11345	----	Team. EDUCATION AS SERVICE BY J. KRISHNAMURTI (ALCYONE) THE RAJPUT PRESS CHICAGO 1912 EDUCATION AS SERVICE INTRODUCTION In long past lives the author of this little book had much to do with educational work, and he seems to have brought over with him an intense interest in education. During his short visits to Benares, he paid an alert attention to many of the details of the work carried on in the Central Hindu College, observing and asking questions, noting the good feeling between teachers and students, so different from his own school experiences in Southern India. He appears to have been brooding over the question, and has, in this booklet, held up the educational ideals which appear to him to be necessary for the improvement of the present system. The position of the teacher must be raised to that which it used to occupy in India, so that to sit in the teacher's chair will be a badge of social honour. His work must be seen as belonging to the great Teaching Department in the Government of our world, and his relation with his pupils must be a copy of the relation between a Master and His disciples. Love, protective and elevating on the one side, must be met with love, confiding and trustful on the other. This is, in truth, the old Hindu ideal, exaggerated as it may seem to be to-day and if it be possible, in any country to rebuild this ideal, it should be by an Indian for Indians. Hence there is, at the back of the author's mind, a dream of a future College and School, wherein this ideal may be materialised--a Theosophical College and School, because the ancient Indian ideals now draw their life from Theosophy which alone can shape the new vessels for the ancient elixir of life Punishment must disappear--not only the old brutality of the cane, but all the forms of coercion that make hypocrites instead of honourable and manly youths. The teacher must embody the ideal, and the boy be drawn, by admiration and love, to copy it. Those who know how swiftly the unspoiled child responds to a noble ideal will realise how potent may be the influence of a teacher, who stimulates by a high example and rules by the sceptre of love instead of by the rod of fear. Besides, the One Life is in teacher and taught, as Alcyone reminds us, and to that Life, which is Divine, all things are possible. Education must be shaped to meet the individual needs of the child, and not by a Government Procrustes' bed, to fit which some are dragged well-nigh asunder and others are chopped down. The capacities of the child, the line they fit him to pursue, these must guide his education. In all, the child's interest must be paramount; the true teacher exists to serve. The school must be a centre of good and joyous influences, radiating from it to the neighbourhood. Studies and games must all be turned to the building of character, to the making of the good citizen, the lover of his country. Thus dreams the boy, who is to become a teacher, of the possibilities the future may unfold. May he realise, in the strength of a noble Manhood, the pure visions of his youth, and embody a Power which shall make earth's deserts rejoice and blossom as the rose. ANNIE BESANT. TO THE SUPREME TEACHER AND TO THOSE WHO FOLLOW HIM FOREWORD Many of the suggestions made in this little book come from my own memories of early school life; and my own experience since of the methods used in Occult training has shown me how much happier boys' lives might be made than they usually are. I have myself experienced both the right way of teaching and the wrong way, and therefore I want to help others towards the right way. I write upon the subject because it is one which is very near to the heart of my Master, and much of what I say is but an imperfect echo of what I have heard from Him. Then again, during the last two years, I have seen much of the work done in the Central Hindu College at Benares by Mr. G.S. Arundale and his devoted band of helpers. I have seen teachers glad to spend their time and energies in continual service of those whom they regard as their younger brothers. I have also watched the boys, in their turn, showing a reverence and an affectionate gratitude to their teachers that I had never thought possible. Though many people may think the ideals put forward are entirely beyond the average teacher, and cannot be put into practice in ordinary schools, I can thus point at least to one institution in which I have seen many of the suggestions made in this book actually carried out. It may be that some of them _are_, at present, beyond most schools; but they will be recognised and practised as soon as teachers realise them as desirable, and have a proper understanding of the importance of their office. Most of the recommendations apply, I think, to all countries, and to all religions, and are intended to sound the note of our common brotherhood, irrespective of religion or caste, race or colour. If the unity of life and the oneness of its purpose could be clearly taught to the young in schools, how much brighter would be our hopes for the future! The mutual distrust of races and nations would disappear, if the children were trained in mutual love and sympathy as members of one great family of children all over the world, instead of being taught to glory only in their own traditions and to despise those of others. True patriotism is a beautiful quality in children, for it means unselfishness of purpose and enthusiasm for great ideals; but that is false patriotism which shows itself in contempt for other nations. There are, I am told, many organisations within the various nations of the world, intended to inspire the children with a love for their country and a desire to serve her, and that is surely good; but I wonder when there will be an international organisation to give the children of all nations common ideals also, and a knowledge of the real foundation of right action, the Brotherhood of Man. I desire to thank my dear mother, Mrs. Annie Besant, for the help she has given me while I have been writing this little book, and also my dear friend, Mr. G.S. Arundale--with whom I have often talked on the subject--for many useful suggestions. J. KRISHNAMURTI. CONTENTS THE TEACHER I. LOVE II. DISCRIMINATION III. DESIRELESSNESS IV. GOOD CONDUCT 1. Self-control as to the mind 2. Self-control in action 3. Tolerance 4. Cheerfulness 5. One-pointedness 6. Confidence THE TEACHER In _At the Feet of the Master_ I have written down the instructions given to me by my Master in preparing me to learn how best to be useful to those around me. All who have read the book will know how inspiring the Master's words are, and how they make each person who reads them long to train himself for the service of others. I know myself how much I have been helped by the loving care of those to whom I look for guidance, and I am eager to pass on to others the help I have obtained from them. It seems to me that the Master's instructions can be universally applied. They are useful not only to those who are definitely trying to tread the path which leads to Initiation, but also to all who, while still doing the ordinary work of the world, are anxious to do their duty earnestly and unselfishly. One of the noblest forms of work is that of the teacher; let us see what light is thrown upon it by the words of the Master. I will take the four Qualifications which have been given in _At the Feet of the Master_, and will try to show how they can be applied to the life of the teacher and of the students, and to the relations which should exist between them. The most important Qualification in education is Love, and I will take that first. It is sad that in modern days the office of a teacher has not been regarded as on a level with other learned professions. Any one has been thought good enough to be a teacher, and as a result little honour has been paid to him. Naturally, therefore, the cleverest boys are not drawn towards that profession. But really the office of the teacher is the most sacred and the most important to the nation, because it builds the characters of the boys and girls who will be its future citizens. In olden days this office was thought so holy that only priests were teachers and the school was a part of the temple. In India the trust in the teacher was so great that the parents gave over their sons completely to him for many years, and teacher and students lived together as a family. Because this happy relation should be brought back again, I put Love first among the Qualifications which a teacher ought to have. If India is to become again the great nation which we all hope to see, this old happy relation must be re-established. I. LOVE My Master taught me that Love will enable a man to acquire all other qualities and that "all the rest without it would never be sufficient." Therefore no person ought to be a teacher--ought to be allowed to be a teacher--unless he has shown in his daily life that Love is the strongest quality of his nature. It may be asked: How are we to find out whether a person possesses Love to a sufficient degree to make him worthy to be a teacher? Just as a boy shows his natural capacities at an early age for one profession or another, so a particularly strong love-nature would mark a boy out as specially fitted to be an instructor. Such boys should be definitely trained for the office of the teacher just as boys are trained for other professions. Boys who are preparing for all careers live a common life in the same school, and they can only become useful to the nation as men, if their school life is happy. A young child is naturally happy, and if that happiness is allowed to go on and grow in the school, and at home, then he will become a man who will make others happy. A teacher full of love and sympathy will attract the boys and make their school life a pleasant one. My Master once said that "children are very eager to learn and if a teacher cannot interest them and make them love their lessons, he is not fit to be a teacher and should choose another profession." He has said also: "Those who are mine love to teach and to serve. They long for an opportunity of service as a hungry man longs for food, and they are always watching for it. Their hearts are so full of the divine Love that it must be always overflowing in love for those around them. Only such are fit to be teachers--those to whom teaching is not only a holy and imperative duty, but also the greatest of pleasures." A sympathetic teacher draws out all the good qualities in his pupils, and his gentleness prevents them from being afraid of him. Each boy then shows himself just as he is, and the teacher is able to see the line best suited to him and to help him to follow it. To such a teacher a boy will come with all his difficulties, knowing that he will be met with sympathy and kindness, and, instead of hiding his weaknesses, he will be glad to tell everything to one of whose loving help he is sure. The good teacher remembers his own youth, and so can feel with the boy who comes to him. My Master said: "He who has forgotten his childhood and lost sympathy with the children is not a man who can teach them or help them." This love of the teacher for his pupil, protecting and helping him, will bring out love from the pupil in turn, and as he looks up to his teacher this love will take the form of reverence. Reverence, beginning in this way with the boy, will grow as he grows older, and will become the habit of seeing and reverencing greatness, and so perhaps in time may lead him to the Feet of the Master. The love of the boy to the teacher will make him docile and easy to guide, and so the question of punishment will never arise. Thus one great cause of fear which at present poisons all the relations between the teacher and his pupil will vanish. Those of us who have the happiness of being pupils of the true Masters know what this relation ought to be. We know the wonderful patience, gentleness and sympathy with which They always meet us, even when we may have made mistakes or have been weak. Yet there is much more difference between Them and us than between the ordinary teacher and his pupil. When the teacher has learned to look upon his office as dedicating him to the service of the nation, as the Master has dedicated Himself to the service of humanity, then he will become part of the great Teaching Department of the world, to which belongs my own beloved Master--the Department of which the supreme Teacher of Gods and men is the august Head. It may be said that many boys could not be managed in this way. The answer is that such boys have been already spoiled by bad treatment. Even so, they must be slowly improved by greater patience and constant love. This plan has already proved successful when tried. Living in this atmosphere of love during school hours, the boy will become a better son and a better brother at home, and will bring home with him a feeling of life and vigour, instead of coming home, as he generally does now, depressed and tired. When he, in turn, becomes the head of a household, he will fill it with the love in which he has been brought up, and so the happiness will go on spreading and increasing, generation after generation. Such a boy when he becomes a father, will not look on his son, as so many do now, from a purely selfish point of view, as though he were merely a piece of property--as though the son existed for the sake of the father. Some parents seem to regard their children only as a means of increasing the prosperity and reputation of the family by the professions which they may adopt or the marriages that they may make, without considering in the least the wishes of the children themselves. The wise father will consult his boy as a friend, will take pains to find out what his wishes are, and will help him with his greater experience to carry out those wishes wisely, remembering always that his son is an ego who has come to the father to give him the opportunity of making good karma by aiding the son in his progress. He will never forget that though his son's body may be young, the soul within is as old as his own, and must therefore be treated with respect as well as affection. Love both at home and in the school will naturally show itself in continual small acts of service, and these will form a habit out of which will grow the larger and more heroic acts of service which makes the greatness of a nation. The Master speaks much on cruelty as a sin against love, and distinguishes between intentional and unintentional cruelty. He says: "Intentional cruelty is purposely to give pain to another living being; and that is the greatest of all sins--the work of a devil rather than a man." The use of the cane must be classed under this, for He says of intentional cruelty: "Many schoolmasters do it habitually." We must also include all words and acts _intended_ to wound the feelings of the boy and to hurt his self-respect. In some countries corporal punishment is forbidden, but in most it is still the custom. But my Master said: "These people try to excuse their brutality by saying that it is the custom; but a crime does not cease to be a crime because many commit it. Karma takes no account of custom; and the karma of cruelty is the most terrible of all. In India at least there can be no excuse for such customs, for the duty of harmlessness is well known to all." The whole idea of what is called "punishment" is not only wrong but foolish. A teacher who tries to frighten his boys into doing what he wishes does not see that they only obey him while he is there, and that as soon as they are out of his sight they will pay no attention to his rules, or even take a pleasure in breaking them because they dislike him. But if he draws them to do what he wants because they love him and wish to please him, they will keep his rules even in his absence, and so make his work much easier. Instead of developing fear and dislike in the characters of the boys, the wise teacher will gain his ends by calling forth from them love and devotion; and so will strengthen all that is good in them, and help them on the road of evolution. Again, the idea of expulsion, of getting rid of a troublesome boy instead of trying to improve him, is wrong. Even when, for the sake of his companions, a boy has to be separated from them, the good of the boy himself must not be forgotten. In fact, all through, school discipline should be based on the good of the boys and not on the idea of saving trouble to the teacher. The loving teacher does not mind the trouble. Unintentional cruelty often comes from mere thoughtlessness, and the teacher should be very careful not to be cruel in words or actions from want of thought. Teachers often cause pain by hasty words uttered at a time when they have been disturbed by some outside annoyance, or are trying to attend to some important duty. The teacher may forget the incident or pass it over as trivial, but in many such cases a sensitive boy has been wounded, and he broods over the words and ends by imagining all sorts of foolish exaggerations. In this way many misunderstandings arise between teachers and boys, and though the boys must learn to be patient and generous, and to realise that the teacher is anxious to help all as much as he can, the teacher in his turn must always be on the alert to watch his words, and to allow nothing but gentleness to shine out from his speech and actions, however busy he may be. If the teacher is always gentle to the boys, who are younger and weaker than himself, it will be easy for him to teach them the important lesson of kindness to little children, animals, birds and other living creatures. The older boys, who themselves are gentle and tactful, should be encouraged to observe the condition of the animals they see in the streets, and if they see any act of cruelty, to beg the doer of it very politely and gently, to treat the animal more kindly. The boys should be taught that nothing which involves the hunting and killing of animals should be called sport. That word ought to be kept for manly games and exercises, and not used for the wounding and killing of animals. My Master says: "The fate of the cruel must fall also upon all who go out intentionally to kill God's creatures and call it sport." I do not think that teachers realise the harm and the suffering caused by gossip, which the Master calls a sin against love. Teachers should be very careful not to make difficulties for their boys by gossiping about them. No boy should ever be allowed to have a bad name in the school, and it should be the rule that no one may speak ill of any other member of the school whether teacher or boy. My Master points out that by talking about a person's faults, we not only strengthen those faults in him, but also fill our own minds with evil thoughts. There is only one way of really getting rid of our lower nature, and that is by strengthening the higher. And while it is the duty of the teacher to understand the weaknesses of those placed in his charge he must realise that he will destroy the lower nature only by surrounding the boy with his love, thus stimulating the higher and nobler qualities till there is no place left for the weaknesses. The more the teacher gossips about the faults of the boys, the more harm he does, and, except during a consultation with his fellow teachers as to the best methods of helping individual boys out of their weaknesses, he should never talk about a boy's defects. The boys must also be taught the cruelty of gossip among themselves. I know many a boy whose life at school has been made miserable because his companions have been thoughtless and unkind, and the teacher either has not noticed his unhappiness, or has not understood how to explain to the boys the nature of the harm they were doing. Boys frequently take hold of some peculiarity in speech or in dress, or of some mistake which has been made, and, not realising the pain they cause, carelessly torture their unfortunate schoolfellow with unkind allusions. In this case the mischief is due chiefly to ignorance, and if the teacher has influence over the boys, and gently explains to them what pain they are giving they will quickly stop. They must be taught, too, that nothing which causes suffering or annoyance to another can ever be the right thing to do, nor can it ever be amusing to any right-minded boy. Some children seem to find pleasure in teasing or annoying others, but that is only because they are ignorant. When they understand, they will never again be so unbrotherly. In every class-room these words of my Master should be put up in a prominent place: "Never speak ill of any one; refuse to listen when anyone else speaks ill of another, but gently say: 'Perhaps this is not true, and even if it is, it is kinder not to speak of it.'" There are crimes against love which are not recognised as crimes, and which are unfortunately very common. A teacher must use discretion in dealing with these, but should teach a doctrine of love so far as he is permitted, and may at least set a good example himself. Three of these are put by my Master under the head of cruelties caused by superstition. 1. Animal sacrifice. Among civilised nations this is now found only in India, and is tending to disappear even there. Parents and teachers should tell their boys that no custom which is cruel is really part of any true religion. For we have seen that religion teaches unity, and therefore kindness and gentleness to everything that feels. God cannot therefore be served by cruelty and the killing of helpless creatures. If Indian boys learn this lesson of love in school they will, when they become men, put an end entirely to this cruel superstition. 2. Much more widely spread is what my Master calls "the still more cruel superstition that man needs flesh for food." This is a matter that concerns the parent more than the teacher, but at least the teacher may gradually lead his boys to see the cruelty involved in killing animals for food. Then, even if the boy is obliged to eat meat at home, he will give it up when he is a man, and will give his own children a better opportunity than he himself had. If parents at home and teachers at school would train young children in the duty of loving and protecting all living creatures, the world would be much happier than it is at present. 3. "The treatment which superstition has meted out to the depressed classes in our beloved India," says the Master, is a proof that "this evil quality can breed heartless cruelty even among those who know the duty of Brotherhood." To get rid of this form of cruelty every boy must be taught the great lesson of love, and much can be done for this in school as well as at home. The boy at school has many special opportunities of learning this lesson, and the teacher should point out the duty of showing courtesy and kindness to all who are in inferior positions, as well as to the poor whom he may meet outside. All who know the truth of reincarnation should realise that they are members of one great family, in which some are younger brethren and some elder. Boys must be taught to show gentleness and consideration to servants, and to all who are below them in social position; caste was not intended to promote pride and rudeness, and Manu teaches that servants should be treated as the children of the family. A great part of the teacher's work lies in the playground, and the teacher who does not play with his boys will never quite win their hearts. Indian boys as a rule do not play enough, and time should be given for games during the school day. Even the teachers who have not learned to play in their youth should come to the playground and show interest in the games, thus sharing in this part of the boy's education. In schools where there are boarding-houses the love of the teacher is especially necessary, for in them the boarding-house must take the place of the home, and a family feeling must be created there. Bright and affectionate teachers will be looked on as elder brothers, and difficulties which escape rules will be got rid of by love. In fact, all the many activities of school life should be made into channels through which affection can run between teacher and pupil, and the more channels there are the better it will be for both. As the boy grows older these channels will naturally become more numerous, and the love of the school will become the friendship of manhood. Thus love will have her perfect work. Love on the physical plane has many forms. We have the love of husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, the affection between relatives and friends. But all these are blended and enriched in the love of the Master to His disciple. The Master gives to His pupil the gentleness and protection of a mother, the strength of a father, the understanding of a brother or a sister, the encouragement of a relative or a friend, and He is one with His pupil and His pupil is a part of Him. Besides this, the Master knows His pupil's past, and His pupil's future, and guides him through the present from the past into the future. The pupil knows but little beyond the present, and he does not understand that great love which draws its inspiration from the memory of the past and shapes itself to mould the powers of the future. He may even sometimes doubt the wisdom of the love which guides itself according to a pattern which his eyes cannot see. That which I have said above may seem a very high ideal for the relation between a teacher and pupil down here. Yet the difference between them is less than the difference between a Master and His disciple. The lower relation should be a faint reflection of the higher, and at least the teacher may set the higher before himself as an ideal. Such an ideal will lift all his work into a higher world, and all school life will be made happier and better because the teacher has set it before him. II. DISCRIMINATION The next very necessary qualification for the teacher is Discrimination. My Master said that the most important knowledge was "the knowledge of God's plan for men, for God has a plan, and that plan is evolution." Each boy has his own place in evolution, and the teacher must try to see what that place is, and how he can best help the boy in that place. This is what the Hindus call Dharma, and it is the teacher's duty to find out the boy's dharma and to help him to fulfil it. In other words, the teaching given to the boy should be that which is suitable for him, and the teacher must use discrimination in choosing the teaching, and in his way of giving it. Under these conditions, the boy's progress would be following out the tendencies made in past lives, and would really be remembering the things he knew before. "The method of evolution," as a great Master said, "is a constant dipping down into matter under the law of readjustment," _i.e._ by reincarnation and karma. Unless the teacher knows these truths, he cannot work with evolution as he should do, and much of his time and of his pupil's time will be wasted. It is this ignorance which causes such small results to be seen, after many years at school, and which leaves the boy himself so ignorant of the great truths which he needs to guide his conduct in life. Discrimination is wanted in the choice of subjects and in the way in which they are taught. First in importance come religion and morals, and these must not only be taught as subjects but must be made both the foundation and the atmosphere of school life, for these are equally wanted by every boy, no matter what he is to do later in life. Religion teaches us that we are all part of One Self, and that we ought therefore help one another. My Master said that people "try to invent ways for themselves which they think will be pleasant for themselves, not understanding that all are one, and that therefore only what the One wills can ever be really pleasant for anyone." And He also said: "You can help your brother through that which you have in common with him, and that is the Divine life." To teach this is to teach religion, and to live it is to lead the religious life. At present the value of the set moral teaching is largely made useless by the arrangements of the school. The school day should always open with something of the nature of a religious service, striking the note of a common purpose and a common life, so that the boys, who are all coming from different homes and different ways of living may be tuned to unity in the school. It is a good plan to begin with a little music or singing so that the boys, who often come rushing in from hastily taken food, may quiet down and begin the school day in an orderly way. After this should come a prayer and a very short but beautiful address, placing an ideal before the boys. But if these ideals are to be useful, they must be practised all through the school day, so that the spirit of the religious period may run through the lessons and the games. For example, the duty of the strong to help the weak is taught in the religious hour, and yet for the rest of the day the strong are set to outstrip the weak, and are given valuable prizes for their success in doing so. These prizes make many boys jealous and discourage others, they stimulate the spirit of struggle. The Central Hindu College Brotherhood has for its motto: "The ideal reward is an increased power to love and to serve." If the prizes for good work and conduct and for helping others were positions of greater trust and power of helping, this motto would be carried out. In fact, in school honour should be given to character and helpfulness rather than to strength of mind and body; strength ought to be trained and developed, but not rewarded for merely outstripping the weak. Such a school life will send out into the world men who will think more of filling places of usefulness to the nation than of merely gaining money and power for themselves. An important part of moral teaching lies in the training of the boy in patriotism--love of country. The above plan of teaching the boy to be of service in the little family of the school, will naturally widen out into service in the large family of the nation. This will also influence the boy in his choice of a profession, for he will think of the nation as his family, and will try to fill a useful place in the national life. But great care must be taken in teaching patriotism not to let the boys slip into hatred of other nations, as so often happens. This is especially important in India, where both Indian and English teachers should try to make good feeling between the two races living side by side, so that they may join in common work for the one Empire. Discrimination may also be shown in the arrangement of lessons, the most difficult subjects being taken early in the day, as far as possible. For even with the best and most carefully arranged teaching a boy will be more tired at the end of the school day than at the beginning. Discrimination is also wanted in the method of teaching, and in the amount of time given to mental and physical education. The care of the body and its development are of the first importance, for without a healthy body all teaching is wasted. It should be remembered that the boy can go on, learning all his life, if he is wise enough to wish to do so; but it is only during the years of growth that he can build up a healthy physical body in which to spend that life. Therefore during those early years the healthy development of that physical body must be absolutely the first consideration, and anything that cannot be learned compatibly with that must for the time remain unlearned. The strain on the boy's mind--and particularly on those of very young boys--is far too great and lasts far too long; the lesson period should be broken up, and the teacher should be very careful to watch the boys and to see that they do not become tired. His wish to prevent this strain will make him think out new ways of teaching, which will make the lessons very interesting; for a boy who is interested does not easily become tired. I myself remember how tired we used to be when we reached home, far too tired to do anything but lie about. But the Indian boy is not allowed to rest even when he comes home, for he has then to begin home lessons, often with a tutor, when he ought to be at rest or play. These home lessons begin again in the morning, before he goes to school, and the result is that he looks on his lessons as a hardship instead of a pleasure. Much of this homework is done by a very bad light and the boy's eyes suffer much. All home lessons should be abolished; home work burns the candle at both ends, and makes the boy's life a slavery. School hours are quite long enough, and an intelligent teacher can impart in them quite as much as any boy ought to learn in one day. What cannot be taught within those hours should be postponed until the next day. We see the result of all this overstrain in the prevalence of eye-diseases in India. Western countries set us a good example in the physical training of their boys, who leave school strong and healthy. I have heard in England that in the poorer schools the children are often inspected by a doctor so that any eye-disease or other defect is found out at once before it becomes serious. I wonder how many boys in India are called stupid merely because they are suffering from some eye or ear trouble. Discrimination should also be shown in deciding the length of the waking and sleeping times. These vary, of course, with age and to some extent perhaps with temperament. No boy should have less than nine or ten hours of sleep; when growth ceases, eight hours would generally be enough. A boy grows most during his sleep, so that the time is not in the least wasted. Few people realise how much a boy is affected by his surroundings, by the things on which his eyes are continually resting. The emotions and the mind are largely trained through the eye, and bare walls, or, still worse, ugly pictures are distinctly harmful. It is true that beautiful surroundings sometimes cost a little more than ugly ones, but the money is well spent. In some things only trouble is needed in choosing, for an ugly picture costs as much as a pretty one. Perfect cleanliness is also absolutely necessary, and teachers should be constantly on the watch to see that it is maintained. The Master said about the body: "Keep it strictly clean always; even from the minutest speck of dirt." Both teachers and students should be very clean and neat in their dress, thus helping to preserve the general beauty of the school surroundings. In all these things careful discrimination is wanted. If a boy is weak in a particular subject, or is not attracted by some subject which he is obliged to learn, a discriminating teacher will sometimes help him by suggesting to him to teach it to one who knows less than he does. The wish to help the younger boy will make the elder eager to learn more, and that which was a toil becomes a pleasure. A clever teacher will think of many such ways of helping his boys. If discrimination has been shown, as suggested in a preceding paragraph, in choosing the best and most helpful boys for positions of trust, it will be easy to teach the younger boys to look up to and wish to please them. The wish to please a loved and admired elder is one of the strongest motives in a boy, and this should be used to encourage good conduct, instead of using punishment to drive boys away from what is bad. If the teacher can succeed in attracting this love and admiration to himself, he will remain a helper to his students long after they have become men. I have been told that the boys who were under Dr. Arnold at Rugby continued in after life to turn to him for advice in their troubles and perplexities. We may perhaps add that discrimination is a most important qualification for those whose duty it is to choose the teachers. High character and the love-nature of which we have already spoken are absolutely necessary if the above suggestions are to be carried out. III. DESIRELESSNESS The next qualification to be considered is Desirelessness. There are many difficulties in the way of the teacher when he tries to acquire desirelessness, and it also requires special consideration from the standpoint of the student. As has been said in _At the Feet of the Master_: "In the light of His holy Presence all desire dies, _but_ the desire to be like Him." It is also said in the Bhagavad Gita that all desire dies "when once the Supreme is seen." This is the ideal at which to aim, that the One Will shall take the place of changing desires. This Will is seen in our dharma, and in a true teacher, one whose dharma is teaching, his one desire will be to teach, and to teach well. In fact, unless this desire is felt, teaching is not his dharma, for the presence of this desire is inseparable from real capacity to teach. We have already said that little honour, unfortunately, is attached to the post of a teacher, and that a man often takes the position because he can get nothing else, instead of because he really wants to teach, and knows that he can teach. The result is that he thinks more about salary than anything else, and is always looking about for the chance of a higher salary. This becomes his chief desire. While the teacher is no doubt partly to blame for this, it is the system which is mostly in fault, for the teacher needs enough to support himself and his family, and this is a right and natural wish on his part. It is the duty of the nation to see that he is not placed in a position in which he is obliged to be always desiring increase of salary, or must take private tuition in order to earn enough to live. Only when this has been done will the teacher feel contented and happy in the position he occupies, and feel the dignity of his office as a teacher, whatever may be his position among other teachers--which is, I fear, now marked chiefly by the amount of his salary. Only the man who is really contented and happy can have his mind free to teach well. The teacher should not desire to gain credit for himself by forcing a boy along his own line, but should consider the special talent of each boy, and the way in which _he_ can gain most success. Too often the teacher, thinking only of his own subject, forgets that the boy has to learn many subjects. The one on which most stress should be laid is the one most suited to the boy's capacity. Unless the teachers co-operate with each other, the boy is too much pressed, for each teacher urges him on in his own subject, and gives him home-lessons in this. There are many teachers, but there is only one boy. Again, the boy's welfare must be put by the teacher before his own desire to obtain good results in an examination. Sometimes it is better for a boy to remain for another year in a class and master a subject thoroughly rather than to go up for an examination which is really too difficult for him. In such a case it is right to keep him back. But it is not right to keep him back merely for the sake of good results for the teacher. On the other hand, a teacher has sometimes to resist the parents who try to force the boy beyond his strength, and think more of his rising into a higher class than of his really knowing his subjects. Unless the teacher has desirelessness, his own desires may blind him to the aspirations and capacities of the boys in his care, and he will be frequently imposing his own wishes on them instead of helping them in their natural development. However much a teacher may be attracted towards any profession or any particular set of ideas, he must so develop desirelessness that while he creates in his pupils an enthusiasm for principles, he shall not cramp them within the limits of any particular application of the principles, or allow their generous impulses--unbalanced by experience--to grow into narrow fanaticism. Thus, he should teach the principles of citizenship, but not party politics. He should teach the value of all professions to a nation, if honourably filled, and not the superiority of one profession over another. IV. GOOD CONDUCT There are six points which are summed up by the Master as Good Conduct. These are: 1. Self-control as to the mind. 2. Self-control in action. 3. Tolerance. 4. Cheerfulness. 5. One-pointedness. 6. Confidence. We will take each of these in turn. 1. _Self-control as to the mind_ is a most important qualification for a teacher, for it is principally through the mind that he guides and influences his boys. In the first place it means, as my Master has said, "control of temper, so that you may feel no anger or impatience." It is obvious that much harm will be done to boys if their teacher is often angry and impatient. It is true that this anger and impatience are often caused by the outer conditions of the teacher's life, but this does not prevent their bad effect on the boys. Such feelings, due generally to very small causes, re-act upon the minds of the students, and if the teacher is generally impatient and very often angry, he is building into the character of the boys germs of impatience and anger which may in after life destroy their own happiness, and embitter the lives of their relations and friends. We have to remember also that the boys themselves often come to school discontented and worried on account of troubles at home, and so both teachers and boys bring with them angry and impatient thoughts, which spread through the school, and make the lessons difficult and unpleasant when they should be easy and full of delight. The short religious service referred to in an early part of this little book should be attended by teachers as well as students, and should act as a kind of door to shut out such undesirable feelings. Then both teachers and students would devote their whole energies to the creation of a happy school, to which all should look forward in the morning, and which all should be sorry to leave at the end of the school day. The lack of control of temper, it must be remembered, often leads to injustice on the part of the teacher, and therefore to sullenness and want of confidence on the boy, and no boy can make real progress, or be in any real sense happy, unless he has complete confidence in the justice of his elders. Much of the strain of modern school life is due to this lack of confidence, and much time has to be wasted in breaking down barriers which would never have been set up if the teacher had been patient. Anger and impatience grow out of irritability. It is as necessary for the boy to understand his teacher as for the teacher to understand the boy, and hasty temper is an almost insuperable obstacle in the way of such understanding. "The teacher is angry to-day," "The teacher is irritable to-day," "The teacher is short-tempered to-day," are phrases too often on the lips of boys, and they produce a feeling of discomfort in the class-room that makes harmony and ease impossible. Boys learn to watch their teachers, and to guard themselves against their moods, and so distrust replaces confidence. The value of the teacher depends upon his power of inspiring confidence, and he loses this when he gives way to irritability. This is particularly important with young children, for they are eager to learn and eager to love, and only those who have no business to be teachers would dare to meet such eagerness by anger. It is of course true that younger boys are in many ways more difficult to teach than elder ones; for they have not yet learned how to make efforts, nor how to control and guide them when made. The teacher has therefore to help them much more than the elder boys who have learned largely to help themselves. The chief difficulty is to make the best use of the young energies by finding them continual and interesting employment; if the young enthusiasms are checked harshly instead of being guided sympathetically they will soon die out, and the boy will become dull and discontented. I have read that youth is full of enthusiasm and ideals, and that these gradually disappear with age, until a man is left with few or none. But it seems to me that enthusiasm, if real, should not die out, and leave cynicism behind, but rather should become stronger and more purposeful with age. The young children coming straight out of the heaven-world have brought with them a feeling of unity, and this feeling should be strengthened in them, so that it may last on through life. Anger and irritability belong only to the separated self, and they drive away the feeling of unity. Self-control also involves calmness, courage and steadiness. Whatever difficulties the teacher may have either at home or at school, he must learn to face them bravely and cheerfully, not only that he may avoid worry for himself, but also that he may set a good example to his boys, and so help them to become strong and brave. Difficulties are much increased by worrying over them, and by imagining them before they happen--doing what Mrs. Besant once called, "crossing bridges before we come to them." Unless the teacher is cheerful and courageous with his own difficulties, he will not be able to help the boys to meet _their_ difficulties bravely. Most obstacles grow small before a contented mind, and boys who bring this to their work will find their studies much easier than if they came to them discontented and worried. Courage and steadiness lead to self-reliance, and one who is self-reliant can always be depended on to do his duty, even under difficult circumstances. Self-control as to the mind also means concentration on each piece of work as it has to be done. My Master says about the mind: "You must not let it wander. Whatever you are doing, fix your thought upon it, that it may be perfectly done." Much time is lost in school because the boys do not pay sufficient attention to their work; and unless the teacher is himself paying full attention to it the minds of the boys are sure to wander. Prayer and meditation are intended to teach control of the mind, but these are practised only once or twice a day. Unless the mind is controlled all day long by paying attention to everything we do, as the Master directs, we shall never gain real power over our minds, so that they may be perfect instruments. One of the most difficult parts of a teacher's duty is to turn quickly from one subject to another, as the boys come to him with their different questions and troubles. His mind must be so fully under his control that he can pay complete attention to the particular anxiety of each boy, taking up one after the other with the same care and interest, and without any impatience. If he does not pay this full attention he is sure to make mistakes in the advice which he gives, or to be unjust in his decisions, and out of such mistakes very serious troubles may arise. On this point my friend, Mr. G.S. Arundale, the well-known Principal of the Central Hindu College, writes: "At frequent intervals, of course, boys come with complaints, with petitions, and here I have to be very careful to concentrate my attention on each boy and on his particular need, for the request, or complaint, or trouble, is sometimes quite trivial and foolish, and yet it may be a great source of worry to the boy unless it is attended to; and even if the boy cannot be satisfied he can generally be sent away contented. One of the most difficult tasks for a teacher is to have sufficient control over his attention to be able continually to turn it from one subject to another without losing intensity, and to bear cheerfully the strain this effort involves. We often speak of something taxing a person's patience, but we really mean that it taxes a person's attention, for impatience is only the desire of the mind to attend to something more interesting than that which for the moment occupies it." Boys must be helped to concentrate their attention on what they are doing, for their minds are always wandering away from the subject in hand. The world outside them is so full of attractive objects new and interesting to them, that their attention runs away after each fresh thing that comes under their eyes. A child is constantly told to observe, and he takes pleasure in doing so; when he begins to reason he must for the time stop observing and concentrate his mind on the subject he is studying. This change is at first very difficult for him, and the teacher must help him to take up the new attitude. Sometimes attention wanders because the boy is tired, and then the teacher should try to put the subject in a new way. The boy does not generally cease to pay attention wilfully and deliberately, and the teacher must be patient with the restlessness so natural to youth. Let him at least always be sure that the want of attention is not the result of his own fault, of his own way of teaching. If the attention of the teachers and the boys is trained in this way, the whole school life will become fuller and brighter, and there will be no room for the many harmful thoughts which crowd into the uncontrolled mind. Even when rest is wanted by the mind, it need not be quite empty; in the words of the Master: "Keep good thoughts always in the background of it, ready to come forward the moment it is free." The Master goes on to explain how the mind may be used to help others, when it has been brought under control. "Think each day of some one whom you know to be in sorrow, or suffering, or in need of help, and pour out loving thoughts upon him." Teachers hardly understand the immense force they may use along this line. They can influence their boys by their thoughts even more than by their words and actions, and by sending out a stream of kind and loving thoughts over the class, the minds of all the boys will be made quieter and happier. Even without speaking a word they will improve the whole atmosphere. This good influence of thought should spread out from the school over the neighbourhood. As those who live among young people keep young themselves, and keep the ideals and pure aspirations of youth longer than those who live mainly among older people, so the presence of a school should be a source of joy and inspiration to the surrounding neighbourhood or district. Happy and harmonious thought-forms should radiate from it, lighting up the duller atmosphere outside, pouring streams of hope and strength into all within its sphere of influence. The poor should be happier, the sick more comfortable, the aged more respected, because of the school in their midst. If the teacher often speaks on these subjects to his boys, and from time to time places some clear thought before them, which they all think about together, much good may be done. For thought is a very real and powerful force, especially when many join together with some common thought in their minds. If any great disaster has happened, causing misery to numbers of people, the teacher might take advantage of the religious service to draw attention to the need, and ask the boys to join with him in sending thoughts of love and courage to the sufferers. The last point mentioned by the Master is pride: "Hold back your mind from pride," He says, "for pride comes only from ignorance." We must not confuse pride with the happiness felt when a piece of work is well done; pride grows out of the feeling of separateness: "_I_ have done better than others." Happiness in good work should grow out of the feeling of unity: "I am glad to have done this to help us all." Pride separates a person from others, and makes him think himself superior to those around him; but the pleasure in some piece of work well done is helpful and stimulating, and encourages the doer to take up some more difficult work. When we share with others any knowledge we have gained, we lose all feeling of pride, and the wish to help more, instead of the wish to excel others, becomes the motive for study. 2. _Self-control in action_. The Master points out that while "there must be no laziness, but constant activity in good work ... it must be your _own_ duty that you do--not another man's, unless with his permission and by way of helping him." The teacher has, however, a special duty in this connection; for while he must offer to his boys every opportunity for development along their own lines, and must be careful not to check their growth or to force it in an unsuitable direction, he is bound to guide them very carefully, to watch them very closely, and, as Master has said, to tell them gently of their faults. The teacher is in charge of his boys while they are in school, and must, while they are there, take the place of their parents. His special lesson of self-control is to learn to adapt his own methods to the stage through which his boys are passing. While contenting himself with watching and encouraging them when their activity is running along right lines, he must be ready to step in--with as little disturbance as possible--to modify the activity if it becomes excessive, to stimulate it if it becomes dull, and to turn it into new channels if it has taken a wrong course. In any necessary interposition he should try to make the boys feel that he is helping them to find the way they have missed but really wished to go, rather than forcing them to go his way. Many boys have failed to develop the necessary strength of character, because the teacher, by constant interference, has imposed on them his own knowledge as to right action, instead of trying to awaken their judgment and intuition. The boys become accustomed to depend entirely on him, instead of learning gradually to walk alone. The teacher must be very careful not to allow outside interests to take him away from his duties in the school. Many teachers do not seem to realise that the school should occupy as much time as they can possibly give to it outside their home duties. They sometimes do the bare amount of work necessary, and then rush away to some other occupation which they find more interesting. No teacher can be really successful in his profession unless it is the thing he cares for most, unless he is eager to devote all the time he can to his boys, and feels that he is happiest when he is working with them or for them. We are always told that enthusiasm and devotion to their work mark the successful business man, the successful official, the successful statesman; they are equally necessary for the successful teacher. Anyone who desires to rise high in the profession of teaching must bring to his work, not only ability, but similar enthusiasm and devotion. Surely even more enthusiasm and devotion should be brought to the moulding of many hundreds of young lives than to the gaining of money or power. Every moment that the teacher is with his boys he can help them, for, as has always been taught in India, being near a good man helps one's evolution. Away from the school he should be thinking of them and planning for them, and this he cannot do if his whole mind, out of school, is taken up with other interests. On this, again, I may quote Mr. Arundale: "When I get up in the morning my first thought is what has to be done during the day generally and as regards my own work in particular. A rapid mental survey of the School and College enables me to see whether any student seems to stand out as needing particular help. I make a note of any such student in my note book, so that I may call him during the day. Then before College hours, before I take up any extraneous work, I look through my own lectures to see that I am ready for them. By this time students are continually dropping in with questions, with their hopes and aspirations, with difficulties and with troubles, some with slight ailments they want cured. I have a special little place in which to see those young men, so that the atmosphere may be pure and harmonious, and upon each one I endeavour to concentrate my whole attention, shutting everything else completely off, and I am not satisfied unless each boy leaves me with a smile upon his face." Unless a teacher works in this spirit, he does not understand how sacred and solemn a trust is placed in his hands. No teacher is worthy of the name who does not realise that he serves God most truly and his country most faithfully when he lives and works with his boys. His self-sacrificing life, lived amongst them, inspires them to perform their duties well, as they see him performing his, and thus they grow in reverence and patriotism. These boys are God's children entrusted to his care; they are the hope of the nation placed in his hands. How shall he answer to God and the nation, when the trust passes out of his hands, if he has not consecrated his whole time and thought to discharge it faithfully, but has allowed the boys to go out into the world with out love to God, and without the wish and power to serve their country? Boys, as well as teachers, must learn self-control in action. They must not so engage in other activities as to neglect their ordinary school duties. My Master says to those who wish to serve Him: "You must do ordinary work better than others, not worse." A boy's first duty in school is to learn well, and nothing should lead him to neglect his regular school work. Outside this--as it is best that his activities should be kept within the school--the wise teacher will provide within the school organisation all the activities in which his boys can usefully take part. If there should be any national organisation to which he thinks it useful that they should belong, he will himself organise a branch of it within the school and he himself and the other teachers will take part in it. For example the Boy-Scout movement and the Sons of India are both national organisations, but branches of them should be formed in the separate schools. Teachers should train their boys to realise that just as the home is the centre of activity for the child, so is the school the centre of activity for the youth. As the child draws his life and energy from the home, so the youth should draw his from the school. The most useful work should be done in connection with the school so that it may form part of the general education of the boy, and be in harmony with the rest of his growth. There should be in the school debating societies, in which the rules of debate are carefully observed, so that the boys may learn self-control in argument; dramatic clubs in which they may learn control of expression; athletic clubs in which control of mind and action are both acquired; literary societies for boys specially interested in certain studies; societies for helping the poorer students. It is also very important to give the boys an opportunity of understanding the conditions under which their country is growing, so that in the school they may practice patriotism apart from politics. It is very unfortunate that in India students are often taught by unscrupulous agitators that love of their country should be shown by hatred of other countries; the boys would never believe this, if their own school provided patriotic services for its boys, so as to give a proper outlet for the enthusiasm they rightly feel. They only seek an outlet away from the school because none is provided for them within it. Groups of students should be formed for various kinds of social service according to the capacities of the boys, and the needs of their surroundings: for the protection of animals, for rendering first aid to the injured, for the education of the depressed classes, for service in connection with national and religious festivals, and so on. Boys, for whom such forms of service are provided in their schools, will not want to carry them on separately. Boys have a special opportunity of practising self-control in action when they play games. The boys come from the more formal discipline of the class-room into conditions in which there is a sudden cessation of external authority; unless they have learned to replace this with self-control, we shall see in the play-ground brutality in the stronger followed by fear in the weaker. The playing fields have a special value in arousing the power of self-discipline, and if teachers are there who set the example of submitting to the authority of the captain, of showing gentleness and honour, and playing for the side rather than for themselves, they will much help the boys in gaining self-control. The boys also will see the teacher in a new light; he is no longer imposing his authority upon them as a teacher, but he is ruling himself from within and subordinating his own action to the rules of the game, and to the interests of those who are playing with him. The boy who enters the field with no other idea than that of enjoying himself as much as he can, even at the expense of his fellow-students, will learn from his teacher's example that he is happiest when playing for others, not for himself alone, and that he plays best when the object of the game is the honour of the school and not his own advantage. He also learns that the best player is the boy who practises his strokes carefully, and uses science to direct strength. Desiring to be a good player himself, he begins to train his body to do as he wishes, thus gaining self-control in action; through this self-control he learns the great lesson, that self-control increases happiness and leads to success. Another thing learned in the play-ground is control of temper, for a boy who loses his temper always plays badly. He learns not to be hasty and impatient, and to control his speech even when he is losing, and not to show vanity when he wins. Thus he is making a character, strong and well-balanced, which will be very useful to him when he comes to be a man. All this is really learned better in the play-ground than in the class-room. 3. _Tolerance_. Most of my Master's directions under this head are intended mainly for disciples, but still their spirit may be applied to those who are living the ordinary life. Tolerance is a virtue which is very necessary in schools, especially when the scholars are of different faiths. "You must feel," says my Master, "perfect tolerance for all, and a hearty interest in the beliefs of those of another religion, just as much as in your own. For their religion is a path to the highest just as yours is. And to help all you must understand all." It is the duty of the teacher to be the first in setting an example along these lines. Many teachers, however, make the mistake of thinking that the views and rules to which they are themselves accustomed are universal principles which everybody ought to accept. They are therefore anxious to destroy the students' own convictions and customs, in order to replace them by others which they think better. This is especially the case in countries like India, where the boys are of many religions. Unless the teacher studies sympathetically the religions of his pupils, and understands that the faith of another is as dear to him as his own is to himself, he is likely to make his boys unbelievers in all religion. He should take special care to speak with reverence of the religions to which his boys belong, strengthening each in the great principles of his own creed, and showing the unity of all religions by apt illustrations taken from the various sacred books. Much can be done in this direction during the religious service which precedes the ordinary work of the day, if this be carried out on lines common to all; while each boy should be taught the doctrines of his own religion, it would be well if he were reminded once in the day of the unity of all religions, for, as the Master said, every "religion is a path to the highest." An example would thus be set in the school of members of different religions living happily side by side, and showing respect to each other's opinions. I feel that this is one of the special functions of the school in the life of the nation. At home the boy is always with those who hold the same opinions as himself, and he has no opportunity of coming into touch with other beliefs and other customs. At school he should have the opportunity of meeting other ways of believing, and the teacher should lead him to understand these, and to see the unity underneath them. The teacher must never make a boy discontented with his own faith by speaking contemptuously of it, or by distorting it through his own ignorance. Such conduct on his part leads a boy to despise all religion. Then again there are many different customs which belong to the different parts of the country. People often exaggerate these and look on them as essential parts of religion instead of only as marks of the part of the country in which they were born. Hence they look with contempt or disapproval on those whose customs differ from their own, and they keep themselves proudly separate. I do not know how far this is a difficulty in western countries, but in India I think that customs separate us much more than physical distance or religious differences. Each part of the country has its own peculiarities as to dress, as to the manner of taking food, as to the way of wearing the hair, school boys are apt at first to look down upon those of their schoolfellows whose appearance or habits differ from their own. Teachers should help boys to get over these trivial differences and to think instead of the one Motherland to which they all belong. We have already said that patriotism should be taught without race hatred, and we may add that understanding and loving other nations is part of the great virtue of tolerance. Boys are obliged to learn the history of their own and of other nations; and history, as it is taught, is full of wars and conquests. The teacher should point out how much terrible suffering has been caused by these, and that though, in spite of them, evolution has made its way and has even utilised them, far more can be gained by peace and good will than by hatred. If care is taken to train children to look on different ways of living with interest and sympathy instead of with distrust and dislike, they will grow up into men who will show to all nations respect and tolerance. 4. _Cheerfulness_. No teacher who really loves his students can be anything but cheerful during school hours. No brave man will allow himself to be depressed, but depression is particularly harmful in a teacher, for he is daily in contact with many boys, and he spreads among them the condition of his own mind. If the teacher is depressed the boys cannot long be cheerful and happy; and unless they are cheerful and happy they cannot learn well. If teachers and boys associate cheerfulness with their school life, they will not only find the work easier than it would otherwise be, but they will turn to the school as to a place in which they can for the time live free from all cares and troubles. The teacher should train himself to turn away from all worrying and depressing thoughts the moment he enters the school gate, for his contribution to the school atmosphere, in which the boys must live and grow, must be cheerfulness and energy. The best way to get rid of depression is to occupy the mind with something bright and interesting, and this should not be difficult when he is going to his boys. Thoughts die when no attention is paid to them so it is better to turn away from depressing thoughts than to fight them. Cheerfulness literally increases life, while depression diminishes it, and by getting rid of depression the teacher increases his energy. It is often indeed very difficult for the teacher, who has the cares of family life upon him, to keep free from anxiety, but still he must try not to bring it into the school. Mr. Arundale tells me that he has made a habit of becoming cheerful the moment he enters the College gates, however worried he may have been beforehand, because, he writes: "I want my contribution to the school day to be happiness and interest, and by a daily process of making myself pretend to be cheerful when the College gates are entered, I have finally succeeded in becoming so. If, as I pass through the grounds to my office, I see any student looking dull and gloomy, I make a point of going up to him in order to exert my cheerfulness against his gloom, and the gloom soon passes away. Then comes the religious service, and when I take my seat upon the platform with the religious instructor, I try to ask the Master's blessing on all the dear young faces I see before me, and I look slowly around upon each member of the audience, trying to send out a continual stream of affection and sympathy." I have already said that boys watch their teachers' faces to see if they are in a good or a bad mood. If the teacher is always cheerful and loving, the boys will no longer watch him, for they will have learned to trust him, and all anxiety and strain will disappear. If the teacher displays constant cheerfulness, he sends out among his boys streams of energy and good will, new life pours into them, their attention is stimulated, and the sympathy of the teacher conquers the carelessness of the boy. Just as a boy learns control of action on the play-ground, so he may learn there this virtue of cheerfulness. To be cheerful in defeat makes the character strong, and the boy who can be cheerful and good-tempered in the face of the team which has just defeated him is well on the way to true manliness. 5. _One-pointedness_. One-pointedness, the concentration of attention on each piece of work as it is being done, so that it may be done as well as possible, largely depends upon interest. Unless the teacher is interested in his work, and loves it beyond all other work, he will not be able to be really one-pointed. He must be so absorbed in his school duties that his mind is continually occupied in planning for his boys, and looks upon everything in the light of its possible application to his own particular work. One-pointedness means enthusiasm, but enthusiasm is impossible without ideals. So the teacher who desires to be one-pointed must be full of ideals to which he is eager to lead his school. These ideals will sharpen his attention, and make him able to concentrate it even upon quite trivial details. He will have the ideal school in his mind, and will always be trying to bring the real school nearer to it. To be one-pointed, therefore, the teacher must not be contented with things as they are, but must be continually on the alert to take advantage of every opportunity of improvement. The teacher's ideal will of course be modified as he learns more of his students' capacities and of the needs of the nation. In this way, as the years pass, the teacher may find himself far from the early ideals that at first gave him one-pointedness. Ideals will still guide him, but they will be more practical, and so his one-pointedness will be much keener and will produce larger results. The Master quotes two sayings which seem to me to show very clearly the lines along which one-pointedness should work: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might"; and: "Whatsoever ye do, do it _heartily_, as to the Lord and not unto men." It must be done "as to the Lord." The Master says: "Every piece of work must be done religiously--done with the feeling that it is a sacred offering to be laid on the altar of the Lord. 'This do I, O Lord, in Thy name and for Thee.' Thinking this, can I offer to Him anything but my very best? Can I let _any_ piece of my work be done carelessly or inattentively, when I know that it is being done expressly for Him? Think how you would do your work if you knew that the Lord Himself were coming directly to see it; and then realise that He _does_ see it, for all is taking place within His consciousness. So will you do your duty 'as unto the Lord and not as unto men'." The work must be done, too, according to the teacher's knowledge of the principles of evolution, and not merely out of regard to small and fleeting interests. The teacher must therefore gradually learn his own place in evolution, so that he may become one-pointed as to himself; unless he practises one-pointedness with regard to his own ideal for himself, he will not be able to bring it to bear on his surroundings. He must try to be in miniature the ideal towards which he hopes to lead his boys, and the application of the ideal to himself will enable him to see in it details which otherwise would escape his notice, or which he might neglect as unimportant. The practical application, then, of one-pointedness lies in the endeavour to keep before the mind some dominant central ideal towards which the whole of the teachers' and boys' daily routine shall be directed, so that the small life may be vitalised by the larger, and all may become conscious parts of one great whole. The ideal of service, for instance, may be made so vivid that the whole of daily life shall be lived in the effort to serve. 6. _Confidence_. First among the qualifications for the teacher has been placed Love, and it is fitting that this little book should end with another qualification of almost equal importance--Confidence. Unless the teacher has confidence in his power to attain his goal, he will not be able to inspire a similar confidence in his boys, and self-confidence is an indispensable attribute for success in all departments of human activity. The Master has beautifully explained why we have the right to be confident. "You must trust yourself. You say you know yourself too well? If you feel so, you do _not_ know yourself; you know only the weak outer husk, which has fallen often into the mire. But _you_--the real you--you are a spark of God's own fire, and God, Who is almighty, is in you, and because of that there is nothing that you cannot do if you will." The teacher must feel that he has the power to teach his boys and to train them for their future work in the world. This power is born of his love for them and his desire to help them, and is drawn from the one spiritual life of which all partake. It is because the teacher and his boys are one in essence, make one little flame in "God's own fire," that the teacher has the right to be confident that every effort to help, growing out of his own share in the one life, will reach and stimulate that same life in the boys. He will not always be able to see at once the effect he is producing. Indeed, the most important influence the teacher has shows itself in the growing characters of the boys. No success in examinations, in reports, in inspections can satisfy the real teacher as to the effect of his work. But when he feels that his own higher nature is strengthened and purified by his eagerness to serve his boys, when he has the joy of watching the divine life in them shining out in answer to that in himself, then his happiness is indeed great. Then he has the peace of knowing that he has awakened in his boys the knowledge of their own divinity, which, sooner or later, will bring them to perfection. The teacher is justified in feeling confident because the divine life is in him and his boys, and they turn to him for inspiration and strength. Let him but send out to them all that is highest in himself, and he may be quite sure that there will not be one boy who will not to some extent respond in his own higher Self, however little the response may be seen by the teacher. This constant interplay of the one life between teacher and students will draw them ever nearer to each other. They learn in the school to live together as elder and younger brothers of the one school family. By living a life of brotherhood within the small area of the school, they will be trained to live that life in the larger area of the nation. Then they will gradually learn that there is but one great brotherhood in all the world, one divine life in all. This life each separate member of the brotherhood is trying to express, consciously or unconsciously. The teacher is indeed happy who knows his own divinity; that knowledge of the divinity in man is the highest lesson it will ever be his privilege to teach. 
12902	----	Distributed Proofreaders A TEXTBOOK OF THEOSOPHY by C.W. LEADBEATER 1912 CONTENTS Chapter I. What Theosophy Is II. From the Absolute to Man III. The Formation of a Solar System IV. The Evolution of Life V. The Constitution of Man VI. After Death VII. Reincarnation VIII. The Purpose of Life IX. The Planetary Chains X. The Result of Theosophical Study Index Chapter I WHAT THEOSOPHY IS "There is a school of philosophy still in existence of which modern culture has lost sight." In these words Mr. A.P. Sinnett began his book, _The Occult World_, the first popular exposition of Theosophy, published thirty years ago. [Namely in 1881.] During the years that have passed since then, many thousands have learned wisdom in that school, yet to the majority its teachings are still unknown, and they can give only the vaguest of replies to the query, "What is Theosophy?" Two books already exist which answer that question: Mr. Sinnett's _Esoteric Buddhism_ and Dr. Besant's _The Ancient Wisdom_. I have no thought of entering into competition with those standard works; what I desire is to present a statement, as clear and simple as I can make it, which may be regarded as introductory to them. We often speak of Theosophy as not in itself a religion, but the truth which lies behind all religions alike. That is so; yet, from another point of view, we may surely say that it is at once a philosophy, a religion and a science. It is a philosophy, because it puts plainly before us an explanation of the scheme of evolution of both the souls and the bodies contained in our solar system. It is a religion in so far as, having shown us the course of ordinary evolution, it also puts before us and advises a method of shortening that course, so that by conscious effort we may progress more directly towards the goal. It is a science, because it treats both these subjects as matters not of theological belief but of direct knowledge obtainable by study and investigation. It asserts that man has no need to trust to blind faith, because he has within him latent powers which, when aroused, enable him to see and examine for himself, and it proceeds to prove its case by showing how those powers may be awakened. It is itself a result of the awakening of such powers by men, for the teachings which it puts before us are founded upon direct observations made in the past, and rendered possible only by such development. As a philosophy, it explains to us that the solar system is a carefully-ordered mechanism, a manifestation of a magnificent life, of which man is but a small part. Nevertheless, it takes up that small part which immediately concerns us, and treats it exhaustively under three heads--present, past and future. It deals with the present by describing what man really is, as seen by means of developed faculties. It is customary to speak of man as having a soul. Theosophy, as the result of direct investigation, reverses that dictum, and states that man _is_ a soul, and _has_ a body--in fact several bodies, which are his vehicles and instruments in various worlds. These worlds are not separate in space; they are simultaneously present with us, here and now, and can be examined; they are the divisions of the material side of Nature--different degrees of density in the aggregation of matter, as will presently be explained in detail. Man has an existence in several of these, but is normally conscious only of the lowest, though sometimes in dreams and trances he has glimpses of some of the others. What is called death is the laying aside of the vehicle belonging to this lowest world, but the soul or real man in a higher world is no more changed or affected by this than the physical man is changed or affected when he removes his overcoat. All this is a matter, not of speculation, but of observation and experiment. Theosophy has much to tell us of the past history of man--of how in the course of evolution he has come to be what he now is. This also is a matter of observation, because of the fact that there exists an indelible record of all that has taken place--a sort of memory of Nature--by examining which the scenes of earlier evolution may be made to pass before the eyes of the investigator as though they were happening at this moment. By thus studying the past we learn that man is divine in origin and that he has a long evolution behind him--a double evolution, that of the life or soul within, and that of the outer form. We learn, too, that the life of man as a soul is of, what to us seems, enormous length, and that what we have been in the habit of calling his life is in reality only one day of his real existence. He has already lived through many such days, and has many more of them yet before him; and if we wish to understand the real life and its object, we must consider it in relation not only to this one day of it, which begins with birth and ends with death, but also to the days which have gone before and those which are yet to come. Of those that are yet to come there is also much to be said, and on this subject, too, a great deal of definite information is available. Such information is obtainable, first, from men who have already passed much further along the road of evolution than we, and have consequently direct experience of it; and, secondly, from inferences drawn from the obvious direction of the steps which we see to have been previously taken. The goal of this particular cycle is in sight, though still far above us but it would seem that, even when that has been attained, an infinity of progress still lies before everyone who is willing to undertake it. One of the most striking advantages of Theosophy is that the light which it brings to us at once solves many of our problems, clears away many difficulties, accounts for the apparent injustices of life, and in all directions brings order out of seeming chaos. Thus, while some of its teaching is based upon the observation of forces whose direct working is somewhat beyond the ken of the ordinary man of the world, if the latter will accept it as a hypothesis he will very soon come to see that it must be a correct one, because it, and it alone, furnishes a coherent and reasonable explanation of the drama of life which is being played before him. The existence of Perfected Men, and the possibility of coming into touch with Them and being taught by Them, are prominent among the great new truths which Theosophy brings to the western world. Another of them is the stupendous fact that the world is not drifting blindly into anarchy, but that its progress is under the control of a perfectly organized Hierarchy, so that final failure even for the tiniest of its units is of all impossibilities the most impossible. A glimpse of the working of that Hierarchy inevitably engenders the desire to co-operate with it, to serve under it, in however humble a capacity, and some time in the far-distant future to be worthy to join the outer fringes of its ranks. This brings us to that aspect of Theosophy which we have called religious. Those who come to know and to understand these things are dissatisfied with the slow æons of evolution; they yearn to become more immediately useful, and so they demand and obtain knowledge of the shorter but steeper Path. There is no possibility of escaping the amount of work that has to be done. It is like carrying a load up a mountain; whether one carries it straight up a steep path or more gradually by a road of gentle slope, precisely the same number of foot-pounds must be exerted. Therefore to do the same work in a small fraction of the time means determined effort. It can be done, however, for it has been done; and those who have done it agree that it far more than repays the trouble. The limitations of the various vehicles are thereby gradually transcended, and the liberated man becomes an intelligent co-worker in the mighty plan for the evolution of all beings. In its capacity as a religion, too, Theosophy gives its followers a rule of life, based not on alleged commands delivered at some remote period of the past, but on plain common sense as indicated by observed facts. The attitude of the student of Theosophy towards the rules which it prescribes resembles rather that which we adopt to hygienic regulations than obedience to religious commandments. We may say, if we wish, that this thing or that is in accordance with the divine Will, for the divine Will is expressed in what we know as the laws of Nature. Because that Will wisely ordereth all things, to infringe its laws means to disturb the smooth working of the scheme, to hold back for a moment that fragment or tiny part of evolution, and consequently to bring discomfort upon ourselves and others. It is for that reason that the wise man avoids infringing them--not to escape the imaginary wrath of some offended deity. But if from a certain point of view we may think of Theosophy as a religion, we must note two great points of difference between it and what is ordinarily called religion in the West. First, it neither demands belief from its followers, nor does it even speak of belief in the sense in which that word is usually employed. The student of occult science either _knows_ a thing or suspends his judgment about it; there is no place in his scheme for blind faith. Naturally, beginners in the study cannot yet _know_ for themselves, so they are asked to read the results of the various observations and to deal with them as probable hypotheses--provisionally to accept and act upon them, until such time as they can prove them for themselves. Secondly, Theosophy never endeavours to convert any man from whatever religion he already holds. On the contrary, it explains his religion to him, and enables him to see in it deeper meanings than he has ever known before. It teaches him to understand it and live it better than he did, and in many cases it gives back to him, on a higher and more intelligent level, the faith in it which he had previously all but lost. Theosophy has its aspects as a science also; it is in very truth a science of life, a science of the soul. It applies to everything the scientific method of oft-repeated, painstaking observation, and then tabulates the results and makes deductions from them. In this way it has investigated the various planes of Nature, the conditions of man's consciousness during life and after what is commonly called death. It cannot be too often repeated that its statements on all these matters are not vague guesses or tenets of faith, but are based upon direct and oft-repeated _observation_ of what happens. Its investigators have dealt also to a certain extent with subjects more in the range of ordinary science, as may be seen by those who read the book on _Occult Chemistry_. Thus we see that Theosophy combines within itself some of the characteristics of philosophy, religion and science. What, it might be asked, is its gospel for this weary world? What are the main points which emerge from its investigations? What are the great facts which it has to lay before humanity? They have been well summed up under three main heads. "There are three truths which are absolute, and which cannot be lost, but yet may remain silent for lack of speech. "The soul of man is immortal and its future is the future of a thing whose growth and splendour has no limit. "The principle which gives life dwells in us and without us, is undying and eternally beneficent, is not heard or seen or smelt, but is perceived by the man who desires perception. "Each man is his own absolute lawgiver, the dispenser of glory or gloom to himself, the decreer of his life, his reward, his punishment. "These truths, which are as great as is life itself, are as simple as the simplest mind of man." Put shortly, and in the language of the man of the street, this means that God is good, that man is immortal, and that as we sow so we must reap. There is a definite scheme of things; it is under intelligent direction and works under immutable laws. Man has his place in this scheme and is living under these laws. If he understands them and co-operates with them, he will advance rapidly and will be happy; if he does not understand them--if, wittingly or unwittingly, he breaks them, he will delay his progress and be miserable. These are not theories, but proved facts. Let him who doubts read on, and he will see. Chapter II FROM THE ABSOLUTE TO MAN Of the Absolute, the Infinite, the All-embracing, we can at our present stage know nothing, except that It is; we can say nothing that is not a limitation, and therefore inaccurate. In It are innumerable universes; in each universe countless solar systems. Each solar system is the expression of a mighty Being, whom we call the LOGOS, the Word of God, the Solar Deity. He is to it all that men mean by God. He permeates it; there is nothing in it which is not He; it is the manifestation of Him in such matter as we can see. Yet He exists above it and outside it, living a stupendous life of His own among His Peers. As is said in an Eastern Scripture: "Having permeated this whole universe with one fragment of Myself I remain." Of that higher life of His we can know nothing. But of the fragment of His life which energises His system we may know something in the lower levels of its manifestation. We may not see Him, but we may see His power at work. No one who is clairvoyant can be atheistic; the evidence is too tremendous. Out of Himself He has called this mighty system into being. We who are in it are evolving fragments of His life, Sparks of His divine Fire; from Him we all have come; into Him we shall all return. Many have asked why He has done this; why He has emanated from Himself all this system; why He has sent us forth to face the storms of life. We cannot know, nor is the question practical; suffice it that we are here, and we must do our best. Yet many philosophers have speculated on this point and many suggestions have been made. The most beautiful that I know is that of a Gnostic philosopher: "God is Love, but Love itself cannot be perfect unless it has those upon whom it can be lavished and by whom it can be returned. Therefore He put forth of Himself into matter, and He limited His glory, in order that through this natural and slow process of evolution we might come into being; and we in turn according to His Will are to develop until we reach even His own level, and then the very love of God itself will become more perfect, because it will then be lavished on those, His own children, who will fully understand and return it, and so His great scheme will be realized and His Will, be done." At what stupendous elevation His consciousness abides we know not, nor can we know its true nature as it shows itself there. But when He puts Himself down into such conditions as are within our reach, His manifestation is ever threefold, and so all religions have imaged Him as a Trinity. Three, yet fundamentally One; Three Persons (for person means a mask) yet one God, showing Himself in those Three Aspects. Three to us, looking at Them from below, because Their functions are different; one to Him, because He knows Them to be but facets of Himself. All Three of these Aspects are concerned in the evolution of the solar system; all Three are also concerned in the evolution of man. This evolution is His Will; the method of it is His plan. Next below this Solar Deity, yet also in some mysterious manner part of Him, come His seven Ministers sometimes called the Planetary Spirits. Using an analogy drawn from the physiology of our own body, Their relation to Him is like that of the ganglia or the nerve centres to the brain. All evolution which comes forth from Him comes through one or other of Them. Under Them in turn come vast hosts or orders of spiritual beings, whom we call angels or devas. We do not yet know all the functions which they fulfil in different parts of this wonderful scheme, but we find some of them intimately connected with the building of the system and the unfolding of life within it. Here in our world there is a great Official who represents the Solar Deity and is in absolute control of all the evolution that takes place upon this planet. We may image Him as the true KING of this world and under Him are ministers in charge of different departments. One of these departments is concerned with the evolution of the different races of humanity so that for each great race there is a Head who founds it, differentiates it from all others, and watches over its development. Another department is that of religion and education, and it is from this that all the greatest teachers of history have come--that all religions have been sent forth. The great Official at the head of this department either comes Himself or sends one of His pupils to found a new religion when He decides that one is needed. Therefore all religions, at the time of their first presentation to the world, have contained a definite statement of the Truth, and in its fundamentals this Truth has been always the same. The presentations of it have varied because of differences in the races to whom it was offered. The conditions of civilization and the degree of evolution obtained by various races have made it desirable to present this one Truth in divers forms. But the inner Truth is always the same, and the source from which it comes is the same, even though the external phases may appear to be different and even contradictory. It is foolish for men to wrangle over the question of the superiority of one teacher or one form of teaching to another, for the teacher is always one sent by the Great Brotherhood of Adepts, and in all its important points, in its ethical and moral principles, the teaching has always been the same. There is in the world a body or Truth which lies at the back of all these religions, and represents the facts of nature as far as they are at present known to man. In the outer world, because of their ignorance of this, people are always disputing and arguing about whether there is a God; whether man survives death; whether definite progress is possible for him, and what is his relation to the universe. These questions are ever present in the mind of man as soon as intelligence is awakened. They are not unanswerable, as is frequently supposed; the answers to them are within the reach of anyone who will make proper efforts to find them. The truth is obtainable, and the conditions of its attainment are possible of achievement by anyone who will make the effort. In the earlier stages of the development of humanity the great Officials of the Hierarchy are provided from outside, from other and more highly evolved parts of the system, but as soon as men can be trained to the necessary level of power and wisdom these offices are held by them. In order to be fit to hold such an office a man must raise himself to a very high level, and must become what is called an Adept--a being of goodness, power and wisdom so great that He towers above the rest of humanity, for He has already attained the summit of ordinary human evolution; He has achieved that which the plan of the Deity marked out for Him to achieve during this age or dispensation. But His evolution later on continues beyond that level--continues to divinity. A large number of men have attained the Adept level--men not of one nation, but of all the leading nations of the world--rare souls who with indomitable courage have stormed the fortresses of nature, and captured her innermost secrets, and so have truly earned the right to be called Adepts. Among Them there are many degrees and many lines of activity; but always some of Them remain within touch of our earth as members of this Hierarchy which has in charge the administration of the affairs of our world and of the spiritual evolution of our humanity. This august body is often called the Great White Brotherhood, but its members are not a community all living together. Each of Them, to a large extent, draws Himself apart from the world, and They are in constant communication with one another and with Their Head; but Their knowledge of higher forces is so great that this is achieved without any necessity for meeting in the physical world. In many cases They continue to live each in His own country, and Their power remains unsuspected among those who live near Them. Any man who will may attract Their attention, but he can do it only by showing himself worthy of Their notice. None need fear that his efforts will pass unnoticed; such oversight is impossible, for the man who is devoting himself to service such as this, stands out from the rest of humanity like a great flame in a dark night. A few of these great Adepts, who are thus working for the good of the world, are willing to take as apprentices those who have resolved to devote themselves utterly to the service of mankind; such Adepts are called Masters. One of these apprentices was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky--a great soul who was sent out to offer knowledge to the world. With Colonel Henry Steel Olcott she founded The Theosophical Society for the spread of this knowledge which she had to give. Among those who came into contact with her in those early days was Mr. A.P. Sinnett, the editor of _The Pioneer_, and his keen intellect at once grasped the magnitude and the importance of the teaching which she put before him. Although Madame Blavatsky herself had previously written _Isis Unveiled_, it had attracted but little attention, and it was Mr. Sinnett who first made the teaching really available for western readers in his two books, _The Occult World_ and _Esoteric Buddhism_. It was through these works that I myself first came to know their author, and afterwards Madame Blavatsky herself; from both of them I learned much. When I asked Madame Blavatsky how one could learn still more, how one could make definite progress along the Path which she pointed out to us, she told me of the possibility that other students might be accepted as apprentices by the great Masters, even as she herself had been accepted, and that the only way to gain such acceptance was to show oneself worthy of it by earnest and altruistic work. She told me that to reach that goal a man must be absolutely one-pointed in his determination; that no one who tried to serve both God and Mammon could ever hope to succeed. One of these Masters Himself had said: "In order to succeed, a pupil must leave his own world and come into ours." This means that he must cease to be one of the majority who live for wealth and power, and must join the tiny minority who care nothing for such things, but live only in order to devote themselves selflessly to the good of the world. She warned us clearly that the way was difficult to tread, that we should be misunderstood and reviled by those who still lived in the world, and that we had nothing to look forward to but the hardest of hard work; and though the result was sure, no one could foretell how long it would take to arrive at it. Some of us accepted these conditions joyfully, and we have never for a moment regretted the decision. After some years of work I had the privilege of coming into contact with these great Masters of the Wisdom; from Them I learnt many things--among others, how to verify for myself at first hand most of the teachings which They had given. So that, in this matter, I write of what I know, and what I have seen for myself. Certain points are mentioned in the teaching, for the verification of which powers are required far beyond anything which I have gained so far. Of them, I can say only that they are consistent with what I do know, and in many cases are necessary as hypotheses to account for what I have seen. They came to me, along with the rest of the Theosophical system, upon the authority of these mighty Teachers. Since then I have learnt to examine for myself by far the greater part of what I was told, and I have found the information given to me to be correct in every particular; therefore I am justified in assuming the probability that that other part, which as yet I cannot verify, will also prove to be correct when I arrive at its level. To attain the honour of being accepted as an apprentice of one of the Masters of the Wisdom is the object set before himself by every earnest Theosophical student. But it means a determined effort. There have always been men who were willing to make the necessary effort, and therefore there have always been men who knew. The knowledge is so transcendent that when a man grasps it fully he becomes more than man and he passes beyond our ken. But there are stages in the acquirement of this knowledge, and we may learn much if we will, from those who themselves are still in process of learning; for all human beings stand on one or other of the rungs of the ladder of evolution. The primitive stand at its foot; we who are civilized beings have already climbed part of the way. But though we can look back and see rungs of the ladder below us which we have already passed, we may also look up and see many rungs above us to which we have not yet attained. Just as men are standing even now on each of the rungs below us, so that we can see the stages by which man has mounted, so also are there men standing on each of the rungs above us, so that from studying them we may see how man shall mount in the future. Precisely because we see men on every step of this ladder, which leads up to a glory which as yet we have no words to express, we know that the ascent to that glory is possible for us. Those who stand high above us, so high that They seem to us as gods in Their marvellous knowledge and power, tell us that They stood not long since where we are standing now, and They indicate to us clearly the steps which lie between, which we also must tread if we would be as They. Chapter III THE FORMATION OF A SOLAR SYSTEM The beginning of the universe (if ever it had a beginning) is beyond our ken. At the earliest point of history that we can reach, the two great opposites of spirit and matter, of life and form, are already in full activity. We find that the ordinary conception of matter needs a revision, for what are commonly called force and matter are in reality only two varieties of Spirit at different stages in evolution and the real matter or basis of everything lies in the background unperceived. A French scientist has recently said: "There is no matter; there are nothing but holes in the æther." This also agrees with the celebrated theory of Professor Osborne Reynolds. Occult investigation shows this to be the correct view, and in that way explains what Oriental sacred books mean when they say that matter is an illusion. The ultimate root-matter as seen at our level is what scientists call the æther of space. [This has been described in _Occult Chemistry_ under the name of koilon.] To every physical sense the space occupied by it appears empty, yet in reality this æther is far denser than anything of which we can conceive. Its density is defined by Professor Reynolds as being ten thousand times greater than that of water, and its mean pressure as seven hundred and fifty thousand tons to the square inch. This substance is perceptible only to highly developed clairvoyant power. We must assume a time (though we have no direct knowledge on this point) when this substance filled all space. We must also suppose that some great Being (not the Deity of a solar system, but some Being almost infinitely higher than that) changed this condition of rest by pouring out His spirit or force into a certain section of this matter, a section of the size of a whole universe. This effect of the introduction of this force is as that of the blowing of a mighty breath; it has formed within this æther an incalculable number of tiny spherical bubbles, [The bubbles are spoken of in _The Secret Doctrine_ as the holes which Fohat digs in space.] and these bubbles are the ultimate atoms of which what we call matter is composed. They are not the atoms of the chemist, nor even the ultimate atoms of the physical world. They stand at a far higher level, and what are usually called atoms are composed of vast aggregations of these bubbles, as will be seen later. When the Solar Deity begins to make His system, He finds ready to His hand this material--this infinite mass of tiny bubbles which can be built up into various kinds of matter as we know it. He commences by defining the limit of His field of activity, a vast sphere whose circumference is far larger than the orbit of the outermost of His future planets. Within the limit of that sphere He sets up a kind of gigantic vortex--a motion which sweeps together all the bubbles into a vast central mass, the material of the nebula that is to be. Into this vast revolving sphere He sends forth successive impulses of force, gathering together the bubbles into ever more and more complex aggregations, and producing in this way seven gigantic interpenetrating worlds of matter of different degrees of density, all concentric and all occupying the same space. Acting through His Third Aspect He sends forth into this stupendous sphere the first of these impulses. It sets up all through the sphere a vast number of tiny vortices, each of which draws into itself forty-nine bubbles, and arranges them in a certain shape. These little groupings of bubbles so formed are the atoms of the second of the interpenetrating worlds. The whole number of the bubbles is not used in this way, sufficient being left in the dissociated state to act as atoms for the first and highest of these worlds. In due time comes the second impulse, which seizes upon nearly all these forty-nine bubble-atoms (leaving only enough to provide atoms for the second world), draws them back into itself and then, throwing them out again, sets up among them vortices, each of which holds within itself 2,401 bubbles (49^2). These form the atoms of the third world. Again after a time comes a third impulse, which in the same way seizes upon nearly all these 2,401 bubble-atoms, draws them back again into their original form, and again throws them outward once more as the atoms of the fourth world--each atom containing this time 49^{3} bubbles. This process is repeated until the sixth of these successive impulses has built the atom of the seventh or the lowest world--that atom containing 49^{6} of the original bubbles. This atom of the seventh world is the ultimate atom of the physical world--not any of the atoms of which chemists speak, but that ultimate out of which all their atoms are made. We have at this stage arrived at that condition of affairs in which the vast whirling sphere contains within itself seven types of matter, all one in essence, because all built of the same kind of bubbles, but differing in their degree of density. All these types are freely intermingled, so that specimens of each type would be found in a small portion of the sphere taken at random in any part of it, with, however, a general tendency of the heavier atoms to gravitate more and more towards the centre. The seventh impulse sent out from the Third Aspect of the Deity does not, as before, draw back the physical atoms which were last made into the original dissociated bubbles, but draws them together into certain aggregations, thus making a number of different kinds of what may be called proto-elements, and these again are joined together into the various forms which are known to science as chemical elements. The making of these extends over a long period of ages, and they are made in a certain definite order by the interaction of several forces, as is correctly indicated in Sir William Crookes's paper, _The Genesis of the Elements_. Indeed the process of their making is not even now concluded; uranium is the latest and heaviest element so far as we know, but others still more complicated may perhaps be produced in the future. As ages rolled on the condensation increased, and presently the stage of a vast glowing nebula was reached. As it cooled, still rapidly rotating, it flattened into a huge disc and gradually broke up into rings surrounding a central body--an arrangement not unlike that which Saturn exhibits at the present day, though on a far larger scale. As the time drew near when the planets would be required for the purposes of evolution, the Deity sets up somewhere in the thickness of each ring a subsidiary vortex into which a great deal of the matter of the ring was by degrees collected. The collisions of the gathered fragments caused a revival of the heat, and the resulting planet was for a long time a mass of glowing gas. Little by little it cooled once more, until it became fit to be the theatre of life such as ours. Thus were all the planets formed. Almost all the matter of those interpenetrating worlds was by this time concentrated into the newly formed planets. Each of them was and is composed of all those different kinds of matter. The earth upon which we are now living is not merely a great ball of physical matter, built of the atoms of that lowest world, but has also attached to it an abundant supply of matter of the sixth, the fifth, the fourth and other worlds. It is well known to all students of science that particles of matter never actually touch one another, even in the hardest of substances. The spaces between them are always far greater in proportion than their own size--enormously greater. So there is ample room for all the other kinds of atoms of all those other worlds, not only to lie between the atoms of the denser matter, but to move quite freely among them and around them. Consequently, this globe upon which we live is not one world, but seven interpenetrating worlds, all occupying the same space, except that the finer types of matter extend further from the centre than does the denser matter. We have given names to these interpenetrating worlds for convenience in speaking of them. No name is needed for the first, as man is not yet in direct connection with it; but when it is necessary to mention it, it may be called the divine world. The second is described as the monadic, because in it exist those Sparks of the divine Life which we call the human Monads; but neither of these can be touched by the highest clairvoyant investigations at present possible for us. The third sphere, whose atoms contain 2,401 bubbles, is called the spiritual world, because in it functions the highest Spirit in man as now constituted. The fourth is the intuitional world, [Previously called in Theosophical literature the buddhic plane.] because from it come the highest intuitions. The fifth is the mental world, because from its matter is built the mind of man. The sixth is called the emotional or astral world, because the emotions of man cause undulations in its matter. (The name astral was given to it by mediæval alchemists, because its matter is starry or shining as compared to that of the denser world.) The seventh world, composed of the type of matter which we see all around us, is called the physical. The matter of which all these interpenetrating worlds are built is essentially the same matter, but differently arranged and of different degrees of density. Therefore the rates at which these various types of matter normally vibrate differ also. They may be considered as a vast gamut of undulations consisting of many octaves. The physical matter uses a certain number of the lowest of these octaves, the astral matter another group of octaves just above that, the mental matter a still further group, and so on. Not only has each of these worlds its own type of matter; it has also its own set of aggregations of that matter--its own substances. In each world we arrange these substances in seven classes according to the rate at which their molecules vibrate. Usually, but not invariably, the slower oscillation involves also a larger molecule--a molecule, that is, built up by a special arrangement of the smaller molecules of the next higher subdivision. The application of heat increases the size of the molecules and also quickens and amplifies their undulation, so that they cover more ground, and the object, as a whole expands, until the point is reached where the aggregation of molecules breaks up, and the latter passes from one condition to that next above it. In the matter of the physical world the seven subdivisions are represented by seven degrees of density of matter, to which, beginning from below upwards, we give the names solid, liquid, gaseous, etheric, superetheric, subatomic and atomic. The atomic subdivision is one in which all forms are built by the compression into certain shapes of the physical atoms, without any previous collection of these atoms into blocks or molecules. Typifying the physical ultimate atom for the moment by a brick, any form in the atomic subdivision would be made by gathering together some of the bricks, and building them into a certain shape. In order to make matter for the next lower subdivision, a certain number of the bricks (atoms) would first be gathered together and cemented into small blocks of say four bricks each, five bricks each, six bricks or seven bricks; and then these blocks so made would be used as building stones. For the next subdivision several of the blocks of the second subdivision cemented together in certain shapes would form building-stones, and so on to the lowest. To transfer any substance from the solid condition to the liquid (that is to say, to melt it) is to increase the vibration of its compound molecules until at last they are shaken apart into the simpler molecules of which they were built. This process can in all cases be repeated again and again until finally any and every physical substance can be reduced to the ultimate atoms of the physical world. Each of these worlds has its inhabitants, whose senses are normally capable of responding to the undulations of their own world only. A man living (as we are all doing) in the physical world sees, hears, feels, by vibrations connected with the physical matter around him. He is equally surrounded by the astral and mental and other worlds which are interpenetrating his own denser world, but of them he is normally unconscious, because his senses cannot respond to the oscillations of their matter, just as our physical eyes cannot see by the vibrations of ultra-violet light, although scientific experiments show that they exist, and there are other consciousnesses with differently-formed organs who _can_ see by them. A being living in the astral world might be occupying the very same space as a being living in the physical world, yet each would be entirely unconscious of the other and would in no way impede the free movement of the other. The same is true of all other worlds. We are at this moment surrounded by these worlds of finer matter, as close to us as the world we see, and their inhabitants are passing through us and about us, but we are entirely unconscious of them. Since our evolution is centred at present upon this globe which we call the earth, it is in connection with it only that we shall be speaking of these higher worlds, so in future when I use the term "astral world" I shall mean by it the astral part of our own globe only, and not (as heretofore) the astral part of the whole solar system. This astral part of our own world is also a globe, but of astral matter. It occupies the same place as the globe which we see, but its matter (being so much lighter) extends out into space on all sides of us further than does the atmosphere of the earth--a great deal further. It stretches to a little less than the mean distance of the moon, so that though the two physical globes, the earth and the moon, are nearly 240,000 miles apart, the astral globes of these two bodies touch one another when the moon is in perigee, but not when she is in apogee. I shall apply the term "mental world" to the still larger globe of mental matter in the midst of which our physical earth exists. When we come to the still higher globes we have spheres large enough to touch the corresponding spheres of other planets in the system, though their matter also is just as much about us here on the surface of the solid earth as that of the others. All these globes of finer matter are a part of us, and are all revolving round the sun with their visible part. The student will do well to accustom himself to think of our earth as the whole of this mass of interpenetrating worlds--not only the comparatively small physical ball in the centre of it. Chapter IV THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE All the impulses of life which I have described as building the interpenetrating worlds come forth from the Third Aspect of the Deity. Hence in the Christian scheme that Aspect is called "the Giver of Life", the Spirit who brooded over the face of the waters of space. In Theosophical literature these impulses are usually taken as a whole, and called the First Outpouring. When the worlds had been prepared to this extent, and most of the chemical elements already existed, the Second Outpouring of life took place, and this came from the Second Aspect of the Deity. It brought with it the power of combination. In all the worlds it found existing what may be thought of as elements corresponding to those worlds. It proceeded to combine those elements into organisms which it then ensouled, and in this way it built up the seven kingdoms of Nature. Theosophy recognizes seven kingdoms, because it regards man as separate from the animal kingdom and it takes into account several stages of evolution which are unseen by the physical eye, and gives to them the mediæval name of "elemental kingdoms". The divine Life pours itself into matter from above, and its whole course may be thought of in two stages--the gradual assumption of grosser and grosser matter, and then the gradual casting off again of the vehicles which have been assumed. The earliest level upon which its vehicles can be scientifically observed is the mental--the fifth counting from the finer to the grosser, the first on which there are separated globes. In practical study it is found convenient to divide this mental world into two parts, which we call the higher and the lower according to the degree of density of their matter. The higher consists of the three finer subdivisions of mental matter; the lower part of the other four. When the outpouring reaches the higher mental world it draws together the ethereal elements there, combines them into what at that level correspond to substances and of these substances builds forms which it inhabits. We call this the first elemental kingdom. After a long period of evolution through different forms at that level, the wave of life, which is all the time pressing steadily downwards, learns to identify itself so fully with those forms that, instead of occupying them and withdrawing from them periodically, it is able to hold them permanently and make them part of itself, so that now from that level it can proceed to the temporary occupation of forms at a still lower level. When it reaches this stage we call it the second elemental kingdom, the ensouling life of which resides upon the higher mental levels, while the vehicles through which it manifests are on the lower. After another vast period of similar length, it is found that the downward pressure has caused this process to repeat itself; once more the life has identified itself with its forms, and has taken up its residence upon the lower mental levels, so that it is capable of ensouling bodies in the astral world. At this stage we call it the third elemental kingdom. We speak of all these forms as finer or grosser relatively to one another, but all of them are almost infinitely finer than any with which we are acquainted in the physical world. Each of these three is a kingdom of Nature, as varied in the manifestations of its different forms of life as is the animal or vegetable kingdom which we know. After a long period spent in ensouling the forms of the third of these elemental kingdoms it identifies itself with them in turn, and so is able to ensoul the etheric part of the mineral kingdom, and becomes the life which vivifies that--for there is a life in the mineral kingdom just as much as in the vegetable or the animal, although it is in conditions where it cannot manifest so freely. In the course of the mineral evolution the downward pressure causes it to identify itself in the same way with the etheric matter of the physical world, and from that to ensoul the denser matter of such minerals as are perceptible to our senses. In the mineral kingdom we include not only what are usually called minerals, but also liquids, gases and many etheric substances the existence of which is unknown to western science. All the matter of which we know anything is living matter, and the life which it contains is always evolving. When it has reached the central point of the mineral stage the downward pressure ceases, and is replaced by an upward tendency; the outbreathing has ceased and the indrawing has begun. When mineral evolution is completed, the life has withdrawn itself again into the astral world, but bearing with it all the results obtained through its experiences in the physical. At this stage it ensouls vegetable forms, and begins to show itself much more clearly as what we commonly call life--plant-life of all kinds; and at a yet later stage of its development it leaves the vegetable kingdom and ensouls the animal kingdom. The attainment of this level is the sign that it has withdrawn itself still further, and is now working from the lower mental world. In order to work in physical matter from that mental world it must operate through the intervening astral matter; and that astral matter is now no longer part of the garment of the group-soul as a whole, but is the individual astral body of the animal concerned, as will be later explained. In each of these kingdoms it not only passes a period of time which is to our ideas almost incredibly long, but it also goes through a definite course of evolution, beginning from the lower manifestations of that kingdom and ending with the highest. In the vegetable kingdom, for example, the life-force might commence its career by occupying grasses or mosses and end it by ensouling magnificent forest trees. In the animal kingdom it might commence with mosquitoes or with animalculæ, and might end with the finest specimens of the mammalia. The whole process is one of steady evolution from lower forms to higher, from the simpler to the more complex. But what is evolving is not primarily the form, but the life within it. The forms also evolve and grow better as time passes; but this is in order that they may be appropriate vehicles for more and more advanced waves of life. When the life has reached the highest level possible in the animal kingdom, it may then pass on into the human kingdom, under conditions which will presently be explained. The outpouring leaves one kingdom and passes to another, so that if we had to deal with only one wave of this outpouring we could have in existence only one kingdom at a time. But the Deity sends out a constant succession of these waves, so that at any given time we find a number of them simultaneously in operation. We ourselves represent one such wave; but we find evolving alongside us another wave which ensouls the animal kingdom--a wave which came out from the Deity one stage later than we did. We find also the vegetable kingdom, which represents a third wave, and the mineral kingdom, which represents a fourth; and occultists know of the existence all round us of three elemental kingdoms, which represent the fifth, sixth and seventh waves. All these, however, are successive ripples of the same great outpouring from the Second Aspect of the Deity. We have here, then, a scheme of evolution in which the divine Life involves itself more and more deeply in matter, in order that through that matter it may receive vibrations which could not otherwise affect it--impacts from without, which by degrees arouse within it rates of undulation corresponding to their own, so that it learns to respond to them. Later on it learns of itself to generate these rates of undulation, and so becomes a being possessed of spiritual powers. We may presume that when this outpouring of life originally came forth from the Deity, at some level altogether beyond our power of cognition, it may perhaps have been homogeneous; but when it first comes within practical cognizance, when it is itself in the intuitional world, but is ensouling bodies made of the matter of the higher mental world, it is already not one huge world-soul but many souls. Let us suppose a homogeneous outpouring, which may be considered as one vast soul, at one end of the scale; at the other, when humanity is reached, we find that one vast soul broken up into millions of the comparatively little souls of individual men. At any stage between these two extremes we find an intermediate condition, the immense world-soul already subdivided, but not to the utmost limit of possible subdivision. Each man is a soul, but not each animal or each plant. Man, as a soul, can manifest through only one body at a time in the physical world, whereas one animal soul manifests simultaneously through a number of animal bodies, one plant soul through a number of separate plants. A lion, for example, is not a permanently separate entity in the same way as a man is. When the man dies--that is, when he as a soul lays aside his physical body--he remains himself exactly as he was before, an entity separate from all other entities. When the lion dies, that which has been the separate soul of him is poured back into the mass from which it came--a mass which is at the same time providing the souls for many other lions. To such a mass we give the name of "group-soul". To such a group-soul is attached a considerable number of lion bodies--let us say a hundred. Each of those bodies while it lives has its hundredth part of the group-soul attached to it, and for the time being this is apparently quite separate, so that the lion is as much an individual during his physical life as the man; but he is not a permanent individual. When he dies the soul of him flows back into the group-soul to which it belongs, and that identical lion-soul cannot be separated again from the group. A useful analogy may help comprehension. Imagine the group-soul to be represented by the water in a bucket, and the hundred lion bodies by a hundred tumblers. As each tumbler is dipped into the bucket it takes out from it a tumblerful of water (the separate soul). That water for the time being takes the shape of the vehicle which it fills, and is temporarily separate from the water which remains in the bucket, and from the water in the other tumblers. Now put into each of the hundred tumblers some kind of colouring matter or some kind of flavouring. That will represent the qualities developed by its experiences in the separate soul of the lion during its lifetime. Pour back the water from the tumbler into the bucket; that represents the death of the lion. The colouring matter or the flavouring will be distributed through the whole of the water in the bucket, but will be a much fainter colouring, a much less pronounced flavour when thus distributed than it was when confined in one tumbler. The qualities developed by the experience of one lion attached to that group-soul are therefore shared by the entire group-soul, but in a much lower degree. We may take out another tumblerful of water from that bucket, but we can never again get exactly the same tumblerful after it has once been mingled with the rest. Every tumblerful taken from that bucket in the future will contain some traces of the colouring or flavouring put into each tumbler whose contents have been returned to the bucket. Just so the qualities developed by the experience of a single lion will become the common property of all lions who are in the future to be born from that group-soul, though in a lesser degree than that in which they existed in the individual lion who developed them. That is the explanation of inherited instincts; that is why the duckling which has been hatched by a hen takes to the water instantly without needing to be shown how to swim; why the chicken just out of its shell will cower at the shadow of a hawk; why a bird which has been artificially hatched, and has never seen a nest, nevertheless knows how to make one, and makes it according to the traditions of its kind. Lower down in the scale of animal life enormous numbers of bodies are attached to a single group-soul--countless millions, for example, in the case of some of the smaller insects; but as we rise in the animal kingdom the number of bodies attached to a single group-soul becomes smaller and smaller, and therefore the differences between individuals become greater. Thus the group-souls gradually break up. Returning to the symbol of the bucket, as tumbler after tumbler of water is withdrawn from it, tinted with some sort of colouring matter and returned to it, the whole bucketful of water gradually becomes richer in colour. Suppose that by imperceptible degrees a kind of vertical film forms itself across the centre of the bucket, and gradually solidifies itself into a division, so that we have now a right half and a left half to the bucket, and each tumblerful of water which is taken out is returned always to the same section from which it came. Then presently a difference will be set up, and the liquid in one half of the bucket will no longer be the same as that in the other. We have then practically two buckets, and when this stage is reached in a group-soul it splits into two, as a cell separates by fission. In this way, as the experience grows ever richer, the group-souls grow smaller but more numerous, until at the highest point we arrive at man with his single individual soul, which no longer returns into a group, but remains always separate. One of the life-waves is vivifying the whole of a kingdom; but not every group-soul in that life-wave will pass through the whole of that kingdom from the bottom to the top. If in the vegetable kingdom a certain group-soul has ensouled forest trees, when it passes on into the animal kingdom it will omit all the lower stages--that is, it will never inhabit insects or reptiles, but will begin at once at the level of the lower mammalia. The insects and reptiles will be vivified by group-souls which have for some reason left the vegetable kingdom at a much lower level than the forest tree. In the same way the group-soul which has reached the highest levels of the animal kingdom will not individualize into primitive savages, but into men of somewhat higher type, the primitive savages being recruited from group-souls which have left the animal kingdom at a lower level. Group-souls at any level or at all levels arrange themselves into seven great types, according to the Minister of the Deity through whom their life has poured forth. These types are clearly distinguishable in all the kingdoms, and the successive forms taken by any one of them form a connected series, so that animals, vegetables, minerals and the varieties of the elemental creatures may all be arranged into seven great groups, and the life coming along one of those lines will not diverge into any of the others. No detailed list has yet been made of the animals, plants or minerals from this point of view; but it is certain that the life which is found ensouling a mineral of a particular type will never vivify a mineral of any other type than its own, though within that type it may vary. When it passes on to the vegetable and animal kingdoms it will inhabit vegetables and animals of that type and of no other; and when it eventually reaches humanity it will individualize into men of that type and of no other. The method of individualization is the raising of the soul of a particular animal to a level so much higher than that attained by its group-soul that it can no longer return to the latter. This cannot be done with _any_ animal, but only with those whose brain is developed to a certain level, and the method usually adopted to acquire such mental development is to bring the animal into close contact with man. Individualization, therefore, is possible only for domestic animals, and only for certain kinds even of those. At the head of each of the seven types stands one kind of domestic animal--the dog for one, the cat for another, the elephant for a third, the monkey for a fourth, and so on. The wild animals can all be arranged on seven lines leading up to the domestic animals; for example, the fox and the wolf are obviously on the same line with the dog, while the lion, the tiger and the leopard equally obviously lead up to the domestic cat; so that the group-soul animating a hundred lions mentioned some time ago might at a later stage of its evolution have divided into, let us say, five group-souls each animating twenty cats. The life-wave spends a long period of time in each kingdom; we are now only a little past the middle of such an æon, and consequently the conditions are not favourable for the achievement of that individualization which normally comes only at the end of a period. Rare instances of such attainment may occasionally be observed on the part of some animal much in advance of the average. Close association with man is necessary to produce this result. The animal if kindly treated develops devoted affection for his human friend, and also unfolds his intellectual powers in trying to understand that friend and to anticipate his wishes. In addition to this, the emotions and the thoughts of the man act constantly upon those of the animal, and tend to raise him to a higher level both emotionally and intellectually. Under favourable circumstances this development may proceed so far as to raise the animal altogether out of touch with the group to which he belongs, so that his fragment of a group-soul becomes capable of responding to the outpouring which comes from the First Aspect of the Deity. For this final outpouring is not like the others, a mighty outrush affecting thousands or millions simultaneously; it comes to each one individually as that one is ready to receive it. This outpouring has already descended as far as the intuitional world; but it comes no farther than that until this upward leap is made by the soul of the animal from below; but when that happens this Third Outpouring leaps down to meet it, and in the higher mental world is formed an ego, a permanent individuality--permanent, that is, until, far later in his evolution, the man transcends it and reaches back to the divine unity from which he came. To make this ego, the fragment of the group-soul (which has hitherto played the part always of ensouling force) becomes in its turn a vehicle, and is itself ensouled by that divine Spark which has fallen into it from on high. That Spark may be said to have been hovering in the monadic world over the group-soul through the whole of its previous evolution, unable to effect a junction with it until its corresponding fragment in the group-soul had developed sufficiently to permit it. It is this breaking away from the rest of the group-soul and developing a separate ego which marks the distinction between the highest animal and the lowest man. Chapter V THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN Man is therefore in essence a Spark of the divine Fire, belonging to the monadic world.[1] To that Spark, dwelling all the time in that world, we give the name "Monad". For the purposes of human evolution the Monad manifests itself in lower worlds. When it descends one stage and enters the spiritual world, it shows itself there as the triple Spirit having itself three aspects (just as in worlds infinitely higher the Deity has His three Aspects). Of those three one remains always in that world, and we call that the Spirit in man. The second aspect manifests itself in the intuitional world, and we speak of it as the Intuition in man. The third shows itself in the higher mental world, and we call it the Intelligence in man. These three aspects taken together constitute the ego which ensouls the fragment from the group-soul. Thus man as we know him, though in reality a Monad residing in the monadic world, shows himself as an ego in the higher mental world, manifesting these three aspects of himself (Spirit, Intuition and Intelligence) through that vehicle of higher mental matter which we name the causal body. Footnote 1: The President has now decided upon a set of names for the planes, so for the future these will be used instead of those previously employed. A table of them is given below for reference. NEW NAMES OLD NAMES 1. Divine World Âdi Plane 2. Monadic World Anupâdaka Plane 3. Spiritual World Âtmic or Nirvânic Plane 4. Intuitional World Buddhic Plane 5. Mental World Mental Plane 6. Emotional or Astral World Astral Plane 7. Physical World Physical Plane These will supersede the names given in Vol. II of _The Inner Life._ This ego is the man during the human stage of evolution; he is the nearest correspondence, in fact, to the ordinary unscientific conception of the soul. He lives unchanged (except for his growth) from the moment of individualization until humanity is transcended and merged into divinity. He is in no way affected by what we call birth and death; what we commonly consider as his life is only a day in his life. The body which we can see, the body which is born and dies, is a garment which he puts on for the purposes of a certain part of his evolution. Nor is it the only body which he assumes. Before he, the ego in the higher mental world, can take a vehicle belonging to the physical world, he must make a connection with it through the lower mental and astral worlds. When he wishes to descend he draws around himself a veil of the matter of the lower mental world, which we call his mental body. This is the instrument by means of which he thinks all his concrete thoughts--abstract thought being a power of the ego himself in the higher mental world. Next he draws round himself a veil of astral matter, which we call his astral body; and that is the instrument of his passions and emotions, and also (in conjunction with the lower part of his mental body) the instrument of all such thought as is tinged by selfishness and personal feeling. Only after having assumed these intermediate vehicles can he come into touch with a baby physical body, and be born into the world which we know. He lives through what we call his life, gaining certain qualities as the result of its experiences; and at its end, when the physical body is worn out, he reverses the process of descent and lays aside one by one the temporary vehicles which he has assumed. The first to go is the physical body, and when that is dropped, his life is centred in the astral world and he lives in his astral body. The length of his stay in that world depends upon the amount of passion and emotion which he has developed within himself in his physical life. If there is much of these, the astral body is strongly vitalized, and will persist for a long time; if there is but little, the astral body has less vitality, and he will soon be able to cast that vehicle aside in turn. When that is done he finds himself living in his mental body. The strength of that depends upon the nature of the thoughts to which he has habituated himself, and usually his stay at this level is a long one. At last it comes to an end, and he casts aside the mental body in turn, and is once more the ego in his own world. Owing to lack of development, he is as yet but partially conscious in that world; the vibrations of its matter are too rapid to make any impression upon him, just as the ultra-violet rays are too rapid to make any impression upon our eyes. After a rest there, he feels the desire to descend to a level where the undulations are perceptible to him, in order that he may feel himself to be fully alive; so he repeats the process of descent into denser matter, and assumes once more a mental, an astral and a physical body. As his previous bodies have all disintegrated, each in its tarn, these new vehicles are entirely distinct from them, and thus it happens that in his physical life he has no recollection whatever of other similar lives which have preceded it. When functioning in this physical world he remembers by means of his mental body; but since that is a new one, assumed only for this birth, it naturally cannot contain the memory of previous births in which it had no part. The man himself, the ego, does remember them all when in his own world, and occasionally some partial recollection of them or influence from them filters through into his lower vehicles. He does not usually, in his physical life, remember the experiences of earlier lives, but he does manifest in physical life the qualities which those experiences have developed in him. Each man is therefore exactly what he has made himself during those past lives; if he has in them developed good qualities in himself, he possesses the good qualities now; if he neglected to train himself, and consequently left himself weak and of evil disposition, he finds himself precisely in that condition now. The qualities, good or evil, with which he is born are those which he has made for himself. This development of the ego is the object of the whole process of materialization; he assumes those veils of matter precisely because through them he is able to receive vibrations to which he can respond, so that his latent faculties may thereby be unfolded. Though man descends from on high into these lower worlds, it is only through that descent that a full cognizance of the higher worlds is developed in him. Full consciousness in any given world involves the power to perceive and respond to all the undulations of that world: therefore the ordinary man has not yet perfect consciousness at any level--not even in this physical world which he thinks he knows. It is possible for him to unfold his percipience in all these worlds, and it is by means of such developed consciousness that we observe all these facts which I am now describing. The causal body is the permanent vehicle of the ego in the higher mental world. It consists of matter of the first, second and third subdivisions of that world. In ordinary people it is not yet fully active, only that matter which belongs to the third subdivision being vivified. As the ego unfolds his latent possibilities through the long course of his evolution, the higher matter is gradually brought into action, but it is only in the perfected man whom we call the Adept that it is developed to its fullest extent. Such matter can be discerned by clairvoyant sight, but only by a seer who knows how to use the sight of the ego. It is difficult to describe a causal body fully, because the senses belonging to its world are altogether different from and higher than ours at this level. Such memory of the appearance of a causal body as it is possible for a clairvoyant to bring into his physical brain represents it as ovoid, and as surrounding the physical body of the man, extending to a distance of about eighteen inches from the normal surface of that body. In the case of primitive man it resembles a bubble, and gives the impression of being empty. It is in reality filled with higher mental matter, but as this is not yet brought into activity it remains colourless and transparent. As advancement continues it is gradually stirred into alertness by vibrations which reach it from the lower bodies. This comes but slowly, because the activities of man in the earlier stages of his evolution are not of a character to obtain expression in matter so fine as that of the higher mental body; but when a man reaches the stage where he is capable either of abstract thought or of unselfish emotion the matter of the causal body is aroused into response. When these rates of undulation are awakened within him they show themselves in his causal body as colours, so that instead of being a mere transparent bubble it gradually becomes a sphere filled with matter of the most lovely and delicate hues--an object beautiful beyond all conception. It is found by experience that these colours are significant. The vibration which denotes the power of unselfish affection shows itself as a pale rose-colour; that which indicates high intellectual power is yellow; that which expresses sympathy is green, while blue betokens devotional feeling, and a luminous lilac-blue typifies the higher spirituality. The same scheme of colour-significance applies to the bodies which are built of denser matter, but as we approach the physical world the hues are in every case by comparison grosser--not only less delicate but also less living. In the course of evolution in the lower worlds man often introduces into his vehicles qualities which are undesirable and entirely inappropriate for his life as an ego--such, for example, as pride, irritability, sensuality. These, like the rest, are reducible to vibrations, but they are in all cases vibrations of the lower subdivisions of their respective worlds, and therefore they cannot reproduce themselves in the causal body, which is built exclusively of the matter of the three higher subdivisions of its world. For each section of the astral body acts strongly upon the corresponding section of the mental body, but only upon the corresponding section; it cannot influence any other part. So the causal body can be affected only by the three higher portions of the astral body; and the oscillations of those represent only good qualities. The practical effect of this is that the man can build into the ego (that is, into his true self) nothing but good qualities; the evil qualities which he develops are in their nature transitory and must be thrown aside as he advances, because he has no longer within him matter which can express them. The difference between the causal bodies of the savage and the saint is that the first is empty and colourless, while the second is full of brilliant, coruscating tints. As the man passes beyond even saint-hood and becomes a great spiritual power, his causal body increases in size, because it has so much more to express, and it also begins to pour out from itself in all directions powerful rays of living light. In one who has attained Adeptship this body is of enormous dimensions. The mental body is built of matter of the four lower subdivisions of the mental world, and expresses the concrete thoughts of the man. Here also we find the same colour-scheme as in the causal body. The hues are somewhat less delicate, and we notice one or two additions. For example, a thought of pride shows itself as orange, while irritability is manifested by a brilliant scarlet. We may see here sometimes the bright brown of avarice, the grey-brown of selfishness, and the grey-green of deceit. Here also we perceive the possibility of a mixture of colours; the affection, the intellect, the devotion may be tinged by selfishness, and in that case their distinctive colours are mingled with the brown of selfishness, and so we have an impure and muddy appearance. Although its particles are always in intensely rapid motion among themselves, this body has at the same time a kind of loose organization. The size and shape of the mental body are determined by those of the causal vehicle. There are in it certain striations which divide it more or less irregularly into segments, each of these corresponding to a certain department of the physical brain, so that every type of thought should function through its duly assigned portion. The mental body is as yet so imperfectly developed in ordinary men that there are many in whom a great number of special departments are not yet in activity, and any attempt at thought belonging to those departments has to travel round through some inappropriate channel which happens to be fully open. The result is that thought on those subjects is for those people clumsy and uncomprehending. This is why some people have a head for mathematics and others are unable to add correctly--why some people instinctively understand, appreciate and enjoy music, while others do not know one tune from another. All the matter of the mental body should be circulating freely, but sometimes a man allows his thought upon a certain subject to set and solidify, and then the circulation is impeded, and there is a congestion which presently hardens into a kind of wart on the mental body. Such a wart appears to us down here as a prejudice; and until it is absorbed and free circulation restored, it is impossible for the man to think truly or to see clearly with regard to that particular department of his mind, as the congestion checks the free passage of undulations both outward and inward. When a man uses any part of his mental body it not only vibrates for the time more rapidly, but it also temporarily swells out and increases in size. If there is prolonged thought upon a subject this increase becomes permanent, and it is thus open to any man to increase the size of his mental body either along desirable or undesirable lines. Good thoughts produce vibrations of the finer matter of the body, which by its specific gravity tends to float in the upper part of the ovoid; whereas bad thoughts, such as selfishness and avarice, are always oscillations of the grosser matter, which tends to gravitate towards the lower part of the ovoid. Consequently the ordinary man, who yields himself not infrequently to selfish thoughts of various kinds, usually expands the lower part of his mental body, and presents roughly the appearance of an egg with its larger end downwards. The man who has repressed those lower thoughts, and devoted himself to higher ones, tends to expand the upper part of his mental body, and therefore presents the appearance of an egg standing on its smaller end. From a study of the colours and striations of a man's mental body the clairvoyant can perceive his character and the progress he has made in his present life. From similar features of the causal body he can see what progress the ego has made since its original formation, when the man left the animal kingdom. When a man thinks of any concrete object--a book, a house, a landscape--he builds a tiny image of the object in the matter of his mental body. This image floats in the upper part of that body, usually in front of the face of the man and at about the level of the eyes. It remains there as long as the man is contemplating the object, and usually for a little time afterwards, the length of time depending upon the intensity and the clearness of the thought. This form is quite objective, and can be seen by another person, if that other has developed the sight of his own mental body. If a man thinks of another, he creates a tiny portrait in just the same way. If his thought is merely contemplative and involves no feeling (such as affection or dislike) or desire (such as a wish to see the person) the thought does not usually perceptibly affect the man of whom he thinks. If coupled with the thought of the person there is a feeling, as for example of affection, another phenomenon occurs besides the forming of the image. The thought of affection takes a definite form, which it builds out of the matter of the thinker's mental body. Because of the emotion involved, it draws round it also matter of his astral body, and thus we have an astromental form which leaps out of the body in which it has been generated, and moves through space towards the object of the feeling of affection. If the thought is sufficiently strong, distance makes absolutely no difference to it; but the thought of an ordinary person is usually weak and diffused, and is therefore not effective outside a limited area. When this thought-form reaches its object it discharges itself into his astral and mental bodies, communicating to them its own rate of vibration. Putting this in another way, a thought of love sent from one person to another involves the actual transference of a certain amount both of force and of matter from the sender to the recipient, and its effect upon the recipient is to arouse the feeling of affection in him, and slightly but permanently to increase his power of loving. But such a thought also strengthens the power of affection in the thinker, and therefore it does good simultaneously to both. Every thought builds a form; if the thought be directed to another person it travels to him; if it be distinctly selfish it remains in the immediate neighbourhood of the thinker; if it belongs to neither of these categories it floats for awhile in space and then slowly disintegrates. Every man therefore is leaving behind him wherever he goes a trail of thought forms; as we go along the street we are walking all the time amidst a sea of other men's thoughts. If a man leaves his mind blank for a time, these residual thoughts of others drift through it, making in most cases but little impression upon him. Sometimes one arrives which attracts his attention, so that his mind seizes upon it and makes it its own, strengthens it by the addition of its force, and then casts it out again to affect somebody else. A man therefore, is not responsible for a thought which floats into his mind, because it may be not his, but someone else's; but he _is_ responsible if he takes it up, dwells upon it and then sends it out strengthened. Self-centred thought of any kind hangs about the thinker, and most men surround their mental bodies with a shell of such thoughts. Such a shell obscures the mental vision and facilitates the formation of prejudice. Each thought-form is a temporary entity. It resembles a charged battery, awaiting an opportunity to discharge itself. Its tendency is always to reproduce its own rate of vibration in the mental body upon which it fastens itself, and so to arouse in it a like thought. If the person at whom it is aimed happens to be busy or already engaged in some definite train of thought, the particles of his mental body are already swinging at a certain determinate rate, and cannot for the moment be affected from without. In that case the thought-form bides its time, hanging about its object until he is sufficiently at rest to permit its entrance; then it discharges itself upon him, and in the act ceases to exist. The self-centred thought behaves in exactly the same way with regard to its generator, and discharges itself upon him when opportunity offers. If it be an evil thought, he generally regards it as the suggestion of a tempting demon, whereas in truth he tempts himself. Usually each definite thought creates a new thought-form; but if a thought-form of the same nature is already hovering round the thinker, under certain circumstances a new thought on the same subject, instead of creating a new form, coalesces with and strengthens, the old one, so that by long brooding over the same subject a man may sometimes create a thought-form of tremendous power. If the thought be a wicked one, such a thought-form may become a veritable evil influence, lasting perhaps for many years, and having for a time all the appearance and powers of a real living entity. All these which have been described are the ordinary unpremeditated thoughts of man. A man can make a thought-form intentionally, and aim it at another with the object of helping him. This is one of the lines of activity adopted by those who desire to serve humanity. A steady stream of powerful thought directed intelligently upon another person may be of the greatest assistance to him. A strong thought-form may be a real guardian angel, and protect its object from impurity, from irritability or from fear. An interesting branch of the subject is the study of the various shapes and colours taken by thought-forms of different kinds. The colours indicate the nature of the thought, and are in agreement with those which we have already described as existing in the bodies. The shapes are of infinite variety, but are often in some way typical of the kind of thought which they express. Every thought of definite character, such as a thought of affection or hatred, of devotion or suspicion, of anger or fear, of pride or jealousy, not only creates a form but also radiates an undulation. The fact that, each one of these thoughts is expressed by a certain colour indicates that the thought expresses itself as an oscillation of the matter of a certain part of the mental body. This rate of oscillation communicates itself to the surrounding mental matter precisely in the same way as the vibration of a bell communicates itself to the surrounding air. This radiation travels out in all directions, and whenever it impinges upon another mental body in a passive or receptive condition it communicates to it something of its own vibration. This does not convey a definite complete idea, as does the thought-form, but it tends to produce a thought of the same character as itself. For example, if the thought be devotional its undulations will excite devotion, but the object of the worship may be different in the case of each person upon whose mental body they impinge. The thought-form, on the other hand, can reach only one person, but will convey to that person (if receptive) not only a general devotional feeling, but also a precise image of the Being for whom the adoration was originally felt. Any person who habitually thinks pure, good and strong thoughts is utilizing for that purpose the higher part of his mental body--a part which is not used at all by the ordinary man, and is entirely undeveloped in him. Such an one is therefore a power for good in the world, and is being of great use to all those of his neighbours who are capable of any sort of response. For the vibration which he sends out tends to arouse a new and higher part of their mental bodies, and consequently to open before them altogether new fields of thought. It may not be exactly the same thought as that sent out, but it is of the same nature. The undulations generated by a man thinking of Theosophy do not necessarily communicate Theosophical ideas to all those around him; but they do awaken in them more liberal and higher thought than that to which they have before been accustomed. On the other hand, the thought-forms generated under such circumstances, though more limited in their action than the radiation, are also more precise; they can affect only those who are to some extent open to them, but to them they will convey definite Theosophical ideas. The colours of the astral body bear the same meaning as those of the higher vehicles, but are several octaves of colours below them, and much more nearly approaching to such hues as we see in the physical world. It is the vehicle of passion and emotion, and consequently it may exhibit additional colours, expressing man's less desirable feelings, which cannot show themselves at higher levels; for example, a lurid brownish-red indicates the presence of sensuality, while black clouds show malice and hatred. A curious livid grey betokens the presence of fear, and a much darker grey, usually arranged in heavy rings around the ovoid, indicates a condition of depression. Irritability is shown by the presence of a number of small scarlet flecks in the astral body, each representing a small angry impulse. Jealousy is shown by a peculiar brownish-green, generally studded with the same scarlet flecks. The astral body is in size and shape like those just described, and in the ordinary man its outline is usually clearly marked; but in the case of primitive man it is often exceedingly irregular, and resembles a rolling cloud composed of all the more unpleasant colours. When the astral body is comparatively quiet (it is never actually at rest) the colours which are to be seen in it indicate those emotions to which the man is most in the habit of yielding himself. When the man experiences a rush of any particular feeling, the rate of vibration which expresses that feeling dominates for a time the entire astral body. If, for example, it be devotion, the whole of his astral body is flushed with, blue, and while the emotion remains at its strongest the normal colours do little more than modify the blue, or appear faintly through a veil of it; but presently the vehemence of the sentiment dies away, and the normal colours re-assert themselves. But because of that spasm of emotion the part of the astral body which is normally blue has been increased in size. Thus a man who frequently feels high devotion soon comes to have a large area of the blue permanently existing in his astral body. When the rush of devotional _feeling_ comes over him, it is usually accompanied by _thoughts_ of devotion. Although primarily formed in the mental body, these draw round themselves a large amount of astral matter as well, so that their action is in both worlds. In both worlds also is the radiation which was previously described, so that the devotional man is a centre of devotion, and will influence other people to share both his thoughts and his feelings. The same is true in the case of affection, anger, depression--and, indeed, of all other feelings. The flood of emotion does not itself greatly affect the mental body, although for a time it may render it almost impossible for any activity from that mental body to come through into the physical brain. That is not because that body itself is affected, but because the astral body, which acts as a bridge between it and the physical brain, is vibrating so entirely at one rate as to be incapable of conveying any undulation which is not in harmony with that. The permanent colours of the astral body react upon, the mental. They produce in it their correspondences, several octaves higher, in the same manner as a musical note produces overtones. The mental body in its turn reacts upon the causal in the same way, and thus all the good qualities expressed in the lower vehicles by degrees establish themselves permanently in the ego. The evil qualities cannot do so, as the rates of vibrations which express them are impossible for the higher mental matter of which the causal body is constructed. So far, we have described vehicles which are the expression of the ego in their respective worlds--vehicles, which he provides for himself; in the physical world we come to a vehicle which is provided for him by Nature under laws which will be later explained--which though also in some sense an expression of him, is by no means a perfect manifestation. In ordinary life we see only a small part of this physical body--only that which is built of the solid and liquid subdivisions of physical matter. The body contains matter of all the seven subdivisions, and all of them play their part in its life and are of equal importance, to it. We usually speak of the invisible part of the physical body as the etheric double; "double" because it exactly reproduces the size and shape of the part of the body that we can see, and "etheric" because it is built--of that finer kind of matter by the vibrations of which light is conveyed to the retina of the eye. (This must not be confused with the true æther of space--that of which matter is the negation.) This invisible part of the physical body is of great importance to us, since it is the vehicle through which flow the streams of vitality which keep the body alive, and without it, as a bridge to convey undulations of thought and feeling from the astral to the visible denser physical matter, the ego could make no use of the cells of his brain. The life of a physical body is one of perpetual change and in order that it shall live, it needs constantly to be supplied from three distinct sources. It must have food for its digestion, air for its breathing, and vitality for its absorption. This vitality is essentially a force, but when clothed in matter it appears to us as a definite element, which exists in all the worlds of which we have spoken. At the moment we are concerned with that manifestation of it which we find in the highest subdivision of the physical world. Just as the blood circulates through the veins, so does the vitality circulate along the nerves; and precisely as any abnormality in the flow of the blood at once affects the physical body, so does the slightest irregularity in the absorption or flow of the vitality affect this higher part of the physical body. Vitality is a force which comes originally from the sun. When an ultimate physical atom is charged with it, it draws round itself six other atoms, and makes itself into an etheric element. The original force of vitality is then subdivided into seven, each of the atoms carrying a separate charge. The element thus made is absorbed into the human body through the etheric part of the spleen. It is there split up into its component parts, which at once low to the various parts of the body assigned to them. The spleen is one of the seven force centres in the etheric part of the physical body. In each of our vehicles seven such centres should be in activity, and when they are thus active they are visible to clairvoyant sight. They appear usually as shallow vortices, for they are the points at which the force from the higher bodies enters the lower. In the physical body these centres are: (1) at the base of the spine, (2) at the solar plexus, (3) at the spleen, (4) over the heart, (5) at the throat, (6) between the eyebrows, and (7) at the top of the head. There are other dormant centres, but their awakening is undesirable. The shape of all the higher bodies as seen by the clairvoyant is ovoid, but the matter composing them is not equally distributed throughout the egg. In the midst of this ovoid is the physical body. The physical body strongly attracts astral matter, and in its turn the astral matter strongly attracts mental matter. Therefore by far the greater part of the matter of the astral body is gathered within the physical frame; and the same is true of the mental vehicle. If we see the astral body of a man in its own world, apart from the physical body we shall still perceive the astral matter aggregated in exactly the shape of the physical, although, as the matter is more fluidic in its nature, what we see is a body built of dense mist, in the midst of an ovoid of much finer mist. The same is true for the mental body. Therefore, if in the astral or the mental world we should meet an acquaintance, we should recognise him by his appearance just as instantly as in the physical world. This, then, is the true constitution of man. In the first place he is a Monad, a Spark of the Divine. Of that Monad the ego is a partial expression, formed in order that he may enter evolution, and may return to the Monad with joy, bringing his sheaves with him in the shape of qualities developed by garnered experience. The ego in his turn puts down part of himself for the same purpose into lower worlds, and we call that part a personality, because the Latin word _persona_ means a mask, and this personality is the mask which the ego puts upon himself when he manifests in worlds lower than his own. Just as the ego is a small part and an imperfect expression of the Monad, so is the personality a small part and an imperfect expression of the ego; so that what we usually think of as the man is only in truth a fragment of a fragment. The personality wears three bodies or vehicles, the mental, the astral and the physical. While the man is what we call alive and awake on the physical earth he is limited by his physical body, for he uses the astral and mental bodies only as bridges to connect himself with his lowest vehicle. One of the limitations of the physical body is that it quickly becomes fatigued and needs periodical rest. Each night the man leaves it to sleep, and withdraws into his astral vehicle, which does not become fatigued, and therefore needs no sleep. During this sleep of the physical body the man is free to move about in the astral world; but the extent to which he does this depends upon his development. The primitive savage usually does not move more than a few miles away from his sleeping physical form--often not as much as that; and he has only the vaguest consciousness. The educated man is generally able to travel in his astral vehicle wherever he will, and has much more consciousness in the astral world, though he has not often the faculty of bringing into his waking life any memory of what he has seen and done while his physical body was asleep. Sometimes he does remember some incident which he has seen, some experience which he has had, and then he calls it a vivid dream. More often his recollections are hopelessly entangled with vague memories of waking life, and with impressions made from without upon the etheric part of his brain. Thus we arrive at the confused and often absurd dreams of ordinary life. The developed man becomes as fully conscious and active in the astral world as in the physical, and brings through into the latter full remembrance of what he has been doing in the former--that is, he has a continuous life without any loss of consciousness throughout the whole twenty-four hours, and thus throughout the whole of his physical life, and even through death itself. Chapter VI AFTER DEATH Death is the laying aside of the physical body; but it makes no more difference to the ego than does the laying aside of an overcoat to the physical man. Having put off his physical body, the ego continues to live in his astral body until the force has become exhausted which has been generated by such emotions and passions as he has allowed himself to feel during earth-life. When that has happened, the second death takes place; the astral body also falls away from him, and he finds himself living in the mental body and in the lower mental world. In that condition he remains until the thought-forces generated during his physical and astral lives have worn themselves out; then he drops the third vehicle in its turn and remains once more an ego in his own world, inhabiting his causal body. There is, then, no such thing as death as it is ordinarily understood. There is only a succession of stages in a continuous life--stages lived in the three worlds one after another. The apportionment of time between these three worlds varies much as man advances. The primitive man lives almost exclusively in the physical world, spending only a few years in the astral at the end of each of his physical lives. As he develops, the astral life becomes longer, and as intellect: unfolds in him, and he becomes able to think, he begins to spend a little time in the mental world as well. The ordinary man of civilized races remains longer in the mental world than in the physical and astral; indeed, the more a man evolves the longer becomes his mental, life and the shorter his life in the astral world. The astral life is the result of all feelings which have in them the element of self. If they have been directly selfish, they bring him into conditions of great unpleasantness in the astral world; if, though tinged with thoughts of self, they have been good and kindly, they bring him a comparatively pleasant though still limited astral life. Such of his thoughts and feelings as have been entirely unselfish produce their results in his life in the mental world; therefore that life in the mental, world cannot be other than blissful. The astral life, which the man has made for himself either miserable or comparatively joyous, corresponds to what Christians call purgatory; the lower mental life, which is always entirely happy, is what is called heaven. Man makes for himself his own purgatory and heaven, and these are not planes, but states of consciousness. Hell does not exist; it is only a figment of the theological imagination; but a man who lives foolishly may make for himself a very unpleasant and long enduring purgatory. Neither purgatory nor heaven can ever be eternal, for a finite cause cannot produce an infinite result. The variations in individual cases are so wide that to give actual figures is somewhat misleading. If we take the average man of what is called the lower middle class, the typical specimen of which would be a small shopkeeper or shop-assistant, his average life in the astral world would be perhaps about forty years, and the life in the mental world about two hundred. The man of spirituality and culture, on the other hand, may have perhaps twenty years of life in the astral world and a thousand in the heaven life. One who is specially developed may reduce the astral life to a few days or hours and spend fifteen hundred years in heaven. Not only does the length of these periods vary greatly, but the conditions in both worlds also differ widely. The matter of which all these bodies are built is not dead matter but living, and that fact has to be taken into consideration. The physical body is built up of cells, each of which is a tiny separate life animated by the Second Outpouring, which comes forth from the Second Aspect of the Deity. These cells are of varying kinds and fulfil various functions, and all these facts must be taken into account if the man wishes to understand the work of his physical body and to live a healthy life in it. The same thing applies to the astral and mental bodies. In the cell-life which permeates them there is as yet nothing in the way of intelligence, but there is a strong instinct always pressing in the direction of what is for its development. The life animating the matter of which such bodies are built is upon the outward arc of evolution, moving downwards or outwards into matter, so that progress for it means to descend into denser forms of matter, and to learn to express itself through them. Unfoldment for the man is just the opposite of this; he has already sunk deeply into matter and is now rising out of that towards his source. There is consequently a constant conflict of interests between the man within and the life inhabiting the matter of his vehicles, inasmuch as its tendency is downward, while his is upward. The matter of the astral body (or rather the life animating its molecules) desires for its evolution such undulations as it can get, of as many different kinds as possible, and as coarse as possible. The next step in its evolution will be to ensoul physical matter and become used to its still slower oscillations; and as a step on the way to that, it desires the grossest of the astral vibrations. It has not the intelligence definitely to plan for these; but its instinct helps it to discover how most easily to procure them. The molecules of the astral body are constantly changing, as are those of the physical body, but nevertheless the life in the mass of those astral molecules has a sense, though a very vague sense, of itself as a whole--as a kind of temporary entity. It does not know that it is part of a man's astral body; it is quite incapable of understanding what a man is; but it realizes in a blind way that under its present conditions it receives many more waves, and much stronger ones, than it would receive if floating at large in the atmosphere. It would then only occasionally catch, as from a distance, the radiation of man's passions and emotions; now it is in the very heart of them, it can miss none, and it gets them at their strongest. Therefore it feels itself in a good position, and it makes an effort to retain that position. It finds itself in contact with something finer than itself--the matter of the man's mental body; and it comes to feel that if it can contrive to involve that finer something in its own undulations, they will be greatly intensified and prolonged. Since astral matter is the vehicle of desire and mental matter is the vehicle of thought, this instinct, when translated into our language, means that if the astral body can induce us to think that _we_ want what _it_ wants, it is much more likely to get it. Thus it exercises a slow steady pressure upon the man--a kind of hunger on its side, but for him a temptation to what is coarse and undesirable. If he be a passionate man there is a gentle but ceaseless pressure in the direction of irritability; if he be a sensual man, an equally steady pressure in the direction of impurity. A man who does not understand this usually makes one of two mistakes with regard to it: either he supposes it to be the prompting of his own nature, and therefore regards that nature as inherently evil, or he thinks of the pressure as coming from outside--as a temptation of an imaginary devil. The truth lies between the two. The pressure is natural, not to the man but to the vehicle which he is using; its desire is natural and right for it, but harmful to the man, and therefore it is necessary that he should resist it. If he does so resist, if he declines to yield himself to the feelings suggested to him, the particles within him which need those vibrations become apathetic for lack of nourishment, and eventually atrophy and fall out from his astral body, and are replaced by other particles, whose natural wave-rate is more nearly in accordance with that which the man habitually permits within his astral body. This gives the reason for what are called promptings of the lower nature during life. If the man yields himself to them, such promptings grow stronger and stronger until at last he feels as though he could not resist them, and identifies himself with them--which is exactly what this curious half-life in the particles of the astral body wants him to do. At the death of the physical body this vague astral consciousness is alarmed. It realizes that its existence as a separated mass is menaced, and it takes instinctive steps to defend itself and to maintain its position as long as possible. The matter of the astral body is far more fluidic than that of the physical, and this consciousness seizes upon its particles and disposes them so as to resist encroachment. It puts the grossest and densest upon the outside as a kind of shell, and arranges the others in concentric layers, so that the body as a whole may become as resistant to friction as its constitution permits, and may therefore retain its shape as long as possible. For the man this produces various unpleasant effects. The physiology of the astral body is quite different from that of the physical; the latter acquires its information from without by means of certain organs which are specialized as the instruments of its senses, but the astral body has no separated senses in our meaning of the word. That which for the astral body corresponds to sight is the power of its molecules to respond to impacts from without, which come to them by means of similar molecules. For example, a man has within his astral body matter belonging to all the subdivisions of the astral world, and it is because of that that he is capable of "seeing" objects built of the matter of any of these subdivisions. Supposing an astral object to be made of the matter of the second and third subdivisions mixed, a man living in the astral world could perceive that object only if on the surface of his astral body there were particles belonging to the second and third subdivisions of that world which were capable of receiving and recording the vibrations which that object set up. A man who from the arrangement of his body by the vague consciousness of which we have spoken, had on the outside of that vehicle only the denser matter of the lowest subdivision, could no more be conscious of the object which we have mentioned than we are ourselves conscious in the physical body of the gases which move about us in the atmosphere or of objects built exclusively of etheric matter. During physical life the matter of the man's astral body is in constant motion, and its particles pass among one another much as do those of boiling water. Consequently at any given moment it is practically certain that particles of all varieties will be represented on the surface of his astral body, and that therefore when he is using his astral body during sleep he will be able to "see" by its means any astral object which approaches him. After death, if he has allowed the rearrangement to be made (as from ignorance, all ordinary persons do) his condition in this respect will be different. Having on the surface of his astral body only the lowest and grossest particles, he can receive impressions only from corresponding particles outside; so that instead of seeing the whole of the astral world about him, he will see only one-seventh of it, and that the densest and most impure. The vibrations of this heavier matter are the expressions only of objectionable feelings and emotions, and of the least refined class of astral entities. Therefore it emerges that a man in this condition can see only the undesirable inhabitants of the astral world, and can feel only its most unpleasant and vulgar influences. He is surrounded by other men, whose astral bodies are probably of quite ordinary character; but since he can see and feel only that which is lowest and coarsest in them, they appear to him to be monsters of vice with no redeeming features. Even his friends seem not at all what they used to be, because he is now incapable of appreciating any of their better qualities. Under these circumstances it is little wonder that he considers the astral world a hell; yet the fault is in no way with the astral world, but with himself--first, for allowing within himself so much of that cruder type of matter, and, secondly, for letting that vague astral consciousness dominate him and dispose it in that particular way. The man who has studied these matters declines absolutely to yield to the pressure during life or to permit the rearrangement after death, and consequently he retains his power of seeing the astral world as a whole, and not merely the cruder and baser part of it. The astral world has many points in common with the physical; just like the physical, it presents different appearances to different people, and even to the same person at different periods of his career. It is the home of emotions and of lower thoughts; and emotions are much stronger in that world than in this. When a person is awake we cannot see that larger part of his emotion at all; its strength goes in setting in motion the gross physical matter of the brain. So if we see a man show affection here, what we can see is not the whole of his affection, but only such part of it as is left after all this other work has been done. Emotions therefore bulk far more largely in the astral life than in the physical. They in no way exclude higher thought if they are controlled, so in the astral world as in the physical a man may devote himself to study and to helping his fellows, or he may waste his time and drift about aimlessly. The astral world extends nearly to the mean distance of the orbit of the moon; but though the whole of this realm is open to any of its inhabitants who have not permitted the redistribution of their matter, the great majority remain much nearer to the surface of the earth. The matter of the different subdivisions of that world interpenetrates with perfect freedom, but there is on the whole a general tendency for the denser matter to settle towards the centre. The conditions are much like those which obtain in a bucket of water which contains in suspension a number of kinds of matter of different degrees of density. Since the water is kept in perpetual motion, the different kinds of matter are diffused through it; but in spite of that, the densest matter is found in greatest quantity nearest to the bottom. So that though we must not at all think of the various subdivisions of the astral world as lying above one another as do the coats of an onion, it is nevertheless true that the average arrangement of the matter of those subdivisions partakes somewhat of that general character. Astral matter interpenetrates physical matter precisely as though it were not there, but each subdivision of physical matter has a strong attraction for astral matter of the corresponding subdivision. Hence it arises that every physical body has its astral counterpart. If I have a glass of water standing upon a table, the glass and the table, being of physical matter in the solid state, are interpenetrated by astral matter of the lowest subdivision. The water in the glass, being liquid, is interpenetrated by what we may call astral liquid--that is, by astral matter of the sixth subdivision; whereas the air surrounding both, being physical matter in the gaseous condition, is entirely interpenetrated by astral gaseous matter--that is, astral matter of the fifth subdivision. But just as air, water, glass and table are alike interpenetrated all the time by the finer physical matter which we have called etheric, so are all the astral counterparts interpenetrated by the finer astral matter of the higher subdivisions which correspond to the etheric. But even the astral solid is less dense than the finest of the physical ethers. The man who finds himself in the astral world after death, if he has not submitted to the rearrangement of the matter of his body, will notice but little difference from physical life. He can float about in any direction at will, but in actual fact he usually stays in the neighbourhood to which he is accustomed. He is still able to perceive his house, his room, his furniture, his relations, his friends. The living, when ignorant of the higher worlds, suppose themselves to have "lost" those who have laid aside their physical bodies; but the dead are never for a moment under the impression that they have lost the living. Functioning as they are in the astral body, the dead can no longer see the physical bodies of those whom they have left behind; but they do see their astral bodies, and as those are exactly the same in outline as the physical, they are perfectly aware of the presence of their friends. They see each one surrounded by a faint ovoid of luminous mist, and if they happen to be observant, they may notice various other small changes in their surroundings; but it is at least quite clear to them that they have not gone away to some distant heaven or hell, but still remain in touch with the world which they know, although they see it at a somewhat different angle. The dead man has the astral body of his living friend obviously before him, so he cannot think of him as lost; but while the friend is awake, the dead man will not be able to make any impression upon him, for the consciousness of the friend is then in the physical world, and his astral body is being used only as a bridge. The dead man cannot therefore communicate with his friend, nor can he read his friend's higher thoughts; but he will see by the change in colour in the astral body any emotion which that friend may feel, and with a little practice and observation he may easily learn to read all those thoughts of his friend which have in them anything of self or of desire. When the friend falls asleep the whole position is changed. He is then also conscious in the astral world side by side with the dead man, and they can communicate in every respect as freely as they could during physical life. The emotions felt by the living react strongly upon the dead who love them. If the former give way to grief, the latter cannot but suffer severely. The conditions of life after death are almost infinite in their variety, but they can be calculated without difficulty by any one who will take the trouble to understand the astral world and to consider the character of the person concerned. That character is not in the slightest degree changed by death; the man's thoughts, emotions and desires are exactly the same as before. He is in every way the same man, minus his physical body; and his happiness or misery depends upon the extent to which this loss of the physical body affects him. If his longings have been such as need a physical body for their gratification, he is likely to suffer considerably. Such a craving manifests itself as a vibration in the astral body, and while we are still in this world most of its strength is employed in setting in motion the heavy physical particles. Desire is therefore a far greater force in the astral life than in the physical, and if the man has not been in the habit of controlling it, and if in this new life it cannot be satisfied, it may cause him great and long-continued trouble. Take as an illustration the extreme case of a drunkard or a sensualist. Here we have a lust which has been strong enough during physical life to overpower reason, common sense and all the feelings of decency and of family affection. After death the man finds himself in the astral world feeling the appetite perhaps a hundred times more strongly, yet absolutely unable to satisfy it because he has lost the physical body. Such a life is a very real hell--the only hell there is; yet no one is punishing him; he is reaping the perfectly natural result of his own action. Gradually as time passes this force of desire wears out, but only at the cost of terrible suffering for the man, because to him every day seems as a thousand years. He has no measure of time such as we have in the physical world. He can measure it only by his sensations. From a distortion of this fact has come the blasphemous idea of eternal damnation. Many other cases less extreme than this will readily suggest themselves, in which a hankering which cannot be fulfilled may prove itself a torture. A more ordinary case is that of a man who has no particular vices, such as drink or sensuality, but yet has been attached entirely to things of the physical world, and has lived a life devoted to business or to aimless social functions. For him the astral world is a place of weariness; the only thing for which he craves are no longer possible for him, for in the astral world there is no business to be done, and, though he may have as much companionship as he wishes, society is now for him a very different matter, because all the pretences upon which it is usually based in this world are no longer possible. These cases, however, are only the few, and for most people the state after death is much happier than life upon earth. The first feeling of which the dead man is usually conscious is one of the most wonderful and delightful freedom. He has absolutely nothing to worry about, and no duties rest upon him, except those which he chooses to impose upon himself. For all but a very small minority, physical life is spent in doing what the man would much rather not do; but he has to do it in order to support himself or his wife and family. In the astral world no support is necessary; food is no longer needed, shelter is not required, since he is entirely unaffected by heat or cold; and each man by the mere exercise of his thought clothes himself as he wishes. For the first time since early childhood the man is entirely free to spend the whole of his time in doing just exactly what he likes. His capacity for every kind of enjoyment is greatly enhanced, if only that enjoyment does not need a physical body for its expression. If he loves the beauties of Nature, it is now within his power to travel with great rapidity and without fatigue over the whole world, to contemplate all its loveliest spots, and to explore its most secret recesses. If he delights in art, all the world's masterpieces are at his disposal. If he loves music, he can go where he will to hear it, and it will now mean much more to him than it has ever meant before; for though he can no longer hear the physical sounds, he can receive the whole effect of the music into himself in far fuller measure than in this lower world. If he is a student of science, he can not only visit the great scientific men of the world, and catch from them such thoughts and ideas as may be within his comprehension, but also he can undertake researches of his own into the science of this higher world, seeing much more of what he is doing than has ever before been possible to him. Best of all, he whose great delight in this world has been to help his fellow men will still find ample scope for his philanthropic efforts. Men are no longer hungry, cold, or suffering from disease in this astral world; but there are vast numbers who, being ignorant, desire knowledge--who, being still in the grip of desire for earthly things, need the explanation which will turn their thought to higher levels--who have entangled themselves in a web of their own imaginings, and can be set free only by one who understands these new surroundings and can help them to distinguish the facts of the world from their own ignorant misrepresentation of them. All these can be helped by the man of intelligence and of kindly heart. Many men arrive in the astral world in utter ignorance of its conditions, not realizing at first that they are dead, and when they do realize it fearing the fate that may be in store for them, because of false and wicked theological teaching. All of these need the cheer and comfort which can only be given to them by a man of common sense who possesses some knowledge of the facts of Nature. There is thus no lack of the most profitable occupation for any man whose interests during his physical life have been rational; nor is there any lack of companionship. Men whose tastes and pursuits are similar drift naturally together there just as they do here; and many realms of Nature, which during our physical life are concealed by the dense veil of matter, now lie open for the detailed study of those who care to examine them. To a large extent people make their own surroundings. We have already referred to the seven subdivisions of this astral world. Numbering these from the highest and least material downwards, we find that they fall naturally into three classes--divisions one, two and three forming one such class, and four, five and six another; while the seventh and lowest of all stands alone. As I have said, although they all interpenetrate, their substance has a general tendency to arrange itself according to its specific gravity, so that most of the matter belonging to the higher subdivisions is found at a greater elevation above the surface of the earth than the bulk of the matter of the lower portions. Hence, although any person inhabiting the astral world can move into any part of it, his natural tendency is to float at the level which corresponds with the specific gravity of the heaviest matter in his astral body. The man who has not permitted the rearrangement of the matter of his astral body after death is entirely free of the whole astral world; but the majority, who do permit it, are not equally free--not because there is anything to prevent them from rising to the highest level or sinking to the lowest, but because they are able to sense clearly only a certain part of that world. I have described something of the fate of a man who is on the lowest level, shut in by a strong shell of coarse matter. Because of the extreme comparative density of that matter he is conscious of less outside of his own subdivision than a man at any other level. The general specific gravity of his own astral body tends to make him float below the surface of the earth. The physical matter of the earth is absolutely non-existent to his astral senses, and his natural attraction is to that least delicate form of astral matter which is the counterpart of that solid earth. A man who has confined himself to that lowest subdivision will therefore usually find himself floating in darkness and cut off to a great extent from others of the dead, whose lives have been such as to keep them on a higher level. Divisions four, five and six of the astral world (to which most people are attracted) have for their background the astral counterpart of the physical world in which we live, and all its familiar accessories. Life in the sixth subdivision is simply like our ordinary life on this earth minus the physical body and its necessities while as it ascends through the fifth and fourth divisions it becomes less and less material and is more and more withdrawn from our lower world and its interests. The first, second and third sections, though occupying the same space, yet give the impression of being much further removed from the physical, and correspondingly less material. Men who inhabit these levels lose sight of the earth and its belongings; they are usually deeply self-absorbed, and to a large extent create their own surroundings, though these are sufficiently objective to be perceptible to other men of their level, and also to clairvoyant vision. This region is the summerland of which we hear in spiritualistic circles--the world in which, by the exercise of their thought, the dead call into temporary existence their houses and schools and cities. These surroundings, though fanciful from our point of view, are to the dead as real as houses, temples or churches built of stone are to us, and many people live very contentedly there for a number of years in the midst of all these thought-creations. Some of the scenery thus produced is very beautiful; it includes lovely lakes, magnificent mountains, pleasant flower gardens, decidedly superior to anything in the physical world; though on the other hand it also contains much which to the trained clairvoyant (who has learned to see things as they are) appears ridiculous--as, for example, the endeavours of the unlearned to make a thought-form of some of the curious symbolic descriptions contained in their various scriptures. An ignorant peasant's thought-image of a beast full of eyes within, or of a sea of glass mingled with fire, is naturally often grotesque, although to its maker it is perfectly satisfactory. This astral world is full of thought-created figures and landscapes. Men of all religions image here their deities and their respective conceptions of paradise, and enjoy themselves greatly among these dream-forms until they pass into the mental world and come into touch with something nearer to reality. Every one after death--any ordinary person, that is, in whose case the rearrangement of the matter of the astral body has been made--has to pass through all these subdivisions in turn. It does not follow that every one is conscious in all of them. The ordinarily decent person has in his astral body but little of the matter of its lowest portion--by no means enough to construct a heavy shell. The redistribution puts on the outside of the body its densest matter; in the ordinary man this is usually matter of the sixth subdivision, mixed with a little of the seventh, and so he finds himself viewing the counterpart of the physical world. The ego is steadily withdrawing into himself, and as he withdraws he leaves behind him level after level of this astral matter. So the length of the man's detention in any section of the astral world is precisely in proportion to the amount of its matter which is found in his astral body, and that in turn depends upon the life he has lived, the desires he has indulged, and the class of matter which by so doing he has attracted towards him and built into himself. Finding himself then in the sixth section, still hovering about the places and persons with which he was most closely connected while on earth, the average man, as time passes on, finds the earthly surroundings gradually growing dimmer and becoming of less and less importance to him, and he tends more and more to mould his entourage into agreement with the more persistent of his thoughts. By the time that he reaches the third level he finds that this characteristic has entirely superseded the vision of the realities of the astral world. The second subdivision is a shade less material than the third, for if the latter is the summerland of the spiritualists, the former is the material heaven of the more ignorantly orthodox; while the first or highest level appears to be the special home of those who during life have devoted themselves to materialistic but intellectual pursuits, following them not for the sake of benefiting their fellow men, but either from motives of selfish ambition or simply for the sake of intellectual exercise. All these people are perfectly happy. Later on they will reach a stage when they can appreciate something much higher, and when that stage comes they will find the higher ready for them. In this astral life people of the same nation and of the same interest tend to keep together, precisely as they do here. The religious people, for example, who imagine for themselves a material heaven, do not at all interfere with men of other faiths whose ideas of celestial joy are different. There is nothing to prevent a Christian from drifting into the heaven of the Hindu or the Muhammadan, but he is little likely to do so, because his interests and attractions are all in the heaven of his own faith, along with friends who have shared that faith with him. This is by no means the true heaven described by any of the religions, but only a gross and material misrepresentation of it; the real thing will be found when we come to consider the mental world. The dead man who has not permitted the rearrangement of the matter of his astral body is free of the entire world, and can wander all over it at will, seeing the whole of whatever he examines, instead of only a part of it as the others do. He does not find it inconveniently crowded, for the astral world is much larger than the surface of the physical earth, while its population is somewhat smaller, because the average life of humanity in the astral world is shorter than the average in the physical. Not only the dead, however, are the inhabitants of this astral world, but always about one-third of the living as well, who have temporarily left their physical bodies behind them in sleep. The astral world has also a great number of non-human inhabitants, some of them far below the level of man, and some considerably above him. The nature-spirits form an enormous kingdom, some of whose members exist in the astral world, and make a large part of its population. This vast kingdom exists in the physical world also, for many of its orders wear etheric bodies and are only just beyond the range of ordinary physical sight. Indeed, circumstances not infrequently occur under which they can be seen, and in many lonely mountain districts these appearances are traditional among the peasants, by whom they are commonly spoken of as fairies, good people, pixies or brownies. They are protean, but usually prefer to wear a miniature human form. Since they are not yet individualized, they may be thought of almost as etheric and astral animals; yet many of them are intellectually quite equal to average humanity. They have their nations and types just as we have, and they are often grouped into four great classes, and called the spirits of earth, water, fire and air. Only the members of the last of these four divisions normally confine their manifestation to the astral world, but their numbers are so prodigious that they are everywhere present in it. Another great kingdom has its representatives here--the kingdom of the angels (called in India the devas). This is a body of beings who stand far higher in evolution than man, and only the lowest fringe of their hosts touches the astral world--a fringe whose constituent members are perhaps at about the level of development of what we should call a distinctly good man. We are neither the only nor even the principal inhabitants of our solar system; there are other lines of evolution running parallel with our own which do not pass through humanity at all, though they must all pass through a level corresponding to that of humanity. On one of these other lines of evolution are the nature-spirits above described, and at a higher level of that line comes this great kingdom of the angels. At our present level of evolution they come into obvious contact with us only very rarely, but as we develop we shall be likely to see more of them--especially as the cyclic progress of the world is now bringing it more and more under the influence of the Seventh Ray. This Seventh Ray has ceremonial for one of its characteristics, and it is through ceremonial such as that of the Church or of Freemasonry that we come most easily into touch with the angelic kingdom. When all the man's lower emotions have worn themselves out--all emotions, I mean, which have in them any thought of self--his life in the astral world is over, and the ego passes on into the mental world. This is not in any sense a movement in space; it is simply that the steady process of withdrawal has now passed beyond even the finest kind of astral matter; so that the man's consciousness is focussed in the mental world. His astral body has not entirely disintegrated, though it is in process of doing so, and he leaves behind him an astral corpse, just as at a previous stage of the withdrawal he left behind him a physical corpse. There is a certain difference between the two which should be noticed, because of the consequences which ensue from it. When the man leaves his physical body his separation from it should be complete, and generally is so; but this is not the case with the much finer matter of the astral body. In the course of his physical life the ordinary man usually entangles himself so much in astral matter (which, from another point of view, means that he identifies himself so closely with his lower desires) that the indrawing force of the ego cannot entirely separate him from it again. Consequently, when he finally breaks away from the astral body and transfers his activities to the mental, he loses a little of himself he leaves some of himself behind imprisoned in the matter of the astral body. This gives a certain remnant of vitality to the astral, corpse, so that it still moves freely in the astral world, and may easily be mistaken by the ignorant for the man himself--the more so as such fragmentary consciousness as still remains to it is part of the man, and therefore it naturally regards itself and speaks of itself as the man. It retains his memories, but is only a partial and unsatisfactory representation of him. Sometimes in spiritualistic séances one comes into contact with an entity of this description, and wonders how it is that one's friend has deteriorated so much since his death. To this fragmentary entity we give the name "shade". At a later stage even this fragment of consciousness dies out of the astral body, but does not return to the ego to whom it originally belonged. Even then the astral corpse still remains, but when it is quite without any trace of its former life we call it a "shell". Of itself a shell cannot communicate at a séance, or take any action of any sort; but such shells are frequently seized upon by sportive nature-spirits and used as temporary habitations. A shell so occupied _can_ communicate at a séance and masquerade as its original owner, since some of his characteristics and certain portions of his memory can be evoked by the nature-spirit from his astral corpse. When a man falls asleep, he withdraws in his astral body, leaving the whole of the physical vehicle behind him. When he dies, he draws out with him the etheric part of the physical body, and consequently has usually at least a moment of unconsciousness while he is freeing himself from it. The etheric double is not a vehicle and cannot be used as such; so when the man is surrounded by it, he is for the moment able to function neither in the physical world nor the astral. Some men succeed in shaking themselves free of this etheric envelope in a few moments; others rest within it for hours, days or even weeks. Nor is it certain that, when the man is free from this, he will at once become conscious of the astral world. For there is in him a good deal of the lowest kind of astral matter, so that a shell of this may be made around him. But he may be quite unable to use that matter. If he has lived a reasonably decent life he is little in the habit of employing it or responding to its vibrations, and he cannot instantly acquire this habit. For that reason, he may remain unconscious until that matter gradually wears away, and some matter which he _is_ in the habit of using comes on the surface. Such an occlusion, however, is scarcely ever complete, for even in the most carefully made shell some particles of the finer matter occasionally find their way to the surface, and give him fleeting glimpses of his surroundings. There are some men who cling so desperately to their physical vehicles that they will not relax their hold upon the etheric double, but strive with all their might to retain it. They may be successful in doing so for a considerable time, but only at the cost of great discomfort to themselves. They are shut out from both worlds, and find themselves surrounded by a dense grey mist, through which they see very dimly the things of the physical world, but with all the colour gone from them. It is a terrible struggle for them to maintain their position in this miserable condition, and yet they will not relax their hold upon the etheric double, feeling that that is at least some sort of link with the only world that they know. Thus they drift about in a condition of loneliness and misery until from sheer fatigue their hold fails them, and they slip into the comparative happiness of astral life. Sometimes in their desperation they grasp blindly at other bodies, and try to enter into them, and occasionally they are successful in such an attempt. They may seize upon a baby body, ousting the feeble personality for whom it was intended, or sometimes they grasp even the body of an animal. All this trouble arises entirely from ignorance, and it can never happen to anyone who understands the laws of life and death. When the astral life is over, the man dies to that world in turn, and awakens in the mental world. With him it is not at all what it is to the trained clairvoyant, who ranges through it and lives amidst the surroundings which he finds there, precisely as he would in the physical or astral worlds. The ordinary man has all through his life been encompassing himself with a mass of thought-forms. Some which are transitory, to which he pays little attention, have fallen away from him long ago, but those which represent the main interests of his life are always with him, and grow ever stronger and stronger. If some of these have been selfish, their force pours down into astral matter, and he has exhausted them during his life in the astral world. But those which are entirely unselfish belong purely to his mental body, and so when he finds himself in the mental world it is through these special thoughts that he is able to appreciate it. His mental body is by no means fully developed; only those parts of it are really in action to their fullest extent which he has used in this altruistic manner. When he awakens again after the second death, his first sense is one of indescribable bliss and vitality--a feeling of such utter joy in living that he needs for the time nothing but just to live. Such bliss is of the essence of life in all the higher worlds of the system. Even astral life has possibilities of happiness far greater than anything that we can know in the dense body; but the heaven-life in the mental world is out of all proportion more blissful than the astral. In each higher world the same experience is repeated. Merely to live in any one of them seems the uttermost conceivable bliss; and yet, when the next one is reached, it is seen that it far surpasses the last. Just as the bliss increases, so does the wisdom and the breadth of view. A man fusses about in the physical world and thinks himself so busy and so wise; but when he touches even the astral, he realizes at once that he has been all the time only a caterpillar crawling about and seeing nothing but his own leaf, whereas now he has spread his wings like the butterfly and flown away into the sunshine of a wider world. Yet, impossible as it may seem, the same experience is repeated when he passes into the mental world, for this life is in turn so much fuller and wider and more intense than the astral that once more no comparison is possible. And yet beyond all these there is still another life, that of the intuitional world, unto which even this is but as moonlight unto sunlight. The man's position in the mental world differs widely from that in the astral. There he was using a body to which he was thoroughly accustomed, a body which he had been in the habit of employing every night during sleep. Here he finds himself living in a vehicle which he has never used before--a vehicle furthermore which is very far from being fully developed--a vehicle which shuts him out to a great extent from the world about him, instead of enabling him to see it. The lower part of his nature burnt itself away during his purgatorial life, and now there remain to him only his higher and more refined thoughts, the noble and unselfish aspirations which he poured out during earth-life. These cluster round him, and make a sort of shell about him, through the medium of which he is able to respond to certain types of vibrations in this refined matter. These thoughts which surround him are the powers by which he draws upon the wealth of the heaven-world, and he finds it to be a storehouse of infinite extent, upon which he is able to draw just according to the power of those thoughts and aspirations; for in this world is existing the infinite fullness of the Divine Mind, open in all its limitless affluence to every soul, just in proportion as that soul has qualified itself to receive. A man who has already completed his human evolution, who has fully realized and unfolded the divinity whose germ is within him, finds the whole of this glory within his reach; but since none of us has yet done that, since we are only gradually rising towards that splendid consummation, it follows that none of us as yet can grasp that entirety. But each draws from it and cognizes so much of it as he has by previous effort prepared himself to take. Different individuals bring very different capacities; they tell us in the East that each man brings his own cup, and some of the cups are large and some are small, but small or large every cup is filled to its utmost capacity; the sea of bliss holds far more than enough for all. A man can look out upon all this glory and beauty only through the windows which he himself has made. Every one of these thought-forms is such a window, through which response may come to him from the forces without. If during his earth-life he has chiefly regarded physical things, then he has made for himself but few windows through which this higher glory can shine in upon him. Yet every man who is above the lowest savage must have had some touch of pure unselfish feeling, even if it were but once in all his life, and that will be a window for him now. The ordinary man is not capable of any great activity in this mental world; his condition is chiefly receptive, and his vision of anything outside his own shell of thought is of the most limited character. He is surrounded by living forces, mighty angelic inhabitants of this glorious world, and many of their orders are very sensitive to certain aspirations of man and readily respond to them. But a man can take advantage of these only in so far as he has already prepared himself to profit by them, for his thoughts and aspirations are only along certain lines, and he cannot suddenly form new lines. There are many directions which the higher thought may take--some of them personal and some impersonal. Among the latter are art, music and philosophy; and a man whose interest lay along any one of these lines finds both measureless enjoyment and unlimited instruction waiting for him--that is, the amount of enjoyment and instruction is limited only by his power of perception. We find a large number of people whose only higher thoughts are those connected with affection and devotion. If a man loves another deeply or if he feels strong devotion to a personal deity, he makes a strong mental image of that friend or of the deity, and the object of his feeling is often present in his mind. Inevitably he takes that mental image into the heaven-world with him, because it is to that level of matter that it naturally belongs. Take first the case of affection. The love which forms and retains such an image is a very powerful force--a force which is strong enough to reach and to act upon the ego of his friend in the higher part of the mental world. It is that ego that is the real man whom he loves--not the physical body which is so partial a representation of him. The ego of the friend, feeling this vibration, at once and eagerly responds to it, and pours himself into the thought-form, which has been made for him; so that the man's friend is truly present with him more vividly than ever before. To this result it makes no difference whatever whether the friend is what we call living or dead; the appeal is made not to the fragment of the friend which is sometimes imprisoned in a physical body, but to the man himself on his own true level; and he always responds. A man who has a hundred friends can simultaneously and fully respond to the affection of every one of them, for no number of representations on a lower level can exhaust the infinity of the ego. Thus every man in his heaven-life has around him all the friends for whose company he wishes, and they are for him always at their best, because he himself makes for them the thought-form through which they manifest to him. In our limited physical world we are so accustomed to thinking of our friend as only the limited manifestation which we know in the physical world, that it is at first difficult for us to realize the grandeur of the conception; when we can realize it, we shall see how much nearer we are in truth to our friends in the heaven-life than we ever were on earth. The same is true in the case of devotion. The man in the heaven-world is two great stages nearer to the object of his devotion than he was during physical life, and so his experiences are of a far more transcendent character. In this mental world, as in the astral, there are seven subdivisions. The first, second and third are the habitat of the ego in his causal body, so the mental body contains matter of the remaining four only, and it is in those sections that his heaven-life is passed. Man does not, however, pass from one to the other of these, as is the case in the astral world, for there is nothing in this life corresponding to the rearrangement. Rather is the man drawn to the level which best corresponds to the degree of his development, and on that level he spends the whole of his life in the mental body. Each man makes his own conditions, so that the number of varieties is infinite. Speaking broadly, we may say that the dominant characteristic observed in the lowest portion is unselfish family affection. Unselfish it must be, or it would find no place here; all selfish tinges, if there were any, worked out their results in the astral world. The dominant characteristic of the sixth level may be said to be anthropomorphical religious devotion; while that of the fifth section is devotion expressing itself in active work of some sort. All these--the fifth, sixth and seventh subdivisions--are concerned with the working out of devotion to personalities (either to one's family and friends or to a personal deity) rather than the wider devotion to humanity for its own sake, which finds its expression in the next section. The activities of this fourth stage are varied. They can best be arranged in four main divisions: unselfish pursuit of spiritual knowledge; high philosophy or scientific thought; literary or artistic ability exercised for unselfish purposes; and service for the sake of service. Even to this glorious heaven-life there comes an end, and then the mental body in its turn drops away as the others have done, and the man's life in his causal body begins. Here the man needs no windows, for this is his true home and all his walls have fallen away. The majority of men have as yet but very little consciousness at such a height as this; they rest dreamily unobservant and scarcely awake, but such vision as they have is true, however limited it may be by their lack of development. Still, every time they return, these limitations will be smaller, and they themselves will be greater; so that this truest life will be wider and fuller for them. As this improvement continues, this causal life grows, longer and longer, assuming an ever larger proportion as compared to the existence at lower levels. And as he grows, the man becomes capable not only of receiving but also of giving. Then indeed is his triumph approaching, for he is learning the lesson of the Christ, learning the crowning glory of sacrifice, the supreme delight of pouring out all his life for the helping of his fellow-men, the devotion of the self to the all, of celestial strength to human service, of all those splendid heavenly forces to the aid of the struggling sons of earth. That is part of the life that lies before us; these are some of the steps which even we who are still so near the bottom of the golden ladder may see rising above us, so that we may report them to those who have not seen as yet, in order that they too may open their eyes to the unimaginable splendour which surrounds them here and now in this dull daily life. This is part of the gospel of Theosophy--the certainty of this sublime future for all. It is certain because it is here already, because to inherit it we have only to fit ourselves for it. Chapter VII REINCARNATION This life of the ego in his own world, which is so glorious and so fully satisfying for the developed man, plays but a very small part in the life of the ordinary person, for in his case the ego has not yet reached a sufficient stage of development to be awake in his causal body. In obedience to the law of Nature he has withdrawn into it, but in doing so he has lost the sensation of vivid life, and his restless desire to feel this once more pushes him in the direction of another descent into matter. This is the scheme of evolution appointed for man at the present stage--that he shall develop by descending into grosser matter, and then ascend to carry back into himself the result of the experiences so obtained. His real life, therefore, covers millions of years, and what we are in the habit of calling a life is only one day of this greater existence. Indeed, it is in reality only a small part of one day; for a life of seventy years in the physical world is often succeeded by a period of twenty times that length spent in higher spheres. Every one of us has a long line of these physical lives behind him, and the ordinary man has a fairly long line still in front of him. Each of such lives is a day at school. The ego puts upon himself his garment of flesh and goes forth into the school of the physical world to learn certain lessons. He learns them, or does not learn them, or partially learns them, as the case may be, during his schoolday of earth-life; then he lays aside the vesture of the flesh and returns home to his own level for rest and refreshment. In the morning of each new life he takes up again his lesson at the point where he left it the night before. Some lessons he may be able to learn in one day, while others may take him many days. If he is an apt pupil and learns quickly what is needed, if he obtains an intelligent grasp of the rules of the school, and takes the trouble to adapt his conduct to them, his school-life is comparatively short, and when it is over he goes forth fully equipped into the real life of the higher worlds for which all this is only a preparation. Other egos are duller boys who do not learn so quickly; some of them do not understand the rules of the school, and through that ignorance are constantly breaking them; others are wayward, and even when they see the rules they cannot at once bring themselves to act in harmony with them. All of these have a longer school-life, and by their own actions they delay their entry upon the real life of the higher worlds. For this is a school in which no pupil ever fails; every one must go on to the end. He has no choice as to that; but the length of time which he will take in qualifying himself for the higher examinations is left entirely to his own discretion. The wise pupil, seeing that school-life is not a thing in itself, but only a preparation for a more glorious and far wider life, endeavours to comprehend as fully as possible the rules of his school, and shapes his life in accordance with them as closely as he can, so that no time may be lost in the learning of whatever lessons are necessary. He co-operates intelligently with the Teachers, and sets himself to do the maximum of work which is possible for him, in order that as soon as he can he may come of age and enter into his kingdom as a glorified ego. Theosophy explains to us the laws under which this school-life must be lived, and in that way gives a great advantage to its students. The first great law is that of evolution. Every man has to become a perfect man, to unfold to the fullest degree the divine possibilities which lie latent within him, for that unfoldment is the object of the entire scheme so far as he is concerned. This law of evolution steadily presses him onward to higher and higher achievements. The wise man tries to anticipate its demands--to run ahead of the necessary curriculum, for in that way he not only avoids all collision with it, but he obtains the maximum of assistance from its action. The man who lags behind in the race of life finds its steady pressure constantly constraining him--a pressure which, if resisted, rapidly becomes painful. Thus the laggard on the path of evolution has always the sense of being hunted and driven by his fate, while the man who intelligently co-operates is left perfectly free to choose the direction in which he shall move, so long as it is onward and upward. The second great law under which this evolution is taking place is the law of cause and effect. There can be no effect without its cause, and every cause must produce its effect. They are in fact not two but one, for the effect is really part of the cause, and he who sets one in motion sets the other also. There is in Nature no such idea as that of reward or punishment, but only of cause and effect. Anyone can see this in connection with mechanics or chemistry; the clairvoyant sees it equally clearly with regard to the problems of evolution. The same law obtains in the higher as in the lower worlds; there, as here, the angle of reflection is always equal to the angle of incidence. It is a law of mechanics that action and reaction are equal and opposite. In the almost infinitely finer matter of the higher worlds the reaction is by no means always instantaneous; it may sometimes be spread over long periods of time, but it returns inevitably and exactly. Just as certain in its working as the mechanical law in the physical world is the higher law, according to which the man who sends out a good thought or does a good action receives good in return, while the man who sends out an evil thought or does an evil action, receives evil in return with equal accuracy--once more, not in the least a reward or punishment administered by some external will, but simply as the definite and mechanical result of his own activity. Man has learnt to appreciate a mechanical result in the physical world, because the reaction is usually almost immediate and can be seen by him. He does not invariably understand the reaction in the higher worlds because that takes a wider sweep, and often returns not in this physical life, but in some future one. The action of this law affords the explanation of a number of the problems of ordinary life. It accounts for the different destinies imposed upon people, and also for the differences in the people themselves. If one man is clever in a certain direction and another is stupid, it is because in a previous life the clever man has devoted much effort to practise in that particular direction, while the stupid man is trying it for the first time. The genius and the precocious child are examples not of the favouritism of some deity but of the result produced by previous lives of application. All the varied circumstances which surrounded us are the result of our own actions in the past, precisely as are the qualities of which we find ourselves in possession. We are what we have made ourselves, and our circumstances are such as we have deserved. There is, however, a certain adjustment or apportionment of these effects. Though the law is a natural law and mechanical in its operation, there are nevertheless certain great Angels who are concerned with its administration. They cannot change by one feather-weight the amount of the result which follows upon any given thought or act, but they can within certain limits expedite or delay its action, and decide what form it shall take. If this were not done there would be at least a possibility that in his earlier stages the man might blunder so seriously that the results of his blundering might be more than he could bear. The plan of the Deity is to give man a limited amount of free-will; if he uses that small amount well, he earns the right to a little more next time; if he uses it badly, suffering comes upon him as the result of such evil use, and he finds himself restrained by the result of his previous actions. As the man learns how to use his free-will, more and more of it is entrusted to him, so that he can acquire for himself practically unbounded freedom in the direction of good, but his power to do wrong is strictly restricted. He can progress as rapidly as he will, but he cannot wreck his life in his ignorance. In the earlier stages of the savage life of primitive man it is natural that there should be on the whole more of evil than of good, and if the entire result of his actions came at once upon a man as yet so little developed, it might well crush the newly evolved powers which are still so feeble. Besides this, the effects of his actions are varied in character. While some of them produce immediate results, others need much more time for their action, and so it comes to pass that as the man develops he has above him a hovering cloud of undischarged results, some of them good, some of them bad. Out of this mass (which we may regard for purposes of analogy much as though it were a debt owing to the powers of Nature) a certain amount falls due in each of his successive births; and that amount, so assigned, may be thought of as the man's destiny for that particular life. All that it means is that a certain amount of joy and a certain amount of suffering are due to him, and will unavoidably happen to him; how he will meet this destiny and what use he will make of it, that is left entirely to his own option. It is a certain amount of force which has to work itself out. Nothing can prevent the action of that force, but its action may always be modified by the application of a new force in another direction, just as is the case in mechanics. The result of past evil is like any other debt; it may be paid in one large cheque upon the bank of life--by some one supreme catastrophe; or it may be paid in a number of smaller notes, in minor troubles and worries; in some cases it may even be paid in the small change of a great number of petty annoyances. But one thing is quite certain--that, in some form or other, paid it will have to be. The conditions of our present life, then, are absolutely the result of our own action in the past; and the other side of that statement is that our actions in this life are building up conditions for the next one. A man who finds himself limited either in powers or in outer circumstances may not always be able to make himself or his conditions all that he would wish in this life; but he can certainly secure for the next one whatever he chooses. Man's every action ends not with himself, but invariably affects others around him. In some cases this effect may be comparatively trivial, while in others it may be of the most serious character. The trivial results, whether good or bad, are simply small debits or credits in our account with Nature; but the greater effects, whether good or bad, make a personal account which is to be settled with the individual concerned. A man who gives a meal to a hungry beggar, or cheers him by a kindly word, will receive the result of his good action as part of a kind of general fund of Nature's benefits; but one who by some good action changes the whole current of another man's life will assuredly have to meet that same man again in a future life, in order that he who has been benefited may have the opportunity of repaying the kindness that has been done to him. One who causes annoyance to another will suffer proportionately for it somewhere, somehow, in the future, though he may never meet again the man whom he has troubled; but one who does serious harm to another, one who wrecks his life or retards his evolution, must certainly meet his victim again at some later point in the course of their lives, so that he may have the opportunity, by kindly and self-sacrificing service, of counterbalancing the wrong which he has done. In short, large debts must be paid personally, but small ones go into the general fund. These then are the principal factors which determine the next birth of the man. First acts the great law of evolution, and its tendency is to press the man into that position in which he can most easily develop the qualities which he most needs. For the purposes of the general scheme, humanity is divided into great races, called root-races, which rule and occupy the world successively. The great Aryan or Indo-Caucasian race, which at the present moment includes the most advanced of Earth's inhabitants, is one of these. That which came before it in the order of evolution was the Mongolian race, usually called in Theosophical books Atlantean because the continent from which it ruled the world lay where now roll the waters of the Atlantic ocean. Before that came the Negroid race, some of whose descendants still exist, though by this time much mingled with offshoots of later races. From each of these great root-races there are many offshoots which we call sub-races--such, for example, as the Roman races or the Teutonic; and each of the sub-races in turn divides itself into branch-races, such as the French and the Italians, the English and the Germans. These arrangements are made in order that for each ego there may be a wide choice of varying conditions and surroundings. Each race is especially adapted to develop within its people one or other of the qualities which are needed in the course of evolution. In every nation there exist an almost infinite number of diverse conditions, riches and poverty, a wide field of opportunities or a total lack of them, facilities for development or conditions under which development is difficult or well-nigh impossible. Amidst all these infinite possibilities the pressure of the law of evolution tends to guide the man to precisely those which best suit his needs at the stage at which he happens to be. But the action of this law is limited by that other law of which we spoke, the law of cause and effect. The man's actions in the past may not have been such as to deserve (if we may put it so) the best possible opportunities; he may have set in motion in his past certain forces the inevitable result of which will be to produce limitations; and these limitations may operate to prevent his receiving that best possible of opportunities, and so as the result of his own actions in the past he may have to put up with the second best. So we may say that the action of the law of evolution, which if left to itself would do the very best possible for every man, is restrained by the man's own previous actions. An important feature in that limitation--one which may act most powerfully for good or for evil--is the influence of the group of egos with which the man has made definite links in the past--those with whom he has formed strong ties of love or hate, of helping or of injury--those souls whom he must meet again because of connections made with them in days of long ago. His relation with them is a factor which must be taken into consideration before it can be determined where and how he shall be reborn. The Will of the Deity is man's evolution. The effort of that nature which is an expression of the Deity is to give the man whatever is most suitable for that evolution; but this is conditioned by the man's deserts in the past and by the links which he has already formed. It may be assumed that a man descending into incarnation could learn the lessons necessary for that life in any one of a hundred positions. From half of these or more than half he may be debarred by the consequences of some of his many and varied actions in the past. Among the few possibilities which remain open to him, the choice of one possibility in particular may be determined by the presence in that family or in that neighbourhood of other egos upon whom he has a claim for services rendered, or to whom he in his turn owes a debt of love. Chapter VIII THE PURPOSE OF LIFE To fulfil our duty in the divine scheme we must try to understand not only that scheme as a whole, but the special part that man is intended to play in it. The divine outbreathing reached its deepest immersion in matter in the mineral kingdom, but it reaches its ultimate point of differentiation not at the lowest level of materiality, but at the entrance into the human kingdom on the upward arc of evolution. We have thus to realize three stages in the course of this evolution. (a) The downward arc in which the tendency is towards differentiation and also towards greater materiality. In this stage spirit is involving itself in matter, in order that it may learn to receive impressions through it. (b) The earlier part of the upward arc, in which the tendency is still towards greater differentiation, but at the same time towards spiritualization and escape from materiality. In this stage the spirit is learning to dominate matter and to see it as an expression of itself. (c) The later part of the upward arc, when differentiation has been finally accomplished, and the tendency is towards unity as well as towards greater spirituality. In this stage the spirit, having learnt perfectly how to receive impression through matter and how to express itself through it, and having awakened its dormant powers, learns to use these powers rightly in the service of the Deity. The object of the whole previous evolution has been to produce the ego as a manifestation of the Monad. Then the ego in its turn evolves by putting itself down into a succession of personalities. Men who do not understand this look upon the personality as the self, and consequently live for it alone, and try to regulate their lives for what appears to be its temporary advantage. The man who understands realizes that the only important thing is the life of the ego, and that its progress is the object for which the temporary personality must be used. Therefore when he has to decide between two possible courses he thinks not, as the ordinary man might: "Which will bring the greater pleasure and profit to me as a personality?" but "Which will bring greater progress to me as an ego?" Experience soon teaches him that nothing can ever be really good for him, or for anyone, which is not good for all, and so presently he learns to forget himself altogether, and to ask only what will be best for humanity as a whole. Clearly then at this stage of evolution whatever tends to unity, whatever tends to spirituality, is in accord with the plan of the Deity for us, and is therefore right for us, while whatever tends to separateness or to materiality is equally certainly wrong for us. There are thoughts and emotions which tend to unity, such as love, sympathy, reverence, benevolence; there are others which tend to disunion, such as hatred, jealousy, envy, pride, cruelty, fear. Obviously the former group are for us the right, the latter group are for us the wrong. In all these thoughts and feelings which are clearly wrong, we recognize one dominant note, the thought of self; while in all those which are clearly right we recognize that the thought is turned toward others, and that the personal self is forgotten. Wherefore we see that selfishness is the one great wrong, and that perfect unselfishness is the crown of all virtue. This gives us at once a rule of life. The man who wishes intelligently to co-operate with the Divine Will must lay aside all thought of the advantage or pleasure of the personal self, and must devote himself exclusively to carrying out that Will by working for the welfare and happiness of others. This is a high ideal, and difficult of attainment, because there lies behind us such a long history of selfishness. Most of us are as yet far from the purely altruistic attitude; how are we to go to work to attain it, lacking as we do the necessary intensity in so many of the good qualities, and possessing so many which are undesirable? Here comes into operation the great law of cause and effect to which I have already referred. Just as we can confidently appeal to the laws of Nature in the physical world, so may we also appeal to these laws of the higher world. If we find evil qualities within us, they have grown up by slow degrees through ignorance and through self-indulgence. Now that the ignorance is dispelled by knowledge, now that in consequence we recognize the quality as an evil, the method of getting rid of it lies obviously before us. For each of these vices there is a contrary virtue; if we find one of them rearing its head within us, let us immediately determine deliberately to develop within ourselves the contrary virtue. If a man realizes that in the past he has been selfish, that means that he has set up within himself the habit of thinking of himself first and pleasing himself, of consulting his own convenience or his pleasure without due thought of the effect upon others; let him set to work purposefully to form the exactly opposite habit, to make a practice before doing anything of thinking how it will affect all those around him; let him set himself habitually to please others, even though it be at the cost of trouble or privation for himself. This also in time will become a habit, and by developing it he will have killed out the other. If a man finds himself full of suspicion, ready always to assign evil motives to the actions of those about him, let him set himself steadily to cultivate trust in his fellows, to give them credit always for the highest possible motives. It may be said that a man who does this will lay himself open to be deceived, and that in many cases his confidence will be misplaced. That is a small matter; it is far better for him that he should sometimes be deceived as a result of his trust in his fellows than that he should save himself from such deception by maintaining a constant attitude of suspicion. Besides, confidence begets faithfulness. A man who is trusted will generally prove himself worthy of the trust, whereas a man who is suspected is likely presently to justify the suspicion. If a man finds in himself the tendency towards avarice, let him go out of his way to be especially generous; if he finds himself irritable, let him definitely train himself in calmness; if he finds himself devoured by curiosity, let him deliberately refuse again and again to gratify that curiosity; if he is liable to fits of depression, let him persistently cultivate cheerfulness, even under the most adverse circumstances. In every case the existence of an evil quality in the personality means a lack of the corresponding good quality in the ego. The shortest way to get rid of that evil and to prevent its reappearance is to fill the gap in the ego, and the good quality which is thus developed will show itself as an integral part of the man's character through all his future lives. An ego cannot be evil, but he can be imperfect. The qualities which he develops cannot be other than good qualities, and when they are well defined they show themselves in each of all his numerous personalities, and consequently those personalities can never be guilty of the vices opposite to these qualities; but where there is a gap in the ego, where there is a quality undeveloped, there is nothing inherent in the personality to check the growth of the opposite vice; and since others in the world about him already possess that vice, and man is an imitative animal, it is quite probable that it will speedily manifest itself in him. This vice, however, belongs to the vehicles only and not to the man inside. In these vehicles its repetition may set up a momentum which is hard to conquer; but if the ego bestirs himself to create in himself the opposite virtue, the vice is cut off at its root, and can no longer exist--neither in this life nor in all the lives that are to come. A man who is trying to evolve these qualities in himself will find certain obstacles in his way--obstacles which he must learn to surmount. One of these is the critical spirit of the age--the disposition to find fault with a thing, to belittle everything, to look for faults in everything and everyone. The exact opposite of this is what is needed for progress. He who wishes to move rapidly along the path of evolution must learn to see good in everything--to see the latent Deity in everything and in everyone. Only so can he help those other people--only so can he get the best out of those other things. Another obstacle is the lack of perseverance. We tend in these days to be impatient; if we try any plan we expect immediate results from it, and if we do not get them, we give up that plan and try something else. That is not the way to make progress in occultism. The effort which we are making is to compress into one or two lives the evolution which would naturally take perhaps a hundred lives. That is not the sort of undertaking in which immediate results are to be expected. We attempt to uproot an evil habit, and we find it hard work; why? Because we have indulged in that practice for, perhaps, twenty thousand years; one cannot shake off the custom of twenty thousand years in a day or two. We have allowed that habit to gain an enormous momentum, and before we can set up a force in the opposite direction we have to overcome that momentum. That cannot be done in a moment, but it is absolutely certain that it _will_ be done eventually, if we persevere, because the momentum, however strong it may be, is a finite quantity, whereas the power that we can bring to bear against it is the infinite power of the human will, which can make renewed efforts day after day, year after year, even life after life if necessary. Another great difficulty in our way is the lack of clearness in our thought. People in the West are little used to clear thought with regard to religious matters. Everything is vague and nebulous. For occult development vagueness and nebulosity will not do. Our conceptions must be clear-cut and our thought-images definite. Other necessary characteristics are calmness and cheerfulness; these are rare in modern life, but are absolute essentials for the work which we are here undertaking. The process of building a character is as scientific as that of developing one's muscles. Many a man, finding himself with certain muscles flabby and powerless takes that as his natural condition, and regards their weakness as a kind of destiny imposed upon him; but anyone who understands a little of the human body is aware that by continued exercise those muscles can be brought into a state of health and the whole body eventually put in order. In exactly the same way, many a man finds himself possessed of a bad temper or a tendency to avarice or suspicion or self-indulgence, and when in consequence of any of these vices he commits some great mistake or does some great harm he offers it as an excuse that he is a hasty-tempered man, or that he possesses this or that quality by nature--implying that therefore he cannot help it. In this case just as in the other the remedy is in his own hands. Regular exercise of the right kind will develop a certain muscle, and regular mental exercise of the right kind will develop a missing quality in a man's character. The ordinary man does not realize that he can do this, and even if he sees that he can do it, he does not see why he should, for it means much effort and much self-repression. He knows of no adequate motive for undertaking a task so laborious and painful. The motive is supplied by the knowledge of the truth. One who gains an intelligent comprehension of the direction of evolution feels it not only his interest but his privilege and his delight to co-operate with it. One who wills the end wills also the means; in order to be able to do good work for the world he must develop within himself the necessary strength and the necessary qualities. Therefore he who wishes to reform the world must first of all reform himself. He must learn to give up altogether the attitude of insisting upon rights, and must devote himself utterly to the most earnest performance of his duties. He must learn to regard every connection with his fellow-man as an opportunity to help that fellow-man, or in some way to do him good. One who studies these subjects intelligently cannot but realize the tremendous power of thought, and the necessity for its efficient control. All action springs from thought, for even when it is done (as we say) without thought, it is the instinctive expression of the thoughts, desires and feelings which the man has allowed to grow luxuriantly within himself in earlier days. The wise man, therefore, will watch his thought with the greatest of care, for in it he possesses a powerful instrument, for the right use of which he is responsible. It is his duty to govern his thought, lest it should be allowed to run riot and to do evil to himself, and to others; it is his duty also to develop his thought-power, because by means of it a vast amount of actual and active good can be done. Thus controlling his thought and his action, thus eliminating from himself all evil and unfolding in himself all good qualities, the man presently raises himself far above the level of his fellows, and stands out conspicuously among them as one who is working on the side of good as against evil, of evolution as against stagnation. The Members of the great Hierarchy, in whose hands is the evolution of the world, are watching always for such men in order that They may train them to help in the great work. Such a man inevitably attracts Their attention, and They begin to use him as an instrument in Their work. If he proves himself a good and efficient instrument, presently They will offer him definite training as an apprentice, that by helping Them in the world-business which They have to do he may some day become even as They are, and join the mighty Brotherhood to which They belong. But for an honour so great as this mere ordinary goodness will not suffice. True, a man must be good first of all, or it would be hopeless to think of using him, but in addition to being good he must be wise and strong. What is needed is not merely a good man, but a great spiritual power. Not only must the candidate have cast aside all ordinary weaknesses but he must have acquired strong positive qualities before he can offer himself to Them with any hope that he will be accepted. He must live no longer as a blundering and selfish personality, but as an intelligent ego who comprehends the part which he has to play in the great scheme of the universe. He must have forgotten himself utterly; he must have resigned all thought of worldly profit or pleasure or advancement; he must be willing to sacrifice everything, and himself first of all, for the sake of the work that has to be done. He may be _in_ the world, but he must not be _of_ the world. He must be careless utterly of its opinion. For the sake of helping man he must make himself something more than man. Radiant, rejoicing, strong, he must live but for the sake of others and to be an expression of the love of God in the world. A high ideal, yet not too high; possible, because there are men who have achieved it. When a man has succeeded in unfolding his latent possibilities so far that he attracts the attention of the Masters of the Wisdom, one of Them will probably receive him as an apprentice upon probation. The period of probation is usually seven years, but may be either shortened or lengthened at the discretion of the Master. At the end of that time, if his work has been satisfactory, he becomes what it commonly called the accepted pupil. This brings him into close relations with his Master, so that the vibrations of the latter constantly play upon him, and he gradually learns to look at everything as the Master looks at it. After yet another interval, if he proves himself entirely worthy, he may be drawn into a still closer relationship, when he is called the son of the Master. These three stages mark his relationship to his own Master only, not to the Brotherhood as a whole. The Brotherhood admits a man to its ranks only when he has fitted himself to pass the first of the great Initiations. This entry into the Brotherhood of Those who rule the world may be thought of as the third of the great critical points in man's evolution. The first of these is when he becomes man--when he individualizes out of the animal kingdom and obtains a causal body. The second is what is called by the Christian "conversion", by the Hindu "the acquirement of discrimination", and by the Buddhist "the opening of the doors of the mind". That is the point at which he realizes the great facts of life, and turns away from the pursuit of selfish ends in order to move intentionally along with the great current of evolution in obedience to the divine Will. The third point is the most important of all, for the Initiation which admits him to the ranks of the Brotherhood also insures him against the possibility of failure to fulfil the divine purpose in the time appointed for it. Hence those who have reached this point are called in the Christian system the "elect", the "saved" or the "safe", and in the Buddhist scheme "those who have entered on the stream". For those who have reached this point have made themselves absolutely certain of reaching a further point also--that of Adeptship, at which they pass into a type of evolution which is definitely Superhuman. The man who has become an Adept has fulfilled the divine Will so far as this chain of worlds is concerned. He has reached, even already at the midmost point of the æon of evolution, the stage prescribed for man's attainment at the end of it. Therefore he is at liberty to spend the remainder of that time either in helping his fellow-men or in even more splendid work in connection with other and higher evolutions. He who has not yet been initiated is still in danger of being left behind by our present wave of evolution, and dropping into the next one--the "æonian condemnation" of which the Christ spoke, which has been mistranslated "eternal damnation". It is from this fate of possible æonian failure--that is, failure for this age, or dispensation, or life-wave--that the man who attains Initiation is "safe". He has "entered upon the stream" which now _must_ bear him on to Adeptship in this present age, though it is still possible for him by his actions to hasten or delay his progress along the Path which he is treading. That first Initiation corresponds to the matriculation which admits a man to a University, and the attainment of Adeptship to the taking of a degree at the end of a course. Continuing the simile, there are three intermediate examinations, which are usually spoken of as the second, third, and fourth Initiations, Adeptship being the fifth. A general idea of the line of this higher evolution may be obtained by studying the list of what are called in Buddhist books "the fetters" which must be cast off--the qualities of which a man must rid himself as he treads this Path. These are: the delusion of separateness; doubt or uncertainty; superstition; attachment to enjoyment; the possibility of hatred; desire for life, either in this or the higher worlds; pride; agitation or irritability; and ignorance. The man who reaches the Adept level has exhausted all the possibilities of moral development, and so the future evolution which still lies before him can only mean still wider knowledge and still more wonderful spiritual powers. Chapter IX THE PLANETARY CHAINS The scheme of evolution of which our Earth forms a part is not the only one in our solar system, for ten separate chains of globes exist in that system which are all of them theatres of somewhat similar progress. Each of these schemes of evolution is taking place upon a chain of globes, and in the course of each scheme its chain of globes goes through seven incarnations. The plan, alike of each scheme as a whole and of the successive incarnation of its chain of globes, is to dip step by step more deeply into matter, and then to rise step by step out of it again. Each chain consists of seven globes, and both globes and chains observe the rule of descending into matter and then rising out of it again. In order to make this comprehensible let us take as an example the chain to which our Earth belongs. At the present time it is in its fourth or most material incarnation, and therefore three of its globes belong to the physical world, two to the astral world, and two to the lower part of the mental world. The wave of divine Life passes in succession from globe to globe of this chain, beginning with one of the highest, descending gradually to the lowest and then climbing again to the same level as that at which it began. Let us for convenience of reference label the seven globes by the earlier letters of the alphabet, and number the incarnations in order. Thus, as this is the fourth incarnation of our chain, the first globe in this incarnation will be 4A, the second 4B, the third 4C, the fourth (which is our Earth) 4D, and so on. These globes are not all composed of physical matter. 4A contains no matter lower than that of the mental world; it has its counterpart in all the worlds higher than that, but nothing below it. 4B exists in the astral world; but 4C is a physical globe, visible to our telescopes, and is in fact the planet which we know as Mars. Globe 4D is our own Earth, on which the life-wave of the chain is at present in action. Globe 4E is the planet which we call Mercury--also in the physical world. Globe 4F is in the astral world, corresponding on the ascending arc to globe 4B in the descent; while globe 4G corresponds to globe 4A in having its lowest manifestation in the lower part of the mental world. Thus it will be seen that we have a scheme of globes starting in the lower mental world, dipping through the astral into the physical and then rising into the lower mental through the astral again. Just as the succession of the globes in a chain constitutes a descent into matter and an ascent from it again, so do the successive incarnations of a chain. We have described the condition of affairs in the fourth incarnation; looking back at the third, we find that that commences not on the lower level of the mental world but on the higher. Globes 3A and 3G, then, are both of higher mental matter, while globes 3B and 3F are at the lower mental level. Globes 3C and 3E belong to the astral world, and only globe 3D is visible in the physical world. Although this third incarnation of our chain is long past, the corpse of this physical globe 3D is still visible to us in the shape of that dead planet the Moon, whence that third incarnation is usually called the lunar chain. The fifth incarnation of our chain, which still lies very far in the future, will correspond to the third. In that, globes 5A and 5G will be built of higher mental matter, globes 5B and 5F of lower mental, globes 5C and 5E of astral matter, and only globe 5D will be in the physical world. This planet 5D is of course not yet in existence. The other incarnations of the chain follow the same general rule of gradually decreasing materiality; 2A, 2G, 6A and 6G are all in the intuitional world; 2B, 2F, 6B and 6F are all in the higher part of the mental world; 2C, 2E, 6C and 6E are in the lower part of the mental world; 2D and 6D are in the astral world. In the same way 1A, 1G, 7A and 7G belong to the spiritual world; 1B, IF, 7B and 7F are in the intuitional world; 1C, 1E, 7C and 7E are in the higher part of the mental world; 1D-and 7D are in the lower part of the mental world. Thus it will be seen that not only does the life-wave in passing through one chain of globes dip down into matter and rise out of it again, but the chain itself in its successive incarnations does exactly the same thing. There are ten schemes of evolution at present existing in our solar system, but only seven of them are at the stage where they have planets in the physical world. These are: (1) that of an unrecognized planet Vulcan, very near the sun, about which we have very little definite information. It was seen by the astronomer Herschel, but is now said to have disappeared. We at first understood that it was in its third incarnation; but it is now regarded as possible that it has recently passed from its fifth to its sixth chain, which would account for its alleged disappearance; (2) that of Venus, which is in its fifth incarnation, and also therefore, has only one visible globe; (3) that of the Earth, Mars and Mercury, which has three visible planets because it is in its fourth incarnation; (4) that of Jupiter, (5) that of Saturn, (6) that of Uranus, all in their third incarnations; and (7) that of Neptune and the two unnamed planets beyond its orbit, which is in its fourth incarnation, and therefore has three physical planets as we have. In each incarnation of a chain (commonly called a chain-period) the wave of divine Life moves seven times round the chain of seven planets, and each such movement is spoken of as a round. The time that the life-wave stays upon each planet is known as a world-period, and in the course of a world-period there are seven great root-races. As has been previously explained, these are subdivided into sub-races, and those again into branch-races. For convenience of reference we may state this in tabular form: 7 Branch-Races make 1 Sub-Race 7 Sub-Races make 1 Root-Race 7 Root-Races make 1 World-Period 7 World-Periods make 1 Round 7 Rounds make 1 Chain-Period 7 Chain-Periods make 1 Scheme of Evolution 10 Schemes of Evolution make 1 Our Solar System It is clear that the fourth root-race of the fourth globe of the fourth round of a fourth chain-period would be the central point of a whole scheme of evolution, and we find ourselves at the present moment only a little past that point. The Aryan race, to which we belong, is the fifth root-race of the fourth globe, so that the actual middle point fell in the time of the last great root-race, the Atlantean. Consequently the human race as a whole is very little more than half-way through its evolution, and those few souls who are already nearing Adeptship, which is the end and crown of this evolution, are very far in advance of their fellows. How do they come to be so far in advance? Partly and in some cases because they have worked harder, but usually because they are older egos--because they were individualized out of the animal kingdom at an earlier date, and so have had more time for the human part of their evolution. Any given wave of life sent forth from the Deity usually spends a chain-period in each of the great kingdoms of Nature. That which in our first chain was ensouling the first elemental kingdom must have ensouled the second of those kingdoms in the second chain, in the third of them in the Moon-chain, and is now in the mineral kingdom in the fourth chain. In the future fifth chain it will ensoul the vegetable kingdom, in the sixth the animal, and in the seventh it will attain humanity. From this it follows that we ourselves represented the mineral kingdom on the first chain, the vegetable on the second, and the animal on the lunar chain. There some of us attained our individualization, and so we were enabled to enter this Earth-chain as men. Others who were a little more backward did not succeed in attaining it, and so had to be born into this chain as animals for a while before they could reach humanity. Not all of mankind, however, entered this chain together. When the lunar chain came to its end the humanity upon it stood at various levels. Not Adeptship, but what is now for us the fourth step on the Path, was the goal appointed for that chain. Those who had attained it (commonly called in Theosophical literature the Lords of the Moon) had, as is usual, seven choices before them as to the way in which they would serve. Only one of those choices brought them, or rather a few of them, over into this Earth-chain to act as guides and teachers to the earlier races. A considerable proportion--a vast proportion, indeed--of the Moon-men had not attained that level, and consequently had to reappear in this Earth-chain as humanity. Besides this, a great mass of the animal kingdom of the Moon-chain was surging up to the level of the individualization, and some of its members had already reached it, while many others had not. These latter needed further animal incarnations upon the Earth-chain, and for the moment may be put aside. There were many classes even among the humanity, and the manner in which these distributed themselves over the Earth-chain needs some explanation. It is the general rule that those who have attained the highest possible in any chain on any globe, in any root-race, are not born into the beginning of the next chain, globe or race, respectively. The earlier stages are always for the backward entities, and only when they have already passed through a good deal of evolution and are beginning to approach the level of those others who had done better, do the latter descend into incarnation and join them once more. That is to say, almost the earlier half of any period of evolution, whether it be a race, a globe or a chain, seems to be devoted to bringing the backward people up to nearly the level of those who have got on better; then these latter also (who, in the meantime, have been resting in great enjoyment in the mental world) descend into incarnation along with the others, and they press on together until the end of the period. Thus the first of the egos from the Moon who entered the Earth-chain were by no means the most advanced. Indeed they may be described as the least advanced of those who had succeeded in attaining humanity--the animal-men. Coming as they did into a chain of new globes, freshly aggregated, they had to establish the forms in all the different kingdoms of Nature. This needs to be done at the beginning of the first round in a new chain, but never after that; for though the life-wave is centred only upon one of the seven globes of a chain at any given time, yet life has not entirely departed from the other globes. At the present moment, for example, the life-wave of our chain is centred on this Earth, but on the other two physical globes of our chain, Mars and Mercury, life still exists. There is still a population, human, animal and vegetable, and consequently when the life-wave goes round again to either of those planets there will be no necessity for the creation of new forms. The old types are already there, and all that will happen will be a sudden marvellous fecundity, so that the various kingdoms will quickly increase and multiply, and make a rapidly increasing population instead of a stationary one. It was, then, the animal-men, the lowest class of human beings of the Moon-chain, who established the forms in the first round of the Earth-chain. Pressing closely after them were the highest of the lunar animal kingdom, who were soon ready to occupy the forms which had just been made. In the second journey round the seven globes of the Earth-chain, the animal-men who had been the most backward of the lunar humanity were leaders of this terrene humanity, the highest of the moon-animals making its less developed grades. The same thing went on in the third round of the Earth-chain, more and more of the lunar animals attaining individualization and joining the human rank, until in the middle of that round on this very globe D which we call the Earth, a higher class of human beings--the Second Order of Moon-men--descended into incarnation and at once took the lead. When we come to the fourth, our present round, we find the First Order of the Moon-men pouring in upon us--all the highest and the best of the lunar humanity who had only just fallen short of success. Some of those who had already, even on the Moon, entered upon the Path soon attained its end, became Adepts and passed away from the Earth. Some few others who had not been quite so far advanced have attained Adeptship only comparatively recently--that is, within the last few thousand years, and these are the Adepts of the present day. We, who find ourselves in the higher races of humanity now, were several stages behind Them, but the opportunity lies before us of following in Their steps if we will. The evolution of which we have been speaking is that of the Ego himself, of what might be called the soul of man; but at the same time there has been also an evolution to the body. The forms built in the first round were very different from any of which we know anything now. Properly speaking, those which were made on our physical earth can scarcely be called forms at all, for they were constructed of etheric matter only, and resembled vague, drifting and almost shapeless clouds. In the second round they were definitely physical, but still shapeless and light enough to float about in currents of wind. Only in the third round did they begin to bear any kind of resemblance to man as we know him today. The very methods of reproduction of those primitive forms differed from those of humanity today, and far more resembled those which we now find only in very much lower types of life. Man in those early days was androgynous, and a definite separation into sexes took place only about the middle of the third round. From that time onward until now the shape of man has been steadily evolving along definitely human lines, becoming smaller and more compact than it was, learning to stand upright instead of stooping and crawling, and generally differentiating itself from the animal forms out of which it had been evolved. One curious break in the regularity of this evolution deserves mention. On this globe, in this fourth round, there was a departure from the straightforward scheme of evolution. This being the middle globe of a middle round, the midmost point of evolution upon it marked the last moment at which it was possible for members of what had been the lunar animal kingdom to attain individualization. Consequently a sort of strong effort was made--a special scheme was arranged to give a final chance to as many as possible. The conditions of the first and second rounds were specially reproduced in place of the first and second races--conditions of which in the earlier rounds these backward egos had not been able fully to take advantage. Now, with the additional evolution, which they had undergone during the third round, some of them were able to take such advantage, and so they rushed in at the very last moment before the door was shut, and became just human. Naturally they will not reach any high level of human development, but at least when they try again in some future chain it will be some advantage to them to have had even this slight experience of human life. Our terrestrial evolution received a most valuable stimulus from the assistance given to us by our sister globe, Venus. Venus is at present in the fifth incarnation of its chain, and in the seventh round of that incarnation, so that its inhabitants are a whole chain-period and a half in front of us in evolution. Since, therefore, its people are so much more developed than ours, it was thought desirable that certain Adepts from the Venus evolution should be transferred to our Earth in order to assist in the specially busy time just before the closing of the door, in the middle of the fourth root-race. These august Beings have been called the Lords of the Flame and the Children of the Fire-mist, and They have produced a wonderful effect upon our evolution. The intellect of which we are so proud is almost entirely due to Their presence, for in the natural course of events the next round, the fifth, should be that of intellectual advancement, and in this our present fourth round we should be devoting ourselves chiefly to the cultivation of the emotions. We are therefore in reality a long way in advance of the programme marked out for us; and such advance is entirely due to the assistance given by these great Lords of the Flame. Most of Them stayed with us only through that critical period of our history; a few still remain to hold the highest offices of the Great White Brotherhood until the time when men of our own evolution shall have risen to such a height as to be capable of relieving their august Visitors. The evolution lying before us is both of the life and of the form; for in future rounds, while the egos will be steadily growing in power, wisdom and love, the physical forms also will be more beautiful and more perfect than they have ever yet been. We have in this world at the present time men at widely differing stages of evolution, and it is clear that there are vast hosts of savages who are far behind the great civilized races of the world--so far behind that it is quite impossible that they can overtake them. Later on in the course of our evolution a point will be reached at which it is no longer possible for those undeveloped souls to advance side by side with the others, so that it will be necessary that a division should be made. The proceeding is exactly analogous to the sorting out by a schoolmaster of the boys in his class. During the school year he has to prepare his boys for a certain examination, and by perhaps the middle of that school year he knows quite well which of them will pass it. If he should have in his class some who are hopelessly behind the rest, he might reasonably say to them when the middle period was reached: "It is quite useless for you to continue with your fellows, for the more difficult lessons which I shall now have to give will be entirely unintelligible to you. It is impossible that you can learn enough in the time to pass the examination, so that the effort would only be a useless strain for you, and meantime you would be a hindrance to the rest of the class. It is therefore far better for you to give up striving after the impossible, and to take up again the work of the lower class which you did not do perfectly, and then to offer yourselves for this examination along with next year's class, for what is now impossible for you will then be easy." This is in effect exactly what is said at a certain stage in our future evolution, to the most backward egos. They drop out of this year's class and come along with the next one. This is the "æonian condemnation" to which reference was made a little while ago. It is computed that about two-fifths of humanity will drop out of the class in this way, leaving the remaining three-fifths to go on with far greater rapidity to the glorious destinies which lie before them. Chapter X THE RESULT OF THEOSOPHICAL STUDY "Members of the Theosophical Society study these truths and Theosophists endeavour to live them." What manner of man then is the true Theosophist in consequence of his knowledge? What is the result in his daily life of all this study? Finding that there is a Supreme Power who is directing the course of evolution, and that He is all-wise and all-loving, the Theosophist sees that everything which exists within this scheme must be intended to further its progress. He realizes that the scripture which tells us that all things are working together for good, is not indulging in a flight of poetic fancy or voicing a pious hope, but stating a scientific fact. The final attainment of unspeakable glory is an absolute certainty for every son of man, whatever may be his present condition; but that is by no means all. Here and at this present moment he is on his way towards the glory; and all the circumstances surrounding him are intended to help and not to hinder him, if only they are rightly understood. It is sadly true that in the world there is much of evil and of sorrow and of suffering; yet from the higher point of view the Theosophist sees that terrible though this be, it is only temporary and superficial, and is all being utilized as a factor in the progress. When in the days of his ignorance he looked at it from its own level it was almost impossible to see this; while he looked from beneath at the under side of life, with his eyes fixed all the time upon some apparent evil, he could never gain a true grasp of its meaning. Now he raises himself above it to the higher levels of thought and consciousness, and looks down upon it with the eye of the spirit and understands it in its entirety, so he can see that in very truth all is well--not that all will be well at some remote period, but that even now at this moment, in the midst of incessant striving and apparent evil, the mighty current of evolution is still flowing, and so all is well because all is moving on in perfect order towards the final goal. Raising his consciousness thus above the storm and stress of worldly life, he recognizes what used to seem to be evil, and notes how it is apparently pressing backwards against the great stream of progress; but he also sees that the onward sweep of the divine law of evolution bears the same relation to this superficial evil as does the tremendous torrent of Niagara to the fleckings of foam upon its surface. So while he sympathizes deeply with all who suffer, he yet realizes what will be the end of that suffering, and so for him despair or hopelessness is impossible. He applies this consideration to his own sorrows and troubles, as well as to those of the world, and therefore one great result of his Theosophy is a perfect serenity--even more than that, a perpetual cheerfulness and joy. For him there is an utter absence of worry, because in truth there is nothing left to worry about, since he knows that all must be well. His higher Science makes him a confirmed optimist, for it shows him that whatever of evil there may be in any person or in any movement, it is of necessity temporary, because it is opposed to the resistless stream of evolution; whereas whatever is good in any person or in any movement must necessarily be persistent and useful, because it has behind it the omnipotence of that current, and therefore it must abide and it must prevail. Yet it must not for a moment be supposed that because he is so fully assured of the final triumph of good he remains careless or unmoved by the evils which exist in the world around him. He knows that it is his duty to combat these to the utmost of his power, because in doing this he is working upon the side of the great evolutionary force, and is bringing nearer the time of its ultimate victory. None will be more active than he in labouring for the good, even though he is absolutely free from the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness which so often oppresses those who are striving to help their fellow-men. Another most valuable result of his Theosophical study is the absence of fear. Many people are constantly anxious or worried about something or other; they are fearing lest this or that should happen to them, lest this or that combination may fail, and so all the while they are in a condition of unrest; and most serious of all for many is the fear of death. For the Theosophist the whole of this feeling is entirely swept away. He realizes the great truth of reincarnation. He knows that he has often before laid aside physical bodies, and so he sees that death is no more than sleep--that just as sleep comes in between our days of work and gives us rest and refreshment, so between these days of labour here on earth, which we call lives, there comes a long night of astral and of heavenly life to give us rest and refreshment and to help us on our way. To the Theosophist death is simply the laying aside for a time of this robe of flesh. He knows that it is his duty to preserve the bodily vesture as long as possible, and gain through it all the experience he can; but when the time comes for him to lay it down he will do so thankfully, because he knows that the next stage will be a much pleasanter one than this. Thus he will have no fear of death, although he realizes that he must live his life to the appointed end, because he is here for the purpose of progress, and that progress is the one truly momentous matter. His whole conception of life is different; the object is not to earn so much money, not to obtain such and such a position; the one important thing is to carry out the divine plan. He knows that for this he is here, and that everything else must give way to it. Utterly free also is he from any religious fears or worries or troubles. All such things are swept aside for him, because he sees clearly that progress towards the highest is the divine Will for us, that we cannot escape from that progress, and that whatever comes in our way and whatever happens to us is meant to help us along that line; that we ourselves are absolutely the only people who can delay our advance. No longer does he trouble and fear about himself. He simply goes on and does the duty which comes nearest in the best way that he can, confident that if he does this all will be well for him without his perpetual worrying. He is satisfied quietly to do his work and to try to help his fellows in the race, knowing that the great divine Power behind will press him onward slowly and steadily, and do for him all that can be done, so long as his face is set steadfastly in the right direction, so long as he does all that he reasonably can. Since he knows that we are all part of one great evolution and all literally the children of one Father, he sees that the universal brotherhood of humanity is no mere poetical conception, but a definite fact; not a dream of something which is to be in the dim distance of Utopia, but a condition existing here and now. The certainty of this all-embracing fraternity gives him a wider outlook upon life and a broad impersonal point of view from which to regard everything. He realizes that the true interests of all are in fact identical, and that no man can ever make real gain for himself at the cost of loss or suffering to some one else. This is not to him an article of religious belief, but a scientific fact proved to him by his study. He sees that since humanity is literally a whole, nothing which injures one man can ever be really for the good of any other, for the harm done influences not only the doer but also those who are about him. He knows that the only true advantage for him is that benefit which he shares with all. He sees that any advance which he is able to make in the way of spiritual progress or development is something secured not for himself alone but for others. If he gains knowledge or self-control, he assuredly acquires much for himself, yet he takes nothing away from anyone else, but on the contrary he helps and strengthens others. Cognizant as he is of the absolute spiritual unity of humanity, he knows that, even in this lower world, no true profit can be made by one man which is not made in the name of and for the sake of humanity; that one man's progress must be a lifting of the burden of all the others; that one man's advance in spiritual things means a very slight yet not imperceptible advance to humanity as a whole; that every one who bears suffering and sorrow nobly in his struggle towards the light is lifting a little of the heavy load of the sorrow and suffering of his brothers as well. Because he recognizes this brotherhood not merely as a hope cherished by despairing men, but as a definite fact following in scientific series from all other facts; because he sees this as an absolute certainty, his attitude towards all those around him changes radically. It becomes a posture ever of helpfulness, ever of the deepest sympathy, for he sees that nothing which clashes with their higher interests can be the right thing for him to do, or can be good for him in any way. It naturally follows that he becomes filled with the widest possible tolerance and charity. He cannot but be always tolerant, because his philosophy shows him that it matters little what a man believes, so long as he is a good man and true. Charitable also he must be, because his wider knowledge enables him to make allowances for many things which the ordinary man does not understand. The standard of the Theosophist as to right and wrong is always higher than that of the less instructed man, yet he is far gentler than the latter in his feeling towards the sinner, because he comprehends more of human nature. He realizes how the sin appeared to the sinner at the moment of its commission, and so he makes more allowances than is ever made by the man who is ignorant of all this. He goes further than tolerance, charity, sympathy; he feels positive love towards mankind, and that leads him to adopt a position of watchful helpfulness. He feels that every contact with others is for him an opportunity, and the additional knowledge which his study has brought to him enables him to give advice or help in almost any case which comes before him. Not that he is perpetually thrusting his opinions upon other people. On the contrary, he observes that to do this is one of the commonest mistakes made by the uninstructed. He knows that argument is a foolish waste of energy, and therefore he declines to argue. If anyone desires from him explanation or advice he is more than willing to give it, yet he has no sort of wish to convert anyone else to his own way of thinking. In every relation of life this idea of helpfulness comes into play, not only with regard to his fellowmen but also in connection with the vast animal kingdom which surrounds him. Units of this kingdom are often brought into close relation with man, and this is for him an opportunity of doing something for them. The Theosophist recognizes that these are also his brothers, even though they may be younger brothers, and that he owes a fraternal duty to them also--so to act and so to think that his relation with them shall be always for their good and never for their harm. Pre-eminently and above all, this Theosophy is to him a doctrine of common sense. It puts before him, as far as he can at present know them, the facts about God and man and the relations between them; then he proceeds to take these facts into account and to act in relation to them with ordinary reason and common sense. He regulates his life according to the laws of evolution which it has taught him, and this gives him a totally different standpoint, and a touchstone by which to try everything--his own thoughts and feelings, and his own actions first of all, and then those things which come before him in the world outside himself. Always he applies this criterion: Is the thing right or wrong, does it help evolution or does it hinder it? If a thought or a feeling arises within himself, he sees at once by this test whether it is one he ought to encourage. If it be for the greatest good of the greatest number then all is well; if it may hinder or cause harm to any being in its progress, then it is evil and to be avoided. Exactly the same reason holds good if he is called upon to decide with regard to anything outside himself. If from that point of view a thing be a good thing, then he can conscientiously support it; if not, then it is not for him. For him the question of personal interest does not come into the case at all. He thinks simply of the good of evolution as a whole. This gives him a definite foothold and the clear criterion, and removes from him altogether the pain of indecision and hesitation. The Will of the Deity is man's evolution; whatever therefore helps on that evolution must be good; whatever stands in the way of it and delays it, that thing must be wrong, even though it may have on its side all the weight of public opinion and immemorial tradition. Knowing that the true man is the ego and not the body, he sees that it is the life of the ego only which is really of moment, and that everything connected with the body must unhesitatingly be subordinated to those higher interests. He recognizes that this earth-life is given to him for the purpose of progress, and that that progress is the one important thing. The real purpose of his life is the unfoldment of his powers as an ego, the development of his character. He knows that there must be evolvement not only of the physical body but also of the mental nature, of the mind and of the spiritual perceptions. He sees that nothing short of absolute perfection is expected of him in connection with this development; that all power with regard to it is in his own hands; that he has everlasting time before him in which to attain this perfection, but that the sooner it is gained the happier and more useful will he be. He recognizes his life as nothing but a day at school, and his physical body as a temporary vesture assumed for the purpose of learning through it. He knows at once that this purpose of learning lessons is the only one of any real importance, and that the man who allows himself to be diverted from that purpose by any consideration whatever is acting with inconceivable stupidity. To him the life devoted exclusively to physical objects, to the acquisition of wealth or fame, appears the merest child's-play--a senseless sacrifice of all that is really worth having for the sake of a few moments' gratification of the lower part of his nature. He "sets his affection on things above and not on things of the earth", not only because he sees this to be the right course of action, but because he realizes so clearly the valuelessness of these things of earth. He always tries to take the higher point of view, for he knows that the lower is utterly unreliable--that the lower desires and feelings gather round him like a dense fog, and make it impossible for him to see anything clearly from that level. Whenever he finds a struggle going on within him he remembers that he himself is the higher, and that this which is the lower is not the real self, but merely an uncontrolled part of one of its vehicles. He knows that though he may fall a thousand times on the way towards his goal, his reason for trying to reach it remains just as strong after the thousandth fall as it was in the beginning, so that it would not only be useless but unwise and wrong to give way to despondency and hopelessness. He begins his journey upon the road of progress at once--not only because he knows that it is far easier for him now than it will be if he leaves the effort until later, but chiefly because if he makes the endeavour now and succeeds in achieving some progress, if he rises thereby to some higher level, he is in a position to hold out a helping hand to those who have not yet reached even that step on the ladder which he has gained. In that way he takes a part, however humble it may be, in the great divine work of evolution. He knows that he has arrived at his present position only by a slow process of growth, and so he does not expect instantaneous attainment of perfection. He sees how inevitable is the great law of cause and effect, and that when he once grasps the working of that law he can use it intelligently in regard to mental and moral development, just as in the physical world we can employ for our own assistance those laws of Nature the action of which we have learnt to understand. Understanding what death is, he knows that there can be no need to fear it or to mourn over it, whether it comes to himself or to those whom he loves. It has come to them all often before, so there is nothing unfamiliar about it. He sees death simply as a promotion from a life which is more than half physical to one which is wholly superior, so for himself he unfeignedly welcomes it; and even when it comes to those whom he loves, he recognizes at once the advantage for them, even though he cannot but feel a pang of regret that he should be temporarily separated from them so far as the physical world is concerned. But he knows that the so-called dead are near him still, and that he has only to cast off for a time his physical body in sleep in order to stand side by side with them as before. He sees clearly that the world is one, and that the same divine laws rule the whole of it, whether it be visible or invisible to physical sight. So he has no feeling of nervousness or strangeness in passing from one part of it to another, and no feeling of uncertainty as to what he will find on the other side of the veil. He knows that in that higher life there opens before him a splendid vista of opportunities both for acquiring fresh knowledge and for doing useful work; that life away from this dense body has a vividness and a brilliancy to which all earthly enjoyment is as nothing; and so through his clear knowledge and calm confidence the power of the endless life shines out upon all those round him. Doubt as to his future is for him impossible, for just as by looking back on the savage he realizes that which he was in the past, so by looking to the greatest and wisest of mankind he knows what he will be in the future. He sees an unbroken chain of development, a ladder of perfection rising steadily before him, yet with human beings upon every step of it, so that he knows, that those steps are possible for him to climb. It is just because of the unchangeableness of the great law of cause and effect that he finds himself able to climb that ladder, because since the law works always in the same way, he can depend upon it and he can use it, just as he uses the laws of Nature in the physical worlds. His knowledge of this law brings to him a sense of perspective and shows him that if something comes to him, it comes because he has deserved it as a consequence of actions which he has committed, of words which he has spoken, of thought to which he has given harbour in previous days or in earlier lives. He comprehends that all affliction is of the nature of the payment of a debt, and therefore when he has to meet with the troubles of life he takes them and uses them as a lesson, because he understands why they have come and is glad of the opportunity which they give him to pay off something of his obligation. Again, and in yet another way, does he take them as an opportunity, for he sees that there is another side to them if he meets them in the right way. He spends no time in bearing prospective burdens. When trouble comes to him he does not aggravate it by foolish repining but sets himself to endure so much of it as is inevitable, with patience and with fortitude. Not that he submits himself to it as a fatalist might, for he takes adverse circumstances as an incentive to such development as may enable him to transcend them, and thus out of long-past evil he brings forth a seed of future growth. For in the very act of paying the outstanding debt he develops qualities of courage and resolution that will stand him in good stead through all the ages that are to come. He is distinguishable from the rest of the world by his perennial cheerfulness, his undaunted courage under difficulties, and his ready sympathy and helpfulness; yet he is at the same time emphatically a man who takes life seriously, who recognizes that there is much for everyone to do in the world, and that there is no time to waste. He knows with utter certainty that he not only makes his own destiny but also gravely affects that of others around him, and thus he perceives how weighty a responsibility attends the use of his power. He knows that thoughts are things and that it is easily possible to do great harm or great good by their means. He knows that no man liveth to himself, for his every thought acts upon others as well; that the vibrations which he sends forth from his mind and from his mental nature are reproducing themselves in the minds and the mental natures of other men, so that he is a source either of mental health or of mental ill to all with whom he comes in contact. This at once imposes upon him a far higher code of social ethics than that which is known to the outer world, for he knows that he must control not only his acts and his words, but also his thoughts, since they may produce effects more serious and more far-reaching than their outward expression in the physical world. He knows that even when a man is not in the least thinking of others, he yet inevitably affects them for good or for evil. In addition to this unconscious action of his thought upon others he also employs it consciously for good. He sets currents in motion to carry mental help and comfort to many a suffering friend, and in this way he finds a whole new world of usefulness opening before him. He ranges himself ever on the side of the higher rather than the lower thought, the nobler rather than the baser. He deliberately takes the optimistic rather than the pessimistic view of everything, the helpful, rather than the cynical, because he knows that to be fundamentally the true view. By looking continually for the good in everything that he may endeavour to strengthen it, by striving always to help and never to hinder, he becomes ever of greater use to his fellow-men, and is thus in his small way a co-worker with the splendid scheme of evolution. He forgets himself utterly and lives but for the sake of others, realizing himself as a part of that scheme; he also realizes the God within him, and learns to become ever a truer expression of Him, and thus in fulfilling God's Will, he is not only blessed himself, but becomes a blessing to all. INDEX Adept, causal body of 45-8 further evolution of 13 is on summit of human evolution 13 level of 13, 119-21 work of 119-20 Adepts, as members of Hierarchy 13 first of Earth 129 from Venus 131-2 Great Brotherhood of 12-4, 117-8, 132 many degrees of 13 men have become 13 some are Masters 14 some remain with mankind 22 some take apprentices 100 Adeptship, older egos nearing 126 Æonian condemnation 119-20, 133 Æther, breath, blown into 19 bubbles in 19-22, 23 density of 19 mean pressure of 19 of space 18 ultimate atoms formed in 19 Age or dispensation 13 Air, nature spirits of 84 _Ancient Wisdom, The_ 1 Androgynous man 130 Angels, approach men through ceremonial 85 guardian 54 hosts of 11 Kingdom of 84 of the law of cause and effect 100 Animals, additional evolution of 131 are our younger brothers 141 distinction between man and 40 domestic 38 heads of types of 38 individualization of 38-40 man's emotions act on 38 man's thoughts act on 38 Moon-, came to Earth chain 128 Moon-, individualize 126, 131 seven types of 37, 38 souls of 33 Animal kingdom 31-2, 37, 141 Animal-men of Moon-chain 127-8 Apprentice upon probation 118 Apprentices, to Masters 14-7 accepted 118 men may become 18, 116-7 qualifications necessary for 116-8 three stages of 118 Aryan root-race 105, 125 Aspects, three, of the Logos 11 three, of man 11, 41 Astral body, after death 68-71, 73-5, 81, 86 cell-life of 65 colours of 56-8 disintegration of 86 effect of thought on 51-2 ego casts off 42, 63 ego takes an 42, 61 entity occupying 66-72 is bridge to mental body 58 man in his, during sleep 62, 71 matter of, is in constant motion 70 never fatigued 62 no separate senses in 69-70 of animal 32 of group-soul 32 permanent colours of 58 reacts on causal body 47 reacts on mental body 47 shape of 56, 61 shell around 68, 70, 78-80, 81 simile of boiling water 69-70 size of 56 temptations caused by 66-8 vibrations of 56-8, 65-7, 75-6 Astral corpse 86 counterparts 72-3, 78-80 entity 66-8 shell 68, 78-81, 86-7 shell, result of 70 vitality of 86-7 Astral globe of Earth 26-7, 71-2 globe of Moon 26-7 globes of Earth-chain 122 Astral matter, arrangement of 71-3 attracts mental matter 60 physical body attracts 60 vibrations of 24 Astral sight 68-9 Astral world, the appearance of 71, 78-83 death in 89 delights of 76-8 descent of ego to 42-3 extent of 26-7, 71 inhabitants of 83 the, is the home of emotions 71 is the home of lower thoughts 71 life period in, after death 43, 64-5, 81 man in, during sleep 62, 70 man's freedom in 73, 76 matter, simile of onion 72 nature spirits in 84 no measurement of time in 75 non-human inhabitants of 84 of Moon 27 scenery of 77, 81 second outpouring enters 30 second outpouring indrawn to 31 sections of 78-83 the sixth plane is named 23, 41 the summerland of 80 withdrawal of ego from 82 Astro-mental forms 51, 57 Atlantean root-race 105, 125 Atomic matter 25 Atoms charged with vitality of interpenetrating worlds 20-1 physical ultimate 25 ultimate 19-22 Attainment is certain for all 132 Besant, Dr. 1 author of _The Ancient Wisdom_ 1 Birth of man, factors determining 104-5 Blavatsky, H.P. 14 author of _Isis Unveiled_ 15 was a founder of the T.S. 14 was an apprentice to a Master 14 Bliss of the higher worlds 89-91 Books, oriental sacred 18 Brain, connection with astral body 59 connection with ego 59 connection with mental body 49 etheric part of 62 Branch-races 104-5, 125 Bridges to ego 59, 61 Brotherhood, the Great, of Adepts 12-4, 116-9, 132 entry into 119 Great White, the 12 Head of 12 Lords of the Flame hold highest office in 132 man may join in 116 Brotherhood of humanity, the universal 138-9 Bubbles in space 19-21 aggregations of 19-22, 23-4 form material of nebula 19 Casual body, the, abstract thoughts arouse 46 appearance of 45-9 bad qualities do not affect 47, 58 colours in 46-8 composition of 45 is the vehicle of ego 42 life in 95-6 mental body reacts upon 58 of Adept 45, 48 of developed man 48 of primitive man 46 of saint 48 of savage 48 only good affects 47, 58 permanent vehicle of ego 45 unselfish emotions arouse 47 Cause and effect, law of 100-7 adjustment of 101 angels connected with 101 cannot be modified 101 exactness of 100-1 explains problems of life 100-1 Cause and effect, is universal 100 simile of debts and 102-7 Cell-life of astral body 65 of mental body 65 of physical body 65 Centres of force 60 Ceremonial, angels approach men through 85 Chain, a, consists of seven rounds 124 life-wave of a 121, 123-5 lunar, the 123, 126-7 periods 125 Chains of globes 121 descent of, into matter 121-4 incarnation of 121-5 Character and simile of muscles 114 how, is formed 111-5 Chemical elements 21, 28 Children of the Fire-mist 131 (also see Lords of Flame) Christ, the, learning the lesson of 96 spoke of the "æonian condemnation" 119, 133 Church, the angels approach men through 85 Clairvoyant sight 46 character seen by 50 force-centres seen by 60 Colours of astral body 56-8 of causal body 46-8 of mental body 48 of thoughts 54 Consciousness, development of 45-6 of developed man 62-3 states of 64 Corpse, astral 86 physical 86 the Moon is a 123 Counterparts, astral 73-4 of globes 122 Crookes, Sir William 22 Dead, the, can be helped 77-9 can continue studies 77 can help their fellowmen 77 communicate with living 74 cravings of the 75-7 first feeling of 76 friends of, in mental world 93-4 have no measurement of time 75 in astral world 73-89 in mental world 89-95 in the three sections of astral world 74-5, 78-83 most of, are happy 76 period in astral world, 64-5, 82 period in mental world 64 relation of, to Earth 73-4 some seize other bodies 88 thought-creations of 80 what they see 73 Death, a second 63, 89 artists after 77 average men after 64-5 character not changed by 74 conditions of life after 74 cultured men after 65 etheric double at 87 happiness after 74, 76 in astral world 68, 89 lovers of music after 77 misery after 75 philanthropists after 77 primitive men after 63 sensualists after 75-6 spiritual men after 65 students of science after 77 what is 3, 63, 137, 144 Deity (see Solar Deity) Demons, tempting 53, 67 Departments of the world 11 Devas, hosts of 11 (also see Angels) Discrimination 118 Divine Life 29 ensouls matter 29-40 responds to vibrations 33 Divine world, extent of 26-7 first plane named 23, 41 "Door, shutting the" 131 Dreams 62 Earth, Adepts from Venus come to 131 astral globe of 26-7 -chain 121 first men of the 125-30 nature spirits of the 85 purpose of life on 142 Earth-chain, the 121 animal-men build early forms on 127-8 explained 121-4 incarnation of 122-5 Moon-animals come to 128 Education, department of 11-2 Ego, the, assumes bodies 42, 61 bridges of to physical body 58, 61 connection of, with brain 59 desire of, for vivid life 97 drops lower bodies 43 ensouls fragment of group-soul 42 fills mental images of himself 93 gains qualities 43 habitat of 94 is a part expression of Monad 61 is the manifestation of the triple Spirit in man 42 life of, in causal body 95-7 life of, in lower bodies 63-4 lives for millions of years 97 loses part of his life sometimes 86 object of descent of 45, 98 only good affects 47-8, 58, 112 origin of 39, 109 passes to mental world 85 remembers past lives 44 sheaves of 61 sight of 45 the, simile of day at school and 98 succession of personalities of 109 withdraws from astral plane 82 Elemental kingdoms, the three 29-30 seven types of each of 37 Elemental creatures 37 Elements, chemical 21, 28 proto- 21 Emotions affect life after death 64, 67-8 of the living react on the dead 74 selfish and unselfish 110 should be developed in fourth round 131 the home of the 71 Emotional world (see astral world) Entity, astral body 66-8 Etheric, bodies of early humanity 129 bodies of nature spirits 84 matter 25 Etheric double, the 59 at death 87-8 force-centres in 60 is a bridge 59 is not a vehicle 87-8 some dead cling to 88 vitality flows through 59 Evil, is transitory 48, 58, 135-6 is utilized for progress 135 man's powers of, are restricted 102 simile of Niagara Falls, and 135 Evolution, additional, for animals 131 advanced state of 131 animal 31-40 break in regularity of 130 central point of 125, 130 early stages of, for backward entities 127 examining scenes of early 3 is the Will of the Deity 11, 142 ladder of 17 man restrains law of 105 mineral 30-1 object of human 99 of human forms 129-30 of life 28-40 other schemes of 121, 123 pressure of 99, 105 resistless stream of 136 scheme of, a 32, 122-5 summit of human 13 super-human 13, 119 Theosophy explains laws of 99 three stages of 108-9 vegetable 30-1 Eye-brows, force-centre between 60 Failure is impossible 5 Fairies (see Nature-spirits) 'Fetters' to be cast off 120 Fire-mist, Children of the 131 Fire, nature-spirits of 84 Sparks of divine 10, 41, 61 Flame, Lords of the 131 Fohat 19 Forces, the higher, Adepts' knowledge of 14 Force-centres 60 Founder of each race 11 Founders of the Theosophical Society 14 Fragment of life of the Logos 9 of group-soul 39, 42 of the Monad 61 Freemasonry, angels approach men through 85 Free-will 99 Free-will, limitation of unbounded 102-3 _Genesis of Elements, The_ 22 Globe, astral, of Earth 27 astral of, Moon 27 mental 27 Globes, chains of 121 seven, of Earth-chain 122-3 'God is Love' 10 Word of 9 (see also Solar Deity) Group of egos 106 Group-soul, fragment, from, is ensouled 39-42 of domestic animals 38-40 numbers of bodies attached to one 34-7 Spark hovers over 40 Group-souls 36-9 seven types of 37 simile of bucket of water and 34-6 Guardian angel 54 Head, force-centre in 60 of each race 11 of human evolution 11 of religion and education 11-2 of the White Brotherhood 14 Heart, force-centre in 60 Heaven, is a state of consciousness 64 simile of capacity of cups and 91-2 varying capacities of men in 91-2 Hell, non-existence of 64, 71, 74, 75 Hierarchy, The 5 controls the world 5, 13 Head of 14 man can join 13 Members of, watch for helpers 116-7 Human evolution, beginning of 32-8 division of races of 104-5 the central point in 118-9 the half-way point of 125 the summit of 13 Humanity, bodies of early 128-9 early, was androgynous 130 races of 11 receives help from Venus 131 service of, by thought 53-4 spiritual unity of 139 Immortal, the soul of man 8 Incarnations of Earth-chain 122-5 Individuality, a permanent 39 Individualization, is the first critical point of man's life 118 of animals 37-40 of Moon-animals 126-7, 130-1 Indo-Caucasian root-race 105 Inhabitants of finer worlds 26 Initiations, the great 118, 119-20 simile of university degrees 120 Instincts, of animals 35 of cell-life 65 Intellect is a fifth round development 131 Intelligence in man 42 Intuition in man 23, 42 Intuitional world, the 23, 42 extent of 27 Monad manifests in 42 second outpouring in 33 third outpouring descends to 39-40 _Isis Unveiled_ 15 Jupiter, the planet 124 King of the World, The 11 Kingdom, animal 30-1, 37-9 first elemental 29 mineral 30-3, 40 of angels 84-5 of nature-spirits 84-5 second elemental 30 seven types of each 38 third elemental 30 vegetable 30-1, 38 Kingdoms of nature ensouled by life-waves 38, 126 the elemental 29-30 the seven, of nature 28, 38-9 Koilon 18 Ladder of evolution, the 17, 145 golden 96 rungs of 17 Law, the, of evolution 99, 104-5 of cause and effect 100-7 Laws, the immutable 8 Liberated man 5-6 Life, cell- 65-6 conditions of, after death 74 divine 23, 29, 121 man's continuous 63 the purpose of 98-9, 108-20 Life-waves, the 28-40 constant-successions of 32 ensoul the kingdoms of nature 33, 37 of chains 121-2, 123-5 two stages of 29 Life-wave, the, now centred on Earth 128 period of, in each kingdom 38-9 Logos, the (see Solar Deity) Lords of the Flame, assistance given by 132 come to Earth 131 some still remain on Earth 132 of the Moon 126 'Love, God is' 10 Lunar-chain (see Moon-chain) Man, after death 63-96 can kill out vices 110-5 conflict of interest between, and his vehicles 66 constitution of 41-62 distinction between animals and 40 during sleep 61-2, 70, 74 early, was androgynous 130 evolves through different races 104-5 exists in other worlds 2-3, 42-3 factors determining birth of 104-5 free will of 99-100, 102 has latent powers 2 has many lives 2-4, 42 has powers of evil restricted 102 has several bodies 2-3, 42 is always affecting others 138-9, 147 is a Monad 42 is a soul 2-3 is a Spark of divine Fire 41 is divine in origin 3 is his own law-giver 8 is immortal 8 is influenced by his astral body-entity 68 is not changed by death 74 is separate from animal kingdom 28 is the outcome of his past 44-5 learns to use his powers in service 108-9 liberated 5-6 makes his own destiny 147 may be apprenticed to a Master 14-5, 117 past history of 2-3 physical body of, is evolved from animal forms 130 reaps result of his action 100-1 represents mineral kingdom of first chain 126 the Triple Spirit in 41 the triumph of 96 three aspects of 11, 41-2 why, does not remember past lives 44 (also see primitive man and savages) Mars, the planet 122, 124 life exists on 128 Master, son of a 118 the 13-7 are Adepts Who take apprentices 14 take apprentices 14-7, 117-8 the great knowledge of 14 "Their world" 15 Matter, all, is living 30, 65 astral 15, 26, 31, 43, 51, 66-7 atomic 25 different densities of 20, 25 etheric 25, 59 formation of root- 18-9 intermingling of 21 mental 23, 27, 29, 33, 42 molecules of 24-5 power of attraction of 60 root- 81 Matter, seven types of 21, 24 starry 24 sub-atomic 25 sub-divisions of 24-5 super-etheric 25 the senses respond to vibrations in 26 ultimate 18-21 vibrations of 24-6, 33, 44-7 whirling sphere of, a 19-21 Memory of nature 3 of past lives 44 Men, backward, drop out 132-3 bodies of first Earth-chain 129-30 first, of Earth-chain 126-7 Moon- 126-9 Mental, globe 26-7 globes of Earth-chain 122 images of friends 93-4 shell 53, 91 warts 49 (also see mental world) Mental body, the, after death 90-1 bridge from, to physical body 58 cell-life of 65 composition of 48 connection of brain with 49 description of 48-9, 60-1 effect of prejudice upon 49 effect of thoughts upon 48-51 expresses concrete thoughts 48 reacts on causal body 58 shell 53, 91 sight of 50-1 striations in 49-50 the astral body reacts upon 58 the dead are unused to 90-1 the ego casts aside his 43-4, 63 the ego takes a 42-3 the memory of 44-5 thoughts shown as colours in 48-50 vibrations of 50, 53-4 warts on 49 Mental matter, globe of 26-7 the causal body is built of 45 the mind is built of 23 vibrations of 24 Mental world, average life in, after death 64-5 bliss of 90 effect of higher thought in 92-3 ego formed in higher 39 extent of 27 formation of 20-3 friends of dead in 93-4 higher 29-30, 33, 39-42 levels of 94 lower 29-30 man in, after death 63-4, 89-95 the fifth plane named 24-41 the Monad manifests in higher 42 the second outpouring descends to 29-30 wealth of 91 Mercury, the planet 122, 124 life exists on 128 Mind, the divine 91 the, of man 23 (also see mental body) Mineral, the kingdom 30-1, 37, 108, 126 man represents, of first chain 126 seven types of 37 the first out-pouring ensouls 30 Ministers in charge of departments 11 the seven, of Solar Deity 11 Monad, the, descent of 41 Monad, origin of 41, 61 Monads, the home of human, 23, 41 Monadic world, the, extent of 27 man belongs to 41 the second plane named 23, 41-2 Mongolian root-race 105 Moon, the, astral globe of 27, 71 human goal on 126 individualization on 125 is a corpse 123 Lords of the 126 Moon-animals 126-7 individualize on Earth 128-9 Moon-chain, animal-men of 127-8 human goal on 126 men of 126 men come to Earth-chain 126-9 was the third incarnation of our chain 123 Moon-men 126-9 distribution of, on Earth-chain 126-9 first order of 129 second order of 129 some entered the Path 129 Motive, the, for self-effort 115 Nature, memory of 3 planes of 7 seven kingdoms of 28 Nature-spirits, are not individualized 84 are sometimes seen by men 84 four classes of 84 many wear etheric bodies 84 the kingdom of 84 where they exist 83-4 Nebula, cooling of 22 planets formed from 22 rings of 22 subsidiary vortices of 22 vortex of 20 Negroid, the, race 105 Neptune, the planet 124 Nerves, vitality flows along 59 _Occult Chemistry_ 7 _Occult World, The_ 1, 15 Occultism, how to progress in 113-7 Official, pupils of great 11 representing Solar Deity 11 Officials of the Hierarchy 13 Olcott, Colonel H.S. 14 a founder of T.S. 14 Oriental sacred books 18 Origin, divine, of man 3, 10, 39-40 Outpouring, the first 20-8 the second 28-39, 65 the third 39-40 Path, the, conditions of 15 fetters to be cast off on 119-20 fourth step on 126 Moon-men entered 129 simile of mountain 5 steeper 5, 119-20 Peers of Logos 9 Perfect men 5 Perseverance necessary for progress 113 Personality 61 the purpose of the 109 Philosophy, Theosophy is a 1 Physical body, attracts astral matter 60 cells of the 65-6 during sleep man leaves his 62, 70 early evolution of the 129-30 ego, drops his 43, 63 Physical body, ego takes a 43, 61 etheric part of 59-60 future perfection of the 132 of first round 129-30 of man is evolved from animal forms 130 requirements of the 59-60 Physical matter, subdivisions of 25 vibrations of 24, 33 Physical world, the, descent of ego to 42-3 formation of 21-3, 23-6 second outpouring enters 30-1 seven sub-divisions of 25 _Pioneer, The_, Mr. A.P. Sinnett, editor of 15 Planes of nature, the 7 formation of 20-1 investigation of 7 naming of 41 Planets, formation of 22 future 20 life on other 128 Planetary chains 121-33 Planetary Spirits, the seven 11 simile of ganglia and 11 Powers latent in man 2 are for use in service 109 observation of history by 3 observation of other worlds by 2-3 Prejudices shown in mental body, 49 Primitive man, causal body of 46-8 during sleep 62 life of, after death 64 result of action of 102 types of 37 Principle, undying, in man 8 Probation, apprentice upon 118 period of 118 Promptings of lower nature 66-8 Proto-elements 21 Pupils, accepted, of Master 118 of Great Officials 11 of Masters 14-7, 116-8 (see also apprentices) Purgatory is a state of consciousness 64-5 Quotations from, a French Scientist 18 a Gnostic Philosopher 10 a Master 15 an Eastern Scripture 9 _The Occult World_ 1 Race, Founder of each 11 Head of each 11 of life 99 Races, branch- 105, 125 man evolves through different 105 object of 105 of humanity 14 root- 105, 125-6 sub- 105, 125 Ray, the seventh 85 Record, indelible 3 Reincarnation 42-4, 97-107 desire of ego for 97 simile of days at school and 98-9 Theosophy explains 99 Religion, Adepts, Teachers of 12 department of 12 Founders of new 11 Religions, have one source 12 start with basic truths 12 the sending forth of 11 Reproduction, early methods of 130 Reynolds, Prof. O. 18-9 Right and wrong, the test of 142 Roman races, the 105 Root-matter 18 Root-races 105, 125 Round, a 125 first, differs from others 128 Rounds, conditions, of early reproduced in fourth round 130-1 human forms on first three 128-30 Saturn, rings of, simile of 22 Savages, causal bodies of 46-7, 48-9 during sleep 62 types of 37 'Saved, The' 119 Scheme of evolution, a 32, 121-2 central point of 125 School, of philosophy, there is a 1 of life, none fail in the 98 Séances 87 _Secret Doctrine, The_ 19 Seers can use sight of the ego 46 Senses, the, of astral body 68-9 respond to vibrations of matter 26 Service, man learns to use his powers in 109 the joy of 96 Seven, 'bubbles' combine in powers of 20-1, 23 choices of Lords of the Moon 127-8 degrees of density of matter 24-5 force-centres in man's bodies 60 globes of a chain 121-2 impulses of force 19-20 incarnations of chains 121 interpenetrating worlds 20, 22 kingdoms of nature 28 life-waves 33 Ministers of Solar Deity 11 Planetary Spirits 11 sub-divisions of matter 24-5 sub-divisions of vitality 60 types of animals 37-9 types of elemental creatures 37-8 types of group-souls 37-8 types of matter 21, 24 types of men 43 types of minerals 37 types of vegetables 37 Sexes, separation of 130 Shade, the 86 Sheaves of the ego 61 Shell, of astral body 68, 78-80, 81, 86-7 of thoughts 53, 91 Sight, astral 68-9 clairvoyant 46 mental 51 of ego 46 Simile of, boiling water 69-70 brick 25 bucket of water 34-5 charged battery 53 cups of varying capacities 91-2 days at school 97-8, 143 dense fog 143 developing muscles 114 flame in a dark night 14 ganglia 11 matter diffused in water 72 Niagara Falls 135 onion 72 overtones of musical notes 58 path up mountain 5 payment of a debt 102-4 rungs of a ladder 17 Saturn's rings 22 shutting a door 131 sorting out school-boys 132 university degrees 120 vibrations of a bell 55 warts 49 Sinnett, Mr. A.P. 1, 15 author of _The Occult World_ 1, 15 author of _Esoteric Buddhism_ 1, 15 editor of _The Pioneer_ 15 Sleep 61-2, 70, 87 man during 61-2, 70 the dead are met during 74 Solar Deity, the, a Being higher than 19 builds His system 9-10, 19 field of activity of 19 first Aspect of 39 fragment of Life of 9-10 future planets of 19 impulses of force of 20-1, 28 is a Trinity 11 Official representing 11 Peers of 9 Plan of 11, 13 second Aspect of 28, 32, 65 Self-limitation of 10 seven Ministers of 11 seven Planetary Spirits 11 the King of the World represents 11 third Aspect of 20-1, 28 threefold manifestation of 10 Solar plexus, force-centre, the 60 Solar System, evolutionary table of 125 formation of 18-27 inhabitants of the 85 Logos of a 9 origin of 19 ten chains of 121-3 Solar systems, countless 9 Son of Master 118 Soul, the group 33-9, 42 man is a 2, 33 of an animal 33-4 of domestic animals 37-40 of grasses 31 of insects 37 of lions 33-4 of man 8, 33, 55 of reptiles 42 of trees 31 plant- 33 World- 33 Space, between atoms 23 Fohat digs holes in 19 the æther of 18-9 worlds not separate in 2 Sparks, of divine Fire 39-40, 61 of divine Life 23, 29 Spine, force-centre at base of 60 Spirit, and matter 18 in man 23, 41 the triple, in man 41-2 Spiritual world, the extent of 26-7 is the name of third plane 23, 41 Monads descend to 41 Spleen, the, vitality flows through 60 Stream, those who have entered the 119 Sub-atomic matter 25 Sub-races of humanity 105, 125 Summerland, the, of astral world 80 Sun, vitality comes from the 60 Super-etheric matter 25 Table of evolution of Solar System 125 Teachers, authority of 16 of earlier races 126 of religion 11-2 Tempting demons 53, 67 Test, the, of right and wrong 142 Teutonic sub-race 105 Theosophy, demands no belief 6 explains reincarnation 99 explains religions 7 first popular exposition of 1 is a philosophy 1 is a religion 1, 5-7 is a science 1, 7 never converts 7 solves problems of life 4 statements of, based on observation 6 tells of past history 3 the gospel of 96 the great facts of 8 what, does for us 134-148 Theosophist, the, cheerfully faces trouble 146 conception of life of 137 does not try to convert 140 has no fear of death 137 knows the power of thought 147 relation of, to animals 141 sees purpose of life 142 test of right and wrong of 141 Thought, abstract 46 all actions spring from 116 concrete 48, 50 coupled with feeling 51 -forces after death 63 is a powerful instrument 116 necessity for clear 114 necessity for control of 116 prolonged 50 shell of 53 Thoughts, are things 147 as a power for good 55 build forms 52 distance no hindrance to 52 effect of, after death 63-4, 80 humanity helped by 54-5 meaning of colours of 46, 54-7 meaning of shapes of 54 on Theosophy 55-60 others affected by 50-51 self-centred 53-4 selfish and unselfish 110 transmission of 52 Thought-forms 50-4 are temporary entities 53 as guardian angels 54 as tempting demons 53 astro-mental 51, 57 duration of 53-4 effect on others of 51-2 move through space 51 Thought images (see Thought-forms) Three, Aspects of the Logos 10-1 aspects of man 41 critical points in man's evolution 117-9 elemental kingdoms 28-9 great truths 8 in One 10 outpourings 28-39 Persons 10 stages of apprenticeship 118 stages of evolution 108-9 Throat, the force-centre in 60 Time, no measure of, in astral world 75 Trinity of Solar Logos 10 Triple Spirit in man 41-2 Triumph, the, of man 96 Trust begets trust 111 Truth, one in diverse forms 12 the, is obtainable 12 Truths, basic, of religions 12-3 the three great 8 Types of, animals 37-8 elemental creatures 37 group-souls 37 life 37 matter 21 men 37-9 minerals 37 reptiles 37 vegetables 38 Ultimate atoms 19 physical atoms 25 root-matter 18 Ultra-violet light 26-44 Unity, the, of humanity 138-9 what tends to 109 Universe, the, beginning of 18 Universes, innumerable 9 Universal brotherhood of humanity, the 138 Uranium 22 Uranus, the planet 124 Vegetable, the, kingdom 30-1, 37-8 seven types of 37 Vehicles, man's conflict of interest with his 66-9 Venus, the planet 124 Adepts from, come to Earth 131 stage of evolution of 131 Vibrations, of astral body 56-7, 65-6, 75-6 of mental body 44 of thought-forms 53, 55 Vibrations, in matter 24, 33, 59 causal body affected by 47-9 ego responds to 45 life learns to generate 33 octaves of 24 the senses respond to 25-6 Vices, belong to the vehicles 112 how to kill out 110-5 Vitality, circulates along the nerves 59 of astral corpse 86 sub-division of 59-60 what it is 59 Vortices, force-centres appear as 60 in matter 20 in nebular 19-22 Vulcan, the planet, was seen by Herschel 124 Warts on mental body 49 Water, nature-spirits of 84 Waves, life- (see life-waves) Wealth of the heaven world 91 Whirling sphere of matter 19-21 vortex in 20 Will, the divine 6, 11 evolution is 11, 120 fulfilment of 118 Wisdom, Masters of the (see Masters) Word of God, the 9 World, departments of the 11 King of this 11 -period 124 Worlds, bliss of the higher 89-90 inhabitants of finer 25-6 man exists in several 2-3 of different densities 3 seven interpenetrating 20, 23-4 
12648	----	Proofreading Team THE BEAUTIFUL NECESSITY Seven Essays on Theosophy and Architecture by CLAUDE BRAGDON, F.A.I.A. MCMXXII "Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity" --EMERSON By the Same Author: Episodes From An Unwritten History The Golden Person In The Heart Architecture And Democracy A Primer Of Higher Space Four Dimensional Vistas Projective Ornament Oracle CONTENTS I THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE II UNITY AND POLARITY III CHANGELESS CHANGE IV THE BODILY TEMPLE V LATENT GEOMETRY VI THE ARITHMETIC OF BEAUTY VII FROZEN MUSIC CONCLUSION PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION _The Beautiful Necessity_ was first published in 1910. Save for a slim volume of privately printed verse it was my first book. I worked hard on it. Fifteen years elapsed between its beginning and completion; it was twice published serially--written, rewritten and tre-written--before it reached its ultimate incarnation in book form. Confronted now with the opportunity to revise the text again, I find myself in the position of a surgeon who feels that the operation he is called upon to perform may perhaps harm more than it can help. Prudence therefore prevails over my passion for dissection: warned by eminent examples, I fear that any injection of my more mature and less cocksure consciousness into this book might impair its unity--that I "never could recapture the first fine careless rapture." The text stands therefore as originally published save for a few verbal changes, and whatever reservations I have about it shall be stated in this preface. These are not many nor important: _The Beautiful Necessity_ contains nothing that I need repudiate or care to contradict. Its thesis, briefly stated, is that art in all its manifestations is an expression of the cosmic life, and that its symbols constitute a language by means of which this life is published and represented. Art is at all times subject to the _Beautiful Necessity_ of proclaiming the _world order_. In attempting to develop this thesis it was not necessary (nor as I now think, desirable) to link it up in so definite a manner with theosophy. The individual consciousness is colored by the particular medium through which it receives truth, and for me that medium was theosophy. Though the book might gain a more unprejudiced hearing, and from a larger audience, by the removal of the theosophic "color-screen," it shall remain, for its removal now might seem to imply a loss of faith in the fundamental tenets of theosophy, and such an implication would not be true. The ideas in regard to time and space are those commonly current in the world until the advent of the Theory of Relativity. To a generation brought up on Einstein and Ouspensky they are bound to appear "lower dimensional." Merely to state this fact is to deal with it to the extent it needs to be dealt with. The integrity of my argument is not impaired by these new views. The one important influence that has operated to modify my opinions concerning the mathematical basis of the arts of space has been the discoveries of Mr. Jay Hambidge with regard to the practice of the Greeks in these matters, as exemplified in their temples and their ceramics, and named by him _Dynamic Symmetry_. In tracing everything back to the logarithmic spiral (which embodies the principle of extreme and mean ratios) I consider that Mr. Hambidge has made one of those generalizations which reorganizes the old knowledge and organizes the new. It would be only natural if in his immersion in his idea he overworks it, but Mr. Hambidge is a man of such intellectual integrity and thoroughness of method that he may be trusted not to warp the facts to fit his theories. The truth of the matter is that the entire field of research into the mathematics of Beauty is of such richness that wherever a man plants his metaphysical spade he is sure to come upon "pay dirt." _The_ _Beautiful Necessity_ represents the result of my own prospecting; _Dynamic Symmetry_ represents the result of his. If at any point our findings appear to conflict, it is less likely that one or the other of us is mistaken than that each is right from his own point of view. Be that as it may, I should be the last man in the world to differ from Mr. Hambidge, for if he convicted me of every conceivable error his work would still remain the greatest justification and confirmation of my fundamental contention--that art is an expression of the _world order_ and is therefore orderly, organic; subject to mathematical law, and susceptible of mathematical analysis. CLAUDE BRAGDON Rochester, N.Y. April, 1922 I THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE One of the advantages of a thorough assimilation of what may be called the theosophic idea is that it can be applied with advantage to every department of knowledge and of human activity: like the key to a cryptogram it renders clear and simple that which before seemed intricate and obscure. Let us apply this key to the subject of art, and to the art of architecture in particular, and see if by so doing we may not learn more of art than we knew before, and more of theosophy too. The theosophic idea is that everything is an expression of the Self--or whatever other name one may choose to give to that immanent unknown reality which forever hides behind all phenomenal life--but because, immersed as we are in materiality, our chief avenue of knowledge is sense perception, a more exact expression of the theosophic idea would be: Everything is the expression of the Self in terms of sense. Art, accordingly, is the expression of the Self in terms of sense. Now though the Self is _one_, sense is not one, but manifold: and therefore there are _arts_, each addressed to some particular faculty or group of faculties, and each expressing some particular quality or group of qualities of the Self. The white light of Truth is thus broken up into a rainbow-tinted spectrum of Beauty, in which the various arts are colors, each distinct, yet merging one into another--poetry into music; painting into decoration; decoration becoming sculpture; sculpture--architecture, and so on. In such a spectrum of the arts each one occupies a definite place, and all together form a series of which music and architecture are the two extremes. That such is their relative position may be demonstrated in various ways. The theosophic explanation involving the familiar idea of the "pairs of opposites" would be something as follows. According to the Hindu-Aryan theory, Brahma, that the world might be born, fell asunder into man and wife--became in other words _name and form_[A] The two universal aspects of name and form are what philosophers call the two "modes of consciousness," one of time, and the other of space. These are the two gates through which ideas enter phenomenal life; the two boxes, as it were, that contain all the toys with which we play. Everything, were we only keen enough to perceive it, bears the mark of one or the other of them, and may be classified accordingly. In such a classification music is seen to be allied to time, and architecture to space, because music is successive in its mode of manifestation, and in time alone everything would occur successively, one thing following another; while architecture, on the other hand, impresses itself upon the beholder all at once, and in space alone all things would exist simultaneously. Music, which is in time alone, without any relation to space; and architecture, which is in space alone, without any relation to time, are thus seen to stand at opposite ends of the art spectrum, and to be, in a sense, the only "pure" arts, because in all the others the elements of both time and space enter in varying proportion, either actually or by implication. Poetry and the drama are allied to music inasmuch as the ideas and images of which they are made up are presented successively, yet these images are for the most part forms of space. Sculpture on the other hand is clearly allied to architecture, and so to space, but the element of _action_, suspended though it be, affiliates it with the opposite or time pole. Painting occupies a middle position, since in it space instead of being actual has become ideal--three dimensions being expressed through the mediumship of two--and time enters into it more largely than into sculpture by reason of the greater ease with which complicated action can be indicated: a picture being nearly always time arrested in midcourse as it were--a moment transfixed. In order to form a just conception of the relation between music and architecture it is necessary that the two should be conceived of not as standing at opposite ends of a series represented by a straight line, but rather in juxtaposition, as in the ancient Egyptian symbol of a serpent holding its tail in its mouth, the head in this case corresponding to music, and the tail to architecture; in other words, though in one sense they are the most-widely separated of the arts, in another they are the most closely related. Music being purely in time and architecture being purely in space, each is, in a manner and to a degree not possible with any of the other arts, convertible into the other, by reason of the correspondence subsisting between intervals of time and intervals of space. A perception of this may have inspired the famous saying that architecture is _frozen music_, a poetical statement of a philosophical truth, since that which in music is expressed by means of harmonious intervals of time and pitch, successively, after the manner of time, may be translated into corresponding intervals of architectural void and solid, height and width. In another sense music and architecture are allied. They alone of all the arts are purely creative, since in them is presented, not a likeness of some known idea, but _a thing-in-itself_ brought to a distinct and complete expression of its nature. Neither a musical composition nor a work of architecture depends for its effectiveness upon resemblances to natural sounds in the one case, or to natural forms in the other. Of none of the other arts is this to such a degree true: they are not so much creative as re-creative, for in them all the artist takes his subject ready made from nature and presents it anew according to the dictates of his genius. The characteristic differences between music and architecture are the same as those which subsist between time and space. Now time and space are such abstract ideas that they can be dealt with best through their corresponding correlatives in the natural world, for it is a fundamental theosophic tenet that nature everywhere abounds in such correspondences; that nature, in its myriad forms, is indeed the concrete presentment of abstract unities. The energy which everywhere animates form is a type of time within space; the mind working in and through the body is another expression of the same thing. Correspondingly, music is dynamic, subjective, mental, of one dimension; while architecture is static, objective, physical, of three dimensions; sustaining the same relation to music and the other arts as does the human body to the various organs which compose, and consciousnesses which animate it (it being the reservatory of these organs and the vehicle of these consciousnesses); and a work of architecture in like manner may and sometimes does include all of the other arts within itself. Sculpture accentuates and enriches, painting adorns, works of literature are stored within it, poetry and the drama awake its echoes, while music thrills to its uttermost recesses, like the very spirit of life tingling through the body's fibres. Such being the relation between them, the difference in the nature of the ideas bodied forth in music and in architecture becomes apparent. Music is interior, abstract, subjective, speaking directly to the soul in a simple and universal language whose meaning is made personal and particular in the breast of each listener: "Music alone of all the arts," says Balzac, "has power to make us live within ourselves." A work of architecture is the exact opposite of this: existing principally and primarily for the uses of the body, it is like the body a concrete organism, attaining to esthetic expression only in the reconciliation and fulfilment of many conflicting practical requirements. Music is pure beauty, the voice of the unfettered and perpetually vanishing soul of things; architecture is that soul imprisoned in a form, become subject to the law of causality, beaten upon by the elements, at war with gravity, the slave of man. One is the Ariel of the arts; the other, Caliban. Coming now to the consideration of architecture in its historical rather than its philosophical aspect, it will be shown how certain theosophical concepts are applicable here. Of these none is more familiar and none more fundamental than the idea of reincarnation. By reincarnation more than mere physical re-birth is meant, for physical re-birth is but a single manifestation of that universal law of alternation of state, of animation of vehicles, and progression through related planes, in accordance with which all things move, and as it were make music--each cycle complete, yet part of a larger cycle, the incarnate monad passing through correlated changes, carrying along and bringing into manifestation in each successive arc of the spiral the experience accumulated in all preceding states, and at the same time unfolding that power of the Self peculiar to the plane in which it is momentarily manifesting. This law finds exemplification in the history of architecture in the orderly flow of the building impulse from one nation and one country to a different nation and a different country: its new vehicle of manifestation; also in the continuity and increasing complexity of the development of that impulse in manifestation; each "incarnation" summarizing all those which have gone before, and adding some new factor peculiar to itself alone; each being a growth, a life, with periods corresponding to childhood, youth, maturity and decadence; each also typifying in its entirety some single one of these life-periods, and revealing some special aspect or power of the Self. For the sake of clearness and brevity the consideration of only one of several architectural evolutions will be attempted: that which, arising in the north of Africa, spread to southern Europe, thence to the northwest of Europe and to England--the architecture, in short, of the so-called civilized world. This architecture, anterior to the Christian era, may be broadly divided into three great periods, during which it was successively practiced by three peoples: the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans. Then intervened the Dark Ages, and a new art arose, the Gothic, which was a flowering out in stone of the spirit of Christianity. This was in turn succeeded by the Renaissance, the impulse of which remains to-day unexhausted. In each of these architectures the peculiar genius of a people and of a period attained to a beautiful, complete and coherent utterance, and notwithstanding the considerable intervals of time which sometimes separated them they succeeded one another logically and inevitably, and each was related to the one which preceded and which followed it in a particular and intimate manner. The power and wisdom of ancient Egypt was vested in its priesthood, which was composed of individuals exceptionally qualified by birth and training for their high office, tried by the severest ordeals and bound by the most solemn oaths. The priests were honored and privileged above all other men, and spent their lives dwelling apart from the multitude in vast and magnificent temples, dedicating themselves to the study and practice of religion, philosophy, science and art--subjects then intimately related, not widely separated as they are now. These men were the architects of ancient Egypt: theirs the minds which directed the hands that built those time-defying monuments. The rites that the priests practiced centered about what are known as the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries. These consisted of representations by means of symbol and allegory, under conditions and amid surroundings the most awe-inspiring, of those great truths concerning man's nature, origin and destiny of which the priests--in reality a brotherhood of initiates and their pupils--were the custodians. These ceremonies were made the occasion for the initiation of neophytes into the order, and the advancement of the already initiated into its successive degrees. For the practice of such rites, and others designed to impress not the elect but the multitude, the great temples of Egypt were constructed. Everything about them was calculated to induce a deep seriousness of mind, and to inspire feelings of awe, dread and even terror, so as to test the candidate's fortitude of soul to the utmost. The avenue of approach to an Egyptian temple was flanked on both sides, sometimes for a mile or more, with great stone sphinxes--that emblem of man's dual nature, the god emerging from the beast. The entrance was through a single high doorway between two towering pylons, presenting a vast surface sculptured and painted over with many strange and enigmatic figures, and flanked by aspiring obelisks and seated colossi with faces austere and calm. The large court thus entered was surrounded by high walls and colonnades, but was open to the sky. Opposite the first doorway was another, admitting to a somewhat smaller enclosure, a forest of enormous carved and painted columns supporting a roof through the apertures of which sunshine gleamed or dim light filtered down. Beyond this in turn were other courts and apartments culminating in some inmost sacred sanctuary. Not alone in their temples, but in their tombs and pyramids and all the sculptured monuments of the Egyptians, there is the same insistence upon the sublimity, mystery and awefulness of life, which they seem to have felt so profoundly. But more than this, the conscious thought of the masters who conceived them, the buildings of Egypt give utterance also to the toil and suffering of the thousands of slaves and captives which hewed the stones out of the heart of the rock, dragged them long distances and placed them one upon another, so that these buildings oppress while they inspire, for there is in them no freedom, no spontaneity, no individuality, but everywhere the felt presence of an iron conventionality, of a stern immutable law. In Egyptian architecture is symbolized the condition of the human soul awakened from its long sleep in nature, and become conscious at once of its divine source and of the leaden burden of its fleshy envelope. Egypt is humanity new-born, bound still with an umbilical cord to nature, and strong not so much with its own strength as with the strength of its mother. This idea is aptly symbolized in those gigantic colossi flanking the entrance to some rock-cut temple, which though entire are yet part of the living cliff out of which they were fashioned. In the architecture of Greece the note of dread and mystery yields to one of pure joyousness and freedom. The terrors of childhood have been outgrown, and man revels in the indulgence of his unjaded appetites and in the exercise of his awakened reasoning faculties. In Greek art is preserved that evanescent beauty of youth which, coming but once and continuing but for a short interval in every human life, is yet that for which all antecedent states seem a preparation, and of which all subsequent ones are in some sort an effect. Greece typifies adolescence, the love age, and so throughout the centuries humanity has turned to the contemplation of her, just as a man all his life long secretly cherishes the memory of his first love. An impassioned sense of beauty and an enlightened reason characterize the productions of Greek architecture during its best period. The perfection then attained was possible only in a nation whereof the citizens were themselves critics and amateurs of art, one wherein the artist was honored and his work appreciated in all its beauty and subtlety. The Greek architect was less bound by tradition and precedent than was the Egyptian, and he worked unhampered by any restrictions save such as, like the laws of harmony in music, helped rather than hindered his genius to express itself--restrictions founded on sound reason, the value of which had been proved by experience. The Doric order was employed for all large temples, since it possessed in fullest measure the qualities of simplicity and dignity, the attributes appropriate to greatness. Quite properly also its formulas were more fixed than those of any other style. The Ionic order, the feminine of which the Doric may be considered the corresponding masculine, was employed for smaller temples; like a woman it was more supple and adaptable than the Doric, its proportions were more slender and graceful, its lines more flowing, and its ornament more delicate and profuse. A freer and more elaborate style than either of these, infinitely various, seeming to obey no law save that of beauty, was used sometimes for small monuments and temples, such as the Tower of the Winds, and the monument of Lysicrates at Athens. [Illustration 1] Because the Greek architect was at liberty to improve upon the work of his predecessors if he could, no temple was just like any other, and they form an ascending scale of excellence, culminating in the Acropolis group. Every detail was considered not only with relation to its position and function, but in regard to its intrinsic beauty as well, so that the merest fragment, detached from the building of which it formed a part, is found worthy of being treasured in our museums for its own sake. Just as every detail of a Greek temple was adjusted to its position and expressed its office, so the building itself was made to fit its site and to show forth its purpose, forming with the surrounding buildings a unit of a larger whole. The Athenian Acropolis is an illustration of this: it is an irregular fortified hill, bearing diverse monuments in various styles, at unequal levels and at different angles with one another, yet the whole arrangement seems as organic and inevitable as the disposition of the features of a face. The Acropolis is an example of the ideal architectural republic wherein each individual contributes to the welfare of all, and at the same time enjoys the utmost personal liberty (Illustration 1). Very different is the spirit bodied forth in the architecture of Imperial Rome. The iron hand of its sovereignty encased within the silken glove of its luxury finds its prototype in buildings which were stupendous crude brute masses of brick and concrete, hidden within a covering of rich marbles and mosaics, wrought in beautiful but often meaningless forms by clever degenerate Greeks. The genius of Rome finds its most characteristic expression, not in temples to the high gods, but rather in those vast and complicated structures--basilicas, amphitheatres, baths--built for the amusement and purely temporal needs of the people. If Egypt typifies the childhood of the race and Greece its beautiful youth, Republican Rome represents its strong manhood--a soldier filled with the lust of war and the love of glory--and Imperial Rome its degeneracy: that soldier become conqueror, decked out in plundered finery and sunk in sensuality, tolerant of all who minister to his pleasures but terrible to all who interfere with them. The fall of Rome marked the end of the ancient Pagan world. Above its ruin Christian civilization in the course of time arose. Gothic architecture is an expression of the Christian spirit; in it is manifest the reaction from licentiousness to asceticism. Man's spiritual nature, awakening in a body worn and weakened by debaucheries, longs ardently and tries vainly to escape. Of some such mood a Gothic cathedral is the expression: its vaulting, marvelously supported upon slender shafts by reason of a nicely adjusted equilibrium of forces; its restless, upward-reaching pinnacles and spires; its ornament, intricate and enigmatic--all these suggest the over-strained organism of an ascetic; while its vast shadowy interior lit by marvelously traceried and jeweled windows, which hold the eyes in a hypnotic thrall, is like his soul: filled with world sadness, dead to the bright brief joys of sense, seeing only heavenly visions, knowing none but mystic raptures. Thus it is that the history of architecture illustrates and enforces the theosophical teaching that everything of man's creating is made in his own image. Architecture mirrors the life of the individual and of the race, which is the life of the individual written large in time and space. The terrors of childhood; the keen interests and appetites of youth; the strong stern joy of conflict which comes with manhood; the lust, the greed, the cruelty of a materialized old age--all these serve but as a preparation for the life of the spirit, in which the man becomes again as a little child, going over the whole round, but on a higher arc of the spiral. The final, or fourth state being only in some sort a repetition of the first, it would be reasonable to look for a certain correspondence between Egyptian and Gothic architecture, and such a correspondence there is, though it is more easily divined than demonstrated. In both there is the same deeply religious spirit; both convey, in some obscure yet potent manner, a sense of the soul being near the surface of life. There is the same love of mystery and of symbolism; and in both may be observed the tendency to create strange composite figures to typify transcendental ideas, the sphinx seeming a blood-brother to the gargoyle. The conditions under which each architecture flourished were not dissimilar, for each was formulated and controlled by small well-organized bodies of sincerely religious and highly enlightened men--the priesthood in the one case, the masonic guilds in the other--working together toward the consummation of great undertakings amid a populace for the most part oblivious of the profound and subtle meanings of which their work was full. In Mediæval Europe, as in ancient Egypt, fragments of the Ancient Wisdom--transmitted in the symbols and secrets of the cathedral builders--determined much of Gothic architecture. The architecture of the Renaissance period, which succeeded the Gothic, corresponds again, in the spirit which animates it, to Greek architecture, which succeeded the Egyptian, for the Renaissance as the name implies was nothing other than an attempt to revive Classical antiquity. Scholars writing in what they conceived to be a Classical style, sculptors modeling Pagan deities, and architects building according to their understanding of Vitruvian methods succeeded in producing works like, yet different from the originals they followed--different because, animated by a spirit unknown to the ancients, they embodied a new ideal. In all the productions of the early Renaissance, "that first transcendent springtide of the modern world," there is the evanescent grace and beauty of youth which was seen to have pervaded Greek art, but it is a grace and beauty of a different sort. The Greek artist sought to attain to a certain abstract perfection of type; to build a temple which should combine all the excellencies of every similar temple, to carve a figure, impersonal in the highest sense, which should embody every beauty. The artist of the Renaissance on the other hand delighted not so much in the type as in the variation from it. Preoccupied with the unique mystery of the individual soul--a sense of which was Christianity's gift to Christendom--he endeavored to portray that wherein a particular person is unique and singular. Acutely conscious also of his own individuality, instead of effacing it he made his work the vehicle and expression of that individuality. The history of Renaissance architecture, as Symonds has pointed out, is the history of a few eminent individuals, each one moulding and modifying the style in a manner peculiar to himself alone. In the hands of Brunelleschi it was stern and powerful; Bramante made it chaste, elegant and graceful; Palladio made it formal, cold, symmetrical; while with Sansovino and Sammichele it became sumptuous and bombastic. As the Renaissance ripened to decay its architecture assumed more and more the characteristics which distinguished that of Rome during the decadence. In both there is the same lack of simplicity and sincerity, the same profusion of debased and meaningless ornament, and there is an increasing disposition to conceal and falsify the construction by surface decoration. The final part of this second or modern architectural cycle lies still in the future. It is not unreasonable to believe that the movement toward mysticism, of which modern theosophy is a phase and the spiritualization of science an episode, will flower out into an architecture which will be in some sort a reincarnation of and a return to the Gothic spirit, employing new materials, new methods, and developing new forms to show forth the spirit of the modern world, without violating ancient verities. In studying these crucial periods in the history of European architecture it is possible to trace a gradual growth or unfolding as of a plant. It is a fact fairly well established that the Greeks derived their architecture and ornament from Egypt; the Romans in turn borrowed from the Greeks; while a Gothic cathedral is a lineal descendant from a Roman basilica. [Illustration 2] [Illustration 3] The Egyptians in their constructions did little more than to place enormous stones on end, and pile one huge block upon another. They used many columns placed close together: the spaces which they spanned were inconsiderable. The upright or supporting member may be said to have been in Egyptian architecture the predominant one. A vertical line therefore may be taken as the simplest and most abstract symbol of Egyptian architecture (Illustration 2). It remained for the Greeks fully to develop the lintel. In their architecture the vertical member, or column, existed solely for the sake of the horizontal member, or lintel; it rarely stood alone as in the case of an Egyptian obelisk. The columns of the Greek temples were reduced to those proportions most consistent with strength and beauty, and the intercolumnations were relatively greater than in Egyptian examples. It may truly be said that Greek architecture exhibits the perfect equality and equipoise of vertical and horizontal elements and these only, no other factor entering in. Its graphic symbol would therefore be composed of a vertical and a horizontal line (Illustration 3). The Romans, while retaining the column and lintel of the Greeks, deprived them of their structural significance and subordinated them to the semicircular arch and the semi-cylindrical and hemispherical vault, the truly characteristic and determining forms of Roman architecture. Our symbol grows therefore by the addition of the arc of a circle (Illustration 4). In Gothic architecture column, lintel, arch and vault are all retained in changed form, but that which more than anything else differentiates Gothic architecture from any style which preceded it is the introduction of the principle of an equilibrium of forces, of a state of balance rather than a state of rest, arrived at by the opposition of one thrust with another contrary to it. This fact can be indicated graphically by two opposing inclined lines, and these united to the preceding symbol yield an accurate abstract of the elements of Gothic architecture (Illustration 5). [Illustration 4] [Illustration 5] All this is but an unusual application of a familiar theosophic teaching, namely, that it is the method of nature on every plane and in every department not to omit anything that has gone before, but to store it up and carry it along and bring it into manifestation later. Nature everywhere proceeds like the jingle of _The House that Jack Built_: she repeats each time all she has learned, and adds another line for subsequent repetition. [Footnote A: The quaint Oriental imagery here employed should not blind the reader to the precise scientific accuracy of the idea of which this imagery is the vehicle. Schopenhauer says: "Polarity, or the sundering of a force into two quantitively different and opposed activities striving after re-union,... is a fundamental type of almost all the phenomena of nature, from the magnet and the crystal to man himself."] II UNITY AND POLARITY Theosophy, both as a philosophy, or system of thought, which discovers correlations between things apparently unrelated, and as a life, or system of training whereby it is possible to gain the power to perceive and use these correlations for worthy ends, is of great value to the creative artist, whose success depends on the extent to which he works organically, conforming to the cosmic pattern, proceeding rationally and rhythmically to some predetermined end. It is of value no less to the layman, the critic, the art amateur--to anyone in fact who would come to an accurate and intimate understanding and appreciation of every variety of esthetic endeavor. For the benefit of such I shall try to trace some of those correlations which theosophy affirms, and indicate their bearing upon art, and upon the art of architecture in particular. One of the things which theosophy teaches is that those transcendent glimpses of a divine order and harmony throughout the universe vouchsafed the poet and the mystic in their moments of vision are not the paradoxes--the paronomasia as it were--of an intoxicated state of consciousness, but glimpses of reality. We are all of us participators in a world of concrete music, geometry and number--a world of sounds, odors, forms, motions, colors, so mathematically related and coordinated that our pigmy bodies, equally with the farthest star, vibrate to the music of the spheres. There is a _Beautiful Necessity_ which rules the world, which is a law of nature and equally a law of art, for art is idealized creation: nature carried to a higher power by reason of its passage through a human consciousness. Thought and emotion tend to crystallize into forms of beauty as inevitably as does the frost on a window pane. Art therefore in one of its aspects is the weaving of a pattern, the communication of an order and a method to the material or medium employed. Although no masterpiece was ever created by the conscious following to set rules, for the true artist works unconsciously, instinctively, as the bird sings or as the bee builds its honey-cell, yet an analysis of any masterpiece reveals the fact that its author (like the bird and the bee) has "followed the rules without knowing them." Helmholtz says, "No doubt is now entertained that beauty is subject to laws and rules dependent on the nature of human intelligence. The difficulty consists in the fact that these laws and rules, on whose fulfilment beauty depends, are not consciously present in the mind of the artist who creates the work, or of the observer who contemplates it." Nevertheless they are discoverable, and can be formulated, after a fashion. We have only to read aright the lessons everywhere portrayed in the vast picture-books of nature and of art. The first truth therein published is the law of _Unity_--oneness; for there is one Self, one Life, which, myriad in manifestation, is yet in essence ever _one_. Atom and universe, man and the world--each is a unit, an organic and coherent whole. The application of this law to art is so obvious as to be almost unnecessary of elucidation, for to say that a work of art must possess unity, must seem to proceed from a single impulse and be the embodiment of one dominant idea, is to state a truism. In a work of architecture the coördination of its various parts with one another is almost the measure of its success. We remember any masterpiece--the cathedral of Paris no less than the pyramids of Egypt--by the singleness of its appeal; complex it may be, but it is a coordinated complexity; variety it may possess, but it is a variety in an all-embracing unity. The second law, not contradicting but supplementing the first is the law of _Polarity_, i.e., duality. All things have sex, are either masculine or feminine. This too is the reflection on a lower plane of one of those transcendental truths taught by the Ancient Wisdom, namely that the Logos, in his voluntarily circumscribing his infinite life in order that he may manifest, encloses himself within his limiting veil, _maya_, and that his life appears as spirit (male), and his _maya_ as matter (female), the two being never disjoined during manifestation. The two terms of this polarity are endlessly repeated throughout nature: in sun and moon, day and night, fire and water, man and woman--and so on. A close inter-relation is always seen to subsist between corresponding members of such pairs of opposites: sun, day, fire, man express and embody the primal and active aspect of the manifesting deity; moon, night, water, woman, its secondary and passive aspect. Moreover, each implies or brings to mind the others of its class: man, like the sun, is lord of day; he is like fire, a devastating force; woman is subject to the lunar rhythm; like water, she is soft, sinuous, fecund. The part which this polarity plays in the arts is important, and the constant and characteristic distinction between the two terms is a thing far beyond mere contrast. In music they are the major and minor modes: the typical, or representative chords of the dominant seventh, and of the tonic (the two chords into which Schopenhauer says all music can be resolved): a partial dissonance, and a consonance: a chord of suspense, and a chord of satisfaction. In speech the two are vowel, and consonant sounds: the type of the first being _a_, a sound of suspense, made with the mouth open; and of the second _m_, a sound of satisfaction, made by closing the mouth; their combination forms the sacred syllable Om (_Aum_). In painting they are warm colors, and cold: the pole of the first being in red, the color of fire, which excites; and of the second in blue, the color of water, which calms; in the Arts of design they are lines straight (like fire), and flowing (like water); masses light (like the day), and dark (like night). In architecture they are the column, or vertical member, which resists the force of gravity; and the lintel, or horizontal member, which succumbs to it; they are vertical lines, which are aspiring, effortful; and horizontal lines, which are restful to the eye and mind. It is desirable to have an instant and keen realization of this sex quality, and to make this easier some sort of classification and analysis must be attempted. Those things which are allied to and partake of the nature of _time_ are masculine, and those which are allied to and partake of the nature of _space_ are feminine: as motion, and matter; mind, and body; etc. The English words "masculine" and "feminine" are too intimately associated with the idea of physical sex properly to designate the terms of this polarity. In Japanese philosophy and art (derived from the Chinese) the two are called _In_ and _Yo_ (In, feminine; Yo, masculine); and these little words, being free from the limitations of their English correlatives, will be found convenient, Yo to designate that which is simple, direct, primary, active, positive; and In, that which is complex, indirect, derivative, passive, negative. Things hard, straight, fixed, vertical, are Yo; things soft, curved, horizontal, fluctuating, are In--and so on. [Illustration 6: WILD CHERRY; MAPLE LEAF] [Illustration 7: CALLAS IN YO] In passing it may be said that the superiority of the line, mass, and color composition of Japanese prints and kakemonos to that exhibited in the vastly more pretentious easel pictures of modern Occidental artists--a superiority now generally acknowledged by connoisseurs--is largely due to the conscious following, on the part of the Japanese, of this principle of sex-complementaries. Nowhere are In and Yo more simply and adequately imaged than in the vegetable kingdom. The trunk of a tree is Yo, its foliage, In; and in each stem and leaf the two are repeated. A calla, consisting of a single straight and rigid spadix embraced by a soft and tenderly curved spathe, affords an almost perfect expression of the characteristic differences between Yo and In and their reciprocal relation to each other. The two are not often combined in such simplicity and perfection in a single form. The straight, vertical reeds which so often grow in still, shallow water, find their complement in the curved lily-pads which lie horizontally on its surface. Trees such as pine and hemlock, which are excurrent--those in which the branches start successively (i.e., after the manner of time) from a straight and vertical central stem--are Yo; trees such as the elm and willow, which are deliquescent--those in which the trunk dissolves as it were simultaneously (after the manner of space) into its branches--are In. All tree forms lie in or between these two extremes, and leaves are susceptible of a similar classification. It will be seen to be a classification according to time and space, for the characteristic of time is _succession_, and of space, _simultaneousness_: the first is expressed symbolically by elements arranged with relation to axial lines; the second, by elements arranged with relation to focal points (Illustrations 6,7). The student should train himself to recognize In and Yo in all their Protean presentments throughout nature--in the cloud upon the mountain, the wave against the cliff, in the tracery of trees against the sky--that he may the more readily recognize them in his chosen art, whatever that art may be. If it happens to be painting, he will endeavor to discern this law of duality in the composition of every masterpiece, recognizing an instinctive obedience to it in that favorite device of the great Renaissance masters of making an architectural setting for their groups of figures, and he will delight to trace the law in all its ramifications of contrast between complementaries in line, color, and mass (Illustration 8). [Illustration 8: THE LAW OF POLARITY CLEOPATRA MELTING THE PEARL. BY TIEPOLO] With reference to architecture, it is true, generally speaking, that architectural forms have been developed through necessity, the function seeking and finding its appropriate form. For example, the buttress of a Gothic cathedral was developed by the necessity of resisting the thrust of the interior vaulting without encroaching upon the nave; the main lines of a buttress conform to the direction of the thrust, and the pinnacle with which it terminates is a logical shape for the masonry necessary to hold the top in position (Illustration 9). Research along these lines is interesting and fruitful of result, but there remains a certain number of architectural forms whose origin cannot be explained in any such manner. The secret of their undying charm lies in the fact that in them In and Yo stand symbolized and contrasted. They no longer obey a law of utility, but an abstract law of beauty, for in becoming sexually expressive as it were, the construction itself is sometimes weakened or falsified. The familiar classic console or modillion is an example: although in general contour it is well adapted to its function as a supporting bracket, embedded in, and projecting from a wall, yet the scroll-like ornament with which its sides are embellished gives it the appearance of not entering the wall at all, but of being stuck against it in some miraculous manner. This defect in functional expressiveness is more than compensated for by the perfection with which feminine and masculine characteristics are expressed and contrasted in the exquisite double spiral, opposed to the straight lines of the moulding which it subtends (Illustration 10). Again, by fluting the shaft of a column its area of cross-section is diminished but the appearance of strength is enhanced because its masculine character--as a supporting member resisting the force of gravity--is emphasized. [Illustration 9: CROSS SECTION OF BUTTRESS.] The importance of the so-called "orders" lies in the fact that they are architecture epitomized as it were. A building consists of a wall upholding a roof: support and weight. The type of the first is the column, which may be conceived of as a condensed section of wall; and of the second, the lintel, which may be conceived of as a condensed section of roof. The column, being vertical, is Yo; the lintel, being horizontal, is In. To mark an entablature with horizontal lines in the form of mouldings, and the columns with vertical lines in the form of flutes, as is done in all the "classic orders," is a gain in functional and sex expressiveness, and consequently in art (Illustration 11). [Illustration 10: CORINTHIAN MODILLION; CLASSIC CONSOLE; IONIC CAP] The column is again divided into the shaft, which is Yo; and the capital, which is In. The capital is itself twofold, consisting of a curved member and an angular member. These two appear in their utmost simplicity in the _echinus_ (In) and the _abacus_ (Yo) of a Greek Doric cap. The former was adorned with painted leaf forms, characteristically feminine, and the latter with the angular fret and meander (Illustration 12). The Ionic capital, belonging to a more feminine style, exhibits the abacus subordinated to that beautiful cushion-shaped member with its two spirally marked volutes. This, though a less rational and expressive form for its particular office than is the echinus of the Doric cap, is a far more perfect symbol of the feminine element in nature. There is an essential identity between the Ionic cap and the classic console before referred to--although superficially the two do not resemble each other--for a straight line and a double spiral are elements common to both (Illustration 10). The Corinthian capital consists of an ordered mass of delicately sculptured leaf and scroll forms sustaining an abacus which though relatively masculine is yet more curved and feminine than that of any other style. In the caulicole of a Corinthian cap In and Yo are again contrasted. In the unique and exquisite capital from the Tower of the Winds at Athens, the two are well suggested in the simple, erect, and pointed leaf forms of the upper part, contrasted with the complex, deliquescent, rounded ones from which they spring. The essential identity of principle subsisting between this cap and the Renaissance baluster by San Gallo is easily seen (Illustration 13). [Illustration 11] [Illustration 12] This law of sex-expressiveness is of such universality that it can be made the basis of an analysis of the architectural ornament of any style or period. It is more than mere opposition and contrast. The egg and tongue motif, which has persisted throughout so many centuries and survived so many styles, exhibits an alternation of forms resembling phallic emblems. Yo and In are well suggested in the channeled triglyphs and the sculptured metopes of a Doric frieze, in the straight and vertical mullions and the flowing tracery of Gothic windows, in the banded torus, the bead and reel, and other familiar ornamented mouldings (Illustrations 14, 15, 16). There are indications that at some time during the development of Gothic architecture in France, this sex-distinction became a recognized principle, moulding and modifying the design of a cathedral in much the same way that sex modifies bodily structure. The masonic guilds of the Middle Ages were custodians of the esoteric--which is the theosophic--side of the Christian faith, and every student of esotericism knows how fundamental and how far-reaching is this idea of sex. [Illustration 13: CAPITAL FROM THE TOWER OF THE WINDS, ATHENS; CORINTHIAN CAP FROM HADRIAN BUILDINGS, ATHENS; ROSETTE FROM TEMPLE OF MARS, ROME; CAULICULUS OF CORINTHIAN CAP; BULUSTER BY SAN GALLO] [Illustration 14: EGG AND TONGUE; BEAD AND REEL; BANDED TORUS] The entire cathedral symbolized the crucified body of Christ; its two towers, man and woman--that Adam and that Eve for whose redemption according to current teaching Christ suffered and was crucified. The north or right-hand tower ("the man's side") was called the sacred male pillar, Jachin; and the south, or left-hand tower ("the woman's side"), the sacred female pillar, Boaz, from the two columns flanking the gate to Solomon's Temple--itself an allegory to the bodily temple. In only a few of the French cathedrals is this distinction clearly and consistently maintained, and of these Tours forms perhaps the most remarkable example, for in its flamboyant façade, over and above the difference in actual breadth and apparent sturdiness of the two towers (the south being the more slender and delicate), there is a clearly marked distinction in the character of the ornamentation, that of the north tower being more salient, angular, radial--more masculine in point of fact (Illustration 17). In Notre Dame, the cathedral of Paris, as in the cathedral of Tours, the north tower is perceptibly broader than the south. The only other important difference appears to be in the angular label-mould above the north entrance: whatever may have been its original function or significance, it serves to define the tower sexually, so to speak, as effectively as does the beard on a man's face. In Amiens the north tower is taller than the south, and more massive in its upper stages. The only traceable indication of sex in the ornamentation occurs in the spandrels at the sides of the entrance arches: those of the north tower containing single circles, and those of the south tower containing two in one. This difference, small as it may seem, is significant, for in Europe during the Middle Ages, just as anciently in Egypt and again in Greece--in fact wherever and whenever the Secret Doctrine was known--sex was attributed to numbers, odd numbers being conceived of as masculine, and even, as feminine. Two, the first feminine number, thus became a symbol of femininity, accepted as such so universally at the time the cathedrals were built, that two strokes of a bell announced the death of a woman, three, the death of a man. [Illustration 15: FRIEZE OF THE FARNESE PALACE; ROMAN CONSOLE. VATICAN MUSEUM; FRIEZE IN THE EMPIRE STYLE BY PERCIER AND FONTAINE. FRIEZE FROM THE TEMPLE OF VESTA AT TIVOLI. (ROMAN); ROMAN DORIC FRIEZE--VIGNOLE] [Illustration 16] [Illustration 17] The vital, organic quality so conspicuous in the best Gothic architecture has been attributed to the fact that necessity determined its characteristic forms. Professor Goodyear has demonstrated that it may be due also in part to certain subtle vertical leans and horizontal bends; and to nicely calculated variations from strict uniformity, which find their analogue in nature, where structure is seldom rigidly geometrical. The author hazards the theory that still another reason why a Gothic cathedral seems so living a thing is because it abounds in contrasts between what, for lack of more descriptive adjectives, he is forced to call masculine and feminine forms. [Illustration 18] [Illustration 19] Ruskin says, in _Stones of Venice_, "All good Gothic is nothing more than the development, in various ways, and on every conceivable scale, of the group formed by the pointed arch for the bearing line below, and the gable for the protecting line above, and from the huge, gray, shaly slope of the cathedral roof, with its elastic pointed vaults beneath, to the crown-like points that enrich the smallest niche of its doorway, one law and one expression will be found in all. The modes of support and of decoration are infinitely various, but the real character of the building, in all good Gothic, depends on the single lines of the gable over the pointed arch endlessly rearranged and repeated." These two, an angular and a curved form, like the everywhere recurring column and lintel of classic architecture, are but presentments of Yo and In (Illustration 18). Every Gothic traceried window, with straight and vertical mullions in the rectangle, losing themselves in the intricate foliations of the arch, celebrates the marriage of this ever diverse pair. The circle and the triangle are the In and Yo of Gothic tracery, its Eve and Adam, as it were, for from their union springs that progeny of trefoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil, of shapes flowing like water, and shapes darting like flame, which makes such visible music to the entranced ear. [Illustration 20: SAN GIMIGNANO S. JACOPO.] By seeking to discover In and Yo in their myriad manifestations, by learning to discriminate between them, and by attempting to express their characteristic qualities in new forms of beauty--from the disposition of a façade to the shaping of a moulding--the architectural designer will charge his work with that esoteric significance, that excess of beauty, by which architecture rises to the dignity of a "fine" art (Illustrations 19, 20). In so doing, however, he should never forget, and the layman also should ever remember, that the supreme architectural excellence is fitness, appropriateness, the perfect adaptation of means to ends, and the adequate expression of both means and ends. These two aims, the one abstract and universal, the other concrete and individual, can always be combined, just as in every human countenance are combined a type, which is universal, and a character, which is individual. III CHANGELESS CHANGE TRINITY, CONSONANCE, DIVERSITY IN MONOTONY, BALANCE, RHYTHMIC CHANGE, RADIATION The preceding essay was devoted for the most part to that "inevitable duality" which finds concrete expression in countless pairs of opposites, such as day and night, fire and water, man and woman; in the art of music by two chords, one of suspense and the other of fulfilment; in speech by vowel and consonant sounds, epitomized in _a_ and in _m_; in painting by warm colors and cold, epitomized in red and blue; in architecture by the vertical column and the horizontal lintel, by void and solid--and so on. TRINITY This concept should now be modified by another, namely, that in every duality a third is latent; that two implies three, for each sex so to speak is in process of becoming the other, and this alternation engenders and is accomplished by means of a third term or neuter, which is like neither of the original two but partakes of the nature of them both, just as a child may resemble both its parents. Twilight comes between day and night; earth is the child of fire and water; in music, besides the chord of longing and striving, and the chord of rest and satisfaction (the dominant seventh and the tonic), there is a third or resolving chord in which the two are reconciled. In the sacred syllable Om (_Aum_), which epitomizes all speech, the _u_ sound effects a transition between the _a_ sound and the _m_; among the so-called primary colors yellow comes between red and blue; and in architecture the arch, which is both weight and support, which is neither vertical nor horizontal, may be considered the neuter of the group of which the column and the lintel are respectively masculine and feminine. "These are the three," says Mr. Louis Sullivan, "the only three letters from which has been expanded the architectural art, as a great and superb language wherewith man has expressed, through the generations, the changing drift of his thoughts." [Illustration 21: THE LAW OF TRINITY. A ROMAN IONIC ARCADE, BY VIGNOLE.--THE COLUMN, THE ENTABLATURE, AND THE ARCH CORRESPOND TO LINES VERTICAL, HORIZONTAL AND CURVED.] It would be supererogatory to dwell at any length on this "trinity of manifestation" as the concrete expression of that unmanifest and mystical trinity, that _three-in-one_ which under various names occurs in every world-religion, where, defying definition, it was wont to find expression symbolically in some combination of vertical, horizontal and curved lines. The anstated cross of the Egyptians is such a symbol, the Buddhist wheel, and the fylfot or swastika inscribed within a circle, also those numerous Christian symbols combining the circle and the cross. Such ideographs have spelled profound meaning to the thinkers of past ages. We of to-day are not given to discovering anything wonderful in three strokes of a pen, but every artist in the weaving of his pattern must needs employ these mystic symbols in one form or another, and if he employs them with a full sense of their hidden meaning his work will be apt to gain in originality and beauty--for originality is a new and personal perception of beauty, and beauty is the name we give to truth we cannot understand. In architecture, this trinity of vertical, horizontal and curved lines finds admirable illustration in the application of columns and entablature to an arch and impost construction, so common in Roman and Renaissance work. This is a redundancy, and finds no justification in reason, because the weight is sustained by the arch, and the "order" is an appendage merely; yet the combination, illogical as it is, satisfies the sense of beauty because the arch effects a transition between the columns and the entablature, and completes the trinity of vertical, horizontal and curved lines (Illustration 21). In the entrances to many of the Gothic cathedrals and churches the same elements are better because more logically disposed. Here the horizontal lintel and its vertical supports are not decorative merely, but really perform their proper functions, while the arch, too, has a raison d'être in that it serves to relieve the lintel of the superincumbent weight of masonry. The same arrangement sometimes occurs in classic architecture also, as when an opening spanned by a single arch is subdivided by means of an order (Illustration 22). Three is pre-eminently the number of architecture, because it is the number of space, which for us is three-dimensional, and of all the arts architecture is most concerned with the expression of spatial relations. The division of a composition into three related parts is so universal that it would seem to be the result of an instinctive action of the human mind. The twin pylons of an Egyptian temple with its entrance between, for a third division, has its correspondence in the two towers of a Gothic cathedral and the intervening screen wall of the nave. In the palaces of the Renaissance a threefold division--vertically by means of quoins or pilasters, and horizontally by means of cornices or string courses--was common, as was also the division into a principal and two subordinate masses (Illustration 23). [Illustration 22: THE LAW OF TRINITY. THE TRINITY OF HORIZONTAL VERTICAL AND CURVED LINES.] The architectural "orders" are divided threefold into pedestal or stylobate, column and entablature; and each of these is again divided threefold: the first into plinth, die and cornice; the second into base, shaft and capital; the third into architrave, frieze and cornice. In many cases these again lend themselves to a threefold subdivision. A more detailed analysis of the capitals already shown to be twofold reveals a third member: in the Greek Doric this consists of the annulets immediately below the abacus; in the other orders, the necking which divides the shaft from the cap. CONSONANCE "As is the small, so is the great" is a perpetually recurring phrase in the literature of theosophy, and naturally so, for it is a succinct statement of a fundamental and far-reaching truth. The scientist recognizes it now and then and here and there, but the occultist trusts it always and utterly. To him the microcosm and the macrocosm are one and the same in essence, and the forth-going impulse which calls a universe into being and the indrawing impulse which extinguishes it again, each lasting millions of years, are echoed and repeated in the inflow and outflow of the breath through the nostrils, in nutrition and excretion, in daily activity and nightly rest, in that longer day which we name a lifetime, and that longer rest in _Devachan_--and so on until time itself is transcended. [Illustration 23] In the same way, in nature, a thing is echoed and repeated throughout its parts. Each leaf on a tree is itself a tree in miniature, each blossom a modified leaf; every vertebrate animal is a complicated system of spines; the ripple is the wave of a larger wave, and that larger wave is a part of the ebbing and flowing tide. In music this law is illustrated in the return of the tonic to itself in the octave, and its partial return in the dominant; also in a more extended sense in the repetition of a major theme in the minor, or in the treble and again in the bass, with modifications perhaps of time and key. In the art of painting the law is exemplified in the repetition with variation of certain colors and combinations of lines in different parts of the same picture, so disposed as to lead the eye to some focal point. Every painter knows that any important color in his picture must be echoed, as it were, in different places, for harmony of the whole. [Illustration 24] In the drama the repetition of a speech or of an entire scene, but under circumstances which give it a different meaning, is often most effective, as when Gratiano, in the trial scene of _The Merchant of Venice_ taunts Shylock with his own words, "A Daniel come to judgment!" or, as when in one of the later scenes of _As You Like It_ an earlier scene is repeated, but with Rosalind speaking in her proper person and no longer as the boy Ganymede. These recurrences, these inner consonances, these repetitions with variations are common in architecture also. The channeled triglyphs of a Greek Doric frieze echo the fluted columns below (Illustration 24). The balustrade which crowns a colonnade is a repetition, in some sort, of the colonnade itself. The modillions of a Corinthian cornice are but elaborated and embellished dentils. Each pinnacle of a Gothic cathedral is a little tower with its spire. As Ruskin has pointed out, the great vault of the cathedral nave, together with the pointed roof above it, is repeated in the entrance arch with its gable, and the same two elements appear in every statue-enshrining niche of the doorway. In classic architecture, as has been shown, instead of the arch and gable, the column and entablature everywhere recur under different forms. The minor domes which flank the great dome of the cathedral of Florence enhance and reinforce the latter, and prepare the eye for a climax which would otherwise be too abrupt. The central pavilion of the Château Maintenon, with its two turrets, echoes the entire façade with its two towers. Like the overture to an opera, it introduces themes which find a more extended development elsewhere (Illustration 26). [Illustration 25] [Illustration 26] [Illustration 27] This law of Consonance is operative in architecture more obscurely in the form of recurring numerical ratios, identical geometrical determining figures, parallel diagonals and the like, which will be discussed in a subsequent essay. It has also to do with style and scale, the adherence to substantially one method of construction and manner of ornament, just as in music the key, or chosen series of notes, may not be departed from except through proper modulations, or in a specific manner. Thus it is seen that in a work of art, as in a piece of tapestry, the same thread runs through the web, but goes to make up different figures. The idea is deeply theosophic: one life, many manifestations; hence, inevitably, echoes, resemblances--_Consonance_. DIVERSITY IN MONOTONY Another principle of natural beauty, closely allied to the foregoing, its complement as it were, is that of _Diversity in Monotony_--not identity, but difference. It shows itself for the most part as a perceptible and piquant variation between individual units belonging to the same class, type, or species. No two trees put forth their branches in just the same manner, and no two leaves from the same tree exactly correspond; no two persons look alike, though they have similiar members and features; even the markings on the skin of the thumb are different in every human hand. Browning says, "As like as a hand to another hand! Whoever said that foolish thing, Could not have studied to understand--" Now every principle of natural beauty is but the presentment of some occult law, some theosophical truth; and this law of Diversity in Monotony is the presentment of the truth that identity does not exclude difference. The law is binding, yet the will is free: all men are brothers united by the ties of brotherhood, yet each is unique, a free agent, and never so free as when most bound by the Good Law. This truth nature beautifully proclaims, and art also. In architecture it is admirably exemplified in the metopes of the Parthenon frieze: seen at a distance these must have presented a scarcely distinguishable texture of sunlit marble and cool shadow, yet in reality each is a separate work of art. So with the capitals of the columns of the wonderful sea-arcade of the Venetian Ducal palace: alike in general contour they differ widely in detail, and unfold a Bible story. In Gothic cathedrals, in Romanesque monastery cloisters, a teeming variety of invention is hidden beneath apparent uniformity. The gargoyles of Notre Dame make similiar silhouettes against the sky, but seen near at hand what a menagerie of monsters! The same spirit of controlled individuality, of liberty subservient to the law of all, is exemplified in the bases of the columns of the temple of Apollo near Miletus--each one a separate masterpiece of various ornamentation adorning an established architectural form (Illustration 28). [Illustration 28] [Illustration 29] The builders of the early Italian churches, instinctively obeying this law of Diversity in Monotony, varied the size of the arches in the same arcade (Illustration 29), and that this was an effect of art and not of accident or carelessness Ruskin long ago discovered, and the Brooklyn Institute surveys have amply confirmed his view. Although by these means the builders of that day produced effects of deceptive perspective, of subtle concord and contrast, their sheer hatred of monotony and meaningless repetition may have led them to diversify their arcades in the manner described, for a rigidly equal and regular division lacks interest and vitality. BALANCE If one were to establish an axial plane vertically through the center of a tree, in most cases it would be found that the masses of foliage, however irregularly shaped on either side of such an axis, just about balanced each other. Similarly, in all our bodily movements, for every change of equilibrium there occurs an opposition and adjustment of members of such a nature that an axial plane through the center of gravity would divide the body into two substantially equal masses, as in the case of the tree. This physical plane law of Balance shows itself for the most part on the human plane as the law of Compensation, whereby, to the vision of the occultist, all accounts are "squared," so to speak. It is in effect the law of Justice, aptly symbolized by the scales. The law of Balance finds abundant illustration in art: in music by the opposition, the answering, of one phrase by another of the same elements and the same length, but involving a different sequence of intervals; in painting by the disposition of masses in such a way that they about equalize one another, so that there is no sense of "strain" in the composition. In architecture the common and obvious recognition of the law of Balance is in the symmetrical disposition of the elements, whether of plan or of elevation, on either side of axial lines. A far more subtle and vital illustration of the law occurs when the opposed elements do not exactly match, but differ from each other, as in the case of the two towers of Amiens, for example. This sort of balance may be said to be characteristic of Gothic, as symmetry is characteristic of Classic, architecture. RHYTHMIC CHANGE There is in nature a universal tendency toward refinement and compactness of form in space, or contrariwise, toward increment and diffusion; and this manifests itself in time as acceleration or retardation. It is governed, in either case, by an exact mathematical law, like the law of falling bodies. It shows itself in the widening circles which appear when one drops a stone into still water, in the convolutions of shells, in the branching of trees and the veining of leaves; the diminution in the size of the pipes of an organ illustrates it, and the spacing of the frets of a guitar. More and more science is coming to recognize, what theosophy affirms, that the spiral vortex, which so beautifully illustrates this law, both in its time and its space aspects is the universal archetype, the pattern of all that is, has been, or will be, since it is the form assumed by the ultimate physical atom, and the ultimate physical atom is the physical cosmos in miniature. This Rhythmic Diminution is everywhere: it is in the eye itself, for any series of mathematically equal units, such for example as the columns and intercolumnations of a colonnade, become when seen in perspective rhythmically unequal, diminishing according to the universal law. The entasis of a Classic column is determined by this law, the spirals of the Ionic volute, the annulets of the Parthenon cap, obey it (Illustration 30). In recognition of the same principle of Rhythmic Diminution a building is often made to grow, or appear to grow lighter, more intricate, finer, from the ground upward, an end attained by various devices, one of the most common being the employment of the more attenuated and highly ornamented orders above the simpler and sturdier, as in the Roman Colosseum, or in the Palazzo Uguccioni, in Florence--to mention only two examples out of a great number. In the Riccardi Palace an effect of increasing refinement is obtained by diminishing the boldness of the rustication of the ashlar in successive stories; in the Farnese, by the gradual reduction of the size of the angle quoins (Illustration 30). In an Egyptian pylon it is achieved most simply by battering the wall; in a Gothic cathedral most elaborately by a kind of segregation, or breaking up, analogous to that which a tree undergoes--the strong, relatively unbroken base corresponding to the trunk, the diminishing buttresses to the tapering limbs, and the multitude of delicate pinnacles and crockets, to the outermost branches and twigs, seen against the sky. RADIATION The final principle of natural beauty to which the author would call attention is the law of _Radiation_, which is in a manner a return to the first, the law of _Unity_. The various parts of any organism radiate from, or otherwise refer back to common centers, or foci, and these to centers of their own. The law is represented in its simplicity in the star-fish, in its complexity in the body of man; a tree springs from a seed, the solar system centers in the sun. The idea here expressed by the term "radiation" is a familiar one to all students of theosophy. The Logos radiates his life and light throughout his universe, bringing into activity a host of entities which become themselves radial centers; these generate still others, and so on endlessly. This principle, like every other, patiently publishes itself to us, unheeding, everywhere in nature, and in all great art as well; it is a law of optics, for example, that all straight lines having a common direction if sufficiently prolonged appear to meet in a point, i.e., radiate from it (Illustration 31). Leonardo da Vinci employed this principle of perspective in his Last Supper to draw the spectator's eye to the picture's central figure, the point of sight toward which the lines of the walls and ceiling converge centering in the head of Christ. Puvis de Chavannes, in his Boston Library decoration, leads the eye by a system of triangulation to the small figure of the Genius of Enlightenment above the central door (Illustration 32); and Ruskin, in his _Elements of Drawing_, has shown how artfully Turner arranged some of his compositions to attract attention to a focal point. This law of Radiation enters largely into architecture. The Colosseum, based upon the ellipse, a figure generated from two points or foci, and the Pantheon, based upon the circle, a figure generated from a central point, are familiar examples. The distinctive characteristic of Gothic construction, the concentration or focalization of the weight of the vaults and arches at certain points, is another illustration of the same principle applied to architecture, beautifully exemplified in the semicircular apse of a cathedral, where the lines of the plan converge to a common center, and the ribs of the vaulting meet upon the capitals of the piers and columns, seeming to radiate thence to still other centers in the loftier vaults which finally meet in a center common to all. [Illustration 30] [Illustration 31] [Illustration 32] The tracery of the great roses, high up in the façades of the cathedrals of Paris and of Amiens, illustrate Radiation, in the one case masculine: straight, angular, direct; in the feminine: curved, flowing, sinuous. The same _Beautiful Necessity_ determined the characteristics of much of the ornament of widely separated styles and periods: the Egyptian lotus, the Greek honeysuckle, the Roman acanthus, Gothic leaf work--to snatch at random four blossoms from the sheaf of time. The radial principle still inherent in the debased ornament of the late Renaissance gives that ornament a unity, a coherence, and a kind of beauty all its own (Illustration 35). [Illustration 33] [Illustration 34] Such are a few of the more obvious laws of natural beauty and their application to the art of architecture. The list is by no means exhausted, but it is not the multiplicity and diversity of these laws which is important to keep in mind, so much as their relatedness and coördination, for they are but different aspects of the One Law, that whereby the Logos manifests in time and space. A brief recapitulation will serve to make this correlation plain, and at the same time fix what has been written more firmly in the reader's mind. [Illustration 35] [Illustration 36] First comes the law of _Unity_; then, since every unit is in its essence twofold, there is the law of _Polarity_; but this duality is not static but dynamic, the two parts acting and reacting upon one another to produce a third--hence the law of _Trinity_. Given this third term, and the innumerable combinations made possible by its relations to and reactions upon the original pair, the law of _Multiplicity in Unity_ naturally follows, as does the law of _Consonance_, or repetition, since the primal process of differentiation tends to repeat itself, and the original combinations to reappear--but to reappear in changed form, hence the law of _Diversity in Monotony_. The law of _Balance_ is seen to be but a modification of the law of Polarity, and since all things are waxing and waning, there is the law whereby they wax and wane, that of _Rhythmic Change_. _Radiation_ rediscovers and reaffirms, even in the utmost complexity, that essential and fundamental unity from which complexity was wrought. Everything, beautiful or ugly, obeys and illustrates one or another of these laws, so universal are they, so inseparably attendant upon every kind of manifestation in time and space. It is the number of them which finds illustration within small compass, and the aptness and completeness of such illustration, which makes for beauty, because beauty is the fine flower of a sort of sublime ingenuity. A work of art is nothing if not _artful_: like an acrostic, the more different ways it can be read--up, down, across, from right to left and from left to right--the better it is, other things being equal. This statement, of course, may be construed in such a way as to appear absurd; what is meant is simply that the more a work of art is freighted and fraught with meaning beyond meaning, the more secure its immortality, the more powerful its appeal. For enjoyment, it is not necessary that all these meanings should be fathomed, it is only necessary that they should be felt. Consider for a moment the manner in which Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, an acknowledged masterpiece, conforms to everyone of the laws of beauty enumerated above (Illustration 32). It illustrates the law of Unity in that it movingly portrays a single significant episode in the life of Christ. The eye is led to dwell upon the central personage of this drama by many artful expedients: the visible part of the figure of Christ conforms to the lines of an equilateral triangle placed exactly in the center of the picture; the figure is separated by a considerable space from the groups of the disciples on either hand, and stands relieved against the largest parallelogram of light, and the vanishing point of the perspective is in the head of Christ, at the apex, therefore, of the triangle. The law of Polarity finds fulfilment in the complex and flowing lines of the draped figures contrasted with the simple parallelogram of the cloth-covered table, and the severe architecture of the room. The law of Trinity is exemplified in the three windows, and in the subdivision of the twelve figures of the disciples into four groups of three figures each. The law of Consonance appears in the repetition of the horizontal lines of the table in the ceiling above; and in the central triangle before referred to, continued and echoed, as it were, in the triangular supports of the table visible underneath the cloth. The law of Diversity in Monotony is illustrated in the varying disposition of the heads of the figures in the four groups of three; the law of Balance in the essential symmetry of the entire composition; the law of Rhythmic Change in the diminishing of the wall and ceiling spaces; and the law of Radiation in the convergence of all the perspective lines to a single significant point. To illustrate further the universality of these laws, consider now their application to a single work of architecture: the Taj Mahal, one of the most beautiful buildings of the world (Illustration 36). It is a unit, but twofold, for it consists of a curved part and an angular part, roughly figured as an inverted cup upon a cube; each of these (seen in parallel perspective, at the end of the principal vista) is threefold, for there are two sides and a central parallelogram, and two lesser domes flank the great dome. The composition is rich in consonances, for the side arches echo the central one, the subordinate domes the great dome, and the lanterns of the outstanding minarets repeat the principal motif. Diversity in Monotony appears abundantly in the ornament, which is intricate and infinitely various; the law of Balance is everywhere operative in the symmetry of the entire design. Rhythmic Change appears in the tapering of the minarets, the outlines of the domes and their mass relations to one another; and finally, the whole effect is of radiation from a central point, of elements disposed on radial lines. It would be fatuous to contend that the prime object of a work of architecture is to obey and illustrate these laws. The prime object of a work of architecture is to fulfill certain definite conditions in a practical, economical, and admirable way, and in fulfilling to express as far as possible these conditions, making the form express the function. The architect who is also an artist however will do this and something beyond: working for the most part unconsciously, harmoniously, joyously, his building will obey and illustrate natural laws--these laws of beauty--and to the extent it does so it will be a work of art; for art is the method of nature carried into those higher regions of thought and feeling which man alone inhabits: regions which it is one of the purposes of theosophy to explore. IV THE BODILY TEMPLE Carlyle says: "There is but one temple in the world, and that is the body of man." If the body is, as he declares, a temple, it is not less true that a temple or any work of architectural art is a larger body which man has created for his uses, just as the individual self is housed within its stronghold of flesh and bones. Architectural beauty like human beauty depends upon the proper subordination of parts to the whole, the harmonious interrelation between these parts, the expressiveness of each of its function or functions, and when these are many and diverse, their reconcilement one with another. This being so, a study of the human figure with a view to analyzing the sources of its beauty cannot fail to be profitable. Pursued intelligently, such a study will stimulate the mind to a perception of those simple yet subtle laws according to which nature everywhere works, and it will educate the eye in the finest known school of proportion, training it to distinguish minute differences, in the same way that the hearing of good music cultivates the ear. Those principles of natural beauty which formed the subject of the two preceding essays are all exemplified in the ideally perfect human figure. Though essentially a unit, there is a well marked division into right and left--"Hands to hands, and feet to feet, in one body grooms and brides." There are two arms, two legs, two ears, two eyes, and two lids to each eye; the nose has two nostrils, the mouth has two lips. Moreover, the terms of such pairs are masculine and feminine with respect to each other, one being active and the other passive. Owing to the great size and one-sided position of the liver, the right half of the body is heavier than the left; the right arm is usually longer and more muscular than the left; the right eye is slightly higher than its fellow. In speaking and eating the lower jaw and under lip are active and mobile with relation to the upper; in winking it is the upper eyelid which is the more active. That "inevitable duality" which is exhibited in the form of the body characterizes its motions also. In the act of walking for example, a forward movement is attained by means of a forward and a backward movement of the thighs on the axis of the hips; this leg movement becomes twofold again below the knee, and the feet move up and down independently on the axis of the ankle. A similar progression is followed in raising the arm and hand: motion is communicated first to the larger parts, through them to the smaller and thence to the extremities, becoming more rapid and complex as it progresses, so that all free and natural movements of the limbs describe invisible lines of beauty in the air. Coexistent with this pervasive duality there is a threefold division of the figure into trunk, head and limbs: a superior trinity of head and arms, and an inferior trinity of trunk and legs. The limbs are divided threefold into upper-arm, forearm and hand; thigh, leg and foot. The hand flowers out into fingers and the foot into toes, each with a threefold articulation; and in this way is effected that transition from unity to multiplicity, from simplicity to complexity, which appears to be so universal throughout nature, and of which a tree is the perfect symbol. [Illustration 37: THE LAW OF RHYTHMIC DIMINUTION ILLUSTRATED IN THE TAPERING BODY, LIMBS, FINGERS & TOES.] [Illustration 38] [Illustration 39] The body is rich in veiled repetitions, echoes, _consonances_. The head and arms are in a sense a refinement upon the trunk and legs, there being a clearly traceable correspondence between their various parts. The hand is the body in little--_"Your soft hand is a woman of itself"_--the palm, the trunk; the four fingers, the four limbs; and the thumb, the head;-each finger is a little arm, each finger tip a little palm. The lips are the lids of the mouth, the lids are the lips of the eyes--and so on. The law of _Rhythmic Diminution_ is illustrated in the tapering of the entire body and of the limbs, in the graduated sizes and lengths of the palm and the toes, and in the successively decreasing length of the palm and the joints of the fingers, so that in closing the hand the fingers describe natural spirals (Illustrations 37, 38). Finally, the limbs radiate as it were from the trunk, the fingers from a point in the wrist, the toes from a point in the ankle. The ribs radiate from the spinal column like the veins of a leaf from its midrib (Illustration 39). [Illustration 40] The relation of these laws of beauty to the art of architecture has been shown already. They are reiterated here only to show that man is indeed the microcosm--a little world fashioned from the same elements and in accordance with the same _Beautiful Necessity_ as is the greater world in which he dwells. When he builds a house or temple he builds it not literally in his own image, but according to the laws of his own being, and there are correspondences not altogether fanciful between the animate body of flesh and the inanimate body of stone. Do we not all of us, consciously or unconsciously, recognize the fact of character and physiognomy in buildings? Are they not, to our imagination, masculine or feminine, winning or forbidding--_human_, in point of fact--to a greater degree than anything else of man's creating? They are this certainly to a true lover and student of architecture. Seen from a distance the great French cathedrals appear like crouching monsters, half beast, half human: the two towers stand like a man and a woman, mysterious and gigantic, looking out over city and plain. The campaniles of Italy rise above the churches and houses like the sentinels of a sleeping camp--nor is their strangely human aspect wholly imaginary: these giants of mountain and campagna have eyes and brazen tongues; rising four square, story above story, with a belfry or lookout, like a head, atop, their likeness to a man is not infrequently enhanced by a certain identity of proportion--of ratio, that is, of height to width: Giotto's beautiful tower is an example. The caryatid is a supporting member in the form of a woman; in the Ionic column we discern her stiffened, like Lot's wife, into a pillar, with nothing to show her feminine but the spirals of her beautiful hair. The columns which uphold the pediment of the Parthenon are unmistakably masculine: the ratio of their breadth to their height is the ratio of the breadth to the height of a man (Illustration 40). [Illustration 41: THE BODY THE ARCHETYPE OF SACRED EDIFICES.] [Illustration 42: THE VESICA PISCIS AND THE PLAN OF CHARTRES.] At certain periods of the world's history, periods of mystical enlightenment, men have been wont to use the human figure, the soul's temple, as a sort of archetype for sacred edifices (Illustration 41). The colossi, with calm inscrutable faces, which flank the entrance to Egyptian temples; the great bronze Buddha of Japan, with its dreaming eyes; the little known colossal figures of India and China--all these belong scarcely less to the domain of architecture than of sculpture. The relation above referred to however is a matter more subtle and occult than mere obvious imitation on a large scale, being based upon some correspondence of parts, or similarity of proportions, or both. The correspondence between the innermost sanctuary or shrine of a temple and the heart of a man, and between the gates of that temple and the organs of sense is sufficiently obvious, and a relation once established, the idea is susceptible of almost infinite development. That the ancients proportioned their temples from the human figure is no new idea, nor is it at all surprising. The sculpture of the Egyptians and the Greeks reveals the fact that they studied the body abstractly, in its exterior presentment. It is clear that the rules of its proportions must have been established for sculpture, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that they became canonical in architecture also. Vitruvius and Alberti both lay stress on the fact that all sacred buildings should be founded on the proportions of the human body. [Illustration 43: A GOTHIC CATHEDRAL THE SYMBOL OF THE BODY OF JESUS CHRIST] [Illustration 44: THE SYMBOLISM OF A GOTHIC CATHEDRAL FROM THE ROSICRUCIANS: HARGRAVE JENNINGS] In France, during the Middle Ages, a Gothic cathedral became, at the hands of the secret masonic guilds, a glorified symbol of the body of Christ. To practical-minded students of architectural history, familiar with the slow and halting evolution of a Gothic cathedral from a Roman basilica, such an idea may seem to be only the maunderings of a mystical imagination, a theory evolved from the inner consciousness, entitled to no more consideration than the familiar fallacy that vaulted nave of a Gothic church was an attempt to imitate the green aisles of a forest. It should be remembered however that the habit of the thought of that time was mystical, as that of our own age is utilitarian and scientific; and the chosen language of mysticism is always an elaborate and involved symbolism. What could be more natural than that a building devoted to the worship of a crucified Savior should be made a symbol, not of the cross only, but of the body crucified? [Illustration 45: THE GEOMETRICAL BASIS OF THE HUMAN FIGURE] [Illustration 46] The _vesica piscis_ (a figure formed by the developing arcs of two equilateral triangles having a common side) which in so many cases seems to have determined the main proportion of a cathedral plan--the interior length and width across the transepts--appears as an aureole around the figure of Christ in early representations, a fact which certainly points to a relation between the two (Illustrations 42, 43). A curious little book, _The Rosicrucians_, by Hargrave Jennings, contains an interesting diagram which well illustrates this conception of the symbolism of a cathedral. A copy of it is here given. The apse is seen to correspond to the head of Christ, the north transept to his right hand, the south transept to the left hand, the nave to the body, and the north and south towers to the right and left feet respectively (Illustration 44). [Illustration 47] The cathedral builders excelled all others in the artfulness with which they established and maintained a relation between their architecture and the stature of a man. This is perhaps one reason why the French and English cathedrals, even those of moderate dimensions are more truly impressive than even the largest of the great Renaissance structures, such as St. Peter's in Rome. A gigantic order furnishes no true measure for the eye: its vastness is revealed only by the accident of some human presence which forms a basis of comparison. That architecture is not necessarily the most awe-inspiring which gives the impression of having been built by giants for the abode of pigmies; like the other arts, architecture is highest when it is most human. The mediæval builders, true to this dictum, employed stones of a size proportionate to the strength of a man working without unusual mechanical aids; the great piers and columns, built up of many such stones, were commonly subdivided into clusters, and the circumference of each shaft of such a cluster approximated the girth of a man; by this device the moulding of the base and the foliation of the caps were easily kept in scale. Wherever a balustrade occurred it was proportioned not with relation to the height of the wall or the column below, as in classic architecture, but with relation to a man's stature. [Illustration 48: FIGURE DIVIDED ACCORDING TO THE EGYPTIAN CANON] It may be stated as a general rule that every work of architecture, of whatever style, should have somewhere about it something fixed and enduring to relate it to the human figure, if it be only a flight of steps in which each one is the measure of a stride. In the Farnese, the Riccardi, the Strozzi, and many another Italian palace, the stone seat about the base gives scale to the building because the beholder knows instinctively that the height of such a seat must have some relation to the length of a man's leg. In the Pitti palace the balustrade which crowns each story answers a similar purpose: it stands in no intimate relation to the gigantic arches below, but is of a height convenient for lounging elbows. The door to Giotto's campanile reveals the true size of the tower as nothing else could, because it is so evidently related to the human figure and not to the great windows higher up in the shaft. [Illustration 49: THE MEDI�VAL METHOD OF DRAWING THE FIGURE] The geometrical plane figures which play the most important part in architectural proportion are the square, the circle and the triangle; and the human figure is intimately related to these elementary forms. If a man stand with heels together, and arms outstretched horizontally in opposite directions, he will be inscribed, as it were, within a square; and his arms will mark, with fair accuracy, the base of an inverted equilateral triangle, the apex of which will touch the ground at his feet. If the arms be extended upward at an angle, and the legs correspondingly separated, the extremities will touch the circumferences of a circle having its center in the navel (Illustrations 45, 46). [Illustration 50] The figure has been variously analyzed with a view to establishing numerical ratios between its parts (Illustrations 47, 48, 49). Some of these are so simple and easily remembered that they have obtained a certain popular currency; such as that the length of the hand equals the length of the face; that the span of the horizontally extended arms equals the height; and the well known rule that twice around the wrist is once around the neck, and twice around the neck is once around the waist. The Roman architect Vitruvius, writing in the age of Augustus Cæsar, formulated the important proportions of the statues of classical antiquity, and except that he makes the head smaller than the normal (as it should be in heroic statuary), the ratios which he gives are those to which the ideally perfect male figure should conform. Among the ancients the foot was probably the standard of all large measurements, being a more determinate length than that of the head or face, and the height was six lengths of the foot. If the head be taken as a unit, the ratio becomes 1:8, and if the face--1:10. Doctor Rimmer, in his _Art Anatomy_, divides the figure into four parts, three of which are equal, and correspond to the lengths of the leg, the thigh and the trunk; while the fourth part, which is two-thirds of one of these thirds, extends from the sternum to the crown of the head. One excellence of such a division aside from its simplicity, consists in the fact that it may be applied to the face as well. The lowest of the three major divisions extends from the tip of the chin to the base of the nose, the next coincides with the height of the nose (its top being level with the eyebrows), and the last with the height of the forehead, while the remaining two-thirds of one of these thirds represents the horizontal projection from the beginning of the hair on the forehead to the crown of the head. The middle of the three larger divisions locates the ears, which are the same height as the nose (Illustrations 45, 47). Such analyses of the figure, however conducted, reveals an all-pervasive harmony of parts, between which definite numerical relations are traceable, and an apprehension of these should assist the architectural designer to arrive at beauty of proportion by methods of his own, not perhaps in the shape of rigid formulæ, but present in the consciousness as a restraining influence, acting and reacting upon the mind with a conscious intention toward rhythm and harmony. By means of such exercises, he will approach nearer to an understanding of that great mystery, the beauty and significance of numbers, of which mystery music, architecture, and the human figure are equally presentments--considered, that is, from the standpoint of the occultist. V LATENT GEOMETRY [Illustration 51: THE HEXAGRAM AND EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE IN NATURE] It is a well known fact that in the microscopically minute of nature, units everywhere tend to arrange themselves with relation to certain simple geometrical solids, among which are the tetrahedron, the cube, and the sphere. This process gives rise to harmony, which may be defined as the relation between parts and unity, the simplicity latent in the infinitely complex, the potential complexity of that which is simple. Proceeding to things visible and tangible, this indwelling harmony, rhythm, proportion, which has its basis in geometry and number, is seen to exist in crystals, flower forms, leaf groups, and the like, where it is obvious; and in the more highly organized world of the animal kingdom also; though here the geometry is latent rather than patent, eluding though not quite defying analysis, and thus augmenting beauty, which like a woman is alluring in proportion as she eludes (Illustrations 51, 52, 53). [Illustration 52: PROPORTIONS OF THE HORSE] [Illustration 53] By the true artist, in the crystal mirror of whose mind the universal harmony is focused and reflected, this secret of the cause and source of rhythm--that it dwells in a correlation of parts based on an ultimate simplicity--is instinctively apprehended. A knowledge of it formed part of the equipment of the painters who made glorious the golden noon of pictorial art in Italy during the Renaissance. The problem which preoccupied them was, as Symonds says of Leonardo, "to submit the freest play of form to simple figures of geometry in grouping." Alberti held that the painter should above all things have mastered geometry, and it is known that the study of perspective and kindred subjects was widespread and popular. [Illustration 54] The first painter who deliberately rather than instinctively based his compositions on geometrical principles seems to have been Fra Bartolommeo, in his Last Judgment, in the church of St. Maria Nuova, in Florence. Symonds says of this picture, "Simple figures--the pyramid and triangle, upright, inverted, and interwoven like the rhymes of a sonnet--form the basis of the composition. This system was adhered to by the Fratre in all his subsequent works" (Illustration 54). Raphael, with that power of assimilation which distinguishes him among men of genius, learned from Fra Bartolommeo this method of disposing figures and combining them in masses with almost mathematical precision. It would have been indeed surprising if Leonardo da Vinci, in whom the artist and the man of science were so wonderfully united, had not been greatly preoccupied with the mathematics of the art of painting. His Madonna of the Rocks, and Virgin on the Lap of Saint Anne, in the Louvre, exhibit the very perfection of pyramidal composition. It is however in his masterpiece, The Last Supper, that he combines geometrical symmetry and precision with perfect naturalness and freedom in the grouping of individually interesting and dramatic figures. Michael Angelo, Andrea del Sarto, and the great Venetians, in whose work the art of painting may be said to have culminated, recognized and obeyed those mathematical laws of composition known to their immediate predecessors, and the decadence of the art in the ensuing period may be traced not alone to the false sentiment and affectation of the times, but also in the abandonment by the artists of those obscurely geometrical arrangements and groupings which in the works of the greatest masters so satisfy the eye and haunt the memory of the beholder (Illustrations 55, 56). [Illustration 55: THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE IN RENAISSANCE PAINTING] [Illustration 56: GEOMETRICAL BASIS OF THE SISTINE CEILING PAINTINGS] [Illustration 57: ASSYRIAN; GREEK] [Illustration 58: THE GEOMETRICAL BASIS OF THE PLAN IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN] [Illustration 59] Sculpture, even more than painting, is based on geometry. The colossi of Egypt, the bas-reliefs of Assyria, the figured pediments and metopes of the temples of Greece, the carved tombs of Revenna, the Della Robbia lunettes, the sculptured tympani of Gothic church portals, all alike lend themselves in greater or less degree to a geometrical synopsis (Illustration 57). Whenever sculpture suffered divorce from architecture the geometrical element became less prominent, doubtless because of all the arts architecture is the most clearly and closely related to geometry. Indeed, it may be said that architecture is geometry made visible, in the same sense that music is number made audible. A building is an aggregation of the commonest geometrical forms: parallelograms, prisms, pyramids and cones--the cylinder appearing in the column, and the hemisphere in the dome. The plans likewise of the world's famous buildings reduced to their simplest expression are discovered to resolve themselves into a few simple geometrical figures. (Illustration 58). This is the "bed rock" of all excellent design. [Illustration 60: EGYPTIAN; GREEK; ROMAN; MEDI�VAL] [Illustration 61: JEFFERSON'S PEN SKETCH FOR THE ROTUNDA OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA] [Illustration 62: APPLICATION OF THE EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE TO THE ERECHTHEUM AT ATHENS] [Illustration 63] [Illustration 64: THE EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE IN ROMAN ARCHITECTURE] But architecture is geometrical in another and a higher sense than this. Emerson says: "The pleasure a palace or a temple gives the eye is that an order and a method has been communicated to stones, so that they speak and geometrize, become tender or sublime with expression." All truly great and beautiful works of architecture from the Egyptian pyramids to the cathedrals of Ile-de-France--are harmoniously proportioned, their principal and subsidiary masses being related, sometimes obviously, more often obscurely, to certain symmetrical figures of geometry, which though invisible to the sight and not consciously present in the mind of the beholder, yet perform the important function of coördinating the entire fabric into one easily remembered whole. Upon some such principle is surely founded what Symonds calls "that severe and lofty art of composition which seeks the highest beauty of design in architectural harmony supreme, above the melodies of gracefulness of detail." [Illustration 65: THE EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE IN ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE] [Illustration 66: THE HEXAGRAM IN GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE] There is abundant evidence in support of the theory that the builders of antiquity, the masonic guilds of the Middle Ages, and the architects of the Italian Renaissance, knew and followed certain rules, but though this theory be denied or even disproved--if after all these men obtained their results unconsciously--their creations so lend themselves to a geometrical analysis that the claim for the existence of certain canons of proportion, based on geometry, remains unimpeached. [Illustration 67] [Illustration 68] The plane figures principally employed in determining architectural proportion are the circle, the equilateral triangle, and the square--which also yields the right angled isosceles triangle. It will be noted that these are the two dimensional correlatives of the sphere, the tetrahedron and the cube, mentioned as being among the determining forms in molecular structure. The question naturally arises, why the circle, the equilateral triangle and the square? Because, aside from the fact that they are of all plane figures the most elementary, they are intimately related to the body of man, as has been shown (Illustration 45), and the body of man is as it were the architectural archetype. But this simply removes the inquiry to a different field, it is not an answer. Why is the body of man so constructed and related? This leads us, as does every question, to the threshold of a mystery upon which theosophy alone is able to throw light. Any extended elucidation would be out of place here: it is sufficient to remind the reader that the circle is the symbol of the universe; the equilateral triangle, of the higher trinity (_atma, buddhi, manas_); and the square, of the lower quaternary of man's sevenfold nature. [Illustration 69] [Illustration 70] The square is principally used in preliminary plotting: it is the determining figure in many of the palaces of the Italian Renaissance; the Arc de Triomphe, in Paris is a modern example of its use (Illustrations 59, 60). The circle is often employed in conjunction with the square and the triangle. In Thomas Jefferson's Rotunda for the University of Virginia, a single great circle was the determining figure, as his original pen sketch of the building shows (Illustration 61). Some of the best Roman triumphal arches submit themselves to a circular synopsis, and a system of double intersecting circles has been applied, with interesting results, to façades as widely different as those of the Parthenon and the Farnese Palace in Rome, though it would be fatuous to claim that these figures determined the proportions of the façades. By far the most important figure in architectural proportion, considered from the standpoint of geometry, is the equilateral triangle. It would seem that the eye has an especial fondness for this figure, just as the ear has for certain related sounds. Indeed it might not be too fanciful to assert that the common chord of any key (the tonic with its third and fifth) is the musical equivalent of the equilateral triangle. It is scarcely necessary to dwell upon the properties and unique perfection of this figure. Of all regular polygons it is the simplest: its three equal sides subtend equal angles, each of 60 degrees; it trisects the circumference of a circle; it is the graphic symbol of the number three, and hence of every threefold thing; doubled, its generating arcs form the _vesica piscis_, of so frequent occurrence in early Christian art; two symmetrically intersecting equilateral triangles yield the figure known as "Solomon's Seal," or the "Shield of David," to which mystic properties have always been ascribed. It may be stated as a general rule that whenever three important points in any architectural composition coincide (approximately or exactly) with the three extremities of an equilateral triangle, it makes for beauty of proportion. An ancient and notable example occurs in the pyramids of Egypt, the sides of which, in their original condition, are believed to have been equilateral triangles. It is a demonstrable fact that certain geometrical intersections yield the important proportions of Greek architecture. The perfect little Erechtheum would seem to have been proportioned by means of the equilateral triangle and the angle of 60 degrees, both in general and in detail (Illustration 62). The same angle, erected from the central axis of a column at the point where it intersects the architrave, determines both the projection of the cornice and the height of the architrave in many of the finest Greek and Roman temples (Illustrations 67-70). The equilateral triangle used in conjunction with the circle and the square was employed by the Romans in determining the proportions of triumphal arches, basilicas and baths. That the same figure was a factor in the designing of Gothic cathedrals is sufficiently indicated in the accompanying facsimile reproductions of an illustration from the Como Vitruvius, published in Milan in 1521, which shows a vertical section of the Milan cathedral and the system of equilateral triangles which determined its various parts (Illustration 71). The _vesica piscis_ was often used to establish the two main internal dimensions of the cathedral plan: the greatest diameter of the figure corresponding with the width across the transepts, the upper apex marking the limit of the apse, and the lower, the termination of the nave. Such a proportion is seen to be both subtle and simple, and possesses the advantage of being easily laid out. The architects of the Italian Renaissance doubtless inherited certain of the Roman canons of architectural proportion, for they seem very generally to have recognized them as an essential principle of design. [Illustration 71] Nevertheless, when all is said, it is easy to exaggerate the importance of this matter of geometrical proportion. The designer who seeks the ultimate secret of architectural harmony in mathematics rather than in the trained eye, is following the wrong road to success. A happy inspiration is worth all the formulæ in the world--if it be really happy, the artist will probably find that he has "followed the rules without knowing them." Even while formulating concepts of art, the author must reiterate Schopenhauer's dictum that the _concept_ is unfruitful in art. The mathematical analysis of spatial beauty is an interesting study, and a useful one to the artist; but it can never take the place of the creative faculty, it can only supplement, restrain, direct it. The study of proportion is to the architect what the study of harmony is to a musician--it helps his genius adequately to express itself. VI THE ARITHMETIC OF BEAUTY Although architecture is based primarily upon geometry, it is possible to express all spatial relations numerically: for arithmetic, not geometry, is the universal science of quantity. The relation of masses one to another--of voids to solids, and of heights and lengths to widths--forms ratios; and when such ratios are simple and harmonious, architecture may be said, in Walter Pater's famous phrase, to "aspire towards the condition of music." The trained eye, and not an arithmetical formula, determines what is, and what is not, beautiful proportion. Nevertheless the fact that the eye instinctively rejects certain proportions as unpleasing, and accepts others as satisfactory, is an indication of the existence of laws of space, based upon number, not unlike those which govern musical harmony. The secret of the deep reasonableness of such selection by the senses lies hidden in the very nature of number itself, for number is the invisible thread on which the worlds are strung--the universe abstractly symbolized. Number is the within of all things--the "first form of Brahman." It is the measure of time and space; it lurks in the heart-beat and is blazoned upon the starred canopy of night. Substance, in a state of vibration, in other words conditioned by number, ceaselessly undergoes the myriad transmutations which produce phenomenal life. Elements separate and combine chemically according to numerical ratios: "Moon, plant, gas, crystal, are concrete geometry and number." By the Pythagoreans and by the ancient Egyptians sex was attributed to numbers, odd numbers being conceived of as masculine or generating, and even numbers as feminine or parturitive, on account of their infinite divisibility. Harmonious combinations were those involving the marriage of a masculine and a feminine--an odd and an even--number. [Illustration 72: A GRAPHIC SYSTEM OF NOTATION] Numbers progress from unity to infinity, and return again to unity as the soul, defined by Pythagoras as a self-moving number, goes forth from, and returns to God. These two acts, one of projection and the other of recall; these two forces, centrifugal and centripetal, are symbolized in the operations of addition and subtraction. Within them is embraced the whole of computation; but because every number, every aggregation of units, is also a new unit capable of being added or subtracted, there are also the operations of multiplication and division, which consists in one case of the addition of several equal numbers together, and in the other, of the subtraction of several equal numbers from a greater until that is exhausted. In order to think correctly it is necessary to consider the whole of numeration, computation, and all mathematical processes whatsoever as _the division of the unit_ into its component parts and the establishment of relations between these parts. [Illustration 73] [Illustration 74] The progression and retrogression of numbers in groups expressed by the multiplication table gives rise to what may be termed "numerical conjunctions." These are analogous to astronomical conjunctions: the planets, revolving around the sun at different rates of speed, and in widely separated orbits, at certain times come into line with one another and with the sun. They are then said to be in conjunction. Similarly, numbers, advancing toward infinity singly and in groups (expressed by the multiplication table), at certain stages of their progression come into relation with one another. For example, an important conjunction occurs in 12, for of a series of twos it is the sixth, of threes the fourth, of fours the third, and of sixes the second. It stands to 8 in the ratio of 3:2, and to 9, of 4:3. It is related to 7 through being the product of 3 and 4, of which numbers 7 is the sum. The numbers 11 and 13 are not conjunctive; 14 is so in the series of twos, and sevens; 15 is so in the series of fives and threes. The next conjunction after 12, of 3 and 4 and their first multiples, is in 24, and the next following is in 36, which numbers are respectively the two and three of a series of twelves, each end being but a new beginning. [Illustration 75] It will be seen that this discovery of numerical conjunctions consists merely of resolving numbers into their prime factors, and that a conjunctive number is a common multiple; but by naming it so, to dismiss the entire subject as known and exhausted, is to miss a sense of the wonder, beauty and rhythm of it all: a mental impression analogous to that made upon the eye by the swift-glancing balls of a juggler, the evolutions of drilling troops, or the intricate figures of a dance; for these things are number concrete and animate in time and space. [Illustration 76] The truths of number are of all truths the most interior, abstract and difficult of apprehension, and since knowledge becomes clear and definite to the extent that it can be made to enter the mind through the channels of physical sense, it is well to accustom oneself to conceiving of number graphically, by means of geometrical symbols (Illustration 72), rather than in terms of the familiar arabic notation which though admirable for purposes of computation, is of too condensed and arbitrary a character to reveal the properties of individual numbers. To state, for example, that 4 is the first square, and 8 the first cube, conveys but a vague idea to most persons, but if 4 be represented as a square enclosing four smaller squares, and 8 as a cube containing eight smaller cubes, the idea is apprehended immediately and without effort. The number 3 is of course the triangle; the irregular and vital beauty of the number 5 appears clearly in the heptalpha, or five-pointed star; the faultless symmetry of 6, its relation to 3 and 2, and its regular division of the circle, are portrayed in the familiar hexagram known as the Shield of David. Seven, when represented as a compact group of circles reveals itself as a number of singular beauty and perfection, worthy of the important place accorded to it in all mystical philosophy (Illustration 73). It is a curious fact that when asked to think of any number less than 10, most persons will choose 7. [Illustration 77] Every form of art, though primarily a vehicle for the expression and transmission of particular ideas and emotions, has subsidiary offices, just as a musical tone has harmonics which render it more sweet. Painting reveals the nature of color; music, of sound--in wood, in brass, and in stretched strings; architecture shows forth the qualities of light, and the strength and beauty of materials. All of the arts, and particularly music and architecture, portray in different manners and degrees the truths of number. Architecture does this in two ways: esoterically as it were in the form of harmonic proportions; and exoterically in the form of symbols which represent numbers and groups of numbers. The fact that a series of threes and a series of fours mutually conjoin in 12, finds an architectural expression in the Tuscan, the Doric, and the Ionic orders according to Vignole, for in them all the stylobate is four parts, the entablature 3, and the intermediate column 12 (Illustration 74). The affinity between 4 and 7, revealed in the fact that they express (very nearly) the ratio between the base and the altitude of the right-angled triangle which forms half of an equilateral, and the musical interval of the diminished seventh, is architecturally suggested in the Palazzo Giraud, which is four stories in height with seven openings in each story (Illustration 75). [Illustration 78] [Illustration 79] [Illustration 80] [Illustration 81] Every building is a symbol of some number or group of numbers, and other things being equal the more perfect the numbers involved the more beautiful will be the building (Illustrations 76-82). The numbers 5 and 7--those which occur oftenest--are the most satisfactory because being of small quantity, they are easily grasped by the eye, and being odd, they yield a center or axis, so necessary in every architectural composition. Next in value are the lowest multiples of these numbers and the least common multiples of any two of them, because the eye, with a little assistance, is able to resolve them into their constituent factors. It is part of the art of architecture to render such assistance, for the eye counts always, consciously or unconsciously, and when it is confronted with a number of units greater than it can readily resolve, it is refreshed and rested if these units are so grouped and arranged that they reveal themselves as factors of some higher quantity. [Illustration 82] [Illustration 83: A NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF GOTHIC TRACERY] There is a raison d'être for string courses other than to mark the position of a floor on the interior of a building, and for quoins and pilasters other than to indicate the presence of a transverse wall. These sometimes serve the useful purpose of so subdividing a façade that the eye estimates the number of its openings without conscious effort and consequent fatigue (Illustration 82). The tracery of Gothic windows forms perhaps the highest and finest architectural expression of number (Illustration 83). Just as thirst makes water more sweet, so does Gothic tracery confuse the eye with its complexity only the more greatly to gratify the sight by revealing the inherent simplicity in which this complexity has its root. Sometimes, as in the case of the Venetian Ducal Palace, the numbers involved are too great for counting, but other and different arithmetical truths are portrayed; for example, the multiplication of the first arcade by 2 in the second, and this by 3 in the cusped arches, and by 4 in the quatrefoils immediately above. [Illustration 84: NUMERATION IN GROUPS EXPRESSED ARCHITECTURALLY] [Illustration 85: ARCHITECTURAL ORNAMENT CONSIDERED AS THE OBJECTIFICATION OF NUMBER. MULTIPLICATION IN GROUPS OF FIVE; TWO; THREE; ALTERNATION OF THREE AND SEVEN] [Illustration 86] Seven is proverbially the perfect number. It is of a quantity sufficiently complex to stimulate the eye to resolve it, and yet so simple that it can be analyzed at a glance; as a center with two equal sides, it is possessed of symmetry, and as the sum of an odd and even number (3 and 4) it has vitality and variety. All these properties a work of architecture can variously reveal (Illustration 77). Fifteen, also, is a number of great perfection. It is possible to arrange the first 9 numbers in the form of a "magic" square so that the sum of each line, read vertically, horizontally or diagonally, will be 15. Thus: 4 9 2 = 15 3 5 7 = 15 8 1 6 = 15 -- -- -- 15 15 15 Its beauty is portrayed geometrically in the accompanying figure which expresses it, being 15 triangles in three groups of 5 (Illustration 86). Few arrangements of openings in a façade better satisfy the eye than three superimposed groups of five (Illustrations 76-80). May not one source of this satisfaction dwell in the intrinsic beauty of the number 15? In conclusion, it is perhaps well that the reader be again reminded that these are the by-ways, and not the highways of architecture: that the highest beauty comes always, not from beautiful numbers, nor from likenesses to Nature's eternal patterns of the world, but from utility, fitness, economy, and the perfect adaptation of means to ends. But along with this truth there goes another: that in every excellent work of architecture, in addition to its obvious and individual beauty, there dwells an esoteric and universal beauty, following as it does the archetypal pattern laid down by the Great Architect for the building of that temple which is the world wherein we dwell. VII FROZEN MUSIC In the series of essays of which this is the final one, the author has undertaken to enforce the truth that evolution on any plane and on any scale proceeds according to certain laws which are in reality only ramifications of one ubiquitous and ever operative law; that this law registers itself in the thing evolved, leaving stamped thereon as it were fossil footprints by means of which it may be known. In the arts the creative spirit of man is at its freest and finest, and nowhere among the arts is it so free and so fine as in music. In music accordingly the universal law of becoming finds instant, direct and perfect self-expression; music voices the inner nature of the _will-to-live_ in all its moods and moments; in it form, content, means and end are perfectly fused. It is this fact which gives validity to the before quoted saying that all of the arts "aspire toward the condition of music." All aspire to express the law, but music, being least encumbered by the leaden burden of materiality, expresses it most easily and adequately. This being so there is nothing unreasonable in attempting to apply the known facts of musical harmony and rhythm to any other art, and since these essays concern themselves primarily with architecture, the final aspect in which that art will be presented here is as "frozen music"--ponderable form governed by musical law. Music depends primarily upon the equal and regular division of time into beats, and of these beats into measures. Over this soundless and invisible warp is woven an infinitely various melodic pattern, made up of tones of different pitch and duration arithmetically related and combined according to the laws of harmony. Architecture, correspondingly, implies the rhythmical division of space, and obedience to laws numerical and geometrical. A certain identity therefore exists between simple harmony in music, and simple proportion in architecture. By translating the consonant tone-intervals into number, the common denominator, as it were, of both arts, it is possible to give these intervals a spatial, and hence an architectural, expression. Such expression, considered as proportion only and divorced from ornament, will prove pleasing to the eye in the same way that its correlative is pleasing to the ear, because in either case it is not alone the special organ of sense which is gratified, but the inner Self, in which all senses are one. Containing within itself the mystery of number, it thrills responsive to every audible or visible presentment of that mystery. [Illustration 87] If a vibrating string yielding a certain musical note be stopped in its center, that is, divided by half, it will then sound the octave of that note. The numerical ratio which expresses the interval of the octave is therefore 1:2. If one-third instead of one-half of the string be stopped, and the remaining two-thirds struck, it will yield the musical fifth of the original note, which thus corresponds to the ratio 2:3. The length represented by 3:4 yields the fourth; 4:5 the major third; and 5:6 the minor third. These comprise the principal consonant intervals within the range of one octave. The ratios of inverted intervals, so called, are found by doubling the smaller number of the original interval as given above: 2:3, the fifth, gives 3:4, the fourth; 4:5, the major third, gives 5:8, the minor sixth; 5:6, the minor third, gives 6:10, or 3:5, the major sixth. [Illustration 88: ARCHITECTURE AS HARMONY] Of these various consonant intervals the octave, fifth, and major third are the most important, in the sense of being the most perfect, and they are expressed by numbers of the smallest quantity, an odd number and an even. It will be noted that all the intervals above given are expressed by the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, except the minor sixth (5:8), and this is the most imperfect of all consonant intervals. The sub-minor seventh, expressed by the ratio 4:7 though included among the dissonances, forms, according to Helmholtz, a more perfect consonance with the tonic than does the minor sixth. A natural deduction from these facts is that relations of architectural length and breadth, height and width, to be "musical" should be capable of being expressed by ratios of quantitively small numbers, preferably an odd number and an even. Although generally speaking the simpler the numerical ratio the more perfect the consonance, yet the intervals of the fifth and major third (2:3 and 4:5), are considered to be more pleasing than the octave (1:2), which is too obviously a repetition of the original note. From this it is reasonable to assume (and the assumption is borne out by experience), that proportions, the numerical ratios of which the eye resolves too readily, become at last wearisome. The relation should be felt rather than fathomed. There should be a perception of identity, and also of difference. As in music, where dissonances are introduced to give value to consonances which follow them, so in architecture simple ratios should be employed in connection with those more complex. [Illustration 89] Harmonics are those tones which sound with, and reinforce any musical note when it is sounded. The distinguishable harmonics of the tonic yield the ratios 1:2, 2:3, 3:4, 4:5, and 4:7. A note and its harmonics form a natural chord. They may be compared to the widening circles which appear in still water when a stone is dropped into it, for when a musical sound disturbs the quietude of that pool of silence which we call the air, it ripples into overtones, which becoming fainter and fainter, die away into silence. It would seem reasonable to assume that the combination of numbers which express these overtones, if translated into terms of space, would yield proportions agreeable to the eye, and such is the fact, as the accompanying examples sufficiently indicate (Illustrations 87-90). The interval of the sub-minor seventh (4:7), used in this way, in connection with the simpler intervals of the octave (1:2), and the fifth (2:3), is particularly pleasing because it is neither too obvious nor too subtle. This ratio of 4:7 is important for the reason that it expresses the angle of sixty degrees, that is, the numbers 4 and 7 represent (very nearly) the ratio between one-half the base and the altitude of an equilateral triangle: also because they form part of the numerical series 1, 4, 7, 10, etc. Both are "mystic" numbers, and in Gothic architecture particularly, proportions were frequently determined by numbers to which a mystic meaning was attached. According to Gwilt, the Gothic chapels of Windsor and Oxford are divided longitudinally by four, and transversely by seven equal parts. The arcade above the roses in the façade of the cathedral of Tours shows seven principal units across the front of the nave, and four in each of the towers. A distinguishing characteristic of the series of ratios which represent the consonant intervals within the compass of an octave is that it advances by the addition of 1 to both terms: 1:2, 2:3, 3:4, 4:5, and 5:6. Such a series always approaches unity, just as, represented graphically by means of parallelograms, it tends toward a square. Alberti in his book presents a design for a tower showing his idea for its general proportions. It consists of six stories, in a sequence of orders. The lowest story is a perfect cube and each of the other stories is 11-12ths of the story below, diminishing practically in the proportion of 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, allowing in each case for the amount hidden by the projection of the cornice below; each order being accurate as regards column, entablature, etc. It is of interest to compare this with Ruskin's idea in his _Seven Lamps_, where he takes the case of a plant called Alisma Plantago, in which the various branches diminish in the proportion of 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, respectively, and so carry out the same idea; on which Ruskin observes that diminution in a building should be after the manner of Nature. [Illustration 90: ARCADE OF THE CANCELLERIA] It would be a profitless task to formulate exact rules of architectural proportion based upon the laws of musical harmony. The two arts are too different from each other for that, and moreover the last appeal must always be to the eye, and not to a mathematical formula, just as in music the last appeal is to the ear. Laws there are, but they discover themselves to the artist as he proceeds, and are for the most part incommunicable. Rules and formulæ are useful and valuable not as a substitute for inspiration, but as a guide: not as wings, but as a tail. In this connection perhaps all that is necessary for the architectural designer to bear in mind is that important ratios of length and breadth, height and width, to be "musical" should be expressed by quantitively small numbers, and that if possible they should obey some simple law of numerical progression. From this basic simplicity complexity will follow, but it will be an ordered and harmonious complexity, like that of a tree, or of a symphony. [Illustration 91: THE PALAZZO VERZI AT VERONA (LOWER PORTION ONLY). A COMPOSITION FOUNDED ON THE EQUAL AND REGULAR DIVISION OF SPACE, AS MUSIC IS FOUNDED ON THE EQUAL AND REGULAR DIVISION OF TIME.] [Illustration 92: ARCHITECTURE AS RHYTHM. A DIVISION OF SPACE CORRESPONDING TO 3/4 AND 4/4 TIME.] In the same way that a musical composition implies the division of time into equal and regular beats, so a work of architecture should have for its basis some unit of space. This unit should be nowhere too obvious and may be varied within certain limits, just as musical time is retarded or accelerated. The underlying rhythm and symmetry will thus give value and distinction to such variation. Vasari tells how Brunelleschi. Bramante and Leonardo da Vinci used to work on paper ruled in squares, describing it as a "truly ingenious thing, and of great utility in the work of design." By this means they developed proportions according to a definite scheme. They set to work with a division of space analogous to the musician's division of time. The examples given herewith indicate how close a parallel may exist between music and architecture in this matter of rhythm (Illustrations 91-93). [Illustration 93] It is a demonstrable fact that musical sounds weave invisible patterns in the air. Architecture, correspondingly, in one of its aspects, is geometric pattern made fixed and enduring. What could be more essentially musical for example than the sea arcade of the Venetian Ducal Palace? The sand forms traced by sound-waves on a musically vibrating steel plate might easily suggest architectural ornament did not the differences of scale and of material tend to confuse the mind. The architect should occupy himself with identities, not differences. If he will but bear in mind that architecture is pattern in space, just as music is pattern in time, he will come to perceive the essential identity between, say, a Greek rosette and a Gothic rose-window; an arcade and an egg and dart moulding (Illustration 94). All architectural forms and arrangements which give enduring pleasure are in their essence musical. Every well composed façade makes harmony in three dimensions; every good roof-line sings a melody against the sky. [Illustration 94: ARCHITECTURE AS PATTERN] CONCLUSION In taking leave of the reader at the end of this excursion together among the by-ways of a beautiful art, the author must needs add a final word or two touching upon the purpose and scope of these essays. Architecture (like everything else) has two aspects: it may be viewed from the standpoint of utility, that is, as construction; or from the standpoint of expressiveness, that is, as decoration. No attempt has been made here to deal with its first aspect, and of the second (which is again twofold), only the universal, not the particular expressiveness has been sought. The literature of architecture is rich in works dealing with the utilitarian and constructive side of the art: indeed, it may be said that to this side that literature is almost exclusively devoted. This being so, it has seemed worth while to attempt to show the reverse of the medal, even though it be "tails" instead of "heads." It will be noted that the inductive method has not, in these pages, been honored by a due observance. It would have been easy to have treated the subject inductively, amassing facts and drawing conclusions, but to have done so the author would have been false to the very principle about which the work came into being. With the acceptance of the Ancient Wisdom, the inductive method becomes no longer necessary. Facts are not useful in order to establish a hypothesis, they are used rather to elucidate a known and accepted truth. When theosophical ideas shall have permeated the thought of mankind, this work, if it survives at all, will be chiefly--perhaps solely--remarkable by reason of the fact that it was among the first in which the attempt was made again to unify science, art and religion, as they were unified in those ancient times and among those ancient peoples when the Wisdom swayed the hearts and minds of men. 
13142	----	SELF-DEVELOPMENT AND THE WAY TO POWER by L. W. ROGERS Price 25 Cents 1922 "We may be either the suffering slaves of nature or the happy masters of her laws." SELF DEVELOPMENT AND THE WAY TO POWER It is the natural right of every human being to be happy--to escape all the miseries of life. Happiness is the normal condition, as natural as the landscapes and the seasons. It is unnatural to suffer and it is only because of our ignorance that we do suffer. Happiness is the product of wisdom. To attain perfect wisdom, to comprehend fully the purpose of life, to realize completely the relationship of human beings to each other, is to put an end to all suffering, to escape every ill and evil that afflicts us. Perfect wisdom is unshadowed joy. Why do we suffer in life? Because in the scheme of nature we are being forced forward in evolution and we lack the spiritual illumination that alone can light the way and enable us to move safely among the obstacles that lie before us. Usually we do not even see or suspect the presence of trouble until it suddenly leaps upon us like a concealed tiger. One day our family circle is complete and happy. A week later death has come and gone and joy is replaced with agony. Today we have a friend. Tomorrow he will be an enemy and we do not know why. A little while ago we had wealth and all material luxuries. There was a sudden change and now we have only poverty and misery and yet we seek in vain for a reason why this should be. There was a time when we had health and strength; but they have both departed and no trace of a reason appears. Aside from these greater tragedies of life innumerable things of lesser consequence continually bring to us little miseries and minor heartaches. We most earnestly desire to avoid them but we never see them until they strike us, until in the darkness of our ignorance we blunder upon them. The thing we lack is the spiritual illumination that will enable us to look far and wide, finding the hidden causes of human suffering and revealing the method by which they may be avoided; and if we can but reach illumination the evolutionary journey can be made both comfortably and swiftly. It is as though we must pass through a long, dark room filled with furniture promiscuously scattered about. In the darkness our progress would be slow and painful and our bruises many. But if we could press a button that would turn on the electric light we could then make the same journey quickly and with perfect safety and comfort. The old method of education was to store the mind with as many facts, or supposed facts, as could be accumulated and to give a certain exterior polish to the personality. The theory was that when a man was born he was a completed human being and that all that could be done for him was to load him up with information that would be used with more or less skill, according to the native ability he happened to be born with. The theosophical idea is that the physical man, and all that constitutes his life in the physical world, is but a very partial expression of the self; that in the ego of each there is practically unlimited power and wisdom; that these may be brought through into expression in the physical world as the physical body and its invisible counterparts, which together constitute the complex vehicle of the ego's manifestation, are evolved and adapted to the purpose; and that in exact proportion that conscious effort is given to such self-development will spiritual illumination be achieved and wisdom attained. Thus the light that leads to happiness is kindled from within and the evolutionary journey that all are making may be robbed of its suffering. Why does death bring misery? Chiefly because it separates us from those we love. But when we have evolved the faculty of clairvoyance, in our work of self-development, the separation vanishes and our "dead" friends are as much with us as the living. The only other reason why death brings grief or fear is because we do not understand it and comprehend the part it plays in human evolution. But the moment our ignorance gives way to comprehension such fear vanishes and a serene happiness takes its place. Why do we have enemies from whose words or acts we suffer? Because in our limited physical consciousness we do not perceive the unity of all life and realize that our wrong thinking and doing must react upon us through other people--a situation from which there is no possible escape except through ceasing to think evil and then patiently awaiting the time when the causes we have already generated are fully exhausted. When spiritual illumination comes, and we no longer stumble in the night of ignorance, the last enemy will disappear and we shall make no more forever. Why do people suffer from poverty and disease? Only because of our blundering ignorance that makes their existence possible for us, and because we do not comprehend their meaning and their lessons, nor know the attitude to assume toward them. Had we but the wisdom to understand why they come to people, why they are necessary factors in their evolution, they would trouble us no longer. When nature's lesson is fully learned these mute teachers will vanish. And so it is with all forms of suffering we experience. They are at once reactions from our ignorant blunderings and instructors that point out the better way. When we have comprehended the lessons they teach they are no longer necessary and disappear. Thus our evolution is going forward and has gone forward in the past. We know that the human race has passed through a long evolution during which it has acquired five senses by which knowledge is gained. Nobody who has given thought to the subject will make the mistake of supposing that this evolution is completed and that the five senses are all we shall ever possess. In this long evolutionary journey the next thing we shall do is to develop the sixth sense. Some people have already done so and all are approaching it. This dawning sense is called clairvoyance. Fair investigation will show that the clairvoyant possesses certain powers not common to the majority of people. This is merely the beginning of the development of the sixth sense, and probably with the majority of clairvoyants it goes no further than etheric and lower astral sight. In other words, they are able to raise the consciousness only to a grade of matter a little beyond the grasp of ordinary vision, while the properly developed, trained clairvoyant raises his consciousness two full planes beyond. The higher the consciousness is raised the further the horizon of knowledge extends and the clairvoyant is able to hand down information that appears quite miraculous; but it is perfectly natural. If a certain person were born blind and had never understood any more about eyesight than most people understand about clairvoyance; if this person could know how many doorways were in a large building only by groping along with his hands and thus acquiring the knowledge by touch, and another person who could see should glance along the block and instantly tell the blind man the correct number, that would be to the blind man a miracle. Now, when a clairvoyant sees things at a distance where the physical eye cannot reach he really does nothing more remarkable. When we see a thing we receive the vibrations caused by light. That gives the information. When the clairvoyant "sees" at a distance through what we mistakenly call solid substances he receives vibrations of matter so fine that it interpenetrates solids as the ether does. Every human being must make, and is making, this long evolutionary journey from spiritual infancy to godlike power and perfection, but there are two ways in which it may be done. We may, as the vast majority do, accept the process of unconscious evolution and submit to nature's whip and spur that continuously urge the thoughtless and indifferent forward until they finally reach the goal. Or, we may choose conscious evolution and work intelligently with nature, thus making progress that is comparatively of enormous rapidity and at the same time avoid much of what Hamlet called the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." The degree to which mind can control circumstances and dominate matter is far greater than is generally believed. Our impressions about matter are very illusory. No form of matter is permanent. Change goes on everywhere at every instant, by physical laws in the physical body and by astral and mental laws in our invisible bodies. We are not the same being, physically, mentally or spiritually, any two days in succession. The very soul itself is subject to this law of change. It may expand and shine out through the physical organism resplendent, or it may only faintly glimmer through a constantly coarsening body. What is the law of soul growth? Through adherence to what principle may we reach spiritual illumination? There are certain well established facts about the laws of growth that we should not overlook when seeking the way forward. Nothing whatever can grow without use, without activity. Inaction causes atrophy. Physiologists tell us that if the arm be tied to the body so that it cannot be used it will in time become so enfeebled, that it is of no further service. It will wither away. That is nature's law of economy. She never gives life where it is useless, where it can not, or will not, be utilized. On the other hand, exercise increases power. To increase the size and strength of muscles we must use them. This is just as true of mental and moral faculties as it is of the physical body. The only way to make the brain keen and powerful is to exercise it by original thinking. One way to gain soul powers is to give free play to the loftiest aspirations of which we are capable, and to do it systematically instead of at random. We grow to be like the things we think about. Now, the reverse of all this must be equally true. To give no thought to higher things, to become completely absorbed in material affairs, is to stifle the soul, to invite spiritual atrophy. Turning our attention to nature we shall find in the parasite convincing proof of all this. The parasite, whether plant or animal, is living evidence that to refuse or neglect to use an organ or faculty results in being deprived of it. The dodder, says Drummond, has roots like other plants, but when it fixes sucker discs on the branches of neighboring plants and begins to get its food through them, its roots perish. When it fails to use them it loses them. He also points to the hermit-crab as an illustration of this great fact in nature, that disuse means loss, and that to shirk responsibility is the road to degeneration. The hermit-crab was once equipped with a hard shell and with as good means of locomotion as other crabs. But instead of courageously following the hardy life of other crustaceans it formed the bad habit of taking up its residence in the cast-off shells of mollusks. This made life easy and indolent. But it paid the price of all shirking. In time it lost four legs, while the shell over the vital portion of its body degenerated to a thin membrane which leaves it practically helpless when it is out of its captured home. And this is the certain result of all shirking of responsibility. There may be an apparent temporary gain, but it always means greater loss, either immediate or remote. So nature punishes inaction with atrophy. Whatever is not used finally ceases to be. In plain language, apathy, inaction, idleness, uselessness, is the road to degeneration. On the other hand, aspiration and activity mean growth, development, power. So we grow, physically, mentally and morally, by activity, by exercise of the organs or the faculties we desire to possess. It is only by the constant exercise of these things that we can grow at all. When this great law of nature is understood we see at once how it is that life is full of trouble; why it is that the whole visible world seems to be designed to keep us constantly at work physically and mentally, to challenge our resourcefulness in improving our physical, social and political conditions, to continually try our patience and to forever test our courage. It is the way of development. It is the price of progress. The universe is a training school for evolving intelligence--a vast gymnasium for the development of moral fibre. We become mentally clever by playing at the game of life. We match our courage against its adversities and acquire fearlessness. We try our optimism against its disappointments and learn cheerfulness. We pit our patience against its failures and gain persistence. We are torn from the pinnacle of ambition by opponents and learn toleration of others. We fall from the heights of vanity and pride, and learn to be modest and humble. We encounter pain and sorrow and learn sympathy with suffering. It is only by such experiences that we can grow to rounded measure. It is only in an environment thus adapted to our spiritual development that we can evolve the latent powers within us. Such is the universe in which we find ourselves and from it there is no escape. No man can avoid life--not even the foolish one who, when the difficulties before him appear for the moment overwhelming, tries to escape them by suicide. A man cannot die. He can only choose how he will live. He may either helplessly drift through the world suffering from all the ills and evils that make so many unhappy or he may choose the method of conscious evolution that alone makes life truly successful. We may be either the suffering slaves of nature or the happy masters of her laws. Now, all powers possessed by any human being, no matter how exalted his position in evolution, or how sublime his spiritual power, are latent in all human beings and can, in time, be developed and brought into action. Of course there is no magic rule by which the ignoramus can instantly become wise or by which a brutal man can be at once transformed into a saint. It may require scores of incarnations to accomplish a work so great, but when a man reaches the point in his evolution where he begins to comprehend the purpose of life, and to evolve the will to put forth his energies in co-operation with nature, his rise to wisdom and power may be swift indeed. But this transformation from the darkness of ignorance to spiritual illumination, from helplessness "in the fell clutch of circumstance" to power over nature, must be brought about by his own efforts, for it is a process of evolution--of forcing the latent to become the active. Therefore one must resolve to take oneself in hand for definite and systematic self-development. Nobody else can do the work for us. Certain moral qualities must be gained before there can be spiritual illumination and genuine wisdom and such qualities, or virtues, have to be evolved by the laws under which all growth occurs. It is just as impossible to acquire a moral quality by reading about its desirability as to evolve muscular strength by watching the performance of a group of athletes. To gain muscular strength one must take part in the physical activities that produce it. He must live the athletic life. To win spiritual strength and supremacy he must live the spiritual life. There is no other way. He must first learn what mental and moral qualities are essential, and how to gain them, and then set earnestly about the work of acquiring them. The first thing necessary is to get a clear understanding of the fact that the physical body is not the self but only a vehicle or instrument through which the self is being manifested in the visible world. The body is as much your instrument as the hand is, or as your pen is. It is a thing which you, the self, use and a clear conception of this fact--a feeling that this is the fact--is the first step toward that absolute control of the physical body that lays the foundation for success in conscious evolution. When we feel that in managing the physical body we are controlling something that is not ourself we are fairly started on the right road. Now, there are three things that a person must possess to be successful in self-development. If he has not these three qualifications he will make but little progress; but, fortunately, any lacking quality can be evolved and if one does not possess these three necessities his first work is to create them. These three things are an ardent desire, an iron will and an alert intelligence. Why are these three qualifications essential to success and what purpose do they serve? Desire is nature's motor power--the propulsive force that pushes everything forward in its evolution. It is desire that stimulates to action. Desire drives the animal into the activities that evolve its physical body and sharpen its intelligence. If it had no desire it would lie inert and perish. But the desire for food, for drink, for association with its kind, impel it to action, and the result is the evolution of strength, skill and intelligence in proportion to the intensity of its desires. To gratify these desires it will accept battle no matter how great may be the odds against it and will unhesitatingly risk life itself in the combat. Desire not only induces the activity that develops physical strength and beauty, but also has its finer effects. Hunger compels the animal not only to seek food, but to pit its cunning against that of its prey. Driven forward by desire it develops, among other qualities, strength, courage, patience, endurance, intelligence. Desire plays the same role with man at his higher stage of evolution. It stimulates him to action; and always as his activity satisfies his original desire a new one replaces the old and lures him on to renewed exertion. The average young man beginning his business career, desires only a comfortable cottage. But when that is attained he wants a mansion. He soon tires of the mansion and wants a palace. Then he wants several--at the seaside, in the city, and on the mountains. At first he is satisfied with a horse; then he demands an automobile, and finally a steam yacht. He sets out as a youth to earn a livelihood and welcomes a small salary. But the desire for money pushes him into business for himself and he works tirelessly for a competence. He feels that a small fortune should satisfy anybody but when he gets it he wants to be a millionaire. If he succeeds in that he then desires to become a multi-millionaire. Whether the desire is for wealth, or for fame, or for power, the same result follows--when the desire is satisfied a greater one takes its place and spurs the ambitious one to still further exertion. He grasps the prize he believes to contain complete satisfaction only to discover that while he was pursuing it desire had grown beyond it, and so the goal he would attain is always far ahead of him. Thus are we tricked and apparently mocked by nature until we finally awake to the fact that all the objects of desire--the fine raiment, the jewels, the palaces, the wealth, the power, are but vain and empty things; and that the real reward for all our efforts to secure them is not these objects at all _but the new powers we have evolved in getting them;_ powers that we did not before possess and which we should not have evolved but for nature's great propulsive force--desire. The man who accumulates a fortune by many years of persistent effort in organizing and developing a business enterprise, by careful planning and deep thinking, may naturally enough look upon the fortune he will possess for a few years before it passes on to others, as his reward. But the truth is that it is a very transient and perishable and worthless thing compared to the new powers that were unconsciously evolved in getting it--powers that will be retained by the man and be brought into use in future incarnations. Desire, then, plays a most important role in human evolution. It awakens, stimulates, propels. What wind is to the ship, what steam is to the locomotive, desire is to the human being. It has been written in a great book, "Kill out desire," and elsewhere it is written, "Resist not evil." We may find, in similar exalted pronouncements, truths that are very useful to disciples but which might be confusing and misleading to the man of the world if he attempted to literally apply them. Perhaps for the average mortal "kill out desire" might be interpreted "transmute desire." Without desire man would be in a deathlike and dangerous condition--a condition in which further progress would be impossible. But by transmuting the lower desires into the higher he moves steadily forward and upward without losing the motive power that urges him forever onward. To transmute desire, to continually replace the lower with the higher, really is killing desire out but it is doing it by the slow and safe evolutionary process. As to crushing it suddenly, that is simply impossible; but substitution may work wonders. Suppose, for example, that a young man is a gambler and his parents are much distressed about it. The common and foolish course is to lecture him on the sin of gambling and to tearfully urge him to associate only with very proper young men. But the young gambler is not in the least interested in that sort of a life, which appears to him to be a kind of living death, and such entreaty does not move him. His parents would do better by looking more closely into the case. Why is he a gambler? He desires money. He seeks excitement. He wants to live in an atmosphere of intense life and activity. Very well. These desires are quite right in themselves. It is useless to try to crush them. It is nonsense to argue that he does not want these things. Clearly enough he does want them and that is precisely why he gambles. Then do not attempt the impossibility of killing the desire but change the objects of his desires. Say to him: "You desire money and a life full of turbulence and excitement. Well, you can get all that in a better and a legitimate way and have the respect of your friends besides. You can go into politics. That is a field within the pale of the law and in it you can have scope for all the energy and activity and intensity of life you long for, with all the element of chance which you find so attractive." And when the young man has had his fling there and tires of it then something else can be attempted. But to try to crush desire and curb the outrushing life is both foolish and impossible. We can only direct it. There are, of course, certain gross desires that must be gotten rid of by the most direct and least objectionable method, and when one really desires to be free from a given vice or moral weakness and sets earnestly and intelligently about it his release is not so difficult as the complete tyranny of most vices would lead one to suppose. There is a process by which any of us may be free if we will take the trouble to patiently put it into practice. This method will apply to any desire from which we wish to be released. For example, let us take the person who has a settled desire for alcoholic stimulants but really wishes to be rid of it forever. Many people who are thus afflicted to the point where they occasionally become intoxicated feel, when they recover their normal condition, that no price would be too great to pay for freedom from this humiliating habit. As a rule such a man tries to close his eyes to his shame and forget it, promising himself that he will be stronger when the temptation again assails him. But it is just this putting it aside, this casting it out of his mind, that perpetuates his weakness. He instinctively shrinks from dwelling upon the thought of whither he is drifting. So he puts the unpleasant subject aside altogether and when the inner desire asserts itself again he finds himself precisely as helpless as before. Now, his certain method of escape from this tyranny of desire is to turn his mind resolutely to an examination of the whole question. Let him look the facts in the face, however humiliating they may be. He should call his imagination to his assistance. It should be used to picture to himself his future if he does not succeed in breaking up the unfortunate slavery of the desire nature. He should think of the fact that as he grows older the situation grows worse. He should picture himself as the helpless, repulsive sot, with feeble body and weakening mind, and reflect upon the humiliation he must endure, the poverty he must face, and the physical and mental pain he must bear in the future if he now fails to break the desire ties that bind him. This creates in him a feeling of repulsion toward the cause of it all; and if he continues to think daily upon this hideous picture of what he is slowly drifting toward--if he daily regards it all with a feeling of slight repulsion--then even within a month or two he will find that his desire for drink is slowly fading out. This is as true of all other desires that enslave us. The desire for alcoholic stimulants merely illustrates the principle involved. Any desire from which one wishes to be free may be escaped by the same method. But one who would free himself from the desire-nature should not make the mistake of creating a feeling of intense hostility toward the thing he seeks to escape; for hatred is also a tie. He should merely reach a position of complete indifference. He should think of it not with settled hostility, but with slight repulsion; and if he does that daily, mentally dwelling upon the pain and humiliation it causes, he will find the ties loosening, the desire weakening. Desire is a force that may be beneficial or detrimental, according to its use. As we may eradicate a desire so may we create a desire. How, then, may one who seeks the highest self-development use desire, this propulsive force of nature, to help himself forward? He should desire spiritual progress most earnestly, for without such desire he cannot succeed. Therefore if the aspirant does not have the ardent desire for spiritual illumination he must create it. To accomplish this let him again call imagination to his assistance. Let him picture himself as having his power for usefulness many times multiplied by occult development. He should think of himself as possessing the inner sight that enables him to understand the difficulties of others and to comprehend their sorrows. He should daily think of the fact that this would so broaden and quicken his sympathies that he would be enormously more useful in the world than he can now possibly be and that he could become a source of happiness to thousands. Let him reflect that as he gets farther along in occult development and in unselfishness and spirituality he may have the inestimable privilege of coming into contact with some of the exalted intelligences that watch over and assist the struggling aspirants on their upward way. He should daily recall the fact that he is now moving forward toward a freer, richer, more joyous life than he has yet known and that every effort brings him nearer to its realization. Thus dwelling on the subject in its various aspects he creates the ardent desire that serves to propel him forward. If he feels that these things make an ideal a little too high for him at present he may reach that point by degrees. He may at first dwell in thought upon the personal satisfaction that would come from the possession of astral sight. Let him reflect upon what it would mean to be conscious of the invisible world; to have all its wonders laid open before him; to be able to consciously meet the so-called dead, including his own friends and relatives; to be able to have the positive personal proof that we survive the death of the physical body; to be able to become one of the "invisible helpers" of the world; to have available the priceless advantages of the astral region and to bring the consciousness of all this into the physical life. That is certainly something worth all the time and effort required to attain it. Thus thinking constantly of the widened life and added powers it would confer, the desire to move forward in self-development will be greatly stimulated. But the student should always keep it in mind that the real purpose of acquiring new powers is to increase his capacity for service to the race, and that he who falls short of that ideal walks upon dangerous ground. The second requisite is a firm will. It should not be forgotten that an unusual and difficult thing is being attempted in which a person of weak will cannot possibly hope to succeed. Even in the ordinary life of the world considerable will power is essential to success. To succeed in business, to become expert in a profession, or to completely master an art, requires strong will, determination, perseverance. The difficulties in occult development are still greater and, while it is true that any degree of effort is well worth while, the weaklings will not go far. Only those with the indomitable will that knows neither surrender nor compromise may hope for a large measure of success. Once the will is thoroughly aroused and brought into action every hindrance in the way will be swept aside. "The human will, that force unseen, The offspring of a deathless soul, Can hew a way to any goal Tho' walls of granite intervene. * * * * * "Be not impatient of delay, But wait as one who understands. When spirit rises and commands The gods are ready to obey." Mighty, indeed, is this force when aroused. But a person may be easily deceived about his will. He is likely to think that his will is much stronger than it really is. He may say to himself, "Oh, yes, I would go through anything for the sake of the higher life and spiritual illumination." But that is no guarantee that after a few months of monotonous work he may not abandon it unless he adopts the wise plan of strengthening his will as he moves forward. Let him begin this by testing his present strength of will, but let him not be discouraged by the result. He should remember that whatever he lacks in will power he can evolve by proper effort. To find out whether he really has much strength of will a person may begin to observe to what extent he permits his daily plans to be modified, or entirely changed, by the things that run counter to his will. Does he hold steadfastly to his purpose or does he weakly surrender to small obstacles? Has he the will power to even begin the day as he has planned it? The evening before he decides that he will rise at six o'clock the next morning. He knows there are certain excellent reasons why he should do so and he retires with the matter fully decided. It is positively settled that at exactly six o'clock the day's program shall begin. But when the clock strikes that hour the next morning he feels strongly disinclined to obey the summons. It involves some bodily discomfort to rise at that moment and he concludes that, after all, perhaps he was a bit hasty the evening before in fixing upon that hour! Whereupon he reconsiders the matter and makes it seven; and when that time arrives he generously extends it to eight o'clock. The hour, of course, is unimportant. But whatever may have been the hour that was previously determined upon the keeping of that determination is of the greatest importance and the failure to put the resolution into effect is evidence of the possession of a weak will. Now all this proves that such persons have very little real will power, for they permit the desire for trifling bodily comfort to set their plans aside. Such persons are still slaves to the physical body and weakly permit it to upset carefully outlined programs. They are not yet ready for good work in occult development, where real success can come only to those who have steadfast strength of purpose. People who fail to assert the will and bring the body into complete subjection probably little realize what a price they pay for a trifling physical pleasure; for until we voluntarily take the right course we have not escaped the evolutionary necessity of compulsion and may reasonably expect sooner or later to be thrown into an environment that will apply the stimulus we still need to arouse the will. It may be unpleasant while it is occurring, but what better fortune could befall an indolent man than to find himself in circumstances where his poverty or other necessity compels him to subordinate bodily comfort to the reign of the will? Nature provides the lessons we require. We may wisely co-operate with her and thus escape the sting. But so long as we need the lesson we may be quite sure that it awaits us. All the business activities of the world are developing the will. Through them will and desire work together in evolving latent powers. Desire arouses will power. A man desires wealth and the desire plunges him into business activities and stimulates the will by which he overcomes all the difficulties that lie in his way. Ardent desire for an education arouses the will of the student and the awakened will triumphs over poverty and all other barriers between him and the coveted diploma. If a man stands at a lower point in evolution where he has not the ambition for intellectual culture nor for fame nor for wealth, but only the desire for shelter and food, still that primitive desire forces him into action; and while his will power will be evolved only in proportion to the strength of the desire that prompts him, it must nevertheless grow. Instead of rising at a certain hour because the will decrees it he may rise only because he knows his livelihood depends upon it. But he is learning the same lesson--the overcoming of the inertia of the physical body--albeit it is compulsory instead of voluntary. But all this is unconscious evolution. It is the long, slow, painful process. It is the only way possible for those who are not wise enough to co-operate with nature in her evolutionary work and thus rise above the necessity of compulsion. How, then, may we develop the will when it is so weak that we are still the slaves of nature instead of the masters of destiny? Will power, like any other faculty, may be cultivated and made strong. To do this one may plan in advance what he will do under certain circumstances and then carry out the program without evasion or hesitation when the time arrives. His forethought will enable him to do this if he does not undertake things too difficult at first. Let him resolve to do at a certain hour some small thing which, in the ordinary course of his duties, he sees is necessary but unpleasant; and then firmly resolve in advance that exactly at the appointed time he will do it. Thus fortified before the trial comes he will probably go successfully through with it. After once deciding upon the time there should be no postponement and not an instant's delay when the moment arrives. One of the things we have to learn is to overcome the inertia of the physical body and many people are not really awake on the physical plane because they have not done so. To a certain extent they are "dead" within the physical body for it is a condition much nearer death than that supposed death of one who no longer has the physical body. The inert mass of physical matter in which such people are functioning leaves them only half alive until they have aroused themselves from its domination. They remind one of the lines: "Life is a mystery, death is a doubt, And some folks are dead While they're walking about!" This inertia of the physical body that so often renders people nearly useless is very largely a matter of habit and can be overcome to a surprising degree by simply using a little will-power. Everybody is familiar with the fact that it is sometimes much easier to think and act than at other times. But perhaps it is not so well known that the dull periods can invariably be overcome by an effort of the will and the physical body be made to do its proper work. An actor or lecturer after months of continuous work may find the brain and body growing tired and dull. He may feel when going before his audience that he has not an idea nor the wit to express it were someone else to furnish it. Yet by an effort of the will he can quickly overcome the condition and change from stupidity to mental alertness and intensity of thought. The self is never tired. It is only the physical body that grows weary. It is true that it has its limitations and must not be overtaxed and driven beyond endurance as a tired horse is sometimes cruelly urged forward with whip and spur. Judgment must always be used in determining one's capacity for work. But that which is to be done should never be done draggingly, with the inertia of the physical body marring the work. We should be fully awake instead of "dead" while we "are walking about." If a person resolves to be the master of the body he may soon acquire the power to arouse it to activity and alertness during all his waking hours, very much as one may acquire the habit of keen observation and be conscious of what is occurring in his vicinity instead of being carelessly unconscious of the major portion of what is going on immediately about him. This matter of giving attention to the things that may properly engage the mind, and of using the will to arouse and control it, is of very great importance. Is it not what we call "paying attention" that makes the connection between the ego and the objective world? Giving attention is a process of consciousness. The person who fails in attention misses the purpose of life and throws away valuable time and opportunity. To give attention is to be alive and awake and in a condition to make the most of limited physical life. Yet many people cannot give sustained attention to an ordinary conversation nor direct the mind with sufficient precision to state a simple fact without wandering aimlessly about in the effort, bringing in various incidental matters until the original subject, instead of being made clear, is obscured in a maze of unimportant details or lost sight of altogether. Such habits of mind should be put resolutely aside by one who would hasten self-development. The attention should be fixed deliberately upon the subject in hand, whatever it may be, and nothing should be permitted to break the connection between that and the mind. Whether it is a conversation or a book, or a manual task, or a problem being silently worked out intellectually, it should have undivided attention until the mind is ready for something else. Perhaps few of us give to any subject the close attention which alone can prove its own effectiveness and demonstrate the fact that there goes with such steadily sustained attention a subtle power of extended, or accentuated, consciousness. When ten minutes is given to a certain subject and other thoughts are constantly intruding, so that when the ten minutes have passed only five minutes have actually been devoted to the subject, the result is by no means a half of what would have been accomplished had the whole of the ten minutes been given to uninterrupted attention. The time thus spent in wavering attention is practically without effect. The connection between mind and subject has not been complete. Mind and subject were, so to say, out of focus. Attention must be sustained to the point where it becomes concentration. The mind must be used as a sun-glass can be used. Hold the glass between sun and paper, out of focus, for an hour and nothing will happen. A yellow circle of light falls on the paper and that is all. But bring it into perfect focus, concentrating the rays to the finest possible point, and the paper turns brown and finally bursts into the fire that will consume it. They are the same rays that were previously ineffective. Concentration produced results. The mind must be brought under such complete control of the will that it can be manipulated like a search-light, turned in this direction or that, or flung full upon some obscure subject and held steadily there till it illuminates every detail of it, as the search-light sends a dazzling ray through space and shows every rock and tree on a hillside far away through the darkness of the night. The third necessity is keen intelligence. The force of desire, directed by the will, must be supplemented by an alert mind. There is a popular notion that good motives are sufficient in themselves and that when one has the desire to attain spiritual illumination, plus the will to achieve, nothing more is needed but purity of purpose. But this is a misconception. It is true that the mystic makes devotion the vital thing in his spiritual growth; and it is also true that the three paths of action, knowledge and devotion blend and become one at a higher stage. But while there are methods of development in which intellect is not at first made a chief factor it can by no means be ignored in the long-run; nor are we now considering those methods. A good intellect, therefore, is a necessary part of the equipment. Good motives play a most important part, indeed, in occult progress. They safeguard the aspirant on his upward way. Without pure motives, without a large measure of unselfishness, the greatest dangers would encompass him. But good motives cannot take the place of good sense and relieve him of the necessity of thinking. He must develop judgment and discrimination. There are things he must know, and he must use his knowledge, or difficulties will follow no matter how noble may be his intentions. Suppose, for illustration, that two men set out upon a dark might to cross a wild and rugged piece of ground--one with bad motives and the other with good. One is going out to rob a house and if need be, to kill anybody who might try to interfere with his plans. His motives are very bad but he has perfect knowledge of the dangerous ground he is to cross and he will therefore travel over it in safety. The other man has the best of motives. He is going to spend the night with a sick and helpless neighbor. But he has no knowledge of the rough and treacherous ground he must cross in the darkness and his good motives will not insure him against stumbling over the stones or falling into a ditch and breaking his arm. Good motives are not enough. We must know! Progress in occultism is impossible without knowledge. But how is a keen, alert intelligence to be acquired if we do not possess it? Like any other latent faculty or power it may be evolved. As the physical strength may be steadily increased by constant exercise of the muscles, so mind may increase in power by systematic work. It should be exercised in original thinking. A stated period, if only a quarter of an hour daily, can be set aside for the purpose. A book on a serious subject will furnish material but the too common method of reading, of following the author lazily and accepting whatever he sets forth as a matter of course, is of little value. One must read with discrimination, receiving the ideas offered as a juryman would receive testimony from a witness, considering it from every possible viewpoint, examining it in the light of known facts, turning it over in the mind, weighing it thoughtfully, and accepting or rejecting according to its reasonableness or its lack of reason. In such mental work for intellectual growth each paragraph can be considered by itself and only a small portion of the time should be given to the reading while the remainder is devoted to pondering over what has been read. Of course a specific study is an advantage and perhaps nothing is better than to study occultism, thinking deeply upon the problems of human evolution. Another method that goes admirably with such work is the close observation and study of all the life in manifestation about us. We should try to comprehend people, to observe and understand them. Every word, act and facial expression has its meaning to be caught and interpreted. All this will not only sharpen the wits but also strengthen human sympathy for it enables us the better to know the difficulties and sorrows of others. If such practices are followed faithfully day by day the growth will be steady. Still another useful practice is to exercise the imagination, the art of creating mental pictures with no physical object present. The face of an absent friend can be called up in the mind and reproduced in every detail--the color of the eyes and hair, the various moods and expressions. Or one's childhood home can be recalled and the imagination made to reconstruct it. The house being complete the landscape can be reproduced, with the hills, trees and roads. Repeated practice at "seeing mentally" is of the greatest value in occult development. While the aspirant is thus working to improve the three essential qualifications of desire, will and intelligence--to intensify his desire to possess powers for the helping of others, to strengthen the will to get such powers, and to steadily improve the intellect--he should also be giving most earnest attention to meditation, for it is through this practice that the most remarkable results may be produced in the transformation of his bodies, visible and invisible, through which the ego manifests itself in the physical world. In the degree that these are organized and made sensitive and responsive they cease to be limitations of consciousness. Such sensitiveness and responsiveness may be brought about by meditation, together with proper attention to the purification of the physical and astral bodies; for purity and sensitiveness go together. Meditation is a subject so very important to the aspirant that specific instructions should guide him. The average person, used to the turbulent life of occidental civilization, will find it a sufficiently difficult matter to control the mind, and to finally acquire the power to direct it as he desires, even with all the conditions in his favor. The serene hours of morning are the most favorable of the twenty-four for meditation. Regularity has a magic of its own and the hour should be the same each morning. To be alone in surroundings as quiet as possible is another essential. The most desirable time for meditation is soon after awakening in the morning. Before turning the mind to any of the business affairs of the day let the aspirant sit calmly down and mediate upon any wholesome thought, like patience, courage or compassion, keeping the mind steadily upon the subject for five minutes. Two very important things are being accomplished by such meditation. First, we are getting control of the mind and learning to direct it where and how we choose; and, second, we are attracting and building into the bodies we possess certain grades of imponderable matter that will make thinking and acting along these lines easier and easier for us until they are established habits and we actually become in daily life patient, courageous and compassionate. Whatever qualities or virtues we desire to possess may be gained through the art of meditation and the effort to live up to the ideal dwelt upon daily by the mind. While it is absolutely true that any human being can make of himself that which he desires to be--can literally raise himself to any ideal he is capable of conceiving--it must not be supposed that it can be done in a short time and by intermittent effort. We sometimes hear it said that all we need do is to realize that all power is within us, when, presto! we are the thing we would be! It is quite true that we must realize their existence before we can call the latent powers into expression; but the work of arousing the latent into the active is a process of growth, of actual evolutionary change. The physical body as it is now is not sensitive enough to respond to subtle vibrations. Its brain is not capable of receiving and registering the delicate vibrations sent outward by the ego, and the task of changing it so that it can do so is not a trifling or easy one. But every effort produces its effect and to the persistent and patient devotee of self-development the final result is certain. But it is not a matter of miraculous accomplishment. It is a process of inner growth. There are, it is quite true, cases in which people who have entered upon this method of self-development have, in a short time, attained spiritual illumination, becoming fully conscious of the invisible world and its inhabitants while awake in the physical body; extending the horizon of consciousness to include both worlds, and coming into possession of the higher clairvoyance that enables one to trace past causes and modify impending effects. But such people are those who have given so much attention to self-development in past lives that they have now but little more to do in order to come into full possession of occult powers. Sometimes it requires little more than the turning of their attention to the matter. Becoming a member of the Theosophical Society or seriously taking up theosophical studies is sometimes the final step that leads to the opening of the inner sight. But how can one know to what point he may have advanced in the past and where he now stands? How may we know whether there is but a little work ahead or a great deal? We cannot know; nor is it important to know. The person who should take up the task merely because he thinks there is little to do would certainly fail. The very fact that he would not venture upon the undertaking if he thought the task a difficult one is evidence that he has not the qualifications necessary for the success of the occult student. Unless he is filled with a longing to possess greater power to be used in the service of humanity, and fired with an enthusiasm that would hesitate at no difficulties, he has not yet reached the point in his evolution where he awaits only the final steps that will make him a disciple. But even the absence of the keen desire for spiritual progress, which is the best evidence of the probability of success, should not deter anybody from entering upon the systematic study of theosophy and devoting to it all the time and energy he can; nor should the thought that many years might pass without producing any very remarkable results lead him to conclude that the undertaking would not be a profitable one. The time will come with each human being when he will step out of the great throng that drifts with the tide and enter upon the course of conscious evolution, assisting nature instead of ignoring her beneficent plan; and since it is but a question of time the sooner a beginning is made the better, for the sooner will suffering cease. There should be a word of warning about the folly of trying to reach spiritual illumination by artificial methods. Astral sight is sometimes quickly developed by crystal gazing and also by a certain regulation of the breathing. For two reasons such methods should be avoided. One is that any powers thus gained can not be permanent, and the other is that they may be more or less dangerous. Many people have made physical wrecks of themselves or have become insane by some of these methods. There are those who advertise to quickly teach clairvoyance, for a consideration, as though spiritual powers could really be conferred instead of evolved! It is true that efforts toward the evolution of such powers may be enormously aided by teachers, but such instruction can not be bought, and the offer to furnish it for money is the best evidence of its worthlessness. Those who teach this ancient wisdom select their own pupils from the morally fit, and tuition can be paid only in devotion to truth and service to humanity. That is the only road that leads to instruction worth having, and until the aspirant is firmly upon that sound moral ground he is much better off without powers, the selfish use of which would lead to certain disaster. But how shall the pupil find the teacher? He need not find him, at first, so far as the limited consciousness is concerned. Long before he knows anything of it in his waking hours he may be receiving instruction while he is out of the physical body during the hours of sleep. The teacher finds the pupil long before the pupil suspects that the teacher exists; and since it is the pupil who has the limited consciousness it is quite natural that it should be so. Thus it is inevitable that all who enter upon the way that leads to spiritual illumination must long remain ignorant of the fact that any teachers are interested in them or that anybody is giving the slightest attention to them. Naturally enough one cannot know until the moment arrives when his brain has become sufficiently sensitive to retain a memory of at least a fragment of his superphysical experiences. But what leads to the selection of the pupil? His earnestness, his unselfishness, his devotion, his spiritual aspirations. There is an old occult maxim to the effect that when the pupil is ready the Master is waiting. They have need of many more than are ready to be taught. Those who lead and enlighten watch eagerly for all who will qualify themselves to enter upon the upward way. Every human being gets exactly what he fits himself to receive. He cannot possibly be overlooked. By his spiritual aspiration each lights the lamp in the window of his soul and to the watchers from the heights that light against the background of the overwhelming materiality of our times must be as the sun in a cloudless sky. Other things come later but these simpler things, to realize the necessity for conscious evolution, to comprehend the method of soul development, to take full control of the mind and the physical body, to resolutely curb the grosser desires and to give free rein to the higher aspirations are the first infant steps in the self-development that leads to illumination. Then we begin to discover that this very desire for greater spiritual power is generating a force that carries us forward and upward. We soon begin to observe actual progress. The brain becomes clearer, the intellect keener. Our sphere of influence grows wider, our friendships become warmer. Aspiration lifts us into a new and radiant life, and the wondrous powers of the soul begin to become a conscious possession. And to this soul growth there is no limit. The aspirant will go on and on in this life and others with an ever-extending horizon of consciousness until he has the mental grasp of a Plato, the vivid imagination of a Dante, the intuitive perception of a Shakespeare. It is not by the outward acquirement of facts that such men become wise and great. It is by developing the soul from within until it illuminates the brain with that flood of light called genius. And when, through the strife and storm, we finally reach the tranquility of the inner peace we shall comprehend the great fact that life really is joy when lived in the possession of spiritual power and in perfect harmony with the laws of the universe. With even these first steps in occult achievement the aspirant enters upon a higher and more satisfactory life than he has ever known. Literally he becomes a new man. Gradually the old desires and impulses fade away and new and nobler aspirations take their place. He has learned obedience to law only to find that obedience was the road to conquest. He has risen above the gross and sensuous by the power of conscious evolution; and, looking back upon what he has been with neither regret nor apology, he comprehends that significant thought of Tennyson: On stepping stones of their dead selves men rise to higher things. 
17009	----	STUDIES IN OCCULTISM by H.P. BLAVATSKY STUDIES IN OCCULTISM A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H.P. BLAVATSKY NO. 1 PRACTICAL OCCULTISM OCCULTISM VERSUS THE OCCULT ARTS THE BLESSINGS OF PUBLICITY POINT LOMA EDITION The Aryan Theosophical Press Point Loma, California 1910 See Book List at the end of this volume for the other numbers of this Series and also for other Theosophical literature. CONTENTS PAGE Practical Occultism 1 From _Lucifer_, April, 1888 Occultism versus the Occult Arts 17 From _Lucifer_, May, 1888 The Blessings of Publicity 42 From _Lucifer_, August, 1891 Occultism is not magic, though magic is one of its tools. Occultism is not the acquirement of powers, whether psychic or intellectual, though both are its servants. Neither is occultism the pursuit of happiness, as men understand the word; for the first step is sacrifice, the second, renunciation. Occultism is the science of life, the art of living.--_Lucifer_, Vol. I, p. 7. PRACTICAL OCCULTISM IMPORTANT TO STUDENTS As some of the letters in the Correspondence of this month show, there are many people who are looking for practical instruction in Occultism. It becomes necessary, therefore, to state once for all:-- (_a_) The essential difference between theoretical and practical Occultism; or what is generally known as Theosophy on the one hand, and Occult science on the other, and:-- (_b_) The nature of the difficulties involved in the study of the latter. It is easy to become a Theosophist. Any person of average intellectual capacities, and a leaning toward the metaphysical; of pure, unselfish life, who finds more joy in helping his neighbor than in receiving help himself; one who is ever ready to sacrifice his own pleasures for the sake of other people; and who loves Truth, Goodness, and Wisdom for their own sake, not for the benefit they may confer--is a Theosophist. But it is quite another matter to put oneself upon the path which leads to the knowledge of what is good to do, as to the right discrimination of good from evil; a path which also leads a man to that power through which he can do the good he desires, often without even apparently lifting a finger. Moreover, there is one important fact with which the student should be made acquainted. Namely, the enormous, almost limitless responsibility assumed by the teacher for the sake of the pupil. From the Gurus of the East who teach openly or secretly, down to the few Kabalists in Western lands who undertake to teach the rudiments of the Sacred Science to their disciples--those western Hierophants being often themselves ignorant of the danger they incur--one and all of these "Teachers" are subject to the same inviolable law. From the moment they begin _really_ to teach, from the instant they confer _any_ power--whether psychic, mental, or physical--on their pupils, they take upon themselves _all_ the sins of that pupil, in connexion with the Occult Sciences, whether of omission or commission, until the moment when initiation makes the pupil a Master and responsible in his turn. There is a weird and mystic religious law, greatly reverenced and acted upon in the Greek, half-forgotten in the Roman Catholic, and absolutely extinct in the Protestant Church. It dates from the earliest days of Christianity and has its basis in the law just stated, of which it was a symbol and an expression. This is the dogma of the absolute sacredness of the relation between the god-parents who stand sponsors for a child.[A] These tacitly take upon themselves all the sins of the newly baptized child--(anointed, as at the initiation, a mystery truly!)--until the day when the child becomes a responsible unit, knowing good and evil. Thus it is clear why the "Teachers" are so reticent, and why "Chelas" are required to serve a seven years probation to prove their fitness, and develop the qualities necessary to the security of both Master and pupil. Occultism is not magic. It is _comparatively_ easy to learn the trick of spells and the methods of using the subtler, but still material, forces of physical nature; the powers of the animal soul in man are soon awakened; the forces which his love, his hate, his passion, can call into operation, are readily developed. But this is Black Magic--_Sorcery_. For it is the motive, _and the motive alone_, which makes any exercise of power become black, malignant, or white, beneficent Magic. It is impossible to employ _spiritual_ forces if there is the slightest tinge of selfishness remaining in the operator. For, unless the intention is entirely unalloyed, the spiritual will transform itself into the psychic, act on the astral plane, and dire results may be produced by it. The powers and forces of animal nature can equally be used by the selfish and revengeful, as by the unselfish and the all-forgiving; the powers and forces of spirit lend themselves only to the perfectly pure in heart--and this is Divine Magic. What are then the conditions required to become a student of the "Divina Sapientia"? For let it be known that no such instruction can possibly be given unless these certain conditions are complied with, and rigorously carried out during the years of study. This is a _sine quâ non_. No man can swim unless he enters deep water. No bird can fly unless its wings are grown, and it has space before it and courage to trust itself to the air. A man who will wield a two-edged sword, must be a thorough master of the blunt weapon, if he would not injure himself--or what is worse--others, at the first attempt. To give an approximate idea of the conditions under which alone the study of Divine Wisdom can be pursued with safety, that is without danger that Divine will give place to Black Magic, a page is given from the "private rules," with which every instructor in the East is furnished. The few passages which follow are chosen from a great number and explained in brackets. * * * * * 1. The place selected for receiving instruction must be a spot calculated not to distract the mind, and filled with "influence-evolving" (magnetic) objects. The five sacred colors gathered in a circle must be there among other things. The place must be free from any malignant influences hanging about in the air. [The place must be set apart, and used for no other purpose. The five "sacred colors" are the prismatic hues arranged in a certain way, as these colors are very magnetic. By "malignant influences" are meant any disturbances through strifes, quarrels, bad feelings, etc., as these are said to impress themselves immediately on the astral light, i.e., in the atmosphere of the place, and to hang "about in the air." This first condition seems easy enough to accomplish, yet--on further consideration, it is one of the most difficult ones to obtain.] 2. Before the disciple shall be permitted to study "face to face," he has to acquire preliminary understanding in a select company of other lay _upâsakas_ (disciples), the number of whom must be odd. ["Face to face" means in this instance a study independent or apart from others, when the disciple gets his instruction _face to face_ either with himself (his higher, Divine Self) or--his guru. It is then only that each receives _his due_ of information, according to the use he has made of his knowledge. This can happen only toward the end of the cycle of instruction.] 3. Before thou (the teacher) shalt impart to thy Lanoo (disciple) the good (holy) words of Lamrin, or shalt permit him "to make ready" for _Dubjed_, thou shalt take care that his mind is thoroughly purified and at peace with all, especially _with his other Selves_. Otherwise the words of Wisdom and of the good Law, shall scatter and be picked up by the winds. ["Lamrin" is a work of practical instructions, by Tson-kha-pa, in two portions, one for ecclesiastical and exoteric purposes, the other for esoteric use. "To make ready" for _Dubjed_, is to prepare the vessels used for seership, such as mirrors and crystals. The "other selves," refers to the fellow students. Unless the greatest harmony reigns among the learners, _no_ success is possible. It is the teacher who makes the selections according to the magnetic and electric natures of the students, bringing together and adjusting most carefully the positive and the negative elements.] 4. The _upâsakas_ while studying must take care to be united as the fingers on one hand. Thou shalt impress upon their minds that whatever hurts one should hurt the others, and if the rejoicing of one finds no echo in the breasts of the others, then the required conditions are absent, and it is useless to proceed. [This can hardly happen if the preliminary choice made was consistent with the magnetic requirements. It is known that Chelas otherwise promising and fit for the reception of truth, had to wait for years on account of their temper and the impossibility they felt to put themselves _in tune_ with their companions. For--] 5. The co-disciples must be tuned by the guru as the strings of a lute (_vina_) each different from the others, yet each emitting sounds in harmony with all. Collectively they must form a key-board answering in all its parts to thy lightest touch (the touch of the Master). Thus their minds shall open for the harmonies of Wisdom, to vibrate as knowledge through each and all, resulting in effects pleasing to the presiding gods (tutelary or patron-angels) and useful to the Lanoo. So shall Wisdom be impressed forever on their hearts and the harmony of the law shall never be broken. 6. Those who desire to acquire the knowledge leading to the _Siddhis_ (occult powers) have to renounce all the vanities of life and of the world (here follows enumeration of the Siddhis). 7. None can feel the difference between himself and his fellow-students, such as "I am the wisest," "I am more holy and pleasing to the teacher, or in my community, than my brother," etc.,--and remain an upâsaka. His thoughts must be predominantly fixed upon his heart, chasing therefrom every hostile thought to any living being. It (the heart) must be full of the feeling of its non-separateness from the rest of beings as from all in Nature; otherwise no success can follow. 8. A _Lanoo_ (disciple) has to dread external living influence alone (magnetic emanations from living creatures). For this reason while at one with all, in his _inner nature_, he must take care to separate his outer (external) body from every foreign influence: none must drink out of, or eat in his cup but himself. He must avoid bodily contact (i.e., being touched or touch) with human, as with animal being. [No pet animals are permitted, and it is forbidden even to touch certain trees and plants. A disciple has to live, so to say, in his own atmosphere in order to individualize it for occult purposes.] 9. The mind must remain blunt to all but the universal truths in nature, lest the "Doctrine of the Heart" should become only the "Doctrine of the Eye," (i.e., empty exoteric ritualism). 10. No animal food of whatever kind, nothing that has life in it should be taken by the disciple. No wine, no spirits, or opium should be used; for these are like the _Lhama-yin_ (evil spirits), who fasten upon the unwary, they devour the understanding. [Wine and spirits are supposed to contain and preserve the bad magnetism of all the men who helped in their fabrication; the meat of each animal, to preserve the psychic characteristics of its kind.] 11. Meditation, abstinence in all, the observation of moral duties, gentle thoughts, good deeds and kind words, as good will to all and entire oblivion of Self, are the most efficacious means of obtaining knowledge and preparing for the reception of higher wisdom. 12. It is only by virtue of a strict observance of the foregoing rules that a Lanoo can hope to acquire in good time the Siddhis of the Arhats, the growth which makes him become gradually One with the Universal ALL. * * * * * These 12 extracts are taken from among some 73 rules, to enumerate which would be useless as they would be meaningless in Europe. But even these few are enough to show the immensity of the difficulties which beset the path of the would-be "Upâsaka," who has been born and bred in Western lands.[B] All western, and especially English, education is instinct with the principle of emulation and strife; each boy is urged to learn more quickly, to outstrip his companions, and to surpass them in every possible way. What is mis-called "friendly rivalry" is assiduously cultivated, and the same spirit is fostered and strengthened in every detail of life. With such ideas "educated into" him from his childhood, how can a Western bring himself to feel towards his co-students "as the fingers on one hand"? Those co-students, too, are not of his _own selection_, or chosen by himself from personal sympathy and appreciation. They are chosen by his teacher on far other grounds, and he who would be a student must _first_ be strong enough to kill out in his heart all feelings of dislike and antipathy to others. How many Westerns are ready even to attempt this in earnest? And then the details of daily life, the command not to touch even the hand of one's nearest and dearest. How contrary to Western notions of affection and good feeling! How cold and hard it seems. Egotistical too, people would say, to abstain from giving pleasure to others for the sake of one's own development. Well, let those who think so defer till another lifetime the attempt to enter the path in real earnest. But let them not glory in their own fancied unselfishness. For, in reality, it is only the seeming appearances which they allow to deceive them, the conventional notions, based on emotionalism and gush, or so-called courtesy, things of the unreal life, not the dictates of Truth. But even putting aside these difficulties, which may be considered "external," though their importance is none the less great, how are students in the West to "attune themselves" to harmony as here required of them? So strong has personality grown in Europe and America, that there is no school of artists even whose members do not hate and are not jealous of each other. "Professional" hatred and envy have become proverbial; men seek each to benefit himself at all costs, and even the so-called courtesies of life are but a hollow mask covering these demons of hatred and jealousy. In the East the spirit of "non-separateness" is inculcated as steadily from childhood up, as in the West the spirit of rivalry. Personal ambition, personal feelings and desires, are not encouraged to grow so rampant there. When the soil is naturally good, it is cultivated in the right way, and the child grows into a man in whom the habit of subordination of one's lower to one's higher Self is strong and powerful. In the West men think that their own likes and dislikes of other men and things are guiding principles for them to act upon, even when they do not make of them the law of their lives and seek to impose them upon others. Let those who complain that they have learned little in the Theosophical Society lay to heart the words written in an article in the _Path_ for last February:--"The key in each degree is the _aspirant himself_." It is not "the fear of God" which is "the beginning of Wisdom," but the knowledge of SELF which is WISDOM ITSELF. How grand and true appears, thus, to the student of Occultism who has commenced to realize some of the foregoing truths, the answer given by the Delphic Oracle to all who came seeking after Occult Wisdom--words repeated and enforced again and again by the wise Socrates:--MAN KNOW THYSELF. Chelaship has nothing _whatever_ to do with means of subsistence or anything of the kind, for a man can isolate his mind entirely from his body and its surroundings. Chelaship is a _state of mind_, rather than a life according to hard and fast rules, on the physical plane. This applies especially to the earlier, probationary period, while the rules given in _Lucifer_ for April last pertain properly to a later stage, that of actual occult training and the development of occult powers and insight. These rules indicate, however, the mode of life which ought to be followed by all aspirants _so far as practicable_, since it is the most helpful to them in their aspirations. It should never be forgotten that Occultism is concerned with the _inner man_, who must be strengthened and freed from the dominion of the physical body and its surroundings, which must become his servants. Hence the _first_ and chief necessity of Chelaship is a spirit of absolute unselfishness and devotion to Truth; then follow self-knowledge and self-mastery. These are all-important; while outward observance of fixed rules of life is a matter of secondary moment.--_Lucifer_: IV, 348, note. OCCULTISM VERSUS THE OCCULT ARTS "I oft have heard, but ne'er believed till now, There are, who can by potent magic spells Bend to their crooked purpose Nature's laws." _Milton_ In this month's Correspondence several letters testify to the strong impression produced on some minds by our last month's article "Practical Occultism." Such letters go far to prove and strengthen two logical conclusions:-- (_a_) There are more well-educated and thoughtful men who believe in the existence of Occultism and Magic (the two differing vastly) than the modern materialist dreams of; and:-- (_b_) That most of the believers (comprising many theosophists) have no definite idea of the nature of Occultism and confuse it with the Occult sciences in general, the "Black art" included. Their representations of the powers it confers upon man, and of the means to be used to acquire them are as varied as they are fanciful. Some imagine that a master in the art, to show the way, is all that is needed to become a Zanoni. Others, that one has but to cross the Canal of Suez and go to India to bloom forth as a Roger Bacon or even a Count St. Germain. Many take for their ideal Margrave with his ever-renewing youth, and care little for the soul as the price paid for it. Not a few, mistaking "Witch-of-Endorism" pure and simple, for Occultism--"through the yawning Earth from Stygian gloom, call up the meager ghost to walks of light," and want, on the strength of this feat, to be regarded as full blown Adepts. "Ceremonial Magic" according to the rules mockingly laid down by Éliphas Lévi, is another imagined _alter ego_ of the philosophy of the Arhats of old. In short, the prisms through which Occultism appears, to those innocent of the philosophy, are as multicolored and varied as human fancy can make them. Will these candidates to Wisdom and Power feel very indignant if told the plain truth? It is not only useful, but it has now become _necessary_ to disabuse most of them and before it is too late. This truth may be said in a few words: There are not in the West half-a-dozen among the fervent hundreds who call themselves "Occultists," who have even an approximately correct idea of the nature of the Science they seek to master. With a few exceptions, they are all on the highway to Sorcery. Let them restore some order in the chaos that reigns in their minds, before they protest against this statement. Let them first learn the true relation in which the Occult Sciences stand to Occultism, and the difference between the two, and then feel wrathful if they still think themselves right. Meanwhile, let them learn that Occultism differs from Magic and other secret Sciences as the glorious Sun does from a rush-light, as the immutable and immortal Spirit of Man--the reflection of the absolute, causeless, and unknowable all,--differs from the mortal clay--the human body. In our highly civilized West, where modern languages have been formed, and words coined, in the wake of ideas and thoughts--as happened with every tongue--the more the latter became materialized in the cold atmosphere of Western selfishness and its incessant chase after the goods of this world, the less was there any need felt for the production of new terms to express that which was tacitly regarded as obsolete and exploded "superstition." Such words could answer only to ideas which a cultured man was scarcely supposed to harbor in his mind. "Magic," a synonym for jugglery; "Sorcery," an equivalent for crass ignorance; and "Occultism," the sorry relic of crack-brained, medieval Fire-philosophers, of the Jacob Boehmes and the St. Martins, are expressions believed more than amply sufficient to cover the whole field of "thimble-rigging." They are terms of contempt, and used generally only in reference to the dross and residues of the Dark Ages and its preceding aeons of paganism. Therefore have we no terms in the English tongue to define and shade the difference between such abnormal powers, or the sciences that lead to the acquisition of them, with the nicety possible in the Eastern languages--pre-eminently the Sanskrit. What do the words "miracle" and "enchantment" (words identical in meaning after all, as both express the idea of producing wonderful things by _breaking the laws of nature_ [!!] as explained by the accepted authorities) convey to the minds of those who hear, or who pronounce them? A Christian--_breaking_ "of the laws of nature," notwithstanding--while believing firmly in the _miracles_, because said to have been produced by God through Moses, will either scout the enchantments performed by Pharoah's magicians, or attribute them to the devil. It is the latter whom our pious enemies connect with Occultism, while their impious foes, the infidels, laugh at Moses, Magicians, and Occultists, and would blush to give one serious thought to such "superstitions." This, because there is no term in existence to show the difference; no words to express the lights and shadows and draw the line of demarcation between the sublime and the true, the absurd and the ridiculous. The latter are the theological interpretations which teach the "breaking of the laws of Nature" by man, God, or devil; the former--the _scientific_ "miracles" and enchantments of Moses and the Magicians _in accordance with natural laws_, both having been learned in all the Wisdom of the Sanctuaries, which were the "Royal Societies" of those days--and in true OCCULTISM. This last word is certainly misleading, translated as it stands from the compound word _Guptâ-Vidyâ_, "Secret Knowledge." But the knowledge of what? Some of the Sanskrit terms may help us. There are four (out of the many other) names of the various kinds of Esoteric Knowledge or Sciences given, even in the exoteric Purânas. There is (1) _Yajña-Vidyâ_,[C] knowledge of the occult powers awakened in Nature by the performance of certain religious ceremonies and rites. (2) _Mahâ-Vidyâ_, the "great knowledge," the magic of the Kabalists and of the _Tântrika_ worship, often Sorcery of the worst description. (3) _Guhyâ-Vidyâ_, knowledge of the mystic powers residing in Sound (Ether), hence in the _Mantras_ (chanted prayers or incantations) and depending on the rhythm and melody used; in other words a magical performance based on Knowledge of the Forces of Nature and their correlation; and (4) Âtma-Vidyâ, a term which is translated simply "Knowledge of the Soul," _true Wisdom_ by the Orientalists, but which means far more. This last is the only kind of Occultism that any Theosophist who admires _Light on the Path_, and who would be wise and unselfish, ought to strive after. All the rest is some branch of the "Occult Sciences," i.e., arts based on the knowledge of the ultimate essence of all things in the Kingdom of Nature--such as minerals, plants, and animals--hence of things pertaining to the realm of _material_ Nature, however invisible that essence may be, and howsoever much it has hitherto eluded the grasp of Science. Alchemy, Astrology, Occult Physiology, Chiromancy exist in Nature, and the _exact_ Sciences--perhaps so called because they are found in this age of paradoxical philosophies the reverse--have already discovered not a few of the secrets of the above _arts_. But clairvoyance, symbolized in India as the "Eye of Siva," called in Japan, "Infinite Vision," is _not_ Hypnotism, the illegitimate son of Mesmerism, and is not to be acquired by such arts. All the others may be mastered and results obtained, whether good, bad, or indifferent; but _Âtma-Vidyâ_ sets small value on them. It includes them all, and may even use them occasionally, but it does so after purifying them of their dross, for beneficent purposes, and taking care to deprive them of every element of selfish motive. Let us explain: Any man or woman can set himself or herself to study one or all of the above specified "Occult Arts" without any great previous preparation, and even without adopting any too restraining mode of life. One could even dispense with any lofty standard of morality. In the last case, of course, ten to one the student would blossom into a very decent kind of sorcerer, and tumble down headlong into black magic. But what can this matter? The _Voodoos_ and the _Dugpas_ eat, drink and are merry over hecatombs of victims of their infernal arts. And so do the amiable gentlemen vivisectionists and the _diploma-ed_ "Hypnotizers" of the Faculties of Medicine; the only difference between the two classes being that the Voodoos and the Dugpas are _conscious_, and the Charcot-Richet crew _unconscious_ Sorcerers. Thus, since both have to reap the fruits of their labors and achievements in the black art, the Western practitioners should not have the punishment and reputation without the profits and enjoyments they may get therefrom. For we say it again, _hypnotism_ and _vivisection_ as practised in such schools, are _Sorcery_ pure and simple, _minus_ a knowledge that the Voodoos and Dugpas enjoy, and which no Charcot-Richet can procure for himself in fifty years of hard study and experimental observation. Let then those who will dabble in magic, whether they understand its nature or not, but who find the rules imposed upon students too hard, and who, therefore, lay Âtma-Vidyâ or Occultism aside--go without it. Let them become magicians by all means, even though they do become _Voodoos_ and _Dugpas_ for the next ten incarnations. But the interest of our readers will probably center on those who are invincibly attracted towards the "Occult," yet who neither realize the true nature of what they aspire towards, nor have they become passion-proof, far less truly unselfish. How about these unfortunates, we shall be asked, who are thus rent in twain by conflicting forces? For it has been said too often to need repetition, and the fact itself is patent to any observer, that when once the desire for Occultism has really awakened in a man's heart, there remains for him no hope of peace, no place of rest and comfort in all the world. He is driven out into the wild and desolate spaces of life by an ever-gnawing unrest he cannot quell. His heart is too full of passion and selfish desire to permit him to pass the Golden Gate; he cannot find rest or peace in ordinary life. Must he then inevitably fall into sorcery and black magic, and through many incarnations heap up for himself a terrible Karma? Is there no other road for him? Indeed there is, we answer. Let him aspire to no higher than he feels able to accomplish. Let him not take a burden upon himself too heavy for him to carry. Without ever becoming a "Mahâtmâ," a Buddha, or a Great Saint, let him study the philosophy and the "Science of Soul," and he can become one of the modest benefactors of humanity, without any "superhuman" powers. _Siddhis_ (or the Arhat powers) are only for those who are able to "lead the life," to comply with the terrible sacrifices required for such a training, and to comply with them _to the very letter_. Let them know at once and remember always, that _true Occultism or Theosophy_ is the "Great Renunciation of SELF," unconditionally and absolutely, in thought as in action. It is ALTRUISM, and it throws him who practises it out of calculation of the ranks of the living altogether. "Not for himself, but for the world, he lives," as soon as he has pledged himself to the work. Much is forgiven during the first years of probation. But, no sooner is he "accepted" than his personality must disappear, and he has to become _a mere beneficent force in Nature_. There are two poles for him after that, two paths, and no midward place of rest. He has either to ascend laboriously, step by step, often through numerous incarnations and _no Devachanic break_, the golden ladder leading to Mahâtmâship (the _Arhat_ or _Bodhisattva_ condition), or--he will let himself slide down the ladder at the first false step, and roll down into _Dugpa-ship_.... All this is either unknown or left out of sight altogether. Indeed, one who is able to follow the silent evolution of the preliminary aspirations of the candidates, often finds strange ideas quietly taking possession of their minds. There are those whose reasoning powers have been so distorted by foreign influences that they imagine that animal passions can be so sublimated and elevated that their fury, force, and fire can, so to speak, be turned inwards; that they can be stored and shut up in one's breast, until their energy is, not expanded, but turned toward higher and more holy purposes; namely, _until their collective and unexpanded strength enables their possessor to enter the true Sanctuary of the Soul_ and stand therein in the presence of the _Master_--the Higher Self! For this purpose they will not struggle with their passions nor slay them. They will simply, by a strong effort of will put down the fierce flames and keep them at bay within their natures, allowing the fire to smolder under a thin layer of ashes. They submit joyfully to the torture of the Spartan boy who allowed the fox to devour his entrails rather than part with it. Oh, poor, blind visionaries! As well hope that a band of drunken chimney-sweeps, hot and greasy from their work, may be shut up in a Sanctuary hung with pure white linen, and that instead of soiling and turning it by their presence into a heap of dirty shreds, they will become masters in and of the sacred recess, and finally emerge from it as immaculate as that recess. Why not imagine that a dozen of skunks imprisoned in the pure atmosphere of a _Dgon-pa_ (a monastery) can issue out of it impregnated with all the perfumes of the incenses used?... Strange aberration of the human mind. Can it be so? Let us argue. The "Master" in the Sanctuary of our souls is "the Higher Self"--the divine spirit whose consciousness is based upon and derived solely (at any rate during the mortal life of the man in whom it is captive) from the Mind, which we have agreed to call the _Human Soul_ (the "Spiritual Soul" being the vehicle of the Spirit). In its turn the former (the _personal_ or human soul) is a compound in its highest form, of spiritual aspirations, volitions and divine love; and in its lower aspect, of animal desires and terrestrial passions imparted to it by its associations with its vehicle, the seat of all these. It thus stands as a link and a medium between the animal nature of man which its higher reason seeks to subdue, and his divine spiritual nature to which it gravitates, whenever it has the upper hand in its struggle with the _inner animal_. The latter is the instinctual "animal Soul" and is the hotbed of those passions, which, as just shown, are lulled instead of being killed, and locked up in their breasts by some imprudent enthusiasts. Do they still hope to turn thereby the muddy stream of the animal sewer into the crystalline waters of life? And where, on what neutral ground can they be imprisoned so as not to affect man? The fierce passions of love and lust are still alive and they are allowed to still remain in the place of their birth--_that same animal soul_; for both the higher and the lower portions of the "Human Soul" or Mind reject such inmates, though they cannot avoid being tainted with them as neighbors. The "Higher Self" or Spirit is as unable to assimilate such feelings as water to get mixed with oil or unclean liquid tallow. It is thus the mind alone--the sole link and medium between the man of earth and the Higher Self--that is the only sufferer, and which is in the incessant danger of being dragged down by those passions that may be reawakened at any moment, and perish in the abyss of matter. And how can it ever attune itself to the divine harmony of the highest Principle, when that harmony is destroyed by the mere presence, within the Sanctuary in preparation, of such animal passions? How can harmony prevail and conquer, when the soul is stained and distracted with the turmoil of passions and the terrestrial desires of the bodily senses, or even of the "Astral man"? For this "Astral"--the shadowy "double" (in the animal as in man)--is not the companion of the _divine Ego_ but of the _earthly body_. It is the link between the personal Self, the lower consciousness of _Manas_ and the Body, and is the vehicle of _transitory_, _not of immortal life_. Like the shadow projected by man, it follows his movements and impulses slavishly and mechanically, and leans therefore to matter without ever ascending to Spirit. It is only when the power of the passions is dead altogether, and when they have been crushed and annihilated in the retort of an unflinching will; when not only all the lusts and longings of the flesh are dead, but also the recognition of the personal Self is killed out and the "astral" has been reduced in consequence to a cipher, that the Union with the "Higher Self" can take place. Then when the "astral" reflects only the conquered man, the still living, but no more the longing, selfish personality, then the brilliant _Augoeides_, the divine Self, can vibrate in conscious harmony with both the poles of the human Entity--the man of matter purified, and the ever pure Spiritual Soul--and stand in the presence of the Master Self, the Christos of the mystic Gnostics, blended, merged into, and one with IT for ever.[D] How then can it be thought possible for a man to enter the "strait gate" of occultism when his daily and hourly thoughts are bound up with worldly things, desires of possession and power, with lust, ambition and duties, which, however honorable, are still of the earth earthy? Even the love for wife and family--the purest as the most unselfish of human affections--is a barrier to _real_ occultism. For whether we take as an example the holy love of a mother for her child, or that of a husband for his wife, even in these feelings, when analysed to the very bottom, and thoroughly sifted, there is still _selfishness_ in the first, and an _égoisme à deux_ in the second instance. What mother would not sacrifice without a moment's hesitation hundreds and thousands of lives for that of the child of her heart? and what lover or true husband would not break the happiness of every other man and woman around him to satisfy the desire of one whom he loves? This is but natural, we shall be told. Quite so; in the light of the code of human affections; less so, in that of divine universal love. For, while the heart is full of thoughts for a little group of _selves_, near and dear to us, how shall the rest of mankind fare in our souls? What percentage of love and care will there remain to bestow on the "great orphan"? And how shall the "still small voice" make itself heard in a soul entirely occupied with its own privileged tenants? What room is there left for the needs of Humanity _en bloc_ to impress themselves upon, or even receive a speedy response? And yet, he who would profit by the wisdom of the universal mind, has to reach it through _the whole of Humanity_ without distinction of race, complexion, religion or social status. It is _altruism_, not _ego-ism_ even in its most legal and noble conception, that can lead the unit to merge its little Self in the Universal Selves. It is to _these_ needs and to this work that the true disciple of true Occultism has to devote himself, if he would obtain _theo_-sophy, divine Wisdom and Knowledge. The aspirant has to choose absolutely between the life of the world and the life of Occultism. It is useless and vain to endeavor to unite the two, for no one can serve two masters and satisfy both. No one can serve his body and the higher Soul, and do his family duty and his universal duty, without depriving either one or the other of its rights; for he will either lend his ear to the "still small voice" and fail to hear the cries of his little ones, or, he will listen but to the wants of the latter and remain deaf to the voice of Humanity. It would be a ceaseless, a maddening struggle for almost any married man, who would pursue true practical Occultism, instead of its _theoretical_ philosophy. For he would find himself ever hesitating between the voice of the impersonal divine love of Humanity, and that of the personal, terrestrial love. And this could only lead him to fail in one or the other, or perhaps in both his duties. Worse than this; for, _whoever indulges, after having pledged himself to_ OCCULTISM, _in the gratification of a terrestrial love or lust_, must feel an almost immediate result; that of being irresistibly dragged from the impersonal divine state down to the lower plane of matter. Sensual, or even mental self-gratification, involves the immediate loss of the powers of spiritual discernment; the voice of the MASTER can no longer be distinguished from that of one's passions or _even that of a Dugpa_; the right from wrong; sound morality from mere casuistry. The Dead Sea fruit assumes the most glorious mystic appearance, only to turn to ashes on the lips, and to gall in the heart, resulting in:-- Depth ever deepening, darkness darkening still; Folly for wisdom, guilt for innocence; Anguish for rapture, and for hope despair. And once being mistaken and having acted on their mistakes, most men shrink from realizing their error, and thus descend deeper and deeper into the mire. And, although it is the intention that decides primarily whether _white_ or _black_ magic is exercised, yet the results even of involuntary, unconscious sorcery cannot fail to be productive of bad Karma. Enough has been said to show that _sorcery is any kind of evil influence exercised upon other persons, who suffer, or make other persons suffer, in consequence_. Karma is a heavy stone splashed in the quiet waters of Life; and it must produce ever widening circles of ripples, carried wider and wider, almost _ad infinitum_. Such causes produced have to call forth effects, and these are evidenced in the just laws of Retribution. Much of this may be avoided if people will only abstain from rushing into practices neither the nature nor importance of which they understand. No one is expected to carry a burden beyond his strength and powers. There are "natural-born magicians"; Mystics and Occultists by birth, and by right of direct inheritance from a series of incarnations and aeons of suffering and failures. These are passion-proof, so to say. No fires of earthly origin can fan into a flame any of their senses or desires; no human voice can find response in their souls, except the great cry of Humanity. These only may be certain of success. But they can be met only far and wide, and they pass through the narrow gates of Occultism because they carry no personal luggage of human transitory sentiments along with them. They have got rid of the feeling of the lower personality, paralysed thereby the "astral" animal, and the golden, but narrow gate is thrown open before them. Not so with those who have to carry yet for several incarnations the burden of sins committed in previous lives, and even in their present existence. For such, unless they proceed with great caution, the golden gate of Wisdom may get transformed into the wide gate and the broad way "that leadeth unto destruction," and therefore "many be they that enter in thereby." This is the Gate of the Occult arts, practised for selfish motives and in the absence of the restraining and beneficent influence of Âtma-Vidyâ. We are in the Kali Yuga and its fatal influence is a thousand-fold more powerful in the West than it is in the East; hence the easy preys made by the Powers of the Age of Darkness in this cyclic struggle, and the many delusions under which the world is now laboring. One of these is the relative facility with which men fancy they can get at the "Gate" and cross the threshold of Occultism without any great sacrifice. It is the dream of most Theosophists, one inspired by desire for Power and personal selfishness, and it is not such feelings that can ever lead them to the coveted goal. For, as well said by one believed to have sacrificed himself for Humanity--"Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life" eternal, and therefore "few there be that find it." (_Matt._ vii, 14) So strait indeed, that at the bare mention of some of the preliminary difficulties the affrighted Western candidates turn back and retreat with a shudder.... Let them stop here and attempt no more in their great weakness. For if, while turning their backs on the narrow gate, they are dragged by their desire for the Occult one step in the direction of the broad and more inviting gates of that golden mystery which glitters in the light of illusion, woe to them! It can lead only to Dugpa-ship, and they will be sure to find themselves very soon landed on that _Via Fatale_ of the _Inferno_, over whose portal Dante read the words:-- _Per me si va nella citta dolente_ _Per me si va nell' eterno dolore_ _Per me si va tra la perduta gente...._ THE BLESSINGS OF PUBLICITY A well-known public lecturer, a distinguished Egyptologist, said, in one of his lectures against the teachings of Theosophy, a few suggestive words, which are now quoted and must be answered:-- It is a delusion to suppose there is anything in the experience or wisdom of the past, the ascertained results of which can only be communicated from beneath the cloak and mask of mystery.... Explanation is the Soul of Science. They will tell you _we cannot have their knowledge without living their life_.... Public experimental research, the printing press, and a free-thought platform, have abolished the need of mystery. It is no longer necessary for science to take the veil, as she was forced to do for security in times past.... This is a very mistaken view in one aspect. "Secrets of the purer and profounder life" not only _may_ but _must_ be made universally known. But _there are secrets that kill_ in the arcana of Occultism, and unless a man _lives the life_ he cannot be entrusted with them. The late Professor Faraday had very serious doubts whether it was quite wise and reasonable to give out to the public at large certain discoveries of modern science. Chemistry had led to the invention of too terrible means of destruction in our century to allow it to fall into the hands of the profane. What man of sense--in the face of such fiendish applications of dynamite and other explosive substances as are made by those incarnations of the Destroying Power, who glory in calling themselves Anarchists and Socialists--would not agree with us in saying:--Far better for mankind that it should never have blasted a rock by modern perfected means, than that it should have shattered the limbs of one per cent even of those who have been thus destroyed by the pitiless hand of Russian Nihilists, Irish Fenians, and Anarchists. That such discoveries, and chiefly their murderous application, ought to have been withheld from public knowledge may be shown on the authority of statistics and commissions appointed to investigate and record the result of the evil done. The following information gathered from public papers will give an insight into what may be in store for wretched mankind. England alone--the center of civilization--has 21,268 firms fabricating and selling explosive substances.[E] But the centers of the dynamite trade, of infernal machines, and other such results of modern civilization, are chiefly at Philadelphia and New York. It is in the former city of "Brotherly Love" that the now most famous manufacturer of explosives flourishes. It is one of the well-known respectable citizens--the inventor and manufacturer of the most murderous "dynamite toys"--who, called before the Senate of the United States anxious to adopt means for the repression of a _too free trade_ in such implements, found an argument that ought to become immortalized for its cynical sophistry--"My _machines_," that expert is reported to have said--"are quite _harmless to look at_; as they may be manufactured in the shape of oranges, hats, boats, and anything one likes.... Criminal is he who murders people by means of such machines, not he who manufactures them. The firm refuses to admit that were there no supply there would be no incentive for demand on the market; but insists that every demand should be satisfied by a supply ready at hand." That "supply" is the fruit of civilization and of the publicity given to the discovery of every murderous property in matter. What is it? As found in the Report of the Commission appointed to investigate the variety and character of the so-called "infernal machines," so far the following implements of instantaneous human destruction are already on hand. The most fashionable of all among the many varieties fabricated by Mr. Holgate are the "Ticker," the "Eight Day Machine," the "Little Exterminator," and the "Bottle Machines." The "Ticker" is in appearance like a piece of lead, a foot long and four inches thick. It contains an iron or steel tube full of a kind of gunpowder invented by Holgate himself. That gunpowder, in appearance like any other common stuff of that name, has, however, an explosive power two hundred times stronger than common gunpowder; the "Ticker" containing thus a powder which equals in force two hundred pounds of the common gunpowder. At one end of the machine is fastened an invisible clock-work meant to regulate the time of the explosion, which time may be fixed from one minute to thirty-six hours. The spark is produced by means of a steel needle which gives a spark at the touch-hole, and communicates thereby the fire to the whole machine. The "Eight Day Machine" is considered the most powerful, but at the same time the most complicated, of all those invented. One must be familiar with handling it before a full success can be secured. It is owing to this difficulty that the terrible fate intended for London Bridge and its neighborhood was turned aside by the instantaneous killing instead of the two Fenian criminals. The size and appearance of that machine changes, Proteus-like, according to the necessity of smuggling it in, in one or another way, unperceived by the victims. It may be concealed in bread, in a basket of oranges, in a liquid, and so on. The Commission of Experts is said to have declared that its explosive power is such as to reduce to atoms instantly the largest edifice in the world. The "Little Exterminator" is an innocent-looking plain utensil having the shape of a modest jug. It contains neither dynamite nor powder, but secretes, nevertheless, a deadly gas, and has a hardly perceptible clock-work attached to its edge, the needle of which points to the time when that gas will effect its escape. In a shut-up room this new "vril" of lethal kind will _smother to death, nearly instantaneously_, every living being within a distance of a hundred feet radius of the murderous jug. With these three "latest novelties" in the high season of Christian civilization, the catalog of the dynamiters is closed; all the rest belongs to the old "fashion" of the past years. It consists of hats, _porte cigars_, bottles of ordinary kind, and even _ladies' smelling bottles_, filled with dynamite, nitro-glycerin, etc., etc.--weapons, some of which, following unconsciously Karmic law, killed many of the dynamiters in the last Chicago _revolution_. Add to this the forthcoming long-promised Keeley's vibratory force, capable of reducing in a few seconds a dead bullock to a heap of ashes, and then ask yourself if the _Inferno_ of Dante as a locality can ever rival earth in the production of more hellish engines of destruction? Thus, if purely material implements are capable of blowing up, from a few corners, the greatest cities of the globe, provided the murderous weapons are guided by expert hands--what terrible dangers might not arise from magical _occult_ secrets being revealed, and allowed to fall into the possession of ill-meaning persons! A thousand times more dangerous and lethal are these, because neither the criminal hand, nor the _immaterial_ invisible weapon used, can ever be detected. The congenital _black_ magicians--those who, to an innate propensity towards evil, unite highly-developed mediumistic natures--are but too numerous in our age. It is nigh time then that the psychologists and believers, at least, should cease advocating the beauties of publicity and claiming knowledge of the secrets of nature for all. It is not in our age of "suggestion" and "explosives" that Occultism can open wide the doors of its laboratories except to those who _do_ live the life. H.P.B. FOOTNOTES: [A] So holy is the connexion thus formed deemed in the Greek Church, that a marriage between god-parents of the same child is regarded as the worst kind of incest, is considered illegal, and is dissolved by law; and this absolute prohibition extends even to the children of one of the sponsors as regards those of the other. [B] Be it remembered that _all_ "Chelas," even lay disciples, are called Upâsaka until after their first initiation, when they become Lanoo-Upâsaka. To that day, even those who belong to Lamaseries and are _set apart_, are considered as "laymen." [C] "The _Yajña_," say the Brâhmans, "exists from eternity, for it proceeded forth from the Supreme One ... in whom it lay dormant from '_no_ beginning.' It is the key to the Traividya, the thrice sacred science contained in the Rig verses, which teaches the Yajus or sacrificial mysteries. 'The Yajña' exists as an invisible thing at all times; it is like the latent power of electricity in an electrifying machine, requiring only the operation of a suitable apparatus in order to be elicited. It is supposed to extend from the _Ahavaniya_ or sacrificial fire to the heavens, forming a bridge or ladder by means of which the sacrificer can communicate with the world of gods and spirits, and even ascend when alive to their abodes."--Martin Haug's _Aitareya Brâhmana_. "This _Yajña_ is again one of the forms of the _Âkâsa_; and the mystic word calling it into existence and pronounced mentally by the initiated Priest is the Lost Word receiving impulse through WILL POWER."--_Isis Unveiled_, Vol. I. Introduction. See _Aitareya Brâhmana_, Haug. [D] Those who would feel inclined to see three _Egos_ in one man will show themselves unable to perceive the metaphysical meaning. Man is a trinity composed of Body, Soul and Spirit; but _man_ is nevertheless _one_ and is surely not his body. It is the latter which is the property, the transitory clothing of the man. The three "Egos" are MAN in his three aspects on the astral, intellectual or psychic, and the Spiritual planes, or states. [E] Nitro-glycerin has found its way even into medical compounds. Physicians and druggists are vying with the Anarchists in their endeavors to destroy the surplus of mankind. The famous chocolate tablets against dyspepsia are said to contain nitro-glycerin! They may save, but they can kill still more easily. _There is No Religion Higher than Truth_ The Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society _Established for the benefit of the people of the earth & all creatures_ * * * * * OBJECTS This BROTHERHOOD is part of a great and universal movement which has been active in all ages. This Organization declares that Brotherhood is a fact in Nature. Its principal purpose is to teach Brotherhood, demonstrate that it is a fact in nature and make it a living power in the life of humanity. Its subsidiary purpose is to study ancient and modern religions, science, philosophy and art; to investigate the laws of nature and the divine powers in man. * * * * * The Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society, founded by H.P. Blavatsky at New York, 1875, continued after her death under the leadership of the co-founder, William Q. Judge, and now under the leadership of their successor, Katherine Tingley, has its Headquarters at the International Theosophical Center, Point Loma, California. This Organization is not in any way connected with nor does it endorse any other societies using the name of Theosophy. The Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society welcomes to membership all who truly love their fellow men and desire the eradication of the evils caused by the barriers of race, creed, caste or color, which have so long impeded human progress; to all sincere lovers of truth and to all who aspire to higher and better things than the mere pleasures and interests of a worldly life, and are prepared to do all in their power to make Brotherhood a living energy in the life of humanity, its various departments offer unlimited opportunities. The whole work of the Organization is under the direction of the Leader and Official Head, Katherine Tingley, as outlined in the Constitution. * * * * * Do not fail to profit by the following: It is a regrettable fact that many people use the name of Theosophy and of our Organization for self-interest, as also that of H.P. Blavatsky, the Foundress, to attract attention to themselves and to gain public support. This they do in private and public speech and in publications, also by lecturing throughout the country. Without being in any way connected with the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society, in many cases they permit it to be inferred that they are, thus misleading the public, and many honest inquirers are hence led away from the truths of Theosophy as presented by H.P. Blavatsky and her successors, William Q. Judge and Katherine Tingley, and practically exemplified in their Theosophical work for the uplifting of humanity. The International Brotherhood League Founded in 1897 by Katherine Tingley ITS OBJECTS ARE: 1. To help men and women to realize the nobility of their calling and their true position in life. 2. To educate children of all nations on the broadest lines of Universal Brotherhood, and to prepare destitute and homeless children to become workers for humanity. 3. To ameliorate the condition of unfortunate women, and assist them to a higher life. 4. To assist those who are, or have been, in prisons, to establish themselves in honorable positions in life. 5. To abolish capital punishment. 6. To bring about a better understanding between so-called savage and civilized races, by promoting a closer and more sympathetic relationship between them. 7. To relieve human suffering resulting from flood, famine, war, and other calamities; and, generally, to extend aid, help and comfort to suffering humanity throughout the world. For further information regarding the above Notices, address KATHERINE TINGLEY International Theosophical Headquarters, Point Loma, California Books Recommended to Inquirers For _complete_ Book List write to The Theosophical Publishing Co., Point Loma, California * * * * * Isis Unveiled (H.P. Blavatsky). 2 vols., royal 8vo, about 1400 pages; cloth; with portrait of the author. _Point Loma Edition, with a preface._ Postpaid 4.00 Key to Theosophy, The (H.P. Blavatsky). _Point Loma Edition, with Glossary and exhaustive Index. Portraits of H.P. Blavatsky and W.Q. Judge._ 8vo, cloth, 400 pages. Postpaid 2.25 A clear exposition of Theosophy in form of question and answer. The book for Students. Secret Doctrine, The (H.P. Blavatsky). The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy. New Point Loma Edition, 2 vols., royal 8vo, about 1500 pages; cloth. Postpaid 10.00 Voice of the Silence, The (For the daily use of disciples). Translated and annotated by H.P. Blavatsky. Pocket size, leather .75 Mysteries of the Heart Doctrine, The. Prepared by Katherine Tingley and her pupils. Square 8vo, cloth 2.00 Paper 1.00 A Series of Eight Pamphlets, comprising different articles in above, paper, each .25 Life at Point Loma, The. Some notes by Katherine Tingley, Leader and Official Head of the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society .15 Reprinted from the _Los Angeles Post_, Dec., 1902. 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16269	----	THOUGHT-FORMS BY ANNIE BESANT AND C.W. LEADBEATER [Illustration: Publisher Logo] THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE LTD 38 GREAT ORMOND STREET, LONDON, W.C. 1 _First Printed_ 1901 _Reprint_ 1905 _Reprint_ 1925 _Made and Printed in Great Britain by_ PERCY LUND, HUMPHRIES & CO LTD THE COUNTRY PRESS BRADFORD [Illustration: FRONTISPIECE--MEANING OF THE COLOURS--(see html version for this and other illustrations.)] FOREWORD The text of this little book is the joint work of Mr Leadbeater and myself; some of it has already appeared as an article in _Lucifer_ (now the _Theosophical Review_), but the greater part of it is new. The drawing and painting of the Thought-Forms observed by Mr Leadbeater or by myself, or by both of us together, has been done by three friends--Mr John Varley, Mr Prince, and Miss Macfarlane, to each of whom we tender our cordial thanks. To paint in earth's dull colours the forms clothed in the living light of other worlds is a hard and thankless task; so much the more gratitude is due to those who have attempted it. They needed coloured fire, and had only ground earths. We have also to thank Mr F. Bligh Bond for allowing us to use his essay on _Vibration Figures_, and some of his exquisite drawings. Another friend, who sent us some notes and a few drawings, insists on remaining anonymous, so we can only send our thanks to him with similar anonymity. It is our earnest hope--as it is our belief--that this little book will serve as a striking moral lesson to every reader, making him realise the nature and power of his thoughts, acting as a stimulus to the noble, a curb on the base. With this belief and hope we send it on its way. ANNIE BESANT. CONTENTS PAGE FOREWORD 6 INTRODUCTION 11 THE DIFFICULTY OF REPRESENTATION 16 THE TWO EFFECTS OF THOUGHT 21 HOW THE VIBRATION ACTS 23 THE FORM AND ITS EFFECT 25 THE MEANING OF THE COLOURS 32 THREE CLASSES OF THOUGHT-FORMS 36 ILLUSTRATIVE THOUGHT-FORMS 40 AFFECTION 40-44 DEVOTION 44-49 INTELLECT 49-50 AMBITION 51 ANGER 52 SYMPATHY 55 FEAR 55 GREED 56 VARIOUS EMOTIONS 57 SHIPWRECK 57 ON THE FIRST NIGHT 59 THE GAMBLERS 60 AT A STREET ACCIDENT 61 AT A FUNERAL 61 ON MEETING A FRIEND 64 APPRECIATION OF A PICTURE 65 FORMS SEEN IN MEDITATION 66 SYMPATHY AND LOVE FOR ALL 66 AN ASPIRATION TO ENFOLD ALL 66 IN THE SIX DIRECTIONS 67 COSMIC ORDER 68 THE LOGOS AS MANIFESTED IN MAN 69 THE LOGOS PERVADING ALL 70 ANOTHER CONCEPTION 71 THE THREEFOLD MANIFESTATION 71 THE SEVENFOLD MANIFESTATION 72 INTELLECTUAL ASPIRATION 72 HELPFUL THOUGHTS 74 FORMS BUILT BY MUSIC 75 MENDELSSOHN 77 GOUNOD 80 WAGNER 82 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIG. PAGE MEANING OF THE COLOURS _Frontispiece_ CHLADNI'S SOUND PLATE 1 28 FORMS PRODUCED IN SAND 2 28 FORMS PRODUCED IN SAND 3 29 FORMS PRODUCED BY PENDULUMS 4-7 30 VAGUE PURE AFFECTION 8 40 VAGUE SELFISH AFFECTION 9 40 DEFINITE AFFECTION 10 42 RADIATING AFFECTION 11 43 PEACE AND PROTECTION 12 42 GRASPING ANIMAL AFFECTION 13 43 VAGUE RELIGIOUS FEELING 14 44 UPWARD RUSH OF DEVOTION 15 46 SELF-RENUNCIATION 16 44 RESPONSE TO DEVOTION 17 46 VAGUE INTELLECTUAL PLEASURE 18 50 VAGUE SYMPATHY 18A 50 THE INTENTION TO KNOW 19 51 HIGH AMBITION 20 52 SELFISH AMBITION 21 52 MURDEROUS RAGE 22 53 SUSTAINED ANGER 23 53 EXPLOSIVE ANGER 24 51 WATCHFUL JEALOUSY 25 54 ANGRY JEALOUSY 26 54 SUDDEN FRIGHT 27 55 SELFISH GREED 28 56 GREED FOR DRINK 29 56 AT A SHIPWRECK 30 58 ON THE FIRST NIGHT 31 59 THE GAMBLERS 32 60 AT A STREET ACCIDENT 33 61 AT A FUNERAL 34 62 ON MEETING A FRIEND 35 64 THE APPRECIATION OF A PICTURE 36 64 SYMPATHY AND LOVE FOR ALL 37 66 AN ASPIRATION TO ENFOLD ALL 38 67 IN THE SIX DIRECTIONS 39 66 AN INTELLECTUAL CONCEPTION OF COSMIC ORDER 40 69 THE LOGOS AS MANIFESTED IN MAN 41 69 THE LOGOS PERVADING ALL 42 and 44 70 ANOTHER CONCEPTION 45 70 THE THREEFOLD MANIFESTATION 46 70 THE SEVENFOLD MANIFESTATION 47 70 INTELLECTUAL ASPIRATION 43 72 HELPFUL THOUGHTS 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 74 PLATE MUSIC OF MENDELSSOHN M 78 MUSIC OF GOUNOD G 80 MUSIC OF WAGNER W 82 [Transcriber's Note: Some of the plates are displayed out of sequence to correspond with references to them in the text.] THOUGHT-FORMS As knowledge increases, the attitude of science towards the things of the invisible world is undergoing considerable modification. Its attention is no longer directed solely to the earth with all its variety of objects, or to the physical worlds around it; but it finds itself compelled to glance further afield, and to construct hypotheses as to the nature of the matter and force which lie in the regions beyond the ken of its instruments. Ether is now comfortably settled in the scientific kingdom, becoming almost more than a hypothesis. Mesmerism, under its new name of hypnotism, is no longer an outcast. Reichenbach's experiments are still looked at askance, but are not wholly condemned. Röntgen's rays have rearranged some of the older ideas of matter, while radium has revolutionised them, and is leading science beyond the borderland of ether into the astral world. The boundaries between animate and inanimate matter are broken down. Magnets are found to be possessed of almost uncanny powers, transferring certain forms of disease in a way not yet satisfactorily explained. Telepathy, clairvoyance, movement without contact, though not yet admitted to the scientific table, are approaching the Cinderella-stage. The fact is that science has pressed its researches so far, has used such rare ingenuity in its questionings of nature, has shown such tireless patience in its investigations, that it is receiving the reward of those who seek, and forces and beings of the next higher plane of nature are beginning to show themselves on the outer edge of the physical field. "Nature makes no leaps," and as the physicist nears the confines of his kingdom he finds himself bewildered by touches and gleams from another realm which interpenetrates his own. He finds himself compelled to speculate on invisible presences, if only to find a rational explanation for undoubted physical phenomena, and insensibly he slips over the boundary, and is, although he does not yet realise it, contacting the astral plane. One of the most interesting of the highroads from the physical to the astral is that of the study of thought. The Western scientist, commencing in the anatomy and physiology of the brain, endeavours to make these the basis for "a sound psychology." He passes then into the region of dreams, illusions, hallucinations; and as soon as he endeavours to elaborate an experimental science which shall classify and arrange these, he inevitably plunges into the astral plane. Dr Baraduc of Paris has nearly crossed the barrier, and is well on the way towards photographing astro-mental images, to obtaining pictures of what from the materialistic standpoint would be the results of vibrations in the grey matter of the brain. It has long been known to those who have given attention to the question that impressions were produced by the reflection of the ultra-violet rays from objects not visible by the rays of the ordinary spectrum. Clairvoyants were occasionally justified by the appearance on sensitive photographic plates of figures seen and described by them as present with the sitter, though invisible to physical sight. It is not possible for an unbiassed judgment to reject _in toto_ the evidence of such occurrences proffered by men of integrity on the strength of their own experiments, oftentimes repeated. And now we have investigators who turn their attention to the obtaining of images of subtle forms, inventing methods specially designed with the view of reproducing them. Among these, Dr Baraduc seems to have been the most successful, and he has published a volume dealing with his investigations and containing reproductions of the photographs he has obtained. Dr Baraduc states that he is investigating the subtle forces by which the soul--defined as the intelligence working between the body and the spirit--expresses itself, by seeking to record its movements by means of a needle, its "luminous" but invisible vibrations by impressions on sensitive plates. He shuts out by non-conductors electricity and heat. We can pass over his experiments in Biometry (measurement of life by movements), and glance at those in Iconography--the impressions of invisible waves, regarded by him as of the nature of light, in which the soul draws its own image. A number of these photographs represent etheric and magnetic results of physical phenomena, and these again we may pass over as not bearing on our special subject, interesting as they are in themselves. Dr Baraduc obtained various impressions by strongly thinking of an object, the effect produced by the thought-form appearing on a sensitive plate; thus he tried to project a portrait of a lady (then dead) whom he had known, and produced an impression due to his thought of a drawing he had made of her on her deathbed. He quite rightly says that the creation of an object is the passing out of an image from the mind and its subsequent materialisation, and he seeks the chemical effect caused on silver salts by this thought-created picture. One striking illustration is that of a force raying outwards, the projection of an earnest prayer. Another prayer is seen producing forms like the fronds of a fern, another like rain pouring upwards, if the phrase may be permitted. A rippled oblong mass is projected by three persons thinking of their unity in affection. A young boy sorrowing over and caressing a dead bird is surrounded by a flood of curved interwoven threads of emotional disturbance. A strong vortex is formed by a feeling of deep sadness. Looking at this most interesting and suggestive series, it is clear that in these pictures that which is obtained is not the thought-image, but the effect caused in etheric matter by its vibrations, and it is necessary to clairvoyantly see the thought in order to understand the results produced. In fact, the illustrations are instructive for what they do not show directly, as well as for the images that appear. It may be useful to put before students, a little more plainly than has hitherto been done, some of the facts in nature which will render more intelligible the results at which Dr Baraduc is arriving. Necessarily imperfect these must be, a physical photographic camera and sensitive plates not being ideal instruments for astral research; but, as will be seen from the above, they are most interesting and valuable as forming a link between clairvoyant and physical scientific investigations. At the present time observers outside the Theosophical Society are concerning themselves with the fact that emotional changes show their nature by changes of colour in the cloud-like ovoid, or aura, that encompasses all living beings. Articles on the subject are appearing in papers unconnected with the Theosophical Society, and a medical specialist[1] has collected a large number of cases in which the colour of the aura of persons of various types and temperaments is recorded by him. His results resemble closely those arrived at by clairvoyant theosophists and others, and the general unanimity on the subject is sufficient to establish the fact, if the evidence be judged by the usual canons applied to human testimony. The book _Man Visible and Invisible_ dealt with the general subject of the aura. The present little volume, written by the author of _Man Visible and Invisible_, and a theosophical colleague, is intended to carry the subject further; and it is believed that this study is useful, as impressing vividly on the mind of the student the power and living nature of thought and desire, and the influence exerted by them on all whom they reach. [Footnote 1: Dr Hooker, Gloucester Place, London, W.] THE DIFFICULTY OF REPRESENTATION We have often heard it said that thoughts are things, and there are many among us who are persuaded of the truth of this statement. Yet very few of us have any clear idea as to what kind of thing a thought is, and the object of this little book is to help us to conceive this. There are some serious difficulties in our way, for our conception of space is limited to three dimensions, and when we attempt to make a drawing we practically limit ourselves to two. In reality the presentation even of ordinary three-dimensional objects is seriously defective, for scarcely a line or angle in our drawing is accurately shown. If a road crosses the picture, the part in the foreground must be represented as enormously wider than that in the background, although in reality the width is unchanged. If a house is to be drawn, the right angles at its corners must be shown as acute or obtuse as the case may be, but hardly ever as they actually are. In fact, we draw everything not as it is but as it appears, and the effort of the artist is by a skilful arrangement of lines upon a flat surface to convey to the eye an impression which shall recall that made by a three-dimensional object. It is possible to do this only because similar objects are already familiar to those who look at the picture and accept the suggestion which it conveys. A person who had never seen a tree could form but little idea of one from even the most skilful painting. If to this difficulty we add the other and far more serious one of a limitation of consciousness, and suppose ourselves to be showing the picture to a being who knew only two dimensions, we see how utterly impossible it would be to convey to him any adequate impression of such a landscape as we see. Precisely this difficulty in its most aggravated form stands in our way, when we try to make a drawing of even a very simple thought-form. The vast majority of those who look at the picture are absolutely limited to the consciousness of three dimensions, and furthermore, have not the slightest conception of that inner world to which thought-forms belong, with all its splendid light and colour. All that we can do at the best is to represent a section of the thought-form; and those whose faculties enable them to see the original cannot but be disappointed with any reproduction of it. Still, those who are at present unable to see anything will gain at least a partial comprehension, and however inadequate it may be it is at least better than nothing. All students know that what is called the aura of man is the outer part of the cloud-like substance of his higher bodies, interpenetrating each other, and extending beyond the confines of his physical body, the smallest of all. They know also that two of these bodies, the mental and desire bodies, are those chiefly concerned with the appearance of what are called thought-forms. But in order that the matter may be made clear for all, and not only for students already acquainted with theosophical teachings, a recapitulation of the main facts will not be out of place. Man, the Thinker, is clothed in a body composed of innumerable combinations of the subtle matter of the mental plane, this body being more or less refined in its constituents and organised more or less fully for its functions, according to the stage of intellectual development at which the man himself has arrived. The mental body is an object of great beauty, the delicacy and rapid motion of its particles giving it an aspect of living iridescent light, and this beauty becomes an extraordinarily radiant and entrancing loveliness as the intellect becomes more highly evolved and is employed chiefly on pure and sublime topics. Every thought gives rise to a set of correlated vibrations in the matter of this body, accompanied with a marvellous play of colour, like that in the spray of a waterfall as the sunlight strikes it, raised to the _n_th degree of colour and vivid delicacy. The body under this impulse throws off a vibrating portion of itself, shaped by the nature of the vibrations--as figures are made by sand on a disk vibrating to a musical note--and this gathers from the surrounding atmosphere matter like itself in fineness from the elemental essence of the mental world. We have then a thought-form pure and simple, and it is a living entity of intense activity animated by the one idea that generated it. If made of the finer kinds of matter, it will be of great power and energy, and may be used as a most potent agent when directed by a strong and steady will. Into the details of such use we will enter later. When the man's energy flows outwards towards external objects of desire, or is occupied in passional and emotional activities, this energy works in a less subtle order of matter than the mental, in that of the astral world. What is called his desire-body is composed of this matter, and it forms the most prominent part of the aura in the undeveloped man. Where the man is of a gross type, the desire-body is of the denser matter of the astral plane, and is dull in hue, browns and dirty greens and reds playing a great part in it. Through this will flash various characteristic colours, as his passions are excited. A man of a higher type has his desire-body composed of the finer qualities of astral matter, with the colours, rippling over and flashing through it, fine and clear in hue. While less delicate and less radiant than the mental body, it forms a beautiful object, and as selfishness is eliminated all the duller and heavier shades disappear. This desire (or astral) body gives rise to a second class of entities, similar in their general constitution to the thought-forms already described, but limited to the astral plane, and generated by the mind under the dominion of the animal nature. These are caused by the activity of the lower mind, throwing itself out through the astral body--the activity of Kâma-Manas in theosophical terminology, or the mind dominated by desire. Vibrations in the body of desire, or astral body, are in this case set up, and under these this body throws off a vibrating portion of itself, shaped, as in the previous case, by the nature of the vibrations, and this attracts to itself some of the appropriate elemental essence of the astral world. Such a thought-form has for its body this elemental essence, and for its animating soul the desire or passion which threw it forth; according to the amount of mental energy combined with this desire or passion will be the force of the thought-form. These, like those belonging to the mental plane, are called artificial elementals, and they are by far the most common, as few thoughts of ordinary men and women are untinged with desire, passion, or emotion. THE TWO EFFECTS OF THOUGHT Each definite thought produces a double effect--a radiating vibration and a floating form. The thought itself appears first to clairvoyant sight as a vibration in the mental body, and this may be either simple or complex. If the thought itself is absolutely simple, there is only the one rate of vibration, and only one type of mental matter will be strongly affected. The mental body is composed of matter of several degrees of density, which we commonly arrange in classes according to the sub-planes. Of each of these we have many sub-divisions, and if we typify these by drawing horizontal lines to indicate the different degrees of density, there is another arrangement which we might symbolise by drawing perpendicular lines at right angles to the others, to denote types which differ in quality as well as in density. There are thus many varieties of this mental matter, and it is found that each one of these has its own especial and appropriate rate of vibration, to which it seems most accustomed, so that it very readily responds to it, and tends to return to it as soon as possible when it has been forced away from it by some strong rush of thought or feeling. When a sudden wave of some emotion sweeps over a man, for example, his astral body is thrown into violent agitation, and its original colours are or the time almost obscured by the flush of carmine, of blue, or of scarlet which corresponds with the rate of vibration of that particular emotion. This change is only temporary; it passes off in a few seconds, and the astral body rapidly resumes its usual condition. Yet every such rush of feeling produces a permanent effect: it always adds a little of its hue to the normal colouring of the astral body, so that every time that the man yields himself to a certain emotion it becomes easier for him to yield himself to it again, because his astral body is getting into the habit of vibrating at that especial rate. The majority of human thoughts, however, are by no means simple. Absolutely pure affection of course exists; but we very often find it tinged with pride or with selfishness, with jealousy or with animal passion. This means that at least two separate vibrations appear both in the mental and astral bodies--frequently more than two. The radiating vibration, therefore, will be a complex one, and the resultant thought-form will show several colours instead of only one. HOW THE VIBRATION ACTS These radiating vibrations, like all others in nature, become less powerful in proportion to the distance from their source, though it is probable that the variation is in proportion to the cube of the distance instead of to the square, because of the additional dimension involved. Again, like all other vibrations, these tend to reproduce themselves whenever opportunity is offered to them; and so whenever they strike upon another mental body they tend to provoke in it their own rate of motion. That is--from the point of view of the man whose mental body is touched by these waves--they tend to produce in his mind thoughts of the same type as that which had previously arisen in the mind of the thinker who sent forth the waves. The distance to which such thought-waves penetrate, and the force and persistency with which they impinge upon the mental bodies of others, depend upon the strength and clearness of the original thought. In this way the thinker is in the same position as the speaker. The voice of the latter sets in motion waves of sound in the air which radiate from him in all directions, and convey his message to all those who are within hearing, and the distance to which his voice can penetrate depends upon its power and upon the clearness of his enunciation. In just the same way the forceful thought will carry very much further than the weak and undecided thought; but clearness and definiteness are of even greater importance than strength. Again, just as the speaker's voice may fall upon heedless ears where men are already engaged in business or in pleasure, so may a mighty wave of thought sweep past without affecting the mind of the man, if he be already deeply engrossed in some other line of thought. It should be understood that this radiating vibration conveys the character of the thought, but not its subject. If a Hindu sits rapt in devotion to Krishna, the waves of feeling which pour forth from him stimulate devotional feeling in all those who come under their influence, though in the case of the Muhammadan that devotion is to Allah, while for the Zoroastrian it is to Ahuramazda, or for the Christian to Jesus. A man thinking keenly upon some high subject pours out from himself vibrations which tend to stir up thought at a similar level in others, but they in no way suggest to those others the special subject of his thought. They naturally act with special vigour upon those minds already habituated to vibrations of similar character; yet they have some effect on every mental body upon which they impinge, so that their tendency is to awaken the power of higher thought in those to whom it has not yet become a custom. It is thus evident that every man who thinks along high lines is doing missionary work, even though he may be entirely unconscious of it. THE FORM AND ITS EFFECT Let us turn now to the second effect of thought, the creation of a definite form. All students of the occult are acquainted with the idea of the elemental essence, that strange half-intelligent life which surrounds us in all directions, vivifying the matter of the mental and astral planes. This matter thus animated responds very readily to the influence of human thought, and every impulse sent out, either from the mental body or from the astral body of man, immediately clothes itself in a temporary vehicle of this vitalised matter. Such a thought or impulse becomes for the time a kind of living creature, the thought-force being the soul, and the vivified matter the body. Instead of using the somewhat clumsy paraphrase, "astral or mental matter ensouled by the monadic essence at the stage of one of the elemental kingdoms," theosophical writers often, for brevity's sake, call this quickened matter simply elemental essence; and sometimes they speak of the thought-form as "an elemental." There may be infinite variety in the colour and shape of such elementals or thought-forms, for each thought draws round it the matter which is appropriate for its expression, and sets that matter into vibration in harmony with its own; so that the character of the thought decides its colour, and the study of its variations and combinations is an exceedingly interesting one. This thought-form may not inaptly be compared to a Leyden jar, the coating of living essence being symbolised by the jar, and the thought energy by the charge of electricity. If the man's thought or feeling is directly connected with someone else, the resultant thought-form moves towards that person and discharges itself upon his astral and mental bodies. If the man's thought is about himself, or is based upon a personal feeling, as the vast majority of thoughts are, it hovers round its creator and is always ready to react upon him whenever he is for a moment in a passive condition. For example, a man who yields himself to thoughts of impurity may forget all about them while he is engaged in the daily routine of his business, even though the resultant forms are hanging round him in a heavy cloud, because his attention is otherwise directed and his astral body is therefore not impressible by any other rate of vibration than its own. When, however, the marked vibration slackens and the man rests after his labours and leaves his mind blank as regards definite thought, he is very likely to feel the vibration of impurity stealing insidiously upon him. If the consciousness of the man be to any extent awakened, he may perceive this and cry out that he is being tempted by the devil; yet the truth is that the temptation is from without only in appearance, since it is nothing but the natural reaction upon him of his own thought-forms. Each man travels through space enclosed within a cage of his own building, surrounded by a mass of the forms created by his habitual thoughts. Through this medium he looks out upon the world, and naturally he sees everything tinged with its predominant colours, and all rates of vibration which reach him from without are more or less modified by its rate. Thus until the man learns complete control of thought and feeling, he sees nothing as it really is, since all his observations must be made through this medium, which distorts and colours everything like badly-made glass. If the thought-form be neither definitely personal nor specially aimed at someone else, it simply floats detached in the atmosphere, all the time radiating vibrations similar to those originally sent forth by its creator. If it does not come into contact with any other mental body, this radiation gradually exhausts its store of energy, and in that case the form falls to pieces; but if it succeeds in awakening sympathetic vibration in any mental body near at hand, an attraction is set up, and the thought-form is usually absorbed by that mental body. Thus we see that the influence of the thought-form is by no means so far-reaching as that of the original vibration; but in so far as it acts, it acts with much greater precision. What it produces in the mind-body which it influences is not merely a thought of an order similar to that which gave it birth; it is actually the same thought. The radiation may affect thousands and stir up in them thoughts on the same level as the original, and yet it may happen that no one of them will be identical with that original; the thought-form can affect only very few, but in those few cases it will reproduce exactly the initiatory idea. The fact of the creation by vibrations of a distinct form, geometrical or other, is already familiar to every student of acoustics, and "Chladni's" figures are continually reproduced in every physical laboratory. [Illustration: FIG. 1. CHLADNI'S SOUND PLATE] [Illustration: FIG. 2. FORMS PRODUCED IN SOUND] For the lay reader the following brief description may be useful. A Chladni's sound plate (fig. 1) is made of brass or plate-glass. Grains of fine sand or spores are scattered over the surface, and the edge of the plate is bowed. The sand is thrown up into the air by the vibration of the plate, and re-falling on the plate is arranged in regular lines (fig. 2). By touching the edge of the plate at different points when it is bowed, different notes, and hence varying forms, are obtained (fig. 3). If the figures here given are compared with those obtained from the human voice, many likenesses will be observed. For these latter, the 'voice-forms' so admirably studied and pictured by Mrs Watts Hughes,[1] bearing witness to the same fact, should be consulted, and her work on the subject should be in the hands of every student. But few perhaps have realised that the shapes pictured are due to the interplay of the vibrations that create them, and that a machine exists by means of which two or more simultaneous motions can be imparted to a pendulum, and that by attaching a fine drawing-pen to a lever connected with the pendulum its action may be exactly traced. Substitute for the swing of the pendulum the vibrations set up in the mental or astral body, and we have clearly before us the _modus operandi_ of the building of forms by vibrations.[2] [Illustration: FIG. 3. FORMS PRODUCED IN SOUND] [Footnote 1: _The Eidophone Voice Figures._ Margaret Watts Hughes.] [Footnote 2: Mr Joseph Gould, Stratford House, Nottingham, supplies the twin-elliptic pendulum by which these wonderful figures may be produced.] The following description is taken from a most interesting essay entitled _Vibration Figures_, by F. Bligh Bond, F.R.I.B.A., who has drawn a number of remarkable figures by the use of pendulums. The pendulum is suspended on knife edges of hardened steel, and is free to swing only at right angles to the knife-edge suspension. Four such pendulums may be coupled in pairs, swinging at right angles to each other, by threads connecting the shafts of each pair of pendulums with the ends of a light but rigid lath, from the centre of which run other threads; these threads carry the united movements of each pair of pendulums to a light square of wood, suspended by a spring, and bearing a pen. The pen is thus controlled by the combined movement of the four pendulums, and this movement is registered on a drawing board by the pen. There is no limit, theoretically, to the number of pendulums that can be combined in this manner. The movements are rectilinear, but two rectilinear vibrations of equal amplitude acting at right angles to each other generate a circle if they alternate precisely, an ellipse if the alternations are less regular or the amplitudes unequal. A cyclic vibration may also be obtained from a pendulum free to swing in a rotary path. In these ways a most wonderful series of drawings have been obtained, and the similarity of these to some of the thought-forms is remarkable; they suffice to demonstrate how readily vibrations may be transformed into figures. Thus compare fig. 4 with fig. 12, the mother's prayer; or fig. 5 with fig. 10; or fig. 6 with fig. 25, the serpent-like darting forms. Fig. 7 is added as an illustration of the complexity attainable. It seems to us a most marvellous thing that some of the drawings, made apparently at random by the use of this machine, should exactly correspond to higher types of thought-forms created in meditation. We are sure that a wealth of significance lies behind this fact, though it will need much further investigation before we can say certainly all that it means. But it must surely imply this much--that, if two forces on the physical plane bearing a certain ratio one to the other can draw a form which exactly corresponds to that produced on the mental plane by a complex thought, we may infer that that thought sets in motion on its own plane two forces which are in the same ratio one to the other. What these forces are and how they work remains to be seen; but if we are ever able to solve this problem, it is likely that it will open to us a new and exceedingly valuable field of knowledge. [Illustration: FIGS. 4-7. FORMS PRODUCED BY PENDULUMS] GENERAL PRINCIPLES. Three general principles underlie the production of all thought-forms:-- 1. Quality of thought determines colour. 2. Nature of thought determines form. 3. Definiteness of thought determines clearness of outline. THE MEANING OF THE COLOURS The table of colours given in the frontispiece has already been thoroughly described in the book _Man Visible and Invisible_, and the meaning to be attached to them is just the same in the thought-form as in the body out of which it is evolved. For the sake of those who have not at hand the full description given in the book just mentioned, it will be well to state that black means hatred and malice. Red, of all shades from lurid brick-red to brilliant scarlet, indicates anger; brutal anger will show as flashes of lurid red from dark brown clouds, while the anger of "noble indignation" is a vivid scarlet, by no means unbeautiful, though it gives an unpleasant thrill; a particularly dark and unpleasant red, almost exactly the colour called dragon's blood, shows animal passion and sensual desire of various kinds. Clear brown (almost burnt sienna) shows avarice; hard dull brown-grey is a sign of selfishness--a colour which is indeed painfully common; deep heavy grey signifies depression, while a livid pale grey is associated with fear; grey-green is a signal of deceit, while brownish-green (usually flecked with points and flashes of scarlet) betokens jealousy. Green seems always to denote adaptability; in the lowest case, when mingled with selfishness, this adaptability becomes deceit; at a later stage, when the colour becomes purer, it means rather the wish to be all things to all men, even though it may be chiefly for the sake of becoming popular and bearing a good reputation with them; in its still higher, more delicate and more luminous aspect, it shows the divine power of sympathy. Affection expresses itself in all shades of crimson and rose; a full clear carmine means a strong healthy affection of normal type; if stained heavily with brown-grey, a selfish and grasping feeling is indicated, while pure pale rose marks that absolutely unselfish love which is possible only to high natures; it passes from the dull crimson of animal love to the most exquisite shades of delicate rose, like the early flushes of the dawning, as the love becomes purified from all selfish elements, and flows out in wider and wider circles of generous impersonal tenderness and compassion to all who are in need. With a touch of the blue of devotion in it, this may express a strong realisation of the universal brotherhood of humanity. Deep orange imports pride or ambition, and the various shades of yellow denote intellect or intellectual gratification, dull yellow ochre implying the direction of such faculty to selfish purposes, while clear gamboge shows a distinctly higher type, and pale luminous primrose yellow is a sign of the highest and most unselfish use of intellectual power, the pure reason directed to spiritual ends. The different shades of blue all indicate religious feeling, and range through all hues from the dark brown-blue of selfish devotion, or the pallid grey-blue of fetish-worship tinged with fear, up to the rich deep clear colour of heartfelt adoration, and the beautiful pale azure of that highest form which implies self-renunciation and union with the divine; the devotional thought of an unselfish heart is very lovely in colour, like the deep blue of a summer sky. Through such clouds of blue will often shine out golden stars of great brilliancy, darting upwards like a shower of sparks. A mixture of affection and devotion is manifested by a tint of violet, and the more delicate shades of this invariably show the capacity of absorbing and responding to a high and beautiful ideal. The brilliancy and the depth of the colours are usually a measure of the strength and the activity of the feeling. Another consideration which must not be forgotten is the type of matter in which these forms are generated. If a thought be purely intellectual and impersonal--for example, if the thinker is attempting to solve a problem in algebra or geometry--the thought-form and the wave of vibration will be confined entirely to the mental plane. If, however, the thought be of a spiritual nature, if it be tinged with love and aspiration or deep unselfish feeling, it will rise upwards from the mental plane and will borrow much of the splendour and glory of the buddhic level. In such a case its influence is exceedingly powerful, and every such thought is a mighty force for good which cannot but produce a decided effect upon all mental bodies within reach, if they contain any quality at all capable of response. If, on the other hand, the thought has in it something of self or of personal desire, at once its vibration turns downwards, and it draws round itself a body of astral matter in addition to its clothing of mental matter. Such a thought-form is capable of acting upon the astral bodies of other men as well as their minds, so that it can not only raise thought within them, but can also stir up their feelings. THREE CLASSES OF THOUGHT-FORMS From the point of view of the forms which they produce we may group thought into three classes:-- 1. That which takes the image of the thinker. When a man thinks of himself as in some distant place, or wishes earnestly to be in that place, he makes a thought-form in his own image which appears there. Such a form has not infrequently been seen by others, and has sometimes been taken for the astral body or apparition of the man himself. In such a case, either the seer must have enough of clairvoyance for the time to be able to observe that astral shape, or the thought-form must have sufficient strength to materialise itself--that is, to draw round itself temporarily a certain amount of physical matter. The thought which generates such a form as this must necessarily be a strong one, and it therefore employs a larger proportion of the matter of the mental body, so that though the form is small and compressed when it leaves the thinker, it draws round it a considerable amount of astral matter, and usually expands to life-size before it appears at its destination. 2. That which takes the image of some material object. When a man thinks of his friend he forms within his mental body a minute image of that friend, which often passes outward and usually floats suspended in the air before him. In the same way if he thinks of a room, a house, a landscape, tiny images of these things are formed within the mental body and afterwards externalised. This is equally true when he is exercising his imagination; the painter who forms a conception of his future picture builds it up out of the matter of his mental body, and then projects it into space in front of him, keeps it before his mind's eye, and copies it. The novelist in the same way builds images of his character in mental matter, and by the exercise of his will moves these puppets from one position or grouping to another, so that the plot of his story is literally acted out before him. With our curiously inverted conceptions of reality it is hard for us to understand that these mental images actually exist, and are so entirely objective that they may readily be seen by the clairvoyant, and can even be rearranged by some one other than their creator. Some novelists have been dimly aware of such a process, and have testified that their characters when once created developed a will of their own, and insisted on carrying the plot of the story along lines quite different from those originally intended by the author. This has actually happened, sometimes because the thought-forms were ensouled by playful nature-spirits, or more often because some 'dead' novelist, watching on the astral plane the development of the plan of his fellow-author, thought that he could improve upon it, and chose this method of putting forward his suggestions. 3. That which takes a form entirely its own, expressing its inherent qualities in the matter which it draws round it. Only thought-forms of this third class can usefully be illustrated, for to represent those of the first or second class would be merely to draw portraits or landscapes. In those types we have the plastic mental or astral matter moulded in imitation of forms belonging to the physical plane; in this third group we have a glimpse of the forms natural to the astral or mental planes. Yet this very fact, which makes them so interesting, places an insuperable barrier in the way of their accurate reproduction. Thought-forms of this third class almost invariably manifest themselves upon the astral plane, as the vast majority of them are expressions of feeling as well as of thought. Those of which we here give specimens are almost wholly of that class, except that we take a few examples of the beautiful thought-forms created in definite meditation by those who, through long practice, have learnt how to think. Thought-forms directed towards individuals produce definitely marked effects, these effects being either partially reproduced in the aura of the recipient and so increasing the total result, or repelled from it. A thought of love and of desire to protect, directed strongly towards some beloved object, creates a form which goes to the person thought of, and remains in his aura as a shielding and protecting agent; it will seek all opportunities to serve, and all opportunities to defend, not by a conscious and deliberate action, but by a blind following out of the impulse impressed upon it, and it will strengthen friendly forces that impinge on the aura and weaken unfriendly ones. Thus may we create and maintain veritable guardian angels round those we love, and many a mother's prayer for a distant child thus circles round him, though she knows not the method by which her "prayer is answered." In cases in which good or evil thoughts are projected at individuals, those thoughts, if they are to directly fulfil their mission, must find, in the aura of the object to whom they are sent, materials capable of responding sympathetically to their vibrations. Any combination of matter can only vibrate within certain definite limits, and if the thought-form be outside all the limits within which the aura is capable of vibrating, it cannot affect that aura at all. It consequently rebounds from it, and that with a force proportionate to the energy with which it impinged upon it. This is why it is said that a pure heart and mind are the best protectors against any inimical assaults, for such a pure heart and mind will construct an astral and a mental body of fine and subtle materials, and these bodies cannot respond to vibrations that demand coarse and dense matter. If an evil thought, projected with malefic intent, strikes such a body, it can only rebound from it, and it is flung back with all its own energy; it then flies backward along the magnetic line of least resistance, that which it has just traversed, and strikes its projector; he, having matter in his astral and mental bodies similar to that of the thought-form he generated, is thrown into respondent vibrations, and suffers the destructive effects he had intended to cause to another. Thus "curses [and blessings] come home to roost." From this arise also the very serious effects of hating or suspecting a good and highly-advanced man; the thought-forms sent against him cannot injure him, and they rebound against their projectors, shattering them mentally, morally, or physically. Several such instances are well known to members of the Theosophical Society, having come under their direct observation. So long as any of the coarser kinds of matter connected with evil and selfish thoughts remain in a person's body, he is open to attack from those who wish him evil, but when he has perfectly eliminated these by self-purification his haters cannot injure him, and he goes on calmly and peacefully amid all the darts of their malice. But it is bad for those who shoot out such darts. Another point that should be mentioned before passing to the consideration of our illustrations is that every one of the thought-forms here given is drawn from life. They are not imaginary forms, prepared as some dreamer thinks that they ought to appear; they are representations of forms actually observed as thrown off by ordinary men and women, and either reproduced with all possible care and fidelity by those who have seen them, or with the help of artists to whom the seers have described them. * * * * * For convenience of comparison thought-forms of a similar kind are grouped together. ILLUSTRATIVE THOUGHT-FORMS AFFECTION _Vague Pure Affection._--Fig. 8 is a revolving cloud of pure affection, and except for its vagueness it represents a very good feeling. The person from whom it emanates is happy and at peace with the world, thinking dreamily of some friend whose very presence is a pleasure. There is nothing keen or strong about the feeling, yet it is one of gentle well-being, and of an unselfish delight in the proximity of those who are beloved. The feeling which gives birth to such a cloud is pure of its kind, but there is in it no force capable of producing definite results. An appearance by no means unlike this frequently surrounds a gently purring cat, and radiates slowly outward from the animal in a series of gradually enlarging concentric shells of rosy cloud, fading into invisibility at a distance of a few feet from their drowsily contented creator. [Illustration: FIG. 8. VAGUE PURE AFFECTION] _Vague Selfish Affection._--Fig. 9 shows us also a cloud of affection, but this time it is deeply tinged with a far less desirable feeling. The dull hard brown-grey of selfishness shows itself very decidedly among the carmine of love, and thus we see that the affection which is indicated is closely connected with satisfaction at favours already received, and with a lively anticipation of others to come in the near future. Indefinite as was the feeling which produced the cloud in Fig. 8, it was at least free from this taint of selfishness, and it therefore showed a certain nobility of nature in its author. Fig. 9 represents what takes the place of that condition of mind at a lower level of evolution. It would scarcely be possible that these two clouds should emanate from the same person in the same incarnation. Yet there is good in the man who generates this second cloud, though as yet it is but partially evolved. A vast amount of the average affection of the world is of this type, and it is only by slow degrees that it develops towards the other and higher manifestation. [Illustration: FIG. 9. VAGUE SELFISH AFFECTION] _Definite Affection._--Even the first glance at Fig. 10 shows us that here we have to deal with something of an entirely different nature--something effective and capable, something that will achieve a result. The colour is fully equal to that of Fig. 8 in clearness and depth and transparency, but what was there a mere sentiment is in this case translated into emphatic intention coupled with unhesitating action. Those who have seen the book _Man Visible and Invisible_ will recollect that in Plate XI. of that volume is depicted the effect of a sudden rush of pure unselfish affection as it showed itself in the astral body of a mother, as she caught up her little child and covered it with kisses. Various changes resulted from that sudden outburst of emotion; one of them was the formation within the astral body of large crimson coils or vortices lined with living light. Each of these is a thought-form of intense affection generated as we have described, and almost instantaneously ejected towards the object of the feeling. Fig. 10 depicts just such a thought-form after it has left the astral body of its author, and is on its way towards its goal. It will be observed that the almost circular form has changed into one somewhat resembling a projectile or the head of a comet; and it will be easily understood that this alteration is caused by its rapid forward motion. The clearness of the colour assures us of the purity of the emotion which gave birth to this thought-form, while the precision of its outline is unmistakable evidence of power and of vigorous purpose. The soul that gave birth to a thought-form such as this must already be one of a certain amount of development. [Illustration: FIG. 10. DEFINITE AFFECTION] _Radiating Affection._--Fig. 11 gives us our first example of a thought-form intentionally generated, since its author is making the effort to pour himself forth in love to all beings. It must be remembered that all these forms are in constant motion. This one, for example, is steadily widening out, though there seems to be an exhaustless fountain welling up through the centre from a dimension which we cannot represent. A sentiment such as this is so wide in its application, that it is very difficult for any one not thoroughly trained to keep it clear and precise. The thought-form here shown is, therefore, a very creditable one, for it will be noted that all the numerous rays of the star are commendably free from vagueness. [Illustration: FIG. 11. RADIATING AFFECTION] _Peace and Protection._--Few thought-forms are more beautiful and expressive than this which we see in Fig. 12. This is a thought of love and peace, protection and benediction, sent forth by one who has the power and has earned the right to bless. It is not at all probable that in the mind of its creator there existed any thought of its beautiful wing-like shape, though it is possible that some unconscious reflection of far-away lessons of childhood about guardian angels who always hovered over their charges may have had its influence in determining this. However that may be, the earnest wish undoubtedly clothed itself in this graceful and expressive outline, while the affection that prompted it gave to it its lovely rose-colour, and the intellect which guided it shone forth like sunlight as its heart and central support. Thus in sober truth we may make veritable guardian angels to hover over and protect those whom we love, and many an unselfish earnest wish for good produces such a form as this, though all unknown to its creator. [Illustration: FIG. 12. PEACE AND PROTECTION] _Grasping Animal Affection._--Fig. 13 gives us an instance of grasping animal affection--if indeed such a feeling as this be deemed worthy of the august name of affection at all. Several colours bear their share in the production of its dull unpleasing hue, tinged as it is with the lurid gleam of sensuality, as well as deadened with the heavy tint indicative of selfishness. Especially characteristic is its form, for those curving hooks are never seen except when there exists a strong craving for personal possession. It is regrettably evident that the fabricator of this thought-form had no conception of the self-sacrificing love which pours itself out in joyous service, never once thinking of result or return; his thought has been, not "How much can I give?" but "How much can I gain?" and so it has expressed itself in these re-entering curves. It has not even ventured to throw itself boldly outward, as do other thoughts, but projects half-heartedly from the astral body, which must be supposed to be on the left of the picture. A sad travesty of the divine quality love; yet even this is a stage in evolution, and distinctly an improvement upon earlier stages, as will presently be seen. [Illustration: FIG. 13. GRASPING ANIMAL AFFECTION] DEVOTION _Vague Religious Feeling._--Fig. 14 shows us another shapeless rolling cloud, but this time it is blue instead of crimson. It betokens that vaguely pleasurable religious feeling--a sensation of devoutness rather than of devotion--which is so common among those in whom piety is more developed than intellect. In many a church one may see a great cloud of deep dull blue floating over the heads of the congregation--indefinite in outline, because of the indistinct nature of the thoughts and feelings which cause it; flecked too often with brown and grey, because ignorant devotion absorbs with deplorable facility the dismal tincture of selfishness or fear; but none the less adumbrating a mighty potentiality of the future, manifesting to our eyes the first faint flutter of one at least of the twin wings of devotion and wisdom, by the use of which the soul flies upward to God from whom it came. [Illustration: FIG. 14. VAGUE RELIGIOUS FEELING] Strange is it to note under what varied circumstances this vague blue cloud may be seen; and oftentimes its absence speaks more loudly than its presence. For in many a fashionable place of worship we seek it in vain, and find instead of it a vast conglomeration of thought-forms of that second type which take the shape of material objects. Instead of tokens of devotion, we see floating above the "worshippers" the astral images of hats and bonnets, of jewellery and gorgeous dresses, of horses and of carriages, of whisky-bottles and of Sunday dinners, and sometimes of whole rows of intricate calculations, showing that men and women alike have had during their supposed hours of prayer and praise no thoughts but of business or of pleasure, of the desires or the anxieties of the lower form of mundane existence. Yet sometimes in a humbler fane, in a church belonging to the unfashionable Catholic or Ritualist, or even in a lowly meeting-house where there is but little of learning or of culture, one may watch the deep blue clouds rolling ceaselessly eastward towards the altar, or upwards, testifying at least to the earnestness and the reverence of those who give them birth. Rarely--very rarely--among the clouds of blue will flash like a lance cast by the hand of a giant such a thought-form as is shown in Fig. 15; or such a flower of self-renunciation as we see in Fig. 16 may float before our ravished eyes; but in most cases we must seek elsewhere for these signs of a higher development. _Upward Rush of Devotion._--The form in Fig. 15 bears much the same relation to that of Fig. 14 as did the clearly outlined projectile of Fig. 10 to the indeterminate cloud of Fig. 8. We could hardly have a more marked contrast than that between the inchoate flaccidity of the nebulosity in Fig. 14 and the virile vigour of the splendid spire of highly developed devotion which leaps into being before us in Fig. 15. This is no uncertain half-formed sentiment; it is the outrush into manifestation of a grand emotion rooted deep in the knowledge of fact. The man who feels such devotion as this is one who knows in whom he has believed; the man who makes such a thought-form as this is one who has taught himself how to think. The determination of the upward rush points to courage as well as conviction, while the sharpness of its outline shows the clarity of its creator's conception, and the peerless purity of its colour bears witness to his utter unselfishness. [Illustration: FIG. 15. UPWARD RUSH OF DEVOTION] _The Response to Devotion._--In Fig. 17 we see the result of his thought--the response of the LOGOS to the appeal made to Him, the truth which underlies the highest and best part of the persistent belief in an answer to prayer. It needs a few words of explanation. On every plane of His solar system our LOGOS pours forth His light, His power, His life, and naturally it is on the higher planes that this outpouring of divine strength can be given most fully. The descent from each plane to that next below it means an almost paralysing limitation--a limitation entirely incomprehensible except to those who have experienced the higher possibilities of human consciousness. Thus the divine life flows forth with incomparably greater fulness on the mental plane than on the astral; and yet even its glory at the mental level is ineffably transcended by that of the buddhic plane. Normally each of these mighty waves of influence spreads about its appropriate plane--horizontally, as it were--but it does not pass into the obscuration of a plane lower than that for which it was originally intended. [Illustration: FIG. 17. RESPONSE TO DEVOTION] Yet there are conditions under which the grace and strength peculiar to a higher plane may in a measure be brought down to a lower one, and may spread abroad there with wonderful effect. This seems to be possible only when a special channel is for the moment opened; and that work must be done from below and by the effort of man. It has before been explained that whenever a man's thought or feeling is selfish, the energy which it produces moves in a close curve, and thus inevitably returns and expends itself upon its own level; but when the thought or feeling is absolutely unselfish, its energy rushes forth in an open curve, and thus does _not_ return in the ordinary sense, but pierces through into the plane above, because only in that higher condition, with its additional dimension, can it find room for its expansion. But in thus breaking through, such a thought or feeling holds open a door (to speak symbolically) of dimension equivalent to its own diameter, and thus furnishes the requisite channel through which the divine force appropriate to the higher plane can pour itself into the lower with marvellous results, not only for the thinker but for others. An attempt is made in Fig. 17 to symbolise this, and to indicate the great truth that an infinite flood of the higher type of force is always ready and waiting to pour through when the channel is offered, just as the water in a cistern may be said to be waiting to pour through the first pipe that may be opened. The result of the descent of divine life is a very great strengthening and uplifting of the maker of the channel, and the spreading all about him of a most powerful and beneficent influence. This effect has often been called an answer to prayer, and has been attributed by the ignorant to what they call a "special interposition of Providence," instead of to the unerring action of the great and immutable divine law. _Self-Renunciation._--Fig. 16 gives us yet another form of devotion, producing an exquisitely beautiful form of a type quite new to us--a type in which one might at first sight suppose that various graceful shapes belonging to animate nature were being imitated. Fig. 16, for example, is somewhat suggestive of a partially opened flower-bud, while other forms are found to bear a certain resemblance to shells or leaves or tree-shapes. Manifestly, however, these are not and cannot be copies of vegetable or animal forms, and it seems probable that the explanation of the similarity lies very much deeper than that. An analogous and even more significant fact is that some very complex thought-forms can be exactly imitated by the action of certain mechanical forces, as has been said above. While with our present knowledge it would be unwise to attempt a solution of the very fascinating problem presented by these remarkable resemblances, it seems likely that we are obtaining a glimpse across the threshold of a very mighty mystery, for if by certain thoughts we produce a form which has been duplicated by the processes of nature, we have at least a presumption that these forces of nature work along lines somewhat similar to the action of those thoughts. Since the universe is itself a mighty thought-form called into existence by the LOGOS, it may well be that tiny parts of it are also the thought-forms of minor entities engaged in the same work; and thus perhaps we may approach a comprehension of what is meant by the three hundred and thirty million Devas of the Hindus. [Illustration: FIG. 16. SELF-RENUNCIATION] This form is of the loveliest pale azure, with a glory of white light shining through it--something indeed to tax the skill even of the indefatigable artist who worked so hard to get them as nearly right as possible. It is what a Catholic would call a definite "act of devotion"--better still, an act of utter selflessness, of self-surrender and renunciation. INTELLECT _Vague Intellectual Pleasure._--Fig. 18 represents a vague cloud of the same order as those shown in Figs. 8 and 14, but in this case the colour is yellow instead of crimson or blue. Yellow in any of man's vehicles always indicates intellectual capacity, but its shades vary very much, and it may be complicated by the admixture of other hues. Generally speaking, it has a deeper and duller tint if the intellect is directed chiefly into lower channels, more especially if the objects are selfish. In the astral or mental body of the average man of business it would show itself as yellow ochre, while pure intellect devoted to the study of philosophy or mathematics appears frequently to be golden, and this rises gradually to a beautiful clear and luminous lemon or primrose yellow when a powerful intellect is being employed absolutely unselfishly for the benefit of humanity. Most yellow thought-forms are clearly outlined, and a vague cloud of this colour is comparatively rare. It indicates intellectual pleasure--appreciation of the result of ingenuity, or the delight felt in clever workmanship. Such pleasure as the ordinary man derives from the contemplation of a picture usually depends chiefly upon the emotions of admiration, affection, or pity which it arouses within him, or sometimes, if it pourtrays a scene with which he is familiar, its charm consists in its power to awaken the memory of past joys. An artist, however, may derive from a picture a pleasure of an entirely different character, based upon his recognition of the excellence of the work, and of the ingenuity which has been exercised in producing certain results. Such pure intellectual gratification shows itself in a yellow cloud; and the same effect may be produced by delight in musical ingenuity, or the subtleties of argument. A cloud of this nature betokens the entire absence of any personal emotion, for if that were present it would inevitably tinge the yellow with its own appropriate colour. [Illustration: FIG. 18. VAGUE INTELLECTUAL PLEASURE] _The Intention to Know._--Fig. 19 is of interest as showing us something of the growth of a thought-form. The earlier stage, which is indicated by the upper form, is not uncommon, and indicates the determination to solve some problem--the intention to know and to understand. Sometimes a theosophical lecturer sees many of these yellow serpentine forms projecting towards him from his audience, and welcomes them as a token that his hearers are following his arguments intelligently, and have an earnest desire to understand and to know more. A form of this kind frequently accompanies a question, and if, as is sometimes unfortunately the case, the question is put less with the genuine desire for knowledge than for the purpose of exhibiting the acumen of the questioner, the form is strongly tinged with the deep orange that indicates conceit. It was at a theosophical meeting that this special shape was encountered, and it accompanied a question which showed considerable thought and penetration. The answer at first given was not thoroughly satisfactory to the inquirer, who seems to have received the impression that his problem was being evaded by the lecturer. His resolution to obtain a full and thorough answer to his inquiry became more determined than ever, and his thought-form deepened in colour and changed into the second of the two shapes, resembling a cork-screw even more closely than before. Forms similar to these are constantly created by ordinary idle and frivolous curiosity, but as there is no intellect involved in that case the colour is no longer yellow, but usually closely resembles that of decaying meat, somewhat like that shown in Fig. 29 as expressing a drunken man's craving for alcohol. [Illustration: FIG. 19. THE INTENTION TO KNOW] _High Ambition._--Fig. 20 gives us another manifestation of desire--the ambition for place or power. The ambitious quality is shown by the rich deep orange colour, and the desire by the hooked extensions which precede the form as it moves. The thought is a good and pure one of its kind, for if there were anything base or selfish in the desire it would inevitably show itself in the darkening of the clear orange hue by dull reds, browns, or greys. If this man coveted place or power, it was not for his own sake, but from the conviction that he could do the work well and truly, and to the advantage of his fellow-men. [Illustration: FIG. 20. HIGH AMBITION] _Selfish Ambition._--Ambition of a lower type is represented in Fig. 21. Not only have we here a large stain of the dull brown-grey of selfishness, but there is also a considerable difference in the form, though it appears to possess equal definiteness of outline. Fig. 20 is rising steadily onward towards a definite object, for it will be observed that the central part of it is as definitely a projectile as Fig. 10. Fig. 21, on the other hand, is a floating form, and is strongly indicative of general acquisitiveness--the ambition to grasp for the self everything that is within sight. [Illustration: FIG. 21. SELFISH AMBITION] ANGER _Murderous Rage and Sustained Anger._--In Figs. 22 and 23 we have two terrible examples of the awful effect of anger. The lurid flash from dark clouds (Fig. 22) was taken from the aura of a rough and partially intoxicated man in the East End of London, as he struck down a woman; the flash darted out at her the moment before he raised his hand to strike, and caused a shuddering feeling of horror, as though it might slay. The keen-pointed stiletto-like dart (Fig. 23) was a thought of steady anger, intense and desiring vengeance, of the quality of murder, sustained through years, and directed against a person who had inflicted a deep injury on the one who sent it forth; had the latter been possessed of a strong and trained will, such a thought-form would slay, and the one nourishing it is running a very serious danger of becoming a murderer in act as well as in thought in a future incarnation. It will be noted that both of them take the flash-like form, though the upper is irregular in its shape, while the lower represents a steadiness of intention which is far more dangerous. The basis of utter selfishness out of which the upper one springs is very characteristic and instructive. The difference in colour between the two is also worthy of note. In the upper one the dirty brown of selfishness is so strongly evident that it stains even the outrush of anger; while in the second case, though no doubt selfishness was at the root of that also, the original thought has been forgotten in the sustained and concentrated wrath. One who studies Plate XIII. in _Man Visible and Invisible_ will be able to image to himself the condition of the astral body from which these forms are protruding; and surely the mere sight of these pictures, even without examination, should prove a powerful object-lesson in the evil of yielding to the passion of anger. [Illustration: FIG. 22. MURDEROUS RAGE] [Illustration: FIG. 23. SUSTAINED ANGER] _Explosive Anger._--In Fig. 24 we see an exhibition of anger of a totally different character. Here is no sustained hatred, but simply a vigorous explosion of irritation. It is at once evident that while the creators of the forms shown in Figs. 22 and 23 were each directing their ire against an individual, the person who is responsible for the explosion in Fig. 24 is for the moment at war with the whole world round him. It may well express the sentiment of some choleric old gentleman, who feels himself insulted or impertinently treated, for the dash of orange intermingled with the scarlet implies that his pride has been seriously hurt. It is instructive to compare the radiations of this plate with those of Fig. 11. Here we see indicated a veritable explosion, instantaneous in its passing and irregular in its effects; and the vacant centre shows us that the feeling that caused it is already a thing of the past, and that no further force is being generated. In Fig. 11, on the other hand, the centre is the strongest part of the thought-form, showing that this is not the result of a momentary flash of feeling, but that there is a steady continuous upwelling of the energy, while the rays show by their quality and length and the evenness of their distribution the steadily sustained effort which produces them. [Illustration: FIG. 24. EXPLOSIVE ANGER] _Watchful and Angry Jealousy._--In Fig. 25 we see an interesting though unpleasant thought-form. Its peculiar brownish-green colour at once indicates to the practised clairvoyant that it is an expression of jealousy, and its curious shape shows the eagerness with which the man is watching its object. The remarkable resemblance to the snake with raised head aptly symbolises the extraordinarily fatuous attitude of the jealous person, keenly alert to discover signs of that which he least of all wishes to see. The moment that he does see it, or imagines that he sees it, the form will change into the far commoner one shown in Fig. 26, where the jealousy is already mingled with anger. It may be noted that here the jealousy is merely a vague cloud, though interspersed with very definite flashes of anger ready to strike at those by whom it fancies itself to be injured; whereas in Fig. 25, where there is no anger as yet, the jealousy itself has a perfectly definite and very expressive outline. [Illustration: FIG. 25. WATCHFUL JEALOUSY] [Illustration: FIG. 26. ANGRY JEALOUSY] SYMPATHY _Vague Sympathy._--In Fig. 18A we have another of the vague clouds, but this time its green colour shows us that it is a manifestation of the feeling of sympathy. We may infer from the indistinct character of its outline that it is not a definite and active sympathy, such as would instantly translate itself from thought into deed; it marks rather such a general feeling of commiseration as might come over a man who read an account of a sad accident, or stood at the door of a hospital ward looking in upon the patients. [Illustration: FIG. 18A. VAGUE SYMPATHY] FEAR _Sudden Fright._--One of the most pitiful objects in nature is a man or an animal in a condition of abject fear; and an examination of Plate XIV. in _Man Visible and Invisible_ shows that under such circumstances the astral body presents no better appearance than the physical. When a man's astral body is thus in a state of frenzied palpitation, its natural tendency is to throw off amorphous explosive fragments, like masses of rock hurled out in blasting, as will be seen in Fig. 30; but when a person is not terrified but seriously startled, an effect such as that shown in Fig. 27 is often produced. In one of the photographs taken by Dr Baraduc of Paris, it was noticed that an eruption of broken circles resulted from sudden annoyance, and this outrush of crescent-shaped forms seems to be of somewhat the same nature, though in this case there are the accompanying lines of matter which even increase the explosive appearance. It is noteworthy that all the crescents to the right hand, which must obviously have been those expelled earliest, show nothing but the livid grey of fear; but a moment later the man is already partially recovering from the shock, and beginning to feel angry that he allowed himself to be startled. This is shown by the fact that the later crescents are lined with scarlet, evidencing the mingling of anger and fear, while the last crescent is pure scarlet, telling us that even already the fright is entirely overcome, and only the annoyance remains. [Illustration: FIG. 27. SUDDEN FRIGHT] GREED _Selfish Greed._--Fig. 28 gives us an example of selfish greed--a far lower type than Fig. 21. It will be noted that here there is nothing even so lofty as ambition, and it is also evident from the tinge of muddy green that the person from whom this unpleasant thought is projecting is quite ready to employ deceit in order to obtain her desire. While the ambition of Fig. 21 was general in its nature, the craving expressed in Fig. 28 is for a particular object towards which it is reaching out; for it will be understood that this thought-form, like that in Fig. 13, remains attached to the astral body, which must be supposed to be on the left of the picture. Claw-like forms of this nature are very frequently to be seen converging upon a woman who wears a new dress or bonnet, or some specially attractive article of jewellery. The thought-form may vary in colour according to the precise amount of envy or jealousy which is mingled with the lust for possession, but an approximation to the shape indicated in our illustration will be found in all cases. Not infrequently people gathered in front of a shop-window may be seen thus protruding astral cravings through the glass. [Illustration: FIG. 28. SELFISH GREED] _Greed for Drink._--In Fig. 29 we have another variant of the same passion, perhaps at an even more degraded and animal level. This specimen was taken from the astral body of a man just as he entered at the door of a drinking-shop; the expectation of and the keen desire for the liquor which he was about to absorb showed itself in the projection in front of him of this very unpleasant appearance. Once more the hooked protrusions show the craving, while the colour and the coarse mottled texture show the low and sensual nature of the appetite. Sexual desires frequently show themselves in an exactly similar manner. Men who give birth to forms such as this are as yet but little removed from the animal; as they rise in the scale of evolution the place of this form will gradually be taken by something resembling that shown in Fig. 13, and very slowly, as development advances, that in turn will pass through the stages indicated in Figs. 9 and 8, until at last all selfishness is cast out, and the desire to have has been transmuted into the desire to give, and we arrive at the splendid results shown in Figs. 11 and 10. [Illustration: FIG. 29. GREED FOR DRINK] VARIOUS EMOTIONS _At a Shipwreck._--Very serious is the panic which has occasioned the very interesting group of thought-forms which are depicted in Fig. 30. They were seen simultaneously, arranged exactly as represented, though in the midst of indescribable confusion, so their relative positions have been retained, though in explaining them it will be convenient to take them in reverse order. They were called forth by a terrible accident, and they are instructive as showing how differently people are affected by sudden and serious danger. One form shows nothing but an eruption of the livid grey of fear, rising out of a basis of utter selfishness: and unfortunately there were many such as this. The shattered appearance of the thought-form shows the violence and completeness of the explosion, which in turn indicates that the whole soul of that person was possessed with blind, frantic terror, and that the overpowering sense of personal danger excluded for the time every higher feeling. [Illustration: FIG. 30. AT A SHIPWRECK] The second form represents at least an attempt at self-control, and shows the attitude adopted by a person having a certain amount of religious feeling. The thinker is seeking solace in prayer, and endeavouring in this way to overcome her fear. This is indicated by the point of greyish-blue which lifts itself hesitatingly upwards; the colour shows, however, that the effort is but partially successful, and we see also from the lower part of the thought-form, with its irregular outline and its falling fragments, that there is in reality almost as much fright here as in the other case. But at least this woman has had presence of mind enough to remember that she ought to pray, and is trying to imagine that she is not afraid as she does it, whereas in the other case there was absolutely no thought beyond selfish terror. The one retains still some semblance of humanity, and some possibility of regaining self-control; the other has for the time cast aside all remnants of decency, and is an abject slave to overwhelming emotion. A very striking contrast to the humiliating weakness shown in these two forms is the splendid strength and decision of the third. Here we have no amorphous mass with quivering lines and explosive fragments, but a powerful, clear-cut and definite thought, obviously full of force and resolution. For this is the thought of the officer in charge--the man responsible for the lives and the safety of the passengers, and he rises to the emergency in a most satisfactory manner. It does not even occur to him to feel the least shadow of fear; he has no time for that. Though the scarlet of the sharp point of his weapon-like thought-form shows anger that the accident should have happened, the bold curve of orange immediately above it betokens perfect self-confidence and certainty of his power to deal with the difficulty. The brilliant yellow implies that his intellect is already at work upon the problem, while the green which runs side by side with it denotes the sympathy which he feels for those whom he intends to save. A very striking and instructive group of thought-forms. _On the First Night._--Fig. 31 is also an interesting specimen--perhaps unique--for it represents the thought-form of an actor while waiting to go upon the stage for a "first-night" performance. The broad band of orange in the centre is very clearly defined, and is the expression of a well-founded self-confidence--the realisation of many previous successes, and the reasonable expectation that on this occasion another will be added to the list. Yet in spite of this there is a good deal of unavoidable uncertainty as to how this new play may strike the fickle public, and on the whole the doubt and fear overbalance the certainty and pride, for there is more of the pale grey than of the orange, and the whole thought-form vibrates like a flag flapping in a gale of wind. It will be noted that while the outline of the orange is exceedingly clear and definite, that of the grey is much vaguer. [Illustration: FIG. 31. ON THE FIRST NIGHT] _The Gamblers._--The forms shown in Fig. 32 were observed simultaneously at the great gambling-house at Monte Carlo. Both represent some of the worst of human passions, and there is little to choose between them; although they represent the feelings of the successful and the unsuccessful gambler respectively. The lower form has a strong resemblance to a lurid and gleaming eye, though this must be simply a coincidence, for when we analyse it we find that its constituent parts and colours can be accounted for without difficulty. The background of the whole thought is an irregular cloud of deep depression, heavily marked by the dull brown-grey of selfishness and the livid hue of fear. In the centre we find a clearly-marked scarlet ring showing deep anger and resentment at the hostility of fate, and within that is a sharply outlined circle of black expressing the hatred of the ruined man for those who have won his money. The man who can send forth such a thought-form as this is surely in imminent danger, for he has evidently descended into the very depths of despair; being a gambler he can have no principle to sustain him, so that he would be by no means unlikely to resort to the imaginary refuge of suicide, only to find on awakening into astral life that he had changed his condition for the worse instead of for the better, as the suicide always does, since his cowardly action cuts him off from the happiness and peace which usually follow death. [Illustration: FIG. 32. THE GAMBLERS] The upper form represents a state of mind which is perhaps even more harmful in its effects, for this is the gloating of the successful gambler over his ill-gotten gain. Here the outline is perfectly definite, and the man's resolution to persist in his evil course is unmistakable. The broad band of orange in the centre shows very clearly that although when the man loses he may curse the inconstancy of fate, when he wins he attributes his success entirely to his own transcendent genius. Probably he has invented some system to which he pins his faith, and of which he is inordinately proud. But it will be noticed that on each side of the orange comes a hard line of selfishness, and we see how this in turn melts into avarice and becomes a mere animal greed of possession, which is also so clearly expressed by the claw-like extremities of the thought-form. _At a Street Accident._--Fig. 33 is instructive as showing the various forms which the same feelings may take in different individuals. These two evidences of emotion were seen simultaneously among the spectators of a street accident--a case in which someone was knocked down and slightly injured by a passing vehicle. The persons who generated these two thought-forms were both animated by affectionate interest in the victim and deep compassion for his suffering, and so their thought-forms exhibited exactly the same colours, although the outlines are absolutely unlike. The one over whom floats that vague sphere of cloud is thinking "Poor fellow, how sad!" while he who gives birth to that sharply-defined disc is already rushing forward to see in what way he can be of assistance. The one is a dreamer, though of acute sensibilities; the other is a man of action. [Illustration: FIG. 33. AT A STREET ACCIDENT] _At a Funeral._--In Fig. 34 we have an exceedingly striking example of the advantage of knowledge, of the fundamental change produced in the man's attitude of mind by a clear understanding of the great laws of nature under which we live. Utterly different as they are in every respect of colour and form and meaning, these two thought-forms were seen simultaneously, and they represent two points of view with regard to the same occurrence. They were observed at a funeral, and they exhibit the feelings evoked in the minds of two of the "mourners" by the contemplation of death. The thinkers stood in the same relation to the dead man, but while one of them was still steeped in the dense ignorance with regard to super-physical life which is so painfully common in the present day, the other had the inestimable advantage of the light of Theosophy. In the thought of the former we see expressed nothing but profound depression, fear and selfishness. The fact that death has approached so near has evidently evoked in the mind of the mourner the thought that it may one day come to him also, and the anticipation of this is very terrible to him; but since he does not know what it is that he fears, the clouds in which his feeling is manifested are appropriately vague. His only definite sensations are despair and the sense of his personal loss, and these declare themselves in regular bands of brown-grey and leaden grey, while the very curious downward protrusion, which actually descends into the grave and enfolds the coffin, is an expression of strong selfish desire to draw the dead man back into physical life. [Illustration: FIG. 34. AT A FUNERAL] It is refreshing to turn from this gloomy picture to the wonderfully different effect produced by the very same circumstances upon the mind of the man who comprehends the facts of the case. It will be observed that the two have no single emotion in common; in the former case all was despondency and horror, while in this case we find none but the highest and most beautiful sentiments. At the base of the thought-form we find a full expression of deep sympathy, the lighter green indicating appreciation of the suffering of the mourners and condolence with them, while the band of deeper green shows the attitude of the thinker towards the dead man himself. The deep rose-colour exhibits affection towards both the dead and the living, while the upper part of the cone and the stars which rise from it testify to the feeling aroused within the thinker by the consideration of the subject of death, the blue expressing its devotional aspect, while the violet shows the thought of, and the power to respond to, a noble ideal, and the golden stars denote the spiritual aspirations which its contemplation calls forth. The band of clear yellow which is seen in the centre of this thought-form is very significant, as indicating that the man's whole attitude is based upon and prompted by his intellectual comprehension of the situation, and this is also shown by the regularity of the arrangement of the colours and the definiteness of the lines of demarcation between them. The comparison between the two illustrations shown in this plate is surely a very impressive testimony to the value of the knowledge given by the theosophical teaching. Undoubtedly this knowledge of the truth takes away all fear of death, and makes life easier to live because we understand its object and its end, and we realise that death is a perfectly natural incident in its course, a necessary step in our evolution. This ought to be universally known among Christian nations, but it is not, and therefore on this point, as on so many others, Theosophy has a gospel for the Western world. It has to announce that there is no gloomy impenetrable abyss beyond the grave, but instead of that a world of life and light which may be known to us as clearly and fully and accurately as this physical world in which we live now. We have created the gloom and the horror for ourselves, like children who frighten themselves with ghastly stories, and we have only to study the facts of the case, and all these artificial clouds will roll away at once. We have an evil heredity behind us in this matter, for we have inherited all kinds of funereal horrors from our forefathers, and so we are used to them, and we do not see the absurdity and the monstrosity of them. The ancients were in this respect wiser than we, for they did not associate all this phantasmagoria of gloom with the death of the body--partly perhaps because they had a much more rational method of disposing of the body--a method which was not only infinitely better for the dead man and more healthy for the living, but was also free from the gruesome suggestions connected with slow decay. They knew much more about death in those days, and because they knew more they mourned less. _On Meeting a Friend._--Fig. 35 gives us an example of a good, clearly-defined and expressive thought-form, with each colour well marked off from the others. It represents the feeling of a man upon meeting a friend from whom he has been long separated. The convex surface of the crescent is nearest to the thinker, and its two arms stretch out towards the approaching friend as if to embrace him. The rose colour naturally betokens the affection felt, the light green shows the depth of the sympathy which exists, and the clear yellow is a sign of the intellectual pleasure with which the creator of the thought anticipates the revival of delightful reminiscences of days long gone by. [Illustration: FIG. 35. ON MEETING A FRIEND] _The Appreciation of a Picture._--In Fig. 36 we have a somewhat complex thought-form representing the delighted appreciation of a beautiful picture upon a religious subject. The strong pure yellow marks the beholder's enthusiastic recognition of the technical skill of the artist, while all the other colours are expressions of the various emotions evoked within him by the examination of so glorious a work of art. Green shows his sympathy with the central figure in the picture, deep devotion appears not only in the broad band of blue, but also in the outline of the entire figure, while the violet tells us that the picture has raised the man's thought to the contemplation of a lofty ideal, and has made him, at least for the time, capable of responding to it. We have here the first specimen of an interesting class of thought-forms of which we shall find abundant examples later--that in which light of one colour shines out through a network of lines of some quite different hue. It will be noted that in this case from the mass of violet there rise many wavy lines which flow like rivulets over a golden plain; and this makes it clear that the loftiest aspiration is by no means vague, but is thoroughly supported by an intellectual grasp of the situation and a clear comprehension of the method by which it can be put into effect. [Illustration: FIG. 36. THE APPRECIATION OF A PICTURE] FORMS SEEN IN THOSE MEDITATING _Sympathy and Love for all._--Hitherto we have been dealing chiefly with forms which are the expression of emotion, or of such thought as is aroused within the mind by external circumstances. We have now to consider some of those caused by thoughts which arise from within--forms generated during meditation--each being the effect produced by a conscious effort on the part of the thinker to form a certain conception, or to put himself into a certain attitude. Naturally such thoughts are definite, for the man who trains himself in this way learns how to think with clearness and precision, and the development of his power in this direction shows itself in the beauty and regularity of the shapes produced. In this case we have the result of an endeavour on the part of the thinker to put himself into an attitude of sympathy and love towards all mankind, and thus we have a series of graceful lines of the luminous green of sympathy with the strong roseate glow of affection shining out between them (Fig. 37). The lines are still sufficiently broad and wide apart to be easily drawn; but in some of the higher examples of thought-forms of this type the lines are so fine and so close that no human hand can represent them as they really are. The outline of this thought-form is that of a leaf, yet its shape and the curve of its lines are more suggestive of a certain kind of shell, so that this is another example of the approximation to forms seen in physical nature which we noted in commenting upon Fig. 16. [Illustration: FIG. 37. SYMPATHY AND LOVE FOR ALL] _An Aspiration to Enfold all._--In Fig. 38 we have a far more developed example of the same type. This form was generated by one who was trying, while sitting in meditation, to fill his mind with an aspiration to enfold all mankind in order to draw them upward towards the high ideal which shone so clearly before his eyes. Therefore it is that the form which he produces seems to rush out from him, to curve round upon itself, and to return to its base; therefore it is that the marvellously fine lines are drawn in lovely luminous violet, and that from within the form there shines out a glorious golden light which it is unfortunately quite impossible to reproduce. For the truth is that all these apparently intricate lines are in reality only one line circling round the form again and again with unwearied patience and wonderful accuracy. It is scarcely possible that any human hand could make such a drawing as this on this scale, and in any case the effect of its colours could not be shown, for it will be seen by experiment that if an attempt be made to draw fine violet lines close together upon a yellow background a grey effect at once appears, and all likeness to the original is destroyed. But what cannot be done by hand may sometimes be achieved by the superior accuracy and delicacy of a machine, and it is in this way that the drawing was made from which our illustration is reproduced,--with some attempt to represent the colour effect as well as the wonderful delicacy of the lines and curves. [Illustration: FIG. 38. AN ASPIRATION TO ENFOLD ALL] _In the Six Directions._--The form represented in Fig. 39 is the result of another endeavour to extend love and sympathy in all directions--an effort almost precisely similar to that which gave birth to Fig. 37, though the effect seems so different. The reasons for this variety and for the curious shape taken in this case constitute a very interesting illustration of the way in which thought-forms grow. It will be seen that in this instance the thinker displays considerable devotional feeling, and has also made an intellectual effort to grasp the conditions necessary for the realisation of his wishes, and the blue and yellow colours remain as evidence of this. Originally this thought-form was circular, and the dominant idea evidently was that the green of sympathy should be upon the outside, facing in all directions, as it were, and that love should lie at the centre and heart of the thought and direct its outgoing energies. But the maker of this thought-form had been reading Hindu books, and his modes of thought had been greatly influenced by them. Students of Oriental literature will be aware that the Hindu speaks, not of four directions (north, east, south, and west), as we do, but always of six, since he very sensibly includes the zenith and the nadir. Our friend was imbued from his reading with the idea that he should pour forth his love and sympathy "in the six directions"; but since he did not accurately understand what the six directions are, he directed his stream of affection towards six equidistant points in his circle. The outrushing streams altered the shape of the outlying lines which he had already built up, and so instead of having a circle as a section of his thought-form, we have this curious hexagon with its inward-curving sides. We see thus how faithfully every thought-form records the exact process of its upbuilding, registering ineffaceably even the errors of its construction. [Illustration: FIG. 39. IN THE SIX DIRECTIONS] _An Intellectual Conception of Cosmic Order._--In Fig. 40 we have the effect of an attempt to attain an intellectual conception of cosmic order. The thinker was obviously a Theosophist, and it will be seen that when he endeavours to think of the action of spirit upon matter he instinctively follows the same line of symbolism as that depicted in the well-known seal of the Society. Here we have an upward-pointing triangle, signifying the threefold aspect of the Spirit, interlaced with the downward-pointing triangle, which indicates matter with its three inherent qualities. Usually we represent the upward triangle in white or gold, and the downward-pointing one in some darker hue such as blue or black, but it is noteworthy that in this case the thinker is so entirely occupied with the intellectual endeavour, that no colour but yellow is exhibited within the form. There is no room as yet for emotions of devotion, of wonder, or of admiration; the idea which he wishes to realise fills his mind entirely, to the exclusion of all else. Still the definiteness of the outline as it stands out against its background of rays shows that he has achieved a high measure of success. [Illustration: FIG. 40. AN INTELLECTUAL CONCEPTION OF COSMIC ORDER] _The Logos as manifested in Man._--We are now coming to a series of thoughts which are among the very highest the human mind can form, when in meditation upon the divine source of its being. When the man in reverent contemplation tries to raise his thought towards the LOGOS of our solar system, he naturally makes no attempt to image to himself that august Being; nor does he think of Him as in any way possessing such form as we can comprehend. Nevertheless such thoughts build forms for themselves in the matter of the mental plane; and it will be of interest for us to examine those forms. In our illustration in Fig. 41 we have a thought of the LOGOS as manifested in man, with the devotional aspiration that He may thus be manifested through the thinker. It is this devotional feeling which gives the pale blue tinge to the five-pointed star, and its shape is significant, since it has been employed for many ages as a symbol of God manifest in man. The thinker may perhaps have been a Freemason, and his knowledge of the symbolism employed by that body may have had its share in the shaping of the star. It will be seen that the star is surrounded by bright yellow rays shining out amidst a cloud of glory, which denotes not only the reverential understanding of the surpassing glory of the Deity, but also a distinct intellectual effort in addition to the outpouring of devotion. [Illustration: FIG. 41. THE LOGOS AS MANIFESTED IN MAN] _The Logos pervading all._--Our next three Figures are devoted to the effort to represent a thought of a very high type--an endeavour to think of the LOGOS as pervading all nature. Here again, as in Fig. 38, it is impossible to give a full reproduction, and we must call upon our readers for an effort of the imagination which shall to some extent supplement the deficiencies of the arts of drawing and printing. The golden ball depicted in Fig. 42 must be thought of as inside the other ball of delicate lines (blue in colour) which is drawn in Fig. 44. Any effort to place the colours in such intimate juxtaposition on the physical plane results simply in producing a green blur, so that the whole character of the thought-form is lost. It is only by means of the machine before mentioned that it is at all possible to represent the grace and the delicacy of the lines. As before, a single line produces all the wonderful tracery of Fig. 44, and the effect of the four radiating lines making a sort of cross of light is merely due to the fact that the curves are not really concentric, although at first sight they appear to be so. [Illustration: FIG. 42. THE LOGOS PERVADING ALL] [Illustration: FIG. 44. THE LOGOS PERVADING ALL] _Another Conception._--Fig. 45 exhibits the form produced by another person when trying to hold exactly the same thought. Here also we have an amazing complexity of almost inconceivably delicate blue lines, and here also our imagination must be called upon to insert the golden globe from Fig. 42, so that its glory may shine through at every point. Here also, as in Fig. 44, we have that curious and beautiful pattern, resembling somewhat the damascening on ancient Oriental swords, or that which is seen upon watered silk or _moire antique_. When this form is drawn by the pendulum, the pattern is not in any way intentionally produced, but simply comes as a consequence of the crossing of the innumerable microscopically fine lines. It is evident that the thinker who created the form upon Fig. 44 must have held in his mind most prominently the unity of the LOGOS, while he who generated the form in Fig. 45 has as clearly in mind the subordinate centres through which the divine life pours forth, and many of these subordinate centres have accordingly represented themselves in the thought-form. [Illustration: FIG. 45. ANOTHER CONCEPTION] _The Threefold Manifestation._--When the form employed in Fig. 46 was made, its creator was endeavouring to think of the LOGOS in His threefold manifestation. The vacant space in the centre of the form was a blinding glow of yellow light, and this clearly typified the First Aspect, while the Second was symbolised by the broad ring of closely-knitted and almost bewildering lines which surround this centre, while the Third Aspect is suggested by the narrow outer ring which seems more loosely woven. The whole figure is pervaded by the usual golden light gleaming out between the lines of violet. [Illustration: FIG. 46. THE THREEFOLD MANIFESTATION] _The Sevenfold Manifestation._--In all religions there remains some tradition of the great truth that the LOGOS manifests Himself through seven mighty channels, often regarded as minor Logoi or great planetary Spirits. In the Christian scheme they appear as the seven great archangels, sometimes called the seven spirits before the throne of God. The figure numbered 47 shows the result of the effort to meditate upon this method of divine manifestation. We have the golden glow in the centre, and also (though with lesser splendour) pervading the form. The line is blue, and it draws a succession of seven graceful and almost featherlike double wings which surround the central glory and are clearly intended as a part of it. As the thought strengthens and expands, these beautiful wings change their colour to violet and become like the petals of a flower, and overlap one another in an intricate but exceedingly effective pattern. This gives us a very interesting glimpse into the formation and growth of these shapes in higher matter. [Illustration: FIG. 47. THE SEVENFOLD MANIFESTATION] _Intellectual Aspiration._--The form depicted in Fig. 43 bears a certain resemblance to that in Fig. 15; but, beautiful as that was, this is in reality a far higher and grander thought, and implies much more advanced development on the part of the thinker. Here we have a great clear-cut spear or pencil of the pure pale violet which indicates devotion to the highest ideal, and it is outlined and strengthened by an exceedingly fine manifestation of the noblest development of intellect. He who can think thus must already have entered upon the Path of Holiness, for he has learnt how to use the power of thought to very mighty effect. It will be noted that in both the colours there is a strong admixture of the white light which always indicates unusual spiritual power. [Illustration: FIG. 43. INTELLECTUAL ASPIRATION] Surely the study of these thought-forms should be a most impressive object-lesson, since from it we may see both what to avoid and what to cultivate, and may learn by degrees to appreciate how tremendous is our responsibility for the exercise of this mighty power. Indeed it is terribly true, as we said in the beginning, that thoughts are things, and puissant things; and it behoves us to remember that every one of us is generating them unceasingly night and day. See how great is the happiness this knowledge brings to us, and how gloriously we can utilise it when we know of some one in sorrow or in suffering. Often circumstances arise which prevent us from giving physical help either by word or deed, however much we may desire to do so; but there is no case in which help by thought may not be given, and no case in which it can fail to produce a definite result. It may often happen that at the moment our friend may be too entirely occupied with his own suffering, or perhaps too much excited, to receive and accept any suggestion from without, but presently a time comes when our thought-form can penetrate and discharge itself, and then assuredly our sympathy will produce its due result. It is indeed true that the responsibility of using such a power is great, yet we should not shrink from our duty on that account. It is sadly true that there are many men who are unconsciously using their thought-power chiefly for evil, yet this only makes it all the more necessary that those of us who are beginning to understand life a little should use it consciously, and use it for good. We have at our command a never-failing criterion; we can never misuse this mighty power of thought if we employ it always in unison with the great divine scheme of evolution, and for the uplifting of our fellow-man. HELPFUL THOUGHTS The Figures numbered 48 to 54 were the results of a systematic attempt to send helpful thought by the friend who has furnished us with the sketches. A definite time was given each day at a fixed hour. The forms were in some cases seen by the transmitter, but in all cases were perceived by the recipient, who immediately sent rough sketches of what was seen by the next post to the transmitter, who has kindly supplied the following notes with regard to them:-- "In the coloured drawings appended the blue features appear to have represented the more devotional element of the thought. The yellow forms accompanied the endeavour to communicate intellectual fortitude, or mental strength and courage. The rosy pink appeared when the thought was blended with affectionate sympathy. If the sender (A.) could formulate his thought deliberately at the appointed time, the receiver (B.) would report seeing a large clear form as in Figs. 48, 49, and 54. The latter persisted for some minutes, constantly streaming its luminous yellow 'message' upon B. If, however, A. was of necessity experimenting under difficulty--say walking out of doors--he would occasionally see his 'forms' broken up into smaller globes, or shapes, such as 50, 51, 52, and B. would report their receipt so broken up. In this way many details could be checked and compared as from opposite ends of the line, and the nature of the influence communicated offered another means of verification. Upon one occasion A. was disturbed in his endeavour to send a thought of the blue-pink connotation, by a feeling of anxiety that the nature of the pink element should not be misapprehended. The report of B. was that a well-defined globe as in Fig. 54 was first seen, but that this suddenly disappeared, being replaced by a moving procession of little light-green triangles, as in Fig. 53. These few drawings give but a slight idea of the varied flower-like and geometric forms seen, while neither paint nor crayon-work seems capable of representing the glowing beauty of their living colours." [Illustration: FIG. 48. HELPFUL THOUGHTS] [Illustration: FIG. 49. HELPFUL THOUGHTS] [Illustration: FIG. 50. HELPFUL THOUGHTS] [Illustration: FIG. 51. HELPFUL THOUGHTS] [Illustration: FIG. 52. HELPFUL THOUGHTS] [Illustration: FIG. 53. HELPFUL THOUGHTS] [Illustration: FIG. 54. HELPFUL THOUGHTS] FORMS BUILT BY MUSIC Before closing this little treatise it will perhaps be of interest to our readers to give a few examples of another type of forms unknown to those who are confined to the physical senses as their means of obtaining information. Many people are aware that sound is always associated with colour--that when, for example, a musical note is sounded, a flash of colour corresponding to it may be seen by those whose finer senses are already to some extent developed. It seems not to be so generally known that sound produces form as well as colour, and that every piece of music leaves behind it an impression of this nature, which persists for some considerable time, and is clearly visible and intelligible to those who have eyes to see. Such a shape is perhaps not technically a thought-form--unless indeed we take it, as we well may, as the result of the thought of the composer expressed by means of the skill of the musician through his instrument. Some such forms are very striking and impressive, and naturally their variety is infinite. Each class of music has its own type of form, and the style of the composer shows as clearly in the form which his music builds as a man's character shows in his handwriting. Other possibilities of variation are introduced by the kind of instrument upon which the music is performed, and also by the merits of the player. The same piece of music if accurately played will always build the same form, but that form will be enormously larger when it is played upon a church organ or by a military band than when it is performed upon a piano, and not only the size but also the texture of the resultant form will be very different. There will also be a similar difference in texture between the result of a piece of music played upon a violin and the same piece executed upon the flute. Again, the excellence of the performance has its effect, and there is a wonderful difference between the radiant beauty of the form produced by the work of a true artist, perfect alike in expression and execution, and the comparatively dull and undistinguished-looking one which represents the effort of the wooden and mechanical player. Anything like inaccuracy in rendering naturally leaves a corresponding defect in the form, so that the exact character of the performance shows itself just as clearly to the clairvoyant spectator as it does to the auditor. It is obvious that, if time and capacity permitted, hundreds of volumes might be filled with drawings of the forms built by different pieces of music under different conditions, so that the most that can be done within any reasonable compass is to give a few examples of the leading types. It has been decided for the purposes of this book to limit these to three, to take types of music presenting readily recognisable contrasts, and for the sake of simplicity in comparison to present them all as they appeared when played upon the same instrument--a very fine church organ. In each of our Plates the church shows as well as the thought-form which towers far into the air above it; and it should be remembered that though the drawings are on very different scales the church is the same in all three cases, and consequently the relative size of the sound-form can easily be calculated. The actual height of the tower of the church is just under a hundred feet, so it will be seen that the sound-form produced by a powerful organ is enormous in size. Such forms remain as coherent erections for some considerable time--an hour or two at least; and during all that time they are radiating forth their characteristic vibrations in every direction, just as our thought-forms do; and if the music be good, the effect of those vibrations cannot but be uplifting to every man upon whose vehicles they play. Thus the community owes a very real debt of gratitude to the musician who pours forth such helpful influences, for he may affect for good hundreds whom he never saw and will never know upon the physical plane. _Mendelssohn._--The first of such forms, a comparatively small and simple one, is drawn for us in Plate M. It will be seen that we have here a shape roughly representing that of a balloon, having a scalloped outline consisting of a double violet line. Within that there is an arrangement of variously-coloured lines moving almost parallel with this outline; and then another somewhat similar arrangement which seems to cross and interpenetrate the first. Both of these sets of lines evidently start from the organ within the church, and consequently pass upward through its roof in their course, physical matter being clearly no obstacle to their formation. In the hollow centre of the form float a number of small crescents arranged apparently in four vertical lines. [Illustration: PLATE M. MUSIC OF MENDELSSOHN] Let us endeavour now to give some clue to the meaning of all this, which may well seem so bewildering to the novice, and to explain in some measure how it comes into existence. It must be recollected that this is a melody of simple character played once through, and that consequently we can analyse the form in a way that would be quite impossible with a larger and more complicated specimen. Yet even in this case we cannot give all the details, as will presently be seen. Disregarding for the moment the scalloped border, we have next within it an arrangement of four lines of different colours running in the same direction, the outermost being blue and the others crimson, yellow, and green respectively. These lines are exceedingly irregular and crooked; in fact, they each consist of a number of short lines at various levels joined together perpendicularly. It seems that each of these short lines represents a note of music, and that the irregularity of their arrangement indicates the succession of these notes; so that each of these crooked lines signifies the movement of one of the parts of the melody, the four moving approximately together denoting the treble, alto, tenor and bass respectively, though they do not necessarily appear in that order in this astral form. Here it is necessary to interpolate a still further explanation. Even with a melody so comparatively simple as this there are tints and shades far too finely modulated to be reproduced on any scale at all within our reach; therefore it must be said that each of the short lines expressing a note has a colour of its own, so that although as a whole that outer line gives an impression of blueness, and the one next within it of carmine, each yet varies in every inch of its length; so that what is shown is not a correct reproduction of every tint, but only the general impression. The two sets of four lines which seem to cross one another are caused by two sections of the melody; the scalloped edging surrounding the whole is the result of various flourishes and arpeggios, and the floating crescents in the centre represent isolated or staccato chords. Naturally the arpeggios are not wholly violet, for each loop has a different hue, but on the whole they approach more nearly to that colour than to any other. The height of this form above the tower of the church is probably a little over a hundred feet; but since it also extends downwards through the roof of the church its total perpendicular diameter may well be about a hundred and fifty feet. It is produced by one of Mendelssohn's "Lieder ohne Wörte," and is characteristic of the delicate filigree-work which so often appears as the result of his compositions. The whole form is seen projected against a coruscating background of many colours, which is in reality a cloud surrounding it upon every side, caused by the vibrations which are pouring out from it in all directions. _Gounod._--In Plate G we have an entirely different piece--a ringing chorus by Gounod. Since the church in the illustration is the same, it is easy to calculate that in this case the highest point of the form must rise fully six hundred feet above the tower, though the perpendicular diameter of the form is somewhat less than that, for the organist has evidently finished some minutes ago, and the perfected shape floats high in the air, clearly defined and roughly spherical, though rather an oblate spheroid. This spheroid is hollow, as are all such forms, for it is slowly increasing in size--gradually radiating outward from its centre, but growing proportionately less vivid and more ethereal in appearance as it does so, until at last it loses coherence and fades away much as a wreath of smoke might do. The golden glory surrounding and interpenetrating it indicates as before the radiation of its vibrations, which in this case show the dominant yellow in much greater proportion than did Mendelssohn's gentler music. [Illustration: PLATE G. MUSIC OF GOUNOD] The colouring here is far more brilliant and massive than in Plate M, for this music is not so much a thread of murmurous melody as a splendid succession of crashing chords. The artist has sought to give the effect of the chords rather than that of the separate notes, the latter being scarcely possible on a scale so small as this. It is therefore more difficult here to follow the development of the form, for in this much longer piece the lines have crossed and intermingled, until we have little but the gorgeous general effect which the composer must have intended us to feel--and to see, if we were able to see. Nevertheless it is possible to discern something of the process which builds the form, and the easiest point at which to commence is the lowest on the left hand as one examines the Plate. The large violet protrusion there is evidently the opening chord of a phrase, and if we follow the outer line of the form upward and round the circumference we may obtain some idea of the character of that phrase. A close inspection will reveal two other lines further in which run roughly parallel to this outer one, and show similar successions of colour on a smaller scale, and these may well indicate a softer repetition of the same phrase. Careful analysis of this nature will soon convince us that there is a very real order in this seeming chaos, and we shall come to see that if it were possible to make a reproduction of this glowing glory that should be accurate down to the smallest detail, it would also be possible patiently to disentangle it to the uttermost, and to assign every lovely touch of coruscating colour to the very note that called it into existence. It must not be forgotten that very far less detail is given in this illustration than in Plate M; for example, each of these points or projections has within it as integral parts, at least the four lines or bands of varying colour which were shown as separate in Plate M, but here they are blended into one shade, and only the general effect of the chord is given. In M we combined horizontally, and tried to show, the characteristics of a number of successive notes blended into one, but to keep distinct the effect of the four simultaneous parts by using a differently-coloured line for each. In G we attempt exactly the reverse, for we combine vertically, and blend, not the successive notes of one part, but the chords, each probably containing six or eight notes. The true appearance combines these two effects with an inexpressible wealth of detail. _Wagner._--No one who has devoted any study to these musical forms would hesitate in ascribing the marvellous mountain-range depicted in Plate W to the genius of Richard Wagner, for no other composer has yet built sound edifices with such power and decision. In this case we have a vast bell-shaped erection, fully nine hundred feet in height, and but little less in diameter at the bottom, floating in the air above the church out of which it has arisen. It is hollow, like Gounod's form, but, unlike that, it is open at the bottom. The resemblance to the successively retreating ramparts of a mountain is almost perfect, and it is heightened by the billowy masses of cloud which roll between the crags and give the effect of perspective. No attempt has been made in this drawing to show the effect of single notes or single chords; each range of mimic rocks represents in size, shape, and colour only the general effect of one of the sections of the piece of music as seen from a distance. But it must be understood that in reality both this and the form given in Plate G are as full of minute details as that depicted in Plate M, and that all these magnificent masses of colour are built up of many comparatively small bands which would not be separately visible upon the scale on which this is drawn. The broad result is that each mountain-peak has its own brilliant hue, just as it is seen in the illustration--a splendid splash of vivid colour, glowing with the glory of its own living light, spreading its resplendent radiance over all the country round. Yet in each of these masses of colour other colours are constantly flickering, as they do over the surface of molten metal, so that the coruscations and scintillations of these wondrous astral edifices are far beyond the power of any physical words to describe. [Illustration: PLATE W. MUSIC OF WAGNER] A striking feature in this form is the radical difference between the two types of music which occur in it, one producing the angular rocky masses, and the other the rounded billowy clouds which lie between them. Other _motifs_ are shown by the broad bands of blue and rose and green which appear at the base of the bell, and the meandering lines of white and yellow which quiver across them are probably produced by a rippling arpeggio accompaniment. In these three Plates only the form created directly by the sound-vibrations has been drawn, though as seen by the clairvoyant it is usually surrounded by many other minor forms, the result of the personal feelings of the performer or of the emotions aroused among the audience by the music. To recapitulate briefly: in Plate M we have a small and comparatively simple form pourtrayed in considerable detail, something of the effect of each note being given; in Plate G we have a more elaborate form of very different character delineated with less detail, since no attempt is made to render the separate notes, but only to show how each chord expresses itself in form and colour; in Plate W we have a still greater and richer form, in the depiction of which all detail is avoided, in order that the full effect of the piece as a whole may be approximately given. Naturally every sound makes its impression upon astral and mental matter--not only those ordered successions of sounds which we call music. Some day, perhaps, the forms built by those other less euphonious sounds may be pictured for us, though they are beyond the scope of this treatise; meantime, those who feel an interest in them may read an account of them in the little book on _The Hidden Side of Things_.[1] It is well for us ever to bear in mind that there is a hidden side to life--that each act and word and thought has its consequence in the unseen world which is always so near to us, and that usually these unseen results are of infinitely greater importance than those which are visible to all upon the physical plane. The wise man, knowing this, orders his life accordingly, and takes account of the whole of the world in which he lives, and not of the outer husk of it only. Thus he saves himself an infinity of trouble, and makes his life not only happier but far more useful to his fellow-men. But to do this implies knowledge--that knowledge which is power; and in our Western world such knowledge is practically obtainable only through the literature of Theosophy. To exist is not enough; we desire to live intelligently. But to live we must know, and to know we must study; and here is a vast field open before us, if we will only enter upon it and gather thence the fruits of enlightenment. Let us, then, waste no more time in the dark dungeons of ignorance, but come forth boldly into the glorious sunshine of that divine wisdom which in these modern days men call Theosophy. [Footnote 1: By C.W. Leadbeater.] BRADFORD: REPRINTED BY PERCY LUND, HUMPHRIES AND CO. LTD. 
14599	----	The present edition of LIGHT ON THE PATH is a verbatim reprint of the 1888 edition (George Redway, London) in which later edition the NOTES by the Author first appear. The COMMENTS, which are not in the 1888 edition, are here taken directly from _Lucifer_, Volume I, 1887-8, where they were first published. Also in this volume we reprint verbatim the original edition (1887) of THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD by the same Author, together with a commentary by William Q. Judge taken from his magazine, _The Path_, March, 1887. *Light on the Path* _A Treatise_ WRITTEN FOR THE PERSONAL USE OF THOSE WHO ARE IGNORANT OF THE EASTERN WISDOM, AND WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN ITS INFLUENCE _Written down by_ M.C. _with Notes by the Author_ *LIGHT ON THE PATH* LIGHT ON THE PATH I These rules are written for all disciples: Attend you to them. Before the eyes can see, they must be incapable of tears. Before the ear can hear, it must have lost its sensitiveness. Before the voice can speak in the presence of the Masters it must have lost the power to wound. Before the soul can stand in the presence of the Masters its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart. 1. Kill out ambition. 2. Kill out desire of life. 3. Kill out desire of comfort. 4. Work as those work who are ambitious. Respect life as those do who desire it. Be happy as those are who live for happiness. Seek in the heart the source of evil and expunge it. It lives fruitfully in the heart of the devoted disciple as well as in the heart of the man of desire. Only the strong can kill it out. The weak must wait for its growth, its fruition, its death. And it is a plant that lives and increases throughout the ages. It flowers when the man has accumulated unto himself innumerable existences. He who will enter upon the path of power must tear this thing out of his heart. And then the heart will bleed, and the whole life of the man seem to be utterly dissolved. This ordeal must be endured: it may come at the first step of the perilous ladder which leads to the path of life: it may not come until the last. But, O disciple, remember that it has to be endured, and fasten the energies of your soul upon the task. Live neither in the present nor the future, but in the eternal. This giant weed cannot flower there: this blot upon existence is wiped out by the very atmosphere of eternal thought. 5. Kill out all sense of separateness. 6. Kill out desire for sensation. 7. Kill out the hunger for growth. 8. Yet stand alone and isolated, because nothing that is imbodied, nothing that is conscious of separation, nothing that is out of the eternal, can aid you. Learn from sensation and observe it, because only so can you commence the science of self-knowledge, and plant your foot on the first step of the ladder. Grow as the flower grows, unconsciously, but eagerly anxious to open its soul to the air. So must you press forward to open your soul to the eternal. But it must be the eternal that draws forth your strength and beauty, not desire of growth. For in the one case you develop in the luxuriance of purity, in the other you harden by the forcible passion for personal stature. 9. Desire only that which is within you. 10. Desire only that which is beyond you. 11. Desire only that which is unattainable. 12. For within you is the light of the world--the only light that can be shed upon the Path. If you are unable to perceive it within you, it is useless to look for it elsewhere. It is beyond you; because when you reach it you have lost yourself. It is unattainable, because it for ever recedes. You will enter the light, but you will never touch the flame. 13. Desire power ardently. 14. Desire peace fervently. 15. Desire possessions above all. 16. But those possessions must belong to the pure soul only, and be possessed therefore by all pure souls equally, and thus be the especial property of the whole only when united. Hunger for such possessions as can be held by the pure soul; that you may accumulate wealth for that united spirit of life, which is your only true self. The peace you shall desire is that sacred peace which nothing can disturb, and in which the soul grows as does the holy flower upon the still lagoons. And that power which the disciple shall covet is that which shall make him appear as nothing in the eyes of men. 17. Seek out the way. 18. Seek the way by retreating within. 19. Seek the way by advancing boldly without. 20. Seek it not by any one road. To each temperament there is one road which seems the most desirable. But the way is not found by devotion alone, by religious contemplation alone, by ardent progress, by self-sacrificing labor, by studious observation of life. None alone can take the disciple more than one step onward. All steps are necessary to make up the ladder. The vices of men become steps in the ladder, one by one, as they are surmounted. The virtues of man are steps indeed, necessary--not by any means to be dispensed with. Yet, though they create a fair atmosphere and a happy future, they are useless if they stand alone. The whole nature of man must be used wisely by the one who desires to enter the way. Each man is to himself absolutely the way, the truth, and the life. But he is only so when he grasps his whole individuality firmly, and, by the force of his awakened spiritual will, recognises this individuality as not himself, but that thing which he has with pain created for his own use, and by means of which he purposes, as his growth slowly develops his intelligence, to reach to the life beyond individuality. When he knows that for this his wonderful complex separated life exists, then, indeed, and then only, he is upon the way. Seek it by plunging into the mysterious and glorious depths of your own inmost being. Seek it by testing, all experience, by utilizing the senses in order to understand the growth and meaning of individuality, and the beauty and obscurity of those other divine fragments which are struggling side by side with you, and form the race to which you belong. Seek it by study of the laws of being, the laws of nature, the laws of the supernatural: and seek it by making the profound obeisance of the soul to the dim star that burns within. Steadily, as you watch and worship, its light will grow stronger. Then you may know you have found the beginning of the way. And when you have found the end its light will suddenly become the infinite light. 21. Look for the flower to bloom in the silence that follows the storm not till then. It shall grow, it will shoot up, it will make branches and leaves and form buds, while the storm continues, while the battle lasts. But not till the whole personality of the man is dissolved and melted--not until it is held by the divine fragment which has created it, as a mere subject for grave experiment and experience--not until the whole nature has yielded and become subject unto its higher self, can the bloom open. Then will come a calm such as comes in a tropical country after the heavy rain, when Nature works so swiftly that one may see her action. Such a calm will come to the harassed spirit. And in the deep silence the mysterious event will occur which will prove that the way has been found. Call it by what name you will, it is a voice that speaks where there is none to speak--it is a messenger that comes, a messenger without form or substance; or it is the flower of the soul that has opened. It cannot be described by any metaphor. But it can be felt after, looked for, and desired, even amid the raging of the storm. The silence may last a moment of time or it may last a thousand years. But it will end. Yet you will carry its strength with you. Again and again the battle must be fought and won. It is only for an interval that Nature can be still. These written above are the first of the rules which are written on the walls of the Hall of Learning. Those that ask shall have. Those that desire to read shall read. Those who desire to learn shall learn. PEACE BE WITH YOU. II Out of the silence that is peace a resonant voice shall arise. And this voice will say, It is not well; thou hast reaped, now thou must sow. And knowing this voice to be the silence itself thou wilt obey. Thou who art now a disciple, able to stand, able to hear, able to see, able to speak, who hast conquered desire and attained to self-knowledge, who hast seen thy soul in its bloom and recognised it, and heard the voice of the silence, go thou to the Hall of Learning and read what is written there for thee. 1. Stand aside in the coming battle, and though thou fightest be not thou the warrior. 2. Look for the warrior and let him fight in thee. 3. Take his orders for battle and obey them. 4. Obey him not as though he were a general, but as though he were thyself, and his spoken words were the utterance of thy secret desires; for he is thyself, yet infinitely wiser and stronger than thyself. Look for him, else in the fever and hurry of the fight thou mayest pass him; and he will not know thee unless thou knowest him. If thy cry meet his listening ear, then will he fight in thee and fill the dull void within. And if this is so, then canst thou go through the fight cool and unwearied, standing aside and letting him battle for thee. Then it will be impossible for thee to strike one blow amiss. But if thou look not for him, if thou pass him by, then there is no safeguard for thee. Thy brain will reel, thy heart grow uncertain, and in the dust of the battlefield thy sight and senses will fail, and thou wilt not know thy friends from thy enemies. He is thyself, yet thou art but finite and liable to error. He is eternal and is sure. He is eternal truth. When once he has entered thee and become thy warrior, he will never utterly desert thee, and at the day of the great peace he will become one with thee. 5. Listen to the song of life. 6. Store in your memory the melody you hear. 7. Learn from it the lesson of harmony. 8. You can stand upright now, firm as a rock amid the turmoil, obeying the warrior who is thyself and thy king. Unconcerned in the battle save to do his bidding, having no longer any care as to the result of the battle, for one thing only is important, that the warrior shall win, and you know he is incapable of defeat--standing thus, cool and awakened, use the hearing you have acquired by pain and by the destruction of pain. Only fragments of the great song come to your ears while yet you are but man. But if you listen to it, remember it faithfully, so that none which has reached you is lost, and endeavor to learn from it the meaning of the mystery which surrounds you. In time you will need no teacher. For as the individual has voice, so has that in which the individual exists. Life itself has speech and is never silent. And its utterance is not, as you that are deaf may suppose, a cry: it is a song. Learn from it that you are part of the harmony; learn from it to obey the laws of the harmony. 9. Regard earnestly all the life that surrounds you. 10. Learn to look intelligently into the hearts of men. 11. Regard most earnestly your own heart. 12. For through your own heart comes the one light which can illuminate life and make it clear to your eyes. Study the hearts of men, that you may know what is that world in which you live and of which you will to be a part. Regard the constantly changing and moving life which surrounds you, for it is formed by the hearts of men; and as you learn to understand their constitution and meaning, you will by degrees be able to read the larger word of life. 13. Speech comes only with knowledge. Attain to knowledge and you will attain to speech. 14. Having obtained the use of the inner senses, having conquered the desires of the outer senses, having conquered the desires of the individual soul, and having obtained knowledge, prepare now, O disciple, to enter upon the way in reality. The path is found: make yourself ready to tread it. 15. Inquire of the earth, the air, and the water, of the secrets they hold for you. The development of your inner senses will enable you to do this. 16. Inquire of the holy ones of the earth of the secrets they hold for you. The conquering of the desires of the outer senses will give you the right to do this. 17. Inquire of the inmost, the one, of its final secret which it holds for you through the ages. The great and difficult victory, the conquering of the desires of the individual soul, is a work of ages; therefore expect not to obtain its reward until ages of experience have been accumulated. When the time of learning this seventeenth rule is reached, man is on the threshold of becoming more than man. 18. The knowledge which is now yours is only yours because your soul has become one with all pure souls and with the inmost. It is a trust vested in you by the Most High. Betray it, misuse your knowledge, or neglect it, and it is possible even now for you to fall from the high estate you have attained. Great ones fall back, even from the threshold, unable to sustain the weight of their responsibility, unable to pass on. Therefore look forward always with awe and trembling to this moment, and be prepared for the battle. 19. It is written that for him who is on the threshold of divinity no law can be framed, no guide can exist. Yet to enlighten the disciple, the final struggle may be thus expressed: Hold fast to that which has neither substance nor existence. 20. Listen only to the voice which is soundless. 21. Look only on that which is invisible alike to the inner and the outer sense. PEACE BE WITH YOU. NOTES _Note on Rule 1._--Ambition is the first curse: the great tempter of the man who is rising above his fellows. It is the simplest form of looking for reward. Men of intelligence and power are led away from their higher possibilities by it continually. Yet it is a necessary teacher. Its results turn to dust and ashes in the mouth; like death and estrangement it shows the man at last that to work for self is to work for disappointment. But though this first rule seems so simple and easy, do not quickly pass it by. For these vices of the ordinary man pass through a subtle transformation and reappear with changed aspect in the heart of the disciple. It is easy to say, I will not be ambitious: it is not so easy to say, when the Master reads my heart he will find it clean utterly. The pure artist who works for the love of his work is sometimes more firmly planted on the right road than the occultist, who fancies he has removed his interest from self, but who has in reality only enlarged the limits of experience and desire, and transferred his interest to the things which concern his larger span of life. The same principle applies to the other two seemingly simple rules. Linger over them and do not let yourself be easily deceived by your own heart. For now, at the threshold, a mistake can be corrected. But carry it on with you and it will grow and come to fruition, or else you must suffer bitterly in its destruction. _Note on Rule 5_.--Do not fancy you can stand aside from the bad man or the foolish man. They are yourself, though in a less degree than your friend or your master. But if you allow the idea of separateness from any evil thing or person to grow up within you, by so doing you create Karma, which will bind you to that thing or person till your soul recognises that it cannot be isolated. Remember that the sin and shame of the world are your sin and shame; for you are a part of it; your Karma is inextricably interwoven with the great Karma. And before you can attain knowledge you must have passed through all places, foul and clean alike. Therefore, remember that the soiled garment you shrink from touching may have been yours yesterday, may be yours tomorrow. And if you turn with horror from it, when it is flung upon your shoulders, it will cling the more closely to you. The self-righteous man makes for himself a bed of mire. Abstain because it is right to abstain--not that yourself shall be kept clean. _Note on Rule 17._--These four words seem, perhaps, too slight to stand alone. The disciple may say, Should I study these thoughts at all did I not seek out the way? Yet do not pass on hastily. Pause and consider awhile. Is it the way you desire, or is it that there is a dim perspective in your visions of great heights to be scaled by yourself, of a great future for you to compass? Be warned. The way is to be sought for its own sake, not with regard to your feet that shall tread it. There is a correspondence between this rule and the 17th of the 2nd series. When after ages of struggle and many victories the final battle is won, the final secret demanded, then you are prepared for a further path. When the final secret of this great lesson is told, in it is opened the mystery of the new way--a path which leads out of all human experience, and which is utterly beyond human perception or imagination. At each of these points it is needful to pause long and consider well. At each of these points it is necessary to be sure that the way is chosen for its own sake. The way and the truth come first, then follows the life. _Note on Rule 20_.--Seek it by testing all experience, and remember that when I say this I do not say, Yield to the seductions of sense in order to know it. Before you have become an occultist you may do this; but not afterwards. When you have chosen and entered the path you cannot yield to these seductions without shame. Yet you can experience them without horror: can weigh, observe and test them, and wait with the patience of confidence for the hour when they shall affect you no longer. But do not condemn the man that yields; stretch out your hand to him as a brother pilgrim whose feet have become heavy with mire. Remember, O disciple, that great though the gulf may be between the good man and the sinner, it is greater between the good man and the man who has attained knowledge; it is immeasurable between the good man and the one on the threshold of divinity. Therefore be wary lest too soon you fancy yourself a thing apart from the mass. When you have found the beginning of the way the star of your soul will show its light; and by that light you will perceive how great is the darkness in which it burns. Mind, heart, brain, all are obscure and dark until the first great battle has been won. Be not appalled and terrified by this sight; keep your eyes fixed on the small light and it will grow. But let the darkness within help you to understand the helplessness of those who have seen no light, whose souls are in profound gloom. Blame them not, shrink not from them, but try to lift a little of the heavy Karma of the world; give your aid to the few strong hands that hold back the powers of darkness from obtaining complete victory. Then do you enter into a partnership of joy, which brings indeed terrible toil and profound sadness, but also a great and ever-increasing delight. _Note on Rule 21._--The opening of the bloom is the glorious moment when perception awakes: with it comes confidence, knowledge, certainty. The pause of the soul is the moment of wonder, and the next moment of satisfaction, that is the silence. Know, O disciple, that those who have passed through the silence, and felt its peace and retained its strength, they long that you shall pass through it also. Therefore, in the Hall of Learning, when he is capable of entering there, the disciple will always find his master. Those that ask shall have. But though the ordinary man asks perpetually, his voice is not heard. For he asks with his mind only; and the voice of the mind is only heard on that plane on which the mind acts. Therefore, not until the first twenty-one rules are past do I say those that ask shall have. To read, in the occult sense, is to read with the eyes of the spirit. To ask is to feel the hunger within--the yearning of spiritual aspiration. To be able to read means having obtained the power in a small degree of gratifying that hunger. When the disciple is ready to learn, then he is accepted, acknowledged, recognised. It must be so, for he has lit his lamp, and it cannot be hidden. But to learn is impossible until the first great battle has been won. The mind may recognise truth, but the spirit cannot receive it. Once having passed through the storm and attained the peace, it is then always possible to learn, even though the disciple waver, hesitate, and turn aside. The voice of the silence remains within him, and though he leave the path utterly, yet one day it will resound and rend him asunder and separate his passions from his divine possibilities. Then with pain and desperate cries from the deserted lower self he will return. Therefore I say, Peace be with you. My peace I give unto you can only be said by the Master to the beloved disciples who are as himself. There are even some amongst those who are ignorant of the Eastern wisdom to whom this can be said, and to whom it can daily be said with more completeness. Regard the three truths. They are equal. PART II _Note on Sect. II_--To be able to stand is to have confidence; to be able to hear is to have opened the doors of the soul; to be able to see is to have attained perception; to be able to speak is to have attained the power of helping others; to have conquered desire is to have learned how to use and control the self; to have attained to self-knowledge is to have retreated to the inner fortress from whence the personal man can be viewed with impartiality; to have seen thy soul in its bloom is to have obtained a momentary glimpse in thyself of the transfiguration which shall eventually make thee more than man; to recognise is to achieve the great task of gazing upon the blazing light without dropping the eyes and not falling back in terror, as though before some ghastly phantom. This happens to some, and so when the victory is all but won it is lost; to hear the voice of the silence is to understand that from within comes the only true guidance; to go to the Hall of Learning is to enter the state in which learning becomes possible. Then will many words be written there for thee, and written in fiery letters for thee easily to read. For when the disciple is ready the Master is ready also. _Note on Rule 5_.--Look for it and listen to it first in your own heart. At first you may say it is not there; when I search I find only discord. Look deeper. If again you are disappointed, pause and look deeper again. There is a natural melody, an obscure fount in every human heart. It may be hidden over and utterly concealed and silenced--but it is there. At the very base of your nature you will find faith, hope, and love. He that chooses evil refuses to look within himself, shuts his ears to the melody of his heart, as he blinds his eyes to the light of his soul. He does this because he finds it easier to live in desires. But underneath all life is the strong current that cannot be checked; the great waters are there in reality. Find them, and you will perceive that none, not the most wretched of creatures, but is a part of it, however he blind himself to the fact and build up for himself a phantasmal outer form of horror. In that sense it is that I say to you--All those beings among whom you struggle on are fragments of the Divine. And so deceptive is the illusion in which you live, that it is hard to guess where you will first detect the sweet voice in the hearts of others. But know that it is certainly within yourself. Look for it there, and once having heard it, you will more readily recognise it around you. _Note on Rule 10._--From an absolutely impersonal point of view, otherwise your sight is colored. Therefore impersonality must first be understood. Intelligence is impartial: no man is your enemy: no man is your friend. All alike are your teachers. Your enemy becomes a mystery that must be solved, even though it take ages: for man must be understood. Your friend becomes a part of yourself, an extension of yourself, a riddle hard to read. Only one thing is more difficult to know--your own heart. Not until the bonds of personality are loosed, can that profound mystery of self begin to be seen. Not till you stand aside from it will it in any way reveal itself to your understanding. Then, and not till then, can you grasp and guide it. Then, and not till then, can you use all its powers, and devote them to a worthy service. _Note on Rule 13._--It is impossible to help others till you have obtained some certainty of your own. When you have learned the first 21 rules and have entered the Hall of Learning with your powers developed and sense unchained, then you will find there is a fount within you from which speech will arise. After the 13th rule I can add no words to what is already written. My peace I give unto you. [Greek: D] These notes are written only for those to whom I give my peace; those who can read what I have written with the inner as well as the outer sense. COMMENTS I "BEFORE THE EYES CAN SEE THEY MUST BE INCAPABLE OF TEARS." It should be very clearly remembered by all readers of this volume that it is a book which may appear to have some little philosophy in it, but very little sense, to those who believe it to be written in ordinary English. To the many, who read in this manner it will be--not caviare so much as olives strong of their salt. Be warned and read but a little in this way. There is another way of reading, which is, indeed, the only one of any use with many authors. It is reading, not between the lines but within the words. In fact, it is deciphering a profound cipher. All alchemical works are written in the cipher of which I speak; it has been used by the great philosophers and poets of all time. It is used systematically by the adepts in life and knowledge, who, seemingly giving out their deepest wisdom, hide in the very words which frame it its actual mystery. They cannot do more. There is a law of nature which insists that a man shall read these mysteries for himself. By no other method can he obtain them. A man who desires to live must eat his food himself: this is the simple law of nature--which applies also to the higher life. A man who would live and act in it cannot be fed like a babe with a spoon; he must eat for himself. I propose to put into new and sometimes plainer language parts of "Light on the Path"; but whether this effort of mine will really be any interpretation I cannot say. To a deaf and dumb man, a truth is made no more intelligible if, in order to make it so, some misguided linguist translates the words in which it is couched into every living or dead language, and shouts these different phrases in his ear. But for those who are not deaf and dumb one language is generally easier than the rest; and it is to such as these I address myself. The very first aphorisms of "Light on the Path," included under Number I, have, I know well, remained sealed as to their inner meaning to many who have otherwise followed the purpose of the book. There are four proven and certain truths with regard to the entrance to occultism. The Gates of Gold bar that threshold; yet there are some who pass those gates and discover the sublime and illimitable beyond. In the far spaces of Time all will pass those gates. But I am one who wish that Time, the great deluder, were not so over-masterful. To those who know and love him I have no word to say; but to the others--and there are not so very few as some may fancy--to whom the passage of Time is as the stroke of a sledge-hammer, and the sense of Space like the bars of an iron cage, I will translate and re-translate until they understand fully. The four truths written on the first page of "Light on the Path," refer to the trial initiation of the would-be occultist. Until he has passed it, he cannot even reach to the latch of the gate which admits to knowledge. Knowledge is man's greatest inheritance; why, then, should he not attempt to reach it by every possible road? The laboratory is not the only ground for experiment; _science_, we must remember, is derived from _sciens_, present participle of _scire_, "to know,"--its origin is similar to that of the word "discern," to "ken." Science does not therefore deal only with matter, no, not even its subtlest and obscurest forms. Such an idea is born merely of the idle spirit of the age. Science is a word which covers all forms of knowledge. It is exceedingly interesting to hear what chemists discover, and to see them finding their way through the densities of matter to its finer forms; but there are other kinds of knowledge than this, and it is not every one who restricts his (strictly scientific) desire for knowledge to experiments which are capable of being tested by the physical senses. Everyone who is not a dullard, or a man stupefied by some predominant vice, has guessed or even perhaps discovered with some certainty, that there are subtle senses lying within the physical senses. There is nothing at all extraordinary in this; if we took the trouble to call Nature into the witness box we should find that everything which is perceptible to the ordinary sight, has something even more important than itself hidden within it; the microscope has opened a world to us, but within those encasements which the microscope reveals, lies a mystery which no machinery can probe. The whole world is animated and lit, down to its most material shapes, by a world within it. This inner world is called Astral by some people, and it is as good a word as any other, though it merely means starry; but the stars, as Locke pointed out, are luminous bodies which give light of themselves. This quality is characteristic of the life which lies within matter; for those who see it, need no lamp to see it by. The word star, moreover, is derived from the Anglo-Saxon "stir-an," to steer, to stir, to move, and undeniably it is the inner life which is master of the outer, just as a man's brain guides the movements of his lips. So that although Astral is no very excellent word in itself, I am content to use it for my present purpose. The whole of "Light on the Path" is written in an astral cipher and can therefore only be deciphered by one who reads astrally. And its teaching is chiefly directed towards the cultivation and development of the astral life. Until the first step has been taken in this development, the swift knowledge, which is called intuition with certainty, is impossible to man. And this positive and certain intuition is the only form of knowledge which enables a man to work rapidly or reach his true and high estate, within the limit of his conscious effort. To obtain knowledge by experiment is too tedious a method for those who aspire to accomplish real work; he who gets it by certain intuition, lays hands on its various forms with supreme rapidity, by fierce effort of will; as a determined workman grasps his tools, indifferent to their weight or any other difficulty which may stand in his way. He does not stay for each to be tested--he uses such as he sees are fittest. All the rules contained in "Light on the Path," are written for all disciples, but only for disciples---those who "take knowledge." To none else but the student in this school are its laws of any use or interest. To all who are interested seriously in Occultism, I say first--take knowledge. To him who hath shall be given. It is useless to wait for it. The womb of Time will close before you, and in later days you will remain unborn, without power. I therefore say to those who have any hunger or thirst for knowledge, attend to these rules. They are none of my handicraft or invention. They are merely the phrasing of laws in super-nature, the putting into words truths as absolute in their own sphere, as those laws which govern the conduct of the earth and its atmosphere. The senses spoken of in these four statements are the astral, or inner senses. No man desires to see that light which illumines the spaceless soul until pain and sorrow and despair have driven him away from the life of ordinary humanity. First he wears out pleasure; then he wears out pain--till, at last, his eyes become incapable of tears. This is a truism, although I know perfectly well that it will meet with a vehement denial from many who are in sympathy with thoughts which spring from the inner life. _To see_ with the astral sense of sight is a form of activity which it is difficult for us to understand immediately. The scientist knows very well what a miracle is achieved by each child that is born into the world, when it first conquers its eyesight and compels it to obey its brain. An equal miracle is performed with each sense certainly, but this ordering of sight is perhaps the most stupendous effort. Yet the child does it almost unconsciously, by force of the powerful heredity of habit. No one now is aware that he has ever done it at all; just as we cannot recollect the individual movements which enabled us to walk up a hill a year ago. This arises from the fact that we move and live and have our being in matter. Our knowledge of it has become intuitive. With our astral life it is very much otherwise. For long ages past, man has paid very little attention to it--so little, that he has practically lost the use of his senses. It is true, that in every civilization the star arises, and man confesses, with more or less of folly and confusion, that he knows himself to be. But most often he denies it, and in being a materialist becomes that strange thing, a being which cannot see its own light, a thing of life which will not live, an astral animal which has eyes, and ears, and speech, and power, yet will use none of these gifts. This is the case, and the habit of ignorance has become so confirmed, that now none will see with the inner vision till agony has made the physical eyes not only unseeing, but without tears--the moisture of life. To be incapable of tears is to have faced and conquered the simple human nature, and to have attained an equilibrium which cannot be shaken by personal emotions. It does not imply any hardness of heart, or any indifference. It does not imply the exhaustion of sorrow, when the suffering soul seems powerless to suffer acutely any longer; it does not mean the deadness of old age, when emotion is becoming dull because the strings which vibrate to it are wearing out. None of these conditions are fit for a disciple, and if any one of them exist in him it must be overcome before the path can be entered upon. Hardness of heart belongs to the selfish man, the egotist, to whom the gate is forever closed. Indifference belongs to the fool and the false philosopher; those whose lukewarmness makes them mere puppets, not strong enough to face the realities of existence. When pain or sorrow has worn out the keenness of suffering, the result is a lethargy not unlike that which accompanies old age, as it is usually experienced by men and women. Such a condition makes the entrance to the path impossible, because the first step is one of difficulty and needs a strong man, full of psychic and physical vigor, to attempt it. It is a truth, that, as Edgar Allan Poe said, the eyes are the windows for the soul, the windows of that haunted palace in which it dwells. This is the very nearest interpretation into ordinary language of the meaning of the text. If grief, dismay, disappointment or pleasure, can shake the soul so that it loses its fixed hold on the calm spirit which inspires it, and the moisture of life breaks forth, drowning knowledge in sensation, then all is blurred, the windows are darkened, the light is useless. This is as literal a fact as that if a man, at the edge of a precipice, loses his nerve through some sudden emotion he will certainly fall. The poise of the body, the balance, must be preserved, not only in dangerous places, but even on the level ground, and with all the assistance Nature gives us by the law of gravitation. So it is with the soul, it is the link between the outer body and the starry spirit beyond; the divine spark dwells in the still place where no convulsion of Nature can shake the air; this is so always. But the soul may lose its hold on that, its knowledge of it, even though these two are part of one whole; and it is by emotion, by sensation, that this hold is loosed. To suffer either pleasure or pain, causes a vivid vibration which is, to the consciousness of man, life. Now this sensibility does not lessen when the disciple enters upon his training; it increases. It is the first test of his strength; he must suffer, must enjoy or endure, more keenly than other men, while yet he has taken on him a duty which does not exist for other men, that of not allowing his suffering to shake him from his fixed purpose. He has, in fact, at the first step to take himself steadily in hand and put the bit into his own mouth; no one else can do it for him. The first four aphorisms of "Light on the Path," refer entirely to astral development. This development must be accomplished to a certain extent--that is to say it must be fully entered upon--before the remainder of the book is really intelligible except to the intellect; in fact, before it can be read as a practical, not a metaphysical treatise. In one of the great mystic Brotherhoods, there are four ceremonies, that take place early in the year, which practically illustrate and elucidate these aphorisms. They are ceremonies in which only novices take part, for they are simply services of the threshold. But it will show how serious a thing it is to become a disciple, when it is understood that these are all ceremonies of sacrifice. The first one is this of which I have been speaking. The keenest enjoyment, the bitterest pain, the anguish of loss and despair, are brought to bear on the trembling soul, which has not yet found light in the darkness, which is helpless as a blind man is, and until these shocks can be endured without loss of equilibrium the astral senses must remain sealed. This is the merciful law. The "medium," or "spiritualist," who rushes into the psychic world without preparation, is a law-breaker, a breaker of the laws of super-nature. Those who break Nature's laws lose their physical health; those who break the laws of the inner life, lose their psychic health. "Mediums" become mad, suicides, miserable creatures devoid of moral sense; and often end as unbelievers, doubters even of that which their own eyes have seen. The disciple is compelled to become his own master before he adventures on this perilous path, and attempts to face those beings who live and work in the astral world, and whom we call masters, because of their great knowledge and their ability to control not only themselves but the forces around them. The condition of the soul when it lives for the life of sensation as distinguished from that of knowledge, is vibratory or oscillating, as distinguished from fixed. That is the nearest literal representation of the fact; but it is only literal to the intellect, not to the intuition. For this part of man's consciousness a different vocabulary is needed. The idea of "fixed" might perhaps be transposed into that of "at home." In sensation no permanent home can be found, because change is the law of this vibratory existence. That fact is the first one which must be learned by the disciple. It is useless to pause and weep for a scene in a kaleidoscope which has passed. It is a very well-known fact, one with which Bulwer Lytton dealt with great power, that an intolerable sadness is the very first experience of the neophyte in Occultism. A sense of blankness falls upon him which makes the world a waste, and life a vain exertion. This follows his first serious contemplation of the abstract. In gazing, or even in attempting to gaze, on the ineffable mystery of his own higher nature, he himself causes the initial trial to fall on him. The oscillation between pleasure and pain ceases for--perhaps an instant of time; but that is enough to have cut him loose from his fast moorings in the world of sensation. He has experienced, however briefly, the greater life; and he goes on with ordinary existence weighted by a sense of unreality, of blank, of horrid negation. This was the nightmare which visited Bulwer Lytton's neophyte in "Zanoni"; and even Zanoni himself, who had learned great truths, and been entrusted with great powers, had not actually passed the threshold where fear and hope, despair and joy seem at one moment absolute realities, at the next mere forms of fancy. This initial trial is often brought on us by life itself. For life is after all, the great teacher. We return to study it, after we have acquired power over it, just as the master in chemistry learns more in the laboratory than his pupil does. There are persons so near the door of knowledge that life itself prepares them for it, and no individual hand has to invoke the hideous guardian of the entrance. These must naturally be keen and powerful organizations, capable of the most vivid pleasure; then pain comes and fills its great duty. The most intense forms of suffering fall on such a nature, till at last it arouses from its stupor of consciousness, and by the force of its internal vitality steps over the threshold into a place of peace. Then the vibration of life loses its power of tyranny. The sensitive nature must suffer still; but the soul has freed itself and stands aloof, guiding the life towards its greatness. Those who are the subjects of Time, and go slowly through all his spaces, live on through a long drawn series of sensations, and suffer a constant mingling of pleasure and of pain. They do not dare to take the snake of self in a steady grasp and conquer it, so becoming divine; but prefer to go on fretting through divers experiences, suffering blows from the opposing forces. When one of these subjects of Time decides to enter on the path of Occultism, it is this which is his first task. If life has not taught it to him, if he is not strong enough to teach himself and if he has power enough to demand the help of a master, then this fearful trial, depicted in Zanoni, is put upon him. The oscillation in which he lives, is for an instant stilled; and he has to survive the shock of facing what seems to him at first sight as the abyss of nothingness. Not till he has learned to dwell in this abyss, and has found its peace, is it possible for his eyes to have become incapable of tears. II "BEFORE THE EAR CAN HEAR, IT MUST HAVE LOST ITS SENSITIVENESS." The first four rules of "Light on the Path" are, undoubtedly, curious though the statement may seem, the most important in the whole book, save one only. Why they are so important is that they contain the vital law, the very creative essence of the astral man. And it is only in the astral (or self-illuminated) consciousness that the rules which follow them have any living meaning. Once attain to the use of the astral senses and it becomes a matter of course that one commences to use them; and the later rules are but guidance in their use. When I speak like this I mean, naturally, that the first four rules are the ones which are of importance and interest to those who read them in print upon a page. When they are engraved on a man's heart and on his life, unmistakably then the rules become not merely interesting, or extraordinary, metaphysical statements, but actual facts in life which have to be grasped and experienced. The four rules stand written in the great chamber of every actual lodge of a living Brotherhood. Whether the man is about to sell his soul to the devil, like Faust; whether he is to be worsted in the battle, like Hamlet; or whether he is to pass on within the precincts; in any case these words are for him. The man can choose between virtue and vice, but not until he is a man; a babe or a wild animal cannot so choose. Thus with the disciple, he must first become a disciple before he can even see the paths to choose between. This effort of creating himself as a disciple, the re-birth, he must do for himself without any teacher. Until the four rules are learned no teacher can be of any use to him; and that is why "the Masters" are referred to in the way they are. No real masters, whether adepts in power, in love, or in blackness, can affect a man till these four rules are passed. Tears, as I have said, may be called the moisture of life. The soul must have laid aside the emotions of humanity, must have secured a balance which cannot be shaken by misfortune, before its eyes can open upon the super-human world. The voice of the Masters is always in the world; but only those hear it whose ears are no longer receptive of the sounds which affect the personal life. Laughter no longer lightens the heart, anger may no longer enrage it, tender words bring it no balm. For that within, to which the ears are as an outer gateway, is an unshaken place of peace in itself which no person can disturb. As the eyes are the windows of the soul, so are the ears its gateways or doors. Through them comes knowledge of the confusion of the world. The great ones who have conquered life, who have become more than disciples, stand at peace and undisturbed amid the vibration and kaleidoscopic movement of humanity. They hold within themselves a certain knowledge, as well as a perfect peace; and thus they are not roused or excited by the partial and erroneous fragments of information which are brought to their ears by the changing voices of those around them. When I speak of knowledge, I mean intuitive knowledge. This certain information can never be obtained by hard work, or by experiment; for these methods are only applicable to matter, and matter is in itself a perfectly uncertain substance, continually affected by change. The most absolute and universal laws of natural and physical life, as understood by the scientist, will pass away when the life of this universe has passed away, and only its soul is left in the silence. What then will be the value of the knowledge of its laws acquired by industry and observation? I pray that no reader or critic will imagine that by what I have said I intend to depreciate or disparage acquired knowledge, or the work of scientists. On the contrary, I hold that scientific men are the pioneers of modern thought. The days of literature and of art, when poets and sculptors saw the divine light, and put it into their own great language--these days lie buried in the long past with the ante-Phidian sculptors and the pre-Homeric poets. The mysteries no longer rule the world of thought and beauty; human life is the governing power, not that which lies beyond it. But the scientific workers are progressing, not so much by their own will as by sheer force of circumstances, towards the far line which divides things interpretable from things uninterpretable. Every fresh discovery drives them a step onward. Therefore do I very highly esteem the knowledge obtained by work and experiment. But intuitive knowledge is an entirely different thing. It is not acquired in any way, but is, so to speak, a faculty of the soul; not the animal soul, that which becomes a ghost after death, when lust or liking or the memory of ill deeds holds it to the neighborhood of human beings, but the divine soul which animates all the external forms of the individualized being. This is, of course, a faculty which indwells in that soul, which is inherent. The would-be disciple has to arouse himself to the consciousness of it by a fierce and resolute and indomitable effort of will. I use the word indomitable for a special reason. Only he who is untameable, who cannot be dominated, who knows he has to play the lord over men, over facts, over all things save his own divinity can arouse this faculty. "With faith all things, are possible." The skeptical laugh at faith and pride themselves on its absence from their own minds. The truth is that faith is a great engine, an enormous power, which in fact can accomplish all things. For it is the convenant or engagement between man's divine part and his lesser self. The use of this engine is quite necessary in order to obtain intuitive knowledge; for unless a man believes such knowledge exists within himself how can he claim and use it? Without it he is more helpless than any drift-wood or wreckage on the great tides of the ocean. They are cast hither and thither indeed; so may a man be by the chances of fortune. But such adventures are purely external and of very small account. A slave may be dragged through the streets in chains, and yet retain the quiet soul of a philosopher, as was well seen in the person of Epictetus. A man may have every worldly prize in his possession, and stand absolute master of his personal fate, to all appearance, and yet he knows no peace, no certainty, because he is shaken within himself by every tide of thought that he touches on. And these changing tides do not merely sweep the man bodily hither and thither like drift-wood on the water; that would be nothing. They enter into the gate-ways of his soul, and wash over that soul and make it blind and blank and void of all permanent intelligence so that passing impressions affect it. To make my meaning plainer I will use an illustration. Take an author at his writing, a painter at his canvas, a composer listening to the melodies that dawn upon his glad imagination; let any one of these workers pass his daily hours by a wide window looking on a busy street. The power of the animating life blinds sight and hearing alike, and the great traffic of the city goes by like nothing but a passing pageant. But a man whose mind is empty, whose day is objectless, sitting at that same window, notes the passers-by and remembers the faces that chance to please or interest him. So it is with the mind in its relation to eternal truth. If it no longer transmits its fluctuations, its partial knowledge, its unreliable information to the soul, then in the inner place of peace already found when the first rule has been learned--in that inner place there leaps into flame the light of actual knowledge. Then the ears begin to hear. Very dimly, very faintly at first. And, indeed, so faint and tender are these first indications of the commencement of true actual life, that they are sometimes pushed aside as mere fancies, mere imaginings. But before these are capable of becoming more than mere imaginings, the abyss of nothingness has to be faced in another form. The utter silence which can only come by closing the ears to all transitory sounds comes as a more appalling horror than even the formless emptiness of space. Our only mental conception of blank space is, I think, when reduced to its barest element of thought, that of black darkness. This is a great physical terror to most persons, and when regarded as an eternal and unchangeable fact, must mean to the mind the idea of annihilation rather than anything else. But it is the obliteration of one sense only; and the sound of a voice may come and bring comfort even in the profoundest darkness. The disciple, having found his way into this blackness, which is the fearful abyss, must then so shut the gates of his soul that no comforter can enter there nor any enemy. And it is in making this second effort that the fact of pain and pleasure being but one sensation becomes recognisable by those who have before been unable to perceive it. For when the solitude of silence is reached the soul hungers so fiercely and passionately for some sensation on which to rest, that a painful one would be as keenly welcomed as a pleasant one. When this consciousness is reached the courageous man by seizing and retaining it, may destroy the "sensitiveness" at once. When the ear no longer discriminates between that which is pleasant or that which is painful, it will no longer be affected by the voices of others. And then it is safe and possible to open the doors of the soul. "Sight" is the first effort, and the easiest, because it is accomplished partly by an intellectual effort. The intellect can conquer the heart, as is well known in ordinary life. Therefore, this preliminary step still lies within the dominion of matter. But the second step allows of no such assistance, nor of any material aid whatever. Of course, I mean by material aid the action of the brain, or emotions, or human soul. In compelling the ears to listen only to the eternal silence, the being we call man becomes something which is no longer man. A very superficial survey of the thousand and one influences which are brought to bear on us by others will show that this must be so. A disciple will fulfil all the duties of his manhood; but he will fulfil them according to his own sense of right, and not according to that of any person or body of persons. This is a very evident result of following the creed of knowledge instead of any of the blind creeds. To obtain the pure silence necessary for the disciple, the heart and emotions, the brain and its intellectualisms, have to be put aside. Both are but mechanisms, which will perish with the span of man's life. It is the essence beyond, that which is the motive power, and makes man live, that is now compelled to rouse itself and act. Now is the greatest hour of danger. In the first trial men go mad with fear; of this first trial Bulwer Lytton wrote. No novelist has followed to the second trial, though some of the poets have. Its subtlety and great danger lies in the fact that in the measure of a man's strength is the measure of his chance of passing beyond it or coping with it at all. If he has power enough to awaken that unaccustomed part of himself, the supreme essence, then has he power to lift the gates of gold, then is he the true alchemist, in possession of the elixir of life. It is at this point of experience that the occultist becomes separated from all other men and enters on to a life which is his own; on to the path of individual accomplishment instead of mere obedience to the genii which rule our earth. This raising of himself into an individual power does in reality identify him with the nobler forces of life and make him one with them. For they stand beyond the powers of this earth and the laws of this universe. Here lies man's only hope of success in the great effort; to leap right away from his present standpoint to his next and at once become an intrinsic part of the divine power as he has been an intrinsic part of the intellectual power, of the great nature to which he belongs. He stands always in advance of himself, if such a contradiction can be understood. It is the men who adhere to this position, who believe in their innate power of progress, and that of the whole race, who are the elder brothers, the pioneers. Each man has to accomplish the great leap for himself and without aid; yet it is something of a staff to lean on to know that others have gone on that road. It is possible that they have been lost in the abyss; no matter, they have had the courage to enter it. Why I say that it is possible they have been lost in the abyss is because of this fact, that one who has passed through is unrecognisable until the other and altogether new condition is attained by both. It is unnecessary to enter upon the subject of what that condition is at present. I only say this, that in the early state in which man is entering upon the silence he loses knowledge of his friends, of his lovers, of all who have been near and dear to him; and also loses sight of his teachers and of those who have preceded him on his way. I explain this because scarce one passes through without bitter complaint. Could but the mind grasp beforehand that the silence must be complete, surely this complaint need not arise as a hindrance on the path. Your teacher, or your predecessor may hold your hand in his, and give you the utmost sympathy the human heart is capable of. But when the silence and the darkness comes, you lose all knowledge of him; you are alone and he cannot help you, not because his power is gone, but because you have invoked your great enemy. By your great enemy, I mean yourself. If you have the power to face your own soul in the darkness and silence, you will have conquered the physical or animal self which dwells in sensation only. This statement, I feel, will appear involved; but in reality it is quite simple. Man, when he has reached his fruition, and civilization is at its height, stands between two fires. Could he but claim his great inheritance, the encumbrance of the mere animal life would fall away from him without difficulty. But he does not do this, and so the races of men flower and then droop and die and decay off the face of the earth, however splendid the bloom may have been. And it is left to the individual to make this great effort; to refuse to be terrified by his greater nature, to refuse to be drawn back by his lesser or more material self. Every individual who accomplishes this is a redeemer of the race. He may not blazon forth his deeds, he may dwell in secret and silence; but it is a fact that he forms a link between man and his divine part; between the known and the unknown; between the stir of the marketplace and the stillness of the snow-capped Himalayas. He has not to go about among men in order to form this link; in the astral he _is_ that link, and this fact makes him a being of another order from the rest of mankind. Even so early on the road towards knowledge, when he has but taken the second step, he finds his footing more certain, and becomes conscious that he is a recognised part of a whole. This is one of the contradictions in life which occur so constantly that they afford fuel to the fiction writer. The occultist finds them become much more marked as he endeavors to live the life he has chosen. As he retreats within himself and becomes self-dependent, he finds himself more definitely becoming part of a great tide of definite thought and feeling. When he has learned the first lesson, conquered the hunger of the heart, and refused to live on the love of others, he finds himself more capable of inspiring love. As he flings life away it comes to him in a new form and with a new meaning. The world has always been a place with many contradictions in it, to the man; when he becomes a disciple he finds life is describable as a series of paradoxes. This is a fact in nature, and the reason for it is intelligible enough. Man's soul "dwells like a star apart," even that of the vilest among us; while his consciousness is under the law of vibratory and sensuous life. This alone is enough to cause those complications of character which are the material for the novelist; every man is a mystery, to friend and enemy alike, and to himself. His motives are often undiscoverable, and he cannot probe to them or know why he does this or that. The disciple's effort is that of awakening consciousness in this starry part of himself, where his power and divinity lie sleeping. As this consciousness becomes awakened, the contradictions in the man himself become more marked than ever; and so do the paradoxes which he lives through. For, of course man creates his own life; and "adventures are to the adventurous" is one of those wise proverbs which are drawn from actual fact, and cover the whole area of human experience. Pressure on the divine part of man re-acts upon the animal part. As the silent soul awakes it makes the ordinary life of the man more purposeful, more vital, more real, and responsible. To keep to the two instances already mentioned, the occultist who has withdrawn into his own citadel has found his strength; immediately he becomes aware of the demands of duty upon him. He does not obtain his strength by his own right, but because he is a part of the whole; and as soon as he is safe from the vibration of life and can stand unshaken, the outer world cries out to him to come and labor in it. So with the heart. When it no longer wishes to take, it is called upon to give abundantly. "Light on the Path" has been called a book of paradoxes, and very justly; what else could it be, when it deals with the actual personal experience of the disciple? To have acquired the astral senses of sight and hearing; or in other words to have attained perception and opened the doors of the soul, are gigantic tasks and may take the sacrifice of many successive incarnations. And yet, when the will has reached its strength, the whole miracle may be worked in a second of time. Then is the disciple the servant of Time no longer. These two first steps are negative; that is to say they imply retreat from a present condition of things rather than advance towards another. The two next are active, implying the advance into another state of being. III "BEFORE THE VOICE CAN SPEAK IN THE PRESENCE OF THE MASTERS." Speech is the power of communication; the moment of entrance into active life is marked by its attainment. And now, before I go any further, let me explain a little the way in which the rules written down in "Light on the Path" are arranged. The first seven of those which are numbered are sub-divisions of the two first unnumbered rules, those with which I have dealt in the two preceding papers. The numbered rules were simply an effort of mine to make the unnumbered ones more intelligible. "Eight" to "fifteen" of these numbered rules belong to this unnumbered rule which is now my text. As I have said, these rules are written for all disciples, but for none else; they are not of interest to any other persons. Therefore I trust no one else will trouble to read these papers any further. The first two rules, which include the whole of that part of the effort which necessitates the use of the surgeon's knife, I will enlarge upon further if I am asked to do so. But the disciple is expected to deal with a snake, his lower self, unaided; to suppress his human passions and emotions by the force of his own will. He can only demand assistance of a master when this is accomplished, or at all events, partially so. Otherwise the gates and windows of his soul are blurred, and blinded, and darkened, and no knowledge can come to him. I am not, in these papers, purposing to tell a man how to deal with his own soul; I am simply giving, to the disciple, knowledge. That I am not writing even now, so that all who run may read, is owing to the fact that super-nature prevents this by its own immutable laws. The four rules which I have written down for those in the West who wish to study them, are as I have said, written in the ante-chamber of every living Brotherhood; I may add more, in the ante-chamber of every living or dead Brotherhood, or Order yet to be formed. When I speak of a Brotherhood or an Order, I do not mean an arbitrary constitution made by scholiasts and intellectualists; I mean an actual fact in super-nature, a stage of development towards the absolute God or Good. During this development the disciple encounters harmony, pure knowledge, pure truth, in different degrees, and, as he enters these degrees, he finds himself becoming part of what might be roughly described as a layer of human consciousness. He encounters his equals, men of his own selfless character, and with them his association becomes permanent and indissoluble, because founded on a vital likeness of nature. To them he becomes pledged by such vows as need no utterance or framework in ordinary words. This is one aspect of what I mean by a Brotherhood. If the first rules are conquered, the disciple finds himself standing at the threshold. Then if his will is sufficiently resolute his power of speech comes; a two-fold power. For, as he advances now, he finds himself entering into a state of blossoming, where every bud that opens throws out its several rays or petals. If he is to exercise his new gift, he must use it in its two-fold character. He finds in himself the power to speak in the presence of the masters; in other words, he has the right to demand contact with the divinest element of that state of consciousness into which he has entered. But he finds himself compelled, by the nature of his position, to act in two ways at the same time. He cannot send his voice up to the heights where sit the gods till he has penetrated to the deep places where their light shines not at all. He has come within the grip of an iron law. If he demands to become a neophyte, he at once becomes a servant. Yet his service is sublime, if only from the character of those who share it. For the masters are also servants; they serve and claim their reward afterwards. Part of their service is to let their knowledge touch him; his first act of service is to give some of that knowledge to those who are not yet fit to stand where he stands. This is no arbitrary decision, made by any master or teacher or any such person, however divine. It is a law of that life which the disciple has entered upon. Therefore was it written in the inner doorway of the lodges of the old Egyptian Brotherhood, "the laborer is worthy of his hire." "Ask and ye shall have," sounds like something too easy and simple to be credible. But the disciple cannot "ask" in the mystic sense in which the word is used in this scripture until he has attained the power of helping others. Why is this? Has the statement too dogmatic a sound? Is it too dogmatic to say that a man must have foothold before he can spring? The position is the same. If help is given, if work is done, then there is an actual claim--not what we call personal claim of payment, but the claim of co-nature. The divine give, they demand that you also shall give before you can be of their kin. This law is discovered as soon as the disciple endeavors to speak. For speech is a gift which comes only to the disciple of power and knowledge. The spiritualist enters the psychic-astral world, but he does not find there any certain speech, unless he at once claims it and continues to do so. If he is interested in "phenomena," or the mere circumstance and accident of astral life, then he enters no direct ray of thought or purpose, he merely exists and amuses himself in the astral life as he has existed and amused himself in the physical life. Certainly there are one or two simple lessons which the psychic-astral can teach him, just as there are simple lessons which material and intellectual life teach him. And these lessons have to be learned; the man who proposes to enter upon the life of the disciple without having learned the early and simple lessons must always suffer from his ignorance. They are vital, and have to be studied in a vital manner; experienced through and through, over and over again, so that each part of the nature has been penetrated by them. To return. In claiming the power of speech, as it is called, the Neophyte cries out to the Great One who stands foremost in the ray of knowledge on which he has entered, to give him guidance. When he does this, his voice is hurled back by the power he has approached, and echoes down to the deep recesses of human ignorance. In some confused and blurred manner the news that there is knowledge and a beneficent power which teaches is carried to as many men as will listen to it. No disciple can cross the threshold without communicating this news, and placing it on record in some fashion or other. He stands horror-struck at the imperfect and unprepared manner in which he has done this; and then comes the desire to do it well, and with the desire thus to help others comes the power. For it is a pure desire, this which comes upon him; he can gain no credit, no glory, no personal reward by fulfilling it. And therefore he obtains the power to fulfil it. The history of the whole past, so far as we can trace it, shows very plainly that there is neither credit, glory, nor reward to be gained by this first task which is given to the Neophyte. Mystics have always been sneered at, and seers disbelieved; those who have had the added power of intellect have left for posterity their written record, which to most men appears unmeaning and visionary, even when the authors have the advantage of speaking from a far-off past. The disciple who undertakes the task, secretly hoping for fame or success, to appear as a teacher and apostle before the world, fails even before his task is attempted, and his hidden hypocrisy poisons his own soul, and the souls of those he touches. He is secretly worshiping himself, and this idolatrous practice must bring its own reward. The disciple who has the power of entrance, and is strong enough to pass each barrier, will, when the divine message comes to his spirit, forget himself utterly in the new consciousness which falls on him. If this lofty contact can really rouse him, he becomes as one of the divine in his desire to give rather than to take, in his wish to help rather than be helped, in his resolution to feed the hungry rather than take manna from Heaven himself. His nature is transformed, and the selfishness which prompts men's actions in ordinary life suddenly deserts him. IV "BEFORE THE VOICE CAN SPEAK IN THE PRESENCE OF THE MASTERS, IT MUST HAVE LOST THE POWER TO WOUND." Those who give merely passing and superficial attention to the subject of occultism--and their name is Legion--constantly inquire why, if adepts in life exist, they do not appear in the world and show their power. That the chief body of these wise ones should be understood to dwell beyond the fastnesses of the Himalayas, appears to be a sufficient proof that they are only figures of straw. Otherwise why place them so far off? Unfortunately, Nature has done this and not personal choice or arrangement. There are certain spots on the earth where the advance of "civilization" is unfelt, and the nineteenth century fever is kept at bay. In these favored places there is always time, always opportunity, for the realities of life; they are not crowded out by the doings of an inchoate, money-loving, pleasure seeking society. While there are adepts upon the earth, the earth must preserve to them places of seclusion. This is a fact in nature which is only an external expression of a profound fact in super-nature. The demand of the neophyte remains unheard until the voice in which it is uttered has lost the power to wound. This is because the divine-astral life[A] is a place in which order reigns, just as it does in natural life. There is, of course, always the center and the circumference as there is in nature. Close to the central heart of life, on any plane, there is knowledge, there order reigns completely; and chaos makes dim and confused the outer margin of the circle. In fact, life in every form bears a more or less strong resemblance to a philosophic school. There are always the devotees to knowledge who forget their own lives in their pursuit of it; there are always the flippant crowd who come and go--of such, Epictetus said that it was [as] easy to teach them philosophy as to eat custard with a fork. The same state exists in the super-astral life; and the adept has an even deeper and more profound seclusion there in which to dwell. This place of retreat is so safe, so sheltered, that no sound which has discord in it can reach his ears. Why should this be, will be asked at once, if he is a being of such great powers as those say who believe in his existence? The answer seems very apparent. He serves humanity and identifies himself with the whole world; he is ready to make vicarious sacrifice for it at any moment--_by living not by dying for it_. Why should he not die for it? Because he is part of the great whole, and one of the most valuable parts of it. Because he lives under laws of order which he does not desire to break. His life is not his own, but that of the forces which work behind him. He is the flower of humanity, the bloom which contains the divine seed. He is, in his own person, a treasure of the universal nature, which is guarded and made safe in order that the fruition shall be perfected. It is only at definite periods of the world's history that he is allowed to go among the herd of men as their redeemer. But for those who have the power to separate themselves from this herd he is always at hand. And for those who are strong enough to conquer the vices of the personal human nature, as set forth in these four rules, he is consciously at hand, easily recognised, ready to answer. [Footnote A: Of course every occultist knows by reading Eliphas Lévi and other authors that the "astral" plane is a plane of unequalized forces, and that a state of confusion necessarily prevails. But this does not apply to the "divine astral" plane, which is a plane where wisdom, and therefore order, prevails.] But this conquering of self implies a destruction of qualities which most men regard as not only indestructible but desirable. The "power to wound" includes much that men value, not only in themselves, but in others. The instinct of self-defense and of self-preservation is part of it; the idea that one has any right or rights, either as a citizen, or man, or individual, the pleasant consciousness of self-respect and of virtue. These are hard sayings to many; yet they are true. For these words that I am writing now, and those which I have written on this subject, are not in any sense my own. They are drawn from the traditions of the lodge of the great Brotherhood, which was once the secret splendor of Egypt. The rules written in its ante-chamber were the same as those now written in the ante-chamber of existing schools. Through all time the wise men have lived apart from the mass. And even when some temporary purpose or object induces one of them to come into the midst of human life, his seclusion and safety is preserved as completely as ever. It is part of his inheritance, part of his position, he has an actual title to it, and can no more put it aside than the Duke of Westminster can say he does not choose to be the Duke of Westminster. In the various great cities of the world an adept lives for a while from time to time, or perhaps only passes through; but all are occasionally aided by the actual power and presence of one of these men. Here in London, as in Paris and St. Petersburgh, there are men high in development. But they are only known as mystics by those who have the power to recognise; the power given by the conquering of self. Otherwise how could they exist, even for an hour, in such a mental and psychic atmosphere as is created by the confusion and disorder of a city? Unless protected and made safe their own growth would be interfered with, their work injured. And the neophyte may meet an adept in the flesh, may live in the same house with him, and yet be unable to recognise him, and unable to make his own voice heard by him. For no nearness in space, no closeness of relations, no daily intimacy, can do away with the inexorable laws which give the adept his seclusion. No voice penetrates to his inner hearing till it has become a divine voice, a voice which gives no utterance to the cries of self. Any lesser appeal would be as useless, as much a waste of energy and power, as for mere children who are learning their alphabet to be taught it by a professor of philology. Until a man has become, in heart and spirit, a disciple, he has no existence for those who are teachers of disciples. And he becomes this by one method only--the surrender of his personal humanity. For the voice to have lost the power to wound, a man must have reached that point where he sees himself only as one of the vast multitudes that live; one of the sands washed hither and thither by the sea of vibratory existence. It is said that every grain of sand in the ocean bed does, in its turn, get washed up on to the shore and lie for a moment in the sunshine. So with human beings, they are driven hither and thither by a great force, and each, in his turn, finds the sunrays on him. When a man is able to regard his own life as part of a whole like this he will no longer struggle in order to obtain anything for himself. This is the surrender of personal rights. The ordinary man expects, not to take equal fortunes with the rest of the world, but in some points, about which he cares, to fare better than the others. The disciple does not expect this. Therefore, though he be, like Epictetus, a chained slave, he has no word to say about it. He knows that the wheel of life turns ceaselessly. Burne Jones has shown it in his marvellous picture--the wheel turns, and on it are bound the rich and the poor, the great and the small--each has his moment of good fortune when the wheel brings him uppermost--the King rises and falls, the poet is _fêted_ and forgotten, the slave is happy and afterwards discarded. Each in his turn is crushed as the wheel turns on. The disciple knows that this is so, and though it is his duty to make the utmost of the life that is his, he neither complains of it nor is elated by it, nor does he complain against the better fortune of others. All alike, as he well knows, are but learning a lesson; and he smiles at the socialist and the reformer who endeavor by sheer force to re-arrange circumstances which arise out of the forces of human nature itself. This is but kicking against the pricks; a waste of life and energy. In realizing this a man surrenders his imagined individual rights, of whatever sort. That takes away one keen sting which is common to all ordinary men. When the disciple has fully recognised that the very thought of individual rights is only the outcome of the venomous quality in himself, that it is the hiss of the snake of self which poisons with its sting his own life and the lives of those about him, then he is ready to take part in a yearly ceremony which is open to all neophytes who are prepared for it. All weapons of defense and offense are given up; all weapons of mind and heart, and brain, and spirit. Never again can another man be regarded as a person who can be criticized or condemned; never again can the neophyte raise his voice in self-defense or excuse. From that ceremony he returns into the world as helpless, as unprotected, as a new-born child. That, indeed, is what he is. He has begun to be born again on to the higher plane of life, that breezy and well-lit plateau from whence the eyes see intelligently and regard the world with a new insight. I have said, a little way back, that after parting with the sense of individual rights, the disciple must part also with the sense of self-respect and of virtue. This may sound a terrible doctrine, yet all occultists know well that it is not a doctrine, but a fact. He who thinks himself holier than another, he who has any pride in his own exemption from vice or folly, he who believes himself wise, or in any way superior to his fellow men, is incapable of discipleship. A man must become as a little child before he can enter into the kingdom of heaven. Virtue and wisdom are sublime things; but if they create pride and a consciousness of separateness from the rest of humanity in the mind of a man, then they are only the snakes of self re-appearing in a finer form. At any moment he may put on his grosser shape and sting as fiercely as when he inspired the actions of a murderer who kills for gain or hatred, or a politician who sacrifices the mass for his own or his party's interests. In fact, to have lost the power to wound, implies that the snake is not only scotched, but killed. When it is merely stupefied or lulled to sleep it awakes again and the disciple uses his knowledge and his power for his own ends, and is a pupil of the many masters of the black art, for the road to destruction is very broad and easy, and the way can be found blindfold. That it is the way to destruction is evident, for when a man begins to live for self he narrows his horizon steadily till at last the fierce driving inwards leaves him but the space of [a] pin's-head to dwell in. We have all seen this phenomenon occur in ordinary life. A man who becomes selfish isolates himself, grows less interesting and less agreeable to others. The sight is an awful one, and people shrink from a very selfish person at last, as from a beast of prey. How much more awful is it when it occurs on the more advanced plane of life, with the added powers of knowledge, and through the greater sweep of successive incarnations! Therefore I say, pause and think well upon the threshold. For if the demand of the neophyte is made without the complete purification, it will not penetrate the seclusion of the divine adept, but will evoke the terrible forces which attend upon the black side of our human nature. V "BEFORE THE SOUL CAN STAND IN THE PRESENCE OF THE MASTERS, ITS FEET MUST BE WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF THE HEART." The word soul, as used here, means the divine soul, or "starry spirit." "To be able to stand is to have confidence"; and to have confidence means that the disciple is sure of himself, that he has surrendered his emotions, his very self, even his humanity; that he is incapable of fear and unconscious of pain; that his whole consciousness is centered in the divine life, which is expressed symbolically by the term "the Masters"; that he has neither eyes, nor ears, nor speech, nor power, save in and for the divine ray on which his highest sense has touched. Then he is fearless, free from suffering, free from anxiety or dismay; his soul stands without shrinking or desire of postponement, in the full blaze of the divine light which penetrates through and through his being. Then he has come into his inheritance and can claim his kinship with the teachers of men; he is upright, he has raised his head, he breathes the same air that they do. But before it is in any way possible for him to do this, the feet of the soul must be washed in the blood of the heart. The sacrifice, or surrender of the heart of man, and its emotions, is the first of the rules; it involves the "attaining of an equilibrium which cannot be shaken by personal emotion." This is done by the stoic philosopher; he, too, stands aside and looks equably upon his own sufferings, as well as on those of others. In the same way that "tears" in the language of occultists expresses the soul of emotion, not its material appearance, so blood expresses, not that blood which is an essential of physical life, but the vital creative principle in man's nature, which drives him into human life in order to experience pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow. When he has let the blood flow from the heart he stands before the Masters as a pure spirit which no longer to incarnate for the sake of emotion and experience. Through great cycles of time successive incarnations in gross matter may yet be his lot; but he no longer desires them, the crude wish to live has departed from him. When he takes upon him man's form in the flesh he does it in the pursuit of a divine object, to accomplish the work of "the Masters," and for no other end. He looks neither for pleasure nor pain, asks for no heaven, and fears no hell; yet he has entered upon a great inheritance which is not so much a compensation for these things surrendered, as a state which simply blots out the memory of them. He lives now not in the world, but with it: his horizon has extended itself to the width of the whole universe. KARMA Consider with me that the individual existence is a rope which stretches from the infinite to the infinite and has no end and no commencement, neither is it capable of being broken. This rope is formed of innumerable fine threads, which, lying closely together, form its thickness. These threads are colorless, are perfect in their qualities of straightness, strength, and levelness. This rope, passing as it does through all places, suffers strange accidents. Very often a thread is caught and becomes attached, or perhaps is only violently pulled away from its even way. Then for a great time it is disordered, and it disorders the whole. Sometimes one is stained with dirt or with color, and not only does the stain run on further than the spot of contact, but it discolors other of the threads. And remember that the threads are living--are like electric wires, more, are like quivering nerves. How far, then, must the stain, the drag awry, be communicated! But eventually the long strands, the living threads which in their unbroken continuity form the individual, pass out of the shadow into the shine. Then the threads are no longer colorless, but golden; once more they lie together, level. Once more harmony is established between them; and from that harmony within the greater harmony is perceived. This illustration presents but a small portion--a single side of the truth: it is less than a fragment. Yet, dwell on it; by its aid you may be led to perceive more. What it is necessary first to understand is, not that the future is arbitrarily formed by any separate acts of the present, but that the whole of the future is in unbroken continuity with the present as the present is with the past. On one plane, from one point of view, the illustration of the rope is correct. It is said that a little attention to occultism produces great Karmic results. That is because it is impossible to give any attention to occultism without making a definite choice between what are familiarly called good and evil. The first step in occultism brings the student to the tree of knowledge. He must pluck and eat; he must choose. No longer is he capable of the indecision of ignorance. He. goes, on, either on the good or on the evil path. And to step definitely and knowingly even but one step on either path produces great Karmic results. The mass of men walk waveringly, uncertain as to the goal they aim at; their standard of life is indefinite; consequently their Karma operates in a confused manner. But when once the threshold of knowledge is reached, the confusion begins to lessen, and consequently the Karmic results increase enormously, because all are acting in the same direction on all the different planes: for the occultist cannot be half-hearted, nor can he return when he has passed the threshold. These things are as impossible as that the man should become the child again. The individuality has approached the state of responsibility by reason of growth; it cannot recede from it. He who would escape from the bondage of Karma must raise his individuality out of the shadow into the shine; must so elevate his existence that these threads do not come in contact with soiling substances, do not become so attached as to be pulled awry. He simply lifts himself out of the region in which Karma operates. He does not leave the existence which he is experiencing because of that. The ground may be rough and dirty, or full of rich flowers whose pollen stains, and of sweet substances that cling and become attachments--but overhead there is always the free sky. He who desires to be Karmaless must look to the air for a home; and after that to the ether. He who desires to form good Karma will meet with many confusions, and in the effort to sow rich seed for his own harvesting may plant a thousand weeds, and among them the giant. Desire to sow no seed for your own harvesting; desire only to sow that seed the fruit of which shall feed the world. You are part of the world; in giving it food you feed yourself. Yet in even this thought there lurks a great danger which starts forward and faces the disciple, who has for long thought himself working for good, while in his inmost soul he has perceived only evil; that is, he has thought himself to be intending great benefit to the world while all the time he has unconsciously embraced the thought of Karma, and the great benefit he works for is for himself. A man may refuse to allow himself to think of reward. But in that very refusal is seen the fact that reward is desired. And it is useless for the disciple to strive to learn by means of checking himself. The soul must be unfettered, the desires free. But until they are fixed only on that state wherein there is neither reward nor punishment, good nor evil, it is in vain that he endeavors. He may seem to make great progress, but some day he will come face to face with his own soul, and will recognise that when he came to the tree of knowledge he chose the bitter fruit and not the sweet; and then the veil will fall utterly, and he will give up his freedom and become a slave of desire. Therefore be warned, you who are but turning toward the life of occultism. Learn now that there is no cure for desire, no cure for the love of reward, no cure for misery of longing, save in the fixing of the sight and hearing upon that which is invisible and soundless. Begin even now to practise it, and so a thousand serpents will be kept from your path. Live in the eternal. The operations of the actual laws of Karma are not to be studied until the disciple has reached the point at which they no longer affect himself. The initiate has a right to demand the secrets of nature and to know the rules which govern human life. He obtains this right by having escaped from the limits of nature and by having freed himself from the rules which govern human life. He has become a recognised portion of the divine element, and is no longer affected by that which is temporary. He then obtains a knowledge of the laws which govern temporary conditions. Therefore you who desire to understand the laws of Karma, attempt first to free yourself from these laws; and this can only be done by fixing your attention on that which is unaffected by those laws. *THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD* *Through the Gates of Gold* *A FRAGMENT OF THOUGHT* PROLOGUE Every man has a philosophy of life of his own, except the true philosopher. The most ignorant boor has some conception of his object in living, and definite ideas as to the easiest and wisest way of attaining that object. The man of the world is often, unconsciously to himself, a philosopher of the first rank. He deals with his life on principles of the clearest character, and refuses to let his position be shattered by chance disaster. The man of thought and imagination has less certainty, and finds himself continually unable to formulate his ideas on that subject most profoundly interesting to human nature,--human life itself. The true philosopher is the one who would lay no claim to the name whatever, who has discovered that the mystery of life is unapproachable by ordinary thought, just as the true scientist confesses his complete ignorance of the principles which lie behind science. Whether there is any mode of thought or any effort of the mind which will enable a man to grasp the great principles that evidently exist as causes in human life, is a question no ordinary thinker can determine. Yet the dim consciousness that there is cause behind the effects we see, that there is order ruling the chaos and sublime harmony pervading the discords, haunts the eager souls of the earth, and makes them long for vision of the unseen and knowledge of the unknowable. Why long and look for that which is beyond all hope until the inner eyes are opened? Why not piece together the fragments that we have, at hand, and see whether from them some shape cannot be given to the vast puzzle? CHAPTER I THE SEARCH FOR PLEASURE I We are all acquainted with that stern thing called misery, which pursues man, and strangely enough, as it seems at first, pursues him with no vague or uncertain method, but with a positive and unbroken pertinacity. Its presence is not absolutely continuous, else man must cease to live; but its pertinacity is without any break. There is always the shadowy form of despair standing behind man ready to touch him with its terrible finger if for too long he finds himself content. What has given this ghastly shape the right to haunt us from the hour we are born until the hour we die? What has given it the right to stand always at our door, keeping that door ajar with its impalpable yet plainly horrible hand, ready to enter at the moment it sees fit? The greatest philosopher that ever lived succumbs before it at last; and he only is a philosopher, in any sane sense, who recognises the fact that it is irresistible, and knows that like all other men he must suffer soon or late. It is part of the heritage of men, this pain and distress; and he who determines that nothing shall make him suffer, does but cloak himself in a profound and chilly selfishness. This cloak may protect him from pain, it will also separate him from pleasure. If peace is to be found on earth, or any joy in life, it cannot be by closing up the gates of feeling, which admit us to the loftiest and most vivid part of our existence. Sensation, as we obtain it through the physical body, affords us all that induces us to live in that shape. It is inconceivable that any man would care to take the trouble of breathing, unless the act brought with it a sense of satisfaction. So it is with every deed of every instant of our life. We live because it is pleasant even to have the sensation of pain. It is sensation we desire, else we would with one accord taste of the deep waters of oblivion, and the human race would become extinct. If this is the case in the physical life, it is evidently the case with the life of the emotions,--the imagination, the sensibilities, all those fine and delicate formations which, with the marvellous recording mechanism of the brain, make up the inner or subtile man. Sensation is that which makes their pleasure; an infinite series of sensations is life to them. Destroy the sensation which makes them wish to persevere in the experiment of living, and there is nothing left. Therefore the man who attempts to obliterate the sense of pain, and who proposes to maintain an equal state whether he is pleased or hurt, strikes at the very root of life, and destroys the object of his own existence. And that must apply, so far as our present reasoning or intuitive powers can show us, to every state, even to that of the Oriental's longed-for Nirvana. This condition can only be one of infinitely subtiler and more exquisite sensation, if it is a state at all, and not annihilation; and according to the experience of life from which we are at present able to judge, increased subtility of sensation means increased vividness,--as, for instance, a man of sensibility and imagination feels more in consequence of the unfaithfulness or faithfulness of a friend than can a man of even the grossest physical nature feel through the medium of the senses. Thus it is clear that the philosopher who refuses to feel, leaves himself no place to retreat to, not even the distant and unattainable Nirvanic goal. He can only deny himself his heritage of life, which is in other words the right of sensation. If he chooses to sacrifice that which makes him man, he must be content with mere idleness of consciousness,--a condition compared to which the oyster's is a life of excitement. But no man is able to accomplish such a feat. The fact of his continued existence proves plainly that he still desires sensation, and desires it in such positive and active form that the desire must be gratified in physical life. It would seem more practical not to deceive one's self by the sham of stoicism, not to attempt renunciation of that with which nothing would induce one to part. Would it not be a bolder policy, a more promising mode of solving the great enigma of existence, to grasp it, to take hold firmly and to demand of it the mystery of itself? If men will but pause and consider what lessons they have learned from pleasure and pain, much might be guessed of that strange thing which causes these effects. But men are prone to turn away hastily from self-study, or from any close analysis of human nature. Yet there must be a science of life as intelligible as any of the methods of the schools. The science is unknown, it is true, and its existence is merely guessed, merely hinted at, by one or two of our more advanced thinkers. The development of a science is only the discovery of what is already in existence; and chemistry is as magical and incredible now to the ploughboy as the science of life is to the man of ordinary perceptions. Yet there may be, and there must be, a seer who perceives the growth of the new knowledge as the earliest dabblers in the experiments of the laboratory saw the system of knowledge now attained evolving itself out of nature for man's use and benefit. II Doubtless many more would experiment in suicide, as many now do, in order to escape from the burden of life, if they could be convinced that in that manner oblivion might be found. But he who hesitates before drinking the poison from the fear of only inviting change of mode of existence, and perhaps a more active form of misery, is a man of more knowledge than the rash souls who fling themselves wildly on the unknown, trusting to its kindliness. The waters of oblivion are something very different from the waters of death, and the human race cannot become extinct by means of death while the law of birth still operates. Man returns to physical life as the drunkard returns to the flagon of wine,--he knows not why, except that he desires the sensation produced by life as the drunkard desires the sensation produced by wine. The true waters of oblivion lie far behind our consciousness, and can only be reached by ceasing to exist in that consciousness,--by ceasing to exert the will which makes us full of senses and sensibilities. Why does not the creature man return into that great womb of silence whence he came, and remain in peace, as the unborn child is at peace before the impetus of life has reached it? He does not do so because he hungers for pleasure and pain, joy and grief, anger and love. The unfortunate man will maintain that he has no desire for life; and yet he proves his words false by living. None can compel him to live; the galley-slave may be chained to his oar, but his life cannot be chained to his body. The superb mechanism of the human body is as useless as an engine whose fires are not lit, if the will to live ceases,--that will which we maintain resolutely and without pause, and which enables us to perform the tasks which otherwise would fill us with dismay, as, for instance, the momently drawing in and giving out of the breath. Such herculean efforts as this we carry on without complaint, and indeed with pleasure, in order that we may exist in the midst of innumerable sensations. And more; we are content, for the most part, to go on without object or aim, without any idea of a goal or understanding of which way we are going. When the man first becomes aware of this aimlessness, and is dimly conscious that he is working with great and constant efforts, and without any idea towards what end those efforts are directed, then descends on him the misery of nineteenth-century thought. He is lost and bewildered, and without hope. He becomes sceptical, disillusioned, weary, and asks the apparently unanswerable question whether it is indeed worth while to draw his breath for such unknown and seemingly unknowable results. But are these results unknowable? At least, to ask a lesser question, is it impossible to make a guess as to the direction in which our goal lies? III This question, born of sadness and weariness, which seems to us essentially part of the spirit of the nineteenth century, is in fact a question which must have been asked all through the ages. Could we go back throughout history intelligently, no doubt we should find that it came always with the hour when the flower of civilization had blown to its full, and when its petals were but slackly held together. The natural part of man has reached then its utmost height; he has rolled the stone up the Hill of Difficulty only to watch it roll back again when the summit is reached,--as in Egypt, in Rome, in Greece. Why this useless labor? Is it not enough to produce a weariness and sickness unutterable, to be forever accomplishing a task only to see it undone again? Yet that is what man has done throughout history, so far as our limited knowledge reaches. There is one summit to which, by immense and united efforts, he attains, where there is a great and brilliant efflorescence of all the intellectual, mental, and material part of his nature. The climax of sensuous perfection is reached, and then his hold weakens, his power grows less, and he falls back, through despondency and satiety, to barbarism. Why does he not stay on this hill-top he has reached, and look away to the mountains beyond, and resolve to scale those greater heights? Because he is ignorant, and seeing a great glittering in the distance, drops his eyes bewildered and dazzled, and goes back for rest to the shadowy side of his familiar hill. Yet there is now and then one brave enough to gaze fixedly on this glittering, and to decipher something of the shape within it. Poets and philosophers, thinkers and teachers,--all those who are the "elder brothers of the race,"--have beheld this sight from time to time, and some among them have recognised in the bewildering glitter the outlines of the Gates of Gold. Those Gates admit us to the sanctuary of man's own nature, to the place whence his life-power comes, and where he is priest of the shrine of life. That it is possible to enter here, to pass through those Gates, some one or two have shown us. Plato, Shakespeare, and a few other strong ones have gone through and spoken to us in veiled language on the near side of the Gates. When the strong man has crossed the threshold he speaks no more to those at the other side. And even the words he utters when he is outside are so full of mystery, so veiled and profound, that only those who follow in his steps can see the light within them. IV What men desire is to ascertain how to exchange pain for pleasure; that is, to find out in what way consciousness may be regulated in order that the sensation which is most agreeable is the one that is experienced. Whether this can be discovered by dint of human thought is at least a question worth considering. If the mind of man is turned upon any given subject with a sufficient concentration, he obtains illumination with regard to it sooner or later. The particular individual in whom the final illumination appears is called a genius, an inventor, one inspired; but he is only the crown of a great mental work created by unknown men about him, and receding back from him through long vistas of distance. Without them he would not have had his material to deal with. Even the poet requires innumerable poetasters to feed upon. He is the essence of the poetic power of his time, and of the times before him. It is impossible to separate an individual of any species from his kin. If, therefore, instead of accepting the unknown as unknowable, men were _with one accord_ to turn their thoughts towards it, those Golden Gates would not remain so inexorably shut. It does but need a strong hand to push them open. The courage to enter them is the courage to search the recesses of one's own nature without fear and without shame. In the fine part, the essence, the flavor of the man, is found the key which unlocks those great Gates. And when they open, what is it that is found? Voices here and there in the long silence of the ages speak to answer that question. Those who have passed through have left words behind them as legacies to others of their kin. In these words we can find definite indications of what is to be looked for beyond the Gates. But only those who desire to go that way read the meaning hidden within the words. Scholars, or rather scholiasts, read the sacred books of different nations, the poetry and the philosophy left by enlightened minds, and find in it all the merest materiality. Imagination glorifying legends of nature, or exaggerating the psychic possibilities of man, explains to them all that they find in the Bibles of humanity. What is to be found within the words of those books is to be found in each one of us; and it is impossible to find in literature or through any channel of thought that which does not exist in the man who studies. This is of course an evident fact known to all real students. But it has to be especially remembered in reference to this profound and obscure subject, as men so readily believe that nothing can exist for others where they themselves find emptiness. One thing is soon perceived by the man who reads: those who have gone before have not found that the Gates of Gold lead to oblivion. On the contrary, sensation becomes real for the first time when that threshold is crossed. But it is of a new order, an order unknown to us now, and by us impossible to appreciate without at least some clew as to its character. This clew can be obtained undoubtedly by any student who cares to go through all the literature accessible to us. That mystic books and manuscripts exist, but remain inaccessible simply because there is no man ready to read the first page of any one of them, becomes the conviction of all who have studied the subject sufficiently. For there must be the continuous line all through: we see it go from dense ignorance up to intelligence and wisdom; it is only natural that it should go on to intuitive knowledge and to inspiration. Some scant fragments we have of these great gifts of man; where, then, is the whole of which they must be a part? Hidden behind the thin yet seemingly impassable veil which hides it from us as it hid all science, all art, all powers of man till he had the courage to tear away the screen. That courage comes only of conviction. When once man believes that the thing exists which he desires, he will obtain it at any cost. The difficulty in this case lies in man's incredulity. It requires a great tide of thought and attention to set in towards the unknown region of man's nature in order that its gates may be unlocked and its glorious vistas explored. That it is worth while to do this whatever the hazard may be, all must allow who have asked the sad question of the nineteenth century,--Is life worth living? Surely it is sufficient to spur man to new effort,--the suspicion that beyond civilization, beyond mental culture, beyond art and mechanical perfection, there is a new, another gateway, admitting to the realities of life. V When it seems as if the end was reached, the goal attained, and that man has no more to do,--just then, when he appears to have no choice but between eating and drinking and living in his comfort as the beasts do in theirs, and scepticism which is death,--then it is that in fact, if he will but look, the Golden Gates are before him. With the culture of the age within him and assimilated perfectly, so that he is himself an incarnation of it, then he is fit to attempt the great step which is absolutely possible, yet is attempted by so few even of those who are fitted for it. It is so seldom attempted, partly because of the profound difficulties which surround it, but much more because man does not realize that this is actually the direction in which pleasure and satisfaction are to be obtained. There are certain pleasures which appeal to each individual; every man knows that in one layer or another of sensation he finds his chief delight. Naturally he turns to this systematically through life, just as the sunflower turns to the sun and the water-lily leans on the water. But he struggles throughout with an awful fact which oppresses him to the soul,--that no sooner has he obtained his pleasure than he loses it again and has once more to go in search of it. More than that; he never actually reaches it, for it eludes him at the final moment. This is because he endeavors to seize that which is untouchable and satisfy his soul's hunger for sensation by contact with external objects. How can that which is external satisfy or even please the inner man,--the thing which reigns within and has no eyes for matter, no hands for touch of objects, no senses with which to apprehend that which is outside its magic walls? Those charmed barriers which surround it are limitless, for it is everywhere; it is to be discovered in all living things, and no part of the universe can be conceived of without it, if that universe is regarded as a coherent whole. And unless that point is granted at the outset it is useless to consider the subject of life at all. Life is indeed meaningless unless it is universal and coherent, and unless we maintain our existence by reason of the fact that we are part of that which is, not by reason of our own being. This is one of the most important factors in the development of man, the recognition--profound and complete recognition--of the law of universal unity and coherence. The separation which exists between individuals, between worlds, between the different poles of the universe and of life, the mental and physical fantasy called space, is a nightmare of the human imagination. That nightmares exist, and exist only to torment, every child knows; and what we need is the power of discrimination between the phantasmagoria of the brain, which concern ourselves only, and the phantasmagoria of daily life, in which others also are concerned. This rule applies also to the larger case. It concerns no one but ourselves that we live in a nightmare of unreal horror, and fancy ourselves alone in the universe and capable of independent action, so long as our associates are those only who are a part of the dream; but when we desire to speak with those who have tried the Golden Gates and pushed them open, then it is very necessary--in fact it is essential--to discriminate, and not bring into our life the confusions of our sleep. If we do, we are reckoned as madmen, and fall back into the darkness where there is no friend but chaos. This chaos has followed every effort of man that is written in history; after civilization has flowered, the flower falls and dies, and winter and darkness destroy it. While man refuses to make the effort of discrimination which would enable him to distinguish between the shapes of night and the active figures of day, this must inevitably happen. But if man has the courage to resist this reactionary tendency, to stand steadily on the height he has reached and put out his foot in search of yet another step, why should he not find it? There is nothing to make one suppose the pathway to end at a certain point, except that tradition which has declared it is so, and which men have accepted and hug to themselves as a justification for their indolence. VI Indolence is, in fact, the curse of man. As the Irish peasant and the cosmopolitan gypsy dwell in dirt and poverty out of sheer idleness, so does the man of the world live contented in sensuous pleasures for the same reason. The drinking of fine wines, the tasting of delicate food, the love of bright sights and sounds, of beautiful women and admirable surroundings,--these are no better for the cultivated man, no more satisfactory as a final goal of enjoyment for him, than the coarse amusements and gratifications of the boor are for the man without cultivation. There can be no final point, for life in every form is one vast series of fine gradations; and the man who elects to stand still at the point of culture he has reached, and to avow that he can go no further, is simply making an arbitrary statement for the excuse of his indolence. Of course there is a possibility of declaring that the gypsy is content in his dirt and poverty, and, because he is so, is as great a man as the most highly cultured. But he only is so while he is ignorant; the moment light enters the dim mind the whole man turns towards it. So it is on the higher platform; only the difficulty of penetrating the mind, of admitting the light, is even greater. The Irish peasant loves his whiskey, and while he can have it cares nothing for the great laws of morality and religion which are supposed to govern humanity and induce men to live temperately. The cultivated gourmand cares only for subtle tastes and perfect flavors; but he is as blind as the merest peasant to the fact that there is anything beyond such gratifications. Like the boor he is deluded by a mirage that oppresses his soul; and he fancies, having once obtained a sensuous joy that pleases him, to give himself the utmost satisfaction by endless repetition, till at last he reaches madness. The bouquet of the wine he loves enters his soul and poisons it, leaving him with no thoughts but those of sensuous desire; and he is in the same hopeless state as the man who dies mad with drink. What good has the drunkard obtained by his madness? None; pain has at last swallowed up pleasure utterly, and death steps in to terminate the agony. The man suffers the final penalty for his persistent ignorance of a law of nature as inexorable as that of gravitation,--a law which forbids a man to stand still. Not twice can the same cup of pleasure be tasted; the second time it must contain either a grain of poison or a drop of the elixir of life. The same argument holds good with regard to intellectual pleasures; the same law operates. We see men who are the flower of their age in intellect, who pass beyond their fellows and tower over them, entering at last upon a fatal treadmill of thought, where they yield to the innate indolence of the soul and begin to delude themselves by the solace of repetition. Then comes the barrenness and lack of vitality,--that unhappy and disappointing state into which great men too often enter when middle life is just passed. The fire of youth, the vigor of the young intellect, conquers the inner inertia and makes the man scale heights of thought and fill his mental lungs with the free air of the mountains. But then at last the physical reaction sets in; the physical machinery of the brain loses its powerful impetus and begins to relax its efforts, simply because the youth of the body is at an end. Now the man is assailed by the great tempter of the race who stands forever on the ladder of life waiting for those who climb so far. He drops the poisoned drop into the ear, and from that moment all consciousness takes on a dulness, and the man becomes terrified lest life is losing its possibilities for him. He rushes back on to a familiar platform of experience, and there finds comfort in touching a well-known chord of passion or emotion. And too many having done this linger on, afraid to attempt the unknown, and satisfied to touch continually that chord which responds most readily. By this means they get the assurance that life is still burning within them. But at last their fate is the same as that of the gourmand and the drunkard. The power of the spell lessens daily as the machinery which feels loses its vitality; and the man endeavors to revive the old excitement and fervor by striking the note more violently, by hugging the thing that makes him feel, by drinking the cup of poison to its fatal dregs. And then he is lost; madness falls on his soul, as it falls on the body of the drunkard. Life has no longer any meaning for him, and he rushes wildly into the abysses of intellectual insanity. A lesser man who commits this great folly wearies the spirits of others by a dull clinging to familiar thought, by a persistent hugging of the treadmill which he asserts to be the final goal. The cloud that surrounds him is as fatal as death itself, and men who once sat at his feet turn away grieved, and have to look back at his early words in order to remember his greatness. VII What is the cure for this misery and waste of effort? Is there one? Surely life itself has a logic in it and a law which makes existence possible; otherwise chaos and madness would be the only state which would be attainable. When a man drinks his first cup of pleasure his soul is filled with the unutterable joy that comes with a first, a fresh sensation. The drop of poison that he puts into the second cup, and which, if he persists in that folly, has to become doubled and trebled till at last the whole cup is poison,--that is the ignorant desire for repetition and intensification; this evidently means death, according to all analogy. The child becomes the man; he cannot retain his childhood and repeat and intensify the pleasures of childhood except by paying the inevitable price and becoming an idiot. The plant strikes its roots into the ground and throws up green leaves; then it blossoms and bears fruit. That plant which will only make roots or leaves, pausing persistently in its development, is regarded by the gardener as a thing which is useless and must be cast out. The man who chooses the way of effort, and refuses to allow the sleep of indolence to dull his soul, finds in his pleasures a new and finer joy each time he tastes them,--a something subtile and remote which removes them more and more from the state in which mere sensuousness is all; this subtile essence is that elixir of life which makes man immortal. He who tastes it and who will not drink unless it is in the cup finds life enlarge and the world grow great before his eager eyes. He recognises the soul within the woman he loves, and passion becomes peace; he sees within his thought the finer qualities of spiritual truth, which is beyond the action of our mental machinery, and then instead of entering on the treadmill of intellectualisms he rests on the broad back of the eagle of intuition and soars into the fine air where the great poets found their insight; he sees within his own power of sensation, of pleasure in fresh air and sunshine, in food and wine, in motion and rest, the possibilities of the subtile man, the thing which dies not either with the body or the brain. The pleasures of art, of music, of light and loveliness,--within these forms, which men repeat till they find only the forms, he sees the glory of the Gates of Gold, and passes through to find the new life beyond which intoxicates and strengthens, as the keen mountain air intoxicates and strengthens, by its very vigor. But if he has been pouring, drop by drop, more and more of the elixir of life into his cup, he is strong enough to breathe this intense air and to live upon it. Then if he die or if he live in physical form, alike he goes on and finds new and finer joys, more perfect and satisfying experiences, with every breath he draws in and gives out. CHAPTER II THE MYSTERY OF THRESHOLD I There is no doubt that at the entrance on a new phase of life something has to be given up. The child, when it has become the man, puts away childish things. Saint Paul showed in these words, and in many others which he has left us, that he had tasted of the elixir of life, that he was on his way towards the Gates of Gold. With each drop of the divine draught which is put into the cup of pleasure something is purged away from that cup to make room for the magic drop. For Nature deals with her children generously: man's cup is always full to the brim; and if he chooses to taste of the fine and life-giving essence, he must cast away something of the grosser and less sensitive part of himself. This has to be done daily, hourly, momently, in order that the draught of life may steadily increase. And to do this unflinchingly, a man must be his own schoolmaster, must recognise that he is always in need of wisdom, must be ready to practise any austerities, to use the birch-rod unhesitatingly against himself, in order to gain his end. It becomes evident to any one who regards the subject seriously, that only a man who has the potentialities in him both of the voluptuary and the stoic has any chance of entering the Golden Gates. He must be capable of testing and valuing to its most delicate fraction every joy existence has to give; and he must be capable of denying himself all pleasure, and that without suffering from the denial. When he has accomplished the development of this double possibility, then he is able to begin sifting his pleasures and taking away from his consciousness those which belong absolutely to the man of clay. When those are put back, there is the next range of more refined pleasures to be dealt with. The dealing with these which will enable a man to find the essence of life is not the method pursued by the stoic philosopher. The stoic does not allow that there is joy within pleasure, and by denying himself the one loses the other. But the true philosopher, who has studied life itself without being bound by any system of thought, sees that the kernel is within the shell, and that, instead of crunching up the whole nut like a gross and indifferent feeder, the essence of the thing is obtained by cracking the shell and casting it away. All emotion, all sensation, lends itself to this process, else it could not be a part of man's development, an essential of his nature. For that there is before him power, life, perfection, and that every portion of his passage thitherwards is crowded with the means of helping him to his goal, can only be denied by those who refuse to acknowledge life as apart from matter. Their mental position is so absolutely arbitrary that it is useless to encounter or combat it. Through all time the unseen has been pressing on the seen, the immaterial overpowering the material; through all time the signs and tokens of that which is beyond matter have been waiting for the men of matter to test and weigh them. Those who will not do so have chosen the place of pause arbitrarily, and there is nothing to be done but let them remain there undisturbed, working that treadmill which they believe to be the utmost activity of existence. II There is no doubt that a man must educate himself to perceive that which is beyond matter, just as he must educate himself to perceive that which is in matter. Every one knows that the early life of a child is one long process of adjustment, of learning to understand the use of the senses with regard to their special provinces, and of practice in the exercise of difficult, complex, yet imperfect organs entirely in reference to the perception of the world of matter. The child is in earnest and works on without hesitation if he means to live. Some infants born into the light of earth shrink from it, and refuse to attack the immense task which is before them, and which must be accomplished in order to make life in matter possible. These go back to the ranks of the unborn; we see them lay down their manifold instrument, the body, and fade into sleep. So it is with the great crowd of humanity when it has triumphed and conquered and enjoyed in the world of matter. The individuals in that crowd, which seems so powerful and confident in its familiar demesne, are infants in the presence of the immaterial universe. And we see them, on all sides, daily and hourly, refusing to enter it, sinking back into the ranks of the dwellers in physical life, clinging to the consciousnesses they have experienced and understand. The intellectual rejection of all purely spiritual knowledge is the most marked indication of this indolence, of which thinkers of every standing are certainly guilty. That the initial effort is a heavy one is evident, and it is clearly a question of strength, as well as of willing activity. But there is no way of acquiring this strength, or of using it when acquired, except by the exercise of the will. It is vain to expect to be born into great possessions. In the kingdom of life there is no heredity except from the man's own past. He has to accumulate that which is his. This is evident to any observer of life who uses his eyes without blinding them by prejudice; and even when prejudice is present, it is impossible for a man of sense not to perceive the fact. It is from this that we get the doctrine of punishment and salvation, either lasting through great ages after death, or eternal. This doctrine is a narrow and unintelligent mode of stating the fact in Nature that what a man sows that shall he reap. Swedenborg's great mind saw the fact so clearly that he hardened it into a finality in reference to this particular existence, his prejudices making it impossible for him to perceive the possibility of new action when there is no longer the sensuous world to act in. He was too dogmatic for scientific observation, and would not see that, as the spring follows the autumn, and the day the night, so birth must follow death. He went very near the threshold of the Gates of Gold, and passed beyond mere intellectualism, only to pause at a point but one step farther. The glimpse of the life beyond which he had obtained appeared to him to contain the universe; and on his fragment of experience he built up a theory to include all life, and refused progress beyond that state or any possibility outside it. This is only another form of the weary treadmill. But Swedenborg stands foremost in the crowd of witnesses to the fact that the Golden Gates exist and can be seen from the heights of thought, and he has cast us a faint surge of sensation from their threshold. III When once one has considered the meaning of those Gates, it is evident that there is no other way out of this form of life except through them. They only can admit man to the place where he becomes the fruit of which manhood is the blossom. Nature is the kindest of mothers to those who need her; she never wearies of her children or desires them to lessen in multitude. Her friendly arms open wide to the vast throng who desire birth and to dwell in forms; and while they continue to desire it, she continues to smile a welcome. Why, then, should she shut her doors on any? When one life in her heart has not worn out a hundredth part of the soul's longing for sensation such as it finds there, what reason can there be for its departure to any other place? Surely the seeds of desire spring up where the sower has sown them. This seems but reasonable; and on this apparently self-evident fact the Indian mind has based its theory of re-incarnation, of birth and re-birth in matter, which has become so familiar a part of Eastern thought as no longer to need demonstration. The Indian knows it as the Western knows that the day he is living through is but one of many days which make up the span of a man's life. This certainty which is possessed by the Eastern with regard to natural laws that control the great sweep of the soul's existence is simply acquired by habits of thought. The mind of many is fixed on subjects which in the West are considered unthinkable. Thus it is that the East has produced the great flowers of the spiritual growth of humanity. On the mental steps of a million men Buddha passed through the Gates of Gold; and because a great crowd pressed about the threshold he was able to leave behind him words which prove that those Gates will open. CHAPTER III THE INITIAL EFFORT I It is very easily seen that there is no one point in a man's life or experience where he is nearer the soul of things than at any other. That soul, the sublime essence, which fills the air with a burnished glow, is there, behind the Gates it colors with itself. But that there is no one pathway to it is immediately perceived from the fact that this soul must from its very nature be universal. The Gates of Gold do not admit to any special place; what they do is to open for egress from a special place. Man passes through them when he casts off his limitation. He may burst the shell that holds him in darkness, tear the veil that hides him from the eternal, at any point where it is easiest for him to do so, and most often this point will be where he least expects to find it. Men go in search of escape with the help of their minds, and lay down arbitrary and limited laws as to how to attain the, to them, unattainable. Many, indeed, have hoped to pass through by the way of religion, and instead they have formed a place of thought and feeling so marked and fixed that it seems as though long ages would be insufficient to enable them to get out of the rut! Some have believed that by the aid of pure intellect a way was to be found; and to such men we owe the philosophy and metaphysics which have prevented the race from sinking into utter sensuousness. But the end of the man who endeavors to live by thought alone is that he dwells in fantasies, and insists on giving them to other men as substantial food. Great is our debt to the meta-physicians and transcendentalists; but he who follows them to the bitter end, forgetting that the brain is only one organ of use, will find himself dwelling in a place where a dull wheel of argument seems to turn forever on its axis, yet goes nowhither and carries no burden. Virtue (or what seems to each man to be virtue, his own special standard of morality and purity) is held by those who practise it to be a way to heaven. Perhaps it is, to the heaven of the modern sybarite, the ethical voluptuary. It is as easy to become a gourmand in pure living and high thinking as in the pleasures of taste or sight or sound. Gratification is the aim of the virtuous man as well as of the drunkard; even if his life be a miracle of abstinence and self-sacrifice, a moment's thought shows that in pursuing this apparently heroic path he does but pursue pleasure. With him pleasure takes on a lovely form because his gratifications are those of a sweet savor, and it pleases him to give gladness to others rather than to enjoy himself at their expense. But the pure life and high thoughts are no more finalities in themselves than any other mode of enjoyment; and the man who endeavors to find contentment in them must intensify his effort and continually repeat it,--all in vain. He is a green plant indeed, and the leaves are beautiful; but more is wanted than leaves. If he persists in his endeavor blindly, believing that he has reached his goal when he has not even perceived it, then he finds himself in that dreary place where good is done perforce, and the deed of virtue is without the love that should shine through it. It is well for a man to lead a pure life, as it is well for him to have clean hands,--else he becomes repugnant. But virtue as we understand it now can no more have any special relation to the state beyond that to which we are limited than any other part of our constitution. Spirit is not a gas created by matter, and we cannot create our future by forcibly using one material agent and leaving out the rest. Spirit is the great life on which matter rests, as does the rocky world on the free and fluid ether; whenever we can break our limitations we find ourselves on that marvellous shore where Wordsworth once saw the gleam of the gold. When we enter there all the present must disappear alike,--virtue and vice, thought and sense. That a man reaps what he has sown must of course be true also; he has no power to carry virtue, which is of the material life, with him; yet the aroma of his good deeds is a far sweeter sacrifice than the odor of crime and cruelty. Yet it may be, however, that by the practice of virtue he will fetter himself into one groove, one changeless fashion of life in matter, so firmly that it is impossible for the mind to conceive that death is a sufficient power to free him, and cast him upon the broad and glorious ocean,--a sufficient power to undo for him the inexorable and heavy latch of the Golden Gate. And sometimes the man who has sinned so deeply that his whole nature is scarred and blackened by the fierce fire of selfish gratification is at last so utterly burned out and charred that from the very vigor of the passion light leaps forth. It would seem more possible for such a man at least to reach the threshold of the Gates than for the mere ascetic or philosopher. But it is little use to reach the threshold of the Gates without the power to pass through. And that is all that the sinner can hope to do by the dissolution of himself which comes from seeing his own soul. At least this appears to be so, inevitably because his condition is negative. The man who lifts the latch of the Golden Gate must do so with his own strong hand, must be absolutely positive. This we can see by analogy. In everything else in life, in every new step or development, it is necessary for a man to exercise his most dominant will in order to obtain it fully. Indeed in many cases, though he has every advantage and though he use his will to some extent, he will fail utterly of obtaining what he desires from lack of the final and unconquerable resolution. No education in the world will make a man an intellectual glory to his age, even if his powers are great; for unless he positively desires to seize the flower of perfection, he will be but a dry scholar, a dealer in words, a proficient in mechanical thought, and a mere wheel of memory. And the man who has this positive quality in him will rise in spite of adverse circumstances, will recognise and seize upon the tide of thought which is his natural food, and will stand as a giant at last in the place he willed to reach. We see this practically every day in all walks of life. Wherefore it does not seem possible that the man who has simply succeeded through the passions in wrecking the dogmatic and narrow part of his nature should pass through those great Gates. But as he is not blinded by prejudice, nor has fastened himself to any treadmill of thought, nor caught the wheel of his soul in any deep rut of life, it would seem that if once the positive will might be born within him, he could at some time not hopelessly far distant lift his hand to the latch. Undoubtedly it is the hardest task we have yet seen set us in life, that which we are now talking of,--to free a man of all prejudice, of all crystallized thought or feeling, of all limitations, yet develop within him the positive will. It seems too much of a miracle; for in ordinary life positive will is always associated with crystallized ideas. But many things which have appeared to be too much of a miracle for accomplishment have yet been done, even in the narrow experience of life given to our present humanity. All the past shows us that difficulty is no excuse for dejection, much less for despair; else the world would have been without the many wonders of civilization. Let us consider the thing more seriously, therefore, having once used our minds to the idea that it is not impossible. The great initial difficulty is that of fastening the interest on that which is unseen. Yet, this is done every day, and we have only to observe how it is done in order to guide our own conduct. Every inventor fastens his interest firmly on the unseen; and it entirely depends on the firmness of that attachment whether he is successful or whether he fails. The poet who looks on to his moment of creation as that for which he lives, sees that which is invisible and hears that which is soundless. Probably in this last analogy there is a clew as to the mode by which success in this voyage to the unknown bourn ("whence," indeed, "no traveller returns") is attained. It applies also to the inventor and to all who reach out beyond the ordinary mental and psychical level of humanity. The clew lies in that word "creation." II The words "to create" are often understood by the ordinary mind to convey the idea of evolving something out of nothing. This is clearly not its meaning; we are mentally obliged to provide our Creator with chaos from which to produce the worlds. The tiller of the soil, who is the typical producer of social life, must have his material, his earth, his sky, rain, and sun, and the seeds to place within the earth. Out of nothing he can produce nothing. Out of a void Nature cannot arise; there is that material beyond, behind, or within, from which she is shaped by our desire for a universe. It is an evident fact that the seeds and the earth, air, and water which cause them to germinate exist on every plane of action. If you talk to an inventor, you will find that far ahead of what he is now doing he can always perceive some other thing to be done which he cannot express in words because as yet he has not drawn it into our present world of objects. That knowledge of the unseen is even more definite in the poet, and more inexpressible until he has touched it with some part of that consciousness which he shares with other men. But in strict proportion to his greatness he lives in the consciousness which the ordinary man does not even believe can exist,--the consciousness which dwells in the greater universe, which breathes in the vaster air, which beholds a wider earth and sky, and snatches seeds from plants of giant growth. It is this place of consciousness that we need to reach out to. That it is not reserved only for men of genius is shown by the fact that martyrs and heroes have found it and dwelt in it. It is not reserved for men of genius only, but it can only be found by men of great soul. In this fact there is no need for discouragement. Greatness in man is popularly supposed to be a thing inborn. This belief must be a result of want of thought, of blindness to facts of nature. Greatness can only be attained by growth; that is continually demonstrated to us. Even the mountains, even the firm globe itself, these are great by dint of the mode of growth peculiar to that state of materiality,--accumulation of atoms. As the consciousness inherent in all existing forms passes into more advanced forms of life it becomes more active, and in proportion it acquires the power of growth by assimilation instead of accumulation. Looking at existence from this special point of view (which indeed is a difficult one to maintain for long, as we habitually look at life in planes and forget the great lines which connect and run through these), we immediately perceive it to be reasonable to suppose that as we advance beyond our present standpoint the power of growth by assimilation will become greater and probably change into a method yet more rapid, easy, and unconscious. The universe is, in fact, full of magnificent promise for us, if we will but lift our eyes and see. It is that lifting of the eyes which is the first need and the first difficulty; we are so apt readily to be content with what we see within touch of our hands. It is the essential characteristic of the man of genius that he is comparatively indifferent to that fruit which is just within touch, and hungers for that which is afar on the hills. In fact he does not need the sense of contact to arouse longing. He knows that this distant fruit, which he perceives without the aid of the physical senses, is a subtler and a stronger food than any which appeals to them. And how is he rewarded! When he tastes that fruit, how strong and sweet is its flavor, and what a new sense of life rushes upon him! For in recognising that flavor he has recognised the existence of the subtile senses, those which feed the life of the inner man; and it is by the strength of that inner man, and by his strength only, that the latch of the Golden Gates can be lifted. In fact it is only by the development and growth of the inner man that the existence of these Gates, and of that to which they admit, can be even perceived. While man is content with his gross senses and cares nothing for his subtile ones, the Gates remain literally invisible. As to the boor the gateway of the intellectual life is as a thing uncreate and non-existent, so to the man of the gross senses, even if his intellectual life is active, that which lies beyond is uncreate and non-existent, only because he does not open the book. To the servant who dusts the scholar's library the closed volumes are meaningless; they do not even appear to contain a promise unless he also is a scholar, not merely a servant. It is possible to gaze throughout eternity upon a shut exterior from sheer indolence,--mental indolence, which is incredulity, and which at last men learn to pride themselves on; they call it scepticism, and talk of the reign of reason. It is no more a state to justify pride than that of the Eastern sybarite who will not even lift his food to his mouth; he is "reasonable" also in that he sees no value in activity, and therefore does not exercise it. So with the sceptic; decay follows the condition of inaction, whether it be mental, psychic, or physical. III And now let us consider how the initial difficulty of fastening the interest on that which is unseen is to be overcome. Our gross senses refer only to that which is objective in the ordinary sense of the word; but just beyond this field of life there are finer sensations which appeal to finer senses. Here we find the first clew to the stepping-stones we need. Man looks from this point of view like a point where many rays or lines centre; and if he has the courage or the interest to detach himself from the simplest form of life, the point, and explore but a little way along these lines or rays, his whole being at once inevitably widens and expands, the man begins to grow in greatness. But it is evident, if we accept this illustration as a fairly true one, that the chief point of importance is to explore no more persistently on one line than another: else the result must be a deformity. We all know how powerful is the majesty and personal dignity of a forest tree which has had air enough to breathe, and room for its widening roots, and inner vitality with which to accomplish its unceasing task. It obeys the perfect natural law of growth, and the peculiar awe it inspires arises from this fact. How is it possible to obtain recognition of the inner man, to observe its growth and foster it? Let us try to follow a little way the clew we have obtained, though words will probably soon be useless. We must each travel alone and without aids, as the traveller has to climb alone when he nears the summit of the mountain. No beast of burden can help him there; neither can the gross senses or anything that touches the gross senses help him here. But for a little distance words may go with us. The tongue recognises the value of sweetness or piquancy in food. To the man whose senses are of the simplest order there is no other idea of sweetness than this. But a finer essence, a more highly placed sensation of the same order, is reached by another perception. The sweetness on the face of a lovely woman, or in the smile of a friend, is recognised by the man whose inner senses have even a little--a mere stirring of--vitality. To the one who has lifted the golden latch the spring of sweet waters, the fountain itself whence all softness arises, is opened and becomes part of his heritage. But before this fountain can be tasted, or any other spring reached, any source found, a heavy weight has to be lifted from the heart, an iron bar which holds it down and prevents it from arising in its strength. The man who recognises the flow of sweetness from its source through Nature, through all forms of life, he has lifted this, he has raised himself into that state in which there is no bondage. He knows that he is a part of the great whole, and it is this knowledge which is his heritage. It is through the breaking asunder of the arbitrary bond which holds him to his personal centre that he comes of age and becomes ruler of his kingdom. As he widens out, reaching by manifold experience along those lines which centre at the point where he stands embodied, he discovers that he has touch with all life, that he contains within himself the whole. And then he has but to yield himself to the great force which we call good, to clasp it tightly with the grasp of his soul, and he is carried swiftly on to the great, wide waters of real living. What are those waters? In our present life we have but the shadow of the substance. No man loves without satiety, no man drinks wine without return of thirst. Hunger and longing darken the sky and make the earth unfriendly. What we need is an earth that will bear living fruit, a sky that will be always full of light. Needing this positively, we shall surely find it. CHAPTER IV THE MEANING OF PAIN I Look into the deep heart of life, whence pain comes to darken men's lives. She is always on the threshold, and behind her stands despair. What are these two gaunt figures, and why are they permitted to be our constant followers? It is we who permit them, we who order them, as we permit and order the action of our bodies; and we do so as unconsciously. But by scientific experiment and investigation we have learned much about our physical life, and it would seem as if we can obtain at least as much result with regard to our inner life by adopting similar methods. Pain arouses, softens, breaks, and destroys. Regarded from a sufficiently removed standpoint, it appears as medicine, as a knife, as a weapon, as a poison, in turn. It is an implement, a thing which is used, evidently. What we desire to discover is, who is the user; what part of ourselves is it that demands the presence of this thing so hateful to the rest? Medicine is used by the physician, the knife by the surgeon; but the weapon of destruction is used by the enemy, the hater. Is it, then, that we do not only use means, or desire to use means, for the benefit of our souls, but that also we wage warfare within ourselves, and do battle in the inner sanctuary? It would seem so; for it is certain that if man's will relaxed with regard to it he would no longer retain life in that state in which pain exists. Why does he desire his own hurt? The answer may at first sight seem to be that he primarily desires pleasure, and so is willing to continue on that battlefield where it wages war with pain for the possession of him, hoping always that pleasure will win the victory and take him home to herself. This is but the external aspect of the man's state. In himself he knows well that pain is co-ruler with pleasure, and that though the war wages always it never will be won. The superficial observer concludes that man submits to the inevitable. But that is a fallacy not worthy of discussion. A little serious thought shows us that man does not exist at all except by exercise of his positive qualities; it is but logical to suppose that he chooses the state he will live in by the exercise of those same qualities. Granted, then, for the sake of our argument, that he desires pain, why is it that he desires anything so annoying to himself? II If we carefully consider the constitution of man and its tendencies, it would seem as if there were two definite directions in which he grows. He is like a tree which strikes its roots into the ground while it throws up young branches towards the heavens. These two lines which go outward from the central personal point are to him clear, definite, and intelligible. He calls one good and the other evil. But man is not, according to any analogy, observation, or experience, a straight line. Would that he were, and that life, or progress, or development, or whatever we choose to call it, meant merely following one straight road or another, as the religionists pretend it does. The whole question, the mighty problem, would be very easily solved then. But it is not so easy to go to hell as preachers declare it to be. It is as hard a task as to find one's way to the Golden Gate! A man may wreck himself utterly in sense-pleasure,--may debase his whole nature, as it seems,--yet he fails of becoming the perfect devil, for there is still the spark of divine light within him. He tries to choose the broad road which leads to destruction, and enters bravely on his headlong career. But very soon he is checked and startled by some unthought-of tendency in himself,--some of the many other radiations which go forth from his centre of self. He suffers as the body suffers when it develops monstrosities which impede its healthy action. He has created pain, and encountered his own creation. It may seem as if this argument is difficult of application with regard to physical pain. Not so, if man is regarded from a loftier standpoint than that we generally occupy. If he is looked upon as a powerful consciousness which forms its external manifestations according to its desires, then it is evident that physical pain results from deformity in those desires. No doubt it will appear to many minds that this conception of man is too gratuitous, and involves too large a mental leap into unknown places where proof is unobtainable. But if the mind is accustomed to look upon life from this standpoint, then very soon none other is acceptable; the threads of existence, which to the purely materialistic observer appear hopelessly entangled, become separated and straightened, so that a new intelligibleness illumines the universe. The arbitrary and cruel Creator who inflicts pain and pleasure at will then disappears from the stage; and it is well, for he is indeed an unnecessary character, and, worse still, is a mere creature of straw, who cannot even strut upon the boards without being upheld on all sides by dogmatists. Man comes into this world, surely, on the same principle that he lives in one city of the earth or another; at all events, if it is too much to say that this is so, one may safely ask, why is it not so? There is neither for nor against which will appeal to the materialist, or which would weigh in a court of justice; but I aver this in favor of the argument,--that no man having once seriously considered it can go back to the formal theories of the sceptics. It is like putting on swaddling-clothes again. Granting, then, for the sake of this argument, that man is a powerful consciousness who is his own creator, his own judge, and within whom lies all life in potentiality, even the ultimate goal, then let us consider why he causes himself to suffer. If pain is the result of uneven development, of monstrous growths, of defective advance at different points, why does man not learn the lesson which this should teach him, and take pains to develop equally? It would seem to me as if the answer to this question is that this is the very lesson which the human race is engaged in learning. Perhaps this may seem too bold a statement to make in the face of ordinary thinking, which either regards man as a creature of chance dwelling in chaos, or as a soul bound to the inexorable wheel of a tyrant's chariot and hurried on either to heaven or to hell. But such a mode of thought is after all but the same as that of the child who regards his parents as the final arbiters of his destinies, and in fact the gods or demons of his universe. As he grows he casts aside this idea, finding that it is simply a question of coming of age, and that he is himself the king of life like any other man. So it is with the human race. It is king of its world, arbiter of its own destiny, and there is none to say it nay. Who talk of Providence and chance have not paused to think. Destiny, the inevitable, does indeed exist for the race and for the individual; but who can ordain this save the man himself? There is no clew in heaven or earth to the existence of any ordainer other than the man who suffers or enjoys that which is ordained. We know so little of our own constitution, we are so ignorant of our divine functions, that it is impossible for us yet to know how much or how little we are actually fate itself. But this at all events we know,--that so far as any provable perception goes, no clew to the existence of an ordainer has yet been discovered; whereas if we give but a very little attention to the life about us in order to observe the action of the man upon his own future, we soon perceive this power as an actual force in operation. It is visible, although our range of vision is so very limited. The man of the world, pure and simple, is by far the best practical observer and philosopher with regard to life, because he is not blinded by any prejudices. He will be found always to believe that as a man sows so shall he reap. And this is so evidently true when it is considered, that if one takes the larger view, including all human life, it makes intelligible the awful Nemesis which seems consciously to pursue the human race,--that inexorable appearance of pain in the midst of pleasure. The great Greek poets saw this apparition so plainly that their recorded observation has given to us younger and blinder observers the idea of it. It is unlikely that so materialistic a race as that which has grown up all over the West would have discovered for itself the existence of this terrible factor in human life without the assistance of the older poets,--the poets of the past. And in this we may notice, by the way, one distinct value of the study of the classics,--that the great ideas and facts about human life which the superb ancients put into their poetry shall not be absolutely lost as are their arts. No doubt the world will flower again, and greater thoughts and more profound discoveries than those of the past will be the glory of the men of the future efflorescence; but until that far-off day comes we cannot prize too dearly the treasures left us. There is one aspect of the question which seems at first sight positively to negative this mode of thought; and that is the suffering in the apparently purely physical body of the dumb beings,--young children, idiots, animals,--and their desperate need of the power which comes of any sort of knowledge to help them through their sufferings. The difficulty which will arise in the mind with regard to this comes from the untenable idea of the separation of the soul from the body. It is supposed by all those who look only at material life (and especially by the physicians of the flesh) that the body and the brain are a pair of partners who live together hand in hand and react one upon another. Beyond that they recognise no cause and therefore allow of none. They forget that the brain and the body are as evidently mere mechanism as the hand or the foot. There is the inner man--the soul--behind, using all these mechanisms; and this is as evidently the truth with regard to all the existences we know of as with regard to man himself. We cannot find any point in the scale of being at which soul-causation ceases or can cease. The dull oyster must have that in him which makes him choose the inactive life he leads; none else can choose it for him but the soul behind, which makes him be. How else can he be where he is, or be at all? Only by the intervention of an impossible creator called by some name or other. It is because man is so idle, so indisposed to assume or accept responsibility, that he falls back upon this temporary makeshift of a creator. It is temporary indeed, for it can only last during the activity of the particular brain power which finds its place among us. When the man drops this mental life behind him, he of necessity leaves with it its magic lantern and the pleasant illusions he has conjured up by its aid. That must be a very uncomfortable moment, and must produce a sense of nakedness not to be approached by any other sensation. It would seem as well to save one's self this disagreeable experience by refusing to accept unreal phantasms as things of flesh and blood and power. Upon the shoulders of the Creator man likes to thrust the responsibility not only of his capacity for sinning and the possibility of his salvation, but of his very life itself, his very consciousness. It is a poor Creator that he thus contents himself with,--one who is pleased with a universe of puppets, and amused by pulling their strings. If he is capable of such enjoyment, he must yet be in his infancy. Perhaps that is so, after all; the God within us is in his infancy, and refuses to recognise his high estate. If indeed the soul of man is subject to the laws of growth, of decay, and of re-birth as to its body, then there is no wonder at its blindness. But this is evidently not so; for the soul of man is of that order of life which causes shape and form, and is unaffected itself by these things,--of that order of life which like the pure, the abstract flame burns wherever it is lit. This cannot be changed or affected by time, and is of its very nature superior to growth and decay. It stands in that primeval place which is the only throne of God,--that place whence forms of life emerge and to which they return. That place is the central point of existence, where there is a permanent spot of life as there is in the midst of the heart of man. It is by the equal development of that,--first by the recognition of it, and then by its equal development upon the many radiating lines of experience,--that man is at last enabled to reach the Golden Gate and lift the latch. The process is the gradual recognition of the god in himself; the goal is reached when that godhood is consciously restored to its right glory. III The first thing which it is necessary for the soul of man to do in order to engage in this great endeavor of discovering true life is the same thing that the child first does in its desire for activity in the body,--he must be able to stand. It is clear that the power of standing, of equilibrium, of concentration, of uprightness, in the soul, is a quality of a marked character. The word that presents itself most readily as descriptive of this quality is "confidence." To remain still amid life and its changes, and stand firmly on the chosen spot, is a feat which can only be accomplished by the man who has confidence in himself and in his destiny. Otherwise the hurrying forms of life, the rushing tide of men, the great floods of thought, must inevitably carry him with them, and then he will lose that place of consciousness whence it was possible to start on the great enterprise. For it _must_ be done knowingly, and without pressure from without,--this act of the new-born man. All the great ones of the earth have possessed this confidence, and have stood firmly on that place which was to them the one solid spot in the universe. To each man this place is of necessity different. Each man must find his earth and his own heaven. We have the instinctive desire to relieve pain, but we work in externals in this as in everything else. We simply alleviate it; and if we do more, and drive it from its first chosen stronghold, it reappears in some other place with reinforced vigor. If it is eventually driven off the physical plane by persistent and successful effort, it reappears on the mental or emotional planes where no man can touch it. That this is so is easily seen by those who connect the various planes of sensation, and who observe life with that additional illumination. Men habitually regard these different forms of feeling as actually separate, whereas in fact they are evidently only different sides of one centre,--the point of personality. If that which arises in the centre, the fount of life, demands some hindered action, and consequently causes pain, the force thus created being driven from one stronghold must find another; it cannot be driven out. And all the blendings of human life which cause emotion and distress exist for its use and purposes as well as for those of pleasure. Both have their home in man; both demand their expression of right. The marvellously delicate mechanism of the human frame is constructed to answer to their lightest touch; the extraordinary intricacies of human relations evolve themselves, as it were, for the satisfaction of these two great opposites of the soul. Pain and pleasure stand apart and separate, as do the two sexes; and it is in the merging, the making the two into one, that joy and deep sensation and profound peace are obtained. Where there is neither male nor female neither pain nor pleasure, there is the god in man dominant, and then is life real. To state the matter in this way may savor too much of the dogmatist who utters his assertions uncontradicted from a safe pulpit; but it is dogmatism only as a scientist's record of effort in a new direction is dogmatism. Unless the existence of the Gates of Gold can be proved to be real, and not the mere phantasmagoria of fanciful visionaries, then they are not worth talking about at all. In the nineteenth century hard facts or legitimate arguments alone appeal to men's minds; and so much the better. For unless the life we advance towards is increasingly real and actual, it is worthless, and time is wasted in going after it. Reality is man's greatest need, and he demands to have it at all hazards, at any price. Be it so. No one doubts he is right. Let us then go in search of reality. IV One definite lesson learned by all acute sufferers will be of the greatest service to us in this consideration. In intense pain a point is reached where it is indistinguishable from its opposite, pleasure. This is indeed so, but few have the heroism or the strength to suffer to such a far point. It is as difficult to reach it by the other road. Only a chosen few have the gigantic capacity for pleasure which will enable them to travel to its other side. Most have but enough strength to enjoy and to become the slave of the enjoyment. Yet man has undoubtedly within himself the heroism needed for the great journey; else how is it martyrs have smiled amid the torture? How is it that the profound sinner who lives for pleasure can at last feel stir within himself the divine afflatus? In both these cases the possibility has arisen of finding the way; but too often that possibility is killed by the overbalance of the startled nature. The martyr has acquired a passion for pain and lives in the idea of heroic suffering; the sinner becomes blinded by the thought of virtue and worships it as an end, an object, a thing divine in itself; whereas it can only be divine as it is part of that infinite whole which includes vice as well as virtue. How is it possible to divide the infinite,--that which is one? It is as reasonable to lend divinity to any object as to take a cup of water from the sea and declare that in that is contained the ocean. You cannot separate the ocean; the salt water is part of the great sea and must be so; but nevertheless you do not hold the sea in your hand. Men so longingly desire personal power that they are ready to put infinity into a cup, the divine idea into a formula, in order that they may fancy themselves in possession of it. These only are those who cannot rise and approach the Gates of Gold, for the great breath of life confuses them; they are struck with horror to find how great it is. The idol-worshipper keeps an image of his idol in his heart and burns a candle always before it. It is his own, and he is pleased at that thought, even if he bow in reverence before it. In how many virtuous and religious men does not this same state exist? In the recesses of the soul the lamp is burning before a household god,--a thing possessed by its worshipper and subject to him. Men cling with desperate tenacity to these dogmas, these moral laws, these principles and modes of faith which are their household gods, their personal idols. Bid them burn the unceasing flame in reverence only to the infinite, and they turn from you. Whatever their manner of scorning your protest may be, within themselves it leaves a sense of aching void. For the noble soul of the man, that potential king which is within us all, knows full well that this household idol may be cast down and destroyed at any moment,--that it is without finality in itself, without any real and absolute life. And he has been content in his possession, forgetting that anything possessed can only by the immutable laws of life be held temporarily. He has forgotten that the infinite is his only friend; he has forgotten that in its glory is his only home,--that it alone can be his god. There he feels as if he is homeless; but that amid the sacrifices he offers to his own especial idol there is for him a brief resting-place; and for this he clings passionately to it. Few have the courage even slowly to face the great desolateness which lies outside themselves, and must lie there so long as they cling to the person which they represent, the "I" which is to them the centre of the world, the cause of all life. In their longing for a God they find the reason for the existence of one; in their desire for a sense-body and a world to enjoy in, lies to them the cause of the universe. These beliefs may be hidden very deep beneath the surface, and be indeed scarcely accessible; but in the fact that they are there is the reason why the man holds himself upright. To himself he is himself the infinite and the God; he holds the ocean in a cup. In this delusion he nurtures the egoism which makes life pleasure and makes pain pleasant. In this profound egoism is the very cause and source of the existence of pleasure and of pain. For unless man vacillated between these two, and ceaselessly reminded himself by sensation that he exists, he would forget it. And in this fact lies the whole answer to the question, "Why does man create pain for his own discomfort?" The strange and mysterious fact remains unexplained as yet, that man in so deluding himself is merely interpreting Nature backwards and putting into the words of death the meaning of life. For that man does indeed hold within him the infinite, and that the ocean is really in the cup, is an incontestable truth; but it is only so because the cup is absolutely non-existent. It is merely an experience of the infinite, having no permanence, liable to be shattered at any instant. It is in the claiming of reality and permanence for the four walls of his personality, that man makes the vast blunder which plunges him into a prolonged series of unfortunate incidents, and intensifies continually the existence of his favorite forms of sensation. Pleasure and pain become to him more real than the great ocean of which he is a part and where his home is; he perpetually knocks himself painfully against these walls where he feels, and his tiny self oscillates within his chosen prison. CHAPTER V THE SECRET OF STRENGTH I Strength to step forward is the primary need of him who has chosen his path. Where is this to be found? Looking round, it is not hard to see where other men find their strength. Its source is profound conviction. Through this great moral power is brought to birth in the natural life of the man that which enables him, however frail he may be, to go on and conquer. Conquer what? Not continents, not worlds, but himself. Through that supreme victory is obtained the entrance to the whole, where all that might be conquered and obtained by effort becomes at once not his, but himself. To put on armor and go forth to war, taking the chances of death in the hurry of the fight, is an easy thing; to stand still amid the jangle of the world, to preserve stillness within the turmoil of the body, to hold silence amid the thousand cries of the senses and desires, and then, stripped of all armor and without hurry or excitement take the deadly serpent of self and kill it, is no easy thing. Yet that is what has to be done; and it can only be done in the moment of equilibrium when the enemy is disconcerted by the silence. But there is needed for this supreme moment a strength such as no hero of the battlefield needs. A great soldier must be filled with the profound convictions of the justness of his cause and the rightness of his method. The man who wars against himself and wins the battle can do it only when he knows that in that war he is doing the one thing which is worth doing, and when he knows that in doing it he is winning heaven and hell as his servitors. Yes, he stands on both. He needs no heaven where pleasure comes as a long-promised reward; he fears no hell where pain waits to punish him for his sins. For he has conquered once for all that shifting serpent in himself which turns from side to side in its constant desire of contact, in its perpetual search after pleasure and pain. Never again (the victory once really won) can he tremble or grow exultant at any thought of that which the future holds. Those burning sensations which seemed to him to be the only proofs of his existence are his no longer. How, then, can he know that he lives? He knows it only by argument. And in time he does not care to argue about it. For him there is then peace; and he will find in that peace the power he has coveted. Then he will know what is that faith which can remove mountains. II Religion holds a man back from the path, prevents his stepping forward, for various very plain reasons. First it makes the vital mistake of distinguishing between good and evil. Nature knows no such distinction; and the moral and social laws set us by our religions are as temporary, as much a thing of our own special mode and form of existence, as are the moral and social laws of the ants or the bees. We pass out of that state in which these things appear to be final, and we forget them forever. This is easily shown, because a man of broad habits of thought and of intelligence must modify his code of life when he dwells among another people. These people among whom he is an alien have their own deep-rooted religions and hereditary convictions, against which he cannot offend. Unless his is an abjectly narrow and unthinking mind, he sees that their form of law and order is as good as his own. What then can he do but reconcile his conduct gradually to their rules? And then if he dwells among them many years the sharp edge of difference is worn away, and he forgets at last where their faith ends and his commences. Yet is it for his own people to say he has done wrong, if he has injured no man and remained just? I am not attacking law and order; I do not speak of these things with rash dislike. In their place they are as vital and necessary as the code which governs the life of a beehive is to its successful conduct. What I wish to point out is that law and order in themselves are quite temporary and unsatisfactory. a man's soul passes away from its brief dwelling-place, thoughts of law and order do not accompany it. If it is strong, it is the ecstasy of true being and real life which it becomes possessed of, as all know who have watched by the dying. If the soul is weak, it faints and fades away, overcome by the first flush of the new life. Am I speaking too positively? Only those who live in the active life of the moment, who have not watched beside the dead and dying, who have not walked the battlefield and looked in the faces of men in their last agony, will say so. The strong man goes forth from his body exultant. Why? Because he is no longer held back and made to quiver by hesitation. In the strange moment of death he has had release given him; and with a sudden passion of delight he recognises that it is release. Had; he been sure of this before, he would have been a great sage, a man to rule the world, for he would have had the power to rule himself and his own body. That release from the chains of ordinary life can be obtained as easily during life as by death. It only needs a sufficiently profound conviction to enable the man to look on his body with the same emotions as he would look on the body of another man, or on the bodies of a thousand men. In contemplating a battlefield it is impossible to realize the agony of every sufferer; why, then, realize your own pain more keenly than another's? Mass the whole together, and look at it all from a wider standpoint than that of the individual life. That you actually feel your own physical wound is a weakness of your limitation. The man who is developed psychically feels the wound of another as keenly as his own, and does not feel his own at all if he is strong enough to will it so. Every one who has examined at all seriously into psychic conditions knows this to be a fact, more or less marked, according to the psychic development. In many instances, the psychic is more keenly and selfishly aware of his own pain than of any other person's; but that is when the development, marked perhaps so far as it has gone, only reaches a certain point. It is the power which carries the man to the margin of that consciousness which is profound peace and vital activity. It can carry him no further. But if he has reached its margin he is freed from the paltry dominion of his own self. That is the first great release. Look at the sufferings which come upon us from our narrow and limited experience and sympathy. We each stand quite alone, a solitary unit, a pygmy in the world. What good fortune can we expect? The great life of the world rushes by, and we are in danger each instant that it will overwhelm us or even utterly destroy us. There is no defence to be offered to it; no opposition army can be set up, because in this life every man fights his own battle against every other man, and no two can be united under the same banner. There is only one way of escape from this terrible danger which we battle against every hour. Turn round, and instead of standing against the forces, join them; become one with Nature, and go easily upon her path. Do not resist or resent the circumstances of life any more than the plants present the rain and the wind. Then suddenly, to your own amazement, you find you have time and strength to spare, to use in the great battle which it is inevitable every man must fight,--that in himself, that which leads to his own conquest. Some might say, to his own destruction. And why? Because from the hour when he first tastes the splendid reality of living he forgets more and more his individual self. No longer does he fight for it, or pit its strength against the strength of others. No longer does he care to defend or to feed it. Yet when he is thus indifferent to its welfare, the individual self grows more stalwart and robust, like the prairie grasses and the trees of untrodden forests. It is a matter of indifference to him whether this is so or not. Only, if it is so, he has a fine instrument ready to his hand; and in due proportion to the completeness of his indifference to it is the strength and beauty of his personal self. This is readily seen; a garden flower becomes a mere degenerate copy of itself if it is simply neglected; a plant must be cultivated to the highest pitch, and benefit by the whole of the gardener's skill, or else it must be a pure savage, wild, and fed only by the earth and sky. Who cares for any intermediate states? What value or strength is there in the neglected garden rose which has the canker in every bud? For diseased or dwarfed blossoms are sure to result from an arbitrary change of condition, resulting from the neglect of the man who has hitherto been the providence of the plant in its unnatural life. But there are wind-blown plains where the daisies grow tall, with moon faces such as no cultivation can produce in them. Cultivate, then, to the very utmost; forget no inch of your garden ground, no smallest plant that grows in it; make no foolish pretence nor fond mistake in the fancy that you are ready to forget it, and so subject it to the frightful consequences of half-measures. The plant that is watered to-day and forgotten to-morrow must dwindle or decay. The plant that looks for no help but from Nature itself measures its strength at once, and either dies and is re-created or grows into a great tree whose boughs fill the sky. But make no mistake like the religionists and some philosophers; leave no part of yourself neglected while you know it to be yourself. While the ground is the gardener's it is his business to tend it; but some day a call may come to him from another country or from death itself, and in a moment he is no longer the gardener, his business is at an end, he has no more duty of that kind at all. Then his favorite plants suffer and die, and the delicate ones become one with the earth. But soon fierce Nature claims the place for her own, and covers it with thick grass or giant weeds, or nurses some sapling in it till its branches shade the ground. Be warned, and tend your garden to the utmost, till you can pass away utterly and let it return to Nature and become the wind-blown plain where the wild-flowers grow. Then, if you pass that way and look at it, whatever has happened will neither grieve nor elate you. For you will be able to say, "I am the rocky ground, I am the great tree, I am the strong daisies," indifferent which it is that flourishes where once your rose-trees grew. But you must have learned to study the stars to some purpose before you dare to neglect your roses, and omit to fill the air with their cultivated fragrance. You must know your way through the trackless air, and from thence to the pure ether; you must be ready to lift the bar of the Golden Gate. Cultivate, I say, and neglect nothing. Only remember, all the while you tend and water, that you are impudently usurping the tasks of Nature herself. Having usurped her work, you must carry it through until you have reached a point when she has no power to punish you, when you are not afraid of her, but can with a bold front return her her own. She laughs in her sleeve, the mighty mother, watching you with covert, laughing eye, ready relentlessly to cast the whole of your work into the dust if you do but give her the chance, if you turn idler and grow careless. The idler is father of the madman in the sense that the child is the father of the.man. Nature has put her vast hand on him and crushed the whole edifice. The gardener and his rose-trees are alike broken and stricken by the great storm which her movement has created; they lie helpless till the sand is swept over them and they are buried in a weary wilderness. From this desert spot Nature herself will re-create, and will use the ashes of the man who dared to face her as indifferently as the withered leaves of his plants. His body, soul, and spirit are all alike claimed by her. III The man who is strong, who has resolved to find the unknown path, takes with the utmost care every step. He utters no idle word, he does no unconsidered action, he neglects no duty or office however homely or however difficult. But while his eyes and hands and feet are thus fulfilling their tasks, new eyes and hands and feet are being born within him. For his passionate and unceasing desire is to go that way on which the subtile organs only can guide him. The physical world he has learned, and knows how to use; gradually his power is passing on, and he recognises the psychic world. But he has to learn this world and know how to use it, and he dare not lose hold of the life he is familiar with till he has taken hold of that with which he is unfamiliar. When he has acquired such power with his psychic organs as the infant has with its physical organs when it first opens its lungs, then is the hour for the great adventure. How little is needed--yet how much that is! The man does but need the psychic body to be formed in all parts, as is an infant's; he does but need the profound and unshakable conviction which impels the infant, that the new life is desirable. Once those conditions gained and he may let himself live in the new atmosphere and look up to the new sun. But then his must remember to check his new experience by the old. He is breathing still, though differently; he draws air into his lungs, and takes life from the sun. He has been born into the psychic world, and depends now on the psychic air and light. His goal is not here: this is but a subtile repetition of physical life; he has to pass through it according to similar laws. He must study, learn, grow, and conquer; never forgetting the while that his goal is that place where there is no air nor any sun or moon. Do not imagine that in this line of progress the man himself is being moved or changing his place. Not so. The truest illustration of the process is that of cutting through layers of crust or skin. The man, having learned his lesson fully, casts off the physical life; having learned his lesson fully, casts off the psychic life; having learned his lesson fully, casts off the contemplative life, or life of adoration. All are cast aside at last, and he enters the great temple where any memory of self or sensation is left outside as the shoes are cast from the feet of the worshipper. That temple is the place of his own pure divinity, the central flame which, however obscured, has animated him through all these struggles. And having found this sublime home he is sure as the heavens themselves. He remains still, filled with all knowledge and power. The outer man, the adoring, the acting, the living personification, goes its own way hand in hand with Nature, and shows all the superb strength of the savage growth of the earth, lit by that instinct which contains knowledge. For in the inmost sanctuary, in the actual temple, the man has found the subtile essence of Nature herself. No longer can there be any difference between them or any half-measures. And now comes the hour of action and power. In that inmost sanctuary all is to be found: God and his creatures, the fiends who prey on them, those among men who have been loved, those who have been hated. Difference between them exists no longer. Then the soul of man laughs in its strength and fearlessness, and goes forth into the world in which its actions are needed, and causes these actions to take place without apprehension, alarm, fear, regret, or joy. This state is possible to man while yet he lives in the physical; for men have attained it while living. It alone can make actions in the physical divine and true. Life among objects of sense must forever be an outer shape to the sublime soul,--it can only become powerful life, the life of accomplishment, when it is animated by the crowned and indifferent god that sits in the sanctuary. The obtaining of this condition is so supremely desirable because from the moment it is entered there is no more trouble, no more anxiety, no more doubt or hesitation. As a great artist paints his picture fearlessly and never committing any error which causes him regret, so the man who has formed his inner self deals with his life. But that is when the condition is entered. That which we who look towards the mountains hunger to know is the mode of entrance and the way to the Gate. The Gate is that Gate of Gold barred by a heavy bar of iron. The way to the threshold of it turns a man giddy and sick. It seems no path, it seems to end perpetually, its way lies along hideous precipices, it loses itself in deep waters. Once crossed and the way found it appears wonderful that the difficulty should have looked; so great. For the path where it disappears does but turn abruptly, its line upon the precipice edge is wide enough for the feet, and across the deep waters that look so treacherous there, is always a ford and a ferry. So it happens in all profound experiences of human nature. When the first grief tears the heart asunder it seems that the path has ended and a blank darkness taken the place of the sky. And yet by groping the soul passes on, and that difficult and seemingly hopeless turn in the road is passed. So with many another form or human torture. Sometimes throughout a long period or a whole lifetime the path of existence is perpetually checked by what seem like insurmountable obstacles. Grief, pain, suffering, the loss of all that is beloved or valued, rise up before the terrified soul and check it at every turn. Who places those obstacles there? The reason shrinks at the childish dramatic picture which the religionists place before it,--God permitting the Devil to torment His creatures for their ultimate good! When will that ultimate good be attained? The idea involved in this picture supposes an end, a goal. There is none. We can any one of us safely assent to that; for as far as human observation, reason, thought, intellect, or instinct can reach towards grasping the mystery of life, all data obtained show that the path is endless and that eternity cannot be blinked and converted by the idling soul into a million years. In man, taken individually or as a whole, there clearly exists a double constitution. I am speaking roughly now, being well aware that the various schools of philosophy cut him up and subdivide him according to their several theories. What I mean is this: that two great tides of emotion sweep through his nature, two great forces guide his life; the one makes him an animal, and the other makes him a god. No brute of the earth is so brutal as the man who subjects his godly power to his animal power. This is a matter of course, because the whole force of the double nature is then used in one direction. The animal pure and simple obeys his instincts only and desires no more than to gratify his love of pleasure; he pays but little regard to the existence of other beings except in so far as they offer him pleasure or pain; he knows nothing of the abstract love of cruelty or of any of those vicious tendencies of the human being which have in themselves their own gratification. Thus the man who becomes a beast has a million times the grasp of life over the natural beast, and that which in the pure animal is sufficiently innocent enjoyment, uninterrupted by an arbitrary moral standard, becomes in him vice, because it is gratified on principle. Moreover he turns all the divine powers of his being into this channel, and degrades his soul by making it the slave of his senses. The god, deformed and disguised, waits on the animal and feeds it. Consider then whether it is not possible to change the situation. The man himself is king of the country in which this strange spectacle is seen. He allows the beast to usurp the place of the god because for the moment the beast pleases his capricious royal fancy the most. This cannot last always; why let it last any longer? So long as the animal rules there will be the keenest sufferings in consequence of change, of the vibration between pleasure and pain, of the desire for prolonged and pleasant physical life. And the god in his capacity of servant adds a thousand-fold to all this, by making physical life so much more filled with keenness of pleasure,--rare, voluptuous, aesthetic pleasure,--and by intensity of pain so passionate that one knows not where it ends and where pleasure commences. So long as the god serves, so long the life of the animal will be enriched and increasingly valuable. But let the king resolve to change the face of his court and forcibly evict the animal from the chair of state, restoring the god to the place of divinity. Ah, the profound peace that falls upon the palace! All is indeed changed. No longer is there the fever of personal longings or desires, no longer is there any rebellion or distress, no longer any hunger for pleasure or dread of pain. It is like a great calm descending on a stormy ocean; it is like the soft rain of summer falling on parched ground; it is like the deep pool found amidst the weary, thirsty labyrinths of the unfriendly forest. But there is much more than this. Not only is man more than an animal because there is the god in him, but he is more than a god because there is the animal in him. Once force the animal into his rightful place, that of the inferior, and you find yourself in possession of a great force hitherto unsuspected and unknown. The god as servant adds a thousand-fold to the pleasures of the animal; the animal as servant adds a thousand-fold to the powers of the god. And it is upon the union, the right relation of these two forces in himself, that man stands as a strong king, and is enabled to raise his hand and lift the bar of the Golden Gate. When these forces are unfitly related, then the king is but a crowned voluptuary, without power, and whose dignity does but mock him; for the animals, undivine, at least know peace and are not torn by vice and despair. That is the whole secret. That is what makes man strong, powerful, able to grasp heaven and earth in his hands. Do not fancy it is easily done. Do not be deluded into the idea that the religious or the virtuous man does it! Not so. They do no more than fix a standard, a routine, a law, by which they hold the animal in check. The god is compelled to serve him in a certain way, and does so, pleasing him with the beliefs and cherished fantasies of the religious, with the lofty sense of personal pride which makes the joy of the virtuous. These special and canonized vices are things too low and base to be possible to the pure animal, whose only inspirer is Nature herself, always fresh as the dawn. The god in man, degraded, is a thing unspeakable in its infamous power of production. The animal in man, elevated, is a thing unimaginable in its great powers of service and of strength. You forget, you who let your animal self live on, merely checked and held within certain bounds, that it is a great force, an integral portion of the animal life of the world you live in. With it you can sway men, and influence the very world itself, more or less perceptibly according to your strength. The god, given his right place, will so inspire and guide this extraordinary creature, so educate and develope it, so force it into action and recognition of its kind, that it will make you tremble when you recognise the power that has awakened within you. The animal in yourself will then be a king among the animals of the world. This is the secret of the old-world magicians who made Nature serve them and work miracles every day for their convenience. This is the secret of the coming race which Lord Lytton foreshadowed for us. But this power can only be attained by giving the god the sovereignty. Make your animal ruler over yourself, and he will never rule others. EPILOGUE Secreted and hidden in the heart of the world and in the heart of man is the light which can illumine all life, the future and the past. Shall we not search for it? Surely some must do so. And then perhaps those will add what is needed to this poor fragment of thought. THROUGH THE GATES OF GOLD From _The Path_, March, 1887 The most notable book for guidance in Mysticism which has appeared since _Light on the Path_ was written has just been published under the significant title of _Through the Gates of Gold_. Though the author's name is withheld, the occult student will quickly discern that it must proceed from a very high source. In certain respects the book may be regarded as a commentary on _Light on the Path_. The reader would do well to bear this in mind. Many things in that book will be made clear by the reading of this one, and one will be constantly reminded of that work, which has already become a classic in our literature. _Through the Gates of Gold_ is a work to be kept constantly at hand for reference and study. It will surely take rank as one of the standard books of Theosophy. The "Gates of Gold" represent the entrance to that realm of the soul unknowable through the physical perceptions, and the purpose of this work is to indicate some of the steps necessary to reach their threshold. Through its extraordinary beauty of style and the clearness of its statement it will appeal to a wider portion of the public than most works of a Theosophical character. It speaks to the Western World in its own language, and in this fact lies much of its value. Those of us who have been longing for something "practical" will find it here, while it will probably come into the hands of thousands who know little or nothing of Theosophy, and thus meet wants deeply felt though unexpressed. There are also doubtless many, we fancy, who will be carried far along in its pages by its resistless logic until they encounter something which will give a rude shock to some of their old conceptions, which they have imagined as firmly based as upon a rock--a shock which may cause them to draw back in alarm, but from which they will not find it so easy to recover, and which will be likely to set them thinking seriously. The titles of the five chapters of the book are, respectively, "The Search for Pleasure," "The Mystery of Threshold," "The Initial Effort," "The Meaning of Pain," and "The Secret of Strength." Instead of speculating upon mysteries that lie at the very end of man's destiny, and which cannot be approached by any manner of conjecture, the work very sensibly takes up that which lies next at hand, that which constitutes the first step to be taken if we are ever to take a second one, and teaches us its significance. At the outset we must cope with sensation and learn its nature and meaning. An important teaching of _Light on the Path_ has been misread by many. We are not enjoined to kill out sensation, but to "kill out _desire_ for sensation," which is something quite different. "Sensation, as we obtain it through the physical body, affords us all that induces us to live in that shape," says this work. The problem is, to extract the meaning which it holds for us. That is what existence is for. "If men will but pause and consider what lessons they have learned from pleasure and pain, much might be guessed of that strange thing which causes these effects." "The question concerning results seemingly unknowable, that concerning the life beyond the Gates," is presented as one that has been asked throughout the ages, coming at the hour "when the flower of civilization had blown to its full, and when its petals are but slackly held together," the period when man reaches the greatest physical development of his cycle. It is then that in the distance a great glittering is seen, before which many drop their eyes bewildered and dazzled, though now and then one is found brave enough to gaze fixedly on this glittering, and to decipher something of the shape within it. "Poets and philosophers, thinkers and teachers, all those who are the 'elder brothers of the race'--have beheld this sight from time to time, and some among them have recognized in the bewildering glitter the outlines of the Gates of Gold." Those Gates admit us to the sanctuary of man's own nature, to the place whence his life-power comes, and where he is priest of the shrine of life. It needs but a strong hand to push them open, we are told. "The courage to enter them is the courage to search the recesses of one's own nature without fear and without shame. In the fine part, the essence, the flavor of the man, is found the key which unlocks those great Gates." The necessity of killing out the sense of separateness is profoundly emphasized as one of the most important factors in this process. We must divest ourselves of the illusions of the material life. "When we desire to speak with those who have tried the Golden Gates and pushed them open, then it is very necessary--in fact it is essential--to discriminate, and not bring into our life the confusions of our sleep. If we do, we are reckoned as madmen, and fall back into the darkness where there is no friend but chaos. This chaos has followed every effort of man that is written in history; after civilization has flowered, the flower falls and dies, and winter and darkness destroy it." In this last sentence is indicated the purpose of civilization. It is the blossoming of a race, with the purpose of producing a certain spiritual fruit; this fruit having ripened, then the degeneration of the great residuum begins, to be worked over and over again in the grand fermenting processes of reincarnation. Our great civilization is now flowering and in this fact we may read the reason for the extraordinary efforts to sow the seed of the Mystic Teachings wherever the mind of man may be ready to receive it. In the "Mystery of Threshold," we are told that "only a man who has the potentialities in him both of the voluptuary and the stoic has any chance of entering the Golden Gates. He must be capable of testing and valuing to its most delicate fraction every joy existence has to give; and he must be capable of denying himself all pleasure, and that without suffering from the denial." The fact that the way is different for each individual is finely set forth in "The Initial Effort," in the words that man "may burst the shell that holds him in darkness, tear the veil that hides him from the eternal, at any moment where it is easiest for him to do so; and most often this point will be where he least expects to find it." By this we may see the uselessness of laying down arbitrary laws in the matter. The meaning of those important words, "All steps are necessary to make up the ladder," finds a wealth of illustration here. These sentences are particularly pregnant: "Spirit is not a gas created by matter, and we cannot create our future by forcibly using one material agent and leaving out the rest. Spirit is the great life on which matter rests, as does the rocky world on the free and fluid ether; whenever we can break our limitations we find ourselves on that marvellous shore where Wordsworth once saw the gleam of the gold." Virtue, being of the material life, man has not the power to carry it with him, "yet the aroma of his good deeds is a far sweeter sacrifice than the odor of crime and cruelty." "To the one who has lifted the golden latch the spring of sweet waters, the fountain itself whence all softness arises, is opened and becomes part of his heritage. But before this can be reached a heavy weight has to be lifted from the heart, an iron bar which holds it down and prevents it from arising in its strength." The author here wishes to show that there is sweetness and light in occultism, and not merely a wide dry level of dreadful Karma, such as some Theosophists are prone to dwell on. And this sweetness and light may be reached when we discover the iron bar and raising it shall permit the heart to be free. This iron bar is what the Hindus call "the knot of the heart"! In their scriptures they talk of unloosing this knot, and say that when that is accomplished freedom is near. But what is the iron bar and the knot? is the question we must answer. It is the astringent power of self--of egotism--of the idea of separateness. This idea has many strongholds. It holds its most secret court and deepest counsels near the far removed depths and centre of the heart. But it manifests itself first, in that place which is nearest to our ignorant perceptions, where we see it first after beginning the search. When we assault and conquer it there it disappears. It has only retreated to the next row of outworks where for a time it appears not to our sight, and we imagine it killed, while it is laughing at our imaginary conquests and security. Soon again we find it and conquer again, only to have it again retreat. So we must follow it up if we wish to grasp it at last in its final stand just near the "kernel of the heart." There it has become "an iron bar that holds down the heart," and there only can the fight be really won. That disciple is fortunate who is able to sink past all the pretended outer citadels and seize at once this _personal devil_ who holds the bar of iron, and there wage the battle. If won there, it is easy to return to the outermost places and take them by capitulation. This is very difficult, for many reasons. It is not a mere juggle of words to speak of this trial. It is a living tangible thing that can be met by any real student. The great difficulty of rushing at once to the centre lies in the unimaginable terrors which assault the soul on its short journey there. This being so it is better to begin the battle on the outside in just the way pointed out in this book and _Light on the Path_, by testing experience and learning from it. In the lines quoted the author attempts to direct the eyes of a very materialistic age to the fact which is an accepted one by all true students of occultism, that the true heart of a man--which is visibly represented by the muscular heart--is the focus point for spirit, for knowledge, for power; and that from that point the converged rays begin to spread out fan-like, until they embrace the Universe. So it is the Gate. And it is just at that neutral spot of concentration that the pillars and the doors are fixed. It is beyond it that the glorious golden light burns, and throws up a "burnished glow." We find in this the same teachings as in the Upanishads. The latter speaks of "the ether which is within the heart," and also says that we must pass across that ether. "The Meaning of Pain" is considered in a way which throws a great light on the existence of that which for ages has puzzled many learned men. "Pain arouses, softens, breaks, and destroys. Regarded from a sufficiently removed standpoint, it appears as a medicine, as a knife, as a weapon, as a poison, in turn. It is an implement, a thing which is used, evidently. What we desire to discover is, who is the user; what part of ourselves is it that demands the presence of this thing so hateful to the rest?" The task is, to rise above both pain and pleasure and unite them to our service. "Pain and pleasure stand apart and separate, as do the two sexes; and it is in the merging, the making the two into one, that joy and deep sensation and profound peace are obtained. Where there is neither male nor female, neither pain nor pleasure, there is the god in man dominant, and then is life real." The following passage can hardly fail to startle many good people: "Destiny, the inevitable, does indeed exist for the race and for the individual; but who can ordain this save the man himself? There is no clew in heaven or earth to the existence of any ordainer other than the man who suffers or enjoys that which is ordained." But can any earnest student of Theosophy deny, or object to this? Is it not a pure statement of the law of Karma? Does it not agree perfectly with the teaching of the Bhagavat-Gita? There is surely no power which sits apart like a judge in court, and fines us or rewards us for this misstep or that merit; it is we who shape, or ordain, our own future. God is not denied. The seeming paradox that a God exists within each man is made clear when we perceive that our separate existence is an illusion; the physical, which makes us separate individuals, must eventually fall away, leaving each man one with all men, and with God, who is the Infinite. And the passage which will surely be widely misunderstood is that in "The Secret of Strength." "Religion holds a man back from the path, prevents his stepping forward, for various very plain reasons. First, it makes the vital mistake of distinguishing between good and evil. Nature knows no such distinctions." Religion is always man-made. It cannot therefore be the whole truth. It is a good thing for the ordinary and outside man, but surely it will never bring him to the Gates of Gold. If religion be of God how is it that we find that same God in his own works and acts violating the precepts of religion? He kills each man once in life; every day the fierce elements and strange circumstances which he is said to be the author of, bring on famine, cold and innumerable untimely deaths; where then, in The True, can there be any room for such distinctions as right and wrong? The disciple, must as he walks on the path, abide by law and order, but if he pins his faith on any religion whatever he will stop at once, and it makes no matter whether he sets up Mahatmas, Gods, Krishna, Vedas or mysterious acts of grace, each of these will stop him and throw him into a rut from which even heavenly death will not release him. Religion can only teach morals and ethics. It cannot answer the question "what am I?" The Buddhist ascetic holds a fan before his eyes to keep away the sight of objects condemned by his religion. But he thereby gains no knowledge, for that part of him which is affected by the improper sights has to be known by the man himself, and it is by experience alone that the knowledge can be possessed and assimilated. The book closes gloriously, with some hints that have been much needed. Too many, even of the sincerest students of occultism, have sought to ignore that one-half of their nature, which is here taught to be necessary. Instead of crushing out the animal nature, we have here the high and wise teaching that we must learn to fully understand the animal and subordinate it to the spiritual. "The god in man, degraded, is a thing unspeakable in its infamous power of production. The animal in man, elevated, is a thing unimaginable in its great powers of service and of strength," and we [are] told that our animal self is a great force, the secret of the old-world magicians, and of the coming race which Lord Lytton foreshadowed. "But this power can only be attained by giving the god the sovereignty. Make your animal ruler over your self, and he will never rule others." This teaching will be seen to be identical with that of the closing words of _The Idyll of the White Lotus_: "He will learn how to expound spiritual truths, and to enter into the life of his highest self, and he can learn also to hold within him the glory of that higher self, and yet to retain life upon this planet so long as it shall last, if need be; to retain life in the vigor of manhood, till his entire work is completed, and he has taught the three truths to all who look for light." There are three sentences in the book which ought to be imprinted in the reader's mind, and we present them inversely: "Secreted and hidden in the heart of the world and the heart of man is the light which can illumine all life, the future and the past." "On the mental steps of a million men Buddha passed through the Gates of Gold; and because a great crowd pressed about the threshold he was able to leave behind him words which prove that those gates will open." "This is one of the most important factors in the development of man, the recognition--profound and complete recognition--of the law of universal unity and coherence." 
14002	----	COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS The Man-God Whom We Await by ALI NOMAD 1915 CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE NEW BIRTH; WHAT IT IS; INSTANCES DESCRIBED The religions and philosophies of the Orient and the Occident compared; their chief difference; The mistaken idea of death. Cosmic Consciousness not common in the Orient. Why? What the earnest disciple strives for. The Real and the unreal. Buddha's agonized yearnings; why he was moved by them with such irresistible power; the ultimate victory. The identity of The Absolute; The Oriental teachings; "The Spiritual Maxims of Brother Lawrence;" The seemingly miraculous power of the Oriental initiate; does he really "talk" to birds and animals? How they learn to know and read "the heart of the world." The inner temples throughout Japan. The strange experience of a Zen (a Holy Order of Japan), student-priest in attaining _mukti_. The key to Realization. An address by Manikyavasayar, one of the great Tamil saints of Southern India. The Hindu conception of Cosmic Consciousness. The Japanese idea of the state. The Buddhist "Life-saving" monasteries; how the priests extend their consciousness to immeasurable distances at will. The last incarnation of God in India. His marvelous insight. The urge of the spiritual yearning for the "Voice of the Mother." His twelve years of struggle. His final illumination. The unutterable bliss pictured in his own words. What the Persian mystics allusion to "union with the Beloved" signifies; its exoteric and its esoteric meaning. The "Way of the Gods." The chief difference between the message of Jesus and that of other holy men. The famous "Song of Solomon" and the different interpretations; a new version. A French writer's evident glimpses of the new birth. Man's relation to the universe. CHAPTER II. MAN'S RELATION TO GOD AND TO HIS FELLOW-MEN The great riddle and a new solution. The persistence of the ideal of Perfected Man; Has it any basis in history? The superlative faculty of spiritual sight as depicted by artists, painters and sculptors. Symbols of consciousness. The way in which the higher consciousness expresses itself. Certain peculiar traits which distinguish those destined to the influx. The abode of the gods; The conditioned promise of godhood in Man. What is Nirvana? The Vedantan idea. The Christian idea. Did Jesus teach the kingdom of God on earth? Is there a basis for belief in physical immortality? A new explanation. The perilous paths. Those who "will see God." Evolution of consciousness from prehistoric man to the highest developed beings. CHAPTER III AREAS OF CONSCIOUSNESS The Divine spark. Consciousness the essence of everything. Axioms of universal Occultism. The great central light. The teachings of Oriental seers regarding the ultimate goal. Different stages of mankind. Births in consciousness. Physical consciousness: its limitations. Mental consciousness: the jungles of the mind. Soul consciousness; whither it leads. The irresistible urge. Why we obey it. Sayings of ancient manuscripts. Perfecting Light. The disciple's test. Awakening of the divine man. Is he now on earth? What is meant by the awakening of the inner Self. Is the _atman_ asleep? The doctrine of illusion; its relation to Cosmic Consciousness. CHAPTER IV SELF-NESS AND SELFLESSNESS The Dark Ages. The esoteric meaning of religious practices. The penetrating power of spiritual insight. The mystery of conversion. The paradox of Self-attainment and the necessity for selflessness. The Oriental teachings regarding the Self. The wisdom of the Illumined Master. The test of fitness for Nirvana. What caused Buddha the greatest anxiety? Experiences of Oriental sages and their testimony. What correlation exists between Buddha's desire and the attainment of Cosmic Consciousness among Occidental disciples. CHAPTER V INSTANCES OF ILLUMINATION AND ITS AFTER EFFECTS The wonderful brilliancy of Illumination. Dr. Bucke's description of the Cosmic Light; his opinion regarding the possibility of becoming more general. Peculiar methods of producing spiritual ecstacy, as described by Lord Tennyson and others. The Power and Presence of God, as a reality. The dissolution of race barriers. The effacement of the sense of sin among the Illuminati. What is meant by the phrase "naked and unashamed." Will such a state ever exist on the earth? Efforts of those who have experienced Cosmic Consciousness to express the experience; the strange similarity found in all attempts. Is there any evidence that Cosmic Consciousness is possible to all? CHAPTER VI EXAMPLES OF COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS, WHO HAVE FOUNDED NEW SYSTEMS OF RELIGION The simple religion of early Japan. The inner or secret shrine: its esoteric and its exoteric office. The Mystic Brotherhoods. Why the esoteric meanings have always been veiled. The great teachers and the uniformity of their instructions. Philosophy as taught by Vivekananda. The fundamental doctrine of Buddhism. Have the present-day Buddhists lost the key? Is religion necessary to Illumination? The fruits of Cosmic Consciousness. CHAPTER VII MOSES, THE LAW-GIVER The salient features of the Law as given by Moses to his people. Had the ancient Hebrews any knowledge of Illumination and its results? The symbol of liberation. Its esoteric meaning. CHAPTER VIII GAUTAMA--THE COMPASSIONATE Prenatal conditions influencing Buddha. His strange temperament. His peculiar trances and their effect upon him. Why Buddha endured such terrible struggles; is suffering necessary to Cosmic Consciousness? From what was Buddha finally liberated? The simplicity of Buddha's commandments in the light of Cosmic Consciousness. The fundamental truths taught by Buddha and all other sages. Buddha's own words regarding death and Nirvana. Last words to his disciples. How the teachings of Buddha compare with the vision of Cosmic Consciousness. His method of development of spiritual consciousness. CHAPTER IX JESUS OF NAZARETH The astonishing similarity found in all religious precepts; the distinguishing feature of the teachings as delivered by Jesus. His repeated allusion to "the light within." The great commandment he gave to his disciples. Love the basis of the teachings of all Illumined minds. The "Second Coming of Christ." The signs of the times. CHAPTER X PAUL OF TARSUS His undoubted experience of illumination and its effects. Was Paul changed by "conversion," or what was the wonderful power that altered his whole life? Why Paul sought seclusion after his illumination. Characteristics of all Illumined ones. The desire for simplicity. Paul's incomparable description of "the Love that never faileth." The safe guide to illumination. The "first fruits of the spirit," as prophesied by Paul. CHAPTER XI MOHAMMED Mohammed a predestined Leader. Condition of Arabia at his birth. Prophecies of a Messiah. His peculiar psychic temperament; his frequent attacks of catalepsy; his sufferings because of doubt; his never-ceasing urge toward a final revelation. His changed state after the revelation on Mt. Hara. His unswerving belief in his mission; his devotion to Truth; His simplicity and humility. His claim to Cosmic Consciousness. CHAPTER XII EMANUEL SWEDENBORG Swedenborg's early life. His sudden change from materialism. The difficulty of clear enunciation. His unfailing belief in the divinity of his revelations. How they compare with experiences of others. The frequent reception of the Light. The blessing of Cosmic Consciousness. CHAPTER XIII MODERN EXAMPLES OF INTELLECTUAL COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS: EMERSON; TOLSTOI; BALZAC The way to Illumination through intellectual cultivation; Emerson a notable example; The Cosmic note in his essays and conversations. Emerson's religious nature. His familiarity with Oriental philosophy; his remarkable discrimination; the peculiar penetrating quality of his intellect. His never failing assurance of unity with the Divine. His belief in a spiritual life. Did Emerson predict a Millenium? His writings as they reflect light upon his attainment of Cosmic Consciousness. LEO TOLSTOI--RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHER Tolstoi the strangest and most unusual figure of the Nineteenth Century; His almost unbearable sufferings; his avowed materialism; his horror of death; The prevailing gloom of his writings and to what due. Incidents in his life previous to his illumination. The remarkable and radical change made by his experience. To what was due Tolstoi's great struggle and suffering? Why the great philosopher sought to die in a hut. His idea not one of penance. The signal change in his life after illumination. What he says of this. HONORE DE BALZAC Balzac's classification as of the psychic temperament. His amazing power of magnetic attraction. His feminine refinement in dress. His power of inspiration gave him his place in French literature. The dominant motive of all his writings. His unshakable conviction of immortality. His power to function on both planes of consciousness. The lesson to be drawn from Seraphita. Balzac's evident intention, and why veiled. The inevitable conclusion to be drawn from the Symbolical character. CHAPTER XIV ILLUMINATION AS EXPRESSED IN THE POETICAL TEMPERAMENT Poetry the language of Cosmic Consciousness. Unconscious instruments of the Cosmic law. The true poet and the maker of rhymes. The mission and scope of the poetical temperament. How "temperament" affects expression. No royal road to Illumination. Teaching of Oriental mysticism. Whitman's extraordinary experience. His idea of "Perfections." Lord Tennyson's two distinct states of consciousness; his early boyhood and strange experiences. Facts about his illumination. The after effects. Tennyson's vision of the future. Wordsworth, the poet of Nature. How he attained and lost spiritual illumination. How he again received the great Light. The evidences of two states of consciousness. Outline of his illumination. Noguchi--a most remarkable instance of Illumination in early youth; Lines expressive of an exalted state of consciousness; how it resulted in later life. The strange case of William Sharp and "Fiona Macleod:" a perfect example of dual consciousness; the distinguishing features of the self and the Self; the fine line of demarcation. How the writer succeeded in living two distinct lives and the result. Remarkable contribution to literature. A puzzling instance of phases of consciousness. CHAPTER XV METHODS OF ATTAINMENT: THE WAY OF ILLUMINATION The four Oriental methods of liberation. The goal of the soul's pilgrimage. Strange theory advanced. Revolutionary results that follow. How to perceive the actuality of the higher Self. Gaining immortality "In the flesh;" What Revelation has promised and its substantiation in modern Science. The prize and the price. Some valuable Yoga exercises to induce spiritual ecstacy. What "union with God" really means. The "Brahmic Bliss" of the Upanashads. The new race; its powers and privileges. "The man-god whom we await" as described by Emerson. THE SELF AND SYMBOL Thou most Divine! above all women Above all men in consciousness. Thou in thy nearness to me Hast shown me paths of love. Yea; walks that lead from hell To the great light; where life and love Do ever reign. Thou hast taught to me a patience To behold whatever state; However beautiful and joyful; however ugly and sorrowful. To know that these are--all!--but The glimmerings of the greater life-- Expressions of the infinite. According to the finality of that moment Now to come; in the eternal now, which thou Sweet Presence, hast awakened me to-- I see the light--the way. An everlasting illumination That takes me to the gate; the open door To the house of God. There I find most priceless jewels; The key to all the ways, That lead from _Om_ to thee. A mistake--an off-turn from the apparent road of right Is but the bruising of thy temple, Calling thy Self--thy soul-- The God within; showing thee, The _nita_ of it all; which is but the half of me. And as thy consciousness of the two The _nita_ and the _ita_, comes to thee A three is formed--the trinity is found. Through thee the Deity hast spoken Uniting the two in the one; Revealing the illusion of mortality The message of _Om_ to the Illumined. --Ali Nomad. ARGUMENT Man is essentially a spiritual being. The source of this spiritual Omniscience we may not, in our finite intelligence, fully cognize, because full cognition would preclude the possibility of finite expression. The destiny of man is perfection. Man perfected becomes a god. "Only the gods are immortal," we are told. Let us consider what this means, supposing it to be an axiom of truth. Mortality is subject to change and death. Mortality is the manifest--the stage upon which "man in his life plays many parts." Immortality, is what the word says it is--godhood re-cognized in the mortal. "Im" or, "Om"--the more general term--stands for the Changeless. Birthless. Deathless. Unnamable Power that holds the worlds in space, and puts intelligence into man. Biologists, even though they were to succeed in reproducing life by chemical processes from so-called "lifeless" (sterilized) _matter_, making so high a form of manifestation as man himself, yet could never name _the power by which they accomplished it_. Always there must remain the Unknownable--the Absolute. "Om," therefore, is the word we use to express this Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent power. The term "mortal" we have already defined. The compound immortal, applied to individual man, stands for one who has made his "at-one-ment" with Om, and who has, while still in the mortal body, re-cognized himself as one with Om. This is what it means to escape the "second death," to which the merely mortal consciousness is subject. This is the goal of every human life; this is the essence, the _substance_ of all religious systems and all philosophies. The only chance for disputation among theologians and philosophers, lies in the way of accomplishing this at-one-ment. There is not the slightest opportunity for a difference of opinion as what they wish to accomplish. Admitting then, that the goal of every soul is the same--immortality--(the mortal consciousness cognizing itself as Om), we come to a consideration of the evidence we may find in support of this axiom. This evidence we do _not_ find satisfactory, in spirit communication; in psychic experiences; in hypnotic phenomena; and astral trips; important, and reliable as these many psychic research phenomena are. These are not satisfactory or convincing evidences of our at-one-ment with Om, because they do not preclude the probability of the "second death;" but on the contrary, they verify it. However, aside from all these psychic phenomena, there is a phase of human experience, much more rare but becoming somewhat general, that transcends phenomena of every kind. The western world has given to these experiences the term "cosmic consciousness," which term is self explanatory. The Orientals have long known of this goal of the soul, and they have terms to express this, varying with the many types of the Oriental mind, but all meaning the same thing. This meaning, from our Occidental viewpoint, is best translated in the term liberation, signifying to be set free from the limitations of sense, and of self-consciousness, and to have glimpsed the larger area of consciousness, that takes in the very cosmos. This experience is accompanied by a great light, whether this light is manifested as spiritual, or as intellectual power, determines its expression. The object of this book is to call attention to some of the more pronounced instances of this Illumination, and to classify them, according as they have been expressed through religions enthusiasm; poetical fervor; or great intellectual power. But we have also one other argument to make, and this we present with a conviction of its _truth_, while conceding that it must remain a _theory_, until proven, each individual, man or woman, for himself and herself. The postulate is this: immortality (i.e. godhood) is bi-sexual. No male person can by any possibility become an immortal god, in, of and by himself; no female person can be complete without the "other half" that makes the ONE. Each and every SOUL, therefore, has its spiritual counterpart--its "other half," with which it unites on the spiritual plane, when the time comes for attainment of immortality. Sex is an eternal verity. The entire Cosmos is bi-sexual. Everything in the visible universe; in the manifest, is the result of this universal principle. "As above so below," is a safe rule, as far as the IDEA goes. This hypothesis does not preclude _perfection_ above, of that which we find below, but any radical reversion or repudiation of nature is inconceivable. "Male and female created he them." This being true, male and female must they return to the source from which they sprung, completing the circle, and gaining what? _Consciousness of godhood; of completeness in counterpartal union. Not absorption_ of consciousness, but _union_, which is quite a different idea. Out of this counterpartal union a race of gods will be born, and these _supermen_, shall "inherit the earth" making it a "fit dwelling place for the gods." This earth is now being made fit. This fact may seem a far distant hope if we do not judge with the eyes of the seer, but its proof lies in the emancipation of woman. Its evidences are many and varied, but the awakening of woman is the _cause_. This awakening of woman constitutes the first rays of the dawn--that long-looked for Millenium, which many of us have regarded as a mere figure of speech, instead of as a literal truth. The argument is not that there has been no individual awakening until the present time; but that never before in the finite history of the world has there been such a general awakening, and as it is self evident that conditions will reflect the idea of the majority, the fact that woman is being given her rightful place in the sense-conscious life, proves that the earth will be a fit dwelling place for a higher order of beings than have hitherto constituted the majority. The numerous instances of Illumination, or cosmic consciousness which are forcing attention at the present time, prove that there is a _race-awakening_ to a realization of our unity with Om. Another point which we trust these pages will make clear is this: So-called "revelation" is neither a personal "discovery," nor any special act of a divine power. "God spake thus and so to me," is a phrase which the self-conscious initiate employs, _because he has lost sight of the_ cosmic light, or because he finds it expedient to use that phraseology in delivering the message of cosmic consciousness. If we will substitute the term "_initiation_," for the term "_revelation_," we will have a clearer idea of the truth. Perhaps some of our readers will feel that the terms mean the same, but for the most part, those who have employed the word "revelation," have used it as implying that the plan of the cosmos was unfinished, and that the Creator, having found some person suitable to convey the latest decision to mankind, natural laws had been suspended and the revelation made. It is to correct this view, that we emphasize the distinction between the two words. The cosmos is complete. "As it was in the beginning, it is now and ever shall be, worlds without end." A circle is without beginning or end. We, in our individual consciousness may traverse this circle, but our failure to realize its completeness does not change the fact that it is finished. We can not add to the universal consciousness; nor take away therefrom. But we can extend our own area of consciousness from the narrow limits of the personal self, into the heights and depths of the atman and who shall set limitations to the power of the atman, the higher Self, when it has attained at-one-ment with Om? It is not the purpose of this book to trace the spiritual ascent of man further than to point out the wide gulf between the degrees of consciousness manifested in the lower animals and that of human consciousness; again tracing in the human, the ever-widening area of his cognition of the personal self, and its needs, to the awakening of the soul and its needs; which needs include the welfare of all living things as an absolute necessity to individual happiness. Altruism, therefore, is not a virtue. It is a means of self-preservation--without this degree of initiation into the boundless area of universal, or cosmic consciousness, we may not escape the karmic law. The revelations, therefore, upon which are founded the numerous religious systems, are comparable with the many and various degrees of initiation into THAT WHICH IS. They represent the degree which the initiate has taken in the lodge. It may be argued that this fact of individual initiation into the ever-present truth of Being, as into a lodge, offers no proof that this earth is to ultimately become a heaven. It may be that this planet is the outer-most lodge room and that there will never be a sufficient number of initiates to make the earth a fit dwelling place for a higher order of beings than now inhabit it. This may, indeed, be true. But all evidence tends toward the hope that even the planet itself will come under the regenerating power of Illumination. All prophecies embody this promise; all that we know of what materialists call "evolution" and occultists might well name "uncovering of consciousness," points to a time when "God's will," "shall be done on earth as it is in heaven." All who have attained to cosmic consciousness in whatever degree, have prophecied a _time_, when this blessing would descend upon every one; but the difficulty in adequately explaining this great gift seems also to have been the burden of their cry. Jesus sought repeatedly to describe to his hearers the wonders of the cosmic sense, but realized that he was too far in advance of the cyclic end; but even as at that time, a number of disciples were capable of receiving the Illumination, so to-day, a larger number are capable of attainment. If this number is great enough to bring about the regeneration--the perfecting--of the earth conditions, then it _must be accomplished_. We believe that it is. We make the claim that the Millenium _has dawned_; and although it may be many years before the light of the morning breaks into the full light of the day, yet the rays of the dawn are dispelling the world's long night. In his powerful and prophetic story "In the Days of the Comet," H.G. Wells, tells of a _great change_ that comes over the world following an atmospheric phenomenon in which a "green vapor" is generated in the clouds and falls upon the earth with instantaneous effect. As this peculiar vapor descends, it has the effect of putting every one to sleep; this sleep continues for three days and when people finally awake, their interior nature has undergone a complete change. Where before they "saw dimly," they now see clearly; the petty differences and quarrels are perceived in their true perspective. Instead of place, and power, and influence, and wealth, being all-important goals of ambition as before the change, every one now strives to be of service to the world. Love and kindness become greater factors than commercial expediency and business success. In many respects, Wells' description of the great change and its effect upon people, corresponds with the effect of Illumination. The sense of entering into the very heart of things; of growing plants; the birds and the little wood animals; the intense sympathy and understanding of life described by him, sounds like the effect of cosmic consciousness, as related by nearly all who have attained it. How the world's activities are resumed after the change, and under what vastly different incentives people work, form a part of the story, which is written as fiction, but which contains the seed of a great truth. This truth is expressed in science, as human achievement, and in religion as fulfilled prophecy, but the truth is the same. Both religion and science point to a _time_ when this earth will know freedom from strife and suffering. Even the elements which have hitherto been regarded as beyond the boundaries of man's will, may be completely controlled; not _may be_, but _will be_. Manual labor will cease. National Eugenic societies will put a stop to war, when they come to the inevitable conclusion, that no race can by any possibility be improved, while the most perfect physical species are reserved for armies. Awakening woman will refuse--indeed they are now refusing--to bear children to be shot down in warfare, and crushed under the juggernaut of commercial competition. Those who realize the signs of the times, look for the birth of cosmic consciousness as a race-consciousness, foreshadowing the new day; the "second coming of Christ," not as a personal, vicarious sacrifice, but as a factor in human attainment. "For I am persuaded," said St. Paul, "that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God." If we interpret this in the light of cosmic consciousness, we realize that we shall know, and _experience_ that boundless, deathless, perfect, satisfying, complete and all-embracing love which is the goal of immortality; which is an attribute (we may say the _one_ attribute) of God. We are not looking for the birth of _a_ Christ-child, but of _the_ Christ-child; we are not looking for a second coming of _a_ man who shall be as Jesus was, but we are anticipating the coming of _the_ man (homo), who shall be cosmically conscious, even as was Jesus of Nazareth; as was Guatama, the Buddha. That there may be one man and one woman who shall first achieve this consciousness and realization is barely possible, but the preponderance of evidence is for a more general awakening to the light of Illumination. "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in the twinkling of an eye," said St. Paul. The prophecy of "the woman clothed with the sun, and with the moon under her feet," is not of _a_ woman, but of Woman, in the light of a race of men who have attained cosmic consciousness. Nothing more is needed to make a heaven of earth, than that the great light and love that comes of Illumination, shall become dominant. It will solve all problems, because problems arise only because we are groping in the dark. The elimination of selfishness; of condemnation; of fear and anger, and doubt, must have far greater power for universal happiness and well-being than all the systems which theology or science or politics could devise. Indeed, all these systems are sporadic and empirical attempts to express the vague dawning of Illumination. In the fullness of its light, the need for systems will have passed away. CHAPTER I THE NEW BIRTH: WHAT IT IS: INSTANCES DESCRIBED The chief difference between the religions and the philosophies of the Orient and those of the Occident, lies in the fact that the Oriental systems, methods, and practices, emphasize the assumption that the goal of these efforts, is attainable at any moment, as it were. That is, Oriental religion--speaking in the broad sense--teaches that the disciple need not wait for the experience called death to liberate the Self, the _atman_, from the enchantment or delusion, the _maya_, of the external world. Indeed, the Oriental devotee well knows that physical death, _mrityu_, is not a guarantee of liberation; does not necessarily bring with it immortality. He well recognizes that physical death is but a procedure in existence. Death does not of itself, change the condition of _maya_, in which the disciple is bound until such a time, as he has earned liberation--_mukti_, which condition may be defined as immunity from further incarnation. Immortality is our rightful heritage but it must be claimed,--yea, it must be _earned_. It is a mistake to imagine that death makes man immortal. Immortality is an attribute of the gods. But since all souls possess a spark of the divine essence of Brahman (The Absolute), _mukti_ may be attained by earnest seeking, and thus immortality be _realized_. This condition of awakening, is variously named among Oriental sages and chelas, such for instance as glimpsing the _Brahmic splendor; mutki; samadhi; moksha; entering Nirvana_; becoming "_twice-born_." In recent years there have come to light in the Occident a number of instances of the attainment of this state, and these have been described as "cosmic consciousness;" "illumination;" "liberation;" the "baptism of the Holy Ghost;" and becoming "immersed in the great white light." Baptism, which is a ceremony very generally incorporated into religious systems, is a symbol of this esoteric truth, namely the necessity for Illumination in order that the soul may be "saved" from further incarnations--from further experience. The term cosmic consciousness as well describes this condition of the disciple, as any words can, perhaps, although the term liberation is more literal, since the influx of this state of being, is actually the liberation of the _atman_, the eternal Self, from the illusion of the external, or _maya_. Contrary to the general belief, instances of cosmic consciousness are not extremely rare, although they are not at all general. Particularly is this true in the Orient, where the chief concern as it were, of the people has for centuries been the realization of this state of liberation. The Oriental initiate in the study of religious practices, realizes that these devotions are for the sole purpose of attaining _mukti_, whereas in the Occident, the very general idea held by the religious devotee, is one of penance; of propitiation of Deity. This truth applies essentially to the initiate, the aspirant for priesthood, or guru-ship. No qualified priest or guru of the Orient harbors any doubt regarding the _object_, or purpose of religious practices. The attainment of the spiritual experience described in occidental language as "cosmic consciousness" is the goal. The goal is not a peaceful death; nor yet an humble entrance into heaven as a place of abode; nor is it the ultimate satisfying of a God of extreme justice; the "eye for an eye" God of the fear-stricken theologian. One purpose only, actuates the earnest disciple, like a glorious star lighting the path of the mariner on life's troublous sea. That goal is the attainment of that beatific state in which is revealed to the soul and the mind, the real and the unreal; the eternal substance of truth, and the shifting kaleidoscope of _maya_. Nor can there be any purpose in the pursuit of either religion or philosophy other than this attainment; nor does the unceasing practice of rites and ceremonies; of contemplation; renunciation; prayers; fasting; penance; devotion; service; adoration; absteminousness; or isolation, insure the attainment of this state of bliss. There is no bartering; no assurance of reward for good conduct. It is not as though one would say, "Ah, my child, if thou wouldst purchase liberation thou shalt follow this recipe." No golden promises of speedy entrance into Paradise may be given the disciple. Nor any exact rules, or laws of equation by virtue of which the goal shall be reached. Nor yet may any specific time be correctly estimated in which to serve a novitiate, before final initiation. Many indeed, attain a high degree of spirituality, and yet not have found the key of perfect liberation, although the goal may be not far off. Many, very many, on earth to-day, are living so close to the borderland of the new birth that they catch fleeting glimpses of the longed-for freedom, but the full import of its meaning does not dawn. There is yet another veil, however thin, between them and the Light. The Buddha spent seven years in an intense longing and desire to attain that liberation which brought him consciousness of godhood--deliverance from the sense of sin and sorrow that had oppressed him; immunity from the necessity for reincarnation. Jesus became a _Christ_ only after passing through the agonies of Gethsemane. A Christ is one who has found liberation; who has been born again in his individual consciousness into the inner areas of consciousness which are of the _atman_, and this attainment establishes his identity with The Absolute. All oriental religions and philosophies teach that this state of consciousness, is possible to all men; therefore all men are gods in embryo. But no philosophy or religion may promise the devotee the realization of this grace, nor yet can they deny its possible attainment to any. Strangely enough, if we estimate men by externalities, we discover that there is no measure by which the supra-conscious man may be measured. The obscure and unlearned have been known to possess this wonderful power which dissolves the seeming, and leaves only the contemplation of the Real. So also, men of great learning have experienced this rebirth; but it would seem that much cultivation of the intellectual qualities, unless accompanied by an humble and reverent spirit, frequently acts as a barrier to the realization of supra-consciousness. In "Texts of Taoism," Kwang-Tse, one of the Illuminati, writes: "He whose mind is thus grandly fixed, emits a heavenly light. In him who emits this heavenly light, men see the true man (i.e., the _atman_; the Self). When a man has cultivated himself to this point, thenceforth he remains constant in himself. When he is thus constant in himself, what is merely the human element will leave him, but Heaven will help him. Those whom Heaven helps, we call the sons of Heaven. Those who would, by learning, attain to this, seek for what they _can not learn_." Thus it will be seen, that according to the reports offered us by this wise man, that which men call learning guarantees no power regarding that area of consciousness which brings Illumination--liberation from enchantment, of the senses--_mukti_. Again, in the case of Jacob Boehme, the German mystic, although he left tomes of manuscript, it is asserted authoritatively, that he "possessed no learning" as that word is understood to mean accumulated knowledge. In "The Spiritual Maxims" of Brother Lawrence, the Carmelite monk, we find this: "You must realize that you reach God through the heart, and not through the mind." "Stupidity is closer to deliverance than intellect which innovates," is a phrase ascribed to a Mohammedan saint, and do not modern theologians report with enthusiasm, the unlettered condition of Jesus? In the Orient, the would-be initiate shuts out the voice of the world, that he may know the heart of the world. Many, very many, are the years of isolation and preparation which such an earnest one accepts in order that he may attain to that state of supra-consciousness in which "nothing is hidden that shall not be revealed" to his clarified vision. In the inner temples throughout Japan, for example, there are persons who have not only attained this state of consciousness, but who have also retained it, to such a degree and to such an extent, that no event of cosmic import may occur in any part of the world, without these illumined ones instantly becoming aware of its happening, and indeed, this knowledge is possessed by them _before_ the event has taken place in the external world, since their consciousness is not limited to time, space, or place (relative terms only), but is cosmic, or universal. This power is not comparable with what Occidental Psychism knows as "clairvoyance," or "spirit communication." The state of consciousness is wholly unlike anything which modern spiritualism reports in its phenomena. Far from being in any degree a suspension of consciousness as is what is known as mediumship, this power partakes of the quality of omniscience. It harmonizes with and blends into all the various degrees and qualities of consciousness in the cosmos, and becomes "at-one" with the universal heart-throb. A Zen student priest was once discovered lying face downward on the grass of the hill outside the temple; his limbs were rigid, and not a pulse throbbed in his tense and immovable form. He was allowed to remain undisturbed as long as he wished. When at length he stood up, his face wore an expression of terrible anguish. It seemed to have grown old. His _guru_ stood beside him and gently asked: "What did you, my son?" "O, my Master," cried out the youth, "I have heard and felt all the burdens of the world. I know how the mother feels when she looks upon her starving babe. I have heard the cry of the hunted things in the woods; I have felt the horror of fear; I have borne the lashes and the stripes of the convict; I have entered the heart of the outcast and the shame-stricken; I have been old and unloved and I have sought refuge in self-destruction; I have lived a thousand lives of sorrow and strife and of fear, and O, my Master, I would that I could efface this anguish from the heart of the world." The _guru_ looked in wonder upon the young priest and he said, "It is well, my son. Soon thou shalt know that the burden is lifted." Great compassion, the attribute of the Lord Buddha, was the key which opened to this young student priest, the door of _mukti_, and although his compassion was not less, after he had entered into that blissful realization, yet so filled did he become with a sense of bliss and inexpressible realization of eternal love, that all consciousness of sorrow was soon wiped out. This condition of effacement of all identity, as it were, with sorrow, sin, and death, seems inseparable from the attainment of liberation, and has been testified to by all who have recorded their emotions in reaching this state of consciousness. In other respects, the acquisition of this supra-consciousness varies greatly with the initiate. In all instances, there is also an overwhelming conviction of the transitory character of the external world, and the emptiness of all man-bestowed honors and riches. A story is told of the Mohammedan saint Fudail Ibn Tyad, which well illustrates this. The Caliph Harun-al-Rashid, learning of the extreme simplicity and asceticism of his life exclaimed, "O, Saint, how great is thy self-abnegation." To which the saint made answer: "Thine is greater." "Thou dost but jest," said the Caliph in wonderment. "Nay, not so, great Caliph," replied the saint. "I do but make abnegation of this world which is transitory, and thou makest abnegation of the next which will last forever." However, the phrase, "self-abnegation," predicates the concept of sacrifice; the giving up of something much to be desired, while, as a matter of truth, there arises in the consciousness of the Illumined One, a natural contempt for the "baubles" of externality; therefore there is no sacrifice. Nothing is given up. On the contrary, the gain is infinitely great. Manikyavasayar, one of the great Tamil saints of Southern India, addressed a gathering of disciples thus: "Why go about sucking from each flower, the droplet of honey, when the heavy mass of pure and sweet honey is available?" By which he questioned why they sought with such eagerness the paltry pleasures of this world, when the state of cosmic consciousness might be attained. The thought of India, is however, one of ceaseless repudiation of all that is external, and the Hindu conception of _mukti_, or cosmic consciousness, differs in many respects from that reported by the Illumined in other countries, even while all reports have many emotions in common. Again we find that reports of the cosmic influx, differ with the century in which the Illumined one lived. This may be accounted for in the fact that an experience so essentially spiritual can not be accurately expressed in terms of sense consciousness. Far different from the Hindu idea, for example, is the report of a woman who lived in Japan in the early part of the nineteenth century. This woman was very poor and obscure, making her frugal living by braiding mats. So intense was her consciousness of unity with all that is, that on seeing a flower growing by the wayside, she would "enter into its spirit," as she said, with an ecstacy of enjoyment, that would cause her to become momentarily entranced. She was known to the country people around her as _Sho-Nin_, meaning literally "above man in consciousness." It is said that the wild animals of the wood, were wont to come to her door, and she talked to them, as though they were humans. An injured hare came limping to her door in the early morning hours and "spoke" to her. Upon which, she arose and dressed, and opened the door of her dwelling with words of greeting, as she would use to a neighbor. She washed the soil from the injured foot, and "loved" it back to wholeness, so that when the hare departed there was no trace of injury. She declared that she spoke to and was answered by, the birds and the flowers, and the animals, just as she was by persons. Indeed, among the high priests of the Jains, and the Zens (sects which may be classed as highly developed Occultists), entering into animal consciousness, is a power possessed by all initiates. Passing along a highway near a Zen temple, the driver of a cart was stopped by a priest, who gently said: "My good man, with some of the money you have in your purse please buy your faithful horse a bucket of oats. He tells me he has been so long fed on rice straw that he is despondent." To the Occidental mind this will doubtless appear to be the result of keen observation, the priest being able to see from the appearance of the animal that he was fed on straw. They will believe, perhaps, that the priest expressed his observations in the manner described to more fully impress the driver, but this conclusion will be erroneous. The priest, possessing the enlarged or all-inclusive consciousness which in the west is termed "cosmic," actually did speak to the horse. Nor is this fact one which the western mind should be unable to follow. Science proves the fact of consciousness existing in the atoms composing even what has been termed _inanimate_ objects. How much more comprehensible to our understanding is the consciousness of an animate organism, even though this organism be not more complex than the horse. There is a Buddhist monastery built high on the cliff overlooking the Japan Inland sea, which is called a "life-saving" monastery. The priests who preside over this temple, possess the power of extending their consciousness over many miles of sea, and on a vibration attuned to a pitch above the sound of wind and wave, so that they can hear a call of distress from fishermen who need their help. This fact being admitted, might be accounted for by the uninitiated, as a wonderfully "trained ear," which by cultivation and long practice detects sounds at a seemingly miraculous distance. But the priests know how many are in a wrecked boat, and can describe them, and "converse" with them, although the fishermen are not aware that they have "talked" to the priest. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the latest incarnation of God in India, and the master to whom the late Swami Vivekananda gives such high praise and devotion, lived almost wholly in that exalted state of consciousness which would appear to be more essentially _spiritual_, than _cosmic_ in the strict sense of the latter word, since _cosmic_ should certainly imply all-inclusiveness, rather than wholly _spiritual_ (spiritual being here used as an extremely high vibration of the cosmos). We learn that Sri Ramakrishna was a man comparatively unlettered, and yet his insight was so marvelous, his consciousness so exalted that the most learned pundits honored and respected him as one who had attained unto the goal of all effort--liberation, _mukti_, while to many persons throughout India to-day, and indeed throughout the whole world, he is looked upon as an incarnation of Krishna. It is related of Sri Ramakrishna that his yearning for Truth (his mother, he called it), was so great that he finally became unfit to conduct services in the temple, and retired to a little wood near by. Here he seemed to be lost in concentration upon the one thought, to such an extent that had it not been for devoted attendants, who actually put food into his mouth, the sage would have starved to death. He had so completely lost all thought of himself and his surroundings that he could not tell when the day dawned or when the night fell. So terrible was his yearning for the voice of Truth that when day after day passed and the light he longed for had not come to him he would weep in agony. Nor could any words or argument dissuade him from his purpose. He once said to Swami Vivekananda: "My son, suppose there is a bag of gold in yonder room, and a robber is in the next room. Do you think that robber can sleep? He cannot. His mind will be always thinking how he can enter that room and obtain possession of that gold. Do you think, then, that a man firmly persuaded that there is a reality behind all these appearances, that there is a God, that there is One who never dies, One who is Infinite Bliss, a bliss compared with which these pleasures of the senses are simply playthings,--can rest contented without struggling to attain it? No, he will become mad with longing." At length, after almost twelve years unceasing effort, and undivided purpose Sri Ramakrishna was rewarded with what has been described as "a torrent of spiritual light, deluging his mind and giving him peace." This wonderful insight he displayed in all the after years of his earthly mission, and he not only attained glimpses of the cosmic conscious state, but he also retained the Illumination, and the power to impart to a great degree, the realization of that state of being which he himself possessed. Like the Lord Buddha, this Indian sage also describes his experience as accompanied by "unbounded light." Speaking of this strange and overpowering sense of being immersed in light, Sri Ramakrishna described it thus: "The living light to which the earnest devotee is drawn doth not burn. It is like the light coming from a gem, shining yet soft, cool and soothing. It burneth not. It giveth peace and joy." This effect of great light, is an almost invariable accompaniment of supra-consciousness, although there are instances of undoubted cosmic consciousness in which the realization has been a more gradual growth, rather than a sudden influx, in which the phenomenon of _light_ is not greatly marked. Mohammed is said to have swooned with the "intolerable splendor" of the flood of white light which broke upon him, after many days of constant prayer and meditation, in the solitude of the cavern outside the gates of Mecca. Similar is the description of the attainment of cosmic consciousness, given by the Persian mystics, although it is evident that the Sufis regarded the result as reunion with "the other half" of the soul in exile. The burden of their cry is love, and "union with the beloved" is the longed-for goal of all earthly strife and experience. Whether this reunion be considered from the standpoint of finding the other half of the perfect one, as exemplified in the present-day search for the soul mate, or whether it be considered in the light of a spiritual merging into the One Eternal Absolute is the question of questions. Certainly the terms used to express this state of spiritual ecstacy are words which might readily be applied to lovers united in marriage. One thing is certain, the Sufis did not personify the Deity, except symbolically, and the "beloved one" is impartially referred to as masculine or feminine, even as modern thought has come to realize God as Father-Mother. In all mystical writings, we find the conclusion that there is no _one way_ in which the seeker may find reunion with The Beloved. "The ways of God are as the number of the souls of men," declare the followers of Islam, and "for the love that thou wouldst find demands the sacrifice of self to the end that the heart may be filled with the passion to stand within the Holy of Holies, in which alone the mysteries of the True Beloved can be revealed unto thee," is also a Sufi sentiment, although it might also be Christian or Mohammedan, or Vedantan. Indeed, if the student of Esotericism, searches deeply enough, he will find a surprising unity of sentiment, and even of expression, in all the variety of religions and philosophies, including Christianity. It has been said that the chief difference between the message of Jesus and those of the holy men of other races, and times, lies in the fact that Jesus, more than his predecessors, emphasized the importance of love. But consider the following lines from Jami, the Persian mystic: "Gaze, till gazing out of gazing Grew to BEING HER I gazed on, She and I no more, but in one Undivided Being blended. All that is not One must ever Suffer with the wound of absence; And whoever in Love's city Enters, finds but room for one And but in Oneness, union." These lines express that religious ecstacy which results from spiritual aspiration, or they express the union of the individual soul with its mate according to the viewpoint. In any event, they are an excellent description of the realization of that much-to-be-desired consciousness which is fittingly described in Occidental phraseology as "cosmic consciousness." Whether this realization is the result of union with the soul's "other half," or whether it is an impersonal reunion with the Causeless Cause, The Absolute, from which we are earth wanderers, is not the direct purpose of this volume to answer, although the question will be answered, and that soon. From whence and by whom we are not prepared to say, but the "signs and portents" which precede the solution of this problem have already made their appearance. Christian students of the Persian mystics, take exception to statements like the above, and regard them as "erotic," rather than spiritual. Mahmud Shabistari employs the following symbolism, but unquestionably seeks to express the same emotion: "Go, sweep out the chamber of your heart, Make it ready to be the dwelling-place of the Beloved. When you depart out, he will enter in, In you, void of your_self_, will he display his beauty." The "Song of Solomon" is in a similar key, and whether the wise king referred to that state of _samadhi_ which accompanies certain experiences of cosmic consciousness, or whether he was reciting love-lyrics, must be a moot question. The personal note in the famous "song" has been accounted for by many commentators, on the grounds that Solomon had only partial glimpses of the supra-conscious state, and that, in other words, he frequently "backslid" from divine contemplation, and allowed his yearning for the state of liberation, to express itself in love of woman. An attribute of the possession of cosmic consciousness is wisdom, and this Solomon is said to have possessed far beyond his contemporaries, and to a degree incompatible with his years. It is said that he built and consecrated a "temple for the Lord," and that, as a result of his extreme piety and devotion to God, he was vouchsafed a vision of God. As these reports have come to us through many stages of church history and as Solomon lived many centuries before the birth of Jesus, it seems hardly fitting to ascribe the raptures of Solomon as typifying the love of the Church (the bride) for Christ (the bridegroom). Rather, it is easier to believe, the wisdom of the king argues a degree of consciousness far beyond that of the self-conscious man, and he rose to the quality of spiritual realization, expressing itself in a love and longing for that soul communion which may be construed as quite personal, referring to a personal, though doubtless non-corporeal union with his spiritual complement. Although the pronoun "he" is used, signifying that Solomon's longing was what theology terms "spiritual" and consequently impersonal, meaning God The Absolute, yet we suggest that the use of the masculine pronoun may be due entirely to the translators and commentators (of whom there have been many), and that, in their zeal to reconcile the song with the ecclesiastical ideas of spirituality, the gender of the pronoun has been changed. We submit that the idea is more than possible, and indeed in view of the avowed predilections of the ancient king and sage, it is highly probable. He sings: "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth For his love is better than wine." Again he cries: "Behold thou art fair my love, behold thou art fair, thou _hast dove's eyes_." The realization of _mukti_, i.e., the power of the _atman_ to transcend the physical, is thus expressed by Solomon, clearly indicating that he had found liberation: "My beloved spoke and said unto me, 'Rise up my love my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is passed, the rain is over and gone. "'The flowers appear upon the earth; the time of singing of birds has come, and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land. "'The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vine with the tender grapes gives a goodly smell. Arise my love, my fair one, and come away.'" It is assumed that these lines do not refer to a personal hegira, but rather to the act of withdrawing the Self from the things of the outer life, and fixing it in contemplation upon the larger life, the supra-conscious life, but there is no reason to doubt that they may refer to a longing to commune with the beautiful and tender things of nature. Another point to be noted is that in the spring and early summer it is with difficulty that the mind can be made to remain fixed upon the petty details of everyday business life. The awakening of the earth from the long cold sleep of winter is typical of the awakening of the mind from its hypnotisms of external consciousness. Instinctively, there arises a realization of the divinity of creative activity, and the mind soars up to the higher vibrations and awakes to the real purpose of life, more or less fully, according to individual development. This has given rise to the assumption, predicated by some writers on cosmic consciousness, that this state of consciousness is attained in the early summer months, and the instances cited would seem to corroborate this assumption. But, as a poet has sung, "it is always summer in the soul," so there is no specific time, nor age, in which individual cosmic consciousness may be attained. A point which we suggest, and which is verified by the apparent connection between the spring months, and the full realization of cosmic consciousness, is the point that this phenomenon comes through contemplation and desire for love. Whether this love be expressed as the awakening of creative life, as in nature's springtime, or whether it be expressed as love of the lover for his bride; the dove for his mate; the mother for her child, or as the religious devotee for the Lord, the key that unlocks the door to illumination of body, soul and spirit, is Love, "the maker, the monarch and savior of all," but whether this love in its fullness of perfection may be found in that perfect spiritual mating, which we see exemplified in the tender, but ardent mating of the dove (the symbol of Purity and Peace), or whether it means spiritual union with the Absolute is not conclusive. The mystery of Seraphita, Balzac's wonderful creation, is an evidence that Balzac had glimpses of that perfect union, which gives rise to the experience called cosmic consciousness. It is well to remember that in every instance of cosmic consciousness, the person experiencing this state, finds it practically impossible to fully describe the state, or its exact significance. Therefore, when these efforts have been made, we must expect to find the description colored very materially by the habit of _thought_, of the person having the experience. Balzac was essentially religious, but he was also extremely suggestible, and, until very recently, Theology and Religion were supposed to be synonymous, or at least to walk hand in hand. Balzac's early training and his environment, as well as the thought of the times in which he lived, were calculated to inspire in him the fallacious belief that God would have us renounce the love of our fellow beings, for love of Him. Balzac makes "Louis Lambert" renounce his great passion for Pauline, and seems to suggest that this renunciation led to the subsequent realization of cosmic consciousness, which he unquestionably experienced. Nor is it possible to say that it did not, since renunciation of the lower must inevitably lead to the higher, and we give up the lesser only that we may enjoy the greater. In "Seraphita" Balzac expressed what may be termed spiritual love and that spiritual union with the Beloved, which the Sufis believed to be the result of a perfect and complete "mating," between the sexes, on the spiritual plane, regardless of physical proximity or recognition, but which is also elsewhere described as the soul's glimpse of its union with the Absolute or God. The former view is individual, while the latter is impersonal, and may, or may not, involve absorption of individual consciousness. In subsequent chapters we shall again refer to Balzac's Illumination as expressed in his writings, and will now take up the question of man's relation to the universe, as it appears in the light of cosmic consciousness, or liberation. CHAPTER II MAN'S RELATION TO GOD AND TO HIS FELLOW-MEN The riddle of the Sphinx is no riddle at all. The strange figure, the lower part animal; the upper part human; and the sprouting wings epitomize the growth and development of man from the animal, or physical (carnal), consciousness to the soul consciousness, represented by woman's head and breast, to the supra-conscious, winged god. No higher conception of life has ever emanated from any source, than the concept of man developed to a state of perfection represented by wings (a symbol of freedom). These winged humans are sometimes called angels and sometimes gods, although the words may not be synonymous. The point is, that no theory of life and its purposes seems more general or more unescapable than that of man's growth from sin (limitations) to god-hood--freedom. Whether this consummation is brought about through an unbroken chain of upward tendencies from the lowest forms of life to the highest; or whether it is symbolized by the old theologic idea of man's fall from godhood to sin, the fact remains that we know no other ideal than that represented by perfected man; and we know no lower idea than that of man still in the animal stage of consciousness. Artists, painters, sculptors, wishing to depict the beauty of spiritual things, must still use the human idea for a model--refined, spiritualized, supra-human, but still man. It is a truism that man epitomizes the universe. Therefore, the law of growth, which science names evolution, may be studied and applied with equal precision and accuracy to the individual; to a body of individuals called a nation; and to worlds, or planets. The evolution of an individual is accomplished when he has learned through the various avenues of experience, the fact of his own godhood; and when he has established his union with that indescribable spiritual essence which is called Om; God; Nirvana; Samadhi; Brahm; Kami; Allah; and the Absolute. A Japanese term is _Dai Zikaku_. The Zen sect of Japanese Buddhists say _Daigo Tettei_, and one who has attained to this superior phase of consciousness is called Sho-Nin, meaning literally "above man." Emerson, the great American seer, expressed this Nameless One, as The Oversoul, and Herbert Spencer, the intellectual giant of England, used the term Universal Energy. Emerson was a seer; Spencer was a scientist, which word, until recently, was a synonym for materialist. But what are words? Mere symbols of consciousness, and subject to change and evolvement, as man's consciousness evolves. The student of truth will recognize in these different words, exactly the same meaning. The "eternal energy from which all things proceed" is a phrase identical with "The Oversoul," or "The Absolute," from which all manifestation comes. Man's evolution, then, is an evolution in consciousness, from the subjective _awareness_ of the monad to a realization of the entire cosmos. Each phase of life is a specific degree of consciousness and each successive degree brings the individual nearer to the realization of the _sum_ of all degrees of consciousness, into godhood--the highest degree which we can conceive. Such, briefly, is a statement of that phenomenon which is attracting the attention of occidental students of psychology, and which has been fittingly termed "the attainment of cosmic consciousness." The phrase expresses a degree of consciousness which includes the entire cosmos--not only this planet called earth, and everything thereon, but also the spheres of the Constellation. Not that this degree of consciousness carries with it the power to express in words, that which it is. In fact, the one who has had this marvelous awakening, cannot adequately describe, or even _retain_, a full comprehension of what it signifies. All-inclusive knowledge would indeed, preclude the possibility of expression. Therefore, even if it were possible to retain in the finite mind, the full realization of cosmic consciousness, words could not be found in which to express it to others. Thought is the creator of words, but thought is but the material which the mind employs, and cosmic consciousness transcends the mind, engulfs the soul, and reaches to the trackless areas of Spirit. It may be doubted if any one may retain a full realization of cosmic consciousness, and remain in the physical body. Great and wonderful as have been the experiences of those who have sought to relate their sensations, it is probable that these flashes of insight have been in the nature of cosmic _perception_, and have lacked full realization. Of those who have had glimpses of that larger area of consciousness which includes an awareness of eternal unity with the cosmos, there are, we believe, many more than students of the subject have any idea of. This century marks a distinct epoch in what is called evolution. The end of a _kalpa_, or cycle of manifestation, is symbolized by the presence on a planet of many avatars, masters, and angels. By their very presence these enlightened ones arouse in all who are ready for the experience a glimpse of that state of being to which all souls are destined, and to which all shall ultimately attain. A time when "gods shall walk the earth" is a prophecy which all nations have heard and looked forward to. That time is now. We see the effect of their presence in Peace Conferences; in abolition of child labor; in prison reform; in the amalgamation of the races; in attempts at social equality; in National Eugenic Societies, and above all, as we have before stated, in the Emancipation of Woman. In fact, it is seen in all the various ways in which the higher consciousness finds expression. One of the characteristic signs of this awakening, the Millenium Dawn, as it has been named, lies in a very general optimism shining through the mists of doubt and unrest and inexpressible desire, which accompany the new birth in consciousness. Amid the seeming chaos of present day conditions is it not easy to discern the coming of that dawn of which all great ones of earth have foretold--a time when "the earth shall be made a fit habitation for the gods"? "The heavens" is a term employed to specify the Constellation which is composed of planets and stars, but we use the term "Heaven" also to mean a state of happiness and bliss attainable through certain methods, a consideration of which we will take up later. The immediate point is that this planet is being prepared for a position in the solar system consistent with that which is the abode of the gods--Heaven. This proposition is made in its literal meaning. Corroborative of this statement, which is consistent with all prophecies, is the information recently given to the world, by Camille Flammarion, and other great astronomers, that "the earth is changing its position in the heavens at an astonishing rate." The idea that "there shall be no night there," is foreshadowed by the estimate that this change will give to the earth a perpetual and uniform light, and heat. The New Thought preachment of physical immortality is but a faint and imperfect perception of this time, when "there shall be no death," because the animal man, subject to change, shall give place to the changeless, deathless, spiritual man; not through cataclysms, and destruction, but through the natural birth into a higher consciousness. The Occidental mind is easily affrighted by a name. Perhaps we should not specify the Occidental mind, but rather the mind of man among all races is easily put to sleep by the hypnotism of a word. The word Pantheism is a bugaboo to the Occidentalist. He fears the destruction of the Monistic faith, if he admits that man is in essence a god, and that therefore there are many gods in the one God, even as there are many members to the one physical organism. Nevertheless all literature, whether sacred or profane, teaches the attainment of godhood by Man. This can not mean other than the attainment of _realization_ of godhood, by the individual and the _retention_ of this realization to the end that reincarnation shall cease and identity with the cosmic, principle, be established, beyond further loss, or doubt, or strife, or death. This is what it means to attain to cosmic consciousness. It is inclusive consciousness. It is not absorption into the vast unknown, in the sense of annihilation of identity. It is consciousness _plus_, not minus. An ancient writing says: "And thou shalt awake as from a long dream. Thou shalt be like the perfume arising from the flower in which it has been so long enclosed. And thou wilt float above the opened flower. And thou wilt say 'There is time before me in eternity.'" There is nothing in the testimony of those who have described, as best they could, their emotions upon attainment of this consciousness, which would argue the absorption of the individual soul into The Absolute. There is no testimony to argue that the attainment of cosmic consciousness, carries with it anything approaching annihilation of _sentiency_. Rather it would seem to testify to an acceleration of all the higher faculties. That this would be a more apt interpretation may be seen by comparing the different reports of those experiencing the phenomenon of Illumination. Nevertheless there has been much controversy regarding the meaning of the terms nirvana; samadhi; dai zikaku, etc.--words expressing the condition which we are considering under the phrase cosmic consciousness. WHAT IS NIRVANA? Let us consider briefly, what is meant by Nirvana, and see if it is not highly probable that the word describes the state of consciousness which we are considering, referring later on to the question, and its interpretation by the various schools of religion and philosophy. It is apparent that the most learned sages of the Orient fail to agree as to the exact meaning of Nirvana. Occidental writers and leaders of the Theosophical philosophy, differ somewhat as to its import, but at the same time we find enough unity on this point to make it evident that the state of Nirvana is a desirable attainment--the goal of the religious enthusiast. Going back for a moment, to a consideration of the earliest recorded religion of Japan, we find that Sintoism means literally "the way of the gods," meaning the way in which men who have become god-like, found the path that led thereunto, but as to exactly what conditions are represented by godhood, how indeed, is it possible for man to _know_, much less to express? Since we are conscious of a divine and irresistible urge toward the attainment of this state of being, it is hardly consistent with what we know of merely _human_ nature, that the way lies in the direction of loss of identity, or in other words, in what is popularly comprehended as _absorption_. That this idea prevails in many Oriental sects of Buddhism and Vedanta we are aware, but we are confident that this idea is erroneous, and comes from the fact that it is impossible to describe the condition of consciousness enjoyed by the initiate into Nirvana, which term we believe, is identical, or at least comparable with cosmic consciousness. The very fact that external life represents so universal a struggle for attainment of this state of being, or higher consciousness, indicates at least, even if it does not actually _guarantee_ a fuller, deeper, more complete state of consciousness than hitherto enjoyed, rather than an absorption or annihilation of any of that dearly bought consciousness which distinguishes the self from its environment, and which says with conviction "I am." It is admitted that those who have experienced liberation, illumination, _mukti_, have reported their sensations with such relative vagueness and with such apparent variance of conclusion as regards the _meaning_ of the experience that the reader is left to his own interpretation of the character of that state of being, other than a general uniformity of description. Referring to the pleasure which the lower nature feels under certain conditions, the late Swami Vivekananda says: "The whole idea of this nature is to make the soul know that it is entirely separate from nature and when the soul knows this, nature has no more attraction for it. But the whole of nature vanishes only for that man who has become free. There will always remain an infinite number of others for whom nature will go on working." But did Vivekananda employ the phrase "nature has no more attraction for him," to describe the sensation of unappreciativeness of the wonders of the natural world? We think not. Rather the gentle-hearted sage meant to report the fact that the soul is no longer _held in bondage_ to the external world, when it has once attained supra-consciousness. If this expression referred to the pleasure the true lover of nature feels in the out-of-doors, he might well say "I trust that I shall never attain to that state of consciousness. Or if attainment be compulsory, then shall I prolong the time of accomplishment as long as possible." And who would blame him? Why should we strive for the attainment of a state of being described so unattractively as to give us the impression of entire _loss_ of so enjoyable and unselfish a sensation as love of nature? The Vedantic idea, according to interpreted translations is that out of The Absolute, the All (Om), we _come_, and therefore back to it we go, being now in our present state of consciousness, en route, as it were to return. But returning to _what_? That is the unanswerable problem of all religions; all philosophies; all science. If we _return_ to a void, such as some interpreters of the Vedas declare, then surely this urge within mankind toward this annihilatory state would hardly be expected. It would be inconsistent with that instinct of self-preservation which we are told is the first law of nature. Compared to this Vedantic concept of the Absolute, the Christian's simple, and very empirical ideal of eternal happiness is preferable. To walk streets paved with gold and play a harp incessantly while chanting doleful praises to a Deity who ought to become wearied of the never-ceasing adulation, would still be a more desirable goal of our strife, than that so inaccurately and unattractively described by many students of Oriental religions and philosophies as the state _nirvana_, or _samadhi_. Again quoting from Vivekananda's Raja Yoga: "There are not wanting persons who think that this manifest state (our present existence) is the highest state of man. Thinkers of great caliber are of the opinion that we are manifested specimens of undifferentiated Being, and this differentiated state is _higher than the Absolute_." Although as Vivekananda says there are thinkers who make this claim, the idea does not find ready acceptance among theologians, either Eastern, or Western. Neither do philosophers, as a general thing incline to adopt this view. The reason for this general disinclination is not difficult of discovery. It is due to the present state of man on this planet. If man, as we see and know mankind, is the highest state of Being (not merely of manifestation, but of Being) "then," they say, "we have nothing to hope for." But have we not? May we not hope that man will _manifest_, on this planet a fuller realization, of that which he _is_ in _Being_, and that, far from dissolving what consciousness he has, he will but _plus_ this consciousness by a larger--an all-embracing consciousness that shall make earth a fit habitation for god-like men? In Vivekananda's Raja Yoga we find the following: "There was an old solution that man, after death, remained the same; that all his good sides, minus his evil sides, remained forever. Logically stated, this means that man's goal is the world; this world meaning earth carried to a state higher and with elimination of its evils is the state they call heaven. This theory, on the face of it, is absurd and puerile because it cannot be. There cannot be good without evil, or evil without good. To live in a world where there is all good and no evil, is what Sanskrit logicians call a 'dream in the air.'" It is not necessary to argue here that there is no such thing as positive evil. St. Paul said: "I know and am persuaded that nothing is unclean of itself; save that to him who accounteth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean." And again we are assured that "there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so;" which means that evil has no more foundation in reality than has thought, and thought is ever-changing; transitory. Evil therefore may be entirely eliminated by thought, since it is created by thought. That there is a condition of mankind which has been alluded to as "evil" is self-evident. The term has been employed to describe a condition of either an individual, or a society, or a nation or a race, wherein there is in harmony; disease; unhappiness. Anything that makes for suffering on any plane of consciousness, may be termed "evil" as here used. Let us consider for a moment if it be illogical to imagine a world in which this in harmony has been eliminated. Imagine a family in which all the members radiate love and unselfish consideration. Add to this, or we may say complementary to this, we have perfect health and prosperity; and over and above all we have a conviction of immortality, eliminating doubt and fear and worry as to future sorrows or partings, with no knowledge that there are others in the world suffering. Do we not find it quite possible, to say the least, and even desirable, to live in such a family, particularly if we had previously acquired a knowledge of that which is evil and that which is good--merely terms used to describe limited, or enlarged consciousness. If we admit the desirability of living in such a family, why not in such a world? "Logically stated," says the Hindu swami, "this means that man's goal is this world (earth planet); carried to a state higher and with the elimination of its evils, this world is the state (place) they call heaven." Again we must question. Why not? This planet we call earth, is a great and marvelous work, whether it be the work of an abstract God, or whether it be the work of the god in Man. And whether this earth be the gift of an abstract God, or whether it be the generating bed of the life now upon it, the fact remains that we have no business to despise the gift, or the work of self-generation. Our business is to enhance its beauties and eliminate its ugliness. Why have we prayed that the will of God which is Love, "be done on earth as it is in the heavens," if we despise the planet and hope to leave it? Although the general impression given in all religious systems is that the perfected soul leaves this earth, yet there is nothing in any of them to prove that it does so, or if it has hitherto, that it shall continue so to do. We have no right to assume that the outer life--the external, manifested life which we perceive with our physical senses, is all there is to this earth and that when we leave this outer life, we go to some other _place_. The _invisible_ life on this planet is unquestionably far greater than the _visible_ but both visible and invisible doubtless belong to the planet earth. The Absolute, presumably occupies all space, and therefore it may as reasonably be postulated that this state of Nirvana or Samadhi, may be entered within the area of this planet's vibrations, as in that of the other planets. The finite mind cannot conceive of a state of being apart from motion, space or time, even though these concepts are crude in their relation to the state of consciousness to which the sum of all consciousness is tending, whether the individual would, or not. We speak of "the heavens" when we refer to the immeasurable, and little known region of the solar system, and we use the same term when we refer to a state of being in which the perfected soul of man will finally enter. And this term implies that when we are thus in heaven, we are _with_ God, if not _absorbed into_ God. Jesus, the master, taught the coming of the kingdom of God _on earth_ and urged mankind to _pray_ for its coming, asking that the will of God (or gods) be done on earth as it is in the heavens, from which it is not illogical to infer that the earth itself, as a planet, is not outside the pale of that blissful state which we ascribe to God, and which, at the same time, we expect to enter without being swallowed up in the sense that we lose that consciousness which cognizes itself as an eternal verity. If then, the "heavens" as applied to the planets revolving above the earth in the solar system, and "Heaven" as a term used to describe a state of happiness, bliss, samadhi, nirvana, or "life with God," be synonymous it may reasonably be inferred that in the solar system are planets upon which live sentient beings, in a state to which we on earth, are seeking to attain; a state wherein so-called evil has been eliminated and the good retained. In fact, we may see with none too prophetic eyes the elimination of evil right here in the visible. All who have attained a glimpse of Illumination have reported the loss of the "sense of sin and death," and have retained this feeling of security and "all-is-well-ness" as long as they have lived thereafter. From the old conception of "evil" as a positive, opposing and independent force, modern thought, in all its branches, namely science; religion; social evolution, and philosophy, has arrived at the conclusion that evil is not a power or force in and of itself, but that it is evidence of a limited degree of consciousness which sees only one side of a subject--only a limited area of an infinitely wide and varied manifestation of the one supreme consciousness. Therefore, it is, that evil per se, does not exist as power, but that it is the effect of a misapplication of power. The cure then, for this state of Relativity, is found logically enough, in an extension of individual consciousness. That this idea is logical may be deduced from the fact that as the mind expands, through the various channels of learning; observation; contact with each other, and by the many roads of Experience, altruism becomes more general. Almost every one readily admits that the world is "growing better," as they express it. This means that the individual consciousness is becoming broadened, deepened, enlarged; and this enlargement makes it possible to show that the happiness of each one, means the happiness of all, and that no one human life can reach the goal of freedom and eternal life (_mukti_, which can mean nothing less than godhood) unless he does so by some one of the many paths of selflessness. Up through the perilous paths and the devious ways of brute consciousness toward a more or less perfect perception of that blissful state which the Illumined have sought to describe, each individual has come to his present state; and it is only by virtue of the ability to look back over the path, and to look onward a little into relative futurity, that each may record the fact of his gain in consciousness, and what this gain means to the future of this earth. But who is there who cannot see that each step in attainment of consciousness brings with it a corresponding freedom from suffering? The planet itself does not make us suffer. The latest discoveries of astronomers indicate that as the standard of morality (using the term "morality" in its true sense), becomes higher, the position of the earth itself becomes changed, in its relation to the solar system. In this way, it is expected that a uniform temperature will prevail all over the earth's surface; and with the cessation of war, and of competition (which is mental warfare) cataclysms, storms, and earthquakes will cease. When we come, as we will, in succeeding chapters of this book, to a review of the experiences of those who have attained cosmic consciousness (mukti) we will find that, in each instance, there has come a realization of the _nothingness_ of sin and consequent suffering. The trouble then, is not with the earth as a planet, but with the lack of consciousness of earth's inhabitants, which lack makes possible all the suffering which afflicts human life. Those who have attained to the state of cosmic consciousness in both Occidental and Oriental instances of this perception, have reported an abiding sense of rest and peace and satisfaction--a condition which we associate with accepted ideals of heaven as taught in Occidental creeds and among some schools of Oriental philosophers, and sects of religious worship. There is a far greater unity of idea between the Oriental and the Occidental methods and systems, as to the _goal_ of ultimate attainment than is generally believed, or understood. The highest expression of Japanese Buddhism differs from Hindu Buddhism and from Vedanta, and the many other forms of Hindu philosophy and religion, in the same way that the Japanese, as a nation, differ from their Hindu brothers. The Japanese emphasize, more than do the Hindus, the preservation of the nation, and to this end, they are called more "practical" minded, but with the Japanese, as with all the Orientals, we find an intense contempt for any one who would seek to preserve his physical existence, or hesitate at any personal sacrifice. This unwritten code has its origin, as have all Oriental traditions and concepts, in the teachings of religious systems. According to Oriental ethics, the person is very low in the scale of consciousness, when he considers his physical body as of comparative consequence, when the question of expediency, or of the welfare of his country, is in the balance. Nevertheless, Japan has offered, far more than has India, a fertile field for the growth of materialism, owing to the fact that underlying the apparent observance of and loyalty to, religious practices, the Japanese temperament inclines to a practical application of the wisdom attained through religious instruction. Therefore we find among the Illumined Ones of Japanese history, sages who taught the attainment of liberation through paths which are not generally accepted by interpreters of Hinduism. For example, among the orthodox Sintoists, (the original religion of the Japanese, before the advent of Buddhism), we find that cleanliness of mind and body, was taught as the prime essential to attainment of unity with _Kami_, rather than contemplation, meditation and isolation, as with the Hindus. And in the Christian world we have a corresponding admonition in the phrase "cleanliness is next to godliness." Simple as this rule of conduct is, it nevertheless embodies the key to the situation, inasmuch as we are assured that "blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." Again Jesus told his hearers that they "must become as little children," evidently meaning that they must possess the clean, pure, guileless mind of a little child, if they would reach the goal of liberation, from strife; death (repeated incarnation); and all so-called "evil." To this end man is striving, whether by rites and ceremonies of religion; by worship; by contemplation; by effort and struggle; by invention; by aspiration; by sacrifice; or by whatever path, or device, or system. What, then is the goal, and how may it be attained? Before taking up this question, let us go back a little over the history of human life and attainment, and trace, briefly, the evolution of consciousness, from pre-historic man, to the highest examples of human devotion and wisdom, of which, happily, the world affords not a few instances. CHAPTER III AREAS OF CONSCIOUSNESS Consciousness may be termed, simply, "the divine spark," which enters into every form and phase of manifested life emanating from that one Eternal Power which materialists designate as "energy" and which Occultists, both Oriental and Occidental, best define as "Aum," God! The Absolute--The Divine Mind, and many other terms. Consciousness, therefore, enters into everything--is the life essence of everything. The materialistic hypothesis formerly predicated the axiom that there were two distinct phases of manifestation, namely organic and inorganic. Organic life was sentient, or conscious, while inorganic life was insensate--a structure acted upon from forces outside itself, and dependent upon an exterior force for its action. Other names for this differentiation, would be "matter" and "spirit." The point is, that the old materialistic philosophy failed to recognize the fact that consciousness, in varying degrees, characterizes all manifested life. This fact every phase of Oriental philosophy recognized, and always has recognized. The assumption of the Christian Science devotee, that there is anything new in the postulate that "all is spirit," is possible only because of his ignorance of Oriental philosophy, as will be seen later on in these pages, when we take up the relative comparison between the Oriental and the Occidental systems of "salvation." To resume therefore, we postulate the following recognized axioms of Universal Occultism. All life is sentient or conscious. All life is from the one source, and therefore contains this "divine spark." All manifestation expresses degrees or phases of consciousness. The degree of this consciousness fixes the status of the organism, and determines its classification, whether it is organic or inorganic; simple, or complex. Every cell, each separate cell, in fact, has its own consciousness--that is each cell is a center of this power that we term consciousness; a group of cells with this power focalized to a given point, or center, makes an organ of consciousness, and so on up the scale through many many degrees of complexity of organism, until we come to man. Webster defines consciousness as "the ability to know ones mental operations." But, we do not take this definition in Occultism, for the obvious reason, that it is not possible to state arbitrarily whether or not, the cell "knows its operations," and since all operations are necessarily mental in the final analysis, we assume that there is a phase of consciousness below that of cognition of "self," which may be termed "the unconscious consciousness," which again is synonymous with the phrase "automatic cerebration." Coming up through the various myriad degrees of sub-conscious life (sub being here used as below self consciousness) we arrive at the stage of simple consciousness which characterizes the animal kingdom, remembering that consciousness in the abstract is not a _condition_, or state of environment. It is one of the eternal verities. It _is_ just as Aum _is_. The attainment of a wider and wider area of consciousness, is but the _uncovering_, or the attracting to a central point or to an individual organism of _this that is_. Thus consciousness, in the abstract, may say of itself "before creation was, I am." That is what is meant when it is said that God is omnipotent, and omniscient. The difference between mere power, or energy, and consciousness, whether considered from the standpoint of the organic or the inorganic kingdom, may be likened to the difference between a blind force, and a power that knows itself. Consciousness is practically the great central light that "lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Without consciousness, manifestation would be darkness. Thus it is said, "the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not." This applies to that tiny spark of divinity in which consciousness exists but where there is not realization of its divinity. This fact is not applicable to the inorganic, or the animal kingdoms alone. Many men are not conscious of the light that shineth within them, save as there is an aggregate of cell consciousness which recognizes its focalized power as an organism. Manifestation then, is the vehicle (carrying character) of universal consciousness, and we may logically assume that manifestation is due to the necessity of developing individualized entities, who may, through successive phases of conscious unfoldment, or uncovering of areas of Being, become gods. The western writers, and indeed, many Oriental seers prefer to put it thus: "become fit to dwell with God, in eternal bliss and power." To dwell with God, must be to become gods. Once more, we must remember that only gods are immortal. Souls continue to exist after the physical body has been discarded, for the reason that no body in these days, lives as long as its psychic counterpart or dweller. But, although the soul continues to exist on another plane of note of the _scale of vibration_, it does not argue that the identity shall continue eternally, except in such instances, as when the soul through numbers of incarnations shall have finally accomplished the purpose of its pilgrimage and attained to _mukti_ (liberation from the law of change and death). Returning to a consideration of what may be said to constitute certain specific phases of consciousness, we will take into consideration the phase of consciousness, which we see expressed in the mineral kingdom. That there is a distinct and separate character of consciousness thus expressed is evident from the fact that there is a law of chemical affinity, i.e. attraction and repulsion, which causes different minerals to respond, or to refuse to respond, as the case may be, to certain conditions or chemical processes, more or less crude in character. From this to the vegetable kingdom we assume a step in advance, as vegetable life measured by complexity and refinement, responds with a greater degree of sensitiveness to the laws of evolution, as expressed in cultivation, selection and environment. Even in this phase of manifestation, we find the law of Being, is measured by the perfection of species. Evolution of inorganic life, is as real, and as much a part of the plan, (or whatever name we choose), as is organic, and self-conscious life. That which is less perfect, measured by the law of beauty and usefulness, we find gradually being exterminated. That the earth, as a planet, is obeying this cosmic law of evolution from grossness to refinement; from crudity to perfection; from the limited to the all-inclusive, is indisputable. As the motor power of electricity has become general, we find that beasts of burden are fast disappearing from the earth, according to the law of the "survival of the fittest," this law, always being subject to change. The "fittest" means that which is best fitted to the conditions of the time. Brute force survives among brutes, in the degree that it is strong or weak; coming out of that expression of law into the mental areas of consciousness, we find that the _mentally_ fit survive among those who live only in the areas of the mind; so on, into the spiritual, we will find the "survival of the fittest" will be those who are best fitted for spiritual eternity--for godhood. Coming again, to our consideration of the term consciousness, we will take a brief survey of that phase of consciousness which we see manifested in the forms of life that have the power to move from their immediate environment; such for instance would include the fish in the sea; insect life; reptiles; the birds in the air; and all forms of animal life. While expressing a very limited degree of consciousness, yet there is evident a certain degree or aggregate of cell consciousness, which transcends that of the mineral and vegetable life. This apparently _advanced_ degree of consciousness, does not, as we have stated, presuppose a nearer approach to immortality, however, for the reason that we apply the law of the survival of the fittest to all manifestation, and that which is best fitted for certain stages of the planet's life during the process of evolvement, may be most unfitted for succeeding stages, and will, by the inexorable law of survival, be discontinued--discarded, even as the properties and stage-settings of a drama are thrown aside, when the play has been "taken off the boards." It is admitted, therefore, that those forms of life having the power of locomotion, involve a more complex degree of consciousness, than does that of the mineral or vegetable. In that phase of life that we see possessing the power to move, to change its immediate environment, even though not capable of changing its _habitat_ we may perceive the beginning of that consciousness expressed as "free-will." Here, we assume, the organism recognizes its self as distinct from its environment, and from its counterparts, etc., but this recognition has not sufficient consciousness to _assert_ that recognition, and so we say that there is no _self_-consciousness. There is what occultists have agreed to call simple consciousness, but this does not include a realization of identity, as apart from environment. This may be better understood if we separate these degrees or phases of consciousness into groups, applicable to the human organism, leaving, for a time the consideration of whether or not some human specimens are higher in the scales than are some animals. Physical, or sense consciousness, is shared alike by man and the animals. Beyond this phase of consciousness we may classify the human species in the following terms: Physical self-consciousness. Mental self-consciousness. Soul (individual) "I" consciousness. Spiritual self-consciousness. Physical self-consciousness is that phase of self-recognition which knows itself as a body distinct from its neighbors; from its natural environment. This awareness of the self it is that actuated pre-historic man when he manifested the blind force that is sometimes called "self-preservation," which force has erroneously been termed "the first law of nature." Preservation of this physical self is the most "primitive" law of nature, but not "first" in the sense that it is the most important, or the strongest. The world's long list of heroes refutes this idea. The pre-historic species of human, then, in common with his brother, the animal, sought to preserve this physical self, because he felt that this physical self, his body, was all there was of him, and he wished to preserve it, even as the _wise_ man of to-day, sacrifices everything to the preservation of the moral and spiritual Self which he realizes is the _real_ of him. To this end, he cultivated physical force, sufficient to overcome his environment; and as he developed a little of that consciousness which we term mental (using the term merely as a part of the physical organism called the brain), he realized that co-operation would greatly enhance his chances for self-preservation, and therefore, this mental consciousness impelled him to annex to his forces other physical organisms so that their united strength might preserve each other. This side of the story of man's evolution in consciousness is not however a part of our present work, and we will therefore leave it, for a brief consideration of the successive steps in attainment of consciousness, leading through devious paths, and through millions of relative time called years, into the present state of man's consciousness which in so many instances presages the oncoming of that state, called liberation, or illumination--mukti. Through mental self-consciousness the way has been long and arduous. There are many, many degrees of this phase of consciousness, and to this phase we owe what is called our present civilization. The true occultist, whether viewing manifestation from the standpoint of Oriental or of Occidental ideals, realizes that everything is right which makes for human betterment, and that _dharma_ (right-action) consists in acting in accordance with the highest motive of which one's consciousness is capable. That our present civilization is most _uncivilized_ in many respects, will be admitted by all whose range of consciousness has touched in any degree, the infinite areas of wisdom expressed in altruistic action. But, though the path be long, and thorny, the cycle is closing, and many have reached the goal through its zigzag course. But, underlying, as it were, and upholding and uplifting the expression of sense consciousness in which so many persons seem lost to-day, there are evidences of a consciousness which _observes the effects_, of this tremendous mental activity, and knows itself as something apart from, and superior to this manifestation. This, we define as soul--individualized expression of the spiritual consciousness--the central light, which as we previously quoted, "lighteth every man that cometh into the world." Many there are who merely _perceive_ this. To them there is a vague and indefinable _something_ which seems to realize that the operations of the mind are something phenomenal and apart from the _real_ Self. Psychology, even so empirical a psychology as is possible of demonstration in western schools and colleges, evidences the fact that there is a far greater field of mental operation than is covered by the outer, or _mental_ consciousness. The outer, or objective action of the mind, considers but one subject, one question, one problem at a time. Many varied _phases_ of this problem may present themselves, but the mental forces are focalized upon one subject at a time. And yet to state that but one idea, thought-concept, or desire, can enter the mind at a time, is not a safe assumption. After many centuries of material strife, with the object of satisfying the demands of human life, the conviction is forcing itself upon people in all walks of life, that wealth, ambition, power and possessions, do not give us the answer to the eternal unescapable and insistent question of the way to happiness. This means that there is awakening in the human race more generally than at any other time in recorded history, a realization that the human organism is not merely a physical aggregate of cells, nor yet that it is mind individualized and in operation for the purpose of exercising new powers. The fact is becoming apparent that all discovery is but an uncovering of those vast areas of consciousness which are limitless; and which include not only all life on this planet, but all life in the Cosmos. In short, cosmic consciousness is becoming _perceived_, by a vast majority, and is being _realized_ by not a few. But in the immediate future of the race, we find the next step, for the majority to be that of soul-consciousness. Back of thought, like a guardian angel stands the desire of the soul, stimulating and directing; back of action stands thought, as the master directs the servant, or as the captain decides the course of the ship. Spiritual evolution may be understood, or at least _perceived_, from a study of physical and mental evolution. From the crude to the perfect is the law; if this perfection of species, or of phases, could be attained without pain, it were well. Pain comes from lack of wisdom to realize that out of the lower the higher inevitably springs, as the butterfly springs from the cocoon; as the flower springs from the seed; "as above so below" is a translation of an old Sinto saying, which also bids us "trust in Kami and keep clean." Again it is said "to him who overcometh, will I give the inheritance." _Overcoming_ may be variously interpreted. In the past, it has been presented to the initiate, as sacrifice. If so it be, then is it because of lack of that wisdom which knows that there is no sacrifice in exchanging the physical for the spiritual--the ephemeral for the abiding. Says the ancient manuscripts: "The body is purified by water, the mind by truth, the soul by knowledge and austerity, the reason by wisdom." But as the groping, undeveloped soul struggles for consciousness, it reaches out for the gratification of mental desires. The soul is moved by desire for perfect happiness. The mind seeks to satisfy this craving for happiness in increased activities; in accumulation; in so-called pleasure, i.e. always looking outside--thinking outside, living in the outside--the _maya_. But the soul has but one answer to this quest for happiness. It is love, because only love and wisdom give immortality--which is self-preservation in the true sense. It is written in the Shruti: "Brahman is wisdom and bliss." No higher text can be given the disciple. Wisdom comes from reflection upon the results of Experience, in the search for happiness. When the mind has sounded the depths of its resources, and the urge forward can not be appeased, when the voice of the inner self--the soul, cannot be silenced; the disciple pauses to ask _the way_. He wants to know what it is all about, and why it is that all he has so striven and struggled for fails to satisfy. He wants to know how to avoid pain; and how to find the most direct road to that satisfaction which endures; and which is not synonymous with the so-called "pleasures" of the senses. When this stage of development has been reached, the disciple is ready for another phase of Experience which shall extend his consciousness into those areas of knowledge, in which the Real is distinguishable from the Illusory. Experience will then teach him that only Love is real. That which is for the permanent good of all, as opposed to that which is transitory and only seemingly satisfying to the few, may be said to constitute the perception of the Real, and the avoidance of Illusion. To exchange a present seeming advantage to the physical environment, for a future and permanent satisfaction of the soul is the prerogative of the wise--the soul that has discovered itself and its mission. In all organisms below the scale of the human, there is a constant growth in complexity of organism, with specialization of functions. When we come to this last-mentioned stage of human development, we find that there is no more specialization in the way of development of the physical functions. Instead, there is a determined effort at perfecting the higher functions, through the gradations of consciousness, until the spiritual consciousness of the individual entity has been awakened. Then, indeed, has been awakened the "divine man" and the path to immortality is henceforth comparatively short, although by no means strewn with roses, judged from the limited standard of Relativity. A man's karma simply and mathematically, proves the direction of his former desires. Karma does not punish or reward, as is frequently imagined. The general impression that one is reaping "good or bad karma" according as his life is one of pleasure or of pain, is not the solution of the problem of karma, and has no relation to the law of karmic action. If a soul has in a previous life outgrown or outworn that evolutionary phase of development, in which the mind seeks temporary pleasures, and has come to the place where he wants to distinguish the Real from the Illusory, his karma, in compliance with the law of desire, will bring him in relation to those conditions which will teach him to know the Real from the Illusory, and in those conditions he will experience pain because he will, if he remain in the activities of the world, be acting contrary to the ideas of the _average_. Thus, to the onlooker, and in accordance with the general misinterpretation of the law of karma, he will be thought to have reaped a "bad" karma, while as a matter of reality, he will be making very rapid strides on the path to godhood. Said a famous Japanese high priest: "Desire is the bird that carries the soul to the object in which his mind is immersed, and thus his future actions are the result." This means that by the law of desire, acting in accordance with the evolutionary pilgrimage of the soul, the karma is produced. The American poet, Lowell, says: "No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him." However, whether or not this applies to man in the first stages of his upward climb to the goal of attainment of conscious godhood, it most assuredly applies to those souls who have become aware of their purpose, and who have made a _conscious_ choice of their karma. And of this class of souls, the world to-day has a goodly number. The end of a kalpa finds many avatars, and angels on earth, and however obscured the mind of these may become in the fog of Illusion, the inner light guides them through its mists to the safe accomplishment of their mission. There is a story of a Buddhist priest, who when dying, was comforted by his loving disciples with the reminder that he was at last entering upon a state of bliss and rest. To which the earnest one replied: "Never so long as there is misery to be assuaged, shall I enter Nirvana. I shall be reborn where the need is greatest. I shall wish to be reborn in the nethermost depths of hell, because that is the place that most needs enlightenment; that is the place to point out the path to deliverance; that is the place where the light will shine most brightly." Thus it will be seen we may not readily determine what is "good" and what is "bad" karma, by judging from external conditions. As we are told that we may entertain "angels unawares," so we may pass the world's avatars upon the street, and judging from the external, the physical environment, we may not know them from the vampire souls that contact them. The point of our present consideration is that this "year of grace," meaning not the mere twelve months of the calendar year, but the century, is the end of the present _kalpa_ (cycle), and demonstrates that period of evolution has terminated, and the era is at hand when spiritual alchemy shall transform the old into the new, and that the desire, which has so long ministered to the wants of the physical body, shall be turned (converted) into the channels that lead to spiritual consciousness. The undefined, instinctive urge that has actuated so many intrepid souls, is becoming recognized for what it is--the awakening of the inner Self; the blind groping in the dark will cease and there shall arise a race of human beings liberated; free; aware of their spiritual origin and their inherent divinity. All who have conformed their life activities to the divine law of action, which may be tersely stated as "Not mine, but thine, dear brother," will have achieved the goal of the soul's purpose--will have found Nirvana. CHAPTER IV SELF-NESS AND SELFLESSNESS During what is historically known as the Dark Ages, the esoteric meaning of religious practices became obscured. This is true no less, and no more, of Oriental countries, than of European. The long night through which the earth passed during that time and since, but foreshadowed a coming dawn. In the still very imperfect light of the dawning day, truth is seen but dimly, and its rays appear distorted, whereas, when seen with the "pure and spotless eye" they are straight and clear and simple. Indeed, the very simplicity of Truth causes her to pass unnoticed. While to the superficial observer; the student who is mentally eager but who lacks the wonderful penetrating power of spiritual insight, there seems to be a great complexity in Oriental philosophy, the fact is, that the entire aggregation of systems is simple enough when we have the key. One of the stumbling blocks; the inexplicable enigma to many Occidental students, is the problem of the preservation, of the Self, and the constant admonition to become selfless. The two appear paradoxical. How may the Self acquire consciousness and yet become selfless? Throughout the Oriental teachings, no matter which of the many systems we study, we find the oft-repeated declaration that liberation can never be accomplished and Nirvana reached, by him "who holds to the idea of self." It is this universally recognized aphorism which has given rise to the erroneous conception of Nirvana as absorption of all identity. Hakuin Daisi, the St. Paul of Japanese Buddhism, cautioned his disciples that they must "absorb the self into the whole, the cosmos, if they would never die," and Jesus assured his hearers that "he who loses his life for my sake shall find it." Christians have taken this simple statement to mean that he who endured persecution and death because of his espousal of Christianity, would be rewarded in the way that a king bestows lands and titles, for defense of his person and throne. This is the limited viewpoint of the personal self; it is far from being consistent with the wisdom of the Illumined Master. He who has sufficient spiritual consciousness to desire the welfare of _all_, even though his own life and his own possessions were the price therefore, can not lose his life. Such a one is fit for immortality and his godhood is claimed by the very act of renunciation--not as a reward bestowed for such renunciation. By the very act of willingness to lose the self we find the Self. Not the self of externality. Not the self that says "I am a white man; or a black man; or a yellow man; or a red man." That says "I am John Smith"--or any other name. The awareness of this kind of selfhood, this personal self, is like looking at one's reflection in the mirror and saying, "Ah, I have on a becoming attire," or "my face looks sickly to-day." It is the same "I" that looked yesterday and found the face looking excellently well, so that there must have been consciousness behind the observation, that could take cognizance of the difference in appearance of yesterday's reflection and that which met that cognizing eye to-day. Eagerness to retain consciousness of the personal self blocks the way of Illumination which uncovers the real, the greater, the higher Self--the _atman_. This constant adjuration to sink the self into The Absolute, is what has given rise to so much difference of interpretation as to the meaning of _mukti_, liberation. It sounds paradoxical to state that it is only by giving up all consciousness of self, that immortal Self-hood is gained. Thus has arisen all the confusion as to the meaning of "absorption into a state of bliss." How may the Self realize a state of selflessness and yet not be lost in a sea of _un_ consciousness? Only one who is capable of self-sacrifice were he called upon, can correctly answer this question, and by what may be termed the very _law of equation_, the sacrifice becomes impossible. Should any one seek to bargain with himself to pay the price of loss of self, so that he might gain the higher, fuller life, his sacrifice would be in vain because it would not be selflessness, but selfishness--there could be no _sacrifice_, were it a bargain. Let no one think that this unchanging law of the Cosmos is in the nature of either reward or punishment, or that it was devised by the gods, as a method of initiation--a test of fitness for Nirvana. Even though the test be applied by the gods, it is not of their planning. It _is_, just as the absolute _is_, and analysis of the way and wherefrom is not possible of contemplation. If it sometimes appears that Illumined Ones have seemed to infer a loss of identity of the Self, it should be remembered that not only have these reported instances of liberation (cosmic consciousness attained), been vague, but they have necessarily suffered from the impossibility of describing that which is indescribable. We should also remember that translators employ the words in the English language which most nearly express their interpretation of the original meaning. Words are at best but clumsy symbols. Perfect bliss is voiceless--inexpressible. This does not, however, mean that perfect bliss is nothingness. Rather is it _everything-ness_, in that it is all-embracing in its realization. In complete realization of the Cosmos nothing is excluded. Exclusiveness is a concomitant of the state of consciousness pertinent to the personal self, which state is not excluded from the consciousness described as cosmic, _nirvana_ or _mukti_, but on the contrary, is included in it, even as the simple vibrations of the musical scale are included in the great harmonies of Wagner's compositions. "He who has realized Brahman becomes silent," says Ramakrishna. "Discussions and argumentations exist so long as the realization of The Absolute does not come. If you melt butter in a pan over a fire, how long does it make a noise? So long as there is water in it. When the water is evaporated it ceases to make further noise. The soul of the seeker after Brahman may be compared to fresh butter. Discussions and argumentations of a seeker are like the noise caused during the process of purification by the fire of knowledge. As the water of egotism and worldliness is evaporated and the soul becomes purer, all noise of debates and discussions ceases and absolute silence reigns in the state of _samadhi_." A better translation of the word "noise" would be "sputtering." Sound is not necessarily _noise_. The idea conveyed is not intended to be a condition in which the soul becomes anæsthetized as it were, but a state of _knowing_, and the effort and the sputtering of _questioning_ and _searching_ is passed. The same gospel better expresses the meaning thus: "The bee buzzes so long as it is outside the lotus, and does not settle down in its heart to drink of the honey. As soon as it tastes of the honey all buzzing is at an end. Similarly all noise of discussion ceases when the soul of the neophyte begins to drink the nectar of Divine Love, at the lotus feet of the Blissful One." Who will not say that the bee is more satisfied when he has found and drank of the honey than when he is buzzingly seeking it? Surely it is not necessary to be of one mind, in order that we may be of one heart. Even though we were as "like as two peas in a pod," it is well to note that the two peas are _two_ spheres--nature has made them separate and distinct despite their close resemblance. To unite with the absolute should correspond to this unity of all hearts in the desire for a common effort to establish harmony, while we permit to each individual the freedom of mind; of taste; of choice of pursuits; of choice of pleasure; of discrimination; and preservation of identity. Our contention is that _mukti_, or liberation (which we believe to be identical with attainment of cosmic consciousness) does not mean an absorption into the Universal, the Absolute, Brahm, to the extent of annihilation of identity. And we claim that this view finds corroboration in the best interpretation of Oriental philosophies and religions, as well as in the Christian doctrine. Says Nagasena, the Buddhist sage: "He who is not free from passion experiences both the taste of food, and also the passion due to that taste; while he who is free from passion experiences the taste of food but no passion." Hence we discover that the state of Illumination, _samadhi_, or _mukti_, according to the most enlightened and logical interpretation, means a calm and peaceful consciousness, undisturbed by passion. But we should not interpret the word "passion" as here used, to mean absence of all sensation, feeling or knowledge. There is absolutely no arbitrary interpretation or translation of the words of Buddha, nor can there be. The same is true of Confucius; of Mohammed; of Krishna; of Laotze; of Jesus; of all the teachers and philosophers of the world. Who of you who read these words has not listened to debates and endless discussions as to what even so modern a writer as Emerson or Whitman, or Nietzche or Kobo Daisi, or some other, may have meant by certain statements? In the Samyutta Nikaya we read: "Let a man who holds the Self clear, keep that Self free from wickedness." This does not imply annihilation of identity, _absorption_ of consciousness, although it has been so interpreted by many students. On the contrary, instead of losing consciousness of the Self (which is not merely the personality), we _find_ the Real Self. As an adult we realize more consciousness than we do as infants. Not that we possess more consciousness. We cannot acquire consciousness as we accumulate _things_. We can not add one iota to the sum of consciousness, but we can and do uncover portion upon portion of the vast area of consciousness which _is_. Says the Dhammapada: "As kinsmen, friends and lovers salute a man who has been long away and returns safe from afar; in like manner his good deeds receive him who has done good, and who has gone from this world to the other, as kinsmen receive a friend on his return." If this state of _mukti_ were annihilation of individual consciousness it would hardly be an incentive to do good deeds, except that good deeds in themselves bring happiness, but if the bringing of happiness did not also bring with it a larger consciousness, it would not be true happiness, but merely a _condition_, and conditions are always subject to change. "It is not separateness you should hope and long for; it is _union_--the sense of oneness with all that is, that has ever been and that can ever be--the sense that shall _enlarge the horizon of your being_, to the limits of the universe; to the boundaries of time and space; that shall lift you up into a new plane far beyond, outside all mean and miserable care for self. Why stand shrinking there? Give up the fool's paradise of 'This is I'; 'This is mine.' It is the great reality you are asked to grasp. Leap forward without fear. You shall find yourself in the ambrosial waters of Nirvana and sport with the Arhats who have conquered birth and death." This admonition to give up the struggle and strife for separateness is interpreted by many to declare for annihilation of consciousness of identity, but we contend that _union_ is in no wise akin to annihilation, and since this assurance of union is further described as an enlargement of the horizon of _your being_, it is evident that your being can not be enlarged by becoming annihilated, or even _absorbed into_ The Absolute, as in that event it would cease to be _your being_. Moreover, you are told that you will "sport with the Arhats who have conquered birth and death." Arhats are alluded to in the plural, and not as One Being. To be sure there may be a final state of absorption of consciousness far beyond this state of being which is described as Nirvana. Theosophy lays much stress upon the assumption that the attainment of godhood is possible to every human soul, but that this godhood must inevitably have an ultimate conclusion. That is, there is a _place_ or heaven, which is called the Devachanic plane, and this plane, or place, is inhabited by "gods," for a definite period, approximating thousands of years, but that the final conclusion must be, absorption of identity into the universal reservoir of mind, or consciousness. But we may readily see that beyond the Devachanic plane, we may not penetrate with the limited consciousness which takes cognizance of external conditions. Any attempt, therefore, at a description of what occurs to the individual consciousness beyond the areas of Devachan, must be futile. The argument that most logically postulates the assumption that all identity, or differentiation of consciousness, becomes absorbed into The Absolute, is based upon the fact that we remember nothing of previous states of consciousness. That is, the devious pathway by which the advanced and progressive individual has reached his present state or realization of consciousness, is shrouded in oblivion. From this it is not unnatural to assume that since we have come OUT OF THE VOID, having apparently no memory or realization of what preceded this coming, we will return to the same state, when we shall have completed the round of evolution. This postulate, is, however, merely the result of our limited power of comprehension, and may or may not be true. The answer is as yet inexplicable to the finite mind, considered from the standpoint of relative proof. If it were a fact, that all Oriental sages experiencing the phenomenon of liberation, _mukti_, had reported what would seem to be annihilation of identity of consciousness, we still maintain that this fact would not be proof sufficient upon which to postulate this conclusion, for the very obvious reason that the present era promises what Occidental theology, science, and philosophy unite in designating as a "new dispensation," wherein the "old shall pass away," and a "new order" shall be established. "Look how the fine and valuable gold-dust shifts through the screen, leaving only the useless stones and debris in the catches; even so that which is infinitely fine substance becomes lost when sifted through the screen of the limited mind of man," said a wise Japanese high priest. However, it is our contention that Buddhism, far indeed from postulating the assumption that individual consciousness is swallowed up in The Absolute, as is frequently understood by Occidental translators of Buddhistic writings, announces a calm and unquestioning conviction in the power of man to attain to immortality, and consequent godhood, through contemplation of faith in his own identity with the _Supreme One_. When we consider that there are in the religion of Buddhism, as many as sixty different expositions of the teachings of the Lord Buddha, and that these vary, even as the Christian sects vary in their interpretations and presentments of the instructions of the Master, Jesus of Nazareth, we begin to have some idea of the difficulties of correct interpretation of the obscure and mystical language in which _mukti_ is ever described. One of the most quoted of the translations of the Life of Buddha, reaches the English readers through devious ways, namely, from the Sanskrit into Chinese, and from the Chinese into English, and again edited by an English scientist who is also an Oriental scholar. We must also consider the poverty of the English language when used to describe supra-conscious experiences, or what modern thought terms Metaphysics. Only within very recent times, approximating twenty-five years, there have been coined innumerable words in the English language. The advances made in mechanical, scientific, ethical and philosophical thought, have made this a necessity, while, when it comes to an attempt at clarifying the meaning of mystical terms, a very wide range of interpretation is imperative. Buddha, addressing his servant, says: "Kandaka, take this gem and going back to where my father is, lay it reverently before him, to signify my heart's relation to him." It is related that the gem mentioned was a beryl, which in the language of gems signifies purity and peace. It must be remembered that all Oriental languages give power to gems, perfumes and talismanic symbols. This fact makes direct translation of Oriental writings a difficult task for the Occidental scholar, who, until recently at least, gave no power to so-called "inanimate" things. "And then for me request the king to stifle every fickle feeling of affection, and say that I, to escape from birth and age and death, have entered the forest of painful discipline. "Not that I may get a heavenly birth, much less because I have no tenderness of heart, or that I cherish any cause of bitterness, but Only that I may escape this weight of sorrow; the accumulated long-night weight of covetous desire. I now desire to ease the load, so that it may be overthrown forever; therefore I seek the way of ultimate escape. "If I should gain the way of emancipation, then shall I never need to put away my kindred, to leave my home, to sever ties of love. O grieve not for your son. The five desires of sense beget the sorrow; those held by lust themselves induce sorrow; my very ancestors, victorious kings, have handed down to me their kingly wealth; I, thinking only on eternal bliss, put it all away." The meaning here conveyed is simple enough to understand. From a long line of ancestors who had ruled with the unquestioned authority of Oriental monarchs, the young prince felt that he had inherited much that would retard his soul's freedom. The examples of kings and emperors who have abandoned their possessions have been too few to cause us to believe that they have held these possessions as naught. Through rivers of blood; through ages of despotism, and self-seeking, kings and emperors have maintained their vested rights bequeathing to their progeny the same desires; the same covetousness of worldly power; the same consideration for the lesser self; the same hypnotism that takes account of caste. To escape from these fetters of the soul, into a realization of the Eternal Oneness of life, was no easy task for the inheritor of such desires and beliefs and appetites as an ancestry of rulers imposes. And Prince Siddhartha was anxious to escape reincarnation--a theory or conviction inseparable from Oriental religion. His reference to "fickle affection" means literally that selfish affection of the parent, which would retain the fleeting joy of a few short earthly years of companionship, while the larger and more perfect love would bid the child seek its birthright of godhood. The word "fickle" here would more properly be translated transitory. Buddha's desire to escape from a continuous round of deaths and "leave-takings from kindred," does not necessarily imply an absorption into The Absolute; it may as logically be interpreted to mean, that liberation from the hypnotisms of externality _(mukti)_ insures the possession and power of the gods--power over physical life and death, and this power need not mean a cessation from individual consciousness, but rather, a full realization of individual _unity_ with the sum of all consciousness. There is another mistaken interpretation of the means of attainment of that state of liberation, which has been alluded to in so many varied terms. The fact that Buddha, like many of the Oriental Masters, sought the seclusion of the forest; the isolation, and simplicity of the hermit,--has given rise to the belief, almost universally held among Oriental disciples, that liberation from _maya_, the delusions of the world, can not be attained save by these methods. Monasteries are the result of this idea, and this Buddhistic practice was adopted by the first Christian church, since which time the real purpose and intention of the monastery and the nunnery have become lost in the concept of sacrifice or punishment. The Christian monk almost invariably retires to a monastery, not for the purpose of consciously attaining to that enlarged area of consciousness which insures liberation, _mukti_, but as an "outward and visible sign" that he is willing to undergo the sacrifice of worldly pleasures at the behest of the Lord Jesus. Thus, the real object of retirement is lost, and the sacrifice again becomes in the nature of a "bargain." In the Bhagavad-Gita, we find these words: "Renunciation and yoga by action both lead to the highest bliss; of the two, yoga by action is verily better than renunciation of action. He who is harmonized by yoga, the self-purified, self-ruled, the senses subdued, whose self is the self of all beings, although _acting_, yet is such an one not _affected_. "He who acteth, placing all action in the _eternal_, abandoning attachment, is unaffected by sin as a lotus leaf by the waters." This is interpreted according to the viewpoint of the translator, even as, among an audience of ten thousand persons, we may find almost as many interpretations, and shades of meaning of a musical composition. True, the Oriental meaning _seems_ to be the one that we shall cease to love friends, relatives, and lovers, abandoning them as one would abandon the furniture of one's household when outworn, and no longer of service. We do not accept this interpretation. To abandon one's friends, one's loved ones, yea, even one's would-be enemies is equivalent to leaving one's companions on a sinking raft and, without sentiment or remorse, save one's physical self from destruction. No higher sentiment is known to struggling humanity than love of each other. "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend." Oriental or Occidental philosophy, whichever may be presented to the mind, as an unfailing guide, should be distrusted, if that philosophy prescribes the abandonment of lover, friend, relative, neighbor, brother, companion. That is, if we accept the dictionary meaning of the word "abandoned" as translated into English. A western avatar has said: "I will not have what my brother can not," and in this we heartily concur, not hesitating to say that until all human life shall accept and realize the fullness of this message, we shall not, as a race, have attained to the inheritance that is ours. But shall we then believe, that the Oriental doctrine is erroneous? Not necessarily. Errors of interpretation are not only natural but inevitable, and this interpretation of abandonment is in line with the idea of sacrifice (using the word in its old sense of paying a debt), which prevailed throughout all the centuries just passed--centuries in which the idea of God was estimated by the conduct of the kings and monarchs of earth. A later revelation or dispensation has given what the Illumined One said was a "new commandment," and it is one more in accord with our ideals of godhood. "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye _love_ one another." But love, like everything which _is_, means much or little, according as the soul is advanced in knowledge, or is undeveloped. Perfect and complete love is not selfish; it desires not possession, but union. There is a world of difference between the two words. "The soul enchained is man, and free from chain is God," said Sri Ramakrishna. And the soul is enchained by illusion--by mistaking the effect for the cause, and by regarding the effect as the real, instead of realizing the incompleteness; the limitedness; the unsatisfying character of the changing--the external. Not that the pursuit of the external is sinful, but it is unsatisfying, while the soul that has caught a glimpse of that wonderful ecstasy of Illumination, has found that which satisfies. Upon this point of attainment of complete satisfaction, and certainty, all who have experienced the consciousness we are considering seem to agree, according to the testimony here submitted. CHAPTER V INSTANCES OF ILLUMINATION AND ITS EFFECTS The term Illumination seems a fitting description of the state of consciousness which is frequently alluded to as cosmic consciousness. Without the light of understanding, which is a spiritual quality, words themselves are meaningless. When the mind becomes Illumined the spirit of the word is clear and where before the meaning was clouded, or perhaps altogether obscured, there comes to the Illumined One a depth of comprehension undreamed of by the merely sense-conscious person. If we consider the recorded instances of Illumination found among Occidentals, we will find that such extreme intensity of effort as that which is reported of Sri Ramakrishna, and other Oriental sages, does not appear. It would seem that the late Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke of Toronto, Canada, was the first in this country to present a specific classification of what he termed the "new" consciousness, and to describe in some detail, he experience of himself and others, notably Walt Whitman. Dr. Bucke's first public exposition of these experiences was made at a congress of the British Medical Association in Montreal, Canada, in September of the year 1897. Dr. Bucke described this state of consciousness--a subject that seemed to him at that time to be a new one--in the following words: "But of infinitely more importance than telepathy, and so-called spiritualism--no matter what explanation we give of these, or what their future is destined to be--is the final act here touched upon. This is, that superimposed upon self-consciousness as is that faculty upon simple consciousness, a third and higher form of consciousness is at present making its appearance in our race. This higher form of consciousness, when it appears, occurs as it must, at the full maturity of the individual, at or about the age of thirty-five, but almost always between the ages of thirty and forty. There have been occasional cases of it for the last two thousand years, and it is becoming more and more common. In fact, in all appearances, as far as observed, it obeys the laws to which every nascent faculty is subject. Many more or less perfect examples of this new faculty exist in the world to-day, and it has been my privilege to know personally and to have had the opportunity of studying, several men and women who have possessed it. In the course of a few more milleniums there should be born from the present human race, a higher type of man, possessing this higher type of consciousness. This new race, as it may well be called, would occupy toward us, a position such as that occupied by us toward the simple conscious 'alulus homo.' The advent of this higher, better and happier race, would simply justify the long agony of its birth through countless ages of our past. And it is the first article of my belief, some of the grounds for which I have endeavored to lay before you, that a new race is in course of evolution." At a subsequent date, having given the subject further consideration and having collected data corroborative of his former observations, Dr. Bucke said: "I have, in the last three years, collected twenty-three cases of this so-called cosmic consciousness. In each case the onset or incoming of the new faculty is always sudden, instantaneous. Among the unusual feelings the mind experiences, is a sudden sense of being immersed in flame or in a brilliant light. This occurs entirely without worrying or outward cause, and may happen at noonday or in the middle of the night, and the person at first feels that he is becoming insane. "Along with these feelings comes a sense of immortality; not merely a feeling of certainty that there is a future life,--that would be a small matter--but a pronounced _consciousness_ that the life now being lived is eternal, death being seen as a trivial incident which does not affect its continuity. "Further, there is annihilation of the sense of sin, and an intellectual competency, not simply surpassing the old plane, but on an entirely new and higher plane. * * * The cosmic conscious race will not be the race that exists to-day, any more than the present is the same race that existed prior to the evolution of self-consciousness. A new race is being born from us, and this new race will in the near future, possess the earth." Dr. Bucke later published an article in a current magazine, illustrating the illumination of his friend Walt Whitman, and supplemented with an account of his own experience. We quote briefly from Dr. Bucke's account of his own experience: "I had spent the evening in a great city with some friends reading and discussing poetry and philosophy. We had occupied ourselves with Wordsworth, Shelley, Browning, and especially Whitman. We parted at midnight. I had a long drive in a hansom to my lodgings. My mind, deeply under the influence of the ideas, images and emotions called up by the reading and talk, was calm and peaceful. I was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment, not actually thinking, but letting ideas, images and emotions flow of themselves, as it were, through my mind. All at once, without warning of any kind, I found myself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, an immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great city. The next moment I knew that the fire was within myself." While Dr. Bucke is unquestionably right in his estimate of the fact that "a new race is being born," as he expresses it, there can scarcely be any question of individual age, in which the new consciousness may be expected. Physical maturity can have nothing whatever to do with the matter, since the acquisition of supra-consciousness is a matter of the maturity of the soul. This completement of the cycle of the soul's pilgrimage and service, may come at any age, as far as the physical body is concerned. Indeed, science records no definite age at which even physical maturity is invariably reached, although there is an approximate age. A case recently widely commented upon was that of a child of six years who showed every symptom of senility or old age, which could hardly be possible without having passed what we call "maturity." Again, we find that some persons retain every indication of youth, both of mind and body, long after their contemporaries have reached and passed middle age. It is coming more and more to be admitted that age is relative, and that what we know as the relative is the effect of mental operations. Mental operations are subject to change--to enlargement. The advent of cosmic consciousness is, therefore, not subject to what we know as time, as applied to physical development. Nor should we speak of cosmic consciousness as an acquisition, but rather as a _realization_, since the consciousness _is_, at all times. It always has been, it will always be. Our relation to it changes, as we develop from the sense conscious to the self-conscious state and finally to what we term the "cosmic" conscious state. This latter must of necessity have been as yet only imperfectly realized, even by those of the Illuminati, who are known to the world as avatars and saviours. Several instances of the possession of cosmic consciousness by children, are personally known to the writer. A well-known woman writer in America thus describes a succession of experiences in what were evidently conditions of cosmic consciousness, although as she said, she did not until many years later realize what had taken place. Like Lord Alfred Tennyson, who tells of inducing in himself a state of spiritual ecstasy or liberation, by repeatedly intoning his own name, this lady acquired the habit of repeating in wonder and awe the name by which she was called in the household, which was an abbreviation of her baptismal name. The effect is best described in her own words: "It seems to me that I never could quite become accustomed to hear myself addressed by name. When some member of the household would call me from study or play--even at the early age of five or six years--I would instantly be seized with a feeling of great and almost overwhelming awe and amazement, at the sound, which I knew was in some way associated with me. "I found it extremely difficult to identity myself with that name, and often when alone would repeat the name over and over, trying to find a solution of the 'why and wherefore.' "At length this wonderment grew upon me to such an extent that I felt I must see this self of me that was called by a name. "I acquired the habit of standing on a chair to gaze into the mirror above the chest of drawers in my mother's bed-room, and putting my face close to the mirror, I would gaze and gaze into the eyes I saw there, and repeat over and over the name which seemed to me not to belong to that 'other self' hidden behind those eyes. On one occasion I became quite entranced and fell from the chair, after which I refrained from looking into the mirror, although I did not for many years get over the feeling of wonderment at the sound of my own name, and many times, on repeating the name aloud, I would feel myself being lifted up into what seemed to me the clouds above my head, until I felt myself being 'melted,' as I termed it, into the moving cloud of soft transparent light. "At this time I was between seven and eight years of age, and although I was far beyond children of my age, in my school studies, I was frequently admonished for being 'stupid,' owing to the fact that I could not remember the names of objects, nor could I be trusted on an errand. "While walking from our house to the grocer's, scarcely a block away, I would feel that sudden wonderment and awe of my name steal over me, and again I would be transported to some unknown, yet immanent region, utterly losing consciousness of my surroundings. I would sometimes awake to find myself standing before the counter of the grocery store, struggling to remember who and where I was, and what it was that I had been sent to that strange place for." This lady relates that she never dared to tell of her strange experiences, although she did not "outgrow" them until early womanhood, when she dropped the abbreviation of her name, and assumed her full baptismal name. Whether this latter fact had anything to do with the cessation of the experience is doubtful. At the same time, she declares that she can even now induce the same sensations, and transport herself into childhood again by repeating her childhood name. The following extract from a paper published in London, England, in 1890, gives a description of an experience of a young man who had fallen into a condition which the physicians pronounced "catalepsy." This young man was at the time a medical student, and had always exhibited a tendency to entrancement, or catalepsy. On recovering from one of these cataleptic attacks, and being asked to give a description of his sensations or experiences, the young man said: "I felt a kind of soothing slumber stealing over me. I became aware that I was floating in a vast ocean of light and joy. I was here, there, and everywhere. I was everybody and everybody was I. I knew I was I, and yet I knew that I was much more than myself. Indeed, it seemed to me that there was no division. That all the universe was in me and I in it, and yet nothing was lost or swallowed up. Everything was alive with a joy that would never diminish." Such, in substance, was the attempt of this young man to describe what all who have experienced cosmic consciousness unite in saying is indescribable, for the very obvious reason that there are no words in which to express what is wordless, and inexpressible. This authentic account of a young man under twenty years of age, however, serves to prove that there is no special age of physical maturity in which the attainment of this state of consciousness may be expected. This account was published seven years previous to Dr. Bucke's statement, and yet, since it is not quoted in Dr. Bucke's account, it is most unlikely that he had seen the article. Certainly the young man had never heard of the experience which Dr. Bucke later records, as "cosmic consciousness," and yet the similarity of the experience, with the many which have been recorded is almost startling. The salient point in this account, as in most of the others which have found their way into public print, is the feeling of being in perfect harmony and union with everything in the universe. "I was everything and everything was I," said this young man, and again "I was here, there and everywhere at once," he says in an effort to describe something which in the very nature of it, must be indescribable in terms of sense consciousness. Illustrative of the connection between religious ecstasy and cosmic consciousness, we find the experience of an illiterate negro woman, a celebrated religious and anti-slavery worker of the early part of the last century. This woman was known as "Sojourner Truth" and was at least forty years of age in 1817, when she was given her freedom under a law which freed all slaves in New York state, who had attained the age of forty years. Sojourner Truth never learned to read or write, and her education consisted almost entirely of that presentation of religious truth which finds its most successful converts in revivalism. With this fact in mind, nothing less than the attainment of a wonderful degree of spiritual consciousness could account for her marvelous power of description, and her ready flow of language, when "exhorting." Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote of her, in an article published in the Atlantic Monthly, as early as 1863: "I do not recollect ever to have been conversant with any one who had more of that silent and subtle power which we call personal presence, than this woman. In the modern spiritualistic phraseology, she would be described as having a 'strong sphere.'" The wonderful mental endowment which seems to follow as a complement to the experience of Illumination, when not already present, as in the case of Whitman, for example, is characteristic of "Sojourner Truth," or Isabella, as she was baptized. Naturally, this mental power, seemingly inconsistent with her humble origin, and her unlettered condition, is evidenced along those lines which made up the sum and substance of her life. Judging her from the broader concept of philosophy, Isabella appears somewhat fanatical, but the influence of her life and work was so great, that Wendell Phillips wrote of her: "I once heard her describe the captain of a slave ship going up to judgment, followed by his victims as they gathered from the depths of the sea, in a strain that reminded me of Clarence's dream in Shakespeare, and equalled it. The anecdotes of her ready wit and quick striking replies are numberless. But the whole together give little idea of the rich, quaint, poetic and often profound speech of a most remarkable person, who used to say to us: 'You read books; God Himself talks to me.'" Isabella's conviction that she had "talked to God," was unshakable, and was, indeed, the dynamic force which moved her. She was accustomed to tell of the strange and startling experience in which she met God face to face, and in which she said to Him: "Oh, God, I didn't know as you was so big." In the New England Magazine for March, 1901, there was given a full account of the work of this noted negro woman. Commenting on her sense of awe of the immensity of God "when she met him," the writer says: "The consciousness of God's presence was like a fire around her and she was afraid, till she began to feel that somebody stood between her and this brilliant presence; and after a while she knew that this somebody loved her. At first, she thought it must be Cato, a preacher whom she knew or Deencia or Sally--people who had been her friends. "We are not told whether these persons were living or dead, or whether she thought they had come in the flesh, or in the spirit to her relief. However this may be, she soon perceived that their images looked vile and black and could not be the beautiful presence that shielded her from the fires of God. She began to experiment with her inner vision, and found that when she said to the presence 'I know you, I know you,' she perceived a light; but when she said 'I don't know you,' the light went out. "At last, she became aware that it was Jesus who was shielding her and loving her, and the world grew bright, her troubled thoughts were banished, and her heart was filled with praise and with love for all creatures. 'Lord, Lord,' she cried, 'I can love even de white folks.'" The question will legitimately arise here, as to the authenticity of an experience in which Jesus is said to be personally guiding and shielding her, but it must be remembered that the mind is the medium through which the spiritual realization must be _expressed_ and, as has been stated previously, the description of the phenomenon of Illumination, particularly when experienced in a sudden influx must partake of the character of the mind of the illumined one. William James, late professor of Psychology of Harvard University, in his exhaustive book _The Varieties of Religious Experiences_, in the chapter on "The Value of Saintliness," says: "Now in the matter of intellectual standards, we must bear in mind that it is unfair, where we find narrowness of mind, always to impute it as a vice to the individual for in religious and theological matters, he probably absorbs his narrowness from his generation. Moreover, we must not confound the essentials of saintliness with its accidents, which are the special determination of these passions at any historical moment. In these determinations the saints will usually be loyal to the temporary idols of their tribe." Applying this explanation to the case of "Sojourner Truth," we may realize that the literal conception of Jesus as her guide and shield, was a mental image, inevitable with her, as Jesus was the motive power of her every thought and act. And although at the moment of her Illumination, she realized the "bigness" of God, later, in arranging and recording the phenomenon, in her mental note-book, she tabulated it with all she knew of God--the religious enthusiasm of her work of conversion to the religion of Jesus. Says James, commenting upon the question of conversion in human experience: and this tendency to what seems a narrow and limited viewpoint: "If you open the chapter on 'Association,' of any treatise on Psychology, you will read that a man's ideas, aims and objects form diverse internal groups, and systems, relatively independent of one another. Each 'aim' which he follows awakens a certain specific kind of interested excitement, and gathers a certain group of ideas together in subordination to it as its associates." It is perhaps natural to assume that most instances of the attainment of Illumination, have been inseparable from religious devotion, or at least contemplative mysticism. This view is held almost exclusively by Orientals, and seems to have been shared to a great extent by western commentators upon the subject. A notable example among Occidentals, bearing the religious aspect, and one which is important from the fact that the person detailing his experience, was a man of mental training, is the case of Rev. Charles G. Finney, formerly president of Oberlin College. In his "Memoirs," Dr. Finney describes what Orthodox Christians generally call the "baptism of the Holy Spirit": "I had retired to a back room for prayer," writes Dr. Finney, "and there was no fire or light in the room; nevertheless it appeared to me as if it were perfectly light. As I went in and shut the door after me, it seemed as if I met the Lord Jesus Christ face to face. It did not occur to me then nor did it for some time afterwards, that it was wholly a mental state. "On the contrary, it seemed to me a reality, that he stood before me and I fell down at his feet and poured out my soul to him. I wept aloud like a child and made such confessions as I could with choked utterance. "It seemed to me that I bathed his feet with my tears, and yet I had no distinct impression that I touched him, that I recollect. As I turned and was about to take my seat, I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost. "Without any expectation, without even having the thought in my mind, that there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned, by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me body and soul. "I could feel the impression like the waves of electricity going through me and through me. Indeed, it seemed to come in _waves of liquid love_. For I could not express it in any other way. It seemed like the very breath of God. I can recollect distinctly that it seemed to fan me like immense wings. No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart. "I wept aloud with joy and love. These waves came over me, and over me, one after the other, until I recollect that I cried out, 'I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me.' I said 'Lord, I cannot bear any more.'" We will note, that although Dr. Finney says that he could not remember ever having heard the thing mentioned by any person, yet he felt "the baptism of the Holy Spirit." It is practically impossible that Dr. Finney could have lived in an age and a community which was essentially strict in its Orthodoxy, without having heard of the phrase "baptism of the Holy Spirit," even though the words had escaped his immediate recollection. However, the point that characterizes Dr. Finney's experience, in common with all others, is that of seeing an intense light, and of the realization of the overwhelming force of love. The relation of this experience to a creed or system of religion, is something which, we believe, may be accounted for, as Professor James has said, on the fact of "historical determination." Until very recently, the idea that spirituality was impossible save in connection with religious systems, and rigid discipline, has been quite general. In the case of Dr. Finney, we find that all his life previous to this experience he had been noted for his simplicity and child-like trust. Following his Illumination we learn that he became a man of great influence, and power, because of "the wonderful humanity which he radiated." Similar in experience, in its effects, is a case related by Theodore F. Seward, the well-known American philanthropist, Mr. Seward relates the following story: "The strange experience which I here relate came to a friend whom I knew intimately, and from whose lips I received the account. It is a lady in middle life, who has for years been an earnest seeker for truth and spiritual light. She was alone in her room sewing. "Thinking, as was her wont, of spiritual things and feeling a strong sense of the presence and power of God, she suddenly had a consciousness of being surrounded by a brilliant white light, which seemed to radiate from her person. The light continued for some minutes, and at the same time, she felt a great spiritual uplifting and an enlargement of her mental powers, as if the limitations of the body were transcended, and her soul's capacities were in a measure set free for the moment. The experience was unique, above and beyond the ordinary current of human life, and while the vision or impression passed away, a permanent effect was produced upon her mind. She had never heard the term 'cosmic consciousness,' and did not know that the subject it covers is beginning to be discussed." It must be noted that in these experiences, the idea most strongly felt was the one of the "power and presence of God," and we are impressed with the fact that, no matter how varied may be the _creeds_ of the world, as founded by "saviours" and incarnations of God, there is a unity among all races, as to the fact of a one supreme universal power, which is Aum, the Absolute, and which must represent perfect love and perfect peace, since all who have glimpsed their unity with this power, testify to a feeling of happiness, peace and satisfaction, rare and exalted. By comparing the experience of those who have attained this state of liberation from illusion, through religious rites and ceremonies, or "sacrifice to God," as it is not infrequently called, with the experience of those who have recorded the phenomenon, apparently arriving at the goal through intellectual and moral aspiration, we will find that the results are almost identical, and the after-effects similar. It has been said that those who attain liberation have invariably sought to found a new system of worship, and this fact has given rise to the many paths or methods of attainment which have been taught by various Illumined Ones, both in the Orient and in the western world, supplementary as it were to the main great religious systems. We will take a short survey of a few of these systems in Japan and India in comparatively modern times, or at least during the last two thousand years, which is modern compared to the history of the Orient. CHAPTER VI EXAMPLES OF COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS, WHO HAVE FOUNDED NEW SYSTEMS OF RELIGION The early religion of Japan, before the advent of Buddhism, was extremely simple. It consists of the postulate that there was but one God, _Kami_, from him all things came, and to him all things shall return. As has been stated previously, the chief injunction of Shintoism is: "Keep your body and your mind clean, and trust _Kami_." Shintoism literally translated, means "the way to God," and includes the belief that all persons ultimately reach the place where God dwells, and become "one with Him." In present day interpretations and descriptions of Shintoism, we read of the "heathen" belief that _Kami_ himself dwells in person, in the "inner temple" or sacred place of Shinto temples. This idea doubtless exists as a reality among the very ignorant superstitious devotees, much as among the ignorant Catholics we find the unquestioned belief that the actual body and blood of Jesus the Christ is contained in the Eucharist. The Shinto temple always contains an "inner or sacred shrine," which is equivalent to the "holy of holies," of the Mystic Brotherhoods, and typifies the fact that _within_ and not _without_, will be found the God in man, by finding which, man reaches liberation, or cessation from the cycle of births and deaths. A Shinto funeral is an occasion for rejoicing, because the departed one may be a step farther on the way to God, and since his ancestors were directly responsible, as a favor, for his occasion to become reborn, thus fulfilling the law of _karma_, the Shintoist pays much respect to his ancestors. The advent of Buddhism into Japan was made possible by the simple fact that the people were becoming somewhat disgruntled with Shintoism, because of its emphasis upon the never-to-be questioned postulate that the Mikado and his progeny was the direct gift of _Kami_ to his people, to be obeyed without demur, and to be adored as divine. Several generations of Mikados who did not fulfil the ideal of Deity--an ideal to which even savages attach the qualities of justice and mercy--left the masses ready and eager to grasp at a religion that gave them some other personified god, than the Mikado, much as a drowning man clutches at a straw. The Lord Buddha was a prince, therefore worship of him would not be an absolutely impossible step--an unforgivable breach of contract with the Mikado, and as he exhibited the qualities of humility and mercy and tolerance, he was welcomed. The religion of Japan is to-day regarded as Buddhistic, although the Imperial family, and consequently the army and the navy are to all outward appearance, Shintoists. Coming, then, to a consideration of the varying sects of Buddhism in Japan, and the corresponding sects in India, we find that there have been nine different incarnations of God, and that another, and, it is believed the final one, is expected. The intelligent and open minded seeker after truth of whatever race or color, will find in the instructions given man by each and every great teacher, whether we believe in them as especially "divine" or as mere humans who have attained to the realization of their godhood (_avatars,_) a complete unity of _purpose_, and if these teachers differ in _method of attainment_, it is only because of the immutable fact that there can be no _one and only_ way of attainment. Methods and systems are established consistently with the age and character of those whom they are designed to assist in finding the way. And again we must emphasize the fact that by the phrase "the way," we mean the way to a realization of the godhood within the inner temple of man's threefold nature. Thus, the intelligent, unprejudiced student of the religions and philosophies of all times and all races, will find that, while there are many and diverse paths to the goal of "salvation," the goal itself means unity with the Causeless Cause, wherein exists perfection. Perhaps it has been left for the expected Incarnate God, which Christians speak of as "the second coming of Christ," to make clear the problem as to whether this attainment or completement means an absorption of individual consciousness, or whether it will be an adding to the present incarnation, of the memory of past lives, in such a manner that no consciousness shall be lost, but all shall be found. In considering instances of cosmic consciousness, _mukti_, which have been recorded as distinctly religious experiences, and the effect of this attainment, the system best known to the Occident, is contained in the philosophy of Vedanta, expounded and interpreted to western understanding by the late Swami Vivekananda. But it should be understood that the philosophy taught by Vivekananda is not strictly orthodox Hinduism. It bears the same relation to the old religious systems of India that Unitarianism bears to orthodox Christianity such as we find in Catholicism, and its off-shoots. Vivekananda honored and revered and followed, according to his interpretation of the message, Sri Ramakrishna, whom an increasing number of Hindus regard as the latest incarnation of Aum--the Absolute. Not that the reader is to understand, that Sri Ramakrishna's message contradicted the essential character of the basic principles of orthodox Hinduism, as set down in the Vedas and the Upanashads. The same difference of _emphasis_ upon certain points, or interpretations of meaning exists in the Orient, as in the western world, in regard to the possible meaning of the Scriptures. Sri Ramakrishna, who passed from this earth life at Cossipore, in 1886, was a disciple of the Vedanta system, as founded by Vyasa, or by Badarayana, authorities failing to agree as to which of these traditional sages of India founded the Vedantic system of religion or philosophy. Vedanta, particularly as interpreted by Sri Ramakrishna and his successors, offers a wider field of effort, and a more intellectual consideration of Hindu religion than that of the Yoga system as interpreted from the original Sankhya system by Patanjali, about 300 B.C. Patanjali's sutras are considered the most complete system of Yoga practice, for the purpose of mental control, and psychic development. Patanjali's sutras are almost identical with those employed in the Zen sect of Buddhist monasteries, throughout Japan. These sutras, together with Buddhist mantrams will be considered in a subsequent chapter, devoted to the development of spiritual consciousness as taught by the Oriental sages and philosophers. One other great teacher of modern times who has left a large following, was Lord Gauranga, who was born in India in the early part of the fifteenth century. Gauranga was worshipped as the Lord God, whether with his consent, or without, it is not exactly clear, even though his biographers are united on the fact of his divine origin. Those who have espoused the message of Gauranga claim that he brought to the world "a beautiful religion, such as had never before been known." But, as this claim is made for all teachers and founders of religions and philosophies, we suggest that the reader compare the message of Lord Gauranga with those of other avatars and teachers. Lord Gauranga's message is known as Vaishnavitism, and we will here consider only those passages of his doctrine which shed light upon his attainment of cosmic consciousness. Certainly his breadth of mind, and his standards of tolerance, justice and consideration for all other systems of worship, would indicate his claim to cosmic consciousness. One of the contentions of the Vaishnavas is that they alone of all religious faiths, admit the divine birth and mission of the founders of all religions. Thus the Christians have declared that Jesus was the only Son of God; the Buddhists have claimed Buddha; the Hebrews have clung tenaciously to their prophets as the only true messengers from heaven, and the Mohammedans have refused, until the present century, to even sit at the table with the "infidels" who would not acknowledge Mohammed as the only true incarnation of Allah. It is well to remember that these claims have been made by the blind followers of these great teachers, and that it is almost certain that not any one of them made such claim for himself. Certainly he did not, if he had attained to spiritual consciousness. One passage from the doctrines of Gauranga is almost identical with many others who have sought to express the feeling of security, of _deathlessness_ which comes to the soul which has realized cosmic consciousness. He says: "My Beloved, whether you clasp me unto your heart, or you crush me by that embrace, it is all the same to me. For you are no other than my own, the sole partner of my soul." The gospel of Gauranga and his followers is, indeed, much more a gospel of love, than of methods of worship, or of intellectual research. The realization of our union with God, in deathless love, is the key-note of the message, and this great joy or bliss comes to the soul as soon as it has attained Illumination through love. God is alluded to in Vaishnavism most frequently as _Anandamaya_--meaning all joy. Vaishnavism more nearly resembles the gospel of Jesus, as taught by orthodoxy, than it does the Vedantic systems, since it does, not claim that God is _within each_ human organism, as the seed is within the fruit, but that, by love, we may gain heaven or the state or place where God dwells. "If you would worship God, as the Giver of Bounties, then shall the prayer be answered, and further connection cut off, God having answered the demand. So if you would worship God in simple love, He will send love. The real devotee seeks to establish a relationship with God which will endure. He will ask only to worship and love God, and pray that his soul may cling to God in divine reverence and love." Thus, say the Vaishnavas, "God serves as he is served, in absolute justice." Another salient point which the followers of Lord Gauranga emphasize, is the "All-Sweetness" of God. This idea is impressed, doubtless that the devotee may not feel an impossible barrier between himself and so great and all-powerful a being, as God, when His Omnipotence is considered. The idea is similar to that of the Roman church, which bids its untutored children to select some patron saint, or to say prayers to the Virgin Mary, because these characters were once human and seem to be nearer, and more approachable than the Great God whose Majesty and All-Mightiness have been exploited. Be that as it may, the fact remains, that Lord Gauranga is said to have earned the devotion and love of some of the most learned pundits of India and, according to a recent biographer, "he had all the frailties of a man; he ate and slept like a man. In short, he behaved generally like an ordinary human being, but yet he succeeded in extorting from the foremost sages of India, the worship and reverence due a God." The fact that Lord Gauranga "behaved like a man," is comforting, to say the least, and presages the coming of a day when "behaving like a man" will not be considered ungodly. When that time shall have arrived, surely there will be less mysticism of the hysterical variety and probably fewer hypocrites. Very unlike Lord Gauranga, is the report of a writer of India, who tells of the effects of cosmic consciousness upon Tukaram, considered to be one of the greatest saints and poets of Ancient India. Tukaram lived early in the sixteenth century, some years later than Lord Gauranga. This Maharashtra saint is chiefly remembered for his beautiful description of the effects of Illumination, in which he likens the human soul to the bride, and the bridegroom is God. This poem is called "Love's Lament," and might have been written by an impassioned lover to his promised bride. The life of Tukaram, like that of the late Sri Ramakrishna Paramanansa, was one long agony of yearning and struggle for that peace of soul which he craved. One of his chroniclers thus describes, in brief, the final struggle and the subsequent attainment of Illumination of this good man: "Selfless, he sought to gather no crowds of idle admiring disciples about him, but followed what his conscience dictated. He listened not to the counsel of his relatives and friends, who thought he had gone mad; and he bore in patience the well-meant but harsh rebukes of his second wife. After a long mental struggle, the agonies of which he has recorded in heart-rending words, now entreating God in the tenderest of terms, now resigning himself to despair, now appealing with the petulance of a pet child for what he deemed his birthright, now apologizing in all humility for thus taking liberties with his Mother-God, he succeeded at last in gaining a restful place of beatitude--a state in which he merged his soul in the universal soul,"--that is, Illumination, or cosmic consciousness. Sadasiva Brahman, one of the great Siddhas, and a comparatively modern sage of India, left a Sanskrit poem called _Atmavidyavilasa_, which gives a comprehensive description of the experience and the effects of Illumination, as for example: "The sage whose mind by the grace of his blessed Guru is merged in his own true nature (Existence, Intelligence, and Bliss Absolute), that great Illumined one, wise, with all egotism suppressed, and extremely delighted _within himself_, sports in joy." "He who is himself alone, who has known the secret of bliss, who has firmly embraced peace, who is magnanimous and whose feelings other than those of the _atman_, have been allayed, that person sports on his pleasant couch of self-bliss." "The pure moon of the prince of recluses, who is fit to be worshipped by gods and whose moonlight of intelligence that dispels the darkness of ignorance causes the lily of the earth to blossom, shines forth in the abode of the all-pervading Essence of Light." The above stanzas represent a more impersonal idea of the bliss of attainment than those of many others who have experienced Illumination, but they emphasize the same point that we find throughout all writings of the Illuminati, namely, the realization of the kingdom _within_, rather than without, and the necessity of selflessness--meaning the subjugation of the lesser self, the mental, to the soul. We come now to a consideration of the life and character of the Lord Buddha, whose influence is still stronger in all parts of the world than that of any other person who has ever taught the precepts of attainment. In Japan, for example, Buddhism, in its various branches, or interpretations, is the religion of the vast majority and even where Shintoism is the method of worship, the influence of Buddhism may be seen. So too, we find in Japan, a form of Buddhism, which shows evidences of the influence of Shintoism, but I think it may be admitted that Japan, above all other countries, represents to-day, the religion of Buddhism. Buddhism has been called the "religion of enlightenment," but the term "illumination" as it is used to describe the attainment of cosmic consciousness, is what is meant, rather than the purely intellectual quality which we are accustomed to think of as enlightenment. Sakyamuni, another name for Buddhism, means also illumination, or realization of the saving character of the light within. The lamp is the most important symbol in, Buddhism, as it typifies the divine flame or illumination (which is cosmic consciousness), as the goal of the disciple. Another interpretation of the symbol of the lamp, is that of the power of the lamp to shed its rays to light the way of those who are traveling "in the gloom," and by so doing, it lights the flame of illumination in others, without diminishing its own power. An article of faith reads: "As one holds out a lamp in the darkness that those who have eyes may see the objects, even so has the doctrine been made clear by the Lord in manifold exposition." Again, in the _Book of the Great Decease_, we learn that Buddha admonished his disciples to "dwell as lamps unto yourselves." Another symbol used throughout Japan as a means of teaching the masses the essential doctrines of "The Compassionate One," has become familiar to occidental people as a sort of "curio." It is that of the three monkeys carved in wood or ivory. One monkey is covering his eyes with both paws; another has stopped his ears; and the third has his paw pressed tightly over his mouth. The lesson briefly told is to "see no evil; hear no evil; speak no evil," and the reason that the monkey is employed as the symbol, is because the monkey, more than any other animal, resembles primitive man. If, then, we would rise from the monkey, or animal condition (the physical or animal part of the human organism), we must avoid a karma of consciousness of evil. Buddhism is full of symbolism, and these symbols must be interpreted according to the age, or of the individual consciousness of the interpreter, or the translator. But the fundamental doctrine of Buddha is essentially one of renunciation as applied to the things of the world. Nevertheless this quality of renunciation has been greatly exaggerated during the centuries, because of the fact that the Lord Buddha had so much to give up, viewed from the standpoint of worldly ethics. In the following "sayings of Buddha," we find that the quest of the noble sage was for that supraconsciousness wherein change and decay were _not_, rather than that he regarded the things of the senses, as sinful. For example: "It is not that I am careless about beauty, or am ignorant of human joys; but only that I see on all the impress of change; therefore, my heart is sad and heavy." Or this: "A hollow compliance and a protesting heart, such method is not for me to follow: I now will seek a noble law, unlike the worldly methods known to men. I will oppose disease, and change and death, and strive against the mischief wrought by these, on men." According to the _Samyutta Nikaya_, the twelve _Nidanas_ (or chain of consequences) are: "On ignorance depends karma; "On karma depends consciousness; "On consciousness depends name and form; "On name and form depends the six organs of sense." "On contact depends sensation; "On sensation depends desire; "On desire depends attachment; "On attachment depends existence; "On existence depends birth; "On birth depend old age and death, sorrow, lamentation, misery, grief, and despair. "Thus does this entire aggregation of misery arise." Having arrived at this conclusion, the problem may be solved by learning how to avoid existence. But, let us consider what the term "existence" means. The common acceptance of the word, as used in the English, seems to include _being_; but if we will consider the word in its literal meaning, when analyzed, we find that it comes from "est" (to be), and the prefix "ex," meaning actually "_not-being_." The word _Being_, is a synonym for eternal life--for Deity. It does not savor of anything that has been created, or that will terminate. _Being is_, therefore, to cease to _ex_-ist, is to cease to live under the spell of the illusory and changing quality of _maya_, or externality. Far from meaning to be "wiped out," or absorbed into The Absolute, in the sense of complete loss of consciousness, it means the eternal retention of consciousness, unhampered by the delusion of sense as a reality. To escape from this chain of illusory ideas, and their consequences, the obvious necessity is to claim the soul's right to _Being_. This is done by dispelling ignorance (_A-vidya_) by vidya (knowledge). Thus karma ceases: "On the cessation of karma ceases consciousness of self; "On the cessation of this consciousness of self, cease name and form; "On the cessation of name and form, cease the organs of sense; "On the cessation of sense, ceases contact; "On the cessation of contact, ceases sensation; "On the cessation of sensation, ceases desire; "On the cessation of desire ceases attachment; "On the cessation of attachment ceases existence; "On the cessation of existence, ceases birth. "On the cessation of birth cease old age, and death; sorrow; lamentation; misery; grief and despair. Thus does the entire aggregation of misery cease." But, as to the exact interpretation of all these, Buddha himself says: "Ye must rely upon the truth; this is your highest, strongest vantage ground; the foolish masters practicing superficial wisdom, grasp not the meaning of the truth; but to receive the law, not skillfully to handle words and sentences, the meaning then is hard to know, as in the night-time, if traveling and seeking for a house, if all be dark within, how difficult to find." But let it be understood, that Buddhism as now taught and practiced is necessarily colored by the effect of the centuries which have elapsed since the Lord Buddha lived and taught the precepts of his Illumination. Modern Buddhism, as a religious system of worship bears the same relation to Prince Siddhartha, as does modern Christianity to Jesus of Nazareth. A short review of the life and character of the personalities around whom the great religious systems of the world have been formed will aid us in perceiving the unity of thought and character of the Illumined, and the similarity of reports as to the effect of this realization of cosmic consciousness will be apparent. CHAPTER VII MOSES, THE LAW-GIVER The salient feature of the law as given by Moses unto his people, the Jews, is that of strict cleanliness of mind and body. In this we find a similarity to the oft-repeated behest of Gautama, the Buddha, who constantly admonished his followers to keep their hearts pure and their minds and bodies clean. This spirit of cleanliness finds also a counterpart in the saying ascribed to Jesus, "blessed are the pure in heart." The cleanliness here referred to is doubtless not so much physical neatness as mental purity of thought--thought free from doubt and calumny and petty deceits and hypocrisy and selfishness and debasing perversions of the life forces; but during various stages of history we find that all teachings have their esoteric and their exoteric application. The law, as enunciated by Moses, according to the Jewish reports, laid much stress upon physical cleanliness, as an attribute of godhood. But Moses, if we may credit reports, was something far more inspired and illumined than a mere physical culturist--commendable as is personal cleanliness--and his admonitions were the result of that fine sense of discrimination and enlightenment which comes from cosmic perception even if he had not experienced the deeper, fuller realization of liberation, of which Buddha is a shining example. It is evident that the laws laid down by Moses were taught and practised by the Egyptians many many years prior to the time in which Moses lived, which from the most reliable authorities, must have been about four to five hundred years before the Exodus. This does not detract from the evidence that the great Egyptian-Hebrew, was a man of wonderful intellectual attainments, and from what we know of modern examples of Illumination, he also possessed a degree of cosmic consciousness. The story of the seemingly miraculous birth of Moses, and the mystery with which his ancestry is surrounded, is also typical of one who has attained to cosmic consciousness. The Illumined one realizes his birthlessness and his deathlessness, and expresses it in symbolism, meaning of course, the realization that as the spirit is never born and can never die, the idea of age is an unreality--and should find no place in the consciousness of one who regards himself as an indestructible atom of the Cosmos. But the evidences regarding the probable Illumination of Moses are to be found in the reports of his ascension of Mt. Sinai, and what occurred there. The phenomenon of the great light which is inseparable from instances of cosmic consciousness, and which gives to the phenomenon its name "Illumination," was apparently marked in the case of Moses. The "burning bush," which he describes is the experience of the mind when the illusion of sense has ceased, even temporarily, to obscure the mental vision. "And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire, and out of the midst of a bush; and he looked and behold, the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed." There is a subtler interpretation to this report than that usually given, even by those who realize that this expression is an evidence of the sudden influx of supra consciousness which attends the soul's liberation from the limits of sense consciousness. The "burning bush" is synonymous with the "tree of life" which is ever alive with the "fires of creation." All who realize liberation are endowed with the power to understand this symbol. For those who have not attained to this degree of consciousness, the esoteric meaning is necessarily hidden. The phenomenon of the strange mystical light which seems to enfold and bathe the Illumined one, is concisely expressed in the case of Moses. "And it came to pass, that when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the tablets of the testimony in hand, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone, or sent forth beams by reason of his speaking with Him. "And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses behold! the skin of his face shone and they were afraid to come nigh him." Again we find in the case of Moses, a momentary fear of the phenomenon which he was experiencing, in the influx of light and the sound of the voice which seems to accompany the light. The interpretation given the words spoken, and the identity of the voice is ever dependent upon the time and character of the mind experiencing the Illumination. Thus Moses claims to have heard the voice of the God of the Hebrews, but the probabilities are, that the "voice" is the mental operations of the person experiencing the phenomenon of supra-consciousness, and this interpretation will vary with what Professor James calls the "historical determination," i.e. it is dependent upon the age in which the illumined one lived, and upon the character of the impressions previously absorbed. This apparent difference of report, as to the identity of the "voice," is of small import. The salient point is that each person relating his experience has heard a _voice_ giving more or less explicit instructions and promises. In each instance it has been characterized as the voice of the God of their desire, _and adoration_. Certainly, whatever may be our opinions as to whether God, as we understand the term, talked to Moses, giving him such explicit commands as the great leader afterwards laid down to his people accompanied by the insurmountable barrier to dissent or discussion, "thus saith the Lord," we can but admit that the prophet was possessed of intellectual power far in advance of his time, and his laws did indeed, save his people from self destruction, through uncleanliness and strife, and dense ignorance. The ten commandments have been the "word of God" to all men for lo! these many ages, and even Jesus could but add one other commandment to those already in use: "Another commandment give I unto you--_that ye love one another_." To sum up the evidences of cosmic consciousness, or Illumination, as reported in the case of Moses, we find: The experience of great light as seen on Horeb. The "voice" which he calls the voice of "The Lord." The sudden and momentary fear, and humility. The shining of his face and form, as though bathed in light. The subsequent intellectual superiority over those of his time. The perfect assurance and confidence of authority and "salvation." The desire for solitude, which caused him to die alone in the vale of Moab. The intense desire to uplift his people to a higher consciousness. CHAPTER VIII GAUTAMA--THE COMPASSIONATE Gautama, prince of the house of Siddhartha, of the Sakya class, was born in northern India in the township of Kapilavastu, in the year 556 B.C., according to the best authorities, as interpreted and reported by Max Muller. The Japanese tradition agrees with this, practically, stating that O Shaka Sama (signifying one born of wisdom and love) was born as a Kotai Si, crown prince of the Maghada country. We have the assurance that as a youth, Gautama, like Jesus, exhibited a serious mindedness and an insight into matters spiritual, which astonished and dumbfounded his hearers, and the sages who gave him respectful attention. Some accounts even go so far as to state that at the very moment of his birth the young prince was able to speak, and that his words ascended "even to the gods of the uppermost Brahma-world." Divesting the traditions that surround the birth and early life of the world's great masters, of much that has been interpolated by a designing priesthood, we may yet conclude that a certain seriousness, and a deep sympathy with the sorrows of their fellowmen, would naturally characterize these inspired ones, even while they were still in their early youth. It is evident that the young Prince Siddhartha was subject to meditation and that these meditations led at times to complete trance. It is reported that one day while out riding in all the pomp and accoutrements of the son of a ruling king, he was visited by an angel (a messenger from the gods of Devachan), and told that if he would lessen the sorrows of the world that he must renounce his right to his father's kingdom and go into the jungle, becoming a hermit, and devoting his life to fasting, prayer and meditation, in order to fit himself for the work of preaching the "way of liberation," which consisted of, first of all, to take no life; be pure in mind; be as the humblest, which latter admonition found little favor with the world of his personal environment where caste was and still is, a seemingly ineradicable race-thought. The sorrows of humanity weighed heavily upon his heart, and the superficialities of the wealthy and ostentatious court in which he lived, irked his outspoken and truth-loving spirit. Surrounded, as he was, by wealth and ease, with time for contemplation and a mind given to philosophic speculation, the young prince found no sense of comfort or permanent satisfaction in his own immunity from want and sorrow. He pondered long upon the way to become freed from the "successive round of births and deaths," and thus pondering, he sought solitude in which to find his questions answered. Fasting and penance have ever been the gist of the instruction given to those who would "find the way to God," and so to this end Gautama fasted and prayed, and practised self-sacrifice. But the attainment of liberation was not easy, and Siddhartha suffered long and practiced self-mortification assiduously, at length being rewarded; and "there arose within him the eye to perceive the great and noble truths which had been handed down; the knowledge of their nature; the understanding of their cause; the wisdom that lights the true path; the light that expels darkness." The terrible struggle which characterized the attainment of cosmic consciousness, by so many of the sages and saviours of history, is, we believe, clue to the fact that no one individual may hope to rise so immeasurably above the plane of the race-consciousness of his day and age, except through intense and overwhelming desire. Gautama abandoned his heritage, his relatives, his wife to whom he was devoted, and his infant son, as we have previously stated, not because Illumination is purchasable at so terrible a price, but because his desire to _know_ transcended all other desires, and in order to be free from the demands made upon him, he must of necessity, seek solitude. Few examples of the attainment of cosmic consciousness are as complete and of such fullness, as that attained by Buddha, and no instance which history affords has left so great an effect upon the world. It is estimated that at least one-third of the human race are Buddhists. This is not saying that any such number of persons are like unto Buddha, nor do we contend that this is any evidence that his message is greater or more fraught with truth than that of other illumined ones. The intelligent student of occultism in all its phases will arrive, sooner or later, at the inevitable conclusion that all illumined souls have seen and have taught the same fundamental truth. Buddha was convinced that in The Absolute, or First Cause, there could be no sin and consequently no sorrow, and he persistently sought to inaugurate such systems of conduct and such a standard of morals as would lead the disciple back to godhood, or liberation from the "wheel of causation." To keep the mind pure and clean was the burden of his cry, well knowing that the mind is the fertile field wherein illusions of sense consciousness thrive. He says: "Mind is the root (of evil); actions proceed from the mind. If anyone speak or act from a corrupt mind, suffering will follow, as the dust follows the rolling wheel." That we can not expect to escape the result of our thoughts and acts was ever a doctrine of Buddha, albeit, he seems also to have sought to make clear to his disciples, the UNREALITY of sin as a part of the indestructible "First Cause." Many Buddhist sects interpret the doctrines of Buddha to deny a belief in a future existence, in at least as far as identity is concerned, but this conception is not consistent with the most reliable reports, neither is it in keeping with the extreme peace and satisfaction which all illumined ones experience. If extinction of identity were the goal of Illumination, it is inconceivable that the illumined ones should report the attainment of perfect satisfaction and bliss. Besides, it is clearly stated that Gautama told his disciples that he had already entered Nirvana, while yet in the body. "My mind is free from passions; is released from the follies of the world. I have gained the victory," said Lord Buddha to his disciple Ananda. It is also asserted that Buddha appeared in his own "glorified body" to his disciples after his physical dissolution, plainly indicating that far from being swallowed up in The Absolute, he had acquired godhood in his present body. Detailing the advantages of a pure life, Buddha said to his disciples: "The virtuous man rejoices in this world, and he will rejoice in the next; in both worlds has he joy. He rejoices, he exults, seeing the purity of his deed." Again, alluding to a sage (rahan), Buddha is reported to have said: "He is indeed blest, having conquered all his passions, and attained the state of Nirvana." This alluded to the acquisition of _Nirvana_ while still in the physical body. In other words, as we of this century understand the teaching, he had experienced cosmic consciousness. The modern version of the commandments of Buddha are almost identical with those of the Christian creed, and these commandments are, as we have previously observed, the same that Moses laid down for the guidance of his people. That they were old before Moses was born, is also more than problematical. It is also more than probable that Buddha did not personally write the ethical code which we now find submitted as the "Commandments of Buddha," but that Buddha merely emphasized them. These commandments are not, however, understood, by the intelligent Buddhist as "sacred," in the sense that "God spoke unto Buddha." Moses doubtless assumed to have been divinely instructed in the law, although that supposition may be erroneous. He may have had in mind the same fundamental idea which all those expressing cosmic consciousness have had, that of being a mouthpiece of a higher power, rather than to attract to themselves any adulation or worship, as being specially divine. The "Commandments," therefore, as translated and ascribed to modern Buddhism, are an ethical and moral code for the _MORTAL_ consciousness, rather than a _formula_ for developing cosmic consciousness. These commandments are: 1--Thou shalt kill no animal whatever, from the meanest insect up to man. 2--Thou shalt not steal. 3--Thou shalt not violate the wife of another. 4--Thou shalt speak no word that is false. 5--Thou shalt not drink wine, nor anything that may intoxicate. 6--Thou shalt avoid all anger, hatred and bitter language. 7--Thou shalt not indulge in idle and vain talk, but shall do all for others. 8--Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods. 9--Thou shalt not harbor envy, nor pride, nor revenge, nor malice, nor the desire of thy neighbor's death or misfortune. 10--Thou shalt not follow the doctrines of false gods. And the devotee is assured, even as in the Christian creed, that "he who keeps these commandments, shall enter Nirvana--the rest of Buddha." But let it be understood that Gautama, the Lord Buddha, did not formulate these commandments. Neither are they considered as infallible formulæ, by the enlightened Buddhist. They constitute the ethical and moral code of the undeveloped man in all ages of the world, and among all peoples. They had become traditional long before Buddha came to interpret "the way of the gods." But Gautama, like Jesus, was an evolutionist, and not a revolutionist. He came "not to destroy, but to fulfill," and so Buddha paid no attention to the code of morals as it stood, but merely contented himself with emphasizing the importance of unselfishness--purity of heart and mind, because he realized that the mental world is the trap of the soul, even as "the elephant is held tethered by a galucchi creeper." Buddha taught the way of emancipation of the soul held in bondage by means of the illusions of _maya_, even as the elephant is held in captivity by so weak a thing as a galucchi creeper, which could be broken by a single effort. That many who keep the commandments are yet a long way from cosmic consciousness must be apparent to all. Therefore we are justified in assuming that the mere keeping of the commandments will not bring about _mukti_. Many a man follows the letter of the law, and escapes prison, but if he does this through fear of punishment, and not because of a desire to maintain peace that his neighbors may be benefited, then he is not keeping the spirit of the law at all, and his reward is a negative one. According to the most reliable authorities, Buddha died in his eightieth year, having spent about fifty years in preaching, in healing the sick, in conversing with exalted beings in the heavenly worlds, and in leaving at will his physical body and visiting other worlds. Buddha prophesied his coming dissolution, and expressed to his disciples, a hope that they would realize that he still lived, even when his physical body should have become ashes. As his last hour approached, Buddha summoned his disciples, and after a moment's silent meditation, he addressed himself to Ananda, his relative; as well as his favorite disciple, thus: "When I shall have disappeared from this state of existence, and be no longer with you, do not believe that the Buddha has left you, and ceased to dwell among you. Do not think therefore, nor believe, that the Buddha has disappeared, and is no more with you." From these words, it is evident that the state of Nirvana which Buddha assured his followers that he had already attained, did not argue loss of identity, nor translation to another planet. Nor is there anywhere in the sayings of Buddha, rightly interpreted, any suggestion of expecting or desiring personal worship. This, the great sage particularly avoided, as indeed have all illumined ones. It is evident that Gautama the Buddha had experienced that divine influx of light and wisdom in which he sought for others the happiness he had gained for himself, and to this end he was eager to leave to his friends and disciples such rules of conduct of life as should aid them in attaining the divine peace that comes from illumination. But that he founded a religious system of worship of himself, is wholly unbelievable in the light of a study of comparative religions and the wisdom which illumination confers. To realize that one has attained to immortality, and claimed his birthright of godhood, is not synonymous with the claim to worship as the one eternal source of life. It is a part of human weakness to insist upon idealizing the personality of a teacher, and this tendency becomes in time merged into actual worship, whereas the teacher, if he or she be truly illumined, seeks only to inculcate the philosophy which will bring his faithful followers into a realization of cosmic consciousness. The points which characterize the person who has experienced a degree of illumination (entered into cosmic consciousness), were particularly evident in the life and character of Gautama, the Buddha. They may be summed up thus: A marked seriousness in youth. A great sympathy and compassion with the sorrows of others. A deep tenderness for all forms of life. A realization of the nothingness of caste and pomp and power. The firm conviction that he was instructed by angels. The wonderful magnetism and illumination of his person. The firm conviction of immortality--released from the "wheel of life" as he expressed it. The knowledge of when and where he was to pass out from the life of the body. The love of solitude and meditation. The intellectual power maintained even into old age. The unselfish desire to help others. Great and never-failing sympathy with suffering, a divine patience, and insight into the hearts of all forms of life, earned for this great soul the name "Buddha--The Compassionate." CHAPTER IX JESUS OF NAZARETH Turning now to the next in order of the world's great masters, or illumined ones, we come to a consideration of Jesus of Nazareth, in whose name the great moral system of religion, called "Christianity," is promulgated. It has been conclusively shown that the essential features of the present-day _system_ of religion, known as Christianity, were instituted by Paul rather than by Jesus, and that the system itself, like Buddhism, is the work of the followers of the great teacher, rather than that of the Master. Our present concern, however, is not with the system or method of the church, but with those historic facts which bear upon the question of the Illumination of Jesus, classifying Him, not as an incarnate son of God, in the accepted theological interpretation, but in the light of cosmic consciousness. Jesus the Christ was born, according to the most reliable authorities, about six hundred years after Gautama, the Buddha. Whether or not the Nazarene was familiar with the Buddhist doctrines or whether He spent the years of His life which are shrouded in mystery, in the inner temples of either Thibet, India, Persia, China, or other oriental country, will doubtless always be a disputed point among controversialists. The fact does not matter, either way. There is an encouraging similarity in the fundamentals of all religious precepts, arguing that when a teacher is really inspired, the truth makes friends with him or her. Some writers on the subject of Illumination give exact dates when the flash of cosmic consciousness came to the various teachers of the world, but these dates are problematical, and they are also inconsequential. That Jesus was among those historic characters who had attained cosmic consciousness, there can be no possible doubt, even though his exact words will be disputed. Enough has come down to us through the ages to prove the fact that Jesus knew and taught the illusory character of external life (_maya_) and that he was himself absolutely certain of the "kingdom within," which he admonished his hearers to seek, rather than to live so much in the external. This he did because he well knew that constant dwelling in the external consciousness led not to liberation. _The light within_, was the substance of his cry, and that light, when perceived, leads to illumination of everything, both the within and the without. The transfiguration of Jesus was undoubtedly the effect of his being in a supra-conscious state, a state of exaltation, in which many mystics enter at more or less frequent intervals, according to their mode of life, and their objective environment. "And he was transfigured before them; and his garments became exceedingly white," we are told in the gospels, and there are many persons in the world to-day possessing the power of the inner or clairvoyant vision (not identical with cosmic consciousness), who have witnessed similar phenomena. In the "Sermon on the Mount," we find that Jesus spoke with such certainty and such authority, as one who had experienced the very essence of the cosmic conscious state, and was already freed from the illusions of the senses. His words, like those of all who have sought to give directions and instructions for the attainment of freedom from externality, are capable of interpretation in various ways, according to the degree of consciousness of the age in which the interpretations have been made. For example, we find these words of Jesus given different meanings, and in fact, there have been many and diverse discussions and conclusions as to exactly what the Master did mean by them: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Let us examine the phrase, and see if it accords with our ideas of cosmic consciousness. To be "poor in spirit," is not consistent with our understanding of the requirements for the expansion of the soul. Those who take this phrase literally, and who are opposed to religious concepts, as a factor in human betterment, are fond of using this phrase as an evidence of the fanaticism of Jesus, and his concurrence in the worldly habit of exploiting the poor, and "riding the backs of the wage slaves," as our Socialist brothers put it. Now let us, for a moment, consider the phrase _as a person who possessed cosmic consciousness would have said it_. One possessing the cosmic sense, viewing the external more as a trap of the senses, than as realities, would readily perceive that to amass wealth (external possessions), the mind must be in harmony with the methods and the ideals of the world, rather than that it should be concentrated upon the "things of the spirit." This idea is expressed in the phrase, "no man can serve two masters," and while we are not prepared to say that the possession of worldly goods is absolutely _impossible_ to the attainment of cosmic consciousness--observation, reflection, and intuition will unite in the conclusion that they are more or less _improbable_. If then, we will interpret these sayings of Jesus in the light of a broader outlook than was possible to the understanding of his chroniclers, we will find that what he doubtless said was: "_Blessed in spirit_ are the poor, for theirs shall be the kingdom of heaven." And in his vision, which extended beyond the times in which he lived, and foresaw that the attainment of cosmic consciousness must involve a degree of physical hardship, he said: "Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." A survey of the world's progress will readily prove the fact that those who have bent their talents and their energies toward the uplift of the race, have done so under great stress, and in the face of persistent opposition. This opposition is an accompaniment to altruistic effort, for the very obvious reason that the race-thought of the world is still materialistic. The thoughts that predominate are commercial. This is due to the fact that those who are wealthy have large financial interests to maintain; business problems to solve; that take about all their time. The poor find the maintenance of physical existence a task that absorbs the greater part of their mortal mind, and therefore, those who are devoting their time and talents to the work of regeneration (the coming of the cosmic sense), are necessarily in the minority, and the majority rules in thought, as in act. The present metaphysical movement lays great stress upon worldly success and "attraction" of wealth, as an evidence of possession of power and truth, but the law of equation proves that we obtain _that which we most desire_. A religious system which amasses great wealth in a short time does so, only because its _dominant_ teaching inspires the desire for worldly advancement, as the _prime requisite_. The same is true of an individual, as of a system. Not that the attainment of cosmic consciousness is absolutely impossible to a rich man, because a man may inherit riches and position and power, as in the case of Prince Siddhartha, the Lord Buddha; or he may have set in motion certain currents of desire for wealth, and later in life may change that desire, when naturally, the "business" he has created will follow the law which instigated it, and increasing wealth will result. But, let it be known, that Buddha renounced all his possessions, and there are many instances to-day of renunciation of worldly life and wealth, in order to attain to that supreme consciousness in which the illumined one possesses all that he desires, even though he have but one coat to his back. Let it not be thought that we mean to infer that God is partial to poverty, and that the rich man will be excluded from the attainment of the kingdom, merely because of his riches; but if riches be any man's aim, then assuredly he cannot "serve two masters" and it will not be possible for him to become illumined while in pursuit of worldly goods. Jesus said: "It is easier for a camel to go through the needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." It is now thoroughly established that the "Needle's Eye" was the name given to a certain narrow and difficult pass through which camels bearing heavy burdens, could not find room to pass, and Jesus sought to convey to his hearers the truth that persons bearing in their mental desires the load of many possessions, would hardly find room for the one supreme desire which would bring them into the kingdom (the possession of cosmic consciousness). But the most significant of the utterances of the illumined Nazarene is the one in which he said: "Except ye become as little children, ye can in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven." The possession of cosmic consciousness brings with it, invariably, the simplicity, the faith and _innocence_ of a little child. The child is pleased with natural pleasures, and does not know the worldly standard of valuation. And above all, the soul, while still attached to the physical body, is like a little child. The attainment of cosmic consciousness is possible only to one who has first "got acquainted with his soul"; when we are really soul-conscious we possess the innocence (not ignorance), of a little child, and we also possess a child's wisdom. We are, in other words, "as wise as the serpent and as harmless as the dove." Wisdom brings with it harmlessness. The truly wise person would not wilfully harm any living thing; wisdom knows no revenge; no "eye for an eye" philosophy; makes no demands. And what may be considered the second most significant remark of the Master _is_ this: "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation; neither shall they say Lo, here; or Lo, there, for Lo, the kingdom of heaven is within you." Jesus, although forced by the conventions of the time in which he taught to conform to the laws laid down by the scribes and Pharisees, influenced by the strict views of the Israelites, who honored the law laid down by Moses and the prophets, still possessed cosmic consciousness to such an extent that he knew the folly of judging others by outward appearance, and also of promising them cosmic consciousness in return for obedience to prescribed rules or commandments. When it would seem to his critics that he did not sufficiently emphasize the traditional laws, that he was seemingly making it too simple and too easy for people to live, they sought to trap him into a statement that would oppose the accepted commandments. But this Jesus steadfastly refused to do. "I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it," he said. Like all those who have experienced cosmic consciousness, his policy was one of construction, and not of destruction. Evolution accomplishes peacefully what revolution seeks to do by force. Jesus laid little stress upon the commandments as they stood. He neither sought to emphasize them, nor to criticise them. All that he said was: "A new commandment give I unto you: that ye love one another." All truly illumined minds have made love the basis of their teaching, well knowing that where true love reigns there can be no destruction. Love conquers fear--the arch-enemy of mankind. Love makes it impossible to harm the thing loved, and universal love would make it impossible, for one experiencing it, to consciously bring the slightest pain to any living thing. Therefore Jesus taught repeatedly the doctrine of love, and he made no new commandments other than this. It has been said that inasmuch as Jesus laid greater emphasis upon this one great need than had any previous inspired teacher, he deserves greater honor. Theologians whose purpose it is to promulgate the doctrine of Christianity as superior to others, use this argument in support of their contention that Jesus was the only true son of God. But this view will be recognized as prejudiced, and lacking in the very essentials taught and practiced by the Christ. In the light of Illumination, it will readily be perceived that all persons expressing any considerable degree of cosmic consciousness, have taught the same fundamental and simple truths, as witness the following: Do as you would be done by.--_Persian._ Do not that to a neighbor which you would take ill from him.--_Grecian_. What you would not wish done to yourself, do not unto others.--_Chinese_. One should seek for others the happiness one desires for oneself.--_Buddhist_. He sought for others the good he desired for himself. Let him pass on.--_Egyptian_. All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do you even so to them.--_Christian_. Let none of you treat his brother in a way he himself would dislike to be treated.--_Mohammedan_. The true rule in life is to guard and do by the things of others as they do by their own.--_Hindu_. The law imprinted on the hearts of all men is to love the members of society as themselves.--_Roman_. Whatsoever you do not wish your neighbor to do to you, do not unto him. This is the whole law. The rest is a mere exposition of it.--_Jewish_. While it is probable that Jesus gave no directions or methods of attainment, yet the records of his sayings give the clue to the character of his instruction to those of his students who were capable of understanding, particularly as shown in a recently discovered papyrus, authentically identified as belonging to the early Christians. This-papyrus was discovered by Egyptian explorers in 1904. Although the papyrus was more or less mutilated, the meaning is sufficiently clear to justify the translators in inserting certain words. However, we will here quote only such of the "sayings" as were decipherable, without having anything supplied by translators. Evidently having been asked when his kingdom should be realized on earth he answered: "When ye return to the state of innocence which existed before the fall" (i.e., when manifestation will be perceived in its illusory character, and the soul freed from the enchantment of the mortal consciousness). "I am come to end the sacrifices and if ye cease not from sacrificing, the wrath shall not cease from you." This evidently corresponds to his saying, "They who use the sword, shall perish by the sword." The conclusion is obvious that hate and destruction beget their kind, and that love is the only power that can prevent the continuation of destruction. This may with equal logic, be applied to the sacrifice of animal and bird life for food, as well as the sacrifices of blood which formed a part of ancient ritual. His disciples said unto him: "When will thou be manifest to us, and when shall we see thee?" He saith: "When ye shall be stripped and not be ashamed." The time is near at hand, when the body will not be regarded as something vile and unworthy; something of which to be ashamed and to keep covered, as if God's handiwork were vile. In fact, the function of sex, from the extreme of ancient sex worship to the present extreme of sex degradation, shall soon be established in its rightful place. It is not the purpose of this book to deal with this important subject, so we will say no more here. Nevertheless, this saying attributed to Jesus, the Christ, resurrected as it has been in this century, is timely. It is almost universally conceded that the time of the "Second Coming of Christ" is already at hand. Just what this second coming means, is interpreted differently by theologians, philosophers, scientists, poets and prophets, but there is a unanimous belief that the time is here and now. Those who have the comprehension to read the signs of the times, are cheerfully expectant of radical changes in our attitude toward the function of sex and the divinity of love. "When the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male as the female, neither male nor female--these things if ye do, the kingdom of My Father shall come." Again, the meaning of these words depends upon the degree of illumination of the person reading them. They mean the present inevitable equality of the sexes, when each individual will count not as a mere man or a mere woman, but as an important factor in the world's redemption. Or, it will appeal to a few as the promised time when every soul which has completed the circle, ended its karma, and claimed its god-hood, unites with the soul of its mate, the two blending into one perfect whole--the Father-Mother God of the New Dispensation. Again we find in these newly discovered papyri a phrase bearing upon this subject: To the question of Salome: "How long shall death reign?" The Lord answered: "As long as ye women give birth. For I am come to make an end to the works of the woman." Then Salome said to him: "Then have I done well that I have not given birth?" To this the Lord replied: "Eat of every herb, but of the bitter one eat not." When Salome asked when it shall be known what she asked, the Lord said: "When you tread under foot the covering of shame, and when two is made one, and the male with the female, neither male nor female." "How be it, he who longs to be rich is like a man who drinketh sea water: the more he drinketh the more thirsty he becomes, and never leaves off drinking till he perish." "Blessed is he who also fasts that he may feed the poor, for it is more blessed to give than to receive." "Let thy alms sweat in thy hand until thou knowest to whom thou givest." It is not probable that any one who reads these words will make the mistake of assuming that Jesus advised us to inquire into the character or the antecedents of the one on whom we are to bestow a gift. Neither are we expected to ascertain whether he belongs to our "lodge" or not. If you give alms as though to an inferior; if you assume a self-righteous mind; if you give for hope of reward; then withhold your gift. In fact, unless you can realize that you are giving as though to yourself, keep your gift. It will do neither you nor the one receiving it, any good whatsoever. "Good things must come. He is blessed through whom they come." This presages the coming of the kingdom of love on earth, as a foregone conclusion. Yet, those who lend themselves _consciously_, as _servants_ of the cause--helpers in the establishment of the new order--are blessed. "Love covereth a multitude of sins, so be not joyful save when you look upon your brother's countenance in love." "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath, for the greatest of crimes is this: if a man shall sadden his brother's spirit." "For our possessions are in heaven; therefore, sons of men, purchase unto yourselves by these transitory things which are not yours, _what is yours_, and shall not pass away." For the Lord has said in a mystery: "Unless ye make the right as the left; the left as the right; the top as the bottom; and the front as the backward, ye shall not know the kingdom of God." "Keep the flesh holy and the seal undented, that ye may receive eternal life." "If a man shall sadden his brother's spirit." This indeed is the greatest of all crimes, because out of man's inhumanity to man springs all the sin and sorrow of the world. "Unless ye make the right as the left; the top as the bottom; the front as the backward." The meaning should be clear enough and the words are worthy of the illumined mind of Jesus of Nazareth. The great sin is separation; segregation; "My and mine" as opposed to "Thee and thine." To the truly illumined one there can be no "mine," as distinct from another's. The sinner is no less my brother than is the saint. The beggar is as dear to me as is the rich man. Every man is a king. There are no "chosen of God" to the one who has entered cosmic consciousness. "For our possessions are in heaven. Use, therefore, the things of earth, while ye are living in the flesh (sons of men), in such a way and to such purpose that they will not enchain you in the maze of manifestation, and thereby require that you postpone your claim to immortality." This statement is distinct enough, as is also the one: "He who longs to be rich is like a man drinking sea water. The more he drinketh, the more thirsty he becomes and _never leaves off drinking until he perisheth_." The hypnotism of the external world is too well illustrated to need further comment. The man who enters upon the pursuit of worldly possessions; temporal power; personal ambition; thinking that when he shall have attained all these, then will he turn to the solution of the mystery of mysteries, finds himself caught in the trap of his desires, and he can not escape. He is under the spell of enchantment, wherein the unreal appears as real, and the real becomes the illusory. To sum up, the fragmentary accounts we have of the life and character of the man Jesus are conclusive proof that he had entered into full realization of cosmic consciousness. Like Lord Gautama, he appeared to his disciples after he had left the physical body, "glorified," as one who had taken on immortality. Nor was there ever, it would appear, any doubt in the mind of Jesus, of his right to godhood, while retaining, also, his self-consciousness. The intellectual superiority. The wonderful spiritual magnetism and attraction of his presence. The absolute, unwavering conviction of his mission, and of his immortality. The transfiguration, after his "temptation" and his prophetic vision. His great love and compassion for even his enemies. These are what made him indeed a Christ. The term "Christ" and the term "Buddha" are synonymous. They both mean one who has entered into his godhood. One who has attained to cosmic consciousness, leaving forever the limitations of the lower self. CHAPTER X PAUL OF TARSUS The system of worship known as Christianity owes its systematic foundation to Paul of Tarsus. Paul's sudden conversion from zealous persecution of the followers of Jesus of Nazareth to an equally zealous propaganda of the gospel of Light, offers a perfect example of the peculiar oncoming of cosmic consciousness. Paul evidently occupied a position of authority among the Jews and it is equally probable that he was near the same age as Jesus, as he is referred to as a "young man named Saul" in Bible accounts of the persecution of the early Christians. His illumination occurred shortly after the crucifixion, probably within two or three years. In Acts, chapter 8-9, we read: "And Saul was consenting unto his death (Stephen). And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea, and Samaria, except the apostles. "And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him. "As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and hailing men and women, committed them to prison. "And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings, and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest and desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound, unto Jerusalem. "And as he journeyed he came near unto Damascus, and suddenly there shone round about him a light from heaven. "And he fell to the earth and heard a voice saying unto him: 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?' "And he said: 'Who art thou, Lord?' And the Lord said: 'I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest; it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.' "And he trembling and astonished, said: 'Lord, what wilt thou have me do?' "And the Lord said unto him: 'Arise and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.' "And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice but seeing no man. "And Saul arose from the earth, and when his eyes were opened he saw no man; but they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. "And he was three days without sight and neither did eat nor drink. "And there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias, and to him said the Lord in a vision: 'Ananias;' and he said: 'Lord, behold, I am here.' And the Lord said unto him: 'Arise and go into the street called Straight, and enquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus; for behold, he prayeth. And hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in and putting his hand on him that he might receive his sight.' Then Ananias answered: 'Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done by thy saints at Jerusalem. And here he hath authority from the high priests to bind all that call on thy name.' But the Lord said unto him: 'Go thy way; for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and children of Israel. For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake.' "And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him, said: 'Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.' And immediately there fell from his eyes, as it had been scales; and he received sight forthwith, and arose and was baptized." Like all those who have entered cosmic consciousness, Paul sought the blessing of solitude, that he might readjust himself to his changed viewpoint, since he now saw things in the light of the larger consciousness. He says: "Immediately I conferred, not with flesh and blood; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned unto Damascus." The irresistible longing to get away from the sights and sounds of the external world, is one of the most characteristic phases of Illumination. It is only in order that they may take up the work of bringing to others this great blessing that those who have entered into the larger consciousness, eventually bring themselves to enter the life of the world. Thus, we find that Paul's great desire to bring the light to others, took him again to Damascus; and from the records we have of his utterances and his mode of living, we may gather some idea of the great change which Illumination made in him. Certain statements, which characterize all who possess cosmic consciousness, in any degree of fullness, emanate from the converted Paul. He says: "I must needs glory though it is not expedient, but I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord--for if I should desire to glory I shall not be foolish; for I shall speak the truth; but I forbear, lest any man should account of me above that which he seeth me to be, or heareth from me. And by reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations--wherefore that I should not be exalted overmuch, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me." One of the characteristics of the Illumined is a deep humility. This is not in any sense an abasement of the self; not in any sense a feeling that it is necessary to "bow down and worship;" nor yet a tinge of that nameless fear, which the carnal-minded self feels in the presence of exalted beings. It is a humility born of the desire to make every one know and feel a sense of kinship with him; he hesitates to reveal all that has been revealed to him, lest those who hear his words may think he is either "speaking foolishly," through egotism, or else that they may look upon him as a being superior, more exalted, than themselves. And a divine compassion and love for his fellow being characterizes the Illumined. Again, Paul wishes to make clear the fact that he is still living in the physical body; living the life of a body, and until liberated from the conditions that influence the external world, he is himself subject to the lesser consciousness, and he does not want them to expect more of the personal self, than that personal self is capable of, under the conditions in which he lives. He desires no personal exaltation, or praise, therefore he hesitates to speak fully of his own revelations, but prefers to teach by reference to the experiences of others. Nevertheless, he tries to make clear the fact that he is not merely preaching a "belief," which he has embraced because of doubt or fear, or because it is a creed. Indeed, he is free from the "law" and is, therefore, not merely following a system, neither the old one which he has abandoned, nor a new one which he has accepted. He speaks from the "Lord," which is no other than the highest authority that man may know--namely, the authority that comes from the realization of his own imperishable godhood--the effect of cosmic consciousness. He says: "For I make known to you brethren, as touching the gospel as preached by me, that it is not after man. For neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Christ. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. But before faith came, we were kept inward under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. For ye are all sons of God through faith in Christ. For with freedom did Christ set us free." This we take to refer to his former adherence to, and belief in, the system of worship taught by the Jews, as a necessary and probably the only "way of salvation" acceptable to God. He wishes his hearers to understand that he is not bound by adherence to any creed; neither the old one, nor yet the new one, but that what he preached came from the light of cosmic consciousness, in which there is no law, nor sense of law. Cosmic consciousness gives to the illumined one a sense of freedom (Christ means cosmic consciousness, and not a personality). Cosmic consciousness confers, above all else, perhaps, a sense of freedom from every form of bondage. The duty and the obligations that bind the average person, are impossible to the cosmically conscious one. Not that he displays indifference toward the welfare and the rights of others. Far from that, he feels an added sense of responsibility for the irresponsible; an overwhelming compassion for the unfortunate, and a relationship greater than ever to mankind. But this sense of freedom causes him to do all _in love_, which he hitherto did because it was so "laid down in the law." Again St. Paul makes this plain: "The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance; against such as these there is no law--neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature." When we are armored with the "fruit of the spirit," we have no need for rules of conduct; for methods of salvation; or for any of the bonds that are necessary to the merely sense-conscious man. Plainly, Paul recognized the fact that systems of religion, of philosophy, of rules and ethics of intercourse, are necessary only so long as man remains on the sense-conscious plane. When Illumination comes, there comes with it absolute freedom. God does not want to be worshipped on bended knee; by rites and ceremonies; by obedience to commandments, but the undisciplined soul acquires power and poise through these exercises, and in time grows to the full stature of god-consciousness. Nor is intellectual greatness to be confounded with the godlike character of the one who has attained to Illumination. Elsewhere in these pages we have made the distinction between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge alone can never bring a soul into the path of Illumination. Wisdom will point the way, but love is the unerring guide to the very goal. St. Paul's expression of this fact is concise, and to the point. This observation alone, stamps him as one possessing a very high degree of realization of what cosmic consciousness is. "If any man thinketh that he is wise among you in this world, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God." The worldly wise man or woman asks "how much do I get?" The truly wise person cares nothing at all for possessions. He only asks "how much can I give?" And although we find in the marts of commercialism a contempt for the gullible, and the credulous; the trusting and the confiding, let it be known that the "smart" bargainer will indeed smart for his smartness, for in the light of cosmic consciousness, this alleged "wisdom" of men, appears as utter foolishness; wasted effort; a perversion of opportunity. Because "all these things shall pass away." Love alone is imperishable. Love alone is the savior of the human race, and whenever we fail to act from motives of love, we are disloyal to the light within us. Again says St. Paul: "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. "And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. "And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing. "_LOVE NEVER FAILETH_. "But whether there be prophecies they shall be done away; whether there be tongues they shall cease; whether there be knowledge it shall be done away. For we know in part and we prophecy in part, but when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away." It must be remembered that in the days of St. Paul the high priests and the prophets were accounted the wisest and most exalted persons in the community. The ability to prophecy presupposed a special favor of the God of the Jews. St. Paul's exposition of the changed viewpoint that comes to one who has entered into cosmic consciousness, was therefore aptly illustrated by his open avowal that there was a far greater power--a more exalted state of consciousness, than that of the gift of prophecy and of "knowing all mysteries;" that state of one in which love was the ruler, and in order that they might the more fully comprehend the simplicity, and yet the perfection, of this state of consciousness, he made clear the fact that no one truly who became "a new creature", as he characterized this change, ever exalted himself, or made high claims; or became exclusive, or "superior," or "holy," in the sense the latter word had been used. How, then, would they know when they had attained to this state of consciousness, of which he spoke, and which they but dimly understood? How might they know when they had found this great love that was to make them "a new creature"? First of all, they might know because: _LOVE NEVER FAILETH_. Love suffereth long and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself; is not puffed up, does not behave unseemly; seeketh not its own; is not provoked; taketh not account of evil; rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things; believeth all things; hopeth all things; endureth all things. In fact, _LOVE NEVER FAILETH_. Love is always a safe guide. No matter what may be said to the contrary; no matter how much suffering it entails; no matter how seemingly fruitless the sacrifice; or how ungrateful the results, _love_ never faileth. How can it fail when we "seek not our own," but only love for love's own sake, without regard to compensation or gratitude? St. Paul, with all who have expressed in any considerable degree this cosmic realization, seems to have expected a time, when cosmic consciousness should become so general, as to bring the kingdom of love upon earth. This corresponds to the Millenium, which has always been prophesied, and which the present era fulfills, in all the "signs of the times" that were to usher in The Dawn. Moreover, the idea that there shall come a time when death shall be overcome, is a persistent part of every prophecy, and of every religious cult. In these days we find that science is speculating upon the probability of discovering a specific for senile death, as well as for the final elimination of death from disease and accidents. Whether or not this is to be the manner of "overcoming the last enemy," the fact remains that the almost universally held idea of physical immortality has a basis in fact, which this postulate of science symbolizes. "For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortality must put on immortality, but when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: 'Death is swallowed up in victory.'" So said St. Paul, and his words show clearly that before his time there had been a prophecy and belief in the final triumph of love over death, not as an article of faith, but as a common knowledge. St. Paul speaks of the time when "we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump. "And then come to the end, when he shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have abolished all rule, all authority, and all power." Unquestionably, if all men on earth in the flesh and in the astral, were to come into the light of the cosmic consciousness, there would be no need for laws, for authority or power. The kingdom, which signifies the earth as a planet, would indeed be delivered to God, which means Love, and "Love never faileth." And while we admit that these words of St. Paul may be applied to individual attainment of cosmic consciousness, and not refer to an era of earth life, in which the fruits of this larger consciousness are to be gathered in the physical, yet we maintain that the argument for such an hypothesis is strong indeed. He says: "For the earnest expectation of creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God." For the term "sons of God" interpret "those who have attained cosmic consciousness," and we may readily parallel this with the many allusions to the earth's redemption, with which history is strewn. To "redeem" the earth is quite comparable with the idea of redeeming any part of the earth's surface--either as a nation, or as a tract of land--which is not yielding the best that it is capable of. In the cosmogony of the heavens, the planet earth may well be likened to a territory that has possibilities, but which needs cultivation; encouragement; work; to bring out its possibilities and make it a place of comfort and enlightenment. So we have been informed--and an understanding of deeper occultism will bear out the information--that this earth is being made a "fit habitation for the gods" (i.e., cosmically conscious beings, to whom love is the only authority necessary). Paul clearly alludes to the redemption of the body, as well as the continuance of the life of the soul, when he says: "For the creation was subject to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only so, but ourselves also, WHICH HAVE THE FIRST FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT, even we ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." St. Paul declared that even those who had glimpsed that wonderful Illumination (which have the first fruits of the spirit), are not free from the travail of the sense-conscious world, until such time as the cycle has been completed, and those who "are already in Christ, and then they that are Christ's at his coming," shall have made possible the perfected creation, and brought about the reign of love on earth. So that, when a sufficient number of souls shall have attained to this Illumination (cosmic consciousness), the "last enemy shall be overcome." That this present era gives promise of this hope, is evident. The attainment of cosmic consciousness brings with it immunity from reincarnation, as a necessity--as a law, but it does not provide against the coming of avatars--"sons of God," who are to "deliver Creation from the bondage of corruption." This also is clearly stated by Paul: "There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ made me free from the law of sin and death." There never is any doubt in the minds of those who have attained cosmic consciousness, that they are spiritual beings and immortal--free from the law of karma; neither is there any thought of evil or of condemnation. They know that men are gods in embryo and that until they have been born into the cosmic consciousness--the realization of their _reality as spirit_, they must travail; but this sense-conscious state is not to be condemned any more than the child is to be condemned because it has not yet grown to adultship. The advice of St. Paul himself was simple enough and straight-forward enough. It was devoid of all subtleties; free from complexity; free from fear, or haste, or doubt, or strife, while confidently awaiting the universal attainment of Illumination. To the question as to what path to follow; what should be done to gain this great boon, if the law of the ancient Hebrews was not to be followed in its literal significance, Paul said: "Whatsoever things are honest; whatsoever things are true; whatsoever things are just; whatsoever things are pure; whatsoever things are lovely; whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, _THINK ON THESE THINGS_." Which is to say, do not seek the letter of the way of Illumination. Do not look for forms and ceremonies and rules and systems, but look for that which is clean and pure and good wherever it may be found. In St. Paul we have fulfilled all the points that characterize those who have been blessed with the great Illumination. His broad outlook upon humanity, which refused to see evil or to condemn where formerly he had been noted for his zeal in bringing to condemnation all whom he believed to be heretics; his conviction of immortality; his humility, as far as personal aggrandizement was concerned; the great light in which was revealed to him the truth; the annihilation of the idea of sin and death; the realization that systems and laws and methods of worship and giving of alms and all the by-paths which formerly he had deemed necessary, were as naught compared to the great illuminating, all-embracing power of Love--the Savior whose kingdom should sometime be established upon earth--the time being when cosmic consciousness should be general. CHAPTER XI MOHAMMED Despite the fact that the followers of Mohammed, the prophet, are among the most fanatical and prejudiced of all religious sects, Mohammed himself was unquestionably among the Illumined Ones of earth, and had attained and retained a high degree of cosmic consciousness. The wars; the persecutions; the horrors that have been committed in the name of Islam, are perhaps a little more atrocious than any in history although the unspeakable cruelties of the Inquisition would seem to have no parallel. The religion of Persia, wrongly alluded to as "fire-worship," marks Zoroaster as among the Illuminati, but as the present volume is concerned, in the religious aspect of it, only with those cases of Illumination which we are classifying among the present great religious systems, we cite the case of Mohammed, the Arab, as one clearly establishing the characteristic points of Illumination. When Mohammed was born, in the early part of the fifth century, the condition of his countrymen was primitive in the extreme. The most powerful force among them was tribal or clan loyalty, and a corresponding hatred of, and readiness to make war with, opposing clans. Although at the time of Mohammed's birth, Christianity had made great headway in different parts of the old world, it had made very little impress upon the Arabs. They worshipped their tribal gods, and there are traces of a belief in a supreme God (Allah ta-ala), but they were not as a race inclined to a deeply religious sentiment. One and all, whether given to superstitions or denying a belief in Allah, they dreaded the dark after-life and although the different tribes made their yearly pilgrimages to Mecca, and faithfully kissed the stone that had fallen from heaven in the days of Adam, the inspiration of their ancient prophets had long since died, and a new prophet was expected and looked for. The yearly pilgrimage to Mecca, which was at once the center of trade and the goal of the religious enthusiast, was observed by all the tribes of Arabia, but it is a question whether the pilgrimage was not more often made in a holiday spirit than in that of the devotee to the _Kaabeh,_ the most sacred temple in all Arabia. Indeed, it is agreed by all commentators, that the ancient Arab, "In the Time of Ignorance," before the coming of Mohammed, knew little and cared less about those spiritual qualities that look beyond the physical; not questioning, as did Mohammed, what lies beyond this vale of strife, whose only exit is the dark and inscrutable face of death. Besides the tribal gods, individual households had their special Penates, to whom was due the first and the last salam of the returning or out-going host. But in spite of all this superstitious apparatus, the Arabs were never a religious people. In the old days, as now, they were reckless, skeptical, materialistic. They had their gods and their divining arrows, but they were ready to demolish both if the responses proved contrary to their wishes. A great majority believed in no future life, nor in a reckoning day of good and evil. Such, then, was the condition of thought among the various tribes when Mohammed was born. It was not, however, until he was past forty years of age, that the revelations came to him, and although it was some time later that these were set down, together with his admonitions and counsel to his followers, it is believed that they are for the most part well authenticated, as the Koran was compiled during Mohammed's lifetime, and thus, in the original, doubtless represents an authentic account of Mohammed's experiences. It is related that Mohammed's father died before his son's birth and his mother six years later. Thus Mohammed was left to the care of his grandfather, the virtual chief of Mecca. The venerable chief lived but two years and Mohammed, who was a great favorite with his grandfather, became the special charge of his uncle, Aboo-Talib, whose devotion never wavered, even during the trying later years, when Mohammed's persecutions caused the uncle untold hardships and trials. At an early age Mohammed took up the life of a sheep herder, caring for the herds of his kinsmen. This step became necessary because the once princely fortune of his noble ancestors had dwindled to almost the extreme of poverty, but although the occupation of sheep herder was despised by the tribes, it is said that Mohammed himself in later life often alluded to his early calling as the time when "God called him." At the age of twenty-five he took up the more desirable post of camel driver, and was taken into the employ of a wealthy kinswoman, Khadeejeh, whom he afterwards married, although she was fifteen years his senior--a disparity in age which means far more in the East, where physical charm and beauty are the only requisites for a wife, than it does in the West where men look more to the mental endowments of a wife than to the fleeting charm of youth. It is also to Mohammed's credit that his devotion to his first wife never wavered to the day of her death and, indeed, as long as he himself lived he spoke with reverence and deep affection of Khadeejeh. We learn that the next fifteen years were lived in the usual manner of a man of his station. Khadeejeh brought him wealth and this gave him the necessary time and ease in which to meditate, and the never-varying devotion and trust of his faithful wife brought him repose and the power to aid his impoverished uncle, and to be regarded among the tribes as a man of influence. His simple, unostentatious, and even ascetic life during these years was noted. He was known as a man of extremely refined tastes and sensitive though not querulous nature. A commentator says of him: "His constitution was extremely delicate. He was nervously afraid of bodily pain; he would sob and roar under it. Eminently unpractical in the common things of life, he was gifted with mighty powers of imagination, elevation of mind, delicacy and refinement of feeling. "He is more modest than a virgin behind her curtain," it has been said of him. "He was most indulgent to his inferiors and would not allow his awkward little page to be scolded, whatever he did. He was most affectionate toward his family. He was very fond of children, and would stop them in the streets and pat their little cheeks. He never struck anyone in his life. The worst expression he ever made use of in conversation was: 'What has come to him--may his forehead be darkened with mud.' "When asked to curse some one he replied: 'I have not been sent to curse, but to be a mercy to mankind.' He visited the sick, followed any bier he met, accepted the invitation of a slave to dinner, mended his own clothes, milked his goats and waited upon himself. "He never withdrew his hand out of another's palm, and turned not before the other had turned. "He was the most faithful protector of those he protected, the sweetest and most agreeable in conversation; those who saw him were suddenly filled with reverence; those who came to him, loved him. They who described him would say: 'I have never seen his like, either before or after.' "He was, however, very nervous and restless withal, often low-spirited, downcast as to heart and eyes. Yet he would at times suddenly break through these broodings, become gay, talkative, jocular, chiefly among his own." This picture corresponds with the temperament which is alluded to as the "artistic," or "psychic" temperament, and allowing that in these days there is much posing and pretense, we still must admit that the quality known as "temperament" is a psychological study suggesting a stage of development hitherto unclassified. It is said also, that in his youth Mohammed was subject to attacks of catalepsy, evidencing an organism peculiarly "psychic." It is evident that Mohammed regarded himself as one having a mission upon earth, even before he had received the revelations which announced him as a prophet chosen of Allah, for he long brooded over the things of the spirit, and although he had not, up to his fortieth year, openly protested against the fetish worship of the Kureysh, yet he was regarded as one who had a different idea of worship from that of the men with whom he came in contact. Gradually, he became more and more inclined to solitude, and made frequent excursions into the hills, and in his solitary wanderings, he suffered agonies of doubt and self distrust, fearing lest he be self-deceived, and again, lest he be indeed called to become a prophet of God and fail in his mission. Here in a cave, the revelation came. Mohammed had spent nights and days in fasting and prayer beseeching God for some sign, some word that would settle his doubts and agonies of distrust and longing for an answer to life's riddle. It is related that suddenly during the watches of the night, Mohammed awoke to find his solitary cave filled with a great and wondrous light out of which issued a voice saying: "Cry, cry aloud." "What shall I cry?" he answers, and the voice answered: "Cry in the name of thy Lord who hath created; He hath created man from a clot of blood. Cry--and thy Lord is the most bountiful, who hath taught by the pen; He hath taught man that which he knew not." It is reported that almost immediately, Mohammed felt his intelligence illuminated with the light of spiritual understanding, and all that had previously vexed his spirit with doubt and non-comprehension, was clear as crystal to his understanding. Nevertheless, this feeling of assurance did not remain with him at that time, definitely, for we are told that "Mohammed arose trembling and went to Khadeejeh and told her what he had seen and heard; and she did her woman's part and believed in him and soothed his terror and bade him hope for the future. Yet he could not believe in himself. Was he not perhaps, mad? or possessed by a devil? Were these voices of a truth from God? And so he went again on the solitary wanderings, hearing strange sounds, and thinking them at one time the testimony of heaven and at another the temptings of Satan, or the ravings of madness. Doubting, wondering, hoping, he had fain put an end to a life which had become intolerable in its changings from the hope of heaven to the hell of despair, when he again heard the voice: 'Thou art the messenger of God and I am Gabriel.' Conviction at length seized hold upon him; he was indeed to bring a message of good tidings to the Arabs, the message of God through His angel Gabriel. He went back to his faithful wife exhausted in mind and body, but with his doubts laid at rest." With the history of the spread of Mohammed's message we are not concerned in this volume. The fact that his own nearest of kin, those of his own household, believed in his divine mission, and held to him with unwavering faith during the many years of persecution that followed, is proof that Mohammed was indeed a man who had attained Illumination. If the condition of woman did not rise to the heights which we have a right to expect of the cosmic conscious man of the future, we must remember that eastern traditions have ever given woman an inferior place, and for the matter of that, St. Paul himself seems to have shared the then general belief in the inferiority of the female. It is undeniable that Mohammed's domestic relations were of the most agreeable character; his kindness and consideration were without parallel; his harem was made up for the most part of women who were refused and scorned by other men; widows of his friends. And the fact that the prophet was a man of the most abstemious habits argues the claim that compassion and kindness was the motive in most instances where he took to himself another and yet another wife. However, the points which we are here dealing with, are those which directly relate to Mohammed's unquestioned illumination and the spirit of his utterances as contained in the Ku-ran, corroborate the experience of Buddha, of Jesus, and of all whose illumination has resulted in the establishment of a religious system. Mohammed taught, first of all, the fact of the one God. "There is no God but Allah," was his cry, and, following the example, or at least paralleling the example of Jesus, he "destroyed their idols" and substituted the worship of one God, in place of the tribal deities, which were a constant source of disputation among the clans. Compare the following, which is one of the five daily prayers of the faithful Muslim, with the Lord's prayer as used in Christian theology. "In the name of God, the compassionate--the merciful. Praise be to God, the Lord of the worlds, The compassionate, the merciful. The king of the day of judgment. Thee do we worship and of Thee do we beg assistance. Guide us in the right way, The way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious, Not of those with whom Thou art wroth, nor of the erring." Mohammed never tired of telling his disciples and followers that God was "The Very-Forgiving." Among the many and sometimes strangely varied attributes of God (The Absolute), we find this characteristic most strongly and persistently dwelt upon--the ever ready forgiveness and mercifulness of God. Every _soorah_ of the _Kur-an_ begins with the words: "In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful," but, even as Jesus laid persistent emphasis upon the _love_ of God, and yet up to very recent times, Christianity taught the _fear and wrath_ of God, losing sight of the one great and important fact that _God is love_, and that _love is God_, so the Muslims overlooked the _real_ message, and the greatness and the power and the fearfulness of God, is the incentive of the followers of the Illumined Mohammed. The following extracts from the Kur-an are almost identical with many passages in the Holy Scriptures of the Christian, and are comparable with the sayings of the Lord Buddha. "God. There is no God but He, the ever-living, the ever-subsisting. Slumber seizeth Him not nor sleep. To Him belongeth whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth. Who is he that shall intercede with Him, save by His permission?" The Muslim is a fatalist, but this may be due less to the teachings of the prophet than to the peculiar quality of the Arab nature, which makes him stake everything, even his own liberty upon the cast of a die. The leading doctrine of the all-powerfulness of God seems to warrant the belief in fatalism--belief which offers a stumbling block to all theologians, all philosophers, all thinkers. If God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, how and where and in what manner can be explained the necessity of individual effort? This problem is not at all clear to the western mind, and it is equally obscure to that of the East. It is said of Mohammed that when asked concerning the doctrine of "fatalism" he would show more anger than at any other question that could be put to him. He found it impossible to explain that while all knowledge was God's, yet the individual was responsible for his own salvation, by virtue of his good deeds and words. Nevertheless, it is not unlikely that Mohammed possessed the key to this seeming riddle; but how could it be possible to speak in a language which was totally incomprehensible to them of this knowledge--the language of cosmic consciousness? Like Jesus, who said: "Many things I have to tell you, but you can not bear (understand) them now," so, we may well believe that Mohammed was hard-pressed to find language comprehensible to his followers, in which to explain the all-knowingness and all-powerfulness of God, and at the same time, not have them fall into the error of the _fatal_ doctrine of fatalism. But throughout all his teachings Mohammed's chief concern seemed to be to draw his people away from their worship of idols, and to this end he laid constant and repeated emphasis upon the one-ness of God; the all-ness, the completeness of the one God; always adding "_the Compassionate_, the Loving." This constant allusion to the all-ness of God is in line with all who have attained to cosmic consciousness. Nothing more impresses the illumined mind, than the fact that the universe is One--uni--(one)--verse--(song)--one glorious harmony when taken in its entirety, but when broken up and segregated, and set at variance, we find discord, even as the score of a grand operatic composition when played in unison makes perfect harmony but when incomplete, is nerve-racking. Like all inspired teachers, Mohammed taught the end of the world of sense, and the coming of the day of judgment, and the final reign of peace and love. This may, of course, be interpreted literally, and applied to a life other than that which is to be lived on this planet, but it may also with equal logic be assumed that Mohammed foresaw the dawn of cosmic consciousness as a race-endowment, belonging to the inheritors of this sphere called earth. In either event the ultimate is the same, whether the one who suffers and attains, comes into his own in some plane or place in the heavens, or whether he becomes at-one with God, The Absolute Love and Power of the spheres, and "inherits the earth," in the days of the on-coming higher degree of consciousness, which we are here considering. That Mohammed realized the nothingness of form and ritual, except it be accompanied by sincerity and understanding, is evident in the following: "Your turning your faces _in prayer_, towards the East and the West, is not piety; but the pious is he who believeth in God, and the last day, and in the angels and in the Scripture; and the prophets, and who giveth money notwithstanding his love of it to relations and orphans, and to the needy and the son of the road, and to the askers for the _freeing of slaves_; and who performeth prayer and giveth the alms, and those who perform their covenant when they covenant; and the patient in adversity and affliction and the time of violence. These are they who have been true; and these are they who fear God." Parallel with the doctrine taught by Buddha, and Jesus, is the advice to overcome evil with good. In our modern metaphysical language, we must dissolve the vibrations of hate, by the power of love, instead of opposing hate with hate, war with war, revenge with revenge. Mohammed expressed this doctrine of non-resistance thus: "Turn away evil by that which is better; and lo, he, between whom and thyself was enmity, shall become as though he were a warm friend." "But none is endowed with this, except those who have been patient and none is endowed with it, except he who is greatly favored." Mohammed meant by these words "he who is greatly favored," to explain that in order to see the wisdom and the glory of such conduct, one must have attained to spiritual consciousness. This was especially a new doctrine to the people to whom he was preaching, because it was considered cowardice to fail to resent a blow. Pride of family and birth was the strongest trait in the Arab nature. In furtherance of this doing good to others, we find these words: "If ye are greeted with a greeting, then greet ye with a better greeting, or at least return it; verily. God taketh count of these things. If there be any under a difficulty wait until it be easy; but if ye remit it as alms, it will be better for you." Mohammed here referred to debtors and creditors; as he was talking to traders, merchants, men who were constantly buying and selling, this admonition was in line with his teaching, which was to "do unto others that which you would that they do unto you." In further compliance with his doctrine of doing good for good's sake Mohammed said: "If ye manifest alms, good will it be; but if ye conceal them and give them to the poor, it will be better for you; and it will expiate some of your sins." Alms-giving, as an ostentatious display among church members, was here given its rightful place. It is well and good to give openly to organizations, but it is better to give to individuals who need it, secretly and quietly to give, without hope, or expectation, or desire for thanks, or for reward, to give for the love of giving, for the sole wish to make others happy. This desire to bestow upon others the happiness which has come to them, is a characteristic of the cosmic conscious man or woman. It is comforting to know that Mohammed, like Buddha and The Man of Sorrows; and like Sri Ramakrishna, the saint of India, at length attained unto that peaceful calm that comes to one who has found the way of Illumination. It is doubtless impossible for the merely sense-conscious person to form any adequate idea of the inward urge; the agony of doubts and questionings; the imperative necessity such a one feels, to _KNOW_. The sense-conscious person reads of the lives of these men and wonders why they could not be happy with the things of the world. The temptation that we are told came to Jesus in the garden, is typical of the state of transition from sense-consciousness to cosmic consciousness. The sense-conscious person regards the _things of the senses_ as important. He is actuated by ambition or self-seeking or by love of physical comfort or by physical activity, to _obtain_ the possessions of sense. To such as these, the agonies of mind; the physical hardships; the ever-ready forgiveness and the desire for peace and love of the Illuminate seem almost weaknesses. Therefore, they can not fully comprehend the satisfaction which comes to the one who has come into a realization of illumination, through the years of mental tribulation such as that endured by Mohammed and Jesus and Buddha. We are told that the prophet repeatedly refuted the suggestion of his adoring followers that he was God himself come to earth. "It is wonderful," says one of his commentators, "with his temptations, how great a humility was ever is, how little he assumed of all the godlike attributes men forced upon him. His whole life is one long argument for his loyalty to truth. He had but one answer for his worshippers, 'I am no more than a man; I am only human.' * * * He was sublimely confident of this single attribute that he was the messenger of the Lord of the daybreak, and that the words he spake came verily from him. He was fully persuaded that God had sent him to do a great work among his people in Arabia. Nervous to the verge of madness, subject to hysteria, given to wild dreaming in solitary places, his was a temperament that easily lends itself to religious enthusiasm." While it may be argued that Mohammed did not possess cosmic consciousness in the degree of fullness which we find in the life of St. Paul, for example, we must take into consideration the temperament of the Arab, and the conditions under which he labored. But that he had attained a high degree of Illumination is beyond dispute. This fact is evidenced by the following salient points characteristic of cosmic consciousness: A fine sensitive, highly-strung organization; a deep and serious thoughtfulness, especially regarding the realities of life; an indifference to the call of personal ambition; love of solitude and the mental urge that demands to know the answer to life's riddle. Following the time of illumination on Mount Hara we find Mohammed possessing a conviction of the truth of immortality and the goodness of God; we find him also with a wonderful power to draw people to him in loving service; and the irresistible desire to bring to his people the message of immortal life, and the necessity to look more to spiritual things than to the things of the flesh. Added to this, we find Mohammed changed from a shrinking, sensitive youth, given to much reflection and silent meditation, into a man with perfect confidence in his own mission and in his ultimate victory. CHAPTER XII EMANUEL SWEDENBORG While the Swedenborgians, as a religious sect, are not numerically sufficient to be reckoned among the world's great religions, it is yet a fact that the followers of the great Swedish seer and scientist hold a prominent place among the innumerable sects which the beginning of this century finds flourishing. Swedenborg was born in Stockholm, in January, 1688, and lived to the advanced age of eighty-four years. Swedenborg was well born; he was the son of a bishop of the Swedish church, and during his lifetime held many positions of honor. He was a friend and adviser of the king, and his expert knowledge of mining engineering gave him a place among the scientists of his age. He was a voluminous writer, his early work being confined to the phases of materialistic science, notably on mines and metals, and later upon man, in his physiological aspect. His "De Cerebro and Psychologia Rationales," published in his fifty-seventh year, showed a different Swedenborg from the one to whom his colleagues were accustomed to refer with much respect. This book dealt with man, not as a product of brute creation, but as an evolutionary creature, having at least a possibility of divine origin. It is, however, his "Arcana Coelestia" upon which "The Church of the New Jerusalem" is founded; and it is this work which caused Swedenborg's friends and colleagues to determine that he had become insane. It is, in fact, only within very recent years, that the so-called scientific world has deigned to regard Swedenborg's revelations with any degree of serious and respectful attention. Swedenborg's Illumination was not, like that of so many others, who have founded a new religion, a sudden influx of spiritual consciousness, but rather a gradual leading up to the inevitable goal, by virtue of serious thought, deep study, and a high order of mentality. But that the Swedish seer received, in full measure, the blessing of cosmic consciousness, is beyond doubt. Swedenborg's extremely simple habits of life; his freedom from any desire for display, or for those social advantages into which he was born; his gentleness and unassuming manner, of which much is written by his followers, all point to him as one upon whom the blessing might readily descend. Swedenborg was a vegetarian, but this seems not to be a necessary characteristic of those possessing illumination, although, when cosmic consciousness shall have become almost general, vegetarianism must inevitably come with it, as animal life will disappear from the earth. Swedenborg, like many others who have perceived the cosmic light, evidently believed that he had been specially selected and consecrated for the work of the new church. That is, he took his illumination, not as an initiation into the higher degrees of cosmic truth, but as a special and personal revelation. This view characterizes those who founded a new, or a reformed religious system, while as a matter of truth, the light that comes is a part of the cosmic plan, and not, as Swedenborg and others imagine, as a personal revelation. However, Swedenborg considered himself a direct instrument in the hands of God, and God is alluded to as a personality. He believed that his great mission was to disclose the true nature of the Bible, and to prove that it was actually the inspired word of God, having an esoteric meaning, which has wrongly been interpreted to apply to the creation of a material world, and to its history and its people, but that when understood, it explains clearly, the nature of God, and the nature of man, and their relation to each other. It should be remembered that at the time Swedenborg wrote his theological works, the church had fallen into rank materialism and superstition. That Swedenborg should have received his illumination, or revelation, direct from the Lord, only serves to prove that the mortal consciousness clothes the revelation with whatever personality appeals to it, as having authority. Thus, the angel Gabriel was the dictator in the case of Mohammed, and the "Blessed Mother" of the Hindu reveals to them the vision of _mukti_. Swedenborg says of his vision: "God appeared to me and said, 'I am the Lord God, the Creator and Redeemer of the world. I have chosen thee to unfold the spiritual sense of the Holy Scriptures. I will myself dictate to thee what thou shalt write.'" In "The True Christian Religion," published shortly before his death he says: "Since the Lord can not manifest Himself in person as has been shown, and yet He has foretold that He would come and establish a new church, which is the New Jerusalem, it follows that He is to do it, by means of a man, who is able not only to receive the doctrines of this church with his understanding, but also to publish them by the press. That the Lord has manifested Himself before me, His servant, and sent me on this office, and that, after this, He opened the sight of my spirit, and thus let me into the spiritual world, and gave me to see the heavens and the hells and also to speak with spirits and angels, and this now continually for many years, I testify in truth; and also that, from the first day of that call, I have not received anything that pertains to the doctrines of that church from my angel, but from the Lord alone, while I read the Word." It is stated with great positiveness by Swedenborg's followers, and indeed, apparently by the seer himself, if we may take as authoritative, the translations of his works, that the revelations accorded to him covered a period of many years, whereas, we find in most instances of cosmic consciousness, the illumined ones have alluded to some specific time, as the great event, even while claiming that the effect of this illumination remains indefinitely--in fact, forms a part of a wider area of consciousness which is ever increasing. But when we take the numerous instances of revelations, in which the devout ones firmly believe that they and they alone have been accorded the vision, we must realize that this phenomenon is impersonal, looked at as a favor to any one human being. By that we mean that Illumination comes to every soul who has earned it, just as mathematically as the sun seems to set, after the earth has made its hourly journey. Perhaps this comparison is not as clear as to say: when the normal child has grown to manhood or womanhood, his consciousness has widened, beyond that of the infant; not excluding that of the infant but inclusive of all hitherto acquired knowledge. Without in any degree lessening the importance and the verity of Swedenborg's visions, it may be assumed that his record of these visions and their meaning has partaken more or less of the limitations of mortal mind. Spiritual consciousness can not be set down in terms of sense. The external world symbolizes spiritual truths; each interpreter must of necessity weave into his interpretation and attempt at finite expression of these truths, something of his own mortal consciousness; and this "mortal mind" consciousness is bound to partake of the time and age, and conditions of environment of the person who has experienced the revelation. Making due allowance, therefore, for the impossibility of exact expression of any spiritual illumination, we find in the revelation of Swedenborg exactly what we find in all who have attained to cosmic consciousness, namely, the absolute, confidential assurance of immortal life: the conviction that creation is under divine love and wisdom, administered by Cosmic Law and order, or Justice, and the final "redemption" (i.e., evolution), of all men. In his "Conjugal Love," Swedenborg touches upon the premise which we declare, as the foundation of all cosmic consciousness, namely the attainment of spiritual union with the "mate" which we believe to be inseparable from all creation; the reunited principle which we see expressed in the male and female, whether in plant, bird, animal, man, or angel; the "twain made one" which Jesus declared would be the sign manual of the coming of his kingdom; that is, the coming of cosmic consciousness--the kingdom of pure and perfect love upon earth as it is in the heavens. In Corinthians (11: 12) we read: "For as the woman is of the man so is the man also of the woman; for the woman is not without the man, nor the man without the woman _in the Lord_." Which is to say, that in the attainment of cosmic consciousness (_in the Lord_), the "twain are made one," and immortality (i.e., immunity from reincarnation) is gained, because of this union. God is a bi-sexual Being. This fact is evidenced throughout all creation. To attain to immortality is to become as God. In this day and age of the world we have come into a realization of the Father-Mother idea of godhood, clearly and literally signifying the coming consciousness which is bi-sexual; male and female; perfect counterparts, or complements and through which alone, this earth can be made a "fit dwelling place for gods." This, too, is the message of the great seer Swedenborg, as it relates to love, as it is, when rightly understood and interpreted, of all who have felt the blessing of perfection, as exemplified in Illumination. The fundamental points of Swedenborg's doctrine agree with those of all other Illumined ones, who have founded a system of worship; a "Way of Illumination" it may be called; or in whose name such systems have been formed. That is, he testified to: A conviction of immortality; A realization of absolute justice, whereby all souls shall finally come into cosmic consciousness. An actual time when Christ (the cosmic illumination) shall come to earth. A great and abiding love for and patience with the frailties of his sense-conscious fellow-beings; A transcendent desire to bestow upon all men, the blessing of cosmic consciousness. Few if any, have ever attained a full and complete realization of cosmic consciousness and remained in the physical body. Those who have attained and retained the highest degree of this glimpse of the Paradise of the gods, find it practically impossible to describe or explain the sensations experienced, even though they are more convinced of the truth and the reality of this realm than of anything in the merely sense-conscious life. Lastly, let us not lose sight of the all-important fact that no one system, creed, philosophy, or way of Illumination will answer for all types and degrees of men. "All things work together for good" to those who have the keenness of vision which precedes the full attainment of cosmic consciousness, as well as to those who have grasped its full significance. The characteristic evidence of the potentiality of the present era of the world, is preeminently that of a desire for unity. This desire is expressed in all the avenues of external life; its inner meaning is obscured by commercialism and self-interest, as in trusts and labor unions, but it is there nevertheless--the symbol of the inner urge toward unity in consciousness. It is found in efforts at Communism, and in allied reform movements. It is particularly evident in the breaking down of church prejudices. In these days a Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi find it not only expedient but mutually helpful, to unite in the work of municipal reform; in the abolition of child labor; in all things that will bring a better state of existence into daily human life. The business man uses the phrase "let us get together on this" without knowing that he is expressing in terms of sense-consciousness, the urge of his own and his fellow beings' inner mind, which senses the fact of our unescapable Brotherhood. All religious systems then, are good, as are all systems of philosophy. They are good because they are an attempt at bringing into the perspective of the mortal mind the reality of the soul and the soul life; the rule of the spiritually conscious ego over the physical body in order that we may now, in our present incarnation, claim immortality. CHAPTER XIII MODERN EXAMPLES OF INTELLECTUAL COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS: EMERSON; TOLSTOI; BALZAC Passing over the ancient philosophers, Aristotle, Albertus Magnus, Plotinus, Marcus Aurelius, Pascal, Socrates, Plato, Aspasia, and others, all of whom had glimpsed, if not fully attained, cosmic consciousness, we come to a consideration of those cases in our own day and age, in which this superior consciousness has found expression through intellectual rather than through religious channels. Of these latter, no more illustrious example can be cited than that of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the sage of Concord. Emerson's nature was essentially religious, but his religion was not of the emotional quality so often found among enthusiasts, and which is almost always openly expressed when this religious enthusiasm is not balanced by intellectuality. Analysis is frequently a foe to inspiration, but there are fare instances where the intellect is of such a penetrating and extraordinary quality that it carries the power of analysis into the unseen; in fact what we habitually term the unseen is a part of the visible to this type of mind. True intellect is a natural inheritance, a karmic attribute. The spurious kind is the result of education, and it invariably has its limitations. It stops short of the finer vibrations of consciousness and denies the reality of the inner life of man--which inner life constitutes the _real_ to the character of intellect that penetrates beyond _maya_. Of such a quality of intellect is that exemplified in Emerson. No mere tabulator of facts was he, but a dissector of the causes back of all the manifestation which he observed and studied and classified with the mental power of a god. Nor is there lacking ample proof that Emerson experienced the phenomenon of the suddenness of cosmic consciousness--a degree of which he seems to have possessed from earliest youth. In his essay on Nature, we find these words: "Crossing a bare common in snow puddles at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear." Emerson here alluded to a feeling of fear, which seems to have been experienced during a certain stage by many of those who have entered into cosmic consciousness. This fear is doubtless due to the presence in the human organism of what we may term the "animal instinct," which is an inheritance of the physical body. This same peculiar phenomenon oppresses almost everyone when coming into contact with a new and hitherto untried force. A certain lady, who relates her experience in entering into the cosmic conscious state, says: "A certain part of me was unafraid, certain, secure and content, at the same time my mortal consciousness felt an almost overwhelming sense of fear." Continuing, Emerson says: "All mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God." Emerson's powerful intellect would naturally describe such an experience in intellectual terms rather than, as in the instances heretofore recorded, in religious phraseology, but it must not be inferred that Emerson was less religious, in the true sense, than was Mohammed or St. Paul. Emerson lived in an age when orthodoxy flourished, and he and his associates of the Transcendentalist cult, were regarded as non-religious, if not actually heretical. Therefore, it is that Emerson's keen intellect was brought to bear upon everything he encountered, not only in his own intimate experience but also in all that he read and heard, lest he be trapped into committing the error which he saw all about him, namely, of mistaking an accepted viewpoint as an article of actual faith. His way to the Great Light lay through the jungle of the mind, but he found the path clear and plain and he left a torchlight along the way. Emerson fully recognized the illusory character of external life, and the eternal verity of the soul, as witness: "If the red slayer thinks he slays, Or if the slain thinks he is slain, They know not well, the subtle ways, I keep and pass and turn again." Horrible as is war, because of the spirit of hate and destruction it embodies and keeps alive, yet the fact remains that man in his soul knows that he can neither slay nor be slain by the mere act of destroying the physical shell called the body. It is inconceivable that human beings would lend themselves to warfare, if they did not know, as a part of that area of supra-consciousness, that there is a _something_ over which bullets have no power. This fact, regarded as a more or less vague _belief_ to the majority, becomes incontrovertible fact to the person who has entered cosmic consciousness. His view is reversed, and where he formerly looked from the sense-conscious plane forward into a _possible_ spiritual plane, he now gazes back over the path from the spiritual heights and sees the winding road that led upward to the elevation, much as a traveller on the mountain top looks back and for the first time sees all of the devious trail over which he has, climbed to his present vantage point. During the journey there had been many times when he could only see the next step ahead, and nothing but his faith in the assurance of his fellow men who had attained the summit of that mountain, could ever have sustained him through the perils of the climb, but once on the heights, his backward view takes in the details of the journey and sees not "through a glass darkly," but in the clear light of achievement. Such is the effect of cosmic consciousness to the one who has seen the light. "One of the benefits of a college education," says Emerson, "is to show the boy its little avail." Does this imply that an unlettered mind is desirable? Not necessarily, but there is a phase of intellectual culture that is detrimental while it lasts. It is as though one were to choke up a perfectly flowing stream which yielded the moisture to fertile lands, by filling the bed of the stream with rocks and sticks. The flow of the spiritual currents becomes clogged by the activities of the mind in its acquisition of mere knowledge, and before that knowledge has been turned into wisdom. The same truth is expressed in the aphorism "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." It is dangerous because it chains the mind to the external things of life, whereas the totally unlettered (we do not use the term ignorant here) person will, if he have his heart filled with love, perceive the reality of spiritual things that transcend mere knowledge of the physical universe. Beyond this plane of mortal mind-consciousness, which is fitly described as "dangerous," there is the wide open area of cosmic _perception_, which may lead ultimately to the limitless areas of cosmic consciousness. If, therefore, an education, whether acquired in or out of college, so whets the grain of the mind that it becomes keen and fine enough to realize that knowledge is valuable _ONLY_ as it leads to real wisdom, then indeed it is a benefit; unless it does this, it is temporarily an obstruction. Out of the lower into the higher vibration; out of sense-consciousness into cosmic consciousness; out of organization and limitations into freedom--the freedom of perfection, is the law and the purpose. This Emerson with his clearness of spiritual vision, saw, and this premise he subjected to the microscopic lens of his penetrating intellect. In his essay on Fate he says: "Fate involves amelioration. No statement of the Universe can have any soundness which does not admit its ascending effort. The direction of the whole and of the parts is toward benefit. Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty. * * * The Better; the Best. The first and worse races are dead. The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance _out of fate into freedom_." This phrase, "out of fate into freedom," may be read to mean, literally, out of the bondage of the sense-conscious life which entails rebirth and continued experience, into the light of Illumination which makes us free. Further commenting, Emerson says: "Liberation of the will from the sheaths and clogs of organization which he has outgrown _is the end and aim of the world_ * * * The whole circle of animal life--tooth against tooth, devouring war, war for food, a yelp of pain and a grunt of triumph, until at last the whole menagerie, the whole chemical mass, is mellowed and refined _for higher use_ * * *" The sense of unity which is so inseparable from the cosmic conscious state, was always uppermost in Emerson's mind. Neither did he ever present as unity that state of consciousness that may be termed organization-consciousness--group-consciousness it is often called. He realized that the person who stands for Individualism is much more than apt to recognize his indissoluble relationship with the Cosmos. A perception of unity is a complement of Individualism. That which, in modern metaphysical phraseology, is best termed "The Absolute," was expressed by Emerson as the Over-Soul, and this term meant something much greater, more unescapable than the anthropomorphic God of the church-goers. His assurance of unity with this Divine Spiritual Essence was perfect. It savors more of what is termed the religious view of life than of the philosophic, but we contend that in the coming era of the cosmic conscious man, all life will be religious, in the true sense, and that there will be no dividing line between philosophy and worship, because worship will consist of living the life of the spiritual man, and not in any set forms or rites. Bearing upon this we find Emerson saying: "Not thanks, not prayer, seem quite the highest or truest name for our communion with the infinite--but glad and conspiring reception--reception that becomes giving in its turn as the receiver is only the All-Giver in part and in infancy. I cannot--nor can any man--speak precisely of things so sublime, but it seems to me the wit of man, his strength, his grace, and his tendency, his art, is the grace and the presence of God. It is beyond explanation. When all is said and done, _the rapt saint is found the only logician._ Not exhortation nor argument becomes our lips, but paeans of joy and praise. But not of adulation; we are too nearly related in the deep of the mind to that we honor. It is God in us that checks the language of petition by a grander thought. In the bottom of the heart it is said, 'I am and by me, O child, this fair body and world of thine stands and grows; I am, all things are mine; and all mine are thine.'" We could quote passages from the essays ad infinitum, showing conclusively that the cosmic conscious plane had been attained and retained by this great philosopher--one of the first of the early part of the century, which has been prophesied as the beginning of the first faint lights of the Dawn, but enough has been offered for our present purpose, that of establishing the salient points of the cosmic conscious man or woman, which points are the complete assurance of the eternal verity and indestructibility of the soul; of its ultimate and inevitable victory over _maya_ or the "wheel of causation"; and the joyousness and the sense of at-one-ness with the universe, which comes to the illumined one, bespeaking an unquenchable optimism and an utter destruction of the sense of sin--points which characterize all who have attained to this supra-conscious state of Being. These points are all expressed repeatedly in all Emerson's utterances and mark him as one of the most illumined philosophers, as he was one of the greatest intellects of the last century, or of any other century. LEO TOLSTOI: RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHER A strange, lonely and wonderful figure was Tolstoi, novelist, philosopher, socialist, artist and reformer. Great souls are always lonely souls, estimated by sense-conscious humans. In the midst of the so-called pleasures and luxuries of the senses, a wise soul appears as barren of comfort as is a desert of foliage. Without the divine optimism that comes from soul-consciousness, such a one could not endure the life of the body: without the absolute assurance that comes with cosmic consciousness, men like the late Count Tolstoi must needs die of soul-loneliness. From early childhood up to the time of his Illumination Tolstoi indulged in seriousness of thought. Like Mohammed, great and overpowering desire to fathom the mystery of death took possession of him. He was ever haunted by an excessive dread of the "darkness of the grave," and in his essay, "Childhood," he describes with that wonderful realism, which characterizes all his works, the effect on a child's mind of seeing the face of his dead mother. This may be taken in a sense as biographical, although it is not probable that Tolstoi here alludes to the death of his own mother as she died when he was too young to have remembered. He describes the scene in the words of Irteniev: "I could not believe that this was her face. I began to look at it more closely, and gradually discovered in it the familiar and beloved features. I shuddered with fear when I became sure that it was indeed she, but why were the closed eyes so fallen in? Why was she so terribly pale, and why was there a blackish mark under the clear skin on one cheek?" A terror of death, and yet a haunting urge that compelled him to be forever thinking upon the mystery of it, is the dominant note in every line of Tolstoi's writings up to the time which he describes as "a change" that came over him. For example, when Count Leo was in his 33d year, his brother Nicolai died. Leo was present at the bedside and described the scene with the utmost frankness regarding its effect upon his mind; and again we note that awful fear and hopeless questioning which characterizes the sense-conscious man whose intellect has been cultivated to the very edge of the line which separates the self-conscious life from the cosmic conscious. This questioning, with the fear and dread and terror of death and of the "ceaseless round of births" and the cares and sorrows of existence was what drove Prince Siddhartha from his father's court and Mohammed into the mountains to meditate and pray until the answer came in the light of illumination. It came to Tolstoi through the very intensity of his powers of reason and analysis; through the sword-like quality of mental urge--a much more sorrowful path than the one through the simple way of love and service and prayer. His comments upon the death of his brother give us a vivid idea of the state of mind of the Tolstoi of that age: "Never in my life has anything had such an effect upon me. He was right (referring to his brother's words) when he said to me there is nothing worse than death, and if you remember that death is the inevitable goal of all that lives, then it must be confessed that there is nothing poorer than life. Why should we be so careful when at the end of all things nothing remains of what was once Nicolai Tolstoi? Suddenly he started up and murmured in alarm: 'What is this?' He saw that he was passing into nothingness." From the above it will be seen that the Tolstoi of those days was a materialist pure and simple. "He saw that he was passing into nothingness," he said of his brother, as though there could be no question as to the nothingness of the individual consciousness that he had known as Nicolai, his brother. This soul-harrowing materialism haunted Tolstoi during all the years of his youth and early manhood, and threw him constantly into fits of melancholy and inner brooding. He could neither dismiss the subject from his mind, nor could he bring into the area of his mortal consciousness that serene contemplation and optimistic line of reasoning which marks all that Emerson wrote. Tolstoi's morbid horror of decay and death was not in any sense due to a lack of physical courage. It was the inevitable repulsion of a strong and robust animalism of the body, coupled with a powerful mentality--both of which are barriers to the "still small voice" of the soul, through which alone comes the conviction of the nothingness of death. A biographer says of Tolstoi: "The fit of the fear of death which at the end of the seventies brought him to the verge of suicide, was not the first and apparently not the last and at any rate not the only one. He felt something like it fifteen years before when his brother Nicolai died. Then he fell ill and conjectured the presence of the complaint that killed his brother--consumption. He had constant pain in his chest and side. He had to go and try to cure himself in the Steppe by a course of koumiss, and did actually cure himself. Formerly these recurrent attacks of spiritual or physical weakness were cured in him, not by any mental or moral upheavals, but simply by his vitality, its exuberance and intoxication." The birth of the new consciousness which came to Tolstoi a few years later, was born into existence through these terrible struggles and mental agonies, inevitable because of the very nature of his heredity and education and environment. Although as we know, he came of gentle-folk, there was much of the Russian peasant in Tolstoi's makeup. His organism, both as to physical and mental elements, was like a piece of solid iron, untempered by the refining processes of an inherent spirituality. His never-ceasing struggle for attainment of the degree of cosmic consciousness which he finally reached was wholly an intellectual struggle. He possessed such a power of analysis, such a depth of intellectual perception, that he must needs go on or go mad with the strain of the question unanswered. To such a mind, the admonition to "never mind about those questions; don't think about them," fell upon dull ears. He could no more cease thinking upon the mysteries of life and death than he could cease respiration. Nor could he blindly trust. He must _know_. Nothing is more unescapable than the soul's urge toward freedom--and freedom can be won only by liberation from the bondage of illusion. Tolstoi's friends and biographers agree that along about his forty-fifth year, a great moral and religious change took place. The whole trend of his thoughts turned from the mortal consciousness to that inner self whence issues the higher qualities of mankind. From a man who, although he was a great writer and a Russian nobleman, was yet a man like others of his kind, influenced by traditionary ideas of class and outward appearance; a man of conventional habits and ideas; Tolstoi emerged a free soul. He shook off the illusion of historical life and culture, and stood upon free, moral ground, estimating himself and his fellows by means of an insight which ignores the world's conventions and despises the world's standards of success. In short, Tolstoi had received Illumination and henceforth should he reckoned among those of the new birth. In his own words, written in 1879, this change is described: "Five years ago a change took place in me. I began to experience at first times of mental vacuity, of cessation of life, as if I did not know why I was to live or what I was to do. These suspensions of life always found expression in the same problem, 'Why am I here?' and then 'What next?' I had lived and lived and gone on and on till I had drawn near a precipice; I saw clearly that before me there lay nothing but destruction. With all my might I endeavored to escape from this life. And suddenly I, a happy man, began to hide my bootlaces that I might not hang myself between the wardrobes in my room when undressing at night; and ceased to take a gun with me out shooting, so as to avoid temptation by these two means of freeing myself from this life. * * * "I lived in this way (that is to say, in communion with the people) for two years; and a change took place in me. What befell me was that the life of our class--the wealthy and cultured--not only became repulsive to me, but lost all significance. All our actions, our judgments, science, and art itself, appeared to me in a new light. I realized that it was all self-indulgence, and that it was useless to look for any meaning in it. I hated myself and acknowledged the truth. Now it had all become clear to me." From this time on, Tolstoi's life was that of one who had entered into cosmic consciousness, as we note the effects in others. Desire for solitude a taste for the simple, natural things of life, possessed him. The primitive peasants and their coarse but wholesome food appealed to him. It was not a penance that Tolstoi imposed upon himself, that caused him to abandon the life of a country gentleman for that of a hut in the woods. The penance would come to such a one from enforced living in the glare of the world's artificialities. Cosmic consciousness bestows above all things a taste for simplicity; it restores the normal condition of mankind, the intimacy with nature and the feeling of kinship with nature-children. It is not our purpose here to enter into any detailed biography of these instances of cosmic consciousness. The point we wish to make is the fact that the birth of this new consciousness frequently comes through much mental travail and agonies of doubt, speculation and questioning; but that it is worth the price paid, however seemingly great, there can be no possible distrust. HONORE DE BALZAC Balzac should head this chapter, if we were considering these philosophers in chronological order, as Balzac was born in 1799, preceding Emerson by a matter of four years. But Balzac's peculiar temperament, might almost be classed as a religious rather than strictly intellectual example of cosmic consciousness. Of the latter phase or expression of this "new" sense, as present-day writers frequently call it, Emerson is the most perfect example, because he was the most balanced; the most literary, in the strict interpretation of the word. Balzac's place in literature is due far more to his wonderful spiritual insight, and his powerful imagination, than to his intellectuality, or to literary style. But that he was an almost complete case of cosmic consciousness is evident in all he wrote and in all he did. His life was absolutely consistent with the cosmic conscious man, living in a world where the race consciousness has not yet risen to the heights of the spiritually conscious life. Bucke comments upon his decision against the state of matrimony, because, as Balzac himself declared, it would be an obstacle to the perfectibility of his interior senses, and to his flight through the spiritual worlds, and says: "When we consider the antagonistic attitude of so many of the great cases toward this relation (Gautama, Jesus, Paul, Whitman, etc.), there seems little doubt that anything like general possession of cosmic consciousness must abolish marriage as we know it to-day." Balzac explains this seeming aversion to the marriage state _as we know it to-day_, in his two books, written during his early thirties, namely, Louis Lambert and Seraphita. "Louis Lambert" is regarded as in the nature of an autobiography, since Balzac, like his mouthpiece, Louis, viewed everything from an inner sense--from intuition, or the soul faculties, rather than from the standard of mere intellectual observation, analysis and synthesis. This inner sense, so real and so thoroughly understandable to those possessing it, is almost, if not quite, impossible of description to the complete comprehension of those who have no intimate relationship with this inner vision. To the person who views life from the inner sense, the soul sense (which is the approach to, and is included in, cosmic consciousness), the external or physical life is like a mirror reflecting, more or less inaccurately, the reality--the soul is the gazer, and the visible life is what he sees. Balzac expresses this view in all he says and does. "All we are is in the soul," he says, and the perfection or the imperfection of what we externalize, depends upon the development of the soul. It is this marvelously developed inner vision that makes marriage, on the sense-conscious plane, which is the plane upon which we know marriage as it is to-day, objectionable to Balzac. His spirit had already united with its spiritual counterpart, and his soul sought the embodiment of that union in the flesh. This he did not find in the perfection and completeness which from his inner view he knew to exist. Barriers of caste, or class; of time and space; of age; of race and color; of condition; may intervene between counterparts on the physical plane; nay, one may be manifesting in the physical body and the other have abandoned the body, but as there is neither time nor space nor condition to the spirit, this union may have been sought and found, and _reflected to_ the mortal consciousness, in which case marriage with anything less than the _one_ true counterpart would be unsatisfactory, if not altogether objectionable. With this view in mind, Seraphita becomes as lucid a bit of reading as anything to be found in literature. Seraphita is the perfected being--the god into which man is developing, or more properly speaking, _unfolding_, since man must unfold into that from which he started, but with consciousness added. Everywhere, in ancient and modern mysticism, we find the assumption that God is dual--male and female. The old Hebrew word for God is plural--Elohim. Humankind invariably and persistently, even though half-mockingly, alludes to man and wife as "one"; and men and women speak of each other, when married, as "my other half." That which persists has a basis in fact, and symbolizes the perfect type. What we know of marriage as it is to-day, proves to us beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the man-made institution of marriage does not make man and woman one, nor insure that two halves of the same whole are united. The highest type of men and women to-day are at best but half-gods, but these are prophecies of the future race, "the man-god whom we await" as Emerson puts it. But that which we await is the man-woman-god, the Perfected Being, of whom Balzac writes in Seraphita. It has been said that Madame Hanska, whom the author finally married only six months previous to his death, was the original of Seraphita, but it would seem that this great affection, tender and enduring as it was, partook far more of a beautiful friendship between two souls who knew and understood each other's needs, than it did of that blissful and ecstatic union of counterparts, which everywhere is described by those who have experienced it, as a sensation of _melting or merging into_ the other's being. Seraphita is the embodiment, in human form, of the _idea_ expressed in the world-old belief in a perfected being; whose perfection was complete when the two halves of the _one_ should have found each other. The inference is very generally made that Balzac believed in and sought to express the idea of a bi-sexual individual--a _personality_ who is complete in himself or herself _as a person_; one in which the intuitive, feminine principle and the reasoning, masculine principle had become perfectly balanced--in short, an androgynous human. This idea is apparently further substantiated by the fact that Seraphita was loved by Minna, a beautiful young girl to whom Seraphita was always Seraphitus, an ideal lover; and by Wilfrid, to whom Seraphita represented his ideal of feminine loveliness, both in mind and body; a young girl possessing marvelous, almost miraculous, wisdom, but yet a woman with human passions and human virtues--his ideal of wifehood and motherhood. But whatever the idea that Balzac intended to convey, whether, as is generally believed, Seraphita was an androgynous being, or whether she symbolized the perfection of soul-union, our contention is that this union is not a creation of the imagination, but the accomplishment of the plan of creation--the final goal of earthly pilgrimage; the raison d'etre of love itself. One argument against the idea that Seraphita was intended to illustrate an androgynous being, rather than a perfected human, who had her spiritual mate, is found in the words in which she refused to marry Wilfrid, although Balzac makes it plainly evident that she was attracted to Wilfrid with a degree of sense-attraction, due to the fact that she was still living within the environment of the physical, and therefore subject to the illusions of the mortal, even while her spiritual consciousness was so fully developed as to enable her to perceive and realize the difference between an attraction that was based largely upon sense, and that which was of the soul. Wilfrid says to her: "Have you no soul that you are not seduced by the prospect of consoling a great man, who will sacrifice all to live with you in a little house by the border of a lake?" "But," answers Seraphita, "I am loved with a love without bounds." And when Wilfrid with insane anger and jealousy asked who it was whom Seraphita loved and who loved her, she answered "God." At another time, when Minna, to whom she had often spoken in veiled terms of a mysterious being who loved her and whom she loved, asked her who this person was, she answered: "I can love nothing here on earth." "What dost thou love then?" asked Minna. "Heaven" was the reply. This obscurity and uncertainty as to what manner of love it was that absorbed Seraphita, and who was the object of it, could not have been possible had it been the usual devotion of the _religeuse_. Seraphita, whose consciousness extended far beyond that of the people about her, could not have explained to her friends that the invisible realms were as real to her as the visible universe was to those with only sense-consciousness. It was impossible to explain to them that she had found and knew her mate, even though she had not met him in the physical body. To Wilfrid she said she loved "God." To Minna she used the term "Heaven," and when Minna questioned: "But art thou worthy of heaven when thou despisest the creatures of God?" Seraphita answered: "Couldst thou love two beings at once? Would a lover be a lover if he did not fill the heart? Should he not be the first, the last, the only one? She who loves will she not quit the world for her lover? Her entire family becomes a memory; she has no longer a relative. The lover! she has given him her whole soul. If she has kept a fraction of it, she does not love. To love feebly, is that to love? The word of the lover makes all her joy, and quivers in her veins like a purple deeper than blood; his glance is a light which penetrates her; she dissolves in him; there, where he is, all is beautiful; he is warmth to the soul: he irradiates everything; near him could one know cold or night? He is never absent; he is ever within us; we think in him, to him, for him. Minna, that is the-way I love." And when Minna, like Wilfrid, "seized by a devouring jealousy," demanded to know "whom?" Seraphita answered, "God." This she did because the one whom she loved became her God. We are told that "love makes gods of men." Perfect love, the love of those who are spiritual-mates--soul-mates--the "man-woman-god whom we await," becomes an immortal: and immortals are gods. Moreover if Seraphita had intended to teach the love of the religious devotee to The Absolute instead of a perfected sex-love, she would not have pointed out to both Wilfrid and Minna that which she, in her superior vision, her supra-consciousness, perceived, namely, that Wilfrid and Minna were really intended for spiritual mates, and that what they each saw in her was really a prophecy of their own perfected and spiritualized love. The subject is one that is positively incomprehensible and unexplainable to the average mind. All mystic literature, when read with the eyes of understanding, exalts and spiritualizes sex. The latter day degeneration of sex is the "trail of the serpent," which Woman is to crush with her heel. And Woman is crushing it to-day, although to the superficial observer, who sees only surface conditions, it would appear as though Woman had fallen from her high estate, to take her place on a footing with man. This view is the exoteric, and not the esoteric, one. They who have ears hear the inner voice, and they who have eyes see with the inner sight. The mystery of sex is the eternal mystery which each must solve for himself before he can comprehend it, and when solved eliminates all sense of sin and shame; brings Illumination in which everything is made clear and makes man-woman immortal--_a_ god. Swedenborg's theory of Heaven as a never-ending honeymoon in which spiritually-mated humans dwell, has been denounced by many as "shocking" to a refined and sensitive mind. But this idea is shocking only because even the most advanced minds are seldom Illumined, their advancement being along the lines of intellectual research and _acquired knowledge_, which, as we have previously explained, is not synonymous with _interior wisdom_. The illumined mind is bound to find in the eternal and ever-present fact of sex, the key to the mysteries--the password to immortal godhood. The subject is one that cannot be set forth in printed words; this fact is, indeed, the very Plan of Illumination. It cannot be _taught_. It must be _found_. Only those who have glimpsed its truth can even imperfectly point the way in which it _may_ be discovered. No teacher can guarantee it. It is the most evanescent, the most delicate, the most indescribable thing in the Cosmos. It is therefore the most readily misinterpreted and misunderstood. Balzac doubtless understood, not as a matter of perception of a truth but as an experience, and this fact, if no other, marks him as one having a very high degree of cosmic consciousness. Seraphita called herself a "Specialist." When Minna inquired how it was that Seraphitus could read the souls of men, the answer was: "I have the gift of Specialism. Specialism is an inward sight that can penetrate all things; you will understand its full meaning only through comparison. In the great cities of Europe works are produced by which the human hand seeks to represent the effects of the moral nature as well as those of the physical nature, as well as those of the ideas in marble. The sculptor acts on the stone; he fashions it; he puts a realm of ideas into it. There are statues which the hand of man has endowed with the faculty of representing the whole noble side of humanity, or the evil side of it; most men see in such marbles a human figure and nothing more; a few older men, a little higher in the scale of being, perceive a fraction of the thoughts expressed in the statue; but the Initiates in the secrets of art are of the same intellect as the sculptor; they see in his work the whole universe of thought. Such persons are in themselves the principles of art; they bear within them a mirror which reflects nature in her slightest manifestations. Well, so it is with me; I have within me a mirror before which the moral nature, with its causes and its effects, appears and is reflected. Entering thus into the consciousness of others I am able to divine both the future and the past * * * though what I have said does not define the gift of Specialism, for to conceive the nature of that gift we must possess it." This describes in terms similar to those employed by others who possess cosmic consciousness, the results of this inner light, which Seraphita calls a "mirror." And yet, with this seemingly exhaustive and lucid exposition of the effects of Illumination, Seraphita declares that "to conceive the nature of this gift we must possess it." Balzac further comments upon what he terms this gift of Specialism, which is cosmic consciousness or illumination, thus: "The specialist is necessarily the loftiest expression of man--the link which connects the visible to the superior worlds. He acts, he sees, he feels through his _inner being_. The abstractive _thinks_. The instinctive simply _acts_. Hence three degrees for man. As an instinctive he is below the level; as an abstractive he attains it; as a specialist he rises above it. Specialism opens to man his true career; the Infinite dawns upon him--he catches a glimpse of his destiny." The merely sense-conscious man is the man-animal; the abstractive man is the average man and woman in the world to-day--the human who is evolving out of the mental into the spiritual consciousness. The specialist is the cosmic conscious one, the one who "catches a glimpse of his destiny." Balzac, in company with all who attain cosmic consciousness, had a great capacity for suffering; and this soul-loneliness became crystalized into spiritual wisdom, which he expressed in the words and in the manner most likely to be accepted by the world. How else can that divine union to which we are heirs and for which we are either blindly, consciously, or supra-consciously, striving, be described and exploited without danger of defilement and degeneracy, save and except by the phrase "unity with God"? All mystics have found it necessary to veil the "secret of secrets," lest the unworthy (because _unready_) defile it with his gaze, even as the sinful devotee prostrates himself hiding his face, while the priest raises the chalice containing the holy eucharist in the ceremony of the mass. CHAPTER XIV ILLUMINATION AS EXPRESSED IN THE POETICAL TEMPERAMENT Poetry is the natural language of cosmic consciousness. "The music of the spheres" is a literal expression, as all who have ever _glimpsed_ the beauties of the spiritual realms will testify. "Poets are the trumpets which sing to battle. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," said Shelley. Not that all poets are aware, in their mortal consciousness, of their divine mission, or of their spiritual glimpses. The outer mind, the mortal or carnal mind--that part of our organism whose office it is to take care of the physical body, for its preservation and its well-being, may be so dominant as, to hold in bondage the _atman_, but it can not utterly silence its voice. Thus the true poet is also a seer; a prophet; a spiritually-conscious being, for such time, or during such phases of inspiration, as he becomes imbued with the spirit of poetry. A person who writes rhymes is not necessarily a poet. So, too, there are poets who do not express their inspirations according to the rules of metre and syntax. Between that which Balzac tabulated as the "abstractive" type of human evolvement and that which is fully cosmic in consciousness, there are many and diverse degrees of the higher faculties; but the poet always expresses some one of these degrees of the higher consciousness; indeed some poets are of that versatile nature that they run the entire gamut of the emotional nature, now descending to the ordinary normal consciousness which takes account only of the personal self; again ascending to the heights of the impersonal fearlessness and unassailable confidence that is the heritage of those who have reached the full stature of the "man-god whom we await"--the cosmic conscious race that is to be. All commentators upon modern instances of Illumination unite in regarding Walt Whitman as one of the most, if not _the most_, perfect example of whom we have any record of cosmic consciousness and its sublime effects upon the character and personality of the illumined one. Whitman is a sublime type for reasons which are of first importance in their relation to character as viewed from the ideals of the cosmic conscious race-to-be. Moralists have criticized Whitman as immoral; religionists have deplored his lack of a religious creed; literary critics have denied his claim to high rank in the world of literature; but Walt Whitman is unquestionably without a peer in the roundness of his genius; in the simplicity of his soul; in the catholicity of his sympathy; in the perfect poise and self-control and imperturbability of his kindness. His biographers agree as to his never-failing good nature. He was without any of those fits of unrest and temperamental eccentricities which are supposed to be the "sign manual" of the child of the poetic muse. In Whitman it would seem that all those petty prejudices against any nationality or class of men, were entirely absent. He exalted the common-place, not as a pose, nor because he had given himself to that task, but because to him there was no common-place. In the cosmic perception of the universe, everything is exalted to the plane of _fitness_. As to the pure all things are pure, so to the one who is steeped in the sublimity of Divine Illumination, there is no high or low, no good or bad, no white or black, or rich or poor; all--all is a part of the plan, and, in its place in cosmic evolution, it _fits_. Whitman cries: "All! all! Let others ignore what they may, I make the poem of evil also, I commemorate that part also; I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is, and I say there, is in fact no evil." Compared to the religious aspect of cosmic consciousness in which, previous to the time of Illumination, the devotee had striven to rise to spiritual heights through disdaining the flesh, this note of Whitman's is a new note--the nothingness of evil as such; the righteousness of the flesh and the holiness of earthly, or human, love, bespeaks the prophet of the New Dispensation; the time hinted of by Jesus, the Master, when he said, "when the twain shall be one and the outside as the inside," as a sign and symbol of the blessed time to come when the kingdom he spoke of (not his personal kingdom, but the kingdom which he represented, the kingdom of Love), should come upon earth. Whitman's illumination is essentially poetic; not that it is not also intellectual and moral; but after his experience--at least an experience more notable than any hitherto recorded by him, in or about his thirty-fifth year--we find his conversation invariably reflecting the beauty and poetical imagery of his mind. He may be said to have lived and moved and had his being in a state of blissful unconsciousness of anything unclean or impure, or unnatural. This absence of _consciousness of evil_ is in no wise synonymous with a type of person who _exalts_ his undeveloped animal tendencies under the guise of liberation from a sense of sin. Neither is this discrimination easy of attainment to any but those who _realize_ in their own hearts the very distinct difference between the nothingness of sin and the pretended acceptance of perversions as purity. While we are on this point we must again emphasize the truth that cosmic consciousness cannot be gained by prescription; there is no royal road to _mukti_. Liberation from the lower _manas_ can not be bought or sold, it can not be explained or comprehended, save by those to whom the attainment of such a state is at least _possible_ if not _probable_. Illustrative of his sense of unity with all life (one of the most salient characteristics of the fully cosmic conscious man), are these lines of Whitman's: "Voyaging to every port, to dicker and adventure; Hurrying with the modern crowd, as eager and fickle as any; Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him; Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while; Walking the hills of Judea, with the beautiful gentle God by my side; Speeding through space--speeding through Heaven and the stars." Oriental mysticism tells us that one of the attributes of the liberated one is the power to read the hearts and souls of all men; to feel what they feel; and to so unite with them in consciousness that we _are_ for the time being the very person or thing we contemplate. If this be indeed the test of godhood, Whitman expresses it in every line: "The disdain and calmness of olden martyrs; The mother condemned for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her children gazing on; The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence, blowing, covered with sweat; The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck--the murderous buckshot and the bullets; All these I feel, or am." Seeking to express the sense of knowing and especially of _feeling_, and the bigness and broadness of life, the scorn of petty aims and strife; in short, that interior perception which Illumination brings, he says: "Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? have you reckoned the earth much? Have you practised so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems; You shall possess the good of the earth and sun--there are millions of suns left; You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books; You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me; You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself. I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end; But I do not talk of the beginning nor the end. * * * * * "There was never any more inception than there is now; Nor any more youth or age than there is now; And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now." A perception of eternity as an ever-present reality is one of the characteristic signs of the inception of the new birth. Birth and death become nothing more nor yet less, than events in the procedure of eternal life; age becomes merely a graduation garment; God and heaven are not separated from us by any reality; they become every-day facts. Whitman tells of the annihilation of any sense of separateness from his soul side, in the following words: "Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul." He did not confound his mortal consciousness, the lower _manas_, with the higher--the soul; neither did he recognize an impassable gulf between them. While admittedly ascending to the higher consciousness from the lower, Whitman refused to follow the example of the saints and sages of old, and mortify or despise the lower self--the manifestation. He had indeed _struck the balance_; he recognized his dual nature, each in its rightful place and with its rightful possessions, and refused to abase either "I am" to the other. He literally "rendered unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's," by claiming for the flesh the purity and the cleanliness of God's handiwork. In Whitman, too, we find an almost perfect realization of immortality and of blissfulness of life and the complete harmony and unity of his soul with _all there is_. Following closely upon the experience that seems to have been the most vivid of the many instances of illumination which he enjoyed throughout a long life, he wrote the following lines, indicative of the emotions immediately associated with the influx of illumination: "Swiftly arose and spread around me, the peace and joy and knowledge that pass all the art and argument of earth; And I know that the hand of God is the elder hand of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of creation is love." In lines written in 1860, about seven years after the first vivid instance of the experience of illumination which afterward became oft-recurrent, Whitman speaks of what he calls "Perfections," and from what he writes we may assume that he referred to those possessing cosmic consciousness, and the practical impossibility of describing this peculiarity and accounting for the alteration it makes in character and outlook. Says Whitman: "Only themselves understand themselves, and the like of themselves, As souls only understand souls." It has been pointed out that Whitman more perfectly illustrates the type of the coming man--the cosmic conscious race, because Whitman's illumination seems to have come without the terrible agonies of doubt and prayer and mortification of the flesh, which characterize so many of those saints and sages of whom we read in sacred literature. But it must not be inferred from this that Whitman's life was devoid of suffering. A biographer says of him: "He has loved the earth, sun, animals; despised riches, given alms to every one that asked; stood up for the stupid and crazy; devoted his income and labor to others; according to the command of the divine voice; and was impelled by the divine impulse; and now for reward he is poor, despised, sick, paralyzed, neglected, dying. His message to men, to the delivery of which he devoted his life, which has been dearer in his eyes (for man's sake) than wife, children, life itself, is unread, or scoffed and jeered at. What shall he say to God? He says that God knows him through and through, and that he is willing to leave himself in God's hands." But above and beyond all this, is the sense of oneness with all who suffer which is ever a heritage of the cosmic conscious one, even while he is, at the same time, the recipient of states of bliss and certainty of immortality, and melting soul-love, incomprehensible and indescribable to the non-initiate. Whitman's calm and poise was not that of the ice-encrusted egotist. It is the poise of the perfectly balanced man-god equally aware of his human and his divine attributes; and justly estimating both; nor drawing too fine a line between. "I embody all presence outlawed or suffering; See myself in prison, shaped like another man, And feel the dull unintermitted pain. * * * * * "For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch; It is I left out in the morning, and barr'd at night. Not a mutineer walks handcuffed to jail, but I am handcuffed and walk by his side; * * * * * "Not a youngster is taken for larceny, but I go up too, and am tried and sentenced. Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the last gasp; My face is ash-colored--my sinews gnarl--away from me people retreat. * * * * * "Askers embody themselves in me, and I am embodied in them; I project my hat, sit shame-faced and beg." If any one imagines that Whitman was not a religious man, let him read the following: "I say that no man has ever yet been half devout enough; None has ever yet adored or worshipped half enough; None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the future is." There is a sublime confidence and worship in these words which belittles the churchman's hope and prayer that God may be good to him and bless him with a future life. Whitman's philosophy, less specific as to method, is assuredly more certain, more faithful in effect. Whitman had the experience of being immersed in a sea of light and love, so frequently a phenomenon of Illumination; he retained throughout all his life a complete and perfect assurance of immortality. His sense of union with and relationship to all living things was as much a part of him as the color of his eyes and hair; he did not have to remind himself of it, as a religious duty. He experienced a keen joy in nature and in the innocent, childlike pleasures of everyday things, and at the same time possessed a splendid intellect. All consciousness of sin or evil had been erased from his mind and actually had no place in his life. ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON In the case of Lord Tennyson, we have a definite recognition of two distinct states of consciousness, finally culminating in a clear experience of cosmic consciousness; this experience was so positive as to leave no doubt or indecision in his mind regarding the reality of the spiritual, and the illusory character of the external life. In truth Tennyson had so fixed his consciousness in the spiritual rather than in the external, that he looked out from that inner self, as through the windows of a house; he was prepared, as he said, to believe that his body was but an imaginary symbol of himself, but nothing and no one could persuade him that the real Tennyson, the _I am_ consciousness of being which was he, was other than spiritual, eternal, undying. Like so many others, notably Whitman, who have realized a more or less full degree of cosmic consciousness, Tennyson was deeply and reverently religious, although not partisanly connected with church work. Tennyson's early boyhood was marked by experiences which usually befall persons of the psychic temperament. As he himself described these states of consciousness, they were moments in which the ego transcended the limits of self consciousness and entered the limitless realm of spirit. They do not tabulate with the ordinary trance condition of the spiritualistic medium, who subjects his own self consciousness to a "control," although Tennyson always believed that the best of his writings were inspired by, and written under "the direct influence of higher intelligences, of whose presence he was distinctly conscious. He felt them near him and his mind was impressed by their ideas." The point which we emphasize is that these peculiar states of consciousness are not synonymous with the western idea of trance as seen in mediumship, although Tennyson uses the term "trance" in describing them. He says: "A kind of walking trance I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has often come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently until all at once, as it were, out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade into boundless being." It is a fact that children of a peculiarly sensitive or psychic temperament seem to have strange ideas regarding the name by which they are called, and not infrequently become confused and filled with an inexplicable wonderment at the sound of their own name. This phenomenon is much less rare than is generally known. In Tennyson's "Ancient Sage" this experience of entering into cosmic consciousness is thus described: "More than once when I Sat all alone, revolving in myself, The word that is the symbol of myself, The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, And passed into the nameless, as a cloud Melts into heaven. I touched my limbs; the limbs Were strange, not mine; and yet no shade of doubt, But utter clearness, and thro' loss of self The gain of such large life as matched with ours Were sun to spark--unshadowable in words. Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world." Tennyson's illumination is certain, clearly defined, distinct and characteristic, although his poems are much less cosmic than those of Whitman and of many others. There is, however, in the above, all that is descriptive of that state of consciousness which accompanies liberation from the illusion--the _enchantment_ of the merely mortal existence. Words are, as Tennyson fitly says, but "shadows of a shadow-world"; how then may we hope to define in terms comprehensible to sense-consciousness only, emotions and experiences which involve loss of _self_, and at the same time gain of the _Self_? Tennyson's frequent excursions into the realm of spiritual consciousness while still a child, bears out our contention that many children not infrequently have this experience, and either through reserve or from lack of ability to explain it, keep the matter to themselves; generally losing or "outgrowing" the tendency as they enter the activities of school life, and the mortal mind becomes dominant in them. This is especially true of the rising generation, and we personally know several clearly defined instances which have been reported to us, during conversations upon the theme of cosmic consciousness. YONE NOGUCHI Any one who has ever had the good fortune to read a little book of verse entitled "From the Eastern Seas," by Yone Noguchi, a young Japanese, will at once pronounce them a beautiful and perhaps perfect example of verse that may be correctly labeled "cosmic." Noguchi was under nineteen years of age when he penned these verses, but they are thoughts and expressions possible only to one who lives the greater part of his life within the illumination of the cosmic sense. They are so delicate as to have little, if any, of the mortal in them. It is also significant that Noguchi in these later years (he is now only a little past thirty), does not reproduce this cosmic atmosphere in his writings to such an extent, due no doubt to the fact that his daily occupation (that of Professor of Languages in the Imperial College of Tokio), compels his outer attention, excluding the fullness of the inner vision. The following lines, are perfect as an exposition of spiritual consciousness in which the lesser self has become submerged: "Underneath the shade of the trees, myself passed into somewhere as a cloud. I see my soul floating upon the face of the deep, nay the faceless face of the deepless deep-- Ah, the seas of loneliness. The silence-waving waters, ever shoreless, bottomless, colorless, have no shadow of my passing soul. I, without wisdom, without foolishness, without goodness, without badness--am like God, a negative god at least." The almost perpetual state of spiritual consciousness in which the young poet lived at this time is apparent in the following lines: "When I am lost in the deep body of the mist on a hill, The universe seems built with me as its pillar. Am I the god upon the face of the deep, nay-- The deepless deepness in the beginning?" And the following, possible of comprehension only to one who has glimpsed the eternal verity of man's spiritual reality, and the shadow-like quality of the external; could have been written only by one freed from the bonds of illusion: "The mystic silence of the moon, Gradually revived in me immortality; The sorrow that gently stirred Was melancholy-sweet; sorrow is higher Far than joy, the sweetest sorrow is supreme Amid all the passions. I had No sorrow of mortal heart: my sorrow Was one given before the human sorrows Were given me. Mortal speech died From me: my speech was one spoken before God bestowed on me human speech. There is nothing like the moon-night When I, parted from the voice of the city, Drink deep of Infinity with peace From another, a stranger sphere. There is nothing Like the moon-night when the rich, noble stars And maiden roses interchange their long looks of love. When I raise my face from the land of loss Unto the golden air, and calmly learn How perfect it is to grow still as a star. There is nothing like the moon-night When I walk upon the freshest dews, And amid the warmest breezes, With all the thought of God And all the bliss of man, as Adam Not yet driven from Eden, and to whom Eve was not yet born. What a bird Dreams in the moonlight is my dream: What a rose sings is my song." The true poet does not need individual experiences of either sorrow or of joy. His spirit is so attuned to the song of the universe; so sympathetic with the moans of earthly trials, that every vibration from the heart of the universe reaches him; stabs him with its sorrow, or irradiates his being with joy. Jesus is fitly portrayed to us as "The Man of Sorrows"; even while we recognize him as a self-conscious son of God--an immortal being fully aware of his escape from enchantment, and his heirship to Paradise. Cosmic consciousness bestows a bliss that is past all words to describe and it also quickens the sympathies and attunes the soul to the vibrations of the heart-cries of the struggling evolving ones who are still travailing in the pains of the new birth. We must be willing to endure the suffering _in order that we may realize_ the joy; not because joy is the reward for suffering, but because it is only by losing sight of the personal self that we become aware of that inner Self which is immortal and blissful; and when we become aware of the reality of that inner Self, we know that we are united with _the all_, and must feel with all. It would be impossible in one volume to enumerate all the poets who have given evidence of supra-consciousness. As has been previously pointed out, all true poets are at least temporarily aware of their dual nature--rather, one should say, the dual phases of their consciousness. Many, perhaps, do not function beyond the higher planes of the psychic vibrations, but even these are aware of the reality of the soul, and the illusion of the sense-conscious, mortal life. Dante; the Brownings; Shelley; Swinbourne; Goethe; Milton; Keats; Rosetti; Shakespeare; Pope; Lowell--where should we stop, did we essay to draw a line? WORDSWORTH Wordsworth, the poet of Nature has given us in his own words, so clearly cut an outline of his Illumination, that we can not resist recording here the salient points which mark his experience as that of cosmic consciousness, transcending the more frequent phenomenon of soul-consciousness and its psychic functions. Wordsworth's Ode to immortality epitomizes the lesson of the Yoga sutras--out of The Absolute we come, and return to immortal bliss with consciousness added. Wordsworth also affords an excellent example of our contention that cosmic consciousness does not come to us at any specific age or time. Wordsworth distinctly says that as a child he possessed this faculty, as for example his oft-repeated words, both in conversation and in his biography: "Nothing was more difficult for me in childhood than to admit the notion of death, as a state applicable to my own being. It was not so much from feelings of animal vivacity that my difficulty came, as from a sense of the indomitableness of the spirit within me. I used to brood over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and almost to persuade myself that, whatever might become of others, I should be translated, in something of the same way, to heaven. With a feeling congenial to this, I was often unable to think of external things as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw as something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature. Many times while going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree, to recall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality." In later life, Wordsworth lost the realization of this supra-consciousness, in what a commentator calls a "fever of rationalism"; but the power of that wonderful spiritual vision, pronounced in his youth, could not be utterly lost and soon after he reached his thirtieth year, he again becomes the spiritual poet, fully conscious of his higher nature--the cosmic conscious self. WILLIAM SHARP--"FIONA MACLEOD" A pronounced instance of the two phases of consciousness, is that of the late William Sharp, one of the best known writers of the modern English school. It was not until after the death of William Sharp, that the secret of this dual personality was given to the public, although a few of his most intimates had known it for several years. In the "Memoirs" compiled by Elizabeth Sharp, wife of the writer, we find the following: "The life of William Sharp divides itself naturally into two halves: the first ends with the publication by William Sharp of 'Vistas,' and the second begins with 'Pharais,' the first book signed _Fiona Macleod_." In these memoirs, the point is made obvious that _Fiona Macleod_ is not merely a _nom de plume_; neither is she an obsessing personality; a guide or "control," as the Spiritualists know that phenomenon. _Fiona Macleod_, always referred to by William Sharp as "she," is his own higher Self--the cosmic consciousness of the spiritual man which was so nearly balanced in the personality of William Sharp as to _appear_ to the casual observer as another person. It is said that the identity of _Fiona Macleod_, as expressed in the manuscript put out under that name, was seldom suspected to be that of William Sharp, so different was the style and the tone of the work of these two phases of the same personality. In this connection it may be well to quote his wife's opinion regarding the two phases of personality, answering the belief of Yeats the Irish poet that he believed William Sharp to be the most extraordinary psychic he ever encountered and saying that _Fiona Macleod_ was evidently a distinct personality. In the Memoirs, Mrs. Sharp comments upon this and says: "It is true, as I have said, that William Sharp seemed a different person when the Fiona mood was on him; but that he had no recollection of what he said in that mood was not the case--the psychic visionary power belonged exclusively to neither; it influenced both and was dictated by laws he did not understand." Mrs. Sharp refers to William Sharp and Fiona, as two persons, saying that "it influenced both," but both sides of his personality rather than both personalities, is what she claims. In further explanation she writes: "I remember from early days how he would speak of the momentary curious 'dazzle in the brain,' which preceded the falling away of all material things and precluded some inner vision of great beauty, or great presences, or some symbolic import--that would pass as rapidly as it came. I have been beside him when he has been in trance and I have felt the room throb with heightened vibration." One of the "dream-visions" which William Sharp experienced shortly before his last illness, is headed "Elemental Symbolism," and was recorded by him in these beautiful words: "I saw Self, or Life, symbolized all about me as a limitless, fathomless and lonely sea. I took a handful and threw it into the grey silence of ocean air, and it returned at once as a swift and potent flame, a red fire crested with brown sunrise, rushing from between the lips of sky and sea to the sound as of innumerable trumpets." "In another dream he visited a land where there was no more war, where all men and women were equal; where humans, birds and beasts were no longer at enmity, or preyed on one another. And he was told that the young men of the land had to serve two years as missionaries to those who lived at the uttermost boundaries. 'To what end?' he asked. 'To cast out fear, our last enemy.' In the house of his host he was struck by the beauty of a framed painting that seemed to vibrate with rich colors. 'Who painted that?' he asked. His host smiled, 'We have long since ceased to use brushes and paints. That is a thought projected from the artist's brain, and its duration will be proportionate with its truth.'" In explanation of why he chose to put out so much of the creative work of his brain under the signature of a woman, and how he happened to use the name _Fiona Macleod_, Sharp explained that when he began to realize how strong was the feminine element in the book _Pharais_, he decided to issue the book under a woman's name and _Fiona Macleod_ "flashed ready-made" into his mind. "My truest self, the self who is below all other selves must find expression," he explained. The Self that is _above_ the other self is what he should have said. The following extracts are from the _Fiona Macleod_ phase of William Sharp and are characteristic of the Self, as evidenced in all instances of Illumination, particularly as these expressions refer to the nothingness of death, and the beauty and power of Love. "Do not speak of the spiritual life as 'another life'; there is no 'other life'; what we mean by that, is with us now. The great misconception of death is that it is the only door to another world." This testimony corroborates that of Whitman as well as of St. Paul, notwithstanding all the centuries that separate the two. St. Paul did not say that man _will have_ a spiritual body, but that he _has_ a spiritual body as well as a corporeal body. After the experience of his illumination, William Sharp, writing as _Fiona Macleod_ constantly testified to the ever-present reality of his spiritual life; a life far more real to him than the sense-conscious life although he alluded to it as his dream. In one place he says: "Now truly, is dreamland no longer a phantasy of sleep, but a loveliness so great that, like deep music, there could be no words wherewith to measure it, but only the breathless unspoken speech of the soul upon whom has fallen the secret dews." Of the impossibility of adequately explaining the mystery of Illumination and the sensations it inspires, he says, speaking through the Self of _Fiona Macleod_: "I write, not because I know a mystery, and would reveal it, but because I have known a mystery and am to-day as a child before it, and can neither reveal nor interpret it." This is comparable with Whitman's "when I try to describe the best, I can not. My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots." Another sentence from _Fiona_: "There is a great serenity in the thought of death, when it is known to be the gate of Life." Like all who have gained the Great Blessing, the revelation to the mind of that higher Self, that _we are_, William Sharp suffered keenly. The despair of the world was his, co-equal with the Joy of the Spirit. Indeed, his is at once the gift and the burden of the Illuminati. Mrs. Mona Caird said of him: "He was almost encumbered by the infinity of his perceptions; by the thronging interests, intuitions, glimpses of wonders, beauties, and mysteries which made life for him a pageant and a splendor such as is only disclosed to the soul that has to bear the torment and revelations of genius." The burden of the world's sorrow; the longings and aspirations of the soul that has glimpsed, or that has more fully cognized the realms of the Spirit which are its rightful home; are ever a part of the price of liberation. The illumined mind sees and hears and feels the vibrations that emanate from all who are travailing in the meshes of the sense-conscious life; but through all the sympathetic sorrow, there runs the thread of a divine assurance and certainty of profound joy--a bliss that passes comprehension or description. Mrs. Sharp, in the final conclusion of the _Memoirs_ says "to quote my husband's own words--ever below all the stress and failure, below all the triumph of his toil, lay the _beauty of his dream_." In accordance with an oft-repeated request, these lines are inscribed on the Iona cross carved in lava, which marks the grave wherein is laid to rest the earthly form of William Sharp: "Farewell to the known and exhausted, Welcome the unknown and illimitable." And this: "Love is more great than we conceive, and death is the keeper of unknown redemptions." They are from his higher Self; from the illumined "Dominion of Dreams." CHAPTER XV METHODS OF ATTAINMENT: THE WAY OF ILLUMINATION Oriental philosophies recognize four important methods of yoga. Yoga is the word which signifies "uniting with God." From what has gone before in these pages, the reader will understand that unity with God means to us, the uncovering of the god-nature within or above, the human personality; it means the attainment and retainment in _fullness_ of cosmic consciousness. We do not believe that any one retains full and complete realization of cosmic consciousness and remains in the physical body. The numerous instances to which we allude in former chapters, are at best, but temporary flights into that state, which is the goal of the soul's pilgrimage, and the only means of escape from the "ceaseless round of births and deaths" which so weighed upon the heart of Gautama. The paths of yoga then, are the methods by which the mind, in the personal self, is made to perceive the reality of the higher Self, and its relation to the Supreme Intelligence--The Absolute. The various methods or paths are pointed out, but no one, nor all of these paths guarantees illumination as a _reward_ for diligence. That which is in the _heart_ of the disciple is the key that unlocks the door. These paths are called: _Karma Yoga; Raja Yoga; Gnani Yoga; Bhakti Yoga_. _Karma Yoga_ is the path of cheerful submission to the conditions in which the disciple finds himself, believing that those conditions are his because of his needs, and in order that he may fulfill that which he has attracted to himself. The admonition "whatever thy hand finds to do that doest thou with all thy heart," sums up the lessons of the path of Karma Yoga. The urge to achieve: to do; to accomplish; to strive and attain, actuates those who have, whether with conscious intent, or because of a vague "inward urge," devoted their lives to taking an active part in the material or intellectual achievements of the race. There are those who are blindly following (as far as their mental operations are concerned), the path of Karma Yoga; that is, they work without knowing why they work; they work because they are compelled to do so, as slaves of the law; these will work their way out of that necessity of fulfillment, in the course of time, even though they blindly follow the urge; but, if they could be made to work as masters of the conditions under which they labor, instead of as slaves to environment, they would find themselves at the end of that path. Karma Yoga would have been accomplished. "Work as those work who are ambitious" but be not thou enslaved by the delusion of personal ambition--this is the password to liberation from Karma Yoga. _Raja Yoga_ is the way of the strongly individualized _will_. "_Knowledge is power_" is the hope which encourages the disciple on the path of Raja Yoga. He seeks to master the personal self by meditation, by concentration of will; by self discipline and sacrifice. When the ego gains complete control over the mental faculties, so that the mind may be directed as the individual will suggests, the student has mastered the path of Raja Yoga. If his mastery is complete, he finds himself regarding his body as the instrument of the Self, and the body and its functions are under the guidance of the ego; the mind is the lever with which this Self raises the consciousness from the lower to the higher vibrations. The student who has mastered Raja Yoga can induce the trance state; control his dreams as well as his waking thoughts; he may learn to practice magic in its higher aspects, but unless he is extremely careful this power will tempt him to use his knowledge for selfish or unworthy purposes. Let the student of Raja Yoga bear in mind the one great and high purpose of his efforts, which should be: the realization of his spiritual nature, and the development of his individual self, so that it finally merges into the spiritual Self, thus gaining immortality "in the flesh." Does this "flesh" mean the physical body? Not necessarily, because this that we see and name "the physical body" is not the real body, any more than the clothing that covers it, is the person, although frequently we recognize acquaintances _by their clothing_. Immortality in the flesh means cessation from further incarnations, the last and present personality including all others in consciousness, until we can say, "I, manifesting in the physical, as so-and-so, am now and forever immortal, remembering other manifestations which were not sufficiently complete, but which added to the sum of my consciousness until now I _know myself a deathless being_." To those who seek the path of Raja Yoga, we recommend meditation upon Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, of which there are several translations, differing slightly as to interpretation. We have selected some of the most important, from the translations by Johnston. They are designed to make clear the difference between the self of personality, and the Self, or _atman_ which manifests in personality: "The personal self seeks to feast upon life, through a failure to perceive the distinction between the personal self and the spiritual man. All personal experience really exists for the sake of another: namely, the spiritual man. By perfectly concentrated meditation on experience for the sake of the Self, comes a knowledge of the spiritual man." The wise person seeks experience in order that he may attain to the standard of the spiritual man; doing all things for the lessons that they teach; working "as those work who are ambitious," and yet having no personal ambition. Looking on all life, and at the self of personality and knowing the illusion of the self he is raising the personal self to the spiritual plane; but always he has the handicap of the desires of the lower self, the personal, which "seeks to feast on life," because it is born of the external, and its inherent appetites are for the satisfaction and pleasures of that physical self. We do not say to look upon the body with its needs and its desires, as an enemy to be overcome; or that its allurements are dangerous although pleasurable. No. We say to the student, "control the desires of the body. Make them do the bidding of the Self, because it is only by so doing that you can gain the immortal heights of god-hood, looking down upon the fleeting dream of personality, with its so-called pleasures, as a bad nightmare compared to the joys that await the immortals." Therefore, concentrate upon experience for the sake of the Self that you are, and learn the lesson of your experience, throwing aside the experience itself, as you would cast aside the skin of an orange from which the juice had been extracted. Don't fill the areas of your mortal mind with rubbish--with memories of "benefits forgot;" or loves unrequited; or friendships broken; or misspent hours; or unhallowed words and acts. Cull from each day's experience all that helps to develop the spiritual man--all that will stand the test of immortality--kind words and deeds; principle maintained; a wrong forgiven; a service cheerfully extended; a tolerance and generosity for the mistakes of others as well as for your own. These seem small things to the personal self--the ambitious, the gloating, the sense-desiring self of the personality; we scarcely take them into account, but to the Self that is seeking immortality, these are the grains of wheat from the load of chaff; the diamond in the carbon; the wings upon which the spirit soars to realms of bliss. _Meditate upon this sutra._ "By perfectly concentrated meditation upon the heart, the interior being, comes the knowledge of consciousness." The heart is the guide of the inner nature, as the head is of the outer. Love, the Most High God, is not born in the head, but in the heart. The heart travails in pain through sorrow and loss and compassion and pity and loneliness and aspiration and sensitiveness; and lo! there is born from this pain, the spiritual Self, which embraces the lesser consciousness, enfolding all your consciousness in the softness and bliss of pure, Seraphic Love--the heritage of your immortality. _Meditate long and wisely upon this sutra._ "Through perfectly concentrated meditation on the light in the head, come the visions of the Masters who have attained; or through the divining power of intuition he knows all things." There is a point in the head, anatomically named "the pineal gland"; this is frequently alluded to as the seat of the soul, but the soul is not confined within the body, therefore, it is in the nature of a key between the sense-conscious self and the spiritually conscious Self; it is like a central receiving station, and may be "called up," and aroused to consciousness by meditation. Realizing and focusing the light of the spiritual nature upon this part of the head, opens up those unexplored areas of consciousness in which the masters dwell, and the student knows by intuition, which is a higher aspect of reason, many things which were heretofore incomprehensible to the merely sense-conscious man. The spiritual Self is not a being unlike and wholly foreign to our concept of the perfect mortal-man; all the powers of discernment which we find in mortal consciousness are accentuated, intensified, refined; all grossness, all imperfections and embarrassments removed; pleasure sensitized to ecstasy; love glorified to worship. "Shapeliness, beauty, force, the temper of the diamond; these are the endowments of that body." The spiritual body is shapely, strong, beautiful, imperishable, as the diamond, with all its brilliancy. No vapory, uncertain, or _unreal being_, but the Real, with the husk of sense-consciousness dropped off, and only the kernels of truth buried in the chaff of Experience, retained from the experiences of the personal self. "When the spiritual man is perfectly disentangled from the psychic body, he attains to mastery over all things and to a knowledge of all." The spiritual Self, the cosmic conscious Self, must not be confounded with the psychic body, which is formed from the emotions--passions; fears; hatreds; ambitions; resentments; envy; regrets. Know thyself as a being superior to all baser emotions, and the mastery over them is complete. They are not destroyed, but converted into love--the everlasting Source of Life. "There should be complete overcoming of allurement or pride in the invitations of the different regions of life, lest attachment to things evil arise once more." It is said that the disciples, seeking the paths of Yoga, reach three degrees or stages of development; first, those who are just entering the path; second, those who are in the realm of allurements, subject to temptations; third, those who have won the victory over the senses and the external life--_maya_; fourth, those who are firmly entrenched behind the bulwark of certainty; the spiritual being realized: cosmic consciousness attained and retained. "By absence of all self indulgence at this point, also, the seeds of bondage of sorrow are destroyed, and pure spiritual being is attained." Self-abnegation and self-sacrifice have ever been the way of spiritual development; but we are prone to misunderstand and mistake the true interpretation of this admonition; men shut themselves in monasteries and women become nuns and recluses _as a penance_, in order to purchase, as it were, absolution (at-one-ness with The Absolute, which knows not sin); this is not the point intended here. Spiritual consciousness can not be bought; the desires of the personal self may be _sublimated_ into divine force and power, through recognizing the desires of the self as baubles which attract and fill the eye, until we fail to see the glories of that which awaits us. "Thereafter, the whole personal being bends toward illumination, full of the spirit of Eternal Life." Here again, we have assurance that the spiritually-conscious man, the "luminous body" is not a being apart from the self that we know our inner nature to be, but rather it _is_ the inner Self even as we in our ignorance and our lack of initiation, know it, raised to a higher realm of consciousness; our desires refined, spiritualized, made pure, and our faculties strengthened and immortalized. We do not withdraw from experience but we draw from Experience the _lesson_--the hidden wisdom of the initiate. _Meditate upon these sutras._ "He who, after he has attained, is wholly free from self, is set in a cloud of holiness which is called Illumination. This is the true spiritual consciousness." This aphorism is self-explanatory. He who attains illumination, and afterward lives and acts from the inner consciousness--the _spiritual man_, is free from the desires of the sense-conscious life, with its consequent disappointments; he sees everything from the spiritual, rather than the mental point of view, and understands the phrase "and behold, all was good." "_Thereon comes surcease from sorrow and the burden of toil._" The one who has attained cosmic consciousness, acting always from the Self, and not from personal desires, is set free from karma; he has fulfilled the cycle; he makes no more bondage for himself; he is free and is already immortal. "When that condition of consciousness is reached, which is far-reaching, and not confined to the body, which is outside the body and not conditioned by it, then the veil which conceals the light is worn away." The acquisition of spiritual consciousness, Illumination, endows the mortal mind also, with a degree of power sufficient to penetrate the veil of illusion--the _maya_; the disciple then sees for the first time, all things in their true light. The separation between the personal self, and the spiritual being that we are, is so fine as to be like a cob-web veil, and yet how few penetrate it. The suddenness with which this awakening (for it is like awakening from a dream of the senses), comes, startles and surprises us, and then we become astonished at the transparency of the bonds that bound us to the limitations of the mortal, when we might have soared to realms of light. "By perfectly concentrated meditation on the correlation of the body with the ether, and by thinking of it as light as thistle-down, will come the power to traverse the ether." The Zens say that the way of the gods is through the air and afterwards in the ether. This means that we must evolve from the physical to the psychic, and thence to the etheric or spiritual body. This is the way of the many. It is only the few who attain to perfect spiritual consciousness while manifesting in the physical, but these do not have to undergo "the second death" which is the dropping off of the psychic body, and assuming the spiritual body. They attain to immortality _in the flesh_, (i.e., in the present personality). "Thereupon will come the manifestation of the atomic and other powers, which are the endowment of the body, together with its unassailable force." The body here referred to, it must be borne in mind, is the etheric or spiritual body, which possesses the power to disintegrate matter; the power to annihilate time and space; so that he may look backward into remote antiquity and forward into boundless futurity; or as the commentator says, "he can touch the moon with the tip of his finger"; the power of levitation and limitless extension; the power of command; the power of creative will. These are the endowments of the spiritual body with which the disciple is seeking to establish his identity--that he may overcome the second death and become immortal _in consciousness_, here and now. Of this spiritual, or etheric body it is said, "Fire burns it not; water wets it not; the sword cleaves it not; dry winds parch it not. It is unassailable." _Meditate upon this sutra._ "For him who discerns between the mind and the spiritual man (the Self) there comes perfect fruition of the longing after the real being." When the disciple has once grasped the fact that he _is_ a soul, and _possesses_ a mind and a physical covering, he has entered on the way of Illumination, and must inevitably reach the goal; then shall he find "perfect fruition of the longing" after the perfect Self, and its completement in union with the love that he craves. "Have you, in lonely darkness longed for companionship and consolation? You shall have angels and archangels for your friends and all the immortal hosts of the Dawn." Such are the Yoga sutras, or aphorisms, as enunciated by Patanjali. If the aspiring one were to give up a whole lifetime to their practice, gaining at last the consciousness of immortal life and love, what a small price to pay. _Raja Yoga_ with its methods and exercises, is the path of knowledge, through application; concentration; meditation. The practice of Raja Yoga will lead the student to the path of Gnani Yoga; and to the realization that Bhakti Yoga, the way of love and service will be included, not as an arduous task; not as a study, or as a means to an end, but because of the love of it. _Gnani Yoga_ comes as complementary to practice of the sutras because knowledge applied for the purpose of spiritual attainment brings _wisdom_. _Gnani Yoga_, then, is the path of wisdom. The follower of Gnani Yoga seeks the occult or hidden wisdom, and always has before him the idea of whether this or that be of the Self, the _atman_, or of the self, the personal, gradually eliminating from his desires all that does not answer the test of its reality in spiritual consciousness; he welcomes experiences of all kinds, as so many lessons from which he extracts the fine grain of truth, and throws aside the husks; he accepts nothing blindly or in faith, but "proves all things holding fast to that which is good"; not that he lacks faith, but because the very nature of his inquiry is to discover the interior nature and its relation to God. There are many in the world of to-day who feel the urge toward the path of Gnani Yoga, because of the conviction that is forcing itself upon every truly enlightened mind, that civilization with all its wonderful achievements, does not promise happiness, or solve the question of the soul's urge. In short, the educated, and the well conditioned, if he be a thinker, and not submerged in _maya_, lost in the personal self, inevitably finds himself searching for the _real_ in all this labyrinth of mind creations and sea of emotions, and then as a rule, he seeks the path of Gnani Yoga, because his intellect must be satisfied, even though his heart calls. The mystic, the teacher, and the philosopher are following the path of Gnani; so is the true occultist, but many who deal in so-called occultism are employing _knowledge_ only, entirely missing the higher quality--_wisdom_. _Bhakti Yoga_, the path of self-surrender; the thorny way through the emotions; the "blood of the heart," is the short cut to Illumination, if such a thing could be. But there is no "short cut"; nor yet a long road. Some one has said there are as many ways to God as there are souls. And yet, all persons who are on the upward climb, are demonstrating some one of these four paths, or a combination of the paths. It is, however, a significant fact that we do not hear anything of the great intellectual attainments of the three great masters--Krishna, Buddha and Jesus, but only of their great compassion; their wonderful love for mankind, and all living things. St. Paul, who was probably an educated man, as he held a position of prominence among those in authority, previous to his conversion, laid particular stress upon the love-nature as the way of illumination. And Jesus repeatedly said "Love is the fulfilling of the law." What is the law? The law of evolution and involution; of generation and regeneration; when the time should come, that Love was to reign on the planet earth as it does in the heavens above the earth, then should the kingdom of which he foretold "be at hand," and in conclusion of this _to-be_, Jesus promised that the law would be fulfilled when Love should come. So Swami Vivekananda in his exposition of Vedanta declares: "Love is higher than work, than yoga; than knowledge. Day and night think of God in the midst of all your activities. The daily necessary thoughts can all be thought through God. Eat to Him, drink to Him, sleep to Him, see Him in all. Let us open ourselves to the one Divine Actor, and let Him act and do nothing ourselves. Complete self-surrender is the only way. Put out self, lose it; forget it." Let us substitute for the words "God," and "Him," the one word Love, and see what it is that we are told to do. Love of doing good frees us from work, even though we labor from early dawn until the night falls; so, too, if we have some loved one for whom we strive, we can endure every hardship with equanimity, as far as our own comfort is concerned. Few human beings in the world to-day are so enmeshed in the personal self as to work merely for the gratification of selfish instincts. The hard-working man, whether laborer or banker, must have some one else for whom he struggles and strives; otherwise, he descends to a level below that of the brute. This is the reason for the family; the lodge; the community; the nation; there must be some motive other than the preservation of the personal self, in order to develop the higher quality of love which embraces the world, until the spirit of a Christ takes possession of the human and he would gladly offer himself a sacrifice to the world, if by so doing he could eliminate all the pain from the world. How natural it is to feel, when we see a loved one suffering, that we would gladly take upon ourselves that pain; the heart fills with love until it aches with the burden of it; this love enlarged, expanded and impersonal in its application is the same love with which we are told to love God, and to "do all for Him." Do all for love of all the other hearts in the Universe that feel as we feel when their loved ones suffer--that is the way to love God--it is the only way we know. We only know divine love through human love: human love is divine when it is unselfish and eternal--not fed upon carnality, but anchored in spiritual complement. The story of Abou Ben Adhem ("may his tribe increase") tells us how we may know who loves the Lord. The angel wrote the names of those who loved the Lord most faithfully and fully, and coming to Abou Ben Adhem asked if he should write his name, and received the reply that he could not say whether he deeply loved the Lord, but he was quite certain that the angel could "write me as one who loves his fellow-men." And, lo! when the list was made and the names of all who loved the Lord recorded, Abou Ben Adhem's name headed the list. The Vedanta philosophy teaches non-attachment and Vivekananda himself says: "To love any one personally is bondage. Love all alike then all desires fall off." To love only the personal self of any one binds us to the sorrow of loss and of separation and disappointment; but to love any one spiritually is to establish a bond which can never be broken; which insures reunion, and defies time and space. We can not love all alike, though we can love all humanity impersonally. All desires that have their root in the sense-conscious plane of expression, will fall off when the heart is anchored in spiritual love; but let it be understood that spiritual love is not opposed to human love; we do not grow into spiritual love by denying the human, but by plussing the human. Spiritual consciousness is all that is good and pure and noble, and satisfying in the mortal and infinitely more. It is the love of personal self _plus_ the _Self_--the _atman_. Love is never unrequited. It is never wasted; never foolish. Love is its own self-justification; if it be real love, and not vanity, or self admiration, misnamed, give it freely, and don't ask for a return; don't ask whither it leads; only ask if it is real--if the love you feel is for the object of your love, or if it is for yourself--for you to possess and to minister to your pleasure; ask whether it is from the senses or from the heart. The way of the _Bhakti yoga_, is the way of love and service, because service to our fellow beings, is the inevitable complement of love. Where we truly love, we gladly serve. It has been said: "The chela treads a hair-line." That is to say, the initiate must be prepared to meet defeat at every turn. Not defeat of his object of attainment, but the personal defeat that so many seek in the delusion that the world's ideal of success is the real success. In conclusion we can only repeat what has been told and retold many times by all inspired ones, of whatever creed and race; namely, think and act always from the _inner Self_, cheerfully taking the consequences of your choice. Let not the opinions of the illusory world of the senses balk and thwart you. Let not the "worldly-wise" swerve you from your ideal and your faith in the final goal of your earthly pilgrimage--the attainment of spiritual consciousness _in your present personality_; this is the meaning of immortality in the flesh Doubt not this. Make love your ideal; your guide; your final goal; look for the inner Self of all whom you meet. "Learn to look into the _hearts_ of men," says the injunction in Light on the Path; dismiss from your mind all the accumulation of traditional concepts and prejudices that are not grounded in love, and above all _falter not_, nor doubt--no matter what seeming hardships you encounter in your earthly pilgrimage; they are but the Indian-clubs of your soul's gymnasium--Experience. "Meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat these _two impostors_ just the same." Triumph and Disaster as seen with the eyes of sense-consciousness are both illusions; but don't for this reason cease your work. The phrase "you must work out your own salvation" is true. So also, you must be willing to do your part in working out the salvation of the world; salvation means simply the realization of the spiritual Being that you are--the attainment of that state of Illumination which guarantees immortality. Experience teaches one important lesson: Our sense-conscious life is filled with symbolic language if we have the inner eye of discernment. An unescapable truth is symbolized in our daily life by the evidence that we get nothing for nothing. Everything has its price. Immortality godhood, will not be handed to you on a silver salver; neither can any one withhold it from you, if you desire it above all things. And, altho' it has its price, yet _you can not buy it_. A seeming paradox, but the Initiate will see it all clearly enough when the time comes. "He who would scale the Heights of Understanding From whence the soul looks out forever free Must falter not; nor fail; all truth demanding Though he bear the cross and know Gethsemane." * * * * * The discouraged student says to himself: "If Truth demands such sorrow and sacrifice as this, I will not serve her. It is a false god that would so try his devotees." Have you not said it? The toll you pay is not to the Divine Self within, but to the "keepers of the threshold," that guard the entrance to the dwelling place of the Illuminati. Earthly lodges and brotherhoods are symbols of the higher initiations. There is a common mistake in the idea that the invisible states of consciousness are chaotic, or radically different from the visible. "As below, so above, and as above so below" is an aphorism constantly held before the eyes of the would-be initiate. Each of whom, must interpret and know it for himself. If the student finds the Raja Yoga sutras difficult of comprehension or of practice let him meditate upon the following mantrams: I know myself to be above the false concepts which assail the personal self that I _appear_ to be. I am united with the All-seeing All-knowing Consciousness. I abide in the consciousness of the Indestructibility and Omniscience of Being. I rest secure and content in the integrity of Cosmic Law which shall lead my soul unto its own, guaranteeing immortal love. I unite myself with that Power that makes for righteousness. Therefore nothing shall dismay or defeat me, because I am at-one with the limitless areas of spiritual consciousness. My mind is the dynamic center through which my soul manifests the Love which illumines the world. Only good can come to the world through me. Much that is called Mental Science, New Thought and Christian Science has for its aim and ideal, avoidance of all that does not make for personal well-being, and worldly success. Avoid this ideal; distrust this motive. Be ever willing to sacrifice the personal self to the Real Self, _if need be_. If the ideal is truly the desire for _illumination_, and not for self-gratification, the mind will soon learn to distinguish between the lesser and the greater. Have you longed for perfect, satisfying _human_ love? You shall have it plussed a thousand fold in immortal spiritual union with _your_ god. SUMMARY. In the foregoing chapters we have set forth only a few of the facts and instances which the inquirer will find, if he but seek, of the reality of a supra-conscious faculty, no less actual, than are the faculties of the sense-conscious human, which type forms the average of the race. This faculty, or rather we should say _these faculties_--because they find expression in many ways, through avenues correlative to the physical senses--prove the existence of a realm of consciousness, far above the planes of the mortal or sense-conscious man, and transcending the region known as the astral and psychic areas of consciousness. All who have reported their experiences in contacting this illimitable region unite in the essential points of experience, namely: The experience is indescribable. It confers an unshakable conviction of immortality. It discloses the fact that we are now living in this supra-conscious realm; that it is not something which we acquire after death; it _is_ not _to be_. This realm is characterized by a beautiful, wonderful radiant iridescent light. "_O green fire of life, pulse of the world, O love."_ It fills the heart with a great and all-embracing love, establishing a realization of the silent Brotherhood of the Cosmos, demolishing all barriers of race and color and class and condition. Illumination is inclusive. It knows no separation. It announces the fact that every person is right from his point of view. "That nothing walks with aimless feet; that no one life shall be destroyed; or cast as rubbish on the void; when God hath made the pile complete." That Life and Love and Joy unutterable are the reward of the seeker; and that there is no one and only path. All systems; all creeds; all methods that are formulated and upheld by altruism are righteous, and that the Real is the spiritual--the external is a dream from which the world is awakening to the consciousness of the spiritual man--the _atman_--the Self that is ageless; birthless; deathless--divine. On all sides are evidences that the race is entering upon this new consciousness. So many are weary with the strife and struggle and noise of the sense-conscious life. The illusions of possessions which break in our hands as we grasp them; of empty titles of so-called "honor," builded upon prowess in war; the feverish race after wealth--cold as the marble palaces which it builds to shut in its worshippers--all these things are becoming skeleton-like and no longer deceive those who are even remotely discerning the new birth. The new heraldry will have for its badge of royalty "Love and Service to my Fellow Beings," displacing the "Dieu et mon Droit" of the ancient ideal. The Dawn is here. Are you awake? "--In the heart of To-day is the word of To-morrow. The Builders of Joy are the Children of Sorrow." Jesus The Last Great Initiate By EDOUARD SCHURE Mr. Schure in this volume, has done much to strengthen the belief that Jesus was an Essene, in whom a Messianic consciousness was awakened by special initiation. A remarkable full account is given of his experiences among the Essenes and how his early life, (about which the Bible is so reticent) was spent studying with the advanced Occult masters. The problem of how Jesus became the Messiah, he holds to be not capable of solution without the aid of intuition and esoteric tradition. The life of the great Teacher as pictured by the writer is one to be dreamed over and capable of imparting both knowledge and stimulus to that inner life which is in so many undeveloped and even unsuspected. Bound Silk Cloth. Price $0.80 Postpaid. * * * * * Krishna and Orpheus The Great Initiates of the East and West By EDOUARD SCHURE The lives and teachings of these two great Masters who preceeded Jesus are very much like the latter's. You cannot help noting the remarkable resemblance they bear to each other. Krishna's Virgin Birth, His Youth, Initiation, The Doctrine of the Initiates, Triumph and Death, are all told in a fashion that shows that Mr. Schure has devoted much time to thought and research work. The mighty religious of India, Egypt and Greece are passed in rapid review and the author declares that while from the outside they present nothing but chaos, the root idea of their founders and prophets presents a key to them all. Bound in Silk Cloth. Price $0.80 Postpaid. 
15545	----	Proofreading Team. [Transcriber's Note: Accented characters with macrons are marked in this file as [=x], while those with inferior dots are marked as [x.].] THE BASIS OF MORALITY BY ANNIE BESANT AUTHOR OF _Mysticism, The Immediate Future, Initiation: The Perfecting of Man, Superhuman Men, etc. etc._ THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE ADYAR, MADRAS, INDIA 1915 * * * * * CONTENTS I. REVELATION II. INTUITION III. UTILITY IV. EVOLUTION V. MYSTICISM * * * * * I REVELATION Must religion and morals go together? Can one be taught without the other? It is a practical question for educationists, and France tried to answer it in the dreariest little cut and dry kind of catechism ever given to boys to make them long to be wicked. But apart from education, the question of the bedrock on which morals rest, the foundation on which a moral edifice can be built that will stand secure against the storms of life--that is a question of perennial interest, and it must be answered by each of us, if we would have a test of Right and Wrong, would know why Right is Right, why Wrong is Wrong. Religions based on Revelation find in Revelation their basis for morality, and for them that is Right which the Giver of the Revelation commands, and that is Wrong which He forbids. Right is Right because God, or a [R.][s.]hi or a Prophet, commands it, and Right rests on the Will of a Lawgiver, authoritatively revealed in a Scripture. Now all Revelation has two great disadvantages as a basis for morality. It is fixed, and therefore unprogressive; while man evolves, and at a later stage of his growth, the morality taught in the Revelation becomes archaic and unsuitable. A written book cannot change, and many things in the Bibles of Religion come to be out of date, inappropriate to new circumstances, and even shocking to an age in which conscience has become more enlightened than it was of old. The fact that in the same Revelation as that in which palpably immoral commands appear, there occur also jewels of fairest radiance, gems of poetry, pearls of truth, helps us not at all. If moral teachings worthy only of savages occur in Scriptures containing also rare and precious precepts of purest sweetness, the juxtaposition of light and darkness only produces moral chaos. We cannot here appeal to reason or judgment for both must be silent before authority; both rest on the same ground. "Thus saith the Lord" precludes all argument. Let us take two widely accepted Scriptures, both regarded as authoritative by the respective religions which accept them as coming from a Divine Preceptor or through a human but illuminated being, Moses in the one case, Manu in the other. I am, of course, well aware that in both cases we have to do with books which may contain traditions of their great authors, even sentences transmitted down the centuries. The unravelling of the tangled threads woven into such books is a work needing the highest scholarship and an infinite patience; few of us are equipped for such labour. But let us ignore the work of the Higher Criticism, and take the books as they stand, and the objection raised to them as a basis for morality will at once appear. Thus we read in the same book: "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." "The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." "Sanctify yourselves therefore and be ye holy." Scores of noble passages, inculcating high morality, might be quoted. But we have also: "If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly saying, let us go and serve other Gods ... thou shalt not consent unto him nor hearken unto him; neither shalt thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him, but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death." "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." A man is told, that he may seize a fair woman in war, and "be her husband and she shall be thy wife. And it shall be that if thou hast no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither she will." These teachings and many others like them have drenched Europe with blood and scorched it with fire. Men have grown out of them; they no longer heed nor obey them, for man's reason performs its eclectic work on Revelation, chooses the good, rejects the evil. This is very good, but it destroys Revelation as a basis. Christians have outgrown the lower part of their Revelation, and do not realise that in striving to explain it away they put the axe to the root of its authority. So also is it with the Institutes of Manu, to take but one example from the great sacred literature of India. There are precepts of the noblest order, and the essence and relative nature of morality is philosophically set out; "the sacred law is thus grounded on the rule of conduct," and He declares that good conduct is the root of further growth in spirituality. Apart from questions of general morality, to which we shall need to refer hereafter, let us take the varying views of women as laid down in the present Sm[r.][t.]i as accepted. On many points there is no wiser guide than parts of this Sm[r.][t.]i, as will be seen in Chapter IV. With regard to the marriage law, Manu says: "Let mutual fidelity continue unto death." Of a father He declares: "No father who knows must take even the smallest gratuity for his daughter; for a man, who through avarice takes a gratuity, is a seller of his offspring." Of the home, He says: "Women must be honoured and adorned by their fathers, husbands, brothers and brothers-in-law who desire happiness. Where women are honoured, there the [D.]evas are pleased; but where they are not honoured, any sacred rite is fruitless." "In that family where the husband is pleased with his wife and the wife with her husband [note the equality], happiness will assuredly be lasting." Food is to be given first in a house to "newly-married women, to infants, to the sick, and to pregnant women". Yet the same Manu is supposed to have taken the lowest and coarsest view of women: "It is the nature of women to seduce men; for that reason the wise are never unguarded with females ... One should not sit in a lonely place with one's mother, sister or daughter; for the senses are powerful, and master even a learned man." A woman must never act "independently, even in her own house," she must be subject to father, husband or (on her husband's death) sons. Women have allotted to them as qualities, "impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, malice and bad conduct". The Sh[=u][d.]ra servant is to be "regarded as a younger son"; a slave is to be looked on "as one's shadow," and if a man is offended by him he "must bear it without resentment"; yet the most ghastly punishments are ordered to be inflicted on Sh[=u][d.]ras for intruding on certain sacred rites. The net result is that ancient Revelations, being given for a certain age and certain social conditions, often cannot and ought not to be carried out in the present state of Society; that ancient documents are difficult to verify--often impossible--as coming from those whose names they bear; that there is no guarantee against forgeries, interpolations, glosses, becoming part of the text, with a score of other imperfections; that they contain contradictions, and often absurdities, to say nothing of immoralities. Ultimately every Revelation must be brought to the bar of reason, and as a matter of fact, is so brought in practice, even the most "orthodox" Br[=a]hma[n.]a in Hin[d.][=u]ism, disregarding all the Sh[=a]s[t.]raic injunctions which he finds to be impracticable or even inconvenient, while he uses those which suit him to condemn his "unorthodox" neighbours. No Revelation is accepted as fully binding in any ancient religion, but by common consent the inconvenient parts are quietly dropped, and the evil parts repudiated. Revelation as a basis for morality is impossible. But all sacred books contain much that is pure, lofty, inspiring, belonging to the highest morality, the true utterances of the Sages and Saints of mankind. These precepts will be regarded with reverence by the wise, and should be used as authoritative teaching for the young and the uninstructed as moral textbooks, like--textbooks in other sciences--and as containing moral truths, some of which can be verified by all morally advanced persons, and others verifiable only by those who reach the level of the original teachers. * * * * * II INTUITION When scholarship, reason and conscience have made impossible the acceptance of Revelation as the bedrock of morality, the student--especially in the West--is apt next to test "Intuition" as a probable basis for ethics. In the East, this idea has not appealed to the thinker in the sense in which the word Intuition is used in the West. The moralist in the East has based ethics on Revelation, or on Evolution, or on Illumination--the last being the basis of the Mystic. Intuition--which by moralists like Theodore Parker, Frances Power Cobb, and many Theists, is spoken of as the "Voice of God" in the human soul--is identified by these with "conscience," so that to base morality on Intuition is equivalent to basing it on conscience, and making the dictate of conscience the categorical imperative, the inner voice which declares authoritatively "Thou shalt," or "Thou shalt not". Now it is true that for each individual there is no better, no safer, guide than his own conscience and that when the moralist says to the inquirer: "Obey your conscience" he is giving him sound ethical advice. None the less is the thinker faced with an apparently insuperable difficulty in the way of accepting conscience as an ethical basis; for he finds the voice of conscience varying with civilisation, education, race, religion, traditions, customs, and if it be, indeed, the voice of God in man, he cannot but see--in a sense quite different from that intended by the writer--that God "in divers manners spoke in past times". Moreover he observes, as an historical fact, that some of the worst crimes which have disgraced humanity have been done in obedience to the voice of conscience. It is quite clear that Cromwell at Drogheda was obeying conscience, was doing that which he conscientiously believed to be the Will of God; and there is no reason to doubt that a man like Torquemada was also carrying out what he conscientiously believed to be the Divine Will in the war which he waged against heresy through the Inquisition. In this moral chaos, with such a clash of discordant "Divine Voices," where shall sure guidance be found? One recalls the bitter gibe of Laud to the Puritan, who urged that he must follow his conscience: "Yea, verily; but take heed that thy conscience be not the conscience of a fool." Conscience speaks with authority, whenever it speaks at all. Its voice is imperial, strong and clear. None the less is it often uninformed, mistaken, in its dictate. There _is_ an Intuition which is verily the voice of the Spirit in man, in the God-illuminated man, which is dealt with in the fifth chapter. But the Intuition recognised in the West, and identified with conscience, is something far other. For the sake of clarity, we must define what conscience is since we have said what it is not: that it is not the voice of the Spirit in man, that it is not the voice of God. Conscience is the result of the accumulated experience gained by each man in his previous lives. Each of us is an Immortal Spirit, a Divine fragment, a Self: "A fragment of mine own Self, transformed in the world of life into an immortal Spirit, draweth round itself the senses, of which the mind is the sixth, veiled in Matter." Such is each man. He evolves into manifested powers all the potentialities unfolded in him by virtue of his divine parentage, and this is effected by repeated births into this world, wherein he gathers experience, repeated deaths out of this world into the other twain--the wheel of births and deaths turns in the [T.]riloka, the three worlds--wherein he reaps in pain the results of experiences gathered by disregard of law, and assimilates, transforming into faculty, moral and mental, the results of experience gathered in harmony with law. Having transmuted experience into faculty, he returns to earth for the gathering of new experience, dealt with as before after physical death. Thus the Spirit unfolds, or the man evolves--whichever expression is preferred to indicate this growth. Very similarly doth the physical body grow; a man eats food; digests it, assimilates it, transmutes it into the materials of his body; ill food causes pain, even disease; good food strengthens, and makes for growth. The outer is a reflection of the inner. Now conscience is the sum total of the experiences in past lives which have borne sweet and bitter fruit, according as they were in accord or disaccord with surrounding natural law. This sum total of _physical_ experiences, which result in increased or diminished life, we call instinct, and it is life-preserving. The sum total of our interwoven _mental and moral_ experiences, in our relations with others, is moral instinct, or conscience, and it is harmonising, impels to "good"--a word which we shall define in our fourth chapter. Hence conscience depends on the experiences through which we have passed in previous lives, and is necessarily an individual possession. It differs where the past experience is different, as in the savage and the civilised man, the dolt and the talented, the fool and the genius, the criminal and the saint. The voice of God would speak alike in all; the experience of the past speaks differently in each. Hence also the consciences of men at a similar evolutionary level speak alike on broad questions of right and wrong, good and evil. On these the "voice" is clear. But there are many questions whereon past experience fails us, and then conscience fails to speak. We are in doubt; two apparent duties conflict; two ways seem equally right or equally wrong. "I do not know what I _ought_ to do," says the perplexed moralist, hearing no inner voice. In such cases, we must seek to form the best judgment we can, and then act boldly. If unknowingly we disregard some hidden law we shall suffer, and _that_ experience will be added to our sum total, and in similar circumstances in the future, conscience, through the aid of this added experience, will have found a voice. Hence we may ever, having judged as best we can, act boldly, and learn increased wisdom from the result. Much moral cowardice, paralysing action, has resulted from the Christian idea of "sin," as something that incurs the "wrath of God," and that needs to be "forgiven," in order to escape an artificial--not a natural--penalty. We gain knowledge by experience, and disregard of a law, where it is not known, should cause us no distress, no remorse, no "repentance," only a quiet mental note that we must in future remember the law which we disregarded and make our conduct harmonise therewith. Where conscience does not speak, how shall we act? The way is well known to all thoughtful people: we first try to eliminate all personal desire from the consideration of the subject on which decision is needed, so that the mental atmosphere may not be rendered a distorting medium by the mists of personal pleasure or pain; next, we place before us all the circumstances, giving each its due weight; then, we decide; the next step depends on whether we believe in Higher Powers or not; if we do, we sit down quietly and alone; we place our decision before us; we suspend _all_ thought, but remain mentally alert--all mental ear, as it were; we ask for help from God, from our Teacher, from our own Higher Self; into that silence comes the decision. We obey it, without further consideration, and then we watch the result, and judge by that of the value of the decision, for it may have come from the higher or from the lower Self. But, as we did our very best, we feel no trouble, even if the decision should be wrong and bring us pain. We have gained an experience, and will do better next time. The trouble, the pain, we have brought on ourselves by our ignorance, we note, as showing that we have disregarded a law, and we profit by the additional knowledge in the future. Thus understanding conscience, we shall not take it as a basis of morality, but as our best available individual light. We shall judge our conscience, educate it, evolve it by mental effort, by careful observation. As we learn more, our conscience will develop; as we act up to the highest we can see, our vision will become ever clearer, and our ear more sensitive. As muscles develop by exercise, so conscience develops by activity, and as we use our lamp it burns the more brightly. But let it ever be remembered that it is a man's own experience that must guide him, and his own conscience that must decide. To overrule the conscience of another is to induce in him moral paralysis, and to seek to dominate the will of another is a crime. * * * * * III UTILITY To those whose intelligence and conscience had revolted against the crude and immoral maxims mixed up with noble precepts in Revelation; to those who recognised the impossibility of accepting the varying voices of Intuition as a moral guide; to all those the theory that Morality was based on Utility, came as a welcome and rational relief. It promised a scientific certitude to moral precepts; it left the intellect free to inquire and to challenge; it threw man back on grounds which were found in this world alone, and could be tested by reason and experience; it derived no authority from antiquity, no sanction from religion; it stood entirely on its own feet, independently of the many conflicting elements which were found in the religions of the past and present. The basis for morality, according to Utility, is the greatest happiness of the greatest number; that which conduces to the greatest happiness of the greatest number is Right; that which does not is Wrong. This general maxim being laid down, it remains for the student to study history, to analyse experience, and by a close and careful investigation into human nature and human relations to elaborate a moral code which would bring about general happiness and well-being. This, so far, has not been done. Utility has been a "hand-to-mouth" moral basis, and certain rough rules of conduct have grown up by experience and the necessities of life, without any definite investigation into, or codifying of, experience. Man's moral basis as a rule is a compound of partially accepted revelations and partially admitted consciences, with a practical application of the principle of "that which works best". The majority are not philosophers, and care little for a logical basis. They are unconscious empirics, and their morality is empirical. Mr. Charles Bradlaugh, considering that the maxim did not sufficiently guard the interests of the minority, and that, so far as was possible, these also should be considered and guarded, added another phrase; his basis ran: "The greatest happiness of the greatest number, with the least injury to any." The rule was certainly improved by the addition, but it did not remove many of the objections raised. It was urged by the Utilitarian that morality had developed out of the social side of human beings; that men, as social animals, desired to live in permanent relations with each other, and that this resulted in the formation of families; men could not be happy in solitude; the persistence of these groups, amid the conflicting interests of the individuals who composed them, could only be secured by recognising that the interests of the majority must prevail, and form the rule of conduct for the whole family. Morality, it was pointed out, thus began in family relations, and conduct which disrupted the family was wrong, while that which strengthened and consolidated it was right. Thus family morality was established. As families congregated together for mutual protection and support, their separate interests as families were found to be conflicting, and so a _modus vivendi_ was sought in the same principle which governed relations within the family: the common interests of the grouped families, the tribe, must prevail over the separate and conflicting interests of the separate families; that which disrupted the tribe was wrong, while that which strengthened and consolidated it was right. Thus tribal morality was established. The next step was taken as tribes grouped themselves together and became a nation, and morality extended so as to include all who were within the nation; that which disrupted the nation was wrong, and that which consolidated and strengthened it was right. Thus national morality was established. Further than that, utilitarian morality has not progressed, and international relations have not yet been moralised; they remain in the savage state, and recognise no moral law. Germany has boldly accepted this position, and declares formally that, for the State, Might is Right, and that all which the State can do for its own aggrandisement, for the increase of its power, it may and ought to do, for there is no rule of conduct to which it owes obedience; it is a law unto itself. Other nations have not formularised the statement in their literature as Germany has done, but the strong nations have acted upon it in their dealings with the weaker nations, although the dawning sense of an international morality in the better of them has led to the defence of international wrong by "the tyrant's plea, necessity". The most flagrant instance of the utter disregard of right and wrong as between nations, is, perhaps, the action of the allied European nations against China--in which the Hun theory of "frightfulness" was enunciated by the German Kaiser--but the history of nations so far is a history of continual tramplings on the weak by the strong, and with the coming to the front of the Christian white nations, and their growth in scientific knowledge and thereby in power, the coloured nations and tribes, whether civilised or savage, have been continually exploited and oppressed. International morality, at present, does not exist. Murder within the family, the tribe, and the nation is marked as a crime, save that judicial murder, capital punishment, is permitted--on the principle of (supposed) Utility. But multiple murder outside the nation--War--is not regarded as criminal, nor is theft "wrong," when committed by a strong nation on a weak one. It may be that out of the widespread misery caused by the present War, some international morality may be developed. We may admit that, as a matter of historical and present fact, Utility has been everywhere tacitly accepted as the basis of morality, defective as it is as a theory. Utility is used as the test of Revelation, as the test of Intuition, and precepts of Manu, Zarathushtra, Moses, Christ, Muhammad, are acted on, or disregarded, according as they are considered to be useful, or harmful, or impracticable, to be suitable or unsuitable to the times. Inconsistencies in these matters do not trouble the "practical" ordinary man. The chief attack on the theory of Utility as a basis for morality has come from Christians, and has been effected by challenging the word "happiness" as the equivalent of "pleasure," the "greatest number" as equivalent to "individual," and then denouncing the maxim as "a morality for swine". "Virtue" is placed in antagonism to happiness, and virtue, not happiness, is said to be the right aim for man. This really begs the question, for what is "virtue"? The crux of the whole matter lies there. Is "virtue" opposed to "happiness," or is it a means to happiness? Why is the word "pleasure" substituted for "happiness" when utility is attacked? We may take the second question first. "Pleasure," in ordinary parlance, means an immediate and transitory form of happiness and usually a happiness of the body rather than of the emotions and the mind. Hence the "swine". A sensual enjoyment is a "pleasure"; union with God would not be called a pleasure, but happiness. An old definition of man's true object is: "To know God, and to enjoy Him for ever." There happiness is clearly made the true end of man. The assailant changes the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" into the "pleasure of the individual," and having created this man of straw, he triumphantly knocks it down. Does not virtue lead to happiness? Is it not a condition of happiness? How does the Christian define virtue? It is obedience to the Will of God. But he only obeys that Will as "revealed" so far as it agrees with Utility. He no longer slays the heretic, and he suffers the witch to live. He does not give his cloak to the thief who has stolen his coat, but he hands over the thief to the policeman. Moreover, as Herbert Spencer pointed out, he follows virtue as leading to heaven; if right conduct led him to everlasting torture, would he still pursue it? Or would he revise his idea of right conduct? The martyr dies for the truth he sees, because it is easier _to him_ to die than to betray truth. He could not live on happily as a conscious liar. The nobility of a man's character is tested by the things which give him pleasure. The joy in following truth, in striving after the noblest he can see--that is the greatest happiness; to sacrifice present enjoyment for the service of others is not self-denial, but self-expression, to the Spirit who is man. Where Utility fails is that it does not inspire, save where the spiritual life is already seen to be the highest happiness of the individual, because it conduces to the good of all, not only of the "greatest number". Men who thus feel have inspiration from within themselves and need no outside moral code, no compelling external law. Ordinary men, the huge majority at the present stage of evolution, need either compulsion or inspiration, otherwise they will not control their animal nature, they will not sacrifice an immediate pleasure to a permanent increase of happiness, they will not sacrifice personal gain to the common good. The least developed of these are almost entirely influenced by fear of personal pain and wish for personal pleasure; they will not put their hand into the fire, because they know that fire burns, and no one accuses them of a "low motive" because they do not burn themselves; religion shows them that the results of the disregard of moral and mental law work out in suffering after death as well as before it, and that the results of obedience to such laws similarly work out in post-mortem pleasure. It thus supplies a useful element in the early stages of moral development. At a higher stage, love of God and the wish to "please Him" by leading an exemplary life is a motive offered by religion, and this inspires to purity and to self-sacrifice; again, this is no more ignoble than the wish to please the father, the mother, the friend. Many a lad keeps pure to please his mother, because he loves her. So religious men try to live nobly to please God, because they love Him. At a higher stage yet, the good of the people, the good of the race, of humanity in the future, acts as a potent inspiration. But this does not touch the selfish lower types. Hence Utility fails as a compelling power with the majority, and is insufficient as motive. Add to this the radical fault that it does not place morality on a universal basis, the happiness of _all_, that it disregards the happiness of the minority, and its unsatisfactory nature is seen. It has much of truth in it; it enters as a determining factor into all systems of ethics, even where nominally ignored or directly rejected; it is a better basis in theory, though a worse one in practice, than either Revelation or Intuition, but it is incomplete. We must seek further for a solid basis of morality. * * * * * IV EVOLUTION We come now to the sure basis of morality, the bedrock of Nature, whereon Morality may be built beyond all shaking and change, built as a Science with recognised laws, and in a form intelligible and capable of indefinite expansion. Evolution is recognised as the method of Nature, her method in all her realms, and according to the ascertained laws of Nature, so far as they are known, all wise and thoughtful people endeavour to guide themselves. In making Morality a Science, we give it a binding force, and render it of universal application; moreover, we incorporate into it all the fragments of truth which exist in other systems, and which have lent to them their authority, their appeal to the intellect and the heart. Let us first define Morality. It is the science of human relations, the Science of Conduct, and its laws, as inviolable, as sure, as changeless, as all other laws of Nature, can be discovered and formulated. Harmony with these laws, like harmony with all other natural laws, is the condition of happiness, for in a realm of law none can move without pain while disregarding law. A law of Nature is the statement of an inviolable and constant sequence external to ourselves and unchangeable by our will, and amid the conditions of these inviolable sequences we live, from these we cannot escape. One choice alone is ours: to live in harmony with them or to disregard them; violate them we cannot, but we can dash ourselves against them; then the law asserts itself in the suffering that results from our flinging ourselves against it, or from our disregarding its existence; its existence is proved as well by the pain that results from our disregard of it, as by the pleasure that results from our harmony with it. Only a fool deliberately and gratuitously disregards a natural law when he knows of its existence; a man shapes his conduct so as to avoid the pain which results from clashing with it, unless he deliberately disregards the pain in view of a result to be brought about, which he considers to be worth more than the purchase price of pain. The Science of Morality, of Right Conduct, "lays down the conditions of harmonious relations between individuals, and their several environments small or large, families, societies, nations, humanity as a whole. Only by the knowledge and observance of these laws can men be either permanently healthy or permanently happy, can they live in peace and prosperity. Where morality is unknown or disregarded, friction inevitably arises, disharmony and pain result; for Nature is a settled Order in the mental and moral worlds as much as in the physical, and only by knowledge of that Order and by obedience to it can harmony, health and happiness be secured." The religious man sees in the laws of Nature the manifestation of the Divine Nature, and in obedience to and co-operation with them, he sees obedience to and co-operation with the Will of God. The non-religious man sees them as sequences he cannot alter, on harmony with which his happiness, his comfort, depends. In either case they have a binding force. The man belonging to any exoteric religion will modify by them the precepts of his Scriptures, realising that morality rises as Evolution proceeds. He does thus modify scriptural precepts by practical obedience or disregard, whether he do it by theory or not. But it is better that theory and practice should correspond. The intuitionist will understand that conscience, accumulated experience, has developed by experience within these laws. The utilitarian will see that the happiness of all, not only of the greatest number, must be ensured by a true morality, and will understand why Happiness is the result thereof. Manu indicates the various bases very significantly: "The whole Ve[d.]a is the source of the Sacred Law [Revelation], next the tradition [Conscience] and the virtuous conduct of those who know [Utility], also the customs of holy men [Evolution] and self-satisfaction [Mysticism]" (ii, 6.). It is true that happiness can result only by harmony with law, harmony with the Divine Will which is embodied in law--we need not quarrel over names--and the Science of Right Conduct, "by establishing righteousness brings about Happiness". It may therefore be truly said that the object of Morality is Universal Happiness. Why the doing of a right action causes a flow of happiness in the doer, even in the midst of a keen temporary pain entailed by it, we shall see under "Mysticism". The moment we base Morality on Evolution, we see that it must change with the stage of evolution reached, and that the duty--that which ought to be done--of the civilised and highly advanced man is not the same as the duty of the savage. "One set of duties for men in the K[r.][t.]a age, different ones in the Tre[t.][=a] and in the Dv[=a]para, and another in the Kali." (_Manusm[r.][t.]i_, i, 85.) Different ages bring new duties. But if Morality be based on Evolution we can at once define what is "Right" and what is "Wrong". That is Right which subserves Evolution; that is Wrong which antagonises it. Or in other words, for those of us who believe that God's method for this world is the evolutionary: that is Right which co-operates with His Will; that is wrong which works against it. "Revelation" is an attempt to state this at any given time; "Intuition" is the result of successful attempts to do this; "Utility" is the application of observed results of happiness and misery which flow from obedience to this, or disregard thereof. Evolution is the unfolding and manifestation of life-energies, the unfolding of the capacities of consciousness, the manifestation of these ever-increasing capacities in ever-improving and more plastic forms. The primary truth of Morality, as of Religion and of Science, is the Unity of Life. One Life ever unfolding in endless varieties of forms; the essence of all beings is the same, the inequalities are the marks of the stage of its unfoldment. When we base Morality on Evolution, we cannot have, it is obvious, one cut and dry rule for all. Those who want cut and dry rules must go to their Scriptures for them, and even then, as the rules in the Scriptures are contradictory--both as between Scriptures and within any given Scripture--they must call in the help of Intuition and Utility in the making of their code, in their selective process. This selective process will be largely moulded by the public opinion of their country and age, emphasising some precepts and ignoring others, and the code will be the expression of the average morality of the time. If this clumsy and uncertain fashion of finding a rule of conduct does not suit us, we must be willing to exert our intelligence, to take a large view of the evolutionary process, and to deduce our moral precepts at any given stage by applying our reason to the scrutiny of this process at that stage. This scrutiny is a laborious one; but Truth is the prize of effort in the search therefor, it is not an unearned gift to the slothful and the careless. This large view of the evolutionary process shows us that it is best studied in two great divisions: the first from the savage to the highly civilised man who is still working primarily for himself and his family, still working for private ends predominantly; and the second, at present but sparsely followed, in which the man, realising the supreme claim of the whole upon its part, seeks the public good predominantly, renounces individual advantages and private gains, and consecrates himself to the service of God and of man. The Hindu calls the first section of evolution the Prav[r.][t.][t.]i M[=a]rga, the Path of Forthgoing; the second the Niv[r.][t.][t.]i M[=a]rga, the Path of Return. In the first, the man evolves by taking; in the second, by giving. In the first, he incurs debts; in the second, he pays them. In the first, he acquires; in the second, he renounces. In the first, he lives for the profit of the smaller self; in the second, for the service of the One Self. In the first, he claims Rights; in the second, he discharges Duties. Thus Morality is seen from two view-points, and the virtues it comprises fall into two groups. Men are surrounded on every side by objects of desire, and the use of these is to evoke the desire to possess them, to stimulate exertion, to inspire efforts, and thus to make faculty, capacity--strength, intelligence, alertness, judgment, perseverance, patience, fortitude. Those who regard the world as God-emanated and God-guided, must inevitably realise that the relation of man--susceptible to pleasure and pain by contact with his environment--to his environment--filled with pleasure and pain-giving objects--must be intended to provoke in man the desire to possess the pleasure-giving, to avoid the pain-giving. In fact, God's lures to exertion are pleasures; His warnings are pains and the interplay between man and environment causes evolution. The man who does not believe in God has only to substitute the word "Nature" for "God" and to leave out the idea of design, and the argument remains the same: man's relation to his environment provokes exertion, and thus evolution. A man on the Path of Forthgoing will, at first, seize everything he desires, careless of others, and will gradually learn, from the attacks of the despoiled, some respect for the rights of others; the lesson will be learnt more quickly by the teaching of more advanced men--[R.][s.]his, Founders of Religions, Sages, and the like--who tell him that if he kills, robs, tramples on others, he will suffer. He does all these things; he suffers; he learns--his post-mortem lives helping him much in the learning. Later on, he lives a more controlled and regulated life, and he may blamelessly enjoy the objects of desire, provided he injure none in the taking. Hin[d.][=u]ism lays down, as the proper pursuits for the household life, the gaining of wealth, the performance of the duties of the position held, the gratification of desire. The desires will become subtler and more refined as intelligence fashions them and as emotions replace passions; but throughout the treading of the Path of Forthgoing, the "desire for fruit" is the necessary and blameless motive for exertion. Without this, the man at this stage of evolution becomes lethargic and does not evolve. Desire subserves Evolution, and it is Right. The gratification of Desire may lead a man to do injury to others, and as soon as he has developed enough to understand this, then the gratification becomes wrong, because, forgetting the Unity, he has inflicted harm on one who shares life with him, and has thus hampered evolution. The sense of Unity is the root-Love, the Uniter, and Love is the expression of the attraction of the separated towards union; out of Love, controlled by reason and by the desire for the happiness of all, grow all Virtues, which are but permanent, universal, specialised _forms_ of love. So also is the sense of Separateness the root-Hate, the Divider, the expression of the repulsion of the separated from each other. Out of this grow all Vices, the permanent, universal, specialised _forms_ of Hate. That which Love does for the Beloved, that Virtue does for all who need its aid, so far as its power extends. That which Hate wreaks on the Abhorred, that Vice does to all who obstruct its path, so far as its power extends. "Virtues and Vices are fixed emotional states. The Virtues are fixed Love-emotions, regulated and controlled by enlightened intelligence seeing the Unity; the Vices are fixed Hate-emotions, strengthened and intensified by the unenlightened intelligence, seeing the separateness." (_Universal Text Book_, ii, 32.) It is obvious that virtues are constructive and vices destructive, for Love holds together, while Hate disintegrates. Yet the modified form of Hate--antagonism, competition--had its part to play in the earlier stages of human evolution, developing strength, courage, and endurance, and while Love built up Nations within themselves, Hate made each strong against its competitor. And within Nations, there has been conflict of classes, class and caste war, and all this modified and softened by a growing sense of a common good, until Competition, the characteristic of the Path of Forthgoing tends to change into Co-operation, the characteristic of the Path of Return. The Path of Forthgoing must still be trodden by many, but the number is decreasing; more and more are turning towards the Path of Return. Ideals are formulated by the leaders of Humanity, and the Ideals held up to-day are increasingly those of Love and of Service. "During the first stage, man grasps at everything he desires and develops a strong individuality by conflict; in the second, he shares all he has, and yokes that individuality to service; ever-increasing separation is the key-note of the one; ever-increasing unity is the key-note of the other. Hence we need not brand as evil the rough aggression and the fierce struggles of barbarous times; they were a necessary stage of growth and were at that stage Right, and in the divine plan. But now those days are over, strength has been won; the time has come when the separated selves must gradually draw together, and to co-operate with the divine Will which is working for union is the Right. The Right which is the outcome of Love, directed by reason, at the present stage of evolution, then, seeks an ever-increasing realisation of Unity, a drawing together of the separated selves. That which by establishing harmonious relations makes for Unity is Right; that which divides and disintegrates, which makes for separation, is Wrong." (_ibid._, 10, 11.) Hin[d.][=u]ism, on which the whole of this is based, has added to this broad criterion the division of a life into four stages, to each of which appropriate virtues are assigned: the Student Period, with its virtues of perfect continence, industry, frugality, exertion; the Household Period, with its virtue of duties appropriate to the position, the earning and enjoying of wealth, the gratification of desires; the Retirement Period, with the virtues of the renouncing of worldly gain and of sacrifice; the Ascetic Period, of complete renunciation, meditation and preparation for post-mortem life. These indications make more easy the decisions as to Right and Wrong. The more we think upon and work out into detail this view of Morality as based on Evolution, the more we realise its soundness, and the more we find that the moral law is as discoverable by observation, by reason, and by experiment, as any other law of Nature. If a man disregards it, either ignorantly or wilfully, he suffers. A man may disregard physical hygienic and sanitary laws because of his ignorance; none the less will he suffer from physical disease. A man may disregard moral laws because of ignorance; none the less will he suffer from moral disease. The sign of disease in both cases is pain and unhappiness; experts in both cases warn us, and if we disregard the warning, we learn its truth later by experience. There is no hurry; but the law is sure. Working with the law, man evolves swiftly with happiness; working against it, he evolves slowly with pain. In either case, he evolves, advancing joyously as a free man, or scourged onwards as a slave. The most obstinate fool in life's class, refusing to learn, fortunately dies and cannot quite escape after death the knowledge of his folly. Let the reader try for himself the solution of moral problems, accepting, as a hypothesis, the facts of evolution and of the two halves of its huge spiral, and see for himself if this view does not offer a rational, intelligible, practical meaning to the much-vexed words, Right and Wrong. Let him see how it embraces all that is true in the other bases suggested, is their summation, and rationalises their precepts. He will find that Morality is no longer dependent on the maxims of great Teachers--though indeed they proclaimed its changeless laws--nor on the imperfect resultant of individual experiences, nor on the happiness of some only of the great human family, but that it inheres in the very nature of things, an essential law of happy life and ordered progress. Then indeed is Morality founded on a basis that cannot be moved; then indeed can it speak with an imperial authority the "ought" that must be obeyed; then it unfolds its beauty as humanity evolves to its perfecting, and leads to Bliss Eternal, the Brahman Bliss, where the human will, in fullest freedom, accords itself in harmony with the divine. * * * * * V MYSTICISM Mysticism cannot be spoken of as a basis of morality in the sense in which Revelation, Intuition, Utility and Evolution are bases, for it is valid only for the individual, not for everybody, for the true Mystic, the dictates of the Outer or Inner God are imperial, compelling, but to any one else they are entirely unauthoritative. None the less, as the influence of the Mystic is wide-reaching, and his dicta are accepted by many as a trustworthy revelation--are not all revelations communicated by Mystics?--or as the intuition of an illuminated conscience, or as showing the highest utility, or as the result of an evolution higher than the normal, it is worth while to consider their value. Mysticism is the realisation of God, of the Universal Self. It is attained either as a realisation of God outside the Mystic, or within himself. In the first case, it is usually reached from within a religion, by exceptionally intense love and devotion, accompanied by purity of life, for only "the pure in heart shall see God". The external means are prayer to and meditation on the Object of devotion--Shr[=i] R[=a]ma, Shr[=i] K[r.][s.]h[n.]a, the Lord Jesus--long continued and persevering, and the devotee realises his Divinity by ecstacy attaining Union thereby. Such Mystics are, for the most part, valuable to the world as creating an atmosphere of spirituality, which raises the general level of religious feeling in those who come within its area; India has especially profited by the considerable number of such Mystics found within its borders in past times, and to a lesser extent to-day; every one who practises, for instance, meditation, knows that it is easier here than elsewhere, and all sensitive persons feel the Indian "atmosphere". Outside this, such Mystics occasionally write valuable books, containing high ideals of the spiritual life. As a rule, they do not concern themselves with the affairs of the outer world, which they regard as unimportant. Their cry continually is that the world is evil, and they call on men to leave it, not to improve it. To them God and the world are in opposition, "the world, the flesh, and the devil" are the three great enemies of the spiritual life. In the West, this is almost universal, for in the Roman Catholic Church seclusion is the mark of the religious life, and "the religious" are the monk and the nun, the "religious" and the "secular" being in opposition. In truth, where the realisation of God outside himself is sought by the devotee, seclusion is a necessity for success, if only for the time which is required for meditation, the essential preliminary of ecstacy. In the very rare Mystics of non-Catholic communions, full ecstacy is scarcely, if at all, known or even recognised; an overpowering sense of the divine Presence is experienced, but it is a Presence outside the worshipper; it is accompanied with a deliberate surrender of the will to God, and a feeling on the part of the man that he becomes an instrument of the divine Will; this he carries with him into outer life, and, undirected by love and the illuminated reason, it often lands the half-developed Mystic into fanaticism and cruelty; no one who has read Oliver Cromwell's letters can deny that he was a Mystic, half-developed, and it is on him that Lord Rosebery founded his dictum of the formidable nature of the "practical Mystic"; the ever present sense of a divine Power behind himself gives such a man a power that ordinary men cannot successfully oppose; but this sense affords no moral basis, as, witness the massacre of Drogheda. Such a Mystic, belonging to a particular religion, as he always does, takes the revelation of his religion as his moral code, and Cromwell felt himself as the avenging sword of his God, as did the Hebrews fighting with the Amalekites. No man who accepts a revelation as his guide can be regarded as more than partially a Mystic. He has the Mystic temperament only, and that undoubtedly gives him a strength far beyond the strength of those who have it not. The true Mystic, realising God, has no need of any Scriptures, for he has touched the source whence all Scriptures flow. An "enlightened" Br[=a]hma[n.]a, says Shr[=i] K[r.][s.]h[n.]a, has no more need of the Ve[d.]as, than a man needs a tank in a place which is overflowing with water. The value of cisterns, of reservoirs, is past, when a man is seated beside an ever-flowing spring. As Dean Inge has pointed out, Mysticism is the most scientific form of religion, for it bases itself, as does all science, on experience and experiment--experiment being only a specialised form of experience, devised either to discover or to verify. We have seen the Mystic who realises God outside himself and seeks Union with Him. There remains the most interesting, the most effective form of Mysticism, the realisation by a man of God within himself. Here meditation is also a necessity, and the man who is born with a high capacity for concentration is merely a man who has practised it in previous lives. A life or lives of study and seclusion often precede a life of tremendous and sustained activity in the physical world. The realisation is preceded by control of the body, control of the emotions and control of the mind, for the power to hold these in complete stillness is necessary, if a man is to penetrate into those depths of his own nature in which alone is to be found the shrine of the inner God. The subtle music of that sphere is drowned by the clatter of the lower bodies as the most exquisite notes of the V[=i][n.][=a] are lost in the crude harsh sound of the harmonium. The Voice of the Silence can only be heard in the silence, and all the desires of the heart must be paralysed ere can arise in the tranquillity of senses and mind, the glorious majesty of the Self. Only in the desert of loneliness rises that Sun in all His glory, for all objects that might cloud His dawning must vanish; only "when half-Gods go," does God arise. Even the outer God must hide, ere the Inner God can manifest; the cry of agony of the Crucified must be wrung from the tortured lips; "My God, my God, why hast _Thou_ forsaken me?" precedes the realisation of the God within. Through this all Mystics pass who are needed for great service in the world, those whom Mr. Bagshot so acutely calls "materialised Mystics". The Mystics who find God outside themselves are the "unmaterialised" Mystics, and they serve the world in the ways above mentioned; but the other, as Mr. Bagshot points out, transmute their mystic thought into "practical energy," and these become the most formidable powers known in the physical world. All that is based on injustice, fraud and wrong may well tremble when one of these arises, for the Hidden God has become manifest, and who may bar His way? Such Mystics wear none of the outer signs of the "religious"--their renunciation is within, not without, there is no parade of outer holiness, no outer separation from the world; Janaka the King, K[r.][s.]h[n.]a the Warrior-Statesman, are of these; clothed in cotton cloth or cloth of gold, it matters not; poor or rich, it boots not; failing or succeeding, it is naught, for each apparent failure is the road to fuller success, and both are their servants, not their masters; victory ever attends them, to-day or a century hence is equal, for they live in Eternity, and with them it is ever To-day. Possessing nothing, all is theirs; holding everything, nothing belongs to them. Misconception, misrepresentation, they meet with a smile, half-amused, all-forgiving; the frowns, the taunts, the slanders of the men they live to serve are only the proofs of how much these foolish ones need their help, and how should these foolish ones hurt those on whom the Peace of the Eternal abides? These Mystics are a law unto themselves, for the inner law has replaced the external compulsion. More rigid, for it is the law of their own nature; more compelling, for it is the Voice of the divine Will; more exacting, for no pity, no pardon, is known to it; more all-embracing, for it sees the part only in the whole. But it has, it ought to have, no authority outside the Mystic himself. It may persuade, it may win, it may inspire, but it may not claim obedience as of right. For the Voice of the God within only becomes authoritative for another when the God within that other self answers the Mystic's appeal, and he recognises an ideal that he could not have formulated, unaided, for himself. The Mystic may shine as a Light, but a man must see with his own eyes, and there lies the world's safety; the materialised Mystic, strong as he is, cannot, by virtue of the God within him, enslave his fellow-men. * * * * * THE VASANTA PRESS, ADYAR, MADRAS 
18266	----	_Theosophical Manuals. No. 3._ DEATH--AND AFTER? BY ANNIE BESANT. (20TH THOUSAND) Theosophical Publishing Society London and Benares City Agents, Percy Lund Humphries & Co. Amen Corner, London, E.C. 1906 _PRICE ONE SHILLING_ PREFACE. _Few words are needed in sending this little book out into the world. It is the third of a series of Manuals designed to meet the public demand for a simple exposition of Theosophical teachings. Some have complained that our literature is at once too abstruse, too technical, and too expensive for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope that the present series may succeed in supplying what is a very real want. Theosophy is not only for the learned; it is for all. Perhaps among those who in these little books catch their first glimpse of its teachings, there may be a few who will be led by them to penetrate more deeply into its philosophy, its science, and its religion, facing its abstruser problems with the student's zeal and the neophyte's ardour. But these Manuals are not written for the eager student, whom no initial difficulties can daunt; they are written for the busy men and women of the work-a-day world, and seek to make plain some of the great truths that render life easier to bear and death easier to face. Written by servants of the Masters who are the Elder Brothers of our race, they can have no other object than to serve our fellow-men._ DEATH--AND AFTER? Who does not remember the story of the Christian missionary in Britain, sitting one evening in the vast hall of a Saxon king, surrounded by his thanes, having come thither to preach the gospel of his Master; and as he spoke of life and death and immortality, a bird flew in through an unglazed window, circled the hall in its flight, and flew out once more into the darkness of the night. The Christian priest bade the king see in the flight of the bird within the hall the transitory life of man, and claimed for his faith that it showed the soul, in passing from the hall of life, winging its way not into the darkness of night, but into the sunlit radiance of a more glorious world. Out of the darkness, through the open window of Birth, the life of a man comes to the earth; it dwells for a while before our eyes; into the darkness, through the open window of Death, it vanishes out of our sight. And man has questioned ever of Religion, Whence comes it? Whither goes it? and the answers have varied with the faiths. To-day, many a hundred year since Paulinus talked with Edwin, there are more people in Christendom who question whether man has a spirit to come anywhence or to go anywhither than, perhaps, in the world's history could ever before have been found at one time. And the very Christians who claim that Death's terrors have been abolished, have surrounded the bier and the tomb with more gloom and more dismal funeral pomp than have the votaries of any other creed. What can be more depressing than the darkness in which a house is kept shrouded, while the dead body is awaiting sepulture? What more repellent than the sweeping robes of lustreless crape, and the purposed hideousness of the heavy cap in which the widow laments the "deliverance" of her husband "from the burden of the flesh"? What more revolting than the artificially long faces of the undertaker's men, the drooping "weepers", the carefully-arranged white handkerchiefs, and, until lately, the pall-like funeral cloaks? During the last few years, a great and marked improvement has been made. The plumes, cloaks, and weepers have well-nigh disappeared. The grotesquely ghastly hearse is almost a thing of the past, and the coffin goes forth heaped over with flowers instead of shrouded in the heavy black velvet pall. Men and women, though still wearing black, do not roll themselves up in shapeless garments like sable winding-sheets, as if trying to see how miserable they could make themselves by the imposition of artificial discomforts. Welcome common-sense has driven custom from its throne, and has refused any longer to add these gratuitous annoyances to natural human grief. In literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding Death has been characteristic of Christianity. Death has been painted as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening figure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking an hour-glass--all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round this rightly-named King of Terrors. Milton, who has done so much with his stately rhythm to mould the popular conceptions of modern Christianity, has used all the sinewy strength of his magnificent diction to surround with horror the figure of Death. The other shape, If shape it might be called, that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, For each seemed either; black it stood as night, Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell, And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on. Satan was now at hand, and from his seat The monster moving onward came as fast, With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode.... ... So spoke the grisly terror: and in shape So speaking, and so threatening, grew tenfold More dreadful and deform.... ... but he, my inbred enemy, Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart, Made to destroy: I fled, and cried out _Death!_ Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed From all her caves, and back resounded _Death_.[1] That such a view of Death should be taken by the professed followers of a Teacher said to have "brought life and immortality to light" is passing strange. The claim, that as late in the history of the world as a mere eighteen centuries ago the immortality of the Spirit in man was brought to light, is of course transparently absurd, in the face of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary available on all hands. The stately Egyptian Ritual with its _Book of the Dead_, in which are traced the post-mortem journeys of the Soul, should be enough, if it stood alone, to put out of court for ever so preposterous a claim. Hear the cry of the Soul of the righteous: O ye, who make the escort of the God, stretch out to me your arms, for I become one of you. (xvii. 22.) Hail to thee, Osiris, Lord of Light, dwelling in the mighty abode, in the bosom of the absolute darkness. I come to thee, a purified Soul; my two hands are around thee. (xxi. 1.) I open heaven; I do what was commanded in Memphis. I have knowledge of my heart; I am in possession of my heart, I am in possession of my arms, I am in possession of my legs, at the will of myself. My Soul is not imprisoned in my body at the gates of Amenti. (xxvi. 5, 6.) Not to multiply to weariness quotations from a book that is wholly composed of the doings and sayings of the disembodied man, let it suffice to give the final judgment on the victorious Soul: The defunct shall be deified among the Gods in the lower divine region, he shall never be rejected.... He shall drink from the current of the celestial river.... His Soul shall not be imprisoned, since it is a Soul that brings salvation to those near it. The worms shall not devour it. (clxiv. 14-16.) The general belief in Re-incarnation is enough to prove that the religions of which it formed a central doctrine believed in the survival of the Soul after Death; but one may quote as an example a passage from the _Ordinances of Manu_, following on a disquisition on metempsychosis, and answering the question of deliverance from rebirths. Amid all these holy acts, the knowledge of self [should be translated, knowledge of the _Self_, Atmâ] is said (to be) the highest; this indeed is the foremost of all sciences, since from it immortality is obtained.[2] The testimony of the great Zarathustrean Religion is clear, as is shown by the following, translated from the _Avesta_, in which, the journey of the Soul after death having been described, the ancient Scripture proceeds: The soul of the pure man goes the first step and arrives at (the Paradise) Humata; the soul of the pure man takes the second step and arrives at (the Paradise) Hukhta; it goes the third step and arrives at (the Paradise) Hvarst; the soul of the pure man takes the fourth step and arrives at the Eternal Lights. To it speaks a pure one deceased before, asking it: How art thou, O pure deceased, come away from the fleshy dwellings, from the earthly possessions, from the corporeal world hither to the invisible, from the perishable world hither to the imperishable, as it happened to thee--to whom hail! Then speaks Ahura-Mazda: Ask not him whom thou asketh, (for) he is come on the fearful, terrible, trembling way, the separation of body and soul.[3] The Persian _Desatir_ speaks with equal definiteness. This work consists of fifteen books, written by Persian prophets, and was written originally in the Avestaic language; "God" is Ahura-Mazda, or Yazdan: God selected man from animals to confer on him the soul, which is a substance free, simple, immaterial, non-compounded and non-appetitive. And that becomes an angel by improvement. By his profound wisdom and most sublime intelligence, he connected the soul with the material body. If he (man) does good in the material body, and has a good knowledge and religion he is _Hartasp_.... As soon as he leaves this material body, I (God) take him up to the world of angels, that he may have an interview with the angels, and behold me. And if he is not Hartasp, but has wisdom and abstains from vice, I will promote him to the rank of angels. Every person in proportion to his wisdom and piety will find a place in the rank of wise men, among the heavens and stars. And in that region of happiness he will remain for ever.[4] In China, the immemorial custom of worshipping the Souls of ancestors shows how completely the life of man was regarded as extending beyond the tomb. The _Shû King_--placed by Mr. James Legge as the most ancient of Chinese classics, containing historical documents ranging from B.C. 2357-627--is full of allusions to these Souls, who with other spiritual beings, watch over the affairs of their descendants and the welfare of the kingdom. Thus Pan-kang, ruling from B.C. 1401-1374, exhorts his subjects: My object is to support and nourish you all. I think of my ancestors (who are now) the spiritual sovereigns.... Were I to err in my government, and remain long here, my high sovereign (the founder of our dynasty) would send down on me great punishment for my crime, and say, "Why do you oppress my people?" If you, the myriads of the people, do not attend to the perpetuation of your lives, and cherish one mind with me, the One man, in my plans, the former kings will send down on you great punishment for your crime, and say, "Why do you not agree with our young grandson, but go on to forfeit your virtue?" When they punish you from above, you will have no way of escape.... Your ancestors and fathers will (now) cut you off and abandon you, and not save you from death.[5] Indeed, so practical is this Chinese belief, held to-day as in those long-past ages, that "the change that men call Death" seems to play a very small part in the thoughts and lives of the people of the Flowery Land. These quotations, which might be multiplied a hundred-fold, may suffice to prove the folly of the idea that immortality came to "light through the gospel". The whole ancient world basked in the full sunshine of belief in the immortality of man, lived in it daily, voiced it in its literature, went with it in calm serenity through the gate of Death. It remains a problem why Christianity, which vigorously and joyously re-affirmed it, should have growing in its midst the unique terror of Death that has played so large a part in its social life, its literature, and its art. It is not simply the belief in hell that has surrounded the grave with horror, for other Religions have had their hells, and yet their followers have not been harassed by this shadowy Fear. The Chinese, for instance, who take Death as such a light and trivial thing, have a collection of hells quite unique in their varied unpleasantness. Maybe the difference is a question of race rather than of creed; that the vigorous life of the West shrinks from its antithesis, and that its unimaginative common-sense finds a bodiless condition too lacking in solidity of comfort; whereas the more dreamy, mystical East, prone to meditation, and ever seeking to escape from the thraldom of the senses during earthly life, looks on the disembodied state as eminently desirable, and as most conducive to unfettered thought. Ere passing to the consideration of the history of man in the post-mortem state, it is necessary, however briefly, to state the constitution of man, as viewed by the Esoteric Philosophy, for we must have in mind the constituents of his being ere we can understand their disintegration. Man then consists of _The Immortal Triad_: Atmâ. Buddhi. Manas. _The Perishable Quaternary_: Kâma. Prâna. Etheric Double. Dense Body. The dense body is the physical body, the visible, tangible outer form, composed of various tissues. The etheric double is the ethereal counterpart of the body, composed of the physical ethers. Prâna is vitality, the integrating energy that co-ordinates the physical molecules and holds them together in a definite organism; it is the life-breath within the organism, the portion of the universal Life-Breath, appropriated by the organism during the span of existence that we speak of as "a life". Kâma is the aggregate of appetites, passions, and emotions, common to man and brute. Manas is the Thinker in us, the Intelligence. Buddhi is the vehicle wherein Atmâ, the Spirit, dwells, and in which alone it can manifest. Now the link between the Immortal Triad and the Perishable Quaternary is Manas, which is dual during earth life, or incarnation, and functions as Higher Manas and Lower Manas. Higher Manas sends out a Ray, Lower Manas, which works in and through the human brain, functioning there as brain-consciousness, as the ratiocinating intelligence. This mingles with Kâma, the passional nature, the passions and emotions thus becoming a part of Mind, as defined in Western Psychology. And so we have the link formed between the higher and lower natures in man, this Kâma-Manas belonging to the higher by its mânasic, and to the lower by its kâmic, elements. As this forms the battleground during life, so does it play an important part in post-mortem existence. We might now classify our seven principles a little differently, having in view this mingling in Kâma-Manas of perishable and imperishable elements: { Atmâ. _Immortal_. { Buddhi. { Higher-Manas. _Conditionally Immortal_. Kâma-Manas. { Prâna. _Mortal_. { Etheric Double. { Dense Body. Some Christian writers have adopted a classification similar to this, declaring Spirit to be inherently immortal, as being Divine; Soul to be conditionally immortal, _i.e._, capable of winning immortality by uniting itself with Spirit; Body to be inherently mortal. The majority of uninstructed Christians chop man into two, the Body that perishes at Death, and the something--called indifferently Soul or Spirit--that survives Death. This last classification--if classification it may be called--is entirely inadequate, if we are to seek any rational explanation, or even lucid statement, of the phenomena of post-mortem existence. The tripartite view of man's nature gives a more reasonable representation of his constitution, but is inadequate to explain many phenomena. The septenary division alone gives a reasonable theory consistent with the facts we have to deal with, and therefore, though it may seem elaborate, the student will do wisely to make himself familiar with it. If he were studying only the body, and desired to understand its activities, he would have to classify its tissues at far greater length and with far more minuteness than I am using here. He would have to learn the differences between muscular, nervous, glandular, bony, cartilaginous, epithelial, connective, tissues, and all their varieties; and if he rebelled, in his ignorance, against such an elaborate division, it would be explained to him that only by such an analysis of the different components of the body can the varied and complicated phenomena of life-activity be understood. One kind of tissue is wanted for support, another for movement, another for secretion, another for absorption, and so on; and if each kind does not have its own distinctive name, dire confusion and misunderstanding must result, and physical functions remain unintelligible. In the long run time is gained, as well as clearness, by learning a few necessary technical terms, and as clearness is above all things needed in trying to explain and to understand very complicated post-mortem phenomena, I find myself compelled--contrary to my habit in these elementary papers--to resort to these technical names at the outset, for the English language has as yet no equivalents for them, and the use of long descriptive phrases is extremely cumbersome and inconvenient. For myself, I believe that very much of the antagonism between the adherents of the Esoteric Philosophy and those of Spiritualism has arisen from confusion of terms, and consequent misunderstanding of each others meaning. One eminent Spiritualist lately impatiently said that he did not see the need of exact definition, and that he meant by Spirit all the part of man's nature that survived Death, and was not body. One might as well insist on saying that man's body consists of bone and blood, and asked to define blood, answer: "Oh! I mean everything that is not bone." A clear definition of terms, and a rigid adherence to them when once adopted, will at least enable us all to understand each other, and that is the first step to any fruitful comparison of experiences. THE FATE OF THE BODY. The human body is constantly undergoing a process of decay and of reconstruction. First builded into the etheric form in the womb of the mother, it is built up continually by the insetting of fresh materials. With every moment tiny molecules are passing away from it; with every moment tiny molecules are streaming into it. The outgoing stream is scattered over the environment, and helps to rebuild bodies of all kinds in the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms, the physical basis of all these being one and the same. The idea that the human tabernacle is built by countless _lives_, just in the same way as the rocky crust of our Earth was, has nothing repulsive in it for the true mystic.... Science teaches us that the living as well as the dead organism of both man and animal are swarming with bacteria of a hundred various kinds; that from without we are threatened with the invasion of microbes with every breath we draw, and from within by leucomaines, robes, ærobes, anærobes, and what not. But Science never yet went so far as to assert with the Occult Doctrine that our bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of such beings, which, except larger species, no microscope can detect. So far as regards the purely animal and material portion of man, Science is on its way to discoveries that will go far towards corroborating this theory. Chemistry and physiology are the two great magicians of the future, who are destined to open the eyes of mankind to the great physical truths. With every day, the identity between the animal and physical man, between the plant and man, and even between the reptile and its nest, the rock, and man, is more and more clearly shown. The physical and chemical constituents of all being found to be identical, chemical Science may well say that there is no difference between the matter which composes the ox and that which forms man. But the Occult Doctrine is far more explicit. It says: Not only the chemical compounds are the same, but the same infinitesimal _invisible lives_ compose the atoms of the bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the elephant, and of the tree which shelters him from the sun. Each particle--whether you call it organic or inorganic--_is a life_.[6] These "lives" which, separate and independent, are the minute vehicles of Prâna, aggregated together form the molecules and cells of the physical body, and they stream in and stream out, during all the years of bodily life, thus forming a continual bridge between man and his environment. Controlling these are the "Fiery Lives," the Devourers, which constrain these to their work of building up the cells of the body, so that they work harmoniously and in order, subordinated to the higher manifestation of life in the complex organism called Man. These Fiery Lives on our plane correspond, in this controlling and organising function, with the One Life of the Universe,[7] and when they no longer exercise this function in the human body, the lower lives run rampant, and begin to break down the hitherto definitely organised body. During bodily life they are marshalled as an army; marching in regular order under the command of a general, performing various evolutions, keeping step, moving as a single body. At "Death" they become a disorganised and tumultuous mob, rushing hither and thither, jostling each other, tumbling over each other, with no common object, no generally recognised authority. The body is never more alive than when it is dead; but it is alive in its units, and dead in its totality; alive as a congeries, dead as an organism. Science regards man as an aggregation of atoms temporarily united by a mysterious force called the life-principle. To the Materialist, the only difference between a living and a dead body is that in the one case that force is active, in the other latent. When it is extinct or entirely latent, the molecules obey a superior attraction, which draws them asunder and scatters them through space. This dispersion must be Death, if it is possible to conceive such a thing as Death, where the very molecules of the dead body manifest an intense vital energy.... Says Eliphas Levi: "Change attests movement, and movement only reveals life. The corpse would not decompose if it were dead; all the molecules which compose it are living and struggle to separate."[8] Those who have read _The Seven Principles of Man_,[9] know that the etheric double is the vehicle of Prâna, the life-principle, or vitality. Through the etheric double Prâna exercises the controlling and co-ordinating force spoken of above, and "Death" takes triumphant possession of the body when the etheric double is finally withdrawn and the delicate cord which unites it with the body is snapped. The process of withdrawal has been watched by clairvoyants, and definitely described. Thus Andrew Jackson Davis, "the Poughkeepsie Seer", describes how he himself watched this escape of the ethereal body, and he states that the magnetic cord did not break for some thirty-six hours after apparent death. Others have described, in similar terms, how they saw a faint violet mist rise from the dying body, gradually condensing into a figure which was the counterpart of the expiring person, and attached to that person by a glistening thread. The snapping of the thread means the breaking of the last magnetic link between the dense body and the remaining principles of the human constitution; the body has dropped away from the man; he is excarnated, disembodied; six principles still remain as his constitution immediately after death, the seventh, or the dense body, being left as a cast-off garment. Death consists, indeed, in a repeated process of unrobing, or unsheathing. The immortal part of man shakes off from itself, one after the other, its outer casings, and--as the snake from its skin, the butterfly from its chrysalis--emerges from one after another, passing into a higher state of consciousness. Now it is the fact that this escape from the body, and this dwelling of the conscious entity either in the vehicle called the body of desire, the kâmic or astral body, or in a yet more ethereal Thought Body, can be effected during earth-life; so that man may become familiar with the excarnated condition, and it may lose for him all the terrors that encircle the unknown. He can know himself as a conscious entity in either of these vehicles, and so prove to his own satisfaction that "life" does not depend on his functioning through the physical body. Why should a man who has thus repeatedly "shed" his lower bodies, and has found the process result, not in unconsciousness, but in a vastly extended freedom and vividness of life--why should he fear the final casting away of his fetters, and the freeing of his Immortal Self from what he realises as the prison of the flesh? This view of human life is an essential part of the Esoteric Philosophy. Man is primarily divine, a spark of the Divine Life. This living flame, passing out from the Central Fire, weaves for itself coverings within which it dwells, and thus becomes the Triad, the Atmâ-Buddhi-Manas, the reflection of the Immortal Self. This sends out its Ray, which becomes encased in grosser matter, in the desire body, or kâmic elements, the passional nature, and in the etheric double and the physical body. The once free immortal Intelligence thus entangled, enswathed, enchained, works heavily and laboriously through the coatings that enwrap it. In its own nature it remains ever the free Bird of Heaven, but its wings are bound to its side by the matter into which it is plunged. When man recognises his own inherent nature, he learns to open his prison doors occasionally and escapes from his encircling gaol; first he learns to identify himself with the Immortal Triad, and rises above the body and its passions into a pure mental and moral life; then he learns that the conquered body cannot hold him prisoner, and he unlocks its door and steps out into the sunshine of his true life. So when Death unlocks the door for him, he knows the country into which he emerges, having trodden its ways at his own will. And at last he grows to recognise that fact of supreme importance, that "Life" has nothing to do with body and with this material plane; that Life is his conscious existence, unbroken, unbreakable, and that the brief interludes in that Life, during which he sojourns on Earth, are but a minute fraction of his conscious existence, and a fraction, moreover, during which he is less alive, because of the heavy coverings which weigh him down. For only during these interludes (save in exceptional cases) may he wholly lose his consciousness of continued life, being surrounded by these coverings which delude him and blind him to the truth of things, making that real which is illusion, and that stable which is transitory. The sunlight ranges over the universe, and at incarnation we step out of it into the twilight of the body, and see but dimly during the period of our incarceration; at Death we step out of the prison again into the sunlight, and are nearer to the reality. Short are the twilight periods, and long the periods of the sunlight; but in our blinded state we call the twilight life, and to us it is the real existence, while we call the sunlight Death, and shiver at the thought of passing into it. Well did Giordano Bruno, one of the greatest teachers of our Philosophy in the Middle Ages, state the truth as to the body and Man. Of the real Man he says: He will be present in the body in such wise that the best part of himself will be absent from it, and will join himself by an indissoluble sacrament to divine things, in such a way that he will not feel either love or hatred of things mortal. Considering himself as master, and that he ought not to be servant and slave to his body, which he would regard only as the prison which holds his liberty in confinement, the glue which smears his wings, chains which bind fast his hands, stocks which fix his feet, veil which hides his view. Let him not be servant, captive, ensnared, chained, idle, stolid, and blind, for the body which he himself abandons cannot tyrannise over him, so that thus the spirit in a certain degree comes before him as the corporeal world, and matter is subject to the divinity and to nature.[10] When once we thus come to regard the body, and by conquering it we gain our liberty, Death loses for us all his terrors, and at his touch the body slips from us as a garment, and we stand out from it erect and free. On the same lines of thought Dr. Franz Hartmann writes: According to certain views of the West man is a developed ape. According to the views of Indian Sages, which also coincide with those of the Philosophers of past ages and with the teachings of the Christian Mystics, man is a God, who is united during his earthly life, through his own carnal tendencies, to an animal (his animal nature). The God who dwells within him endows man with wisdom. The animal endows him with force. After death, _the God effects his own release from the man_ by departing from the animal body. As man carries within him this divine consciousness, it is his task to battle with his animal inclinations, and to raise himself above them, by the help of the divine principle, a task which the animal cannot achieve, and which therefore is not demanded of it.[11] The "man", using the word in the sense of personality, as it is used in the latter half of this sentence, is only conditionally immortal; the true man, the evolving God, releases himself, and so much of the personality goes with him as has raised itself into union with the divine. The body thus left to the rioting of the countless lives--previously held in constraint by Prâna, acting through its vehicle the etheric double--begins to decay, that is to break up, and with the disintegration of its cells and molecules, its particles pass away into other combinations. On our return to Earth we may meet again some of those same countless lives that in a previous incarnation made of our then body their passing dwelling; but all that we are just now concerned with is the breaking up of the body whose life-span is over, and its fate is complete disintegration. To the dense body, then, Death means dissolution as an organism, the loosing of the bonds that united the many into one. THE FATE OF THE ETHERIC DOUBLE. The etheric double is the ethereal counterpart of the gross body of man. It is the double that is sometimes seen during life in the neighbourhood of the body, and its absence from the body is generally marked by the heaviness or semi-lethargy of the latter. Acting as the reservoir, or vehicle, of the life-principle during earth-life, its withdrawal from the body is naturally marked by the lowering of all vital functions, even while the cord which unites the two is still unbroken. As has been already said, the snapping of the cord means the death of the body. When the etheric double finally quits the body, it does not travel to any distance from it. Normally it remains floating over the body, the state of consciousness being dreamy and peaceful, unless tumultuous distress and violent emotion surround the corpse from which it has just issued. And here it may be well to say that during the slow process of dying, while the etheric double is withdrawing from the body, taking with it the higher principles, as after it has withdrawn, extreme quiet and self-control should be observed in the chamber of Death. For during this time the whole life passes swiftly in review before the Ego, the individual, as those have related who have passed in drowning into this unconscious and pulseless state. A Master has written: _At the last moment the whole life is reflected in our memory, and emerges from all the forgotten nooks and corners, picture after picture, one event after another.... The man may often appear dead, yet from the last pulsation, from and between the last throbbing of his heart and the moment when the last spark of animal heat leaves the body_, the brain thinks, _and the Ego lives over in those few brief seconds his whole life. Speak in whispers, ye who assist at a deathbed, and find yourselves in the solemn presence of death. Especially have ye to keep quiet just after death has laid her clammy hand upon the body. Speak in whispers, I say, lest ye disturb the quiet ripple of thought, and hinder the busy work of the past, casting its reflection upon the veil of the future._[12] This is the time during which the thought-images of the ended earth-life, clustering around their maker, group and interweave themselves into the completed image of that life, and are impressed in their totality on the Astral Light. The dominant tendencies, the strongest thought-habits, assert their pre-eminence, and stamp themselves as the characteristics which will appear as "innate qualities" in the succeeding incarnation. This balancing-up of the life-issues, this reading of the kârmic records, is too solemn and momentous a thing to be disturbed by the ill-timed wailings of personal relatives and friends. At the solemn moment of death every man, even when death is sudden, sees the whole of his past life marshalled before him, in its minutest details. For one short instant the _personal_ become one with the _individual_ and all-knowing Ego. But this instant is enough to show to him the whole chain of causes which have been at work during his life. He sees and now understands himself as he is, unadorned by flattery or self-deception. He reads his life, remaining as a spectator, looking down into the arena he is quitting.[13] This vivid sight is succeeded, in the ordinary person, by the dreamy, peaceful semi-consciousness spoken of above, as the etheric double floats above the body to which it has belonged, now completely separated from it. Sometimes this double is seen by persons in the house, or in the neighbourhood, when the thought of the dying has been strongly turned to some one left behind, when some anxiety has been in the mind at the last, something left undone which needed doing, or when some local disturbance has shaken the tranquillity of the passing entity. Under these conditions, or others of a similar nature, the double may be seen or heard; when seen, it shows the dreamy, hazy consciousness alluded to, is silent, vague in its aspect, unresponsive. As the days go on, the five higher principles gradually disengage themselves from the etheric double, and shake this off as they previously shook off the grosser body. They pass on, as a fivefold entity, into a state to be next studied, leaving the etheric double, with the dense body of which it is the counterpart, thus becoming an ethereal corpse, as much as the body had become a dense corpse. This ethereal corpse remains near the dense one, and they disintegrate together; clairvoyants see these ethereal wraiths in churchyards, sometimes showing likeness to the dead dense body, sometimes as violet mists or lights. Such an ethereal corpse has been seen by a friend of my own, passing through the horribly repulsive stages of decomposition, a ghastly vision in face of which clairvoyance was certainly no blessing. The process goes on _pari passu_, until all but the actual bony skeleton of the dense body is completely disintegrated, and the particles have gone to form other combinations. One of the great advantages of cremation--apart from all sanitary conditions--lies in the swift restoration to Mother Nature of the physical elements composing the dense and ethereal corpses, brought about by the burning. Instead of slow and gradual decomposition, swift dissociation takes place, and no physical remnants are left, working possible mischief. The ethereal corpse may to some extent be revivified for a short period after its death. Dr. Hartmann says: The fresh corpse of a person who has suddenly been killed may be galvanised into a semblance of life by the application of a galvanic battery. Likewise the astral corpse of a person may be brought back into an artificial life by being infused with a part of the life principle of the medium. If that corpse is one of a very intellectual person, it may talk very intellectually; and if it was that of a fool it will talk like a fool.[14] This mischievous procedure can only be carried out in the neighbourhood of the corpse, and for a very limited time after death, but there are cases on record of such galvanising of the ethereal corpse, performed at the grave of the departed person. Needless to say that such a process belongs distinctly to "Black" Magic, and is wholly evil. Ethereal corpses, like dense ones, if not swiftly destroyed by burning, should be left in the silence and the darkness, a silence and a darkness that it is the worst profanity to break. KÂMALOKA, AND THE FATE OF PRÂNA AND KÂMA. Loka is a Sanskrit word that may be translated as place, world, land, so that Kâmaloka is literally the place or the world of Kâma, Kâma being the name of that part of the human organism that includes all the passions, desires, and emotions which man has in common with the lower animals.[15] In this division of the universe, the Kâmaloka, dwell all the human entities that have shaken off the dense body and its ethereal double, but have not yet disentangled themselves from the passional and emotional nature. Kâmaloka has many other tenants, but we are concerned only with the human beings who have lately passed through the gateway of Death, and it is on these that we must concentrate our study. A momentary digression may be pardoned on the question of the existence of regions in the universe, other than the physical, peopled with intelligent beings. The existence of such regions is postulated by the Esoteric Philosophy, and is known to the Adepts and to very many less highly evolved men and women by personal experience; all that is needed for the study of these regions is the evolution of the faculties latent in every man; a "living" man, in ordinary parlance, can leave his dense and ethereal bodies behind him, and explore these regions without going through Death's gateway. Thus we read in the _Theosophist_ that real knowledge may be acquired by the Spirit in the living man coming into conscious relations with the world of Spirit. As in the case, say, of an initiated Adept, who brings back upon earth with him the clear and distinct recollection--correct to a detail--of facts gathered, and the information obtained, in the invisible sphere of _Realities_.[16] In this way those regions become to him matters of knowledge as definite, as certain, as familiar, as if he should travel to Africa in ordinary fashion, explore its deserts, and return to his own land the richer for the knowledge and experience gained. A seasoned African explorer would care but little for the criticisms passed on his report by persons who had never been thither; he might tell what he saw, describe the animals whose habits he had studied, sketch the country he had traversed, sum up its products and its characteristics. If he was contradicted, laughed at, set right, by untravelled critics, he would be neither ruffled nor distressed, but would merely leave them alone. Ignorance cannot convince knowledge by repeated asseveration of its nescience. The opinion of a hundred persons on a subject on which they are wholly ignorant is of no more weight than the opinion of one such person. Evidence is strengthened by many consenting witnesses, testifying each to his knowledge of a fact, but nothing multiplied a thousand times remains nothing. Strange, indeed, would it be if all the Space around us be empty, mere waste void, and the inhabitants of earth the only forms in which intelligence could clothe itself. As Dr. Huxley said: Without stepping beyond the analogy of that which is known, it is easy to people the cosmos with entities, in ascending scale, until we reach something practically indistinguishable from omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience.[17] If these entities did not have organs of sense like our own, if their senses responded to vibrations different from those which affect ours, they and we might walk side by side, pass each other, meet each other, pass through each other, and yet be never the wiser as to each other's existence. Mr. Crookes gives us a glimpse of the possibility of such unconscious co-existence of intelligent beings, and but a very slight effort of imagination is needed to realise the conception. It is not improbable that other sentient beings have organs of sense which do not respond to some or any of the rays to which our eyes are sensitive, but are able to appreciate other vibrations to which we are blind. Such beings would practically be living in a different world to our own. Imagine, for instance, what idea we should form of surrounding objects were we endowed with eyes not sensitive to the ordinary rays of light, but sensitive to the vibrations concerned in electric and magnetic phenomena. Glass and crystal would be among the most opaque of bodies. Metals would be more or less transparent, and a telegraph wire through the air would look like a long narrow hole drilled through an impervious solid body. A dynamo in active work would resemble a conflagration, whilst a permanent magnet would realise the dream of mediæval mystics, and become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of energy or consumption of fuel.[18] Kâmaloka is a region peopled by intelligent and semi-intelligent entities, just as our own is thus peopled; it is crowded, like our world, with many types and forms of living things, as diverse from each other as a blade of grass is different from a tiger, a tiger from a man. It interpenetrates our own world and is interpenetrated by it, but, as the states of matter in the two worlds differ, they co-exist without the knowledge of the intelligent beings in either. Only under abnormal circumstances can consciousness of each other's presence arise among the inhabitants of the two worlds; by certain peculiar training a living human being can come into conscious contact with and control many of the sub-human denizens of Kâmaloka; human beings, who have quitted earth and in whom the kâmic elements were strong, may very readily be attracted by the kâmic elements in embodied men, and by their help become conscious again of the presence of the scenes they had left; and human beings still embodied may set up methods of communication with the disembodied, and may, as said, leave their own bodies for awhile, and become conscious in Kâmaloka by the use of faculties through which they have accustomed their consciousness to act. The point which is here to be clearly grasped is the existence of Kâmaloka as a definite region, inhabited by a large diversity of entities, among whom are disembodied human beings. From this necessary digression we return to the particular human being whose fate, as a type, we may be said to be tracing, and of whose dense body and etheric double we have already disposed. Let us contemplate him in the state of very brief duration that follows the shaking off of these two casings. Says H.P. Blavatsky, after quoting from Plutarch a description of the man after death: Here you have our doctrine, which shows man a _septenary_ during life; a _quintile_ just after death, in Kâmaloka.[19] Prâna, the portion of the life-energy appropriated by the man in his embodied state, having lost its vehicle, the ethereal double, which, with the physical body, has slipped away from its controlling energy, must pass back into the great life-reservoir of the universe. As water enclosed in a glass vessel and plunged into a tank mingles with the surrounding water if the vessel be broken, so Prâna, as the bodies drop from it, mingles again with the Life Universal. It is only "just after death" that man is a quintile, or fivefold in his constitution, for Prâna, as a distinctively human principle, cannot remain appropriated when its vehicle disintegrates. The man now is clothed, but with the Kâma Rûpa, or body of Kâma, the desire body, a body of astral matter, often termed "fluidic," so easily does it, during earth-life, take any form impressed upon it from without or moulded from within. The living man is there, the immortal Triad, still clad in the last of its terrestrial garments, in the subtle, sensitive, responsive form which lent it during embodiment the power to feel, to desire, to enjoy, to suffer, in the physical world. When the man dies, his three lower principles leave him for ever; _i.e._, body, life, and the vehicle of the latter, the etheric body, or the double of the living man. And then his four principles--the central or middle principle (the animal soul or Kâma Rûpa, with what it has assimilated from the lower Manas) and the higher Triad--find themselves in Kâmaloka.[20] This desire body undergoes a marked change soon after death. The different densities of the astral matter of which it is composed arrange themselves in a series of shells or envelopes, the densest being outside, shutting the consciousness away from all but very limited contact and expression. The consciousness turns in on itself, if left undisturbed, and prepares itself for the next step onwards, while the desire body gradually disintegrates, shell after shell. Up to the point of this re-arrangement of the matter of the desire body, the post-mortem experience of all is much the same; it is a "dreamy, peaceful semi-consciousness," as before said, and this, in the happiest cases, passes without vivid awakening into the deeper "pre-devachanic unconsciousness" which ends with the blissful wakening in Devachan, for the period of repose that intervenes between two incarnations. But as, at this point, different possibilities arise, let us trace a normal uninterrupted progression in Kâmaloka, up to the threshold of Devachan, and then we can return to consider other classes of circumstances. If a person has led a pure life, and has steadfastly striven to rise and to identify himself with the higher rather than the lower parts of his nature, after shaking off the dense body and the etheric double, and after Prâna has re-mingled with the ocean of Life, and he is clothed only with the Kâma Rûpa, the passional elements in him, being but weak and accustomed to comparatively little activity, will not be able to assert themselves strongly in Kâmaloka. Now during earth-life Kâma and the Lower Manas are strongly united and interwoven with each other; in the case we are considering Kâma is weak, and the Lower Manas has purified Kâma to a great extent. The mind, woven with the passions, emotions, and desires, has purified them, and has assimilated their pure part, absorbed it into itself, so that all that is left of Kâma is a mere residue, easily to be gotten rid of, from which the Immortal Triad can readily free itself. Slowly this Immortal Triad, the true Man, draws in all his forces; he draws into himself the memories of the earth-life just ended, its loves, its hopes, its aspirations, and prepares to pass out of Kâmaloka into the blissful rest of Devachan, the "abode of the Gods", or as some say, "the land of bliss". Kâmaloka Is an astral locality, the Limbus of scholastic theology, the Hades of the ancients, and, strictly speaking, a _locality_ only in a relative sense. It has neither a definite area, nor boundary, but exists _within_ subjective space, _i.e._, is beyond our sensuous perceptions. Still it exists, and it is there that the astral _eidolons_ of all the beings that have lived, animals included, await their _second death_. For the animals it comes with the disintegration and the entire fading out of their astral particles to the last. For the human _eidolon_ it begins when the Atmâ-Buddhi-Mânasic Triad is said to "separate" itself from its lower principles or the reflection of the ex-personality, by falling into the Devachanic state.[21] This second death is the passage, then, of the Immortal Triad from the kâmalokic sphere, so closely related to the earth sphere, into the higher state of Devachan, of which we must speak later. The type of man we are considering passes through this, in the peaceful dreamy state already described, and, if left undisturbed, will not regain full consciousness until these stages are passed through, and peace gives way to bliss. But during the whole period that the four principles--the Immortal Triad and Kâma--remain in Kâmaloka, whether the period be long or short, days or centuries, they are within the reach of the earth-influences. In the case of such a person as we have been describing, an awakening may be caused by the passionate sorrow and desires of friends left on earth, and these violently vibrating kâmic elements in the embodied persons may set up vibrations in the desire body of the disembodied, and so reach and rouse the lower Manas, not yet withdrawn to and reunited with its parent, the Spiritual Intelligence. Thus it may be roused from its dreamy state to vivid remembrance of the earth-life so lately left, and may--if any sensitive or medium is concerned, either directly, or indirectly through one of these grieving friends in communication with the medium--use the medium's etheric and dense bodies to speak or write to those left behind. This awakening is often accompanied with acute suffering, and even if this be avoided, the natural process of the Triad freeing itself is rudely disturbed, and the completion of its freedom is delayed. In speaking of this possibility of communication during the period immediately succeeding death and before the freed Man passes on into Devachan, H.P. Blavatsky says: Whether any living mortal, save a few exceptional cases--when the intensity of the desire in the dying person to return for some purpose forced the higher consciousness _to remain awake_, and, therefore, it was really the _individuality_, the "Spirit", that communicated--has derived much benefit from the return of the Spirit into the _objective_ plane is another question. The Spirit is dazed after death, and falls very soon into what we call "pre-devachanic unconsciousness."[22] Intense desire may move the disembodied entity to spontaneously return to the sorrowing ones left behind, but this spontaneous return is rare in the case of persons of the type we are just now considering. If they are left at peace, they will generally sleep themselves quietly into Devachan, and so avoid any struggle or suffering in connection with the second death. On the final escape of the Immortal Triad there is left behind in Kâmaloka only the desire body, the "shell" or mere empty phantom, which gradually disintegrates; but it will be better to deal with this in considering the next type, the average man or woman, without marked spirituality of an elevated kind, but also without marked evil tendencies. When an average man or woman reaches Kâmaloka, the spiritual Intelligence is clothed with a desire body, which possesses considerable vigour and vitality; the lower Manas, closely interwoven with Kâma during the earth-life just ended, having lived much in the enjoyment of objects of sense and in the pleasures of the emotions, cannot quickly disentangle itself from the web of its own weaving, and return to its Parent Mind, the source of its own being. Hence a considerable delay in the world of transition, in Kâmaloka, while the desires wear out and fade away to a point at which they can no longer detain the Soul with their clinging arms. As said, during the period that the Immortal Triad and Kâma remain together in Kâmaloka, communication between the disembodied entity and the embodied entities on earth is possible. Such communication will generally be welcomed by these disembodied ones, because their desires and emotions still cling to the earth they have left, and the mind has not sufficiently lived on its own plane to find therein full satisfaction and contentment. The lower Manas still yearns towards kâmic gratifications and the vivid highly coloured sensations of earth-life, and can by these yearnings be drawn back to the scenes it has regretfully quitted. Speaking of the possibility of communication between the Ego of the deceased person and a medium, H.P. Blavatsky says in the _Theosophist_,[23] as from the teachings received by her from the Adept Brothers, that such communication may occur during two intervals: Interval the first is that period between the physical death and the merging of the spiritual Ego into that state which is known in the Arhat esoteric doctrine as Bar-do. We have translated this as the "gestation" period [pre-devachanic]. Some of the communications made through mediums are from this source, from the disembodied entity, thus drawn back to the earth-sphere--a cruel kindness, delaying its forward evolution and introducing an element of disharmony into what should be an orderly progression. The period in Kâmaloka is thus lengthened, the desire body is fed and its hold on the Ego is maintained, and thus is the freedom of the Soul deferred, the immortal Swallow being still held down by the bird-lime of earth. Persons who have led an evil life, who have gratified and stimulated their animal passions, and have full fed the desire body while they have starved even the lower mind--these remain for long, denizens of Kâmaloka, and are filled with yearnings for the earth-life they have left, and for the animal delights that they can no longer--in the absence of the physical body--directly taste. These gather round the medium and the sensitive, endeavouring to utilise them for their own gratification, and these are among the more dangerous of the forces so rashly confronted in their ignorance by the thoughtless and the curious. Another class of disembodied entities includes those whose lives on earth have been prematurely cut short, by their own act, the act of others, or by accident. Their fate in Kâmaloka depends on the conditions which surrounded their outgoings from earthly life, for not all suicides are guilty of _felo de se_, and the measure of responsibility may vary within very wide limits. The condition of such has been thus described: _Suicides, although not wholly dissevered from their sixth and seventh principles, and quite potent in the séance room, nevertheless to the day when they would have died a natural death, are separated from their higher principles by a gulf. The sixth and seventh principles remain passive and negative, whereas in cases of_ accidental death _the higher and the lower groups actually attract each other. In cases of good and innocent Egos, moreover, the latter gravitates irresistibly toward the sixth and seventh, and thus either slumbers surrounded by happy dreams, or sleeps a dreamless profound sleep until the hour strikes. With a little reflection and an eye to the eternal justice and fitness of things, you will see why. The victim, whether good or bad, is irresponsible for his death. Even if his death were due to some action in a previous life or an antecedent birth, was an act, in short, of the Law of Retribution, still it was not the_ direct _result of an act deliberately committed by the_ personal _Ego of that life during which he happened to be killed. Had he been allowed to live longer he might have atoned for his antecedent sins still more effectually, and even now, the Ego having been made to pay off the debt of his maker, the personal Ego is free from the blows of retributive justice. The Dhyân Chohans, who have no hand in the guidance of the living human Ego, protect the helpless victim when it is violently thrust out of its element into a new one, before it is matured and made fit and ready for it._ These, whether suicides or killed by accident, can communicate with those in earth-life, but much to their own injury. As said above, the good and innocent sleep happily till the life-period is over. But where the victim of an accident is depraved and gross, his fate is a sad one. _Unhappy shades, if sinful and sensual, they wander about (not shells, for their connection with their two higher principles is not quite broken) until their_ death-_hour comes. Cut off in the full flush of earthly passions which bind them to familiar scenes, they are enticed by the opportunities which mediums afford to gratify them vicariously. They are the Pishâchas, the Incubi and Succubæ of mediæval times; the demons of thirst, gluttony, lust, and avarice--Elementaries of intensified craft, wickedness, and cruelty; provoking their victims to horrid crimes, and revelling in their commission! They not only ruin their victims, but these psychic vampires, borne along by the torrent of their hellish impulses, at last--at the fixed close of their natural period of life--they are carried out of the earth's aura into regions where for ages they endure exquisite suffering and end with entire destruction. * * * * * Now the causes producing the "new being" and determining the nature of Karma are Trishnâ (Tanhâ)--thirst, desire for sentient existence--and Upâdâna, which is the realisation or consummation of Trishnâ, or that desire. And both of these the medium helps to develop_ ne plus ultra _in an Elementary, be he a suicide or a victim. The rule is that a person who dies a natural death will remain from "a few hours to several short years" within the earth's attraction--_i.e._, the Kâmaloka. But exceptions are the cases of suicides and those who die a violent death in general. Hence, one of such Egos who was destined to live, say, eighty or ninety years--but who either killed himself or was killed by some accident, let us suppose at the age of twenty--would have to pass in the Kâmaloka not "a few years," but in his case sixty or seventy years, as an Elementary, or rather an "earth-walker," since he is not, unfortunately for him, even a "Shell." Happy, thrice happy, in comparison, are those disembodied entities who sleep their long slumber and live in dream in the bosom of Space! And woe to those whose Trishnâ will attract them to mediums, and woe to the latter who tempt them with such an easy Upâdâna. For, in grasping them and satisfying their thirst for life, the medium helps to develop in them--is, in fact, the cause of--a new set of Skandhas, a new body with far worse tendencies and passions than the one they lost. All the future of this new body will be determined thus, not only by the Karma of demerit of the previous set or group, but also by that of the new set of the future being. Were the mediums and spiritualists but to know, as I said, that with every new "angel-guide" they welcome with rapture, they entice the latter into a Upâdâna, which will be productive of untold evils for the new Ego that will be reborn under its nefarious shadow, and that with every séance, especially for materialization, they multiply the causes for misery, causes that will make the unfortunate Ego fail in his spiritual birth, or be reborn into a far worse existence than ever--they would, perhaps, be less lavish in their hospitality._ Premature death brought on by vicious courses, by over-study, or by voluntary sacrifice for some great cause, will bring about delay in Kâmaloka, but the state of the disembodied entity will depend on the motive that cut short the life. _There are very few, if any, of the men who indulge in these vices, who feel perfectly sure that such a course of action will lead them eventually to premature death. Such is the penalty of Mâyâ. The "vices" will not escape their punishment; but it is the_ cause, _not the effect, that will be punished, especially an unforeseen, though probable effect. As well call a man a "suicide" who meets his death in a storm at sea, as one who kills himself with "over-study". Water is liable to drown a man, and too much brain work to produce a softening of the brain matter which may carry him away. In such a case no one ought to cross the_ Kâlapâni, _nor even to take a bath for fear of getting faint in it and drowned (for we all know of such cases), nor should a man do his duty, least of all sacrifice himself for even a laudable and highly beneficial cause as many of us do. Motive is everything, and man is punished in a case of direct responsibility, never otherwise. In the victim's case the natural hour of death was anticipated_ accidentally, _while in that of the suicide death is brought on voluntarily and with a full and deliberate knowledge of its immediate consequences. Thus a man who causes his death in a fit of temporary insanity is_ not _a_ felo de se, _to the great grief and often trouble of the Life Insurance Companies. Nor is he left a prey to the temptations of the Kâmaloka, but falls_ asleep _like any other victim._ The population of Kâmaloka is thus recruited with a peculiarly dangerous element by all the acts of violence, legal and illegal, which wrench the physical body from the soul and send the latter into Kâmaloka clad in the desire body, throbbing with pulses of hatred, passion, emotion, palpitating with longings for revenge, with unsatiated lusts. A murderer in the body is not a pleasant member of society, but a murderer suddenly expelled from the body is a far more dangerous entity; society may protect itself against the first, but in its present state of ignorance it is defenceless as against the second. Finally, the Immortal Triad sets itself free from the desire body, and passes out of Kâmaloka; the Higher Manas draws back its Ray, coloured with the life-scenes it has passed through, and carrying with it the experiences gained through the personality it has informed. The labourer is called in from the field, and he returns home bearing his sheaves with him, rich or poor, according to the fruitage of the life. When the Triad has quitted Kâmaloka, it passes wholly out of the sphere of earth attractions: _As soon as it has stepped outside the Kâmaloka--crossed the "Golden Bridge" leading to the "Seven Golden Mountains"--the Ego can confabulate no more with easy-going mediums._ There are some exceptional possibilities of reaching such an Ego, that will be explained later, but the Ego is out of the reach of the ordinary medium and cannot be recalled into the earth-sphere. But ere we follow the further course of the Triad, we must consider the fate of the now deserted desire body, left as a mere _reliquum_ in Kâmaloka. KÂMALOKA. THE SHELLS. The Shell is the desire body, emptied of the Triad, which has now passed onwards; it is the third of the transitory garments of Soul, cast aside and left in Kâmaloka to disintegrate. When the past earth-life has been noble, or even when it has been of average purity and utility, this Shell retains but little vitality after the passing onwards of the Triad, and rapidly dissolves. Its molecules, however, retain, during this process of disintegration, the impressions made upon them during the earth-life, the tendency to vibrate in response to stimuli constantly experienced during that period. Every student of physiology is familiar with what is termed automatic action, with the tendency of cells to repeat vibrations originally set up by purposive action; thus are formed what we term habits, and we unconsciously repeat motions which at first were done with thought. So strong is this automatism of the body, that, as everyone knows by experience, it is difficult to break off the use of a phrase or of a gesture that has become "habitual." Now the desire body is during earth-life the recipient of and the respondent to all stimuli from without, and it also continually receives and responds to stimuli from the lower Manas. In it are set up habits, tendencies to repeat automatically familiar vibrations, vibrations of love and desire, vibrations imaging past experiences of all kinds. Just as the hand may repeat a familiar gesture, so may the desire body repeat a familiar feeling or thought. And when the Triad has left it, this automatism remains, and the Shell may thus simulate feelings and thoughts which are empty of all true intelligence and will. Many of the responses to eager enquiries at _séances_ come from such Shells, drawn to the neighbourhood of friends and relatives by the magnetic attractions so long familiar and dear, and automatically responding to the waves of emotion and remembrance, to the impulse of which they had so often answered during the lately closed earth-life. Phrases of affection, moral platitudes, memories of past events, will be all the communications such Shells can make, but these may be literally poured out under favourable conditions under the magnetic stimuli freely applied by the embodied friends and relatives. In cases where the lower Manas during earth-life has been strongly attached to material objects and to intellectual pursuits directed by a self-seeking motive, the desire body may have acquired a very considerable automatism of an intellectual character, and may give forth responses of considerable intellectual merit. But still the mark of non-originality will be present: the apparent intellectuality will only give out reproductions, and there will be no sign of the new and independent thought which would be the inevitable outcome of a strong intelligence working with originality amid new surroundings. Intellectual sterility brands the great majority of communications from the "spirit world"; reflections of earthly scenes, earthly conditions, earthly arrangements, are plentiful, but we usually seek in vain for strong, new thought, worthy of Intelligences freed from the prison of the flesh. The communications of a loftier kind occasionally granted are, for the most part, from non-human Intelligences, attracted by the pure atmosphere of the medium or sitters. And there is an ever-present danger in this commerce with the Shells. Just because they are Shells, and nothing more, they answer to the impulses that strike on them from without, and easily become malicious and mischievous, automatically responding to evil vibrations. Thus a medium, or sitters of poor moral character, will impress the Shells that flock around them with impulses of a low order, and any animal desires, petty and foolish thoughts, will set up similar vibrations in the blindly responsive Shells. Again, the Shell is very easily taken possession of by Elementals, the semi-conscious forces working in the kingdoms of Nature, and may be used by them as a convenient vehicle for many a prank and trick. The etheric double of the medium, and the desire bodies emptied of their immortal Tenants, give the material basis by which Elementals can work many a curious and startling result; and frequenters of _séances_ may be confidently appealed to, and asked whether many of the childish freaks with which they are familiar--pullings of hair, pinchings, slaps, throwing about of objects, piling up of furniture, playing on accordions, &c.--are not more rationally accounted for as the tricky vagaries of sub-human forces, than as the actions of "spirits" who, while in the body, were certainly incapable of such vulgarities. Let us leave the Shells alone to peacefully dissolve into their elements, and mingle once again in the crucible of Nature. The authors of the _Perfect Way_ put very well the real character of the Shell. The true "ghost" consists of the exterior and earthly portion of the Soul, that portion which, being weighted with cares, attachments, and memories merely mundane, is detached by the Soul and remains in the astral sphere, an existence more or less definite and personal, and capable of holding, through a sensitive, converse with the living. It is, however, but as a cast-off vestment of the Soul, and is incapable of endurance _as ghost_. The true Soul and real person, the _anima divina_, parts at death with all those lower affections which would have retained it near its earthly haunts.[24] If we would find our beloved, it is not among the decaying remnants in Kâmaloka that we should seek them. "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" KÂMALOKA. THE ELEMENTARIES. The word "Elementary" has been so loosely used that it has given rise to a good deal of confusion. It is thus defined by H.P. Blavatsky: Properly, the disembodied _souls_ of the depraved; these souls having, at some time prior to death, separated from themselves their divine spirits, and so lost their chance for immortality. But at the present stage of learning it has been thought best to apply the term to the spooks or phantoms of disembodied persons, in general to those whose temporary habitation is the Kâmaloka.... Once divorced from their higher Triads and their bodies, these souls remain in their Kâma Rûpic envelopes, and are irresistibly drawn to the earth amid elements congenial to their gross natures. Their stay in the Kâmaloka varies as to its duration; but ends invariably in disintegration, dissolving like a column of mist, atom by atom, in the surrounding elements.[25] Students of this series of Manuals know that it is possible for the lower Manas to so entangle itself with Kâma as to wrench itself away from its source, and this is spoken of in Occultism as "the loss of the Soul."[26] It is, in other words, the loss of the personal self, which has separated itself from its Parent, the Higher Ego, and has thus doomed itself to perish. Such a Soul, having thus separated itself from the Immortal Triad during its earth-life, becomes a true Elementary, after it has quitted the dense and etheric bodies. Then, clad in its desire body, it lives for awhile, for a longer or shorter time according to the vigour of its vitality, a wholly evil thing, dangerous and malignant, seeking to renew its fading vitality by any means laid open to it by the folly or ignorance of still embodied souls. Its ultimate fate is, indeed, destruction, but it may work much evil on its way to its self-chosen doom. The word Elementary is, however, very often used to describe the lower Manas in its garment the desire body, not broken away from the higher Principles, but not yet absorbed into its Parent, the Higher Manas. Such Elementaries may be in any stage of progress, harmless or mischievous. Some writers, again, use Elementary as a synonym for Shell, and so cause increased confusion. The word should at least be restricted to the desire body _plus_ lower Manas, whether that lower Manas be disentangling itself from the kâmic elements, in order that it may be re-absorbed into its source, or separated from the Higher Ego, and therefore on the road to destruction. DEVACHAN. Among the various conceptions presented by the Esoteric Philosophy, there are few, perhaps, which the Western mind has found more difficulty in grasping than that of Devachan, or Devasthân, the Devaland, or land of the Gods.[27] And one of the chief difficulties has arisen from the free use of the words illusion, dream-state, and other similar terms, as denoting the devachanic consciousness--a general sense of unreality having thus come to pervade the whole conception of Devachan. When the Eastern thinker speaks of the present earthly life as Mâyâ, illusion, dream, the solid Western at once puts down the phrases as allegorical and fanciful, for what can be less illusory, he thinks, than this world of buying and selling, of beefsteaks and bottled stout. But when similar terms are applied to a state beyond Death--a state which to him is misty and unreal in his own religion, and which, as he sadly feels, is lacking in all the substantial comforts dear to the family man--then he accepts the words in their most literal and prosaic meaning, and speaks of Devachan as a delusion in his own sense of the word. It may be well, therefore, on the threshold of Devachan to put this question of "illusion" in its true light. In a deep metaphysical sense all that is conditioned is illusory. All phenomena are literally "appearances", the outer masks in which the One Reality shows itself forth in our changing universe. The more "material" and solid the appearance, the further is it from Reality, and therefore the more illusory it is. What can be a greater fraud than our body, so apparently solid, stable, visible and tangible? It is a constantly changing congeries of minute living particles, an attractive centre into which stream continually myriads of tiny invisibles, that become visible by their aggregation at this centre, and then stream away again, becoming invisible by reason of their minuteness as they separate off from this aggregation. In comparison with this ever-shifting but apparently stable body how much less illusory is the mind, which is able to expose the pretensions of the body and put it in its true light. The mind is constantly imposed on by the senses, and Consciousness, the most real thing in us, is apt to regard itself as the unreal. In truth, it is the thought-world that is the nearest to reality, and things become more and more illusory as they take on more and more of a phenomenal character. Again, the mind is permanent as compared with the transitory physical world. For the "mind" is only a clumsy name for the living Thinker in us, the true and conscious Entity, the inner Man, "that was, that is, and will be, for whom the hour shall never strike". The less deeply this inner Man is plunged into matter, the less unreal is his life; and when he has shaken off the garments he donned at incarnation, his physical, ethereal, and passional bodies, then he is nearer to the Soul of Things than he was before, and though veils of illusion still dim his vision they are far thinner than those which clouded it when round him was wrapped the garment of the flesh. His freer and less illusory life is that which is without the body, and the disembodied is, comparatively speaking, his normal state. Out of this normal state he plunges into physical life for brief periods in order that he may gain experiences otherwise unattainable, and bring them back to enrich his more abiding condition. As a diver may plunge into the depths of the ocean to seek a pearl, so the Thinker plunges into the depths of the ocean of life to seek the pearl of experience; but he does not stay there long; it is not his own element; he rises up again into his own atmosphere and shakes off from him the heavier element he leaves. And therefore it is truly said of the Soul that has escaped from earth that it has returned to its own place, for its home is the "land of the Gods", and here on earth it is an exile and a prisoner. This view was very clearly put by a Master of Wisdom in a conversation reported by H.P. Blavatsky, and printed under the title "Life and Death."[28] The following extracts state the case: _The Vedântins, acknowledging two kinds of conscious existence, the terrestrial and the spiritual, point only to the latter as an undoubted actuality. As to the terrestrial life, owing to its changeability and shortness, it is nothing but an illusion of our senses. Our life in the spiritual spheres must be thought an actuality because it is there that lives our endless, never-changing immortal I, the Sûtrâtmâ. Whereas in every new incarnation it clothes itself in a perfectly different personality, a temporary and short-lived one.... The very essence of all this, that is to say, spirit, force, and matter, has neither end nor beginning, but the shape acquired by this triple unity during its incarnations, their exterior, so to speak, is nothing but a mere illusion of personal conceptions. This is why we call the posthumous life the only reality, and the terrestrial one, including the personality itself, only imaginary._ Why in this case should we call the reality sleep, and the phantasm waking? _This comparison was made by me to facilitate your comprehension. From the standpoint of your terrestrial notions it is perfectly accurate._ Note the words: "From the standpoint of your terrestrial notions," for they are the key to all the phrases used about Devachan as an "illusion." Our gross physical matter is not there; the limitations imposed by it are not there; the mind is in its own realm, where to will is to create, where to think is to see. And so, when the Master was asked: "Would it not be better to say that death is nothing but a birth for a new life, or still better, a going back to eternity?" he answered: _This is how it really is, and I have nothing to say against such a way of putting it. Only with our accepted views of material life the words "live" and "exist" are not applicable to the purely subjective condition after death; and were they employed in our Philosophy without a rigid definition of their meanings, the Vedântins would soon arrive at the ideas which are common in our times among the American Spiritualists, who preach about spirits marrying among themselves and with mortals. As amongst the true, not nominal, Christians so amongst the Vedântins--the life on the other side of the grave is the land where there are no_ _tears, no sighs, where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, and where the just realise their full perfection._ The dread of materialising mental and spiritual conceptions has always been very strong among the Philosophers and oral Teachers of the far East. Their constant effort has been to free the Thinker as far as possible from the bonds of matter even while he is embodied, to open the cage for the Divine Swallow, even though he must return to it for awhile. They are ever seeking "to spiritualise the material", while in the West the continual tendency has been "to materialise the spiritual". So the Indian describes the life of the freed Soul in all the terms that make it least material--illusion, dream, and so on--whereas the Hebrew endeavours to delineate it in terms descriptive of the material luxury and splendour of earth--marriage feast, streets of gold, thrones and crowns of solid metal and precious stones; the Western has followed the materialising conceptions of the Hebrew, and pictures a heaven which is merely a double of earth with earth's sorrows extracted, until we reach the grossest of all, the modern Summerland, with its "spirit-husbands", "spirit-wives", and "spirit-infants" that go to school and college, and grow up into spirit-adults. In "Notes on Devachan",[29] someone who evidently writes with knowledge remarks of the Devachanî: _The_ à priori _ideas of space and time do not control his perceptions; for he absolutely creates and annihilates them at the same time. Physical existence has its cumulative intensity from infancy to prime, and its diminishing energy from dotage to death; so the dream-life of Devachan is lived correspondentially. Nature cheats no more the Devachanî than she does the living physical man. Nature provides for him far more_ real _bliss and happiness_ there _than she does_ here, _where all the conditions of evil and chance are against him. To call the Devachan existence a "dream" in any other sense than that of a conventional term, is to renounce for ever the knowledge of the Esoteric Doctrine, the sole custodian of truth._ "Dream" only in the sense that it is not of this plane of gross matter, that it belongs not to the physical world. Let us try and take a general view of the life of the Eternal Pilgrim, the inner Man, the human Soul, during a cycle of incarnation. Before he commences his new pilgrimage--for many pilgrimages lie behind him in the past, during which he gained the powers which enable him to tread the present one--he is a spiritual Being, but one who has already passed out of the passive condition of pure Spirit, and who by previous experience of matter in past ages has evolved intellect, the self-conscious mind. But this evolution by experience is far from being complete, even so far as to make him master of matter; his ignorance leaves him a prey to all the illusions of gross matter, so soon as he comes into contact with it, and he is not fit to be a builder of a universe, being subject to the deceptive visions caused by gross matter--as a child, looking through a piece of blue glass, imagines all the outside world to be blue. The object of a cycle of incarnation is to free him from these illusions, so that when he is surrounded by and working in gross matter he may retain clear vision and not be blinded by illusion. Now the cycle of incarnation is made up of two alternating states: a short one called life on earth, during which the Pilgrim-God is plunged into gross matter, and a comparatively long one, called life in Devachan, during which he is encircled by subtle matter, illusive still, but far less illusive than that of earth. The second state may fairly be called his normal one, as it is of enormous extent as compared with the breaks in it that he spends upon earth; it is comparatively normal also, as being less removed from his essential Divine life; he is less encased in matter, less deluded by its swiftly-changing appearances. Slowly and gradually, by reiterated experiences, gross matter loses its power over him and becomes his servant instead of his tyrant. In the partial freedom of Devachan he assimilates his experiences on earth, still partly dominated by them--at first, indeed, almost completely dominated by them so that the devachanic life is merely a sublimated continuation of the earth-life--but gradually freeing himself more and more as he recognises them as transitory and external, until he can move through any region of our universe with unbroken self-consciousness, a true Lord of Mind, the free and triumphant God. Such is the triumph of the Divine Nature manifested in the flesh, the subduing of every form of matter to be the obedient instrument of Spirit. Thus the Master said: _The spiritual Ego of the man moves in eternity like a pendulum between the hours of life and death, but if these_ _hours, the periods of life terrestrial and life posthumous, are limited in their continuation, and even the very number of such breaks in eternity between sleep and waking, between illusion and reality, have their beginning as well as their end, the spiritual Pilgrim himself is eternal. Therefore the_ hours of his posthumous life, _when unveiled he stands face to face with truth, and the short-lived mirages of his terrestrial existence are far from him,_ compose _or make up, in our ideas,_ the only reality. _Such breaks, in spite of the fact that they are finite, do double service to the Sûtrâtmâ, which, perfecting itself constantly, follows without vacillation, though very slowly, the road leading to its last transformation, when, reaching its aim at last, it becomes a Divine Being. They not only contribute to the reaching of this goal, but without these finite breaks Sûtrâtmâ-Buddhi could never reach it. Sûtrâtmâ is the actor, and its numerous and different incarnations are the actor's parts. I suppose you would not apply to these parts, and so much the less to their costumes, the term of personality. Like an actor the soul is bound to play, during the cycle of births up to the very threshold of Parinirvâna, many such parts, which often are disagreeable to it, but like a bee, collecting its honey from every flower, and leaving the rest to feed the worms of the earth, our spiritual individuality, the Sûtrâtmâ, collecting only the nectar of moral qualities and consciousness from every terrestrial personality in which it has to clothe itself, forced by Karma, unites at last all these qualities in one, having then become a perfect being, a Dhyân Chohan._[30] It is very significant, in this connection, that every devachanic stage is conditioned by the earth-stage that precedes it, and the Man can only assimilate in Devachan the kinds of experience he has been gathering on earth. _A colourless, flavourless personality has a colourless, feeble Devachanic state._[31] Husband, father, student, patriot, artist, Christian, Buddhist--he must work out the effects of his earth-life in his devachanic life; he cannot eat and assimilate more food than he has gathered; he cannot reap more harvest than he has sown seed. It takes but a moment to cast a seed into a furrow; it takes many a month for that seed to grow into the ripened ear; but according to the kind of the seed is the ear that grows from it, and according to the nature of the brief earth-life is the grain reaped in the field of Aanroo. _There is a change of occupation, a continual change in Devachan, just as much and far more than there is in the life of any man or woman who happens to follow in his or her whole life one sole occupation, whatever it may be, with this difference, that to the Devachanî this spiritual occupation is always pleasant and fills his life with rapture. Life in Devachan is the function of the aspirations of earth-life; not the indefinite prolongation of that "single instant," but its infinite developments, the various incidents and events based upon and outflowing from that one "single moment" or moments. The dreams of the objective become the realities of the subjective existence.... The reward provided by Nature for men who are benevolent in a large systematic way, and who have not focussed their affections on an individual or speciality, is that, if pure, they pass the quicker for that through the Kâma and Rûpa Lokas into the higher sphere of Tribhuvana, since it is one where the formulation of abstract ideas and the consideration of general principles fill the thought of its occupant._[32] Into Devachan enters nothing that defileth, for gross matter has been left behind with all its attributes on earth and in Kâmaloka. But if the sower has sowed but little seed, the devachanic harvest will be meagre, and the growth of the Soul will be delayed by the paucity of the nutriment on which it has to feed. Hence the enormous importance of the earth-life, _the field of sowing, the place where experience is to be gathered_. It conditions, regulates, limits, the growth of the Soul; it yields the rough ore which the Soul then takes in hand, and works upon during the devachanic stage, smelting it, forging it, tempering it, into the weapons it will take back with it for its next earth-life. The experienced Soul in Devachan will make for itself a splendid instrument for its next earth-life; the inexperienced one will forge a poor blade enough; but in each case the only material available is that brought from earth. In Devachan the Soul, as it were, sifts and sorts out its experiences; it lives a comparatively free life, and gradually gains the power to estimate the earthly experiences at their real value; it works out thoroughly and completely as objective realities all the ideas of which it only conceived the germ on earth. Thus, noble aspiration is a germ which the Soul would work out into a splendid realisation in Devachan, and it would bring back with it to earth for its next incarnation that mental image, to be materialised on earth when opportunity offers and suitable environment presents itself. For the mind sphere is the sphere of creation, and earth only the place for materialising the pre-existent thought. And the soul is as an architect that works out his plans in silence and deep meditation, and then brings them forth into the outer world where his edifice is to be builded; out of the knowledge gained in his past life, the Soul draws his plans for the next, and he returns to earth to put into objective material form the edifices he has planned. This is the description of a Logos in creative activity: Whilst Brahmâ formerly, in the beginning of the Kalpas, was meditating on creation, there appeared a creation beginning with ignorance and consisting of darkness.... Brahmâ, beholding that it was defective, designed another; and whilst he thus meditated, the animal creation was manifested.... Beholding this creation also imperfect, Brahmâ again meditated, and a third creation appeared, abounding with the quality of goodness.[33] The objective manifestation follows the mental meditation; first idea, then form. Hence it will be seen that the notion current among many Theosophists that Devachan is waste time, is but one of the illusions due to the gross matter that blinds them, and that their impatience of the idea of Devachan arises from the delusion that fussing about in gross matter is the only real activity. Whereas, in truth, all effective action has its source in deep meditation, and out of the Silence comes ever the creative Word. Action on this plane would be less feeble and inefficient if it were the mere blossom of the profound root of meditation, and if the Soul embodied passed oftener out of the body into Devachan during earth-life, there would be less foolish action and consequent waste of time. For Devachan is a state of consciousness, the consciousness of the Soul escaped for awhile from the net of gross matter, and may be entered at any time by one who has learned to withdraw his Soul from the senses as the tortoise withdraws itself within its shell. And then, coming forth once more, action is prompt, direct, purposeful, and the time "wasted" in meditation is more than saved by the directness and strength of the mind-engendered act. Devachan is the sphere of the mind, as said, it is the land of the Gods, or the Souls. In the before quoted "Notes on Devachan" we read: _There are two fields of causal manifestations: the objective and the subjective. The grosser energies find their outcome in the new personality of each birth in the cycle of evoluting individuality. The moral and spiritual activities find their sphere of effects in Devachan._ As the moral and spiritual activities are the most important, and as on the development of these depends the growth of the true Man, and therefore the accomplishing of "the object of creation, the liberation of Soul", we may begin to understand something of the vast importance of the devachanic state. THE DEVACHANÎ. When the Triad has shaken off its last garment, it crosses the threshold of Devachan, and becomes "a Devachanî". We have seen that it is in a peaceful dreamy state before this passage out of the earth sphere, the "second death", or "pre-devachanic unconsciousness". This condition is otherwise spoken of as the "gestation" period, because it precedes the birth of the Ego into the devachanic life. Regarded from the earth-sphere the passage is death, while regarded from that of Devachan it is birth. Thus we find in "Notes on Devachan": _As in actual earth-life, so there is for the Ego in Devachan the first flutter of psychic life, the attainment of prime, the gradual exhaustion of force passing into semi-consciousness and lethargy, total oblivion, and--not death but birth, birth into another personality, and the resumption of action which daily begets new congeries of causes that must be worked out in another term of Devachan, and still another physical birth as a new personality. What the lives in Devachan and upon earth shall be respectively in each instance is determined by Karma, and this weary round of birth must be ever and ever run through until the being reaches the end of the seventh Round, or attains in the interim the wisdom of an Arhat, then that of a Buddha, and thus gets relieved for a Round or two._ When the devachanic entity is born into this new sphere it has passed beyond recall to earth. The embodied Soul may rise to it, but it cannot be drawn back to our world. On this a Master has spoken decisively: _From Sukhâvatî down to the "Territory of Doubt," there is a variety of spiritual states, but ... as soon as it has stepped outside the Kâmaloka, crossed the "Golden Bridge" leading to the "Seven Golden Mountains," the Ego can confabulate no more with easy-going mediums. No Ernest or Joey has ever returned from the Rûpa Loka, let alone the Arupa Loka, to hold sweet intercourse with men._ In the "Notes on Devachan," again, we read: _Certainly the new Ego, once that it is reborn (in Devachan), retains for a certain time--proportionate to its earth-life--a complete recollection "of his life on earth"; but it can never revisit the Earth from Devachan except in Re-incarnation._ The Devachanî is generally spoken of as the Immortal Triad, Atmâ-Buddhi-Manas, but it is well always to bear in mind that Atman is no individual property of any man, but is the Divine Essence which has no body, no form, which is imponderable, invisible, and indivisible, that which does not _exist_ and yet _is_, as the Buddhists say of Nirvâna. It only overshadows the mortal; that which enters into him and pervades the whole body being only it's omni-present rays or light, radiated through Buddhi, its vehicle and direct emanation.[34] Buddhi and Manas united, with this overshadowing of Atmâ, form the Devachanî; now, as we have seen in studying the Seven Principles, Manas is dual during earth-life, and the Lower Manas is redrawn into the Higher during the kâmalokic interlude. By this reuniting of the Ray and its Source, Manas re-becomes one, and carries the pure and noble experiences of the earth-life into Devachan with it, thus maintaining the past personality as the marked characteristic of the Devachanî, and it is in this prolongation of the "personal Ego", so to speak, that the "illusion" of the Devachanî consists. Were the mânasic entity free from all illusion, it would see all Egos as its brother-Souls, and looking back over its past would recognise all the varied relationships it had borne to others in many lives, as the actor would remember the many parts he had played with other actors, and would think of each brother actor as a man, and not in the parts he had played as his father, his son, his judge, his murderer, his master, his friend. The deeper human relationship would prevent the brother actors from identifying each other with their parts, and so the perfected spiritual Egos, recognising their deep unity and full brotherhood, would no longer be deluded by the trappings of earthly relationships. But the Devachanî, at least in the lower stages, is still within the personal boundaries of his past earth-life; he is shut into the relationships of the one incarnation; his paradise is peopled with those he "_loved best with an undying love, that holy feeling that alone survives_," and thus the purified personal Ego is the salient feature, as above said, in the Devachanî. Again quoting from the "Notes on Devachan": "_Who goes to Devachan?" The personal Ego, of course; but beatified, purified, holy. Every Ego--the combination of the sixth and seventh principles[35]--which after the period of unconscious gestation is reborn into the Devachan, is of necessity as innocent and pure as a new-born babe. The fact of his being reborn at all shows the preponderance of good over evil in his old personality. And while the Karma [of Evil] steps aside for the time being to follow him in his future earth re-incarnation, he brings along with him but the Karma of his good deeds, words and thoughts into this Devachan. "Bad" is a relative term for us--as you were told more than once before--and the Law of Retribution is the only law that never errs. Hence all those who have not slipped down into the mire of unredeemable sin and bestiality go to the Devachan. They will have to pay for their sins, voluntary and involuntary, later on. Meanwhile they are rewarded; receive the effects of the causes produced by them._ Now in some people a sense of repulsion arises at the idea that the ties they form on earth in one life are not to be permanent in eternity. But let us look at the question calmly for a moment. When a mother first clasps her baby-son in her arms, that one relationship seems perfect, and if the child should die, her longing would be to re-possess him as her babe; but as he lives on through youth to manhood the tie changes, and the protective love of the mother and the clinging obedience of the child merge into a different love of friends and comrades, richer than ordinary friendship from the old recollections; yet later, when the mother is aged and the son in the prime of middle life, their positions are reversed and the son protects while the mother depends on him for guidance. Would the relation have been more perfect had it ceased in infancy with only the one tie, or is it not the richer and the sweeter from the different strands of which the tie is woven? And so with Egos; in many lives they may hold to each other many relationships, and finally, standing as Brothers of the Lodge closely knit together, may look back over past lives and see themselves in earth-life related in the many ways possible to human beings, till the cord is woven of every strand of love and duty; would not the final unity be the richer not the poorer for the many-stranded tie? "Finally", I say; but the word is only of this cycle, for what lies beyond, of wider life and less separateness, no mind of man may know. To me it seems that this very variety of experiences makes the tie stronger, not weaker, and that it is a rather thin and poor thing to know oneself and another in only one little aspect of many-sided humanity for endless ages of years; a thousand or so years of one person in one character would, to me, be ample, and I should prefer to know him or her in some new aspect of his nature. But those who object to this view need not feel distressed, for they will enjoy the presence of their beloved in the one personal aspect held by him or her in the one incarnation they are conscious of _for as long as the desire for that presence remains_. Only let them not desire to impose their own form of bliss on everybody else, nor insist that the kind of happiness which seems to them at this stage the only one desirable and satisfying, must be stereotyped to all eternity, through all the millions of years that lie before us. Nature gives to each in Devachan the satisfaction of all pure desires, and Manas there exercises that faculty of his innate divinity, that he "never wills in vain". Will not this suffice? But leaving aside disputes as to what may be to us "happiness" in a future separated from our present by millions of years, so that we are no more fitted now to formulate its conditions than is a child, playing with its dolls, to formulate the deeper joys and interests of its maturity, let us understand that, according to the teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy, the Devachanî is surrounded by all he loved on earth, with pure affection, and the union being on the plane of the Ego, not on the physical plane, it is free from all the sufferings which would be inevitable were the Devachanî present in consciousness on the physical plane with all its illusory and transitory joys and sorrows. It is surrounded by its beloved in the higher consciousness, but is not agonised by the knowledge of what they are suffering in the lower consciousness, held in the bonds of the flesh. According to the orthodox Christian view, Death is a separation, and the "spirits of the dead" wait for reunion until those they love also pass through Death's gateway, or--according to some--until after the judgment-day is over. As against this the Esoteric Philosophy teaches that Death cannot touch the higher consciousness of man, and that it can only separate those who love each other so far as their lower vehicles are concerned; the man living on earth, blinded by matter, feels separated from those who have passed onwards, but the Devachanî, says H.P. Blavatsky, has a complete conviction "that there is no such thing as Death at all", having left behind it all those vehicles over which Death has power. Therefore, to its less blinded eyes, its beloved are still with it; for it, the veil of matter that separates has been torn away. A mother dies, leaving behind her little helpless children, whom she adores, perhaps a beloved husband also. We say that her "Spirit" or Ego--that individuality which is now wholly impregnated, for the entire Devachanic period, with the noblest feelings held by its late _personality, i.e._, love for her children, pity for those who suffer, and so on--is now entirely separated from the "vale of tears," that its future bliss consists in that blessed ignorance of all the woes it left behind ... that the _post-mortem_ spiritual consciousness of the mother will represent to her that she lives surrounded by her children and all those whom she loved; that no gap, no link will be missing to make her disembodied state the most perfect and absolute happiness.[36] And so again: As to the ordinary mortal his bliss in Devachan is complete. It is an absolute oblivion of all that gave it pain or sorrow in the past incarnation, and even oblivion of the fact that such things as pain or sorrow exist at all. The Devachanî lives its intermediate cycle between two incarnations surrounded by everything it had aspired to in vain, and in the companionship of everything it loved on earth. It has reached the fulfilment of all its soul-yearnings. And thus it lives throughout long centuries an existence of _unalloyed_ happiness, which is the reward for its sufferings in earth-life. In short, it bathes in a sea of uninterrupted felicity spanned only by events of still greater felicity in degree.[37] When we take the wider sweep in thought demanded by the Esoteric Philosophy, a far more fascinating prospect of persistent love and union between individual Egos rolls itself out before our eyes than was offered to us by the more limited creed of exoteric Christendom. "Mothers love their children with an immortal love," says H.P. Blavatsky, and the reason for this immortality in love is easily grasped when we realise that it is the same Egos that play so many parts in the drama of life, that the experience of each part is recorded in the memory of the Soul, and that between the Souls there is no separation, though during incarnation they may not realise the fact in its fulness and beauty. We are with those whom we have lost in material form, and far, far nearer to them now than when they were alive. And it is not only in the fancy of the Devachanî, as some may imagine, but in reality. For pure divine love is not merely the blossom of a human heart, but has its roots in eternity. Spiritual holy love is immortal, and Karma brings sooner or later all those who loved each other with such a spiritual affection to incarnate once more in the same family group.[38] Love "has its roots in eternity", and those to whom on earth we are strongly drawn are the Egos we have loved in past earth-lives and dwelt with in Devachan; coming back to earth these enduring bonds of love draw us together yet again, and add to the strength and beauty of the tie, and so on and on till all illusions are lived down, and the strong and perfected Egos stand side by side, sharing the experience of their well-nigh illimitable past. THE RETURN TO EARTH. At length the causes that carried the Ego into Devachan are exhausted, the experiences gathered have been wholly assimilated, and the Soul begins to feel again the thirst for sentient material life that can be gratified only on the physical plane. The greater the degree of spirituality reached, the purer and loftier the preceding earth-life, the longer the stay in Devachan, the world of spiritual, pure, and lofty effects. [I am here ignoring the special conditions surrounding one who is forcing his own evolution, and has entered on the Path that leads to Adeptship within a very limited number of lives.] The "average time [in Devachan] is from ten to fifteen centuries", H.P. Blavatsky tells us, and the fifteen centuries cycle is the one most plainly marked in history.[39] But in modern life this period has much shortened, in consequence of the greater attraction exercised by physical objects over the heart of man. Further, it must be remembered that the "average time" is not the time spent in Devachan by any person. If one person spends there 1000 years, and another fifty, the "average" is 525. The devachanic period is longer or shorter according to the type of life which preceded it; the more there was of spiritual, intellectual, and emotional activity of a lofty kind, the longer will be the gathering in of the harvest; the more there was of activity directed to selfish gain on earth, the shorter will be the devachanic period. When the experiences are assimilated, be the time long or short, the Ego is ready to return, and he brings back with him his now increased experience, and any further gains he may have made in Devachan along the lines of abstract thought; for, while in Devachan, In one sense we can acquire more knowledge; that is, we can develop further any faculty which we loved and strove after during life, provided it is concerned with abstract and ideal things, such as music, painting, poetry, &c.[40] But the Ego meets, as he crosses the threshold of Devachan on his way outwards--dying out of Devachan to be reborn on earth--he meets in the "atmosphere of the terrestrial plane", the seeds of evil sown in his preceding life on earth. During the devachanic rest he has been free from all pain, all sorrow, but the evil he did in his past has been in a state of suspended animation, not of death. As seeds sown in the autumn for the spring-time lie dormant beneath the surface of the soil, but touched by the soft rain and penetrating warmth of sun begin to swell and the embryo expands and grows, so do the seeds of evil we have sown lie dormant while the Soul takes its rest in Devachan, but shoot out their roots into the new personality which begins to form itself for the incarnation of the returning man. The Ego has to take up the burden of his past, and these germs or seeds, coming over as the harvest of the past life, are the Skandhas, to borrow a convenient word from our Buddhist brethren. They consist of material qualities, sensations, abstract ideas, tendencies of mind, mental powers, and while the pure aroma of these attached itself to the Ego and passed with it into Devachan, all that was gross, base and evil remained in the state of suspended animation spoken of above. These are taken up by the Ego as he passes outwards towards terrestrial life, and are built into the new "man of flesh" which the true man is to inhabit. And so the round of births and deaths goes on, the turning of the Wheel of Life; the treading of the Cycle of Necessity, until the work is done and the building of the Perfect Man is completed. NIRVÂNA. What Devachan is to each earth-life, Nirvâna is to the finished cycle of Re-incarnation, but any effective discussion of that glorious state would here be out of place. It is mentioned only to round off the "After" of Death, for no word of man, strictly limited within the narrow bounds of his lower consciousness, may avail to explain what Nirvâna is, can do aught save disfigure it in striving to describe. What it is not may be roughly, baldly stated--it is not "annihilation", it is not destruction of consciousness. Mr. A.P. Sinnett has put effectively and briefly the absurdity of many of the ideas current in the West about Nirvâna. He has been speaking of absolute consciousness, and proceeds: We may use such phrases as intellectual counters, but for no ordinary mind--dominated by its physical brain and brain-born intellect--can they have a living signification. All that words can convey is that Nirvâna is a sublime state of conscious rest in omniscience. It would be ludicrous, after all that has gone before, to turn to the various discussions which have been carried on by students of exoteric Buddhism as to whether Nirvâna does or does not mean annihilation. Worldly similes fall short of indicating the feeling with which the graduates of Esoteric Science regard such a question. Does the last penalty of the law mean the highest honour of the peerage? Is a wooden spoon the emblem of the most illustrious pre-eminence in learning? Such questions as these but faintly symbolise the extravagance of the question whether Nirvâna is held by Buddhism to be equivalent to annihilation.[41] So we learn from the _Secret Doctrine_ that the Nirvânî returns to cosmic activity in a new cycle of manifestation, and that _The thread of radiance which is imperishable and dissolves only in Nirvâna, re-emerges from it in its integrity on the day when the Great Law calls all things back into action._[42] COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN THE EARTH AND OTHER SPHERES. We are now in position to discriminate between the various kinds of communication possible between those whom we foolishly divide into "dead" and "living," as though the body were the man, or the man could die. "Communications between the embodied and the disembodied" would be a more satisfactory phrase. First, let us put aside as unsuitable the word Spirit: Spirit does not communicate with Spirit in any way conceivable by us. That highest principle is not yet manifest in the flesh; it remains the hidden fount of all, the eternal Energy, one of the poles of Being in manifestation. The word is loosely used to denote lofty Intelligences, who live and move beyond all conditions of matter imaginable by us, but pure Spirit is at present as inconceivable by us as pure matter. And as in dealing with possible "communications" we have average human beings as recipients, we may as well exclude the word Spirit as much as possible, and so get rid of ambiguity. But in quotations the word often occurs, in deference to the habit of the day, and it then denotes the Ego. Taking the stages through which the living man passes after "Death", or the shaking off of the body, we can readily classify the communications that may be received, or the appearances that may be seen: I. While the Soul has shaken off only the dense body, and remains still clothed in the etheric double. This is a brief period only, but during it the disembodied Soul may show itself, clad in this ethereal garment. For a very short period after death, while the incorporeal principles remain within the sphere of our earth's attraction, it is _possible_ for spirit, under _peculiar_ and _favourable_ conditions, to appear.[43] It makes no communications during this brief interval, nor while dwelling in this form. Such "ghosts" are silent, dreamy, like sleep-walkers, and indeed they are nothing more than astral sleep-walkers. Equally irresponsive, but capable of expressing a single thought, as of sorrow, anxiety, accident, murder, &c., are apparitions which are merely a thought of the dying, taking shape in the astral world, and carried by the dying person's will to some particular person, with whom the dying intensely longs to communicate. Such a thought, sometimes called a Mayâvi Rûpa, or illusory form _May be often thrown into objectivity, as in the case of apparitions after death; but, unless it is projected with the knowledge of (whether latent or potential), or owing to the intensity of the desire to see or appear to some one shooting through, the dying brain, the apparition will be simply automatical; it will not be due to any sympathetic attraction, or to any act of volition, any more than the reflection of a person passing unconsciously near a mirror is due to the desire of the latter._ When the Soul has left the etheric double, shaking it off as it shook off the dense body, the double thus left as a mere empty corpse may be galvanised into an "artificial life"; but fortunately the method of such galvanisation is known to few. II. While the Soul is in Kâmaloka. This period is of very variable duration. The Soul is clad in an astral body, the last but one of its perishable garments, and while thus clad it can utilise the physical bodies of a medium, thus consciously procuring for itself an instrument whereby it can act on the world it has left, and communicate with those living in the body. In this way it may give information as to facts known to itself only, or to itself and another person, in the earth-life just closed; and for as long as it remains within the terrestrial atmosphere such communication is possible. The harm and the peril of such communication has been previously explained, whether the Lower Manas be united with the Divine Triad and so on its way to Devachan, or wrenched from it and on its way to destruction. III. While the Soul is in Devachan, if an embodied Soul is capable of rising to its sphere, or of coming into _rapport_ with it. To the Devachanî, as we have seen, the beloved are present in consciousness and full communication, the Egos being in touch with each other, though one is embodied and one is disembodied, but the higher consciousness of the embodied rarely affects the brain. As a matter of fact, all that we know on the physical plane of our friend, while we both are embodied, is the mental image caused by the impression he makes on us. This is, to our consciousness, our friend, and lacks nothing in objectivity. A similar image is present to the consciousness of the Devachanî, and to him lacks nothing in objectivity. As the physical plane friend is visible to an observer on earth, so is the mental plane friend visible to an observer on that plane. The amount of the friend that ensouls the image is dependent on his own evolution, a highly evolved person being capable of far more communication with a Devachanî than one who is unevolved. Communication when the body is sleeping is easier than when it is awake, and many a vivid "dream" of one on the other side of death is a real interview with him in Kâmaloka or in Devachan. Love beyond the grave, illusion though you may call it,[44] has a magic and divine potency that re-acts on the living. A mother's Ego, filled with love for the imaginary children it sees near itself, living a life of happiness, as real to it as when on earth--that love will always be felt by the children in flesh. It will manifest in their dreams and often in various events--in providential protections and escapes, for love is a strong shield, and is not limited by space or time. As with this Devachanic "mother", so with the rest of human relationships and attachments, save the purely selfish or material.[45] Remembering that a thought becomes an active entity, capable of working good or evil, we easily see that as embodied Souls can send to those they love helping and protecting forces, so the Devachanî, thinking of those dear to him, may send out such helpful and protective thoughts, to act as veritable guardian angels round his beloved on earth. But this is a very different thing from the "Spirit" of the mother coming back to earth to be the almost helpless spectator of the child's woes. The Soul embodied may sometimes escape from its prison of flesh, and come into relations with the Devachanî. H.P. Blavatsky writes: Whenever years after the death of a person his spirit is claimed to have "wandered back to earth" to give advice to those it loved, it is always in a subjective vision, in dream or in trance, and in that case it is the Soul of the living seer that is drawn to the _disembodied_ spirit, and not the latter which wanders back to our spheres.[46] Where the sensitive, or medium, is of a pure and lofty nature, this rising of the freed Ego to the Devachanî is practicable, and naturally gives the impression to the sensitive that the departed Ego has come back to him. The Devachanî is wrapped in its happy "illusion", and _The Souls, or astral Egos, of pure loving sensitives, labouring under the same delusion, think their loved ones come down to them on earth, while it is their own spirits that are raised towards those in the Devachan._[47] This attraction can be exercised by the departed Soul from Kâmaloka or from Devachan: A "spirit" or the spiritual Ego, cannot _descend_ to the medium, but it can _attract_ the spirit of the latter to itself, and it can do this only during the two intervals--before and after its "gestation period". Interval the first is that period between the physical death and the merging of the spiritual Ego into that state which is known in the Arhat Esoteric Doctrine as "Bar-do". We have translated this as the "gestation period", and it lasts from a few days to several years, according to the evidence of the Adepts. Interval the second lasts so long as the merits of the old [personal] Ego entitle the being to reap the fruit of its reward in its new regenerated Egoship. It occurs after the gestation period is over, and the new spiritual Ego is reborn--like the fabled Phoenix from its ashes--from the old one. The locality which the former inhabits is called by the northern Buddhist Occultists "Devachan."[48] So also may the incorporeal principles of pure sensitives be placed _en rapport_ with disembodied Souls, although information thus obtained is not reliable, partly in consequence of the difficulty of transferring to the physical brain the impressions received, and partly from the difficulty of observing accurately, when the seer is untrained.[49] A pure medium's Ego can be drawn to and made, for an instant, to unite in a magnetic(?) relation with a real disembodied spirit, whereas the soul of an impure medium can only confabulate with the _Astral Soul_, or Shell, of the deceased. The former possibility explains those extremely rare cases of direct writing in recognised autographs, and of messages from the higher class of disembodied intelligences. But the confusion in messages thus obtained is considerable, not only from the causes above-named, but also because Even the best and purest sensitive can at most only be placed at any time _en rapport_ with a particular spiritual entity, and can only know, see, and feel what that particular entity knows, sees, and feels. Hence much possibility of error if generalisations are indulged in, since each Devachanî lives in his own paradise, and there is no "peeping down to earth," Nor is there any _conscious_ communication with the flying Souls that come as it were to learn where the Spirits are, what they are doing, and what they think, feel, and see. What then is being _en rapport_? It is simply an identity of molecular vibration between the astral part of the incarnated sensitive and the astral part of the dis-incarnated personality. The spirit of the sensitive gets "odylised", so to speak, by the aura of the spirit, whether this be hybernating in the earthly region or dreaming in the Devachan; identity of molecular vibration is established, and for a brief space the sensitive becomes the departed personality, and writes in its handwriting, uses its language, and thinks its thoughts. At such times sensitives may believe that those with whom they are for the moment _en rapport_ descend to earth and communicate with them, whereas, in reality, it is merely their own spirits which, being correctly attuned to those others, are for the time blended with them.[50] In a special case under examination, H.P. Blavatsky said that the communication might have come from an Elementary, but that it was Far more likely that the medium's spirit really became _en rapport_ with some spiritual entity in Devachan, the thoughts, knowledge, and sentiments of which formed the substance, while the medium's own personality and pre-existing ideas more or less governed the forms of the communication.[51] While these communications are not reliable in the facts and opinions stated, We would remark that it may _possibly_ be that there really is a distinct spiritual entity impressing our correspondent's mind. In other words, there may, for all we know, be some spirit, with whom his spiritual nature becomes habitually, for the time, thoroughly harmonised, and whose thoughts, language, &c., become his for the time, the result being that this spirit seems to communicate with him.... It is possible (though by no means probable) that he habitually passes into a state of _rapport_ with a genuine spirit, and, for the time, is assimilated therewith, thinking (to a great extent if not entirely) the thoughts that spirit would think, writing in its handwriting, &c. But even so, Mr. Terry must not fancy that that spirit is consciously communicating with him, or knows in any way anything of him, or any other person or thing on earth. It is simply that, the _rapport_ established, he, Mr. Terry, becomes for the nonce assimilated with that other personality, and thinks, speaks, and writes as it would have done on earth.... The molecules of his astral nature may from time to time vibrate in perfect unison with those of some spirit of such a person, now in Devachan, and the result may be that he appears to be in communication with that spirit, and to be advised, &c., by him, and clairvoyants may see in the Astral Light a picture of the earth-life form of that spirit. IV. Communications other than those from disembodied Souls, passing through normal _post mortem_ states. (a) _From Shells._ These, while but the cast-off garment of the liberated Soul, retain for some time the impress of their late inhabitant, and reproduce automatically his habits of thought and expression, just as a physical body will automatically repeat habitual gestures. Reflex action is as possible to the desire body as to the physical, but all reflex action is marked by its character of repetition, and absence of all power to initiate movement. It answers to a stimulus with an appearance of purposive action, but it initiates nothing. When people "sit for development", or when at a _séance_ they anxiously hope and wait for messages from departed friends, they supply just the stimulus needed, and obtain the signs of recognition for which they expectantly watch. (b) _From Elementaries._ These, possessing the lower capacities of the mind, _i.e._, all the intellectual faculties that found their expression through the physical brain during life, may produce communications of a highly intellectual character. These, however, are rare, as may be seen from a survey of the messages published as received from "departed Spirits". (c) _From Elementals._ These semi-conscious centres of force play a great part at _séances_, and are mostly the agents who are active in producing physical phenomena. They throw about or carry objects, make noises, ring bells, etc., etc. Sometimes they play pranks with Shells, animating them and representing them to be the spirits of great personalities who have lived on earth, but who have sadly degenerated in the "spirit-world", judging by their effusions. Sometimes, in materialising _séances_, they busy themselves in throwing pictures from the Astral Light on the fluidic forms produced, so causing them to assume likenesses of various persons. There are also Elementals of a high type who occasionally communicate with very gifted mediums, "Shining Ones" from other spheres. (d) _From Nirmânakâyas._ For these communications, as for the two classes next mentioned, the medium must be of a very pure and lofty nature. The Nirmânakâya is a perfected man, who has cast aside his physical body but retains his other lower principles, and remains in the earth-sphere for the sake of helping forward the evolution of mankind. Nirmânakâyas Have, out of pity for mankind and those they left on earth, renounced the Nirvânic state. Such an Adept, or Saint, or whatever you may call him, believing it a selfish act to rest in bliss while mankind groans under the burden of misery produced by ignorance, renounces Nirvâna and determines to remain invisible _in spirit_ on this earth. They have no material body, as they have left it behind; but otherwise they remain with all their principles even _in astral life_ in our sphere. And such can and do communicate with a few elect ones, only surely not with _ordinary_ mediums.[52] (e) _From Adepts now living on earth._ These often communicate with Their disciples, without using the ordinary methods of communication, and when any tie exists, perchance from some past incarnation, between an Adept and a medium, constituting that medium a disciple, a message from the Adept might readily be mistaken for a message from a "Spirit". The receipt of such messages by precipitated writing or spoken words is within the knowledge of some. (f) _From the medium's Higher Ego._ Where a pure and earnest man or woman is striving after the light, this upward striving is met by a downward reaching of the higher nature, and light from the higher streams downward, illuminating the lower consciousness. Then the lower mind is, for the time, united with its parent, and transmits as much of its knowledge as it is able to retain. From this brief sketch it will be seen how varied may be the sources from which communications apparently from "the other side of Death" may be received. As said by H.P. Blavatsky: The variety of the causes of phenomena is great, and one need be an Adept, and actually look into and examine what transpires, in order to be able to explain in each case what really underlies it.[53] To complete the statement it may be added that what the average Soul can do when it has passed through the gateway of Death, it can do on this side, and communications may be as readily obtained by writing, in trance, and by the other means of receiving messages, from embodied as from disembodied Souls. If each developed within himself the powers of his own Soul, instead of drifting about aimlessly, or ignorantly plunging into dangerous experiments, knowledge might be safely accumulated and the evolution of the Soul might be accelerated. This one thing is sure: Man is to-day a living Soul, over whom Death has no power, and the key of the prison-house of the body is in his own hands, so that he may learn its use if he will. It is because his true Self, while blinded by the body, has lost touch with other Selves, that Death has been a gulf instead of a gateway between embodied and disembodied Souls. * * * * * APPENDIX. The following passage on the fate of suicides is taken from the _Theosophist_, September, 1882. We do not pretend--we are not permitted--to deal exhaustively with the question at present, but we may refer to one of the most important classes of entities, who can participate in objective phenomena, other than Elementaries and Elementals. This class comprises the Spirits of conscious sane suicides. They are _Spirits_, and not _Shells_, because there is not in their cases, at any rate until later, a total and permanent divorce between the fourth and fifth principles on the one hand, and the sixth and seventh on the other. The two duads are divided, they exist apart, but a line of connection still unites them, they may yet reunite, and the sorely threatened personality avert its doom; the fifth principle still holds in its hands the clue by which, traversing the labyrinth of earthly sins and passions, it may regain the sacred penetralia. But for the time, though really a Spirit, and therefore so designated, it is practically not far removed from a Shell. This class of Spirit can undoubtedly communicate with men, but, as a rule, its members have to pay dearly for exercising the privilege, while it is scarcely possible for them to do otherwise than lower and debase the moral nature of those with and through whom they have much communication. It is merely, broadly speaking, a question of degree; of much or little injury resulting from such communication; the cases in which real, permanent good can arise are too absolutely exceptional to require consideration. Understand how the case stands. The unhappy being revolting against the trials of life--trials, the results of its own former actions, trials, heaven's merciful medicine for the mentally and spiritually diseased--determines, instead of manfully taking arms against a sea of troubles, to let the curtain drop, and, as it fancies, end them. It destroys the body, but finds itself precisely as much alive mentally as before. It had an appointed life-term determined by an intricate web of prior causes, which its own wilful sudden act cannot shorten. That term must run out its appointed sands. You may smash the lower half of the hand hour-glass, so that the impalpable sand shooting from the upper bell is dissipated by the passing aerial currents as it issues; but that stream will run on, unnoticed though it remain, until the whole store in that upper receptacle is exhausted. So you may destroy the body, but not the appointed period of sentient existence, foredoomed (because simply the effect of a plexus of causes) to intervene before the dissolution of the personality; this must run on for its appointed period. This is so in other cases, _e.g._, those of the victims of accident or violence; they, too, have to complete their life-term, and of these, too, we may speak on another occasion--but here it is sufficient to notice that, whether good or bad, their mental attitude at the time of death alters wholly their subsequent position. They, too, have to wait on within the "Region of Desires" until their wave of life runs on to and reaches its appointed shore, but they wait on, wrapped in dreams soothing and blissful, or the reverse, according to their mental and moral state at, and prior to the fatal hour, but nearly exempt from further material temptations, and, broadly speaking, incapable (except just at the moment of real death) of communicating _scio motu_ with mankind, though not wholly beyond the possible reach of the higher forms of the "Accursed Science," Necromancy. The question is a profoundly abstruse one; it would be impossible to explain within the brief space still remaining to us, how the conditions immediately after death differ so entirely as they do in the case (1) of the man who deliberately _lays down_ (not merely _risks_) his life from altruistic motives in the hope of saving those of others; and (2) of him who deliberately sacrifices his life from selfish motives, in the hope of escaping trials and troubles which loom before him. Nature or Providence, Fate, or God, being merely a self-adjusting machine, it would at first sight seem as if the results must be identical in both cases. But, machine though it be, we must remember that it is a machine _sui generis_-- Out of himself he span The eternal web of right and wrong; And ever feels the subtlest thrill, The slenderest thread along. A machine compared with whose perfect sensitiveness and adjustment the highest human intellect is but a coarse clumsy replica, _in petto_. And we must remember that thoughts and motives are material, and at times marvellously potent material, forces, and we may then begin to comprehend why the hero, sacrificing his life on pure altruistic grounds, sinks as his life-blood ebbs away into a sweet dream, wherein All that he wishes and all that he loves, Come smiling round his sunny way, only to wake into active or objective consciousness when reborn in the Region of Happiness, while the poor unhappy and misguided mortal who, seeking to elude fate, selfishly loosens the silver string and breaks the golden bowl, finds himself terribly alive and awake, instinct with all the evil cravings and desires that embittered his world-life, without a body in which to gratify these, and capable of only such partial alleviation as is possible by more or less vicarious gratification, and this only at the cost of the ultimate complete rupture with his sixth and seventh principles, and consequent ultimate annihilation after, alas! prolonged periods of suffering. Let it not be supposed that there is no hope for this class--the sane deliberate suicide. If, bearing steadfastly his cross, he suffers patiently his punishment, striving against carnal appetites still alive in him, in all their intensity, though, of course, each in proportion to the degree to which it had been indulged in earth-life. If, we say, he bears this humbly, never allowing himself to be tempted here or there into unlawful gratifications of unholy desires, then when his fated death-hour strikes, his four higher principles reunite, and, in the final separation that then ensues, it may well be that all may be well with him, and that he passes on to the gestation period and its subsequent developments. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Book ii., from lines 666-789. The whole passage bristles with horrors.] [Footnote 2: xii. 85. Trans., of Burnell and Hopkins.] [Footnote 3: From the translation of Dhunjeebhoy Jamsetjee Medhora, _Zoroastrian and some other Ancient Systems_, xxvii.] [Footnote 4: Trans., by Mirza Mohamed Hadi. _The Platonist_, 306.] [Footnote 5: _The Sacred Books of the East_, iii, 109, 110.] [Footnote 6: _Secret Doctrine_, vol. i. p. 281.] [Footnote 7: See _ibid._, p. 283.] [Footnote 8: _Isis Unveiled_, vol. i. p. 480.] [Footnote 9: Theosophical Manuals, No. 1.] [Footnote 10: _The Heroic Enthusiasts_, Trans., by L. Williams. part ii. pp. 22, 23.] [Footnote 11: _Cremation_, Theosophical Siftings, vol. iii.] [Footnote 12: _Man: Fragments of Forgotten History_, pp. 119, 120.] [Footnote 13: _Key to Theosophy_, H.P. Blavatsky, p. 109. Third Edition.] [Footnote 14: _Magic, White and Black_, Dr. Franz Hartmann, pp. 109, 110. Third Edition.] [Footnote 15: See _The Seven Principles of Man_, pp. 17-21.] [Footnote 16: _Theosophist_, March, 1882, p. 158, note.] [Footnote 17: _Essays upon some Controverted Questions_, p. 36.] [Footnote 18: _Fortnightly Review_, 1892, p. 176.] [Footnote 19: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 67.] [Footnote 20: _Ibid._, p. 97.] [Footnote 21: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 97] [Footnote 22: _Ibid._, p. 102.] [Footnote 23: June, 1882, art. "Seeming Discrepancies."] [Footnote 24: Pp. 73, 74. Ed. 1887.] [Footnote 25: _Theosophical Glossary_, Elementaries.] [Footnote 26: See _The Seven Principles of Man_, p.p. 44-46.] [Footnote 27: The name Sukhâvatî, borrowed from Tibetan Buddhism, is sometimes used instead of that of Devachan. Sukhâvatî, according to Schlagintweit, is "the abode of the blessed, into which ascend those who have accumulated much merit by the practice of virtues", and "involves the deliverance from metempsychosis" (_Buddhism in Tibet_, p. 99). According to the Prasanga school, the higher Path leads to Nirvâna, the lower to Sukhâvatî. But Eitel calls Sukhâvatî "the Nirvâna of the common people, where the saints revel in physical bliss for æons, until they reënter the circle of transmigration" (_Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary_). Eitel, however, under "Amitâbha" states that the "popular mind" regards the "paradise of the West" as "the haven of final redemption from the eddies of transmigration". When used by one of the Teachers of the Esoteric Philosophy it covers the higher Devachanic states, but from all of these the Soul comes back to earth.] [Footnote 28: See _Lucifer_, Oct, 1892, Vol. XI. No. 62.] [Footnote 29: _The Path_, May, 1890.] [Footnote 30: _Ibid._] [Footnote 31: "Notes on Devachan," as cited.] [Footnote 32: "Notes on Devachan," as before. There are a variety of stages in Devachan; the Rûpa Loka is an inferior stage, where the Soul is still surrounded by forms. It has escaped from these personalities in the Tribhuvana.] [Footnote 33: _Vishnu Purâna_, Bk. I. ch. v.] [Footnote 34: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 69. Third Edition.] [Footnote 35: Sixth and seventh in the older nomenclature, fifth and sixth in the later--_i.e._, Manas and Buddhi.] [Footnote 36: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 99. Third Edition.] [Footnote 37: _Ibid._, p. 100.] [Footnote 38: _Ibid._, p. 101.] [Footnote 39: See Manual No. 2 _Re-incarnation_, pp. 60, 61. Third Edition.] [Footnote 40: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 105. Third Edition.] [Footnote 41: _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 197. Eighth Edition.] [Footnote 42: Quoted in the _Secret Doctrine_, vol. ii. p. 83. The student will do well to read, for a fair presentation of the subject, G.R.S. Mead's "Note on Nirvâna" in _Lucifer_, for March, April, and May, 1893. (Re-printed in _Theosophical Siftings_).] [Footnote 43: _Theosophist_, Sept., 1882, p. 310.] [Footnote 44: See on "illusion" what was said under the heading "Devachan".] [Footnote 45: _Key to Theosophy_, p. 102. Third Edition.] [Footnote 46: _Theosophist_, Sept. 1881.] [Footnote 47: "Notes on Devachan", _Path_, June, 1890, p. 80.] [Footnote 48: _Theosophist_, June, 1882, p. 226.] [Footnote 49: Summarised from article in _Theosophist_, Sept., 1882.] [Footnote 50: _Ibid._, p. 309.] [Footnote 51: _Ibid._, p. 310.] [Footnote 52: _Key to Theosophy,_ p. 151.] [Footnote 53: _Theosophist_, Sept., 1882, p. 310.] * * * * * INDEX. Accident, Death by, 37. Appendix, 81. Astral Body, 19, Fate of, 31. Astral Shell or Soul, 75. _Avesta_, quoted, 9. Blavatsky, H.P., quoted, 16, 17, 24, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 45, 49, 60, 65, 66, 67, 73, 74, 78. _Book of the Dead_, quoted, 8. Bruno, Giordano, quoted, 21. _Buddhism in Tibet_, quoted, 47, (note). Communications between Earth and other Spheres, 70. " between Earth and Soul in Etheric Body, 71. " between Earth, and soul in Devachan, 72, " between Earth and soul in Kâmaloka, 72. " from Adepts now living, 79. " from Elementals, 78. " from Elementaries, 77. " from Medium's Higher Ego, 79. " from Nirmânakâyas, 78. " from Shells, 43, 77. _Controverted Questions, Essays upon some_, quoted, 28. _Cremation_, quoted, 21. Cycle of Incarnation, 52 et seq. Death, a Gateway, 79. " Chinese Ideas of, 11. " Christian Ideas of, 6. " Egyptian Ideas of, 8. " Theosophic Ideas of, 18. _Desatir_, quoted, 9. Devachan, 33, 46. et seq. Devachan, Passing into, of the average-living, 33. Devachan, The Soul in, 72. Devachanî, The, 58 et seq. Earth, The return to, 66. Egos, Many lives of, 63 et seq. Elementals, 44, 78. Elementaries, 45, 77. _Esoteric Buddhism_, quoted, 69. Etheric Double, 12, 22 et seq., 24, 25, 71 et seq. Fiery Lives, 17. _Fortnightly Review_, quoted, 29. _Heroic Enthusiasts, The_, quoted, 21. Immortal Triad, The, 12, 13, 31, 33, 58, 60. _Isis Unveiled_, quoted, 17. Kâmaloka, 26, 27, 29, 32, 34, 41. Kâmaloka, The Soul in, 72. Kâma Rûpa, 30. _Key to Theosophy_, quoted, 24, 30, 31, 33, 60, 65, 67, 73, 78. _Lucifer_, quoted, 49, 70. _Magic, White and Black_, quoted, 26. _Man: Fragments of Forgotten History_, quoted, 23. Man: How Made, 12 et seq. Mâyâ, 47. Medium, Communications from Higher Egos of, 79. Nirvâna, 69. _Ordinances of Manu_, quoted, 9. _Paradise Lost_, quoted, 7. _Path_, quoted, 51, 54, 55, 56, 59 et seq. _Perfect Way_, quoted, 44. Perishable Quaternary, 12. Pishâchas, 38. Prâna, 26, 30. Premature Death, 36, 39. Re-incarnation, 8, 67. _Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary_, quoted, 47 (Footnote: 27). _Seven principles of Man_, quoted, 26, 45. Shell, Astral Soul, or, 75. Shells, The, 41. _Shû King_, quoted, 10. Soul, Growth of, in Devachan, 56, " Powers of the, 80. " Relations of, with Devachanî, 74 et seq. " The Disembodied, 71 et seq. Spiritualism and Esoteric Philosophy, 15. Suicides, 36, et seq., 81. _Theosophical Glossary_, quoted, 45. _Theosophical Siftings_, quoted, 21. _Theosophist, The_, quoted, 27, 35, 71, 74, 75 et seq. _Theosophist. The_, summarised, 75, 79, 81. Unconscious co-existence of intelligent beings, 28 et seq. _Vishnu Purâna_, quoted, 57. * * * * * 
14378	----	FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY Mystical, Philosophical, Theosophical, Historical and Scientific Essays Selected from "The Theosophist" Edited by George Robert Snow Mead CONTENTS Mystical The "Elixir of Life" Is the Desire to "Live" Selfish? Contemplation Chelas and Lay Chelas Ancient Opinions upon Psychic Bodies The Nilgiri Sannyasis Witchcraft on the Nilgiris Shamanism and Witchcraft Amongst the Kolarian Tribes Mahatmas and Chelas The Brahmanical Thread Reading in a Sealed Envelope The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac The Sishal and Bhukailas Yogis Philosophical True and False Personality Chastity Zorastrianism on the Septenary Constitution of Man Brahmanism on the Sevenfold Principle in Man The Septenary Principle in Esotericism Personal and Impersonal God Prakriti and Parusha Morality and Pantheism Occult Study Some Inquiries Suggested by Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism" Sakya Muni's Place in History Inscriptions Discovered by General A. Cunningham Discrimination of Spirit and Not-Spirit Was Writing Known Before Panini? Theosophical What is Theosophy? How a "Chela" Found His "Guru" The Sages of the Himavat The Himalayan Brothers--Do They Exist? Interview With a Mahatma The Secret Doctrine Historical The Puranas on the Dynasty of the Moryas and on Koothoomi The Theory of Cycles Scientific Odorigen and Jiva Introversion of Mental Vision "Precipitation" "How Shall We Sleep?" Transmigration of the Life Atoms "OM" and its Practical Significance FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY Mystical The "Elixir of Life" From a Chela's* Diary. By G---M---, F.T.S. "And Enoch walked with the Elohim, and the Elohim took him." --Genesis Introduction [The curious information-for whatsoever else the world may think of it, it will doubtless be acknowledged to be that--contained in the article that follows, merits a few words of introduction. The details given in it on the subject of what has always been considered as one of the darkest and most strictly guarded of the mysteries of the initiation into occultism--from the days of the Rishis until those of the Theosophical Society--came to the knowledge of the author in a way that would seem to the ordinary run of Europeans strange and supernatural. He himself, however, we may assure the reader, is a most thorough disbeliever in the Supernatural, though he has learned too much to limit the capabilities of the natural as some do. Further, he has to make the following confession of his own belief. It will be apparent, from a careful perusal of the facts, that if the matter be really as stated therein, the author cannot himself be an adept of high grade, as the article in such a case would never have been written. Nor does he pretend to be one. He is, or rather was, for a few years an humble Chela. Hence, the converse must consequently be also true, that as regards the higher stages of the mystery he can have no personal experience, but speaks of it only as a close observer left to his own surmises--and no more. He may, therefore, boldly state that during, and notwithstanding, his unfortunately rather too short stay with some adepts, he has by actual experiment and observation verified some of the less transcendental or incipient parts of the "Course." And, though it will be impossible for him to give positive testimony as to what lies beyond, he may yet mention that all his own course of study, training and experience, long, severe and dangerous as it has often been, leads him to the conviction that everything is really as stated, save some details purposely veiled. For causes which cannot be explained to the public, he himself may he unable or unwilling to use the secret he has gained access to. Still he is permitted by one to whom all his reverential affection and gratitude are due--his last guru--to divulge for the benefit of Science and Man, and specially for the good of those who are courageous enough to personally make the experiment, the following astounding particulars of the occult methods for prolonging life to a period far beyond the common.--G.M.] --------- * A. Chela is the pupil and disciple of an initiated Guru or Master.--Ed. --------- Probably one of the first considerations which move the worldly-minded at present to solicit initiation into Theosophy is the belief, or hope, that, immediately on joining, some extraordinary advantage over the rest of mankind will be conferred upon the candidate. Some even think that the ultimate result of their initiation will perhaps be exemption from that dissolution which is called the common lot of mankind. The traditions of the "Elixir of Life," said to be in the possession of Kabalists and Alchemists, are still cherished by students of Medieval Occultism--in Europe. The allegory of the Ab-e Hyat or Water of Life, is still credited as a fact by the degraded remnants of the Asiatic esoteric sects ignorant of the real GREAT SECRET. The "pungent and fiery Essence," by which Zanoni renewed his existence, still fires the imagination of modern visionaries as a possible scientific discovery of the future. Theosophically, though the fact is distinctly declared to be true, the above-named conceptions of the mode of procedure leading to the realization of the fact, are known to be false. The reader may or may not believe it; but as a matter of fact, Theosophical Occultists claim to have communication with (living) Intelligences possessing an infinitely wider range of observation than is contemplated even by the loftiest aspirations of modern science, all the present "Adepts" of Europe and America--dabblers in the Kabala--notwithstanding. But far even as those superior Intelligences have investigated (or, if preferred, are alleged to have investigated), and remotely as they may have searched by the help of inference and analogy, even They have failed to discover in the Infinity anything permanent but--SPACE. ALL IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Reflection, therefore, will easily suggest to the reader the further logical inference that in a Universe which is essentially impermanent in its conditions, nothing can confer permanency. Therefore, no possible substance, even if drawn from the depths of Infinity; no imaginable combination of drugs, whether of our earth or any other, though compounded by even the Highest Intelligence; no system of life or discipline though directed by the sternest determination and skill, could possibly produce Immutability. For in the universe of solar systems, wherever and however investigated, Immutability necessitates "Non-Being" in the physical sense given it by the Theists-Non-Being which is nothing in the narrow conceptions of Western Religionists--a reductio ad absurdum. This is a gratuitous insult even when applied to the pseudo-Christian or ecclesiastical Jehovite idea of God. Consequently, it will be seen that the common ideal conception of "Immortality" is not only essentially wrong, but a physical and metaphysical impossibility. The idea, whether cherished by Theosophists or non-Theosophists, by Christians or Spiritualists, by Materialists or Idealists, is a chimerical illusion. But the actual prolongation of human life is possible for a time so long as to appear miraculous and incredible to those who regard our span of existence as necessarily limited to at most a couple of hundred years. We may break, as it were, the shock of Death, and instead of dying, change a sudden plunge into darkness to a transition into a brighter light. And this may be made so gradual that the passage from one state of existence to another shall have its friction minimized, so as to be practically imperceptible. This is a very different matter, and quite within the reach of Occult Science. In this, as in all other cases, means properly directed will gain their ends, and causes produce effects. Of course, the only question is, what are these causes, and how, in their turn, are they to be produced. To lift, as far as may be allowed, the veil from this aspect of Occultism, is the object of the present paper. We must premise by reminding the reader of two Theosophic doctrines, constantly inculcated in "Isis" and in other mystic works--namely, (a) that ultimately the Kosmos is One--one under infinite variations and manifestations, and (b) that the so-called man is a "compound being"-- composite not only in the exoteric scientific sense of being a congeries of living so-called material Units, but also in the esoteric sense of being a succession of seven forms or parts of itself, interblended with each other. To put it more clearly we might say that the more ethereal forms are but duplicates of the same aspect,--each finer one lying within the inter-atomic spaces of the next grosser. We would have the reader understand that these are no subtleties, no "spiritualities" at all in the Christo-Spiritualistic sense. In the actual man reflected in your mirror are really several men, or several parts of one composite man; each the exact counterpart of the other, but the "atomic conditions" (for want of a better word) of each of which are so arranged that its atoms interpenetrate those of the next "grosser" form. It does not, for our present purpose, matter how the Theosophists, Spiritualists, Buddhists, Kabalists, or Vedantists, count, separate, classify, arrange or name these, as that war of terms may be postponed to another occasion. Neither does it matter what relation each of these men has to the various "elements" of the Kosmos of which he forms a part. This knowledge, though of vital importance in other respects, need not be explained or discussed now. Nor does it much more concern us that the Scientists deny the existence of such an arrangement, because their instruments are inadequate to make their senses perceive it. We will simply reply--"get better instruments and keener senses, and eventually you will." All we have to say is that if you are anxious to drink of the "Elixir of Life," and live a thousand years or so, you must take our word for the matter at present, and proceed on the assumption. For esoteric science does not give the faintest possible hope that the desired end will ever be attained by any other way; while modern, or so-called exact science--laughs at it. So, then, we have arrived at the point where we have determined-- literally, not metaphorically--to crack the outer shell known as the mortal coil or body, and hatch out of it, clothed in our next. This "next" is not spiritual, but only a more ethereal form. Having by a long training and preparation adapted it for a life in this atmosphere, during which time we have gradually made the outward shell to die off through a certain process (hints of which will be found further on) we have to prepare for this physiological transformation. How are we to do it? In the first place we have the actual, visible, material body--Man, so called; though, in fact, but his outer shell--to deal with. Let us bear in mind that science teaches us that in about every seven years we change skin as effectually as any serpent; and this so gradually and imperceptibly that, had not science after years of unremitting study and observation assured us of it, no one would have had the slightest suspicion of the fact. We see, moreover, that in process of time any cut or lesion upon the body, however deep, has a tendency to repair the loss and reunite; a piece of lost skin is very soon replaced by another. Hence, if a man, partially flayed alive, may sometimes survive and be covered with a new skin, so our astral, vital body--the fourth of the seven (having attracted and assimilated to itself the second) and which is so much more ethereal than the physical one--may be made to harden its particles to the atmospheric changes. The whole secret is to succeed in evolving it out, and separating it from the visible; and while its generally invisible atoms proceed to concrete themselves into a compact mass, to gradually get rid of the old particles of our visible frame so as to make them die and disappear before the new set has had time to evolve and replace them. We can say no more. The Magdalene is not the only one who could be accused of having "seven spirits" in her, though men who have a lesser number of spirits (what a misnomer that word!) in them, are not few or exceptional; they are the frequent failures of nature--the incomplete men and women.* ----------- * This is not to be taken as meaning that such persons are thoroughly destitute of some one or several of the seven principles--a man born without an arm has still its ethereal counterpart; but that they are so latent that they cannot be developed, and consequently are to be considered as non-existing.--Ed. Theos. ---------- Each of these has in turn to survive the preceding and more dense one, and then die. The exception is the sixth when absorbed into and blended with the seventh. The "Phatu" * of the old Hindu physiologist had a dual meaning, the esoteric side of which corresponds with the Tibetan "Zung" (seven principles of the body). We Asiatics, have a proverb, probably handed down to us, and by the Hindus repeated ignorantly as to its esoteric meaning. It has been known ever since the old Rishis mingled familiarly with the simple and noble people they taught and led on. The Devas had whispered into every man's ear--Thou only--if thou wilt--art "immortal." Combine with this the saying of a Western author that if any man could just realize for an instant, that he had to die some day, he would die that instant. The Illuminated will perceive that between these two sayings, rightly understood, stands revealed the whole secret of Longevity. We only die when our will ceases to be strong enough to make us live. In the majority of cases, death comes when the torture and vital exhaustion accompanying a rapid change in our physical conditions becomes so intense as to weaken, for one single instant, our "clutch on life," or the tenacity of the will to exist. Till then, however severe may be the disease, however sharp the pang, we are only sick or wounded, as the case may be. ----------- * Dhatu--the seven principal substances of the human body--chyle, flesh, blood, fat, bones, marrow, semen. ----------- This explains the cases of sudden deaths from joy, fright, pain, grief or such other causes. The sense of a life-task consummated, of the worthlessness of one's existence, if strongly realized, produced death as surely as poison or a rifle-bullet. On the other hand, a stern determination to continue to live, has, in fact, carried many through the crises of the most severe diseases, in perfect safety. First, then, must be the determination--the Will--the conviction of certainty, to survive and continue.* Without that, all else is useless. And to be efficient for the purpose, it must be, not only a passing resolution of the moment, a single fierce desire of short duration, but a settled and continued strain, as nearly as can be continued and concentrated without one single moment's relaxation. In a word, the would-be "Immortal" must be on his watch night and day, guarding self against-himself. To live--to live--to live--must be his unswerving resolve. He must as little as possible allow himself to be turned aside from it. It may be said that this is the most concentrated form of selfishness,--that it is utterly opposed to our Theosophic professions of benevolence, and disinterestedness, and regard for the good of humanity. Well, viewed in a short-sighted way, it is so. But to do good, as in everything else, a man must have time and materials to work with, and this is a necessary means to the acquirement of powers by which infinitely more good can be done than without them. ---------- * Col. Olcott has epigrammatically explained the creative or rather the re-creative power of the Will, in his "Buddhist Catechism." He there shows--of course, speaking on behalf of the Southern Buddhists--that this Will to live, if not extinguished in the present life, leaps over the chasm of bodily death, and recombines the Skandhas, or groups of qualities that made up the individual into a new personality. Man is, therefore, reborn as the result of his own unsatisfied yearning for objective existence. Col. Olcott puts it in this way: Q. 123. What is that, in man, which gives him the impression of having a permanent individuality? A. Tanha, or the unsatisfied desire for existence. The being having done that for which he must be rewarded or punished in future, and having Tanha, will have a rebirth through the influence of Karma. Q. 124. ....What is it that is reborn? A. A new aggregation of Skandhas, or individuality, caused by the last yearning of the dying person. Q. 128. To what cause must we attribute the differences in the combination of the Five Skandhas has which makes every individual different from every other individual? A. To the Karma of the individual in the next preceding birth. Q. 129. What is the force or energy that is at work, under the guidance of Karma, to produce the new being? A. Tanha--the "Will to Live." ---------- When these are once mastered, the opportunities to use them will arrive, for there comes a moment when further watch and exertion are no longer needed:--the moment when the turning-point is safely passed. For the present as we deal with aspirants and not with advanced chelas, in the first stage a determined, dogged resolution, and an enlightened concentration of self on self, are all that is absolutely necessary. It must not, however, be considered that the candidate is required to be unhuman or brutal in his negligence of others. Such a recklessly selfish course would be as injurious to him as the contrary one of expending his vital energy on the gratification of his physical desires. All that is required from him is a purely negative attitude. Until the turning-point is reached, he must not "lay out" his energy in lavish or fiery devotion to any cause, however noble, however "good," however elevated.* Such, we can solemnly assure the reader, would bring its reward in many ways--perhaps in another life, perhaps in this world, but it would tend to shorten the existence it is desired to preserve, as surely as self-indulgence and profligacy. That is why very few of the truly great men of the world (of course, the unprincipled adventurers who have applied great powers to bad uses are out of the question)--the martyrs, the heroes, the founders of religions, the liberators of nations, the leaders of reforms--ever became members of the long-lived "Brotherhood of Adepts" who were by some and for long years accused of selfishness. (And that is also why the Yogis, and the Fakirs of modern India--most of whom are acting now but on the dead-letter tradition, are required if they would be considered living up to the principles of their profession--to appear entirely dead to every inward feeling or emotion.) Notwithstanding the purity of their hearts, the greatness of their aspirations, the disinterestedness of their self-sacrifice, they could not live for they had missed the hour. -------- * On page 151 of Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World," the author's much abused, and still more doubted correspondent assures him that none yet of his "degree are like the stern hero of Bulwer's" Zanoni.... "the heartless morally dried up mummies some would fancy us to be" and adds that few of them "would care to play the part in life of a desiccated pansy between the leaves of a volume of solemn poetry." But our adept omits saying that one or two degrees higher, and he will have to submit for a period of years to such a mummifying process unless, indeed, he would voluntarily give up a life-long labour and--Die.--Ed. ---------- They may at times have exercised powers which the world called miraculous; they may have electrified man and subdued Nature by fiery and self-devoted Will; they may have been possessed of a so-called superhuman intelligence; they may have even had knowledge of, and communion with, members of our own occult Brotherhood; but, having deliberately resolved to devote their vital energy to the welfare of others, rather than to themselves, they have surrendered life; and, when perishing on the cross or the scaffold, or falling, sword in hand, upon the battle-field, or sinking exhausted after a successful consummation of the life-object, on death-beds in their chambers, they have all alike had to cry out at last: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!" So far so good. But, given the will to live, however powerful, we have seen that, in the ordinary course of mundane life, the throes of dissolution cannot be checked. The desperate, and again and again renewed struggle of the Kosmic elements to proceed with a career of change despite the will that is checking them, like a pair of runaway horses struggling against the determined driver holding them in, are so cumulatively powerful, that the utmost efforts of the untrained human will acting within an unprepared body become ultimately useless. The highest intrepidity of the bravest soldier; the interest desire of the yearning lover; the hungry greed of the unsatisfied miser; the most undoubting faith of the sternest fanatic; the practiced insensibility to pain of the hardiest red Indian brave or half-trained Hindu Yogi; the most deliberate philosophy of the calmest thinker--all alike fail at last. Indeed, sceptics will allege in opposition to the verities of this article that, as a matter of experience, it is often observed that the mildest and most irresolute of minds and the weakest of physical frames are often seen to resist "Death" longer than the powerful will of the high-spirited and obstinately-egotistic man, and the iron frame of the labourer, the warrior and the athlete. In reality, however, the key to the secret of these apparently contradictory phenomena is the true conception of the very thing we have already said. If the physical development of the gross "outer shell" proceeds on parallel lines and at an equal rate with that of the will, it stands to reason that no advantage for the purpose of overcoming it, is attained by the latter. The acquisition of improved breechloaders by one modern army confers no absolute superiority if the enemy also becomes possessed of them. Consequently it will be at once apparent, to those who think on the subject, that much of the training by which what is known as "a powerful and determined nature," perfects itself for its own purpose on the stage of the visible world, necessitating and being useless without a parallel development of the "gross" and so-called animal frame, is, in short, neutralized, for the purpose at present treated of, by the fact that its own action has armed the enemy with weapons equal to its own. The force of the impulse to dissolution is rendered equal to the will to oppose it; and being cumulative, subdues the will-power and triumphs at last. On the other hand, it may happen that an apparently weak and vacillating will-power residing in a weak and undeveloped physical frame, may be so reinforced by some unsatisfied desire--the Ichcha (wish)--as it is called by the Indian Occultists (for instance, a mother's heart-yearning to remain and support her fatherless children)--as to keep down and vanquish, for a short time, the physical throes of a body to which it has become temporarily superior. The whole rationale then, of the first condition of continued existence in this world, is (a) the development of a Will so powerful as to overcome the hereditary (in a Darwinian sense) tendencies of the atoms composing the "gross" and palpable animal frame, to hurry on at a particular period in a certain course of Kosmic change; and (b) to so weaken the concrete action of that animal frame as to make it more amenable to the power of the Will. To defeat an army, you must demoralize and throw it into disorder. To do this then, is the real object of all the rites, ceremonies, fasts, "prayers," meditations, initiations and procedures of self-discipline enjoined by various esoteric Eastern sects, from that course of pure and elevated aspiration which leads to the higher phases of Adeptism Real, down to the fearful and disgusting ordeals which the adherent of the "Left-hand-Road" has to pass through, all the time maintaining his equilibrium. The procedures have their merits and their demerits, their separate uses and abuses, their essential and non-essential parts, their various veils, mummeries, and labyrinths. But in all, the result aimed at is reached, if by different processes. The Will is strengthened, encouraged and directed, and the elements opposing its action are demoralized. Now, to any one who has thought out and connected the various evolution theories, as taken, not from any occult source, but from the ordinary scientific manual accessible to all--from the hypothesis of the latest variation in the habits of species--say, the acquisition of carnivorous habits by the New Zealand parrot, for instance--to the farthest glimpses backwards into Space and Eternity afforded by the "Fire Mist" doctrine, it will be apparent that they all rest on one basis. That basis is, that the impulse once given to a hypothetical Unit has a tendency to continue; and consequently, that anything "done" by something at a certain time and certain place tends to repeat itself at other times and places. Such is the admitted rationale of heredity and atavism. That the same things apply to our ordinary conduct is apparent from the notorious ease with which "habits,"--bad or good, as the case may be--are acquired, and it will not be questioned that this applies, as a rule, as much to the moral and intellectual, as to the physical world. Furthermore, History and Science teach us plainly that certain physical habits conduce to certain moral and intellectual results. There never yet was a conquering nation of vegetarians. Even in the old Aryan times, we do not learn that the very Rishis, from whose lore and practice we gain the knowledge of Occultism, ever interdicted the Kshetriya (military) caste from hunting or a carnivorous diet. Filling, as they did, a certain place in the body politic in the actual condition of the world, the Rishis as little thought of interfering with them, as of restraining the tigers of the jungle from their habits. That did not affect what the Rishis did themselves. The aspirant to longevity then must be on his guard against two dangers. He must beware especially of impure and animal* thoughts. For Science shows that thought is dynamic, and the thought-force evolved by nervous action expanding outwardly, must affect the molecular relations of the physical man. The inner men,** however sublimated their organism may be, are still composed of actual, not hypothetical, particles, and are still subject to the law that an "action" has a tendency to repeat itself; a tendency to set up analogous action in the grosser "shell" they are in contact with, and concealed within. ---------- * In other words, the thought tends to provoke the deed.--G.M. ** We use the word in the plural, reminding the reader that, according to our doctrine, man is septenary.--G.M. ---------- And, on the other hand, certain actions have a tendency to produce actual physical conditions unfavourable to pure thoughts, hence to the state required for developing the supremacy of the inner man. To return to the practical process. A normally healthy mind, in a normally healthy body, is a good starting-point. Though exceptionally powerful and self-devoted natures may sometimes recover the ground lost by mental degradation or physical misuse, by employing proper means, under the direction of unswerving resolution, yet often things may have gone so far that there is no longer stamina enough to sustain the conflict sufficiently long to perpetuate this life; though what in Eastern parlance is called the "merit" of the effort will help to ameliorate conditions and improve matters in another. However this may be, the prescribed course of self-discipline commences here. It may be stated briefly that its essence is a course of moral, mental, and physical development, carried on in parallel lines--one being useless without the other. The physical man must be rendered more ethereal and sensitive; the mental man more penetrating and profound; the moral man more self-denying and philosophical. And it may be mentioned that all sense of restraint--even if self-imposed--is useless. Not only is all "goodness" that results from the compulsion of physical force, threats, or bribes (whether of a physical or so-called "spiritual" nature) absolutely useless to the person who exhibits it, its hypocrisy tending to poison the moral atmosphere of the world, but the desire to be "good" or "pure," to be efficacious must be spontaneous. It must be a self-impulse from within, a real preference for something higher, not an abstention from vice because of fear of the law: not a chastity enforced by the dread of Public Opinion; not a benevolence exercised through love of praise or dread of consequences in a hypothetical Future Life.* ---------- * Col. Olcott clearly and succinctly explains the Buddhist doctrine of Merit or Karma, in his "Buddhist Catechism." (Question 83).--G.M. ---------- It will be seen now in connection with the doctrine of the tendency to the renewal of action, before discussed, that the course of self-discipline recommended as the only road to Longevity by Occultism is not a "visionary" theory dealing with vague "ideas," but actually a scientifically devised system of drill. It is a system by which each particle of the several men composing the septenary individual receives an impulse, and a habit of doing what is necessary for certain purposes of its own free-will and with "pleasure." Every one must be practiced and perfect in a thing to do it with pleasure. This rule especially applies to the case of the development of Man. "Virtue" may be very good in its way--it may lead to the grandest results. But to become efficacious it has to be practiced cheerfully not with reluctance or pain. As a consequence of the above consideration the candidate for Longevity at the commencement of his career must begin to eschew his physical desires, not from any sentimental theory of right or wrong, but for the following good reason. As, according to a well-known and now established scientific theory, his visible material frame is always renewing its particles; he will, while abstaining from the gratification of his desires, reach the end of a certain period during which those particles which composed the man of vice, and which were given a bad predisposition, will have departed. At the same time, the disuse of such functions will tend to obstruct the entry, in place of the old particles, of new particles having a tendency to repeat the said acts. And while this is the particular result as regards certain "vices," the general result of an abstention from "gross" acts will be (by a modification of the well-known Darwinian law of atrophy by non-usage) to diminish what we may call the "relative" density and coherence of the outer shell (as a result of its less-used molecules); while the diminution in the quantity of its actual constituents will he "made up" (if tried by scales and weights) by the increased admission of more ethereal particles. What physical desires are to be abandoned and in what order? First and foremost, he must give up alcohol in all forms; for while it supplies no nourishment, nor any direct pleasure (beyond such sweetness or fragrance as may be gained in the taste of wine, &c., to which alcohol, in itself, is non-essential) to even the grossest elements of the "physical" frame, it induces a violence of action, a rush so to speak, of life, the stress of which can only be sustained by very dull, gross, and dense elements, and which, by the operation of the well-known law of Re-action (in commercial phrase, "supply and demand") tends to summon them from the surrounding universe, and therefore directly counteracts the object we have in view. Next comes meat-eating, and for the very same reason, in a minor degree. It increases the rapidity of life, the energy of action, the violence of passions. It may be good for a hero who has to fight and die, but not for a would-be sage who has to exist and.... Next in order come the sexual desires; for these, in addition to the great diversion of energy (vital force) into other channels, in many different ways, beyond the primary one (as, for instance, the waste of energy in expectation, jealousy, &c.), are direct attractions to a certain gross quality of the original matter of the Universe, simply because the most pleasurable physical sensations are only possible at that stage of density. Alongside with and extending beyond all these and other gratifications of the senses (which include not only those things usually known as "vicious," but all those which, though ordinarily regarded as "innocent," have yet the disqualification of ministering to the pleasures of the body--the most harmless to others and the least "gross" being the criterion for those to be last abandoned in each case)--must be carried on the moral purification. Nor must it be imagined that "austerities" as commonly understood can, in the majority of cases, avail much to hasten the "etherealizing" process. That is the rock on which many of the Eastern esoteric sects have foundered, and the reason why they have degenerated into degrading superstitions. The Western monks and the Eastern Yogees, who think they will reach the apex of powers by concentrating their thought on their navel, or by standing on one leg, are practicing exercises which serve no other purpose than to strengthen the willpower, which is sometimes applied to the basest purposes. These are examples of this one-sided and dwarf development. It is no use to fast as long as you require food. The ceasing of desire for food without impairment of health is the sign which indicates that it should be taken in lesser and ever decreasing quantities until the extreme limit compatible with life is reached. A stage will be finally attained where only water will be required. Nor is it of any use for this particular purpose of longevity to abstain from immorality so long as you are craving for it in your heart; and so on with all other unsatisfied inward cravings. To get rid of the inward desire is the essential thing, and to mimic the real thing without it is barefaced hypocrisy and useless slavery. So it must be with the moral purification of the heart. The "basest" inclinations must go first--then the others. First avarice, then fear, then envy, worldly pride, uncharitableness, hatred; last of all ambition and curiosity must be abandoned successively. The strengthening of the more ethereal and so-called "spiritual" parts of the man must go on at the same time. Reasoning from the known to the unknown, meditation must be practiced and encouraged. Meditation is the inexpressible yearning of the inner Man to "go out towards the infinite," which in the olden time was the real meaning of adoration, but which has now no synonym in the European languages, because the thing no longer exists in the West, and its name has been vulgarized to the make-believe shams known as prayer, glorification, and repentance. Through all stages of training the equilibrium of the consciousness--the assurance that all must be right in the Kosmos, and therefore with you a portion of it--must be retained. The process of life must not be hurried but retarded, if possible; to do otherwise may do good to others-- perhaps even to yourself in other spheres, but it will hasten your dissolution in this. Nor must the externals be neglected in this first stage. Remember that an adept, though "existing" so as to convey to ordinary minds the idea of his being immortal, is not also invulnerable to agencies from without. The training to prolong life does not, in itself, secure one from accidents. As far as any physical preparation goes, the sword may still cut, the disease enter, the poison disarrange. This case is very clearly and beautifully put in "Zanoni," and it is correctly put and must be so, unless all "adeptism" is a baseless lie. The adept may be more secure from ordinary dangers than the common mortal, but he is so by virtue of the superior knowledge, calmness, coolness and penetration which his lengthened existence and its necessary concomitants have enabled him to acquire; not by virtue of any preservative power in the process itself. He is secure as a man armed with a rifle is more secure than a naked baboon; not secure in the sense in which the deva (god) was supposed to be securer than a man. If this is so in the case of the high adept, how much more necessary is it that the neophyte should be not only protected but that he himself should use all possible means to ensure for himself the necessary duration of life to complete the process of mastering the phenomena we call death! It may be said, why do not the higher adepts protect him? Perhaps they do to some extent, but the child must learn to walk alone; to make him independent of his own efforts in respect to safety, would be destroying one element necessary to his development--the sense of responsibility. What courage or conduct would be called for in a man sent to fight when armed with irresistible weapons and clothed in impenetrable armour? Hence the neophyte should endeavour, as far as possible, to fulfill every true canon of sanitary law as laid down by modern scientists. Pure air, pure water, pure food, gentle exercise, regular hours, pleasant occupations and surroundings, are all, if not indispensable, at least serviceable to his progress. It is to secure these, at least as much as silence and solitude, that the Gods, Sages, Occultists of all ages have retired as much as possible to the quiet of the country, the cool cave, the depths of the forest, the expanse of the desert, or the heights of the mountains. Is it not suggestive that the Gods have always loved the "high places"; and that in the present day the highest section of the Occult Brotherhood on earth inhabits the highest mountain plateaux of the earth?* --------- * The stern prohibition to the Jews to serve "their gods upon the high mountains and upon the hills" is traced back to the unwillingness of their ancient elders to allow people in most cases unfit for adeptship to choose a life of celibacy and asceticism, or in other words, to pursue adeptship. This prohibition had an esoteric meaning before it became the prohibition, incomprehensible in its dead-letter sense: for it is not India alone whose sons accorded divine honours to the Wise Ones, but all nations regarded their adepts and initiates as divine.-- G.M. --------- Nor must the beginner disdain the assistance of medicine and good medical regimen. He is still an ordinary mortal, and he requires the aid of an ordinary mortal. "Suppose, however, all the conditions required, or which will be understood as required (for the details and varieties of treatment requisite, are too numerous to be detailed here), are fulfilled, what is the next step?" the reader will ask. Well if there have been no backslidings or remissness in the procedure indicated, the following physical results will follow:-- First the neophyte will take more pleasure in things spiritual and pure. Gradually gross and material occupations will become not only uncraved for or forbidden, but simply and literally repulsive to him. He will take more pleasure in the simple sensations of Nature--the sort of feeling one can remember to have experienced as a child. He will feel more light-hearted, confident, happy. Let him take care the sensation of renewed youth does not mislead, or he will yet risk a fall into his old baser life and even lower depths. "Action and Re-action are equal." Now the desire for food will begin to cease. Let it be left off gradually--no fasting is required. Take what you feel you require. The food craved for will be the most innocent and simple. Fruit and milk will usually be the best. Then as till now, you have been simplifying the quality of your food, gradually--very gradually--as you feel capable of it diminish the quantity. You will ask: "Can a man exist without food?" No, but before you mock, consider the character of the process alluded to. It is a notorious fact that many of the lowest and simplest organisms have no excretions. The common guinea-worm is a very good instance. It has rather a complicated organism, but it has no ejaculatory duct. All it consumes--the poorest essences of the human body--is applied to its growth and propagation. Living as it does in human tissue, it passes no digested food away. The human neophyte, at a certain stage of his development, is in a somewhat analogous condition, with this difference or differences, that he does excrete, but it is through the pores of his skin, and by those too enter other etherealized particles of matter to contribute towards his support.* Otherwise, all the food and drink is sufficient only to keep in equilibrium those "gross" parts of his physical body which still remain to repair their cuticle-waste through the medium of the blood. Later on, the process of cell-development in his frame will undergo a change; a change for the better, the opposite of that in disease for the worse--he will become all living and sensitive, and will derive nourishment from the Ether (Akas). But that epoch for our neophyte is yet far distant. --------- * He is in a state similar to the physical state of a fetus before birth into the world.--G.M. --------- Probably, long before that period has arrived, other results, no less surprising than incredible to the uninitiated will have ensued to give our neophyte courage and consolation in his difficult task. It would be but a truism to repeat what has been again alleged (in ignorance of its real rationale) by hundreds and hundreds of writers as to the happiness and content conferred by a life of innocence and purity. But often at the very commencement of the process some real physical result, unexpected and unthought of by the neophyte, occurs. Some lingering disease, hitherto deemed hopeless, may take a favourable turn; or he may develop healing mesmeric powers himself; or some hitherto unknown sharpening of his senses may delight him. The rationale of these things is, as we have said, neither miraculous nor difficult of comprehension. In the first place, the sudden change in the direction of the vital energy (which, whatever view we take of it and its origin, is acknowledged by all schools of philosophy as most recondite, and as the motive power) must produce results of some kind. In the second, Theosophy shows, as we said before, that a man consists of several men pervading each other, and on this view (although it is very difficult to express the idea in language) it is but natural that the progressive etherealization of the densest and most gross of all should leave the others literally more at liberty. A troop of horses may be blocked by a mob and have much difficulty in fighting its way through; but if every one of the mob could be changed suddenly into a ghost, there would be little to retard it. And as each interior entity is more rare, active, and volatile than the outer and as each has relation with different elements, spaces, and properties of the Kosmos which are treated of in other articles on Occultism, the mind of the reader may conceive--though the pen of the writer could not express it in a dozen volumes--the magnificent possibilities gradually unfolded to the neophyte. Many of the opportunities thus suggested may be taken advantage of by the neophyte for his own safety, amusement, and the good of those around him; but the way in which he does this is one adapted to his fitness--a part of the ordeal he has to pass through, and misuse of these powers will certainly entail the loss of them as a natural result. The Itchcha (or desire) evoked anew by the vistas they open up will retard or throw back his progress. But there is another portion of the Great Secret to which we must allude, and which is now, for the first, in a long series of ages, allowed to be given out to the world, as the hour for it is come. The educated reader need not be reminded again that one of the great discoveries which has immortalized the name of Darwin is the law that an organism has always a tendency to repeat, at an analogous period in its life, the action of its progenitors, the more surely and completely in proportion to their proximity in the scale of life. One result of this is, that, in general, organized beings usually die at a period (on an average) the same as that of their progenitors. It is true that there is a great difference between the actual ages at which individuals of any species die. Disease, accidents and famine are the main agents in causing this. But there is, in each species, a well-known limit within which the Race-life lies, and none are known to survive beyond it. This applies to the human species as well as any other. Now, supposing that every possible sanitary condition had been complied with, and every accident and disease avoided by a man of ordinary frame, in some particular case there would still, as is known to medical men, come a time when the particles of the body would feel the hereditary tendency to do that which leads inevitably to dissolution, and would obey it. It must be obvious to any reflecting man that, if by any procedure this critical climacteric could be once thoroughly passed over, the subsequent danger of "Death" would be proportionally less as the years progressed. Now this, which no ordinary and unprepared mind and body can do, is possible sometimes for the will and the frame of one who has been specially prepared. There are fewer of the grosser particles present to feel the hereditary bias--there is the assistance of the reinforced "interior men" (whose normal duration is always greater even in natural death) to the visible outer shell, and there is the drilled and indomitable Will to direct and wield the whole.* ----------- * In this connection we may as well show what modern science, and especially physiology has to say as to the power of the human will. "The force of will is a potent element in determining longevity. This single point must be granted without argument, that of two men every way alike and similarly circumstanced, the one who has the greater courage and grit will be longer-lived. One does not need to practice medicine long to learn that men die who might just as well live if they resolved to live, and that myriads who are invalids could become strong if they had the native or acquired will to vow they would do so. Those who have no other quality favourable to life, whose bodily organs are nearly all diseased, to whom each day is a day of pain, who are beset by life-shortening influences, yet do live by will alone." --Dr. George M. Beard. ------------- From that time forward the course of the aspirant is clearer. He has conquered "the Dweller of the Threshold"--the hereditary enemy of his race, and, though still exposed to ever-new dangers in his progress towards Nirvana, he is flushed with victory, and with new confidence and new powers to second it, can press onwards to perfection. For, it must be remembered, that nature everywhere acts by Law, and that the process of purification we have been describing in the visible material body, also takes place in those which are interior, and not visible to the scientist by modifications of the same process. All is on the change, and the metamorphoses of the more ethereal bodies imitate, though in successively multiplied duration, the career of the grosser, gaining an increasing wider range of relations with the surrounding kosmos, till in Nirvana the most rarefied Individuality is merged at last into the INFINITE TOTALITY. From the above description of the process, it will be inferred why it is that "Adepts" are so seldom seen in ordinary life; for, pari passu, with the etherealization of their bodies and the development of their power, grows an increasing distaste, and a so-to-speak, "contempt" for the things of our ordinary mundane existence. Like the fugitive who successively casts away in his flight those articles which incommode his progress, beginning with the heaviest, so the aspirant eluding "Death" abandons all on which the latter can take hold. In the progress of Negation everything got rid of is a help. As we said before, the adept does not become "immortal" as the word is ordinarily understood. By or about the time when the Death-limit of his race is passed he is actually dead, in the ordinary sense, that is to say, he has relieved himself of all or nearly all such material particles as would have necessitated in disruption the agony of dying. He has been dying gradually during the whole period of his Initiation. The catastrophe cannot happen twice over. He has only spread over a number of years the mild process of dissolution which others endure from a brief moment to a few hours. The highest Adept is, in fact, dead to, and absolutely unconscious of, the world; he is oblivious of its pleasures, careless of its miseries, in so far as sentimentalism goes, for the stern sense of DUTY never leaves him blind to its very existence. For the new ethereal senses opening to wider spheres are to ours much in the relation of ours to the Infinitely Little. New desires and enjoyments, new dangers and new hindrances arise, with new sensations and new perceptions; and far away down in the mist--both literally and metaphorically--is our dirty little earth left below by those who have virtually "gone to join the gods." And from this account too, it will be perceptible how foolish it is for people to ask the Theosophist to "procure for them communication with the highest Adepts." It is with the utmost difficulty that one or two can be induced, even by the throes of a world, to injure their own progress by meddling with mundane affairs. The ordinary reader will say: "This is not god-like. This is the acme of selfishness." .... But let him realize that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the world, would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation. And is the result of all that have gone before in that line sufficiently encouraging to prompt a renewal of the attempt? A deep consideration of all that we have written, will also give the Theosophists an idea of what they demand when they ask to be put in the way of gaining practically "higher powers." Well, there, as plainly as words can put it, is the PATH .... can they tread it? Nor must it be disguised that what to the ordinary mortal are unexpected dangers, temptations and enemies also beset the way of the neophyte. And that for no fanciful cause, but the simple reason that he is, in fact, acquiring new senses, has yet no practice in their use, and has never before seen the things he sees. A man born blind suddenly endowed with vision would not at once master the meaning of perspective, but would, like a baby, imagine in one case, the moon to be within his reach, and, in the other, grasp a live coal with the most reckless confidence. And what, it may be asked, is to recompense this abnegation of all the pleasures of life, this cold surrender of all mundane interests, this stretching forward to an unknown goal which seems ever more unattainable? For, unlike some of the anthropomorphic creeds, Occultism offers to its votaries no eternally permanent heaven of material pleasure, to be gained at once by one quick dash through the grave. As has, in fact, often been the case many would be prepared willingly to die now for the sake of the paradise hereafter. But Occultism gives no such prospect of cheaply and immediately gained infinitude of pleasure, wisdom and existence. It only promises extensions of these, stretching in successive arches obscured by successive veils, in an unbroken series up the long vista which leads to NIRVANA. And this too, qualified by the necessity that new powers entail new responsibilities, and that the capacity of increased pleasure entails the capacity of increased sensibility to pain. To this, the only answer that can be given is two-fold: (1st) the consciousness of Power is itself the most exquisite of pleasures, and is unceasingly gratified in the progress onwards with new means for its exercise and (2ndly) as has been already said--THIS is the only road by which there is the faintest scientific likelihood that "Death" can be avoided, perpetual memory secured, infinite wisdom attained, and hence an immense helping of mankind made possible, once that the adept has safely crossed the turning-point. Physical as well as metaphysical logic requires and endorses the fact that only by gradual absorption into infinity can the Part become acquainted with the Whole, and that that which is now something can only feel, know, and enjoy EVERYTHING when lost in Absolute Totality in the vortex of that Unalterable Circle wherein our Knowledge becomes Ignorance, and the Everything itself is identified with the NOTHING. Is the Desire to "Live" Selfish? The passage "to live, to live, to live must be the unswerving resolve," occurring in the article on the Elixir of Life, is often quoted by superficial and unsympathetic readers as an argument that the teachings of occultism are the most concentrated form of selfishness. In order to determine whether the critics are right or wrong, the meaning of the word "selfishness" must first be ascertained. According to an established authority, selfishness is that "exclusive regard to one's own interest or happiness; that supreme self-love or self-preference which leads a person to direct his purposes to the advancement of his own interest, power, or happiness, without regarding those of others." In short, an absolutely selfish individual is one who cares for himself and none else, or, in other words, one who is so strongly imbued with a sense of the importance of his own personality that to him it is the crown of all thoughts, desires, and aspirations, and beyond which lies the perfect blank. Now, can an occultist be then said to be "selfish" when he desires to live in the sense in which that word is used by the writer of the article on the Elixir of Life? It has been said over and over again that the ultimate end of every aspirant after occult knowledge is Nirvana or Mukti, when the individual, freed from all Mayavic Upadhi, becomes one with Paramatma, or the Son identifies himself with the Father in Christian phraseology. For that purpose, every veil of illusion which creates a sense of personal isolation, a feeling of separateness from THE ALL, must be torn asunder, or, in other words, the aspirant must gradually discard all sense of selfishness with which we are all more or less affected. A study of the Law of Kosmic Evolution teaches us that the higher the evolution, the more does it tend towards Unity. In fact, Unity is the ultimate possibility of Nature, and those who through vanity and selfishness go against her purposes, cannot but incur the punishment of annihilation. The occultist thus recognizes that unselfishness and a feeling of universal philanthropy are the inherent laws of our being, and all he does is to attempt to destroy the chains of selfishness forged upon us all by Maya. The struggle then between Good and Evil, God and Satan, Suras and Asuras, Devas and Daityas, which is mentioned in the sacred books of all the nations and races, symbolizes the battle between unselfish and selfish impulses, which takes place in a man, who tries to follow the higher purposes of Nature, until the lower animal tendencies, created by selfishness, are completely conquered, and the enemy thoroughly routed and annihilated. It has also been often put forth in various Theosophical and other occult writings that the only difference between an ordinary man who works along with Nature during the course of Kosmic evolution and an occultist, is that the latter, by his superior knowledge, adopts such methods of training and discipline as will hurry on that process of evolution, and he thus reaches in a comparatively short time the apex which the ordinary individual will take perhaps billions of years to reach. In short, in a few thousand years he approaches that type of evolution which ordinary humanity attains in the sixth or seventh Round of the Manvantara, i.e., cyclic progression. It is evident that an average man cannot become a MAHATMA in one life, or rather in one incarnation. Now those, who have studied the occult teachings concerning Devachan and our after-states, will remember that between two incarnations there is a considerable period of subjective existence. The greater the number of such Devachanic periods, the greater is the number of years over which this evolution is extended. The chief aim of the occultist is therefore to so control himself as to be able to regulate his future states, and thereby gradually shorten the duration of his Devachanic existence between two incarnations. In the course of his progress, there comes a time when, between one physical death and his next rebirth, there is no Devachan but a kind of spiritual sleep, the shock of death, having, so to say, stunned him into a state of unconsciousness from which he gradually recovers to find himself reborn, to continue his purpose. The period of this sleep may vary from twenty-five to two hundred years, depending upon the degree of his advancement. But even this period may be said to be a waste of time, and hence all his exertions are directed to shorten its duration so as to gradually come to a point when the passage from one state of existence into another is almost imperceptible. This is his last incarnation, as it were, for the shock of death no more stuns him. This is the idea the writer of the article on the Elixir of Life means to convey when he says: By or about the time when the Death-limit of his race is passed he is actually dead, in the ordinary sense, that is to say, he has relieved himself of all or nearly all such material particles as would have necessitated in disruption the agony of dying. He has been dying gradually during the whole period of his Initiation. The catastrophe cannot happen twice over, he has only spread over a number of years the mild process of dissolution which others endure from a brief moment to a few hours. The highest Adept is, in fact, dead to, and absolutely unconscious of, the World; he is oblivious of its pleasures, careless of its miseries, in so far as sentimentalism goes, for the stern sense of Duty never leaves him blind to its very existence.... The process of the emission and attraction of atoms, which the occultist controls, has been discussed at length in that article and in other writings. It is by these means that he gets rid gradually of all the old gross particles of his body, substituting for them finer and more ethereal ones, till at last the former sthula sarira is completely dead and disintegrated, and he lives in a body entirely of his own creation, suited to his work. That body is essential to his purposes; as the Elixir of Life says:-- To do good, as in every thing else, a man most have time and materials to Work with, and this is a necessary means to the acquirement of powers by which infinitely more good can be done than without them. When these are once mastered, the opportunities to use them will arrive.... Giving the practical instructions for that purpose, the same paper continues:-- The physical man must be rendered more ethereal and sensitive; the mental man more penetrating and profound; the moral man more self-denying and philosophical. Losing sight of the above important considerations, the following passage is entirely misunderstood:-- And from this account too, it will be perceptible how foolish it is for people to ask the Theosophist "to procure for them communication with the highest Adepts." It is with the utmost difficulty that one or two can be induced, even by the throes of a world, to injure their own progress by meddling with mundane affairs. The ordinary reader will say: "This is not god-like. This is the acme of selfishness." ....But let him realize that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the world, would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation. And is the result of all that have gone before in that line sufficiently encouraging to prompt a renewal of the attempt? Now, in condemning the above passage as inculcating selfishness, superficial critics neglect many profound truths. In the first place, they forget the other extracts already quoted which impose self-denial as a necessary condition of success, and which say that, with progress, new senses and new powers are acquired with which infinitely more good can be done than without them. The more spiritual the Adept becomes the less can he meddle with mundane gross affairs and the more he has to confine himself to spiritual work. It has been repeated, times out of number, that the work on the spiritual plane is as superior to the work on the intellectual plane as the latter is superior to that on the physical plane. The very high Adepts, therefore, do help humanity, but only spiritually: they are constitutionally incapable of meddling with worldly affairs. But this applies only to very high Adepts. There are various degrees of Adept-ship, and those of each degree work for humanity on the planes to which they may have risen. It is only the chelas that can live in the world, until they rise to a certain degree. And it is because the Adepts do care for the world that they make their chelas live in and work for it, as many of those who study the subject are aware. Each cycle produces its own occultists capable of working for the humanity of the time on all the different planes; but when the Adepts foresee that at a particular period humanity will he incapable of producing occultists for work on particular planes, for such occasions they do provide by either voluntarily giving up their further progress and waiting until humanity reaches that period, or by refusing to enter into Nirvana and submitting to re-incarnation so as to be ready for work when the time comes. And although the world may not be aware of the fact, yet there are even now certain Adepts who have preferred to remain in statu quo and refuse to take the higher degrees, for the benefit of the future generations of humanity. In short, as the Adepts work harmoniously, since unity is the fundamental law of their being, they have, as it were, made a division of labour, according to which each works on the plane appropriate to himself for the spiritual elevation of us all--and the process of longevity mentioned in the Elixir of Life is only the means to the end which, far from being selfish, is the most unselfish purpose for which a human being can labour. (--H.P. Blavatsky) Contemplation A general misconception on this subject seems to prevail. One confines oneself for some time in a room, and passively gazes at one's nose, a spot on the wall, or, perhaps, a crystal, under the impression that such is the true form of contemplation enjoined by Raj Yoga. Many fail to realize that true occultism requires a physical, mental, moral and spiritual development to run on parallel lines, and injure themselves, physically and spiritually, by practice of what they falsely believe to be Dhyan. A few instances may be mentioned here with advantage, as a warning to over-zealous students. At Bareilly the writer met a member of the Theosophical Society from Farrukhabad, who narrated his experiences and shed bitter tears of repentance for his past follies--as he termed them. It appears from his account that fifteen or twenty years ago having read about contemplation in the Bhagavad Gita, he undertook the practice of it, without a proper comprehension of its esoteric meaning and carried it on for several years. At first he experienced a sense of pleasure, but simultaneously he found he was gradually losing self-control; until after a few years he discovered, to his great bewilderment and sorrow, that he was no longer his own master. He felt his heart actually growing heavy, as though a load had been placed on it. He had no control over his sensations the communication between the brain and the heart had become as though interrupted. As matters grew worse, in disgust he discontinued his "contemplation." This happened as long as seven years ago; and, although since then he has not felt worse, yet he could never regain his original healthy state of mind and body. Another case came under the writer's observation at Jubbulpore. The gentleman concerned, after reading Patanjali and such other works, began to sit for "contemplation." After a short time he commenced seeing abnormal sights and hearing musical bells, but neither over these phenomena nor over his own sensations could he exercise any control. He could not produce these results at will, nor could he stop them when they were occurring. Numerous such examples may be cited. While penning these lines, the writer has on his table two letters upon this subject, one from Moradabad and the other from Trichinopoly. In short, all this mischief is due to a misunderstanding of the significance of contemplation as enjoined upon students by all the schools of Occult Philosophy. With a view to afford a glimpse of the Reality through the dense veil that enshrouds the mysteries of this Science of Sciences, an article, the Elixir of Life, was written. Unfortunately, in too many instances, the seed seems to have fallen upon barren ground. Some of its readers pin their faith to the following clause in that paper:-- Reasoning from the known to the unknown meditation must be practiced and encouraged. But, alas! their preconceptions have prevented them from comprehending what is meant by meditation. They forget that the meditation spoken of "is the inexpressible yearning of the inner Man to 'go out towards the infinite,' which in the olden time was the real meaning of adoration"-- as the next sentence shows. A good deal of light would be thrown upon this subject if the reader were to turn to an earlier part of the same paper, and peruse attentively the following paragraphs:-- So, then, we have arrived at the point where we have determined-- literally, not metaphorically--to crack the outer shell known as the mortal coil or body, and hatch out of it, clothed in our next. This 'next' is not a spiritual, but only a more ethereal form. Having by a long training and preparation adapted it for a life in the atmosphere, during which time we have gradually made the outward shell to die off through a certain process .... we have to prepare for this physiological transformation. How are we to do it? In the first place we have the actual, visible, material body--Man, so called, though, in fact, but his outer shell--to deal with. Let us bear in mind that Science teaches us that in about every seven years we change skin as effectually as any serpent; and this so gradually and imperceptibly that, had not science after years of unremitting study and observation assured us of it, no one would have had the slightest suspicion of the fact.... Hence, if a man, partially flayed alive, may sometimes survive and be covered with a new skin, so our astral, vital body .... may be made to harden its particles to the atmospheric changes. The whole secret is to succeed in evolving it out, and separating it from the visible; and while its generally invisible atoms proceed to concrete themselves into a compact mass, to gradually get rid of the old particles of our visible frame so as to make them die and disappear before the new set has had time to evolve and replace them.... We can say no more. A correct comprehension of the above scientific process will give a clue to the esoteric meaning of meditation or contemplation. Science teaches us that man changes his physical body continually, and this change is so gradual that it is almost imperceptible. Why then should the case be otherwise with the inner man? The latter too is developing and changing atoms at every moment. And the attraction of these new sets of atoms depends upon the Law of Affinity--the desires of the man drawing to his bodily tenement only such particles as are necessary to give them expression. For Science shows that thought is dynamic, and the thought-force evolved by nervous action expanding itself outwardly, must affect the molecular relations of the physical man. The inner men, however sublimated their organism may be, are still composed of actual, not hypothetical, particles, and are still subject to the law that an "action" has a tendency to repeat itself; a tendency to set up analogous action in the grosser "shell" they are in contact with, and concealed within.--"The Elixir of Life" What is it the aspirant of Yog Vidya strives after if not to gain Mukti by transferring himself gradually from the grosser to the next less gross body, until all the veils of Maya being successively removed his Atma becomes one with Paramatma? Does he suppose that this grand result can be achieved by a two or four hours' contemplation? For the remaining twenty or twenty-two hours that the devotee does not shut himself up in his room for meditation is the process of the emission of atoms and their replacement by others stopped? If not, then how does he mean to attract all this time only those suited to his end? From the above remarks it is evident that just as the physical body requires incessant attention to prevent the entrance of a disease, so also the inner man requires an unremitting watch, so that no conscious or unconscious thought may attract atoms unsuited to its progress. This is the real meaning of contemplation. The prime factor in the guidance of the thought is Will. Without that, all else is useless. And, to be efficient for the purpose, it must be, not only a passing resolution of the moment, a single fierce desire of short duration, but a settled and continued strain, as nearly as can be continued and concentrated without one single moment's remission. The student would do well to take note of the italicized clause in the above quotation. He should also have it indelibly impressed upon his mind that: It is no use to fast as long as one requires food.... To get rid of the inward desire is the essential thing, and to mimic the real thing without it is barefaced hypocrisy and useless slavery. Without realizing the significance of this most important fact, any one who for a moment finds cause of disagreement with any one of his family, or has his vanity wounded, or for a sentimental flash of the moment, or for a selfish desire to utilize the Divine power for gross purposes--at once rushes into contemplation and dashes himself to pieces on the rock dividing the known from the unknown. Wallowing in the mire of exotericism, he knows not what it is to live in the world and yet be not of the world; in other words, to guard self against self is an almost incomprehensible axiom for the profane. The Hindu ought to know better from the life of Janaka, who, although a reigning monarch, was yet styled Rajarshi and is said to have attained Nirvana. Hearing of his widespread fame, a few sectarian bigots went to his court to test his Yoga-power. As soon as they entered the court-room, the king having read their thoughts--a power which every chela attains at a certain stage--gave secret instructions to his officials to have a particular street in the city lined on both sides by dancing girls singing the must voluptuous songs. He then had some gharas (pots) filled with water up to the brim so that the least shake would be likely to spill their contents. The wiseacres, each with a full ghara (pot) on his head, were ordered to pass along the street, surrounded by soldiers with drawn swords to be used against them if even so much as a drop of water were allowed to run over. The poor fellows having returned to the palace after successfully passing the test, were asked by the King-Adept what they had met with in the street they were made to go through. With great indignation they replied that the threat of being cut to pieces had so much worked upon their minds that they thought of nothing but the water on their heads, and the intensity of their attention did not permit them to take cognizance of what was going on around them. Then Janaka told them that on the same principle they could easily understand that, although being outwardly engaged in managing the affairs of his State, he could, at the same time, be an Occultist. He too, while in the world, was not of the world. In other words, his inward aspirations had been leading him on continually to the goal in which his whole inner self was concentrated. Raj Yoga encourages no sham, requires no physical postures. It has to deal with the inner man whose sphere lies in the world of thought. To have the highest ideal placed before oneself and strive incessantly to rise up to it, is the only true concentration recognized by Esoteric Philosophy which deals with the inner world of noumena, not the outer shell of phenomena. The first requisite for it is thorough purity of heart. Well might the student of Occultism say with Zoroaster, that purity of thought, purity of word, and purity of deed,--these are the essentials of one who would rise above the ordinary level and join the "gods." A cultivation of the feeling of unselfish philanthropy is the path which has to be traversed for that purpose. For it is that alone which will lead to Universal Love, the realization of which constitutes the progress towards deliverance from the chains forged by Maya (illusion) around the Ego. No student will attain this at once, but as our Venerated Mahatma says in the "Occult World":-- The greater the progress towards deliverance, the less this will be the case, until, to crown all, human and purely individual personal feelings, blood-ties and friendship, patriotism and race predilection, will all give way to become blended into one universal feeling, the only true and holy, the only unselfish and eternal one, Love, an Immense Love for Humanity as a whole. In short, the individual is blended with the ALL. Of course, contemplation, as usually understood, is not without its minor advantages. It develops one set of physical faculties as gymnastics does the muscles. For the purposes of physical mesmerism it is good enough; but it can in no way help the development of the psychological faculties, as the thoughtful reader will perceive. At the same time, even for ordinary purposes, the practice can never be too well guarded. If, as some suppose, they have to be entirely passive and lose themselves in the object before them, they should remember that, by thus encouraging passivity, they, in fact, allow the development of mediumistic faculties in themselves. As was repeatedly stated--the Adept and the Medium are the two Poles: while the former is intensely active and thus able to control the elemental forces, the latter is intensely passive and thus incurs the risk of falling a prey to the caprice and malice of mischievous embryos of human beings, and the elementaries. It will be evident from the above that true meditation consists in the "reasoning from the known to the unknown." The "known" is the phenomenal world, cognizable by our five senses. And all that we see in this manifested world are the effects, the causes of which are to be sought after in the noumenal, the unmanifested, the "unknown world:" this is to be accomplished by meditation, i.e., continued attention to the subject. Occultism does not depend upon one method, but employs both the deductive and the inductive. The student must first learn the general axioms, which have sufficiently been laid down in the Elixir of Life and other occult writings. What the student has first to do is to comprehend these axioms and, by employing the deductive method, to proceed from universals to particulars. He has then to reason from the "known to the unknown," and see if the inductive method of proceeding from particulars to universals supports those axioms. This process forms the primary stage of true contemplation. The student must first grasp the subject intellectually before he can hope to realize his aspirations. When this is accomplished, then comes the next stage of meditation, which is "the inexpressible yearning of the inner man to 'go out towards the infinite.'" Before any such yearning can be properly directed, the goal must first be determined. The higher stage, in fact, consists in practically realizing what the first steps have placed within one's comprehension. In short, contemplation, in its true sense, is to recognize the truth of Eliphas Levi's saying:-- To believe without knowing is weakness; to believe, because one knows, is power. The Elixir of Life not only gives the preliminary steps in the ladder of contemplation but also tells the reader how to realize the higher stages. It traces, by the process of contemplation as it were, the relation of man, "the known," the manifested, the phenomenon, to "the unknown," the unmanifested, the noumenon. It shows the student what ideal to contemplate and how to rise up to it. It places before him the nature of the inner capacities of man and how to develop them. To a superficial reader, this may, perhaps, appear as the acme of selfishness. Reflection will, however, show the contrary to be the case. For it teaches the student that to comprehend the noumenal, he must identify himself with Nature. Instead of looking upon himself as an isolated being, he must learn to look upon himself as a part of the Integral Whole. For, in the unmanifested world, it can be clearly perceived that all is controlled by the "Law of Affinity," the attraction of the one for the other. There, all is Infinite Love, understood in its true sense. It may now not be out of place to recapitulate what has already been said. The first thing to be done is to study the axioms of Occultism and work upon them by the deductive and the inductive methods, which is real contemplation. To turn this to a useful purpose, what is theoretically comprehended must be practically realized. --Damodar K. Mavalaukar Chelas and Lay Chelas A "chela" is a person who has offered himself to a master as a pupil to learn practically the "hidden mysteries of Nature and the psychical powers latent in man." The master who accepts him is called in India a Guru; and the real Guru is always an adept in the Occult Science. A man of profound knowledge, exoteric and esoteric, especially the latter; and one who has brought his carnal nature under the subjection of the WILL; who has developed in himself both the power (Siddhi) to control the forces of Nature, and the capacity to probe her secrets by the help of the formerly latent but now active powers of his being--this is the real Guru. To offer oneself as a candidate for Chelaship is easy enough, to develop into an adept the most difficult task any man could possibly undertake. There are scores of "natural-born" poets, mathematicians, mechanics, statesmen, &c. But a natural-born adept is something practically impossible. For, though we do hear at very rare intervals of one who has an extraordinary innate capacity for the acquisition of occult knowledge and power, yet even he has to pass the self-same tests and probations, and go through the self-same training as any less endowed fellow aspirant. In this matter it is most true that there is no royal road by which favourites may travel. For centuries the selection of Chelas--outside the hereditary group within the gon-pa (temple)--has been made by the Himalayan Mahatmas themselves from among the class--in Tibet, a considerable one as to number--of natural mystics. The only exceptions have been in the cases of Western men like Fludd, Thomas Vaughan, Paracelsus, Pico di Mirandolo, Count St. Germain, &c., whose temperament affinity to this celestial science, more or less forced the distant Adepts to come into personal relations with them, and enabled them to get such small (or large) proportion of the whole truth as was possible under their social surroundings. From Book IV. of Kui-te, Chapter on "The Laws of Upasanas," we learn that the qualifications expected in a Chela were:-- 1. Perfect physical health; 2. Absolute mental and physical purity; 3. Unselfishness of purpose; universal charity; pity for all animate beings; 4. Truthfulness and unswerving faith in the law of Karma, independent of the intervention of any power in Nature: a law whose course is not to be obstructed by any agency, not to be caused to deviate by prayer or propitiatory exoteric ceremonies; 5. A courage undaunted in every emergency, even by peril to life; 6. An intuitional perception of one's being the vehicle of the manifested Avalokiteswara or Divine Atma (Spirit); 7. Calm indifference for, but a just appreciation of, everything that constitutes the objective and transitory world, in its relation with, and to, the invisible regions. Such, at the least, must have been the recommendations of one aspiring to perfect Chelaship. With the sole exception of the first, which in rare and exceptional cases might have been modified, each one of these points has been invariably insisted upon, and all must have been more or less developed in the inner nature by the Chela's unhelped exertions, before he could be actually "put to the test." When the self-evolving ascetic--whether in, or outside the active world--has placed himself, according to his natural capacity, above, hence made himself master of his (1) Sarira--body; (2) Indriya--senses; (3) Dosha--faults; (4) Dukkha--pain; and is ready to become one with his Manas--mind; Buddhi--intellection, or spiritual intelligence; and Atma--highest soul, i.e., spirit; when he is ready for this, and, further, to recognize in Atma the highest ruler in the world of perceptions, and in the will, the highest executive energy (power), then may he, under the time-honoured rules, be taken in hand by one of the Initiates. He may then be shown the mysterious path at whose farther end is obtained the unerring discernment of Phala, or the fruits of causes produced, and given the means of reaching Apavarga--emancipation from the misery of repeated births, pretya-bhava, in whose determination the ignorant has no hand. But since the advent of the Theosophical Society, one of whose arduous tasks it is to re-awaken in the Aryan mind the dormant memory of the existence of this science and of those transcendent human capabilities, the rules of Chela selection have become slightly relaxed in one respect. Many members of the Society who would not have been otherwise called to Chelaship became convinced by practical proof of the above points, and rightly enough thinking that if other men had hitherto reached the goal, they too, if inherently fitted, might reach it by following the same path, importunately pressed to be taken as candidates. And as it would be an interference with Karma to deny them the chance of at least beginning, they were given it. The results have been far from encouraging so far, and it is to show them the cause of their failure as much as to warn others against rushing heedlessly upon a similar fate, that the writing of the present article has been ordered. The candidates in question, though plainly warned against it in advance, began wrong by selfishly looking to the future and losing sight of the past. They forgot that they had done nothing to deserve the rare honour of selection, nothing which warranted their expecting such a privilege; that they could boast of none of the above enumerated merits. As men of the selfish, sensual world, whether married or single, merchants, civilian or military employees, or members of the learned professions, they had been to a school most calculated to assimilate them to the animal nature, least so to develop their spiritual potentialities. Yet each and all had vanity enough to suppose that their case would be made an exception to the law of countless centuries, as though, indeed, in their person had been born to the world a new Avatar! All expected to have hidden things taught, extraordinary powers given them, because--well, because they had joined the Theosophical Society. Some had sincerely resolved to amend their lives, and give up their evil courses: we must do them that justice, at all events. All were refused at first, Col. Olcott the President himself, to begin with: and he was not formally accepted as a Chela until he had proved by more than a year's devoted labours and by a determination which brooked no denial, that he might safely be tested. Then from all sides came complaints--from Hindus, who ought to have known better, as well as from Europeans who, of course, were not in a condition to know anything at all about the rules. The cry was that unless at least a few Theosophists were given the chance to try, the Society could not endure. Every other noble and unselfish feature of our programme was ignored--a man's duty to his neighbour, to his country, his duty to help, enlighten, encourage and elevate those weaker and less favoured than he; all were trampled out of sight in the insane rush for adeptship. The call for phenomena, phenomena, phenomena, resounded in every quarter, and the Founders were impeded in their real work and teased importunately to intercede with the Mahatmas, against whom the real grievance lay, though their poor agents had to take all the buffets. At last, the word came from the higher authorities that a few of the most urgent candidates should be taken at their word. The result of the experiment would perhaps show better than any amount of preaching what Chelaship meant, and what are the consequences of selfishness and temerity. Each candidate was warned that be must wait for year in any event, before his fitness could be established, and that he must pass through a series of tests that would bring out all there was in him, whether bad or good. They were nearly all married men, and hence were designated "Lay Chelas"--a term new in English, but having long had its equivalent in Asiatic tongues. A Lay Chela is but a man of the world who affirms his desire to become wise in spiritual things. Virtually, every member of the Theosophical Society who subscribes to the second of our three "Declared Objects" is such; for though not of the number of true Chelas, he has yet the possibility of becoming one, for he has stepped across the boundary-line which separated him from the Mahatmas, and has brought himself, as it were, under their notice. In joining the Society and binding himself to help along its work, he has pledged himself to act in some degree in concert with those Mahatmas, at whose behest the Society was organized, and under whose conditional protection it remains. The joining is then, the introduction; all the rest depends entirely upon the member himself, and he need never expect the most distant approach to the "favour" of one of our Mahatmas or any other Mahatmas in the world--should the latter consent to become known--that has not been fully earned by personal merit. The Mahatmas are the servants, not the arbiters of the Law of Karma. Lay-Chelaship confers no privilege upon any one except that of working for merit under the observation of a Master. And whether that Master be or be not seen by the Chela makes no difference whatever as to the result: his good thought, words and deeds will bear their fruits, his evil ones, theirs. To boast of Lay Chelaship or make a parade of it, is the surest way to reduce the relationship with the Guru to a mere empty name, for it would be prima facie evidence of vanity and unfitness for farther progress. And for years we have been teaching everywhere the maxim "First deserve, then desire" intimacy with the Mahatmas. Now there is a terrible law operative in Nature, one which cannot be altered, and whose operation clears up the apparent mystery of the selection of certain "Chelas" who have turned out sorry specimens of morality, these few years past. Does the reader recall the old proverb, "Let sleeping dogs lie?" There is a world of occult meaning in it. No man or woman knows his or her moral strength until it is tried. Thousands go through life very respectably, because they were never put to the test. This is a truism doubtless, but it is most pertinent to the present case. One who undertakes to try for Chelaship by that very act rouses and lashes to desperation every sleeping passion of his animal nature. For this is the commencement of a struggle for mastery in which quarter is neither to be given nor taken. It is, once for all, "To be, or Not to be;" to conquer, means Adept-ship: to fail, an ignoble Martyrdom; for to fall victim to lust, pride, avarice, vanity, selfishness, cowardice, or any other of the lower propensities, is indeed ignoble, if measured by the standard of true manhood. The Chela is not only called to face all the latent evil propensities of his nature, but, in addition, the momentum of maleficent forces accumulated by the community and nation to which he belongs. For he is an integral part of those aggregates, and what affects either the individual man or the group (town or nation), reacts the one upon the other. And in this instance his struggle for goodness jars upon the whole body of badness in his environment, and draws its fury upon him. If he is content to go along with his neighbours and be almost as they are--perhaps a little better or somewhat worse than the average--no one may give him a thought. But let it be known that he has been able to detect the hollow mockery of social life, its hypocrisy, selfishness, sensuality, cupidity and other bad features, and has determined to lift himself up to a higher level, at once he is hated, and every bad, bigotted, or malicious nature sends at him a current of opposing will-power. If he is innately strong he shakes it off, as the powerful swimmer dashes through the current that would bear a weaker one away. But in this moral battle, if the Chela has one single hidden blemish--do what he may, it shall and will be brought to light. The varnish of conventionalities which "civilization" overlays us all with must come off to the last coat, and the inner self, naked and without the slightest veil to conceal its reality, is exposed. The habits of society which hold men to a certain degree under moral restraint, and compel them to pay tribute to virtue by seeming to be good whether they are so or not--these habits are apt to be all forgotten, these restraints to be all broken through under the strain of Chelaship. He is now in an atmosphere of illusions--Maya. Vice puts on its most alluring face, and the tempting passions attract the inexperienced aspirant to the depths of psychic debasement. This is not a case like that depicted by a great artist, where Satan is seen playing a game of chess with a man upon the stake of his soul, while the latter's good angel stands beside him to counsel and assist. For the strife is in this instance between the Chela's will and his carnal nature, and Karma forbids that any angel or Guru should interfere until the result is known. With the vividness of poetic fancy Bulwer Lytton has idealized it for us in his "Zanoni," a work which will ever be prized by the occultist while in his "Strange Story" he has with equal power shown the black side of occult research and its deadly perils. Chelaship was defined, the other day, by a Mahatma as a "psychic resolvent, which eats away all dross and leaves only the pure gold behind." If the candidate has the latent lust for money, or political chicanery, or materialistic scepticism, or vain display, or false speaking, or cruelty, or sensual gratification of any kind the germ is almost sure to sprout; and so, on the other hand, as regards the noble qualities of human nature. The real man comes out. Is it not the height of folly, then, for any one to leave the smooth path of commonplace life to scale the crags of Chelaship without some reasonable feeling of certainty that he has the right stuff in him? Well says the Bible: "Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall"--a text that would-be Chelas should consider well before they rush headlong into the fray! It would have been well for some of our Lay Chelas if they had thought twice before defying the tests. We call to mind several sad failures within a twelve-month. One went wrong in the head, recanted noble sentiments uttered but a few weeks previously, and became a member of a religion he had just scornfully and unanswerably proven false. A second became a defaulter and absconded with his employer's money--the latter also a Theosophist. A third gave himself up to gross debauchery, and confessed it, with ineffectual sobs and tears, to his chosen Guru. A fourth got entangled with a person of the other sex and fell out with his dearest and truest friends. A fifth showed signs of mental aberration and was brought into Court upon charges of discreditable conduct. A sixth shot himself to escape the consequences of criminality, on the verge of detection! And so we might go on and on. All these were apparently sincere searchers after truth, and passed in the world for respectable persons. Externally, they were fairly eligible as candidates for Chelaship, as appearances go; but "within all was rottenness and dead men's bones." The world's varnish was so thick as to hide the absence of the true gold underneath; and the "resolvent" doing its work, the candidate proved in each instance but a gilded figure of moral dross, from circumference to core. In what precedes we have, of course, dealt but with the failures among Lay Chelas; there have been partial successes too, and these are passing gradually through the first stages of their probation. Some are making themselves useful to the Society and to the world in general by good example and precept. If they persist, well for them, well for us all: the odds are fearfully against them, but still "there is no impossibility to him who Wills." The difficulties in Chelaship will never be less until human nature changes and a new order is evolved. St. Paul (Rom. vii. 18,19) might have had a Chela in mind when he said "to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do." And in the wise Kiratarjuniyam of Bharavi it is written:-- The enemies which rise within the body, Hard to be overcome--the evil passions-- Should manfully be fought; who conquers these Is equal to the conqueror of worlds. (XI. 32.) (--H.P. Blavatsky) Ancient Opinions Upon Psychic Bodies It must be confessed that modern Spiritualism falls very short of the ideas formerly suggested by the sublime designation which it has assumed. Chiefly intent upon recognizing and putting forward the phenomenal proofs of a future existence, it concerns itself little with speculations on the distinction between matter and spirit, and rather prides itself on having demolished Materialism without the aid of metaphysics. Perhaps a Platonist might say that the recognition of a future existence is consistent with a very practical and even dogmatic materialism, but it is rather to be feared that such a materialism as this would not greatly disturb the spiritual or intellectual repose of our modern phenomenalists.* Given the consciousness with its sensibilities safely housed in the psychic body which demonstrably survives the physical carcase, and we are like men saved from shipwreck, who are for the moment thankful and content, not giving thought whether they are landed on a hospitable shore, or on a barren rock, or on an island of cannibals. It is not of course intended that this "hand to mouth" immortality is sufficient for the many thoughtful minds whose activity gives life and progress to the movement, but that it affords the relief which most people feel when in an age of doubt they make the discovery that they are undoubtedly to live again. To the question "how are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?" modern Spiritualism, with its empirical methods, is not adequate to reply. Yet long before Paul suggested it, it had the attention of the most celebrated schools of philosophy, whose speculations on the subject, however little they may seem to be verified, ought not to be without interest to us, who, after all, are still in the infancy of a spiritualist revival. --------- * "I am afraid," says Thomas Taylor in his Introduction to the Phaedo, "there are scarcely any at the present day who know that it is one thing for the soul to be separated from the body, and another for the body to be separated from the soul, and that the former is by no means a necessary consequence of the latter." ----------- It would not be necessary to premise, but for the frequency with which the phrase occurs, that the "spiritual body" is a contradiction in terms. The office of body is to relate spirit to an objective world. By Platonic writers it is usually termed okhema--"vehicle." It is the medium of action, and also of sensibility. In this philosophy the conception of Soul was not simply, as with us, the immaterial subject of consciousness. How warily the interpreter has to tread here, every one knows who has dipped, even superficially, into the controversies among Platonists themselves. All admit the distinction between the rational and the irrational part or principle, the latter including, first, the sensibility, and secondly, the Plastic, or that lower which in obedience to its sympathies enables the soul to attach itself to, and to organize into a suitable body those substances of the universe to which it is most congruous. It is more difficult to determine whether Plato or his principal followers, recognized in the rational soul or nous a distinct and separable entity, that which is sometimes discriminated as "the Spirit." Dr. Henry More, no mean authority, repudiates this interpretation. "There can be nothing more monstrous," he says, "than to make two souls in man, the one sensitive, the other rational, really distinct from one another, and to give the name of Astral spirit to the former, when there is in man no Astral spirit beside the Plastic of the soul itself, which is always inseparable from that which is rational. Nor upon any other account can it be called Astral, but as it is liable to that corporeal temperament which proceeds from the stars, or rather from any material causes in general, as not being yet sufficiently united with the divine body--that vehicle of divine virtue or power." So he maintains that the Kabalistic three souls--Nephesh, Ruach, Neschamah--originate in a misunderstanding of the true Platonic doctrine, which is that of a threefold "vital congruity." These correspond to the three degrees of bodily existence, or to the three "vehicles," the terrestrial, the aerial, and the ethereal. The latter is the augoeides--the luciform vehicle of the purified soul whose irrational part has been brought under complete subjection to the rational. The aerial is that in which the great majority of mankind find themselves at the dissolution of the terrestrial body, and in which the incomplete process of purification has to be undergone during long ages of preparation for the soul's return to its primitive, ethereal state. For it must be remembered that the preexistence of souls is a distinguishing tenet of this philosophy as of the Kabala. The soul has "sunk into matter." From its highest original state the revolt of its irrational nature has awakened and developed successively its "vital congruities" with the regions below, passing, by means of its "Plastic," first into the aerial and afterwards into the terrestrial condition. Each of these regions teems also with an appropriate population which never passes, like the human soul, from one to the other--"gods," "demons," and animals.* As to duration, "the shortest of all is that of the terrestrial vehicle. In the aerial, the soul may inhabit, as they define, many ages, and in the ethereal, for ever." --------- * The allusion here is to those beings of the several kingdoms of the elements which we Theosophists, following after the Kabalists, have called the "Elementals." They never become men. --Ed. Theos. --------- Speaking of the second body, Henry More says "the soul's astral vehicle is of that tenuity that itself can as easily pass the smallest pores of the body as the light does glass, or the lightning the scabbard of a sword without tearing or scorching of it." And again, "I shall make bold to assert that the soul may live in an aerial vehicle as well as in the ethereal, and that there are very few that arrive to that high happiness as to acquire a celestial vehicle immediately upon their quitting the terrestrial one; that heavenly chariot necessarily carrying us in triumph to the greatest happiness the soul of man is capable of, which would arrive to all men indifferently, good or bad, if the parting with this earthly body would suddenly mount us into the heavenly. When by a just Nemesis the souls of men that are not heroically virtuous will find themselves restrained within the compass of this caliginous air, as both Reason itself suggests, and the Platonists have unanimously determined." Thus also the most thorough-going, and probably the most deeply versed in the doctrines of the master among modern Platonists, Thomas Taylor (Introduction. Phaedo):--"After this our divine philosopher informs that the pure soul will after death return to pure and eternal natures; but that the impure soul, in consequence of being imbued with terrene affections, will be drawn down to a kindred nature, and be invested with a gross vehicle capable of being seen by the corporeal eye.* For while a propensity to body remains in the soul, it causes her to attract a certain vehicle to herself; either of an aerial nature, or composed from the spirit and vapours of her terrestrial body, or which is recently collected from surrounding air; for according to the arcana of the Platonic philosophy, between an ethereal body, which is simple and immaterial and is the eternal connate vehicle of the soul, and a terrene body, which is material and composite, and of short duration, there is an aerial body, which is material indeed, but simple and of a more extended duration; and in this body the unpurified soul dwells for a long time after its exit from hence, till this pneumatic vehicle being dissolved, it is again invested with a composite body; while on the contrary the purified soul immediately ascends into the celestial regions with its ethereal vehicle alone." ---------- * This is the Hindu theory of nearly every one of the Aryan philosophies.--Ed. Theos. ---------- Always it is the disposition of the soul that determines the quality of its body. "However the soul be in itself affected," says Porphyry (translated by Cudworth), "so does it always find a body suitable and agreeable to its present disposition, and therefore to the purged soul does naturally accrue a body that comes next to immateriality, that is, an ethereal one." And the same author, "The soul is never quite naked of all body, but hath always some body or other joined with it, suitable and agreeable to its present disposition (either a purer or impurer one). But that at its first quitting this gross earthly body, the spirituous body which accompanieth it (as its vehicle) must needs go away fouled and incrassated with the vapours and steams thereof, till the soul afterwards by degrees purging itself, this becometh at length a dry splendour, which hath no misty obscurity nor casteth any shadow." Here it will be seen, we lose sight of the specific difference of the two future vehicles--the ethereal is regarded as a sublimation of the aerial. This, however, is opposed to the general consensus of Plato's commentators. Sometimes the ethereal body, or augoeides, is appropriated to the rational soul, or spirit, which must then be considered as a distinct entity, separable from the lower soul. Philoponus, a Christian writer, says, "that the Rational Soul, as to its energie, is separable from all body, but the irrational part or life thereof is separable only from this gross body, and not from all body whatsoever, but hath after death a spirituous or airy body, in which it acteth--this I say is a true opinion which shall afterwards be proved by us.... The irrational life of the soul hath not all its being in this gross earthly body, but remaineth after the soul's departure out of it, having for its vehicle and subject the spirituous body, which itself is also compounded out of the four elements, but receiveth its denomination from the predominant part, to wit, Air, as this gross body of ours is called earthy from what is most predominant therein."--Cudworth, "Intell. Syst." From the same source we extract the following: "Wherefore these ancients say that impure souls after their departure out of this body wander here up and down for a certain space in their spirituous vaporous and airy body, appearing about sepulchres and haunting their former habitation. For which cause there is great reason that we should take care of living well, as also of abstaining from a fouler and grosser diet; these Ancients telling us likewise that this spirituous body of ours being fouled and incrassated by evil diet, is apt to render the soul in this life also more obnoxious to the disturbances of passions. They further add that there is something of the Plantal or Plastic life, also exercised by the soul, in those spirituous or airy bodies after death; they being nourished too, though not after the same manner, as those gross earthy bodies of ours are here, but by vapours, and that not by parts or organs, but throughout the whole of them (as sponges), they imbibing everywhere those vapours. For which cause they who are wise will in this life also take care of using a thinner and dryer diet, that so that spirituous body (which we have also at this present time within our proper body) may not be clogged and incrassed, but attenuated. Over and above which, those Ancients made use of catharms, or purgations to the same end and purpose also. For as this earthy body is washed by water so is that spirituous body cleansed by cathartic vapours--some of these vapours being nutritive, others purgative. Moreover, these Ancients further declared concerning this spirituous body that it was not organized, but did the whole of it in every part throughout exercise all functions of sense, the soul hearing, seeing and perceiving all sensibles by it everywhere. For which cause Aristotle himself affirmeth in his Metaphysics that there is properly but one sense and one Sensory. He by this one sensory meaneth the spirit, or subtle airy body, in which the sensitive power doth all of it through the whole immediately apprehend all variety of sensibles. And if it be demanded to how it comes to pass that this spirit becomes organized in sepulchres, and most commonly of human form, but sometimes in the forms of other animals, to this those Ancients replied that their appearing so frequently in human form proceeded from their being incrassated with evil diet, and then, as it were, stamped upon with the form of this exterior ambient body in which they are, as crystal is formed and coloured like to those things which it is fastened in, or reflects the image of them. And that their having sometimes other different forms proceedeth from the phantastic power of the soul itself, which can at pleasure transform the spirituous body into any shape. For being airy, when it is condensed and fixed, it becometh visible, and again invisible and vanishing out of sight when it is expanded and rarified." Proem in Arist. de Anima. And Cudworth says, "Though spirits or ghosts had certain supple bodies which they could so far condense as to make them sometimes visible to men, yet is it reasonable enough to think that they could not constipate or fix them into such a firmness, grossness and solidity, as that of flesh and bone is to continue therein, or at least not without such difficulty and pain as would hinder them from attempting the same. Notwithstanding which it is not denied that they may possibly sometimes make use of other solid bodies, moving and acting them, as in that famous story of Phlegons when the body vanished not as other ghosts use to do, but was left a dead carcase behind." In all these speculations the Anima Mundi plays a conspicuous part. It is the source and principle of all animal souls, including the irrational soul of man. But in man, who would otherwise be merely analogous to other terrestrial animals--this soul participates in a higher principle, which tends to raise and convert it to itself. To comprehend the nature of this union or hypostasis it would be necessary to have mastered the whole of Plato's philosophy as comprised in the Parmenides and the Timaeus; and he would dogmatize rashly who without this arduous preparation should claim Plato as the champion of an unconditional immortality. Certainly in the Phaedo the dialogue popularly supposed to contain all Plato's teaching on the subject--the immortality allotted to the impure soul is of a very questionable character, and we should rather infer from the account there given that the human personality, at all events, is lost by successive immersions into "matter." The following passage from Plutarch (quoted by Madame Blavatsky, "Isis Unveiled," vol. ii. p. 284) will at least demonstrate the antiquity of notions which have recently been mistaken for fanciful novelties. "Every soul hath some portion of nous, reason, a man cannot be a man without it; but as much of each soul as is mixed with flesh and appetite is changed, and through pain and pleasure becomes irrational. Every soul doth not mix herself after one sort; some plunge themselves into the body, and so in this life their whole frame is corrupted by appetite and passion; others are mixed as to some part, but the purer part still remains without the body. It is not drawn down into the body, but it swims above, and touches the extremest part of the man's head; it is like a cord to hold up and direct the subsiding part of the soul, as long as it proves obedient and is not overcome by the appetites of the flesh. The part that is plunged into the body is called soul. But the incorruptible part is called the nous, and the vulgar think it is within them, as they likewise imagine the image reflected from a glass to be in that glass. But the more intelligent, who know it to be without, call it a Daemon." And in the same learned work ("Isis Unveiled ") we have two Christian authorities, Irenaeus and Origen, cited for like distinction between spirit and soul in such a manner as to show that the former must necessarily be regarded as separable from the latter. In the distinction itself there is of course no novelty for the most moderately well-informed. It is insisted upon in many modern works, among which may be mentioned Heard's "Trichotomy of Man" and Green's "Spiritual Philosophy"; the latter being an exposition of Coleridge's opinion on this and cognate subjects. But the difficulty of regarding the two principles as separable in fact as well as in logic arises from the senses, if it is not the illusion of personal identity. That we are particle, and that one part only is immortal, the non-metaphysical mind rejects with the indignation which is always encountered by a proposition that is at once distasteful and unintelligible. Yet perhaps it is not a greater difficulty (if, indeed, it is not the very same) than that hard saying which troubled Nicodemus, and which has been the key-note of the mystical religious consciousness ever since. This, however, is too extensive and deep a question to be treated in this paper, which has for its object chiefly to call attention to the distinctions introduced by ancient thought into the conception of body as the instrument or "vehicle" of soul. That there is a correspondence between the spiritual condition of man and the medium of his objective activity every spiritualist will admit to be probable, and it may well be that some light is thrown on future states by the possibility or the manner of spirit communication with this one. --C. C. Massey The Nilgiri Sannyasis I was told that Sannyasis were sometimes met with on a mountain called Velly Mallai Hills, in the Coimbatore District, and trying to meet with one, I determined to ascend this mountain. I traveled up its steep sides and arrived at an opening, narrow and low, into which I crept on all fours. Going up some twenty yards I reached a cave, into the opening of which I thrust my head and shoulders. I could see into it clearly, but felt a cold wind on my face, as if there was some opening or crevice--so I looked carefully, but could see nothing. The room was about twelve feet square. I did not go into it. I saw arranged round its sides stones one cubit long, all placed upright. I was much disappointed at there being no Sannyasi, and came back as I went, pushing myself backwards as there was no room to turn. I was then told Sannyasis had been met with in the dense sholas (thickets), and as my work lay often in such places, I determined to prosecute my search, and did so diligently, without, however, any success. One day I contemplated a journey to Coimbatore on my own affairs, and was walking up the road trying to make a bargain with a handy man whom I desired to engage to carry me there; but as we could not come to terms, I parted with him and turned into the Lovedale Road at 6 P.M. I had not gone far when I met a man dressed like a Sannyasi, who stopped and spoke to me. He observed a ring on my finger and asked me to give it to him. I said he was welcome to it, but inquired what he would give me in return, he said, "I don't care particularly about it; I would rather have that flour and sugar in the bundle on your back." "I will give you that with pleasure," I said, and took down my bundle and gave it to him. "Half is enough for me," he said; but subsequently changing his mind added, "now let me see what is in your bundle," pointing to my other parcel. "I can't give you that." He said, "Why cannot you give me your swami (family idol)?" I said, "It is my swami, I will not part with it; rather take my life." On this he pressed me no more, but said, "Now you had better go home." I said, "I will not leave you." "Oh you must," he said, "you will die here of hunger." "Never mind," I said, "I can but die once." "You have no clothes to protect you from the wind and rain; you may meet with tigers," he said. "I don't care," I replied. "It is given to man once to die. What does it signify how he dies?" When I said this he took my hand and embraced me, and immediately I became unconscious. When I returned to consciousness, I found myself with the Sannyasi in a place new to me on a hill, near a large rock and with a big shola near. I saw in the shola right in front of us, that there was a pillar of fire, like a tree almost. I asked the Sannyasi what was that like a high fire. "Oh," he said, "most likely a tree ignited by some careless wood-cutters." "No," I said, "it is not like any common fire--there is no smoke, nor are there flames--and it's not lurid and red. I want to go and see it." "No, you must not do so, you cannot go near that fire and escape alive." "Come with me then," I begged. "No--I cannot," he said, "if you wish to approach it, you must go alone and at your own risk; that tree is the tree of knowledge and from it flows the milk of life: whoever drinks this never hungers again." Thereupon I regarded the tree with awe. I next observed five Sannyasis approaching. They came up and joined the one with me, entered into talk, and finally pulled out a hookah and began to smoke. They asked me if I could smoke. I said no. One of them said to me, let us see the swami in your bundle (here gives a description of the same). I said, "I cannot, I am not clean enough to do so." "Why not perform your ablutions in yonder stream?" they said. "If you sprinkle water on your forehead that will suffice." I went to wash my hands and feet, and laved my head, and showed it to them. Next they disappeared. "As it is very late, it is time you returned home," said my first friend. "No," I said, "now I have found you I will not leave you." "No, no," he said, "you must go home. You cannot leave the world yet; you are a father and a husband, and you must not neglect your worldly duties. Follow the footsteps of your late respected uncle; he did not neglect his worldly affairs, though he cared for the interests of his soul; you must go, but I will meet you again when you get your fortnightly holiday." On this he embraced me, and I again became unconscious. When I returned to myself, I found myself at the bottom of Col. Jones' Coffee Plantation above Coonor on a path. Here the Sannyasi wished me farewell, and pointing to the high road below, he said, "Now you will know your way home;" but I would not part from him. I said, "All this will appear a dream to me unless you will fix a day and promise to meet me here again." "I promise," he said. "No, promise me by an oath on the head of my idol." Again he promised, and touched the head of my idol. "Be here," he said, "this day fortnight." When the day came I anxiously kept my engagement and went and sat on the stone on the path. I waited a long time in vain. At last I said to myself, "I am deceived, he is not coming, he has broken his oath"--and with grief I made a poojah. Hardly had these thoughts passed my mind, than lo! he stood beside me. "Ah, you doubt me," he said; "why this grief." I fell at his feet and confessed I had doubted him and begged his forgiveness. He forgave and comforted me, and told me to keep in my good ways and he would always help me; and he told me and advised me about all my private affairs without my telling him one word, and he also gave me some medicines for a sick friend which I had promised to ask for but had forgotten. This medicine was given to my friend and he is perfectly well now. A verbatim translation of a Settlement Officer's statement to --E.H. Morgan Witchcraft on the Nilgiris Having lived many years (30) on the Nilgiris, employing the various tribes of the Hills on my estates, and speaking their languages, I have had many opportunities of observing their manners and customs and the frequent practice of Demonology and Witchcraft among them. On the slopes of the Nilgiris live several semi-wild people: 1st, the "Curumbers," who frequently hire themselves out to neighbouring estates, and are first-rate fellers of forest; 2nd, the "Tain" ("Honey Curumbers"), who collect and live largely on honey and roots, and who do not come into civilized parts; 3rd, the "Mulu" Curumbers, who are rare on the slopes of the hills, but common in Wynaad lower down the plateau. These use bows and arrows, are fond of hunting, and have frequently been known to kill tigers, rushing in a body on their game and discharging their arrows at a short distance. In their eagerness they frequently fall victims to this animal; but they are supposed to possess a controlling power over all wild animals, especially elephants and tigers; and the natives declare they have the power of assuming the forms of various beasts. Their aid is constantly invoked both by the Curumbers first named, and by the natives generally, when wishing to be revenged on an enemy. Besides these varieties of Curumbers there are various other wild tribes I do not now mention, as they are not concerned in what I have to relate. I had on my estate near Ootacamund a gang of young Badagas, some 30 young men, whom I had had in my service since they were children, and who had become most useful handy fellows. From week to week I missed one or another of them, and on inquiry was told they had been sick and were dead! One market-day I met the Moneghar of the village to which my gang belonged and some of his men, returning home laden with their purchases. The moment he saw me he stopped, and coming up to me, said, "Mother, I am in great sorrow and trouble, tell me what I can do!" "Why, what is wrong?" I asked. "All my young men are dying, and I cannot help them, nor prevent it; they are under a spell of the wicked Curumbers who are killing them, and I am powerless." "Pray explain," I said; "why do the Curumbers behave in this way, and what do they do to your people?" "Oh, Madam, they are vile extortioners, always asking for money; we have given and given till we have no more to give. I told them we had no more money and then they said,--All right--as you please; we shall see. Surely as they say this, we know what will follow--at night when we are all asleep, we wake up suddenly and see a Curumber standing in our midst, in the middle of the room occupied by the young men." "Why do you not close and bolt your doors securely?" I interrupted. "What is the use of bolts and bars to them? they come through stone walls.... Our doors were secure, but nothing can keep out a Curumber. He points his finger at Mada, at Kurira, at Jogie--he utters no word, and as we look at him he vanishes! In a few days these three young men sicken, a low fever consumes them, their stomachs swell, they die. Eighteen young men, the flower of my village, have died thus this year. These effects always follow the visit of a Curumber at night." "Why not complain to the Government?" I said. "Ah, no use, who will catch them?" "Then give them the 200 rupees they ask this once on a solemn promise that they exact no more" "I suppose we must find the money somewhere," he said, turning sorrowfully away. A Mr. K---is the owner of a coffee estate near this, and like many other planters employs Burghers. On one occasion he went down the slopes of the hills after bison and other large game, taking some seven or eight Burghers with him as gun carriers (besides other things necessary in jungle-walking--axes to clear the way, knives and ropes, &c.). He found and severely wounded a fine elephant with tusks. Wishing to secure these, he proposed following up his quarry, but could not induce his Burghers to go deeper and further into the forests; they feared to meet the "Mula Curumbers" who lived thereabouts. For long he argued in vain, at last by dint of threats and promises he induced them to proceed, and as they met no one, their fears were allayed and they grew bolder, when suddenly coming on the elephant lying dead (oh, horror to them!), the beast was surrounded by a party of Mulu Curumbers busily engaged in cutting out the tusks, one of which they had already disengaged! The affrighted Burghers fell back, and nothing Mr. K--- could do or say would induce them to approach the elephant, which the Curumbers stoutly declared was theirs. They had killed him they said. They had very likely met him staggering under his wound and had finished him off. Mr. K---was not likely to give up his game in this fashion. So walking threateningly to the Curumbers he compelled them to retire, and called to his Burghers at the same time. The Curumbers only said, "Just you DARE to touch that elephant," and retired. Mr. K---thereupon cut out the remaining tusk himself, and slinging both on a pole with no little trouble, made his men carry them. He took all the blame on himself, showed them that they did not touch them, and finally declared he would stay there all night rather than lose the tusks. The idea of a night near the Mulu Curumbers was too much for the fears of the Burghers, and they finally took up the pole and tusks and walked home. From that day those men, all but one who probably carried the gun, sickened, walked about like spectres, doomed, pale and ghastly, and before the month was out all were dead men, with the one exception! A few months ago, at the village of Ebanaud, a few miles from this, a fearful tragedy was enacted. The Moneghar or headman's child was sick unto death. This, following on several recent deaths, was attributed to the evil influences of a village of Curumbers hard by. The Burghers determined on the destruction of every soul of them. They procured the assistance of a Toda, as they invariably do on such occasions, as without one the Curumbers are supposed to be invulnerable. They proceeded to the Curumber village at night and set their huts on fire, and as the miserable inmates attempted to escape, flung them back into the flames or knocked them down with clubs. In the confusion one old woman escaped unobserved into the adjacent bushes. Next morning she gave notice to the authorities, and identified seven Burghers, among whom was the Moneghar or headman, and one Toda. As the murderers of her people they were all brought to trial in the Courts here,--except the headman, who died before he could be brought in--and were all sentenced and duly executed, that is, three Burghers and the Toda, who were proved principals in the murders. Two years ago an almost identical occurrence took place at Kotaghery, with exactly similar results, but without the punishment entailed having any deterrent effect. They pleaded "justification," as witchcraft had been practiced on them. But our Government ignores all occult dealings and will not believe in the dread power in the land. They deal very differently with these matters in Russia, where, in a recent trial of a similar nature, the witchcraft was admitted as an extenuating circumstance and the culprits who had burnt a witch were all acquitted. All natives of whatever caste are well aware of these terrible powers and too often do they avail themselves of them--much oftener than any one has an idea of. One day as I was riding along I came upon a strange and ghastly object--a basket containing the bloody head of a black sheep, a cocoanut, 10 rupees in money, some rice and flowers. These smaller items I did not see, not caring to examine any closer; but I was told by some natives that those articles were to be found in the basket. The basket was placed at the apex of a triangle formed by three fine threads tied to three small sticks, so placed that any one approaching from the roads on either side had to stumble over the threads and receive the full effects of the deadly "Soonium" as the natives call it. On inquiry I learnt that it was usual to prepare such a "Soonium" when one lay sick unto death; as throwing it on another was the only means of rescuing the sick one, and woe to the unfortunate who broke a thread by stumbling over it! --E.H. Morgan Shamanism and Witchcraft Amongst the Kolarian Tribes Having resided for some years amongst the Mimdas and Hos of Singbhoom, and Chutia Nagpur, my attention was drawn at times to customs differing a good deal in some ways, but having an evident affinity to those related of the Nilghiri "Curumbers" in Mrs. Morgan's article. I do not mean to say that the practices I am about to mention are confined simply to the Kolarian tribes, as I am aware both Oraons (a Dravidian tribe), and the different Hindu castes living side by side with the Kols, count many noted wizards among their number; but what little I have come to know of these curious customs, I have learnt among the Mimdas and Hos, some of the most celebrated practitioners among them being Christian converts. The people themselves say, that these practices are peculiar to their race, and not learnt from the Hindu invaders of their plateau; but I am inclined to think that some, at least, of the operations have a strong savour of the Tantric black magic about them, though practiced by people who are often entirely ignorant of any Hindu language. These remarks must he supplemented by a short sketch of Kol ideas of worship. They have nothing that I have either seen or heard of in the shape of an image, but their periodical offerings are made to a number of elemental spirits, and they assign a genie to every rock or tree in the country, whom they do not consider altogether malignant, but who, if not duly "fed" or propitiated, may become so. The Singbonga (lit., sun or light spirit) is the chief; Buru Bonga (spirit of the hills), and the Ikhir Bonga (spirit of the deep), come next. After these come the Darha, of which each family has its own, and they may be considered in the same light as Lares and Penates. But every threshing, flour and oil mill, has its spirit, who must be duly fed, else evil result may be expected. Their great festival (the Karam) is in honour of Singbonga and his assistants; the opening words of the priests' speech on that occasion, sufficiently indicate that they consider Singbonga, the creator of men and things. Munure Singbonga manokoa luekidkoa (In the beginning Singbonga made men). Each village has its Sarna or sacred grove, where the hereditary priest from time to time performs sacrifices, to keep things prosperous; but this only relates to spirits actually connected with the village, the three greater spirits mentioned, being considered general, are only fed at intervals of three or more years, and always on a public road or other public place, and once every ten years a human being was (and as some will tell you is sacrificed to keep the whole community of spirits in good train.) The Pahans, or village priests, are regular servants of the spirits, and the najo, deona and bhagats are people who in some way are supposed to obtain an influence or command over them. The first and lowest grade of these adepts, called najos (which may be translated as practitioners of witchcraft pure and simple), are frequently women. They are accused, like the "Mula Curumbers," of demanding quantities of grain or loans of money, &c., from people, and when these demands are refused, they go away with a remark to the effect, "that you have lots of cattle and grain just now, but we'll see what they are like after a month or two." Then probably the cattle of the bewitched person will get some disease, and several of them die, or some person of his family will become ill or get hurt in some unaccountable way. Till at last, thoroughly frightened, the afflicted person takes a little uncooked rice and goes to a deona or mati (as he is called in the different vernaculars of the province)--the grade immediately above najo in knowledge--and promising him a reward if he will assist him, requests his aid; if the deona accedes to the request, the proceedings are as follows. The deona taking the oil brought, lights a small lamp and seats himself beside it with the rice in a surpa (winnower) in his hands. After looking intently at the lamp flame for a few minutes, he begins to sing a sort of chant of invocation in which all the spirits are named, and at the name of each spirit a few grains of rice are thrown into the lamp. When the flame at any particular name gives a jump and flares up high, the spirit concerned in the mischief is indicated. Then the deona takes a small portion of the rice wrapped up in a sal (Shorea robusta) leaf and proceeds to the nearest new white-ant nest from which he cuts the top off and lays the little bundle, half in and half out of the cavity. Having retired, he returns in about an hour to see if the rice is consumed, and according to the rapidity with which it is eaten he predicts the sacrifice which will appease the spirit. This ranges from a fowl to a buffalo, but whatever it may include, the pouring out of blood is an essential. It must be noted, however, that the mati never tells who the najo is who has excited the malignity of the spirit. But the most important and lucrative part of a deona's business is the casting out of evil spirits, which operation is known variously as ashab and langhan. The sign of obsession is generally some mental alienation accompanied (in bad cases) by a combined trembling and restlessness of limbs, or an unaccountable swelling up of the body. Whatever the symptoms may be the mode of cure appears to be much the same. On such symptoms declaring themselves, the deona is brought to the house and is in the presence of the sick man and his friends provided with some rice in a surpa, some oil, a little vermilion, and the deona produces from his own person a little powdered sulphur and an iron tube about four inches long and two tikli.* Before the proceedings begin all the things mentioned are touched with vermilion, a small quantity of which is also mixed with the rice. Three or four grains of rice and one of the tikli being put into the tube, a lamp is then lighted beside the sick man and the deona begins his chant, throwing grains of rice at each name, and when the flame flares up, a little of the powdered sulphur is thrown into the lamp and a little on the sick man, who thereupon becomes convulsed, is shaken all over and talks deliriously, the deona's chant growing louder all the while. Suddenly the convulsions and the chant cease, and the deona carefully takes up a little of the sulphur off the man's body and puts into the tube, which he then seals with the second tikli. The deona and one of the man's friends then leave the hut, taking the iron tube and rice with them, the spirit being now supposed out of the man and bottled up in the iron tube. They hurry across country until they leave the hut some miles behind. Then they go to the edge of some tank or river, to some place they know to be frequented by people for the purposes of bathing, &c., where, after some further ceremony, the iron is stuck into the ground and left there. This is done with the benevolent intention that the spirit may transfer its attentions to the unfortunate person who may happen to touch it while bathing. I am told the spirit in this case usually chooses a young and healthy person. Should the deona think the spirit has not been able to suit itself with a new receptacle, he repairs to where a bazaar is taking place and there (after some ceremony) he mixes with the crowd, and taking a grain of the reddened rice jerks it with his forefinger and thumb in such a way that without attracting attention it falls on the person or clothes of some. This is done several times to make certain. Then the deona declares he has done his work, and is usually treated to the best dinner the sick man's friends can afford. It is said that the person to whom the spirit by either of these methods is transferred may not be affected for weeks or even months. But some fine day while he is at his work, he will suddenly stop, wheel round two or three times on his heels and fall down more or less convulsed, from that time forward he will begin to be troubled in the same way as his dis-obsessed predecessor was. -------- * Tikli is a circular piece of gilt paper which is stuck on between the eyebrows of the women of the Province as ornament. -------- Having thus given some account of the deona, we now come to the bhagat, called by the Hindus sokha and sivnath. This is the highest grade of all, and, as I ought to have mentioned before, the 'ilm (knowledge) of both the deona and bhagat grades is only to be learned by becoming a regular chela of a practitioner; but I am given to understand that the final initiation is much hastened by a seasonable liberality on the part of the chela. During the initiation of the sokha certain ceremonies are performed at night by aid of a human corpse, this is one of the things which has led me to think that this part at least of these practices is connected with Tantric black magic. The bhagat performs two distinct functions: (1st), a kind of divination called bhao (the same in Hindi), and (2nd), a kind of Shamanism called darasta in Hindi, and bharotan in Horokaji, which, however, is resorted to only on very grave occasions--as, for instance, when several families think they are bewitched at one time and by the same najo. The bhao is performed as follows:--The person having some query to propound, makes a small dish out of a sal leaf and puts in it a little uncooked rice and a few pice; he then proceeds to the bhagat and lays before him the leaf and its contents, propounding at the same time his query. The bhagat then directs him to go out and gather two golaichi (varieties of Posinia) flowers (such practitioners usually having a golaichi tree close to their abodes); after the flowers are brought the bhagat seats himself with the rice close to the inquirer, and after some consideration selects one of the flowers, and holding it by the stalk at about a foot from his eyes in his left hand twirls it between his thumb and fingers, occasionally with his right hand dropping on it a grain or two of rice.* In a few minutes his eyes close and he begins to talk-- usually about things having nothing to do with the question in hand, but after a few minutes of this, he suddenly yells out an answer to the question, and without another word retires. The inquirer takes his meaning as he can from the answer, which, I believe, is always ambiguous. --------- * This is the process by which the bhagat mesmerizes himself. --------- The bharotan as I have above remarked is only resorted to when a matter of grave import has to be inquired about; the bhagat makes a high charge for a seance of this description. We will fancy that three or four families in a village consider themselves bewitched by a najo, and they resolve to have recourse to a bhagat to find out who the witch is; with this view a day is fixed on, and two delegates are procured from each of five neighbouring villages, who accompany the afflicted people to the house of the bhagat, taking with them a dali or offering, consisting of vegetables, which on arrival is formally presented to him. Two delegates are posted at each of the four points of the compass, and the other two sent themselves with the afflicted parties to the right of the bhagat, who occupies the centre of the apartment with four or five chelas, a clear space being reserved on the left. One chela then brings a small earthenware-pot full of lighted charcoal, which is set before the bhagat with a pile of mango wood chips and a ball composed of dhunia (resin of Shorea robusta), gur (treacle), and ghee (clarified butter), and possibly other ingredients. The bhagat's sole attire consists of a scanty lenguti (waist-cloth), a necklace of the large wooden beads such as are usually worn by fakeers, and several garlands of golaichi flowers round his neck, his hair being unusually long and matted. Beside him stuck in the ground is his staff. One chela stands over the firepot with a bamboo-mat fan in his hand, another takes charge of the pile of chips, and a third of the ball of composition, and one or two others seat themselves behind the bhagat, with drums and other musical instruments in their hands. All being in readiness, the afflicted ones are requested to state their grievance. This they do, and pray the bhagat to call before him the najo, who has stirred up the spirits to afflict them, in order that he may be punished. The bhagat then gives a sign to his chelas, those behind him raise a furious din with their instruments, the fire is fed with chips, and a bit of the composition is put on it from time to time, producing a volume of thick greyish-blue smoke; this is carefully fanned over, and towards the bhagat, who, when well wrapped in smoke, closes his eyes and quietly swaying his body begins a low chant. The chant gradually becomes louder and the sway of his body more pronounced, until he works himself into a state of complete frenzy. Then with his body actually quivering, and his head rapidly working about from side to side, he sings in a loud voice how a certain najo (whom he names) had asked money of those people and was refused, and how he stirred up certain spirits (whom he also names) to hurt them, how they killed so and so's bullocks, some one else's sheep, and caused another's child to fall ill. Then he begins to call on the najo to come and answer for his doings, and in doing so rises to his feet--still commanding the najo to appear; meanwhile he reels about; then falls on the ground and is quite still except for an occasional whine, and a muttered, "I see him!" "He is coming!" This state may last for an hour or more till at last the bhagat sits up and announces the najo has come; as he says so, a man, apparently mad with drink, rushes in and falls with his head towards the bhagat moaning and making a sort of snorting as if half stifled. In this person the bewitched parties often recognize a neighbour and sometimes even a relation, but whoever he may be they have bound themselves to punish him. The bhagat then speaks to him and tells him to confess, at the same time threatening him, in case of refusal, with his staff. He then confesses in a half-stupefied manner, and his confession tallies with what the bhagat has told in his frenzy. The najo is then dismissed and runs out of the house in the same hurry as he came in. The delegates then hold a council at which the najo usually is sentenced to a fine--often heavy enough to ruin him--and expelled from his village. Before the British rule the convicted najo seldom escaped with his life, and during the mutiny time, when no Englishmen were about, the Singbhoom Hos paid off a large number of old scores of this sort. For record of which, see "Statistical Account of Bengal," vol. xvii. p. 52. In conclusion I have merely to add that I have derived this information from people who have been actually concerned in these occurrences, and among others a man belonging to a village of my own, who was convicted and expelled from the village with the loss of all his movable property, and one of his victims, a relation of his, sat by me when the above was being written. --E.D. Ewen Mahatmas and Chelas A Mahatma is an individual who, by special training and education, has evolved those higher faculties, and has attained that spiritual knowledge, which ordinary humanity will acquire after passing through numberless series of re-incarnations during the process of cosmic evolution, provided, of course, that they do not go, in the meanwhile, against the purposes of Nature and thus bring on their own annihilation. This process of the self-evolution of the MAHATMA extends over a number of "incarnations," although, comparatively speaking, they are very few. Now, what is it that incarnates? The occult doctrine, so far as it is given out, shows that the first three principles die more or less with what is called the physical death. The fourth principle, together with the lower portions of the fifth, in which reside the animal propensities, has Kama Loka for its abode, where it suffers the throes of disintegration in proportion to the intensity of those lower desires; while it is the higher Manas, the pure man, which is associated with the sixth and seventh principles, that goes into Devachan to enjoy there the effects of its good Karma, and then to be reincarnated as a higher personality. Now an entity that is passing through the occult training in its successive births, gradually has less and less (in each incarnation) of that lower Manas until there arrives a time when its whole Manas, being of an entirely elevated character, is centred in the individuality, when such a person may be said to have become a MAHATMA. At the time of his physical death, all the lower four principles perish without any suffering, for these are, in fact, to him like a piece of wearing apparel which he puts on and off at will. The real MAHATMA is then not his physical body but that higher Manas which is inseparably linked to the Atma and its vehicle (the sixth principle)--a union effected by him in a comparatively very short period by passing through the process of self-evolution laid down by Occult Philosophy. When therefore, people express a desire to "see a MAHATMA," they really do not seem to understand what it is they ask for. How can they, with their physical eyes, hope to see that which transcends that sight? Is it the body--a mere shell or mask--they crave or hunt after? And supposing they see the body of a MAHATMA, how can they know that behind that mask is concealed an exalted entity? By what standard are they to judge whether the Maya before them reflects the image of a true MAHATMA or not? And who will say that the physical is not a Maya? Higher things can be perceived only by a sense pertaining to those higher things; whoever therefore wants to see the real MAHATMA, must use his intellectual sight. He must so elevate his Manas that its perception will be clear and all mists created by Maya be dispelled. His vision will then be bright and he will see the MAHATMA wherever he may be, for, being merged into the sixth and the seventh principles, which know no distance, the MAHATMA may be said to be everywhere. But, at the same time, just as we may be standing on a mountain top and have within our sight the whole plain, and yet not be cognizant of any particular tree or spot, because from that elevated position all below is nearly identical, and as our attention may be drawn to something which may be dissimilar to its surroundings--in the same manner, although the whole of humanity is within the mental vision of the MAHATMA, he cannot be expected to take special note of every human being, unless that being by his special acts draws particular attention to himself. The highest interest of humanity, as a whole, is the MAHATMA's special concern, for he has identified himself with that Universal Soul which runs through Humanity; and to draw his attention one must do so through that Soul. This perception of the Manas may be called "faith" which should not be confounded with blind belief. "Blind faith" is an expression sometimes used to indicate belief without perception or understanding; while the true perception of the Manas is that enlightened belief which is the real meaning of the word "faith." This belief should at the same time be accompanied by knowledge, i.e., experience, for "true knowledge brings with it faith." Faith is the perception of the Manas (the fifth principle), while knowledge, in the true sense of the term, is the capacity of the Intellect, i.e., it is spiritual perception. In short, the individuality of man, composed of his higher Manas, the sixth and the seventh principle, should work as a unity, and then only can it obtain "divine wisdom," for divine things can be sensed only by divine faculties. Thus a chela should be actuated solely by a desire to understand the operations of the Law of Cosmic Evolution, so as to be able to work in conscious and harmonious accord with Nature. --Anon. The Brahmanical Thread I. The general term for the investiture of this thread is Upanayana; and the invested is called Upanita, which signifies brought or drawn near (to one's Guru), i.e., the thread is the symbol of the wearer's condition. II. One of the names of this thread is Yajna-Sutra. Yajna means Brahma, or the Supreme Spirit, and Sutra the thread, or tie. Collectively, the compound word signifies that which ties a man to his spirit or god. It consists of three yarns twisted into one thread, and three of such threads formed and knotted into a circle. Every Theosophist knows what a circle signifies and it need not be repeated here. He will easily understand the rest and the relation they have to mystic initiation. The yarns signify the great principle of "three in one, and one in three," thus:--The first trinity consists of Atma which comprises the three attributes of Manas, Buddhi, and Ahankara (the mind, the intelligence, and the egotism). The Manas again, has the three qualities of Satva, Raja, and Tama (goodness, foulness, and darkness). Buddhi has the three attributes of Pratyaksha, Upamiti and Anumiti (perception, analogy, and inference). Ahankara also has three attributes, viz., Jnata, Jneya, and Jnan (the knower, the known, and the knowledge). III. Another name of the sacred thread is Tri-dandi. Tri means three, and Danda, chastisement, correction, or conquest. This reminds the holder of the three great "corrections" or conquests he has to accomplish. These are:--(1) the Vakya Sanyama;* (2) the Manas Sanyama; and (3) the Indriya (or Deha) Sanyama. Vakya is speech, Manas, mind, and Deha (literally, body) or Indriya, is the senses. The three conquests therefore mean the control over one's speech, thought, and action. -------- * Danda and Sanyama are synonymous terms.--A.S. --------- This thread is also the reminder to the man of his secular duties, and its material varies, in consequence, according to the occupation of the wearer. Thus, while the thread of the Brahmans is made of pure cotton, that of the Kshatriyas (the warriors) is composed of flax--the bow-string material; and that of Vaishyas (the traders and cattle-breeders), of wool. From this it is not to be inferred that caste was originally meant to be hereditary. In the ancient times, it depended on the qualities of the man. Irrespective of the caste of his parents, a man could, according to his merit or otherwise, raise or lower himself from one caste to another; and instances are not wanting in which a man has elevated himself to the position of the highest Brahman (such as Vishvamitra Rishi, Parasara, Vyasa, Satyakam, and others) from the very lowest of the four castes. The sayings of Yudhishthira on this subject, in reply to the questions of the great serpent, in the Arannya Parva of the Maha-Bharata, and of Manu, on the same point, are well known and need nothing more than bare reference. Both Manu and Maha-Bharata--the fulcrums of Hinduism--distinctly affirm that a man can translate himself from one caste to another by his merit, irrespective of his parentage. The day is fast approaching when the so-called Brahmans will have to show cause, before the tribunal of the Aryan Rishis, why they should not be divested of the thread which they do not at all deserve, but are degrading by misuse. Then alone will the people appreciate the privilege of wearing it. There are many examples of the highest distinctive insignia being worn by the unworthy. The aristocracies of Europe and Asia teem with such. --A. Sarman Reading in a Sealed Envelope Some years ago, a Brahman astrologer named Vencata Narasimla Josi, a native of the village of Periasamudram in the Mysore Provinces, came to the little town in the Bellary District where I was then employed. He was a good Sanskrit, Telugu and Canarese poet, and an excellent master of Vedic rituals; knew the Hindu system of astronomy, and professed to be an astrologer. Besides all this, he possessed the power of reading what was contained in any sealed envelope. The process adopted for this purpose was simply this:--We wrote whatever we chose on a piece of paper; enclosed it in one, two or three envelopes, each properly gummed and sealed, and handed the cover to the astrologer. He asked us to name a figure between 1 and 9, and on its being named, he retired with the envelope to some secluded place for some time; and then he returned with a paper full of figures, and another paper containing a copy of what was on the sealed paper--exactly, letter for letter and word for word. I tried him often and many others did the same; and we were all satisfied that he was invariably accurate, and that there was no deception whatsoever in the matter. About this time, one Mr. Theyagaraja Mudalyar, a supervisor in the Public Works Department, an English scholar and a good Sanskrit and Telugu poet, arrived at our place on his periodical tour of inspection. Having heard about the aforesaid astrologer, he wanted to test him in a manner, most satisfactory to himself. One morning handing to the astrologer a very indifferently gummed envelope, he said, "Here, Sir, take this letter home with you and come back to me with your copy in the afternoon." This loose way of closing the envelope, and the permission given to the astrologer to take it home for several hours, surprised the Brahman, who said, "I don't want to go home. Seal the cover better, and give me the use of some room here. I shall be ready with my copy very soon." "No," said the Mudalyar, "take it as it is, and come back whenever you like. I have the means of finding out the deception, if any be practiced." So then the astrologer went with the envelope; and returned to the Mudalyar's place in the afternoon. Myself and about twenty others were present there by appointment. The astrologer then carefully handed the cover to the Mudalyar, desiring him to see if it was all right. "Don't mind that," the Mudalyar answered; "I can find out the trick, if there be any. Produce your copy." The astrologer thereupon presented to the Mudalyar a paper on which four lines were written and stated that this was a copy of the paper enclosed in the Mudalyar's envelope. Those four lines formed a portion of an antiquated poem. The Mudalyar read the paper once, then read it over again. Extreme satisfaction beamed over his countenance, and he sat mute for some seconds seemingly in utter astonishment. But soon after, the expression of his face changing, he opened the envelope and threw the enclosure down, jocularly saying to the astrologer, "Here, Sir, is the original of which you have produced the copy." The paper lay upon the carpet, and was quite blank! not a word, nor a letter on its clean surface. This was a sad disappointment to all his admirers; but to the astrologer himself, it was a real thunderbolt. He picked up the paper pensively, examined it on both sides, then dashed it on the ground in a fury; and suddenly arising, exclaimed, "My Vidya* is a delusion, and I am a liar!" --------- * Secret knowledge, magic. --------- The subsequent behaviour of the poor man made us fear lest this great disappointment should drive him to commit some desperate act. In fact he seemed determined to drown himself in the well, saying that he was dishonoured. While we were trying to console him, the Mudalyar came forward, caught hold of his hands, and besought him to sit down and calmly listen to his explanation, assuring him that he was not a liar, and that his copy was perfectly accurate. But the astrologer would not be satisfied; he supposed that all this was said simply to console him; and cursed himself and his fate most horribly. However, in a few minutes he became calmer and listened to the Mudalyar's explanation, which was in substance as follows The only way for the sceptic to account for this phenomenon, is to suppose that the astrologer opened the covers dexterously and read their contents. "So," he said, "I wrote four lines of old poetry on the paper with nitrate of silver, which would be invisible until exposed to the light; and this would have disclosed the astrologer's fraud, if he had tried to find out the contents of the enclosed paper, by opening the cover, however ingeniously. For, if he opened it and looked at the paper, he would have seen that it was blank, resealed the cover, and declared that the paper enveloped therein bore no writing whatever; or if he had, by design or accident, exposed the paper to light, the writing would have become black; and he would have produced a copy of it as if it were the result of his own Vidya; but in either case and the writing remaining, his deception would have been clear, and it would have been patent to all that he did open the envelope. But in the present case, the result proved conclusively that the cover was not opened at all." --P. Sreeneevas Row The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac The division of the Zodiac into different signs dates from immemorial antiquity. It has acquired a world-wide celebrity and is to be found in the astrological systems of several nations. The invention of the Zodiac and its signs has been assigned to different nations by different antiquarians. It is stated by some that, at first, there were only ten signs, that one of these signs was subsequently split up into two separate signs, and that a new sign was added to the number to render the esoteric significance of the division more profound, and at the same time to conceal it more perfectly from the uninitiated public. It is very probable that the real philosophical conception of the division owes its origin to some particular nation, and the names given to the various signs might have been translated into the languages of other nations. The principal object of this article, however, is not to decide which nation had the honour of inventing the signs in question, but to indicate to some extent the real philosophical meaning involved therein, and the way to discover the rest of the meaning which yet remains undisclosed. But from what is herein stated, an inference may fairly be drawn that, like so many other philosophical myths and allegories, the invention of the Zodiac and its signs owes its origin to ancient India. What then is its real origin, what is the philosophical conception which the Zodiac and its signs are intended to represent? Do the various signs merely indicate the shape or configuration of the different constellations included in the divisions, or, are they simply masks designed to veil some hidden meaning? The former supposition is altogether untenable for two reasons, viz.:-- I. The Hindus were acquainted with the precession of the equinoxes, as may he easily seen from their work on Astronomy, and from the almanacs published by Hindu astronomers. Consequently they were fully aware of the fact that the constellations in the various Zodiacal divisions were not fixed. They could not, therefore, have assigned particular shapes to these shifting groups of fixed stars with reference to the divisions of the Zodiac. But the names indicating the Zodiacal signs have all along remained unaltered. It is to be inferred, therefore, that the names given to the various signs have no connection whatever with the configurations of the constellations included in them. II. The names assigned to these signs by the ancient Sanskrit writers and their exoteric or literal meanings are as follows:-- The Names of the Signs ....... Their Exoteric or Literal Meanings 1. Mesha ........................... Ram, or Aries. 2. Rishabha .......................Bull, or Taurus. 3. Mithunam ................... Twins, or Gemini (male and female). 4. Karkataka ...................... Crab, or Cancer. 5. Simha .............................. Lion, or Leo. 6. Kanya ............................. Virgin or Virgo.* 7. Tula .......................... Balance, or Libra. 8. Vrischika ..................... Scorpion, or Scorpio. 9. Dhanus ....................... Archer, or Sagittarius. 10. Makara ........... The Goat, or Capricornus (Crocodile, in Sanskrit). 11. Kumbha .................. Water-bearer, or Aquarius. 12. Meenam ................. Fishes, or Pisces. The figures of the constellations included in the signs at the time the division was first made do not at all resemble the shapes of the animals, reptiles and other objects denoted by the names given them. The truth of this assertion can be ascertained by examining the configurations of the various constellations. Unless the shape of the crocodile** or the crab is called up by the observer's imagination, there is very little chance of the stars themselves suggesting to his idea that figure, upon the blue canopy of the starry firmament. -------- * Virgo-Scorpio, when none but the initiates knew there were twelve signs. Virgo-Scorpio was then followed for the profane by Sagittarius. At the middle or junction-point where now stands Libra and at the sign now called Virgo, two mystical signs were inserted which remained unintelligible to the profane.--Ed. Theos. ** This constellation was never called Crocodile by the ancient Western astronomers, who described it as a horned goat and called it so-- Capricornus.--Ed. Theos. -------- If, then, the constellations have nothing to do with the origin of the names by which the Zodiacal divisions are indicated, we have to seek for some other source which might have given rise to these appellations. It becomes my object to unravel a portion of the mystery connected with these Zodiacal signs, as also to disclose a portion of the sublime conception of the ancient Hindu philosophy which gave rise to them. The signs of the Zodiac have more than one meaning. From one point of view they represent the different stages of evolution up to the time the present material universe with the five elements came into phenomenal existence. As the author of "Isis Unveiled" has stated in the second volume of her admirable work, "The key should be turned seven times" to understand the whole philosophy underlying these signs. But I shall wind it only once and give the contents of the first chapter of the History of Evolution. It is very fortunate that the Sanskrit names assigned to the various divisions by Aryan philosophers contain within themselves the key to the solution of the problem. Those of my readers who have studied to some extent the ancient "Mantra" and the "Tantra Sastras" * of India, would have seen that very often Sanskrit words are made to convey a certain hidden meaning by means of well-known pre-arranged methods and a tacit convention, while their literal significance is something quite different from the implied meaning. --------- * Works on Incantation and Magic. --------- The following are some of the rules which may help an inquirer in ferreting out the deep significance of ancient Sanskrit nomenclature to be found in the old Aryan myths and allegories: 1. Find out the synonyms of the word used which have other meanings. 2. Find out the numerical value of the letters composing the word according to the methods given in ancient Tantrika works. 3. Examine the ancient myths or allegories, if there are any, which have any special connection with the word in question. 4. Permute the different syllables composing the word and examine the new combinations that will thus be formed and their meanings, &c. &c. I shall now apply some of the above given rules to the names of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. I. Mesha.--One of the synonyms of this word is Aja. Now, Aja literally means that which has no birth, and is applied to the Eternal Brahma in certain portions of the Upanishads. So, the first sign is intended to represent Parabrahma, the self-existent, eternal, self-sufficient cause of all. II. Rishabham.--This word is used in several places in the Upanishads and the Veda to mean Pranava (Aum). Sankaracharya has so interpreted it in several portions of his commentary.* -------- * Example, "Rishabhasya--Chandasam Rishabhasya Pradhanasya Pranavasya." -------- III. Mithuna.--As the word plainly indicates, this sign is intended to represent the first androgyne, the Ardhanareeswara, the bisexual Sephira--Adam Kadmon. IV. Karkataka.--When the syllables are converted into the corresponding numbers, according to the general mode of transmutation so often alluded to in Mantra Shastra, the word in question will be represented by ////. This sign then is evidently intended to represent the sacred Tetragram; the Parabrahmadharaka; the Pranava resolved into four separate entities corresponding to its four Matras; the four Avasthas indicated by Jagrata (waking) Avastha, Swapna (dreaming) Avastha, Sushupti (deep sleep) Avastha, and Turiya (the last stage, i.e., Nirvana) Avastha (as yet in potentiality); the four states of Brahma called Vaiswanara, Taijasa (or Hiranyagarbha), Pragna, and Iswara, and represented by Brahma, Vishna, Maheswara, and Sadasiva; the four aspects of Parabrahma, as Sthula (gross), Sukshma (subtle), Vija (seed), and Sakshi (witness); the four stages or conditions of the Sacred Word, named Para, Pasyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari; Nadam, Bindu, Sakti and Kala. This sign completes the first quaternary. V. Simha.--This word contains a world of occult meaning within itself; and it may not be prudent on my part to disclose the whole of its meaning now. It will be sufficient for the present purpose to give a general indication of its significance. Two of its synonymous terms are Panchasyam and Hari, and its number in the order of the Zodiacal divisions (being the fifth sign) points clearly to the former synonym. This synonym--Panchasyam--shows that the sign is intended to represent the five Brahmas--viz., Isanam, Aghoram, Tatpurusham, Vamadevam, and Sadyojatam:--the five Buddhas. The second synonym shows it to be Narayana, the Jivatma or Pratyagatma. The Sukarahasy Upanishad will show that the ancient Aryan philosophers looked upon Narayana as the Jivatma.* The Vaishnavites may not admit it. But as an Advaiti, I look upon Jivatma as identical with Paramatma in its real essence when stripped of its illusory attributes created by Agnanam or Avidya--ignorance. --------- * In its lowest or most material state, as the life-principle which animates the material bodies of the animal and vegetable worlds, &c. --Ed. Theos. --------- The Jivatma is correctly placed in the fifth sign counting from Mesham, as the fifth sign is the putrasthanam or the son's house according to the rules of Hindu Astrology. The sign in question represents Jivatma-- the son of Paramatma as it were. (I may also add that it represents the real Christ, the anointed pure spirit, though many Christians may frown at this interpretation.)* I will only add here that unless the nature of this sign is fully comprehended it will be impossible to understand the real order of the next three signs and their full significance. The elements or entities that have merely a potential existence in this sign become distinct separate entities in the next three signs. Their union into a single entity leads to the destruction of the phenomenal universe, and the recognition of the pure Spirit and their separation has the contrary effect. It leads to material earth-bound existence and brings into view the picture gallery of Avidya (Ignorance) or Maya (Illusion). If the real orthography of the name by which the sign in question is indicated is properly understood, it will readily be seen that the next three signs are not what they ought to be. -------- * Nevertheless it is a true one. The Jiv-atma in the Microcosm (man) is the same spiritual essence which animates the Macrocosm (universe), the differentiation, or specific difference between the two Jivatmas presenting itself but in the two states or conditions of the same and one Force. Hence, "this son of Paramatma" is an eternal correlation of the Father-Cause. Purusha manifesting himself as Brahma of the "golden egg" and becoming Viradja--the universe. We are "all born of Aditi from the water" (Hymns of the Maruts, X. 63, 2), and "Being was born from not-being" (Rig-Veda, Mandala I, Sukta 166).--Ed. Theos. ----------- Kanya or Virgo and Vrischika or Scorpio should form one single sign, and Thula must follow the said sign if it is at all necessary to have a separate sign of that name. But a separation between Kanya and Vrischika was effected by interposing the sign Tula between the two. The object of this separation will be understood on examining the meaning of the three signs. VI. Kanya.--Means a virgin and represents Sakti or Mahamaya. The sign in question is the sixth Rasi or division, and indicates that there are six primary forces in Nature. These forces have different sets of names in Sanskrit philosophy. According to one system of nomenclature, they are called by the following names*:--(1) Parasakty; (2) Gnanasakti; (3) Itchasakti (will-power); (4) Kriytisakti; (5) Kundalinisakti; and (6) Matrikasakti. The six forces are in their unity represented by the Astral Light.** --------- * Parasakti:--Literally the great or supreme force or power. It means and includes the powers of light and heat. Gnanasakti:--Literally the power of intellect or the power of real wisdom or knowledge. It has two aspects. I. The following are some of its manifestations when placed under the influence or control of material conditions. (a) The power of the mind in interpreting our sensations; (b) Its power in recalling past ideas (memory) and raising future expectation; (c) Its power as exhibited in what are called by modern psychologists "the laws of association," which enables it to form persisting connections between various groups of sensations and possibilities of sensations, and thus generate the notion or idea of an external object; (d) Its power in connecting our ideas together by the mysterious link of memory, and thus generating the notion of self or individuality. II. The following are some of its manifestations when liberated from the bonds of matter:-- (a) Clairvoyance. (b) Pyschometry. Itchasakti:--Literally the power of the will. Its most ordinary manifestation is the generation of certain nerve currents which set in motion such muscles as are required for the accomplishment of the desired object. Kriyasakti:--The mysterious power of thought which enables it to produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own inherent energy. The ancients held that any idea will manifest itself externally if one's attention is deeply concentrated upon it. Similarly an intense volition will be followed by the desired result. A Yogi generally performs his wonders by means of Itchasakti and Kriyasakti. Kundalinisakti:--Literally the power or force which moves in a serpentine or curved path. It is the universal life-principle which everywhere manifests itself in Nature. This force includes in itself the two great forces of attraction and repulsion. Electricity and magnetism are but manifestations of it. This is the power or force which brings about that "continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations" which is the essence of life according to Herbert Spencer, and that "continuous adjustment of external relations to internal relations" which is the basis of transmigration of souls or punarjanmam (re-birth) according to the doctrines of the ancient Hindu philosophers. A Yogi must thoroughly subjugate this power or force before he can attain moksham. This force is, in fact, the great serpent of the Bible. Matrikasakti:--Literally the force or power of letters or speech or music. The whole of the ancient Mantra Shastra has this force or power in all its manifestations for its subject-matter. The power of The Word which Jesus Christ speaks of is a manifestation of this Sakti. The influence of its music is one of its ordinary manifestations. The power of the mirific ineffable name is the crown of this Sakti. Modern science has but partly investigated the first, second and fifth of the forces or powers above named, but it is altogether in the dark as regards the remaining powers. ** Even the very name of Kanya (Virgin) shows how all the ancient esoteric systems agreed in all their fundamental doctrines. The Kabalists and the Hermetic philosophers call the Astral Light the "heavenly or celestial Virgin." The Astral Light in its unity is the 7th. Hence the seven principles diffused in every unity or the 6 and one--two triangles and a crown.--Ed. Theos. ----------- VII. Tula.--When represented by numbers according to the method above alluded to, this word will be converted into 36. This sign, therefore, is evidently intended to represent the 36 Tatwams. (The number of Tatwams is different according to the views of different philosophers but by Sakteyas generally and by several of the ancient Rishis, such as Agastya, Dvrasa and Parasurama, &c., the number of Tatwams has been stated to be 36). Jivatma differs from Paramatma, or to state the same thing in other words, "Baddha" differs from "Mukta" * in being encased as it were within these 36 Tatwams, while the other is free. This sign prepares the way to earthly Adam to Nara. As the emblem of Nara it is properly placed as the seventh sign. --------- * As the Infinite differs from the Finite and the Unconditioned from the Conditioned.--Ed. Theos. --------- VIII. Vrischika.--It is stated by ancient philosophers that the sun when located in this Rasi or sign is called by the name of Vishnu (see the 12th Skandha of Bhagavata). This sign is intended to represent Vishnu. Vishnu literally means that which is expanded--expanded as Viswam or Universe. Properly speaking, Viswam itself is Vishnu (see Sankaracharya's commentary on Vishnusahasranamam). I have already intimated that Vishnu represents the Swapnavastha or the Dreaming State. The sign in question properly signifies the universe in thought or the universe in the divine conception. It is properly placed as the sign opposite to Rishabham or Pranava. Analysis from Pranava downwards leads to the Universe of Thought, and synthesis from the latter upwards leads to Pranava (Aum). We have now arrived at the ideal state of the universe previous to its coming into material existence. The expansion of the Vija or primitive germ into the universe is only possible when the 36 "Tatwams" * are interposed between the Maya and Jivatma. The dreaming state is induced through the instrumentality of these "Tatwams." It is the existence of these Tatwams that brings Hamsa into existence. The elimination of these Tatwams marks the beginning of the synthesis towards Pranava and Brahmam and converts Hamsa into Soham. As it is intended to represent the different stages of evolution from Brahmam downwards to the material universe, the three signs Kanya, Tula, and Vrischika are placed in the order in which they now stand as three separate signs. IX. Dhanus (Sagittarius).--When represented in numbers the name is equivalent to 9, and the division in question is the 9th division counting from Mesha. The sign, therefore, clearly indicates the 9 Brahmas--the 9 Parajapatis who assisted the Demiurgus in constructing the material universe. X. Makara.--There is some difficulty in interpreting this word; nevertheless it contains within itself the clue to its correct interpretation. The letter Ma is equivalent to number 5, and Kara means hand. Now in Sanskrit Thribhujam means a triangle, bhujam or karam (both are synonymous) being understood to mean a side. So, Makaram or Panchakaram means a Pentagon.** ---------- * 36 is three times 12, or 9 Tetraktis, or 12 Triads, the most sacred number in the Kabalistic and Pythagorean numerals.--Ed. Theos. ** The five-pointed star or pentagram represented the five limbs of man.--Ed. Theos. ---------- Now, Makaram is the tenth sign, and the term "Dasadisa" is generally used by Sanskrit writers to denote the faces or sides of the universe. The sign in question is intended to represent the faces of the universe, and indicates that the figure of the universe is bounded by Pentagons. If we take the pentagons as regular pentagons (on the presumption or supposition that the universe is symmetrically constructed) the figure of the material universe will, of course, be a Dodecahedron, the geometrical model imitated by the Demiurgus in constructing the material universe. If Tula was subsequently invented, and if instead of the three signs "Kanya," "Tula," and "Vrischikam," there had existed formerly only one sign combining in itself Kanya and Vrischika, the sign now under consideration was the eighth sign under the old system, and it is a significant fact that Sanskrit writers generally speak also of "Ashtadisa" or eight faces bounding space. It is quite possible that the number of disa might have been altered from 8 to 10 when the formerly existing Virgo-Scorpio was split up into three separate signs. Again, Kara may be taken to represent the projecting triangles of the five-pointed star. This figure may also be called a kind of regular pentagon (see Todhunter's "Spherical Trigonometry," p. 143). If this interpretation is accepted, the Rasi or sign in question represents the "microcosm." But the "microcosm" or the world of thought is really represented by Vrischika. From an objective point of view the "microcosm" is represented by the human body. Makaram may be taken to represent simultaneously both the microcosm and the macrocosm, as external objects of perception. In connection with this sign I shall state a few important facts which I beg to submit for the consideration of those who are interested in examining the ancient occult sciences of India. It is generally held by the ancient philosophers that the macrocosm is similar to the microcosm in having a Sthula Sariram and a Suksma Sariram. The visible universe is the Sthula Sariram of Viswam; the ancient philosophers held that as a substratum for this visible universe, there is another universe-- perhaps we may call it the universe of Astral Light--the real universe of Noumena, the soul as it were of this visible universe. It is darkly hinted in certain passages of the Veda and the Upanishads that this hidden universe of Astral Light is to be represented by an Icosahedron. The connection between an Icosahedron and a Dodecahedron is something very peculiar and interesting, though the figures seem to be so very dissimilar to each other. The connection may be understood by the under-mentioned geometrical construction. Describe a Sphere about an Icosahedron; let perpendiculars be drawn from the centre of the Sphere on its faces and produced to meet the surface of the Sphere. Now, if the points of intersection be joined, a Dodecahedron is formed within the Sphere. By a similar process an Icosahedron may be constructed from a Dodecahedron. (See Todhunter's "Spherical Trigonometry," p. 141, art. 193). The figure constructed as above described will represent the universe of matter and the universe of Astral Light as they actually exist. I shall not now, however, proceed to show how the universe of Astral Light may be considered under the symbol of an Icosahedron. I shall only state that this conception of the Aryan philosophers is not to be looked upon as mere "theological twaddle" or as the outcome of wild fancy. The real significance of the conception in question can, I believe, be explained by reference to the psychology and the physical science of the ancients. But I must stop here and proceed to consider the meaning of the remaining two signs. XI. Kumbha (or Aquarius).--When represented by numbers, the word is equivalent to 14. It can be easily perceived then that the division in question is intended to represent the "Chaturdasa Bhuvanam," or the 14 lokas spoken of in Sanskrit writings. XII. Mina (or Pisces).--This word again is represented by 5 when written in numbers, and is evidently intended to convey the idea of Panchamahabhutams or the 5 elements. The sign also suggests that water (not the ordinary water, but the universal solvent of the ancient alchemists) is the most important amongst the said elements. I have now finished the task which I have set to myself in this article. My purpose is not to explain the ancient theory of evolution itself, but to show the connection between that theory and the Zodiacal divisions. I have herein brought to light but a very small portion of the philosophy imbedded in these signs. The veil that was dexterously thrown over certain portions of the mystery connected with these signs by the ancient philosophers will never be lifted up for the amusement or edification of the uninitiated public. Now to summarize the facts stated in this article, the contents of the first chapter of the history of this universe are as follows: 1. The self-existent, eternal Brahmam. 2. Pranava (Aum). 3. The androgyne Brahma, or the bisexual Sephira-Adam Kadmon. 4. The Sacred Tetragram--the four matras of Pranava--the four avasthas--the four states of Brahma--the Sacred Dharaka. 5. The five Brahmas--the five Buddhas representing in their totality the Jivatma. 6. The Astral Light--the holy Virgin--the six forces in Nature. 7. The thirty-six Tatwams born of Avidya. 8. The universe in thought--the Swapna Avastha--the microcosm looked at from a subjective point of view. 9. The nine Prajapatis--the assistants of the Demiurgus.* 10. The shape of the material universe in the mind of the Demiurgus-- the DODECAHEDRON. 11. The fourteen lokas. 12. The five elements. -------- * The nine Kabalistic Sephiroths emanated from Sephira the 10th and the head Sephiroth are identical. Three trinities or triads with their emanative principle form the Pythagorean mystic Decad, the sum of all which represents the whole Kosmos.--Ed. Theos. -------- The history of creation and of this world from its beginning up to the present time is composed of seven chapters. The seventh chapter is not yet completed. --T. Subba Row Triplicane, Madras, September 14, 1881 The Sishal and Bhukailas Yogis We are indebted to the kindness of the learned President of the Adi Brahmo Samaji for the following accounts of two Yogis, of whom one performed the extraordinary feats of raising his body by will power, and keeping it suspended in the air without visible support. The Yoga posture for meditation or concentration of the mind upon spiritual things is called Asana. There are various of these modes of sitting, such as Padmasan, &c. &c. Babu Rajnarain Bose translated this narrative from a very old number of the Tatwabodhini Patrika, the Calcutta organ of the Brahmo Samaj. The writer was Babu Akkhaya Kumar Dalta, then editor of the Patrika, of whom Babu Rajnarain speaks in the following high terms--"A very truth-loving and painstaking man; very fond of observing strict accuracy in the details of a description." Sishal Yogi A few years ago, a Deccan Yogi, named Sishal, was seen at Madras, by many Hindus and Englishmen, to raise his Asana, or seat, up into the air. The picture of the Yogi, showing his mode of seating, and other particulars connected with him, may be found in the Saturday Magazine on page 28. His whole body seated in air, only his right hand lightly touched a deer skin, rolled up in the form of a tube, and attached to a brazen rod which was firmly stuck into a wooden board resting on four legs. In this position the Yogi used to perform his japa (mystical meditation), with his eyes half shut. At the time of his ascending to his aerial seat, and also when he descended from it, his disciples used to cover him with a blanket. The Tatwabodhini Patrika, Chaitra, 1768 Sakabda, corresponding to March 1847. The Bhukailas Yogi The extraordinary character of the holy man who was brought to Bhukailas, in Kidderpore, about 14 years ago, may still be remembered by many. In the month of Asar, 1754 Sakabda (1834 A.C.), he was brought to Bhukailas from Shirpur, where he was under the charge of Hari Singh, the durwan (porter) of Mr. Jones. He kept his eyes closed, and went without food and drink, for three consecutive days, after which a small quantity of milk was forcibly poured down his throat. He never took any food that was not forced upon him. He seemed always without external consciousness. To remove this condition Dr. Graham applied ammonia to his nostrils; but it only produced tremblings in the body, and did not break his Yoga state. Three days passed before he could be made to speak. He said that his name was Dulla Nabab, and when annoyed, he uttered a single word, from which it was inferred that he was a Punjabi. When he was laid up with gout Dr. Graham attended him, but he refused to take medicine, either in the form of powder or mixture. He was cured of the disease only by the application of ointments and liniments prescribed by the doctor. He died in the month of Chaitra 1755 Sakabda, of a choleric affection.*--The Tatwabodhini Patrika, Chaitra, 1768 Sakabda, corresponding to March, 1847 A.C. -------- * The above particulars of this holy man have been obtained on unexceptionable testimony.--Ed. T.B.P. -------------------- PHILOSOPHICAL True and False Personality The title prefixed to the following observations may well have suggested a more metaphysical treatment of the subject than can be attempted on the present occasion. The doctrine of the trinity, or trichotomy of man, which distinguishes soul from spirit, comes to us with such weighty, venerable, and even sacred authority, that we may well be content, for the moment, with confirmations that should be intelligible to all, forbearing the abstruser questions which have divided minds of the highest philosophical capacity. We will not now inquire whether the difference is one of states or of entities; whether the phenomenal or mind consciousness is merely the external condition of one indivisible Ego, or has its origin and nature in an altogether different principle; the Spirit, or immortal part of us, being of Divine birth, while the senses and understanding, with the consciousness--Ahankara--thereto appertaining, are from an Anima Mundi, or what in the Sankhya philosophy is called Prakriti. My utmost expectations will have been exceeded if it should happen that any considerations here offered should throw even a faint suggestive light upon the bearings of this great problem. It may be that the mere irreconcilability of all that is characteristic of the temporal Ego with the conditions of the superior life--if that can be made apparent--will incline you to regard the latter rather as the Redeemer, that has indeed to be born within us for our salvation and our immortality, than as the inmost, central, and inseparable principle of our phenomenal life. It may be that by the light of such reflections the sense of identity will present no insuperable difficulty to the conception of its contingency, or to the recognition that the mere consciousness which fails to attach itself to a higher principle is no guarantee of an eternal individuality. It is only by a survey of individuality, regarded as the source of all our affections, thoughts, and actions, that we can realize its intrinsic worthlessness; and only when we have brought ourselves to a real and felt acknowledgment of that fact, can we accept with full understanding those "hard sayings" of sacred authority which bid us "die to ourselves," and which proclaim the necessity of a veritable new birth. This mystic death and birth is the key-note of all profound religious teaching; and that which distinguishes the ordinary religious mind from spiritual insight is just the tendency to interpret these expressions as merely figurative, or, indeed, to overlook them altogether. Of all the reproaches which modern Spiritualism, with the prospect it is thought to hold out of an individual temporal immortality, has had to encounter, there is none that we can less afford to neglect than that which represents it as an ideal essentially egotistical and borne. True it is that our critics do us injustice through ignorance of the enlarged views as to the progress of the soul in which the speculations of individual Spiritualists coincide with many remarkable spirit teachings. These are, undoubtedly, a great advance upon popular theological opinions, while some of them go far to satisfy the claim of Spiritualism to be regarded as a religion. Nevertheless, that slight estimate of individuality, as we know it, which in one view too easily allies itself to materialism, is also the attitude of spiritual idealism, and is seemingly at variance with the excessive value placed by Spiritualists on the discovery of our mere psychic survival. The idealist may recognise this survival; but, whether he does so or not, he occupies a post of vantage when he tells us that it is of no ultimate importance. For he, like the Spiritualist who proclaims his "proof palpable of immortality," is thinking of the mere temporal, self-regarding consciousness--its sensibilities, desires, gratifications, and affections--which are unimportant absolutely, that is to say, their importance is relative solely to the individual. There is, indeed, no more characteristic outbirth of materialism than that which makes a teleological centre of the individual. Ideas have become mere abstractions; the only reality is the infinitely little. Thus utilitarianism can see in the State only a collection of individuals whose "greatest happiness," mutually limited by nice adjustment to the requirements of "the greatest numbers," becomes the supreme end of government and law. And it cannot, I think, be pretended that Spiritualists in general have advanced beyond this substitution of a relative for an absolute standard. Their "glad tidings of great joy" are not truly religious. They have regard to the perpetuation in time of that lower consciousness whose manifestations, delights, and activity are in time, and of time alone. Their glorious message is not essentially different from that which we can conceive as brought to us by some great alchemist, who had discovered the secret of conferring upon us and upon our friends a mundane perpetuity of youth and health. Its highest religious claim is that it enlarges the horizon of our opportunities. As such, then, let us hail it with gratitude and relief; but, on peril of our salvation, if I may not say of our immortality, let us not repose upon a prospect which is, at best, one of renewed labours, and trials, and efforts to be free even of that very life whose only value is opportunity. To estimate the value of individuality, we cannot do better than regard man in his several mundane relations, supposing that either of these might become the central, actuating focus of his being--his "ruling love," as Swedenborg would call it--displacing his mere egoism, or self-love, thrusting that more to the circumference, and identifying him, so to speak, with that circle of interests to which all his energies and affections relate. Outside this substituted Ego we are to suppose that he has no conscience, no desire, no will. Just as the entirely selfish man views the whole of life, so far as it can really interest him solely in relation to his individual well-being, so our supposed man of a family, of a society, of a Church, or a State, has no eye for any truth or any interest more abstract or more individual than that of which he may be rightly termed the incarnation. History shows approximations to this ideal man. Such a one, for instance, I conceive to have been Loyola; such another, possibly, is Bismarck. Now these men have ceased to be individuals in their own eyes, so far as concerns any value attaching to their own special individualities. They are devotees. A certain "conversion" has been effected, by which from mere individuals they have become "representative" men. And we--the individuals--esteem them precisely in proportion to the remoteness from individualism of the spirit that actuates them. As the circle of interests to which they are "devoted" enlarges--that is to say, as the dross of individualism is purged away--we accord them indulgence, respect, admiration and love. From self to the family, from the family to the sect or society, from the sect or society to the Church (in no denominational sense) and State, there is the ascending scale and widening circle, the successive transitions which make the worth of an individual depend on the more or less complete subversion of his individuality by a more comprehensive soul or spirit. The very modesty which suppresses, as far as possible, the personal pronoun in our addresses to others, testifies to our sense that we are hiding away some utterly insignificant and unworthy thing; a thing that has no business even to be, except in that utter privacy which is rather a sleep and a rest than living. Well, but in the above instances, even those most remote from sordid individuality, we have fallen far short of that ideal in which the very conception of the partial, the atomic, is lost in the abstraction of universal being, transfigured in the glory of a Divine personality. You are familiar with Swedenborg's distinction between discrete and continuous degrees. Hitherto we have seen how man--the individual--may rise continuously by throwing himself heart and soul into the living interests of the world, and lose his own limitations by adoption of a larger mundane spirit. But still he has but ascended nearer to his own mundane source, that soul of the world, or Prakriti, to which, if I must not too literally insist on it, I may still resort as a convenient figure. To transcend it, he must advance by the discrete degree. No simple "bettering" of the ordinary self, which leaves it alive, as the focus--the French word "foyer" is the more expressive--of his thoughts and actions; not even that identification with higher interests in the world's plane just spoken of, is, or can progressively become, in the least adequate to the realization of his Divine ideal. This "bettering" of our present nature, it alone being recognized as essential, albeit capable of "improvement," is a commonplace, and to use a now familiar term a "Philistine," conception. It is the substitution of the continuous for the discrete degree. It is a compromise with our dear old familiar selves. "And Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them; but everything that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly." We know how little acceptable that compromise was to the God of Israel; and no illustration can be more apt than this narrative, which we may well, as we would fain, believe to be rather typical than historical. Typical of that indiscriminate and radical sacrifice, or "vastation," of our lower nature, which is insisted upon as the one thing needful by all, or nearly all,* the great religions of the world. No language could seem more purposely chosen to indicate that it is the individual nature itself, and not merely its accidental evils, that has to be abandoned and annihilated. It is not denied that what was spared was good; there is no suggestion of a universal infection of physical or moral evil; it is simply that what is good and useful relatively to a lower state of being must perish with it if the latter is to make way for something better. And the illustration is the more suitable in that the purpose of this paper is not ethical, but points to a metaphysical conclusion, though without any attempt at metaphysical exposition. There is no question here of moral distinctions; they are neither denied nor affirmed. According to the highest moral standard, 'A' may be a most virtuous and estimable person. According to the lowest, 'B' may be exactly the reverse. The moral interval between the two is within what I have called, following Swedenborg, the "continuous degree." And perhaps the distinction can be still better expressed by another reference to that Book which we theosophical students do not less regard, because we are disposed to protest against all exclusive pretensions of religious systems. -------- * Of the higher religious teachings of Mohammedanism I know next to nothing, and therefore cannot say if it should be excepted from the statement. -------- The good man who has, however, not yet attained his "son-ship of God" is "under the law"--that moral law which is educational and preparatory, "the schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ," our own Divine spirit, or higher personality. To conceive the difference between these two states is to apprehend exactly what is here meant by the false, temporal, and the true, eternal personality, and the sense in which the word personality is here intended to be understood. We do not know whether, when that great change has come over us, when that great work* of our lives has been accomplished--here or hereafter--we shall or shall not retain a sense of identity with our past, and forever discarded selves. In philosophical parlance, the "matter" will have gone, and the very "form" will have been changed. Our transcendental identity with the 'A' or 'B' that now is** must depend on that question, already disclaimed in this paper, whether the Divine spirit is our originally central essential being, or is an hypostasis. Now, being "under the law" implies that we do not act directly from our own will, but indirectly, that is, in willing obedience to another will. -------- * The "great work," so often mentioned by the hermetic philosophers, and which is exactly typified by the operation of alchemy, the conversion of the base metals to gold, is now well understood to refer to the analogous spiritual conversion. There is also good reason to believe that the material process was a real one. ** "A person may have won his immortal life, and remained the same inner self he was on earth, through eternity; but this does not imply necessarily that he must either remain the Mr. Smith or Brown he was on earth, or lose his individuality."--Isis Unveiled, vol. 1. p. 316. ---------- The will from which we should naturally act--our own will--is of course to be understood not as mere volition, but as our nature--our "ruling love," which makes such and such things agreeable to us, and others the reverse. As "under the law," this nature is kept in suspension, and because it is suspended only as to its activity and manifestation, and by no means abrogated, is the law--the substitution of a foreign will-- necessary for us. Our own will or nature is still central; that which we obey by effort and resistance to ourselves is more circumferential or hypostatic. Constancy in this obedience and resistance tends to draw the circumferential will more and more to the centre, till there ensues that "explosion," as St. Martin called it, by which our natural will is for ever dispersed and annihilated by contact with the divine, and the latter henceforth becomes our very own. Thus has "the schoolmaster" brought us unto "Christ," and if by "Christ" we understand no historically divine individual, but the logos, word, or manifestation of God in us--then we have, I believe, the essential truth that was taught in the Vedanta, by Kapila, by Buddha, by Confucius, by Plato, and by Jesus. There is another presentation of possibly the same truth, for a reference to which I am indebted to our brother J.W. Farquhar. It is from Swedenborg, in the "Apocalypse Explained," No. 57:--"Every man has an inferior or exterior mind, and a mind superior or interior. These two minds are altogether distinct. By the inferior mind man is in the natural world together with men there; but by the superior mind he is in the spiritual world with the angels there. These two minds are so distinct that man so long as he lives in the world does not know what is performing within himself in his superior mind; but when he becomes a spirit, which is immediately after death, he does not know what is performing in his mind." The consciousness of the "superior mind," as the result of mere separation from the earthly body, certainly does not suggest that sublime condition which implies separation from so much more than the outer garment of flesh, but otherwise the distinction between the two lives, or minds, seems to correspond with that now under consideration. What is it that strikes us especially about this substitution of the divine-human for the human-natural personality? Is it not the loss of individualism? (Individualism, pray observe, not individuality.) There are certain sayings of Jesus which have probably offended many in their hearts, though they may not have dared to acknowledge such a feeling to themselves: "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" and those other disclaimers of special ties and relationships which mar the perfect sympathy of our reverence. There is something awful and incomprehensible to us in this repudiation of individualism, even in its most amiable relations. But it is in the Aryan philosophies that we see this negation of all that we associate with individual life most emphatically and explicitly insisted on. It is, indeed, the impossibility of otherwise than thus negatively characterizing the soul that has attained Moksha (deliverance from bonds) which has caused the Hindu consummation to be regarded as the loss of individuality and conscious existence. It is just because we cannot easily dissociate individuality from individualism that we turn from the sublime conception of primitive philosophy as from what concerns us as little as the ceaseless activity and germination in other brains of thought once thrown off and severed from the thinking source, which is the immortality promised by Mr. Frederick Harrison to the select specimens of humanity whose thoughts have any reproductive power. It is not a mere preference of nothingness, or unconscious absorption, to limitation that inspires the intense yearning of the Hindu mind for Nirvana. Even in the Upanishads there are many evidences of a contrary belief, while in the Sankhya the aphorisms of Kapila unmistakably vindicate the individuality of soul (spirit). Individual consciousness is maintained, perhaps infinitely intensified, but its "matter" is no longer personal. Only try to realize what "freedom from desire," the favourite phrase in which individualism is negated in these systems, implies. Even in that form of devotion which consists in action, the soul is warned in the Bhagavad-Gita that it must be indifferent to results. Modern Spiritualism itself testifies to something of the same sort. Thus we are told by one of its most gifted and experienced champions, "Sometimes the evidence will come from an impersonal source, from some instructor who has passed through the plane on which individuality is demonstrable." (M.A. (Oxon.), "Spirit Identity," p. 7.) Again, "And if he" (the investigator) "penetrates far enough, he will find himself in a region for which his present embodied state unfits him: a region in which the very individuality is merged, and the highest and subtlest truths are not locked within one breast, but emanate from representative companies whose spheres of life are interblended." (Id., p. 15.) By this "interblending" is of course meant only a perfect sympathy and community of thought; and I should doubtless misrepresent the author quoted were I to claim an entire identity of the idea he wishes to convey, and that now under consideration. Yet what, after all, is sympathy but the loosening of that hard "astringent" quality (to use Bohme's phrase) wherein individualism consists? And just as in true sympathy, the partial suppression of individualism and of what is distinctive, we experience a superior delight and intensity of being, so it may be that in parting with all that shuts us up in the spiritual penthouse of an Ego--all, without exception or reserve--we may for the first time know what true life is, and what are its ineffable privileges. Yet it is not on this ground that acceptance can be hoped for the conception of immortality here crudely and vaguely presented ill contrast to that bourgeois eternity of individualism and the family affections, which is probably the great charm of Spiritualism to the majority of its proselytes. It is doubtful whether the things that "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard," have ever taken stronghold of the imagination, or reconciled it to the loss of all that is definitely associated with the Joy and movement of living. Not as consummate bliss can the dweller on the lower plane presume to command that transcendent life. At the utmost he can but echo the revelation that came to the troubled mind in "Sartor Resartus," "A man may do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness." It is no sublimation of hope, but the necessities of thought that compel us to seek the condition of true being and immortality elsewhere than in the satisfactions of individualism. True personality can only subsist in consciousness by participation of that of which we can only say that it is the very negation of individuality in any sense in which individuality can be conceived by us. What is the content or "matter" of consciousness we cannot define, save by vaguely calling it ideal. But we can say that in that region individual interests and concerns will find no place. Nay, more, we can affirm that only then has the influx of the new life a free channel when the obstructions of individualism are already removed. Hence the necessity of the mystic death, which is as truly a death as that which restores our physical body to the elements. "Neither I am, nor is aught mine, nor do I exist," a passage which has been well explained by a Hindu Theosophist (Peary Chand Mittra), as meaning "that when the spiritual state is arrived at, I and mine, which belong to the finite mind, cease, and the soul, living in the universum and participating in infinity with God, manifests its infinite state." I cannot refrain from quoting the following passage from the same instructive writer:-- Every human being has a soul which, while not separable from the brain or nerves, is mind or jivatma, or sentient soul, but when regenerated or spiritualized by yoga, it is free from bondage and manifests the divine essence. It rises above all phenomenal states--joy, sorrow, grief, fear, hope, and in fact all states resulting in pain or pleasure, and becomes blissful, realizing immortality, infinitude and felicity of wisdom within itself. The sentient soul is nervous, sensational, emotional, phenomenal, and impressional. It constitutes the natural life and is finite. The soul and the non-soul are thus the two landmarks. What is non-soul is prakriti, or created. It is not the lot of every one to know what soul is, and therefore millions live and die possessing minds cultivated in intellect and feeling, but not raised to the soul state. In proportion as one's soul is emancipated from prakriti or sensuous bondage, in that proportion his approximation to the soul state is attained; and it is this that constitutes disparities in the intellectual, moral, and religious culture of human beings and their consequent approximation to God.--Spiritual Stray Leaves, Calcutta, 1879. He also cites some words of Fichte, which prove that the like conclusion is reached in the philosophy of Western idealism: "The real spirit which comes to itself in human consciousness is to be regarded as an impersonal pneuma--universal reason, nay, as the spirit of God Himself; and the good of man's whole development, therefore, can be no other than to substitute the universal for the individual consciousness." That there may be, and are affirmed to be, intermediate stages, states, or discrete degrees, will, of course, be understood. The aim of this paper has been to call attention to the abstract condition of the immortalized consciousness; negatively it is true, but it is on this very account more suggestive of practical applications. The connection of the Theosophical Society with the Spiritualist movement is so intimately sympathetic, that I hope one of these may he pointed out without offence. It is that immortality cannot be phenomenally demonstrated. What I have called psychic survival can be, and probably is. But immortality is the attainment of a state, and that state the very negation of phenomenal existence. Another consequence refers to the direction our culture should take. We have to compose ourselves to death. Nothing less. We are each of us a complex of desires, passions, interests, modes of thinking and feeling, opinions, prejudices, judgment of others, likings and dislikings, affections, aims public and private. These things, and whatever else constitutes, the recognizable content of our present temporal individuality, are all in derogation of our ideal of impersonal being--saving consciousness, the manifestation of being. In some minute, imperfect, relative, and almost worthless sense we may do right in many of our judgments, and be amiable in many of our sympathies and affections. We cannot be sure even of this. Only people unhabituated to introspection and self-analysis are quite sure of it. These are ever those who are loudest in their censures, and most dogmatic in their opinionative utterances. In some coarse, rude fashion they are useful, it may be indispensable, to the world's work, which is not ours, save in a transcendental sense and operation. We have to strip ourselves of all that, and to seek perfect passionless tranquillity. Then we may hope to die. Meditation, if it be deep, and long, and frequent enough, will teach even our practical Western mind to understand the Hindu mind in its yearning for Nirvana. One infinitesimal atom of the great conglomerate of humanity, who enjoys the temporal, sensual life, with its gratifications and excitements, as much as most, will testify with unaffected sincerity that he would rather be annihilated altogether than remain for ever what he knows himself to be, or even recognizably like it. And he is a very average moral specimen. I have heard it said, "The world's life and business would come to an end, there would be an end to all its healthy activity, an end of commerce, arts, manufactures, social intercourse, government, law, and science, if we were all to devote ourselves to the practice of Yoga, which is pretty much what your ideal comes to." And the criticism is perfectly just and true. Only I believe it does not go quite far enough. Not only the activities of the world, but the phenomenal world itself, which is upheld in consciousness, would disappear or take new, more interior, more living, and more significant forms, at least for humanity, if the consciousness of humanity was itself raised to a superior state. Readers of St. Martin, and of that impressive book of the late James Hinton, "Man and his Dwelling-place," especially if they have also by chance been students of the idealistic philosophies, will not think this suggestion extravagant. If all the world were Yogis, the world would have no need of those special activities, the ultimate end and purpose of which, by-the-by, our critic would find it not easy to define. And if only a few withdraw, the world can spare them. Enough of that. Only let us not talk of this ideal of impersonal, universal being in individual consciousness as an unverified dream. Our sense and impatience of limitations are the guarantees that they are not final and insuperable. Whence is this power of standing outside myself, of recognizing the worthlessness of the pseudo--judgments, of the prejudices with their lurid colouring of passion, of the temporal interests, of the ephemeral appetites, of all the sensibilities of egoism, to which I nevertheless surrender myself so that they indeed seem myself? Through and above this troubled atmosphere I see a being, pure, passionless, rightly measuring the proportions and relations of things, for whom there is, properly speaking, no present, with its phantasms, falsities, and half-truths; who has nothing personal in the sense of being opposed to the whole of related personalities: who sees the truth rather than struggles logically towards it, and truth of which I can at present form no conception; whose activities are unimpeded by intellectual doubt, un-perverted by moral depravity, and who is indifferent to results, because he has not to guide his conduct by calculation of them, or by any estimate of their value. I look up to him with awe, because in being passionless he sometimes seems to me to be without love. Yet I know that this is not so; only that his love is diffused by its range, and elevated in abstraction beyond my gaze and comprehension. And I see in this being my ideal, my higher, my only true, in a word, my immortal self. --C.C. Massey Chastity Ideal woman is the most beautiful work of the evolution of forms (in our days she is very often only a beautiful work of art). A beautiful woman is the most attractive, charming, and lovely being that a man can imagine. I never saw a male being who could lay any claims to manly vigour, strength or courage, who was not an admirer of woman. Only a profligate, a coward or a sneak would hate women; a hero and a man admires woman, and is admired by her. Women's love belongs to a complete man. Then she smiles on him his human nature becomes aroused, his animal desires like little children begin to clamour for bread, they do not want to be starved, they want to satisfy their hunger. His whole soul flies towards the lovely being, which attracts him with almost irresistible force, and if his higher principles, his divine spirit, is not powerful enough to restrain him, his soul follows the temptations of his physical body. Once again the animal nature has subdued the divine. Woman rejoices in her victory, and man is ashamed of his weakness; and instead of being a representation of strength, he becomes an object of pity. To be truly powerful a man must retain his power and never for a moment lose it. To lose it is to surrender his divine nature to his animal nature; to restrain his desires and retain his power, is to assert his divine right, and to become more than a man--a god. Eliphas Levi says: "To be an object of attraction for all women, you must desire none;" and every one who has had a little experience of his own must know that he is right. Woman wants what she cannot get, and what she can get she does not want. Perhaps it is to the man endowed with spiritual power, that the Bible refers, when it says: "To him who has much, more shall be given, and from him who has little, that little shall be taken away." To become perfect it is not required that we should be born without any animal desires. Such a person would not be much above an idiot; he would be rightly despised and laughed at by every true man and woman; but we must obtain the power to control our desires, instead of being controlled by them; and here lies the true philosophy of temptation. If a man has no higher aim in life than to eat and drink and propagate his species; if all his aspirations and desires are centred in a wish of living a happy life in the bosom of his family; there can be no wrong if he follows the dictates of his nature and is satisfied with his lot. When he dies, his family will mourn, his friends will say he was a good fellow; they will give him a first-class funeral, and they will perhaps write on his tombstone something like what I once saw in a certain churchyard: Here is the grave of John McBride, He lived, got married, and died. And that will be the end of Mr. John McBride, until in another incarnation he will wake up again perhaps as Mr. John Smith, or Ramchandra Row, or Patrick O'Flannegan, to find himself on much the same level as he was before. But if a man has higher aims and objects in life, if he wants to avoid an endless cycle of re-incarnations, if he wants to become a master of his destiny, then must he first become a master of himself. How can he expect to be able to control the external forces of Nature, if he cannot control the few little natural forces that reside within his own insignificant body? To do this, it is not necessary that a man should run away from his wife and family, and leave them uncared for. Such a man would commence his spiritual career with an act of injustice,--an act that like Banquo's ghost would always haunt him and hinder him in his further progress. If a man has taken upon himself responsibilities, he is bound to fulfill them, and an act of cowardice would be a bad beginning for a work that requires courage. A celibate, who has no temptation and who has no one to care for but himself, has undoubtedly superior advantages for meditation and study. Being away from all irritating influences, he can lead what may be called a selfish life; because he looks out only for his own spiritual interest; but he has little opportunity to develop his will-power by resisting temptations of every kind. But the man who is surrounded by the latter, and is every day and every hour under the necessity of exercising his will-power to resist their surging violence, will, if he rightly uses these powers, become strong; he may not have as much opportunity for study as the celibate, being more engrossed in material cares; but when he rises up to a higher state in his next incarnation, his will-power will be more developed, and he will be in the possession of the password, which is CONTINENCE. A slave cannot become a commander, until after he becomes free. A man who is subject to his own animal desires, cannot command the animal nature of others. A muscle becomes developed by its use, an instinct or habit is strengthened in proportion as it is permitted to rule, a mental power becomes developed by practice, and the principle of will grows strong by exercise; and this is the use of temptations. To have strong passions and to overcome them, makes man a hero. The sexual instinct is the strongest of all, and he who vanquishes it, becomes a god. The human soul admires a beautiful form, and is therefore an idolater. The human spirit adores a principle, and is the true worshiper. Marriage is the union of the male spirit with the female soul for the purpose of propagating the species; but if in its place there is only a union of a male and a female body, then marriage becomes merely a brutal act, which lowers man and woman, not to the level of animals but below them; because animals are restricted to certain seasons for the exercise of their procreative powers; while man, being a reasonable being, has it in his power to use or abuse them at all times. But how many marriages do we find that are really spiritual and not based on beauty of form or other considerations? How soon after the wedding-day do they become disgusted with each other? What is the cause of this? A man and a woman may marry and their characters may differ widely. They may have different tastes, different opinions and different inclinations. All those differences may disappear, and will probably disappear; because by living together they become accustomed to each other, and become equalized in time. Each influences the other, and as a man may grow fond of a pet snake, whose presence at first horrified him, so a man may put up with a disagreeable partner and become fond of her in course of time. But if the man allows full liberty to his animal passions, and exercises his "legal rights" without restraint, these animal cravings which first called so piteously for gratification, will soon be gorged, and flying away laugh at the poor fool who nursed them in his breast. The wife will come to know that her husband is a coward, because she sees him squirm under the lash of his animal passions; and as woman loves strength and power, so in proportion as he loses his love, will she lose her confidence. He will look upon her as a burden, and she will look upon him in disgust as a brute. Conjugal happiness will have departed, and misery, divorce or death will be the end. The remedy for all these evils is continence, and it has been our object to show its necessity, for it was the object of this article. --F. Hartmann Zoroastrianism on the Septenary Constitution of Man Many of the esoteric doctrines given out through the Theosophical Society reveal a spirit akin to that of the older religions of the East, especially the Vedic and the Zendic. Leaving aside the former, I propose to point out by a few instances the close resemblance which the doctrines of the old Zendic Scriptures, as far as they are now preserved, bear to these recent teachings. Any ordinary Parsi, while reciting his daily Niyashes, Gehs and Yashts, provided he yields to the curiosity of looking into the meanings of what he recites, will, with a little exertion, perceive how the same ideas, only clothed in a more intelligible and comprehensive garb, are reflected in these teachings. The description of the septenary constitution of man found in the 54th chapter of the Yasna, one of the most authoritative books of the Mazdiasnian religion, shows the identity of the doctrines of Avesta and the esoteric philosophy. Indeed, as a Mazdiasnian, I felt quite ashamed that, having such undeniable and unmistakable evidence before their eyes, the Zoroastrians of the present day should not avail themselves of the opportunity offered of throwing light upon their now entirely misunderstood and misinterpreted Scriptures by the assistance and under the guidance of the Theosophical Society. If Zend scholars and students of Avesta would only care to study and search for themselves, they would, perhaps, find to assist them, men who are in possession of the right and only key to the true esoteric wisdom; men, who would be willing to guide and help them to reach the true and hidden meaning, and to supply them with the missing links that have resulted in such painful gaps as to leave the meaning meaningless, and to create in the mind of the perplexed student doubts that finally culminate in a thorough unbelief in his own religion. Who knows but they may find some of their own co-religionists, who, aloof from the world, have to this day preserved the glorious truths of their once mighty religion, and who, hidden in the recesses of solitary mountains and unknown silent caves, are still in possession of; and exercising, mighty powers, the heirloom of the ancient Magi. Our Scriptures say that ancient Mobeds were Yogis, who had the power of making themselves simultaneously visible at different places, even though hundreds of miles apart, and also that they could heal the sick and work that which would now appear to us miraculous. All this was considered facts but two or three centuries back, as no reader of old books (mostly Persian) is unacquainted with, or will disbelieve a priori unless his mind is irretrievably biassed by modern secular education. The story about the Mobed and Emperor Akbar and of the latter's conversion, is a well-known historical fact, requiring no proof. I will first of all quote side by side the two passages referring to the septenary nature of man as I find them in our Scriptures and the THEOSOPHIST-- Sub-divisions of septenary Sub-divisions of septenary man according to the man according to Yasna Occultists. (chap.54, para. I). 1. The Physical body, com- 1. Tanwas-i.e., body(the posed wholly of matter in its self ) that consists of bones grossest and most tangible -grossest form of matter. form. 2. The Vital principle-(or Jiva)- 2. Ushtanas-Vital heat a form of force indestructible, (or force). and when disconnected with one set of atoms, becoming attracted immediately by others. 3. The Astral body (Linga- 3. Keherpas Aerial form, sharira) composed of highly the airy mould, (Per. Kaleb). etherealized matter; in its habitual passive state, the perfect but very shadowy duplicate of the body; its activity, consolidation and form depending entirely on the Kama-rupa. 4. The Astral shape (Kama- 4. Tevishis-Will, or where rupa or body of desire, a sentient consciousness is principle defining the con- formed, also fore-knowledge. figuration of-- 5. The animal or Physical 5. Baodhas (in Sanskrit, intelligence or Conscious- Buddhi)-Body of physical ness or Ego, analogous to, consciousness, perception by though proportionally higher the senses or animal soul. in the senses or the animal degree than the reason, instinct, memory, imagination &c., existing in the higher animals. 6. The Higher or Spiritual 6. Urawanem (Per. Rawan) intelligence or consciousness, -Soul, that which gets its spiritual Ego, in which or reward or punishment mainly resides the sense of after death. consciousness in the perfect man, though the lower dimmer animal consciousness co-exists in No. 5. 7. The Spirit-an emanation from 7. Frawashem or Farohar- the ABSOLUTE uncreated; eternal; Spirit (the guiding energy a state rather than a being. which is with every man, is absolutely independent, and, without mixing with any worldly object, leads man to good. The spark of divinity in every being). The above is given in the Avesta as follows:-- "We declare and positively make known this (that) we offer (our) entire property (which is) the body (the self consisting of) bones (tanwas), vital heat (ushtanas), aerial form (keherpas), knowledge (tevishis), consciousness (baodhas), soul (urwanem), and spirit (frawashem), to the prosperous, truth-coherent (and) pure Gathas (prayers)." The ordinary Gujarathi translation differs from Spiegel's, and this latter differs very slightly from what is here given. Yet in the present translation there has been made no addition to, or omission from, the original wording of the Zend text. The grammatical construction also has been preserved intact. The only difference, therefore, between the current translations and the one here given is that ours is in accordance with the modern corrections of philological research which make it more intelligible, and the idea perfectly clear to the reader. The word translated "aerial form" has come down to us without undergoing any change in the meaning. It is the modern Persian word kaleb, which means a mould, a shape into which a thing is cast, to take a certain form and features. The next word is one about which there is a great difference of opinion. It is by some called strength, durability, i.e., that power which gives tenacity to and sustains the nerves. Others explain it as that quality in a man of rank and position which makes him perceive the result of certain events (causes), and thus helps him in being prepared to meet them. This meaning is suggestive, though we translate it as knowledge, or foreknowledge rather, with the greatest diffidence. The eighth word is quite clear. That inward feeling which tells a man that he knows this or that, that he has or can do certain things--is perception and consciousness. It is the inner conviction, knowledge and its possession. The ninth word is again one which has retained its meaning and has been in use up to the present day. The reader will at once recognize that it is the origin of the modern word Rawan. It is (metaphorically) the king, the conscious motor or agent in man. It is that something which depends upon and is benefited or injured by the foregoing attributes. We say depends upon, because its progress entirely consists in the development of those attributes. If they are neglected, it becomes weak and degenerated, and disappears. If they ascend on the moral and spiritual scale, it gains strength and vigour and becomes more blended than ever to the Divine essence--the seventh principle. But how does it become attracted toward its monad? The tenth word answers the question. This is the Divine essence in man. But this is only the irresponsible minister (this completes the metaphor). The real master is the king, the spiritual soul. It must have the willingness and power to see and follow the course pointed out by the pure spirit. The vizir's business is only to represent a point of attraction, towards which the king should turn. It is for the king to see and act accordingly for the glory of his own self. The minister or spirit can neither compel nor constrain. It inspires and electrifies into action; but to benefit by the inspiration, to take advantage of it, is left to the option of the spiritual soul. If, then, the Avesta contains such a passage, it must fairly be admitted that its writers knew the whole doctrine concerning spiritual man. We cannot suppose that the ancient Mazdiasnians, the Magi, wrote this short passage, without inferring from it, at the same time, that they were thoroughly conversant with the whole of the occult theory about man. And it looks very strange indeed, that modern Theosophists should now preach to us the very same doctrines that must have been known and taught thousands of years ago by the Mazdiasnians,--the passage is quoted from one of their oldest writings. And since they propound the very same ideas, the meaning of which has well-nigh been lost even to our most learned Mobeds, they ought to be credited at least with some possession of a knowledge, the key to which has been revealed to them, and lost to us, and which opens the door to the meaning of those hitherto inexplicable sentences and doctrines in our old writings, about which we are still, and will go on, groping in the dark, unless we listen to what they have to tell us about them. To show that the above is not a solitary instance, but that the Avesta contains this idea in many other places, I will give another paragraph which contains the same doctrine, though in a more condensed form than the one just given. Let the Parsi reader turn to Yasna, chapter 26, and read the sixth paragraph, which runs as follows:-- We praise the life (ahum), knowledge (daenam), consciousness (baodhas), soul (urwanem), and spirit (frawashem) of the first in religion, the first teachers and hearers (learners), the holy men and holy women who were the protectors of purity here (in this world). Here the whole man is spoken of as composed of five parts, as under:-- 1. The Physical Body. 1. Ahum-Existence, Life. 2. The Vital Principle. It includes: 3. The Astral Body. 2. Daenam-Knowledge. 4. The Astral shape or body of desire. 3. Baodhas-Consciousness. 5. The Animal or physical intelligence or consciousness or Ego. 4. Urwanem-Soul. 6. The Higher or Spiritual intelligence or consciousness, or Spiritual Ego. 5. Frawashem-Spirit. 7. The Spirit. In this description the first triple group--viz., the bones (or the gross matter), the vital force which keeps them together, and the ethereal body, are included in one and called Existence, Life. The second part stands for the fourth principle of the septenary man, as denoting the configuration of his knowledge or desires.* Then the three, consciousness (or animal soul), (spiritual) soul, and the pure Spirit are the same as in the first quoted passage. Why are these four mentioned as distinct from each other and not consolidated like the first part? The sacred writings explain this by saying that on death the first of these five parts disappears and perishes sooner or later in the earth's atmosphere. The gross elementary matter (the shell) has to run within the earth's attraction; so the ahum separates from the higher portions and is lost. --------- * Modern science also teaches that certain characteristics of features indicate the possession of certain qualities in a man. The whole science of physiognomy is founded on it. One can predict the disposition of a man from his features,--i.e., the features develop in accordance with the idiosyncrasies, qualities and vices, knowledge or the ignorance of man. --------- The second (i.e., the fourth of the septenary group) remains, but not with the spiritual soul. It continues to hold its place in the vast storehouse of the universe. And it is this second daenam which stands before the (spiritual) soul in the form of a beautiful maiden or an ugly hag. That which brings this daenam within the sight of the (spiritual) soul is the third part (i.e., the fifth of the septenary group), the baodhas. Or in other words, the (spiritual) soul has with it, or in it, the true consciousness by which it can view the experiences of its physical career. So this consciousness, this power or faculty which brings the recollection, is always with, in other words, is a part and parcel of, the soul itself; hence, its not mixing with any other part, and hence its existence after the physical death of man.* --A Parsi F.T.S. --------- * Our Brother has but to look into the oldest sacred hooks of China-- namely, the YI KING. or Book of Changes (translated by James Legge) written 1,200 B.C., to find that same Septenary division of man mentioned in that system of Divination. Zhing, which is translated correctly enough "essence," is the more subtle and pure part of matter-- the grosser form of the elementary ether; Khi, or "spirit," is the breath, still material but purer than the zhing, and is made of the finer and more active form of ether. In the hwun, or soul (animus) the Khi predominates and the zhing (or zing) in the pho or animal soul. At death the hwun (Or spiritual soul) wanders away, ascending, and the pho (the root of the Tibetan word Pho-hat) descends and is changed into a ghostly shade (the shell). Dr. Medhurst thinks that "the Kwei Shans" (see "Theology of the Chinese," pp. 10-12) are "the expanding and contracting principles of human life!" "The Kwei Shans" are brought about by the dissolution of the human frame--and consist of the expanding and ascending Shan which rambles about in space, and of the contracted and shrivelled Kwei, which reverts to earth and nonentity. Therefore, the Kwei is the physical body; the Shan is the vital principle the Kwei Shan the linga-sariram, or the vital soul; Zhing the fourth principle or Kama Rupa, the essence of will; pho, the animal soul; Khi, the spiritual soul; and Hwun the pure spirit--the seven principles of our occult doctrine!--Ed. Theos. --------- Brahmanism on the Sevenfold Principle in Man It is now very difficult to say what was the real ancient Aryan doctrine. If an inquirer were to attempt to answer it by an analysis and comparison of all the various systems of esotericism prevailing in India, he will soon be lost in a maze of obscurity and uncertainty. No comparison between our real Brahmanical and the Tibetan esoteric doctrines will be possible unless one ascertains the teachings of that so-called "Aryan doctrine," and fully comprehends the whole range of the ancient Aryan philosophy. Kapila's "Sankhya," Patanjali's "Yog philosophy," the different systems of "Saktaya" philosophy, the various Agamas and Tantras are but branches of it. There is a doctrine, though, which is their real foundation, and which is sufficient to explain the secrets of these various systems of philosophy and harmonize their teachings. It probably existed long before the Vedas were compiled, and it was studied by our ancient Rishis in connection with the Hindu scriptures. It is attributed to one mysterious personage called Maha.*..... ---------- * The very title of the present chief of the esoteric Himalayan Brotherhood.--Ed. Theos. ---------- The Upanishads and such portions of the Vedas as are not chiefly devoted to the public ceremonials of the ancient Aryans are hardly intelligible without some knowledge of that doctrine. Even the real significance of the grand ceremonials referred to in the Vedas will not be perfectly apprehended without its light being throw upon them. The Vedas were perhaps compiled mainly for the use of the priests assisting at public ceremonies, but the grandest conclusions of our real secret doctrine are therein mentioned. I am informed by persons competent to judge of the matter, that the Vedas have a distinct dual meaning--one expressed by the literal sense of the words, the other indicated by the metre and the swara (intonation), which are, as it were the life of the Vedas. Learned Pundits and philologists of course deny that swara has anything to do with philosophy or ancient esoteric doctrines; but the mysterious connection between swara and light is one of its most profound secrets. Now, it is extremely difficult to show whether the Tibetans derived their doctrine from the ancient Rishis of India, or the ancient Brahrnans learned their occult science from the adepts of Tibet; or, again, whether the adepts of both countries professed originally the same doctrine and derived it from a common source.* If you were to go to the Sramana Balagula, and question some of the Jain Pundits there about the authorship of the Vedas and the origin of the Brahmanical esoteric doctrine, they would probably tell you that the Vedas were composed by Rakshasas** or Daityas, and that the Brahmans had derived their secret knowledge from them.*** --------- * See Appendix, Note I. ** A kind of demons-devil. *** And so would the Christian padris. But they would never admit that their "fallen angels" were borrowed from the Rakshasas; that their "devil" is the illegitimate son of Dewel, the Sinhalese female demon; or that the "war in heaven" of the Apocalypse--the foundation of the Christian dogma of the "Fallen Angels" was copied from the Hindu story about Siva hurling the Tarakasura who rebelled against the gods into Andhahkara, the abode of Darkness, according to Brahmanical Shastras. --------- Do these assertions mean that the Vedas and the Brahmanical esoteric teachings had their origin in the lost Atlantis--the continent that once occupied a considerable portion of the expanse of the Southern and the Pacific oceans? The assertion in "Isis Unveiled," that Sanskrit was the language of the inhabitants of the said continent, may induce one to suppose that the Vedas had probably their origin there, wherever else might be the birthplace of the Aryan esotericism.* But the real esoteric doctrine, as well as the mystic allegorical philosophy of the Vedas, were derived from another source again, whatever that may be-- perchance from the divine inhabitants (gods) of the sacred island which once existed in the sea that covered in days of old the sandy tract now called Gobi Desert. However that may be, the knowledge of the occult powers of Nature possessed by the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis was learnt by the ancient adepts of India, and was appended by them to the esoteric doctrine taught by the residents of the sacred island.** The Tibetan adepts, however, have not accepted this addition to their esoteric doctrine; and it is in this respect that one should expect to find a difference between the two doctrines.*** ---------- * Not necessarily. (See Appendix, Note II.) It is generally held by Occultists that Sanskrit has been spoken in Java and adjacent islands from remote antiquity.--Ed. Theos. ** A locality which is spoken of to this day by the Tibetans, and called by them "Scham-bha-la," the Happy Land. (See Appendix, Note III.) *** To comprehend this passage fully, the reader must turn to vol. I. pp. 589-594 of "Isis Unveiled." -------- The Brahmanical occult doctrine probably contains everything that was taught about the powers of Nature and their laws, either in the mysterious island of the North or in the equally mysterious continent of the South. And if you mean to compare the Aryan and the Tibetan doctrines as regards their teachings about the occult powers of Nature, you must beforehand examine all the classifications of these powers, their laws and manifestations, and the real connotations of the various names assigned to them in the Aryan doctrine. Here are some of the classifications contained in the Brahmanical system: I. As appertaining to Parabrahmam and existing in the MACROCOSM. II. As appertaining to man and existing in the MICROCOSM. III. For the purposes of d Taraka Yog or Pranava Yog. IV. For the purposes of Sankhya Yog (where they are, as it were, the inherent attributes of Prakriti). V. For the purposes of Hata Yog. VI. For the purposes of Koula Agama. VII. For the purposes of Sakta Agama. VIII. For the purposes of Siva Aqama. IX. For the purposes of Sreechakram (the Sreechakram referred to in "Isis Unveiled" is not the real esoteric Sreechakram of the ancient adepts of Aryavarta).* -------- * Very true. But who would be allowed to give out the "real" esoteric one?--Ed. Theos. -------- X. In Atharvena Veda, &c. In all these classifications subdivisions have been multiplied indefinitely by conceiving new combinations of the Primary Powers in different proportions. But I must now drop this subject, and proceed to consider the "Fragments of Occult Truth" (since embodied in "Esoteric Buddhism"). I have carefully examined it, and find that the results arrived at (in the Buddhist doctrine) do not differ much from the conclusions of our Aryan philosophy, though our mode of stating the arguments may differ in form. I shall now discuss the question from my own standpoint, though, following, for facility of comparison and convenience of discussion, the sequence of classification of the sevenfold entities or principles constituting man which is adopted in the "Fragments." The questions raised for discussion are (1) whether the disembodied spirits of human beings (as they are called by Spiritualists) appear in the seance-rooms and elsewhere; and (2) whether the manifestations taking place are produced wholly or partly through their agency. It is hardly possible to answer these two questions satisfactorily unless the meaning intended to be conveyed by the expression "disembodied spirits of human beings" be accurately defined. The words spiritualism and spirit are very misleading. Unless English writers in general, and Spiritualists in particular, first ascertain clearly the connotation they mean to assign to the word spirit, there will be no end of confusion, and the real nature of these so-called spiritualistic phenomena and their modus occurrendi can never be clearly defined. Christian writers generally speak of only two entities in man--the body, and the soul or spirit (both seeming to mean the same thing to them). European philosophers generally speak of body and mind, and argue that soul or spirit cannot be anything else than mind. They are of opinion that any belief in lingasariram* is entirely unphilosophical. These views are certainly incorrect, and are based on unwarranted assumptions as to the possibilities of Nature, and on an imperfect understanding of its laws. I shall now examine (from the standpoint of the Brahmanical esoteric doctrine) the spiritual constitution of man, the various entities or principles existing in him, and ascertain whether either of those entities entering into his composition can appear on earth after his death, and if so, what it is that so appears. -------- * The astral body, so called. -------- Professor Tyndall in his excellent papers on what he calls the "Germ Theory," comes to the following conclusions as the result of a series of well-planned experiments:--Even in a very small volume of space there are myriads of protoplasmic germs floating in ether. If, for instance, say water (clear water) is exposed to them, and if they fall into it, some form of life or other will be evolved out of them. Now, what are the agencies for the bringing of this life into existence? Evidently-- I. The water, which is the field, so to say, for the growth of life. II. The protoplasmic germ, out of which life or a living organism is to be evolved or developed. And lastly-- III. The power, energy, force, or tendency which springs into activity at the touch or combination of the protoplasmic germ and the water, and which evolves or develops life and its natural attributes. Similarly, there are three primary causes which bring the human being into existence. I shall call them, for the purpose of discussion, by the following names (1) Parabrahmam, the Universal Spirit. (2) Sakti, the crown of the astral light, combining in itself all the powers of Nature. (3) Prakriti, which in its original or primary shape is represented by Akasa. (Really every form of matter is finally reducible to Akasa.)* It is ordinarily stated that Prakriti or Akasa is the Kshetram, or the basis which corresponds to water in the example we have taken Brahmam the germ, and Sakti, the power or energy that comes into existence at their union or contact.** -------- * The Tibetan esoteric Buddhist doctrine teaches that Prakriti is cosmic matter, out of which all visible forms are produced; and Akasa, that same cosmic matter, but still more subjective--its spirit, as it were. Prakriti being the body or substance, and Akasa Sakti its soul or energy. ** Or, in other words, "Prakriti, Swabhavat, or Akasa, is SPACE, as the Tibetans have it; Space filled with whatsoever substance or no substance at all--i.e., with substance so imperceptible as to be only metaphysically conceivable. Brahman, then, would be the germ thrown into the soil of that field, and Sakti, that mysterious energy or force which develops it, and which is called by the Buddhist Arahat of Tibet, FOHAT. That which we call form (rupa) is not different from that which we call space (sunyata).... Space is not different from form. Form is the same as space; space is the same as form. And so with the other skandhas, whether vedana, or sanjna, or sanskara, or vijnana, they are each the same as their opposite." .... (Book of Sin-king, or the "Heart Sutra." Chinese translation of the "Maha-Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya-Sutra," chapter on the "Avalokiteshwara," or the manifested Buddha.) So that the Aryan and Tibetan or Arhat doctrines agree perfectly in substance, differing but in names given and the way of putting it. --------- But this is not the view which the Upanishads take of the question. According to them, Brahamam* is the Kshetram or basis, Akasa or Prakriti, the germ or seed, and Sakti, the power evolved by their union or contact. And this is the real scientific, philosophical mode of stating the case. -------- * See Appendix, Note IV. -------- Now, according to the adepts of ancient Aryavarta, seven principles are evolved out of these three primary entities. Algebra teaches us that the number of combinations of n things, taken one at a time, two at a time, three at a time, and so forth = 2(n)-1. Applying this formula to the present case, the number of entities evolved from different combinations of these three primary causes amounts to 2(3)-1 = 8-1 = 7. As a general rule, whenever seven entities are mentioned in the ancient occult science of India, in any connection whatsoever, you must suppose that those seven entities came into existence from three primary entities; and that these three entities, again, are evolved out of a single entity or MONAD. To take a familiar example, the seven coloured rays in the solar ray are evolved out of three primary coloured rays; and the three primary colours coexist with the four secondary colours in the solar rays. Similarly, the three primary entities which brought man into existence co-exist in him with the four secondary entities which arose from different combinations of the three primary entities. Now these seven entities, which in their totality constitute man, are as follows. I shall enumerate them in the order adopted in the "Fragments," as far as the two orders (the Brahmanical and the Tibetan) coincide:-- Corresponding names in Esoteric Buddhism. I. Prakriti. Sthulasariram (Physical Body). II. The entity evolved out of the combination Sukshmasariram or Lingasariram of Prakriti and Sakti. (Astral Body). III. Sakti. Kamarupa (the Perispirit). IV. The entity evolved out of the combination of Jiva (Life-Soul). Brahmam, Sakti and Prakriti. V. The entity evolved out of the combination of Physical Intelligence (or Brahmam and Prakriti. animal soul). VI. The entity evolved out of the combination of Spiritual Intelligence (or Soul). Brahmam and Sakti. VII. Brahmam. The emanation from the ABSOLUTE, &c. (or pure spirit.) Before proceeding to examine these nature of these seven entities, a few general explanations are indispensably necessary. I. The secondary principles arising out of the combination of primary principles are quite different in their nature from the entities out of whose combination they came into existence. The combinations in question are not of the nature of mere mechanical juxtapositions, as it were. They do not even correspond to chemical combinations. Consequently no valid inferences as regards the nature of the combinations in question can be drawn by analogy from the nature [variety?] of these combinations. II. The general proposition, that when once a cause is removed its effect vanishes, is not universally applicable. Take, for instance, the following example:--If you once communicate a certain amount of momentum to a ball, velocity of a particular degree in a particular direction is the result. Now, the cause of this motion ceases to exist when the instantaneous sudden impact or blow which conveyed the momentum is completed; but according to Newton's first law of motion, the ball will continue to move on for ever and ever, with undiminished velocity in the same direction, unless the said motion is altered, diminished, neutralized, or counteracted by extraneous causes. Thus, if the ball stop, it will not be on account of the absence of the cause of its motion, but in consequence of the existence of extraneous causes which produce the said result. Again, take the instance of subjective phenomena. Now the presence of this ink-bottle before me is producing in me, or in my mind, a mental representation of its form, volume, colour and so forth. The bottle in question may be removed, but still its mental picture may continue to exist. Here, again, you see, the effect survives the cause. Moreover, the effect may at any subsequent time be called into conscious existence, whether the original cause be present or not. Now, in the ease of the filth principle above mentioned-the entity that came into existence by the combination of Brahmam and Prakriti--if the general proposition (in the "Fragments of Occult Truth") is correct, this principle, which corresponds to the physical intelligence, must cease to exist whenever the Brahmam or the seventh Principle should cease to exist for the particular individual; but the fact is certainly otherwise. The general proposition under consideration is adduced in the "Fragments" in support of the assertion that whenever the seventh principle ceases to exist for any particular individual, the sixth principle also ceases to exist for him. The assertion is undoubtedly true, though the mode of stating it and the reasons assigned for it, are to my mind objectionable. It is said that in cases where tendencies of a man's mind are entirely material, and all spiritual aspirations and thoughts were altogether absent from his mind, the seventh principle leaves him either before or at the time of death, and the sixth principle disappears with it. Here, the very proposition that the tendencies of the particular individual's mind are entirely material, involves the assertion that there is no spiritual intelligence or spiritual Ego in him, it should then have been said that, whenever spiritual intelligence ceases to exist in any particular individual, the seventh principle ceases to exist for that particular individual for all purposes. Of course, it does not fly off anywhere. There can never be any thing like a change of position in the case of Brahmam.* The assertion merely means that when there is no recognition whatever of Brahmam, or spirit, or spiritual life, or spiritual consciousness, the seventh principle has ceased to exercise any influence or control over the individual's destinies. -------- * True--from the standpoint of Aryan Exotericism and the Upanishads, not quite so in the case of the Arahat or Tibetan esoteric doctrine; and it is only on this one solitary point that the two teachings disagree, as far as we know. The difference is very trifling, though, resting as it does solely upon the two various methods of viewing the one and the same thing from two different aspects. (See Appendix, Note IV.) -------- I shall now state what is meant (in the Aryan doctrine) by the seven principles above enumerated. I. Prakriti. This is the basis of Sthulasariram, and represents it in the above-mentioned classification. II. Prakriti and Sakti. This is the Lingasariram, or astral body. III. Sukti. This principle corresponds to your Kamarupa. This power or force is placed by ancient occultists in the Nabhichakram. This power can gather akasa or prakriti, and mould it into any desired shape. It has very great sympathy with the fifth principle, and can be made to act by its influence or control. IV. Brahmam and Sakti, and Prakriti. This again corresponds to your second principle, Jiva. This power represents the universal life-principle which exists in Nature. Its seat is the Anahatachakram (heart). It is a force or power which constitutes what is called Jiva, or life. It is, as you say, indestructible, and its activity is merely transferred at the time of death to another set of atoms, to form another organism. V. Brahma and Prakriti. This, in our Aryan philosophy, corresponds to your fifth principle, called the physical intelligence. According to our philosophers, this is the entity in which what is called mind has its seat or basis. This is the most difficult principle of all to explain, and the present discussion entirely turns upon the view we take of it. Now, what is mind? It is a mysterious something, which is considered to be the seat of consciousness--of sensations, emotions, volitions, and thoughts. Psychological analysis shows it to be apparently a congeries of mental states, and possibilities of mental states, connected by what is called memory, and considered to have a distinct existence apart from any of its particular states or ideas. Now in what entity has this mysterious something its potential or actual existence? Memory and expectation, which form, as it were, the real foundation of what is called individuality, or Ahankaram, must have their seat of existence somewhere. Modern psychologists of Europe generally say that the material substance of brain is the seat of mind; and that past subjective experiences, which can he recalled by memory, and which in their totality constitute what is called individuality, exist therein in the shape of certain unintelligible mysterious impressions and changes in the nerves and nerve-centres of the cerebral hemispheres. Consequently, they say, the mind--the individual mind--is destroyed when the body is destroyed; so there is no possible existence after death. But there are a few facts among those admitted by these philosophers which are sufficient for us to demolish their theory. In every portion of the human body a constant change goes on without intermission. Every tissue, every muscular fibre and nerve-tube, and every ganglionic centre in the brain, is undergoing an incessant change. In the course of a man's lifetime there may be a series of complete tranformations of the substance of his brain. Nevertheless, the memory of his past mental states remains unaltered. There may be additions of new subjective experiences and some mental states may be altogether forgotten, but no individual mental state is altered. The person's sense of personal identity remains the same throughout these constant alterations in the brain substance.* It is able to survive all these changes, and it can survive also the complete destruction of the material substance of the brain. -------- * This is also sound Buddhist philosophy, the transformation in question being known as the change of the skandhas.--Ed. Theos. -------- This individuality arising from mental consciousness has its seat of existence, according to our philosophers, in an occult power or force, which keeps a registry, as it were, of all our mental impressions. The power itself is indestructible, though by the operation of certain antagonistic causes its impressions may in course of time be effaced, in part or wholly. I may mention in this connection that our philosophers have associated seven occult powers with the seven principles or entities above-mentioned. These seven occult powers in the microcosm correspond with, or are the counterparts of, the occult powers in the macrocosm. The mental and spiritual consciousness of the individual becomes the general consciousness of Brahmam, when the barrier of individuality is wholly removed, and when the seven powers in the microcosm are placed en rapport with the seven powers in the macrocosm. There is nothing very strange in a power, or force, or sakti, carrying with it impressions of sensations, ideas, thoughts, or other subjective experiences. It is now a well-known fact, that an electric or magnetic current can convey in some mysterious manner impressions of sound or speech, with all their individual peculiarities; similarly, I can convey my thoughts to you by a transmission of energy or power. Now, this fifth principle represents in our philosophy the mind, or, to speak more correctly, the power or force above described, the impressions of the mental states therein, and the notion of self-identity or Ahankaram generated by their collective operation. This principle is called merely physical intelligence in the "Fragments." I do not know what is really meant by this expression. It may be taken to mean that intelligence which exists in a very low state of development in the lower animals. Mind may exist in different stages of development, from the very lowest forms of organic life, where the signs of its existence or operation can hardly be distinctly realized, up to man, in whom it reaches its highest state of development. In fact, from the first appearance of life* up to Tureeya Avastha, or the state of Nirvana, the progress is, as it were, continuous. -------- * In the Aryan doctrine, which blends Brahmam, Sakti, and Prakriti in one, it is the fourth principle then, in the Buddhist esotericisms the second in combination with the first. -------- We ascend from that principle up to the seventh by almost imperceptible gradations. But four stages are recognized in the progress where the change is of a peculiar kind, and is such as to arrest an observer's attention. These four stages are as follows:-- (1) Where life (fourth principle) makes its appearance. (2) Where the existence of mind becomes perceptible in conjunction with life. (3) Where the highest state of mental abstraction ends, and spiritual consciousness commences. (4) Where spiritual consciousness disappears, leaving the seventh principle in a complete state of Nirvana, or nakedness. According to our philosophers, the fifth principle under consideration is intended to represent the mind in every possible state of development, from the second stage up to the third stage. IV. Brahmam and Sakti. This principle corresponds to your "spiritual intelligence." It is, in fact, Buddhi (I use the word Buddhi not in the ordinary sense, but in the sense in which it is used by our ancient philosophers); in other words, it is the seat of Bodha or Atmabodha. One who has Atmabodha in its completeness is a Buddha. Buddhists know very well what this term signifies. This principle is described in the "Fragments" as an entity coming into existence by the combination of Brahmam and Prakriti. I do not again know in what particular sense the word Prakriti is used in this connection. According to our philosophers it is an entity arising from the union of Brahmam and Sakti. I have already explained the connotation attached by our philosophers to the words Prakriti and Sakti. I stated that Prakriti in its primary state is Akasa.* If Akasa be considered to be Sakti or power** then my statement as regards the ultimate state of Prakriti is likely to give rise to confusion and misapprehension unless I explain the distinction between Akasa and Sakti. Akasa is not, properly speaking, the crown of the astral light, nor does it by itself constitute any of the six primary forces. But, generally speaking, whenever any phenomenal result is produced, Sakti acts in conjunction with Akasa. And, moreover, Akasa serves as a basis or Adhishthanum for the transmission of force currents and for the formation or generation of force or power correlations.*** -------- * According to the Buddhists, in Akasa lies that eternal, potential energy whose function it is to evolve all visible things out of itself.--Ed. Theos. ** It was never so considered, as we have shown it. But as the "Fragments" are written in English, a language lacking such an abundance of metaphysical terms to express ever minute change of form, substance and state as are found in the Sanskrit, it was deemed useless to confuse the Western reader, untrained in the methods of Eastern expression, more than is necessary, with a too nice distinctions of proper technical terms. As "Prakriti in its primary state is Akasa," and Sakti "is an attribute AKASA," it becomes evident that for the uninitiated it is all one. Indeed, to speak of the "union of Brahmam and Prakriti" instead of "Brahmam and Sakti" is no worse than for a theist to write that "That man has come into existence by the combination of spirit and matter," whereas, his word, framed in an orthodox shape, ought to read "man is a living soul was created by the power (or breath) of God over matter." *** That is to say, the Aryan Akasa is another word for Buddhist SPACE (in its metaphysical meaning).--Ed. Theos. --------- In Mantrasastra the letter Ha represents Akasa, and you will find that this syllable enters into most of the sacred formula intended to be used in producing phenomenal results. But by itself it does not represent any Sakti. You may, if you please, call Sakti an attribute of Akasa. I do not think that, as regards the nature of this principle, there can in reality exist any difference of opinion between the Buddhist and Brahmanical philosophers. Buddhist and Brahmanical initiates know very well that mysterious circular mirror composed of two hemispheres which reflects as it were the rays emanating from the "burning bush" and the blazing star--the spiritual sun Shining in CHIDAKASAM. The spiritual impressions constituting this principle have their existence in an occult power associated with the entity in question. The successive incarnations of Buddha, in fact, mean the successive transfers of this mysterious power, or the impressions thereof. The transfer is only possible when the Mahatma* who transfers it has completely identified himself with his seventh principle, has annihilated his Ahankaram, and reduced it to ashes in CHIDAGNIKUNDUM, and has succeeded in making his thoughts correspond with the eternal laws of Nature and in becoming a co-worker with Nature. Or, to put the same thing in other words, when he has attained the state of Nirvana, the condition of final negation, negation of individual, or separate existence.** --------- * The highest adept. * In the words of Agatha in the "Maha-pari-Nirvana Sutra," "We reach a condition of rest Beyond the limit of any human knowledge" --Ed. Theos. --------- VII. Atma.--The emanation from the absolute, corresponding to the seventh principle. As regards this entity there exists positively no real difference of opinion between the Tibetan Buddhist adepts and our ancient Rishis. We must now consider which of these entities can appear after the individual's death in seance-rooms and produce the so-called spiritualistic phenomena. Now, the assertion of the Spiritualists, that the "disembodied spirits" of particular human beings appear in seance-rooms, necessarily implies that the entity that so appears bears the stamp of some particular personality. So, we have to ascertain beforehand in what entity or entities personality has its seat of existence. Apparently it exists in the person's particular formation of body, and in his subjective experiences (called his mind in their totality). On the death of the individual his body is destroyed; his lingasariram being decomposed, the power associated with it becomes mingled in the current of the corresponding power in the macrocosm. Similarly, the third and fourth principles are mingled with their corresponding powers. These entities may again enter into the composition of other organisms. As these entities bear no impression of personality, the Spiritualists have no right to say that the disembodied spirit of the human being has appeared in the seance-room whenever any of these entities may appear there. In fact, they have no means of ascertaining that they belonged to any particular individual. Therefore, we must only consider whether any of the last three entities appear in seance-rooms to amuse or to instruct Spiritualists. Let us take three particular examples of individuals, and see what becomes of these three principles after death. I. One in whom spiritual attachments have greater force than terrestrial attachments. II. One in whom spiritual aspirations do exist, but are merely of secondary importance to him, his terrestrial interests occupying the greater share of his attention. III. One in whom there exists no spiritual aspirations whatsoever, one whose spiritual Ego is dead or non-existent to his apprehension. We need not consider the case of a complete adept in this connection. In the first two cases, according to our supposition, spiritual and mental experiences exist together; when spiritual consciousness exists, the existence of the seventh principle being recognized, it maintains its connection with the fifth and sixth principles. But the existence of terrestrial attachments creates the necessity of Punarjanmam (re-birth), the latter signifying the evolution of a new set of objective and subjective experiences, constituting a new combination of surrounding circumstances, or, in other words, a new world. The period between death and the next subsequent birth is occupied with the preparation required for the evolution of these new experiences. During the period of incubation, as you call it, the spirit will never of its own accord appear in this world, nor can it so appear. There is a great law in this universe which consists in the reduction of subjective experiences to objective phenomena, and the evolution of the former from the latter. This is otherwise called "cyclic necessity." Man is subjected to this law if he do not check and counterbalance the usual destiny or fate, and he can only escape its control by subduing all his terrestrial attachments completely. The new combination of circumstances under which he will then be placed may be better or worse than the terrestrial conditions under which he lived; but in his progress to a new world, you may be sure he will never turn around to have a look at his spiritualistic friends. In the third of the above three cases there is, by our supposition, no recognition of spiritual consciousness or of spirits; so they are non-existing so far as he is concerned. The case is similar to that of an organ or faculty which remains unused for a long time. It then practically ceases to exist. These entities, as it were, remain his, or in his possession, when they are stamped with the stamp of recognition. When such is not the case, the whole of his individuality is centred in his fifth principle. And after death this fifth principle is the only representative of the individual in question. By itself it cannot evolve for itself a new set of objective experiences, or, to say the same thing in other words, it has no punarjanmam. It is such an entity that can appear in seance-rooms; but it is absurd to call it a disembodied spirit.* It is merely a power or force retaining the impressions of the thoughts or ideas of the individual into whose composition it originally entered. It sometimes summons to its aid the Kamarupa power, and creates for itself some particular ethereal form (not necessarily human). -------- * It is especially on this point that the Aryan and Arahat doctrines quite agree. The teaching and argument that follow are in every respect those of the Buddhist Himalayan Brotherhood.--Ed. Theos. -------- Its tendencies of action will be similar to those of the individual's mind when he was living. This entity maintains its existence so long as the impressions on the power associated with the fifth principle remain intact. In course of time they are effaced, and the power in question is then mixed up in the current of its corresponding power in the MACROCOSM, as the river loses itself in the sea. Entities like these may afford signs of there having been considerable intellectual power in the individuals to which they belonged; because very high intellectual power may co-exist with utter absence of spiritual consciousness. But from this circumstance it cannot be argued that either the spirits or the spiritual Egos of deceased individuals appear in seance-rooms. There are some people in India who have thoroughly studied the nature of such entities (called Pisacham). I do not know much about them experimentally, as I have never meddled with this disgusting, profitless, and dangerous branch of investigation. The Spiritualists do not know what they are really doing. Their investigations are likely to result in course of time either in wicked sorcery or in the utter spiritual ruin of thousands of men and women.* -------- * We share entirely in this idea.--Ed. Theos. -------- The views I have herein expressed have been often illustrated by our ancient writers by comparing the course of a man's life or existence to the orbital motion of a planet round the sun. Centripetal force is spiritual attraction, and centrifugal terrestrial attraction. As the centripetal force increases in magnitude in comparison with the centrifugal force, the planet approaches the sun--the individual reaches a higher plane of existence. If, on the other hand, the centrifugal force becomes greater than the centripetal force, the planet is removed to a greater distance from the sun, and moves in a new orbit at that distance--the individual comes to a lower level of existence. These are illustrated in the first two instances I have noticed above. We have only to consider the two extreme cases. When the planet in its approach to the sun passes over the line where the centripetal and centrifugal force completely neutralize each other, and is only acted on by the centripetal force, it rushes towards the sun with a gradually increasing velocity, and is finally mixed up with the mass of the sun's body. This is the case of a complete adept. Again, when the planet in its retreat from the sun reaches a point where the centrifugal force becomes all-powerful, it flies off in a tangential direction from its orbit, and goes into the depths of void space. When it ceases to be under the control of the sun, it gradually gives up its generative heat, and the creative energy that it originally derived from the sun, and remains a cold mass of material particles wandering through space until the mass is completely decomposed into atoms. This cold mass is compared to the fifth principle under the conditions above noticed, and the heat, light, and energy that left it are compared to the sixth and seventh principles. Either after assuming a new orbit or in its course of deviation from the old orbit to the new, the planet can never go back to any point in its old orbit, as the various orbits lying in different planes never intersect each other. This figurative representation correctly explains the ancient Brahmanical theory on the subject. It is merely a branch of what is called the Great Law of the Universe by the ancient mystics. --T. Subba Row Appendix Note I. In this connection it will be well to draw the reader's attention to the fact that the country called "Si-dzang" by the Chinese, and Tibet by Western geographers, is mentioned in the oldest books preserved in the province of Fo-kien (the headquarters of the aborigines of China) as the great seat of occult learning in the archaic ages. According to these records, it was inhabited by the "Teachers of Light," the "Sons of Wisdom" and the "Brothers of the Sun." The Emperor Yu the "Great" (2207 B.C.), a pious mystic, is credited with having obtained his occult wisdom and the system of theocracy established by him--for he was the first one to unite in China ecclesiastical power with temporal authority--from Si-dzang. That system was the same as with the old Egyptians and the Chaldees; that which we know to have existed in the Brahmanical period in India, and to exist now in Tibet--namely, all the learning, power, the temporal as well as the secret wisdom were concentrated within the hierarchy of the priests and limited to their caste. Who were the aborigines of Tibet is a question which no ethnographer is able to answer correctly at present. They practice the Bhon religion, their sect is a pre-and anti-Buddhistic one, and they are to be found mostly in the province of Kam. That is all that is known of them. But even that would justify the supposition that they are the greatly degenerated descendants of mighty and wise forefathers. Their ethnical type shows that they are not pure Turanians, and their rites--now those of sorcery, incantations, and Nature-worship--remind one far more of the popular rites of the Babylonians, as found in the records preserved on the excavated cylinders, than of the religious practices of the Chinese sect of Tao-sse (a religion based upon pure reason and spirituality), as alleged by some. Generally, little or no difference is made, even by the Kyelang missionaries, who mix greatly with these people on the borders of British Lahoul and ought to know better, between the Bhons and the two rival Buddhist sects, the Yellow Caps and the Red Caps. The latter of these have opposed the reform of Tzong-ka-pa from the first, and have always adhered to old Buddhism, so greatly mixed up now with the practices of the Bhons. Were our Orientalists to know more of them, and compare the ancient Babylonian Bel or Baal worship with the rites of the Bhons, they would find an undeniable connection between the two. To begin an argument here, proving the origin of the aborigines of Tibet as connected with one of the three great races which superseded each other in Babylonia, whether we call them the Akkadians (a name invented by F. Lenormant), or the primitive Turanians, Chaldees, and Assyrians, is out of the question. Be it as it may, there is reason to call the trans-Himalayan esoteric doctrine Chaldeo-Tibetan. And when we remember that the Vedas came, agreeably to all traditions, from the Mansarawara Lake in Tibet, and the Brahmins themselves from the far North, we are justified in looking on the esoteric doctrines of every people who once had or still has it, as having proceeded from one and the same source; and to thus call it the "Aryan-Chaldeo-Tibetan" doctrine, or Universal Wisdom-Religion. "Seek for the Lost Word among the hierophants of Tartary, China, and Tibet," was the advice of Swedenborg the seer. Note II. Not necessarily, we say. The Vedas, Brahmanism, and along with these, Sanskrit, were importations into what we now regard as India. They were never indigenous to its soil. There was a time when the ancient nations of the West included under the generic name of India many of the countries of Asia now classified under other names. There was an Upper, a Lower, and a Western India, even during the comparatively late period of Alexander; and Persia (Iran) is called Western India in some ancient classics. The countries now named Tibet, Mongolia, and Great Tartary were considered by them as forming part of India. When we say, therefore, that India has civilized the world, and was the Alma Mater of the civilizations, arts, and sciences of all other nations (Babylonia, and perhaps even Egypt, included), we mean archaic, pre-historic India, India of the time when the great Gobi was a sea, and the lost "Atlantis" formed part of an unbroken continent which began at the Himalayas and ran down over Southern India, Ceylon, and Java, to far-away Tasmania. Note III. To ascertain such disputed questions, one has to look into and study well the Chinese sacred and historical records--a people whose era begins nearly 4,600 years back (2697 B.C.). A people so accurate, and by whom some of the most important inventions of modern Europe and its so much boasted modern science were anticipated--such as the compass, gunpowder, porcelain, paper, printing, &c.--known and practiced thousands of years before these were rediscovered by the Europeans, ought to receive some trust for their records. And from Lao-tze down to Hiouen-Thsang their literature is filled with allusions and references to that island and the wisdom of the Himalayan adepts. In the "Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese," by the Rev. Samuel Beal, there is a chapter "On the TIAN-TA'I School of Buddhism" (pp. 244-258) which our opponents ought to read. Translating the rules of that most celebrated and holy school and sect in China founded by Chin-che-K'hae, called Che-chay (the Wise One), in the year 575 of our era, when coming to the sentence which reads "That which relates to the one garment (seamless) worn by the GREAT TEACHERS OF THE SNOWY MOUNTAINS, the school of the Haimavatas" (p. 256), the European translator places after the last sentence a sign of interrogation, as well he may. The statistics of the school of the "Haimavatas," or of our Himalayan Brotherhood, are not to be found in the general census records of India. Further, Mr. Beal translates a rule relating to "the great professors of the higher order who live in mountain depths remote from men," the Aranyakas, or hermits. So, with respect to the traditions concerning this island, and apart from the (to them) historical records of this preserved in the Chinese and Tibetan sacred books, the legend is alive to this day among the people of Tibet. The fair island is no more, but the country where it once bloomed remains there still, and the spot is well known to some of the "great teachers of the Snowy Mountains," however much convulsed and changed its topography by the awful cataclysm. Every seventh year these teachers are believed to assemble in SCHAM-BHA-LA, the "Happy Land." According to the general belief it is situated in the north-west of Tibet. Some place it within the unexplored central regions, inaccessible even to the fearless nomadic tribes; others hem it in between the range of the Gangdisri Mountains and the northern edge of the Gobi desert, south and north, and the more populated regions of Khoondooz and Kashmir, of the Gya-Pheling (British India), and China, west and east, which affords to the curious mind a pretty large latitude to locate it in. Others still place it between Namur Nur and the Kuen-Lun Mountains, but one and all firmly believe in Scham-bha-la, and speak of it as a fertile fairy-like land once an island, now an oasis of incomparable beauty, the place of meeting of the inheritors of the esoteric wisdom of the god-like inhabitants of the legendary island. In connection with the archaic legend of the Asian Sea and the Atlantic Continent, is it not profitable to note a fact known to all modern geologists-that the Himalayan slopes afford geological proof that the substance of those lofty peaks was once a part of an ocean floor? Note IV. We have already pointed out that, in our opinion, the whole difference between Buddhistic and Vedantic philosophies was that the former was a kind of Rationalistic Vedantism, while the latter might be regarded as transcendental Buddhism. If the Aryan esotericism applies the term jivatma to the seventh principle--the pure and per se unconscious spirit--it is because the Vedanta, postulating three kinds of existence--(1) the paramarthika (the true, the only real one), (2) the vyavaharika (the practical), and (3) the pratibhasika (the apparent or illusory life)--makes the first life or jiva, the only truly existent one. Brahma, or the ONE'S SELF, is its only representative in the universe, as it is the universal Life in toto, while the other two are but its "phenomenal appearances," imagined and created by ignorance, and complete illusions suggested to us by our blind senses. The Buddhists, on the other hand, deny either subjective or objective reality even to that one Self-Existence. Buddha declares that there is neither Creator nor an Absolute Being. Buddhist rationalism was ever too alive to the insuperable difficulty of admitting one absolute consciousness, as in the words of Flint, "wherever there is consciousness there is relation, and wherever there is relation there is dualism." The ONE LIFE is either "MUKTA" (absolute and unconditioned), and can have no relation to anything nor to any one; or it is "BADDHA" (bound and conditioned), and then it cannot be called the absolute; the limitation, moreover, necessitating another deity as powerful as the first to account for all the evil in this world. Hence, the Arahat secret doctrine on cosmogony admits but of one absolute, indestructible, eternal, and uncreated UNCONSCIOUSNESS (so to translate) of an element (the word being used for want of a better term) absolutely independent of everything else in the universe; a something ever present or ubiquitous, a Presence which ever was, is, and will be, whether there is a God, gods, or none, whether there is a universe, or no universe, existing during the eternal cycles of Maha Yugs, during the Pralayas as during the periods of Manvantara, and this is SPACE, the field for the operation of the eternal Forces and natural Law, the basis (as Mr. Subba Row rightly calls it) upon which take place the eternal intercorrelations of Akasa-Prakriti; guided by the unconscious regular pulsations of Sakti, the breath or power of a conscious deity, the theists would say; the eternal energy of an eternal, unconscious Law, say the Buddhists. Space, then, or "Fan, Bar-nang" (Maha Sunyata) or, as it is called by Lao-tze, the "Emptiness," is the nature of the Buddhist Absolute. (See Confucius' "Praise of the Abyss.") The word jiva, then, could never be applied by the Arahats to the Seventh Principle, since it is only through its correlation or contact with matter that Fo-hat (the Buddhist active energy) can develop active conscious life; and that to the question "how can unconsciousness generate consciousness?" the answer would be: "Was the seed which generated a Bacon or a Newton self-conscious?" Note V. To our European readers, deceived by the phonetic similarity, it must not be thought that the name "Brahman" is identical in this connection with Brahma or Iswara, the personal God. The Upanishads--the Vedanta Scriptures--mention no such God, and one would vainly seek in them any allusions to a conscious deity. The Brahman, or Parabrahm, the absolute of the Vedantins, is neuter and unconscious, and has no connection with the masculine Brahma of the Hindu Triad, or Trimurti. Some Orientalists rightly believe the name derived from the verb "Brih," to grow or increase, and to be in this sense the universal expansive force of Nature, the vivifying and spiritual principle or power spread throughout the universe, and which, in its collectivity, is the one Absoluteness, the one Life and the only Reality. --H.P. Blavatsky Septenary Division in Different Indian Systems We give below in a tabular form the classifications, adopted by Buddhist and by Vedantic teachers, of the principles in man:-- Classification in Vedantic Classification in Esoteric Buddhism Classification Taraka Raja Yoga (1.) Sthula sarira Annamaya kosa Sthulopadhi (2.) Prana Pranamaya kosa (3.)The Vehicle of Prana (4.) Kama rupa (a) Volitions Manomaya kosa (5.) Mind/& feelings &c. Sukshmopadhi (b) Vignanam Vignanamayakosa (6.) Spiritual Soul Anandamayakosa Karanopadhi (7.) Atma Atma Atma From the foregoing table it will be seen that the third principle in the Buddhist classification is not separately mentioned in the Vedantic division as it is merely the vehicle of prana. It will also be seen that the fourth principle is included in the third kosa (sheath), as the said principle is but the vehicle of will-power, which is but an energy of the mind. It must also be noticed that the Vignanamayakosa is considered to be distinct from the Manomayakosa, as a division is made after death between the lower part of the mind, as it were, which has a closer affinity with the fourth principle than with the sixth and its higher part, which attaches itself to the latter, and which is, in fact, the basis for the higher spiritual individuality of man. We may also here point out to our readers that the classification mentioned in the last column is for all practical purposes connected with Raja Yoga, the best and simplest. Though there are seven principles in man, there are but three distinct Upadhis (bases), in each of which his Atma may work independently of the rest. These three Upadhis can be separated by an adept without killing himself. He cannot separate the seven principles from each other without destroying his constitution. --T.S. The Septenary Principle in Esotericism Since the exposition of the Arhat esoteric doctrine was begun, many who had not acquainted themselves with the occult basis of Hindu philosophy have imagined that the two were in conflict. Some of the more bigoted have openly charged the Occultists of the Theosophical Society with propagating rank Buddhistic heresy; and have even gone to the length of affirming that the whole Theosophic movement was but a masked Buddhistic propaganda. We were taunted by ignorant Brahmins and learned Europeans that our septenary divisions of Nature and everything in it, including man, are arbitrary and not endorsed by the oldest religious systems of the East. It is now proposed to throw a cursory glance at the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Law-Books of Manu, and especially the Vedanta, and show that they too support our position. Even in their crude exotericism their affirmation of the sevenfold division is apparent. Passage after passage may be cited in proof. And not only can the mysterious number be found traced on every page of the oldest Aryan Sacred Scriptures, but in the oldest books of Zoroastrianism as well; in the rescued cylindrical tile records of old Babylonia and Chaldea, in the "Book of the Dead" and the Ritualism of ancient Egypt, and even in the Mosaic books--without mentioning the secret Jewish works, such as the Kabala. The limited space at command forces us to allow a few brief quotations to stand as landmarks and not even attempt long explanations. It is no exaggeration to say that upon each of the few hints now given in the cited Slokas a thick volume might be written. From the well-known hymn To Time, in the Atharva-Veda (xix. 53): "Time, like a brilliant steed with seven rays, Full of fecundity, bears all things onward. "Time, like a seven-wheeled, seven-naved car moves on, His rolling wheels are all the worlds, his axle Is immortality...." --down to Manu, "the first and the seventh man," the Vedas, the Upanishads, and all the later systems of philosophy teem with allusions to this number. Who was Manu, the son of Swayambhuva? The secret doctrine tells us that this Manu was no man, but the representation of the first human races evolved with the help of the Dhyan-Chohans (Devas) at the beginning of the first Round. But we are told in his Laws (Book I. 80) that there are fourteen Manus for every Kalpa or "interval from creation to creation" (read interval from one minor "Pralaya" to another) and that "in the present divine age there have been as yet seven Manus." Those who know that there are seven Rounds, of which we have passed three, and are now in the fourth; and who are taught that there are seven dawns and seven twilights, or fourteen Manvantaras; that at the beginning of every Round and at the end, and on and between the planets, there is "an awakening to illusive life," and "an awakening to real life," and that, moreover, there are "root-Manus," and what we have to clumsily translate as the "seed-Manus"--the seeds for the human races of the forthcoming Round (a mystery divulged but to those who have passed the 3rd degree in initiation); those who have learned all that, will be better prepared to understand the meaning of the following. We are told in the Sacred Hindu Scriptures that "the first Manu produced six other Manus (seven primary Manus in all), and these produced in their turn each seven other Manus" (Bhrigu I. 61-63),* the production of the latter standing in the occult treatises as 7 x 7. Thus it becomes clear that Manu--the last one, the progenitor of our Fourth Round Humanity--must be the seventh, since we are on our fourth Round, and that there is a root-Manu on globe A and a seed-Manu on globe G. Just as each planetary Round commences with the appearance of a "Root-Manu" (Dhyan-Chohan) and closes with a "Seed-Manu," so a root-and a seed-Manu appear respectively at the beginning and the termination of the human period on any particular planet. ------- * The fact that Manu himself is made to declare that he was created by Viraj and then produced the ten Prajapatis, who again produced seven Menus, who in their turn gave birth to seven other Manus (Manu, I. 33-36), relates to other still earlier mysteries, and is at the same time a blind with regard to the doctrine of the Septenary chain. --------- It will be easily seen from the foregoing statement that a Manu-antaric period means, as the term implies, the time between the appearance of two Manus or Dhyan-Chohans: and hence a minor Manu-antara is the duration of the seven races on any particular planet, and a major Manu-antara is the period of one human round along the planetary chain. Moreover, that, as it is said that each of the seven Manus creates 7 x 7 Manus, and that there are 49 root-races on the seven planets during each Round, then every root-race has its Manu. The present seventh Manu is called "Vaivasvata," and stands in the exoteric texts for that Manu who represents in India the Babylonian Xisusthrus and the Jewish Noah. But in the esoteric books we are told that Manu Vaivasvata, the progenitor of our fifth race--who saved it from the flood that nearly exterminated the fourth (Atlantean)--is not the seventh Manu, mentioned in the nomenclature of the Root, or primitive Manus, but one of the 49 "emanated from this 'root'--Manu." For clearer comprehension we here give the names of the 14 Manus in their respective order and relation to each Round:-- 1st 1st (Root) Manu on Planet A.-Swayambhuva Round. 1st (Seed) Manu on Planet G.-Swarochi (or)Swarotisha 2nd 2nd (R.) M. on Planet A.-Uttama Round 2nd (S.) M. " " G.-Thamasa 3rd 3rd (R.) M. " " A.-Raivata Round 3rd (S.) M. " " G.-Chackchuska 4th 4th (R.) M. " " A.-Vaivasvata (our progenitor) Round 4th (S.) M. " " G.-Savarni 5th 5th (R.) M. " " A.-Daksha Savarni Round 5th (S.) M. " " G.-Brahma Savarni 6th 6th (R.) M. on Planet A.-Dharma Savarni Round 6th (S.) M. " " G.-Rudra Savarni 7th 7th (R.) M. " " A.-Rouchya Round 7th (S.) M. " " G.-Bhoutya Vaivasvata thus, though seventh in the order given, is the primitive Root-Manu of our fourth Human Wave (the reader must always remember that Manu is not a man but collective humanity), while our Vaivasvata was but one of the seven Minor Manus who are made to preside over the seven races of this our planet. Each of these has to become the witness of one of the periodical and ever-recurring cataclysms (by fire and water in turn) that close the cycle of every root-race. And it is this Vaivasvata--the Hindu ideal embodiment called respectively Xisusthrus, Deukalion, Noah, and by other names--who is the allegorical man who rescued our race when nearly the whole population of one hemisphere perished by water, while the other hemisphere was awakening from its temporary obscuration. The number seven stands prominently conspicuous in even a cursory comparison of the 11th Tablet of the Izdhubar Legends of the Chaldean account of the Deluge and the so-called Mosaic books. In both the number seven plays a most prominent part. The clean beasts are taken by sevens, the fowls by sevens also; in seven days, it is promised Noah, to rain upon the earth; thus he stays "yet other seven days," and again seven days; while in the Chaldean. account of the Deluge, on the seventh day the rain abated. On the seventh day the dove is sent out; by sevens, Xisusthrus takes "jugs of wine" for the altar, &c. Why such coincidence? And yet we are told by, and bound to believe in, the European Orientalists, when passing judgment alike upon the Babylonian and Aryan chronology they call them "extravagant and fanciful!" Nevertheless, while they give us no explanation of, nor have they ever noticed, as far as we know, the strange identity in the totals of the Semitic, Chaldean, and Aryan Hindu chronology, the students of Occult Philosophy find the following fact extremely suggestive. While the period of the reign of the 10 Babylonian antediluvian kings is given as 432,000 years,* the duration of the postdiluvian Kali-yug is also given as 432,000, while the four ages or the divine Maha-yug, yield in their totality 4,320,000 years. Why should they, if fanciful and "extravagant," give the identical figures, when neither the Aryans nor the Babylonians have surely borrowed anything from each other! We invite the attention of our occultists to the three figures given--4 standing for the perfect square, 3 for the triad (the seven universal and the seven individual principles), and 2 the symbol of our illusionary world, a figure ignored and rejected by Pythagoras. -------- * See "Babylonia," by George Smith, p. 36. Here again, as with the Manus and 10 Prajapatis and the 10 Sephiroths in the Book of Numbers-- they dwindle down to seven! -------- It is in the Upanishads and the Vedanta though, that we have to look for the best corroborations of the occult teachings. In the mystical doctrine the Rahasya, or the Upanishads--"the only Veda of all thoughtful Hindus in the present day," as Monier Williams is made to confess, every word, as its very name implies,* has a secret meaning underlying it. This meaning can be fully realized only by him who has a full knowledge of Prana, the ONE LIFE, "the nave to which are attached the seven spokes of the Universal Wheel." (Hymn to Prana, Atharva-Veda, XI. 4.) Even European Orientalists agree that all the systems in India assign to the human body: (a) an exterior or gross body (sthula-sarira); (b) an inner or shadowy body (sukshma), or linga-sarira (the vehicle), the two cemented with--(c), life (jiv or Karana sarira, "causal body").** These the occult system or esotericism divides into seven, farther adding to these--kama, manas, buddhi and atman. The Nyaya philosophy when treating of Prameyas (by which the objects and subjects of Praman are to be correctly understood) includes among the 12 the seven "root principles" (see IXth Sutra), which are 1, soul (atman), and 2 its superior spirit Jivatman; 3, body (sarira); 4, senses (indriya); 5, activity or will (pravritti); 6, mind (manas); 7, Intellection (Buddhi). The seven Padarthas (inquiries or predicates of existing things) of Kanada in the Vaiseshikas, refer in the occult doctrine to the seven qualities or attributes of the seven principles. Thus: 1, substance (dravya) refers to body or sthula-sarira; 2, quality or property (guna) to the life principle, jiv; 3, action or act (karman) to the Linga, sarira; 4, Community or commingling of properties (Samanya) to Kamarupa; 5, personality or conscious individuality (Visesha) to Manas; 6, co-inherence or perpetual intimate relation (Samuvuya) to Buddhi, the inseparable vehicle of Atman; 7, non-existence or non-being in the sense of, and as separate from, objectivity or substance (abhava)--to the highest monad or Atman. ------- * Upa-ni-shad means, according to Brahminical authority, "to conquer ignorance by revealing the secret spiritual knowledge." According to Monier Williams, the title is derived from the root sad with the prepositions upa and ni, and implies "something mystical that underlies or is beneath the surface." ** This Karana-sarira is often mistaken by the uninitiated for Linga-sarira, and since it is described as the inner rudimentary or latent embryo of the body, confounded with it. But the Occultists regard it as the life (body) or Jiv, which disappears at death; is withdrawn--leaving the 1st and 3rd principles to disintegrate and return to their elements. ---------- Thus, whether we view the ONE as the Vedic Purusha or Brahman (neuter) the "all-expanding essence;" or as the universal spirit, the "light of lights" (jyotisham jyotih) the TOTAL independent of all relation, of the Upanishads; or as the Paramatman of the Vedanta; or again as Kanada's Adrishta, "the unseen Force," or divine atom; or as Prakriti, the "eternally existing essence," of Kapila--we find in all these impersonal universal Principles the latent capability of evolving out of themselves "six rays" (the evolver being the seventh). The third aphorism of the Sankhya-Karika, which says of Prakriti that it is the "root and substance of all things," and no production, but itself a producer of "seven things, which produced by it, become also producers," has a purely occult meaning. What are the "producers" evoluted from this universal root-principle, Mula-prakriti or undifferentiated primeval cosmic matter, which evolves out of itself consciousness and mind, and is generally called "Prakriti" and amulam mulam, "the rootless root," and Aryakta, the "unevolved evolver," &c.? This primordial tattwa or "eternally existing 'that,'" the unknown essence, is said to produce as a first producer, 1, Buddhi-- "intellect"--whether we apply the latter to the 6th macrocosmic or microcosmic principle. This first produced produces in its turn (or is the source of) Ahankara, "self-consciousness" and manas "mind." The reader will please always remember that the Mahat or great source of these two internal faculties, "Buddhi" per se, can have neither self-consciousness nor mind; viz., the 6th principle in man can preserve an essence of personal self-consciousness or "personal individuality" only by absorbing within itself its own waters, which have run through that finite faculty; for Ahankara, that is the perception of "I," or the sense of one's personal individuality, justly represented by the term "Ego-ism," belongs to the second, or rather the third, production out of the seven, viz., to the 5th principle, or Manas. It is the latter which draws "as the web issues from the spider" along the thread of Prakriti, the "root principle," the four following subtle elementary principles or particles--Tanmatras, out of which "third class," the Mahabhutas or the gross elementary principles, or rather sarira and rupas, are evolved-- the kama, linga, Jiva and sthula-sarira. The three gunas of "Prakriti"--the Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas (purity, passionate activity, and ignorance or darkness)--spun into a triple-stranded cord or "rope," pass through the seven, or rather six, human principles. It depends on the 5th--Manas or Ahankara, the "I"--to thin the guna, "rope," into one thread--the sattwa; and thus by becoming one with the "unevolved evolver," win immortality or eternal conscious existence. Otherwise it will be again resolved into its Mahabhautic essence; so long as the triple-stranded rope is left unstranded, the spirit (the divine monad) is bound by the presence of the gunas in the principles "like an animal" (purusha pasu). The spirit, atman or jivatman (the 7th and 6th principles), whether of the macro-or microcosm, though bound by these gunas during the objective manifestation of universe or man, is yet nirguna--i.e., entirely free from them. Out of the three producers or evolvers, Prakriti, Buddhi and Ahankara, it is but the latter that can be caught (when man is concerned) and destroyed when personal. The "divine monad" is aguna (devoid of qualities), while Prakriti, once that from passive Mula-prakriti it has become avyakta (an active evolver) is gunavat--endowed with qualities. With the latter, Purusha or Atman can have nought to do (of course being unable to perceive it in its gunuvatic state); with the former--or Mula-prakriti or undifferentiated cosmic essence--it has, since it is one with it and identical. The Atma Bodha, or "knowledge of soul," a tract written by the great Sankaracharya, speaks distinctly of the seven principles in man (see 14th verse). They are called therein the five sheaths (panchakosa) in which is enclosed the divine monad--the Atman, and Buddhi, the 7th and 6th principles, or the individuated soul when made distinct (through avidya, maya and the gunas) from the supreme soul--Parabrahm. The 1st sheath, called Ananda-maya--the "illusion of supreme bliss"--is the manas or fifth principle of the occultists, when united with Buddhi; the 2nd sheath is Vjnana-maya-kosa, the case or "envelope of self-delusion," the manas when self-deluded into the belief of the personal "I," or ego, with its vehicle. The 3rd, the Mano-maya sheath, composed of "illusionary mind" associated with the organs of action and will, is the Kamarupa and Linga-sarira combined, producing an illusive "I" or Mayavi-rupa. The 4th sheath is called Prana-maya, "illusionary life," our second life principle or jiv, wherein resides life, the "breathing" sheath. The 5th kosa is called Anna-maya, or the sheath supported by food--our gross material body. All these sheaths produce other smaller sheaths, or six attributes or qualities each, the seventh being always the root sheath; and the Atman or spirit passing through all these subtle ethereal bodies like a thread, is called the "thread-soul" or sutratman. We may conclude with the above demonstration. Verily the Esoteric doctrine may well be called in its turn the "thread-doctrine," since, like Sutratman or Pranatman, it passes through and strings together all the ancient philosophical religious systems, and, what is more, reconciles and explains them. For though seeming so unlike externally, they have but one foundation, and of that the extent, depth, breadth and nature are known to those who have become, like the "Wise Men of the East," adepts in Occult Science. --H.P. Blavatsky Personal and Impersonal God At the outset I shall request my readers (such of them at least as are not acquainted with the Cosmological theories of the Idealistic thinkers of Europe) to examine John Stuart Mill's Cosmological speculations as contained in his examination of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy, before attempting to understand the Adwaita doctrine; and I beg to inform them beforehand that in explaining the main principles of the said doctrine, I am going to use, as far as it is convenient to do so, the phraseology adopted by English psychologists of the Idealistic school of thought. In dealing with the phenomena of our present plane of existence John Stuart Mill ultimately came to the conclusion that matter, or the so-called external phenomena, are but the creation of our mind; they are the mere appearances of a particular phase of our subjective self, and of our thoughts, volitions, sensations and emotions which in their totality constitute the basis of that Ego. Matter then is the permanent possibility of sensations, and the so-called Laws of matter are, properly speaking, the Laws which govern the succession and coexistence of our states of consciousness. Mill further holds that properly speaking there is no noumenal Ego. The very idea of a mind existing separately as an entity, distinct from the states of consciousness which are supposed to inhere in it, is in his opinion illusory, as the idea of an external object, which is supposed to be perceived by our senses. Thus the ideas of mind and matter, of subject and object, of the Ego and external world, are really evolved from the aggregation of our mental states which are the only realities so far as we are concerned. The chain of our mental states or states of consciousness is "a double-headed monster," according to Professor Bain, which has two distinct aspects, one objective and the other subjective. Mr. Mill has paused here, confessing that psychological analysis did not go any further; the mysterious link which connects together the train of our states of consciousness and gives rise to our Ahankaram in this condition of existence, still remains an incomprehensible mystery to Western psychologists, though its existence is but dimly perceived in the subjective phenomena of memory and expectation. On the other hand, the great physicists of Europe are gradually coming to the conclusion* that mind is the product of matter, or that it is one of the attributes of matter in some of its conditions. It would appear, therefore, from the speculations of Western psychologists that matter is evolved from mind and that mind is evolved from matter. These two propositions are apparently irreconcilable. -------- * See Tyndall's Belfast Address.--S.R. -------- Mill and Tyndall have admitted that Western science is yet unable to go deeper into the question. Nor is it likely to solve the mystery hereafter, unless it calls Eastern occult science to its aid and takes a more comprehensive view of the capabilities of the real subjective self of man and the various aspects of the great objective universe. The great Adwaitee philosophers of ancient Aryavarta have examined the relationship between subject and object in every condition of existence in this solar system in which this differentiation is presented. Just as a human being is composed of seven principles, differentiated matter in the solar system exists in seven different conditions. These different states of matter do not all come within the range of our present objective consciousness. But they can be objectively perceived by the spiritual Ego in man. To the liberated spiritual monad of man, or to the Dhyan Chohans, every thing that is material in every condition of matter is an object of perception. Further, Pragna or the capacity of perception exists in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter. Strictly speaking, there are but six states of matter, the so-called seventh state being the aspect of cosmic matter in its original undifferentiated condition. Similarly there are six states of differentiated Pragna, the seventh state being a condition of perfect unconsciousness. By differentiated Pragna, I mean the condition in which Pragna is split up into various states of consciousness. Thus we have six states of consciousness, either objective or subjective for the time being, as the case may be, and a perfect state of unconsciousness, which is the beginning and the end of all conceivable states of consciousness, corresponding to the states of differentiated matter and its original undifferentiated basis which is the beginning and the end of all cosmic evolutions. It will be easily seen that the existence of consciousness is necessary for the differentiation between subject and object. Hence these two phases are presented in six different conditions, and in the last state there being no consciousness as above stated, the differentiation in question ceases to exist. The number of these various conditions is different in different systems of philosophy. But whatever may be the number of divisions, they all lie between perfect unconsciousness at one end of the line and our present state of consciousness or Bahipragna at the other end. To understand the real nature of these different states of consciousness, I shall request my readers to compare the consciousness of the ordinary man with the consciousness of the astral man, and again compare the latter with the consciousness of the spiritual Ego in man. In these three conditions the objective universe is not the same. But the difference between the Ego and the non-Ego is common to all these conditions. Consequently, admitting the correctness of Mill's reasoning as regards the subject and object of our present plane of consciousness, the great Adwaitee thinkers of India have extended the same reasoning to other states of consciousness, and came to the conclusion that the various conditions of the Ego and the non-Ego were but the appearances of one and the same entity--the ultimate state of unconsciousness. This entity is neither matter nor spirit; it is neither Ego nor non-Ego; and it is neither object nor subject. In the language of Hindu philosophers it is the original and eternal combination of Purusha and Prakriti. As the Adwaitees hold that an external object is merely the product of our mental states, Prakriti is nothing more than illusion, and Purush is the only reality; it is the one existence which remains eternal in this universe of Ideas. This entity then is the Parabrahmam of the Adwaitees. Even if there were to be a personal God with anything like a material Upadhi (physical basis of whatever form), from the standpoint of an Adwaitee there will be as much reason to doubt his noumenal existence as there would be in the case of any other object. In their opinion, a conscious God cannot be the origin of the universe, as his Ego would be the effect of a previous cause, if the word conscious conveys but its ordinary meaning. They cannot admit that the grand total of all the states of consciousness in the universe is their deity, as these states are constantly changing and as cosmic idealism ceases during Pralaya. There is only one permanent condition in the universe which is the state of perfect unconsciousness, bare Chidakasam (field of consciousness) in fact. When my readers once realize the fact that this grand universe is in reality but a huge aggregation of various states of consciousness, they will not be surprised to find that the ultimate state of unconsciousness is considered as Parabrahmam by the Adwaitees. The idea of a God, Deity, Iswar, or an impersonal God (if consciousness is one of his attributes) involves the idea of Ego or non-Ego in some shape or other, and as every conceivable Ego or non-Ego is evolved from this primitive element (I use this word for want of a better one) the existence of an extra-cosmic god possessing such attributes prior to this condition is absolutely inconceivable. Though I have been speaking of this element as the condition of unconsciousness, it is, properly speaking, the Chidakasam or Chinmatra of the Hindu philosophers which contains within itself the potentiality of every condition of "Pragna," and which results as consciousness on the one hand and the objective universe on the other, by the operation of its latent Chichakti (the power which generates thought). Before proceeding to discuss the nature of Parabrahmam. It is to be stated that in the opinion of Adwaitees, the Upanishads and the Brahmasutras fully support their views on the subject. It is distinctly affirmed in the Upanishads that Parabrahmam, which is but the bare potentiality of Pragna,* is not an aspect of Pragna or Ego in any shape, and that it has neither life nor consciousness. The reader will be able to ascertain that such is really the case on examining the Mundaka and Mandukya Upanishads. The language used here and there in the Upanishads is apt to mislead one into the belief that such language points to the existence of a conscious Iswar. But the necessity for such language will perhaps be rendered clear from the following considerations. -------- * The power or the capacity that gives rise to perception. -------- From a close examination of Mill's cosmological theory the difficulty will be clearly seen referred to above, of satisfactorily accounting for the generation of conscious states in any human being from the standpoint of the said theory. It is generally stated that sensations arise in us from the action of the external objects around us: they are the effects of impressions made on our senses by the objective world in which we exist. This is simple enough to an ordinary mind, however difficult it may be to account for the transformation of a cerebral nerve-current into a state of consciousness. But from the standpoint of Mill's theory we have no proof of the existence of any external object; even the objective existence of our own senses is not a matter of certainty to us. How, then, are we to account for and explain the origin of our mental states, if they are the only entities existing in this world? No explanation is really given by saying that one mental state gives rise to another mental state, to a certain extent at all events, under the operation of the so-called psychological "Laws of Association." Western psychology honestly admits that its analysis has not gone any further. It may be inferred, however, from the said theory that there would be no reason for saying that a material Upadhi (basis) is necessary for the existence of mind or states of consciousness. As is already indicated, the Aryan psychologists have traced this current of mental states to its source--the eternal Chinmatra existing everywhere. When the time for evolution comes this germ of Pragna unfolds itself and results ultimately as Cosmic ideation. Cosmic ideas are the conceptions of all the conditions of existence in the Cosmos existing in what may be called the universal mind (the demiurgic mind of the Western Kabalists). This Chinmatra exists as it were at every geometrical point of the infinite Chidakasam. This principle then has two general aspects. Considered as something objective it is the eternal Asath--Mulaprakriti or Undifferentiated Cosmic matter. From a subjective point of view it may be looked upon in two ways. It is Chidakasam when considered as the field of Cosmic ideation; and it is Chinmatra when considered as the germ of Cosmic ideation. These three aspects constitute the highest Trinity of the Aryan Adwaitee philosophers. It will be readily seen that the last-mentioned aspect of the principle in question is far more important to us than the other two aspects; for, when looked upon in this aspect the principle under consideration seems to embody within itself the great Law of Cosmic Evolution. And therefore the Adwaitee philosophers have chiefly considered it in this light, and explained their cosmogony from a subjective point of view. In doing so, however, they cannot avoid the necessity of speaking of a universal mind (and this is Brahma, the Creator) and its ideation. But it ought not to be inferred therefrom that this universal mind necessarily belongs to an Omnipresent living conscious Creator, simply because in ordinary parlance a mind is always spoken of in connection with a particular living being. It cannot be contended that a material Uphadi is indispensable for the existence of mind or mental states when the objective universe itself is, so far as we are concerned, the result of our states of consciousness. Expressions implying the existence of a conscious Iswar which are to be found here and there in the Upanishads should not therefore be literally construed. It now remains to be seen how Adwaitees account for the origin of mental states in a particular individual. Apparently the mind of a particular human being is not the universal mind. Nevertheless Cosmic ideation is the real source of the states of consciousness in every individual. Cosmic ideation exists everywhere; but when placed under restrictions by a material Upadhi it results as the consciousness of the individual inhering in such Upadhi. Strictly speaking, an Adwaitee will not admit the objective existence of this material Upadhi. From his standpoint it is Maya or illusion which exists as a necessary condition of Pragna. But to avoid confusion, I shall use the ordinary language; and to enable my readers to grasp my meaning clearly the following simile may be adopted. Suppose a bright light is placed in the centre with a curtain around it. The nature of the light that penetrates through the curtain and becomes visible to a person standing outside depends upon the nature of the curtain. If several such curtains are thus successively placed around the light, it will have to penetrate through all of them; and a person standing outside will only perceive as much light as is not intercepted by all the curtains. The central light becomes dimmer and dimmer as curtain after curtain is placed before the observer; and as curtain after curtain is removed the light becomes brighter and brighter until it reaches its natural brilliancy. Similarly, universal mind or Cosmic ideation becomes more and more limited and modified by the various Upadhis of which a human being is composed; and when the action or influence of these various Upadhis is successively controlled, the mind of the individual human being is placed en rapport with the universal mind and his ideation is lost in Cosmic ideation. As I have already said, these Upadhis are strictly speaking the conditions of the gradual development or evolution of Bahipragna--or consciousness in the present plane of our existence--from the original and eternal Chinmatra, which is the seventh principle in man, and the Parabrahmam of the Adwaitees. This then is the purport of the Adwaitee philosophy on the subject under consideration, and it is, in my humble opinion, in harmony with the Arhat doctrine relating to the same subject. The latter doctrine postulates the existence of Cosmic matter in an undifferentiated condition throughout the infinite expanse of space. Space and time are but its aspects, and Purush, the seventh principle of the universe, has its latent life in this ocean of Cosmic matter. The doctrine in question explains Cosmogony from an objective point of view. When the period of activity arrives, portions of the whole differentiate according to the latent law. When this differentiation has commenced, the concealed wisdom or latent Chichakti acts in the universal mind, and Cosmic energy or Fohat forms the manifested universe in accordance with the conceptions generated in the universal mind out of the differentiated principles of Cosmic matter. This manifested universe constitutes a solar system. When the period of Pralaya comes, the process of differentiation stops and Cosmic ideation ceases to exist; and at the time of Brahmapralaya or Mahapralaya the particles of matter lose all differentiation, and the matter that exists in the solar system returns to its original undifferentiated condition. The latent design exists in the one unborn eternal atom, the centre which exists everywhere and nowhere; and this is the one life that exists everywhere. Now, it will be easily seen that the undifferentiated Cosmic matter, Purush, and the ONE LIFE of the Arhat philosophers, are the Mulaprakriti, Chidakasam, and Chinmatra of the Adwaitee philosophers. As regards Cosmogony, the Arhat standpoint is objective, and the Adwaitee standpoint is subjective. The Arhat Cosmogony accounts for the evolution of the manifested solar system from undifferentiated Cosmic matter, and Adwaitee Cosmogony accounts for the evolution of Bahipragna from the original Chinmatra. As the different conditions of differentiated C osmic matter are but the different aspects of the various conditions of Pragna, the Adwaitee Cosmogony is but the complement of the Arhat Cosmogony. The eternal principle is precisely the same in both the systems, and they agree in denying the existence of an extra-Cosmic God. The Arhats call themselves Atheists, and they are justified in doing so if theism inculcates the existence of a conscious God governing the universe by his will-power. Under such circumstance the Adwaitee will come under the same denomination. Atheism and theism are words of doubtful import, and until their meaning is definitely ascertained it would be better not to use them in connection with any system of philosophy. --T. Subba Row Prakriti and Parusha Prakriti may be looked upon either as Maya when considered as the Upadhi of Parabrahmam or as Avidya when considered as the Upadhi of Jivatma (7th principle in man).* Avidya is ignorance or illusion arising from Maya. The term Maya, though sometimes used as a synonym for Avidya, is, properly speaking, applicable to Prakriti only. There is no difference between Prakriti, Maya and Sakti; and the ancient Hindu philosophers made no distinction whatsoever between Matter and Force. In support of these assertions I may refer the learned hermit to "Swetaswatara Upanishad" and its commentary by Sankaracharya. In case we adopt the fourfold division of the Adwaitee philosophers, it will be clearly seen that Jagrata,* Swapna* and Sushupti Avasthas* are the results of Avidya, and that Vyswanara,* Hiranyagarbha* and Sutratma* are the manifestations of Parabrahmam in Maya or Prakriti. In drawing a distinction between Avidya and Prakriti, I am merely following the authority of all the great Adwaitee philosophers of Aryavarta. It will be sufficient for me to refer to the first chapter of the celebrated Vidantic treatise, the Panchadasi. ---------- * Upadhi--vehicle. Jagrata--waking state, or a condition of external perception. Swapna--dreamy state, or a condition of clairvoyance in the astral plane. Sushupti--a state of extasis; and Avastas--states or conditions of Pragna. Vyswanara--the magnetic fire that pervades the manifested solar system-- the root objective aspect of the ONE LIFE. Hiranyagarbha--the one life as manifested in the plane of astral Light. Sutratma--the Eternal germ of the manifested universe existing in the field of Mulaprakriti. --------- In truth, Prakriti and Purusha are but the two aspects of the same ONE REALITY. As our great Sankaracharya truly observes at the close of his commentary on the 23rd Sutra of the first chapter of the Brahma sutras, "Parabrahmam is Karta (Purush), as there is no other Adhishtatha,* and Parabrahmam is Prakriti, there being no other Upadanam." This sentence clearly indicates the relation between "the One Life" and "the One Element" of the Arha-philosophers. This will elucidate the meaning of the statement so often quoted by Adwaitees--"Sarvam Khalvitham Brahma" ** and also of what is meant by saying that Brahmam is the Upadanakarnam (material cause) of the Universe. --T Subba Row --------- * Adishtatha--that which inheres in another principle--the active agent working in Prakriti. ** Everything in the universe is Brahma. --------- Morality and Pantheism Questions have been raised in several quarters as to the inefficiency of Pantheism (which term is intended to include Esoteric Buddhism, Adwaitee Vedantism, and other similar religious systems) to supply a sound basis of morality. The philosophical assimilation of meum and teum, it is urged, must of necessity be followed by their practical confusion, resulting in the sanction of cruelty, robbery, &c. This line of argument points, however, most unmistakably to the co-existence of the objection with an all but utter ignorance of the systems objected to, in the critic's mind, as we shall show by-and-by. The ultimate sanction of morality, as is well known, is derived from a desire for the attainment of happiness and escape from misery. But schools differ in their estimate of happiness. Exoteric religions base their morality on the hope of reward and fear of punishment at the hands of an Omnipotent Ruler of the Universe by following the rules he has at his pleasure laid down for the obedience of his helpless subjects; in some cases, however, religions of later growth have made morality to depend on the sentiment of gratitude to that Ruler for benefits received. The worthlessness, not to speak of the mischievousness, of such systems of morality is almost self-evident. As a type of morality founded on hope and fear, we shall take an instance from the Christian Bible: "He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord." The duty of supporting the poor is here made to depend upon prudential motives of laying by for a time when the "giver to the poor" will be incapable of taking care of himself. But the Mahabharata says that "He that desireth a return for his good deeds loseth all merit; he is like a merchant bartering his goods." The true springs of morality lose their elasticity under the pressure of such criminal selfishness; all pure and unselfish natures will fly away from it in disgust. To avoid such consequences attempts have been made by some recent reformers of religion to establish morality upon the sentiment of gratitude to the Lord. But it requires no deep consideration to find that, in their endeavours to shift the basis of morality, these reformers have rendered morality entirely baseless. A man has to do what is represented to be a thing "dear unto the Lord" out of gratitude for the many blessings He has heaped upon him. But as a matter of fact he finds that the Lord has heaped upon him curses as well as blessings. A helpless orphan is expected to be grateful to him for having removed the props of his life, his parents, because he is told in consolation that such a calamity is but apparently an evil, but in reality the All-Merciful has underneath it hidden the greatest possible good. With equal reason might a preacher of the Avenging Ahriman exhort men to believe that under the apparent blessings of the "Merciful" Father there lurks the serpent of evil. The modern Utilitarians, though the range of their vision is so narrow, have sterner logic in their teachings. That which tends to a man's happiness is good, and must be followed, and the contrary shunned as evil. So far so good. But the practical application of the doctrine is fraught with mischief. Cribbed, cabined, and confined, by rank Materialism, within the short space between birth and death, the Utilitarians' scheme of happiness is merely a deformed torso, which cannot certainly be considered as the fair goddess of our devotion. The only scientific basis of morality is to be sought for in the soul-consoling doctrines of Lord Buddha or Sri Sankaracharya. The starting-point of the "pantheistic" (we use the word for want of a better one) system of morality is a clear perception of the unity of the one energy operating in the manifested Cosmos, the grand result which it is incessantly striving to produce, and the affinity of the immortal human spirit and its latent powers with that energy, and its capacity to cooperate with the one life in achieving its mighty object. Now knowledge or jnanam is divided into two classes by Adwaitee philosophers--Paroksha and Aparoksha. The former kind of knowledge consists in intellectual assent to a stated proposition, the latter in the actual realization of it. The object which a Buddhist or Adwaitee Yogi sets before himself is the realization of the oneness of existence, and the practice of morality is the most powerful means to that end, as we proceed to show. The principal obstacle to the realization of this oneness is the inborn habit of man of always placing himself at the centre of the Universe. Whatever a man might act, think, or feel, the irrepressible personality is sure to be the central figure. This, as will appear on reflection, is that which prevents every individual from filling his proper sphere in existence, where he only is exactly in place and no other individual is. The realization of this harmony is the practical or objective aspect of the GRAND PROBLEM. And the practice of morality is the effort to find out this sphere; morality, indeed, is the Ariadne's clue in the Cretan labyrinth in which man is placed. From the study of the sacred philosophy preached by Lord Buddha or Sri Sankara, paroksha knowledge (or shall we say belief?), in the unity of existence is derived, but without the practice of morality that knowledge cannot be converted into the highest kind of knowledge, or aproksha jnanam, and thus lead to the attainment of mukti. It availeth naught to intellectually grasp the notion of your being everything and Brahma, if it is not realized in practical acts of life. To confuse meum and teum in the vulgar sense is but to destroy the harmony of existence by a false assertion of "I," and is as foolish as the anxiety to nourish the legs at the expense of the arms. You cannot be one with all, unless all your acts, thoughts, and feelings synchronize with the onward march of Nature. What is meant by the Brahmajnani being beyond the reach of Karma, can be fully realized only by a man who has found out his exact position in harmony with the One Life in Nature; that man sees how a Brahmajnani can act only in unison with Nature, and never in discord with it: to use the phraseology of ancient writers on Occultism, a Brahmajnani is a real "co-worker with Nature." Not only European Sanskritists, but also exoteric Yogis, fall into the grievous mistake of supposing that, in the opinion of our sacred writers, a human being can escape the operation of the law of Karma by adopting a condition of masterly inactivity, entirely losing sight of the fact that even a rigid abstinence from physical acts does not produce inactivity on the higher astral and spiritual planes. Sri Sankara has very conclusively proved, in his commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, that such a supposition is nothing short of a delusion. The great teacher shows there that forcibly repressing the physical body from working does not free one from vasana or vritti--the inherent inclination of the mind to work. There is a tendency, in every department of Nature, for an act to repeat itself; the Karma acquired in the last preceding birth is always trying to forge fresh links in the chain, and thereby lead to continued material existence;--and this tendency can only be counteracted by unselfishly performing all the duties appertaining to the sphere in which a person is born; such a course alone can produce chitta suddhi, (purification of the mind), without which the capacity of perceiving spiritual truths can never be acquired. A few words must here be said about the physical inactivity of the Yogi or the Mahatma. Inactivity of the physical body (sthula sarira) does not indicate a condition of inactivity either on the astral or the spiritual plane of action. The human spirit is in its highest state of activity in samadhi, (highest trance) and not, as is generally supposed, in a dormant, quiescent condition. And, moreover, it will be easily seen, by any one who examines the nature of occult dynamics, that a given amount of energy expended on the spiritual or astral plane is productive of far greater results than the same amount expended on the physical objective plane of existence. When an Adept has placed himself en rapport with the universal mind he becomes a real power in Nature. Even on the objective plane of existence the difference between brain and muscular energy, in their capacity of producing widespread and far-reaching results, can he very easily perceived. The amount of physical energy expended by the discoverer of the steam-engine might not have been more than that expended by a hardworking day-labourer. But the practical results of the labourer's work can never be compared with the results achieved by the discovery of the steam-engine. Similarly, the ultimate effects of spiritual energy are infinitely greater than those of intellectual energy. From the above considerations it is abundantly clear that the initiatory training of a true Vedantin Raj Yogi must be the nourishing of a sleepless and ardent desire of doing all in his power for the good of mankind on the ordinary physical plane, his activity being transferred, however, to the higher astral and spiritual planes as his development proceeds. In course of time, as the Truth becomes realized, the situation is rendered quite clear to the Yogi, and he is placed beyond the criticism of any ordinary man. The Mahanirvan Tantra says:-- Charanti trigunatite ko vidhir ko ishedhava. "For one, walking beyond the three gunas--Satva (feeling of gratification), Rajas (passional activity) and Tamas (inertness)--what injunction or what restriction is there?"--in the consideration of men, walled in on all sides by the objective plane of existence. This does not mean that a Mahatma can or will ever neglect the laws of morality, but that he, having unified his individual nature with Great Nature herself, is constitutionally incapable of violating any one of the laws of nature, and no man can constitute himself a judge of the conduct of the Great one without knowing the laws of all the planes of Nature's activity. (As honest men are honest without the least consideration of the) criminal law, so a Mahatma is moral without reference to the laws of morality. These are, however, sublime topics: we shall before conclusion notice some other considerations which lead the ordinary "pantheist" to the true foundation of morality. Happiness has been defined by John Stuart Mill as the state of absence of opposition. Manu gives the definition in more forcible terms: Sarvam paravasam duhkham Sarva matmavasam sukham Idam jnayo samasena Lakshanam sukhaduhkhayo. "Every kind of subjugation to another is pain, and subjugation to one's self is happiness: in brief, this is to be known as the characteristic marks of the two." Now, it is universally admitted that the whole system of Nature is moving in a particular direction, and this direction, we are taught, is determined by the composition of two forces--namely, the one acting from that pole of existence ordinarily called "matter" towards the other pole called "spirit," and the other in the opposite direction. The very fact that Nature is moving shows that these two forces are not equal in magnitude. The plane on which the activity of the first force predominates is called in occult treatises the "ascending arc," and the corresponding plane of the activity of the other force is styled the "descending arc." A little reflection will show that the work of evolution begins on the descending arc and works its way upwards through the ascending arc. From this it follows that the force directed towards spirit is the one which must, though not without hard struggle, ultimately prevail. This is the great directing energy of Nature, and, although disturbed by the operation of the antagonistic force, it is this that gives the law to her; the other is merely its negative aspect, for convenience regarded as a separate agent. If an individual attempts to move in a direction other than that in which Nature is moving, that individual is sure to be crushed, sooner or later, by the enormous pressure of the opposing force. We need not say that such a result would be the very reverse of pleasurable. The only way, therefore, in which happiness might be attained is by merging one's nature in great Mother Nature, and following the direction in which she herself is moving: this again can only be accomplished by assimilating men's individual conduct with the triumphant force of Nature, the other force being always overcome with terrific catastrophes. The effort to assimilate the individual with the universal law is popularly known as the practice of morality. Obedience to this universal law, after ascertaining it, is true religion, which has been defined by Lord Buddha "as the realization of the True." An example will serve to illustrate the position. Can a practical pantheist, or, in other words, an occultist, utter a falsehood? Now, it will be readily admitted that life manifests itself by the power of acquiring sensation, temporary dormancy of that power being suspended animation. If a man receives a particular series of sensations and pretends they are other than they really are, the result is that he exercises his will-power in opposition to a law of Nature on which, as we have shown, life depends, and thereby becomes suicide on a minor scale. Space prevents further discussion, but all the ten deadly sins mentioned by Manu and Buddha can be satisfactorily dealt with in the light sought to be focused here. --Mohini M. Chatterji Occult Study The practical bearing of occult teaching on ordinary life is very variously interpreted by different students of the subject. For many Western readers of recent books on the esoteric doctrine, it even seems doubtful whether the teaching has any bearing on practical life at all. The proposal which it is supposed sometimes to convey, that all earnest inquirers should put themselves under the severe ascetic regimen followed by its regular Oriental disciples, is felt to embody a strain on the habits of modern civilization which only a few enthusiasts will be prepared to encounter. The mere intellectual charm of an intricate philosophy may indeed be enough to recommend the study to some minds, but a scheme of teaching that offers itself as a substitute for religious faith of the usual kind will be expected to yield some tangible results in regard to the future spiritual well-being of those who adopt it. Has occult philosophy nothing to give except to those who are in a position and willing to make a sacrifice in its behalf of all other objects in life? In that case it would indeed be useless to bring it out into the world. In reality the esoteric doctrine affords an almost infinite variety of opportunities for spiritual development, and no greater mistake could be made in connection with the present movement than to suppose the teaching of the Adepts merely addressed to persons capable of heroic self-devotion. Assuredly it does not discourage efforts in the direction of the highest achievement of occult progress, if any Western occultists may feel disposed to make them; but it is important for us all to keep clearly in view the lower range of possibilities connected with humbler aspirations. I believe it to be absolutely true that even the slightest attention seriously paid to the instructions now emanating from the Indian Adepts will generate results within the spiritual principles of those who render it--causes capable of producing appreciable consequences in a future state of existence. Any one who has sufficiently examined the doctrine of Devachan will readily follow the idea, for the nature of the spiritual existence which in the ordinary course of things must succeed each physical life, provides for the very considerable expansion of any aspirations towards real knowledge that may be set going on earth. I will recur to this point directly, when I have made clearer the general drift of the argument I am trying to unfold. At the one end of the scale of possibilities connected with occult study lies the supreme development of Adeptship; an achievement which means that the person reaching it has so violently stimulated his spiritual growth within a short period, as to have anticipated processes on which Nature, in her own deliberate way, would have spent a great procession of ages. At the other end of the scale lies the small result to which I have just alluded--a result which may rather be said to establish a tendency in the direction of spiritual achievement than to embody such achievement. But between these two widely different results there is no hard and fast line that can be drawn at any place to make a distinct separation in the character of the consequences ensuing from devotion to occult pursuits. As the darkness of blackest night gives way by imperceptible degrees to the illumination of the brightest sunrise, so the spiritual consequences of emerging from the apathy either of pure materialism or of dull acquiescence in unreasonable dogmas, brighten by imperceptible degrees from the faintest traces of Devachanic improvement into the full blaze of the highest perfection human nature can attain. Without assuming that the course of Nature which prescribes for each human Ego successive physical lives and successive periods of spiritual refreshment--without supposing that this course is altered by such moderate devotion to occult study as is compatible with the ordinary conditions of European life, it will nevertheless be seen how vast the consequences may ultimately be of impressing on that career of evolution a distinct tendency in the direction of supreme enlightenment, of that result which is described as the union of the individual soul with universal spirit. The explanations of the esoteric doctrine which have been publicly given, have shown that humanity in the mass has now attained a stage in the great evolutionary cycle from which it has the opportunity of growing upward towards final perfection. In the mass it is, of course, unlikely that it will travel that road: final perfection is not a gift to be bestowed upon all, but to be worked for by those who desire it. It may be put within the theoretical reach of all; there may be no human creature living at this moment, of whom it can be said that the highest possibilities of Nature are impossible of attainment, but it does not follow by any means that every individual will attain the highest possibilities. Regarding each individual as one of the seeds of a great flower which throws out thousands of seeds, it is manifest that only a few, relatively to the great number, will become fully developed flowers in their turn. No unjust neglect awaits the majority. For each and every one the consequences of the remote future will be precisely proportioned to the aptitudes he develops, but only those can reach the goal who, with persistent effort carried out through a long series of lives, differentiate themselves in a marked degree from the general multitude. Now, that persistent effort must have a beginning, and granted the beginning, the persistence is not improbable. Within our own observation of ordinary life, good habits, even though they may not be so readily formed as bad ones, are not difficult to maintain in proportion to the difficulty of their commencement. For a moment it may be asked how this may be applied to a succession of lives separate from each other by a total oblivion of their details; but it really applies as directly to the succession of lives as to the succession of days within one life, which are separated from each other by as many nights. The certain operation of those affinities in the individual Ego which are collectively described in the esoteric doctrine by the word Karma, must operate to pick up the old habits of character and thought, as life after life comes round, with the same certainty that the thread of memory in a living brain recovers, day after day, the impressions of those that have gone before. Whether a moral habit is thus deliberately engendered by an occult student in order that it may propagate itself through future ages, or whether it merely arises from unintelligent aspirations towards good, which happily for mankind are more widely spread than occult study as yet, the way it works in each case is the same. The unintelligent aspiration towards goodness propagates itself and leads to good lives in the future; the intelligent aspiration propagates itself in the same way plus the propagation of intelligence; and this distinction shows the gulf of difference which may exist between the growth of a human soul which merely drifts along the stream of time, and that of one which is consciously steered by an intelligent purpose throughout. The human Ego which acquires the habit of seeking for knowledge becomes invested, life after life, with the qualifications which ensure the success of such a search, until the final success, achieved at some critical period of its existence, carries it right up into the company of those perfected Egos which are the fully developed flowers only expected, according to our first metaphor, from a few of the thousand seeds. Now, it is clear that a slight impulse in a given direction, even on the physical plane does not produce the same effect as a stronger one; so, exactly in this matter of engendering habits required to persist in their operation through a succession of lives, it is quite obvious that the strong impulse of a very ardent aspiration towards knowledge will be more likely than a weaker one to triumph over the so called accidents of Nature. This consideration brings us to the question of those habits in life which are more immediately associated in the popular views of the matter with the pursuit of occult science. It will be quite plain that the generation within his own nature by an occult student of affinities in the direction of spiritual progress, is a matter which has little if anything to do with the outer circumstances of his daily life. It cannot be dissociated from what may be called the outer circumstances of his moral life, for an occult student, whose moral nature is consciously ignoble, and who combines the pursuit of knowledge with the practice of wrong, becomes by that condition of things a student of sorcery rather than of true occultism--a candidate for satanic evolution instead of perfection. But at the same time the physical habits of life may be quite the reverse of ascetic, while all the while the thinking processes of the intellectual life are developing affinities which cannot fail in the results just seen to produce large ulterior consequences. Some misconception is very apt to arise here from the way in which frequent reference is made to the ascetic habits of those who purpose to become the regular chelas of Oriental Adepts. It is supposed that what is practiced by the Master is necessarily recommended for all his pupils. Now this is far from being the case as regards the miscellaneous pupils who are gathering round the occult teachers lately become known to public report. Certainly even in reference to their miscellaneous pupils the Adepts would not discountenance asceticism. As we saw just now, there is no hard line drawn across the scale on which are defined the varying consequences of occult study in all its varying degrees of intensity--so with ascetic practice, from the slightest habits of self-denial, which may engender a preference for spiritual over material gratification, up to the very largest developments of asceticism required as a passport to chelaship, no such practices can be quite without their consequences in the all-embracing records of Karma. But, broadly speaking, asceticism belongs to that species of effort which aims at personal chelaship, and that which contemplates the patient development of spiritual growth along the slow track of natural evolution claims no more, broadly speaking, than intellectual application. All that is asserted in regard to the opening now offered to those who have taken notice of the present opportunity, is, that they may now give their own evolution an impulse which they may not again have an opportunity of giving it with the same advantage to themselves if the present opportunity is thrown aside. True, it is most unlikely that any one advancing through Nature, life after life, under the direction of a fairly creditable Karma, will go on always without meeting sooner or later with the ideas that occult study implants. So that the occultist does not threaten those who turn aside from his teachings with any consequences that must necessarily be disastrous. He only says that those who listen to them must necessarily derive advantage from so doing in exact proportion to the zeal with which they undertake the study and the purity of motive with which they promote it in others. Nor must it be supposed that those which have here been described as the lower range of possibilities in connection with occult study, are a mere fringe upon the higher possibilities, to be regarded as a relatively poor compensation accorded to those who do not feel equal to offering themselves for probation as regular chelas. It would be a grave misconception of the purpose with which the present stream of occult teaching has been poured into the world, if we were to think it a universal incitement to that course of action. It may be hazardous for any of us who are not initiates to speak with entire confidence of the intention of the Adepts, but all the external facts concerned with the growth and development of the Theosophical Society, show its purpose to be more directly related to the cultivation of spiritual aspirations over a wide area, than to the excitement of these with supreme intensity in individuals. There are considerations, indeed, which may almost be said to debar the Adepts from ever doing anything to encourage persons in whom this supreme intensity of excitement is possible, to take the very serious step of offering themselves as chelas. Directly that by doing this a man renders himself a candidate for something more than the maximum advantages that can flow to him through the operation of natural laws--directly that in this way he claims to anticipate the most favourable course of Nature and to approach high perfection by violent and artificial processes, he at once puts himself in presence of many dangers which would never beset him if he contented himself with a favourable natural growth. It appears to be always a matter of grave consideration with the Adepts whether they will take the responsibility of encouraging any person who may not have it in him to succeed, to expose himself to these dangers. For any one who is determined to face them and is permitted to do so, the considerations put forward above in regard to the optional character of personal physical training fall to the ground. Those ascetic practices which a candidate for nothing more than the best natural evolution may undertake if he chooses, with the view of emphasizing his spiritual Karma to the utmost, become a sine qua non in regard to the very first step of his progress. But with such progress the present explanation is not specially concerned. Its purpose has been to show the beneficial effects which may flow to ordinary people living ordinary lives, from even that moderate devotion to occult philosophy which is compatible with such ordinary lives, and to guard against the very erroneous belief that occult science is a pursuit in which it is not worth while to engage, unless Adeptship is held out to the student as its ultimate result. --Lay Chela Some Inquiries Suggested by Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism" The object of the following paper is to submit certain questions which have occurred to some English readers of "Esoteric Buddhism." We have had the great advantage of hearing Mr. Sinnett himself explain many points which perplexed us; and it is with his sanction that we now venture to ask that such light as is permissible may be thrown upon some difficulties which, so far as we can discover, remain as yet unsolved. We have refrained from asking questions on subjects on which we understand that the Adepts forbid inquiry, and we respectfully hope that, as we approach the subject with a genuine wish to arrive at all the truth possible to us, our perplexities may be thought worthy of an authorized solution. We begin, then, with some obvious scientific difficulties. 1. Is the Nebular Theory, as generally held, denied by the Adepts? It seems hard to conceive of the alternate evolution from the sun's central mass of planets, some of them visible and heavy, others invisible,--and apparently without weight, as they have no influence on the movements of the visible planets. 2. And, further, the time necessary for the manvantara even of one planetary chain, much more of all seven, seems largely to exceed the probable time during which the sun can retain heat, if it is merely a cooling mass, which derives no important accession of heat from without. Is some other view as regards the maintenance of the sun's heat held by the Adepts? 3. The different races which succeed each other on the earth are said to be separated by catastrophes, among which continental subsidences occupy a prominent place. Is it meant that these subsidences are so sudden and unforeseen as to sweep away great nations in an hour? Or, if not, how is it that no appreciable trace is left of such high civilizations as are described in the past? Is it supposed that our present European civilization, with its offshoots all over the globe, can be destroyed by any inundation or conflagration which leaves life still existing on the earth? Are our existing arts and languages doomed to perish? or was it only the earlier races who were thus profoundly disjoined from one another? 4. The moon is said to be the scene of a life even more immersed in matter than the life on earth. Are there then material organizations living there? If so, how do they dispense with air and water, and how is it that our telescopes discern no trace of their works? We should much like a fuller account of the Adepts' view of the moon, as so much is already known of her material conditions that further knowledge could be more easily adjusted than in the case (for instance) of planets wholly invisible. 5. Is the expression "a mineral monad" authorized by the Adepts? If so, what relation does the monad bear to the atom, or the molecule, of ordinary scientific hypothesis? And does each mineral monad eventually become a vegetable monad, and then at last a human being? Turning now to some historical difficulties, we would ask as follows:-- 6. Is there not some confusion in the letter quoted on p. 62 of "Esoteric Buddhism," where "the old Greeks and Romans" are said to have been Atlanteans? The Greeks and Romans were surely Aryans, like the Adepts and ourselves: their language being, as one may say, intermediate between Sanscrit and modern European dialects. 7. Buddha's birth is placed (on p. 141) in the year 643 B.C.. Is this date given by the Adepts as undoubtedly correct? Have they any view as to the new inscriptions of Asoka (as given by General A. Cunningham, "Corpus Inscriptionum Indicanum," vol. I. pp. 20-23), on the strength of which Buddha's Nirvana is placed by Barth ("Religions of India," p. 106), &c., about 476 B.C., and his birth therefore at about 556 B.C.? It would be exceedingly interesting if the Adepts would give a sketch however brief of the history of India in those centuries with authentic dates. 8. Sankaracharya's date is variously given by Orientalists, but always after Christ. Barth, for instance, places him about 788 A.D. In "Esoteric Buddhism" he is made to succeed Buddha almost immediately (p. 149). Can this discrepancy be explained? Has not Sankaracharya been usually classed as Vishnuite in his teaching? And similarly has not Gaudapada been accounted a Sivite? and placed much later than "Esoteric Buddhism" (p.147) places him? We would willingly pursue this line of inquiry, but think it best to wait and see to what extent the Adepts may be willing to clear up some of the problems in Indian religious history on which, as it would seem, they must surely possess knowledge which might be communicated to lay students without indiscretion. We pass on to some points beyond the ordinary range of science or history on which we should be very glad to hear more, if possible. 9. We should like to understand more clearly the nature of the subjective intercourse with beloved souls enjoyed in Devachan. Say, for instance, that I die and leave on earth some young children. Are these children present to my consciousness in Devachan still as children? Do I imagine that they have died when I died? or do I merely imagine them as adult without knowing their life-history? or do I miss them from Devachan until they do actually die, and then hear from them their life-history as it has proceeded between my death and theirs? 10. We do not quite understand the amount of reminiscence attained at various points in the soul's progress. Do the Adepts, who, we presume, are equivalent to sixth rounders, recollect their previous incarnations? Do all souls which live on into the sixth round attain this power of remembrance? or does the Devachan, at the end of each round bring a recollection of all the Devachans, or of all the incarnations, which have formed a part of that particular round? And does reminiscence carry with it the power of so arranging future incarnations as still to remain in company with some chosen soul or group of souls? We have many more questions to ask, but we scruple to intrude further. And I will conclude here by repeating the remark with which we are most often met when we speak of the Adepts to English friends. We find that our friends do not often ask for so-called miracles or marvels to prove the genuineness of the Adepts' powers. But they ask why the Adepts will not give some proof--not necessarily that they are far beyond us, but that their knowledge does at least equal our own in the familiar and definite tracks which Western science has worn for itself. A few pregnant remarks on Chemistry,--the announcement of a new electrical law, capable of experimental verification--some such communication as this (our interlocutors say), would arrest attention, command respect, and give a weight and prestige to the higher teaching which, so long as it remains in a region wholly unverifiable, it can scarcely acquire. We gratefully recognize the very acceptable choice which the Adepts have made in selecting Mr. Sinnett as the intermediary between us and them. They could hardly have chosen any one more congenial to our Western minds:--whether we consider the clearness of his written style, the urbanity of his verbal expositions, or the earnest sincerity of his convictions. Since they have thus far met our peculiar needs with such considerate judgment, we cannot but hope that they may find themselves able yet further to adapt their modes of teaching to the requirements of Occidental thought. --An English F.T.S. London, July 1883. Reply to an English F.T.S Answers It was not in contemplation, at the outset of the work begun in Fragments, to deal as fully with the scientific problems of cosmic evolution as now seems expected. A distinct promise was made, as Mr. Sinnett is well aware, to acquaint the readers with the outlines of Esoteric doctrines and--no more. A good deal would be given, much more kept back. This seeming unwillingness to share with the world some of Nature's secrets that may have come into the possession of the few, arises from causes quite different from the one generally assigned. It is not SELFISHNESS erecting a Chinese wall between occult science and those who would know more of it, without making any distinction between the simply curious profane, and the earnest, ardent seeker after truth. Wrong and unjust are those who think so; who attribute to indifference for other people's welfare a policy necessitated, on the contrary, by a far-seeing universal philanthropy; who accuse the custodians of lofty physical and spiritual though long rejected truths, of holding them high above the people's heads. In truth, the inability to reach them lies entirely with the seekers. Indeed, the chief reason among many others for such a reticence, at any rate, with regard to secrets pertaining to physical sciences--is to be sought elsewhere.* It rests entirely on the impossibility of imparting that the nature of which is at the present stage of the world's development, beyond the comprehension of the would-be learners, however intellectual and however scientifically trained may be the latter. This tremendous difficulty is now explained to the few, who, besides having read "Esoteric Buddhism," have studied and understood the several occult axioms approached in it. It is safe to say that it will not be even vaguely realized by the general reader, but will offer the pretext for sheer abuse. Nay, it has already. ------- * Needless to remind AN ENGLISH F.T.S. that what is said here, applies only to secrets the nature of which when revealed will not be turned into a weapon against humanity in general, or its units--men. Secrets of such class could not be given to any one but a regular chela of many years' standing and during his successive initiations; mankind as a whole has first to come of age, to reach its majority, which will happen but toward the beginning of its sixth race--before such mysteries can be safely revealed to it. The vril is not altogether a fiction, as some chelas and even "lay" chelas know. --------- It is simply that the gradual development of man's seven principles and physical senses has to be coincident and on parallel lines with Rounds and Root-races. Our fifth race has so far developed but its five senses. Now, if the Kama or Will-principle of the "Fourth-rounders" has already reached that stage of its evolution when the automatic acts, the unmotivated instincts and impulses of its childhood and youth, instead of following external stimuli, will have become acts of will framed constantly in conjunction with the mind (Manas), thus making of every man on earth of that race a free agent, a fully responsible being--the Kama of our hardly adult fifth race is only slowly approaching it. As to the sixth sense of this, our race, it has hardly sprouted above the soil of its materiality. It is highly unreasonable, therefore, to expect for the men of the fifth to sense the nature and essence of that which will be fully sensed and perceived but by the sixth--let alone the seventh race--i.e., to enjoy the legitimate outgrowth of the evolution and endowments of the future races with only the help of our present limited senses. The exceptions to this quasi-universal rule have been hitherto found only in some rare cases of constitutional, abnormally precocious individual evolutions; or, in such, where by early training and special methods, reaching the stage of the fifth rounders, some men in addition to the natural gift of the latter have fully developed (by certain occult methods) their sixth, and in still rarer cases their seventh, sense. As an instance of the former class may be cited the Seeress of Prevorst; a creature born out of time, a rare precocious growth, ill adapted to the uncongenial atmosphere that surrounded her, hence a martyr ever ailing and sickly. As an example of the other, the Count St. Germain may be mentioned. Apace with the anthropological and physiological development of man runs his spiritual evolution. To the latter, purely intellectual growth is often more an impediment than a help. An instance: radiant stuff--"the fourth state of matter"--has been hardly discovered, and no one--the eminent discoverer himself not excepted--has yet any idea of its full importance, its possibilities, its connection with physical phenomena, or even its bearing upon the most puzzling scientific problems. How then can any "Adept" attempt to prove the fallacy of much that is predicated in the nebular and solar theories when the only means by which he could successfully prove his position is an appeal to, and the exhibition of, that sixth sense-- consciousness which the physicist cannot postulate? Is not this plain? Thus, the obstacle is not that the "Adepts" would "forbid inquiry," but rather the personal, present limitations of the senses of the average, and even of the scientific man. To undertake the explanation of that which at the outset would be rejected as a physical impossibility, the outcome of hallucination, is unwise and even harmful, because premature. It is in consequence of such difficulties that the psychic production of physical phenomena--save in exceptional cases--is strictly forbidden. And now, "Adepts" are asked to meddle with astronomy--a science which, of all the branches of human knowledge has yielded the most accurate information, afforded the most mathematically correct data, and of the achievements in which the men of science feel the most justly proud! It is true that on the whole astronomy has achieved triumphs more brilliant than those of most other sciences. But if it has done much in the direction of satisfying man's straining and thirsting mind and his noble aspirations for knowledge, physical as to its most important particulars, it has ever laughed at man's puny efforts to wrest the great secrets of Infinitude by the help of only mechanical apparatus. While the spectroscope has shown the probable similarity of terrestrial and sidereal substance, the chemical actions peculiar to the variously progressed orbs of space have not been detected, nor proven to be identical with those observed on our own planet. In this particular, Esoteric Psychology may be useful. But who of the men of science would consent to confront it with their own handiwork? Who of them would recognise the superiority and greater trustworthiness of the Adept's knowledge over their own hypotheses, since in their case they can claim the mathematical correctness of their deductive reasonings based on the alleged unerring precision of the modern instruments; while the Adepts can claim but their knowledge of the ultimate nature of the materials they have worked with for ages, resulting in the phenomena produced. However much it may he urged that a deductive argument, besides being an incomplete syllogistic form, may often be in conflict with fact; that their major propositions may not always be correct, although the predicates of their conclusions seem correctly drawn--spectrum analysis will not be acknowledged as inferior to purely spiritual research. Nor, before developing his sixth sense, will the man of science concede the error of his theories as to the solar spectrum, unless he abjure, to some degree at least, his marked weakness for conditional and disjunctive syllogisms ending in eternal dilemmas. At present the "Adepts" do not see any help for it. Were these invisible and unknown profanes to interfere with--not to say openly contradict--the dicta of the Royal Society, contempt and ridicule, followed by charges of crass ignorance of the first elementary principles of modern science would be their only reward; while those who would lend an ear to their "vagaries," would be characterized immediately as types of the "mild lunatics" of the age. Unless, indeed, the whole of that August body should be initiated into the great Mysteries at once, and without any further ado or the preliminary and usual preparations or training, the F.R.S.'s could be miraculously endowed with the required sixth sense, the Adepts fear the task would be profitless. The latter have given quite enough, little though it may seem, for the purposes of a first trial. The sequence of martyrs to the great universal truths has never been once broken; and the long list of known and unknown sufferers, headed with the name of Galileo, now closes with that of Zollner. Is the world of science aware of the real cause of Zollner's premature death? When the fourth dimension of space becomes a scientific reality like the fourth state of matter, he may have a statue raised to him by grateful posterity. But this will neither recall him to life, nor will it obliterate the days and months of mental agony that harassed the soul of this intuitional, far-seeing, modest genius, made even after his death to receive the donkey's kick of misrepresentation and to be publicly charged with lunacy. Hitherto, astronomy could grope between light and darkness only with the help of the uncertain guidance offered it by analogy. It has reduced to fact and mathematical precision the physical motion and the paths of the heavenly bodies, and--no more. So far, it has been unable to discover with any approach to certainty the physical constitution of either sun, stars, or even cometary matter. Of the latter, it seems to know no more than was taught 5,000 years ago by the official astronomers of old Chaldea and Egypt--namely, that it is vaporous, since it transmits the rays of stars and planets without any sensible obstruction. But let the modern chemist be asked to tell one whether this matter is in any way connected with, or akin to, that of any of the gases he is acquainted with; or again, to any of the solid elements of his chemistry. The probable answer received will be very little calculated to solve the world's perplexity; since, all hypotheses to the contrary notwithstanding, cometary matter does not appear to possess even the common law of adhesion or of chemical affinity. The reason for it is very simple. And the truth ought long ago to have dawned upon the experimentalists, since our little world (though so repeatedly visited by the hairy and bearded travelers, enveloped in the evanescent veil of their tails, and otherwise brought in contact with that matter) has neither been smothered by an addition of nitrogen gas, nor deluged by an excess of hydrogen, nor yet perceptibly affected by a surplus of oxygen. The essence of cometary matter must be--and the "Adepts" say is--totally different from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with which the greatest chemists and physicists of the earth are familiar-- all recent hypotheses to the contrary notwithstanding. It is to be feared that before the real nature of the elder progeny of Mula Prakriti is detected, Mr. Crookes will have to discover matter of the fifth or extra radiant state; et seq. Thus, while the astronomer has achieved marvels in the elucidation of the visible relations of the orbs of space, he has learnt nothing of their inner constitution. His science has led him no farther towards a reading of that inner mystery than has that of the geologist, who can tell us only of the earth's superficial layers, and that of the physiologist, who has until now been able to deal only with man's outer shell, or Sthula Sarira. Occultists have asserted, and go on asserting daily, the fallacy of judging the essence by its outward manifestations, the ultimate nature of the life-principle by the circulation of the blood, mind by the gray matter of the brain, and the physical constitution of sun, stars and comets by our terrestrial chemistry and the matter of our own planet. Verily and indeed, no microscopes, spectroscopes, telescopes, photometers, or other physical apparatuses can ever be focused on either the macro-or micro-cosmical highest principles, nor will the mayavirupa of either yield its mystery to physical inquiry. The methods of spiritual research and psychological observation are the only efficient agencies to employ. We have to proceed by analogy in everything to be sure. Yet the candid men of science must very soon find out that it is not sufficient to examine a few stars--a handful of sand, as it were, from the margin of the shoreless, cosmic ocean--to conclude that these stars are the same as all other stars--our earth included; that, because they have attained a certain very great telescopic power, and gauged an area enclosed in the smallest of spaces when compared with what remains, they have, therefore, concurrently perfected the survey of all that exists within even that limited space. For, in truth, they have done nothing of the kind. They have had only a superficial glance at that which is made visible to them under the present conditions, with the limited power of their vision. And even though it were helped by telescopes of a hundred-fold stronger power than that of Lord Rosse, or the new Lick Observatory, the case would not alter. No physical instrument will ever help astronomy to scan distances of the immensity of which that of Sirius, situated at the trifle of 130,125,000,000,000 miles away from the outer boundary of the spherical area, or even that of (a) Capella, with its extra trifle of 295,355,000,000,000* miles still farther away, can give them, as they themselves are well aware, the faintest idea. For, though an Adept is unable to cross bodily (i.e., in his astral shape) the limits of the solar system, yet he knows that, far stretching beyond the telescopic power of detection, there are systems upon systems, the smallest of which would, when compared with the system of Sirius, make the latter seem like an atom of dust imbedded in the great Shamo desert. The eye of the astronomer, who thinks he also knows of the existence of such systems, has never rested upon them, has never caught of them, even that spectral glimpse, fanciful and hazy as the incoherent vision in a slumbering mind that he has occasionally had of other systems, and yet he verily believes he has gauged INFINITUDE! And yet these immeasurably distant worlds are brought as clear and near to the spiritual eye of the astral astronomer as a neighbouring bed of daisies may be to the eye of the botanist. -------- * The figures are given from the mathematical calculations of exoteric Western astronomy. Esoteric astronomy may prove them false some day. -------- Thus, the "Adepts" of the present generation, though unable to help the profane astronomer by explaining the ultimate essence, or even the material constitution, of star and planet, since European science, knowing nothing as yet of the existence of such substances, or more properly of their various states or conditions, has neither proper terms for, nor can form any adequate idea of them by any description, they may, perchance, be able to prove what this matter is not--and this is more than sufficient for all present purposes. The next best thing to learning what is true is to ascertain what is not true. Having thus anticipated a few general objections, and traced a limit to expectations, since there is no need of drawing any veil of mystery before "An English F.T.S.," his few questions may be partially answered. The negative character of the replies draws a sufficiently strong line of demarcation between the views of the Adepts and those of Western science to afford some useful hints at least. Question 1.--Do the Adepts deny the Nebular Theory? Answer:--No; they do not deny its general propositions, nor the approximative truths of the scientific hypotheses. They only deny the completeness of the present, as well as the entire error of the many so-called "exploded" old theories, which, during the last century, have followed each other in such rapid succession. For instance: while denying, with Laplace, Herschel and others, that the variable patches of light perceived on the nebulous background of the galaxy ever belonged to remote worlds in the process of formation; and agreeing with modern science that they proceed from no aggregation of formless matter, but belong simply to clusters of "stars" already formed; they yet add that many of such clusters, that pass in the opinion of the astro-physicists for stars and worlds already evoluted, are in fact but collections of the various materials made ready for future worlds. Like bricks already baked, of various qualities, shapes and colour, that are no longer formless clay but have become fit units of a future wall, each of them having a fixed and distinctly assigned space to occupy in some forthcoming building, are these seemingly adult worlds. The astronomer has no means of recognizing their relative adolescence, except perhaps by making a distinction between the star clusters with the usual orbital motion and mutual gravitation, and those termed, we believe, irregular star-clusters of very capricious and changeful appearances. Thrown together as though at random, and seemingly in utter violation of the law of symmetry, they defy observation: such, for instance, are 5 M. Lyrae, 5 2 M. Cephei, Dumb-Bell, and some others. Before an emphatic contradiction of what precedes is attempted, and ridicule offered perchance, it would not be amiss to ascertain the nature and character of those other so-called "temporary" stars, whose periodicity, though never actually proven, is yet allowed to pass unquestioned. What are these stars which, appearing suddenly in matchless magnificence and splendour, disappear as mysteriously as unexpectedly, without leaving a single trace behind? Whence do they appear? Whither are they engulfed? In the great cosmic deep--we say. The bright "brick" is caught by the hand of the mason--directed by that Universal Architect which destroys but to rebuild. It has found its place in the cosmic structure and will perform its mission to its last Manvantaric hour. Another point most emphatically denied by the "Adepts" is, that there exist in the whole range of visible heavens any spaces void of starry worlds. There are stars, worlds and systems within as without the systems made visible to man, and even within our own atmosphere, for all the physicist knows. The "Adept" affirms in this connection that orthodox, or so-called official science, uses very often the word "infinitude" without attaching to it any adequate importance; rather as a flower of speech than a term implying an awful, a most mysterious Reality. When an astronomer is found in his Reports "gauging infinitude," even the most intuitional of his class is but too often apt to forget that he is gauging only the superficies of a small area and its visible depths, and to speak of these as though they were merely the cubic contents of some known quantity. This is the direct result of the present conception of a three-dimensional space. The turn of a four-dimensional world is near, but the puzzle of science will ever continue until their concepts reach the natural dimensions of visible and invisible space--in its septenary completeness. "The Infinite and the Absolute are only the names for two counter-imbecilities of the human (uninitiated) mind;" and to regard them as the transmuted "properties of the nature of things--of two subjective negatives converted into objective affirmatives," as Sir W. Hamilton puts it, is to know nothing of the infinite operations of human liberated spirit, or of its attributes, the first of which is its ability to pass beyond the region of our terrestrial experience of matter and space. As an absolute vacuum is an impossibility below, so is it a like impossibility above. But our molecules, the infinitesimals of the vacuum "below," are replaced by the giant-atom of the Infinitude "above." When demonstrated, the four-dimensional conception of space may lead to the invention of new instruments to explore the extremely dense matter that surrounds us as a ball of pitch might surround--say, a fly, but which, in our extreme ignorance of all its properties save those we find it exercising on our earth, we yet call the clear, the serene, and the transparent atmosphere. This is no psychology, but simply occult physics, which can never confound "substance" with "centres of Force," to use the terminology of a Western science which is ignorant of Maya. In less than a century, besides telescopes, microscopes, micrographs and telephones, the Royal Society will have to offer a premium for such an etheroscope. It is also necessary in connection with the question under reply that "An English F.T.S." should know that the "Adepts" of the Good Law reject gravity as at present explained. They deny that the so-called "impact theory" is the only one that is tenable in the gravitation hypothesis. They say, that if all efforts made by the physicists to connect it with ether, in order to explain electric and magnetic distance-action have hitherto proved complete failures, it is again due to the race ignorance of the ultimate states of matter in Nature, and, foremost of all, of the real nature of the solar stuff. Believing but in the law of mutual magneto-electric attraction and repulsion, they agree with those who have come to the conclusion that "Universal gravitation is a weak force," utterly incapable of accounting for even one small portion of the phenomena of motion. In the same connection they are forced to suggest that science may he wrong in her indiscriminate postulation of centrifugal force, which is neither a universal nor a consistent law. To cite but one instance this force is powerless to account for the spheroidal oblateness of certain planets. For if the bulge of planetary equators and the shortening of their polar axes is to be attributed to centrifugal force, instead of being simply the result of the powerful influence of solar electro-magnetic attraction, "balanced by concentric rectification of each planet's own gravitation achieved by rotation on its axis," to use an astronomer's phraseology (neither very clear nor correct, yet serving our purpose to show the many flaws in the system), why should there be such difficulty in answering the objection that the differences in the equatorial rotation and density of various planets are directly in opposition to this theory? How long shall we see even great mathematicians bolstering up fallacies to supply an evident hiatus! The "Adepts" have never claimed superior or any knowledge of Western astronomy and other sciences. Yet turning even to the most elementary textbooks used in the schools of India, they find that the centrifugal theory of Western birth is unable to cover all the ground. That, unaided, it can neither account for every spheroid oblate, nor explain away such evident difficulties as are presented by the relative density of some planets. How indeed can any calculation of centrifugal force explain to us, for instance, why Mercury, whose rotation is, we are told, only "about one-third that of the Earth, and its density only about one-fourth greater than the Earth," should have a polar compression more than ten times greater than the latter? And again, why Jupiter, whose equatorial rotation is said to be "twenty-seven times greater, and its density only about one-fifth that of the Earth," should have its polar compression seventeen times greater than that of the Earth? Or, why Saturn, with an equatorial velocity fifty-five times greater than Mercury for centrifugal force to contend with, should have its polar compression only three times greater than Mercury's? To crown the above contradictions, we are asked to believe in the Central Forces as taught by modern science, even when told that the equatorial matter of the sun, with more than four times the centrifugal velocity of the earth's equatorial surface and only about one-fourth part of the gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested any tendency to bulge out at the solar equator, nor shown the least flattening at the poles of the solar axis. In other and clearer words, the sun, with only one-fourth of our earth's density for the centrifugal force to work upon, has no polar compression at all! We find this objection made by more than one astronomer, yet never explained away satisfactorily so far as the "Adepts" are aware. Therefore do they say that the great men of science of the West, knowing nothing or next to nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulae, or the physical constitution of the sun, stars, or even the moon, are imprudent to speak so confidently as they do about the "central mass of the sun" whirling out into space planets, comets, and whatnot. Our humble opinion being wanted, we maintain: that it evolutes out, but the life principle, the soul of these bodies, giving and receiving it back in our little solar system, as the "Universal Life-giver," the ONE LIFE gives and receives it in the Infinitude and Eternity; that the Solar System is as much the Microcosm of the One Macrocosm, as man is the former when compared with his own little solar cosmos. What are the proofs of science? The solar spots (a misnomer, like much of the rest)? But these do not prove the solidity of the "central mass," any more than the storm-clouds prove the solid mass of the atmosphere behind them. Is it the non-coextensiveness of the sun's body with its apparent luminous dimensions, the said "body" appearing "a solid mass, a dark sphere of matter confined within a fiery prison-house, a robe of fiercest flames?" We say that there is indeed a "prisoner" behind, but that having never yet been seen by any physical, mortal eye, what he allows to be seen of him is merely a gigantic reflection, an illusive phantasma of "solar appendages of some sort," as Mr. Proctor honestly calls it. Before saying anything further, we will consider the next interrogatory. Question II.--Is the Sun merely a cooling mass? Such is the accepted theory of modern science: it is not what the "Adepts" teach. The former says--the sun "derives no important accession of heat from without:"--the latter answer--"the sun needs it not." He is quite as self dependent as he is self-luminous; and for the maintenance of his heat requires no help, no foreign accession of vital energy; for he is the heart of his system, a heart that will not cease its throbbing until its hour of rest shall come. Were the sun "a cooling mass," our great life-giver would have indeed grown dim with age by this time, and found some trouble to keep his watch-fires burning for the future races to accomplish their cycles, and the planetary chains to achieve their rounds. There would remain no hope for evoluting humanity; except perhaps in what passes for science in the astronomical textbooks of Missionary Schools--namely, that "the sun has an orbital journey of a hundred millions of years before him, and the system yet but seven thousand years old!" (Prize Book, "Astronomy for General Readers.") The "Adepts," who are thus forced to demolish before they can reconstruct, deny most emphatically (a) that the sun is in combustion, in any ordinary sense of the word; or (b) that he is incandescent, or even burning, though he is glowing; or (c) that his luminosity has already begun to weaken and his power of combustion may be exhausted within a given and conceivable time; or even (d) that his chemical and physical constitution contains any of the elements of terrestrial chemistry in any of the states that either chemist or physicist is acquainted with. With reference to the latter, they add that, properly speaking, though the body of the sun--a body that was never yet reflected by telescope or spectroscope that man invented--cannot be said to be constituted of those terrestrial elements with the state of which the chemist is familiar, yet that these elements are all present in the sun's outward robes, and a host more of elements unknown so far to science. There seems little need, indeed, to have waited so long for the lines belonging to these respective elements to correspond with dark lines of the solar spectrum to know that no element present on our earth could ever be possibly found wanting in the sun; although, on the other hand, there are many others in the sun which have either not reached or not as yet been discovered on our globe. Some may be missing in certain stars and heavenly bodies still in the process of formation; or, properly speaking, though present in them, these elements on account of their undeveloped state may not respond as yet to the usual scientific tests. But how can the earth possess that which the sun has never had? The "Adepts" affirm as a fact that the true Sun--an invisible orb of which the known one is the shell, mask, or clothing--has in him the spirit of every element that exists in the solar system; and his "Chromosphere," as Mr. Lockyer named it, has the same, only in a far more developed condition, though still in a state unknown on earth; our planet having to await its further growth and development before any of its elements can be reduced to the condition they are in within that chromosphere. Nor can the substance producing the coloured light in the latter be properly called solid, liquid, or even "gaseous," as now supposed, for it is neither. Thousands of years before Leverrier and Padri Secchi, the old Aryans sung of Surya .... "hiding behind his Yogi,* robes his head that no one could see;" the ascetic's dress being, as all know, dyed expressly into a red-yellow hue, a colouring matter with pinkish patches on it, rudely representing the vital principle in man's blood--the symbol of the vital principle in the sun, or what is now called chromosphere. The "rose-coloured region!" How little astronomers will ever know of its real nature, even though hundreds of eclipses furnish them with the indisputable evidence of its presence. The sun is so thickly surrounded by a shell of this "red matter," that it is useless for them to speculate with only the help of their physical instruments, upon the nature of that which they can never see or detect with mortal eye behind that brilliant, radiant zone of matter. --------- * There is an interesting story in the Puranas relating to this subject. The Devas, it would appear, asked the great Rishi Vasishta to bring the sun into Satya Loka. The Rishi requested the Sun-god to do so. The Sun-god replied that all the worlds would be destroyed if he were to leave his place. The Rishi then offered to place his red-coloured cloth (Kashay Vastram) in the place of the sun's disk, and did so. The visible body of the sun is this robe of Vasishta, it would seem. --------- If the "Adepts" are asked: "What then, in your views, is the nature of our sun and what is there beyond that cosmic veil?"--they answer: beyond rotates and beats the heart and head of our system; externally is spread its robe, the nature of which is not matter, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, such as you are acquainted with, but vital electricity, condensed and made visible.* --------- * If the "English F.T.S." would take the trouble of consulting p. 11 of the "Magia Adamica" of Eugenius Philalethes, his learned compatriot, he would find therein the difference between a visible and an invisible planet is clearly hinted at as it was safe to do at a time when the iron claw of orthodoxy had the power as well as disposition to tear the flesh from heretic bones. "The earth is invisible," says he, .... "and which is more, the eye of man never saw the earth, nor can it be seen without art. To make this element visible is the greatest secret in magic .... As for this feculent, gross body upon which we walk, it is a compost, and no earth but it hath earth in it .... in a word, all the elements are visible but one, namely, the earth: and when thou hast attained to so much perfection as to know why God hath placed the earth in abscondito, thou hast an excellent figure whereby to know God himself, and how he is visible, how invisible," The italics are the author's, it being the custom of the Alchemists to emphasize those words which had a double meaning in their code. Here "God himself" visible and invisible, relates to their lapis philosophorum--Nature's seventh principle. ---------- And if the statement is objected to on the grounds that were the luminosity of the sun due to any other cause than combustion and flame, no physical law of which Western science has any knowledge could account for the existence of such intensely high temperature of the sun without combustion; that such a temperature, besides burning with its light and flame every visible thing in our universe, would show its luminosity of a homogeneous and uniform intensity throughout, which it does not; that undulations and disturbances in the photosphere, the growing of the "protuberances," and a fierce raging of elements in combustion have been observed in the sun, with their tongues of fire and spots exhibiting every appearance of cyclonic motion, and "solar storms," &c. &c.; to this the only answer that can be given is the following: the appearances are all there, yet it is not combustion. Undoubtedly were the "robes," the dazzling drapery which now envelopes the whole of the sun's globe, withdrawn, or even "the shining atmosphere which permits us to see the sun" (as Sir William Herschel thought) removed so as to allow one trifling rent, our whole universe would be reduced to ashes. Jupiter Fulminator revealing himself to his beloved would incinerate her instantly. But it can never be. The protecting shell is of a thickness and at a distance from the universal HEART that call hardly be ever calculated by your mathematicians. And how can they hope to see the sun's inner body once that the existence of that "chromosphere" is ascertained, though its actual density may be still unknown, when one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of their authorities--Sir W. Herschel--says the following: "The sun, also, has its atmosphere, and if some of the fluids which enter into its composition should be of a shining brilliancy, while others are merely transparent, any temporary cause which may remove the lucid fluid will permit us to see the body of the sun through the transparent ones." The underlined words, written nearly eighty years ago, embody the wrong hypothesis that the body of the sun might be seen under such circumstances, whereas it is only the far-away layers of "the lucid fluid" that would be perceived. And what the great astronomer adds invalidates entirely the first portion of his assumption: "If an observer were placed on the moon, he would see the solid body of our earth only in those places where the transparent fluids of the atmosphere would permit him. In others, the opaque vapours would reflect the light of the sun without permitting his view to penetrate to the surface of our globe." Thus, if the atmosphere of our earth, which in its relation to the "atmosphere" (?) of the sun is like the tenderest skin of a fruit compared with the thickest husk of a cocoa-nut, would prevent the eye of an observer standing on the moon from penetrating everywhere "to the surface of our globe," how can an astronomer ever expect his sight to penetrate to the sun's surface, from our earth and at a distance of from 85 to 95 million miles,* whereas, the moon, we are told, is only about 238,000 miles! -------- * Verily, "absolute accuracy in the solution of this problem (of distances between the heavenly bodies and the earth) is simply out of the question." ---------- The proportionately larger size of the sun does not bring it any the more within the scope of our physical vision. Truly remarks Sir W. Herschel that the sun "has been called a globe of fire, perhaps metaphorically!" It has been supposed that the dark spots were solid bodies revolving near the sun's surface. "They have been conjectured to be the smoke of volcanoes the scum floating upon an ocean of fluid matter.... They have been taken for clouds .... explained to be opaque masses swimming in the fluid matter of the sun...." When all his anthropomorphic conceptions are put aside, Sir John Herschel, whose intuition was still greater than his great learning, alone of all astronomers comes near the truth--far nearer than any of those modern astronomers who, while admiring his gigantic learning, smile at his "imaginative and fanciful theories." His only mistake, now shared by most astronomers, was that he regarded the "opaque body" occasionally observed through the curtain of the "luminous envelope" as the sun itself. When saying in the course of his speculations upon the Nasmyth willow-leaf theory--"the definite shape of these objects, their exact similarity one to another.... all these characters seem quite repugnant to the notion of their being of a vaporous, a cloudy, or a fluid nature"--his spiritual intuition served him better than his remarkable knowledge of physical science. When he adds: "Nothing remains but to consider them as separate and independent sheets, flakes.... having some sort of solidity.... Be they what they may, they are evidently the immediate sources of the solar light and heat"--he utters a grander physical truth than was ever uttered by any living astronomer. And when, furthermore, we find him postulating--"looked at in this point of view, we cannot refuse to regard them as organisms of some peculiar and amazing kind; and though it would be too daring to speak of such organization as partaking of the nature of life, yet we do know that vital action is competent to develop at once heat, and light, and electricity," Sir John Herschel gives out a theory approximating an occult truth more than any of the profane ever did with regard to solar physics. These "wonderful objects" are not, as a modern astronomer interprets Sir J. Herschel's words, "solar inhabitants, whose fiery constitution enables them to illuminate, warm and electricize the whole solar system," but simply the reservoirs of solar vital energy, the vital electricity that feeds the whole system in which it lives, and breathes, and has its being. The sun is, as we say, the storehouse of our little cosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and ever receiving a much as it gives out. Were the astronomers to be asked--what definite and positive fact exists at the root of their solar theory--what knowledge they have of solar combustion and atmosphere--they might, perchance, feel embarrassed when confronted with all their present theories. For it is sufficient to make a resume of what the solar physicists do not know, to gain conviction that they are as far as ever from a definite knowledge of the constitution and ultimate nature of the heavenly bodies. We may, perhaps, be permitted to enumerate:-- Beginning with, as Mr. Proctor wisely calls it, "the wildest assumption possible," that there is, in accordance with the law of analogy, some general resemblance between the materials in, and the processes at work upon, the sun, and those materials with which terrestrial chemistry and physics are familiar, what is that sum of results achieved by spectroscopic and other analyses of the surface and the inner constitution of the sun, which warrants any one in establishing the axiom of the sun's combustion and gradual extinction? They have no means, as they themselves daily confess, of experimenting upon, hence of determining, the sun's physical condition; for (a) they are ignorant of the atmospheric limits; (b) even though it were proved that matter, such as they know of, is continuously falling upon the sun, being ignorant of its real velocity and the nature of the material it falls upon, they are unable "to discuss of the effect of motions wholly surpassing in velocity .... enormously exceeding even the inconceivable velocity of many meteors;" (c) confessedly--they "have no means of learning whence that part of the light comes which gives the continuous spectrum".... hence no means of determining how great a depth of the solar substance is concerned in sending out that light. This light "may come from the surface layers only;" and, "it may be but a shell" .... (truly!); and finally, (d) they have yet to learn "how far combustion, properly so-called, can take place within the sun's mass;" and "whether these processes, which we (they) recognize as combustion, are the only processes of combustion which can actually take place there." Therefore, Mr. Proctor for one comes to the happy and prudent idea after all "that what had been supposed the most marked characteristic of incandescent solid and liquid bodies, is thus shown to be a possible characteristic of the light of the glowing gas." Thus, the whole basis of their reasoning having been shaken (by Frankland's objection), they, the astronomers, may yet arrive at accepting the occult theory, viz., that they have to look to the 6th state of matter, for divulging to them the true nature of their photospheres, chromospheres, appendages, prominences, projections and horns. Indeed, when one finds one of the authorities of the age in physical science--Professor Tyndall--saying that "no earthly substance with which we are acquainted, no substance which the fall of meteors has landed on the earth--would be at all competent to maintain the sun's combustion;" and again:--".... multiplying all our powers by millions of millions, we do not reach the sun's expenditure. And still, notwithstanding this enormous drain in the lapse of human history, we are unable to detect a diminution of his store ...."--after reading this, to see the men of science still maintaining their theory of "a hot globe cooling," one may be excused for feeling surprised at such inconsistency. Verily is that great physicist right in viewing the sun itself as "a speck in infinite extension--a mere drop in the Universal sea;" and saying that, "to Nature nothing can be added; from Nature nothing can be taken away; the sum of her energy is constant, and the utmost man can do in the pursuit of physical truth, or in the applications of physical knowledge, is to shift the constituents of the never-varying total. The law of conservation rigidly excludes both creation and annihilation .... the flux of power is eternally the same." Mr. Tyndall speaks here as though he were an Occultist. Yet, the memento mori--"the sun is cooling .... it is dying!" of the Western Trappists of Science resounds as loud as it ever did. No, we say; no, while there is one man left on the globe, the sun will not be extinguished. Before the hour of the "Solar Pralaya" strikes on the watch-tower of Eternity, all the other worlds of our system will be gliding in their spectral shells along the silent paths of Infinite Space. Before it strikes, Atlas, the mighty Titan, the son of Asia and the nursling of Aether, will have dropped his heavy manvantaric burden and--died; the Pleiades, the bright seven Sisters, will have upon awakening hiding Sterope to grieve with them--to die themselves for their father's loss. And, Hercules, moving off his left leg, will have to shift his place in heavens and erect his own funeral pile. Then only, surrounded by the fiery element breaking through the thickening gloom of the Pralayan twilight, will Hercules, expiring amidst a general conflagration, bring on likewise the death of our sun: he will have unveiled by moving off the "CENTRAL SUN"--the mysterious, the ever-hidden centre of attraction of our sun and system. Fables? Mere poetical fiction? Yet, when one knows that the most exact sciences, the greatest mathematical and astronomical truths went forth into the world among the hoi polloi from the circle of initiated priests, the Hierophants of the sanctum sanctorum of the old temples, under the guise of religious fables, it may not be amiss to search for universal truths even under the patches of fiction's harlequinade. This fable about the Pleiades, the seven Sisters, Atlas, and Hercules exists identical in subject, though under other names, in the sacred Hindu books, and has likewise the same occult meaning. But then like the Ramayana "borrowed from the Greek Iliad" and the Bhagavat-Gita and Krishna plagiarized from the Gospel--in the opinion of the great Sanskritist, Prof. Weber, the Aryans may have also borrowed the Pleiades and their Hercules from the same source! When the Brahmins can be shown by the Christian Orientalists to be the direct descendants of the Teutonic Crusaders, then only, perchance, will the cycle of proofs be completed, and the historical truths of the West vindicated! Question III.--Are the great nations to be swept away in an hour? No such absurdity was ever postulated. The cataclysm that annihilated the choicest sub-races of the Fourth race, or the Atlanteans, was slowly preparing its work for ages; as any one can read in "Esoteric Buddhism" (page 54). "Poseidonis," so called, belongs to historical times, though its fate begins to be realized and suspected only now. What was said is still asserted: every root-race is separated by a catastrophe, a cataclysm--the basis and historical foundation of the fables woven later on into the religious fabric of every people, whether civilized or savage, under the names of "deluges," "showers of fire," and such like. That no "appreciable trace is left of such high civilization" is due to several reasons. One of these may be traced chiefly to the inability, and partially to the unwillingness (or shall we say congenital spiritual blindness of this our age!) of the modern archeologist to distinguish between excavations and ruins 50,000 and 4,000 years old, and to assign to many a grand archaic ruin its proper age and place in prehistoric times. For the latter the archeologist is not responsible--for what criterion, what sign has he to lead him to infer the true date of an excavated building bearing no inscription; and what warrant has the public that the antiquary and specialist has not made an error of some 20,000 years? A fair proof of this we have in the scientific and historic labeling of the Cyclopean architecture. Traditional archeology bearing directly upon the monumental is rejected. Oral literature, popular legends, ballads and rites, are all stifled in one word-- superstition; and popular antiquities have become "fables" and "folk-lore." The ruder style of Cyclopean masonry, the walls of Tyrius, mentioned by Homer, are placed at the farthest end--the dawn of pre-Roman history; the walls of Epirus and Mycenae--at the nearest. The latter are commonly believed the work of the Pelasgi and probably of about 1,000 years before the Western era. As to the former, they were hedged in and driven forward by the Noachian deluge till very lately-- Archbishop Usher's learned scheme, computing that earth and man "were created 4,004 B.C.," having been not only popular but actually forced upon the educated classes until Mr. Darwin's triumphs. Had it not been for the efforts of a few Alexandrian and other mystics, Platonists, and heathen philosophers, Europe would have never laid her hands even on those few Greek and Roman classics she now possesses. And, as among the few that escaped the dire fate not all by any means were trustworthy-- hence, perhaps, the secret of their preservation--Western scholars got early into the habit of rejecting all heathen testimony, whenever truth clashed with the dicta of their churches. Then, again, the modern Archeologists, Orientalists and Historians, are all Europeans; and they are all Christians, whether nominally or otherwise. However it may be, most of them seem to dislike to allow any relic of archaism to antedate the supposed antiquity of the Jewish records. This is a ditch into which most have slipped. The traces of ancient civilizations exist, and they are many. Yet, it is humbly suggested, that so long as there are reverend gentlemen mixed up unchecked in archaeological and Asiatic societies; and Christian bishops to write the supposed histories and religions of non-Christian nations, and to preside over the meetings of Orientalists--so long will Archaism and its remains be made subservient in every branch to ancient Judaism and modern Christianity. So far, archeology knows nothing of the sites of other and far older civilizations, except the few it has stumbled upon, and to which it has assigned their respective ages, mostly under the guidance of biblical chronology. Whether the West had any right to impose upon Universal History the untrustworthy chronology of a small and unknown Jewish tribe and reject, at the same time, every datum as every other tradition furnished by the classical writers of non-Jewish and non-Christian nations, is questionable. At any rate, had it accepted as willingly data coming from other sources, it might have assured itself by this time, that not only in Italy and other parts of Europe, but even on sites not very far from those it is accustomed to regard as the hotbed of ancient relics--Babylonia and Assyria--there are other sites where it could profitably excavate. The immense "Salt Valley" of Dasht-Beyad by Khorasson covers the most ancient civilizations of the world; while the Shamo desert has had time to change from sea to land, and from fertile land to a dead desert, since the day when the first civilization of the Fifth Race left its now invisible, and perhaps for ever hidden, "traces" under its beds of sand. Times have changed, are changing. Proofs of the old civilizations and the archaic wisdom are accumulating. Though soldier-bigots and priestly schemers have burnt books and converted old libraries to base uses; though the dry rot and the insect have destroyed inestimably precious records; though within the historic period the Spanish brigands made bonfires of the works of the refined archaic American races, which, if spared, would have solved many a riddle of history; though Omar lit the fires of the Alexandrian baths for months with the literary treasures of the Serapeum; though the Sybilline and other mystical books of Rome and Greece were destroyed in war; though the South Indian invaders of Ceylon "heaped into piles as high as the tops of the cocoanut trees" the ollas of the Buddhists, and set them ablaze to light their victory--thus obliterating from the world's knowledge early Buddhist annals and treatises of great importance: though this hateful and senseless Vandalism has disgraced the career of most fighting nations--still, despite everything, there are extant abundant proofs of the history of mankind, and bits and scraps come to light from time to time by what science has often called "most curious coincidences." Europe has no very trustworthy history of her own vicissitudes and mutations, her successive races and their doings. What with their savage wars, the barbaric habits of the historic Goths, Huns, Franks, and other warrior nations, and the interested literary Vandalism of the shaveling priests who for centuries sat upon its intellectual life like a nightmare, an antiquity could not exist for Europe. And, having no Past to record themselves, the European critics, historians and archeologists have not scrupled to deny one to others--whenever the concession excited a sacrifice of biblical prestige. No "traces of old civilizations" we are told! And what about the Pelasgi--the direct forefathers of the Hellenes, according to Herodotus? What about the Etruscans--the race mysterious and wonderful, if any, for the historian, and whose origin is the most insoluble of problems? That which is known of them only shows that could something more be known, a whole series of prehistoric civilizations might be discovered. A people described as are the Pelasgi--a highly intellectual, receptive, active people, chiefly occupied with agriculture, warlike when necessary, though preferring peace; a people who built canals as no one else, subterranean water-works, dams, walls, and Cyclopean buildings of the most astounding strength; who are even suspected of having been the inventors of the so-called Cadmean or Phoenician writing characters from which all European alphabets are derived--who were they? Could they be shown by any possible means as the descendants of the biblical Peleg (Gen. x. 25) their high civilization would have been thereby demonstrated, though their antiquity would still have to be dwarfed to 2247 "B.C.." And who were the Etruscans? Shall the Easterns like the Westerns be made to believe that between the high civilizations of the pre-Roman (and we say--prehistoric) Tursenoi of the Greeks, with their twelve great cities known to history; their Cyclopean buildings, their plastic and pictorial arts, and the time when they were a nomadic tribe "first descended into Italy from their northern latitudes"--only a few centuries elapsed? Shall it be still urged that the Phoenicians with their Tyre 2750 "B.C." (a chronology, accepted by Western history), their commerce, fleet, learning, arts, and civilization, were only a few centuries before the building of Tyre but "a small tribe of Semitic fishermen"? Or, that the Trojan war could not have been earlier than 1184 B.C., and thus Magna Graecia must be fixed somewhere between the eighth and the ninth Century "B.C.," and by no means thousands of years before, as was claimed by Plato and Aristotle, Homer and the Cyclic Poems, derived from, and based upon, other records millenniums older? If the Christian historian, hampered by his chronology, and the freethinker by lack of necessary data, feel bound to stigmatize every non-Christian or non-Western chronology as "obviously fanciful," "purely mythical," and "not worthy of a moment's consideration," how shall one, wholly dependent upon Western guides get at the truth? And if these incompetent builders of Universal History can persuade their public to accept as authoritative their chronological and ethnological reveries, why should the Eastern student, who has access to quite different--and we make bold to say, more trustworthy-- materials, be expected to join in the blind belief of those who defend Western historical infallibility? He believes--on the strength of the documentary evidence, left by Yavanacharya (Pythagoras) 607 "B.C." in India, and that of his own national "temple records," that instead of giving hundreds we may safely give thousands of years to the foundation of Cumaea and Magna Graecia, of which it was the pioneer settlement. That the civilization of the latter had already become effete when Pythagoras, the great pupil of Aryan Masters went to Crotone. And, having no biblical bias to overcome, he feels persuaded that, if it took the Celtic and Gaelic tribes Britannicae Insulae, with the ready-made civilizations of Rome before their eyes, and acquaintance with that of the Phoenicians whose trade with them began a thousand years before the Christian era; and to crown all with the definite help later of the Normans and Saxons--two thousand years before they could build their medieval cities, not even remotely comparable with those of the Romans; and it took them two thousand five hundred years to get half as civilized; then, that instead of that hypothetical period, benevolently styled the childhood of the race, being within easy reach of the Apostles and the early Fathers, it must be relegated to an enormously earlier time. Surely if it took the barbarians of Western Europe so many centuries to develop a language and create empires, then the nomadic tribes of the "mythical" periods ought in common fairness--since they never came under the fructifying energy of that Christian influence to which we are asked to ascribe all the scientific enlightenment of this age--about ten thousand years to build their Tyres and their Veii, their Sidons and Carthagenes. As other Troys lie under the surface of the topmost one in the Troad; and other and higher civilizations were exhumed by Mariette Bey under the stratum of sand from which the archeological collections of Lepsius, Abbott, and the British Museum were taken; and six Hindu "Delhis," superposed and hidden away out of sight, formed the pedestal upon which the Mogul conqueror built the gorgeous capital whose ruins still attest the splendour of his Delhi; so when the fury of critical bigotry has quite subsided, and Western men are prepared to write history in the interest of truth alone, will the proofs be found of the cyclic law of civilization. Modern Florence lifts her beautiful form above the tomb of Etruscan Florentia, which in her turn rose upon the hidden vestiges of anterior towns. And so also Arezzo, Perugia, Lucca, and many other European sites now occupied by modern towns and cities, are based upon the relics of archaic civilizations whose period covers ages incomputable, and whose names Echo has forgotten to even whisper through "the corridors of Time." When the Western historian has finally and Unanswerably proven who were the Pelasgi, at least, and who the Etruscans, and the as mysterious Iapygians, who seem also to have had an earlier acquaintance with writing--as proved by their inscriptions--than the Phoenicians, then only may he menace the Asiatic into acceptance of his own arbitrary data and dogmas. Then also may he tauntingly ask "how it is that no appreciable trace is left of such high civilizations as are described in the Past?" "Is it supposed that the present European civilization with its offshoots .... can be destroyed by any inundation or conflagration?" More easily than was many another civilization. Europe has neither the titanic and Cyclopean masonry of the ancients, nor even its parchments, to preserve the records of its "existing arts and languages." Its civilization is too recent, too rapidly growing, to leave any positively indestructible relics of either its architecture, arts or sciences. What is there in the whole Europe that could be regarded as even approximately indestructible, without mentioning the debacle of the geological upheaval that follows generally such cataclysms? Is it its ephemeral Crystal Palaces, its theatres, railways, modern fragile furniture: or its electric telegraphs, phonographs, telephones, and micrographs? While each of the former is at the mercy of fire and cyclone, the last enumerated marvels of modern science can be destroyed by a child breaking them to atoms. When we know of the destruction of the "Seven World's Wonders," of Thebes, Tyre, the Labyrinth, and the Egyptian pyramids and temples and giant palaces, as we now see slowly crumbling into the dust of the deserts, being reduced to atoms by the hand of Time--lighter and far more merciful than any cataclysm--the question seems to us rather the outcome of modern pride than of stern reasoning. Is it your daily newspapers and periodicals, rags of a few days; your fragile books bearing the records of all your grand civilization, withal liable to become annihilated after a few meals are made on them by the white ants, that are regarded as invulnerable? And why should European civilization escape the common lot? It is from the lower classes, the units of the great masses who form the majorities in nations, that survivors will escape in greater numbers; and these know nothing of the arts, sciences, or languages except their own, and those very imperfectly. The arts and sciences are like the phoenix of old: they die but to revive. And when the question found on page 58 of "Esoteric Buddhism" concerning "the curious rush of human progress within the last two thousand years," was first propounded, Mr. Sinnett's correspondent might have made his answer more complete by saying: "This rush, this progress, and the abnormal rapidity with which one discovery follows the other, ought to be a sign to human intuition that what you look upon in the light of 'discoveries' are merely rediscoveries, which, following the law of gradual progress, you make more perfect, yet in enunciating, you are not the first to explain them." We learn more easily that which we have heard about, or learnt in childhood. If, as averred, the Western nations have separated themselves from the great Aryan stock, it becomes evident that the races that first peopled Europe were inferior to the root-race which had the Vedas and the pre-historic Rishis. That which your far-distant forefathers had heard in the secrecy of the temples was not lost. It reached their posterity, which is now simply improving upon details. Question IV.--Is the Moon immersed in matter? No "Adept," so far as the writers know, has ever given to "Lay Chela" his "views of the moon," for publication. With Selenography, modern science is far better acquainted than any humble Asiatic ascetic may ever hope to become. It is to be feared the speculations on pp. 104 and 105 of "Esoteric Buddhism," besides being hazy, are somewhat premature. Therefore, it may be as well to pass on to-- Question V.--About the mineral monad. Any English expression that correctly translates the idea given is "authorized by the Adepts." Why not? The term "monad" applies to the latent life in the mineral as much as it does to the life in the vegetable and the animal. The monogenist may take exception to the term and especially to the idea while the polygenist, unless he be a corporealist, may not. As to the other class of scientists, they would take objection to the idea even of a human monad, and call it "unscientific." What relation does the monad bear to the atom? None whatever to the atom or molecule as in the scientific conception at present. It can neither be compared with the microscopic organism classed once among polygastric infusoria, and now regarded as vegetable and ranked among algae; nor is it quite the monas of the Peripatetics. Physically or constitutionally the mineral monad differs, of course, from that of the human monad, which is neither physical, nor can its constitution be rendered by chemical symbols and elements. In short, the mineral monad is one--the higher animal and human monads are countless. Otherwise, how could one account for and explain mathematically the evolutionary and spiral progress of the four kingdoms? The "monad" is the combination of the last two Principles in man, the 6th and the 7th, and, properly speaking, the term "human monad" applies only to the Spiritual Soul, not to its highest spiritual vivifying Principle. But since divorced from the latter the Spiritual Soul could have no existence, no being, it has thus been called. The composition (if such a word, which would shock an Asiatic, seems necessary to help European conception) of Buddhi or the 6th principle is made up of the essence of what you would call matter (or perchance a centre of Spiritual Force) in its 6th and 7th condition or state; the animating ATMAN being part of the ONE LIFE or Parabrahm. Now the Monadic Essence (if such a term be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable and animal, though the same throughout the series of cycles from the lowest elemental up to the Deva kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression. It would be very misleading to imagine a monad as a separate entity trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and after an incalculable series of transmigrations flowering into a human being; in short, that the monad of a Humboldt dates back to the monad of an atom of hornblende. Instead of saying a mineral monad, the correcter phraseology in physical science which differentiates every atom, would of course have been to call it the Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called the mineral kingdom. Each atom or molecule of ordinary scientific hypotheses is not a particle of something, animated by a psychic something, destined to blossom as a man after aeons. But it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy which itself has not yet become individualized: a sequential manifestation of the one Universal Monas. The ocean does not divide into its potential and constituent drops until the sweep of the life-impulse reaches the evolutionary stage of man-birth. The tendency towards segregation into individual monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to the point. The Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Cosmos, in the pantheistic sense; and the Occultists while accepting this thought for convenience' sake, distinguish the progressive stages of the evolution of the Concrete from the Abstract by terms of which the "Mineral Monad" is one. The term merely means that the tidal wave of spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit. The "Monadic Essence" begins to imperceptibly differentiate in the vegetable kingdom. As the monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their degrees of differentiation which constitutes properly the monad--not the atomic aggregation which is only the vehicle and the substance through which thrill the lower and higher degrees of intelligence. And though, as shown by those plants that are known as sensitives, there are a few among them that may be regarded as possessing that conscious perception which is called by Leibnitz apperception, while the rest are endowed but with that internal activity which may be called vegetable nerve-sensation (to call it perception would be wrong), yet even the vegetable monad is still the Monad in its second degree of awakening sensation. Leibnitz came several times very near the truth, but defined the monadic evolution incorrectly and often greatly blundered. There are seven kingdoms. The first group comprises three degrees of elementals, or nascent centres of forces--from the first stage of the differentiation of Mulaprakriti to its third degree--i.e., from full unconsciousness to semi-perception; the second or higher group embraces the kingdoms from vegetable to man; the mineral kingdom thus forming the central or turning-point in the degrees of the "Monadic Essence"-- considered as an Evoluting Energy. Three stages in the elemental side; the mineral kingdom; three stages in the objective physical side--these are the seven links of the evolutionary chain. A descent of spirit into matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a re-ascent from the deepest depths of materiality (the mineral) towards its status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete organisms up to Nirvana--the vanishing point of differentiated matter. Perhaps a simple diagram will aid us:-- [[Diagram here]] The line A D represents the gradual obscuration of spirit as it passes into concrete matter; the point D indicates the evolutionary position of the mineral kingdom from its incipient (d) to its ultimate concretion (a); c, b, a, on the left-hand side of the figure, are the three stages of elemental evolution; i.e., the three successive stages passed by the spiritual impulse (through the elementals--of which little is permitted to be said) before they are imprisoned in the most concrete form of matter; and a, b, c, on the right-hand side, are the three stages of organic life, vegetable, animal, human. What is total obscuration of spirit is complete perfection of its polar antithesis--matter; and this idea is conveyed in the lines A D and D A. The arrows show the line of travel of the evolutionary impulse in entering its vortex and expanding again into the subjectivity of the ABSOLUTE. The central thickest line, d d, is the Mineral Kingdom. The monogenists have had their day. Even believers in a personal god, like Professor Agassiz, teach now that, "There is a manifest progress in the succession of beings on the surface of the earth. The progress consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and among the vertebrates especially, in the increasing resemblance to man. Man is the end towards which all the animal creation has tended from the first appearance of the first Palaeozoic fishes" ("Principles of Zoology," pp. 205-6). The mineral "monad" is not an individuality latent, but an all-pervading Force which has for its Present vehicle matter in its lowest and most concrete terrestrial state; in man the monad is fully developed, potential, and either passive or absolutely active, according to its vehicle, the five lower and more physical human principles. In the Deva kingdom it is fully liberated and in its highest state--but one degree lower than the ONE Universal Life.* ---------- * The above diagram represents a logical section of the scheme of evolution, and not the evolutionary history of a unit of consciousness. ---------- Question VIII.--Sri Sankaracharya's Date It is always difficult to determine with precision the date of any particular event in the ancient history of India; and this difficulty is considerably enhanced by the speculations of European Orientalists, whose labours in this direction have but tended to thicken the confusion already existing in popular legends and traditions, which were often altered or modified to suit the necessities of sectarian controversy. The causes that have produced this result will be fully ascertained on examining the assumptions on which these speculations are based. The writings of many of these Orientalists are often characterized by an imperfect knowledge of Indian literature, philosophy and religion, and of Hindu traditions, and a contemptuous disregard for the opinions of Hindu writers and pundits. Very often, facts and dates are taken by these writers from the writings of their predecessors or contemporaries on the assumption that they are correct without any further investigation by themselves. Even when a writer gives a date with an expression of doubt as to its accuracy, his follower frequently quotes the same date as if it were absolutely correct. One wrong date is made to depend upon another wrong date, and one bad inference is often deduced from another inference equally unwarranted and illogical. And consequently, if the correctness of any particular date given by these writers is to be ascertained, the whole structure of Indian Chronology constructed by them will have to be carefully examined. It will be convenient to enumerate some of the assumptions above referred to before proceeding to examine their opinions concerning the date of Sankaracharya. I. Many of these writers are not altogether free from the prejudices engendered by the pernicious doctrine, deduced from the Bible, whether rightly or wrongly, that this world is only six thousand years old. We do not mean to say that any one of these writers would now seriously think of defending the said doctrine. Nevertheless, it had exercised a considerable influence on the minds of Christian writers when they began to investigate the claims of Asiatic Chronology. If an antiquity of five or six thousand years is assigned to any particular event connected with the ancient history of Egypt, India or China, it is certain to be rejected at once by these writers without any inquiry whatever regarding the truth of the statement. II. They are extremely unwilling to admit that any portion of the Veda can be traced to a period anterior to the date of the Pentateuch, even when the arguments brought forward to establish the priority of the Vedas are such as would be convincing to the mind of an impartial investigator untainted by Christian prejudices. The maximum limit of Indian antiquity is, therefore, fixed for them by the Old Testament; and it is virtually assumed by them that a period between the date of the Old Testament on the one side, and the present time on the other, should necessarily be assigned to every book in the whole range of Vedic and Sanskrit literature, and to almost every event of Indian history. III. It is often assumed without reason that every passage in the Vedas containing philosophical or metaphysical ideas must be looked upon as a subsequent interpolation, and that every book treating of a philosophical subject must be considered as having been written after the time of Buddha or after the commencement of the Christian era. Civilization, philosophy and scientific investigation had their origin, in the opinion of these writers, within the six or seven centuries preceding the Christian era, and mankind slowly emerged, for the first time, from "the depths of animal brutality" within the last four or five thousand years. IV. It is also assumed that Buddhism was brought into existence by Gautama Buddha. The previous existence of Buddhism, Jainism and Arhat philosophy is rejected as an absurd and ridiculous invention of the Buddhists and others, who attempted thereby to assign a very high antiquity to their own religion. In consequence of this erroneous impression every Hindu book referring to the doctrines of Buddhists is declared to have been written subsequent to the time of Gautama Buddha. For instance, Mr. Weber is of opinion that Vyasa, the author of the Brahma Sutras, wrote them in the fifth century after Christ. This is indeed a startling revelation to the majority of Hindus. V. Whenever several works treating of various subjects are attributed to one and the same author by Hindu writings or traditions, it is often assumed, and apparently without any reason whatever in the majority of cases, that the said works should be considered as the productions of different writers. By this process of reasoning they have discovered two Badarayanas (Vyasas), two Patanjalis, and three Vararuchis. We do not mean to say that in every case identity of name is equivalent to identity of personality. But we cannot but protest against such assumptions when they are made without any evidence to support them, merely for the purpose of supporting a foregone conclusion or establishing a favourite hypothesis. VI. An attempt is often made by these writers to establish the chronological order of the events of ancient Indian history by means of the various stages in the growth or development of the Sanskrit language and Indian literature. The time required for this growth is often estimated in the same manner in which a geologist endeavours to fix the time required for the gradual development of the various strata composing the earth's crust. But we fail to perceive anything like a proper method in making these calculations. It will be wrong to assume that the growth of one language will require the same time as that of another within the same limits. The peculiar characteristics of the nation to whom the language belongs must be carefully taken into consideration in attempting to make any such calculation. The history of the said nation is equally important. Any one who examines Max Muller's estimate of the so-called Sutra, Brahmana, Mantra and Khanda periods, will be able to perceive that no attention has been paid to these considerations. The time allotted to the growth of these four "strata" of Vedic literature is purely arbitrary. We have enumerated these defects in the writings of European Orientalists for the purpose of showing to our readers that it is not always safe to rely upon the conclusions arrived at by these writers regarding the dates of ancient Indian history. In examining the various quotations and traditions selected by European Orientalists for the purpose of fixing Sankaracharya's date, special care must be taken to see whether the person referred to was the very first Sankaracharya who established the Adwaitee doctrine, or one of his followers who became the Adhipathis (heads) of the various Mathams (temples) established by him and his successors. Many of the Adwaitee Mathadhipatis who succeeded him (especially of the Sringeri Matham) were men of considerable renown and were well known throughout India during their time. They are often referred to under the general name of Sankaracharya. Consequently, any reference made to any one of these Mathadhipatis is apt to be mistaken for a reference to the first Sankaracharya himself. Mr. Barth, whose opinion regarding Sankara's date is quoted by "An English F.T.S." against the date assigned to that teacher in Mr. Sinnett's book on Esoteric Buddhism, does not appear to have carefully examined the subject himself. He assigns no reasons for the date given, and does not even allude to the existence of other authorities and traditions which conflict with the date adopted by him. The date which he assigns to Sankara appears in an unimportant foot-note on page 89 of his book on "The Religions of India," which reads thus: "Sankaracharya is generally placed in the eighth century; perhaps we must accept the ninth rather. The best accredited tradition represents him as born on the 10th of the month 'Madhava' in 788 A.D. Other traditions, it is true, place him in the second and fifth centuries. The author of the Dabistan, on the other hand, brings him as far down as the commencement of the fourteenth." Mr. Barth is clearly wrong in saying that Sankara is generally placed in the eight century. There are as many traditions for placing him in some century before the Christian era as for placing him in some century after the said era, and it will also be seen from what follows that in fact evidence preponderates in favour of the former statement. It cannot be contended that the generality of Orientalists have any definite opinions of their own on the subject under consideration. Max Muller does not appear to have ever directed his attention to this subject. Monier Williams merely copies the date given by Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Weber seems to rely upon the same authority without troubling himself with any further inquiry about the matter. Mr. Wilson is probably the only Orientalist who investigated the subject with some care and attention; and he frankly confesses that the exact period at which "he (Sankara) flourished can by no means be determined" (p. 201 of vol. I. of his "Essays on the Religion of the Hindoos"). Under such circumstances the foot-note above quoted is certainly very misleading. Mr. Barth does not inform his readers where he obtained the tradition referred to, and what reasons he has for supposing that it refers to the first Sankaracharya, and that it is "the best accredited tradition." When the matter is still open to discussion, Mr. Barth should not have adopted any particular date if he is not prepared to support it and establish it by proper arguments. The other traditions alluded to are not intended, of course, to strengthen the authority of the tradition relied upon. But the wording of the foot-note in question seems to show that all the authorities and traditions relating to the subject are comprised therein, when in fact the most important of them are left out of consideration, as will be shown hereafter. No arguments are to be found in support of the date assigned to Sankara in the other portions of Mr. Barth's book, but there are a few isolated passages which may be taken either as inferences from the statement in question or arguments in its support, which it will be necessary to examine in this connection. Mr. Barth has discovered some connection between the appearance of Sankara in India and the commencement of the persecution of the Buddhists, which he seems to place in the seventh and eighth centuries. In page 89 of his book he speaks of "the great reaction on the offensive against Buddhism which was begun in the Deccan in the seventh and eighth centuries by the schools of Kumarila and Sankara;" and in page 135 he states that the "disciples of Kumarila and Sankara, organized into military bands, constituted themselves the rabid defenders of orthodoxy." The force of these statements is, however, considerably weakened by the author's observations on pages 89 and 134, regarding the absence of any traces of Buddhist persecution by Sankara in the authentic documents hitherto examined, and the absurdity of legends which represent him as exterminating Buddhists from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin. The association of Sankara with Kumarila in the passages above cited is highly ridiculous. It is well known to almost every Hindu that the followers of Purva Mimamsa (Kumarila commented on the Sutras) were the greatest and the bitterest opponents of Sankara and his doctrine, and Mr. Barth seems to be altogether ignorant of the nature of Kumarila's views and Purva Mimamsa, and the scope and aim of Sankara's Vedantic philosophy. It is impossible to say what evidence the author has for asserting that the great reaction against the Buddhists commenced in the seventh and eighth centuries, and that Sankara was instrumental in originating it. There are some passages in his book which tend to show that this date cannot be considered as quite correct. In page 135 he says that Buddhist persecution began even in the time of Asoka. Such being the case, it is indeed very surprising that the orthodox Hindus should have kept quiet for nearly ten centuries without retaliating on their enemies. The political ascendency gained by the Buddhists during the reign of Asoka did not last very long; and the Hindus had the support of very powerful kings before and after the commencement of the Christian era. Moreover, the author says, in p. 132 of his book, that Buddhism was in a state of decay in the seventh century. It is hardly to be expected that the reaction against the Buddhists would commence when their religion was already in a state of decay. No great religious teacher or reformer would waste his time and energy in demolishing a religion already in ruins. But what evidence is there to show that Sankara was ever engaged in this task? If the main object of his preaching was to evoke a reaction against Buddhism, he would no doubt have left us some writings specially intended to criticize its doctrines and expose its defects. On the other hand, he does not even allude to Buddhism in his independent works. Though he was a voluminous writer, with the exception of a few remarks on the theory advocated by some Buddhists regarding the nature of perception, contained in his Commentary on the Brahma-Sutras, there is not a single passage in the whole range of his writings regarding the Buddhists or their doctrines; and the insertion of even these few remarks in his Commentary was rendered necessary by the allusions contained in the Sutras which he was interpreting. As, in our humble opinion, these Brahma-Sutras were composed by Vyasa himself (and not by an imaginary Vyasa of the fifth century after Christ, evolved by Mr. Weber's fancy), the allusions therein contained relate to the Buddhism which existed to the date of Gautama Buddha. From these few remarks it will be clear to our readers that Sankaracharya had nothing to do with Buddhist persecution. We may here quote a few passages from Mr. Wilson's Preface to the first edition of his Sanskrit Dictionary in support of our remarks. He writes as follows regarding Sankara's connection with the persecution of the Buddhists:--"Although the popular belief attributes the origin of the Bauddha persecution to Sankaracharya, yet in this case we have some reason to distrust its accuracy. Opposed to it we have the mild character of the reformer, who is described as uniformly gentle and tolerant; and, speaking from my own limited reading in Vedanta works, and the more satisfactory testimony of Ram Mohun Roy, which he permits me to adduce, it does not appear that any traces of his being instrumental to any persecution are to be found in his own writings, all which are extant, and the object of which is by no means the correction of the Bauddha or any other schism, but the refutation of all other doctrines besides his own, and the reformation or re-establishment of the fourth religious order." Further on he observes that "it is a popular error to ascribe to him the work of persecution; he does not appear at all occupied in that odious task, nor is he engaged in particular controversy with any of the Bauddhas." From the foregoing observations it will be seen that Sankara's date cannot be determined by the time of the commencement of the Buddhist persecution, even if it were possible to ascertain the said period. Mr. Barth seems to have discovered some connection between the philosophical systems of Sankara, Ramanuja and Anandathirtha, and the Arabian merchants who came to India in the first centuries of the Hejira, and he is no doubt fully entitled to any credit that may be given him for the originality of his discovery. This mysterious and occult connection between Adwaita philosophy and Arabian commerce is pointed out in p. 212 of his book, and it may have some bearing on the present question, if it is anything more than a figment of his fancy. The only reason given by him in support of his theory is, however, in my humble opinion, worthless. The Hindus had a Prominent example of a grand religious movement under the guidance of a single teacher in the life of Buddha, and it was not necessary for them to imitate the adventures of the Arabian prophet. There is but one other passage in Mr. Barth's book which has some reference to Sankara's date. In page 207 he writes as follows:--"The Siva, for instance, who is invoked at the commencement of the drama of Sakuntala, who is at once God, priest and offering, and whose body is the universe, is a Vedantic idea. This testimony appears to be forgotten when it is maintained, as is sometimes done, that the whole sectarian Vedantism commences with Sankara." But this testimony appears to be equally forgotten when it is maintained, as is sometimes done by Orientalists like Mr. Barth, that Sankara lived in some century after the author of Sakuntala. From the foregoing remarks it will be apparent that Mr. Barth's opinion regarding Sankara's date is very unsatisfactory. As Mr. Wilson seems to have examined the subject with some care and attention, we must now advert to his opinion and see how far it is based on proper evidence. In attempting to fix Amara Sinha's date (which attempt ultimately ended in a miserable failure), he had to ascertain the period when Sankara lived. Consequently his remarks concerning the said period appear in his preface to the first edition of his Sanskrit Dictionary. We shall now reproduce here such passages from this preface as are connected with the subject under consideration and comment upon them. Mr. Wilson writes as follows:-- "The birth of Sankara presents the same discordance as every other remarkable incident amongst the Hindus. The Kadali (it ought to be Koodali) Brahmins, who form an establishment following and teaching his system, assert his appearance about 2,000 years since; some accounts place him about the beginning of the Christian era, others in the third or fourth century after; a manuscript history of the kings of Konga, in Colonel Mackenzie's Collection, makes him contemporary with Tiru Vikrama Deva Chakravarti, sovereign of Skandapura in the Dekkan, AD. 178; at Sringeri, on the edge of the Western Ghauts, and now in the Mysore Territory, at which place he is said to have founded a College that still exists, and assumes the supreme control of the Smarta Brahmins of the Peninsula, an antiquity of 1,600 years is attributed to him, and common tradition makes him about 1,200 years old. The Bhoja Prabandha enumerates Sankara among its worthies, and as contemporary with that prince; his antiquity will then be between eight and nine centuries. The followers of Madhwacharya in Tuluva seem to have attempted to reconcile these contradictory accounts by supposing him to have been born three times; first at Sivuli in Tuluva about 1,500 years ago, again in Malabar some centuries later, and finally at Padukachaytra in Tuluva, no more than 600 years since; the latter assertion being intended evidently to do honour to their own founder, whose date that was, by enabling him to triumph over Sankara in a supposititious controversy. The Vaishnava Brahmins of Madura say that Sankara appeared in the ninth century of Salivahana, or tenth of our era. Dr. Taylor thinks that, if we allow him about 900 years, we shall not be far from the truth, and Mr. Colebroke is inclined to give him an antiquity of about 1,000 years. This last is the age which my friend Ram Mohun Roy, a diligent student of Sankara's works, and philosophical teacher of his doctrines, is disposed to concur in, and he infers that 'from a calculation of the spiritual generations of the followers of Sankara Swami from his time up to this date, he seems to have lived between the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era,' a distance of time agreeing with the statements made to Dr. Buchanan in his journey through Sankara's native country, Malabar, and in union with the assertion of the Kerala Utpatti, a work giving art historical and statistical account of the same province, and which, according to Mr. Duncan's citation of it, mentions the regulations of the castes of Malabar by this philosopher to have been effected about 1,000 years before 1798. At the same time, it must be observed, that a manuscript translation of the same work in Colonel Mackenzie's possession, states Sankaracharya to have been born about the middle of the fifth century, or between thirteen or fourteen hundred years ago, differing in this respect from Mr. Duncan's statement--a difference of the less importance, as the manuscript in question, either from defects in the original or translation, presents many palpable errors, and cannot consequently be depended upon. The weight of authority therefore is altogether in favour of an antiquity of about ten centuries, and I am disposed to adopt this estimate of Sankara's date, and to place him in the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth century of the Christian era." We will add a few more authorities to Mr. Wilson's list before proceeding to comment on the foregoing passage. In a work called "The Biographical Sketches of Eminent Hindu Authors," published at Bombay in 1860 by Janardan Ramchenderjee, it is stated that Sankara lived 2,500 years ago, and that, in the opinion of some people, 2,200 years ago. The records of the Combaconum Matham give a list of nearly 66 Mathadhipatis from Sankara down to the present time, and show that he lived more than 2,000 years ago. The Kudali Matham referred to by Mr. Wilson, which is a branch of the Sringeri Matham, gives the same date as the latter Matham, their traditions being identical. Their calculation can safely be relied upon as far as it is supported by the dates given on the places of Samadhi (something like a tomb) of the successive Gurus of the Sringeri Matham; and it leads us to the commencement of the Christian era. No definite information is given by Mr. Wilson regarding the nature, origin, or reliability of the accounts which place Sankara in the third or fourth century of the Christian era or at its commencement; nor does it clearly appear that the history of the kings of Konga referred to unmistakably alludes to the very first Sancharacharya. These traditions are evidently opposed to the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Wilson, and it does not appear on what grounds their testimony is discredited by him. Mr. Wilson is clearly wrong in stating that an antiquity of 1,600 years is attributed to Sankara by the Sringeri Matham. We have already referred to the account of the Sringeri Matham, and it is precisely similar to the account given by the Kudali Brahmins. We have ascertained that it is so from the agent of the Sringeri Matham at Madras, who has recently published the list of teachers preserved at the said Matham with the dates assigned to them. And further, we are unable to see which "common tradition" makes Sankara "about 1,200 years old." As far as our knowledge goes there is no such common tradition in India. The majority of people in Southern India have, up to this time, been relying on the Sringeri account, and in Northern India there seems to be no common tradition. We have but a mass of contradictory accounts. It is indeed surprising that an Orientalist of Mr. Wilson's pretensions should confound the poet named Sankara and mentioned in Bhoja Prabandha with the great Adwaitee teacher. No Hindu would ever commit such a ridiculous mistake. We are astonished to find some of these European Orientalists quoting now and then some of the statements contained in such books as Bhoja Prabandha, Katha Sarit Sagara, Raja-tarangini and Panchatantra, as if they were historical works. In some other part of his preface Mr. Wilson himself says that this Bhoja Prabandha is altogether untrustworthy, as some of the statements contained therein did not harmonize with his theory about Amarasimha's date; but now he misquotes its statements for the purpose of supporting his conclusion regarding Sankara's date. Surely, consistency is not one of the prominent characteristics of the writings of the majority of European Orientalists. The person mentioned in Bhoja Prabandha is always spoken of under the name of Sankara Kavi (poet), and he is nowhere called Sankaracharya (teacher), and the Adwaitee teacher is never mentioned in any Hindu work under the appellation of Sankara Kavi. It is unnecessary for us to say anything about the Madhwa traditions or the opinion of the Vaishnava Brahmins of Madurah regarding Sankara's date. It is, in our humble opinion, hopeless to expect anything but falsehood regarding Sankara's history and his philosophy from the Madhwas and the Vaishnavas. They are always very anxious to show to the world at large that their doctrines existed before the time of Sankara, and that the Adwaitee doctrine was a deviation from their preexisting orthodox Hinduism. And consequently they have assigned to him an antiquity of less than 1,500 years. It does not appear why Dr. Taylor thinks that he can allow Sankara about 900 years, or on what grounds Mr. Colebrooke is inclined to give him an antiquity of about 1,000 years. No reliance can be placed on such statements before the reasons assigned therefore are thoroughly sifted. Fortunately, Mr. Wilson gives us the reason for Ram Mohun Roy's opinion. We are inclined to believe that Ram Mohun Roy's calculation was made with reference to the Sringeri list of Teachers or Gurus, as that was the only list published up to this time; and as no other Matham, except perhaps the Cumbaconum Matham, has a list of Gurus coming up to the present time in uninterrupted succession. There is no necessity for depending upon his calculation (which from its very nature cannot be anything more than mere guesswork) when the old list preserved at Sringeri contains the dates assigned to the various teachers. As these dates have not been published up to the present time, and as Ram Mohun Roy had merely a string of names before him, he was obliged to ascertain Sankara's date by assigning a certain number of years on the average to every teacher. Consequently, his opinion is of no importance whatever when we have the statement of the Sringeri Matham which, as we have already said, places Sankara some centuries before the Christian era. The same remarks will apply to the calculation in question even if it were made on the basis of the number of teachers contained in the list preserved in the Cumbaconum Matham. Very little importance can be attached to the oral evidence adduced by some unknown persons before Dr. Buchanan in his travels through Malabar; and we have only to consider the inferences that may be drawn from the accounts contained in Kerala Utpatti. The various manuscript copies of this work seem to differ in the date they assign to Sankaracharya; even if the ease were otherwise, we cannot place any reliance upon this work, for the following among other reasons:-- I. It is a well-known fact that the customs of Malabar are very peculiar. Their defenders have been, consequently, pointing to some great Rishi or some great philosopher of ancient India as their legislator. Some of them affirm (probably the majority) that Parasurama brought into existence some of these customs and left a special Smriti for the guidance of the people of Malabar; others say that it was Sankaracharya who sanctioned these peculiar customs. It is not very difficult to perceive why these two persons were selected by them. According to the Hindu Puranas, Parasurama lived in Malabar for some time, and according to Hindu traditions Sankara was born in that country. But it is extremely doubtful whether either of them had anything to do with the peculiar customs of the said country. There is no allusion whatever to any of these customs in Sankara's works. He seems to have devoted his whole attention to religious reform, and it is very improbable that he should have ever directed his attention to the local customs of Malabar. While attempting to revive the philosophy of the ancient Rishis, it is not likely that he should have sanctioned the customs of Malabar, which are at variance with the rules laid down in the Smritis of those very Rishis; and as far as our knowledge goes, he left no written regulations regarding to the castes of Malabar. II. The statements contained in Kerala Utpatti are opposed to the account of Sankara's life given in almost all the Sankara Vijayams (Biographies of Sankara) examined up to this time--viz., Vidyaranya's Sankara Vijayam, Chitsukhachary's Sankara Vijayavilasam, Brihat Sankara Vijayam, &c. According to the account contained in these works, Sankara left Malabar in his eighth year, and returned to his native village when his mother was on her death-bed, and on that occasion he remained there only for a few days. It is difficult to see at what period of his lifetime he was engaged in making regulations for the castes of Malabar. III. The work under consideration represents Malabar as the seat of Bhattapada's triumphs over the Buddhists, and says that this teacher established himself in Malabar and expelled the Buddhists from that country. This statement alone will be sufficient to show to our readers the fictitious character of the account contained in this book. According to every other Hindu work, this great teacher of Purva Mimamsa was born in Northern India; almost all his famous disciples and followers were living in that part of the country, and according to Vidyaranya's account he died at Allahabad. For the foregoing reasons we cannot place any reliance upon this account of Malabar. From an examination of the traditions and other accounts referred to above, Mr. Wilson comes to the conclusion that Sankaracharya lived in the end of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth century of the Christian era. The accounts of the Sringeri, Kudali and Cumbaconum Mathams, and the traditions current in the Bombay Presidency, as shown in the biographical sketches published at Bombay, place Sankara in some century before the Christian era. On the other hand, Kerala Utpatti, the information obtained by Dr. Buchanan in his travels through Malabar, and the opinions expressed by Dr. Taylor and Mr. Colebrooke, concur in assigning to him an antiquity of about 1,000 years. The remaining traditions referred to by Mr. Wilson are as much opposed to his opinion as to the conclusion that Sankara lived before Christ. We shall now leave it to our readers to say whether, under such circumstances, Mr. Wilson is justified in asserting that "the weight of authority is altogether in favour" of his theory. We have already referred to the writings of almost all the European Orientalists who expressed an opinion upon the subject under discussion; and we need hardly say that Sankara's date is yet to be ascertained. We are obliged to comment at length on the opinions of European Orientalists regarding Sankara's date, as there will be no probability of any attention being paid to the opinion of Indian and Tibetan initiates when it is generally believed that the question has been finally settled by European Sanskritists. The Adepts referred to by "An English F.T.S." are certainly in a position to clear up some of the problems in Indian religious history. But there is very little chance of their opinions being accepted by the general public under present circumstances, unless they are supported by such evidence as is within the reach of the outside world. As it is not always possible to procure such evidence, there is very little use in publishing the information which is in their possession until the public are willing to recognize and admit the antiquity and trustworthiness of their traditions, the extent of their powers, and the vastness of their knowledge. In the absence of such proof as is above indicated, there is every likelihood of their opinions being rejected as absurd and untenable; their motives will no doubt be questioned, and some people may be tempted to deny even the fact of their existence. It is often asked by Hindus as well as by English men why these Adepts are so very unwilling to publish some portion at least of the information they possess regarding the truths of physical science. But, in doing so, they do not seem to perceive the difference between the method by which they obtain their knowledge and the process of modern scientific investigation by which the facts of Nature are ascertained and its laws are discovered. Unless an Adept can prove his conclusions by the same kind of reasoning as is adopted by the modern scientist they remain undemonstrated to the outside world. It is of course impossible for him to develop in a considerable number of human beings such faculties as would enable them to perceive their truth; and it is not always practicable to establish them by the ordinary scientific method unless all the facts and laws on which his demonstration is to be based have already been ascertained by modern science. No Adept can be expected to anticipate the discoveries of the next four or five centuries, and prove some grand scientific truth to the entire satisfaction of the educated public after having discovered every fact and law of Nature required for the said purpose by such process of reasoning as would be accepted by them. They have to encounter similar difficulties in giving any information regarding the events of the ancient history of India. However, before giving the exact date assigned to Sankaracharya by the Indian and Tibetan initiates, we shall indicate a few circumstances by which his date may be approximately determined. It is our humble opinion that the Sankara Vijayams hitherto published can be relied upon as far as they are consistent with each other regarding the general outlines of Sankara's life. We cannot, however, place any reliance whatever upon Anandagiri's Sankara Vijaya published at Calcutta. The Calcutta edition not only differs in some very material points from the manuscript copies of the same work found in Southern India, but is opposed to every other Sankara Vijayam hitherto examined. It is quite clear from its style and some of the statements contained therein, that it was not the production of Anandagiri, one of the four chief disciples of Sankara and the commentator on his Upanishad Bhashyam. For instance, it represents Sankara as the author of a certain verse which is to be found in Vidyaranya's Adhikaranaratnamala, written in the fourteenth century. It represents Sankara as giving orders to two of his disciples to preach the Visishtadwaitee and the Dwaitee doctrines, which are directly opposed to his own doctrine. The book under consideration says that Sankara went to conquer Mandanamisra in debate, followed by Sureswaracharya, though Mandanamisra assumed the latter name at the time of initiation. It is unnecessary for us here to point out all the blunders and absurdities of this book. It will be sufficient to say that in our opinion it was not written by Anandagiri, and that it was the introduction of an unknown author who does not appear to have been even tolerably well acquainted with the history of the Adwaitee doctrine. Vidyaranya's (otherwise Sayanachary, the great commentator of the Vedas) Sankara Vijaya is decidedly the most reliable source of information as regards the main features of Sankara's biography. Its authorship has been universally accepted, and the information contained therein was derived by its author, as may be seen from his own statements, from certain old biographies of Sankara existing at the time of its composition. Taking into consideration the author's vast knowledge and information, and the opportunities he had for collecting materials for his work when he was the head of the Sringeri Matham, there is every reason to believe that he had embodied in his work the most reliable information he could obtain. Mr. Wilson, however, says that the book in question is "much too poetical and legendary" to be acknowledged as a great authority. We admit that the style is highly poetical, but we deny that the work is legendary. Mr. Wilson is not justified in characterizing it as such on account of its description of some of the wonderful phenomena shown by Sankara. Probably the learned Orientalist would not be inclined to consider the Biblical account of Christ in the same light. It is not the peculiar privilege of Christianity to have a miracle-worker for its first propagator. In the following observations we shall take such facts as are required from this work. It is generally believed that a person named Govinda Yogi was Sankara's Guru, but it is not generally known that this Yogi was in fact Patanjali--the great author of the Mahabhashya and the Yoga Sutras-- under a new name. A tradition current in Southern India represents him as one of the Chelas of Patanjali; but it is very doubtful if this tradition has anything like a proper foundation. But it is quite clear from the 94th, 95th, 96th, and 97th verses of the 5th chapter of Vidyaranya's Sankara Vijayam that Govinda Yogi and Patanjali were identical. According to the immemorial custom observed amongst initiates, Patanjali assumed the name of Govinda Yogi at the time of his initiation by Goudapada. It cannot be contended that Vidyaranya represented Patanjali as Sankara's Guru merely for the purpose of assigning some importance to Sankara and his teaching. Sankara is looked upon as a far greater man than Patanjali by the Adwaitees, and nothing can be added to Sankara's reputation by Vidyaranya's assertion. Moreover, Patanjali's views are not altogether identical with Sankara's views; it may be seen from Sankara's writings that he attached no importance whatever to the practices of Hatha Yog regarding which Patanjali composed his Yoga Sutras. Under such circumstances, if Vidyaranya had the option of selecting a Guru for Sankara, he would no doubt have represented Vyasa himself (who is supposed to be still living) as his Guru. We see no reason therefore to doubt the correctness of the statement under examination. Therefore, as Sankara was Patanjali's Chela, and as Goudapada was his Guru, his date will enable us to fix the dates of Sankara and Goudapada. We may here point out to our readers a mistake that appears in p. 148 of Mr. Sinnett's book on Esoteric Buddhism as regards the latter personage. He is there represented as Sankara's Guru; Mr. Sinnett was informed, we believe, that he was Sankara's Paramaguru, and not having properly understood the meaning of this expression, Mr. Sinnett wrote that he was Sankara's Guru. It is generally admitted by Orientalists that Patanjali lived before the commencement of the Christian era. Mr. Barth places him in the second century before the Christian era, accepting Goldstucker's opinion, and Monier Williams does the same thing. Weber, who seems to have carefully examined the opinions of all the other Orientalists who have written upon the subject, comes to the conclusion that "we must for the present rest satisfied with placing the date of the composition of the Bhashya between B.C. 140 and A.D. 60, a result which considering the wretched state of the chronology of Indian Liturgy generally is, despite its indefiniteness, of no mean importance." And yet even this date rests upon inferences drawn from one or two unimportant expressions contained in Patanjali's Mahabhashya. It is always dangerous to draw such inferences, and especially so when it is known that, according to the tradition current amongst Hindu grammarians, some portions of Mahabhashya were lost, the gaps being filled up by subsequent writers. Even supposing that we should consider the expression quoted as written by Patanjali himself, there is nothing in those expressions which would enable us to fix the writer's date. For instance, the connection between the expression "Arunad Yavanah Saketam" and the expedition of Menander against Ayodhya between B.C. 144 and 120, relied upon by Goldstucker is merely imaginary. There is nothing in the expression to show that the allusion contained therein points necessarily to Menander's expedition. We believe that Patanjali is referring to the expedition of Yavanas against Ayodhya during the lifetime of Sagara's father described in Harivamsa. This expedition occurred long before Rama's time, and there is nothing to connect it with Menander. Goldstucker's inference is based upon the assumption that there was no other Yavana expedition against Ayodhya known to Patanjali, and it will be easily seen from Harivamsa (written by Vyasa) that the said assumption is unwarranted. Consequently the whole theory constructed by Goldstucker on this weak foundation falls to the ground. No valid inferences can be drawn from the mere names of kings contained in Mahabhashya, even if they are traced to Patanjali himself, as there would be several kings in the same dynasty bearing the same name. From the foregoing remarks it will be clear that we cannot fix, as Weber has done, B.C. 140 as the maximum limit of antiquity that can be assigned to Patanjali. It is now necessary to see whether any other such limit has been ascertained by Orientalists. As Panini's date still remains undetermined, the limit cannot be fixed with reference to his date. But it is assumed by some Orientalists that Panini must have lived at some time subsequent to Alexander's invasion, from the fact that Panini explains in his Grammar the formation of the word Yavanani. We are very sorry that European Orientalists have taken the pains to construct theories upon this basis without ascertaining the meaning assigned to the word Yavana, and the time when the Hindus first became acquainted with the Greeks. It is unreasonable to assume without proof that this acquaintance commenced at the time of Alexander's invasion. On the other hand, there are very good reasons for believing that the Greeks were known to the Hindus long before this event. Pythagoras visited India, according to the traditions current amongst Indian initiates, and he is alluded to in Indian astrological works under the name of Yavanacharya. Moreover, it is not quite certain that the word Yavana was strictly confined to the Greeks by the ancient Hindu writers. Probably it was originally applied to the Egyptians and the Ethiopians; it was probably extended first to the Alexandrian Greeks, and subsequently to the Greeks, Persians, and Arabians. Besides the Yavana invasion of Ayodhya described in Harivamsa, there was another subsequent expedition to India by Kala Yavana (Black Yavana) during Krishna's lifetime described in the same work. This expedition was probably undertaken by the Ethiopians. Anyhow, there are no reasons whatever, as far as we can see, for asserting that Hindu writers began to use the word Yavana after Alexander's invasion. We can attach no importance whatever to any inferences that may be drawn regarding the dates of Panini and Katyayana (both of them lived before Patanjali) from the statements contained in Katha Sarit Sayara, which is nothing more than a mere collection of fables. It is now seen by Orientalists that no proper conclusions can be drawn regarding the dates of Panini and Katyayana from the statements made by Hiuan Thsang, and we need not therefore say anything here regarding the said statements. Consequently the dates of Panini and Katyayana still remain undetermined by European Orientalists. Goldstucker is probably correct in his conclusion that Panini lived before Buddha, and the Buddhists' accounts agree with the traditions of the initiates in asserting that Katyayana was a contemporary of Buddha. From the fact that Patanjali must have composed his Mahabhashyam after the composition of Panini's Sutras and Katyayana's Vartika, we can only infer that it was written after Buddha's birth. But there are a few considerations which may help us in coming to the conclusion that Patanjali must have lived about the year 500 B.C.; Max Muller fixed the Sutra period between 500 B.C. and 600 B.C. We agree with him in supposing that the period probably ended with B.C. 500, though it is uncertain how far it extended into the depths of Indian antiquity. Patanjali was the author of the Yoga Sutras, and this fact has not been doubted by any Hindu writer up to this time. Mr. Weber thinks, however, that the author of the Yoga Sutras might be a different man from the author of the Mahabhashya, though he does not venture to assign any reason for his supposition. We very much doubt if any European Orientalist can ever find out the connection between the first Anhika of the Mahabhashya and the real secrets of Hatha Yoga contained in the Yoga Sutras. No one but an initiate can understand the full significance of the said Anhika; and the "eternity of the Logos" or Sabda is one of the principal doctrines of the Gymnosophists of India, who were generally Hatha Yogis. In the opinion of Hindu writers and pundits Patanjali was the author of three works, viz., Mahabhashya, Yoga Sutras, and a book on Medicine and Anatomy; and there is not the slightest reason for questioning the correctness of this opinion. We must, therefore, place Patanjali in the Sutra period, and this conclusion is confirmed by the traditions of the Indian initiates. As Sankaracharya was a contemporary of Patanjali (being his Chela) he must have lived about the same time. We have thus shown that there are no reasons for placing Sankara in the eighth or ninth century after Christ, as some of the European Orientalists have done. We have further shown that Sankara was Patanjali's Chela, and that his date should be ascertained with reference to Patanjali's date. We have also shown that neither the year B.C. 140 nor the date of Alexander's invasion can be accepted as the maximum limit of antiquity that can be assigned to him, and we have lastly pointed out a few circumstances which will justify us in expressing an opinion that Patanjali and his Chela Sankara belonged to the Sutra period. We may, perhaps, now venture to place before the public the exact date assigned to Sankaracharya by Tibetan and Indian initiates. According to the historical information in their possession he was born in the year B.C. 510 (fifty-one years and two months after the date of Buddha's Nirvana), and we believe that satisfactory evidence in support of this date can be obtained in India if the inscriptions at Conjeveram, Sringeri, Jaggurnath, Benares, Cashmere, and various other places visited by Sankara, are properly deciphered. Sankara built Conjeveram, which is considered as one of the most ancient towns in Southern India; and it may be possible to ascertain the time of its construction if proper inquiries are made. But even the evidence now brought before the public supports the opinion of the Initiates above indicated. As Goudapada was Sankaracharya's Guru's guru, his date entirely depends on Sankara's date; and there is every reason to suppose that he lived before Buddha. Question VI.--"Historical Difficulty"--Why? It is asked whether there may not be "some confusion" in the letter quoted on p. 62 of "Esoteric Buddhism" regarding "old Greeks and Romans said to have been Atlanteans." The answer is--None whatever. The word "Atlantean" was a generic name. The objection to have it applied to the old Greeks and Romans on the ground that they were Aryans, "their language being intermediate between Sanskrit and modern European dialects," is worthless. With equal reason might a future 6th Race scholar, who had never heard of the (possible) submergence of a portion of European Turkey, object to Turks from the Bosphorus being referred to as a remnant of the Europeans. "The Turks are surely Semites," he might say 12,000 years hence, and "their language is intermediate between Arabic and our modern 6th Race dialects." * -------- * This is not to be construed to mean that 12,000 years hence there will be yet any man of the 6th Race, or that the 5th will be submerged. The figures are given simply for the sake of a better comparison with the present objection in the case of the Greeks and Atlantis. --------- The "historical difficulty" arises from a certain authoritative statement made by Orientalists on philological grounds. Professor Max Muller has brilliantly demonstrated that Sanskrit was the "elder sister"--by no means the mother--of all the modern languages. As to that "mother," it is conjectured by himself and colleagues to be a "now extinct tongue, spoken probably by the nascent Aryan race." When asked what was this language, the Western voice answers: "Who can tell?" When, "during what geological periods did this nascent race flourish?" the same impressive voice replies: "In prehistoric ages, the duration of which no one can now determine." Yet it must have been Sanskrit, however barbarous and unpolished, since "the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, Slavonians, Germans and Kelts" were living within "the same precincts" with that nascent race, and the testimony borne by language has enabled the philologist to trace the "language of the gods" in the speech of every Aryan nation. Meanwhile it is affirmed by these same Orientalists that classical Sanskrit has its origin at the very threshold of the Christian era; while Vedic Sanskrit is allowed an antiquity of hardly 3,000 years (if so much) before that time. Now, Atlantis, on the statement of the "Adepts," sank over 9,000 years before the Christian era.* How then can one maintain that the "old Greeks and Romans" were Atlanteans? How can that be, since both nations are Aryans, and the genesis of their languages is Sanskrit? Moreover, the Western scholars know that the Greek and Latin languages were formed within historical periods, the Greeks and Latins themselves having no existence as nations 11,000 B.C.. Surely they who advance such a proposition do not realize how very unscientific is their statement! ---------- * The position recently taken up by Mr. Gerald Massey in Light that the story of Atlantis is not a geological event but an ancient astronomical myth, is rather imprudent. Mr. Massey, notwithstanding his rare intuitional faculties and great learning, is one of those writers in whom the intensity of research bent into one direction has biased his otherwise clear understanding. Because Hercules is now a constellation it does not follow that there never was a hero of this name. Because the Noachian Universal Deluge is now proved a fiction based upon geological and geographical ignorance, it does not, therefore, appear that there were not many local deluges in prehistoric ages. The ancients connected every terrestrial event with the celestial bodies. They traced the history of their great deified heroes and memorialized it in stellar configurations as often as they personified pure myths, anthropomorphizing objects in Nature. One has to learn the difference between the two modes before attempting to classify them under one nomenclature. An earthquake has just engulfed over 80,000 people (87,903) in Sunda Straits. These were mostly Malays, savages with whom but few had relations, and the dire event will be soon forgotten. Had a portion of Great Britain been thus swept away instead, the whole world would have been in commotion, and yet, a few thousand years hence, even such an event would have passed out of man's memory; and a future Gerald Massey might be found speculating upon the astronomical character and signification of the Isles of Wight, Jersey, or Man, arguing, perhaps, that this latter island had not contained a real living race of men but "belonged to astronomical mythology," was a "Man submerged in celestial waters." If the legend of the lost Atlantis is only "like those of Airyana-Vaejo and Jambu-dvipa," it is terrestrial enough, and therefore "the mythological origin of the Deluge legend" is so far an open question. We claim that it is not "indubitably demonstrated," however clever the theoretical demonstration. --------- Such are the criticisms passed, such the "historical difficulty." The culprits arraigned are fully alive to their perilous situation; nevertheless, they maintain the statement. The only thing which may perhaps here be objected to is, that the names of the two nations are incorrectly used. It may be argued that to refer to the remote ancestors and their descendants equally as "Greeks and Romans," is an anachronism as marked as would be the calling of the ancient Keltic Gauls, or the Insubres, Frenchmen. As a matter of fact this is true. But, besides the very plausible excuse that the names used were embodied in a private letter, written as usual in great haste, and which was hardly worthy of the honour of being quoted verbatim with all its imperfections, there may perhaps exist still weightier objections to calling the said people by any other name. One misnomer is as good as another; and to refer to old Greeks and Romans in a private letter as the old Hellenes from Hellas or Magna Graecia, and the Latins as from Latium, would have been, besides looking pedantic, just as incorrect as the use of the appellation noted, though it may have sounded, perchance, more "historical." The truth is that, like the ancestors of nearly all the Indo-Europeans (or shall we say Indo-Germanic Japhetidae?), the Greek and Roman sub-races mentioned have to be traced much farther back. Their origin must be carried far into the mists of that "prehistoric" period, that mythical age which inspires the modern historian with such a feeling of squeamishness that anything creeping out of its abysmal depths is sure to be instantly dismissed as a deceptive phantom, the mythos of an idle tale, or a later fable unworthy of serious notice. The Atlantean "old Greeks" could not be designated even as the Autochthones--a convenient term used to dispose of the origin of any people whose ancestry cannot be traced, and which, at any rate with the Hellenes, meant certainly more than simply "soil-born," or primitive aborigines; and yet the so-called fable of Deukalion and Pyrrha is surely no more incredible or marvelous than that of Adam and Eve--a fable that hardly a hundred years ago no one would have dared or even thought to question. And in its esoteric significance the Greek tradition is possibly more truly historical than many a so-called historical event during the period of the Olympiades, though both Hesiod and Homer may have failed to record the former in their epics. Nor could the Romans be referred to as the Umbro-Sabbellians, nor even as the Itali. Peradventure, had the historians learnt something more than they have of the Italian "Autochthones"--the Iapygians--one might have given the "old Romans" the latter name. But then there would be again that other difficulty: history knows that the Latin invaders drove before them, and finally cooped up, this mysterious and miserable race among the clefts of the Calabrian rocks, thus showing the absence of any race affinity between the two. Moreover, Western archeologists keep to their own counsel, and will accept of no other but their own conjectures. And since they have failed to make anything out of the undecipherable inscriptions in an unknown tongue and mysterious characters on the Iapygian monuments, and so for years have pronounced them unguessable, he who would presume to meddle where the doctors muddle would be likely to be reminded of the Arab proverb about proffered advice. Thus, it seems hardly possible to designate "the old Greeks and Romans" by their legitimate, true name, so as to at once satisfy the "historians" and keep on the fair side of truth and fact. However, since in the Replies that precede Science had to be repeatedly shocked by most unscientific propositions, and that before this series is closed many a difficulty, philological and archeological as well as historical, will have to be unavoidably created--it may be just as wise to uncover the occult batteries at once and have it over with. Well, then, the "Adepts" deny most emphatically to Western science any knowledge whatever of the growth and development of the Indo-Aryan race which, "at the very dawn of history," they have espied in its "patriarchal simplicity" on the banks of the Oxus. Before our proposition concerning "the old Greeks and Romans" can be repudiated or even controverted, Western Orientalists will have to know more than they do about the antiquity of that race and the Aryan language; and they will have to account for those numberless gaps in history which no hypotheses of theirs seem able to fill up. Notwithstanding their present profound ignorance with regard to the early ancestry of the Indo-European nations, and though no historian has yet ventured to assign even a remotely approximate date to the separation of the Aryan nations and the origins of the Sanskrit language, they hardly show the modesty that might, under these circumstances, be expected from them. Placing as they do that great separation of the races at the first "dawn of traditional history," with the Vedic age as "the background of the whole Indian world" (of which confessedly they know nothing), they will, nevertheless, calmly assign a modern date to any of the Rik-vedic oldest songs, on its "internal evidence;" and in doing this, they show as little hesitation as Mr. Fergusson when ascribing a post-Christian age to the most ancient rockcut temple in India, merely on its "external form." As for their unseemly quarrels, mutual recriminations, and personalities over questions of scholarship, the less said the better. "The evidence of language is irrefragable," as the great Oxford Sanskritist says. To which he is answered--"provided it does not clash with historical facts and ethnology." It may be--no doubt it is, as far as his knowledge goes--"the only evidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods;" but when something of these alleged "prehistorical periods" comes to be known, and when what we think we know of certain supposed prehistoric nations is found diametrically opposed to his "evidence of language," the "Adepts" may be, perhaps, permitted to keep to their own views and opinions, even though they differ with those of the greatest living philologist. The study of language is but a part--though, we admit, a fundamental part--of true philology. To be complete, the latter has, as correctly argued by Bockt, to be almost synonymous with history. We gladly concede the right to the Western philologist, who has to work in the total absence of any historical data, to rely upon comparative grammar, and take the identification of roots lying at the foundation of words of those languages he is familiar with, or may know of, and put it forward as the result of his study, and the only available evidence. But we would like to see the same right conceded by him to the student of other races; even though these be inferior to the European races, in the opinion of the paramount West: for it is barely possible that, proceeding on other lines, and having reduced his knowledge to a system which precludes hypothesis and simple affirmation, the Eastern student has preserved a perfectly authentic record (for him) of those periods which his opponent regards as ante-historical. The bare fact that, while Western men of science are referred to as "scholars" and scholiasts--native Sanskritists and archeologists are often spoken of as "Calcutta" and "Indian sciolists"--affords no proof of their real inferiority, but rather of the wisdom of the Chinese proverb that "self-conceit is rarely companion to politeness." The "Adept" therefore has little, if anything, to do with difficulties presented by Western history. To his knowledge--based on documentary records from which, as said, hypothesis is excluded, and as regards which even psychology is called to play a very secondary part--the history of his and other nations extends immeasurably beyond that hardly discernible point that stands on the far-away horizon of the Western world as a landmark of the commencement of its history. Records made throughout a series of ages, based on astronomical chronology and zodiacal calculations, cannot err. (This new "difficulty"-- palaeographical, t his time--that may be possibly suggested by the mention of the Zodiac in India and Central Asia before the Christian era, is disposed of in a subsequent article.) Hence, the main question at issue is to decide which--the Orientalist or the "Oriental"--is most likely to err. The "English F.T.S." has choice of two sources of information, two groups of teachers. One group is composed of Western historians with their suite of learned Ethnologists, Philologists, Anthropologists, Archeologists and Orientalists in general. The other consists of unknown Asiatics belonging to a race which, notwithstanding Mr. Max Muller's assertion that the same "blood is running in the veins (of the English soldier) and in the veins of the dark Bengalese," is generally regarded by many a cultured Western as "inferior." A handful of men can hardly hope to be listened to, specially when their history, religion, language, origin and sciences, having been seized upon by the conqueror, are now disfigured and mutilated beyond recognition, and who have lived to see the Western scholar claim a monopoly beyond appeal or protest of deciding the correct meaning, chronological date, and historical value of the monumental and palaeographic relics of his motherland. It has little, if ever, entered the mind of the Western public that their scholars have, until very lately, worked in a narrow pathway obstructed with the ruins of an ecclesiastical, dogmatic Past; that they have been cramped on all sides by limitations of "revealed" events coming from God, "with whom a thousand years are but as one day," and who have thus felt bound to cram millenniums into centuries and hundreds into units, giving at the utmost an age of 1,000 to what is 10,000 years old. All this to save the threatened authority of their religion and their own respectability and good name in cultured society. And even that, when free themselves from preconceptions, they have had to protect the honour of the Jewish divine chronology assailed by stubborn facts; and thus have become (often unconsciously) the slaves of an artificial history made to fit into the narrow frame of a dogmatic religion. No proper thought has been given to this purely psychological but very significant trifle. Yet we all know how, rather than admit any relation between Sanskrit and the Gothic, Keltic, Greek, Latin and old Persian, facts have been tampered with, old texts purloined from libraries, and philological discoveries vehemently denied. And we have also heard from our retreats, how Dugald Stewart and his colleagues, upon seeing that the discovery would also involve ethnological affinities, and damage the prestige of those sires of the world races--Shem, Ham and Japhet--denied in the face of fact that "Sanskrit had ever been a living, spoken language," supporting the theory that "it was an invention of the Brahmins, who had constructed their Sanskrit on the model of the Greek and Latin." And again we know, holding the proof of the same, how the majority of Orientalists are prone to go out of their way to prevent any Indian antiquity (whether MSS. or inscribed monument, whether art or science) from being declared pre-Christian. As the origin and history of the Gentile world is made to move in the narrow circuit of a few centuries "B.C.," within that fecund epoch when mother earth, recuperated from her arduous labours of the Stone age, begat, it seems without transition, so many highly civilized nations and false pretenses, so the enchanted circle of Indian archeology lies between the (to them unknown) year of the Samvat era, and the tenth century of the Western chronology. Having to dispose of an "historical difficulty" of such a serious character, the defendants charged with it can but repeat what they have already stated; all depends upon the past history and antiquity allowed to the Indo-Aryan nation. The first step to take is to ascertain how much History herself knows of that almost prehistoric period when the soil of Europe had not been trodden yet by the primitive Aryan tribes. From the latest Encyclopedia down to Professor Max Muller and other Orientalists, we gather what follows; they acknowledge that at some immensely remote period, before the Aryan nations got divided from the parent stock (with the germs of Indo-Germanic languages in them); and before they rushed asunder to scatter over Europe and Asia in search of new homes, there stood a "single barbaric (?) people as physical and political representative of the nascent Aryan race." This people spoke "a now extinct Aryan language," from which by a series of modifications (surely requiring more thousands of years than our difficulty-makers are willing to concede) there arose gradually all the subsequent languages now spoken by the Caucasian races. That is about all Western history knows of its genesis. Like Ravana's brother, Kumbhakarna,--the Hindu Rip van Winkle--it slept for a long series of ages a dreamless, heavy sleep. And when at last it awoke to consciousness, it was but to find the "nascent Aryan race" grown into scores of nations, peoples and races, most of them effete and crippled with age, many irretrievably extinct, while the true origin of the younger ones it was utterly unable to account for. So much for the "youngest brother." As for "the eldest brother, the Hindu," who, Professor Max Muller tells us, "was the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family," and whose history this eminent philologist has now kindly undertaken to impart to him,--he, the Hindu, claims that while his Indo-European relative was soundly sleeping under the protecting shadow of Noah's ark, he kept watch and did not miss seeing one event from his high Himalayan fastnesses; and that he has recorded the history thereof, in a language which, though as incomprehensible as the Iapygian inscriptions to the Indo-European immigrant, is quite clear to the writers. For this crime he now stands condemned as a falsifier of the records of his forefathers. A place has been hitherto purposely left open for India "to be filled up when the pure metal of history should have been extracted from the ore of Brahmanic exaggeration and superstition." Unable, however, to meet this programme, the Orientalist has since persuaded himself that there was nothing in that "ore" but dross. He did more. He applied himself to contrast Brahmanic "superstition" and "exaggeration" with Mosaic revelation and its chronology. The Veda was confronted with Genesis. Its absurd claims to antiquity were forthwith dwarfed to their proper dimensions by the 4,004 years B.C. measure of the world's age; and the Brahmanic "superstition and fables" about the longevity of the Aryan Rishis, were belittled and exposed by the sober historical evidence furnished in "The genealogy and age of the Patriarchs from Adam to Noah," whose respective days were 930 and 950 years; without mentioning Methuselah, who died at the premature age of nine hundred and sixty-nine. In view of such experience, the Hindu has a certain right to decline the offers made to correct his annals by Western history and chronology. On the contrary, he would respectfully advise the Western scholar, before he denies point-blank any statement made by the Asiatics with reference to what is prehistoric ages to Europeans, to show that the latter have themselves anything like trustworthy data as regards their own racial history. And that settled, he may have the leisure and capacity to help his ethnic neighbours to prune their genealogical trees. Our Rajputs, among others, have perfectly trustworthy family records of an unbroken lineal descent through 2,000 years "B.C." and more, as proved by Colonel Tod; records which are accepted by the British Government in its official dealings with them. It is not enough to have studied stray fragments of Sanskrit literature--even though their number should amount to 10,000 texts, as boasted of--allowed to fall into foreign hands, to speak so confidently of the "Aryan first settlers in India," and assert that, "left to themselves, in a world of their own, without a past and without a future (!) before them, they had nothing but themselves to ponder upon," and therefore could know absolutely nothing of other nations. To comprehend correctly and make out the inner meaning of most of them, one has to read these texts with the help of the esoteric light, and after having mastered the language of the Brahmanic Secret Code--branded generally as "theological twaddle." Nor is it sufficient--if one would judge correctly of what the archaic Aryans did or did not know; whether or not they cultivated the social and political virtues; cared or not for history--to claim proficiency in both Vedic and classical Sanskrit, as well as in Prakrit and Arya Bhasha. To comprehend the esoteric meaning of ancient Brahmanical literature, one has, as just remarked, to be in possession of the key to the Brahmanical Code. To master the conventional terms used in the Puranas, the Aranyakas and Upanishads is a science in itself, and one far more difficult than even the study of the 3,996 aphoristical rules of Panini, or his algebraical symbols. Very true, most of the Brahmans themselves have now forgotten the correct interpretations of their sacred texts. Yet they know enough of the dual meaning in their scriptures to be justified in feeling amused at the strenuous efforts of the European Orientalist to protect the supremacy of his own national records and the dignity of his science by interpreting the Hindu hieratic text after a peremptory fashion quite unique. Disrespectful though it may seem, we call on the philologist to prove in some more convincing manner than usual, that he is better qualified than even the average Hindu Sanskrit pundit to judge of the antiquity of the "language of the gods;" that he has been really in a position to trace unerringly along the lines of countless generations the course of the "now extinct Aryan tongue" in its many and various transformations in the West, and its primitive evolution into first the Vedic, and then the classical Sanskrit in the East, and that from the moment when the mother-stream began deviating into its new ethnographical beds, he has followed it up. Finally that, while he, the Orientalist, can, owing to speculative interpretations of what he thinks he has learnt from fragments of Sanskrit literature, judge of the nature of all that he knows nothing about--i.e., to speculate upon the past history of a great nation he has lost sight of from its "nascent state," and caught up again but at the period of its last degeneration--the native student never knew, nor can ever know, anything of that history. Until the Orientalist has proved all this, he can be accorded but small justification for assuming that air of authority and supreme contempt which is found in almost every work upon India and its Past. Having no knowledge himself whatever of those incalculable ages that lie between the Aryan Brahman in Central Asia, and the Brahman at the threshold of Buddhism, he has no right to maintain that the initiated Indo-Aryan can never know as much of them as the foreigner. Those periods being an utter blank to him, he is little qualified to declare that the Aryan, having had no political history "of his own...." his only sphere was "religion and philosophy.... in solitude and contemplation." A happy thought suggested, no doubt, by the active life, incessant wars, triumphs, and defeats portrayed in the oldest songs of the Rik-Veda. Nor can he with the smallest show of logic affirm that "India had no place in the political history of the world," or that "there are no synchronisms between the history of the Brahmans and that of other nations before the date of the origin of Buddhism in India;" for he knows no more of the prehistoric history of those "other nations" than of that of the Brahman. All his inferences, conjectures and systematic arrangements of hypotheses begin very little earlier than 200 "B.C.," if even so much, on anything like really historical grounds. He has to prove all this before he can command our attention. Otherwise, however "irrefragable the evidence of language," the presence of Sanskrit roots in all the European languages will be insufficient to prove, either that (a) before the Aryan invaders descended toward the seven rivers they had never left their northern regions; or (b) why the "eldest brother, the Hindu," should have been "the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family." To the philologist such a supposition may seem "quite natural." Yet the Brahman is no less justified in his ever-growing suspicion that there may be at the bottom some occult reason for such a programme. That in the interest of his theory the Orientalist was forced to make "the eldest brother" tarry so suspiciously long on the Oxus, or wherever "the youngest" may have placed him in his "nascent state" after the latter "saw his brothers all depart towards the setting sun." We find reasons to believe that the chief motive for alleging such a procrastination is the necessity to bring the race closer to the Christian era. To show the "brother" inactive and unconcerned, "with nothing but himself to ponder on," lest his antiquity and "fables of empty idolatry," and perhaps his traditions of other people's doings, should interfere with the chronology by which it is determined to try him. The suspicion is strengthened when one finds in the book from which we have been so largely quoting--a work of a purely scientific and philological character--such frequent remarks and even prophecies as: "History seems to teach that the whole human race required a gradual education before, in the fulness of time, it could be admitted to the truths of Christianity." Or, again "The ancient religions of the world were but the milk of Nature, which was in due time to be succeeded by the bread of life;" and such broad sentiments expressed as that "there is some truth in Buddhism, as there is in every one of the false religions of the world, but...." * ----------- * Max Muller's "History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature." ----------- The atmosphere of Cambridge and Oxford seems decidedly unpropitious to the recognition of either Indian antiquity, or the merit of the philosophies sprung from its soil!* --------- * And how one-sided and biased most of the Western Orientalists are may be seen by reading carefully "The History of Indian Literature," by Albrecht Weber--a Sanskrit scholiast classed with the highest authorities. The incessant harping upon the one special string of Christianity, and the ill-concealed efforts to pass it off as the keynote of all other religions, is painfully pre-eminent in his work. Christian influences are shown to have affected not only the growth of Buddhism and Krishna worship, but even that of the Siva-cult and its legends; it is openly stated that "it is not at all a far-fetched hypothesis that they have reference to scattered Christian missionaries!" The eminent Orientalist evidently forgets that, notwithstanding his efforts, none of the Vedic, Sutra or Buddhist periods can be possibly crammed into this Christian period--their universal tank of all ancient creeds, and of which some Orientalists would fain make a poor-house for all decayed archaic religions and philosophy. Even Tibet, in his opinion, has not escaped "Western influence." Let us hope to the contrary. It can be proved that Buddhist missionaries were as numerous in Palestine, Alexandria, Persia, and even Greece, two centuries before the Christian era, as the Padris are now in Asia. That the Gnostic doctrines (as he is obliged to confess) are permeated with Buddhism. Basilides, Valentinian, Bardesanes, and especially Manes were simply heretical Buddhists, "the formula of abjuration of these doctrines in the case of the latter, specifying expressly Buddha (Bodda) by name." ---------- Leaflets from Esoteric History The foregoing--a long, yet necessary digression--will show that the Asiatic scholar is justified in generally withholding what he may know. That it is not merely on historical facts that hangs the "historical difficulty" at issue; but rather on its degree of interference with time-honoured, long-established conjectures, often raised to the eminence of an unapproachable historical axiom. That no statement coming from our quarters can ever hope to be given consideration so long as it has to be supported on the ruins of reigning hobbies, whether of an alleged historical or religious character. Yet pleasant it is, after the brainless assaults to which occult sciences have hitherto been subjected--assaults in which abuse has been substituted for argument, and flat denial for calm inquiry--to find that there remain in the West some men who will come into the field like philosophers, and soberly and fairly discuss the claims of our hoary doctrines to the respect due to a truth and the dignity demanded for a science. Those alone whose sole desire is to ascertain the truth, not to maintain foregone conclusions, have a right to expect undisguised facts. Reverting to our subject, so far as allowable, we will now, for the sake of that minority, give them. The records of the Occultists make no difference between the "Atlantean" ancestors of the old Greeks and Romans. Partially corroborated and in turn contradicted by licensed or recognized history, their records teach that of the ancient Latini of classic legend called Itali; of that people, in short, which, crossing the Apennines (as their Judo-Aryan brothers--let this be known--had crossed before them the Hindoo-Koosh) entered from the north the peninsula--there survived at a period long before the days of Romulus but the name, and a nascent language. Profane history informs us that the Latins of the "mythical era" got so Hellenized amidst the rich colonies of Magna Grecia that there remained nothing in them of their primitive Latin nationality. It is the Latins proper, it says, those pre-Roman Italians who by settling in Latium had from the first kept themselves free from the Greek influence, who were the ancestors of the Romans. Contradicting exoteric history, the Occult records affirm that if, owing to circumstances too long and complicated to be related here, the settlers of Latium preserved their primitive nationality a little longer than their brothers who had first entered the peninsula with them after leaving the East (which was not their original home), they lost it very soon, for other reasons. Free from the Samnites during the first period, they did not remain free from other invaders. While the Western historian puts together the mutilated, incomplete records of various nations and people, and makes them into a clever mosaic according to the best and most probable plan and rejects entirely traditional fables, the Occultist pays not the slightest attention to the vain self-glorification of alleged conquerors or their lithic inscriptions. Nor does he follow the stray bits of so-called historical information, often concocted by interested parties and found scattered hither and thither in the fragments of classical writers, whose original texts themselves have not seldom been tampered with. The Occultist follows the ethnological affinities and their divergences in the various nationalities, races and sub-races, in a more easy way; and he is guided in this as surely as the student who examines a geographical map. As the latter can easily trace by their differently coloured outlines the boundaries of the many countries and their possessions; their geographical superficies and their separations by seas, rivers and mountains; so the Occultist can by following the (to him) well distinguishable and defined auric shades and gradations of colour in the inner-man unerringly pronounce to which of the several distinct human families, as also to what special group, and even small sub-group of the latter, belongs any particular people, tribe, or man. This will appear hazy and incomprehensible to the many who know nothing of ethnic varieties of nerve-aura, and disbelieve in any "inner-man" theory, scientific but to the few. The whole question hangs upon the reality or unreality of the existence of this inner-man whom clairvoyance has discovered, and whose odyle or nerve-emanations Von Reichenbach proves. If one admits such a presence and realizes intuitionally that being closer related to the one invisible Reality, the inner type must be still more pronounced than the outer physical type, then it will be a matter of little, if any, difficulty to conceive our meaning. For, indeed, if even the respective physical idiosyncrasies and special characteristics of any given person make his nationality usually distinguishable by the physical eye of the ordinary observer--let alone the experienced ethnologist: the Englishman being commonly recognizable at a glance from the Frenchman, the German from the Italian, not to speak of the typical differences between human root-families* in their anthropological division--there seems little difficulty in conceiving that the same, though far more pronounced, difference of type and characteristics should exist between the inner races that inhabit these "fleshly tabernacles." Besides this easily discernible psychological and astral differences, there are the documentary records in their unbroken series of chronological tables and the history of the gradual branching off of races and sub-races from the three geological primeval Races, the work of the Initiates of all the archaic and ancient temples up to date, collected in our "Book of Numbers," and other volumes. --------- * Properly speaking, these ought to be called "Geological Races," so as to be easily distinguished from their subsequent evolutions--the root-races. The Occult doctrine has nothing to do with the Biblical division of Shem, Ham and Japhet, and admires, without accepting it, the latest Huxleyan physiological division of the human races into their quintuple groups of Australioids, Negroids, Mongoloids, Xanthechroics, and the fifth variety of Melanochroics. Yet it says that the triple division of the blundering Jews is closer to the truth, it knows but of three entirely distinct primeval races whose evolution, formation and development went pari passu and on parallel lines with the evolution, formation, and development of three geological strata; namely, the BLACK, the RED-YELLOW, and the BROWN-WHITE RACES. --------- Hence, and on this double testimony (which the Westerns are quite welcome to reject if so pleased) it is affirmed that, owing to the great amalgamation of various sub-races, such as the Iapygian, Etruscan, Pelasgic, and later--the strong admixture of the Hellenic and Kelto-Gaulic element in the veins of the primitive Itali of Latium--there remained in the tribes gathered by Romulus on the banks of the Tiber about as much Latinism as there is now in the Romanic people of Wallachia. Of course if the historical foundation of the fable of the twins of the Vestal Silvia is entirely rejected, together with that of the foundation of Alba Longa by the son of Aeneas, then it stands to reason that the whole of the statements made must be likewise a modern invention built upon the utterly worthless fables of the "legendary mythical age." For those who now give these statements, however, there is more of actual truth in such fables than there is in the alleged historical Regal period of the earliest Romans. It is to be deplored that the present statement should clash with the authoritative conclusion of Mommsen and others. Yet, stating but that which to the "Adepts" is fact, it must be understood at once that all (but the fanciful chronological date for the foundation of Rome-April, 753 "B.C.") that is given in old traditions in relation to the Paemerium, and the triple alliance of the Ramnians, Luceres and Tities, of the so-called Romuleian legend, is indeed far nearer truth than what external history accepts as facts during the Punic and Macedonian wars up to, through, and down the Roman Empire to its fall. The founders of Rome were decidedly a mongrel people, made up of various scraps and remnants of the many primitive tribes; only a few really Latin families, the descendants of the distinct sub-race that came along with the Umbro-Sabellians from the East remaining. And, while the latter preserved their distinct colour down to the Middle Ages through the Sabine element, left unmixed in its mountainous regions, the blood of the true Roman was Hellenic blood from its beginning. The famous Latin league is no fable, but history. The succession of kings descended from the Trojan Aeneas is a fact; and the idea that Romulus is to be regarded as simply the symbolical representative of a people, as Aeolus, Dorius, and Ion were once, instead of a living man, is as unwarranted as it is arbitrary. It could only have been entertained by a class of historiographers bent upon condoning their sin in supporting the dogma that Shem, Ham and Japhet were the historical once living ancestors of mankind, by making a burnt-offering of every really historical but non-Jewish tradition, legend, or record which might presume to a place on the same level with these three privileged archaic mariners, instead of humbly groveling at their feet as "absurd myths" and old wives' tales and superstitions. It will thus appear that the objectionable statements on pp. 56 and 62 of "Esoteric Buddhism," which are alleged to create an "historical difficulty," were not made by Mr. Sinnett's correspondent to bolster a western theory, but in loyalty to historical facts. Whether they can or cannot be accepted in those particular localities where criticism seems based upon mere conjecture (though honoured with the name of scientific hypothesis), is something which concerns the present writers as little as any casual traveler's unfavourable comments upon the time-scarred visage of the Sphinx can affect the designer of that sublime symbol. The sentences, "the Greeks and Romans were small sub-races of our own Caucasian stock" (p. 6), and they were "the remnants of the Atlanteans (the modern belong to the fifth race)" (p. 62), show the real meaning on their face. By the old Greeks, "remnants of the Atlanteans" the eponymous ancestors (as they are called by Europeans) of the Aeolians, Dorians and Ionians, are meant. By the connection together of the old Greeks and Romans without distinction, was meant that the primitive Latins were swallowed by Magna Graecia. And by "the modern" belonging "to the fifth race"--both these small branchlets from whose veins had been strained out the last drop of the Atlantean blood--it was implied that the Mongoloid 4th race blood had already been eliminated. Occultists make a distinction between the races intermediate between any two root-races: the Westerns do not. The "old Romans" were Hellenes in a new ethnological disguise; and the still older Greeks the real blood ancestors of the future Romans. In direct relation to this, attention is drawn to the following fact--one of the many in close historical bearing upon the "mythical" age to which Atlantis belongs. It is a fable and may be charged to the account of historical difficulties. It is well calculated, however, to throw all the old ethnological and genealogical divisions into confusion. Asking the reader to bear in mind that Atlantis, like modern Europe, comprised many nations and many dialects (issues from the three primeval root-languages of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Races), we may return to Poseidonis, its last surviving remnant of 12,000 years ago. As the chief element in the languages of the 5th race is the Aryan-Sanskrit of the "Brown-white" geological stock or race, so the predominating element in Atlantis was a language which has now survived but in the dialects of some American Red-Indian tribes, and in the Chinese speech of the inland Chinamen, the mountainous tribes of Kivang-ze--a language which was an admixture of the agglutinate and the monosyllabic, as it would be called by modern philologists. It was, in short, the language of the "Red-yellow" second or middle geological stock (we maintain the term "geological"). A strong percentage of the Mongoloid or 4th Root-race was, of course, to be found in the Aryans of the 5th. But this did not prevent in the least the presence at the same time of unalloyed, pure Aryan races in it. A number of small islands scattered around Poseidonis had been vacated, in consequence of earthquakes, long before the final catastrophe, which has alone remained in the memory of men-- thanks to some written records. Tradition says that one of the small tribes (the Aeolians) who had become islanders after emigrating from far northern countries, had to leave their home again for fear of a deluge. If, in spite of the Orientalists and the conjecture of M.F. Lenormant-- who invented a name for a people whose shadowy outline he dimly perceived in the faraway Past as preceding the Babylonians--we say that this Aryan race that came from Central Asia, the cradle of the 5th race Humanity, belonged to the "Akkadian" tribes, there will be a new historico-ethnological difficulty created. Yet it is maintained that these "Akkads" were no more a "Turanian" race than any of the modern British people are the mythical ten tribes of Israel, so conspicuously present in the Bible, and absent from history. With such remarkable pacta conventa between modern exact (?) and ancient Occult sciences, we may proceed with the fable. Belonging virtually, through their original connection with the Aryan, Central Asian stock, to the 5th race, the old Aeolians yet were Atlanteans, not only in virtue of their long residence in the now submerged continent, covering some thousands of years, but by the free intermingling of blood, by intermarriage with them. Perhaps in this connection Mr. Huxley's disposition to account for his Melanochroi (the Greeks being included under this classification or type)--as themselves "the result of crossing between the Xanthochroi and the Australioids," among whom he places the Southern India lower classes and the Egyptians to some extent--is not far off from fact. Anyhow the Aeolians of Atlantis were Aryans on the whole, as much as the Basques-- Dr. Pritchard's Allophylians--are now southern Europeans, although originally belonging to the South Indian Dravidian stock (their progenitors having never been the aborigines of Europe prior to the first Aryan emigration, as supposed). Frightened by the frequent earthquakes and the visible approach of the cataclysm, this tribe is said to have filled a flotilla of arks, to have sailed from beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and, sailing along the coasts, after several years of travel to have landed on the shores of the Aegean Sea in the land of Pyrrha (now Thessaly), to which they gave the name of Aeolia. Thence they proceeded on business with the gods to Mount Olympus. It may be stated here, at the risk of creating a "geographical difficulty," that in that mythical age Greece, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, and many other islands of the Mediterranean, were simply the far-away possessions, or colonies, of Atlantis. Hence, the "fable" proceeds to state that all along the coasts of Spain, France, and Italy the Aeolians often halted, and the memory of their "magical feats" still survives among the descendants of the old Massilians, of the tribes of the later Carthago-Nova, and the seaports of Etruria and Syracuse. And here again it would not be a bad idea, perchance, even at this late hour, for the archeologists to trace, with the permission of the anthropological societies, the origin of the various autochthones through their folk-lore and fables, as they may prove both more suggestive and reliable than their "undecipherable" monuments. History catches a misty glimpse of these particular autochthones thousands of years only after they had been settled in old Greece--namely, at the moment when the Epireans cross the Pindus bent on expelling the black magicians from their home to Boeotia. But history never listened to the popular legends which speak of the "accursed sorcerers" who departed, leaving as an inheritance behind them more than one secret of their infernal arts, the fame of which crossing the ages has now passed into history--or, classical Greek and Roman fable, if so preferred. To this day a popular tradition narrates how the ancient forefathers of the Thessalonians, so renowned for their magicians, had come from behind the Pillars, asking for help and refuge from the great Zeus, and imploring the father of the gods to save them from the deluge. But the "Father" expelled them from the Olympus, allowing their tribe to settle only at the foot of the mountain, in the valleys, and by the shores of the Aegean Sea. Such is the oldest fable of the ancient Thessalonians. And now, what was the language spoken by the Atlantean Aeolians? History cannot answer us. Nevertheless, the reader has only to be reminded of some of the accepted and a few of the as yet unknown facts, to cause the light to enter any intuitional brain. It is now proved that man was universally conceived in antiquity as born of the earth. Such is now the profane explanation of the term autochthones. In nearly every vulgarized popular fable, from the Sanskrit Arya "born of the earth," or Lord of the Soil in one sense; the Erechtheus of the archaic Greeks, worshiped in the earliest days of the Akropolis and shown by Homer as "he whom the earth bore" ( Il. ii. 548); down to Adam fashioned of "red earth," the genetical story has a deep occult meaning, and an indirect connection with the origin of man and of the subsequent races. Thus, the fables of Helen, the son of Pyrrha the red--the oldest name of Thessaly; and of Mannus, the reputed ancestor of the Germans, himself the son of Tuisco, "the red son of the earth," have not only a direct bearing upon our Atlantis fable, but they explain moreover the division of mankind into geological groups as made by the Occultists. It is only this, their division, that is able to explain to Western teachers the apparently strange, if not absurd, coincidence of the Semitic Adam--a divinely revealed personage--being connected with red earth, in company with the Aryan Pyrrha, Tuisco, &c.--the mythical heroes of "foolish" fables. Nor will that division made by the Eastern Occultists, who call the 5th race people "the Brown-white," and the 4th race the "Red-yellow," Root-races--connecting them with geological strata--appear at all fantastic to those who understood verse iii. 34-9 of the Veda and its occult meaning, and another verse in which the Dasyus are called "Yellow." Hatvi Dasyun pra aryam varanam avat is said of Indra who, by killing the Dasyus, protected the colour of the Aryans; and again, Indra "unveiled the light for the Aryas and the Dasyus was left on the left hand" (ii. III 18). Let the student of Occultism bear in mind that the Greek Noah, Deukalion, the husband of Pyrrha, was the reputed son of Prometheus who robbed Heaven of its fire (i.e., of secret Wisdom "of the right hand," or occult knowledge); that Prometheus is the brother of Atlas; that he is also the son of Asia and of the Titan Iapetus--the antetype from which the Jews borrowed their Japhet for the exigencies of their own popular legend to mask its kabalistic, Chaldean meaning; and that he is also the antetype of Deukalion. Prometheus is the creator of man out of earth and water,* who after stealing fire from Olympus--a mountain in Greece--is chained on a mount in the far-off Caucasus. From Olympus to Mount Kazbek there is a considerable distance. The Occultists say that while the 4th race was generated and developed on the Atlantean continent--our Antipodes in a certain sense--the 5th was generated and developed in Asia. (The ancient Greek geographer Strabo, for one, calls by the name of Ariana, the land of the Aryas, the whole country between the Indian Ocean in the south, the Hindu Kush and Parapamisis in the north, the Indus on the east, and the Caspian Gates, Karamania and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, on the west.) The fable of Prometheus relates to the extinction of the civilized portions of the 4th race, whom Zeus, in order to create a new race, would destroy entirely, and Prometheus (who had the sacred fire of knowledge) saved partially "for future seed." But the origin of the fable antecedes the destruction of Poseidonis by more than seventy thousand years, however incredible it may seem. The seven great continents of the world, spoken of in the Vishnu Purana (B. II., cap. 2) include Atlantis, though, of course, under another name. Ila and Ira are synonymous Sanskrit terms (see Amarakosha), and both mean earth or native soil; and Ilavrita is a portion of Ila, the central point of India (Jambudvipa), the latter being itself the centre of the seven great continents before the submersion of the great continent of Atlantis, of which Poseidonis was but an insignificant remnant. And now, while every Brahmin will understand the meaning, we may help the Europeans with a few more explanations. -------- * Behold Moses saying that it requires earth and water to make a living man. -------- If, in that generally tabooed work, "Isis Unveiled," the "English F.T.S." turns to page 589, vol. I., he may find therein narrated another old Eastern legend. An island .... (where now the Gobi desert lies) was inhabited by the last remnants of the race that preceded ours: a handful of "Adepts"--the "Sons of God," now referred to as the Brahman Pitris; called by another yet synonymous name in the Chaldean Kabala. "Isis Unveiled" may appear very puzzling and contradictory to those who know nothing of Occult Sciences. To the Occultist it is correct, and while perhaps left purposely sinning (for it was the first cautious attempt to let into the West a faint streak of Eastern esoteric light), it reveals more facts than were ever given before its appearance. Let any one read these pages and he may comprehend. The "six such races" in Manu refer to the sub-races of the fourth race (p. 590). In addition to this the reader must turn to the paper on "The Septenary Principle in Esotericism" (p. 187 ante), study the list of the "Manus" of our fourth Round (p. 254), and between this and "Isis" light may, perchance, be focused. On pages 590-6 of the work mentioned above, he will find that Atlantis is mentioned in the "Secret Books of the East" (as yet virgin of Western spoliating hand) under another name in the sacred hieratic or sacerdotal language. And then it will be shown to him that Atlantis was not merely the name of one island but that of a whole continent, of whose isles and islets many have to this day survived. The remotest ancestors of some of the inhabitants of the now miserable fisherman's hovel "Aclo" (once Atlan), near the gulf of Uraha, were allied at one time as closely with the old Greeks and Romans as they were with the "true inland China-man," mentioned on p. 57 Of "Esoteric Buddhism." Until the appearance of a map, published at Basle in 1522, wherein the name of America appears for the first time, the latter was believed to be part of India; and strange to him who does not follow the mysterious working of the human mind and its unconscious approximations to hidden truths--even the aborigines of the new continent, the Red-skinned tribes, the "Mongoloids" of Mr. Huxley, were named Indians. Names now attributed to chance: elastic word that! Strange coincidence, indeed, to him who does not know--science refusing yet to sanction the wild hypothesis--that there was a time when the Indian peninsula was at one end of the line, and South America at the other, connected by a belt of islands and continents. The India of the prehistoric ages was not only within the region at the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes, but there was even in the days of history, and within its memory, an upper, a lower, and a western India: and still earlier it was doubly connected with the two Americas. The lands of the ancestors of those whom Ammianus Marcellinus calls the "Brahmans of Upper India" stretched from Kashmir far into the (now) deserts of Schamo. A pedestrian from the north might then have reached--hardly wetting his feet--the Alaskan Peninsula, through Manchooria, across the future Gulf of Tartary, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands; while another traveler, furnished with a canoe and starting from the south, could have walked over from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands and trudged into any part of the continent of South America. On pp. 592-3 of "Isis," vol. I., the Thevetatas--the evil, mischievous gods that have survived in the Etruscan Pantheon--are mentioned, along with the "sons of God" or Brahman Pitris. The Involute, the hidden or shrouded gods, the Consentes, Complices, and Novensiles, are all disguised relics of the Atlanteans; while the Etruscan arts of soothsaying their Disciplina revealed by Tages comes direct and in undisguised form from the Atlantean king Thevetat, the "invisible" Dragon, whose name survives to this day among the Siamese and Burmese, as also, in the Jataka allegorical stories of the Buddhists as the opposing power under the name of Devadat. And Tages was the son of Thevetat, before he became the grandson of the Etruscan Jupiter-Tinia. Have the Western Orientalists tried to find out the connection between all these Dragons and Serpents; between the "powers of Evil" in the cycles of epic legends, the Persian and the Indian, the Greek and the Jewish; between the contests of Indra and the giant; the Aryan Nagas and the Iranian Aji Dahaka; the Guatemalian Dragon and the Serpent of Genesis--&c. &c. &c.? Professor Max Muller discredits the connection. So be it. But the fourth race of men, "men" whose sight was unlimited and who knew all things at once, the hidden as the unrevealed, is mentioned in the Popol-Vuh, the sacred books of the Guatemalians; and the Babylonian Xisuthrus, the far later Jewish Noah, the Hindu Vaivaswata, and the Greek Deukalion, are all identical with the great Father of the Thlinkithians, of Popol-Vuh who, like the rest of these allegorical (not mythical) Patriarchs, escaped in his turn and in his days, in a large boat at the time of the last great Deluge--the submersion of Atlantis. To have been an Indo-Aryan, Vaivaswata had not, of necessity, to meet with his Saviour (Vishnu, under the form of a fish) within the precincts of the present India, or even anywhere on the Asian continent; nor is it necessary to concede that he was the seventh great Manu himself (see catalogue of the Manus, in the paper on "The Septenary Principle in Esotericism" cited above), but simply that the Hindu Noah belonged to the clan of Vaivaswata and typifies the fifth race. Now the last of the Atlantean islands perished some 11,000 years ago; and the fifth race headed by the Aryans began its evolution, to the certain knowledge of the "Adepts" nearer one million than 900,000 years ago. But the historian and the anthropologist with their utmost stretch of liberality are unable to give more than from twenty to one hundred thousand years for all our human evolution. Hence we put it to them as a fair question: at what point during their own conjectural lakh of years do they fix the root-germ of the ancestral line of the "old Greeks and Romans?" Who were they? What is known or even "conjectured" about their territorial habitat after the division of the Aryan nations? And where were the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races? It is not enough for purposes of refutation of other peoples' statements to say that the latter lived separate from the former, and then come to a full stop--a fresh hiatus in the ethnological history of mankind. Since Asia is sometimes called the Cradle of Humanity, and it is an ascertained fact that Central Asia was likewise the cradle of the Semitic and Turanian races (for thus it is taught in Genesis), and we find the Turans agreeably to the theory evolved by the Assyriologists preceding the Babylonian Semitists, where, at what spot of the globe, did these Semito-Turanian nations break away from the parent stock, and what has become of the latter? It cannot be the small Jewish tribe of Patriarchs; and unless it can be shown that the garden of Eden was also on the Oxus or the Euphrates, fenced off from the soil inhabited by the children of Cain, philologists who undertake to fill in the gaps in Universal History with their made-up conjectures, may be regarded as ignorant of this detail as those they would enlighten. Logically, if the ancestors of these various groups had been at that remote period massed together, then the self-same roots of a parent common stock would have been equally traceable in their perfected languages as they are in those of the Judo-Europeans. And so, since whichever way one turns, one is met with the same troubled sea of speculation, margined by the treacherous quicksands of hypothesis, and every horizon bounded by inferential landmarks inscribed with imaginary dates. Again, the "Adepts" ask why should any one be awed into accepting as final criterion that which passes for science of high authority in Europe? For all this is known to the Asiatic scholar--in every case save the purely mathematical and physical sciences--as little better than a secret league for mutual support, and, perhaps, admiration. He bows with profound respect before the Royal Societies of Physicists, Chemists, and, to a degree, even of Naturalists. He refuses to pay the slightest attention to the merely speculative and conjectural so-called "sciences" of the modern Physiologist, Ethnologist, Philologist, &c., and the mob of self-styling Oedipuses to whom it is not given to unriddle the Sphynx of Nature, and who therefore throttle her. With an eye to the above, as also with a certain prevision of the future, the defendants in the cases under examination believe that the "historical difficulty" with reference to the non-historical statement, necessitated more than a simple reaffirmation of the fact. They knew that with no better claims to a hearing than may be accorded by the confidence of a few, and in view of the decided antagonism of the many, it would never do for them to say "we maintain" while Western professors maintained to the contrary. For a body of, so to say, unlicensed preachers and students of unauthorized and unrecognized sciences to offer to fight an August body of universally recognized oracles, would be an unprecedented piece of impertinence. Hence their respective claims had to be examined on however small a scale to begin with (in this as in all other cases) on other than psychological grounds. The "Adepts" in Occult Arts had better keep silence when confronted with the "A.C.S.'s"--Adepts in Conjectural Sciences--unless they could show, partially at least, how weak is the authority of the latter and on what foundations of shifting sands their scientific dicta are often built. They may thus make it a thinkable conjecture that the former may be right after all. Absolute silence, moreover, as at present advised, would have been fatal. Besides risking to be construed into inability to answer, it might have given rise to new complaints among the faithful few, and lead to fresh charges of selfishness against the writers. Therefore have the "Adepts" agreed to smooth in part at least a few of the most glaring difficulties and showing a highway to avoid them in future by studying the non-historical but actual, instead of the historical but mythical, portions of Universal History. And this they have achieved, they believe (at any rate with a few of their querists), by simply showing, or rather reminding them, that since no historical fact can stand as such against the "assumption" of the "Adepts"-- historians being confessedly ignorant of pre-Roman and Greek origins beyond the ghostly shadows of the Etruscans and Pelasgians--no real historical difficulty can be possibly involved in their statement. From objectors outside the Society, the writers neither demand nor do they expect mercy. The "Adept" has no favours to ask at the hands of conjectural science, nor does he exact from any member of the "London Lodge" blind faith: it being his cardinal maxim that faith should only follow inquiry. The "Adept" is more than content to be allowed to remain silent, keeping what he may know to himself, unless worthy seekers wish to share it. He has so done for ages, and can do so for a little longer. Moreover, he would rather not "arrest attention" or "command respect" at present. Thus he leaves his audience to first verify his statements in every case by the brilliant though rather wavering light of modern science: after which his facts may be either accepted or rejected, at the option of the willing student. In short, the "Adept"--if one indeed--has to remain utterly unconcerned with, and unmoved by, the issue. He imparts that which it is lawful for him to give out, and deals but with facts. The philological and archeological "difficulties" next demand attention. Philological and Archeological "Difficulties" Two questions are blended into one. Having shown the reasons why the Asiatic student is prompted to decline the guidance of Western History, it remains to explain his contumacious obstinacy in the same direction with regard to philology and archeology. While expressing the sincerest admiration for the clever modern methods of reading the past histories of nations now mostly extinct, and following the progress and evolution of their respective languages, now dead, the student of Eastern occultism, and even the profane Hindu scholar acquainted with his national literature, can hardly be made to share the confidence felt by Western philologists in these conglutinative methods, when practically applied to his own country and Sanskrit literature. Three facts, at least, out of many are well calculated to undermine his faith in these Western methods:-- 1. Of some dozens of eminent Orientalists, no two agree, even in their verbatim translation of Sanskrit texts. Nor is there more harmony shown in their interpretation of the possible meaning of doubtful passages. 2. Though Numismatics is a less conjectural branch of science, and when starting from well-established basic dates, so to say, an exact one (since it can hardly fail to yield correct chronological data, in our case, namely, Indian antiquities); archeologists have hitherto failed to obtain any such position. On their own confession, they are hardly justified in accepting the Samvat and Salivahana eras as their guiding lights, the real initial points of both being beyond the power of the European Orientalists to verify; yet all the same, the respective dates "of 57 B.C. and 78 A.D." are accepted implicitly, and fanciful ages thereupon ascribed to archeological remains. 3. The greatest authorities upon Indian archeology and architecture-- General Cunningham and Mr. Fergusson--represent in their conclusions the two opposite poles. The province of archeology is to provide trustworthy canons of criticism, and not, it should seem, to perplex or puzzle. The Western critic is invited to point to one single relic of the past in India, whether written record or inscribed or uninscribed monument, the age of which is not disputed. No sooner has one archeologist determined a date--say the first century--than another tries to pull it forward to the 10th or perhaps the 14th century of the Christian era. While General Cunningham ascribes the construction of the present Buddha Gaya temple to the 1st century after Christ--the opinion of Mr. Fergusson is that its external form belongs to the 14th century; and so the unfortunate outsider is as wise as ever. Noticing this discrepancy in a "Report on the Archeological Survey of India" (vol. viii. p. 60), the conscientious and capable Buddha-Gaya Chief Engineer, Mr. J.D. Beglar, observes that "notwithstanding his (Fergusson's) high authority, this opinion must be unhesitatingly set aside," and forthwith assigns the building under notice to the 6th century. While the conjectures of one archeologist are termed by another "hopelessly wrong," the identifications of Buddhist relics by this other are in their turn denounced as "quite untenable." And so in the case of every relic of whatever age. When the "recognized" authorities agree--among themselves at least--then will it be time to show them collectively in the wrong. Until then, since their respective conjectures can lay no claim to the character of history, the "Adepts" have neither the leisure nor the disposition to leave weightier business to combat empty speculations, in number as many as there are pretended authorities. Let the blind lead the blind, if they will not accept the light.* -------- * However, it will be shown elsewhere that General Cunningham's latest conclusions about the date of Buddha's death are not all supported by the inscriptions newly discovered.--T. Subba Row. --------- As in the "historical," so in this new "archeological difficulty," namely, the apparent anachronism as to the date of our Lord's birth, the point at issue is again concerned with the "old Greeks and Romans." Less ancient than our Atlantean friends, they seem more dangerous inasmuch as they have become the direct allies of philologists in our dispute over Buddhist annals. We are notified by Prof. Max Muller, by sympathy the most fair of Sanskritists as well as the most learned--and with whom, for a wonder, most of his rivals are found siding in this particular question--that "everything in Indian chronology depends on the date of Chandragupta,"--the Greek Sandracottus. "Either of these dates (in the Chinese and Ceylonese chronology) is impossible, because it does not agree with the chronology of Greece." ("Hist. of the Sans. Lit.," p. 275.) It is then by the clear light of this new Alexandrian Pharos shed, upon a few synchronisms casually furnished by the Greek and Roman classical writers, that the "extraordinary" statements of the "Adepts" have now to be cautiously examined. For Western Orientalists the historical existence of Buddhism begins with Asoka, though, even with the help of Greek spectacles, they are unable to see beyond Chandragupta. Therefore, "before that time Buddhist chronology is traditional and full of absurdities." Furthermore, nothing is said in the Brahmanas of the Bauddhas--ergo, there were none before "Sandracottus," nor have the Buddhists or Brahmans any right to a history of their own, save the one evoluted by the Western mind. As though the Muse of History had turned her back while events were gliding by, the "historian" confesses his inability to close the immense lacunae between the Indo-Aryan supposed immigration en masse across the Hindoo Kush, and the reign of Asoka. Having nothing more solid, he uses contradictory inferences and speculations. But the Asiatic occultists, whose forefathers had her tablets in their keeping, and even some learned native Pundits--believe they can. The claim, however, is pronounced unworthy of attention. Of the late Smriti (traditional history) which, for those who know how to interpret its allegories, is full of unimpeachable historical records, an Ariadne's thread through the tortuous labyrinth of the Past--has come to be unanimously regarded as a tissue of exaggerations, monstrous fables, "clumsy forgeries of the first centuries A.D." It is now openly declared as worthless not only for exact chronological but even for general historical purposes. Thus by dint of arbitrary condemnations, based on absurd interpretations (too often the direct outcome of sectarian prejudice), the Orientalist has raised himself to the eminence of a philological mantic. His learned vagaries are fast superseding, even in the minds of many a Europeanized Hindu, the important historical facts that lie concealed under the exoteric phraseology of the Puranas and other Smritic literature. At the outset, therefore, the Eastern Initiate declares the evidence of those Orientalists who, abusing their unmerited authority, play ducks and drakes with his most sacred relics, ruled out of court; and before giving his facts he would suggest to the learned European Sanskritist and archeologist that, in the matter of chronology, the difference in the sum of their series of conjectural historical events, proves them to be mistaken from A to Z. They know that one single wrong figure in an arithmetical progression will always throw the whole calculation into inextricable confusion: the multiplication yielding, generally, in such a case, instead of the correct sum something entirely unexpected. A fair proof of this may, perhaps, be found in something already alluded to-- namely, the adoption of the dates of certain Hindu eras as the basis of their chronological assumptions. In assigning a date to text or monument they have, of course, to be guided by one of the pre-Christian Indian eras, whether inferentially, or otherwise. And yet--in one case, at least--they complain repeatedly that they are utterly ignorant as to the correct starting-point of the most important of these. The positive date of Vikramaditya, for instance, whose reign forms the starting point of the Samvat era, is in reality unknown to them. With some, Vikramaditya flourished "B.C." 56; with others, 86; with others again, in the 6th century of the Christian era; while Mr. Fergusson will not allow the Samvat era any beginning before the "10th century A.D." In short, and in the words of Dr. Weber,* they "have absolutely no authentic evidence to show whether the era of Vikramaditya dates from the year of his birth, from some achievement, or from the year of his death, or whether, in fine, it may not have been simply introduced by him for astronomical reasons." There were several Vikramadityas and Vikramas in Indian history, for it is not a name, but an honorary title, as the Orientalists have now come to learn. How then can any chronological deduction from such a shifting premise be anything but untrustworthy, especially when, as in the instance of the Samvat, the basic date is made to travel along, at the personal fancy of Orientalists, between the 1st and the 10th century? ----------- * "The History of Indian Literature," Trubner's Series, 1882, p. 202. ----------- Thus it appears to be pretty well proved that in ascribing chronological dates to Indian antiquities, Anglo-Indian as well as European archeologists are often guilty of the most ridiculous anachronisms. That, in fine, they have been hitherto furnishing History with an arithmetical mean, while ignorant, in nearly every case, of its first term! Nevertheless, the Asiatic student is invited to verify and correct his dates by the flickering light of this chronological will-o-the-wisp. Nay, nay. Surely "An English F.T.S." would never expect us in matters demanding the minutest exactness to trust to such Western beacons! And he will, perhaps, permit us to hold to our own views, since we know that our dates are neither conjectural nor liable to modifications. Where even such veteran archeologists as General Cunningham do not seem above suspicion, and are openly denounced by their colleagues, palaeography seems to hardly deserve the name of exact science. This busy antiquarian has been repeatedly denounced by Prof. Weber and others for his indiscriminate acceptance of that Samvat era. Nor have the other Orientalists been more lenient; especially those who, perchance under the inspiration of early sympathies for biblical chronology, prefer in matters connected with Indian dates to give head to their own emotional but unscientific intuitions. Some would have us believe that the Samvat era "is not demonstrable for times anteceding the Christian era at all." Kern makes efforts to prove that the Indian astronomers began to employ this era "only after the year of grace 1000." Prof. Weber, referring sarcastically to General Cunningham, observes that "others, on the contrary, have no hesitation in at once referring, wherever possible, every Samvat or Samvatsare-dated inscription to the Samvat era." Thus, e.g., Cunningham (in his "Arch. Survey of India," iii. 31, 39) directly assigns an inscription dated Samvat 5 to the year "B.C. 52," &c., and winds up the statement with the following plaint: "For the present, therefore, unfortunately, where there is nothing else (but that unknown era) to guide us, it must generally remain an open question, which era we have to do with in a particular inscription, and what date consequently the inscription bears." * -------- * Op. cit., p. 203. -------- The confession is significant. It is pleasant to find such a ring of sincerity in a European Orientalist, though it does seem quite ominous for Indian archeology. The initiated Brahmans know the positive dates of their eras and remain therefore unconcerned. What the "Adepts" have once said, they maintain; and no new discoveries or modified conjectures of accepted authorities can exert any pressure upon their data. Even if Western archeologists or numismatists took it into their heads to change the date of our Lord and Glorified Deliverer from the 7th century "B.C." to the 7th century "A.D.," we would but the more admire such a remarkable gift for knocking about dates and eras, as though they were so many lawn-tennis balls. Meanwhile, to all sincere and inquiring Theosophists, we will say plainly, it is useless for any one to speculate about the date of our Lord Sanggyas's birth, while rejecting a priori all the Brahmanical, Ceylonese, Chinese, and Tibetan dates. The pretext that these do not agree with the chronology of a handful of Greeks who visited the country 300 years after the event in question, is too fallacious and bold. Greece was never concerned with Buddhism, and besides the fact that the classics furnish their few synchronistic dates simply upon the hearsay of their respective authors--a few Greeks, who themselves lived centuries before the writers quoted--their chronology is itself too defective, and their historical records, when it was a question of national triumphs, too bombastic and often too diametrically opposed to fact, to inspire with confidence any one less prejudiced than the average European Orientalist. To seek to establish the true dates in Indian history by connecting its events with the mythical "invasion," while confessing that "one would look in vain in the literature of the Brahmans or Buddhists for any allusion to Alexander's conquest, and although it is impossible to identify any of the historical events related by Alexander's companions with the historical tradition of India," amounts to something more than a mere exhibition of incompetence in this direction: were not Prof. Max Muller the party concerned--we might say that it appears almost like predetermined dishonesty. These are harsh words to say, and calculated no doubt to shock many a European mind trained to look up to what is termed "scientific authority" with a feeling akin to that of the savage for his family fetich. They are well deserved, nevertheless, as a few examples will show. To such intellects as Prof. Weber's--whom we take as the leader of the German Orientalists of the type of Christophiles--certainly the word "obtuseness" cannot be applied. Upon seeing how chronology is deliberately and maliciously perverted in favour of "Greek influence," Christian interests and his own predetermined theories--another, and even a stronger term should be applied. What expression is too severe to signify one's feelings upon reading such an unwitting confession of disingenuous scholarship as Weber repeatedly makes ("Hist. Ind. Lit.") when urging the necessity of admitting that a passage "has been touched up by later interpellation," or forcing fanciful chronological places for texts admittedly very ancient--"as otherwise the dates would be brought down too far or too near!" And this is the keynote of his entire policy: fiat hypothesis, ruat caelum! On the other hand Prof. Max Muller, enthusiastic Indophile as he seems, crams centuries into his chronological thimble without the smallest apparent compunction.... These two Orientalists are instances, because they are accepted beacons of philology and Indian paleography. Our national monuments are dated and our ancestral history perverted to suit their opinions; the pernicious evil has ensued, that as a result History is now recording for the misguidance of posterity the false annals and distorted facts which, upon their evidence, will be accepted without appeal as the outcome of the fairest and ablest critical analysis. While Prof. Max Muller will hear of no other than a Greek criterion for Indian chronology, Prof. Weber (op. cit.) finds Greek influence--his universal solvent--in the development of India's religion, philosophy, literature, astronomy, medicine, architecture, &c. To support this fallacy the most tortuous sophistry, the most absurd etymological deductions are resorted to. If one fact more than another has been set at rest by comparative mythology, it is that their fundamental religious ideas, and most of their gods, were derived by the Greeks from religions flourishing in the north-west of India, the cradle of the main Hellenic stock. This is now entirely disregarded, because a disturbing element in the harmony of the critical spheres. And though nothing is more reasonable than the inference that the Grecian astronomical terms were inherited equally from the parent stock, Prof. Weber would have us believe that "it was Greek influence that just infused a real life into Indian astronomy" (p. 251). In fine, the hoary ancestors of the Hindus borrowed their astronomical terminology and learnt the art of star gazing and even their zodiac from the Hellenic infant! This proof engenders another: the relative antiquity of the astronomical texts shall be henceforth determined upon the presence or absence in them of asterisms and zodiacal signs, the former being undisguisedly Greek in their names, the latter are "designated by their Sanskrit names which are translated from the Greek" (p. 255). Thus "Manu's law being unacquainted with the planets," is considered as more ancient than Yajnavalkya's Code, which "inculcates their worship," and so on. But there is still another and a better test found out by the Sanskritists for determining with "infallible accuracy" the age of the texts, apart from asterisms and zodiacal signs any casual mention in them of the name "Yavana," taken in every instance to designate the "Greeks." This, apart "from an internal chronology based on the character of the works themselves, and on the quotations, &c., therein contained, is the only one possible," we are told. As a result the absurd statement that "the Indian astronomers regularly speak of the Yavanas as their teachers" (p. 252). Ergo, their teachers were Greeks. For with Weber and others "Yavana" and "Greek" are convertible terms. But it so happens that Yavanacharya was the Indian title of a single Greek--Pythagoras; as Sankaracharya was the title of a single Hindu philosopher; and the ancient Aryan astronomical writers cited his opinions to criticize and compare them with the teachings of their own astronomical science, long before him perfected and derived from their ancestors. The honorific title of Acharya (master) was applied to him as to every other learned astronomer or mystic; and it certainly did not mean that Pythagoras or any other Greek "Master" was necessarily the master of the Brahmans. The word "Yavana" was a generic term employed ages before the "Greeks of Alexander" projected "their influence" upon Jambudvipa, to designate people of a younger race, the word meaning Yuvan "young," or younger. They knew of Yavanas of the north, west, south and east; and the Greek strangers received this appellation as the Persians, Indo-Scythians and others had before them. An exact parallel is afforded in our present day. To the Tibetans every foreigner whatsoever is known as a Peling; the Chinese designate Europeans as "red-haired devils;" and the Mussalmans call every one outside of Islam a Kuffir. The Webers of the future, following the example now set them, may perhaps, after 10,000 years, affirm, upon the authority of scraps of Moslem literature then extant, that the Bible was written, and the English, French, Russians and Germans who possessed and translated or "invented" it, lived in Kaffiristan shortly before their era under "Moslem influence." Because the Yuga Purana of the Gargi Sanhita speaks of an expedition of the Yavanas "as far as Pataliputra," therefore, either the Macedonians or the Seleuciae had conquered all India! But our Western critic is ignorant, of course, of the fact that Ayodhya or Saketa of Rama was for two millenniums repelling inroads of various Mongolian and other Turanian tribes, besides the Indo-Scythians, from beyond Nepaul and the Himalayas. Prof. Weber seems finally himself frightened at the Yavana spectre he has raised, for he queries:--"Whether by the Yavanas it is really the Greeks who are meant or possibly merely their Indo-Scythian or other successors, to whom the name was afterwards transferred." This wholesome doubt ought to have modified his dogmatic tone in many other such cases. But, drive out prejudice with a pitch fork it will ever return. The eminent scholar, though staggered by his own glimpse of the truth, returns to the charge with new vigour. We are startled by the fresh discovery that Asuramaya:* the earliest astronomer, mentioned repeatedly in the Indian epics, "is identical with 'Ptolemaios' of the Greeks." The reason for it given is, that "this latter name, as we see from the inscriptions of Piyadasi, became in Indian 'Turamaya,' out of which the name 'Asuramaya' might very easily grow; and since, by the later tradition, this 'Maya' is distinctly assigned to Romaka-pura in the West." Had the "Piyadasi inscription" been found on the site of ancient Babylonia, one might suspect the word "Turamaya" as derived from "Turanomaya," or rather mania. Since, however, the Piyadasi inscriptions belong distinctly to India, and the title was borne but by two kings--Chandragupta and Dharmasoka--what has "'Ptolemaios' of the Greeks" to do with "Turamaya" or the latter with "Asuramaya," except, indeed, to use it as a fresh pretext to drag the Indian astronomer under the stupefying "Greek influence" of the Upas Tree of Western Philology? Then we learn that, because "Panini once mentions the Yavanas, i.e., .... Greeks, and explains the formation of the word 'Yavanani,' to which, according to the Varttika, the word lipi, 'writing,' must be supplied," therefore the word signifies "the writing of the Yavanas" of the Greeks and none other. Would the German philologists (who have so long and so fruitlessly attempted to explain this word) be very much surprised if told that they are yet as far as possible from the truth? That--Yavanani does not mean "Greek writing" at all, but any foreign writing whatsoever? That the absence of the word "writing" in the old texts, except in connection with the names of foreigners, does not in the least imply that none but Greek writing was known to them, or that they had none of their own, being ignorant of the art of reading and writing until the days of Panini? (theory of Prof. Max Muller). For Devanagari is as old as the Vedas, and held so sacred that the Brahmans, first under penalty of death, and later on of eternal ostracism, were not even allowed to mention it to profane ears, much less to make known the existence of their secret temple libraries. So that by the word Yavanani, "to which, according to the Varttika, the word lipi, 'writing,' must he supplied," the writing of foreigners in general, whether Phoenician, Roman, or Greek, is always meant. As to the preposterous hypothesis of Prof. Max Muller that writing "was not used for literary purposes in India" before Panini's time (again upon Greek authority) that matter has been disposed of elsewhere. --------- * Dr. Weber is not probably aware of the fact that this distinguished astronomer's name was simply Maya; the prefix "Asura" was often added to it by ancient Hindu writers to show that he was a Rakshasa. In the opinion of the Brahmans he was an "Atlantean" and one of the greatest astronomers and occultists of the lost Atlantis. --------- Equally unknown are those certain other and most important facts, fable though they seem. First, that the Aryan "Great War," the Mahabharata, and the Trojan War of Homer--both mythical as to personal biographies and fabulous supernumeraries, yet perfectly historical in the main-- belong to the same cycle of events. For the occurrences of many centuries, among them the separation of sundry peoples and races, erroneously traced to Central Asia alone, were in these immortal epics compressed within the scope of single dramas made to occupy but a few years. Secondly, that in this immense antiquity the forefathers of the Aryan Greeks and the Aryan Brahmans were as closely united and intermixed as are now the Aryans and the so-called Dravidians. Thirdly, that before the days of the historical Rama, from whom in unbroken genealogical descent the Oodeypore sovereigns trace their lineage, Rajpootana was as full of direct post-Atlantean "Greeks," as the post-Trojan, subjacent Cumaea and other settlements of pre-Magna Graecia were of the fast Hellenizing sires of the modern Rajpoot. One acquainted with the real meaning of the ancient epics cannot refrain from asking himself whether these intuitional Orientalists prefer being called deceivers or deceived, and in charity give them the benefit of the doubt.* --------- * Further on, Prof. Weber indulges in the following piece of chronological sleight of hand. In his arduous endeavour "to determine accurately" the place in history of "the Romantic Legend of Sakya Buddha" (translation by Beale), he thinks "the special points of relation here found to Christian legends are very striking. The question which party was the borrower Deals properly leaves undetermined. Yet in all likelihood (!!) we have here simply a similar case to that of the appropriation of Christian legend by this worshipers of Krishna" (p. 300). Now it is this that every Hindu and Buddhist has the right to brand as "dishonesty," whether conscious or unconscious. Legends originate earlier than history and die out upon being sifted. Neither of the fabulous events in connection with Buddha's birth, taken exoterically, necessitated a great genius to narrate them, nor was the intellectual capacity of the Hindus ever proved so inferior to that of the Jewish and Greek mob that they should borrow from them even fables inspired by religion. How their fables, evolved between the second and third centuries after Buddha's death, when the fever of proselytism and the adoration of his memory were at their height, could be borrowed and then appropriated from the Christian legends written during the first century of the Western era, can only be explained by a German Orientalist. Mr. T.W. Rhys Davids (Jataka Book) shows the contrary to have been true. It may be remarked in this connection that, while the first "miracles" of both Krishna and Christ are said to have happened at a Mathura, the latter city exists to this day in India--the antiquity of its name being fully proved--while the Mathura, or Matures in Egypt, of the "Gospel of Infancy," where Jesus is alleged to have produced his first miracle, was sought to be identified, centuries ago, by the stump of an old tree in thee desert, and is represented by an empty spot! ---------- What can be thought of Prof. Weber's endeavour when, "to determine more accurately the position of Ramayana (called by him the 'artificial epic') in literary history," he ends with an assumption that "it rests upon an acquaintance with the Trojan cycle of legend .... the conclusion there arrived at is that the date of its composition is to be placed at the commencement of the Christian era in an epoch when the operation of the Greek influence upon India had already set in!" (p. 194.) The case is hopeless. If the "internal chronology" and external fitness of things, we may add presented in the triple Indian epic, did not open the eyes of the hypercritical professors to the many historical facts enshrined in their striking allegories; if the significant mention of "black Yavanas," and "white Yavanas," indicating totally different peoples, could so completely escape their notice;* and the enumeration of a host of tribes, nations, races, clans, under their separate Sanskrit designations in the Mahbharata, had not stimulated them to try to trace their ethnic evolution and identify them with their now living European descendants, there is little to hope from their scholarship except a mosaic of learned guesswork. The latter scientific mode of critical analysis may yet end some day in a consensus of opinion that Buddhism is due wholesale to the "Life of Barlaam and Josaphat," written by St. John of Damascus; or that our religion was plagiarized from that famous Roman Catholic legend of the eighth century in which our Lord Gautama is made to figure as a Christian Saint, better still, that the Vedas were written at Athens under the auspices of St. George, the tutelary successor of Theseus. --------- * See Twelfth Book of Mahabharata, Krishnas fight with Kalayavana. --------- For fear that anything might be lacking to prove the complete obsession of Jambudvipa by the demon of "Greek influence," Dr. Weber vindictively casts a last insult into the face of India by remarking that if "European Western steeples owe their origin to an imitation of the Buddhist topes* .... on the other hand in the most ancient Hindu edifices the presence of Greek influence is unmistakable" (p. 274). Well may Dr. Rajendralala Mitra "hold out particularly against the idea of any Greek influence whatever on the development of Indian architecture." If his ancestral literature must be attributed to "Greek influence," the temples, at least, might have been spared. One can understand how the Egyptian Hall in London reflects the influence of the ruined temples on the Nile; but it is a more difficult feat, even for a German professor, to prove the archaic structure of old Aryavarta a foreshadowing of the genius of the late lamented Sir Christopher Wren! The outcome of this paleographic spoliation is that there is not a tittle left for India to call her own. Even medicine is due to the same Hellenic influence. We are told--this once by Roth--that "only a comparison of the principles of Indian with those of Greek medicine can enable us to judge of the origin, age and value of the former;" .... and "a propos of Charaka's injunctions as to the duties of the physician to his patient," adds Dr. Weber, "he cites some remarkably coincident expressions from the Oath of the Asklepiads." It is then settled. India is Hellenized from head to foot, and even had no physic until the Greek doctors came. ---------- * Of Hindu Lingams, rather. ---------- Sakya Muni's Place in History No Orientalist, save perhaps, the same wise, not to say deep, Prof. Weber, opposes more vehemently than Prof. Max Muller Hindu and Buddhist chronology. Evidently if an Indophile he is not a Buddhophile, and General Cunningham, however independent otherwise in his archeological researches, agrees with him more than would seem strictly prudent in view of possible future discoveries.* We have then to refute in our turn this great Oxford professor's speculations. --------- * Notwithstanding Prof. M. Muller's regrettable efforts to invalidate every Buddhist evidence, he seems to have ill-succeeded in proving his case, if we can judge from the openly expressed opinion of his own German confreres. In the portion headed "Tradition as to Buddha's Age" (pp. 283-288) in his "Hist. of Ind. Lit.," Prof. Weber very aptly remarks, "Nothing like positive certainty, therefore, is for the present attainable. Nor have the subsequent discussions of this topic by Max Muller (1859) ('Hist. A.S.L.' p. 264 ff), by Westergaard (1860), 'Ueber Buddha's Todesjahr,' and by 'Kern Over de Jaartelling der Zuidel Buddhisten' so far yielded any definite results." Nor are they likely to. --------- To the evidence furnished by the Puranas and Mahavansa, which he also finds hopelessly entangled and contradictory (though the perfect accuracy of that Sinhalese history is most warmly acknowledged by Sir Emerson Tennant, the historian), he opposes the Greek classics and their chronology. With him, it is always "Alexander's invasion" and "Conquest," and "the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator-Megasthenes," while even the faintest record of such "conquest" is conspicuously absent from Brahmanic record; and although in an inscription of Piyadasi are mentioned the names of Antiochus, Ptolemy, Magus, Antigonus, and even of the great Alexander himself, as vassals of the king Piyadasi, the Macedonian is yet called the "Conqueror of India." In other words, while any casual mention of Indian affairs by a Greek writer of no great note must be accepted unchallenged, no record of the Indians, literary or monumental, is entitled to the smallest consideration. Until rubbed against the touch-stone of Hellenic infallibility it must be set down, in the words of Professor Weber, as "of course mere empty boasting." Oh, rare Western sense of justice! * ---------- * No Philaryan would pretend for a moment on the strength of the Piyadasi inscriptions that Alexander of Macedonia, or either of the other sovereigns mentioned, was claimed as an actual "vassal" of Chandragupta. They did not even pay tribute, but only a kind of quit-rent annually for lands ceded in the north: as the grant-tablets could show. But the inscription, however misinterpreted, shows most clearly that Alexander was never the conqueror of India. --------- Occult records show differently. They say--challenging proof to the contrary--that Alexander never penetrated into India farther than Taxila; which is not even quite the modern Attock. The murmuring of the Macedonian's troops began at the same place, and not as given out, on the banks of the Hyphasis. For having never gone to the Hydaspes or Jhelum, he could not have been on the Sutlej. Nor did Alexander ever found satrapies or plant any Greek colonies in the Punjab. The only colonies he left behind him that the Brahmans ever knew of, amounted to a few dozens of disabled soldiers, scattered hither and thither on the frontiers; who with their native raped wives settled around the deserts of Karmania and Drangaria--the then natural boundaries of India. And unless history regards as colonists the many thousands of dead men and those who settled for ever under the hot sands of Gedrosia, there were no other, save in the fertile imagination of the Greek historians. The boasted "invasion of India" was confined to the regions between Karmania and Attock, east and west; and Beloochistan and the Hindu Kush, south and north: countries which were all India for the Greek of those days. His building a fleet on the Hydaspes is a fiction; and his "victorious march through the fighting armies of India," another. However, it is not with the "world conqueror" that we have now to deal, but rather with the supposed accuracy and even casual veracity of his captains and countrymen, whose hazy reminiscences on the testimony of the classical writers have now been raised to unimpeachable evidence in everything that may affect the chronology of early Buddhism and India. Foremost among the evidence of classical writers, that of Flavius Arrianus is brought forward against the Buddhist and Chinese chronologies. No one should impeach the personal testimony of this conscientious author had he been himself an eye-witness instead of Megasthenes. But when a man comes to know that he wrote his accounts upon the now lost works of Aristobulus and Ptolemy; and that the latter described their data from texts prepared by authors who had never set their eyes upon one line written by either Megasthenes or Nearchus himself; and that knowing so much one is informed by Western historians that among the works of Arrian, Book VII. of the "Anabasis of Alexander," is "the chief authority on the subject of the Indian invasion--a book unfortunately with a gap in its twelfth chapter"--one may well conceive upon what a broken reed Western authority leans for its Indian chronology. Arrian lived over 600 years after Buddha's death; Strabo, 500 (55 "B.C."); Diodorus Siculus--quite a trustworthy compiler!--about the first century; Plutarch over 700 anno Buddhae, and Quintus Curtius over 1,000 years! And when, to crown this army of witnesses against the Buddhist annals, the reader is informed by our Olympian critics that the works of the last-named author--than whom no more blundering (geographically, chronologically, and historically) writer ever lived--form along with the Greek history of Arrian the most valuable source of information respecting the military career of Alexander the Great--then the only wonder is that the great conqueror was not made by his biographers to have--Leonidas-like--defended the Thermopylean passes in the Hindu Kush against the invasion of the first Vedic Brahmins "from the Oxus." Withal the Buddhist dates are either rejected or only accepted pro tempore. Well may the Hindu resent the preference shown to the testimony of Greeks--of whom some, at least, are better remembered in Indian history as the importers into Jambudvipa of every Greek and Roman vice known and unknown to their day--against his own national records and history. "Greek influence" was felt, indeed, in India, in this, and only in this, one particular. Greek damsels mentioned as an article of great traffic for India--Persian and Greek Yavanis--were the fore-mothers of the modern nautch-girls, who had till then remained pure virgins of the inner temples. Alliances with the Autiochuses and the Seleucus Nicators bore no better fruit than the rotten apple of Sodom. Pataliputra, as prophesied by Gautama Buddha, found its fate in the waters of the Ganges, having been twice before nearly destroyed, again like Sodom, by the fire of heaven. Reverting to the main subject, the "contradictions" between the Ceylonese and Chino-Tibetan chronologies actually prove nothing. If the Chinese annalists of Saul in accepting the prophecy of our Lord that "a thousand years after He had reached Nirvana, His doctrines would reach the north" fell into the mistake of applying it to China, whereas Tibet was meant, the error was corrected after the eleventh century of the Tzina era in most of the temple chronologies. Besides which, it may now refer to other events relating to Buddhism, of which Europe knows nothing, China or Tzina dates its present name only from the year 296 of the Buddhist era* (vulgar chronology having assumed it from the first Hoang of the Tzin dynasty): therefore the Tathagata could not have indicated it by this name in his well-known prophecy. If misunderstood even by several of the Buddhist commentators, it is yet preserved in its true sense by his own immediate Arhats. The Glorified One meant the country that stretches far off from the Lake Mansorowara; far beyond that region of the Himavat, where dwelt from time immemorial the great "teachers of the Snowy Range." These were the great Sraman-acharyas who preceded Him, and were His teachers, their humble successors trying to this day to perpetuate their and His doctrines. The prophecy came out true to the very day, and it is corroborated both by the mathematical and historical chronology of Tibet--quite as accurate as that of the Chinese. Arhat Kasyapa, of the dynasty of Moryas, founded by one of the Chandraguptas near Ptaliputra, left the convent of Panch-Kukkutarama, in consequence of a vision of our Lord, for missionary purpose in the year 683 of the Tzin era (436 Western era) and had reached the great Lake of Bod-Yul in the same year. It is at that period that expired the millennium prophesied. -------- * The reference to Chinahunah (Chinese and Huns) in the Vishma Parva of the Mahabharata is evidently a later interpolation, as it does not occur in the old MSS. existing in Southern India. -------- The Arhat carrying with him the fifth statue of Sakya Muni out of the seven gold statues made after his bodily death by order of the first Council, planted it in the soil on that very spot where seven years later was built the first GUNPA (monastery), where the earliest Buddhist lamas dwelt. And though the conversion of the whole country did not take place before the beginning of the seventh century (Western era), the good law had, nevertheless, reached the North at the time prophesied, and no earlier. For, the first of the golden statues had been plundered from Bhikshu Sali Suka by the Hiong-un robbers and melted, during the days of Dharmasoka, who had sent missionaries beyond Nepaul. The second had a like fate, at Ghar-zha, even before it had reached the boundaries of Bod-Yul. The third was rescued from a barbarous tribe of Bhons by a Chinese military chief who had pursued them into the deserts of Schamo about 423 Buddhist era (120 "B.C.") The fourth was sunk in the third century of the Christian era, together with the ship that carried it from Magadha toward the hills of Ghangs-chhen-dzo-nga (Chitagong). The fifth arriving in the nick of time reached its destination with Arhat Kasyapa. So did the last two.* --------- * No doubt, since the history of these seven statues is not in the hands of the Orientalists, it will be treated as a "groundless fable." Nevertheless such is their origin and history. They date from the first Synod, that of Rajagriha, held in the season of war following the death of Buddha, i.e., one year after his death. Were this Rajagriha Council held 100 years after, as maintained by some, it could not have been presided over by Mahakasyapa, the friend and brother Arhat of Sakyamuni, as he would have been 200 years old. The second Council or Synod, that of Vaisali, was held 120, not 100 or 110 years as some would have it, after the Nirvana, for the latter took place at a time a little over 20 years before the physical death of Tathagata. It was held at the great Saptapana cave (Mahavansa's Sattapanni), near the Mount Baibhar (the Webhara of the Pali Manuscripts), that was in Rajagriha, the old capital of Magadha. Memoirs exist, containing the record of his daily life, made by the nephew of king Ajatasatru, a favourite Bikshu of the Mahacharya. These texts have ever been in the possession of the superiors of the first Lamasery built by Arhat Kasyapa in Bod-Yul, most of whose Chohans were the descendants of the dynasty of the Moryas, there being up to this day three of the members of this once royal family living in India. The old text in question is a document written in Anudruta Magadha characters. (We deny that these or any other characters--whether Devanagari, Pali, or Dravidian--ever used in India, are variations of, or derivatives from, the Phoenician.) To revert to the texts it is therein stated that the Sattapanni cave, then called "Sarasvati" and "Bamboo-cave," got its latter name in this wise. When our Lord first sat in it for Dhyana, it was a large six-chambered natural cave, 50 to 60 feet wide by 33 deep. One day, while teaching the mendicants outside, our Lord compared man to a Saptaparna (seven-leaved) plant, showing them how after the loss of its first leaf every other could be easily detached, but the seventh leaf--directly connected with the stem. "Mendicants," he said, "there are seven Buddhas in every Buddha, and there are six Bikshus and but one Buddha in each mendicant. What are the seven? The seven branches of complete knowledge. What are the six? The six organs of sense. What are the five? The five elements of illusive being. And the ONE which is also ten? He is a true Buddha who develops in him the ten forms of holiness and subjects them all to the one--'the silent voice' (meaning Avolokiteswara). After that, causing the rock to be moved at His command, the Tathagata made it divide itself into a seventh additional chamber, remarking that a rock too was septenary, and had seven stages of development. From that time it was called the Sattapanni or the Saptaparna cave. After the first Synod was held, seven gold statues of the Bhagavat were cast by order of the king, and each of them was placed in one of the seven compartments." These in after times, when the good law had to make room to more congenial because more sensual creeds, were taken in charge by various Viharas and then disposed of as explained. Thus when Mr. Turnour states on the authority of the sacred traditions of Southern Buddhists that the cave received its name from the Sattapanni plant, he states what is correct. In the "Archeological Survey of India," we find that Gen. Cunningham identifies this cave with one not far away from it and in the same Baihbar range, but which is most decidedly not our Saptaparna cave. At the same time the Chief Engineer of Buddha Gaya, Mr. Beglar, describing the Chetu cave, mentioned by Fa-hian, thinks it is the Saptaparna cave, and he is right. For that, as well as the Pippal and the other caves mentioned in our texts, are too sacred in their associations--both having been used for centuries by generations of Bhikkhus, unto the very time of their leaving India--to have their sites so easily forgotten. --------- On the other hand, the Southern Buddhists, headed by the Ceylonese, open their annals with the following event:-- They claim according to their native chronology that Vijaya, the son of Sinhabahu, the sovereign of Lala, a small kingdom or Raj on the Gandaki river in Magadha, was exiled by his father for acts of turbulence and immorality. Sent adrift on the ocean with his companions after having their heads shaved, Buddhist-Bhikshu fashion, as a sign of penitence, he was carried to the shores of Lanka. Once landed, he and his companions conquered and easily took possession of an island inhabited by uncivilized tribes, generically called the Yakshas. This--at whatever epoch and year it may have happened--is an historical fact, and the Ceylonese records, independent of Buddhist chronology, give it out as having taken place 382 years before Dushtagamani (i.e., in 543 before the Christian era). Now, the Buddhist Sacred Annals record certain words of our Lord pronounced by Him shortly before His death. In Mahavansa He is made to have addressed them to Sakra, in the midst of a great assembly of Devatas (Dhyan Chohans), and while already "in the exalted unchangeable Nirvana, seated on the throne on which Nirvana is achieved." In our texts Tathagata addresses them to his assembled Arhats and Bhikkhuts a few days before his final liberation:--"One Vijaya, the son of Sinhabahu, king of the land of Lala, together with 700 attendants, has just landed on Lanka. Lord of Dhyan Buddhas (Devas)! my doctrine will be established on Lanka. Protect him and Lanka!" This is the sentence pronounced which, as proved later, was a prophecy. The now familiar phenomenon of clairvoyant prevision, amply furnishing a natural explanation of the prophetic utterance without any unscientific theory of miracle, the laugh of certain Orientalists seems uncalled for. Such parallels of poetico-religious embellishments as found in Mahavansa exist in the written records of every religion--as much in Christianity as anywhere else. An unbiased mind would first endeavour to reach the correct and very superficially hidden meaning before throwing ridicule and contemptuous discredit upon them. Moreover, the Tibetans possess a more sober record of this prophecy in the Notes, already alluded to, reverentially taken down by King Ajatasatru's nephew. They are, as said above, in the possession of the Lamas of the convent built by Arhat Kasyapa--the Moryas and their descendants being of a more direct descent than the Rajput Gautamas, the Chiefs of Nagara--the village identified with Kapilavastu--are the best entitled of all to their possession. And we know they are historical to a word. For the Esoteric Buddhist they yet vibrate in space; and these prophetic words, together with the true picture of the Sugata who pronounced them, are present in the aura of every atom of His relics. This, we hasten to say, is no proof but for the psychologist. But there is other and historical evidence: the cumulative testimony of our religious chronicles. The philologist has not seen these; but this is no proof of their non-existence. The mistake of the Southern Buddhists lies in dating the Nirvana of Sanggyas Pan-chhen from the actual day of his death, whereas, as above stated, He had reached it over twenty years previous to his disincarnation. Chronologically, the Southerners are right, both in dating His death in 543 "B.C.," and one of the great Councils at 100 years after the latter event. But the Tibetan Chohans, who possess all the documents relating to the last twenty-four years of His external and internal life--of which no philologist knows anything--can show that there is no real discrepancy between the Tibetan and the Ceylonese chronologies as stated by the Western Orientalists.* For the profane, the Exalted One was born in the sixty-eighth year of the Burmese Eeatzana era, established by Eeatzana (Anjana), King of Dewaha; for the initiated--in the forty-eighth year of that era, on a Friday of the waxing moon, of May. And it was in 563 before the Christian chronology that Tathagata reached his full Nirvana, dying, as correctly stated by Mahavana--in 543, on the very day when Vijaya landed with his companions in Ceylon--as prophesied by Loka-ratha, our Buddha. --------- * Bishop Bigandet, after examining all the Burmese authorities accessible to him, frankly confesses that "the history of Buddha offers an almost complete blank as to what regards his doings and preachings during a period of nearly twenty-three years." (Vol. I. p. 260.) --------- Professor Max Muller seems to greatly scoff at this prophecy. In his chapter ("Hist. S. L.") upon Buddhism (the "false" religion), the eminent scholar speaks as though he resented such an unprecedented claim. "We are asked to believe"--he writes--"that the Ceylonese historians placed the founder of the Vijyan dynasty of Ceylon in the year 543 in accordance with their sacred chronology!" (i.e., Buddha's prophecy), "while we (the philologists) are not told, however, through what channel the Ceylonese could have received their information as to the exact date of Buddha's death." Two points may be noticed in these sarcastic phrases: (a) the implication of a false prophecy by our Lord; and (b) a dishonest tampering with chronological records, reminding one of those of Eusebius, the famous Bishop of Caesarea, who stands accused in history of "perverting every Egyptian chronological table for the sake of synchronisms." With reference to charge one, he may be asked why our Sakyasinha's prophecies should not be as much entitled to his respect as those of his Saviour would be to ours--were we to ever write the true history of the "Galilean" Arhat. With regard to charge two, the distinguished philologist is reminded of the glass house he and all Christian chronologists are themselves living in. Their inability to vindicate the adoption of December 25 as the actual day of the Nativity, and hence to determine the age and the year of their Avatar's death-- even before their own people--is far greater than is ours to demonstrate the year of Buddha to other nations. Their utter failure to establish on any other but traditional evidence the, to them, historically unproved, if probable, fact of his existence at all--ought to engender a fairer spirit. When Christian historians can, upon undeniable historical authority, justify biblical and ecclesiastical chronology, then, perchance, they may be better equipped than at present for the congenial work of rending heathen chronologies into shreds. The "channel" the Ceylonese received their information through, was two Bikshus who had left Magadha to follow their disgraced brethren into exile. The capacity of Siddhartha Buddha's Arhats for transmitting intelligence by psychic currents may, perhaps, be conceded without any great stretch of imagination to have been equal to, if not greater than, that of the prophet Elijah, who is credited with the power of having known from any distance all that happened in the king's bed chamber. No Orientalist has the right to reject the testimony of other people's Scriptures, while professing belief in the far more contradictory and entangled evidence of his own upon the self-same theory of proof. If Professor Muller is a sceptic at heart, then let him fearlessly declare himself; only a sceptic who impartially acts the iconoclast has the right to assume such a tone of contempt towards any non-Christian religion. And for the instruction of the impartial inquirer only, shall it be thought worth while to collate the evidence afforded by historical--not psychological--data. Meanwhile, by analyzing some objections and exposing the dangerous logic of our critic, we may give the theosophists a few more facts connected with the subject under discussion. Now that we have seen Professor Max Muller's opinions in general about this, so to say, the Prologue to the Buddhist Drama with Vijaya as the hero--what has he to say as to the details of its plot? What weapon does he use to weaken this foundation-stone of a chronology upon which are built and on which depend all other Buddhist dates? What is the fulcrum for the critical lever he uses against the Asiatic records? Three of his main points may be stated seriatim with answers appended. He begins by premising that-- 1st.--"If the starting-point of the Northern Buddhist chronology turns out to be merely hypothetical, based as it is on a prophecy of Buddha, it will be difficult to avoid the same conclusion with regard to the date assigned to Buddha's death by the Buddhists of Ceylon and of Burmah" (p. 266). "The Mahavansa begins with relating three miraculous visits which Buddha paid to Ceylon." Vijaya, the name of the founder of the first dynasty (in Ceylon), means conquest, "and, therefore, such a person most likely never existed" (p. 268). This he believes invalidates the whole Buddhist chronology. To which the following pendant may be offered:-- William I., King of England, is commonly called the Conqueror; he was, moreover, the illegitimate son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, surnamed le Diable. An opera, we hear, was invented on this subject, and full of miraculous events, called "Robert the Devil," showing its traditional character. Therefore shall we be also justified in saying that Edward the Confessor, Saxons and all, up to the time of the union of the houses of York and Lancaster under Henry VII.--the new historical period in English history--are all "fabulous tradition" and "such a person as William the Conqueror most likely never existed?" 2nd.--In the Chinese chronology--continues the dissecting critic --"the list of the thirty-three Buddhist patriarchs .... is of a doubtful character. For Western history the exact Ceylonese chronology begins with 161 B.C." Extending beyond that date there exists but "a traditional native chronology. Therefore .... what goes before .... is but fabulous tradition." The chronology of the Apostles and their existence has never been proved historically. The history of the Papacy is confessedly "obscure." Ennodius of Pavia (fifth century) was the first one to address the Roman Bishop (Symmochus), who comes fifty-first in the Apostolic succession, as "Pope." Thus, if we were to write the history of Christianity, and indulge in remarks upon its chronology, we might say that since there were no antecedent Popes, and since the Apostolic line began with Symmochus (498 A.D.), all Christian records beginning with the Nativity and up to the sixth century are therefore "fabulous traditions," and all Christian chronology is "purely hypothetical." 3rd.--Two discrepant dates in Buddhist chronology are scornfully pointed out by the Oxford Professor. If the landing of Vijaya, in Lanka--he says--on the same day that Buddha reached Nirvana (died) is in fulfilment of Buddha's prophecy, then "if Buddha was a true prophet, the Ceylonese argue quite rightly that he must have died in the year of the conquest, or 543 B.C." (p. 270). On the other hand, the Chinese have a Buddhist chronology of their own; and it does not agree with the Ceylonese. "The lifetime of Buddha from 1029 to 950 rests on his own prophecy that a millennium would elapse from his death to the conversion of China. If, therefore, Buddha was a true prophet, he must have lived about 1000 B.C." (p. 266). But the date does not agree with the Ceylonese chronology--ergo, Buddha was a false prophet. As to that other "the first and most important link" in the Ceylonese as well as in the Chinese chronology, "it is extremely weak." .... In the Ceylonese "a miraculous genealogy had to be provided for Vijaya," and, "a prophecy was therefore invented" (p. 269). On these same lines of argument it may be argued that: Since no genealogy of Jesus, "exact or inexact," is found in any of the world's records save those entitled the Gospels of SS. Mathew (I--1-17), and Luke (iii. 23--38); and, since these radically disagree--although this personage is the most conspicuous in Western history, and the nicest accuracy might have been expected in his case; therefore, agreeably with Professor Max Muller's sarcastic logic, if Jesus "was a true prophet," he must have descended from David through Joseph (Matthew's Gospel); and "if he was a true prophet," again, then the Christians "argue quite rightly that he must have" descended from David through Mary (Luke's Gospel). Furthermore, since the two genealogies are obviously discrepant and prophecies were, in this instance, truly "invented" by the post-apostolic theologians [or, if preferred, old prophecies of Isaiah and other Old Testament prophets, irrelevant to Jesus, were adapted to suit his case--as recent English commentators (in Holy Orders), the Bible revisers, now concede]; and since, moreover-- always following the Professor's argument, in the cases of Buddhist and Brahmanical chronologies--Biblical chronology and genealogy are found to be "traditional and full of absurdities .... every attempt to bring them into harmony having proved a failure." (p. 266): have we or have we not a certain right to retort, that if Gautama Buddha is shown on these lines a false prophet, then Jesus must be likewise "a false prophet?" And if Jesus was a true prophet despite existing confusion of authorities, why on the same lines may not Buddha have been one? Discredit the Buddhist prophecies and the Christian ones must go along with them. The utterances of the ancient pythoness now but provoke the scientific smile: but no tripod ever mounted by the prophetess of old was so shaky as the chronological trinity of points upon which this Orientalist stands to deliver his oracles. Moreover, his arguments are double-edged, as shown. If the citadel of Buddhism can be undermined by Professor Max Muller's critical engineering, then pari passu that of Christianity must crumble in the same ruins. Or have the Christians alone the monopoly of absurd religious "inventions" and the right of being jealous of any infringement of their patent rights? To conclude, we say, that the year of Buddha's death is correctly stated by Mr. Sinnett, "Esoteric Buddhism" having to give its chronological dates according to esoteric reckoning. And this reckoning would alone, if explained, make away with every objection urged, from Professor Max Muller's "Sanskrit Literature" down to the latest "evidence"--the proofs in the "Reports of the Archeological Survey of India." The Ceylonese era, as given in Mahavansa, is correct in everything, withholding but the above given fact of Nirvana, the great mystery of Samma-Sambuddha and Abhidina remaining to this day unknown to the outsider; and though certainly known to Bikshu Mahanama--King Dhatusena's uncle--it could not be explained in a work like the Mahavansa. Moreover, the Singhalese chronology agrees in every particular with the Burmese chronology. Independent of the religious era dating from Buddha's death, called "Nirvanic Era," there existed, as now shown by Bishop Bigandet ("Life of Guadama"), two historical eras. One lasted 1362 years, its last year corresponding with 1156 of the Christian era: the other, broken in two small eras, the last, succeeding immediately the other, exists to the present day. The beginning of the first, which lasted 562 years, coincides with the year 79 A.D. and the Indian Saka era. Consequently, the learned Bishop, who surely can never be suspected of partiality to Buddhism, accepts the year 543 of Buddha's Nirvana. So do Mr. Tumour, Professor Lassen, and others. The alleged discrepancies between the fourteen various dates of Nirvana collected by Csoma Corosi, do not relate to the Nyr-Nyang in the least. They are calculations concerning the Nirvana of the precursors, the Boddhisatwas and previous incarnations of Sanggyas that the Hungarian found in various works and wrongly applied to the last Buddha. Europeans must not forget that this enthusiast acted under protest of the Lamas during the time of his stay with them: and that, moreover, he had learned more about the doctrines of the heretical Dugpas than of the orthodox Gelugpas. The statement of this "great authority (!) on Tibetan Buddhism," as he is called, to the effect that Gautama had three wives whom he names--and then contradicts himself by showing ("Tibetan Grammar," p. 162, see note) that the first two wives "are one and the same," shows how little he can be regarded as an "authority." He had not even learned that "Gopa, Yasodhara and Utpala Varna" are the three names for three mystical powers. So with the "discrepancies" of the dates. Out of the sixty-four mentioned by him but two relate to Sakya Muni--namely, the years 576 and 546--and these two err in their transcription; for when corrected they must stand 564 and 543. As for the rest they concern the seven ku-sum, or triple form of the Nirvanic state and their respective duration, and relate to doctrines of which Orientalists know absolutely nothing. Consequently from the Northern Buddhists, who, as confessed by Professor Weber, "alone possess these (Buddhist) Scriptures complete," and have "preserved more authentic information regarding the circumstances of their redaction"--the Orientalists have up to this time learned next to nothing. The Tibetans say that Tathagata became a full Buddha--i.e., reached absolute Nirvana--in 2544 of the Kali era (according to Souramana), and thus lived indeed but eighty years, as no Nirvanee of the seventh degree can be reckoned among the living (i.e., existing) men. It is no better than loose conjecture to argue that it would have entered as little into the thoughts of the Brahmans to note the day of Buddha's birth "as the Romans or even the Jews (would have) thought of preserving the date of the birth of Jesus before he had become the founder of a religion." (Max Muller's "Hist. S. L.") For, while the Jews had been from the first rejecting the claim of Messiah-ship set up by the Chelas of the Jewish prophet and were not expecting their Messiah at that time, the Brahmans (the initiates, at any rate) knew of the coming of him whom they regarded as an incarnation of Divine wisdom, and therefore were well aware of the astrological date of his birth. If, in after times, in their impotent rage they destroyed every accessible vestige of the birth, life and death of Him, who in his boundless mercy to all creatures had revealed their carefully concealed mysteries and doctrines in order to check the ecclesiastical torrent of ever-growing superstitions, yet there had been a time when he was met by them as an Avatar. And, though they destroyed, others preserved. The thousand and one speculations and the torturing of exoteric texts by Archeologist or Paleographer will ill repay the time lost in their study. The Indian annals specify King Ajatasatru as a contemporary of Buddha, and another Ajatasatru helped to prepare the council 100 years after his death. These princes were sovereigns of Magadha and have naught to do with Ajatasatru of the Brihad-Aranyaka and the Kaushitaki-Upanishad, who was a sovereign of the Kasis; though Bhadrasena, "the son of Ajatasatru" cursed by Aruni, may have more to do with his namesake the "heir of Chandragupta" than is generally known, Professor Max Miller objects to two Asokas. He rejects Kalasoka and accepts but Dharmasoka--in accordance with "Greek" and in utter conflict with Buddhist chronology. He knows not--or perhaps prefers to ignore--that besides the two Asokas there were several personages named Chandragupta and Chandramasa. Plutarch is set aside as conflicting with the more welcome theory, and the evidence of Justin alone is accepted. There was Kalasoka, called by some Chandramasa and by others Chandragupta, whose son Nanda was succeeded by his cousin the Chandragupta of Seleucus, and under whom the Council of Vaisali took place "supported by King Nanda" as correctly stated by Taranatha. (None of them were Sudras, and this is a pure invention of the Brahmans.) Then there was the last of the Chandraguptas who assumed the name of Vikrama; he commenced the new era called the Vikramaditya or Samvat and began the new dynasty at Pataliputra, 318 (B.C.)--according to some European "authorities;" after him his son Bindusara or Bhadrasena--also Chandragupta, who was followed by Dharmasoka Chandragupta. And there were two Piyadasis--the "Sandracottus" Chandragupta and Asoka. And if controverted, the Orientalists will have to account for this strange inconsistency. If Asoka was the only "Piyadasi" and the builder of the monuments, and maker of the rock-inscriptions of this name; and if his inauguration occurred as conjectured by Professor Max Muller about 259 B.C., in other words, if he reigned sixty or seventy years later than any of the Greek kings named on the Piyadasian monuments, what had he to do with their vassalage or non-vassalage, or how was he concerned with them at all? Their dealings had been with his grandfather some seventy years earlier--if he became a Buddhist only after ten years occupancy of the throne. And finally, three well-known Bhadrasenas can be proved, whose names spelt loosely and phonetically, according to each writer's dialect and nationality, now yield a variety of names, from Bindusara, Bimbisara, and Vindusara, down to Bhadrasena and Bhadrasara, as he is called in the Vayu Purana. These are all synonymous. However easy, at first sight, it may seem to be to brush out of history a real personage, it becomes more difficult to prove the non-existence of Kalasoka by calling him "false," while the second Asoka is termed "the real," in the face of the evidence of the Puranas, written by the bitterest enemies of the Buddhists, the Brahmans of the period. The Vayu and Matsya Puranas mention both in their lists of their reigning sovereigns of the Nanda and the Morya dynasties. And, though they connect Chandragupta with a Sudra Nanda, they do not deny existence to Kalasoka, for the sake of invalidating Buddhist chronology. However falsified the now extant texts of both the Vaya and Matsya Puranas, even accepted as they at present stand "in their true meaning," which Professor Max Muller (notwithstanding his confidence) fails to seize, they are not "at variance with Buddhist chronology before Chandragupta." Not, at any rate, when the real Chandragupta instead of the false Sandrocottus of the Greeks is recognized and introduced. Quite independently of the Buddhist version, there exists the historical fact recorded in the Brahmanical as well as in the Burmese and Tibetan versions, that in the year 63 of Buddha, Susinago of Benares was chosen king by the people of Pataliputra, who made away with Ajatasatru's dynasty. Susinago removed the capital of Magadha from Rajagriha to Vaisali, while his successor Kalasoka removed it in his turn to Pataliputra. It was during the reign of the latter that the prophecy of Buddha concerning Patalibat or Pataliputra--a small village during His time--was realized. (See Mahaparinibbana Sutta). It will be easy enough, when the time comes, to answer all denying Orientalists and face them with proof and document in hand. They speak of the extravagant, wild exaggerations of the Buddhists and Brahmans. The latter answer: "The wildest theorists of all are they who, to evade a self-evident fact, assume moral, anti-national impossibilities, entirely opposed to the most conspicuous traits of the Brahmanical Indian character--namely, borrowing from, or imitating in anything, other nations. From their comments on Rig Veda, down to the annals of Ceylon, from Panini to Matouan-lin, every page of their learned scholia appears, to one acquainted with the subject, like a monstrous jumble of unwarranted and insane speculations. Therefore, notwithstanding Greek chronology and Chandragupta--whose date is represented as 'the sheet-anchor of Indian chronology' that 'nothing will ever shake'--it is to be feared that as regards India, the chronological ship of the Sanskritists has already broken from her moorings and gone adrift with all her precious freight of conjectures and hypotheses. She is drifting into danger. We are at the end of a cycle--geological and other--and at the beginning of another. Cataclysm is to follow cataclysm. The pent-up forces are bursting out in many quarters; and not only will men be swallowed up or slain by thousands, 'new' land appear and 'old' subside, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves appal; but secrets of an unsuspected past will be uncovered to the dismay of Western theorists and the humiliation of an imperious science. This drifting ship, if watched, may be seen to ground upon the upheaved vestiges of ancient civilizations, and fall to pieces. We are not emulous of the prophet's honours: but still, let this stand as a prophecy." Inscriptions Discovered by General A. Cunningham We have carefully examined the new inscription discovered by General A. Cunningham on the strength of which the date assigned to Buddha's death by Buddhist writers has been declared to be incorrect; and we are of opinion that the said inscription confirms the truth of the Buddhist traditions instead of proving them to be erroneous. The above-mentioned archeologist writes as follows regarding the inscription under consideration in the first volume of his reports:--"The most interesting inscription (at Gaya) is a long and perfect one dated in the era of the Nirvana or death of Buddha. I read the date as follows:--Bhagavati Parinirvritte Samvat 1819 Karttike badi I Budhi--that is, 'in the year 1819 of the Emancipation of Bhagavata on Wednesday, the first day of the waning moon of Kartik.' If the era here used is the same as that of the Buddhists of Ceylon and Burmah, which began in 543 B.C., the date of this inscription will be 1819--543 = A.D. 1276. The style of the letters is in keeping with this date, but is quite incompatible with that derivable from the Chinese date of the era. The Chinese place the death of Buddha upwards of 1000 years before Christ, so that according to them the date of this inscription would be about A.D. 800, a period much too early for the style of character used in the inscription. But as the day of the week is here fortunately added, the date can be verified by calculation. According to my calculation, the date of the inscription corresponds with Wednesday, the 17th of September, AD. 1342. This would place the Nirvana of Buddha in 477 B.C., which is the very year that was first proposed by myself as the most probable date of that event. This corrected date has since been adopted by Professor Max Muller." The reasons assigned by some Orientalists for considering this so-called "corrected date" as the real date of Buddha's death have already been noticed and criticized in the preceding paper; and now we have only to consider whether the inscription in question disproves the old date. Major-General Cunningham evidently seems to take it for granted, as far as his present calculation is concerned, that the number of days in a year is counted in the Magadha country and by Buddhist writers in general on the same basis on which the number of days in a current English year is counted; and this wrong assumption has vitiated his calculation and led him to a wrong conclusion. Three different methods of calculation were in use in India at the time when Buddha lived, and they are still in use in different parts of the country. These methods are known as Souramanam, Chandrarmanam and Barhaspatyamanam. According to the Hindu works on astronomy a Souramanam year consists of 365 days 15 ghadias and 31 vighadias; a Chandramanam year has 360 days, and a year on the basis of Barhaspatyamanam has 361 days and 11 ghadias nearly. Such being the case, General Cunningham ought to have taken the trouble of ascertaining before he made his calculation the particular manam (measure) employed by the writers of Magadha and Ceylon in giving the date of Buddha's death and the manam used in calculating the years of the Buddhist era mentioned in the inscription above quoted. Instead of placing himself in the position of the writer of the said inscription and making the required calculation from that standpoint, he made the calculation on the same basis of which an English gentleman of the nineteenth century would calculate time according to his own calendar. If the calculation were correctly made, it would have shown him that the inscription in question is perfectly consistent with the statement that Buddha died in the year 543 B.C. according to Barhaspatyamanam (the only manam used in Magadha and by Pali writers in general). The correctness of this assertion will be clearly seen on examining the following calculation. 543 years according to Barhaspatyamanam are equivalent to 536 years and 8 months (nearly) according to Souramanam. Similarly, 1819 years according to the former manam are equivalent to 1798 years (nearly) according to the latter manarn. As the Christian era commenced on the 3102nd year of Kaliyuga (according to Souramanam), Buddha died in the year 2565 of Kaliyuga and the inscription was written in the year 4362 of Kaliyuga (according to Souramanam). And now the question is whether according to the Hindu almanack, the first day of the waning moon of Kartik coincided with a Wednesday. According to Suryasiddhanta the number of days from the beginning of Kaliyuga up to midnight on the 15th day of increasing moon of Aswina is 1,593,072, the number of Adhikamasansas (extra months) during the interval being 1608 and the number of Kshayathithis 25,323. If we divide this number by 7 the remainder would be 5. As Kaliyuga commenced with Friday, the period of time above defined closed with Tuesday, as according to Suryasiddhanta a weekday is counted from midnight to midnight. It is to be noticed that in places where Barhaspatyamanam is in use Krishnapaksham (or the fortnight of waning moon) commences first and is followed by Suklapaksham (period of waxing moon). Consequently, the next day after the 15th day of the waxing moon of Aswina will be the 1st day of the waning moon of Kartika to those who are guided by the Barhaspatyamanam calendar. And therefore the latter date, which is the date mentioned in the inscription, was Wednesday in the year 4362 of Kaliyuga. The geocentric longitude of the sun at the time of his meridian passage on the said date being 174 deg. 20' 16" and the moon's longitude being 70 deg 51' 42" (according to Suryasiddhanta) it can be easily seen that at Gaya there was Padyamitithi (first day of waning moon) for nearly 7 ghadias and 50 vighadias from the time of sunrise. It is clear from the foregoing calculation that "Kartik I Badi" coincided with Wednesday in the year 4362 of Kaliyuga or the year 1261 of the Christian era, and that from the standpoint of the person who wrote the inscription the said year was the 1819th year of the Buddhist era. And consequently this new inscription confirms the correctness of the date assigned to Buddha's death by Buddhist writers. It would have been better if Major-General Cunningham had carefully examined the basis of his calculation before proclaiming to the world at large that the Buddhist accounts were untrustworthy. Discrimination of Spirit and Not Spirit (Translated from the original Sanskrit of Sankara Acharya.) by Mohini M. Chatterji [An apology is scarcely needed for undertaking a translation of Sankara Acharya's celebrated Synopsis of Vedantism entitled "Atmanatma Vivekah." This little treatise, within a small compass, fully sets forth the scope and purpose of the Vedanta philosophy. It has been a matter of no little wonder, considering the authorship of this pamphlet and its own intrinsic merits, that a translation of it has not already been executed by some competent scholar. The present translation, though pretending to no scholarship, is dutifully literal, excepting, however, the omission of a few lines relating to the etymology of the words Sarira and Deha, and one or two other things which, though interesting in themselves, have no direct bearing on the main subject of treatment. --T.R.] Nothing is Spirit which can be the object of consciousness. To one possessed of right discrimination, the Spirit is the subject of knowledge. This right discrimination of Spirit and Not-spirit is set forth in millions of treatises. This discrimination of Spirit and Not-spirit is given below: Q. Whence comes pain to the Spirit? A. By reason of its taking a body. It is said in the Sruti: * "Not in this (state of existence) is there cessation of pleasure and pain of a living thing possessed of a body." Q. By what is produced this taking of a body? A. By Karma.** Q. Why does it become so by Karma? A. By desire and the rest (i.e., the passions). Q. By what are desire and the rest produced? A. By egotism. Q. By what again is egotism produced? A. By want of right discrimination. Q. By what is this want of right discrimination produced? A. By ignorance. Q. Is ignorance produced by anything? A. No, by nothing. Ignorance is without beginning and ineffable by reason of its being the intermingling of the real (sat) and the unreal (asat.)*** It is a something embodying the three qualities**** and is said to be opposed to Wisdom, inasmuch as it produces the concept "I am ignorant." The Sruti says, "(Ignorance) is the power of the Deity and is enshrouded by its own qualities." ***** ---------- * Chandogya Upanishad. ** This word it is impossible to translate. It means the doing of a thing for the attainment of an object of worldly desire. *** This word, as used in Vedantic works, is generally misunderstood. It does not mean the negation of everything; it means "that which does not exhibit the truth," the "illusory." **** Satva (goodness), Rajas (foulness), and Tamas (darkness) are the three qualities; pleasure, pain and indifference considered as objective principles. ***** Chandogya Upanishad. -------- The origin of pain can thus be traced to ignorance and it will not cease until ignorance is entirely dispelled, which will be only when the identity of the Self with Brahma (the Universal Spirit) is fully realized.* Anticipating the contention that the eternal acts (i.e., those enjoined by the Vedas) are proper, and would therefore lead to the destruction of ignorance, it is said that ignorance cannot be dispelled by Karma (religious exercises). -------- * This portion has been condensed from the original. -------- Q. Why is it so? A. By reason of the absence of logical opposition between ignorance and act. Therefore it is clear that Ignorance can only be removed by Wisdom. Q. How can this Wisdom be acquired? A. By discussion--by discussing the nature of Spirit and Non-Spirit. Q. Who are worthy of engaging in such discussion? A. Those who have acquired the four qualifications. Q. What are the four qualifications? A. (1) True discrimination of permanent and impermanent things. (2) Indifference to the enjoyment of the fruits of one's actions both here and hereafter. (3) Possession of Sama and the other five qualities. (4) An intense desire of becoming liberated (from conditional existence). (1.) Q. What is the right discrimination of permanent and impermanent things? A. Certainty as to the Material Universe being false and illusive, and Brahman being the only reality. (2.) Indifference to the enjoyment of the fruits of one's actions in this world is to have the same amount of disinclination for the enjoyment of worldly objects of desire (such as garland of flowers, sandal-wood paste, women and the like) beyond those absolutely necessary for the preservation of life, as one has for vomited food, &c. The same amount of disinclination to enjoyment in the society of Rambha, Urvasi, and other celestial nymphs in the higher spheres of life beginning with Svarga loka and ending with Brahma loka.* -------- * These include the whole range of Rupa loka (the world of forms) in Buddhistic esoteric philosophy. -------- (3) Q. What are the six qualities beginning with Sama? A. Sama, dama, uparati, titiksha, samadhana and sraddha. Sama is the repression of the inward sense called Manas--i.e., not allowing it to engage in any other thing but Sravana (listening to what the sages say about the Spirit), Manana (reflecting on it), Nididhyasana (meditating on the same). Dama is the repression of the external senses. Q. What are the external senses? A. The five organs of perception and the five bodily organs for the performance of external acts. Restraining these from all other things but sravana and the rest, is dama. Uparati is the abstaining on principle from engaging in any of the acts and ceremonies enjoined by the shastras. Otherwise, it is the state of the mind which is always engaged in Sravana and the rest, without ever diverging from them. Titiksha (literally the desire to leave) is the bearing with indifference all opposites (such as pleasure and pain, heat and cold, &c.) Otherwise, it is the showing of forbearance to a person one is capable of punishing. Whenever a mind, engaged in Sravana and the rest, wanders to any worldly object of desire, and, finding it worthless, returns to the performance of the three exercises--such returning is called samadhana. Sraddha is an intensely strong faith in the utterances of one's guru and of the Vedanta philosophy. (4.) An intense desire for liberation is called mumukshatva. Those who possess these four qualifications, are worthy of engaging in discussions as to the nature of Spirit and Not-Spirit, and, like Brahmacharins, they have no other duty (but such discussion). It is not, however, at all improper for householders to engage in such discussions; but, on the contrary, such a course is highly meritorious. For it is said--Whoever, with due reverence, engages in the discussion of subjects treated of in Vedanta philosophy and does proper service to his guru, reaps happy fruits. Discussion as to the nature of Spirit and Not-Spirit is therefore a duty. Q. What is Spirit? A. It is that principle which enters into the composition of man and is not included in the three bodies, and which is distinct from the five sheaths (Koshas), being sat (existence),* chit (consciousness),** and ananda (bliss),*** and witness of the three states. -------- * This stands for Purusha. ** This stands for Prakriti, cosmic matter, irrespective of the state we perceive it to be in. *** Bliss is Maya or Sakti, it is the creative energy producing changes of state in Prakriti. Says the Sruti (Taittiriya Upanishad): "Verily from Bliss are all these bhutas (elements) born, and being born by it they live, and they return and enter into Bliss." -------- Q. What are the three bodies? A. The gross (sthula), the subtile (sukshma), and the causal (karana). Q. What is the gross body? A. That which is the effect of the Mahabhutas (primordial subtile elements) differentiated into the five gross ones (Panchikrita),* is born of Karma and subject to the six changes beginning with birth.** It is said:-- What is produced by the (subtile) elements differentiated into the five gross ones, is acquired by Karma, and is the measure of pleasure and pain, is called the body (sarira) par excellence. Q. What is the subtile body? A. It is the effect of the elements not differentiated into five and having seventeen characteristic marks (lingas). Q. What are the seventeen? A. The five channels of knowledge (Jnanendriyas), the five organs of action, the five vital airs, beginning with prana, and manas and buddhi. ------- * The five subtile elements thus produce the gross ones--each of the five is divided into eight parts, four of those parts and one part of each of the others enter into combination, and the result is the gross element corresponding with the subtile element, whose parts predominate in the composition. ** These six changes are--birth, death, existence in time, growth, decay, and undergoing change of substance (parinam) as milk is changed into whey. -------- Q. What are the Jnandendriyas? A. [Spiritual] Ear, skin, eye, tongue and nose. Q. What is the ear? A. That channel of knowledge which transcends the [physical] ear, is limited by the auricular orifice, on which the akas depends, and which is capable of taking cognisance of sound. Q. The skin? A. That which transcends the skin, on which the skin depends, and which extends from head to foot, and has the power of perceiving heat and cold. Q. The eye? A. That which transcends the ocular orb, on which the orb depends, which is situated to the front of the black iris and has the power of cognising forms. Q. The tongue? A. That which transcends the tongue, and can perceive taste. Q. The nose? A. That which transcends the nose, and has the power of smelling. Q. What are the organs of action? A. The organ of speech (vach), hands, feet, &c. Q. What is vach? A. That which transcends speech, in which speech resides, and which is located in eight different centres* and has the power of speech. -------- * The secret commentaries say seven; for it does not separate the lips into the "upper" and "nether" lips. And, it adds to the seven centres the seven passages in the head connected with, and affected by, vach-- namely, the mouth, the two eyes, the two nostrils and the two ears. "The left ear, eye and nostril being the messengers of the right side of the head; the right ear, eye and nostril, those of the left side." Now this is purely scientific. The latest discoveries and conclusions of modern physiology have shown that the power or the faculty of human speech is located in the third frontal cavity of the left hemisphere of the brain. On the other hand, it is a well known fact that the nerve tissues inter-cross each other (decussate) in the brain in such a way that the motions of our left extremities are governed by the right hemisphere, while the motions of our right limbs are subject to the left hemisphere of the brain. --------- Q. What are the eight centres? A. Breast, throat, head, upper and nether lips, palate ligature (fraenum), binding the tongue to the lower jaw and tongue. Q. What is the organ of the hands? A. That which transcends the hands, on which the palms depend, and which has the power of giving and taking.... (The other organs are similarly described.) Q. What is the antahkarana? * A. Manas, buddhi, chitta and ahankara form it. The seat of the manas is the root of the throat, of buddhi the face, of chitta the umbilicus, and of ahankara the breast. The functions of these four components of antahkarana are respectively doubt, certainty, retention and egotism. Q. How are the five vital airs,** beginning with prana, named? -------- * A flood of light will be thrown on the text by the note of a learned occultist, who says:--"Antahkarana is the path of communication between soul and body, entirely disconnected with the former, existing with, belonging to, and dying with the body." This path is well traced in the text. ** These vitals airs and sub-airs are forces which harmonize the interior man with his surroundings, by adjusting the relations of the body to external objects. They are the five allotropic modifications of life. ------- A. Prana, apana, vyana, udana and samana. Their locations are said to be:--of prana the breast, of apana the fundamentum, of samana the umbilicus, of udana the throat, and vyana is spread all over the body. Functions of these are:--prana goes out, apana descends, udana ascends, samana reduces the food eaten into an undistinguishable state, and vyana circulates all over the body. Of these five vital airs there are five sub-airs--namely, naga, kurma, krikara, devadatta and dhananjaya. Functions of these are:--eructations produced by naga, kurma opens the eye, dhananjaya assimilates food, devadatta causes yawning, and krikara produces appetite--this is said by those versed in Yoga. The presiding powers (or macrocosmic analogues) of the five channels of knowledge and the others are dik (akas) and the rest. Dik, vata (air), arka (sun), pracheta (water), Aswini, bahni (fire), Indra, Upendra, Mrityu (death), Chandra (moon), Brahma, Rudra, and Kshetrajnesvara,* which is the great Creator and cause of everything. These are the presiding powers of ear, and the others in the order in which they occur. All these taken together form the linga sarira.** It is also said in the Shastras:-- The five vital airs, manas, buddhi, and the ten organs form the subtile body, which arises from the subtile elements, undifferentiated into the five gross ones, and which is the means of the perception of pleasure and pain. Q. What is the Karana sarira? --------- * The principle of intellect (Buddhi) in the macrocosm. For further explanation of this term, see Sankara's commentaries on the Brahma Sutras. ** Linga means that which conveys meaning, characteristic mark. -------- A. It is ignorance [of different monads] (avidya), which is the cause of the other two bodies, and which is without beginning [in the present manvantara],* ineffable, reflection [of Brahma] and productive of the concept of non-identity between self and Brahma. It is also said:-- "Without a beginning, ineffable avidya is called the upadhi (vehicle)-- karana (cause). Know the Spirit to be truly different from the three upadhis--i.e., bodies." Q. What is Not-Spirit? A. It is the three bodies [described above], which are impermanent, inanimate (jada), essentially painful and subject to congregation and segregation. -------- * It must not be supposed that avidya is here confounded with prakriti. What is meant by avidya being without beginning, is that it forms no link in the Karmic chain leading to succession of births and deaths, it is evolved by a law embodied in prakriti itself. Avidya is ignorance or matter as related to distinct monads, whereas the ignorance mentioned before is cosmic ignorance, or maya-Avidya begins and ends with this manvantara. Maya is eternal. The Vedanta philosophy of the school of Sankara regards the universe as consisting of one substance, Brahman (the one ego, the highest abstraction of subjectivity from our standpoint), having an infinity of attributes, or modes of manifestation from which it is only logically separable. These attributes or modes in their collectivity form Prakriti (the abstract objectivity). It is evident that Brahman per se does not admit of any description other than "I am that I am." Whereas Prakriti is composed of an infinite number of differentiations of itself. In the universe, therefore, the only principle which is indifferentiable is this "I am that I am" and the manifold modes of manifestation can only exist in reference to it. The eternal ignorance consists in this, that as there is but one substantive, but numberless adjectives, each adjective is capable of designating the All. Viewed in time the most permanent object or mood of the great knower at any moment represents the knower, and in a sense binds it with limitations. In fact, time itself is one of these infinite moods, and so is space. The only progress in Nature is the realization of moods unrealized before. -------- Q. What is impermanent? A. That which does not exist in one and the same state in the three divisions of time [namely, present, past and future.] Q. What is inanimate (jada)? A. That which cannot distinguish between the objects of its own cognition and the objects of the cognition of others.... Q. What are the three states (mentioned above as those of which the Spirit is witness)? A. Wakefulness (jagrata), dreaming (svapna), and the state of dreamless slumber (sushupti). Q. What is the state of wakefulness? A. That in which objects are known through the avenue of [physical] senses. Q. Of dreaming? A. That in which objects are perceived by reason of desires resulting from impressions produced during wakefulness. Q. What is the state of dreamless slumber? A. That in which there is an utter absence of the perception of objects. The indwelling of the notion of "I" in the gross body during wakefulness is visva (world of objects),* in subtile body during dreaming is taijas (magnetic fire), and in the causal body during dreamless slumber is prajna (One Life). Q. What are the five sheaths? A. Annamaya, Pranamaya, Manomaya, Vjjnanamaya, and Anandamaya. Annamaya is related to anna** (food), Pranamaya of prana (life), Manomaya of manas, Vijnanamaya of vijnana (finite perception), Anandamaya of ananda (illusive bliss). ------- * That is to say, by mistaking the gross body for self, the consciousness of external objects is produced. ** This word also means the earth in Sanskrit. ------- Q. What is the Annamaya sheath? A. The gross body. Q. Why? A. The food eaten by father and mother is transformed into semen and blood, the combination of which is transformed into the shape of a body. It wraps up like a sheath and hence so called. It is the transformation of food and wraps up the spirit like a sheath--it shows the spirit which is infinite as finite, which is without the six changes, beginning with birth as subject to those changes, which is without the three kinds of pain* as liable to them. It conceals the spirit as the sheath conceals the sword, the husk the grain, or the womb the fetus. Q. What is the next sheath? A. The combination of the five organs of action, and the five vital airs form the Pranamaya sheath. By the manifestation of prana, the spirit which is speechless appears as the speaker, which is never the giver as the giver, which never moves as in motion, which is devoid of hunger and thirst as hungry and thirsty. Q. What is the third sheath? A. It is the five (subtile) organs of sense (jnanendriya) and manas. -------- * The three kinds of pain are:-- Adhibhautika, i.e., from external objects, e.g., from thieves, wild animals, &c. Adhidaivika, i.e., from elements, e.g., thunder, &c. Adhyatmika, i.e., from within one's self, e.g., head-ache, &c. See Sankhya Karika, Gaudapada's commentary on the opening Sloka. ------- By the manifestation of this sheath (vikara) the spirit which is devoid of doubt appears as doubting, devoid of grief and delusion as grieved and deluded, devoid of sight as seeing. Q. What is the Vijnanamaya sheath? A. [The essence of] the five organs of sense form this sheath in combination with buddhi. Q. Why is this sheath called the jiva (personal ego), which by reason of its thinking itself the actor, enjoyer, &c., goes to the other loka and comes back to this?* A. It wraps up and shows the spirit which never acts as the actor, which never cognises as conscious, which has no concept of certainty as being certain, which is never evil or inanimate as being both. Q. What is the Anandamaya sheath? A. It is the antahkarana, wherein ignorance predominates, and which produces gratification, enjoyment, &c. It wraps up and shows the spirit, which is void of desire, enjoyment and fruition, as having them, which has no conditioned happiness as being possessed thereof. Q. Why is the spirit said to be different from the three bodies? A. That which is truth cannot be untruth, knowledge ignorance, bliss misery, or vice versa. Q. Why is it called the witness of the three states? A. Being the master of the three states, it is the knowledge of the three states, as existing in the present, past and future.** ------- * That is to say, flits from birth to birth. ** It is the stable basis upon which the three states arise and disappear. ------- Q. How is the spirit different from the five sheaths? A. This is being illustrated by an example:--"This is my cow," "this is my calf," "this is my son or daughter," "this is my wife," "this is my anandamaya sheath," and so on*--the spirit can never be connected with these concepts; it is different from and witness of them all. For it is said in the Upanishad--[The spirit is] "naught of sound, of touch, of form, or colour, of taste, or of smell; it is everlasting, having no beginning or end, superior [in order of subjectivity] to Prakriti (differentiated matter); whoever correctly understands it as such attains mukti (liberation)." The spirit has also been called (above) sat, chit, and ananda. Q. What is meant by its being sat (presence)? A. Existing unchanged in the three divisions of time and uninfluenced by anything else. Q. What by being chit (consciousness)? A. Manifesting itself without depending upon anything else, and containing the germ of everything in itself. Q. What by being ananda (bliss)? A. The ne plus ultra of bliss. Whoever knows without doubt and apprehension of its being otherwise, the self as being one with Brahma or spirit, which is eternal, non-dual and unconditioned, attains moksha (liberation from conditioned existence.) -------- * The "heresy of individuality," or attavada of the Buddhists. -------- Was Writing Known Before Panini? I am entrusted with the task of putting together some facts which would support the view that the art of writing was known in India before the time of our grammarian--the Siva-taught Panini. Professor Max Muller has maintained the contrary opinion ever since 1856, and has the approbation of other illustrious Western scholars. Stated briefly, their position is that the entire absence of any mention of "writing, reading, paper, or pen" in the Vedas, or during the whole of the Brahmana period, and the almost, if not quite, as complete silence as to them throughout the Sutra period, "lead us to suppose that even then [the Sutra period], though the art of writing began to be known, the whole literature of India was preserved by oral tradition only." ("Hist. Sans. Lit.," p. 501.) To support this theory, he expands the mnemonic faculty of our respected ancestors to such a phenomenal degree that, like the bull's hide of Queen Dido, it is made to embrace the whole ground needed for the proposed city of refuge, to which discomfited savants may flee when hard pressed. Considering that Professor Weber--a gentleman who, we observe, likes to distil the essence of Aryan aeons down into an attar of no greater volume than the capacity of the Biblical period--admits that Europe now possesses 10,000 of our Sanscrit texts; and considering that we have, or have had, many other tens of thousands which the parsimony of Karma has hitherto withheld from the museums and libraries of Europe, what a memory must have been theirs! Under correction, I venture to assume that Panini, who was ranked among the Rishis, was the greatest known grammarian in India, than whom there is no higher in history, whether ancient or modern; further, that contemporary scholars agree that the Sanskrit is the most perfect of languages. Therefore, when Prof. Muller affirms that "there is not a single word in Panini's terminology which presupposes the existence of writing" (op. cit. 507), we become a little shaken in our loyal deference to Western opinion. For it is very hard to conceive how one so pre-eminently great as Panini should have been incapable of inventing characters to preserve his grammatical system--supposing that none had previously existed--if his genius was equal to the invention of classical Sanskrit. The mention of the word Grantha, the equivalent for a written or bound book in the later literature of India--though applied by Panini (in B. I. 3, 75) to the Veda; (in B. iv. 3, 87) to any work; (in B. iv. 3, 116) to the work of any individual author; and (in B. iv. 3, 79) to any work that is studied, do not stagger Prof. Muller at all. Grantha he takes to mean simply a composition, and this may be handed down to posterity by oral communication. Hence, we must believe that Panini was illiterate; but yet composed the most elaborate and scientific system of grammar ever known; recorded its 3,996 rules only upon the molecular quicksands of his "cerebral cineritious matter," and handed them over to his disciples by atmospheric vibration, i.e., oral teaching! Of course, nothing could be clearer; it commends itself to the simplest intellect as a thing most probable! And in the presence of such a perfect hypothesis, it seems a pity that its author should (op. cit. 523) confess that "it is possible" that he "may have overlooked some words in the Brahmanas and Sutras, which would prove the existence of written books previous to Panini." That looks like the military strategy of our old warriors, who delivered their attack boldly, but nevertheless tried to keep their rear open for retreat if compelled. The precaution was necessary: written books did exist many centuries before the age in which this radiant sun of Aryan thought rose to shine upon his age. They existed, but the Orientalist may search in vain for the proof amid the exoteric words in our earlier literature. As the Egyptian hierophants had their private code of hieratic symbols, and even the founder of Christianity spoke to the vulgar in parables whose mystical meaning was known only to the chosen few, so the Brahmans had from the first (and still have) a mystical terminology couched behind ordinary expressions, arranged in certain sequences and mutual relations, which none but the initiate would observe. That few living Brahmans possess this key but proves that, as in other archaic religious and philosophical systems, the soul of Hinduism has fled (to its primal imparters--the initiates), and only the decrepit body remains with a spiritually degenerate posterity.* ------- * Not only are the Upanishads a secret doctrine, but in dozens of other works as, for instance, in the Aitareya Aranyaka, it is plainly expressed that they contain secret doctrines, that are not to be imparted to any one but a Dwija (twice-born, initiated) Brahman. -------- I fully perceive the difficulty of satisfying European philologists of a fact which, upon my own statement, they are debarred from verifying. We know that from the present mental condition of our Brahmans. But I hope to be able to group together a few admitted circumstances which will aid, at least, to show the Western theory untenable, if not to make a base upon which to rest our claim for the antiquity of Sanskrit writing. Three good reasons may be adduced in support of the claim--though they will be regarded as circumstantial evidence by our opponents. I.--It can be shown that writing was known in Phoenicia from the date of the acquaintance of Western history with her first settlements; and this may be dated, according to European figures, 2760 B.C., the age of the Tyrian settlement. II.--Our opponents confess to ignorance of the source whence the Phoenicians themselves got their alphabet. III.--It can be proved that before the final division and classification of languages, there existed two languages in every nation: (a) the profane or popular language of the masses; (b) the sacerdotal or secret language of the initiates of the temples and mysteries--the latter being one and universal. Or, in other, words, every great people had, like the Egyptians, its Demotic and its Hieratic writing and language, which had resulted first in a pictorial writing or the hieroglyphics, and later on in a phonetic alphabet. Now it requires a stretch of prejudice, indeed, to assert upon no evidence whatever that the Brahman Aryans--mystics and metaphysicians above everything--were the only ones who had never had any knowledge of either the sacerdotal language or the characters in which it was recorded. To contradict this gratuitous assumption, we can furnish a whole array of proofs. It can be demonstrated that the Aryans no more borrowed their writing from the Hellenes, or from the Phoenicians, than they were indebted to the influence of the former for all their arts and sciences. (Even if we accept Mr. Cunningham's "Indo-Grecian Period," for it lasted only from 250-57 B.C., as he states it.) The direct progenitor of the Vedic Sanskrit was the sacerdotal language (which has a distinct name among the initiates). The Vach--its alter ego or the "mystic self," the sacerdotal speech of the initiated Brahman--became in time the mystery language of the inner temple, studied by the initiates of Egypt and Chaldea; of the Phoenicians and the Etruscans; of the Pelasgi and Palanquans; in short, of the whole globe. The appellation DEVANAGARI is the synonym of, and identical with, the Hermetic and Hieratic NETER-KHARI (divine speech) of the Egyptians. As the discussion divides naturally into two parts as to treatment-- though a general synthesis must be the final result--we will proceed to examine the first part--namely, the charge that the Sanskrit alphabet is derived from the Phoenicians. When a Western philologer asserts that writing did not exist before a certain period, we assume that he has some approximate certitude as to its real invention. But so far is this from the truth, that admittedly no one knows whence the Phoenicians learned the characters, now alleged (by Gesenius first) to be the source from which modern alphabets were directly derived. De Rouge's investigations make it extremely probable that "they were borrowed, or rather adapted from certain archaic hieroglyphics of Egypt:" a theory which the Prisse Papyrus, "the oldest in existence," strongly supports by its "striking similarities with the Phoenician characters." But the same authority traces it back one step farther. He says that the ascription (by the myth-makers) of the art of writing to Thoth, or to Kadmos, "only denotes their belief in its being brought from the East (Kedem), or being perhaps primeval." There is not even a certainty whether, primevally or archaically, "there were several original alphabetical systems, or whether one is to be assumed as having given rise to the various modes of writing in use." So, if conjecture has the field, it is no great disloyalty to declare one's rebellion against the eminent Western gentlemen who are learnedly guessing at the origin of things. Some affirm that the Phoenicians derived their so-called Kadmean or Phoenician writing-characters from the Pelasgians, held also to have been the inventors, or at least the improvers, of the so-called Kadmean characters. But, at the same time, this is not proven, they confess, and they only know that the latter were in possession of the art of writing "before the dawn of history." Let us see what is known of both Phoenicians and Pelasgians. If we inquire who were the Phoenicians, we learn as follows:--From having been regarded as Hamites on Bible testimony, they suddenly became Semites--on geographical and philological evidence(?). Their origin begins, it is said, on the shores of the Erythrian Sea; and that sea extended from the eastern shores of Egypt to the western shores of India. The Phoenicians were the most maritime nation in the world. That they knew perfectly the art of writing no one would deny. The historical period of Sidon begins 1500 B.C. And it is well ascertained that in 1250 Sanchoniathon had already compiled from annals and State documents, which filled the archives of every Phoenician city, the full records of their religion. Sanchoniathon wrote in the Phoenician language, and was mis-translated later on into Greek by Philo of Byblus, and annihilated bodily--as to his works--except one small fragment preserved by Eusebius, the literary Siva, the Destroyer of nearly all heathen documents that fell in his way. To see the direct bearing of the alleged superior knowledge of the Phoenicians upon the alleged ignorance of the Aryan Brahmans, one has but to turn to "European Universal History," meagre though its details and possible knowledge, yet I suppose no one would contradict the historical facts given. Some fragments of Dius, the Phoenician who wrote the history of Tyre, are preserved in Josephus; and Tyre's activity begins 1100 B.C., in the earlier part of the third period of Phoenician history, so called. And in that period, as we are told, they had already reached the height of their power; their ships covered all seas, their commerce embraced the whole earth, and their colonies flourished far and near. Even on Biblical testimony they are known to have come to the Indies by the Red Sea, while trading on Solomon's account about a millennium before the Western era. These data no man of science can deny. Leaving entirely aside the thousand-and-one documentary proofs that could be given on the evidence of our most ancient texts on Occult Sciences, of inscribed tablets, &c., those historical events that are accepted by the Western world are alone here given. Turning to the Mahabharata, the date of which--on the sole authority of the fancy lore drawn from the inner consciousness of German scholars, who perceive in the great epic poem proofs of its modern fabrication in the words "Yavana" and others--has been changed from 3300 years to the first centuries after Christ (!!), we find: (1) ample evidence that the ancient Hindus had navigated (before the establishment of the caste system) the open seas to the regions of the Arctic Ocean and held communication with Europe; and (2) that the Pandus had acquired universal dominion and taught the sacrificial mysteries to other races (see Mahabharata, book xiv,). With such proofs of international communication, and more than proved relations between the Indian Aryans and the Phoenicians, Egyptians and other literate people, it is rather startling to be told that our forefathers of the Brahmanic period knew nothing of writing. Admitting, for the argument only, that the Phoenician were the sole custodians of the glorious art of writing, and that as merchants they traded with India, what commodity, I ask, could they have offered to a people led by the Brahmans so precious and marketable as this art of arts, by whose help the priceless lore of the Rishis might be preserved against the accidents of imperfect oral transmission? And even if the Aryans learned from Phoenicians how to write--to every educated Hindu an absurdity--they must have possessed the art 2,000 or at least 1,000 years earlier than the period supposed by Western critics. Negative proof, perhaps? Granted: yet no more so than their own, and most suggestive. And now we may turn to the Pelasgians. Notwithstanding the rebuke of Niebuhr, who, speaking of the historian in general, shows him as hating "the spurious philology, out of which the pretences to knowledge on the subject of such extinct people arise," the origin of the Pelasgians is conjectured to have been from--(a) swarthy Asiatics (Pellasici) or from some (b) mariners--from the Greek Pelagos, the sea; or again to be sought for in the (c) Biblical Peleg! The only divinity of their Pantheon well known to Western history is Orpheus, also the "swarthy," the "dark-skinned;" represented for the Pelasgians by Xoanon, their "Divine Image." Now if the Pelasgians were Asiatics, they must have been Turanians, Semites or Aryans. That they could not have been either of the two first, and must have been the last named, is shown on Herodotus' testimony, who declared them the forefathers of the Greeks-- though they spoke, as he says, "a most barbarous language." Further, unerring philology shows that the vast number of roots common both to Greek and Latin, are easily explained by the assumption of a common Pelasgic linguistic and ethnical stock in both nationalities. But then how about the Sanskrit roots traced in the Greek and Latin languages? The same roots must have been present in the Pelasgian tongues? We who place the origin of the Pelasgian far beyond the Biblical ditch of historic chronology, have reasons to believe that the "barbarous language" mentioned by Herodotus was simply "the primitive and now extinct Aryan tongue" that preceded the Vedic Sanskrit. Who could they be, these Pelasgians? They are described generally on the meagre data in hand as a highly intellectual, receptive, active and simple people, chiefly occupied with agriculture; warlike when necessary, though preferring peace. We are told that they built canals, subterranean water-works, dams, and walls of astounding strength and most excellent construction. And their religion and worship originally consisted in a mystic service of those natural powers--the sun, wind, water, and air (our Surya, Maruts, Varuna, and Vayu), whose influence is visible in the growth of the fruits of the earth; moreover, some of their tribes were ruled by priests, while others stood under the patriarchal rule of the head of the clan or family. All this reminds one of the nomads, the Brahmanic Aryas of old under the sway of their Rishis, to whom were subject every distinct family or clan. While the Pelasgians were acquainted with the art of writing, and had thus "a vast element of culture in their possession before the dawn of history," we are told (by the same philologists) that our ancestors knew of no writing until the dawn of Christianity! Thus the Pelasgianic language, that "most barbarous language" spoken by this mysterious people, what was it but Aryan; or rather, which of the Aryan languages could it have been? Certainly it must have been a language with the same and even stronger Sanskrit roots in it than the Greek. Let us bear in mind that the Aeolic was neither the language of Aeschylus, nor the Attic, nor even the old speech of Homer. As the Oscan of the "barbarous" Sabines was not quite the Italian of Dante nor even the Latin of Virgil. Or has the Indo-Aryan to come to the sad conclusion that the average Western Orientalist will rather incur the blame of ignorance when detected than admit the antiquity of the Vedic Sanskrit and the immense period which separated this comparatively rough and unpolished language, compared with the classical Sanskrit, and the palmy days of the "extinct Aryan tongue?" The Latium Antiquum of Pliny and the Aeolic of the Autochthones of Greece present the closest kinship, we are told. They had a common ancestor--the Pelasgian. What, then, was the parent tongue of the latter unless it was the language "spoken at one time by all the nations of Europe--before their separation?" In the absence of all proofs, it is unreasonable that the Rik-Brahmanas, the Mahabharata and every Nirukti should be treated as flippantly as they now are. It is admitted that, however inferior to the classical Sanskrit of Panini, the language of the oldest portions of Rig Veda, notwithstanding the antiquity of its grammatical forms, is the same as that of the latest texts. Every one sees--cannot fail to see and to know--that for a language so old and so perfect as the Sanskrit to have survived alone, among all languages, it must have had its cycles of perfection and its cycles of degeneration. And, if one had any intuition, he might have seen that what they call a "dead language" being an anomaly, a useless thing in Nature, it would not have survived, even as a "dead" tongue, had it not its special purpose in the reign of immutable cyclic laws; and that Sanskrit, which came to be nearly lost to the world, is now slowly spreading in Europe, and will one day have the extension it had thousands upon thousands of years back--that of a universal language. The same as to the Greek and the Latin: there will be a time when the Greek of Aeschylus (and more perfect still in its future form) will be spoken by all in Southern Europe, while Sanskrit will be resting in its periodical pralaya; and the Attic will be followed later by the Latin of Virgil. Something ought to have whispered to us that there was also a time--before the original Aryan settlers among the Dravidian and other aborigines, admitted within the fold of Brahmanical initiation, marred the purity of the sacred Sanskrita Bhasha--when Sanskrit was spoken in all its unalloyed subsequent purity, and therefore must have had more than once its rise and fall. The reason for it is simply this: classical Sanskrit was only restored, if in some things perfected, by Panini. Panini, Katyayana or Patanjali did not create it; it has existed throughout cycles, and will pass through other cycles still. Professor Max Miller is willing to admit that a tribe of Semitic nomads--fourteen centuries before the year 1 of the Westerns--knew well the art of writing, and had their historically and scientifically proven "book of the covenant and the tables 'with the writing of God upon them.'" Yet the same authority tells us that the Aryans could neither read nor write until the very close of the Brahmanic period. "No trace of writing can be discovered (by the philologists) in the Brahmanical literature before the days of Panini." Very well, and now what was the period during which this Siva-taught sage is allowed to have flourished? One Orientalist (Bohtlingk) refers us to 350 B.C., while less lenient ones, like Professor Weber, land the grammarian right in the middle of the second century of the Christian era! Only, after fixing Panini's period with such a remarkable agreement of chronology (other calculations ranging variously between 400 B.C. and 460 A.D.), the Orientalists place themselves inextricably between the horns of a dilemma. For whether Panini flourished 350 B.C. or 180 A.D., he could not have been illiterate; for firstly, in the Lalita Vistara, a canonical book recognized by the Sanskritists, attributed by Max Muller to the third Buddhist council (and translated into Tibetan), our Lord Buddha is shown as studying, besides Devanagari, sixty-three other alphabets specified in it as being used in various parts of India; and secondly, though Megasthenes and Nearchus do say that in their time the laws of Manu were not (popularly) reduced to writing (Strabo, xv. 66 and 73) yet Nearchus describes the Indian art of making paper from cotton. He adds that the Indians wrote letters on cotton twisted together (Strabo, xv. 53 and 67). This would be late in the Sutra period, no doubt, according to Professor Miller's reasoning. Can the learned gentleman cite any record within that comparatively recent period showing the name of the inventor of that cotton-paper, and the date of his discovery? Surely so important a fact as that, a novelty so transcendently memorable, would not have passed without remark. One would seem compelled, in the absence of any such chronicle, to accept the alternative theory--known to us Aryan students as a fact--that writing and writing materials were, as above remarked, known to the Brahmans in an antiquity inconceivably remote--many centuries before the epoch made illustrious by Panini. Attention has been asked above to the interesting fact that the god Orpheus, of "Thracia" (?) is called the "dark-skinned." Has it escaped notice that he is "supposed to be the Vedic Ribhu or Abrhu, an epithet both of Indra and the Sun."* And if he was "the inventor of letters," and is "placed anterior to both Homer and Hesiod," then what follows? That Indra taught writing to the Thracian Pelasgians under the guise of Orpheus,** but left his own spokesmen and vehicles, the Brahmans, illiterate until "the dawn of Christianity?" Or, that the gentlemen of the West are better at intuitional chronology than conspicuous for impartial research? ------- * "Chamber's Encyclopedia," vii. 127. ** According to Herodotus the Mysteries were actually brought from India by Orpheus. ------- Orpheus was--in Greece--the son of Apollo or Helios, the sun-god, according to corrected mythology, and from him received the phorminx or lyre of seven strings, i.e.--according to occult phraseology--the sevenfold mystery of the Initiation. Now Indra is the ruler of the bright firmament, the disperser of clouds, "the restorer of the sun to the sky." He is identified with Arjuna in the Samhita Satapatha Brahmana (although Prof. Weber denies the existence of any such person as Arjuna, yet there was indeed one), and Arjuna was the Chief of the Pandavas;* and though Pandu the white passes for his father, he is yet considered the son of Indra. As throughout India all ancient cyclopean structures are even now attributed to the Pandavas, so all similar structures in the West were anciently ascribed to the Pelasgians. Moreover, as shown well by Pococke--laughed at because too intuitional and too fair though, perchance less, philologically learned--the Pandavas were in Greece, where many traces of them can be shown. ------- * Another proof of the fact that the Pandavas were, though Aryans, not Brahmans, and belonged to an Indian tribe that preceded the Brahmans, and were later on Brahmanized, and then out-casted and called Mlechhas, Yavanas (i.e., foreign to the Brahmans), is afforded in the following: Pandu has two wives; and "it is not Kunti, his lawful wife, but Madri, his most beloved wife," who is burnt with the old King when dead, as well remarked by Prof Max Muller, who seems astonished at it without comprehending the true reason. As stated by Herodotus (v. 5), it was a custom amongst the Thracians to allow the most beloved of a man's wives to be sacrificed upon his tomb; and Herodotus (iv. 17) asserts a similar fact of the Scythians, and Pausanias (iv. 2) of the Greeks. ("Hist. Sans. Lit." p. 48). The Pandavas and the Kauravas are called esoterically cousins in the Epic poem because they were two distinct yet Aryan tribes, and represent two peoples, not simply two families. -------- In the Mahabharata, Arjuna is taught the occult philosophy by Krishna (personification of the universal Divine Principle); and the less mythological view of Orpheus presents him to us as "a divine bard or priest in the service of Zagreus .... founder of the Mysteries .... the inventor of everything, in fact, that was supposed to have contributed to the civilization and initiation into a more humane worship of the deity." Are not these striking parallels; and is it not significant that, in the cases of both Arjuna and Orpheus, the sublimer aspects of religion should have been imparted along with the occult methods of attaining it by masters of the mysteries? Real Devanagari--non-phonetic characters--meant formerly the outward symbols, so to say, the signs used in the intercommunication between gods and initiated mortals. Hence their great sacredness and the silence maintained throughout the Vedic and the Brahmanical periods about any object concerned with, or referring to, reading and writing. It was the language of the gods. If our Western critics can only understand what the Ancient Hindu writers meant by Rhutaliai, so often mentioned in their mystical writings, they will be in a position to ascertain the source from which the Hindus first derived their knowledge of writing. A secret language, common to all schools of occult science once prevailed throughout the world. Hence Orpheus learnt "letters" in the course of his initiation. He is identified with Indra; according to Herodotus he brought the art of writing from India; his complexion swarthier than that of the Thracians points to his Indo-Aryan nationality--supposing him to have been "a bard and priest," and not a god; the Pelasgians are said to have been born in Thracia; they are believed (in the West) to have first possessed the art of writing, and taught the Phoenicians; from the latter all modern alphabets proceed. I submit, then, with all these coincidences and sequences, whether the balance of proof is on the side of the theory that the Aryans transmitted the art of writing to the people of the West; or on the side which maintains that they, with their caste of scholarly Brahmans, their noble sacerdotal tongue, dating from high antiquity, their redundant and splendid literature, their acquaintance with the most wonderful and recondite potentialities of the human spirit, were illiterate until the era of Panini, the grammarian and last of the Rishis. When the famous theorists of the Western colleges can show us a river running from its mouth back to its source in the feeble mountain spring, then may we be asked to believe in their theory of Aryan illiteracy. The history of human intellectual development shows that humanity always passes through the stage of ideography or pictography before attaining that of cursive writing. It therefore remains with the Western critics who oppose the antiquity of Aryan Scriptures to show us the pictographic proofs which support their position. As these are notoriously absent, it appears they would have us believe that our ancestors passed immediately from illiteracy to the Devanagari characters of Panini's time. Let the Orientalists bear in mind the conclusions drawn from a careful study of the Mahabharata by Muir in his "Sanskrit Texts" (vol. I. pp. 390,480 and 482). It may be conclusively proven on the authority of the Mahabharata that the Yavanas (of whom India, as alleged, knew nothing before the days of Alexander!) belong to those tribes of Kshatriyas who, in consequence of their non-communication with, and in some cases rejection by, the Brahmins, had become from twice-born, "Vrishalas,"-- i.e., outcasts (Mahabharata Anusasanaparvam, vv. 2103 F.): "Sakah Yavana-Kambojas tastah kshattriya jatayah Vrishalatvam parigatah Brahmananam adarsana. Dravidas cha Kalindas cha Pulindas chapy Usinarah Kalisarpa Mahishakas tastah kshattriya jatayah," &c. &c. The same reference may be found in verses 2158-9. The Mahabharata shows the Yavanas descended from Turvasu--once upon a time Kshatriya, subsequently degraded into Vrishala. Harivamsa shows when and how the Yavanas were excommunicated. It may be inferred from the account therein contained of the expedition against Ayodhya by the Yavanas, and the subsequent proceedings of Sagara, that the Yavanas were, previous to the date of the expedition, Kshatriyas subject to the government of the powerful monarchs who reigned at Ayodhya. But on account of their having rebelled against their sovereign, and attacked his capital, they were excommunicated by Sagara who successfully drove them out of Ayodhya, at the suggestion of Vasishtha who was the chief minister and guru of Sagara's father. The only trouble in connecting the Pelasgians with, and tracing their origin to, the Kshatriyas of Rajputana, is created by the Orientalist who constructs a fanciful chronology, based on no proof, and showing only unfamiliarity with the world's real history, and with Indian history even within historical periods. The value of that chronology--which places virtually the "primitive Indo-Germanic-period" before the ancient Vedic period (!)--may, in conclusion, be illustrated by an example. Rough as may be the calculations offered, it is impossible to go deeper into any subject of this class within the narrow limits prescribed, and without recourse to data not generally accessible. In the words of Prof. Max Muller:--"The Code of Manu is almost the only work in Sanskrit literature which, as yet, has not been assailed by those who doubt the antiquity of everything Indian. No historian has disputed its claim to that early date which had from the first been assigned to it by Sir William Jones" ("Hist. Sans, Lit." p. 61). And now, pray, what is this extremely "early date?" "From 880 to 1200 B.C.," we are told. We will then, for the present purpose, accept this authoritative conclusion. Several facts, easily verifiable, have to be first of all noticed:--(1) Manu in his many enumerations of Indian races, kingdoms and places, never once mentions Bengal; the Aryan Brahmans had not yet reached, in the days when his Code was compiled, the banks of the Ganges nor the plains of Bengal. It was Arjuna who went first to Banga (Bengal) with his sacrificial horse. [Yavanas are mentioned in Rajdharma Anasasanika Parva as part of the tribes peopling it.] (2) In the Ayun a list of the Hindu kings of Bengal is given. Though the date of the first king who reigned over Banga cannot be ascertained, owing to the great gaps between the various dynasties; it is yet known that Bengal ceased to be an independent Hindu kingdom from 1203 after Christ. Now if, disregarding these gaps, which are wide and many, we make up the sum of only those chronological periods of the reign of the several dynasties that are preserved by history, we find the following:-- 24 Kshatriya families of kings reigned for a period of 2,418 years 9 Kaista kings " " " " 250 " 11 Of the Adisur families " " " 714 " 10 Of the Bhopal family " " " 689 " 10 Of the Pala dynasty (from 855 to 1040 A.D.) " " 185 " 10 The Vaidya Rajahs reigned for a period of " " 137 " -------- Years . . . . 4,393 " If we deduct from this sum 1,203, we have 3,190 years B.C. of successive reigns. If it can be shown on the unimpeachable evidence of the Sanskrit texts that some of the reigns happened simultaneously, and the line cannot therefore be shown as successive (as was already tried), well and good. Against an arbitrary chronology set up with a predetermined purpose and theory in view, there will remain but little to be said. But if this attempt at reconciliation of figures and the surrounding circumstances are maintained simply upon "critical, internal evidence," then, in the presence of these 3,190 years of an unbroken line of powerful and mighty Hindu kings, the Orientalists will have to show a very good reason why the authors of the Code of Manu seem entirely ignorant even of the existence of Bengal--if its date has to be accepted as not earlier than 1280 B.C.! A scientific rule which is good enough to apply to the case of Panini ought to be valid in other chronological speculations. Or, perhaps, this is one of those poor rules which will not "work both ways?" --A Chela THEOSOPHICAL What is Theosophy? According to lexicographers, the term theosophia is composed of two Greek words--theos "god," and sophas "wise." So far, correct. But the explanations that follow are far from giving a clear idea of Theosophy. Webster defines it most originally as "a supposed intercourse with God and superior spirits, and consequent attainment of superhuman knowledge by physical processes, as by the theurgic operations of some ancient Platonists, or by the chemical processes of the German fire-philosophers." This, to say the least, is a poor and flippant explanation. To attribute such ideas to men like Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Jamblichus, Porphyry, Proclus, shows either intentional misrepresentation, or ignorance of the philosophy and motives of the greatest geniuses of the later Alexandrian School. To impute to those, whom their contemporaries as well as posterity styled "theodidaktoi," god-taught, a purpose to develop their psychological, spiritual perceptions by "physical processes," is to describe them as materialists. As to the concluding fling at the fire-philosophers, it rebounds from them upon some of the most eminent leaders of modern science; those in whose mouths the Rev. James Martineau places the following boast: "Matter is all we want; give us atoms alone, and we will explain the universe." Vaughan offers a far better, more philosophical definition. "A Theosophist," he says, "is one who gives you a theory of God or the works of God, which has not revelation, but inspiration of his own for its basis." In this view every great thinker and philosopher, especially every founder of a new religion, school of philosophy, or sect, is necessarily a Theosophist. Hence, Theosophy and Theosophists have existed ever since the first glimmering of nascent thought made man seek instinctively for the means of expressing his own independent opinions. There were Theosophists before the Christian era, notwithstanding that the Christian writers ascribe the development of the Eclectic Theosophical system to the early part of the third century of their era. Diogenes Laertius traces Theosophy to an epoch antedating the dynasty of the Ptolemies; and names as its founder an Egyptian Hierophant called Pot-Amun, the name being Coptic, and signifying a priest consecrated to Amun, the god of Wisdom. But history shows its revival by Ammonius Saccas, the founder of the Neo-Platonic School. He and his disciples called themselves "Philaletheians"--lovers of the truth; while others termed them the "Analogists," on account of their method of interpreting all sacred legends, symbolical myths, and mysteries, by a rule of analogy or correspondence so that events which had occurred in the external world were regarded as expressing operations and experiences of the human soul. It was the aim and purpose of Ammonius to reconcile all sects, peoples, and nations under one common faith--a belief in one Supreme, Eternal, Unknown, and Unnamed Power, governing the universe by immutable and eternal laws. His object was to prove a primitive system of Theosophy, which, at the beginning, was essentially alike in all countries: to induce all men to lay aside their strifes and quarrels, and unite in purpose and thought as the children of one common mother; to purify the ancient religions, by degrees corrupted and obscured, from all dross of human element, by uniting and expounding them upon pure philosophical principles. Hence, the Buddhistic, Vedantic and Magian, or Zoroastrian systems were taught in the Eclectic Theosophical School along with all the philosophies of Greece. Hence also, that pre-eminently Buddhistic and Indian feature among the ancient Theosophists of Alexandria, of due reverence for parents and aged persons, a fraternal affection for the whole human race, and a compassionate feeling for even the dumb animals. While seeking to establish a system of moral discipline which enforced upon people the duty to live according to the laws of their respective countries, to exalt their minds by the research and contemplation of the one Absolute Truth; his chief object, in order, as he believed, to achieve all others, was to extract from the various religious teachings, as from a many-chorded instrument, one full and harmonious melody, which would find response in every truth-loving heart. Theosophy is, then, the archaic Wisdom-Religion, the esoteric doctrine once known in every ancient country having claims to civilization. This "Wisdom" all the old writings show us as an emanation of the Divine Principle; and the clear comprehension of it is typified in such names as the Indian Buddh, the Babylonian Nebo, the Thoth of Memphis, the Hermes of Greece; in the appellations, also, of some goddesses--Metis, Neitha, Athena, the Gnostic Sophia; and, finally, the Vedas, from the word "to know." Under this designation, all the ancient philosophers of the East and West, the Hierophants of old Egypt, the Rishis of Aryavart, the Theodidaktoi of Greece, included all knowledge of things occult and essentially divine. The Mercavah of the Hebrew Rabbis, the secular and popular series, were thus designated as only the vehicle, the outward shell, which contained the higher esoteric knowledges. The Magi of Zoroaster received instruction and were initiated in the caves and secret lodges of Bactria; the Egyptian and Grecian hierophants had their apporiheta, or secret discourses, during which the Mysta became an Epopta--a Seer. The central idea of the Eclectic Theosophy was that of a single Supreme Essence, Unknown and Unknowable; for "how could one know the knower?" as inquires Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Their system was characterized by three distinct features, the theory of the above-named Essence: the doctrine of the human soul; an emanation from the latter, hence of the same nature; and its theurgy. It is this last science which has led the Neo-Platonists to be so misrepresented in our era of materialistic science. Theurgy being essentially the art of applying the divine powers of man to the subordination of the blind forces of Nature, its votaries were first decisively termed magicians--a corruption of the word "Magh," signifying a wise or learned man. Sceptics of a century ago would have been as wide of the mark if they had laughed at the idea of a phonograph or telegraph. The ridiculed and the "infidels" of one generation generally become the wise men and saints of the next. As regards the Divine Essence and the nature of the soul and spirit, modern Theosophy believes now as ancient Theosophy did. The popular Dev of the Aryan nations was identical with the Iao of the Chaldeans, and even with the Jupiter of the less learned and philosophical among the Romans; and it was just as identical with the Jahve of the Samaritans, the Tiu or "Tiusco" of the Northmen, the Duw of the Britons, and the Zeus of the Thracians. As to the Absolute Essence, the One and All, whether we accept the Greek Pythagorean, the Chaldean Kabalistic, or the Aryan philosophy in regard to it, it will all lead to one and the same result. The Primeval Monad of the Pythagorean system, which retires into darkness and is itself Darkness (for human intellect), was made the basis of all things; and we can find the idea in all its integrity in the philosophical systems of Leibnitz and Spinoza. Therefore, whether a Theosophist agrees with the Kabala which, speaking of En-Soph, propounds the query; "Who, then, can comprehend It, since It is formless, and non-existent?" or, remembering that magnificent hymn from the Rig Veda (Hymn 129, Book x.), inquires: "Who knows from whence this great creation sprang? Whether his will created or was mute. He knows it--or perchance even He knows not." Or, again, he accepts the Vedantic conception of Brahma, who, in the Upanishads, is represented as "without life, without mind, pure," unconscious, for Brahma is "Absolute Consciousness." Or, even finally, siding with the Svabhavikas of Nepaul, maintains that nothing exists but "Svabhavat" (substance or nature) which exists by itself without any creator--he is the true follower of pure and absolute Theosophy. That Theosophy which prompted such men as Hegel, Fichte and Spinoza to take up the labours of the old Grecian philosophers and speculate upon the One Substance--the Deity, the Divine All proceeding from the Divine Wisdom--incomprehensible, unknown and unnamed by any ancient or modern religious philosophy, with the exception of Judaism, including Christianity and Mohammedanism. Every Theosophist, then, holding to a theory of the Deity "which has not revelation but an inspiration of his own for its basis," may accept any of the above definitions or belong to any of these religions, and yet remain strictly within the boundaries of Theosophy. For the latter is belief in the Deity as the ALL, the source of all existence, the infinite that cannot be either comprehended or known, the universe alone revealing It, or, as some prefer it, Him, thus giving a sex to that, to anthropomorphize which is blasphemy. True Theosophy shrinks from brutal materialization; it prefers believing that, from eternity retired within itself, the Spirit of the Deity neither wills nor creates; but from the infinite effulgence everywhere going forth from the Great Centre, that which produces all visible and invisible things is but a ray containing in itself the generative and conceptive power, which, in its turn, produces that which the Greeks called Macrocosm, the Kabalists Tikkun or Adam Kadmon, the archetypal man, and the Aryans Purusha, the manifested Brahm, or the Divine Male. Theosophy believes also in the Anastasis, or continued existence, and in transmigration (evolution) or a series of changes of the personal ego, which can be defended and explained on strict philosophical principles by making a distinction between Paramatma (transcendental, supreme spirit) and Jivatma (individual spirit) of the Vedantins. To fully define Theosophy, we must consider it under all its aspects. The interior world has not been hidden from all by impenetrable darkness. By that higher intuition acquired by Theosophia, or God-knowledge, which carries the mind from the world of form into that of formless spirit, man has been sometimes enabled, in every age and every country, to perceive things in the interior or invisible world. Hence, the "Samadhi," or Dhyan Yog Samadhi, of the Hindu ascetics; the "Daimonlonphoti," or spiritual illumination of the Neo-Platonists; the "sidereal confabulation of soul," of the Rosicrucians or Fire-philosophers; and, even the ecstatic trance of mystics and of the modern mesmerists and spiritualists, are identical in nature, though various as to manifestation. The search after man's diviner "self," so often and so erroneously interpreted as individual communion with a personal God, was the object of every mystic; and belief in its possibility seems to have been coeval with the genesis of humanity, each people giving it another name. Thus Plato and Plotinus call "Noetic work" that which the Yogi and the Shrotriya term Vidya. "By reflection, self-knowledge and intellectual discipline, the soul can be raised to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty--that is, to the Vision of God. This is the epopteia," said the Greeks. "To unite one's soul to the Universal Soul," says Porphyry, "requires but a perfectly pure mind. Through self contemplation, perfect chastity, and purity of body, we may approach nearer to It, and receive, in that state, true knowledge and wonderful insight." And Swami Dayanund Saraswati, who has read neither Porphyry nor other Greek authors, but who is a thorough Vedic scholar, says in his "Veda Bhashya" (opasna prakaru ank. 9)--"To obtain Diksha (highest initiation) and Yog, one has to practise according to the rules..... The soul in the human body can perform the greatest wonders by knowing the Universal Spirit (or God) and acquainting itself with the properties and qualities (occult) of all the things in the universe. A human being (a Dikshit or initiate) can thus acquire a power of seeing and hearing at great distances." Finally, Alfred R. Wallace, F.R.S., a spiritualist and yet a confessedly great naturalist, says, with brave candour: "It is spirit that alone feels, and perceives, and thinks, that acquires knowledge, and reasons and aspires..... There not unfrequently occur individuals so constituted that the spirit can perceive independently of the corporeal organs of sense, or can, perhaps, wholly or partially quit the body for a time and return to it again; the spirit communicates with spirit easier than with matter." We can now see how, after thousands of years have intervened between the age of the Gymnosophists* and our own highly civilized era, notwithstanding, or, perhaps, just because of such an enlightenment which pours its radiant light upon the psychological as well as upon the physical realms of Nature, over twenty millions of people today believe, under different form, in those same spiritual powers that were believed in by the Yogis and the Pythagoreans, nearly 3,000 years ago. -------- * The reality of the Yog-power was affirmed by many Greek and Roman writers, who call the Yogis Indian Gymnosophists--by Strabo, Lucan, Plutarch, Cicero (Tusculum), Pliny (vii. 2), &c. -------- Thus, while the Aryan mystic claimed for himself the power of solving all the problems of life and death, when he had once obtained the power of acting independently of his body, through the Atman, "self," or "soul;" and the old Greeks went in search of Atmu, the Hidden one, or the God-Soul of man, with the symbolical mirror of the Thesmophorian mysteries; so the spiritualists of today believe in the capacity of the spirits, or the souls of the disembodied persons, to communicate visibly and tangibly with those they loved on earth. And all these, Aryan Yogis, Greek philosophers, and modern spiritualists, affirm that possibility on the ground that the embodied soul and its never embodied spirit--the real self--are not separated from either the Universal Soul or other spirits by space, but merely by the differentiation of their qualities, as in the boundless expanse of the universe there can be no limitation. And that when this difference is once removed--according to the Greeks and Aryans by abstract contemplation, producing the temporary liberation of the imprisoned soul, and according to spiritualists, through mediumship--such a union between embodied and disembodied spirits becomes possible. Thus was it that Patanjali's Yogis, and, following in their steps, Plotinus, Porphyry and other Neo-Platonists, maintained that in their hours of ecstasy, they had been united to, or rather become as one with, God several times during the course of their lives. This idea, erroneous as it may seem in its application to the Universal Spirit, was, and is, claimed by too many great philosophers to be put aside as entirely chimerical. In the case of the Theodidaktoi, the only controvertible point, the dark spot on this philosophy of extreme mysticism, was its claim to include that which is simply ecstatic illumination, under the head of sensuous perception. In the case of the Yogis, who maintained their ability to see Iswara "face to face," this claim was successfully overthrown by the stern logic of the followers of Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya philosophy. As to the similar assumption made for their Greek followers, for a long array of Christian ecstatics, and, finally, for the last two claimants to "God-seeing" within these last hundred years--Jacob Bohme and Swedenborg--this pretension would and should have been philosophically and logically questioned, if a few of our great men of science, who are spiritualists, had had more interest in the philosophy than in the mere phenomenalism of spiritualism. The Alexandrian Theosophists were divided into neophytes, initiates and masters, or hierophants; and their rules were copied from the ancient Mysteries of Orpheus, who, according to Herodotus, brought them from India. Ammonius obligated his disciples by oath not to divulge his higher doctrines, except to those who were proved thoroughly worthy and initiated, and who had learned to regard the gods, the angels, and the demons of other peoples, according to the esoteric hyponia, or under-meaning. "The gods exist, but they are not what the hoi polloi, the uneducated multitude, suppose them to be," says Epicurus. "He is not an atheist who denies the existence of the gods, whom the multitude worship, but he is such who fastens on these gods the opinions of the multitude." In his turn, Aristotle declares that of the "Divine Essence pervading the whole world of Nature, what are styled the gods are simply the first principles." Plotinus, the pupil of the "God-taught" Ammonius, tells us that the secret gnosis or the knowledge of Theosophy, has three degrees-opinion, science, and illumination. "The means or instrument of the first is sense, or perception; of the second, dialectics; of the third, intuition. To the last, reason is subordinate; it is absolute knowledge, founded on the identification of the mind with the object known." Theosophy is the exact science of psychology, so to say; it stands in relation to natural, uncultivated mediumship, as the knowledge of a Tyndall stands to that of a school-boy in physics. It develops in man a direct beholding; that which Schelling denominates "a realization of the identity of subject and object in the individual;" so that under the influence and knowledge of hyponia man thinks divine thoughts, views all things as they really are, and, finally, "becomes recipient of the Soul of the World," to use one of the finest expressions of Emerson. "I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect," he says in his superb "Essay on the Oversoul." Besides this psychological, or soul state, Theosophy cultivated every branch of sciences and arts. It was thoroughly familiar with what is now commonly known as mesmerism. Practical theurgy or "ceremonial magic," so often resorted to in their exorcisms by the Roman Catholic clergy, was discarded by the Theosophists. It is but Jamblichus alone who, transcending the other Eclectics, added to Theosophy the doctrine of Theurgy. When ignorant of the true meaning of the esoteric divine symbols of Nature, man is apt to miscalculate the powers of his soul, and, instead of communing spiritually and mentally with the higher celestial beings, the good spirits (the gods of the theurgists of the Platonic school), he will unconsciously call forth the evil, dark powers which lurk around humanity, the undying, grim creations of human crimes and vices, and thus fall from theurgia (white magic) into goetia (or black magic, sorcery). Yet, neither white nor black magic are what popular superstition understands by the terms. The possibility of "raising spirits," according to the key of Solomon, is the height of superstition and ignorance. Purity of deed and thought can alone raise us to an intercourse "with the gods" and attain for us the goal we desire. Alchemy, believed by so many to have been a spiritual philosophy as well as a physical science, belonged to the teachings of the Theosophical School. It is a noticeable fact that neither Zoroaster, Buddha, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Confucius, Socrates, nor Ammonius Saccas, committed anything to writing. The reason for it is obvious. Theosophy is a double-edged weapon and unfit for the ignorant or the selfish. Like every ancient philosophy it has its votaries among the moderns; but, until late in our own days, its disciples were few in numbers, and of the most various sects and opinions. "Entirely speculative, and founding no schools, they have still exercised a silent influence upon philosophy; and no doubt, when the time arrives, many ideas thus silently propounded may yet give new directions to human thought," remarks Mr. Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, himself a mystic and a Theosophist, in his large and valuable work, "The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia" (articles "Theosophical Society of New York," and "Theosophy," p. 731).* Since the days of the fire-philosophers, they had never formed themselves into societies, for, tracked like wild beasts by the Christian clergy, to be known as a Theosophist often amounted, hardly a century ago, to a death-warrant. ---------- * "The Royal Masonic Cycloptedia of History, Rites, Symbolism, and Biography." Edited by Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie IX. (Cryptonymus) Hon. Member of the Canongate Kilwinning Lodge, No. 2, Scotland. New York J. W. Bouton, 706, Broadway. 1877. -------- The statistics show that, during a period of 150 years, no less than 90,000 men and women were burned in Europe for alleged witchcraft. In Great Britain only, from A.D. 1640 to 1660, but twenty years, 3,000 persons were put to death for compact with the "Devil." It was but late in the present century--in 1875--that some progressed mystics and spiritualists, unsatisfied with the theories and explanations of Spiritualism started by its votaries, and finding that they were far from covering the whole ground of the wide range of phenomena, formed at New York, America, an association which is now widely known as the Theosophical Society. (--H.P. Blavatsky) How a "Chela" Found his "Guru" [Being Extracts from a private letter to Damodar K. Mavalankar, Joint Recording Secretary of the Theosophical Society.] ....When we met last at Bombay I told you what had happened to me at Tinnevelly. My health having been disturbed by official work and worry, I applied for leave on medical certificate and it was duly granted. One day in September last, while I was reading in my room, I was ordered by the audible voice of my blessed Guru, M---Maharsi, to leave all and proceed immediately to Bombay, whence I was to go in search of Madame Blavatsky wherever I could find her and follow her wherever she went. Without losing a moment, I closed up all my affairs and left the station. For the tones of that voice are to me the divinest sound in Nature, its commands imperative. I traveled in my ascetic robes. Arrived at Bombay, I found Madame Blavatsky gone, and learned through you that she had left a few days before; that she was very ill; and that, beyond the fact that she had left the place very suddenly with a Chela, you knew nothing of her whereabouts. And now, I must tell you what happened to me after I had left you. Really not knowing whither I had best go, I took a through ticket to Calcutta; but, on reaching Allahabad, I heard the same well-known voice directing me to go to Berhampore. At Azimgunge, in the train, I met, most providentially I may say, with some Bengali gentlemen (I did not then know they were also Theosophists, since I had never seen any of them), who were also in search of Madame Blavatsky. Some had traced her to Dinapore, but lost her track and went back to Berhampore. They knew, they said, she was going to Tibet and wanted to throw themselves at the feet of the Mahatmas to permit them to accompany her. At last, as I was told, they received from her a note, permitting them to come if they so desired it, but saying that she herself was prohibited from going to Tibet just now. She was to remain, she said, in the vicinity of Darjiling and would see the Mahatma on the Sikkhim Territory, where they would not be allowed to follow her .... Brother Nobin K. Bannerji, the President of the Adhi Bhoutic Bhratru Theosophical Society, would not tell me where Madame Blavatsky was, or perhaps did not then know himself. Yet he and others had risked all in the hope of seeing the Mahatmas. On the 23rd, at last he brought me from Calcutta to Chandernagore, where I found Madame Blavatsky, ready to start by train in five minutes. A tall, dark-looking hairy Chela (not Chunder Cusho), but a Tibetan I suppose by his dress, whom I met after I had crossed the river Hugli with her in a boat, told me that I had come too late, that Madame Blavatsky had already seen the Mahatmas and that he had brought her back. He would not listen to my supplications to take me with him, saying he had no other orders than what he had already executed--namely, to take her about twenty-five miles beyond a certain place he named to me, and that he was now going to see her safe to the station and return. The Bengali brother Theosophists had also traced and followed her, arriving at the station half an hour later. They crossed the river from Chandernagore to a small railway station on the opposite side. When the train arrived, she got into the carriage, upon entering which I found the Chela! And, before even her own things could be placed in the van, the train, against all regulations and before the bell was rung, started off, leaving the Bengali gentlemen and her servant behind, only one of them and the wife and daughter of another--all Theosophists and candidates for Chelaship--having had time to get in. I myself had barely the time to jump into the last carriage. All her things, with the exception of her box containing Theosophical correspondence, were left behind with her servant. Yet, even the persons that went by the same train with her did not reach Darjiling. Babu Nobin Banerjee, with the servant, arrived five days later; and those who had time to take their seats, were left five or six stations behind, owing to another unforeseen accident (?), reaching Darjiling also a few days later. It required no great stretch of imagination to conclude that Madame Blavatsky was, perhaps, being again taken to the Mahatmas, who, for some good reasons best known to them, did not want us to be following and watching her. Two of the Mahatmas, I had learned for a certainty, were in the neighbourhood of British territory; and one of them was seen and recognized, by a person I need not name here, as a high Chutukla of Tibet. The first days of her arrival Madame Blavatsky was living at the house of a Bengali gentleman, a Theosophist, refusing to see any one, and preparing, as I thought, to go again somewhere on the borders of Tibet. To all our importunities we could get only this answer from her: that we had no business to stick to and follow her, that she did not want us, and that she had no right to disturb the Mahatmas with all sorts of questions that concerned only the questioners, for they knew their own business best. In despair, I determined, come what might, to cross the frontier, which is about a dozen miles from here, and find the Mahatmas or--DIE. I never stopped to think that what I was going to undertake would be regarded as the rash act of a lunatic. I had no permission, no "pass" from the Sikkhim Rajah, and was yet decided to penetrate into the heart of a semi-independent State where, if anything happened, the Anglo-Indian officials would not--if even they could--protect me, since I should have crossed over without their permission. But I never even gave that a thought, but was bent upon one engrossing idea--to find and see my Guru. Without breathing a word of my intentions to any one, one morning, namely, October 5, I set out in search of the Mahatma. I had an umbrella and a pilgrim's staff for sole weapons, with a few rupees in my purse. I wore the yellow garb and cap. Whenever I was tired on the road, my costume easily procured for me for a small sum a pony to ride. The same afternoon I reached the banks of the Rungit River, which forms the boundary between British and Sikkhimese territories. I tried to cross it by the aerial suspension bridge constructed of canes, but it swayed to and fro to such an extent that I, who have never known in my life what hardship was, could not stand it. I crossed the river by the ferry-boat, and this even not without much danger and difficulty. That whole afternoon I traveled on foot, penetrating further and further into the heart of Sikkhim, along a narrow footpath. I cannot now say how many miles I traveled before dusk, but I am sure it was not less than twenty or twenty-five miles. Throughout, I saw nothing but impenetrable jungles and forests on all sides of me, relieved at very long intervals by solitary huts belonging to the mountain population. At dusk I began to search around me for a place to rest in at night. I met on the road, in the afternoon, a leopard and a wild cat; and I am astonished now to think how I should have felt no fear then nor tried to run away. Throughout, some secret influence supported me. Fear or anxiety never once entered my mind. Perhaps in my heart there was room for no other feeling but an intense anxiety to find my Guru. When it was just getting dark, I espied a solitary hut a few yards from the roadside. To it I directed my steps in the hope of finding a lodging. The rude door was locked. The cabin was untenanted at the time. I examined it on all sides and found an aperture on the western side. It was small indeed, but sufficient for me to jump through. It had a small shutter and a wooden bolt. By a strange coincidence of circumstances the hillman had forgotten to fasten it on the inside when he locked the door. Of course, after what has subsequently transpired, I now, through the eye of faith, see the protecting hand of my Guru everywhere around me. Upon getting inside I found the room communicated, by a small doorway, with another apartment, the two occupying the whole space of this sylvan mansion. I laid down, concentrating every thought upon my Guru as usual, and soon fell into a profound sleep. Before I went to rest, I had secured the door of the other room and the single window. It may have been between ten and eleven, or perhaps a little later, that I awoke and heard sounds of footsteps in the adjoining room. I could plainly distinguish two or three people talking together in a dialect unknown to me. Now, I cannot recall the same without a shudder. At any moment they might have entered from the other room and murdered me for my money. Had they mistaken me for a burglar the same fate awaited me. These and similar thoughts crowded into my brain in an inconceivably short period. But my heart did not palpitate with fear, nor did I for one moment think of the possibly tragical chances of the moment. I know not what secret influence held me fast, but nothing could put me out or make me fear; I was perfectly calm. Although I lay awake staring into the darkness for upwards of two hours, and even paced the room softly and slowly without making any noise, to see if I could make my escape, in case of need, back to the forest by the same way I had effected my entrance into the hut--no fear, I repeat, or any such feeling ever entered my heart. I recomposed myself to rest. After a sound sleep, undisturbed by any dream, I awoke at daybreak. Then I hastily put on my boots, and cautiously got out of the hut through the same window. I could hear the snoring of the owners of the hut in the other room. But I lost no time, and gained the path to Sikkhim (the city) and held on my way with unflagging zeal. From the inmost recesses of my heart I thanked my revered Guru for the protection he had vouchsafed me during the night. What prevented the owners of the hut from penetrating to the second room? What kept me in the same serene and calm spirit, as if I were in a room of my own house? What could possibly make me sleep so soundly under such circumstances,--enormous, dark forests on all sides abounding in wild beasts, and a party of cut-throats--as most of the Sikkhimese are said to be--in the next room, with an easy and rude door between them and me? When it became quite light, I wended my way on through hills and dales. Riding or walking, the journey was not a pleasant one for any man not as deeply engrossed in thought as I was then myself, and quite oblivious to anything affecting the body. I have cultivated the power of mental concentration to such a degree of late that, on many an occasion, I have been able to make myself quite unconscious of anything around me when my mind was wholly bent upon the one object of my life, as several of my friends will testify; but never to such an extent as in this instance. It was, I think, between eight and nine A.M. I was following the road to the town of Sikkhim, whence, I was assured by the people I met on the road, I could cross over to Tibet easily in my pilgrim's garb, when I suddenly saw a solitary horseman galloping towards me from the opposite direction. From his tall stature and skill in horsemanship, I thought he was some military officer of the Sikkhim Rajah. Now, I thought, I am caught! He will ask me for my pass and what business I have in the independent territory of Sikkhim, and, perhaps, have me arrested and sent back, if not worse. But, as he approached me, he reined up. I looked at and recognized him instantly.... I was in the awful presence of him, of the same Mahatma, my own revered Guru, whom I had seen before in his astral body on the balcony of the Theosophical Headquarters. It was he, the "Himalayan Brother" of the ever-memorable night of December last, who had so kindly dropped a letter in answer to one I had given but an hour or so before in a sealed envelope to Madame Blavatsky, whom I had never lost sight of for one moment during the interval. The very same instant saw me prostrated on the ground at his feet. I arose at his command, and, leisurely looking into his face, forgot myself entirely in the contemplation of the image I knew so well, having seen his portrait (the one in Colonel Olcott's possession) times out of number. I knew not what to say: joy and reverence tied my tongue. The majesty of his countenance, which seemed to me to be the impersonation of power and thought, held me rapt in awe. I was at last face to face with "the Mahatma of the Himavat," and he was no myth, no "creation of the imagination of a medium," as some sceptics had suggested. It was no dream of the night; it was between nine and ten o'clock of the forenoon. There was the sun shining and silently witnessing the scene from above. I see him before me in flesh and blood, and he speaks to me in accents of kindness and gentleness. What more could I want? My excess of happiness made me dumb. Nor was it until some time had elapsed that I was able to utter a few words, encouraged by his gentle tone and speech. His complexion is not as fair as that of Mahatma Koothoomi; but never have I seen a countenance so handsome, a stature so tall and so majestic. As in his portrait, he wears a short black beard, and long black hair hanging down to his breast; only his dress was different: Instead of a white, loose robe he wore a yellow mantle lined with fur, and on his head, instead of the turban, a yellow Tibetan felt cap, as I have seen some Bhootanese wear in this country. When the first moments of rapture and surprise were over, and I calmly comprehended the situation, I had a long talk with him. He told me to go no further, for I should come to grief. He said I should wait patiently if I wanted to become an accepted Chela; that many were those who offered themselves as candidates, but that only a very few were found worthy; none were rejected, but all of them tried, and most found to fail signally, as for example---and---. Some, instead of being accepted and pledged this year, were now thrown off for a year. The Mahatma, I found, speaks very little English--or at least it so seemed to me--and spoke to me in my mother-tongue--Tamil. He told me that if the Chohan permitted Madame Blavatsky to visit Parijong next year, then I could come with her. The Bengali Theosophists who followed the "Upasika" (Madame Blavatsky) would see that she was right in trying to dissuade them from following her now. I asked the blessed Mahatma whether I could tell what I saw and heard to others. He replied in the affirmative, and that moreover I would do well to write to you and describe all. I must impress upon your mind the whole situation, and ask you to keep well in view that what I saw was not the mere "appearance" only, the astral body of the Mahatma, as we saw him at Bombay, but the living man, in his own physical body. He was pleased to say when I offered my farewell namaskarams (prostration) that he approached the British territory to see the Upasika. Before he left me, two more men came on horseback, his attendants I suppose, probably Chelas, for they were dressed like lama-gylungs, and both, like himself, with long hair streaming down their backs. They followed the Mahatma, when he left, at a gentle trot. For over an hour I stood gazing at the place that he had just quitted, and then I slowly retraced my steps. Now it was that I found for the first time that my long boots had pinched my leg in several places, that I had eaten nothing since the day before, and that I was too weak to walk further. My whole body was aching in every limb. At a little distance I saw petty traders with country ponies, carrying burdens. I hired one of these animals. In the afternoon I came to the Rungit River and crossed it. A bath in its cool waters revived me. I purchased some fruit in the only bazaar there and ate heartily. I took another horse immediately and reached Darjiling late in the evening. I could neither eat, nor sit, nor stand. Every part of my body was aching. My absence had seemingly alarmed Madame Blavatsky. She scolded me for my rash and mad attempt to try to go to Tibet after that fashion. When I entered the house I found with Madame Blavatsky, Bahu Parbati Churn Roy, Deputy Collector of Settlements and Superintendent of Dearah Survey, and his assistant, Babu Kanty Bhushan Sen, both members of our Society. At their prayer and Madame Blavatsky's command, I recounted all that had happened to me, reserving of course my private conversation with the Mahatma. They were all, to say the least, astounded. After all, she will not go this year to Tibet; for which I am sure she does not care, since she has seen our Masters and thus gained her only object. But we, unfortunate people! we lose our only chance of going and offering our worship to the "Himalayan Brothers," who, I know, will not soon cross over to British territory, if ever, again. And now that I have seen the Mahatma in the flesh, and heard his living voice, let no one dare say to me that the Brothers do not exist. Come now whatever will, death has no fear for me, nor the vengeance of enemies; for what I know, I know! --S. Ramaswamier, F.T.S. The Sages of the Himavat While on my tour with Col. Olcott several phenomena occurred, in his presence as well as in his absence, such as immediate answers to questions in my Master's handwriting, and over his signature, put by a number of our Fellows. These occurrences took place before we reached Lahore, where we expected to meet in the body my Master. There I was visited by him in the body, for three nights consecutively, for about three hours every time, while I myself retained full consciousness, and, in one case, even went to meet him outside the house. To my knowledge there is no case on the Spiritualist records of a medium remaining perfectly conscious, and meeting, by previous arrangement, his spirit-visitor in the compound, re-entering the house with him, offering him a seat, and then holding a long converse with the "disembodied spirit" in a way to give him the impression that he is in personal contact with an embodied entity. Moreover, him whom I saw in person at Lahore was the same I had seen in astral form at the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society, and again, the same whom I had seen in visions and trances at his house, thousands of miles off, which I reached in my astral Ego by his direct help and protection. In those instances, with my psychic powers hardly yet developed, I had always seen him as a rather hazy form, although his features were perfectly distinct and their remembrance was profoundly graven on my soul's eye and memory, while now at Lahore, Jummoo, and elsewhere, the impression was utterly different. In the former cases, when making Pranam (salutation) my hands passed through his form, while on the latter occasions they met solid garments and flesh. Here I saw a living man before me, the original of the portraits in Madame Blavatsky's possession and in Mr. Sinnett's, though far more imposing in his general appearance and bearing. I shall not here dwell upon the fact of his having been corporeally seen by both Col. Olcott and Mr. Brown separately for two nights at Lahore, as they can do so better, each for himself, if they so choose. At Jummoo again, where we proceeded from Lahore, Mr. Brown saw him on the evening of the third day of our arrival there, and from him received a letter in his familiar handwriting, not to speak of his visits to me almost every day. And what happened the next morning almost every one in Jummoo is aware of. The fact is, that I had the good fortune of being sent for, and permitted to visit a sacred Ashrum, where I remained for a few days in the blessed company of several of the Mahatmas of Himavat and their disciples. There I met not only my beloved Gurudeva and Col. Olcott's master, but several others of the fraternity, including one of the highest. I regret the extremely personal nature of my visit to those thrice blessed regions prevents my saying more about it. Suffice it that the place I was permitted to visit is in the Himalayas, not in any fanciful Summer Land, and that I saw him in my own sthula sarira (physical body) and found my Master identical with the form I had seen in the earlier days of my Chelaship. Thus, I saw my beloved Guru not only as a living man, but actually as a young one in comparison with some other Sadhus of the blessed company, only far kinder, and not above a merry remark and conversation at times. Thus on the second day of my arrival, after the meal hour, I was permitted to hold an intercourse for over an hour with my Master. Asked by him smilingly what it was that made me look at him so perplexed, I asked in my turn:--"How is it, Master, that some of the members of our Society have taken into their heads a notion that you were 'an elderly man,' and that they have even seen you clairvoyantly looking an old man past sixty?" To which he pleasantly smiled and said that this latest misconception was due to the reports of a certain Brahmachari, a pupil of a Vedantic Swami in the Punjab,* who had met last year in Tibet the chief of a sect, an elderly Lama, who was his (my Master's) traveling companion at that time. The said Brahmachari, having spoken of the encounter in India, had led several persons to mistake the Lama for himself. As to his being perceived clairvoyantly as an "elderly man," that could never be, he added, as real clairvoyance could lead no one into such mistaken notions; and then he kindly reprimanded me for giving any importance to the age of a Guru, adding that appearances were often false, &c., and explaining other points. -------- * See infra. Rajani Kanta Brahmachai's "Interview with a Mahatma." -------- These are all stern facts, and no third course is open to the reader. What I assert is either true or false. In the former case, no Spiritualistic hypothesis can hold good, and it will have to be admitted that the Himalayan Brothers are living men, and neither disembodied spirits nor creations of the over-heated imagination of fanatics. Of course I am fully aware that many will discredit my account; but I write only for the benefit of those few who know me well enough to see in me neither a hallucinated medium, nor attribute to me any bad motive, and who have ever been true and loyal to their convictions and to the cause they have so nobly espoused. As for the majority who laugh at and ridicule what they have neither the inclination nor the capacity to understand, I hold them in very small account. If these few lines will help to stimulate even one of my brother-Fellows in the Society, or one right-thinking man outside of it, to promote the cause of Truth and Humanity, I shall consider that I have properly performed my duty. --Damodar K. Mavalankar The Himalayan Brothers--Do They Exist? "Ask and it shall be given unto you; knock and it shall be opened," this is an accurate representation of the position of the earnest inquirer as to the existence of the Mahatmas. I know of none who took up this inquiry in right earnest and were not rewarded for their labours with knowledge, certainty. In spite of all this there are plenty of people who carp and cavil but will not take the trouble of proving the thing for themselves. Both by Europeans and a section of our own countrymen--the too Europeanized graduates of Universities--the existence of the Mahatmas is looked upon with incredulity and distrust, to give it no harder name. The position of the Europeans is easily intelligible, for these things are so far removed from their intellectual horizon, and their self-sufficiency is so great, that they are almost impervious to these new ideas. But it is much more difficult to conceive why the people of India, who are born and brought up in an atmosphere redolent with the traditions of these things, should affect such scepticism. It would have been more natural for them, on the other hand, to hail such proofs as those I am now laying before the public with the same satisfaction as an astronomer feels when a new star, whose elements he has calculated, swims within his ken. I myself was a thorough-going disbeliever only two years back. In the first place I had never witnessed any occult phenomena myself, nor did I find any one who had done so in that small ring of our countrymen for whom only I was taught to have any respect--the "educated classes." It was only in the month of October, 1882, that I really devoted any time and attention to this matter, and the result is that I have as little doubt with respect to the existence of the Mahatmas as of mine own. I now know that they exist. But for a long time the proofs that I had received were not all of an objective character. Many things which are very satisfactory proofs to me would not be so to the reader. On the other hand, I have no right to speak of the unimpeachable evidence I now possess. Therefore I must do the best I can with the little I am permitted to give. In the present paper I have brought forward such evidence as would be perfectly satisfactory to all capable of measuring its probative force. The evidence now laid before the public was collected by me during the months of October and November, 1882, and was at the time placed before some of the leading members of the Theosophical Society, Mr. Sinnett among others. The account of Bro. Ramaswamier's interview with his Guru in Sikkhim being then ready for publication, there was no necessity, in their opinion, for the present paper being brought to light. But since an attempt has been made in some quarters to minimize the effect of Mr. Ramaswamier's evidence by calling it most absurdly "the hallucinations of a half-frozen strolling Registrar," I think something might be gained by the publication of perfectly independent testimony of, perhaps, equal, if not greater, value, though of quite a different character. With these words of explanation as to the delay in its publication, I resign this paper to the criticism of our sceptical friends. Let them calmly consider and pronounce upon the evidence of the Tibetan pedlar at Darjiling, supported and strengthened by the independent testimony of the young Brahmachari at Dehradun. Those who were present when the statements of these persons were taken, all occupy very respectable positions in life--some in fact belonging to the front ranks of Hindu Society, and several in no way connected with the Theosophical movement, but, on the contrary, quite unfriendly to it. In those days I again say I was rather sceptical myself. It is only since I collected the following evidence and received more than one proof of the actual existence of my venerated master, Mahatma Koothoomi, whose presence-- quite independently of Madame Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott or any "alleged" Chela--was made evident to me in a variety of ways, that I have given up the folly of doubting any longer. Now I believe no more--I KNOW; and knowing, I would help others to obtain the same knowledge. During my visit to Darjiling I lived in the same house with several Theosophists, all as ardent aspirants for the higher life, and most of them as doubtful with regard to the Himalayan Mahatmas as I was myself at that time. I met at Darjiling persons who claimed to be Chelas of the Himalayan Brothers and to have seen and lived with them for years. They laughed at our perplexity. One of them showed us an admirably executed portrait of a man who appeared to be an eminently holy person, and who, I was told, was the Mahatma Koothoomi (now my revered master), to whom Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World" is dedicated. A few days after my arrival, a Tibetan pedlar of the name of Sundook accidentally came to our house to sell his things. Sundook was for years well-known in Darjiling and the neighbourhood as an itinerant trader in Tibetan knick-knacks, who visited the country every year in the exercise of his profession. He came to the house several times during our stay there, and seemed to us, from his simplicity, dignity of bearing and pleasant manners, to be one of Nature's own gentlemen. No man could discover in him any trait of character even remotely allied to the uncivilized savages, as the Tibetans are held in the estimation of Europeans. He might very well have passed for a trained courtier, only that he was too good to be one. He came to the house while I was there. On the first occasion he was accompanied by a Goorkha youth, named Sundar Lall, an employee in the Darjiling News office, who acted as interpreter. But we soon found out that the peculiar dialect of Hindi which he spoke was intelligible to some of us without any interpreter, and so there was none needed on subsequent occasions. On the first day we put him some general questions about Tibet and the Gelugpa sect, to which he said he belonged, and his answers corroborated the statements of Bogle, Turnour and other travelers. On the second day we asked him if he had heard of any persons in Tibet who possessed extraordinary powers besides the great lamas. He said there were such men; that they were not regular lamas, but far higher than they, and generally lived in the mountains beyond Tchigatze and also near the city of Lhassa. These men, he said, produce many and very wonderful phenomena or "miracles," and some of their Chelas, or Lotoos, as they are called in Tibet, cure the sick by giving them to eat the rice which they crush out of the paddy with their hands, &c. Then one of us had a glorious idea. Without saying one word, the above-mentioned portrait of the Mahatma Koothoomi was shown to him. He looked at it for a few seconds, and then, as though suddenly recognizing it, he made a profound reverence to the portrait, and said it was the likeness of a Chohan (Mahatma) whom he had seen. Then he began rapidly to describe the Mahatma's dress and naked arms; then suiting the action to the word, he took off his outer cloak, and baring his arms to the shoulder, made the nearest approach to the figure in the portrait, in the adjustment of his dress. He said he had seen the Mahatma in question accompanied by a numerous body of Gylungs, about that time of the previous year (beginning of October 1881) at a place called Giansi, two days' journey southward of Tchigatze, whither the narrator dad gone to make purchases for his trade. On being asked the name of the Mahatma, he said to our unbounded surprise, "They are called Koothum-pa." Being cross-examined and asked what he meant by "they," and whether he was naming one man or many, he replied that the Koothum-pas were many, but there was only one man or chief over them of that name; the disciples being always called after the names of their guru. Hence the name of the latter being Koot-hum, that of his disciples was "Koot-hum-pa." Light was shed upon this explanation by a Tibetan dictionary, where we found that the word "pa" means "man;" "Bod-pa" is a "man of Bod or Thibet," &c. Similarly Koothum-pa means man or disciple of Koothoom or Koothoomi. At Giansi, the pedlar said, the richest merchant of the place went to the Mahatma, who had stopped to rest in the midst of an extensive field, and asked him to bless him by coming to his house. The Mahatma replied, he was better where he was, as he had to bless the whole world, and not any particular man. The people, and among them our friend Sundook, took their offerings to the Mahatma, but he ordered them to be distributed among the poor. Sundook was exhorted by the Mahatma to pursue his trade in such a way as to injure no one, and warned that such was the only right way to prosperity. On being told that people in India refused to believe that there were such men as the Brothers in Tibet, Sundook offered to take any voluntary witness to that country, and convince us, through him, as to the genuineness of their existence, and remarked that if there were no such men in Tibet, he would like to know where they were to be found. It being suggested to him that some people refused to believe that such men existed at all, he got very angry. Tucking up the sleeve of his coat and shirt, and disclosing a strong muscular arm, he declared that he would fight any man who would suggest that he had said anything but the truth. On being shown a peculiar rosary of beads belonging to Madame Blavatsky, the pedlar said that such things could only be got by those to whom the Tesshu Lama presented them, as they could be got for no amount of money elsewhere. When the Chela who was with us put on his sleeveless coat and asked him whether he recognized the latter's profession by his dress, the pedlar answered that he was a Gylung and then bowing down to him took the whole thing as a matter of course. The witnesses in this case were Babu Nobin Krishna Bannerji, deputy magistrate, Berhampore, M.R. Ry. Ramaswamiyer Avergal, district registrar, Madura (Madras), the Goorkha gentleman spoken of before, all the family of the first-named gentleman, and the writer. Now for the other piece of corroborative evidence. This time it came most accidentally into my possession. A young Bengali Brahmachari, who had only a short time previous to our meeting returned from Tibet and who was residing then at Dehradun, in the North-Western Provinces of India, at the house of my grandfather-in-law, the venerable Babu Devendra Nath Tagore of the Brahmo Samaj, gave most unexpectedly, in the presence of a number of respectable witnesses, the following account:-- On the 15th of the Bengali month of Asar last (1882). being the 12th day of the waxing moon, he met some Tibetans, called the Koothoompas, and their guru in a field near Taklakhar, a place about a day's journey from the Lake of Manasarawara. The guru and most of his disciples, who were called gylungs, wore sleeveless coats over under-garments of red. The complexion of the guru was very fair, and his hair, which was not parted but combed back, streamed down his shoulders. When the Brahmachani first saw the Mahatma he was reading in a book, which the Brahmachari was informed by one of the gylungs was the Rig Veda. The guru saluted him, and asked him where he was coming from. On finding the latter had not had anything to eat, the guru commanded that he should be given some ground gram (Sattoo) and tea. As the Brahmachari could not get any fire to cook food with, the guru asked for, and kindled a cake of dry cow-dung--the fuel used in that country as well as in this--by simply blowing upon it, and gave it to our Brahmachari. The latter assured us that he had often witnessed the same phenomenon, produced by another guru or chohan, as they are called in Tibet, at Gauri, a place about a day's journey from the cave of Tarchin, on the northern side of Mount Kailas. The keeper of a flock, who was suffering from rheumatic fever came to the guru, who gave him a few grains of rice, crushed out of paddy, which the guru had in his hand, and the sick man was cured then and there. Before he parted company with the Koothumpas and their guru, the Brahmachari found that they were going to attend a festival held on the banks of the Lake of Manasarawara, and that thence they intended to proceed to the Kailas mountains. The above statement was on several occasions repeated by the Brahmachari in the presence (among others) of Babu Dwijender Nath Tagore of Jorasanko, Calcutta; Babu Cally Mohan Ghose of the Trigonometrical Surcey of India, Dehradun; Babu Cally Cumar Chatterij of the same place; Babu Gopi Mohan Ghosh of Dacca; Babu Priya Nath Sastri, clerk to Babu Devender Nath Tagore, and the writer. Comments would here seem almost superfluous, and the facts might very well have been left to speak for themselves to a fair and intelligent jury. But the averseness of people to enlarge their field of experience and the wilful misrepresentation of designing persons know no bounds. The nature of the evidence here adduced is of an unexceptional character. Both witnesses were met quite accidentally. Even if it be granted, which we certainly do not for a moment grant, that the Tibetan pedlar, Sundook, had been interviewed by some interested person, and induced to tell an untruth, what can be conceived to have been the motive of the Brahmachari, one belonging to a religious body noted for their truthfulness, and having no idea as to the interest the writer took in such things, in inventing a romance, and how could he make it fit exactly with the statements of the Tibetan pedlar at the other end of the country? Uneducated persons are no doubt liable to deceive themselves in many matters, but these statements dealt only with such disunited facts as fell within the range of the narrator's eyes and ears, and had nothing to do with his judgment or opinion. Thus, when the pedlar's statement is coupled with that of the Dehradun Brahmachari, there is, indeed, no room left for any doubt as to the truthfulness of either. It may here be mentioned that the statement of the Brahmachari was not the result of a series of leading questions, but formed part of the account he voluntarily gave of his travels during the year, and that he is almost entirely ignorant of the English language, and had, to the best of my knowledge, information and belief, never even so much as heard of the name of Theosophy. Now, if any one refuses to accept the mutually corroborative but independent testimonies of the Tibetan pedlar of Darjiling and the Brahmachari of Dehradun on the ground that they support the genuineness of facts not ordinarily falling within the domain of one's experience, all I can say is that it is the very miracle of folly. It is, on the other hand, most unshakably established upon the evidence of several of his Chelas, that the Mahatma Koothoomi is a living person like any of us, and that moreover he was seen by two persons on two different occasions. This will, it is to be hoped, settle for ever the doubts of those who believe in the genuineness of occult phenomena, but put them down to the agency of "spirits." Mark one circumstance. It may be argued that during the pedlar's stay at Darjiling, Madame Blavatsky was also there, and, who knows, she might have bribed him (!!) into saying what he said. But no such thing can be urged in the case of the Dehradun Brahmachari. He knew neither the pedlar nor Madame Blavatsky, had never heard of Colonel Olcott, having just returned from his prolonged journey, and had no idea that I was a Fellow of the Society. His testimony was entirely voluntary. Some others, who admit that Mahatmas exist, but that there is no proof of their connection with the Theosophical Society, will be pleased to see that there is no a priori impossibility in those great souls taking an interest in such a benevolent Society as ours. Consequently it is a gratuitous insult to a number of self-sacrificing men and women to reject their testimony without a fair hearing. I purposely leave aside all proofs which are already before the public. Each set of proofs is conclusive in itself, and the cumulative effect of all is simply irresistible. --Mohini M. Chatterji Interview with a Mahatma At the time I left home for the Himalayas in search of the Supreme Being, having adopted Brahmacharyashrama (religious mendicancy), I was quite ignorant of the fact that there was any such philosophical sect as the Theosophists existing in India, who believed in the existence of the Mahatmas or "superior persons." This and other facts connected with my journey are perfectly correct as already published, and so need not be repeated or contradicted. Now I beg to give a fuller account of my interview with the Mahatmas. Before and after I met the so-called Mahatma Koothum-pa, I had the good fortune of seeing in person several other Mahatmas of note, a detailed account of whom, I hope, should time allow, to write to you by-and-by. Here I wish to say something about Koothum-pa only. When I was on my way to Almora from Mansarowar and Kailas, one day I had nothing with me to eat. I was quite at a loss how to get on without food. There being no human habitation in that part of the country, I could expect no help, but pray to God, and take my way patiently on. Between Mansarowar and Taklakhal, by the side of a road, I observed a tent pitched and several Sadhus (holy men), called Chohans, sitting outside it who numbered about seventeen in all. As to their dress, &c., what Babu M.M. Chatterji says is quite correct. When I went to them they entertained me very kindly, and saluted me by uttering, "Ram Ram." Returning their salutations, I sat down with them, and they entered upon conversation with me on different subjects, asking me first the place I was coming from and whither I was going. There was a chief of them sitting inside the tent, and engaged in reading a book. I inquired about his name and the book he was reading from, one of his Chelas, who answered me in rather a serious tone, saying that his name was Guru Koothum-pa, and the book he was reading was Rig Veda. Long before, I had been told by some Pundits of Bengal that the Tibetan Lamas were well-acquainted with the Rig Veda. This proved what they had told me. After a short time, when his reading was over, he called me in by one of his Chelas, and I went to him. He, also bidding me "Ram Ram," received me very gently and courteously, and began to talk with me mildly in pure Hindi. He addressed me in words such as follows:--"You should remain here for some time and see the fair at Mansarowar, which is to come off shortly. Here you will have plenty of time and suitable retreats for meditation, &c. I will help you in whatever I can." He spoke as above for some time, and I replied that what he said was right, and that I would gladly have stayed, but there was some reason which prevented me. He understood my object immediately, and then, having given me some private advice as to my spiritual progress, bade me farewell. Before this he had come to know that I was hungry, and so wished me to take some food. He ordered one of his Chelas to supply me with food, which he did immediately. In order to get hot water ready for my ablutions, he prepared fire by blowing into a cow-dung cake, which burst into flames at once. This is a common practice among the Himalayan Lamas. It is also fully explained by M.M. Chatterji, and so need not be repeated. As long as I was there with the said Lama, he never persuaded me to accept Buddhism or any other religion, but only said, "Hinduism is the best religion; you should believe in the Lord Mahadeva--he will do good to you. You are still quite a young man--do not be enticed away by the necromancy of anybody." Having had a conversation with the Mahatma as described above for about three hours, I at last took leave and resumed my journey. I am neither a Theosophist nor a sectarian, but am the worshipper of the only Om. As regards the Mahatma I personally saw, I dare say that he is a great Mahatma. By the fulfilment of certain of his prophecies, I am quite convinced of his excellence. Of all the Himalayan Mahatmas with whom I had an interview, I never met a better Hindi speaker than he. As to his birth-place and the place of his residence, I did not ask him any question. Neither can I say if he is the Mahatma of the Theosophists. As to the age of the Mahatma Koothum-pa, as I told Babu M. M. Chatterji and others, he was an elderly looking man. --Rajani Kant Brahmachari The Secret Doctrine Few experiences lying about the threshhold of occult studies are more perplexing and tormenting than those which have to do with the policy of the Brothers as to what shall, and what shall not, be revealed to the outer world. In fact, it is only by students at the same time tenacious and patient--continuously anxious to get at the truths of occult philosophy, but cool enough to bide their time when obstacles come in the way--that what looks, at first sight, like a grudging and miserly policy in this matter on the part of our illustrious teachers can be endured. Most men persist in judging all situations by the light of their own knowledge and conceptions, and certainly by reference to standards of right and wrong with which modern civilization is familiar a pungent indictment may be framed against the holders of philosophical truth. They are regarded by their critics as keeping guard over their intellectual possessions, declaring, "We have won this knowledge with strenuous effort and at the cost of sacrifice and suffering; we will not make a present of it to luxurious idlers who have done nothing to deserve it." Most critics of the Theosophical Society and its publications have fastened on this obvious idea, and have denounced the policy of the Brothers as "selfish" and "unreasonable." It has been argued that, as regards occult powers, the necessity for keeping back all secrets which would enable unconscientious people to do mischief, might be granted, but that no corresponding motives could dictate the reservation of occult philosophical truth. I have lately come to perceive certain considerations on this subject which have generally been overlooked; and it seems desirable to put them forward at once; especially as a very considerable body of occult philosophical teaching is now before the world, and as those who appreciate its value best, will sometimes be inclined to protest all the more emphatically against the tardiness with which it has been served out, and the curious precautions with which its further development is even now surrounded. In a nutshell, the explanation of the timid policy displayed is that the Brothers are fully assured that the disclosure of that actual truth (which constitutes the secret doctrine) about the origin of the World and of Humanity--of the laws which govern their existence, and the destinies to which they are moving on--is calculated to have a very momentous effect on the welfare of mankind. Great results ensue from small beginnings, and the seeds of knowledge now being sown in the world may ultimately bear prodigious harvest. We, who are present merely at the sowing, may not realize the magnitude and importance of the impulse we are concerned in giving, but that impulse will roll on, and a few generations hence will be productive of tremendous consequences one way or the other. For occult philosophy is no shadowy system of speculation like any of the hundred philosophies with which the minds of men have been overwhelmed; it is the positive Truth, and by the time enough of it is let out, it will be seen to be so by thousands of the greatest men who may then be living in the world. What will be the consequence? The first effect on the minds of all who come to understand it, is terribly iconoclastic. It drives out before it everything else in the shape of religious belief. It leaves no room for any conceptions belonging even to the groundwork or foundation of ordinary religious faith. And what becomes then of all rules of right and wrong, of all sanctions for morality? Most assuredly there are rules of right and wrong thrilling through every fibre of occult philosophy really higher than any which commonplace theologies can teach; far more cogent sanctions for morality than can be derived at second-hand from the distorted doctrines of exoteric religions; but a complete transfer of the sanction will be a process involving the greatest possible danger for mankind at the time. Bigots of all denominations will laugh at the idea of such a transfer being seriously considered. The orthodox Christian--confident in the thousand of churches overshadowing all western lands, of the enormous force engaged in the maintenance and propagation of the faith, with the Pope and the Protestant hierarchy in alliance for this broad purpose, with the countless clergy of all sects, and the fiery Salvation Army bringing up the rear--will think that the earth itself is more likely to crumble into ruin than the irresistible authority of Religion to be driven back. They are all counting, however, without the progress of enlightenment. The most absurd religions die hard; but when the intellectual classes definitively reject them, they die, with throes of terrible agony, may be, and, perhaps, like Samson in the Temple, but they cannot permanently outlive a conviction that they are false in the leading minds of the age. Just what has been said of Christianity may be said of Mahomedanism and Brahminism. Little or no risk is run while occult literature aims merely at putting a reasonable construction on perverted tenets--in showing people that truth may lurk behind even the strangest theologic fictions. And the lover of orthodoxy, in either of the cases instanced, may welcome the explanation with complacency. For him also, as for the Christian, the faith which he professes-- sanctioned by what looks like a considerable antiquity to the very limited vision of uninitiated historians, and supported by the attachment of millions grown old in its service and careful to educate their children in the convictions that have served their turn--is founded on a rock which has its base in the foundations of the world. Fragmentary teachings of occult philosophy seem at first to be no more than annotations on the canonical doctrine. They may even embellish it with graceful interpretations of its symbolism, parts of which may have seemed to require apology, when ignorantly taken at the foot of the letter. But this is merely the beginning of the attack. If occult philosophy gets before the world with anything resembling completeness, it will so command the assent of earnest students that for them nothing else of that nature will remain standing. And the earnest students in such eases must multiply. They are multiplying now even, merely on the strength of the little that has been revealed. True, as yet--for some time to come--the study will be, as it were, the whim of a few; but "those who know," know among other things that, give it fair-play, and it must become the subject of enthusiasm with all advanced thinkers. And what is to happen when the world is divided into two camps--the whole forces of intellectuality and culture on the one side, those of ignorance and superstitious fanaticism on the other? With such a war as that impending, the adepts, who will be conscious that they prepared the lists and armed the combatants, will require some better justification for their policy before their own consciences than the reflection that, in the beginning, people accused them of selfishness, and of keeping a miserly guard over their knowledge, and so goaded them with this taunt that they were induced to set the ball rolling. There is no question, be it understood, as to the relative merits of the moral sanctions that are afforded by occult philosophy and those which are distilled from the worn-out materials of existing creeds. If the world could conceivably be shunted at one coup from the one code of morals to the other, the world would be greatly the better for the change. But the change cannot be made all at once, and the transition is most dangerous. On the other hand, it is no less dangerous to take no steps in the direction of that transition. For though existing religions may be a great power--the Pope ruling still over millions of consciences if not over towns and States, the name of the Prophet being still a word to conjure with in war, the forces of Brahmanical custom holding countless millions in willing subjection--in spite of all this, the old religions are sapped and past their prime. They are in process of decay, for they are losing their hold on the educated minority; it is still the case that in all countries the camps of orthodoxy include large numbers of men distinguished by intellect and culture, but one by one their numbers are diminishing. Five-and-twenty years only, in Europe, have made a prodigious change. Books are written now that pass almost as matters of course which would have been impossible no further back than that. No further back, books thrilled society with surprise and excitement, which the intellectual world would now ignore as embodying the feeblest commonplaces. The old creeds, in fact, are slowly losing their hold upon mankind--more slowly in the more deliberately moving East than Europe, but even here by degrees also--and a time will come, whether occult philosophy is given out to take their place or not, when they will no longer afford even such faulty sanctions for moral conduct and right as they have supplied in times gone by. Therefore it is plain that something must be given out to take their place, and hence the determinations of which this movement in which we are engaged is one of the undulations--these very words some of the foremost froth upon the advancing wave. But surely, when something which must be done is yet very dangerous in the doing, the persons who control the operations in progress may be excused for exercising the utmost caution. Readers of Theosophical literature will be aware how bitterly our adept Brothers have been criticized for choosing to take their own time and methods in the task of partially communicating their knowledge to the world. Here in India these criticisms have been indignantly resented by the passionate loyalty to the Mahatmas that is so widely spread among Hindus--resented more by instinct than reason in some cases perhaps, though in others, no doubt, as a consequence of a full appreciation of all that is being now explained, and of other considerations beside. But in Europe such criticisms will have seemed hard to answer. The answer is really embodied, however imperfectly, in the views of the situation now set forth. We ordinary mortals in the world work as men traveling by the light of a lantern in an unknown country. We see but a little way to the right and left, only a little way behind even. But the adepts work as men traveling by daylight, with the further advantage of being able at will to get up in a balloon and survey vast expanses of lake and plain and forest. The choice of time and methods for communicating occult knowledge to the world necessarily includes the choice of intermediary agent. Hence the double set of misconceptions in India and Europe, each adapted to the land of its origin. In India, where knowledge of the Brothers' existence and reverence for their attributes is widely diffused, it is natural that persons who may be chosen for their serviceability rather than for their merits, as the recipients of their direct teaching, should be regarded with a feeling resembling jealousy. In Europe, the difficulty of getting into any sort of relations with the fountain-head of Eastern philosophy is regarded as due to an exasperating exclusiveness on the part of the adepts in that philosophy, which renders it practically worth no man's while to devote himself to the task of soliciting their instruction. But neither feeling is reasonable when considered in the light of the explanations now put forward. The Brothers can consider none but public interests, in the largest sense of the words, in throwing out the first experimental flashes of occult revelation into the world. They can only employ agents on whom they can rely for doing the work as they may wish it done--or, at all events, in no manner which may be widely otherwise. Or they can only protect the task on which they are concerned in another way. They may consent sometimes to a very much more direct mode of instruction than that provided through intermediary agents for the world at large, in the cases of organized societies solemnly pledged to secrecy, for the time being at all events, in regard to the teaching to be conveyed to them. In reference to such societies, the Brothers need not be on the watch to see that the teaching is not worked up for the service of the world in a way they would consider, for any reasons of their own, likely to be injurious to final results or dangerous. Different men will assimilate the philosophy to be unfolded in different ways: for some it will be too iconoclastic altogether, and its further pursuit, after a certain point is reached, unwelcome. Such persons, entering too hastily on the path of exploration, will be able to drop off from the undertaking whenever they like, if thoroughly pledged to secrecy in the first instance, without being a source of embarrassment afterwards, as regards the steady prosecution of the work in hand by other more resolute, or less sensitive, labourers. It may be that in some such societies, if any should be formed in which occult philosophy may be secretly studied, some of the members will be as well fitted as, or better than, any other persons employed elsewhere to put the teachings in shape for publication, but in that case it is to be presumed that special qualifications will eventually make themselves apparent. The meaning and good sense of the restrictions, provisionally imposed meanwhile, will be plain enough to any impartial person on reflection, even though their novelty and strangeness may be a little resented at the first glance. --Lay Chela HISTORICAL The Puranas on the Dynasty of the Moryas and on Koothoomi It is stated in Matsya Puran, chapter cclxxii., that ten Moryas would reign over India, and would be succeeded by the Shoongas, and that Shata Dhanva will be the first of these ten Maureyas (or Moryas). In Vishnu Purana (Book IV. chapter iv.) it is stated that there was in the Soorya dynasty a king called Moru, who through the power of devotion (Yoga) is said to be still living in the village called Katapa, in the Himalayas (vide vol. iii. p. 197, by Wilson), and who, in a future age, will be the restorer of the Kshatriya race, in the Solar dynasty, that is, many thousands of years hence. In another part of the same Purana (Book IV. chapter xxiv.) it is stated that, "upon the cessation of the race of Nanda, the Moryas* will possess the earth, for Kautilya will place Chandragupta on the throne." Col. Tod considers Morya, or Maurya, a corruption of Mori, the name of a Rajput tribe. ------- * The particulars of this legend are recorded in the Atthata katha of the Uttaraviharo priests. ------- The Commentary on the Mahavanso thinks that the princes of the town Mori were thence called Mauryas. Vachaspattya, a Sanskrit Encyclopaedia, places the village of Katapa on the northern side of the Himalayas-- hence in Tibet. The same is stated in chapter xii. (Skanda) of Bhagavat, vol. iii. p. 325. The Vayu Purana seems to declare that Moru will re-establish the Kshatriyas in the nineteenth coming Yuga. In chapter vi. Book III. of Vishnu Purana, a Rishi called Koothoomi is mentioned. Will any of our Brothers tell us how our Mahatmas stand to these revered personages? --R. Ragoonath Row Editor's Note In the Buddhist Mahavanso, Chandagatto, or Chandragupta, Asoka's grandfather, is called a prince of the Moryan dynasty as he certainly was--or rather as they were, for there were several Chandraguptas. This dynasty, as said in the same book, began with certain Kshatriyas (warriors) of the Sakya line closely related to Gautama Buddha, who crossing the Himavanto (Himalayas) "discovered a delightful location, well watered, and situated in the midst of a forest of lofty bo and other trees. There they founded a town, which was called by its Sakya lords, Morya-Nagara." Prof. Max Muller would see in this legend a made-up story for two reasons: (1) A desire on the part of Buddhists to connect their king Asoka, "the beloved of gods," with Buddha, and thus nullify the slanders set up by the Brahmanical opponents of Buddhism to the effect that Asoka and Chandragupta were Sudras; and (2) because this document does not dovetail with his own theories and chronology based on the fanciful stories of the Greek-Megasthenes and others. It was not the princes of Morya-Nagara who received their name from the Rajput tribe of Mori, but the latter that became so well known as being composed of the descendants of the Moryan sovereign of Morya-Nagara. Some light is thrown on the subsequent destiny of that dynasty in "Replies to an English F.T.S." (See ante.) The name of Rishi Koothoomi is mentioned in more than one Purana, and his Code is among the eighteen Codes written by various Rishis, and preserved at Calcutta in the library of the Asiatic Society. But we have not been told whether there is any connection between our Mahatma of that name and the Rishi, and we do not feel justified in speculating upon the subject. All we know is, that both are Northern Brahmans, while the Moryas are Kshatriyas. If any of our Brothers know more, or can discover anything relating to the subject in the Sacred Books, we shall hear of it with pleasure. The words: "The Moryas will possess the earth, for Kautilya will place Chandragupta on the throne," have in our occult philosophy a dual meaning. In one sense they relate to the days of early Buddhism, when a Chandragupta (Morya) was the king "of all the earth," i.e., of Brahmans, who believed themselves the highest and only representatives of humanity for whom earth was evolved. The second meaning is purely esoteric. Every adept or genuine Mahatma is said to "possess the earth," by the power of his occult knowledge. Hence, a series of ten Moryas, all initiated adepts, would be regarded by the occultists, and referred to as "possessing all the earth," or all its knowledge. The names of "Chandragupta" and "Kautilya" have also an esoteric significance. Let our Brother ponder over their Sanskrit meaning, and he will perhaps see what bearing the phrase--"for Kautilya will place Chandragupta upon the throne"--has upon the Moryas possessing the earth. We would also remind our Brother that the word Itihasa, ordinarily translated as "history," is defined by Sanskrit authorities to be the narrative of the lives of some August personages, conveying at the same time meanings of the highest moral and occult importance. The Theory of Cycles It is now some time since this theory--which was first propounded in the oldest religion of the world, Vedaism--has been gradually coming into prominence again. It was taught by various Greek philosophers, and afterwards defended by the Theosophists of the Middle Ages, but came to be flatly denied by the wise men of the West, the world of negations. Contrary to the rule, it is the men of science themselves who have revived this theory. Statistics of events of the most varied nature are fast being collected and collated with the seriousness demanded by important scientific questions. Statistics of wars and of the periods (or cycles) of the appearance of great men--at least those who have been recognized as such by their contemporaries; statistics of the periods of development and progress of large commercial centres; of the rise and fall of arts and sciences; of cataclysms, such as earthquakes, epidemics; periods of extraordinary cold and heat; cycles of revolutions, and of the rise and fall of empires, &c.: all these are subjected in turn to the analysis of the minutest mathematical calculations. Finally, even the occult significance of numbers in names of persons and cities, in events, and like matters, receives unwonted attention. If, on the one hand, a great portion of the educated public is running into atheism and scepticism, on the other hand, we find an evident current of mysticism forcing its way into science. It is the sign of an irrepressible need in humanity to assure itself that there is a power paramount over matter; an occult and mysterious law which governs the world, and which we should rather study and closely watch, trying to adapt ourselves to it, than blindly deny, and dash ourselves vainly against the rock of destiny. More than one thoughtful mind, while studying the fortunes and reverses of nations and great empires, has been struck by one identical feature in their history--namely, the inevitable recurrence of similar events, and after equal periods of time. This relation between events is found to be substantially constant, though differences in the outward form of details no doubt occur. Thus the belief of the ancients in their astrologers, soothsayers and prophets might have been warranted by the verification of many of their most important predictions, without these prognostications of future events implying of necessity anything very miraculous. The soothsayers and augurs having occupied in days of the old civilizations the very same position now occupied by our historians, astronomers and meteorologists, there was nothing more wonderful in the fact of the former predicting the downfall of an empire or the loss of a battle, than in the latter predicting the return of a comet, a change of temperature, or perhaps the final conquest of Afghanistan. Both studied exact sciences; for, if the astronomer of today draws his observations from mathematical calculations, the astrologer of old also based his prognostication upon no less acute and mathematically correct observations of the ever-recurring cycles. And, because the secret of this ancient science is now being lost, does that give any warrant for saying that it never existed, or that to believe in it, one must be ready to swallow "magic," "miracles" and the like? "If, in view of the eminence to which modern science has reached, the claim to prophesy future events must be regarded as either child's play or a deliberate deception," says a writer in the Novoye Vremja, "then we can point at science which, in its turn, has now taken up and placed on record the question, whether there is or is not in the constant repetition of events a certain periodicity; in other words, whether these events recur after a fixed and determined period of years with every nation; and if a periodicity there be, whether this periodicity is due to blind chance, or depends on the same natural laws which govern the phenomena of human life." Undoubtedly the latter. And the writer has the best mathematical proof of it in the timely appearance of such works as that of Dr. E. Zasse, and others. Several learned works treating upon this mystical subject have appeared of late, and to some of these works and calculations we shall presently refer. A very suggestive work by a well-known German scientist, E. Zasse, appears in the Prussian Journal of Statistics, powerfully corroborating the ancient theory of cycles. These periods which bring around ever-recurring events, begin from the infinitesimally small--say of ten years--rotation, and reach to cycles which require 250, 500, 700, and 1000 years to effect their revolutions around themselves, and within one another. All are contained within the Maha-Yug, the "Great Age" or Cycle of Manu's calculation, which itself revolves between two eternities--the "Pralayas" or Nights of Brahma. As, in the objective world of matter, or the system of effects, the minor constellations and planets gravitate each and all around the sun, so in the world of the subjective, or the system of causes, these innumerable cycles all gravitate between that which the finite intellect of the ordinary mortal regards as eternity, and the still finite, but more profound, intuition of the sage and philosopher views as but an eternity within THE ETERNITY. "As above, so it is below," runs the old Hermetic maxim. As an experiment in this direction, Dr. Zasse selected the statistical investigations of all the wars recorded in history, as a subject which lends itself more easily to scientific verification than any other. To illustrate his subject in the simplest and most easily comprehensible manner, Dr. Zasse represents the periods of war and the periods of peace in the shape of small and large wave-lines running over the area of the Old World. The idea is not a new one, for the image was used for similar illustrations by more than one ancient and medieval mystic, whether in words or pictures--by Henry Kunrath, for example. But it serves well its purpose, and gives us the facts we now want. Before he treats, however, of the cycles of wars, the author brings in the record of the rise and fall of the world's great empires, and shows the degree of activity they have played in the Universal History. He points out the fact that if we divide the map of the Old World into six parts--into Eastern, Central, and Western Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, and Egypt--then we shall easily perceive that every 250 years an enormous wave passes over these areas, bringing to each in its turn the events it has brought to the one next preceding. This wave we may call "the historical wave" of the 250 years' cycle. The first of these waves began in China 2000 years B.C., in the "golden age" of this empire, the age of philosophy, of discoveries, of reforms. "In 1750 B.C. the Mongolians of Central Asia establish a powerful empire. In 1500, Egypt rises from its temporary degradation and extends its sway over many parts of Europe and Asia; and about 1250, the historical wave reaches and crosses over to Eastern Europe, filling it with the spirit of the Argonautic Expedition, and dies out in 1000 B.C. at the Siege of Troy." The second historical wave appears about that time in Central Asia. "The Scythians leave her steppes, and inundate towards the year 750 B.C. the adjoining countries, directing themselves towards the south and west; about the year 500, in Western Asia begins an epoch of splendour for ancient Persia; and the wave moves on to the east of Europe, where, about 250 B.C., Greece reaches her highest state of culture and civilization--and further on to the west, where, at the birth of Christ, the Roman Empire finds itself at its apogee of power and greatness." Again, at this period we find the rising of a third historical wave at the far East. After prolonged revolutions, about this time, China forms once more a powerful empire, and its arts, sciences and commerce flourish again. Then 250 years later, we find the Huns appearing from the depths of Central Asia; in the year 500 A.D., a new and powerful Persian kingdom is formed; in 750--in Eastern Europe--the Byzantine empire; and in the year 1000--on its western side--springs up the second Roman Power, the Empire of the Papacy, which soon reaches an extraordinary development of wealth and brilliancy. At the same time the fourth wave approaches from the Orient. China is again flourishing; in 1250, the Mongolian wave from Central Asia has overflowed and covered an enormous area of land, including Russia. About 1500, in Western Asia the Ottoman Empire rises in all its might, and conquers the Balkan peninsula; but at the same time, in Eastern Europe, Russia throws off the Tartar yoke; and about 1750, during the reign of Empress Catherine, rises to an unexpected grandeur, and covers itself with glory. The wave ceaselessly moves further on to the West; and beginning with the middle of the past century, Europe is living over an epoch of revolutions and reforms, and, according to the author, "if it is permissible to prophesy, then about the year 2000, Western Europe will have lived through one of those periods of culture and progress so rare in history." The Russian press taking the cue believes, that "towards those days the Eastern Question will be finally settled, the national dissensions of the European peoples will come to an end, and the dawn of the new millennium will witness the abolition of armies and an alliance between all the European empires." The signs of regeneration are also fast multiplying in Japan and China, as if pointing to the rise of a new historical wave in the extreme East. If from the cycle of two-and-a-half centuries we descend to that which leaves its impress every century, and, grouping together the events of ancient history, mark the development and rise of empires, then we shall find that, beginning from the year 700 B.C., the centennial wave pushes forward, bringing into prominence the following nations, each in its turn--the Assyrians, the Medes, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Macedonians, the Carthagenians, the Romans, and the Teutons. The striking periodicity of the wars in Europe is also noticed by Dr. E. Zasse. Beginning with 1700 A.D., every ten years have been signalized by either a war or a revolution. The periods of the strengthening and weakening of the warlike excitement of the European nations represent a wave strikingly regular in its periodicity, flowing incessantly, as if propelled onward by some fixed inscrutable law. This same mysterious law seems also to connect these events with the astronomical wave or cycle, which governs the periodicity of solar spots. The periods when the European powers have shown the most destructive energy are marked by a cycle of fifty years' duration. It would be too long and tedious to enumerate them from the beginning of history. We may, therefore, limit our study to the cycle beginning with the year 1712, when all the European nations were fighting each other in the Northern, and the Turkish wars, and the war for the throne of Spain. About 1761, the "Seven Years' War"; in 1810, the wars of Napoleon I. Towards 1861, the wave has been a little deflected from its regular course; but, as if to compensate for it, or propelled, perhaps, with unusual force, the years directly preceding, as well as those which followed it, left in history the records of the most fierce and bloody wars--the Crimean War in the former, and the American Civil War in the latter period. The periodicity in the wars between Russia and Turkey appears peculiarly striking, and represents a very characteristic wave. At first the intervals between the cycles of thirty years' duration--1710, 1740, 1770 then these intervals diminish, and we have a cycle of twenty years--1790, 1810, 1829-30; then the intervals widen again--1853 and 1878. But if we take note of the whole duration of the in-flowing tide of the war-like cycle, then we shall have at the centre of it--from 1768 to 1812--three wars of seven years' duration each, and at both ends, wars of two years. Finally, the author comes to the conclusion that, in view of facts, it becomes thoroughly impossible to deny the presence of a regular periodicity in the excitement of both mental and physical forces in the nations of the world. He proves that in the history of all the peoples and empires of the Old World, the cycles marking the millenniums, the centennials as well as the minor ones of fifty and ten years' duration, are the most important, inasmuch as neither of them has ever yet failed to bring in its train some more or less marked event in the history of the nation swept over by these historical waves. The history of India is one which, of all histories, is the most vague and least satisfactory. Yet were its consecutive great events noted down, and its annals well searched, the law of cycles would be found to have asserted itself here as plainly as in every other country in respect of its wars, famines, political exigencies, and other matters. In France, a meteorologist of Paris went to the trouble of compiling the statistics of the coldest seasons, and discovered that those years which had the figure 9 in them had been marked by the severest winters. His figures run thus:--in 859 A.D., the northern part of the Adriatic Sea was frozen, and was covered for three months with ice. In 1179, In the most moderate zones, the earth was covered with several feet of snow. In 1209, in France the depth of snow and the bitter cold caused such a scarcity of fodder that most of the cattle perished in that country. In 1249, the Baltic Sea between Russia, Norway and Sweden remained frozen for many months, and communication was kept up by sleighs. In 1339, there was such a terrific winter in England, that vast numbers of people died of starvation and exposure. In 1409, the river Danube was frozen from its sources to its mouth in the Black Sea. In 1469, all the vineyards and orchards perished in consequence of the frost. In 1609, in France, Switzerland and Upper Italy, people had to thaw their bread and provisions before they could use them. In 1639, the Harbour of Marseilles was covered with ice to a great distance. In 1659, all the rivers in Italy were frozen. In 1699, the winter in France and Italy proved the severest and longest of all. The prices for articles of food were so much raised that half of the population died of starvation. In 1709, the winter was no less terrible. The ground was frozen in France, Italy and Switzerland to the depth of several feet; and the sea, south as well as north, was covered with one compact and thick crust of ice, many feet deep, and for a considerable distance in the usually open sea. Numbers of wild beasts, driven out by the cold from their dens in the forests, sought refuge in villages and even cities; and the birds fell dead to the ground by hundreds. In 1729, 1749 and 1769 (cycles of twenty years' duration), all the rivers and streams were ice-bound all over France for many weeks, and all the fruit trees perished. In 1789, France was again visited by a very severe winter. In Paris, the thermometer stood at nineteen degrees of frost. But the severest of all winters proved that of 1829. For fifty-four consecutive days all the roads in France were covered, with snow several feet deep, and all the rivers were frozen. Famine and misery reached their climax in the country in that year. In 1839, there was again in France a most terrific and trying cold season. And the winter of 1879 has asserted its statistical rights, and proved true to the fatal influence of the figure 9. The meteorologists of other countries are invited to follow suit, and make their investigations likewise, for the subject is certainly most fascinating as well as most instructive. Enough has been shown, however, to prove that neither the ideas of Pythagoras on the mysterious influence of numbers, nor the theories of the ancient world-religions and philosophies are as shallow and meaningless as some too forward thinkers would have had the world to believe. --H.P.B. SCIENTIFIC Odorigen and Jiva Professor Yaeger of Stuttgart has made a very interesting study of the sense of smell. He starts from the fact well known in medical jurisprudence, that the blood of an animal when treated by sulphuric, or indeed by any other decomposing acid, smells like the animal itself to which it belongs. This holds good even after the blood has been long dried. Let us state before all what is to be understood by the smell of a certain animal. There is the pure, specific smell of the animal, inherent in its flesh, or, as we shall see hereafter, in certain portions of its flesh. This smell is best perceived when the flesh is gently boiling in water. The broth thereby obtained contains the specific taste and smell of the animal--I call it specific, because every species, nay every variety of species, has its own peculiar taste and smell. Think of mutton broth, chicken broth, fish broth, &c. &c. I shall call this smell, the specific scent of the animal. I need not say that the scent of an animal is quite different from all such odours as are generated within its organism, along with its various secretions and excretions: bile, gastric juice, sweat, &c. These odours are again different in the different species and varieties of animals. The cutaneous exhalation of the goat, the sheep, the donkey, widely differ from each other; and a similar difference prevails with regard to all the other effluvia of these animals. In fact, as far as olfactory experience goes, we may say that the odour of each secretion and excretion of a certain species of animals is peculiar to itself, and characteristically different in the similar products of another species. By altering the food of an animal we may considerably alter all the above-mentioned odours, scents, as well as smells; yet essentially they will always retain their specific odoriferous type. All this is matter of strict experience. Strongly diffusive as all these odorous substances are, they permeate the whole organism, and each of them contributes its share to what in the aggregate constitutes the smell of the living animal. It is altogether an excrementitious smell tempered by the scent of the animal. That excrementitious smell we shall henceforth simply call the smell, in contradistinction to the scent of the animal. To return after this not very pleasant, but nevertheless necessary digression, to our subject. Professor Yaeger found that blood, treated by an acid, may emit the scent or the smell of the animal, according as the acid is weak or strong. A strong acid, rapidly disintegrating the blood, brings out the animal's smell; a weak acid, the animal's scent. We see, then, that in every drop of blood of a certain species of animal, and we may as well say, in each of its blood corpuscles, and in the last instance, in each of its molecules, the respective animal species is fully represented, as to its odorant speciality, under both aspects of scent and smell. We have, then, on the one side, the fact before us that wherever we meet in the animal kingdom with difference of shape, form, and construction, so different as to constitute a class, a genus, or a family of its own, there we meet at the same time with a distinct and specific scent and smell. On the other hand, we know that these specific odours are invariably interblended with the very life-blood of the animal. And lastly, we know that these specific odours cannot be accounted for by any agents taken up in the shape of food from the outer world. We are, then, driven to the conclusion that they are properties of the inner animal; that they, in other words, pertain to the specific protoplasm of the animal concerned. And thus our conclusion attains almost certainty, when we remember that it stands the crucial test of experiment--that we need only decompose the blood in order to find there what we contend to be an essential ingredient of it. I must now say a few words in explanation of the term protoplasm. Protoplasm is a soft, gelatinous substance, transparent and homogeneous, easily seen in large plant-cells; it may be compared to the white of an egg. When at rest all sorts of vibratory, quivering and trembling movements can be observed within its mass. It forms the living material in all vegetable and animal cells; in fact, it is that component of the body which really does the vital work. It is the formative agent of all living tissues. Vital activity, in the broadest sense of the term, manifests itself in the development of the germ into the complete organism, repeating the type of its parents, and in the subsequent maintenance of that organism in its integrity and both these functions are exclusively carried on by the protoplasm. Of course, there is a good deal of chemical and mechanical work done in the organism, but protoplasm is the formative agent of all the tissues and structures. Of tissues and structures already formed, we may fairly say that they have passed out of the realms of vitality, as they are destined to gradual disintegration and decay in the course of life; it is they that are on the way of being cast out of the organism, when they have once run through the scale of retrograde metamorphosis; and it is they that give rise to what we have called the smell of the animal. What lives in them is the protoplasm. In the shape of food the outer world supplies the organism with all the materials necessary for the building up of the constantly wasting organic structures; and, in the shape of heat, there comes from the outer world that other element necessary for structural changes, development and growth--the element of force. But the task of directing all the outward materials to the development and maintenance of the organism--in other words, the task of the director-general of the organic economy falls to the protoplasm. Now this wonderful substance, chemically and physically the same in the highest animal and in the lowest plant, has been all along the puzzle of the biologist. How is it that in man protoplasm works out human structure; in fowl, fowl structure, &c. &c., while the protoplasm itself appears to be everywhere the same? To Professor Yaeger belongs the great merit of having shown us that the protoplasms of the various species of plants and animals are not the same; that each of them contains, moreover, imbedded in its molecules, odorant substances peculiar to the one species and not to the other. That, on the other hand, those odorous substances are by no means inactive bodies, may be inferred from their great volatility, known as it is in physical science that volatility is owing to a state of atomic activity. Prevost has described two phenomena that are presented by odorous substances. One is that, when placed on water, they begin to move; and the other is, that a thin layer of water, extended on a perfectly clean glass plate, retracts when such an odorous substance as camphor is placed upon it. Monsieur Ligeois has further shown that the particles of an odorous body, placed on water, undergo a rapid division, and that the movements of camphor, or of benzoic acid, are inhibited, or altogether arrested, if an odorous substance be brought into contact with the water in which they are moving. Seeing, then, that odorous substances, when coming in contact with liquid bodies, assume a peculiar motion, and impart at the same time motion to the liquid body, we may fairly conclude that the specific formative capacity of the protoplasm is owing, not to the protoplasm itself, since it is everywhere alike, but to the inherent, specific, odoriferous substances. I shall only add that Professor Yaeger's theory may be carried farther yet. Each metal has also a certain taste and odour peculiar to itself; in other words, they are also endowed with odoriferous substances. And this may help us to explain the fact that each metal, when crystallizing out of a liquid solution, invariably assumes a distinct geometrical form, by which it may be distinguished from any other. Common salt, for instance, invariably crystallizes in cubes, alum in octohedra, and so on. Professor Yaeger's theory explains further to us that other great mystery of Nature--the transmission from parent to offspring of the morphological speciality. This is another puzzle of the biologist. What is there in the embryonal germ that evolves out of the materials stored up therein a frame similar to the parents? In other words, what is there that presides over the preservation of the species, working out the miniature duplicate of the parents' configuration and character? It is the protoplasm, no doubt; and the female ovum contains protoplasm in abundance. But neither the physicist nor the chemist can detect any difference between the primordial germ, say of the fowl, and that of a female of the human race. In answer to this question--a question before which science stands perplexed--we need only remember what has been said before about the protoplasmic scent. We have spoken before of the specific scent of the animal as a whole. We know, however, that every organ and tissue in a given animal has again its peculiar scent and taste. The scent and taste of the liver, spleen, brain, &c., are quite different in the same animal. And if our theory is correct, then it could not be otherwise. Each of these organs is differently constructed, and as variety of organic structure is supposed to be dependent upon variety of scent, there must necessarily be a specific cerebral scent, a specific splenetic scent, a specific hepatic scent, &c. &c. What we call, then, the specific scent of the living animal must, therefore, be considered as the aggregate of all the different scents of its organs. When we see that a weak solution of sulphuric acid is capable of disengaging from the blood the scent of the animal, we shall then bear in mind that this odorous emanation contains particles of all the scents peculiar to each tissue and organ of the animal. When we further say that each organ in a living animal draws by selective affinity from the blood those materials which are necessary for its sustenance, we must not forget that each organ draws at the same time by a similar selective affinity the specific odorous substances requisite for its constructive requirements. We have now only to suppose that the embryonal germ contains, like the blood itself, all the odorous substances pertaining to the various tissues and organs of the parent, and we shall understand which is the moving principle in the germ that evolves an offspring, shaped in the image and after the likeness of the parents. In plants it is the blossom which is entrusted with the function of reproduction, and the odorous emanations accompanying that process are well known. There is strong reason to believe that something similar prevails in the case of animals, as may be seen from an examination of what embryologists call the aura seminalis. Let us now inquire what the effects are of odours generated in the outer world on animals. The odorous impressions produced may be pleasant or unpleasant, pleasant to one and unpleasant to another animal. What is it that constitutes this sensation of pleasure or displeasure? Professor Yaeger answers, It is harmony or disharmony which makes all the difference. The olfactory organs of each animal are impregnated by its own specific scent. Whenever the odorous waves of a substance harmonize in their vibration with the odorous waves emanating from the animal; in other words, whenever they fall in and agree with each other, an agreeable sensation is produced; whenever the reverse takes places, the sensation is disagreeable. In this way it is that the odour regulates the choice of the food on the part of the animal. In a similar way the sympathies and antipathies between the various animals are regulated. For every individual has not only its specific but also its individual scent. The selection between the sexes, or what, in the case of the human race, is called love, has its mainspring in the odorous harmony subsisting in the two individuals concerned. This individual scent--a variation of the specific odorous type--alters (within the limits of its speciality) with age, with the particular mode of occupation, with the sex, with certain physiological conditions and functions during life, with the state of health, and last, but not least, with the state of our mind. It is to be remembered that every time protoplasm undergoes disintegration, specific odours are set free. We have seen how sulphuric acid, or heat, when boiling or roasting meat, brings out the specific animal odour. But it is an established fact in science, that every physical or mental operation is accompanied by disintegration of tissue; consequently we are entitled to say that with every emotion odours are being disengaged. It can be shown that the quality of those odours differ with the nature of the emotion. The prescribed limits prevent further pursuit of the subject; I shall, therefore, content myself by drawing some conclusions from Professor Yaeger's theory in the light of the Esoteric Doctrine. The phenomena of mesmeric cures find their full explanation in the theory just enunciated. For since the construction and preservation of the organism, and of every organ in particular, is owing to specific scents, we may fairly look upon disease in general as a disturbance of the specific scent of the organism, and upon disease of a particular organ of the body, as a disturbance of the specific scent pertaining to that particular organ. We have been hitherto in the habit of holding the protoplasm responsible for all phenomena of disease. We have now come to learn that what acts in the protoplasm are the scents; we shall, therefore, have to look to them as the ultimate cause of morbid phenomena. I have mentioned before the experiment of Mons. Ligeois, showing that odoriferous substances, when brought in contact with water, move; and that the motion of one odoriferous substance may be inhibited, or arrested altogether, by the presence of another odoriferous substance. Epidemic diseases, and the zymotic diseases in particular, have, then, most likely their origin in some local odours which inhibit the action of our specific organic odours. In the case of hereditary diseases, it is most likely the transmission of morbid specific odours from parent to offspring that is the cause of the evil, knowing, as we do, that in disease the natural specific odour is altered, and must, therefore, have been altered in the diseased parent. Now comes the mesmeriser. He approaches the sick with the strong determination to cure him. This determination, or effort of the will, is absolutely necessary, according to the agreement of all mesmerisers, for his curative success. Now an effort of the will is a mental operation, and is, therefore, accompanied by tissue disintegration. The effort being purely mental, we may say it is accompanied by disintegration of cerebral and nervous tissue. But disintegration of organic tissue means, as we have seen before, disengagement of specific scents; the mesmeriser emits, then, during his operation, scents from his own body. And as the patient's sufferings are supposed to originate from a deficiency or alteration of his own specific scent, we can well see how the mesmeriser, by his mesmeric or odoriferous emanations, may effect a cure. He may supply the want of certain odoriferous substances in the patient, or he may correct others by his own emanations, knowing, as we do, from the experiment of Mons. Ligeois, that odorant matter does act on odorant matter. One remark more and I have done. By the Esoteric Doctrine we are told that the living body is divided into two parts: 1. The physical body, composed wholly of matter in its grossest and most tangible form. 2. The vital principle (or Jiva), a form of force indestructible, and, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becoming attracted immediately by others. Now this division, generally speaking, fully agrees with the teachings of science. I need only remind you of what I have said before with regard to the formed tissues and structures of the body and its formative agent the protoplasm. Formed structure is considered as material which has already passed out of the realms of life; what lives in it is the protoplasm. So far the esoteric conception fully agrees with the result of the latest investigations of modern science. But when we are told by the Esoteric Doctrine that the vital principle is indestructible, we feel we move on occult, incomprehensible ground, for we know that protoplasm is, after all, as destructible as the body itself. It lives as long as life lasts, and, it may be said, it is the only material in the body that does live as long as life lasts. But it dies with the cessation of life. It is true it is capable of a sort of resuscitation. For that very dead protoplasm, be it animal or vegetable, serves again as our food, and as the food of all the animal world, and thus helps to repair our constantly wasting economy. But for all that it could hardly be said to be indestructible; it is assimilable--that is to say, capable of re-entering the domain of life, through its being taken up by a living body. But such an eventual chance does by no means confer upon it the attribute of indestructibility; for we need only leave the dead animal or plant containing the protoplasm alone, and it will rot and decay--organs, tissues, and protoplasm altogether. To our further perplexity the Esoteric Doctrine tells us that the vital principle is not only indestructible, but it is a form of force, which, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becomes attracted immediately by others. The vital principle to the Esoteric Doctrine would then appear to be a sort of abstract force, not a force inherent in the living protoplasm--this is the scientific conception--but a force per se, independent altogether of the material with which it is connected. Now I must confess this is a doctrine which puzzles one greatly, although one may have no difficulty in accepting the spirit of man as an entity, for the phenomena of ratiocination are altogether so widely different from all physical phenomena that they can hardly be explained by any of the physical forces known to us. The materialist, who tells us that consciousness, sensation, thought, and the spontaneous power of the will, so peculiar to man and to the higher animals, are altogether so many outcomes of certain conditions of matter and nothing else, makes at best merely a subjective statement. He cannot help acknowledging that spontaneity is not a quality of matter. He is then driven to the contention that what we believe to be spontaneous in us, is, after all, an unconscious result of external impulses only. His contention rests then on the basis of his own inner experience, or what he believes to be such. This contention of his is, however, disputed by many, who no less appeal to their own inner experience, or what they believe to be their experience. It is then a question of inner experience of the one party versus inner experience of the other. And such being the case, the scientific materialist is driven to admit that his theory, however correct it may be, rests, after all, on subjective experience, and can, as such, not claim the rank of positive knowledge. There is then no difficulty in accepting the entity of the spirit in man, the materialistic assertion to the contrary notwithstanding. But the vital force is exclusively concerned with the construction of matter. Here we have a right to expect that physical and chemical forces should hold the whole ground of an explanation, if an explanation is possible at all. Now, physical and chemical forces are no entities; they are invariably connected with matter. In fact, they are so intimately connected with matter that they can never be dissevered from it altogether. The energy of matter may be latent or patent, and, when patent, it may manifest itself in one form or the other, according to the condition of its surroundings; it may manifest itself in the shape of light, heat, electricity, magnetism, or vitality; but in one form or the other energy constantly inheres in matter. The correlation of forces is now a well-established, scientific fact, and it is more than plausible that what is called the vital principle, or the vital force, forms a link in the chain of the other known physical forces, and is, therefore, transmutable into any of them; granted even that there is such a thing as a distinct vital force. The tendency of modern Biology is then to discard the notion of a vital entity altogether. If vital force is to be indestructible, then so are also indestructible heat, light, electricity, &c.; they are indestructible in this sense, that whenever their respective manifestation is suspended or arrested, they make their appearance in some other form of force; and in this very same sense vital force may be looked upon as indestructible: whenever vital manifestation is arrested, what had been acting as vital force is transformed into chemical, electrical forces, &c., taking its place. But the Esoteric Doctrine appears to teach something quite different from what I have just explained, and what is, as far as I understand, a fair representation of the scientific conception of the subject. The Esoteric Doctrine tells us that the vital principle is indestructible, and, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becomes attracted by others. He then evidently holds that, what constitutes the vital principle is a principle or form of force per se, a form of force which can leave one set of atoms and go over as such to another set, without leaving any substitute force behind. This, it must be said, is simply irreconcileable with the scientific view on the subject as hitherto understood. By the and of Professor Yaeger's theory this difficulty can be explained, I am happy to say, in a most satisfactory way. The seat of the vital principle, according to Professor Yaeger's theory, is not the protoplasm, but the odorant matter imbedded in it. And such being the case, the vital principle, as far as it can be reached by the breaking up of its animated protoplasm, is really indestructible. You destroy the protoplasm by burning it, by treating it with sulphuric acid, or any other decomposing agent--the odoriferous substances, far from being destroyed, become only so much the more manifest; they escape the moment protoplasmic destruction or decomposition begins, carrying along with them the vital principle, or what has been acting as such in the protoplasm. And as they are volatile, they must soon meet with other protoplasms congenial to their nature, and set up there the same kind of vital activity as they have done in their former habitat. They are, as the Esoteric Doctrine rightly teaches, indestructible, and when disconnected with one set of atoms, they immediately become attracted by others. --L. Salzer, M.D. Odorigen and Jiva (II.) There is a well-known Sanskrit treatise, where most of the deductions of Dr. Yaeger are anticipated and practically applied to sexual selection in the human species. The subject of aura seminalis finds a pretty full treatment there. The connection between what Dr. Yaeger calls "odorigen" and jiva or prana, as it is differently called in different systems of Indian philosophy, has been well traced. But his remarks on this subject, able as they no doubt are, call for a few observations from the point of view of occult philosophy. Jiva has been described by a trustworthy authority as a "form of force indestructible, and, when disconnected with one set of atoms, is immediately attracted by another set." Dr. Salzer concludes from this that occult philosophy looks upon it as an abstract force or force per se. But surely this is bending too much to the Procrustean phraseology of modern science, and if not properly guarded will lead to some misapprehension. Matter in occult philosophy means existence in the widest sense of that word. However much the various forms of existence, such as physical, vital, mental, spiritual, &c., differ from each other, they are mutually related as being parts of the ONE UNIVERSAL EXISTENCE, the Parabrahma of the Vedantist. Force is the inherent power or capacity of Parabrahma, or the "matter" of occultism, to assume different forms. This power or capacity is not a separate entity, but is the thing itself in which it inheres, just as the three-angled character of a triangle is nothing separate from the triangle itself. From this it will be abundantly clear that, accepting the nomenclature of occult science, one cannot speak of an abstract force without being guilty of a palpable absurdity. What is meant by Jiva being a "form of force," &c., is that it is matter in a state in which it exhibits certain phenomena, not produced by it in its sensuous state; or, in other words, it is a property of matter in a particular state, corresponding with properties called, under ordinary circumstances, heat, electricity, &c., by modern science, but at the same time without any correlation to them. It might here be objected that if Jiva was not a force per se, in the sense which modern science would attach to the phrase, then how can it survive unchanged the grand change called death, which the protoplasms it inheres in undergo? and even granting that Jiva is matter in a particular state, in what part of the body shall we locate it, in the teeth of the fact that the most careful examination has not been successful in detecting it? Jiva, as has already been stated, is subtle supersensuous matter, permeating the entire physical structure of the living being, and when it is separated from such structure life is said to become extinct. It is not reasonable therefore to expect it to be subject to detection by the surgeon's knife. A particular set of conditions is necessary for its connection with an animal structure, and when those conditions are disturbed, it is attracted by other bodies, presenting suitable conditions. Dr. Yaegar's "odorigen" is not Jiva itself, but is one of the links which connects it with the physical body; it seems to be matter standing between Sthula Sarira (gross body) and Jiva. --Dharanidar Kauthumi Introversion of Mental Vision Some interesting experiments have recently been tried by Mr. F.W.H. Myers and his colleagues of the Psychic Research Society of London, which, if properly examined, are capable of yielding highly important results. With the details of these we are not at present concerned: it will suffice for our purpose to state, for the benefit of readers unacquainted with the experiments, that in a very large majority of cases, too numerous to be the result of mere chance, it was found that the thought-reading sensitive obtained but an inverted mental picture of the object given him to read. A piece of paper, containing the representation of an arrow, was held before a carefully blindfolded thought-reader, who was requested to mentally see the arrow as it was turned round. In these circumstances it was found that when the arrow-head pointed to the right, it was read off as pointing to the left, and so on. This led some to imagine that there was a mirage in the inner as well as on the outer plane of optical sensation. But the real explanation of the phenomenon lies deeper. It is well known that an object as seen by us and its image on the retina of the eye, are not exactly the same in position, but quite the reverse. How the image of an object on the retina is inverted in sensation, is a mystery which physical science is admittedly incapable of solving. Western metaphysics, too, with regard to this point, hardly fares any better; there are as many theories as there are metaphysicians. The only philosopher who has obtained a glimpse of the truth is the idealist Berkeley, who says that a child does really see a thing inverted from our standpoint; to touch its head it stretches out its hands in the same direction of its body as we do of ours to reach our feet. Repeated failures give experience and lead to the correction of the notions born of one sense by those derived through another; the sensations of distance and solidity are produced in the same way. The application of this knowledge to the above mentioned experiments of the Psychic Research Society will lead to very suggestive results. If the trained adept is a person who has developed all his interior faculties, and is on the psychic plane in the full possession of his senses, the individual, who accidentally, that is, without occult training, gains the inner sight, is in the position of a helpless child--a sport of the freaks of one isolated inner sense. Such was the case with the sensitives with whom Mr. Myers and his colleagues experimented. There are instances, however, when the correction of one sense by another takes place involuntarily and accurate results are brought out. When the sensitive reads the thoughts in a man's mind, this correction is not required, for the will of the thinker shoots the thoughts, as it were, straight into the mind of the sensitive. The introversion under notice will, moreover, be found to take place only in the instance of such images which cannot be corrected by the already acquired sense-experience of the sensitive. A difficulty may here suggest itself with regard to the names of persons or the words thought of for the sensitive's reading. But allowance must in such cases be made for the operation of the thinker's will, which forces the thought into the sensitive's mind, and thereby obviates introversion. It is abundantly clear from this that the best way of studying these phenomena is when only one set of inner faculties, that of the sensitive, is in play. This takes place always when the object the sensitive has to abnormally perceive is independent of the will of any other person, as in the case of its being represented on paper. Applying the same law to dreams, we can find the rationale of the popular superstition that facts are generally inverted in dreams. To dream of something good is generally taken to be the precursor of something evil. In the exceptional cases in which dreams have been found to be prophetic, the dreamer was either affected by another's will or under the operation of some disturbing forces, which cannot be calculated except for each particular case. In this connection another very important psychic phenomenon may be noticed. Instances are too numerous and too well authenticated to be amenable to dispute, in which an occurrence at a distance--for instance, the death of a person--has pictured itself to the mental vision of one interested in the occurrence. In such cases the double of the dying man appears even at a great distance, and becomes visible usually to his friend only, but instances are not rare when the double is seen by a number of persons. The former case comes within the class of cases under consideration, as the concentrated thought of the dying man is clairvoyantly seen by the friend, and the incidents correctly reproduced by the operation of the dying man's will-energy, while the latter is the appearance of the genuine mayavirupa, and therefore not governed by the law under discussion. --Mohini M. Chatterji "Precipitation" Or all phenomena produced by occult agency in connection with our Society, none have been witnessed by a more extended circle of spectators, or more widely known and commented on through recent Theosophical publications, than the mysterious production of letters. The phenomenon itself has been so well described in the "Occult World" and elsewhere, that it would be useless to repeat the description here. Our present purpose is more connected with the process than the phenomenon of the mysterious formation of letters. Mr. Sinnett sought for an explanation of the process, and elicited the following reply from the revered Mahatma, who corresponds with him:--"....Bear in mind these letters are not written, but impressed, or precipitated, and then all mistakes corrected .... I have to think it over, to photograph every word and sentence carefully in my brain, before it can be repeated by precipitation. As the fixing on chemically-prepared surfaces of the images formed by the camera requires a previous arrangement within the focus of the object to be represented, for, otherwise--as often found in bad photographs--the legs of the sitter might appear out of all proportion with the head, and so on--so we here to first arrange our sentences, and impress every letter to appear on paper in our minds, before it becomes fit to be read. For the present, it is all I can tell you." Since the above was written, the Masters have been pleased to permit the veil to be drawn aside a little more, and the modus operandi can thus be explained now more fully to the outsider. Those having even a superficial knowledge of the science of mesmerism know how the thoughts of the mesmeriser, though silently formulated in his mind, are instantly transferred to that of the subject. It is not necessary for the operator, if he is sufficiently powerful, to be present near the subject to produce the above result. Some celebrated practitioners in this science are known to have been able to put their subjects to sleep even from a distance of several days' journey. This known fact will serve us as a guide in comprehending the comparatively unknown subject now under discussion. The work of writing the letters in question is carried on by a sort of psychic telegraphy; the Mahatmas very rarely write their letters in the ordinary way. An electro-magnetic connection, so to say, exists on the psychic plane between a Mahatma and his chelas, one of whom acts as his amanuensis. When the Master wants a letter to be written in this way, he very often draws the attention of the chela, whom he selects for the task, by causing an astral bell (heard by so many of our Fellows and others) to be rung near him, just as the despatching telegraph office signals to the receiving office before wiring the message. The thoughts arising in the mind of the Mahatma are then clothed in words, pronounced mentally, and forced along currents in the astral light impinge on the brain of the pupil. Thence they are borne by the nerve-currents to the palms of his hands and the tips of his fingers, which rest on a piece of magnetically-prepared paper. As the thought waves are thus impressed on the tissue, materials are drawn to it from the ocean of akas (permeating every atom of the sensuous universe) by an occult process, out of place here to describe, and permanent marks are left. From this it is abundantly clear that the success of such writing, as above described, depends chiefly upon two conditions:--(1) The force and clearness with which the thoughts are propelled; and (2) the freedom of the receiving brain from disturbance of every description. The case with the ordinary electric telegraph is exactly the same. If, for some reason or other, the battery supplying the electric power falls below the requisite strength on any telegraph line, or there is some derangement in the receiving apparatus, the message transmitted becomes either mutilated or otherwise imperfectly legible. Inaccuracies, in fact, do very often arise, as may be gathered from what the Mahatma says in the above extract. "Bear in mind," says he, "that these letters are not written, but impressed, or precipitated, and then all mistakes corrected." To turn to the sources of error in the precipitation. Remembering the circumstances under which blunders arise in telegrams, we see that if a Mahatma somehow becomes exhausted, or allows his thoughts to wander during the process, or fails to command the requisite intensity in the astral currents along which his thoughts are projected, or the distracted attention of the pupil produces disturbances in his brain and nerve-centres, the success of the process is very much interfered with. It is to be regretted that illustrations of the above general principles are not permitted to be published. Enough, however, has been disclosed to give the public a clue to many apparent mysteries in regard to precipitated letters, and to draw all earnest and sincere inquirers strongly to the path of spiritual progress, which alone can lead to the comprehension of occult phenomena. --Anon. "How Shall We Sleep?" It appears that the opinion of Mr. Seeta Nath Ghose and of Baron Von Reichenbach are in direct conflict on the subject of this paper, the latter recommending the head of the sleeper to be northward, the former entirely condemning that position. It is my humble opinion that both writers are right, each from his own standpoint, as I shall try to show. What is the reason that our position in sleep should be of any consequence? Because our body must be in a position at harmony with the main magnetic currents of the earth; but as these currents are not the same in all parts of the world the positions of the sleeper must, therefore, vary. There are three main magnetic currents on our earth--viz., in the northern hemisphere, from north pole towards the equator; in the southern hemisphere, from south pole towards the equator; these two currents meeting in the torrid zone continue their combined course from east to west. So the position of the sleeper must vary according as he finds himself to the north or south of the torrid zone or within it. In the north frigid or temperate zone, he has to lie with his head northward; in the southern, southward; in the torrid zone, eastward-- in order that the magnetic current may pass through him from head to foot without disturbance, as this is the natural position for magnetization. The following diagram may give a clearer view of the case, and thus help us to answer the second part of the question, whether and when we ought to lie on the right or the left side, on the stomach or on the back:-- [[Diagram here]] The able writer of "How Shall we Sleep?" shows, in his cross diagram, that he thinks the head to be entirely positive and both feet negative. I think that this is not the case, but that the right side of the head and the left foot are positive, and the left side of the head and the right foot negative, and similarly the right hand is negative and the left hand is positive. As the north pole is positive and the left side of the head negative, the natural position in sleep for those living within the northern zones would be on the right side, head northward; and it is obvious that in the southern zones the position must be exactly the reverse. As to those who live under the tropics, lying on the stomach seems to me to be the most natural position, since the left, or negative side of the head, is turned to the north or positive current, and vice versa. For many years I and my family have been sleeping with our heads either to the north or the west (the right position in our hemisphere, in my opinion), and we had no occasion to regret it; for from that time forward the physician has become a rare visitor in our house. Mr. Seeta Nath Ghose says, in his interesting paper on "Medical Magnetism," that Mandulies (metallic cells) are worn to great advantage in India on diseased parts of the body. The curative properties of these cells I have seen verified in authentic instances. When, years ago (I believe about 1852), cholera was devastating some parts of Europe, it was remarked at Munich (Bavaria) that among the thousands of its victims there was not a single coppersmith. Hence, it was recommended by the medical authorities of that town to wear disks of thin copperplate (of about 2 1/2 inch diameter) on a string, on the pit of the stomach, and they proved to be a powerful preventive of cholera. Again, in 1867, cholera visited Odessa. I and my whole family wore these copper disks; and while all around there were numerous cases of cholera and dysentery, not one of us was attacked. I propose that serious experiments should be made in this direction, and specially in those countries which are periodically devastated by that disease: as India, for instance. It is my conviction that one disk of copper on the stomach, and another of zinc on the spine, opposite the former, will be of still better service, the more so if the disks are joined by a thin copper chain. --Gustave Zorn In the first place it is necessary to say that the rules laid down by Garga, Markandeya and others on the above subject, refer to the inhabitants of the plains only, and not to dwellers on mountains. The rule is that on retiring a man should first lie on his right side for the period of sixteen breathings, then turn on his left for double that time, and after that he can sleep in any position. Further, that a man must not sleep on the ground, on silken or woollen cloth, under a solitary tree, where cross-roads meet, on mountains, or on the sky (whatever that may mean). Nor is he to sleep with damp clothes, wet feet, or in a naked state; and, unless an initiate, should not sleep on Kusha grass or its varieties. There are many more such rules. I may here notice that in Sanskrit the right hand or side and south are signified by the same term. So also the front and north have one and the same name. The sun is the great and chief source of life and magnetism in the solar system. Hence to the world the east is positive as the source of light and magnetism. For the same reason, to the northern hemisphere the south (the equator and not the north) is positive. Under the laws of dynamics the resultant of these two forces will be a current in the directed from S.E. to N.W. This, I think, is one of the real causes of the prevailing south-east wind. At any rate, I do not think the north pole to be positive, as there would be no snow there in such a case. The aurora cannot take place at the source of the currents, but at their close. Hence the source must be towards the equator or south. The course of life, civilization, light, and almost everything seems to be from E. to W. or S.E. to N.W. The penalty for sleeping with the head to the west is said to be anxiety of mind, while sleeping with the head to the north is considered fatal. I beg to invite the attention of the Hindus to a similar penalty of death incurred by any but an initiate (Brahman) pronouncing the sacred Pranava (Om). This does not prove that Pranava is really a mischievous bad word, but that, with incompetent men, it is fraught with danger. So also, in the case of ordinary men of the plains, there may be unknown dangers which it would not be prudent for them to risk so long as they do not know how to meet them, or so long as they are not under the guidance of men who can protect them. In short, ordinary men should move on in their beaten course, and these rules are for them only. As an instance of the infringement of the rule the following anecdote is given:-- After Ganesha (Siva's son) was born, all the Devas (gods) came to congratulate the family and bless the child. Sani or Saturn, was the last to come, and even then he came after he had been several times inquired after. When he went to see the infant, it appeared headless! This at once created a sensation, and all the Devas were at their wits' end. At last Saturn himself approached Mahadeva with folded hands and reminded him that it was due to his presence, and the child having been kept in a bed with its head to the north. For such was the law. Then the Devas consulted together and sent out messengers to find out who else was sleeping with the head to the north. At last they discovered an elephant in that position. Its head was immediately cut off and placed on the shoulders of Ganesha. It need not be said that Ganesha became afterwards so learned and wise that if he had not had an elephant's head, a human head would never have been sufficient to hold all he knew. This advantage he owed to the circumstance of his sleeping with head to the north, and the blessing of the Devas. To the elephant, the same position but minus the blessing of the Devas proved absolute death. --Nobin K. Bannerji Reading Mr. Seeta Nath Ghose's paper on "Medical Magnetism" and having studied long ago Baron von Reichenbach's "Researches in Magnetism," I am sorely puzzled, inasmuch as these two authorities appear to clash with each other most completely--the one asserting "head to north never, under no circumstances," the other "head to north ever and under all circumstances." I have pursued the advice of the latter, not knowing of the former for many years, but have not found the effect on my health which I had hoped for, and what is of more importance, I have not found a law of certain application to humanity and bringing health to all. It seems to me on carefully reading this article that a most important point has been omitted or passed over--i.e., the position of the sleeper, whether on his face or on his back? This is most important, for a correct answer may go far to reconcile the two theories, which, be it remembered, claim both to be supported by experiment and by observation. I cannot conceive that a one-sided position is a natural one for man, and thus leave two alternatives. Is the proper position in sleep lying on the back or on the stomach? Not one word has been said as to the position in which experiments were tried on either side. Now the one thing which seems clear in all this is, that positive should be toward negative and negative toward positive. Let us then draw a diagram and these positions will follow with these results--taking the north as positive and south as negative, east as negative and west as positive. Position I.--Lying on the Back. A. Head to East ............ Accord in all B. Head to North .......... Discord--Head and feet Accord--Hands. C. Head to South ........... Accord--Head and feet. Discord--Hands. D. Head to West ............ Discord in all. ---529 [[Diagram here]] Position II.--Lying on Stomach A'. Head to East ........ Accord--in Head and feet Discord--in Hands B'. Head to North ....... Discord in all C'. Head to South ....... Accord in all D'. Head to West ........ Discord--Head and feet Accord--Hands Now, from this will come some light, I think on the apparently contradictory theories, if we could ascertain: (1) Which position did the renowned Garga and Markandeya contemplate as the proper position for men to sleep in? (2) In which position did those on whom Baron von Reichenbach experimented lie? This is a most important question for all who value the gift of health, as well as for those who would be wise. In my sojourn in southern countries I have noticed that the natives of the lower classes at least always sleep on their stomachs, with their back turned to the sun, and all animals do the same, while sleeping on the back is most dangerous, at least in the sun. Is not this a guide or hint as to the true position? Transmigration of the Life-Atoms It is said that "for three thousand years at least the 'mummy,' not withstanding all the chemical preparations, goes on throwing off to the last invisible atoms, which, from the hour of death, reentering the various vortices of being, go indeed through every variety of organized life-forms. But it is not the soul, the fifth, least of all the sixth principle, but the life-atoms of the Jiva, the second principle. At the end of the 3,000 years, sometimes more, and sometimes less, after endless transmigrations, all these atoms are once more drawn together, and are made to form the new outer clothing or the body of the same monad (the real soul) which they had already clothed two or three thousand years before. Even in the worst case, that of the annihilation of the conscious personal principle, the monad or individual soul is ever the same, as are also the atoms of the lower principles, which, regenerated and renewed in this ever-flowing river of being, are magnetically drawn together owing to their affinity, and are once more reincarnated together." This little passage is a new instalment of occult teaching given to the public, and opens up a vast field for thought. It suggests, in the first instance, that the exoteric doctrine of the transmigration of the soul through lower forms of existence--so generally believed in by the Hindus, though incorrect as regards the soul (fifth principle)--has some basis of truth when referred to the lower principles. It is stated further that the mummy goes on throwing off invisible atoms, which go through every variety of organized life-forms, and further on it is stated that it is the life-atoms of the Jiva, the second principle, that go through these transmigrations. According to the esoteric teaching, the Jiva "is a form of force indestructible, and, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becoming attracted immediately by others." What, then, is meant by the life-atoms, and their going through endless transmigrations? The invisible atoms of the mummy would mean the imperceptibly decaying atoms of the physical body, and the life-atoms of the Jiva would be quite distinct from the atoms of the mummy. Is it meant to imply that both the invisible atoms of the physical body, as well as the atoms of the Jiva, after going through various life-forms, return again to re-form the physical body, and the Jiva of the entity that has reached the end of its Devachanic state and is ready to be reincarnated again? It is taught, again, that even in the worst case (the annihilation of the Personal Ego) the atoms of the lower principles are the same as in the previous birth. Here, does the term "lower principles" include the Kama rupa also, or only the lower triad of body, Jiva, and Lingasarira? It seems the Kama rupa in that particular case cannot be included, for in the instance of the annihilation of the personal soul, the Kama rupa would be in the eighth sphere. Another question also suggests itself. The fourth principle (Kama rupa) and the lower portion of the fifth, which cannot be assimilated by the sixth, wander about as shells, and in time disperse into the elements of which they are made. Do the atoms of these principles also reunite, after going through various transmigrations, to constitute over again the fourth and the lower fifth of the next incarnation? --N.D.K. Note We would, to begin with, draw attention to the closing sentence of the passage quoted above: "Such was the true occult theory of the Egyptians," the word "true" being used there in the sense of its being the doctrine they really believed in, as distinct from both the tenets fathered upon them by some Orientalists, and that which the modern occultists may be now teaching. It does not stand to reason that, outside those occult truths that were known to, and revealed by, the great Hierophants during the final initiation, we should accept all that either the Egyptians or any other people may have regarded as true. The Priests of Isis were the only true initiates, and their occult teachings were still more veiled than those of the Chaldeans. There was the true doctrine of the Hierophants of the inner Temple; then the half-veiled Hieratic tenets of the Priest of the outer Temple; and, finally, the vulgar popular religion of the great body of the ignorant, who were allowed to reverence animals as divine. As shown correctly by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, the initiated priests taught that "dissolution is only the cause of reproduction .... nothing perishes which has once existed, but things which appear to be destroyed only change their natures and pass into another form." To the present case, however, the Egyptian doctrine of atoms coincides with our own occult teachings. In the above remarks the words, "The life-atoms of the Jiva," are taken in a strictly literal sense. Without any doubt Jiva or Prana is quite distinct from the atoms it animates. The latter belong to the lowest or grossest state of matter--the objectively conditioned; the former, to a higher state--that state which the uninitiated, ignorant of its nature, would call the "objectively finite," but which, to avoid any future misunderstanding, we may, perhaps, be permitted to call the subjectively eternal, though, at the same time and in one sense, the subsistent existence, however paradoxical and unscientific the term may appear.* Life, the occultist says, is the eternal uncreated energy, and it alone represents in the infinite universe, that which the physicists have agreed to name the principle, or the law of continuity, though they apply it only to the endless development of the conditioned. But since modern science admits, through her most learned professors, that "energy has as much claim to be regarded as an objective reality as matter itself"** and as life, according to the occult doctrine, is the one energy acting, Proteus-like, under the most varied forms, the occultists have a certain right to use such phraseology. Life is ever present in the atom or matter, whether organic or inorganic--a difference that the occultists do not accept. Their doctrine is that life is as much present in the inorganic as in the organic matter: when life-energy is active in the atom, that atom is organic; when dormant or latent, then the atom is inorganic. -------- * Though there is a distinct term for it in the language of the adepts, how can one translate it into a European language? What name can be given to that which is objective yet immaterial in its finite manifestations, subjective yet substantive (though not in our sense of substance) in its eternal existence? Having explained it the best we can, we leave the task of finding a more appropriate term for it to our learned English occultists. ** "Unseen Universe." ---------- Therefore, the expression "life-atom," though apt in one sense to mislead the reader, is not incorrect after all, since occultists do not recognize that anything in Nature can be inorganic, and know of no "dead atoms," whatever meaning science may give to the adjective. The law of biogenesis, as ordinarily understood, is the result of the ignorance of the man of science of occult physics. It is accepted because the man of science is unable to find the necessary means to awaken into activity the dormant life inherent in what he terms an inorganic atom; hence the fallacy that a living thing can only be produced from a living thing, as though there ever was such a thing as dead matter in Nature! At this rate, and to be consistent, a mule ought to be also classed with inorganic matter, since it is unable to reproduce itself and generate life. We dwell so much upon the above as it meets at once all future opposition to the idea that a mummy, several thousand years old, can be throwing off atoms. Nevertheless, the sentence would perhaps have gained in clearness if we had said, instead of the "life-atoms of jiva," the atoms "animated by dormant Jiva or life-energy." Again, the definition of Jiva quoted above, though quite correct on the whole, might be more fully, if not more clearly, expressed. The "jiva," or life, principle, which animates man, beast, plant, and even a mineral, certainly is "a form of force indestructible," since this force is the one life, or anima mundi, the universal living soul, and that the various modes in which objective things appear to us in Nature in their atomic aggregations, such as minerals, plants, animals, &c., are all the different forms or states in which this force manifests itself. Were it to become--we will not say absent, for this is impossible, since it is omnipresent--but for one single instant inactive, say in a stone, the particles of the latter would lose instantly their cohesive property, and disintegrate as suddenly, though the force would still remain in each of its particles, but in a dormant state. Then the continuation of the definition, which states that when this indestructible force is "disconnected with one set of atoms, it becomes attracted immediately by others," does not imply that it abandons entirely the first set, but only that it transfers its vis viva, or living power--the energy of motion--to another set. But because it manifests itself in the next set as what is called kinetic energy, it does not follow that the first set is deprived of it altogether; for it is still in it, as potential energy, or life latent.* This is a cardinal and basic truth of occultism, on the perfect knowledge of which depends the production of every phenomenon. Unless we admit this point, we should have to give up all the other truths of occultism. Thus what is "meant by the life-atom going through endless transmigration" is simply this: we regard and call, in our occult phraseology, those atoms that are moved by kinetic energy as "life-atoms," while those that are for the time being passive, containing but imperceptible potential energy, we call "sleeping atoms;" regarding, at the same time, these two forms of energy as produced by one and the same force or life. ------- * We feel constrained to make use of terms that have become technical in modern science--though they do not always fully express the idea to be conveyed--for want of better words. It is useless to hope that the occult doctrine may be ever thoroughly understood, even the few tenets that can be safely given to the world at large, unless a glossary of such words is edited; and, what is of a still greater importance, until the full and correct meaning of the terms therein taught is thoroughly mastered. --------- Now to the Hindu doctrine of Metempsychosis. It has a basis of truth; and, in fact, it is an axiomatic truth, but only in reference to human atoms and emanations, and that not only after a man's death, but during the whole period of his life. The esoteric meaning of the Laws of Manu (sec. XII. 3, and XII. 54 and ), of the verses asserting that "every act, either mental, verbal or corporeal, bears good or evil fruit (Karma)," that "the various transmigrations of men (not souls) through the highest, middle and lowest stages, are produced by their actions," and again that "a Brahman-killer enters the body of a dog, bear, ass, camel, goat, sheep, bird, &c.," bears no reference to the human Ego, but only to the atoms of his body, his lower triad and his fluidic emanations. It is all very well for the Brahmans to distort, in their own interest, the real meaning contained in these laws, but the words as quoted never meant what they were made to yield later on. The Brahmans applied them selfishly to themselves, whereas by "Brahman," man's seventh principle, his immortal monad and the essence of the personal Ego were allegorically meant. He who kills or extinguishes in himself the light of Parabrahm--i.e., severs his personal Ego from the Atman, and thus kills the future Devachanee, becomes a "Brahman killer." Instead of facilitating, through a virtuous life and spiritual aspirations, the union of the Buddhi and the Manas, he condemns, by his own evil acts, every atom of his lower principles to become attracted and drawn in virtue of the magnetic affinity, thus created by his passions, into the bodies of lower animals. This is the real meaning of the doctrine of Metempsychosis. It is not that such amalgamation of human particles with animal or even vegetable atoms can carry in it any idea of personal punishment per se, for of course it does not. But it is a cause, the effects of which may manifest themselves throughout succeeding re-births, unless the personality is annihilated. Otherwise, from cause to effect, every effect becoming in its turn a cause, they will run along the cycle of re-births, the once given impulse expending itself only at the threshold of Pralaya. But of this anon. Notwithstanding their esoteric meaning, even the words of the grandest and noblest of all the adepts, Gautama Buddha, are misunderstood, distorted and ridiculed in the same way. The Hina-yana, the lowest form of transmigration of the Buddhist, is as little comprehended as the Maha-yana, its highest form; and, because Sakya Muni is shown to have once remarked to his Bhikkhus, while pointing out to them a broom, that "it had formerly been a novice who neglected to sweep out" the Council-room, hence was re-born as a broom (!), therefore, the wisest of all the world's sages stands accused of idiotic superstition. Why not try and find out, before condemning, the true meaning of the figurative statement? Why should we scoff before we understand? Is or is not that which is called magnetic effluvium a something, a stuff, or a substance, invisible, and imponderable though it be? If the learned authors of "The Unseen Universe" object to light, heat and electricity being regarded merely as imponderables, and show that each of these phenomena has as much claim to be recognized as an objective reality as matter itself, our right to regard the mesmeric or magnetic fluid which emanates from man to man, or even from man to what is termed an inanimate object, is far greater. It is not enough to say that this fluid is a species of molecular energy like heat, for instance, though of much greater potency. Heat is produced when ever kinetic energy is transformed into molecular energy, we are told, and it may be thrown out by any material composed of sleeping atoms, or inorganic matter as it is called; whereas the magnetic fluid projected by a living human body is life itself. Indeed it is "life-atoms" that a man in a blind passion throws off unconsciously, though he does it quite as effectively as a mesmeriser who transfers them from himself to any object consciously and under the guidance of his will. Let any man give way to any intense feeling, such as anger, grief, &c., under or near a tree, or in direct contact with a stone, and after many thousands of years any tolerable psychometer will see the man, and perceive his feelings from one single fragment of that tree or stone that he had touched. Hold any object in your hand, and it will become impregnated with your life-atoms, indrawn and outdrawn, changed and transferred in us at every instant of our lives. Animal heat is but so many life atoms in molecular motion. It requires no adept knowledge, but simply the natural gift of a good clairvoyant subject to see them passing to and fro, from man to objects and vice versa like a bluish lambent flame. Why, then, should not a broom, made of a shrub, which grew most likely in the vicinity of the building where the lazy novice lived, a shrub, perhaps, repeatedly touched by him while in a state of anger provoked by his laziness and distaste for his duty--why should not a quantity of his life-atoms have passed into the materials of the future besom, and therein have been recognized by Buddha, owing to his superhuman (not supernatural) powers? The processes of Nature are acts of incessant borrowing and giving back. The materialistic sceptic, however, will not take anything in any other way than in a literal, dead-letter sense. To conclude our too long answer, the "lower principles" mentioned before are the first, second and the third. They cannot include the Kama rupa, for this "rupa" belongs to the middle, not the lower principles. And, to our correspondent's further query, "Do the atoms of these (the fourth and the fifth) also re-form, after going through various transmigrations, to constitute over again the fourth and the lower fifth of the next incarnation?" we answer, "They do." The reason why we have tried to explain the doctrine of the "life-atoms" at such length, is precisely in connection with this last question, and with the object of throwing out one more fertile hint. We do not feel at liberty at present, however, to give any further details. --H.P. Blavatsky "OM," And Its Practical Significance I shall begin with a definition of Om, as given by the late Professor Theodore Goldstucker:-- "Om is a Sanskrit word which, on account of the mystical notions that even at an early date of Hindu civilization were connected with it, acquired much importance in the development of Hindu religion. Its original sense is that of emphatic or solemn affirmation or assent. Thus, when in the White Yajur Veda the sacrificer invites the gods to rejoice in his sacrifice, the goddess Savitri assents to his summons by saying, 'Om' (i.e., be it so); proceed!" Or, when in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Prajapati, the father of gods, men and demons, asks the gods whether they have understood his instructions, he expresses his satisfaction with their affirmative reply in these words, "Om, you have fully comprehended it;" and in the same Upanishad, Pravahana answers the question of Swetaketu, as to whether his father has instructed him, by uttering the word "Om"--i.e., "forsooth (I am)." A portion of the Rig Veda called the Aitareya Brahmana, where, describing a religious ceremony at which verses from the Rig Veda, as well as songs called Gathas, were recited by the priest called Hotri, and responses given by another priest, the Adhwaryu, says: Om is the response of the Adhwaryu to the Rig Veda verses (recited by the Hotri), and likewise tatha (i.e., thus) his response to the Gathas, for Om is (the term of assent) used by the gods, whereas tatha is (the term of assent) used by men (the Rig Veda verses being, to the orthodox Hindu, of divine and the Gathas of human authorship). In this, the original sense of the word, it is little doubtful that Om is but an older and contracted form of the common Sanskrit word evam ("thus"), which, coming from the pronominal base "a," in some derivations changed to "e," may have at one time occurred in the form avam, when, by the elision of the vowel following a, for which there are numerous analogies in Sanskrit, vum would become aum, and hence, according to the ordinary phonetic laws of the language, Om. This etymology of the word, however, seems to have been lost even at an early period of Sanskrit literature; for another is met with in the ancient grammarians, enabling us to account for the mysticism which many religious and theological works of ancient and medieval India suppose to inhere in it. According to this latter etymology, Om would come from a radical av; by means of an affix man, when Om would be a curtailed form of avman or oman, and as av implies the notion of "protect, preserve, save," Om would be a term implying "protection or salvation," its mystical properties and its sanctity being inferred from its occurrence in the Vedic writings and in connection with sacrificial acts, such as are alluded to before. Hence Om became the auspicious word with which the spiritual teacher had to begin and the pupil to end each lesson of his reading of the Veda. "Let this syllable," the existing Prati-sakhya, or a grammar of the Rig Veda, enjoins, "be the head of the reading of the Veda; for alike to the teacher and the pupil it is the supreme Brahman, the gate of heaven." And Manu ordains: "A Brahman at the beginning and end (of a lesson on the Veda) must always pronounce the syllable Om; for unless Om precede, his learning will slip away from him; and unless it follows, nothing will be long retained." At the time when another class of writings (the Puranas) were added to the inspired code of Hinduism, for a similar reason Om is their introductory word. That the mysterious power which, as the foregoing quotation from the law-book of Manu shows, was attributed to this word must have been the subject of early speculation, is obvious enough. A reason assigned for it is given by Manu himself. "Brahma," he says, "extracted from the three Vedas the letter a, the letter u, and the letter m (which combined result in Om), together with the (mysterious) words Bhuh (earth), Bhuva (sky), and Swah (heaven);" and in another verse: "These three great immutable words, preceded by the syllable Om, and (the sacred Rig Veda verse called) Gayatri, consisting of three lines, must be considered as the mouth (or entrance) of Brahman (the Veda)," or, as the commentators observe, the means of attaining final emancipation; and "The syllable Om is the supreme Brahman. (Three) regulated breathings, accompanied with the mental recitation of Om, the three mysterious words Bhuh, Bhuvah, Swah and the Gayatri, are the highest devotion." "All rites ordained in the Veda, such as burnt and other sacrifices, pass away, but the syllable Om must be considered as imperishable; for it is (a symbol of) Brahman (the supreme spirit) himself, the Lord of Creation." In these speculations Manu bears out, and is borne out by, several Upanishads. In the Katha-Upanishad for instance, Yama, the god of death, in replying to a question of Nachiketas, says: "The word which all the Vedas record, which all the modes of penance proclaim, desirous of which religious students perform their duties, this word I will briefly tell thee--it is Om. This syllable means the (inferior) Brahman and the supreme (Brahman). Whoever knows this syllable obtains whatever he wishes." And in the Pras'na-Upanishad the saint Pippalada says to Satyakama: "The supreme and the inferior Brahman are both the word Om; hence the wise follow by this support the one or the other of the two. If he meditates upon its one letter (a) only, he is quickly born on the earth; is carried by the verses of the Rig Veda to the world of man; and, if he is devoted there to austerity, the duties of a religious student and faith, he enjoys greatness. But if he meditates in his mind on its two letters (a and u), he is elevated by the verses of the Yajur Veda to the intermediate region; comes to the world of the moon and, having enjoyed there power, returns again (to the world of man). If, however, he meditates on the supreme spirit by means of its three letters (a, u, and m) he is produced in light in the sun; as the snake is liberated from its skin, so is he liberated from sin." According to the Mandukya-Upanishad the nature of the soul is summarized in the three letters a, u, and m in their isolated and combined form--a being Vaiswanara, or that form of Brahman which represents the soul in its waking condition; a, Taijasa, or that form of Brahman which represents it in its dreaming state; and m, Piajna, or that form of Brahman which represents it in its state of profound sleep (or that state in which it is temporarily united with the supreme spirit); while a, u, m combined (i.e., Om), represent the fourth or highest condition of Brahman, "which is unaccountable, in which all manifestations have ceased, which is blissful and without duality. Om therefore, is soul, and by this soul, he who knows it, enters into (the supreme) soul." Passages like these may be considered as the key to the more enigmatic expressions used; for instance, by the author of the Yoga philosophy where, in three short sentences, he says his (the supreme lord's) name is Pranava (i.e., Om); its muttering (should be made) and reflection on its signification; thence comes the knowledge of the transcendental spirit and the absence of the obstacles (such as sickness, languor, doubt, &c., which obstruct the mind of an ascetic). But they indicate, at the same time, the further course which superstition took in enlarging upon the mysticism of the doctrine of the Upanishads. For, as soon as every letter of which the word Om consists was fancied to embody a separate idea, it is intelligible that other sectarian explanations were grafted on them to serve special purposes. Thus, while Sankara, the great theologian and commentator on the Upanishads, is still contented with an etymological punning by means of which he transforms a into an abbreviation of apti (pervading), since speech is pervaded by Vaiswanara; u into an abbreviation of utkartha (superiority), since Taijasa is superior to Vaiswanara; and m into an abbreviation of miti (destruction), Vaiswanara and Taijasa, at the destruction and regeneration of the world, being, as it were, absorbed into Prajna--the Puranas make of a, a name of Vishnu; of u, a name of his consort "Sri;" and of m, a designation of their joint worshipper; or they see in a, u, m, the Triad--Brahm, Vishnu, and Siva; the first being represented by a, the second by u, and the third by m--each sect, of course, identifying the combination of these letters, or Om with their supreme deity. Thus, also, in the Bhagavadgita, which is devoted to the worship of Vishnu in his incarnation as Krishna, though it is essentially a poem of philosophical tendencies based on the doctrine of the Yoga, Krishna in one passage says of himself that he is Om; while in another passage he qualifies the latter as the supreme spirit. A common designation of the word Om--for instance, in the last-named passages of the Bhagavadgita is the word Pranava, which comes from a so-called radical nu, "praise," with the prefix pra amongst other meanings implying emphasis, and, therefore, literally means "eulogium, emphatic praise." Although Om, in its original sense as a word of solemn or emphatic assent, is, properly speaking, restricted to the Vedic literature, it deserves notice that it is now-a-days often used by the natives of India in the sense of "yes," without, of course, any allusion to the mystic properties which are ascribed to it in the religious works. Monier Williams gives the following account of the mystic syllable Om: "When by means of repeating the syllable Om, which originally seems to have meant 'that' or 'yes,' they had arrived at a certain degree of mental tranquillity, the question arose what was meant by this Om, and to this various answers were given according as the mind was to be led up to higher and higher objects. Thus, in one passage, we are told at first that Om is the beginning of the Veda, or as we have to deal with an Upanishad of the Shama Veda, the beginning of the Shama Veda; so that he who meditates on Om may be supposed to be meditating on the whole of the Shama Veda. "Om is the essence of the Shama Veda which, being almost entirely taken from the Rig Veda, may itself be called the essence of the Rig Veda. The Rig Veda stands for all speech, the Shama Veda for all breath or life; so that Om may be conceived again as the symbol of all speech and all life. Om thus becomes the name not only of all our mental and physical powers, but is especially that of the living principle of the pran or spirit. This is explained by the parable in the second chapter, while in the third chapter that spirit within us is identified with the spirit in the sun. "He, therefore, who meditates on Om, meditates on the spirit in man as identical with the spirit in Nature or in the sun, and thus the lesson that is meant to be taught in the beginning of the Khandogya Upanishad is really this that none of the Vedas, with their sacrifices and ceremonies, could ever secure the salvation of the worshipers. That is, the sacred works performed, according to the rules of the Vedas, are of no avail in the end, but meditation on Om, or that knowledge of what is meant by Om, alone can procure true salvation or true immortality. "Thus the pupil is led on step by step to what is the highest object of the Upanishads--namely, the recognition of the self in man as identical of the highest soul. "The lessons which are to lead up to that highest conception of the universe, both subjective and objective, are, no doubt, mixed up with much that is superstitious and absurd. Still the main object is never lost sight of. Thus, when we come to the eighth chapter, the discussion, though it begins with Om ends with the question of the origin of the world, and the final answer--namely, that Om means Akasa, ether, and that ether is the origin of all things." Dr. Lake considers electricity as the akas, or the fifth element of the Hindus. I shall now give my own opinion on the mystic syllable Om. Breath consists of an inspiration termed puraka, an interval termed kumbhaka, and an expiration called rechaka. When the respiration is carried on by the right nostril, it is called the pingala; when it is carried on by the two nostrils, it is named the susumna; and when it is carried on by the left nostril, it is called ida. The right respiration is called the solar respiration, from its heating nature; while the left respiration is termed the lunar respiration, from its cooling character. The susumna respiration is called the shambhu-nadi. During the intermediate respiration the human mind should be engaged in the contemplation of the supreme soul. The breath takes its origin from the "indiscreet" or unreflecting form, and the mind from the breath. The organs of sense and action are under the control of the mind. The Yogis restrain their mind by the suspension of breath. Breath is the origin of all speech. The word soham is pronounced by a deep inspiration followed by expiration carried on by the nostrils.... This word means, "God is in us." There is another word called hangsha. This is pronounced by a deep expiration followed by inspiration. Its meaning is "I am in God." The inspiration is sakti, or strength. The expiration is siva, or death. The internal or Kumbhaka is a promoter of longevity. When the expiration is not followed by inspiration death ensues. A forcible expiration is always the sure and certain sign of approaching dissolution or death. Both these words soham and hanysha cause the waste of the animal economy, as they permit the oxygen of the inspired air to enter the lungs where the pulmonary changes of the blood occur. According to Lavoissier, an adult Frenchman inhales daily 15,661 grains of oxygen from the atmosphere, at the rate of 10.87 grains nearly per minute. The word Om is pronounced by the inspiration of air through the mouth and the expiration of the same by the nostrils. When a man inspires through the mouth and expires through the nostrils, the oxygen of the inspired air does not enter the lungs where the pulmonary changes of the blood take place. The monosyllable Om thus acts as a substitute for the suspension of the breath. The waste of the body is proportionate to the quantity of oxygen taken into the system by the respiration. The waste of a man who breathes quickly is greater than that of one who breathes slowly. While tranquillity of mind produces slow breathing, and causes the retardation of the bodily waste, the tranquil respiration has a tendency to produce calmness of mind. The Yogis attain to Nirvana by suspending or holding the breath. The Vedantists obtain moksha, or emancipation of the soul, by holding the mind (mental abstraction). Thus Om is the process of separating the soul from the body. It is the product of the gasping breath which precedes the dissolution of our body. The ancient Hindus utilized the gasping breath of the dying man by discovering the syllable Om. The syllable Om protects man from premature decay and death, preserves him from worldly temptations, and saves him from re-birth. It causes the union of the human soul to the supreme soul. Om has the property of shortening the length of respiration. Siva is made to say in a work on "Sharodaya" (an excellent treatise on respiration) that the normal length of the expiration is 9 inches. During meals and speaking the length of the expiration becomes 13.5 inches. In ordinary walking the expiration is lengthened to 18 inches. Running lengthens the expiration to 25.5 inches. In sexual intercourse the extent of respiration becomes 48.75 inches. During sleep the respiration becomes 75 inches long. As sleep causes a great waste of the body and invites disease, premature decay and death, the Yogi tries to abstain from it. He lives upon the following dietary:--rice, 6 ounces troy; milk, 12 ounces troy. He consumes daily: carbon, 156.2 grains; nitrogen, 63.8 grains. Under this diet he is ever watchful, and spends his time in the contemplation of Om. From the small quantity of nitrogen contained in his diet he is free from anger. The Yogi next subdues his carnal desire or sexual appetite. He diminishes day by day his food until it reaches the minimum quantity on which existence is maintained. He passes his life in prayer and meditation. He seeks retirement. He lives in his little cell; his couch is the skin of tiger or stag; he regards gold, silver, and all precious stones as rubbish. He abstains from flesh, fish, and wine. He never touches salt, and lives entirely on fruits and roots. I saw a female mendicant who lived upon a seer of potatoes and a small quantity of tamarind pulp daily. This woman reduced herself to a skeleton. She led a pure, chaste life, and spent her time in the mental recitation of Om. One seer of potatoes contains 3,600 grains of solid residue, which is exactly 7 1/2 ounces troy. The solid residue of one seer of potatoes consists of the following ultimate ingredients:-- Carbon .............. 1587.6 grains Hydrogen ............ 208.8 " Nitrogen ............. 43.2 " Oxygen .............. 1580.4 " Salts .................180.0 " -------- 3600.0 " I saw a Brahman (Brahmachari) who consumed daily one seer of milk, and took no other food. Analysis of One Seer of Cow's Milk by Boussingault. Water ....................... 12,539.520 grains Carbon ...................... 1,005.408 " Hydrogen ...................... 164.736 " Nitrogen ....................... 74.880 " Oxygen ......................... 525.456 " Salts ........................... 90.000 " ----------- 14,400.000 " Now, one seer of cow's milk requires for combustion within the animal economy 3278.88 grains of oxygen. The Brahmachari inhaled 2.27 grains of oxygen per minute. This Brahmachari spent his life in the contemplation of Om, and led a life of continence. The French adult, who is a fair specimen of well-developed sensuality, inhaled from the atmosphere 10.87 grains of oxygen every minute of his existence. A retired, abstemious, and austere life is essentially necessary for the pronunciation of Om, which promotes the love of rigid virtue and a contempt of impermanent sensuality. Siva says "He who is free from lust, anger, covetousness and ignorance is qualified to obtain salvation, or moksha," or the Nirvana of the Buddhists. The solid residue of one seer of cow's milk is 1860.48 grains. "In 1784 a student of physic at Edinburgh confined himself for a long space of time to a pint of milk and half a pound of white bread." The diet of this student contained 1487.5 grains of carbon and 80.1875 grains of nitrogen. This food required 4,305 grains of oxygen for the complete combustion of its elements. He inspired 2.92 grains of oxygen per minute. In this instance the intense mental culture diminished the quantity of oxygen inspired from the atmosphere. The early Christian hermits, with a view to extinguish carnal desire and overcome sleep, lived upon a daily allowance of 12 ounces of bread and water. They daily consumed 4063.084 grains of oxygen. They inhaled oxygen at the rate of 2.8215 grains per minute. According to M. Andral, the great French physiologist, a French boy 10 years old, before the sexual appetite is developed, exhales 1852.8 grains of carbon in the twenty-four hours. He who wishes to curb his lust should consume 1852.8 grains of carbon in his daily diet. Now, 6,500 grains of household bread contain 1852 grains of carbon, according to Dr. Edward Smith. This quantity of bread is equal to 14 ounces avoirdupois and 375 grains, but the early Christian hermits who lived upon 12 oz. of bread (avoirdupois) consumed daily 1496.25 grains of carbon. This quantity of carbon was less than that which the French boy consumed daily by 356.55 grains. The French boy consumed 1852.8 grains of carbon in his diet, but the Hindu female mendicant, who led a life of continence, consumed in her daily ration of potatoes 1587.6 grains of carbon. Hence it is evident that the French boy consumed 265.2 grains of carbon more than what was consumed by the female Hindu Yogi. There lived in Brindavana a Sannyasi, who died at the age of 109 years, and who subsisted for forty years upon the daily diet of four chuttacks of penda and four chuttacks of milk. His diet contained 1,980 grains of carbon and 90.72 grains of nitrogen. Abstemiousness shortens the length of respiration, diminishes the waste of the body, promotes longevity, and engenders purity of heart. Abstemiousness cures vertigo, cephalalgia, tendency to apoplexy, dyspnoea, gout, old ulcers, impetigo, scrofula, herpes, and various other maladies. Cornaro, an Italian nobleman, who was given up by all his physicians, regained health by living upon 12 ounces of bread and 15 ounces of water, and lived to a great age. He consumed less than an ounce of flesh-formers in his diet. According to Edward Smith 5401.2 grains of bread contain 1 ounce of flesh-formers. He who wishes to lead a life of chastity, honesty, meekness, and mercy, should consume daily one ounce of flesh-formers in his diet. As an ounce of nitrogenous matter contains 70 grains of nitrogen, one should take such food as yields only 70 grains of azote. Murder, theft, robbery, cruelty, covetousness, lust, slander, anger, voluptuousness, revenge, lying, prostitution, and envy are sins which arise from a consumption of a large quantity of aliments containing a higher percentage of azote. He who intends to be free from every earthly thought, desire and passion should abstain from fish, flesh, woman, and wine, and live upon the most innocent food. The following table shows approximately the quantities of various aliments furnishing 70 grains of nitrogen: Wheat dried in vacuo ............ 3181.81 grains Oats ............................ 3181.81 " Barley .......................... 3465.34 " Indian corn ..................... 3500 " Rye dried ........................4117.64 " Rice dried .......................5036 " Milk dried .......................1750 " Peas dried .......................1666.6 " White haricots dried ..... .......1627.67 " Horse beans dried ................1272.72 " Cabbage dried ....................1891.89 " Carrots dried ....................2916.66 " Jerusalem artichokes .............4375 " Turnips dried ....................3181.81 " Bread ............................5401.2 " Locust beans .....................6110 " Figs .............................7172.13 " Cow's milk fresh .................1346.2 " Abstemiousness begets suspension of breath. From the suspension of breath originates tranquillity of mind, which engenders supersensuous knowledge. From supersensuous knowledge originates ecstasy which is the Samadhi of the ancient Hindu sages. Instead of walking and running, which lengthen the respiration, the devotees of Om should practice the two tranquil postures termed the padmasana and siddhasana, described in my mystic tract called "The Yoga Philosophy." According to Siva the normal length of expiration is 9 inches. He says that one can subdue his lust and desire by shortening his expiration to 8.25 inches, whether by the inaudible pronunciation of Om or by the suspension of breath (Pranayama); that one can enjoy ecstasy by diminishing the length of his expiration to 7.50 inches. One acquires the power of writing poetry by reducing his expiration to 6.75 inches. When one can reduce his expiration to 6 inches long he acquires the power of foretelling future events. When one reduces the length of his expiration to 5.25 inches he is blessed with the divine eye. He sees what is occurring in the distant worlds. When the inaudible pronunciation of Om reduces the length of the expiration to 4.50 inches it enables its votary to travel to aerial regions. When the length of expiration becomes 3.75 inches, the votary of Om travels in the twinkling of an eye through the whole world. When by the inaudible muttering of Om a man reduces his expiration to 3 inches, he acquires ashta Siddhis or consummations (or superhuman powers). When the expiration is reduced to 2.25 inches, the votary of Om can acquire the nine precious jewels of the world (Nava nidhi). Such a man can attract the wealth of the world to him.* -------- * Supposing he had any care or use for it--Ed. Theos. -------- When the expiration becomes 1.50 inches long from the above practice, he sees the celestial sphere where the Supreme Soul resides. When the inaudible pronunciation of Om reduces the length of expiration to .75 inch, the votary becomes deified and casts no shadow. "Om Amitaya! measure not with words The immeasurable; nor sink the string of thought Into the Fathomless! Who asks doth err; Who answers errs. Say nought!" "Om mani padma hum. Om the jewel in the lotus." By the muttering of the above formula the Great Buddha freed himself from selfishness, false faith, doubt, hatred, lust, self-praise, error, pride, and attained to Nirvana. "And how man hath no fate except past deeds, No Hell but what he makes, no Heaven too high For those to reach whose passions sleeps subdued." According to Siva a man acquires Nirvana when his breathing becomes internal and does not come out of the nostrils. When the breathing becomes internal--that is, when it is contained within the nostrils, the Yogi is free from fainting, hunger, thirst, languor, disease and death. He becomes a divine being, he feels not when he is brought into contact with fire; no air can dry him, no water can putrefy him, no poisonous serpent can inflict a mortal wound. His body exhales fragrant odours, and can bear the abstinence from air, food, and drink. When the breathing becomes internal, the Yogi is incapable of committing any sin in deed, thought, and speech, and thereby inherits the Kingdom of Heaven, which is open to sinless souls. --N.C. Paul ------------------- Glossary Ab-e-Hyat, Water of Life, supposed to give eternal youth. Abhava, negation or non-being of individual objects; the substance, the abstract objectivity. Adam Kadmon, the bi-sexual Sephira of the Kabalists. Adept, one who, through the development of his spirit, has attained to transcendental knowledge and powers. Adhibhautika, arising from external objects. Adhidaivika, arising from the gods, or accidents. Adhikamasansas, extra months. Adhishthanum, basis a principle in which some other principle inheres. Adhyatmika, arising out of the inner-self. Advaiti, a follower of the school of Philosophy established by Sankaracharya. Ahankara, personality; egoism; self identity; the fifth principle. Ahriman, the Evil Principle of the Universe; so called by the Zoroastrians. Ahum, the first three principles of septenary human constitution; the gross living body of man according to the Avesta. A'kasa, the subtle supersensuous matter which pervades all space. Amulam Mulam (lit. "the rootless root"); Prakriti; the material of the universe. Anahatachakram, the heart, the seat of life. A'nanda, bliss. A'nanda-maya-kosha, the blissful; the fifth sheath of the soul in the Vedantic system; the sixth principle. Anastasis, the continued existence of the soul. Anima Mundi, the soul of the world. Annamaya Kosha, the gross body; the first sheath of the divine monad (Vedantic). Antahkarana, the internal instrument, the soul, formed by the thinking principle and egoism. Anumiti, inference. Aparoksha, direct perception. Apavarya, emancipation from repeated births. Apporrheta, secret discourses in Egyptian and Grecian mysteries. Arahats (lit."the worthy ones"), the initiated holy men of the Buddhist and Jain faiths. Aranyakas, holy sages dwelling in forests. Ardhanariswara, (lit. "the bisexual Lord"); the unpolarized state of cosmic energy; the bi-sexual Sephira, Adam Kadmon. Arka, sun. Aryavarta, the ancient name of Northern India where the Brahmanical invaders first settled. A'sana, the third stage of Hatha Yoga; the posture for meditation. Asat, the unreal, Prakriti. A'shab and Laughan, ceremonies for casting out evil spirits, so called among the Kolarian tribes. Ashta Siddhis, the eight consummations of Hatha Yoga. Asoka (King), a celebrated conqueror, monarch of a large portion of India, who is called "the Constantine of Buddhism," temp. circa 250 B.C. Astral Light, subtle form of existence forming the basis of our material universe. Asuramaya, an Atlantean astronomer, well known in Sanskrit writings. Asuras, a class of elementals considered maleficent; demons. Aswini, the divine charioteers mystically they correspond to Hermes, who is looked upon as his equal. They represent the internal organ by which knowledge is conveyed from the soul to the body. Atharva Veda, one of the four most ancient and revered books of the ancient Brahmans. Atlantis, the continent that was submerged in the Southern and Pacific Oceans. Atmabodha (lit. "self-knowledge"), the title of a Vedantic treatise by Sankaracharya. Atman, &c Atma. A'tma, the spirit; the divine monad; the seventh principle of the septenary human constitution. A'ttavada, the sin of personality (Pali). Aum, the sacred syllable in Sanskrit representing the Trinity Avalokitesvara, manifested wisdom, or the Divine Spirit in man. Avasthas, states, conditions, positions. Avatar, the incarnation of an exalted being, so called among the Hindus. Avesta, the sacred books of the Zoroastrians. Avyakta, the unrevealed cause. Baddha, bound or conditioned; the state of an ordinary human being who has not attained Nirvana. Bahihpragna, the present state of consciousness. Baodhas, consciousness; the fifth principle of man. Barhaspatyamanam, a method of calculating time prevalent during the later Hindu period in North-eastern India. Bhadrasena, a Buddhist king of Magadha. Bhagats (or called Sokha and Sivnath by the Hindus), one who exorcises an evil spirit. Bhagavad Gita (lit, the "Lord's Song"), an episode of the Maha-Bharata, the great epic poem of India. It contains a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna on Spiritual Philosophy. Bhao, ceremony of divination among the Kolarian tribes of Central India. Bhashya, commentary. Bhon, religion of the aborigines of Tibet. Bikshu, a religious mendicant and ascetic who suppresses all desire and is constantly occupied in devotion; a Buddhist monk. Boddhisatwas, Egos evolving towards Buddhahood. Brahma, the Hindu Deity which personifies the active cosmic energy. Brahmachari, a Bushman ascetic. Brahmagnani, one possessed of complete illumination. Brahman, the highest caste in India; Brahman, the absolute of the Vedantins. Brahmana period, one of the four periods into which the Vedic literature has been divided. Brihadranyaka Upanishad, one of the sacred books of the Brahmins; an Aranyaka is a treatise appended to the Vedas, and considered the subject of special study by those who have retired to the forest for purposes of religious meditation. Buddha, the founder of Buddhism; he was a royal prince, by name Siddhartha, son of Suddhodhana, king of the Sakyas, an Aryan tribe. Buddhi, the spiritual Ego. Buru Bonga, spirit of the hills worshiped by the Kolarian tribes of Central India. Canarese, one of the Dravidian tongues, spoken in Southern India. Chandragupta, one of the kings of Magadha, an ancient province of India. Chandramanam, the method of calculating time by the movements of the moon. Charaka, the most celebrated writer on medicine among the Hindus. Chaturdasa Bhuvanam, the fourteen lokas or states. Chela, a pupil of an adept in occultism; a disciple. Chichakti, the power which generates thought. Chidagnikundum (lit. "the fireplace in the heart"), the seat of the force which extinguishes all individual desires. Chidakasam, the field of consciousness. Chinmatra, the germ of consciousness, abstract consciousness. Chit, the abstract consciousness. Chitta suddhi (Chitta, mind, and Suddi, purification), purification of the mind. Chutuktu, the five chief Lamas of Tibet. Daemon, the incorruptible part of man; nous; rational soul. Daenam (lit. "knowledge"), the fourth principle in man, according to the Avesta. Daimonlouphote, spiritual illumination. Daityas, demons, Titans. Dama, restraint of the senses. Darasta, ceremonial magic practised among the Kolarian tribes of Central India. Darha, ancestral spirits of the Kolarian tribes of Central India. Deona or Mati, one who exercises evil spirits (Kolarian). Deva, God; beings of the subjective side of Nature. Devachan, a blissful condition in the after-life; heavenly existence. Devanagari, the current Sanskrit alphabet. Dharmasoka, one of the kings of Magadha. Dhatu, the seven principal substances of the human body --chyle, flesh, blood, fat, bones, marrow, semen. Dhyan, contemplation. There are six stages of Dhyan, varying in the degrees of abstraction of the Ego from sensuous life. Dhyan Chohans, Devas or Gods planetary spirits. Dik, space. Diksha, initiation. Dosha, fault. Dravidians, a group of tribes inhabiting Southern India. Dravya, substance. Dugpas, the "Red Caps," evil magicians, belonging to the left-hand path of occultism, so called in Tibet. Dukkhu, pain. Dwija Brahman, twice born; the investiture with the sacred thread constitutes the second birth. Elementals, generic name for all subjective beings other than disembodied human creatures. Epopta, Greek for seer. Fakir, a Mahomedan recluse or Yogi. Fan, Bar-nang, space, eternal law. Fohat, Tibetan for Sakti; cosmic force or energizing power of the universe. Fravashem, absolute spirit. Gaudapada, a celebrated Brahmanical teacher, the author of commentaries on the Sankhya Karika, Mundukya Upanishad, &c. Gayatri, the holiest verse of the Vedas. Gehs, Parsi prayers. Gelugpas, "Yellow Caps," the true Magi and their school, so called in Tibet. Gnansaki, the power of true knowledge, one of the six forces. Gujarathi, the vernacular dialect of Gujrat, a province of Western India. Gunas, qualities, properties. Gunava, endowed with qualities. Guru, spiritual preceptor. Ha, a magic syllable used in sacred formula; represents the power of Akasa Sakti. Hangsa, a mystic syllable standing for evolution, it literally means "I am he." Hatha Yog, a system of physical training to obtain psychic powers, the chief feature of this system being the regulation of breath. Hierophants, the High Priests. Hina-yana, lowest form of transmigration of the Buddhist. Hiong-Thsang, the celebrated chinese traveler whose writings contain the most interesting account of India of the period. Hwun, spirit; the seventh principle in man (Chinese). Ikhir Bongo, spirit of the deep of the Kolarian tribes. Indriya, or Deha Sanyama, control over the senses. "Isis" ("Isis Unveiled"), book written by Madame Blavatsky on the Esoteric Doctrine. Iswara, Personal God, Lord, the Spirit in man, the Divine principle in its active nature or condition, one of the four states of Brahma. Itchasakti, will power; force of desire; one of the six forces of Nature. Itchcha, will. Ivabhavat, the one substance. Jagrata, waking. Jagrata Avasta, the waking state; one of the four aspects of Pranava. Jains, a religious sect in India closely related to the Buddhists. Jambudvipa, one of the main divisions of the world, including India, according to the ancient Brahminical system. Janaka, King of Videha, a celebrated character in the Indian epic of Ramayana. He was a great royal sage. Janwas, gross form of matter. Japa, mystical practice of the Yogi, consisting of the repetition of certain formula. Jevishis, will; Karma Rupa; fourth principle. Jiva or Karana Sarira, the second principle of man; life. Jivatma, the human spirit, seventh principle in the Microcosm. Jnanam, knowledge. Jnanendrayas, the five channels of knowledge. Jyotisham Jyotih, the light of lights, the supreme spirit, so called in the Upanishads. Kabala, ancient mystical Jewish books. Kaliyuga, the last of the four ages in which the evolutionary period of man is divided. It began 3,000 years B.C. Kalpa, the period of cosmic activity; a day of Brahma, 4,320 million years. Kama Loka, abode of desire, the first condition through which a human entity passes in its passage, after death, to Devachan. It corresponds to purgatory. Kama, lust, desire, volition; the Hindu Cupid. Kamarupa, the principle of desire in man; the fourth principle. Kapila, the founder of one of the six principal systems of Indian philosophy--viz., the Sankhya. Karans, great festival of the Kolarian tribes in honour of the sun spirit. Karana Sarira, the causal body; Avidya; ignorance; that which is the cause of the evolution of a human ego. Karma, the law of ethical causation; the effect of an act for the attainment of an object of personal desire, merit and demerit. Karman, action; attributes of Linga Sarira. Kartika, the Indian god of war, son or Siva and Parvati; he is also the personification of the power of the Logos. Kasi, another name for the sacred city of Benares. Keherpas, aerial form; third principle. Khanda period, a period of Vedic literature. Khi (lit, breath); the spiritual ego; the sixth principle in man (Chinese). Kiratarjuniya of Bkaravi, a Sanskrit epic, celebrating the encounters of Arjuna, one of this heroes of the Maha-bharata with the god Siva, disguised as a forester. Kols, one of the tribes in Central India. Kriyasakti, the power of thought; one of the six forces in Nature. Kshatriya, the second of the four castes into which the Hindu nation was originally divided. Kshetrajnesvara, embodied spirit, the conscious ego in its highest manifestation. Kshetram, the great abyss of the Kabbala; chaos; Yoni, Prakriti; space. Kumbhaka, retention of breath, regulated according to the system of Hatha Yoga. Kundalinisakti, the power of life; one of the six forces of Nature. Kwer Shans, Chinese for third principle; the astral body. Lama-gylongs, pupils of Lamas. Lao-teze, a Chinese reformer. Macrocosm, universe. Magi, fire worshippers; the great magicians or wisdom- philosophers of old. Maha-Bharata, the celebrated Indian epic poem. Mahabhashya, a commentary on the Grammar of Panini by Patanjali. Mahabhautic, belonging to the macrocosmic principles. Mahabhutas, gross elementary principles. Mahaparinibbana Sutta, one of the most authoritative of the Buddhist sacred writings. Maha Sunyata, space or eternal law; the great emptiness. Mahat, Buddhi; the first product of root-nature and producer of Ahankara (egotism), and manas (thinking principle). Mahatma, a great soul; an adept in occultism of the highest order. Mahavanso, a Buddhist historical work written by the Bhikshu Mohanama, the uncle of King Dhatusma. Maha-Yug, the aggregate of four Yugas, or ages--4,320,000 years--in the Brahmanical system. Manas, the mind, the thinking principle; the fifth principle in the septenary division. Manas Sanyama, perfect concentration of the mind; control over the mind. Manomaya Kosha, third sheath of the divine monad, Vedantic equivalent for fourth and fifth principles. Mantra period, one of the four periods into which Vedic literature has been divided. Mantra Sastra, Brahmanical writings on the occult science of incantations. Mantra Tantra Shastras, works on incantation and Magic. Manu, the great Indian legislator. Manvantara, the outbreathing of the creative principle; the period of cosmic activity between two pralayas. Maruts, the wind gods. Mathadhipatis, heads of different religious institutions in India. Matras, the quantity of a Sanskrit syllable. Matrikasakti, the power of speech, one of six forces in Nature. Matsya Puranas, one of the Puranas. Maya, illusion, is the cosmic power which renders phenomenal existence possible. Mayavic Upadhi, the covering of illusion, phenomenal appearance. Mayavirupa, the "double;" "doppelganger;" "perisprit." Mazdiasnian, Zoroastrian (lit. "worshiping God"). Microcosm, man. Mobeds, Zoroastrian priests. Monad, the spiritual soul, that which endures through all changes of objective existence. Moneghar, the headman of a village. Morya, one of time royal houses of Magadha; also the name of a Rajpoot tribe. Mukta, liberated; released from conditional existence. Mukti. See Mukta. Mula-prakriti, undifferentiated cosmic matter; the unmanifested cause and substance of all being. Mumukshatwa, desire for liberation. Nabhichakram, the seat of the principle of desire, near the umbilicus. Najo, witch. Nanda (King), one of the kings of Magadha. Narayana, in mystic symbology it stands for the life principle. Nava nidhi, the nine jewels, or consummation of spiritual development. Neophyte, a candidate for initiation into the mysteries of adeptship. Nephesh, one of the three souls, according to the Kabala; first three principles in the human septenary. Neschamah, one of the three souls, according to the Kabala; seventh principle in the human septenary. Nirguna, unbound; without gunas or attributes; the soul in its state of essential purity is so called. Nirvana, beautitude, abstract spiritual existence, absorption into all. Niyashes, Parsi prayers. Noumena, the true essential nature of being, as distinguished from the illusive objects of sense. Nous, spirit, mind; Platonic term, reason. Nyaya Philosophy, a system of Hindu logic founded by Gautuma. Occultism, the study of the mysteries of Nature and the development of the psychic powers latent in man. Okhema, vehicle; Platonic term for body. Padarthas, predicates of existing things, so called in the "Vaiseshikha," or atomic system of philosophy, founded by Kanad (Sanskrit). Padma sana, a posture practised by some Indian mystics it consists in sitting with the legs crossed one over the other and the body straight. Pahans, village priests. Panchakosha, the five sheaths in which is enclosed the divine monad. Panchikrita, developed into the five gross elements. Parabrahm, the supreme principle in Nature; the universal spirit. Paramarthika, one of the three states of existence according to Vedanta; the true, the only real one. Paramatma, time Supreme Spirit, one of the six forces of Nature; the great force. Parasakti, intellectual apprehension of a truth. Pataliputra, the ancient capital of the kingdom Magadha, in Eastern India, a city identified with the modern Patna. Patanjali, the author of "Yoga Philosophy," one of the six orthodox systems of India and of the Mahabhashya. Peling, the name given to Europeans in Tibet. Phala, retribution; fruit or results of causes. Pho, animal soul. Pisacham, fading remnants of human beings in the state of Kama Loka; shells or elementaries. Piyadasi, another name for Asoka (q.v.) Plaster or Plantal, Platonic term for the power which moulds the substances of the universe into suitable forms. Popol-Vuh, the sacred book of the Guatemalans. Poseidonis, the last island submerged of the continent of Atlantis. Pracheta, the principle of water. Pragna, consciousness. Prajapatis, the constructors of the material universe. Prakriti, undifferentiated matter; the supreme principle regarded as the substance of the universe. Pralaya, the period of cosmic rest. Prameyas, things to be proved, objects of Pramana or proof. Prana, the one life. Pranamaya Kosha, the principle of life and its vehicle; the second sheath of the Divine monad (Vedantic). Pranatman, the eternal or germ thread on which are strung, like beads, the personal lives. The same as Sutratma. Pratibhasika, the apparent or illusory life. Pratyaksha, perception. Pretya-bhava, the state of an ego under the necessity of repeated births. Punarjanmam, power of evolving objective manifestation; rebirth. Puraka, in-breathing, regulated according to the system of Hatha Yoga. Puranas (lit. "old writings"). A collection of symbolical Brahmanical writings. They are eighteen in number, and are supposed to have been composed by Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata. Purusha, spirit. Rajas, the quality of foulness; passionate activity. Rajarshi, a king-adept. Raj Yoga, the true science of the development of psychic powers and union with the Supreme Spirit. Rakshasas, evil spirits; literally, raw-eaters. Ramayana, an epic poem describing the life of Rama, a deified Indian hero. Ram Mohun Roy, the well-known Indian Reformer, died 1833. Rechaka, out-breathing, regulated according to the system of Hatha Yoga. Rig Veda, the first of the Vedas. Rishabham, the Zodiacal sign Taurus, the sacred syllable Aum. Rishis (lit. "revealers"), holy sages. Ruach, one of the souls, according to the Kabala; second three principles in the human septenary. Sabda, the Logos or Word. Saketa, the capital of the ancient Indian kingdom of Ayodhya. Sukshma sariram, the subtile body. Sakti, the crown of the astral light; the power of Nature. Sakuntala, a Sanskrit drama by Kalidasa. Samadhana, incapacity to diverge from the path of spiritual progress. Sama, repression of mental perturbations. Samadhi, state of ecstatic trance. Samanya, community or commingling of qualities. Samma-Sambuddha, perfect illumination. Samvat, an Indian era which, is usually supposed to have commenced 57 B.C. Sankaracharya, the great expositor of the monistic Vedanta Philosophy, which denies the personality of the Divine Principle, and affirms its unity with the spirit of man. Sankhya Karika, a treatise containing the aphorisms of Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya system, one of the six schools of Hindu philosophy. Sankhya Yog, the system of Yog as set forth by Sankhya philosophers. Sannyasi, a Hindu, ascetic whose mind is steadfastly fixed upon the Supreme Truth. Sarira, body. Sat, the real, Purusha. Sattwa, purity. Satva, goodness. Satya Loka, the abode of Truth, one of the subjective spheres in our solar system. Shamanism, spirit worship; the oldest religion of Mongolia. Siddhasana, one of the postures enjoined by the system of Hatha Yoga. Siddhi, abnormal power obtained by spiritual development. Sing Bonga, sun spirit of the Kolarian tribes. Siva, one of the Hindu gods, with Brahma and Vishnu, forming the Trimurti or Trinity; the principle of destruction. Sivite, a worshipper of Siva, the name of a sect among the Hindus. Skandhas, the impermanent elements which constitute a man. Slokas, stanzas (Sanskrit). Smriti, legal and ceremonial writings of the Hindus. Soham, mystic syllable representing involution; lit. "that am I." Soonium, a magical ceremony for the purpose of removing a sickness from one person to another. Soorya, the sun. Souramanam, a method of calculating time. Space, Akasa; Swabhavat (q.v.) Sraddha, faith. Sravana, receptivity, listening. Sthula-Sariram, the gross physical body. Sukshmopadhi, fourth and fifth principles (Raja Yoga.) Sunyata, space; nothingness. Suras, elementals of a beneficent order; gods. Surpa, winnower. Suryasiddhanta, a Sanskrit treatise on astronomy. Sushupti Avastha, deep sleep; one of the four aspects of Pranava. Sutra period, one of the periods into which Vedic literature has been divided. Sutratman, (lit. "the thread spirit,") the immortal individuality upon which are strung our countless personalities. Svabhavat, Akasa; undifferentiated primary matter; Prakriti. Svapna, dreamy condition, clairvoyance. Swami (lit. "a master"), the family idol. Swapna Avastha, dreaming state; one of the four aspects of Pranava. Tama, indifference, dullness. Tamas, ignorance, or darkness. Tanha, thirst; desire for life, that which produces re-birth. Tanmatras, the subtile elements, the abstract counterpart of the five elements, earth, water, fire, air and ether, consisting of smell, taste, feeling, sight and sound. Tantras, works on Magic. Tantrika, ceremonies connected with the worship of the goddess Sakti, who typifies Force. Taraka Yog, one of the Brahmanical systems for the development of psychic powers and attainment of spiritual knowledge. Tatwa, eternally existing "that;" the different principles in Nature. Tatwams, the abstract principles of existence or categories, physical and metaphysical. Telugu, a language spoken in Southern India. Tesshu Lama, the head of the Tibetan Church. The Laws of Upasanas, chapter in the Book iv. of Kui-te on the rules for aspirants for chelaship. Theodidaktos (lit. "God taught "), a school of philosophers in Egypt. Theosophy, the Wisdom-Religion taught in all ages by the sages of the world. Tikkun, Adam Kadmon, the ray from the Great Centre. Titiksha, renunciation. Toda, a mysterious tribe in India that practise black magic. Tridandi, (tri, "three," danda, "chastisement"), name of BrahmanicaI thread. Trimurti, the Indian Trinity--Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, Creator, Preserver and Destroyer. Turiya Avastha, the state of Nirvana. Tzong-ka-pa, celebrated Buddhist reformer of Tibet, who instituted the order of Gelugpa Lamas. Universal Monas, the universal spirit. Upadana Karnam, the material cause of an effect. Upadhis, bases. Upamiti, analogy. Upanayana, investiture with the Brahmanical thread. Upanishads, Brahmanical Scriptures appended to the Vedas, containing the esoteric doctrine of the Brahmans. Upanita, one who is invested with the Brahmanical thread (lit. "brought to a spiritual teacher"). Uparati, absence of out-going desires. Urvanem, spiritual ego; sixth principle. Ushtanas, vital force; second principle. Vach, speech; the Logos; the mystic Word. Vaishyas, cattle breeders artisans; the third caste among the Hindus. Vakya Sanyama, control over speech. Varuna or Pracheta, the Neptune of India. Vasishta, a great Indian sage, one of those to whom the Rig Veda was revealed in part. Vata, air. Vayu, the wind. Vayu Puranas, one of the Puranas. Vedantists, followers of the Vedanta School of Philosophy, which is divided into two branches, monists and dualists. Vedas, the most authoritative of the Hindu Scriptures. The four oldest sacred books--Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva--revealed to the Rishis by Brahma. Vedic, pertaining to the Vedas. Vidya, secret knowledge. Vija, the primitive germ which expands into the universe. Vijnana-maya-kosha, the sheath of knowledge; the fourth sheath of the divine monad; the fifth principle in man (Vedanta). Viraj, the material universe. Vishnu, the second member of the Hindu trinity; the principle of preservation. Vishnuite or Vishuvite, a worshiper of Vishnu, the name of a sect among the Hindus. Vrishalas, Outcasts. Vyasa, the celebrated Rishi, who collected and arranged the Vedas in their present form. Vyavaharika, objective existence; practical. Yajna Sutra, the name of the Brahmanical thread. Yama, law, the god of death. Yashts, the Parsi prayer-books. Yasna, religious book of the Parsis. Yasodhara, the wife of Buddha. Yavanacharya, the name given to Pythagoras in the Indian books. Yavanas, the generic name given by the Brahmanas to younger peoples. Yoga Sutras, a treatise on Yoga philosophy by Patanjali. Yog Vidya, the science of Yoga; the practical method of uniting one's own spirit with the universal spirit. Yogis, mystics, who develop themselves according to the system of Patanjali's "Yoga Philosophy." Yudhishthira, the eldest of the five brothers, called Pandavas, whose exploits are celebrated in the great Sanskrit epic "Mahabharata." Zend, the sacred language of ancient Persia. Zhing, subtle matter; Kama Rupa, or fourth principle (Chinese). Zoroaster, the prophet of the Parsis. 
30134	----	produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) ELEMENTARY THEOSOPHY L. W. ROGERS LOS ANGELES THEOSOPHICAL BOOK CONCERN 1917 Copyright By L. W. Rogers 1917 PREFACE To comprehend the significance of great world changes, before Time has fully done his work, is difficult. While mighty events are still in their formative period the future is obscure. But our inability to outline the future cannot blind us to the unmistakable trend of the evolutionary forces at work. One thing that is clear is that our boasted Christian civilization is the theater in which has been staged the most un-Christian war of recorded history and in which human atrocity has reached a point that leaves us vaguely groping for a rational explanation of it. Another obvious fact is that the more than twenty nations involved have been forced into measures and methods before unknown and which wholly transform the recognized function and powers of governments. With these startling facts of religious and political significance before us thoughtful people are beginning to ask if we are not upon the threshold of a complete breaking down of modern civilization and the birth of a new order of things, in which direct government by the people throughout the entire world will be coincident with the rise of a universal religion based on the brotherhood of man. In such a time any contribution to current literature that will help to clear the ground of misconceptions and to bring to the attention of those interested in such things, that set of fundamental natural truths known as theosophy, may perhaps be helpful. Whether or not the world is about to recast its ethical code there can at least be no doubt that it is eagerly seeking reliable evidence that we live after bodily death and that it will welcome a hypothesis of immortality that is inherently reasonable and therefore satisfies the intellect as well as the heart. Those who are dissatisfied with the old answers to the riddle of existence and demand that Faith and Reason shall walk hand in hand, may find in the following pages some explanation of the puzzling things in life--an explanation that disregards neither the intuitions of religion nor the facts of science. Of course no pretension is made of fully covering the ground. The book is a student's presentation of some of the phases of theosophy as he understands them. They are presented with no authority whatever, and are merely an attempt to discuss in simple language some of the fundamental truths about the human being. No claim is made to originality but it is hoped that by putting the old truths in a somewhat different way, with new illustrations and arguments, they may perhaps be seen from a new viewpoint. The intention has been to present elementary theosophy simply and clearly and in the language familiar to the ordinary newspaper reader. All technical terms and expressions have been avoided and the reader will not find a single foreign word in the book. L. W. R. CONTENTS I. THEOSOPHY 9 II. THE IMMANENCE OF GOD 15 III. THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL 23 IV. LIFE AFTER BODILY DEATH 29 V. THE EVOLUTIONARY FIELD 43 VI. THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 49 VII. DEATH 59 VIII. THE ASTRAL WORLD 69 IX. REBIRTH: ITS REASONABLENESS 103 X. REBIRTH: ITS JUSTICE 135 XI. REBIRTH: ITS NECESSITY 153 XII. WHY WE DO NOT REMEMBER 167 XIII. VICARIOUS ATONEMENT 181 XIV. THE FORCES WE GENERATE 187 XV. SUPERPHYSICAL EVOLUTION 205 CHAPTER I. THEOSOPHY Rediscovery is one of the methods of progress. Very much that we believe to be original with us at the time of its discovery or invention proves in time to have been known to earlier civilizations. The elevator, or lift, is a very modern invention and we supposed it to be a natural development of our civilization, with its intensive characteristics, until an antiquarian startled us with the announcement that it was used in Rome over two thousand years ago; not, of course, as we use it, but for the same purpose, and involving the same principles. A half century ago our scientific men were enthusiastic over the truths of evolution that were being discovered and placed before western civilization. But as we learn more and more of the thought and intellectual life of the Orient it becomes clear that the idea of evolution permeated that part of the world centuries ago. Even the most recent and startling scientific discoveries occasionally serve to prove that what we supposed to be the fantastic beliefs of the ancients were really truths of nature that we were not yet able to comprehend! The transmutation of metals is an example. We have already gone far enough in that direction to show that the alchemists of old were not the foolish and superstitious people we supposed them to be. We have given far too little credit to past civilizations and we are coming to understand now that we have rated them too low. Our modesty must necessarily increase as it becomes clearer that much of our supposed contribution to the world's progress is not invention but rediscovery. We are beginning to see that it is not safe to put aside without careful examination an idea or a belief that was current in the world thousands of years ago. Like the supposed folly of the alchemists it may contain profound truths of nature that have thus far been foreign to our modes of thinking. Theosophy is both very old and very new--very old because the principles it contains were known and taught in the oldest civilizations, and very new because it includes the latest investigations of the present day. It is sometimes said by those who desire to speak lightly of it that it is a philosophy borrowed from the Buddhists, or at least from the Orient. That is, of course, an erroneous view. It is true that the Buddhists hold some beliefs in common with theosophists. It is also true that Methodists hold some beliefs in common with Unitarians, but that does not show that Unitarianism was borrowed from Wesley! When different people study the same facts of nature they are likely to arrive at substantially the same conclusions. Theosophy is based upon certain truths of nature. Those who study those truths and formulate a belief from them must reasonably be expected to resemble theosophists in their views. Buddhism is not unique in resembling theosophy. In the same list may be placed the Vedanta philosophy, the Cabala of the Jews, the teachings of the Christian Gnostics, and the philosophy of the Stoics. The more general charge must also be denied; theosophy is not something transplanted from the Orient. It belongs to the race, as the earth does, and cannot be localized, even to a continent. As it is taught today in Europe and America it is probably unknown to the masses of the Orient, for the great general truths it embodies have here the special application and peculiar emphasis required by a totally different civilization. But that theosophical principles were earlier known and more widely accepted in the Orient is quite true. That fact can in no possible way lessen their value to us. Precisely the same thing is true of the principles of mathematics. The science of mathematics reached European civilization directly from the Arabs, but we do not foolishly decline to make use of the knowledge on that account. The literal meaning of the word theosophy is self-evident--knowledge of God. It has three aspects, determined by the different ways in which the human being acquires knowledge--through the study of concrete facts, by the study of the relationship of the individual consciousness to its source, and through the use of reasoning faculties in constructing a logical explanation of life and its purpose. In one aspect it is, therefore, a science. It deals with the tangible, with the facts and phenomena of the material scientist and makes its appeal to the evidence of the physical senses. In another aspect it is a religion. It deals with the relationship between the source of all consciousness and its multiplicity of individual expressions; with the complex relationships that arise between these personalities; with the duties and obligations which thus come into existence; with the evolution of the individual consciousness and its ultimate translation to higher spheres. In its other aspect it is a philosophy of life. It deals with man, his origin, his evolution, his destiny. It seeks to explain the universe and to throw a flood of light upon the problem of existence that will enable those who study its wisdom to go forward in their evolution rapidly, safely and comfortably, instead of blundering onward in the darkness of ignorance, reaping as they go the painful harvests of misdirected energy. While theosophy is distinctly a science and a philosophy it is not, in the same full sense, a religion. It has its distinctive religious aspect, it is true, but when we speak of a religion we usually have in mind a certain set of religious dogmas and a church that propagates them. Theosophy is a universal thing like mathematics--a body of natural truths applicable to all phases of life. It sees all religions as equally important, as peculiarly adapted to the varying civilizations in which they are found, and it presents a synthesis of the fundamental principles upon which all of them rest. From all of this it will be seen that there is a vast difference between theosophy and theology. Theosophy declares the immortality of man but not as a religious belief. It appeals to the scientific facts in relation to the nature of consciousness. It knows no such word as "faith," as it is ordinarily used. Its faith arises from the constancy of natural law, the balance and sanity of nature, and the harmonious adjustment of the universe. Theosophy is very ancient in that it is the great fund of ancient wisdom about man and his earth, that has come down through countless centuries, reaching far back into prehistoric times. But added to that hoary wisdom are the up-to-date facts that have been acquired by its most successful students, who have evolved their consciousness to levels transcending the physical senses--facts which, however, do not derive their authority from the method of their discovery but from their inherent reasonableness. A detailed discussion of such methods of consciousness and the proper value to be placed upon such investigations rightly belongs to another chapter. It is enough now to warn the reader against the error of confusing the pronouncements of pseudo psychism with the work of the psychic scientists who have already done much toward placing a scientific foundation beneath the universal hope of immortality. CHAPTER II. THE IMMANENCE OF GOD The antagonism between scientific and religious thought was the cause of the greatest controversy in the intellectual world in the nineteenth century. If the early teaching of the Christian Church had not been lost the conflict could not have arisen. The Gnostic philosophers, who were the intellect and heart of the church, had a knowledge of nature so true that it could not possibly come into collision with any fact of science. But unfortunately they were enormously outnumbered by the ignorant and the authority passed wholly into their hands. It was inevitable that misunderstanding should follow. The gross materialization of the early teaching, the superstition, the bigotry and the persecution of the Middle Ages was a perfectly natural result. That perverted, materialistic view has come down to us, and even now gives trend to the religious thought of Western civilization. Of that degradation of the early teaching the Encyclopedia Britannica says: The conception of God as wholly external to man, a purely mechanical theory of creation, is throughout Christendom regarded as false to the teaching of the New Testament as also to Christian experience. It is, indeed, false to the teaching of the Christ but if it is so regarded "throughout Christendom" it is only on the part of its scholars; most certainly not by the masses of the people. The popular conception is undeniably that the relationship between God and man is identical with that between an inventor and an animated machine. It is an absolutely anthropomorphic view of the Supreme Being and thinks of God as being apart from man in precisely the same sense that a father is apart from his son. It may be an exalted, idealized conception of the relationship of father and son but it is nevertheless just that relationship, and along that line runs practically all the teaching and preaching of those who speak officially in modern religious interpretation. Emerson sought to counteract that popular misconception but he was regarded as a heretic by all but an infinitesimal portion of the church. The idea of the immanence of God is as different from the popular conception as noontide is different from midnight. It is so radically different that one who accepts that ancient belief must put aside his old ideas of what man is and raise him in dignity and potential power to a level that will, at first, seem actually startling; for it means, in its uttermost significance that God and man are but two phases of the one eternal life and consciousness that constitute our universe! The idea of the immanence of God is that He _is_ the universe; that the solar system is an emanation of the Supreme Being as clouds are an emanation of the sea, and that the relationship between God and man is not merely that of father and son but also that of ocean and raindrop. This conception makes man _a part of_ God, having potentially within him all the attributes and powers of the Supreme Being. It is the idea that nothing exists except God and that humanity is one portion of Him, and one phase of His being, as clouds are one expression of the waters that constitute the sea. The immanence of God is a conception of the universe that puts science and religion into perfect harmony with each other because miraculous creation disappears and evolutionary creation takes its place. Although the anthropomorphic idea of God has such widespread dominion in Occidental thought the immanence of God is plainly taught and repeatedly emphasized in the Christian scriptures. "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being," is certainly very explicit and admits of no anthropomorphic interpretation. It could not be said that a son lives and moves in his father. The declaration presents the relationship of a lesser consciousness within a greater, and constituting a part of it. The essentially divine nature of man is made clear in the declaration in Genesis that he is an image of God. To say that the likeness is on the material side would, of course, be absurd. In divine essence, in latent power, in potential spirituality, man is an image of God, because he is a part of Him. The same idea is more directly put in the Psalms with the assertion, "ye are gods."[A] If the idea of the immanence of God is sound man, as a literal fragment of the consciousness of the Supreme Being, is an embryo god, destined to ultimately evolve his latent powers into perfect expression. The oneness of life was explicitly asserted by Jesus in his teaching. Emerson's teaching of the immanence of God is unmistakable in both his prose and poetry. "There is no bar or wall," he says, "in the soul where man, the effect, ceases and God, the Cause, begins." Still more explicitly he puts it: The realms of being to no other bow; Not only all are Thine, but all are Thou. The statement is as complete as it is emphatic. "Not only all are Thine, _but all are thou_." It's an unqualified assertion that humanity is a part of God, as leaves are part of a tree--not something a tree has created in the sense that a man creates a machine but something that is an emanation of the tree, and is a living part of it. Thus only has God made man. Humanity is a growth, a development, an emanation, an evolutionary expression of the Supreme Being. It is upon the unity of all life that theosophy bases its declaration of universal brotherhood, regarding it as a fact in nature. The immanence of God gives a scientific basis of morality. The theosophical conception is that men are separated in form but are united in the one consciousness which is the life base of the universe. Their relationship to each other is somewhat like that of the fingers to each other--they are separate individuals on the form side but they are united in the one consciousness that animates the hand. If we imagine each finger to possess a consciousness of its own, which is limited to itself and cannot pass beyond to the hand, we shall have a fair analogy of the unity and identity of interests of all living things. Under such circumstances an injury to one finger would not appear to the others as an injury to them, but if the finger consciousness could be extended to the hand the reality of the injury to all would be apparent. Likewise an injury to any human being is literally an injury to the race. The race does not recognize the truth of it just because, and only because, of the limitation of consciousness. Lowell put the fact clearly when he said: He's true to God who's true to man; Wherever wrong is done To the humblest and weakest 'Neath the all-beholding sun, That wrong is also done to us; And they are slaves most base Whose love of right is for themselves, And not for all the race. He's true to God who's true to man because they are one life; because they are but different expressions of the one eternal consciousness; because they are as inseparable as the light and warmth of the sun. It follows that being true to man is fidelity to God. The popular idea is that people should be moral because that sort of conduct is pleasing to the Supreme Being and that He will, in the life beyond physical existence, in some way punish those who have broken the moral laws. It is belief in an external authority that threatens punishment as a deterrent to law breaking, as a state devises penalties commensurate with offenses. But the immanence of God represents a condition in which not punishments, but consequences, automatically follow all violations of natural law. Under such a state of affairs it would require no penalties, but only knowledge, to insure right conduct, for it would be perceived that there is no possible escape from the consequences of an evil act. It is not difficult to see the relative value of the two systems of thought when put to a practical test in human affairs. Imagine an unscrupulous man of great mental capacity who is amassing an enormous fortune through sharp practices that enable him to acquire the earnings of others while he safely keeps just within the limits of the law. We can point out to him that while he is not violating the law, and cannot therefore be prosecuted, he is nevertheless inflicting injury upon others and consequently public opinion will condemn him. But such a man usually cares nothing at all for public opinion and he sees no good reason why he should not continue in his injurious work. But if he can be made to understand that all life is one and that we are so knit together in consciousness that an injury to another must ultimately react upon the person who inflicts it; if he once clearly understands that to enslave another is to put chains upon himself, that to maim another is to strike himself, he will require neither the fear of an exterior hell nor the threat of legal penalties to induce him to follow a moral course. He would see that his own larger and true self-interest could be served only when his conduct was in harmony with the welfare of all. It is but a simple statement of the truth to say that the immanence of God furnishes a scientific basis of morality. FOOTNOTES: [A] Psalms LXXXII--6. CHAPTER III. THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL If we accept the idea of the immanence of God we shall be forced to abandon belief in a miraculous instantaneous creation of man and the earth on which he exists. The old, absurd, unscientific, impossible idea that the race came from an original human pair must be replaced by the hypothesis of the evolution of the soul. It was about the fact of evolution that the great storm of controversy raged between scientists and theologians in the middle of the nineteenth century, and later. The evolutionary truths were not at first well understood. They seemed to question or deny the existence of God. Deep within humanity is intuitive religious belief. It is a natural faith that transcends all facts, like the faith of a child in its mother. Because evolution was contrary to all preconceived ideas of the earth's inception it seemed at first to shatter faith and destroy hope, and against fact and reason itself rose the protest of intuition with spiritual intensity. People felt more than they reasoned and cried out that science was about to destroy the belief in God. But time has proved that they had merely misinterpreted the meaning of evolution. Further understanding has shown that, instead of destroying the belief in God, evolution has given us a new and better understanding of the whole matter and has placed the hope of immortality on firmer ground than it previously occupied. Evolution is an established and generally accepted fact. No educated person now thinks of questioning it. It is settled beyond dispute that all things in the physical world have become what they are through a long, slow, gradual evolution and that organisms the most perfect in form and most complex in function have evolved from simpler ones. The age of miracle has passed and belief in miracle has passed so far as its relation to the material world is concerned. It is no longer necessary to have a belief in an anthropomorphic God, performing feats in defiance of natural law, in order to account for that which exists. Science has reduced the cosmos to comprehension and shown that, given nebulous physical matter, we can understand how the earth came into existence. But why should we stop with the application of the laws of evolution to material things? Only the outright materialist, who asserts that life is a product of matter, can logically do so, and so great an authority in the scientific world as Sir Oliver Lodge has asserted that there is no longer any such thing as scientific materialism.[B] Those who accept the idea of the existence of the soul at all must necessarily accept the idea of the evolution of the soul. How can consciousness possibly escape the laws that evolve the media for the expression of consciousness? There must be the evolution of mind as certainly as there is evolution of matter. The material and the spiritual, form and life, are inseparable. Indeed, scientific progress has now brought us to the point where matter, as such, practically disappears and we are face to face with the fact that matter is really but a manifestation of force. How, then, is it longer possible to speak of the soul and not accept the evolution of the soul? Psychology is no less a science than physiology. The phenomena of consciousness are as definitely studied as physical phenomena, and it is no more difficult to account for a myriad souls than to account for a million suns and their planets. The scientists who have taken the position that the universe has a spiritual side as well as a material side are among the most eminent and distinguished of the modern world. If evolution has produced the starry heavens from the material side it has likewise evolved the human souls of our world and others from the spiritual side. It is no more difficult to understand the one than the other. From the scientific viewpoint the old popular belief in the creation of the earth and the race by an act suddenly accomplished is, of course, preposterous. If we could know nothing back of the present moment and were called upon to account for the world as we see it--with its cities, its ships and railways, its cultivated fields and parks--many people who still believe in instantaneous creation of the soul would save themselves much mental exertion by declaring that God had made it all as it stands for the use and entertainment of man. But we know that it is utterly absurd to think of the world leaping into existence instantaneously--nothing existing one day and all trains running on time between ready-made cities the next, carrying ready-made people about. It sounds ridiculous only because we are putting it in material terms, but in very truth it is less ludicrous than thinking of the instantaneous creation of the creators of cities and railways. The idea that we are a sudden creation is only possible because of the very vague ideas of what human souls are. The chief difficulty with the popular notion that a human soul is as new as the body it inhabits is that it is a vague and indefinite conception of life, and the moment we begin to think seriously about it the weakness of the idea becomes apparent. Such a notion has no relationship to the processes of reasoning. How can one reason with a man who believes it possible for a soul to spring into existence from the void? What is the use in reasoning about the "whys and wherefores" when it settles the whole matter to say: "God did it"? One thing that prevents us from believing not only that millions of souls were created in the twinkling of an eye, but also that the world as it now is was likewise suddenly created, is that we happen to know quite definitely the history of the world a little way into the past, and that history affirms that the earth and all life on it is the product of slow evolutionary growth. The evolution of the soul places the realm of religion on a scientific basis. Not only the origin of the soul but its development and its destiny at once appear in a new light. The mind is instinctively impressed with the dignity of the idea of the evolution of the soul, which, with its corollary, the immanence of God, makes the divinity of man a fact in nature. FOOTNOTES: [B] Raymond: or Life and Death. CHAPTER IV. LIFE AFTER BODILY DEATH One of the really remarkable facts of modern life is the disinclination to accept at apparent value the scientific and other evidence there is to prove that consciousness persists after the death of the physical body. There is in existence a large amount of such evidence and much of it is offered by scientists of the highest standing; and yet the average man continues to speak of the subject as though nothing about it had yet been definitely learned. It is the tendency of the human mind to adjust itself very slowly to the truth, as it is discovered. Sometimes a generation passes away between the discovery and the general acceptance of a great truth. When we recall the intense opposition to the introduction of steam-driven boats and vehicles, and the slowness with which the world settles down to any radical change in its methods of thinking, it will perhaps seem less remarkable that the truth about the life after bodily death has waited so long for general recognition. The evidence upon which a belief in the continuity of consciousness is based is of two kinds--that furnished by physical science and that furnished by psychic science. Together they make a very complete case. The printed evidence of the first division--physical science--is voluminous. In addition to that gathered by the Society for Psychical Research there are the researches and experiments by the scientists of England, France and Italy, among whom are Crookes, Lodge, Flammarion and Lombroso. Crookes was a pioneer in the work of studying the human consciousness and tracing its activities beyond the change called death. All of that keenness of intellect and great scientific knowledge, which has enabled him to make so many valuable discoveries and inventions, and has won for him world-wide fame, were brought to bear upon the subject, and for a period of four years he patiently investigated and experimented. Many illustrated articles prepared by him, fully describing his work, were published at the time in _The Journal of Science_ of which he was then the editor. Three vital points in psychic research were established by Sir William Crookes. One was that there is psychic force. He demonstrated its existence by levitation. He showed next, that the force is directed by intelligence. By various clever experiments he obtained most conclusive evidence of that fact. He then demonstrated that the intelligence directing the force is not that of living people. Crookes also went exhaustively into the subject of materialization and here, again, he was remarkably successful. He was the first scientist to photograph the materialized human form and engage in direct conversation with the person who thus returned from the mysterious life beyond. This evidence from the camera must be regarded as particularly interesting. It was received with much amazement at the time, but that was before we had revised our erroneous ideas about the nature of matter and before the day of liquid air. Materialization is no longer a startling idea, for that is precisely what liquid air is--a condensation of invisible matter to the point where it becomes tangible and can be weighed, measured, seen and otherwise known to the physical senses. All these things Sir William Crookes did upon his own premises and under the most rigid scientific conditions. All the methods and mechanism known to modern science were employed and he finally announced his complete satisfaction and acceptance of the genuineness of the phenomena observed. As Sir William Crookes was the earliest, Sir Oliver Lodge is the latest of the famous scientists who have taken up the investigation of the continuity of consciousness. In a lecture upon the subject, before the Society for the Advancement of Science, he declared not only that the subject of life after physical death was one which science might legitimately and profitably investigate but that the existence of an invisible realm had been established. He declared the continent of an invisible world had been discovered, and added, "already a band of daring investigators have landed on its treacherous but promising shores." Different scientists make a specialty of certain kinds of psychic investigation and while Crookes made a detailed and careful study of materialization Lodge has given equally painstaking efforts to investigations by the use of that class of sensitives known as "mediums." A medium is not necessarily a clairvoyant, and usually is not clairvoyant. A person in whose body the etheric matter easily separates from the physical matter is a medium and can readily be utilized as a sort of telephone between the visible and the invisible planes. A medium is an abnormal person and is a good medium in proportion to the degree of abnormality. If the etheric matter of the body is easily extruded the physical body readily falls into the trance condition and the mechanism of conversation can be operated by the so-called "dead" person who has temporarily taken possession of it. In such cases it is not the medium who speaks for the living-dead communicator. He is speaking directly himself, but he may often do it with great difficulty and not always succeed in accurately expressing the thought he has in mind. He may have to contend with other thoughts, moods and emotions than his own and to those who understand something of his difficulties it is not strange that such communications are frequently unsatisfactory. It is not often that an analogy can be found that will give a physical plane comprehension of a superphysical condition, but perhaps a faint understanding may be had by thinking of a "party line" telephone that any one of a dozen people may use at any moment he can succeed in getting possession of it. A listener attempting to communicate with one of them may find that several others are constantly "switching in," much to his confusion. If distinction of voices due to sound were eliminated and then a stenographic record were to be made of all words reaching the listener he would find that it would often be fragmentary and trivial. That would not, however, prove that the conversation did not come from living beings nor that there was not at least one intelligent person among them. That scientists engaged in psychic research have similar experiences proves nothing more. It seems to be a common opinion that the evidential value of such psychic communications, even under the direction of a skilful scientist, cannot be very great. But there are ways of knowing. It is not at all difficult for the investigator to confine his work, not only to incidents unknown to the medium, but to scientific facts which the medium can not possibly comprehend. It is a matter of common knowledge that mediums are usually people without technical scientific knowledge. Some of them have some degree of education and some of them are illiterate. Some of the most celebrated belong to the peasant class of Europe. Let us suppose that Sir Oliver Lodge is about to attempt to communicate with a scientist who has passed on to join the living dead. He will ask technical scientific questions that nobody but a scientist can answer and that the medium can by no possibility even understand when they are answered. Or suppose he gets a communication from the medium's hand signed by a great author. The living dead man writes a criticism, let us say, of some new book and does it in his characteristic style, full of the power of keen analysis and sound literary judgment. Surely nobody can believe that the medium is producing such things on her own account. If she could do so she would not be earning her living as a medium. But the scientists do not stop there. We often hear the expression "cross-correspondence." Just what do they mean by that and in what way does it prove the personal identity of a dead man who is communicating? The principle may be illustrated by the hotel clerk's method. Sometimes a guest leaves a sum of money with the clerk, and he wishes to be perfectly sure of his identity when he returns to claim it. He requests the guest to put his signature on a card. Then he tears the card in two, gives him one piece and keeps the other. That gives him a double proof of identity. When he comes for his money he must first give his name and then produce the piece of card that fits into the ragged edge of the piece the clerk has retained, the two together making the whole and restoring the signature. It's one of the simplest but most satisfactory proofs possible. Neither piece of that card alone is intelligible. If one piece should be lost and others should find it nobody could read it or make anything of it. Nobody could guess the name unless he had the other piece. He knows only about the part he holds. He may be a thief and may earnestly desire to use what he has found to defraud, but he is helpless because he has only one of the two parts it requires to make an intelligible whole. That is the principle involved in identity by cross-correspondence. Part of a message is written through one medium and part through another medium at another time in another place and neither part presents a complete statement or has coherence until it is fitted into the other part; and that prevents a medium who is dishonest from manufacturing a story that may be more or less plausible. We are by no means wholly dependent upon scientific investigation for evidence that the dead still live. Hundreds of people are sufficiently sensitive to have some personal knowledge of the matter. The number is far beyond what it appears to be for two reasons. One is that the average person fears ridicule and keeps his own counsel about his occult experience. The other is the feeling that communications from departed relatives are too sacred and personal for public discussion. Tens of thousands of people have seen demonstrations at spiritualistic seances which, while possessing little evidential value from the scientific viewpoint, nevertheless have a legitimate place in the great mass of psychic phenomena. But more convincing is the evidence furnished in hundreds of homes where some member of the family acts as automatic writer or medium. The most convincing evidence is not always scientific evidence. What can be more convincing than the evidence furnished in one's home by members of the family? There is much such evidence, obtained both through mediums and by automatic writing. Automatic writing--that is, the control of the hand of a living person to record the thoughts of another who has lost the physical body--is perhaps one of the least objectionable ways in which communications have come from the astral world, and to it we are indebted for some useful books with interesting accounts of the life in the unseen regions. Here, of course, as elsewhere, discrimination must be used, for the wise and foolish, the useful and useless are to be found side by side. In accepting or rejecting, one must use his common sense just as he does on this plane in separating the valuable from the worthless. In such matters we should not lose sight of the fact that the living dead are unchanged in intellect and morality. The genius here is the genius there and the living fool is not different from the dead one. It is often those who know the least who are the most anxious to tell it and the medium or automatic writer sometimes gives them the opportunity. Consequently we get many foolish communications and an enormous amount of commonplace platitude is delivered at seances. But it is equally true that unquestionable proof of personal identity is sometimes secured. There is much valuable non-scientific evidence that the consciousness survives the loss of the physical body and it frequently comes from sources that insure respectful attention. The two following stories of that kind are cited as corroboration of the scientific evidence. Little touches of the personality often constitute the most convincing of all evidence. It is one thing to show that people in general live after physical death. It is quite a different matter to establish the personal identity of one of them who is communicating, and that is one of the vital points involved. W. J. Stillman, the eminent journalist, gives us some valuable evidence on personal identity. In his earlier years he had studied art in London. Shortly before the death of Turner, the great artist had volunteered to give Stillman some advice on painting, but had not redeemed the promise at the time of passing away. Stillman had a friend whose daughter was mediumistic and he decided to experiment. Immediately on beginning the seance the young girl was taken possession of by an entity claiming to be Turner. Stillman asked his question silently, speaking no words, but mentally requesting Turner to write his name. The only reply was an emphatic shake of the head. He then asked if he would give some advice on painting. The response was another decided negative. Stillman felt that he was foolishly wasting his time and declared the seance at an end. But the girl sat silent. Then after a moment she slowly arose with the air of decrepitude, took a lithograph from the wall and went through the pantomime of stretching a sheet of paper on a drawing board, sharpening a pencil, tracing the outline, the washing-in of a drawing, etc., and then proceeded to show a simple but surprising method of taking out the lights. "Do you mean to say that Turner got his effects in that way?" asked the incredulous young artist. The answer was an emphatic affirmative. Stillman then asked if the central passage of sunlight and shadow through rain in the well known drawing "Llanthony Abbey" by Turner, had been done in that way and was answered by another emphatic affirmative. So sure was the young artist that this could not be true that he gave it up in disgust and abruptly left. A few weeks later Stillman was calling upon Ruskin and related the experience. Ruskin, who had known the celebrated dead artist intimately, declared that the contrariness of the medium at the beginning of the seance was remarkably characteristic of Turner. But what was much more to the point, in the way of evidence, was that the drawing in question was in Ruskin's possession and eagerly it was brought down from the wall for examination. After close scrutiny the great art critic and the young artist agreed that, beyond dispute, the drawing _had_ been done in the way described. Such evidence has an added value when it comes from those who are neither spiritualists nor professional investigators, but who have the things they doubt thrust upon them in such convincing manner that they feel impelled to record their experience for the enlightenment of others. In the last literary work[C] done by Carl Schurz, we are given, quite incidentally, his testimony that at a seance soon after the Civil War he was told the future in such detail as to leave no possible room for the explanation of coincidence. It was in July, 1865, when Schurz was on his way to Washington, whither he had been summoned by President Johnson, that he stopped in Philadelphia at the home of his friend, Dr. Tiedemann. The doctor's daughter, about fifteen years old, could do automatic writing. As a matter of interest and amusement in the family circle the girl gave an exhibition of her psychic abilities. When Schurz was invited to ask for a communication he not unnaturally requested one from the recently deceased President Lincoln, for he had been personally acquainted with him. The girl wrote a message purporting to come from Lincoln. It related to politics and proved, in time, to have been an accurate prophecy of most unexpected facts which would not transpire for more than three years! Schurz lived in Wisconsin at the time and had no intention of changing his residence, nor did he do so until two years later. The message which the girl wrote asserted that Schurz would be elected to the United States senate _from Missouri_. He did not regard the message as authentic and naturally enough considered the prophecy absurd. In 1867 he took up his residence in St. Louis and in January, 1869, he was elected United States senator by the Missouri legislature. So far as the scientific evidence is concerned, it will be understood, of course, that no attempt is here made to present that. The intention is merely to call attention to some of the eminent scientists who have done notable work and to mention a few of the more interesting discoveries made. Those who desire to come into possession of the evidence in full will find upon examination that it is voluminous. From the viewpoint of physical science alone the evidence of the continuity of consciousness is not only convincing but conclusive. Yet occult science has much more to offer. To those who have no personal knowledge of the existence of occult faculties, such evidence can be offered only upon the inherent reasonableness of the statements made. The truth of clairvoyance, like all other truths, must slowly win its way to general acceptance. While large numbers of people still scoff at it, even as the world not so very long ago scoffed at hypnotism as a fantastic theory with no foundation in fact, there is nevertheless a large and rapidly growing number who personally know the truth about clairvoyance. There is every conceivable grade of clairvoyant power and some degree of superphysical sensitiveness is becoming rather common. There are two distinct kinds of clairvoyance and that which is most in evidence with the public is not calculated to inspire confidence. It is employed almost exclusively in what is known as "fortune telling" and is often practiced by those who are interested only in the money they can earn by it. As a matter of course, trickery and fraud are found associated with it among such people, and those amongst them who are both capable and honest suffer on account of it. The fortune telling clairvoyant is usually one who was born with "second sight," as the Scotch have named it, and almost without an exception they do not in the least understand its rationale. They find certain facts in their consciousness that could not be known to them by the physical senses, but why or how they get the information they do not know. That form of clairvoyance is a sensitiveness related to the sympathetic nervous system, the center of which is the solar plexus. It has no relationship whatever to the mind, no association with intelligence, and will often--indeed, commonly--be possessed by the most ignorant and uncouth. It is much more common among Indians and negroes than among more highly evolved people. It is vestigial and will slowly disappear from the race. It belongs to the realm of emotion, not thought. The higher clairvoyance, the only true "clear seeing," is associated with the cerebro-spinal nervous system and its seat is in the brain. It is not a "natural gift"[D] like the other, although it is latent in all human beings. It has been highly developed in some who have had the unusual opportunity of long training under the direct supervision of great psychic scientists. Such clairvoyants are never to be found among the fortune tellers. Only people with serious views of life and intense devotion to human service would have the patience and endurance to undergo such training and only those of singular purity of life would have any possibility of success. Such clairvoyants are people of keen intelligence. By special training and tremendous effort, not possible to most of us, they have pressed forward in evolution and attained a development that the race will be many a century in reaching. It is by the use of this exalted order of clairvoyance that invisible realms are explored, and additional knowledge is accumulated to the ancient wisdom. Such a clairvoyant is not a medium. The medium surrenders his physical mechanism for the use of another, who speaks through it, and at the close of the seance the medium knows nothing of what has occurred. The clairvoyant is always in possession of his senses and is fully aware of what is occurring. He is the explorer and discoverer. He deals with the facts of the life after bodily death in a different way than the physical scientist does but it is soon found by the student that the physical scientist and the psychic scientist corroborate each other. Together they bring overwhelming evidence to support the hypothesis that life is eternal; that the consciousness we have at this moment will never cease to be; that our individuality, with all its present memories, will eternally persist; that what we call death is in reality but a forward step in an orderly evolutionary journey and an entrance upon a more joyous phase of life, which is not remarkably different from that we live today. The sum total of the knowledge that we have gained through the combined work of the physical scientists and the occult scientists leads us to the conclusion that the death of the physical body means neither the annihilation of consciousness nor a radical change in consciousness. It is, in fact, but the release of consciousness from its confinement to the physical form, as a song-bird is released from a cage to the joyous freedom of a wider world, where woods and stream and field and sky give new impulse to its innate characteristics. FOOTNOTES: [C] Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, Vol. III, p. 154. [D] There are, of course, really no natural gifts. Nature does not favor some and ignore others. When a few possess what others do not have, they earned it by giving special attention to its development or as in the case of the psychic sensitiveness of the sympathetic nervous system, it is vestigial, and has been possessed by the race in earlier ages. CHAPTER V. THE EVOLUTIONARY FIELD In a treatise on elementary theosophy the solar system may be reckoned as our universe and we shall have no need of considering more than a small fragment of even that. It is septenary in constitution, as may be seen in its vibrations expressed in color and sound. Beyond the seven colors of the prism we have only tints and outside the seven notes we can get only overtones or undertones. There are likewise seven planes in the system but less than half of them require our attention, for the evolutionary field of the human soul is the three lower planes, known as the physical, astral and mental. When the human being has outgrown them in evolution he passes on to superhuman evolution. The word "plane," so often encountered in theosophical literature, should perhaps have some definition. It has a wide application and is used as a synonym for region, place, sphere or world. In referring to the physical plane the term embraces all we know of earth and sky and life through the physical senses. There are seven planes in our solar system because of the seven different combinations of its ultimate atoms. Each plane consists of a totally different grade of matter than the next plane, but all have for their base the ultimate atom of the solar system. When modern science discovered, to its astonishment, that the physical atom was a composite body it confirmed the theosophical teaching that the ultimate physical atom was _not_ the final point of division. Theosophy teaches that when the ultimate physical atom is disintegrated its particles become the coarsest matter of the next plane or region above it--the astral plane. The process repeated with astral matter results in driving its ultimate atom from the highest level of the astral plane or world to the lowest of the mental plane. That scientist who said that the atom is the brick of the universe stated a great truth, for of its combinations all forms are built; and if the idea be applied to the ultimate atom of the solar system it will then be true that of such "bricks" all the planes are built. The relationship of the planes to each other is that of interpenetrating spheres of matter. The physical plane, consisting of the earth and its atmosphere, is surrounded and interpenetrated by the astral plane, or world, which is an enormously larger globe of exceedingly tenuous matter. This vast sphere of invisible matter is _within_ the earth as well as beyond it, interpenetrating every atom of physical matter to the earth's center. Its grossest grade of matter is so rare, and its vibrations so intense, that they cannot affect the physical senses and therefore we remain unconscious of it while that matter moves freely through all physical objects. We are unconscious of its life and activities for precisely the same reason that we know nothing of the messages of intelligence carried on the vibrations of the wireless telegraph, although they pass through the room where we sit. We have no sense organs with which it is possible to register such vibrations. Messages conveying intelligence of tremendous import, involving the movements of vast armies, the fall of empires and the destinies of great nations, flow through the very space we occupy but we are wholly unconscious of them. Even so we remain blind and deaf to the stupendous activities of life and consciousness in the astral world, notwithstanding the fact that it surrounds and permeates us while its forms, unseen and unfelt, move through the physical world as freely as water flows through a sieve. The mental world constitutes a region of our earth still more vast than the astral portion of it. As the astral sphere encloses the physical globe, the mental encompasses both, enclosing them and also interpenetrating them to the earth's center. The term "mental world" may seem confusing to some because we are accustomed to think of the mental and the material as being opposites. The mental world, or sphere, or plane, of theosophy, is a world of _matter_, not merely thought. It is matter, however, of such remarkable tenuosity that it may properly be called mind-stuff, and in its rarest levels it is said to be "formless" so far as the existence of what the physical senses know as form is concerned. All three of these worlds, or planes--the physical, astral and mental--are, then, worlds of matter, of form, of activity, of thought and of enterprise. They are concentric globes, the physical enclosed by the astral, and both physical and astral enclosed by the mental. Within and without all physical matter are both astral and mental matter. Every physical atom is surrounded and permeated by astral and mental matter. The relationship is precisely that which exists between the ether and the lower grades of physical matter. If the relationship of the three worlds--physical, astral and mental--is fully understood later confusion of thought will be avoided. Physical language is not capable of fully expressing much with which students of the occult must deal. Because there is nothing better for the purpose, words must be used that express but a part of the truth and may sometimes prove misleading unless the constitution and relationship of the three spheres is kept in mind. Thus, it is necessary to speak of higher and lower worlds, or planes, inner or outer, and of the soul coming "down" into the material world when, as a matter of fact, _no movement in space_ is under consideration. The astral is commonly spoken of as an inner plane and while it truly is so because it can be known only to astral senses by a withdrawal of the consciousness from its exterior, material body, it is also true that the astral world is outside the physical because it envelops it as the sea does a sponge. We usually speak of coming down from higher planes to lower and that may be true not only in the sense of changing the state of consciousness from higher vibrations to lower ones but it _could_ mean a journey in space from a point in the astral plane above the physical globe to a point at its surface. "Up" and "down" are relative, not absolute. "Down" for us is toward the earth's center and "up" is the opposite direction. A spire in the Occident and a spire in the Orient are both said to be pointing upward but they are pointing in opposite directions. On most parts of the earth's surface we have four directions, while at the poles there is, of course, but one direction--south or north, as the case may be. East, west and north disappear at the north pole. Reflection upon such facts leads one to at least faintly comprehend the possibility of space itself disappearing from the inner planes--space as we know it. The matter of each of the planes consists of seven classes. We are familiar with the solids, liquids and gases of the physical plane, and to them must be added four grades of the ether. The seven grades of matter of the astral and mental worlds constitute an important part of the mechanism for the soul's evolution, for they determine the state of consciousness in the life beyond the physical plane. But a study of those states of consciousness belongs to a later chapter. A difficulty which the student of theosophy should make an early effort to eliminate, is the tendency to think of invisible realms as unreal. It should not be forgotten that it is only the limitation of the physical senses that gives rise to the feeling of unreality beyond the visible. We should keep in mind the fact that the invisible realms are composed of matter as certainly as the air is matter, or a stone is matter. The water in a pan may evaporate, but it does not cease to be matter because it has passed beyond the ken of the physical senses. It will some time condense once more and play its part as the liquid, water, or as the solid, ice. Only when matter is in certain forms can we know of its existence through the physical senses. We frequently hear people who are students of the occult speak of a deceased person as having left the earth. But passing into the astral plane, or world, is not, of course, leaving the earth. Both the astral world and the mental world are divisions of the earth. As the atmosphere is invisible and yet is a part of the earth's physical matter, so the invisible astral and mental regions are other parts of the earth. They are properly called worlds because the activities in consciousness that make up existence there are as remote from ours as though they were upon another planet. We have erroneously supposed that with the physical senses we really see and know the earth, whereas we have known only that small fragment of the earth that consists of physical matter. Beyond the limitation of our poor senses stretch in unsuspected grandeur vaster regions of our earth, swept by the vibrations of an intenser life. CHAPTER VI. THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS The soul is a center of consciousness within the all-consciousness, or the life of the solar Logos; an individualized portion of the universal mind. That fragment of the divine life, with its latent God-like attributes, is expressed through a mechanism of consciousness that is formed of the matter of the various planes. Naturally enough it is expressed more fully upon the higher planes than upon the lower. At a very high level it is known as the monad. When it reaches down into the higher subdivisions of the mental world it is the ego, a lesser expression of the same divine life that pours from the Logos through the monad--lesser because it is then functioning through the denser matter of a lower level. The knowledge that has been gained about the nature of matter in recent years is helpful in understanding the activities of consciousness. The atom is found to be a center of force, and we are at the point where matter, as we have known it, disappears. All the force and consciousness of the solar system is, of course, but the life of the Logos, and on higher planes the distinctions we observe here fade out. Matter becomes a very different thing from the matter we know. The ether of the physical world is almost inconceivably tenuous matter. Yet it is gross when compared to the lowest grade of astral matter. The matter of the mental world is enormously rarer than the most tenuous matter of the astral world. In view of these facts it requires no stress of the imagination to understand that the matter of the higher planes is responsive to the vibrations of consciousness. The outraying energies of the individualized center of consciousness act upon the matter of the plane and draw about it a film that slowly grows into a vehicle through which consciousness can be more fully expressed, and which serves as a point of vantage from which its expression can be extended to lower planes. The seven subdivisions of the mental world fall naturally into two groups, composed of the three higher and the four lower grades of matter. The ego, anchored in the matter of the two planes above the mental world, descends to the upper levels of the mental and the vesture of matter with which it clothes itself is known as the causal body. Sending its energies downward, or outward, to the lower levels of the mental world, it establishes itself there in what slowly becomes a mental body. Again in the astral world the process is repeated and a vehicle of consciousness is formed of astral matter. The physical body is the lowest and last of the vehicles to be formed and as it is slowly built, in the months preceding birth, the matter it contains falls into place under the operation of occult laws which permit no element of chance to enter into its construction. Each of these bodies serves as a vehicle of consciousness on the plane to which it belongs. The soul is evolving simultaneously in each of the worlds, physical, astral and mental, and these various bodies enable it to receive the vibrations of the plane they belong to and thus to be conscious there. The mental body is the seat of intellectual activity. Thought arises as a vibration in it and passes through the astral body into the physical brain. Whenever we think we are using the mental body. The astral body is the seat of emotion. With it we feel. All emotion passes from it to the physical body to be expressed in the material world. The astral world is also called the emotional world, as the mental plane is called the mental world. The physical body is the soul's instrument of action. It attaches it to the physical world, enables the consciousness to contact material objects and to move and express on the material plane the thoughts and emotions generated in the mental and astral bodies. Another part of the mechanism of consciousness is known as the etheric double. But it is only a link in the chain and not a body through which the soul can function. It is composed of the etheric matter of the physical world and connects the astral body with the physical body. As every atom of physical matter is surrounded and permeated by etheric matter, it follows that the physical body has its duplicate in etheric matter. "Etheric double" is a very appropriate name since it is a perfect duplicate of the physical body in etheric matter. It serves the purpose of supplying the life force to the nervous system and is the medium through which sensation is conveyed. The action of an anaesthetic drives out so much of the matter of the etheric double that the connection is broken and sensation in the physical body ceases. One of the difficulties in the way of getting a clear conception of the constitution of man, and realizing that he is a soul functioning through various vehicles of consciousness, is the materialistic modes of thought common to Occidental civilization. We are accustomed to thinking of the physical body itself as being the man, and if there is any thought at all of the consciousness surviving the death of the body it is very vague and indefinite as to where it exists and how it is expressed. Very little thinking should be necessary to show the absurdity of the belief that the body is the man. Two bodies may be alike, as in the case of twins, but the souls, the real men, may be absolutely unlike. The real man is superphysical. His intelligence or his stupidity, his genial disposition or his moroseness, his generosity or his selfishness, are but the manifestations of himself through the body by which they are expressed. The body itself is a mere aggregation of physical atoms, as a planet is, so organized that they constitute an instrument for a purpose. The mass of matter constituting the body is a variable mass. It may increase or diminish greatly, but the man remains unchanged. There is no permanent relationship between the man and the physical matter which he uses for his vehicle of consciousness. According to the physiologists every atom of the body changes within a period of a few years. The cells wear out, break down and pass away to be replaced by new matter. Not a particle of the physical matter that was in our bodies seven years ago is there now, and none that is there now will remain. Within seven years, or less, we shall have bodies composed of new matter as certainly as an infant's is. Of course such reconstruction of the body does not change its appearance. It is built on the same lines. It is as it would be with some very old cathedral. As the centuries pass it must be slowly rebuilt. The floors wear out and are relaid. The roof serves its time and is replaced. The walls crumble first in one place and then another until they have been completely reconstructed. After a thousand years has passed there may be none of the original material in the building, yet its appearance is unchanged. The bodies we have today shall have passed away and will be growing in the trees and blooming in the flowers in a few years. The bodies we shall then have are now scattered through the world. They will be brought together during that time and will come from many parts of the earth. The physical senses continually deceive us and nowhere more than in our ideas about the physical body. It is an unstable mass of matter, in constant motion, with great gulfs of space between its atoms. Emerson was very far ahead of his time and it took science a half century to catch up with him and learn that he had recorded a fact in nature when he wrote: Atom from atom yawns as far As earth from moon, or star from star. In 1908 the _Scientific American Supplement_, commenting on our reconstructed ideas about matter, remarked that the actual mass of the physical body to the apparent mass was about one to one million! If the physical body is merely an organized mass of matter, continually varying, constantly coming and going, and having no permanent relationship to the consciousness that functions through it, what reason is there for believing that it is the man? Does it seem strange that the center of consciousness should be able to draw about itself on the higher planes aggregations of matter and finally to express itself on the material plane through the mass of matter we call the body? If that is mysterious quite as miraculous things are going on constantly about us unnoticed. Thoreau calls attention to the fact that we become so accustomed to the marvelous expressions of life all about us that we are oblivious of the phenomena that are taking place. Commenting on the magic possible to nature he says: "Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed--a, to me, equally mysterious origin for it. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.... In the spring of 1857 I planted six seeds sent to me from the Patent Office, and labeled, I think, 'Poitrine jaune grosse,' large yellow squash. Two came up, and one bore a squash which weighed 123½ pounds, the other bore four, weighing together 186¼ pounds. Who would have believed that there was 310 pounds of poitrine jaune grosse in that corner of my garden? These seeds were the bait I used to catch it, my ferrets which I sent into its burrow, my brace of terriers which unearthed it.... Other seeds I have which will find other things in that corner of my garden. Perfect alchemists I keep who can transmute substances without end, and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. Here you can dig, not gold, but the value which gold merely represents; and there is no Signor Blitz about it. Yet farmer's sons will stare by the hour to see a juggler draw ribbons from his throat, though he tells them it is all deception. Surely, men love darkness rather than light."[E] A seed is a center of force through which life, at a much lower level than the human, flows and gathers about that center the material mass that serves the purpose of its lowly evolution. At the human level consciousness has become self-consciousness and a marvelously complex mechanism is required to express it and serve the purpose of its farther evolution. This complex mechanism of consciousness, composed of the various bodies through which the ego expresses itself at different levels, is used as a whole for functioning on the physical plane. But when the ego is functioning no farther down than the astral plane, the physical body is, of course, temporarily discarded. It is then in the condition known as sleep, or trance. Sleep is the natural withdrawing of the consciousness from the physical body. When the separation occurs in the case of the medium it is called a trance. The cause of the inert condition of the physical body is the same in both cases--the withdrawal of the consciousness of the ego. The physical body is then unoccupied, but the consciousness maintains magnetic connection with it. In death that tie is severed and the consciousness can return to the body no more. Instances in which the apparently dead are brought back to life are cases where the magnetic tie is not broken, notwithstanding there is every appearance of death. In form and feature the physical body has its exact duplicate in the astral body, and in it we function in the astral world whenever the separation between the two occurs, whether from sleep or death. In sleep the consciousness, expressing itself in the astral body in the astral world, may be turned dreamily inward or it may be turned outward and be vividly aware of the life and activities of that world. But there is small chance that any memory of it will come through into the physical consciousness upon awakening. Occasionally, however, it does occur and then it is usually remembered as a very vivid dream. In illness, and other abnormal conditions, the connection between the physical and astral consciousness is much closer. At a comparatively high point in evolution the two states of consciousness merge. The man is then continuously conscious, and has a full memory in the physical brain of all his activities in the astral world during the hours when the physical body was asleep. Consciousness is, of course, at its worst when expressed through the limitation of its lower vehicles. Any person, whether brilliant or stupid, will be much abler and keener on the astral plane than on the physical, because in sleep, and after death, he has lost the limitations imposed by physical matter. But the degree of restriction is variable and depends much upon the _kind_ of matter of which the brain and body are composed; for the physical atoms vary greatly, and as they come and go in the passing years the body may either become purified and refined or it may grow grosser and coarser. By careful attention to food and drink, and by control of the emotions, the limitations of physical matter may be lessened and a much higher and more efficient state of consciousness in the physical body can be attained. FOOTNOTES: [E] The Succession of Forest Trees.--Thoreau. CHAPTER VII. DEATH Perhaps one of the reasons why death is so commonly associated with a feeling of fear is because we give so little thought to it. Most people seem never to think of the subject at all until death invades the home and threatens some member of the family. Then terror fills the mind and all but paralyzes the reasoning faculties. Such fear of death, so widespread in Occidental civilization, is eloquent testimony to the materialism of our times. It is doubt about the future that causes fear of death. Only when we have a scientific basis for the hope of immortality will the awful fear of death disappear. It is feared because it seems like annihilation. If people really believed in a heavenly existence beyond the physical life they could not possibly be filled with terror at the prospect of entering it. If a man's religion has not given him a genuine confidence in a future life, and made it as much of a reality to him as this life is, it has failed to do what we have a right to demand of religion. If it does not enable him to look upon the face of his dead without a doubt, or a fear, there is something wrong, either with his religion or with his comprehension of it. What possible reason is there for fearing death? A thing that is universal, that comes to all, can not be pernicious. To regard death as a disastrous thing would be an indictment of the sanity of nature. Death is merely the close of a particular cycle of experience. It is the annihilation of nothing but the physical body, in its aspect of an instrument of activity and a vehicle of the consciousness upon the physical plane. The atoms of the body, drawn together in the human form for temporary use, are, in death, released from the cohesive force of a living organism and will return whence they came. In reality there is no such thing as death, unless it be strictly applied to the form, regarded as a temporary vehicle of consciousness. As for the consciousness, there is no death. There is life in a physical form and life out of it, but no such thing as the death, or cessation, of the individual intelligence. What we name "death" is but a change in the orderly evolution of life, and it is only because the phenomenon is viewed from the physical plane that such a term can be applied to it. From this plane it is death, or departure. But looked at from the astral world it is birth, or arrival. What we call birth is the beginning of the expression of the soul through a material body on the physical plane. It is an arrival. But from the astral viewpoint it is a departure and therefore is as logically a "death" there as departure from a physical body is here. So death and departure from one plane is simply birth, or arrival, upon another, although it is not, of course, birth as we know it. Every process in nature has a part to play in evolution and therefore death is as necessary as life and as beneficial as birth. Death is the destroyer of the useless. There is a time when each human being should die--that is to say, a time when the physical body has fulfilled its mission and completely accomplished the purpose for which it exists. To continue life in a physical body beyond that point is to waste energy and lose time in the evolutionary journey. Under the action of what we call "diseases" the body becomes inefficient, or through the gradual breaking down of old age the senses grow dim and uncertain. The consciousness can no longer be keenly expressed through its impaired machine and it is decidedly to the advantage of the ego to withdraw from it. The soul is in the position of an artisan obliged to work with broken and rusted tools. Good results are no longer possible. It is then that death comes, beneficently destroying the worn out instrument and releasing the consciousness from its too-often painful situation and permitting its escape into a field of unobstructed activity. Death is painless. The breaking down of the body under the ravages of disease may cause pain, but that belongs to physical life, not death. Distress may also be caused by groundless fear of death. But the dying person who does not know that death is upon him has no terror, and no pain, and sinks quietly to sleep. Very little observation will convince one that the distress about a death-bed is invariably on the part of surviving friends, not on the part of the dying. Those who are left behind remain within the limitations of the physical senses, and they are therefore separated from the so-called dead man, but he is not separated from them. It is because of that separation that the terror of death exists for them. But in that very fact is to be seen the great evolutionary value of death. The separation it causes intensifies love as nothing else could do. It is only when our friend is gone that we begin to appreciate his real value and comprehend how large a part he really played in our existence. As sudden silence gives the consciousness a keener realization of the sound that has just ceased, so death, by its contrast, gives a vivid, realistic touch to life. We all know how enormously the heart qualities are quickened by the death of a close friend. The whole nature is in some degree purified and spiritualized. Selfishness is decreased and compassion expands. Sympathy for others in distress is born, and thus a decided evolutionary advance is made. We have only to reflect upon the fact that separation without death produces the same effects in a minor key, to realize the evolutionary value of death. In constant association we grow careless and indifferent. But an absence of a month or two enables one to get a truer perspective of personal associations and thereafter life has new zest. A child regards its mother with a certain degree of appreciation but a short absence enormously increases its appreciation. All human beings come into closer and more sympathetic association after a period of separation, and the completeness of the separation caused by death renders it peculiarly efficacious in the development of the spiritual side of one's nature. It often requires death to turn attention away from materialistic life. Frequently a family becomes completely absorbed in material success. There is no thought at all given to the higher life. Wealth, position, power, fame, all the vanities of the world, hold them firmly. They become completely self-centered. Then suddenly death enters and breaks the family circle, and the transient character of all they had been so strenuously striving for suddenly dawns upon them, and attention is turned to the nobler things of life. It is a well known fact that great wars are accompanied or followed with widespread spiritual awakening, and it is no doubt largely because the shadow of death has fallen on tens of thousands of households. It has sometimes been asked by doubtful critics if it would not be an improvement on nature's plan if the sorrow caused by the death of our friends were softened by direct knowledge of their continued existence. It is evidently the plan of nature to have the physical life and the astral life normally separated at our present level of evolution. Some of the reasons have already been discussed. There are undoubtedly others that we are incapable of understanding, and still others that we can readily comprehend. If the higher, joyous life of the astral world were open to our consciousness, then concentration upon the duties of this life would be difficult, if not impossible. Our life in the physical body may be compared to the tasks of children in school. They have serious business before them in the acquiring of knowledge and the development of the intellect. They can best accomplish the work when completely isolated from other phases of life. Introduce into their work-day consciousness the joys of a child's existence, the circus, the military parade, the picnic and the dancing parties, and the purpose for which the school exists would be defeated. To exactly the extent that the consciousness is withdrawn from such things will desirable progress be made with the work of the school-room. And so it is with the limitation of our physical senses. It serves a purpose. But there is a point in human evolution where such limitation of the senses is no longer of any service and may be transcended. Some people have attained it. They are those who have previously been referred to as the psychic scientists, with the higher clairvoyance of the cerebro-spinal system developed. It is an accomplishment to which all may aspire. None need submit to the separation commonly caused by death. By hard work in co-operating with nature's methods of evolution and by a serious and sustained effort to live the highest and most helpful life of which one is capable, it is possible in time to attain a level of consciousness where one has personal knowledge that the dead still live. But in the very work of rising to that level, the concentration previously enforced by the limitation of the physical senses will have been acquired. One of the common delusions about death is that some radical change in the nature of a person then takes place. This is no doubt due in part to the theological ideas that have come down to us from the time of the Middle Ages. It is popularly supposed that at death one comes to some sort of a judgment that classes him as either a saint qualified for eternal bliss or a fiend fit only for endless torture! The belief is based on that erroneous view of human nature that was common to the melodrama of a past generation and that will possibly have eternal life in the cheap novel. It represented the hero as unqualifiedly good and the villain as absolutely bad. The one had no flaw of character and the other had not a redeeming feature. But human nature does not thus express itself. The spark of divine life is in all, notwithstanding it is sometimes darkly hidden. On the other hand we find no perfected beings. The perfect heroes were merely creations of an imperfect imagination. At our halfway stage of evolution we find neither the absolutely good nor the hopelessly bad. Why should the change we call death transform a human being? It is merely the loss of one part of the mechanism of consciousness. The soul, the thinker, has lost connection with the physical world because the physical body has ceased to exist. The mental body and the astral body remain and they enable him to think and feel. But he can not think more than he knows, nor feel what he has not evolved. All that has happened in death is that contact with the material world has been lost. One of the misconceptions is that death brings great wisdom, and we often hear of people getting into communication with those who have passed on, with the hope of obtaining valuable advice. It is true that death ushers one into a realm of wider consciousness and that in the astral world one can see a little further ahead and take a few more things into consideration. But--and it is a vital point--he would have no better judgment in determining a course of action than he had while here in the physical world. Both mentally and emotionally he is unchanged. His grade of morality is neither better nor worse. His tolerance or narrowness remains what it previously was. If he was bigoted while here he is still bigoted there. If he was the unevolved ignoramus here he remains precisely that in the astral world. Whether genius or fool, saint or villain, he remains unchanged and goes on with his evolutionary development, but in a world where emotion is the determining factor. Death merely opens the door to a new and wider realm where the evolution of the soul proceeds. It would be difficult to say which is the greater misfortune--the delusions that make death the king of terrors, or the complacent belief that if death does not end all, it at least brings the soul to a judgment that ends all personal responsibility and settles one's fate forever. Death can no more lessen responsibility or transform the moral nature than sleep can change character or determine destiny. The theosophical conception of death is as consoling as it is scientific. Instead of the fear of death it gives us knowledge of continued life. Instead of doubt and despair it gives us confidence and joy, for it guarantees the companionship once more of those we have known and loved, and erroneously supposed we have lost. CHAPTER VIII. THE ASTRAL WORLD When the physical body dies there is an interval between the loss of consciousness here and the dawning of the astral consciousness. During that interim a review of the life scenes takes place. Everything between birth and death passes again through the consciousness, as it thus pauses in the etheric double, between the life activities of two worlds. Then peaceful unconsciousness follows, from which the man awakes in the astral world. To those accustomed to thinking of the dying as passing to some remote heaven, where they become angels, it will perhaps sound startling to say that a dead man is not aware at first that the change we call death has taken place. Yet that is a common experience. Nor is it at all remarkable that it should be so with many. We have only to recall the fact that all physical matter is surrounded and permeated with astral matter to realize that the physical plane is duplicated in astral matter. Not only the physical body of the human being but, of course, every physical object, has its astral duplicate. The dying man loses consciousness of the physical plane and awakes as from a sleep to the astral consciousness. He sees then the exact duplicate, in astral matter, of the familiar scenes he has left behind. He sees, too, his friends, for their astral bodies are replicas of their physical forms. And yet, notwithstanding all this there is a difference, though not a difference that enables him to comprehend what has occurred. He may know that only yesterday, or what seems to him to have been yesterday, he was ill and confined to his bed, and was perhaps told that he was about to die; and now he is not ill; indeed, he never felt so free from aches and pains in all his life. The pulsing energies and exhilaration of youth are his again! This mystifies him. He sees his friends and naturally speaks to them, but gets no reply and finds that he can not attract their attention. It must be remembered that he can not see their physical bodies any more than they can see his astral body. Yet he truly sees them. If a so-called dead man and a living person look at the same instant at another living person they will both see him, but the latter sees the physical body while the former sees the astral body that surrounds and permeates it. Under these circumstances it is not strange that the new arrival in the astral world is seized with a feeling of baffling mystery. He is in full possession of his reasoning faculties, and will power, but there is a puzzling limitation to his efforts to produce expected results. A partial analogy may be found in the case of a person suddenly stricken with aphasia over night. He rises in the morning, dresses, and goes about his accustomed duties without the slightest suspicion that any change has come to him until he takes up the morning paper and discovers that he can not read--that the familiar print simply means nothing to him! Of course, in time the living dead man gets adjusted to the new life. He soon meets others in the astral world who have been there longer and they, sooner or later, succeed in convincing him that he is not having an exceptionally vivid dream. The astral world, as explained in a previous chapter, has seven subdivisions and the astral body contains matter belonging to each of them. While we have the physical body the matter of the astral body is in rapid circulation, every grade of it being constantly represented at the surface. But when the connection with the material plane is broken, a rearrangement of the matter of the astral body automatically takes place (unless it is prevented by an exercise of will power) and the grossest grade of matter thereafter occupies its surface. Consequently the consciousness of the man is limited to that subdivision of the astral world represented by the lowest grade of matter which his astral body contains at the time of his death. This is a fact the importance of which it would be difficult to over emphasize, because his after-death state of consciousness, his joy or sorrow--in short, his temporary heaven or hell, depends upon his location in the astral world. There are three, and only three modes of death, or release from the physical body--by old age, by disease, or by violence. Old age is the natural and desirable close of the chapter of physical plane experience. It is most desirable to live to ripe old age and accumulate a large harvest of experience. To live long and actively is excellent fortune. It is not well to pass into the astral world with strong physical desires. As old age comes on the desire forces subside. Most of that grade of astral matter that is capable of expressing them has slowly disappeared. Old age represents the most gradual loosening of the life forces from the material plane, and that has many advantages. Release from the physical body by disease is next in order of desirability. It is a quicker and less complete breaking down of the connection with the physical world. Nevertheless it is a condition in which much progress may be made in getting free from physical desires, as those who have had experience with invalids are aware. Desires usually grow weaker with the progress of the disease that finally ends in death. Release from the physical form by violence is, of course, the least desirable of the three, not merely because it is violence, but for the much more important reason that sudden death finds the man, as a rule, with a considerable amount of the lower grades of astral matter in his astral body. Whether the death by violence is the result of accident, murder, suicide or legal execution, the astral plane conditions of consciousness are alike unfortunate, in that it is sudden death, not the manner of death, that permits entry upon the astral life before the lower grades of astral matter have been eliminated from the astral body. This is one reason why suicide is unfortunate--because it ushers the man into the astral world with more of the matter of the lower levels in his astral vehicle than would be there if he had lived out his normal physical life. Purgatory is a term often applied to the lowest level of the astral world. The word is well chosen because it is there that the moral nature is purged of its impurities. Strong desires cultivated and indulged during the life in the physical body are eliminated with the gross astral matter through which alone they can be expressed and, freed to that extent, the man passes to the next subdivision, and into its higher state of consciousness. In the astral life some people linger long on the lower levels while others know them not at all, but awaken to the blissful consciousness of the higher subdivisions. Nature is everywhere consistent, grouping together people of a kind. It is, however, the manner in which one lives during physical life that determines his happiness or sorrow after death. The astral body, the seat of the emotions, is, like the physical body, constantly changing the matter that composes it. An emotion of any kind expresses itself as a vibration in the matter of the astral body. If it is a base emotion, such as anger, hatred, lust or cruelty, it throws into vibration the grossest of the astral body's matter, for only in that can it be expressed. If it is an exalted emotion, such as love, sympathy, devotion, courage or benevolence, it affects only the rarer grades of astral matter, for in them only can such feeling be expressed. With most people there is a constant mingling of a wide range of emotions, with a gain in one direction and a loss in another. One who fortunately understands the law of emotional cause and effect may make absolutely certain of a comfortable sojourn upon the astral plane after death. He would make it a rule to watch his emotions and control them, knowing that each time he indulged a gross one the vibration set up in his astral body would strengthen and vivify the grossest grade of matter in it, while pure and exalted emotions would strengthen the higher grades. Ultimately, the grossest grade, becoming atrophied for the lack of activity, would drop away from him. The descriptions of purgatory given by the psychic scientists are calculated to induce even the reckless to avoid it. If we could bring together all the vilest men and women now living on the physical plane, the crudest of murderers, the most besotted drunkards, the vilest degenerates, the most conscienceless and vindictive fiends of every description, and huddle them together in hovels reeking with filth, and let them remain without any outward government, free to prey upon each other, we should perhaps have a faint comprehension of the reality of the lowest subdivision of the astral world. But no physical plane comparison can do it full justice, for we must remember that it is the emotional world and that the feelings of its inhabitants make its atmosphere in a way that would here be impossible. Astral matter instantly and exactly reproduces emotion, so that the fiend or the sensualist looks exactly what he feels. Even in the unresponsive physical matter, the evil in a man is often sufficiently expressed to fill those who behold him with terror. In the astral world every cruel thought and hideous emotion would express itself in visible form and the multitudinous emotions welling up in the lower level of the astral world would be as a loathsome swarm of reptiles gliding through its horrible life. Add to all that the fact that the hopeless despair of its denizens gives an atmosphere of utter gloom and desolation, and we have a hell that leaves no need of other torture to check the course of the erring soul. And yet there is no suffering that is not self-imposed. It is both consistent and just that a man should associate with his kind and look upon himself in others until he grows sick of his own vileness and cries out in agony of spirit against his own moral offenses. It must not be assumed that every person dying with considerable matter belonging to the lower astral level still within his emotional body will necessarily pass through such experiences. It should never be forgotten that we are dealing with a matter of the utmost complexity and that even the most exhaustive description in print would present only a fragment of the truth. The conditions of consciousness on any subplane vary as individuals vary. Some people on the lowest astral level are wholly unconscious of their surroundings. Another variation is that some people find themselves floating in darkness and largely cut off from others--a sufficiently undesirable condition, and yet better than the fate of some. All states of astral consciousness are reactions from previous good or evil conduct and are, moreover, temporary conditions that will in time be left behind. In a different way and at a higher level there may be suffering on the astral plane that is purifying the nature. Not all offenses against nature's laws are of so gross a type. There is the abuse of desire and the violation of conscience that may result in various kinds of regret and emotional distress. A desire of a refined type strongly built up upon the physical plane lives with an intenser vitality on the astral plane after the physical body can no longer gratify it. A glutton and a miser have strong desires of a very different type. Each of them is likely to suffer on account of it during the astral life. They need not dwell upon the lowest level to get a reaction from their folly in the physical life. We can easily imagine the distress of the glutton in a world without food. There could be no distress because of hunger, for the astral body is not, like the physical body, renewed and maintained by what it consumes. But hunger and the gratification of the sense of taste are very different things. It is the latter that would trouble the gormand, and it is said that great suffering, as in the case of the drunkard, is his lot until the desire gradually disappears because of the impossibility of its gratification. The miser represents a subtler form of desire, but his greed for gold may be quite as intense as that of the glutton for sensual gratification. The accumulation of money has been the dominant thought of his life. He has created in his mind a wholly false value for money and it gives him real pain to part with a dollar of it. Only dire necessity forces him to spend any portion of his hoard. It is not difficult to imagine his emotions when he is obliged to leave it behind and see others spend it freely. Any kind of a desire that is related to the physical body is without means of gratification in the astral world and if such desire has been cultivated until it becomes strong enough to play an important part in one's life it will certainly give him more or less trouble after the loss of the physical body. Whether it grows out of an over-refinement and excess in a natural appetite, as in the case of the epicure, or is simply an artificial thing that is unrelated to any natural demand, as in the case of the smoker, the inability to gratify the desire is equally distressing. The suffering that results could hardly be judged by what would follow on the physical plane when desire is thwarted, for in the astral life emotion expresses itself much more intensely. All of the suffering in the astral world, of whatever type, is the natural result of the thoughts, emotions and acts during the life on the physical plane. The astral world is that part of the mechanism for man's evolution that brings him up with a sharp turn when he is moving in the wrong direction. He is not being punished. The injurious forces he has generated are simply reacting upon him. This reaction, that sets him right, is as certain as in the case of the infant that picks up a live coal. It is merely less direct, and not so immediate in result, and it works itself out in a multiplicity of ways. One of the methods of reaction that helps to stamp out a fault is the automatic repetition of the unpleasant consequences of wrong doing. The murderer will serve for a general illustration. In the case of a deliberate, premeditated and cruel murder, the assassin is moved by such base motives as revenge or jealousy. The results of these, so far as their frightful consequences to the victim are concerned, do not in the least tend to deter the assassin from further deeds of violence. He feels gratified with his success and is quite satisfied with himself. Only the possibility of detection and punishment troubles him. If they follow in due course they will accomplish something in correcting his erroneous views of life. But they will not be sufficient to register indelibly, in the very nature of the man, a proper sense of the horror of which he has been guilty. Such a man can be impressed and his viewpoint changed only by consequences to himself. It is in the reaction in the astral life of the forces he has generated here that he gets the lesson that forces in upon his consciousness the horror inseparable from murder. If he escapes the physical plane consequences of his deed he will nevertheless come into contact in the astral world with conditions sufficiently horrible. He has made a tie with his victim that can not be broken until the scales of justice are balanced and nature's exaction has been paid to the uttermost. Just what form of retribution will follow depends, of course, on the nature of the case. But the reaction is as certain as it is multiplex. One of its variants is the gruesome experience of always fleeing from the corpse of the victim, but with the utter impossibility of a moment's escape. In the case of a murderer who has been apprehended, tried, condemned and executed, the whole of the tragedy and its sequel would be, not only lived over in imagination but repeated automatically, in fact, and worked out in full detail in the plastic matter of the astral region. Probably few people have the imagination to comprehend what the murderer feels of apprehension and fear at his trial when his life is in the balance; or what he suffers while hiding from justice and making futile efforts to escape the pursuing officers of the law; or what his emotions are as his hands are tied and he steps upon the death trap. All this is reproduced in the astral life, repeatedly. As one whose mind is completely filled with a subject--let us say something that is the cause of much anxiety--finds it impossible to turn his attention from it and think of other things, or go to sleep, and is impelled against his desire to think the matter over and over, so the assassin is enmeshed in the emotion web of his crime and can not escape from living and acting it all over and over again until a revulsion of feeling arouses him to full comprehension of the horror of his crime. Again it should be said that no attempt is here made to give more than a very fragmentary description, and a few hints, of the manner in which the retributory laws of nature work. A writer on the subject should also be careful that, in pointing out the fact that to certain classes of offenders against nature's laws severe penalties accrue, the reader does not get the impression that suffering is the common lot in the astral life. The truth of the matter is that people who live clean, moderate lives, and refrain from generating forces that are injurious to others, will know nothing whatever of the unfortunate side of astral existence. In the limitations, the vexations, the physical aches and ills, the poverty, sorrow and suffering of the material plane, most of us are as near to hell-conditions of existence as we ever will be. The ordinary man of average morality has so little of the matter of the lowest level of the astral plane lingering in him that as a rule he would begin his postmortem existence on the next higher subdivision, which is the counterpart of the earth's surface. He would therefore have no knowledge of the hell that exists on the lower level. But that is not at all true of those who live grossly and freely indulge the emotions of anger, jealousy, hatred, revenge, and their kindred impulses, that often lead to violent crimes. It is possible to live the physical life so sanely, usefully, harmoniously and unselfishly that at the death of the physical body one will pass almost immediately to a joyous and useful career in the astral world. But while that is quite possible the unfortunate fact is that a great many people so color all their emotions with selfishness that the astral sojourn is unpleasantly affected by it. It is the emotions that determine the astral life and it is said that if they are directly selfish they bring the man into conditions on the astral plane that are very unpleasant. It must be expected that any idea we may form of the astral life will be incomplete, and inadequate to give a true conception what it is really like. Perhaps the most comprehensible of the subplanes is that which reproduces the physical landscape in astral matter. There the average man will begin his conscious astral career. If we think of the world as we know it here and then imagine all that is material to have vanished from it we shall gain some comprehension of the situation. Eliminate the necessity of providing food, clothing and shelter and nearly all of the labor of the race would cease. The tilling of the soil, the mining, the building, the manufacturing, and the transportation and exchange of the products of field and factory, constitute nearly the whole of human activity. In the astral life no food is required and one is clothed with astral matter from which garments are fashioned almost with the ease and rapidity of thought. No houses are needed for shelter. The astral body is not susceptible to degrees of heat and cold, and nothing there corresponds to our temperatures. There is no division of night and day, objects being self-luminous and light being perpetual. If we could drop out of physical life all need of physical labor, abolish all response to heat or cold, the need of food and houses, and add unlimited wealth or, to be more exact, give each person the power to possess all that wealth can confer and much that it can not, we would have an approach to a conception of the astral world from one viewpoint. Each one entering the astral life has, of course, a fullness of liberty and freedom from responsibility that is not instantly comprehensible to the physical mind. There is nothing whatever that he must do. There is, however, plenty that he can do if he desires to be active. On the physical plane many people of wealth travel and amuse themselves with sight seeing. Thousands of others would do so if it were possible. In the astral world it is possible and large numbers of people drift aimlessly about with no particular plans. Multitudes belonging to various religious sects organize themselves into congregations, build edifices and spend much time in religious services. Others amuse themselves building houses and constructing landscapes. It is not at all necessary, but the old habits live and influence activities. The average person in the astral world gives himself to idleness and the enjoyment of the intensified emotions of the astral life just as the majority of people would do here if it were possible to escape the round of duties so sternly imposed by their necessities. For a long time the most of them also make daily visits to the homes they have left behind on the physical plane. Those who have a strong tie of affection with some member of the family frequently spend much time lingering around and going on little journeys about the premises or elsewhere with the loved one. They understand that the dead person is not perceived by the living one, but nevertheless they desire to be near. They do not have a full consciousness of all the living person is thinking and doing, but they are fully aware of the state of feeling, or emotion, and whether the living friend is pleasantly or unpleasantly affected by passing events. As the astral life becomes more and more familiar to the newly arrived individual he gets well settled in it and gradually readjusts his viewpoint to a truer perspective than he has here. As time passes he is less and less in touch with the affairs of the physical life and finally loses consciousness of them altogether as he passes on to the higher levels of the astral world. But there are many people who have a more serious view of life and who lose no opportunity of acquiring knowledge, and the astral world, which is called "the hall of learning" by students of the occult, presents remarkably good conditions to them. Here we are limited in three dimensions of matter and hampered by the very narrow range of the physical senses. In the astral world matter has four dimensions and new and marvelous avenues of learning open before the student. Those who are at all interested in music, or art of any kind, find both the field and the facilities enormously extended. Those who study nature, whether by directly probing into her secrets or by cleverly combining her principles into new processes and inventions, have such opportunities as scientist and discoverer has not dreamed of on this plane. And so for all the thoughtful and studious there is a life of the most useful and fascinating kind in the astral world. But it must not be supposed that the opportunity of usefulness and progress is only for the studious. There as here the opportunity for useful work in helping humanity forward is boundless; for while poverty and disease have disappeared absolutely there is much philanthropic work of other kinds to be done. People are to be taught, for there, as here, the majority are sadly in need of knowledge of how to take advantage of nature's laws for our rapid progress, and how to live in harmony with them in order to get the greatest happiness from life. But the work to be done is by no means confined to teaching. The ignorance that makes the teaching so necessary has brought a great many people into the unfortunate condition, where immediate assistance is most urgently needed, and there is such a variety of helplessness that nobody need be idle. Because of the false teaching upon the subject of life hereafter, people are bewildered when they become conscious in the astral life. Many have had their minds so vividly impressed with the awful fate that awaits those who are not "saved" before death that they fall into a state of terror when at last they realize that death has really occurred. Others, who may or may not be haunted with any such absurd misconceptions, cling so tenaciously to the physical life when about to leave it that there is not complete separation between the etheric double and astral body. The result is that the unfortunate person finds himself cut off from the physical world and yet not arrived in the astral! Wrapped in a cloud of etheric matter he drifts for a time in terror of the unknown. Those among the so-called dead who are kindly enough to rescue the distressed may come to their relief and give valuable assistance. Perhaps the commonest thing that engages the attention of the astral worker is the fear that death brings to most people. They arrive in the astral world with the feeling that everything is unknown and uncertain. All preconceived ideas about the life after death have suddenly been found unreliable and they are afraid of, they know not what. They want to cling to anybody who knows something of the new world. When we remember that people are arriving in the astral world by the tens of thousands daily, even under normal conditions, it is evident that all who wish to be of service can find plenty to do. No special knowledge of the astral plane is necessary. Common sense is a sufficient equipment, in such simple work, for those who desire to be useful instead of giving the entire time to the pleasures of that world. The work for the astral helpers ranges upward in complexity, of course, and there is profitable activity for those with the fullest knowledge and skill. They usually work in well organized groups and render service of great practical value. Life on the astral plane has its end for the same reason that it comes to a close on the physical plane. Nature's purpose has been accomplished and the man is ready to go on farther in his evolution. The length of the astral life varies just as it does in the physical world. Some physical lives are very long and sometimes only when five scores of years, or more, have passed does the ego withdraw. Other lives are very short and scarcely well begun when they unexpectedly come to a close. There is nevertheless a general average to be found. It is at least possible to make averages for different classes of people and to say that a majority of those who are of ordinary health and strength are likely to attain a stated age, while it is certain that the majority of those who have such, and such, a physical handicap will lose their physical bodies when they are much younger. Such general rules may also be applied to the astral life. Here a long and alert life is most desirable because the purpose of the physical plane is to gather experience that shall be transmuted into wisdom on a higher plane. It is a seed time against a later harvest. But the astral plane is, for the vast majority of the race, related to the purgative process. In that life the errors of the physical life are largely worked out and desires that have grown up like weeds in a garden are rooted out and the budding virtues are given a chance to grow. It is a corrective plane, where blunders are checked up and the moral perspective is re-established. Naturally enough the sooner that can be done the better. The rule of a long life being most desirable on the physical plane is, therefore, reversed on the astral plane. It is the shortest life in the astral world that is the greatest prize, and it comes to those who have lived the purest and noblest lives while here. The sooner a man gets through the astral world and begins the reaping of his harvest on the mental plane, or heaven world, the better it is for him. The length of the astral sojourn depends primarily upon the durability of the astral body and that, in turn, depends upon the kind of a life he has lived here. Let us suppose that he has lived a very gross and sensual life. All of the emotions of that type that he indulged built more gross matter in his astral body and also strengthened and vivified the lowest grade of matter that was already there. Let us also imagine that he had an ungovernable temper and frequently gave way to outbursts of fury; further, that he was cruel and revengeful, seeking and finding many opportunities of inflicting injuries upon others. Here we have a case for long life on the lower levels of the astral world. Let us now consider a different type of man. He lives peacefully and harmoniously with those about him. He feels strong affection for wife and children. He has a host of friends because of his cheerful, helpful and sympathetic attitude toward others. He lives cleanly and thinks nobly. His mind is kept free from trivialities and his tongue is never employed in gossip. He makes a determined and persistent effort to eliminate pride, envy and ambition. He cultivates the habit of thinking first of the welfare of others and always last of himself--in short, tries hard to eliminate selfishness and see all things impersonally. Such a man could know nothing whatever of the disagreeable part of the astral life and would pass quickly through even the higher subdivisions and reach the ecstatic happiness of the heaven world. From the lower subdivisions a man rises very gradually to the higher. He remains on a given level so long as is required to eliminate the matter of that level from his astral body. He is then immediately conscious on the next higher level. The grosser matter falls away because the man has at last stopped sending his life force through it. Ungratified desire has finally worn itself out and he is free. The process can be greatly hastened or retarded by the man's attitude toward life. If he foolishly dwells upon his desires, he gives new vitality and prolonged life to them. If he can resolutely turn his mind to higher things he hastens his release. His fate is in his own hands, and he is fortunate indeed if he has a knowledge of such matters. One who dies in advanced years will pass more rapidly through the astral world than he would have done had he died in the full strength of manhood. As the years accumulate the emotions that vivify the lowest grades of astral matter are not so much in evidence and the matter in which they are expressed loses its vitality. That is an additional reason why it is desirable to live to old age in the physical world. The hold that the material world has upon the mind is one of the causes which greatly prolong existence in the astral world. Some people give their time and thought so exclusively to material things that after they lose the physical body they cannot keep the mind away from the life that lies behind them. This difficulty does not necessarily arise wholly from having given one's energies entirely to personal ambition and material accumulation. Sometimes the ruler of a country is so determined to still manage affairs, as far as possible, that this vivid interest in the physical world stretches out the period of astral life most unfortunately. Ordinarily one's sojourn in the astral world is comparatively short, if we measure it in the terms of physical life. A person who has lived here seventy years may have thirty or forty years on the astral plane. But that will depend not only upon how he lived the physical life just closed but also upon his general position in human evolution. A savage of low type would have a comparatively long astral life while a man at the higher levels of civilization would have a comparatively short period there, while the man in the lower levels of civilized life might be said to come in at about midway between the two. But it must be remembered that these are very general estimates and that among civilized peoples individuals differ enormously. Some will pass very slowly and, so far as lower levels are concerned, painfully, through astral life, while the sojourn of others there is measured in minutes, and they pass happily and almost instantaneously from physical death to the heaven world. But such people are the exception, not the rule. Communication with those who have passed on into the astral world is possible, but not always desirable, for a number of reasons. As an evidence of the continuity of consciousness in the hands of the scientific investigator, such communications have been of the greatest value. As a consolation to those who have thus come again in touch with dead friends such messages have been of inestimable value to the bereaved, particularly when they have been received in the privacy of the family circle by some of its members. For a time those who have lost the physical body are usually within easy reach through the usual methods employed for the purpose and perhaps no harm is done by such communications unless they arouse anew the grief of those who have been left behind and thus greatly depress the departed. But after the living dead get farther along, and are practically out of touch with the material world, then directing their attention backward may be positively injurious to them. For that reason careful students of the occult seldom seek to obtain messages, or at least do it with proper consideration for all the circumstances of the particular case. Due regard for the interests of those who have passed on, as well as for those who remain, requires that all the facts be given full weight. The truth of the matter is that it is our keen sense of loss that gives rise to the desire for a message of some sort. We long to once more get into touch with one that seems to be lost to us. We are not really thinking much about his welfare. As a matter of fact he has not lost sight of us and does not have our sense of separation. Not only is he able to see us at all times and be conscious of our feelings and emotions, but during the hours when we are asleep he is in the fullest and freest communication with us and we with him. On awakening we usually have no memory of this and if we do we think it was a dream. But it is not so with him. His memory of it is perfect and the result is that he has not our sense of separation and loss at all. The result of knowledge upon the subject, that is readily gained by a study of the researches of the skilled occultists, is that one comes to feel that one should rest satisfied with the fact that we do converse with the dead nightly, and leave mediumistic communications to the scientific investigators. The natural order of things is that the person who passes into the astral world shall in time fix his mind exclusively upon the inner life and be completely divorced from physical plane affairs. That is the mental and emotional condition which permits of his rapid passage through levels where he should not linger. It is said that to turn his attention backward at this time may cause him acute distress. A reading of the Christian scriptures with a knowledge of occultism often throws a new light upon the subject. An instance of this is to be found in the story of the woman of Endor who is visited by Saul in his quest for psychic information about the crisis that has been reached in the affairs of his kingdom. The woman went into trance and acted as a medium for a communication from Samuel, who tells Saul just what will occur in the impending battle. Samuel's first words were a reproach to Saul. "Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?"[F] was his greeting. It is the language of one who is displeased. Drawing his attention forcibly back to the material world by the strong desire Saul had to communicate with him was evidently distressing to the dead king, hence the rebuke, "Why hast thou _disquieted_ me?" What is here said on the subject of communication, however, has reference to general principles only. There is no intention of suggesting that it is always undesirable to communicate with those who have passed over. Often those on the other side seek means of communicating and they should then find the most willing co-operation from this side. Sometimes one who has left the physical plane life has a message of great importance to deliver and such a case reverses the general rule--he would be delayed if he could _not_ communicate. It would be decidedly to his advantage to free his mind of the matter. Until he has done so he may remain in a restless condition and his case falls into the category of what the spiritualists call "earth bound." He may have left undone something that a message will set right, if he can get it through, or he may have secreted something that cannot be found because he died suddenly and had no opportunity to speak of it. Or it may simply be a case of desiring to prove to materialistic friends the fact that the so-called dead are not dead, and are close at hand. It is sometimes possible for the important information to come through into physical life in the form of a dream by the living, and thus the recovery of valuables has followed.[G] In such a case the dream is a memory of facts well known in astral life but hidden from the waking consciousness by the unresponsive material brain. It sometimes happens that one who thus most earnestly desires to communicate but is wholly ignorant of how to accomplish his purpose causes a good deal of annoyance. His blundering attempts to use psychic force may be wholly abortive and result only in meaningless noises, raps, the tumbling of books or dishes from shelves or the aimless movement of furniture. Annoyance is sometimes caused also by intention, on the part of those who think it is humorous to play pranks. It must be remembered that passing on to the astral life does not improve one's common sense. If while living here, he thought it amusing to astonish or delude somebody, or trick a friend into seriously accepting some absurd assertion as a fact, he still regards the same course as entertaining. This accounts for many of the foolish, and sometimes startling messages, or answers to questions, received at seances. It has often been asked why, if communication between the physical and astral planes is possible, we do not receive information that might lead to valuable discoveries and inventions. The very fact that death does not confer wisdom explains it in part. But an even more important fact is that communication is easy with the lower levels and correspondingly difficult as the higher levels are reached. All who have had much experience with seances are familiar with the fact that "guides" or "controls," that is, the persons in the invisible realms who direct the seance and frequently speak through the medium, are very often Indians or others at a low level of evolution. The majority of the inhabitants of the astral levels with which communication is easy are not the type capable of furnishing ideas of any great value. It is on the higher levels that the man of intellectual power passes most of his astral life. The scientist or the inventor who has given so much thought to his work that he has been in some degree successful here is not likely to have much consciousness on lower levels. It is the highest of the seven subdivisions of the astral world that is the habitat of the person who has followed intellectual pursuits, during physical life, and with that level it is practically impossible for the ordinary medium to communicate. One of the objections to indiscriminate communication with the astral plane lies in the very fact that the lowest class of entities are most accessible. That not only accounts for the commonplace messages in such abundance, but it is frequently a source of actual danger, especially where people form "circles" for the purpose of rendering themselves more sensitive to psychic influences. In such cases it is common to accept every message as absolute truth. There is no doubt that as a rule the astral people in charge of such a gathering are earnest and honest. But they are neither all-wise nor all-powerful, and it sometimes comes about that some of the sitters are partially or wholly obsessed by astral entities, and that may prove to be an exceedingly serious matter. Some people have thus lost their sanity and others their lives. It is, of course, only the gross type of astral person who has a desire to seize upon the physical body of another. The purpose is to gratify desires that have outlived the physical body. The dead drunkard is perhaps the commonest example of the obsessing entity, and if the obsession is only partial it may lead to nothing worse than strong and perhaps irresistible impulses toward alcoholic stimulation. Obsession may, of course, occur without the psychic door being opened deliberately. But no obsession is possible, in any case, unless there is something within the victim responsive to the moral defect of the obsessing entity. Partial obsessions are rather common and there are frequent inquiries as to the best means of treating such a case. It may amount only to the slight annoyance of astral people hanging about and refusing to depart or to actual persecution. In all such cases the victim is, of course, in conscious touch and communication with the intruders. One of the world's greatest authorities on the subject, who is a constant investigator of the unseen regions, has given detailed answer to two questioners, and what he says is of such practical value that it is well worth reproducing. The second question itself is enlightening as to the character of the obsessing entities. The first inquirer asks: "What is the best way to get rid of an excarnate human being who persists in occupying one's body?" The reply follows: "I should simply and absolutely decline to be so obsessed. The best and kindest plan would be to have an explanation with the dead person, to enquire what he wants and why he makes such persistent attempts. Quite probably, he may be some ignorant soul who does not at all comprehend his new surroundings, and is striving madly to get into touch again with the only kind of life that he understands. In that case if matters are explained to him, he may be brought to a happier frame of mind and induced to cease his ill-directed efforts. Or the poor creature may have something on his mind--some duty unfulfilled or some wrong unrighted; if this be so, and the matter can be arranged to his satisfaction, he may then be at peace. "If, however, he proves not to be amenable to reason, if in spite of all argument and explanation he refuses to abandon his reprehensible line of action, it will be necessary gently but firmly to resist him. Every man has an inalienable right to the use of his own vehicles, and encroachments of this nature should not be permitted. If the lawful possessor of the body will confidently assert himself and use his own willpower no obsession can take place. "When such things occur, it is almost always because the victim has in the first place voluntarily yielded himself to the invading influence, and his first step therefore is to reverse that act of submission, to determine strongly to take matters into his own hands again and to resume control over his property. It is this reassertion of himself that is the fundamental requirement, and though much help may be given by wise friends, nothing which they can do will take the place of the development of willpower on the part of the victim, or obviate the necessity for it. The exact method of procedure will naturally vary according to the details of the case." The same authority answers another question on the same subject and he is here dealing with particular entities that he has evidently seen: "I have long been troubled by entities who constantly suggest evil ideas and make use of coarse and violent language. They are always urging me to take strong drink, and goading me on to the consumption of large quantities of meat. I have prayed earnestly, but with little avail, and am driven to my wits' end. What can I do?" To this appeal the psychic scientist replies: "You have indeed suffered greatly; but now you must make up your mind to suffer no more. You must take courage and make a firm stand. The power of these dead people over you is only in your fear of them. Your own will is stronger than all theirs combined if you will only know that it is; if you turn upon them with vigor and determination they must yield before you. You have an inalienable right to the undisturbed use of your own vehicles, and you should insist on being left in peace. You would not tolerate an intrusion of filthy and disgusting beings into your house on the physical plane; why should you submit to it because the entities happen to be astral? If an insolent tramp forces himself into a man's house, the owner does not kneel down and pray--he kicks the tramp out; and that is precisely what you must do with these astral tramps. "You will no doubt say to yourself that when I give you this advice I do not know the terrible power of the particular demons who are afflicting you. That is exactly what they would like you to believe--what they will try to make you believe; but do not be so foolish as to listen to them. I know the type perfectly, and mean, despicable, bullying villains they are; they will torment a weak woman for months together, but will fly in cowardly terror the moment you turn upon them in righteous anger! I should just laugh at them, but I would drive them out, hold not a moment's parley with them. Of course, they will bluster and show fight, because you have let them have their own way for so long that they will not tamely submit to expulsion; but face them with iron determination, set your will against them like an immovable rock, and down they will go. Say to them: 'I am a spark of the divine fire, and by the power of the God within me I order you to depart!' Never let yourself think for an instant of failure or of yielding; God is within you, and God cannot fail."[H] Probably there is no astral subject of more vital importance to any of us than that of the right attitude of mind and emotion toward the living dead. It is commonly said that we can do nothing more for them when they have passed away from physical plane life, but a greater error could not easily be made. The connection with us is by no means severed. Not only are they emotionally in touch with us but their emotions are very much keener than when they had a physical body through which to express them. They are now living in the astral body, the matter of which is enormously more responsive to emotional vibrations. A joyous emotion here would be tremendously more joyous there and a thing that would produce depression here would be a hundred times more depressing there. That fact should give pause to those who are inclined to think in sorrow, and with something of despair, about their friends who have passed on. They are not far away in space and our emotions affect them profoundly and instantly. We are all familiar with the fact that moods are communicable. The person who is cheerful cheers up others in his vicinity, while the one who is gloomy spreads gloom wherever he goes. It is a simple matter of vibrations. It is often within the power of a member of the family who habitually has "the blues" to destroy the happiness of the entire household. If we think of the most depressing effect that can be caused by sorrow on the physical plane, and then multiply its effectiveness by a hundred, we shall have no exaggeration of the astral effects of the emotions we indulge in the physical body. If, then, the sorrow of a weeping relative distresses us here it is clear that it must bring really keen distress to the one who is the subject of such grief. His life may thus be made miserable by the very persons who would be the last to cause him sorrow if they understood what they were doing. We can really help the so-called dead and make them very much happier by simply changing our mournful attitude toward them. All violent expressions of grief should be avoided and a determination to make the best of the matter should be cultivated. The situation may indeed be bad, but we make it very much worse by our mourning. The funeral customs of Occidental civilization are quite consistent with its materialism. We act as nearly as possible as though we believe the dead are lost to us absolutely. We make matters as gloomy as possible. Yet we are slowly improving. Not so very long ago when anybody died those present stopped the ticking of the clock, drew down the window curtains, moved about on tiptoe, and acted generally in a way calculated to add as much as possible to the awe and the gloom. We still wear somber and depressing black and add all we can externally to our inward distress. A more sensible attitude of mind may be observed at any theosophical funeral and, with growing frequency, at the funerals among thinking people. A funeral should not be the occasion of a final expression of grief, but a gathering of friends who send kindly thoughts and helpful good wishes to the comrade whose life work in the physical world is finished. The general feeling should be very much like that of a party of friends who go to the pier to see a well loved traveler off on a long journey to remote parts of the earth for a sojourn of many years or possibly a lifetime. There should be constant thought of his welfare, not of the loss to his friends. Grief that thinks of itself is an expression of selfishness and is detrimental to all. One should practice self control in such a matter just as one would control a feeling of anger under different circumstances. Naturally enough the control of grief when one we love has passed on is none to easy. But any degree of success is much better than no effort, and will certainly help the one for whom we mourn. Much can be accomplished by avoiding unnecessary incidents that bring vividly back the keen sense of loss. Many people indulge the foolish custom of regularly visiting the cemetery where the body has been interred. A little analysis will show that this is only another evidence of our materialistic modes of thought, and the custom serves to perpetuate emotions that should never have existed. We can not, of course, think too often nor too tenderly of those who have passed on, but we should do nothing that leads us to think of them as being dead, or being far away. The fact that they are alive and well and happy and near should constantly fill the mind; and all of that, in nearly all cases, will be perfectly true if we do not foolishly destroy their peace of mind with our selfish sorrow. Occasionally a hint on the subject comes from the astral plane people themselves. In the recent book[I] by Sir Oliver Lodge, on his experiments in psychic research, there is a message from his son, who was killed in battle, agreeing to attend the family Christmas dinner and to occupy the chair placed for him, provided they will all refrain from gloomy thoughts about him! No one who is informed on the subject of emotional reaction on the astral body, after the loss of the physical body, could be surprised by the conditions named by the young man. The advocates of cremation have a strong argument in the fact that the preservation of the body for a time, whether in a tomb or a grave, tends to keep grief alive. When the body is reduced to ashes the delusion that the body is somehow the man seems to have less of a material basis. Visits to a tomb or grave are unfortunate, not alone because they renew grief through thinking upon it and thus cause great distress to those for whom we mourn, but also because the environment of a cemetery is one of the worst possible for the sorrowing. It is a dismal park of concentrated griefs where each mourner accentuates the emotional distress of all others. There is but one sensible attitude to take toward those we have lost by death--to think of them as living a joyous, busy life and at least calling on us daily even though most of us are not sensitive enough to be conscious of the fact. We should try to realize the truth of the matter and then readjust our habits to fit the facts. The average person who is afflicted with the erroneous ideas still so common, is doing an enormous amount of injury and bringing into the lives of the very people he loves a depression of which he little dreams, and which he can change to vivid pleasure by always thinking cheerfully of them and sending them daily thoughts of serenity and peace. FOOTNOTES: [F] 1 Samuel XXVIII--15. [G] Ch. 3, Dreams and Premonitions.--L. W. Rogers. [H] The Inner Life.--Leadbeater, Vol. I. p. 483. [I] Raymond: or Life and Death.--Lodge. CHAPTER IX. REBIRTH: ITS REASONABLENESS Life is the most elusive thing with which science has to deal but we have learned much about both life and matter in recent years, and it is a noteworthy fact that the more we learn the thinner become the ranks of the materialists. The only scientist of note who still declares his philosophy of materialism is Haeckel, and of him a brother scientist has written, "He is, as it were, a surviving voice from the middle of the nineteenth century;" and, referring to Haeckel's almost deserted ground in the scientific world, he declares that his voice "is as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, not as the pioneer or vanguard of an advancing army, but as the despairing shout of a standard-bearer, still bold and unflinching, but abandoned by the retreating ranks of his comrades as they march to new orders in a fresh and more idealistic direction." Thus is the old ground of scientific materialism being deserted by all progressive scientists. While we do not yet know a great deal about life, science has gone far enough to permit a grasp of facts and principles from which conclusions may be logically drawn and working hypotheses constructed. Sir Oliver Lodge, who is president of one of the great English Universities, and ranks as one of the world's most eminent scientists, speaking of his conception of life, says that "It is dependent on matter for its phenomenal appearance--for its manifestation to us here and now, and for all its terrestrial activities; but otherwise I conceive that it is independent, that its essential existence is continuous and permanent, though its interactions with matter are discontinuous and temporary; and I conjecture that it is subject to a law of evolution--that a linear advance is open to it--whether it be in its phenomenal or in its occult state."[J] Later in the same work he expresses the opinion "that life is something outside the scheme of mechanics--outside the categories of matter and energy; though it can nevertheless control and direct material forces...." In closing his volume on _Life and Matter_ this distinguished scientist says: "What is certain is that life possesses the power of vitalizing the complex material aggregates which exist on this planet, and of utilizing their energies for a time to display itself amid terrestrial surroundings; and then it seems to disappear or evaporate whence it came. It is perpetually arriving and perpetually disappearing. While it is here, if it is at a sufficiently high level, the animated material body moves about and strives after many objects, some worthy, some unworthy; it acquires thereby a certain individuality, a certain character. It may realize itself, moreover, becoming conscious of its own mental and spiritual existence; and it then begins to explore the Mind which, like its own, it conceives must underlie the material fabric--half displayed, half concealed, by the environment, and intelligible only to a kindred spirit. Thus the scheme of law and order dimly dawns on the nascent soul, and it begins to form clear conceptions of truth, goodness, and beauty; it may achieve something of permanent value, or a work of art or of literature; it may enter the region of emotion and may evolve ideas of the loftiest kind; it may degrade itself below the beasts, or it may soar till it is almost divine. "Is it the material molecular aggregate that has of its own unaided latent power generated this individuality, acquired this character, felt these emotions, evolved these ideas? There are some who try to think that it is. There are others who recognize in this extraordinary development a contact between this material frame of things and a universe higher and other than anything known to our senses; a universe not dominated by physics and chemistry; but utilizing the interactions of matter for its own purpose; a universe where the human spirit is more at home than it is among these temporary collocations of atoms; a universe capable of infinite development, of noble contemplation and of lofty joy, long after this planet--nay, the whole solar system--shall have fulfilled its present sphere of destiny, and retired cold and lifeless upon its endless way." Such a conception of life carries us very far from the old popular view of the origin of the race, but it is a conception that brings science and religion into perfect agreement and will enable us to understand human evolution and explain facts in life that would otherwise remain incomprehensible. The pre-existence of the soul, as a part of universal life, was taught and commonly accepted in the early Christian period. If we accept the fact of evolution at all, and are not materialists, there is no escape from the belief of the pre-existence of the soul. Indeed, not even materialism can save one from the necessity of accepting the pre-existence of the individualized consciousness that we call a human being. Let us consider the human infant as we see it at birth. Whence came it--how can we account for it in a universe of law and order? We can understand it from the physical side. Its tiny body is a concourse of physical atoms with a prenatal history of a few months. But its mind, its consciousness, its emotions, what of them? The average man replies that God made them and they constitute the soul. But how and when were they "made"? Even the material part of this infant did not spring miraculously and instantaneously into existence. How much less possible is it that the soul did so! If we say "God made it" we have explained nothing. But it is not necessary to deny that God creates the soul in order for us to move toward an understanding of how the soul came to be. It is only necessary to say that the process of its creation was evolutionary. Nobody denies that the earth was created by evolution, although men may differ in opinion on the matter of a divine intelligence guiding its evolutionary development. The same principle must apply to the human intelligence. Lodge wrote _Life and Matter_ as a reply to Haeckel's _Riddle of the Universe_, which presented the latter's philosophy of materialism. But Lodge did more than demolish Haeckel's premises and leave him with not an inch of scientific ground to support his theory. The English scientist raised questions that have not been answered, and cannot be answered, by the scientific materialist. He points out that the materialist's philosophy has no explanation for "the extraordinary rapidity of development, which results in the production of a fully endowed individual in the course of some fraction of a century."[K] With those two dozen words Lodge leaves the scientific materialist speechless; for all scientists are evolutionists, and it is impossible to account for "_the extraordinary rapidity of development_" by the laws of evolution. It is well known that the evolutionary age of anything depends upon its complexity. A simple form is comparatively young while a complex one has a long evolutionary history behind it. The earth is simple compared to a human being. If, then, it has required ages to evolve the earth to its present stage how long did it take to evolve the wonderfully complex mental and emotional nature of the human being that inhabits the earth? And thus Lodge bottles Haeckel up on his own premises and shows that the very evolutionary principles to which the German scientist appeals demolish his theory! He practically says to Haeckel, "Your philosophy, sir, fails to show how it is possible for the vacuous mind of the infant to evolve into the genius of the philosopher in thirty or forty years." In other words, if the infant is nothing but the form we see it would be utter absurdity to say that that mass of matter can evolve a high grade of intelligence within a few years when it takes centuries to make a slight evolutionary gain. Look at an infant the day it is born. Study its face. One might as well search the surface of a squash for some indication of intelligence. But wait only a little while and you shall have evidence not merely of intelligence but of emotions possible only to the highest order of life. Clearly, here is not something evolved within a brief period from a mass of material atoms. Such a theory would be as unscientific as the popular belief in miraculous creation at which the scientific materialist scoffs. The swift change from the vacuity of the infant mind to the intellectual power of the adult in the "fraction of a century" is not the creation of something but its _manifestation_--_the coming through into visible expression of that which already exists_. The soul, the consciousness, the real man, consisting of the whole of the mental and emotional nature, which has been built up through thousands of years of evolution, is coming once more to rebirth, to visible expression in a material body. The body is, of course, but the new physical instrument of the old soul--an instrument, as certainly as the violin is the instrument and a vehicle for the musician's expression. At every turn our materialistic conceptions mislead us and prevent the perception of nature's truth. It is because we think of the body as being actually the person, that it seems improbable that an old soul has entered the infant body. We think of the power and intelligence of an old soul and then look at the baby and find no indication of such things. But that is only because the baby body is such a new and undeveloped instrument that it is at first useless and only slowly can it be brought under control of the soul and made to express its intelligence and power. The body is a growing instrument, not a completed one. Let us suppose that musical instruments grow as physical bodies do. Suppose there was a time when the piano was keyless, as a baby is toothless. Suppose that sounding boards have a period of immaturity and that the whole mechanism of the instrument is in a state that can only be characterized as infantile. If a master musician attempts to play on such a piano his performance would by no means be an indication of his ability. A competent critic who could hear the performance but not see the musician would promptly declare that no really great musician was touching the keys. And that is precisely the mistake we make in assuming that the immature body of an infant is capable of expressing the intellectual power of the old soul, or, to put it differently, denying that a returned, old soul is in possession of the infant body simply because there is no physical plane evidence of the fact. If pianos slowly grew to maturity then only when the instrument was mature could the master musician give a practical demonstration of his skill; and only when the physical body has reached its maturity can the soul that is using it fully express itself. In the early years of the physical body the soul is only very partially expressed through it. The entrance of the consciousness into the physical world is slow and gradual. It is somewhat like the growth of a plant, very gradual, but the analogy is not a good one, for a plant is very little like a human body. It is impossible to find a material equivalent of the dawning of consciousness on the physical plane. Beginning about four and a half months before the birth of the physical body and continuing for a period of several years the soul, or consciousness, is engaged in the process of anchorage in the physical world. For a long time the center of consciousness remains above the material plane and during the early years of childhood the consciousness is divided between the astral and physical worlds, with the result that the child is often somewhat confused and brings fragments of astral consciousness into physical life. When the physical body is about seven years old the consciousness may be said to be centered on the physical plane, but only when the body and brain of the soul's new instrument are mature has the opportunity come for the fullest expression. Some of the difficulties commonly associated in the mind with the thought of the pre-existence and rebirth of the soul will disappear if we do not lose sight of the fact that the soul is a center of consciousness, which is always consciousness somewhere, but which very gradually shifts its focus from plane to plane. Its permanent home is in that body of filmy matter drawn about the ego in the higher levels of the heaven world. From that point it sends energies outward and draws about itself in the lower levels of the mental world a body, or vehicle of consciousness, that is not permanent but which will serve the purpose of functioning for a period on that plane. Downward again the energies are sent, building about the center of consciousness on the astral plane a temporary body of astral matter, temporary in the same sense that the physical body is temporary, and which shall serve the consciousness in the astral, or emotional world, during the whole of the physical plane life and for some time afterward. Still outward, or downward, the soul sends its energies till the material world is reached, when it begins to function partially, and very feebly, through the infant physical body. For the time being the soul's evolution lies on the physical plane where certain lessons are to be learned. After the early years of childhood are over the consciousness is firmly anchored here, where the chief work is to be done, during the hours of the waking consciousness. During sleep the ego temporarily lays aside the physical body and functions in the astral body in the astral world. The material body sleeping here is merely a deserted and empty vehicle, magnetically connected with the soul, and awaiting its return. As childhood, youth, maturity and old age pass, complex experiences come to the soul thus functioning here. Other souls functioning through physical bodies are encountered and various relationships are established. Out of the complexity of social, business, religious and political activities the soul gets a large and varied experience. Sooner or later the death of the physical body closes the chapter. The gathering of such experience has ceased, not because the soul has acquired all possible physical world knowledge, but because its instrument of consciousness here has worn out. Death cuts the soul off from its physical plane connection and the center of its consciousness is then shifted to the astral plane. There the purgative process goes forward, as explained in a previous chapter. As that proceeds the soul gradually gets free from one grade of astral matter after another and with the loss of each the man becomes conscious on a higher level. The physical body is lost suddenly but the matter of the astral body gradually wears away until there is so little left that the soul has lost connection with the astral world also. This means that the center of consciousness has shifted to the mental plane, or heaven world, where the man will function on the lower levels. There in the mental world, functioning through the vehicle of mental matter, a very important process goes on. The heaven world life is a harvest time in which assimilation of experience takes place. The consciousness there deeply broods over the experiences of life and extracts the essence from them which is transmuted into faculty and power for future greater expression. It is thus that the soul grows in wisdom and power through its long evolution. When the heaven life is finished, when the harvest of experience has been threshed out and the net gain has been built into the enduring causal body, the mental body, like the astral, has been completely dissipated. The end of a cycle of experience--of a day in the evolutionary school--has come and the physical, astral and mental bodies have all perished. Nothing remains but the soul, the real man, the ego, functioning through the causal body which persists. From that the ego again sends the forces outward, in the first activity toward rebirth, first forming a new mental body by drawing about itself the matter of the lower levels of the mental plane, then securing a new astral body on the astral plane and finally taking possession of another infant body in process of formation on the physical plane, into which it will in due course be reborn. The period between these successive appearances of the soul in a succession of physical bodies varies greatly and depends on a number of things. The length of time spent upon the astral plane has already been discussed. The time spent in the heaven world depends upon the mental and moral forces generated during the physical and astral life. If there is a great harvest of experience it will require a longer time to transmute it, while, of course, one who has thought little and loved but little will have a shorter period there, for it is the heart and head forces that have their culmination in the mental world. The question is a rather complex one and other factors come into play, including the intensity of the heaven world life. In general terms, however, it can be said that the heaven life of the ordinarily intelligent person will commonly be a period several times the length of his combined physical and astral life. Some people will have only two or three hundred years between incarnations while others may have six or seven centuries and still others a much longer period. In getting a right understanding of the subject of rebirth, or reincarnation, it is necessary to keep in mind the fact that the soul, or center of individualized consciousness, is the man and that the physical body is merely an instrument he uses for a number of years; that the causal body is his permanent body for the whole of human evolution; that the mental plane is his home plane and that from there he sends forth successive expressions of himself into these lower planes. With such facts before us there should be no confusion of thought about the successive personalities of an individual. Yet we sometimes hear people speak of the absurdity of supposing that a person can be one man in one incarnation and another man at a later rebirth. Of course no such thing occurs. An individual remains the same individual forever. "But," objects the critic, "may I not have been Mr. Jones, in England six hundred years ago, whereas I am now certainly Mr. Brown, in America at this moment? If so is that not a case of being two individuals?" It is certainly not a case of being two individuals. It is a case of one individual being expressed through a physical body six hundred years ago in England, dying from it, spending a fairly long period in the astral plane and heaven world, and then again expressing himself through another physical body in America at the present time. The confusion of thought on the part of the questioner arises from thinking of the physical body as being the man. But it is no more the man than the clothing he wears. It is true that he is known at one period as Jones and at another as Brown, but that no more affects his individuality than the assumption of an _alias_ by a fleeing criminal changes him. The name applies exclusively to the physical body, or personality, as distinguished from the individuality. That body is but the temporary clothing of the soul. Let us suppose that a man's name were applied to his clothing and changed with his clothing as it does with his body. We might then know him as Mr. Lightclothes in the summer and as Mr. Darkclothes in the winter, but neither the change of clothing or name would in the least degree make him somebody else. The majority of women change their names in each incarnation. A man may know a certain woman as Miss Smith when she is a slip of a girl, free from care and with little serious thought of life. Twenty years later she may be Mrs. Brown, his wife, a thoughtful matron, the mother of children. She has changed her name and greatly changed in character, too, but she is the same individual. It seems probable that a person may change quite as much between infancy and old age as between one incarnation and the next. Even the difference between a youth of twenty years who is an artist and the same man at three score and ten who has given forty years to scientific study and research, may be enormous, but the individuality is, of course, identical. It has rapidly evolved and greatly improved, and that is just what occurs to the soul by repeated rebirths--steady evolutionary development of the eternal individual. The reincarnating process by which the soul evolves is somewhat analogous to the growth of a young physical body. The process consists of alternating periods of objective and subjective activity. How does the body of a child grow? It consumes food, the objective activity. It then digests and assimilates it, the subjective activity. These periods must alternate or there can be no growth, because neither alone is the complete process. The one is the complement of the other. So it is in the evolution of the soul by reincarnation. The experience of life is the food on which the soul grows. The physical plane existence is the objective period in which the food is gathered. At death the man passes into the invisible realms where the subjective process is carried on. He digests and assimilates his experiences and the gist is stored in the causal body and its growth includes an actual increase in size, just as in the case of the child's physical body. The same law governs mental and moral growth as it operates in our daily affairs. A young man is in college. How does his intellect grow? By precisely the same process of alternating periods of objective and subjective activity. In the class room the instructor puts a mathematical problem on the blackboard and explains it. With the outward senses of sight and hearing, aided by pencil and notebook, the student gathers the food for mental growth. This period of objective activity comes to an end and he then retires to the privacy of his room and there the subjective period begins. He deeply thinks over the problem. His material, the food for mental growth, is only a few notes that serve to keep the experience in his mind. At first all that they signify is not obvious, but as he turns the various points over and over in his mind their significance becomes clearer and fuller. It is the subjective process of digestion. Little by little new light dawns in the student's mind. Finally he has complete comprehension of the mathematical principles involved, and the process of assimilation is finished. This subjective period is the complement of the objective period and they must go on alternating or intellectual growth will stop. When the process of digestion and assimilation is finished the student must return to the classroom for further mental food and when he arrives it is by virtue of the fact that he did digest the previous lesson that he is able to take a higher and more difficult one. And precisely so it is with the reincarnating soul. In the interval between incarnations it so assimilates the experiences of the last physical life that it comes to rebirth with added abilities which enable it to take higher and more difficult lessons than it could previously master. In the case of both physical growth by eating and mental growth by instruction there is no possible escape from the law of alternating periods of objective and subjective activity. When the child has digested and assimilated a meal there is but one possible thing that can follow--return to his source of supply for another meal. When the student has digested and assimilated the lesson given to him the only possibility of further mental growth lies in his return to the class-room for more material. And so it is with the human soul in its work of evolving its latent powers and possibilities. There is no other road forward but the cyclic one that brings it back to the physical life incarnation after incarnation, but always at a higher point than it previously touched. The very hunger of the child that insures its return to the table for more food is analogous to the desire of the soul for sentient expression that brings it to rebirth. These alternating periods with the element of constant return are found everywhere in the economy of nature. All her evolutionary expressions are cyclic. But the cyclic movement is not in closed circles. It represents a spiral. The "evolutionary ladder" that the soul climbs is a winding stairway. In its upward progress it makes many rounds but it is always mounting and never returns to the same point. In each cycle, that is made up of the journey from the heaven world through the astral plane, into the physical and then back through the astral plane into the heaven world, it touches each of them at a higher point, or in a higher state of development, than it had previously attained. Each rebirth finds it abler here to gather a larger harvest of experience and each return to the mental plane, or heaven world, finds it abler to digest and assimilate its experiences, and to comprehend more of the realities of the life of its home plane. This round, or cycle, through the physical, astral and mental regions, is a continuous progressive journey of the soul which began away back at the dawn of mind in man and will continue until he is the perfected mental and moral being. At each incarnation here he gathers experience in proportion to his alertness and to the opportunities his previous lives have made for him. He learns to help others, to be sympathetic, to be tolerant. Such activities will give him pleasure in the astral life and joy and wisdom in the mental region, or heaven world. But he also does some evil things. He makes enemies, he generates hatred and he injures others. This will give him distress in the astral life and no results for soul growth or general progress in the heaven world. If he does an equal amount of good and harm his progress will be slow. If he does much good and little evil his progress will be rapid and his existence happy. If he is a man of great energy, and no very great moral development, and selfishly does much wrong, he will suffer much in the astral life. It often puzzles the student of elementary theosophy to be told that the soul passes through the purgation of the astral plane and goes on into the heaven world only to return to another incarnation and later to again enter the astral purgatory. Why, it is asked, must one who has thus been purified be again purified? The astral reactions are the results of the blunders made in each incarnation. Each of us in any given incarnation creates by his wrong doing the purgatory that awaits him after death. If he does no wrong there cannot possibly be any reaction. As a matter of occult fact the average good man will find the astral plane life a happy existence and will soon pass on to the blissful heaven world. As for the evil doer the suffering relates only to his evil deeds. Let us say he has committed murder. When the reaction of the evil force he has generated is over and he passes on into the heaven plane it does not mean that he is incapable of future evil. It means that he has probably learned thoroughly the lesson that it is very foolish to take life. But there are many other lessons he has not learned. When he passes into the heaven world he leaves all evil behind him. He is as one who puts his shoes aside to enter a temple. The astral body, like the physical, has perished and it is the freed soul that enters the heaven world. But when he returns through the astral plane to reincarnation he is clothed again in astral matter and this new astral body is exactly representative of his attainments in evolution. In his coming incarnation he will have other physical plane experiences and learn other lessons. The next time probably he will not kill, but perhaps he will cheat and steal or be a drunkard. These errors will react upon him in the astral life that follows. In a coming incarnation he will be wise enough to be temperate and neither cheat nor steal; but perhaps he will be a gossip and work much evil through slander. This in turn will bring its pain. And so in time he will learn to generate no evil force at all but to live in good will and helpfulness toward everybody. Then his progress will be rapid indeed, his life on all planes will be happy and the painful part of human evolution will be over. The purpose of evolution is no less obvious than the fact of evolution. Evolution is an unfolding process in which the latent becomes the active and the inner life is more and more fully expressed in outer form. The development and improvement in form keeps pace with the necessities of the unfolding life. In the lowest levels of the animal kingdom the form is but a cell. But as the life comes into fuller and fuller expression, limbs for locomotion and, in due course, the organs for hearing, and seeing, and the other mechanism of the developing consciousness, are evolved. In the human kingdom the vehicle of consciousness comes to its highest possible form and then evolution goes on in the perfecting of the physical form. In the process of continually changing the matter of the body it is possible for the brain to be constantly improved and the whole body to grow more and more sensitive and gradually to become a better and truer expression of the evolving life within. In each incarnation the physical body thus improves. The evolution of life and form keep pace. Ultimately perfection of form, as well as perfection of intellect and morality, will be reached and human evolution will be finished. The purpose of evolution, then, is clear. Man is a god in the making--not actually, but only potentially a god, a being to whom all wisdom, perfect compassion and unlimited power are possible; and by the process of evolution he changes the latent into the active. He is at first only an individualized center of consciousness within the All-Consciousness, a mere fragment of the divine life. His relationship to God is something like that of a seed to its plant, a product of it that has latent within it all the characteristics of the plant and the power to become a plant. It is not a plant and neither is man a god; but when it has sent out a sprout and taken root in the soil it is a plant in the making; and when the human being has begun to evolve his latent spiritual qualities he is a god in the making. The theosophical view is that man is essentially divine. Critics sometimes ask why, if man is originally divine, it is necessary for him to pass through any evolutionary process. Divinity here indicates merely the essential nature of the human being, not his possession of either knowledge or power or any degree of spiritual perfection. It is as though we should say that the infant son of a great king is royal. The word "royal," like the word "divine," indicates a relationship. The baby royalist is not a king. But he is a king in the making. He has much to learn. He must be educated in statecraft and he must evolve diplomacy. After much experience and development he will, in time, be capable of ruling an empire. At present this helpless infant bears little resemblance to a king. Nevertheless, on the day of his birth he was as much royal as he will ever be. In the same sense the divinity of man represents potential possibilities rather than an obvious fact of the moment. Man is an embryo god and, in time, he shall evolve faculties and powers that his present limited consciousness can not even comprehend. He is not an ephemeral creature of physical origin that lives a brief span to catch a glimpse of immortality and perish, but the deathless son of the living God, and by right divine he walks the upward way of eternal life. Some people appear to accept evolution as a matter of course, in a general way, but they appear unwilling to admit that the race has really made any evolutionary progress. Even scientific men have sometimes expressed doubt whether the world is growing better. In a newspaper interview an English scientist was quoted as saying a few years ago that the race is just as wicked today as at any time within recorded history. But if he was correctly reported it must have been a hasty expression of opinion which a little deliberation would have led him to revise. It is true that things are still bad enough but they are certainly enormously better than they were some centuries ago. To say that the world is full of crime and violence proves nothing; nor does even the fact that a civilized nation has reverted to the wartime practices of savage life furnish real ground for a pessimistic view. What we have to do in determining whether there has been any racial progress in morality is to take as our standard of measurement something that tests the collective conscience. How does the world of today view war and how did the world in the day of Caesar regard it? There is plenty to shock us now but the very fact that it does shock us is the best evidence of moral progress. Atrocities were expected and taken as a matter of course some centuries ago. They are not the rule now but the rare exception and those guilty of them are likely to make their name a by-word among nations. Well within the era of recorded history the usages of nations' condemned prisoners of war to become slaves for life. Now the rule is to feed and clothe them and at the close of the conflict to send them home. A simple thing like public sports may be used as a measure of public morals. They show what the collective conscience approves. In these days there is very little of brutality in public sports. Professional pugilism still lingers, but barely lingers, in the most enlightened nations. In less progressive countries like Spain and Mexico bull fighting is popular. That is about all we can say against modern popular entertainment. But if we look backward to the Roman period we find a cruelty in public sports that is comparatively shocking. Gladiators were compelled to fight to the death and offenders were devoured by starving wild beasts and it all made a Roman holiday. Such "sports" would, of course, be utterly impossible anywhere in the world today. But at that time they were matters of course in the life of the world's greatest empire. The fact that the race has evolved morally and that the collective conscience marks a higher point on the ethical thermometer than in the past is too obvious for argument. Now, how is that evolutionary progress to be accounted for? It will not do to say that the Christian religion has wrought the change because, splendid as are the teachings of the Christ, the world has not accepted them and shaped its civilization by them. If it had done so the world war would have been impossible. Not only have the so-called Christian nations wrangled and fought over commercial spoils through all their history but class has been arrayed against class and every gain in either personal liberty or economic improvement has been wrested by force from those who profited by the misfortunes of others. In other words, the particular improvements that should have been brought about by religion were compelled, not freely volunteered. All religious teaching helps but, allowing all we reasonably may for the influence of Christianity, we are still unable to account for the change in the common conscience of the race, an evolutionary gain that has been going steadily on since long, long before the coming of the Christ. How then shall we account for it? If the hypothesis of reincarnation is sound the progress of the race in morality becomes simple. The majority of the great groups of souls that constituted the civilized nations in the time when Rome was mistress of the world have had several incarnations in that time and in each sojourn on the astral plane have had the severe lesson of the painful reaction from cruelty to others. Thus does nature gradually change the cruel man to the merciful man. In every incarnation the soul grows more humane as well as more intelligent. All of the lessons learned in any incarnation are carried forward into the next life, and thus compassion grows until there is ultimately perfect sympathy with all suffering. Both the progress of the soul and of the race are comprehensible from the viewpoint of reincarnation. Except by that hypothesis how is it possible to explain such evolutionary progress? Those who do not believe in the pre-existence of the soul and hold that it is in some way brought into being at the time of conception or birth, are put in the very illogical position of saying that the reason why the world is better now than it was in the Roman period is because it pleases God to create a better kind of souls now than he created then! The tendency of large groups of people, tribes or nations, to act in a way that imitates, or nearly duplicates, what has been done centuries before by other tribes or nations, is such a common phenomenon that it has given rise to the declaration that history repeats itself. The fact of reincarnation shows why it repeats itself. A nation like the Romans, or the Carthaginians, are bound together in the subtle ties that are formed by the intimate relationships of constant association. The group tends to persist and the members of it are largely drawn together and regrouped in the following incarnations. All have evolved beyond the level of the previous centuries but the general traits and tendencies remain and the same general policies are likely to shape the national affairs. There comes a time in the existence of the great group, or nation, when the old environment will no longer serve for its further collective evolution as well as some other country. The majority then reincarnate elsewhere and the old country comes gradually to be inhabited by a different great group of souls. Hence the remarkable difference in the people of a given nation in different periods. Compare Rome in the time of Caesar to Rome late in the Middle Ages, or compare the mighty civilization of ancient Egypt with modern Egypt. It is high-class egos that make a great nation and when a country has no more lessons to teach them, or rather when another country will serve as a better environment for their further progress, they return in rebirth to the more advantageous spot on the earth, and a different set of souls come into possession of the abandoned environment. The valley of the Nile, that was once the home of an energetic people with a flourishing civilization would not now serve such a purpose. The center of virile civilization has shifted to central and northern Europe because only that environment, in full touch with the great commercial stream of the economic world, can serve the purpose. As the world is today what could a pushing, energetic, up-to-date group of souls do if born into Egypt? Nothing but leave it. So they are not reincarnated there, but other souls that are at the point in evolution where the primitive life of an isolated country will give the simpler lessons they must acquire, inherit the abandoned environment. As an individual moves continually onward in each return to incarnation to professional and business environments that will enable him to put into effect all the new skill and wisdom he has gained, so a nation goes on to greater and greater opportunities. Souls that made the greatness of Greece and Carthage and Rome are now making the greatness of Europe and America. Such facts explain many things that have seemed puzzling. How, for example, was it possible for the world's greatest civilization to spring up suddenly in Europe from barbarous peoples? When Rome declined--declined because her people largely reincarnated elsewhere--Europe was inhabited by slightly civilized hordes. To assume that since then, in a few centuries--a mere passing moment in the great lapse of time required for race evolution--the civilization today could arise, would be to ignore the fundamentals of evolution. But when we understand that great groups of old souls incarnate in the strong physical bodies which the more primitive peoples could bring into the world, the mystery of the rapid rise of a great civilization in Europe is solved. The principle of rebirth holds also with the animal kingdom at a high level in it. The last phase of evolution in the animal kingdom is the individualizing of the consciousness. A particularly intelligent cat or dog, for example, may be just finishing animal evolution and will be reborn at the lowest human level. Previous to its individualization it evolves in a group with others of its kind, animated by a common ensoulment that has not reached the level of complete self-consciousness. At that group-soul stage the experience of each animal in the group adds to the knowledge of all. This theosophical teaching on one of nature's most interesting facts enables us to understand many things that would otherwise remain mysterious. Instinct has never been explained by science. Some of its best known expressions are altogether mysterious. Why does a young wild animal hide from the enemies of its kind but not from friends, when it has never seen either? A quail a day old will fall upon its side with a chip or small stone or bit of grass firmly clutched in its tiny claws to hide its body, and remain perfectly motionless at the approach of a human being, but will take no alarm at the passing of a squirrel or a rabbit. How does a young chick know the difference between a crow and a hawk? And why, in remote places like the antarctic regions, are both young and old birds and animals unafraid of man? The group-soul is a clear and simple explanation of all such phenomena. The youngest have the knowledge of the oldest because they are attached to the same group-soul, or source of consciousness. The young quails of this season come back to rebirth from the group-soul that is the storehouse of the experiences of the quails that were killed by men in past seasons, and thus all young things know the common enemy. In the remote regions referred to the killing proclivities of the human being have not become known and there is no "instinct" to warn. An excellent bit of evidence on the subject of the group-soul is the fact, often chronicled but not explained, that when telephone or telegraph lines are built in new countries the birds fly against the wires and are killed by thousands, the first season. But when the next season's birds are hatched they are wise and avoid the wires! If the group-soul were not a fact in nature it would naturally require a long time for wire education. No such sudden adjustment would be possible. Reincarnation represents continuous evolution with no waste of time or loss of energy. Death is not the sudden break in the life program that the popular belief pictures it. The common view of death is as erroneous as the common view of birth. If death were what most people believe it to be it would constitute a blunder of nature--an irrational interruption of orderly development. In nature's economy there is conservation of energy and no loss can arise through the change called death. If the popular belief that at death we go far away to a totally different kind of existence were sound then death would usually mean an enormous waste. A young man is educated for some particular work, engineering, architecture or statecraft, and graduates only perhaps to die soon afterward. All that time and energy spent in getting such an education would be largely lost either if death ends all, or is the last he will know of the material world. But nature does not thus blunder. Her law of conservation is always operative. All the skill and wisdom acquired will be brought back in rebirth and will be used in the future incarnations. A child in school is a fair analogy for a soul in evolution. The child cannot get an education in a term nor in a year. He must return often to the same school, after the rest of regular vacations. He may use new books with higher lessons but he returns periodically to the same environment. Continuous attendance would be as unthinkable as finishing his education in a single term. In evolution the soul returns periodically to the physical world, or plane, for the same reasons. Continuous life here until all material experience is gained would be impossible. Aside from the need of the double process of acquiring and digesting experience the physical body would become a hindrance to evolution. Within certain limits the physical brain can respond to the requirements of the growing soul, but a new body is in time an absolute necessity to further evolution. If we give a little thought to the evolutionary progress the ordinary person must make to raise him to mental and moral perfection, the absurdity of a single lifetime becomes apparent. Consider, a moment, intellectual perfection. It would mean a development of the mind to the point of genius in many directions. If we combine into one mind the attainments of the mathematical genius, the musical genius, the inventive genius, the statecraft genius, and so on until every line of intellectual activity is included, we then have only the perfect mental man. On the moral side we must add to that the combined qualities of the saints. Then we have the perfected human being, with nothing more to be learned from incarnation here. His further evolution belongs to superphysical realms. In trying to comprehend the evolution of the soul, that slowly changes it life after life from the savage to the civilized state and finally raises it to perfection, it is helpful to observe how this great work corresponds to the smaller cycle of a single incarnation. A great character in history begins with helpless infancy. Steadily he progresses, unfolding new power at each step. He passes through the graded schools, slowly acquiring elementary lessons. College follows with higher and more difficult mental acquirements. Then he enters professional life and begins to use his intellect with more and more initiative. He moves on into public life with increased duties and responsibilities. From one post of honor he rises to another with increasing ability and mastery, until at last he is the head of a nation and has become a world figure. Even so it is in the evolution of the soul. Life by life we rise, evolving new powers and virtues amidst every increasing opportunities and responsibilities. In one incarnation we have conditions that evolve courage. In another we are thrown into situations that develop tolerance. In still another we acquire patience and balance. In all of these incarnations we steadily evolve intellect and strengthen all previously acquired virtues. In each life we find the new conditions that are necessary for the exercise of our added abilities and, ultimately, with the powers, the spiritual insight and the ripened wisdom of the gods themselves, we move forward to higher fields of evolution. FOOTNOTES: [J] "Life and Matter," Lodge, p. 119, 120. [K] Life and Matter.--Lodge, p. 121. CHAPTER X. REBIRTH: ITS JUSTICE No matter how much we may differ in our view of the relationship between God and man there is general agreement about the attributes of the Supreme Being. All ascribe to him unlimited power, wisdom, love and, of course, the perfection of all those desirable qualities we see in human beings. The theosophical view is that all we know in man of power, wisdom, love, justice, beauty, harmony, et cetera, are faint but actual manifestations of the attributes of the deity. All who are not materialists, denying the existence of a Supreme Being, will agree that the wisdom and justice of God must be perfect. It would be illogical and inconsistent to limit or qualify His attributes. Either He is all-wise and absolutely just, or else the materialist is right. We cannot have a deity at all unless He represents perfect justice. Another point on which all but the materialists must agree is that creation is so ordered that the common welfare of humanity is best served by just the conditions of life that surround us. Nothing is different from what it should be unless it is because of man's failure to do what he should do for his own welfare. If it were otherwise what would become of the argument that an omniscient God has ordered it as it is? If, then, things are as they should be in the truest interests of man, and we find things in life that, according to our views of creation, are not right and just, it necessarily follows that the views we hold are erroneous. The popular belief is that human beings constitute a special creation; that whenever a baby is born God creates a soul or consciousness for that body and that after a life of many years, or a few days, or a few minutes, as the case may be, the body dies and the consciousness goes to dwell in remote regions for ever and ever. If the person lived a good life and also believed in the current religion he will be "saved" and will be eternally happy. If he did not live a good life but finally "believed" before death he will be saved anyway and be just as happy as though he had lived right from the start. If he did live a good life, but was not born with the ability to believe easily, he will be lost and will be eternally miserable. According to this theory of special creation God makes people of all sorts. None of them can help being what they are created. Some are wise and some are foolish. Those who are smart enough to find the way of salvation will finally have heaven added to their original gift of wisdom. Those who are not smart enough to find it will finally have hell added to their original lack of sense. This is what some people are pleased to call divine justice! It will hardly do to argue that the possibility that all may at last be happy in an endless heaven, makes it unimportant that there are inequalities now. The majority of the theologians do not admit that such a state awaits the whole of the human race, and the comparatively few who do believe it will hardly venture to assert that present justice can be determined by future happiness. Even if we positively knew that eternal bliss awaited everybody after the close of this physical life how could that make it just that one person shall be born a congenital criminal and another shall be born a poet and philosopher? How could it make it right that one is born to life-long illness, suffering and poverty, while another inherits both wealth and a sound physical body? Not even the certainty of future happiness would be compensation for present inequalities. But why should there be any such inequalities if God represents unlimited power and perfect justice? Why should there be any poverty when, if He really created the soul itself instantaneously, He can as certainly create any necessary condition for the soul? Why poverty and disease and suffering at all? There must be a better answer to such questions than that "it pleased God to have it so." It is surely little better than blasphemy to suggest that any kind of hard conditions for man are pleasing to the deity. To hold that any future condition of happiness can make present justice out of the truly terrible inequalities of life, would be much like a millionaire who has two sons giving one of them all the advantages of wealth, travel, skilled instructors and special care, while the other was permitted to wear rags and go hungry. If the neglected son asked why he was thus treated while his brother was most carefully provided for, the father might reply with some indignation, "You are to have plenty in the future! My will is so drawn that when I die my great wealth will be equally divided between you and your brother. You will then be a millionaire with more money than you can possibly spend. So don't be foolish about your hardships now. Learn to starve like a gentleman!" The father's position in such a case would be just as reasonable as that of those who think a heaven hereafter can justify an earthly hell now. Now let us take some of the particular facts of life that puzzle us and test them with the hypothesis of special creation, and also with the hypothesis of reincarnation, and see which can really explain them in a satisfactory manner. We will take some facts of real life. In a Massachusetts prison there is an old man whose name became familiar to many of us in our youth. He was then known as Jesse Pomeroy, the boy murderer. The present generation scarcely knows him. But forty years or more ago he was talked about by all the newspapers. For the crime of murdering his playmates the boy was sent to prison for life. Why did Pomeroy become a noted criminal in childhood? If the theory of special creation is sound he was created and put in the world to fit himself for a future heaven. But he was created in such fashion that he was deficient in moral perception and he began life with an act that led to his expulsion from society. If God created this soul as we first knew him why was he not created with the moral balance of a law-abiding citizen so that he could have lived long and peacefully in civilized society and have been prepared for heaven at death? What could have been the purpose of giving him a brain that could not think soundly and a conscience that welcomed murder? That leads us inevitably to the question, Why are criminals created at all? Why are idiots created? The deeper we look into the facts of life the more unsatisfactory does the theory of special creation become because we find a thousand things that contradict it and show its inconsistency. If the purpose of God was to create a heaven to be enjoyed by those who reach it we cannot see why He should create a humanity the majority of which is incapable of ever attaining it. If He creates them as they come into the world at birth why are not all of them created wise and kind? Why must most of them blunder through life, making all sorts of mistakes, bringing suffering to others by their unkindness or cruelty and only, in the end, to pass from a life of failure to eternal punishment for that failure? There is no reason, no justice, no sanity in such a theory. Now let us turn to the explanation of reincarnation. According to that, Pomeroy has had many past incarnations and will have many more. Like all the rest of us he came up from primitive man. We have all learned the lessons of civilized life slowly by experience like children acquiring lessons from their books. The majority have come along well and developed a fair share of intellect in dealing with life's problems, and some degree of sympathy for others. Some have evolved rapidly like hard working pupils and they are called geniuses. Some have lagged behind and have learned very little. They are like the truants at school who have broken the rules and run away from their lessons. These laggards of the human race are the dullards and the criminals, who have moved so slowly incarnation after incarnation, or are so much younger in evolution, that they are now bringing savage traits into our present civilized life. Reincarnation not only explains who and what the criminal is but it also explains away the hell with which special creation threatens him. No hell awaits him except that which he has created himself by what he has done. By the law of cause and effect all the cruelty and suffering he has inflicted will react upon him to his sorrow, but will also serve for his enlightenment. In his next incarnation the kind of body he will have and the environment in which he will live will be determined exactly by the thoughts and emotions and acts of this and past incarnations. He will therefore neither go to a heaven for which he is not fitted nor to a hell which he does not justly deserve. He will simply come back in another physical body and have a chance to try it again, but he will have to make the trial under the conditions which his conduct has merited. And what of the idiot? According to special creation we cannot possibly explain him. It would be blasphemous to believe that God creates a mindless man. If one soul is given a mind and another is not, and for no reason whatever, it is the most monstrous injustice that ever forced itself upon the understanding of man! Think for a moment of the difference between the idiot and the normal person. The man of sound mind has before him the opportunity of progress, of mental and moral development. The avenues of business and professional life are open before him. He is free to try his powers and win his way. Wealth, power and fame are all possible for him. All the joys of social life may be his. Think of him surrounded by his family and friends, successful, satisfied, happy, and then think of the life of the idiot. Language cannot express the horror of the contrast! If there were no other explanation of life than that of special creation it would change the world into the hopeless hell of a mad-house. Again reincarnation saves us from either blasphemy or madness. The idiot, like the congenital cripple, differs from the normal man only in the body, which is the instrument of the soul. Deformity of the body is a limitation of the ego who functions through it. A withered arm, a club foot, a deformed back, in this incarnation are results of unfortunate causes which that soul has generated in past lives. In idiocy the malformation is in the brain. Of course this is not an accident. There is no element of chance which places the limitation in one body where it causes but little trouble and in another where it prevents mental activity and thus produces idiocy. In each case it is the exact working out of the law. The body of the idiot is the physical plane representation of a soul that has made a serious blunder in the past, possible by limiting another with cruel restraint, and the gross misuse of his intellect and power in that way has operated to prevent his using it at all in the present life. But such limitations belong to the outer planes. It is the form that limits and when the form perishes the limitation disappears. As with the criminal no hell is needed to punish the idiot. He has made his own hell by his mistake in the past and in this incarnation he must live in it and expiate his blunder. Perhaps it may seem to some that since the idiot is incapable of realizing the life of the normal person the situation represents no real misfortune for him. But idiocy on the physical plane does not mean idiocy in the soul. Even from the astral plane the ego may keenly feel the horror of functioning for a lifetime through such a physical body, as one here would feel the anguish of incarceration in a dungeon. The criminal and the idiot are striking illustrations of the failure of the theory of special creation to satisfactorily explain the facts of life. But if we turn to the other extreme and consider the most fortunate people in the world we shall find there, too, precisely the same failure to explain. By the hypothesis of special creation we find a gross injustice done to the soul born an ignoramus. Yet we find others possessing enough intelligence for several people. In the case of Macaulay we have the evidence in his own handwriting in a letter the date of which proves his age, that he was reading Greek and Latin and studying mathematics deeply when seven years old. There are many other cases of the remarkable display of talents in childhood, but a single instance will serve for all. It is all the better as an illustration because it is a contemporaneous case and the facts are known to scores of living people. It is recorded of William James Sidis, of Brookline, Massachusetts, that at six years of age he entered a grammar school and in six months had completed the work of seven grades. At the age of seven he had gone so far with his mathematical studies that his father, Professor Boris Sidis, could be of little assistance to him. He worked out the most abstruse and difficult problems with the greatest ease and invented new systems of computation which attracted much attention. When eight years old he entered the Brookline High School and in six weeks had completed the mathematical course and began writing a book on astronomy. He then took up the study of French, German, Latin and Russian. On leaving school he took up mathematics as a specialty and invented a system of logarithms based on the number 12 instead of 10. This was inspected by several well known mathematicians who pronounced it perfect in every detail. He applied for admission to Harvard University but the authorities refused his petition on account of his youth, only, since he could have passed the examination with ease. He tried again the next year and was again refused on the same ground. But at eleven years of age, having passed the entrance examination for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was judged to know enough of chemistry and kindred subjects to make him eligible for admission to the Harvard medical school. He then entered upon a special course at Harvard because the ordinary course in college was far below the abilities of this boy of eleven years. Professor James, of Harvard, the famous psychologist, has pronounced him the greatest mental marvel he ever knew. It is said the young prodigy could recite pages of Shakespeare from memory at an age when the ordinary boy is learning his alphabet. In the same city where young Sidis was born we find the idiot. Did God create them both as they were born or did they come up to their present difference of mental equipment through a process of evolution that accounts for it all satisfactorily? If the theory of special creation is sound why did not the idiot get at least a little of the intellect that Sidis could so easily have spared? If they are the work of special creation it is impossible to find reason or justice in such terrible inequalities. But if reincarnation is God's method of creation the explanation of the difference between them becomes simple. Sidis is not only an old soul but evidently one who has worked hard in past lives, throwing off the lassitude of the dense bodies and evolving the power of will that enabled him to triumph over obstacles, conquering all the enemies of intellectual progress and thus earning the fine physical body and brain he now possesses. His present abilities are but the sum total of the energies he has put forth in the past. The theory of special creation does not explain the facts of life. It lacks justice, it lacks harmony and it lacks consistency. It is not in accord with natural law. Nature knows no such thing as special creation. To believe in special creation is to ignore all scientific facts and principles. On the other hand reincarnation is in harmony with science and with natural law. Reincarnation is evolution and every kingdom of nature develops through evolution. The difference between the shriveled wild grain that struggles with the rock and soil for life enough to barely reproduce itself, and the plump wheat of the cultivated fields that feeds the world, is the work of evolution. The wild stalk produced the seed and from that seed came a better stalk. The better stalk produced a still better kernel and from that better kernel sprang a superior stalk to yield a higher grade of wheat than any of its predecessors. The stalk sprouts from the ground, matures, stores all its gain of growth within the seed and perishes. But from the seed springs its reincarnated form, to repeat the process that changes poor to good, good to better and better into best. And thus it is with the reincarnating soul. As the almost worthless grain through many seasons is slowly changed to perfect worth, the soul is by that same law of evolution slowly changed through many incarnations from the chaos of savage instincts to the law and order of the moral world. Each incarnation yields some improvement. As the seed sprouts within the darkness of the soil and, perishing there, attains its full results in the higher realm of sun and air, drawing from the soil that which, stored within the grain, gives power to reproduce its better self, so the soul strikes anchorage in the lower planes and draws from its varied experiences that which, transmuted after the body's death, gives the power to return with greater life. Attempts have been made to find some explanation of the mental and moral inequalities that exist at birth. In the earlier days of the study of evolution it was usually asserted that the human being inherits his mentality and morality from his parents. But even if that were true the injustice of one being born a genius and another a fool would remain. It is the fact of inequality that constitutes the injustice, and it is of no importance whether it comes about through heredity or otherwise. But as a matter of fact heredity is confined to the physical side of existence. As more and more is learned by observation the old theory of mental and moral heredity has lost ground until it can be said that it now has no recognition in the scientific world. Nobody is better qualified to speak upon the subject than those with practical experience. Dr. A. Ritter, of the Stanford University Children's Clinic, that has large numbers of defective children in charge, treating no less than sixteen hundred in a single year, says: "As to the definite causes of the prevalence of defective types, I cannot speak with finality or assurance. I do not agree with social or educational doctrinaires who assign the causes definitely to liquor, poverty, infectious diseases, or other social or moral shortcomings. The greatest minds of the world are hesitant in theorizing about this. There are a complex of causes which explain many of these cases, but no generalization fits absolutely. We may find a case which is not traceable to any of these conditions--_a case in which the antecedents would promise a perfectly normal child, and yet we are confronted with a defective child_. On the other hand, bright, normal children, even children of superior intelligence sometimes spring from such conditions."[L] A little reasoning about the facts concerning both genius and idiocy will make it clear that neither is inherited. If it were true that genius is inherited society would present a different appearance. There would be famous families of geniuses living in the world, in music, in poetry, in warfare, in invention, in art, if genius were inherited. The fact is that it is difficult to find even two geniuses in any family. The Caesars, Napoleons, Edisons, Lincolns, Wagners, Shakespeares, stand alone with neither great ancestors nor great descendants. We search in vain for great ancestors for such men; but if the theory of mental heredity were sound we should know their ancestors for precisely the same reason that we know them. Heredity, then, does not explain whence genius comes; and if anybody had really traced genius from father, or grandfather, to son or grandson, we should still have no explanation of what genius is. We could then only regard it as the result of some strange chance; yet the scientist knows that laws of nature contain no such element. But the only reason why genius appears so incomprehensible is because we have not looked at it in the light of nature's truth. We have erroneously assumed that this is the only life we live on the physical plane, and therefore the time is too short for the evolution of genius. A man can become an expert in one lifetime but not a genius. But if we give him many incarnations to develop along certain lines he can become a genius of a given type. The soul that works strenuously at building up a certain faculty through many incarnations naturally develops qualities in the causal body that shine out brilliantly upon its return to a physical body and we have the genius. We evolve our mentality and morality, and there could be no justice in life if it were otherwise. There is no element of chance in getting a new physical body in the next incarnation. The body is the material expression of the self. It is as much the product of the self as the rose is of the bush, the apple of the tree, or the tulip of the bulb. The musician can no more get a body suitable to the blacksmith than the rose bush can produce an apple. We do not get bodies by lottery, like destitute people drawing clothing by numbers which might result in grotesque misfits. We do not get bodies at all, we evolve them, and in each incarnation the new body expresses all the soul has come to be up to that point in its evolution. Such a view of life has a basis of absolute justice. Every soul gets exactly what it has earned. The common belief in Occidental civilization is that we live here for only sixty or seventy years and that then, when we die, we pass on to live eternally somewhere else, and that the whole of eternity, whether it is filled with pleasure or is horrible with pain, is made to depend on how we spent those few years of the physical life! Such a fate would be unfair and unjust. If a schoolboy is incorrigible for a term it would not be fair to condemn him to lose all opportunity of getting an education. We would give him another chance at the following term. A little incident of disobedience from home life will illustrate the point involved. A quinine capsule was lying on the table. A three-year-old boy reached for it. His mother called across the room, "Don't eat that, dearie, it isn't candy." But in a spirit of reckless mischief he hurried it into his mouth and quickly chewed it up! It was a very disagreeable but salutary lesson for the little fellow. It is an example of nature's methods. She is always consistent, and has a balanced relationship between cause and effect. But suppose in this case we throw her consistency aside as those who believe that eternal results will follow temporal effects are obliged to do. An ordinary lifetime compared to eternity is somewhat like that instant of disobedience compared to eighty years, but the illustration is not adequate because eternity never ends. As nearly as the principle can be applied it would be by saying to the child, "Because you were disobedient for a second of time you shall taste quinine for eighty years!" If that punishment is injustice what must we call the infliction of an eternity of pain as the result of the errors committed in a lifetime? Any hypothesis of existence that does not take into consideration the welfare of humanity is a false hypothesis. What plan can better serve the common welfare than a chance to redeem a failure? When a prisoner is condemned for a crime we do not deprive him of opportunities. We give him every possible chance to improve his character. God cannot be less just or merciful than man. Rebirth is a new chance. Every incarnation is another opportunity. If the popular idea of an eternal heaven and hell is sound, and there be few who find the "narrow way," the time will come when the majority of the race will have used their one opportunity of a brief lifetime, and have failed. If that were really true, it is easy to imagine what they would do with another opportunity if they had it! How long should opportunity be given? Just as long as it will be used, and to deprive anybody of it when he is eager to redeem past errors is to ignore the principles of human welfare. Therefore such a plan cannot be the true one. John J. Ingalls personified opportunity and wrote: Master of human destinies am I! Fame, Love and Fortune on my footsteps wait; Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate Deserts and seas remote, and passing by Hovel and mart and palace, soon or late I knock unbidden once at every gate. If sleeping, awake; if feasting, rise before I turn away. It is the hour of fate, And they who follow me reach every state Mortals desire, and conquer every foe Save Death; but those who doubt or hesitate, Condemned to failure, penury and woe, Seek me in vain and uselessly implore; I answer not and I return no more. That is true enough from one viewpoint and profitably emphasizes the importance of promptly acting when the time for action arrives. But there is another truth to be expressed on the subject and it is well done by Walter Malone, who says: They do me wrong who say I come no more, When once I knock and fail to find you in; For every day I stand outside your door, And bid you awake and rise to fight and win. Wail not for precious chances passed away; Weep not for golden ages on the wane; Each night I burn the records of the day, At sunrise every soul is born again. Laugh like a boy at splendors that are sped; To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb; My judgments seal the dead past with its dead, But never bind a moment yet to come. Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep, I lend my arm to all who say, "I can." What a magnificent view of human evolution! No ultimate failure possible because there is always another chance. The failure of one incarnation made good by the sincere efforts of the next. All the faults and frailties--the shadow blots of the past--vanishing in the light of a higher wisdom that has been won. No endless hell, no eternal torment; not even the ghosts of vanished chances to haunt the mind; but only the insistent voice of immortal Opportunity, urging us to wake and rise to strive and win! FOOTNOTES: [L] Interview in San Francisco Examiner, March 5, 1916. CHAPTER XI. REBIRTH: ITS NECESSITY There are apparently but three ways in which anybody has attempted to explain the origin of the race. If two of these are shown to be impossible we have no course open to us but to accept the one which remains. One of the three theories is that of the materialist. Another is the common belief that God created an original human pair and continues to create souls for babies. The third hypothesis is that of the evolution of the soul. The materialist's position seems to be, briefly, that the forces of nature, with no directive intelligence, are sufficient to account for man as we see him; that a continuing consciousness in the human being is a delusion; that immortality is a vain dream and that humanity has neither a past nor a future. Yet the very facts of science to which the materialist appeals contradict such conclusions. This materialistic belief regards the human body as a self-sufficient machine whose brain generates thought. But the savage has a completely evolved physical body with eyes, ears and other organs like our own. His brain under the microscope shows no trace of difference in its material constitution from the brain of civilized man. Indeed, his physical body is not only as complete a machine as ours but is likely to be materially sounder. Why, then, if the brain produces thought, does not this savage produce the thoughts of a philosopher? If there is no directing soul back of the brain, why the marvelous difference in the product of the two brains? Materialists go too far in the assumption that they can explain the phenomena of life. They can talk learnedly about it but they must stop short of the source of life. Everything about anatomy and physiology they know, but the life that flows through the human machine remains unexplained. They can trace the circulation of the blood from the heart through the arteries, from the arteries across to the veins, from the veins back to the heart, but the greatest mind the race has produced cannot say what makes the heart beat. Life has not been explained and cannot be explained from the materialist's viewpoint. Every human being is a miracle. A fingernail is a mystery of evolution. It is formed from the same food that makes the flesh and it will continue to be formed regardless of the variety or quality of the food. Why do certain particles become flesh or nails? Who can draw the division line between them? With marvelous instruments and wondrous skill science has explored and mapped and charted the "tabernacle of clay," but it cannot throw a single ray of light upon the intelligence that animates it. Materialism fails sadly enough in that direction, but still worse as a satisfactory interpretation of the panorama of the life about us. It is a philosophy of the gloomiest fatalism. It holds that we simply chance to be that which we are; that we are what we are merely because of fortuitous chemical and mechanical combinations. Had the combinations chanced to be something different we should not be in existence. Chance is the king of the materialist's world. According to this theory all abilities are the gifts of nature and all lack of them is the blind award of chance. No credit whatever is due to anybody for what he is, nor can anybody be logically blamed for his deficiencies. All are like men who, with closed eyes, draw something from a bag under compulsion. It is not to the credit of one that he got a prize nor to the discredit of another that he drew a blank. This hypothesis holds that recently we were not and that presently we shall cease to be; that we appear by chance, live our brief period, suffer or enjoy as it may happen and then pass to the oblivion of eternal silence; that all the thought, all the toil and the striving, all the effort and endurance were for nothing, and accomplished nothing. Such a philosophy will not long survive the progress of our age. It lacks the balance of nature's principle of conservation. It lacks the completeness of universal law. It lacks the element of justice that is enthroned in every human consciousness and without which life would be a meaningless mockery and the world a chaos of despair. But the materialist's philosophy has no monopoly of bad points or undesirable beliefs. The old popular idea of a mechanical creation is equally at war with both fact and reason. That belief is that God created the world as men build houses, and added the human beings as men furnish their houses when built. It is the belief that He is still making souls as fast as bodies are being born in the world, that these souls begin their existence at birth, live here but one life and then pass on into either endless bliss or eternal pain. This idea differs from materialism in the matter of a governing intelligence and on immortality but it is remarkably like it in other ways. Like materialism it is fatalistic because it makes man the helpless subject of resistless power. It merely puts an intelligent force as first cause where the materialist postulates blind force. The materialist says that all human characteristics are the gift of nature while according to the popular belief they are the gifts of God. In either case one class of human beings gets abilities that they have not earned and others get defects that they do not deserve. The intellectual man is favored without reason and the fool is handicapped without mercy. Some come into the world with salvation assured by being well born while others are foredoomed to failure. Predestination goes logically with such ideas. Happily the world has long been growing away from the once wide-spread belief in predestination because it is too shocking to the modern sense of justice. But is the world at the same time catching the point that if there is but one life on earth and the soul is created at birth, then the very essence of predestination remains, because some are created with the wisdom to attain salvation and others are created without it? If the soul has no pre-existence it can have no responsibility at the time of birth. Neither can it have any merit. One is born with a sound mind and moral insight. These qualities may lead to salvation but the man has done nothing to earn them. Another is born with cruel and vicious tendencies and poor intellect. He may therefore miss salvation, but if he had no pre-existence he can have done nothing to deserve such a start in life. If we are really here for the first time then justice can be done only by giving us equal equipment at the start and equal opportunities afterward. Think for a moment of the sweeping difference between human beings at birth. There is every degree of vice and virtue from the savage to the saint and every mental variation from the fool to the philosopher. If God really creates the soul at birth, then one is created wise and kind though he did nothing to earn it. Another is created vicious and depraved. He did nothing to deserve it. One is showered with natural gifts to which he is not justly entitled. Another is blighted with a stupidity he did nothing to incur; and we are asked to believe that God made them thus! Such a belief is contrary to reason and to justice. It is easy to see why, in this old view of the relationship between God and man, salvation was to be by faith. It was impossible for a person to be saved by his merit because, if his qualities were given to him by God at birth, he had no merit. His very ability to comprehend spiritual truth and his moral strength to resist temptation, were conferred upon him, not earned by him. If this popular view is sound, human beings should be neither praised nor censured. They are simply human automata operated by such degree of mental and moral ability as God chose to assign to them. If this be true, genius should have no credit for its accomplishments, indolence no frown of disapproval, cowardice no lash of condemnation, tolerance no need of praise, cruelty no rebuke, virtue no applause and heroism no fame for its selfless sacrifice. And yet this absurd and illogical belief lingers in the minds of millions of people. It is believed because it always has been believed. If materialism is an impossible philosophy, then the popular belief that the soul is created at birth is also impossible. It is a theory that encumbers its belief in immortality with conditions that destroy justice and defy logic. That old form of belief has outlived its day. It was possible at any time only because there was too little information and, like the old belief that the world was flat, it must yield place to the newer knowledge. The truth of evolution is the stanchest friend of religion. It is the foundation on which may be built a scientific belief in a Supreme Being, a rational faith in immortality and a brotherhood of man that has a basis in nature itself. The very idea that was hastily thought to be destructive of a belief in God and heaven and immortality is rapidly becoming the most important witness to the truth of them all. While it is true that in the earliest days of evolution the most eminent scientists were agnostic, it is equally true that today the most eminent scientists of the world believe in the existence of the soul, and in its immortality, and base that belief upon scientific grounds. What is the essence of the facts of evolution and how does it give evidence against materialism and for immortality? Evolution is an orderly unfolding from the single to the diversified, from the simple to the complex, in which process life evolves by passing from lower to higher forms and storing within itself the gist of the experiences gained in each. One of the vital facts that evolution establishes is that slow building is the order of creation. The horse is an example. He is traced backward with certainty to a small creature that resembles him very little indeed. Ages were required to evolve the horse into his present intelligence and utility. Another profoundly important fact in evolution is the continuity of life from body to body. The butterfly is frequently used as an illustration, but the principle holds with all the higher order of insects like ants, flies and bees. In the metamorphosis of the caterpillar we have a phenomenon so common that most people have personally observed it. Watch, in imagination, its transformation that contradicts materialistic philosophy. The worm is a physical body occupied by an evolving life or intelligence. Its physical body perishes and becomes part of the dust of the street. The life enters the grave of the chrysalis. The scientist takes that chrysalis, packs it in an ice house and leaves it frozen for a number of years. Now a mere frost will kill either caterpillar or butterfly, but when the chrysalis is removed from the ice and brought into a higher temperature the triumphant life emerges in the form of the butterfly. This phenomenon proves that life does survive the loss of the body. The body of the caterpillar is dead and has turned to dust years ago, but the caterpillar that lived in it is not dead. It now lives again in the physical world in a physical body of a higher type. Here, in an order of existence almost infinitely below man, we have an individual life existing in a physical form, passing from it and, after a number of years, taking possession of another form and living in that. Who can admit such continuity of life for the insect and deny it for man? Can there be a deathless something in a worm and not in a human being? Even without the mass of physical evidence that exists upon the subject the logic of nature would lead us to confident conclusions. The knowledge of evolution which science has so far accumulated leads to four natural inferences. One is that man is immortal. Another is that he has, like all creatures, slowly evolved to what he now is. A third is that both life, and the forms it uses, are evolving together, and the fourth is that lower orders evolve into higher and continually higher ones. The human soul evolves from the savage to the saint--from animal instincts to the self-sacrifice of martyrs and heroes. We cannot escape the conclusion that the race has evolved, is evolving and will continue to evolve until mental and moral perfection has been attained. If neither the theory of the materialist nor the popular notion that the soul is created at birth is satisfactory, we have only reincarnation left as a working hypothesis; and if we accept the evolution of the soul as a natural truth, then reincarnation becomes a necessity in explaining the known facts of life. But there are some students of life who appear to refuse the hypothesis of reincarnation while wishing to accept the idea of the evolution of the soul. But how would that be possible? If the soul is evolving it is under the necessity of developing by the laws of growth. They were discussed in Chapter IX. Those who desire to put their ideas about the soul and its immortality into harmony with the facts of evolution sometimes ask why it would not be possible for the soul to leave the material plane forever at the death of the physical body and then pursue its evolution on higher planes. In the vast universe there must be opportunity for all possible development, it is argued. But why go on into other regions when the lessons here have not been learned? That would be a violation of nature's law of the conservation of energy. The average human being is in the elementary grades, with scores of incarnations ahead of him before he will be in a position even to take advantage of his opportunities and thus make fairly rapid progress. To talk of going on to higher planes for further evolution is like proposing that a child shall leave the kindergarten and enter the university. We are evolving along two lines, the mental and moral, and a little consideration of the matter will make clear two important points--that we have much to learn and that the physical plane is wonderfully arranged for our instruction. We have conditions here for developing mentality that do not exist on higher planes. The absolute necessity of procuring food is an example. Death is the penalty for failure to obtain it. Hunger was the earliest spur to action at the lowest level of evolution and even now at our high point of attainment it is one of the chief factors of racial activity. In providing the necessities of life and in gratifying our multitude of desires mentality is developed. Business and professional life rests upon these physical plane necessities and, engaged in solving the problems of civilization, the race evolves intellect. Such problems do not, of course, exist on higher planes. While the mentality is thus being pushed along in evolution by our material necessities, the heart qualities are developed by the family ties in a way that could not be done elsewhere. In the nature of things the entrance of the soul to the physical plane is attended with helplessness. From the beginning it must have material necessities or die, and yet it can do nothing in its new infant body. Again, as a rule, long before it leaves the physical plane old age has once more rendered it helpless. Thus every human being must depend on the assistance of others at two critical periods of each incarnation. The help it receives, in infancy and old age, it pays back to the race, in the care of both the helpless young and the helpless old, when it is in the vigor of mature physical life. It is obvious that such experience develops the qualities of sympathy and compassion as no phase of business life could. The relationship of parent and child, husband and wife, evolves the heart qualities in a way that would be impossible in the totally different environment of higher planes. Naturally enough, each plane has a specific work to do in the soul's evolution. We can no more learn in the highest planes the lessons the material world is designed to teach us than a pupil can acquire a knowledge of mathematics from his lessons in geography. Hence the necessity for a periodical return to this life until its experiences have developed in us the qualities we lack. Not only has each plane its special adaptability to particular needs of the soul in its evolution, but the two kinds of physical bodies--masculine and feminine--through which the soul functions, afford special advantages for acquiring the lessons of life. The soul on its home plane is, of course, sexless. Sex, as we know it, is a differentiation arising from the soul's expression on lower planes. All characteristics of the soul itself, like intelligence, love, or devotion, are common to both sexes. The ego functioning through the masculine body has the opportunity of certain experiences that would be impossible in the feminine body, while, of course, the feminine form enables the ego to get experience that could not be known through the masculine body. A consideration of the widely different experiences of fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, will show how true this is. The lessons obtained in the masculine body are largely those of the head while in the feminine form they are lessons of the heart. When the ego puts forth its energies and begins descent into lower planes for another incarnation it is apparently beginning a cycle of experience in which either mentality or spirituality shall be the dominant note for that incarnation, and probably for several others. If it is to evolve for the time being through those experiences related to objective activity, with intellect as the guiding factor, the masculine body can best serve the purpose. But if the dominant note is to be spirituality, rather than mentality and the soul is, for the time, moving along the line of the heart side--the subjective, the intuitive--then the feminine body is the better vehicle in which such experience can be obtained. But to say that mentality is the dominant factor of masculine incarnation does not at all mean that men have a monopoly of the reasoning faculty. Nor does the fact that other souls are being expressed through the feminine body mean that they have a fundamental spiritual advantage. Some women are better reasoners than some men, while some men are more spiritual than some women. What it does mean is that a certain ego can express intellect better through a masculine body and intuition better through a feminine body. Our ordinary language confirms the truth of the statement that men normally express more the head qualities and women more the heart qualities. We speak of men as being reasoners and of women as being intuitional and depending upon their impressions. The soul in the masculine body is for the time being getting experiences of the outer, objective activities. He is the home builder and protector, the bread winner, the battle fighter. The soul in the feminine body is, for the time, getting experience along the line of the inner, subjective life. She is the wife and mother, and her lessons are of the heart rather than the head. As we study nature we are more and more impressed with her wonderful mechanism for the evolution of the soul. It soon becomes clear to the student that every individual is, in each incarnation, thrown into precisely the circumstances required for the greatest possible progress of that particular ego. If the qualities of initiative and courage, for example, are to be developed, the masculine body admirably serves the purpose, while if sympathy and compassion need stimulation the feminine form is wonderfully effective for that kind of progress. It requires little reasoning to see that the soul would not continue to incarnate in one sex indefinitely. It must develop all its inner qualities. Both intellect and compassion must reach perfect expression. Such a consummation can, of course, be best attained by alternating sex experiences. But here again there is wide latitude in the operation of the law. The rule seems to be that ordinarily there are not less than three nor more than seven successive incarnations in one sex, and then the ego begins to express itself through a body of the other sex. By that rule it would commonly be for a period of from a few hundred years to some thousands of years, that the ego expresses itself through one sex before it changes to the other. One case is mentioned by the occult investigators in which for about thirty thousand years a certain ego had expressed itself only through the masculine form. At least no trace of a feminine incarnation could be found during that time. The necessity for rebirth becomes clearer and clearer as we study the nature of the human being and the inherent divine qualities he is unfolding. Reincarnation is the method of evolution at the human level. Only by physical plane experience can man's potential powers be aroused and so tremendous is the evolutionary work to be done that only a mere fragment of it can be accomplished in an ordinary lifetime. The absolute necessity of many rebirths is obvious. CHAPTER XII. WHY WE DO NOT REMEMBER The loss of memory between incarnations and the failure to now recall any of our experiences previous to the present physical plane life has sometimes been cited as a negative kind of evidence against the hypothesis of rebirth. The point could not be made, however, by one who has studied the matter because close scrutiny will show that the loss of memory is a necessary part of reincarnation. The fact that we do not remember is in perfect harmony with the principles of evolution. Indeed, the close student of the subject would be very much surprised if we could normally remember, because he does not get far until he sees, not only why we do not remember past incarnations but why we should not remember them. The very nature of the evolutionary work to be done by reincarnation necessitates a sacrifice of memory. One useful purpose of the confinement of consciousness in matter, through the use of a physical body, is that it narrows the scope of consciousness and thereby increases its efficiency. The consciousness of the ego sweeps over a vast range, forward and backward, including all past incarnations. But the limitation of matter which compels consciousness to be expressed through a physical body, focuses the attention on the evolutionary work immediately in hand. The brain becomes the instrument of consciousness but also, fortunately, the limitation of consciousness. If there were not loss of memory our minds would now range over the adventures of thousands of years in the past. It would encompass a vast drama with countless loves and hates, of many lives filled with pathos and tragedy. To thus distract the mind from the present life would retard our progress. When one is alone and in a secluded place one can think better and accomplish more than when in the midst of turbulent scenes and throngs of people. When there is less to think about the thinking is more effective. It is necessary to restrict the consciousness and limit the mind to the present life in order to get the most satisfactory results. The same truth is embodied in that old saying that whoever is jack of all trades is master of none. Concentration alone can produce satisfactory results. If we would master the lessons of this life we must not take other lives within the field of consciousness. The very process of reincarnation is a coming out of the general into the particular, with the consequent narrowing of consciousness. We should keep in mind the fact that our true and permanent life is in the causal body, and on the mental plane, and that there, alone, is unbroken memory possible. The descent into matter in each incarnation is also beyond reach of the brain memory, of course. Getting new bodies is the working out of natural law even as instinct works in animals. The whole animal kingdom, lacking the reasoning power of man, nevertheless adapts means to ends with unerring accuracy and with a depth of wisdom that is beyond our comprehension. And so is human evolution directed by impelling forces that are unknown to our waking consciousness. But our waking consciousness is only a small part of our consciousness--that fragment of it that can be expressed through the physical brain. The physical brain is a limitation of consciousness, and therefore of memory, as certainly as a mountain range is a limitation of sight and prevents one's knowing what lies beyond it. In higher realms we do know our wider life and vaster consciousness that includes the memory of our past incarnations. But when we come downward into another incarnation it is as though we were descending in a narrow vale within mountain ranges that stand between us and the wider world. Memory is dependent on things not within the control of the will. Memory often fails to establish facts which we wish to recall. We know, for example, the name of a certain person. There is no doubt that we know it and yet it is impossible to remember it at will. Tomorrow it will flash upon us, but we cannot remember it now, try as we may. Now, if memory fails to produce its record even when we have a mental picture of just how that person looks, and know just where we have met him, it is certainly not remarkable that with no such immediate connection with our last incarnation we fail to recall it. It was perhaps in another part of the world, and in another civilization, and is separated from us by the long interval between incarnations. Of course memory likewise fails to produce that record. But all of our past experiences are within the soul, just as the records of all of the experiences of this life are in the mind whether we can connect them with the present moment or not. But it may be asked why it is that, if we do not remember events that have occurred in past lives and people we have seen before, we do not at least now have a knowledge of the facts previously familiar to us. What the soul gains from incarnation to incarnation is not concrete facts but something higher and far more valuable. It gains the essence of facts which gives the understanding of their true relationship; and this is the thing we call good judgment or common-sense. A man does not succeed in business because he knows a lot of facts, but because he knows what to do with the facts. An encyclopedia is full of facts but it cannot run a business. Every theorist and dreamer is loaded with facts. The successful man is the one with balance and judgment. It might seem on first thought that one who has been a carpenter in a previous incarnation should have no need to learn the name and use of a saw, or one who has been a skillful penman to learn slowly to hold the pen and fashion the letters. But we must remember that the old soul is now breaking in a new physical instrument with which to express itself and that while it will be able to use all the skill it has previously evolved, its full expression must await the time when the new instrument has been brought into responsive action. The situation might be fairly illustrated by the case of a stenographer who is still using the original typewriter, in some remote corner of the earth, and who has not even seen or heard of any of the remarkable improvements made in such machines in the last thirty years. If his old machine were suddenly taken from him and a model of the present year were put in its place, it is obvious that he could at first make little use of it--not because he has no knowledge but because he must become accustomed to the new machine before he can express himself through it. It would have mechanism and appliances that he could not immediately manage. Let us imagine also that all the characters are in a foreign language which must be mastered before the machine can be used. But the difficulties are not great enough yet for a fair illustration. We must also suppose that it is a living thing, with moods and emotions, and that it must pass through stages of growth comparable to infancy and youth. Under these handicaps it would be certain that the stenographer would appear to have very little knowledge and to possess little skill. Yet as a matter of fact it is merely the conditions that temporarily prevent him from expressing his wisdom and skill. The gist of knowledge gained in the past represents skill that has no dependence whatever upon brain memory. If a man should suffer a lapse of memory, as sometimes happens, and wander about unable to give his name or place of residence, such loss of memory does not prevent him using any skill he may have evolved. If he is an athlete he may not know in what gymnasium he evolved his great strength, but he can use it just as effectively regardless of the absence of memory. One who has been a skillful penman brings all his skill to the new incarnation but of course the new body must be trained to hold the pen and form the letters. Every public school teacher knows that one child will quickly learn that and soon become a competent penman while another can by no possibility exhibit skill in that particular art. The reason is that one has previously evolved his skill and the other has not, and may not, for several more incarnations. It is sometimes objected that by the hypothesis of reincarnation we are required to go over the same ground again and again and learn what we have previously learned. But the criticism has no foundation in fact. There is undoubtedly some necessary recapitulation in the early part of the incarnation, just as there may be in the early part of a school term. But in the main we are thrown into new conditions which are calculated to develop additional faculties. We return to the same material world but we find it with a higher form of civilization than when we were here before. Never before have we who are now here seen a civilization like this, with its age of iron and steam and electricity, with its marvelous opportunities for developing the mechanical faculty in human nature. And that is another bit of evidence of the beauty and utility of the evolutionary scheme. We come back always to greater opportunities than we have yet known. It is not only clear that the failure to remember the past has nothing to do with our ability to use the skill and wisdom we have previously evolved but it is equally obvious that it is the best of good fortune that we cannot remember the past. If we could do so that memory would keep alive the personal antagonisms of past reincarnations. Nobody will deny that we have plenty of them in this incarnation or that the world would be the better if we could bury some of the present antagonisms in a like oblivion. If all quarreling neighbors were to suddenly lose memory of their feuds it would be an undeniable advantage to everybody concerned. Nature's wisdom in veiling the past from us can be understood by observing the pernicious effects of remembering too long the blunders people make in this incarnation. Take the case of a very young man who has charge of his employer's money and who, finding himself pressed for ready cash, makes the grave mistake of "borrowing" a hundred dollars without his employer's knowledge and consent. The young man really believes he is borrowing it and knows just where the money is to come from to replace it soon, and he thinks nobody but himself will ever know anything about it. But to his consternation the money that was due him in a few days cannot be collected in time and an unexpected examination of his books leads to his arrest for embezzlement. He is convicted, sent to prison for a year, and returns a marked man. Thoughtless society closes its doors against him. He seeks employment in vain. Nobody wants an ex-convict. He explains that he had no criminal intent and that he really was guilty of only an indiscretion and that he paid back the money later. But the world is too busy to listen. It sees only the court record, and that was against him. The public forgets, or never knows, the extenuating circumstances. But it never forgets two things--the verdict of guilty and the prison. The young man would almost give his life for a chance to wipe it all out, but it is impossible. It stands against him for life. But nature is wise. She does not permit our vicious traits to extend their injury too far. If we could remember from incarnation to incarnation that man's misfortune might afflict him for thousands of years. But by the wise plan of closing all accounts at the end of each incarnation the mischief of remembering the blunders of others comes to an end. In the next incarnation all start with clear records again. One of the objections that one sometimes hears against reincarnation is that it seems to separate us for long periods, if not forever, and that even when we meet those we have previously known and loved, there is no memory of the past. The answer to the first point is that the separation is wholly on the lower planes and that the time spent on the higher planes is often twenty times that given to the lower. Separation is, of course, unavoidable on the physical plane, even where people live together in the same home. The average man spends most of the day at his office and sleeps about eight hours during the twenty-four. He is really separated from his family most of the time. But there is no such separation on higher planes and there is spent most of the whole period of evolution. The second point--that we do not now have the pleasure of knowing that our friends are those we knew and loved before--is not an important one. What is really important is that we again have them. If the ties of affection have been strong between us in the past there will be instant friendship when we meet for the first time in this incarnation. Those with strong heart ties are certain to be drawn into very close association life after life. It has been observed through the investigations that egos have been husband and wife, or parent and child, again and again. The probability of such close relationships depends upon the strength of the ties of affection. But if such real bond between the souls is lacking the mere fact that they now have family relationships is no guarantee of such future intimate association. When two souls have strong ties arising out of past association the failure to remember that incarnation does not in the least weaken the ties. But it does mercifully hide the past contentions that are to be found in nearly all lives. The failure to remember previous incarnations will be more clearly understood if we now give some thought to the fact that the personality here on the material plane is only a fragment of the whole consciousness of the soul. As we come down into lower planes from the mental world each grosser grade of matter through which the ego expresses itself is a limitation of consciousness. On the astral plane each of us, whatever he may be here, is more alive and enjoys an actual extension of consciousness. On the mental plane he has enormously greater wisdom than here, with a still further extension of consciousness that is quite beyond the present comprehension of the brain intelligence. To put it differently, the ego really does not come into incarnation at all. It merely sends outward a ray from itself--a mere fragment of itself, as a man might put his hand down into the water of a shallow stream to gather bits of ore from which gold can be obtained. So the ego puts a finger, only, down into denser matter to get the general experience that can be transmuted into the gold of wisdom and skill. That finger of the ego, that we know as the personality, gathers the experience and then it is withdrawn into the ego. During the incarnation the personality has been animated by only a little of the ego's vast intelligence and that is why it blunders so often. But, veiled in dense matter, not much of the ego's consciousness can reach it. The relationship between the ego and the personality may be illustrated by that which exists between the brain consciousness and that of the finger-tip. The difference, of course, is great. The finger tip cannot see of hear or taste or smell. It is limited to one sense--touch. But it is a form of consciousness, and it can get experience and pass it on to the brain consciousness. A man may be addressing an audience and see some substance on the table before him. It may be sand or sugar. Without interrupting his lecture he can put down his finger and get at the truth about the matter. The finger-tip gets the information and passes it on to the brain consciousness. Meantime there has been no pause in the discourse. Not a phrase nor a word nor the shading of a thought has been missed. The intellectual life went on in its completeness while the ray of intelligence sent down in the finger-tip got and reported the fact as it was. Just so the life of the ego--the true self of each of us--goes forward on its home plane while the personality here gropes for its harvest of experience. Some of those experiences will be painful to the personality, and the event will seem tragic here, but it will be a passing incident to the ego. In the illustration just used the substance on the table may prove to be neither sand nor sugar, but tiny bits of glass. Some of the sharp points may penetrate the finger and pain follows. To the finger-tip consciousness it is a blinding flash of distress that is overwhelming. But to the brain consciousness it is a trivial incident. And thus it is with most of our painful experiences here. They do a useful work in our evolution and they are trifling incidents to the consciousness of the ego. The personality finishes its work and perishes, in the sense that it is drawn up and incorporated in the ego. Most people identify themselves so fully with the personality that its loss seems like a tragedy to them. But that feeling will trouble them no longer when the ego is understood to be the real self. We might say that the relationship between the ego and the personality is like that between man and child. Childhood will perish but only to be merged into manhood. When we look at that transformation from the viewpoint of the man it is quite satisfactory. But if looked at from the viewpoint of the child it may look appalling. If you should say to your son of three summers, "My child, the time will come when all these beautiful toys will be broken and lost and your little playmates will see you no more," you might cause him much distress. It would seem to his limited child consciousness nothing less than a tragic destruction of what makes life worth while. But when he reaches manhood he will look back with a smile to the trivial things of those early days. If there is something in his childhood of real, permanent value, it will persist in manhood. All the trivial and transient will have disappeared and he will be pleased that it is so, for manhood is the real life of the personality as the ego is the real self. As the memory of childhood lives in the brain of the man, so the memory of all the hundreds of incarnations persists in the causal body and is an eternal possession of the ego. When we are sufficiently evolved to raise the consciousness to the level of the causal body, while still living on the physical plane, as some people are now able to do, we shall thus temporarily recover the memory of past lives. When that time comes, however, the soul is sufficiently advanced to use such wider knowledge without injury to itself or others. CHAPTER XIII. VICARIOUS ATONEMENT Back of the old doctrine of vicarious atonement is a profound and beautiful natural truth, but it has been degraded into a teaching that is as selfish and brutal as it is false. The natural truth is the sacrifice of the solar Logos, or the deity of our system. The sacrifice consists of limiting Himself in the matter of manifested worlds and it is reflected in the sacrifice of the Christ and other great teachers who use their vast consciousness through a physical brain for the helping of the world. Compared to the descent of such supermen into mundane spheres a mere physical death is a trifling sacrifice indeed. The help that such great spiritual beings have given mankind is incalculable and altogether beyond what we are able to comprehend. But for such sacrifice the race would be very, very far below its present evolutionary level. But to assume that such sacrifices relieve man from the necessity of developing his spiritual nature or in any degree nullify his personal responsibility is false and dangerous doctrine. Nobody more than the theosophist pays to the Christ the tribute of the most reverent gratitude. He also holds with St. Paul that each must work out his own salvation. The belief in special creation arose in that period of our history when our ancestors knew little of nature. Modern science was then unborn and superstition filled the western world. Now that we do know the truths of nature, now that we know that creation is a continuous process that is still going on, it is time to abandon the old conceptions and bring religious beliefs and scientific principles into harmonious relationship. Wherever it touches the practical affairs of life the old idea of special creation and special salvation fail to satisfy our sense of justice and of consistency. Intuitively we know that any belief that is not in harmony with the facts of life is a wrong belief. The idea of special creation is not only inconsistent with the facts as science has found them, but it does not give us a sound basis for moral development. Having started with the false idea of the special creation of the soul, which brings it into the world free from personal responsibility, it became a necessity to invent a special salvation to give any semblance of justice at all. Now the vital point against this plan of salvation is that it denies the soul's personal responsibility and teaches that whatever the offenses against God and nature have been, they may be cancelled by the simple act of believing that another suffered and died in order that those sins might be forgiven. It is the pernicious doctrine that wrong doing by one can be set right by the sacrifice of another. It is simply astounding that such a belief could have survived the Middle Ages and should continue to find millions who accept it in these days of clearer thinking. But it seems that when people are taught a thing in childhood the mind accepts it then without reasoning and afterwards vaguely regards it as one of the established facts without thinking further of it at all. But upon reflection we see at once the impossibility of its being true. We hear of a lingering practice in a remote province of China, whereby a man convicted of a crime is permitted to hire a substitute to suffer the penalty in his stead. The law must have its victim and its supremacy must be upheld. We laugh at that and know well enough that punishing the unfortunate substitute, who sacrifices himself to obtain a sum of money that will provide for his family, cannot regenerate the offender. Indeed, we see clearly that his willingness to shift the responsibility for his crime upon another only sinks him farther into iniquity. The only person who can gain in moral strength is the one who makes the sacrifice. Let us suppose that that system of vicarious atonement for wrong doing were to be adopted generally. Then every murderer who had the means would escape the consequences of his crime. Every burglar who was successful enough to have the cash on hand could elude prison. Every pickpocket could hire a substitute to suffer for him and thus continue his criminal career. Every embezzler would have the money to purchase freedom. Every corruptionist would be safe. Every thief could laugh at the law. It would make a mockery of justice. It would place a premium upon crime and a handicap upon honesty and virtue. However bad the dishonest might be it would make them worse. It would necessarily lower the standard of their morality by shifting the burden of their sins to others. It would destroy personal responsibility, and personal responsibility is the basis of sound morals and the foundation of civilized society. Yet that is precisely the sort of thing that goes with the belief in special creation and special salvation--the teaching that we are not responsible for our sins and that by believing that another assumed them and died for us we can escape the results of our wrong doing and thus be saved. What are we to be saved from? From nothing but ourselves. From our selfishness, from our capacity to do evil, from our willingness to inflict pain, from our lack of sympathy with all suffering and from the heartlessness that is willing to let others suffer in order that we may escape. Salvation must necessarily mean capacity to enjoy heaven. The man who is willing to purchase bliss by the agony of another is unfit for heaven and could not recognize it if he were there. What do we think of a person here who shifts his sins upon another and while that other suffers he goes free and enjoys the fruits of his baseness? A heaven that is populated with those who see in vicarious atonement a happy arrangement for letting them in pleasantly and easily would not be worth having. It would be a heaven of selfishness and that would be no heaven at all. A real heaven can be composed only of those who have eliminated selfishness; only of those who want to help others instead of trying to dodge the consequences of their own acts; only of those who are manly and womanly and generous and just and true. Nothing less than a recognition of personal responsibility can lead to a heaven like that. Yet the theory of special salvation ignores it, waves it aside--in fact denies it! Reincarnation represents personal responsibility and therefore absolute justice. It shows that, not merely in all the vast future, but also in this life and in every life, and all the time, our degree of happiness depends upon our present and past course. If reincarnation were generally understood it would necessarily raise the average of morality. It furnishes a deterrent for the evil doer and a tremendous incentive for the man who desires to obey natural law and be happy. It shows the one that there is no possible escape from evil deeds; that he must return life after life to associations and environments determined by the good or the ill he has done; that he can no more escape from his evil deeds than he can escape from himself; that he must ultimately suffer in turn the pain of every blow and the humiliation of every insult he has inflicted upon others. It assures the man of good intentions and right desires that every good deed shall rise up in the future to bless him; that all whom he has helped shall become his helpers hereafter; that even his good intentions that failed in their purpose through mistaken judgment, shall bring him joy in the future. What a splendid thing it is to know that every thought and act adds permanent value to the character; that all we learn in any life becomes an eternal possession; that we can add to our intellect, to our insight, to our compassion, to our wisdom, to our power, as certainly and definitely as a man can add to his bank account or permanent investments; that whatever we may be in this incarnation we can return again stronger and wiser and better. The hypothesis of reincarnation shows our inherent divinity and the method by which the latent becomes the actual. Instead of the ignoble belief that we can fling our sins upon another it makes personal responsibility the keynote of life. It is the ethics of self-help. It is the moral code of self-reliance. It is the religion of self-respect. Think of the utility as well as of the common-sense of a scheme of salvation that really saves us because it evolves us; that never denies us a chance to retrieve an error; that gives us an opportunity to right every wrong; that brings us back life after life until all enemies have been changed to friends; until all accounts are closed and balanced; until all our powers have been evolved, until intellect has become genius; until sympathy has become compassion and the last moral battle has been fought and won. CHAPTER XIV. THE FORCES WE GENERATE Every human being is constantly generating three classes of forces, and they determine the kind of life he will lead here, the degree of success or failure that will characterize it, and the state of his consciousness on the inner planes after the death of his physical body. The law of rebirth brings us back to incarnation, but it is the law of action and reaction under which we evolve while here. The three classes of energies which we generate are those of thought, desire and action. They belong, in the order named, to the mental world, the astral world and the physical world. All people are constantly thinking and desiring and, with varying degrees of energy, are putting thought and desire into action. These forces sent out into the worlds of thought, emotion and action, produce certain reactions, or consequences, and to them the man is bound until justice is done and the soul has learned its evolutionary lesson. That thought and desire are forces as certainly as electricity is, the student of the occult well knows, but the world is not quite yet at the point where the fact is generally accepted. That, however, is the history of all human progress. When Franklin began his experiments with electrical force almost nobody believed there was any such thing in existence. Yet today we use it to carry our messages, run our trains and drive our machinery. Had anybody predicted all that at the time of the first experiments he would have been considered extraordinarily foolish. What the world accepts or rejects at any particular time usually has very little to do with the facts. The general public can be expected to come trailing along, about a half century late, with its acceptance and approval. Thought is a force or telepathy and hypnotism would be impossible. Both have been scientifically demonstrated. The mental body grows by the process of thinking. The force generated in thinking reacts in the production of greater faculty for thinking, so that we literally create our mental abilities. The activities of thought change the mental body into a better and constantly better instrument through which the ego can express itself. But our thoughts also affect others and we thereby make ties with them that must work out sooner or later in associated experience. Desires generate a kind of energy that plays a most important role in the drama of human evolution. The law operates to bring together the desirer and the object that aroused the desire. For the soul can only judge the wisdom of its desires by observing the result of gratifying them. Thus do we acquire discrimination. It is usually a strong desire nature that brings trouble of various kinds and yet the force of desire it is that pushes all evolution onward. Through experience the soul finally learns to control desire, to raise lower desires into higher ones and thus ultimately to attain non-attachment and liberation. Actions are the physical expression of thoughts and desires and, as we are constantly simultaneously thinking, desiring and acting, very complex results arise. In the multitudinous activities of life we set up relationships with other souls, some of the results of which reach far into the future. The average man, with no knowledge of the laws under which he is evolving, is usually making both friends and foes for future incarnations and is often unwittingly laying up pain and sorrow for himself that a little occult knowledge would enable him to avoid. Every injury that he inflicts will return to him, though not necessarily in kind. Nature does not punish. She merely teaches and knows nothing of retaliations. Her great concern seems to be that all souls shall get on in evolution and when a lesson is learned her purpose appears to be accomplished. The forces we generate in each incarnation shape and determine the next and succeeding ones. Our friends, our families, our business associates, our nation, are determined by what we have thought and felt and done in the past and by the lessons it is necessary we shall learn. Our wealth or poverty, our fame or obscurity, our strength or frailty, our intelligence or stupidity, our good or bad environment, our freedom or limitations, all grow out of the thoughts and emotions and acts in the past. From their consequences there is no possibility of escape. But that does not mean that we are the helpless slaves of fate from which there is no release. We who generated the forces can neutralize them. We can undo anything we have done. It only means that for a time we must work within the self-imposed limitations created by a wrong course in the past. Those who are interested in the long-time discussion over free-will and determinism have often been impressed with the remarkably strong arguments that can be marshaled by each side to the controversy. Either side, when presented alone, appears to be conclusive. The explanation lies in the fact that each is right, but only to a certain point. Both free will and necessity are factors and when the theosophical viewpoint is understood the apparent contradiction disappears. We are temporarily bound, _but we did the binding_, by the desires we indulged and the emotions we freely harbored in the past. The condition of temporary restraint in which we now find ourselves may be likened to that of a party of gold hunters who go into Alaska to locate mines. They are all aware that in that remote northern country navigation closes very early and that after the last boat leaves there is no possibility of getting out of that region until navigation opens again in the next season. Some of them are discreet and reach the landing in ample time. Others are careless. They continue their search for gold a little too long, and arrive at the river a day too late. The boat has sailed and they must become prisoners of the ice king. It's a great misfortune but they alone are responsible. They cannot escape from Alaska for many months but within Alaska they are absolutely free. They can build a cabin and either waste the time with idle games or seriously think and study. They are limited but free within the limitation, and the limitation itself was of their own making. It is precisely so with us in the environment of the present incarnation and with our various fortunes. We made them and, when the forces with which we did it are exhausted, we shall be free. Meantime we can do much toward modification and improvement. The reactions from the forces we generate naturally do us exact justice just because they _are_ reactions. We reap precisely what we sow. The reaction may sometimes seem harsh but consideration of the matter from all points of view will show that mercy as well as justice is always a factor. Let us consider the method by which nature changes recklessness into caution. A man is careless, we will say, about lighting a cigar and throwing the burning match down wherever it may happen to fall. He may go on doing that a long time with no serious result, yet all careful people know that he is a source of danger. Some time ago a newspaper told the story of such a man, who passed along the street, lighted a cigaret and carelessly flung the flaming match from him. A nurse was passing with her charge in its tiny carriage. The match fell on some of the light, airy wraps of the infant and they burst into a blaze. Before the fire could be extinguished the child was so badly burned that it died the next day. The moment such a case is stated we realize the necessity of something that will cure the man of such fatal carelessness. He is a menace to the lives and property in his vicinity. No law, however, can be invoked. He had no criminal intent but he is none the less dangerous for that, as the incident proved. We are helpless, however, to prevent his continued carelessness. But nature is not helpless. Under the law of action and reaction he must reap as he has sown. It may be in the latter part of this incarnation, or it may be in a following one, but sooner or later his carelessness will react and he will lose his physical body in pain and distress and come to know personally just what his recklessness means. In the reaction, a part only of which is on the physical plane, he gets the experience that is necessary to set him right. The folly of his course is so driven in on his consciousness that he is changed from the careless man to the careful man. In no other way could his cure be brought about. It may be said that if a misfortune comes to us as the result of our wrong thinking and acting in a past life we can now know nothing of its cause and therefore we cannot profit by the reaction. But while we do not know in the limited consciousness of the physical brain the soul does know and in the wider consciousness the lesson is registered. The principles of justice are never violated in teaching the soul its evolutionary lessons. Nothing can come to a man that he does not merit and that which often looks like a misfortune is only the beneficent working of the law seen from an angle that makes it illusory. But, it may be objected, how does theosophy see "beneficent working of the law" in the burning of a theater where a score of people lose their lives, including several children? How can theosophy explain that? How can it be explained by those who hold that the soul is created at birth? If God really brings the soul into its original expression in an infant body, why does he throw it out again in a few years, or even months? What can be the purpose? It would be difficult indeed to explain the death of children if the soul were created at birth. But let us look at it from the theosophical viewpoint. The child is an old soul with a young body. Hark back to the case of the man whose carelessness caused the death of the baby in its carriage. He, and others like him, are again in incarnation and in the burning theater they get the reaction of the unfortunate forces they have generated. But why so many in some catastrophes? it may be asked. A principle is not affected by the number involved. If we can see justice in the death of one person we can see justice in the death of a hundred. It is simply class instruction. People of a kind have been drawn together. We should not forget that we see only a small fragment of any such case from the physical plane. We form an opinion, however, on that inadequate survey and are quick to declare our opinion of the justice or injustice involved. But our verdict depends wholly upon a viewpoint. Let us suppose, for example, that a man strolls down the street and that, as he turns a corner, he suddenly comes upon a little tragedy of life. A young man is lying on the ground, battered and bleeding, while two others stand over him. What would the average man, coming suddenly on the scene say? He would probably indignantly blurt out "The ruffians!" and he would be inclined to assist the man who was down. But let us suppose that he had been a moment earlier. He would then have been in time to turn around the corner with the other men and would have seen him rush upon a defenseless woman, push her down, snatch her purse and dash away, but, fortunately, in the direction of the men who assaulted and stopped him. Had the last arrival seen the entire affair he would have reversed his opinion and said that the thief got what he deserved. And so it is in our inadequate physical plane view of what we call a calamity. It may appear to involve an injustice, but only because we do not see the entire transaction. Those who study the occult laws that shape human destiny may learn to use them for their rapid progress and for insuring a comfortable, as well as spiritually profitable, life journey. But before we can work successfully within the law we must know that the law really exists. Most people seem either to believe there is no law that will certainly bring them the results of their good or evil thoughts and acts or that if there is such a law they can in some way dodge it and escape the consequence, and so we see them go along through life always doing the selfish thing or the thoughtless thing. They misstate facts, they engage in gossip, they harbor evil thoughts, they have their enemies and hate them, they scheme to bring discomfort and humiliation upon those whom they dislike. And then, when the harvest from this misdirected energy is ripe and they are misled by the falsehoods of others to their loss and injury, when they fall into the company of schemers and are swindled, when a false story is started about them, when--through no fault of the moment--they are plunged into discomfort and humiliation, they merely call it so much bad luck and go blindly on with their generation of wrong forces that will in due time bring another enforced reaping of pain. There is a law that regulates the pleasure and pain of daily life as certainly as there is a law that guides the earth in its orbit about the sun. That law of action and reaction is just as constant, accurate and immutable as the law of gravity that keeps our feet upon the ground while we come and go and think nothing at all about it. There is something almost terrifying in the immutability of all natural laws and their utterly impersonal aspect. They are the operation of forces which, in themselves, are not related to what we call good and bad. They simply are. The law of gravity will illustrate the point. It operates with no consideration whatever for character or motives. It holds all people, good and bad alike, firmly upon the earth while it whirls through space. If a saint and a fiend stumble over a precipice, it will hurl them both to the bottom with perfect impartiality. If the fiend, who may just have murdered a victim, is more cautious than the saint and avoids the precipice, the law has not favored him. He has merely reaped the reward of his alertness in spite of his bad morals. The saintly man may have come fresh from some deed of mercy but the law of gravity takes no account of that. When he stepped over the precipice, and was dashed to death, he paid the penalty of carelessness regardless of his benevolence. There is profound wisdom in the words "God is no respecter of persons," for, of course, all natural laws are but the expression of the divine will. But this immutability of natural law is not in the least terrifying when we come to look more closely at it. On the contrary it is within that very immutability that divine beneficence and compassion are hidden. It is only by the constancy if the changeless law that we can calculate with absolute certainty and surely attain the results at which we aim. It is because of the certainty that the doing of evil brings pain and the doing of good yields a return of happiness that we can control circumstances and determine destiny. Why should there be such a law operating in the mental and moral realm? Because only thus can we evolve. We must not only change from ignorance to wisdom but from selfishness to compassion, from wrong doing to perfect harmlessness. How would that be possible without the law of cause and effect, without action and reaction which brings pleasure for righteousness and pain for evil deeds? Only under such a law can we learn what is the right and what is the wrong thing to do. If it is agreed that we are souls, that evolution is a fact, and that perfection is the goal of the human race, then the necessity for the law of action and reaction is as obvious as the reason for a law of gravity. The existence and operation of this law of cause and effect are set forth repeatedly in the Christian scriptures. "With what measures ye mete it to others it shall be measured to you," is certainly explicit. In Proverbs[M] we have this definite declaration: "Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein, and he that rolleth a stone, it shall return upon him." Of course the language is figurative. No writer of common sense would assert that every time a workman digs a pit he shall tumble into it nor that whenever anybody rolls a stone it will roll back upon him! We dig pits in the moral world whenever we undermine the character of another with a false story, whether we originate it or merely repeat it, and into such a pit we shall ourselves fall, in the reaction of the law. We have loosened and set rolling the stones of envy and hatred and they shall return to crush us down to failure and humiliation in the reaction that follows. We have ignorantly generated evil forces under the law when we could have used it for our success and happiness. "Judge not, that ye be not judged," is another statement of the law of action and reaction. It is not an assertion that we should not judge because we are not qualified nor because we may ignorantly wrong another with such a judgment. It is an explicit statement that the consequence of judging others is that we, in turn, shall be judged. If we criticize, we shall be criticized. If we condemn others for their faults and failures, we shall be condemned. If we are broad and tolerant and remain silent about the frailties of others we shall be tolerantly regarded by others. All of us who have studied the subject find in our daily lives the evidence of the truth of such Biblical declarations. We know perfectly well that anger provokes anger and that conciliation wins concessions, while retaliation keeps a feud alive. We know that retort calls out retort, while silence restores the peace. In these little things it is usually within the power of either party to the trouble to have peace instead of turmoil--just a matter of self control. But in the larger events it is not always so. They are not invariably within our immediate control because they are often the results of causes generated in the past which we can no longer modify. And this brings us to a wider view of this law of cause and effect. If we look at the life history of an individual as it stretches out from birth to death it presents a remarkable record of events that appear to have no logical relationship to each other. In childhood, there may have been either great happiness or great sorrow and suffering regardless of the qualities of character we are considering, and there is nothing in the present life of the child to explain either. The child itself may be gentle and affectionate and yet it may be the recipient of gross abuse and cruel misunderstanding. In maturity we may find still greater mysteries. Invariably there are mingled successes and failures, pleasures and pains. But when we come to analyze them we fail to find a satisfactory reason for them. We see that the successes often arrive when they are not warranted by anything that was done to win them, and for the want of any rational explanation we call it "good luck." We also observe that sometimes failure after failure comes when the man is not only doing his very best but when all of his plans will stand the test of sound business procedure. Baffled again we throw logic to the winds and call it "bad luck." Luck is a word we use to conceal our ignorance and our inability to trace the working of the law. Suppose we were to ask a savage to explain how it is that a few minutes' time with the morning paper enables one to know what happened yesterday in London. He knows nothing of reporters and cables and presses. He cannot explain it. He cannot even comprehend it. But if he is a vain savage and does not wish to admit his ignorance he might solemnly assert that the reason we know is because we are lucky; and he would be using the word just as sensibly as we use it! If by luck we mean chance, there is no such thing in this world. Chance means chaos and the absence of law. From the magnificent, orderly procession of a hundred million suns and their world systems that wheel majestically through space down to the very atom, with all of its electrons, the universe is a stupendous proclamation of the all-pervading presence of law. It is a mighty panorama of cause and effect. There is no such thing as chance. What then _is_ good luck? We know that people do receive benefits which they apparently have not earned. There simply cannot be a result without a cause. They have earned it in other lives when the conditions did not permit immediate harvesting of the results of the good forces generated and Nature is paying the debt and making the balance of her books at a later period. It may be in the case of one that some specific act is attracting its reward, or it may be in the case of another that he is nearing the point in evolution where he no longer desires things for himself, only to discover that nature fairly flings her treasures at his feet. He has put himself in harmony with evolutionary law--with the divine plan, and nature withholds nothing. When we eliminate chance, then, we are forced to seek the cause of unexplained good or bad fortune beyond the boundaries of this life because there is nothing else we can do. We have results to explain and we know they do not come from causes that belong to this life. They must of necessity arise from causes generated in a past life. Now the moment we get away from the narrow view that we began existence when we were born, all the mysteries about us disappear and we can fall back on natural law and logically explain everything. Why does one person begin life with a good mind while another is born with small mental capacity? Because one worked hard at life's problems in past incarnations while the other led a butterfly existence and merely amused himself. Why does one move serenely through trying circumstances always maintaining a cheerful view of life while another loses control of his temper at the slightest annoyance and wears himself out with the trifling vexations of existence? Only because one has for a long period practiced self control while the other has never given a thought to the matter. Why is one so thoughtful of others that he wins universal love and admiration while another is so self centered that he makes no true friends at all? Again past experience explains it. The one has studied the laws of destiny and lived by them while the other has not yet even learned of their existence. Putting aside the old belief that the soul is created at birth, and keeping in mind the newer and scientific view that we have all lived many lives before, all the difficulties and perplexities at once disappear. We are no longer puzzled because we find in a man's life some good fortune when he has apparently done nothing to deserve it, for we see that he must have set the forces in motion in a previous life which now culminate in this result. We are no longer mystified because apparent causeless misfortunes befall him for we know that in the nature of things he did generate the causes in the past. A single incarnation has the same relation to the whole of the soul's evolution that a single day has to one incarnation. As the days are separated by the nights and yet all the days are related by the acts which run through them, so the incarnations are separated by periods of rest in the heaven world and yet all the incarnations are related by the thoughts and acts running through them. What a man does in his youth affects his old age, and what we did in our last incarnation is affecting the present one. The one is no more remarkable than the other. As we mould old age by youth so we are shaping the coming incarnation by this one. Before we shall be able to see the utter reasonableness of the truth that what we are now is the result of our past we must have a clear understanding of the relationship between the soul and the body. The physical body in each incarnation is the material expression of the soul, of its moral power or weakness, of its wisdom or ignorance, of its purity or its grossness, just as one's face is, at each moment the expression of one's thought and emotion in physical matter. Every change of consciousness registers itself in matter. A man has emotions. He feels a thrill of joy and his face proclaims the fact. He becomes angry, and the change from joy to anger is registered in physical matter so that all who see his face are aware of the change in his consciousness, which they cannot see. These are passing changes like sunshine and shadow and they are obvious to all. But we know that as the years pass the constant influence of consciousness moulds even physical matter into permanent form. A soul of sunny disposition finally comes to have benevolent features while one of morose tendency as certainly has a face of settled gloom. Nobody can contact the soul of another with any physical sense we possess yet nobody has the slightest doubt of his ability to distinguish between a sunny, peaceful soul and a soul that is not in harmony with life. We know the difference only because consciousness moulds matter. But this is merely the surface indication. Consciousness is continually influencing matter and the major part of its work is not visible to us. What the consciousness is, the body becomes. Whether we are now brilliant or stupid, comely or deformed, is the result of the activities of consciousness, and the very grain of the flesh and the shape of the physical body are the registrations in matter of what we, the soul, thought and did in the past. Consider a specific thing like deformity and we shall begin to see just why and how it may have come about. If in a past life a person was guilty of deliberate cruelty to another, and on account of it suffered great mental and emotional distress afterward, it would be no remarkable thing if the mental images of the injuries inflicted on his victim are reproduced in himself. In idiocy we have apparently merely a distorted brain so that the consciousness cannot function through it. Might not that distortion of the physical brain easily be the result of violent reaction from cruelties in a past life? The consciousness that can be guilty of cruelty is seeing things crooked--out of proportion. Otherwise it could not be cruel. This distortion in consciousness must register a corresponding distortion in matter, for the body is the faithful and accurate reflection of that consciousness. It is just because the body is the true and exact expression of the consciousness in physical matter that the palmist and phrenologist can sometimes give us such remarkable delineations of character. The record is there in hand and head for those who can read it. This broader outlook on the life journey, extending over a very long series of incarnations, gives us a wholly different view of the difficulties with which we have to contend and of the limitations which afflict us. It at once shows us that in the midst of apparent injustice there is really nothing but perfect justice for everybody; that all good fortune has been earned; that all bad fortune is deserved, and that each of us is, mentally and morally, what he has made himself. Masefield put it well when he wrote: All that I rightly think or do, Or make or spoil or bless or blast, Is curse or blessing justly due For sloth or effort in the past. My life's a statement of the sum Of vice indulged or overcome. And as I journey on the roads I shall be helped and healed and blessed. Dear words shall cheer, and be as goads To urge to heights as yet unguessed. My road shall be the road I made. All that I gave shall be repaid. Have we ever heard of a plan more just, of a truth more inspiring? It is surely a satisfying thought that every effort shall give increased power of intellect; that all kindly thought of others is a shield for our own protection in time of need; that every impulse of affection shall ripen into the love of comrades; that all noble thinking builds heroic character, with which we shall return, in some future time, to play to a still noble part in the world of men. FOOTNOTES: [M] Proverbs, XXVI, 27. CHAPTER XV. SUPERPHYSICAL EVOLUTION If we accept the idea of evolution at all we cannot escape the conclusion that there is superphysical evolution. The belief that man is the highest intelligence in the universe, except God himself, would be utterly inconsistent with evolutionary facts and principles. Evolution is a continuous unfolding from within, and it is only the limitation of our senses that leads us to set limitations to it. The one great life of the universe expresses itself in myriad forms and at innumerable levels of development. One of those levels is humanity. But as certainly as our consciousness has evolved to its present stage it shall go on to higher ones. Orderly gradation is clearly nature's method of expression. A continuous, unbroken line of life reaches downward from man. Its successive stages are seen in the animals, the reptiles, the insects and the microbes. Even the great kingdoms into which the biologist divides life fade into each other almost imperceptibly and it becomes difficult to say where the vegetable kingdom stops and the animal kingdom begins. Just as that continuous chain of life runs downward from man it must also rise above him until it merges in the Supreme Being. There must necessarily be the higher as well as the lower products of evolution. Man is merely one link in the evolutionary chain. The human level is the point where consciousness has become completely individualized and is capable of turning back upon itself and studying its own inner processes. The thought of Occidental civilization has been sadly fettered with materialism. It has scarcely dared to think beyond that which could be grasped with the hands. The physical senses were its outposts of investigation. What could not be seen or heard or felt had no existence for it. Modern science explored the material universe and perfected its methods until the vast panorama of worlds could be intimately studied, and its illimitable scope and colossal grandeur be somewhat comprehended. But there was no study of life comparable to the vast stretch of worlds; for material science had made the remarkable blunder of assuming that the last word on the nature of matter had been said. Then came the startling discoveries that revolutionized the accepted views of matter, that proved that the supposedly indivisible atom was a miniature universe, a tiny cosmos of force. The old theories about matter had to be thrown aside. They were as much out of date as the belief that the earth is flat. Stripped of technical terms of expression the revised view of matter is, substantially, that it is the lowest expression of life; and now modern science is turning tardy attention to a study of the life side of the universe. The moment that is done the sense of consistency and the law of correspondence compel us to postulate a gradation of intelligences rising above man as man does above the insects. The scientific mind instantly grasps the inherent reasonableness of the existence of superphysical beings. Writing on the subject of energy, Nicola Tesla says: "We can conceive of organized beings living without nourishment and deriving all the energy they need for the performance of their life functions from the ambient medium.*** There may be *** individualized material systems of beings, perhaps of gaseous constitution, or composed of substance still more tenuous. In view of this possibility--nay, probability--we cannot apodictically deny the existence of organized beings on a planet merely because the conditions on the same are unsuitable for the existence of life as we conceive it. We cannot even, with positive assurance, assert that some of them might not be present here in this our world, in the very midst of us, for their constitution and life manifestation may be such that we are unable to perceive them."[N] Alfred Russell Wallace, who was called "the grand old man of science," wrote in one of his latest books: "I think we have got to recognize that between man and the ultimate God there is an almost infinite multitude of beings working in the universe at large, at tasks as definite and important as any we have to perform on earth. I imagine that the universe is peopled with spirits--that is, with intelligent beings with powers and duties akin to our own, but vaster. I think there is a gradual ascent from man upward and onward." While the scientist, still lacking the absolutely conclusive evidence, goes only to the point of asserting that it is reasonable and probable that supermen exist, the occultist asserts it as a fact within his personal knowledge.[O] So we have the direct testimony of the occultists, the endorsement of the scientists as to its probability, and, perhaps the most important of all, the inherent reasonableness of the idea. The relationship of the supermen, or great spiritual hierarchy, to the human race is that of teachers, guardians and directors. They superintend human evolution. But this does not mean in the very least the relationship that is expressed in the term "spirit guides" so frequently use by the spiritualist. That is a totally different thing. They seem to imply that the "spirit guide" gives direct instructions or orders to the person known as a "medium." If we were all thus controlled and directed what would become of free will? Evolution can proceed only if we use our initiative in the affairs of life. If we were to be directed by the wisdom and will of others we would not evolve at all. We would be merely automata directed by others, and no matter how great they were we could never thus develop our judgment and self-reliance. It is not thus that the great spiritual hierarchy directs human evolution. It is, in part, by working with mankind en masse and bringing mental and moral forces to play upon them, thus stimulating latent spiritual forces from within. It is also by directly, or indirectly placing ideals instead of commands before the race. In another direction it is actual superintendence, or administration, or teaching, in a way that does not interfere with one's initiative or will. If the soul is to evolve it must have liberty--even the freedom to make mistakes. It is sometimes asked why, if the supermen exist, those who are in incarnation do not come out into the world and give us ocular evidence of the fact. It is pointed out that they could speedily convince the world by a display of superphysical force. But they are probably not in the least interested in convincing anybody of their existence. They _are_ interested in raising the general level of morality, of course, but such an exhibition would not make people morally better. The work of the supermen can best be done from higher planes than the physical. As for the very small number of the supermen who take physical bodies to better do their special work, they can best accomplish it from secluded places; and if they sometimes have reason to come out into the seething vibrations of our modern civilization it is easy to understand that they would not be conspicuously different from other men, to the ordinary observer. It is from the spiritual hierarchy that come all the religions of the world. There the question may arise, "Then why do they differ so greatly?" Because the peoples to whom they are given differ greatly. The difference of temperament and viewpoint between the Orient and the Occident is enormous. We are evolving along the outer, the objective, and our civilization represents the material conquest of nature. They are evolving the inner, the subjective. In the Orient the common trend of conversation is philosophical, just as in the Occident it is commercial. Such different types of mind require somewhat different statements of ethics, but the fundamental principles of all religions are identical. When a new era in human evolution begins a World Teacher comes into voluntary incarnation and founds a religion that is suited to the requirements of the new era. Humanity is never left to grope along alone. All that it can comprehend and utilize is taught it in the various religions. World Teachers, the Christs and saviours of the race, have been appearing at propitious times since humanity began existence. Most readers will probably agree that a World Teacher known as the Christ did come and found a religion nearly two thousand years ago. Why do they think so? They reply that God so loved the world that he sent his Son, the Christ, to bring it light and life. If that is true how can we avoid the conclusion that He, or his predecessors, must have come many a time before? The belief that He came but once is consistent only with the erroneous notion that Genesis is history instead of allegory, and that the earth is about six thousand years old! Science has not determined its age but we know that it is very old, indeed. Many eminent scientists have made rough estimates, taking into consideration all that we have learned from astronomy, geology and archeology. Phillips, the geologist, basing his calculations upon the time required for the depositions of the stratified rocks, put the minimum age at thirty-eight million years and the maximum age at ninety-six million years. Sir George Darwin, basing his calculation wholly upon astronomical data, puts the earth's age at a minimum of fifty-six million years. Joly arrived at his estimate by a calculation of the time required to produce the sodium content of the ocean, and concluded that the age of the earth is between eighty million and one hundred million years. Sollas is said to have made careful study of the matter and he finds the minimum to be eighty million, and the maximum age to be one hundred and fifty million years. But perhaps the most exhaustive study of the matter, and that made by the use of the later scientific knowledge, was by Bosler, of the French scientists. He bases his calculations upon the radio-activity of rocks and arrives at a minimum earth age of seven hundred and ten millions of years. Thus it will be observed that as our knowledge grows the estimated age of the earth increases. In the face of such facts what becomes of the assertion that God so loved the world that he sent His Son to help ignorant humanity about two thousand years ago--but never before? What about the hundreds of millions of human beings who lived and died before that time? Did He care nothing for them? Did He give his attention to humanity for a period of only two thousand years and neglect it for millions of years? Two thousand years, compared to the age of the earth, is less than an hour in the ordinary life of a man. Does anybody believe that God, in his great compassion, sent just one World Teacher for that brief period? What would we say of a father who gave one hour of his whole life to his child and neglected him absolutely before and after that? Countless millions of the people who lived and died prior to the coming of the Christ were very much like ourselves. They belonged to ancient civilizations that often surpassed our own in many desirable characteristics. They were educated and cultured in their time and fashion. They were fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and husbands and wives, with the same kind of heart ties that we have. What of them? Were they permitted to grope in the moral wilderness without a Teacher or a ray of light? Of course the idea is preposterous. If God so loved the world that He sent his Son two thousand years ago He sent Him, or some predecessor, very many times before. By the same token He will come again. The only logical escape from such a conclusion is in the materialist's belief that He never came at all. All religions crystalize, become materialized, and lose their spiritual significance. That is precisely what has happened to the various great religions of the modern world, including Christianity. It is no longer the dynamic thing in the lives of the people it once was. That's why a world war was possible. The fault is not with the teachings of the Christ. The trouble is that the world has not lived by them. We need a restatement of the old teachings in the terms of modern life that shall again make it a living force in the lives of men. It is when the World Teacher is most needed that he comes; and when has the need been greater than now? The world war has demonstrated the failure of so-called Christian civilization. We have seen the highest type of that civilization revert to the law of the jungle, deliberately disregard the usages of civilized warfare, and commit atrocities that would shame barbarians. We surely need no further proof that the Christian religion has not accomplished all that the spiritual hierarchy had a right to hope for, and that the coming of the Christ again is a necessity. But the spiritual hierarchy sends its great ambassadors only when the time is propitious, only when the world is ready to listen. Perhaps such an event can never be predicted in terms of time, but only in those of conditions. When the strength of the nations is spent, when the slain totals appalling numbers, when few homes of high or low degree are without their terrible sacrifice, when the heart of the race is filled with anguish, when famine and disease have done their awful work, and humanity fully realizes what the reaction from greed, lust, cruelty and revenge actually means, the world will be ready to listen as it never listened before, and after that we may reasonably expect the Christ to again appear to re-proclaim the ancient truth in terms of modern life. The supermen are not myths nor figments of imagination. They are as natural and comprehensive as human beings. In the regular order of evolution we shall reach their level and join their ranks while younger humanities shall attain our present estate. As the supermen rose we, too, shall rise. Our past has been evolution's night. Our present is its dawn. Our future shall be its perfect day. Think of that night from which we have emerged--a chaos of contending forces, a world in which might was the measure of right, a civilization of scepter and sword, of baron and serf, of master and slave. That, we have left behind us. Think of the grey dawn that our civilization has reached--the dawn of a public conscience, of individual liberty, of collective welfare, of the sacredness of life, but with armed force still dominant, with war the arbiter of national destiny, with industrial slavery still lingering, with conflict between the higher aspirations and the lower desires still raging--a world of selfishness masked by civilized usage, a world of veneered cruelty and refined brutality. In all that we now live. But think of the coming results of evolution!--an era in which love shall replace force, when saber and cannon shall be unknown, when selfish desires shall be transmuted into noble service, when, finally, we shall finish the painful period of human evolution and join the spiritual hierarchy to direct the faltering steps of a younger race. FOOTNOTES: [N] "The Conservation of Energy," Nicola Tesla, Century Magazine, June 1900. [O] An Outline of Theosophy, C. W. Leadbeater, pp. 6-12. [Transcriber's Note: The following corrections were made: p. 6: pretention to pretension (no pretension is made) p. 12: An to In (In another aspect it is a religion.) p. 12: thesosophy to theosophy (While theosophy is distinctly a science) p. 13: discusison to discussion (A detailed discussion of such methods) p. 16: nevertheelss to nevertheless (is nevertheless just that relationship) p. 17: explicilt to explicit (is certainly very explicit) p. 19: period to semi-colon (who's true to man;) p. 34: communciating to communicating (dead man who is communicating?) p. 35: extra 'the' removed (more convincing than the evidence) p. 46-47: envelopes to envelops (because it envelops it) p. 63: oftens to often (often requires death) p. 74: repreduces to reproduces (exactly reproduces emotion) p. 82: consciouness to consciousness (finally loses consciousness) p. 83: of to or (or by cleverly combining) p. 86: strengthend to strengthened (strengthened and vivified) p. 89: slight to sight (has not lost sight of us) p. 91: communciate to communicate (had to communicate with him) p. 91: communcation to communication (subject of communication) p. 92: communciate to communicate (desires to communicate) p. 93: influnces to influences (sensitive to psychic influences) p. 94: persist to persists (who persists in occupying) p. 95: confidenty to confidently (will confidently assert himself) p. 96: close quote added (What can I do?") p. 103: missing comma added (While we do not yet know a great deal about life, science) p. 105: perect to perfect (perfect agreement) p. 109: extra 'and' removed (new and undeveloped) p. 115: thoughtul to thoughtful (a thoughtful matron) p. 117: methematical to mathematical (a mathematical problem) p. 120: If to It (It often puzzles) p. 121: from to form (highest possible form) p. 124: missing apostrophe added (of nations' condemned prisoners) p. 128: extra 'to' removed (civilization today could arise) p. 129: two erroneously reversed lines corrected (consciousness. The young quails of this season come / they are attached to the same group-soul, or source of) p. 138: crminal to criminal (a noted criminal) p. 142: possesing to possessing (we find others possessing) p. 146: blockquote formatted to match others in text p. 158: meed to need (no need of praise) p. 181: incalcuable to incalculable (is incalculable and altogether beyond) p. 185: responsibilty to responsibility (personal responsibility and therefore) p. 191: hapen to happen (may happen to fall) p. 191-192: extinquished to extinguished (Before the fire could be extinguished) p. 193: beneficient to beneficent ("beneficent working of the law") p. 193: phsical to physical (from the physical plane) p. 195: mistate to misstate (misstate facts) p. 196: atain to attain (and surely attain) p. 203: idocy to idiocy (In idiocy we have) p. 204: Maesfield to Masefield (Masefield put it well) p. 204: blest to blessed (I shall be helped and healed and blessed.) p. 207: appodictically to apodictically (cannot apodictically deny) p. 209: superman to supermen (small number of the supermen) p. 209: it to is (it is easy to understand) p. 211: calcualations to calculations (He bases his calculations upon) p. 212: chrystalize to crystalize (All religions crystalize) p. 213: embassadors to ambassadors (sends its great ambassadors) Irregularities in hyphenation (e.g. wide-spread vs. widespread, class-room vs. classroom) and variant spellings (e.g. cigaret) have not been corrected.] 
57292	----	+-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | |The Publisher updated some of the text of the | |Book List by hand, indicating those which were | |out of print. | |The original text has been retained. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT A BROAD OUTLINE OF THEOSOPHICAL DOCTRINES BY WILLIAM Q. JUDGE [OCCULTUS] SECOND POINT LOMA EDITION THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY POINT LOMA, CALIFORNIA 1910 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1890, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. BY WILLIAM Q. JUDGE. [Illustration: Logo] THE ARYAN THEOSOPHICAL PRESS Point Loma, California DEDICATED TO HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE BY THE AUTHOR TO THE READER Echoes from the Orient was written by Mr. Judge sixteen years ago (1890) as a series of papers for a well known periodical. The author wrote under the name of "_Occultus_," as it was intended that his personality should be hidden until the series was completed. The value of these papers as a popular presentation of Theosophical teaching was at once seen and led to their publication in book form. As Mr. Judge wrote in his "Antecedent Words" to the earlier edition: "The restrictions upon the treatment of the subject growing out of the popular character of the paper in which they were published precluded the detail and elaboration that would have been possible in a philosophical or religious periodical. No pretense is made that the subject of Theosophy as understood in the Orient has been exhaustively treated, for, believing that millions of years have been devoted by the sages who are the guardians of Theosophical truth to its investigation, I think no one writer could do more than to repeat some of the echoes reaching his ears." The reader should remember that the scope and influence of the Theosophical Movement have since that time (1890) greatly expanded, the work of THE UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD AND THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY now reaching nearly every country in the world. Point Loma, California, 1906 ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT. I. What appears to the Western mind to be a very strange superstition prevails in India about wonderful persons who are said to be of immense age, and who keep themselves secluded in places not accessible to the ordinary traveler. So long has this been current in India that the name applied to these beings is well known in the Sanskrit language: "Mahâtma," a compound of two words, _maha_, great, and _âtma_, soul. The belief in the existence of such persons is not confined to the ignorant, but is shared by the educated of all castes. The lower classes look upon the Mahâtmas as a sort of gods, and think most of their wonderful powers and great age. The pundits, or learned class, and educated Hindus in general, have a different view; they say that Mahâtmas are men or souls with unlimited knowledge of natural laws and of man's history and development. They claim also that the Mahâtmas--or Rishees, as they sometimes call them--have preserved the knowledge of all natural laws for ages, not only by tradition among their disciples, but also by actual records and in libraries existing somewhere in the many underground temples and passages in India. Some believers assert that there are also stores of books and records in secluded parts all over that part of Thibet which is not known to Europeans, access to them being possible only for the Mahâtmas and Adepts. The credence given to such a universal theory grows out of an old Indian doctrine that man is a spiritual being--a soul, in other words--and that this soul takes on different bodies from life to life on earth in order at last to arrive at such perfect knowledge, through repeated experience, as to enable one to assume a body fit to be the dwelling-place of a Mahâtma or perfected soul. Then, they say, that particular soul becomes a spiritual helper to mankind. The perfected men are said to know the truth about the genesis of worlds and systems, as well as the development of man upon this and other planets. Were such doctrines held only in India, it would be natural to pass the subject by with this brief mention. But when it is found that a large body of people in America and Europe hold the same beliefs, it is interesting to note such an un-Western development of thought. The Theosophical Society was founded in New York in 1875, with the avowed object of forming a nucleus for a Universal Brotherhood, and its founders state that they believe the Indian Mahâtmas directed them to establish such a society. Since its foundation it has gained members in all countries, including people of wealth as well as those in moderate circumstances, and the highly cultured also. Within its ranks there flourish beliefs in the Mahâtmas of India and in Reïncarnation and its twin doctrine, Karma. This last holds that no power, human or divine, can save one from the consequences of acts performed, and that in this life we are experiencing the results due to us for all acts and thoughts which were ours in the preceding incarnation. This has brought out a large body of literature in books and magazines published in the United States, England, India, and elsewhere. Newspapers are published in the interest of the new-old cult in the vernacular of Hindûstan and also in old Ceylon. Even Japan has its periodicals devoted to the same end, and to ignore so wide-spread a movement would bespeak ignorance of the factors at work in our development. When such an eminent authority as the great French savant, Emile Burnouf, says that the Theosophical movement must be counted as one of the three great religious influences in the world to-day, there is no need of an excuse for presenting its features in detail to readers imbued with the civilization of the West. II. In my former paper I merely hinted at the two principal doctrines promulgated by the Theosophical Society; it is well now to notice the fact that the Society itself was organized amid a shout of laughter, which at intervals ever since has been repeated. Very soon after it launched forth it found a new member in a Bavarian gentleman, Baron Henry Louis de Palm, who not long thereafter died and obligingly left his body to be cremated. The funeral was held at Masonic Hall, New York city, and attracted widespread attention from both press and public. It was Theosophical in its character, and while conducted with befitting dignity in view of the solemnity of the occasion, was along distinctly original lines. All this of course, drew forth satire from the press, but served the purpose of gaining some attention for the young Society. Its history since then has been remarkable, and it is safe to say that no other similar body in this century has drawn to itself so much consideration, stirred up such a thinking among people on mystical subjects, and grown so rapidly amid the loudest derision and against the fiercest opposition, within the short space of fifteen years. While the press has been sneering and enemies have been plotting, the workers in the Society have established centers all over the world, and are to-day engaged persistently in sending out Theosophical literature into every nook and corner of the United States. A glance at the Theosophical map shows a line of Branches of the Society dotting a strip of this country which reaches from the city of New York to the Pacific Coast; at either end this belt spreads out to take in Boston and New Orleans in the East and San Francisco and San Diego in the West; while near the middle of the continent there is another accumulation of centers. This is claimed to be strictly and mystically Theosophical, because at each end of the magic line of effort and at its central point there is an accumulation of nucleï. It is a fact that the branches of the Society in America are rapidly running up into the first hundred. For some little time there existed in Washington a Branch of the Society called the Gnostic, but it never engaged in any active work. After it had been once incontinently dissolved by its president, who thereafter withdrew, leaving the presidency in the hands of another, the governing body of the American Theosophists formally dischartered the Gnostic, and its members joined other Branches. There is, however, to-day a Washington Branch named boldly after the much lauded and belittled Mme. H. P. Blavatsky, while the Theosophical map shows an accumulation of influences in Washington that point to an additional Branch, and inquiry in official quarters discloses the fact that the matter is already mooted. The Theosophical map of which I have spoken is a curiosity, an anomaly in the nineteenth century. Few of the members are allowed to see it; but those who are say that it is a register of the actual state, day by day, of the whole United States Section--a sort of weather map, with areas of pressure and Theosophical humidity in all directions. Where a Branch is well founded and in good condition, the spot or sensitive surface shows clearness and fixity. In certain places which are in a formative condition there is another appearance symptomatic of a vortex that may soon bring forth a Branch; while, wherever the principle of disintegration has crept into an existing organization, there the formerly bright and fixed spots grow cloudy. By means of this map, those who are managing the real growth of the movement can tell how it is going and aid it intelligently. Of course all this sounds ridiculous in our age; but, whether true or false, there are many Theosophists who believe it. A similar arrangement would be desirable in other branches of our civilization. The grand theories of the Theosophists regarding evolution, human races, religions and general civilization, as well as the future state of man and the various planets he inhabits, should engage our more serious attention; and of these I propose to speak at another time. III. The first Echo from the burnished and mysterious East which reverberated from these pages sounded the note of Universal Brotherhood. Among the men of this day such an idea is generally accepted as vague and utopian, but one which it will do no harm to subscribe to; they therefore quickly assent, and as quickly nullify the profession by action in the opposite direction. For the civilization of to-day, and especially of the United States, is an attempt to accentuate and glorify the individual. The oft-repeated declaration that any born citizen may aspire to occupy the highest office in the gift of the nation is proof of this, and the Mahâtmas who guard the truth through the ages while nations are decaying, assert that the reaction is sure to come in a relapse into the worst forms of anarchy. The only way to prevent such a relapse is for men to really practice the Universal Brotherhood they are willing to accept with the tongue. These exalted beings further say that all men are--as a scientific and dynamic fact--united, whether they admit it or not; and that each nation suffers, on the moral as well as the physical plane, from the faults of all other nations, and receives benefit from the others also even against its will. This is due to the existence of an imponderable, tenuous medium which interpenetrates the entire globe, and in which all the acts and thoughts of every man are felt and impressed, to be afterward reflected again. Hence, say the Adepts, the thoughts or the doctrines and beliefs of men are of the higher importance, because those that prevail among people of a low character are just as much and as easily reflected upon the earth as are the thoughts and beliefs of persons occupying a higher plane of culture. This is a most important tenet, if true; for, with the aid of the discoveries just now admitted by science respecting hypnotism, we are at once able to see that an enormous hypnotizing machine is about. As this tenuous medium--called by the men of the East "Akàsa" and by the mediæval philosophers the "Astral Light"--is entirely beyond our control, we are at the mercy of the pictures made in it and reflected upon us. If to this we add the wonderfully interesting doctrine of Reïncarnation, remembering also that the images made in the Astral Light persist for centuries, it is at once seen that upon returning again to earth-life we are affected for good or evil by the conduct, the doctrine and the aspirations of preceding nations and men. Returning here now, for instance, we are moved, without our knowledge, by the impressions made in the Astral Light at the time when the Indians, the Spaniards and the harsh Puritans lived upon the earth. The words of the immortal Shakspere-- The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones, receive a striking exemplification under this doctrine. For, as the evil thoughts and deeds are the more material and therefore more firmly impacted into the Astral Light, while the good, being spiritual, easily fade out, we are in effect at the mercy of the evil done. And the Adepts assert that Shakspere was, unconsciously to himself, inspired by one of their own number. I shall refer again to this branch of the subject. The scheme of evolution put forth by these beings and their disciples is so broad, deep and far-reaching as to stagger the ordinary mind. It takes in with ease periods of years running up into trillions and quadrillions. It claims that man has been on earth for millions of years more than science yet is willing to admit. It is not bound by the narrow scheme of biblical chronologists, nor startled by the magnificent age of civilizations which disappeared long ago. The keepers of this doctrine say that they and their predecessors lived in those older times, and have preserved not only the memory of them, but also complete records. These records, moreover, are not merely on perishable paper and palm leaf, but on imperishable stone. They point to such remains as the statues twenty-seven feet high found on Easter Island; to rows of gigantic statues in Asia, that by their varying heights show the gradual diminution of human stature, which kept pace with other degenerations; and, to crown all, they say that they possess to-day in the East the immense and well guarded collections of records of all sorts. Not only are these records said to relate to the physical history of man, but also to his astral and spiritual evolution. Before closing this paper, I can only indicate one of their basic doctrines in the scheme of evolution. That is, that the evolution of the inner, astral form of man came first in order, and continued for an immense number of years before his physical structure was built up around it. This, with other portions of the doctrine, is vital and will aid much in an understanding of the complex questions presented to us by the history of the human race, both that which is known and that which is still resting on conjecture. IV. The records to which in my last paper I referred, as having been kept by the Adepts and now in the possession of their present representatives and successors--Adepts also--relate not only to the birth of planets in this solar system, but also to the evolution and development of man, through the various kingdoms of nature, until he reaches the most perfect condition which can be imagined. The evolution of the human being includes not only the genesis of his mortal frame, but, as well, the history of the inner man, whom they are accustomed to call the real one. This, then, brings us to a very interesting claim put forward for the Wisdom Religion, that it pretends to throw light not only upon man's emotions and mental faculties, but also upon his pre-natal and post-mortem states, both of which are of the highest interest and importance. Such questions as, "Where have I come from?" and, "What shall be my condition after death?" trouble and confuse the minds of all men, ignorant or cultured. Priests and thinkers have, from time to time, formulated theories, more or less absurd, as to those pre-natal and post-mortem states, while the Science of to-day laughs in derision at the idea of making any inquiry into the matter whatever. Theologians have offered explanations, all of which relate only to what they suppose will happen to us after death, leaving entirely out of view and wholly unanswered the natural question, "What were we before we were born here?" And, taking them on their own ground, they are in a most illogical position, because, having once postulated immortality for the soul--the real man--they cannot deny immortality in either direction. If man is immortal, that immortality could never have had a beginning, or else it would have an end. Hence their only escape from the dilemma is to declare that each soul is a special creation. But this doctrine of a special creation for each soul born upon the earth, is not dwelt upon or expounded by the priests, inasmuch as it is deemed better to keep it discreetly in the background. The Wisdom Religion, on the other hand, remains logical from beginning to end. It declares that man is a spiritual being, and allows of no break in the chain of anything once declared immortal. The Ego of each man is immortal; "always was existent, always will be, and never can be nonexistent;" appearing now and again, and reäppearing, clothed in bodies on each occasion different, it only appears to be mortal; it always remains the substratum and support for the personality acting upon the stage of life. And in those appearances as mortal, the questions mooted above--as to the pre-natal and post-mortem states--are of vital interest, because knowledge or ignorance concerning them alters man's thought and action while an actor on the stage, and it is necessary for him to know in order that he may so live as to aid in the grand upward sweep of the evolutionary wave. Now the Adepts have for ages pursued scientific experimentation and investigation upon those lines. Seers themselves of the highest order, they have recorded not only their own actual experiences beyond the veil of matter, on both sides, but have collected, compared, analyzed and preserved the records of experiences of the same sort by hundreds of thousands of lesser seers, their own disciples; and this process has been going on from time immemorial. Let Science laugh as it may, the Adepts are the only true scientists, for they take into account every factor in the question, whereas Science is limited by brain-power, by circumstance, by imperfection of instruments, and by a total inability to perceive anything deeper than the mere phenomena presented by matter. The records of the visions and experiences of the greater and lesser seers, through the ages, are extant to-day. Of their mass, nothing has been accepted except that which has been checked and verified by millions of independent observations; and therefore the Adepts stand in the position of those who possess actual experimental knowledge of what precedes the birth of the Ego in a human form, and what succeeds when the "mortal coil" is cast away. This recording of experiences still goes on; for the infinity of the changes of Nature in its evolution permits of no stoppage, no "last word," no final declaration. As the earth sweeps around the sun, it not only passes through new places in its orbit, but, dragged as it is by the sun through his greater orbit, involving millions of millions of years, it must in that larger circle enter upon new fields in space and unprecedented conditions. Hence the Adepts go farther yet and state that, as the phenomena presented by matter to-day are different from those presented a million years ago, so matter will in another million of years show different phenomena still. Indeed, if we could translate our sight to that time, far back in the past of our globe, we could see conditions and phenomena of the material world so different from those now surrounding us that it would be almost impossible to believe we had ever been in such a state as that then prevailing. And the changes toward the conditions that will prevail at a point equally remote in advance of us, in time, and which will be not less than those that have occurred, are in progress now. Nothing in the material world endures absolutely unchanged in itself or its conditions, even for the smallest conceivable portion of time. All that _is_, is forever in process of _becoming_ something else. This is not mere transcendentalism, but is an old established doctrine called, in the East, "the doctrine of the constant, eternal change of atoms from one state into another." V. The ancient doctrine of the constant, eternal change of every atom from state to state, is founded upon, or rather grows out of, another which postulates that there is no such thing as dead matter. At every conceivable point in the universe there are lives; nowhere can be found a spot that is dead; and each life is forever hastening onward to higher evolution. To admit this, we must of course grant that matter is never perceived by the eye or through any instrument. It is but the phenomena of matter that we recognize with the senses, and hence, say the sages, the thing denominated "matter" by us is an illusion. Even the protoplasm of the schools is not the original matter; it is simply another of the phenomena. This first original matter is called by Paracelsus and others primordial matter, the nearest approach to which in the Eastern school is found in the Sanskrit word _mulaprakriti_. This is the root of matter, invisible, not to be weighed, or measured, or tested with any instrument of human invention. And yet it is the only real matter underlying all the phenomena to which we erroneously give its name. But even it is not dead, but full of the lives first referred to. Now, bearing this in mind, we consider the vast solar system, yet vast only when not compared with the still greater aggregation of stars and planets around it. The great sidereal year covered by the sun in going through the twelve signs of the zodiac includes over 25,000 mortal years of 365 days each. While this immense circuit is being traversed, the sun drags the whole solar system with him around his own tremendous orbit, and we may imagine--for there are no observations on the point--that, while the 25,000 years of travel around the zodiac have been passing, the solar system as a whole has advanced along the sun's own orbit only a little distance. But after millions of years shall have been consumed in these progresses, the sun must bring his train of planets to stellar space where they have never been before; here other conditions and combinations of matter may very well obtain--conditions and states of which our scientists have never heard, of which there never has been recorded one single phenomenon; and the difference between planetary conditions then and now will be so great that no resemblance shall be observed. This is a branch of cyclic law with which the Eastern sages are perfectly familiar. They have inquired into it, recorded their observations, and preserved them. Having watched the uncountable lives during cycles upon cycles past, and seen their behavior under different conditions in other stellar spaces long ago left behind, they have some basis upon which to draw conclusions as to what will be the state of things in ages yet to come. This brings us to an interesting theory offered by Theosophy respecting life itself as exhibited by man, his death and sleep. It relates also to what is generally called "fatigue." The most usual explanation for the phenomenon of sleep is that the body becomes tired and more or less depleted of its vitality and then seeks repose. This, says Theosophy, is just the opposite of the truth, for, instead of having suffered a loss of vitality, the body, at the conclusion of the day, has more life in it than when it waked. During the waking state the life-waves rush into the body with greater intensity every hour, and, we being unable to resist them any longer than the period usually observed, they overpower us and we fall asleep. While sleeping, the life waves adjust themselves to the molecules of the body; and when the equilibrium is complete we again wake to continue the contest with life. If this periodical adjustment did not occur, the life current would destroy us. Any derangement of the body that tends to inhibit this adjustment is a cause of sleeplessness, and perhaps death. Finally, death of the body is due to the inequality of the contest with the life force; it at last overcomes us, and we are compelled to sink into the grave. Disease, the common property of the human race, only reduces the power of the body to adjust and resist. Children, say the Adepts, sleep more than adults, and need earlier repose, because the bodily machine, being young and tender, is easily overcome by life and made to sleep. Of course, in so short an article, I cannot elaborate this theory; but, although not probably acceptable now to Science, it will be one day accepted as true. As it is beginning to be thought that electricity is all-pervading, so, perhaps, ere long it will be agreed that life is universal even in what we are used to calling dead matter. As, however, it is plain to any observant mind that there seems to be more or less intelligence in the operations of this life energy, we naturally approach another interesting Theosophical doctrine as to the beings and hierarchies directing this energy. VI. While studying these ancient ideas, we may as well prepare ourselves to have them clash with many long-accepted views. But since Science has very little save conjecture to offer when it attempts to solve the great problems of genesis and cosmo-genesis, and, in the act of denying old dogmas, almost always starts with a hypothesis, the Theosophist may feel safe. In important matters, such as the heat of the sun or the history of the moon there is no agreement between scientists or astronomers. Newton, Pouillet, Zöllner, Secchi, Fizeau, Waterston, Rosetti, and others all differ about the sun, the divergence between their estimates of its heat being as high as 8,998,600 degrees. If we find the Adepts stating that the moon is not a mass thrown off from the earth in cooling, but, on the contrary, is the progenitor of this globe, we need not fear the jeers of a Science that is as uncertain and unsafe in many things as it is positive. Had I to deal only with those learned men of the schools who abide by the last utterance from the mouths of the leaders of Science, I should never attempt the task of speaking of the beings and hierarchies who guide the lives of which I wrote in my last. My pen would drop from a hand paralyzed by negations. But the spiritual beliefs of the common people will still be in vogue when the learned materialist has passed away. The great Immanuel Kant said: "I confess I am much disposed to assert the existence of immaterial natures in the world, and to place my own soul in the class of these beings. It will hereafter, I know not where nor when, yet be proved that the human soul stands, even in this life, in indissoluble connection with all immaterial natures in the spirit world, that it reciprocally acts upon these, and receives impressions from them." And the greater number of men think so also. That there are hierarchies ruling in the universe is not a new idea. It can be easily found to-day in the Christian Church. The early fathers taught it, St. Paul spoke of it, and the Roman Catholic Church has it clearly now in the Book of Ritual of the Spirits of the Stars. The four archangels who guard the four cardinal points represent the groups of rulers in the ancient system, or the heads of each group. In that system the rulers are named Dhyan Chôhans. Although the Theosophical philosophy does not postulate a personal God, whether extra- or intra-cosmic, it cannot admit that Nature is left unaided in her work, but asserts that the Dhyan Chôhans aid her, and are constantly occupied in directing the all-pervading life in its evolutionary movement. Mme. Blavatsky, speaking on this subject in her _Secret Doctrine_, quotes from the old _Book of Dzyan_ thus: "An army of the Sons of Light stands at each angle, the Lipika in the middle wheel." The four angles are the four quarters, and the "middle wheel" is the center of space; and that center is everywhere, because as space is illimitable, the center of it must be wherever the cognizing consciousness is. And the same author, using the _Disciple's Catechism_, writes: "What is it that ever is? Space, the Anupadaka. What is it that ever was? The germ in the Root. What is it that is ever coming and going? The great Breath. Then there are three eternals? No, the three are one. That which ever is is one; that which ever was is one; that which is ever being and becoming is also one; and this is space." In this parentless and eternal space is the wheel in the center where the Lipika are, of whom I cannot speak; at the four angles are the Dhyan Chôhans, and doing their will among men on this earth are the Adepts--the Mahâtmas. The harmony of the spheres is the voice of the Law, and that voice is obeyed alike by the Dhyan Chôhan and the Mahâtma--on their part with willingness, because they are the law; on the part of men and creatures because they are bound by the adamantine chains of the law which they do not understand. When I said that nothing could be spoken about the Lipika, I meant that, because of their mysterious nature and incomprehensible powers, it is not possible to know enough to say anything with either sense or certainty. But of the Dhyan Chôhans and the Adepts we may know something, and are often given, as it were, tangible proof of their existence. For the Adepts are living men, using bodies similar to ours; they are scattered all over the earth in all nations; they know each other, but not according to mere forms and Masonic signs of recognition, unless we call natural, physical, and astral signs Masonic. They have times when they meet together and are presided over by some among their number who are more advanced in knowledge and power than the rest; and these higher Adepts again have their communications, at which that One who presides is the highest; from these latter begins the communication with the Dhyan Chôhans. All in their several degrees do that work which pertains to their degree, and although only to the Highest can be ascribed any governance or guidance of nature and mankind, yet the very least occupies an important place in the whole scheme. Freemasons and the numerous mock-Rosicrucians of the day will probably not unanimously accept this view, inasmuch as these Adepts have not submitted to their ritual; but that there has always been a widespread--and, if you please, a sometimes sneaking--belief in such beings and orders, is not difficult to discern or prove. VII. An old argument for the existence of an extra-cosmic--a personal--God, is this very intelligence that appears to pervade nature, from which the conclusion is drawn that there is a being who is the intelligent director. But Theosophy does not admit any such God, for he is neither necessary nor possible. There are too many evidences of implacability in the operations of nature for us to be able for very long to cherish the notion of a personal God. We see that storms will rage and overwhelm good and bad together; that earthquakes have no respect for age, sex or rank, and that wherever a natural law has to act it will do so regardless of human pain or despair. The Wisdom Religion in postulating hierarchies such as those I have previously referred to, does not thereby outline a personal God. The difference between the personal God--say Jehovah for one--and the Lipika with the hosts of the Dhyan Chôhans, is very great. Law and order, good sense, decency and progress are all subservient to Jehovah, sometimes disappearing altogether under his beneficent sway; while in the Wisdom Religion the Dhyan Chôhans can only follow the immutable laws eternally traced in the Universal Mind, and this they do intelligently, because they are in fact men become gods. As these eternal laws are far-reaching, and as Nature herself is blind, the hierarchies--the hosts at the angles--have to guide the evolutionary progress of matter. In order to grasp the doctrine better, let us take one period of manifestation such as that we are now in. This began millions of millions of years ago, succeeding a vast period of darkness or hibernation. It is called Chaos in the Christian scheme. And preceding that period of sleep there were eternally other periods of activity or manifestation. Now, in those prior periods of energy and action the same evolutionary progress went on, from and out of which came great beings--men perfected and become what to us are gods, who had aided in countless evolutions in the eternal past. These became Dhyan Chôhans and took part in all succeeding evolutions. Such is the great goal for a human soul to strive after. Before it the paltry and impossible rewards of the Christian heaven turn to dross. The mistake must not be made of confining these great evolutionary periods and the beings spoken of, to our miserable earth. We are only in the chain. There are other systems, other spaces where energy, knowledge and power are exercised. In the mysterious Milky-Way there are spots vast in size and incomprehensibly distant, where there is room for many such systems as ours; and even while we now watch the assemblage of stars, there is some spot among them where the vast night of death is spreading remorselessly over a once fair system. Now these beings, under the sway of the law as they are, seem perhaps to be sometimes implacable. Occasions are met where to mortal judgment it would seem to be wise or just to save a city from destruction, or a nation from decay, or a race from total extinction. But if such a fate is the natural result of actions performed or a necessary step in the cyclic sweep, it cannot be averted. As one of the Masters of this noble science has written: "We never pretended to be able to draw nations in the mass to this or that crisis in spite of the _general drift of the world's cosmic relations_. The cycles must run their rounds. Periods of mental and moral light and darkness succeed each other as day does night. The major and minor yugas must be accomplished _according to the established order of things_. And we, borne along on the mighty tide, can only modify and direct some of its minor currents. If we had the powers of the imaginary personal God, and the immutable laws were but toys to play with, then, indeed, might we have created conditions that would have turned this earth into an Arcadia for lofty souls." And so in individual cases--even among those who are in direct relations with some Adept--the law cannot be infringed. Karma demands that such and such a thing should happen to the individual, and the greatest God or the smallest Adept cannot lift a finger to prevent it. A nation may have heaped up against its account as a nation a vast amount of bad Karma. Its fate is sure, and although it may have noble units in it, great souls even who are Adepts themselves, nothing can save it, and it will "go out like a torch dipped in water." Such was the end of ancient Egypt, of whose former glory no man of this day knows aught. Although to us she appears in the historical sky as a full-risen sun, she yet had her period of growth, when mighty Adepts sat upon the throne and guided the people. She gradually reached a high point of power and then her people grew material; the Adepts retired; pretended Adepts took their place, and gradually her glory waned until at last the light of Egypt became darkness. The same story was repeated in Chaldea and Assyria and also upon the surface of our own America. Here a great, a glorious civilization once flourished, only to disappear as the others did; and that a grand development of civilization is beginning here again is one of the operations of the just and perfect law of Karma to the eye of the Theosophist, but one of the mysterious workings of an irresponsible providence to those who believe in a personal God who giveth the land of other men to the good Christian. The development of the American nation has a mysterious but potent connection with the wonderful past of the Atlanteans, and is one of those great stories outlined in the book of fate by the Lipika to whom I referred last week. VIII. Among the Adepts the rise and fall of nations and civilizations are subjects which are studied under the great cyclic movements. They hold that there is an indissoluble connection between man and every event that takes place on this globe, not only the ordinary changes in politics and social life, but all the happenings in the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. The changes in the seasons are for and through man; the great upheavals of continents, the movements of immense glaciers, the terrific eruptions of volcanoes, or the sudden overflowings of great rivers, are all for and through man, whether he be conscious of it or present or absent. And they tell of great changes in the inclination of the axis of the earth, past and to come, all due to man. This doctrine is incomprehensible to the Western nineteenth century, for it is hidden from observation, opposed to tradition and contradicted by education. But the Theosophist who has passed beyond the elementary stages knows that it is true nevertheless. "What," says the worshipper of Science, "has man got to do with the Charleston earthquake, or with the showers of cosmic dust that invade our atmosphere? Nothing." But the Adept, standing on the immeasurable height where centuries lie under his glance, sees the great cycles and the lesser ones rolling onward, influenced by man and working out their changes for his punishment, reward, experience and development. It is not necessary now to try to make it clear how the thoughts and deeds of men effect any changes in material things; that I will lay down for the present as a dogma, if you please, to be made clear later on. The great subject of cycles has been touched upon, and brings us close to a most fascinating statement made by the Theosophical Adepts. It is this, that the cycles in their movement are bringing up to the surface now, in the United States and America generally, not only a great glory of civilization which was forgotten eleven thousand or more years ago, but also the very men, the monads--the egos, as they call them--who were concerned so many ages since in developing and bringing it to its final lustre. In fact, we of the nineteenth century, hearing of new discoveries and inventions every day, and dreaming of great advances in all arts and sciences, are the same individuals who inhabited bodies among the powerful and brilliant as well as wicked, Atlanteans, whose name is forever set immortal in the Atlantic Ocean. The Europeans are also Atlantean monads; but the flower, so to speak, of this revival or resurrection, is and is to be on the American continent. I will not say the United States, for mayhap, when the sun of our power has risen again, there may be no United States for it to rise upon. Of course, in order to be able to accept in any degree this theory, it is essential that one should believe in the twin Theosophical doctrines of Karma and Reïncarnation. To me it seems quite plain. I can almost see the Atlanteans in these citizens of America, sleepy, and not well aware who they are, but yet full of the Atlantean ideas, which are only prevented from full and clear expression by the inherited bodily and mental environment which cramps and binds the mighty man within. This again is Nemesis-Karma that punishes us by means of these galling limitations, penning up our power and for the time frustrating our ambition. It is because, when we were in Atlantean bodies, we did wickedly, not the mere sordid wicked things of this day, but high deeds of evil such as by St. Paul were attributed to unknown spiritual beings in high places. We degraded spiritual things and turned mighty powers over nature to base uses; we did _in excelsis_ that which is hinted at now in the glorification of wealth, of material goods, of the individual over the spiritual and above the great Man--Humanity. This has now its compensation in our present inability to attain what we want or to remove from among us the grinding-stones of poverty. We are, as yet, only preparers, much as we may exalt our plainly crude American development. Herein lies the very gist of the cycle's meaning. It is a preparatory cycle with much of necessary destruction in it; for, before construction, we must have some disintegration. We are preparing here in America a new race which will exhibit the perfection of the glories that I said were being slowly brought to the surface from the long forgotten past. This is why the Americas are seen to be in a perpetual ferment. It is the seething and bubbling of the older races in the refining-pot, and the slow coming up of the material for the new race. Here, and nowhere else, are to be found men and women of every race living together, being governed together, attacking nature and the problems of life together, and bringing forth children who combine, each one, two races. This process will go on until in the course of many generations there will be produced on the American continents an entirely new race; new bodies; new orders of intellect; new powers of the mind; curious and unheard-of psychic powers, as well as extraordinary physical ones; with new senses and extensions of present senses now unforeseen. When this new sort of body and mind are generated--then other monads, or our own again, will animate them and paint upon the screen of time the pictures of 100,000 years ago. IX. In dealing with these doctrines one is compelled now and then to greatly extend the scope and meaning of many English words. The word "race" is one of these. In the Theosophical scheme, as given out by the sages of the East, seven great races are spoken of. Each one of these includes all the different so-called races of our modern ethnology. Hence the necessity for having seven great root-races, sub-races, family races, and countless offshoot races. The root-race sends off sub-races, and these divide into family groups; all, however, being included in the great root-race then undergoing development. The appearance of these great root-races is always just when the world's development permits. When the globe was forming, the first root-race was more or less ethereal and had no such body as we now inhabit. The cosmic environment became more dense and the second race appeared, soon after which the first wholly disappeared. Then the third came on the scene, after an immense lapse of time, during which the second had been developing the bodies needed for the third. At the coming of the fourth root-race it is said that the present human form was evolved, although gigantic and in some respects different from our own. It is from this point--the fourth race--that the Theosophical system begins to speak of man as such. The old book quoted by Mme. Blavatsky has it in this wise: "Thus two by two on the seven zones the third race gave birth to the fourth;" and, "The first race on every zone was moon-colored; the second, yellow, like gold; the third, red; the fourth, brown, which became black with sin." Topinard, in his _Anthropology_, gives support to this, as he says that there are three fundamental colors in the human organism--red, yellow and black. The brown race, which became black with sin, refers to the Atlantean sorcerer race of which I spoke in my last; its awfully evil practices, both mental and physical, having produced a change in the color of the skin. The evolution of these seven great races covers many millions of years, and it must not be forgotten that when the new race is fully evolved the preceding race disappears, as the monads in it have been gradually reïncarnated in the bodies of the new race. The present root-race to which we belong, no matter what the sub-race or family we may be in, is the fifth. It became a separate, distinct and completely-defined race about one million years ago, and has yet many more years to serve before the sixth will be ushered in. This fifth race includes also all the nations in Europe, as they together form a family race and are not to be divided off from each other. Now, the process of forming the foundation, or great spinal column, for that race which is to usher in the sixth, and which I said is now going on in the Americas, is a slow process for us. Obliged as we are by our inability to judge or to count except by relativity, the gradual coming together of nations and the fusion of their offspring over and over again so as to bring forth something new in the human line, is so gradual as to seem almost without progress. But this change and evolution go on nevertheless, and a very careful observer can see evidences of it. One fact deserves attention. It is the inventive faculty displayed by Americans. This is not accorded much force by our scientists, but the Occultist sees in it an evidence that the brains of these inventors are more open to influences and pictures from the astral world than are the brains of the older nations. Reports have been brought to me by competent persons of children, boys and girls, who were born with most abnormal faculties of speech, or memory or otherwise, and some such cases I have seen myself. All of these occur in America, and many of them in the West. There is more nervousness here than in the older nations. This is accounted for by the hurry and rush of our civilization; but such an explanation really explains nothing, because the question yet remains, "Why is there such hurry and push and change in the United States?" Such ordinary arguments go in a circle, since they leave out of sight the fundamental reason, so familiar to the Theosophist, that it is human evolution going on right before our eyes in accordance with cyclic laws. The Theosophical Adepts believe in evolution, but not that sort which claims an ape as our ancestor. Their great and comprehensive system is quite able to account for rudimentary muscles and traces of organs found complete only in the animal kingdom without having to call a pithecoid ape our father, for they show the gradual process of building the temple for the use of the divine Ego, proceeding ceaselessly, and in silence, through ages upon ages, winding in and out among all the forms in nature in every kingdom, from the mineral up to the highest. This is the real explanation of the old Jewish, Masonic and archaic saying that the temple of the Lord is not made with hands and that no sound of building is heard in it. X. It is well now to say, more definitely than I have as yet, a few words of the two classes of beings, one of which has been much spoken of in Theosophical literature, and also by those on the outside who write of the subject either in seriousness or in ridicule. These two classes of exalted personages are the Mahâtmas and Nirmânakâyas. In respect to the Mahâtmas, a great many wrong notions have currency, not only with the public, but as well with Theosophists in all parts of the world. In the early days of the Theosophical Society the name Mahâtma was not in use here, but the title then was "Brothers." This referred to the fact that they were a band of men who belonged to a brotherhood in the East. The most wonderful powers and, at times, the most extraordinary motives were attributed to them by those who believed in their existence. They could pass to all parts of the world in the twinkling of an eye. Across the great distance that India is from here they could precipitate letters to their friends and disciples in New York. Many thought that if this were done it was only for amusement; others looked at it in the light of a test for the faithful, while still others often supposed Mahâtmas acted thus for pure love of exercising their power. The Spiritualists, some of whom believed that Mme. Blavatsky really did the wonderful things told of her, said that she was only a medium, pure and simple, and that her Brothers were familiar spooks of séance rooms. Meanwhile the press in general laughed, and Mme. Blavatsky and her Theosophical friends went on doing their work and never gave up their belief in the Brothers, who after a few years came to be called Mahâtmas. Indiscriminately with Mahâtma the word Adept has been used to describe the same beings, so that we have these two titles made use of without accuracy and in a misleading fashion. The word Adept signifies proficiency, and is not uncommon, so that, when using it, some description is necessary if it is to be applied to the Brothers. For that reason I used Theosophical Adepts in a previous paper. A Mahâtma is not only an Adept, but much more. The etymology of it will make the matter clearer, the word being strictly Sanskrit, from _mahâ_, great, and _âtmâ_, soul--hence Great Soul. This does not mean a noble-hearted man merely, but a perfected being, one who has attained to the state often described by mystics and held by scientific men to be an impossibility, when time and space are no obstacles to sight, to action, to knowledge or to consciousness. Hence they are said to be able to perform the extraordinary feats related by various persons, and also to possess information of a decidedly practical character concerning the laws of nature, including that mystery for science--the meaning, operation and constitution of life itself--and concerning the genesis of this planet as well as the races upon it. These large claims have given rise to the chief complaint brought forward against the Theosophical Adepts by those writers outside of the Society who have taken the subject up--that they remain, if they exist at all, in a state of cold and selfish quietude, seeing the misery and hearing the groans of the world, yet refusing to hold out a helping hand except to a favored few; possessing knowledge of scientific principles, or of medicinal preparations, and yet keeping it back from learned men or wealthy capitalists who desire to advance commerce while they turn an honest penny. Although, for one, I firmly believe, upon evidence given me, in all that is claimed for these Adepts, I declare groundless the complaint advanced, knowing it to be due to a want of knowledge of those who are impugned. Adepts and Mahâtmas are not a miraculous growth, nor the selfish successors of some who, accidentally stumbling upon great truths, transmitted them to adherents under patent rights. They are human beings trained, developed, cultivated through not only a life but long series of lives, always under evolutionary laws and quite in accord with what we see among men of the world or of science. Just as a Tyndall is greater than a savage, though still a man, so is the Mahâtma, not ceasing to be human, still greater than a Tyndall. The Mahâtma-Adept is a natural growth, and not produced by any miracle; the process by which he so becomes may be to us an unfamiliar one, but it is in the strict order of nature. Some years ago a well-known Anglo-Indian, writing to the Theosophical Adepts, queried if they had ever made any mark upon the web of history, doubting that they had. The reply was that he had no bar at which to arraign them, and that they had written many an important line upon the page of human life, not only as reigning in visible shape, but down to the very latest dates when, as for many a long century before, they did their work behind the scenes. To be more explicit, these wonderful _men_ have swayed the destiny of nations and are shaping events to-day. Pillars of peace and makers of war such as Bismarck, or saviors of nations such as Washington, Lincoln and Grant, owe their elevation, their singular power, and their astonishing grasp upon the right men for their purposes, not to trained intellect or long preparation in the schools of their day, but to these very unseen Adepts, who crave no honors, seek no publicity and claim no acknowledgment. Each one of these great human leaders whom I have mentioned had in his obscure years what he called premonitions of future greatness, or connection with stirring events in his native land. Lincoln always felt that in some way he was to be an instrument for some great work, and the stray utterances of Bismarck point to silent hours, never openly referred to, when he felt an impulse pushing him to whatever of good he may have done. A long array of instances could be brought forward to show that the Adepts have made "an ineffaceable mark upon diverse eras." Even during the great uprising in India that threatened the English rule there, they saw long in advance the influence England and India would have in the affairs of the world through the very psychic and metaphysical changes of to-day, and often hastened to communicate, by their own occult and wonderful methods, the news of successes for English arms to districts and peoples in the interior who might have risen under the stimulus of imaginary reports of English disasters. At other times, vague fears were spread instantly over large masses of the Hindûs, so that England at last remained master, even though many a patriotic native desired another result. But the Adepts do not work for the praise of men, for the ephemeral influence of a day, but for the future races and man's best and highest good. XI. For an exhaustive disquisition upon Adepts, Mahâtmas and Nirmânakâyas, more than a volume would be needed. The development illustrated by them is so strange to modern minds and so extraordinary in these days of general mediocrity, that the average reader fails to grasp with ease the views advanced in a condensed article; and nearly everything one would say about Adepts--to say nothing of the Nirmânakâyas--requiring full explanation of recondite laws and abstruse questions, is liable to be misunderstood, even if volumes should be written upon them. The development, conditions, powers, and function of these beings carry with them the whole scheme of evolution; for, as said by the mystics, the Mahâtma is the efflorescence of an age. The Adepts may be dimly understood to-day, the Nirmânakâyas have as yet been only passingly mentioned, and the Mahâtmas are misconceived by believers and deniers alike. But one law governing them is easy to state and ought not to be difficult for the understanding. They do not, will not, and must not interfere with Karma; that is, however apparently deserving of help an individual may be, they will not extend it in the manner desired if his Karma does not permit it; and they would not step into the field of human thought for the purpose of bewildering humanity by an exercise of power which on all sides would be looked upon as miraculous. Some have said that if the Theosophical Adepts were to perform a few of their feats before the eyes of Europe, an immense following for them would at once arise; but such would not be the result. Instead of it there would be dogmatism and idolatry worse than have ever been, with a reaction of an injurious nature impossible to counteract. Hypnotism--though by another name--has long been known to them. The hypnotic condition has often aided the schemes of priests and churches. To compel recognition of true doctrine is not the way of these sages, for compulsion is hypnotism. To feed a multitude with only five loaves would be easy for them; but as they never act upon sentiment but continually under the great cosmic laws, they do not advance with present material aid for the poor in their hands. But, by using their natural powers, they every day influence the world, not only among the rich and poor of Europe and America, but in every other land, so that what does come about in our lives is better than it would have been had they not had part therein. The other class referred to--Nirmânakâyas--constantly engage in this work deemed by them greater than earthly enterprises: the betterment of the soul of man, and any other good that they can accomplish through human agents. Around them the long-disputed question of Nirvâna revolves, for all that they have not been distinctly considered in it. For, if Max Müller's view of Nirvâna, that it is annihilation, be correct, than a Nirmânakâya is an impossibility. Paradoxically speaking, they are in and out of that state at one and the same time. They are owners of Nirvâna who refuse to accept it in order that they may help the suffering orphan, Humanity. They have followed the injunction of the _Book of the Golden Precepts_: "Step out from sunlight into shade, to make more room for others." A greater part is taken in the history of nations by the Nirmânakâyas than anyone supposes. Some of them have under their care certain men in every nation who from their birth are destined to be great factors in the future. These they guide and guard until the appointed time. And such protégés but seldom know that such influence is about them, especially in the nineteenth century. Acknowledgment and appreciation of such great assistance are not required by the Nirmânakâyas, who work behind the veil and prepare the material for a definite end. At the same time, too, one Nirmânakâya may have many different men--or women--whom he directs. As Patanjali puts it, "In all these bodies one mind is the moving cause." Strange, too, as it may seem, often such men as Napoleon Buonaparte are from time to time helped by them. Such a being as Napoleon could not come upon the scene fortuitously. His birth and strange powers must be in the order of nature. The far-reaching consequences going with a nature like his, unmeasurable by us, must in the eastern Theosophical philosophy be watched and provided for. If he was a wicked man, so much the worse for him; but that could never deter a Nirmânakâya from turning him to his uses. That might be by swerving him, perchance, from a path that would have plunged the world into depths of woe and been made to bring about results in after years which Napoleon never dreamed of. The fear of what the world might think of encouraging a monster at a certain point never can deter a sage who sees the end that is best. And in the life of Napoleon there are many things going to show at times an influence more powerful than he could grapple. His foolhardy march to Moscow was perhaps engineered by these silent campaigners, and also his sudden and disastrous retreat. What he could have done had he remained in France, no present historian is competent to say. The oft-doubted story of the red letter from the Red Man just when Napoleon was in a hesitating mood, may have been an encouragement at a particular juncture. "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." Nor will the defeat at Waterloo be ever understood until the Nirmânakâyas give their records up. As a change in the thought of a people who have been tending to gross atheism is one always desired by the Sages of the Wisdom Religion, it may be supposed that the wave of spiritualistic phenomena resulting now quite clearly in a tendency back to a universal acknowledgment of the soul, has been aided by the Nirmânakâyas. They are in it and of it; they push on the progress of a psychic deluge over great masses of people. The result is seen in the literature, the religion and the drama of to-day. Slowly but surely the tide creeps up and covers the once dry shore of Materialism, and, though priests may howl, demanding "the suppression of Theosophy with a firm hand," and a venal press may try to help them, they have neither the power nor the knowledge to produce one backward ripple, for the Master hand is guided by omniscient intelligence propelled by a gigantic force, and--_works behind the scene_. XII. There have been so many secret societies during the Christian era, by whom claims were made to knowledge of nature's secret laws, that a natural question arises: "In what do the Theosophic Eastern Sages differ from the many Rosicrucians and others so often heard of?" The old bookshelves of Germany are full of publications upon Rosicrucianism, or by pretended and genuine members of that order, and to-day it is not uncommon to find those who have temerity enough to dub themselves "Rosicrucians." The difference is that which exists between reality and illusion, between mere ritualism and the signs printed by nature upon all things and beings passing forever up the road to higher states of existence. The Rosicrucian and Masonic fraternities known to history rely upon outward signs and tokens to indicate the status in the order of their members, who, without such guarantees, are only uninitiated outsiders. But the Sages we speak of, and their disciples, carry with them the indelible mark and speak the well-known words that show they are beings developed under laws, and not merely persons who, having undergone a childish ordeal, are possessed of a diploma. The Adepts may be called rugged oaks that have no disguise, while the undeveloped man dabbling in Masonic words and formulas is only a donkey wearing a lion's skin. There are many Adepts living in the world, all of whom know each other. They have means of communication unknown to modern civilization, by using which they can transmit to and receive from each other messages at any moment and from immense distances, without using any mechanical means. We might say that there is a Society of Adepts, provided that we never attach to the word "society" the meaning ordinarily conveyed by it. It is a society which has no place of meeting, which exacts no dues, which has no constitution or by-laws other than the eternal laws of nature; there are no police or spies attached to it and no complaints are made or received in it, for the reason that any offender is punished by the operation of law entirely beyond his control--his mastery over the law being lost upon his infringing it. Under the protection and assistance and guidance of this Society of Adepts are the disciples of each one of its members. These disciples are divided into different degrees, corresponding to the various stages of development; the least developed disciples are assisted by those who are in advance of them, and the latter in a similar manner by others, until the grade of disciple is reached where direct intercourse with the Adepts is possible. At the same time, each Adept keeps a supervisory eye upon all his disciples. Through the agency of the disciples of Adepts many effects are brought about in human thought and affairs, for from the higher grades are often sent those who, without disclosing their connection with mysticism, influence individuals who are known to be main factors in events about to occur. It is claimed that the Theosophical Society receives assistance in its growth and the spreading of its influence from the Adepts and their accepted disciples. The history of the Society would seem to prove this, for unless there were some hidden but powerful force operating for its advantage it would have long ago sunk into obscurity, destroyed by the storm of ridicule and abuse to which it has been subjected. Promises were made, in the early history of the Society, that assistance would at all times be rendered, and prophecies were hinted that it would be made the target for vilification and the object of opposition. Both prophecies have been fulfilled to the letter. In just the same way as a polished diamond shows the work which gives it value and brilliancy, so the man who has gone through probation and teaching under the Adepts carries upon his person the ineffaceable marks. To the ordinary eye untrained in this department, no such indications are visible; but those who can see describe them as being quite prominent and wholly beyond the control of the bearer. For this reason that one who has progressed, say, three steps along the way, will have three marks, and it is useless to pretend that his rank is a step higher, for, if it were, then the fourth mark would be there, since it grows with the being's development. Now, as these signatures cannot be imitated or forged, the whole inner fraternity has no need for concealment or signs. No one can commit a fraud upon or extract from them the secrets of higher degrees by having obtained signs and pass-words out of a book or in return for the payment of fees, and none can procure the conferring of any advancement until the whole nature of the man exactly corresponds to the desired point of development. In two ways the difference between the Adept fraternity and the worldly secret societies can be seen--in their treatment of nations and of their own direct special disciples. Nothing is forced or depends upon favor. Everything is arranged in accordance with the best interests of a nation, having in view the cyclic influences at any time prevailing, and never before the proper time. When they desire to destroy the chains forged by dogmatism, they do not make the error of suddenly appearing before the astonished eyes of the people; for they know well that such a course would only alter the dogmatic belief in one set of ideas to a senseless and equally dogmatic adherence to the Adepts as gods, or else create in the minds of many the surety that the devil was present. XIII. The training of the disciple by the teachers of the school to which the Theosophical Adepts belong is peculiar to itself, and not in accord with prevailing modern educational ideas. In one respect it is a specialization of the pilgrimage to a sacred place so common in India, and the enshrined object of the journey is the soul itself, for with them the existence of soul is one of the first principles. In the East the life of man is held to be a pilgrimage, not only from the cradle to the grave, but also through that vast period of time, embracing millions upon millions of years, stretching from the beginning to the end of a Manvantara, or period of evolution, and as he is held to be a spiritual being, the continuity of his existence is unbroken. Nations and civilizations rise, grow old, decline and disappear; but the being lives on, spectator of all the innumerable changes of environment. Starting from the great All, radiating like a spark from the central fire, he gathers experience in all ages, under all rulers, civilizations and customs, ever engaged in a pilgrimage to the shrine from which he came. He is now the ruler and now the slave; to-day at the pinnacle of wealth and power, to-morrow at the bottom of the ladder, perhaps in abject misery, but ever the same being. To symbolize this, the whole of India is dotted with sacred shrines, to which pilgrimages are made, and it is the wish of all men in that so-called benighted land to make such a journey at least once before death, for the religious duties of life are not fully performed without visiting such sacred places. One great reason for this, given by those who understand the inner significance of it, is that the places of pilgrimage are centers of spiritual force from which radiate elevating influences not perceptible to the pig-sticking, wine-drinking traveller. It is asserted by many, indeed, that at most of the famous places of pilgrimage there is an Adept of the same order to which the Theosophical Adepts are said to belong, who is ready always to give some meed of spiritual insight and assistance to those of pure heart who may go there. He, of course, does not reveal himself to the knowledge of the people, because it is quite unnecessary, and might create the necessity for his going elsewhere. Superstitions have arisen from the doctrine of pilgrimages, but, as that is quite likely to come about in this age, it is no reason why places of pilgrimage should be abolished, since, if the spiritual centers were withdrawn, good men who are free from superstition would not receive the benefits they now may have. The Adepts founded these places in order to keep alive in the minds of the people the soul idea which modern Science and education would soon turn into agnosticism, were they to prevail unchecked. But the disciple of the Adept knows that the place of pilgrimage symbolizes his own nature, shows him how he is to start on the scientific investigation of it and how to proceed, by what roads and in which direction. He is supposed to concentrate into a few lives the experience and practice which it takes ordinary men countless incarnations to acquire. His first steps, as well as his last, are on difficult, often dangerous places; the road, indeed, "winds up hill all the way," and upon entering it he leaves behind the hope for reward so common in all undertakings. Nothing is gained by favor, but all depends upon his actual merit. As the end to be reached is self-dependence with perfect calmness and clearness, he is from the beginning made to stand alone, and this is for most of us a difficult thing which frequently brings on a kind of despair. Men like companionship, and cannot with ease contemplate the possibility of being left altogether to themselves. So, instead of being constantly in the company of a lodge of fellow-apprentices, as is the case in the usual worldly secret society, he is forced to see that, as he entered the world alone, he must learn to live there in the same way, leaving it as he came, solely in his own company. But this produces no selfishness, because, being accompanied by constant meditation upon the unseen, the knowledge is acquired that the loneliness felt is only in respect to the lower, personal, worldly self. Another rule that this disciple must follow is that no boasting may be indulged in on any occasion, and this gives us the formula that, given a man who speaks of his powers as an Adept or boasts of his progress on the spiritual planes, we can be always sure he is neither Adept nor disciple. There have been those in the Theosophical Society who gave out to the world that they were either Adepts in fact or very near it, and possessed of great powers. Under our formula it follows that they were mere boasters, with nothing behind their silly pretensions but vanity and a fair knowledge of the weakness as well as the gullibility of human nature; upon the latter they play for either their profit or pleasure. But, hiding themselves under an exterior which does not attract attention, there are many of the real disciples in the world. They are studying themselves and other human hearts. They have no diplomas, but there resides in them a consciousness of constant help and a clear knowledge of the true Lodge which meets in real secrecy and is never found mentioned in any directory. Their whole life is a persistent pursuit of the fast-moving soul which, although appearing to stand still, can distance the lightning; and their death is only another step forward to greater knowledge through better physical bodies in new lives. XIV. Looking back into the past the nineteenth-century historian finds his sight speedily striking a mist and at last plunging into inky darkness. Bound down in fact by the influence of a ridiculous dogmatism which allows only some six thousand years for man's life on earth, he is unwilling to accept the old chronologies of the Egyptians or Hindûs, and, while permitting the assumption of vast periods for geological changes, he is staggered by a few millions of years more or less when they are added to the length of time during which humanity has peopled the globe. The student of Theosophy, however, sees no reason why he should doubt the statement made by his teachers on this subject. He knows that the periods of evolution are endless. These are called Manvantaras, because they are between two Manus, or, two men. These periods may be called waves whose succession has no cessation. Each grand period, including within it all the minor evolutions, covers 311,040,000,000,000 human years; under a single Manu the human years come and go, 306,720,000 in number, and the lesser yugas--or ages--more immediately concerning us, comprise of solar years 4,320,000. During these solar revolutions the human races sweep round and round this planet. Cave-dwellers, lake-dwellers and those of a neolithic or any other age appear and disappear over and over again, and in each of those we who now read, write and think of them were ourselves the very Egos whose past we are trying to trace. But, going deep into geological strata, the doubt of man's existence contemporaneously with the plesiosaurus arises because no fossil _genus homo_ is discovered in the same stratum. It is here that the theories of the Theosophist come in and furnish the key. Those hold that before man developed any physical body he clothed himself with an astral form; and this is why H. P. Blavatsky writes in her _Secret Doctrine_: "it teaches the birth of the _astral_ before the _physical_ body, the former being the model for the latter." At the time of the huge antediluvian animals they absorbed in their enormous bodies so much of the total quantity of gross matter available for frames of sentient beings that the astral man remained without a corporeal frame, as yet unclothed "with coats of skin." For this reason he could exist in the same place with those huge birds and reptiles without fear. Their massive proportions inspired him with no terror, and by their consumption of food there was no lessening of his sustenance. And, therefore, being of such a composition that he left no impression upon mud or plastic rock, the death of one astral body after another left no fossil and no mark to be unearthed by us in company with the very beasts and birds which were his contemporaries. Man was all this time acquiring the power to clothe himself with a dense frame. He threw off astral bodies one after another, in the ceaseless pursuit, each effort giving him a little more density. Then he began to cast a shadow, as it were, and the vast, unwieldy animal world--and others as well--felt more and more the draughts made upon it by the coming man. As he thickened they grew smaller, and his remains could not be deposited in any stratum until such time as he had grown to sufficient hardness. But our modern anthropologists have not yet discovered when that was. They are ready enough to make definite statements, but, learned as they are, there are surprises awaiting them not so far off. While, therefore, our explorers are finding, now and then, the remains of animals and birds and reptiles in strata which show an age far greater than any assigned to the human race, they never come upon human skeletons. How could man leave any trace at a stage when he could not press himself into the clay or be caught by soft lava or masses of volcanic dust? I do not mean, however, to say that the period of the plesiosaurus is the period of the man of astral body devoid of a material one. The question of exact period may well be left for a more detailed account; this is only to point to the law and to the explanation for the non-appearance of man's remains in very early geologic strata. But the Theosophic Adepts insist that there are still in the earth bony remains of man, which carry his first appearance in a dense body many millions of years farther back than have yet been admitted, and these remains will be discovered by us before much time shall have rolled away. One of the first results of these discoveries will be to completely upset the theory as to the succession of ages, as I may call it, which is given and accepted at the present time, and also the estimation of the various civilizations that have passed from the earth and left no trace except in the inner constitution of ourselves--for it is held that _we are those very persons_, now in different bodies, who so long ago lived and loved and died upon the planet. We began to make Karma then and have been under its influence ever since, and it seems fitting that that great doctrine should be taken up at another time for a more careful examination. XV. The Oriental doctrine of reward and punishment of the human Ego is very different from the theological scheme accepted throughout Christendom, since the Brahmins and Buddhists fix the place of punishment and compensation upon this earth of ours, while the Christian removes the "bar of God" to the hereafter. We may not profitably stop to argue upon logic with the latter; it will be sufficient to quote to them the words of Jesus, St. Matthew, and the Psalmist. "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you again," said Jesus; and Matthew declares that for every word, act, and thought we shall have to answer, while David, the royal poet, sang that those who serve the Lord should never eat beggar's bread. We all know well that the first two declarations do away with the vicarious atonement; and as for the Jewish singer's notion, it is negatived every day in any city of either hemisphere. Among the Ceylonese Buddhists the name of the doctrine is Kamma; with the Hindûs it is Karma. Viewed in its religious light, it "is the good and bad deeds of sentient beings, by the infallible influence or efficacy of which those beings are met with due rewards or punishment, according as they deserve, in any state of being."[A] When a being dies, he emits, as it were, a mass of force or energy, which goes to make up the new personality when he shall be reïncarnated. In this energy is found the summation of the life just given up, and by means of it the Ego is forced to assume that sort of body among those appropriate circumstances which together are the means for carrying out the decrees of Karma. Hence hell is not a mythical place or condition after death in some unknown region specially set apart by the Almighty for the punishment of his children, but is in very truth our own globe, for it is on the earth, in earth-lives experienced in human bodies, that we are punished for bad deeds previously done, and meet with happiness and pleasure as rewards for old merit. When one sees, as is so common, a good man suffering much in his life, the question naturally arises, "Has Karma anything to do with it, and is it just that such a person should be so afflicted?" For those who believe in Karma it is quite just, because this man in a previous life must have done such acts as deserve punishment now. And, similarly, the wicked man who is free from suffering, happy and prosperous, is so because in a previous existence he had been badly treated by his fellows or had experienced much suffering. And the perfect justice of Karma is well illustrated in his case because, although now favored by fortune, he, being wicked, is generating causes which, when he shall be reborn, will operate then to punish him for his evil-doing now. Some may suppose that the Ego should be punished after death, but such a conclusion is not logical. For _evil deeds committed here on the objective plane could not with any scientific or moral propriety be punished on a plane which is purely subjective_. And such is the reason why so many minds, both of the young and old, have rejected and rebelled against the doctrine of a hellfire in which they would be eternally punished for commission of sin on earth. Even when unable to formulate the reason in metaphysical terms, they instinctively knew that it would be impossible to remove the scene of compensation from the very place where the sin and confusion had been done and created. When the disciples of Jesus asked him if the man who was born blind was thus brought into the world for some sin he had committed they had in mind this doctrine of Karma, just as all the Hindûs and Buddhists have when they see some of their fellows crippled or deformed or deprived of sight. The theory above hinted at of the person at death throwing out from himself the new personality, so to speak, ready to await the time when the Ego should return to earth seeking a new body, is a general law that operates in a great many other instances besides the birth or death of a being. It is that which is used by the Theosophists to explain the relations between the moon and the earth. For, as the moon is held by them to be the planet on which we lived before reaching the earth and before there was any such earth whatever; and that, when our so-called satellite came to die, all the energy contained in it was thrown out into space, where in a single vortex it remained until the time came for that energy to be again supplied with a body--this earth--so the same law prevails with men, the single units in the vast aggregate which is known among advanced Theosophists as the great Manu. Men being, as to their material envelope, derived from the moon, must follow the law of their origin, and therefore the Buddhist priest says, as quoted: "At the death of a being nothing goes out from him to the other world for his rebirth; but by the efficacy--or, to use a more figurative expression, by the ray--of influence which Kamma emits, a new being is produced in the other world very identical with the one who died away," for in this "new being" is held all the life of the deceased. The term "being," as applied to it may be taken by us with some qualification. It is more properly a mass of energy devoid of conscience and crowded with desires of the person from whom it emanated; and its special province is to await the return of the individuality and form for that the new body in which it shall suffer or enjoy. Each man is therefore his own creator under the great Cosmic laws that control all creations. A better term in place of "creation" is "evolution," for we, from life to life, are engaged in evolving out of the material provided in this _Manvantara_ new bodies at every turn of the wheel of rebirth. The instruments we use in this work are desire and will. Desire causes the will to fix itself on objective life; in that plane it produces force and out of that comes matter in its objective form. FOOTNOTE: [A] The Rev. T. P. Terunnanse, High-Priest at Dodanduwa, Ceylon. XVI. Very many Western people say that this Oriental doctrine of Karma is difficult to understand, being fit only for educated and thoughtful persons. But in India, Ceylon and Burmah, not to mention other Asiatic countries, the whole mass of the people accept and seem to understand it. The reason for this lies probably in the fact that they also firmly believe in Reïncarnation, which may be said to be the twin doctrine to Karma. Indeed, the one cannot be properly considered without keeping the other in view, for Karma--whether as punishment or reward--could have no actual or just operation upon the Ego unless the means for its operation were furnished by Reïncarnation. Our deserts are meted out to us while we are associating in life with each other, and not while we are alone, nor in separateness. If being raised to power in a nation or becoming possessed of wealth is called a reward, it would lose all value were there no people to govern and no associated human beings with and upon whom we could spend our wealth and who might aid us in satisfying our manifold desires. And so the law of Reïncarnation drags us into life again and again, bringing with us uncounted times the various Egos whom we have known in prior births. This is in order that the Karma--or causes--generated in company with those Egos may be worked out, for to take us off separately into an unknown hell, there to receive some sort of punishment, or into an impossible serio-comic heaven to meet our reward, would be as impossible as unjust. Hence, no just-hanged murderer absolved by priest or praising Jesus can escape. He, together with his victim, must return to this earth, each to aid the other in adjusting the disturbed harmony, during which process each makes due compensation. With this doctrine we restore justice to her seat in the governance of men, for without it the legal killing of the murderer after condemnation is only a half remedy, since no provision is made by the State for the being hurled out of the body nor for the dependants he may have left behind, and, still further, nothing is done for those who in the family of the murderer survive him. But the Theosophical sages of all ages push the doctrine of Karma beyond a mere operation upon incarnated men. They view all worlds as being bound together and swayed by Karma. As the old Hindû book, the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_, says, "all worlds up to that of Brahmâ are subject to Karma." Hence it acts on all planes. So viewing it, they say that this world as it is now conditioned is the actual result of what it came to be at the beginning of the _pralaya_ or grand death which took place billions upon billions of years ago. That is, the world evolves just as man does. It is born, it grows old, it dies, and it is reïncarnated. This goes on many times, and during those incarnations it suffers and enjoys in its own way for its previous evolutions. For it the reward is a greater advance along the line of evolution, and the punishment is a degraded state. Of course, as I said in a former article, these states have man for their object and cause, for he is the crown of all evolution. And, coming down from the high consideration of great cosmic spaces and phenomena, the Theosophist is taught to apply these laws of Karma and Reïncarnation to every atom in the body in _especial_ and apart from the total Karma. Since we are made up of a mass of lives, our thoughts and acts affect those atoms or lives and impress them with a Karma of their own. As the Oriental thinkers say, "not a moment passes without some beings coming to life in us, acquiring Karma, dying, and being reïncarnated." The principal divisions of Karma are three in number. One sort is that now operating in the present life and body, bringing about all the circumstances and changes of life. Of this we see illustrations every day, with now and then strange climaxes which throw upon the doctrine the brightest light. One such is immortalized in India by a building erected by the favored son of fortune, as we would say, and thus it came about. A Rajah had a very strange dream, so affecting that he called upon his soothsayers for interpretation. They said that their horoscopes showed he was required next day to give an immense sum of money to the first person he should see after awaking, their intention being to present themselves at an early hour. Next day the King arose unusually early, stepped to his window, threw it open, and there before him was a chandalah sweeping up the dirt. To him he gave a fortune, and thus in a moment raised him to affluence from abject poverty. The chandalah then built a huge building to commemorate his sudden release from the grinding chains of poverty. Another class of Karma is that which is held over and not now in operation because the man does not furnish the appropriate means for bringing it into action. This may be likened to vapor held in suspension in the atmosphere and not visible to the eye, but which will fall as rain upon the earth the moment conditions are ripe. The last chief class is that Karma which we are making now, and which will be felt by us in future births. Its appropriate symbol is the arrow shot forward in the air by the archer. XVII. The spirit is not affected by Karma at any time or under any circumstances, and so the Theosophical Adepts would not use the terms "cultivation of the Spirit." The Spirit in man, called by them _Ishwara_, is immutable, eternal and indivisible--the fundamental basis of all. Hence they say that the body and all objects are impermanent and thus deluding to the soul whenever they are mistaken for reality. They are only real on and for this plane and during the time when the consciousness takes them up here for cognition. They are therefore relatively real and not so in an absolute sense. This can easily be proved from dreams. In the dream state we lose all knowledge of the objects which while awake we thought real and proceed to suffer and enjoy in that new state. In this we find the consciousness applying itself to objects partaking of course of the nature of the experiences of the waking condition, but at the same time producing the sensations of pleasure and pain while they last. Let us imagine a person's body plunged in a lethargy extending over twenty years and the mind undergoing a pleasant or unpleasant dream, and we have a life just of that sort, altogether different from the life of one awake. For the consciousness of this dreamer the reality of objects known during the waking state is destroyed. But as material existence is a necessary evil and the one in which alone emancipation or salvation can be obtained, it is of the greatest importance and hence Karma which governs it and through whose decrees emancipation may be reached must be well understood and then be accepted and obeyed. Karma will operate to produce a deformed or deficient body, to give in a good body a bad disposition or _vicè versâ_; it will cause diseases, hurts or annoyances, or bring about pleasures and favorable situations for the material frame. So we sometimes find with a deformed or disagreeable body a most enlightened and noble mind. In this case the physical Karma is bad and the mental good. This leads us to the sort of Karma that works upon the mental plane. At the same time that an unfavorable Karmic cause is showing forth in the physical structure another and better sort is working out in the mind and disposition or has eventuated in conferring a mind well balanced, calm, cheerful, deep, and brilliant. Hence we discover a purely physical as compared with an entirely mental Karma. Purely physical would be that resulting, say from a removal from the ground of fruit peel which might otherwise cause some unknown person to fall and be hurt. Purely mental might be due to a life spent in calm, philosophical thought and the like. There is in one of the Hindû books a strange sentence respecting this part of the subject, reading: "Perfection of body or superhuman powers are produced by birth or by herbs or by incantations, penances, or meditations." Among mental afflictions esteemed as worse than any bodily hurt or loss is that Karma from a preceding life which results in obscurity of such a character that there is a loss of all power to conceive of the reality of Spirit or the existence of soul--that is, materialism. The last field of operation for this law may be said to be the psychical nature. Of this in America we have numerous examples in mediums, clairvoyants, clairaudients, mind-readers, hysteriacs, and all sorts of abnormal sensitives. There could be no clairvoyant according to the Oriental scheme if the person so afflicted, using as I think the proper term, had not devoted much of previous lives to a one-sided development of the psychical nature resulting now in powers which make the possessor an abnormality in society. A very strange belief of the Hindûs is that one which allows the possibility of a change of state by a mortal of such a character that the once man becomes a _Deva_ or lesser god. They divide nature into several departments, in each of which are conscious powers or entities called _Devas_, to put it roughly. Yet this is not so far apart from the ideas of some of our best scientific men who have said there is no reason why in each ray of the spectrum there may not be beings to us unseen. Many centuries ago the Hindû thinker admitted this, and pushing further on declared that a man might through a certain sort of Karma become one of these beings, with corresponding enjoyment and freedom from care, but with the certainty, however, of eventually changing back again to begin the weary round of birth over again. What might be called the doctrine of the nullification of Karma is an application in this department of the well-known law in physics which causes an equilibrium when two equal forces oppose each other. A man may have in his Karmic account a very unpleasant cause and at the same time a cause of opposite character. If these come together for expression at the same time they may so counteract each other as that neither will be apparent and the equilibrium is the equivalent of both. In this way it is easy to understand the Biblical verse: "Charity covereth a multitude of sins," as referring to the palliative effect of charitable deeds as opposed to deeds of wickedness, and giving a reason for the mediæval knight devoting some of the years of his life to almsgiving. In the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_, a book revered by all in India, the highest place is given to what is called _Karma-Yôga_ or the Religion of the Performance of Works and Duty, and there it is said: "He who, unattached to the fruits of his actions, performs such actions as must be done, is both renouncer and devotee; not he who kindles no sacrificial fires and performs no ceremonies. He who remains inert, restraining the organs of action, and pondering with his heart on objects of sense, is called a false pietist of bewildered soul. But he who, restraining his senses by his heart and being free from interest in acting, undertakes active devotion through the organs of action, is praiseworthy." XVIII. That the doctrine of Karma is unjust, unsympathetic, and fatalistic has been claimed by those who oppose it, but such conclusions are not borne out by experience among those races who believe in it, nor will the objections stand a close examination. The Hindûs and Buddhists thoroughly believe in Karma, convinced that no one but themselves punishes or rewards in this or any life, yet we do not find them cold or unsympathetic. Indeed, in the relations of life it is well known that the Hindû is as loving and tender as his American brother, and there are as many instances of heroic self-sacrifice in their history as in ours. Some go further than this and say that the belief in Karma and Reïncarnation has made the Hindû more gentle in his treatment of men and animals than are the Europeans, and more spiritual in his daily life. Going deeper into their history, the belief in Karma is found side by side with material works of great magnitude, and whose remains to this day challenge our wonder, admiration, and respect; it is doubtful whether we could ever show such triumphs over nature as can be seen at any time in the rock-cut temples of Hindustan. So it would appear that this doctrine of ours is not likely to produce bad or enervating effects upon the people who accept it. "But," says an objector, "it is fatalism. If Karma is Karma, if I am to be punished in such and such a manner, then it will come about so whether I will or not, and hence I must, like the Turk, say 'Kismet,' and do nothing." Now, although the Mohammedan doctrine of Kismet has been abused as fatalism, pure and simple, it was not so held by the Prophet nor by his greatest disciples, for they taught that it was law and not fate. And neither is Karma amenable to this objection. In the minds of those who, having vaguely apprehended Karma as applying to one life only, do not give the doctrine its true majestic, endless sweep, fatalism is the verdict. When, on the other hand, each man is seen as the fashioner of the fate for his next fleeting earth personality, there can be no fatality in it, because in his own hand is the decree. He set in motion the causes which will inevitably have certain results. Just as easily he could have made different causes and thus brought about different results. That there are a repellant coldness and want of tenderness in a doctrine which thus deals out inflexible justice and compels us to forever lose our friends and beloved relatives, once death has closed the door, is the feeling of a few who make sentiment their rule in life. But while sentiment and our own wishes are not the guiding laws of nature, there is no reason even on the sentimental ground for this objection; it is due to a partial knowledge of the doctrine which, when fully known, is found to be as full of opportunity for the exercise of what is dear to the heart as any other theory of life. The same law that throws us into life to suffer or enjoy, as may be deserved, decrees that the friends and the relatives who are like unto each other must incarnate together, until by reason of differentiation of character they cannot under any law of attraction remain in company. Not unless and until they become different do they separate from each other. And who would wish to be eternally tied to the side of uncongenial relatives or acquaintances merely because there was an accident of birth! For our aid also this law works well and ceaselessly. "Those whom you help will help you in other lives," is the declaration. In ages past perhaps we knew those who long since have passed up to greater heights. The very moment in the long series of incarnations we come near to where they are pursuing their pilgrimage, they at once extend assistance, whether that be on the material or moral planes. And it makes no difference whether one or the other is aware of who is assisting or who is being assisted. Inflexible law guides the current and brings about the result. Thus the members of the whole human family reciprocally act on one another, forced into it by a law which is as kind as it is great, which turns the contempt we bore in the past into present honor and opportunity to help our fellows. There is no favoritism possible in nature; no man has any privilege or gift which he has not deserved, either as a reward or a compensation. Looking at the present life spread before our limited vision, we may see perhaps no cause why there should be any such reward to an unworthy man, but Karma never errs and will surely repay. And it not only rewards, but to it solely belong those compensations which we with revenge attempt to mete out. It is with this in view that the holy writ of the Christians says, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay," for so surely as one hurts another so is the certainty of Karma striking the offender;--but let the injured one beware that he does not desire the other punished, for by Karma will he be punished also. So from all this web of life and ceaselessly revolving wheel, Karma furnishes the escape and the means of escape, and by reïncarnation we are given the time for escape. XIX. In the Egyptian _Book of the Dead_, chapter x describes the place where, after death, disembodied souls remain in different degrees of perfection. Some are shown as taking wheat three cubits high, while others are only permitted to glean it--"he gleaned the fields of Aanroo." Thus some enjoy the perfection of spiritual bliss, while others attain only to minor degrees in that place or state where divine justice is meted out to the soul. Devachan is the land of reward; the domain of spiritual effects. The word spiritual here refers to disembodiment; it must only be used as relative to our material existence. The Christian demonstrates this fact by the material _entourage_ of his heaven. In the _Secret Doctrine_, H. P. Blavatsky says: "Death itself is unable to deliver man from it [Karma], since death is simply the door through which he passes to another life on earth, after a little rest on its threshold--Devachan." Devachan, then, is the threshold of life. In the Hindû system it is etymologically the place of the gods, Indra's heaven. Indra is the regent of heaven, who gives to those who can reach his realm long-enduring gifts of happiness and dominion. The _Bhavagad-Gîtâ_ says: "After enjoying felicity for innumerable years in the regions of Indra, he is born again upon this earth." For the purpose of this article, we assume that the entire man, minus the body, goes into Devachan. This, however, is not so. The _post-mortem_ division of our sevenfold constitution given by Theosophy is exact. It exhibits the basis of life, death and reïncarnation. It shows the composite being, man, in analogy with that other composite being, nature. Both are a unity in diversity. Man, suspended in nature, like her, divides and reünites. This sevenfold division will be treated in a future article. Devachan, being a state of prolonged subjective happiness after the death of the body, is plainly the heaven of the Christian, but with a difference. It is a heaven made scientifically possible. Heaven itself must accord with the divine laws projected into nature. As sleep is a release from the body, during which we have dreams, so death is a complete separation and release, after which in Devachan we dream until, on being again incarnated in a new body on earth, we come once more into what we call waking existence. Even the human soul would weary of the ceaseless round of rebirths, if some place or state were not provided in which rest could be obtained; in which germinating aspirations, restricted by earth-life, could have their full development. No energy can be annihilated, least of all a psychic energy; these must somewhere find an outlet. It is found in Devachan; this realization is the rest of the soul. Its deepest desires, its highest needs are there enjoyed. There every hope blooms out in full and glorious flower. To prolong this blissful state, Hindû books give many incantations and provide innumerable ceremonies and sacrifices, all of them having for end and aim a long stay in Devachan. The Christian does precisely the same. He longs for heaven, prays that he may go there, and offers up to his God such propitiatory rites and acts as seem best to him, the only difference being that he does not do it half so scientifically as the Hindû. The Hindû is also more vivid in his conception of this heaven than the Christian is. He postulates many places or conditions adapted to the energic and qualitative differences between souls. Kama-loka and other states are where concrete desires, restricted by life in the body, have full expression, while in Tribûvana the abstract and benevolent thinkers absorb the joys of lofty thought. The orthodox heaven has no such proviso. It also ignores the fact that a settled monotony of celestial existence would exhaust the soul--would be stagnation, not growth. Devachanic life is development of aspiration, passing through the various stages of gestation, birth, cumulative growth, downward momentum and departure to another condition, all rooted in joy. There is nothing in the mere fact of death to mould a soul anew. It is a group of psychic energies, and heaven must have something in common with these, or why should it gravitate there? Souls differ as men do. In Devachan each one receives that degree of bliss which it can assimilate; its own development determines its reward. The Christian places all the snuffy old saints as high as other holy souls, sinking genius to the level of the mediocre mass, while the Hindû gives infinite variety of occupation and existence suited to grave and gay, the soul of genius or of poetry. No one sits in undesired seats, nor sings psalms he never liked, nor lives in a city which might pall upon him if he were forever compelled to walk its pearly streets. The laws of cause and effect forbid that Devachan should be monotonous. Results are proportionate to antecedent energies. The soul oscillates between Devachan and earth-life, finding in each conditions suited to its continuous development, until, through effort, it reaches a perfection in which it ceases to be the subject of the laws of action and reäction, becoming instead their conscious co-worker. Devachan is a dream, but only in the sense in which objective life can be called such. Both last until Karma is satisfied in one direction, and begins to work in the other. The Devachanee has no idea of space or time except such as he makes for himself. He creates his own world. He is with all he ever loved, not in bodily companionship, but in one to him real, close and blissful. When a man dies, the brain dies last. Life is still busy there after death has been announced. The soul marshals up all past events, grasps the sum total, the average tendency stands out, the ruling hope is seen. Their final aroma forms the keynote of Devachanic existence. The lukewarm man goes neither to heaven nor hell. Nature spews him out of her mouth. Positive conditions, objective or subjective, are only reached through positive impulsion. Devachanic distribution is governed by the ruling motive of the soul. The hater may, by reäction, become the lover, but the indifferent have no propulsion, no growth. XX. It is quite evident to the unprejudiced inquirer that Christian priests for some reason or other studiously ignore the composite nature of man, although their great authority, St. Paul, clearly refers to it. He spoke of body, soul, and spirit, they only preach of body and soul; he declared we had a spiritual body, they remain misty as to the soul's body and cling to an absurd resurrection of the material casket. It became the duty of Theosophists to draw the attention of the modern mind once more to the Oriental division of man's constitution, for through that alone can an understanding of his state before and after death be attained. The division laid down by St. Paul is threefold, the Hindû one is of a sevenfold character. St. Paul's is meant for those who require broad outlines, but do not care to inquire into details. Spirit, soul, and body, however, include the whole seven divisions, the latter being a more complete analysis; and it is suspected by many deep thinkers that Paul knew the complete system but kept it back for good reasons of his own. An analysis of body discloses more than mere molecular structure, for it shows a force or life or power that keeps it together and active throughout its natural period. Some writers on Theosophical subjects, dealing more or less accurately with the Eastern system, have called this _Prâna_ or _Jîva_; others, however, call it _Prâna_ alone, which seems more appropriate, because the human aspect of the life force is dependent upon _Prâna_, or _breath_. The _spirit_ of St. Paul may be taken for our purposes to be the Sanskrit _Âtmâ_. Spirit is universal, indivisible, and common to all. In other words, there are not many spirits, one for each man, but solely one spirit which shines upon all men alike, finding as many souls--roughly speaking--as there are beings in the world. In man the spirit has a more complete instrument or assemblage of tools with which to work. This spiritual identity is the basis of the philosophy; upon it the whole structure rests; to individualize spirit, assigning to each human being his own spirit, particular to him and separate from the spirit of any other man, is to throw to the ground the whole Theosophic philosophy, will nullify its ethics and defeat its object. Starting then with _Âtmâ_--spirit--as including the whole, being its basis and support, we find the Hindû offering the theory of sheaths or covers of the soul or inner man. These sheaths are necessary the moment evolution begins and visible objects appear, so that the aim of the soul may be attained in conjunction with nature. In this way, through a process which would be out of place here, a classification is arrived at by means of which the phenomena of life and consciousness may be explained. The six vehicles used by the spirit and by means of which the Ego gains experience are: _Body_, as a gross vehicle. _Vitality_, or _Prâna_. _Astral Body_, or _Linga Sharîra_. _Animal Soul_, or _Kâma Rûpa_. _Human Soul_, or _Manas_. _Spiritual Soul_, or _Buddhi_. The _Linga Sharîra_ is needed as a more subtle body than the corporeal frame, because the latter is in fact only stupid, inert matter. _Kâma Rûpa_ is the body, or collection, of desires and passions; _Manas_ may be properly called the mind, and _Buddhi_ is the highest intellection beyond brain or mind. It is that which discriminates. At the death of the body, _Prâna_ flies back to the reservoir of force; the astral body dissipates after a longer period and often returns with _Kâma Rûpa_ when aided by certain other forces to séance-rooms, where it masquerades as the deceased, a continual lie and ever-present snare. The human and the spiritual soul go into the state spoken of before as _Devachan_ or heaven, where the stay is prolonged or short according to the energies appropriate to that state generated during earth-life. When these begin to exhaust themselves the Ego is gradually drawn back to earth-life, where through human generation it takes up a new body, with another astral body, vitality, and animal soul. This is the "wheel of rebirth," from which no man can escape unless he conforms to true ethics and acquires true knowledge and consciousness while living in a body. It was to stop this ceaselessly revolving wheel that Buddha declared his perfect law, and it is the aim of the true Theosophist to turn his great and brilliant "Wheel of the Law" for the healing of the nations. XXI. High in the esteem of the Hindû stands the serpent, both as a symbol and a creature. Moving in a wavy line, he figures the vast revolution of the Sun through eternal space carrying the rapidly whirling Earth in her lesser orbit; periodically casting his skin, he presents a visible illustration of renewal of life or reïncarnation; coiling to strike, he shows the working of the law of Karma-Nemesis which, with a basis in our actions, deals an unerring blow. As a symbol with tail in mouth, forming a circle, he represents eternity, the circle of necessity, all-devouring Time. For the older Initiates he spoke to them also of the astral light which is at once devilish and divine. Probably in the whole field of Theosophic study there is nothing so interesting as the astral light. Among the Hindûs it is known as Akâsa, which can also be translated as æther. Through a knowledge of its properties they say that all the wonderful phenomena of the Oriental Yogis are accomplished. It is also claimed that clairvoyance, clairaudience, mediumship, and seership as known to the Western world are possible only through its means. It is the register of our deeds and thoughts, the great picture gallery of the earth, where the seer can always gaze upon any event that has ever happened, as well as those to come. Swimming in it as in a sea are beings of various orders and also the astral remains of deceased men and women. The Rosicrucians and other European mystics called these beings Sylphs, Salamanders, Gnomes, Undines, Elementals; the Hindû calls them Gandharbhas or celestial musicians, Yakshas, Rakshâsas and many more. The "spooks" of the dead--mistaken by Spiritualists for the individuals who are no more--float in this Akâsic substance, and for centuries have been known to the mystical Hindû as Bhûta, another name for devil, or Pisâcha, a most horrible devil; neither of them any more than the cast-off soul-body nearest earth, devoid of conscience and only powerful for evil. But the term "astral light," while not new, is purely of Occidental origin. Porphyry spoke of it when referring to the celestial or soul-body, which he says is immortal, luminous, and "star-like;" Paracelsus called it the "sidereal light;" later it grew to be known as astral. It was said to be the same as the _anima mundi_ or soul of the world. Modern scientific investigators approach it when they speak of "luminiferous ether" and "radiant matter." The great astronomer, Camille Flammarion, who was a member of the Theosophical Society during his life, speaks of the astral light in his novel _Uranie_ and says: "The light emanating from all these suns that people immensity, the light reflected through space by all these worlds lighted by these suns, _photographs_ throughout the boundless heaven the centuries, the days, the moments as they pass.... From this it results that the histories of all the worlds are travelling through space without dispersing altogether, and that all the events of the past are present and live evermore in the bosom of the infinite." Like all unfamiliar or occult things the astral light is difficult to define, and especially so from the very fact that it is called "light." It is not the light as we know it, and neither is it darkness. Perhaps it was said to be a light because when clairvoyants saw by means of it, the distant objects seemed to be illuminated. But as equally well distant sounds can be heard in it, heavy bodies levitated by it, odors carried thousands of miles through it, thoughts read in it, and all the various phenomena by mediums brought about under its action, there has been a use of the term "light" which while unavoidable is none the less erroneous. A definition to be accurate must include all the functions and powers of this light, but as those are not fully known even to the mystic, and wholly _terra incognita_ for the scientist, we must be content with a partial analysis. It is a substance easily imagined as imponderable ether which, emanating from the stars, envelopes the earth and permeates every atom of the globe and each molecule upon it. Obeying the laws of attraction and repulsion, it vibrates to and fro, making itself now positive and now negative. This gives it a circular motion which is symbolized by the serpent. It is the great final agent, or prime mover, cosmically speaking, which not only makes the plant grow but also keeps up the diastole and systole of the human heart. Very like the action of the sensitive photographic plate is this light. It takes, as Flammarion says, the pictures of every moment and holds them in its grasp. For this reason the Egyptians knew it as the Recorder; it is the Recording Angel of the Christian, and in one aspect it is Yâma, the judge of the dead in the Hindû pantheon, for it is by the pictures we impress therein that we are judged by Karma. As an enormous screen or reflector the astral light hangs over the earth and becomes a powerful universal hypnotizer of human beings. The pictures of all acts good and bad done by our ancestors as by ourselves, being ever present to our inner selves, we constantly are impressed by them by way of suggestion and go then and do likewise. Upon this the great French priest-mystic, Éliphas Lévi, says: "We are often astonished when in society at being assailed by evil thoughts and suggestions that we would not have imagined possible, and we are not aware that we owe them solely to the presence of some morbid neighbor; this fact is of great importance, since it relates to the manifestation of conscience--one of the most terrible and incontestable secrets of the magic art.... So diseased souls have a bad breath, and vitiate the moral atmosphere; that is to say, they mingle impure reflections with the astral light which penetrates them, and thus establish deleterious currents." There is also a useful function of this light. As it preserves the pictures of all past events and things, and as there is nothing new under the sun, the appliances, the ideas, the philosophy, the arts and sciences of long buried civilizations are continually being projected in pictures out of the astral into the brains of living men. This gives a meaning not only to the oft-recurring "coïncidence" of two or more inventors or scientists hitting upon the same ideas or inventions at about the same time and independently of each other, but also to other events and curious happenings. Some self-styled scientists have spoken learnedly of telepathy, and other phenomena, but give no sufficient reason in nature for thought-transference or apparitions or clairvoyance or the hundred and one varieties of occurrences of an occult character noticed from day to day among all conditions of men. It is well to admit that thought may be transferred without speech directly from one brain to another, but how can the transference be effected without a medium? That medium is the astral light. The moment the thought takes shape in the brain it is pictured in this light, and from there is taken out again by any other brain sensitive enough to receive it intact. Knowing the strange properties of the astral plane and the actual fate of the sheaths of the soul spoken of in another article, the Theosophical Adepts of all times gave no credit to pretended returning of the dead. Éliphas Lévi learned this well and said: "The astral light combining with ethereal fluids forms the astral phantom of which Paracelsus speaks. This astral body being freed at death, attracts to itself and preserves for a long time, by the sympathy of likeness, the reflection of the past life; if a powerfully sympathetic will draws it into the proper current it manifests itself in the form of an apparition." But with a sensitive, abnormally constituted person present--a medium, in other words, and all of that class are nervously unbalanced--the strong will is not needed, for the astral light and the living medium's astral body recall these soulless phantoms, and out of the same reservoir take their speech, their tones, their idiosyncrasies of character, which the deluded devotees of this debasing practice are cheated into imagining as the returned self of dead friend or relative. Yet all I have referred to here are only instances of a few of the various properties of the astral light. So far as concerns our world it may be said that astral light is everywhere, interpenetrating all things; to have a photographic power by which it grasps pictures of thoughts, deeds, events, tones, sounds, colors, and all things; reflective in the sense that it reflects itself into the minds of men; repellant from its positive side and attractive from the negative; capable of assuming extreme density when drawn in around the body by powerful will or by abnormal bodily states, so that no physical force can penetrate it. This phase of its action explains some facts officially recorded during the witchcraft excitement in Salem. It was there found that although stones and other flying objects came toward the possessed one they always fell as it were from the force of gravity _just at the person's feet_. The Hindû Yogi gives evidence of a use of this condensation of the astral light when he allows arrows and other projectiles to be thrown at him, all of them falling at his feet no matter how great their momentum, and the records of genuine Spiritualistic phenomena in the United States furnish similar experiences. The astral light is a powerful factor, unrecognized by science, in the phenomenon of hypnotism. Its action will explain many of the problems raised by Binet, Charcot and others, and especially that class in which two or more distinct personalities seem to be assumed by the subject, who can remember in each only those things and peculiarities of expression which belong to that particular stratum of their experience. These strange things are due to the currents in the astral light. In each current will be found a definite series of reflections, and they are taken up by the inner man, who reports them through speech and action on this plane as if they were his own. By the use of these currents too, but unconsciously, the clairvoyants and clairaudients seem to read in the hidden pages of life. This light can therefore be impressed with evil or good pictures, and these are reflected into the subconscious mind of every human being. If you fill the astral light with bad pictures, just such as the present century is adept at creating, it will be our devil and destroyer, but if by the example of even a few good men and women a new and purer sort of events are limned upon this eternal canvas, it will become our Divine Uplifter. _There is no Religion Higher than Truth_ THE UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD AND THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY _Established for the benefit of the people of the earth and all creatures_ OBJECTS This BROTHERHOOD is a part of a great and universal movement which has been active in all ages. This Organization declares that Brotherhood is a fact in Nature. 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21080	----	THEOSOPHICAL MANUALS. No. 5 THE ASTRAL PLANE ITS SCENERY, INHABITANTS AND PHENOMENA C. W. LEADBEATER London: Theosophical Publishing Society 7 Duke Street, Adelphi, W.C. BENARES: THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY, MADRAS: _The Theosophist_ OFFICE, ADYAR. 1895 * * * * * PREFACE. _Few words are needed in sending this little book out into the world. It is the fifth of a series of Manuals designed to meet the public demand for a simple exposition of Theosophical teachings. Some have complained that our literature is at once too abstruse, too technical, and too expensive for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope that the present series may succeed in supplying what is a very real want. Theosophy is not only for the learned; it is for all. Perhaps among those who in these little books catch their first glimpse of its teachings, there may be a few who will be led by them to penetrate more deeply into its philosophy, its science and its religion, facing its abstruser problems with the student's zeal and the neophyte's ardour. But these Manuals are not written for the eager student, whom no initial difficulties can daunt; they are written for the busy men and women of the work-a-day world, and seek to make plain some of the great truths that render life easier to bear and death easier to face. Written by servants of the Masters who are the Elder Brothers of our race, they can have no other object than to serve our fellow-men._ * * * * * CONTENTS. Introduction. Scenery.--The Seven Subdivisions--Degrees of Materiality--Characteristics of Astral Vision--The Aura--The Etheric Double--Power of Magnifying Minute Objects--The "Summerland"--Records of the Astral Light. Inhabitants.--I. Human. (1) _Living_:--The Adept or Chela in Mâyâvirûpa--The Psychically Developed Person--The Ordinary Person in Astral Body--The Black Magician. (2) _Dead_:--The Nirmânakâya--The Chela awaiting Reincarnation--The Ordinary Person after Death--The Shade--The Shell--The Vitalized Shell--The Suicide--The Victim of Sudden Death--The Vampire--The Werewolf--The Black Magician after Death. II. Non-human:--The Elemental Essence--The Kâmarûpas of Animals--Various Classes of Nature-Spirits, commonly called Fairies--Kâmadevas--Rûpadevas--Arûpadevas--The Devarâjahs. III. Artificial:--Elementals formed Unconsciously--Guardian Angels--Elementals formed Consciously--Human Artificials--The True Origin of Spiritualism. Phenomena.--Churchyard Ghosts.--Apparitions of the Dying--Haunted Localities--Family Ghosts--Bell-ringing, Stone-throwing, etc.--Fairies--Communicating Entities--Astral Resources--Clairvoyance--Prevision--Second-Sight--Astral Forces--Etheric Currents--Etheric Pressure--Latent Energy--Sympathetic Vibration--Mantras--Disintegration--Materialization--Why Darkness is required at a _Séance_--Spirit Photographs--Reduplication--Precipitation of Letters and Pictures--Slate-writing--Levitation--Spirit Lights--Handling Fire--Transmutation--Repercussion. Conclusion. * * * * * THE ASTRAL PLANE. INTRODUCTION Reference to the astral plane, or Kâmaloka as it is called in Sanskrit, has frequently been made by Theosophical writers, and a good deal of information on the subject of this realm of nature is to be found scattered here and there in our books; but there is not, so far as I am aware, any single volume to which one can turn for a complete summary of the facts at present known to us about this interesting region. The object of this manual is to collect and make some attempt to arrange this scattered information, and also to supplement it slightly in cases where new facts have come to our knowledge. It must be understood that any such additions are only the result of the investigations of a few explorers, and must not, therefore, be taken as in any way authoritative, but are given simply for what they are worth. On the other hand every precaution in our power has been taken to ensure accuracy, no fact, old or new, being admitted to this manual unless it has been confirmed by the testimony of at least two independent trained investigators among ourselves, and has also been passed as correct by older students whose knowledge on these points is necessarily much greater than ours. It is hoped, therefore, that this account of the astral plane, though it cannot be considered as quite complete, may yet be found reliable as far as it goes. The first point which it is necessary to make clear in describing this astral plane is its absolute _reality_. Of course in using that word I am not speaking from that metaphysical standpoint from which all but the One Unmanifested is unreal because impermanent; I am using the word in its plain, every-day sense, and I mean by it that the objects and inhabitants of the astral plane are real in exactly the same way as our own bodies, our furniture, our houses or monuments are real--as real as Charing Cross, to quote an expressive remark from one of the earliest Theosophical works. They will no more endure for ever than will objects on the physical plane, but they are nevertheless realities from our point of view while they last--realities which we cannot afford to ignore merely because the majority of mankind is as yet unconscious, or but vaguely conscious, of their existence. There appears to be considerable misunderstanding even among Theosophical students upon this question of the reality of the various planes of the universe. This may perhaps be partly due to the fact that the word "plane" has occasionally been very loosely used in our literature--writers speaking vaguely of the mental plane, the moral plane, and so on; and this vagueness has led many people to suppose that the information on the subject which is to be found in Theosophical books is inexact and speculative--a mere hypothesis incapable of definite proof. No one can get a clear conception of the teachings of the Wisdom-Religion until he has at any rate an intellectual grasp of the fact that in our solar system there exist perfectly definite planes, each with its own matter of different degrees of density, and that some of these planes can be visited and observed by persons who have qualified themselves for the work, exactly as a foreign country might be visited and observed; and that, by comparison of the observations of those who are constantly working on these planes, evidence can be obtained of their existence and nature at least as satisfactory as that which most of us have for the existence of Greenland or Spitzbergen. The names usually given to these planes, taking them in order of materiality, rising from the denser to the finer, are the physical, the astral, the devachanic, the sushuptic, and the nirvânic. Higher than this last are two others, but they are so far above our present power of conception that for the moment they may be left out of consideration. Now it should be understood that the matter of each of these planes differs from that of the one below it in the same way as, though to a much greater degree than, vapour differs from solid matter; in fact, the states of matter which we call solid, liquid, and gaseous are merely the three lowest subdivisions of the matter belonging to this one physical plane. The astral region which I am to attempt to describe is the second of these great planes of nature--the next above (or within) that physical world with which we are all familiar. It has often been called the realm of illusion--not that it is itself any more illusory than the physical world, but because of the extreme unreliability of the impressions brought back from it by the untrained seer. This is to be accounted for mainly by two remarkable characteristics of the astral world--first, that many of its inhabitants have a marvellous power of changing their forms with Protean rapidity, and also of casting practically unlimited glamour over those with whom they choose to sport; and secondly, that sight on that plane is a faculty very different from and much more extended than physical vision. An object is seen, as it were, from all sides at once, the inside of a solid being as plainly open to the view as the outside; it is therefore obvious that an inexperienced visitor to this new world may well find considerable difficulty in understanding what he really does see, and still more in translating his vision into the very inadequate language of ordinary speech. A good example of the sort of mistake that is likely to occur is the frequent reversal of any number which the seer has to read from the astral light, so that he would be liable to render, say, 139 as 931, and so on. In the case of a student of occultism trained by a capable Master such a mistake would be impossible except through great hurry or carelessness, since such a pupil has to go through a long and varied course of instruction in this art of seeing correctly, the Master, or perhaps some more advanced pupil, bringing before him again and again all possible forms of illusion, and asking him "What do you see?" Any errors in his answers are then corrected and their reasons explained, until by degrees the neophyte acquires a certainty and confidence in dealing with the phenomena of the astral plane which far exceeds anything possible in physical life. But he has to learn not only to see correctly but to translate the memory of what he has seen accurately from one plane to the other; and to assist him in this he is trained to carry his consciousness without break from the physical plane to the astral or devachanic and back again, for until that can be done there is always a possibility that his recollections may be partially lost or distorted during the blank interval which separates his periods of consciousness on the various planes. When the power of bringing over the consciousness is perfectly acquired the pupil will have the advantage of the use of all the astral faculties, not only while out of his body during sleep or trance, but also while fully awake in ordinary physical life. It has been the custom of some Theosophists to speak with scorn of the astral plane, and treat it as entirely unworthy of attention; but that seems to me a somewhat mistaken view. Most assuredly that at which we have to aim is the purely spiritual plane, and it would be most disastrous for any student to neglect that higher development and rest satisfied with the attainment of astral consciousness. There are some whose Karma is such as to enable them to develop the purely spiritual faculties first of all--to over-leap the astral plane for the time, as it were; and when afterwards they make its acquaintance they have, if their spiritual development has been perfect, the immense advantage of dipping into it from above, with the aid of a spiritual insight which cannot be deceived and a spiritual strength which nothing can resist. It is, however, a mistake to suppose, as some writers have done, that this is the only, or even the ordinary method adopted by the Masters of Wisdom with their pupils. Where it is possible it saves much trouble, but for most of us such progress by leaps and bounds has been forbidden by our own faults or follies in the past: all that we can hope for is to win our way slowly step by step, and since this astral plane lies next to our world of denser matter, it is usually in connection with it that our earliest superphysical experiences take place. It is therefore by no means without interest to those of us who are but beginners in these studies, and a clear comprehension of its mysteries may often be of the greatest importance to us, not only by enabling us to understand many of the phenomena of the _séance_-room, of haunted houses, etc., which would otherwise be inexplicable, but also to guard ourselves and others from possible dangers. The first introduction to this remarkable region comes to people in various ways. Some only once in their whole lives under some unusual influence become sensitive enough to recognize the presence of one of its inhabitants, and perhaps, because the experience does not repeat itself, come in time to believe that on that occasion they must have been the victims of hallucination: others find themselves with increasing frequency seeing and hearing something to which those around them are blind and deaf; others again--and perhaps this is the commonest experience of all--begin to recollect with greater and greater clearness that which they have seen or heard on that other plane during sleep. Among those who make a study of these subjects, some try to develop the astral sight by crystal-gazing or other methods, while those who have the inestimable advantage of the direct guidance of a qualified teacher will probably be placed upon that plane for the first time under his special protection, which will be continued until, by the application of various tests, he has satisfied himself that the pupil is proof against any danger or terror that he is likely to encounter. But, however it may occur, the first actual realization that we are all the while in the midst of a great world full of active life, of which most of us are nevertheless entirely unconscious, cannot but be to some extent a memorable epoch in a man's existence. So abundant and so manifold is this life of the astral plane that at first it is absolutely bewildering to the neophyte; and even for the more practised investigator it is no easy task to attempt to classify and to catalogue it. If the explorer of some unknown tropical forest were asked not only to give a full account of the country through which he had passed, with accurate details of its vegetable and mineral productions, but also to state the genus and species of every one of the myriad insects, birds, beasts, and reptiles which he had seen, he might well shrink appalled at the magnitude of the undertaking: yet even this affords no parallel to the embarrassments of the psychic investigator, for in his case matters are further complicated, first by the difficulty of correctly translating from that plane to this the recollection of what he has seen, and secondly by the utter inadequacy of ordinary language to express much of what he has to report. However, just as the explorer on the physical plane would probably commence his account of a country by some sort of general description of its scenery and characteristics, so it will be well to begin this slight sketch of the astral plane by endeavouring to give some idea of the scenery which forms the background of its marvellous and ever-changing activities. Yet here at the outset an almost insuperable difficulty confronts us in the extreme complexity of the matter. All who see fully on that plane agree that to attempt to call up before those whose eyes are as yet unopened a vivid picture of this astral scenery is like speaking to a blind man of the exquisite variety of tints in a sunset sky--however detailed and elaborate the description may be, there is no certainty that the idea presented before the hearer's mind will be an adequate representation of the truth. SCENERY. First of all, then, it must be understood that the astral plane has seven subdivisions, each of which has its corresponding degree of materiality and its corresponding condition of matter. Now numbering these from the highest and least material downwards, we find that they naturally fall into three classes, divisions 1, 2 and 3 forming one such class, and 4, 5 and 6 another, while the seventh and lowest of all stands alone. The difference between the matter of one of these classes and the next would be commensurable with that between a solid and a liquid, while the difference between the matter of the subdivisions of a class would rather resemble that between two kinds of solid, such as, say, steel and sand. Putting aside for the moment the seventh, we may say that divisions 4, 5 and 6 of the astral plane have for their background the physical world we live in and all its familiar accessories. Life on the sixth division is simply our ordinary life on this earth, minus the physical body and its necessities; while as it ascends through the fifth and fourth divisions it becomes less and less material, and is more and more withdrawn from our lower world and its interests. The scenery of these lower divisions, then, is that of the earth as we know it: but it is also very much more; for when looked at from this different standpoint, with the assistance of the astral senses, even purely physical objects present a very different appearance. As has already been mentioned, they are seen by one whose eyes are fully opened, not as usual from one point of view, but from all sides at once--an idea in itself sufficiently confusing; and when we add to this that every particle in the interior of a solid body is as fully and clearly visible as those on the outside, it will be comprehended that under such conditions even the most familiar objects may at first be totally unrecognizable. Yet a moment's consideration will show that such vision approximates much more closely to true perception than does physical sight. Looked at on the astral plane, for example, the sides of a glass cube would all appear equal, as they really are, while on the physical plane we see the further side in perspective--that is, it appears smaller than the nearer side, which is, of course, a mere illusion. It is this characteristic of astral vision which has led to its sometimes being spoken of as sight in the fourth dimension--a very suggestive and expressive phrase. But in addition to these possible sources of error matters are further complicated by the fact that astral sight cognizes forms of matter which, while still purely physical, are nevertheless invisible under ordinary conditions. Such, for example, are the particles composing the atmosphere, all the various emanations which are always being given out by everything that has life, and also four grades of a still finer order of physical matter which, for want of more distinctive names, must all he described as etheric. The latter form a kind of system by themselves, freely interpenetrating all other physical matter; and the investigation of their vibrations and the manner in which various higher forces affect them would in itself constitute a vast field of deeply interesting study for any man of science who possessed the requisite sight for its examination. Even when our imagination has fully grasped all that is comprehended in what has already been said, we do not yet understand half the complexity of the problem; for besides all these new forms of physical matter we have to deal with the still more numerous and perplexing subdivisions of astral matter. We must note first that every material object, every particle even, has its astral counterpart; and this counterpart is itself not a simple body, but is usually extremely complex, being composed of various kinds of astral matter. In addition to this each living creature is surrounded with an atmosphere of its own, usually called its aura, and in the case of human beings this aura forms of itself a very fascinating branch of study. It is seen as an oval mass of luminous mist of highly complex structure, and from its shape has sometimes been called the auric egg. Theosophical readers will hear with pleasure that even at the early stage of his development at which the pupil begins to acquire this astral sight, he is able to assure himself by direct observation of the accuracy of the teaching given through our great founder, Madame Blavatsky, on the subject of some at least of the seven principles of man. In regarding his fellow-man he no longer sees only his outer appearance; exactly co-extensive with that physical body he clearly distinguishes the etheric double, which in Theosophical literature has usually been called the Linga Sharîra; while the Jîva, as it is absorbed and specialized into Prâna, as it circulates in rosy light throughout the body, as it eventually radiates from the healthy person in its altered form, is also perfectly obvious. Most brilliant and most easily seen of all, perhaps, though belonging to quite a different order of matter--the astral--is the kâmic aura, which expresses by its vivid and ever-changing flashes of colour the different desires which sweep across the man's mind from moment to moment. This is the true astral body. Behind that, and consisting of a finer grade of matter--that of the rûpa levels of Devachan--lies the devachanic body or aura of the lower Manas, whose colours, changing only by slow degrees as the man lives his life, show the disposition and character of the personality; while still higher and infinitely more beautiful, where at all clearly developed, is the living light of the Kârana Sharîra, the aura or vehicle of the higher Manas, which shows the stage of development of the real Ego in its passage from birth to birth. But to see these the pupil must have developed something more than mere astral vision. It will save the student much trouble if he learns at once to regard these auras not as mere emanations, but as the actual manifestation of the Ego on their respective planes--if he understands that it is the auric egg which is the real man, not the physical body which on this plane crystallizes in the middle of it. So long as the reincarnating Ego remains upon the plane which is his true home in the arûpa levels of Devachan, the body which he inhabits is the Kârana Sharîra, but when he descends into the rûpa levels he must, in order to be able to function upon them, clothe himself in their matter; and the matter that he thus attracts to himself furnishes his devachanic or mind-body. Similarly, descending into the astral plane he forms his astral or kâmic body out of its matter, though of course still retaining all the other bodies, and on his still further descent to this lowest plane of all the physical body is formed in the midst of the auric egg, which thus contains the entire man. Fuller accounts of these auras will be found in _Transaction_ No. 18 of the London Lodge, and in a recent article of mine in _The Theosophist_, but enough has been said here to show that as they all occupy the same space (which by the way they share also with the physical health-aura), the finer interpenetrating the grosser, it needs careful study and much practice to enable the neophyte to distinguish clearly at a glance the one from the other. Nevertheless the human aura, or more usually some one part of it only, is not infrequently one of the first purely astral objects seen by the untrained, though in such a case its indications are naturally very likely to be misunderstood. Though the kâmic aura from the brilliancy of its flashes of colour may often be more conspicuous, the nerve-ether and the etheric double are really of a much denser order of matter, being strictly speaking within the limits of the physical plane, though invisible to ordinary sight. It has been the custom in Theosophical literature to describe the Linga Sharîra as the astral counterpart of the human body, the word "astral" having been usually applied to everything beyond the cognition of our physical senses. As closer investigation enables us to be more precise in the use of our terms, however, we find ourselves compelled to admit much of this invisible matter as purely physical, and therefore to define the Linga Sharîra no longer as the astral, but as the etheric double. This seems an appropriate name for it, since it consists of various grades of that matter which scientists call "ether," though this proves on examination to be not a separate substance, as has been generally supposed, but a condition of finer subdivision than the gaseous, to which any kind of physical matter may be reduced by the application of the appropriate forces. The name "etheric double" will therefore for the future be used in Theosophic writings instead of "Linga Sharîra": and this change will not only give us the advantage of an English name which is clearly indicative of the character of the body to which it is applied, but will also relieve us from the frequent misunderstandings which have arisen from the fact that an entirely different signification is attached in all the Oriental books to the name we have hitherto been using. It must not however be supposed that in making this alteration in nomenclature we are in any way putting forward a new conception; we are simply altering, for the sake of greater accuracy, the labels previously attached to certain facts in nature. If we examine with psychic faculty the body of a newly-born child, we shall find it permeated not only by astral matter of every degree of density, but also by the several grades of etheric matter; and if we take the trouble to trace these inner bodies backwards to their origin, we find that it is of the latter that the etheric double--the mould upon which the physical body is built up--is formed by the agents of the LORDS of Karma; while the astral matter has been gathered together by the descending Ego--not of course consciously, but automatically--as he passes through the astral plane. (See _Manual_ No. IV., p. 44.) Into the composition of the etheric double must enter something of all the different grades of etheric matter; but the proportions may vary greatly, and are determined by several factors, such as the race, sub-race, and type of a man, as well as by his individual Karma. When it is remembered that these four subdivisions of matter are made up of numerous combinations, which, in their turn, form aggregations that enter into the composition of the "atom" of the so-called "element" of the chemist, it will be seen that this second principle of man is highly complex, and the number of its possible variations practically infinite, so that, however complicated and unusual a man's Karma may be, the LIPIKA are able to give a mould in accordance with which a body exactly suiting it can be formed. One other point deserves mention in connection with the appearance of physical matter when looked at from the astral plane, and that is that the astral vision possesses the power of magnifying at will the minutest physical particle to any desired size, as though by a microscope, though its magnifying power is enormously greater than that of any microscope ever made or ever likely to be made. The hypothetical molecule and atom postulated by science are therefore visible realities to the occult student, though the latter recognizes them as much more complex in their nature than the scientific man has yet discovered them to be. Here again is a vast field of study of absorbing interest to which a whole volume might readily be devoted; and a scientific investigator who should acquire this astral sight in perfection, would not only find his experiments with ordinary and known phenomena immensely facilitated, but would also see stretching before him entirely new vistas of knowledge needing more than a lifetime for their thorough examination. For example, one curious and very beautiful novelty brought to his notice by the development of this vision would be the existence of other and entirely different colours beyond the limits of the ordinarily visible spectrum, the ultra-red and ultra-violet rays which science has discovered by other means being plainly perceptible to astral sight. We must not, however, allow ourselves to follow these fascinating bye-paths, but must resume our endeavour to give a general idea of the appearance of the astral plane. It will by this time be obvious that though, as above stated, the ordinary objects of the physical world form the background to life on certain levels of the astral plane, yet so much more is seen of their real appearance and characteristics that the general effect differs widely from that with which we are familiar. For the sake of illustration take a rock as an example of the simpler class of objects. When regarded with trained sight it is no mere inert mass of stone. First of all, the whole of the physical matter of the rock is seen instead of a very small part of it; secondly, the vibrations of its physical particles are perceptible; thirdly, it is seen to possess an astral counterpart composed of various grades of astral matter, whose particles are also in constant motion; fourthly, the Jîva or universal life is seen to be circulating through it and radiating from it; fifthly, an aura will be seen surrounding it, though this is, of course, much less extended and varied than in the case of the higher kingdoms; sixthly, its appropriate elemental essence is seen permeating it, ever active but ever fluctuating. In the case of the vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, the complications are naturally much more numerous. It may be objected by some readers that no such complexities as these are described by most of the psychics who occasionally get glimpses of the astral world, nor are they reported at _séances_ by the entities that manifest there; but this is readily accounted for. Few untrained persons on that plane, whether living or dead, see things as they really are until after very long experience; even those who do see fully are often too dazed and confused to understand or remember: and among the very small minority who both see and remember there are hardly any who can translate the recollection into language on our lower plane. Many untrained psychics never examine their visions scientifically at all: they simply obtain an impression which may be quite correct, but may also be half false, or even wholly misleading. All the more probable does the latter hypothesis become when we take into consideration the frequent tricks played by sportive denizens of the other world, against which the untrained person is usually absolutely defenceless. It must also be remembered that the regular inhabitant of the astral plane, whether he be human or elemental, is under ordinary circumstances conscious only of the objects of that plane, physical matter being to him as entirely invisible as is astral matter to the majority of mankind. Since, as before remarked, every physical object has its astral counterpart, which _would_ be visible to him, it may be thought that the distinction is a trivial one, yet it is an essential part of the symmetrical conception of the subject. If, however, an astral entity constantly works through a medium, these finer astral senses may gradually be so coarsened as to become insensible to the higher grades of matter on their own plane, and to include in their purview the physical world as we see it instead; but only the trained visitor from this life, who is fully conscious on both planes, can depend upon seeing both clearly and simultaneously. Be it understood, then, that the complexity exists, and that only when it is fully perceived and scientifically unravelled is there perfect security against deception or mistake. For the seventh or lowest subdivision of the astral plane also this physical world of ours may be said to be the background, though what is seen is only a distorted and partial view of it, since all that is light and good and beautiful seems invisible. It was thus described four thousand years ago in the Egyptian papyrus of the Scribe Ani: "What manner of place is this unto which I have come? It hath no water, it hath no air; it is deep, unfathomable; it is black as the blackest night, and men wander helplessly about therein; in it a man may not live in quietness of heart." For the unfortunate entity on that level it is indeed true that "all the earth is full of darkness and cruel habitations," but it is darkness which radiates from within himself and causes his existence to be passed in a perpetual night of evil and horror--a very real hell, though, like all other hells, entirely of man's own creation. Most students find the investigation of this section an extremely unpleasant task, for there appears to be a sense of density and gross materiality about it which is indescribably loathsome to the liberated astral body, causing it the sense of pushing its way through some black, viscous fluid, while the inhabitants and influences encountered there are also usually exceedingly undesirable. The first, second, and third subdivisions seem much further removed from this physical world, and correspondingly less material. Entities inhabiting these levels lose sight of the earth and its belongings; they are usually deeply self-absorbed, and to a large extent create their own surroundings, though these are not purely subjective, as in Devachan, but on the contrary sufficiently objective to be perceptible to other entities and also to clairvoyant vision. This region is beyond doubt the "summerland" of which we hear so much at spiritualistic _séances_, and the entities who descend from and describe it are probably often speaking the truth as far as their knowledge extends. It is on these planes that "spirits" call into temporary existence their houses, schools, and cities, for these objects are often real enough for the time, though to a clearer sight they may sometimes be pitiably unlike what their delighted creators suppose them to be. Nevertheless, many of the imaginations that take form there are of real though temporary beauty, and a visitor who knew of nothing higher might wander contentedly enough there among forests and mountains, lovely lakes and pleasant flower-gardens, or might even construct such surroundings to suit his own fancies. It may be said in passing that communication is limited on the astral plane by the knowledge of the entity, just as it is here. While a person able to function freely on that plane can communicate with any of the human entities there present more readily and rapidly than on earth, by means of mental impressions, the inhabitants themselves do not usually seem able to exercise this power, but appear to be restricted by limitations similar to those that prevail on earth, though perhaps less rigid. The result of this is that they are found associating, there as here in groups drawn together by common sympathies, beliefs, and language. An account of the scenery of the astral plane would be incomplete without mention of what are commonly called the Records of the Astral Light, the photographic representation of all that has ever happened. These records are really and permanently impressed upon that higher medium called the Âkâsha, and are only reflected in a more or less spasmodic manner in the astral light, so that one whose power of vision does not rise above this plane will be likely to obtain only occasional and disconnected pictures of the past instead of a coherent narrative. But nevertheless pictures of all kinds of past events are constantly being reproduced on the astral plane, and form an important part of the surroundings of the investigator there. INHABITANTS. Having sketched in, however slightly, the background of our picture, we must now attempt to fill in the figures--to describe the inhabitants of the astral plane. The immense variety of these entities makes it exceedingly difficult to arrange and tabulate them. Perhaps the most convenient method will be to divide them into three great classes, the human, the non-human, and the artificial. I. HUMAN. The human denizens of Kâmaloka fall naturally into two groups, the living and the dead, or, to speak more accurately, those who have still a physical body, and those who have not. 1. LIVING. The entities which manifest on the astral plane during physical life may be subdivided into four classes: 1. _The Adept or Chela in the Mâyâvirûpa._ This body is the artificial vehicle used on the four lower or rûpa divisions of the devachanic plane by those capable of functioning there during earth-life, and is formed out of the substance of the mind-body. The pupil is at first unable to construct this for himself, and has therefore to be content with his ordinary astral body composed of the less refined matter of the kâmic aura; but at a certain stage of his progress the Master Himself forms his Mâyâvirûpa for him for the first time, and afterwards instructs and assists him until he can make it for himself easily and expeditiously. When this facility is attained this vehicle is habitually used in place of the grosser astral body, since it permits of instant passage from the astral to the devachanic plane and back again at will, and allows of the use at all times of the higher powers belonging to its own plane. It must be noted, however, that a person travelling in the Mâyâvirûpa is not perceptible to merely astral vision unless he chooses to make himself so by gathering around him particles of astral matter and so creating for himself a temporary body suitable to that plane, though such a temporary creation would resemble the ordinary astral body only as a materialization resembles the physical body; in each case it is a manifestation of a higher entity on a lower plane in order to make himself visible to those whose senses cannot yet transcend that plane. But whether he be in the Mâyâvirûpa or the astral body, the pupil who is introduced to the astral plane under the guidance of a competent teacher has always the fullest possible consciousness there, and is in fact himself, exactly as his friends know him on earth, minus only the four lower principles in the former case and the three lower in the latter, and plus the additional powers and faculties of this higher condition, which enable him to carry on far more easily and far more efficiently on that plane during sleep the Theosophical work which occupies so much of his thought in his waking hours. Whether he will remember fully and accurately on the physical plane what he has done or learnt on the other depends largely, as before stated, upon whether he is able to carry his consciousness without intermission from the one state to the other. 2. _The Psychically-developed Person who is not under the guidance of a Master._ Such a person may or may not be spiritually developed, for the two forms of advancement do not necessarily go together, and when a man is born with psychic powers it is simply the result of efforts made during a previous incarnation, which may have been of the noblest and most unselfish character, or on the other hand may have been ignorant and ill-directed or even entirely unworthy. Such an one will usually be perfectly conscious when out of the body, but for want of proper training is liable to be greatly deceived as to what he sees. He will often be able to range through the different subdivisions of the astral plane almost as fully as persons belonging to the last class; but sometimes he is especially attracted to some one division and rarely travels beyond its influences. His recollection of what he has seen may vary according to the degree of his development through all the stages from perfect clearness to utter distortion or blank oblivion. He will appear always in the astral body, since by the hypothesis he does not know how to form the Mâyâvirûpa. 3. _The Ordinary Person_--that is, the person without any psychic development--floating about in his astral body in a more or less unconscious condition. In deep slumber the higher principles in their astral vehicle almost invariably withdraw from the body, and hover in its immediate neighbourhood, practically almost as much asleep as the latter. In some cases, however, this astral vehicle is less lethargic, and floats dreamily about on the various astral currents, occasionally recognizing other people in a similar condition, and meeting with experiences of all sorts, pleasant and unpleasant, the memory of which, hopelessly confused and often travestied into a grotesque caricature of what really happened, will cause the man to think next morning what a remarkable dream he has had. These extruded astral bodies are almost shapeless and very indefinite in outline in the case of the more backward races and individuals, but as the man develops in intellect and spirituality his floating astral becomes better defined and more closely resembles his physical encasement. Since the psychical faculties of mankind are in course of evolution, and individuals are at all stages of their development, this class naturally melts by imperceptible gradations into the former one. 4. _The Black Magician or his pupil._ This class corresponds closely to the first, except that the development has been for evil instead of good, and the powers acquired are used for purely selfish purposes instead of for the benefit of humanity. Among its lower ranks come members of the negro race who practise the ghastly rites of the Obeah or Voodoo schools, and the medicine-men of many a savage tribe; while higher in intellect, and therefore the more blame-worthy, stand the Tibetan black magicians, who are often, though incorrectly, called by Europeans Dûgpas--a title properly belonging, as is quite correctly explained by Surgeon-Major Waddell in his recent work on _The Buddhism of Tibet_, only to the Bhotanese subdivision of the great Kargyu sect, which is part of what may be called the semi-reformed school of Tibetan Buddhism. The Dûgpas no doubt deal in Tântrik magic to a considerable extent, but the real red-hatted entirely unreformed sect is that of the Ñin-mâ-pa, though far beyond them in a still lower depth lie the Bön-pa--the votaries of the aboriginal religion, who have never accepted any form of Buddhism at all. It must not, however, be supposed that all Tibetan sects except the Gelûgpa are necessarily and altogether evil; a truer view would be that as the rules of other sects permit considerably greater laxity of life and practice, the proportion of self-seekers among them is likely to be much larger than among the stricter reformers. The investigator will occasionally meet on the astral plane students of occultism from all parts of the world (belonging to lodges quite unconnected with the Masters of whom Theosophists know most) who are in many cases most earnest and self-sacrificing seekers after truth. It is noteworthy, however, that all such lodges are at least aware of the existence of the great Himalayan Brotherhood, and acknowledge it as containing among its members the highest Adepts now known on earth. 2. DEAD. To begin with, of course this very word "dead" is an absurd misnomer, as most of the entities classified under this heading are as fully alive as we are ourselves; the term must be understood as meaning those who are for the time unattached to a physical body. They may be subdivided into nine principal classes as follows: 1. _The Nirmânakâya._ This class is just mentioned in order to make the catalogue complete, but it is of course very rarely indeed that so exalted a being manifests himself upon so low a plane as this. When for any reason connected with his sublime work he found it desirable to do so, he would probably create a temporary astral body for the purpose, just as the Adept in the Mâyâvirûpa would do, since the more refined vesture would be invisible to astral sight. Further information about the position and work of the Nirmânakâyas may be found in Madame Blavatsky's _Theosophical Glossary_ and _The Voice of the Silence_. 2. _The Chela awaiting reincarnation._ It has frequently been stated in Theosophical literature that when the pupil reaches a certain stage he is able with the assistance of his Master to escape from the action of what is in ordinary cases the law of nature which carries a human being into the devachanic condition after death, there to receive his due reward in the full working out of all the spiritual forces which his highest aspirations have set in motion while on earth. As the pupil must by the hypothesis be a man of pure life and high thought, it is probable that in his case these spiritual forces will be of abnormal strength, and therefore if he, to use the technical expression, "takes his Devachan," it is likely to be an extremely long one; but if instead of taking it he chooses the Path of Renunciation (thus even at his low level and in his humble way beginning to follow in the footsteps of the Great Master of Renunciation, GAUTAMA BUDDHA Himself), he is able to expend that reserve of force in quite another direction--to use it for the benefit of mankind, and so, infinitesimal though his offering may be, to take his tiny part in the great work of the Nirmânakâyas. By taking this course he no doubt sacrifices centuries of intense bliss, but on the other hand he gains the enormous advantage of being able to continue his life of work and progress without a break. When a pupil who has decided to do this dies, he simply steps out of his body, as he has often done before, and waits upon the astral plane until a suitable reincarnation can be arranged for him by his Master. This being a marked departure from the usual course of procedure, the permission of a very high authority has to be obtained before the attempt can be made; yet, even when this is granted, so strong is the force of natural law, that it is said the pupil must be careful to confine himself strictly to the Kâmaloka while the matter is being arranged, lest if he once, even for a moment, touched the devachanic plane, he might be swept as by an irresistible current into the line of normal evolution again. In some cases, though these are rare, he is enabled to avoid the trouble of a new birth by being placed directly in an adult body whose previous tenant has no further use for it, but naturally it is not often that a suitable body is available. Far more frequently he has to wait on the astral plane, as mentioned before, until the opportunity of a fitting birth presents itself. In the meantime, however, he is losing no time, for he is just as fully himself as ever he was, and is able to go on with the work given him by his Master even more quickly and efficiently than when in the physical body, since he is no longer hampered by the possibility of fatigue. His consciousness is of course quite complete, and he roams at will through all the divisions of the Kâmaloka with equal facility. The chela awaiting reincarnation is by no means one of the common objects of the astral plane, but still he may be met with occasionally, and therefore he forms one of our classes. No doubt as the evolution of humanity proceeds, and an ever-increasing proportion enter upon the Path of Holiness, this class will become more numerous. 3. _The Ordinary Person after death._ Needless to say, this class is millions of times larger than those of which we have spoken, and the character and condition of its members vary within extremely wide limits. Within similarly wide limits may vary also the length of their lives upon the astral plane, for while there are those who pass only a few days or hours there, others remain upon this level for many years and even centuries. A man who has led a good and pure life, whose strongest feelings and aspirations have been unselfish and spiritual, will have no attraction to this plane, and will, if entirely left alone, find little to keep him upon it, or to awaken him into activity even during the comparatively short period of his stay. For it must be understood that after death the true man is withdrawing into himself, and just as at the first step of that process he casts off the physical body, and almost directly afterwards the etheric double and the Prâna, so it is intended that he should as soon as possible cast off also the astral or kâmic body, and pass into the devachanic condition, where alone his spiritual aspirations can find their full fruition. The noble and pure-minded man will be able to do this, for he has subdued all earthly passions during life; the force of his will has been directed into higher channels, and there is therefore but little energy of lower desire to be worked out in Kâmaloka. His stay there will consequently be very short, and most probably he will have little more than a dreamy half-consciousness of existence until he sinks into the sleep during which his higher principles finally free themselves from the kâmic envelope and enter upon the blissful rest of Devachan. For the person who has not as yet entered upon the path of occult development, what has been described is the ideal state of affairs, but naturally it is not attained by all, or even by the majority. The average man has by no means freed himself from the lower desires before death, and it takes a long period of more or less fully conscious life on the astral plane to allow the forces he has generated to work themselves out, and thus release the higher Ego. The body which he occupies during this period is the Kâmarûpa which may be described as a rearrangement of the matter of his astral body; but it is much more defined in outline, and there is also this important difference between the two that while the astral body, if sufficiently awakened during life to function at all freely, would probably be able to visit all, or at any rate most, of the subdivisions of its plane, the Kâmarûpa has not that liberty, but is strictly confined to that level to which its affinities have drawn it. It has, however, a certain kind of progress connected with it, for it generally happens that the forces a man has set in motion during earth-life need for their appropriate working out a sojourn on more divisions than one of the Kâmaloka, and when this is the case a regular sequence is observed, commencing with the lowest; so that when the Kâmarûpa has exhausted its attractions to one level, the greater part of its grosser particles fall away, and it finds itself in affinity with a somewhat higher state of existence. Its specific gravity, as it were, is constantly decreasing, and so it steadily rises from the denser to the lighter strata, pausing only when it is exactly balanced for a time. This is evidently the explanation of a remark frequently made by the entities which appear at _séances_ to the effect that they are about to rise to a higher sphere, from which it will be impossible, or not so easy, to "communicate" through a medium; and it is as a matter of fact true that a person upon the highest subdivision of this plane would find it almost impossible to deal with any ordinary medium. It ought perhaps to be explained here that the definiteness of outline which distinguishes the Kâmarûpa from the astral body is of an entirely different character from that definiteness which was described as a sign of progress in the astral of the man before death. There can never be any possibility of confusion between the two entities, for while in the case of the man attached to a physical body the different orders of astral particles are all inextricably mingled and ceaselessly changing their position, after death their activity is much more circumscribed, since they then sort themselves according to their degree of materiality, and become, as it were, a series of sheaths or shells surrounding him, the grossest being always outside and so dissipating before the others. This dissipation is not necessarily complete, the extent to which it is carried being governed by the power of Manas to free itself from its connection with any given level; and on this also, as will be seen later, the nature of the "shade" depends. The poetic idea of death as a universal leveller is a mere absurdity born of ignorance, for, as a matter of fact, in the vast majority of cases the loss of the physical body makes no difference whatever in the character or intellect of the person, and there are therefore as many different varieties of intelligence among those whom we usually call the dead as among the living. The popular religious teaching of the West as to man's _post-mortem_ adventures has long been so wildly inaccurate that even intelligent people are often terribly puzzled when they recover consciousness in Kâmaloka after death. The condition in which the new arrival finds himself differs so radically from what he has been led to expect that it is no uncommon case for him to refuse at first to believe that he has passed through the portals of death at all; indeed, of so little practical value is our much-vaunted belief in the immortality of the soul that most people consider the very fact that they are still conscious an absolute proof that they have not died. The horrible doctrine of eternal punishment, too, is responsible for a vast amount of most pitiable and entirely groundless terror among those newly arrived in Kâmaloka who in many cases spend long periods of acute mental suffering before they can free themselves from the fatal influence of that hideous blasphemy, and realize that the world is governed not according to the caprice of some demon who gloats over human anguish, but according to a benevolent and wonderfully patient law of evolution. Many members of the class we are considering do not really attain an intelligent appreciation of this fact at all, but drift through their astral interlude in the same aimless manner in which they have spent the physical portion of their lives. Thus in Kâmaloka, exactly as on earth, there are the few who comprehend something of their position and know how to make the best of it, and the many who have not yet acquired that knowledge; and there, just as here, the ignorant are rarely ready to profit by the advice or example of the wise. But of whatever grade the entity's intellect may be, it is always a fluctuating and on the whole a gradually diminishing quantity, for the lower Manas is being drawn in opposite directions by the higher Triad which acts on it from above its level and the Kâma which operates from below; and therefore it oscillates between the two attractions, with an ever-increasing tendency towards the former as the kâmic forces wear themselves out. And here comes in the evil of what is called at _séances_ the "development" of a spirit through a medium--a process the object of which is to intensify the downward pull of the Kâma, to awaken the lower portion of the entity (that being all that can be reached) from the natural and desirable unconsciousness into which it is passing, and thus to prolong unnaturally its existence in the Kâmaloka. The peculiar danger of this will be seen when it is recollected that the real man is all the while steadily withdrawing into himself, and is therefore as time goes on less and less able to influence or guide this lower portion, which nevertheless, until the separation is complete, has the power to generate Karma, and under the circumstances is obviously far more likely to add evil than good to its record. Thus the harm done is threefold: first, the retardation of the separation between Manas and Kâma, and the consequent waste of time and prolongation of the interval between two incarnations; secondly, the extreme probability (almost amounting to certainty) that a large addition will be made to the individual's evil Karma, which will have to be worked out in future births; thirdly, the terrible danger that this abnormal intensification of the force of Kâma may eventually enable the latter to entangle the whole of the lower Manas inextricably, and so cause the entire loss of an incarnation. Though such a result as this last-mentioned is happily uncommon, it is a thing that has happened more than once; and in very many cases where the evil has fallen short of this ultimate possibility, the individual has nevertheless lost much more of his lower Manas by this additional entanglement with Kâma than he would have done if left to withdraw into himself quietly as nature intended. It is not denied that a certain amount of good may occasionally be done to very degraded entities at spiritualistic circles; but the intention of nature obviously is that such assistance should be given, as it frequently is, by occult students who are able to visit the astral plane during earth-life, and have been trained by competent teachers to deal by whatever methods may be most helpful with the various cases which they encounter. It will be readily seen that such a scheme of help, carrying with it as it does the possibility of instant reference to higher authorities in any doubtful case, is infinitely safer than any casual assistance obtained through a medium who may be (and indeed generally is) entirely ignorant of the laws governing spiritual evolution, and who is as liable to the domination of evil or mischievous influences as of good ones. Apart altogether from any question of development through a medium, there is another and much more frequently exercised influence which may seriously retard a disembodied entity on his way to Devachan, and that is the intense and uncontrolled grief of his surviving friends or relatives. It is one among many melancholy results of the terribly inaccurate and even irreligious view that we in the West have for centuries been taking of death, that we not only cause ourselves an immense amount of wholly unnecessary pain over this temporary parting from our loved ones, but we often also do serious injury to those for whom we bear so deep an affection by means of this very regret which we feel so acutely. As one of our ablest writers has recently told us, when our departed brother is sinking peacefully and naturally into pre-devachanic unconsciousness "an awakening may be caused by the passionate sorrow and desires of friends left on earth, and these, violently vibrating the kâmic elements in the embodied persons, may set up vibrations in the Kâmarûpa of the disembodied, and so reach and rouse the lower Manas not yet withdrawn to and reunited with its parent, the spiritual intelligence. Thus it may be roused from its dreamy state to vivid remembrance of the earth-life so lately left. This awakening is often accompanied by acute suffering, and even if this be avoided the natural process of the Triad freeing itself is rudely disturbed, and the completion of its freedom is delayed." (_Death and After_, p. 32.) It would be well if those whose loved ones have passed on before them would learn from these undoubted facts the duty of restraining for the sake of those dear ones a grief which, however natural it may be, is yet in its essence selfish. Not that occult teaching counsels forgetfulness of the dead--far from it; but it does suggest that a man's affectionate remembrance of his departed friend is a force which, if properly directed into the channel of earnest good wishes for his progress towards Devachan and his quiet passage through Kâmaloka might be of real value to him, whereas when wasted in mourning for him and longing to have him back again it is not only useless but harmful. It is with a true instinct that the Hindu religion prescribes its Shrâddha ceremonies and the Catholic Church its prayers for the dead. It sometimes happens, however, that the desire for communication is from the other side, and that an entity of the class we are considering has something which it specially desires to say to those whom it has left behind. Occasionally this message is an important one, such as, for example, an indication of the place where a missing will is concealed; but more often it seems to us quite trivial. Still, whatever it may be, if it is firmly impressed upon the mind of the dead person, it is undoubtedly desirable that he should be enabled to deliver it, as otherwise the anxiety to do so would perpetually draw his consciousness back into the earth-life, and prevent him from passing to higher spheres. In such a case a psychic who can understand him, or a medium through whom he can write or speak, is of real service to him. It should be observed that the reason why he cannot usually write or speak without a medium is that one state of matter can ordinarily act only upon the state next below it, and, as he has now no denser matter in his organism than that of which the Kâmarûpa is composed, he finds it impossible to set up vibrations in the physical substance of the air or to move the physical pencil without borrowing living matter of the intermediate order contained in the etheric double, by means of which an impulse can readily be transferred from the one plane to the other. Now he would be unable to borrow this material from an ordinary person, because such a man's principles would be too closely linked together to be separated by any means likely to be at his command, but the very essence of mediumship is the ready separability of the principles, so from a medium he can draw without difficulty the matter he needs for his manifestation, whatever it may be. When he cannot find a medium or does not understand how to use one he sometimes makes clumsy and blundering endeavours to communicate on his own account, and by the strength of his will he sets elemental forces blindly working, perhaps producing such apparently aimless manifestations as stone-throwing, bell-ringing, etc. It consequently frequently happens that a psychic or medium going to a house where such manifestations are taking place may be able to discover what the entity who produces them is attempting to say or do, and may thus put an end to the disturbance. This would not, however, invariably be the case, as these elemental forces are occasionally set in motion by entirely different causes. But for one entity who is earth-bound by the desire to communicate with his surviving friends, there are thousands who, if left alone, would never think of doing so, although when the idea is suggested to them through a medium they will respond to it readily enough, for since during earth-life their interests were probably centred less in spiritual than in worldly affairs, it is not difficult to re-awaken in them vibrations sympathetic to matters connected with the existence they have so lately left; and this undesirable intensification of earthly thoughts is frequently brought about by the interference of well-meaning but ignorant friends, who endeavour to get communications from the departed through a medium, with the result that just in proportion to their success he is subjected to the various dangers mentioned above. It should also be remembered that the possible injury to the entity itself is by no means all the harm that may accrue from such a practice, for those who habitually attend _séances_ during life are almost certain to develop a tendency to haunt them after death, and so themselves in turn run the risks into which they have so often brought their predecessors. Besides, it is well known that the vital energy necessary to produce physical manifestations is frequently drawn from the sitters as well as from the medium, and the eventual effect on the latter is invariably evil, as is evinced by the large number of such sensitives who have gone either morally or psychically to the bad--some becoming epileptic, some taking to drink, others falling under influences which induced them to stoop to fraud and trickery of all kinds. 4. _The Shade._ When the separation of the principles is complete, the Kâmaloka life of the person is over, and, as before stated, he passes into the devachanic condition. But just as when he dies to this plane he leaves his physical body behind him, so when he dies to the astral plane he leaves his Kâmarûpa behind him. If he has purged himself from all earthly desires during life, and directed all his energies into the channels of unselfish spiritual aspiration, his higher Ego will be able to draw back into itself the whole of the lower Manas which it put forth into incarnation; in that case the Kâmarûpa left behind on the astral plane will be a mere corpse like the abandoned physical body, and it will then come not into this class but into the next. Even in the case of a man of somewhat less perfect life almost the same result may be attained if the forces of lower desire are allowed to work themselves out undisturbed in Kâmaloka but the majority of mankind make but very trifling and perfunctory efforts while on earth to rid themselves of the less elevated impulses of their nature, and consequently doom themselves not only to a greatly prolonged sojourn on the astral plane, but also to what cannot be described otherwise than as a loss of a portion of the lower Manas. This is, no doubt, a very material method of expressing the great mystery of the reflection of the higher Manas in the lower, but since only those who have passed the portals of initiation can fully comprehend this, we must content ourselves with the nearest approximation to exactitude which is possible to us; and as a matter of fact, a very fairly accurate idea of what actually takes place will be obtained by adopting the hypothesis that the mânasic principle sends down a portion of itself into the lower world of physical life at each incarnation, and expects to be able to withdraw it again at the end of the life, enriched by all its varied experiences. The ordinary man, however, usually allows himself to be so pitiably enslaved by all sorts of base desires that a certain portion of this lower Manas becomes very closely interwoven with Kâma, and when the separation takes place, his life in Kâmaloka being over, the mânasic principle has, as it were, to be torn apart, the degraded portion remaining within the Kâmarûpa. This Kâmarûpa then consists of the particles of astral matter from which the lower Manas has not been able to disengage itself, and which therefore retain it captive; for when Manas passes into Devachan these clinging fragments adhere to a portion of it and as it were wrench it away. The proportion of the matter of each level present in the Kâmarûpa will therefore depend on the extent to which Manas has become inextricably entangled with the lower passions. It will be obvious that as Manas in passing from level to level is unable to free itself completely from the matter of each, the Kâmarûpa will show the presence of each grosser kind which has succeeded in retaining its connection with it. Thus comes into existence the class of entity which has been called "The Shade"--an entity, be it observed, which is not in any sense the real individual at all (for he has passed away into Devachan), but nevertheless, not only bears his exact personal appearance, but possesses his memory and all his little idiosyncrasies, and may, therefore, very readily personate him, as indeed it frequently does at _séances_. It is not, of course, conscious of any act of impersonation, for as far as its intellect goes it must necessarily suppose itself to be the individual, but one can imagine the horror and disgust of the friends of the departed, if they could only realize that they had been deceived into accepting as their loved one a mere soulless bundle of all his worst qualities. Its length of life varies according to the amount of the lower Manas which animates it, but as this is all the while in process of fading out, its intellect is a steadily diminishing quantity, though it may possess a great deal of a certain sort of animal cunning; and even quite towards the end of its career it is still able to communicate by borrowing temporary intelligence from the medium. From its very nature it is exceedingly liable to be swayed by all kinds of evil influences, and, having separated from its higher Ego, it has nothing in its constitution capable of responding to good ones. It therefore lends itself readily to various minor purposes of some of the baser sort of black magicians. So much of the matter of the mânasic nature as it possesses gradually disintegrates and returns to its own plane, though not to any individual mind, and thus the shade fades by almost imperceptible gradations into a member of our next class. 5. _The Shell._ This is absolutely the mere astral corpse in process of disintegration, every particle of the lower Manas having left it. It is entirely without any kind of consciousness or intelligence, and is drifted passively about upon the astral currents just as a cloud might be swept in any direction by a passing breeze; but even yet it may be galvanized for a few moments into a ghastly burlesque of life if it happens to come within reach of a medium's aura. Under such circumstances it will still exactly resemble its departed personality in appearance, and may even reproduce to some extent his familiar expressions or handwriting, but it does so merely by the automatic action of the cells of which it is composed, which tend under stimulation to repeat the form of action to which they are most accustomed, and whatever amount of intelligence may lie behind any such manifestation has most assuredly no connection with the original entity, but is lent by the medium or his "guides" for the occasion. It is, however, more frequently temporarily vitalized in quite another manner, which will be described under the next head. It has also the quality of being still blindly responsive to such vibrations--usually of the lowest order--as were frequently set up in it during its last stage of existence as a shade, and consequently persons in whom evil desires or passions are predominant will be very likely, when they attend physical _séances_, to find these intensified and as it were thrown back upon them by the unconscious shells. There is also another variety of corpse which it is necessary to mention under this head, though it belongs to a much earlier stage of man's _post-mortem_ history. It has been stated above that after the death of the physical body the Kâmarûpa is comparatively quickly formed, and the etheric double cast off--this latter body being destined to slow disintegration, precisely as is the kâmarûpic shell at a later stage of the proceedings. This etheric shell, however, is not to be met with drifting aimlessly about, as is the variety with which we have hitherto been dealing; on the contrary, it remains within a few yards of the decaying physical body, and since it is readily visible to any one even slightly sensitive, it is accountable for many of the commonly current stories of churchyard ghosts. A psychically developed person passing one of our great cemeteries will see hundreds of these bluish-white, misty forms hovering over the graves where are laid the physical vestures which they have recently left; and as they, like their lower counterparts, are in various stages of disintegration, the sight is by no means a pleasant one. This also, like the other kind of shell, is entirely devoid of consciousness and intelligence; and though it may under certain circumstances be galvanized into a very horrible form of temporary life, this is possible only by means of some of the most loathsome rites of one of the worst forms of black magic, about which the less said the better. It will thus be seen that in the successive stages of his progress from earth-life to Devachan, man casts off and leaves to slow disintegration no less than three corpses--the physical body, the etheric double and the Kâmarûpa--all of which are by degrees resolved into their constituent elements and utilized anew on their respective planes by the wonderful chemistry of nature. 6. _The Vitalized Shell._ This entity ought not, strictly speaking, to be classified under the head "human" at all, since it is only its outer vesture, the passive, senseless shell, that was once an appanage of humanity; such life, intelligence, desire and will as it may possess are those of the artificial elemental animating it, and that, though in terrible truth a creation of man's evil thought, is not itself human. It will therefore perhaps be better to deal with it more fully under its appropriate class among the artificial entities, as its nature and genesis will be more readily comprehensible by the time that part of our subject is reached. Let it suffice here to mention that it is always a malevolent being--a true tempting demon, whose evil influence is limited only by the extent of its power. Like the shade, it is frequently used to further the horrible purposes of the Voodoo and Obeah forms of magic. Some writers have spoken of it under the name "elementary," but as that title has at one time or other been used for almost every variety of _post-mortem_ entity, it has become so vague and meaningless that it is perhaps better to avoid it. 7. _The Suicide, or victim of sudden death._ It will be readily understood that a man who is torn from physical life hurriedly while in full health and strength, whether by accident or suicide, finds himself upon the astral plane under conditions differing considerably from those which surround one who dies either from old age or from disease. In the latter case the hold of earthly desires upon the entity is more or less weakened, and probably the very grossest particles are already got rid of, so that the Kâmarûpa will most likely form itself on the sixth or fifth subdivision of the Kâmaloka, or perhaps even higher; the principles have been gradually prepared for separation, and the shock is therefore not so great. In the case of the accidental death or suicide none of these preparations have taken place, and the withdrawal of the principles from their physical encasement has been very aptly compared to the tearing of the stone out of an unripe fruit; a great deal of the grossest kind of astral matter still clings around the personality, which is consequently held in the seventh or lowest subdivision of the Kâmaloka. This has already been described as anything but a pleasant abiding-place, yet it is by no means the same for all those who are compelled for a time to inhabit it. Those victims of sudden death whose earth-lives have been pure and noble have no affinity for this plane, and the time of their sojourn upon it is passed, to quote from an early Letter on this subject, either "in happy ignorance and full oblivion, or in a state of quiet slumber, a sleep full of rosy dreams ". But on the other hand, if their earth-lives have been low and brutal, selfish and sensual, they will, like the suicides, be conscious to the fullest extent in this undesirable region; and they are liable to develop into terribly evil entities. Inflamed with all kinds of horrible appetites which they can no longer satisfy directly now they are without a physical body, they gratify their loathsome passions vicariously through a medium or any sensitive person whom they can obsess; and they take a devilish delight in using all the arts of delusion which the astral plane puts in their power in order to lead others into the same excesses which have proved so fatal to themselves. Quoting again from the same letter:--"These are the Pisâchas the _incubi_ and _succubæ_ of mediæval writers--demons of thirst and gluttony, of lust and avarice, of intensified craft, wickedness and cruelty, provoking their victims to horrible crimes, and revelling in their commission". From this class and the last are drawn the tempters--the devils of ecclesiastical literature; but their power fails utterly before purity of mind and purpose; they can do nothing with a man unless he has first encouraged in himself the vices into which they seek to draw him. One whose psychic sight has been opened will often see crowds of these unfortunate creatures hanging round butchers' shops, public-houses, or other even more disreputable places--wherever the gross influences in which they delight are to be found, and where they encounter men and women still in the flesh who are like-minded with themselves. For such an entity as one of these to meet with a medium with whom he is in affinity is indeed a terrible misfortune; not only does it enable him to prolong enormously his dreadful life in Kâmaloka but it renews for perhaps an indefinite period his power to generate evil Karma, and so prepare for himself a future incarnation of the most degraded character, besides running the risk of losing a large portion or even the whole of the lower Manas. On this lowest level of the astral plane he must stay at least as long as his earthly life would have lasted if it had not been prematurely cut short; and if he is fortunate enough _not_ to meet with a sensitive through whom his passions can be vicariously gratified, the unfulfilled desires will gradually burn themselves out, and the suffering caused in the process will probably go far towards working off the evil Karma of the past life. The position of the suicide is further complicated by the fact that his rash act has enormously diminished the power of the higher Ego to withdraw its lower portion into itself, and therefore has exposed him to manifold and great additional dangers: but it must be remembered that the guilt of suicide differs considerably according to its circumstances, from the morally blameless act of Seneca or Socrates through all degrees down to the heinous crime of the wretch who takes his own life in order to escape from the entanglements into which his villainy has brought him, and of course the position after death varies accordingly. It should be noted that this class, as well as the shades and the vitalized shells, are all what may be called minor vampires; that is to say, whenever they have the opportunity they prolong their existence by draining away the vitality from human beings whom they find themselves able to influence. This is why both medium and sitters are often so weak and exhausted after a physical _séance_. A student of occultism is taught how to guard himself from their attempts, but without that knowledge it is difficult for one who puts himself in their way to avoid being more or less laid under contribution by them. 8. _The Vampire and Werewolf._ There remain two even more awful but happily very rare possibilities to be mentioned before this part of our subject is completed, and though they differ very widely in many ways we may yet perhaps group them together, since they have in common the qualities of unearthly horror and of extreme rarity--the latter arising from the fact that they are really relics of earlier races. We of the fifth root race ought to have evolved beyond the possibility of meeting such a ghastly fate as is indicated by either of the two headings of this sub-section, and we have so nearly done it that these creatures are commonly regarded as mere mediæval fables; yet there _are_ examples to be found occasionally even now, though chiefly in countries where there is a considerable strain of fourth-race blood, such as Russia or Hungary. The popular legends about them are probably often considerably exaggerated, but there is nevertheless a terribly serious sub-stratum of truth beneath the eerie stories which pass from mouth to mouth among the peasantry of Central Europe. The general characteristics of such tales are too well known to need more than a passing reference; a fairly typical specimen of the vampire story, though it does not profess to be more than the merest fiction, is Sheridan le Fanu's _Carmilla_, while a very remarkable account of an unusual form of this creature is to be found in _Isis Unveiled_, vol. i., p. 454. All readers of Theosophical literature are familiar with the idea that it is possible for a man to live a life so absolutely degraded and selfish, so utterly wicked and brutal, that the whole of his lower Manas may become entirely immeshed in Kâma, and finally separated from its spiritual source in the higher Ego. Some students even seem to think that such an occurrence is quite a common one, and that we may meet scores of such "soulless men," as they have been called, in the street every day of our lives, but this, happily, is untrue. To attain the appalling preeminence in evil which thus involves the entire loss of a personality and the weakening of the developing individuality behind, a man must stifle every gleam of unselfishness or spirituality, and must have absolutely no redeeming point whatever; and when we remember how often, even in the worst of villains, there is to be found something not wholly bad, we shall realize that the abandoned personalities must always be a very small minority. Still, comparatively few though they be, they do exist, and it is from their ranks that the still rarer vampire is drawn. The lost entity would very soon after death find himself unable to stay in Kâmaloka, and would be irresistibly drawn in full consciousness into "his own place," the mysterious eighth sphere, there slowly to disintegrate after experiences best left undescribed. If, however, he perishes by suicide or sudden death, he may under certain circumstances, especially if he knows something of black magic, hold himself back from that awful fate by a death in life scarcely less awful--the ghastly existence of the vampire. Since the eighth sphere cannot claim him until after the death of the body, he preserves it in a kind of cataleptic trance by the horrible expedient of the transfusion into it of blood drawn from other human beings by his semi-materialized Kâmarûpa, and thus postpones his final destiny by the commission of wholesale murder. As popular "superstition" again quite rightly supposes, the easiest and most effectual remedy in such a case is to exhume and burn the body, thus depriving the creature of his _point d'appui_. When the grave is opened the body usually appears quite fresh and healthy, and the coffin is not infrequently filled with blood. Of course in countries where cremation is the custom vampirism of this sort is impossible. The Werewolf, though equally horrible, is the product of a somewhat different Karma, and indeed ought perhaps to have found a place under the first instead of the second division of the human inhabitants of Kâmaloka, since it is always during a man's lifetime that he first manifests under this form. It invariably implies some knowledge of magical arts--sufficient at any rate to be able to project the astral body. When a perfectly cruel and brutal man does this, there are certain circumstances under which the body may be seized upon by other astral entities and materialized, not into the human form, but into that of some wild animal--usually the wolf; and in that condition it will range the surrounding country killing other animals, and even human beings, thus satisfying not only its own craving for blood, but that of the fiends who drive it on. In this case, as so often with the ordinary astral body, any wound inflicted upon the animal materialization will be reproduced upon the human physical body by the extraordinary phenomenon of repercussion; though after the death of that physical body the Kâmarûpa, which will probably continue to appear in the same form, will be less vulnerable. It will then, however, he also less dangerous, as unless it can find a suitable medium it will be unable to materialize fully. It has been the fashion of this century to scoff at what are called the foolish superstitions of the ignorant peasantry; but, as in the above cases, so in many others the occult student finds on careful examination that obscure or forgotten truths of nature lie behind what at first sight appears mere nonsense, and he learns to be cautious in rejecting as well as cautious in accepting. Intending explorers of the astral plane need have little fear of encountering the very unpleasant creatures described under this head, for, as before stated, they are even now extremely rare, and as time goes on their number will happily steadily diminish. In any case their manifestations are usually restricted to the immediate neighbourhood of their physical bodies, as might be supposed from their extremely material nature. 9. _The Black Magician or his pupil._ This person corresponds at the other extremity of the scale to our second class of departed entities, the chela awaiting reincarnation, but in this case, instead of obtaining permission to adopt an unusual method of progress, the man is defying the natural process of evolution by maintaining himself in Kâmaloka by magical arts--sometimes of the most horrible nature. It would be easy to make various subdivisions of this class, according to their objects, their methods, and the possible duration of their existence on this plane, but as they are by no means fascinating objects of study, and all that an occult student wishes to know about them is how to avoid them, it will probably be more interesting to pass on to the examination of another part of our subject. It may, however, be just mentioned that every such human entity which prolongs its life thus on the astral plane beyond its natural limit invariably does so at the expense of others, and by the absorption of their life in some form or another. II. NON-HUMAN. Though it might have been thought fairly obvious even to the most casual glance that many of the terrestrial arrangements of nature which affect us most nearly have not been designed exclusively with a view to our comfort or even our ultimate advantage, it was yet probably unavoidable that the human race, at least in its childhood, should imagine that this world and everything it contains existed solely for its own use and benefit. Undoubtedly we ought by this time to have grown out of that infantile delusion and realized our proper position and the duties that attach to it; that most of us have not yet done so is shown in a dozen ways in our daily life notably by the atrocious cruelty habitually displayed towards the animal kingdom under the name of sport by many who probably consider themselves highly civilized people. Of course the veriest tyro in the holy science of occultism knows that all life is sacred, and that without universal compassion there is no true progress; but it is only as he advances in his studies that he discovers how manifold evolution is, and how comparatively small a place humanity really fills in the economy of nature. It becomes clear to him that just as earth, air and water support myriads of forms of life which, though invisible to the ordinary eye, are revealed to us by the microscope, so the higher planes connected with our earth have an equally dense population of whose existence we are ordinarily completely unconscious. As his knowledge increases he becomes more and more certain that in one way or another the utmost use is being made of every possibility of evolution, and that wherever it seems to us that in nature force or opportunity is being wasted or neglected, it is not the scheme of the universe that is in fault, but our ignorance of its method and intention. For the purposes of our present consideration of the non-human inhabitants of the astral plane it will be best to leave out of consideration those very early forms of the universal life which are evolving, in a manner of which we can have little comprehension, through the successive encasement of atoms, molecules and cells: for if we commence at the lowest of what are usually called the elemental kingdoms, we shall even then have to group together under this general heading an enormous number of inhabitants of the astral plane upon whom it will be possible to touch only very slightly, as anything like a detailed account of them would swell this manual to the dimensions of an encyclopædia. The most convenient method of arranging the non-human entities will perhaps be in four classes it being understood that in this case the class is not, as previously, a comparatively small subdivision, but usually a great kingdom of nature at least as large and varied as, say, the animal or vegetable kingdom. Some of these rank considerably below humanity, some are our equals, and others again rise far above us in goodness and power. Some belong to our scheme of evolution--that is to say, they either have been or will be men like ourselves; others are evolving on entirely distinct lines of their own. Before proceeding to consider them it is necessary, in order to avoid the charge of incompleteness, to mention that in this branch of the subject two reservations have been made. First, no reference is made to the occasional appearances of very high Adepts from other planets of the solar system and of even more august Visitors from a still greater distance, since such matters cannot fitly be described in an essay for general reading; and besides it is practically inconceivable, though of course theoretically possible, that such glorified Beings should ever need to manifest Themselves on a plane so low as the astral. If for any reason They should wish to do so, the body appropriate to the plane would be temporarily created out of astral matter belonging to this planet, just as in the case of the Nirmânakâya. Secondly, quite outside of and entirely unconnected with the four classes into which we are dividing this section, there are two other great evolutions which at present share the use of this planet with humanity; but about them it is forbidden to give any particulars at this stage of the proceedings, as it is not apparently intended under ordinary circumstances either that they should be conscious of man's existence or man of theirs. If we ever do come into contact with them it will most probably be on the purely physical plane, for in any case their connection with our astral plane is of the slightest, since the only possibility of their appearance there depends upon an extremely improbable accident in an act of ceremonial magic, which fortunately only a few of the most advanced sorcerers know how to perform. Nevertheless, that improbable accident has happened at least once, and may happen again, so that but for the prohibition above mentioned it would have been necessary to include them in our list. 1. _The Elemental Essence belonging to our own evolution._ Just as the name "elementary" has been given indiscriminately by various writers to any or all of man's possible _post-mortem_ conditions, so this word "elemental" has been used at different times to mean any or all non-human spirits, from the most godlike of the Devas down through every variety of nature-spirit to the formless essence which pervades the kingdoms lying behind the mineral, until after reading several books the student becomes absolutely bewildered by the contradictory statements made on the subject. For the purposes of this treatise it will perhaps simplify matters to restrict its meaning to the last-mentioned class only, and use it to denote the three great kingdoms which precede the mineral in the order of our evolution. It may be remembered that in one of the earlier letters from an Adept teacher these elemental kingdoms are referred to, and the statement is made that the first and second cannot readily be comprehended except by an Initiate. Fortunately this, the most incomprehensible part of the vast subject, does not come within the province of this manual, as those first and second elemental kingdoms exist and function respectively upon the arûpa and rûpa levels of the devachanic plane. We have consequently to deal for the moment only with kingdom No. 3--the one next before the mineral; though even that will be found quite sufficiently complicated, as will be understood when it is stated that it contains just over two thousand four hundred perfectly distinct varieties of elemental essence, each of which the pupil who wishes to attain perfect control of the astral forces must learn not only to distinguish instantly at sight, but to deal with in its own special method and no other. Of course phenomena of various sorts may be, and constantly are, produced by those who are able to wield only one or two of these forces, but the Adept prefers to take the additional trouble requisite to understand all of them thoroughly, and uses in every case precisely the most appropriate force or combination of forces, so that his object may be attained with scientific accuracy and with the least possible expenditure of energy. To speak, as we so often do, of _an_ elemental in connection with the group we are now considering is somewhat misleading, for strictly speaking there is no such thing. What we find is a vast store of elemental essence, wonderfully sensitive to the most fleeting human thought, responding with inconceivable delicacy in an infinitesimal fraction of a second to a vibration set up in it even by an entirely unconscious exercise of human will or desire. But the moment that by the influence of such thought or exercise of will it is moulded into a living force--into something that may correctly be described as _an_ elemental--it at once ceases to belong to the category we are discussing, and becomes a member of the artificial class. Even then its separate existence is usually of the most evanescent character, and as soon as its impulse has worked itself out it sinks back into the undifferentiated mass of that particular subdivision of elemental essence from which it came. It would be tedious to attempt to catalogue these subdivisions, and indeed even if a list of them were made it would be unintelligible except to the practical student who can call them up before him and compare them. Some idea of the leading lines of classification can, however, be grasped without much trouble, and may prove of interest. First comes the broad division which has given the elementals their name--the classification according to the kind of matter which they inhabit. Here, as usual, the septenary character of our evolution shows itself, for there are seven such chief groups, related respectively to the seven states of physical matter--to "earth, water, air and fire," or to translate from mediæval symbolism to modern accuracy of expression, to the solid, liquid, gaseous and etheric conditions. It has long been the custom to pity and despise the ignorance of the alchemists of the middle ages, because they gave the title of "elements" to substances which modern chemistry has discovered to be compounds; but in speaking of them thus slightingly we have done them great injustice, for their knowledge on this subject was really wider, not narrower, than ours. They may or may not have catalogued all the sixty or seventy substances which we now call elements; but they certainly did not apply that name to them, for their occult studies had taught them that in that sense of the word there was but one element, Âkâsha itself, of which these and all other forms of matter were but modifications--a truth which some of the greatest chemists of the present day are just beginning to suspect. The fact is that in this particular case our despised forefathers' analysis went several steps deeper than our own. They understood and were able to observe the ether, which modern science can only postulate as a necessity for its theories; they were aware that it consists of physical matter in four entirely distinct states above the gaseous--a fact which has not yet been re-discovered. They knew that all physical objects consisted of matter in one or other of these seven states, and that into the composition of every organic body all seven entered in a greater or lesser degree; hence all their talk of fiery and watery humours, or "elements," which seems so grotesque to us. It is obvious that they used the latter word simply as a synonym for "constituent parts," without in the least degree intending it to connote the idea of substances which could not be further reduced. They knew also that each of these orders of matter served as an Upâdhi or basis of manifestation for a great class of evolving monadic essence, and so they christened the essence "elemental". What we have to try to realize, then, is that in every particle of solid matter, so long as it remains in that condition, there resides, to use the picturesque phraseology of mediæval students, an earth elemental--that is, a certain amount of the living elemental essence appropriate to it, while equally in every particle of matter in the liquid, gaseous, or etheric states, the water, air, and fire "elementals" respectively inhere. It will be observed that this first broad division of the third of the elemental kingdoms is, so to speak, a horizontal one--that is to say, its respective classes stand in the relation of steps, each somewhat less material than the one below it, which ascends into it by almost imperceptible degrees; and it is easy to understand how each of these classes may again be divided horizontally into seven, since there are obviously many degrees of density among solids, liquids and gases. There is, however, what may be described as a perpendicular division also, and this is somewhat more difficult to comprehend, especially as great reserve is always maintained by occultists as to some of the facts which would be involved in a fuller explanation of it. Perhaps the clearest way to put what it is permissible to say on the subject will be to state that in each of the horizontal classes and subclasses will be found seven perfectly distinct types of elemental, the difference between them being no longer a question of degree of materiality, but rather of character and affinities. Each of these types so reacts upon the others that, though it is impossible for them ever to interchange their essence, in each of them seven sub-types will be found to exist, distinguished by the colouring given to their original peculiarity by the influence which sways them most readily. It will at once be seen that this perpendicular division and subdivision differs entirely in its character from the horizontal, in that it is far more permanent and fundamental; for while it is the evolution of the elemental kingdom to pass with almost infinite slowness through its various horizontal classes and subclasses in succession, and thus to belong to them all in turn, this is not so with regard to the types and sub-types, which remain unchangeable all the way through. A point which must never be lost sight of in endeavouring to understand this elemental evolution is that it is taking place on what is sometimes called the downward curve of the arc; that is to say, it is progressing _towards_ the complete entanglement in matter which we witness in the mineral kingdom, instead of _away_ from it, as is most other evolution of which we know anything; and this fact sometimes gives it a curiously inverted appearance in our eyes until we thoroughly grasp its object. In spite of these manifold subdivisions, there are certain properties which are possessed in common by all varieties of this strange living essence; but even these are so entirely different from any with which we are familiar on the physical plane that it is exceedingly difficult to explain them to those who cannot themselves see it in action. Let it be premised, then, that when any portion of this essence remains for a few moments entirely unaffected by any outside influence (a condition, by the way, which is hardly ever realized) it is absolutely without any definite form of its own, though even then its motion is rapid and ceaseless; but on the slightest disturbance, set up perhaps by some passing thought-current, it flashes into a bewildering confusion of restless, ever-changing shapes, which form, rush about, and disappear with the rapidity of the bubbles on the surface of boiling water. These evanescent shapes, though generally those of living creatures of some sort, human or otherwise, no more express the existence of separate entities in the essence than do the equally changeful and multiform waves raised in a few moments on a previously smooth lake by a sudden squall. They seem to be mere reflections from the vast storehouse of the astral light, yet they have usually a certain appropriateness to the character of the thought-stream which calls them into existence, though nearly always with some grotesque distortion, some terrifying or unpleasant aspect about them. A question naturally arises in the mind here as to what intelligence it is that is exerted in the selection of an appropriate shape or its distortion when selected. We are not dealing with the more powerful and longer-lived artificial elemental created by a strong definite thought, but simply with the result produced by the stream of half-conscious, involuntary thoughts which the majority of mankind allow to flow idly through their brains, so that the intelligence is obviously not derived from the mind of the thinker; and we certainly cannot credit the elemental essence itself, which belongs to a kingdom further from individualization even than the mineral, with any sort of awakening of the mânasic quality. Yet it does possess a marvellous adaptability which often seems to come very near it, and it is no doubt this property that caused elementals to be described in one of our early books as "the semi-intelligent creatures of the astral light". We shall find further evidence of this power when we come to consider the case of the artificial class. When we read of a good or evil elemental, it must always be either an artificial entity or one of the many varieties of nature spirits that is meant, for the elemental kingdoms proper do not admit of any such conceptions as good and evil, though there is undoubtedly a sort of bias or tendency permeating nearly all their subdivisions which operates to render them rather hostile than friendly towards man, as every neophyte knows, for in most cases his very first impression of the astral plane is of the presence all around him of vast hosts of Protean spectres who advance upon him in threatening guise, but always retire or dissipate harmlessly if boldly faced. It is to this curious tendency that the distorted or unpleasant aspect above mentioned must be referred, and mediæval writers tell us that man has only himself to thank for its existence. In the golden age before this Kaliyuga men were on the whole less selfish and more spiritual, and then the "elementals" were friendly, though now they are no longer so because of man's indifference to, and want of sympathy with, other living beings. From the wonderful delicacy with which the essence responds to the faintest action of our minds or desires it seems clear that this elemental kingdom as a whole is very much what the collective thought of humanity makes it. Any one who will think for a moment how far from elevating the action of that collective thought is likely to be at the present time will see little reason to wonder that we reap as we have sown, and that this essence, which has no power of perception, but only blindly receives and reflects what is projected upon it, should usually exhibit unfriendly characteristics. There can be no doubt that in later races or rounds, when mankind as a whole has evolved to a much higher level, the elemental kingdoms will be influenced by the changed thought which continually impinges upon them, and we shall find them no longer hostile, but docile and helpful, as we are told that the animal kingdom will also be. Whatever may have happened in the past, it is evident that we may look forward to a very passable "golden age" in the future, if we can arrive at a time when the majority of men will be noble and unselfish, and the forces of nature will co-operate willingly with them. The fact that we are so readily able to influence the elemental kingdoms at once shows us that we have a responsibility towards them for the manner in which we use that influence; indeed, when we consider the conditions under which they exist, it is obvious that the effect produced upon them by the thoughts and desires of all intelligent creatures inhabiting the same world with them must have been calculated upon in the scheme of our system as a factor in their evolution. In spite of the consistent teaching of all the great religions, the mass of mankind is still utterly regardless of its responsibility on the thought-plane; if a man can flatter himself that his words and deeds have been harmless to others, he believes that he has done all that can be required of him, quite oblivious of the fact that he may for years have been exercising a narrowing and debasing influence on the minds of those about him, and filling surrounding space with the unlovely creations of a sordid mind. A still more serious aspect of this question will come before us when we discuss the artificial elemental; but in regard to the essence it will be sufficient to state that we undoubtedly have the power to accelerate or delay its evolution according to the use which consciously or unconsciously we are continually making of it. It would be hopeless within the limits of such a treatise as this to attempt to explain the different uses to which the forces inherent in the manifold varieties of this elemental essence can be put by one who has been trained in their management. The vast majority of magical ceremonies depend almost entirely upon its manipulation, either directly by the will of the magician, or by some more definite astral entity evoked by him for that purpose. By its means nearly all the physical phenomena of the _séance_-room are produced, and it is also the agent in most cases of stone-throwing or bell-ringing in haunted houses, such results as these latter being brought about either by blundering efforts to attract attention made by some earth-bound human entity, or by the mere mischievous pranks of some of the minor nature-spirits belonging to our third class. But the "elemental" must never be thought of as itself a prime mover; it is simply a latent force, which needs an external power to set it in motion. It may be noted that although all classes of the essence have the power of reflecting images from the astral light as described above, there are varieties which receive certain impressions much more readily than others--which have, as it were, favourite forms of their own into which upon disturbance they would naturally flow unless absolutely forced into some other, and such shapes tend to be a trifle less evanescent than usual. Before leaving this branch of the subject it may be well to warn the student against the confusion of thought into which some have fallen through failing to distinguish this elemental essence which we have been considering from the monadic essence manifesting through the mineral kingdom. It must be borne in mind that monadic essence at one stage of its evolution towards humanity manifests through the elemental kingdom, while at a later stage it manifests through the mineral kingdom: but the fact that two bodies of monadic essence at these different stages are in manifestation at the same moment, and that one of these manifestations (the earth elemental) occupies the same space as and inhabits the other (say a rock), in no way interferes with the evolution either of one or the other, nor does it imply any relation between the bodies of monadic essence lying within both. The rock will also be permeated by its appropriate variety of the omnipresent Jîva or life principle, but that of course is again totally distinct from either of the essences above mentioned. 2. _The Kâmarûpas of Animals._ This is an extremely large class, yet it does not occupy a particularly important position on the astral plane, since its members usually stay there but a very short time. The vast majority of animals have not as yet acquired permanent individualization, and when one of them dies the monadic essence which has been manifesting through it flows back again into the particular stratum whence it came, bearing with it such advancement or experience as has been attained during that life. It is not, however, able to do this quite immediately; the kâmic aura of the animal forms itself into a Kâmarûpa, just as in man's case, and the animal has a real existence on the astral plane, the length of which, though never great, varies according to the intelligence which it has developed. In most cases it does not seem to be more than dreamily conscious, but appears perfectly happy. The comparatively few domestic animals who have already attained individuality, and will therefore be reborn no more as animals in this world, have a much longer and much more vivid life in Kâmaloka than their less advanced fellows, and at the end of it sink gradually into a subjective condition, which is likely to last for a very considerable period. One interesting subdivision of this class consists of the Kâmarûpas of those anthropoid apes mentioned in _The Secret Doctrine_ (vol. i, p. 184) who are already individualized, and will be ready to take human incarnation in the next round, or perhaps some of them even sooner. 3. _Nature-Spirits of all Kinds._ So many and so varied are the subdivisions of this class that to do them anything like justice one would need to devote a separate treatise to this subject alone. Some characteristics, however, they all have in common, and it will be sufficient here to try to give some idea of those. To begin with, we have to realize that we are here dealing with entities which differ radically from all that we have hitherto considered. Though we may rightly classify the elemental essence and the animal Kâmarûpa as non-human, the monadic essence which manifests itself through them will, nevertheless, in the fulness of time, evolve to the level of manifesting itself through some future humanity comparable to our own, and if we were able to look back through countless ages on our own evolution in previous manvantaras, we should find that that which is now ourselves has passed on its upward path through similar stages. That, however, is not the case with the vast kingdom of nature-spirits; they neither have been, nor ever will be, members of a humanity such as ours; their line of evolution is entirely different, and their only connection with us consists in our temporary occupancy of the same planet. Of course since we are neighbours for the time being we owe neighbourly kindness to one another when we happen to meet, but our lines of development differ so widely that each can do but little for the other. Many writers have included these spirits among the elementals, and indeed they are the elementals (or perhaps, to speak more accurately, the animals) of a higher evolution. Though much more highly developed than our elemental essence, they have yet certain characteristics in common with it; for example, they also are divided into seven great classes, inhabiting respectively the same seven states of matter already mentioned as permeated by the corresponding varieties of the essence. Thus, to take those which are most readily comprehensible to us, there are spirits of the earth, water, air, and fire (or ether)--definite intelligent astral entities residing and functioning in each of those media. It may be asked how it is possible for any kind of creature to inhabit the solid substance of a rock, or of the crust of the earth. The answer is that since the nature-spirits are formed of astral matter, the substance of the rock is no hindrance to their motion or their vision, and furthermore physical matter in its solid state is their natural element--the only one to which they are accustomed and in which they feel at home. The same is of course true of those who live in water, air or ether. In mediæval literature, these earth-spirits are often called gnomes, while the water-spirits are spoken of as ûndinés, the air-spirits as sylphs, and the ether-spirits as salamanders. In popular language they are known by many names--fairies, pixies, elves, brownies, peris, djinns, trolls, satyrs, fauns, kobolds, imps, goblins, good people, etc.--some of these titles being applied only to one variety, and others indiscriminately to all. Their forms are many and various, but most frequently human in shape and somewhat diminutive in size. Like almost all inhabitants of the astral plane, they are able to assume any appearance at will, but they undoubtedly have definite forms of their own, or perhaps we should rather say favourite forms, which they wear when they have no special object in taking any other. Of course under ordinary conditions they are not visible to physical sight at all, but they have the power of making themselves so by materialization when they wish to be seen. There are an immense number of subdivisions or races among them, and individuals of these subdivisions differ in intelligence and disposition precisely as human beings do. The great majority of them apparently prefer to avoid man altogether; his habits and emanations are distasteful to them, and the constant rush of astral currents set up by his restless, ill-regulated desires disturbs and annoys them. On the other hand instances are not wanting in which nature-spirits have as it were made friends with human beings and offered them such assistance as lay in their power, as in the well-known stories told of the Scotch brownies or of the fire-lighting fairies mentioned in spiritualistic literature. This helpful attitude, however, is comparatively rare, and in most cases when they come in contact with man they either show indifference or dislike, or else take an impish delight in deceiving him and playing childish tricks upon him. Many a story illustrative of this curious characteristic may be found among the village gossip of the peasantry in almost any lonely mountainous district, and any one who has been in the habit of attending _séances_ for physical phenomena will recollect instances of practical joking and silly though usually good-natured horseplay, which always indicate the presence of some of the lower orders of the nature-spirits. They are greatly assisted in their tricks by the wonderful power which they possess of casting a glamour over those who yield themselves to their influence, so that such victims for the time see and hear only what these fairies impress upon them, exactly as the mesmerized subject sees, hears, feels and believes whatever the magnetizer wishes. The nature-spirits, however, have not the mesmerizer's power of dominating the human will, except in the case of quite unusually weak-minded people, or of those who allow themselves to fall into such a condition of helpless terror that their will is temporarily in abeyance; they cannot go beyond deception of the senses, but of that art they are undoubted masters, and cases are not wanting in which they have cast their glamour over a considerable number of people at once. It is by invoking their aid in the exercise of this peculiar power that some of the most wonderful feats of the Indian jugglers are performed--the entire audience being in fact hallucinated and made to imagine that they see and hear a whole series of events which have not really taken place at all. We might almost look upon the nature-spirits as a kind of astral humanity, but for the fact that none of them--not even the highest possess a permanent reincarnating individuality. Apparently therefore one point in which their line of evolution differs from ours is that a much greater proportion of intelligence is developed before permanent individualization takes place; but of the stages through which they have passed, and those through which they have yet to pass, we can know little. The life-periods of the different subdivisions vary greatly, some being quite short, others much longer than our human lifetime. We stand so entirely outside such a life as theirs that it is impossible for us to understand much about its conditions; but it appears on the whole to be a simple, joyous, irresponsible kind of existence, much such as a party of happy children might lead among exceptionally favourable physical surroundings. Though tricky and mischievous, they are rarely malicious unless provoked by some unwarrantable intrusion or annoyance; but as a body they also partake to some extent of the universal feeling of distrust for man, and they generally seem inclined to resent somewhat the first appearance of a neophyte on the astral plane, so that he usually makes their acquaintance under some unpleasant or terrifying form. If, however, he declines to be frightened by any of their freaks, they soon accept him as a necessary evil and take no further notice of him, while some among them may even after a time become friendly and manifest pleasure on meeting him. Some among the many subdivisions of this class are much less childlike and more dignified than those we have been describing, and it is from these sections that the entities who have sometimes been reverenced under the name of wood-gods, or local village-gods, have been drawn. Such entities would be quite sensible of the flattery involved in the reverence shown to them, would enjoy it, and would no doubt be quite ready to do any small service they could in return. (The village-god is also often an artificial entity, but that variety will be considered in its appropriate place.) The Adept knows how to make use of the services of the nature-spirits when he requires them, but the ordinary magician can obtain their assistance only by processes either of invocation or evocation--that is, either by attracting their attention as a suppliant and making some kind of bargain with them, or by endeavouring to set in motion influences which would compel their obedience. Both methods are extremely undesirable, and the latter is also excessively dangerous, as the operator would arouse a determined hostility which might prove fatal to him. Needless to say, no one studying occultism under a qualified Master would ever be permitted to attempt anything of the kind at all. 4. _The Devas._ The highest system of evolution connected with this earth, so far as we know, is that of the beings whom Hindus call the Devas, and who have elsewhere been spoken of as angels, sons of God, etc. They may, in fact, be regarded as a kingdom lying next above humanity, in the same way as humanity in turn lies next above the animal kingdom, but with this important difference, that while for an animal there is no possibility of evolution through any kingdom but the human, man, when he attains a certain high level, finds various paths of advancement opening before him, of which this great Deva evolution is only one. In comparison with the sublime renunciation of the Nirmânakâya, the acceptance of this line of evolution is sometimes spoken of in the books as "yielding to the temptation to become a god," but it must not be inferred from this expression that any shadow of blame attaches to the man who makes this choice. The path he selects is not the shortest, but it is nevertheless a very noble one, and if his developed intuition impels him towards it, it is probably the one best suited for his capacities. We must never forget that in spiritual as in physical climbing it is not every one who can bear the strain of the steeper path; there may be many for whom what seems the slower way is the only one possible, and we should indeed be unworthy followers of the great Teachers if we allowed our ignorance to betray us into the slightest thought of despisal towards those whose choice differs from our own. However confident that ignorance of the difficulties of the future may allow us to feel now, it is impossible for us to tell at this stage what we shall find ourselves able to do when, after many lives of patient striving, we have earned the right to choose our own future; and indeed, even those who "yield to the temptation to become gods," have a sufficiently glorious career before them, as will presently be seen. To avoid possible misunderstanding it may be mentioned _par parenthèse_ that there is another and entirely evil sense sometimes attached in the books to this phrase of "becoming a god," but in that form it certainly could never be any kind of "temptation" to the developed man, and in any case it is altogether foreign to our present subject. In oriental literature this word "Deva" is frequently used vaguely to mean almost any kind of non-human entity, so that it would often include DHYÂN CHOHANS on the one hand and nature-spirits and artificial elementals on the other. Here, however, its use will be restricted to the magnificent evolution which we are now considering. Though connected with this earth, the Devas are by no means confined to it, for the whole of our present chain of seven worlds is as one world to them, their evolution being through a grand system of seven chains. Their hosts have hitherto been recruited chiefly from other humanities in the solar system, some lower and some higher than ours, since but a very small portion of our own has as yet reached the level at which for us it is possible to join them; but it seems certain that some of their very numerous classes have not passed in their upward progress through any humanity at all comparable to ours. It is not possible for us at present to understand very much about them, but it is clear that what may be described as the aim of their evolution is considerably higher than ours; that is to say, while the object of our human evolution is to raise the successful portion of humanity to a certain degree of occult development by the end of the seventh round, the object of the Deva evolution is to raise their foremost rank to a very much higher level in the corresponding period. For them, as for us, a steeper but shorter path to still more sublime heights lies open to earnest endeavour; but what those heights may be in their case we can only conjecture. It is of course only the lower fringe of this august body that need be mentioned in connection with our subject of the astral plane. Their three lower great divisions (beginning from the bottom) are generally called Kâmadevas, Rûpadevas, and Arûpadevas respectively. Just as our ordinary body here--the lowest body possible for us--is the physical, so the ordinary body of a Kâmadeva is the astral; so that he stands in somewhat the same position as humanity will do when it reaches planet F, and he, living ordinarily in an astral body, would go out of it to higher spheres in a Mâyâvirûpa just as we might in an astral body, while to enter the Kârana Sharîra would be to him (when sufficiently developed) no greater effort than to form a Mâyâvirûpa is to us. In the same way the Rûpadeva's ordinary body would be the Mâyâvirûpa, since his habitat is on the four lower or rûpa levels of that spiritual state which we usually call Devachan: while the Arûpadeva belongs to the three higher levels of that plane, and owns no nearer approach to a body than the Kârana Sharîra. But for Rûpa and Arûpadevas to manifest on the astral plane is an occurrence at least as rare as it is for astral entities to materialize on this physical plane, so we need do no more than mention them now. As regards the lowest division--the Kâmadevas--it would be quite a mistake to think of all of them as immeasurably superior to ourselves, since some have entered their ranks from a humanity in some respects less advanced than our own; of course the general average among them is much higher than among us, for all that is actively or wilfully evil has long been weeded out from their ranks; but they differ widely in disposition, and a really noble, unselfish, spiritually-minded man may well stand higher in the scale of evolution than some of them. Their attention can be attracted by certain magical evocations, but the only human will which can dominate theirs is that of a certain high class of Adepts. As a rule they seem scarcely conscious of us on our physical plane, but it does now and then happen that one of them becomes aware of some human difficulty which excites his pity, and he perhaps renders some assistance, just as any of us would try to help an animal that we saw in trouble. But it is well understood among them that any interference in human affairs at the present stage is likely to do far more harm than good. Above the Arûpadevas there are four other great divisions, and again, above and beyond the Deva kingdom altogether, stand the great hosts of the DHYÂN CHOHANS, but the consideration of such glorified Beings would be out of place in an essay on the astral plane. Though we cannot claim them as belonging exactly to any of our classes, this is perhaps the best place in which to mention those wonderful and important Beings, the four Devarâjahs. In this name the word Deva must not, however, be taken in the sense in which we have been using it, for it is not over the Deva kingdom but over the four "elements" of earth, water, air, and fire, with their indwelling nature-spirits and essences, that these four Kings rule. What the evolution has been through which they rose to their present height of power and wisdom we cannot tell, save only that it has certainly not passed through anything corresponding to our own humanity. They are often spoken of as the Regents of the Earth, or Angels of the four cardinal points, and the Hindu books call them the Chatur Mahârâjahs, giving their names as Dhritarashtra, Virudhaka, Virupaksha, and Vaishravana. In the same books their hosts are called Gandharvas, Kumbhandas, Nâgas, and Yakshas respectively, the points of the compass appropriated to each being in corresponding order east, south, west, and north, and their symbolical colours white, blue, red, and gold. They are mentioned in _The Secret Doctrine_ as "winged globes and fiery wheels"; and in the Christian bible Ezekiel makes a very remarkable attempt at a description of them in which very similar words are used. References to them are to be found in the symbology of every religion, and they have always been held in the highest reverence as the protectors of mankind. It is they who are the agents of man's Karma during his life on earth, and they thus play an extremely important part in human destiny. The LIPIKA the great karmic deities of the Kosmos, weigh the deeds of each personality when the final separation of its principles takes place in Kâmaloka and give as it were the mould of an etheric double exactly suitable to its Karma for the man's next birth; but it is the Devarâjahs who, having command of the "elements" of which that etheric double must be composed, arrange their proportion so as to fulfil accurately the intention of the LIPIKA. It is they also who constantly watch all through life to counterbalance the changes perpetually being introduced into man's condition by his own free will and that of those around him, so that no injustice may be done, and Karma may be accurately worked out, if not in one way then in another. A learned dissertation upon these marvellous beings will be found in _The Secret Doctrine_, vol. i., pp. 122-126. They are able to take human material forms at will, and several cases are recorded when they have done so. All the higher nature-spirits and hosts of artificial elementals act as their agents in the stupendous work they carry out, yet all the threads are in their hands, and the whole responsibility rests upon them alone. It is not often that they manifest upon the astral plane, but when they do they are certainly the most remarkable of its non-human inhabitants. A student of occultism will not need to be told that as there are seven great classes both of nature-spirits and elemental essence there must really be seven and not four Devarâjahs but outside the circle of initiation little is known and less may be said of the higher three. III. ARTIFICIAL. This, the largest class of astral entities, is also much the most important to man. Being entirely his own creation, it is inter-related with him by the closest karmic bonds, and its action upon him is direct and incessant. It is an enormous inchoate mass of semi-intelligent entities, differing among themselves as human thoughts differ, and practically incapable of anything like classification or arrangement. The only division which can be usefully made is that which distinguishes between the artificial elementals made by the majority of mankind unconsciously, and those made by magicians with definite intent; while we may relegate to a third class the very small number of artificially arranged entities which are not elementals at all. 1. _Elementals formed unconsciously._ It has already been explained that the elemental essence which surrounds us on every side is in all its numberless varieties singularly susceptible to the influence of human thought. The action of the mere casual wandering thought upon it, causing it to burst into a cloud of rapidly-moving, evanescent forms, has already been described; we have now to note how it is affected when the human mind formulates a definite, purposeful thought or wish. The effect produced is of the most striking nature. The thought seizes upon the plastic essence, and moulds it instantly into a living being of appropriate form--a being which when once thus created is in no way under the control of its creator, but lives out a life of its own, the length of which is proportionate to the intensity of the thought or wish which called it into existence. It lasts, in fact, just as long as the thought-force holds it together. Most people's thoughts are so fleeting and indecisive that the elementals created by them last only a few minutes or a few hours, but an often-repeated thought or an earnest wish will form an elemental whose existence may extend to many days. Since the ordinary man's thoughts refer very largely to himself, the elementals they form remain hovering about him, and constantly tend to provoke a repetition of the idea they represent, since such repetitions, instead of forming new elementals, would strengthen the old one, and give it a fresh lease of life. A man, therefore, who frequently dwells upon one wish often forms for himself an astral attendant which, constantly fed by fresh thought, may haunt him for years, ever gaining more and more strength and influence over him; and it will easily be seen that if the desire be an evil one the effect upon his moral nature may be of the most disastrous character. Still more pregnant of result for good or evil are a man's thoughts about other people, for in that case they hover not about the thinker, but about the object of the thought. A kindly thought about any person or an earnest wish for his good will form and project towards him a friendly artificial elemental; if the wish be a definite one, as, for example, that he may recover from some sickness, then the elemental will be a force ever hovering over him to promote his recovery, or to ward off any influence that might tend to hinder it, and in doing this it will display what appears like a very considerable amount of intelligence and adaptability, though really it is simply a force acting along the line of least resistance--pressing steadily in one direction all the time, and taking advantage of any channel that it can find, just as the water in a cistern would in a moment find the one open pipe among a dozen closed ones, and proceed to empty itself through that. If the wish be merely an indefinite one for his general good, the elemental essence in its wonderful plasticity will respond exactly to that less distinct idea also, and the creature formed will expend its force in the direction of whatever action for the man's advantage comes most readily to hand. Of course in all cases the amount of such force it has to expend, and the length of time that it will live to expend it, depend entirely upon the strength of the original wish or thought which gave it birth; though it must be remembered that it can be, as it were, fed and strengthened, and its life-period protracted by other good wishes or friendly thoughts projected in the same direction. Furthermore, it appears to be actuated, like most other beings, by an instinctive desire to prolong its life, and thus reacts on its creator as a force constantly tending to provoke the renewal of the feeling which called it into existence. It also influences in a similar manner others with whom it comes into contact, though its _rapport_ with them is naturally not so perfect. All that has been said as to the effect of good wishes and friendly thoughts is also true in the opposite direction of evil wishes and angry thoughts; and considering the amount of envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness that exists in the world, it will be readily understood that among the artificial elementals many terrible creatures are to be seen. A man whose thoughts or desires are spiteful, brutal, sensual, avaricious, moves through the world carrying with him everywhere a pestiferous atmosphere of his own, peopled with the loathsome beings he has created to be his companions, and thus is not only in sadly evil case himself, but is a dangerous nuisance to his fellow-men, subjecting all who have the misfortune to come into contact with him to the risk of moral contagion from the influence of the abominations with which he chooses to surround himself. A feeling of envious or jealous hatred towards another person will send an evil elemental to hover over him and seek for a weak point through which it can operate; and if the feeling be a persistent one, such a creature may be continually nourished by it and thereby enabled to protract its undesirable activity for a very long period. It can, however, produce no effect upon the person towards whom it is directed unless he has himself some tendency which it can foster--some fulcrum for its lever, as it were; from the aura of a man of pure thought and good life all such influences at once rebound, finding nothing upon which they can fasten, and in that case, by a very curious law, they react in all their force upon their original creator. In him by the hypothesis they find a very congenial sphere of action, and thus the Karma of his evil wish works itself out at once by means of the very entity which he himself has called into existence. It occasionally happens, however, that an artificial elemental of this description is for various reasons unable to expend its force either upon its object or its creator, and in such cases it becomes a kind of wandering demon, readily attracted by any person who indulges feelings similar to that which gave it birth, and equally prepared either to stimulate such feelings in him for the sake of the strength it may gain from them, or to pour out its store of evil influence upon him through any opening which he may offer it. If it is sufficiently powerful to seize upon and inhabit some passing shell it frequently does so, as the possession of such a temporary home enables it to husband its dreadful resources more carefully. In this form it may manifest through a medium, and by masquerading as some well-known friend may sometimes obtain an influence over people upon whom it would otherwise have little hold. What has been written above will serve to enforce the statement already made as to the importance of maintaining a strict control over our thoughts. Many a well-meaning man, who is scrupulously careful to do his duty towards his neighbour in word and deed, is apt to consider that his thoughts at least are nobody's business but his own, and so lets them run riot in various directions, utterly unconscious of the swarms of baleful creatures he is launching upon the world. To such a man an accurate comprehension of the effect of thought and desire in producing artificial elementals would come as a horrifying revelation; on the other hand, it would be the greatest consolation to many devoted and grateful souls who are oppressed with the feeling that they are unable to do anything in return for the kindness lavished upon them by their benefactors. For friendly thoughts and earnest good wishes are as easily and as effectually formulated by the poorest as by the richest, and it is within the power of almost any man, if he will take the trouble, to maintain what is practically a good angel always at the side of the brother or sister, the friend or the child whom he loves best, no matter in what part of the world he may be. Many a time a mother's loving thoughts and prayers have formed themselves into an angel guardian for the child, and except in the almost impossible case that the child had in him no instinct responsive to a good influence, have undoubtedly given him assistance and protection. Such guardians may often be seen by clairvoyant vision, and there have even been cases where one of them has had sufficient strength to materialize and become for the moment visible to physical sight. A curious fact which deserves mention here is that even after the passage of the mother into the devachanic condition the love which she pours out upon the children she thinks of as surrounding her will react upon the real children still living in this world, and will often support the guardian elemental which she created while on earth, until her dear ones themselves pass away in turn. As Madame Blavatsky remarks, "her love will always be felt by the children in the flesh; it will manifest in their dreams and often in various events, in providential protections and escapes--for love is a strong shield, and is not limited by space or time" (_Key to Theosophy_, p. 150). All the stories of the intervention of guardian angels must not, however, be attributed to the action of artificial elementals, for in many cases such "angels" have been the souls of either living or recently departed human beings, and they have also occasionally, though rarely, been Devas. This power of an earnest desire, especially if frequently repeated, to create an active elemental which ever presses forcefully in the direction of its own fulfilment, is the scientific explanation of what devout but unphilosophical people describe as answers to prayer. There are occasions, though at present these are rare, when the Karma of the person so praying is such as to permit of assistance being directly rendered to him by an Adept or his pupil, and there is also the still rarer possibility of the intervention of a Deva or some friendly nature-spirit; but in all these cases the easiest and most obvious form for such assistance to take would be the strengthening and the intelligent direction of the elemental already formed by the wish. A very curious and instructive instance of the extreme persistence of these artificial elementals under favourable circumstances came under the notice of one of our investigators quite recently. All readers of the literature of such subjects are aware that many of our ancient families are supposed to have associated with them a traditional death-warning--a phenomenon of one kind or another which foretells, usually some days beforehand, the approaching decease of the head of the house. A picturesque example of this is the well-known story of the white bird of the Oxenhams, whose appearance has ever since the time of Queen Elizabeth been recognized as a sure presage of the death of some member of the family; while another is the spectral coach which is reported to drive up to the door of a certain castle in the north when a similar calamity is impending. A phenomenon of this order occurs in connection with the family of one of our members, but it is of a much commoner and less striking type than either of the above, consisting only of a solemn and impressive strain of dirge-like music, which is heard apparently floating in the air three days before the death takes place. Our member, having himself twice heard this mystic sound, finding its warning in both cases quite accurate, and knowing also that according to family tradition the same thing had been happening for several centuries, set himself to seek by occult methods for the cause underlying so strange a phenomenon. The result was unexpected but interesting. It appeared that somewhere in the twelfth century the head of the family went to the crusades, like many another valiant man, and took with him to win his spurs in the sacred cause his youngest and favourite son, a promising youth whose success in life was the dearest wish of his father's heart. Unhappily, however, the young man was killed in battle, and the father was plunged into the depths of despair, lamenting not only the loss of his son, but still more the fact that he was cut off so suddenly in the full flush of careless and not altogether blameless youth. So poignant, indeed, were the old man's feelings that he cast off his knightly armour and joined one of the great monastic orders, vowing to devote all the remainder of his life to prayer, first for the soul of his son, and secondly that henceforward no descendant of his might ever again encounter what seemed to his simple and pious mind the terrible danger of meeting death unprepared. Day after day for many a year he poured all the energy of his soul into the channel of that one intense wish, firmly believing that somehow or other the result he so earnestly desired would be brought about. A student of occultism will have little difficulty in deciding what would be the effect of such a definite and long-continued stream of thought; our knightly monk created an artificial elemental of immense power and resourcefulness for its own particular object, and accumulated within it a store of force which would enable it to carry out his wishes for an indefinite period. An elemental is a perfect storage-battery--one from which there is practically no leakage; and when we remember what its original strength must have been, and how comparatively rarely it would be called upon to put it forth, we shall scarcely wonder that even now it exhibits unimpaired vitality, and still warns the direct descendants of the old crusader of their approaching doom by repeating in their ears the strange wailing music which was the dirge of a young and valiant soldier seven hundred years ago in Palestine. 2. _Elementals formed consciously._ Since such results as have been described above have been achieved by the thought-force of men who were entirely in the dark as to what they were doing, it will readily be imagined that a magician who understands the subject, and can see exactly what effect he is producing, may wield immense power along these lines. As a matter of fact occultists of both the white and dark schools frequently use artificial elementals in their work, and few tasks are beyond the powers of such creatures when scientifically prepared and directed with knowledge and skill; for one who knows how to do so can maintain a connection with his elemental and guide it, no matter at what distance it may be working, so that it will practically act as though endowed with the full intelligence of its master. Very definite and very efficient guardian angels have sometimes been supplied in this way, though it is probably very rarely that Karma permits such a decided interference in a person's life as that would be. In such a case, however, as that of a pupil of the Adepts, who might have in the course of his work for them to run the risk of attack from forces with which his unaided strength would be entirely insufficient to cope, guardians of this description have been given, and have fully proved their sleepless vigilance and their tremendous power. By some of the more advanced processes of black magic, also, artificial elementals of great power may be called into existence, and much evil has been worked in various ways by such entities. But it is true of them, as of the previous class, that if they are aimed at a person whom by reason of his purity of character they are unable to influence they react with terrible force upon their creator; so that the mediæval story of the magician being torn to pieces by the fiends he himself had raised is no mere fable, but may well have an awful foundation in fact. Such creatures occasionally, for various reasons, escape from the control of those who are trying to make use of them, and become wandering and aimless demons, as do some of those mentioned under the previous heading under similar circumstances; but those that we are considering, having much more intelligence and power, and a much longer existence, are proportionately more dangerous. They invariably seek for means of prolonging their life either by feeding like vampires upon the vitality of human beings, or by influencing them to make offerings to them; and among simple half-savage tribes they have frequently succeeded by judicious management in getting themselves recognized as village or family gods. Any deity which demands sacrifices involving the shedding of blood may always be set down as belonging to the lowest and most loathsome class of this order; other less objectionable types are sometimes content with offerings of rice and cooked food of various kinds. There are parts of India where both these varieties may be found flourishing even at the present day, and in Africa they are probably comparatively numerous. By means of whatever nourishment they can obtain from the offerings, and still more by the vitality they draw from their devotees, they may continue to prolong their existence for many years, or even centuries, retaining sufficient strength to perform occasional phenomena of a mild type in order to stimulate the faith and zeal of their followers, and invariably making themselves unpleasant in some way or other if the accustomed sacrifices are neglected. For example, it was asserted recently that in one Indian village the inhabitants had found that whenever for any reason the local deity did not get his or her regular meals, spontaneous fires began to break out with alarming frequency among the cottages, sometimes three or four simultaneously, in cases where they declared it was impossible to suspect human agency; and other stories of a more or less similar nature will no doubt recur to the memory of any reader who knows something of the out-of-the-way corners of that most wonderful of all countries. The art of manufacturing artificial elementals of extreme virulence and power seems to have been one of the specialities of the magicians of Atlantis--"the lords of the dark face". One example of their capabilities in this line is given in _The Secret Doctrine_ (vol. ii., p. 427), where we read of the wonderful speaking animals who had to be quieted by an offering of blood, lest they should awaken their masters and warn them of the impending destruction. But apart from these strange beasts they created other artificial entities of power and energy so tremendous, that it is darkly hinted that some of them have kept themselves in existence even to this day, though it is more than eleven thousand years since the cataclysm which overwhelmed their original masters. The terrible Indian goddess whose devotees were impelled to commit in her name the awful crimes of Thuggee--the ghastly Kâlî, worshipped even to this day with rites too abominable to be described--might well be a relic of a system which had to be swept away even at the cost of the submergence of a continent, and the loss of sixty-five million human lives. 3. _Human Artificials._ We have now to consider a class of entities which, though it contains but very few individuals, has acquired from its intimate connection with one of the great movements of modern times an importance entirely out of proportion to its numbers. It seems doubtful whether it should appear under the first or third of our main divisions; but, though certainly human, it is so far removed from the course of ordinary evolution, so entirely the product of a will outside of its own, that it perhaps falls most naturally into place among the artificial beings. The easiest way of describing it will be to commence with its history, and to do that we must once more look back to the great Atlantean race. In thinking of the Adepts and schools of occultism of that remarkable people our minds instinctively revert to the evil practices of which we hear so much in connection with their latter days; but we must not forget that before that age of selfishness and degradation the mighty civilization of Atlantis had brought forth much that was noble and worthy of admiration, and that among its leaders were some who now stand upon the loftiest pinnacles as yet attained by man. Among the lodges for occult study preliminary to initiation formed by the Adepts of the good Law was one in a certain part of America which was then tributary to one of the great Atlantean monarchs--"the Divine Rulers of the Golden Gate"; and though it has passed through many and strange vicissitudes, though it has had to move its headquarters from country to country as each in turn was invaded by the jarring elements of a later civilization, that lodge still exists even at the present day, observing still the same old-world ritual even teaching as a sacred and hidden language the same Atlantean tongue which was used at its foundation so many thousands of years ago. It still remains what it was from the first--a lodge of occultists of pure and philanthropic aims, which can lead those students whom it finds worthy no inconsiderable distance on the road to knowledge, and confers such psychic powers as are in its gift only after the most searching tests as to the fitness of the candidate. Its teachers do not stand upon the Adept level, yet hundreds have learnt through it how to set their feet upon the Path which has led them to Adeptship in later lives; and though it is not in direct communication with the Brotherhood of the Himalayas, there are some among the latter who have themselves been connected with it in former incarnations, and therefore retain a more than ordinarily friendly interest in its proceedings. The chiefs of this lodge, though they have always kept themselves and their society strictly in the background, have nevertheless done what they could from time to time to assist the progress of truth in the world, and some half-century ago, in despair at the rampant materialism which seemed to be stifling all spirituality in Europe and America, they determined to make an attempt to combat it by somewhat novel methods--in point of fact to offer opportunities by which any reasonable man could acquire absolute proof of that life apart from the physical body which it was the tendency of science to deny. The phenomena exhibited were not in themselves absolutely new, since in some form or other we may hear of them all through history; but their definite organization--their production as it were to order--these were features distinctly new to the modern world. The movement they thus set on foot gradually grew into the vast fabric of modern spiritualism, and though it would perhaps be unfair to hold the originators of the scheme directly responsible for many of the results which have followed, we must admit that they have achieved their purpose to the extent of converting vast numbers of people from a belief in nothing in particular to a firm faith in at any rate some kind of future life. This is undoubtedly a magnificent result, though, in the opinion of many of those whose power and knowledge enable them to take a wider view of such matters than we can, it has been attained at too great a cost, since it seems to them that on the whole the harm done outweighs the good. The method adopted was to take some ordinary person after death, arouse him thoroughly upon the astral plane, instruct him to a certain extent in the powers and possibilities belonging to it, and then put him in charge of a spiritualistic circle. He in his turn "developed" other departed personalities along the same line, they all acted upon those who sat at their _séances_, and "developed" them as mediums; and so spiritualism grew and flourished. No doubt living members of the original lodge occasionally manifested themselves in astral form at some of the circles--perhaps they may do so even now; but in most cases they simply gave such direction and guidance as they considered necessary to the persons they had put in charge. There is little doubt that the movement increased so much more rapidly than they had expected that it soon got quite beyond their control, so that, as has been said, for many of the later developments they can only be held indirectly responsible. Of course the intensification of the astral-plane life in those persons who were thus put in charge of circles distinctly delayed their natural progress; and though the idea had been that anything lost in this way would be fully atoned for by the good Karma gained by helping to lead others to the truth, it was soon found that it was impossible to make use of a "spirit-guide" for any length of time without doing him serious and permanent injury. In some cases such "guides" were therefore withdrawn, and others substituted for them; in others it was considered for various reasons undesirable to make such a change, and then a very remarkable expedient was adopted which gave rise to the curious class of creatures we have called "human artificials". The higher principles of the original "guide" were allowed to pass on their long delayed evolution into the devachanic condition, but the shade he left behind him was taken possession of, sustained, and operated upon so that it might appear to its admiring circle practically just as before. This seems at first to have been done by members of the lodge themselves, but apparently that arrangement was found irksome or unsuitable, or perhaps was considered a waste of force, and the same objection applied to the use for this purpose of an artificial elemental; so it was eventually decided that the departed person who would have been appointed to succeed the late "spirit-guide" should still do so, but should take possession of the latter's shade or shell, and in fact simply wear his appearance. It is said that some members of the lodge objected to this on the ground that though the purpose might be entirely good a certain amount of deception was involved; but the general opinion seems to have been that as the shade really was the same, and contained something at any rate of the original lower Manas, there was nothing that could be called deception in the matter. This, then, was the genesis of the human artificial entity, and it is understood that in some cases more than one such change has been made without arousing suspicion, though on the other hand some investigators of spiritualism have remarked on the fact that after a considerable lapse of time certain differences suddenly became observable in the manner and disposition of a "spirit". It is needless to say that none of the Adept Brotherhood has ever approved of the formation of an artificial entity of this sort, though they could not interfere with any one who thought it right to take such a course. A weak point in the arrangement is that many others besides the original lodge may adopt this plan, and there is nothing whatever to prevent black magicians from supplying communicating "spirits"--as, indeed, they have been known to do. With this class we conclude our survey of the inhabitants of the astral plane. With the reservations specially made some few pages back, the catalogue may be taken as a fairly complete one; but it must once more be emphasized that this treatise claims only to sketch the merest outline of a very vast subject, the detailed elaboration of which would need a lifetime of study and hard work. PHENOMENA. Though in the course of this paper various superphysical phenomena have been mentioned and to some extent explained, it will perhaps before concluding be desirable so far to recapitulate as to give a list of those which are most frequently met with by the student of these subjects, and to show by which of the agencies we have attempted to describe they are usually caused. The resources of the astral world, however, are so varied that almost any phenomenon with which we are acquainted can be produced in several different ways, so that it is only possible to lay down general rules in the matter. Apparitions or ghosts furnish a very good instance of the remark just made, for in the loose manner in which the words are ordinarily used they may stand for almost any inhabitant of the astral plane. Of course psychically developed people are constantly seeing such things, but for an ordinary person to "see a ghost," as the common expression runs, one of two things must happen: either that ghost must materialize, or that person must have a temporary flash of psychic perception. But for the fact that neither of these events is a common one, ghosts would be met with in our streets as frequently as living people. [Sidenote: Churchyard Ghosts.] If the ghost is seen hovering about a grave it is probably the etheric shell of a newly-buried person, though it _may_ be the astral body of a living man haunting in sleep the tomb of a friend; or again, it may be a materialized thought-form--that is, an artificial elemental created by the energy with which a man thinks of himself as present at that particular spot. These varieties would be easily distinguishable one from the other by any one accustomed to use astral vision, but an unpractised person would be quite likely to call them all vaguely "ghosts". [Sidenote: Apparitions of the Dying.] Apparitions at the time of death are by no means uncommon, and are very often really visits paid by the astral form of the dying man just before what we elect to call the moment of dissolution; though here again they are quite likely to be thought-forms called into being by his earnest wish to see some friend once more before he passes into an unfamiliar condition. [Sidenote: Haunted Localities.] Apparitions at the spot where some crime was committed are usually thought-forms projected by the criminal, who, whether living or dead, but most especially when dead, is perpetually thinking over again and again the circumstances of his action; and since these thoughts are naturally specially vivid in his mind on the anniversary of the original crime, it is often only on that occasion that the artificial elementals he creates are strong enough to materialize themselves to ordinary sight--a fact which accounts for the periodicity of some manifestations of this class. Another point in reference to such phenomena is, that wherever any tremendous mental disturbance has taken place, wherever overwhelming terror, pain, sorrow, hatred, or indeed any kind of intense passion has been felt, an impression of so very marked a character has been made upon the astral light that a person with even the faintest glimmer of psychic faculty cannot but be deeply impressed by it, and it would need but a slight temporary increase of sensibility to enable him to visualize the entire scene--to see the event in all its detail apparently taking place before his eyes--and in such a case he would of course report that the place was haunted, and that he had seen a ghost. Indeed, people who are as yet unable to see psychically under any circumstances are frequently very unpleasantly impressed when visiting such places as we have mentioned; there are many, for example, who feel uncomfortable when passing the site of Tyburn Tree, or cannot stay in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's, though they may not be in the least aware that their discomfort is due to the dreadful impressions in the astral light which surround places and objects redolent of horror and crime, and to the presence of the loathsome astral entities which always swarm about such centres. [Sidenote: Family Ghosts.] The family ghost, whom we generally find in the stock stories of the supernatural as an appanage of the feudal castle, may be either a thought-form or an unusually vivid impression in the astral light, or again he may really be an earth-bound ancestor still haunting the scenes in which his thoughts and hopes centred during life. [Sidenote: Bell-ringing, stone-throwing, etc.] Another class of hauntings which take the form of bell-ringing, stone-throwing, or the breaking of crockery, has already been referred to, and is almost invariably the work of elemental forces, either set blindly in motion by the clumsy efforts of an ignorant person trying to attract the attention of his surviving friends, or intentionally employed by some childishly mischievous nature-spirit. [Sidenote: Fairies.] The nature-spirits are also responsible for whatever of truth there may be in all the strange fairy stories which are so common in certain parts of the country. Sometimes a temporary accession of clairvoyance, which is by no means uncommon among the inhabitants of lonely mountainous regions, enables some belated wayfarer to watch their joyous gambols; sometimes strange tricks are played upon some terrified victim, and a glamour is cast over him, making him, for example, see houses and people where he knows none really exist. And this is frequently no mere momentary delusion, for a man will sometimes go through quite a long series of imaginary but most striking adventures, and then suddenly find that all his brilliant surroundings have vanished in a moment, leaving him standing in some lonely valley or on some wind-swept plain. On the other hand, it is by no means safe to accept as founded on fact all the popular legends on the subject, for the grossest superstition is often mingled with the theories of the peasantry about these beings, as was shown by a recent terrible murder case in Ireland. To the same entities must be attributed a large portion of what are called physical phenomena at spiritualistic _séances_--indeed, many a _séance_ has been given entirely by these mischievous creatures; and such a performance might easily include many very striking items, such as the answering of questions and delivery of pretended messages by raps or tilts, the exhibition of "spirit lights," the apport of objects from a distance, the reading of thoughts which were in the mind of any person present, the precipitation of writings or drawings, and even materializations. In fact, the nature-spirits alone, if any of them happened to be disposed to take the trouble, could give a _séance_ equal to the most wonderful of which we read; for though there may be certain phenomena which they would not find it easy to reproduce, their marvellous power of glamour would enable them without difficulty to persuade the entire circle that these phenomena also had duly occurred, unless, indeed, there were present a trained observer who understood their arts and knew how to defeat them. As a general rule, whenever silly tricks or practical jokes are played at a _séance_, we may infer the presence either of low-class nature-spirits, or of human beings who were of a sufficiently degraded type to find pleasure in such idiotic performances during life. [Sidenote: Communicating Entities.] As to the entities who may "communicate" at a _séance_, or may obsess and speak through an entranced medium, their name is simply legion; there is hardly a single class among all the varied inhabitants of the astral plane from whose ranks they may not be drawn, though after the explanations given it will be readily understood that the chances are very much against their coming from a high one. A manifesting "spirit" _may_ be exactly what it professes to be, but on the whole the probabilities are that it is nothing of the kind; and for the ordinary sitter there is absolutely no means of distinguishing the true from the false, since the extent to which a being having all the resources of the astral plane at his command can delude a person on the physical plane is so great that no reliance can be placed even on what seems the most convincing proof. If something manifests which announces itself as a man's long-lost brother, he can have no certainty that its claim is a just one; if it tells him of some fact known only to that brother and to himself, he remains unconvinced, for he knows that it might easily have read the information from his own mind, or from his surroundings in the astral light; even if it goes still further and tells him something connected with his brother, of which he himself is unaware, but which he afterwards verifies, he still realizes that even this may have been read from the astral record, or that what he sees before him may be only the shade of his brother, and so possess his memory without in any way being himself. It is not for one moment denied that important communications have sometimes been made at _séances_ by entities who in such cases have been precisely what they said they were; all that is claimed is that it is quite impossible for the ordinary person who visits a _séance_ ever to be certain that he is not being cruelly deceived in one or other of half a dozen different ways. There have been a few cases in which members of the lodge of occultists referred to above as originating the spiritualistic movement have themselves given, through a medium, a series of valuable teachings on deeply interesting subjects, but this has invariably been at strictly private family _séances_, not at public performances for which money has been paid. [Sidenote: Astral Resources.] To understand the methods by which a large class of physical phenomena are produced, it is necessary to have some comprehension of the various resources mentioned above, which a person functioning on the astral plane finds at his command; and this is a branch of the subject which it is by no means easy to make clear, especially as it is hedged about with certain obviously necessary restrictions. It may perhaps help us if we remember that the astral plane may be regarded as in many ways only an extension of the physical, and the idea that matter may assume the etheric state (in which, though intangible to us, it is yet purely physical) may serve to show us how the one melts into the other. In fact, in the Hindu conception of Jagrat, or "the waking state," the physical and astral planes are combined, its seven subdivisions corresponding to the four conditions of physical matter, and the three broad divisions of astral matter explained above. With this thought in our minds it is easy to move a step further, and grasp the idea that astral vision, or rather astral perception, may from one point of view be defined as the capability of receiving an enormously increased number of different sets of vibrations. In our physical bodies one small set of slow vibrations is perceptible to us as sound; another small set of much more rapid vibrations affects us as light; and again another set as electric action: but there are immense numbers of intermediate vibrations which produce no result which our physical senses can cognize at all. Now it will readily be seen that if all, or even some only, of these intermediates, with all the complications producible by differences of wave-length, are perceptible on the astral plane, our comprehension of nature might be very greatly increased on that level, and we might be able to acquire much information which is now hidden from us. [Sidenote: Clairvoyance.] [Sidenote: Prevision and Second-sight.] It is admitted that some of these pass through solid matter with perfect ease, so that this enables us to account scientifically for some of the peculiarities of astral vision, though those minds to which the theory of the fourth dimension commends itself find in it a neater and more complete explanation. It is clear that the mere possession of this astral vision by a being would at once account for his capability to produce many results that seem very wonderful to us--such, for example, as the reading of a passage from a closed book; and when we remember, furthermore, that this faculty includes the power of thought-reading to the fullest extent, and also, when combined with the knowledge of the projection of currents in the astral light, that of observing a desired object in almost any part of the world, we see that a good many of the phenomena of clairvoyance are explicable even without rising above this level. Of course true, trained, and absolutely reliable clairvoyance calls into operation an entirely different set of faculties, but as these belong to a higher plane than the astral, they form no part of our present subject. The faculty of accurate prevision, again, appertains altogether to that higher plane, yet flashes or reflections of it frequently show themselves to purely astral sight, more especially among simple-minded people who live under suitable conditions--what is called "second-sight" among the Highlanders of Scotland being a well-known example. Another fact which must not be forgotten is that any intelligent inhabitant of the astral plane is not only able to perceive these etheric vibrations, but can also--if he has learnt how it is done--adapt them to his own ends or himself set them in motion. [Sidenote: Astral Forces.] [Sidenote: Etheric Currents.] [Sidenote: Etheric Pressure.] [Sidenote: Latent Energy.] [Sidenote: Sympathetic Vibration.] It will be readily understood that superphysical forces and the methods of managing them are not subjects about which much can be written for publication at present, though there is reason to suppose that it may not be very long before at any rate some applications of one or two of them come to be known to the world at large: but it may perhaps be possible, without transgressing the limits of the permissible, to give so much of an idea of them as shall be sufficient to show in outline how certain phenomena are performed. All who have much experience of spiritualistic _séances_ at which physical results are produced must at one time or another have seen evidence of the employment of practically resistless force in, for example, the instantaneous movement of enormous weights, and so on; and if of a scientific turn of mind, they may perhaps have wondered whence this force was obtained, and what was the leverage employed. As usual in connection with astral phenomena, there are several ways in which such work may have been done, but it will be enough for the moment to hint at four. First, there are great etheric currents constantly sweeping over the surface of the earth from pole to pole in volume which makes their power as irresistible as that of the rising tide, and there are methods by which this stupendous force may be safely utilized, though unskilful attempts to control it would be fraught with frightful danger. Secondly, there is what can best be described as an etheric pressure, somewhat corresponding to, though immensely greater than, the atmospheric pressure. In ordinary life we are as little conscious of one of these pressures as we are of the other, but nevertheless they both exist, and if science were able to exhaust the ether from a given space, as it can exhaust the air, the one could be proved as readily as the other. The difficulty of doing that lies in the fact that matter in the etheric condition freely inter-penetrates matter in all states below it, so that there is as yet no means within the knowledge of our physicists by which any given body of ether can be isolated from the rest. Practical Occultism, however, teaches how this can be done, and thus the tremendous force of etheric pressure can be brought into play. Thirdly, there is a vast store of potential energy which has become dormant in matter during the involution of the subtle into the gross, and by changing the condition of the matter some of this may be liberated and utilized, somewhat as latent energy in the form of heat may be liberated by a change in the condition of visible matter. Fourthly, many striking results, both great and small, may be produced by an extension of a principle which may be described as that of sympathetic vibration. Illustrations taken from the physical plane seem generally to misrepresent rather than elucidate astral phenomena, because they can never be more than partially applicable; but the recollection of two simple facts of ordinary life may help to make this important branch of our subject clearer, if we are careful not to push the analogy further than it will hold good. It is well known that if one of the wires of a harp be made to vibrate vigorously, its movement will call forth sympathetic vibrations in the corresponding strings of any number of harps placed round it, if they are tuned to exactly the same pitch. It is also well known that when a large body of soldiers crosses a suspension bridge it is necessary for them to break step, since the perfect regularity of their ordinary march would set up a vibration in the bridge which would be intensified by every step they took, until the point of resistance of the iron was passed, when the whole structure would fly to pieces. With these two analogies in our minds (never forgetting that they are only partial ones) it may seem more comprehensible that one who knows exactly at what rate to start his vibrations--knows, so to speak, the keynote of the class of matter he wishes to affect--should be able by sounding that keynote to call forth an immense number of sympathetic vibrations. When this is done on the physical plane no additional energy is developed; but on the astral plane there is this difference, that the matter with which we are dealing is far less inert, and so when called into action by these sympathetic vibrations it adds its own living force to the original impulse, which may thus be multiplied many-fold; and then by further rhythmic repetition of the original impulse, as in the case of the soldiers marching over the bridge, the vibrations may be so intensified that the result is out of all apparent proportion to the cause. Indeed, it may be said that there is scarcely any limit to the conceivable achievements of this force in the hands of a great Adept Who fully comprehends its possibilities; for the very building of the Universe itself was but the result of the vibrations set up by the Spoken Word. [Sidenote: Mantras.] The class of mantras or spells which produce their result not by controlling some elemental, but merely by the repetition of certain sounds, also depend for their efficacy upon this action of sympathetic vibration. [Sidenote: Disintegration.] The phenomenon of disintegration also may be brought about by the action of extremely rapid vibrations, which overcome the cohesion of the molecules of the object operated upon. A still higher rate of vibrations of a somewhat different type will separate these molecules into their constituent atoms. A body reduced by these means to the etheric condition can be moved by an astral current from one place to another with very great rapidity; and the moment that the force which has been exerted to put it into that condition is withdrawn it will be forced by the etheric pressure to resume its original form. It is in this way that objects are sometimes brought almost instantaneously from great distances at spiritualistic _séances_, and it is obvious that when disintegrated they could be passed with perfect ease through any solid substance, such, for example, as the wall of a house or the side of a locked box, so that what is commonly called "the passage of matter through matter" is seen, when properly understood, to be as simple as the passage of water through a sieve, or of a gas through a liquid in some chemical experiment. [Sidenote: Materialization.] Since it is possible by an alteration of vibrations to change matter from the solid to the etheric condition, it will be comprehended that it is also possible to reverse the process and to bring etheric matter into the solid state. As the one process explains the phenomenon of disintegration, so does the other that of materialization; and just as in the former case a continued effort of will is necessary to prevent the object from resuming its original form, so in exactly the same way in the latter phenomenon a continued effort is necessary to prevent the materialized matter from relapsing into the etheric condition. In the materializations seen at an ordinary _séance_, such matter as may be required is borrowed as far as possible from the medium's etheric double--an operation which is prejudicial to his health, and also undesirable in various other ways; and this explains the fact that the materialized form is usually strictly confined to the immediate neighbourhood of the medium, and is subject to an attraction which is constantly drawing it back to the body from which it came, so that if kept away from the medium too long the figure collapses, and the matter which composed it, returning to the etheric condition, rushes back instantly to its source. [Sidenote: Why Darkness is required.] [Sidenote: Spirit Photographs.] The reason why the beings directing a _séance_ find it easier to operate in darkness or in very subdued light will now be manifest, since their power would usually be insufficient to hold together a materialized form or even a "spirit hand" for more than a very few seconds amidst the intense vibrations set up by brilliant light. The _habitués_ of _séances_ will no doubt have noticed that materializations are of three kinds:--First, those which are tangible but not visible; second, those which are visible but not tangible; and third, those which are both visible and tangible. To the first kind, which is much the most common, belong the invisible spirit hands which so frequently stroke the faces of the sitters or carry small objects about the room, and the vocal organs from which the "direct voice" proceeds. In this case, an order of matter is being used which can neither reflect nor obstruct light, but which is capable under certain conditions of setting up vibrations in the atmosphere which affect us as sound. A variation of this class is that kind of partial materialization which, though incapable of reflecting any light that we can see, is yet able to affect some of the ultra-violet rays, and can therefore make a more or less definite impression upon the camera, and so provide us with what are known as "spirit photographs". When there is not sufficient power available to produce a perfect materialization we sometimes get the vaporous-looking form which constitutes our second class, and in such a case the "spirits" usually warn their sitters that the forms which appear must not be touched. In the rarer case of a full materialization there is sufficient power to hold together, at least for a few moments, a form which can be both seen and touched. When an Adept or pupil finds it necessary for any purpose to materialize his Mâyâvirûpa or his astral body, he does not draw upon either his own etheric double or any one else's, since he has been taught how to extract the matter which he requires directly from the astral light or even from the Âkâsha. [Sidenote: Reduplication.] Another phenomenon closely connected with this part of the subject is that of reduplication, which is produced by simply forming in the astral light a perfect mental image of the object to be copied, and then gathering about that mould the necessary physical matter. Of course for this purpose it is necessary that every particle, interior as well as exterior, of the object to be duplicated should be held accurately in view simultaneously, and consequently the phenomenon is one which requires considerable power of concentration to perform. Persons unable to reduce the matter required directly from the astral light have sometimes borrowed it from the material of the original article, which in this case would be correspondingly reduced in weight. [Sidenote: Precipitation.] We read a good deal in Theosophical literature about the precipitation of letters or pictures. This result, like everything else, may be obtained in several ways. An Adept wishing to communicate with some one might place a sheet of paper before him, form an image of the writing which he wished to appear upon it, and draw from the astral light the matter wherewith to objectify that image; or if he preferred to do so it would be equally easy for him to produce the same result upon a sheet of paper lying before his correspondent, whatever might be the distance between them. A third method which, since it saves time, is much more frequently adopted, is to impress the whole substance of the letter on the mind of some pupil, and leave him to do the mechanical work of precipitation. That pupil would then take his sheet of paper, and, imagining he saw the letter written thereon in his Master's hand, would proceed to objectify the writing as before described. If he found it difficult to perform simultaneously the two operations of drawing his material from the astral light and precipitating the writing on the paper, he might have either ordinary ink or a small quantity of coloured powder on the table beside him, which, being already physical matter, could be drawn upon more readily. It is of course obvious that the possession of this power would be a very dangerous weapon in the hands of an unscrupulous person, since it is just as easy to imitate one man's handwriting as another's, and it would be impossible to detect by any ordinary means a forgery committed in this manner. A pupil definitely connected with any Master has always an infallible test by which he knows whether any message really emanates from that Master or not, but for others the proof of its origin must always lie solely in the contents of the letter and the spirit breathing through it, as the handwriting, however cleverly imitated, is of absolutely no value as evidence. As to speed, a pupil new to the work of precipitation would probably be able to image only a few words at a time, and would, therefore, get on hardly more rapidly than if he wrote his letter in the ordinary way, but a more experienced individual who could visualize a whole page or perhaps the entire letter at once would get through his work with greater facility. It is in this manner that quite long letters are sometimes produced in a few seconds at a _séance_. When a picture has to be precipitated the method is precisely the same, except that here it is absolutely necessary that the entire scene should he visualized at once, and if many colours are required there is of course the additional complication of manufacturing them, keeping them separate, and reproducing accurately the exact tints of the scene to be represented. Evidently there is scope here for the exercise of the artistic faculty, and it must not be supposed that every inhabitant of the astral plane could by this method produce an equally good picture; a man who had been a great artist in life, and had therefore learnt how to see and what to look for, would certainly be very much more successful than the ordinary person if he attempted precipitation when on the astral plane after death. [Sidenote: Slate-writing.] The slate-writing, for the production of which under test conditions some of the greatest mediums have been so famous, is sometimes produced by precipitation, though more frequently the fragment of pencil enclosed between the slates is guided by a spirit hand, of which only just the tiny points sufficient to grasp it are materialized. [Sidenote: Levitation.] An occurrence which occasionally takes place at _séances_, and more frequently among eastern Yógîs, is what is called levitation--that is, the floating of a human body in the air. No doubt when this takes place in the case of a medium, he is often simply upborne by "spirit hands," but there is another and more scientific method of accomplishing this feat which is always used in the East, and occasionally here also. Occult science is acquainted with a means of neutralizing or even entirely reversing the attraction of gravity, and it is obvious that by the judicious use of this power all the phenomena of levitation may be easily produced. It was no doubt by a knowledge of this secret that some of the air-ships of ancient India and Atlantis were raised from the earth and made light enough to be readily moved and directed; and not improbably the same acquaintance with nature's finer forces greatly facilitated the labours of those who raised the enormous blocks of stone sometimes used in cyclopean architecture, or in the building of the Pyramids and Stonehenge. [Sidenote: Spirit Lights.] With the knowledge of the forces of nature which the resources of the astral plane place at the command its inhabitants the production of what are called "spirit lights" is a very easy matter, whether they be of the mildly phosphorescent or the dazzling electrical variety, or those curious dancing globules of light into which a certain class of fire elementals so readily transform themselves. Since all light consists simply of vibrations of the ether, it is obvious that any one who knows how to set up these vibrations can readily produce any kind of light that he wishes. [Sidenote: Handling Fire.] It is by the aid of the etheric elemental essence also that the remarkable feat of handling fire unharmed is generally performed, though there are as usual other ways in which it can be done. The thinnest layer of etheric substance can be so manipulated as to be absolutely impervious to heat, and when the hand of a medium or sitter is covered with this he may pick up burning coal or red-hot iron with perfect safety. [Sidenote: Transmutation.] Most of the occurrences of the _séance_-room have now been referred to, but there are one or two of the rarer phenomena of the outer world which must not be left quite without mention in our list. The transmutation of metals is commonly supposed to be a mere dream of the mediæval alchemists, and no doubt in most cases the description of the phenomenon was merely a symbol of the purification of the soul; yet there seems to be some evidence that it was really accomplished by them on several occasions, and there are petty magicians in the East who profess to do it under test conditions even now. Be that as it may, it is evident that since the ultimate atom is one and the same in all substances, and it is only the methods of its combination that differ, any one who possessed the power of reducing a piece of metal to the atomic condition and of re-arranging its atoms in some other form would have no difficulty in effecting transmutation to any extent that he wished. [Sidenote: Repercussion.] The principle of sympathetic vibration mentioned above also provides the explanation of that strange and little-known phenomenon called repercussion, by means of which any injury done to, or any mark made upon, the astral body in the course of its wanderings will be reproduced in the physical body. We find traces of this in some of the evidence given at trials for witchcraft in the middle ages, in which it is not infrequently stated that some wound given to the witch when in the form of a dog or a wolf was found to have appeared in the corresponding part of her human body. The same strange law has sometimes led to an entirely unjust accusation of fraud against a medium, because, for example, some colouring matter rubbed upon the hand of a materialized "spirit" was afterwards found upon his hand--the explanation being that in that case, as so often happens, the "spirit" was simply the medium's astral body or perhaps even his etheric double, forced by the guiding influences to take some form other than his own. In fact the astral and physical bodies are so intimately connected that it is impossible to touch the keynote of one without immediately setting up exactly corresponding vibrations in the other. CONCLUSION. It is hoped that any reader who has been sufficiently interested to follow this treatise thus far, may by this time have a general idea of the astral plane and its possibilities, such as will enable him to understand and fit into their proper places in its scheme any facts in connection with it which he may pick up in his reading. Though only the roughest sketch has been given of a very great subject, enough has perhaps been said to show the extreme importance of astral perception in the study of biology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, medicine and history, and the great impulse which might be given by its development to all these sciences. Yet its attainment should never be regarded as an end in itself, since any means adopted with that object in view would inevitably lead to what is called in the East the _laukika_ method of development--a system by which certain psychic powers are indeed acquired, but only for the present personality; and since their acquisition is surrounded by no safeguards, the student is extremely likely to misuse them. To this class belong all systems which involve the use of drugs, invocation of elementals, or the practices of Hatha Yoga. The other method, which is called the _lokottara_, consists of Raj Yoga or spiritual progress, and though it may be somewhat slower than the other, whatever is acquired along this line is gained for the permanent individuality, and never lost again, while the guiding care of a Master ensures perfect safety from misuse of power as long as his orders are scrupulously obeyed. The opening of astral vision must be regarded then only as a stage in the development of something infinitely nobler--merely as a step, and a very small step, on that great Upward Path which leads men to the sublime heights of Adeptship, and beyond even that through glorious vistas of wisdom and power such as our finite minds cannot now conceive. Yet let no one think it an unmixed blessing to have the wider sight of the astral plane, for upon one in whom that vision is opened the sorrow and misery, the evil and the greed of the world press as an ever-present burden, until he often feels inclined to echo the passionate adjuration of Schiller: "Why hast thou cast me thus into the town of the ever-blind, to proclaim thine oracle with the opened sense? Take back this sad clear-sightedness; take from mine eyes this cruel light! Give me back my blindness--the happy darkness of my senses; take back thy dreadful gift!" This feeling is perhaps not an unnatural one in the earlier stages of the Path, yet higher sight and deeper knowledge soon bring to the student the perfect certainty that all things are working together for the eventual good of all--that Hour after hour, like an opening flower, Shall truth after truth expand; For the sun may pale, and the stars may fail, But the LAW of GOOD shall stand. Its splendour glows and its influence grows As Nature's slow work appears, From the zoophyte small to the LORDS of all, Through kalpas and crores of years. * * * * * 
39986	----	THE WAY OF INITIATION BY THE SAME AUTHOR INITIATION AND ITS RESULTS a sequel to the "WAY OF INITIATION" By RUDOLF STEINER, Ph.D. Translated from the German by Clifford Bax CONTENTS A FOREWORD I. THE ASTRAL CENTERS (CHAKRAS) II. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE ETHERIC BODY III. DREAM LIFE IV. THE THREE STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS V. THE DISSOCIATION OF HUMAN PERSONALITY DURING INITIATION VI. THE FIRST GUARDIAN OF THE THRESHOLD VII. THE SECOND GUARDIAN OF THE THRESHOLD SELECTED LIST OF OCCULT WORKS In same clear print and rich binding as this book PRICE $1.00 PREPAID THE WAY OF INITIATION OR HOW TO ATTAIN KNOWLEDGE OF THE HIGHER WORLDS BY RUDOLF STEINER, Ph.D. FROM THE GERMAN BY ~MAX GYSI~ WITH SOME BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES OF THE AUTHOR BY ~EDOUARD SCHURÉ~ FIRST AMERICANIZED EDITION MACOY PUBLISHING AND MASONIC SUPPLY CO. NEW YORK, U.S.A. Copyright 1910 BY MACOY PUBLISHING AND MASONIC SUPPLY CO. 45-47-49 JOHN ST. New York, U.S.A. CONTENTS. PAGE The Personality of Rudolf Steiner and His Development 7 I. The Superphysical World and Its Gnosis 33 II. How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds 50 III. The Path of Discipleship 65 IV. Probation 81 V. Enlightenment 93 VI. Initiation 117 VII. The Higher Education of the Soul 135 VIII. The Conditions of Discipleship 149 List of Occult and Kindred Books 165 Transcriber's Note: Words printed in bold are noted with tildes; ~bold~. There is no corresponding anchor for footnote number 5. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. (FOR THE ENGLISH EDITION.) Being deeply interested in Dr. Steiner's work and teachings, and desirous of sharing with my English-speaking friends the many invaluable glimpses of Truth which are to be found therein, I decided upon the translation of the present volume. It is due to the kind co-operation of several friends who prefer to be anonymous that this task has been accomplished, and I wish to express my hearty thanks for the literary assistance rendered by them--also to thank Dr. Peipers of Munich for permission to reproduce his excellent photograph of the author. The special value of this volume consists, I think, in the fact that no advice is given and no statement made which is not based on the personal experience of the author, who is, in the truest sense, both a mystic and an occultist. If the present volume should meet with a reception justifying a further venture, we propose translating and issuing during the coming year a further series of articles by Dr. Steiner in continuation of the same subject, and a third volume will consist of the articles now appearing in the pages of The Theosophist, entitled "The Education of Children." MAX GYSI. PUBLISHER'S NOTE. While the pleasant German vernacular is still discernable in the text of this work, we wish to state that it has been Americanized in spelling, phraseology, and definition, to make plainer to the Western mind the wonderful truths experienced by its distinguished author. The readers, especially Occult, Theosophic, Masonic, and New Thought students, we believe, will appreciate the clearness with which his teachings lead to the simple rich Harmony of Life. MACOY PUB. & MASONIC SUP. CO. THE PERSONALITY OF RUDOLF STEINER AND HIS DEVELOPMENT BY EDOUARD SCHURÉ[1] Many of even the most cultivated men of our time have a very mistaken idea of what is a true mystic and a true occultist. They know these two forms of human mentality only by their imperfect or degenerate types, of which recent times have afforded but too many examples. To the intellectual man of the day, the mystic is a kind of fool and visionary who takes his fancies for facts; the occultist is a dreamer or a charlatan who abuses public credulity in order to boast of an imaginary science and of pretended powers. Be it remarked, to begin with, that this definition of mysticism, though deserved by some, would be as unjust as erroneous if one sought to apply it to such personalities as Joachim del Fiore of the thirteenth century, Jacob Boehme of the sixteenth, or St. Martin, who is called "the unknown philosopher," of the eighteenth century. No less unjust and false would be the current definition of the occultist if one saw in it the slightest connection with such earnest seekers as Paracelsus, Mesmer, or Fabre d'Olivet in the past, as William Crookes, de Rochat, or Camille Flammarion in the present. Think what we may of these bold investigators, it is undeniable that they have opened out regions unknown to science, and furnished the mind with new ideas. [1] Translated by kind permission of the author from the introduction to _Le Mystère Chrétien et les Mystères Antiques_. Traduit de l'allemand par Edouard Schuré, Librairie académique, Perrin & Co., 1908, Paris. No, these fanciful definitions can at most satisfy that scientific dilettantism which hides its feebleness under a supercilious mask to screen its indolence, or the worldly scepticism which ridicules all that threatens to upset its indifference. But enough of these superficial opinions. Let us study history, the sacred and profane books of all nations, and the last results of experimental science; let us subject all these facts to impartial criticism, inferring similar effects from identical causes, and we shall be forced to give quite another definition of the mystic and the occultist. The true mystic is a man who enters into full possession of his inner life, and who, having become cognizant of his sub-consciousness, finds in it, through concentrated meditation and steady discipline, new faculties and enlightenment. These new faculties and this enlightenment instruct him as to the innermost nature of his soul and his relations with that impalpable element which underlies all, with that eternal and supreme reality which religion calls God, and poetry the Divine. The occultist, akin to the mystic, but differing from him as a younger from an elder brother, is a man endowed with intuition and with synthesis, who seeks to penetrate the hidden depths and foundations of Nature by the methods of science and philosophy: that is to say, by observation and reason, methods invariable in principle, but modified in application by being adapted to the descending kingdoms of Spirit or the ascending kingdoms of Nature, according to the vast hierarchy of beings and the alchemy of the creative Word. The mystic, then, is one who seeks for truth and the Divine directly within himself, by a gradual detachment and a veritable birth of his higher soul. If he attains it after prolonged effort, he plunges into his own glowing centre. Then he immerses himself, and identifies himself with that ocean of life which is the primordial Force. The occultist, on the other hand, discovers, studies, and contemplates this same Divine outpouring given forth in diverse portions, endowed with force, and multiplied to infinity in Nature and in Humanity. According to the profound saying of Paracelsus: _he sees in all beings the letters of an alphabet, which, united in man, form the complete and conscious Word of life_. The detailed analysis that he makes of them, the syntheses that he constructs with them, are to him as so many images and forecastings of this central Divine, of this Sun of Beauty, of Truth and of Life, which he sees not, but which is reflected and bursts upon his vision in countless mirrors. The weapons of the mystic are concentration and inner vision; the weapons of the occultist are intuition and synthesis. Each corresponds to the other; they complete and presuppose each other. These two human types are blended in the Adept, in the higher Initiate. No doubt one or the other, and often both, are met with in the founders of great religions and the loftiest philosophies. No doubt also they are to be found again, in a less, but still very remarkable degree, among a certain number of personages who have played a great part in history as reformers, thinkers, poets, artists, statesmen. Why, then, should these two types of mind, which represent the highest human faculties, and were formerly the object of universal veneration, usually appear to us now as merely deformed and travestied? Why have they become obliterated? Why should they have fallen into such discredit? That is the result of a profound cause existing in an inevitable necessity of human evolution. During the last two thousand years, but especially since the sixteenth century, humanity has achieved a tremendous work, namely, the conquest of the globe and the constitution of experimental science, in what concerns the material and visible world. That this gigantic and herculean task should be successfully accomplished, it was necessary that there should be a temporary eclipse of man's transcendental faculties, so that his whole power of observation might be concentrated on the outer world. These faculties, however, have never been extinct or even inactive. They lay dormant in the mass of men; they remained active in the elect, far from the gaze of the vulgar. Now, they are showing themselves openly under new forms. Before long they will assume a leading and directing importance in human destinies. I would add that at no period of history, whether among the nations of the ancient Aryan cycle, or in the Semitic civilizations of Asia and Africa--whether in the Græco-Latin world, or in the middle ages and in modern times, have these royal faculties, for which positivism would substitute its dreary nomenclature, ever ceased to operate at the beginning and in the background of all great human creations and of all fruitful work. For how can we imagine a thinker, a poet, an inventor, a hero, a master of science or of art, a genius of any kind, without a mighty ray of those two master-faculties which make the mystic and the occultist--the inner vision and the sovereign intuition. * * * * * Rudolf Steiner is both a mystic and an occultist. These two natures appear in him in perfect harmony. One could not say which of the two predominates over the other. In intermingling and blending, they have become one homogeneous force. Hence a special development in which outward events play but a secondary part. Dr. Steiner was born in Upper Austria in 1861. His earliest years were passed in a little town situated on the Leytha, on the borders of Styria, the Carpathians, and Hungary. From childhood his character was serious and concentrated. This was followed by a youth inwardly illuminated by the most marvellous intuitions, a young manhood encountering terrible trials, and a ripe age crowned by a mission which he had dimly foreseen from his earliest years, but which was only gradually formulated in the struggle for truth and life. This youth, passed in a mountainous and secluded region, was happy in its way, thanks to the exceptional faculties that he discovered in himself. He was employed in a Catholic church as a choir boy. The poetry of the worship, the profundity of the symbolism, had a mysterious attraction for him; but, as he possessed the innate gift of _seeing souls_, one thing terrified him. This was the secret unbelief of the priests, entirely engrossed in the ritual and the material part of the service. There was another peculiarity: no one, either then or later, allowed himself to talk of any gross superstition in his presence, or to utter any blasphemy, as if those calm and penetrating eyes compelled the speaker to serious thought. In this child, almost always silent, there grew up a quiet and inflexible will, to master things through understanding. That was easier for him than for others, for he possessed from the first that self-mastery, so rare even in the adult, which gives the mastery over others. To this firm will was added a warm, deep and almost painful sympathy; a kind of pitiful tenderness to all beings and even to inanimate nature. It seemed to him that all souls had in them something divine. But in what a stony crust is hidden the shining gold! In what hard rock, in what dark gloom lay dormant the precious essence! Vaguely as yet did this idea stir within him--he was to develop it later--that the divine soul is present in all men, but in a latent state. It is a sleeping captive that has to be _awakened from enchantment_. To the sight of this young thinker, human souls became transparent, with their troubles, their desires, their paroxysms of hatred or of love. And it was probably owing to the terrible things he saw, that he spoke so little. And yet, what delights, unknown to the world, sprang from this involuntary clairvoyance! Among the remarkable inner revelations of this youth, I will instance only one which was extremely characteristic. The vast plains of Hungary, the wild Carpathian forests, the old churches of those mountains in which the monstrance glows brightly as a sun in the darkness of the sanctuary, were not there for nothing, but they were helpful to meditation and contemplation. At fifteen years of age, Steiner became acquainted with a herbalist at that time staying in his country. The remarkable thing about this man was that he knew not only the species, families, and life of plants in their minutest details, but also their secret virtues. One would have said that he had spent his life in conversing with the unconscious and fluid soul of herbs and flowers. He had the gift of seeing the vital principle of plants, their etheric body, and what Occultism calls the elementals of the vegetable world. He talked of it as of a quite ordinary and natural thing. The calm and coolly scientific tone of his conversation still further excited the curiosity and admiration of the youth. Later on, Steiner knew that this strange man was a messenger from the Master, whom as yet he knew not, but who was to be his real initiator, and who was already watching over him from afar. What the curious, double-sighted botanist told him, young Steiner found to be in accordance with the logic of things. That confirmed an inner feeling of long standing, and which more and more forced itself on his mind as the fundamental Law, and as the basis of the Great All. That is to say: _the two-fold current which constitutes the very movement of the world_, and which might be called _the flux and reflux of the universal life_. We are all witnesses and are conscious of the outward current of _evolution_, which urges onward all beings of heaven and of earth--stars, plants, animals and humanity--and causes them to move forward towards an infinite future, without our perceiving the initial force which impels them and makes them go on without pause or rest. But there is in the universe _an inverse current_, which interposes itself and perpetually breaks in on the other. It is that of _involution_, by which the principles, forces, entities and souls which come from the invisible world and the kingdom of the Eternal infiltrate and ceaselessly intermingle with the visible reality. No evolution of matter would be comprehensible without this occult and astral current, which is the great propeller of life, with its hierarchy of powers. Thus the Spirit, which contains the future in germ, _involves_ itself in matter; thus matter, which receives the Spirit, _evolves_ towards the future. While, then, we are moving on blindly towards the unknown future, this future is approaching us consciously, infusing itself in the current of the world and man who elaborate it. _Such is the two-fold movement of time, the out-breathing and the in-breathing of the soul of the world, which comes from the Eternal and returns thither._ From the age of eighteen, young Steiner possessed the spontaneous consciousness of this two-fold current--a consciousness which is the condition of all spiritual vision. This vital axiom was forced upon him by a direct and involuntary seeing of things. Thenceforth he had the unmistakable sensation of occult powers which were working behind and through him for his guidance. He gave heed to this force and obeyed its admonitions, for he felt in profound accordance with it. This kind of perception, however, formed a separate category in his intellectual life. This class of truths seemed to him something so profound, so mysterious, and so sacred, that he never imagined it possible to express it in words. He fed his soul thereon, as from a divine fountain, but to have scattered a drop of it beyond would have seemed to him a profanation. Beside this inner and contemplative life, his rational and philosophic mind was powerfully developing. From sixteen to seventeen years of age, Rudolf Steiner plunged deeply into the study of Kant, Fichte and Schelling. When he came to Vienna some years after, he became an ardent admirer of Hegel, whose transcendental idealism borders on Occultism; but speculative philosophy did not satisfy him. His positive mind demanded the solid basis of the sciences of observation. So he deeply studied mathematics, chemistry, mineralogy, botany and zoology. "These studies," he said "afford a surer basis for the construction of a spiritual system of the universe than history and literature. The latter, wanting in exact methods, would then throw no side-lights on the vast domain of German science." Inquiring into everything, enamored of high art, and an enthusiast for poetry, Steiner nevertheless did not neglect literary studies. As a guide therein he found an excellent professor in the person of Julius Schröer, a distinguished scholar of the school of the brothers Grimm, who strove to develop in his pupils the art of oratory and of composition. To this distinguished man the young student owed his great and refined literary culture. "In the desert of prevailing materialism," says Steiner, "his house was to me an oasis of idealism." But this was not yet the Master whom he sought. Amidst these varied studies and deep meditations, he could as yet discern the building of the universe but in a fragmentary way; his inborn intuition prevented any doubt of the divine origin of things and of a spiritual Beyond. A distinctive mark of this extraordinary man was that he never knew any of those crises of doubt and despair which usually accompany the transition to a definite conviction in the life of mystics and of thinkers. Nevertheless, he felt that the central light which illumines and penetrates the whole was still lacking in him. He had reached young manhood, with its terrible problems. What was he going to do with his life? The sphinx of destiny was facing him. How should he solve its problem? It was at the age of nineteen that the aspirant to the mysteries met with his guide--the Master--so long anticipated. It is an undoubted fact, admitted by occult tradition and confirmed by experience, that those who seek the higher truth from an impersonal motive find a master to initiate them at the right moment: that is to say, when they are ripe for its reception. "Knock, and it shall be opened to you," said Jesus. That is true with regard to everything, but above all with regard to truth. Only, the desire must be ardent as a flame, in a soul pure as crystal. The Master of Rudolf Steiner was one of those men of power who live, unknown to the world, under cover of some civil state, to carry out a mission unsuspected by any but their fellows in the Brotherhood of self-sacrificing Masters. They take no ostensible part in human events. To remain unknown is the condition of their power, but their action is only the more efficacious. For they inspire, prepare and direct those who will act in the sight of all. In the present instance the Master had no difficulty in completing the first and spontaneous initiation of his disciple. He had only, so to speak, to point out to him his own nature, to arm him with his needful weapons. Clearly did he show him the connection between the official and the secret sciences; between the religious and the spiritual forces which are now contending for the guidance of humanity; the antiquity of the occult tradition which holds the hidden threads of history, which mingles them, separates, and re-unites them in the course of ages. Swiftly he made him clear the successive stages of inner discipline, in order to attain conscious and intelligent clairvoyance. In a few months the disciple learned from oral teaching the depth and incomparable splendor of the esoteric synthesis. Rudolf Steiner had already sketched for himself his intellectual mission: "To re-unite Science and Religion. To bring back God into Science, and Nature into Religion. Thus to re-fertilize both Art and Life." But how to set about this vast and daring undertaking? How conquer, or rather, how tame and transform the great enemy, the materialistic science of the day, which is like a terrible dragon covered with its carapace and couched on its huge treasure? How master this dragon of modern science and yoke it to the car of spiritual truth? And, above all, how conquer the bull of public opinion? Rudolf Steiner's Master was not in the least like himself. He had not that extreme and feminine sensibility which, though not excluding energy, makes every contact an emotion and instantly turns the suffering of others into a personal pain. He was masculine in spirit, a born ruler of men, looking only at the species, and for whom individuals hardly existed. He spared not himself, and he did not spare others. His will was like a ball which, once shot from the cannon's mouth, goes straight to its mark, sweeping off everything in its way. To the anxious questioning of his disciple he replied in substance: "If thou wouldst fight the enemy, begin by understanding him. Thou wilt conquer the dragon only by penetrating his skin. As to the bull, thou must seize him by the horns. It is in the extremity of distress that thou wilt find thy weapons and thy brothers in the fight. I have shown thee who thou art, now go--and _be_ thyself!" Rudolf Steiner knew the language of the Masters well enough to understand the rough path that he was thus commanded to tread; but he also understood that this was the only way to attain the end. He obeyed, and set forth. * * * * * From 1880 the life of Rudolf Steiner becomes divided into three quite distinct periods: from twenty to thirty years of age (1881-1891), the Viennese period, a time of study and of preparation; from thirty to forty (1891-1901), the Weimar period, a time of struggle and combat; from forty to forty-six (1901-1907), the Berlin period, a time of action and of organization, in which his thought crystallized into a living work. I pass rapidly over the Vienna period, in which Steiner took the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. He afterwards wrote a series of scientific articles on zoology, geology, and the theory of colors, in which theosophical ideas appear in an idealist clothing. While acting as tutor in several families, with the same conscientious devotion that he gave to everything, he conducted as chief editor a weekly Viennese paper, the _Deutsche Wochenschrift_. His friendship with the Austrian poetess, Marie Eugénie delle Grazie, cast, as it were, into this period of heavy work a warm ray of sunshine, with a smile of grace and poetry. In 1890 Steiner was summoned to collaborate in the archives of Goethe and Schiller at Weimar, to superintend the re-editing of Goethe's scientific works. Shortly after, he published two important works, _Truth and Science_ and _The Philosophy of Liberty_. "The occult powers that guided me," he says, "forced me to introduce spiritualistic ideas imperceptibly into the current literature of the time." But in these various tasks he was but studying his ground while trying his strength. So distant was the goal that he did not dream of being able to reach it as yet. To travel round the world in a sailing vessel, to cross the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, in order to return to a European port, would have seemed easier to him. While awaiting the events that would allow him to equip his ship and to launch it on the open sea, he came into touch with two illustrious personalities who helped to determine his intellectual position in the contemporary world. These two persons were the celebrated philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the no less famous naturalist, Ernst Haeckel. Rudolf Steiner had just written an impartial treatise on the author of _Zarathustra_. In consequence of this, Nietzsche's sister begged the sympathetic critic to come and see her at Naumburg, where her unhappy brother was slowly dying. Madame Foerster took the visitor to the door of the apartment where Nietzsche was lying on a couch in a comatose condition, inert, stupified. To Steiner there was something very significant in this melancholy sight. In it he saw the final act in the tragedy of the would-be superman. Nietzsche, the author of _Beyond Good and Evil_, had not, like the realists of Bismarckian imperialism, renounced idealism, for he was naturally intuitive; but in his individualistic pride he sought to cut off the spiritual world from the universe, and the divine from human consciousness. Instead of placing the superman, of whom he had a poetic vision, in the spiritual kingdom, which is his true sphere, he strove to force him into the material world, which alone was real in his eyes. Hence, in that splendid intellect arose a chaos of ideas and a wild struggle which finally brought on softening of the brain. To explain this particular case, it is needless to bring in atavism or the theory of degeneracy. The frenzied combat of ideas and of contradictory sentiments, of which this brain was the battlefield, was enough. Steiner had done justice to all the genius that marked the innovating ideas of Nietzsche, but this victim of pride, self-destroyed by negation, was to him none the less a tragic instance of the ruin of a mighty intellect which madly destroys itself in breaking away from spiritual intelligence. Madame Foerster did her utmost to enrol Dr. Steiner under her brother's flag. For this she used all her skill, making repeated offers to the young publicist to become editor and commentator of Nietzsche's works. Steiner withstood her insistence as best he could, and ended by taking himself off altogether, for which Madame Foerster never forgave him. She did not know that Rudolf Steiner bore within him the consciousness of a work no less great and more valuable than that of her brother. Nietzsche had been merely an interesting episode in the life of the esoteric thinker on the threshold of his battlefield. His meeting with the celebrated naturalist, Ernst Haeckel, on the contrary, marks a most important phase in the development of his thought. Was not the successor of Darwin apparently the most formidable adversary of the spiritualism of this young initiate, of that philosophy which to him was the very essence of his being and the breath of his thought? Indeed, since the broken link between man and animal has been re-joined, since man can no longer believe in a special and supernatural origin, he has begun altogether to doubt his divine origin and destiny. He no longer sees himself as anything but one phenomenon among so many phenomena, a passing form amidst so many forms, a frail and chance link in a blind evolution. Steiner, then, is right in saying: "The mentality deduced from natural sciences is the greatest power of modern times." On the other hand, he knew that this system merely reproduces a succession of external forms among living beings, and not the inner and acting forces of life. He knew it from personal initiation, and a deeper and vaster view of the universe. So also he could exclaim with more assurance than most of our timid spiritualists and startled theologians: "Is the human soul then to rise on the wings of enthusiasm to the summits of the True, the Beautiful and the Good, only to be swept away into nothingness, like a bubble of the brain?" Yes, Haeckel was the Adversary. It was materialism in arms, the dragon with all his scales, his claws, and his teeth. Steiner's desire to understand this man, and to do him justice as to all that was great in him, to fathom his theory so far as it was logical and plausible, was only the more intense. In this fact one sees all the loyalty and all the greatness of his comprehensive mind. The materialistic conclusions of Haeckel could have no influence on his own ideas which came to him from a different science; but he had a presentment that in the indisputable discoveries of the naturalist he should find the surest basis of an evolutionary spiritualism and a rational theosophy. He began, then, to study eagerly the _History of Natural Creation_. In it Haeckel gives a fascinating picture of the evolution of species, from the amoeba to man. In it he shows the successive growth of organs, and the physiological process by which living beings have raised themselves to organisms more and more complex and more and more perfect. But in this stupendous transformation, which implies millions and millions of years, he never explains the initial force of this universal ascent, nor the series of special impulses which cause beings to rise step by step. To these primordial questions, Haeckel has never been able to reply except by admitting spontaneous generation,[2] which is tantamount to a miracle as great as the creation of man by God from a clod of earth. To a theosophist like Steiner, on the other hand, the cosmic force which elaborates the world comprises in its spheres, fitted one into another, the myriads of souls which crystallize and incarnate ceaselessly in all beings. He, who saw the _underside_ of creation, could but recognize and admire the extent of the all-round gaze with which Haeckel surveyed his _above_. It was in vain that the naturalist would deny the divine Author of the universal scheme: he proved it in spite of himself, in so well describing His work. As to the theosophist, he greeted, in the surging of species and in the breath which urges them onward--Man in the making, the very thought of God, the visible expression of the planetary Word.[3] [2] A speech delivered in Paris, 28th August 1878. See also Haeckel's _History of Natural Creation_, 13th lecture. [3] This is how Dr. Steiner himself describes the famous German naturalist: "Haeckel's personality is captivating. It is the most complete contrast to the _tone_ of his writings. If Haeckel had but made a slight study of the philosophy of which he speaks, not even as a dilettante, but like a child, he would have drawn the most lofty spiritual conclusions from his phylogenetic studies. Haeckel's doctrine is grand, but Haeckel himself is the worst of commentators on his doctrine. It is not by showing our contemporaries the weak points in Haeckel's doctrine that we can promote intellectual progress, but by pointing out to them the grandeur of his phylogenetic thought." Steiner has developed these ideas in two works: _Welt und Lebensanschauungen im 19ten Jahrhundert_ (Theories of the Universe and of Life in the Nineteenth Century), and _Haeckel und seine Gegner_ (Haeckel and his Opponents). While thus pursuing his studies, Rudolf Steiner recalled the saying of his Master: "To conquer the dragon, his skin must be penetrated." While stealing within the carapace of present-day materialism, he had seized his weapons. Henceforth he was ready for the combat. He needed but a field of action to give battle, and a powerful aid to uphold him therein. He was to find his field in the Theosophical Society, and his aid in a remarkable woman. In 1897 Rudolf Steiner went to Berlin to conduct a literary magazine and to give lectures there. On his arrival, he found there a branch of the Theosophical Society. The German branch of this Society was always noted for its great independence, which is natural in a country of transcendental philosophy and of fastidious criticism. It had already made a considerable contribution to occult literature through the interesting periodical, _The Sphinx_, conducted by Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden, and Dr. Carl du Prel's book--_Philosophie der Mystik_. But, the leaders having retired, it was almost over with the group. Great discussions and petty wranglings divided the theosophists beyond the Rhine. Should Rudolf Steiner enter the Theosophical Society? This question forced itself urgently upon him, and it was of the utmost gravity, both for himself and for his cause. Through his first Master, through the brotherhood with which he was associated, and by his own innermost nature, Steiner belongs to another school of Occultism, I mean to the esoteric Christianity of the West, and most especially to the Rosicrucian initiation. After mature consideration he resolved to join the Theosophical Society of which he became a member in 1902. He did not, however, enter it as a pupil of the Eastern tradition, but as an initiate of Rosicrucian esotericism who gladly recognized the profound depth of the Hindu Wisdom and offered it a brotherly hand to make a magnetic link between the two. He understood that the two traditions were not meant to contend with each other, but to act in concert, with complete independence, and thus to work for the common good of civilization. The Hindu tradition, in fact, contains the greatest treasure of occult science as regards cosmogony and the prehistoric periods of humanity, while the tradition of Christian and Western esotericism looks from its immeasurable height upon the far-off future and the final destinies of our race. For the past contains and prepares the future, as the future issues from the past and completes it. Rudolf Steiner was assisted in his work by a powerful recruit and one of inestimable value in the propagandist work that he was about to undertake. Mlle. Marie von Sivers, a Russian by birth, and of an unusually varied cosmopolitan education (she writes and speaks Russian, French, German, and English equally well), had herself also reached Theosophy by other roads, after long seeking for the truth which illumines all because it illumines the very depths of our own being. The extreme refinement of her aristocratic nature, at once modest and proud, her great and delicate sensitiveness, the extent and balance of her intelligence, her artistic and mental endowments, all made her wonderfully fitted for the part of an agent and an apostle. The Oriental theosophy had attracted and delighted her without altogether convincing her. The lectures of Dr. Steiner gave her the light which convinces by casting its beams on all sides, as from a transplendent centre. Independent and free, she, like many Russians in good society, sought for some ideal work to which she could devote all her energies. She had found it. Dr. Steiner having been appointed General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, Mlle. Marie von Sivers became his assistant. From that time, in spreading the work throughout Germany and the adjacent countries, she displayed a real genius for organization, maintained with unwearied activity. As for Rudolf Steiner, he had already given ample proof of his profound thought and his eloquence. He knew himself, and he was master of himself. But such faith, such devotion must have increased his energy a hundredfold, and given wings to his words. His writings on esoteric questions followed one another in rapid succession.[4] [4] _Die Mystik, im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens_ (1901); _Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache_ (1902); _Theosophie_ (1904). He is now preparing an important book, which will no doubt be his chief work, and which is to be called _Geheimwissenschaft_ (Occult Science). He delivered lectures in Berlin, Leipzig, Cassel, Munich, Stuttgart, Vienna, Budapest, etc. All his books are of a high standard. He is equally skilled in the deduction of ideas in philosophical order, and in rigorous analysis of scientific facts. And when he so chooses, he can give a poetical form to his thought, in original and striking imagery. But his whole self is shown only by his presence and his speech, private or public. The characteristic of his eloquence is a singular force, always gentle in expression, resulting undoubtedly from perfect serenity of soul combined with wonderful clearness of mind. Added to this at times is an inner and mysterious vibration which makes itself felt by the listener from the very first words. Never a word that could shock or jar. From argument to argument, from analogy to analogy, he leads you on from the known to the unknown. Whether following up the comparative development of the earth and of man, according to occult tradition, through the Lemurian, Atlantean, Asiatic and European periods; whether explaining the physiological and psychic constitution of man as he now is; whether enumerating the stages of Rosicrucian initiation, or commenting on the Gospel of St. John and the Apocalypse, or applying his root-ideas to mythology, history and literature, that which dominates and guides his discourse is ever this power of synthesis, which co-ordinates facts under one ruling idea and gathers them together in one harmonious vision. And it is ever this inward and contagious fervor, this secret music of the soul, which is, as it were, a subtle melody in harmony with the Universal Soul. Such, at least, is what I felt on first meeting him and listening to him two years ago. I could not better describe this undefinable feeling than by recalling the saying of a poet-friend to whom I was showing the portrait of the German theosophist. Standing before those deep and clear-seeing eyes, before that countenance, hollowed by inward struggles, moulded by a lofty spirit which has proved its balance on the heights and its calm in the depths, my friend exclaimed: "Behold a master of himself and of life!" THE WAY OF INITIATION I THE SUPERPHYSICAL WORLD AND ITS GNOSIS In this practical age and because of the many various claims of the day, it is but natural that people, who hear of transcendentalism should at once ask the question: "How may we for ourselves know the truth of such statements?" Indeed, it is noticeable, as a characteristic of the majority, that they will accept nothing on faith, or mere "authority," but wish rather to rely entirely upon their own judgment. Therefore, when a mystic undertakes to explain something of the superphysical nature of man, and of the destiny of the human soul and spirit before birth and after death, he is at once confronted with that fundamental demand. Such doctrine, they seem to think is important only when you have shown them the way by which they may convince themselves of its truth. [5] Translated from _Lusifer-Gnosis_ (May to Dec. 1904), a theosophical magazine, published by M. Altmann, Leipzig, and edited by Dr. Rudolph Steiner (17 Motzstrasse, Berlin, W.). This translation appeared first in the _Theosophist_ (October 1907-June 1908), a magazine of Brotherhood, of Comparative Religion, Philosophy and Science, and of Occultism. Edited by Annie Besant, President of the Theosophical Society, Adyar, Madras. This critical inquiry is quite justified; and no true mystic or occultist will dispute its fairness, yet it is unfortunate that with many who make the demand, there exists a feeling of skepticism or antagonism toward the mystic or any attempt on his part to explain anything occult. This feeling becomes especially marked when the mystic intimates how the truths which he has described may be attained. For they say, "Whatever is true may be demonstrated; therefore, prove to us what you assert." They demand that the truth must be something clear and simple, something which an ordinary intellect may comprehend. "Surely," they add, "this knowledge cannot be the possession of a chosen few, to whom it is given by a special revelation." And in this way the real messenger of transcendental truth is frequently confronted with people who reject him, because--unlike the scientist, for example, he can produce no proofs for his assertions, of such a nature as they are able to understand. Again, there are those who cautiously reject any information pertaining to the superphysical because to them it does not seem reasonable. Thereupon they partially satisfy themselves, by claiming that we cannot know anything of what lies beyond birth or death, or of anything which cannot be perceived through our five ordinary physical senses. These are but a few of the arguments and criticisms with which to-day the messenger of a spiritual philosophy is confronted; but they are similar to all those which compose the key-note of our time, and he who puts himself at the service of a spiritual movement must recognize this condition quite clearly. For his own part, the mystic is aware that his knowledge rests upon superphysical facts; which to him are just as tangible, for example, as those that form the foundation of the experiences and observations described by a traveller in Africa or any strange land. To the mystic applies what Annie Besant has said in her manual, "Death and After?" "A seasoned African explorer would care but little for the criticisms passed on his report by persons who had never been there; he might tell what he saw, describe the animals whose habits he had studied, sketch the country he had traversed, sum up its products and its characteristics. If he was contradicted, laughed at, set right, by untravelled critics, he would be neither ruffled nor distressed, but would merely leave them alone. Ignorance cannot convince knowledge by repeated asseveration of its nescience. The opinion of a hundred persons on a subject of which they are wholly ignorant is of no more weight than the opinion of one such person. Evidence is strengthened by many consenting witnesses, testifying each to his knowledge of a fact, but nothing multiplied a thousand times remains nothing." Here is expressed the mystic's view of his own situation. He hears the objections which are raised on every side, yet he knows that for himself he has no need to dispute them. He realizes that his certain knowledge is being criticized by those who have not had his experience, that he is in the position of a mathematician who has discovered a truth which can lose no value though a thousand voices are raised in opposition. Then again will arise the objection of the skeptics: "Mathematical truths may be proven to anyone," they will say, "and though perhaps you have really found something, we shall accept it only when we have learned of its truth through our own investigation." Such then have reason to consider themselves to be in the right, because it is clear to them that anyone who acquires the necessary knowledge can prove a mathematical truth, while the experiences professed by the mystic if true depend upon the special faculties of a few elect mystics, in whom they assume they are expected to blindly believe. For him, who rightly considers this objection, all justification for the doubt immediately vanishes; and mystics can here use the very logical reasoning of the skeptics themselves, by emphasizing the truth that the way to Higher Knowledge is open to anyone who will acquire for himself the faculties by which he may prove the spiritual truths herein claimed. The mystic asserts nothing which his opponents would not also be compelled to assert, if they did but fully comprehend their own statements. They, however, in making an assertion, often formulate a claim which constitutes a direct contradiction of that assertion. Skeptics are seldom willing to acquire the necessary faculties to test the assertions of the mystic, but prefer to judge him offhand, without regard to their own lack of qualification. The sincere mystic says to them: "I do not claim to be 'chosen' in the sense that you mean. I have merely developed within myself, some of man's additional senses in order to acquire the faculties through which it is possible to speak of glimpses into superphysical regions." These senses are dormant within you and every other person, until they are developed, (as is necessary with the usual senses and faculties more noticeable in the growth of a child). Yet his opponents answer: "You must prove your truths to us as we now are!" This at once appears a difficult task, for they have not complied with the necessity of developing the dormant powers within them, they are still unwilling to do so, and yet they insist that he shall give them proofs; nor do they see that this is exactly as if a peasant at his plough should demand of the mathematician the proof of a complicated problem, without his undergoing the trouble of learning mathematics. This mixed mental condition appears to be so general and its solution so simple that one almost hesitates to speak of it. And yet it indicates a delusion under which millions of people continue living at the present time. When explained to them they always agree in theory, since it is quite as plain as, that two and two make four; yet in practice they continually act in contradiction. The mistake has grown to be second nature with many; they indulge it without realizing that they do so without desiring to be convinced of its error; just as they set themselves against other laws which they should and would at all times recognize as embodying a principle of the simplest nature, if they but gave it an unbiased consideration. It matters not whether the mystic of to-day moves among thinking artisans, or in a more educated circle, wherever he goes he meets with the same prejudice, the same self-contradiction. One finds it in popular lectures, in the newspapers and magazines, and even in the more learned works or treatises. Here we must recognize quite clearly that we are dealing with a consensus of opinion that amounts to a sign of the times, which we may not simply pronounce as incompetent, nor deal with as possibly a correct but unjust criticism. We must understand that this prejudice against the higher truths, lies deep in the very being of our age. We must understand clearly that the great successes, the immense advance marking our time, necessarily encourages this condition. The nineteenth century especially had in the above respect a dark side to its wonderful excellences. Its greatness rests upon discoveries in the external world, and conquest of natural forces for technical and industrial purposes. These successes could have been attained only by the employment of the mind directed toward material results. The civilization of the present day is the result of the training of our senses, and of that part of our mind which is occupied with the world of sense. Almost every step we take in the busy marts of to-day shows us how much we owe to this kind of training. And it is under the influence of these blessings of civilization that the habits of thought, prevalent among our fellow-men, have been developed. They continue to abide by the senses and the mind, because it is by means of these that they have grown great. People were taught to train themselves to admit nothing as true except those things that were presented to them by the senses or the intellect. And nothing is more apt to claim for itself the only valid testimony, the only absolute authority, than the mind or the senses. If a man has acquired by means of them a certain degree of culture, he thenceforth accustoms himself to submit everything to their consideration, everything to their criticism. And again in another sphere, in the domain of Social Life, we find a similar trait. The man of the nineteenth century insisted, in the fullest sense of the word, upon the absolute freedom of personality, and repudiated any authority in the Social Commonwealth. He endeavored to construct the community in such a way that the full independence, the self-chosen vocation of each individual, should, without interference, be assured. In this way it became habitual for him to consider everything from the standpoint of the average individual. This same individuality is also helpful in the search of knowledge on the spiritual plane, for the higher powers which lie dormant in the soul may be developed by one person in this direction by another in that. One will make more progress, another less. But when they develop those powers, and attach value to them, men begin to differentiate themselves. And then one must allow, to the advanced student, more right to speak on the subject, or to act in a certain way, than to another who is less advanced. This is more essential in matters of the higher realm than on the plane of the senses and the mind, where experiences are more nearly the same. It is also noticeable that the present formation of the Social Commonwealth has helped to bring about a revolt against the higher powers of man. According to the mystic, civilization during the nineteenth century has moved altogether along physical lines; and people have accustomed themselves to move on the physical plane alone, and to feel at home there. The higher powers are developed only on planes higher than the physical, and the knowledge which these faculties bring is, therefore, unknown to the physical man. It is only necessary to attend mass-meetings, if one wishes to be convinced of the fact that the speakers there are totally unable to think any thoughts but those which refer to the physical plane, the world of sense. This can also be seen through the leading journalists of our papers and magazines; and, indeed, on all sides one may observe the haughtiest and most complete denial of everything that cannot be seen with the eyes, or felt with the hands, or comprehended by the average mind. We do not condemn this attitude for it denotes a necessary stage in the development of humanity. Without the pride and prejudices of mind and sense, we should never have achieved our great conquests over material life, nor have been able to impart to the personality a certain measure of elasticity: neither can we hope that many ideals, which must be founded on man's desire for freedom and the assertion of personality, may yet be realized. But this dark side of a purely materialistic civilization has deeply affected the whole being of the modern man. For proof it is not necessary to refer to the obvious facts already named; it would be easy to demonstrate, by certain examples (which are greatly underrated, especially to-day), how deeply rooted in the mind of the modern man is this adhesion to the testimony of the senses, or the average intelligence. And it is just these things that indicate the need for the renewal of spiritual life. The strong response evoked by Professor Friedrich Delitzsch's _Babel and Bible Theory_ fully justifies a reference to its author's method of thinking, as a sign of the time. Professor Delitzsch has demonstrated the relationship of certain traditions in the Old Testament, to the Babylonian accounts of the Creation, and this fact, coming from such a source and in such a form, has been realized by many who would otherwise have ignored such questions. It has led many to reconsider the so-called idea of Revelation. They ask themselves: "How is it possible to accept the idea that the contents of the Old Testament were revealed by God, when we find very similar conceptions among decidedly heathen nations?" This problem cannot here be further discussed. Delitzsch found many opponents who feared that through his exposition, the very foundations of Religion had been shaken. He has defended himself in a pamphlet, _Babel and Bible, a Retrospect and a Forecast_. Here we shall only refer to a single statement in the pamphlet. One of importance, because it reveals the view of an eminent scientist regarding the position of man with respect to transcendental truths. And to-day innumerable other people think and feel just like Delitzsch. The statement affords an excellent opportunity for us to find out what is the innermost conviction of our contemporaries, expressed quite freely and, therefore, in its truest form. Delitzsch turns to those who reproach him with a somewhat liberal use of the term "Revelation," and who would fain regard it as "a kind of old priestly wisdom" which "has nothing at all to do with the layman," making this reply. "For my part, I am of opinion that while our children or ourselves are instructed in school or at church as regards Revelation, not only are we within our right, but it is our duty, to think independently concerning these deep questions, possessing also, as they do, an eminently practical side, were it only that we might avoid giving our children 'evasive' answers. For this very reason it will be gratifying to many searchers after Truth when the dogma of a special 'choosing' of Israel shall have been brought forward into the light of a wider historical outlook, through the union of Babylonian, Assyrian, and Old Testament research.... [A few pages earlier we are shown the direction of such thoughts.] For the rest, it would seem to me that the only logical thing is for Church and School to be satisfied as regards the whole past history of the world and of humanity, with the belief in One Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth, and that these tales of the Old Testament should be classified by themselves under some such title as 'Old Hebraic Myths.'" (It may be taken as a matter of course, we suppose, that no one will see in the following remarks an attack on the investigator Delitzsch.) What, then, is here averred in naive simplicity? Nothing less than that the mind which is engaged upon physical investigation may assert the right of judging experiences of superphysical nature. There is no thought that this mind without further development may perhaps be unfit to reflect upon the teachings of these "Revelations." When one wishes to understand that which appears as a "Revelation," one must employ the kind of knowledge or forces through which the "Revelation," itself has come to us. He who develops within himself the mystical power of perception soon observes that in certain stories of the Old Testament which by Delitzsch were called "Old Hebraic Myths," there are revealed to him truths of a higher nature than those which may be comprehended by the intellect, which is only concerned with the things of sense. His own experiences will lead him to see that these "Myths" have proceeded out of a mystic perception of transcendental truths. And then, in one illuminative moment, his whole point of view is changed. As little as one may demonstrate the fallacy of a mathematical problem by discovering who solved it first, or even that several people have solved it, just so little may one impugn the truth of a biblical narrative by the discovery of a similar story elsewhere. Instead of demanding that everyone should insist upon his right, or even his duty, to think independently on the so-called "Revelations," we ought rather to consider that only he who has developed in himself those latent powers which make it possible for him to relive that which was once realized by those very mystics, who proclaimed the "supersensuous revelations," has a right to decide anything about the matter. Here we have an excellent example of how the average intellect, qualified for the highest triumphs in practical sense-knowledge, sets itself up, in naive pride, as a judge in domains, the existence of which it does not even care to know. For purely historical investigation is also carried on by nothing but the experience of the senses. In just the same way has the investigation of the New Testament led us into a blind alley. At any costs the method of the "Newer Historical Investigation" had to be directed upon the Gospels. These documents have been compared with each other, and brought into relation with all sorts of records, in order that we might find out what really happened in Palestine from the year 1 to the year 33; how the "historical personality" of whom they tell really lived, and what He may really have said. Angelus Selesius, of the seventeenth century, has already expressed the whole of the critical attitude toward this kind of investigation: "Though Christ were yearly born in Bethlehem, and never Had birth in you yourself, then were you lost for ever; And if within yourself it is not reared again, The Cross at Golgotha can save you not from pain." Nor are these the words of one who doubted, but those of a Christian, strong in his belief. And his equally fervent predecessor, Meister Eckhart, said in the thirteenth century: "There are some who desire to see God with their eyes, as they look at a cow; and just as they love a cow, so they desire to love God.... Simple-minded people imagine that God may be seen as if He stood there and they stood here. But this is not so: in that perception, God and I are one." These words must not be understood as directed against the investigation of "historical truth." _Yet no one can rightly understand the historic truth of such documents as the Gospels, unless he has first experienced within himself the mystical meaning which they contain._ All such comparisons and analyses are quite worthless, for no one can discover who was "born in Bethlehem" but he who has mystically experienced the Christ within himself; neither can anyone in whom it has not already been erected, decide how it is that "the Cross at Golgotha" can deliver us from pain. Purely historical investigation "can discover no more concerning the mystic reality than the dismembering anatomist, perhaps, can discover the secret of a great poetical genius." (See my book, _Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache_, Berlin, C. A. Schwetschke und Sohn, 1902, or its French translation, mentioned on page 1.) He who can see clearly in these matters is aware how deeply rooted, at the present time, is the "pride" of the intellect, which only concerns itself with the facts of sense. It says: "I do not wish to develop faculties in order that I may reach the higher truths; I wish to form my decisions concerning them with the powers that I now possess." In a well-meant pamphlet, which is written, however, entirely in that spirit of the age which we have already indicated (_What do we know about Jesus?_ by A. Kalthoff, Berlin, 1904), we read as follows: "Christ, who symbolizes the life of the Community, may be discerned within himself by the man of to-day: out of his own soul the man of to-day can create Christ just as well as the author of a gospel created him; as a man he may put himself in the same position as the gospel-writers, because he can reinstate himself into the same soul-processes, can himself speak or write Gospel." "These words might be true, but they may also be entirely erroneous. They are true when understood in the sense of Angelus Silesius, or of Meister Eckhart, that is when they refer to the development of powers dormant in every human soul, which, from some such idea, endeavors to experience within itself the Christ of the Gospels. They are altogether wrong, if a more or less shallow ideal of the Christ is thus created out of the spirit of an age that acknowledges the truth of no perceptions other than those of the senses." The life of the Spirit can be understood only when we do not presume to criticize it with the lower mind, but rather when we develop it reverently within ourselves. No one can hope to learn anything of the higher truths if he demands that they shall be lowered to the "average understanding." This statement provokes the question: "Why, then, do you mystics proclaim these truths to people who, you declare, cannot as yet understand them? Why should there be Movements in the furtherance of certain teachings, when the powers which render men able to conceive of these teachings are still undeveloped?" It is the task of this book to elucidate this apparent contradiction. It will show that the spiritual currents of our day originate from a different source, in a different manner, from the science which relies entirely on the lower intellect. Yet, in spite of this, these spiritual currents are not to be considered as less scientific than the science which is based upon physical facts alone. Rather do they extend the field of scientific investigation into the superphysical. We must close this chapter with one more question, which is likely to arise: How may one attain to superphysical truths, and, of what help are spiritual movements towards this attainment? II HOW TO ATTAIN KNOWLEDGE OF THE HIGHER WORLDS In every man there are latent faculties by means of which he may acquire for himself knowledge of the higher worlds. The mystic, master, theosophist, or gnostic speaks of a soul-world and a spirit-world, which are, for him, just as real as the world which we see with our physical eyes, or touch with our physical hands. And those who wish to develop the spiritual senses, which unfold psychic knowledge, should understand that safe advice can be given only by those who have already developed such power within themselves. As long as the human race has existed, there have been lodges and schools in which those who possessed these higher faculties have given instruction to those who were in search of them. Such are called occult schools, and the instruction which is imparted therein is called esoteric science, or occult teaching. This designation sometimes leads to misunderstanding. He who hears it may be very easily misled into the belief that those who work in these schools desire to represent a special, privileged class, which arbitrarily withholds its knowledge from its fellow-creatures. Indeed, he may even think that perhaps there is nothing really important behind such knowledge. For he is tempted to think that, if it were a true knowledge, there would be no need of making a secret of it: one might then communicate it publicly to the advantage of all men. Those who have been initiated into occult knowledge are not in the least surprised that the uninitiated should so think. Only he who has to a certain degree experienced this initiation into the higher knowledge of being can understand the secret of that initiation. But it may be asked: How, then, shall the uninitiated, considering the circumstances, develop any interest at all in this so-called mystic knowledge? How and why ought they to search for something of the nature of which they can form no idea? Such a question is based upon an entirely erroneous conception of the real nature of occult knowledge. There is, in truth, no fundamental difference between occult knowledge and all the rest of man's knowledge and capacity. This mystic knowledge is no more a secret for the average man than writing is a secret to him who has never learned to read. And just as everyone who chooses the correct method may learn to write, so too can everyone who searches after the right way become a disciple, and even a teacher. In only one respect are the conditions here different from those that apply to external thought-activities. The possibility of acquiring the art of writing may be withheld from someone through poverty, or through the state of civilization into which he has been born; but for the attainment of knowledge in the higher worlds there is no obstacle for him who sincerely searches for it. Many believe that it is necessary to find, here or there, the Masters of the higher knowledge, in order to receive enlightenment from them. In the first place, he who strives earnestly after the higher knowledge need not be afraid of any difficulty or obstacle in his search for an Initiate who shall be able to lead him into the profounder secrets of the world. Everyone, on the contrary, may be certain that an Initiate will find him, under any circumstances, if there is in him an earnest and worthy endeavor to attain this knowledge. For it is a strict law with all Initiates to withhold from no man the knowledge that is due him. But there is an equally strict law which insists that no one shall receive any occult knowledge until he is worthy and well prepared. And the more strictly he observes these two laws, the more perfect is an Initiate. The order which embraces all Initiates is surrounded, as it were, by a wall, and the two laws here mentioned form two strong principles by which the constituents of this wall are held together. You may live in close friendship with an Initiate, yet this wall will separate him from you just as long as you have not become an Initiate yourself. You may enjoy in the fullest sense the heart, the love of an Initiate, yet he will only impart to you his secret when you yourself are ready for it. You may flatter him; you may torture him; nothing will induce him to divulge to you anything which he knows ought not be disclosed, inasmuch as you, at the present stage of your evolution, do not understand rightly how to receive the secret into your soul. The ways which prepare a man for the reception of such a secret are clearly prescribed. They are indicated by the unfading, everlasting letters within the temples where the Initiates guard the higher secrets. In ancient times, anterior to "history," these temples were outwardly visible; to-day, because our lives have become so unspiritual, they are mostly quite invisible to external sight. Yet they are present everywhere, and all who seek may find them. Only within his soul may a man discover the means which will open for him the lips of the Initiate. To a certain high degree he must develop within himself special faculties, and then the greatest treasures of the Spirit become his own. He must begin with a certain fundamental attitude of the soul: the student of Occultism calls it the Path of Devotion, of Veneration. Only he who maintains this attitude can, in Occultism, become a disciple. And he who has experience in these things is able to perceive even in the child the signs of approaching discipleship. There are children who look up with religious awe to those whom they venerate. For such people they have a respect which forbids them to admit, even in the innermost sanctuary of the heart, any thought of criticism or opposition. These children grow up into young men and maidens who feel happy when they are able to look up to anything venerable. From the ranks of such children are recruited many disciples. Have you ever paused outside the door of some venerated man, and have you, on this your first visit, felt a religious awe as you pressed the handle, in order to enter the room which for you is a holy place? Then there has been manifested in you an emotion which may be the germ of your future discipleship. It is a blessing for every developing person to have such emotions upon which to build. Only it must not be thought that such qualities contain the germ of submissiveness and slavery. Experience teaches us that those can best hold their heads erect who have learned to venerate where veneration is due. And veneration is always in its own place when it rises from the depths of the heart. If we do not develop within ourselves this deeply-rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find enough strength to evolve to something higher. The Initiate has only acquired the power of lifting his intellect to the heights of knowledge by guiding his heart into the depths of veneration and devotion. The heights of the Spirit can only be reached by passing through the portals of humility. Man can certainly have the right to gaze upon the Reality, but he must first earn this right. You can only acquire right knowledge when you are ready to esteem it. There are laws in the spiritual life, as in the physical life. Rub a glass rod with an appropriate material and it will become electric, that is to say, it will acquire the power of attracting small bodies. This exemplifies natural law. (And if one has learned even a little of physics, one knows this.) Similarly, if one is acquainted with the first principles of Occultism, one knows that every feeling of true devotion aids in developing qualities, which sooner or later, lead to the Path of Knowledge. He who possesses within himself this feeling of devotion, or who is fortunate enough to receive it from his education, brings a great deal along with him, when, later in life, he seeks an entrance to the higher knowledge. But he who has had no such preparation will find himself confronted with difficulties, even upon the first step of the Path of Knowledge, unless he undertakes, by rigorous self-education, to create the devotional mood within himself. In our time it is especially important that full attention be given to this point. Our civilization tends much more toward criticism, the giving of judgments, and so forth, than toward devotion, and a selfless veneration. Our children criticize much more than they worship. But every judgment, every carping criticism, frustrates the powers of the soul for the attainment of the higher knowledge, in the same measure that all heartfelt devotion develops them. In this we do not wish to say anything against our civilization nor pass judgment upon it. For it is to this critical faculty, this self-conscious human discernment, this "prove all things and hold fast to the good," that we owe the greatness of our civilization. We could never have attained the science, the commerce, the industry, the law of our time, had we not exercised our critical faculty everywhere, had we not everywhere applied the standard of our judgment. But what we have thereby gained in external culture we have had to pay for with a corresponding loss of the higher knowledge, of the spiritual life. Now the important thing that everyone must clearly understand is that, for him who is right in the midst of the objective civilization of our time, it is very difficult to advance to the knowledge of the higher worlds. He can do so only if he work energetically within himself. At a time when the conditions of outward life were simpler, spiritual exaltation was easier of attainment. That which ought to be venerated, that which should be kept holy, stood out in better relief from the ordinary things of the world. In a period of criticism these ideals are much lowered; other emotions take the place of awe, veneration, respect, and prayer. Our own age continually pushes these better emotions further and further back, so that in the daily life of the people they play but a very small part. He who seeks for higher knowledge must create it within himself; he himself must instil it into his soul. It cannot be done by study; it can only be done through living. He who wishes to become a disciple must therefore assiduously cultivate the devotional mood. Everywhere in his environment he must look for that which demands of him admiration and homage. Whenever his duties or circumstances permit, he should try to abstain entirely from all criticism or judgment. If I meet a brother and blame him for his weakness, I rob myself of power to win the higher knowledge; but if I try to enter lovingly into his merits, I then gather such power. The disciple should seek to benefit both himself and others. Experienced occultists are aware how much they owe to the continual searching for the good in all things, and the withholding of all harsh criticism. This must be not only an external rule of life; but it must take possession of the innermost part of our souls. We have it in our power to perfect ourselves, and by and by to transform ourselves completely. But this transformation must take place in the innermost self, in the mental life. It is not enough that I show respect only in my outward bearing toward a person; I must have this respect in my thought. The disciple must begin by drawing this devotion into his thought-life. He must altogether banish from his consciousness all thoughts of disrespect, of criticism, and he must endeavor straightway to cultivate thoughts of devotion. Every moment, in which we set ourselves to banish from our consciousness whatever remains in it of disparaging, suspicious judgment of our fellow-men, brings us nearer to the knowledge of higher things. And we rise rapidly when, in such moments, we fill our consciousness with only those thoughts that evoke admiration, respect, and veneration for men and things. He who has experience in these matters will know that in every such moment powers are awakened in man which otherwise would remain dormant. In this way the spiritual eyes of a man are opened. He begins to see things around him which hitherto he was unable to perceive. He begins to understand that hitherto he had seen only a part of the world around him. The man with whom he comes in contact now shows him quite a different aspect from that which he showed before. Of course, through this single rule of life, he will not yet be able to see what has elsewhere been described as the human aura, because, for that, a still higher training is necessary. But he may rise to that higher development if he has previously had a thorough training in devotion.[6] [6] In the last chapter of the book entitled _Theosophie_ (Berlin, C. A. Schwetschke und Sohn), Dr. Rudolf Steiner fully describes this "Path of Knowledge;" here it is only intended to give some practical details. Noiseless and unnoticed by the outer world is the following of the "Path of Discipleship." It is not necessary that anyone should observe a change in the disciple. He performs his duties as hitherto; he attends to his business as usual. The transformation goes on only in the inner part of the soul, hidden from outward sight. At first the entire soul-life of a man is flooded by this fundamental spring of devotion for everything which is truly venerable. His entire soul-life finds in this devotional mood its pivot. Just as the sun, through its rays, will vivify everything living, so in the life of the disciple this reverence vivifies all the perceptions of the soul. At first it is not easy for people to believe that feelings like reverence, respect, and so forth, have anything to do with their perceptions. This comes from the fact that one is inclined to think of perception as a faculty quite by itself, one that stands in no relation to what otherwise happens in the soul. In so thinking, we do not remember that it is the soul which perceives. And feelings are for the soul what food is for the body. If we give the body stones in place of bread its activity will cease. It is the same with the soul. Veneration, homage, devotion, are as nutriment which makes it healthy and strong, especially strong for the activity of perception. Disrespect, antipathy, and under-estimation, bring about the starvation and the withering of this activity. For the occultist this fact is visible in the aura. A soul which harbors the feelings of devotion and reverence, brings about a change in its aura. Certain yellowish-red or brown-red tints will vanish, and tints of bluish-red will replace them. And then the organ of perception opens. It receives information of facts in its environment of which it hitherto had no knowledge. Reverence awakens a sympathetic power in the soul, and through this we attract similar qualities in the beings which surround us, that would otherwise remain hidden. More effective still is that power which can be obtained by devotion when another feeling is added. One learns to give up oneself less and less to the impressions of the outer world, and to develop in its place a vivid inward life. He who darts from one impression of the outer world to another, who constantly seeks dissipations, cannot find the way to Occultism. Neither should the disciple blunt himself to the outer world; but let his rich inner life point out the direction in which he ought to lend himself to its impressions. When passing through a beautiful mountain district, the man with depth of soul and richness of emotion has different experiences from the man with few emotions. Only what we experience within ourselves reveals the beauties of the outer world. One man sails across the ocean, and only a few inward experiences pass through his soul; but another will then hear the eternal language of the world-spirit, and for him are unveiled the mysteries of creation. One must have learned to control one's own feelings and ideas if one wishes to develop any intimate relationship with the outer world. Every phenomenon in that outer world is full of divine splendor, but one must have felt the Divine within oneself before one may hope to discover it without. The disciple is told to set apart certain moments of his daily life during which to withdraw into himself, quietly and alone. At such times he ought not to occupy himself with his own personal affairs, for this would bring about the contrary of that at which he is aiming. During these moments he ought rather to listen in complete silence to the echoes of what he has experienced, of what the outward world has told him. Then, in these periods of quiet, every flower, every animal, every action will unveil to him secrets undreamed of, and thus will he prepare himself to receive new impressions of the external world, as if he viewed it with different eyes. For he who merely desires to enjoy impression after impression, only stultifies the perceptive faculty, while he who lets the enjoyment afterwards reveal something to him, thus enlarges and educates it. He must be careful not merely to let the enjoyment reverberate, as it were; but, renouncing any further emotions of joy, begin to work upon his pleasurable experiences with an inward activity. The danger at this point is very great. Instead of working within one-self, it is easy to fall into the opposite habit of afterward trying to completely exhaust the enjoyment. Let us not undervalue the unforeseen sources of error which here confront the disciple. He must of necessity pass through a host of temptations, each of which tends only to harden his Ego and to imprison it within itself. He ought to open it wide for the whole world. It is necessary that he should seek enjoyment, for in this way only can the outward world get at him; and if he blunts himself to enjoyment he becomes as a plant which cannot longer draw nourishment from its environment. Yet, if he stops at the enjoyment, he is then shut up within himself, and will only be something to himself and nothing to the world. However much he may live within himself, however intensely he may cultivate his Ego, the world will exclude him. He is dead to the world. The disciple considers enjoyment only as a means of ennobling himself for the world. Pleasure to him is as a scout who informs him concerning the world, and after having been taught by pleasure he passes on to work. He does not learn in order that he may accumulate wisdom as his own treasure, but in order that he may put his learning at the service of the world. In all forms of Occultism there is a fundamental principle which must not be transgressed, if any goal at all is to be reached. All occult teachers must impress upon their pupils that, _Every branch of knowledge which you seek only to enrich your own learning, only to accumulate treasure for yourself, leads you away from the Path; but all knowledge which you seek for working in the service of humanity and for the uplifting of the world brings you a step forward_. This law must be rigidly observed; nor is one a genuine disciple until he has adopted it as the guide for his whole life. In many occult schools this truth is expressed in the following short sentence: _Every idea which does not become an ideal for you, slays a power within your soul: every idea which becomes an ideal creates within you a vital force_. III THE PATH OF DISCIPLESHIP At the very beginning of his course the student is directed to the _Path of Reverence_, and the development of the _inner life_. The occult teaching also gives practical instructions by the observance of which he may learn to follow that Path and develop that inner life. These practical directions have no arbitrary basis. They rest on ancient experience and ancient wisdom, and wheresoever the ways to higher knowledge are marked out, they are of the same nature. All genuine teachers of Occultism agree as to the essential character of these rules, although they do not always express them in the same words. This difference of expression is of a minor character, more seeming than real, and is due to circumstances which need not be mentioned here. No teacher wishes, by means of such rules, to establish an ascendency over other persons. He would not tamper with individual independence. Indeed, no one respects and cherishes human individuality more than the teachers of Occultism. It was said, in the first part of this book, that the order which embraces all Initiates was surrounded by a wall, and that two laws formed the principles by which it was upheld. Whenever the Initiate leaves this enclosure and steps forth into the world, he must submit to a third inviolable law. It is this: Keep watch over each of your actions and each of your words, in order that you may not hinder the free-will of any human being. Those who recognize that genuine occult teachers are thoroughly permeated with this principle will understand that they can add to their independence by the practical directions which they are advised to follow. One of the first of these rules may be thus expressed in our language: "Provide for yourself moments of inward calm, and in these moments _learn to distinguish between the real and the unreal_." I say advisedly "expressed in our language," because originally all rules and teachings of occult science were expressed in a symbolical sign-language. Those who desire to master its whole scope and meaning must first obtain permission to learn this symbolical language, and before such permission may be obtained, it is necessary to have taken the first steps in occult knowledge. This may be achieved by the careful observance of such rules as are here given. The Path is open to all who earnestly _will_ to enter it. Simple, in truth and easy to follow, is the rule concerning moments of inner calm; but it leads to the goal only when the pursuit is as earnest and strict as the way is simple. It will, therefore, be stated here, without further preamble, the method in which this rule should be observed. The student must mark off a small part of his daily life in which to occupy himself with something quite different from the avocations of his ordinary life, and the _way_ in which he occupies himself at such a time must also differ from the way in which he performs the rest of his duties. But this does not mean that what he does in the time thus set apart has no connection with his daily work. On the contrary, the man who seeks such moments in the right way will soon find that it is just this which gives him full power to do his daily task. Nor must it be supposed that the observance of this rule really deprives anyone of time needed for the performance of his duties. _If any person really has no more time at his disposal, five minutes a day will suffice._ The real point is the manner in which these five minutes are spent. At these periods a man should raise himself completely above his work-a-day life. His thoughts and feelings must take on a different coloring. His joys and sorrows, his cares, experiences, and actions, must pass in review before his soul. And he must cultivate a frame of mind which enables him to regard all his other experiences from a higher point of view. We need only bear in mind how different is the point of view from which in ordinary life we regard the experiences and actions of another, and that from which we judge our own. This is inevitable, for we are interwoven with our own actions and experiences, while we only contemplate those of another. Our aim, in moments of retirement, must be to contemplate and judge our own experiences and actions, as though it were not ourselves but some other person to whom they applied. Suppose, for example, that a certain misfortune has befallen someone. What a different attitude that person takes towards it as compared with an identical misfortune that has befallen his neighbor! No one can blame this attitude as unjustifiable; it is a part of human nature. And just as it is in exceptional circumstances, so it is also in the daily affairs of life. The student must endeavor to attain the power of regarding himself at certain times as he would regard a stranger. He must contemplate himself with the inward calm of the critic. When this is attained, our own experiences present themselves in a new light. As long as we are interwoven with them and are, as it were, within them, we are as closely connected with the unreal as with the real. When we attain to a calm survey, the real is separated from the unreal. Sorrow and joy, every thought, every resolve, appear changed when we contemplate ourselves in this way. It is as though we had spent the whole day in a place where we saw the smallest objects at the same range of vision as the largest ones, and in the evening climbed a neighboring hill and surveyed the whole scene at once. Then the parts of the place take on proportions different from those they bore when seen from within. The value of such calm inward contemplation depends less on the actual thing we contemplate than on the power which such inward calm develops in us. For in every human being there is, besides what we call the work-a-day man, a higher being. This higher being remains concealed until it is awakened. And each of us can only awaken it for himself. But as long as this higher being is not awakened, the higher faculties that might lead to supersensual knowledge, must lie dormant or remain hidden in every man. This power which leads to inward calm is a magic force that sets free certain higher faculties. Until a seeker feels this magic force within him, he must continue to follow strictly and earnestly the rules given. To every man who thus perseveres, the day will come when a spiritual light is revealed to him, and a whole new world, whose existence was hitherto unsuspected, is discerned by an eye within him. Because he begins to follow this rule, there is no need for any outward change in the life of the student. He performs his duties as before, and at first he endures the same sorrows and experiences the same joys as of old. In no way does it estrange him from life, rather is he enabled to devote himself to it the more completely, because in the moments set apart he has a Higher Life of his own. Gradually this Higher Life will make its influence felt on the ordinary life. The calm of the moments set apart will influence his ordinary existence as well. The whole man will grow calmer, will attain serenity in all his actions, and will cease to be perturbed by all manner of incidents. Gradually a student who thus advances will guide himself more and more, and be less governed by circumstances and external influences. Such a man will soon discover how great a source of strength lies for him in these periods of contemplation. He will cease to be annoyed by things that formerly worried him; and countless matters that once filled him with fear will now cease to alarm him. He acquires a new outlook on life. Formerly he may have taken up this or that task with a sense of timidity. He would say: "I lack the power to do this as well as I could wish." Now he no longer admits such a thought but, instead forms one quite different. He says to himself: "I will summon all my strength in order to do my work as well as I possibly can." And he suppresses the thought which encourages timidity; for he knows that this very timidity might spoil his undertaking, and that in any event it can contribute nothing to the improvement of his labor. And thus one thought after another, each fraught with advantage to his whole life, begins to penetrate the student's outlook. They take the place of those which gave a hampering and weakening effect. He begins to steer his own ship, on a firm, secure course, among the waves of life, which formerly tossed it helplessly to and fro. And this calm and serenity react on the whole being. They assist the growth of the inner man, and of those inner faculties which lead to higher knowledge. For it is by his progress in this direction that the student gradually attains to a state in which he himself determines the manner in which the impressions of the external world shall affect him. Thus, he may hear a word, spoken with the object of wounding or vexing him. Before he began his occult studies it would indeed have been painful or irritating. But now that he is in the Path of Discipleship, he is able to take from it the sting or the power to hurt, even before it enters his consciousness. Take another example: we naturally grow impatient when we are kept waiting, but the student is so permeated, in his moments of calm, with the realization of the uselessness of impatience, that this calmness is present with him on every occasion. The impatience which would naturally overcome him vanishes, and an interval which would otherwise have been wasted in the expression of impatience may be utilized by making some profitable observation during the period of waiting. Now we must realize the significance of these facts. We must remember that the "Higher Being" in a man is in constant development, and only the state of calm and serenity here described renders an orderly development possible. The waves of outward life press in upon the inner man from all sides, if, instead of controlling this outward life, he is controlled by it. Such a man is like a plant which tries to expand in a cleft in the rock, and is stunted in its growth until new space is given it. No outward forces can supply space for the inner man; it can only be supplied by the inner calm which he may give to his soul. Outward circumstances can only alter the course of his outward life; they can never awaken the spiritual inner man. The student must himself give birth to the new and higher man within him. The higher man becomes the "inner Ruler," who directs the circumstances of the outer man with sure guidance. As long as the latter has the upper hand, this inner man is enslaved, and cannot therefore develop his powers. _If another than myself has the power to make me angry, I am not master of myself_, or, to put it better, I have not yet found "the Ruler within me." I must develop the power within, of letting the impressions of the outer world approach me only in the way in which I myself choose; then only do I really become an occult student. And only by earnestly striving after this power can a student reach the goal. It is not of so much importance to achieve a great deal in a given time, as to be earnest in the search. Many have striven for years without noticing any marked advance; but many of those who did not despair, and struggled on undaunted, have sometimes quite suddenly achieved the "inner victory." In many situations it requires a good deal of effort to achieve these moments of inward calm. But the greater the effort needed, the more important is the achievement. In esoteric studies, everything depends on the energy, inward truthfulness, and uncompromising sincerity with which we contemplate ourselves and our actions from the standpoint of complete strangers. But only one side of the student's inner activity is characterized by this birth of his own higher being. Something else in addition is needed. Even if a man regards himself as a stranger, it is only himself that he contemplates; he looks at those experiences and actions, with which he is connected, through his particular mode of life, while it is necessary for him to rise above this, and attain to a purely human point of view, to be no longer connected with his own individual circumstances. He must pass on to the contemplation of those things which concern him as a human being, even though he dwell in a different condition and different circumstances. In this way something is brought to birth within him which rises beyond the personal point of view. Thus his gaze is directed to higher worlds than those he knows in every-day life. And then he begins to feel and realize that he belongs to these higher worlds about which his senses and his daily occupations can tell him nothing. In this way he shifts the central point of his being to the inner part of his nature. He listens to the voices within him which speak to him in his moments of calm; and inwardly he cultivates an intercourse with the spiritual world, which removes him from the every-day world, whose voices he no longer hears. Around him there is silence. He puts away from him all his external surroundings, and everything which even reminds him of such external impressions. His entire soul is filled with calm, inward contemplation and converse with the purely spiritual world. This calm contemplation must become a necessity to the student. He is plunged completely into a world of thought, and must develop an earnest desire for calm thinking. He must learn to love the in-pouring of the spirit. Then he will learn to regard this thought-world and its thought-forms as more real than the every-day things which surround him, and he begins to deal with thoughts as with things existing in space. And then the moment is at hand when the revelations of his quiet thinking begin to seem much higher and more real than the things existing in space. He discovers that this thought-world is an expression of life, and realizes that thoughts are not mere phantoms, but that through them, beings, who were hidden before, now speak to him. He begins to hear voices through the silence. Formerly his ear was the only organ of hearing; now he can listen with his soul. An inner language and an inner voice are revealed to him. It is a moment of supremest ecstasy to the student when this experience first comes to him. An inner light floods the whole external world for him, and he is "born anew." Through his being passes a current from a divine world, bringing with it divine bliss. This thought-life of the soul, which is gradually widened into a life of spiritual being, is designated by the Gnosis and by Theosophy as meditation (contemplative thought). This meditation is the means by which supersensual knowledge is attained. But during such moments the student must not be content to give himself up to the luxury of sensation. He must not permit undefined feelings to take possession of his soul. That would only hinder him from attaining true spiritual knowledge. His thoughts must be clearly and sharply defined, and he will be helped in this by not allowing himself to be carried away blindly by the thoughts that spring up within him. Rather must he permeate his mind with the lofty ideas which originated with advanced students to whom inspiration has already come. Let him first of all study the wisdom which originated in such moments of meditation. The student will find such in the mystical, gnostic, and theosophical literature of our time, and will there gain the material for his meditation. Wise men have inscribed in these books the thoughts of divine science, or have proclaimed them to the world through their agents. Such meditation produces a complete transformation in the student. He begins to form entirely new conceptions of Reality. All things acquire fresh values in his eyes. And it cannot be declared too often that this transformation does not estrange him from the world nor keep him from his daily round of duties. For he begins to realize that his most insignificant actions or experiences are in close connection with the great cosmic beings and events. When once this connection is revealed to him in his moments of contemplation, he is endowed with fresher and fuller power for his daily duties. For then he knows that his labor and his suffering are given and endured for the sake of a great spiritual cosmic whole. Thus, instead of weariness, his meditation gives him strength to live. With firm step the student advances in life. No matter what it may bring him, he goes forward erect. In the past he knew not why he worked and suffered, but now he knows. It is obvious that such meditation is more likely to lead to the goal, if conducted under the direction of experienced persons, who know actually how everything may best be done. We should, therefore, seek the advice and direction of such experienced guides (they are called Gurus in certain schools of thought). What would otherwise be mere uncertain groping is transformed by such direction into work that is sure of its goal. Those who apply to the teachers having such knowledge and experience will never apply in vain. They must, however, be quite sure that it is the advice of a friend they desire, not the domination of a would-be ruler. Those who really know are always the most modest of men, and nothing is further from their nature than what is called the passion for power. Those who, by means of meditation, rise to that which unites man with spirit, are bringing to life within them the eternal element which is not limited by birth nor death. Only those who have had no experience for themselves can doubt the existence of this eternal element. Thus meditation becomes the way by which man also attains to the recognition and contemplation of his eternal, indestructible, essential being. And only through meditation can one attain to such a view of life. Gnosis and Theosophy tell of the eternal nature of this essential being, and of its reincarnation. The question is often asked: "Why does a man know nothing of those experiences which lie beyond the borders of birth and death?" Not thus should we ask, but rather: "How may we attain to such knowledge?" The entrance to the Path is opened by right meditation. This alone can revive the memory of events that lie beyond the borders of birth and death. Everyone can attain to this knowledge; in each of us is the faculty of recognizing and contemplating for ourselves the truths of Mysticism, Theosophy, and Gnosis; but the right means must be chosen. Only a being with ears and eyes can perceive tones and colors, nor can the eye perceive without the light by which things are made visible. Occult science gives the means of developing the spiritual ears and eyes, and kindling the spiritual light. There are, according to esoteric teachers, three steps by which the goal may be attained: 1. _Probation._ This develops the spiritual senses. 2. _Enlightenment._ This kindles the spiritual light. 3. _Initiation._ This establishes intercourse with the higher spiritual beings. The following teachings proceed from a secret tradition, but precise information concerning its nature and its name cannot be given at present. They refer to the three steps which, in the school of this tradition, lead to a certain degree of initiation. But here we shall find only so much of this tradition as may be openly declared. These teachings are extracted from a much deeper and more secret doctrine. In the occult schools themselves a definite course of instruction is followed, and in addition to this there are certain practices which enable the souls of men to attain a conscious intercourse with the spiritual world. These practices bear about the same relation to what will be imparted in the following pages, as the teaching which is given in a well-disciplined school bears to the instruction that may be received occasionally during a walk. And yet the ardent and persevering search for what is here hinted at will lead to the way by which one obtains access to a genuine occult school. But, of course, an impatient perusal, devoid of sincerity and perseverance, can lead to nothing at all. He who believes himself to be ready for more must apply to an occult teacher. The study of these things can only be successful if the student will observe what has already been written in previous chapters. The stages which the above-mentioned tradition specifies are the following three: I. Probation, II. Enlightenment, III. Initiation. It is not altogether necessary that these three stages should be so taken that one must have quite completed the first before beginning the second, nor this in its turn before commencing the third. With respect to certain things one can partake of Enlightenment, and even of Initiation, while with others one is still in the probationary stage. Yet it will be necessary to spend a certain time in this stage of Probation before any Enlightenment at all can commence, and at least to some degree one must be enlightened before it is possible even to enter upon the stage of Initiation. In giving an account of them, however, it is necessary, for the sake of clearness, that the three stages follow, one after another. IV PROBATION Probation consists of a strict cultivation of the emotional and mental life. Through this cultivation the "spiritual body" becomes equipped with new instruments of perception and new organs of activity, just as, out of indeterminate living matter, the natural forces have fitted the physical body with the various organs so well known to the physical senses. The beginning of this cultivation is made by directing the attention of the soul to certain events in the world that surrounds us. Such events are the germinating, expanding, and flourishing of _life_ in its myriad forms on the one hand, and, on the other, the fading, decaying, and passing out of life from all things so far as perceptible to the ordinary senses. Wherever we turn our eyes we can observe these things happening simultaneously, and everywhere they naturally evoke in men thoughts and feelings. But under ordinary circumstances a man fails to grasp the importance of these sensations. He hurries on too quickly from impression to impression. What is necessary, therefore, is that he should fix his attention intently and quite consciously upon these phenomena. Wherever he observes expansion and flourishing of a certain kind, he must banish everything else from his soul, and entirely surrender himself for a short time to this one impression. He will soon convince himself that a sensation which heretofore in a similar case would have merely flitted through his soul, is now so magnified that it becomes of a powerful and energetic nature. He should at once allow this thought-form to reverberate throughout his whole being, yet quietly within himself, and to do so he must become inwardly quite still. He should draw himself away from the outward world, and follow only that which his soul tells him. Yet it must not be thought that we can make much progress if we blunt our senses to the world. For, one must first contemplate these objects as keenly and precisely as possible, and then give up to the sensations that result, and the thoughts that arise within the soul. What is most important is, that one should direct the attention, with perfect inner balance, upon both of these phenomena. If one obtains the necessary quiet and surrenders himself to that which arises in the soul, he will, in due time, experience many wonderful thoughts and feelings, unknown to him before. Indeed, the more one fixes the attention in such a way, alternately upon something growing, expanding, and flourishing, and upon something else that is fading and decaying, the more vivid will these feelings become. And just as natural forces evolve the physical eyes and ears of the physical body, out of living matter, so will the organs of clairvoyance evolve themselves from the spiritual feelings which are thus evoked. A definite thought-form unites itself with the germinating and expanding object, and another, equally definite, with that which is fading and decaying. But this will only take place if the cultivation of these feelings be striven for in the way described. It is possible to describe only approximately what these feelings are like. Indeed, everyone must arrive at his own conception of them as he passes through these inward experiences. He who has frequently fixes his attention on the phenomena of germinating, expanding, and flourishing, will feel something remotely allied to the sensation caused by witnessing a sunrise; and the phenomena of fading and decaying will produce in him an experience comparable, in the same way, to the gradual uprising of the moon on the horizon. Both these feelings are forces which, when carefully cultivated, with a continually increasing improvement, will lead to the greatest occult results. To him who again and again, systematically and with design, surrenders himself to such feelings, a new world is opened. The "Spiritual" world, the so-called "Astral plane," begins to dawn upon him. Blooming and fading are facts which no longer make indefinite impressions on him, as of old, but instead they form themselves into spiritual lines and figures of which he had previously suspected nothing. And these lines and figures have for the different phenomena different forms. A blooming flower, an animal growing, a decaying tree, evoke in his soul definite lines. The astral plane slowly broadens out before him. Its forms are not in any sense arbitrary. For two students who find themselves at the same stage of development will always see the same lines and figures under the same conditions. Just as certainly as a round table will be seen as round by two normal persons, not as round by the one and square by the other; so, too, before the perception of two souls a blooming flower will present the same spiritual form. And just as the shapes of animals and plants are described in ordinary natural history, so, too, the teacher in an occult school describes and delineates the spiritual forms of growing and decaying processes after their nature and species. If the student has progressed so far that he can see such aspects of phenomena which are also physically observable with his external eyes, he will then be not far from the condition which will enable him to behold things that have no physical existence, and must therefore remain entirely hidden to those who have undergone no training in an occult school. It should be emphasized that the occult explorer ought never to lose himself in speculation on the meaning of this or that. By such intellectualizing he only directs himself away from the right road. He ought to look out on the sense-world freshly, with healthy senses and quickened observation, and then to give himself up to his own sensations. He ought not to wish, in a speculative manner, to make out what this or that means, but rather to allow the things themselves to inform him.[7] [7] It should be remarked that artistic perception, when coupled with a quiet introspective nature, forms the best foundation for the development of occult faculties. It pierces through the superficial aspect of things and in so doing touches their secrets. A further point of importance is that which is called in occult science "orientation in the higher worlds." This point is attained when one realizes with complete consciousness that feelings and thoughts are veritable realities, just as much as are tables and chairs in the world of the physical senses. Feelings and thoughts act upon each other in the astral-world and in the thought (or mental) world, just as objects of sense act upon each other in the physical world. As long as anyone is not truly permeated with this realization, he will not believe that an evil thought projected from his mind may have as devastating an effect upon other thought forms as that wrought upon physical objects by a bullet shot at random. Such a one will perhaps never allow himself to perform a physically visible action which he considers to be wrong, yet he will not shrink from harboring evil thoughts or feelings, for these do not appear to him to be dangerous to the rest of the world. Nevertheless we can advance in occult science only when we guard our thoughts and feelings in just the same way as a man would guard the steps he takes in the physical world. If anyone sees a wall before him he does not attempt to dash right through it, but directs his course alongside; in other words, he guides himself by the laws of the physical world. There are such laws also in the world of thought and feeling, but there they cannot impose themselves upon us from without. They must flow out of the life of the soul itself. We arrive at such a condition when we forbid ourselves, at all times, to foster wrong thoughts or feelings. All arbitrary goings to-and-fro, all idle fancies, all accidental ups-and-downs of emotion must be forbidden in the same way. But, in so doing, let it not be thought that we bring about a deficiency of emotion. On the contrary, if we regulate our inner life in this manner, we shall speedily find ourselves rich in feelings and in genuine creative imagination. In place of a mere chaos of petty feelings and fantastic trains of thought, there appear significant emotions, and thoughts that are fruitful, and it is emotions and thoughts of this kind that lead a man to "orientation in the higher world." He has entered into the right condition for the things of that world, and they entail for him definite consequences. Just as a physical man finds his way between physical things, so, too, his path now leads him straight between the _growing_ and the _fading_, which he has already come to know in the way described above. For he follows all processes of growing and flourishing, (and, on the other hand, of withering and decaying) that is necessary for his own and the world's prosperity. The occult student has also to bestow a further care on the world of _sound_. He must discriminate between the tones which are produced from the so-called inert (lifeless) bodies (for example, a bell, a musical instrument, or a falling mass), and those which proceed from a living creature (an animal or a person). He who hears the striking of a bell will receive the sound and attach to it a certain sensation, but he who hears the cry of an animal will, in addition to this sensation, become aware that the sound reveals also an inward experience of the animal, either of pain or of pleasure. The student is concerned with the latter aspect of the sound. He must concentrate his whole attention upon it, so that the sound reveals to him something that lies outside of his own soul, and, more than this, must merge himself in this exterior thing. He must closely connect his own emotion with the pleasure or pain communicated to him by means of the sound, and must care nothing whether the sound be pleasant or unpleasant to him, welcome or not; his soul must be filled with only that which proceeds from the creature out of whom the sound has come. He who systematically and deliberately performs such exercises will develop within himself the faculty of intermingling, as it were, with the creature from which the sound proceeded. A person sensitive to music will find it easier to cultivate his spiritual life in this respect than one who is unmusical, but no one should think that a mere sense of music will take the place of this culture. As an occult student, one must learn to contemplate the whole of nature in this way. By so doing a new faculty is developed in the world of thought and feeling. Through her manifold sounds the whole of Nature begins to whisper secrets to the student. What hitherto was merely incomprehensible noise to his soul will become by this means a coherent _language of Nature_. And whereas, hitherto, he heard sound only from the resonance of so-called inanimate objects, he now understands a new speech of the soul. Should he advance in this culture of the soul, he will soon learn that he can hear what hitherto he did not even surmise. He begins to hear with the soul. One thing more must be added before we can reach the topmost point in this direction. What is of special importance in the development of the student is the way in which he hears the speech of other men. He must accustom himself to do this in such a way that while doing so his inner self is absolutely still. If someone expresses an opinion and another hears it, the inner self of the latter will be stirring in general assent or contradiction. Many people in such a case feel themselves urged to an expression of their assent, or, more especially, of their contradiction. All such assent or contradiction must, in the occult student, be silenced. It is not imperative that he should, therefore, quite suddenly begin to make his life entirely different, in order that he may attain to this inward and fundamental calm. He might, therefore, begin by doing so in special cases, deliberately selected by himself. Thus quite slowly and by degrees will this new way of listening creep into his habits, as of itself: In the occult schools these things are systematically practiced. For the sake of practice the student is obliged to listen for a certain period to the most contradictory thoughts, and at the same time to suppress all assent, and more especially all adverse criticism. The point is that in such a way not only all intellectual judgment is silenced, but also all sense of displeasure, denial, or even acceptance. The student must be particularly watchful that such feelings, even if they are not upon the surface, do not still remain lurking in the innermost recesses of his soul. He must listen, for example, to the statements of people who in some respects are far beneath him, and, while so doing, suppress every feeling of greater knowledge or of superiority. It is useful for everyone to listen in this way to children, for even the wisest may learn very much from children. So does it come about that we hear the words of others impersonally, completely divested of our own personality with its opinions and feelings. He who thus makes a practice of listening uncritically, even when a completely contradictory opinion is advanced, learns again and again to blend himself, to become identified, with the being of another. He then hears, as it were, through the words and into the souls of others. Through continual exercise of this kind only, sound becomes the right medium for the revelation of the spirit and the soul. Of course, it implies the strictest self-discipline, but it leads to a high goal. When these practices are undertaken in connection with those that deal with the sounds of Nature, the soul develops a new sense of hearing. It is enabled to receive demonstrations from the spiritual world which do not find their expression in outward sounds apprehensible by the physical ear. The perception of the "inner word" awakens. Gradually truths from the spiritual world reveal themselves to the student, and he hears them expressed in a spiritual way.[8] [8] Only to him, who listens disinterestedly, comes the ability to perceive really from within, silently, and without emotion arising from personal opinion or personal taste,--to such only can the Great Souls, who are known in Occultism as the Masters speak. As long as our opinions and feelings are in a state of vehement opposition to the communications from the Masters, They remain silent. All high truths are attained through such "inner encouragement," and what we hear from the lips of a genuine occult teacher has been experienced in this manner. In so saying it must not be supposed that it is useless to acquaint oneself with the writings on occult science, before one can actually gain this inner encouragement. On the contrary, the reading of such writings, and the listening to eminent teachers of occult lore, are themselves the means of attaining a personal knowledge. Every sentence of the esoteric wisdom which one hears is adapted to direct the senses to that point which must be attained before the soul can experience a real advance. To the practice of all that has been indicated, must be added an ardent study of what the occult teacher gives out to the world. In all occult schools such a study belongs to the probationary period, and he who would employ other methods will attain no goal if he omits the instructions of the occult teacher, for inasmuch as these instructions proceed from an actual "inner word," an actual "encouragement," they possess in themselves a spiritual vitality. They are not mere words; they are living powers; and while you follow the words of an occultist, while you read a book which comes from a genuine inner experience, powers are at work in your soul which make you clairvoyant, just as natural forces have created out of living matter your eyes and ears. V ENLIGHTENMENT. Enlightenment is the result of very simple processes. Here, too, it is a matter of developing certain feelings and thoughts which are dormant within all men, but must be awakened. Only he who carries out these simple processes with complete patience, continuously and strenuously, can be led by them to the reception of inner illumination. The primary step is taken by observing in a particular way different natural objects--a transparent stone of beautiful form (a crystal), a plant, and an animal. One should endeavor at first to direct one's whole attention to a comparison of the stone with the animal, as follows: The thoughts which, accompanied by strong emotions, are thus induced, must pass through the soul, and no other emotions or thoughts must be mixed with them, or disturb the intense contemplation. One then says to oneself: "The stone has a form and the animal also has a form. The stone remains motionless in its place, but the animal is able to move about. It is impulse (desire) which causes the animal to change its place, and it is these impulses to which the form of the animal is of use. Its organs and instruments are the expression of these impulses. The form of the stone, on the contrary, is fashioned, not in accordance with impulses, but in accordance with an impulseless force."[9] [9] The fact here mentioned, in its bearing on the contemplation of crystals, is in many ways distorted by those who have only heard of it in an outward (exoteric) manner, and in this way such practises as crystal-gazing have their origin. Misrepresentations of such a kind are the outcome of misunderstanding. They have been described in many books, but they never form the subject of genuine (esoteric) teaching. If one sinks deeply into such thoughts, and while so doing observes the stone and the animal with fixed attention, then there arise in the soul two separate kinds of emotion. From the stone into the soul there streams one kind of emotion, and from the animal, another. Probably in the beginning the experiment will not succeed, but little by little, with genuine and patient practice, these emotions become manifest. Again and again one should practice. At first the emotions last only as long as the contemplation. Later on, they work afterwards, and then they grow to something which remains alive in the soul. One then needs only to reflect, and both emotions invariably arise, apart from all contemplation of an external object. Out of these emotions, and the thoughts which are bound up with them, clairvoyant organs are formed. Should the plant be added to the contemplation, one will notice that the feeling outflowing from it, both in its quality and in its degree, lies between that which emanates from the stone and that from the animal. The organs which are so formed are spiritual eyes. We learn by degrees and through their means to see both astral and mental colors. As long as one has attained only the condition described as Probation, the spiritual world with its lines and figures remains dark, but through Enlightenment it will become clear. It must be noted here that the words "dark" and "light," as well as the other common expressions, only approximately describe what is really meant; for language as usually understood is constructed to suit physical conditions alone. Occult science describes what emanates from the stone and is seen by clairvoyant eyes, as "blue" or "bluish-red," and that which is observed as coming from the animal is described as "red" or "reddish-yellow." In reality they are colors of a spiritual kind which are discerned. The color proceeding from the plant is "green." Plants are just those natural phenomena whose qualities in the higher worlds are similar to their qualities in the physical world, but it is not so with stones and animals. It must now be clearly understood that the above-mentioned colors only suggest the prevailing shades of the stone, the plant, or the animal. In reality, all possible overtones exist, for every animal, every stone, every plant has its own peculiar shade of color. In addition to these there are the creatures of the higher worlds, who always incorporate themselves with colors not their own, often marvellous, often horrible. In short, the variety of colors in these higher worlds is immeasurably greater than in the physical world. If a man has once acquired the faculty of seeing with spiritual eyes, he sooner or later, meets with the beings here mentioned, some of them higher, some lower than man himself; beings who never entered into physical existence. When he has advanced thus far, the way to a great deal lies open before him; but it is inadvisable to proceed further without an experienced guide. Indeed, for all that has here been described, such experienced guidance is desirable, and he who has the endurance to fulfil the elementary conditions of enlightenment, will assuredly seek and discover his guide. Under all circumstances it is important to give warning, and he who will not heed it had better leave untrodden all the steps of occult science. It is necessary that he who would become an occult student should lose none of his attributes as a good and noble man, and one susceptible to all physical truths. Indeed, throughout his apprenticeship he must continually increase his moral strength, his inner purity, and his powers of observation. Let us give an example: During the preliminary practices of Enlightenment, the student must be careful always to be enlarging his sympathy with the animal and human worlds, and his sense of nature's beauty. If he is not careful to do this he continually dulls both sense and feeling; his heart grows cold and his sympathies dwarfed; which lead to perilous results. How enlightenment proceeds, in the sense of the foregoing practices, if one rises from the stone, the plant, and the animal, up to man, and how, after enlightenment, under all circumstances, the gentle hand of the Pilot comes on a certain day, and leads to Initiation--of these things the next chapter will deal in so far as it can and may do so. In our time, the path to occult science is sought after by many. It is sought in various ways, and many dangerous and even objectionable modes are practiced. Therefore it is that those who know of the truth and dangers concerning these things have allowed a greater portion of the occult training and the necessary warning to be published. Only so much is here imparted as this permission allows, and it is necessary that something of the truth should be known in order that it may counteract the great danger of these errors. If nothing be _forced_, there is no danger for him who follows the way already described; only one thing should be noted: no one ought to spend more time or power upon such practices than is at his disposal with due regard to his circumstances and his duties. No one ought suddenly to change anything in the external conditions of his life. If one desires genuine results, one must have patience; one should be able to cease the practice after a few minutes, and then peacefully to continue one's daily work, and no thought of these practices ought to be mingled with the work of the day. He who has not learned to wait, in the best and highest sense of the word, is of no use as an occult student, nor will he ever attain results of much real value. He who is in search of occult knowledge, by the means indicated in the foregoing pages, must fortify himself throughout the whole course of his efforts by the understanding that after persevering for some time he may have made suitable progress without becoming conscious of it in the precise way which he had expected. He who does not remember this is likely to lose heart, and in a little while to abandon his efforts altogether. The mental powers and faculties about to be developed are at first of the most subtle kind, and their nature differs entirely from the conceptions of them which may be formed in the student's mind. He has been accustomed to occupy himself with the physical world alone, and the mental and astral worlds seem to elude his gaze, and baffle his conceptions. It is, therefore, not remarkable if, at first, he fails to realize the new forces, mental and astral, which are developing in his own being. This is why it is dangerous to enter the path leading to occult knowledge without experienced guidance. The teacher can see the progress made by the pupil, long before the latter becomes conscious of it for himself. He sees the delicate organs of spiritual vision beginning to form themselves, before the pupil is aware of their existence, and a great part of the duties of the teacher consists in perpetual watchfulness, lest the disciple lose confidence, patience, and perseverance, before he becomes conscious of his own progress. The teacher, as we know, can confer upon the student no powers which are not already latent within him, and his sole function is to assist in the awakening of slumbering faculties. But he may be a pillar of strength to him who strives to penetrate through darkness into the light. There are many who leave the occult path soon after setting foot upon it, because they are not immediately conscious of their own progress. And even when higher experiences begin to dawn upon the seeker, he is apt to regard them as illusions, because he had anticipated them quite differently. He loses courage, either because he regards these first experiences as of no value, or because they appear so insignificant that he has no hope of their leading to any appreciable results within a measurable time. Courage and self-confidence are the two lamps which must never be allowed to burn themselves out on the pathway to the occult. He who cannot patiently repeat an exercise which has failed for an apparently unlimited number of times, will never travel far. Long before one is aware of any distinct perception of progress, comes an inarticulate mental impression that the right road has been found. This is a feeling to be welcomed, and to be encouraged, since it may evolve into a trustworthy guide. Above all, it is imperative to extirpate the idea that any fantastic, mysterious practices are required for the attainment of higher experiences. It must be clearly realized that ordinary every-day human feelings and thoughts must form the basis from which the start is to be made, and that it is only needful to give these thoughts and feelings a new direction. Everyone must say to himself: "In my own sphere of thoughts and sensations lie enfolded the deepest mysteries, but hitherto I have been unable to perceive them." In the end it all resolves itself into the fact that man, ordinarily, carries body, soul and spirit about with him, yet is conscious only of the body, not of the soul and spirit, and that the student in due time attains to a similar consciousness of soul and spirit. Hence it is highly important to give the proper direction to thoughts and feelings, in order that one may develop the perception of that which is invisible to a person living the ordinary life. One of the ways by which this development may be carried out will now be indicated. Again, like almost everything else we have explained so far, it is quite a simple matter. Yet the results are of the greatest consequence, if the experiment is carried out with perseverance, and in the right frame of mind. Place before you the small seed of a plant. It is then necessary, while contemplating this significant object, to create with intensity the right kind of thoughts, and through these thoughts to develop certain feelings. In the first place, let the student clearly grasp what is really presented to his vision. Let him describe to himself the shape, color, and all other qualities of the grain of seed. Then let his mind dwell upon the following train of thought: "This grain of seed, if planted in the soil, will grow into a plant of complex structure." Let him clearly picture this plant to himself. Let him build it up in his imagination. And then let him reflect that the object now existing only in his imagination will presently be brought into actual physical existence by the forces of the earth and of light. If the thing contemplated by him were an artificially-made object, though such a close imitation of nature that no external difference could be detected by human eyesight, no forces inherent in the earth or light could avail to produce from it a plant. He who thoroughly grasps this thought and inwardly assimilates it will also be able to form the following idea with the right feeling. He will reasons thus: "That which is ultimately to grow out of this seed is already, as a force, now secretly enfolded within it. The artificial duplicate of the seed contains no such force. And yet both appear to be alike to my eyes. The real seed, therefore, contains something invisible which is not present in the imitation." It is this invisible something on which thought and feeling are now to be concentrated.[10] Let the student fully realize that this invisible something will later on translate itself into a visible plant, perceptible by him in shape and color. Let him dwell upon the thought: "_The invisible will become visible._ If I could not think, then I could not now realize, that which will become visible later on." [10] Anyone who might object that a microscopical examination would reveal the difference between the two would only show that he has failed to grasp the intention of the experiment. The intention is not to investigate the physical structure of the object, but to use it as a means for the development of psychic force. Particular stress must be laid on the importance of _feeling with intensity_ that which one thinks. In calmness of mind a single thought must be vitally experienced within oneself to the exclusion of all disturbing influences. Sufficient time must be taken to allow the thought, and the state of feeling connected therewith, to become, as it were, imbedded in the soul. If that is accomplished in the right way--possibly not until after numerous attempts--an inward force will make itself felt. And this force will create new powers of perception. The grain of seed will appear as if enclosed in a small luminous cloud. The spiritualized vision of the student perceives it as a kind of flame. This flame is of a lilac color in the centre, blue at the edges. Then appears that which one could not see before, and which was created by the power of thought and feeling brought into life within oneself. That which was physically invisible (the plant which will not become visible until later on) has there revealed itself to the spiritual eye. It is pardonable if, to many men, all this appears to be mere illusion. Many will say: "What is the value of such visions or such hallucinations?" And many will thus fall away, and no longer continue to tread the path. But this is precisely the important point--not to confuse, at this difficult stage of human evolution, spiritual reality with the mere creations of phantasy, and to have the courage to press manfully onward, instead of growing timorous and faint-hearted. On the other hand, however, it is necessary to insist on the necessity of maintaining unimpaired, and of perpetually cultivating, the healthy attitude of mind which is required for the distinguishing of truth from illusion. Never during all these exercises must the student surrender the fully conscious control of himself. He must continue to think as soundly and sanely in these spiritual conditions as he does with regard to the things and occurrences of ordinary life. It would be unfortunate if he lapses into reveries. He must at every moment be clear-headed and sober-minded and it would be the greatest mistake if the student, through such practices, lost his mental equilibrium, or if he were prevented from judging as sanely and clearly as before, the matters of work-a-day life. The disciple should, therefore, examine himself again and again to find out whether he has remained unaltered in relation to the circumstances among which he lives, or whether perchance he has lost his mental balance. He must ever maintain a calm repose within his own individuality, and an open mind for everything, being careful at the same time not to drift into vague reveries or to experiment with all sorts of exercises. The lines for development here indicated, belong to those which have been followed, and whose efficacy has been demonstrated in the schools of occultism from the earliest ages, and none but such will here be given. Anyone attempting to employ methods of meditation devised by himself, or which he may have come across in the course of promiscuous reading will inevitably be led astray, and will lose himself in a boundless morass of incoherent phantasies. A further exercise which may succeed the one described above, is the following: Let the disciple place himself in front of a plant which has attained the stage of full development. Now let his mind be absorbed by the reflection that the time is near at hand when this plant will wither and die. "Nothing," he should say to himself, "nothing of what I now see before me will endure. But this plant will have evolved seeds which in their turn will grow into new plants. Again I become aware that in what I see something lies concealed which I cannot see. I will fill my mind wholly with the thought that this plant-form with its colors will cease to be. But the reflection that the plant has produced seeds teaches me that it will not disappear into nothing. That which will prevent this disappearance, I can at present no more see with my eyes than I could originally discern the plant in the grain of seed. _The plant, therefore, contains something which my eyes are unable to see._ If this thought fully lives in me, and combines with the corresponding state of feeling, then, in due time, there will again develop a force in my soul which will ripen into a new kind of perception." Out of the plant there grows once more a flame-like appearance, which is, of course, correspondingly larger than that which was previously described. This flame is greenish at the centre, and is tinged with yellow at the outer edge. He who has won this vision has gained greatly, inasmuch as he sees things, not only in their present state of being, but also in their development and decay. He begins to see in all things the spirit, of which the bodily organs of sight have no perception, and he has taken the initial steps on that road, which will gradually lead him to the solution, by direct vision, of the secret of birth and death. To the outer senses, a being begins to exist at its birth, and ceases to exist at its death. This, however, only appears to be so, because these senses are unable to apprehend the concealed spirit. Birth and death are only, for this spirit, transformations, just as the unfolding of the flower from the bud is a transformation enacted before our physical eyes. But if one desires to attain to direct perception of these facts, one must first awaken the spiritual vision by the means here indicated. In order to meet an objection which may be raised by certain people already possessed of some psychical experience, let it be at once admitted that there are shorter ways than this, and that there are persons who have direct perception of the actualities of birth and death, without having had to pass through all the stages of discipline here set forth. There are also human beings endowed with high psychical faculties, to whom only a slight impulse is necessary for the developing of these powers. But they are exceptional, and the methods described above are safer, and are capable of general application. Similarly, it is possible to gain some knowledge of chemistry by special methods; but in order to make safer the science of chemistry, the recognized, reliable course must be followed. An error fraught with serious consequences would result from the assumption that the goal could be reached more simply by allowing the mind to dwell merely on an imaginary plant or a grain of seed. It may be possible by such means to evoke a force which would enable the soul to attain the inner vision. But this vision will be, in most cases, a mere figment of the imagination, for the main object is not to create arbitrarily a mental vision, but to allow the veritable nature of things to form an image within one's mind. The truth must come up from the depth of one's own soul, not at the call of one's ordinary self, but rather must the objects of one's perception themselves exercise their magical power, if one is to perceive their inner reality. After the disciple has evolved, by such means, the rudiments of spiritual vision, he may proceed to the contemplation of human nature itself. Simple appearances of ordinary life must be chosen first. But before making any attempts in this direction, it is imperative for the student to strive after an absolute sincerity of moral character. He must banish all thoughts of ever using the insight to be attained in these ways for his own selfish ends. He must be absolutely determined that under no circumstances will he avail himself, in an evil sense, of any power which he may gain over his fellow-creatures. This is the reason why everyone who desires to gain direct insight into the secrets of human nature must follow the golden rule of true Occultism. And the golden rule is this: For every one step that you take in the pursuit of the hidden knowledge, take three steps in the perfecting of your own character. He who obeys this rule can perform such exercises as that which is now to be explained. Begin by observing a person filled with a desire for some object. Direct your attention to this desire. It is best to choose a time when this desire is at its height, and when it is not yet certain whether the object of the desire will be attained or not. Then surrender yourself entirely to the contemplation of that which you observe, but maintain the utmost inner tranquility of soul. Make every endeavor to be deaf and blind to everything that may be going on around you at the same time, and bear in mind particularly that this contemplation is to evoke a state of feeling in your soul. Allow this state of feeling to arise in your soul, like a cloud rising on an otherwise cloudless horizon. It is to be expected, of course, that your observation will be interrupted, because the person on whom it is directed will not remain in this particular state of mind for a sufficient length of time. Presumably you will fail in your experiment hundreds and hundreds of times. It is simply a question of not losing patience. After many attempts you will ultimately realize the state of feeling spoken of above as fast as the corresponding mental phenomena pass through the soul of the person under observation. After a time you will begin to notice that this feeling in your own soul is evoking the power of spiritual vision into the psychical condition of the other. A luminous image will appear in your field of vision. And this luminous image is the so-called astral manifestation evoked by the desire-state when under observation. Again we may describe this image as flame-like in appearance. It is yellowish red in the centre and reddish-blue or lilac at the edges. Much depends upon treating such experiences of the inner vision with great delicacy. It will be best for you at first to talk of them to nobody except your teacher, if you have one. The attempt to describe such appearances in appropriate words usually leads to gross self-deception. One employs ordinary terms not applicable to such purposes, and therefore much too gross and clumsy. The consequence is that one's own attempt to clothe this vision in words unconsciously leads one to blend the actual experience with an alloy of imaginary details. It is, therefore, another important law for the occult inquirer that he should know how to observe silence concerning his inner visions. Observe silence even towards yourself. Do not endeavor to express in words that which you see, or to fathom it with reasoning faculties that are inadequate. Freely surrender yourself to these spiritual impressions without any mental reservations, and without disturbing them by thinking about them too much. For you must remember that your reasoning faculties were, at first, by no means equal to your faculties of observation. You have acquired these reasoning faculties through experiences hitherto confined exclusively to the world as apprehended by your physical senses, and the faculties you are now acquiring transcend these experiences. Do not, therefore, try to measure your new and higher perceptions by the old standard. Only he who has already gained some certainty in his observation of inner experiences ought to speak about them with the idea of thereby stimulating his fellow-beings. As a supplementary exercise the following may be set forth. Direct your observation in the same way upon a fellow-being to whom the fulfilment of some wish, the gratification of some desire has just been granted. If the same rules and precautions are adopted as in the previous instance, you will once more attain to spiritual perception. You will distinguish a flame-like appearance which is yellow in the centre and greenish at the edges. By such observations of one's fellow-creatures one may easily be led into a moral fault--one may become uncharitable. All conceivable means must be taken to fight against this tendency. Anyone exercising such powers of observation should have risen to the level on which one is absolutely convinced that thoughts are actual things. He may then no longer allow himself to admit thoughts incompatible with the highest reverence for the dignity of human life and of human liberty. Not for one moment must he entertain the idea of regarding a human being as a mere object for observation. It must be the aim of self-education to see that the faculties for a psychic observation of human nature go hand in hand with a full recognition of the rights of each individual. That which dwells in each human being must be regarded as something holy, and to be held inviolate by us even in our thoughts and feelings. We must be possessed by a feeling of reverential awe for all that is human. For the present, only these two examples can be given as to the methods by which an insight into human nature may be achieved, but they will at least serve to point out the way which must be followed. He who has gained the inner tranquility and repose which are indispensable for such observations, will by so doing, already have undergone a great transformation. This will soon reach the point at which the increase of his spiritual worth will manifest itself in the confidence and composure of his outward demeanor. Again, this alteration in his demeanor will react favorably on his inner condition, and thus he will be able to help himself further along the road. He will find ways of penetrating further and further into those secrets of human nature, those hidden from our external senses, and will then become qualified for a deeper insight into the mysterious correlations between the nature of man, and all else that exists in the universe. By following this path, the disciple will approach closer and closer to the day on which he will be deemed worthy of taking the first steps of initiation; but before these can be taken it is necessary to assure oneself of unflinching courage. At first it may not be at all apparent to the student why it should be necessary, but he cannot fail to be convinced of it in the end. The quality which is indispensable to him who would be initiated is a certain measure of courage and fearlessness. He must absolutely go out of his way to find opportunities for developing these virtues. In the occult schools they are cultivated quite systematically; but life in this respect is itself an excellent school of occultism, nay, possibly the best. To face danger calmly, to try to overcome difficulties unswervingly, this is what the student must learn to do; for instance, in the presence of some peril, he must rise at once to the conception that fears are altogether useless, and ought not to be entertained for one moment, but that the mind ought simply to be concentrated on what is to be done. He must reach a point where it has become impossible for him ever again to feel afraid or to lose his courage. By self-discipline in this direction he will develop within himself distinct qualities which he needs if he is to be initiated into the higher mysteries. Just as man in his physical being requires nervous force in order to use his physical senses, so also, in his psychic nature, he requires the force which is only produced in the courageous and the fearless. For in penetrating to the higher mysteries he will see things not yet revealed to the physical eyesight nor to any other of the human senses. The latter, by hiding from our gaze, the higher verities (things which we could not bear to behold) are in reality our benefactors, since they prevent us from perceiving that which, if realized without due preparation, would throw us into unutterable consternation. The disciple must be prepared to endure this sight, although he has lost certain supports in the outer world by a realization of the very illusions that encompassed him. It is truly and literally as if his attention were suddenly drawn to a certain danger by which for some time he had been unconsciously threatened. He was not afraid hitherto, but now that he sees his peril, he is overcome by terror, even though the danger has not been rendered any greater by his knowledge thereof. The forces at work in the world are both destructive and creative. The destiny of manifested beings is birth and death. The Initiate is to behold this march of destiny. The veil, which in the ordinary course of life clouds the spiritual eyes, is to be uplifted, and the man is to see himself as one interwoven with these forces, with this destiny. His own nature contains destructive and creative powers. As undisguisedly as the other objects of his vision are revealed to the eye of the seer, his own soul is bared to his gaze. In the face of this self-knowledge, the disciple must not suffer himself to droop, and in this he will succeed only if he has brought with him an excess of the necessary strength. In order that this may be the case he must learn to maintain inner calm and confidence in the most difficult circumstances; he must nourish within himself a firm faith in the beneficent forces of existence. He must be prepared to find that many motives which have actuated him hitherto will actuate him no longer. He must needs perceive that he has hitherto often thought or acted in a certain manner, because he was still in the toils of ignorance. Reasons which formerly influenced him will now disappear. He has done many things out of personal vanity; he will now perceive how utterly futile all such vanity is in the eyes of the Initiate. He has done much from motives of avarice; he will now be aware of the destructive effect of all avariciousness. He will have to develop entirely new springs for his thought and action, and it is for this that courage and fearlessness are required. It is especially a matter of cultivating this courage and this fearlessness in the inmost depths of the mental life. The disciple must learn never to despair. He must always be equal to the thought: "I will forget that I have again failed in this matter. I will try once more, as though nothing at all had happened." Thus he will fight his way on to the firm conviction that the universe contains inexhaustible fountains of strength from which he may drink. He must aspire again and again to the Divine which will uplift and support him, however feeble and impotent the mortal part of his being may prove. He must be capable of pressing on towards the future, undismayed by any experiences of the past. Every teacher of Occultism will carefully ascertain how far the disciple, aspiring to Initiation into the higher mysteries, has advanced on the road of spiritual preparation. If he fulfil these conditions to a certain degree, he is then worthy to hear uttered those Names of things which form the key that unlocks the higher knowledge. For Initiation consists in this very act of learning to know the things of the universe by those Names which they bear in the spirit of their Divine Author. And the mystery of things lies in these Names. Therefore it is that the Initiate speaks another language than that of the uninitiate, for he knows the Names by which things were called into existence. VI INITIATION The highest degree in Occultism, of which it is possible to speak in a book for general readers, is Initiation. One cannot give public information concerning all that lies beyond, though the way to it can always be found by one who has previously pressed forward and penetrated the lower secrets and mysteries. The knowledge and power which are conferred upon a man through Initiation could not be obtained in any other manner except in some far distant future, after many incarnations, on quite another road and in quite another form. He who is initiated to-day experiences something which he would otherwise have to experience at a much later period and under quite different circumstances. It is right that a person should learn only so much of the secrets of nature as correspond to his own degree of development, and for this reason alone do obstacles bar his way to complete knowledge and power. People should not be trusted with the use of fire-arms until they have had enough experience to make it certain that they will not use them mischievously or without care. If a person, without the necessary preparation, were initiated to-day, he would still lack those experiences which, in the normal course of his development, would come to him in the future during other incarnations and would then bring with them the corresponding secrets. At the door of Initiation these experiences must, therefore, be supplied in some other way, and in their place the candidate has to undergo the preliminary teaching. These are so-called "trials" which have to be passed. These trials are now being discussed in various books and magazines, but, owing to the very nature of such discussion, it is not surprising that quite false impressions are received concerning them. For those who have not already gone through the periods of Probation and Enlightenment know nothing of these trials, and consequently cannot appropriately describe them. Certain matters or subjects connected with the higher worlds are produced before the candidate, but he is able to see and hear these only when he can perceive clearly the figures, tones, and colors, for which he has been prepared by the teachings on Probation and Enlightenment. The first trial consists in obtaining a clearer comprehension of the corporeal attributes of what seem to be lifeless things, then of plants, of animals, of human beings (in the way that the average person possesses them). This does not mean what is commonly called "scientific knowledge"; with that it has no connection, but it has to do with intuition. What usually occurs is that the Initiate discloses to the candidate how the objects of nature and the essence of living things reveal themselves to the spiritual and mental hearing and sight. In a certain way these things then lie revealed--naked--before the beholder. Attributes and qualities which are concealed from physical eyes and ears can then be seen and heard. Heretofore they have been enwrapped as in a veil, and the falling away of this veil for the candidate, occurs at what is called the Process of Purification by Fire. The first trial is therefore known as the "Fire-Trial," which will briefly be explained thus: For some people the every day ordinary life is a more or less unconscious process of initiation by means of the Fire-Trial. These persons are those who have passed through a wealth of developing experiences, and who find that their self-confidence, courage, and fortitude have been greatly augmented in a normal way--who have learned to bear sorrow and disappointment, from the failure of their undertakings, with greatness of mind, and especially with quiet and unbroken strength. Those who have gone through such experiences are often initiates, without knowing it, and it needs but little to open for them the spiritual hearing and sight--to make them clairvoyant. For it must be noted that a genuine Fire-Trial is not merely intended to satisfy the curiosity of the candidate. He would learn, undoubtedly, many unusual things, of which others, devoid of such experiences, can have no idea; but yet this knowledge is not the end nor aim, but merely the path to the end. The real aim and object is this--that the candidate shall acquire for himself, through this knowledge of the higher worlds, a greater and truer self-confidence, a higher and nobler courage, and a perseverance, an attitude of mind, altogether different from what he could have obtained in the lower world. After the Fire-Trial a candidate may turn from the school; but because he has gone thus far he will accomplish his ordinary life work, greatly strengthened in all his spiritual and physical relations, and in his next incarnation he will continue to seek further initiation and advancement. In his present life, at all events, he will prove himself a more useful member of society, will be of greater service to humanity than he was before, and in whatever position he may find himself, his firmness, prudence, and favorable influence over his fellows will have greatly increased. After coming out of the Fire-Trial, if he should wish to continue in the occult school, he then has to be instructed in a certain writing-system which is used by those in the school. Occult teachings are written in this occult writing-system, because what is really occult can neither be perfectly spoken of in words of our ordinary speech, nor set forth in the ordinary ways of writing. Those who have learned much from the Initiates can but partially translate the teachings of Occultism into terms of ordinary speech. The symbols or signs of the secret script are not arbitrarily invented or imagined, but correspond to powers which are active and efficacious in nature. It is through these symbols or signs that one learns the language of such matters. The candidate immediately sees for himself that these symbols correspond to the figures, tones and colors which he has learned to perceive during the periods of Probation and Enlightenment. He now understands that all which went before was like learning how to spell, and that only now does he begin to read in the higher worlds. All that appeared to him before as separate figures, tones and colors, is now revealed to him as a perfect unity, a coherent harmony, and here, for the first time, he attains a real certainty in observing and following the higher knowledge. Hitherto it was not possible for him to be sure that what he saw had been clearly or correctly perceived. Now, at last, it is possible that a correct understanding between the candidate and the Initiate begin to arise concerning the spheres of the higher worlds. For no matter how close the connection between the two may be, no matter what form their intercourse may take in ordinary life, the Initiate can only communicate to the candidate, on these planes, in the direct form or figures of the secret alphabet. Through this occult speech the student also learns certain rules of conduct for life, certain duties and obligations, of which, previously, he knew nothing whatever. When he learns to know these rules, he is able to perform actions which have a significance and a meaning such as the actions of another who is not initiated can never possess. The only point of view from which he is now able to look upon things; the only plane from which he can now make manifest his deeds, is that of the higher worlds and the instructions concerning such deeds can only be read, or understood, in the secret script. Yet it must be clearly understood and emphasized that there are persons who, _unconsciously_, have the ability or faculty of performing these actions, notwithstanding they have never been in an occult school. Such "helpers of humanity and the world" proceed blessedly and beneficently through life. There are certain fundamental reasons, which cannot be here discussed, why they are in possession of seemingly supernatural gifts. The only difference between these persons and the pupils of an occult school is that the former act unconsciously, while the latter work with a full knowledge, insight, judgment, and understanding of the entire matter in hand. Often the candidate has to win by training that which has been bestowed by a Higher Power upon his fellow, for the good of humanity. One should freely and openly honor these favored ones of God; but he should not, on their account, consider the work of the occult schools unnecessary or superfluous. Now that the student has learned the "Mystery language," there awaits him yet another trial. By this he must prove whether he can move with freedom and certainty in the higher worlds. In ordinary life a man will be impelled to actions by outward motives and conditions. He works at this or that because certain duties are imposed upon him by outward circumstances. It need hardly be mentioned that the occult student must in no way neglect any of the duties connected with his ordinary life because he is a student in an occult school and in the higher worlds. None of his duties there can constrain him to treat with inattention or carelessness any one of his duties in the lower world. The father will remain just as good a father to his family, the mother just as good a mother; and neither the officer nor the soldier, nor anyone else, will be detained from their necessary duties because they are students in Occultism. On the contrary, all the qualities which make capable men are increased to a degree of which the uninitiated can form no idea. That this may not always appear to be the case is due merely to the fact that they have not always the ability to correctly judge or criticize the Initiate. The deeds of the latter are not always entirely intelligible to the former. But, as we have said before, this only happens in certain cases. For him who has arrived at the so-called "Steps of Initiation," there are new duties to be performed to which no outer stimulus is given. He will be moved to do these things by no external pressure, but by those rules of conduct which have been communicated to him in the mystery-language. In this second trial he must prove that, led by such rules of conduct, he can act from inner promptings just as firmly as an officer performs his obligatory duties. For this purpose the teacher will set before the pupil certain definite tasks. The latter now has to perform some deed in consequence of observations made from the total of what he learned during Probation and Enlightenment. He has to find the way to what he is now to perform, by means of the mystery-language, which by this time is familiar to him. If he discerns his duty and executes it correctly, he has endured the trial, and he recognizes the success, which attends the fulfilment of the task, by the changed manner with which the spiritual eyes and ears now apprehend the figures, tones and colors. The occult teacher tells him distinctly how these must appear after the consummation of the trial, and the candidate must know how he can effect this change. This trial is known as the "Water-Trial," because, in consequence of its performance taking place on the higher planes, that support, which would otherwise have been received from outward conditions, is now taken away. One's movements are like those which are made in water by someone learning to swim, and his feelings are those of one having no support except his own efforts. This practice must be often repeated until the candidate attains absolute poise and assurance. These trials are also dependent upon a quality which is produced by his experiences in the higher worlds. The candidate cultivates this quality to an extent which he could not possibly reach in so short a time while developing in the ordinary way, but could attain only after many incarnations. In order to bring about the change here mentioned, the following condition is necessary: The candidate must be guided altogether by what has been proven to him by the cultivation of his higher faculties, by the results of his reading in the secret symbols. Should he, during these experiences, attempt to introduce any of his own opinions or desires, or should he diverge for one moment from the laws and rules which he has proved to be right, something quite other than that which is expected will occur. In such cases the candidate loses sight of the goal for which these matters are undertaken, and the result is confusion. He has, therefore, manifold opportunities, during these trials, for the development of self-control, and this, indeed, is the principal quality needed. These trials are, therefore, much more easily endured by those who, before initiation, have gone through a life which has enabled them to acquire command of themselves. Those who have developed the characteristic of following their higher principles and ideals without thought of personal honor or desire, who always discern the duty to be fulfilled, even though the inclinations and sympathies are too often ready to lead them another way, are already unconscious initiates in the midst of every day life. They need but little to enable them to succeed in the prescribed trials. Indeed, one may say that a certain measure of initiation, thus unconsciously acquired in life, will be absolutely necessary before entering upon the second trial. For even as many who during youth have not learned to write or spell, find much difficulty in learning to do so in later years, so is it also difficult to develop, merely from a knowledge of the higher worlds, the necessary degree of self-control, if one has not already acquired a certain measure of it in the course of ordinary life. The things of the physical world do not alter by merely desiring them to do so, but in the higher worlds our wishes, inclinations and desires are causes that produce effects. If we wish to bring about particular changes in these worlds, we must hold ourselves in absolute control, we must follow the right principle, must entirely subdue the personal will. There is an attribute which at this stage of initiation has to be especially considered,--a really healthy and sure faculty of judgment. Attention must be directed to the education of this faculty during all the previous stages, and in the course of them it must be proven whether the candidate has developed this quality sufficiently to make him fit to tread the path of true knowledge, for, further progress is now possible only if he is able to distinguish illusion, superstition, unsubstantial fancies, and all manner of such things, from the true realities. At first, this is much more difficult to accomplish upon the higher stages of existence than upon the lower. Every prejudice, every cherished opinion regarding these matters, in whatever connection, must be banished. Truth alone must guide. There must be perfect readiness to surrender at once any existing opinion, idea, or inclination, when the logical idea demands it. Absolute certainty in the higher worlds can be obtained only when one does not obtrude his own opinions. People whose mode of thought inclines them to phantasy, prejudice and so forth, can make no progress on the occult way. Yet be not dismayed--there is, in truth, a glorious treasure that the persistent occult student shall attain. All doubt as to the higher worlds will be taken away from him. In all their law they will reveal themselves to his gaze, but so long as he is blindfolded he cannot see these heights and compensations. It is, indeed, unfortunate for him if illusions and fallacies ran away with his intellect and reason. Dreamers and people inclined to phantasies, are as unfit for the occult path as are superstitious people; for in dreams, illusions and superstitions lurk the most dangerous enemies on the road to knowledge. Because the candidate has already seen upon the portals that opened to him the first trial, the words, "Without a normal common-sense all your efforts are in vain;" and upon the gateway, which leads to the second trial, "All prejudices must fall away," it is not necessary to think that the capacity for inspiration and enthusiasm, and all the poetry of life, is lost to the student of Occultism. If he be now sufficiently advanced, a third trial awaits the candidate. No aim, no boundary lines, are here set for him. All is left entirely in his own hands. He finds himself in a condition where nothing external impels or induces him to act. He must find the way of his own accord and from within himself. Conditions or people who might have stimulated him to action are no longer there. Nothing and nobody but he himself alone can give the strength which he now needs. If he should not find this strength within he will very soon be standing where he was before; but it should be stated that very few of those who have endured the previous trials will fail at this point in finding the necessary strength. If they have come so far they will endure at this point also. The only thing necessary is the ability to make a resolution quickly. For here, in the truest meaning of the phrase, one must find oneself. In all matters one must instantly resolve to hear the suggestions, the inspirations of the spirit. One has no time for doubt or delay. Every moment of hesitation would add to the proof that one was not yet ready. All that hinders one from hearing the voice of the spirit must be boldly conquered. It is entirely a matter of proving one's presence of mind, and it is this attribute to which attention must be paid during all the foregoing stages of development. All temptations to act, or even to think, which hitherto assailed a man, must here cease; but in order that he may not slip into inaction, he must not lose his hold upon himself. For only in himself can he find that one sure centre-point on which he can depend. No one should feel an antipathy to this principle of self-rejection. For him who has endured the trials already described, it indicates the most perfect felicity. In this, as in the other stages before mentioned, every day life itself can, for many people, be an occult school. Those who have reached the point of being able to act without delay or personal consideration and can make prompt resolutions when suddenly confronted with some task or problem demanding immediate action, have, indeed, undergone their occult schooling in daily life. The situation which one wishes to suggest is one in which a successful action is impossible unless the person concerned grasps the whole matter and acts at once. He is quick to act when misfortune is in sight, while a moment's hesitation might lead to a catastrophe; and he who possesses the qualities which can be developed into a permanent attribute of such a kind, has already evolved, unknown to himself, the degree of ripeness necessary for the third trial. For, as already remarked, at this stage all depends upon the development of presence of mind. In the occult schools this trial is known as the "Air-Trial," because while undergoing it, the candidate cannot support himself either upon the firm ground, or any external cause, or that which he has learned in Probation and Enlightenment--from the figures and tones and colors, but solely upon himself. If the occult student has endured these trials, he is then permitted to enter "the Temple of the Higher Wisdom." All that can be said further upon this subject can be given out only in the smallest hints and suggestions. The responsibility of the next step has so often been illy expressed by words, that many say the pupil has here to take an "oath," promising to betray nothing that comes from the teacher. However, these expressions, "oath" and "betrayal," are in no way appropriate, and are misleading. It is no oath, in the ordinary sense of the word, but is rather an experience that comes at this stage. Here the candidate appreciates the true value of the occult teachers, and their place in the service of humanity. At last he begins to understand the world correctly. It is not so much a matter of "withholding" the higher truths already learned, but much more of upholding them in the right way and with the necessary tact. That concerning which one learns to "keep silence" is something quite different. One gains possession of this fine attribute in regard to many things of which one had previously spoken, and especially in regard to the manner in which one has spoken of them. Yet he would be a poor Initiate who did not place all his mystical experiences, as adequately and as far-reachingly as possible, at the service of humanity. The sole obstacle in such matters is the misunderstanding of the person who receives the communication. Above all, the higher or occult secrets are not allowed to be spoken of promiscuously, but no one who has passed the steps of development above described, is it actually forbidden to speak of these matters. No one is asked for a negative oath, but everything is entrusted to the judgment, integrity and sense of responsibility of the candidate for Initiation. What one really learns is to find out, within oneself, what should be done under all circumstances, and the "oath" means nothing more than this, that one is found qualified to be entrusted with matters of such importance. If the candidate is found fit, he is then given what is called, symbolically, "the draught of forgetfulness." This means that he will be initiated into the secret knowledge enabling him to act without being continually disturbed by the lower memory. This is absolutely necessary for the Initiate, for he must possess full faith in the immediate present. He must be able to destroy that veil of memory which extends itself round humanity more and more thickly with every moment of life. If one judges things which happen to-day, by the experiences of yesterday, he is subjected to a multitude of errors. Of course, it is not intended that the reader should renounce all the experience acquired in life. He ought always to keep it in mind as firmly as possible. But, as an Initiate, one should acquire the ability to judge every fresh experience irrespective of oneself, unclouded by all bygone experiences. One must be prepared, at every moment, that a new thing or being shall bring to one a new revelation. If one judges the new by the standard of the old, he necessarily falls into error. The memory of past experiences is very useful, however, for it makes one better able to perceive the new. If one had not gone through a certain experience, he probably would not have seen the attributes of this or that being or thing; but having had such experiences he ought to be enabled to discern the new, without judging it by the old. In this way the Initiate obtains certain definite qualities, and by means of these many things are revealed to him, while they remain concealed from the uninitiated. The second draught which is given to the Initiate is the "draught of remembrance." By receiving this he becomes capable of keeping the higher secrets ever present in the soul. Ordinary memory would not be sufficient to ensure this; he must be absolutely at one with the higher truths. He must not merely know them, but be able, as a matter of course, to manifest and administer them in living actions, even as an ordinary man eats and drinks. They must become one's practice, one's inclinations, one's habits. It must be unnecessary to recall them to mind (in the usual sense of the term); they must become a part of oneself and express themselves through one's very being; they must flow through one, just as the life-currents run through one's bodily organism. So must we make ourselves as perfect in a spiritual sense as nature has made us in a physical. VII THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE SOUL If a man carries out the culture of his thoughts and feelings and emotions in the way already described in the chapters on Probation, Enlightenment, and Initiation, he then effects a change in his soul such as Nature has effected in his body. Before this training, soul and spirit are undifferentiated masses. In such a state the clairvoyant will perceive them as interlacing clouds, rotating spirally, and having usually a dull glimmer of reddish or reddish-brown color, or, perhaps, of reddish-yellow; but after this growth they begin to assume a brilliant yellowish-green or yellow-blue hue, and become of a regular structure. A man attains such regularity of structure, and at the same time the higher knowledge, when he brings into the realm of his thoughts, feelings and emotions, an order, such as Nature has brought into his bodily organs, by means of which he can see, hear, digest, breathe, speak and so forth. Gradually the student learns, as it were, to breathe, to see with the soul, and to speak and hear with the spirit. In the following pages a few of the practical points pertaining to the higher education of the soul and spirit will be more fully treated. They are such as may be practically attained by anyone without additional instruction, and by means of which a further step in occult science may be taken. A particular kind of discipline must be patiently attempted such as to avoid every emotion of impatience, for it produces a paralyzing, yea, even a deadening, effect on the higher faculties within us. One must not expect immeasurable glimpses of the higher worlds to open out before one from day to day, for assuredly, as a rule, this does not occur. Contentment with the smallest progress, repose and tranquility must more and more possess the soul. It is conceivable, of course, that the learner may impatiently expect results, but he will attain nothing so long as he fails to master this impatience. Nor is it of any use to struggle against this impatience in the ordinary way, for then it will only become stronger than ever. It is thus that men deceive themselves, for in such a case it embeds itself all the more firmly in the depths of the soul. It is only by repeatedly surrendering oneself to a single definite thought, and by making it absolutely one's own, that anything is really attained. One should think: "I must certainly do everything possible for the culture of soul and spirit, but I will work tranquilly until, by higher powers, I shall be found worthy of definite illumination." When this thought has become so powerful in a man that it is an actual trait in his character, he is treading the right path. This trait will then express itself even in external affairs. The gaze of the eye becomes tranquil; the movements of the body become sure; the resolutions defined; and all that we call nervous susceptibility gradually disappears. Rules that seem trifling and insignificant must be taken into account. For example, suppose that someone affronts us. Before we receive this occult education, we would have directed our resentment against the wrong-doer; there would have been an uprush of anger within us. But in such a case the occult student will think to himself: "An affront of this kind can make no difference to my worth," and whatever must be done to meet the affront, he accomplishes with calm and composure, not with passion. To him it is not a matter of how an affront is to be borne, but without hesitation he is led to ignore or punish the affront to his own person in exactly the same way as if it had been offered to another, in which case one has the right to resent or disregard it. It must always be remembered, however, that the occult training is perfected not by coarse external processes, but by subtle, silent alterations in the life of thought and emotion. Patience has an attractive, while impatience has a repellent, effect on the treasures of the higher knowledge. In the higher regions of being, nothing can be attained by haste and restlessness. Desire and longing for immediate results must be silenced, for these are qualities of the soul before which all higher knowledge recedes. However precious this knowledge may be accounted, one must not desire to anticipate the time of its coming. And, furthermore, he who wishes to have it for his own sake alone will never attain it. It is absolutely demanded that one should be true to himself in his innermost soul. One must not there be deceived by anything; he must encounter, face to face and with absolute truthfulness, his own faults, failings, and unfitness. The moment you try to excuse to yourself any one of your weaknesses, you place an obstacle in the way which leads upward. There is one way only by which to get rid of such obstacles. Our faults and weaknesses can be removed only by self-illumination, and that is by correctly understanding them. All that is needed lies latent in the human soul and can be evoked. A man immediately improves his understanding and his reason when in repose he makes it clear to himself why he is weak in any respect. Self-knowledge of this kind is naturally difficult, for the temptation to deceive oneself is immeasurably great. He who is accustomed to be truthful with himself has opened the portals into a deeper insight. All curiosity must fall away from the student. He must wean himself as much as possible from inquiries into matters of which he wishes to know only for the gratification of his personal thirst for superficial information. He must ask himself only what things will assist him in the perfection of his innermost being for the service of the general evolution. Nevertheless, his delight in knowledge and his devotion to it must in no degree become relaxed. He must listen devoutly to all that contributes to such an end, and should seek every opportunity of doing so. For this interior culture it is especially necessary that the desire-life should be carefully educated. One must not become wholly destitute of desire, for if we are to accomplish something it is necessary that we should desire it, and a desire will always be fulfilled if a certain special force is behind it. This particular force results from a right knowledge: "Do not desire at all until you know the true conditions of any sphere." That is one of the golden rules for the occult student. The wise man first ascertains the laws of the world, and then his desires become powers which realize themselves. Let us consider an example in which the effect is evident. There are certainly many who would like to learn from their own intuition something about their life before birth. Such a desire is altogether aimless, and leads to no result so long as the person in question has not acquired a knowledge of the laws that govern the nature of the Eternal, and a knowledge of them in their subtlest and most intimate character. But if he has actually acquired this knowledge and then wishes to pass onward, he is able to do so by his elevated and purified desire. Moreover, it is of no use to say to oneself: "Yes, I will forthwith examine my previous life, and study with that aim in view." One must rather be ready to abandon such desire, to eliminate it altogether, and first of all, learn, without consideration of this aim. One should cultivate devotion to knowledge without regard to desires. It is only then that one enters into possession of the desire which we are considering, in a way that leads to its own fulfilment. From one's anger or vexation arises an adverse condition in the spiritual world, so that those forces which would open the eyes of the soul are turned away. For example, if someone should annoy me, he sends forth a current into the world of the soul. So long as I allow myself to be annoyed, I cannot see this current. My own annoyance clouds it. But from this it must not be supposed that when I no longer feel annoyed I will see the astral vision. To see an astral vision it is indispensable that the eye of the soul should already be developed; but the capacity for sight of this kind is latent in everyone. And again it is true that during the development, so long as one can be annoyed the sight remains inactive; nor does it present itself immediately, when one has overcome to a small extent this feeling of annoyance. One must continually persevere in the struggle with such a feeling, and patiently make progress: then, some day, he will find that this eye of the soul has become fully developed. Of course annoyance is not the only quality with which we have to struggle before attaining this end. Many people grow impatient or sceptical, because they have for years cultivated certain qualities of the soul and yet clairvoyance has not ensued. They have developed only a few qualities and have allowed others to run wild. The gift of clairvoyance first manifests itself when all those qualities which do not permit the development of the latent faculties are suppressed. Undoubtedly the beginnings of such hearing and seeing may appear at an earlier period, but these are only young and tender shoots which are subject to all possible error, and which, if they be not carefully fostered, may quickly die. The qualities which have to be combated, in addition to anger and vexation, are such as ambition, timidity, curiosity, superstition, conceit, the disease of prejudice, idle love of gossip, and the making of distinctions in regard to human beings according to the merely outward marks of rank, sex, race, and so forth. In our time it is difficult for people to comprehend that the combating of such qualities can have any connection with an increase of capacity for knowledge. But every devotee of Occultism is aware that much more depends upon such matters than upon the expansion of the intellect or the employment of artificial practices. It is particularly easy for a misunderstanding of this point to arise, inasmuch as many believe that one should cultivate foolhardiness because one must be fearless, and that one should ignore altogether the differences in men because one has to combat the prejudices of race, rank, and so forth. Rather should one first learn to appreciate these differences correctly, then one is no longer entangled in prejudice. Even in the usual sense it is true that a fear of any phenomenon hinders one from estimating it rightly; that a race-prejudice prevents one from looking into a man's soul. The student of Occultism must bring his common-sense to perfection in all its exactitude and subtlety. Even everything that a man says without having clearly thought it out will place an obstacle in the path of his occult education. At the same time we must here consider one point which can only be elucidated by giving an example. Thus, if anyone should say something to which another must reply, the one replying should be careful to consider the intention, the feelings, even the prejudices of this other person, rather than what he has to say at the moment on the subject under discussion. In other words, the student must apply himself keenly to the cultivation of a certain fine tact. He must learn to judge how much it may mean to this other person if his opinion be opposed. It must not be imagined for a moment that he ought for this reason, to withhold his own opinion. One must give to the questioner as careful a hearing as possible, and from what one has heard, formulate one's own reply. In such cases there is a certain thought which will constantly recur to the student, and he is treading the true path if this thought becomes so vital within him that it grows into a trait of his character. The thought is as follows: "It matters little whether my view be different from his, the vital point is whether he will discover the right view for himself if I am able to contribute something towards it." By thoughts of such a kind, the mode of action and the character of the student will become permeated with gentleness, one of the most essential qualities for the reception of occult teaching. Harshness obscures that internal image which ought to be evoked by the eye of the soul, while by gentleness many obstacles are cleared from the way, and the inner organs opened. Along with this gentleness another trait will presently be developed in the soul. He will make a quiet estimate of all the subtleties in the soul-life around him, without considering the emotions of his own soul. And if this condition has been attained, the soul-emotions in the environment of others will have such an effect on him that the soul within him grows, and, growing, becomes organized, as a plant expands in the sunlight. Gentleness, quiet reserve, and true patience, open the soul to the world of souls, and the spirit to the realm of spirits. Persevere in repose and retirement; close the senses to that which they brought you before you began your training; bring into utter stillness all those thoughts which, in accordance with your previous habits, were tossed up and down within you; become quite still and silent within, wait in patience, and then the tranquil higher worlds will begin to develop the sight of your soul and the hearing of your spirit. Do not suppose that you will _immediately_ see and hear in the worlds of soul and spirit, for all that you are doing does but help the development of your higher senses, and you will not be able to see with the soul and to hear with the spirit before you have to some degree acquired those senses. When you have persevered for a time in repose and retirement, then go about your daily affairs, having first impressed upon your mind the thought: "Some day, when I am ready, I shall attain what I am to attain." Finally: "Make no attempt whatever to attract any of these higher powers to yourself by an effort of the will." These are instructions which every occult student receives from his teacher at the entrance of the way. If he observes them, he then improves himself; and if he does not observe them, all his labor is in vain; but they are difficult of achievement for him only who has not patience and perseverance. No other obstacles exist save those which one places for oneself, and these may be avoided by anyone if he really wills it. It is necessary to continually insist upon this point, because many people form an altogether wrong conception of the difficulty that lies in the path of Occultism. In a certain sense, it is easier to accomplish the earlier steps of the occult way, than it is for one who has received no instruction, to get rid of the difficulties of one's every-day life. In addition to this, it must be understood that only such things are here imparted as are attended by no danger to the health of soul or body. There are certain other ways which lead more quickly to the goal, but it is not well to treat of them publicly, because they may sometimes have certain effects on a man which would necessitate the immediate intervention of an experienced teacher, and in any case would require his continual supervision. Now, as something about these quicker ways frequently forces itself into publicity, it becomes necessary to give express warning against entering upon them without personal guidance. For reasons which only the initiated can understand, it will never be possible to give public instruction concerning these other ways in their true form, and the fragments which here and there make their appearance can never lead to anything profitable, but may easily result in the undermining of health, fortune and peace of mind. He who does not wish to put himself in the power of certain dark forces, of whose nature and origin he may know nothing, had far better avoid meddling in such matters. Something may here be added concerning the environment in which the practices of occult instruction ought to be undertaken. This is of great importance, although for almost every man the case is different. He who practices in an environment which is only filled with selfish interests, as for example, the modern struggle for existence, ought to be sure that these interests are without influence upon the development of his spiritual organs. It is true that the inner laws of these organs are so powerful that this influence cannot be fatally injurious. Just as a lily, however inappropriate the environment in which it may be placed, can never become a thistle, so the eye of the soul can never grow to anything but its destined end, even though it be subjected to all the modern reverse influences. But it is well if, under all circumstances, the student should now and then seek for his environment the quietude, the inner dignity, the sweetness of Nature herself. Especially fortunate are the conditions of him who is able to pursue his occult studies in the green world of plants, or among the sunny mountains or the delightful interplay of simple things. This develops the inner organs in a degree of harmony which is difficult to obtain amid the noise and commercialism of a modern city. He also is more favorably situated than the mere townsman, who, during his childhood at least, was able to breathe the perfume of the pines, to gaze on the snowy peaks, or observe the silent activity of woodland creatures and insects. Yet no one who is obliged to live in a city should fail to give his evolving soul and spirit the nurture that comes from the inspired utterances of the mighty teachers of man. He who cannot every springtime follow day by day the unfolding of the greenwood, ought in its place to draw into his heart the sublime doctrines of the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, or of _St. John's Gospel_, or of Thomas à Kempis. There are various paths to the summit of insight, but a right selection is invaluable. The adept in Occultism could, indeed, say much concerning these paths--much that might seem strange to an uninitiated hearer. For example, suppose that someone has advanced far along the occult path, and wholly unaware of his nearness, may be standing at the entrance to the sight of the soul and the hearing of the spirit, and then he has the good fortune to pass peacefully into its very presence, and a bandage falls away from the eyes of his soul. Suddenly he can see--his vision is attained! Another, it may be, has advanced so far that this bandage needs only to be loosened, and by some stroke of destiny this occurs. For another one this very stroke might actually have the effect of paralyzing his powers and undermining his energy, but for the occult student it becomes the occasion of his enlightenment. Perhaps a third has patiently persevered for years, and without any marked result. Suddenly, while tranquilly seated in his quiet chamber, light envelops him, the walls become transparent, they vanish away, and a new world expands before his opened eyes, or is audible to his awakened spirit. VIII THE CONDITIONS OF DISCIPLESHIP The conditions of entrance into an occult school are not of a nature to be formulated in an arbitrary way by anyone. They are the natural outcome of occult knowledge. Just as a man will never become a painter if he does not choose to handle a paintbrush, so can no one receive occult training if he is unwilling to fulfil the claims which are put forward by the occult teacher. In fact, the teacher can give nothing but advice, and it is as such that everything he states ought to be considered. He has already trodden the probationary path which leads to the knowledge of higher worlds. From experience he knows what is necessary, and it all depends on the free will of each particular person whether he chooses to follow the same path or not. If anyone, without intending to satisfy the conditions, should demand occult training from a teacher, such a demand would be equivalent to saying: "Teach me to paint, but do not ask me to handle a brush." The occult teacher never goes a step further, unless it be in accord with the free will of the recipient. It must be emphasized that a general wish for higher knowledge is not sufficient, yet many will probably have but such a weak desire. For him who has merely this vague idea, and is not prepared to accept the special conditions of the occult teacher, the latter, for the present, can do nothing. This ought to be kept in mind by those who complain that occult teachers do not "meet them half way." He who cannot, or will not, fulfil the severe conditions necessary, must for the time abandon occult training. It is true that the conditions are, indeed, hard, and yet they are not severe since their fulfilment not only ought to be, but must be, an altogether voluntary deed. To him who does not remember this it is easy for the claims of the occult teacher to seem a coercion of the soul or the conscience; for the training here mentioned is founded on a development of the inner life, and it is the work of the teacher to give advice concerning it. And yet, if something be demanded as the result of free choice, it cannot be considered as a fetter. If anyone says to the teacher: "Give me your secrets, but leave me my customary feelings and thoughts," he is then making an impossible demand. Such an one desires no more than to satisfy his curiosity and thirst for sensations, so that by one who takes an attitude like this, occult knowledge can never be obtained. Let us now consider in their right order the conditions of discipleship. It should be emphasized that the complete fulfilment of any one of these conditions is by no means demanded, but only the effort to gain such fulfilment. No one can at first reach these high ideals, but the path which leads to their fulfilment may be entered by everyone. It is the will that matters, the attitude taken when entering the path. 1. The _first condition_ is the directing of the attention to the advancement of bodily and spiritual health. Of course, discipleship does not in the first place depend on the health of a man, but everyone can endeavor to improve in this respect, and only from a healthy man may proceed a healthy perception. No occult teacher would refuse a man who is not healthy, but it is demanded that the pupils should have the desire for a healthy life. In this respect he must attain the greatest possible independence. The good counsels of others, which, though generally unsought, are received by everybody, are as a rule superfluous. Each must endeavor to take care of himself. From the physical aspect it will be more a matter of warding off harmful influences than of anything else. For in carrying out one's duty one has often to do things which are disadvantageous to health. One must learn how, at the right moment, to place duty higher than the care of health; but with a little good-will, what is there that cannot be omitted? Duty must in many cases be accounted higher than health, indeed, if need be, higher than life itself, but the disciple must never put pleasure as high as either one of these. Pleasure for him can be only a means to health and life, and in respect to this it is absolutely necessary that we should be quite honest and truthful with ourselves. It is of no avail to lead an ascetic life so long as it is born of motives like those that give rise to other enjoyments. There are people who find satisfaction in asceticism, as do others in wine-bibbling, but they must not imagine that asceticism of this kind will assist them to attain the higher knowledge. Many ascribe to their unfavorable circumstances everything which apparently prevents them from making progress in this direction. They say that with their conditions of life they cannot develop themselves to any great extent. For other reasons it may be desirable for many to change their conditions of life, but no one need do so for the purpose of occult training. For this it is only necessary that one should do for one's health so much as one finds possible in the position one holds. Every kind of work may serve the whole of humanity, and it is a surer sign of greatness in the human soul to perceive clearly how necessary for the whole is a petty--perhaps even an unlovely--employment than to think: "This work is not good enough for me: I am destined for something else." It is especially important for the disciple to strive after complete spiritual health. In any case, an unhealthy emotional or thought-life leads one away from the path of higher knowledge. The foundations here consist of clear, calm thinking, reliable conceptions, and stable feelings. Nothing should be more alien to the disciple than an inclination toward a whimsical, excitable life, toward nervousness, intoxication, and fanaticism. He should acquire a healthy outlook on all circumstances of life; he should go through life steadily and should let things act on him and speak to him in all tranquillity. Wherever it is possible he should endeavor to do justice to life. Everything in his tastes and criticisms which is one-sided or extravagant ought to be avoided. If this be not so, the disciple will strand himself in a world of his own imagination, instead of attaining the higher worlds, and in place of truth his own favorite opinions will assert themselves. It is better for the disciple to be "matter-of-fact" than overwrought and fanciful. 2. The _second condition_ is that one should feel oneself as a link in the general life. Much is included in the fulfilment of this condition, but each can only fulfil it after his own manner. If I am a school teacher and my pupil does not answer what is desired of him, I must first direct my feeling not against the pupil but to myself. I ought to feel myself so much at one with my pupil that I ask myself: "May not that in the pupil which does not satisfy my demand be perhaps the result of my own faults?" or if perchance it be his unconscious, or even vicious error, as _teacher_, instead of directing my feelings against him, I shall rather cogitate on the way in which I myself ought to behave, or in kindness show him what is right, so that he may in the future be better able to satisfy my demands. From such a manner of thinking there will come gradually a change over the whole mental attitude. This holds good for the smallest as well as for the greatest. From this point of view I look on a criminal, for instance, altogether differently from the way I should have looked upon him of old. I suspend my judgment and think to myself: "I am only a man as he is. Perhaps the education which, owing to favorable circumstances, has been mine, and nothing else, has saved me from a similar fate." I may even come to the conclusion that if the teachers who took pains with me had done the same for him, this brother of mine would have been quite different. I shall reflect on the fact that something which has been withheld from him has been given to me, and that I may, perhaps, owe my goodness to the fact that he has been thus deprived of it. And then will it no longer be difficult to grasp the conception that I am a link in the whole of humanity, and that consequently I, too, in part, bear the responsibility for everything that happens. By this it is not implied that such a thought should be translated immediately into external action. It should be quietly cultivated in the soul. It will then express itself gradually in the outward behavior of a person, and in such matters each can begin only by reforming himself. It were futile, from such a standpoint, to make general claims on all humanity. It is easy to form an idea of what men ought to be, but the disciple works, not on the surface, but in the depths. And, therefore, it would be wrong if one should endeavor to bring these demands of the occult teacher into relation with any external or political claims. As a rule, political agitators know well what can be demanded of other people, but they say little of demands on themselves. 3. Now with these demands on ourselves the _third condition_ for occult training is intimately connected. The student must be able to realize the idea that his thoughts and feelings are as important for the world as his deeds. It must be recognized that it is as pernicious to hate a fellow-being as to strike him. One can then discern also that by perfecting oneself one accomplishes something not only for oneself but for the whole world. The world profits by pure thoughts and feelings as much as by one's good behavior, and so long as one cannot believe in this world-wide importance of the inner Self, one is not fit for discipleship. One is permeated with a true conception of the soul's importance, only when one works at this inner Self as if it were at least as important as all external things. It must be admitted that one's feelings produce an effect as much as the action of the hand. 4. In so saying we have already mentioned the _fourth condition_: the idea that the real being of man does not lie in the exterior but in the interior. He who regards himself as merely a product of the outer world, a result of the physical world, cannot succeed in this occult training. But he who is able to realize this conception is then also able to distinguish between inner duty and external success. He learns to recognize that the one cannot at once be measured by the other. The student must learn for himself the right position between what is demanded by his external conditions and what he recognizes to be the right conduct for himself. He ought not to force upon his environment anything for which it can have no appreciation, but at the same time he must be altogether free from the desire to do merely what can be appreciated by those around him. In his own sincere and wisdom-seeking soul, and only there, must he look for the recognition of his truths. But from his environment he must learn as much as he possibly can, so that he may discern what those around him need, and what is of use to them. In this way he will develop within himself what is known in Occultism as the "spiritual balance." On one side of the scales there lies a heart open for the needs of the outward world, and on the other lies an inner fortitude and an unfaltering endurance. 5. And here, again, we have hinted at the _fifth condition_: firmness in the carrying out of any resolution when once it has been made. Nothing should induce the disciple to deviate from any such resolution once it is formed, save only the perception that he has made a mistake. Every resolution is a force, and even if such a force does not produce immediate effect on the point at which it was directed, nevertheless it works in its own way. Success is of great importance only when an action arises from desire, but all actions which are rooted in desire are worthless in relation to the higher worlds. There the love expended on an action is alone of importance. In this love, all that impels the student to perform an action ought to be implanted. Thus he will never grow weary of again and again carrying out in action some resolution, even though he has repeatedly failed. And in this way he arrives at the condition in which he does not first count on the external effect of his actions, but is contented with the doing of them. He will learn to sacrifice for the world his actions, nay, more, his whole being, without caring at all how his sacrifice may be received. He who wishes to become a disciple must declare himself ready for such a sacrifice, such an offering. 6. A _sixth condition_ is the development of a sense of gratitude with regard to everything which relates to Man. One must realize that one's existence is, as it were, a gift from the entire universe. Only consider all that is needed in order that each of us may receive and maintain his existence! Consider what we owe to Nature and to others than ourselves! Those who desire an occult training must be inclined toward thoughts like these, for he who cannot enter into such thoughts will be incapable of developing within himself that all-inclusive love which it is necessary to possess before one can attain to higher knowledge. That which we do not love cannot manifest itself to us. And every manifestation must fill us with gratitude, or we ourselves are not the richer for it. 7. All the conditions here set forth must be united in a _seventh_: to regard life continually in the manner demanded by these conditions. The student thus makes it possible to give to his life the stamp of uniformity. All his many modes of expression will, in this way, be brought into _harmony_, and cease to contradict each other. And thus he will prepare himself for the peace which he must attain during the preliminary steps of his training. If a person intend, earnestly and sincerely, to fulfil the conditions mentioned above, he may then address himself to a teacher of Occultism. The latter will then be found ready to give the first words of counsel. Any external formality will consist of giving to these conditions a complete expression, a knowledge of which can only be imparted orally to each individual candidate. Since everything interior must manifest itself in an exterior way, they teach a very important lesson. Even as a picture cannot be said to be here, when it exists only in the brain of the painter, so, too, there cannot be an occult training without an external expression. External forms are regarded as worthless by those only who do not know that the internal must find expression in the external. It is true that it is the spirit and not the form that really matters; but just as the form is void without the spirit, so would the spirit remain inactive as long as it could not create a form. The stipulated conditions are so designed that they may render the disciple strong enough to fulfil the further demands which the teacher must make. If he be faulty in the fulfilment of these conditions, then before each new demand he will stand hesitating. Without this fulfilment he will be lacking in that faith in man which it is necessary for him to possess; for on faith in man and a genuine love for man, all striving after truth must be founded. And the love of man must be slowly widened out into a love for all living creatures, nay, indeed, for all existence. He who fails to fulfil the conditions here given will not possess a perfect love for all up-building, for all creation, nor a tendency to abstain from all destruction and annihilation as such. The disciple must so train himself that, not in deeds only, but also in words, thoughts and feelings, he will never destroy anything for the sake of destruction. He must find his pleasure in the growing and creating aspect of things, and is only justified in assisting the apparent destruction of anything when, by such readjustment, he is able to promote a greater life. Let it not be thought that, in so saying, it is implied that the disciple may allow the triumph of evil, but rather that he must endeavor to find, even in the bad, those aspects through which he may change it into good. He will see more and more clearly that the best way to combat imperfection and evil is by the creation of the perfect and the good. The student knows that nothing can come from nothing, but also that the imperfect may be changed into the perfect. He who develops in himself the tendency to create, will soon find the capacity for facing the evil. He who enters an occult school must be quite sure that his intention is to construct and not to destroy. The student ought, therefore, to bring with him the will for sincere and devoted work, and to this end he ought to be capable of great devotion, for one should be anxious to learn what one does not yet know; he should look reverently on that which discloses itself. Work and devotion,--these are the fundamental attributes which must be claimed from the disciple. Some will have to discover that they do not make real progress in the school, even if in their own opinion they are unceasingly active; they have not grasped in the right manner the meaning of work and meditation. That kind of learning which is undertaken without meditation will advance the student least, and the work which is done for selfish returns will be the least successful. In the love of work, the love to do better work; yes, the love to do perfect work, is the quality which unfolds occult power; and in qualifying for better things one need give little heed for greater returns. If he who is learning seeks for wholesome thoughts and sound judgment, he need not spoil his devotion with doubts and suspicions. The fact that one does not oppose some communication which has been made, but gives to it due attention and even sympathy, does not imply a lack of independent judgment. Those who have arrived at a somewhat advanced stage of knowledge are aware that they owe everything to a quiet attention and assimilation, and not to a stubborn personal judgment. One should always remember that he does not need to learn what he is already able to understand. Therefore, if one desires only to judge, he is apt to cease learning. What is of importance in an occult school, however, is study: one ought to desire, with heart and soul, to be a student: if one cannot understand something it is far better not to judge, lest one wrongly condemn; far wiser to wait for a true understanding. The higher one climbs up the ladder of knowledge, the more he requires this faculty of calm and devotional listening. All perception of truths, all life and activity in the world of spirit, become in these higher regions delicate and subtle in comparison with the activities of the ordinary mind, and of life in the physical world. The more the sphere of a man's activity widens out before him, the more transcendent is the nature of the task to be accomplished by him. It is for this reason that, although there is in reality only one possible fact regarding the higher truths, men come to look at them from such different points of view. It is possible to arrive at this one true standpoint if, through work and devotion, one has so risen that he can really behold the truth. Only he who judges in accordance with preconceived ideas and habitual ways of thought, rather than from sufficient preparation, can arrive at any opinion which differs from the true one. Just as there is only one correct opinion concerning a mathematical problem, so also with regard to things of the higher worlds; but before one can arrive at this knowledge he must first prepare himself. Truth and the higher life do, indeed, abide in every human soul, and it is true that everyone can and must sooner or later find them for himself. W. J. COLVILLE'S BOOKS. A Selection of the Most Popular Works by This Great Author and Well-known Lecturer in Europe, America and Australia. ~Universal Spiritualism.~ Spirit Communion in all ages among all people. The work Has two distinctive features: (1st) A resume of the Spiritual faith and practice of Egypt, India, Persia, Greece, Rome, China, Japan and other ancient nations, not excepting Europe, during Christian centuries. (2nd) A summary of recent experiences in America, Great Britain, Australia, France, Germany, Italy and other modern lands, all tending to show the persistent continuity of spiritual revelation. Clairvoyance, Telepathy and Psychic Phenomena in general are dealt with in separate chapters at the close of the volume, which extends to 352 pages, making it a highly useful text-book for all who are interested in the question of human immortality. _W. J. Colville._ Cloth. No. 24256, 1.00 ~Old and New Psychology.~ Twenty-four chapters, including explanatory essays on many subjects of vital interest to all teachers and students. _W. J. Colville._ Cloth. No. 23766, 1.00 ~Throne of Eden, The.~ Twenty-six chapters presenting important teachings entrusted to the writer's charge; also a record of extensive travel in the Southern Hemisphere; and a rational system of preventing as well as healing diseases. _W. J. Colville._ Cloth. No. 24186, 1.00 ~Life and Power from Within.~ An excellent book, embracing the most advanced mental-physical teaching and the simplest rules for the guidance of daily life according to New Thought standards. _W. J. Colville._ Cloth. No. 23151, .75 ~Dashed Against the Rock.~ A scientific novel, illustrated with many remarkable diagrams. _W. J. Colville._ Cloth. No. 22316, .75 ~Health from Knowledge~; or, the Law of Correspondences as applied to healing. _W. J. Colville._ Leatherette. No. 22745, .50 ~Birthdays, The Significance of~; or Our places in the universal Zodiac. _W. J. Colville._ Leatherette. No. 22191, .50. Paper No. 22195, .40 ~Onesimus Templeton.~ A vivid romance tracing the evolution of a soul from bondage to liberty. _W. J. Colville._ Cloth. No. 23771, .50 ~Living Decalogue, The.~ 12 Expository Lectures. _W. J. Colville._ Leatherette. No. 23156, .50 ~Glints of Wisdom~, or Helpful Sayings for Busy Moments. Abstracts from Lectures by _W. J. Colville._ An encyclopedia of psychological laws contained in an endless variety of subjects. Leatherette, flexible. No. 22671. .40. Paper No. 22675, .30 ~Fate Mastered-Destiny Fulfilled.~ Three stirring essays on live issues. Very tasteful presentation volume. _W. J. Colville._ Cloth: No. 22476, .30 ~Mental Therapeutics, Elementary Text Book of.~ Twelve Practical Lessons. _W. J. Colville._ No. 22420, .25 ~Lectures~, by _W. J. Colville_, on various subjects: Atlantis, The Way of Initiation, Initiation and its Results. Symbolism--Its use and Value, etc. Send for list, each 10¢. 3 for .25 _New works and reprints of older books will be added to this list as fast as they can be prepared. Write for them; also for the latest lectures; either to Mr. Colville or to the publisher._ JAMES ALLEN'S BOOKS. A Foreward. ~James Allen's Books.~ "I looked upon the world, and saw that it was shadowed by sorrow and scorched by the fierce fires of suffering--I looked for the cause, but could not find it until I looked within, and there found both the cause and the self-made nature of the cause. I looked again, deeper, and found the remedy. I found one Law, the Law of Love; one Life, the Life of adjustment to that Law; one Truth, the Truth of a conquered mind and a quiet and obedient heart. And I dreamed of writing a book which should help men and women, rich or poor, learned or unlearned, worldly or unworldly, to find within themselves the source of all success, all happiness, all accomplishment, all truth: And the dream remained with me, and at last became substantial, and now I send it forth into the world on its mission of healing and blessedness, knowing that it cannot fail to reach the homes and hearts of those who are waiting and ready to receive it." ~As a Man Thinketh.~ Inspiring and helpful "New Thought." ~The Path of Prosperity.~ A way leading out of undesirable conditions to health, success, power, abounding happiness and the realization of prosperity. ~Out from the Heart.~ Most optimistic and uplifting. ~Entering the Kingdom.~ That heavenly kingdom within the heart of man, where perfect trust, knowledge, peace and love await all who will enter its Golden Gateways. ~The Way of Peace.~ It's realization and attainment. ~The Heavenly Life.~ How to attain its supreme happiness in this life, on this earth here and now. Any of the above in either style of binding as follows: Paper Covers, size 4-1/4 × 7-1/4 " " " " .15 Cloth Binding, " " " " " " " .50 Leather Binding, " " " " " " " .75 Watered Silk, " " " " " " " .75 Special Gift Editions, with colored borders, 5-1/2 × 7-3/4, embossed .75 _Order and read one of the books--say The Path of Prosperity, and you'll ask the price per dozen, wanting your every friend to have one._ A SELECTED ASSORTMENT OF BOOKS. Historical, Fraternal, Symbolical, Mystic, Astrologic, Occult, Psychic, Spiritualistic, Optimistic, Philosophic, Masonic, New Thought, Etc. Delivered to any address on receipt of price, or if desired for use on our Circulating Library plan; send us the price of the book, and we will prepay postage to you. After reading return it to us carefully protected and we will return the money (except on paper bindings), less the postage we have paid on it, and 10% for the first month's use, and 5% for each additional month. ~Altar in the Wilderness, The.~ In seven chapters--The Golden Age, The Exile, Life in Death, The Conflict. The Wilderness, Illumination, The Temple.--representing the Seven Spiritual Ages of Man. _Ethelbert Johnson._ Cloth, No. 24231, .50. Paper, No. 24235, .25 ~Ancient Mystic Oriental Masonry.~ Its teachings, Rules, Laws and Present Usages which govern the Order at the present day. _Dr. R. Swinburne Clymer._ Cloth, No. 22086, 1.50 ~Ben Hur~, a Tale of Christ. The Great Christian Drama. _Gen. Lew Wallace._ No. 22076, 1.50 ~Book of the Master, The.~ A clue to the mysterious religion of Ancient Egypt. _W. Marsham Adams._ Cloth, No. 22166, 1.25 ~Brotherhood.~ Nature's Law. _Burcham Harding._ No. 22176, .50 ~Brother of the Third Degree.~ An interesting and fascinating story of the thrilling experiences of an earnest occult student on his way upward to those sublime heights of Universal Love and Devotion to Humanity, attained only by the true initiates of the Great White Brotherhood--a vivid picture of life in the famous occult schools of Paris and the Far East; explaining much which has so long been veiled in mystery. _W. L. Carver._ 377 pages, Cloth. No. 22161, 1.50 ~Constructive Psychology.~ The Constructive Principle of Character Building. _Dr. J. D. Buck._ No. 22296, 1.00 ~Culture of Concentration.~ Occult Powers and their acquirement. _Wm. Q. Judge._ No. 22266, .10 ~Discovery of the Soul, The.~ Throwing light on the path of progressive man, leading through mysticism to the discovery of those unused powers within the soul, which duly appropriated give expression to the Divine in Man. _Floyd B. Wilson._ No. 22306, 1.00 ~Egypt the Cradle of Ancient Masonry.~ Comprising a history of Egypt, with a comprehensive and authentic account of the Antiquity of Masonry, the result of many years of personal investigation and exhaustive research in India, Persia, Syria and the Valley of the Nile. _Norman F. de Clifford._ Beautifully illustrated. Art Canvass binding, 2 vol., 9 × 12. 644 pgs, No. 22421 6.75 Half American Morocco, 2 vol., " " " No. 22423 7.50 Full American Morocco, 2 vol., " " " No. 22424 10.00 Full Persian Morocco, 1 vol., " " " No. 22425 10.00 ~Egyptian Symbols, A Comparison~ with those of the Hebrews. Including Principle of Symbology, Application to Egyptian Symbols, to the Symbols of Color and to the Symbols of the Bible. A clear, concise exposition of a most interesting subject, by _Frederick Portal_. Translated from the French, by _John W. Simons_. Illustrated. No. 22381, 1.00 ~Harmonies of Evolution.~ This work marks out a new path in the treatment of the so-called Occult in Nature, attempting to explain rather than to mystify and to illustrate and elucidate the correlation of spiritual and physical forces in Nature. _Florence Huntley._ 463 pgs. No. 22716, 2.00 ~Hermes and Plato.~ The mysteries of Egypt and of Eleusis. _Edouard Shure._ No. 22856, 1.00 ~History of Initiation.~ In Twelve Lectures: General Introduction, History of Initiation in Hindostan, Philosophy of the Eastern Mysteries, Initiation in Persia, Initiation in Greece, Ceremonies of Initiation into the Mysteries of Bacchus, the Celtic Mysteries, Ceremonies in Britain, Symbols and Doctrines of the Druids, Gothic Mysteries, Doctrines and Morality, History of Initiation in America, comprising the Rites, Ceremonies and Doctrines of all the Secret and Mysterious Institutions of the Ancient World. _Rev. George Oliver, D.D._ Illustrated, 218 pgs. Blue cloth and gilt stamps, 5-1/4 × 8-1/4, gilt. No. 22801, 1.50 ~History of the Knights Templar.~ _C. G. Addison._ A condensed narrative or History of the Great Crusades; a thrilling account of the longest and hardest struggle for freedom of Christian principles that the world has ever known; no such zeal, no such ardor has ever been recorded; no such battles have been fought in ancient or modern times; no such persecutions, martyrdom and suffering for any cause as that endured by the Crusaders, out of which has grown our beautiful system of Templarism. The work is also a record of the various events in connection with the order from those strenuous times to the present day, containing the proceedings of Triennial Encampments down to and including the 30th at Saratoga in 1907. Some of these original proceedings are very scarce, and only to be found in rare collections. Order one of the histories; get up a club; ask for agency, and see to it that every Sir Knight has a better knowledge of his glorious ancestry. We guarantee they will sell. Full art canvass. No. 22811 3.25 Library sheep. No. 22812 3.50 Half American Russia. No. 22818 3.75 Half American Morocco. No. 22813 4.00 Full American Russia. No. 22819 4.75 Full American Morocco. No. 22814 5.00 Full Persian Morocco. No. 22817 8.75 ~Initiation, The Way of,~ or how to attain knowledge of the higher world. _Rudolf Steiner, Ph.D._ Arranged from the translation by _Max Gysi_. Notes by _Edouard Schuré_. A valuable guide in a matter between you and yourself. New large type. No. 24276, 1.00, Paper. No. 24280, .75 ~Initiation and its Results.~ _Rudolf Steiner, Ph.D._ (Now in press). A sequel to the way of Initiation. These works, in the plainest and clearest way, give more instruction in occult knowledge than any yet published. The Mystics and philosophic press indorse them in the highest terms. New large type. No. 22976, 1.00 ~In Tune with the Infinite.~ _Ralph Waldo Trine._ Bound in Japanese style or special silk. No. 22996, 1.25 ~Josephus.~ The authentic works and life of this great Jewish historian and celebrated warrior. Translated by _Wm. Winston, M.A._ 1055 pgs., attractively bound and illustrated. 7-1/2 × 9-1/2. No. 23061, 1.75 ~Kingdom of Love, The.~ _Henry Frank._ Beautifully expressed, wholesome, helpful and inspiring essays. 245 pgs. No. 23086, 1.00 ~Koran, The.~ Commonly called the Alkoran of Mohammed (the Mohammedian Bible). 559 pgs. No. 23071, 1.50 ~Krishna and Orpheus~, the Great Initiates of the East and West. _Edouard Schuré._ No. 23106, 1.25 ~Last Great Initiate, Jesus the.~ _Edouard Schuré._ The Essenes, St. John, etc. No. 23056, 1.00 ~Life and Writings of Dr. Rob't. Fludd~, the English Rosicrucian. _I. B. Craven._ Cloth. No. 23206, 2.50 ~Light on the Path.~ A treatise for the personal use of those who are unfamiliar with the Eastern Wisdom but desire to enter within its influence. _C. M._ Cloth. No. 23166, .50, Leather. No. 24266, .75 ~Lost Word Found, The.~ "The most compelling bit of literature yet presented by Dr. Buck, and unlike anything ever written concerning the mystery of the Lost Word." _J. D. Buck._ No. 23196, .50 ~Man Limitless.~ "A study of the possibilities of man when acting under infinite guidance with which he is in absolute touch." _Floyd B. Wilson._ No. 23531, 1.25 ~Man of Mount Moriah, The.~ From Symbolism and Prophecy to Sacrifice and Fulfillment--a wonderfully interesting story of the Grand Architect at the Building of King Solomon's Temple. Beautifully illustrated, followed by forty pages of the best Masonic and O.E.S. poetry, including "Esther, a sacred drama." 334 pgs. Edition after edition has been sold, which enables us to greatly increase the quality and style of the book for serviceable wear and richness of appearance. _C. M. Boutelle._, Half Morocco and full gilt. No. 23488 4.00 Half Russia and full gilt. No. 23487 3.60 Half Morocco, marble edge. No. 23483 3.20 Half Russia, marble edge. No. 23486 2.80 Half Cloth, marble edge. No. 23481 2.40 Heavy Paper Sides, marble edge. No. 23485 1.60 ~Mastery of Mind in the Making of a Man, The.~ A searching analysis and exposition of the power of mind in body-building and the forming of personality. _Henry Frank._ 250 pgs. No. 33336, 1.00 ~Messianic Expectation and Modern Judaism.~ _Solomon Schindler._ Cloth. No. 23336, 1.00 ~Morals and Dogma~, Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite from the 1st, to 33d Degree, by _Albert Pike, Grand Commander_. This valuable work is the result of years of study, translations from ancient and modern languages, and thousands of dollars expenditure by the author. The Masonic and Theosophical student will find in it a mine of knowledge that can be found nowhere else, and heretofore within the reach of but few. The greatest book ever written or printed about Free Masonry. 861 pgs. 6-1/2 × 9-1/2. Cloth binding with gold stamps. No. 23361, 5.25 ~Myrtle Baldwin.~ A novel of great interest, especially to the Fraternity, as it is full of Masonic principles. _Bro. Charles Clark Munn_, author of The Hermet, etc. 510 pgs. 5-1/4 × 7-1/2. Illustrated, green cloth, black and gold stamps. An excellent gift. No. 23586, 1.50 ~Mystical Life of Ours, This.~ _Ralph Waldo Trine._ No. 24236, 1.00 ~Occult Science in India~, and among the Ancients, with an account of their Mystic Initiations and History of Spiritualism. _Louis Jacolliot._ Cloth. No. 23715, 2.50 ~Occultist's Travels, An.~ _Willy Reichel._ Cloth. No. 33726, 1.00 ~Paths to Power.~ "The struggling will gain strength--the doubting assurance--and the despairing hope, from this book." Fifteenth edition. _Floyd B. Wilson._ No. 23796, 1.00 ~Philosophy of Fire, The.~ "There is nothing new under the sun." Fire Philosophy is the foundation of all True Initiation, and all Mystic and Occult Fraternities, as well as the Secret Doctrine and Ancient Mysteries. Atlantis, its Beauty, and its Fall. The Templars, and Fire Philosophers. The Therapeutae and Essenes and their Initiation. Second and very much enlarged edition, contains the Rosicrucian Fire Philosophy according to Jennings. _R. S. Clymer._ About 250 pgs. Silk Cloth. Symbol in gold. No. 23806, 1.50 ~Pythagoras and the Delphic Mysteries.~ _Edouard Schuré._ No. 23811, 1.50 ~Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx.~ A most interesting and valuable work--the result of extensive research among the ruined palaces, tombs and temples, and careful study of the signs, symbols and ancient manuscripts of the Mayas of prehistoric Yucatan; showing evidences of a civilization antedating, by centuries, that of the Eastern Hemisphere, and giving a reasonable solution of that mystery of the ages--the Origin and Meaning of the Egyptian Sphinx. _Augustus Le Plongeon._ Beautifully illustrated with full page half-tone prints, from photographs taken by the author while exploring those ancient remains. No. 23851. Reduced from 6.00 to 4.75 ~Queen Moo's Talisman.~ The Fall of the Maya Empire. A beautiful Poem with Introduction and Explanatory Argument. _Alice Le Plongeon._ Profusely illustrated. Cloth. No. 23841, 1.50 ~Rose Croix, The.~ A story of Two Hemispheres. A most interesting novel. _David Tod Gilliam._ 369 pgs. No. 23946, 1.60 ~Rosicrucians, The.~ Their Teachings and Mysteries according to the Manifestoes issued at various times by the fraternity itself. Also some of their secret Teachings and the mystery of the Order explained. _Bro. R. Swinburne Clymer._ 304 pgs. No. 23906, 6.00 ~Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The.~ With 12 full page illustrations in colors and tinted border designs, 6 × 9. Deckel edge, No. 23936 1.25. Watered Silk, No. 23940, 2.00. Limp Leather, No. 23937, 2.00 ~Sacred Mysteries.~ Freemasonry in times anterior to the Temple of Solomon. Relics of the Mayas and Quiches 11,500 years ago, their relation to the Sacred Mysteries of Egypt, Greece, Chaldea and India. _Augustus Le Plongeon._ No. 23956, 2.50 ~Sermon on the Mount~, and other Extracts from the New Testament. A verbatim translation from the Greek with notes on the Mystical or Arcane Sense. _James M. Pryse._ Cloth. No. 24076, .60 ~Servant in the House, The.~ A beautiful and uplifting drama of Brotherly Love. _Charles Rann Kennedy._ No. 23966, 1.25 ~Signs and Symbols.~ _Dr. George Oliver._ Illustrated and explained in a series of twelve lectures on Freemasonry. No. 23986, 1.50 ~Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, The.~ The wonderful arts of the old wise Hebrews, taken from the Mosaic books of the Kabbalah and the Talmud, for the good of mankind. 100 pgs. Paper, No. 24040, .75 ~Story of the Other Wise Man, The.~ A beautiful narrative. _Henry Van Dyke._ Exquisitely printed and bound. Cloth, No. 23961, .50. and Limp Leather. No. 23962, 1.00 ~Spirit of Freemasonry.~ Comprising lectures on the State of Freemasonry in the Eighteenth Century, the Design, Rites, Ceremonies and Institutions of the Ancients, Nature of the Lodge, Furniture, Apparel and Jewels of Masons, Temple at Jerusalem Geometry, Master Mason's Order, Secrecy of Masons, Charity, Brotherly Love, Occupations, and a Corollary; followed by an Appendix containing Charges, Addresses and Orations on various Masonic occasions. _William Hutchinson._ With copious notes, critical and explanatory, of great value, by the _Rev. George Oliver_. No. 24021, 1.50 ~Swedenborg Rite~, and the Great Masonic Leaders of the Eighteenth Century. The Masonic career of Swedenborg and his followers, and the relation between the symbolic system of Swedenborgianism and modern Freemasonry. _Samuel Beswick._ No. 24051, 1.00 ~Symbol of Glory~, showing the Object and End of Freemasonry in a valedictory and thirteen lectures: Masonic Science, Poetry and Philosophy, Knowledge, Doctrines, Circle and Parallel Meaning, Great Lights, and Masonic Ladder, Theological Virtues and Masonry, Clouded Canopy and Ladder Symbols, Application, Blazing Star, Symbol of Glory, etc. _Rev. George Oliver._ 298 pgs., cloth, black and gold stamps. No. 24061, 1.50 ~Symbolism of Freemasonry.~ Illustrating and Explaining its Science and Philosophy, its Legends, Myths and Symbols. _Mackey._ 360 pgs. No. 24071, 1.50 ~Temple, The.~ Its Ministry and Services at the Time of Jesus Christ. _Rev. Dr. Eidersheim._ 308 pgs. No. 24201, 1.50 ~Through Silence to Realization.~ This work embodies a system of instruction for mental growth and attainment of ideals. _Floyd B. Wilson._ 5-1/2 × 7-1/2. No. 24241, 1.00 ~Voice of the Silence~, and Other Chosen Fragments from the Book of the Golden Precepts for the Daily Use of Lanoos. _B. P. Blavatsky._ Cloth. No. 24266, .50. Leather. No. 24267, .75 Condensed List of New Books, etc., Regularly in Stock, for Sale, Exchange or Circulating Library Use. May be Exchanged if not Found to be What is Wanted. Order By Number. 22001 A.A.S.R., Book of the. _McClenachan_ 3.00 22011 Adoptive Rite, revised, enlarged. _Macoy_ 1.00 22021 Ahiman Rezon, General. _Sickels_ 2.00 22024 Morocco binding, gilt edges 3.50 22036 Akin's Manual of the Lodge 1.25 22006 All These Things Added. _Allen_ 1.00 24231 Altar in the Wilderness. _Johnson._ Cloth .50 24235 Paper .25 22051 Amaranth Odes .20 22055 Paper .15 22041 Amaranth Ritual, revised, enlarged. _Macoy_ 1.00 22081 Ancient Const. Reprint 1723. Music. _Anderson_ 1.00 22056 Ancient Mysteries and Modern Masonry 1.00 22060 Paper. _Rev. Charles H. Vail_ .50 22071 Annotated Constitutions. _Simons_ 1.00 23726 An Occultist's Travels. _Reichel._ Cloth 1.00 22086 Ancient Mystic Oriental Masonry. _Clymer_ 1.50 22110 Ancient Order of Hurcules (_Burlesque_), 6 copies 5.00 22096 Ante Room Talks, _Bloomer_ 1.00 22091 Antiquities of Freemasonry. _Oliver_ 1.50 22101 Antiquities of the Orient Unveiled. _Redding_ 1.50 22146 Arcane Schools-Hist. of Fmsy. _John Yorker_ 4.75 22016 As a Man Thinketh. _J. Allen._ Cloth, 4-1/4 × 7-1/4 .50 22017 Leather .75 22018 Watered Silk .75 22019 Special Gift Edition .75 22020 Paper .15 22076 Ben Hur. _Wallace_ 1.50 22141 Bible Testimony to Theosophical Truths .10 22175 Biography of Mrs. Babington .25 22191 Birthdays, Their Significance. _Colville_ .50 22195 Paper .40 22001 Book of A.A.S.R. _McClenachan_ 3.00 22146 Book of I.O.O.F. Forms 1.00 22151 Book of the Chapter. _Mackey_ 1.60 22166 Book of the Master. _Adams._ Cloth 1.25 22176 Brotherhood. _Harding_ .50 22186 Brotherhood of Healers. _J. Macbeth._ Cloth .50 22161 Brother of Third Degree. _Carver_ 1.50 22067 Buechners Fraternal Register, vest pock. leather .60 22181 Busbee's Digest, I.O.O.F. 4.00 22151 Chapter, Book of the, _Mackey_, Cloth 1.60 22221 Chapter Music. _Ilsley_ .15 22230 Charges of a Mason. _Chase_ .15 22201 Christmas, Easter and Burial Services, K.T. .45 22202 Leather. _Rev. Cornelius L. Twing_ .75 22204 Morocco 1.00 22205 Paper .35 22210 Coles Initiation Ritual (_Burlesque_), 6 copies 3.75 24011 Colorado Grand Lodge Monitor. _Foster._ Cloth .75 24012 Leather 1.00 22246 Concise Cyclopedia of Freemasonry. _Hawkins_ 1.00 22211 Concordia, words only. _Ilsley_ .25 22281 Constitution and History, A.A.S.R. 2.00 22295 Constitutions, O.E.S., _Africa_, paper .25 22236 Cosmogony of Evolution. _Ingalese._ Cloth 2.00 22266 Culture of Concentration. _W. Q. Judge_ .10 22296 Constructive Psychology. _Buck_ 1.00 22231 Council Monitor, _Chase_ 1.00 22241 Council Monitor. _Mackey_ 2.00 22251 Craft Masonry. _Cunningham_ 1.00 22254 Morocco 1.50 22261 Cross Masonic Chart, Revised 1.75 22256 Crucifixion, by an Eye Witness 1.00 22241 Cryptic Masonry. _Mackey_ 2.00 22411 Cyclopedia of Fraternities. _Stevens_ 4.50 22271 Cushing's Manual, Parliamentary Law .75 22316 Dashed Against the Rock. _Colville_ .75 22340 Daughters of Sphinx (_Burlesque_), 6 copies 5.00 22301 Diagram of Parliamentary Rules. _Smith_ .50 22304 Morocco, parchment chart 1.00 22306 Discovery of the Soul 1.00 22346 Divine Pedigree of Man. _T. J. Hudson_ 1.50 22331 Dream Child. _Huntley_ .75 22311 Drew's Monitor, small .60 22351 Early History and Antiquities. _Fort_ 3.50 22366 Early History and Proceedings, N.Y. Vol. I 2.50 22361 Early History, New York. _Ross_ 2.50 22371 Eden to Malta. _Beller_ 1.50 22381 Egyptian Symbols. _Portal_, _Simons_ 1.00 22421 Egypt the Cradle of Msry. _de Clifford_, 2 vol. 6.75 22423 Half American morocco, 2 vol. 7.50 22424 Full American morocco, 2 vol. 10.00 22425 Full Persian morocco, 1 vol. 10.00 22981 Election and Installation .40 22985 Paper .25 22376 Emerson's Essays 1.00 22391 Ency. and History. _Oliver & Macoy._ Cloth 2.75 22392 Library, sheep, marble edge 3.00 22395 Half American Russia 3.25 22393 Half American Morocco 3.50 22397 Full American Russia 4.25 22394 Full American Morocco 5.75 23398 Full Persian Morocco 8.50 22401 Encyclopedia, _Mackey_, _McClenachan_, cloth 4.50 22402 Sheep 6.00 22405 Half Russia, Gilt top 6.50 22404 Full morocco 8.00 22406 Two Volume Edition 11.00 22411 Encyclopedia of Fraternities. _Stevens_ 4.50 22356 Entering the Kingdom. _J. Allen_ .50 22357 Leather .75 22358 Watered Silk .75 22359 Special Gift Edition .75 22360 Paper .15 22396 Evolution of the Soul. _T. J. Hudson_ 1.50 22476 Fate Mastered .30 22465 Female Masonry, "_A la Lease_" .50 22091 Five Grand Periods of Masonry. _Oliver_ 1.50 22471 Five Jewels of the Orient, The. _Burton_ 1.00 22490 Floral March. _Simpson_ .40 22481 Floral Work. _Bunnell_ .40 22485 Paper .25 24006 Florida Monitor, _Gr. Lodge Comm_ .75 24007 Leather 1.00 22530 Freemasonry and Jesuitry .15 22571 Freemason's Monitor. _Sickels_ 1.00 22572 Same, Lodge, to Comdy., leather 1.50 22511 Freemason's Monitor. _Thornberg_ 1.25 22512 Leather 2.00 22501 Freemason's Monitor. _Webb._ Cloth .75 22502 Leather 1.00 22556 Freimaurer's Handbuch. _Committee_ 1.00 22557 Leather 1.25 22551 Freimaurer's Handbuch, small .60 22581 Fundamental Truths. _N.D._ Cloth .50 22156 Funeral Services. _Simons_--_Macoy_ .35 22160 Paper bound .25 22651 Gem of Song, O.E.S. _Pitkin & Mathews_ .50 22655 Paper .25 22021 General Ahiman Rezon, a Large Monitor 2.00 22024 Same, morocco and gilt. _Sickels_--_Macoy_ 3.50 22656 Genius of Freemasonry. _Buck_ 1.00 22661 Great Work. _T.K._ 2.00 22645 Guide to Chapter. _Sheville_, _Gould_, limp cloth .75 22641 Same in cloth and gilt binding 1.00 22642 Leather bound with flap 1.25 22644 Bound in imitation cowhide morocco 1.50 22646 Large library size, cloth bound 1.50 22649 Same in imitation morocco 2.00 22311 Hand Book of Freemasonry. _Drew_ .60 22711 Harmonia. _Music_, _Cutler_ .25 22716 Harmonies of Evolution. _Huntley_ 2.00 22741 Health from Knowledge. _Colville_ .75 22745 Leatherette .50 22851 Heavenly Life. _James Allen._ Cloth .50 22856 Hermes and Plato. _Schuré_ 1.00 22721 Hermetic Writing of Paracelsus. _Waite._ 2 vol. 18.00 22866 Heroines of Jerico. Ceremonies. Cloth. _Dickson_ .75 22861 Heroines of Jerico. Ritual, Cloth. _Dickson_ .50 22723 Historical Landmarks. _Oliver_ 4.00 22726 Historical Sketch--Morton Commandery 2.00 22731 History and Power of Mind. _Ingalese._ Cloth 2.00 22751 History of A. &. A. Scottish Rite. _Folger_ 3.00 22791 History of Colored Freemasonry. _Grimshaw_ 1.25 22771 History of Freemasonry, Concise. _Gould._ Cloth 2.75 22772 Library--sheep 4.00 22773 Half Morocco 3.75 22774 Full Morocco 4.75 22775 Levant 8.50 22761 Hist. of Freemasonry & Concordant Orders 4.50 22763 Half Morocco. _Stillson & Hughan_ 5.50 22764 Full Morocco 6.50 22765 Levant 10.00 22780 History of Frmsy. _Gould_, 6 vol. 1/2 calf 25.00 22779 Morocco. (Shopworn, sets only) 30.00 22781 History of Freemasonry. _Mitchell_, 2 vols. 4.00 22782 Library--sheep 5.00 22784 Morocco 6.00 22801 History of Initiation. _Oliver_ 1.50 22811 History of K.T. Revised. _Addison_ 3.25 22812 Library Sheep 3.50 22818 Half American Russia 3.75 22813 Half American Morocco 4.00 22819 Full American Russia 4.75 22814 Full American Morocco 5.00 22817 Full Persian Morocco 8.75 22831 History of O.E.S. _Engle_ 2.25 22841 History of Rosicrucians--_Waite_ 2.50 24276 Initiation, Way of. _Rudolf Steiner, Ph.D._ 1.00 24280 Paper .75 22976 Initiation and Its Results. _Rudolf Steiner, Ph.D._ 1.00 23010 Initiation of a Candidate--6 copies (_Burlesque_) 5.00 22991 Indian Masonry. _Wright_ 1.50 22986 In Memoriam--Orin Welsh. (_Shopworn_) 1.50 22981 Installation Ceremonies. _Simons_--_Whiting_ .40 22985 Paper .25 22281 Introduction and History, A.A.S.R. 2.00 22996 In Tune with the Infinite. _Trine_ 1.25 23011 I.O.O.F. Hist. and Manual 3.75 23013 Half Morocco 4.75 23914 Full Morocco 6.50 23001 Irish Prince and Hebrew Prophet. _Kissick_ 1.50 23046 Jerico Road. (I.O.O.F.) _Thompson_ 1.00 22530 Jesuitry and Frmsy. _Rameses_ .15 23056 Jesus, the Last Great Initiate. _Schuré_ 1.00 23076 Jewels of Pythian Knighthood, cloth 3.00 23078 Half Morocco 4.00 23079 Full Morocco 5.00 23061 Josephus, The Works of 1.75 23121 Kabbalah Unveiled. _S. L. M. Mathers._ Cloth 3.50 23086 Kingdom of Love. _Frank_ 1.00 23120 King Solomon's Secret (_Farce_) .35 23092 K. of P. Drill. _Carnahan._ Leather 1.50 23091 Cloth 1.00 23115 Knights of the Zoroasters (_Burlesque_), 6 copies 3.75 23070 Knight Templar Melodies, per doz. 4.80 23071 Koran. Translated by _Sale_ 1.50 23106 Krishna and Orpheus. _Schuré_ 1.25 26045 Labyrinth as a Life Story. _O.E.S._ Paper .25 23141 Law of Mental Medicine. _T. J. Hudson_ 1.50 23146 Law of Psychic Phenomena. _T. J. Hudson_ 1.50 23161 Lexicon of Freemasonry. _Mackey_ 3.00 23151 Life and Power from Within. _Colville_ .75 23186 Life and Doctrine of Paracelsus. Cloth 2.50 23286 Life and Writings of Dr. Robt. Fludd. 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44349	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive.) HOURS WITH THE GHOSTS LEE'S LIBRARY OF OCCULT SCIENCE HOURS WITH THE GHOSTS; Or XIX Century Witchcraft By Henry R. Evans. PRACTICAL PALMISTRY; Or Hand Reading Made Easy By Comte C. de Saint-Germain. HERRMANN THE MAGICIAN; His Life; His Secrets By H. J. Burlingame. All profusely illustrated. Bound in Holliston cloth, burnished red top, uncut edges. EACH, $1.00 [Illustration: SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPH. [Taken by the Author.]] Hours With the Ghosts OR NINETEENTH CENTURY WITCHCRAFT ILLUSTRATED INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE Phenomena of Spiritualism and Theosophy BY HENRY RIDGELY EVANS The first duty we owe to the world is Truth--all the Truth--nothing but the Truth.--"_Ancient Wisdom._" CHICAGO LAIRD & LEE, PUBLISHERS Entered according to act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-seven. BY WILLIAM H. LEE, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. TO MY WIFE "It is no proof of wisdom to refuse to examine certain phenomena because we think it certain that they are impossible, as if our knowledge of the universe were already completed."--_Prof. Lodge._ "The most ardent Spiritist should welcome a searching inquiry into the potential faculties of spirits still in the flesh. Until we know more of _these_, those other phenomena to which he appeals must remain unintelligible because isolated, and are likely to be obstinately disbelieved because they are impossible to understand."--_F. W. H. Myers: "Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research," Part XVIII, April, 1891._ TABLE OF CONTENTS. Author's Preface 11 INTRODUCTORY ARGUMENT 13 PART FIRST: =Spiritualism= 18 _I. Divisions of the Subject_ 18 _II. Subjective Phenomena_ 23 1. Telepathy 23 2. Table Tilting. Muscle Reading 40 _III. Physical Phenomena_ 46 1. Psychography or Slate-writing 46 2. The Master of the Mediums: D. D. Home 93 3. Rope Tying and Holding Mediums; Materializations 135 The Davenport Brothers 135 Annie Eva Fay 149 Charles Slade 154 Pierre L. O. A. Keeler 160 Eusapia Paladino 175 F. W. Tabor 182 4. Spirit Photography 188 5. Thought Photography 197 6. Apparitions of the Dead 201 _IV. Conclusions_ 207 PART SECOND: =Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists= 210 _I. The Priestess_ 213 _II. What is Theosophy?_ 237 _III. Madame Blavatsky's Confession_ 250 _IV. The Writings of Madame Blavatsky_ 265 _V. The Life and Death of a Famous Theosophist_ 268 _VI. The Mantle of Madame Blavatsky_ 272 _VII. The Theosophical Temple_ 287 _VIII. Conclusion_ 290 List of Authorities 298 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE. Fig. 1. Spirit Photograph, by the author Frontispiece Fig. 2. Portrait of Dr. Henry Slade 47 Fig. 3. The Holding of the Slate 51 Fig. 4. Slate No. 1 65 Fig. 5. Slate No. 2 71 Fig. 6. Slate No. 3 77 Fig. 7. Home at the Tuileries 97 Fig. 8. Crookes' Apparatus No. 1 116 Fig. 9. Crookes' Apparatus No. 1 119 Fig. 10. Crookes' Apparatus No. 1 120 Fig. 11. Crookes' Apparatus No. 1 121 Fig. 12, 13, 14, 15. Crookes' Diagrams 124-125 Fig. 16. Crookes' Apparatus No. 2 126 Fig. 17. Crookes' Apparatus No. 2 127 Fig. 18, 19, 20. Crookes' Diagrams 128-130 Fig. 21. Hammond's Apparatus 133 Fig. 22. The Davenport's in their Cabinet 139 Fig. 23. Trick Tie and in Cabinet Work 143 Fig. 24. Charles Slade's Poster 158-159 Fig. 25. Pierre Keeler's Cabinet Seance 162 Fig. 26. Pierre Keeler's Cabinet Curtain 163 Fig. 27. Portrait of Eusapia Paladino 176 Fig. 28. Eusapia before the Scientists 177 Fig. 29. Spirit Photograph, by the author 191 Fig. 30. Spirit Photograph, by pretended medium 195 Fig. 31. Sigel's Original Picture of Fig. 30 199 Fig. 32. Portrait of Madame Blavatsky 215 Fig. 33. Mahatma Letter 221 Fig. 34. Mahatma Envelope 225 Fig. 35. Portrait of Col. H. S. Olcott 233 Fig. 36. Oath of Secrecy of the Charter Members of the Theosophical Society 235 Fig. 37. Portrait of W. Q. Judge 241 Fig. 38. Portrait of Mrs. Annie Besant 273 Fig. 39. Portrait of Mrs. Tingley 285 Fig. 40. Autograph of Madame Blavatsky 293 PREFACE. _There are two great schools of thought in the world--materialistic and spiritualistic. With one, MATTER is all in all, the ultimate substratum; mind is merely the result of organized matter; everything is translated into terms of force, motion and the like. With the other, SPIRIT or mind is the ultimate substance--God; matter is the visible expression of this invisible and eternal Consciousness._ _Materialism is a barren, dreary, comfortless belief, and, in the opinion of the author, is without philosophical foundation. This is an age of scientific materialism, although of late years that materialism has been rather on the wane among thinking men. In an age of such ultra materialism, therefore, it is not strange that there should come a great reaction on the part of spiritually minded people. This reaction takes the form of an increased vitality of dogmatic religion, or else culminates in the formation of Spiritualistic or Theosophic societies for the prosecution of occult phenomena. Spiritualists are now numbered by the million. Persons calling themselves mediums present certain phenomena, physical and psychical, and call public attention to them, as an evidence of life beyond the grave, and the possibility of spiritual communication between this world and the next._ _The author has had sittings with many famous mediums of this country and Europe, but has seen little to convince him of the fact of spirit communication. The slate tests and so-called materializations have invariably been frauds. Some experiments along the line of automatic writing and psychometry, however, have demonstrated to the writer the truth of telepathy or thought-transference. The theory of telepathy explains many of the marvels ascribed to spirit intervention in things mundane._ _In this work the author has endeavored to give an accurate account of the lives and adventures of celebrated mediums and occultists, which will prove of interest to the reader. The rise and growth of the Theosophical cult in this country and Europe is of historical interest. Theosophy pretends to a deeper metaphysics than Spiritualism, and numbers its adherents by the thousands; it is, therefore, intensely interesting to study it in its origin, its founder and its present leaders._ _THE AUTHOR._ HOURS WITH THE GHOSTS. INTRODUCTORY ARGUMENT. "If a man die, shall he live again?"--this is the question of the ages, the Sphinx riddle that Humanity has been trying to solve since time began. The great minds of antiquity, Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle were firm in their belief in the immortality of the soul. The writings of Plato are luminous on the subject. The Mysteries of Isis and Osiris, as practiced in Egypt, and those of Eleusis, in Greece, taught the doctrine of the immortality of the individual being. The Divine Master of Arcane knowledge, Christ, proclaimed the same. In latter times, we have had such metaphysical and scientific thinkers as Leibnitz, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schleiermacher advocating individual existence beyond the grave. It is a strange fact that the more materialistic the age, the deeper the interest in spiritual questions. The vitality and persistence of the belief in the reality of the spiritual world is evidence of that hunger for the ideal, for God, of which the Psalmist speaks--"As the heart panteth after water brooks so panteth my soul after Thee, O God!" Through the passing centuries, we have come into a larger, nobler conception of the Universal Life, and our relations to that Life, in which we live, move, and have our being. Granting the existence of an "Eternal and Infinite Spirit, the Intellectual Organizer of the mathematical laws which the physical forces obey," and conceiving ourselves as individualized points of life in the Greater Life, we are constrained to believe that we bear within us the undying spark of divinity and immortality. Evolution points to eternal life as the final goal of self-conscious spirit, else this mighty earth-travail, the long ages of struggle to produce man are utterly without meaning. Speaking of a future life, John Fiske, a leading American exponent of the doctrine of evolution, says ("The Destiny of Man"): "The doctrine of evolution does not allow us to take the atheistic view of the position of man. It is true that modern astronomy shows us giant balls of vapor condensing into fiery suns, cooling down into planets fit for the support of life, and at last growing cold and rigid in death, like the moon. And there are indications of a time when systems of dead planets shall fall in upon their central ember that was once a sun, and the whole lifeless mass, thus regaining heat, shall expand into a nebulous cloud like that with which we started, that the work of condensation and evolution may begin over again. These Titanic events must doubtless seem to our limited vision like an endless and aimless series of cosmical changes. From the first dawning of life we see all things working together toward one mighty goal, the evolution of the most exalted spiritual qualities which characterize Humanity. The body is cast aside and returns to the dust of which it was made. The earth, so marvelously wrought to man's uses, will also be cast aside. So small is the value which Nature sets upon the perishable forms of matter! The question, then, is reduced to this: Are man's highest spiritual qualities, into the production of which all this creative energy has gone, to disappear with the rest? Are we to regard the Creator's work as like that of a child, who builds houses out of blocks, just for the pleasure of knocking them down? For aught that science can tell us, it may be so, but I can see no good reason for believing any such thing." A scientific demonstration of immortality is declared to be an impossibility. But why go to science for such a demonstration? The question belongs to the domain of philosophy and religion. Science deals with physical forces and their relations; collects and inventories facts. Its mission is not to establish a universal metaphysic of things; that is philosophy's prerogative. All occult thinkers declare that life is from within, out. In other words life, or a spiritual principle, precedes organization. Science proceeds to investigate the phenomena of the universe in the opposite way from without, in; and pronounces life to be "a fortuitous collocation of atoms." Still, science has been the torch-bearer of the ages and has stripped the fungi of superstition from the tree of life. It has revealed to us the great laws of nature, though it has not explained them. We know that light, heat, and electricity are modes of motion; more than that we know not. Science is largely responsible for the materialistic philosophy in vogue to-day--a philosophy that sees no reason in the universe. A powerful wave of spiritual thought has set in, as if to counteract the ultra rationalism of the age. In the vanguard of the new order of things are Spiritualism and Theosophy. Spiritualism enters the list, and declares that the immortality of the soul is a demonstrable fact. It throws down the gauntlet of defiance to skepticism, saying: "Come, I will show you that there is an existence beyond the grave. Death is not a wall, but a door through which we pass into eternal life." Theosophy, too, has its occult phenomena to prove the indestructibility of soul-force. Both Spiritualism and Theosophy contain germs of truth, but both are tinctured with superstition. I purpose, if possible, to sift the wheat from the chaff. In investigating the phenomena of Spiritualism and Theosophy I will use the scientific as well as the philosophic method. Each will act, I hope, as corrective of the other. PART FIRST. SPIRITUALISM. I. DIVISIONS OF THE SUBJECT. Belief in the evocation of the spirits of the dead is as old as Humanity. At one period of the world's history it was called Thaumaturgy, at another Necromancy and Witchcraft, in these latter years, Spiritualism. It is new wine in old bottles. On March 31, 1847, at Hydeville, Wayne County, New York, occurred the celebrated "knockings," the beginning of modern Spiritualism. The mediums were two little girls, Kate and Margaretta Fox, whose fame spread over three continents. It is claimed by impartial investigators that the rappings produced in the presence of the Fox sisters were occasioned by natural means. Voluntary disjointings of the muscles of the knee, or to use a medical term "the repeated displacement of the tendon of the _peroneus longus_ muscle in the sheath in which it slides behind the outer _malleolus_" will produce certain extraordinary sounds, particularly when the knee is brought in contact with a table or chair. Snapping the toes in rapid succession will cause similar noises. The above was the explanation given of the "Hydeville and Rochester Knockings", by Professors Flint, Lee and Coventry, of Buffalo, who subjected the Fox sisters to numerous examinations, and this explanation was confirmed many years after (in 1888) by the published confession of Mrs. Kane, _nee_ Margaretta Fox. Spiritualism became the rage and professional mediums went about giving séances to large and interested audiences. This particular creed is still professed by a recognized semi-religious body in America and in Europe. The American mediums reaped a rich harvest in the Old World. The pioneer was Mrs. Hayden, a Boston medium, who went to England in 1852, and the table-turning mania spread like wild fire within a few months. Broadly speaking, the phenomena of modern Spiritualism may be divided into two classes: (1) Physical, (2) Subjective. Of the first, the "Encyclopaedia Britannica", in its brief but able review of the subject, says: "Those which, if correctly observed and due neither to conscious or unconscious trickery nor to hallucination on the part of the observers, exhibit a force hitherto unknown to science, acting in the physical world otherwise than through the brain or muscles of the medium." The earliest of these phenomena were the mysterious rappings and movements of furniture without apparent physical cause. Following these came the ringing of bells, playing on musical instruments, strange lights seen hovering about the séance-room, materializations of hands, faces and forms, "direct writing and drawing" declared to be done without human intervention, spirit photography, levitation, unfastening of ropes and bandages, elongation of the medium's body, handling fire with impunity, etc. Of the second class, or Subjective Phenomena, we have "table-tilting and turning with contact; writing, drawing, etc., by means of the medium's hand; entrancement, trance-speaking, and impersonation by the medium of deceased persons, seeing spirits and visions and hearing phantom voices." From a general scientific point of view there are three ways of accounting for the physical phenomena of spiritualism: (1) Hallucination on the part of the observers; (2) Conjuring; (3) A force latent in the human personality capable of moving heavy objects without muscular contact, and of causing "Percussive Sounds" on table-tops, and raps upon walls and floors. Hallucination has unquestionably played a part in the séance-room, but here again the statement of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" is worthy of consideration: "Sensory hallucination of several persons together who are not in a hypnotic state is a rare phenomenon, and therefore not a probable explanation." In my opinion, conjuring will account for seven-eighths of the so-called phenomena of professional mediums. For the balance of one-eighth, neither hallucination nor legerdemain are satisfactory explanation. Hundreds of credible witnesses have borne testimony to the fact of table-turning and tilting and the movements of heavy objects without muscular contact. That such a force exists is now beyond cavil, call it what you will, magnetic, nervous, or psychic. Count Agenor de Gasparin, in 1854, conducted a series of elaborate experiments in table-turning and tilting, in the presence of his family and a number of skeptical witnesses, and was highly successful. The experiments were made in the full light of day. The members of the circle joined hands and concentrated their minds upon the object to be moved. The Count published a work on the subject "Des Tables Tournantes," in which he stated that the movements of the table were due to a mental or nervous force emanating from the human personality. This psychic energy has been investigated by Professor Crookes and Professor Lodge, of London, and by Doctor Elliott Coues, of Washington, D. C., who calls it "Telekinesis." The existence of this force sufficiently explains such phenomena of the séance-room as are not attributable to hallucination and conjuring, thus removing the necessity for the hypothesis of spirit intervention. In explanation of table-turning by "contact," I quote what J. N. Maskelyne says in "The Supernatural": "Faraday proved to a demonstration that table-turning was simply the result of an unconscious muscular action on the part of the sitters. He constructed a little apparatus to be placed beneath the hands of those pressing upon the table, which had a pointer to indicate any pressure to one side or the other. After a time, of course, the arms of the sitters become tired and they unconsciously press more or less to the right or left. In Faraday's experiments, it always proved that this pressure was exerted in the direction in which the table was expected to move, and the tell-tale pointer showed it at once. There, then, we have the explanation: expectancy and unconscious muscular action." II. SUBJECTIVE PHENOMENA. 1. Telepathy. The subjective phenomena of Spiritualism--trance speaking, automatic writing, etc.,--have engaged the attention of some of the best scientific minds of Europe and America, as studies of abnormal or supernormal psychological conditions. If there are any facts to sustain the spiritual hypothesis, these facts exist in subjective manifestations. The following statement will be conceded by any impartial investigator: A medium, or psychic, in a state of partial or complete hypnosis frequently gives information transcending his conscious knowledge of a subject. There can be but two hypotheses for the phenomena--(1) The intelligence exhibited by the medium is "ultra-mundane," in other words, is the effect of spirit control, or, (2) it is the result of the conscious or unconscious exercise of psychic powers on the part of the medium. It is well known that persons under hypnotic influence exhibit remarkable intelligence, notwithstanding the fact that the ordinary consciousness is held in abeyance. The extraordinary results obtained by hypnotizers point to another phase of consciousness, which is none other than the subjective or "subliminal" self. Mediums sometimes induce hypnosis by self-suggestion, and while in that state, the subconscious mind is in a highly receptive and exalted condition. Mental suggestions or concepts pass from the mind of the sitter consciously or unconsciously to the mind of the medium, and are given back in the form of communications from the invisible world, ostensibly through spirit control. It is not absolutely necessary that the medium be in the hypnotic condition to obtain information, but the hypnotic state seems to be productive of the best results. The medium is usually honest in his belief in the reality of such ultra-mundane control, but he is ignorant of the true psychology of the case--thought transference. The English Society for Psychical Research and its American branch have of late years popularized "telepathy", or thought transference. A series of elaborate investigations were made by Messrs. Edmund Gurney, F. W. H. Myers, and Frank Podmore, accounts of which are contained in the proceedings of the Society. Among the European investigators may be mentioned Messrs. Janet and Gibert, Richet, Gibotteau, and Schrenck-Notzing. Podmore has lately summarized the results of these studies in an interesting volume, "Apparitions and Thought-transference, an Examination of the Evidence for Telepathy." Thought Transference or Telepathy (from _tele_--at a distance, and _pathos_--feeling) he describes as "a communication between mind and mind other than through the known channels of the senses." A mass of evidence is adduced to prove the possibility of this communication. In summing up his book he says: "The experimental evidence has shown that a simple sensation or idea may be transferred from one mind to another, and that this transference may take place alike in the normal state and in the hypnotic trance. * * The personal influence of the operator in hypnotism may perhaps be regarded as a proof presumptive of telepathy." The experiments show that mental concepts or ideas may be transferred to a distance. Podmore advances the following theory in explanation of the phenomena of telepathy: "If we leave fluids and radiant nerve-energy on one side, we find practically only one mode suggested for the telepathic transference--viz., that the physical changes which are the accompaniments of thought or sensation in the agent are transmitted from the brain as undulations in the intervening medium, and thus excite corresponding changes in some other brain, without any other portion of the organism being necessarily implicated in the transmission. This hypothesis has found its most philosophical champion in Dr. Ochorowicz, who has devoted several chapters of his book "De la Suggestion mentale," to the discussion of the various theories on the subject. He begins by recalling the reciprocal convertibility of all physical forces with which we are acquainted, and especially draws attention to what he calls the law of reversibility, a law which he illustrates by a description of the photophone. The photophone is an instrument in which a mirror is made to vibrate to the human voice. The mirror reflects a ray of light, which, vibrating in its turn, falls upon a plate of selenium, modifying its electric conductivity. The intermittent current so produced is transmitted through a telephone, and the original articulate sound is reproduced. Now in hypnotized subjects--and M. Ochorowicz does not in this connection treat of thought-transference between persons in the normal state--the equilibrium of the nervous system, he sees reason to believe, is profoundly affected. The nerve-energy liberated in this state, he points out, 'cannot pass beyond' the subject's brain 'without being transformed. Nevertheless, like any other force, it cannot remain isolated; like any other force it escapes, but in disguise. Orthodox science allows it only one way out, the motor nerves. These are the holes in the dark lantern through which the rays of light escape. * * * Thought remains in the brain, just as the chemical energy of the galvanic battery remains in the cells, but each is represented outside by its correlative energy, which in the case of the battery is called the electric current, but for which in the other we have as yet no name. In any case there is some correlative energy--for the currents of the motor nerves do not and cannot constitute the only dynamic equivalent of cerebral energy--to represent all the complex movements of the cerebral mechanism.'" The above hypothesis may, or may not, afford a clue to the mysterious phenomena of telepathy, but it will doubtless satisfy to some extent those thinkers who demand physical explanations of the known and unknown laws of the universe. The president of the Society for Psychical Research (1894,) A. J. Balfour, in an address on the relation of the work of the Society to the general course of modern scientific investigation, is more cautious than the writers already quoted. He says: "Is this telepathic action an ordinary case of action from a center of disturbance? Is it equally diffused in all directions? Is it like the light of a candle or the light of the sun which radiates equally into space in every direction at the same time? If it is, it must obey the law--at least, we should expect it to obey the law--of all other forces which so act through a non-absorbing medium, and its effects must diminish inversely as the square of the distance. It must, so to speak, get beaten out thinner and thinner the further it gets removed from its original source. But is this so? Is it even credible that the mere thoughts, or, if you please, the neural changes corresponding to these thoughts, of any individual could have in them the energy to produce sensible effects equally in all directions, for distances which do not, as far as our investigations go, appear to have any necessary limit? It is, I think, incredible; and in any case there is no evidence whatever that this equal diffusion actually takes place. The will power, whenever will is used, or the thoughts, in cases where will is not used, have an effect, as a rule, only upon one or two individuals at most. There is no appearance of general diffusion. There is no indication of any disturbance equal at equal distances from its origin and radiating from it alike in every direction. "But if we are to reject this idea, which is the first which ordinary analogies would suggest, what are we to put in its place? Are we to suppose that there is some means by which telepathic energy can be directed through space from the agent to the patient, from the man who influences to the man who is influenced? If we are to believe this, as apparently we must, we are face to face not only with a fact extraordinary in itself, but with a kind of fact which does not fit in with anything we know at present in the region either of physics or of physiology. It is true, no doubt, that we do know plenty of cases where energy is directed along a given line, like water in a pipe, or like electrical energy along the course of a wire. But then in such cases there is always some material guide existing between the two termini, between the place from which the energy comes and the place to which the energy goes. Is there any such material guide in the case of telepathy? It seems absolutely impossible. There is no sign of it. We can not even form to ourselves any notion of its character, and yet, if we are to take what appears to be the obvious lesson of the observed facts, we are forced to the conclusion that in some shape or other it exists." Telepathy once conceded, we have a satisfactory explanation of that class of cases in modern Spiritualism on the subjective side of the question. There is no need of the hypothesis of "disembodied spirits". Some years ago, I instituted a series of experiments with a number of celebrated spirit mediums in the line of thought transference, and was eminently successful in obtaining satisfactory results, especially with Miss Maggie Gaule, of Baltimore, one of the most famous of the latter day psychics. Case A. About three years prior to my sitting with Miss Gaule, a relative by marriage died of cancer of the throat at the Garfield Hospital, Washington, D. C. He was a retired army officer, with the brevet of General, and lived part of the time at Chambersburg, Penn., and the rest of the time at the National Capital. He led a very quiet and unassuming life, and outside of army circles knew but few people. He was a magnificent specimen of physical manhood, six feet tall, with splendid chest and arms. His hair and beard were of a reddish color. His usual street dress was a sort of compromise with an army undress uniform, military cut frock-coat, frogged and braided top-coat, and a Sherman hat. Without these accessories, anyone would have recognized the military man in his walk and bearing. He and his wife thought a great deal of my mother, and frequently stopped me on the street to inquire, "How is Mary?" I went to Miss Gaule's house with the thought of General M-- fixed in my mind and the circumstances surrounding his decease. The medium greeted me in a cordial manner. I sat at one end of the room in the shadow, and she near the window in a large armchair. "You wish for messages from the dead," she remarked abruptly. "One moment, let me think." She sank back in the chair, closed her eyes, and remained in deep thought for a minute or so, occasionally passing her hand across her forehead. "I see," she said, "standing behind you, a tall, large man with reddish hair and beard. He is garbed in the uniform of an officer--I do not know whether of the army or navy. He points to his throat. Says he died of a throat trouble. He looks at you and calls "Mary,--how is Mary?" "What is his name?" I inquired, fixing my mind on the words David M--. "I will ask", replied the medium. There was a long pause. "He speaks so faintly I can scarcely hear him. The first letter begins with D, and then comes a--I can't get it. I can't hear it." With that she opened her eyes. The surprising feature about the above case was the alleged spirit communication, "Mary--how is Mary?" I did not have this in my mind at the time; in fact I had completely forgotten this form of salutation on the part of Gen. M--, when we had met in the old days. It is just this sort of thing that makes spirit-converts. However, the cases of unconscious telepathy cited in the "Reports of the Society for Psychical Research," are sufficient, I think, to prove the existence of this phase of the phenomena. T. J. Hudson, in his work entitled "A scientific demonstration of the future life", says: * * "When a psychic transmits a message to his client containing information which is in his (the psychic's) possession, it can not reasonably be attributed to the agency of disembodied spirits. * * When the message contains facts known to some one in his immediate presence and with whom he is _en rapport_, the agency of spirits of the dead cannot be presumed. Every investigator will doubtless admit that sub-conscious memory may enter as a factor in the case, and that the sub-conscious intelligence--or, to use the favorite terminology employed by Mr. Myers to designate the subjective mind, the 'sublimal consciousness'--of the psychic or that of his client may retain and use facts which the conscious, or objective mind may have entirely forgotten." But suppose the medium relates facts that were never in the possession of the sitter, what are we to say then? Considerable controversy has been waged over this question, and the hypothesis of telepathy is scouted. Minot J. Savage has come to the conclusion that such cases stretch the telepathic theory too far; there can be but one plausible explanation--a communication from a disembodied spirit, operating through the mind of the medium. For the sake of lucidity, let us take an example: A has a relative B who dies in a foreign land under peculiar circumstances, _unknown to A_. A attends a séance of a psychic, C, and the latter relates the circumstances of B's death. A afterwards investigates the statements of the medium, and finds them correct. Can telepathy account for C's knowledge? I think it can. The telepathic communication was recorded in A's sub-conscious mind, he being _en rapport_ with B. A unconsciously yields the points recorded in his sub-conscious mind to the psychic, C, who by reason of his peculiar powers raises them to the level of conscious thought, and gives them back in the form of a message from the dead. Case B. On another occasion, I went with my friend Mr. S. C., of Virginia, to visit Miss Gaule. Mr. S. C. had a young son who had recently passed the examination for admission to the U. S. Naval Academy, and the boy had accompanied his father to Baltimore to interview the military tailors on the subject of uniforms, etc. Miss Gaule in her semi-trance state made the following statement: "I see a young man busy with books and papers. He has successfully passed an examination, and says something about a uniform. Perhaps he is going to a military college." Here again we have excellent evidence of the proof of telepathy. The spelling of names is one of the surprising things in these experiments. On one occasion my wife had a sitting with Miss Gaule, and the psychic correctly spelled out the names of Mrs. Evans' brothers--John, Robert, and Dudley, the latter a family name and rather unusual, and described the family as living in the West. The following example of Telepathy occurred between the writer and a younger brother. Case C. In the fall of 1890, I was travelling from Washington to Baltimore, by the B. & P. R. R. As the train approached Jackson Grove, a campmeeting ground, deserted at that time of the year, the engine whistle blew vigorously and the bell was rung continuously, which was something unusual, as the cars ordinarily did not stop at this isolated station, but whirled past. Then the engine slowed down and the train came to a standstill. "What is the matter?" exclaimed the passengers. "My God, look there!" shouted an excited passenger, leaning out of the coach window, and pointing to the dilapidated platform of the station. I looked out and beheld a decapitated human head, standing almost upright in a pool of blood. With the other male passengers I rushed out of the car. The head was that of an old man with very white hair and beard. We found the body down an embankment at some little distance from the place of the accident. The deceased was recognized as the owner of the Grove, a farmer living in the vicinity. According to the statement of the engineer, the old man was walking on the track; the warning signals were given, but proved of no avail. Being somewhat deaf, he did not realize his danger. He attempted to step off the track, but the brass railing that runs along the side of the locomotive decapitated him like the knife of a guillotine. When I reached Baltimore about 7 o'clock, P. M., I hurried down to the office of the "Baltimore News" and wrote out an account of the tragic affair. My work at the office kept me until a late hour of the night, and I went home to bed at about 1 o'clock, A. M. My brother, who slept in an adjoining room, had retired to bed and the door between our apartments was closed. The next morning, Sunday, I rose at 9 o'clock, and went down to breakfast. The family had assembled, and I was just in time to hear my brother relate the following: "I had a most peculiar dream last night. I thought I was on my way to Mt. Washington (he was in the habit of making frequent visits to this suburb of Baltimore on the Northern Central R. R.) We ran down an old man and decapitated him. I was looking out of the window and saw the head standing in a pool of blood. The hair and beard were snow white. We found the body not far off, and it proved to be a farmer residing in the neighborhood of Mt. Washington." "You will find the counterpart of that dream in the morning paper", I remarked seriously. "I reported the accident." My father called for the paper, and proceeded to hunt its columns for the item, saying, "You undoubtedly transferred the impression to your brother." Case D. This is another striking evidence of telepathic communication, in which I was one of the agents. L-- was a reporter on a Baltimore paper, and his apartments were the rendezvous of a coterie of Bohemian actors, journalists, and _litterati_, among whom was X--, a student at the Johns-Hopkins University, and a poet of rare excellence. Poets have a proverbial reputation for being eccentric in personal appearance; in X this eccentricity took the form of an unclipped beard that stood out in all directions, giving him a savage, anarchistic look. He vowed never under any circumstances to shave or cut this hirsute appendage. L-- came to me one day, and laughingly remarked: "I am being tortured by a mental obsession. X's beard annoys me; haunts my waking and sleeping hours. I must do something about it. Listen! He is coming down to my rooms, Saturday evening, to do some literary work, and spend the night with me. We shall have supper together, and I want you to be present. Now I propose that we drug his coffee with some harmless soporific, and when he is sound asleep, tie him, and shave off his beard. Will you help me? I can provide you with a lounge to sleep on, but you must promise not to go to sleep until after the tragedy." I agreed to assist him in his practical joke, and we parted, solemnly vowing that our project should be kept secret. This was on Tuesday, and no communication was had with X, until Saturday morning, when L-- and I met him on Charles street. "Don't forget to-night," exclaimed L-- "I have invited E to join us in our Epicurean feast." "I will be there," said X. "By the way, let me relate a curious dream I had last night. I dreamt I came down to your rooms, and had supper. E--was present. You fellows gave me something to drink which contained a drug, and I fell asleep on the bed. After that you tied my hands, and shaved off my beard. When I awoke I was terribly mad. I burst the cords that fastened my wrists together, and springing to my feet, cut L--severely with the razor." "That settles the matter", said L--, "his beard is safe from me". When we told X of our conspiracy to relieve him of his poetic hirsute appendage, he evinced the greatest astonishment. As will be seen, every particular of the practical joke had been transferred to his mind, the drugging of the coffee, the tying, and the shaving. Telepathy is a logical explanation of many of the ghostly visitations of which the Society for Psychical Research has collected such a mass of data. For example: A dies, let us say in India and B, a near relative or friend, residing in England, sees a vision of A in a dream or in the waking state. A clasps his hands, and seems to utter the words, "I am dying". When the news comes of A's death, the time of the occurrence coincides with the seeing of the vision. The spiritualist's theory is that the ghost of A was an actual entity. One of the difficulties in the way of such an hypothesis is the clothing of the deceased--_can that, too, be disembodied?_ Thought transference (conscious or unconscious), I think, is the only rational explanation of such phantasms. The vision seen by the percipient is not an objective but a subjective thing--a hallucination produced by the unknown force called telepathy. The vision need not coincide exactly with the date of the death of the transmitter but may make its appearance years afterwards, remaining latent in the subjective mind of the percipient. It may, as is frequently the case, be revealed by a medium in a séance. Many thoughtful writers combat the telepathic explanation of phantasms of the dead, claiming that when such are seen long after the death of persons, they afford indubitable evidence of the reality of spirit visitation. The reader is referred to the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research for a detailed discussion of the _pros_ and _cons_ of this most interesting subject. Many of the so-called materializations of the séance-room may be accounted for by hallucinations superinduced by telepathic suggestions from the mind of the medium or sitters. But, in my opinion, the greater number of these manifestations of spirit power are the result of trickery pure and simple--theatrical beards and wigs, muslin and gossamer robes, etc., being the paraphernalia used to impersonate the shades of the departed, the imaginations of the sitters doing the rest. 2. Table-Tilting--Muscle Reading. In regard to Table-Tilting with contact, I have given Faraday's conclusions on the subject,--unconscious muscular action on the part of the sitter or sitters. In the case of Automatic Writing (particularly with the planchette), unconscious muscular action is the proper explanation for the movements of the apparatus. "Professor Augusto Tamburini, of Italy, author of 'Spiritismo e Telepatia', a cautious investigator of psychical problems," says a reviewer in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (Volume IX, p. 226), "accepts the verdict of all competent observers that imposture is inadmissible as a general explanation, and endorses the view that the muscular action which causes the movements of the table or the pencil is produced by the subliminal consciousness. He explains the definite and varying characters of the supposed authors of the messages as the result of self-suggestion. As by hypnotic or post-hypnotic suggestion a subject may be made to think he is Napoleon or a chimney sweep, so, by self-suggestion, the subliminal consciousness may be made to think that he is X and Y, and to tilt or wrap messages in the character of X and Y." Professor Tamburini's explanation fails to account for the innumerable well authenticated cases where facts are obtained not within the conscious knowledge of the planchette writer or table-tilter. If telepathy does not enter into these cases, what does? There are many exhibitions, of thought transference by public psychics, that are thought transference in name only. One must be on one's guard against these pretenders to occult powers. I refer to men like our late compatriot, Washington Irving Bishop--"muscle-reader" _par excellence_ whose fame extended throughout the civilized world. Muscle-Reading is performed in the following manner: Let us take, for example, the reading of the figures on a bank-note. The subject gazes intently at the figures on a note, and fixes them in his mind. The muscle-reader, blindfolded or not, takes a crayon in his right hand, and lightly clasps the hand or wrist of the subject with his left. He then writes on a blackboard the correct figures on the note. This is one of the most difficult feats in the repertoire of the muscle-reader, and was excelled in by Bishop and Stuart Cumberland. Charles Gatchell, an authority on the subject, says that the above named men were the only muscle-readers who have ever accomplished the feat. Geometrical designs can also be reproduced on a blackboard. The finding of objects hidden in an adjoining room, or upon the person of a spectator in a public hall, or at a distance, are also accomplished by skillful muscle readers, either by clasping the hand of the subject, or one end of a short wire held by him. Says Gatchell, in the "_Forum_" for April, 1891: "Success in muscle-reading depends upon the powers of the principal and upon the susceptibility of the subject. The latter must be capable of mental concentration; he must exert no muscular self-control; he must obey his every impulse. Under these conditions, the phenomena are in accordance with known laws of physiology. On the part of the principal, muscle-reading consists of an acute perception of the slight action of another's muscles. On the part of the subject, it involves a nervous impulse, accompanied by muscular action. The mind of the subject is in a state of tension or expectancy. A sudden release from this state excites, momentarily, an increased activity in the cells of the cerebral cortex. Since the ideational centres, as is usually held, correspond to the motor centres, the nervous action causes a motor impulse to be transmitted to the muscles. * * In making his way to the location of a hidden object, the subject usually does not lead the muscle-reader, but the muscle-reader leads the subject. That is to say, so long as the muscle-reader moves in the right direction, the subject gives no indication, but passively moves with him. The muscle-reader perceives nothing unusual. But, the subject's mind being intently fixed on a certain course, the instant that the muscle-reader deviates from that course there is a slight, involuntary tremor, or muscular thrill, on the part of the subject, due to the sudden interruption of his previous state of mental tension. The muscle-reader, almost unconsciously, takes note of the delicate signal, and alters his course to the proper one, again leading his willing subject. In a word, he follows the line of the least resistance. In other cases the conditions are reversed; the subject unwittingly leads the principal. "The discovery of a bank-note number requires a slightly different explanation. The conditions are these: The subject is intently thinking of a certain figure. His mind is in a state of expectant attention. He is waiting for but one thing in the world to happen--for another to give audible expression to the name of that which he has in mind. The instant that the conditions are fulfilled, the mind of the subject is released from its state of tension, and the accompanying nervous action causes a slight muscular tremor, which is perceived by the acute senses of the muscle-reader. This explanation applies, also, to the pointing out of one pin among many, or of a letter or a figure on a chart. The conditions involved in the tracing of a figure on a blackboard or other surface are of a like order, although this is a severer test of a muscle-reader's powers. So long as the muscle-reader moves the crayon in the right direction, he is permitted to do so; but when he deviates from the proper course, the subject, whose hand or wrist he clasps, involuntarily indicates the fact by the usual slight muscular tremor. This, of course, is done involuntarily; but if he is fulfilling the conditions demanded of all subjects, absolute concentration of attention and absence of muscular control--he unconsciously obeys his impulse. A billiard player does the same when he follows the driven ball with his cue, as if by sheer force of will he could induce it to alter its course. The ivory is uninfluenced; the human ball obeys." III. PHYSICAL PHENOMENA. 1. Psychography, or Slate-Writing. One of the most interesting phases of modern mediumship, on the physical side, is psychography, or slate-writing. After an investigation extending over ten years, I am of the opinion that the majority of slate-writing feats are the results of conjuring. The process generally used is the following. The medium takes two slates, binds them together, after first having deposited a small bit of chalk or slate pencil between their surfaces, and either holds them in his hands, or lays them on the table. Soon the scratching of the pencil is heard, and when the cords are removed a spirit message is found upon the surface of one of the slates. I will endeavor to explain the "modus operandi" of these startling experiments. Some years ago, the most famous of the slate-writing mediums was Dr. Henry Slade, of New York, with whom I had several sittings. I was unable to penetrate the mystery of his performance, until the summer of 1889, when light was thrown upon the subject by the conjurer C-- whom I met in Baltimore. [Illustration: FIG. 2. DR. HENRY SLADE.] "Do you know the medium Slade?" I asked him. "Yes," said he, "and he is a conjurer like myself. I've had sittings with him. Come to my rooms to-night, and I will explain the secret workings of the medium's slate-writing. But first I will treat you to a regular séance." On my way to C's home I tried to put myself in the frame of mind of a genuine seeker after transcendental knowledge. I recalled all the stories of mysterious rappings and ghostly visitations I had read or heard of. It was just the night for such eerie musings. Black clouds were scurrying across the face of the moon like so many mediaeval witches mounted on the proverbial broomsticks _en route_ for a mad sabbat in some lonely churchyard. The prestidigitateur's _pension_ was a great, lumbering, gloomy old house, in an old quarter of Baltimore. The windows were tightly closed and only the feeble glimmer of gaslight was emitted through the cracks of the shutters. I rang the bell and Mr. C's stage-assistant, a pale-faced young man, came to the door, relieved me of my light overcoat and hat, and ushered me upstairs into the conjurer's sitting-room. A large, baize-covered table stood in the centre of the apartment, and a cabinet with a black curtain drawn across it occupied a position in a deep alcove. Suspended from the roof of the cabinet was a large guitar. I took a chair and waited patiently for the appearance of the anti-Spiritualist, after having first examined everything in the room--table, cabinet, and musical instruments--but I discovered no evidence of trickery anywhere. I waited and waited, but no C--. "Can he have forgotten me?" I said to myself. Suddenly a loud rap resounded on the table top, followed by a succession of raps from the cabinet; and the guitar began to play. I was quite startled. When the music ceased the door opened, and C-- entered. "The spirits are in force to-night," he remarked with a meaning smile, as he slightly diminished the light in the apartment. "Yes," I replied. "How did you do it?" "All in good time, my dear ghost-seer," was the answer. "Let us try first a few of Dr. Slade's best slate tests." So saying he handed me a slate and directed me to wash it carefully on both sides with a damp cloth. I did so and passed it back to him. Scattering some tiny fragments of pencil upon it, he held the slate pressed against the under surface of the table leaf, the fingers of his right hand holding the slate, his thumb grasping the leaf. C-- then requested me to hold the other end of the slate in a similar fashion, and took my right hand in his left. Heavy raps were heard on the table-top, and I felt the fingers of a spirit hand plucking at my garments from beneath the table. C--'s body seemed possessed with some strange convulsion, his hands quivered, and his eyes had a glassy look. Listening attentively, I heard the sound of a pencil writing on the slate. "Take care!" gasped the conjurer, breathlessly. The slate was jerked violently out of our hands by some powerful agency, but the medium regained it, and again pressed it against the table as before. In a little while he brought the slate up and there upon its upper surface was a spirit message, addressed to me--"Are you convinced now?--D. D. Home." At this juncture there came a knock at the door, and C--, with the slate in his hand, went to see who it was. It proved to be the pale-faced assistant. A few words in a low-tone of voice were exchanged between them, and the conjurer returned to the table, excusing the interruption by remarking, "Some one to see me, that is all, but don't hurry, for I have another test to show you." After thoroughly washing both sides of the slate he placed it, with a slate pencil, under a chafing-dish cover in the center of the table. We joined hands and awaited developments. Being tolerably well acquainted with conjuring devices, I manifested but little surprise in the first test when the spirit message was written, because the magician _had his fingers on the slate_. But in this test the slate was not in his possession; how then could the writing be accomplished? [Illustration: FIG. 3. THE HOLDING OF THE SLATE.] "Hush!" said C--, "is there a spirit present?" A responsive rap resounded on the table, and after a few minutes' silence, the mysterious scratching of the slate-pencil began. I was nonplussed. "Turn over the slate," said the juggler. I complied with his request and found a long message to me, covering the entire side of the slate. It was signed "Cagliostro." "What do you think of Dr. Slade's slate tests?" inquired C--. "Splendid!" I replied, "but how are they done?" His explanations made the seeming marvel perfectly plain. While the slate is being examined in the first test, the medium slips on a thimble with a piece of slate pencil attached or else has a tiny bit of pencil under his finger nail. In the act of holding the slate under the table, he writes the short message backwards on its under side. It becomes necessary, however, to turn the slate over before exhibiting it to the sitter, so that the writing may appear to have been written on its upper surface--the side that has been pressed to the table. To accomplish this the medium pretends to go into a sort of neurotic convulsion, during which state the slate is jerked away from the sitter, presumably by spirit power, and is turned over in the required position. It is not immediately brought up for examination but is held for a few seconds underneath the table top, and then produced with a certain amount of deliberation. The special difficulty of this trick consists in the medium's ability to write in reverse upon the under surface of the slate. If he wrote from left to right, in the ordinary method, it would, of course, reverse the message when the slate is examined, and give a decided clue to the mystery. This inscribing in reverse, or mirror writing, as it is often called, is exceedingly difficult to do, but nothing is impossible to a Slade. But how is the writing done on the slate in the second test? asks the curious reader. Nothing easier! The servant who raps at the door brings with him, concealed under his coat, a second slate, upon which the long message is written. Over the writing is a pad cut from a book-slate, exactly fitting the frame of the prepared slate. It is impossible to detect the fraud when the light in the room is a trifle obscure. The medium makes an exchange of slates, returns to the table, washes both sides of the trick slate, and carelessly exhibits it to the sitter, the writing being protected of course by the pad. Before placing the slate under the chafing-dish cover, he lets the pad drop into his lap. Now comes a crucial point in the imposture: the writing heard beneath the slate, supposed to be the work of a disembodied spirit. The medium under cover of his handkerchief removes from his pocket an instrument known as a "pencil-clamp." This clamp consists of a small block of wood with two sharp steel points protruding from the upper edge and a piece of slate pencil fixed in the lower. The medium presses the steel points into the under surface of the table with sufficient force to attach the block securely to the table, and then rubs a pencil, previously attached to his right knee by silk sutures, against the side of the pencil fastened to the apparatus. The noise produced thereby exactly simulates that of writing upon a slate. In my case the illusion was perfect. During the examination of the message, the medium has ample opportunity to secrete the false pad and the clamp in his pocket. Instead of having a servant bring the slate to him and making the exchange described above, he may have the trick slate concealed about him before the séance begins, with the message written on it, and adroitly make the substitution while the sitter is engaged in lowering the light. Dr. Slade almost invariably adopted the first-mentioned exchange, because it enabled his confederate to write a lucid message to the sitter. An examination of the sitter's overcoat in the hall frequently yielded valuable information in the way of names and initials extracted from letters, sealed or unsealed. Sealed letters? Yes; it is an easy matter to steam a gummed envelope, open it, and seal it again. Another method is to wet the sealed envelope with a sponge dipped in alcohol. The writing will show up tolerably well if written upon a card. In a very short time the envelope will dry and exhibit no evidence of having been tampered with. And now as to the rest of the phenomena witnessed that evening in C--'s room. The raps on the table top were the result of an ingenious, hidden mechanism, worked by electricity; the mysterious hand that operated under the table was the juggler's right foot. He wore slippers and had the toe part of one stocking cut away. By dropping the slipper from his foot he was enabled to pull the edge of my coat, lift and shove a chair away, and perform sundry other ghostly evolutions, thanks to a well trained big toe. Dr. Slade who was long and lithe of limb, worked this dodge to perfection, prior to the paralytic attack which partly disabled his lower limbs. The stringed instrument which played in the cabinet was arranged as follows: Inside of the guitar was a small musical box, so arranged that the steel vibrating tongues of the box came in contact with a small piece of writing paper. When the box was set to going by means of an electric current, it closely imitated the twanging of a guitar, just as a sheet of music when laid on the strings of a piano simulates a banjo. This spirit guitar is a very useful instrument in the hands of a medium. It may be made to play when it is attached to a telescopic rod, and waved in phosphorescent curves over the heads of a circle of believers in the dark séance. I shall now sum up the subject of Dr. Slade's spirit-slate writing, (Fig. 3) and endeavor to show how grossly exaggerated the reports of the medium's performances have been, and the reasons for such misstatements. No one who is not a professional or amateur prestidigitateur can correctly report what he sees at a spiritualistic séance. It is not so much the swiftness of the hand that counts in conjuring but the ability to force the attention of the spectators in different directions away from the crucial point of the trick. The really important part of the test, then, is hidden from the audience, who imagine they have seen all when they have not. Says Dr. Max Dessoir: "It must therefore be regarded as a piece of rare naiveté if a reporter asserts that in the description of his subjective conclusions he is giving the exact objective processes." This will be seen in Mr. Davey's experiments. Mr. Davey, a member of the London Society for Psychical Research, and an amateur magician who possessed great dexterity in the slate-writing business, gave a series of exhibitions before a number of persons, but did not inform them that the results were due to prestidigitation. No entrance fee was charged for the séances, but the sitters, who were fully impressed with the genuineness of the affair, were requested to submit written reports of what they had seen. These letters, published in vol. iv of the Proceedings of the Society, are admirable examples of mal-observation, for no one detected Mr. Davey exchanging slates and doing the writing. "The sources of error," says Dr. Max Dessoir, in an article reproduced in the "Open Court," "through which such strange reports arise, may be arranged in four groups. First, the observer interpolates a fact which did not happen, but which he is led to believe has happened; thus, he imagines he has examined the slate when as a fact he never has. Second, he confuses two similar ideas; he thinks he has carefully examined the slate, when in reality he has only done so hastily, or in ignorance of the point at issue. Third, the witness changes the order of events a little in consequence of a very natural deception of memory; he believes he tested the slate later than he actually did. Fourth and last, he passes over certain details which were purposely described to him as insignificant; he does not notice that the 'medium' asks him to close a window, and that the trick is thus rendered possible." Similar experiments in slate-writing were conducted by the Seybert Commission with Mr. Harry Kellar, the conjurer, after sittings were had with Dr. Slade, and the magician outdid the medium. The Seybert Commission found none of Slade's tests genuine, and officially denied "the extraordinary stories of his performances with locked slates which constitute a large part of his fame." Dr. Slade began his Spiritualistic operations in London in the year 1876, and charged a fee of a guinea a head for séances lasting a few minutes. Crowds went to see him and he reaped a golden harvest from the credulous, until the grand fiasco came. Slade was caught in one of his juggling séances and exposed by Prof. Lancaster and Dr. Donkin. The result was a criminal prosecution and a sensational trial lasting three days at the Bow Street Police Court. Mr. Maskelyne, the conjurer, was summoned as an expert witness and performed a number of the medium's tricks in the witness box. The court sentenced Slade to three months' hard labor, but he took an appeal from the magistrate's decision. The appeal was sustained on the ground of a technical flaw in the indictment, and the medium fled to the Continent before new summons could be served. He visited Paris, Leipsic, Berlin, St. Petersburg and other cities, giving séances before Royalty and before distinguished members of scientific societies; and afterwards went to Australia. He made money fast and spent it fast, but it took all of his ingenuity to elude the clutches of the police. In 1892, we find him the inmate of a workhouse in one of our Western towns, penniless, friendless and a lunatic. Slade's séances with Prof. Zoellner, of Berlin, in 1878, attracted wide attention, and did more to advertise his fame as a medium than anything else in his career. Zoellner's belief in the genuineness of Slade's mediumistic marvels led him to write a curious work, entitled, "Transcendental Physics," being an inquiry into the "fourth dimension of space." Poor old Zoellner, he was half insane when these séances were held! We have the undisputed authority of the Seybert Commission for the correctness of this statement. In Hamburg, Dr. Borchert wrote to Slade offering him one thousand marks if he would produce writing between locked slates, similar to the writing alleged to have been executed at the Zoellner séances, but the medium took no notice of the professor's letter. The conjurer, Carl Wilmann, with two friends, had a sitting with Slade, but without satisfactory results for the medium. "Slade," says Wilmann, "was unable to distract my attention from the crucial point of the trick, and threw down the slates on the table in disgust, remarking: 'I can not obtain any results to-day, the power that controls me is exhausted. Come tomorrow!'" That tomorrow never arrived for Wilmann and his friends; Slade did not keep his appointment, nor could Wilmann succeed in obtaining another sitting with him. The medium had been warned by friends that Wilmann was an expert professor of legerdemain. It was in 1886 that Slade created such a furore in Hamburg in Spiritualistic circles. A talented conjurer of that city, named Schradieck, after a few weeks' practice succeeded in eclipsing Slade. He learned to write in reverse on slates, and produced writing in various colored chalks. Another one of his experiments was making the slate disappear from one side of the table where it was held _a la_ Slade and appear at the opposite end of the table suddenly, as if held up to view by a spirit hand. Wilmann describes the effect as startling in the extreme and says Schradieck produced it by means of his left foot. After Slade's departure from Hamburg, spirit mediums sprang up like toadstools in a single night. Wilmann in his crusade against these worthies had many interesting experiences. He gives in his work "Moderne Wunder" several exposes of mediumistic tricks, two of which, in the sealed slate line, are very ingenious. The medium takes a slate (one furnished by the sitter if preferred), wipes it on both sides with a wet sponge, and then wraps it up carefully in a piece of ordinary white wrapping paper, allowing the package to be sealed and corded _ad libitum_. Notwithstanding all the precautions used, a message appears on the slate. It is accomplished in this way. A message in reverse is written on the wrapping paper with a camel's hair brush or pointed stick, dipped in some sticky substance, and finely powdered slate pencil dust is scattered over the writing. At a little distance, especially in a dim light, it is impossible to discover the writing as it blends very well with the white paper. In wrapping up the slate the medium presses the writing on the paper against the surface of the slate and the chirography adheres thereto, very much as the greasy drawing on a lithographer's stone prints on paper. In the other experiment the medium uses a _papier mache_ slate, set in the usual wooden frame. A _papier mache_ pad is prepared with a spirit message on one surface; on the other is pasted a piece of newspaper. This pad is laid, written side down, on a sheet of newspaper. After the genuine slate has been washed, the medium proceeds to wrap it up in the newspaper, and presses the trick pad, writing up, into the frame of the slate where it exactly fits into a groove prepared for the purpose. Since Dr. Slade's retirement from the mediumistic field, Pierre L. O. A. Keeler's fame as a slate-writing medium has been spread broadcast. He oscillates between Boston, New York, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, and has a very large and fashionable _clientele_. He gives evening materializing séances of the cabinet type three times a week at his rooms. During the day he gives private slate tests which are very popular. I had a sitting with him on the afternoon of April 24th, 1895. In order to gain his confidence, I went as one witnessing a slate séance for the first time, that is, I accepted _his_ slates, and had no prepared questions. I was ushered into a small, back parlor by the medium who closed the folding doors. We were alone. I made a mental photograph of the surroundings. There was no furniture except a table and two chairs placed near the window. Over the table was a faded cloth, hanging some eight or ten inches below the table. Upon it were several pads of paper and a heterogeneous assortment of lead pencils. Leaning against the mantelpiece, within a foot or so of the medium's chair, were some thirty or forty slates. "Take a seat", said Mr. Keeler pointing to a chair. I sat down, whereupon he seated himself opposite me, remarking as he did so, "Have you brought slates with you?" "I have not," was my reply. "Then, if you have no objection," he said, "we will use two of mine. Please examine these two slates, wash them clean with this damp cloth, and dry them." With that he passed me two ordinary school-slates, which I inspected closely, and carefully cleaned. "Be kind enough to place the slates to one side," said Keeler. I complied. "Have you prepared any slips with the names of friends, relatives, or others, who have passed into spirit life, with questions for them to answer?" "I have not," I replied. "Kindly do so then," he answered, "and take your time about it. There is a pad on the table. Please write but a single question on each slip. Then fold the slips and place them on the table." I did so. "I will also make one," he continued, "it is to my spirit control, George Christy." He wrote a name on a slip of paper, folded it, and tossed it among those I had prepared, passing his hand over them and fingering them, saying, "It is necessary to get a psychic impression from them." We sat in silence several minutes. After a little while Mr. Keeler said: "I do not know whether or not we shall get any responses this afternoon, but have patience." Again we waited. "Suppose you write a few more slips," he remarked, "perhaps we'll have better luck. Be sure and address them to people who were old enough to write before they passed into spirit life." This surprised me, but I complied with his wishes. While writing I glanced furtively at him from time to time; his hands were in his lap, concealed by the table cloth. He looked at me occasionally, then at his lap, fixedly. _I am satisfied that he opened some of my slips, having adroitly abstracted them from the table in the act of fingering them._ [Illustration: FIG. 4--SLATE WRITING.] He directed me to take my handkerchief and tie the two slates on the table tightly together, holding the slates in his hands as I did so. I laid the slates on the table before me, and we waited. "I think we will succeed this time in getting responses to some of the questions. Let us hold the slates." He grasped them with fingers and thumbs at one end, and I at the other in like manner, holding the slates about two inches above the table. We listened attentively, and soon was heard the scratching noise of a slate pencil moving upon a slate. The sound seemed directly under the slate, and was sufficiently impressive to startle any person making a slate test for the first time, and unacquainted with the multifarious devices of the sleight-of-hand artist. "Hold the slates tightly, please!" said Mr. Keeler, as a convulsive tremor shook his hands. I grasped firmly my end of the slates, and waited further developments. The faint tap of a slate pencil upon a slate was heard, and the medium announced that the communications were finished. I untied the handkerchief, and turned up the inner surfaces of the slates. Upon one of them several messages were written, and signed. Other communications were received during the sitting. After the first messages were received, and while I was engaged in reading them, Keeler quickly picked up a slate from the floor, clapped it upon the clean slate remaining on the table, and requested me to tie the two rapidly together with my handkerchief before the influence was lost. At a signal from him I unfastened the slates and found another set of answers. The same proceeding was gone through for the third set. The imitation of a pencil writing upon a slate was either made by the apparatus, described in the séance with C-- in the first part of this chapter, or by some other contrivance; more than likely by simply scratching with his finger on the under surface of the slate. While my attention was absorbed in the act of writing my second set of questions, he prepared answers to two of my first set and substituted a prepared slate for the cleaned slate on the table. _I was sure he was writing under the table; I heard the faint rubbing of a soft bit of pencil upon the surface of a slate. His hands were in his lap and his eyes were fixed downwards._ Several times I saw him put his fingers into his vest pockets, and he appeared to bring up small particles of something, which I believe were bits of the white and colored crayons used in writing the messages. His quiet audacity was surprising. I give below the questions and answers with my comments thereon: First Slate. Fig. 4. QUESTION. To Mamie:-- Tell me the name of your dead brother? (Signed) Harry R. Evans. ANSWER. You must not think of me as one gone forever from you. You have made conditions by and through which I can return to you, and so long as I can do this I can not feel unhappy. So dear one, rest in the assurance that you are helping me, and that I am doing all I can to help you. Let us make the best of it all and help each other as best we can, then all will be well. My home in spirit life is beautiful and awaiting you. I will be the first to greet you. _I have no dead brother. All of us are living._ I am Mamie --. (The medium here cleverly evades giving a name by an equivoque.) QUESTION. To Len-- Tell me the cause of your death, and the circumstances surrounding it? (Signed) Harry R. Evans. ANSWER. Harry! I am very glad to see you. I am happy. You must be reconciled, and not mourn me as dead! I will try to come again soon, when I am stronger and tell of my decease.--Len. (He again evades an answer.) Second Slate. Fig. 5. QUESTION. To A. D. B.-- When and where did you die? (Signed) Harry R. Evans. ANSWER. This all seems so strange coming back and writing just as one would if they were in the earth life and communicating with a friend. What a blessed privilege it is. I am so happy. Oh, I would not come back. It is so restful here. No pain or sorrow. Dear, do not think I have forgotten you, I constantly think of you and wish that you, too, might view these lovely scenes of glorious beauty. You must rest with the thought that when your life is ended upon the earth, _I will be the first to meet you_. Now be patient and hopeful until we meet where there is no more parting. I am sincerely, A. D. B. (No answer at all.) Observe error in first sentence: "as _one_ would if _they_ were--." A. D. B. was an educated gentleman, and not given to such ungrammatical expressions. [Illustration: FIG. 5--SLATE WRITING.] Third Slate. Fig. 6. QUESTION. To B. G.-- Can you recall any of the conversations we had together on the B. and P. R. R. cars? (Signed) H. R. Evans. ANSWER. O my dear one, I can only write a few lines that you may know that I see and hear you as you call upon me. I do not forget you. When I am stronger will come again. I do not know what conversation you refer to in the cars. B. G. (Again evades answering. B. G. was very much interested in the drama, and talked continuously about the stage.) QUESTION. To C. J.-- Where did you die, and from what disease? (Signed) H. R. Evans. ANSWER. I know the days and weeks seem long and lonely to you without me. I do not forget you; am doing the best I can to help you. C. J.--. (Still another evasion of a straightforward question. The lady in spirit life to whom the question was addressed died of consumption in a Roman Catholic Convent. She was only a society acquaintance of the writer, and not on such terms of intimacy as to warrant Mr. Keeler's reply.) In one corner of Slate No. 2 was the following, written with a yellow crayon: "This is remarkable. How did you know we could come?--H. K. Evans." Scrawled across the face of Slate No. 3, in red pencil, was a communication from George Christy, Mr. Keeler's spirit control, reading as follows: "Many are here who----G. C. (George Christy)" (The remainder is so badly written, as to be indecipherable.) On carefully analyzing the various communications it will be observed that the handwriting of the messages from Mamie--and B G.--are similar, possessing the same characteristics as regards letter formation, etc. It does not require a professional expert in chirography to detect this fact. One and the same person wrote the messages purporting to come from Mamie R--, Len--, B. G.--, C. J.--, and A. D. B. _In fact, the writing on all the slates is, in my opinion, the work of Mr. Pierre Keeler._ The longer communications were doubtless prepared beforehand, being general in nature and conveying about the same information that any departed spirit might give to any inquiring mortal, but, as will be observed, _giving no adequate answers to the queries_, with the exception of the last two sentences, _which were written by the medium, after he became acquainted with the tenor of the questions upon the folded slips_. The very short communications are written in a careless hand, such as a man would dash off hastily. There is an attempt at disguise, but a clumsy one, the letters still retaining the characteristics of the more deliberate chirography of the long communications. A close inspection of the slates reveals the exact similarity of the y's, u's, I's, g's, h's, m's and n's. The handwriting of messages on slates should be, and is claimed to be, adequate evidence of the genuineness of the communication, for are we not supposed to know the handwriting of our friends? Possibly Mr. Keeler would claim that the handwriting was the work of his control "Geo. Christy", who acted as a sort of amanuensis for the spirits. If this be so, why the attempts at _disguise_, and bungling attempts at that? In the séance with Mr. Keeler, I subjected him to no tests. He had everything his own way. _I should have brought my own marked slates with me and never let them out of my sight for an instant. I should have subjected the table to a close examination, and requested the medium to move or rather myself removed the collection of slates against the mantel, placed so conveniently within his reach._ I did not do this, because of his well known irascibility. He would probably have shown me the door and refused a sitting on any terms, as he has done to many skeptics. I was anxious to meet Keeler, and preferred playing the novice rather than not get a slate test from one of the best-known and most famous of modern slate-writing mediums. [Illustration: FIG. 6--SLATE WRITING.] After what has been stated, I think there can be no shadow of doubt that the medium abstracted by sleight-of-hand some of the paper slips containing my written questions, read them under cover of the table, and did the slate-writing himself. All of these slate-tests, where pellets or slips of paper are used, are performed in a similar manner, as will be seen from the exposé published by the Society for Psychical Research. In vol. viii of the proceedings of that association will be found a number of revelations, one of which throws considerable light on the Keeler tests. The sitter was Dr. Richard Hodgson, and the medium was a Mrs. Gillett. Says Dr. Hodgson: "Under pretence of 'magnetising' the pellets prepared by the sitter, or folding them more tightly, she substitutes a pellet of her own for one of the sitter's. Reading the sitter's pellet below the table, she writes the answer on one of her own slates, a pile of which, out of the sitter's view, she keeps on a chair by her side. She then takes a second slate, places it on the table, and sponges and dries both sides, after which she takes the first slate, and turning the side upon which she has written towards herself, rubs it in several places with a dry cloth or the ends of her fingers as though cleaning it. She then places it, writing downward, on the other slate on the table, and sponges and dries the upper surface of it. She then pretends to take one of the pellets on the table and put it between the two slates. What she does, however, is to bring the pellet up from below the table, take another of the sitter's pellets on the table into her hand, and place the pellet which she has brought up from below the table between the slates, keeping in her hand the pellet just taken from the top of the table. The final step is to place a rubber band round both slates, in doing which she turns both slates over together. She professes to get the writing without the use of any chalk or pencil. Some of her slates are prepared beforehand with messages or drawings. More interesting, perhaps, because of its boldness, is her method of producing writing on the sitter's own slates. Under the pretence of 'magnetising' these she cleans them several times, rubs them with her hands, stands them up on end together, and while they are in this position between herself and the sitter she writes with one hand on the slate-side nearest to herself, holding the slates erect with the other hand. Later on, she lays both slates together flat on the table again, the writing being on the undermost surface. She then sponges the upper surface of the top slate, turns it over, and sponges its other surface. She next withdraws the bottom slate, places it on top and sponges its top surface, keeping its under surface carefully concealed. The final step, the reversal, is made, as in the other case, with the help of the rubber band. Mrs. Gillett has probably other methods, also. Those which I have described were all that I witnessed at my single sitting with her." My friend, Dr. L. M. Taylor, of Washington, D. C., an investigator of Spiritualistic phenomena, and skeptical like myself of the objective phases of the subject, has had many sittings with Keeler for independent slate-writing. One séance in particular he is fond of relating: "On one occasion, after I had written my slips, folded them up, and tossed them on the table, I said to Keeler who was obtaining his 'psychic' impression of them, 'I wish, if possible, to have a spirit tell me the numbers and the maker's name engraved in my watch. I have never taken the trouble to look at the numbers, consequently I do not know them.' 'Your request is an unusual one,' replied the medium, 'but I will endeavor to gratify it.' We had some conversations on the subject that lasted several minutes. Suddenly he picked up a slate pencil, and scrawled the name, _J. S. Granger_ on the upper surface of one of my slates; the two slates had been previously tied together with my handkerchief and laid on the table in front of me. 'You recognize that name, do you not?' asked Keeler. 'Yes,' I replied, 'that is one of the names I wrote on the slips. J. S. Granger was an old friend of mine who died some years ago. He was a brother-in-law of Stephen A. Douglass.' 'If you wish to facilitate matters,' said Keeler, 'place your watch on top of the slates, concealed beneath the handkerchief, otherwise we may have to wait an hour or more without obtaining results, and there are a number of persons waiting for me in the ante-room. My time you see is limited.' "I detached my watch from its chain, and placed it in the required position. Keeler then took a piece of black cloth, used to clean slates, and laid it over my slates. Finally he requested me to take the covered slates and hold them in my lap. I took care to feel through the cloth that the watch was still beneath the handkerchief. In a short time I was directed to uncover the slates, and untie them, which I did. Upon the inner surface of one of the slates the following message was written: 'Dear Friend, Stephen is with me. I have been through that beautiful watch of yours, and, if I see correctly, the number is 163131. On the inside I see this--E. Howard & Co., Boston, 211327. And then your name as follows: Dr. L. M. Taylor, 1221 Mass. Ave., N. W., Washington, D. C. Signed J. M. Granger.' "I then compared the name and numbers in my watch with those on the slate, and found the latter correct, with the exception of one number. A relative of mine was present in the room during this séance, and I showed her the communication on the slate. Afterwards we passed the slate to Keeler who examined it closely. When he handed it back to me, I was surprised to see that the incorrect number was mysteriously changed to the proper one." This is a very interesting test, indeed, because of its apparently impromptu character. I have seen similar feats performed by professional conjurers as well as mediums. A dummy watch is substituted for the sitter's watch, and after the medium has ascertained the name and numbers on the sitter's timepiece, he succeeds in adroitly exchanging it again for the dummy, thanks to the black cloth. The writing on the slate in the above séance was evidently produced in the same way as that described in my sitting with Keeler, after he had ascertained the name on the slip. The name of Stephen, of course, was directly obtained from Dr. Taylor. Not having been an eye witness of Keeler's movements in the watch test, I am unable to say how closely Dr. Taylor's description coincides with the medium's actual operations. In May, 1897, Mr. Pierre Keeler was in Washington, D. C., as usual. My friend, Dr. Taylor, who was desirous of putting the medium to another crucial test, wrote down a list of names on a sheet of paper--cognomens of ancient Egyptian, Chaldean, and Grecian priests and philosophers--folded the paper, and carefully sealed it in an envelope. He took ten slates with him, all of them marked with a private mark of his own. Mr. Keeler eyed the envelope dubiously, but passed no criticisms on the doctor's precautions to prevent trickery. The two men sat down at a table and waited for the spirits to manifest. Dr. Taylor, on this occasion, was absolutely certain that his slates had not been tampered with, and that the medium had not succeeded in opening the envelope. In a little while the comedy of the pencil-scratching between the tied slates began. "Ah", exclaimed the physician, "a message at last!" Then he thought to himself, "can the medium possibly have deluded my senses by some hypnotic power, and adroitly opened that envelope without my being aware of the fact? But no, that is impossible!" Mr. Keeler took the slates away from Dr. Taylor, and quickly opened them, _accidentally_ dropping one of them behind the table. In a second, however, he brought up the slate, and remarked: "How awkward of me. I beg your pardon," etc. On the surface of this slate was written the following sentence: "See some other medium; d--n it!--George Christy." Dr. Taylor is positive, as he has repeatedly told me, that this message was not inscribed on his own marked slate, but was written by the medium on one of his own. The exchange, of course, must have been effected in the pretended accidental dropping of the doctor's slate by the medium. This is a very old expedient among pretenders to spirit power. All conjurers are familiar with the device. Imro Fox, the American magician, uses it constantly in his entertainments, with capital effect. Dr. Taylor, unfortunately, did not succeed in getting possession of the medium's prepared slate. Another exchange was undoubtedly made by Mr. Keeler, and the physician had returned to him his own marked slate. When he got home that afternoon, and had time to carefully scrutinize his slates, he found that they bore no evidence of having been written upon at all. Having also examined these slates, I am prepared to add my testimony to that of Dr. Taylor. The reader will see from the above-described séance that unless the medium (or a confederate) is enabled to read the names and questions, prepared by the sitter, his hands are practically tied in all experiments in psychology. When investigators bring their own marked slates with them, screwed tightly together, and sealed, the medium has to adopt different tactics from those employed in the tests before mentioned. He has to call in the aid of a confederate. The audacity of the sealed-slate test is without parallel in the annals of pretended mediumship. For an insight into the secrets of this phase of psychography, the reading public is indebted to a medium, the anonymous author of a remarkably interesting work, "Revelations of a Spirit Medium." Many skeptical investigators have been converted to Spiritualism by these tests. They invariably say to you when approached on the subject: "I took my own marked slates, carefully screwed together, to the medium, and had lengthy messages written upon them by spirit power. _These slates never left my hands for a second._" I will quote what the writer of "Revelations of a Spirit Medium" says on the subject: "No man ever received independent slate-writing between slates fastened together that he did not allow out of his hands a few seconds. Scores of persons will tell you that they _have_ received writing under those conditions through the mediumship of the writer; but the writer will tell you how he fooled them and how you can do so if you see fit. "In the first place you will rent a house with a cellar in connection. Cut a trap-door one foot square through the floor between the sills on which the floor is laid. Procure a fur floor mat with long hair. Cut a square out of the mat and tack it to the top of the trap door. Tack the mat fast to the floor, for some one may visit you who will want to raise it up. "Explain the presence of the fur by saying it is an absorbent of magnetic forces, through which you produce the writing. Over the rug place a heavy pine table about four feet square; and over the table a heavy cover that reaches the floor on all sides. Put your assistant in the cellar with a coal-oil stove, a tea-kettle of hot water, different colored letter wax and lead pencils, a screw driver, a pair of nippers, a pair of pliers, a pair of scissors and an assortment of wire brads. You are ready for business. "When your sitter comes in you will notice his slates, if he brings a pair, and see if they are secured in any way that your man in the cellar can not duplicate. If they are, you can touch his slates with your finger and say to him that you can not use his slates on account of the 'magnetism' with which they are saturated. He will know nothing of 'magnetic conditions' and will ask you what he is to do about it. "You will furnish him a pair of new slates with water and cloths to clean them. You also furnish him paper to write his questions on and the screws, wax, paper and mucilage to secure them with. He will write his questions and fasten the slates securely together. "You now conduct him to your séance-room and invite inspection of your table and surroundings. After the examination has been made you will seat the sitter at one side of the table with his side and arm next it. If he desires to keep hold of the slates a signal agreed upon between yourself and your assistant will cause the spirit in the cellar to open the trap door, which opens downwards, and to push through the floor and into position where the sitter can grasp one end of it, a pair of dummy slates. This dummy your assistant will continue to hold until the sitter has taken hold of it after the following performance: "Your assistant lets you know everything is ready by touching your foot. You now reach and take the sitter's slates and put them below the table, and under it, telling the sitter to put his hand under from his side and hold them with you. He puts his hand under and gets hold of the dummy slates held by your assistant. "Your assistant holds on until you have stood the slates on end, leaning against the table leg, and have got hold of the dummy. He then takes the sitter's slates below and closes the trap. He proceeds to open them, read the questions, answer them and refasten the slates. "You will be entertaining your sitter by twitching and jerking and making clairvoyant and clairaudient guesses for him. "When your assistant touches your foot you will know that he is ready to make the exchange again, by which the sitter will get hold of the slates he fastened. When you get the signal you give a snort and jump that jerks the end of the slates from the sitter's hand. He is now given the end of the slates held by your assistant, and you will allow the assistant to take the dummy. After sitting a moment or two longer, you will tell the sitter to take out his slates and examine them if he chooses. Many times they do not open the slates until they reach their homes. "This, reader, is the man who will declare that he furnished the slates and did not allow them out of his hands a minute. "The usual method of obtaining the writing is for the medium to hold the slates alone. When this is the case the medium passes the slates below, and receives in return a dummy which he is continually thumping on the under side of the table for the purpose of showing the sitter that the slates are there all the time. "It is not necessary that you should use a cellar to get this phase of 'independent slate-writing.' You could place your table against a partition door and by fitting one of the small panels with hinges and bolts, would have a very convenient way of obtaining the assistance of the spirit in the next room. It is also possible to make a trap in a room that has a wooden wainscoting." Before closing this brief survey of slate-writing experiments, I must describe an exceedingly ingenious trick, indeed, bordering on the marvelous. It is the recent invention of a Western conjurer, and solves the problem of actually writing between locked slates by physical means. The effect is as follows: You request the sitter to take two slates, wash them carefully, and tie them together, after first having placed a bit of chalk between their surfaces. Hold them under the table for a minute, and then hand them to the sitter for examination. A name, or a short sentence, in answer to some question, will be found scrawled across the upper surface of the bottom slate. It is accomplished in this way. You take a small pellet of iron or steel, coat it with mucilage, and dip it into chalk or slate-pencil dust. This dust will adhere and harden into a consistent mass, after a little while, completely concealing the metal, and causing the whole to resemble a bit of chalk. Take this supposed pellet of chalk from your vest pocket and place it between the slates; hold the latter level beneath a table, and by moving the poles of a strong magnet against the surface of the under slate, you can cause the iron or steel to write a name or sentence, thanks to its coating of chalk dust. It is better to use slates with rather deep frames, in order that the chalked metal may write with facility. It requires considerable practice to write with ease in the manner described above. The first thing of course is to locate the position of the chalk between the locked slates. To enable you to do this, place the supposed chalk in one corner of slate No. 1 before covering with slate No. 2, or else exactly in the center of slate No. 2. In this way you will have no difficulty in affecting the metal with the magnet, when the slates are held under the table. There are various ways of holding the slates; one, is to ask the sitter to hold one end, while you hold the other, five or six inches above the table. The light is put out, and you take the magnet from your pocket and execute the writing. The noise of the magnet passing over the surface of the under slate serves to represent a disembodied spirit as doing the writing. 2. The Master of the Mediums. One of the most remarkable personalities serving as an exponent of Spiritualism was Daniel Dunglas Home, the Napoleon of necromancy, and the Past Grand Master of Mediums. His career reads like a romance. He lived in a sort of twilight land, and hob-nobbed with kings, queens and other people of noble blood. "Something unsubstantial, ghostly, Seems this Theurgist, In deep meditation mostly Wrapped, as in a mist. Vague, phantasmal and unreal, To our thoughts he seems, Walking in a world ideal, In a land of dreams." He wound his serpentine way into the best society of London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, and St. Petersburg--"always despising filthy lucre," as Maskelyn remarks, "but never refusing a diamond worth ten times the amount he would have received in cash, or some present, which the host of the house at which he happened to be manifesting always felt constrained to offer." This thaumaturgist of the Nineteenth Century was born near Edinburg, Scotland, on March 20, 1833, and came of a family reported to be gifted with "second sight." His father, William Home, was a natural son of Alexander, tenth Earl of Home. Strange phenomena occurred during the medium's childhood. At the age of nine he was adopted by his aunt, Mrs. McNeill Cook, who brought him to America. He began giving séances about the year 1852. Among the notable men who attended these early "sittings" were William Cullen Bryant, Professors Wells and Hare, and Judge Edmonds. Home had a tall, slight figure, a fair and freckled face--before disease made it the color of yellow wax--keen, slaty-blue eyes, thin bloodless lips, a rather snub nose, and curly auburn hair. His manners, though forward, were agreeable, and he recited such poetry as Poe's "Raven" and "Ulalume" with powerful effect. He was altogether a weird sort of personage. His principal mediumistic manifestations were rappings, table-tipping, ghostly materializations, playing on sealed musical instruments, levitation, and handling fire with impunity. In 1855 he launched his necromantic bark on European waters. No man since Cagliostro ever created so profound a sensation in the Old World. He wrote his reminiscences in two large volumes, but little credence can be given them, as they are full of extravagant statements and wild fantasies. The London _Punch_ (May 9th, 1868), printed the following effusion on the medium, a sort of parody on "Home, Sweet Home:" Through realms Thaumaturgic the student may roam, And not light on a worker of wonders like _Home_. Cagliostro himself might descend from his chair, And set up our _Daniel_ as Grand-Cophta there-- _Home, Home, Dan. Home_, No medium like _Home_. Spirit legs, spirit hands, he gives table and chair; Gravitation defying, he flies in the air; But the fact to which henceforth his fame should be pinned, Is his power to raise, not himself but the wind!-- _Home, Home, Dan. Home_, No medium like _Home_. Robert Browning made him the subject of his celebrated satirical poem, "Mr. Sludge, the Medium." Some of the most celebrated scientific and literary personages of England became interested in his mysterious abilities, and among his intimate friends were the Earl of Dunraven, Mary Howitt, Mrs. S. C. Hall, Prof. Wallace, and Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton. There is good authority for believing that Home was the mysterious Margrave of Bulwer's weird novel, "A Strange Story." Bulwer was an ardent believer in the supernatural and Home spent many days at Knebworth amid a select coterie of ghost-seers. The famous novelist relates that as Home sat with him in the library of Knebworth, conversing upon politics, social matters, books or other chance topics, the chairs rocked and the tables were suspended in mid-air. When the medium was requested to exert his power and found himself in condition, it is alleged, he would rise and float about the room. This in Spiritualistic parlance is termed "levitation". At Knebworth and other places, some of the most prominent people of the day claim to have seen Home lift himself up and sail tranquilly out of a window, around the house, and come in by another window. The Earl of Dunraven told many stories equally strange of performances that were given in his presence. The Earl declared that he had many times seen Home elongate and shorten his body, and cause the closed piano to play by putting his fingers on the lid. [Illustration: FIG. 7--HOME AT THE TUILERIES.] In the autumn of 1855 the famous medium went to Florence; there, also, the spirit manifestations secured him the _entree_ into the best society of the old Italian city. In his memoirs he speaks of an incident occurring through his mediumship, at a séance given in Florence: "Upon one occasion, while the Countess C-- was seated at one of Erard's grand-action pianos, it rose and balanced itself in the air, during the whole time she was playing." An English lady, resident at Florence, in a supposed haunted house, procured the services of Home to exorcise the ghost. They sat at a table in the sitting-room, and raps were heard proceeding from that piece of furniture, and rustling sounds in the room as of a person moving about in a heavy garment. The spirit being adjured in the name of the "Holy Trinity" to leave the premises, the demonstrations ceased. In February, 1856, the medium joined the retinue of Count B--, a Polish nobleman, and went to Naples with his patron. From Naples to Rome was the next step, and, in the Eternal City, the medium joined the Romish Church, and was adjured by the Pope to abandon spirit séances forever. In 1858 we find Home in St. Petersburg, where he married the youngest daughter of General Count de Kroll, of Russia, and a goddaughter of the Emperor Nicholas, the marriage taking place on Sunday, August 1, 1858, in the private chapel attached to the house of the lady's brother-in-law, the Count Gregoire Koucheleff-Besborodko. It was a very notable affair, and Alexander Dumas came from Paris to attend the ceremony. Home's spirit power which had left him since his conversion to the Roman Catholic faith now returned in full force, it is said, and he saw standing near him at the wedding the spirit form of his mother. In 1862 his wife died at the Chateau Laroche, near Perigneux, France, and the medium repaired to Rome for the purpose of studying sculpture. The reports of the spirit phenomena constantly attending Home's presence reached the ears of the Papal authorities and he was compelled to leave the city, notwithstanding the fact that he gave positive assurance that he would give no séance. He was actually charged with being a sorcerer, like Cagliostro, an accusation that reads very strange in the Nineteenth Century. This affair embittered Home against the Church, and he abandoned Roman Catholicism for the Greek Church. After the Roman fiasco, the famous medium returned to England to give Spiritualistic lectures and séances. A writer in "_All the Year Round_", gives the following pen picture of the medium, as he appeared in 1866: "He is a tall, thin man, with broad square shoulders, suggestive of a suit of clothes hung upon an iron cross. His hair is long and yellow; his teeth are large, glittering and sharp; his eyes are a pale grey, with a redness about the eye-lids, which comes and goes in a ghastly manner, as he talks. When he shows his glittering sharp teeth, and that red line comes round his slowly rolling eyes, he is not a pleasant sight to look upon. His hands are long, white and bony, and on taking them you discover that they are icy cold." A _suit of clothes hung upon an iron cross_ is a weird touch in this pen picture. Home about this time intended going upon the stage, but abandoned the idea to become the secretary of the "Spiritual Atheneum", a society formed for the investigation of psychic phenomena. One of the most notable passages in the life of the great medium was the famous law suit in which he was concerned in England. In 1866 he became acquainted with a wealthy lady, Mrs. Jane Lyons. In his role of medium she consulted him constantly about the welfare of her husband in the spirit world, and her business affairs. She gave him £33,000 for his services. Relatives and friends of Mrs. Lyons, however, saw in Home a cunning adventurer who was preying upon a weak-minded woman. A suit was instituted against the medium to recover the money, and the case became a _cause celebre_ in the annals of the English courts. In the autumn of 1871, Home, who before that time, had been quite a "lion" at the court of Napoleon III and Eugene, followed the German army from Sedan to Versailles, and was hand-in-glove with the King of Prussia. His second marriage took place in October, 1871, at Paris, and after a brief honeymoon in England he visited St. Petersburg with his wife, who was a member of the noble Russian family of Alsakoff. On the 21st of June, 1886, the great American ghost-seer died of consumption, at Auteuil, near Paris, France. For years he was out of health, and he ascribed his weakness to the expenditure of vital force in working wonders during the earlier part of his career. He was buried at St. Germain-en-Laye, with the rites of the Russian Church. The funeral was a very simple one, not more than twenty persons being present, all of whom were in full evening dress. The idea was to emphasize the Spiritualists' belief that death is not a subject for mourning, but is liberation, an occasion for rejoicing. The curious reader will find many accounts of Home's invulnerability to fire while in the trance state, notably those of Prof. Crookes, contained in the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. In the March, 1868, number of "_Human Nature_," Mr. H. D. Jencken writes as follows concerning a séance given by the medium: "Mr. Home, (after various manifestations) said, 'we have gladly shown you our power over fluids, we will now show you our power over solids.' He then knelt down before the hearth, and deliberately breaking up a glowing piece of coal in the fire place, took up a largish lump of incandescent coal and placing the same in his left hand, proceeded to explain that caloric had been extracted by a process known to them (the spirits), and that the heat could in part be returned. This he proved by alternately cooling and heating the coal; and to convince us of the fact, allowed us to handle the coal which had become cool, then suddenly resumed its heat sufficient to burn one, as I again touched it. I examined Mr. Home's hand, and quite satisfied myself that no artificial means had been employed to protect the skin, which did not even retain the smell of smoke. Mr. Home then re-seated himself, and shortly awoke from his trance quite pale and exhausted." Other witnesses of the above experiment were Lord Lindsay, Lord Adare, Miss Douglas, Mr. S. C. Hall, Mr. W. H. Harrison and Prof. Wallace. Mr. H. Nisbet, of Glasgow, relates (_Human Nature_, Feb. 1870) that in his own home in January, 1870, Mr. Home took a red hot coal from the grate and put it in the hands of a lady and gentleman to whom it felt only warm. Subsequently he placed the same on a folded newspaper, the result being a hole burnt through eight layers of paper. Taking another blazing coal he laid it on the same journal, and carried it around the apartment for upwards of three minutes, without scorching the paper. Among the crowned heads and famous people before whom Mr. Home appeared were Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie, Queen Victoria, King Louis I and King Maximilian of Bavaria, the Emperor of Russia, the King and Queen of Wurtemberg, the Duchess of Hamilton, the Crown Prince of Prussia and old Gen. Von Moltke. Alexander Dumas the elder, was a constant companion of the medium for a long time, and wrote columns about him. Napoleon III had two sittings with Home--and it is said Home materialized the spirit of the first Napoleon, who appeared in his familiar cocked hat, gray overcoat and dark green uniform with white facings. "My fate?" asked Louis, trembling with awe. "Like mine--discrowned, and death in exile," replied the ghost; then it vanished. The Empress swooned and Napoleon III fell back in his chair as if about to faint. The medium in his first séance with the French Emperor succeeded only in materializing some flowers and a spirit hand, which the Emperor was permitted to grasp. Celia Logan, the journalist, in writing of one of Home's séances at a nobleman's house in London, says: "On this occasion the medium announced that he would produce balls of fire and illuminated hands. Failing in the former, he declared that the spirits were not strong enough for that to-night, and so he would have to confine himself to showing the luminous hands. "The house was darkened and Home groped his way alone to the head of the broad staircase, where every few minutes a pair of luminous hands were thrown up. The audience was satisfied generally. One lady, however, was not, and whispered to me--she was a half-hearted Spiritualist--that it looked to her as if he had rubbed his own hands over with lucifer matches. "The host stood near the mantel piece and had seen Home abstractedly place a small bottle upon it when he left the room for the staircase. That bottle the host quietly slipped into his pocket. Upon examination the next day it was found to contain phosphorated olive oil or some similar preparation. "The host had declared himself to have seen Home float through the air from one side of the room to the other, lift a piano several feet in the air by simply placing a finger upon it, and had seen him materialize disembodied spirits; but after the discovery of the phosphorus trick he dropped Home at once." It is a significant fact that the medium while giving séances in Paris in 1857 refused to meet Houdin, the renowned prestidigitateur. I shall now attempt an exposé of Home's physical phenomena. Home's extraordinary feat of alternately cooling and heating a lump of coal taken from a blazing fire, as related by Mr. H. D. Jencken and others, is easily explained. It is a juggling trick. The "coal" is a piece of spongy platinum which bears a close resemblance to a lump of half burnt coal, and is palmed in the hand, as a prestidigitateur conceals a coin, a pack of cards, an egg, or a small lemon. The medium or magician advances to the grate and pretends to take a genuine lump of coal from the fire but brings up instead, at the tips of his fingers, the piece of platinum. In a secret breast pocket of his coat he has a small reservoir of hydrogen, with a tube coming down the sleeve and terminating an inch or so above the cuff. By means of certain mechanical arrangements, to enable him to let on and off the gas at the proper moment, he is able to accomplish the trick; for when a current of hydrogen is allowed to impinge upon a piece of spongy platinum, the metal becomes incandescent, and as soon as the current is arrested the platinum is restored to its normal condition. The hand may be protected from burning in various ways, one method being the repeated application of sulphuric acid to the skin, whereby it is rendered impervious to the action of fire for a short period of time; another, by wearing gloves of amianthus or asbestos cloth. With the latter, worn in a badly lighted room, the medium, without much risk of discovery, can handle red hot coals or iron with impunity. The gloves may at the proper moment be slipped off and concealed about the person. A small slip of amianthus cloth placed on a newspaper would protect it from a hot coal and the same means could be used when a coal is placed in another's hand or upon his head. As to the marvelous "levitation", either the witnesses of the alleged feat were under some hypnotic spell, or else they allowed their imaginations to run riot when describing the event. In the case of Lord Lindsay and Lord Adare, D. Carpenter in his valuable paper "On Fallacies Respecting the Supernatural" (_Contemporary Review_, Jan., 1876) says: "A whole party of believers affirm that they saw Mr. Home float out of one window and in at another, while a single honest skeptic declares that Mr. Home was sitting in his chair all the time." It seems that there were three gentlemen present besides the medium when the alleged phenomenon took place, the two noblemen and a "cousin". It is this unnamed hard-headed cousin to whom Dr. Carpenter refers as the "honest skeptic." Many of Home's admirers have declared that he possessed the power of mesmerizing certain of his friends. These gentlemen were no doubt hypnotized and related honestly what they believed they had seen. Again, the expectancy of attention and the nervous tension of the average sitter in spirit-circles tend to produce a morbidly impressible condition of mind. Many mediums since Home's day have performed the act of levitation, but always in a dark room. Mr. Angelo Lewis, the writer on magic, reveals an ingenious method by which levitation is effected. When the lights are extinguished the medium--who, by the way, must be a clever ventriloquist--removes his boots and places them on his hands. "I am rising, I am rising, but pay no attention", he remarks, as he goes about the apartment, where the sitters are grouped in a circle about him, and he lightly touches the heads of various persons. A shadowy form is dimly seen and a smell of boot leather becomes apparent to the olfactory senses of many present. People jump quickly to conclusions in such matters and argue that where the feet of the medium are, his body must surely be--namely, floating in the air. The illusion is further enhanced by the performer's ventriloquial powers. "I am rising! I am touching the ceiling!" he exclaims, imitating the sound of a voice high up. When the lights are turned up, the medium is seen (this time with his boots on his feet) standing on tip-toe, as if just descended from the ceiling. Sometimes before performing the levitation act, he will say, "In order to convince any skeptic present, that I really float upwards, I will write the initials of my name, or the name of some one present, on the ceiling." When the lights are raised, the letters are seen written on the ceiling in a bold scrawling hand. How is it done? The medium has concealed about him a telescopic steel rod, something like those Chinese fishing rods at one time in vogue among modern disciples of Izaak Walton. This convenient rod when not in use folds up in a very small compass, but when it is shoved out to its full length, some three or four feet, with a bit of black chalk attached, the writing on the ceiling is easily produced. The magicians of ancient Egypt displayed their mystic rods as a part of their paraphernalia, while the modern magi bear theirs in secret. A tambourine, a guitar, a bell, or a spirit hand, rubbed with phosphorus, may also be fixed to this ingenious appliance, and floated over the heads of the spectators, and even a horn may be blown, through the hollow rod. The materialization of a spirit hand which crept from beneath a table-cover, and showed itself to the "believers," was one of the most startling things in the repertoire of D. D. Home, as it was in that of Dr. Monck's, an English medium. An explanation of Monck's method of producing the hand may, perhaps, throw some light on Home's "materialization." A small dummy hand, artistically executed in wax, with the fingers slightly bent, is fastened to a broad elastic band about three feet in length. This band is attached to a belt about the performer's waist and passes down his left trouser leg, allowing the hand to dangle within the trouser a few inches above the ankle. I must not forget to explain that to the wrist of the hand is appended an elastic sleeve about five inches long. The medium and two sitters take their seats at a square table, with an over-hanging table-cloth. No one is allowed to be seated at the same side of the table with the medium. This is an imperative condition. "Diminish the light, please," says the medium. Some one rises to lower the gas to the required dim religious light necessary to all spirit séances. "A little lower, please! Lower, lower still!" remarks the medium. Out the light goes. "Dear, me, but this is vexatious! Somebody light it again and be more careful!" he ejaculates. Under cover of the darkness the agile operator crosses his left foot over his right knee, pulls down the wax hand and fixes it to the toe of his boot by means of the elastic sleeve, the apparatus being masked from the sitters by the table cloth until the time comes for the spirit materialization. The three men place their hands on the table and wait patiently for developments. Presently a rap is heard under the table--disjointed knee of the medium,--and then _mirabile dictu!_ the table-cloth shakes and a delicate female hand emerges and shows itself above the edge of the table. A guitar being placed close to the fingers, they soon strum the strings, or rather appear to do so, the medium being the _deus ex machina_. The cleverest part of the whole performance is the fact that the medium never takes his hands from the table. He quietly puts his left foot down on the floor and places his right foot heavily on the false hand--off it comes from the left foot and shoots up the trouser leg like lightning. The sitters may look under the table but they see nothing. An ingenious improvement has been made to this hand-test by an American conjurer, one that enables the medium to produce the hand although his feet are secured by the sitter. "Be kind enough, sir," says the performer to the investigator, "to place your feet on mine. If I should move my feet ever so little, you would know it, would you not?" The sitter replies in the affirmative. The medium, as soon as he feels the pressure of the sitter's feet, withdraws his right foot from a steel shape made in imitation of the toe of his boot, and operates the spirit hand at his leisure. After the sitting, he of course, inserts his right foot into the shape and carries it off with him. The production of spirit music was one of Home's favorite experiments. There are all sorts of ways of producing this music, the most ingenious of which I give: The apparatus consists of a small circular musical box, wound up by clock work, and made to play whenever pressure is put upon a stud projecting a quarter of an inch from its surface. This box is strapped around the right leg of the medium just above his knee, and hidden beneath the trouser leg. When not in use it is on the under side of the leg. On the table a musical box is placed and covered with a soup tureen, or the top of a chafing dish. When the spectators are seated, the medium works the concealed musical box around to the upper part of his leg near the knee cap, and by pressing the stud against the under surface of the table, starts the music playing. In this way the second musical box seems to play and the acoustic effect is perfect. Perhaps Home used a similar contrivance; Dr. Monck did, and was caught in the act by the chief of the Detective Police. Home during his séances on the Continent of Europe was accused of all sorts of trickery. Some asserted that he had concealed about him a small but powerful electric battery for producing certain illusions, mechanical contrivances attached to his legs for making spirit raps, and last but not least, as the medium states in his "Memoirs:" "they even accused me of carrying a small monkey about with me, concealed, trained to perform all sorts of ghostly tricks." People also accused him of obtaining a great deal of his information about the spirits of the departed from tombstones like an Old Mortality, and bribing family servants. A more probable explanation may be found perhaps in telepathy. There is one more phase of Home's mediumship, the moving of heavy pieces of furniture without physical contact, that must be spoken of. In mentioning it, Dr. Max Dessoir, author of the "Psychology of Conjuring,"[1] says: "We must admit that _a few_ feats, such as those of Prof. Crookes with Home, concerning the possibility of setting inanimate objects in motion without touching them, _appear_ to lie entirely outside the sphere of jugglery." In the year 1871, Prof. William Crookes, (now Sir William Crookes) Fellow of the Royal Society, a very eminent scientist, subjected Home to some elaborate tests in order to prove or disprove by means of scientific apparatus the reality of phenomena connected with variations in the weight of bodies, with or without contact. He declared the tests to be entirely satisfactory, but ascribed the phenomena not to spiritual agency, but to a new force, "in some unknown manner connected with the human organization," which for convenience he called the "Psychic Force." He said in his "Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism:" "Of all the persons endowed with a powerful development of this Psychic Force, and who have been termed 'mediums' upon quite another theory of its origin, Mr. Daniel Dunglas Home is the most remarkable, and it is mainly owing to the many opportunities I have had of carrying on my investigations in his presence that I am enabled to affirm so conclusively the existence of this force." Prof. Crookes' experiments were conducted, as he says, in the full light, and in the presence of witnesses, among them being the famous English barrister, Sergeant Cox, and the astronomer, Dr. Huggins. Heavy articles became light and light articles heavy when the medium came near them. In some cases he lightly touched them, in others refrained from contact. [Illustration: FIG. 8. CROOKES' APPARATUS.] The first piece of the apparatus constructed by Crookes to test this psychic force consisted of a mahogany board 36 inches long by 9-1/2 inches wide and 1 inch thick. A strip of mahogany was screwed on at one end, to form a foot, the length being equal to the width of the board. This end of the board was placed on a table, while the other end was upheld by a spring balance, fastened to a strong tripod stand, as will be seen in Fig. 8. "Mr. Home," writes Prof. Crookes, "placed the tips of his fingers lightly on the extreme end of the mahogany board which was resting on the support, whilst Dr. A. B. [Dr. Huggins] and myself sat, one on each side of it, watching for any effect which might be produced. Almost immediately the pointer of the balance was seen to descend. After a few seconds it rose again. This movement was repeated several times, as if by successive waves of the psychic force. The end of the board was observed to oscillate slowly up and down during the experiment. "Mr. Home now, of his own accord, took a small hand-bell and a little card match-box, which happened to be near, and placed one under each hand, to satisfy us, as he said, that he was not producing the downward pressure. The very slow oscillation of the spring balance became more marked, and Dr. A. B., watching the index, said that he saw it descend to 6-1/2 lbs. The normal weight of the board as so suspended being 3 lbs., the additional downward pull was therefore 3-1/2 lbs. On looking immediately afterwards at the automatic register, we saw that the index had at one time descended as low as 9 lbs., showing a maximum pull of 6 lbs. upon a board whose normal weight was 3 lbs. "In order to see whether it was possible to produce much effect on the spring balance by pressure at the place where Mr. Home's fingers had been, I stepped upon the table and stood on one foot at the end of the board. Dr. A. B., who was observing the index of the balance, said that the whole weight of my body (140 lbs.) so applied only sunk the index 1-1/2 lbs., or 2 lbs. when I jerked up and down. Mr. Home had been sitting in a low easy-chair, and could not, therefore, had he tried his utmost, have exerted any material influence on these results. I need scarcely add that his feet as well as his hands were closely guarded by all in the room." The next series of experiments is thus described: "On trying these experiments for the first time, I thought that actual contact between Mr. Home's hands and the suspended body whose weight was to be altered was essential to the exhibition of the force; but I found afterwards that this was not a necessary condition, and I therefore arranged my apparatus in the following manner:-- "The accompanying cuts (Figs. 9, 10 and 11) explain the arrangement. Fig. 9 is a general view, and Figs. 10 and 11 show the essential parts more in detail. The reference letters are the same in each illustration. A B is a mahogany board, 36 inches long by 9-1/2 inches wide, and 1 inch thick. It is suspended at the end, B, by a spring balance, C, furnished with an automatic register, D. The balance is suspended from a very firm tripod support, E. [Illustration: FIG. 9. CROOKES' APPARATUS.] [Illustration: FIG. 10. CROOKES' APPARATUS.] "The following piece of apparatus is not shown in the figures. To the moving index, O, of the spring balance, a fine steel point is soldered, projecting horizontally outwards. In front of the balance, and firmly fastened to it, is a grooved frame, carrying a flat box similar to the dark box of a photographic camera. This box is made to travel by clock-work horizontally in front of the moving index, and it contains a sheet of plate-glass which has been smoked over a flame. The projecting steel point impresses a mark on this smoked surface. If the balance is at rest, and the clock set going, the result is a perfectly straight horizontal line. If the clock is stopped and weights are placed on the end, B, of the board, the result is a vertical line, whose length depends on the weight applied. If, whilst the clock draws the plate along, the weight of the board (or the tension on the balance) varies, the result is a curved line, from which the tension in grains at any moment during the continuance of the experiments can be calculated. "The instrument was capable of registering a diminution of the force of gravitation as well as an increase; registrations of such a diminution were frequently obtained. To avoid complication, however, I will here refer only to results in which an increase of gravitation was experienced. [Illustration: FIG. 11. CROOKES' APPARATUS.] "The end, B, of the board being supported by the spring balance, the end, A, is supported on a wooden strip, F, screwed across its lower side and cut to a knife edge (see Fig. 11). This fulcrum rests on a firm and heavy wooden stand, G H. On the board, exactly over the fulcrum, is placed a large glass vessel filled with water. I L is a massive iron stand, furnished with an arm and a ring, M N, in which rests a hemispherical copper vessel perforated with several holes at the bottom. "The iron stand is 2 inches from the board, A B, and the arm and copper vessel, M N, are so adjusted that the latter dips into the water 1-1/2 inches, being 5-1/2 inches from the bottom of I, and 2 inches from its circumference. Shaking or striking the arm, M, or the vessel, N, produces no appreciable mechanical effect on the board, A B, capable of affecting the balance. Dipping the hand to the fullest extent into the water in N does not produce the least appreciable action on the balance. "As the mechanical transmission of power is by this means entirely cut off between the copper vessel and the board, A B, the power of muscular control is thereby completely eliminated. "For convenience I will divide the experiments into groups, 1, 2, 3, etc., and I have selected one special instance in each to describe in detail. Nothing, however, is mentioned which has not been repeated more than once, and in some cases verified, in Mr. Home's absence, with another person, possessing similar powers. "There was always ample light in the room where the experiments were conducted (my own dining-room) to see all that took place. "_Experiment I._--The apparatus having been properly adjusted before Mr. Home entered the room, he was brought in, and asked to place his fingers in the water in the copper vessel, N. He stood up and dipped the tips of the fingers of his right hand in the water, his other hand and his feet being held. When he said he felt a power, force, or influence, proceeding from his hand, I set the clock going, and almost immediately the end, B, of the board was seen to descend slowly and remain down for about 10 seconds; it then descended a little further, and afterwards rose to its normal height. It then descended again, rose suddenly, gradually sunk for 17 seconds, and finally rose to its normal height, where it remained till the experiment was concluded. The lowest point marked on the glass was equivalent to a direct pull of about 5,000 grains. The accompanying Figure 12 is a copy of the curve traced on the glass. [Illustration: SCALE OF SECONDS. FIG. 12. DIAGRAM SHOWING TENSION IN CROOKES' APPARATUS UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF HOME.] "_Experiment II._--Contact through water having proved to be as effectual as actual mechanical contact, I wished to see if the power or force could affect the weight, either through other portions of the apparatus or through the air. The glass vessel and iron stand, etc., were therefore removed, as an unnecessary complication, and Mr. Home's hands were placed on the stand of the apparatus at P (Fig. 9). A gentleman present put his hand on Mr. Home's hands, and his foot on both Mr. Home's feet, and I also watched him closely all the time. At the proper moment the clock was again set going; the board descended and rose in an irregular manner, the result being a curved tracing on the glass, of which Fig. 13 is a copy. [Illustration: SCALE THE SAME AS IN FIG. 12. FIG. 13. DIAGRAM SHOWING TENSION IN CROOKES' APPARATUS UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF HOME.] "_Experiment III._--Mr. Home was now placed one foot from the board, A B, on one side of it. His hands and feet were firmly grasped by a by-stander, and another tracing, of which Fig. 14 is a copy, was taken on the moving glass plate. [Illustration: SCALE THE SAME AS IN FIG. 12. FIG. 14. DIAGRAM SHOWING TENSION IN CROOKES' APPARATUS UNDER HOME'S INFLUENCE.] "_Experiment IV._--(Tried on an occasion when the power was stronger than on the previous occasions), Mr. Home was now placed 3 feet from the apparatus, his hands and feet being tightly held. The clock was set going when he gave the word, and the end, B, of the board soon descended, and again rose in an irregular manner, as shown in Fig. 15. [Illustration: SCALE THE SAME AS IN FIG. 12. FIG. 15. DIAGRAM SHOWING TENSION IN CROOKES' APPARATUS UNDER HOME'S INFLUENCE.] "The following series of experiments were tried with more delicate apparatus, and with another person, a lady, Mr. Home being absent. As the lady is non-professional, I do not mention her name. She has, however, consented to meet any scientific men whom I may introduce for purposes of investigation. [Illustration: FIG. 16. SECOND CROOKES' APPARATUS.] "A piece of thin parchment, A, (Figs. 16 and 17), is stretched tightly across a circular hoop of wood. B C is a light lever turning on D. At the end B is a vertical needle point touching the membrane A, and at C is another needle point, projecting horizontally and touching a smoked glass plate, E F. This glass plate is drawn along in the direction H G by clockwork, K. The end, B, of the lever is weighted so that it shall quickly follow the movements of the centre of the disc, A. These movements are transmitted and recorded on the glass plate, E F, by means of the lever and needle point, C. Holes are cut in the side of the hoop to allow a free passage of air to the under side of the membrane. The apparatus was well tested beforehand by myself and others, to see that no shaking or jar on the table or support would interfere with the results: the line traced by the point, C, on the smoked glass was perfectly straight in spite of all our attempts to influence the lever by shaking the stand or stamping on the floor. [Illustration: FIG. 17. SECTION OF APPARATUS IN FIG. 16.] "_Experiment V._--Without having the object of the instrument explained to her, the lady was brought into the room and asked to place her fingers on the wooden stand at the points, L M, Fig. 16. I then placed my hands over hers to enable me to detect any conscious or unconscious movement on her part. Presently percussive noises were heard on the parchment, resembling the dropping of grains of sand on its surface. At each percussion a fragment of graphite which I had placed on the membrane was seen to be projected upwards about 1-50th of an inch, and the end, C, of the lever moved slightly up and down. Sometimes the sounds were as rapid as those from an induction-coil, whilst at others they were more than a second apart. Five or six tracings were taken, and in all cases a movement of the end, C, of the lever was seen to have occurred with each vibration of the membrane. "In some cases the lady's hands were not so near the membrane as L M, but were at N O, Fig 17. [Illustration: SCALE OF SECONDS. FIG. 18. DIAGRAM SHOWING TENSION IN CROOKES' APPARATUS (FIG. 15 AND 16) OUTSIDE HOME'S INFLUENCE.] "The accompanying Fig. 18 gives tracings taken from the plates used on these occasions. "_Experiment VI._--Having met with these results in Mr. Home's absence, I was anxious to see what action would be produced on the instrument in his presence. "Accordingly I asked him to try, but without explaining the instrument to him. "I grasped Mr. Home's right arm above the wrist and held his hand over the membrane, about 10 inches from its surface, in the position shown at P, Fig. 17. His other hand was held by a friend. After remaining in this position for about half a minute, Mr. Home said he felt some influence passing. I then set the clock going, and we all saw the index, C, moving up and down. The movements were much slower than in the former case, and were almost entirely unaccompanied by the percussive vibrations then noticed. "Figs. 19 and 20 show the curves produced on the glass on two of these occasions. "Figs. 18, 19 and 20 are magnified. "These experiments _confirm beyond doubt_ the conclusions at which I arrived in my former paper, namely, the existence of a force associated, in some manner not yet explained, with the human organization, by which force increased weight is capable of being imparted to solid bodies without physical contact. In the case of Mr. Home, the development of this force varies enormously, not only from week to week, but from hour to hour; on some occasions the force is inappreciable by my tests for an hour or more, and then suddenly reappears in great strength. [Illustration: SCALE THE SAME AS IN FIG. 18. FIG. 19. DIAGRAM SHOWING TENSION IN CROOKES' APPARATUS (FIG. 16 AND 17) UNDER HOME'S INFLUENCE.] "It is capable of acting at a distance from Mr. Home (not unfrequently as far as two or three feet), but is always strongest close to him. [Illustration: SCALE THE SAME AS ON FIG. 18. FIG. 20. DIAGRAM SHOWING TENSION IN CROOKES' APPARATUS (FIG. 16 AND 17) UNDER HOME'S INFLUENCE.] "Being firmly convinced that there could be no manifestation of one form of force without the corresponding expenditure of some other form of force, I for a long time searched in vain for evidence of any force or power being used up in the production of these results. "Now, however, having seen more of Mr. Home, I think I perceive what it is that this psychic force uses up for its development. In employing the terms _vital force_ or _nervous energy_, I am aware that I am employing words which convey very different significations to many investigators; but after witnessing the painful state of nervous and bodily prostration in which some of these experiments have left Mr. Home--after seeing him lying in an almost fainting condition on the floor, pale and speechless--I could scarcely doubt that the evolution of psychic force is accompanied by a corresponding drain on vital force." Sergeant Cox in speaking of the tests says, "The results appear to me conclusively to establish the important fact, that there is a force proceeding from the nerve-system capable of imparting motion and weight to solid bodies within the sphere of its influence." One of the medium's defenders has written: "Home's mysterious power, whatever it may have been, was very uncertain. Sometimes he could exercise it, and at others not, and these fluctuations were not seldom the source of embarrassment to him. He would often arrive at a place in obedience to an engagement, and, as he imagined, ready to perform, when he would discover himself absolutely helpless. After a séance his exhaustion appeared to be complete. "There is no more striking proof of the fact that Home really possessed occult gifts of some sort--psychic force or whatever else the power may be termed--than he gave such amazing exhibitions in the early part of his history and was able to do so little toward the end. If it had been juggling he would, like other conjurors, have improved on his tricks by experience, or at all events, while his memory held out he would not have deteriorated." Dr. Hammond's Experiments. Dr. William A. Hammond, the eminent neurologist, of Washington, D. C., took up the cudgels against Prof. Crookes' "Psychic Force" theory, and assigned the experiments to the domain of animal electricity. He wrote as follows:[2] "Place an egg in an egg-cup and balance a long lath upon the egg. Though the lath be almost a plank it will obediently follow a rod of glass, gutta percha or sealing-wax, which has been previously well dried and rubbed, the former with a piece of silk, and the two latter with woolen cloth. Now, in dry weather, many persons within my knowledge, have only to walk with a shuffling gait over the carpet, and then approaching the lath hold out the finger instead of the glass, sealing wax or gutta percha, and instantly the end of the lath at L rises to meet it, and the end at L is depressed. Applying these principles, I arranged an apparatus exactly like that of Prof. Crookes, except that the spring balance was such as is used for weighing letters and was therefore very delicate, indicating quarter ounces with exactness, and that the board was thin and narrow. [Illustration: FIG. 21. DR. HAMMOND'S APPARATUS.] "Applying the glass rod or stick of sealing-wax to the end resting by its foot on the table, the index of the balance at once descended, showing an increased weight of a little over three quarters of an ounce, and this without the board being raised from the table. "I then walked over a thick Turkey rug for a few moments, and holding my finger under the board near the end attached to the balance, caused a fall of the index of almost half an ounce. I then rested my finger lightly on the end of the board immediately over the foot, and again the index descended and oscillated several times, just as in Mr. Home's experiments. The lowest point reached was six and a quarter ounces, and as the board weighed, as attached to the balance, five ounces, there was an increased weight of one and a quarter ounces. At no time was the end of the board raised from the table. "I then arranged the apparatus so as to place a thin glass tumbler nearly full of water immediately over the fulcrum, as in Mr. Crookes' experiment, and again the index fell and oscillated on my fingers being put into the water. "Now if one person can thus, with a delicate apparatus like mine, cause the index, through electricity, to descend and ascend, it is not improbable that others, like Mr. Home, could show greater, or even different electrical power, as in Prof. Crookes' experiments. It is well known that all persons are not alike in their ability to be electrically excited. Many persons, myself among them, can light the gas with the end of the finger. Others cannot do it with any amount of shuffling over the carpet. "At any rate is it not much more sensible to believe that Mr. Home's experiments are to be thus explained than to attribute the results of his semi-mysterious attempts to spiritualism or psychic force?" 3. Rope-Tying and Holding Mediums. THE DAVENPORT BROTHERS. Ira Erastus and William Henry Davenport were born at Buffalo, N. Y., the former on Sept. 17, 1839, and the latter on February 1, 1841. Their father, Ira Davenport, was in the police detective department, and, it is alleged, invented the celebrated rope-tying feats after having seen the Indian jugglers of the West perform similar illusions. The usual stories about ghostly phenomena attending the childhood of mediums were told about the Davenport Brothers, but it was not until 1855 that they started on their tour of the United States, with their father as showman or spiritual lecturer. When the Civil War broke out, the Brothers, accompanied by Dr. J. B. Ferguson, formerly an Independent minister of Nashville, Tenn., in the capacity of lecturer, and a Mr. Palmer as general agent and manager, went to England to exhibit their mediumistic powers, following the example of D. D. Home. With the company also was a Buffalo boy named Fay, of German-American parentage, who had formerly acted as ticket-taker for the mediums. He discovered the secret of the rope-tying feat, and was an adept at the coat feat, so he was employed as an "under-study" in case of the illness of William Davenport, who was in rather delicate health. The Brothers Davenport at this period, aged respectively 25 and 23 years, had "long black curly hair, broad but not high foreheads, dark eyes, heavy eye-brows and moustaches, firm set lips, and a bright, keen look." Their first performance in England was given at the Concert Rooms, Hanover Square, London, and created intense excitement. _Punch_ called the _furore_ over the spirit rope-tyers the "tie-fuss fever," and said the mediums were "Ministers of the Interior, with a seat in the Cabinet." J. N. Maskelyne, the London conjurer of Egyptian Hall, wrote of them: "About the Davenport Brothers' performances, I have to say that they were and still remain the most inexplicable ever presented to the public as of spiritual origin; and had they been put forth as feats of jugglery would have awakened a considerable amount of curiosity though certainly not to the extent they did." In September, 1865, the Brothers arrived in Paris, and placarded the city with enormous posters announcing that the Brothers Davenport, spirit-mediums, would give a series of public séances at the _Salle Herz_. Their reputation had preceded them to France and the _boulevardiers_ talked of nothing but the wonderful American mediums and their mysterious cabinet. Before exhibiting in Paris the Davenports visited the _Chateau de Gennevilliers_, whose owner was an enthusiastic believer in Spiritism, and gave a séance before a select party of journalists and scientific men. The exhibition was pronounced marvellous in the extreme and perfectly inexplicable. The Parisian press was divided on the subject of the Davenports and their advertised séances. Some of the papers protested against such performances on the ground that they were dangerous to the mental health of the public, and, one writer said, "Particularly to those weaker intellects which are always ready enough to accept as gospel the tricks and artifices of the adepts of sham witchcraft." M. Edmond About, the famous journalist and novelist, in the _Opinion Nationale_, wrote a scathing denunciation of Spiritism, but all to no purpose, except to inflame public curiosity. The performances of the Davenports were divided into two parts: (1) The light séance, (2) the dark séance. In the light séance a cabinet, elevated from the stage by three trestles, was used. It was a simple wooden structure with three doors. In the centre door was a lozenge-shaped window covered with a curtain. Upon the sides of the cabinet hung various musical instruments, a guitar, a violin, horns, tambourines, and a big dinner bell. [Illustration: FIG. 22. THE DAVENPORT BROTHERS IN THEIR CABINET.] A committee chosen by the audience tied the mediums' hands securely behind their backs, fastened their legs together, and pinioned them to their seats in the cabinet, and to the cross rails with strong ropes. The side doors were closed first, then the center door, but no sooner was the last fastened, than the hands of one of the mediums were thrust through the window in the centre door. In a very short time, at a signal from the mediums, the doors were opened, and the Davenports stepped forth, with the ropes in their hands, every knot untied, confessedly by spirit power. The astonishment of the spectators amounted to awe. On an average it took ten minutes to pinion the Brothers; but a single minute was required for their release. Once more the mediums went into the cabinet, this time with the ropes lying in a coil at their feet. Two minutes elapsed. Hey, presto! the doors were opened, and the Davenports were pronounced by the committee to be securely lashed to their seats. Seals were affixed to the knots in the ropes, and the doors closed as before. Pandemonium reigned. Bells were rung, horns blown, tambourines thumped, violins played, and guitars vigorously twanged. Heavy rappings also were heard on the ceiling, sides and floor of the cabinet, then after a brief but absolute silence, a bare hand and arm emerged from the lozenge window, and rung the big dinner bell. On opening the doors the Brothers were found securely tied as before, and seals intact. An amusing feature of the exhibition occurred when a venturesome spectator volunteered to sit inside of the cabinet between the two mediums. He came out with his coat turned inside out and his hat jammed over his eyes. In the dark séance the cabinet was dispensed with and the spectators, holding hands, formed a ring around the mediums. The lights were put out and similar phenomena took place, with the addition of luminous hands, and musical instruments floating in the air. Robert-Houdin wrote an interesting brochure on the Davenports, ("Secrets of Stage Conjuring," translated by Prof. Hoffmann) from which I take the following: "The ropes used by the Davenport Brothers are of a cotton fibre; and they present therefore smooth surfaces, adapted to slip easily one upon another. Gentlemen are summoned from the audience to tie the mediums. Now, tell me, is it an easy task for an amateur to tie a man up off-hand with a rope three yards long, in a very secure way? The amateur is flurried, self-conscious, anxious to acquit himself well of the business, but he is a gentleman, not a brute, and if one of the Brothers sees the ropes getting into a dangerous tangle, he gives a slight groan, as if he were being injured, and the instantaneous impulse of the other man is to loosen the cord a trifle. A fraction of an inch is an invaluable gain in the after-business of loosening the ropes. Sometimes the stiffening of a muscle, the raising of a shoulder, the crooking of a knee, gives all the play required by the Brothers in ridding themselves of their bonds. Their muscles and joints are wonderfully supple, too; the thumbs can be laid flat in the palm of the hand, the hand itself rounded until it is no broader than the wrist, and then it is easy to pull through. Violent wrenches send the ropes up toward the shoulder, vigorous shakings get the legs free; the first hand untied is thrust through the hole in the door of the cabinet, and then returns to give aid to more serious knots on his own or his brother's person. In tying themselves up the Davenports used the slip-knot, a sort of bow, the ends of which have only to be pulled to be tightened or loosened." This slip-knot is a very ingenious affair. (See Fig. 23.) In performing the spirit-tying, the mediums went into the cabinet with the ropes examined by the audience lying coiled at their feet. The doors were closed. They had concealed about their persons ropes in which these trick knots were already adjusted, and with which they very speedily secured themselves, having first secreted the genuine ropes. Then the doors were opened. Seals were affixed to the knots, but this sealing, owing to the position of the hands, and the careful exposition of the knots did not affect the slipping of the ropes sufficiently to prevent the mediums from removing and replacing their hands. [Illustration: NO. 23. TRICK-TIE IN CABINET WORK.] In the dark séance, flour was sometimes placed in the pinioned hands of the Davenports. On being released from their bonds, the flour was found undisturbed. This was considered a convincing test; for how could the Brothers possibly manipulate the musical instruments with their hands full of flour. One day a wag substituted a handful of snuff for flour, and when the mediums were examined, the snuff had disappeared and flour taken its place. As will be understood, in the above test the Davenports emptied the flour from their hands into secret pockets and at the proper moment took out cornucopias of flour and filled their hands again before securing themselves in the famous slip-knots. Among the exposés of the Brothers Davenport, Herrmann, the conjurer, gives the following in the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_: "The Davenports, for thirteen years, in Europe and America, augmented the faith in Spiritualism. Unfortunately for the Davenports they appeared at Ithaca, New York, where is situated Cornell University. The students having a scientific trend of mind, provided themselves before attending the performance with pyrotechnic balls containing phosphorus, so made as to ignite suddenly with a bright light. During the dark séance when the Davenports were supposed to be bound hand and foot within the closet and when the guitars were apparently floating in the air, the students struck their lights, whereupon the spirits were found to be no other than the Davenports themselves, dodging about the stage brandishing guitars and playing tunes and waving at the same time tall poles surmounted by phosphorescent spook pictures." The Davenports had some stormy experiences in Paris, but managed to come through all successfully, with plenty of French gold in their pockets. William died in October, 1877, at the Oxford Hotel, Sydney, Australia, having publicly denounced Spiritualism. Mr. Fay took to raising sheep in Australia, while Ira Davenport drifted back to his old home in Buffalo, New York. Many mediums, taking the cue from the Davenports, have performed the cabinet act with its accompanying rope-tying, but the conjurers (anti-spiritists) have, with the aid of mechanism, brought the business to a high degree of perfection, notably Mr. J. Nevil Maskelyne, of Egyptian Hall, London, and Mr. Harry Kellar, of the United States. Writing of the Davenport Brothers, Maskelyne says: "The instantaneous tying and untying was simply marvellous, and it utterly baffled everyone to discover, until, on one occasion, the accidental falling of a piece of drapery from a window (the lozenge-shaped aperture in the door of the cabinet), at a critical moment let me into the secret. I was able in a few months to reproduce every item of the Davenports' cabinet and dark séance. So close was the resemblance to the original, that _the Spiritualist had no alternative but to claim us_ (Maskelyne and Cooke) _as most powerful spirit mediums who found it more profitable to deny the assistance of spirits_." Robert-Houdin's explanation of the slip-knot, used by the Davenports in their dark séance, is the correct one, but he failed to fathom the mystery of the mode of release of the Brothers after they were tied in the cabinet by a committee selected from the audience. Anyone trying to extricate himself from bondage _a la_ Houdin, no matter how slippery and serpentine he be, would find it exceedingly difficult. It seems almost incredible, but trickery was used in the light séance, as well as the dark. Maskelyne, as quoted above, claimed to have penetrated the mystery, but he kept it a profound secret--though he declared that his cabinet work was trickery. The writer is indebted for an initiation into the mysteries of the Davenport Brothers' rope-tying to Mr. H. Morgan Robinson (Professor Helmann), of Washington, D. C., a very clever prestidigitateur. In the year 1895, after an unbroken silence of nineteen years, Fay, ex-assistant of the Davenports, determined to resume the profession of public medium. He abandoned his sheep ranch and hunted up Ira Davenport. They gave several performances in Northern towns, and finally landed at the Capital of the Nation, in the spring of 1895, and advertised several séances at Willard's Hall. A very small audience greeted them on their first appearance. Among the committee volunteering to go on the stage and tie the mediums were the writer and Mr. Robinson. After the séance the prestidigitateur fully explained the _modus operandi_ of the mystic tie, which is herein for the first time correctly given to the public. The medium holds out his left wrist first and has it tied securely, about the middle of the rope. Two members of the committee are directed to pull the ends of the cord vigorously. "Are you confident that the knots are securely tied?" he asks; when the committee respond "yes," he puts his hand quickly behind him, and places against the wrist, the wrist of his right hand, in order that they may be pinioned together. During this rapid movement he twists the rope about the knot on his left wrist, thereby allowing enough slack cord to disengage his right hand when necessary. To slip the right hand back into place is an easy matter. After both hands are presumably tied, the medium steps into the cabinet; the ends of the rope are pushed through two holes in the chair or wooden seat, by the committee and made fast to the medium's legs. Bells ring, horns blow, and the performer's hand is thrust through the window of the cabinet. Finally a gentleman is requested to enter the cabinet with the medium. The doors are locked and a perfect pandemonium begins; when they are opened the volunteer assistant tumbles out in great trepidation. His hat is smashed over his eyes, his cravat is tied around his leg, and he is found to have on the medium's coat, while the medium wears the gentleman's coat turned inside out. It all appears very remarkable, but the mystery is cleared up when I state that the innocent looking gentleman is invariably a confederate, what conjurers call a _plant_, because he is planted in the audience to volunteer for the special act. Ira and William Davenport were tied in the manner above described. Often one of the Brothers allowed himself to be genuinely pinioned, after having received a preconcerted signal from his partner that all was right, _i. e._, the partner had been fastened by the trick tie, calling attention to the knots in the cord, etc. The trick tie, however, is so delusive, that it is impossible to penetrate the secret in the short time allowed the committee for investigation, and there is no special reason for permitting a genuine tie-up. Once in a great while, the Davenports were over-reached by clever committee-men and tied up so tightly that there was no getting loose. Where one brother failed to execute the trick and was genuinely fastened, the other medium performed the spirit evolutions, and cut his "confrere" loose before they came out of the cabinet. The Fay-Davenport revival proved a failure, and the mediums dissolved partnership in Washington. Kellar, the magician and former assistant of the original Davenport combination, by a curious coincidence was giving his fine conjuring exhibition in the city at the same time. His tricks far eclipsed the feeble revival of the rope-tying phenomena. The fickle public crowded to see the magician and neglected the mediums. ANNIE EVA FAY. One of the most famous of the materializing mediums now exhibiting in the United States is Annie Eva Fay. She is quite an adept at the spirit-tying business, and like the Davenports, uses a cabinet on the stage, but her method of tying, though clever, is inferior to that used by the Brothers in their balmy days. In the center of the Fay cabinet (a plain, curtained affair) is a post firmly screwed to the stage. The medium permits a committee of two from the audience to tie her to this post, and seal the bandages about her wrists with court plaster. She then takes her seat upon a small stool in front of the stanchion; the musical instruments are placed on her lap, and the curtains of the cabinet closed. Immediately the evidences of _spirit power_ begin: the bell is jingled, the tambourine thumped, and the sound of a horn heard, simultaneously. The Fay method of tying is designed especially to facilitate the medium's actions. Cotton bandages are used, and the committee are invited to sew the knots through and through. Each wrist is tied with a bandage, about an inch and a half wide by a half yard in length; and the medium then clasps her hands behind her, so that her wrists are about six inches apart. The committee now proceed to tie the ends of the bandages firmly together, and, after this is accomplished, the dangling pieces of the bandages are clipped off. It is true, the medium is firmly bound by this process, and it would be physically impossible for her to release herself, without disturbing the sewing and the seals, but it is not intended for her to release herself at all; the method pursued being altogether different from the old species of rope-tying. All being secure, the committee are requested to pass another bandage about the short ligature between the lady's wrists, and tie it in double square knots, and firmly secure this to a ring in the post of the cabinet, the medium being seated on a stool in front of the stanchion, facing the audience. Her neck is likewise secured to the post by cotton bandages and her feet fastened together with a cord, the end of which passes out of the cabinet and is held by one of the committee. The peculiar manner of holding the hands, described above, enables the medium to secure for her use, a ligature of knotted cloth between her hands, some six inches long; and the central bandage, usually tied in four or five double knots, gives her about two inches play between the middle of the cotton handcuffs and the ring in the post, to which it is secured. The ring is two and a half inches in diameter, and the staple which holds it to the stanchion is a half inch. The left hand of the medium gives six additional inches, and the bandage on her wrist slips readily along her slender arm nearly half way to the elbow--"all of which," says John W. Truesdell,[3] who was the first to expose Miss Fay's spirit pretensions, "gives the spirits a clear leeway of not less than 20 inches from the stanchion. The moment the curtain is closed, the medium, under spirit influence spreads her hands as far apart as possible, an act which stretches the knotted ligature so that the bandage about it will easily slip from the centre to either wrist; then, throwing her lithe form by a quick movement, to the left, so that her hips will pass the stanchion without moving her feet from the floor, the spirits are able, through the medium, to reach whatever may have been placed upon her lap." One of Annie Eva's most convincing tests is the accordion which plays, after it has been bound fast with tapes and the tapes carefully sealed at every note, so as to prevent its being performed on in the regular manner. Her method of operating, though simple, is decidedly ingenious. She places a small tube in the valve-hole of the instrument, breathes and blows alternately into it, and then by fingering the keys, executes an air with excellent effect. Sometimes she places a musical box on an oblong plate of glass suspended from the ceiling by four cords. The box plays and stops at word of command, much to the astonishment of listeners. "Electricity," exclaims the reader! Hardly so, for the box is completely insulated on the sheet of glass. Then how is it done? Mr. Asprey Vere, an investigator of spirit phenomena, tells the secret in the following words: ("Modern Magic"). "In the box there is placed a balance lever which when the glass is in the slightest degree tilted, arrests the fly-fan, and thus prevents the machinery from moving. At the word of command the glass is made level, and the fly-fan being released, the machinery moves, and a tune is played. When commanded to stop, either side of the cord is pulled by a confederate behind the scenes, the balance lever drops, the fly-fan is arrested, and the music stops." One of the tests presented to the American public by this medium is the "spirit-hand," constructed of painted wood or _papier mache_, which raps out answers to questions, after it has been isolated from all contact by being placed on a sheet of glass supported on the backs of two chairs. It is a trick performed by every conjurer, and the secret is a piece of black silk thread, worked by confederates stationed in the wings of the theatre, one at the right, the other at the left. The thread lies along the stage when not in use, but at the proper cue from the medium, it is lifted up and brought in contact with the wooden hand. The hand is so constructed that the palm lies on the glass sheet and the wrist, with a fancy lace cuff about it, is elevated an inch above the glass, the whole apparatus being so pivoted that a pressure of the thread from above will depress the wrist and elevate the palm. When the thread is relaxed the hand comes down on the glass with a thump and makes the spirit rap which is so effective. A rapping skull made on similar principles is also in vogue among mediums. CHARLES SLADE. Annie Eva Fay has a rival in Charles Slade, who is a clever performer and a most convincing talker. His cabinet test is the same as Miss Fay's, but he has other specialties that are worth explaining--one is the "table-raising," and another is the "spirit neck-tie." The effect of the first experiment is as follows: Slade, with his arms bared and coat removed, requests several gentlemen to sit around a long table, reserving the head for himself. Hands are placed on the table, and developments awaited. "Do you feel the table raising?" asks the medium, after a short pause. "We do!" comes the response of the sitters. Slade then rises; all stand up, and the table is seen suspended in the air, about a foot from the floor of the stage. In a little while an uncontrollable desire seems to take possession of the table to rush about the stage. Frequently the medium requests several persons to get on the table, but that has no effect whatever. The same levitation takes place. The secret of this surprising mediumistic test is very simple. In the first place, the man who sits at the foot of the table is a confederate. Both medium and confederate wear about their waists wide leather belts, ribbed and strengthened with steel bands, and supported from the shoulders by bands of leather and steel. In the front of each belt is a steel hinge concealed by the vest of the wearer. In the act of sitting down at the table the medium and his confederate quickly pull the hinges which catch under the top of the table when the sitters rise. The rest of the trick is easily comprehended. When the levitation act is finished the hinges are folded up and hidden under the vests of the performers. The "spirit neck-tie" is one of the best things in the whole range of mediumistic marvels, and has never to my knowledge been exposed. A rope is tied about the medium's neck with the knots at the back and the ends are thrust through two holes in one side of the cabinet, and tied in a bow knot on the outside. The holes in the cabinet must be on a level with the medium's neck, after he is seated. The curtains of the cabinet are then closed, and the committee requested to keep close watch on the bow-knot on the outside of the cabinet. The assistant in a short time pulls back the curtain from the cabinet on the side farthest from the medium, and reveals a sheeted figure which writes messages and speaks to the spectators. Other materializations take place. The curtain is drawn. At this juncture the medium is heard calling: "Quick, quick, release me!" The assistant unfastens the bow-knot, the ends of the rope are quickly drawn into the cabinet, and the medium comes forward, looking somewhat exhausted, with the rope still tied about his neck. The question resolves itself into two factors--either the medium gets loose the neck-tie and impersonates the spirits or the materializations are genuine. "Gets loose! But that is impossible," exclaim the committee, "we watched the cord in the closest way." The secret of this surprising feat lies in a clever substitution. The tie is genuine, but the medium, after the curtains of the cabinet are closed, cuts the cord with a sharp knife, just about the region of the throat, and impersonates the ghosts, with the aid of various wigs and disguises concealed about him. Then he takes a second cord from his pocket, ties it about his neck with the same number of knots as are in the original rope and twists the neck-tie around so that these knots will appear at the back of his neck. Now, he exclaims, "Quick, quick, unfasten the cord." As soon as his assistant has untied the simple bow knot on the outside of the cabinet, the medium quickly pulls the genuine rope into the cabinet and conceals it in his pocket. When he presents himself to the spectators the rope about his neck (presumed to be the original) is found to be correctly tied and untampered with. Much of the effect depends on the rapidity with which the medium conceals the original cord and comes out of the cabinet. The author has seen this trick performed in parlors, the holes being bored in a door. Charles Slade makes a great parade in his advertisements about exposing the vulgar tricks of bogus mediums, but he says nothing about the secrets of his own pet illusions. His exposés are made for the purpose of enhancing his own mediumistic marvels. I insert a verbatim copy of the handbills with which he deluges the highways and byways of American cities and towns. SLADE Will fully demonstrate the various methods employed by such renowned spiritualistic mediums as Alex. Hume, Mrs. Hoffmann, Prof. Taylor, Chas. Cooke, Richard Bishop, Dr. Arnold, and various others, IN PLAIN, OPEN LIGHT. Every possible means will be used to enlighten the auditor as to whether these so-called wonders are enacted through the aid of spirits or are the result of natural agencies. _SUCH PHENOMENA AS_ Spirit Materializations, Marvelous Superhuman Visions, Spiritualistic Rappings, Slate Writing, Spirit Pictures, Floating Tables and Chairs, Remarkable Test of the Human Mind, Second Sight Mysteries, A Human Being Isolated from Surrounding Objects Floating in Mid-Air. Committees will be selected by the audience to assist SLADE, and to report their views as to the why and wherefore of the many strange things that will be shown during the evening. This is done so that every person attending may learn the truth regarding the tests, whether they are genuine, or caused by expert trickery. Do not class or confound SLADE with the numerous so-called spirit mediums and spiritual exposers that travel through the country, like a set of roaming vampires, seeking whom they may devour. It is SLADE'S object in coming to your city to enlighten the people one way or the other as to the real TRUTH CONCERNING THESE MYSTERIES. Scientific men, and many great men, have believed there was a grain of essential truth in the claims of Spiritualism. It was believed more on the account of the want of power to deny it than anything else. The idea that under some strained and indefinable possibilities the spirit of the mortal man may communicate with the spirit of the departed man is something that the great heart of humanity is prone to believe, as it has faith in future existence. No skeptic will deny any man's right to such a belief, but this little grain of hope has been the foundation for such extensive and heartless mediumistic frauds that it is constantly losing ground. A NIGHT OF Wonderful Manifestations THE VEIL DRAWN So that all may have an insight into the _SPIRIT WORLD_ And behold many things that are Strange and Startling. The Clergy, the Press, Learned Synods and Councils, Sage Philosophers and Scientists, in fact, the whole world have proclaimed these Philosophical Idealisms to be an astounding FACT. YOU ARE BROUGHT Face to Face with the Spirits. _A SMALL ADMISSION WILL BE CHARGED TO DEFRAY EXPENSES._ PIERRE L. O. A. KEELER. Pierre Keeler's fame as a producer of spirit phenomena rests largely upon his materializing séances. It was his materializations that received the particular attention of the Seybert Commission. The late Mr. Henry Seybert, who was an ardent believer in modern Spiritualism, presented to the University of Pennsylvania a sum of money to found a chair of philosophy, with the proviso that the University should appoint a commission to investigate "all systems of morals, religion or philosophy which assume to represent the truth, and particularly of modern Spiritualism." The following gentlemen were accordingly appointed, and began their investigations: Dr. William Pepper, Dr. Joseph Leidy, Dr. George A. Koenig, Prof. R. E. Thompson, Prof. George S. Fullerton, and Dr. Horace H. Furness. Subsequently others were added to the commission--Dr. Coleman Sellers, Dr. James W. White, Dr. Calvin B. Kneer, and Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. Dr. Pepper, Provost of the University, was _ex-officio_ chairman; Dr. Furness, acting chairman, and Prof. Fullerton, secretary. Keeler's materializations are thus described in the report of the commission: "On May 27 the Seybert commission held a meeting at the house of Mr. Furness at 8 p. m., to examine the phenomena occurring in the presence of Mr. Pierre L. O. A. Keeler, a professional medium. "The medium, Mr. Keeler, is a young man, with well cut features, curly brown hair, a small sandy mustache, and rather worn and anxious expression; he is strongly built, about 5 feet 8 inches high, and with rather short, quite broad, and very muscular hands and strong wrists. The hands were examined by Dr. Pepper and Mr. Fullerton after the séance. "The séance was held in Mr. Furness' drawing-room, and a space was curtained off by the medium in the northeast corner, thus, (Fig. 25): [Illustration: FIG. 25. PIERRE KEELER'S CABINET SEANCE.] "The curtain is represented by A, B; C, D and E are three chairs, placed in front of the curtain by the medium, in one of which (E) he afterwards sat; G denotes the position of Mrs. Keeler; F is a small table, placed within the curtain, and upon which was a tambourine, a guitar, two bells, a hammer, a metallic ring; the stars show the positions of the spectators, who sat in a double row--the two stars at the top facing the letter A indicate the positions taken by Mrs. Kase and Col. Kase, friends of Mr. Keeler, according to the directions of the medium. "The curtain, or rather curtains, were of black muslin, and arranged as follows: There was a plain black curtain, which was stretched across the corner, falling to the floor. Its height, when in position, was 53 inches; it was made thus: [Illustration: FIG. 26. PIERRE KEELER'S CABINET CURTAIN.] "The cord which held the curtain was 1, 2, and the flaps which are represented as standing above it (A, B, C, etc.), fell down over A1, B1, C1, etc., and could be made to cover the shoulders of one sitting with his back against the curtain. A black curtain was also pinned against the wall, in the space curtained off, partly covering it. Another curtain was added to the one pictured, as will be described presently. "The medium asked Col. Kase to say a few words as to the necessity of observing the conditions, need of harmony, etc. And then the medium himself spoke a few words of similar import. He then drew the curtain along the cord (1, 2,) and fastened it; placed three wooden chairs in front of the curtain, as indicated in the diagram, and, saying he needed to form a battery, asked Miss Agnes Irwin to sit in chair D, and Mr. Yost in chair C, the medium himself sitting in chair E. A black curtain was then fastened by Mrs. Keeler over Mr. Keeler, Miss Irwin and Mr. Yost, being fastened at G, between E and D, between D and C, and beyond A; thus entirely covering the three sitting in front of the stretched curtain up to their necks; and when the flaps before mentioned were pulled down over their shoulders, nothing could be seen but the head of each. "Before the last curtain was fastened over them, the medium placed both his hands upon the forearm and wrist of Miss Irwin, the sleeve being pulled up for the purpose, and Miss Irwin grasped with her right hand the left wrist of Mr. Yost, his right hand being in sight to the right of the curtain. "After some piano music the medium said he felt no power from this 'battery,' and asked Mrs. E. D. Gillespie to take Miss Irwin's place. Hands and curtains were arranged as before. The lights were turned down until the room was quite dim. During the singing the medium turned to speak to Mr. Yost, and his body, which had before faced rather away from the two other persons of the 'battery' (which position would have brought his right arm out in front of the stretched curtain), was now turned the other way, so that had he released his grasp upon Mrs. Gillespie's arm, his own right arm could have had free play in the curtained space behind him. His left knee also no longer stood out under the curtain in front, but showed a change of position. "At this time Mrs. Gillespie declared she felt a touch, and soon after so did Mr. Yost. The medium's body was distinctly inclined toward Mr. Yost at this time. Mrs. Gillespie said she felt taps, but declared that, to the best of her knowledge, she still felt the medium's two hands upon her arm. "Raps indicated that the spirit, George Christy, was present. As one of those present played on the piano, the tambourine was played in the curtained space and thrown over the curtain; bells were rung; the guitar was thrummed a little. At this time the medium's face was toward Mrs. Gillespie, and his right side toward the curtain. His body was further in against the curtain than either of the others. Upon being asked, Mrs. Gillespie then said she thought she still felt two hands upon her arm. "The guitar was then thrust out, at least the end of it was, at the bottom of the curtain, between Mrs. Gillespie and the medium. Mrs. Keeler drawing the curtain from over the toes of the medium's boots, to show where his feet were; the guitar was thrummed a little. Had the medium's right arm been free the thrumming could have been done quite easily with one hand. Afterward the guitar was elevated above the curtain; the tambourine, which was by Mrs. Keeler placed upon a stick held up within the inclosure, was made to whirl by the motion of the stick. The phenomena occurred successively, not simultaneously. "When the guitar was held up, and when the tambourine was made to whirl, both of these were to the right of the medium, chiefly behind Mrs. Gillespie; they were just where they might have been produced by the right arm of the medium, had it been free. Two clothes-pins were then passed over the curtain, and they were used in drumming to piano music. They could easily be used in drumming by one hand alone, the fingers being thrust into them. The pins were afterward thrown out over the curtain. Mr. Sellers picked one up as soon as it fell, and found it warm in the split, as though it had been worn. The drumming was probably upon the tambourine. "A hand was seen moving rapidly with a trembling motion--which prevented it from being clearly observed--above the back curtain, between Mr. Yost and Mrs. Gillespie. Paper was passed over the curtain into the cabinet and notes were soon thrown out. The notes could have been written upon the small table within the enclosure by the right hand of the medium, had it been free. Mrs. Keeler then passed a coat over the curtain, and an arm was passed through the sleeve, the fingers, with the cuff around them being shown over the curtain. They were kept moving, and a close scrutiny was not possible. "Mr. Furness was then invited to hold a writing tablet in front of the curtain, when the hand, almost concealed by the coat-sleeve and the flaps mentioned as attached to the curtain, wrote with a pencil on the tablet. The writing was rapid, and the hand, when not writing, was kept in constant, tremulous motion. The hand was put forth, in this case not over the top curtain, but came from under the flap, and could easily have been the medium's right hand were it disengaged, for it was about on a level with his shoulder and to his right, between him and Mrs. Gillespie. Mr. Furness was allowed to pass his hand close to the curtain and grasp the hand for a moment. It was a right hand. "Soon after the medium complained of fatigue, and the sitting was discontinued. It was declared by the Spiritualists present to be a fairly successful séance. When the curtains were removed the small table in the enclosure was found to be overturned, and the bells, hammer, etc., on the floor. "It is interesting to note the space within which all the manifestations occurred. They were, without exception, where they would have been had they been produced by the medium's right arm. Nothing happened to the left of the medium, nor very far over to the right. The sphere of activity was between the medium and Mr. Yost, and most of the phenomena occurred, as, for example, the whirling of the tambourine, behind Mrs. Gillespie. "The front curtain--that is, the main curtain which hung across the corner--was 85 inches in length, and the cord which supported it 53 inches from the floor. The three chairs which were placed in front of it were side by side, and it would not have been difficult for the medium to reach across and touch Mr. Yost. When Mrs. Keeler passed objects over the curtain, she invariably passed them to the right of the medium, although her position was on his left; and the clothes-pins, paper, pencil, etc., were all passed over at a point where the medium's right hand could easily have reached them. "To have produced the phenomena by using his right hand the medium would have had to pass it under the curtain at his back. This curtain was not quite hidden by the front one at the end, near the medium, and this end both Mr. Sellers and Dr. Pepper saw rise at the beginning of the séance. The only thing worthy of consideration, as opposed to a natural explanation of the phenomena, was the grasp of the medium's hand on Mrs. Gillespie's arm. "The grasp was evidently a tight one above the wrist, for the arm was bruised for about four inches. There was no evidence of a similar pressure above that, as the marks on the arm extended in all about five or six inches only. The pressure was sufficient to destroy the sensibility of the forearm, and it is doubtful whether Mrs. Gillespie, with her arm in such a condition could distinguish between the grasp of one hand, with a divided pressure (applied by the two last fingers and the thumb and index) and a double grip by two hands. Three of our number, Mr. Sellers, Mr. Furness, and Dr. White, can, with one hand, perfectly simulate the double grip. "It is specially worthy of note that Mrs. Gillespie declared that, when the medium first laid hold of her arms with his right hand before the curtain was put over them, it was with an undergrip, and she felt his right arm under her left. But when the medium asked her if she felt both his hands upon her arm, and she said, yes, she could feel the grasp, but no arm under hers, though she moved her elbow around to find it--she felt a hand, but not an arm, and at no time during the séance did she find that arm. "It should be noted that both the medium and Mr. Yost took off their coats before being covered with the curtain. It was suggested by Dr. Pepper that this might have been required by the medium as a precaution against movements on the part of Mr. Yost. The white shirt-sleeves would have shown against the black background." I attended a number of Keeler's materializing exhibitions in Washington, D. C., in the spring of 1895, and it is my opinion that the writing of his so-called spirit messages is a simple affair, the very long and elaborate ones being written before the séance begins and the short ones by the medium during the sitting. The latter are done in a scrawling, uncertain hand, just such penmanship one would execute when blindfolded. The evidence of Dr. G. H. La Fetra, of Washington, D. C., is sufficiently convincing on this point. Said Dr. La Fetra to me: "Some years ago I went with a friend, Col. Edward Hayes, to one of Mr. Keeler's light séances. It was rather early in the evening, and but few persons had assembled. Upon the mantel piece of the séance-room were several tablets of paper. Unobserved, I took up these tablets, one at a time, and drew the blade of my pen-knife across one end of each of them, so that I might identify the slips of paper torn therefrom by the nicks in them. In a little while, the room was filled with people, and the séance began; the gas being lowered to a dim religious light. When the time came for the writing, Mr. Keeler requested that some of the tablets of paper on the mantel be passed into the cabinet. This was done. Various persons present received 'spirit' communications, the slips of paper being thrown over the curtain of the cabinet by a 'materialized' hand. Some gentleman picked up the papers and read them, for the benefit of the spectators; afterwards he laid aside those not claimed by anybody. Some of these 'spirit' communications covered almost an entire slip. These were carefully written, some of them in a fine hand. The short messages were roughly scrawled. After the séance, Col. Hayes and myself quietly pocketed a dozen or more of the slips. The next morning at my office we carefully examined them. In every instance, we found that the well-written, lengthy messages were inscribed on _unnicked_ slips, the short ones being written on _nicked_ slips." To me, this evidence of Dr. La Fetra seems most conclusive, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that Keeler prepared his long communications before the séance and had them concealed upon his person, throwing them out of the cabinet at the proper moment. He used the _nicked_ tablets for his short messages, written on the spot, thereby completely revealing his method of operating to the ingenious investigator. The late Dr. Leonard Caughey, of Baltimore, Maryland, an intimate friend of the writer, made a specialty of anti-Spiritualistic tricks, and among others performed this cabinet test of Keeler's. He bought the secret from a broken-down medium for a few dollars, and added to it certain effects of his own, that far surpassed any of Keeler's. The writer has seen Dr. Caughey give the tests, and create the utmost astonishment. His improvement on the trick consisted in the use of a spring clasp like those used by gentlemen bicycle riders to keep their trousers in at the ankles. One end terminated in a soft rubber or chamois skin tip, shaped like a thumb, the other end had four representations of fingers. Two wire rings were soldered on the back of the clasp. This apparatus he had concealed under his vest. Before the curtain of the cabinet was drawn, Dr. Caughey grasped the arm of the lady on his right in the following manner: The thumb of his left hand under her wrist, the fingers extended above it; the thumb of his right hand resting on the thumb of the left, the fingers lightly resting on the fingers of the left hand. As soon as the curtain was fastened he extended the fourth and index fingers of the left hand to the fullest extent and pressed hard upon the lady's arm, relaxing at the same time the pressure of his second and third fingers. This movement exactly simulates the grasp of two hands, and enables the medium to take away his right hand altogether. Dr. Caughey then took his spring clasp, opened it by inserting his thumb and first finger in the soldered rings above mentioned, and lightly fastened it on the lady's arm near the wrist, relaxing the pressure of the first and fourth fingers of the left hand at the same moment. "I will slide my right hand along your arm, and grasp you near the elbow. It will relieve the pressure about your wrist; besides be more convincing to you that there is no trickery." So saying, he quickly slid the apparatus along her arm, and left it in the position spoken of. This produces a perfect illusion, the clasp with its trick thumb and fingers working to perfection. This apparatus may also be used in the following manner: Roll up your sleeves and exhibit your hands to the sitter. Tell him you are going to stand behind him and grasp his arms firmly near the shoulders. Take your position immediately under the gas jet. Ask him to please lower the light. Produce the trick clasps, distend them by means of your thumbs and fingers, and after the gas is lowered, grasp the sitter in the manner described. Remove your fingers and thumbs lightly from the clasps and perform various mediumistic evolutions, such as writing a message on a pad or slate placed on the sitter's head; strike him gently on his cheek with a damp glove, etc. When the séance is over, insert your fingers and thumbs in the soldered rings, remove the clasps and conceal them quickly. EUSAPIA PALADINO. The materializing medium who has caused the greatest sensation since Home's death is Eusapia Paladino, an Italian peasant woman. Signor Damiani, of Florence, Italy, discovered her alleged psychical powers in 1875, and brought her into notice. An Italian Count was so impressed with the manifestations witnessed in the presence of the illiterate peasant woman, that he insisted upon "a commission of scientific men being called to investigate them." In the year 1884, this commission held séances with Eusapia, and afterwards declared that the phenomena witnessed were inexplicable, and unquestionably the result of forces transcending ordinary experience. In the year 1892 another commission was formed in Milan to test Eusapia's powers as a medium, and from this period her fame dates, as the most remarkable psychic of modern times. The report drawn up by this commission was signed by Giovanni Schiaparelli, director of the Astronomical Observatory, Milan; Carl du Prel, doctor of philosophy, Munich; Angelo Brofferio, professor of physics in the Royal School of Agriculture, Portici; G. B. Ermacora, doctor of physics; Giorgio Finzi, doctor of physics. At some of the sittings were present Charles Richet and the famous Cesare Lombroso. The conclusion arrived at by these gentlemen was that Eusapia's mediumistic phenomena were most worthy of scientific attention, and were unfathomable. The medium reaped the benefit of this notoriety, and gave sittings to hundreds of investigators among the Italian nobility, charging as high as $500 for a single séance. At last she was exposed by a clever American, Dr. Richard Hodgson, of Boston, secretary of the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research. His account of the affair, communicated to the _New York Herald_, Jan. 10, 1897, is very interesting. Speaking of the report of the Milan commission, he says: [Illustration: FIG. 27. EUSAPIA PALADINO.] [Illustration: FIG. 28. EUSAPIA BEFORE THE SCIENTISTS.] "Their report confessed to seeing and hearing many strange things, although they believed they had the hands and feet of the psychic so closely held that she could have had nothing to do with the manifestations. "Chairs were moved, bells were rung, imprints of fingers were made on smoked paper and soft clay, apparitions of hands appeared on slightly luminous backgrounds, the chair of the medium and the medium herself were lifted to the table, the sound of trumpets, the contact of a seemingly human face, the touch of human hands, warm and moist, all were felt. "Most of these phenomena were repeated, and the members of the commission were, with two exceptions, satisfied that no known power could have produced them. Professor Richet did not sign the report, but induced Signora Eusapia to go to an island he owned in the Mediterranean, where other exacting tests were made under other scientific eyes. The investigators all agreed that the demonstrations could not be accounted for by ordinary forces. "I have found in my experience that learned scientific men are the most easily duped of any in the world. Instead of having a cold, inert piece of matter to investigate by exact processes and microscopic inspections, they had a clever, bright woman doing her best to mystify them. They could not cope with her. "Professor Richet replied to an article I wrote, upholding his position, and brought Signora Eusapia Paladino to Cambridge, England, where I joined the investigating committee. In the party were Professor Lodge, of Liverpool; Professor F. M. C. Meyer, secretary of the British Society for Psychical Research; Professor Richet and Mr. Henry Sedgwick, president of the society. "I found that the psychic, though giving a great variety of events, confined them to a very limited scope. She was seated during the tests at the end of a rectangular table and when the table was lifted it rose up directly at the other end. It was always so arranged that she was in the dark, even if the rest of the table was in the light; in the so-called light séances it was not light, the lamp being placed in an adjoining room. There were touches, punches and blows given, minor objects moved, some near and some further away; the outline of faces and hands appeared, etc. "When I came to hold her hands I found a key to the mystery. "It was chiefly that she made one hand and one foot do the work of both, by adroit substitution. Given a free hand and a free foot, and nearly all the phenomena can be explained. She has very strong, supple hands, with deft fingers and great coolness and intelligence. "This is the way she substituted one hand for both. She placed one of her hands over A's hand and the other under B's hand. Then, in the movements of the arms during the manifestation, she worked her hands toward each other until they rested one upon the other, with A's hand at the bottom of the pile, B's at the top and both her own, one upon the other, between. To draw out one hand and leave one and yet have the investigators feel that they still had a hand was easy. "With this hand free and in darkness there were great possibilities. There were strings, also, as I believe, which were attached to different objects and moved them. The dim outlines of faces and hands seen were clever representations of the medium's own free hand in various shapes. "It is thought that if a medium was kept clapping her hands she could do nothing with them, but one of the investigators found the Signora slapping her face with one hand, producing just the same sound as if her hands met, while the other hand was free to produce mysterious phenomena. "I have tried the experiment of shifting hands when those who held them knew they were going to be tricked, and yet they did not discover when I made the exchange. I am thoroughly satisfied that Signora Eusapia Paladino is a clever trickster." Eusapia Paladino was by no means disconcerted by Dr. Hodgson's exposé, but continued giving her séances. At the present writing she is continuing them in France with a number of new illusions. Many who have had sittings with her declare that she is able to move heavy objects without contact. Possibly this is due to jugglery, or it may be due to some psychic force as yet not understood. F. W. TABOR. Mr. F. W. Tabor is a materializing medium whose specialty is the trumpet test for the production of spirit voices. I had a sitting with him at the house of Mr. X, of Washington, D. C., on the night of Jan. 10, 1897. Seven persons, including the medium, sat around an ordinary-sized table in Mr. X--'s drawing room, and formed a chain of hands, in the following manner: Each person placed his or her hands on the table with the thumbs crossed, and the little fingers of each hand touching the little fingers of the sitters on the right and left. A musical box was set going and the light was turned out by Mr. X--, who broke the circle for that purpose, but immediately resumed his old position at the table. A large speaking trumpet of tin about three feet long had been placed upright in the center of the table, and near it was a pad of paper, and pencils. We waited patiently for some little time, the monotony being relieved by operatic airs from the music box, and the singing of hymns by the sitters. There were convulsive twitchings of the hands and feet of the medium, who complained of tingling sensations in those members. The first "phenomena" produced were balls of light dancing like will-o'-the-wisps over the table, and the materialization of a luminous spirit hand. Taps upon the table signalled the arrival of Mr. Tabor's spirit control, "Jim," a little newsboy, of San Francisco, who was run over some years ago by a street car. The medium was the first person who picked up the wounded waif and endeavored to administer to him, but without avail. "Jim" died soon after, and his disembodied spirit became the medium's control. Soon the trumpet arose from the table and floated over the heads of the sitters, and the voice of "Jim" was heard, sepulchral and awe-inspiring, through the instrument. Subsequently, messages of an impersonal character were communicated to Mr. X-- and his wife. At one time the trumpet was heard knocking against the chandelier. During the séance several of the ladies experienced the clasp of a ghostly hand about their wrists, and considerable excitement was occasioned thereby. It is not a difficult matter to explain this trumpet test. It hinges on one fact, _freedom of the medium's right hand_! In all of these holding tests, the medium employs a subterfuge to release his hands without the knowledge of the sitter on his right. During his convulsive twitchings, he quickly jerks his right hand away, but immediately extends the fingers of his left hand, and connects the index fingers with the little finger of the sitter's left hand, thereby completing the chain, or "battery," as it is technically called. Were the medium to use his thumb in making the connection the secret would be revealed, but the index finger of his left hand sufficiently simulates a little finger, and in the darkness the sitter is deceived. The right hand once released, the medium manipulates the trumpet and the phosphorescent spirit hands to his heart's content. Sometimes he utilizes the telescopic rod, or a pair of steel "crazy tongs," to elevate the trumpet to the ceiling. This holding test is absurdly simple and perhaps for that reason is so convincing. Mr. Tabor has another method of holding which is far more deceptive than the above. I am indebted to the "Revelations of a Spirit Medium" for an explanation of this test. "The investigators are seated in a circle around the table, male and female alternating. The person sitting on the medium's right--for he sits in the circle--grasps the medium's right wrist in his left hand, while his own right wrist is held by the sitter on his right and this is repeated clear around the circle. This makes each sitter hold the right wrist of his left hand neighbor in his left hand, while his own right hand wrist is held in the left hand of his neighbor on the left. Each one's hands are thus secured and engaged, including the medium's. It will be seen that no one of the sitters can have the use of his or her hands without one or the other of their neighbors knowing it. As each hand was held by a separate person, you cannot understand how he [the medium] could get the use of either of them except the one on his right was a confederate. Such was not the case, and still he _did_ have the use of one hand, the right one. But how? He took his place before the light was turned down, and those holding him say he did not let go for an instant during the séance. He did though, after the light was turned out for the purpose of getting his handkerchief to blow his nose. After blowing his nose he requested the sitter to again take his wrist, which is done, but this time it is the wrist of the left hand instead of the right. He has crossed his legs and there is but one knee to be felt, hence the sitter on the right does not feel that she is reaching across the right knee and thinks it is the left knee which she does feel to be the right. He has let his hand slip down until instead of holding the sitter on his left by the wrist he has him by the fingers, thus allowing him a little more distance, and preventing the left hand sitter using the hand to feel about and discover the right hand sitter's hand on the wrist of the hand holding his. You will see, now, that although both sitters are holding the same hand each one thinks he is holding the one on his or her side of the medium. The balance of the séance is easy." An amusing incident happened during my sitting with Mr. Tabor. Growing somewhat weary waiting for him to "manifest," I determined to undertake some materializations on my own account. I adopted the subterfuge of getting my right hand loose from the lady on my right, and produced the spirit hand that clasped the wrist of several of the sitters in the circle. Mr. X-- asked "Jim" if everything was all right in the circle, every hand promptly joined, and the magnetic conditions perfect. "Jim" responded with three affirmative taps on the table top. I congratulate myself on having deceived "Jim," a spirit operating in the fourth dimension of space, and supposedly cognizant of all that was transpiring at the séance. Once, when the medium was floating the trumpet over my head, I grasped the instrument and dashed it on the table. He made no further attempt to manipulate the trumpet in my direction, and very shortly brought the séance to a close. No written communications were received during the evening. 4. Spirit Photography. You may deceive the human eye, say the advocates of spirit materializations, but you cannot deceive the eye of science, the _photographic camera_. Then they triumphantly produce the spirit photograph as indubitable evidence of the reality of ghostly materializations. "Spirit photography," says the late Alexandre Herrmann, in an article on magic, published in the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_, "was the invention of a man in London, and for ten years Spiritualists accepted the pictures as genuine representations of originals in the spirit land. The snap kodak has superseded the necessity of the explanation of spirit photography." To be more explicit, there are two ways of producing spirit photographs, by _double printing_ and by _double exposure_. In the first, the scene is printed from one negative, and the spirit printed in from another. In the second method, the group with the friendly spook in proper position is arranged, and the lens of the camera uncovered, half of the required exposure being given; then the lens is capped, and the person doing duty as the sheeted ghost gets out of sight, and the exposure is completed. The result is very effective when the picture is printed, the real persons being represented sharp and well defined, while the ghost is but a hazy outline, transparent, through which the background shows. Every one interested in psychic phenomena who makes a pilgrimage to the Capital of the Nation visits the house of Dr. Theodore Hansmann. For ten years Dr. Hansmann has been an ardent student of Spiritualism, and has had sittings with many celebrated mediums. The walls of his office are literally covered with spirit pictures of famous people of history, executed by spirits under supposed test conditions. There are drawings in color by Raphael, Michel Angelo, and others. In one corner of the room is a book-case filled with slates, upon the surfaces of which are messages from the famous dead, attested by their signatures. In the fall of 1895, a correspondent of the _New York Herald_ interviewed Doctor Hansmann on the subject of spirit photographs, and subsequently visited the United States Bureau of Ethnology, where an interview was had with Mr. Dinwiddie, an expert photographer. Here is the substance of this second interview, published in the _Herald_, Nov. 9, 1895. "Dr. Hansmann's collection of 'spirit' photographs is most interesting. There is one with the face of the Empress Josephine, and on the same plate is the head of Professor Darius Lyman, for a long time Chief of the Bureau of Navigation. The head of the Empress Josephine has a diadem around it, and the lights and shadows remind one of the well known portrait of her. On another plate are Grant and Lincoln, Among his other photographs Dr. Hansmann brought out one of a man who was described to me as an Indian agent. Around his head were eleven smaller 'spirit' heads of Indians. In looking at the blue print closely it seemed to me as if I had seen those identical heads--the same as to light, shade and posing--somewhere before. "I was aided at the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution by Mr. F. Webb Hodge, the acting director, who on looking at the blue print named the Indians directly; several of the pictures were of Indians still alive. This, of course, immediately disposed of the idea of the blue print Indians being spirits. [Illustration: FIG. 29--SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPH. [Taken by the Author.]] "Moreover, Mr. Dinwiddie produced the negatives containing the identical portraits of these Indians and made me several proofs, which on a comparison, feature by feature, light for light, and shade for shade, show unquestionably that the faces on the blue print are copies of the portraits made by the photographer of the Bureau of Ethnology. "Mr. Dinwiddie asked me to sit down for awhile, and offered to make me some spirit photographs. This he did, and the results obtained may be considered as far better examples of the art of 'spirit' photography than those of the medium, Keeler. "The matter was very simply done. Mr. Dinwiddie asked one of the ladies from the office to come in, and, she consented to pose as a spirit. She was placed before the camera at a distance of about six feet, a red background was given her, so that it might photograph dark, and she was asked to put on a saintly expression. This she did, and Mr. Dinwiddie gave the plate a half-second exposure. Another head was taken on the other side of the plate in much the same manner. After this was done the other or central photograph was taken with an exposure of four seconds, the plate being rather sensitive. "The plate was then taken to the dark room and developed. The negative came out very well at first, and the halo was put on afterward, when the plate had been dried. The halo was made by rubbing vignetting paste on the back, thus shutting out the light and leaving the paper its original hue. The white shadowy heads which are frequently shown in black coats, and which the mediums claim cannot be explained, are also done in this manner with vignetting paste, the picture being afterward centred over these places, which will be white, the final result showing soft and indefinite, and giving the required spiritual look. "Mr. Dinwiddie did not attempt to produce the hazy effect, but this is very easily accomplished in the photograph by taking the spirit heads a trifle out of focus. He claims that all of these apparent spiritual manifestations are but tricks of photography, and ones which might be accomplished by the veriest tyro, if he were to study the matter, and give his time to the experiment. It is only a wonder that the mediums do not do more of it. "The photograph mediums have always claimed that they were set upon by photographers for business reasons, but Mr. Dinwiddie is employed by the government and has no interests whatever in such a dispute." [Illustration: FIG. 30--SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPH BY PRETENDED MEDIUM.] The eminent authority on photography, Mr. Walter E. Woodbury, gives many interesting exposes of mediumistic photographs in his work, "Photographic Amusements," which the student of the subject would do well to consult. Fig. 30, taken from "Photographic Amusements" is a reproduction of a "spirit" photograph made by a photographer claiming to be a medium. Says Mr. Woodbury: "Fortunately, however, we were in this case able to expose the fraud. Mr. W. M. Murray, a prominent member of the Society of Amateur Photographers of New York, called our attention to the similarity between one of the 'spirit' images and a portrait painting by Sichel, the artist. A reproduction of the picture (Fig 31) is given herewith, and it will be seen at once that the 'spirit' image is copied from it." 5. Thought Photography. During the year 1896 considerable stir was created by the investigation of Dr. Hippolyte Baraduc, of Paris, in the line of "Thought Photography," which is of interest to psychic investigators generally. Dr. Baraduc claimed to have gotten photographic impressions of his thoughts, "made without sunlight or electricity or contact of any material kind." These impressions he declared to be subjective, being his own personal vibrations, the result of a force emanating from the human personality, supra-mechanical, or spiritual. The experiments were carried on in a dark room, and according to his statement were highly successful. In a communication to an American correspondent, printed in the _New York Herald_, January 3, 1897, he writes: "I have discovered a human, invisible light, differing altogether from the cathode rays discovered by Prof. Roentgen." Dr. Baraduc advanced the theory that our souls must be considered as centers of luminous forces, owing their existence partly to the attraction and partly to the repulsion of special and potent forces bred of the invisible cosmos. A number of French scientific journals took up the matter, and discussed "Thought Photography" at length, publishing numerous reproductions of the physician's photographs; but the more conservative journals of England, Germany and America remained silent on the subject, as it seemed to be on the borderland between science and charlatanry. On January 11, 1897, the American newspapers contained an item to the effect that Drs. S. Millington Miller and Carleton Simon, of New York City, the former a specialist in brain physiology, and the latter an expert hypnotist, had succeeded in obtaining successful thought photographs on dry plates from two hypnotized subjects. When the subjects were not hypnotized, the physicians reported no results. [Illustration: FIG. 31--SIGEL'S ORIGINAL PICTURE OF FIG 30.] As "Thought Photography" is without the pale of known physical laws, stronger evidence is needed to support the claims made for it than that which has been adduced by the French and American investigators. "Thought Photography" once established as a scientific fact, we shall have, perhaps, an explanation of genuine spirit photographs, if such there be. 6. Apparitions of the Dead. In my chapter on subjective phenomena, I have not recorded any cases of phantasms of the dead, though several interesting examples of such have come under my notice. I have thought it better to refer the reader to the voluminous reports of the Society for Psychical Research (England). In regard to these cases, the Society has reached the following conclusion: _Between deaths and apparitions of dying persons a connection exists which is not due to chance alone. This we hold as a proved fact._ The "_Literary Digest_," January 12, 1895, in reviewing this report, says: "Inquiries were instituted in 17,000 cases of alleged apparitions. These inquiries elicited 1,249 replies from persons [in England and Wales] who affirmed that they themselves had seen the apparitions. Then the Society by further inquiries and cross-examinations sifted out all but eighty of these as discredited in some way, by error of memory or illusions of identity, or for some other reason, or which could be accounted for by common psychical laws. Of these eighty, fifty more were thrown out, to be on the safe side, and the remaining thirty are used as a basis for scientific consideration. All these consisted of apparitions of dead persons appearing to others within twelve hours after death, and many of them appearing at the very hour and even the very minute of death. The full account of the investigation is published in the tenth volume of the Society's Reports, under the title, 'A Census of Hallucinations,' and Prof. J. H. Hyslop, of Columbia College, wrote an article giving the gist of the report and his comments in the '_Independent_,' (December 27, 1895), from which I cull these few notable paragraphs: "'The committee which conducted the research reasons as follows: Since the death rate of England is 19.15 out of every thousand, the chances of any person's dying on any particular day are one in 19,000 (the ratio of 19.15 to 365 times 1,000). Out of 19,000 death apparitions, therefore, one can be explained as a simple coincidence. But thirty apparitions out of 1,300 cases is in the proportion of 440 out of 19,000, so that to refer these thirty well-authenticated apparitions to coincidence is deemed impossible.' "And further on: "'This is remarkable language for the signatures of Prof. and Mrs. Sidgwick, than whom few harder-headed skeptics could be found. It is more than borne out, however, by a consideration which the committee does not mention, but which the facts entirely justify, and it is that since many of the apparitions occurred not merely on the day, but at the very hour or minute of death, the improbability of their explanation by chance is really much greater than the figures here given. That the apparition should occur within the hour of death the chance should be 1 to 356,000, or at the minute of death 1 to 21,360,000. To get 30 cases, therefore, brought down to these limits we should have to collect thirty times these numbers of apparitions. Either these statistics are of no value in a study of this kind, or the Society's claim is made out that there is either a telepathic communication between the dying and those who see their apparitions, or some causal connection not yet defined or determined by science. That this connection may be due to favorable conditions in the subject of the hallucination is admitted by the committee, if the person having the apparition is suffering from grief or anxiety about the person concerned. But it has two replies to such a criticism. The first is the query how and why under the circumstances does this effect coincide generally with the death of the person concerned, when anxiety is extended over a considerable period. The second is a still more triumphant reply, and it is that a large number of the cases show that the subject of the apparition has no knowledge of the dying person's sickness, place, or condition. In that case there is no alternative to searching elsewhere for the cause. If telepathy or thought transference will not explain the connection, resort must be had to some most extraordinary hypothesis. Most persons will probably accept telepathy as the easiest way out of the difficulty, though I am not sure that we are limited to this, the easiest explanation.' "Professor Hyslop then proceeds to consider the effect of the committee's conclusion upon existing theories and speculations regarding the relations between mind and matter, and foresees with gratification as well as apprehension the revolt likely to be initiated against materialism and which may go so far as to discredit science and carry us far back to the credulous conditions of the Middle Ages. He says: "'The point which the investigations of the Society for Psychical Research have already reached creates a question of transcendent interest, no matter what the solution of it may be, and will stimulate in the near future an amount of psychological and theological speculation of the most hasty and crude sort, which it will require the profoundest knowledge of mental phenomena, normal and abnormal, and the best methods of science to counteract, and to keep within the limits of sober reason. The hardly won conquests of intellectual freedom and self-control can easily be overthrown by a reaction that will know no bounds and which it will be impossible to regulate. Though there may be some moral gain from the change of beliefs, as will no doubt be the case in the long run, we have too recently escaped the intellectual, religious, and political tyranny of the Middle Ages to contemplate the immediate consequences of the reaction with any complacency. But no one can calculate the enormous effect upon intellectual, social, and political conditions which would ensure upon the reconciliation of science and religion by the proof of immortality." IV. CONCLUSIONS. In my investigations of the physical phenomena of modern spiritualism, I have come to the following conclusion: While the majority of mediumistic manifestations are due to conjuring, there is a class of cases not ascribable to trickery, namely, those coming within the domain of psychic force--as exemplified by the experiments of Gasparin, Crookes, Lodge, Asakoff and Coues. In regard to the subjective phenomena, I am convinced that the recently annunciated law of telepathy will account for them. _I discredit the theory of spirit intervention._ If this be a correct conclusion, is there anything in mediumistic phenomena that will contribute to the solution of the problem of the immortality of the soul? I think there is. The existence of a subjective or subliminal consciousness in man, as illustrated in the phenomena mentioned, seems to indicate that the human personality is really a spiritual entity, possessed of unknown resources, and capable of preserving its identity despite the shock of time and the grave. Hudson says: "It is clear that the power of telepathy has nothing in common with objective methods of communications between mind and mind; and that it is not the product of muscle or nerve or any physiological combination whatever, but rather sets these at naught, with their implications of space and time.... When disease seizes the physical frame and the body grows feeble, the objective mind invariably grows correspondingly weak.... In the meantime, as the objective mind ceases to perform its functions, the subjective mind is most active and powerful. The individual may never before have exhibited any psychic power, and may never have consciously produced any psychic phenomena; yet at the supreme moment his soul is in active communication with loved ones at a distance, and the death message is often, when psychic conditions are favorable, consciously received. The records of telepathy demonstrate this proposition. Nay, more; they may be cited to show that in the hour of death the soul is capable of projecting a phantasm of such strength and objectivity that it may be an object of personal experience to those for whom it is intended. Moreover, it has happened that telepathic messages have been sent by the dying, at the moment of dissolution, giving all the particulars of the tragedy, when the death was caused by an unexpected blow which crushed the skull of the victim. It is obvious that in such cases it is impossible that the objective mind could have participated in the transaction. The evidence is indeed overwhelming, that, no matter what form death may assume, whether caused by lingering disease, old age, or violence, the subjective mind is never weakened by its approach or its presence. On the other hand, that the objective mind weakens with the body and perishes with the brain, is a fact confirmed by every-day observation and universal experience." This hypothesis of the objective and subjective minds has been criticised by many psychologists on the ground of its extreme dualism. No such dualism exists, they contend. However, Hudson's theory is only a working hypothesis at best, to explain certain extraordinary facts in human experience. Future investigators may be able to throw more light on the subject. But this one thing may be enunciated: _Telepathy is an incontrovertible fact_, account for it as you may, a physical force or a spiritual energy. If physical, then it does not follow any of the known operations of physical laws as established by modern science, especially in the case of transmission of thought at a distance. It is true, that all evidence in support of telepathic communications is more or less _ex parte_ in character, and does not possess that validity which orthodox science requires of investigators. Any student of the physical laws of matter can make investigations for himself, and at any time, provided he has the proper apparatus. Explain to a person that water is composed of two gases, oxygen and hydrogen, and he can easily verify the fact for himself by combining the gases, in the combination of H2O, and afterwards liberate them by a current of electricity. But experiments in telepathy and clairvoyance cannot be made at will; they are isolated in character, and consequently are regarded with suspicion by orthodox science. Besides this, they transcend the materialistic theories of science as regards the universe, and one is almost compelled to use the old metaphysical terms of mind and matter, body and soul, in describing the phenomena. It is an undoubted fact that science has broken away from the old theory regarding the distinction between mind and matter. Says Prof. Wm. Romaine Newbold, "In the scientific world it has fallen into such disfavor that in many circles it is almost as disgraceful to avow belief in it as in witchcraft or ghosts." We have to-day a school of "physiological-psychology," calling itself "psychology without a soul." This school is devoted to the laboratory method of studying mind. "The laboratory method," says Roark, in his "Psychology in Education," "is concerned mostly with _physiological_ psychology, which is, after all, only _physiology_, even though it be the physiology of the nervous system and the special organs of sense--the material tools of the mind. And after physiological psychology has had its rather prolix say, causal connection of the physical organs with psychic action is as obscure and impossible of explanation as ever. But the laboratory method can be of excellent service in determining the material conditions of mental action, in detecting special deficiencies and weaknesses, and in accumulating valuable statistics along these lines. "It has been asserted that no science can claim to be exact until it can be reduced to formulas of weights and measures. The assertion begs the question for the materialists. We shall probably never be able to weigh an idea or measure the cubic contents of the memory; but the rapidity with which ideas are formed or reproduced by memory has been measured in many particular instances, and the circumstances that retard or accelerate their formation or reproduction have been positively ascertained and classified." That it is possible to explain all mental phenomena in terms of physics is by no means the unanimous verdict of scientific men. A small group of students of late years have detached themselves from the purely materialistic school and broken ground in the region of the supernormal. Says Professor Newbold (_Popular Science Monthly_, January, 1897): "In the supernormal field, the facts already reported, should they be substantiated by further inquiry, would go far towards showing that consciousness is an entity governed by laws and possessed of powers incapable of expression in material conceptions. "I do not myself regard the theory of independence [of mind and body] as proved, but I think we have enough evidence for it to destroy in any candid mind that considers it that absolute credulity as to its possibility which at present characterizes the average man of science." PART SECOND. MADAME BLAVATSKY AND THE THEOSOPHISTS. 1. The Priestess. The greatest "fantaisiste" of modern times was Madame Blavatsky, spirit medium, Priestess of Isis, and founder of the Theosophical Society. Her life is one long catalogue of wonders. In appearance she was enormously fat, had a harsh, disagreeable voice, and a violent temper, dressed in a slovenly manner, usually in loose wrappers, smoked cigarettes incessantly, and cared little or nothing for the conventionalities of life. But in spite of all--unprepossessing appearance and gross habits--she exercised a powerful personal magnetism over those who came in contact with her. She was the Sphinx of the second half of this Century; a Pythoness in tinsel robes who strutted across the world's stage "full of sound and fury," and disappeared from view behind the dark veil of Isis, which she, the fin-de-siecle prophetess, tried to draw aside during her earthly career. In searching for facts concerning the life of this really remarkable woman--remarkable for the influence she has exerted upon the thought of this latter end of the nineteenth century--I have read all that has been written about her by prominent Theosophists, have talked with many who knew her intimately, and now endeavor to present the truth concerning her and her career. The leading work on the subject is "Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky," compiled from information supplied by her relatives and friends, and edited by A. P. Sinnett, author of "The Occult World." The frontispiece to the book is a reproduction of a portrait of Madame Blavatsky, painted by H. Schmiechen, and represents the lady seated on the steps of an ancient ruin, holding a parchment in her hand. She is garbed somewhat after the fashion of a Cumaean Sibyl and gazes straight before her with the deep unfathomable eyes of a mystic, as if she were reading the profound riddles of the ages, and beholding the sands of Time falling hot and swift into the glass of eternity-- "And all things creeping to a day of doom." [Illustration: FIG. 32--MADAME BLAVATSKY.] Sinnett's life of the High Priestess is a strange concoction of monstrous absurdities; it is full of the weirdest happenings that were ever vouchsafed to mortal. We cannot put much faith in this biography, and must delve in other mines for information; but some of the remarkable passages of the book are worth perusing, particularly if the reader be prone to midnight musings of a ghostly character. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the daughter of Col. Peter Hahn of the Russian Army, and granddaughter of General Alexis Hahn von Rottenstern Hahn (a noble family of Mecklenburg, Germany, settled in Russia), was born in Eskaterinoslaw, in the south of Russia, in 1831. "She had," says Sinnett, "a strange childhood, replete with abnormal occurrences. The year of her birth was fatal for Russia, as for all Europe, owing to the first visit of the cholera, that terrible plague that decimated from 1830 to 1832 in turn nearly every town of the Continent.... Her birth was quickened by several deaths in the house, and she was ushered into the world amid coffins and desolation, on the night between July 30th and 31st, weak and apparently no denizen of this world." A hurried baptism was given lest the child die in original sin, and the ceremony was that of the Greek Church. During the orthodox baptismal rite no person is allowed to sit, but a child aunt of the baby, tired of standing for nearly an hour, settled down upon the floor, just behind the officiating priest. No one perceived her, as she sat nodding drowsily. The ceremony was nearing its close. The sponsors were just in the act of renouncing the Evil One and his deeds, a renunciation emphasized in the Greek Church by thrice spitting upon the invisible enemy, when the little lady, toying with her lighted taper at the feet of the crowd, inadvertantly set fire to the long flowing robes of the priest, no one remarking the accident till it was too late. The result was an immediate conflagration, during which several persons--chiefly the old priest--were severely burnt. That was another bad omen, according to the superstitious beliefs of orthodox Russia; and the innocent cause of it, the future Madame Blavatsky, was doomed from that day, in the eyes of all the town, to an eventful, troubled life. "Mlle. Hahn was born, of course, with all the characteristics of what is known in Spiritualism as mediumship in the most extraordinary degree, also with gifts as a clairvoyant of an almost equally unexampled order. On various occasions while apparently in an ordinary sleep, she would answer questions, put by persons who took hold of her hand, about lost property, etc., as though she were a sibyl entranced. For years she would, in childish impulse, shock strangers with whom she came in contact, and visitors to the house, by looking them intently in the face and telling them they would die at such and such a time, or she would prophesy to them some accident or misfortune that would befall them. And since her prognostications usually came true, she was the terror, in this respect, of the domestic circle." Madame V. P. Jelihowsy, a sister of the seeress, has furnished to the world many extraordinary stories of Mme. Blavatsky's childhood, published in various Russian periodicals. At the age of eleven the Sibyl lost her mother, and went to live with her grandparents at Saratow, her grandfather being civil governor of the place. The family mansion was a lumbering old country place "full of subterraneous galleries, long abandoned passages, turrets, and most weird nooks and corners. It looked more like a mediaeval ruined castle than a building of the last century." The ghosts of martyred serfs were supposed to haunt the uncanny building, and strange legends were told by the old family servants of weir-wolves and goblins that prowled about the dark forests of the estate. Here, in this House of Usher, the Sibyl lived and dreamed, and at this period exhibited many abnormal psychic peculiarities, ascribed by her orthodox governess and nurses of the Greek Church to possession by the devil. She had at times ungovernable fits of temper; she would ride any Cossack horse on the place astride a man's saddle; go into trances and scare everyone from the master of the mansion down to the humblest vodka drinker on the estate. In 1848, at the age of 17, she married General Count Blavatsky, a gouty old Russian of 70, whom she called "the plumed raven," but left him after a brief period of marital infelicity. From this time dates her career as a thaumaturgist. She travelled through India and made an honest attempt to penetrate into the mysterious confines of Thibet, but succeeded in getting only a few miles from the frontier, owing to the fanaticism of the natives. In India, as elsewhere, she was accused of being a Russian spy and was generally regarded with suspicion by the police authorities. After some months of erratic wanderings she reappeared in Russia, this time in Tiflis, at the residence of a relative, Prince ----. It was a gloomy, grewsome chateau, well suited for Spiritualistic séances, and Madame Blavatsky, it is claimed, frightened the guests during the long winter evenings with table-tippings, spirit rappings, etc. It was then the tall candles in the drawing-room burnt low, the gobelin tapestry rustled, sighs were heard, strange music "resounded in the air," and luminous forms were seen trailing their ghostly garments across the "tufted floor." [Illustration: FIG. 33--MAHATMA LETTER.] The gossipy Madame de Jelihowsy, in her reminiscences, classifies the phenomena, witnessed in the presence of her Sibylline sister, as follows: 1. Direct and perfectly clearly written and verbal answers to mental questions--or "thought reading." 2. Private secrets, unknown to all but the interested party, divulged, [especially in the case of those persons who mentioned insulting doubts]. 3. Change of weight in furniture and persons at will. 4. Letters from unknown correspondents, and immediate answers written to queries made, and found in the most out-of-the-way mysterious places. 5. Appearance of objects unclaimed by anyone present. 6. Sounds of musical notes in the air wherever Madame Blavatsky desired they should resound. In the year 1858, the High Priestess was at the house of General Yakontoff at Pskoff, Russia. One night when the drawing-room was full of visitors, she began to describe the mediumistic feat of making light objects heavy and heavy objects light. "Can you perform such a miracle?" ironically asked her brother, Leonide de Hahn, who always doubted his sister's occult powers. "I can," was the firm reply. De Hahn went to a small chess table, lifted it as though it were a feather, and said: "Suppose you try your powers on this." "With pleasure!" replied Mme. Blavatsky. "Place the table on the floor, and step aside for a minute." He complied with her request. She fixed her large blue eyes intently upon the chess table and said without removing her gaze, "Lift it now." The young man exerted all his strength, but the table would not budge an inch. Another guest tried with the same result, but the wood only cracked, yielding to no effort. [Illustration: FIG. 34--MAHATMA LETTER ENVELOPE.] "Now, lift it," said Madame Blavatsky calmly, whereupon De Hahn picked it up with the greatest ease. Loud applause greeted this extraordinary feat, and the skeptical brother, so say the occultists, was utterly nonplussed. Madame Blavatsky, as recorded by Sinnett, stated afterwards that the above phenomenon could be produced in two different ways: "First, through the exercise of her own will directing the magnetic currents so that the pressure on the table became such that no physical force could move it; second, through the action of those beings with whom she was in constant communication, and who, although unseen, were able to hold the table against all opposition." The writer has seen similar feats performed by hypnotizers with good subjects without the intervention of any ghostly intelligences. In 1870 the Priestess of Isis journeyed through Egypt in company with a certain Countess K--, and endeavored to form a Spiritualistic society at Cairo, for the investigation of psychic phenomena, but things growing unpleasant for her she left the land of pyramids and papyri in hot haste. It is related of her that during this Egyptian sojourn she spent one night in the King's sepulchre in the bowels of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, sleeping in the very sarcophagus where once reposed the mummy of a Pharoah. Weird sights were seen by the entranced occultist and strange sounds were heard on that eventful occasion within the shadowy mortuary chamber of the pyramid. At times she would let fall mysterious hints of what she saw that night, but they were as incomprehensible as the riddles of the fabled Sphinx. Countess Paschkoff chronicles a curious story about the Priestess of Isis, which reminds one somewhat of the last chapter in Bulwer's occult novel, "A Strange Story." The Countess relates that she was once travelling between Baalbec and the river Orontes, and in the desert came across the caravan belonging to Madame Blavatsky. They joined company and towards nightfall pitched camp near the village of El Marsum amid some ancient ruins. Among the relics of a Pagan civilization stood a great monument covered with outlandish hieroglyphics. The Countess was curious to decipher the inscriptions, and begged Madame Blavatsky to unravel their meaning, but the Priestess of Isis, notwithstanding her great archaeological knowledge, was unable to do so. However, she said: "Wait until night, and we shall see!" When the ruins were wrapped in sombre shadow, Mme. Blavatsky drew a great circle upon the ground about the monument, and invited the Countess to stand within the mystic confines. A fire was built and upon it were thrown various aromatic herbs and incense. Cabalistic spells were recited by the sorceress, as the smoke from the incense ascended, and then she thrice commanded the spirit to whom the monument was erected to appear. Soon the cloud of smoke from the burning incense assumed the shape of an old man with a long white beard. A voice from a distance pierced the misty image, and spoke: "I am Hiero, one of the priests of a great temple erected to the gods, that stood upon this spot. This monument was the altar. Behold!" No sooner were the words pronounced than a phantasmagoric vision of a gigantic temple appeared, supported by ponderous columns, and a great city was seen covering the distant plain, but all soon faded into thin air. This story was related to a select coterie of occultists assembled in social conclave at the headquarters in New York. The question is, had the charming Russian Countess dreamed this, or was she trying to exploit herself as a traveler who had come "out of the mysterious East" and had seen strange things? We next hear of the famous occultist in the United States, where she associated chiefly with spirit-mediums, enchanters, professional clairvoyants, and the like. "At this period of her career she had not,"[4] says Dr. Eliott Coues, a learned investigator of psychic phenomena, "been metamorphosed into a Theosophist. She was simply exploiting as a Spiritualistic medium. Her most familiar spook was a ghostly fiction named 'John King.' This fellow is supposed to have been a pirate, condemned for his atrocities to serve earth-bound for a term of years, and to present himself at materializing séances on call. Any medium who personates this ghost puts on a heavy black horse-hair beard and a white bed sheet and talks in sepulchral chest tones. John is as standard and sure-enough a ghost as ever appeared before the public. Most of the leading mediums, both in Europe and America, keep him in stock. I have often seen the old fellow in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington through more mediums that I can remember the names of. Our late Minister to Portugul, Mr. J. O'Sullivan, has a photograph of him at full length, floating in space, holding up a peculiar globe of light shaped like a glass decanter. This trustworthy likeness was taken in Europe, and I think in Russia, but am not sure on that point. I once had the pleasure of introducing the pirate king to my friend Prof. Alfred Russel Wallace, in the person of Pierre L. O. A. Keeler, a noted medium of Washington. "But the connection between the pirate and my story is this: Madame Blavatsky was exploiting King at the time of which I speak, and several of her letters to friends, which I have read, are curiously scribbled in red and blue pencil with sentences and signatures of 'John King,' just as, later on, 'Koot Hoomi' used to miraculously precipitate himself upon her stationery in all sorts of colored crayons. And, by the way, I may call the reader's attention to the fact that while the ingenious creature was operating in Cairo, her Mahatmas were of the Egyptian order of architecture, and located in the ruins of Thebes or Karnak. They were not put in turbans and shifted to Thibet till late in 1879." In 1875, while residing in New York, Madame Blavatsky conceived the idea of establishing a Theosophical Society. Stupendous thought! Cagliostro in the eighteenth century founded his Egyptian Free-Masonry for the re-generation of mankind, and Blavatsky in the nineteenth century laid the corner stone of modern Theosophy for a similar purpose. Cagliostro had his High Priestess in the person of a beautiful wife, Lorenza Feliciani, and Blavatsky her Hierophant in the somewhat prosaic guise of a New York reporter, Col. Olcott, since then a famous personage in occult circles. During the Civil War, Olcott served in the Quartermaster's Department of the Army and afterwards held a position in the Internal Revenue Service of the United States. In 18-- he was a newspaper man in New York, and was sent by the _Graphic_ to investigate the alleged Spiritualistic phenomena transpiring in the Eddy family in Chittenden, Vermont. There he met Madame Blavatsky. It was his fate. [Illustration: FIG. 35. COL. H. S. OLCOTT.] Col. Olcott's description of his first sight of Mme. Blavatsky is interesting: "The dinner at Eddy's was at noon, and it was from the entrance door of the bare and comfortless dining-room that Kappes and I first saw H. P. B. She had arrived shortly before noon with a French Canadian lady, and they were at table as we entered. My eye was first attracted by a scarlet Garibaldian shirt the former wore, as being in vivid contrast with the dull colors around. Her hair was then a thick blonde mop, worn shorter than the shoulders, and it stood out from her head, silken, soft, and crinkled to the roots, like the fleece of a Cotswold ewe. This and the red shirt were what struck my attention before I took in the picture of her features. It was a massive Kalmuck face, contrasting in its suggestion of power, culture, and imperiousness, as strangely with the commonplace visages about the room, as her red garment did with the gray and white tones of the wall and woodwork, and the dull costumes of the rest of the guests. All sorts of cranky people were continually coming and going at Eddy's, to see the mediumistic phenomena, and it only struck me on seeing this eccentric lady that this was but one more of the sort. Pausing on the door-sill, I whispered to Kappes, 'Good gracious! look at _that_ specimen, will you!' I went straight across and took a seat opposite her to indulge my favorite habit of character-study." Commenting on this meeting, J. Ransom Bridges, in the _Arena_, for April, 1895, remarks: "After dinner Colonel Olcott scraped an acquaintance by opportunely offering her a light for a cigarette which she proceeded to roll for herself. This 'light' must have been charged with Theosophical _karma_, for the burning match or end of a lighted cigar--the Colonel does not specify--lit a train of causes and their effects which now are making history and are world-wide in their importance. So confirmed a pessimist on Theosophical questions as Henry Sidgwick of the London Society for Psychical Research, says, 'Even if it [the Theosophical Society] were to expire next year, its twenty years' existence would be a phenomenon of some interest for a historian of European society in the nineteenth century.'" [Illustration: FIG. 36. OATH OF SECRECY TAKEN BY CHARTER MEMBERS OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. [Kindness of the _New York Herald_.]] The séances at the Eddy house must have been character studies indeed. The place where the ghosts were materialized was a large apartment over the dining room of the ancient homestead. A dark closet, at one end of the room, with a rough blanket stretched across it, served as a cabinet. Red Indians and pirates were the favorite materializations, but when Madame Blavatsky appeared on the scene, ghosts of Turks, Kurdish cavaliers, and Kalmucks visited this earthly scene, much to the surprise of every one. Olcott cites this fact as evidence of the genuineness of the materializations, remarking, "how could the ignorant Eddy boys, rough, rude, uncultured farmers, get the costumes and accessories for characters of this kind in a remote Vermont village." 2. What is Theosophy. Let us turn aside at this juncture to ask, "What is Theosophy." The word Theosophy (Theosophia--divine knowledge) appears to have been used about the Third century, A. D., by the Neo-Platonists, or Gnostics of Alexandria, but the great principles of the doctrine, however, were taught hundreds of years prior to the mystical school established at Alexandria. "It is not," says an interesting writer on the subject, "an outgrowth of Buddhism although many Buddhists see in its doctrines the reflection of Buddha. It proposes to give its followers the esoteric, or inner-spiritual meaning of the great religious teachers of the world. It asserts repeated re-incarnations, or rebirths of the soul on earth, until it is fully purged of evil, and becomes fit to be absorbed into the Deity whence it came, gaining thereby Nirvana, or unconsciousness." Some Theosophists claim that Nirvana is not a state of unconsciousness, but just the converse, a state of the most intensified consciousness, during which the soul remembers all of its previous incarnations. Madame Blavatsky claimed that "there exists in Thibet a brotherhood whose members have acquired a power over Nature which enables them to perform wonders beyond the reach of ordinary men. She declared herself to be a _chela_, or disciple of these brothers (spoken of also as 'Adepts' and as 'Mahatmas'), and asserted that they took a special interest in the Theosophical Society and all initiates in occult lore, being able to cause apparitions of themselves in places where their bodies were not; and that they not only appeared but communicated intelligently with those whom they thus visited and themselves perceived what was going on where their phantoms appeared." This phantasmal appearance she called the projection of the _astral_ form. Many of the phenomena witnessed in the presence of the Sibyl were supposed to be the work of the mystic brotherhood who took so peculiar an interest in the Theosophical Society and its members. The Madame did not claim to be the founder of a new religious faith, but simply the reviver of a creed that has slumbered in the Orient for centuries, and declared herself to be the Messenger of these Mahatmas to the scoffing Western world. Speaking of the Mahatmas, she says in "Isis Unveiled": * * * "Travelers have met these adepts on the shores of the sacred Ganges, brushed against them on the silent ruins of Thebes, and in the mysterious deserted chambers of Luxor. Within the halls upon whose blue and golden vaults the weird signs attract attention, but whose secret meaning is never penetrated by the idle gazers, they have been seen, but seldom recognized. Historical memoirs have recorded their presence in the brilliantly illuminated salons of European aristocracy. They have been encountered again on the arid and desolate plains of the Great Sahara, or in the caves of Elephanta. They may be found everywhere, but make themselves known only to those who have devoted their lives to unselfish study, and are not likely to turn back." The Theosophical Society was organized in New York, Nov. 17, 1875. Mr. Arthur Lillie, in his interesting work, "Madame Blavatsky and Her Theosophy," speaking about the founding of the Society, says: "Its moving spirit was a Mr. Felt, who had visited Egypt and studied its antiquities. He was a student also of the Kabbala; and he had a somewhat eccentric theory that the dog-headed and hawk-headed figures painted on the Egyptian monuments were not mere symbols, but accurate portraits of the 'Elementals.' He professed to be able to evoke and control them. He announced that he had discovered the secret 'formularies' of the old Egyptian magicians. Plainly, the Theosophical Society at starting was an Egyptian school of occultism. Indeed Colonel Olcott, who furnishes these details ('Diary Leaves' in the _Theosophist_, November to December, 1892), lets out that the first title suggested was the 'Egyptological Society.'" There were strange reports set afloat at the time of the organization of the Society of the mysterious appearance of a Hindoo adept in his astral body at the "lamasery" on Forty-seventh street. It was said to be that of a certain Mahatma Koot Hoomi. Olcott declared that the adept left behind him as a souvenir of his presence, a turban, which was exhibited on all occasions by the enterprising Hierophant. William Q. Judge, a noted writer on Spiritualism, who had met the Madame at Irving Place in the winter of 1874, joined the Society about this time, and became an earnest advocate of the secret doctrine. One wintry evening in March, 1889, Mr. Judge attended a meeting of the New York Anthropological Society, and told the audience all about the spectral gentleman, Koot Hoomi. He said: "The parent society (Theosophical) was founded in America by Madame Blavatsky, who gathered about her a few interested people and began the great work. They held a meeting to frame a constitution (1875), etc., but before anything had been accomplished a strangely foreign Hindoo, dressed in the peculiar garb of his country, came before them, and, leaving a package, vanished, and no one knew whither he came or went. On opening the package they found the necessary forms of organization, rules, etc., which were adopted. The inference to be drawn was, that the strange visitor was a Mahatma, interested in the foundation of the Society." [Illustration: FIG. 37. WILLIAM Q. JUDGE. [Reproduced by courtesy of the _New York Herald_.]] And so Blavatskyism flourished, and the Society gathered in disciples from all quarters. Men without definite creeds are ever willing to embrace anything that savors of the mysterious, however absurd the tenets of the new doctrine may be. The objects of the Theosophical Society, as set forth in a number of _Lucifer_, the organ of the cult, published in July, 1890, are stated to be: "1. To form a nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, or color. "2. To promote the study of Aryan and other Eastern literatures, religions and sciences. "3. To investigate laws of Nature and the psychical powers of man." There is nothing of cant or humbug about the above articles. A society founded for the prosecution of such researches seems laudable enough. Oriental scholars and scientists have been working in this field for many years. But the investigations, as conducted under the Blavatsky régime, have savored so of charlatanism that many earnest, truth-seeking Theosophists have withdrawn from the Society. After seeing the Society well established, Madame Blavatsky went to India. Her career in that country was a checkered one. From this period dates the exposé of the Mahatma miracles. The story reads like a romance by Marie Corelli. Let us begin at the beginning. The headquarters of the Society was first established at Bombay, thence removed to Madras and afterwards to Adyar. A certain M. and Mme. Coulomb, trusted friends of Madame Blavatsky, were made librarian and assistant corresponding secretary respectively of the Society, and took up their residence in the building known as the headquarters--a rambling East Indian bungalow, such as figure in Rudyard Kipling's stories of Oriental life. Marvellous phenomena, of an occult nature, alleged to have taken place there, were attested by many Theosophists. Mysterious, ghostly appearances of Mahatmas were seen, and messages were constantly received by supernatural means. One of the apartments of the bungalow was denominated the Occult Room, and in this room was a sort of cupboard against the wall, known as the _Shrine_. In this shrine the ghostly missives were received and from it were sent. Skeptics were convinced, and occult lodges spread rapidly over India among the dreamy, marvel-loving natives. But affairs were not destined to sail smoothly. There came a rift within the lute--Madame Blavatsky quarreled with her trusted lieutenants, the Coulombs! In May, 1884, M. and Mme. Coulomb were expelled from the Society by the General Council, during the absence of the High Priestess and Col. Olcott in Europe. The Coulombs, who had grown weary of a life of imposture, or were actuated by the more ignoble motive of revenge, made a complete exposé of the secret working of the Inner Brotherhood. They published portions of Madame Blavatsky's correspondence in the _Madras Christian College Magazine_, for September and October, 1884; letters written to the Coulombs, directing them to prepare certain impostures and letters written by the High Priestess, under the signature of Koot Hoomi, the mythical adept.[5] This correspondence unquestionably implicated the Sibyl in a conspiracy to fraudulently produce occult phenomena. She declared them to be, in whole, or in part, forgeries. At this juncture the London Society for Psychical Research sent Mr. Richard Hodgson, B. A., scholar of St. John's College, Cambridge, England, to India to investigate the entire matter in the interest of science. He left England November, 1884, and remained in the East till April, 1885. During this period Blavatskyism was sifted to the bottom. Mr. Hodgson's report covers several hundred pages, and proves conclusively that the occult phenomena of Madame Blavatsky and her co-adjutors are unworthy of credence. In his volume he gives diagrams of the trap-doors and machinery of the shrine and the occult room, and facsimiles of Madame Blavatsky's handwriting, which proved to be identical with that of Koot Hoomi, or _Cute_ Hoomi, as the critics dubbed him. He shows that the Coulombs had told the plain unvarnished truth so far as their disclosures went; and he stigmatizes the Priestess of Isis in the following language: "1. She has been engaged in a long continued combination with other persons to produce by ordinary means a series of apparent marvels for the support of the Theosophic movement. "2. That in particular the shrine at Adyar through which letters purporting to come from Mahatmas were received, was elaborately arranged with a view to the secret insertion of letters and other objects through a sliding panel at the back, and regularly used for the purpose by Madame Blavatsky or her agents. "3. That there is consequently a very strong general presumption that all the marvellous narratives put forward in evidence of the existence of Mahatmas are to be explained as due either (_a_) to deliberate deception carried out by or at the instigation of Madame Blavatsky, or (_b_) to spontaneous illusion or hallucination or unconscious misrepresentation or invention on the part of the witnesses." The mysterious appearances of the ghostly Mahatmas at the headquarters was shown, by Mr. Hodgson, to be the work of confederates, the cleverest among them being Madame Coulomb. Sliding panels, secret doors, and many disguises were the _modus operandi_ of the occult phenomena. In regard to the letters and alleged precipitated writing, Mr. Hodgson says: "It has been alleged, indeed, that when Madame Blavatsky was at Madras, instantaneous replies to mental queries had been found in the shrine (at Adyar), that envelopes containing questions were returned absolutely intact to the senders, and that when they were opened replies were found within in the handwriting of a Mahatma. After numerous inquiries, I found that in all cases I could hear of, the mental query was such as might easily have been anticipated by Madame Blavatsky; indeed, the query was whether the questioner would meet with success in his endeavor to become a pupil of the Mahatma, and the answer was frequently of the indefinite and oracular sort. In some cases the envelope inserted in the Shrine was one which had been previously sent to headquarters for that purpose, so that the envelope might have been opened and the answer written therein before it was placed in the Shrine at all. Where sufficient care was taken in the preparation of the inquiry, either no specific answer was given or the answer was delayed." A certain phenomenon, frequently mentioned by Theosophists as having occurred in Madame Blavatsky's sitting-room, was the dropping of a letter from the ceiling, supposed to be a communication from some Mahatma. In all such cases conjuring was proved to have been used--the _deus ex machina_ being either a silk thread or else a cunningly secreted trap door hidden between the wooden beams of the bungalow ceiling, operated of course by a concealed confederate. Madame Blavatsky's favorite method of impressing people with her occult powers was the almost immediate reception of letters from distant countries, in response to questions asked. These feats were the result of carefully contrived plans, preconcerted weeks in advance. She would telegraph in cipher to one of her numerous correspondents, East Indian, for example, to write a letter in reply to a certain query, and post it at a particular date. Then she would calculate the arrival of the letter, often to a nicety. Her ability as a conversationalist enabled her to adroitly lead people into asking questions that would tally with the Mahatma messages. But sometimes she failed, and a ludicrous fiasco was the result. Mr. Hodgson's report contains accounts of many such mystic letters that would arrive by post from India in the nick of time, or too late for use. Among other remarkable things reported of the Madame was her power of producing photographs of people far away by a sort of spiritual photography, involving no other mechanical process than the slipping of a sheet of paper between the leaves of her blotting pad. When stories of this spirit-photography were rife in London, a scientist published the following explanation of a method of making such Mahatma portraits: "Has the English public never heard of 'Magic photography?' Just a few years ago small sheets of white paper were offered for sale which on being covered with damp blotting paper developed an image as if by magic. The white sheets of paper seemed blanks. Really, however, they were photographs, not containing gold, which had been bleached by immersing them in a solution of mercuric chloride. The latter gives up part of its chlorine, and this chlorine bleaches the brown silver particles of which the photograph consists, by changing them to chloride of silver. The mercuric chloride becomes mercurous chloride. This body is white, and therefore invisible on white paper. Now, several substances will color this white mercurous chloride black. Ammonia and hypo-sulphite of soda will do this. In the magic photographs before mentioned the blotting paper contained hypo-sulphite of soda. Consequently when the alleged blank sheets of white note paper were placed between the sheets of blotting paper and slightly moistened, the hypo-sulphite of soda in the blotting paper acted chemically on the mercurous chloride in the white note paper, and the picture appeared. As this was known in 1840 to Herschel, Blavatsky's miracle is nothing but a commonplace conjuring experiment." 3. Madame Blavatsky's Confession. The individual to whom the world is most indebted for a critical analysis of Madame Blavatsky's character and her claims as a producer of occult phenomena is Vsevolod S. Solovyoff, a Russian journalist and _litterateur_ of considerable note. He has ruthlessly torn the veil from the Priestess of Isis in a remarkable book of revelations, entitled, "A Modern Priestess of Isis." In May, 1884, he was in Paris, engaged in studying occult literature, and was preparing to write a treatise on "the rare, but in my opinion, real manifestations of the imperfectly investigated spiritual powers of man." One day he read in the _Matin_ that Madame Blavatsky had arrived in Paris, and he determined to meet her. Thanks to a friend in St. Petersburg, he obtained a letter of introduction to the famous Theosophist, and called on her a few days later, at her residence in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs. His pen picture of the interview is graphic: "I found myself in a long, mean street on the left bank of the Seine, _de l'autre cote de l'eau_, as the Parisians say. The coachman stopped at the number I had told him. The house was unsightly enough to look at, and at the door there was not a single carriage. "'My dear sir, you have let her slip; she has left Paris,' I said to myself with vexation. "In answer to my inquiry the concierge showed me the way. I climbed a very, very dark staircase, rang, and a slovenly figure in an Oriental turban admitted me into a tiny dark lobby. "To my question, whether Madame Blavatsky would receive me, the slovenly figure replied with an '_Entrez, monsieur_,' and vanished with my card, while I was left to wait in a small low room, poorly and insufficiently furnished. "I had not long to wait. The door opened, and she was before me; a rather tall woman, though she produced the impression of being short, on account of her unusual stoutness. Her great head seemed all the greater from her thick and very bright hair, touched with a scarcely perceptible gray, and very slightly frizzed, by nature and not by art, as I subsequently convinced myself. "At the first moment her plain, old earthy-colored face struck me as repulsive; but she fixed on me the gaze of her great, rolling, pale blue eyes, and in these wonderful eyes, with their hidden power, all the rest was forgotten. "I remarked, however, that she was very strangely dressed, in a sort of black sacque, and that all the fingers of her small, soft, and as it were boneless hands, with their slender points and long nails, were covered with great jewelled rings." Madame Blavatsky received Solovyoff kindly, and they became excellent friends. She urged him to join the Theosophical Society, and he expressed himself as favorably impressed with the purposes of the organization. During the interview she produced her astral bell "phenomenon." She excused herself to attend to some domestic duty, and on her return to the sitting-room, the phenomenon took place. Says Solovyoff: "She made a sort of flourish with her hand, raised it upwards and suddenly, I heard distinctly, quite distinctly, somewhere above our heads, near the ceiling, a very melodious sound like a little silver bell or an Aeolian harp. "'What is the meaning of this?' I asked. "'This means only that my master is here, although you and I cannot see him. He tells me that I may trust you, and am to do for you whatever I can. _Vous etes sous sa protection_, henceforth and forever.' "She looked me straight in the eyes, and caressed me with her glance and her kindly smile." This Mahatmic phenomenon ought to have absolutely convinced Solovyoff, but it did not. He asked himself the question: "'Why was the sound of the silver bell not heard at once, but only after she had left the room and come back again?'" A few days after this event, the Russian journalist was regularly enrolled as a member of the Theosophical Society, and began to study Madame Blavatsky instead of Oriental literature and occultism. He was introduced to Colonel Olcott, who showed him the turban that had been left at the New York headquarters by the astral Koot Hoomi. Solovyoff witnessed other "phenomena" in the presence of Madame Blavatsky, which did not impress him very favorably. Finally, the High Priestess produced her _chef d' oeuvre_, the psychometric reading of a letter. Solovyoff was rather impressed with this feat and sent an account of it to the _Rebus_, but subsequently came to the conclusion that trickery had entered into it. When the Coulomb exposures came, he did not see much of Madame Blavatsky. She was overwhelmed with letters and spent a considerable time anxiously travelling to and fro on Theosophical affairs. In August, 1885, she was at Wurzburg sick at heart and in body, attended by a diminutive Hindoo servant, Bavaji by name. She begged Solovyoff to visit her, promising to give him lessons in occultism. With a determination to investigate the "phenomena," he went to the Bavarian watering place, and one morning called on Madame Blavatsky. He found her seated in a great arm chair: "At the opposite end of the table stood the dwarfish Bavaji, with a confused look in his dulled eyes. He was evidently incapable of meeting my gaze, and the fact certainly did not escape me. In front of Bavaji on the table were scattered several sheets of clean paper. Nothing of the sort had occurred before, so my attention was the more aroused. In his hand was a great thick pencil. I began to have ideas. "'Just look at the unfortunate man,' said Helena Petrovna suddenly, turning to me. 'He does not look himself at all; he drives me to distraction'.... Then she passed from Bavaji to the London Society for Psychical Research, and again tried to persuade me about the 'master.' Bavaji stood like a statue; he could take no part in our conversation, as he did not know a word of Russian. "'But such incredulity as to the evidence of your own eyes, such obstinate infidelity as yours, is simply unpardonable. In fact, it is wicked!' exclaimed Helena Petrovna. "I was walking about the room at the time, and did not take my eyes off Bavaji. I saw that he was keeping his eyes wide open, with a sort of contortion of his whole body, while his hand, armed with a great pencil, was carefully tracing some letters on a sheet of paper. "'Look; what is the matter with him?' exclaimed Madame Blavatsky. "'Nothing particular,' I answered; 'he is writing in Russian.' "I saw her whole face grow purple. She began to stir in her chair, with an obvious desire to get up and take the paper from him. But with her swollen and almost inflexible limbs, she could not do so with any speed. I made haste to seize the paper and saw on it a beautifully _drawn_ Russian phrase. "Bavaji was to have written, in the Russian language with which he was not acquainted: 'Blessed are they that believe, as said the Great Adept.' He had learned his task well, and remembered correctly the form of all the letters, but he had omitted two in the word 'believe,' [The effect was precisely the same as if in English he had omitted the first two and last two letters of the word.] "'Blessed are they that _lie_,' I read aloud, unable to control the laughter which shook me. 'That is the best thing I ever saw. Oh, Bavaji! you should have got your lesson up better for examination!' "The tiny Hindoo hid his face in his hands and rushed out of the room; I heard his hysterical sobs in the distance. Madame Blavatsky sat with distorted features." As will be seen from the above, the Hindoo servant was one of the Madame's Mahatmas, and was caught in the act of preparing a communication from a sage in the Himalayas, to Solovyoff. "After this abortive phenomena," remarks the Russian journalist, "things marched faster, and I saw that I should soon be in a position to send very interesting additions to the report of the Psychical Society."... "Every day when I came to see the Madame she used to try to do me a favor in the shape of some trifling 'phenomenon,' but she never succeeded. Thus one day her famous 'silver bell' was heard, when suddenly something fell beside her on the ground. I hurried to pick it up--and found in my hands a pretty little piece of silver, delicately worked and strangely shaped. Helena Petrovna changed countenance, and snatched the object from me. I coughed significantly, smiled and turned the conversation to indifferent matters." On another occasion he was conversing with her about the "Theosophist," and "she mentioned the name of Subba Rao, a Hindoo, who had attained the highest degree of knowledge." She directed Mr. Solovyoff to open a drawer in her writing desk, and take from it a photograph of the adept. "I opened the drawer," says Solovyoff, "found the photograph and handed it to her--together with a packet of Chinese envelopes (See Fig. 34), such as I well knew; they were the same in which the 'elect' used to receive the letters of the Mahatmas Morya and Koot Hoomi by 'astral post.' "'Look at that, Helena Petrovna! I should advise you to hide this packet of the master's envelopes farther off. You are so terribly absent-minded and careless.' "It was easy to imagine what this was to her. I looked at her and was positively frightened; her face grew perfectly black. She tried in vain to speak; she could only writhe helplessly in her great arm-chair." Solovyoff with great adroitness gradually drew from her a confession. "What is one to do," said Madame Blavatsky, plaintively, "when in order to rule men it is necessary to deceive them; almost invariably the more simple, the more silly, and the more gross the phenomenon, the more likely it is to succeed." The Priestess of Isis broke down completely and acknowledged that her phenomena were not genuine; the Koot Hoomi letters were written by herself and others in collusion with her; finally she exhibited to the journalist the apparatus for producing the "astral bell," and begged him to go into a co-partnership with her to astonish the world. He refused! The next day she declared that a black magician had spoken through her mouth, and not herself; she was not responsible for what she had said. After this he had other interviews with her; threats and promises; and lastly a most extraordinary letter, which was headed, "My Confession," and reads, in part, as follows: "Believe me, _I have fallen because I have made up my mind to fall_, or else to bring about a reaction by telling all God's truth about myself, _but without mercy on my enemies_. On this I am firmly resolved, and from this day I shall begin to prepare myself in order to be ready. I will fly no more. Together with this letter, or a few hours later, I shall myself be in Paris, and then on to London. A Frenchman is ready, and a well-known journalist too, delighted to set about the work and to write at my dictation something short, but strong, and what is most important--a true history of my life. _I shall not even attempt to defend_, to justify myself. In this book I shall simply say: "In 1848, I, hating my husband, N. V. Blavatsky (it may have been wrong, but still such was the nature _God_ gave me), left him, abandoned him--_a virgin_. (I shall produce documents and letters proving this, although he himself is not such a swine as to deny it.) I loved one man deeply, but still more I loved occult science, believing in magic, wizards, etc. I wandered with him here and there, in Asia, in America, and in Europe. I met with So-and-so. (You may call him a _wizard_, what does it matter to him?) In 1858 I was in London; there came out some story about a child, not mine (there will follow medical evidence, from the faculty of Paris, and it is for this that I am going to Paris). One thing and another was said of me; that I was depraved, possessed with a devil, etc. "I shall tell everything as I think fit, everything I did, for the twenty years and more, that I laughed at the _qu'en dira-t-on_, and covered up all traces of what I was _really_ occupied in, i. e., the _sciences occultes_, for the sake of my family and relations who would at that time have cursed me. I will tell how from my eighteenth year I tried to get people to talk about me, and say about me that this man and that was my lover, and _hundreds_ of them. I will tell, too, a great deal of which no one ever dreamed, and _I will prove it_. Then I will inform the world how suddenly my eyes were opened to all the horror of my _moral suicide_; how I was sent to America to try my psychological capabilities; how I collected a society there, and began to expiate my faults, and attempted to make men better and to sacrifice myself for their regeneration. _I will name all_ the Theosophists who were brought into the right way, drunkards and rakes, who became almost saints, especially in India, and those who enlisted as Theosophists, and continued their former life, as though they were doing the work (and there are many of them) and _yet were the first_ to join the pack of hounds that were hunting me down, and to bite me.... "No! The devils will save me in this last great hour. You did not calculate on the cool determination of _despair_, which _was_ and has _passed over_.... And to this I have been brought by you. You have been the last straw which has broken the camel's back under its intolerably heavy burden. Now you are at liberty to conceal nothing. Repeat to all Paris what you have ever heard or know about me. I have already written a letter to Sinnett _forbidding him_ to publish my _memoirs_ at his own discretion. I myself will publish them with all the truth.... It will be a Saturnalia of the moral depravity of mankind, this _confession_ of mine, a worthy epilogue of my stormy life.... Let the psychist gentlemen, and whosoever will, set on foot a new inquiry. Mohini and all the rest, even _India_, are dead for me. I thirst for one thing only, that the world may know all the reality, all the _truth_, and learn the lesson. And then _death_, kindest of all. H. BLAVATSKY. "You may print this letter if you will, even in Russia. It is all the same now." This remarkable effusion may be the result of a fever-disordered brain, it may be, as she says, the "God's truth;" at any rate it bears the ear-marks of the Blavatsky style about it. The disciples of the High Priestess of Isis have bitterly denounced Solovyoff and the revelations contained in his book. They brand him as a coward for not having published his diatribe during the lifetime of the Madame, when she was able to defend herself. However that may be, Solovyoff's exposures tally very well with the mass of corroborative evidence adduced by Hodgson, Coues, Coleman, and a host of writers, who began their attacks during the earthly pilgrimage of the great Sibyl. On receipt of this letter, Feb 16, 1886, Solovyoff resigned from the Theosophical Society. He denounced the High Priestess to the Paris Theosophists, and the Blavatsky lodges in that city were disrupted in consequence of the exposures. This seems to be a convincing proof of the genuineness of his revelations. After the Solovyoff incident, Madame Blavatsky went into retirement for a while. Eventually she appeared in London as full of enthusiasm as ever and added to her list of converts the Countess of Caithness and Mrs. Annie Besant, the famous socialist and authoress. Finally came the last act of this strange life-drama. That messenger of death, whom the mystical Persian singer, Omar Khayyam, calls "The Angel of the Darker Drink," held to her lips the inevitable chalice of Mortality; then the "golden cord was loosened and the silver bowl was broken," and she passed into the land of shadows. It was in London, May 8, 1891, that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky ended one of the strangest careers on record. She died calmly and peacefully in her bed, surrounded by her friends, and after her demise her body was cremated by her disciples, with occult rites and ceremonies. All that remained of her--a few handfuls of powdery white ashes--was gathered together, and divided into three equal parts. One portion was buried in London, one sent to New York City, and the third to Adyar, near Madras, India. The New World, the Old World, and the still Older World of the East were honored with the ashes of H. P. B. Three civilizations, three heaps of ashes, three initials--mystic number from time immemorial, celebrated symbol of Divinity known to, and revered by, Cabalists, Gnostics, Rosicrucians, and Theosophists. Mr. J. Ransom Bridges, who had considerable correspondence with the High Priestess from 1888 until her death, says (_Arena_, April, 1895): "Whatever may be the ultimate verdict upon the life and work of this woman, her place in history will be unique. There was a Titanic display of strength in everything she did. The storms that raged in her were cyclones. Those exposed to them often felt with Solovyoff that if there were holy and sage _Mahatmas_, they could not remain holy and sage, and have anything to do with Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. The 'confession' she wrote rings with the mingled curses and mad laughter of a crazy mariner scuttling his own ship. Yet she could be as tender and sympathetic as any mother. Her mastery of some natures seemed complete; and these people she worked like galley-slaves in the Theosophical tread mill of her propaganda movement. "To these disciples she was the greatest thaumaturgist known to the world since the days of the Christ. The attacks upon her, the Coulomb and Solovyoff exposures, the continual newspaper calumnies they look upon as a gigantic conspiracy brewed by all the rules of the black art to counteract, and, if possible, to destroy the effect of her work and mission." "Requiescat in Pace," O Priestess of Isis, until your next incarnation on Earth! The twentieth century will doubtless have need of your services! For the delectation of the curious let me add: the English resting place of Madame Blavatsky is designed after the model of an Oriental "dagoba," or tomb; the American shrine is a marble niche in the wall of the Theosophical headquarters, No. 144 Madison avenue, the ashes reposing in a vase standing in the niche behind a hermetically-sealed glass window. The Oriental shrine in Adyar is a tomb modelled after the world-famous Taj Mahal, and is built of pink sandstone, surmounted by a small Benares copper spire. 4. The Writings of Madame Blavatsky. Madame Blavatsky is known to the reading world as the writer of two voluminous works of a philosophical or mystical character, explanatory of the Esoteric Doctrine, viz., "Isis Unveiled," published in 1877, and the "Secret Doctrine," published in 1888. In the composition of these works she claimed that she was assisted by the Mahatmas who visited her apartments when she was asleep, and wrote portions of the manuscripts with their astral hands while their natural bodies reposed entranced in Thibetan Lamaseries. These fictions were fostered by prominent members of the Theosophical Society, and believed by many credulous persons. "Isis Unveiled" is a hodge-podge of absurdities, pseudo-science, mythology and folklore, arranged in helter-skelter fashion, with an utter disregard of logical sequence. The fact was that Madame Blavatsky had a very imperfect knowledge of English, and this may account for the strange mistakes in which the volume abounds, despite the aid of the ghostly Mahatmas. William Emmette Coleman, of San Francisco, has made an exhaustive analysis of the Madame's writings, and declares that "Isis," and the "Secret Doctrine" are full of plagiarisms. In "Isis" he discovered "some 2,000 passages copied from other books without proper credit." Speaking of the "Secret Doctrine," the master key to the wisdom of the ages, he says: "The 'Secret Doctrine' is ostensibly based upon certain stanzas, claimed to have been translated by Madame Blavatsky from the 'Book of Dzyan'--the oldest book in the world, written in a language unknown to philology. The 'Book of Dzyan' was the work of Madame Blavatsky--a compilation, in her own language, from a variety of sources, embracing the general principles of the doctrines and dogmas taught in the 'Secret Doctrine.' I find in this 'oldest book in the world' statements copied from nineteenth century books, and in the usual blundering manner of Madame Blavatsky. Letters and other writings of the adepts are found in the 'Secret Doctrine.' In these Mahatmic productions I have traced various plagiarized passages from Wilson's 'Vishnu Purana,' and Winchell's 'World Life'--of like character to those in Madame Blavatsky's acknowledged writings. * * * A specimen of the wholesale plagiarisms in this book appears in vol. II., pp. 599-603. Nearly the whole of four pages was copied from Oliver's 'Pythagorean Triangle,' while only a few lines were credited to that work." Those who are interested in Coleman's exposé are referred to Appendix C, of Solovyoff's book, "A Modern Priestess of Isis." The title of this appendix is "The Sources of Madame Blavatsky's Writings." Mr. Coleman is at present engaged in the preparation of an elaborate work on the subject, which will in addition contain an "exposé of Theosophy as a whole." It will no doubt prove of interest to students of occultism. 5. Life and Death of a Famous Theosophist. The funeral of Baron de Palm, conducted according to Theosophical rites, is an interesting chapter in the history of the Society, and worth relating. Joseph Henry Louis Charles, Baron de Palm, Grand Cross Commander of the Sovereign Order of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and knight of various orders, was born at Augsburg, May 10, 1809. He came to the United States rather late in life, drifted West without any settled occupation, and lived from hand to mouth in various Western cities. Finally he located in New York City, broken in health and spirit. He was a man of considerable culture and interested to a greater or less extent in the phenomena of modern Spiritualism. A letter of introduction from the editor of the _Religio-Philosophical Journal_, of Chicago, made him acquainted with Col. Olcott, who introduced him to prominent members of the Theosophical Society. He was elected a member of the Society, eventually becoming a member of the Council. In the year 1875 he died, leaving behind an earnest request that Col. Olcott "should perform the last offices in a fashion that would illustrate the Eastern notions of death and immortality."[6] He also left directions that his body should be cremated. A great deal of excitement was caused over this affair in orthodox religious circles, and public curiosity was aroused to the highest pitch. The funeral service was, as Madame Blavatsky described it in a letter to a European correspondent, "pagan, almost antique pagan." The ceremony was held in the great hall of the Masonic Temple, corner of Twenty-third and Sixth avenue. Tickets of admission were issued of decidedly occult shape--_triangular_; some black, printed in silver; others drab, printed in black. A crowd of 2,000 people assembled to witness the obsequies. On the stage was a _triangular_ altar, with a symbolical fire burning upon it. The coffin stood near by, covered with the orders of knighthood of the deceased. A splendid choir rendered several Orphic hymns composed for the occasion, with organ accompaniment, and Col. Olcott, as Hierophant, made an invocation or _mantram_ "to the Soul of the World whose breath gives and withdraws the form of everything." Death is always solemn, and no subject for levity, yet I must not leave out of this chronicle the unique burlesque programme of Baron de Palm's funeral, published by the _New York World_, the day before the event. Says the _World_: "The procession will move in the following order: "Col. Olcott as high priest, wearing a leopard skin and carrying a roll of papyrus (brown card board). "Mr. Cobb, as sacred scribe, with style and tablet. "Egyptian mummy-case, borne upon a sledge drawn by four oxen. (Also a slave bearing a pot of lubricating oil.) "Madame Blavatsky as chief mourner and also bearer of the sistrum. (She will wear a long linen garment extending to the feet, and a girdle about the waist.) "Colored boy carrying three Abyssinian geese (Philadelphia chickens) to place upon the bier. "Vice-President Felt, with the eye of Osiris painted on his left breast, and carrying an asp (bought at a toy store on Eighth avenue.) "Dr. Pancoast, singing an ancient Theban dirge: "'Isis and Nepthys, beginning and end: One more victim to Amenti we send. Pay we the fare, and let us not tarry. Cross the Styx by the Roosevelt street ferry.'" "Slaves in mourning gowns, carrying the offerings and libations, to consist of early potatoes, asparagus, roast beef, French pan-cakes, bock-beer, and New Jersey cider. "Treasurer Newton, as chief of the musicians, playing the double pipe. "Other musicians performing on eight-stringed harps, tom-toms, etc. "Boys carrying a large lotus (sunflower). "Librarian Fassit, who will alternate with music by repeating the lines beginning: "'Here Horus comes, I see the boat. Friends, stay your flowing tears; The soul of man goes through a goat In just 3,000 years.' "At the temple the ceremony will be short and simple. The oxen will be left standing on the sidewalk, with a boy near by to prevent them goring the passers-by. Besides the Theurgic hymn, printed above in full, the Coptic National anthem will be sung, translated and adapted to the occasion as follows: "Sitting Cynocephalus up in a tree, I see you, and you see me. River full of crocodile, see his long snout! Hoist up the shadoof and pull him right out." 6. The Mantle of Madame Blavatsky. After Madame Blavatsky's death, Mrs. Annie Besant assumed the leadership of the Theosophical Society, and wore upon her finger a ring that belonged to the High Priestess: a ring with a green stone flecked with veins of blood red, upon the surface of which was engraved the interlaced triangles within a circle, with the Indian motto, _Sat_ (Life), the symbol of Theosophy. It was given to Madame Blavatsky by her Indian teacher, says Mrs. Besant, and is very magnetic. The High Priestess on her deathbed presented the mystic signet to her successor, and left her in addition many valuable books and manuscripts. The Theosophical Society now numbers its adherents by the thousands and has its lodges scattered over the United States, France, England and India. At the World's Columbian Exposition it was well represented in the Great Parliament of Religions, by Annie Besant, William Q. Judge, of the American branch, and Prof. Chakravatir, a High Caste Brahmin of India. [Illustration: FIG. 38. PORTRAIT OF MRS. ANNIE BESANT.] Mrs. Besant, in an interview published in the _New York World_, Dec. 11, 1892, made the following statement concerning Madame Blavatsky's peculiar powers: "One time she was trying to explain to me the control of the mind over certain currents in the ether about us, and to illustrate she made some little taps come on my own head. They were accompanied by the sensation one experiences on touching an electric battery. I have frequently seen her draw things to her simply by her will, without touching them. Indeed, she would often check herself when strangers were about. It was natural for her, when she wanted a book that was on the table, to simply draw it to her by her power of mind, as it would be for you to reach out your hand to pick it up. And so, as I say, she often had to check herself, for she was decidedly adverse to making a show of her power. In fact, that is contrary to the law of the brotherhood to which she belonged. This law forbids them to make use of their power except as an instruction to their pupils or as an aid to the spreading of the truth. An adept may never use his knowledge for his personal advantage. He may be starving, and despite his ability to materialize banquets he may not supply himself with a crust of bread. This is what is meant in the Gospel when it says: 'He saved others, Himself He cannot save.' "One time she had written an article and as usual she gave me her manuscript to look over. "Sometimes she wrote very good grammatic English and again she wrote very slovenly English. So she always had me go over her manuscript. In reading this particular one I found a long quotation of some twenty or thirty lines. When I finished it I went to her and said: 'Where in the world did you get that quotation?' "'I got it from an Indian newspaper of --,' naming the date. "'But,' I said, 'that paper cannot be in this country yet! How did you get hold of it?' "'Oh, I got it, dear,' she said, with a little laugh; 'that's enough.' "Of course I understood then. When the time came for the paper to arrive, I thought I would verify her quotation, so I asked her for the name, the date of the issue and the page on which the quotation would be found. She told me, giving me, we will say, 45 as the number of the page. I went to the agent, looked up the paper and there was no such quotation on page 45. Then I remembered that things seen in the astral light are reversed, so I turned the number around, looked on page 54 and there was the quotation. When I went home I told her that it was all right, but that she had given me the wrong page. "'Very likely,' she said. 'Someone came in just as I was finishing it, and I may have forgotten to reverse the number.' "You see, anything seen in the astral light is reversed, as if you saw it in a mirror, while anything seen clairvoyantly is straight." The elevation of Mrs. Besant to the High Priestess-ship of the Theosophical Society was in accord with the spirit of the age--an acknowledgment of the Eternal Feminine; but it did not bring repose to the organization. William Q. Judge, of the American branch, began dabbling, it is claimed, in Mahatma messages on his own account, and charges were made against him by Mrs. Besant. A bitter warfare was waged in Theosophical journals, and finally the American branch of the general society seceded, and organized itself into the American Theosophical Society. Judge was made life-president and held the post until his death, in New York City, March 21st, 1896. His body was cremated and the ashes sealed in an urn, which was deposited in the Society's rooms, No. 144 Madison avenue. Five weeks after the death of Judge, the Theosophical Society held its annual conclave in New York City, and elected E. T. Hargrove as the presiding genius of esoteric wisdom in the United States. It was originally intended to hold this convention in Chicago, but the change was made for a peculiar reason. As the press reported the circumstance, "it was the result of a request by a mysterious adept whose existence had been unsuspected, and who made known his wish in a communication to the executive committee." It seems that the Theosophical Society is composed of two bodies, the exoteric and the esoteric. The first holds open meetings for the discussion of ethical and Theosophical subjects, and the second meets privately, being composed of a secret body of adepts, learned in occultism and possessing remarkable spiritual powers. The chief of the secret order is appointed by the Mahatmas, on account, it is claimed, of his or her occult development. Madame Blavatsky was the High Priestess in this inner temple during her lifetime, and was succeeded by Hierophant W. Q. Judge. When Judge died, it seems there was no one thoroughly qualified to take his place as the head of the esoteric branch, until an examination was made of his papers. Then came a surprise. Judge had named as his successor a certain obscure individual whom he claimed to be a great adept, requesting that the name be kept a profound secret for a specified time. In obedience to this injunction, the Great Unknown was elected as chief of the Inner Brother-and-Sisterhood. All of this made interesting copy for the New York journalists, and columns were printed about the affair. Another surprise came when the convention of exoterics ("hysterics," as some of the papers called them) subscribed $25,000 for the founding of an occult temple in this country. But the greatest surprise of all was a Theosophical wedding. The De Palm funeral fades away into utter insignificance beside this mystic marriage. The contracting parties were Claude Falls Wright, formerly secretary to Madame Blavatsky, and Mary C. L. Leonard, daughter of Anna Byford Leonard, one of the best known Theosophists in the West. The ceremony was performed at Aryan Hall, No. 144 Madison avenue, N. Y., in the presence of the occult body. Outsiders were not admitted. However, public curiosity was partly gratified by sundry crumbs of information thrown out by the Theosophical press bureau. The young couple stood beneath a seven-pointed star, made of electric light globes, and plighted their troth amid clouds of odoriferous incense. Then followed weird chantings and music by an occult orchestra composed of violins and violoncellos. The unknown adept presided over the affair, as special envoy of the Mahatmas. He was enveloped from head to foot in a thick white veil, said the papers. Mr. Wright and his bride-elect declared solemnly that they remembered many of their former incarnations; their marriage had really taken place in Egypt, 5,000 years ago in one of the mysterious temples of that strange country, and the ceremony had been performed by the priests of Isis. Yes, they remembered it all! It seemed but as yesterday! They recalled with vividness the scene: their march up the avenue of monoliths; the lotus flowers strewn in their path by rosy children; the intoxicating perfume of the incense, burned in bronze braziers by shaven-headed priests; the hieroglyphics, emblematical of life, death and resurrection, painted upon the temple walls; the Hierophant in his gorgeous vestments. Oh, what a dream of Old World splendor and beauty! Before many months had passed, the awful secret of the Veiled Adept's identity was revealed. The Great Unknown turned out to be a _she_ instead of a _he_ adept--a certain Mrs. Katherine Alice Tingley, of New York City. The reporters began ringing the front door bell of the adept's house in the vain hope of obtaining an interview, but the newly-hatched Sphinx turned a deaf ear to their entreaties. The time was not yet ripe for revelations. Her friends, however, rushed into print, and told the most marvellous stories of her mediumship. W. T. Stead, the English journalist and student of psychical research, reviewing the Theosophical convention and its outcome, says (_Borderland_, July, 1896, p. 306): "The Judgeite seceders from the Theosophical Society held their annual convention in New York, April 26th to 27th. They have elected a young man, Mr. Ernest T. Hargrove, as their president. A former spiritual medium and clairvoyant, by name Katherine Alice Tingley, who claims to have been bosom friends with H. P. B. 1200 years B. C., when both were incarnated in Egypt, is, however, the grand Panjandrum of the cause. Her first husband was a detective, her second is a clerk in the White Lead Company's office in Brooklyn. "According to Mr. Hargrove she is--'The new adept; she was appointed by Mr. Judge, and we are going to sustain her, as we sustained him, for we know her important connection in Egypt, Mexico and Europe.'" In the spring of 1896, Mrs. Tingley, accompanied by a number of prominent occultists, started on a crusade through the world to bring the truths of Theosophy to the toiling millions. The crusaders before their departure were presented with a purple silk banner, bearing the legend: "Truth, Light, Liberation for Discouraged Humanity." The _New York Herald_ (Aug. 16, 1896) says of this crusade: "When Mrs. Tingley and the other crusaders left this country nothing had been heard of the claim of the reincarnated Blavatsky. Now, however, this idea is boldly advanced in England by the American branch of the society there, and in America by Burcham Harding, the acting head of the society in this country. When Mr. Harding was seen at the Theosophical headquarters, he said: "'Yes, Mme. Blavatsky is reincarnated in Mrs. Tingley. She has not only been recognized by myself and other members of the American branch of the Theosophical Society, who knew H. P. B. in her former life, but the striking physical and facial resemblance has also been noted by members of the English branch.' "But this recognition by the English members of the society does not seem to be as strong as Mr. Harding would seem to have it understood. In fact, there are a number of members of that branch who boldly declare that Mrs. Tingley is an impostor. One of them, within the last week, addressing the English members on the subject, claimed that Mme. Blavatsky had foreseen that such an impostor would arise. He said: "'When Mme. Blavatsky lived in her body among us, she declared to all her disciples that, in her next reincarnation, she would inhabit the body of an Eastern man, and she warned them to be on their guard against any assertion made by mediums or others that they were controlled by her. Whatever H. P. B. lacked, she never wanted emphasis, and no one who knew anything of the founder of the Theosophical Society was left in any doubt as to her views upon this question. She declared that if any persons, after her death, should claim that she was speaking through them, her friends might be quite sure that it was a lie. Imagine, then, the feelings of H. P. B.'s disciples on being presented with an American clairvoyant medium, in the shape of Mrs. Tingley, who is reported to claim that H. P. B. is reincarnated in her.' "The American branch of the society is not at all disturbed by this charge of fraud by the English branch. In connection with it Mr. Harding says: "'It is true that the American branch of the Theosophical Society has seceded from the English branch, but as Mme. Blavatsky, the founder, was in reality an American, it can be understood why we consider ourselves the parent society.' "Of the one letter which Mrs. Tingley has sent to America since the arrival of the crusaders, the English Theosophists are a unit in the expression of opinion that it illustrated, as did her speech in Queen's Hall, merely 'unmeaning platitudes and prophecies.' But the American members are quite as loud in their expressions that the English members are trying to win the sympathies of the public, and that the words are really understood by the initiate. "The letter reads: 'In thanking you for the many kind letters addressed to me as Katherine Tingley, as well as by other names that would not be understood by the general public, I should like to say a few words as to the future and its possibilities. Many of you are destined to take an active part in the work that the future will make manifest, and it is well to press onward with a clear knowledge of the path to be trodden and with a clear vision of the goal to be reached. "'The path to be trodden is both exterior and interior, and in order to reach the goal it is necessary to tread these paths with strength, courage, faith and the essence of them all, which is wisdom. "'For these two paths, which fundamentally are one, like every duality in nature, are winding paths, and now lead through sunlight, then through deepest shade. During the last few years the large majority of students have been rounding a curve in the paths of both inner and outer work, and this wearied many. But those who persevered and faltered not will soon reap their reward. [Illustration: FIG. 39. PORTRAIT OF MRS. TINGLEY. [Reproduced by courtesy of the _New York Herald_.]] "'The present is pregnant with the promise of the near future, and that future is brighter than could be believed by those who have so recently been immersed in the shadows that are inevitable in cyclic progress. Can words describe it? I think not. But if you will think of the past twenty years of ploughing and sowing and will keep in your mind the tremendous force that has been scattered broadcast throughout the world, you must surely see that the hour for reaping is near at hand, if it has not already come." The invasion of English territory by the American crusaders was resented by the British Theosophists. The advocates of universal brotherhood waged bitter warfare against each other in the newspapers and periodicals. It gradually resolved itself into a struggle for supremacy between the two rival claimants for the mantle of Madame Blavatsky, Mrs. Annie Besant and Mrs. Tingley. Each Pythoness ascended her sacred tripod and hysterically denounced the other as an usurper, and false prophetess. Annie Besant sought to disprove the idea of Madame Blavatsky having re-incarnated herself in the body of Mrs. Tingley. She claimed that the late High Priestess had taken up her earthly pilgrimage again in the person of a little Hindoo boy, who lived somewhere on the banks of the Ganges. The puzzling problem was this: If Mrs. Tingley was Mme. Blavatsky, where was Mrs. Tingley? Oedipus would have gone mad trying to solve this Sphinx riddle. The crusade finished, Mrs. Tingley, with her purple banner returned to New York, where she was royally welcomed by her followers. In the wake of the American adept came the irrepressible Annie Besant, accompanied by a sister Theosophist, the Countess Constance Wachmeister. Mrs. Besant, garbed in a white linen robe of Hindoo pattern, lectured on occult subjects to crowded houses in the principal cities of the East and West. In the numerous interviews accorded her by the press, she ridiculed the Blavatsky-Tingley re-incarnation theory. By kind permission of the _New York Herald_, I reproduce a portrait of Mrs. Tingley. The reader will find it interesting to compare this sketch with the photograph of Madame Blavatsky given in this book. He will notice at once how much the two occultists do resemble each other; both are grossly fat, puffy of face, with heavy-lidded eyes and rather thick lips. 7. The Theosophical Temple. If all the dreams of the Theosophical Society are fulfilled we shall see, at no distant date, in the state of California, a sombre and mysterious building, fashioned after an Egyptian temple, its pillars covered with hieroglyphic symbols, and its ponderous pylons flanking the gloomy entrance. Twin obelisks will stand guard at the gateway and huge bronze sphinxes stare the tourist out of countenance. The Theosophical temple will be constructed "upon certain mysterious principles, and the numbers 7 and 13 will play a prominent part in connection with the dimensions of the rooms and the steps of the stairways." The Hierophants of occultism will assemble here, weird initiations like those described in Moore's "Epicurean" will take place, and the doctrines of Hindoo pantheism will be expounded to the Faithful. The revival of the Egyptian mysteries seems to be one of the objects aimed at in the establishment of this mystical college. Just what the Egyptian Mysteries were is a mooted question among Egyptologists. But this does not bother the modern adept. Mr. Bucham Harding, the leading exponent of Theosophy mentioned above, says that within the temple the neophyte will be brought face to face with his own soul. "By what means cannot be revealed; but I may say that the object of initiation will be to raise the consciousness of the pupil to a plane where he will see and know his own divine soul and consciously communicate with it. Once gained, this power is never lost. From this it can be seen that occultism is not so unreal as many think, and that the existence of soul is susceptible of actual demonstration. No one will be received into the mysteries until, by means of a long and severe probation, he has proved nobility of character. Only persons having Theosophical training will be eligible, but as any believer in brotherhood may become a Theosophist, all earnest truthseekers will have an opportunity of admission. "The probation will be sufficiently severe to deter persons seeking to gratify curiosity from trying to enter. No trifler could stand the test. There will be a number of degrees. Extremely few will be able to enter the highest, as eligibility to it requires eradication of every human fault and weakness. Those strong enough to pass through this become adepts." The Masonic Fraternity, with its 33d degree and its elaborate initiations, will have to look to its laurels, as soon as the Theosophical College of Mystery is in good running order. Everyone loves mysteries, especially when they are of the Egyptian kind. Cagliostro, the High Priest of Humbug, knew this when he evolved the Egyptian Rite of Masonry, in the eighteenth century. Speaking of Freemasonry, it is interesting to note the fact, as stated by Colonel Olcott in "Old Diary Leaves," that Madame Blavatsky and her coadjutors once seriously debated the question as to the advisability of engrafting the Theosophical Society on the Masonic fraternity, as a sort of higher degree,--Masonry representing the lesser mysteries, modern Theosophy the greater mysteries. But little encouragement was given to the Priestess of Isis by eminent Freemasons, for Masonry has always been the advocate of theistic doctrines, and opposed to the pantheistic cult. At another time, the leaders of Theosophy talked of imitating Masonry by having degrees, an elaborate ritual, etc.; also pass words, signs and grips, in order that "one _occult_ brother might know another in the darkness as well as in the _astral_ light." This, however, was abandoned. The founding of the Temple of Magic and Mystery in this country, with ceremonies of initiation, etc., seems to me to be a palingenesis of Mme. Blavatsky's ideas on the subject of occult Masonry. 8. Conclusions. The temple of modern Theosophy, the foundation of which was laid by Madame Blavatsky, rests upon the truth of the Mahatma stories. Disbelieve these, and the entire structure falls to the ground like a house of cards. After the numerous exposures, recorded in the preceding chapters, it is difficult to place any reliance in the accounts of Mahatmic miracles. There may, or may not, be sages in the East, acquainted with spiritual laws of being, but that these masters, or adepts, used Madame Blavatsky as a medium to announce certain esoteric doctrines to the Western world, is exceedingly dubious. The first work of any literary pretensions to call attention to Theosophy was Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism." Of that production, William Emmette Coleman says: "'Esoteric Buddhism,' by A. P. Sinnett, was based upon statements contained in letters received by Mr. Sinnett and Mr. A. O. Hume, through Madame Blavatsky, purporting to be written by the Mahatmas Koot Hoomi and Morya--principally the former. Mr. Richard Hodgson has kindly lent me a considerable number of the original letters of the Mahatmas that leading to the production of 'Esoteric Buddhism.' I find in them overwhelming evidence that all of them were written by Madame Blavatsky. In these letters are a number of extracts from Buddhist Books, alleged to be translations from the originals by the Mahatmic writers themselves. These letters claim for the adepts a knowledge of Sanskrit, Thibetan, Pali and Chinese. I have traced to its source each quotation from the Buddhist Scriptures in the letters, and they were all copied from current English translations, including even the notes and explanations of the English translators. They were principally copied from Beal's 'Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese.' In other places where the 'adept' is using his own language in explanation of Buddhistic terms and ideas, I find that his presumed original language was copied nearly word for word from Rhys Davids' 'Buddhism,' and other books. I have traced every Buddhistic idea in these letters and in 'Esoteric Buddhism,' and every Buddhistic term, such as Devachan, Avitchi, etc., to the books whence Helena Petrovna Blavatsky derived them. Although said to be proficient in the knowledge of Thibetan and Sanskrit the words and terms in these languages in the letters of the adepts were nearly all used in a ludicrously erroneous and absurd manner. The writer of those letters was an ignoramus in Sanskrit and Thibetan; and the mistakes and blunders in them, in these languages, are in exact accordance with the known ignorance of Madame Blavatsky concerning these languages. 'Esoteric Buddhism,' like all of Madame Blavatsky's works, was based upon wholesale plagiarism and ignorance." [Illustration: FIG. 40. MADAME BLAVATSKY'S AUTOGRAPH.] Madame Blavatsky never succeeded in penetrating into Thibet, in whose sacred "lamaseries" and temples dwell the wonderful Mahatmas of modern Theosophy, but William Woodville Rockhill, the American traveller and Oriental scholar, did, and we have a record of his adventures in "The Land of the Laas," published in 1891. While at Serkok, he visited a famous monastery inhabited by 700 lamas. He says (page 102): "They asked endless questions concerning the state of Buddhism in foreign lands. They were astonished that it no longer existed in India, and that the church of Ceylon was so like the ancient Buddhist one. When told of our esoteric Buddhists, the Mahatmas, and of the wonderful doctrines they claimed to have obtained from Thibet, they were immensely amused. They declared that though in ancient times there were, doubtless, saints and sages who could perform some of the miracles now claimed by the Esoterists, none were living at the present day; and they looked upon this new school as rankly heretical, and as something approaching an imposition on our credulity." "Isis Unveiled," and the "Secret Doctrine," by Madame Blavatsky, are supposed to contain the completest exposition of Theosophy, or the inner spiritual meaning of the great religious cults of the world, but, as we have seen, they are full of plagiarisms and garbled statements, to say nothing of "spurious quotations from Buddhist sacred books, manufactured by the writer to embody her own peculiar views, under the fictitious guise of genuine Buddhism." This last quotation from Coleman strikes the keynote of the whole subject. Esoteric Buddhism is a product of Occidental manufacture, a figment of Madame Blavatsky's romantic imagination, and by no means represents the truth of Oriental philosophy. As Max Mueller, one of the greatest living Oriental scholars, has repeatedly stated, any attempt to read into Oriental thought our Western science and philosophy or to reconcile them, is futile to a degree; the two schools are as opposite to each other, as the negative and positive poles of a magnet, Orientalism representing the former, Occidentalism, the latter. Oriental philosophy with its Indeterminate Being (or pure nothing as the Absolute) ends in the utter negation of everything and affords no clue to the secret of the Universe. If to believe that all is _maya_, (illusion), and that to be one with Brahma (absorbed like the rain drop in the ocean) constitutes the _summum bonum_ of thinking, then there is no explanation of, or use for, evolution or progress of any kind. The effect of Hindoo philosophy has been stagnation, indifferentism, and, as a result, the Hindoo has no recorded history, no science, no art worthy the name. Compared to it see what Greek philosophy has done: it has transformed the Western world: Starting with Self-Determined Being, reason, self-activity, at the heart of the Universe, and the creation of individual souls by a process of evolution in time and space, and the unfolding of a splendid civilization are logical consequences. In the East, it is the destruction of self-hood; in the West the destruction of selfishness, and the preservation of self-hood. Many noted Theosophists claim that modern Theosophy is not a religious cult, but simply an exposition of the esoteric, or inner spiritual meaning of the great religious teachers of the world. Let me quote what Solovyoff says on this point: "The Theosophical Society shockingly deceived those who joined it as members, in reliance on the regulations. It gradually grew evident that it was no universal scientific brotherhood, to which the followers of all religions might with a clear conscience belong, but a group of persons who had begun to preach in their organ, _The Theosophist_, and in their other publications, a mixed religious doctrine. Finally, in the last years of Madame Blavatsky's life, even this doctrine gave place to a direct and open propaganda of the most orthodox exoteric Buddhism, under the motto of 'Our Lord Buddha,' combined with incessant attacks on Christianity. * * * Now, in 1893, as the direct effect of this cause, we see an entire religious movement, we see a prosperous and growing plantation of Buddhism in Western Europe." As a last word let me add that if, in my opinion, modern Theosophy has no right to the high place it claims in the world of thought, it has performed its share in the noble fight against the crass materialism of our day, and, freed from the frauds that have too long darkened its poetical aspects, it may yet help to diffuse through the world the pure light of brotherly love and spiritual development. List of Works Consulted in the Preparation of this Volume AKSAKOFF, ALEXANDER N. =Animism and Spiritism=: an attempt at a critical investigation of mediumistic phenomena, with special reference to the hypotheses of hallucination and of the unconscious; an answer to Dr. E. von Hartmann's work, "Der Spiritismus." 2 vols. Leipsic, 1890. 8vo. (A profoundly interesting work by an impartial Russian savant. Judicial, critical and scientific.) AZAM, DR. =Hypnotisme et Altérations de la Personnalité.= Paris, 1887. 8vo. BERNHEIM, HIPPOLYTE. =Suggestive Therapeutics=: A study of the nature and use of hypnotism. Translated from the French. New York, 1889. 4to. BINET, A. AND FÉRÉ, C. =Animal Magnetism.= Translated from the French. New York, 1888. BLAVATSKY, MADAME HÉLÈNE PETROVNA HAHN-HAHN. =Isis Unveiled=: A Master-key to the mysteries of ancient and modern science and theology. 6th ed. New York, 1891. 2 vols. 8vo. (A heterogeneous mass of poorly digested quotations from writers living and dead, with running remarks by Mme. Blavatsky. A hodge-podge of magic, masonry, and Oriental witchcraft. Pseudo-scientific.) ------ =The Secret Doctrine=: The Synthesis of science, religion, and philosophy. 2 vols. New York, 1888. 8vo. (Philosophical in character. A reading of Western thought into Oriental religions and symbolisms. So-called quotations from the "Book of Dzyan," manufactured by the ingenious mind of the authoress.) CROCQ FILS, DR. =L'hypnotisme.= Paris, 1896. 4to. (An exhaustive work on hypnotism in all its phases.) CROOKES, WILLIAM. =Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism.= London, 1876. 8vo, (pamphlet). ------ =Psychic Force and Modern Spiritualism.= London, 1875. 8vo, (pamphlet). (Very interesting exposition of experiments made with D. D. Home, the spirit medium.) DAVENPORT, R. B. =Death Blow to Spiritualism=: True story of the Fox sisters. New York, 1888. 8vo. DESSOIR, MAX. =The Psychology of Legerdemain.= _Open Court_, vol. vii. GARRETT, EDMUND. =Isis Very Much Unveiled=: Being the story of the great Mahatma hoax. London, 1895. 8vo. GASPARIN, COMTE AGÉNOR DE. =Des Tables Tournantes, du Surnaturel et des Esprits.= Paris, 1854. 8vo. GATCHELL, CHARLES. The methods of mind-readers. _Forum_, vol. xi, pp. 192-204. GIBIER, DR. PAUL. =Le Spiritisme= (fakirisme occidental). Étude historique, critique et expérimentale. Paris, 1889. 8vo. GURNEY, E., MYERS, F. W., AND PODMORE, F. =Phantasms of the Living.= 2 vols. London, 1887. (Embodies the investigations of the Society for Psychical Research into Spiritualism, Telepathy, Thought-transference, etc.) HAMMOND, DR. W. H. =Spiritualism and Nervous Derangement.= New York, 1876. 8vo. HARDINGE-BRITTAN, EMMA. =History of Spiritualism.= New York. 4to. HART, ERNEST. =Hypnotism, Mesmerism and the New Witchcraft.= London, 1893. 8vo. (Scientific and critical. Anti-spiritualistic in character.) HOME, D. D. =Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism.= New York, 1878. 8vo. HUDSON, THOMAS JAY. =The Law of Psychic Phenomena.= New York, 1894. 8vo. ------ =A Scientific Demonstration of the Future Life.= Chicago, 1895. 8vo. JAMES, WILLIAM. =Psychology.= New York, 1892. 8vo, 2 vols. JASTROW, JOSEPH. =Involuntary Movements.= _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. xl, pp. 743-750. (Interesting account of experiments made in a Psychological Laboratory to demonstrate "the readiness with which normal individuals may be made to yield evidence of unconscious and involuntary processes." Throws considerable light on muscle-reading, planchette-writing, etc.) ------ =The Psychology of Deception.= _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. xxxiv, pp. 145-157. ------ =The Psychology of Spiritualism.= _Popular Science Monthly_, vol. xxxiv, pp. 721-732. (A series of articles of great value to students of psychical research.) KRAFFT-EBING, R. =Experimental Study in the Domain of Hypnotism.= New York, 1889. LEAF, WALTER. =A Modern Priestess of Isis=; abridged and translated on behalf of the Society for Psychical Research, from the Russian of Vsevolod S. Solovyoff. London, 1895. 8vo. LILLIE, ARTHUR. =Madame Blavatsky and her Theosophy.= London, 1896. 8vo. LIPPITT, F. J. =Physical Proofs of Another Life=: Letters to the Seybert commission. Washington, D. C., 1888. 8vo. MACAIRE, SID. =Mind-Reading, or Muscle-Reading?= London, 1889. MOLL, ALBERT. =Hypnotism.= New York, 1892. 8vo. MATTISON, REV. H. =Spirit-rapping Unveiled.= An Exposé of the origin, history theology and philosophy of certain alleged communications from the spiritual world by means of "spirit-rapping," "medium writing," "physical demonstrations," etc. New York, 1855. 8vo. MYERS, F. W. H. =Science and a Future Life=, and other essays. London, 1891. 8vo. OCHOROWICZ, DR. J. =Mental Suggestion= (with a preface by Prof. Charles Richet). From the French by J. Fitz-Gerald. New York, 1891. 8vo. OLCOTT, HENRY S. =Old Diary Leaves.= New York, 1895. 8vo. (Full of wildly improbable incidents in the career of Madame Blavatsky. Valuable on account of its numerous quotations from American journals concerning the early history of the theosophical movement in the United States.) PODMORE, FRANK S. =Apparitions and Thought-Transference=: Examination of the evidence of telepathy. New York, 1894. 8vo. (A thoughtful scientific work on a profoundly interesting subject.) REVELATIONS OF A SPIRIT MEDIUM; or, =Spiritualistic Mysteries Exposed=. St. Paul, Minn., 1891. 8vo. (One of the best exposés of physical phenomena published.) ROBERT-HOUDIN, J. E. =The Secrets of Stage Conjuring.= From the French, by Prof. Hoffmann. New York, 1881. 8vo. (A full account of the performances of the Davenport Bros. in Paris, by the most famous of contemporary conjurers.) ROARK, RURICK N. =Psychology in Education.= New York, 1895. 8vo. ROCKHILL, WM. W. =The Land of the Lamas.= New York, 1891. 8vo. SEYBERT COMMISSION ON SPIRITUALISM. =Preliminary Report.= New York, 1888. 8vo. (Absolutely anti-spiritualistic. The psychical phases of the subject not considered.) SIDGWICK, MRS. H. =Article "Spiritualism" in "Encyclopædia Britannica,"= vol. 22. (An excellent resumé of spiritualism, its history and phenomena.) SINNETT, A. P. (_Ed._) =Incidents in the life of Mme. Blavatsky.= London, 1886. 8vo. (Interesting, but replete with wildly improbable incidents, etc. Of little value as a life of the famous occultist.) ------ =The Occult World.= London, 1885. 8vo. ------ =Esoteric Buddhism.= London, 1888. 8vo. SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH: =Proceedings.= Vols. 1-11. [1882-95.] London, 1882-95. 8vo. (The most exhaustive researches yet set on foot by impartial investigators. Scientific in character, and invaluable to the student. Psychical phases of spiritualism mostly dealt with.) TRUESDELL, JOHN W. =The Bottom Facts Concerning the Science of Spiritualism=: Derived from careful investigations covering a period of twenty-five years. New York, 1883. 8vo. (Anti-spiritualistic. Exposés of physical phenomena: psychography, rope-tests, etc. Of its kind, a valuable contribution to the literature of the subject.) WEATHERLY, DR. L. A., AND MASKELYNE, J. N. =The Supernatural.= Bristol, Eng., 1891. 8vo. WILLMANN, CARL. =Moderne Wunder.= Leipsic, 1892. 8vo. (Contains interesting accounts of Dr. Slade's Berlin and Leipsic experiences. It is written by a professional conjurer. Anti-spiritualistic.) WOODBURY, WALTER E. =Photographic Amusements.= New York, 1896. 8vo. (Contains some interesting accounts of so-called spirit photography.) FOOTNOTES: [1] Introduction to Herrmann the Magician, his Life, his Secrets, (Laird & Lee, Publishers.) [2] Spiritualism and nervous derangement, New York, 1876. p. 115. [3] The Bottom Facts Concerning the Science of Spiritualism, etc., New York, 1883. [4] Communication to _New York Sun_, 1892. [5] NOTE--These letters were purchased from the _Christian College Magazine_ by Dr. Elliot Coues, of Washington, D. C. [6] "Old Diary Leaves"--_Olcott_. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=. 
21533	----	(This file was produced from images generously made available by Case Western Reserve University Preservation Department Digital Library) [Illustration: Docteur Pascal] REINCARNATION A STUDY IN HUMAN EVOLUTION THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY AND THE REINCARNATION OF THE SOUL BY DR. TH. PASCAL TRANSLATED BY FRED ROTHWELL "Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him:--It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life."--SCHOPENHAUER. (_Parerga and Paralipomena_, Vol. 2, Chap. 15) LONDON The Theosophical Publishing Society 161 NEW BOND STREET, W. 1910 * * * * * CONTENTS CHAP. SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE AUTHOR'S PREFACE I. THE SOUL AND THE BODIES II. REINCARNATION AND THE MORAL LAW III. REINCARNATION AND SCIENCE IV. REINCARNATION AND THE RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL CONSENSUS OF THE AGES CONCLUSION * * * * * SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE. Théophile Pascal was born on the 11th of May, 1860, at Villecroze, a village in the South of France. His childhood was spent amid the pleasant surroundings of a country life. Shortly after his sixteenth birthday, a relative of his, a Catholic priest ministering in Toulon, seeing that the youth showed considerable ability, sent for him and presided over his studies in this large maritime centre. Before many years elapsed, he entered the Naval Medical School of the town, which he left at the age of twenty-two, with first-class honours. In his professional capacity, he took several trips on vessels belonging to the Mediterranean squadron. Four years afterwards he married, resigned active naval service, and devoted himself to building up a practice on land, becoming a homoeopathic physician in the great seaport itself. It was about this time that the young doctor became interested in Theosophy, owing to the kindly services of a former patient, Commander Courmes. The closest friendship and sympathetic interest in theosophic thought thus began, and continued during their common labours subsequently in Paris, Dr. Pascal entered the Theosophical Society in 1891, and during the course of the following year wrote a series of articles for the _Revue Théosophique Française_. These were continued year after year, and dealt with the most varied subjects: Psychic Powers; The Fall of the Angels; Kâma-Manasic Elementals; Thought Forms; Christianity, Prehistoric Races, and many others. The young doctor had previously made a deep study of human magnetism, which proved a most fertile ground for the sowing of the seed of the Ancient Wisdom. In 1898 attacks of serious nervous depression became frequent, forcing him to cease work of every kind. Mrs. Besant persuaded him to accompany her to India, where his general health was gradually restored, and he was enabled to return to France in the following year. He decided to leave Toulon, where he had built up a considerable practice, and to settle in Paris, hoping to provide for the needs of himself and his family--his wife and only daughter--by the exercise of his profession, and at the same time to fight the good fight for Theosophy in the capital itself. The French Section of the Theosophical Society was founded in 1900, and Dr. Pascal was elected General Secretary. Throughout the next two years a number of thoughtful articles and publications appeared from his pen. The incessant labour and attention, however, which he bestowed on the spreading of theosophic instruction began to have its effect on a naturally delicate constitution, and in July, 1902, when attending the meetings of the British Convention in London, he was prostrated by an attack of congestion of the brain. The most devoted care was lavished on him, both in London and in Paris, the result being that a rapid, though only temporary, recovery took place. Had he relaxed his efforts somewhat, the cure might have been a permanent one, but Dr. Pascal, with the penetrating vision of the mystic, saw how pressing were the needs of the age, and how few the pioneers of this new presentation of the Truth, so that, at whatever cost of personal sacrifice, he plunged once more into the midst of his arduous toil. In 1903 a series of very fine articles on the Laws of Destiny appeared in the _Revue Théosophique_, to be followed immediately by publication in volume form. Two years afterwards appeared the present volume--REINCARNATION: A STUDY IN HUMAN EVOLUTION; a work considered the most complete of any that have so far appeared in France on this subject, and the most popular of Dr. Pascal's publications. In 1906 some of the nerve centres controlling the organs of speech became affected, but not sufficiently to compel him to remain absent from the International Theosophical Congress held that year in Paris under the presidency of Colonel Olcott. It was on this occasion that Dr. Pascal received from the hands of the President-Founder the Subba Rao medal, awarded to members of the society whose literary labours in the promulgation of the truths of Theosophy have proved eminently useful. Twelve months afterwards he attended the Congress at Munich, under the presidency of Mrs. Besant, but was obliged to leave before the termination of the meetings. This may be regarded as Dr. Pascal's last public appearance as an active theosophist, for his subsequent prolonged stay in the South of France effected no radical improvement in the state of his health. Returning to Paris in March, 1908, and realising how impossible it was for him to fulfil the duties incumbent on a General Secretary, he decided to resign his post. His colleagues, however, insisted on his continuing as Honorary General Secretary. From this time onward his health became gradually worse, and his physical life terminated on the 18th of April, 1909, his body being cremated three days afterwards at the Cemetery of Père Lachaise. What was most striking about Dr. Pascal, in both public and private life, was his intense earnestness--the index of a well-grounded habit of concentration--and the calm strength of his convictions. It was impossible to be in his presence for any length of time without feeling the power that emanated from him, and recognising that here was a mighty soul struggling for expression. Other characteristics were his extreme modesty, and his continual endeavour to accord praise and merit to those working for the cause so dear to his own heart. When questioned on many of the intricate points raised in a lecture or in conversation on some abstruse theosophical subject, he made no pretence at knowledge he did not possess; on such occasions his confession of ignorance would be charming, even touching in its _naïveté_. But the qualities he seemed to feel it his special object to awaken in the minds of others--as will be acknowledged, I think, by those who knew him best--may be inferred from his continual insistence on the double duty, incumbent on students of Theosophy, of practising on all occasions the utmost tolerance, refusing not only to condemn but even to judge harshly the opinions or actions of others, and of seizing every opportunity to help another because of the recognition of the One Life throughout the world, May we who read the following pages catch somewhat of the deep earnestness and enthusiastic spirit breathing through them, and may the joy of service dissipate all meaner, motives, taking as our watchword also the only key to true growth, the very heart of altruism, that exhortation he never wearied of repeating: _Aidez! Aidez toujours!_ F. R. AUTHOR'S PREFACE It will soon be: 1500 years since the decision of the Council of 543 A.D.[1] condemned to oblivion sublime teachings which ought to have been carefully preserved and handed down to future generations as a beacon amid social reefs; teachings that would have uprooted that frightful egoism which threatens to annihilate the world, and instilled patience into the hearts of such as were being crushed beneath the wheel of the cosmic law, by showing them the scales of Justice inclining to the side filled with their iniquities of bygone times; teachings which would have been welcomed by the masses, and the understanding of which would not have called for any lofty intellectual culture. It was one of the greatest misfortunes that could have befallen the races of the West, more especially the European, that they were thus deprived for centuries of this indispensable knowledge. We look upon it as a duty, following on so many others, to offer it anew, this time in the clear, logical, illuminating form presented in theosophic teachings. The necessity thereof is all the more imperative when we consider the growth of scepticism and materialism amongst the more intellectual classes, whilst the mass of the people have forsaken their blind faith only to succumb to religious indifference. To every awakened soul the question comes: Why does evil exist? So long as the enigma remains unsolved, Suffering remains a threatening sphinx, opposing God and ready to devour mankind. The key to the secret lies in Evolution, which can be accomplished only by means of the continual return of souls to earth. When once man learns that suffering is the necessary result of divine manifestation; that inequalities of conditions are due to the different stages which beings have reached and the changeable action of their will; that the painful phase lasts only a moment in Eternity, and that we have it in our power to hasten its disappearance; that though slaves of the past, we are masters of the future; that, finally, the same glorious goal awaits all beings--then, despair will be at an end; hatred, envy, and rebellion will have fled away, and peace will reign over a humanity made wise by knowledge. Were this modest work to hasten forward this time by a few years, we should feel sufficiently rewarded. The subject will be divided into four chapters: (1) The Soul and the bodies. (2) Reincarnation and the moral law. (3) Reincarnation and science. (4) Reincarnation and the religious and philosophical concensus of the ages. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: This Council came to the following decision:--_Whosoever shall teach the pre-existence of the soul and the strange opinion of its returns to earth, let him be anathema!_] REINCARNATION A STUDY IN HUMAN EVOLUTION CHAPTER I. THE SOUL AND THE BODIES. In a book dealing with the resurrection of bodies and the reincarnations of the Soul, a chapter must be devoted to the fundamental elements of the question. We will give the name of _Soul_ to abstract Being, to the Unknown, that unmanifested Principle which cannot be defined, for it is above all definition. It is the Absolute of Western philosophers, the _Parabrahm_ of the Hindus, the _Tao_ of the ancient sages of China, the causeless Cause of all that has been or ever will be manifested in concrete time and space. Some feeble idea of it may perhaps be obtained by comparing it with electricity, which, though the cause of various phenomena: heat, movement, chemical action, light, is not, _per se_, any one of these phenomena, undergoes no modification from their existence, and survives them when the apparatus through which they manifest disappears. We shall set up no distinction between this Soul, which may be called the universal Soul, and the individual soul, which has often been defined as a ray, a particle of the total Soul, for logically one cannot imply parts to the Absolute; it is illusion, limitation on our part, which shows us souls in the Soul. _Bodies_ are "aspects" of the Soul, results of its activity--if, indeed, the Infinite can be said to be either active or passive; words fail when we attempt to express the Inexpressible. These bodies, or, more precisely, the varied forms assumed by force-matter[2] are aspects of the Soul, just as light or chemical action are aspects of electricity, for one cannot suppose anything outside of infinite Being, nor can anything be imagined which is not a manifestation of the abstract Whole. Let us also define _Consciousness_. Taken absolutely, it is Being, the Soul, God; the uncaused Cause of all the states which, in beings, we call states of consciousness. This limited consciousness may be defined as the faculty a "centre of life" possesses of receiving vibrations from its surroundings. When, in the course of evolution, a being is sufficiently developed to become conscious of a separation between its "I" and the object which sends it vibrations, consciousness becomes self-consciousness. This _self_-consciousness constitutes the _human_ stage; it appears in the higher animals, but as it descends the scale of being, gradually disappears in non-individualised consciousness. In a word, absolute Consciousness is one, though, as in the above example, it is manifested differently, according to the differences in the vehicles which express it in the concrete world in which we live. The Soul, _per se_, is beyond the reach of beings who have not finished the pilgrimage of evolution. To know it, one must have attained to the eternal Centre, the unmanifested Logos. Up to that point, one can only, in proportion as one ascends, feel it in oneself, or acknowledge it by means of the logic which perceives it through all its manifestations as the universal Mover of forms, the Cause of all things, the Unity that produces diversity by means of the various vehicles which serve it as methods of expression. Science says that intelligence, or, to be more generic, consciousness, results from the action of matter. This is a mistake. Consciousness does not change in proportion as the cells of the body are renewed; rather it increases with physical unconsciousness, as in somnambulism. Thought is not the fruit of the brain; it offers itself to the latter, ready made, so to speak; the loftiest intellectual or artistic inspirations are flashes which strike down into the awaiting brain, when maintaining that passive expectant attitude which is the condition in which a higher message may be received. The senses are not the thinking-principle. They need to be controlled by consciousness; thus, people blind from birth, when suddenly made to see, cannot judge either distance or perspective; like animals and primitive men, they see nothing but colours on a surface. Science says also: the organ is created for the function it has to perform; again a mistake. The eyes of the foetus are constructed in the darkness of the womb. The human germ, notwithstanding its unconsciousness and its simplicity of structure, develops a body that is complex and capable of a considerable degree of consciousness; though itself unintelligent, it produces prodigies of intelligence in this body; here, consequently, the effect would be greatly superior to the cause, which is absurd. Outside of the body and the germ is a supreme Intelligence which creates the models of forms and carries out their construction. This Intelligence is the Soul of the world. If Consciousness _per se_, or the Soul, is above all direct proof at the present stage of human evolution, the vehicles through which it functions are more or less apparent to us provided they are capable of affecting the brain. At the present stage of human evolution, this is the case only with the astral body; the other bodies are too fine to manifest through the nervous system such characteristics as are calculated to furnish scientists with a proof of their existence; they can only be felt and proved in and by _Yoga_.[3] It is not without importance, however, to set forth the proofs of the existence of a vehicle of consciousness immediately above the physical, for it affords us a wider horizon and throws far more light on the rest of the subject. PROOFS OF THE ASTRAL BODY. Certain normal and abnormal or morbid phenomena in man have proved the existence of this vehicle, which we will call the _higher_ consciousness, for it is far greater than normal, waking consciousness, that of the brain. In the somewhat rare cases in which this consciousness is expressed in the physical world, it is forced to make use of the brain. Now, in the majority of men, the latter is still incapable of vibrating harmoniously with the matter which forms the astral vehicle; this is because the density of the atoms of the brain cells which preside over thought is incapable of reproducing the rapid vibrations of the finer matter belonging to the body immediately above it. By special training (the _yoga_ of the Hindus), by a particular constitution of body (_sensitiveness_), by certain special methods (_hypnotism_), or in certain maladies (_somnambulism_), the brain may become receptive to these vibrations, and receive from them an impression, though always an imperfect one. The rarity of this impression, its imperfection, and especially the necessity for the vibration of the physical brain that it may be manifested in our environment; all these have made it very difficult to prove the existence of this higher vehicle; still, there are certain considerations which show that it exists, and that it alone is capable of explaining the most characteristic phenomena of the higher consciousness. Let us first define these two states of consciousness rather more completely, and fix their limits. Normal consciousness is that which functions during waking hours, when the brain is in full physiological activity, freely and completely related to the outer physical world. This consciousness is more or less developed according to the individual, but its component parts--sensation, emotion, sentiment, reason, intelligence, will, intuition--do not exceed known limits; for instance, we do not find clairvoyance, the prophetic faculty, and certain other abnormal faculties, which we shall class under the higher consciousness. The higher consciousness works in the astral body, whether externalised or not; it seldom manifests itself, and then incompletely; it is accompanied by the more or less complete inhibition of the senses, and by a kind of sleep in which the relations of the subject with the physical world are wholly or partially suspended. The characteristics of this state are greater keenness of the normal faculties, and the appearance of new ones, which are often inexplicable and extraordinary and the more remarkable in proportion as sleep is more profound, the brain calmer, or the physiological state more abnormal. How can we explain the paradox that faculties shown by a brain in a state of inactivity cover an extent of ground which the brain in a state of activity cannot approach? The reason is that the brain, in this case, is not an instrument moved directly by the cause of consciousness, _the soul_, but a simple recipient, which the soul, then centred in the astral body, impresses _on returning to the physical body_ (if it has been far away) or impresses directly when, whilst acting in the finer vehicle, the latter has not left the body.[4] In other words, the brain, by reason of its functional inactivity, vibrates little or not at all in its higher centres; it plays the part of a sounding-board at rest, capable of vibrating sympathetically under the influence of a similar board placed by its side. The necessity of cerebral quiet, if the higher consciousness is to make an impression, is now easy to understand; the finer vibration of the astral body cannot be impressed upon the brain when the latter is already strongly vibrating under the action of normal consciousness. For this reason also, the deeper the sleep of the physical body the better the higher consciousness manifests itself. In ordinary man, organic quiet is scarcely ever complete during sleep; the brain, as we shall see shortly, automatically repeats the vibrations which normal consciousness has called forth during the waking state; this, together with an habitual density of the nervous elements, too great to respond to the higher vibration, explains the rarity and the confused state of the impression of astral consciousness on the brain. The facts relating to the higher consciousness are as numerous as they are varied. We shall not enter into full details, but choose only a few phenomena quoted in well-known works. MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS DURING THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF SLEEP. _Normal dream._ During normal sleep there exists a special consciousness which must not be confounded either with waking consciousness or with that of the astral body. It is due to the automatic, cerebral vibration which continues during sleep, and which the soul examines on its return to the body--when awake. This dream is generally an absurd one, and the reason the dreamer notices it only on awaking is that he is absent from the visible body during sleep. The proof of the departure of the astral body during sleep has been ascertained by a certain number of seers, but the absurdity of the commonplace dream is a rational proof thereof, one which must here be mentioned. As another rational proof of the existence of a second vehicle of consciousness, we must also notice the regular registering of the commonplace dream, because it takes place in the brain, and the habitual non-registering of the true dream experience, because this latter takes place in the externalised astral body. Why does the astral body leave the physical during sleep? This question is beyond our power to answer, though a few considerations on this point may be advanced. Sleep is characterised by the transfer of consciousness from the physical to the astral body; this transfer seems to take place normally under the influence of bodily fatigue. After the day's activity, the senses no longer afford keen sensations, and as it is the energy of these sensations that keeps the consciousness "centred" in the brain[5]; this consciousness, when the senses are lulled to sleep, centres in the finer body, which then leaves the physical body with a slight shock. It is, however, of the real dream--which is at times so intelligent that it has been called lucid, and at all events is reasonable, logical, and co-ordinate--that we wish to speak. In most cases this dream consists of a series of thoughts due to the soul in action in the astral body; it is sometimes the result of seeing mental pictures of the future[6] or else it represents quite another form of animistic activity, as circumstances and the degree of the dreamer's development permit. It is in the lucid dream--whether belonging to normal or to abnormal sleep--that occur those numerous and well-known cases of visions past or future to be found in so many of the books dealing with this special subject. To these same states of higher consciousness are due such productions as Walter Scott's _Ivanhoe_. The author, suffering from fever, wrote this work whilst in a kind of delirious condition; _Ivanhoe_ was printed before the recovery of the author, who, on reading it at a later date, had not the slightest recollection that it was his own production. (Ribot's _Maladies de la Mémoire_, p. 41.) Walter Scott remembered nothing, because _Ivanhoe_ was the fruit of the astral consciousness impressed upon a brain which fever had rendered temporarily receptive to the higher vibrations. There are certain peculiarities of the real dream which prove almost mathematically the superior nature of the vehicle which gives expression to it. This dream, for instance, is never of a fatiguing nature, however long it may appear to last, because it is only an instantaneous impression made upon the brain by the astral body, when the latter returns to the physical body, on awaking. On the other hand, the cerebral ideation of the waking state is fatiguing if intense or prolonged, or if the nervous system of the thinker is deprived of its normal power of resistance (_in neurasthenia_); the commonplace (_brain_) dream is also fatiguing if prolonged or at all vivid. Another peculiarity is that a dream--the real dream--which would require several years of life on earth for its realisation, can take place in a second. The dream of Maury (_Le Sommeil et le Rève_, p. 161), who in half a second lived through three years of the French Revolution, and many other dreams of the same nature, are instances of this. Now, Fechner has proved, in his _Elemente der Psychophysik_, first, that a fraction of a second is needed for the sensorial contact to cause the brain to vibrate--this prevents our perceiving the growth of a plant and enables us to see a circle of fire when a piece of glowing coal is rapidly whirled round; secondly, that another fraction of a second is needed for the cerebral vibration to be transformed into sensation. We might add that a third fraction of a second is needed for sensation to be transformed into ideation, proving that in these special dreams there can have been no more than an instantaneous, mass impression of all the elements of the dream upon the brain,[7] and that the dream itself has been produced by the imaginative action of the soul in the astral body, an extremely subtle one, whose vibratory power is such as to transform altogether our ordinary notions of time and space. _The death-bed dream._ In dying people, the bodily senses gradually lose their vitality, and by degrees the soul concentrates itself within the finer vehicle. From that time signs of the higher consciousness appear, time is inordinately prolonged, visions present themselves, the prophetic faculty is sometimes manifested, and verified cases are related of removal to a distance, like that of the Alsatian woman dying on board ship. During the final coma she went to Rio de Janeiro and commended her child to the keeping of a fellow-countryman. (D'Assier's _L'humanité posthume_, p. 47) Similar instances are found in _The Night Side of Nature_, by C. Crowe, as well as in other works of the same kind. _The dream of intoxication._ Under the influence of soporifics the same transfer of consciousness is produced, and we meet with more or less remarkable phenomena due to the higher consciousness. Opium smokers and eaters of hashish are able to form ideas with such rapidity that minutes seem to them to be years, and a few moments in dreamland delude them into the idea that they have lived through a whole life. (Hervey's _Les rêves et les moyens de les diriger_.) _The dream of asphyxia._ During asphyxia by submersion the higher consciousness enters into a minute study of the life now running to its close. In a few moments it sees the whole of it again in its smallest details. Carl du Prel (_Philos. der Mystik_) gives several instances of this; Haddock (_Somnolism and Psychism_, p. 213) quotes, among other cases, that of Admiral Beaufort. During two minutes' loss of consciousness in a drowning condition, he saw again every detail of his life, all his actions, including their causes, collateral circumstances, their effects, and the reflections of the victim on the good and evil that had resulted therefrom. Perty's account (_Die Mystischen Erscheinungen der Menschlichen Natur_) of Catherine Emmerich, the somnambulist nun, who, when dying, saw again the whole of her past life, would incline one to think that this strange phenomenon, which traditional Catholicism appears to have called the "Private Judgment," and which theosophy defines with greater preciseness, is not limited to asphyxia by submersion, but is the regular accompaniment of life's ending. MANIFESTATION OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS IN VARIOUS CASES OF MENTAL FACULTIES LOST TO NORMAL CONSCIOUSNESS. A rather large number of people born blind have images in dreams, and can see with the higher consciousness, when placed in a state of somnambulism. This proves that the higher consciousness possesses the power of vision on its own plane, and can impress images thereof on the brain. That this impression may be translated into the language of the physical plane,[8] it must evidently take place in one of the physical centres of vision which make possible three-dimensional sight; these centres may be intact even when the external visual apparatus does not exist or is incapable of functioning. A deaf and dumb idiot became intelligent and spoke during spontaneous somnambulism (Steinbach's _Der Dichter ein Seher_). This is a case which appears to us difficult to explain fully; indeed, if the impression of the higher vibration on that portion of the brain which presides over intelligence and thought can be understood, it is not easy to see how tongue and lips could suddenly utter precise sounds which they had never produced before. Another factor must have intervened here, as was the case with the child prophets of the Camisards. (V. Figuier's _Hist. du merveilleux_, _etc._) Young Hébert, who had gone mad as the result of a wound, regained full consciousness, the higher consciousness, during somnambulism. (Puysegur's _Journal du traitement du jeune Hébert_.) Dr. Teste (_Manuel pratiq. du magnét. anim._) came across madmen who became sane just before death, _i.e._, when consciousness was passing into the astral body. He also mentions a servant girl, quite uneducated and of ordinary intelligence, who nevertheless became a veritable philosopher during mesmeric somnambulism and delivered learned discourses on lofty problems dealing with cosmogony. This proves that the vibratory scale of the finer vehicle extends far beyond that of the physical, and that the soul cannot impress on this latter vehicle all that it knows when functioning in the former. By this we do not mean that it is omniscient as soon as it has left the visible body; this opinion, a current one, is contrary to the law of evolution, and will not bear examination. MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS UNDER THE FORM OF MEMORY. The memory that is lost by the brain is preserved in its entirety by the finer vehicle. A musician, a friend of Hervey's, once heard a remarkable piece of music; he remembered it on awaking, and wrote it down, regarding it as his own inspiration. Many years afterwards, he found it in an old parcel of music where he knew it had been long before; he had totally forgotten it in his normal consciousness. (Hervey's _Dreams_.) Coleridge tells of a servant girl who, when in a state of delirium, would recite long passages of Hebrew which she had formerly heard from the lips of a priest in whose service she had been. In the same way, she would repeat passages from Latin and Greek theological books, which she had heard under the same circumstances; in her normal state, she had no recollection whatever of all this. (Dr. Carpenter's _Mental Physiology_, p. 437, 1881 edition.) Ricard (_Physiol. et Hygiène du Magnét._, p. 183) relates the case of a young man, possessed of an ordinary memory, but who, in somnambulism, could repeat almost word for word a sermon he had heard or a book he had read. Mayo, the physiologist, states that an ignorant young girl, in a state of somnambulism, wrote whole pages of a treatise on astronomy, including figures and calculations, which she had probably read in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, for the treatise was afterwards found in that work. (_Truths in Popular Superstitions._) Ladame (_La Névrose hypnotique_, p. 105) mentions a woman who, having only on one occasion been to the theatre, was able, during somnambulism, to sing the whole of the second act of Meyerbeer's _L'Africaine_, an opera of which she knew nothing whatever in her waking state. During experiments with the inhaling of protoxyde of azote, H. Davy said that normal consciousness disappeared, and was followed by a wonderful power of recalling past events. (Hibbert's _Philosophy of Apparitions_, p. 162.) MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS IN PHENOMENA OF DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS. The "strata of memory" met with in many cases also prove the existence of the second vehicle of consciousness which we are trying to demonstrate. Certain dreams continue night after night, beginning again just where they stopped the previous night; this is noticed in the case of those who talk in their sleep and in spontaneous or forced somnambulism. The memory of one intoxicated, or in a state of fever delirium is lost when consciousness returns from the astral to the physical body; it comes back on the return of the delirium or the intoxication. The same thing takes place in madness; at the termination of a crisis, the patients take up the past just where they left it. (Wienholt's _Heilkraft_.) Kerner relates that one of these unfortunate persons, after an illness lasting several years, remembered the last thing he did before the crisis happened, his first question being whether the tools with which he had been cutting up wood had been put away. During the whole of the interval he had been living in his higher consciousness. Ribot (_Maladies de la Mémoire_ p. 63) has noted the fact that the same thing happens with those who fall into a state of coma after having received a hurt or wound. MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS, INDICATING NOT ONLY THAT IT EXTENDS FARTHER THAN NORMAL CONSCIOUSNESS, BUT DOMINATES, AND IS SEPARATED FROM IT, RECOGNISING THAT ITS VEHICLE--THE BODY--IS NOTHING MORE THAN AN INSTRUMENT. The Soul functioning in the finer body sees the physical body in a state of coma. Dr. Abercrombie relates the case of a child aged four, who was trepanned as the result of fracture of the skull, and whilst in a stale of coma. He never knew what happened. At the age of fifteen, during an attack of fever, the higher consciousness impressed itself upon the brain, and he remembered every detail of the accident; he described to his mother where he had felt the pain, the operation, the people present, their number, functions, the clothes they wore, the instruments used, etc. (Kerner, _Magikon_, vol. 3, p. 364.) The Soul, in the finer body, during somnambulism, is separated both from the physical body and from normal consciousness, it calmly foresees the illness or the death of the denser body on which it sometimes imposes serious operations. Such facts were numerous in the case of magnetisers in olden days. Deleuze (_Hist. crit. du magn. animal_, vol. 2, p. 173) had a patient who, in a state of somnambulism, held moral, philosophical, and religious opinions quite contrary to those of his waking state. Charpignon (_Physiol., médecine et métaphys. du magnétisme_, p. 341) tells of a patient who, when awake, wished to go to the theatre, but during somnambulism refused to do so, saying: "_She_ wants to go, but _I_ don't want." On Charpignon recommending that she should try to turn _her_ aside from her purpose, she replied: "What can I do? _She_ is mad!" Deleuze (_Inst. pratiq. s. le magét. anim._, p. 121) says that many somnambulists look into their body when the latter is ill; that they are often indifferent to its sufferings, and sometimes are not even willing to prescribe remedies to cure it. Chardel (_Esquisse de la nat. humaine expliq. p. le magn. anim._, p. 282) relates that many somnambulists are unwilling to be awakened so as not to return to a body which is a hindrance to them. There are many madmen who speak of their body in the third person. (Ladame, _La Névrose_, p. 43). They function in the non-externalised finer vehicle. Some explain their use of the third person as follows:--"_It_ is the body; it is _I_ who am the spirit." MANIFESTATION OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE PHENOMENA OF POSSESSION AND MATERIALISATION. In these strange phenomena, not only manifestations of the higher consciousness, analogous with or similar to those just cited, have been noted, but also a number of facts which prove, to some extent, the casual presence in a normal human body or in materialised abnormal forms, of beings other than that which constitutes the personality of the one possessed, or of the medium who conditions these materialisations. On this point, we would mention the well-known investigations of Sir W. Crookes (_Katie King_), those of Colonel de Rochas (Vincent, _Un cas de changement de personnalité, Lotus Bleu_ 1896), and similar experiments of other savants. "Incarnation mediums" have often lent their physical bodies to disincarnated human entities, whose account of what happened or whose identity it has been possible to verify. Here I will mention only one case amongst several others, I heard it from my friend, D. A. Courmes, a retired naval captain, a man who is well-informed in these matters, thoroughly sincere, and of unquestioned veracity. In 1895, he happened to be off Algiers, on a training vessel. A boat had sunk in the harbour, and a man was drowned. His body had not been recovered. On the evening of the accident, my friend, accompanied by a doctor, a professor, and the vice-president of the Court of Algiers, attended a spiritualistic meeting in the town. One of these "incarnation mediums" happened to be present. M. Courmes suggested that the drowned man should be called up. The latter answered to the call, entered the medium, whose voice and attitude immediately changed. He gave the following account of what had taken place: "When the boat sank, I was on the ladder. I was hurled down, my right leg passed between two bars, occasioning fracture of the leg, and preventing me from releasing myself. My body will be found caught in the ladder when the boat is brought to the surface. It is useless to seek elsewhere." This account was shortly afterwards confirmed. These phenomena are more frequent than one would imagine; a sufficient number might be given to show that, judging from the theory of probabilities, serious consideration should be given to them. MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS IN APPARITIONS. A final group of phenomena to which I wish to call attention is the one which goes under the name of apparitions. A considerable number of these are to be found; we will confine ourselves, however, to referring the reader to a volume entitled _Phantasms of the Living_, due to the patient investigations of a distinguished body of foreign savants. Here we find, first of all, proof of the transmission of thought to a distance. An examination into the conditions under which most of these cases took place has convinced several students of the existence of the finer body which we are here endeavouring to demonstrate, as well as of the possibility of its instantaneous transference to a great distance. As the proofs afforded by apparitions are not mathematical, _i.e._, indisputable, and as they give room for a variety of opinions, we will make no attempt to detail them, preferring to pass on to a final proof--the least important, perhaps, from a general point of view, since it is limited to the individual possessing it; the only absolute and mathematical one, however, to the man who has obtained it:--the personal proof. There are persons--few in number, true--who, under divers influences, have been able to leave the physical body and see it sleeping on a couch. They have freely moved in an environment--the astral world--similar to our physical one in some respects, though different in many others, and have returned again to the body, bringing back the memory of their wanderings. These accounts have been given by persons deserving of credence and not subject to hallucinations. There are other individuals, though not so numerous--of whom we have the pleasure of knowing some personally--who are able to leave their physical bodies and return at will. They travel to great distances with the utmost rapidity and bring back a complete memory of their journeyings. D'Assier gives a typical case in his work. (_L'Humanité posthume_, p. 59.) Such is the proof we look upon as irrefutable, as complete and perfect. The man who can thus travel freely in his finer body knows that the physical body is only a vehicle adapted to the physical world and necessary for life in this world; he knows that consciousness does not cease to function, and that the universe by no means provides the conditions for a state of nothingness, once this body of flesh is laid aside. At this stage of his evolution man can, in addition, make use of his astral body at will, and obtain on the astral plane, first by reason and intuition, afterwards by personal experience, proof of another vehicle of consciousness--the mental body. At a further stage he obtains the certainty of possession of the causal body, then of higher bodies, and from that time he can no longer doubt the teachings of the Elder Brothers, those who have entered the higher evolution, the worlds that are divine. He knows, beyond all possibility of doubt, that what the ordinary man expresses in such childish language regarding these lofty problems, what he calls the Absolute and the Manifested, God and the Universe, the soul and the body, are more vitally true than he imagined; he sees that these words are dense veils that conceal the supreme, ineffable, infinite Being, of whom manifested beings are illusory "aspects," facets of the divine Jewel.[9] With this introduction, we will plunge at once into the heart of the subject. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 2: Which is nothing but an unknown "aspect" of abstract Divinity.] [Footnote 3: Present-day man possesses four bodies of increasing fineness, the elements of which interpenetrate. Proceeding from the most dense, these are: The physical, the astral, the mental, and the causal body. In certain conditions they are capable of dissociation, and they last for a longer or a shorter time. The astral body, also called the body of desire, animal soul (Kâmarûpa, in Sanskrit) is the seat of sensation. Evolution has in store for us higher bodies stilt--the buddhic body, the atmic body, &c.... but these need only be mentioned at this point. _Yoga_--Sanskrit, _union_--is a training of the different bodies of man by the will; its object is to make of those bodies complete and perfect instruments, capable of responding to the vibrations of the outer universe as well as to those of the individual soul. When this process is accomplished, man can receive, consciously and at will, in any one of his bodies, vibrations received by the soul primarily in one of the others; for instance, he may feel in the physical brain the direct action of his astral or higher bodies; he may also leave the physical, and feel directly in his astral body the action of the mental body, and so on. _Yoga_ can be practised only under the guidance of a Master, _i.e._, a highly developed being, capable of guiding the student safely through the dangers incidental to this training.] [Footnote 4: When the astral body is externalised, the subject cannot speak; he must await its return; when only partially externalised or not at all, and consciousness is centred in it, the subject can speak and relate what he sees afar off, for astral vision is possible at enormous distances. Such cases as these are frequently met with.] [Footnote 5: In 1876, in a Leipzic hospital, there was a patient possessed of neither sensibility nor muscular sense. He had only sight in the right eye and hearing in the left ear. If this eye and ear were closed, the patient immediately fell asleep. Neither by being touched nor shaken could he be awakened; to effect this, it was necessary to open his eye and unstop his ear. (_Archiv. für die ges. Physiologie_, vol. 15, p. 573).] [Footnote 6: These pictures are often visible in the astral world; they explain the prophetic faculty of ordinary seers.] [Footnote 7: In such cases, by association of ideas or any other influence, the soul dramatises the physical impression which calls forth the dream, and creates the long phantasmagoria of this dream in so short a time as to be scarcely appreciable. Between the sleeping physical body and the externalised astral body there is so close a degree of sympathy that the latter is conscious of everything that takes place in the former. This explains why the astral body returns so rapidly to the physical when a noise, light, or any other sensation impresses this latter.] [Footnote 8: We say "language of the physical plane" because the soul, in the astral body, sees in four dimensions, _i.e._, all the parts of an object at once, as though these parts were spread out on a two-dimensional plane. Consequently, the higher vision needs interpretation in order to be expressed on the physical plane.] [Footnote 9: There are other proofs of the existence of the causal body, the reincarnating vehicle; the principal one is given in the middle of Chapter 3. It is there shown that the physical germs explain only a very small portion of heredity, and that logic imperiously demands the existence of an invisible, durable body, capable of gathering up the germs which preserve the moral and intellectual qualities of man.] CHAPTER II. REINCARNATION AND THE MORAL LAW. The Goodness, justice, and Omnipotence of God are the guarantees of Providence. It is absolutely impossible that the faintest breath of injustice should ever disturb the Universe. Every time the Law appears to be violated, every time Justice seems outraged, we may be certain that it is our ignorance alone that is at work, and that a deeper knowledge of the net-work of evolution and of the lines of action created by human free will, sooner or later, will dissipate our error. For all that, the whole universe appears to be the very incarnation of injustice. The constellations as they come into manifestation shatter the heavens with their titanic combats; it is the vampirism of the greatest among them that creates the suns, thus inaugurating egoism from the very beginning. Everywhere on earth is heard the cry of pain, a never-ending struggle; sacrifice is everywhere, whether voluntary or forced, offered freely or taken unwillingly. The law of the strongest is the universal tyranny. The vegetable kingdom feeds upon the mineral, and in its turn forms nourishment for the animal; the giants of the forests spread ruin in every direction, beneath their destructive influence the spent, exhausted soil can nourish nothing but weeds and shrubs of no importance. In the animal kingdom a war to the death is ever being waged, a terrible destruction in which those best armed for the fray pitilessly devour the weak and defenceless. Man piles up every kind and method of destruction, cruelty and barbarity of every sort; he tears away gold from the bowels of the earth, mutilates the mighty forests, exhausts the soil by intensive culture, harasses and tortures animals when unable to utilise their muscular strength, and, in addition, kills them when their flesh is eatable; his most careful calculations are the auxiliaries of his insatiable egoism, and, by might or cunning, he crushes everything that hinders or inconveniences him. Finally, from time to time, the Elements mingle their awful voice in this concert of pain and despair, and we find hurricanes and floods, fires and earthquakes pile up colossal wreck and ruin in a few hours, on which scenes of destruction the morrow's calm and glorious sun sheds his impassive beams. And so, before reaching individual evil and apparent injustice, there rises up before us at the very outset the threatening spectre of universal evil and injustice. This problem is so closely bound up with our subject that we are compelled to spend a short time in considering it. WHY DOES PAIN EXIST? To admit, as do certain ignorant fatalists, that the Universe was created by the stroke of some magic wand, and that each planet, kingdom, and being is condemned, so to speak, to a definite crystallisation in the state in which it has pleased God to fix it; to admit that the mineral will remain a mineral throughout eternity, that the vegetable will ever reproduce the same types, that the animal will definitely be confined to his instincts and impulses, without the hope, some day, of developing the superior mentality of his torturers in human form; to admit that man will never be anything but man, _i.e._, a being in whom the passions have full play whereas the virtues are scarcely born; to admit that there is no final goal--perfection, the divine state--to crown man's labour; all this is to refuse to recognise evolution, to deny the progress everywhere apparent, to set divine below human justice; blasphemy, in a word. It has been said by unthinking Christians that evidently God created human suffering, so that those might gain Heaven who, but for this suffering, would have no right to it. To speak thus is to represent the Supreme Goodness in a very unworthy aspect and to attribute the most gratuitous cruelty to Divine Justice. When, too, we see that this absurd reasoning explains neither the sufferings of animals, which have no right to enjoy the felicity of heaven, they say, nor the fact[10] that "there are many called but few chosen," nor the saying that "outside the Church there is no salvation," although for ages past God has caused millions of men to be born in countries where the Gospel has not been preached, we shall not be astonished to find that those who arrogate to themselves a monopoly of Truth bring forward none but arguments of childish folly in support of their claims. Generally, however, it is original sin that is advanced as the cause of suffering. The absurdity of this doctrine is so apparent that it has lost all credence by enlightened members of the Christian faith. First of all, it does not explain the sufferings of animals, which have had no participation in this sin, nor does it account for the unequal distribution of pain amongst men themselves. This sin being the same for all at birth,[11] punishment ought to have been equally severe for all, and we ought not to see such frightful disproportions as are to be found in the condition of children who have not attained to the age of reason, _i.e._, of responsibility. Saint Augustine felt the weight of this consideration; he reflected long on this torturing problem: "When I come to consider the sufferings of children," he says, "believe me, I am in a state of terrible perplexity. I have no wish whatever to speak only of the punishment inflicted on them after this life by eternal damnation to which they are of necessity condemned if they have left their bodies without receiving the sacrament of Christ, but of the pains they endure in this present life, under our very eyes. Did I wish to examine these sufferings, time would fail me rather than instances thereof; they languish in sickness, are torn by pain, tortured by hunger and thirst, weakened in their organs, deprived of their senses, and sometimes tormented by unclean beings. I should have to show how they can with justice be subjected to such things, at a time when they are yet without sin. It cannot be said that they suffer unknown to God or that God can do nothing against their tormentors, nor that He can create or allow unjust punishment. When men suffer, we say they are being punished for their crimes, but this can be applied only to adults. As children have in them no sin capable of meriting so terrible a punishment, tell me what answer can be given?" The answer, indeed, cannot be made that original sin is capable of explaining this unequal retribution; but then, ought not the very absurdity of the consequences due to such sin to justify one in refusing to examine this argument? What soul could admit that the innocent should be punished for the guilty? Does human justice, in spite of its imperfection, punish the offspring of criminals? Can the millions of descendants of the mythical Adam have been chastised for a crime in which they have had no share? And would this chastisement, multiplied millions of times without the faintest reason, never have stirred the conscience of the Church? Saint Augustine could not make up his mind to accuse God of injustice; so, to avoid disputing the truth of the Christian teaching in which he wholly believed, he invented his famous theory of "generation," often called "translation." Men suffer because of original sin, he says, but it would not be just of God to punish them for this, had they not shared therein[12]; this, indeed, they have done, for the soul of a man was not created directly, by God, at the moment of the birth of the body; it is a branch taken from the soul of his father, as the latter's comes from that of his parents; thus, ascending the genealogical chain, we see that all souls issue from that of the common father of mankind: Adam.[13] So that Saint Augustine preferred to deny the creation of souls and to derive them from the soul of Adam, through a successive progeny of human vehicles, rather than to allow God to be charged with injustice. We are not called upon to demonstrate the falsity of his hypothesis, which the Church has been forced to condemn, though without replacing it with a better theory; all the same, if human souls suffer from a sin in which they have not individually and consciously participated--and such is the case, for even granting that translation be a fact, these souls existed in Adam only potentially, as unconscious, undeveloped germs, when the sin took place--their punishment is none the less arbitrary and revolting. Saint Augustine believed he was justifying Providence; he succeeded only in deceiving his own reason and revolted sense of justice, but he preferred by suggestion to deceive himself to such an extent as to believe in the reality of his desire rather than enrol himself against the Church. In order to reconcile divine Justice with the injustice of punishing all for the fault of one alone, the theologians also said: "Adam sinned, his sin has been distributed over the whole of his race, but God, by sending down his son, instituted baptism; and the waters of the sacrament wash the stains of original sin from the souls of men." This reply is as childish as the former. As a matter of fact, according to the Church, about four thousand years intervened between the sin of Adam and the coming of the Redeemer, and so only after that interval did the souls of the just, who were waiting in the Life Beyond for the coming of the Messiah, enter Paradise! Would not this delay in itself be an injustice? Ought not baptism to have been instituted immediately after the sin, and should it not have been placed within the reach of all? Besides, do we not see that even in our days, two thousand years after the coming of the Christ, millions of human beings are born and die without ever having heard of the existence of this sacrament. This part of the argument is too puerile to dwell upon at length, but we will spend a few moments on it to show definitely how powerless this theory is to explain evil. Before teaching the doctrine of "Limbo," the Church accepted the idea of the damnation of children who died without being baptised, as we have just seen in the case of Saint Augustine.[14] Bossuet, with incredible blindness, also accepted it; and, sad to relate, his reason did not feel called upon to furnish an explanation which would justify Providence, as was the case with Saint Augustine. He rejected "translation," and discovered nothing with which to veil the blasphemy. On this point the following is a faithful _résumé_ of his letter to Pope Innocent XII.: The damnation of children who have died without being baptised must be firmly believed by the Church. They are guilty because they are born under the wrath of God and in the power of Darkness. Children of wrath by nature, objects of hatred and aversion, hurled into Hell with the rest of the damned, they will remain there for all eternity punished by the horrible vengeance of the Demon. Such also are the decisions of the learned Denis Pétau, the most eminent Bellarmin, the Councils of Lyons, of Florence, and of Trent; for these things are not decided by human considerations, but by the authority of tradition and of the Scriptures. Such logic makes one really doubt human reason, and reminds one of the spirit with which the courts of the Holy Inquisition were inspired. Where in Nature can there be found such lack of proportion between cause and effect, crime and punishment? Have such arguments ever been justified by the voice of conscience? Official Christianity remains powerless to explain suffering. Let us see what we can learn from the philosophies and religions of the past and the greatest of modern philosophers, as well as from the admirable _résumés_ of Teachers of theosophy. The problem of suffering is one with that of life, _i.e._, with that of evolution in general. The object of the successive worlds is the creation of millions of centres of consciousness in the germinal state (_souls_) and the transformation of these germs into divinities similar to their father, God. This is the divine multiplication, creating innumerable "gods," in God. To produce divine germs, homogeneous Unity must limit its immensity and create within itself the diversity of matter, of form. This can be obtained by the creation of "multiplicity" and by the "limitation" of what might be called a portion of Divinity. Now, limitation implies imperfection, both general and individual, _i.e._, suffering; and multiplicity implies diversity of needs and interests, forced submission to the general law _i.e._, suffering again. That the divine germs may evolve, their potentialities must be awakened by their surroundings; in other words, by the action of the "opposites," and sensation must come into being; the action of the opposites on sensation is also a cause of pain. Outside of the unknown Being--which will be known at the end of evolution--nothing can _be_. Everything is in Him. He is all; the worlds, time and space are "aspects" which He assumes from time to time[15]; for this reason it has been said that the Universe is an illusion, which may be expressed more clearly by saying that it is an illusion to believe that what exists is not one form of divine activity, an "aspect" of God. That anything may exist, or rather that aspects of God may appear, there must be manifested in Him a special mode of being, to call forth what we designate as multiplicity. That multiplicity[16] may be manifest, differences must be produced in Unity; these differences in the world are the "pairs of opposites"--the contraries. These contraries are everywhere. Matter is the fulcrum of force--both of these terms being "aspects" of God--and without a fulcrum no force can manifest itself; there is no heat without cold, and when it is summer in the northern hemisphere it is winter in the southern. There is no movement that does not depend upon a state of rest, no light without shadow, no pleasure without the faculty of pain, no freedom that is not founded upon necessity, no good that does not betoken an evil. The following are a few examples of duality taken from nature. The current of electricity is polarised into a positive and a negative current. It is the same with the magnet; though you break a bar into a hundred pieces, you bring into being a hundred small magnets, each possessing its positive and negative side; you will not have destroyed the "duality," the opposites. Like the magnet, the solar spectrum forms two series, separated by a neutral point, the blue series and the red one, united by the violet.[17] Violet. Indigo. Yellow. Blue. Orange. Green. Red. The terms of the two series are respectively complimentary to each other; the violet dominates the two groups of opposites and is a visible member of the axis formed by the colours that might be called neutral. Duality appears in every shape and form. Symbolically, we may say with the Hindus that the Universe begins and ends with two opposite movements: an emanation from Brahmâ, it is born when the breast of God sends forth the heavenly outbreathing, it dies, reabsorbed, when the universal inbreathing takes place. These movements produce attraction and repulsion, the aggregation and dissolution to be found everywhere. It is the attraction of a force-centre, the "laya centre" of Theosophy, which permits of the atomic condensation that gives it the envelope whose soul it is; when its cycle of activity ends, attraction gives place to repulsion, the envelope is destroyed by the return of its constituent elements to the source from which they were drawn, and the soul is liberated until a future cycle of activity begins. Even the rhythm of pulmonary respiration, the contraction and dilation (systole and diastole) of the heart, the ebb and flow of the tides, as also day and night, sleeping and waking, summer and winter, life and death, are all products of that law of contraries which rules creation. These "opposites" are the very essence of cosmic life, the twin pillars of universal equilibrium; they have been represented in Solomon's symbolical temple--here, the Universe--by Jakin and Boaz, the white and the black columns; they are also the interlaced triangles of "Solomon's Seal," the six-pointed star, the two Old Men of the Kabbalah, the white Jehovah and the black Jehovah; Eros and Anteros, the serpents of Mercury's caduceus, the two Sphinxes of the car of Osiris, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, the Chinese "Yang" and "Yin," the goblet and staff of Tarot, man and woman. All these images represent the same law. Multiplicity, the fruit of the contraries, makes its appearance in the forms born in infinite, homogeneous Being; its goal is the goal of creation; the production, in infinite Being, of centres which are developed by evolution and finally become gods in God. These centres, or "souls," these points in the supreme Point, are divine in essence, though, so far, they have no share at all in the perfection "manifested" by God; they are all "centres," for God is a sphere, whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere, but they have not developed consciousness which is as yet only potential in them. Like cuttings of willow which reproduce the mother-tree, these points, veritable portions of God, are capable of germinating, growing up, and becoming "I's," self-conscious beings, intelligent and endowed with will-power, and finally gods, having developed the entire potentialities of the All by their repeated imprisonment in the series of forms that make up the visible and invisible kingdoms of nature. Every form, _i.e._ aggregate of substance-force, reflects within itself one of these points of Divinity. This point is its Monad, its centre of consciousness, or soul; it is the cause which is manifested as qualities in the envelopes, and these give it the illusion of separateness for a certain period,[18] just as a soap-bubble momentarily acquires a fictitious individuality and appears separate from the atmosphere--of which it forms part--so long as its illusory envelope endures. Thus do men imagine themselves separate from one another, when all the time their soul is nothing more than a drop of the divine Ocean, hidden momentarily in a perishable body. The "contraries" are the anvil and the hammer which slowly forge souls by producing what might be called sensation in general, and sensation is a fertile cause of suffering each time the vehicles of consciousness receive vibrations that greatly exceed their fundamental capacity of sensation. Without sensation however--consequently without suffering--the body could neither walk,[19] nor see, nor hear, nor show any disturbance brought to bear upon it; there would exist no possible relation between the Universe and the "I," between the All and the parts, between bodies and souls; there would be no consciousness, or sensation of being, since no vibration from without would find an echo in the incarnated "centres" of life; no knowledge would be possible; man would be, as it were, in a state of nothingness; and, without suspecting it, his body might at any moment be crushed to the ground by the forces of Nature. But these material necessities are not by any means the only ones that demand sensation; without it, one of the principal objects of evolution--the development of "Egos"--would be impossible. As an example borrowed from the domain of physical sensation, we need only call to memory a well-known experience in childhood. All who have been at a boarding school know how heavy and fetid is the atmosphere of a dormitory in the early winter morning, when fifty boys have been breathing the same air again and again during the whole of the night. And yet, who suspected this until he had gone out for a few minutes and then returned to the bed-room? It needed the "contrary," the pure outside air, to make known the state of the atmosphere inside. The contrast produced sensation--that nauseous, suffocating impression of foul, mephitic air; suffering[20] generated knowledge of the vitiated air; as the result of this influence, the "centre of consciousness" felt itself an "I" distinct from its surroundings, and its "self-consciousness" received a slight increase. What might be called passional sensibility--desire, emotion, impulse--is, like physical sensation, another indispensable factor in evolution; it is the special element in the development of the animal kingdom as well as of the less evolved portion of the human kingdom. The young souls of mankind must receive the comparatively simple lessons of sensation, desire, and passion, before beginning the far more complicated study of mentality. But for desire, a host of needs could not be manifested, numberless functions would remain inactive; the body would not feed itself, and would die, were it not for hunger; danger would not be fled from, but for the instinct of self-preservation; nor without this would there be any propagation of the species. None the less is this life of sensation the source of many evils; desire and passion amongst human beings create terrible misery, fill prisons and hospitals, and are at the root of all kinds of moral suffering. In its turn, intelligence--that sensation so characteristic of the human state--is both an indispensable necessity and the most fertile source of evil, so long as it has not experienced a yearning for that inner "divinity," deep in the heart of man, which calls to it. A powerful lever of progress, it might convert this earth into a paradise, whereas it is the weapon which the strong, in their egoism, use to crush the feeble, a terrible weapon which either creates or intensifies all the evils under which the people writhe in despair. Once it becomes the instrument of a regenerate humanity, that is to say, when men have become compassionate, loving, and devoted, then the social question will cease to exist, and the old instrument of torture will become a pledge of general happiness. Even spiritual sensibility is a cause of suffering to some noble souls who have developed it, for however deep the joy of loving and giving oneself, intense too is the pain of witnessing the cruel drama of life, that fratricidal struggle in which passion strikes without mercy, whilst illusion and ignorance deal blows even more terrible, for into the wounds they make they instil the poison of revolt and despair. The action of multiplicity, and of its creators, the "contraries," engenders still other causes of suffering. Every being lives both for others and at their expense. For instance, physical bodies are obliged to replace with food and nourishment those particles which the various functions of life cause them to lose. The vegetable kingdom takes its constituent elements from the mineral kingdom, and itself serves as food for large portions of the animal kingdom; up to this point physical pain has not manifested itself, though there is a momentary arrest of evolution for the animistic essence which represents the individual in the destroyed vegetable. A portion of the animal kingdom feeds on its own members; man, too, extorts from this same kingdom a very heavy tribute; here, the arrested evolution of the victims is all the more important, inasmuch as their stage of evolution is higher, and the existence of a nervous system brings the possibility of suffering, suffering which certain influences[21] either diminish or suppress altogether, when caused by animal destructiveness, but which may become intense when it is man who is the sacrificer. Among the causes of pain, arising from multiplicity there is also the physical, mental, and moral action exercised by the solidarity of all beings. By exchanging, with those that come into contact with us, the products thrown off by our visible and invisible bodies, we are the dispensers of good or ill-health. Everyone, for instance, is aware of the far-reaching effects of an evil intellectual and moral example; physical contagion, in spite of the torture it inflicts, is far less to be dreaded than moral contagion. The spiritual qualities alone do not form a leaven of evil; they are not the double-edged instruments we meet with elsewhere. The reason of this is that they belong to the plane of Unity. But it is none the less true that, though the presence of a highly developed soul is a help to younger souls within its reach and influence, its powerful vibrations may, from certain points of view, prove fatiguing to those still at the foot of the ladder of evolution. This is one of the many reasons that have given rise to the saying that it is dangerous prematurely to enter the "circle of the ascetics." But the most powerful causes of pain, due to multiplicity, are the ignorance and the will of beings who have reached the human stage. Man can employ his mental faculties for good or evil, and so long as he does not know definitely that he is the brother of all beings, _i.e._, until his divine faculties have been developed, and love and the spirit of sacrifice have taken possession of his heart, he remains a terrible egoist, more to be dreaded than the criminal dominated by a momentary burst of passion, for he acts in cold blood, he evades or refuses to recognise the law of humanity, he dominates and destroys. This man is at the stage of ingratitude; he no longer possesses the harmlessness of childhood, nor has he yet acquired the wisdom of advanced age. Our Western race has reached this critical stage, whereof the menacing demands of the suffering masses are a striking testimony. Here, too, God could not do otherwise; He might create bodies blindly obedient to his law, mere automata, but it would be impossible for Him to cause divine germs to evolve into "gods" without pulling them through the school of evolution which teaches them, first, of the "ego," the root of all egoism, then knowledge by ignorance, liberty by necessity, good by evil, and the perfect by the imperfect. It may at this point just be mentioned that though human egoism appears to have free play and to be unrestrained in its cruelty, divine Law never allows innocence to suffer for the errors of evolving souls, it punishes only the guilty, whether their faults or misdeeds be known or unknown, belonging to the present life or to past ones. Such, briefly, is the cause of pain and suffering in evolution; in the following pages we will set forth the causes of the unequal distribution of this suffering. THE PROBLEM OF THE INEQUALITY OF CONDITIONS. If suffering in general is the child of Necessity--since it is born of multiplicity and the limitation of the Infinite, without which the Universe could not exist--it would seem that we ought to find it falling upon all beings without distinction, in uniform, regular, and impartial fashion. Instead of this, it is every moment losing its character of impersonality; it respects those who are guilty on a large scale; and, without any visible cause, strikes fiercely the most innocent of persons; noble souls are born in the families of criminals, whilst criminals have fathers of the utmost respectability; we find parricides, and brothers hostile to each other; millionaires die of surfeiting alongside of paupers dying of hunger; we find giants by the side of dwarfs; the healthy and well-formed near the crippled or those wasted away by terrible diseases; Apollos contrast with Quasimodos; men of genius are met with, cheek by jowl with idiots; some children are stillborn, others blind or deaf and dumb from birth. Extremely different races people the earth--on the one hand, unintelligent and cannibal negroes; on the other, the proud, handsome, and intelligent, though selfish and cruel white race. Again, from a moral standpoint, who can explain congenital tendencies to crime, the vicious by birth, the wicked by nature, the persons with uncontrollable passions? Wherefore are thrift and foresight lacking in so many men, who are consequently condemned to lifelong poverty and wretchedness? Why this excess of intelligence, used mainly for the exploiting of folly? It is useless to multiply examples, one has only to look around at hospitals and prisons, night-shelters, palaces and garrets; everywhere suffering has taken up its abode. Can no reply be given to this terrible charge brought against Divinity? Is man to remain in a state of dejection and discouragement, as though some irreparable catastrophe had befallen him? According to the Church, all this is the work of the soul which God gives at the birth of a man--a soul that is good or bad, prudent or foolish, one which damns or saves itself according as its will can, or cannot, dominate its passions, its intelligence discover the way to heaven or not; according as grace or rejection predestine it to heaven or to hell. Is it not the depth of profanity to represent God as watching over conceptions in order to create souls so unfairly endowed, most of whom will never hear the Gospel message, and consequently cannot be saved, whilst the rest are destined to animate the bodies of savages and cannibals, devoid of moral consciousness? Is it not an act of sacrilege thus to convert God, Who is all Wisdom and Love, into a kind of accomplice of adulterers and lewd persons or the sport of Malthusian insults. Unconscious blasphemers are they who would offer this Dead Sea fruit as the true manna of Life! There is also another theory, often advanced in certain quarters, on which we must say a few words, for though it contains only a minimum of truth, and consequently cannot withstand serious examination, it has led astray more than one earnest thinker. Inequalities of suffering, it has been said, arise from inequalities of social conditions. Intelligence, morality, will, in fact all human faculties, develop more or less according to their environment; men are born equal; they become unequal as the result of different environment; pay the same care and attention to all and they will remain equal, and if they are equal, the theory seems to imply, evil will disappear from the face of the earth. This is not so. Inequality of suffering does not result from inequality of condition. Many a poor tiller of the fields enjoys a degree of peace and happiness that those favoured by birth or fortune would envy. Disease visits poor and rich alike; moral suffering is more especially the appanage of the so-called higher classes, and if obscurity and poverty render certain troubles specially severe, wealth and rank play the same _rôle_ in afflictions of another kind; there is a dark side to every picture. More than this, inequality of condition is one of the fundamental factors of social equilibrium; without it, many urgent and even indispensable functions would be neglected, numerous general needs would remain unsatisfied; so-called menial work, which, in a state of society that is still imperfect and consequently selfish, is performed only in the hope of remuneration, would never be done at all; every man would have to provide for the whole of his necessities; no one could find time for self-improvement or for flinging himself entirely into those divers branches of activity which, if personal interest were absent, would make life infinitely better and progress extremely rapid. The partisans of this theory rely on diversity of tastes to fill the diversity of functions that are necessary in social life: another illusion. The inferior, painful, or difficult tasks will never find sufficient workers, whilst easy or honourable posts will always be overcrowded. To believe the contrary would be to shut one's eyes to the present imperfection of men; it would mean the belief that they were noble and lofty beings, eager for self-sacrifice, demanding only to work for the happiness of all, without a single thought of their personal preferences; it would mean seeing, in present-day humanity, that of the future in which each individual has attained to such a degree of perfection that not a single idle, ill-disposed, or stupid person is to be found amongst them, for each one would regard himself as the brother and helper of all, and the universal standard of life would be: Each for all and all for each! How ardently we desire that this were so; how eagerly we pray for that future, so far away, when we shall have grown to this nobler stature, and the present fratricidal struggle shall have given place to a lasting peace, the offspring of a higher, spiritual, universal love. Anxiously do we await it; like lost travellers, we fix our eyes on the dark horizon to catch the first faint streaks of light, harbingers of the dawn. We greet with joy and gratitude all such as believe in that blessed future and endeavour to hasten its coming, all who impersonally and in sincerity aim at the social Unity towards which the heart aspires, and especially those whose aim it is to advance in accordance with that continuous, progressive evolution based on the physical, moral, mental, and spiritual amelioration of men, for it is they who have learned the secret of Nature. Indeed, evolution shows us that, the more souls grow, the nearer they approach that perfection to which progress destines them, and happiness exists only in perfection. To return to other aspects of the subject. Men are born equal, we are told. A single glance at the differences in the moral and intellectual qualities of races and individuals, at the differences between young children, even at the differences in the instincts of infants at the breast, is sufficient to prove the contrary. There are savages in whom no trace whatever of the moral sense can be discovered. Charles Darwin in one of his works relates a fact, which Mrs. Besant has quoted, in illustration of this. An English missionary reproached a Tasmanian with having killed his wife in order to eat her. In that rudimentary intellect, the reproach aroused an idea quite different from that of a crime; the cannibal thought the missionary imagined that human flesh was of an unpleasant flavour, and so he replied: "But she was very good!" Is it possible to attribute to the influence of surroundings alone a degree of moral poverty so profound as this? Many a mother has been able to find out that souls are not equal, in other words, that they are of different ages, by the discovery of diametrically opposite qualities and tendencies in two children born under the same conditions; in twins, for instance. Every schoolmaster has noticed the same fact in the pupils under his charge. Mrs. Besant says that amongst the 80,000 children who came under her inspection in the London schools she would often find side by side with gentle, affectionate little beings others who showed criminal tendencies from birth. Looking at the question from another point of view, are we not continually finding in schools and educational establishments pupils who, for no explicable reason, show a disposition for one branch of instruction only? They shine in this, but are dunces in every other subject. As a final example, do not infant prodigies prove that men are not born equal? Young, who discovered the undulatory theory of light, could read with wonderful rapidity at the age of two, whilst at eight he had a thorough knowledge of six languages. Sir W. R. Hamilton began to learn Hebrew when he was three, and knew it perfectly four years later. At the age of thirteen he knew thirteen languages. Gauss, of Brunswick--the greatest mathematician in Europe, according to Laplace--solved problems in arithmetic when only three. No, men are not born equal. Nor does environment cause the inequalities we find; it favours or checks the development of qualities, but has no part in their creation. Still, its influence is sufficiently important for us to give it due consideration. We are linked to one another by the closest bonds of solidarity, whether we wish it and are conscious thereof or not. Everything absorbs and throws off, breathes in and breathes out, and this universal exchange, if at times bad, is none the less a powerful factor in evolution. The atom of carbon, on entering into the combinations of the human body, is endowed with a far higher power of combining than the one which has just left the lump of ore; to obtain its new properties, this atom has had to pass through millions of vegetable, animal, and human molecules. Animals brought into close contact with man develop mentally to a degree that is sometimes incredible, by reason of the intellectual food with which our thoughts supply them. The man who lives alone is, other things being equal, weaker physically, morally, and mentally than he who lives in a large social environment; it is for this reason that the mind develops far more rapidly in large centres of life than in the country. And what is true of good is, unfortunately, true also of evil qualities. Consequently, environment has an undeniable influence, and it is perfectly true to say that the social conditions under which individuals are born favour or impede the development of their faculties. There its influence stops; it can intensify inequality, but does not create it. Inequality of condition arises, above all else, from the continuity of what might be called creation. Atoms are incessantly being formed in the womb of the Virgin Mother,[22] by the might of the divine vortex perceived by seers in ecstatic vision, and which theosophy has named the Great Breath; ceaselessly are these atoms entering into multitudes of organisms, ceaselessly is the plan of evolution being worked--some ending, others beginning the great Pilgrimage. It is the existence of this circuit which creates and keeps complete the hierarchy of beings, brings into existence and perpetuates the known and the unknown kingdoms of Nature; souls ascend slowly from one kingdom to another, whilst the places they leave are filled by new-comers, by younger souls. A second cause of human inequality is the difference in effort and deed accomplished by the will of human beings who have reached a certain point in evolution. As soon as this will is guided by intelligence and the moral sense, it hastens or delays individual evolution, makes it easy when it acts in harmony with divine Law--by doing what is called "good"--or disturbs evolution by pain, when it opposes this Law, by doing "evil." By modifying the direction of the Law, the Soul engenders beneficent or maleficent forces, which, after having played in the universe within the limit the law has imposed on them, return to their starting point--man. From that time, one understands that the balance of the scales in different individuals becomes unequal. These effects of the will influence to a noticeable degree the life during which they have originated; they are preserved in a latent condition after death, and appear again in future returns to earth. Thus are men born laden with the results of their past and in possession of the capacities they have developed in the course of their evolution. Those whom the difficulties of life have filled with energy in the past return to existence on earth possessed of that might which the world admires; now it is perseverance or courage; now patient calm or violence, which is the stronger, according to the aspect of the energy developed. Others, again, are born feeble and devoid of energy; their former lives have been too easy. Men are philosophers or mathematicians, artists or _savants_, from the very cradle. Objections have been brought against the doctrine of Rebirth by opponents who have looked only on one side of the individual life, and so have been unable to explain apparent anomalies, especially in those cases where it is seen that the effect does not immediately follow the cause. In reality, every force that emerges from a centre of will[23] describes an ellipse, so to speak, which travels through a net-work of other ellipses generated by thousands of other centres of energy, and is accelerated or retarded in its course, according to the direction and nature of the forces with which it is connected. It is for this reason that certain actions meet with their reward or their punishment almost immediately. Then the people say: "It is the finger of God!" In other cases, again, and these are the most numerous, the reaction is postponed; the noble-hearted man, who has made sacrifices the whole of his life, seems to receive in exchange nothing but misfortune and pain, whilst close by the wicked, selfish man prospers and thrives exceedingly. Thereupon the ignorant say: "There is no God, for there is no justice." Not so! It is impossible to defeat Justice; though, in the interests of evolving beings, it may allow the forces around to accelerate or retard its progress. Nothing is ever lost; causes that have not fructified remain potential; and, like the grain of corn gathered thousands of years ago, grow and develop as soon as favourable soil and environment are offered them. Debts are still recorded, when the perishable sheaths of our physical bodies have been cast off; they come up for future payment, often in the next life. But this next life may not wipe off the whole of the liabilities, so the process is continued for several successive existences, and this has given rise to the saying that the sins of the parents[24] are visited upon the children[25] unto the seventh generation.[26] Such is the truth. Souls, equal in potentialities whilst dormant as germs in the womb of Being, become unequal, as soon as they are born into existence in the manifested Universe, for they find predecessors, elder souls in front of them; inequality is intensified when they have reached the human stage, where intelligence and will come into play, for henceforth, inequality in the actions of individuals, variations of what might be called merit and demerit, set up a second factor in the inequality of conditions. Evolution treasures up the causes that have not been able to germinate in one existence, and, by successive returns to earth, realises the aims and ends of that Justice which governs the Universe, the designs of that Love which makes for progress and leads to perfection. OBJECTION. An apparently serious objection to the doctrine of Rebirth is constantly being made. It is unjust and useless, people say, to be punished for misdeeds that are forgotten. As this objection has reference to moral proofs, we must deal with it here. Does forgetfulness efface faults or destroy their consequences? Could the assassin, who has lost all memory of the crime committed the previous evening, change his deed or its results in the slightest degree? Rebirths are nothing more than the morrows of former lives, and though the merciful waters of Lethe have effaced their memory, the forces stored up in the soul, during the ages, perform their work all the same in the future. On the other hand, injustice would exist, and that under a very cruel aspect, were memory to continue; for the painful vision of a past always full of weaknesses, even when free from the stain of crime, would be a continual one. And if, too--as our opponents would prefer--man knew why he was punished, _i.e._, if he knew that each of these past errors and faults, ever present before his eyes, would carry with it a particular fruit, and that strict payment would be exacted at every step in his new life, would not the punishment be far greater than the sin? Would there not rise from every human heart an outcry of blasphemy against a God who, by means of memory, transformed life into an endless torment, destroying all activity or initiative in the anxiety of expectancy, in a word, stifling the present beneath the heavy nightmare of the past? Men, though so unjust and little disposed to pity, have always refused to inflict on a man condemned to death the torture of anticipation; only at the last moment is he informed of the rejection of his appeal for mercy. Could divine Law be less compassionate than human law? Is it not rash for us, in our profound ignorance, to criticise the workings of a boundless Wisdom? He who takes only a few steps along the pathway of Knowledge, or enters, however slightly, into the secret of the works of God, obtains the proof that Providence leaves no part of the Cosmos, no being anywhere, deprived of its fatherly care and protection. When, in our blindness, we imagine injustice, a void or an imperfection of any kind, a radiant beam of light shows us the omnipresent Life, bestowing love on all its children without distinction, from the slumbering atom to the glorious planetary Spirit, whose consciousness is so vast as to enfold the Universe. It is more especially after death that the soul, set free from its illusory sheaths, makes an impartial review of its recent incarnation, attentively following its actions and their consequences, noting its errors and failures, along with their motives and causes. In this school it grows in knowledge and power; and when, in a future incarnation, the same difficulties present themselves anew, it is better equipped for the struggle; what has been learned, is retained within the soul; it knows, where formerly it was ignorant, and by the "voice of conscience," tells the personality[27] what its duty is. This wisdom, sifted from the panorama of a thousand past images, is the best of all memories, for on those numerous occasions when a decision must be arrived at on the spur of the moment it would not be possible to summon forth from the depths of the past such groups of memories as refer to the decision to be reached, to see the events over again, and deduce therefrom a line of conduct. The lesson must have been learnt and thoroughly assimilated during the enlightened peace and calm of the Hereafter; then only is the soul ready to respond without delay, and its command is distinct; its judgment, sure; do this, avoid that. When a soul, in the course of evolution, has succeeded in impressing its vibration--its thought--on a brain which it has refined and made responsive by a training which purifies the entire nature of the man, it is able to transmit to the incarnated consciousness the memory of its past lives; but this memory then ceases to be painful or dangerous, for the soul has not only exhausted the greater part of its karma of suffering, it also possesses the strength necessary to sustain its personality, whenever a foreboding of what we call misfortune comes upon it. In the divine work everything comes in its own time, and we recognise the perfection of the Creator by the perfect concatenation of all creation. Reincarnation is so intimately bound up with the Law of Causality, and receives from it such powerful support, that this chapter would be left in a very incomplete form were we not to say a few words on Karma. THE LAW OF CAUSALITY (Karma).[28] Karma is the Law of the Universe, the expression of divine Will. Its seemingly essential attributes are Justice and Love; it neither punishes nor rewards, but adjusts things, restores disturbed balance and harmony, brings back evolving souls to the right path and teaches them Law. When a man acts against the Law, he is like a swimmer, struggling against the current of a rapid river; his strength fails, and he is borne away. So does God bear away, in spite of all their efforts, those who, whether ignorantly or consciously, fight against the Law, for it is His love that wills evolution, _i.e._, the making human beings divine; so he brings them back to the path, in spite of themselves, every time they wander astray. "God is patient because He is eternal," it has been said. The sentence is incomplete and must be changed, since it attributes to Divinity a vindictive nature. The Law is patient because it is perfect in Wisdom, Power, and Love. This Law is the divine Will which moves all things and vibrates everywhere; it is the music of the spheres, the song of glory and harmony, which murmurs in the heart like the rippling of a waterfall, the chant of life and joy that eternally triumphs in its never-ending creation of beings, who, after revolving for a moment in the universe, have become perfect. Its glorious strains resound in the heart of man, when the soul has found peace in the Law, and we are told that, when once heard, its divine accents continue for ever, like an ineffable whisper which brings us back to hope and faith, when we are sunk in the depths of despair. God limited himself in order to become incarnate in the Universe: He is the Soul of the world. His will is exerted everywhere, it finds its reflection in every creature; and man, a portion of divinity in course of evolution, possesses a germ of will that is infinite in its essence, and consequently capable of limitless development; God respects this will in His creatures, and submits to violence, in order to teach them His will, which is supreme Love. Like a stone that falls into a tranquil lake, a human action creates, all round, concentric ripples which continue to the very shores or limits of the Universe; then the wave is thrown back upon itself, returns to its starting-point, and the man who began the first movement receives a recoil exactly equivalent to the original impetus. Reaction is equal to action; obstacles on the way may delay its return or break up its energy, but the time comes when the fractions return to the centre that generates the disturbance, which thus receives from the Law a perfectly just retribution. The principal element in actions is thought. Every thought is a form in a state of vibration--a ray of intelligence which unites itself with subtle matter[29] and forms a being, of which this matter is the body, and thought, the soul. This being, often called a "thought-form," possesses form, duration, and strength that bear a strict relation to the energy of the thought that created it; if it embodies a soul of hatred, it will react on the man who harbours this thought, and on all who come into contact with him, as a leaven of destruction, but if it is guided by love it will be, as it were, the incarnation of some beneficent power. In certain cases its action is expressed visibly and rapidly; for instance, a venomous thought may[30] cause the death of the person against whom it is directed--this is one aspect of the "evil eye"--as also it may[31] return to its starting-point and kill the one who generated it, by the recoil. Every mental projection of a criminal nature, however, by no means necessarily reaches the object aimed at; a sorcerer, for instance, could no more injure one who was positive, consciously and willingly good, than he could cause a grain of corn to sprout on a block of granite; favourable soil is needed to enable the seed of evil to take root in a man's heart; otherwise, the evil recoils with its full force upon the one who sent it forth and who is an irresistible magnet, for he is its very "life-centre." Thoughts cling to their creator and attract towards this latter those of a similar nature floating about in the invisible world, for they instinctively come to vitalise and invigorate themselves by contact with him; they radiate around him a contagious atmosphere of good or evil, and when they have left him, hover about, at the caprice of the various currents, impelling those they touch towards the goal to which they are making. They even recoil on the visible form of their generator; it is for this reason that physical is closely connected with moral well-being, and most of our diseases are nothing else than the outer expression of the hidden leaven of passion. When the action of this latter is sudden and powerful, diseases may be the immediate consequence thereof; blinded by materialism, certain doctors seldom acknowledge their real cause; and yet instances of hair turning white in a single night are too numerous to be refuted, congestion of the brain brought on by a fit of anger, jaundice and other grave maladies caused by grief and trouble, are to be met with continually. When the mental forces which disturb the physical organs meet with obstacles which prevent their immediate outlet, they accumulate, like the electric fluid in a condenser, until an unexpected contact produces a discharge; this condensation often persists for a whole life in a latent condition, and is preserved intact for a future incarnation; this is the cause of original vices, which, incorporated in the etheric double, react upon the organic texture of the body. This also explains why each individual possesses an _ensemble_ of pathological predispositions often radically different from those heredity should have bequeathed to him; it is also, to some extent, the key to physiognomy, for every single feature bears either the stamp of our passions or the halo of our virtues. Thought creates lasting bonds between human beings; love and hatred enchain certain individuals to one another for a whole series of incarnations; many a victim of the past is to be found again in those unnatural sons who send a thrill of horror through society when it hears of some heinous crime--they have become the torturers of their former oppressors. In other cases, it is love which attracts and unites in renewed affection those who formerly loved one another--they return to earth as brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, husbands or wives. But if we are the slaves of the past, if fate compels us to reap what we have sown, we yet have the future in our hands, for we can tear up the weeds, and in their place sow useful plants. Just as, by means of physical hygiene, we can change within a few years the nature of the constituents that make up our bodies, so also, by a process of moral hygiene, we can purify our passions and then turn their strength in the direction of good. According as we will, so do we actually become, good or bad; every man who has taken his evolution in hand notices this rapid transformation of his personality, and sees his successive "egos" rise step by step, so to speak, throughout his whole life. Speaking generally, the first part of life is the expression of the distant past--of former lives--the second is a mixture of the past and of the energies of the present incarnation; the end of life is nothing but a sinking into an ever-deepening rut for those who crystallise in only one direction; the force of habit sets up its reign, and man finds himself bound by the chains he himself has forged. This is the reason an old man does not like the present times; he has stopped whilst time has advanced, and he is now being carried along like the flotsam and jetsam of a wreck; the very tastes and habits of his contemporaries violently clashing with his beloved past. Speak not to him of progress or evolution, he has brought himself into a state of complete immobility, and he will discover no favourable field of action nor will he acquire real energy until he has drunk of the waters of Lethe in a rest-giving Hereafter and a new body supplies his will with an instrument having the obedient suppleness of youth. H. P. Blavatsky, in the _Secret Doctrine_, has well described this progressive enmeshing of man in the net he himself is weaving. "Those who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to death, every man is weaving, thread by thread, around himself, as a spider his web; and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate _astral_ or inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity called man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and implacable _Law of Compensation_ steps in and takes its course, faithfully following the fluctuations of the fight. When the last strand is woven, the man is seemingly enwrapped in the net-work of his own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this _self-made_ destiny...." She adds shortly afterwards: "An Occultist or a philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but, identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that nevertheless it guards the good and watches over them in this as in future lives; and that it punishes the evil-doer, aye, even to his seventh rebirth, so long, in short, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the smallest atom in the Infinite World of harmony, has not been finally readjusted. For the only decree of Karma--an eternal and immutable decree--is absolute Harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of Spirit. It is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward or punish ourselves, according to whether we work with, through, and along with nature, abiding by the laws on which that Harmony depends, or--break them. "Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable, were men to work in union and harmony instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of those ways--which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and intricate, while another sees in them the action of blind Fatalism, and a third, simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to guide them--would surely disappear, if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause.... "We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the riddle of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily, there is not an accident in our lives, not a mis-shapen day or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life...." On the same subject, Mrs. Sinnett says in _The Purpose of Theosophy_: "Every individual is making Karma either good or bad in every action and thought of his daily round, and is at the same time working out in this life the Karma brought about by the acts and desires of the last. When we see people afflicted by congenital ailments, it may be safely assumed that these ailments are the inevitable results of causes started by the same in a previous birth. It may be argued that, as these afflictions are hereditary, they can have nothing to do with a past incarnation; but it must be remembered that the ego, the real man, the individuality, has no spiritual origin in the parentage by which it is re-embodied, but is drawn by the affinities which its previous mode of life attracted round it into the current that carries it, when the time comes for re-birth, to the home best fitted for the development of those tendencies.... "This doctrine of Karma, when properly understood, is well calculated to guide and assist those who realise its truth to a higher and better mode of life; for it must not be forgotten that not only our actions, but our thoughts also, are most assuredly followed by a crowd of circumstances that will influence for good or for evil our own future; and, what is still more important, the future of many of our fellow-creatures. If sins of omission and commission could in any case be only self-regarding, the effect on the sinner's Karma would be a matter of minor consequence. The fact that every thought and act through life carries with it, for good or evil, a corresponding influence on the members of the human family renders a strict sense of justice, morality, and unselfishness so necessary to future happiness and progress. A crime once committed, an evil thought sent out from the mind, are past recall--no amount of repentance can wipe out their results on the future.... "Repentance, if sincere, will deter a man from repeating errors; it cannot save him or others from the effects of those already produced, which will most unerringly overtake him either in this life or in the next rebirth." We will also quote a few lines from E. D. Walker in _Reincarnation_: "Briefly, the doctrine of Karma is that we have made ourselves what we are by former actions, and are building our future eternity by present actions. There is no destiny but what we ourselves determine. There is no salvation or condemnation except what we ourselves bring about.... Because it offers no shelter for culpable actions and necessitates a sterling manliness, it is less welcome to weak natures than the easy religious tenets of vicarious atonement, intercessions, forgiveness, and death-bed conversions.... "In the domain of eternal justice, the offence and the punishment are inseparably connected as the same event, because there is no real distinction between the action and its outcome. "It is Karma, or our old acts, that bring us back into earthly life. The spirit's abode changes according to its Karma, and this Karma forbids any long continuance in one condition, because it is always changing. So long as action is governed by material and selfish motives, just so long must the effect of that action be manifested in physical rebirths. Only the perfectly selfless man can elude the gravitation of material life. Few have attained this, but it is the goal of mankind." The danger of a too brief explanation of the law of Causality consists in the possibility of being imperfectly understood, and consequently of favouring the doctrine of fatalism. "Why act at all, the objection will be urged, if everything is foreseen by the Law? Why stretch out a hand to the man who falls into the water before our very eyes? Is not the Law strong enough to save him, if he is not to die; and if he is, have we any right to interfere?... "Such reasoning arises from ignorance and egoism. "Yes, the law is powerful enough to prevent the man from drowning, and also to prevent the possibility of his being saved by some passer-by, who has been moved to pity by the sight; to doubt this were to doubt the power of God. In the work of evolution, however, God does more than supply man with means of developing his intelligence; in order to enrich his heart, he offers him opportunities of sacrificing himself. Again, the innumerable problems set by duty are far from being solved for us; with difficulty can we distinguish a crime from a noble action; very often we do wrong, thinking we are doing right, and it not unfrequently happens that good results from our evil deeds; this is why God sends us experiences which are to teach us our duty. "The soul learns not only during its incarnations, but even more after leaving the body,[32] for life after death is largely spent in examining the consequences of deeds performed during life on earth. "Whenever, then, an opportunity for action offers itself, let us follow the impulse of the heart, the cry of duty, and not the sophisms of the lower nature, the selfish "ego," the cold brain, which knows neither compassion nor devotion. Do your duty, whatever happens, says the Law, _i.e._, do not allege, as your excuse for being selfish, that God, if He thinks it best, will help your brother in his trouble; why do you not fling yourself into the fire, with the thought that, if your hour has not yet come, God will prevent the flames from burning you? Does not the man, who commits suicide, himself push forward the hand on the dial of life, setting it at the fatal hour? "The threads of karmic action are so wonderfully interwoven, and God, in order to hasten evolution, makes such marvellous use of human forces, both good and bad, that the first few glances cast at the _mêlée_ of events are calculated to trouble the mind rather than reveal to it the marvels of adjustment effected by divine Wisdom, but no sooner does one succeed in unravelling some of the entanglements of the karmic forces, and catching a glimpse of the harmony resulting from their surprising co-operation, than the mind is lost in amaze. Then, one understands how the murderer is only an instrument whose passions are used by God in carrying out the karmic decree which condemned the victim long before the crime was committed; then, too, one knows that capital punishment is a legal crime of which divine Justice makes use--yes, a crime, for none but God can judge; every being has a right to live, and does live, until God condemns him. "But man, by making himself, even ignorantly, the instrument of Karma, acts against the universal law, and is preparing for himself that future suffering which results from every attack made on the harmony of the whole."[33] On the other hand, Destiny is not an immutable mass of forces; will can destroy what it has created, that is a question of time or energy; and when these are unable, within a given period, to bring about the total destruction of a barrier belonging to the past, none the less does this barrier lessen day by day, for the "resultant" of this system of opposing forces changes its direction every moment, and the final shock, when it cannot be avoided, is always diminished to a greater or less degree. In the case of those who have attained to a perfect reading of the past, their knowledge of the hostile forces is complete, and the neutralisation of these forces immensely facilitated. They can seek out, in this world or in the next, those they wronged in the past, and thus repair the harm done; they can see the source of those thoughts of hatred that are sent against them, and destroy them by the intervention of love;[34] they can find out the weak points of their personal armour and strengthen them: it is this that in theosophical language is called the burning of Karma in the fire of "Wisdom." None the less, there are two points in the law of Causality, which appear to favour the idea of fatalism, though in reality, they are merely corollaries of Karma. According to the first, every force is fatal, in the sense that, if left to itself, it is indestructible. This is not fatality, for the force can be modified by meeting with forces differing in character, and if no such encounter takes place, it finally unites with the cosmic Law, or else is broken to pieces upon it, according as it moves with evolution or against it.[35] Only in one sense, then, is it fatal; it cannot be destroyed save by an opposing force of the same momentum. For instance, in order to annihilate an obstructive force, created in the past, the soul must expend an amount of energy that is equal and opposite to that force; it meanwhile cannot devote itself to any other work, thus causing, in one sense, a useless production of energy; in other words, evolution will suffer delay,[36] but, we must repeat, that is not fatality. Now to the second point. Thought, by repetition, gains ever-increasing energy, and when the forces which thoughts accumulate have become as powerful as those of the will of the Ego which created them, a final addition of energy--another thought--alone is needed for the will to be overcome and the heavier scale of the balance to incline; then the thought is fatally realised in the action. But so long as dynamic equilibrium has not been reached, the will remains master, although its power is ever diminishing, in proportion as the difference in the forces becomes smaller. When equilibrium is reached, the will is neutralised; it becomes powerless, and feels that a fall is only a question of moments, and, with a fresh call of energy, the thought is fatally realised on the physical plane; the hour of freedom has gone and the fatal moment arrived. Like some solution that has reached saturation point, obedient to the last impulse, this thought crystallises into an act. Many a criminal thus meets, in a single moment, the fatality he has created in the course of several incarnations; he no longer sees anything, his reason disappears; in a condition of mental darkness his arm is raised, and, impelled by a blind force, he strikes automatically. "What have I done?" he immediately exclaims in horror. "What demon is this that has taken possession of me?" Then only is the crime perpetrated, without there being time for the will to be consulted, without the "voice of conscience" having been invited to speak. The whole fatality of automatism is in the deed, which has been carried through without the man suspecting or being conscious of it; his physical machine has been the blind instrument of the force of evil he has himself slowly accumulated throughout the ages. But let there be no mistake; every time a man, who is tempted, has time to think, even in fleeting fashion, of the moral value of the impulse which is driving him onward, he has power to resist; and if he yields to this impulse, the entire responsibility of this final lapse is added on to that incurred by past thoughts. Among the victims of these actions that have become fatal are often to be found those who are near the stage of initiation, for before being exposed to the dangers of the bewildering "Path," which bridges the abyss--the abyss which separates the worlds of unity from the illusory and transitory regions of the Universe--they are submitted to the most careful tests. There may even be found souls that tread this path,[37] bearing within themselves[38] some old surviving residue which has not yet been finally thrown into the physical plane, and must consequently appear for the last time before falling away and disappearing for ever.[39] Mankind, incapable of seeing the man--the divine fragment gloriously blossoming forth in these beings--often halts before these dark spots in the vesture of the great soul, these _excreta_ flung off from the "centre," belonging to the refuse of the vehicle, not to the soul, and in its blindness pretends to see, in its folly to judge, loftily condemning the sins of a brother more evolved than itself! The future will bring men greater wisdom, and teach them the greatness of their error.[40] At the conclusion of this important chapter, let us repeat that Karma--divine Will in action--is Love as well as justice, Wisdom as well as Power, and no one ought to dread it. If at times it uses us roughly and always brings us back to the strait way when folly leads us astray, it is only measuring its strength against our weakness, its delicate scales balance the load according to our strength, and when, in times of great anguish or terrible crisis, man is on the point of giving way, it suddenly lifts the weight, leaves the soul a moment's respite, and only when it has recovered breath is the burden replaced. The righteous Will of God is always upon us, filling our hearts with its might; His Love is ever about us, enabling us to grow and expand, even through the suffering he sends, for it is ourselves who have created this suffering. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 10: Fortunately, this is a fact only in the imagination of those who are blinded by faith.] [Footnote 11: Before men had sinned individually on earth.] [Footnote 12: _De corruptione et gratia_, chap. 7, No. 19; _Cont. Jul. Pelag._, Book 4, chap. 3, No. 16, et _De Peccat. merit. et remiss._, Book 3, chap. 4, No. 7.] [Footnote 13: "Omnes illae unus homo fuerunt." _De Peccat. merit. et remiss._, Book 1, chap. 10, No. 11. Theologians pass over St. Augustine's adoption of this theory, giving one to understand that he abandoned his error shortly before his death. (_Dictionnaire de Théol._, by Abbé Berger; volume viii., article x., "_Traduciens._")] [Footnote 14: See also, on this subject, his letter to Sixtus, before the latter became Pope. Chap. vii., No. 31, and chap. vi., No. 27.] [Footnote 15: The movements of "creation" and "absorption," which are called in Hindu symbolism the outbreathing and the inbreathing of Brahmâ.] [Footnote 16: Creation.] [Footnote 17: After violet and red there stretches quite another spectrum, invisible to the human eye; it is because violet is at the beginning of our known spectrum, that one might think it was not the neutral point thereof.] [Footnote 18: The soul believes itself distinct from the All, because it is subjected to the illusion engendered by its body.] [Footnote 19: Without the aid of the eyes, walking is impossible to those suffering from plantar anæsthesia.] [Footnote 20: Pleasure, like every other form of sensation, produces the same results, though perhaps with less force.] [Footnote 21: A magnetic effect or an emotion. All travellers who have escaped from the attacks of wild beasts mention this effect of inhibition, manifested by the absence of fear and pain at the moment of attack.] [Footnote 22: Primordial matter which has not yet entered into any combination and is not differentiated.] [Footnote 23: A soul.] [Footnote 24: In these cases, the soul.] [Footnote 25: The personalities or new bodies created by the soul, on each return to earth.] [Footnote 26: That is to say, the seventh incarnation.] [Footnote 27: Waking consciousness.] [Footnote 28: See _Karma_, by A. Besant.] [Footnote 29: Those who have studied thought know that it is capable of being incorporated in diverse states of astral and mental matter.] [Footnote 30: If the divine law allows it.] [Footnote 31: If the divine law has not allowed the action to take place.] [Footnote 32: Man, after death, loses in succession his astral and mental bodies.] [Footnote 33: _La Théosophie en quelques chapitres_, by the author, pages 31 to 34.] [Footnote 34: "Hatred is destroyed only by love," said the Buddha. "Return good for evil," said Jesus.] [Footnote 35: It is this that causes the universal force of opposition--_the Enemy_ or _demon_--to become evil only when ignorance or the human will make use of it to oppose evolution: apart from such cases, it is only the second pillar necessary for the support of the Temple, the stepping-stone of the good.] [Footnote 36: Perhaps this is only an apparent delay, for, on every plane, force is correlative, and knowledge is the fruit of many different kinds of energy. The only real cases in which there is delay of individual evolution are probably those in which _evil is done in return for evil_. Of course, we are speaking in relative terms and from a relative standpoint.] [Footnote 37: When human evolution is completed, man passes the "strait gate" leading to superhuman evolution, to the spiritual life, which develops the next higher principle, _Buddhi_; this is _the Path_. Human evolution develops the mental principle, _Manas_; Super-human evolution develops the spiritual body, _Buddhi._] [Footnote 38: Here we are dealing with faults of a more or less venial nature.] [Footnote 39: For ever, in this case, for the soul is above these residues, and, so to speak, has given them no vitality for ages past.] [Footnote 40: In completion of this chapter on the Law of Causality, we refer the reader to A. Besant's book: _Karma._] CHAPTER III. REINCARNATION AND SCIENCE. The secret of the Universe lies in observation; it is for man to develop his senses and patiently to search into the hidden things of Nature. All science proceeds thus, and the reason that savants have not unearthed the precious object for which they seek with such wonderful perseverance is that the physical senses, even when aided by the most delicate instruments, are able to cognise only a portion of the physical Universe--the denser portion. This is proved by the fact that when man has succeeded in directing into a channel some subtle force, he remains as ignorant of its essence as he was before chaining it down, so to speak; he has not the slightest knowledge of it. He can utilise but he cannot dominate it, for he has not discovered its source. This source is not in the physical world, but on the finer planes of being, which will remain unknown to us, so long as our senses are incapable of responding to their vibrations. Because physical observation reveals only the bark, the outer crust of the Cosmos, man sees nothing but the surface of the world, and remains in ignorance of the heart and vital plexus that give it life; consequently, he calls the disintegration following upon disincarnation by the senseless name of "death." He who has lifted the veil of Isis sees divine Life everywhere, the Life that animates forms, builds them up, uses them, and finally breaks them to pieces when they have ceased to be of use; and this Life--God--thus spread about in numberless forms, by means of its many rays, develops in itself centres--souls--which gradually grow and awaken their infinite potentialities[41] in the course of these successive incarnations. Still, though the eye of the god-man alone can penetrate this wonderful mechanism and study it in all its astonishing details, the savant whose mind is unprejudiced can judge of the concealed mechanism by examining its outer manifestations, and it is on this ground we now place ourselves with the object of setting forth another series of proofs of reincarnation. THE EVOLUTIONARY SERIES. If we look attentively at the totality of beings we perceive a progressive series of forms expressing a parallel series of qualities and states of consciousness. The portion of this scale we are able to compass extends from the amorphous state[42]--which represents the minimum of consciousness--up to those organic complexities which have allowed of a terrestrial expression being given to the soul of the Saviours of the world. In this glorious hierarchy each step forms so delicate a transition between the one preceding and the one following that on the borders of the different kingdoms it becomes impossible to trace a line of demarcation between different beings; thus one does not know whether such or such a family should be classed among minerals, or vegetables or animals. It is this that science has called the evolutionary series.[43] THE CYCLIC PROCESS OF EVOLUTION. Another fact strikes the observer: the cyclic march of evolution. After action comes reaction; after activity, rest; after winter, summer; after day, night; after inspiration--the breath of life during which universal Movement works in a molecular aggregate and there condenses in the form of vitality--expiration--the breath of death, which causes the individualised life to flow back into the ocean of cosmic energy; after the systole, which drives the blood into every part of the body, comes the diastole, which breathes back the vital liquid into the central reservoir; after the waking state comes sleep; life here and life hereafter; the leaves sprout and fall away periodically, with the rising and descending of the sap; annual plants die at the end of the season, persisting in germinal state within a bulb, a rhizome, or a root before coming again to the light; in "metamorphoses," we find that the germ (_the egg_) becomes a larva (_a worm_), and then dies as a chrysalis, to be reborn as a butterfly. Ideas also have their successive cycles of glory and decadence; is not the present theosophical movement the renaissance of the Neoplatonic movement which brought the light to Greece and Egypt fifteen hundred years ago? In 1875 H. P. Blavatsky restored it to life, whilst its previous birth look place in the time of Ammonius Saccas, the theosophist, in the Schools of Alexandria. Those who have acquired the power to read the cosmic records[44] will easily recognise amongst the present pioneers of theosophy many a champion who in a former age struggled and fought in the same sublime cause. Races are born and grow up, die and are born again; pass through a state of childhood, of youth, of maturity, and of old age. They flourish in all their splendour when the vital movement which animates them is at its height; when it leaves them and passes to other portions of the globe, they gradually fall into old age; then the more developed Egos--those incarnated in these races during their maturity--come down into the advanced nations, living on the continents animated by the "life-wave," whilst the less evolved go to form the so-called degenerate races vegetating in obscure parts of the world. Look now at the adolescence of Russia, the youth of America, the old age of France, and the decrepitude of Turkey. Look backwards at the glorious Egypt of bygone ages; nothing remains but deserts of sand on which imperishable structures still testify to the greatness of her past; the race that witnessed the majesty of the Hierophants and the divine Dynasties is now inhabiting other lands. Continents submit to the same law; history and science show how they pass through a series of immersions and emersions; after Lemuria, which bore the third race, came Atlantis, the mother of the fourth; Europe and America now hold the various branches of the fifth; and later on, when this old land of ours is again sunk beneath the waters, new lands will have emerged from the ocean depths to bear the future race, the sixth. The very planets, too, come under this law; issuing as nebulæ from the great womb of the Universe at the beginning of the evolution of a solar system they are absorbed back again when the hour of their dissolution strikes. Finally, the very Universes go forth from the breast of Brahmâ when he out-breathes, and return to him when he in-breathes again. Everything, then, in appearance is born and dies. In reality, each thing springs from its germ, makes an effort--the effort of the divine Will incarnated in this germ--develops its potentialities up to a certain step in the ladder of evolution, then garners the acquired qualities and again returns to activity in continuous cycles of life until its full development is reached. PROGRESS. The observer of Nature makes a third discovery. Every fresh cycle of life is characterised by an advance on the preceding cycle; every stage brings the end nearer. This represents progress, and it is seen everywhere; when it does not appear, it is because our limited vision cannot pierce its veil. Minerals slowly develop in the bowels of the earth, and miners well know when the ore is more or less "ripe,"[45] and that certain portions, now in a transition stage, will in a certain number of centuries have become pure gold; experiments[46] have proved that metals are liable to "fatigue" from excessive tension; and that, after a rest, they acquire greater power of resistance than before; magnets "are fed," _i.e._, they increase their power of attraction, by exercise; cultivation improves and sometimes altogether transforms certain species of vegetables; the rapid mental development of domestic animals by contact with man is a striking instance of the heights to which progress may attain when it is aided, whilst the influence of teaching and education on the development of individuals as well as of races is even more striking.[47] THE GOAL OF EVOLUTION. _The Formation of Centres of Consciousness that become "Egos."_ Through innumerable wanderings this general progress traces a clear, unwavering line. Those capable of following evolution on the planes of finer matter at once perceive, as it were, wide-spreading centres forming in the sea of divine Essence, which is projected by the Logos into the Universe. As the ages pass, these centres are sub-divided into more restricted centres, into clearer and clearer "blocks" in which consciousness, that is, the faculty of receiving vibrations from without, is gradually developed, and when this consciousness within them reaches its limit, they begin to differentiate from their surroundings, to feel the idea of the "I" spring up within them. From that time, there is added to the power of receiving vibrations consciously, that of generating them voluntarily; no longer are they passive centres, but rather beings that have become capable of receiving and giving freely, individualities recognising and affirming themselves more day by day; "I's," who henceforth regard themselves as separated from the rest of the Universe; this stage is that of the Heresy of Separateness. Regarding this heresy, however, one may well say: _Felix culpa._ Fortunate error, indeed, for it is the condition, _sine quâ non_ of future divinity, of salvation. It is self-consciousness; man is born; man, the centre of evolution, set midway between the divine fragment which is beginning and that which is ending its unfoldment, at the turning point of the arc which leads the most elementary of the various kingdoms of Nature to the most divine of Hierarchies. This stage is a terrible one, because it is that which represents egoism, _i.e._ combat, the cause of every evil that afflicts the world, but it is a necessary evil, for there can be no _individual_ wisdom, power, and immortality without the formation of an "I." This ego is nothing but the first shoot, or bud, of the individual soul; it is only one of its first faculties; the finest show themselves subsequently. This bud is to blossom into a sweet-smelling flower; love and compassion, devotion, and self-sacrifice will come into manifestation, and the "centre of consciousness," after passing through the primitive stages--often called the elemental kingdoms--after being sheathed in mineral, vegetable, and animal forms, after having thought, reasoned, and willed in human forms and looked upon itself as separated from its fellow-creatures, comes finally to understand that it is only a breath of the spirit, momentarily clad in a frail garment of matter, recognises its oneness with all and everything, passes into the angelic state, is born as Christ and so ends as a finished, perfected soul--a World-Saviour. Such is the Goal of life, the wherefore of the Universes, the explanation of these startling evolutions of souls in the various worlds, the solution of the problem regarding the diversity in the development of beings, the justification of Providence before the blasphemy of the inequality of conditions. A FEW DEDUCTIONS. _The Germ._ From the facts established in the course of this comprehensive view of the Universe, we are enabled to draw important deductions. For instance, as the basis of every "cycle of life" is found the egg or germ, that strange microcosm which appears to contain within itself the entire organism from which it proceeds and which seems capable of manifesting it in its entirety. The first embryologic discovery we make as the result of this study--a discovery of the utmost importance--is that germs are one in essence, and are all endowed with the same possibilities and potentialities. The only difference that can be found in them is that the more evolved have acquired the power of developing, in the same cycle, a greater number of links, so to speak, in the chain of forms that proceeds from the atom to the sheath, or envelope, of the Gods-Men. Thus, the highest germ which the microscope enables us to follow--the human ovule--is first a kind of mineral represented by the nucleus (the point, unity) of its germinal cell; then it takes the vegetable form--a radicle, crowned by two cotyledons (duality); afterwards it becomes a fish (multiplicity), which is successively transformed into a batrachian, then a bird, afterwards assuming more and more complex animal forms, until, about the third month of foetal life, it appears in the human form. The process of transformation is more rapid when Nature has repeated it a certain number of times; it then represents a more extensive portion of the ladder of evolution, but, be it noted, the process is the same for all, and for all the ladder is composed of the same number of steps; beings start from the same point, follow the same path and halt at the same stages; nothing but their age causes their inequalities. They are more than brothers, they are all representatives of the One, that which is at the root of the Universe, Divinity, supreme Being. We also see that progress, the result of the conservation of qualities, offers us repeated instances of these stages in the reappearance, at each step of the ladder, of the forms preceding it in the natural series. In the course of its evolution, the germ of an animal passes through the mineral and vegetable forms; if the animal is a bird, its final embryological form will be preceded by the animal forms, which, in the evolutionary series, make their appearance before the avian type; if we are dealing with a mammifer, the animal will be the summit of all the lower types; when it is the human germ that we are following in its development, we see that it also has contained within itself and is successively reproducing the potentialities of the whole preceding series. The microscope is able to show only clearly marked stages and the most characteristic types, for evolution runs through its initial stages with a rapidity defying the closest physical observation. If only Nature would slacken her pace in order to humour our incapacity, we should see in an even more striking fashion that she preserves everything she has attained and develops the power of reconstruction with ever-increasing rapidity and perfection. True, each cycle of incarnation realises only an infinitesimal fraction of the total progress made, each being advances only one step at a time along this interminable series; but then, are not these minor "cycles" in the course of which brings grow and advance towards the final Goal, the visible, material expression, the tangible and indisputable proof of the strict, the inexorable Law of Rebirths? _What the Germ contains._ Now let us examine a little more carefully this process of physical germination and attempt to discover an important secret from it; let us see whether the material germ contains the whole being, or whether, as the ancient wisdom teaches, the vehicles of the divine Spark in evolution are as numerous as the germs which respectively effect their development and preservation. Although here, too, the doctrine of the Christian churches is inadequate, we cannot altogether pass it by in silence. We will, therefore, state it, recommending the reader to compare it with the theory of science and the teachings of theosophy. The Churches deny evolution. They say: one single body, one single state of development for each human being. For the lower kingdoms a state of nothingness before birth and after death, whatever may have been the fate of these beings during the short life imposed upon them; for man a single body for which God creates a single soul and to which He gives a single incarnation on a single planet,[48] the Earth. It is our ardent wish that the signs of the growing acceptance of the idea of evolution now manifesting themselves in Christian teaching may increase, and that the Church, whatever be the influence that induces her to take the step, will in the end loyally hold out her hand to Science. Instead of remaining hostile, the two will then help each other to mount the ladder of Truth; and divine Life, the light of all sciences, philosophies, and religions, will illumine the dark path they are treading, and guide their steps towards that One Truth which is both without and within them. Scientific materialism says: Yes, everything is born again from its germ--thus is progress made, but that is the limit of my concessions. Everything is matter; the soul has no existence. There is evolution of matter, for matter, and by matter. When a form is destroyed, its qualities, like its power of rebirth, are stored away in a latent condition, within the germs it has produced during its period of activity. Along with the disappearance of matter, everything disappears--qualities, thoughts, "ego"--and passes into a latent slate within the germ; along with the return of the form, qualities and attributes gradually reappear without any hypothetical soul whatever having any concern in the matter. So long as the form is in its germ stage, the being is nothing more than a mass of potentialities; when fully developed its faculties reappear, but they remain strictly attached to the form, and if the latter changes, the faculties echo the change, so to speak, with the utmost fidelity. Matter is the parent of intelligence, the brain manufactures thought, and the heart distills love, just as the liver secretes bile; such is the language of present-day science. This theory accepts the idea of universal injustice in its entirety; we shall shortly prove that, notwithstanding its apparent logic, it explains only one side of evolution, and that if matter is the condition _sine quâ non_ of the manifestation of spirit, it is at least curious that the latter acts so powerfully upon it, and is, beyond the possibility of a doubt, its real master.[49] Modern Theosophy, as well as the Wisdom of old, says in its turn: Spirit is the All, the one Being, the only Being that exists. Force-matter[50] is nothing but the product of the spirit's activity; in it we find many and divers properties--density, weight, temperature, volume, elasticity, cohesion, &c., because we judge it from our sense perceptions; but in reality, we know it so little, that the greatest thinkers have called it "a state of consciousness," _i.e._, an impression produced by it within ourselves.[51] It is the result of the will of the supreme Spirit, which creates "differences" (forms) in unfathomable homogeneous Unity, which is incarnated in them and produces the modifications necessary for the development of its powers, in other words, for the accomplishment of their evolution. As this evolution takes place in the finite--for the Infinite can effect its "sacrifice," _i.e._ its incarnation,[52] only by limiting itself--it is progressive, proceeding from the simple to the complex. Each incarnate, divine "fragment"[53] at first develops the simpler qualities and acquires the higher ones only by degrees; these qualities can appear only by means of a vehicle of matter, just as the colour-producing properties of a ray of light only become manifest with the aid of a prism. Form plays the part of the revealer of the qualities latent in the divine germ (the soul); the more complex this form becomes, the more atomic divisions it has in a state of activity; the greater the number of senses it has awake, the greater the number of qualities it expresses. In this process, we see at work, three main factors; _Spirit_,[54] awakening within itself _vibrations_,[55] which assume _divers appearances_.[56] These three factors are one; force-matter and form cannot exist without the all-powerful, divine Will (Spirit), for this is the supreme Being, who, by his Will, creates force matter, by his Intelligence gives it a form, and animates it with his Love. Force-matter is the blind giant, who, in the Sankhya philosophy, carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see--a giant, for it is activity itself; and blind, because this activity is directed only by the intelligent Will of the Spirit. The latter is lame, because when it has not at its disposal an instrument of form-matter, it cannot act, it cannot appear, it is no longer manifested, having disappeared with the great periodical dissolution of things which the poetical East calls the inbreathing of Brahmâ. Form--all form--creates a germ which reproduces it. The germ is an aggregate containing, in a very high state of vitalisation, all the atomic types that will enter into the tissues of the form it has to build up. These types serve as centres of attraction for the atoms which are to collect round them when, under the influence of the "vital fire,"[57] creative activity has been roused in the germ. Each atomic type now attracts from the immediate surroundings the atoms that resemble it, the process of segmentation which constitutes germination begins, and the particular tissues represented by the different atomic types are formed; in this way the fibrous, osseous, muscular, nervous, epithelial, and other tissues are reproduced. The creative activity that builds up tissues, if left to itself, could create nothing but formless masses; it must have the help of the intelligence to organise the atoms into molecules, the molecules into tissues, and these again into organs capable of a corporate life as a single organism, supplied with centres of sensation and action. This intelligence cannot proceed from the mind bodies of the various beings, for the latter manifest their qualities only when they possess a fully-developed form--which is not the case with the germs; moreover, the lower kingdoms show nothing but instinct, and even the superior animals possess only a rudimentary form of mentality. The most skilful human anatomist knows nothing more than the eye can teach him regarding the forms he dissects, though even if he were acquainted with their whole structure, he would none the less be quite incapable of creating the simplest sense organ. The Form is the expression of cosmic intelligence, of God incarnated in the Universe, the Soul of the world, which, after creating matter, aggregates it into divers types, to which it assigns a certain duration. The type of the form varies with the stage of development of the being (_the soul_) incarnated therein, for the instrument must be adapted to the artist's capacity; the latter could not use an instrument either too imperfect or too perfect for his degree of skill. What could the rudimentary musician of a savage tribe do if seated before the complex organ of one of our cathedrals; whilst, on the other hand, what kind of harmony could a Wagner produce from a shepherd's pipe? The Cosmic intelligence would appear to have created a single, radical form-type, which gradually develops and at each step produces an apparently new form, until its series has reached the finished type of evolution. It stops the evolutionary process of each germ at the requisite point in the scale; in the case of the most rudimentary souls it allows a single step to be taken, thus supplying an instrument that possesses the requisite simplicity; the process is continued longer for the more advanced souls, but stops just when the form has become a suitable instrument. When it does not furnish the fecundated germ with the "model" which is to serve as a ground-plan for atomic deposits, segmentation takes place in a formless mass, and in this the tissues are shown without organisation; it is then a môle, a false conception. It is the same cosmic Intelligence that derides the period during which the form shall remain in a state of activity in the world. Until a soul has learnt the lesson that incarnation in a form must teach it, this form is necessary, and is given to it again and again until the soul has assimilated the experience that form had to supply; when it has nothing more to learn from the form, on returning to incarnation it passes into one that is more complex. The soul learns only by degrees, beginning with the letters of the alphabet of Wisdom, and gradually passing to more complex matter; thus the stages of evolution are innumerable and the transition from one to the other imperceptible; modern science states this fact, though without explaining it, when she says that "Nature makes no leaps." The building up of forms is effected by numerous Beings, forming an uninterrupted chain that descends from the mighty Architect, God, to the humblest, tiniest, least conscious of the "builders."[58] God, the universal Spirit, directs evolution, and could accomplish every detail of it directly; but it is necessary, for their own development, that the souls, whatever stage they have reached, should work in the whole of creation, and therein play the part, whether consciously or unconsciously, that they are fitted to play. Consequently they are employed at every stage; and, in order to avoid mistakes, their activity is guided by more advanced souls, themselves the agents of higher cosmic Entities, right on up to God, the sovereign controller of the hierarchies. Consequently there are no mistakes--if, indeed, there are any real ones at all--in Nature, except those that are compatible with evolution and of which the results are necessary for the instruction of souls; but the Law is continually correcting them in order to restore the balance. Such, in general outline, is the reason for the intervention of beings in the evolutionary process. So far as man is concerned, the highest of these Beings supply the ideal type of the form which is to give the soul, when reincarnated, the best means of expression; others take charge of these models and entrust them to entities whose sole mission is to keep them before their mental eyes and guide the thousands of "builders" who build round them the atoms which are to form the tabernacle of flesh in its minutest details; these Liliputian builders may be seen at work by the inner eye; they are as real as the workmen who construct material edifices in accordance with an architect's plans. That everything may be faithfully reproduced in form the entity that controls the building must not lose sight of the model for a single moment. Nor does it do so, generally speaking, for one may say that this being is, as it were, the soul of the model, being one with it and conscious only of the work it has to perform. In many cases, however, it receives certain impressions before birth from the mother's thoughts: an influence capable either of forwarding or hindering its work. The ancient Greeks were well acquainted with this fact when they assisted Nature to create beautiful forms by placing in the mother's room statues of rare plastic perfection, and removing from her sight every suggestion of ugliness. More than this; certain intense emotions of the pregnant woman are capable of momentarily effacing the image of the model which the builder has to reproduce, and replacing certain of its details with images arising from the mother's imagination. If these images are sufficiently vivid, the being follows them; and if they endure for a certain length of time they are definitely incorporated in the building of the body. In this fashion, many birth marks (_naevi materni_) are produced; strawberries or other fruit, eagerly desired at times when they cannot be procured, have appeared on the child's skin; divers objects that have left a vivid impression on the imagination may have the same effect. The clearness and perfection of the impression depend on the intensity and continuance of the mental image; the part where it is to appear depends on the sense impressions of the mother coinciding with the desire which forms the image--for instance, a spot on the body touched rather sharply at the moment. This has given rise to the idea that the "longing" is impressed on that part of the body which the mother is touching during her desire. When the image is particularly strong and persistent considerable modifications of the body have been obtained; in such cases, children are born with animal-like heads, and treatises on teratology relate the case of a foetus born with the head detached from the trunk, because the mother, after witnessing an execution, had been horribly impressed by the sight of the separated heads of the victims. Malebranche, in his _Recherche de la Vérité_, tells of a child that was born with broken limbs because his mother had seen the torture of the wheel. In this case, the image must have been of enormous vibratory power and of considerable persistence.[59] A general or even a local arrest of development is almost always due to the phenomenon of mental inhibition experienced by the same being; it definitely ceases to see the plan, evolution stops, and the embryo, expelled before the time takes on the form of the evolutionary stage it had reached at that moment; if it ceases to deal with a single detail only that detail remains in _statu quo_, and is often embedded in portions of the organism quite away from the point where it would have been found had it continued to evolve; certain cysts belong to this class. The third factor, the Spirit, the Soul--or, to be more exact, the incarnated divine ray--follows a line of evolution parallel to that of the matter which constitutes its form, its instrument; this parallelism is so complete that it has deceived observers insufficiently acquainted with the wonders of evolution. It is thus that scientific materialism has taken root. We will endeavour to set forth the mistake that has been made, and call to mind the correctness of the Vedantin symbol, which represents the soul as lame, incapable of acting without the giant, force-matter; though the latter, without the guidance of the former, could not advance along the path of evolution. This soul is a "no-thing," which, in reality, is everything; a ray of the spiritual sun (_God_), a divine spark incarnated in the vibration (_matter_) produced by the supreme Being, it is a "centre," capable of all its Father's potentialities. These potentialities, which may be grouped together under three general heads--power, love, and wisdom--we may sum up in the one word: consciousness. It is, indeed, a "centre of consciousness" in the germinal state, that is about to blossom forth, realising all its possibilities and becoming a being fully aware of its unity with the Being from which it comes and which it will then have become. In this development the vibrations of outer matter play the part of the steel, which, on striking flint, causes the life latent within the latter to dart forth. Each vibration which strikes the soul arouses therein a dormant faculty, and when all the vibrations of the universe have touched it, this soul will have developed as many faculties as that universe admits of, until, in the course of successive worlds, it becomes increasingly divine in the one Divine Being. In order that all the vibrations of which a universe is capable may reach the soul the latter must surround itself with all the different types of atoms that exist in the world, for every vibration is an atomic movement, and the nature of the vibration depends on the quality of the atoms in motion. Now, the first part of evolution consists in condensing round vital centres[60] (_souls_) atoms aggregated in combinations of a progressively increasing density, on to those that make up the physical plane; when the soul has thus clothed itself with the elements of all the planes, the resulting form is called a "microcosm"--a small Cosmos--for it contains, in reality, all the elements contained in the Universe. During this progressive development, the soul, which thus effects its "fall" into matter, receives from all the planes through which it passes and from all the forms in which it incarnates, varied vibrations which awake within it correspondingly responsive powers and develop a non-centred, diffused, non-individualised consciousness. In the second phase of evolution, the forms are limited, the vibrations they receive are transmitted by specialised sensorial groups, and the soul, hitherto endowed with a diffused consciousness, begins to feel varieties of vibrations that grow ever more numerous, to be distinguished from the surrounding world, to separate itself, so to speak, from everything around; in a word, to develop self-consciousness. This separation first takes place on the physical plane; it is made easier by hard, violent contacts, and the forms, in their turn, become more complex, varied, and specialised in proportion as the soul is the more perfectly individualised. When it has developed all the self-conscious responsive powers in the physical body, it begins to develop those faculties which have as their organs of transmission the finer bodies, and as planes of vibration the invisible worlds. In our planetary system the number of the invisible planes is seven.[61] Each of them in turn supplies the soul with a form; thus, when evolution--which in its second phase successively dematerialises matter, _i.e._, disassociates the atoms from their combinations, beginning with the denser ones--has dissolved the physical plane, the human soul will utilise, as its normal body, a finer one which it is at present using as a link between the mental and the physical bodies. Before this dissolution is effected, however, human beings will have developed, to some extent, several finer bodies, already existing, though hitherto not completely organised. The first of these bodies, the astral--a very inappropriate name, though here used because it is so well known--is a copy, more or less, of the physical form in its general aspect; the resemblance and clearness of the features are pronounced in proportion to the intellectual development of the person, for thought-vibration has great influence over the building up of the centres of force and of sensation in this body.[62] The second is an even finer aggregate, composed of mental substance and assuming, during incarnation, the form of a smaller or larger ovoid--the causal body--surrounding the physical form.[63] At its centre, and plunged in the astral body during incarnation, is another kind of ovoid not so large and composed of denser substance--the mental body.[64] Above these states of matter, at the present stage there appears no form to the consciousness of human beings, though perfect seers can perceive, within the causal body, still higher grades of matter, which will only subsequently become centres of self-consciousness. During incarnation, the soul, in the majority of men, is clearly conscious of itself and of its surroundings only when it is functioning through the nervous system (the brain); when it leaves the denser body, during sleep, its consciousness is in the astral body, and there it thinks,[65] but without being conscious of what is taking place around it. After disincarnation, it generally becomes highly conscious in its astral body, where it passes its purgatorial life; and this latter endures until the soul leaves the astral body. As soon as the latter is thrown off, consciousness centres in the mental body; this is the period of _Devachan_ or Heaven. When the mental body is put off, paradise is at an end, and the soul, sheathed only in the causal body, finds itself on a very lofty plane, but here, consciousness is vague, when we are dealing with a man of average development. Instead of laying aside this garment, as so far it has done with the rest, it recommences, after the lapse of a certain time, another descent into the matter of the lower planes and a new incarnation begins. To the centre of the causal body are drawn atoms from the inner mental plane; these represent a new mental body.[66] When this latter has been formed, there are attracted to it atoms of the astral plane, and these form a new astral body; the soul, clothed in these two sheaths, if one may so express it, is brought into conscious or unconscious relation, according to its degree of development, with the two corresponding planes, lives there generally for a short time, and is directed to a mother's womb, in which is created the visible body of flesh within the centre of its astral body. This force of atomic attraction has its centre in the causal body, a kind of sensitive plate on which are registered all those vibrations which disturb or affect human vehicles during incarnation. This body is, in effect, the present abode of the soul, it represents the terminal point of human consciousness,[67] the real centre of man.[68] It receives all the impressions of the plane on which it finds itself, as well as those which come to it from the lower planes, and responds to them the more readily as it has now attained a fuller development. It possesses the power to attract and to repel; a microcosm, it has its outbreathing and inbreathing, as has the Macrocosm; like Brahmâ, it creates its bodies and destroys them, although in the vast majority of mankind it exercises this power more or less unconsciously and under the irresistible impulsion of the force of evolution--the divine Will. When it attracts, it causes to recur within itself the vibrations it has received and registered--like a phonographic roll--during the past incarnations; these vibrations reverberate in the outer world, and certain of them attract from this world[69]--in this case the mental world--the atoms capable of responding to them. When they have created the mental body, other vibrations can be transmitted through this body to the astral world and attract atoms which will form the body bearing the same name--the astral--and finally other vibrations, making use of these two bodies as a means of transmission, will affect the physical plane and attract atoms which will assist in the building up of the denser body. Everywhere the formative power of vibration is guided by cosmic intelligence, but it is effected far more easily in the reconstruction of the higher bodies, that precedes incarnation properly so-called, than in the creation of the now physical body. Indeed, in the astral and mental bodies, nothing is produced but an atomic mass, the many elements of which will be aggregated into complete organisms only during incarnation properly so-called, whilst the construction of the visible body admits of a mass of extremely delicate and important details. It is for this reason that we have seen this work of construction entrusted to special Beings who prepare, control and watch over it unceasingly. It is because the causal body registers every vibration the personality[70] has generated or received in the course of its series of incarnations, that the vices and virtues are preserved, as is the case with the faults or the good qualities of the physical body. The man who has created for himself a coarse astral body by feeding the passions and thoughts which specially vivify the coarser matter of this body will on returning to earth find a new astral body composed of the same elements, though then in a dormant state. He who, by the cultivation of a lofty intellect, has built up a refined mental body, will return to incarnation with a like mental body, whilst the one who, by meditation and the practice of devotion which bring into being the noblest qualities of the heart, has set vibrating the purest portions of the causal body and of the divine essence (Âtmâ-Buddhi, as it is named in Sanskrit), with which it is filled, will return to birth endowed with those qualities which make apostles and saints, the Saviours of the world. In other words: Matter has more remote boundaries than science recognises; the numberless grades of atoms of which it consists, their powers of aggregation, the multiplicity and duration of the bodies they form, are not even suspected by materialism. Materialism sees nothing but the part played by matter; it denies that intelligence plays any part, and will by no means admit--in spite of evolution and progress--that above man there exists an almost endless chain of higher and higher Beings, whilst below him are kingdoms of an increasingly restricted range of consciousness. By refusing to believe in the multiplicity of the vehicles which the human soul uses, it is unable to understand individual survival or to solve the problem of heredity. Indeed, evolution is only partially explained by the physical germ; the latter, in order to act alone and of itself in the development of the human embryo should possess a degree of intelligence considerably superior to that of man. This is the opposite of what we find, however, and we are brought face to face with the absurd fact of a cause vastly inferior to its effect. Indeed, the intelligence shown by the germ is not its own; it is that of the cosmic Mind reflected by mighty Beings, its willing servants. Besides, this germ contains only the qualities that belong to physical matter, and, as we shall show, the moral, mental, and spiritual qualities are preserved by the finer--the causal--body, which represents the real man at the present time. THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN HEREDITY. If materialism were the whole truth, it ought to explain the whole of heredity; instead of that it clashes with almost all the problems of life. Physical substance offers for analysis none but physical phenomena: attraction, repulsion, heat, electricity, magnetism, vital movement; the anatomical constitution of the highest--the nerve--tissue, presents only the slightest differences in the animal series, if these differences are compared with the enormous distinctions in the qualities it expresses. Differences of form, visible to the microscope, are at times important, we shall be told, and those that affect the atomic activity and groupings[71] are perhaps even more important. That is true, especially in whatever concerns man. Intelligence cannot always be explained by the complexity of the brain--though this complexity is the condition of faculty, as a rule--insects such as ants, bees, and spiders, whose brains are nothing but simple nerve ganglia, display prodigies of foresight, architectural ability and social qualities; whilst along with these dwarfs of the animal kingdom, we see giants that manifest only a rudimentary mind, in spite of their large, convoluted brains. Among the higher animals, there is not one that could imitate the beaver--which, all the same, is far from being at the head of the animal series--in building for itself a house in a river and storing provisions therein. There is a vast gulf, in the zoological series, before and after these insects, as there is before and after the beaver; whilst an even wider gulf separates the highest specimens of the animal world from man himself. Nor do the weight and volume of the brain afford any better explanation of the difference in intellect than does its structural complexity. The weight relations between the brain and the body of different animals have been estimated as follows by Debierre (_La Moëlle et l' Encéphale_):-- Rabbit 1 of brain for 140 of body. Cat 1 " 156 " Fox 1 " 205 " Dog 1 " 351 " Horse 1 " 800 " If matter were the only condition _sine quâ non_ of intelligence, we should have to admit that the rabbit was more intelligent than the cat, the fox, the dog, and even than the horse. In the same work the following figures express the average size of the brain in different races of men. Pariahs of India 1332 cubic centimetres. Australians 1338 " Polynesians 1500 " Ancient Egyptians 1500 " Merovingians 1537 " Modern Parisians 1559 " This would prove that the people who built Karnac and the Pyramids, who raised to an elevation of about 500 feet blocks of granite, one of which would require fifteen horses to drag it along a level road, who placed these enormous stones side by side without mortar or cement of any kind and with almost invisible joints, who possessed the secret of malleable glass and of painting in colours that have not faded even after the lapse of centuries ... that such a race of men were inferior to the rude, uncultured Merovingians, and scarcely the equals of the Polynesians! Science also tells us that in a child five years of age the human brain weighs, on an average, 1250 grammes--this, too, would bear no relation whatever with the intellectual and moral development of a child of that age and that of an adult man. Though Cuvier's brain weighed 1830 grammes, and Cromwell's 2230, that of Tiedemann, the great anatomist, when placed on the scales, weighed no more than 1254, and that of Gambetta only 1246. The physical body of itself can give no reason for a host of psychological phenomena on which, however, a flood of light is shed if one recognises the existence of other vehicles of consciousness possessing more far-reaching vibrations, and consequently capable of expressing higher faculties. During sleep, for instance, which is characterised by the Ego having left his physical body, reason is absent, and what we call dreams are generally nothing but a tissue of nonsense, at which the dreamer feels astonishment only when returning to his body on awaking. On the other hand, as we have seen in Chapter I., when the Ego succeeds in imprinting on the brain the vibrations of the higher consciousness, it is able to regain the memory of facts long forgotten and to solve problems that could not be solved during the waking state. There are madmen who have ceased to be mad during somnambulism; persons of rudimentary intelligence have proved themselves to be profound thinkers during the mesmeric trance; when under somnambulism vision is possible to those born blind and certain people can see things that are happening a great distance away, and their reports have been proved correct; certain phenomena of double-consciousness cannot be explained without the plurality--the duality, at all events--of the vehicles of consciousness. To return to the _rôle_ played by the germ in the question of heredity, we repeat that the physical germ, of itself alone, explains only a portion of man; it throws light on the physical side of heredity, but leaves in as great darkness as ever the problem of intellectual and moral faculty. If it represented the whole man, one would expect to find in any individual the qualities manifested in his progenitors or parents--never any other; these qualities could not exceed the amount possessed by the parents, whereas we find criminals from birth in the most respectable families and saints born to parents who are the very scum of society. You may come across twins, _i.e._, beings born from the same germs, under the same conditions of time and environment, one of whom is an angel and the other a demon, though their physical forms closely resemble each other. Child prodigies are sufficiently numerous to frequently trouble the thinker with the problem of heredity. Whence came that irresistible impulse towards poetry in Ovid which showed itself from his earliest youth and in the end overcame the vigorous opposition of his parents? Pascal in his youth met with keen opposition from his parents, who forbade him to think of mathematics and geometry. He besought his father to tell him, at all events, "what was that science of which he was forbidden to think, and what it treated of." The answer was given to him that "it is the method of making correct figures and finding out the proportions they bear to each other." With nothing more than this information and the aid of reflection, he discovered for himself the first thirty-two propositions of Euclid by means of "circles and lines" traced in secret. Mozart, at the age of three, learnt the clavecin by watching his sister play; a year afterwards he composed admirably, at the age of seven he played the violin at first sight without having had any teacher, and proved himself a composer of genius before he reached his twelfth birthday. Pepito Ariola, the little Spaniard, was only three years of age when, about ten years ago, he filled with astonishment the Court of Madrid by his wonderful playing on the piano. In the lineage of these prodigies has there been found a single ancestor capable of explaining these faculties, as astonishing as they are premature? If to the absence of a cause in their progenitors is added the fact that genius is not hereditary, that Mozarts, Beethovens, and Dantes have left no children stamped from birth as prodigies of genius, we shall be forced to the conclusion that, within the limits it has taken up, materialism is unable to explain heredity. A few more words must be said on physical heredity to explain why moral qualities in men of average development are often on a par with the same in their parents. In reality, the physical germs only multiply the organic elements of the ovule, and as this latter contains the cell-types of all the tissues, it follows that these cell-types will possess the qualities of the tissues that exist in the parents. For instance, germs of sufferers from arterio-sclerosis will supply a vascular apparatus predisposed to arterio-sclerosis; tuberculous subjects will supply germs in which the vital vibrations and cellular solidity will be below the normal, and bring about those degenerate tendencies which characterise the tuberculous subject; those of sanguine constitution will transmit a faculty for vital assimilation and considerable corpuscular production, and so on.[72] In this transmission there are two main factors: the male and the female germs. The former represents force, it imprints on the ovule the initial vital vibration which is to be that of each of the cells of the organism in course of construction. The function of this germ may be studied more easily in animals, because their heredity is not complicated by the individual differences due to the mental vehicle. The stallion supplies the vital qualities--the blood, _i.e._, the vivacity, _brio_, pace; physical resistance comes from the mare. To sum up, the modalities of matter are supplied by the feminine germ. Peculiarities of form proceed from several causes. Phrenology and physiognomy are sciences, though the studies hitherto known by these names are almost valueless because they have not been carried on with the necessary scientific precision. Doubtless Gall and Lavater possessed the gift of penetrating both mind and heart, as was also the case with Mlle. Lenormand Desbarolles and the genuine graphologists; but this gift was not the result of mathematical deduction, but rather a psychometric or prophetic faculty; for this reason neither they nor their books have produced pupils worthy of the name. The main features and lines only of the human form have a known meaning--and not always a very precise one--for every physical, passional, mental, or spiritual force possesses an organ of expression in the visible body, and the varieties of form of this organ enable one to judge of the degrees of force they express on the earth plane. On this basis, peculiarities of form mainly stand; and the intensity of certain defects or qualities is at times expressed so strongly that it completely modifies the tendencies it would seem that heredity ought to pass on. The similarity of form between parent and child is not exact, because it proceeds from the peculiarities of the individual in incarnation far more than from the collective tendencies of the embryonic cells in process of proliferation. The being charged with building the body can, in turn, considerably modify its form, copying specially striking features found in the mother's thought; certain characteristic family traits, the Bourbon nose, for instance; those belonging to strangers in continual relationship with the mother, and those that a babe, fed and brought up away from home, takes from his nurse or from the surroundings amid which he lives; all these probably leave their impress in the same way. In this case, indeed, the "builder"--who, it must be added, ceases the work of construction only when it is on its way to completion, which happens about the age of seven--is influenced by the forms of the new surroundings, and at times copies them, more or less, and we may ask ourselves if the unexplained fact of negro children being born to a white woman--the widow of a negro--remarried to a white man is in no way connected with the reproduction of a mental image of the coloured children of a former marriage. Another fact: observers have noticed that almost all great men have had as their mother a woman of lofty character. This preponderance of the maternal influence will be understood if we remember that the cellular mass that composes the child's body belongs to the mother, not only because this mass originates from the proliferation of the ovule, and, consequently, is only the multiplication of the maternal substance, but also because the materials that have formed it and have been transmuted into flesh have been supplied by her; indeed, everything comes from this cellular mass, the elements drawn from the amniotic fluid and the blood, the milk, which, after birth, continues for long months to build up the child's body and the magnetic fluid, the "atoms of life," which are continually escaping from it and which the babe absorbs whilst receiving incessant attention from his mother. This exchange of atoms is of the utmost importance, for these ultra-microscopic particles are charged with our mental and moral tendencies as well as with the physical qualities; personally, I have had many direct proofs of this, but the most striking came at a critical period of my life. One day, when nervous exhaustion, steadily increased by overwork, had reached an extreme stage, a great Being--not a Mahatma, but a Soul at a very lofty stage of evolution--sent to me by destiny at the time, poured into my shattered body a portion of his physical life. Shortly afterwards a real transformation took place, far more of a moral than of a physical nature, and for a few hours I felt myself the "copy" or counterpart of that great Soul, and the divine influence lasted twenty-four hours before it gradually died away. I then understood, better than by any other demonstration, the influence of the physical upon the moral nature and the method of the subtle contagion often effected by mesmerism. _A man is known by the friends he keeps_ is an old proverb. If atoms of life can have so marked an influence upon a man nearly forty years of age, _i.e._, at a period when he is in full possession of himself, how much more powerful is this influence when exercised upon the child--a delicate, sensitive body, almost entirely lacking the control of the soul? This is the reason hired nurses often transmit to the child their own physical features and countless moral tendencies which last some time after weaning; orphans, too, morally, often resemble the strangers who have brought them up. Like physical tendencies these moral propensities disappear only by degrees, according to change of environment, and especially to the degree in which the body is controlled by the reincarnated soul.[73] The most important, however, of the moral influences at work on the being again brought into touch with earth-life is connected with the emotions, the passions and thoughts of those around. The child--and under this name must be included the embryo and the foetus--possesses bodies the subtle elements of which are in a dormant state; his mental and sense organisms are scarcely more than masses of substance that have not yet been vitalised--a sort of collection of germs of good or of evil, which will yield fruit when they awake. The passional and mental vibrations of the parents play on the matter capable of responding to them in the invisible bodies of the child; they vivify it, attract atoms of the same nature taken from the finer atmosphere around, and awake in it passional and mental centres which, but for them, might have remained latent, or, at all events, would only have developed at a later stage, when the Ego, master of its vehicles, would be in a position to struggle against the outer evil influences and not permit them to have effect save within the limits imposed by will. In this way, it is possible to bring to birth evil instincts in a child, and intensify them to a considerable extent, before a single virtue has succeeded in expressing itself on the new instrument in course of development. This mental action is so strong that it colours vividly, if not altogether, the morality of the little ones living beneath its influence, and even older children are still so sensitive to it that whole classes are seen to reflect the moral character of the teacher who has charge of them. This influence, too, does not cease with childhood, it weighs--though far less heavily--on the man during the whole of his life; and families, nations, nay, even races, each see through the prism of their own special atmosphere. Mighty and subtle is this illusion which man, in the course of his pilgrimage towards divine Unity, must succeed in piercing and finally entirely dissipating. Our responsibility towards children is all the more serious in that, to the deep impression which thought makes on the subtle, plastic, and defenceless mental bodies of the little ones, is added the fact that, could one prevent the development of the germs of evil in the course of one incarnation, these germs, not having fructified, would transmit nothing to the _causal body_ after death, and would disappear[74] with the disintegration of the matter of which they were composed. Consequently, with regard to children especially, we should cultivate none but noble emotions and lofty thoughts, so as to create centres of pure and worthy activity within their vehicles in course of reconstruction, and to turn their early impulses in the direction of good, their first actions towards duty and their first aspirations towards the lofty and luminous heights of spirituality. One may see from this rapid sketch how numerous and important are the influences added to and blended with those of physical heredity. This group of influences, some maleficent, some beneficent, is chosen by the Beings who control destiny and give to each Ego, on reincarnation, the body and environment it has merited, or rather that are needed, for the harmonious development of its faculties. A young soul[75] still at the mercy of the animal impulses--necessary impulses at the outset of human development--of its kâmic, _i.e._, desire, vehicle, is sent to parents who will be able to supply its body with material elements of a particular density without which these impulses could not manifest themselves. An Ego that is approaching maturity will be drawn to a family that is physically and morally pure, in which it will receive both the finer physical vehicle it needs and that lofty environment which, when it enters upon earth life, will develop the centres of expression for its nobler faculties. Those who are named in the mystic phraseology of the East, the "Lords of Karma," in their choice of the race, the family, and the environment in which the reincarnated soul is to appear, seek to give this latter the most favourable conditions for its evolution. An Ego whose artistic side needs to be developed will often be born in a family which will supply it with a nervous system accustomed to the kind of vibrations required, and an environment favourable to the early development of the physical centres of these faculties; to assist a being whose scientific, mystical, or metaphysical side needs to be developed, other environment and parentage will be chosen, and it is this relative parallelism existing between the moral qualities of the parents and those of the children which has deceived observers insufficiently instructed in the mystery of heredity, and made them believe in the influence of the physical germ alone. It is an easy matter to supply an Ego of average development with a vehicle; an ordinary body is all that is needed. There may be extreme difficulty, however, when a new instrument has to be found for a lofty soul, and when we think that, in pressing instances when the fortune of humanity is at stake and the hour of destiny has struck, certain great Souls accept very imperfect bodies for want of better ones, we shall no longer be astonished at finding that any particular Messenger, in his compassion for the humanity he has to enlighten and to direct to the ancient, eternal Source of Truth, has clothed himself with a body of flesh the ancestry of which was far from being adapted to the expression of his lofty faculties; courageous Souls are well able to put on the robe of pain and to submit to slander and calumny when the world's salvation can only be achieved at such a cost. We know scarcely anything of the conditions that control the return to earth of the Avataras, the "Sons of God," except that sometimes great Initiates, after purifying their bodies, voluntarily hand them over to the "gods," who come down to earth--a sublime sacrifice which, like that of the Saviours who consent to come amongst us, shows forth that supreme characteristic of divinity; the gift of oneself. Nor is heredity always realised; many a physical characteristic is not reproduced; in families tainted with dangerous physiological defects, many children escape the evil, and the diseased tendencies of the tissues remain latent in them, although they often afflict their descendants. On the other hand, as already stated, extremely divergent mental types are often met with in the same family, and many a virtuous parent is torn with grief on seeing the vicious tendencies of his child. Here, as elsewhere, the hand of Providence, as Christianity calls it--the Intelligence that brings about evolution, the Justice that controls and the Love that animates it--the hand of God or of those who, having become divine, collaborate in the divine plan, comes to make up for the imperfection of the vehicles, and they permit only what is necessary to come to each one--only what he has deserved, as is generally said: this hand can create a physical or a psychic malady even where heredity and environment could not supply it, just as it can preserve a pure soul from the moral infection of the surroundings into which it is thrown.[76] This is the reason we find that heredity and environment either fail to fulfil their promise or else give what was not their's to give. OBJECTION. Reincarnation is not necessary, it has been alleged; the soul's evolution is continued after death in the invisible worlds in finer bodies; consequently it is needless to return to the denser bodies of earth. In our opinion, the trials of life, so exhausting to the will, must have given rise to this theory, for not only have those who advance it never given the slightest proof of its truth, but it is utterly opposed to the law of evolution. In a world which prefers the flights of imagination to logical reasoning we are too accustomed to regard man as a being apart in Nature; we are only too prone to make exceptions on his behalf. The patient scientific researches of all ages have laid down this universally accepted axiom: _Nature does not proceed by leaps_. It has not so far entered anyone's mind--we think not at all events--to teach that the development of the mineral, the vegetable, and even of the animal kingdom, comes to a sudden halt on this planet, once the forms in these kingdoms are dispersed, to be completed in finer worlds; but regarding man other thoughts have prevailed, as though his intelligence and his heart had learnt all the lessons this earth is capable of teaching! From the most undeveloped of savages up to those glorious Spirits that have been the Manu, the Buddha, and the Christ, we find every step occupied on the long ladder of humanity. In the lower kingdoms all the stages exist also and are utilised, each link receiving something from its neighbours and giving them something in return, thus expressing on the visible plane that gracious unity which is divine Love: love that is instinctive and imperative in beings of a low degree of evolution; obeyed by those who, without loving it, understand its good services, and actually lived by such souls as have entered upon the path of sacrifice--souls that comprehend the Unity of beings. If this earth has been capable of teaching the Saviours of the world, why should divine Wisdom send thereon only for one short life this mass of imperfect men, to hurl them afterwards on to other worlds, like careless butterflies flitting from flower to flower? Can the evolutionary effort be so easy and simple; is divine energy of such slight value that it can thus be squandered to no purpose; is the process of creation the sport of an infant God; is the Logos, sacrificing himself in order to give life to the Universe, a prodigal, working without rhyme or reason, sending forth His intelligence and might in aimless sport and leaving evolution at the mercy of His caprice; did not Brahmâ, by means of meditation, which, as the Oriental scriptures tell us, preceded creation, practise the gentlest, the most rapid, and the easiest method of guiding beings to the Goal? Is it not sheer blasphemy to attribute such folly to the Soul of the world? Does not the study of Nature, at each step, belie this insensate waste, of which no human being would be guilty? Everywhere with the minimum of force, Nature produces the maximum of effect; everywhere energy is consolidated with one end in view; and yet, amid the general order around, is the evolution of man to form a solitary, an incomprehensible exception? No, we cannot believe it for a moment. American spiritists,[77] however--for it is they who have given out this hypothesis--are not in agreement with the school of Allan Kardec on this fundamental point, and this fact is by no means calculated to strengthen, the authority for this doctrine. Did we not know that disincarnate beings are as ignorant in the life beyond as they were on earth; that they tend to group themselves, as they did here below, with those who think as they do, whilst remaining aloof from such as profess hostile opinions; that the Hindu remains a Hindu, the Christian a Christian, and the Mussulman a Mussulman; that sceptics are still sceptics; and atheists, atheists; we should think that spirit "communications" with their incessant contradictions were unparalleled nonsense, since the "spirits" are by no means agreed on the very things regarding which they pretend to pronounce a judgment from which there is no appeal. Fortunately, there is a reason for these divergences. Death neither lifts the veil of Isis nor brings the soul into the presence of omniscient Light; man remains what he was, with all his former beliefs, opinions, passions, qualities, sympathies, and antipathies. True, he knows a little more than he did upon earth; no more has he doubts as to the after-life, he regains a precise memory of the whole of his life here, and the recollection of many a forgotten fact comes back to him; he understands better, for his intelligence is being served by a much finer body--but that is all. Therefore "spirits" reflect both the morality and the mentality of the nation to which they belonged on earth, and in the other life are to be found friends and enemies, believers and unbelievers, reincarnationists and non-reincarnationists. Rebirths can be established only by personal proof, by memory; now, the soul that has entered the life beyond, after disincarnation, has not reached the end of its pilgrimage; it is learning that it must, by self-purification, pass from world to world until it attains to a state of supreme and final rest; but when this latter has been reached, it has lost its lower sheaths and the memory they gave it, and when the Law brings it back to earth, it puts on new bodies, which, having had no participation in preceding events, are ignorant of the past. Remembrance, we shall see later on, is preserved in the cosmic Memory, but until the soul has readied a sufficient development, it cannot summon it forth, and even could it do so, it would succeed in leaving its impress on the brain only when the physical, the astral, and the mental bodies have submitted to a process of purification which harmonises[78] them and binds them closely together. Then only does man know that Reincarnation is true, and takes place on earth until this latter passes into a slate of obscuration,[79] or, at all events, until the development of the soul enables it to utilise for its evolution some environment on the planet, other than the physical one.[80] We shall be told that we are now proving what we before denied. No, we are simply stating an exception which happens in very few cases and only then to the pioneers of the race--an exception which is nothing but an apparent one and finds its place in the progressive order which unifies all the beings in the planetary chain to which we belong. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 41: Each part possesses in a potential state the properties of the whole.] [Footnote 42: The kingdoms that are invisible to physical sight are as interesting as those we see, but we have no occasion to speak of them here. Logic compels us to acknowledge them until the time comes when human development enables them to be discovered and affords direct proof of their existence.] [Footnote 43: We do not mean to affirm that evolutionists have not committed serious errors in their theory of development. But the law they have set prominently forth is one of the fundamental expressions of the working of God in the Universe.] [Footnote 44: The vibratory impressions that constitute the memory of the Universe. See in Chapter 4, the final _Objection._] [Footnote 45: See _L'or et la Transmutation des métaux_, by Tiffereau.] [Footnote 46: Such as the one with the magnet which, if too great a weight is suspended to its armature, loses strength, and this it only regains by degrees when "fed" with successively stronger charges. A steel spring that has borne too great a weight loses strength, and may break if subjected anew to the same weight that "fatigued" it. Pieces of iron break after being "fatigued" by a weight they easily carried before. Professor Kennedy made very useful experiments regarding the "fatigue" of metals at the time when metallic bridges were continually breaking, thus causing great perplexity in the engineering world.] [Footnote 47: There has been much discussion as to the causes of Evolution. In his _Progress and Poverty_, Henry George endeavours to show that Evolution is in no way brought about by individual or collective heredity. He says that the factors of Progress are: First, the mind, which causes the advance of civilisation when not exercised solely in the "struggle for life," or in frequent conflicts between nation and nation; second, association or combination, which ensures all the benefits to be derived from division of work; third, justice, which harmonises the units of the social body, and without which civilisation decays and dies. H. George saw only these elements in evolution; consequently, he could neither solve the problem of progress nor explain the rise and fall of empires. Indeed, egoism and war are in no way, as he says they are, the sole causes of the fall of races: the soil cannot feed a great nation for an indefinite period even if the country is prevented by emigration from becoming over-populated; the very nature itself of the civilisation of the time prevents it from continuing for ever. Modern western races, for instance, have for centuries past been developing energy and intelligence; a limit must be fixed to that particular line of progress, under penalty of destroying equilibrium both in the individual and the race. If, indeed, man is to learn strength and intelligence, he must also develop love, or he will fail. The Elder Brothers behind Evolution control the advance of the races in accordance with the plan of God, whose servants they are. The real cause of evolution does not lie in environment, as H. George and his school would have it: it is in the divine Will, incarnate in the Universe. It is God who creates the world, God who fills it with life, guides it and permits its development. All the laws of Nature are the expression of the supreme Intelligence; all progress is nothing but the realisation of the possibilities of the divine Will. The evolutionary edifice is based on solidarity, and here environment is undoubtedly an indispensable factor in development; still, it only acts as the field or soil, and soil without seed remains barren. The mind is also a powerful lever in evolution, but it affects only one side of the matter. Association or co-operation facilitates only the growth of certain faculties whilst checking the development of others. Justice calls forth only certain individual and social forces, and leaves many of them in a state of stagnation. In a word, H. George forgets that there is no useless force in the whole of Nature; that they all collaborate in the general task, and finally that there would be no progress, were it not for the existence of opposing forces. If, _e.g._, egoism were non-existent, those still incapable of working without the hope of personal gain would lack a powerful incentive to action. True is the saying that evil is the stepping-stone to good. Were the Law of Rebirths known, it would prove to be an explanation of the problems of evolution.] [Footnote 48: A few theologians have feebly affirmed the possibility of human life on other planets than the Earth, but their voices have either been stifled or have met with no echo. At the Congress of Fribourg, in Switzerland, August, 1897, evolution was adopted by an assembly of 700 eminent Catholics--laymen and clergy. Dr. Zahn said that _although creation is possible a priori, it is a posteriori so very improbable that it ought to be rejected; that those who believe in this creation rely upon the literal interpretation of Genesis, whilst the contemporary students of the Bible affirm that the book is allegorical, that God, in the beginning created the elements and gave them power to evolve in all the forms that characterise the organic and inorganic worlds_. One voice alone was raised in protest, but it was drowned beneath the refutations of the rest. The question, however, might be asked: How is the transition made from one kingdom to another? What is the missing link? Who is to interpret the Bible if it is an allegorical book? Is it the Church which has always imposed _the letter_ of the Bible and condemned all who have attempted to set forth _its spirit_?] [Footnote 49: In hypnosis, indeed, the thought suggested is strong enough to modify organic life and bring about hematic extravasion (stigmata), burnings, vomiting, etc.... In certain ecstatic cases, fixity of thought produces analogous effects. No one who has studied these questions can have the slightest doubt that mind dominates matter.] [Footnote 50: We say force-matter, for there is no force without matter, they are the two poles of the same thing. Moreover, what is considered force in relation to dense matter plays the _rôle_ of matter to subtler forces; electricity, _e.g._, is force-matter, probably capable of serving as a vehicle for subtler force-matter, just as it plays the _rôle_ of force in relation to its conductors. Force is born and dies with matter and _vice versâ_; both alike arise from the activity of God.] [Footnote 51: The sensations it calls forth vary with the forms. That which burns us, gives life to other beings; water, which suffocates us, enables fishes to live; whilst air suffocates creatures that live in the water, etc.] [Footnote 52: All this must be taken figuratively. God does not incarnate Himself. He is the All. To our limited conceptions, He seems to limit Himself, in order to be the Life of a Universe.] [Footnote 53: Here, too, we are speaking relatively; in reality, there are no fragments of the Absolute. We describe the process as it seems to us in the world of illusion.] [Footnote 54: Being: Divinity.] [Footnote 55: Force-matter.] [Footnote 56: Forms.] [Footnote 57: The movement given to the germ by the union of its positive and negative forces.] [Footnote 58: The "builders" are inferior beings utilised by Nature in every process of germination and development. To certain readers, this will perhaps appear to be an aberration of the theosophic imagination, in which case we recommend them to supply us with a better theory and to believe in that, until the time comes when the functioning of the "inner senses" takes place in them, and enables them to perceive these beings in action.] [Footnote 59: Teratological phenomena attributable to the imagination of the mother are so numerous that they cannot be refuted. The case mentioned here is taken from Van Helmont's _De Injectis Materialibus_. The woman in question had been present at the decapitation of thirteen soldiers, condemned to death by the Duc d'Alva. In the same work are two other instances which occurred under similar circumstances: in the first, the foetus at birth was lacking a hand; and in the second, it was the whole arm that was missing; whilst, what is perhaps even stranger than this, neither arm, nor hand, nor head were found, they had been absorbed by the body of the mother.] [Footnote 60: To be strictly logical, one should say round the only centre, the one Being, but looked upon from the side of manifestation, evolution appears as stated.] [Footnote 61: Hellenbach, in his book, _Magie der Zahlen_, says regarding the number seven. "_The law governing the phenomena on which our knowledge is based decrees that the vibrations of sound and light regularly increase in number, that they are grouped in seven columns, and that the vibratory elements of each column have so close a relation to one another that not only can it be expressed in figures, but it is even confirmed by practice in music and chemistry._ "_The fact that this variation and periodicity are governed by the number seven cannot be disputed; it is not a matter of chance: there is a cause and we ought to discover it._" In his table of the elements grouped according to atomic weight, Mendelejef also acknowledges that the number seven controls what he calls the _Law of periodical function_. He reaches conclusions similar to those of Hellenbach. Dr. Laycock, in his Articles on the _Periodicity of Vital Phenomena_ (_Lancet_) 1842, sums up as follows:-- "_It is, I think, impossible to come to any less general conclusion than this, that, in animals, changes occur every 3-1/2, 7, 14, 21 or 28 days, or at some definite period of weeks._"] [Footnote 62: See _Man and his Bodies_, by A. Besant.] [Footnote 63: The size of the causal body varies according to its development. It has been named _causal_, because it contains within itself the causes or germs of all the other bodies, with the exception of the denser part of the physical. We say denser because the physical body is double: its etheric part belongs to the causal body, its visible part comes from the parents.] [Footnote 64: The mental body, which is, as it were, an ephemeral flower of the causal, is born and developed in each incarnation, disintegrating after the _devachanic_ (heavenly) life.] [Footnote 65: It moves more or less freely on the astral plane, according to the development of the astral body. In men of low development, this body cannot be separated from the physical, under penalty of a nightmare which brings about a waking condition.] [Footnote 66: The atoms interpenetrate in consequence of their differences of tenuity.] [Footnote 67: Later on, the centre of consciousness passes from the human to the superhuman state and ascends unceasingly until it reaches the centre of the Divinity incarnate in the world.] [Footnote 68: When this centre is fixed in one of the higher bodies, the buddhic for instance, the man has passed into the superhuman stage.] [Footnote 69: As sand, placed on a plate in a state of vibration, assumes varying forms.] [Footnote 70: The soul acting in the mental, the astral, and more especially--in the average man--the physical body. The Individuality is the soul acting in the causal body.] [Footnote 71: See the diagram in the chapter on the Atom in _The Ancient Wisdom_, by A. Besant.] [Footnote 72: We have seen that the organs formed by these tissues are the special work of a particular being controlled by lofty Intelligences.] [Footnote 73: As the building of the body is reaching completion, the Ego (the Soul) begins to make use of the new instrument. It is at about the age of seven years that the development of the nerve centres becomes sufficiently advanced to allow of the brain receiving the vibrations of the soul; up to this point, the real man has scarcely had any influence upon the body, although the mental projection (the mental body) which he has formed can express itself to a certain extent much earlier, from the seventh month of foetal life; up to this time, the instinctive energies of the astral body alone affect the embryo.] [Footnote 74: In Kâmaloka (Purgatory). The desires, in purgatory, cannot be satisfied, because there is no physical body to express them, and this causes a state of suffering which has been compared to a burning fire. This fire burns up the passions and leaves behind only the "germs," which the causal body takes up and bequeaths to the future astral body. But for this providential burning away, the passions would exist from early childhood in the future incarnation, _i.e._, at a time when the Ego has no hold whatever upon the new personality, and when the latter would be terribly affected by this influx of the forces of evil.] [Footnote 75: Souls are of different ages: the savage is not so old as the civilised man, while the latter is the younger brother of those strong and wise Souls who compose the vanguard of humanity.] [Footnote 76: It is impossible for heredity and environment to supply _all_ the conditions that a soul's evolution calls for, and _nothing but these conditions_; that is the reason Providence intervenes in the interests of justice.] [Footnote 77: It is in this great body, with which we are in sympathy, though we claim the right to dispute their theories when we regard them as erroneous, that this hypothesis is met with more especially. True, certain schools of lower occultism teach it also, but they form a minority, and are of no importance.] [Footnote 78: Harmony is established when there is vibratory synchronism of all the states of matter of the different bodies _i.e._, when each slate of matter in a body vibrates in unison with the analogous states of matter of all the other bodies.] [Footnote 79: When the "life wave" has ended its cycle on this earth, it passes in succession over the other planets of our chain and leaves the earth in a state of slumber. This slumber ceases with the return of the "life wave"; it becomes death when the evolution of the chain is accomplished. See A. P. Sinnett's _Esoteric Buddhism._] [Footnote 80: At a certain stage on the _Path_, return to earth is no longer obligatory.] CHAPTER IV. REINCARNATION AND THE RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHIC CONSENSUS OF THE AGES. In the rapid review we are now about to make of the religion and philosophy of the past, we shall find that, under many and divers names and veils, the doctrine of Rebirths has been taught from the farthest antiquity right up to the present time. There is not a nation that has not preserved clear traces of this doctrine; not a religion that has not taught it, either openly or in secret, or, at all events, retained the germ of the teaching; and if we count only those peoples of whose national religion it forms part, _i.e._, Hindus and Buddhists, the number of believers in Reincarnation may be summed up in round figures at 540 millions of the present population of 1400 millions throughout the world. The greatest of philosophers, both ancient and modern, have regarded palingenesis as the basis of life, but whereas in the past the pledge of initiation prevented its details from being promulgated, in our days, along with the flood of light which this cycle has brought us, the veil of secrecy has been partially lifted, and theosophy has been privileged to set forth this glorious teaching in its main outlines and its most important details. INDIA. Northern India was the cradle of the present race--the fifth--the Eden of our humanity, our physical, moral, mental, and spiritual mother.[81] From her womb issued the emigrant hordes that peopled Europe after spreading over Egypt, Asia Minor, and Siberia; it was her code of ethics that civilised Chaldæa, Greece, Rome, and the whole of the East; our own code is full of traces of the Laws of Manu, whilst both the Old and New Testament are, in many respects, an abridged and often almost a literal copy of the sacred Books of ancient Aryavarta. The presence of the doctrine of reincarnation in the Vedic hymns has been disputed; this proves nothing more than the present fragmentary condition of the Vedas. Nothing, indeed, could be more absurd than to find that the sacred Scriptures of India had maintained silence on a doctrine which, along with that of Karma, form the two main columns of the Hindu temple; for the Brâhman as well as for the Buddhist--who is only a member of a powerful offshoot of Hinduism--these two laws rule throughout the whole Universe, from the primordial kingdoms up to the gods, including man; and the principal, nay, the only goal of human life is Moksha--salvation, in Christian terminology--liberation from the chain of rebirths. In this land, in which, along with strict obedience to the rules of conduct set forth by its great Teachers, there existed the most complete freedom of opinion, and where the most divergent and numerous philosophic sects consequently developed, there has always been perfect unanimity regarding the doctrine of rebirth, and in that inextricable forest of metaphysical speculations two giant trees have always overtopped the rest: the tree of Karma and the tree of Reincarnation. In spite of the intentional obscurity in which we are left as to the teachings regarding rebirth from the time of the decadence of India, it is no difficult matter, with the aid of theosophy, to discover its main points. Thus we find in them the return of the "life-atoms"[82] and animal souls[83] to existence in new physical bodies; the rebirths of the human Egos are indicated in their main phases; but here, the deliberate omission of certain points which had long to remain incomprehensible--and consequently dangerous--to the masses, makes obscure, and at times absurd, certain aspects of transmigration. I have heard a great Teacher clearly explain these points to some of the most enlightened of the Hindu members of the Theosophical Society, but I do not feel authorised to repeat these explanations, and so will leave this portion of the subject under a veil, which the reader will, with the aid of intuition, be able to lift after reflecting on the following pages. The Sages of ancient India, then, teach three distinct phases in the return-to-birth process: Resurrection, Transmigration or Metempsychosis and Reincarnation properly so-called. RESURRECTION. The human body is a species of polyp colony, a kind of coral island like those that emerge above the waves of the Pacific, by reason of the collective efforts of lower organisms. The most numerous of the compounds of the human aggregate are known to physiology as microbes, bacteria, and bacilli; but amongst them our microscopes discover only comparative monsters, "those that are to the ordinary infinitesimal organisms as the elephant is to the invisible infusorium."[84] Each cell is a complete being; its soul is a vital ray of the general life of our planet; its body consists of molecules that are attracted and then repelled, whilst the cellular soul remains immutable in the ceaseless fluctuations of its corporeal elements. The molecules, too, are animated by a vital soul, connected with the cellular soul, which, in turn, is subordinate to a higher[85] unit of the collective life of the human body. The most infinitesimal of these beings--often called "lives"--penetrate the body freely; they circulate in the aura[86] and in each plexus of the organism; there they are subjected to the incessant impact of the moral, menial, and spiritual forces, and become impregnated with a spirit of good or of evil, as the case may be. They enter the cells and leave them with intense rapidity, for their cycles of activity as well as of passivity are being incessantly repeated. We are all the time emanating millions of "lives," which are at once drawn into the different kingdoms of Nature to which they carry the energies they have gathered in us; they impress on their new organisms the tendencies we have given them, and in this way become ferments of regeneration or of decay; they aid or retard, pollute or purify, and it is for this reason that it is not a matter of indifference whether one lives in town or country, with men or animals, the temperate or the intemperate, the wicked or the good. The animal gains from association with human beings, man loses from association with animals; the disciples of the great schools of initiation, at a certain stage of their discipline, are carefully isolated from any inferior contact. It is these subtle forces that are at play in the physical accomplishment of an action.[87] "For material sins," says Manu, "one[88] passes into mineral and vegetable forms." When, at death, the outer sheath of man disintegrates, these "life atoms" are thrown back into the general surroundings of the earth, where they are subjected to the magnetic currents around; these currents either attract or repel them, and thus bring about that wise selection, which directs them to organisms in affinity with them. The doctrine of metempsychosis[89] is true only for the atoms or emanations sent out by man after death or during the whole course of life. The hidden meaning of the passage from Manu, where we read that "he who slays a Brâhman enters into the body of a dog, a bear, an ass, a camel, &c.," does not apply to the human Ego, but only to the atoms of his body, _i.e._, to the lower triad[90] and its fluidic emanations, as H. P. Blavatsky says, and she adds: "The Hîna-yana, the lowest form of transmigration of the Buddhist, is as little comprehended as the Mahâ-yâna, its highest form, and, because Sâkya Muni--the Buddha--is shown to have once remarked to his Bhikkus--Buddhist monks--while pointing out to them a broom, that it had formerly been a novice who neglected to sweep out the Council room, hence was reborn as a broom,(!) therefore the wisest of all the world's sages stands accused of idiotic superstition. Why not try and understand the true meaning of the figurative statement before criticising? Is or is not that which is called magnetic effluvia a something, a stuff or a substance, invisible and imponderable though it be?... The mesmeric or magnetic fluid which emanates from man to man, or even from man to what is termed an inanimate object, is far greater. Indeed, it is 'life atoms' that a man in a blind passion throws off unconsciously. Let any man give way to any intense feeling such as anger, grief, &c., under or near a tree, or in direct contact with a stone, and many thousands of years after that any tolerable psychometrist will see the man and sense his feelings from one single fragment of that tree or stone that he has touched. Why then should not a broom, made of a shrub, which grew most likely in the vicinity of the building where the lazy novice lived--a shrub, perhaps, repeatedly touched by him while in a state of anger, provoked by his laziness and distaste of his duty--why should not a quantity of his life atoms have passed into the materials of the future broom, and therein have been recognised by Buddha owing to his superhuman (not supernatural) powers?"[91] Such is the meaning of the Resurrection of the body, taught in the Christian church in a form that is repellent to reason, for it kills the spirit of the doctrine and leaves this latter like a corpse from which the life has gone. METEMPSYCHOSIS. After the disintegration of the body, the kâmic[92] elements continue for some time, us a "shade"[93] or a "phantom,"[94] in the finer and invisible atmosphere;[95] then they, in turn, become disintegrated by the various forces of this environment,[96] and are lost in the strata of matter from which they have been taken. Like the physical elements (_life-atoms_), they whirl about in their environment and there submit to the same law of attraction and repulsion as that which controls universal selection; they are drawn towards the kâmic elements of men and animals, and it is here that we ought to place the list of those misdeeds, by reason of which these elements pass into bodies of animals or men of inferior development. "A drunken priest becomes a worm," says Manu, "a stealer of corn, a rat; the murderer of a Brâhman, a dog, a tiger, or a serpent"--and this means that those elements which, in man, serve as a basis for the passions, at death, pass over into the bodies of animals that possess the same passions or experience the same needs. The transmigration of human souls into the bodies of animals is still generally accepted amongst the less intelligent Hindus; it has contributed, perhaps more than anything else, to that wonderful respect for life one meets with all over India. The thought that some ancestor or other might happen to be in the body of an animal prevents its destruction; even the sacrifice of his life offered by a man to one of his brothers in the animal world is regarded as a sublime virtue, and legend tells us of the Buddha, the Lord of Compassion, giving himself up as food for a famishing tigress, that she and her cubs might not perish of hunger. REINCARNATION. The process of disintegration[97] which, after disincarnation, destroys the physical, astral, and mental bodies of the man leaves the Soul--or, to be more exact, the causal body, for the soul is not the causal body any more than it is any of the other human vehicles--intact. Indeed, the causal body is at present the only vehicle that resists the cyclic dissolution of the human compound; this it will be subjected to only when the divine spark which constitutes the Soul--an eternal spark in its essence, since it is a fragment of God, and immortal as an "ego," once it has attained to individualisation, the goal of evolution--has formed for itself a new and superior body with the substance of the finer planes above the mental; but ages will pass before the masses of mankind reach this point. After thus throwing off, one after the other, all its sheaths, the Ego finds that it has ended a "life-cycle," and is preparing to put on new bodies, to return to reincarnation on earth. On Reincarnation properly so called, the Hindu scriptures are so precise and complete, so generally accepted, than it is unnecessary to quote from them in detail. A few extracts will suffice. These we will take from the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_, that glorious episode in the mighty civil war which shattered India, and left her defenceless against the successive invaders who were to complete her fall. This great epic poem introduces to us Arjuna, a noble prince, about to take part in the strife. The two armies, arrayed for battle, are on the point of engaging, arrows have already begun to pierce the air. In the opposing ranks Arjuna sees cherished relatives, dear friends, and revered teachers, whom destiny has placed in hostile array, thus giving to the battle all the horrors of parricide and fratricide. Overwhelmed with grief and pity, his heart moved to its inmost depths, Arjuna drops his bow on the ground and thus addresses his Teacher, the divine Krishna: "Seeing these my kinsmen arrayed, O Krishna, eager to fight, "My limbs fail and my mouth is parched, my body quivers and my hair stands on end. "Gândîva (Arjuna's bow) slips from my hand, and my skin burns all over; I am not able to stand, and my mind is whirling. "And I see adverse omens, O Keshava (hairy one). Nor do I foresee advantage by slaying kinsmen in battle. "For I desire not victory, O Krishna, nor kingship nor pleasures; what is kingship to us, O Govinda (Thou who knowest all that is done by our senses and organs), what enjoyment or even life? "Those for whose sake we desire kingship, enjoyments, and pleasures, they stand here in battle, abandoning life and riches. "Teachers, fathers, sons, as well as grandfathers, mothers' brothers, fathers-in-law, grandsons, brothers-in-law, and other relatives. "These I do not wish to kill, though (myself) slain, O Madhusûdana (slayer of Madhu, a demon), even for the sake of the kingship of the three worlds (the habitations of men, gods, and semi-divine beings); how then for earth? ... "I will not do battle." The divine Krishna then smiled upon his well-beloved disciple, and said to him: "Thou grievest for those that should not be grieved for, and speakest words of wisdom (words that sound wise but miss the deeper sense of wisdom). The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead. "Nor at any time verily was I not, nor thou, nor these princes of men, nor verily shall we ever cease to be hereafter. "As the Dweller in the body seeketh in the body childhood, youth, and old age, so passeth he on to another body; the well-balanced grieve not thereat.... "These bodies of the Embodied One, who is eternal, indestructible, and boundless, are known as finite. Therefore fight, O Bhârata. "He who regardeth This (the Dweller in the body) as a slayer, and he who thinketh it is slain, both of them are ignorant. It slayeth not, nor is it slain.... "Who knoweth It indestructible, perpetual, unborn, undiminishing; how can that man slay, O Pârtha, or cause to be slain? "As a man casting off worn-out garments, taketh new ones, so the Dweller in the body, casting off worn-out bodies, entereth into others that are new. "Weapons cleave It not, nor fire burneth It, nor waters wet It, nor wind drieth It away.... "Further, looking upon thine own Dharma,[98] thou shouldst not tremble, for there is nothing more welcome to a Kshattriya than righteous war." Here are other extracts of this wonderful teaching: "Many births have been left behind by Me and by thee, O Arjuna. I know them all, but thou knowest not thine, Parantapa." "He who thus knoweth My divine birth and action, in its essence, is not born again, having abandoned the body, but he cometh unto Me, O Arjuna." "Having attained to the worlds of the pure-doing, and having dwelt there for eternal years, he who fell from Yoga is reborn in a pure and blessed house.... There he obtaineth the complete yogic wisdom belonging to his former body, and then again laboureth for perfection, O joy of the Kurus!" "But the Yogî, verily, labouring with assiduity, purified from sin, fully perfected through manifold births, he treadeth the supreme Path.... He who cometh unto Me, O Kaunteya, verily he knoweth birth no more." The daily life of Hindu and Buddhist is so entirely based on Reincarnation and on its foundation, the law of Causality, that this faith gives them patience in the present and hope for the future; for it teaches that man, every moment he lives, is subject to the circumstances he has created, and that, though bound by the past, he is yet master of the future. Why cannot we, in this troubled Europe of ours, accept this belief as the solution of the distressing problem of the inequality of conditions, for to the weak in rebellion against oppression it would come as a soothing balm, whilst the strong would find in it a stimulus to devoted pity such as wealth owes to poverty and happiness to misfortune? Herein lies the solution of the whole social problem. EGYPT. If we pass from India to Egypt, the land of mystery, we again find the world-wide doctrine of palingenesis hidden beneath the same veil. According to Egyptian teaching, the theory of the "fall of the angels" was accepted; the fallen angels were human souls[99] who had to become reincarnated till they reached a state of purification; fallen into the flesh, subjected to its vicissitudes and passions, these souls had to evolve, in successive rebirths, until they had developed all their faculties, obtained complete control over the lower nature, and won back their original purity; then this latter would no longer be the unconscious purity of youthful innocence, but the conscious purity of mature age, _i.e._, of the soul that has known both good and evil in the course of its experiences, has overcome the serpent of matter, the tempter, and voluntarily chosen the life of virtue. The "Judgment" of the after-life is determined by the degree of purity that has been attained; if insufficient, the soul returns to earth, there to inhabit a human, an animal, or a vegetable form, in accordance with its merits or demerits. These lines prove that Egyptian teaching has come down to us, covered with gross dross and slag, as it were, which must be subjected to careful sifting; when this is done, we see that it also sets forth the transmigrations to which the elements of the various vehicles are subjected,[100] the physical ternary[101] rises from the dead, the animal man[102] transmigrates; and man, properly so-called,[103] reincarnates, but the details of these processes have been so confused in such fragments of Egyptian palingenesis as we possess that it is no easy matter to find the traces of this classification. For instance. Herodotus tells us: "The Egyptians were the first to hold the opinion that the soul of man is immortal and that when the body dies it enters into the form of an animal which is born at the moment, thence, passing on from one animal into another until it has circled through the forms of all the creatures which tenant the earth, the water, and the air, after which it enters again into a human form and is born anew. The whole period of the transmigration is (they say) three thousand years."[104] This passage evidently refers to the resurrection of the "life atoms." H. P. Blavatsky, in the _Theosophist_, vol. 4, pages 244, 286, confirms this in the following words: "We are taught that for 3000 years, at least, the 'mummy,' notwithstanding all the chemical preparations, goes on throwing off to the last invisible atoms, which, from the hour of death, re-entering the various vortices of being, go indeed 'through every variety of organised life forms.' But it is not the soul, the fifth,[105] least of all, the sixth[106] principle, but the life atoms of the Jiva,[107] the second principle. At the end of the three thousand years, sometimes more, sometimes less, after endless transmigrations, all these atoms are once more drawn together, and are made to form the new outer clothing or the body of the same monad (the real soul) which they had already been clothed with two or three thousands of years before. Even in the worst case, that of the annihilation of the conscious personal principle,[108] the monad, or individual soul,[109] is ever the same, as are also the atoms of the lower principles,[110] which, regenerated and renewed in this ever-flowing river of being, are magnetically drawn together owing to their affinity and are once more reincarnated together...." Certain authors have stated that belief in Resurrection was the origin of embalming, because it was thought that after three thousand years the soul returned to the same body, that it immediately rose again, when the body had been preserved, whereas if such had not been the case, it entered wherever it could, sometimes even into the body of a lower creature. Herodotus, however, says that after the cycle of three thousand years the soul enters a new body, not the mummified one,[111] and this would lead one to imagine that there were other reasons for the process of embalming. Indeed, it became general only during the decline of Egypt; at the beginning, it was reserved for the hierophants alone, with the object of allowing their physical molecular elements to pass into the still coarse bodies of the masses and help forward ordinary souls by the powerful influence of the magnetic potency with which they were charged. It is also for this reason that the body of a Yogî, in India, is interred, whilst in the case of other men cremation is the rule. On the other hand, among the multitude of beliefs left in Egypt by degenerate traditions, there were found some which hinted, more or less clearly, at occult truths, and which might have perpetuated or generalised this practice. It was supposed, according to Servius, that the transmigrations[112] began only when the magnetic bond between the soul and its remains had been broken by the complete disintegration of the corpse; consequently they did all in their power to preserve this latter. This belief may readily be connected with theosophic teaching which says that the affinity existing between the visible corpse and the soul clad in its kâmic (astral) body, the animal soul in Kâmaloka (Purgatory), is capable, in certain cases, of detaining this soul on earth, after its disincarnation, and thus delaying, for a longer or shorter period, the disintegration of the elements of the passional body. It is these elements, not the soul, that pass over into animal bodies, and, contrary to the opinions set forth in Egyptian exotericism, it is to the interest of the soul to free itself from terrestrial attraction and from its kâmic (astral) vehicle, and not to remain bound down to earth. Consequently, embalming was a mistaken action, the result of an error of doctrine, or at all events of teachings that were incomplete, imperfectly transmitted, and misunderstood. Egypt multiplied her symbols of palingenesis. Resurrection--in the sense of re-birth in general--was symbolised by the toad which then became the goddess Hiquet. This animal was chosen because it lives in air and in water,[113] because it can remain imprisoned a very great number of years without either air or food[114] and afterwards come back to life. G. Maspero, in his _Guide du Visiteur au Musée de Boulac_, tells us that the early Christians in Egypt had adopted this symbolism, and that the lamps in their churches were formed in the shape of a toad, and bore the inscription, "I am the Resurrection," in the Greek language. This goddess-toad may still be seen in the museum of Boulac. The Scarabeus, or beetle,[115] symbolised the "personality," the expansion of the mental substance, projected, so to speak, by the higher mental body, at each incarnation, into the new kâmic (astral) body; a certain number of them were always deposited with the mummies, and the beetle was represented standing on an ear of corn, a symbol of the attainments acquired during the past earth life. Indeed, the development of the Ego is effected by that of the personality it sends on to the earth each incarnation; it is the new mental body which controls the new astral and physical bodies of each incarnation, and which is, in very truth, the flower and the fruit of the labour of life. Sacred Egyptology tells us that the scarabeus requires to be "osirified," united to its "living soul," or Ego, which sent it forth. I will now give the reason for this emanation. When, after disincarnation, the purgatorial life begins, the Ego endeavours to throw off the kâmic (astral) body, to pass into the higher world--the mental plane--which is its home, there to enjoy the delights of heaven. Thereupon a veritable battle begins. On the one hand, the Ego endeavours to withdraw the mental body, which, at the beginning of the incarnation, it sent into the kâmic body, and to take it to itself; on the other hand, the passional body[116]--which instinctively feels its life bound to that of the mental element, which gives it its strength, vital activity, and personal characteristics--tries to keep back this centre of individual life, and generally succeeds in doing so up to a certain point. When desire, during incarnation, has regularly gained the victory over the will, the passional body, or Kâma, maintains the supremacy beyond the grave, and the Ego, in endeavouring to rescue its mental projection from the kâmic bonds, yields up a more or less considerable fragment thereof, and this fragment is restored to liberty only when the passional body of the deceased has become disintegrated by the forces of the astral world. This has been called the _fire_ of purgatory. On the other hand, when the Ego, during life, has always refused the appeals of the lower nature, it easily withdraws, after death, from the net of passion, the substance it has infused therein, and passes with this substance into that part of the mental plane which is called "heaven." Such is the struggle that Egypt committed to her annals when she inscribed upon papyrus or engraved upon stone the journeyings of the soul into the world of shades. The soul--the mental personality--which demands "osirification," and invokes the Ego, its god and projector, beseeching him to draw it to himself that it may live with him, is the lower "I." This "I" has not exhausted the "desire to live" on earth; its desire is impressed on the germs it has left in the causal body, and brings the Ego back to incarnation; this is the reason it prays and desires the resurrection[117] of its "living soul," the Ego. Denon, in his _Journeyings in Egypt_, has made known to us the Sha-En (the book of metamorphoses), written in hieratic signs and republished in Berlin, by Brugsch, in the year 1851. Explicit mention is here made of reincarnations, and it is stated that they are very numerous. The third part of the _Book of the Dead_ sets forth a detailed account of the resurrection of an Osiris; the identification of the departed one with Osiris, God of Light, and his sharing in the life, deeds, and power of the God; in a word, it is the final reintegration of the human soul with God. The loftiest and most suggestive of Egyptian palingenetic symbols is unquestionably that of the egg. The deceased is "resplendent in the egg in the land of mysteries." In Kircher's _Oedipus Egyptiacus_[118] we have an egg--the Ego freed from its vehicles--floating over the mummy; this is the symbol of hope and the promise of a new birth to the soul, after gestation in the egg of immortality.[119] The "winged globe," so widely known in Egypt, is egg-shaped, and has the same meaning; its wings indicate its divine nature and prevent it from being confused with the physical germ. "Easter eggs" which are offered in spring, at the rebirth of Nature, commemorate this ancient symbol of eternal Life in its successive phases of disincarnation and rebirth. CHALDÆA. It is said that the Magi taught the immortality of the soul and its reincarnations, but that they considerably limited the number of these latter, in the belief that purification was effected after a restricted number of existences on the soul returning to its heavenly abode. Unfortunately we know nothing definite on this special point in Chaldæan teaching, for some of the most important sources of information were destroyed when the library of Persepolis was burnt by the Macedonian vandal, Alexander the Great, whilst Eusebius--whom Bunsen criticises so harshly[120]--made such great alterations in the manuscripts of Berosus, that we have nothing to proceed upon beyond a few disfigured fragments.[121] And yet Chaldæism comprises a great mass of teachings; he whom we know as "the divine Zoroaster" had been preceded by twelve others, and esoteric doctrine was as well known in Chaldæa as in Egypt. The descendants of the Chaldæans--Fire-worshippers, Mazdeans, Magi, Parsees--according to the names they received at different periods--have preserved the main points of palingenetic instruction up to the present, and, from time to time, have set them forth in the most charming style of Oriental poetry. Book 4 of the great Persian poem, _Masnavi i Ma'navi_, deals with evolution and its corollary, reincarnation, stating that there is one way of remembering past existences, and that is by attaining to spiritual illumination, which is the crown of human evolution and brings the soul to the threshold of divinity. "If your purified soul succeeds in escaping from the sea of ignorance, it will see, with eyes now opened, 'the beginning' and 'the end.' Man first appeared in the order of inorganic things; next, he passed therefrom into that of plants, for years he lived as one of the plants, remembering naught of his inorganic state, so different from this, and when he passed from the vegetable to the animal state he had no remembrance of his state as a plant.... Again the great Creator, as you know, drew man out of the animal into the human state. Thus man passed from one order of nature to another, till he became wise and intelligent and strong as he is now. Of his first soul he has now no remembrance, and he will be again changed from his present soul. In order to escape from his present soul, full of lusts, he must rise to a thousand higher degrees of intelligence. "Though man fell asleep and forgot his previous states, yet God will not leave him in this self-forgetfulness; and then he will laugh at his own former state, saying: 'What mattered my experiences when asleep, when I had forgotten the real state of things, and knew not that the grief and ills I experienced were the effect of sleep and illusion and fancy?'" These lines are concise, but they sum up the whole of evolution, and render it unnecessary to quote at greater length from Chaldæan tradition on this point. Still, those who desire other passages relating to the same doctrine may find them in the "Desatir."[122] THE CELTS. Sacerdotal India--and perhaps also Atlantis--in early times sent pioneers into the West to spread religious teachings amongst their energetic inhabitants; those who settled in Gaul and the British Isles were the Druids. "I am a serpent, a druid," they said. This sentence proves that they were priests, and also the Atlantæan or Indian origin of their doctrines; for the serpent was the symbol of initiation in the sacred mysteries of India, as also on the continent of Atlantis. We know little of their teaching, which was entirely oral, though it covered so much ground that, according to Cæsar, not less than thirty years of study were needed to become a druid. The Roman conquest dispersed them by degrees; then it was that their disciples, the bards, committed to writing more or less imperfect and mutilated fragments of the teachings of their masters. Their "triads"[123] are undoubtedly akin to Hindu teachings; Evolution results from the manifestation of the Absolute, it culminates in man, who possesses a maximum of individualisation, and terminates in the personal, conscious union of the beings thus created with the ineffable All. The Absolute is "Ceugant"; manifestation, or the Universe, is "Abred"; the divine state of freed souls is in "Gwynvyd"; these are in the three circles.[124] In "Ceugant" there is only the Unknowable, the rootless Root. Souls are born and develop in "Abred," passing into the different kingdoms; "Amwn" is the state through which beings pass only once, which means that the "I," when once gained, continues for ever. "Gwynvyd" is the world of perfect and liberated souls, eternal Heaven, great Nirvâna. During this long pilgrimage, the Monad--the divine fragment in a state of incarnation--undergoes an endless number of rebirths, in myriads of bodies. "I have been a viper in the lake," said Taliesin, the bard[125]; "a spotted adder on the mountain, a star, a priest. This was long, long ago; since then, I have slept in a hundred worlds, revolved in a hundred circles." It was their faith in rebirth that gave the Gauls their indomitable courage and extraordinary contempt of death: "One of their principal teachings," said Cæsar,[126] "is that the soul does not die, but passes at death into another body--and this they regard as very favourable for the encouragement of valour and for inculcating scorn of death." Up to a few years ago, belief in the return of the soul to earth was still prevalent in those parts of Brittany in which civilisation had not yet exercised its sceptical, materialising influence; there even existed druids--probably degenerate ones--in Great Britain and France; in the Saône-et-Loire district, they seem to have been called the "Adepts of the White Religion"[127]; both in them and in their ancestors, belief in rebirth remained unshakable. ANCIENT GREECE (_Magna Græcia_). In Greece, the doctrine of Rebirths is met with in the Orphic tradition, continued by Pythagoras and Plato. Up to the present time, this tradition has probably found its best interpreter in Mr. G. R. S. Mead, an eminent theosophist and a scholar of the first rank. We recommend our readers to study his _Orpheus_, if they desire a detailed account of this tradition. Its origins are lost in antiquity, only a few obscure shreds remaining; Pherecydes, however,[128] when speaking of the immortality of the soul, refers to the doctrine of Rebirths; it is also presented very clearly by both Pythagoras and Plato. According to the Pythagorean teaching, the human soul emanates from the Soul of the World, thus affirming, at the outset, the divine nature of the former. It teaches subsequently that this soul assumes successive bodies until it has fully evolved and completed the "Cycle of Necessity."[129] Pythagoras, according to Diogenes of Laertius,[130] was the first in Greece to teach the doctrine of the return of souls to earth. He gave his disciples various details of his past lives; he appears to have been the initiate Oethalides, in the times of the Argonauts; then, almost immediately afterwards, Euphorbus, who was slain by Menelaus at the siege of Troy; again he was Hermotimus of Clazomenæ, who, in the temple of Juno at Argos,[131] recognised the shield he was carrying when his body was slain as Euphorbus, and which Menelaus had given as an offering to the goddess[132]; at a later date he was Pyrrhus, a fisherman of Delos, and, finally, Pythagoras. In all likelihood this genealogy is not correct in every detail, it comes to us from the disciples of the sage of Samos, who were not very trustworthy in their reports. Empedocles, one of the early disciples of Pythagoras, said that he inhabited a female body in his preceding existence. Saint Clement of Alexandria quotes a few lines of his, in which we find the philosopher of Agrigentum teaching the general evolution of forms. "I, too, have been a boy, a maiden, a star, a bird, a mute fish in the depths of the sea." Iarchas, the Brâhman chieftain, said to the great Apollonius: "In bygone ages thou wert Ganga, the famous monarch, and, at a later date, captain of an Egyptian vessel."[133] The Emperor Julian said that he had been Alexander the Great.[134] Proclus affirmed that he had been Nichomachus the Pythagorean.[135] The works of Plato are full of the idea of rebirth, and if the scattered fragments of the teaching are gathered together and illumined with the torch of theosophy, a very satisfactory _ensemble_ will be the result. Souls are older than bodies, he says in _Phædo_; they are ever being born again from _Hades_ and returning to life on earth; each man has his daimon,[136] who follows him throughout his existences, and at death takes him to the lower world[137] for Judgment.[138] Many souls enter Acheron,[139] and, after a longer or shorter period, return to earth to be incarnated in new bodies. Unpardonable sins fling the soul into Tartarus.[140] "Know that if you become worse you will go to the worse souls, or if better to the better, and in every succession of life and death you will do and suffer what like may fitly suffer at the hands of like...."[141] According to Plato, the period between two incarnations is about a thousand years.[142] Man has reminiscences of his past lives that are more or less distinct; they are manifested rather by an intuitive impression than by a definite memory, but they form part of the individual,[143] and at times influence him strongly. "Innate ideas" are only one aspect of memory, often it is impossible to explain them by heredity, education, or environment; they are attainments of the past, the store which the soul takes with it through its incarnations, which it adds to during each sojourn in heaven. There can be no doubt that Plato would appear to have taught metempsychosis, _i.e._, the possibility of a human soul passing into the body of an animal: "Men who have followed after gluttony and wantonness and drunkenness, and have had no thought of avoiding them, would pass into asses and animals of that sort. And those who have chosen the portion of injustice and tyranny and violence will pass into wolves or hawks or kites, and there is no difficulty in assigning to all of them places according to their several natures and propensities."[144] Under the heading of _Neoplatonism_, we shall show that, beneath these coarse symbols, Plato concealed truths which it was then necessary to keep profoundly secret; which, even nowadays, it is not permitted to reveal to all. OLD TESTAMENT. H. P. Blavatsky tells us that the _Old Testament_ is not a homogeneous composition; that _Genesis_ alone is of immense antiquity; that it is prior to the time when the Libra of the Zodiac was invented by the Greeks, for it has been noticed that the chapters containing the genealogies have been touched up so as to adapt them to the new zodiac, and this is the reason that the rabbis who compiled them twice repeated the names of Enoch and Lamech in the Cain list. The other parts seem to be of a comparatively recent date and to have been completed about 150 B.C. The first part of the _Book of God_--as the Scriptures were then called--was written by Hilkiah, jointly with the prophetess Huldah; this disappeared at a later date, and Ezra had to begin a new one which was finished by Judas Maccabæus. This was recopied some time after, with the object of changing the pointed letters into square ones, and in this way was quite disfigured. The Masoretes ended by mutilating it completely. The result is that the text we now possess is one not more than nine hundred years old, bristling with premeditated omissions, interpolations, and perverted interpretations.[145] By the side of this initial difficulty we find another, quite as important. Almost every page of the _Old Testament_ contains veiled meanings and allegories, as is frankly confessed by the rabbis themselves. "We ought not to take literally that which is written in the story of the Creation, nor entertain the same ideas of it as are held by the vulgar. If it were otherwise, our ancient sages would not have taken so much pains to conceal the sense, and to keep before the eyes of the uninstructed the veil of allegory which conceals the truth it contains...."[146] Does not Saint Paul, speaking of the hidden meaning of the Bible, say that Agar is Mount Sinai?[147] Origen and Saint Augustine are of the opinion that the _Old Testament_ must be regarded as symbolical, as otherwise it would be immoral; the Jewish law forbade anyone to read it who had not attained the age of thirty years; Fénelon would have liked it to be thrust away in the recesses of the most secret libraries; the Cardinal de Noailles says that Origen, so full of zeal on behalf of the Holy Scriptures, would not allow anyone to read the _Old Testament_, unless he were firmly anchored in the practice of a virtuous life; he affirms too that Saint Basilius, in a letter to Chilon, the monk, stated that the reading of it often had a harmful influence; for the same reasons, the _Index expurgatorius_ forbids the publication of the Bible in the vulgar tongue, and orders that no one be allowed to read it without the written permission of his confessor.[148] A third difficulty arises from the fact that the Old Testament--its dead "letter" and its commandments, at all events--is no longer suitable to our own race. It was intended for a nation that was composed of young souls, at a low stage of evolution, for whom nothing more than the rudiments of instruction were necessary, and on whom stern rules of morality, suitable for advanced souls, ought not to be imposed. This is why divorce,[149] polygamy,[150] slavery,[151] retaliation, _lex talionis_,[152] the blood of sacrifice[153] are instituted; it is the reason God is represented as a being to be dreaded, punishing those who do not obey him, wicked, jealous, bloodthirsty.[154] Bossuet understood all this when he said that the primitive Hebrew race was not sufficiently advanced to have the immortality of the soul taught to it. This, too, is the only explanation we can find for the sensual materialism of _Ecclesiastes_.[155] Consequently one need not be astonished to find that the Old Testament nowhere deals--directly, at all events--with the doctrine of Rebirth. All the same, here and there we come across a few passages that point in this direction. For instance, we read in _Genesis_, chapter 25, regarding the birth of Jacob and Esau: "And the children (of Rebecca) struggled together within her. "And the Lord said unto her: Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels, and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger. "And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold there were twins in her womb." This passage has been the occasion of lengthy commentaries on the part of certain Fathers of the Church--more especially of Origen. Indeed, either we must acknowledge divine injustice, creating, without any cause, two hostile brothers, one of whom must submit to the rule of the other, and who begin to strive together even before birth, or we must hark back to the pre-existence of the human soul and to a past Karma which had created inequality in condition. David begins the ninetieth _Psalm_ with a verse which only a belief in reincarnation can explain: "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations...." The dwelling-place of the soul, at death, is in heaven, whence it returns to earth when the hour of rebirth has struck; thus, in all generations, that is, from life to life, "the Lord is our dwelling-place." In Chapter 8 of the _Book of Wisdom_, Solomon says in more explicit language: "For I was a witty child, and had a good spirit, yea, rather, being good, I came into a body undefiled." This clearly points to the pre-existence of the soul and the close relation that exists between the conditions of its rebirth and the merits or demerits of its past. Verse 5 of the first chapter of _Jeremiah_ is similar to verse 23 of the twenty-fifth chapter of _Genesis_: "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations...." It is the deeds done in the past lives of Jeremiah that accompany him on his return to earth; God could not, in an arbitrary fashion, have conferred on him the gift of prophecy had he not acquired it by his efforts in a past life; unless, here too, we altogether abandon reason and go back to a capricious or unjust--consequently altogether impossible--God. THE KABALA. Contact with the Babylonians, during the Captivity, brought about a rapid development in the Hebrews, who were at that time far more advanced souls than those that animated the bodies of their fathers,[156] and taught them many important details of religious instruction. It was then that they learned the doctrine of rebirth and that the Kabala came into being.[157] In it the cycle of rebirths is called Gil'gool'em[158] or the "revolving of the Incorporeal" in search of the "promised land." This promised land, the Christian Paradise, or Buddhist Nirvâna, was symbolised by Palestine; the soul in its pilgrimage was brought to this abode of bliss,[159] and, according to the allegory, "the bodies of Hebrews buried in a foreign land contained an animistic principle which only found rest when, by the 'revolving of the Incorporeal,' the immortal fragment had returned to the promised land."[160] There are other aspects from which this "revolution of souls" may be regarded. Certain Kabalists speak of it as a kind of purgatory in which, by means of this "revolving," the purging of the soul is brought about before it enters paradise. In this connection, H. P. Blavatsky states that in the language of the Initiates the words "soul" (_âme_) and "atom" were synonyms, and were frequently used for each other. She says that the "revolution of souls" was in reality only the revolving of the atoms of the bodies which are continually transmigrating from one body to another throughout the various kingdoms of nature. From this point of view, it would seem that "Gil'gool'em" is more especially the cycle of atomic transmigration: _Resurrection_. The doctrine of the reincarnation of the human soul, however, is clearly set forth in the _Zohar_: "All souls are subjected to the tests of transmigration; men know not the designs of the Most High with regard to them; they know not how they are being at all times judged, both before coming into this world and when they leave it; they have no knowledge of the mysterious transformations and sufferings they must undergo, or how numerous are the spirits who coming; into this world never return to the palace of their divine King; they are ignorant of the revolutions to which they are subjected, revolutions similar to those of a stone when it is being hurled from a sling. And now the time has come when the veil shall be removed from all these mysteries.... Souls must in the end be plunged back into the substance from which they came. But before this happens, they must have developed all the perfections the germs of which are implanted within them; if these conditions are not realised in one existence, they must be born again until they reach the stage that makes possible their absorption in God."[161] According to the Kabala, incarnations take place at long intervals; souls completely forget their past, and, far from being a punishment, rebirth is a blessing which enables men to develop and to attain to their final goal. The Essenes taught reincarnation and the immortality of the soul. Ernst von Bunsen,[162] speaking of this sect, says: "Another marked peculiarity of the doctrine of the Essenes was the doctrine concerning the pre-existence of souls. They exist originally in the purest ether, which is their celestial home. By a natural attraction they are drawn towards the earth and are enclosed in human bodies, as in a prison. The death of the body causes the return of the soul to its heavenly abode. The Essenes can, therefore, not have believed in the resurrection of the body, but of the soul only, or, as Paul says, of the 'spiritual body.' This is positively asserted by Josephus."[163] ROME. Although Rome, above all else, was a warlike republic, and religion principally a State cult, that allowed but slight opportunity for the outer expression of spirituality, none the less did it inherit the beliefs of Egypt, Greece, and Persia; the Bacchic mysteries, previous to their degradation, were a copy of the Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries. In the reign of Pompey, Mithraism, a cult borrowed from Persia, was spread throughout the empire. Consequently, we need not be surprised at finding the doctrine of Rebirth mentioned by the great Latin writers. We will quote only from Virgil and Ovid. In the speech addressed by Anchises to Æneas, his son, the Trojan prince deals with the life beyond death, the tortures endured by souls in expiation of their misdeeds, their purification, their passing into Tartarus,[164] into the Elysian Fields,[165] then their return to earth after having drunk of the river of forgetfulness. In Book VI. of the _Æneid_, we find Æneas visiting the lower regions: "After having for a thousand years turned the wheel (of existence), these souls come forth in a mighty troop to the Lethean stream to which God calls them that they may lose the memory of the past, see the higher regions,[166] and begin to wish to return into bodies." Ovid, in his _Metamorphoses_ also deals with the teaching of Pythagoras, his master, on the subject of palingenesis: "Then Death, so-called, is but old matter drest In some new figure, and a varied vest; Thus all things are but alter'd, nothing dies, And here and there th' embodied spirit flies, By time, or force, or sickness dispossest, And lodges, when it lights, in man or beast. Th' immortal soul flies out in empty space To seek her fortune in some other place." NEW TESTAMENT. The _New Testament_ is far more explicit than the _Old_, even though we find the teachings of reincarnation indicated in only a vague, indirect fashion. All the same, it must not be forgotten that the canonical Gospels have suffered numerous suppressions and interpolations. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the early Fathers of the Church made use of gospels that are now either lost or have become apocryphal.[167] It has been proved that neither Jesus nor his disciples wrote a single word, and that no version of the Gospels appeared earlier than the second century.[168] It was at that time that religious quarrels gave birth to hundreds of gospels, the writers of which signed them with the name of an apostle or even with that of Jesus, after forging them in more or less intelligent fashion. Celsus, Jortin, Gibbons, and others have shown that Christianity is directly descended from Paganism; it was by combining the doctrines of Egypt, Persia, and Greece with the teachings of Jesus that the Christian doctrine was built up. Celsus silenced all the Christian doctors of his time by supplying evidence of this plagiarism; Origen, the most learned doctor of the age, was his opponent, but he was no more fortunate than the rest, and Celsus came off victorious. Thereupon recourse was had to the methods usual in those days; his books were burnt. And yet it is evident that the author of the _Revelation_ was a Kabalist; and the writer of the _Gospel of Saint John_ a Gnostic or a Neoplatonist. The _Gospel of Nicodemus_ is scarcely more than a copy of the _Descent of Hercules into the Infernal Regions_; the _Epistle to the Corinthians_ is a distinct reminiscence of the initiatory Mysteries of Eleusis; and the Roman Ritual, according to H. P. Blavatsky, is the reproduction of the Kabalistic Ritual. One gospel only was authentic, the secret or Hebrew _Gospel of Matthew_, which was used by the Nazareans, and at a later date by Saint Justin and the Ebionites. It contained the esoterism of the One-Religion, and Saint Jerome, who found this gospel in the library of Cæsarea about the end of the fourth century, says that he "received permission to translate it from the Nazareans of Beroea." These considerations prove that interested and narrow-minded writers selected from the mass of existing traditions whatever seemed to them of a nature to support their spiritual views as well as their material interests, and that they constructed therefrom not only what has come down to us as the four canonical gospels, but also the whole edifice of Christian dogma. Consequently, we need not be surprised to find in the _New Testament_ only unimportant fragments dealing with reincarnation; but even these are not to be despised, for they prove that the doctrine was, to a certain extent at all events, known and accepted in Palestine. _Reincarnation in the Gospels._ _Saint Mark_, Chapter 6. v. 14. And King Herod heard of him; and he said, That John the Baptist was risen from the dead.... v. 15. Others said, That it is Elias; and others said, That it is a prophet, or as one of the prophets. v. 16. But when Herod heard thereof, he said, It is John whom I beheaded; he is risen from the dead. _Saint Matthew_, Chapter 14. v. 1. At that time, Herod the tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus. v. 2. And said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead.... _Saint Luke_, Chapter 9. v. 7. Now Herod the tetrarch heard of all that was done by him; and he was perplexed because it was said of some that John was risen from the dead. v. 8. And of some, that Elias had appeared; and of others, that one of the old prophets was risen again. v. 9. But Herod said, John have I beheaded; but who is this of whom I hear such things? The account here given proves that the people as well as Herod believed in reincarnation, and that it applied, at all events, "to the prophets" and to those like them. _Saint Matthew_, Chapter 16. v. 13. When Jesus came into the coasts of Cæsarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am? v. 14. And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. The same account is given in _Saint Luke_, chapter 9, verses 18, 19. _Saint Matthew_, Chapter 17. v. 12. But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them. v. 13. Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist. He continued in _Saint Matthew_, Chapter 11. v. 7. Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind? v. 8. But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they that wear soft clothing are in kings' houses. v. 9. But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. v. 14. And if ye will receive it, this is Elias which was for to come. Here we have a distinct declaration: Reincarnation is a fact; John is the rebirth of Elias.[169] Judging from these texts, one might be tempted to think that reincarnation was confined to the prophets or to people of importance, but Saint John shows us that the Jews, though perhaps ignorant that it was a law of universal application, recognised, at any rate, that it might happen in the case of any man. _Saint John_, Chapter 9. v. 1. And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. v. 2. And his disciples asked him, saying: Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? v. 3. Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. Here we are dealing with a man _blind from birth_, and the Jews ask Jesus if he was blind because he sinned; this clearly indicates that they were referring to sins committed in the course of a former existence[170]; the thought is, therefore, quite a natural, straightforward one, referring to something well known to everyone and needing no explanation. As one well acquainted with this doctrine of Rebirth, without combating it as an error or as something doubtful which his disciples ought not to believe, Jesus simply replies: "Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." And yet it appears as though this answer must have been distorted, as so many others have been, otherwise it would mean that the only reason for this man's blindness was the caprice of the Deity. _Reincarnation in the Apocalypse._ The _Apocalypse_, an esoteric book _par excellence_, confirms the doctrine of Reincarnation, and throws considerable light on it: "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out...."[171] In another verse it is stated that to him who overcometh "I will give the morning star."[172] In the language of theosophy, this means: He who has overcome the animal soul, shall, by mystic Communion, be united to the divine soul, which, in the _Apocalypse_, is the symbol of the Christ: "I, Jesus, am the bright and morning star."[173] Another verse clearly characterises the nature and the cost of victory: "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and I will give him a _white stone_, and in the stone a new _name_ written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it."[174] The hidden manna is the ambrosia of the Greeks, the _kyteon_ of the mysteries of Eleusis, the _soma_ of the Hindus, the eucharist of the Christians, the sacred drink offered to the disciples at Initiation, which had the Moon as its symbol, conferred the gift of divine clairvoyance and separated the soul from the body. The "white stone" is none other than the _alba petra_, the white cornelian, the chalcedony, or stone of Initiation. It was given to the candidate who had successfully passed through all the preliminary tests.[175] The "Word" written on the stone is the _sacred Word_, the "lost Word" which Swedenborg said was to be sought for amongst the hierophants of Tartary and Tibet, whom theosophists call the Masters. "He who overcometh" is, therefore, the disciple ready for initiation; it is of him that "a pillar in the temple of God" will be made. In esoteric language, the column signifies Man redeemed, made divine and free, who is no longer to revolve on the wheel of Rebirths, who "shall no more go out," as the _Apocalypse_ says, _i.e._, shall not again leave Heaven. If we examine the text of both _Old_ and _New Testament_ by the light of esoteric teaching, the dead letter, often absurd and at tunes repellent and immoral, would receive unexpected illumination, and would fully justify the words of the great rabbi, Maimonides, quoted a few pages back.[176] Origen, the most learned of the Fathers of the Church, adds in his turn: "If we had to limit ourselves to the letter, and understand after the fashion of the Jews or the people, what is written in the Law, I should be ashamed to proclaim aloud that it was God who gave us such laws; I should find more dignity and reason in human laws, as, for instance, in those of Athens, Rome, or Sparta...." (_Homil 7. in Levit._) Saint Jerome, in his _Epistle to Paulinus_, continues in similar fashion: "Listen, brother, learn the path you must follow in studying the Holy Scriptures. Everything you read in the divine books is shining and light-giving without, but far sweeter is the heart thereof. He who would eat the nut must first break the shell." It is because they have lost the Spirit of their Scriptures that the Christians--ever since their separation from the Gnostics--have offered the world nothing more than the outer shell of the World Religion. NEOPLATONISM. The great philosophic body that formed a bridge, as it were, between the Old World and the New was the famous School of Alexandria, founded about the second century of our era by Ammonius Saccas and closed in the year 429 A.D. through the intolerance of Justinian. Theosophical in its origin, this school had received from Plato the esoteric teaching of Egypt and the East, and the dogma of Rebirth was secretly taught in its entirety, though its meaning may have been travestied by the ignorance of the masses to whom only the grosser aspects of the teaching were given. "It is a dogma recognised throughout antiquity," says Plotinus,[177] "that the soul expiates its sins in the darkness of the infernal regions, and that afterwards it passes into new bodies, there to undergo new trials." "When we have gone astray in multiplicity,[178] we are first punished by our wandering away from the path, and afterwards by less favourable conditions, when we take on new bodies."[179] "The gods are ever looking down upon us in this world, no reproach we bring against them can be justifiable, for their providence is never-ending; they allot to each individual his appropriate destiny, one that is in harmony with his past conduct, in conformity with his successive existences."[180] The following is a quotation from the same philosopher, dealing with metempsychosis, and which, when compared with the foregoing sentences, appears strangely absurd. We make no comment here, as this obscure question will be dealt with a few pages farther on. "Those who have exercised human faculties are reborn as men; those who have lived only the life of the senses pass into animals' bodies, especially into the bodies of wild beasts if they have given way to excesses of anger ... those who have sought only to satisfy their lust and gluttony, pass into the bodies of lascivious and gluttonous animals ... those who have allowed their senses to become atrophied, are sent to vegetate in trees ... those who have reigned tyranically become eagles, if they have no other vice."[181] Porphyry says: "The souls that are not destined for the tortures of hell (_Tartarus_), and those that have passed through this expiation, are born again, and divine Justice gives them a new body, in accordance with their merits and demerits."[182] The following remarkable lines are from Iamblichus: "What appears to us to be an accurate definition of justice does not also appear to be so to the Gods. For we, looking at that which is most brief, direct our attention to things present, and to this momentary life, and the manner in which it subsists. But the powers that are superior to us know the whole life of the Soul, and all its former lives; and, in consequence of this, if they inflict a certain punishment in obedience to the entreaties of those that invoke them, they do not inflict it without justice, but looking at the offences committed by souls in former lives: which men, not perceiving, think that they unjustly fall into the calamities which they suffer."[183] Proclus gave out the same teaching; he affirmed that he had been incarnated in Nichomachus, the Pythagorean. In his commentary on the _Golden Verses of Pythagoras_, Hierocles expresses himself thus: "The ways of the Lord can be justified only by metempsychosis."[184] Damascius and Hermias, as also their masters, proclaimed their belief in Rebirth. Here a short explanation must be given of what has been said regarding transmigration or metempsychosis, in order that all misunderstanding may be removed. Neither Pythagoras nor Plotinus nor any of the great Teachers of the past believed in metempsychosis, as it has been described; all their disciples have affirmed if, and these affirmations, set over against a line of teaching which seems to contradict them, because it is incomplete and intended for the less intelligent portion of society at that time, ought to have reminded its opponents that there might be hidden reasons capable of explaining the paradox. We must first remember that a veil of strictest secrecy was flung over the noblest and most sublime spiritual teachings of the day. According to Bossuet, the teaching of the immortality of the soul seems not to have been deemed suitable for the Hebrew race, and, indeed, it is easy to understand that no double-edged truth should be taught except under conditions that would safeguard it. Ptolemy Philadelphus exiled Hegesias,[185] whose eloquent fanaticism had caused some of his disciples to commit suicide, at Cyrene, after a lesson on immortality. Ptolemy ordered those schools of philosophy to be closed which continued teaching this doctrine, for in the case of a people insufficiently developed, the instinct which binds to physical life, and the dread of the torture that awaits guilty souls in the Hereafter, are preferable to doctrines of immortality deprived of the safeguards with which they should be surrounded. The doctrine of Rebirths called for even stricter secrecy than that of immortality, and this secrecy was accorded it in ancient times; after the coming of the Christ, it grew less rigorous, and the Neoplatonists, though obliged to keep the esoteric teaching to themselves, were permitted to throw light on certain points. Timæus of Locris, one of the masters of Plotinus, hinted at the existence of a more profound doctrine in the following words: "Just as by the threat of punishment imperfectly evolved souls are prevented from sinning, so the transmigration of the souls of murderers into the bodies of wild beasts, and of the souls of unchaste persons into the bodies of swine, was taught; and the previous punishment of these souls in the infernal regions was entrusted to Nemesis (Karma)." Certain modern commentators--though imperfectly instructed in the teachings of palingenesis--have also seen that the masters of philosophy in the past could not possibly have made a mistake which less far-seeing minds would have avoided. Dacier[186] says: "A sure token that Pythagoras never held the opinion attributed to him lies in the fact that there is not the faintest trace of it in the symbols we have left of him, or in the precepts his disciple, Lysis, collected together and handed down as a summary of the master's teachings." Jules Simon also speaks as follows regarding Plotinus:[187] "Here we have the doctrine of metempsychosis which Plotinus found all around, among the Egyptians, the Jews, the Neoplatonists, his predecessors, and finally in Plato himself. Does Plato take metempsychosis seriously, as one would be tempted to believe after reading the _Republic_? Did he mention it only to ridicule the superstitions of his contemporaries, as seems evident from the _Timæus_?[188] "However important Plato may have considered metempsychosis, it can scarcely be imagined that Plotinus took it seriously.... Even granting that this doctrine were literally accepted by Plotinus, the question would still have to be asked whether the human soul really does dwell in the body of an animal, or simply enters a human body, which, in its passions and vices, recalls the nature of that particular animal." The reasons mentioned by Dacier and Jules Simon form only a trifling portion of the whole explanation, but if they are added to the constant protests raised by the disciples of the Masters of the Pythagorean and Platonic traditions, against those who said that their instructors taught metempsychosis in all its crudeness, they assume considerable importance, and show that, although the restrictions of esoteric teaching travestied by the ignorance of the masses may have caused it to be believed that the contrary was the case, none the less the Initiates, from the very beginning, denied that human transmigration into the bodies of animals ever took place. On this question many of them have frequently said that it is the soul which, in such cases, changes its nature, and assumes the passions of animals into which, as is said exoterically, it transmigrates, though it does not enter into their bodies. "He who believes that he transmigrates, after death, into the body of a beast or a plant," says Hierocles,[189] "is grossly mistaken; he is ignorant of the fact that the essential form of the soul cannot change, that it is and it remains human, and only, metaphorically speaking, does virtue make of it a god, and vice an animal." "A human soul," adds Hermes, "cannot go back into the body of an animal; it is preserved from such pollution, for all time, by the will of the gods."[190] Mrs. Besant says as follows in a letter dealing with Theosophy and Reincarnation (_The Theosophist_, April, 1906): "Even with the wealth of detail given in the Hindu Shâstras, thousands of facts of the invisible world are omitted, because their statement would hopelessly bewilder the public mind. "If all the details are given, ere the main principles are grasped, hopeless confusion is caused to the beginner. "When an Ego, a human soul, by vicious appetite or otherwise, forms a very strong link of attachment to any type of animal, the astral body (Kâmarûpa) of such a person shows the corresponding animal characteristics, and in the astral world, where thoughts and passions are visible as forms, may take the animal shapes; thus, after death, in _Pretaloka_, the soul would be embodied in an animal vesture, resembling or approximating to the animal whose qualities had been encouraged during earth-life. Either at this stage, or when the soul is returning towards reincarnation, and is again in the astral world, it may, in extreme cases, be linked by magnetic affinity to the astral body of the animal it has approached in character, and will then, through the animal's astral body, be chained as a prisoner to that animal's physical body. Thus chained, it cannot go onwards to _Svarga_, if the tie be set up while it is a _Preta_; nor go onwards to human birth, if it be descending towards physical life. It is truly undergoing penal servitude, chained to an animal; it is conscious in the astral world, has its human faculties, but it cannot control the brute body with which it is connected, nor express itself through that body on the physical plane. The animal organisation does not possess the mechanism needed by the human Ego for self-expression; it can serve as a jailor, not as a vehicle. Further, the "animal soul" is not ejected, but is the proper tenant and controller of its own body. S'rî Shankarâchârya hints very clearly at the difference between this penal imprisonment and becoming a stone, a tree, or an animal. Such an imprisonment is not "reincarnation," ... the human Ego "cannot reincarnate as an animal," cannot "become an animal." "In cases where the Ego is not degraded enough for absolute imprisonment, but in which the astral body has become very animal, it may pass on normally to human re-birth, but the animal characteristic will be largely reproduced in the physical body--as witness the "monsters" who in face are sometimes repulsively animal, pig-faced, dog-faced, &c. Men, by yielding to the most bestial vices, entail on themselves penalties more terrible than they, for the most part, realise; for Nature's laws work on unbrokenly and bring to every man the harvest of the seed he sows. The suffering entailed on the conscious human entity, thus cut off from progress and from self-expression, is very great, and is, of course, reformatory in its action; it is somewhat similar to that endured by other Egos, who are linked to bodies human in form, but without normal brains--those we call idiots, lunatics, &c. Idiocy and lunacy are the results of vices different in kind from those that bring about the animal servitude above explained, but the Ego in these cases also is attached to a form through which he cannot express himself." "True reason," says Proclus,[191] "affirms that the human soul may at times find lodgment in brutes, but that it is possible for it to live its own life and rise above the lower nature whilst bound to it by the similarity of its tendencies and desires. We have never meant anything else, as has often been proved by the reasoning in our commentaries on _Phædrus_." There is a note in the _Vâhan_[192] on a passage from _Phædrus_ which sheds all the light that can be shed on the question of metempsychosis; in the space of a few lines everything is said that may be publicly revealed, without trespassing on forbidden ground. After stating that, on returning from the internal regions, the soul passes into the "life" of a beast, and that if it were human previously, it afterwards goes into another human body, the note continues: "We must not understand by this that the soul of a man becomes the soul of a brute, but that by way of punishment it is bound to the soul of a brute, or carried in it, just as dæmons used to reside in our souls. Hence all the energies of the rational soul are absolutely impeded, and its intellectual eye beholds nothing but the dark and tumultuous phantasms of a brutal life."[193] This passage contains the explanation of what might be called the metempsychosis of certain human souls at the present time; we once heard a great Teacher fully reveal this mystery to a chosen group of Hindus, but it must for some time to come remain a mystery to the western world. All that can be said on the matter is that it has nothing to do with the incarnation of a human soul in the body of an animal, but rather with a certain temporary karmic bond, in the life Hereafter, between a human soul and an animal one, a bond intended to teach many a hard lesson to the one who has brought upon himself so unpleasant an experience. Metempsychosis included many other facts in human evolution, facts that were plainly taught to the disciples in the "inner circles" of the ancient Schools and passed out to the confused medley of public teaching. The astral body, for instance, of a man of an exceedingly passionate nature, when the soul leaves the physical body, sometimes assumes forms resembling those of the animals which represent these passions on the physical plane, and so the disincarnate soul of an assassin has been said to pass into the body of a wild beast. Metempsychosis, properly so-called, that is to say, the passing of a human soul into the body of a brute, did however exist during the infancy of the human race, when highly developed animal souls were becoming fit to enter the human kingdom. The bodies of these newly-born human souls were coarse and rudimentary in their nature, showing scarcely any difference in form and organic function from the bodies of the higher animals of that period, for these instruments were very similar to one another. The improvements subsequently effected by human bodies did not then exist; the difference, or distinction, which has now widened into a gulf, was scarcely perceptible, and in the early incarnations of these rudimentary human souls back-slidings and falls were so frequent that some of them, thus enfeebled, might find it to their advantage[194] to become incarnate, at times, in highly-developed animal bodies. But that was always an exception, and the exception has long ago become an impossibility. We think these explanations, along with those given in other portions of this work, will throw as much light as is permitted publicly on the subject of metempsychosis--a subject frequently discussed and one that has hitherto been so obscure. Such illumination as is here given is due to the teachings of theosophy. THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH. The documents to which we have access, dealing with the philosophical and religious history of Christianity in the first few centuries of our era, are so questionable, that we can place but faint reliance upon them, if we would really become acquainted with the thought of that period. We have already seen that the number of spurious or counterfeit productions was so great that a strange kind of sorting out, or selection, took place at the first Council of Nicæa, resulting in the choice of four so-called canonical Gospels. It is evident, too, that the copyists, compilers, and translators of the period were anxious, above all else, to make facts and opinions agree with their preconceived ideas and personal sympathies or likings. Each author worked _pro domo sua_, emphasising whatever fitted in with his personal views and carefully concealing what was calculated to weaken them; so that at the present time the only clues we have to guide us out of the labyrinth consist of the brief opinions expressed by a few historians, here and there, on whose honesty reliance may be placed. In the present chapter, for instance, it is no easy matter to unravel the Truth from out of these tangled threads of personal opinions. Some believe that the early Christians and the Fathers of the Church were reincarnationists; others say they were not; the texts, we are in possession of, contradict one another. Thus, whereas Saint Jerome brings against Origen the reproach of having in his book _De Principiis_ taught that, in certain cases, the transmigration of human souls into the bodies of animals, was possible--as, indeed, seems to be the case--certain writers deny that he ever said anything on the subject. These contradictory affirmations are easy to explain, once we know that Ruffinus, when translating into Latin the Greek text of _De Principiis_, omitted all that referred to this question, that the conspiracy of silence might be preserved on the matter of Origenian transmigration. At the close of his article "_Origen on Reincarnation_," in the _Theosophical Review_, February, 1906, G. R. S. Mead says: "It therefore follows that those who have claimed Origen as a believer in reincarnation--and many have done so, confounding reincarnation with pre-existence--have been mistaken. Origen himself answers in no uncertain tones, and stigmatises the belief as a false doctrine, utterly opposed to Scripture and the teaching of the Church." Others affirm that Saint Justin Martyr believed in rebirths and even in the transmigration of human souls into animal bodies. In his book _Against Heresies_, volume 2, chapter 33, the _Absurdity of the Doctrine of the Transmigration of Souls_ is dealt with; and in the following chapter, the pre-existence of the soul is denied! Is this another instance, like the one just mentioned, of tampering with the writings of this Father of the Church?[195] At times an author gives two contradictory opinions on the same subject. In Tertullian's _Apology for the Christians_, for instance, we find the following: "If you can find it reasonable to believe the transmigration of human souls from body to body, why should you think it incredible for the soul to return to the substance it first inhabited?[196] For this is our notion of a resurrection, to be that again after death which we were before, for according to the Pythagorean doctrine these souls now are not the same they were, because they cannot be what they were not without ceasing to be what they were.... I think it of more consequence to establish this doctrine of the resurrection; and we propose it as more consonant with reason and the dignity of human nature to believe that man will be remade man, each person the person he was, a human being a human being; in other words, that the soul shall be habited with the same qualities it was invested with in its former union, though the man may receive some alteration in his form.... The light which daily departs rises again with its original splendour, and darkness succeeds by equal turns; the stars which leave the world, revive; the seasons, when they have finished their course, renew it again; the fruits are consumed and bloom afresh; and that which we sow is not quickened except it die, and by that dissolution rises more fruitful. Thus you see how all things are renewed by corruption and reformed by dying.... How, then, could you imagine that man, the lord of all these dying and reviving things, should himself die for ever?" After such a clear and noble profession of faith, we may well wonder if it were the same man who, in _De Anima_, could have both refuted and pitilessly ridiculed the idea of rebirth, and denied the separation of the soul from the body as well as the influence of the former upon the latter. We prefer to believe that we are dealing with two writers, or else that some literary forger, anxious to create a diversion, deliberately made Tertullian responsible for this strange contradiction. Another reason for the difficulty in unravelling the tangled skein of the religious and philosophical teachings prevalent in the early centuries of Christianity is the lack of precision in the language of the writers, the loss of the key to the special vocabulary they used, and the veils which writers who possessed some degree of initiation, deliberately threw over teachings which could only be given to the masses in general terms. There is one very important point to consider; and this is that in the earlier centuries, outside the circles of initiation, there was not that precision which the present-day teaching of theosophy has given to the doctrine of Reincarnation; this latter, in the mind of the people, became confused with the doctrine of Pre-existence, which affirms that the soul exists before coming into the present body, and will exist in other bodies after leaving this one. This confusion has continued up to the present time, and we find schools of spiritualism in England and America, as well as in other countries, teaching that existence on earth has been preceded and will be followed by a great number of existences on the invisible planes. In reality, this is the doctrine of Rebirths, though there is nothing precise about the teaching. Whether the soul has a single physical body, or takes several in succession, it is none the less continually evolving as it passes into material vehicles, however subtle the matter be; the difference is, therefore, insignificant, unless we wish to enter into details of the process involved, as was the case in the West in the early centuries of Christianity. Did the Fathers of the Church teach Pre-existence? There can be no doubt on this point. In a letter to St. Anastasius, Rufinus said that "this belief was common amongst the early Christian fathers." Arnobius[197] shows his sympathy with this teaching, and adds that St. Clement, of Alexandria, "wrote wonderful accounts of metempsychosis"; and afterwards, in other passages of the same book, he appears to criticise the idea of the plurality of lives. St. Jerome affirms that "the doctrine of transmigration has been secretly taught from ancient times to small numbers of people, as a traditional truth which was not to be divulged."[198] A. Franck quotes this passage on page 184 of his _Kabbale_; Huet, too, gives it in _Origeniana_.[199] The same Father proves himself to be a believer in Pre-existence, in his 94th _Letter to Avitus_, where he agrees with Origen on the subject of the interpretation of a passage from St. Paul,[200] and says that this means "that a divine abode and true repose are to be found in Heaven," and "that there dwell creatures endowed with reason in a state of bliss, before coming down to our visible world, before they fall into the grosser bodies of earth...." Lactantius, whom St. Jerome called the Christian Cicero, though he opposed pagan doctrines, maintained that the soul was capable of immortality and of bodily survival only on the hypothesis that it existed before the body.[201] Nemesius, Bishop of Emissa in Syria, stoutly affirmed the doctrine of Pre-existence, declaring that every Greek who believed in immortality believed also in the pre-existence of the soul. St. Augustine said: "Did I not live in another body, or somewhere else, before entering my mother's womb?"[202] In his _Treatise, on Dreams_, Synesius states that "philosophy assures us that our past lives are a direct preparation for future lives...." When invited by the citizens of Ptolemais to become their bishop, he at once refused, saying that "he cherished certain opinions of which they might not approve, as, after mature reflection, they had struck deep root in his mind. Foremost among these, he mentioned the doctrine of Pre-existence." Dr. Henry More, the famous Platonist of the seventeenth century, quotes Synesius as one of the masters who taught this doctrine,[203] and Beausobre reports a typical phrase of his,[204] "Father, grant that my soul may merge into Light and be no more thrust back into the illusion of earth." St. Gregory of Nysa says it is absolutely necessary that the soul should be healed and purified, and if this does not take place during its life on earth, it must be accomplished in future lives. St. Clement of Alexandria says that, although man was created after other beings, "the human species is more ancient than all these things."[205] In his _Exhortations to the Pagans_, he adds: "We were in being long before the foundation of the world; we existed in the eye of God, for it is our destiny to live in him. We are the reasonable creatures of the divine Word; therefore, we have existed from the beginning, for in the beginning was the Word.... Not for the first time does He show pity on us in out wanderings. He pitied us from the very beginning." He also adds:[205] "Philolaus, the Pythagorean, taught that the soul was flung into the body as a punishment for the misdeeds it had committed, and his opinion was confirmed by the most ancient of the prophets." As regards Reincarnation, _i.e._, the descent of the human soul into successive physical bodies, and even its temporary association with the physical bodies of animals, more than one Christian writer advocated this teaching. Chalcidius, quoted by Beausobre in the book just mentioned, says: "The souls, that are not able to unite with God, are destined to return to life until they repent of their misdeeds." In the _Pistis Sophia_, a Christian treatise on the mysteries of the divine Hierarchies and the evolution of souls in the three worlds, we find the doctrine of Rebirth frequently mentioned: "If he is a man who (after passing out of his body)[206] shall have come to the end of his cycles of transmigrations, without repenting, ... he is cast into outer darkness." A few pages earlier, in the same work, we find: "The disincarnate soul which has not solved the mystery of the breaking of the bonds and of the seals is brought before the virgin of light, who, after judging it, hands it over to her agents (_receivers_), who carry it into a new body." Let us now see what Origen says on the matter[207]: "Celsus, then, is altogether ignorant of the purpose of our writings, and it is therefore upon his own acceptation of them that he casts discredit and not upon their real meaning; whereas if he had reflected on what is appropriate[208] to a soul which is to enjoy an everlasting life, and on the idea which we are to form of its essence and principles, he would not so have ridiculed the entrance of the immortal into a mortal body, which took place, not according to the metempsychosis of Plato, but agreeably to another and higher order of things." The teaching of Origen is not easy to set forth clearly, for he is very reticent about many things, and employs a language to which present-day philosophy cannot always find the key; still, the teaching seems full and complete. It comprises pre-existence and even those special associations of certain human souls with animal souls, which we have just spoken of and which form one of the chief mysteries of metempsychosis. In the following words he explains the existence of souls in previous worlds: "The soul has neither beginning nor end.... "Rational creatures existed undoubtedly from the very beginning in those (ages) which are invisible and eternal. And if this is so, then there has been a descent from a higher to a lower condition on the part not only of those souls who have deserved the change, by the variety of their movements, but also on that of those who, in order to serve the whole world, were brought down from those higher and invisible spheres to these lower and visible ones, although against their will. 'For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope' (_Rom._, chap. 8, v. 20); so that both sun and moon and stars and angels might discharge their duly to the world, and to those souls who, on account of their excessive mental defects, stood in need of bodies of a grosser and more solid nature; and for the sake of those for whom this arrangement was necessary, this visible world was also called into being. "This arrangement of things, then, which God afterwards appointed not being understood by some, who failed to perceive that it was owing to preceding causes originating in free will, that this variety of arrangement had been instituted by God, they have concluded that all things in this world are directed either by fortuitous movements or by a necessary fate, and that nothing is in the power of our own will."[209] "Is it not rational that souls should be introduced into bodies, in accordance with their merits and previous deeds, and that those who have used their bodies in doing the utmost possible good should have a right to bodies endowed with qualities superior to the bodies of others?"[210] All souls will arrive at the same goal;[211] it is the will of souls that makes of them angels, men or demons, and their fall can be of such a nature that they may be chained down to the bodies of animals.[212] Certain souls, on attaining to perfect peace, return to new worlds; some remain faithful, others degenerate to such a degree that they become demons.[213] Concerning bodies, he says: "The soul, which is immaterial and invisible in its nature, exists in no material place, without having a body suited to the nature of that place; accordingly, it at one time puts off one body which was necessary before, but which is no longer adequate in its changed state, and it exchanges it for a second."[214] Although _metensomatosis_ (re-embodiment of the soul), _i.e._, the true teaching of Origen, was not clearly expounded, it considerably influenced the early Christian philosophers, and was favourably received up to the time of its condemnation by the Synod of Constantinople. It appeared in most of the sects of that time and in those of the following centuries: Simonians, Basilidians, Valentinians, Marcionites, Gnostics, Manichæans, Priscillianites, Cathari, Patarins, Albigenses, Bogomiles, &c.... Chivalry, too, in these ages of darkness and persecution, was an instrument for the dissemination of esoteric doctrines, including Reincarnation. The heart of this noble institution consisted of students of divine Wisdom, pure devoted souls who communicated with one another by means of passwords. The Troubadours were their messengers of the sacred Teaching, which they skilfully concealed in their songs, carrying it from group to group, from sect to sect, in their wanderings. "Sons of the teachings of the Albigenses and of the Manichæan-Marcion tradition"[215] they kept alive belief in the rebirths of the soul, "Izarn the Monk," in his book _Historie d' un Hérétique_,[216] apostrophised an Albigensian bishop in the following terms: "Tell me what school it was in which you learnt that the spirit of man, after losing his body, passes into an ox, an ass, a sheep, or a fowl, and transmigrates from one animal to another, until a new human body is born for it?" Izarn was acquainted with only so much of the teachings of the Troubadours as had got abroad and been distorted and misrepresented by ignorant or evil-minded persons; still, his criticism plainly shows traces of the teachings of palingenesis in the darkest and most blood-stained periods of the Middle Ages. The Inquisition put an end to the Troubadours, though certain of them, Dante and St. Francis of Assisi, for instance, by reason of their popularity or the special circumstances of the case, were left in peace. In Europe the secret teaching was continued by the Rosicrucians; the _Roman de la Rose_ is pure Hermetic esotericism. The struggle of official Christianity--that of the letter--against those who represented the spirit of the Scriptures, raged ever more bitterly, and the idea of Rebirth disappeared more and more from the Church; its sole representatives during the Middle Ages were St. Francis of Assisi, the learned Irish monk, Johannes Scotus Erigena, and St. Bonaventura, "the Seraphic Doctor." At the present time there remains nothing more than a disfigured and misunderstood fragment of this idea: the dogma of the _Resurrection of the Body_. ISLAMISM.[217] It has been said that the Arabs believed in Reincarnation before Mohammed forbade it. Some, however, think that the Koran was written only after the death of the Prophet, and that the latter committed nothing to writing, but taught by word of mouth. Besides, it is clear that Mohammedanism is an offshoot of Zoroastrianism and Christianity. Like these, it teaches the Unity of the Whole, the divine Presence in all creatures and things (_Ubiquity_), Predestination, which is only one form of _Karma_, and Resurrection, which expresses one phase of Palingenesis. Mohammed, like all great mystics, had discovered or learnt many of the truths of esotericism. The verses of the Koran that refer to the "Companions of the Cave"[218] indicate that he knew more than he taught in public, and that there may be some ground for certain Asiatic nations holding the exaggerated belief that he was an Avâtâr,[219] the tenth incarnation of the _Aum_--the Amed, the Nations' Desire.[220] He was a Disciple. Had there not been in the heart of Islamism a strong germ of esoteric teaching, Sufism could never have sprung from it. The Sufis are the saints of Mohammedanism, they are those who aspire after the union of the individual "I" with the cosmic "I," of man with God; they are frequently endowed with wonderful powers, and their chiefs have almost always been thaumaturgists. The _New Koran_, a modern exposition of part of the secret doctrine of Islam, shows the correctness of this view. In it we find the following passages on the subject of Palingenesis: "And when his body falleth off altogether, as an old fish-shell, his soul doeth welt by the releasing, and formeth a new one instead. "The disembodied spirits of man and beast return as the clouds to renew the young streamlets of infancy.... "When a man dieth or leaveth his body, he wendeth through the gate of oblivion and goeth to God, and when he is born again he cometh from God and in a new body maketh his dwelling; hence is this saying: "The body to the tomb and the spirit to the womb.... "This doctrine is none other than what God hath taught openly from the very beginning.... "For truly the soul of a man goeth not to the body of a beast, as some say.... "But the soul of the lower beast goeth to the body of the higher, and the soul of the higher beast to the body of the savage, and the soul of the savage to the man.... "And so a man shall be immortal in one body and one garment that neither can fade nor decay. "Ye who now lament to go out of this body, wept also when ye were born into it...."[221] "The person of man is only a mask which the soul putteth on for a season; it weareth its proper time and then is cast off, and another is worn in its stead.... "I tell you, of a truth, that the spirits which now have affinity shall be kindred together, although they all meet in new persons and names."[222] In _Asiatic Researches_, Colebrooke states that the present Mohammedan sect of the _Bohrahs_ believes in metempsychosis, as do the Hindus, and, like the latter, abstains from flesh, for the same reason. Thus we find the doctrine of Reincarnation at the heart of all the great religions of antiquity. The reason it has remained in a germinal state in recent religions--Christianity and Islamism--is that in the latter Mohammed did not attain to the degree of a Hierophant, and in all likelihood the race to which he brought light did not greatly need to become acquainted with the law relating to the return to earth life; whereas in the former the real teachings of the Christ were lost when the Gnostics were exterminated, and Eusebius and Irenæus, the founders of exoteric Christianity, unable to grasp the _spirit_, imposed the _letter_ throughout the religion. THE DOCTRINE OF REBIRTH IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY. In antiquity, science and philosophy were scarcely anything else than parts of religion[223]; the most eminent scientists and the greatest philosophers alike were all supporters of the established form of religion, whenever they did not happen to be its priests, for the temples were the common cradle of science and philosophy. No wonder, then, that we find these three great aspects of Truth always hand in hand, never opposed to or in conflict with one another through the whole of antiquity. Science was for the body, philosophy for the intellect, and religion for that divine spark which is destined to flash forth and finally become a "god" in the bosom of the World Soul. Every intelligent man knew that on this tripod lay the life of the individual, the life of society, and the life of the world. Divorce between these took place only at a later date, when the divine Teachers had disappeared, and mutilated traditions handed down to the nations nothing but disfigured and incomplete teachings buried beneath the ruins of temples that had been crumbling away ever since spiritual Life had left them. Then followed the era of separation; science and philosophy became debased and went their own ways, whilst a degenerate religion reflected nothing higher than the narrow mentality of fallen ministers. As this degradation continued, there sprang into being religious wars, monstrosities that were unknown in those times when Divinity shed illumination and guidance on the nations by means of those mighty souls, the Adept-Kings: gods, demi-gods, and heroes. Nevertheless, Truth never remained without her guardians, and when apostleship had been destroyed by persecutions the sacred treasure which was to be handed down from age to age was secretly entrusted by the sages to faithful disciples. Thus did Esoterism pass through fire and bloodshed, and one of its greatest teachings, the doctrine of Palingenesis, has left a stream of light in its wake. Now we will give a rapid sketch of it in modern times, examining the philosophical teachings of the greatest of recent thinkers. We will borrow mainly from Walker's work on this subject, quoting only the writers most deserving of mention, and making only short extracts, for all that is needed is to plant a few sign-posts to guide the student along the path. In the 128th verse of _Lalla Rookh_, Thomas Moore speaks of rebirths: "Stranger, though new the frame Thy soul inhabits now, I've traced its flame For many an age, in every chance and change Of that Existence, through whose varied range,-- As through a torch-race, where, from hand to hand The flying youths transmit their shining brand,-- From frame to frame the unextinguished soul Rapidly passes, till it reach the goal!" Paracelsus, like every Initiate, was acquainted with it, and Jacob Böhme, the "nursling of the Nirmânakâyas,"[224] knew that it was a law of Nature. Giordano Bruno--also a great Soul--quotes from Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, Book 15, Line 156, &c., as follows: "O mortals! chilled by dreams of icy death, Whom air-blown bubbles of a poet's breath, Darkness and Styx in error's gulph have hurl'd, With fabled terrors of a fabled world; Think not, whene'er material forms expire, Consumed by wasting age or funeral fire, Aught else can die: souls, spurning death's decay, Freed from their old, new tenements of clay Forthwith assume, and wake to life again. ... All is change, Nought perishes" ... _Orger's translation_[225] Campanella, the Dominican monk, was sent into exile on account of his belief in the successive returns of the soul to earth. The Younger Helmont, in his turn, was attacked by the inquisition for leaching this doctrine in his _De Revolutione Animarum_, in which he brings forward, in two hundred problems, all the arguments; that make reincarnation necessary. Cudworth and Dr. Henry More, the Platonists of Cambridge, were faithful believers in Palingenesis; whilst Joseph Glanvill, in _Lux Orientalis_, finds that there are "Seven Pillars" on which Pre-existence rests. Dr. Edward Beecher, in _The Conflict of Ages_ and _The Concord of Ages_, as well as Julius Muller, the well-known German theologian, in _The Christian Doctrine of Sin_, warmly uphold it. Schelling acknowledges it in his _Dissertation on Metempsychosis_. Leibnitz, in his _Monadology_, and more especially his _Theodicy_, witnessed to his belief in this doctrine. Had he dared to speak out his thoughts openly, he would more effectively have advocated his "Optimism," by the teachings of evolution and rebirths, than by all the other arguments he advanced. Chevalier Ramsey, in _The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion_, writes: "The holy oracles always represent Paradise as our native country, and our present life as an exile. How can we be said to have been banished from a place in which we never were? This argument alone would suffice to convince us of pre-existence, if the prejudice of infancy inspired by the schoolmen had not accustomed us to look upon these expressions as metaphorical, and to believe, contrary to Scripture and reason, that we were exiled from a happy state, only for the fault and personal disobedience of our first parents.... "Our Saviour seems to approve the doctrine of pre-existence in his answer to the disciples, when they interrogate him thus about the man born blind,[226] 'Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' It is clear that this question would have been ridiculous and impertinent if the disciples had not believed that the man born blind had sinned before his corporal birth, and consequently that he had existed in another state long ere he was born on earth. Our Saviour's answer is remarkable, 'Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God might be manifested in him.' Jesus Christ could not mean that neither this man nor his parents had ever committed any sin, for this can be said of no mortal; but the meaning is that it was neither for the sins committed by this man in a state of pre-existence, nor for those of his parents, that he was born blind; but that he was deprived of sight from his birth, by a particular dispensation of Providence, in order to manifest, one day, the power of God in our Saviour. Our Lord, therefore, far from blaming and redressing this error in his disciples, as he did those concerning his temporal kingdom, answers in a way that seems to suppose with them, and confirm them in the doctrine of pre-existence. If he had looked upon this opinion as a capital error, would it have been consonant or compatible with his eternal wisdom to have passed it over so lightly and thus tacitly authorised it by such silence? On the contrary, does not his silence manifestly indicate that he looked upon this doctrine, which was a received maxim of the Jewish Church, as the true explanation of original sin? "Since God says that he loved Jacob and detested Esau ere they were born, and before they had done good or evil in this mortal life, since God's love and hatred depend upon the moral dispositions of the creature, ... it follows clearly that if God hated Esau, type of the reprobate, and loved Jacob, type of the elect, before their natural birth, they must have pre-existed in another state. "If it be said that all these texts are obscure, that pre-existence is largely drawn from them by induction, and that this belief is not revealed in Scripture by express words, I answer that the doctrines of the immortality of the soul are nowhere revealed, least of all in the oracles of the _Old_ and _New Testament_. We may say the same of pre-existence. This doctrine is nowhere expressly revealed as an article of faith, but it is evidently implied in the _Wisdom of Solomon_, by the author of _Ecclesiasticus_, by our Saviour's silence, by St. Paul's comparisons, and by the sacred doctrine of original sin, which becomes not only inexplicable, but absurd, repugnant, and impossible, if that of pre-existence be not true.... The Fifth General Council held at Constantinople pronounces anathema against all those who maintain the fabulous doctrine of pre-existence in the Origenian sense. It was not then the simple doctrine of pre-existence that was condemned by the council, but the fictitious mixtures and erroneous disguises by which this ancient tradition had been adulterated by the Origenites." Soame Jenyns writes: "That mankind had existed in some state previous to the present was the opinion of the wisest sages of the most remote antiquity. It was held by the Gymnosophists of Egypt, the Brâhmans of India, the Magi of Persia, and the greatest philosophers of Greece and Rome; it was likewise adopted by the _Fathers of the Christian Church, and frequently enforced by her early writers_; why it has been so little noticed, so much overlooked rather than rejected, by the divines and metaphysicians of latter ages, I am at a loss to account for, as it is undoubtedly confirmed by reason, by all the appearances of nature and the doctrines of revelation. "In the first place, then, it is confirmed by reason, which teaches us that it is impossible that the conjunction of a male and female can create an immortal soul; they may prepare a material habitation for it; but there cannot be an immortal, pre-existent inhabitant ready to take possession. Reason assures us that an immortal soul, which will exist eternally after the dissolution of the body, must have eternally existed before the formation of it; _for whatever has no end can never have had any beginning_.... "Reason likewise tells us that an omnipotent and benevolent Creator would never have formed such a world as this, and filled it with such inhabitants if the present was the only, or even the first, state of their existence; for this state which, if unconnected with the past and the future, would seem calculated for no purpose intelligible to our understanding, neither of good or evil, of happiness or misery, of virtue or vice, of reward or punishment; but a confused jumble of them all together, proceeding from no visible cause and tending to no end.... "Pre-existence, although perhaps it is nowhere in the _New Testament_ explicitly enforced, yet throughout the whole tenour of these writings is everywhere implied; in them, mankind is constantly represented as coming into the world under a load of guilt; as condemned criminals, the children of wrath and objects of divine indignation; placed in it for a time by the mercies of God to give them an opportunity of expiating this guilt by sufferings, and regaining, by a pious and virtuous conduct, their lost state of happiness and innocence.... "Now if by all this a pre-existent state is not constantly supposed, that is, that mankind has existed in some state previous to the present, in which this guilt was incurred, and this depravity contracted, there can be no meaning at all or such a meaning as contradicts every principle of common sense, that guilt can be contracted without acting, or that we can act without existing...." The following is a quotation from Hume, the great positivist philosopher: "Reasoning from the common course of nature, what is incorruptible must also be ingenerable. The soul, therefore, if immortal, existed before our birth, and if the former existence in noway concerned us, neither will the latter.... Metempsychosis is, therefore, the only system of this kind that philosophy can hearken to." (_The Immortality of the Soul_.) Young, in his _Night Thoughts_ (Night the Sixth), has the following lines: "Look nature through, 'tis revolution all; All change, no death. Day follows night; and night The dying day; stars rise, and set, and rise; Earth takes th' example ... ... All, to reflourish, fades; As in a wheel, all sinks, to re-ascend. Emblems of man, who passes, not expires." "It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in Nature is resurrection," said Voltaire. Delormel, Descartes, and Lavater were struck with the tremendous importance of the doctrine of Palingenesis. _The Philosophy of the Universe_, of Dupont de Nemours, is full of the idea of successive lives, as a necessary corollary of the law of progress; whilst Fontenelle strongly advocates it in his _Entretiens sur la Pluralité des Mondes_. It is needless to state that these ideas formed part of the esoteric teachings of Martinez Pasqualis, Claude Saint-Martin, and their followers. Saint-Martin lived in times that were too troubled for him to speak freely. In his works, however, not a few passages are found in which there can be no doubt that reincarnation is hinted at, to anyone able to read between the lines. (_Tableau nat._, vol. I, p. 136; _L'homme de Désir_, p. 312.) In his _Oeuvres Posthumes_ (vol. I, p. 286) appears this remarkable passage: "Death ought to be looked upon only as one stage in our journey. We reach this stage with tired, worn-out horses, and we start again with horses that are fresh and able to take us farther on our road; all the same, we must pay what we owe for the portion of the journey that has been traversed, and until the account is settled, we are not allowed to continue our way." Goethe writes as follows to his friend Madame von Stein: "Tell me what destiny has in store for us? Wherefore has it bound us so closely to each other? Ah! in bygone times, thou must have been my sister or my wife ... and there remains, from the whole of those past ages, only one memory, hovering like a doubt above my heart, a memory of that truth of old that is ever present in me." Ballanche, an orthodox Christian mystic, says: "Each one of us is a reincarnating being, ignorant both of his present and of his former transformations." (_Pal. Sociale_, book III., p. 154.) "Man is brought to perfection only by becoming a more perfect order of things, and even then he does nothing more than bring back, as Plato said, a confused memory of the state that preceded his fall." (_Essai sur les Instit. Sociales_, vol. ii., p. 170.) "This life we spend on earth, shut in between an apparent birth and an equally apparent death, is, in reality, only a portion of our existence, one manifestation of man in time." (_Orphée_, vol. iv., p. 424.) "Our former lives belong to astronomical cycles lost in the mighty bosom of previous ages; not yet has it been given to us to know them." (_Orphée_, vol. iv., p. 432.) Balzac's _Seraphita_ abounds with references to the idea of successive lives: "All human beings spend their first life in the sphere of instincts, in which they endeavour to discover how useless are the treasures of earth." ".... How often we live in this first world...." "Then we have other existences to wear out before we reach the path on which the light shines. Death is one stage on this journey." Constant Savy[227] describes as follows the conditions of immortality and a succession of lives by means of reincarnation: "In proportion as its soul is developed by successive lives, the body to which it is to be united will necessarily be superior to those it has worn out; otherwise there would be no harmony between these two elements of human existence; the means given to the soul would bear no relation to the development of its power. This body, gifted with more perfect and numerous senses, could not have an equal value for all.... "Besides, these natural inequalities are also advantageous for individual progress in another way; the errors resulting therefrom cause truths to be discovered; vices laid bare almost form a reason for the practice of virtue by all men, or at all events they protect one from vice by reason of the horror they inspire; the ignorance of some arouses the love of science in others; the very idleness which dishonours some men inspires others with a love for work. "So that these inequalities, inevitable because they are necessary, are present in the successive lives we pass through. There is nothing in them contrary to universal harmony; rather, they are a means for effecting this harmony, and are the inevitable result of the difference in value that bodies possess. Besides, no man remains stationary; all advance at a more or less rapid rate of progress.... "When faith is born, it is an illumination. Since man's immortality is one progressive advance, and, to effect this, he prepares the life he enters by the life he is leaving; since, in short, there are necessarily two worlds, one material, the other intellectual, these two worlds, which make up the life to come, must be in harmonious relationship with our own. "Man's work will, therefore, be a continuation of his past work.... "I would never believe that our intelligence, which begins to develop in this life, comes to a halt after such an imperfect growth, and is not exercised or perfected after death.... "... Nature always advances, always labours, because God is life and he is eternal, and life is the progressive movement in the direction of the supreme good, which is God himself. Could man alone in the whole of nature, man so imperfect and full of faults, stop in his onward course, either to be annihilated, or suddenly, without participating in it, though he was created free, find that he was as perfect as he could possibly be? This is more than I can understand. "No, when the time comes, man will not find that his life has been useless, a thing for mere contemplation; he will not find that he is improved without personal participation therein, without effort and toil on his part; above all, he will not be reduced to a state of nothingness. He will again have a life of toil; he will participate, to the extent God has permitted him, in the endless creations produced by divine omnipotence; he will again love, he will never cease to love; he will continue his eternal progress, because the distance between himself and God is infinite." Pierre Leroux says: "If God, after creating the world and all creation, were then to abandon them, instead of guiding them from life to life, from one state of progress to another, to a goal of real happiness, he would be an unjust God. It is unnecessary for St. Paul to say; 'Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it. Why hast thou made me thus?' (_Romans_, chap, 9, v. 20.) There is an inner voice, doubtless coming to us from God himself, which tells us that God cannot bring about evil, or create in order to cause suffering. Now this is what would certainly happen were God to abandon his creatures after an imperfect, a truly unhappy life. "On the other hand, if we regard the world as a series of successive lives for each creature, we see very well how it comes about that God, to whom there is neither time nor space, and who perceives the final goal of all things, permits evil and suffering as being necessary phases through which creatures must pass, in order to reach a state of happiness which the creature does not see, and, consequently, cannot enjoy in so far as it is a creature, but which God sees, and which, therefore, the creature virtually enjoys in him, for the time will come when it will partake of that happiness."[228] In Fourier we find the following lines[229]: "Where is there an old man who would not like to feel certain that he would be born again and bring back into another life the experience he has gained in the present one? To affirm that this desire cannot be realised is to confess that God is capable of deceiving us. We must, therefore, recognise that we have already lived before being what we now are, and that many another life awaits us, some in this world, and the rest in a higher sphere, with a finer body and more delicate senses...." Alphonse Esquiros expresses himself as follows[230]: "The question may well be asked whether the talents, the good and the evil tendencies man brings with him at birth may not be the fruit of acquired intelligence, of qualities and vices gained in one or many former existences. Is there a previous life the elements of which have prepared the conditions of the life now being lived by each of us? People in ancient times thought so. Inborn dispositions, so different in children, caused them to believe in impressions left by previous existences in the imperishable germ of man. From the time when intelligence begins to show itself in children we faintly discern a general attitude towards things, which is very like a memory thereof. It would appear that, according to this system, no one is unconnected with the elements he introduces into life at each birth. "All the same, rebirth in humanity constitutes no more than an initial circle of tests. When, after one or several incarnations, man has attained to the degree of perfection necessary to cause a change, he passes to another life, and, in another sphere, begins an existence of which we know nothing, though it is possible for us to regard it as linked to the present life by the closest of bonds.... "The limit to the progress man must have attained to, before entering upon another circle of tests in another sphere, is at present unknown to us; science and philosophy will doubtless succeed in determining this limit later on. "They alone are reborn to earthly flesh who have in no way raised the immortal principle of their nature to a degree of perfection that will enable them to be reborn in glory.... "I affirm the perpetual union of the soul to organic bodies; these bodies succeed each other, being born from one another, and fitting themselves for the constitutive forms of the worlds traversed by the immortal ego in its successive existences. The principle of life, extended to divers evolutions of rebirth, is ever for the Creator nothing more than a continuation of one and the same state. God does not regard the duration of a being as limited to the interval between birth and death; he includes all possible segments of existence, the succession of which, after many interruptions and renewals, forms the real unity of life. Must souls, when they leave our globe, put on, from sphere to sphere, an existence hidden from us, whose organic elements would continually be fitting themselves for the characters and natures of the different worlds? Reason can come to no decision on this point. Only let us not forget that the soul always carries off a material germ from one existence to the next, making itself anew, so to speak, several times, in that endless ascent of lives through the worlds, wherein it attains, heaven after heaven, a degree of perfection increasingly linked with the eternal elements of our growing personality. "It may be seen, from what is here stated, how vain is the hypothesis of perfect bliss following on the death of the righteous. "It is useless for the Christian to soar beyond time, beyond some limit that separates him from infinite good; he cannot do this by a single effort. God proportions his intervention and aid to the totality of the states man must pass through in the course of an indefinitely long series of existences...." M. d'Orient, an orthodox Catholic, writes as follows[231]: "In this doctrine, so evidently based on reason, everything is linked and held together: the foreknowledge of God and the agreement thereof with man's free-will. This problem, hitherto impossible to solve, no longer offers any difficulty, if by it is meant that God, knowing before birth, by reason of his previous deeds, what there is in the heart of man, brings man to life and removes him from it in circumstances that best fit in with the accomplishment of his purposes.... "We see in this way how it is that God is the controller of all the main events that take place in the world, for the knowledge he has of souls in former lives, and his power to dispose of each and all in the way he pleases, enable him to foresee events in his infinite knowledge and arrange the whole sequence of things in conformity with his plans, somewhat as an ingenious, skilful workman, by the aid of various colours, conceives of and arranges the life-like reproduction of a mosaic, a picture, or a piece of inlaid work. We understand all his forecasts of the future, how it was that Daniel foretold so exactly the greatness of Alexander and his conquests; how Isaiah called Cyrus by name many centuries before these mighty conquerors appeared to spread confusion and terror over the world; how God, in order to show forth his might before the nations and spread abroad the glory of his name, is said to have hardened Pharaoh's heart and roused his obstinate will; for all that was needed in order to bring to pass these various results was for God to call back into existence certain souls he knew to be naturally suited to his purpose. This is distinctly pointed out in the passage from the apostle St. Jude, which, if we accept the meaning that first offers itself to the mind, would seem positively to imply that certain souls had undergone a sentence of eternal reprobation: 'For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness....' "And so there falls away and disappears the greatest difficulty in the doctrine of grace, which consisted in explaining how it came about that God made some men pitiful and others hard-hearted, without there being in him either justice or acceptance of persons; showing pity, says St. Augustine, only by grace that was unmerited, and hardening hearts only by judgment that was always just; since evidently according to this theory it is not (as Origen has already said) apart from previous merit that some are formed for vessels of honour, and others for vessels of shame and wrath. That harsh sentence pronounced upon Judas by the Bishop of Hippon, which so grievously scandalised most of the Catholic theologians, although only the confirmation of the quotation from St. Jude, viz., that the wretched man had been predestined to shed the Saviour's blood, will seem to be a very just one in the sense that God causes that already lost soul to be born again, that demon, as Jesus Christ called him, for the very purpose of perpetrating the hateful crime. "Consequently the most sublime mysteries of religion, the most wonderful facts regarding the destiny of the soul, find their natural explanation in a clear understanding of this doctrine of metempsychosis, however strange and extraordinary it may at first appear. What more striking proof can be asked for, what stronger and more convincing reason than such agreement, concerning matter wherein all positive proof will always, humanly speaking, be impossible? A doctrine which meets all the facts of the case so accurately, which explains, without difficulty, all the phenomena of our existence in this world, can, of necessity, be nothing else than true." Jean Reynaud expresses himself in these terms in _Terre el Ciel_: "How glorious the light that would be cast on the present order of things on earth by a knowledge of our former existences! And yet, not only is our memory helpless regarding the times that preceded birth, it is not even conscious of the whole of the intervening period, often playing us false in the course of a lifetime. It retains absolutely nothing of the period immediately preceding birth, and scarcely any trace of our education as children; we might even be altogether ignorant of the fact that we were children once, were there not around us witnesses of that time. On every hand we are wrapped in a veil of ignorance, as with a pall of darkness, we no more distinguish the light beyond the cradle than that beyond the tomb. So far as memory is concerned, it would seem that we might be compared with a rocket such as we sometimes see flashing through the sky in the night-time, leaving behind it a line of light, this light never shows anything more than a limited portion of the way. Of like nature is memory, a trail of light left behind on our journey; we die, and everything is dark around us; we are born again, and the light begins to appear, like a star through the mist; we live, and it develops and grows, suddenly disappears again and reappears once more; from one eclipse to another we continue our way, and this way, interrupted by periods of darkness, is a continuous one, whose elements, only apparently separated, are linked to each other by the closest of bonds; we always bear within ourselves the principle of what we shall be later on, we are always rising higher. Question us on our past, and, like the rocket, we reply that we are going forward, but that our path is illumined only in our immediate neighbourhood, and that the rest of the road is lost in the blackness of night; we no more know from where we came than we know our destination, but we do know that we came from below and are rising higher, and that is all that is necessary to interest us in ourselves and make us conscious of what we are. And who knows but what our soul, in the unknown secret of its essence, has power some day to throw light on its successive journeyings, like those streaks of flame to which we are comparing it? There are strong reasons for thinking that such is the case, since the entire restoration of memory appears, with good reason, to be one of the main conditions of our future happiness.... "In like manner the soul, passing from one abode to another, and leaving its first body for a new one, ever changing its appearance and its dwelling, guided by the Creator's beams, from transmigration to transmigration, from metamorphosis to metamorphosis, pursues the palingenesic course of its eternal destiny.... "... Let us, then, add the teachings of metempsychosis to those of the Gospel, and place Pythagoras by the side of Jesus...." André Pezzani concludes in the following words his remarkable book on _The Plurality of the Soul's Lives_: "Apart from the belief in previous lives, nothing can be explained, neither the coming of a new soul into this evil world, the often incurable bodily infirmities, the disproportionate division of wealth, nor the inequality in intelligence and morality. The justice of God lies behind the monstrous phantom of chance. We understand neither what man is, whence he comes, nor whither he goes; original sin does not account for the particular fate of individuals, as it is the same for all. Roughly speaking, it clears up no difficulties, but rather adds to them the most revolting injustice. Once accept the theory of pre-existence, and a glorious light is thrown on the dogma of sin, for it becomes the result of personal faults from which the guilty soul must be purified. "Pre-existence, once admitted as regards the past, logically implies a succession of future existences for all souls that have not yet attained to the goal and that have imperfections and defilements from which to be cleansed. In order to enter _the circle of happiness_ and leave _the circle of wanderings_, one must be pure. "We have opposed error, and proclaimed truth, and we firmly believe that the dogmas of pre-existence and the plurality of lives are true." Thomas Browne, in _Religio Medici_, section 6, hints at Reincarnation: "Heresies perish not with their authors, but, like the river Arethusa, though they lose their currents in one place, they rise up again in another ... revolution of time will restore it, when it will flourish till it be condemned again. For as though there were a Metempsychosis, and the soul of one man passed into another, opinions do find, after certain Revolutions, men and minds like those that first begat them.... Each man is not only himself, there hath been many Diogenes and as many Timons, though but few of that name; men are lived over again, the world is now as it was in ages past; there was none then but there hath been someone since that parallels him, and is, as it were, his revived self." Lessing, in _The Divine Education of the Human Race_, vigorously opposes a Lutheran divine who rejects reincarnation: "The very same way by which the race reaches its perfection must every individual man--one sooner, another later--have travelled over. Have travelled over in one and the same life? Can he have been in one and the self-same life a sensual Jew and a spiritual Christian? "Surely not that! But why should not every individual man have existed more than once in this world? "Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the schools had disciplined and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once? Why may not even I have already performed those steps of my perfecting which bring to men only temporal punishments and rewards? And once more, why not another time all those steps, to perform which the views of Eternal Rewards so powerfully assist us? Why should I not come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh expertness? Do I bring away so much from once that there is nothing to repay the trouble of coming back? "Is this a reason against it? Or because I forget that I have been here already? Happy is it for me that I do forget. The recollection of my former condition would permit me to make only a bad use of the present. And that which even I must forget _now_, is that necessarily forgotten for ever?" Schlosser gives expression to similar thoughts in a fine work of his: _Über die Seelenwanderung_. Lichtemberg says in his _Seibstcharacteristik_: "I cannot get rid of the thought that I died before I was born, and that by this death I was led to this rebirth. I feel so many things that, were I to write them down, the world would regard me as a madman. Consequently, I prefer to hold my peace." Charles Bonnet is the author of a splendid work, full of noble and lofty thoughts, on this subject. It is entitled _Philosophic Palingenesis_. Emmanuel Kant believes that our souls start imperfect from the sun, and travel through planetary stages farther and farther away to a paradise in the coldest and remotest star in our system. (_General History of Nature_.) In _The Destiny of Man_, J. G. Fichte says: "These two systems, the purely spiritual and the sensuous--which last may consist of an immeasurable series of particular lives--exist in me from the moment when my active reason is developed and pursue their parallel course.... "All death in nature is birth.... There is no death-bringing principle in nature, for nature is only life throughout.... Even because Nature puts me to death, she must quicken me anew...." Herder, in his _Dialogues on Metempsychosis_, deals with this subject more fully: "Do you not know great and rare men who cannot have been what they are in a single human existence; who must have often existed before in order to have attained that purity of feeling, that instinctive impulse for all that is true, beautiful, and good?... Have you never had remembrances of a former state?... Pythagoras, Iarchas, Apollonius, and others remembered distinctly what and how many times they had been in the world before. If we are blind or can see but two steps before our noses, ought we, therefore, to deny that others may see a hundred or a thousand degrees farther, even to the bottom of time ...?" "He who has not become ripe in one form of humanity is put into the experience again, and, some time or other, must be perfected." "I am not ashamed of my half-brothers the brutes; on the contrary, so far as I am concerned, I am a great advocate of metempsychosis. I believe for a certainty that they will ascend to a higher grade of being, and am unable to understand how anyone can object to this hypothesis, which seems to have the analogy of the whole creation in its favour." Sir Walter Scott had such vivid memories of his past lives that they compelled a belief in pre-existence. Instances of this belief may be found in _The Life of Scott_, by Lockhart (vol. 7, p. 114, first edition). According to Schlegel: "Nature is nothing less than the ladder of resurrection, which, step by step, leads upward, or rather is carried from the abyss of eternal death up to the apex of life." (_Æsthetic and Miscellaneous Works_; and, _The Philosophy of History_.) Shelley held a firm belief in Reincarnation: "It is not the less certain, notwithstanding the cunning attempts to conceal the truth, that all knowledge is reminiscence. The doctrine is far more ancient than the times of Plato," (Dowden's _Life of Shelley_, vol. 1, p. 82.) Schopenhauer adopted the idea of Reincarnation which he had found in the _Upanishads_; regarding this portion of his teaching, his contemporaries and followers set up a kind of conspiracy of silence. In _Parerga and Paralipomena_, vol. 2, chap. 15, _Essay on Religions_, he says: "I have said that the combination of the _Old Testament_ with the _New_ gives rise to absurdities. As an example, I may cite the Christian doctrine of Predestination and Grace as formulated by Augustine and adopted from him by Luther, according to which one man is endowed with grace and another is not. Grace thus comes to be a privilege received at birth and brought ready into the world.... What is obnoxious and absurd in this doctrine may be traced to the idea contained in the _Old Testament_, that man is the creation of an external will which called him into existence out of nothing. It is quite true that genuine moral excellence is really innate; but the meaning of the Christian doctrine is expressed in another and more rational way by the theory of Metempsychosis, common to Brâhmans and Buddhists. According to this theory, the qualities which distinguish one man from another are received at birth, _i.e._, are brought from another world and a former life; these qualities are not an external gift of grace, but are the fruits of the acts committed in that other world.... "What is absurd and revolting in this dogma is, in the main, as I said, the simple outcome of Jewish theism with its 'creation out of nothing,' and the really foolish and paradoxical denial of the doctrine of metempsychosis which is involved in that idea, a doctrine which is natural to a certain extent, self-evident, and, with the exception of the Jews, accepted by nearly the whole human race at all times.... Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life." In _The World as Will and Idea_, he also says: "What sleep is for the individual, death is for the Will (character). "It flings off memory and individuality, and this is Lethe; and through this sleep of death it reappears refreshed and fitted out with another intellect, as a new being." In _Parerga and Paralipomena_, vol. 2, chap. 10, he adds: "Did we clearly understand the real nature of our inmost being, we should see how absurd it is to desire that individuality should exist eternally. This wish implies that we confuse real Being with one of its innumerable manifestations. The individuality disappears at death, but we lose nothing thereby, for it is only the manifestation of quite a different Being--a Being ignorant of time, and, consequently, knowing neither life nor death. The loss of intellect is the Lethe, but for which the Will would remember the various manifestations it has caused. When we die, we throw off our individuality, like a worn-out garment, and rejoice because we are about to receive a new and a better one." Edgar Allen Poe, speaking of the dim memories of bygone lives, says: "We walk about, amid the destinies of our world-existence, encompassed by divine but ever present Memories of a Destiny more vast--very distant in the bygone time and infinitely awful. "We live out a Youth peculiarly haunted by such dreams, yet never mistaking them for dreams. As Memories we _know_ them. During our _Youth_ the distinction is too clear to deceive us even for a moment. "But now comes the period at which a conventional World-Reason awakens us from the truth of our dream ... a mis-shapen day or a misfortune that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or in another life...." (_Eureka._) Georges Sand, in _Consuelo_, sets forth the logic of Reincarnation; and G. Flammarion expounds this doctrine in most of his works: _Uranie_; _Les Mondes Imaginaires et les Mondes Réels_; _La Pluralité des Mondes Habités_, etc. Professor William Knight wrote in the _Fortnightly Review_ for September, 1878: "It seems surprising that in the discussions of contemporary philosophy on the origin and destiny of the soul there has been no explicit revival of the doctrines of Pre-existence and Metempsychosis.... They offer quite a remarkable solution of the mystery of Creation, Translation, and Extinction.... "Stripped of all extravagances and expressed in the modest terms of probability, the theory has immense speculative interest and great ethical value. It is much to have the puzzle of the origin of evil thrown back for an indefinite number of cycles of lives and to have a workable explanation of Nemesis...." Professor W. A. Butler, in his _Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy_, says: "There is internally no greater improbability that the present may be the result of a former state now almost wholly forgotten than that the present should be followed by a future form of existence in which, perhaps, or in some departments of which, the oblivion may be as complete." The Rev. William R. Alger, a Unitarian minister, adds: "Our present lack of recollection of past lives is no disproof of their actuality.... The most striking fact about the doctrine of the repeated incarnations of the soul ... is the constant reappearance of that faith in all parts of the world and its permanent hold on certain great nations.... "The advocates of the resurrection should not confine their attention to the repellent or ludicrous aspects of metempsychosis, ... but do justice to its claim and charm." (_A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life_.) Professor Francis Bowen, of Harvard University, writes in the _Princetown Review_ for May, 1881, when dealing with the subject of _Christian Metempsychosis_: "Our life upon earth is rightly held to be a discipline and a preparation for a higher and eternal life hereafter. But if limited to the duration of a single mortal body, it is so brief as to seem hardly sufficient for so great a purpose.... Why may not the probation of the soul be continued or repeated through a long series of successive generations, the same personality animating, one after another, an indefinite number of tenements of flesh, and carrying forward into each the training it has received, the character it has formed, the temper and dispositions it has indulged, in the stage of existence immediately preceding?... "Every human being thus dwells successively in many bodies, even during one short life.[232] If every birth were an act of absolute creation, the introduction to life of an entirely new creature, we might reasonably ask why different souls are so variously constituted at the outset.... One child seems a perverse goblin, while another has the early promise of a Cowley or a Pascal.... The birthplace of one is in Central Africa, and of another in the heart of civilised and Christian Europe. Where lingers eternal justice then? How can such frightful inequalities be made to appear consistent with the infinite wisdom and goodness of God?... "If metempsychosis is included in the scheme of the divine government of the world, this difficulty disappears altogether. Considered from this point of view, everyone is born into the state which he has fairly earned by his own previous history.... We submit with enforced resignation to the stern decree; ... that the iniquities of the fathers shall be visited upon the children even to the third and fourth generation. But no one can complain of the dispositions and endowments which he has inherited, so to speak, from himself, that is, from his former self in a previous stage of existence. "And it matters not, so far as the justice of the sentence is concerned, whether the former self from whom we receive this heritage bore the same name with our present self, or bore a different name...." Professor F. H. Hedge, in _Ways of the Spirit, and other Essays_, p. 359, maintains that: "Whatever had a beginning in time, it should seem, must end in time. The eternal destination which faith ascribes to the soul presupposes an eternal origin.... An obvious objection, and one often urged against this hypothesis, is the absence of any recollection of a previous life.... The new organisation with its new entries must necessarily efface the record of the old. For memory depends on continuity of association. When the thread of that continuity is broken, the knowledge of the past is gone.... "And a happy thing, if the soul pre-existed, it is for us that we remember nothing of its former life.... Of all the theories respecting the origin of the soul this seems to me the most plausible, and therefore the one most likely to throw light on the question of a life to come." The Spiritualists of Europe--those belonging to the school of Allan Kardec, at all events--place reincarnation in the very forefront of their teaching. We may add that those of America do not acknowledge that the soul has more than one existence on earth, driven, however, by the logic of things, which insists on progress, they state that there are a series of lives passed in subtler bodies on invisible planets and worlds. All true philosophers have been attracted by the mystery of palingenesis, and have found that its acceptance has thrown a flood of light on the questions that perplexed them. In Asia there are 400 millions of believers in reincarnation, including the Chinese, Tartars, Thibetans, Hindus, Siamese, Mongolians, Burmese, Cambodians, Koreans, and the people of Japan. Tradition has handed down this teaching even to the most savage tribes. In Madagascar, when a man is on the point of death, a hole is made in the roof of his straw hut, through which his soul may pass out and enter the body of a woman in labour. This may be looked upon as a stupid superstition, still it is one which, in spite of its degenerate form, sets forth the doctrine of the return of souls back to evolution through earthly experiences. The Sontals, Somalis, and Zulus, the Dyaks of Borneo and Sumatra, and the Powhatans of Mexico have similar traditions. In Central Africa, slaves who are hunchbacked or maimed forestall the hour of death by voluntary self-immolation, in the hope of being reborn in the bodies of men who will be free and perfectly formed. To sum up: all tradition, whether popular, philosophical, or religious, is instinct with the teaching of Rebirth. OBJECTION. _Reincarnation and Forgetfulness of the Past._ Sceptics are ever bringing forward against reincarnation the absence of all memory of past lives, convinced that there can be no answer to this argument. They do not reflect that human ignorance is a bottomless abyss, whilst the possibilities of Life are endless. The schools of the future will smile at the claims made by those of the present, just as the latter doubtless regard with pitying indulgence that school which, only a few years ago, in the person of one of its most famous members, Dr. Bouillaud, mercilessly condemned the exponent of Edison's invention, because the _savant_, listening to a phonograph for the first time, could not believe that it was anything else than ventriloquism! Instances of this kind are sufficiently numerous and recent not to be forgotten, in spite of the shortness of human memory. In the present instance, there are many men of science who have not yet been made sufficiently wise by experience to see that the very mystery of memory itself might furnish an explanation of that general absence of all power of recollection, which now seems to them altogether incompatible with the doctrine of Rebirth. So as not to appear to be running away from this objection, by dealing with it only on the surface, we will endeavour to develop the question somewhat, for we shall have to set forth to readers unacquainted with theosophical teachings--which alone, up to the present, have thrown light on these difficult subjects--certain doctrines which will be well understood by none but theosophists, since they are incapable of proof by a simple statement thereof, but form part, of a long chain of teachings. We will offer them simply as theories--though they are facts to us--theories that contain many an error, it may be, and are imperfectly stated, though capable of widening the horizon of thought and shedding a brilliant light upon many an obscure question. Earnest seekers after truth, it is hoped, will not be disheartened by the difficulties of the subject, but will endeavour to grasp the meaning of the following pages, by reading them over again, if need be. First, a few words must be said on memory in general, next we will give a rapid sketch of what constitutes memory in atoms and molecules, in the varied forms of the many kingdoms of nature and in human forms; finally, we will speak of cosmic Memory, that veritable _Judgment Book_ which takes account of all the vibrations of the Universe. Amongst beings capable of memory, a distinction must be made between those which have not reached the stage of self-consciousness, and those which have done so, for memory, properly so-called, takes for granted an "I." That which has not an "I" can only have a memory of which it is not conscious[233]; the atom, for instance, of whose memory we shall speak later on; that which has only a rudimentary "I" possesses only a rudimentary memory from the point of view of its bearing on the individual--such is that possessed by the souls of the lower kingdoms, that which constitutes instinct; to the perfect "I" alone belongs an individual memory--the human memory, and that of beings who have attained to the superhuman stage. This memory may be defined as the faculty possessed by an individualised "centre of consciousness" voluntarily to reproduce the vibrations it has received or generated. A "centre of consciousness" is a form that serves, for the time being, as the instrument of an individualised ray of that indefinable principle called the soul. But for the presence of this individual soul in a form, this latter would remain inactive as a centre of consciousness--although active in its constituent parts[234]--and could it not then, consciously, either generate or receive vibrations on the plane from which the soul is momentarily absent--it could only transmit them; for instance, when a man is in a brown study, he is not conscious in his brain, of what is taking place on the physical plane.[235] The vehicles of consciousness are often numerous in a being, and the more numerous in proportion to the degree this latter has attained in the scale of evolution. The present day man possesses four bodies: the visible, the astral, the mental, and the causal. They are not all equally developed, and therefore not equally conscious, for the clearness and intensity of consciousness depend on the decree of perfection of its vehicles, just as the beauty of electric light depends on the perfection of the apparatus producing it. The Ego--the man--is the consciousness that is called forth by the soul in the causal body. This consciousness varies in power with the development of the body that gives birth to it. At first it is dim and uncertain,[236] and acquires some degree of intensity only when it receives, through the mental and astral vehicles, the simple and intense vibrations of the physical body.[237] In savage races, for instance, man possesses a definite consciousness only in his waking condition; as soon as the soul is attached to the astral body, externalised by sleep, it experiences only a dim consciousness in this undeveloped vehicle. In advanced races, the astral body, being far more developed, brings about distinct consciousness during sleep. As man evolves, consciousness begins to function in the mental and the astral bodies, without the assistance of the vibrations of the lower vehicles, and when all the grades[238] of matter which compose the human constitution are thus vitalised, man has become perfect; he knows the Universe because he feels it within himself--he echoes it, so to speak, and possesses all its powers.[239] In ordinary man, the memory of events that have taken place in his waking state can be brought back by that special effort of will which sets in motion the cerebral molecules that have previously been put into vibration by these events. Sometimes the will, of itself, is powerless to recall this vibration, either because the brain is tired or in some unfavourable condition or other; it is then aided by bringing its automatism into play, by endeavouring, for instance, to call back one constituent element of the fact desired, a place, sound, scent, person, &c, and often in this way is brought about the vibration of the molecules that constituted the rest of the circuit, and the fact sought for presents itself; association of ideas is a phenomenon based on this mechanical process. A third method--a far more difficult one--is also used; the bringing of every mental effort, to a standstill. The suppression of thought, when sufficiently complete, brings the brain into a state of calm, allows of the soul concentrating on the astral body whose memory is keen and only slightly subject to obstruction, and then it often happens that the vibration of the astral memory repercusses on to the physical apparatus which suddenly remembers the thing desired. On the death of the physical, the soul acts in the astral body; there it retains a complete memory of life on earth, but the vibrations of the physical plane no longer reach it,[240] these memories soon cease to occupy its attention, and it gives itself up wholly to the impressions received from the new world into which it has entered. In this first stage of the after-life, then, there is a kind of darkening of the memory of the past earth life--darkening, not oblivion. When the purgatorial life is at an end and the astral body disintegrates in its turn, the soul functions in the mental body, in the mental world.[241] On this new plane, the memory of the worlds left behind continues, though far less clearly than the memory of the physical existed in the astral world; this is owing to the fact that, in ordinary man, the mental body is not sufficiently developed to constitute a complete vehicle of consciousness, capable of registering all the vibrations that come to it; everything in the past that has been _purely_ the work of the astral or the physical plane then disappears from his memory; there remain only memories that have been caused either by the mental qualities or qualities superior to these, all the highest elements concerned with affection, intelligence, or art. The mental world, generally speaking, is seen only to a small extent or not at all, because of the incomplete development of the mental body. Besides, recollections assume a new character[242]; every thought takes a concrete form--that of a friend, for instance, appears as the friend himself, speaking and thinking, more vivid than on the earth plane[243]; everything is dramatised in marvellous fashion, and life is intense throughout the realms of paradise. The mental body, after exhausting the forces that make it up, also dies, and the soul is "centred" in the only vehicle it has left, the causal body, a body that is immortal, one may say, up to a certain point, since the soul retains it until the time comes when it can function in a still higher and more lasting vehicle,[244] and this happens only after millions of years.[245] Here, another diminution of memory takes place, because the soul loses a large portion of its consciousness when it comes into contact with none but the vibrations of this body, which is even more incompletely developed than the former ones, though holding within itself all the germs of these latter. The Ego then remains apparently sunk in sleep for a varying period, though never for very long; then the germs in the causal body become active, build up a new series of bodies in succession--the mental, the astral, and finally the physical--and the soul returns once more to incarnation. It will now be understood how it comes about that a soul of average development--on entering a new cycle, with the memory of the last cycle considerably obliterated by the loss of the physical, astral, and mental bodies, sheathed in new bodies on these planes, bodies that have nothing in common with the life of the past--is unable to impress its dim memories on to the brain; but it will also be seen that, with the progress of evolution, the soul acquires ever clearer consciousness in the causal body, in which it finally preserves the memory of the various life-cycles. Since, at this stage, it has become capable of projecting its vibrations, voluntarily, through the lower bodies, it is able to transmit this memory first to the mental body, then to the astral, and lastly to the physical body; when this is possible, man, in waking consciousness, remembers his former lives. This transmission requires a purificatory process in the vehicles and a special training of the will. The matter of all the bodies--that of the brain in particular--must be refined, its constituent elements must be subtler, and its atoms must be fully awakened to activity[246]; whereupon the cerebral cell becomes capable of responding to the thought of the Ego, _i.e._, of vibrating in harmony with the higher matter. The second condition of the brain's receptivity is that this organ be brought into a state of complete rest. So long as the waking consciousness is active, the brain vibrates powerfully, and if, at this time, the soul sends the brain its thought, this latter can no more make an impression on the existing cerebral activity than a faint note could be heard amid the clash of an orchestra. Consequently, man, by the training of his will, must have acquired the power to stop the thinking activity in the waking state, and to "centre" his attention on the causal body, the only vehicle in which he can know the facts of his past incarnations; this done he is able, at will, to project on to his brain the scenes of his former lives and to imprint them thereon with greater distinctness, in proportion to his development and training. In order to avoid continued explanations, we will deal with another side of the question, however incomprehensible it be to such as have not studied theosophy. A vehicle of consciousness is both a registering apparatus[247] and a conductor of vibrations.[248] The kinds of matter of which forms are made up are perfectly graduated; the finest atom of the physical body is built up of the densest atoms of the astral plane, the finest atom of the astral body is made of the densest atoms of the mental plane, and so on. Each atom is linked to the one that precedes and to the one that follows it in that immense chain which stretches from the densest to the subtlest plane of the Cosmos. Every vibration follows this path, passes in all directions--in the seven[249] dimensions of space-and terminates in the very Centre of consciousness, the Logos, God incarnate in the world. It is then comprehensible, even logical, that God should be both conscious, on his receptive side, of everything that takes place in the world (_omniscient_), and should produce, on his active side, all the forces of the world (_omnipotent_). It is likewise admissible that the human soul, when fully developed, should find in the causal body the memory of the facts that have echoed therein, from the time when it could function consciously in it. But, it will be asked, how could it find, in the causal body, memories of existences it has not been able to register individually, of which it has not been conscious, those, for instance, that form the early stages of its evolution at a time when it was conscious only in the lower vehicles? Memory possesses many store-houses. The vibrations of which it is composed affect the whole Universe, there is not a single local shock that is not felt throughout all the worlds. The eternal registering of things takes place in the great centre of consciousness, God, or rather, it exists in him, for to him there is neither future nor past, only one eternal present; evolution is unceasingly accomplished[250]; but if we look upon ourselves as finite beings, living in the illusion of time and space, we find that vibrating matter preserves for a longer or a shorter period the movement imparted to it. The denser the substance, which forms the medium in which vibration takes place, the feebler the vibration; that is why it speedily ceases on the physical plane; it continues long, however, in the higher conditions of matter, and it is there we must look for it,[251] if we would recall certain events at which we have not been present. When anything exciting, a murder, a battle, for instance, has happened anywhere, the subtler atoms of the surrounding objects receive a powerful shock and continue to vibrate for centuries. Those who have developed their inner senses can thus witness the scene which is continually repeating itself, or rather, is happening all the time.[252] Thus, psychometrists,[253] in presence of a portion of a fossil, are enabled to bring back scenes that this fragment has witnessed millions of years ago.[254] In these cases, the memory of the facts is connected with that of the atoms which register it; this memory can only be recalled by coming into contact with these atoms.[255] There is also another memory, midway between the unconscious memory of atoms and the conscious memory of the human soul; that of the forms of the various sub-human kingdoms. It is only slightly conscious, for it is not individualised; all the same, it is precise in its nature. It dwells in the vital essence of the form, an essence taken from a collective "block" which supplies a portion of its substance to the individuals of the same species; this incarnate portion of essence, when the form disintegrates at death, returns to the parent "block," to which it communicates the result of its experiences, and when the latter sends out a portion of itself, into a new form, this tentacle, which is, so to speak, the soul of the form, is in possession of the whole of the experiences of the "block."[256] This explains how it is that the individual members of certain hostile species know one another from birth--the chicken, for instance, which, immediately it has left the egg, trembles before the hawk hovering above in the air; such is also the reason why a duckling plunges into water as soon as it comes to a pond, and the same instinct impels a bird to leave its nest and trust itself to the air when fully fledged. In these collective souls, belonging to the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, there can be recovered the past to which they bore witness, when the atoms of their bodies have been dispersed and entered into new combinations. When the elemental Essence[257] has definitely split up, and the "blocks" have become separate, individualised, human fragments,[258] each of these fragments is a causal body, a definite, immortal _centre_ in the total Centre. Consequently there are in man three kinds of memory: atomic memory, that of the atoms of his bodies; instinctive memory of the special elemental essences which are the collective souls of his various vehicles; and finally, the individual memory of the centre,[259] which is one with the total Centre from which it comes. This element of unity, this human "I" in the divine "I," when sufficiently developed, is able to evoke the memory of all the events in which it has participated in the causal body, and also the memory of those it has witnessed as a collective soul (elemental "block") in bygone ages when active in various mineral, vegetable, and animal species. As a centre in the great Centre, it can also call forth the memory of everything in the Universe that its consciousness can grasp.[260] And when, in this long pilgrimage, it has developed to the farthest limits of the Universe it knows all that has been, is now, and is to be in this Universe, consequently it knows both what it has and what it has not participated in, for everything in the Universe has then become part of itself. Thus it is seen that the memory of the past is everywhere registered, and that the difficulty a man has in bringing it back is caused by nothing more than his imperfect development. Once he has entered the "Strait Gate,"[261] and his consciousness is awake on the first plane of Unity,[262] he becomes able to read the Great Book of Nature, in which all vibrations are kept in potentiality; he can revive them by an effort of will, similar to that he makes in a waking state, when he wishes to bring back past impressions to his brain. The difference lies in the fact that, in the latter case, being in the physical body, he calls up the memory retained in the astral body; whilst in the former case, being in the causal body, he brings memory within the influence of the buddhic body, or even at times of higher bodies still. The more the Being grows, and becomes able to fix his consciousness on the higher planes, the wider extends his sphere of influence, approaching that of divine Consciousness. It is ignorance that brings forward this objection regarding loss of memory, ignorance of life and of death, ignorance of the phenomena that follow the last breath of a dying man, as well as of those preceding the first faint cry of a new-born child. Sceptics, however, might have shown a little more indulgence, for, as they are well aware, ordinary memory _is_ even now so unreliable that a man has great difficulty in recalling the whole of the thoughts that have entered his brain during the last few minutes; he has forgotten the details of the various events of the week; the facts of the past year have mostly vanished from his mind, and when he comes to the end of the journey, mere fragments of the story of his life are all that is left. For all that, he has all the time retained the notion of the identity of his "I"; he has the same body, the same senses, and the same brain; his environment is the same; everything is there to bring about association of ideas, to awaken memory. On the other hand, centuries have elapsed before Rebirth takes place; the human being has undergone the most radical changes and modifications; everything in him that was perishable has disappeared, and is preserved only in a germinal state. The visible bodily sheath has had its atoms scattered to the four elements; the etheric body[263] has become separated from the physical molecules whose vital support it formed; the body of passions and desires (_astral body_) has lived for a few years in what Catholics call _Purgatory_, Greeks, _Hades_, and Hindus, _Kâmaloka_; after which, only germs have been left behind; then the intelligence (_mental body_) has been dispersed in turn and endures only in a germinal state. Almost everything that made up the man of bygone times has disappeared, and is now concentrated in a complex germ hidden away in the causal body and destined to develop a new personality later on,[264] heir to the former one, though it will not be capable of remembering events in which it took no part. This is the explanation of the myth of Lethe. The soul, in the causal body, drinks of the river of Life, and from its sleep-giving draught forms the sheaths of the new incarnation, the new bodies that altogether blot out the memory of the past; it is, in very truth, a new-born babe who appears on earth. The Root-Being,[265] however, survives the successive wrecks of fleeting personalities, remaining in the new man as a guide, as the "Voice of Conscience." He is the Watcher who strings, as on a thread, the numberless pearls (_personalities_) which form the inevitable cycle of human evolution, and is able, when fully developed, to summon up the distant panorama of past lives. For him, nothing is lost. The pioneers of the race have obtained direct proof of successive incarnations, but apart from these rare and special instances, ordinary individuals frequently have reminiscences and distinct memories which are not investigated, either because they are fragmentary in their nature or are related by children. In India, where the natives believe in Reincarnation, such cases are regarded without astonishment, and efforts are made to prove their truth by serious investigation, whenever possible. And such proof is often possible. When a child dies in infancy, before he is able to use his body intelligently and of his own free will--before being able to generate karma--the higher sheaths (_the astral and mental bodies_) are not separated into their component parts. Return to earth quickly takes place, the memory of the past life exists in the astral body--which has not changed--and, more especially during the first few years of life, can be impressed on the new brain with tolerable ease, if this latter is at all delicately constituted. Then if reincarnation takes place in the same country and in the neighbourhood of the past incarnation, it can be proved to be true. Such instances do exist; the reason they are not mentioned here is that they would add nothing to the general proofs on which stress has been laid in this work. These proofs form part of universal Law; they cannot be separated therefrom. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 81: The fifth, or Aryan race, in theosophic nomenclature; the fourth was that of Atlantis; the third lived on the great southern continent, Lemuria; the two preceding ones were, so to speak, only the embryologic preparation for the following races.] [Footnote 82: The "life-atoms," infinitesimal particles which by aggregation form the human body. Certain of these atoms are preserved, on the death of the body, as germs which will facilitate the reconstruction of the physical body at the next rebirth.] [Footnote 83: The divine Essence which animates animals, and so, in another sense the astral bodies of men and animals, bodies whose particles _transmigrate_ as do the physical atoms.] [Footnote 84: H. P. Blavatsky, _Secret Doctrine._] [Footnote 85: These words are relative; they express differences in the evolution of souls.] [Footnote 86: The atmosphere of subtle physical elements radiating round the human body and acting in a defensive _rôle_ by preventing the penetration of unhealthy elements from the immediate surroundings.] [Footnote 87: The "material sin" of Manu.] [Footnote 88: One, here means the "life atoms" of a man's body.] [Footnote 89: The word is here used in a generic sense; in the present work, it would be more precise to replace it by the word Resurrection.] [Footnote 90: This "triad" comprises the visible matter of the body, the etheric substance, and the life (Prâna) which the human ether absorbs and specialises for the vitalising of the body. See _Man and his Bodies_, by A. Besant.] [Footnote 91: H. P. Blavatsky, _The Theosophist_, Vol. 4, pages 287, 288.] [Footnote 92: The finer elements invisible to physical eye. Their function is sensation, and by their association with the human mental body incarnated in them, they give birth to the emotions and passions, in a word, to the animal in man.] [Footnote 93: The _Umbra_ of the Latin races.] [Footnote 94: The _Kâma Rûpa_ of the Hindus.] [Footnote 95: The purgatory of Christians, the astral plane of theosophists, and the _Kâmaloka_ of Hindus.] [Footnote 96: By the _fire_ of purgatory, says the Catholic metaphor.] [Footnote 97: See A. Besant's masterly work on _Reincarnation._] [Footnote 98: Dharma is a wide word, primarily meaning the essential nature of a thing; hence the laws of its being, its duty; and it includes religious rites, appropriate to those laws. This definition, as also the extracts quoted, are taken from A. Besant's translation of the _Bhagavad Gîtâ._] [Footnote 99: Human souls, not all of them, but only the pious ones, are daimonic and divine. Once separated from the body, and after the struggle to acquire piety, which consists in knowing God and injuring none, such a soul becomes all intelligence. The impious soul, however, remains in its own essence and punishes itself by seeking a human body to enter into, for no other body can receive a human soul, it cannot enter the body of an animal devoid of reason: divine law preserves the human soul from such infamy. Hermes Trismegistus, Book I, _Laclé_: Hermes to his son Tat.] [Footnote 100: Bodies.] [Footnote 101: The physical body with its etheric "double," and life (_Prâna_).] [Footnote 102: The kâmic body.] [Footnote 103: The causal body.] [Footnote 104: _History_. Book 2, chap. 123.] [Footnote 105: The causal body.] [Footnote 106: The buddhic body, which, in ordinary man, is only in an embryonic stage.] [Footnote 107: Generally called _Prâna_, in man. _Jiva_ is the solar life which, on being transmuted by the physical body, becomes _Prâna_, the human physical life. Both _Jiva_ and _Prâna_ differ from each other in nature and in vibration.] [Footnote 108: The mental body.] [Footnote 109: The causal body. In annihilation--what has been called the loss of the soul--the kâmic principle (astral body) in the course of a rather long succession of lives, does not allow the mental body to become separated from it in purgatory; it keeps it imprisoned up to the time of its disintegration; the causal body reaps nothing from the incarnations, at each re-birth it loses the forces it is putting forth in order to form the new mental body. It gradually atrophies until the time comes when it is no longer fit to make use of the ordinary bodies of the race to which it belongs. Then it remains at rest, whilst the mental body gradually disintegrates; afterwards it takes up once again its series of incarnations in the imperfectly evolved bodies of primitive races. This will be understood only by those who have studied theosophy.] [Footnote 110: In this passage, H. P. Blavatsky alludes to the few etheric, astral, and mental atoms which, at each disincarnation, are incorporated in the causal body and form the nuclei of the future bodies corresponding to them.] [Footnote 111: _History._ Vol. 2, book 2, chap. 123 (already quoted).] [Footnote 112: Of the elements of the personality--of the astral body, in all probability.] [Footnote 113: The Ego (soul) also lives in the air (the symbol of heaven) and on the earth (whose symbol is water, dense matter)--in heaven, after disincarnation; on earth, during incarnation.] [Footnote 114: The soul is immortal and needs no food.] [Footnote 115: Its name, Khopiroo, comes from the root Koproo, to become, to be born again (H. P. Blavatsky). Hartley says: "At the centre of the solar disk appears the Scarabeus as the symbol of the soul re-uniting itself with the body. The Scarabeus is called by Pierret the synthesis of the Egyptian religion--type of resurrection--of self-existence--of self-engendering like the Gods. As Tori, or Chepi, the Sun is the Scarabeus, or self-engenderer, and the mystery of God."] [Footnote 116: Also called kâmic body, astral body, body of desire, etc.] [Footnote 117: Reincarnation.] [Footnote 118: Vol. 3, p. 124.] [Footnote 119: The causal body illumined by the divine Essence, which theosophy names Âtmâ-Buddhi.] [Footnote 120: He calls him "the prince of lying fathers and dishonest writers." (_Egypt_, vol. 1, p. 200).] [Footnote 121: Eusebius even confesses this himself: "I have set forth whatever is calculated to enhance the glory of our religion, and kept back everything likely to cast a stain upon it." (_Proeparatio Evangelica._ Book 12, chap. 31).] [Footnote 122: _Namae-Sat Vakhshûr-i-Mahabad_, also in the fourth "Journey" in chap. 4 of _Jam-i-Kaikhoshru_ (see _The Theosophist_, p. 333, vol. 21).] [Footnote 123: See _Bardic Triads_, by E. Williams. Translated from the original Welsh.] [Footnote 124: "'Abred' is the circle of the migrations through which every animated being proceeds from death: man has passed through it." _Triad_ 13. "Transmigration is in 'Abred.'" _Triad_ 14. "There are three primitive calamities in 'Abred': the necessity of evolution (of rebirths), the absence of memory (of past incarnations) and death (followed by rebirth)." _Triad_ 18 (the words in parentheses are our own). "By reason of three things man is subjected to 'Abred' (or transmigration): by the absence of the effort to attain knowledge, by non-attachment to good, and by attachment to evil. As the result of these, he descends into 'Abred,' to the stage corresponding to his development, and begins his transmigrations anew." _Triad_ 25. "The three foundations of science are: complete transmigration through every state of being, the memory of the details of each transmigration, the power to pass again at will through any state, to acquire experience and judgment, (_a_) This comes to pass in the circle of Gwynvyd." _Triad_ 36. (_a_) The liberated being has power to call up the past, to tune his consciousness with that of every being, to feel everything that being feels, to be that being.] [Footnote 125: In the poem _Cad-Godden_, quoted by Pezzani in _La Pluralité des Existences de l'Âme_, p. 93. Taliesin is a generic name indicating a function rather than the name of an individual.] [Footnote 126: _Gallic War_ (Book 2, chap. 6). Valerius Maximus relates that these nations lent one another money which was to be paid back in the other world, and that at Marseilles a sweet-tasted poison was given to anyone who, wishing to commit suicide, offered the judges satisfactory reasons for leaving his body.] [Footnote 127: _The Mystery of the Ages_, by the Duchesse de Pomar.] [Footnote 128: In _Theologia_ or the _Seven Adyta._] [Footnote 129: The "Cycle of Necessity" extends from the time when the soul begins to evolve to the moment when it attains to liberation.] [Footnote 130: _Life of Pythagoras._ Book 8, chap. 14.] [Footnote 131: Ovid's _Metamorphoses_. Book 15.] [Footnote 132: All that remained of the shield was the carved ivory ornamentation, the iron had been eaten away by rust.] [Footnote 133: Philostratus, _Life of Apollonius of Tyana._] [Footnote 134: Philostratus, _Life of Apollonius of Tyana._] [Footnote 135: Marinas, _Vita Procli._] [Footnote 136: The Ego, the human soul properly so-called, what Egypt named the liberated intelligence which resumes its sheath of light, and again becomes a "daimon" (_Maspero_). In antiquity the name of daimon was given to the human soul or to higher intelligences.] [Footnote 137: _Hades_; the Purgatory of Catholics; the _Kâmalôka_ of Hindus.] [Footnote 138: Allusion to the struggle which separates the mental from the astral body in Purgatory.] [Footnote 139: _Kâmalôka_; Purgatory.] [Footnote 140: The subterranean hell, the lowest world in Purgatory.] [Footnote 141: Plato's _Laws_, Book 10.] [Footnote 142: Plato's _Republic_, Book 10.] [Footnote 143: They are in the causal body.] [Footnote 144: _Phædo._] [Footnote 145: These considerations are taken from the writings of H. P. Blavatsky, and are also confirmed by modern criticism of biblical texts.] [Footnote 146: Maimonides. Quoted in _The Perfect Way_, by A. Kingsford and E. Maitland.] [Footnote 147: _Galatians_, chap. 4, verses 24, 25.] [Footnote 148: _Starli_, part 4, p. 5.] [Footnote 149: _Deuteronomy_, chap. 24, verses 1 to 4.] [Footnote 150: _Deuteronomy_, chap. 17, verse 17.] [Footnote 151: _Exodus_, chap. 21, verses 2 to 11.] [Footnote 152: _Exodus_, chap. 21, verses 23, 24, 25.] [Footnote 153: _Genesis_, chap. 9, verses 5, 6; also _Leviticus_, chap. 7.] [Footnote 154: _Exodus_, chapters 6, 12, 14, 22, 32,] [Footnote 155: _Ecclesiastes_, chap. 3, verses 18, 19, 20, 22.] [Footnote 156: The souls of a race in its maturity are of a more advanced type than those of its infancy or old age.] [Footnote 157: The Kabala is the secret teaching of the Jews; in it lie hidden doctrines that are too profound to be taught in public.] [Footnote 158: _Zohar_, 2, 99, quoted in Myer's _Qabbalah_, p. 198.] [Footnote 159: Evolution develops the soul, enabling it to reach its goal: the divine state.] [Footnote 160: The force of evolution comes from God and ceases only when the soul is fully developed, and has reached the "promised land" at the end of its pilgrimage: the divine state.] [Footnote 161: Franck, _La Kabbale_, p. 244, etc.] [Footnote 162: _The Hidden Wisdom of Christ_, 1864, vol. 1, p. 39.] [Footnote 163: _De Bell. jud._ 2, 11.] [Footnote 164: One of the lowest sub-planes of _Kâmaloka_ (Purgatory).] [Footnote 165: The Christian Heaven (_Devachan_ of theosophy).] [Footnote 166: The earth, which is above when compared with Tartarus, but not so in relation to the Elysian Fields; versification imposes such strict limits on expression, that it must have the benefit of poetic licence.] [Footnote 167: Fréret, _Examen crit. des apologistes de la relig. chrét._, pages 12 and 13, Paris, 1823.] [Footnote 168: Faustus.] [Footnote 169: And yet the _Gospel of Saint John_ denies this (chap. 1, v. 21). The contradictions in the gospels are so numerous that they alone have created thousands of infidels.] [Footnote 170: Stolberg expresses himself as follows on this matter: "This question was evidently based on the opinion that the disciples of Jesus had formed, that this man, whose punishment dated from his very birth, had sinned in a previous life." (_Histoire de N. S. Jésus-Christ et de son siècle_, Book 3, chap. 43).] [Footnote 171: _Revelation_, chap. 3, v. 12.] [Footnote 172: _Revelation_, chap. 2, v. 28.] [Footnote 173: _Revelation_, chap. 22, v. 16.] [Footnote 174: _Revelation_, chap. 2, v. 17.] [Footnote 175: H. P. Blavatsky.] [Footnote 176: "Taken literally, the Book of the Creation gives us the most absurd and extravagant ideas of Divinity."] [Footnote 177: First _Ennead_, chap. I.] [Footnote 178: The Universe, which can exist only through _multiplicity._] [Footnote 179: Second _Ennead_, chap. 3.] [Footnote 180: Second _Ennead_, chap. 8.] [Footnote 181: Third _Ennead_, chap. 4.] [Footnote 182: _Concerning Abstinence_; Book 2.] [Footnote 183: _Egyptian Mysteries_, Book 4, chap. 4.] [Footnote 184: Here, _reincarnation_ is meant.] [Footnote 185: This philosopher was surnamed _Peisithanatos_ (the death-persuader).] [Footnote 186: _Vie de Pythagore_, vol. I, p. 28.] [Footnote 187: _Hist. de l'Ec. a'Alex._, vol. I, p 588.] [Footnote 188: In this work, he says: "The winged tribe, that has feathers instead of hair, is formed of innocent but superficial human beings, pompous and frivolous in speech, who, in their simplicity, imagine that the sense of vision is the best judge of the existence of things. Those who take no interest whatever in philosophy become four-footed animals and wild beasts...."] [Footnote 189: _Commentaries on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras._] [Footnote 190: Hermes, _Commentaries of Chalcidius on the Timæus._] [Footnote 191: _Procli Diadochi in Platonis Timæum Commentaria._] [Footnote 192: September, 1898, p. 3.] [Footnote 193: The life of the animal to which it is bound.] [Footnote 194: The instrument must be suited to the development of the artist; too highly developed a body would be bad for a man very low down in the scale of humanity. This will, in some measure, explain the paradoxical word here used; the _advantage_ there may sometimes be in putting on a rudimentary body.] [Footnote 195: G. R. S. Mead tells us that Justin believed in Reincarnation only whilst he was a Platonist; he opposed this teaching after his conversion to Christianity (See _Theosophical Review_, April, 1906).] [Footnote 196: Does this obscure passage refer to the resurrection of the body?] [Footnote 197: _Adversus Gentes_. "We die many times, and as often do we rise again from the dead."] [Footnote 198: Hyeronim., _Epistola ad Demetr...._] [Footnote 199: Book 2, quest. 6, No. 17.] [Footnote 200: _Ephesians_, ch. 1, v. 4 ... he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.] [Footnote 201: _Instit. divin._, 3, 18.] [Footnote 202: _Confessions_, I, ch. 6.] [Footnote 203: _On the Immortality of the Soul_, chap. 12.] [Footnote 204: _Hist. de Manichée et du Manichéisme_, vol. 2, p. 492.] [Footnote 205: _Stromata._, vol. 3, p. 433. Edition des Bénédictins.] [Footnote 206: The words in parenthesis are by the author.] [Footnote 207: _Cont. Cels._ Book 4, chap. 17.] [Footnote 208: [Greek: ti akolouthei].] [Footnote 209: _De Principiis_, Book 3, chap. 5.] [Footnote 210: _Contra Celsum_, Book 1.] [Footnote 211: _Contra Celsum_, Book 1, chap. 6.] [Footnote 212: _De Principiis_, Book 3, chap. 5.] [Footnote 213: _De Principiis_, Book 4, chap. 5.] [Footnote 214: _Contra Celsum_, Book 7, chap. 32.] [Footnote 215: E. Aroux. _Les Mystères de la Chevalerie._] [Footnote 216: Quoted by I. Cooper Oakley in _Traces of a Hidden Tradition in Masonry and Mediæval Mysticism_, a very interesting work on the sects which connect the early centuries with modern times.] [Footnote 217: See _L'Islamisme et son Enseignement Ésotérique_, by Ed. Bailly. _Publications théosophiques_, Paris, 1903.] [Footnote 218: Chapter 18.] [Footnote 219: Islam is now awaiting the coming of the Mahdi, its last prophet; prophecy says that he will be the reincarnation of Mohammed (_Borderland_, April, 1907).] [Footnote 220: This is the reason Afghans still undertake pilgrimages to Mecca.] [Footnote 221: Chap. 22, verses 5, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 41. Quoted by Lady Caithness in _Old Truths in a New Light._] [Footnote 222: Chap. 23, verses 17, 26, 27, etc.] [Footnote 223: By religion is here understood the devotional aspect and the scientific side of the teaching of Truth, _i.e._, the science of the divine Soul.] [Footnote 224: _Nirmânakâyas_ are beings who have become perfect, and who, instead of entering the Nirvâna their efforts have won, renounce peace and bliss in order to help forward their human brothers in their evolution.] [Footnote 225: O! genus attonitum gelidæ formidine mortis, Quid Styga, quid tenebras, quid nomina vana timetis, Materiam vatum, falsique piacula mundi? Corpora sive rogus flammâ, seu tabe vetustas Abstulerit, mala posse pati non ulla putetis Morte carent animæ: semperque priore relictâ Sede, novis domibus habitant vivuntque receptæ . . . . . . . . . Omnia mutantur, nihil interit ... ] [Footnote 226: _S. John's Gospel_, chap. 9, verse 2.] [Footnote 227: The following passages are taken from three of C. Savy's works: _Comment. du Sermon sur la Montagne_ (1818); _Pensées et Méditations_ (1829); _Dieu et l'Homme en cette Vie et Audelà_ (1838).] [Footnote 228: _De l'Humanité_, vol. 1., p. 233.] [Footnote 229: _Théorie de l'Unité Universelle_, vol. 2, p. 304-348.] [Footnote 230: _Vie Future au Point de Vue Socialiste_, and _Confession d'un Curé de Village._] [Footnote 231: _Destinées de l'Âme._] [Footnote 232: Alluding to the complete renewing of the material molecules of the body, every seven years.] [Footnote 233: Whose consciousness, however (along with memory), is at the summit of the hierarchy which is its origin.] [Footnote 234: Molecules and atoms have a particular consciousness of their own which does not cease to function when, on the departure of the individual soul, the body, as such, ceases to function.] [Footnote 235: If sufficiently developed, however, he can be made conscious of this in a higher vehicle.] [Footnote 236: When man has barely entered the human stage--in primitive man.] [Footnote 237: Consciousness begins in the physical body, its simplest instrument.] [Footnote 238: There are other vehicles above the causal body.] [Footnote 239: All the powers of the Universe are in the divine germ, as the tree is in its seed.] [Footnote 240: Because it no longer has a dense physical body. There are exceptions to this rule, but there is no necessity to mention them here.] [Footnote 241: The Christian Heaven, the _Devachan_ of Theosophy.] [Footnote 242: This character has already appeared on the astral plane, though not in so striking a fashion.] [Footnote 243: Unity exists on the plane of the Ego, and the latter sends his thought into the forms made out of his vehicles; this will be understood only by the few, but an explanation cannot be given at this point, without writing a volume on the whole of theosophy.] [Footnote 244: We are still dealing with the ordinary man.] [Footnote 245: When liberation is attained. This can be effected rapidly by those who _will_ to attain it.] [Footnote 246: Only four of the seven atomic _spirillæ_ are active in this our fourth planetary Round (one for each Round). They can be rapidly vitalised by the will.] [Footnote 247: When the soul is "centred" in it.] [Footnote 248: The vibrations, whether registered as they pass or not registered, continue their course through the substance of the Universe.] [Footnote 249: Science even now recognises four of these dimensions.] [Footnote 250: This is said in order to satisfy such as are of a metaphysical turn of mind, and frequently prone to criticism.] [Footnote 251: When the inner senses are developed.] [Footnote 252: A question will doubtless at once rise to the minds of many readers; how can the same atoms produce, at once and almost eternally, millions of different facts? We will reply briefly. Science has been able to conceive of an explanation of a fact apparently quite as absurd--the phenomenon of the balls of Russian platinum mentioned by Zöllner (_Transcendental Physics_, ch. 9) which pass through hermetically sealed glass tubes, and that of the German copper coins dropping through the bottom of a sealed box on to a slate--by accepting a fourth dimension of space. Who would affirm that the dimensions of space are limited to four? Or that the science of the immediate future will not be brought face to face with facts, and find, in a fifth or sixth dimension of space, a possible explanation of the phenomenon here mentioned, one which initiated seers can test whenever they please, because it is a real fact? Still, as these seers say, the coarsest atoms generally register only one image, others register fresh images, so that in many cases there is quite a superposition of images which must be carefully examined to avoid errors.] [Footnote 253: A psychometrist is a person endowed with a very fine nervous system, capable of repeating the delicate vibrations which act upon the inmost atoms of a body. In this way, by placing himself in presence of an object that has been in contact with some individual, he can clearly describe the latter's physical, moral, and mental characteristics. Hitherto, Buchanan and Professor Denton have been the most remarkable psychometrists; the experiments related in their works have been made before witnesses and permit of no doubt whatever as to the reality of this strange faculty.] [Footnote 254: Instances of this are numerous in Professor Denton's _The Soul of Things._] [Footnote 255: This memory is preserved in the first "life-wave."] [Footnote 256: This is _instinct_, _i.e._, a semi-conscious memory, located in the "life-wave" of the second Logos.] [Footnote 257: The divine Essence incarnated in the matter of the lower planes of the Universe.] [Footnote 258: When the "essence," after the destruction of the form to which it gives life, no more returns to the parent-block from which it came, it has become individualised, ready to enter into the _human kingdom._] [Footnote 259: The memory of the third life-wave, of the first Logos.] [Footnote 260: Everything, for instance, that concerns the planes of the planetary system, on which it has finished its evolution.] [Footnote 261: The passing of consciousness from the causal body to the nascent buddhic body.] [Footnote 262: The buddhic plane (the one immediately above the mental) is one in which the forms are so subtle that they no longer _limit_ the Life (_the Soul of the World_) animating them. This Life comes directly into contact with the Life which causes all forms to live; it then sees Unity: it sees itself everywhere and in everything, the joys and sorrows of forms other than its own are its joys and sorrows, for it is universal Life.] [Footnote 263: This body is composed of physical matter, and therefore belongs to the physical plane. It has been given a special name, not only because it is made of ether, but because it can be separated from the physical body.] [Footnote 264: The whole of the bodies: mental, astral, and physical.] [Footnote 265: The Ego (soul) in the causal body.] CONCLUSION. We have now come to the end of our study: a task to which we have certainly not been equal, so far is it beyond our powers. As, however, we have drawn inspiration from our predecessors, so have we also, in our turn, endeavoured to shed a few more rays of light on certain points of this important subject, and indicate fresh paths that may be followed by such as enter upon this line of investigation in the future. It is our most ardent desire to see this fertile soil well tilled, for it will yield an abundant harvest. Mankind is dying in strife and despair; the torrent of human activity is everywhere seething and foaming. Here ignorance buries its victims in a noisome den of slime and filth; there, the strong and ruthless, veritable vampires, batten on the labour and drain away the very life of the weak and helpless; farther away, science stumbles against the wall of the Unknown; philosophy takes up its stand on the cold barren glacier of intellectualism; religions are stifled and struggle for existence beneath the age-long accumulations of the "letter that killeth." More now than ever before do we need to find a reason for morality, a guide for science, an Ariadne's thread for philosophy, a torch to throw light on religion, and Love over all, for if mankind continues to devote the whole of its strength to the pursuit of material benefits, if its most glorious conquests become instruments to advance selfishness, if its progress merely increases physical wretchedness and makes moral decadence more terrible than before, if the head continues to silence the appeals of the heart, then divine Compassion will have no alternative but to destroy beneath the waters of another flood this cruel, implacable civilisation, which has transformed earth into an inferno. Amongst the most pressing and urgent truths, the most fruitful teachings, the most illuminating doctrines, the most comforting promises, we have no hesitation in placing the Law of Rebirths in the very front. It is supported by ethics, by reason, and by science; it offers an explanation of the enigma of life, it alone solves almost all the problems that have harassed the mind of man throughout the ages; and so we hope that, in spite of its many imperfections, this work of ours will induce many a reader to say: _Reincarnation must be true, if could not be otherwise!_ THE END * * * * * 
29399	----	CLAIRVOYANCE BY C. W. LEADBEATER SECOND EDITION LONDON THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY 1903 * * * * * CONTENTS CHAPTER I. PAGE WHAT CLAIRVOYANCE IS. 5 CHAPTER II. SIMPLE CLAIRVOYANCE: FULL 29 CHAPTER III. SIMPLE CLAIRVOYANCE: PARTIAL 50 CHAPTER IV. CLAIRVOYANCE IN SPACE: INTENTIONAL 58 CHAPTER V. CLAIRVOYANCE IN SPACE: SEMI-INTENTIONAL 83 CHAPTER VI. CLAIRVOYANCE IN SPACE: UNINTENTIONAL 87 CHAPTER VII. CLAIRVOYANCE IN TIME: THE PAST 96 CHAPTER VIII. CLAIRVOYANCE IN TIME: THE FUTURE 131 CHAPTER IX. METHODS OF DEVELOPMENT 163 * * * * * CLAIRVOYANCE CHAPTER I. WHAT CLAIRVOYANCE IS. Clairvoyance means literally nothing more than "clear-seeing," and it is a word which has been sorely misused, and even degraded so far as to be employed to describe the trickery of a mountebank in a variety show. Even in its more restricted sense it covers a wide range of phenomena, differing so greatly in character that it is not easy to give a definition of the word which shall be at once succinct and accurate. It has been called "spiritual vision," but no rendering could well be more misleading than that, for in the vast majority of cases there is no faculty connected with it which has the slightest claim to be honoured by so lofty a name. For the purpose of this treatise we may, perhaps, define it as the power to see what is hidden from ordinary physical sight. It will be as well to premise that it is very frequently (though by no means always) accompanied by what is called clairaudience, or the power to hear what would be inaudible to the ordinary physical ear; and we will for the nonce take our title as covering this faculty also, in order to avoid the clumsiness of perpetually using two long words where one will suffice. Let me make two points clear before I begin. First, I am not writing for those who do not believe that there is such a thing as clairvoyance, nor am I seeking to convince those who are in doubt about the matter. In so small a work as this I have no space for that; such people must study the many books containing lists of cases, or make experiments for themselves along mesmeric lines. I am addressing myself to the better-instructed class who know that clairvoyance exists, and are sufficiently interested in the subject to be glad of information as to its methods and possibilities; and I would assure them that what I write is the result of much careful study and experiment, and that though some of the powers which I shall have to describe may seem new and wonderful to them, I mention no single one of which I have not myself seen examples. Secondly, though I shall endeavour to avoid technicalities as far as possible, yet as I am writing in the main for students of Theosophy, I shall feel myself at liberty sometimes to use, for brevity's sake and without detailed explanation, the ordinary Theosophical terms with which I may safely assume them to be familiar. Should this little book fall into the hands of any to whom the occasional use of such terms constitutes a difficulty, I can only apologize to them and refer them for these preliminary explanations to any elementary Theosophical work, such as Mrs. Besant's _Ancient Wisdom_ or _Man and His Bodies_. The truth is that the whole Theosophical system hangs together so closely, and its various parts are so interdependent, that to give a full explanation of every term used would necessitate an exhaustive treatise on Theosophy as a preface even to this short account of clairvoyance. Before a detailed explanation of clairvoyance can usefully be attempted, however, it will be necessary for us to devote a little time to some preliminary considerations, in order that we may have clearly in mind a few broad facts as to the different planes on which clairvoyant vision may be exercised, and the conditions which render its exercise possible. We are constantly assured in Theosophical literature that all these higher faculties are presently to be the heritage of mankind in general--that the capacity of clairvoyance, for example, lies latent in every one, and that those in whom it already manifests itself are simply in that one particular a little in advance of the rest of us. Now this statement is a true one, and yet it seems quite vague and unreal to the majority of people, simply because they regard such a faculty as something absolutely different from anything they have yet experienced, and feel fairly confident that they themselves, at any rate, are not within measurable distance of its development. It may help to dispel this sense of unreality if we try to understand that clairvoyance, like so many other things in nature, is mainly a question of vibrations, and is in fact nothing but an extension of powers which we are all using every day of our lives. We are living all the while surrounded by a vast sea of mingled air and ether, the latter inter-penetrating the former, as it does all physical matter; and it is chiefly by means of vibrations in that vast sea of matter that impressions reach us from the outside. This much we all know, but it may perhaps never have occurred to many of us that the number of these vibrations to which we are capable of responding is in reality quite infinitesimal. Up among the exceedingly rapid vibrations which affect the ether there is a certain small section--a _very_ small section--to which the retina of the human eye is capable of responding, and these particular vibrations produce in us the sensation which we call light. That is to say, we are capable of seeing only those objects from which light of that particular kind can either issue or be reflected. In exactly the same way the tympanum of the human ear is capable of responding to a certain very small range of comparatively slow vibrations--slow enough to affect the air which surrounds us; and so the only sounds which we can hear are those made by objects which are able to vibrate at some rate within that particular range. In both cases it is a matter perfectly well known to science that there are large numbers of vibrations both above and below these two sections, and that consequently there is much light that we cannot see, and there are many sounds to which our ears are deaf. In the case of light the action of these higher and lower vibrations is easily perceptible in the effects produced by the actinic rays at one end of the spectrum and the heat rays at the other. As a matter of fact there exist vibrations of every conceivable degree of rapidity, filling the whole vast space intervening between the slow sound waves and the swift light waves; nor is even that all, for there are undoubtedly vibrations slower than those of sound, and a whole infinity of them which are swifter than those known to us as light. So we begin to understand that the vibrations by which we see and hear are only like two tiny groups of a few strings selected from an enormous harp of practically infinite extent, and when we think how much we have been able to learn and infer from the use of those minute fragments, we see vaguely what possibilities might lie before us if we were enabled to utilize the vast and wonderful whole. Another fact which needs to be considered in this connection is that different human beings vary considerably, though within relatively narrow limits, in their capacity of response even to the very few vibrations which are within reach of our physical senses. I am not referring to the keenness of sight or of hearing that enables one man to see a fainter object or hear a slighter sound than another; it is not in the least a question of strength of vision, but of extent of susceptibility. For example, if anyone will take a good bisulphide of carbon prism, and by its means throw a clear spectrum on a sheet of white paper, and then get a number of people to mark upon the paper the extreme limits of the spectrum as it appears to them, he is fairly certain to find that their powers of vision differ appreciably. Some will see the violet extending much farther than the majority do; others will perhaps see rather less violet than most, while gaining a corresponding extension of vision at the red end. Some few there will perhaps be who can see farther than ordinary at both ends, and these will almost certainly be what we call sensitive people--susceptible in fact to a greater range of vibrations than are most men of the present day. In hearing, the same difference can be tested by taking some sound which is just not too high to be audible--on the very verge of audibility as it were--and discovering how many among a given number of people are able to hear it. The squeak of a bat is a familiar instance of such a sound, and experiment will show that on a summer evening, when the whole air is full of the shrill, needle-like cries of these little animals, quite a large number of men will be absolutely unconscious of them, and unable to hear anything at all. Now these examples clearly show that there is no hard-and-fast limit to man's power of response to either etheric or aerial vibrations, but that some among us already have that power to a wider extent than others; and it will even be found that the same man's capacity varies on different occasions. It is therefore not difficult for us to imagine that it might be possible for a man to develop this power, and thus in time to learn to see much that is invisible to his fellow-men, and hear much that is inaudible to them, since we know perfectly well that enormous numbers of these additional vibrations do exist, and are simply, as it were, awaiting recognition. The experiments with the Röntgen rays give us an example of the startling results which are produced when even a very few of these additional vibrations are brought within human ken, and the transparency to these rays of many substances hitherto considered opaque at once shows us one way at least in which we may explain such elementary clairvoyance as is involved in reading a letter inside a closed box, or describing those present in an adjoining apartment. To learn to see by means of the Röntgen rays in addition to those ordinarily employed would be quite sufficient to enable anyone to perform a feat of magic of this order. So far we have thought only of an extension of the purely physical senses of man; and when we remember that a man's etheric body is in reality merely the finer part of his physical frame, and that therefore all his sense organs contain a large amount of etheric matter of various degrees of density, the capacities of which are still practically latent in most of us, we shall see that even if we confine ourselves to this line of development alone there are enormous possibilities of all kinds already opening out before us. But besides and beyond all this we know that man possesses an astral and a mental body, each of which can in process of time be aroused into activity, and will respond in turn to the vibrations of the matter of its own plane, thus opening up before the Ego, as he learns to function through these vehicles, two entirely new and far wider worlds of knowledge and power. Now these new worlds, though they are all around us and freely inter-penetrate one another, are not to be thought of as distinct and entirely unconnected in substance, but rather as melting the one into the other, the lowest astral forming a direct series with the highest physical, just as the lowest mental in its turn forms a direct series with the highest astral. We are not called upon in thinking of them to imagine some new and strange kind of matter, but simply to think of the ordinary physical kind as subdivided so very much more finely and vibrating so very much more rapidly as to introduce us to what are practically entirely new conditions and qualities. It is not then difficult for us to grasp the possibility of a steady and progressive extension of our senses, so that both by sight and by hearing we may be able to appreciate vibrations far higher and far lower than those which are ordinarily recognised. A large section of these additional vibrations will still belong to the physical plane, and will merely enable us to obtain impressions from the etheric part of that plane, which is at present as a closed book to us. Such impressions will still be received through the retina of the eye; of course they will affect its etheric rather than its solid matter, but we may nevertheless regard them as still appealing only to an organ specialized to receive them, and not to the whole surface of the etheric body. There are some abnormal cases, however, in which other parts of the etheric body respond to these additional vibrations as readily as, or even more readily than, the eye. Such vagaries are explicable in various ways, but principally as effects of some partial astral development, for it will be found that the sensitive parts of the body almost invariably correspond with one or other of the _chakrams_, or centres of vitality in the astral body. And though, if astral consciousness be not yet developed, these centres may not be available on their own plane, they are still strong enough to stimulate into keener activity the etheric matter which they inter-penetrate. When we come to deal with the astral senses themselves the methods of working are very different. The astral body has no specialized sense-organs--a fact which perhaps needs some explanation, since many students who are trying to comprehend its physiology seem to find it difficult to reconcile with the statements that have been made as to the perfect inter-penetration of the physical body by astral matter, the exact correspondence between the two vehicles, and the fact that every physical object has necessarily its astral counterpart. Now all these statements are true, and yet it is quite possible for people who do not normally see astrally to misunderstand them. Every order of physical matter has its corresponding order of astral matter in constant association with it--not to be separated from it except by a very considerable exertion of occult force, and even then only to be held apart from it as long as force is being definitely exerted to that end. But for all that the relation of the astral particles one to another is far looser than is the case with their physical correspondences. In a bar of iron, for example, we have a mass of physical molecules in the solid condition--that is to say, capable of comparatively little change in their relative positions, though each vibrating with immense rapidity in its own sphere. The astral counterpart of this consists of what we often call solid astral matter--that is, matter of the lowest and densest sub-plane of the astral; but nevertheless its particles are constantly and rapidly changing their relative position, moving among one another as easily as those of a liquid on the physical plane might do. So that there is no permanent association between any one physical particle and that amount of astral matter which happens at any given moment to be acting as its counterpart. This is equally true with respect to the astral body of man, which for our purpose at the moment we may regard as consisting of two parts--the denser aggregation which occupies the exact position of the physical body, and the cloud of rarer astral matter which surrounds that aggregation. In both these parts, and between them both, there is going on at every moment of time the rapid inter-circulation of the particles which has been described, so that as one watches the movement of the molecules in the astral body one is reminded of the appearance of those in fiercely boiling water. This being so, it will be readily understood that though any given organ of the physical body must always have as its counterpart a certain amount of astral matter, it does not retain the same particles for more than a few seconds at a time, and consequently there is nothing corresponding to the specialization of physical nerve-matter into optic or auditory nerves, and so on. So that though the physical eye or ear has undoubtedly always its counterpart of astral matter, that particular fragment of astral matter is no more (and no less) capable of responding to the vibrations which produce astral sight or astral hearing than any other part of the vehicle. It must never be forgotten that though we constantly have to speak of "astral sight" or "astral hearing" in order to make ourselves intelligible, all that we mean by those expressions is the faculty of responding to such vibrations as convey to the man's consciousness, when he is functioning in his astral body, information of the same character as that conveyed to him by his eyes and ears while he is in the physical body. But in the entirely different astral conditions, specialized organs are not necessary for the attainment of this result; there is matter in every part of the astral body which is capable of such response, and consequently the man functioning in that vehicle sees equally well objects behind him, beneath him, above him, without needing to turn his head. There is, however, another point which it would hardly be fair to leave entirely out of account, and that is the question of the _chakrams_ referred to above. Theosophical students are familiar with the idea of the existence in both the astral and the etheric bodies of man of certain centres of force which have to be vivified in turn by the sacred serpent-fire as the man advances in evolution. Though these cannot be described as organs in the ordinary sense of the word, since it is not through them that the man sees or hears, as he does in physical life through eyes and ears, yet it is apparently very largely upon their vivification that the power of exercising these astral senses depends, each of them as it is developed giving to the whole astral body the power of response to a new set of vibrations. Neither have these centres, however, any permanent collection of astral matter connected with them. They are simply vortices in the matter of the body--vortices through which all the particles pass in turn--points, perhaps, at which the higher force from planes above impinges upon the astral body. Even this description gives but a very partial idea of their appearance, for they are in reality four-dimensional vortices, so that the force which comes through them and is the cause of their existence seems to well up from nowhere. But at any rate, since all particles in turn pass through each of them, it will be clear that it is thus possible for each in turn to evoke in all the particles of the body the power of receptivity to a certain set of vibrations, so that all the astral senses are equally active in all parts of the body. The vision of the mental plane is again totally different, for in this case we can no longer speak of separate senses such as sight and hearing, but rather have to postulate one general sense which responds so fully to the vibrations reaching it that when any object comes within its cognition it at once comprehends it fully, and as it were sees it, hears it, feels it, and knows all there is to know about it by the one instantaneous operation. Yet even this wonderful faculty differs in degree only and not in kind from those which are at our command at the present time; on the mental plane, just as on the physical, impressions are still conveyed by means of vibrations travelling from the object seen to the seer. On the buddhic plane we meet for the first time with a quite new faculty having nothing in common with those of which we have spoken, for there a man cognizes any object by an entirely different method, in which external vibrations play no part. The object becomes part of himself, and he studies it from the inside instead of from the outside. But with _this_ power ordinary clairvoyance has nothing to do. The development, either entire or partial, of any one of these faculties would come under our definition of clairvoyance--the power to see what is hidden from ordinary physical sight. But these faculties may be developed in various ways, and it will be well to say a few words as to these different lines. We may presume that if it were possible for a man to be isolated during his evolution from all but the gentlest outside influences, and to unfold from the beginning in perfectly regular and normal fashion, he would probably develop his senses in regular order also. He would find his physical senses gradually extending their scope until they responded to all the physical vibrations, of etheric as well as of denser matter; then in orderly sequence would come sensibility to the coarser part of the astral plane, and presently the finer part also would be included, until in due course the faculty of the mental plane dawned in its turn. In real life, however, development so regular as this is hardly ever known, and many a man has occasional flashes of astral consciousness without any awakening of etheric vision at all. And this irregularity of development is one of the principal causes of man's extraordinary liability to error in matters of clairvoyance--a liability from which there is no escape except by a long course of careful training under a qualified teacher. Students of Theosophical literature are well aware that there are such teachers to be found--that even in this materialistic nineteenth century the old saying is still true, that "when the pupil is ready, the Master is ready also," and that "in the hall of learning, when he is capable of entering there, the disciple will always find his Master." They are well aware also that only under such guidance can a man develop his latent powers in safety and with certainty, since they know how fatally easy it is for the untrained clairvoyant to deceive himself as to the meaning and value of what he sees, or even absolutely to distort his vision completely in bringing it down into his physical consciousness. It does not follow that even the pupil who is receiving regular instruction in the use of occult powers will find them unfolding themselves exactly in the regular order which was suggested above as probably ideal. His previous progress may not have been such as to make this for him the easiest or most desirable road; but at any rate he is in the hands of one who is perfectly competent to be his guide in spiritual development, and he rests in perfect contentment that the way along which he is taken will be that which is the best way for him. Another great advantage which he gains is that whatever faculties he may acquire are definitely under his command and can be used fully and constantly when he needs them for his Theosophical work; whereas in the case of the untrained man such powers often manifest themselves only very partially and spasmodically, and appear to come and go, as it were, at their own sweet will. It may reasonably be objected that if clairvoyant faculty is, as stated, a part of the occult development of man, and so a sign of a certain amount of progress along that line, it seems strange that it should often be possessed by primitive peoples, or by the ignorant and uncultured among our own race--persons who are obviously quite undeveloped, from whatever point of view one regards them. No doubt this does appear remarkable at first sight but the fact is that the sensitiveness of the savage or of the coarse and vulgar European ignoramus is not really at all the same thing as the faculty of his properly trained brother, nor is it arrived at in the same way. An exact and detailed explanation of the difference would lead us into rather recondite technicalities, but perhaps the general idea of the distinction between the two may be caught from an example taken from the very lowest plane of clairvoyance, in close contact with the denser physical. The etheric double in man is in exceedingly close relation to his nervous system, and any kind of action upon one of them speedily reacts on the other. Now in the sporadic appearance of etheric sight in the savage, whether of Central Africa or of Western Europe, it has been observed that the corresponding nervous disturbance is almost entirely in the sympathetic system, and that the whole affair is practically beyond the man's control--is in fact a sort of massive sensation vaguely belonging to the whole etheric body, rather than an exact and definite sense-perception communicated through a specialized organ. As in later races and amid higher development the strength of the man is more and more thrown into the evolution of the mental faculties, this vague sensitiveness usually disappears; but still later, when the spiritual man begins to unfold, he regains his clairvoyant power. This time, however, the faculty is a precise and exact one, under the control of the man's will, and exercised through a definite sense-organ; and it is noteworthy that any nervous action set up in sympathy with it is now almost exclusively in the cerebro-spinal system. On this subject Mrs. Besant writes:--"The lower forms of psychism are more frequent in animals and in very unintelligent human beings than in men and women in whom the intellectual powers are well developed. They appear to be connected with the sympathetic system, not with the cerebro-spinal. The large nucleated ganglionic cells in this system contain a very large proportion of etheric matter, and are hence more easily affected by the coarser astral vibrations than are the cells in which the proportion is less. As the cerebro-spinal system develops, and the brain becomes more highly evolved, the sympathetic system subsides into a subordinate position, and the sensitiveness to psychic vibrations is dominated by the stronger and more active vibrations of the higher nervous system. It is true that at a later stage of evolution psychic sensitiveness reappears, but it is then developed in connection with the cerebro-spinal centres, and is brought under the control of the will. But the hysterical and ill-regulated psychism of which we see so many lamentable examples is due to the small development of the brain and the dominance of the sympathetic system." Occasional flashes of clairvoyance do, however, sometimes come to the highly cultured and spiritual-minded man, even though he may never have heard of the possibility of training such a faculty. In his case such glimpses usually signify that he is approaching that stage in his evolution when these powers will naturally begin to manifest themselves, and their appearance should serve as an additional stimulus to him to strive to maintain that high standard of moral purity and mental balance without which clairvoyance is a curse and not a blessing to its possessor. Between those who are entirely unimpressible and those who are in full possession of clairvoyant power there are many intermediate stages. One to which it will be worth while to give a passing glance is the stage in which a man, though he has no clairvoyant faculty in ordinary life, yet exhibits it more or less fully under the influence of mesmerism. This is a case in which the psychic nature is already sensitive, but the consciousness is not yet capable of functioning in it amidst the manifold distractions of physical life. It needs to be set free by the temporary suspension of the outer senses in the mesmeric trance before it can use the diviner faculties which are but just beginning to dawn within it. But of course even in the mesmeric trance there are innumerable degrees of lucidity, from the ordinary patient who is blankly unintelligent to the man whose power of sight is fully under the control of the operator, and can be directed whithersoever he wills, or to the more advanced stage in which, when the consciousness is once set free, it escapes altogether from the grasp of the magnetizer, and soars into fields of exalted vision where it is entirely beyond his reach. Another step along the same path is that upon which such perfect suppression of the physical as that which occurs in the hypnotic trance is not necessary, but the power of supernormal sight, though still out of reach during waking life, becomes available when the body is held in the bonds of ordinary sleep. At this stage of development stood many of the prophets and seers of whom we read, who were "warned of God in a dream," or communed with beings far higher than themselves in the silent watches of the night. Most cultured people of the higher races of the world have this development to some extent: that is to say, the senses of their astral bodies are in full working order, and perfectly capable of receiving impressions from objects and entities of their own plane. But to make that fact of any use to them down here in the physical body, two changes are usually necessary; first, that the Ego shall be awakened to the realities of the astral plane, and induced to emerge from the chrysalis formed by his own waking thoughts, and look round him to observe and to learn; and secondly, that the consciousness shall be so far retained during the return of the Ego into his physical body as to enable him to impress upon his physical brain the recollection of what he has seen or learnt. If the first of these changes has taken place, the second is of little importance, since the Ego, the true man, will be able to profit by the information to be obtained upon that plane, even though he may not have the satisfaction of bringing through any remembrance of it into his waking life down here. Students often ask how this clairvoyant faculty will first be manifested in themselves--how they may know when they have reached the stage at which its first faint foreshadowings are beginning to be visible. Cases differ so widely that it is impossible to give to this question any answer that will be universally applicable. Some people begin by a plunge, as it were, and under some unusual stimulus become able just for once to see some striking vision; and very often in such a case, because the experience does not repeat itself, the seer comes in time to believe that on that occasion he must have been the victim of hallucination. Others begin by becoming intermittently conscious of the brilliant colours and vibrations of the human aura; yet others find themselves with increasing frequency seeing and hearing something to which those around them are blind and deaf; others, again, see faces, landscapes, or coloured clouds floating before their eyes in the dark before they sink to rest; while perhaps the commonest experience of all is that of those who begin to recollect with greater and greater clearness what they have seen and heard on the other planes during sleep. Having now to some extent cleared our ground, we may proceed to consider the various phenomena of clairvoyance. They differ so widely both in character and in degree that it is not very easy to decide how they can most satisfactorily be classified. We might, for example, arrange them according to the kind of sight employed--whether it were mental, astral, or merely etheric. We might divide them according to the capacity of the clairvoyant, taking into consideration whether he was trained or untrained; whether his vision was regular and under his command, or spasmodic and independent of his volition; whether he could exercise it only when under mesmeric influence, or whether that assistance was unnecessary for him; whether he was able to use his faculty when awake in the physical body, or whether it was available only when he was temporarily away from that body in sleep or trance. All these distinctions are of importance, and we shall have to take them all into consideration as we go on, but perhaps on the whole the most useful classification will be one something on the lines of that adopted by Mr. Sinnett in his _Rationale of Mesmerism_--a book, by the way, which all students of clairvoyance ought to read. In dealing with the phenomena, then, we will arrange them rather according to the capacity of the sight employed than to the plane upon which it is exercised, so that we may group instances of clairvoyance under some such headings as these: 1. Simple clairvoyance--that is to say, a mere opening of sight, enabling its possessor to see whatever astral or etheric entities happen to be present around him, but not including the power of observing either distant places or scenes belonging to any other time than the present. 2. Clairvoyance in space--the capacity to see scenes or events removed from the seer in space, and either too far distant for ordinary observation or concealed by intermediate objects. 3. Clairvoyance in time--that is to say, the capacity to see objects or events which are removed from the seer in time, or, in other words, the power of looking into the past or the future. CHAPTER II. SIMPLE CLAIRVOYANCE: FULL. We have defined this as a mere opening of etheric or astral sight, which enables the possessor to see whatever may be present around him on corresponding levels, but is not usually accompanied by the power of seeing anything at a great distance or of reading either the past or the future. It is hardly possible altogether to exclude these latter faculties, for astral sight necessarily has considerably greater extension than physical, and fragmentary pictures of both past and future are often casually visible even to clairvoyants who do not know how to seek specially for them; but there is nevertheless a very real distinction between such incidental glimpses and the definite power of projection of the sight either in space or time. We find among sensitive people all degrees of this kind of clairvoyance, from that of the man who gets a vague impression which hardly deserves the name of sight at all, up to the full possession of etheric and astral vision respectively. Perhaps the simplest method will be for us to begin by describing what would be visible in the case of this fuller development of the power, as the cases of its partial possession will then be seen to fall naturally into their places. Let us take the etheric vision first. This consists simply, as has already been said, in susceptibility to a far larger series of physical vibrations than ordinary, but nevertheless its possession brings into view a good deal to which the majority of the human race still remains blind. Let us consider what changes its acquisition produces in the aspect of familiar objects, animate and inanimate, and then see to what entirely new factors it introduces us. But it must be remembered that what I am about to describe is the result of the full and perfectly-controlled possession of the faculty only, and that most of the instances met with in real life will be likely to fall far short of it in one direction or another. The most striking change produced in the appearance of inanimate objects by the acquisition of this faculty is that most of them become almost transparent, owing to the difference in wave-length of some of the vibrations to which the man has now become susceptible. He finds himself capable of performing with the utmost ease the proverbial feat of "seeing through a brick wall," for to his newly-acquired vision the brick wall seems to have a consistency no greater than that of a light mist. He therefore sees what is going on in an adjoining room almost as though no intervening wall existed; he can describe with accuracy the contents of a locked box, or read a sealed letter; with a little practice he can find a given passage in a closed book. This last feat, though perfectly easy to astral vision, presents considerable difficulty to one using etheric sight, because of the fact that each page has to be looked at _through_ all those which happen to be superimposed upon it. It is often asked whether under these circumstances a man sees always with this abnormal sight, or only when he wishes to do so. The answer is that if the faculty is perfectly developed it will be entirely under his control, and he can use that or his more ordinary vision at will. He changes from one to the other as readily and naturally as we now change the focus of our eyes when we look up from our book to follow the motions of some object a mile away. It is, as it were, a focussing of consciousness on the one or the other aspect of what is seen; and though the man would have quite clearly in his view the aspect upon which his attention was for the moment fixed, he would always be vaguely conscious of the other aspect too, just as when we focus our sight upon any object held in our hands we yet vaguely see the opposite wall of the room as a background. Another curious change, which comes from the possession of this sight, is that the solid ground upon which the man walks becomes to a certain extent transparent to him, so that he is able to see down into it to a considerable depth, much as we can now see into fairly clear water. This enables him to watch a creature burrowing underground, to distinguish a vein of coal or of metal if not too far below the surface, and so on. The limit of etheric sight when looking through solid matter appears to be analogous to that imposed upon us when looking through water or mist. We cannot see beyond a certain distance, because the medium through which we are looking is not perfectly transparent. The appearance of animate objects is also considerably altered for the man who has increased his visual powers to this extent. The bodies of men and animals are for him in the main transparent, so that he can watch the action of the various internal organs, and to some extent diagnose some of their diseases. The extended sight also enables him to perceive, more or less clearly, various classes of creatures, elemental and otherwise, whose bodies are not capable of reflecting any of the rays within the limit of the spectrum as ordinarily seen. Among the entities so seen will be some of the lower orders of nature-spirits--those whose bodies are composed of the denser etheric matter. To this class belong nearly all the fairies, gnomes, and brownies, about whom there are still so many stories remaining among Scotch and Irish mountains and in remote country places all over the world. The vast kingdom of nature-spirits is in the main an astral kingdom, but still there is a large section of it which appertains to the etheric part of the physical plane, and this section, of course, is much more likely to come within the ken of ordinary people than the others. Indeed, in reading the common fairy stories one frequently comes across distinct indications that it is with this class that we are dealing. Any student of fairy lore will remember how often mention is made of some mysterious ointment or drug, which when applied to a man's eyes enables him to see the members of the fairy commonwealth whenever he happens to meet them. The story of such an application and its results occurs so constantly and comes from so many different parts of the world that there must certainly be some truth behind it, as there always is behind really universal popular tradition. Now no such anointing of the eyes alone could by any possibility open a man's astral vision, though certain ointments rubbed over the whole body will very greatly assist the astral body to leave the physical in full consciousness--a fact the knowledge of which seems to have survived even to mediæval times, as will be seen from the evidence given at some of the trials for witchcraft. But the application to the physical eye might very easily so stimulate its sensitiveness as to make it susceptible to some of the etheric vibrations. The story frequently goes on to relate how when the human being who has used this mystical ointment betrays his extended vision in some way to a fairy, the latter strikes or stabs him in the eye, thus depriving him not only of the etheric sight, but of that of the denser physical plane as well. (See _The Science of Fairy Tales_, by E. S. Hartland, in the "Contemporary Science" series--or indeed almost any extensive collection of fairy stories.) If the sight acquired had been astral, such a proceeding would have been entirely unavailing, for no injury to the physical apparatus would affect an astral faculty; but if the vision produced by the ointment were etheric, the destruction of the physical eye would in most cases at once extinguish it, since that is the mechanism by means of which it works. Anyone possessing this sight of which we are speaking would also be able to perceive the etheric double of man; but since this is so nearly identical in size with the physical, it would hardly be likely to attract his attention unless it were partially projected in trance or under the influence of anæsthetics. After death, when it withdraws entirely from the dense body, it would be clearly visible to him, and he would frequently see it hovering over newly made graves as he passed through a churchyard or cemetery. If he were to attend a spiritualistic séance he would see the etheric matter oozing out from the side of the medium, and could observe the various ways in which the communicating entities make use of it. Another fact which could hardly fail soon to thrust itself upon his notice would be the extension of his perception of colour. He would find himself able to see several entirely new colours, not in the least resembling any of those included in the spectrum as we at present know it, and therefore of course quite indescribable in any terms at our command. And not only would he see new objects that were wholly of these new colours, but he would also discover that modifications had been introduced into the colour of many objects with which he was quite familiar, according to whether they had or had not some tinge of these new hues intermingled with the old. So that two surfaces of colour which to ordinary eyes appeared to match perfectly would often present distinctly different shades to his keener sight. We have now touched upon some of the principal changes which would be introduced into a man's world when he gained etheric sight; and it must always be remembered that in most cases a corresponding change would at the same time be brought about in his other senses also, so that he would be capable of hearing, and perhaps even of feeling, more than most of those around him. Now supposing that in addition to this he obtained the sight of the astral plane, what further changes would be observable? Well, the changes would be many and great; in fact, a whole new world would open before his eyes. Let us consider its wonders briefly in the same order as before, and see first what difference there would be in the appearance of inanimate objects. On this point I may begin by quoting a recent quaint answer given in _The Vâhan_. "There is a distinct difference between etheric sight and astral sight, and it is the latter which seems to correspond to the fourth dimension. "The easiest way to understand the difference is to take an example. If you looked at a man with both the sights in turn, you would see the buttons at the back of his coat in both cases; only if you used etheric sight you would see them _through_ him, and would see the shank-side as nearest to you, but if you looked astrally, you would see it not only like that, but just as if you were standing behind the man as well. "Or if you were looking etherically at a wooden cube with writing on all its sides, it would be as though the cube were glass, so that you could see through it, and you would see the writing on the opposite side all backwards, while that on the right and left sides would not be clear to you at all unless you moved, because you would see it edgewise. But if you looked at it astrally you would see all the sides at once, and all the right way up, as though the whole cube had been flattened out before you, and you would see every particle of the inside as well--not _through_ the others, but all flattened out. You would be looking at it from another direction, at right angles to all the directions that we know. "If you look at the back of a watch etherically you see all the wheels through it, and the face _through them_, but backwards; if you look at it astrally, you see the face right way up and all the wheels lying separately, but nothing on the top of anything else." Here we have at once the keynote, the principal factor of the change; the man is looking at everything from an absolutely new point of view, entirely outside of anything that he has ever imagined before. He has no longer the slightest difficulty in reading any page in a closed book, because he is not now looking at it through all the other pages before it or behind it, but is looking straight down upon it as though it were the only page to be seen. The depth at which a vein of metal or of coal may lie is no longer a barrier to his sight of it, because he is not now looking through the intervening depth of earth at all. The thickness of a wall, or the number of walls intervening between the observer and the object, would make a great deal of difference to the clearness of the etheric sight; they would make no difference whatever to the astral sight, because on the astral plane they would _not_ intervene between the observer and the object. Of course that sounds paradoxical and impossible, and it _is_ quite inexplicable to a mind not specially trained to grasp the idea; yet it is none the less absolutely true. This carries us straight into the middle of the much-vexed question of the fourth dimension--a question of the deepest interest, though one that we cannot pretend to discuss in the space at our disposal. Those who wish to study it as it deserves are recommended to begin with Mr. C. H. Hinton's _Scientific Romances_ or Dr. A. T. Schofield's _Another World_, and then follow on with the former author's larger work, _A New Era of Thought_. Mr. Hinton not only claims to be able himself to grasp mentally some of the simpler fourth-dimensional figures, but also states that anyone who will take the trouble to follow out his directions may with perseverance acquire that mental grasp likewise. I am not certain that the power to do this is within the reach of everyone, as he thinks, for it appears to me to require considerable mathematical ability; but I can at any rate bear witness that the tesseract or fourth-dimensional cube which he describes is a reality, for it is quite a familiar figure upon the astral plane. He has now perfected a new method of representing the several dimensions by colours instead of by arbitrary written symbols. He states that this will very much simplify the study, as the reader will be able to distinguish instantly by sight any part or feature of the tesseract. A full description of this new method, with plates, is said to be ready for the press, and is expected to appear within a year, so that intending students of this fascinating subject might do well to await its publication. I know that Madame Blavatsky, in alluding to the theory of the fourth dimension, has expressed an opinion that it is only a clumsy way of stating the idea of the entire permeability of matter, and that Mr. W. T. Stead has followed along the same lines, presenting the conception to his readers under the name of _throughth_. Careful, oft-repeated and detailed investigation does, however, seem to show quite conclusively that this explanation does not cover all the facts. It is a perfect description of etheric vision, but the further and quite different idea of the fourth dimension as expounded by Mr. Hinton is the only one which gives any kind of explanation down here of the constantly-observed facts of astral vision. I would therefore venture deferentially to suggest that when Madame Blavatsky wrote as she did, she had in mind etheric vision and not astral, and that the extreme applicability of the phrase to this other and higher faculty, of which she was not at the moment thinking, did not occur to her. The possession of this extraordinary and scarcely expressible power, then, must always be borne in mind through all that follows. It lays every point in the interior of every solid body absolutely open to the gaze of the seer, just as every point in the interior of a circle lies open to the gaze of a man looking down upon it. But even this is by no means all that it gives to its possessor. He sees not only the inside as well as the outside of every object, but also its astral counterpart. Every atom and molecule of physical matter has its corresponding astral atoms and molecules, and the mass which is built up out of these is clearly visible to our clairvoyant. Usually the astral of any object projects somewhat beyond the physical part of it, and thus metals, stones and other things are seen surrounded by an astral aura. It will be seen at once that even in the study of inorganic matter a man gains immensely by the acquisition of this vision. Not only does he see the astral part of the object at which he looks, which before was wholly hidden from him; not only does he see much more of its physical constitution than he did before, but even what was visible to him before is now seen much more clearly and truly. A moment's consideration will show that his new vision approximates much more closely to true perception than does physical sight. For example, if he looks astrally at a glass cube, its sides will all appear equal, as we know they really are, whereas on the physical plane he sees the further side in perspective--that is, it appears smaller than the nearer side, which is, of course, a mere allusion due to his physical limitations. When we come to consider the additional facilities which it offers in the observation of animate objects we see still more clearly the advantages of the astral vision. It exhibits to the clairvoyant the aura of plants and animals, and thus in the case of the latter their desires and emotions, and whatever thoughts they may have, are all plainly shown before his eyes. But it is in dealing with human beings that he will most appreciate the value of this faculty, for he will often be able to help them far more effectually when he guides himself by the information which it gives him. He will be able to see the aura as far up as the astral body, and though that leaves all the higher part of a man still hidden from his gaze, he will nevertheless find it possible by careful observation to learn a good deal about the higher part from what is within his reach. His capacity of examining the etheric double will give him considerable advantage in locating and classifying any defects or diseases of the nervous system, while from the appearance of the astral body he will be at once aware of all the emotions, passions, desires and tendencies of the man before him, and even of very many of his thoughts also. As he looks at a person he will see him surrounded by the luminous mist of the astral aura, flashing with all sorts of brilliant colours, and constantly changing in hue and brilliancy with every variation of the person's thoughts and feelings. He will see this aura flooded with the beautiful rose-colour of pure affection, the rich blue of devotional feeling, the hard, dull brown of selfishness, the deep scarlet of anger, the horrible lurid red of sensuality, the livid grey of fear, the black clouds of hatred and malice, or any of the other hundredfold indications so easily to be read in it by a practised eye; and thus it will be impossible for any persons to conceal from him the real state of their feelings on any subject. These varied indications of the aura are of themselves a study of very deep interest, but I have no space to deal with them in detail here. A much fuller account of them, together with a large number of coloured illustrations, will be found in my work on the subject _Man Visible and Invisible_. Not only does the astral aura show him the temporary result of the emotion passing through it at the moment, but it also gives him, by the arrangement and proportion of its colours when in a condition of comparative rest, a clue to the general disposition and character of its owner. For the astral body is the expression of as much of the man as can be manifested on that plane, so that from what is seen in it much more which belongs to higher planes may be inferred with considerable certainty. In this judgment of character our clairvoyant will be much helped by so much of the person's thought as expresses itself on the astral plane, and consequently comes within his purview. The true home of thought is on the mental plane, and all thought first manifests itself there as a vibration of the mind-body. But if it be in any way a selfish thought, or if it be connected in any way with an emotion or a desire, it immediately descends into the astral plane, and takes to itself a visible form of astral matter. In the case of the majority of men almost all thought would fall under one or other of these heads, so that practically the whole of their personality would lie clearly before our friend's astral vision, since their astral bodies and the thought-forms constantly radiating from them would be to him as an open book in which their characteristics were writ so largely that he who ran might read. Anyone wishing to gain some idea as to _how_ the thought-forms present themselves to clairvoyant vision may satisfy themselves to some extent by examining the illustrations accompanying Mrs. Besant's valuable article on the subject in _Lucifer_ for September 1896. We have seen something of the alteration in the appearance of both animate and inanimate objects when viewed by one possessed of full clairvoyant sight as far as the astral plane is concerned; let us now consider what entirely new objects he will see. He will be conscious of a far greater fulness in nature in many directions, but chiefly his attention will be attracted by the living denizens of this new world. No detailed account of them can be attempted within the space at our disposal; for that the reader is referred to No. V. of the _Theosophical Manuals_. Here we can do no more than barely enumerate a few classes only of the vast hosts of astral inhabitants. He will be impressed by the protean forms of the ceaseless tide of elemental essence, ever swirling around him, menacing often, yet always retiring before a determined effort of the will; he will marvel at the enormous army of entities temporarily called out of this ocean into separate existence by the thoughts and wishes of man, whether good or evil. He will watch the manifold tribes of the nature-spirits at their work or at their play; he will sometimes be able to study with ever-increasing delight the magnificent evolution of some of the lower orders of the glorious kingdom of the devas, which corresponds approximately to the angelic host of Christian terminology. But perhaps of even keener interest to him than any of these will be the human denizens of the astral world, and he will find them divisible into two great classes--those whom we call the living, and those others, most of them infinitely more alive, whom we so foolishly misname the dead. Among the former he will find here and there one wide awake and fully conscious, perhaps sent to bring him some message, or examining him keenly to see what progress he is making; while the majority of his neighbours, when away from their physical bodies during sleep, will drift idly by, so wrapped up in their own cogitations as to be practically unconscious of what is going on around them. Among the great host of the recently dead he will find all degrees of consciousness and intelligence, and all shades of character--for death, which seems to our limited vision so absolute a change, in reality alters nothing of the man himself. On the day after his death he is precisely the same man as he was the day before it, with the same disposition, the same qualities, the same virtues and vices, save only that he has cast aside his physical body; but the loss of that no more makes him in any way a different man than would the removal of an overcoat. So among the dead our student will find men intelligent and stupid, kind-hearted and morose, serious and frivolous, spiritually-minded and sensually-minded, just as among the living. Since he can not only see the dead, but speak with them, he can often be of very great use to them, and give them information and guidance which is of the utmost value to them. Many of them are in a condition of great surprise and perplexity, and sometimes even of acute distress, because they find the facts of the next world so unlike the childish legends which are all that popular religion in the West has to offer with reference to this transcendently important subject; and therefore a man who understands this new world and can explain matters is distinctly a friend in need. In many other ways a man who fully possesses this faculty may be of use to the living as well as to the dead; but of this side of the subject I have already written in my little book on _Invisible Helpers_. In addition to astral entities he will see astral corpses--shades and shells in all stages of decay; but these need only be just mentioned here, as the reader desiring a further account of them will find it in our third and fifth manuals. Another wonderful result which the full enjoyment of astral clairvoyance brings to a man is that he has no longer any break in consciousness. When he lies down at night he leaves his physical body to the rest which it requires, while he goes about his business in the far more comfortable astral vehicle. In the morning he returns to and re-enters his physical body, but without any loss of consciousness or memory between the two states, and thus he is able to live, as it were, a double life which yet is one, and to be usefully employed during the whole of it, instead of losing one-third of his existence in blank unconsciousness. Another strange power of which he may find himself in possession (though its full control belongs rather to the still higher devachanic faculty), is that of magnifying at will the minutest physical or astral particle to any desired size, as though by a microscope--though no microscope ever made or ever likely to be made possesses even a thousandth part of this psychic magnifying power. By its means the hypothetical molecule and atom postulated by science become visible and living realities to the occult student, and on this closer examination he finds them to be much more complex in their structure than the scientific man has yet realised them to be. It also enables him to follow with the closest attention and the most lively interest all kinds of electrical, magnetic, and other etheric action; and when some of the specialists in these branches of science are able to develop the power to see those things whereof they write so facilely, some very wonderful and beautiful revelations may be expected. This is one of the _siddhis_ or powers described in Oriental books as accruing to the man who devotes himself to spiritual development, though the name under which it is there mentioned might not be immediately recognizable. It is referred to as "the power of making oneself large or small at will," and the reason of a description which appears so oddly to reverse the fact is that in reality the method by which this feat is performed is precisely that indicated in these ancient books. It is by the use of temporary visual machinery of inconceivable minuteness that the world of the infinitely little is so clearly seen; and in the same way (or rather in the opposite way) it is by temporarily enormously increasing the size of the machinery used that it becomes possible to increase the breadth of one's view--in the physical sense as well as, let us hope, in the moral--far beyond anything that science has ever dreamt of as possible for man. So that the alteration in size is really in the vehicle of the student's consciousness, and not in anything outside of himself; and the old Oriental book has, after all, put the case more accurately than we. Psychometry and second-sight _in excelsis_ would also be among the faculties which our friend would find at his command; but those will be more fitly dealt with under a later heading, since in almost all their manifestations they involve clairvoyance either in space or in time. I have now indicated, though only in the roughest outlines, what a trained student, possessed of full astral vision, would see in the immensely wider world to which that vision introduced him; but I have said nothing of the stupendous change in his mental attitude which comes from the experiential certainty as to the existence of the soul, its survival after death, the action of the law of karma, and other points of equally paramount importance. The difference between even the profoundest intellectual conviction and the precise knowledge gained by direct personal experience must be felt in order to be appreciated. CHAPTER III. SIMPLE CLAIRVOYANCE: PARTIAL. The experiences of the untrained clairvoyant--and be it remembered that that class includes all European clairvoyants except a very few--will, however, usually fall very far short of what I have attempted to indicate; they will fall short in many different ways--in degree, in variety, or in permanence, and above all in precision. Sometimes, for example, a man's clairvoyance will be permanent, but very partial, extending only perhaps to one or two classes of the phenomena observable; he will find himself endowed with some isolated fragment of higher vision, without apparently possessing other powers of sight which ought normally to accompany that fragment, or even to precede it. For example, one of my dearest friends has all his life had the power to see the atomic ether and atomic astral matter, and to recognize their structure, alike in darkness or in light, as inter-penetrating everything else; yet he has only rarely seen entities whose bodies are composed of the much more obvious lower ethers or denser astral matter, and at any rate is certainly not permanently able to see them. He simply finds himself in possession of this special faculty, without any apparent reason to account for it, or any recognizable relation to anything else: and beyond proving to him the existence of these atomic planes and demonstrating their arrangement, it is difficult to see of what particular use it is to him at present. Still, there the thing is, and it is an earnest of greater things to come--of further powers still awaiting development. There are many similar cases--similar, I mean, not in the possession of that particular form of sight (which is unique in my experience), but in showing the development of some one small part of the full and clear vision of the astral and etheric planes. In nine cases out of ten, however, such partial clairvoyance will at the same time lack precision also--that is to say, there will be a good deal of vague impression and inference about it, instead of the clear-cut definition and certainty of the trained man. Examples of this type are constantly to be found, especially among those who advertise themselves as "test and business clairvoyants." Then, again, there are those who are only temporarily clairvoyant under certain special conditions. Among these there are various subdivisions, some being able to reproduce the state of clairvoyance at will by again setting up the same conditions, while with others it comes sporadically, without any observable reference to their surroundings, and with yet others the power shows itself only once or twice in the whole course of their lives. To the first of these subdivisions belong those who are clairvoyant only when in the mesmeric trance--who when not so entranced are incapable of seeing or hearing anything abnormal. These may sometimes reach great heights of knowledge and be exceedingly precise in their indications, but when that is so they are usually undergoing a course of regular training, though for some reason unable as yet to set themselves free from the leaden weight of earthly life without assistance. In the same class we may put those--chiefly Orientals--who gain some temporary sight only under the influence of certain drugs, or by means of the performance of certain ceremonies. The ceremonialist sometimes hypnotizes himself by his repetitions, and in that condition becomes to some extent clairvoyant; more often he simply reduces himself to a passive condition in which some other entity can obsess him and speak through him. Sometimes, again, his ceremonies are not intended to affect himself at all, but to invoke some astral entity who will give him the required information; but of course that is a case of magic, and not of clairvoyance. Both the drugs and the ceremonies are methods emphatically to be avoided by any one who wishes to approach clairvoyance from the higher side, and use it for his own progress and for the helping of others. The Central African medicine-man or witch-doctor and some of the Tartar Shamans are good examples of the type. Those to whom a certain amount of clairvoyant power has come occasionally only, and without any reference to their own wish, have often been hysterical or highly nervous persons, with whom the faculty was to a large extent one of the symptoms of a disease. Its appearance showed that the physical vehicle was weakened to such a degree that it no longer presented any obstacle in the way of a certain modicum of etheric or astral vision. An extreme example of this class is the man who drinks himself into delirium tremens, and in the condition of absolute physical ruin and impure psychic excitation brought about by the ravages of that fell disease, is able to see for the time some of the loathsome elemental and other entities which he has drawn round himself by his long course of degraded and bestial indulgence. There are, however, other cases where the power of sight has appeared and disappeared without apparent reference to the state of the physical health; but it seems probable that even in those, if they could have been observed closely enough, some alteration in the condition of the etheric double would have been noticed. Those who have only one instance of clairvoyance to report in the whole of their lives are a difficult band to classify at all exhaustively, because of the great variety of the contributory circumstances. There are many among them to whom the experience has come at some supreme moment of their lives, when it is comprehensible that there might have been a temporary exaltation of faculty which would be sufficient to account for it. In the case of another subdivision of them the solitary case has been the seeing of an apparition, most commonly of some friend or relative at the point of death. Two possibilities are then offered for our choice, and in each of them the strong wish of the dying man is the impelling force. That force may have enabled him to materialize himself for a moment, in which case of course no clairvoyance was needed or more probably it may have acted mesmerically upon the percipient, and momentarily dulled his physical and stimulated his higher sensitiveness. In either case the vision is the product of the emergency, and is not repeated simply because the necessary conditions are not repeated. There remains, however, an irresolvable residuum of cases in which a solitary instance occurs of the exercise of undoubted clairvoyance, while yet the occasion seems to us wholly trivial and unimportant. About these we can only frame hypotheses; the governing conditions are evidently not on the physical plane, and a separate investigation of each case would be necessary before we could speak with any certainty as to its causes. In some such it has appeared that an astral entity was endeavouring to make some communication, and was able to impress only some unimportant detail on its subject--all the useful or significant part of what it had to say failing to get through into the subject's consciousness. In the investigation of the phenomena of clairvoyance all these varied types and many others will be encountered, and a certain number of cases of mere hallucination will be almost sure to appear also, and will have to be carefully weeded out from the list of examples. The student of such a subject needs an inexhaustible fund of patience and steady perseverance, but if he goes on long enough he will begin dimly to discern order behind the chaos, and will gradually get some idea of the great laws under which the whole evolution is working. It will help him greatly in his efforts if he will adopt the order which we have just followed--that is, if he will first take the trouble to familiarize himself as thoroughly as may be with the actual facts concerning the planes with which ordinary clairvoyance deals. If he will learn what there really is to be seen with astral and etheric sight, and what their respective limitations are, he will then have, as it were, a standard by which to measure the cases which he observes. Since all instances of partial sight must of necessity fit into some niche in this whole, if he has the outline of the entire scheme in his head he will find it comparatively easy with a little practice to classify the instances with which he is called upon to deal. We have said nothing as yet as to the still more wonderful possibilities of clairvoyance upon the mental plane, nor indeed is it necessary that much should be said, as it is exceedingly improbable that the investigator will ever meet with any examples of it except among pupils properly trained in some of the very highest schools of occultism. For them it opens up yet another new world, vaster far than all those beneath it--a world in which all that we can imagine of utmost glory and splendour is the commonplace of existence. Some account of its marvellous faculty, its eneffable bliss, its magnificent opportunities for learning and for work, is given in the sixth of our Theosophical manuals, and to that the student may be referred. All that it has to give--all of it at least that he can assimilate--is within the reach of the trained pupil, but for the untrained clairvoyant to touch it is hardly more than a bare possibility. It has been done in mesmeric trance, but the occurrence is of exceeding rarity, for it needs almost superhuman qualifications in the way of lofty spiritual aspiration and absolute purity of thought and intention upon the part both of the subject and the operator. To a type of clairvoyance such as this, and still more fully to that which belongs to the plane next above it, the name of spiritual sight may reasonably be applied; and since the celestial world to which it opens our eyes lies all round us here and now, it is fit that our passing reference to it should be made under the heading of simple clairvoyance, though it may be necessary to allude to it again when dealing with clairvoyance in space, to which we will now pass on. CHAPTER IV. CLAIRVOYANCE IN SPACE: INTENTIONAL. We have defined this as the capacity to see events or scenes removed from the seer in space and too far distant for ordinary observation. The instances of this are so numerous and so various that we shall find it desirable to attempt a somewhat more detailed classification of them. It does not much matter what particular arrangement we adopt, so long as it is comprehensive enough to include all our cases; perhaps a convenient one will be to group them under the broad divisions of intentional and unintentional clairvoyance in space, with an intermediate class that might be described as semi-intentional--a curious title, but I will explain it later. As before, I will begin by stating what is possible along this line for the fully-trained seer, and endeavouring to explain how his faculty works and under what limitations it acts. After that we shall find ourselves in a better position to try to understand the manifold examples of partial and untrained sight. Let us then in the first place discuss intentional clairvoyance. It will be obvious from what has previously been said as to the power of astral vision that any one possessing it in its fulness will be able to see by its means practically anything in this world that he wishes to see. The most secret places are open to his gaze, and intervening obstacles have no existence for him, because of the change in his point of view; so that if we grant him the power of moving about in the astral body he can without difficulty go anywhere and see anything within the limits of the planet. Indeed this is to a large extent possible to him even without the necessity of moving the astral body at all, as we shall presently see. Let us consider a little more closely the methods by which this super-physical sight may be used to observe events taking place at a distance. When, for example, a man here in England sees in minutest detail something which is happening at the same moment in India or America, how is it done? A very ingenious hypothesis has been offered to account for the phenomenon. It has been suggested that every object is perpetually throwing off radiations in all directions, similar in some respects to, though infinitely finer than, rays of light, and that clairvoyance is nothing but the power to see by means of these finer radiations. Distance would in that case be no bar to the sight, all intervening objects would be penetrable by these rays, and they would be able to cross one another to infinity in all directions without entanglement, precisely as the vibrations of ordinary light do. Now though this is not exactly the way in which clairvoyance works, the theory is nevertheless quite true in most of its premises. Every object undoubtedly is throwing off radiations in all directions, and it is precisely in this way, though on a higher plane, that the âkâshic records seem to be formed. Of them it will be necessary to say something under our next heading, so we will do no more than mention them for the moment. The phenomena of psychometry are also dependent upon these radiations, as will presently be explained. There are, however, certain practical difficulties in the way of using these etheric vibrations (for that is, of course, what they are) as the medium by means of which one may see anything taking place at a distance. Intervening objects are not entirely transparent, and as the actors in the scene which the experimenter tried to observe would probably be at least equally transparent, it is obvious that serious confusion would be quite likely to result. The additional dimension which would come into play if astral radiations were sensed instead of etheric would obviate some of the difficulties, but would on the other hand introduce some fresh complications of its own; so that for practical purposes, in endeavouring to understand clairvoyance, we may dismiss this hypothesis of radiations from our minds, and turn to the methods of seeing at a distance which are actually at the disposal of the student. It will be found that there are five, four of them being really varieties of clairvoyance, while the fifth does not properly come under that head at all, but belongs to the domain of magic. Let us take this last one first, and get it out of our way. 1. _By the assistance of a nature-spirit._--This method does not necessarily involve the possession of any psychic faculty at all on the part of the experimenter; he need only know how to induce some denizen of the astral world to undertake the investigation for him. This may be done either by invocation or by evocation; that is to say, the operator may either persuade his astral coadjutor by prayers and offerings to give him the help he desires, or he may compel his aid by the determined exercise of a highly-developed will. This method has been largely practised in the East (where the entity employed is usually a nature-spirit) and in old Atlantis, where "the lords of the dark face" used a highly-specialized and peculiarly venomous variety of artificial elemental for this purpose. Information is sometimes obtained in the same sort of way at the spiritualistic _séance_ of modern days, but in that case the messenger employed is more likely to be a recently-deceased human being functioning more or less freely on the astral plane--though even here also it is sometimes an obliging nature-spirit, who is amusing himself by posing as somebody's departed relative. In any case, as I have said, this method is not clairvoyant at all, but magical; and it is mentioned here only in order that the reader may not become confused in the endeavour to classify cases of its use under some of the following headings. 2. _By means of an astral current._--This is a phrase frequently and rather loosely employed in some of our Theosophical literature to cover a considerable variety of phenomena, and among others that which I wish to explain. What is really done by the student who adopts this method is not so much the setting in motion of a current in astral matter, as the erection of a kind of temporary telephone through it. It is impossible here to give an exhaustive disquisition on astral physics, even had I the requisite knowledge to write it; all I need say is that it is possible to make in astral matter a definite connecting-line that shall act as a telegraph-wire to convey vibrations by means of which all that is going on at the other end of it may be seen. Such a line is established, be it understood, not by a direct projection through space of astral matter, but by such action upon a line (or rather many lines) of particles of that matter as will render them capable of forming a conductor for vibrations of the character required. This preliminary action can be set up in two ways--either by the transmission of energy from particle to particle, until the line is formed, or by the use of a force from a higher plane which is capable of acting upon the whole line simultaneously. Of course this latter method implies far greater development, since it involves the knowledge of (and the power to use) forces of a considerably higher level; so that the man who could make his line in this way would not, for his own use, need a line at all, since he could see far more easily and completely by means of an altogether higher faculty. Even the simpler and purely astral operation is a difficult one to describe, though quite an easy one to perform. It may be said to partake somewhat of the nature of the magnetization of a bar of steel; for it consists in what we might call the polarization, by an effort of the human will, of a number of parallel lines of astral atoms reaching from the operator to the scene which he wishes to observe. All the atoms thus affected are held for the time with their axes rigidly parallel to one another, so that they form a kind of temporary tube along which the clairvoyant may look. This method has the disadvantage that the telegraph line is liable to disarrangement or even destruction by any sufficiently strong astral current which happens to cross its path; but if the original effort of will were fairly definite, this would be a contingency of only infrequent occurrence. The view of a distant scene obtained by means of this "astral current" is in many ways not unlike that seen through a telescope. Human figures usually appear very small, like those on a distant stage, but in spite of their diminutive size they are as clear as though they were close by. Sometimes it is possible by this means to hear what is said as well as to see what is done; but as in the majority of cases this does not happen, we must consider it rather as the manifestation of an additional power than as a necessary corollary of the faculty of sight. It will be observed that in this case the seer does not usually leave his physical body at all; there is no sort of projection of his astral vehicle or of any part of himself towards that at which he is looking, but he simply manufactures for himself a temporary astral telescope. Consequently he has, to a certain extent, the use of his physical powers even while he is examining the distant scene; for example, his voice would usually still be under his control, so that he could describe what he saw even while he was in the act of making his observations. The consciousness of the man is, in fact, distinctly still at this end of the line. This fact, however, has its limitations as well as its advantages, and these again largely resemble the limitations of the man using a telescope on the physical plane. The experimenter, for example, has no power to shift this point of view; his telescope, so to speak, has a particular field of view which cannot be enlarged or altered; he is looking at his scene from a certain direction, and he cannot suddenly turn it all round and see how it looks from the other side. If he has sufficient psychic energy to spare, he may drop altogether the telescope that he is using and manufacture an entirely new one for himself which will approach his objective somewhat differently; but this is not a course at all likely to be adopted in practice. But, it may be said, the mere fact that he is using astral sight ought to enable him to see it from all sides at once. So it would if he were using that sight in the normal way upon an object which was fairly near him--within his astral reach, as it were; but at a distance of hundreds or thousands of miles the case is very different. Astral sight gives us the advantage of an additional dimension, but there is still such a thing as position in that dimension, and it is naturally a potent factor in limiting the use of the powers of its plane. Our ordinary three-dimensional sight enables us to see at once every point of the interior of a two-dimensional figure, such as a square, but in order to do that the square must be within a reasonable distance from our eyes; the mere additional dimension will avail a man in London but little in his endeavour to examine a square in Calcutta. Astral sight, when it is cramped by being directed along what is practically a tube, is limited very much as physical sight would be under similar circumstances; though if possessed in perfection it will still continue to show, even at that distance, the auras, and therefore all the emotions and most of the thoughts of the people under observation. There are many people for whom this type of clairvoyance is very much facilitated if they have at hand some physical object which can be used as a starting-point for their astral tube--a convenient focus for their will-power. A ball of crystal is the commonest and most effectual of such foci, since it has the additional advantage of possessing within itself qualities which stimulate psychic faculty; but other objects are also employed, to which we shall find it necessary to refer more particularly when we come to consider semi-intentional clairvoyance. In connection with this astral-current form of clairvoyance, as with others, we find that there are some psychics who are unable to use it except when under the influence of mesmerism. The peculiarity in this case is that among such psychics there are two varieties--one in which by being thus set free the man is enabled to make a telescope for himself, and another in which the magnetizer himself makes the telescope and the subject is simply enabled to see through it. In this latter case obviously the subject has not enough will to form a tube for himself, and the operator, though possessed of the necessary will-power, is not clairvoyant, or he could see through his own tube without needing help. Occasionally, though rarely, the tube which is formed possesses another of the attributes of a telescope--that of magnifying the objects at which it is directed until they seem of life-size. Of course the objects must always be magnified to some extent, or they would be absolutely invisible, but usually the extent is determined by the size of the astral tube, and the whole thing is simply a tiny moving picture. In the few cases where the figures are seen as of life-size by this method, it is probable that an altogether new power is beginning to dawn; but when this happens, careful observation is needed in order to distinguish them from examples of our next class. 3. _By the projection of a thought-form._--The ability to use this method of clairvoyance implies a development somewhat more advanced than the last, since it necessitates a certain amount of control upon the mental plane. All students of Theosophy are aware that thought takes form, at any rate upon its own plane, and in the vast majority of cases upon the astral plane also; but it may not be quite so generally known that if a man thinks strongly of himself as present at any given place, the form assumed by that particular thought will be a likeness of the thinker himself, which will appear at the place in question. Essentially this form must be composed of the matter of the mental plane, but in very many cases it would draw round itself matter of the astral plane also, and so would approach much nearer to visibility. There are, in fact, many instances in which it has been seen by the person thought of--most probably by means of the unconscious mesmeric influence emanating from the original thinker. None of the consciousness of the thinker would, however, be included within this thought-form. When once sent out from him, it would normally be a quite separate entity--not indeed absolutely unconnected with its maker, but practically so as far as the possibility of receiving any impression through it is concerned. This third type of clairvoyance consists, then, in the power to retain so much connection with and so much hold over a newly-erected thought-form as will render it possible to receive impressions by means of it. Such impressions as were made upon the form would in this case be transmitted to the thinker--not along an astral telegraph line, as before, but by sympathetic vibration. In a perfect case of this kind of clairvoyance it is almost as though the seer projected a part of his consciousness into the thought-form, and used it as a kind of outpost, from which observation was possible. He sees almost as well as he would if he himself stood in the place of his thought-form. The figures at which he is looking will appear to him as of life-size and close at hand, instead of tiny and at a distance, as in the previous case; and he will find it possible to shift his point of view if he wishes to do so. Clairaudience is perhaps less frequently associated with this type of clairvoyance than with the last, but its place is to some extent taken by a kind of mental perception of the thoughts and intentions of those who are seen. Since the man's consciousness is still in the physical body, he will be able (even while exercising the faculty) to hear and to speak, in so far as he can do this without any distraction of his attention. The moment that the intentness of his thought fails the whole vision is gone, and he will have to construct a fresh thought-form before he can resume it. Instances in which this kind of sight is possessed with any degree of perfection by untrained people are naturally rarer than in the case of the previous type, because of the capacity for mental control required, and the generally finer nature of the forces employed. 4. _By travelling in the astral body._--We enter here upon an entirely new variety of clairvoyance, in which the consciousness of the seer no longer remains in or closely connected with his physical body, but is definitely transferred to the scene which he is examining. Though it has no doubt greater dangers for the untrained seer than either of the methods previously described, it is yet quite the most satisfactory form of clairvoyance open to him, for the immensely superior variety which we shall consider under our fifth head is not available except for specially trained students. In this case the man's body is either asleep or in trance, and its organs are consequently not available for use while the vision is going on, so that all description of what is seen, and all questioning as to further particulars, must be postponed until the wanderer returns to this plane. On the other hand the sight is much fuller and more perfect; the man hears as well as sees everything which passes before him, and can move about freely at will within the very wide limits of the astral plane. He can see and study at leisure all the other inhabitants of that plane, so that the great world of the nature-spirits (of which the traditional fairy-land is but a very small part) lies open before him, and even that of some of the lower devas. He has also the immense advantage of being able to take part, as it were, in the scenes which come before his eyes--of conversing at will with these various astral entities, from whom so much information that is curious and interesting may be obtained. If in addition he can learn how to materialize himself (a matter of no great difficulty for him when once the knack is acquired), he will be able to take part in physical events or conversations at a distance, and to show himself to an absent friend at will. Again, he has the additional power of being able to hunt about for what he wants. By means of the varieties of clairvoyance previously described, for all practical purposes he could find a person or a place only when he was already acquainted with it, or when he was put _en rapport_ with it by touching something physically connected with it, as in psychometry. It is true that by the third method a certain amount of motion is possible, but the process is a tedious one except for quite short distances. By the use of the astral body, however, a man can move about quite freely and rapidly in any direction, and can (for example) find without difficulty any place pointed out upon a map, without either any previous knowledge of the spot or any object to establish a connection with it. He can also readily rise high into the air so as to gain a bird's-eye view of the country which he is examining, so as to observe its extent, the contour of its coast-line, or its general character. Indeed, in every way his power and freedom are far greater when he uses this method than they have been in any of the previous cases. A good example of the full possession of this power is given, on the authority of the German writer Jung Stilling, by Mrs. Crowe in _The Night Side of Nature_ (p. 127). The story is related of a seer who is stated to have resided in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia, in America. His habits were retired, and he spoke little; he was grave, benevolent and pious, and nothing was known against his character except that he had the reputation of possessing some secrets that were considered not altogether _lawful_. Many extraordinary stories were told of him, and amongst the rest the following:-- "The wife of a ship captain (whose husband was on a voyage to Europe and Africa, and from whom she had been long without tidings), being overwhelmed with anxiety for his safety, was induced to address herself to this person. Having listened to her story he begged her to excuse him for a while, when he would bring her the intelligence she required. He then passed into an inner room and she sat herself down to wait; but his absence continuing longer than she expected, she became impatient, thinking he had forgotten her, and softly approaching the door she peeped through some aperture, and to her surprise beheld him lying on a sofa as motionless as if he were dead. She of course did not think it advisable to disturb him, but waited his return, when he told her that her husband had not been able to write to her for such and such reasons, but that he was then in a coffee-house in London and would very shortly be home again. "Accordingly he arrived, and as the lady learnt from him that the causes of his unusual silence had been precisely those alleged by the man, she felt extremely desirous of ascertaining the truth of the rest of the information. In this she was gratified, for he no sooner set his eyes on the magician than he said that he had seen him before on a certain day in a coffee-house in London, and that he told him that his wife was extremely uneasy about him, and that he, the captain, had thereon mentioned how he had been prevented writing, adding that he was on the eve of embarking for America. He had then lost sight of the stranger amongst the throng, and knew nothing more about him." We have of course no means now of knowing what evidence Jung Stilling had of the truth of this story, though he declares himself to have been quite satisfied with the authority on which he relates it; but so many similar things have happened that there is no reason to doubt its accuracy. The seer, however, must either have developed his faculty for himself or learnt it in some school other than that from which most of our Theosophical information is derived; for in our case there is a well-understood regulation expressly forbidding the pupils from giving any manifestation of such power which can be definitely proved at both ends in that way, and so constitute what is called "a phenomenon." That this regulation is emphatically a wise one is proved to all who know anything of the history of our Society by the disastrous results which followed from a very slight temporary relaxation of it. I have given some quite modern cases almost exactly parallel to the above in my little book on _Invisible Helpers_. An instance of a lady well-known to myself, who frequently thus appears to friends at a distance, is given by Mr. Stead in _Real Ghost Stories_ (p. 27); and Mr. Andrew Lang gives, in his _Dreams and Ghosts_ (p. 89), an account of how Mr. Cleave, then at Portsmouth, appeared intentionally on two occasions to a young lady in London, and alarmed her considerably. There is any amount of evidence to be had on the subject by any one who cares to study it seriously. This paying of intentional astral visits seems very often to become possible when the principles are loosened at the approach of death for people who were unable to perform such a feat at any other time. There are even more examples of this class than of the other; I epitomize a good one given by Mr. Andrew Lang on p. 100 of the book last cited--one of which he himself says, "Not many stories have such good evidence in their favour." "Mary, the wife of John Goffe of Rochester, being afflicted with a long illness, removed to her father's house at West Malling, about nine miles from her own. "The day before her death she grew very impatiently desirous to see her two children, whom she had left at home to the care of a nurse. She was too ill to be moved, and between one and two o'clock in the morning she fell into a trance. One widow Turner, who watched with her that night, says that her eyes were open and fixed, and her jaw fallen. Mrs. Turner put her hand upon her mouth, but could perceive no breath. She thought her to be in a fit, and doubted whether she were dead or alive. "The next morning the dying woman told her mother that she had been at home with her children, saying, I was with them last night when I was asleep.' "The nurse at Rochester, widow Alexander by name, affirms that a little before two o'clock that morning she saw the likeness of the said Mary Goffe come out of the next chamber (where the elder child lay in a bed by itself), the door being left open, and stood by her bedside for about a quarter of an hour; the younger child was there lying by her. Her eyes moved and her mouth went, but she said nothing. The nurse, moreover, says that she was perfectly awake; it was then daylight, being one of the longest days in the year. She sat up in bed and looked steadfastly on the apparition. In that time she heard the bridge clock strike two, and a while after said: 'In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, what art thou?' Thereupon the apparition removed and went away; she slipped on her clothes and followed, but what became on't, she cannot tell." The nurse apparently was more frightened by its disappearance than its presence, for after this she was afraid to stay in the house, and so spent the rest of the time until six o'clock in walking up and down outside. When the neighbours were awake she told her tale to them, and they of course said she had dreamt it all; she naturally enough warmly repudiated that idea, but could obtain no credence until the news of the other side of the story arrived from West Malling, when people had to admit that there might have been something in it. A noteworthy circumstance in this story is that the mother found it necessary to pass from ordinary sleep into the profounder trance condition before she could consciously visit her children; it can, however, be paralleled here and there among the large number of similar accounts which may be found in the literature of the subject. Two other stories of precisely the same type--in which a dying mother, earnestly desiring to see her children, falls into a deep sleep, visits them and returns to say that she has done so--are given by Dr. F. G. Lee. In one of them the mother, when dying in Egypt, appears to her children at Torquay, and is clearly seen in broad daylight by all five of the children and also by the nursemaid. (_Glimpses of the Supernatural_, vol. ii., p. 64.) In the other a Quaker lady dying at Cockermouth is clearly seen and recognized in daylight by her three children at Settle, the remainder of the story being practically identical with the one given above. (_Glimpses in the Twilight_, p. 94.) Though these cases appear to be less widely known than that of Mary Goffe, the evidence of their authenticity seems to be quite as good, as will be seen by the attestations obtained by the reverend author of the works from which they are quoted. The man who fully possesses this fourth type of clairvoyance has many and great advantages at his disposal, even in addition to those already mentioned. Not only can he visit without trouble or expense all the beautiful and famous places of the earth, but if he happens to be a scholar, think what it must mean to him that he has access to all the libraries of the world! What must it be for the scientifically-minded man to see taking place before his eyes so many of the processes of the secret chemistry of nature, or for the philosopher to have revealed to him so much more than ever before of the working of the great mysteries of life and death? To him those who are gone from this plane are dead no longer, but living and within reach for a long time to come; for him many of the conceptions of religion are no longer matters of faith, but of knowledge. Above all, he can join the army of invisible helpers, and really be of use on a large scale. Undoubtedly clairvoyance, even when confined to the astral plane, is a great boon to the student. Certainly it has its dangers also, especially for the untrained; danger from evil entities of various kinds, which may terrify or injure those who allow themselves to lose the courage to face them boldly; danger of deception of all sorts, of misconceiving and mis-interpreting what is seen; greatest of all, the danger of becoming conceited about the thing and of thinking it impossible to make a mistake. But a little common-sense and a little experience should easily guard a man against these. 5. _By travelling in the mental body._--This is simply a higher and, as it were, glorified form of the last type. The vehicle employed is no longer the astral body, but the mind-body--a vehicle, therefore, belonging to the mental plane, and having within it all the potentialities of the wonderful sense of that plane, so transcendent in its action yet so impossible to describe. A man functioning in this leaves his astral body behind him along with the physical, and if he wishes to show himself upon the astral plane for any reason, he does not send for his own astral vehicle, but just by a single action of his will materializes one for his temporary need. Such an astral materialization is sometimes called the mâyâvirûpa, and to form it for the first time usually needs the assistance of a qualified Master. The enormous advantages given by the possession of this power are the capacity of entering upon all the glory and the beauty of the higher land of bliss, and the possession, even when working on the astral plane, of the far more comprehensive mental sense which opens up to the student such marvellous vistas of knowledge, and practically renders error all but impossible. This higher flight, however, is possible for the trained man only, since only under definite training can a man at this stage of evolution learn to employ his mental body as a vehicle. Before leaving the subject of full and intentional clairvoyance, it may be well to devote a few words to answering one or two questions as to its limitations, which constantly occur to students. Is it possible, we are often asked, for the seer to find any person with whom he wishes to communicate, anywhere in the world, whether he be living or dead? To this reply must be a conditional affirmative. Yes, it is possible to find any person if the experimenter can, in some way or other, put himself _en rapport_ with that person. It would be hopeless to plunge vaguely into space to find a total stranger among all the millions around us without any kind of clue; but, on the other hand, a very slight clue would usually be sufficient. If the clairvoyant knows anything of the man whom he seeks, he will have no difficulty in finding him, for every man has what may be called a kind of musical chord of his own--a chord which is the expression of him as a whole, produced perhaps by a sort of average of the rates of vibration of all his different vehicles on their respective planes. If the operator knows how to discern that chord and to strike it, it will by sympathetic vibration attract the attention of the man instantly wherever he may be, and will evoke an immediate response from him. Whether the man were living or recently dead would make no difference at all, and clairvoyance of the fifth class could at once find him even among the countless millions in the heaven-world, though in that case the man himself would be unconscious that he was under observation. Naturally a seer whose consciousness did not range higher than the astral plane--who employed therefore one of the earlier methods of seeing--would not be able to find a person upon the mental plane at all; yet even he would at least be able to tell that the man sought for was upon that plane, from the mere fact that the striking of the chord as far up as the astral level produced no response. If the man sought be a stranger to the seeker, the latter will need something connected with him to act as a clue--a photograph, a letter written by him, an article which has belonged to him, and is impregnated with his personal magnetism; any of these would do in the hands of a practised seer. Again I say, it must not therefore be supposed that pupils who have been taught how to use this art are at liberty to set up a kind of intelligence office through which communication can be had with missing or dead relatives. A message given from this side to such an one might or might not be handed on, according to circumstances, but even if it were, no reply might be brought, lest the transaction should partake of the nature of a phenomenon--something which could be proved on the physical plane to have been an act of magic. Another question often raised is as to whether, in the action of psychic vision, there is any limitation as to distance. The reply would seem to be that there should be no limit but that of the respective planes. It must be remembered that the astral and mental planes of our earth are as definitely its own as its atmosphere, though they extend considerably further from it even in our three-dimensional space than does the physical air. Consequently the passage to, or the detailed sight of, other planets would not be possible for any system of clairvoyance connected with these planes. It _is_ quite possible and easy for the man who can raise his consciousness to the buddhic plane to pass to any other globe belonging to our chain of worlds, but that is outside our present subject. Still a good deal of additional information about other planets can be obtained by the use of such clairvoyant faculties as we have been describing. It is possible to make sight enormously clearer by passing outside of the constant disturbances of the earth's atmosphere, and it is also not difficult to learn how to put on an exceedingly high magnifying power, so that even by ordinary clairvoyance a good deal of very interesting astronomical knowledge may be gained. But as far as this earth and its immediate surroundings are concerned, there is practically no limitation. CHAPTER V. CLAIRVOYANCE IN SPACE: SEMI-INTENTIONAL. Under this rather curious title I am grouping together the cases of all those people who definitely set themselves to see something, but have no idea what the something will be, and no control over the sight after the visions have begun--psychic Micawbers, who put themselves into a receptive condition, and then simply wait for something to turn up. Many trance-mediums would come under this heading; they either in some way hypnotize themselves or are hypnotized by some "spirit-guide," and then they describe the scenes or persons that happen to float before their vision. Sometimes, however, when in this condition they see what is taking place at a distance, and so they come to have a place among our "clairvoyants in space." But the largest and most widely-spread band of these semi-intentional clairvoyants are the various kinds of crystal-gazers--those who, as Mr. Andrew Lang puts it, "stare into a crystal ball, a cup, a mirror, a blob of ink (Egypt and India), a drop of blood (among the Maories of New Zealand), a bowl of water (Red Indian), a pond (Roman and African), water in a glass bowl (in Fez), or almost any polished surface" (_Dreams and Ghosts_, p. 57). Two pages later Mr. Lang gives us a very good example of the kind of vision most frequently seen in this way. "I had given a glass ball," he says, "to a young lady, Miss Baillie, who had scarcely any success with it. She lent it to Miss Leslie, who saw a large square, old-fashioned red sofa covered with muslin, which she found in the next country-house she visited. Miss Baillie's brother, a young athlete, laughed at these experiments, took the ball into the study, and came back looking 'gey gash.' He admitted that he had seen a vision--somebody he knew under a lamp. He would discover during the week whether he saw right or not. This was at 5.30 on a Sunday afternoon. "On Tuesday, Mr. Baillie was at a dance in a town some forty miles from his home, and met a Miss Preston. 'On Sunday,' he said, 'about half-past five you were sitting under a standard lamp in a dress I never saw you wear, a blue blouse with lace over the shoulders, pouring out tea for a man in blue serge, whose back was towards me, so that I only saw the tip of his moustache.' "'Why, the blinds must have been up,' said Miss Preston. "'I was at Dulby,' said Mr. Baillie, and he undeniably was." This is quite a typical case of crystal-gazing--the picture correct in every detail, you see, and yet absolutely unimportant and bearing no apparent signification of any sort to either party, except that it served to prove to Mr. Baillie that there was something in crystal-gazing. Perhaps more frequently the visions tend to be of a romantic character--men in foreign dress, or beautiful though generally unknown landscapes. Now what is the rationale of this kind of clairvoyance? As I have indicated above, it belongs usually to the "astral-current" type, and the crystal or other object simply acts as a focus for the will-power of the seer, and a convenient starting-point for his astral tube. There are some who can influence what they will see by their will, that is to say they have the power of pointing their telescope as they wish; but the great majority just form a fortuitous tube and see whatever happens to present itself at the end of it. Sometimes it may be a scene comparatively near at hand, as in the case just quoted; at other times it will be a far-away Oriental landscape; at others yet it may be a reflection of some fragment of an âkâshic record, and then the picture will contain figures in some antique dress, and the phenomenon belongs to our third large division of "clairvoyance in time." It is said that visions of the future are sometimes seen in crystals also--a further development to which we must refer later. I have seen a clairvoyant use instead of the ordinary shining surface a dead black one, produced by a handful of powdered charcoal in a saucer. Indeed it does not seem to matter much what is used as a focus, except that pure crystal has an undoubted advantage over other substances in that its peculiar arrangement of elemental essence renders it specially stimulating to the psychic faculties. It seems probable, however, that in cases where a tiny brilliant object is employed--such as a point of light, or the drop of blood used by the Maories--the instance is in reality merely one of self-hypnotization. Among non-European nations the experiment is very frequently preceded or accompanied by magical ceremonies and invocations, so that it is quite likely that such sight as is gained may sometimes be really that of some foreign entity, and so the phenomenon may in fact be merely a case of temporary possession, and not of clairvoyance at all. CHAPTER VI. CLAIRVOYANCE IN SPACE: UNINTENTIONAL. Under this heading we may group together all those cases in which visions of some event which is taking place at a distance are seen quite unexpectedly and without any kind of preparation. There are people who are subject to such visions, while there are many others to whom such a thing will happen only once in a life-time. The visions are of all kinds and of all degrees of completeness, and apparently may be produced by various causes. Sometimes the reason of the vision is obvious, and the subject matter of the gravest importance; at other times no reason at all is discoverable, and the events shown seem of the most trivial nature. Sometimes these glimpses of the super-physical faculty come as waking visions, and sometimes they manifest during sleep as vivid or oft-repeated dreams. In this latter case the sight employed is perhaps usually of the kind assigned to our fourth subdivision of clairvoyance in space, for the sleeping man often travels in his astral body to some spot with which his affections or interests are closely connected, and simply watches what takes place there; in the former it seems probable that the second type of clairvoyance, by means of the astral current, is called into requisition. But in this case the current or tube is formed quite unconsciously, and is often the automatic result of a strong thought or emotion projected from one end or the other--either from the seer or the person who is seen. The simplest plan will be to give a few instances of the different kinds, and to intersperse among them such further explanations as may seem necessary. Mr. Stead has collected a large and varied assortment of recent and well-authenticated cases in his _Real Ghost Stories_, and I will select some of my examples from them, occasionally condensing slightly to save space. There are cases in which it is at once obvious to any Theosophical student that the exceptional instance of clairvoyance was specially brought about by one of the band whom we have called "Invisible Helpers" in order that aid might be rendered to some one in sore need. To this class, undoubtedly, belongs the story told by Captain Yonnt, of the Napa Valley in California, to Dr. Bushnell, who repeats it in his _Nature and the Supernatural_ (p. 14). "About six or seven years previous, in a mid-winter's night, he had a dream in which he saw what appeared to be a company of emigrants arrested by the snows of the mountains, and perishing rapidly by cold and hunger. He noted the very cast of the scenery, marked by a huge, perpendicular front of white rock cliff; he saw the men cutting off what appeared to be tree-tops rising out of deep gulfs of snow; he distinguished the very features of the persons and the look of their particular distress. "He awoke profoundly impressed by the distinctness and apparent reality of the dream. He at length fell asleep, and dreamed exactly the same dream over again. In the morning he could not expel it from his mind. Falling in shortly after with an old hunter comrade, he told his story, and was only the more deeply impressed by his recognizing without hesitation the scenery of the dream. This comrade came over the Sierra by the Carson Valley Pass, and declared that a spot in the Pass exactly answered his description. "By this the unsophistical patriarch was decided. He immediately collected a company of men, with mules and blankets and all necessary provisions. The neighbours were laughing meantime at his credulity. 'No matter,' he said, 'I am able to do this, and I will, for I verily believe that the fact is according to my dream.' The men were sent into the mountains one hundred and fifty miles distant direct to the Carson Valley Pass. And there they found the company exactly in the condition of the dream, and brought in the remnant alive." Since it is not stated that Captain Yonnt was in the habit of seeing visions, it seems clear that some helper, observing the forlorn condition of the emigrant party, took the nearest impressionable and otherwise suitable person (who happened to be the Captain) to the spot in the astral body, and aroused him sufficiently to fix the scene firmly in his memory. The helper may possibly have arranged an "astral current" for the Captain instead, but the former suggestion is more probable. At any rate the motive, and broadly the method, of the work are obvious enough in this case. Sometimes the "astral current" may be set going by a strong emotional thought at the other end of the line, and this may happen even though the thinker has no such intention in his mind. In the rather striking story which I am about to quote, it is evident that the link was formed by the doctor's frequent thought about Mrs. Broughton, yet he had clearly no especial wish that she should see what he was doing at the time. That it was this kind of clairvoyance that was employed is shown by the fixity of her point of view--which, be it observed, is not the doctor's point of view sympathetically transferred (as it might have been) since she sees his back without recognizing him. The story is to be found in the _Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society_ (vol. ii., p. 160). "Mrs. Broughton awoke one night in 1844, and roused her husband, telling him that something dreadful had happened in France. He begged her to go to sleep again, and not trouble him. She assured him that she was not asleep when she saw what she insisted on telling him--what she saw in fact. "First a carriage accident--which she did not actually see, but what she saw was the result--a broken carriage, a crowd collected, a figure gently raised and carried into the nearest house, then a figure lying on a bed which she then recognized as the Duke of Orleans. Gradually friends collecting round the bed--among them several members of the French royal family--the queen, then the king, all silently, tearfully, watching the evidently dying duke. One man (she could see his back, but did not know who he was) was a doctor. He stood bending over the duke, feeling his pulse, with his watch in the other hand. And then all passed away, and she saw no more. "As soon as it was daylight she wrote down in her journal all that she had seen. It was before the days of electric telegraph, and two or more days passed before the _Times_ announced 'The Death of the Duke of Orleans.' Visiting Paris a short time afterwards she saw and recognized the place of the accident and received the explanation of her impression. The doctor who attended the dying duke was an old friend of hers, and as he watched by the bed his mind had been constantly occupied with her and her family." A commoner instance is that in which strong affection sets up the necessary current; probably a fairly steady stream of mutual thought is constantly flowing between the two parties in the case, and some sudden need or dire extremity on the part of one of them endues this stream temporarily with the polarizing power which is needful to create the astral telescope. An illustrative example is quoted from the same _Proceedings_ (vol. i., p. 30). "On September 9th, 1848, at the siege of Mooltan, Major-General R----, C.B., then adjutant of his regiment, was most severely and dangerously wounded; and, supposing himself to be dying, asked one of the officers with him to take the ring off his finger and send it to his wife, who at the time was fully one hundred and fifty miles distant at Ferozepore. "'On the night of September 9th, 1848,' writes his wife, 'I was lying on my bed, between sleeping and waking, when I distinctly saw my husband being carried off the field seriously wounded, and heard his voice saying, "Take this ring off my finger and send it to my wife." All the next day I could not get the sight or the voice out of my mind. "'In due time I heard of General R---- having been severely wounded in the assault of Mooltan. He survived, however, and is still living. It was not for some time after the siege that I heard from General L----, the officer who helped to carry my husband off the field, that the request as to the ring was actually made by him, just as I heard it at Ferozepore at that very time." Then there is the very large class of casual clairvoyant visions which have no traceable cause--which are apparently quite meaningless, and have no recognizable relation to any events known to the seer. To this class belong many of the landscapes seen by some people just before they fall asleep. I quote a capital and very realistic account of an experience of this sort from Mr. W. T. Stead's _Real Ghost Stories_ (p. 65). "I got into bed but was not able to go to sleep. I shut my eyes and waited for sleep to come; instead of sleep, however, there came to me a succession of curiously vivid clairvoyant pictures. There was no light in the room, and it was perfectly dark; I had my eyes shut also. But notwithstanding the darkness I suddenly was conscious of looking at a scene of singular beauty. It was as if I saw a living miniature about the size of a magic-lantern slide. At this moment I can recall the scene as if I saw it again. It was a seaside piece. The moon was shining upon the water, which rippled slowly on to the beach. Right before me a long mole ran into the water. "On either side of the mole irregular rocks stood up above the sea-level. On the shore stood several houses, square and rude, which resembled nothing that I had ever seen in house architecture. No one was stirring, but the moon was there and the sea and the gleam of the moonlight on the rippling waters, just as if I had been looking on the actual scene. "It was so beautiful that I remember thinking that if it continued I should be so interested in looking at it that I should never go to sleep. I was wide awake, and at the same time that I saw the scene I distinctly heard the dripping of the rain outside the window. Then suddenly, without any apparent object or reason, the scene changed. "The moonlit sea vanished, and in its place I was looking right into the interior of a reading-room. It seemed as if it had been used as a schoolroom in the daytime, and was employed as a reading-room in the evening. I remember seeing one reader who had a curious resemblance to Tim Harrington, although it was not he, hold up a magazine or book in his hand and laugh. It was not a picture--it was there. "The scene was just as if you were looking through an opera-glass; you saw the play of the muscles, the gleaming of the eye, every movement of the unknown persons in the unnamed place into which you were gazing. I saw all that without opening my eyes, nor did my eyes have anything to do with it. You see such things as these as it were with another sense which is more inside your head than in your eyes. "This was a very poor and paltry experience, but it enabled me to understand better how it is that clairvoyants see than any amount of disquisition. "The pictures were _apropos_ of nothing; they had been suggested by nothing I had been reading or talking of; they simply came as if I had been able to look through a glass at what was occurring somewhere else in the world. I had my peep, and then it passed, nor have I had a recurrence of a similar experience." Mr. Stead regards that as a "poor and paltry experience," and it may perhaps be considered so when compared with the greater possibilities, yet I know many students who would be very thankful to have even so much of direct personal experience to tell. Small though it may be in itself, it at once gives the seer a clue to the whole thing, and clairvoyance would be a living actuality to a man who had seen even that much in a way that it could never have been without that little touch with the unseen world. These pictures were much too clear to have been mere reflections of the thought of others, and besides, the description unmistakably shows that they were views seen through an astral telescope; so either Mr. Stead must quite unconsciously have set a current going for himself, or (which is much more probable) some kindly astral entity set it in motion for him, and gave him, to while away a tedious delay, any pictures that happened to come handy at the end of the tube. CHAPTER VII. CLAIRVOYANCE IN TIME: THE PAST. Clairvoyance in time--that is to say, the power of reading the past and the future--is, like all the other varieties, possessed by different people in very varying degrees, ranging from the man who has both faculties fully at his command, down to one who only occasionally gets involuntary and very imperfect glimpses or reflections of these scenes of other days. A person of the latter type might have, let us say, a vision of some event in the past; but it would be liable to the most serious distortion, and even if it happened to be fairly accurate it would almost certainly be a mere isolated picture, and he would probably be quite unable to relate it to what had occurred before or after it, or to account for anything unusual which might appear in it. The trained man, on the other hand, could follow the drama connected with his picture backwards or forwards to any extent that might seem desirable, and trace out with equal ease the causes which had led up to it or the results which it in turn would produce. We shall probably find it easier to grasp this somewhat difficult section of our subject if we consider it in the subdivisions which naturally suggest themselves, and deal first with the vision which looks backwards into the past, leaving for later examination that which pierces the veil of the future. In each case it will be well for us to try to understand what we can of the _modus operandi_, even though our success can at best be only a very modified one, owing first to the imperfect information on some parts of the subject at present possessed by our investigators, and secondly to the ever-recurring failure of physical words to express a hundredth part even of the little we do know about higher planes and faculties. In the case then of a detailed vision of the remote past, how is it obtained, and to what plane of nature does it really belong? The answer to both these questions is contained in the reply that it is read from the âkâshic records; but that statement in return will require a certain amount of explanation for many readers. The word is in truth somewhat of a misnomer, for though the records are undoubtedly read from the âkâsha, or matter of the mental plane, yet it is not to it that they really belong. Still worse is the alternative title, "records of the astral light," which has sometimes been employed, for these records lie far beyond the astral plane, and all that can be obtained on it are only broken glimpses of a kind of double reflection of them, as will presently be explained. Like so many others of our Theosophical terms, the word âkâsha has been very loosely used. In some of our earlier books it was considered as synonymous with astral light, and in others it was employed to signify any kind of invisible matter, from mûlaprakriti down to the physical ether. In later books its use has been restricted to the matter of the mental plane, and it is in that sense that the records may be spoken of as âkâshic, for although they are not originally made on that plane any more than on the astral, yet it is there that we first come definitely into contact with them and find it possible to do reliable work with them. This subject of the records is by no means an easy one to deal with, for it is one of that numerous class which requires for its perfect comprehension faculties of a far higher order than any which humanity has yet evolved. The real solution of its problems lies on planes far beyond any that we can possibly know at present, and any view that we take of it must necessarily be of the most imperfect character, since we cannot but look at it from below instead of from above. The idea which we form of it must therefore be only partial, yet it need not mislead us unless we allow ourselves to think of the tiny fragment which is all that we can see as though it were the perfect whole. If we are careful that such conceptions as we may form shall be accurate as far as they go, we shall have nothing to unlearn, though much to add, when in the course of our further progress we gradually acquire the higher wisdom. Be it understood then at the commencement that a thorough grasp of our subject is an impossibility at the present stage of our evolution, and that many points will arise as to which no exact explanation is yet obtainable, though it may often be possible to suggest analogies and to indicate the lines along which an explanation must lie. Let us then try to carry back our thoughts to the beginning of this solar system to which we belong. We are all familiar with the ordinary astronomical theory of its origin--that which is commonly called the nebular hypothesis--according to which it first came into existence as a gigantic glowing nebula, of a diameter far exceeding that of the orbit of even the outermost of the planets, and then, as in the course of countless ages that enormous sphere gradually cooled and contracted, the system as we know it was formed. Occult science accepts that theory, in its broad outline, as correctly representing the purely physical side of the evolution of our system, but it would add that if we confine our attention to this physical side only we shall have a very incomplete and incoherent idea of what really happened. It would postulate, to begin with, that the exalted Being who undertakes the formation of a system (whom we sometimes call the Logos of the system) first of all forms in His mind a complete conception of the whole of it with all its successive chains of worlds. By the very act of forming that conception He calls the whole into simultaneous objective existence on the plane of His thought--a plane of course far above all those of which we know anything--from which the various globes descend when required into whatever state of further objectivity may be respectively destined for them. Unless we constantly bear in mind this fact of the real existence of the whole system from the very beginning on a higher plane, we shall be perpetually misunderstanding the physical evolution which we see taking place down here. But occultism has more than this to teach us on the subject. It tells us not only that all this wonderful system to which we belong is called into existence by the Logos, both on lower and on higher planes, but also that its relation to Him is closer even than that, for it is absolutely a part of Him--a partial expression of Him upon the physical plane--and that the movement and energy of the whole system is _His_ energy, and is all carried on within the limits of His aura. Stupendous as this conception is, it will yet not be wholly unthinkable to those of us who have made any study of the subject of the aura. We are familiar with the idea that as a person progresses on the upward path his causal body, which is the determining limit of his aura, distinctly increases in size as well as in luminosity and purity of colour. Many of us know from experience that the aura of a pupil who has already made considerable advance on the Path is very much larger than that of one who is but just setting his foot upon its first step, while in the case of an Adept the proportional increase is far greater still. We read in quite exoteric Oriental scriptures of the immense extension of the aura of the Buddha; I think that three miles is mentioned on one occasion as its limit, but whatever the exact measurement may be, it is obvious that we have here another record of this fact of the extremely rapid growth of the causal body as man passes on his upward way. There can be little doubt that the rate of this growth would itself increase in geometrical progression, so that it need not surprise us to hear of an Adept on a still higher level whose aura is capable of including the entire world at once; and from this we may gradually lead our minds up to the conception that there is a Being so exalted as to comprehend within Himself the whole of our solar system. And we should remember that, enormous as this seems to us, it is but as the tiniest drop in the vast ocean of space. So of the Logos (who has in Him all the capacities and qualities with which we can possibly endow the highest God we can imagine) it is literally true, as was said of old, that "of Him and through Him, and to Him are all things," and "in Him we live and move and have our being." Now if this be so, it is clear that whatever happens within our system happens absolutely within the consciousness of its Logos, and so we at once see that the true record must be His memory; and furthermore, it is obvious that on whatever plane that wondrous memory exists, it cannot but be far above anything that we know, and consequently whatever records we may find ourselves able to read must be only a reflection of that great dominant fact, mirrored in the denser media of the lower planes. On the astral plane it is at once evident that this is so--that what we are dealing with is only a reflection of a reflection, and an exceedingly imperfect one, for such records as can be reached there are fragmentary in the extreme, and often seriously distorted. We know how universally water is used as a symbol of the astral light, and in this particular case it is a remarkably apt one. From the surface of still water we may get a clear reflection of the surrounding objects, just as from a mirror; but at the best it is only a reflection--a representation in two dimensions of three-dimensional objects, and therefore differing in all its qualities, except colour, from that which it represents; and in addition to this, it is always reversed. But let the surface of the water be ruffled by the wind and what do we find then? A reflection still, certainly, but so broken up and distorted as to be quite useless or even misleading as a guide to the shape and real appearance of the objects reflected. Here and there for a moment we might happen to get a clear reflection of some minute part of the scene--of a single leaf from a tree, for example; but it would need long labour and considerable knowledge of natural laws to build up anything like a true conception of the object reflected by putting together even a large number of such isolated fragments of an image of it. Now in the astral plane we can never have anything approaching to what we have imaged as a still surface, but on the contrary we have always to deal with one in rapid and bewildering motion; judge, therefore, how little we can depend upon getting a clear and definite reflection. Thus a clairvoyant who possesses only the faculty of astral sight can never rely upon any picture of the past that comes before him as being accurate and perfect; here and there some part of it _may_ be so, but he has no means of knowing which it is. If he is under the care of a competent teacher he may, by long and careful training, be shown how to distinguish between reliable and unreliable impressions, and to construct from the broken reflections some kind of image of the object reflected; but usually long before he has mastered those difficulties he will have developed the mental sight, which renders such labour unnecessary. On the next plane, which we call the mental, conditions are very different. There the record is full and accurate, and it would be impossible to make any mistake in the reading. That is to say, if three clairvoyants possessing the powers of the mental plane agreed to examine a certain record there, what would be presented to their vision would be absolutely the same reflection in each case, and each would acquire a correct impression from it in reading it. It does not however follow that when they all compared notes later on the physical plane their reports would agree exactly. It is well known that if three people who witness an occurrence down here in the physical world set to work to describe it afterwards, their accounts will differ considerably, for each will have noticed especially those items which most appeal to him, and will insensibly have made them the prominent features of the event, sometimes ignoring other points which were in reality much more important. Now in the case of an observation on the mental plane this personal equation would not appreciably affect the impressions received, for since each would thoroughly grasp the entire subject it would be impossible for him to see its parts out of due proportion; but, except in the case of carefully trained and experienced persons, this factor does come into play in transferring the impressions to the lower planes. It is in the nature of things impossible that any account given down here of a vision or experience on the mental plane can be complete, since nine-tenths of what is seen and felt there could not be expressed by physical words at all; and, since all expression must therefore be partial, there is obviously some possibility of selection as to the part expressed. It is for this reason that in all our Theosophical investigations of recent years so much stress has been laid upon the constant checking and verifying of clairvoyant testimony, nothing which rests upon the vision of one person only having been allowed to appear in our later books. But even when the possibility of error from this factor of personal equation has been reduced to a minimum by a careful system of counter-checking, there still remains the very serious difficulty which is inherent in the operation of bringing down impressions from a higher plane to a lower one. This is something analogous to the difficulty experienced by a painter in his endeavour to reproduce a three-dimensional landscape on a flat surface--that is, practically in two dimensions. Just as the artist needs long and careful training of eye and hand before he can produce a satisfactory representation of nature, so does the clairvoyant need long and careful training before he can describe accurately on a lower plane what he sees on a higher one; and the probability of getting an exact description from an untrained person is about equal to that of getting a perfectly-finished landscape from one who has never learnt how to draw. It must be remembered, too, that the most perfect picture is in reality infinitely far from being a reproduction of the scene which it represents, for hardly a single line or angle in it can ever be the same as those in the object copied. It is simply a very ingenious attempt to make upon one only of our five senses, by means of lines and colours on a flat surface, an impression similar to that which would have been made if we had actually had before us the scene depicted. Except by a suggestion dependent entirely on our own previous experience, it can convey to us nothing of the roar of the sea, of the scent of the flowers, of the taste of the fruit, or of the softness or hardness of the surface drawn. Of exactly similar nature, though far greater in degree, are the difficulties experienced by a clairvoyant in his attempt to describe upon the physical plane what he has seen upon the astral; and they are furthermore greatly enhanced by the fact that, instead of having merely to recall to the minds of his hearers conceptions with which they are already familiar, as the artist does when he paints men or animals, fields or trees, he has to endeavour by the very imperfect means at his disposal to suggest to them conceptions which in most cases are absolutely new to them. Small wonder then that, however vivid and striking his descriptions may seem to his audience, he himself should constantly be impressed with their total inadequacy, and should feel that his best efforts have entirely failed to convey any idea of what he really sees. And we must remember that in the case of the report given down here of a record read on the mental plane, this difficult operation of transference from the higher to the lower has taken place not once but twice, since the memory has been brought through the intervening astral plane. Even in a case where the investigator has the advantage of having developed his mental faculties so that he has the use of them while awake in the physical body, he is still hampered by the absolute incapacity of physical language to express what he sees. Try for a moment to realize fully what is called the fourth dimension, of which we said something in an earlier chapter. It is easy enough to think of our own three dimensions--to image in our minds the length, breadth and height of any object; and we see that each of these three dimensions is expressed by a line at right angles to both of the others. The idea of the fourth dimension is that it might be possible to draw a fourth line which shall be at right angles to all three of those already existing. Now the ordinary mind cannot grasp this idea in the least, though some few who have made a special study of the subject have gradually come to be able to realize one or two very simple four-dimensional figures. Still, no words that they can use on this plane can bring any image of these figures before the minds of others, and if any reader who has not specially trained himself along that line will make the effort to visualize such a shape he will find it quite impossible. Now to express such a form clearly in physical words would be, in effect, to describe accurately a single object on the astral plane; but in examining the records on the mental plane we should have to face the additional difficulties of a fifth dimension! So that the impossibility of fully explaining these records will be obvious to even the most superficial observation. We have spoken of the records as the memory of the Logos, yet they are very much more than a memory in an ordinary sense of the word. Hopeless as it may be to imagine how these images appear from His point of view, we yet know that as we rise higher and higher we must be drawing nearer to the true memory--must be seeing more nearly as He sees; so that great interest attaches to the experience of the clairvoyant with reference to these records when he stands upon the buddhic plane--the highest which his consciousness can reach even when away from the physical body until he attains the level of the Arhats. Here time and space no longer limit him; he no longer needs, as on the mental plane, to pass a series of events in review, for past, present and future are all alike simultaneously present to him, meaningless as that sounds down here. Indeed, infinitely below the consciousness of the Logos as even that exalted plane is, it is yet abundantly clear from what we see there that to Him the record must be far more than what we call a memory, for all that has happened in the past and all that will happen in the future is _happening now_ before His eyes just as are the events of what we call the present time. Utterly incredible, wildly incomprehensible, of course, to our limited understanding; yet absolutely true for all that. Naturally we could not expect to understand at our present stage of knowledge how so marvellous a result is produced, and to attempt an explanation would only be to involve ourselves in a mist of words from which we should gain no real information. Yet a line of thought recurs to my mind which perhaps suggests the direction in which it is possible that that explanation may lie: and whatever helps us to realize that so astounding a statement may after all not be wholly impossible will be of assistance in broadening our minds. Some thirty years ago I remember reading a very curious little book, called, I think, _The Stars and the Earth_, the object of which was to endeavour to show how it was scientifically possible that to the mind of God the past and the present might be absolutely simultaneous. Its arguments struck me at the time as decidedly ingenious, and I will proceed to summarize them, as I think they will be found somewhat suggestive in connection with the subject which we have been considering. When we see anything, whether it be the book which we hold in our hands or a star millions of miles away, we do so by means of a vibration in the ether, commonly called a ray of light, which passes from the object seen to our eyes. Now the speed with which this vibration passes is so great--about 186,000 miles in a second--that when we are considering any object in our own world we may regard it as practically instantaneous. When, however, we come to deal with interplanetary distances we have to take the speed of light into consideration, for an appreciable period is occupied in traversing these vast spaces. For example it takes eight minutes and a quarter for light to travel to us from the sun, so that when we look at the solar orb we see it by means of a ray of light which left it more than eight minutes ago. From this follows a very curious result. The ray of light by which we see the sun can obviously report to us only the state of affairs which existed in that luminary when it started on its journey, and would not be in the least affected by anything that happened there after it left; so that we really see the sun not as he _is_, but as he was eight minutes ago. That is to say that if anything important took place in the sun--the formation of a new sun-spot, for instance--an astronomer who was watching the orb through his telescope at the time would be quite unaware of the incident while it was happening, since the ray of light bearing the news would not reach him until more than eight minutes later. The difference is more striking when we consider the fixed stars, because in their case the distances are so enormously greater. The pole star, for example, is so far off that light, travelling at the inconceivable speed above mentioned, takes a little more than fifty years to reach our eyes; and from that follows the strange but inevitable inference that we see the pole star not as and where it is at this moment, but as and where it was fifty years ago. Nay, if to-morrow some cosmic catastrophe were to shatter the pole star into fragments, we should still see it peacefully shining in the sky all the rest of our lives; our children would grow up to middle age and gather their children about them in turn before the news of that tremendous accident reached any terrestrial eye. In the same way there are other stars so far distant that light takes thousands of years to travel from them to us, and with reference to their condition our information is therefore thousands of years behind time. Now carry the argument a step farther. Suppose that we were able to place a man at the distance of 186,000 miles from the earth, and yet to endow him with the wonderful faculty of being able from that distance to see what was happening here as clearly as though he were still close beside us. It is evident that a man so placed would see everything a second after the time when it really happened, and so at the present moment he would be seeing what happened a second ago. Double the distance, and he would be two seconds behind time, and so on; remove him to the distance of the sun (still allowing him to preserve the same mysterious power of sight) and he would look down and watch you doing not what you _are_ doing now, but what you _were_ doing eight minutes and a quarter ago. Carry him away to the pole star, and he would see passing before his eyes the events of fifty years ago; he would be watching the childish gambols of those who at the very same moment were really middle-aged men. Marvellous as this may sound, it is literally and scientifically true, and cannot be denied. The little book went on to argue logically enough that God, being almighty, must possess the wonderful power of sight which we have been postulating for our observer; and further, that being omnipresent, He must be at each of the stations which we mentioned, and also at every intermediate point, not successively but simultaneously. Granting these premises, the inevitable deduction follows that everything which has ever happened from the very beginning of the world _must_ be at this very moment taking place before the eye of God--not a mere memory of it, but the actual occurrence itself being now under His observation. All this is materialistic enough, and on the plane of purely physical science, and we may therefore be assured that it is _not_ the way in which the memory of the Logos acts; yet it is neatly worked out and absolutely incontrovertible, and as I have said before, it is not without its use, since it gives us a glimpse of some possibilities which otherwise might not occur to us. But, it may be asked, how is it possible, amid the bewildering confusion of these records of the past, to find any particular picture when it is wanted? As a matter of fact, the untrained clairvoyant usually cannot do so without some special link to put him _en rapport_ with the subject required. Psychometry is an instance in point, and it is quite probable that our ordinary memory is really only another presentment of the same idea. It seems as though there were a sort of magnetic attachment or affinity between any particle of matter and the record which contains its history--an affinity which enables it to act as a kind of conductor between that record and the faculties of anyone who can read it. For example, I once brought from Stonehenge a tiny fragment of stone, not larger than a pin's head, and on putting this into an envelope and handing it to a psychometer who had no idea what it was, she at once began to describe that wonderful ruin and the desolate country surrounding it, and then went on to picture vividly what were evidently scenes from its early history, showing that that infinitesimal fragment had been sufficient to put her into communication with the records connected with the spot from which it came. The scenes through which we pass in the course of our life seem to act in the same manner upon the cells of our brain as did the history of Stonehenge upon that particle of stone: they establish a connection with those cells by means of which our mind is put _en rapport_ with that particular portion of the records, and so we "remember" what we have seen. Even a trained clairvoyant needs some link to enable him to find the record of an event of which he has no previous knowledge. If, for example, he wished to observe the landing of Julius Cæsar on the shores of England, there are several ways in which he might approach the subject. If he happened to have visited the scene of the occurrence, the simplest way would probably be to call up the image of that spot, and then run back through its records until he reached the period desired. If he had not seen the place, he might run back in time to the date of the event, and then search the Channel for a fleet of Roman galleys; or he might examine the records of Roman life at about that period, where he would have no difficulty in identifying so prominent a figure as Cæsar, or in tracing him when found through all his Gallic wars until he set his foot upon British land. People often enquire as to the aspect of these records--whether they appear near or far away from the eye, whether the figures in them are large or small, whether the pictures follow one another as in a panorama or melt into one another like dissolving views, and so on. One can only reply that their appearance varies to a certain extent according to the conditions under which they are seen. Upon the astral plane the reflection is most often a simple picture, though occasionally the figures seen would be endowed with motion; in this latter case, instead of a mere snapshot a rather longer and more perfect reflection has taken place. On the mental plane they have two widely different aspects. When the visitor to that plane is not thinking specially of them in any way, the records simply form a background to whatever is going on, just as the reflections in a pier-glass at the end of a room might form a background to the life of the people in it. It must always be borne in mind that under these conditions they are really merely reflections from the ceaseless activity of a great Consciousness upon a far higher plane, and have very much the appearance of an endless succession of the recently invented _cinematographe_, or living photographs. They do not melt into one another like dissolving views, nor do a series of ordinary pictures follow one another; but the action of the reflected figures constantly goes on, as though one were watching the actors on a distant stage. But if the trained investigator turns his attention specially to any one scene, or wishes to call it up before him, an extraordinary change at once takes place, for this is the plane of thought, and to think of anything is to bring it instantaneously before you. For example, if a man wills to see the record of that event to which we before referred--the landing of Julius Cæsar--he finds himself in a moment not looking at any picture, but standing on the shore among the legionaries, with the whole scene being enacted around him, precisely in every respect as he would have seen it if he had stood there in the flesh on that autumn morning in the year 55 B.C. Since what he sees is but a reflection, the actors are of course entirely unconscious of him, nor can any effort of his change the course of their action in the smallest degree, except only that he can control the rate at which the drama shall pass before him--can have the events of a whole year rehearsed before his eyes in a single hour, or can at any moment stop the movement altogether, and hold any particular scene in view as a picture as long as he chooses. In truth he observes not only what he would have seen if he had been there at the time in the flesh, but much more. He hears and understands all that the people say, and he is conscious of all their thoughts and motives; and one of the most interesting of the many possibilities which open up before one who has learnt to read the records is the study of the thought of ages long past--the thought of the cave-men and the lake-dwellers as well as that which ruled the mighty civilisations of Atlantis, of Egypt or Chaldæa. What splendid possibilities open up before the man who is in full possession of this power may easily be imagined. He has before him a field of historical research of most entrancing interest. Not only can he review at his leisure all history with which we are acquainted, correcting as he examines it the many errors and misconceptions which have crept into the accounts handed down to us; he can also range at will over the whole story of the world from its very beginning, watching the slow development of intellect in man, the descent of the Lords of the Flame, and the growth of the mighty civilisations which they founded. Nor is his study confined to the progress of humanity alone; he has before him, as in a museum, all the strange animal and vegetable forms which occupied the stage in days when the world was young; he can follow all the wonderful geological changes which have taken place, and watch the course of the great cataclysms which have altered the whole face of the earth again and again. In one especial case an even closer sympathy with the past is possible to the reader of the records. If in the course of his enquiries he has to look upon some scene in which he himself has in a former birth taken part, he may deal with it in two ways; he can either regard it in the usual manner as a spectator (though always, be it remembered, as a spectator whose insight and sympathy are perfect) or he may once more identify himself with that long-dead personality of his--may throw himself back for the time into that life of long ago, and absolutely experience over again the thoughts and the emotions, the pleasures and the pains of a prehistoric past. No wilder and more vivid adventures can be conceived than some of those through which he thus may pass; yet through it all he must never lose hold of the consciousness of his own individuality--must retain the power to return at will to his present personality. It is often asked how it is possible for an investigator accurately to determine the date of any picture from the far-distant past which he disinters from the records. The fact is that it is sometimes rather tedious work to find an exact date, but the thing can usually be done if it is worth while to spend the time and trouble over it. If we are dealing with Greek or Roman times the simplest method is usually to look into the mind of the most intelligent person present in the picture, and see what date he supposes it to be; or the investigator might watch him writing a letter or other document and observe what date, if any, was included in what was written. When once the Roman or Greek date is thus obtained, to reduce it to our own system of chronology is merely a matter of calculation. Another way which is frequently adopted is to turn from the scene under examination to a contemporary picture in some great and well-known city such as Rome, and note what monarch is reigning there, or who are the consuls for the year; and when such data are discovered a glance at any good history will give the rest. Sometimes a date can be obtained by examining some public proclamation or some legal document; in fact in the times of which we are speaking the difficulty is easily surmounted. The matter is by no means so simple, however, when we come to deal with periods much earlier than this--with a scene from early Egypt, Chaldæa, or China, or to go further back still, from Atlantis itself or any of its numerous colonies. A date can still be obtained easily enough from the mind of any educated man, but there is no longer any means of relating it to our own system of dates, since the man will be reckoning by eras of which we know nothing, or by the reigns of kings whose history is lost in the night of time. Our methods, nevertheless, are not yet exhausted. It must be remembered that it is possible for the investigator to pass the records before him at any speed that he may desire--at the rate of a year in a second if he will, or even very much faster still. Now there are one or two events in ancient history whose dates have already been accurately fixed--as, for example, the sinking of Poseidonis in the year 9564 B.C. It is therefore obvious that if from the general appearance of the surroundings it seems probable that a picture seen is within measurable distance of one of these events, it can be related to that event by the simple process of running through the record rapidly, and counting the years between the two as they pass. Still, if those years ran into thousands, as they might sometimes do, this plan would be insufferably tedious. In that case we are driven back upon the astronomical method. In consequence of the movement which is commonly called the precession of the equinoxes, though it might more accurately be described as a kind of second rotation of the earth, the angle between the equator and the ecliptic steadily but very slowly varies. Thus, after long intervals of time we find the pole of the earth no longer pointing towards the same spot in the apparent sphere of the heavens, or in other words, our pole-star is not, as at present, [Greek: a] Ursæ Minoris, but some other celestial body; and from this position of the pole of the earth, which can easily be ascertained by careful observation of the night-sky of the picture under consideration, an approximate date can be calculated without difficulty. In estimating the date of occurrences which took place millions of years ago in earlier races, the period of a secondary rotation (or the precession of the equinoxes) is frequently used as a unit, but of course absolute accuracy is not usually required in such cases, round numbers being sufficient for all practical purposes in dealing with epochs so remote. The accurate reading of the records, whether of one's own past lives or those of others, must not, however, be thought of as an achievement possible to anyone without careful previous training. As has been already remarked, though occasional reflections may be had upon the astral plane, the power to use the mental sense is necessary before any reliable reading can be done. Indeed, to minimize the possibility of error, that sense ought to be fully at the command of the investigator while awake in the physical body; and to acquire that faculty needs years of ceaseless labour and rigid self-discipline. Many people seem to expect that as soon as they have signed their application and joined the Theosophical Society they will at once remember at least three or four of their past births; indeed, some of them promptly begin to imagine recollections and declare that in their last incarnation they were Mary Queen of Scots, Cleopatra, or Julius Cæsar! Of course such extravagant claims simply bring discredit upon those who are so foolish as to make them but unfortunately some of that discredit is liable to be reflected, however unjustly, upon the Society to which they belong, so that a man who feels seething within him the conviction that he was Homer or Shakespeare would do well to pause and apply common-sense tests on the physical plane before publishing the news to the world. It is quite true that some people have had glimpses of scenes from their past lives in dreams, but naturally these are usually fragmentary and unreliable. I had myself in earlier life an experience of this nature. Among my dreams I found that one was constantly recurring--a dream of a house with a portico over-looking a beautiful bay, not far from a hill on the top of which rose a graceful building. I knew that house perfectly, and was as familiar with the position of its rooms and the view from its door as I was with those of my home, in this present life. In those days I knew nothing about reincarnation, so that it seemed to me simply a curious coincidence that this dream should repeat itself so often; and it was not until some time after I had joined the Society that, when one who knew was showing me some pictures of my last incarnation, I discovered that this persistent dream had been in reality a partial recollection, and that the house which I knew so well was the one in which I was born more than two thousand years ago. But although there are several cases on record in which some well-remembered scene has thus come through from one life to another, a considerable development of occult faculty is necessary before an investigator can definitely trace a line of incarnations, whether they be his own or another man's. This will be obvious if we remember the conditions of the problem which has to be worked out. To follow a person from this life to the one preceding it, it is necessary first of all to trace his present life backwards to his birth and then to follow up in reverse order the stages by which the Ego descended into incarnation. This will obviously take us back eventually to the condition of the Ego upon the higher levels of the mental plane; so it will be seen that to perform this task effectually the investigator must be able to use the sense corresponding to that exalted level while awake in his physical body--in other words, his consciousness must be centred in the reincarnating Ego itself, and no longer in the lower personality. In that case, the memory of the Ego being aroused, his own past incarnations will be spread out before him like an open book, and he would be able, if he wished, to examine the conditions of another Ego upon that level and trace him backwards through the lower mental and astral lives which led up to it, until he came to the last physical death of that Ego, and through it to his previous life. There is no way but this in which the chain of lives can be followed through with absolute certainty: and consequently we may at once put aside as conscious or unconscious impostors those people who advertise that they are able to trace out anyone's past incarnations for so many shillings a head. Needless to say, the true occultist does not advertise, and never under any circumstances accepts money for any exhibition of his powers. Assuredly the student who wishes to acquire the power of following up a line of incarnations can do so only by learning from a qualified teacher how the work is to be done. There have been those who persistently asserted that it was only necessary for a man to feel good and devotional and "brotherly," and all the wisdom of the ages would immediately flow in upon him; but a little common-sense will at once expose the absurdity of such a position. However good a child may be, if he wants to know the multiplication table he must set to work and learn it; and the case is precisely similar with the capacity to use spiritual faculties. The faculties themselves will no doubt manifest as the man evolves, but he can learn how to use them reliably and to the best advantage only by steady hard work and persevering effort. Take the case of those who wish to help others while on the astral plane during sleep; it is obvious that the more knowledge they possess here, the more valuable will their services be on that higher plane. For example, the knowledge of languages would be useful to them, for though on the mental plane men can communicate directly by thought-transference, whatever their languages may be, on the astral plane this is not so, and a thought must be definitely formulated in words before it is comprehensible. If, therefore, you wish to help a man on that plane, you must have some language in common by means of which you can communicate with him, and consequently the more languages you know the more widely useful you will be. In fact there is perhaps no kind of knowledge for which a use cannot be found in the work of the occultist. It would be well for all students to bear in mind that occultism is the apotheosis of common-sense, and that every vision which comes to them is not necessarily a picture from the âkâshic records, nor every experience a revelation from on high. It is better far to err on the side of healthy scepticism than of over-credulity; and it is an admirable rule never to hunt about for an occult explanation of anything when a plain and obvious physical one is available. Our duty is to endeavour to keep our balance always, and never to lose our self-control, but to take a reasonable, common-sense view of whatever may happen to us; so shall we be better Theosophists, wiser occultists, and more useful helpers than we have ever been before. As usual, we find examples of all degrees of the power to see into this memory of nature, from the trained man who can consult the record for himself at will, down to the person who gets nothing but occasional vague glimpses, or has even perhaps had only one such glimpse. But even the man who possesses this faculty only partially and occasionally still finds it of the deepest interest. The psychometer, who needs an object physically connected with the past in order to bring it all into life again around him, and the crystal-gazer who can sometimes direct his less certain astral telescope to some historic scene of long ago, may both derive the greatest enjoyment from the exercise of their respective gifts, even though they may not always understand exactly how their results are produced, and may not have them fully under control under all circumstances. In many cases of the lower manifestations of these powers we find that they are exercised unconsciously; many a crystal-gazer watches scenes from the past without being able to distinguish them from visions of the present, and many a vaguely-psychic person finds pictures constantly arising before his eyes without ever realizing that he is in effect psychometrizing the various objects around him as he happens to touch them or stand near them. An interesting variant of this class of psychics is the man who is able to psychometrize persons only, and not inanimate objects as is more usual. In most cases this faculty shows itself erratically, so that such a psychic will, when introduced to a stranger, often see in a flash some prominent event in that stranger's earlier life, but on other similar occasions will receive no special impression. More rarely we meet with someone who gets detailed visions of the past life of everyone whom he encounters. Perhaps one of the best examples of this class was the German writer Zschokke, who describes in his autobiography this extraordinary power of which he found himself possessed. He says:-- "It has happened to me occasionally at the first meeting with a total stranger, when I have been listening in silence to his conversation, that his past life up to the present moment, with many minute circumstances belonging to one or other particular scene in it, has come across me like a dream, but distinctly, entirely involuntarily and unsought, occupying in duration a few minutes. "For a long time I was disposed to consider these fleeting visions as a trick of the fancy--the more so as my dream-vision displayed to me the dress and movements of the actors, the appearance of the room, the furniture, and other accidents of the scene; till on one occasion, in a gamesome mood, I narrated to my family the secret history of a sempstress who had just before quitted the room. I had never seen the person before. Nevertheless the hearers were astonished, and laughed and would not be persuaded but that I had a previous acquaintance with the former life of the person, inasmuch as what I had stated was perfectly true. "I was not less astonished to find that my dream-vision agreed with reality. I then gave more attention to the subject, and as often as propriety allowed of it, I related to those whose lives had so passed before me the substance of my dream-vision, to obtain from them its contradiction or confirmation. On every occasion its confirmation followed, not without amazement on the part of those who gave it. "On a certain fair-day I went into the town of Waldshut accompanied by two young foresters, who are still alive. It was evening, and, tired with our walk, we went into an inn called the 'Vine.' We took our supper with a numerous company at the public table, when it happened that they made themselves merry over the peculiarities and simplicity of the Swiss in connection with the belief in mesmerism, Lavater's physiognomical system and the like. One of my companions, whose national pride was touched by their raillery, begged me to make some reply, particularly in answer to a young man of superior appearance who sat opposite, and had indulged in unrestrained ridicule. "It happened that the events of this person's life had just previously passed before my mind. I turned to him with the question whether he would reply to me with truth and candour if I narrated to him the most secret passages of his history, he being as little known to me as I to him? That would, I suggested, go something beyond Lavater's physiognomical skill. He promised if I told the truth to admit it openly. Then I narrated the events with which my dream-vision had furnished me, and the table learnt the history of the young tradesman's life, of his school years, his peccadilloes, and, finally, of a little act of roguery committed by him on the strong-box of his employer. I described the uninhabited room with its white walls, where to the right of the brown door there had stood upon the table the small black money-chest, etc. The man, much struck, admitted the correctness of each circumstance--even, which I could not expect, of the last." And after narrating this incident, the worthy Zschokke calmly goes on to wonder whether perhaps after all this remarkable power, which he had so often displayed, might not really have been always the result of mere chance coincidence! Comparatively few accounts of persons possessing this faculty of looking back into the past are to be found in the literature of the subject, and it might therefore be supposed to be much less common than prevision. I suspect, however, that the truth is rather that it is much less commonly recognized. As I said before, it may very easily happen that a person may see a picture of the past without recognizing it as such, unless there happens to be in it something which attracts special attention, such as a figure in armour or in antique costume. A prevision also might not always be recognized as such at the time; but the occurrence of the event foreseen recalls it vividly at the same time that it manifests its nature, so that it is unlikely to be overlooked. It is probable, therefore, that occasional glimpses of these astral reflections of the âkâshic records are commoner than the published accounts would lead us to believe. CHAPTER VIII. CLAIRVOYANCE IN TIME: THE FUTURE. Even if, in a dim sort of way, we feel ourselves able to grasp the idea that the whole of the past may be simultaneously and actively present in a sufficiently exalted consciousness, we are confronted by a far greater difficulty when we endeavour to realize how all the future may also be comprehended in that consciousness. If we could believe in the Mohammedan doctrine of kismet, or the Calvinistic theory of predestination, the conception would be easy enough, but knowing as we do that both these are grotesque distortions of the truth, we must look round for a more acceptable hypothesis. There may still be some people who deny the possibility of prevision, but such denial simply shows their ignorance of the evidence on the subject. The large number of authenticated cases leaves no room for doubt as to the fact, but many of them are of such a nature as to render a reasonable explanation by no means easy to find. It is evident that the Ego possesses a certain amount of previsional faculty, and if the events foreseen were always of great importance, one might suppose that an extraordinary stimulus had enabled him for that occasion only to make a clear impression of what he saw upon his lower personality. No doubt that is the explanation of many of the cases in which death or grave disaster is foreseen, but there are a large number of instances on record to which it does not seem to apply, since the events foretold are frequently exceedingly trivial and unimportant. A well-known story of second-sight in Scotland will illustrate what I mean. A man who had no belief in the occult was forewarned by a Highland seer of the approaching death of a neighbour. The prophecy was given with considerable wealth of detail, including a full description of the funeral, with the names of the four pall-bearers and others who would be present. The auditor seems to have laughed at the whole story and promptly forgotten it, but the death of his neighbour at the time foretold recalled the warning to his mind, and he determined to falsify part of the prediction at any rate by being one of the pall-bearers himself. He succeeded in getting matters arranged as he wished, but just as the funeral was about to start he was called away from his post by some small matter which detained him only a minute or two. As he came hurrying back he saw with surprise that the procession had started without him, and that the prediction had been exactly fulfilled, for the four pall-bearers were those who had been indicated in the vision. Now here is a very trifling matter, which could have been of no possible importance to anybody, definitely foreseen months beforehand; and although a man makes a determined effort to alter the arrangement indicated he fails entirely to affect it in the least. Certainly this looks very much like predestination, even down to the smallest detail, and it is only when we examine this question from higher planes that we are able to see our way to escape that theory. Of course, as I said before about another branch of the subject, a full explanation eludes us as yet, and obviously must do so until our knowledge is infinitely greater than it is now; the most that we can hope to do for the present is to indicate the line along which an explanation may be found. There is no doubt whatever that, just as what is happening now is the result of causes set in motion in the past, so what will happen in the future will be the result of causes already in operation. Even down here we can calculate that if certain actions are performed certain results will follow, but our reckoning is constantly liable to be disturbed by the interference of factors which we have not been able to take into account. But if we raise our consciousness to the mental plane we can see very much farther into the results of our actions. We can trace, for example, the effect of a casual word, not only upon the person to whom it was addressed, but through him on many others as it is passed on in widening circles, until it seems to have affected the whole country; and one glimpse of such a vision is far more efficient than any number of moral precepts in impressing upon us the necessity of extreme circumspection in thought, word, and deed. Not only can we from that plane see thus fully the result of every action, but we can also see where and in what way the results of other actions apparently quite unconnected with it will interfere with and modify it. In fact, it may be said that the results of all causes at present in action are clearly visible--that the future, as it would be if no entirely new causes should arise, lies open before our gaze. New causes of course do arise, because man's will is free; but in the case of all ordinary people the use which they will make of their freedom can be calculated beforehand with considerable accuracy. The average man has so little real will that he is very much the creature of circumstances; his action in previous lives places him amid certain surroundings, and their influence upon him is so very much the most important factor in his life-story that his future course may be predicted with almost mathematical certainty. With the developed man the case is different; for him also the main events of life are arranged by his past actions, but the way in which he will allow them to affect him, the methods by which he will deal with them and perhaps triumph over them--these are all his own, and they cannot be foreseen even on the mental plane except as probabilities. Looking down on man's life in this way from above, it seems as though his free will could be exercised only at certain crises in his career. He arrives at a point in his life where there are obviously two or three alternative courses open before him; he is absolutely free to choose which of them he pleases, and although some one who knew his nature thoroughly well might feel almost certain what his choice would be, such knowledge on his friend's part is in no sense a compelling force. But when he _has_ chosen, he has to go through with it and take the consequences; having entered upon a particular path he may, in many cases, be forced to go on for a very long way before he has any opportunity to turn aside. His position is somewhat like that of the driver of a train; when he comes to a junction he may have the points set either this way or that, and so can pass on to whichever line he pleases, but when he _has_ passed on to one of them he is compelled to run on along the line which he has selected until he reaches another set of points, where again an opportunity of choice is offered to him. Now, in looking down from the mental plane, these points of new departure would be clearly visible, and all the results of each choice would lie open before us, certain to be worked out even to the smallest detail. The only point which would remain uncertain would be the all-important one as to which choice the man would make. We should, in fact, have not one but several futures mapped out before our eyes, without necessarily being able to determine which of them would materialize itself into accomplished fact. In most instances we should see so strong a probability that we should not hesitate to come to a decision, but the case which I have described is certainly theoretically possible. Still, even this much knowledge would enable us to do with safety a good deal of prediction; and it is not difficult for us to imagine that a far higher power than ours might always be able to foresee which way every choice would go, and consequently to prophesy with absolute certainty. On the buddhic plane, however, no such elaborate process of conscious calculation is necessary, for, as I said before, in some manner which down here is totally inexplicable, the past, the present, and the future, are there all existing simultaneously. One can only accept this fact, for its cause lies in the faculty of the plane, and the way in which this higher faculty works is naturally quite incomprehensible to the physical brain. Yet now and then one may meet with a hint that seems to bring us a trifle nearer to a dim possibility of comprehension. One such hint was given by Dr. Oliver Lodge in his address to the British Association at Cardiff. He said: "A luminous and helpful idea is that time is but a relative mode of regarding things; we progress through phenomena at a certain definite pace, and this subjective advance we interpret in an objective manner, as if events moved necessarily in this order and at this precise rate. But that may be only one mode of regarding them. The events may be in some sense in existence always, both past and future, and it may be we who are arriving at them, not they which are happening. The analogy of a traveller in a railway train is useful; if he could never leave the train nor alter its pace he would probably consider the landscapes as necessarily successive and be unable to conceive their co-existence.... We perceive, therefore, a possible fourth dimensional aspect about time, the inexorableness of whose flow may be a natural part or our present limitations. And if we once grasp the idea that past and future may be actually existing, we can recognize that they may have a controlling influence on all present action, and the two together may constitute the 'higher plane' or totality of things after which, as it seems to me, we are impelled to seek, in connection with the directing of form or determinism, and the action of living beings consciously directed to a definite and preconceived end." Time is not in reality the fourth dimension at all; yet to look at it for the moment from that point of view is some slight help towards grasping the ungraspable. Suppose that we hold a wooden cone at right angles to a sheet of paper, and slowly push it through it point first. A microbe living on the surface of that sheet of paper, and having no power of conceiving anything outside of that surface, could not only never see the cone as a whole, but he could form no sort of conception of such a body at all. All that he would see would be the sudden appearance of a tiny circle, which would gradually and mysteriously grow larger and larger until it vanished from his world as suddenly and incomprehensibly as it had come into it. Thus, what were in reality a series of sections of the cone would appear to him to be successive stages in the life of a circle, and it would be impossible for him to grasp the idea that these successive stages could be seen simultaneously. Yet it is, of course, easy enough for us, looking down upon the transaction from another dimension, to see that the microbe is simply under a delusion arising from its own limitations, and that the cone exists as a whole all the while. Our own delusion as to past, present, and future is possibly not dissimilar, and the view that is gained of any sequence of events from the buddhic plane corresponds to the view of the cone as a whole. Naturally, any attempt to work out this suggestion lands us in a series of startling paradoxes; but the fact remains a fact, nevertheless, and the time will come when it will be clear as noonday to our comprehension. When the pupil's consciousness is fully developed upon the buddhic plane, therefore, perfect prevision is possible to him, though he may not--nay, he certainly will not--be able to bring the whole result of his sight through fully and in order into this light. Still, a great deal of clear foresight is obviously within his power whenever he likes to exercise it; and even when he is not exercising it, frequent flashes of fore-knowledge come through into his ordinary life, so that he often has an instantaneous intuition as to how things will turn out even before their inception. Short of this perfect prevision we find, as in the previous cases, that all degrees of this type of clairvoyance exist, from the occasional vague premonitions which cannot in any true sense be called sight at all, up to frequent and fairly complete second-sight. The faculty to which this latter somewhat misleading name has been given is an extremely interesting one, and would well repay more careful and systematic study than has ever hitherto been given to it. It is best known to us as a not infrequent possession of the Scottish Highlanders, though it is by no means confined to them. Occasional instances of it have appeared in almost every nation, but it has always been commonest among mountaineers and men of lonely life. With us in England it is often spoken of as though it were the exclusive appanage of the Celtic race, but in reality it has appeared among similarly situated peoples the world over. It is stated, for example, to be very common among the Westphalian peasantry. Sometimes the second-sight consists of a picture clearly foreshowing some coming event; more frequently, perhaps, the glimpse of the future is given by some symbolical appearance. It is noteworthy that the events foreseen are invariably unpleasant ones--death being the commonest of all; I do not recollect a single instance in which the second-sight has shown anything which was not of the most gloomy nature. It has a ghastly symbolism which is all its own--a symbolism of shrouds and corpse-candles, and other funereal horrors. In some cases it appears to be to a certain extent dependent on locality, for it is stated that inhabitants of the Isle of Skye who possess the faculty often lose it when they leave the island, even though it be only to cross to the mainland. The gift of such sight is sometimes hereditary in a family for generations, but this is not an invariable rule, for it often appears sporadically in one member of a family otherwise free from its lugubrious influence. An example in which an accurate vision of a coming event was seen some months beforehand by second-sight has already been given. Here is another and perhaps a more striking one, which I give exactly as it was related to me by one of the actors in the scene. "We plunged into the jungle, and had walked on for about an hour without much success, when Cameron, who happened to be next to me, stopped suddenly, turned pale as death, and, pointing straight before him, cried in accents of horror: "'See! see! merciful heaven, look there!' "'Where? what? what is it?' we all shouted confusedly, as we rushed up to him and looked round in expectation of encountering a tiger--a cobra--we hardly knew what, but assuredly something terrible, since it had been sufficient to cause such evident emotion in our usually self-contained comrade. But neither tiger nor cobra was visible--nothing but Cameron pointing with ghastly, haggard face and starting eyeballs at something we could not see. "'Cameron! Cameron' cried I, seizing his arm, "'for heaven's sake, speak! What is the matter?' "Scarcely were the words out of my mouth when a low, but very peculiar sound struck on my ear, and Cameron, dropping his pointing hand, said in a hoarse, strained voice, 'There! you heard it? Thank God it's over' and fell to the ground insensible. "There was a momentary confusion while we unfastened his collar, and I dashed in his face some water which I fortunately had in my flask, while another tried to pour brandy between his clenched teeth; and under cover of it I whispered to the man next to me (one of our greatest sceptics, by the way), 'Beauchamp, did _you_ hear anything?' "'Why, yes,' he replied, a curious sound, very; a sort of crash or rattle far away in the distance, yet very distinct; if the thing were not utterly impossible, I could have sworn it was the rattle of musketry.' "'Just my impression,' murmured I; 'but hush! he is recovering.' "In a minute or two he was able to speak feebly, and began to thank us and apologize for giving trouble; and soon he sat up, leaning against a tree, and in a firm, though still low voice said: "'My dear friends, I feel I owe you an explanation of my extraordinary behaviour. It is an explanation that I would fain avoid giving; but it must come some time, and so may as well be given now. You may perhaps have noticed that when during our voyage you all joined in scoffing at dreams, portents and visions, I invariably avoided giving any opinion on the subject. I did so because, while I had no desire to court ridicule or provoke discussion, I was unable to agree with you, knowing only too well from my own dread experience that the world which men agree to call that of the supernatural is just as real as--nay, perhaps, even far more real than--this world we see about us. In other words, I, like many of my countrymen, am cursed with the gift of second-sight--that awful faculty which foretells in vision calamities that are shortly to occur. "'Such a vision I had just now, and its exceptional horror moved me as you have seen. I saw before me a corpse--not that of one who has died a peaceful natural death, but that of the victim of some terrible accident; a ghastly, shapeless mass, with a face swollen, crushed, unrecognizable. I saw this dreadful object placed in a coffin, and the funeral service performed over it. I saw the burial-ground, I saw the clergyman: and though I had never seen either before, I can picture both perfectly in my mind's eye now; I saw you, myself, Beauchamp, all of us and many more, standing round as mourners; I saw the soldiers raise their muskets after the service was over; I heard the volley they fired--and then I knew no more.' "As he spoke of that volley of musketry I glanced across with a shudder at Beauchamp, and the look of stony horror on that handsome sceptic's face was not to be forgotten." This is only one incident (and by no means the principal one) in a very remarkable story of psychic experience, but as for the moment we are concerned merely with the example of second-sight which it gives us, I need only say that later in the day the party of young soldiers discovered the body of their commanding officer in the terrible condition so graphically described by Mr. Cameron. The narrative continues: "When, on the following evening, we arrived at our destination, and our melancholy deposition had been taken down by the proper authorities, Cameron and I went out for a quiet walk, to endeavour with the assistance of the soothing influence of nature to shake off something of the gloom which paralyzed our spirits. Suddenly he clutched my arm, and, pointing through some rude railings, said in a trembling voice, 'Yes, there it is! that is the burial-ground I saw yesterday.' And when later on we were introduced to the chaplain of the post, I noticed, though my friends did not, the irrepressible shudder with which Cameron took his hand, and I knew that he had recognized the clergyman of his vision." As for the occult rationale of all this, I presume Mr. Cameron's vision was a pure case of second-sight, and if so the fact that the two men who were evidently nearest to him (certainly one--probably both--actually touching him) participated in it to the limited extent of hearing the concluding volley, while the others who were not so close did not, would show that the intensity with which the vision impressed itself upon the seer occasioned vibrations in his mind-body which were communicated to those of the persons in contact with him, as in ordinary thought-transference. Anyone who wishes to read the rest of the story will find it in the pages of _Lucifer_, vol. xx., p. 457. Scores of examples of similar nature to these might easily be collected. With regard to the symbolical variety of this sight, it is commonly stated among those who possess it that if on meeting a living person they see a phantom shroud wrapped around him, it is a sure prognostication of his death. The date of the approaching decease is indicated either by the extent to which the shroud covers the body, or by the time of day at which the vision is seen; for if it be in the early morning they say that the man will die during the same day, but if it be in the evening, then it will be only some time within a year. Another variant (and a remarkable one) of the symbolic form of second-sight is that in which the headless apparition of the person whose death is foretold manifests itself to the seer. An example of that class is given in _Signs before Death_ as having happened in the family of Dr. Ferrier, though in that case, if I recollect rightly, the vision did not occur until the time of the death, or very near it. Turning from seers who are regularly in possession of a certain faculty, although its manifestations are only occasionally fully under their control, we are confronted by a large number of isolated instances of prevision in the case of people with whom it is not in any way a regular faculty. Perhaps the majority of these occur in dreams, although examples of the waking vision are by no means wanting. Sometimes the prevision refers to an event of distinct importance to the seer, and so justifies the action of the Ego in taking the trouble to impress it. In other cases, the event is one which is of no apparent importance, or is not in any way connected with the man to whom the vision comes. Sometimes it is clear that the intention of the Ego (or the communicating entity, whatever it may be) is to warn the lower self of the approach of some calamity, either in order that it may be prevented or, if that be not possible, that the shock may be minimized by preparation. The event most frequently thus foreshadowed is, perhaps not unnaturally, death--sometimes the death of the seer himself, sometimes that of one dear to him. This type of prevision is so common in the literature of the subject, and its object is so obvious, that we need hardly cite examples of it; but one or two instances in which the prophetic sight, though clearly useful, was yet of a less sombre character, will prove not uninteresting to the reader. The following is culled from that storehouse of the student of the uncanny, Mrs. Crowe's _Night Side of Nature_, p. 72. "A few years ago Dr. Watson, now residing at Glasgow, dreamt that he received a summons to attend a patient at a place some miles from where he was living; that he started on horseback, and that as he was crossing a moor he saw a bull making furiously at him, whose horns he only escaped by taking refuge on a spot inaccessible to the animal, where he waited a long time till some people, observing his situation, came to his assistance and released him. "Whilst at breakfast on the following morning the summons came, and smiling at the odd coincidence (as he thought it), he started on horseback. He was quite ignorant of the road he had to go, but by and by he arrived at the moor, which he recognised, and presently the bull appeared, coming full tilt towards him. But his dream had shown him the place of refuge, for which he instantly made, and there he spent three or four hours, besieged by the animal, till the country people set him free. Dr. Watson declares that but for the dream he should not have known in what direction to run for safety." Another case, in which a much longer interval separated the warning and its fulfilment, is given by Dr. F. G. Lee, in _Glimpses of the Supernatural_, vol. i., p. 240. "Mrs. Hannah Green, the housekeeper of a country family in Oxfordshire, dreamt one night that she had been left alone in the house upon a Sunday evening, and that hearing a knock at the door of the chief entrance she went to it and there found an ill-looking tramp armed with a bludgeon, who insisted on forcing himself into the house. She thought that she struggled for some time to prevent him so doing, but quite ineffectually, and that, being struck down by him and rendered insensible, he thereupon gained ingress to the mansion. On this she awoke. "As nothing happened for a considerable period the circumstance of the dream was soon forgotten, and, as she herself asserts, had altogether passed away from her mind. However, seven years afterwards this same housekeeper was left with two other servants to take charge of an isolated mansion at Kensington (subsequently the town residence of the family), when on a certain Sunday evening, her fellow-servants having gone out and left her alone, she was suddenly startled by a loud knock at the front door. "All of a sudden the remembrance of her former dream returned to her with singular vividness and remarkable force, and she felt her lonely isolation greatly. Accordingly, having at once lighted a lamp on the hall table--during which act the loud knock was repeated with vigour--she took the precaution to go up to a landing on the stair and throw up the window; and there to her intense terror she saw in the flesh the very man whom years previously she had seen in her dream, armed with the bludgeon and demanding an entrance. "With great presence of mind she went down to the chief entrance, made that and other doors and windows more secure, and then rang the various bells of the house violently, and placed lights in the upper rooms. It was concluded that by these acts the intruder was scared away." Evidently in this case also the dream was of practical use, as without it the worthy housekeeper would without doubt from sheer force of habit have opened the door in the ordinary way in answer to the knock. It is not, however, only in dream that the Ego impresses his lower self with what he thinks it well for it to know. Many instances showing this might be taken from the books, but instead of quoting from them I will give a case related only a few weeks ago by a lady of my acquaintance--a case which, although not surrounded with any romantic incident, has at least the merit of being new. My friend, then, has two quite young children, and a little while ago the elder of them caught (as was supposed) a bad cold, and suffered for some days from a complete stoppage in the upper part of the nose. The mother thought little of this, expecting it to pass off, until one day she suddenly saw before her in the air what she describes as a picture of a room, in the centre of which was a table on which her child was lying insensible or dead, with some people bending over her. The minutest details of the scene were clear to her, and she particularly noticed that the child wore a white night-dress, whereas she knew that all garments of that description possessed by her little daughter happened to be pink. This vision impressed her considerably, and suggested to her for the first time that the child might be suffering from something more serious than a cold, so she carried her off to a hospital for examination. The surgeon who attended to her discovered the presence of a dangerous growth in the nose, which he pronounced must be removed. A few days later the child was taken to the hospital for the operation, and was put to bed. When the mother arrived at the hospital she found she had forgotten to bring one of the child's night-dresses, and so the nurses had to supply one, which was _white_. In this white dress the operation was performed on the girl the next day, in the room that her mother saw in her vision, every circumstance being exactly reproduced. In all these cases the prevision achieved its result, but the books are full of stories of warnings neglected or scouted, and of the disaster that consequently followed. In some cases the information is given to someone who has practically no power to interfere in the matter, as in the historic instance when John Williams, a Cornish mine-manager, foresaw in the minutest detail, eight or nine days before it took place, the assassination of Mr. Spencer Perceval, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the lobby of the House of Commons. Even in this case, however, it is just possible that something might have been done, for we read that Mr. Williams was so much impressed that he consulted his friends as to whether he ought not to go up to London to warn Mr. Perceval. Unfortunately they dissuaded him, and the assassination took place. It does not seem very probable that, even if he had gone up to town and related his story, much attention would have been paid to him, still there is just the possibility that some precautions might have been taken which would have prevented the murder. There is little to show us what particular action on higher planes led to this curious prophetic vision. The parties were entirely unknown to one another, so that it was not caused by any close sympathy between them. If it was an attempt made by some helper to avert the threatened doom, it seems strange that no one who was sufficiently impressible could be found nearer than Cornwall. Perhaps Mr. Williams, when on the astral plane during sleep, somehow came across this reflection of the future, and being naturally horrified thereby, passed it on to his lower mind in the hope that somehow something might be done to prevent it; but it is impossible to diagnose the case with certainty without examining the âkâshic records to see what actually took place. A typical instance of the absolutely purposeless foresight is that related by Mr. Stead, in his _Real Ghost Stories_ (p. 83), of his friend Miss Freer, commonly known as Miss X. When staying at a country house this lady, being wide awake and fully conscious, once saw a dogcart drawn by a white horse standing at the hall door, with two strangers in it, one of whom got out of the cart and stood playing with a terrier. She noticed that he was wearing an ulster, and also particularly observed the fresh wheel-marks made by the cart on the gravel. Nevertheless there was no cart there at the time; but half an hour later two strangers _did_ drive up in such an equipage, and every detail of the lady's vision was accurately fulfilled. Mr. Stead goes on to cite another instance of equally purposeless prevision where seven years separated the dream (for in this case it was a dream) and its fulfilment. All these instances (and they are merely random selections from many hundreds) show that a certain amount of prevision is undoubtedly possible to the Ego, and such cases would evidently be much more frequent if it were not for the exceeding density and lack of response in the lower vehicles of the majority of what we call civilized mankind--qualities chiefly attributable to the gross practical materialism of the present age. I am not thinking of any profession of materialistic belief as common, but of the fact that in all practical affairs of daily life nearly everyone is guided solely by considerations of worldly interest in some shape or other. In many cases the Ego himself may be an undeveloped one, and his prevision consequently very vague; in others he himself may see clearly, but may find his lower vehicles so unimpressible that all he can succeed in getting through into his physical brain may be an indefinite presage of coming disaster. Again, there are cases in which a premonition is not the work of the Ego at all, but of some outside entity, who for some reason takes a friendly interest in the person to whom the feeling comes. In the work which I quoted above, Mr. Stead tells us of the certainty which he felt many months beforehand that be would be left in charge of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ though from an ordinary point of view nothing seemed less probable. Whether that fore-knowledge was the result of an impression made by his own Ego or of a friendly hint from someone else it is impossible to say without definite investigation, but his confidence in it was fully justified. There is one more variety of clairvoyance in time which ought not to be left without mention. It is a comparatively rare one, but there are enough examples on record to claim our attention, though unfortunately the particulars given do not usually include those which we should require in order to be able to diagnose it with certainty. I refer to the cases in which spectral armies or phantom flocks of animals have been seen. In _The Night Side of Nature_ (p. 462 _et seq._) we have accounts of several such visions. We are there told how at Havarah Park, near Ripley, a body of soldiers in white uniform, amounting to several hundreds, was seen by reputable people to go through various evolutions and then vanish; and how some years earlier a similar visionary army was seen in the neighbourhood of Inverness by a respectable farmer and his son. In this case also the number of troops was very great, and the spectators had not the slightest doubt at first that they were substantial forms of flesh and blood. They counted at least sixteen pairs of columns, and had abundance of time to observe every particular. The front ranks marched seven abreast, and were accompanied by a good many women and children, who were carrying tin cans and other implements of cookery. The men were clothed in red, and their arms shone brightly in the sun. In the midst of them was an animal, a deer or a horse, they could not distinguish which, that they were driving furiously forward with their bayonets. The younger of the two men observed to the other that every now and then the rear ranks were obliged to run to overtake the van; and the elder one, who had been a soldier, remarked that that was always the case, and recommended him if he ever served to try to march in the front. There was only one mounted officer; he rode a grey dragoon horse, and wore a gold-laced hat and blue Hussar cloak, with wide open sleeves lined with red. The two spectators observed him so particularly that they said afterwards they should recognize him anywhere. They were, however, afraid of being ill-treated or forced to go along with the troops, whom they concluded to have come from Ireland, and landed at Kyntyre; and whilst they were climbing over a dyke to get out of their way, the whole thing vanished. A phenomenon of the same sort was observed in the earlier part of this century at Paderborn in Westphalia, and seen by at least thirty people; but as, some years later, a review of twenty thousand men was held on the very same spot, it was concluded that the vision must have been some sort of second-sight--a faculty not uncommon in the district. Such spectral hosts, however, are sometimes seen where an army of ordinary men could by no possibility have marched, either before or after. One of the most remarkable accounts of such apparitions is given by Miss Harriet Martineau, in her description of _The English Lakes_. She writes as follows:-- "This Souter or Soutra Fell is the mountain on which ghosts appeared in myriads, at intervals during ten years of the last century, presenting the same appearances to twenty-six chosen witnesses, and to all the inhabitants of all the cottages within view of the mountain, and for a space of two hours and a half at one time--the spectral show being closed by darkness! The mountain, be it remembered, is full of precipices, which defy all marching of bodies of men; and the north and west sides present a sheer perpendicular of 900 feet. "On Midsummer Eve, 1735, a farm servant of Mr. Lancaster, half a mile from the mountain, saw the eastern side of its summit covered with troops, which pursued their onward march for an hour. They came, in distinct bodies, from an eminence on the north end, and disappeared in a niche in the summit. When the poor fellow told his tale, he was insulted on all hands, as original observers usually are when they see anything wonderful. Two years after, also on a Midsummer Eve, Mr. Lancaster saw some men there, apparently following their horses, as if they had returned from hunting. He thought nothing of this; but he happened to look up again ten minutes after, and saw the figures, now mounted, and followed by an interminable array of troops, five abreast, marching from the eminence and over the cleft as before. All the family saw this, and the manoeuvres of the force, as each company was kept in order by a mounted officer, who galloped this way and that. As the shades of twilight came on, the discipline appeared to relax, and the troops intermingled, and rode at unequal paces, till all was lost in darkness. Now of course all the Lancasters were insulted, as their servant had been; but their justification was not long delayed. "On the Midsummer Eve of the fearful 1745, twenty-six persons, expressly summoned by the family, saw all that had been seen before, and more. Carriages were now interspersed with the troops; and everybody knew that no carriages had been, or could be, on the summit of Souter Fell. The multitude was beyond imagination; for the troops filled a space of half a mile, and marched quickly till night hid them--still marching. There was nothing vaporous or indistinct about the appearance of these spectres. So real did they seem, that some of the people went up, the next morning, to look for the hoof-marks of the horses; and awful it was to them to find not one foot-print on heather or grass. The witnesses attested the whole story on oath before a magistrate; and fearful were the expectations held by the whole country-side about the coming events of the Scotch rebellion. "It now comes out that two other persons had seen something of the sort in the interval--_viz._, in 1743--but had concealed it, to escape the insults to which their neighbours were subjected. Mr. Wren, of Wilton Hall, and his farm servant, saw, one summer evening, a man and a dog on the mountain, pursuing some horses along a place so steep that a horse could hardly by any possibility keep a footing on it. Their speed was prodigious, and their disappearance at the south end of the fell so rapid, that Mr. Wren and the servant went up, the next morning, to find the body of the man who must have been killed. Of man, horse, or dog, they found not a trace and they came down and held their tongues. When they did speak, they fared not much better for having twenty-six sworn comrades in their disgrace. "As for the explanation, the editor of the _Lonsdale Magazine_ declared (vol. ii., p. 313) that it was discovered that on the Midsummer Eve of 1745 the rebels were 'exercising on the western coast of Scotland, whose movements had been reflected by some transparent vapour, similar to the Fata Morgana.' This is not much in the way of explanation; but it is, as far as we know, all that can be had at present. These facts, however, brought out a good many more; as the spectral march of the same kind seen in Leicestershire in 1707, and the tradition of the tramp of armies over Helvellyn, on the eve of the battle of Marston Moor." Other cases are cited in which flocks of spectral sheep have been seen on certain roads, and there are of course various German stories of phantom cavalcades of hunters and robbers. Now in these cases, as so often happens in the investigation of occult phenomena, there are several possible causes, any one of which would be quite adequate to the production of the observed occurrences, but in the absence of fuller information it is hardly feasible to do more than guess as to which of these possible causes were in operation in any particular instance. The explanation usually suggested (whenever the whole story is not ridiculed as a falsehood) is that what is seen is a reflection by mirage of the movements of a real body of troops, taking place at a considerable distance. I have myself seen the ordinary mirage on several occasions, and know something therefore of its wonderful powers of deception; but it seems to me that we should need some entirely new variety of mirage, quite different from that at present known to science, to account for these tales of phantom armies, some of which pass the spectator within a few yards. First of all, they may be, as apparently in the Westphalian case above mentioned, simply instances of prevision on a gigantic scale--by whom arranged, and for what purpose, it is not easy to divine. Again, they may often belong to the past instead of the future, and be in fact the reflection of scenes from the âkâshic records--though here again the reason and method of such reflection is not obvious. There are plenty of tribes of nature-spirits perfectly capable, if for any reason they wished to do so, of producing such appearances by their wonderful power of glamour (see _Theosophical Manual, No. V._, p. 60), and such action would be quite in keeping with their delight in mystifying and impressing human beings. Or it may even sometimes be kindly intended by them as a warning to their friends of events that they know to be about to take place. It seems as though some explanation along these lines would be the most reasonable method of accounting for the extraordinary series of phenomena described by Miss Martineau--that is, if the stories told to her can be relied upon. Another possibility is that in some cases what have been taken for soldiers were simply the nature-spirits themselves going through some of the ordered evolutions in which they take so much delight, though it must be admitted that these are rarely of a character which could be mistaken for military manoeuvres except by the most ignorant. The flocks of animals are probably in most instances mere records, but there are cases where they, like the "wild huntsmen" of German story, belong to an entirely different class of phenomena, which is altogether outside of our present subject. Students of the occult will be familiar with the fact that the circumstances surrounding any scene of intense terror or passion, such as an exceptionally horrible murder, are liable to be occasionally reproduced in a form which it needs a very slight development of psychic faculty to be able to see and it has sometimes happened that various animals formed part of such surroundings, and consequently they also are periodically reproduced by the action of the guilty conscience of the murderer (see _Manual V._, p. 83). Probably whatever foundation of fact underlies the various stories of spectral horsemen and hunting-troops may generally be referred to this category. This is also the explanation, evidently, of some of the visions of ghostly armies, such as that remarkable re-enactment of the battle of Edgehill which seems to have taken place at intervals for some months after the date of the real struggle, as testified by a justice of the peace, a clergyman, and other eye-witnesses, in a curious contemporary pamphlet entitled _Prodigious Noises of War and Battle, at Edgehill, near Keinton, in Northamptonshire_. According to the pamphlet this case was investigated at the time by some officers of the army, who clearly recognized many of the phantom figures that they saw. This looks decidedly like an instance of the terrible power of man's unrestrained passions to reproduce themselves, and to cause in some strange way a kind of materialization of their record. In some cases it is clear that the flocks of animals seen have been simply hordes of unclean artificial elementals taking that form in order to feed upon the loathsome emanations of peculiarly horrible places, such as would be the site of a gallows. An instance of this kind is furnished by the celebrated "Gyb Ghosts," or ghosts of the gibbet, described in _More Glimpses of the World Unseen_, p. 109, as being repeatedly seen in the form of herds of mis-shapen swine-like creatures, rushing, rooting and fighting night after night on the site of that foul monument of crime. But these belong to the subject of apparitions rather than to that of clairvoyance. CHAPTER IX. METHODS OF DEVELOPMENT. When a man becomes convinced of the reality of the valuable power of clairvoyance, his first question usually is, "How can I develop in my own case this faculty which is said to be latent in everyone?" Now the fact is that there are many methods by which it may be developed, but only one which can be at all safely recommended for general use--that of which we shall speak last of all. Among the less advanced nations of the world the clairvoyant state has been produced in various objectionable ways; among some of the non-Aryan tribes of India, by the use of intoxicating drugs or the inhaling of stupefying fumes; among the dervishes, by whirling in a mad dance of religious fervour until vertigo and insensibility supervene; among the followers of the abominable practices of the Voodoo cult, by frightful sacrifices and loathsome rites of black magic. Methods such as these are happily not in vogue in our own race, yet even among us large numbers of dabblers in this ancient art adopt some plan of self-hypnotization, such as the gazing at a bright spot or the repetition of some formula until a condition of semi-stupefaction is produced; while yet another school among them would endeavour to arrive at similar results by the use of some of the Indian systems of regulation of the breath. All these methods are unequivocally to be condemned as quite unsafe for the practice of the ordinary man who has no idea of what he is doing--who is simply making vague experiments in an unknown world. Even the method of obtaining clairvoyance by allowing oneself to be mesmerized by another person is one from which I should myself shrink with the most decided distaste; and assuredly it should never be attempted except under conditions of absolute trust and affection between the magnetizer and the magnetized, and a perfection of purity in heart and soul, in mind and intention, such as is rarely to be seen among any but the greatest of saints. Experiments in connection with the mesmeric trance are of the deepest interest, as offering (among other things) a possibility of proof of the fact of clairvoyance to the sceptic, yet except under such conditions as I have just mentioned--conditions, I quite admit, almost impossible to realize--I should never counsel anyone to submit himself as a subject for them. Curative mesmerism (in which, without putting the patient into the trance state at all, an effort is made to relieve his pain, to remove his disease, or to pour vitality into him by magnetic passes) stands on an entirely different footing; and if the mesmerizer, even though quite untrained, is himself in good health and animated by pure intentions, no harm is likely to be done to the subject. In so extreme a case as that of a surgical operation, a man might reasonably submit himself even to the mesmeric trance, but it is certainly not a condition with which one ought lightly to experiment. Indeed, I should most strongly advise any one who did me the honour to ask for my opinion on the subject, not to attempt any kind of experimental investigation into what are still to him the abnormal forces of nature, until he has first of all read carefully everything that has been written on the subject, or--which is by far the best of all--until he is under the guidance of a qualified teacher. But where, it will be said, is the qualified teacher to be found? Not, most assuredly, among any who advertise themselves as teachers, who offer to impart for so many guineas or dollars the sacred mysteries of the ages, or hold "developing circles" to which casual applicants are admitted at so much per head. Much has been said in this treatise of the necessity for careful training--of the immense advantages of the trained over the untrained clairvoyant; but that again brings us back to the same question--where is this definite training to be had? The answer is, that the training may be had precisely where it has always been to be found since the world's history began--at the hands of the Great White Brotherhood of Adepts, which stands now, as it has always stood, at the back of human evolution, guiding and helping it under the sway of the great cosmic laws which represent to us the Will of the Eternal. But how, it may be asked, is access to be gained to them? How is the aspirant thirsting for knowledge to signify to them his wish for instruction? Once more, by the time-honoured methods only. There is no new patent whereby a man can qualify himself without trouble to become a pupil in that School--no royal road to the learning which has to be acquired in it. At the present day, just as in the mists of antiquity, the man who wishes to attract their notice must enter upon the slow and toilsome path of self-development--must learn first of all to take himself in hand and make himself all that he ought to be. The steps of that path are no secret; I have given them in full detail in _Invisible Helpers_, so I need not repeat them here. But it is no easy road to follow, and yet sooner or later all must follow it, for the great law of evolution sweeps mankind slowly but resistlessly towards its goal. From those who are pressing into this path the great Masters select their pupils, and it is only by qualifying himself to be taught that a man can put himself in the way of getting the teaching. Without that qualification, membership in any Lodge or Society, whether secret or otherwise, will not advance his object in the slightest degree. It is true, as we all know, that it was at the instance of some of these Masters that our Theosophical Society was founded, and that from its ranks some have been chosen to pass into closer relations with them. But that choice depends upon the earnestness of the candidate, not upon his mere membership of the Society or of any body within it. That, then, is the only absolutely safe way of developing clairvoyance--to enter with all one's energy upon the path of moral and mental evolution, at one stage of which this and other of the higher faculties will spontaneously begin to show themselves. Yet there is one practice which is advised by all the religions alike--which if adopted carefully and reverently can do no harm to any human being, yet from which a very pure type of clairvoyance has sometimes been developed; and that is the practice of meditation. Let a man choose a certain time every day--a time when he can rely upon being quiet and undisturbed, though preferably in the daytime rather than at night--and set himself at that time to keep his mind for a few minutes entirely free from all earthly thoughts of any kind whatever and, when that is achieved, to direct the whole force of his being towards the highest spiritual ideal that he happens to know. He will find that to gain such perfect control of thought is enormously more difficult than he supposes, but when he attains it it cannot but be in every way most beneficial to him, and as he grows more and more able to elevate and concentrate his thought, he may gradually find that new worlds are opening before his sight. As a preliminary training towards the satisfactory achievement of such meditation, he will find it desirable to make a practice of concentration in the affairs of daily life--even in the smallest of them. If he writes a letter, let him think of nothing else but that letter until it is finished if he reads a book, let him see to it that his thought is never allowed to wander from his author's meaning. He must learn to hold his mind in check, and to be master of that also, as well as of his lower passions he must patiently labour to acquire absolute control of his thoughts, so that he will always know exactly what he is thinking about, and why--so that he can use his mind, and turn it or hold it still, as a practised swordsman turns his weapon where he will. Yet after all, if those who so earnestly desire clairvoyance could possess it temporarily for a day or even an hour, it is far from certain that they would choose to retain the gift. True, it opens before them new worlds of study, new powers of usefulness, and for this latter reason most of us feel it worth while; but it should be remembered that for one whose duty still calls him to live in the world it is by no means an unmixed blessing. Upon one in whom that vision is opened the sorrow and the misery, the evil and the greed of the world press as an ever-present burden, until in the earlier days of his knowledge he often feels inclined to echo the passionate adjuration contained in those rolling lines of Schiller's: Dien Orakel zu verkünden, warum warfest du mich hin In die Stadt der ewig Blinden, mit dem aufgeschloss'nen Sinn? Frommt's, den Schleier aufzuheben, wo das nahe Schreckniss droht? Nur der Irrthum ist das Leben; dieses Wissen ist der Tod. Nimm, O nimm die traur'ge Klarheit mir vom Aug' den blut'gen Schein! Schrecklich ist es deiner Wahrheit sterbliches Gefäss zu seyn! which may perhaps be translated "Why hast thou cast me thus into the town of the ever-blind, to proclaim thine oracle by the opened sense? What profits it to lift the veil where the near darkness threatens? Only ignorance is life; this knowledge is death. Take back this sad clear-sightedness; take from mine eyes this cruel light! It is horrible to be the mortal channel of thy truth." And again later he cries, "Give me back my blindness, the happy darkness of my senses; take back thy dreadful gift!" But this of course is a feeling which passes, for the higher sight soon shows the pupil something beyond the sorrow--soon bears in upon his soul the overwhelming certainty that, whatever appearances down here may seem to indicate, all things are without shadow of doubt working together for the eventual good of all. He reflects that the sin and the suffering are there, whether he is able to perceive them or not, and that when he can see them he is after all better able to give efficient help than he would be if he were working in the dark; and so by degrees he learns to bear his share of the heavy karma of the world. Some misguided mortals there are who, having the good fortune to possess some slight touch of this higher power, are nevertheless so absolutely destitute of all right feeling in connection with it as to use it for the most sordid ends--actually even to advertise themselves as "test and business clairvoyants!" Needless to say, such use of the faculty is a mere prostitution and degradation of it, showing that its unfortunate possessor has somehow got hold of it before the moral side of his nature has been sufficiently developed to stand the strain which it imposes. A perception of the amount of evil karma that may be generated by such action in a very short time changes one's disgust into pity for the unhappy perpetrator of that sacrilegious folly. It is sometimes objected that the possession of clairvoyance destroys all privacy, and confers a limit-less ability to explore the secrets of others. No doubt it does confer such an _ability_, but nevertheless the suggestion is an amusing one to anyone who knows anything practically about the matter. Such an objection may possibly be well-founded as regards the very limited powers of the "test and business clairvoyant," but the man who brings it forward against those who have had the faculty opened for them in the course of their instruction, and consequently possess it fully, is forgetting three fundamental facts: first, that it is quite inconceivable that anyone, having before him the splendid fields for investigation which true clairvoyance opens up, could ever have the slightest wish to pry into the trumpery little secrets of any individual man; secondly, that even if by some impossible chance our clairvoyant _had_ such indecent curiosity about matters of petty gossip, there is, after all, such a thing as the honour of a gentleman, which, on that plane as on this, would of course prevent him from contemplating for an instant the idea of gratifying it; and thirdly, in case, by any unheard-of possibility, one might encounter some variety of low-class pitri with whom the above considerations would have no weight, full instructions are always given to every pupil, as soon as he develops any sign of faculty, as to the limitations which are placed upon its use. Put briefly, these restrictions are that there shall be no prying, no selfish use of the power, and no displaying of phenomena. That is to say, that the same considerations which would govern the actions of a man of right feeling upon the physical plane are expected to apply upon the astral and mental planes also; that the pupil is never under any circumstances to use the power which his additional knowledge gives to him in order to promote his own worldly advantage, or indeed in connection with gain in any way; and that he is never to give what is called in spiritualistic circles "a test"--that is, to do anything which will incontestably prove to sceptics on the physical plane that he possesses what to them would appear to be an abnormal power. With regard to this latter proviso people often say, "But why should he not? it would be so easy to confute and convince your sceptic, and it would do him good!" Such critics lose sight of the fact that, in the first place, none of those who know anything _want_ to confute or convince sceptics, or trouble themselves in the slightest degree about the sceptic's attitude one way or the other; and in the second, they fail to understand how much better it is for that sceptic that he should gradually grow into an intellectual appreciation of the facts of nature, instead of being suddenly introduced to them by a knock-down blow, as it were. But the subject was fully considered many years ago in Mr. Sinnet's _Occult World_, and it is needless to repeat again the arguments there adduced. It is very hard for some of our friends to realize that the silly gossip and idle curiosity which so entirely fill the lives of the brainless majority on earth can have no place in the more real life of the disciple; and so they sometimes enquire whether, even without any special wish to see, a clairvoyant might not casually observe some secret which another person was trying to keep, in the same way as one's glance might casually fall upon a sentence in someone else's letter which happened to be lying open upon the table. Of course he might, but what if he did? The man of honour would at once avert his eyes, in one case as in the other, and it would be as though he had not seen. If objectors could but grasp the idea that no pupil _cares_ about other people's business, except when it comes within his province to try to help them, and that he has always a world of work of his own to attend to, they would not be so hopelessly far from understanding the facts of the wider life of the trained clairvoyant. Even from the little that I have said with regard to the restrictions laid upon the pupil, it will be obvious that in very many cases he will know much more than he is at liberty to say. That is of course true in a far wider sense of the great Masters of Wisdom themselves, and that is why those who have the privilege of occasionally entering their presence pay so much respect to their lightest word even on subjects quite apart from the direct teaching. For the opinion of a Master, or even of one of his higher pupils, upon any subject is that of a man whose opportunity of judging accurately is out of all proportion to ours. His position and his extended faculties are in reality the heritage of all mankind, and, far though we may now be from those grand powers, they will none the less certainly be ours one day. Yet how different a place will this old world be when humanity as a whole possesses the higher clairvoyance! Think what the difference will be to history when all can read the records; to science, when all the processes about which now men theorize can be watched through all their course; to medicine, when doctor and patient alike can see clearly and exactly all that is being done; to philosophy, when there is no longer any possibility of discussion as to its basis, because all alike can see a wider aspect of the truth; to labour, when all work will be joy, because every man will be put only to that which he can do best; to education, when the minds and hearts of the children are open to the teacher who is trying to form their character; to religion, when there is no longer any possibility of dispute as to its broad dogmas, since the truth about the states after death, and the Great Law that governs the world, will be patent to all eyes. Above all, how far easier it will be then for the evolved men to help one another under those so much freer conditions! The possibilities that open before the mind are as glorious vistas stretching in all directions, so that our seventh round should indeed be a veritable golden age. Well for us that these grand faculties will not be possessed by all humanity until it has evolved to a far higher level in morality as well as in wisdom, else should we but repeat once more under still worse conditions the terrible downfall of the great Atlantean civilization, whose members failed to realize that increased power meant increased responsibility. Yet we ourselves were most of us among those very men let us hope that we have learnt wisdom by that failure, and that when the possibilities of the wider life open before us once more, this time we shall bear the trial better. INDEX PAGE Advantages of astral vision, 41, 65, 71 mental vision, 79 training, 20, 56, 70, 103, 116, 121 Âkâshic records, 85, 97 _et seq._, 160 Apparitions, 54 Armies, phantom, 154 Assassination of Mr. Perceval, 151 Aspect of the records, 115 Astral body, 69 counterpart 16 current, 62 _et seq._, 88, 95 matter, polarization of, 63 senses, 17 sight, 37 _et seq._, 59 _et seq._, 66 telescope, 65, 85, 103 world, 81, 103 Aura, the, 42 _et seq._, 101 Balance, 126 Bat's cry, experiment with, 11 Battle of Edgehill, 161 Body, the astral, 69 the causal, 101 Brownies, 33 Buddhic faculty, 18, 108, 136, 139 Bull and the doctor, the story of, 147 Causal body, 101 Centres of vitality, 14, 17 Cerebro-spinal system, 22 Ceremonies used to gain clairvoyance, 52, 163 Certainty of eventual good, 174 Character, judgment of, 42 Chakrams, 14-17 Chord of a man, the, 80 Clairaudience, 6, 69 _et seq._ Clairvoyance by drugs or ceremonies, 52 _et seq._, 163 casual, 93 does it destroy privacy?, 171 Clairvoyance during sleep, 26 how first manifested, 26 hysterical, 53 limitations of, 79, 81, 171 meaning of word, 5 occasional flashes of, 23 of the uncultured, 21 on mental plane, 56 on trivial subjects, 55, 95, 152 partial and temporary, 54 restrictions upon, 81, 171 sadness of, 169 under mesmerism, 24, 52, 164 Clairvoyants, "test and business", 51, 170 Classification of phenomena, 27 Colours, new, 35 Common-sense in occultism, necessity of, 125 Consciousness, continuous, 46 the focus of, 31 Considerations, preliminary, 7 Contemplation, 167 Continuous consciousness, 46 Control of thought, 168 Counterpart, astral, 16 Crystal-gazing, 66, 84 _et seq._, 127 Curative mesmerism, 165 Curiosity not permitted, 173 Current, astral, 62 _et seq._, 88, 95 Dangers, 78 Date, how to find a, 119 _et seq._ Dead, the, 45, 62 Death, visits at, 74 _et seq._ Delirium tremens, 53 Dervishes, the, 163 Devas, the, 44 Development, methods of, 163 the path of, 167 regular, 19 Difference between etheric and astral sight, 36 Difficulties, 103 _et seq._ Dimension, the fourth, 38 _et seq._, 65, 107, 137 Distance, sight at a, 59, 81 Double, the etheric, 34 Drugs used to gain clairvoyance, 52, 163 Duke of Orleans, the story of the, 90 _Earth, the Stars and the_, 110 Edgehill, battle of, 161 Elementals, 32, 44, 162 Equation, the personal, 104 _et seq._ Eternal now, the, 109, 137 Etheric double, the, 34 vision, 30 _et seq._ Experiments in crystal-gazing, 66, 84 _et seq._ with bat's cry, 11 with spectrum, 10 Extension of senses, 12 Faculties, latent, 7 buddhic, 18, 108, 136, 139 Fairy ointment, 34 Finding a stranger, 80 First manifestations of clairvoyance, 25 _et seq._ Flocks, phantom, 154, 160, 162 Focus of consciousness, the, 31 Fourth dimension, the, 38 _et seq._, 65, 107, 137 Freewill limited, 132 _et seq._ Future prospects, 175 Ghosts of the gibbet, 162 Glamour, 160 Goffe, the story of Mary, 75 Helpers, invisible, 46, 74, 88, 166 Historical study, possibilities of, 114 _et seq._ Hinton's works, 38 Housekeeper's dream, the story of the, 147 _et seq._ How a picture is found, 116 _et seq._ to find a date, 119 _et seq._ to investigate, 55 Huntsman, the wild, 160 Hypnotization, self, 86 Hysterical clairvoyance, 53 Incarnations, past, 118, 123 _et seq._ Investigate, how to, 55 Invisible helpers, 46, 74, 88, 166 Judgment of character, 42 Jung Stilling's story, 71 _et seq._ Knowledge, the value of, 125 Latent faculties, 7 Limitations of clairvoyance, the, 79, 81, 171 Limited freewill, 132 _et seq._ Links needed, 114 Lodge, address by Dr. Oliver, 137 Logos of the system, the, 99 _et seq._ Magic, 53 Magnifying, the power of, 47-67 Manifestations of clairvoyance, the first, 26 Masters of Wisdom, the, 20, 167, 174 Materialization, 70 Mâyâvirûpa, the, 78 Meaning of word clairvoyance, 5 Meditation, 167 Mediums, trance, 83 Mental plane clairvoyance, 56 plane sense, 18 world, 80, 104, 115 Mesmerism, clairvoyance under, 24, 62, 164 curative, 165 Methods of development, 163 Micawbers, psychic, 83 Mooltan, story of the siege of, 92 Murder, reproduction of, 161 Nature spirits, 33, 44, 61, 160 Necessity of common-sense in occultism, 125 New colours, 35 Now, the eternal, 109, 137 Occasional clairvoyance, 23 Ointment, fairy and witch, 34 Orleans, the story of the Duke of, 90 Other planets, 81 Partial and temporary clairvoyance, 54 Past incarnations, 118, 123 _et seq._ Path of development, the, 167 Perceval, assassination of Mr., 151 Personal equation, the, 104 _et seq._ Phantom flocks, 154, 160, 162 Phenomena, classification of, 27 séance room, 35, 62 Philadelphian seer, the story of a, 72 _et seq._ Physical objects, the transparency of, 32 Pictures before going to sleep, 93 Planets, other, 81 Polarization of astral matter, 63 Poseidonis, the sinking of, 120 Possibilities of historical study, 114 _et seq._ Power of magnifying, the, 47, 67 Power of response to vibrations, 9, 11 Preliminary considerations, 7 Premonition, Mr. Stead's, 153 Prevision, 132, 139 Prospects for the future, 175 Psychic Micawbers, 83 Psychometry, 114, 127 Qualifications of the student, 166 Qualified teachers, 165 Radiations, 59 Records, âkâshic, 85, 97 _et seq._, 160 aspect of the, 115 Regular development, 19 Reproduction of a murder, 161 Restrictions upon clairvoyance, 81, 171 Röntgen rays, the, 11 Sadness of clairvoyance, the, 169 Schiller's lines, 169 Séance-room phenomena, 35, 62 Second-sight, 140 _et seq._ the symbolism of, 145 Seer, a Philadelphian, 72 _et seq._ Self-hypnotization, 86 Sense, extension of, 12 Senses, astral, 17 Sight, astral, 37 _et seq._, 59 _et seq._, 66 at a distance, 59, 81 spiritual, 57 Sleep, clairvoyance during, 26 Society, the Theosophical, 167 Solar system, the, 99 Spectral armies, 154 Spectrum, experiment with the, 10 Spiritualistic phenomena, 35, 62 _Stars and the Earth, The_, 110 Stories of crystal-gazing, 84 _et seq._ second sight, 132, 140 _et seq._ Story by Jung Stilling, 72 Mr. Stead's, 93 of Captain Yonnt, 89 Mary Goffe, 75 Miss X.'s dogcart, 152 Mr. Stead's premonition, 153 Story of Souter Fell, 156-7 the bull and the doctor, 147 the Duke of Orleans, 90 the housekeeper's dream, 147 _et seq._ Story of the siege of Mooltan, 92 the white night-dress, 149 Zschokke, 127 _et seq._ Stranger, finding a, 80 Sympathetic system, the, 22 _et seq._ System, the Logos of the, 99 _et seq._ Teachers, qualified, 165 Telescope, the astral, 65, 85, 103 Temporary and partial clairvoyance, 54 Tests not given, 172 Theosophical Society, The, 167 terms, 7 Thought-control, 168 Thought-forms, 43, 67 Throughth, 39 Time only relative, 138 Training, the advantages of, 165 where to be had, 167 Trance mediums, 83 Transparency of physical objects, 32 Trivial subjects, clairvoyance on, 55, 95, 152 Uncultured, clairvoyance in the, 21 Value of knowledge, the, 125 Variable capacity of response, 10 _et seq._ Vibrations, 9 power of response to, 11 Vision, astral, 37 _et seq._, 59 _et seq._, 66 etheric, 30 _et seq._ Visions, casual, 141 Visits at death, 74 _et seq._ Voodoo or Obeah, 163 White night-dress, the story of the, 149 Wild huntsman, the, 160 Wisdom, the Masters of, 20, 167, 174 World, the astral, 81, 103 mental, 80, 104, 115 X.'s story, Miss, 152 X Rays, 11 Yonnt's story, Captain, 89 Zschokke's story, 127 _et seq._ PRINTED BY NEILL AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH. * * * * * THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 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5772	----	Transcription by M.R.J. AE In The Irish Theosophist --By "AE" (George William Russell) Contents: 1--A Word Upon the Objects of the Theosophical Society 2--The Twilight Hour 3--The Mask of Apollo 4--The Secret of Power 5--The Priestess of the Woods 6--A Tragedy in the Temple 7--Jagrata, Svapna and Sushupti 8--Concentration 9--Verse by AE in "The Irish Theosophist" (39 verses) 10--The Element Language 11--At the Dawn of the Kali Yuga 12--The Meditation of Parvati 13--A Talk by the Euphrates 14--The Cave of Lilith 15--A Strange Awakening 16--The Midnight Blossom 17--The Story of a Star 18--How Theosophy Affects One's View of Life 19--Comfort 20--The Ascending Cycle 21--The Mystic Night's Entertainment 22--On the Spur of the Moment 23--The Legends of Ancient Eire 24--Review: Lyrics of Fitzpatrick 25--"Yes, And Hope" 26--Content 27--The Enchantment of Cuchullain 28--Shadow and Substance 29--On the Passing of W.Q. Judge 30--Self-Reliance 31--The Mountains 32--Works and Days 33--The Childhood of Apollo 34--The Awakening of the Fires 35--Our Secret Ties 36--Priest or Hero? 37--The Age of the Spirit 38--A Thought Along the Road 39--The Fountains of Youth A Word Upon the Objects of the Theosophical Society 1st:--To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or color. 2nd:---To promote the study of Aryan and other Eastern literatures, religions, philosophies and sciences, and demonstrate the importance of that study. 3rd:---To investigate unexplained laws of nature and the psychic powers latent in man. Started a little under a quarter of a century ago, in an age grown cold with unbelief and deadened by inexplicable dogmas, the Theosophical Society has found adherents numerous enough to make it widely known, and enthusiastic enough to give it momentum and make it a living force. The proclamation of its triple objects-- brotherhood, wisdom and power, acted like a trumpet call, and many came forth to join it, emerging from other conflicts; and out of silence and retirement came many who had grown hopeless but who had still the old feeling at heart. For the first object no explanation is necessary; but a word or two of comment upon the second and third may help to show how they do not weaken, by turning into other channels, the intellectual energies and will, which might serve to carry out the first. In these old philosophies of the East we find the stimulus to brotherly action which might not be needed in an ideal state, but which is a help to the many, who, born into the world with a coldness of heart as their heritage, still wish to do their duty. Now out duty alters according to our conception of nature, and in the East there has been put forward, by men whom we believe to be the wise and great of the earth, a noble philosophy, a science of life itself, and this, not as a hypothesis, but as truth which is certain, truth which has been verified by eyes which see deeper than ours, and proclaimed by the voices of those who have become the truth they speak of; for as Krishna teaches Arjuna in the Dayanishvari: "on this Path to whatever place one would go that place one's self becomes!" The last word of this wisdom is unity. Underneath all phenomena and surviving all changes, a great principle endures for ever. At the great white dawn of existence, from this principle stream spirit and primordial matter; as they flow away further from their divine source, they become broken up, the one life into countless lives, matter into countless forms, which enshrine these lives; spirit involves itself into matter and matter evolves, acted upon by this informing fire. These lives wander on through many a cycle's ebb and flow, in separation and sorrow, with sometimes the joy of a momentary meeting. Only by the recognition of that unity, which spiritually is theirs, can they obtain freedom. It is true in the experience of the race that devotion of any life to universal ends brings to that life a strange subtle richness and strength; by our mood we fasten ourselves into the Eternal; hence these historic utterances, declarations of permanence and a spiritual state of consciousness, which have been the foundation of all great religious movements. Christ says, "I and my Father are one." "Before Abraham was I am." Paul says, "In him we live and move and have our being." In the sacred books of India it is the claim of many sages that they have recognised "the ancient constant and eternal which perishes not through the body be slain," and there are not wanting to-day men who speak of a similar expansion of their consciousness, out of the gross and material, into more tender, wise and beautiful states of thought and being. Tennyson, in a famous letter published some time ago, mentioned that he had at different times experienced such a mood; the idea of death was laughable; it was not thought, but a state; "the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest." It would be easy to do on multiplying instances. Now in a nature where unity underlies all differences, where soul is bound to soul more than star to star; where if one falters or fails the order of all the rest is changed; the duty of any man who perceives this unity is clear, the call for brotherly action is imperative, selfishness cannot any longer wear the mask of wisdom, for isolation is folly and shuts us out from the eternal verities. The third object of the society defined as "the study of the psychic powers latent in man" is pursued only by a portion of the members; those who wish to understand more clearly the working of certain laws of nature and who wish to give themselves up more completely to that life in which they live and move and have their being; and the outward expression of the occult life is also brotherhood. --Nov. 15, 1892 The Hour of Twilight For the future we intend that at this hour the Mystic shall be at home, less metaphysical and scientific than is his wont, but more really himself. It is customary at this hour, before the lamps are brought in, to give way a little and dream, letting all the tender fancies day suppresses rise up in out minds. Wherever it is spent, whether in the dusky room or walking home through the blue evening, all things grow strangely softened and united; the magic of the old world reappears. The commonplace streets take on something of the grandeur and solemnity of starlit avenues of Egyptian temples the public squares in the mingled glow and gloom grow beautiful as the Indian grove where Sakuntala wandered with her maidens; the children chase each other through the dusky shrubberies, as they flee past they look at us with long remembered glances: lulled by the silence, we forget a little while the hard edges of the material and remember that we are spirits. Now is the hour for memory, the time to call in and make more securely our own all stray and beautiful ideas that visited us during the day, and which might otherwise be forgotten. We should draw them in from the region of things felt to the region of things understood; in a focus burning with beauty and pure with truth we should bind them, for from the thoughts thus gathered in something accrues to the consciousness; on the morrow a change impalpable but real has taken place in our being, we see beauty and truth through everything. It is in like manner in Devachan, between the darkness of earth and the light of spiritual self-consciousness, that the Master in each of us draws in and absorbs the rarest and best of experiences, love, self-forgetfulness, aspiration, and out of these distils the subtle essence of wisdom, so that he who struggles in pain for his fellows, when he wakens again on earth is endowed with the tradition of that which we call self-sacrifice, but which is in reality the proclamation of our own universal nature. There are yet vaster correspondences, for so also we are told, when the seven worlds are withdrawn, the great calm Shepherd of the Ages draws his misty hordes together in the glimmering twilights of eternity, and as they are penned within the awful Fold, the rays long separate are bound into one, and life, and joy, and beauty disappear, to emerge again after rest unspeakable on the morning of a New Day. Now if the aim of the mystic be to fuse into one all moods made separate by time, would not the daily harvesting of wisdom render unnecessary the long Devachanic years? No second harvest could be reaped from fields where the sheaves are already garnered. Thus disregarding the fruits of action, we could work like those who have made the Great Sacrifice, for whom even Nirvana is no resting place. Worlds may awaken in nebulous glory, pass through their phases of self-conscious existence and sink again to sleep, but these tireless workers continue their age-long task of help. Their motive we do not know, but in some secret depth of our being we feel that there could be nothing nobler, and thinking this we have devoted the twilight hour to the understanding of their nature. --February 15, 1893 There are dreams which may be history or may be allegory. There is in them nothing grotesque, nothing which could mar the feeling of authenticity, the sense of the actual occurence of the dream incident. The faces and figures perceived have the light shade and expression which seems quite proper to the wonderworld in which the eye of the inner man has vision; and yet the story may be read as a parable of spiritual truth like some myth of ancient scripture. Long ago I had may such dreams, and having lately become a student of such things, I have felt an interest in recalling the more curious and memorable of these early vision. The nebulous mid-region between waking and unconsciousness was the haunt of many strange figures, reflections perhaps from that true life led during sleep by the immortal man. Among these figures two awoke the strangest feelings of interest. One was an old man with long grey hair and beard, whose grey-blue eyes had an expression of secret and inscrutable wisdom; I felt an instinctive reverence for this figure, so expressive of spiritual nobility, and it became associated in my mind with all aspiration and mystical thought. The other figure was that of a young girl. These two appeared again and again in my visions; the old man always as instructor, the girl always as companion. I have here written down one of these adventures, leaving it to the reader to judge whether it is purely symbolical, or whether the incidents related actually took place, and were out-realized from latency by the power of the Master within. With the girl as my companion I left an inland valley and walked towards the sea. It was evening when we reached it and the tide was far out. The sands glimmered away for miles on each side of us; we walked outwards through the dim coloured twilight, I was silent; a strange ecstacy slowly took possession of me, as if drop by drop an unutterable life was falling within; the fever grew intense, then unbearable as it communicated itself to the body; with a wild cry I began to spin about, whirling round and round in ever increasing delirium; Some secretness was in the air; I was called forth by the powers of invisible nature and in a swoon I fell. I rose again with sudden memory, but my body was lying upon the sands; with a curious indifference I saw that the tide was on the turn and the child was unable to remove the insensible form beyond its reach; I saw her sit down beside it and place the head upon her lap; she sat there quietly waiting, while all about her little by little the wave of the Indian sea began to ripple inwards, and overhead the early stars began softly to glow. After this I forgot completely the child and the peril of the waters, I began to be conscious of the presence of a new world. All around me currents were flowing, in whose waves dance innumerable lives; diaphanous forms glided about, a nebulous sparkle was everywhere apparent; faces as of men in dreams glimmered on me, or unconsciously their forms drifted past, and now and then a face looked sternly upon me with a questioning glance. I was not to remain long in this misty region, again I felt the internal impulse and internally I was translated into a sphere of more pervading beauty and light; and here with more majesty and clearness than I had observed before was the old man of my dreams. I had though of him as old but there was an indescribable youth pervading the face with its ancient beauty, and then I knew it was neither age nor youth, it was eternalness. The calm light of thought played over features clear cut as a statue's, and an inner luminousness shone through the rose of his face and his silver hair. There were others about but of them I had no distinct vision. He said, "You who have lived and wandered through our own peculiar valleys look backwards now and learn the alchemy of thought." He touched me with his hand and I became aware of the power of these strange beings. I felt how they had waited in patience, how they had worked and willed in silence; from them as from a fountain went forth peace; to them as to the stars rose up unconsciously the aspirations of men, the dumb animal cravings, the tendrils of the flowers. I saw how in the valley where I lived, where naught had hindered, their presence had drawn forth in luxuriance all dim and hidden beauty, a rarer and pure atmosphere recalled the radiant life of men in the golden dawn of the earth. With wider vision I saw how far withdrawn from strife they had stilled the tumults of nations; I saw how hearing far within the voices, spiritual, remote, which called, the mighty princes of the earth descended from their thrones becoming greater than princes; under this silent influence the terrible chieftains flung open the doors of their dungeons that they themselves might become free, and all these joined in that hymn which the quietude of earth makes to sound in the ears of the gods.--Overpowered I turned round, the eyes of light were fixed upon me. "Do you now understand?" "I do not understand," I replied. I see that the light and the beauty and the power that enters the darkness of the world comes from these high regions; but I do not know how the light enters, no how beauty is born, I do not know the secret of power." "You must become as one of us," he answered. I bowed my head until it touched his breast; I felt my life was being drawn from me, but before consciousness utterly departed and was swallowed up in that larger life, I learned something of the secret of their being; I lived within the minds of men, but their thoughts were not my thoughts; I hung like a crown over everything, yet age was no nearer than childhood to the grasp of my sceptre and sorrow was far away when it wept for my going, and very far was joy when it woke at my light; yet I was the lure that led them on; I was at the end of all ways, and I was also in the sweet voice that cried "return;" and I had learned how spiritual life is one in all things, when infinite vistas and greater depths received me, and I went into that darkness out of which no memory can ever return. --March 15, 1893 The Mask of Apollo A tradition rises up within me of quiet, unrumoured years, ages before the demigods and heroes toiled at the making of Greece, long ages before the building of the temples and sparkling palaces of her day of glory. The land was pastoral, all over its woods hung a stillness as of dawn and of unawakened beauty deep-breathing in rest. Here and there little villages sent up their smoke and a dreamy people moved about; they grew up, toiled a little at their fields, followed their sheep and goats, they wedded and grey age overtook them, but they never ceased to be children. They worshiped the gods with ancient rites in little wooden temples and knew many things which were forgotten in later years. Near one of these shrines lived a priest, an old man whose simple and reverend nature made him loved by all around. To him, sitting one summer evening before his hut, came a stranger whom he invited to share his meal. The stranger sat down and began to tell him many wonderful things, stories of the magic of the sun and of the bright beings who moved at the gates of the day. The old priest grew drowsy in the warm sunlight and fell asleep. Then the stranger who was Apollo arose and in the guise of the old priest entered the little temple, and the people came in unto him one after the other. Agathon, the husbandman. "Father, as I bend over the fields or fasten up the vines, I sometimes remember how you said that the gods can be worshiped by doing these things as by sacrifice. How is it, father, that the pouring of cool water over roots, or training up the branches can nourish Zeus? How can the sacrifice appear before his throne when it is not carried up in the fire and vapour." Apollo. "Agathon, the father omnipotent does not live only in the aether. He runs invisibly within the sun and stars, and as they whirl round and round, they break out into woods and flowers and streams, and the winds are shaken away from them like leaves from off the roses. Great, strange and bright, he busies himself within, and at the end of time his light shall shine through and men shall see it, moving in a world of flame. Think then, as you bend over your fields, of what you nourish and what rises up within them. Know that every flower as it droops in the quiet of the woodland feels within and far away the approach of an unutterable life and is glad, they reflect that life even as the little pools take up the light of the stars. Agathon, Agathon, Zeus is no greater in the aether than he is in the leaf of grass, and the hymns of men are no sweeter to him than a little water poured over one of his flowers." Agathon the husbandman went away and bent tenderly over his fruits and vines, and he loved each one of them more than before, and he grew wise in many things as he watched them and he was happy working for the gods. Then spake Damon the shepherd, "Father, while the flocks are browsing dreams rise up within me; they make the heart sick with longing; the forests vanish, I hear no more the lamb's bleat or the rustling of the fleeces; voices from a thousand depths call me, they whisper, they beseech me, shadows lovelier than earth's children utter music, not for me though I faint while I listen. Father, why do I hear the things others hear not, voices calling to unknown hunters of wide fields, or to herdsmen, shepherds of the starry flocks"? Apollo answered, "Damon, a song stole from the silence while the gods were not yet, and a thousand ages passed ere they came, called forth by the music, and a thousand ages they listened then joined in the song; then began the worlds to glimmer shadowy about them and bright beings to bow before them. These, their children, began in their turn to sing the song that calls forth and awakens life. He is master of all things who has learned their music. Damon, heed not the shadows, but the voices, the voices have a message to thee from beyond the gods. Learn their song and sing it over again to the people until their hearts too are sick with longing and they can hear the song within themselves. Oh, my son, I see far off how the nations shall join in it as in a chorus, and hearing it the rushing planets shall cease from their speed and be steadfast; men shall hold starry sway." The face of the god shone through the face of the old man, and filled with awe, it was so full of secretness. Damon the herdsman passed from his presence and a strange fire was kindled in his heart. Then the two lovers, Dion and Neaera, came in and stood before Apollo. Dion spake, "Father, you who are so wise can tell us what love is, so that we shall never miss it. Old Tithonius nods his grey head at us as we pass; he says, 'only with the changeless gods has love endurance, for men the loving time is short and its sweetness is soon over.'" Neaera added. "But it is not true, father, for his drowsy eyes light when he remembers the old days, when he was happy and proud in love as we are." Apollo. "My children, I will tell you the legend how love came into the world and how it may endure. It was on high Olympus the gods held council at the making of man; each had brought a gift, they gave to man something of their own nature. Aphrodite, the loveliest and sweetest, paused and was about to add a new grace to his person, but Eros cried, "let them not be so lovely without, let them be lovelier within. Put you own soul in, O mother." The mighty mother smiled, and so it was; and now whenever love is like hers, which asks not return but shines on all because it must, within that love Aphrodite dwells and it becomes immortal by her presence." Then Dion and Neaera went out, and as they walked homewards through the forest, purple and vaporous in the evening light, they drew closer together; and Dion looking into her eyes saw there a new gleam, violet, magical, shining, there was the presence of Aphrodite, there was her shrine. Then came in unto Apollo the two grandchildren of old Thithonius and they cried, "See the flowers we have brought you, we gathered them for you down in the valley where they grow best." Then Apollo said, "What wisdom shall we give to children that they may remember? Our most beautiful for them!" As he stood and looked at them the mask of age and secretness vanished, he stood before them radiant in light; they laughed in joy at his beauty; he bent down and kissed them each upon the forehead then faded away into the light which was his home. As the sun sank down amid the blue hills the old priest awoke with a sigh and cried out, "Oh that we could talk wisely as we do in our dreams." --April 15, 1893 The Secret of Power It is not merely because it is extraordinary that I wish to tell you this story. I think mere weirdness, grotesque or unusual character, are not sufficient reasons for making public incidents in which there is an element of the superhuman. The world, in spite of its desire to understand the nature of the occult is sick of and refuses to listen to stories of apparitions which betray no spiritual character or reveal no spiritual law. The incident here related is burned into my mind and life, not because of its dramatic intensity or personal character, but because it was a revelation of the secret of power, a secret which the wise in good and the wise in evil alike have knowledge of. My friend Felix was strangely disturbed; not only were his material affairs unsettled, but he was also passing through a crisis in his spiritual life. Two paths were open before him; On one side lay the dazzling mystery of passion; on the other "the small old path" held out its secret and spiritual allurements. I had hope that he would choose the latter, and as I was keenly interested in his decision. I invested the struggle going on in his mind with something of universal significance, seeing in it a symbol of the strife between "light and darkness which are the world's eternal ways." He came in late one evening. I saw at once by the dim light that there was something strange in his manner. I spoke to him in enquiry; he answered me in a harsh dry voice quite foreign to his usual manner. "Oh, I am not going to trouble myself any more, I will let things take their course." This seemed the one idea in his mind, the one thing he understood clearly was that things were to take their own course; he failed to grasp the significance of any other idea or its relative importance. He answered "Aye, indeed," with every appearance of interest and eagerness to some trivial remark about the weather, and was quite unconcerned about another and most important matter which should have interested him deeply. I soon saw what had happened; his mind, in which forces so evenly balanced had fought so strenuously, had become utterly wearied out and could work no longer. A flash of old intuition illumined it at last,-- it was not wise to strive with such bitterness over life,--therefore he said to me in memory of this intuition, "I am going to let things take their course." A larger tribunal would decide; he had appealed unto Caesar. I sent him up to his room and tried to quiet his fever by magnetization with some success. He fell asleep, and as I was rather weary myself I retired soon after. This was the vision of the night. It was surely in the room I was lying and on my bed, and yet space opened on every side with pale, clear light. A slight wavering figure caught my eye, a figure that swayed to and fro; I was struck with its utter feebleness, yet I understood it was its own will or some quality of its nature which determined that palpitating movement towards the poles between which it swung. What were they? I became silent as night and thought no more. Two figures awful in their power opposed each other; the frail being wavering between them could by putting out its arms have touched them both. It alone wavered, for they were silent, resolute and knit in the conflict of will; they stirred not a hand nor a foot; there was only a still quivering now and then as of intense effort, but they made no other movement. Their heads were bent forward slightly, their arms folded, their bodies straight, rigid, and inclined slightly backwards from each other like two spokes of a gigantic wheel. What were they, these figures? I knew not, and yet gazing upon them, thought which took no words to clothe itself mutely read their meaning. Here were the culminations of the human, towering images of the good and evil man may aspire to. I looked at the face of the evil adept. His bright red-brown eyes burned with a strange radiance of power; I felt an answering emotion of pride, of personal intoxication, of psychic richness rise up within me gazing upon him. His face was archetypal; the abstract passion which eluded me in the features of many people I knew, was here declared, exultant, defiant, giantesque; it seem to leap like fire, to be free. In this face I was close to the legendary past, to the hopeless worlds where men were martyred by stony kings, where prayer was hopeless, where pity was none. I traced a resemblance to many of the great Destroyers in history whose features have been preserved, Napoleon, Ramses and a hundred others, named and nameless, the long line of those who were crowned and sceptered in cruelty. His strength was in human weakness, I saw this, for space and the hearts of men were bare before me. Out of space there flowed to him a stream half invisible of red; it nourished that rich radiant energy of passion; it flowed from men as they walked and brooded in loneliness, or as they tossed in sleep. I withdrew my gaze from this face which awoke in me a lurid sense accompaniment, and turned it on the other. An aura of pale soft blue was around this figure through which gleamed an underlight as of universal gold. The vision was already dim and departing, but I caught a glimpse of a face godlike in its calm, terrible in the beauty of a life we know only in dreams, with strength which is the end of the hero's toil, which belongs to the many times martyred soul; yet not far away not in the past was its power, it was the might of life which exists eternally. I understood how easy it would have been for this one to have ended the conflict, to have gained a material victory by its power, but this would not have touched on or furthered its spiritual ends. Only its real being had force to attract that real being which was shrouded in the wavering figure. This truth the adept of darkness knew also and therefore he intensified within the sense of pride and passionate personality. Therefore they stirred not a hand nor a foot while under the stimulus of their presence culminated the good and evil in the life which had appealed to a higher tribunal to decide. Then this figure wavering between the two moved forward and touched with its hand the Son of Light. All at once the scene and actors vanished, and the eye that saw them was closed, I was alone with darkness and a hurricane of thoughts. Strange and powerful figures! I knew your secret of strength, it is only to be, nature quickened by your presence leaps up in response. I knew no less the freedom of that human soul, for your power only revealed its unmanifest nature, it but precipitated experience. I knew that although the gods and cosmic powers may war over us for ever, it is we alone declare them victors or vanquished. For the rest the vision of that night was prophetic, and the feet of my friend are now set on that way which was the innermost impulse of his soul. --May 15, 1893 The Priestess of the Woods Here is a legend whispered to me, the land or time I cannot tell, it may have been in the old Atlantean days. There were vast woods and a young priestess ruled them; she presided at the festivals and sacrificed at the altar for the people, interceding with the spirits of fire, water air and earth, that the harvest might not be burned up, nor drenched with the floods, nor town by storms and that the blight might not fall upon it, which things the elemental spirits sometimes brought about. This woodland sovereignty was her heritage from her father who was a mighty magician before her. Around her young days floated the faery presences; she knew them as other children know the flowers having neither fear nor wonder for them. She saw deeper things also; as a little child, wrapped up in her bearskin, she watched with awe her father engaged in mystic rites; when around him the airy legions gathered from the populous elements, the spirits he ruled and the spirits he bowed down before: fleeting nebulous things white as foam coming forth from the great deep who fled away at the waving of his hand; and rarer the great sons of fire, bright and transparent as glass, who though near seemed yet far away and were still and swift as the figures that glance in a crystal. So the child grew up full of mystery; her thoughts were not the thoughts of the people about her, nor their affections her affections. It seemed as if the elf-things or beings carved by the thought of the magician, pushed aside by his strong will and falling away from him, entering into the child became part of her, linking her to the elemental beings who live in the star-soul that glows within the earth. Her father told her such things as she asked, but he died while she was yet young and she knew not his aim, what man is, or what is his destiny; but she knew the ways of every order of spirit that goes about clad in a form, how some were to be dreaded and some to be loved; By reason of this knowledge she succeeded as priestess to the shrine, and held the sway of beauty and youth, of wisdom and mystery over the people dwelling in the woods. It was the evening of the autumn festival, the open grassy space before the altar was crowded with figures, hunters with their feathered heads; shepherds, those who toil in the fields, the old and hoary were gathered around. The young priestess stood up before them; she was pale from vigil, and the sunlight coming through the misty evening air fell upon her swaying arms and her dress with its curious embroidery of peacock's feathers; the dark hollows of her eyes were alight and as she spoke inspiration came to her; her voice rose and fell, commanding, warning, whispering, beseeching; its strange rich music flooded the woods and pierced through and through with awe the hearts of those who listened. She spoke of the mysteries of that unseen nature; how man is watched and ringed round with hosts who war upon him, who wither up his joys by their breath; she spoke of the gnomes who rise up in the woodland paths with damp arms grasping from their earthy bed. "Dreadful" she said "are the elementals who live in the hidden waters: they rule the dreaming heart: their curse is forgetfulness; they lull man to fatal rest, with drowsy fingers feeling to put out his fire of life. But the most of all, dread the powers that move in air; their nature is desire unquenchable; their destiny is--never to be fulfilled--never to be at peace: they roam hither and thither like the winds they guide; they usurp dominion over the passionate and tender soul, but they love not in our way; where they dwell the heart is a madness and the feet are filled with a hurrying fever, and night has no sleep and day holds no joy in its sunlit cup. Listen not to their whisper; they wither and burn up the body with their fire; the beauty they offer is smitten through and through with unappeasable anguish." She paused for a moment; here terrible breath had hardly ceased to thrill them, when another voice was heard singing; its note was gay and triumphant, it broke the spell of fear upon the people, "I never heed by waste or wood The cry of fay or faery thing Who tell of their own solitude; Above them all my soul is king. The royal robe as king I wear Trails all along the fields of light; Its silent blue and silver bear For gems the starry dust of night. The breath of joy unceasingly Waves to and fro its fold star-lit, And far beyond earth's misery I live and breathe the joy of it." The priestess advanced from the altar, her eyes sought for the singer; when she came to the centre of the opening she paused and waited silently. Almost immediately a young man carrying a small lyre stepped out of the crowd and stood before her; he did not seem older than the priestess; he stood unconcerned though her dark eyes blazed at the intrusion; he met her gaze fearlessly; his eyes looked into hers--in this way all proud spirits do battle. Her eyes were black with almost a purple tinge, eyes that had looked into the dark ways of nature; his were bronze, and a golden tinge, a mystic opulence of vitality seemed to dance in their depths; they dazzled the young priestess with the secrecy of joy; her eyes fell for a moment. He turned round and cried out, "Your priestess speaks but half truths, her eyes have seen but her heart does not know. Life is not terrible but is full of joy. Listen to me. I passed by while she spake, and I saw that a fear lay upon every man, and you shivered thinking of your homeward path, fearful as rabbits of the unseen things, and forgetful how you have laughed at death facing the monsters who crush down the forests. Do you not know that you are greater than all these spirits before who you bow in dread; your life springs from a deeper source. Answer me, priestess, where go the fire-spirits when winter seizes the world?" "Into the Fire-King they go, they dream in his heart." She half chanted, the passion of her speech not yet fallen away from her. "And where go the fires of men when they despair"? She was silent; then he continued half in scorn, "Your priestess is the priestess of ghouls and fays rather than a priestess of men; her wisdom is not for you; the spirits that haunt the elements are hostile because they see you full of fear; do not dread them and their hatred will vanish. The great heart of the earth is full of laughter; do not put yourselves apart from its joy, for its soul is your soul and its joy is your true being." He turned and passed through the crowd; the priestess made a motion as if she would have stayed him, then she drew herself up proudly and refrained. They heard his voice again singing as he passed into the darkening woods, "The spirits to the fire-king throng Each in the winter of his day: And all who listen to their song Follow them after in that way. They seek the heart-hold of the king, They build within his halls of fire, Their dreams flash like the peacock's wing, They glow with sun-hues of desire. I follow in no faery ways; I heed no voice of fay or elf; I in the winter of my days Rest in the high ancestral self." The rites interrupted by the stranger did not continue much longer; the priestess concluded her words of warning; she did not try to remove the impression created by the poet's song, she only said, "His wisdom may be truer. It is more beautiful than the knowledge we inherit." The days passed on; autumn died into winter, spring came again and summer, and the seasons which brought change to the earth brought change to the young priestess. She sought no longer to hold sway over the elemental tribes, and her empire over them departed: the song of the poet rang for ever in her ears; its proud assertion of kingship and joy in the radiance of a deeper life haunted her like truth; but such a life seemed unattainable by her and a deep sadness rested in her heart. The wood-people often saw her sitting in the evening where the sunlight fell along the pool, waving slowly its azure and amethyst, sparkling and flashing in crystal and gold, melting as if a phantom Bird of Paradise were fading away; her dark head was bowed in melancholy and all the great beauty flamed and died away unheeded. After a time she rose up and moved about, she spoke more frequently to the people who had not dared to question her, she grew into a more human softness, they feared her less and loved her more; but she ceased not from her passionate vigils and her step faltered and her cheek paled, and her eager spirit took flight when the diamond glow of winter broke out over the world. The poet came again in the summer; they told him of the change they could not understand, but he fathomed the depths of this wild nature, and half in gladness, half in sorrow, he carved an epitaph over her tomb near the altar, Where is the priestess of this shrine, And by what place does she adore? The woodland haunt below the pine Now hears her whisper nevermore. Ah, wrapped in her own beauty now She dreams a dream that shall not cease; Priestess, to her own soul to bow Is hers in everlasting peace. --July 15, 1893 A Tragedy in the Temple I have often thought with sadness over the fate of that comrade. That so ardent and heroic a spirit, so much chivalry and generosity should meet such a horrible fate, has often made me wonder if there is any purpose in this tangled being of ours; I have hated life and the gods as I thought of it. What brought him out of those great deserts where his youth was spent, where his soul grew vast knowing only of two changes, the blaze of day and night the purifier, blue, mysterious, ecstatic with starry being? Were not these enough for him? Could the fire of the altar inspire more? Could he be initiated deeper in the chambers of the temple than in those great and lonely places where God and man are alone together? This was my doing; resting in his tent when I crossed the desert, I had spoken to him of that old wisdom which the priests of the inner temple keep and hand down from one to the other; I blew to flame the mystic fire which already smouldered within him, and filled with the vast ambition of God, he left his tribe and entered the priesthood as neophyte in the Temple of Isthar, below Ninevah. I had sometimes to journey thither bearing messages from our high priest, and so as time passed my friendship with Asur grew deep. That last evening when I sat with him on the terrace that roofed the temple, he was more silent than I had known him before to be; we had generally so many things to speak of; for he told me all his dreams, such vague titanic impulses as the soul has in the fresh first years of its awakening, when no experience hinders with memory its flights of aspiration, and no anguish has made it wise. But that evening there was, I thought, something missing; a curious feverishness seemed to have replaced the cool and hardy purity of manner which was natural to him; his eyes had a strange glow, fitful and eager; I saw by the starlight how restless his fingers were, they intertwined, twisted, and writhed in and out. We sat long in the rich night together; then he drew nearer to me and leaned his head near my shoulder; he began to whisper incoherently a wild and passionate tale; the man's soul was being tempted. "Brother" he said, "I am haunted by a vision, by a child of the stars as lovely as Isthar's self; she visits my dreaming hours, she dazzles me with strange graces, she bewilders with unspeakable longing. Sometime, I know, I must go to her, though I perish. When I see her I forget all else and I have will to resist no longer. The vast and lonely inspiration of the desert departs from my thought, she and the jewel-light she lives in blot it out. The thought of her thrills me like fire. Brother give me help, ere I go mad or die; she draws me away from earth and I shall end my days amid strange things, a starry destiny amid starry races." I was not then wise in these things, I did not know the terrible dangers that lurk in the hidden ways in which the soul travels. "This" I said " is some delusion. You have brooded over a fancy until it has become living; you have filled your creation with your own passion and it lingers and tempts you; even if it were real, it is folly to think of it, we must close our hearts to passion if we would attain the power and wisdom of Gods." He shook his head, I could not realize or understand him. Perhaps if I had known all and could have warned him, it would have been in vain; perhaps the soul must work out its own purification in experience and learn truth and wisdom through being. Once more he became silent and restless. I had to bid him farewell as I was to depart on the morrow, but he was present in my thoughts and I could not sleep because of him; I felt oppressed with the weight of some doom about to fall. To escape from this feeling I rose in adoration to Hea; I tried to enter into the light of that Wisdom; a sudden heart-throb of warning drew me back; I thought of Asur instinctively, and thinking of him his image flashed on me. He moved as if in trance through the glassy waves of those cosmic waters which everywhere lave and permeate the worlds, and in which our earth is but a subaqueous mound. His head was bowed, his form dilated to heroic stature, as if he conceived of himself as some great thing or as moving to some high destiny; and this shadow which was the house of his dreaming soul grew brilliant with the passionate hues of his thought; some power beyond him drew him forth. I felt the fever and heat of this inner sphere like a delirious breath blow fiercely about me; there was a phosphorescence of hot and lurid colours. The form of Asur moved towards a light streaming from a grotto, I could see within it burning gigantic flowers. On one, as on a throne, a figure of weird and wonderful beauty was seated. I was thrilled with a dreadful horror, I thought of the race of Liliths, and some long forgotten and tragic legends rose up in my memory of these beings whose soul is but a single and terrible passion; whose love too fierce for feebler lives to endure, brings death or madness to men. I tried to warn, to awaken him from the spell; my will-call aroused him; he turned, recognized me and hesitated; then this figure that lured him rose to her full height; I saw her in all her plume of a peacock, it was spotted with gold and green and citron dyes, she raised her arms upwards, her robe, semi-transparent, purple and starred over with a jewel lustre, fell in vaporous folds to her feet like the drift over a waterfall. She turned her head with a sudden bird-like movement, her strange eyes looked into mine with a prolonged and snaky glance; I saw her move her arms hither and thither, and the waves of this inner ocean began to darken and gather about me, to ripple through me with feverish motion. I fell into a swoon and remembered nothing more. I was awakened before dawn, those with whom I was to cross the desert were about to start and I could remain no longer. I wrote hurriedly to Asur a message full of warning and entreaty and set out on my return journey full of evil forebodings. Some months after I had again to visit the temple; it was evening when I arrived; after I had delivered the message with which I was charged, I asked for Asur. The priest to whom I spoke did not answer me. He led me in silence up to the terrace that overlooked the desolate eastern desert. The moon was looming white upon the verge, the world was trembling with heat, the winged bulls along the walls shone with a dull glow through the sultry air. The priest pointed to the far end of the terrace. A figure was seated looking out over the desert, his robes were motionless as if their wrinkles were carved of stone, his hands lay on his knees, I walked up to him; I called his name; he did not stir. I came nearer and put my face close to his, it was as white as the moon, his eyes only reflected the light. I turned away from him sick to the very heart. --September 15, 1893 Jagrata, Svapna and Sushupti While the philosophical concepts of ancient India, concerning religion and cosmogony, are to some extent familiar and appreciated in these countries, its psychology, intimately related with its religion and metaphysics, is comparatively unknown. In Europe the greatest intellects have been occupied by speculations upon the laws and aspects of physical nature, while the more spiritual Hindus were absorbed in investigations as to the nature of life itself; by continual aspiration, devotion, introspection and self-analysis, they had acquired vast knowledge of the states of consciousness possible for man to enter upon; they had laid bare the anatomy of the mind, and described the many states that lay between the normal waking condition of man, and the final state of spiritual freedom and unity with BRAHMA, which it was the aim alike of religion and science to bring about. Most interesting among their ideas, was their analysis of the states of consciousness upon which we enter during sleep. Roughly speaking, they may be divided into two, which together with the waking state, make a trinity of states through which every person passes, whether he be aware of it or not. These states are known as:---Jagrata, waking; Svapna, dreaming; and Sushupti, deep sleep. The English equivalents of these words give no idea of the states. Passing our of Jagrata, the Indians held that, beyond the chaotic borderland, we entered, in Svapna and Sushupti, upon real states of being. Sushupti, the highest, was accounted a spiritual state; here the soul touches vaster centres in the great life and has communion with celestial intelligences. The unification of these states into one is one of the results of Raj-Yoga; in this state the chela keeps memory of what occurred while his consciousness was in the planes of Svapna and Sushupti. Entrance upon these states should not I think be understood as meaning that the mind has deserted its fleshly tabernacle in search of such experience. Departure from the physical form is no more necessary for this than for clairvoyence, but a transfer of the consciousness in us from one plane to another is necessary. Now as we generate Karma in the dreaming and deep sleep states which may either help or hinder the soul in its evolution, it is a matter of importance that we should take steps to promote the unification of these states, so that the knowledge and wisdom of any one state may be used to perfect the others. Our thoughts and actions in the waking state react upon the dreaming and deep sleep, and our experiences in the latter influence us in the waking state by suggestion and other means. The reason we do not remember what occurs in Svapna and Sushupti is because the astral matter which normally surrounds the thinking principle is not subtle enough to register in its fullness the experience of any one upon the more spiritual planes of consciousness. To increase the responsiveness upon the more spiritual planes of consciousness. To increase the responsiveness of this subtle matter we have to practise concentration, and so heighten the vibrations, or in other words to evolve or perfect the astral principle. Modern science is rapidly coming to the conclusion that the differences perceived in objects around us, are not differences in substance, but differences of vibration in one substance. Take a copper wire; pass electrical currents through it, gradually increasing their intensity, and phenomena of sound, heat and light will be manifest, the prismatic colours appearing one after the other. Similarly by an increased intensity in the performance of every action, the consciousness is gradually transferred from the lower to the higher planes. In order to give a point, or to direct the evolving faculties into their proper channel, continual aspiration is necessary. Take some idea--the spiritual unity of all things, for example--something which can only be realized by our complete absorption in spiritual nature; let every action be performed in the light of this idea, let it be the subject of reverent thought. If this is persisted in, we will gradually begin to become conscious upon the higher planes, the force of concentration carrying the mind beyond the waking into Svapna and Sushupti. The period between retiring to rest and awakening, formerly a blank, will begin to be spotted with bright lights of consciousness, or, as we walk about during the day such knowledge will visit us. "He who is perfected in devotion findeth spiritual knowledge springing up spontaneously in himself" say Krishna. Patanjali recommends dwelling on the knowledge that presents itself in dreams; if we think over any such experience, many things connected with it will be revealed, and so gradually the whole shadowy region will become familiar and attractive, and we will gain a knowledge of our own nature which will be invaluable and which cannot otherwise be acquired. --January 15, 1893 Concentration Beyond waking, dreaming and deep sleep is Turya. Here there is a complete change of condition; the knowledge formerly sought in the external world is now present within the consciousness; the ideations of universal mind are manifest in spiritual intuitions. The entrance to this state is through Jagrata, Svapna, and Sushupti, and here that spiritual unity is realized, the longing for which draws the soul upwards through the shadowy worlds of dreaming and deep sleep. I have thought it necessary to supplement the brief statement made in the previous number by some further remarks upon concentration, for the term applied without reference to the Turya state is liable to be misunderstood and a false impression might arise that the spiritual is something to be sought for outside ourselves. The waking, dreaming and deep sleep states correspond to objective worlds, while Turya is subjective, including in itself all ideals. If this is so, we can never seek for the true beyond ourselves; the things we suppose we shall come sometime realize in spiritual consciousness must be present in it now, for to spirit all things are eternally present. Advance to this state is measured by the realization of moods: we are on the path when there surges up in the innermost recesses of our being the cry of the long imprisoned souls of men; we are then on our way to unity. The Bhagavad-Gita which is a treatise on Raj Yoga, gives prominence to three aspects of concentration. Liberation is attained by means of action, by devotion, by spiritual discernment; these aspects correspond respectively to three qualities in man and nature, known as Tamas, Rajas and Satva. The Tamas is the gross, material or dark quality; Rajas is active and passional; the attributes of Satva are light, peace, happiness, wisdom. No one while in the body can escape from the action of the three qualities, for they are brought about by nature which is compounded of them. We have to recognize this, and to continue action, aspiration and thought, impersonally or with some universal motive, in the manner nature accomplishes these things. Not one of these methods can be laid aside or ignored, for the Spirit moveth within all, these are its works, and we have to learn to identify ourselves with the moving forces of nature. Having always this idea of brotherhood or unity in mind, by action-- which we may interpret as service in some humanitarian movement-- we purify the Tamas. By a pure motive, which is the Philosopher's Stone, a potent force in the alchemy of nature, we change the gross into the subtle, we initiate that evolution which shall finally make the vesture of the soul of the rare, long-sought-for, primordial substance. Devotion is the highest possibility for the Rajas; that quality which is ever attracted and seduced by the beautiful mayas of fame, wealth and power, should be directed to that which it really seeks for, the eternal universal life; the channels through which it must flow outwards are the souls of other men, it reaches the One Life through the many. Spiritual discernment should be the aim of the Satva, "there is not anything, whether animate or inanimate which is without me," says Krishna, and we should seek for the traces of THAT in all things, looking upon it as the cause of the alchemical changes in the Tamas, as that which widens the outflowing love of the Rajas. By a continued persistence of this subtle analytic faculty, we begin gradually to perceive that those things which we formerly thought were causes, are in reality not causes at all; that there is but one cause for everything, "The Atma by which this universe is pervaded. By reason of its proximity alone the body, the organs, Manas and Buddhi apply themselves to their proper objects as if applied (by some one else)." (The Crest Jewel of Wisdom). By uniting these three moods, action, devotion and spiritual discernment, into one mood, and keeping it continuously alight, we are accompanying the movements of spirit to some extent. This harmonious action of all the qualities of our nature, for universal purposes without personal motive, is in synchronous vibration with that higher state spoken of at the beginning of the paper; therefore we are at one with it. "When the wise man perceiveth that the only agents of action are these qualities, and comprehends that which is superior to the qualities of goodness, action and indifference--which are co-existent with the body, it is released from rebirth and death, old age and pain, and drinketh of the water of immortality." --February 15, 1893 Verse by AE in the "Irish Theosophist" Contents: 1--"While the yellow constellations...." (untitled) 2--Om 3--Krishna 4--Pain 5--Three Councelors 6--Dusk 7--Dawn 8--Desire 9--Deep Sleep 10--Day 11--To A Poet 12--The Place of Rest 13--Comfort 14--H.P.B. (In Memoriam.) 15--By the Margin of the Great Deep 16--The Secret 17--Dust 18--Magic 19--Immortality 20--The Man to the Angel 21--The Robing of the King 22--Brotherhood 23--In the Womb 24--In the Garden of God 25--The Breath of Light 26--The Free 27--The Magi 28--W.Q.J. (?) 29--From the Book of the Eagle 30--The Protest of Love 31--The King Initiate 32--The Dream of the Children 33--The Chiefs of the Air 34--The Palaces of the Sidhe 35--The Voice of the Wise 36--A Dawn Song 37--The Fountain of Shadowy Beauty 38--A New Earth 39--Duality While the yellow constellations shine with pale and tender glory, In the lilac-scented stillness, let us listen to Earth's story. All the flow'rs like moths a-flutter glimmer rich with dusky hues, Everywhere around us seem to fall from nowhere the sweet dews. Through the drowsy lull, the murmur, stir of leaf and sleep hum We can feel a gay heart beating, hear a magic singing come. Ah, I think that as we linger lighting at Earth's olden fire Fitful gleams in clay that perish, little sparks that soon expire, So the mother brims her gladness from a life beyond her own, From whose darkness as a fountain up the fiery days are thrown Starry worlds which wheel in splendour, sunny systems, histories, Vast and nebulous traditions told in the eternities: And our list'ning mother whispers through her children all the story: Come, the yellow constellations shine with pale and tender glory! --October 15, 1892 Om Faint grew the yellow buds of light Far flickering beyond the snows, As leaning o'er the shadowy white Morn glimmered like a pale primrose. Within an Indian vale below A child said "Om" with tender heart, Watching with loving eyes the glow In dayshine fade and night depart. The word which Brahma at his dawn Outbreathes and endeth at his night; Whose tide of sound so rolling on Gives birth to orbs of golden light; And beauty, wisdom, love, and youth, By its enchantment, gathered grow In age-long wandering to the truth, Through many a cycle's ebb and flow. And here all lower life was stilled, The child was lifted to the Wise: A strange delight his spirit filled, And Brahm looked from his shining eyes. --December 15, 1892 Krishna The East was crowned with snow-cold bloom And hung with veils of pearly fleece; They died away into the gloom, Vistas of peace, and deeper peace. And earth and air and wave and fire In awe and breathless silence stood, For One who passed into their choir Linked them in mystic brotherhood. Twilight of amethyst, amid The few strange stars that lit the heights, Where was the secret spirit hid, Where was Thy place, O Light of Lights? The flame of Beauty far in space-- When rose the fire, in Thee? in Me? Which bowed the elemental race To adoration silently. --February 15, 1893 Pain Men have made them gods of love, Sun gods, givers of the rain, Deities of hill and grove, I have made a god of Pain. Of my god I know this much, And in singing I repeat, Though there's anguish in his touch Yet his soul within is sweet. --March 15, 1893 Three Counselors It was the fairy of the place Moving within a little light, Who touched with dim and shadowy grace The conflict at its fever height. It seemed to whisper "quietness," Then quietly itself was gone; Yet echoes of its mute caress Still rippled as the years flowed on. It was the Warrior within Who called "Awake! prepare for fight, "Yet lose not memory in the din; "Make of thy gentleness thy might. "Make of thy silence words to shake "The long-enthroned kings of earth; "Make of thy will the force to break "Their towers of wantonness and mirth." It was the wise all-seeing soul Who counseled neither war nor peace "Only be thou thyself that goal "In which the wars of time shall cease." --April 15, 1893 Dusk Dusk wraps the village in its dim caress; Each chimney's vapour, like a thin grey rod, Mounting aloft through miles of quietness, Pillars the skies of God. Far up they break or seem to break their line, Mingling their nebulous crests that bow and nod Under the light of those fierce stars that shine Out of the house of God. Only in clouds and dreams I felt those souls In the abyss, each fire hid in its clod, From which in clouds and dreams the spirit rolls Into the vast of God. --May 15, 1893 Dawn Still as the holy of holies breathes the vast, Within its crystal depths the stars grow dim, Fire on the altar of the hills at last Burns on the shadowy rim. Moment that holds all moments, white upon The verge it trembles; then like mists of flowers Break from the fairy fountain of the dawn The hues of many hours. Thrown downward from that high companionship Of dreaming inmost heart with inmost heart, Into the common daily ways I slip My fire from theirs apart. --June 15, 1893 Desire With Thee a moment! then what dreams have play! Traditions of eternal toil arise, Search for the high, austere and lonely way, Where Brahma treads through the eternities. Ah, in the soul what memories arise! And with what yearning inexpressible, Rising from long forgetfulness I turn To Thee, invisible, unrumoured, still: White for Thy whiteness all desires burn! Ah, with what longing once again I turn! --August 15, 1893 Deep Sleep Heart-hidden from the outer things I rose, The spirit woke anew in nightly birth Into the vastness where forever glows The star-soul of the earth. There all alone in primal ecstasy, Within her depths where revels never tire, The olden Beauty shines; each thought of me Is veined through with its fire. And all my thoughts are throngs of living souls; They breath in me, heart unto heart allied With joy undimmed, though when the morning tolls The planets may divide. --September 15, 1893 Day In day from some titanic past it seems As if a thread divine of memory runs; Born ere the Mighty One began his dreams, Or yet were stars and suns. But here an iron will has fixed the bars; Forgetfulness falls on earth's myriad races, No image of the proud and morning stars Looks at us from their faces. Yet yearning still to reach to those dim heights, Each dream remembered is a burning-glass, Where through to darkness from the light of lights Its rays in splendour pass. --September 15, 1893 To A Poet Oh, be not led away. Lured by the colour of the sun-rich day. The gay romances of song Unto the spirit-life doth not belong. Though far-between the hours In which the Master of Angelic Powers Lightens the dusk within The Holy of Holies; be it thine to win Rare vistas of white light, Half-parted lips, through which the Infinite Murmurs her ancient story; Hearkening to whom the wandering planets hoary Waken primeval fires, With deeper rapture in celestial choirs Breathe, and with fleeter motion Wheel in their orbits through the surgeless ocean. So, hearken thou like these, Intent on her, mounting by slow degrees, Until thy song's elation Echoes her multitudinous meditation. --November 15, 1893 The Place of Rest --The soul is its own witness and its own refuge. Unto the deep the deep heart goes. It lays its sadness nigh the breast: Only the mighty mother knows The wounds that quiver unconfessed. It seeks a deeper silence still; It folds itself around with peace, Where thoughts alike of good or ill In quietness unfostered, cease. It feels in the unwounding vast For comfort for its hopes and fears: The mighty mother bows at last; She listens to her children's tears. Where the last anguish deepens--there-- The fire of beauty smites through pain, A glory moves amid despair, The Mother takes her child again. --December 15, 1893 Comfort Dark head by the fireside brooding, Sad upon your ears Whirlwinds of the earth intruding Sound in wrath and tears: Tender-hearted, in your lonely Sorrow I would fain Comfort you, and say that only Gods could feel such pain. Only spirits know such longing For the far away; And the fiery fancies thronging Rise not out of clay. Keep the secret sense celestial Of the starry birth; Though about you call the bestial Voices of the earth. If a thousand ages since Hurled us from the throne: Then a thousand ages wins Back again our own. Sad one, dry away your tears: Sceptred you shall rise, Equal mid the crystal spheres With seraphs kingly wise. --February, 1894 H. P. B. (In Memoriam.) Though swift the days flow from her day, No one has left her day unnamed: We know what light broke from her ray On us, who in the truth proclaimed Grew brother with the stars and powers That stretch away--away to light, And fade within the primal hours, And in the wondrous First unite. We lose with her the right to scorn The voices scornful of her truth: With her a deeper love was born For those who filled her days with ruth. To her they were not sordid things: In them sometimes--her wisdom said-- The Bird of Paradise had wings; It only dreams, it is not dead. We cannot for forgetfulness Forego the reverence due to them, Who wear at times they do not guess The sceptre and the diadem. With wisdom of the olden time She made the hearts of dust to flame; And fired us with the hope sublime Our ancient heritage to claim; That turning from the visible, By vastness unappalled nor stayed, Our wills might rule beside that Will By which the tribal stars are swayed; And entering the heroic strife, Tread in the way their feet have trod Who move within a vaster life, Sparks in the Fire--Gods amid God. --August 15, 1894 By the Margin of the Great Deep When the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies, All its vapourous sapphire, violet glow and silver gleam With their magic flood me through the gateway of the eyes; I am one with the twilight's dream. When the trees and skies and fields are one in dusky mood, Every heart of man is rapt within the mother's breast: Full of peace and sleep and dreams in the vasty quietude, I am one with their hearts at rest. From our immemorial joys of hearth and home and love, Strayed away along the margin of the unknown tide, All its reach of soundless calm can thrill me far above Word or touch from the lips beside. Aye, and deep, and deep, and deeper let me drink and draw From the olden Fountain more than light or peace or dream, Such primeval being as o'erfills the heart with awe, Growing one with its silent stream. --March 15, 1894 The Secret One thing in all things have I seen: One thought has haunted earth and air; Clangour and silence both have been Its palace chambers. Everywhere I saw the mystic vision flow, And live in men, and woods, and streams, Until I could no longer know The dream of life from my own dreams. Sometimes it rose like fire in me, Within the depths of my own mind, And spreading to infinity, It took the voices of the wind. It scrawled the human mystery, Dim heraldry--on light and air; Wavering along the starry sea, I saw the flying vision there. Each fire that in God's temple lit Burns fierce before the inner shrine, Dimmed as my fire grew near to it, And darkened at the light of mine. At last, at last, the meaning caught: When spirit wears its diadem, It shakes its wondrous plumes of thought, And trails the stars along with them. --April 15, 1894 Dust I heard them in their sadness say, "The earth rebukes the thought of God: We are but embers wrapt in clay A little nobler than the sod." But I have touched the lips of clay-- Mother, thy rudest sod to me Is thrilled with fire of hidden day, And haunted by all mystery. --May 15, 1894 Magic --After reading the Upanishads Out of the dusky chamber of the brain Flows the imperial will through dream on dream; The fires of life around it tempt and gleam; The lights of earth behind it fade and wane. Passed beyond beauty tempting dream on dream, The pure will seeks the hearthold of the light; Sounds the deep "OM," the mystic word of might; Forth from the hearthold breaks the living stream. Passed out beyond the deep heart music-filled, The kingly Will sits on the ancient throne, Wielding the sceptre, fearless, free, alone, Knowing in Brahma all it dared and willed. --June 15, 1894 Immortality We must pass like smoke, or live within the spirits' fire; For we can no more than smoke unto the flame return. If our thought has changed to dream, or will into desire, As smoke we vanish o'er the fires that burn. Lights of infinite pity star the grey dusk of our days; Surely here is soul; with it we have eternal breath; In the fire of love we live or pass by many ways, By unnumbered ways of dream to death. --July 15, 1894 The Man to the Angel I have wept a million tears; Pure and proud one, where are thine? What the gain of all your years That undimmed in beauty shine? All your beauty cannot win Truth we learn in pain and sighs; You can never enter in To the Circle of the Wise. They are but the slaves of light Who have never known the gloom, And between the dark and bright Willed in freedom their own doom. Think not in your pureness there That our pain but follows sin; There are fires for those who dare Seek the Throne of Might to win. Pure one, from your pride refrain; Dark and lost amid the strife, I am myriad years of pain Nearer to the fount of life. When defiance fierce is thrown At the God to whom you bow, Rest the lips of the Unknown Tenderest upon the brow. --September 15, 1894 Songs of Olden Magic--II. The Robing of the King --"His candle shined upon my head, and by his light I walked through darkness."--Job, xxix. 3 On the bird of air blue-breasted glint the rays of gold, And a shadowy fleece above us waves the forest old, Far through rumorous leagues of midnight stirred by breezes warm. See the old ascetic yonder, Ah, poor withered form! Where he crouches wrinkled over by unnumbered years Through the leaves the flakes of moonfire fall like phantom tears. At the dawn a kingly hunter passed proud disdain, Like a rainbow-torrent scattered flashed his royal train. Now the lonely one unheeded seeks earth's caverns dim, Never king or princes will robe them radiantly as him. Mid the deep enfolding darkness, follow him, oh seer, While the arrow will is piercing fiery sphere on sphere. Through the blackness leaps and sparkles gold and amethyst, Curling, jetting and dissolving in a rainbow mist. In the jewel glow and lunar radiance rise there One, a morning star in beauty, young, immortal, fair. Sealed in heavy sleep, the spirit leaves its faded dress, Unto fiery youth returning out of weariness. Music as for one departing, joy as for a king, Sound and swell, and hark! above him cymbals triumphing. Fire an aureole encircling suns his brow with gold Like to one who hails the morning on the mountains old. Open mightier vistas changing human loves to scorns, And the spears of glory pierce him like a Crown of Thorns. As the sparry rays dilating o'er his forehead climb Once again he knows the Dragon Wisdom of the prime. High and yet more high to freedom as a bird he springs, And the aureole outbreathing, gold and silver wings Plume the brow and crown the seraph. Soon his journey done He will pass our eyes that follow, sped beyond the sun. None may know the darker radiance, King, will there be thine. Rapt above the Light and hidden in the Dark Divine. --September 15, 1895 Brotherhood Twilight a blossom grey in shadowy valleys dwells: Under the radiant dark the deep blue-tinted bells In quietness reimage heaven within their blooms, Sapphire and gold and mystery. What strange perfumes, Out of what deeps arising, all the flower-bells fling, Unknowing the enchanted odorous song they sing! Oh, never was an eve so living yet: the wood Stirs not but breathes enraptured quietude. Here in these shades the Ancient knows itself, the Soul, And out of slumber waking starts unto the goal. What bright companions nod and go along with it! Out of the teeming dark what dusky creatures flit, That through the long leagues of the island night above Come wandering by me, whispering and beseeching love,-- As in the twilight children gather close and press Nigh and more nigh with shadowy tenderness, Feeling they know not what, with noiseless footsteps glide Seeking familiar lips or hearts to dream beside. Oh, voices, I would go with you, with you, away, Facing once more the radiant gateways of the day; With you, with you, what memories arise, and nigh Trampling the crowded figures of the dawn go by; Dread deities, the giant powers that warred on men Grow tender brothers and gay children once again; Fades every hate away before the Mother's breast Where all the exiles of the heart return to rest. --July 15, 1895 In the Womb Still rests the heavy share on the dark soil: Upon the dull black mould the dew-damp lies: The horse waits patient: from his lonely toil The ploughboy to the morning lifts his eyes. The unbudding hedgerows, dark against day's fires, Glitter with gold-lit crystals: on the rim Over the unregarding city's spires The lonely beauty shines alone for him. And day by day the dawn or dark enfolds, And feeds with beauty eyes that cannot see How in her womb the Mighty Mother moulds The infant spirit for Eternity. --January 15, 1895 In the Garden of God Within the iron cities One walked unknown for years, In his heart the pity of pities That grew for human tears When love and grief were ended The flower of pity grew; By unseen hands 'twas tended And fed with holy dew. Though in his heart were barred in The blooms of beauty blown; Yet he who grew the garden Could call no flower his own. For by the hands that watered, The blooms that opened fair Through frost and pain were scattered To sweeten the dull air. --February 15, 1895 The Breath of Light From the cool and dark-lipped furrows breathes a dim delight Aureoles of joy encircle every blade of grass Where the dew-fed creatures silent and enraptured pass: And the restless ploughman pauses, turns, and wondering Deep beneath his rustic habit finds himself a king; For a fiery moment looking with the eyes of God Over fields a slave at morning bowed him to the sod. Blind and dense with revelation every moment flies, And unto the Mighty Mother gay, eternal, rise All the hopes we hold, the gladness, dreams of things to be. One of all they generations, Mother, hails to thee! Hail! and hail! and hail for ever: though I turn again For they joy unto the human vestures of pain. I, thy child, who went forth radiant in the golden prime Find thee still the mother-hearted through my night in time; Find in thee the old enchantment, there behind the veil Where the Gods my brothers linger, Hail! for ever, Hail! --May 15, 1895 The Free They bathed in the fire-flooded fountains; Life girdled them round and about; They slept in the clefts of the mountains: The stars called them forth with a shout. They prayed, but their worship was only The wonder at nights and at days, As still as the lips of the lonely Though burning with dumbness of praise. No sadness of earth ever captured Their spirits who bowed at the shrine; They fled to the Lonely enraptured And hid in the Darkness Divine. At twilight as children may gather They met at the doorway of death, The smile of the dark hidden Father The Mother with magical breath. Untold of in song or in story, In days long forgotten of men, Their eyes were yet blind with a glory Time will not remember again. --November 15, 1895 Songs of Olden Magic--IV The Magi "The mountain was filled with the hosts of the Tuatha de Dannan." --Old Celtic Poem See where the auras from the olden fountain Starward aspire; The sacred sign upon the holy mountain Shines in white fire: Waving and flaming yonder o'er the snows The diamond light Melts into silver or to sapphire glows Night beyond night; And from the heaven of heavens descends on earth A dew divine. Come, let us mingle in the starry mirth Around the shrine! Enchantress, mighty mother, to our home In thee we press, Thrilled by the fiery breath and wrapt in some Vast tenderness The homeward birds uncertain o'er their nest Wheel in the dome, Fraught with dim dreams of more enraptured rest, Wheel in the dome, But gather ye to whose undarkened eyes The night is day: Leap forth, Immortals, Birds of Paradise, In bright array Robed like the shining tresses of the sun; And by his name Call from his haunt divine the ancient one Our Father Flame. Aye, from the wonder-light that wraps the star, Come now, come now; Sun-breathing Dragon, ray thy lights afar, Thy children bow; Hush with more awe the breath; the bright-browed races Are nothing worth By those dread gods from out whose awful faces The earth looks forth Infinite pity, set in calm; their vision cast Adown the years Beholds how beauty burns away at last Their children's tears. Now while our hearts the ancient quietness Floods with its tide, The things of air and fire and height no less In it abide; And from their wanderings over sea and shore They rise as one Unto the vastness and with us adore The midnight sun; And enter the innumerable All, And shine like gold, And starlike gleam in the immortals' hall, The heavenly fold, And drink the sun-breaths from the mother's lips Awhile--and then Fail from the light and drop in dark eclipse To earth again, Roaming along by heaven-hid promontory And valley dim. Weaving a phantom image of the glory They knew in Him. Out of the fulness flow the winds, their son Is heard no more, Or hardly breathes a mystic sound along The dreamy shore: Blindly they move unknowing as in trance, Their wandering Is half with us, and half an inner dance Led by the King. --January 15, 1896 W. Q. J. * O hero of the iron age, Upon thy grave we will not weep, Nor yet consume away in rage For thee and thy untimely sleep. Our hearts a burning silence keep. O martyr, in these iron days One fate was sure for soul like thine: Well you foreknew but went your ways. The crucifixion is the sign, The meed of all the kingly line. We may not mourn--though such a night Has fallen on our earthly spheres Bereft of love and truth and light As never since the dawn of years;-- For tears give birth alone to tears. One wreath upon they grave we lay (The silence of our bitter thought, Words that would scorch their hearts of clay), And turn to learn what thou has taught, To shape our lives as thine was wrought. --April 15, 1896 [* This is unsigned but is very possibly G.W. Russell's. It was a memoriam to William Quan Judge (W.Q.J), the leader of the American and European Theosophical Societies at the time, one of the original founders of the Theosophical Society, and close co-worker with H.P. Blavatsky.] Fron the Book of the Eagle --[St. John, i. 1-33] In the mighty Mother's bosom was the Wise With the mystic Father in aeonian night; Aye, for ever one with them though it arise Going forth to sound its hymn of light. At its incantation rose the starry fane; At its magic thronged the myriad race of men; Life awoke that in the womb so long had lain To its cyclic labours once again. 'Tis the soul of fire within the heart of life; From its fiery fountain spring the will and thought; All the strength of man for deeds of love or strife, Though the darkness comprehend it not. In the mystery written here John is but the life, the seer; Outcast from the life of light, Inly with reverted sight Still he scans with eager eyes The celestial mysteries. Poet of all far-seen things At his word the soul has wings, Revelations, symbols, dreams Of the inmost light which gleams. The winds, the stars, and the skies though wrought By the one Fire-Self still know it not; And man who moves in the twilight dim Feels not the love that encircles him, Though in heart, on bosom, and eyelids press Lips of an infinite tenderness, He turns away through the dark to roam Nor heeds the fire in his hearth and home. They whose wisdom everywhere Sees as through a crystal air The lamp by which the world is lit, And themselves as one with it; In whom the eye of vision swells, Who have in entranced hours Caught the word whose might compels All the elemental powers; They arise as Gods from men Like the morning stars again. They who seek the place of rest Quench the blood-heat of the breast, Grow ascetic, inward turning Trample down the lust from burning, Silence in the self the will For a power diviner still; To the fire-born Self alone The ancestral spheres are known. Unto the poor dead shadows came Wisdom mantled about with flame; We had eyes that could see the light Born of the mystic Father's might. Glory radiant with powers untold And the breath of God around it rolled. Life that moved in the deeps below Felt the fire in its bosom glow; Life awoke with the Light allied, Grew divinely stirred, and cried: "This is the Ancient of Days within, Light that is ere our days begin. "Every power in the spirit's ken Springs anew in our lives again. We had but dreams of the heart's desire Beauty thrilled with the mystic fire. The white-fire breath whence springs the power Flows alone in the spirit's hour." Man arose the earth he trod, Grew divine as he gazed on God: Light in a fiery whirlwind broke Out of the dark divine and spoke: Man went forth through the vast to tread By the spirit of wisdom charioted. There came the learned of the schools Who measure heavenly things by rules, The sceptic, doubter, the logician, Who in all sacred things precision, Would mark the limit, fix the scope, "Art thou the Christ for whom we hope? Art thou a magian, or in thee Has the divine eye power to see?" He answered low to those who came, "Not this, nor this, nor this I claim. More than the yearning of the heart I have no wisdom to impart. I am the voice that cries in him Whose heart is dead, whose eyes are dim, 'Make pure the paths where through may run The light-streams from that golden one, The Self who lives within the sun.' As spake the seer of ancient days." The voices from the earthly ways Questioned him still: "What dost thou here, If neither prophet, king nor seer? What power is kindled by they might?" "I flow before the feet of Light: I am the purifying stream. But One of whom ye have no dream, Whose footsteps move among you still, Though dark, divine, invisible. Impelled by Him, before His ways I journey, though I dare not raise Even from the ground these eyes so dim Or look upon the feet of Him." When the dead or dreamy hours Like a mantle fall away, Wakes the eye of gnostic powers To the light of hidden day, And the yearning heart within Seeks the true, the only friend, He who burdened with our sin Loves and loves unto the end. Ah, the martyr of the world, With a face of steadfast peace Round whose brow the light is curled: 'Tis the Lamb with golden fleece. So they called of old the shining, Such a face the sons of men See, and all its life divining Wake primeval fires again. Such a face and such a glory Passed before the eyes of John, With a breath of olden story Blown from ages long agone Who would know the God in man. Deeper still must be his glance. Veil on veil his eye must scan For the mystic signs which tell If the fire electric fell On the seer in his trance: As his way he upward wings From all time-encircled things, Flames the glory round his head Like a bird with wings outspread. Gold and silver plumes at rest: Such a shadowy shining crest Round the hero's head reveals him To the soul that would adore, As the master-power that heals him And the fount of secret lore. Nature such a diadem Places on her royal line, Every eye that looks on them Knows the Sons of the Divine. --April 15, 1896 The Protest of Love "Those who there take refuge nevermore return."--Bhagavad Gita Ere I lose myself in the vastness and drowse myself with the peace, While I gaze on the light and beauty afar from the dim homes of men, May I still feel the heart-pang and pity, love-ties that I would not release, May the voices of sorrow appealing call me back to their succour again. Ere I storm with the tempest of power the thrones and dominions of old, Ere the ancient enchantment allures me to roam through the star- misty skies, I would go forth as one who has reaped well what harvest the earth may unfold: May my heart be o'erbrimmed with compassion, on my brow be the crown of the wise. I would go as the dove from the ark sent forth with wishes and prayers To return with the paradise-blossoms that bloom in the eden of light: When the deep star-chant of the seraphs I hear in the mystical airs May I capture one tone of their joy for the sad ones discrowned in the night. Not alone, not alone would I go to my rest in the Heart of the Love: Were I tranced in the innermost beauty, the flame of its tenderest breath, I would still hear the plaint of the fallen recalling me back from above To go down to the side of the mourners who weep in the shadow of death. --May 15, 1896 The King Initiate "They took Iesous and scourged him."--St. John Age after age the world has wept A joy supreme--I saw the hands Whose fiery radiations swept And burned away his earthly bands: And where they smote the living dyes Flashed like the plumes of paradise. Their joys the heavy nations hush-- A form of purple glory rose Crowned with such rays of light as flush The white peaks on their towering snows: It held the magic wand that gave Rule over earth, air, fire and wave. What sorrow makes the white cheeks wet: The mystic cross looms shadowy dim-- There where the fourfold powers have met And poured their living tides through him, The Son who hides his radiant crest To the dark Father's bosom pressed. --June 15, 1896 The Dream of the Children The children awoke in their dreaming While earth lay dewy and still: They followed the rill in its gleaming To the heart-light of the hill. Its sounds and sights were forsaking The world as they faded in sleep, When they heard a music breaking Out from the heart-light deep. It ran where the rill in its flowing Under the star-light gay With wonderful colour was glowing Like the bubbles they blew in their play. From the misty mountain under Shot gleams of an opal star: Its pathways of rainbow wonder Rayed to their feet from afar. From their feet as they strayed in the meadow It led through caverned aisles, Filled with purple and green light and shadow For mystic miles on miles. The children were glad; it was lonely To play on the hill-side by day. "But now," they said, "we have only To go where the good people stray." For all the hill-side was haunted By the faery folk come again; And down in the heart-light enchanted Were opal-coloured men. They moved like kings unattended Without a squire or dame, But they wore tiaras splendid With feathers of starlight flame. They laughed at the children over And called them into the heart: "Come down here, each sleepless rover: We will show you some of our art." And down through the cool of the mountain The children sank at the call, And stood in a blazing fountain And never a mountain at all. The lights were coming and going In many a shining strand, For the opal fire-kings were blowing The darkness out of the land. This golden breath was a madness To set a poet on fire, And this was a cure for sadness, And that the ease of desire. And all night long over Eri They fought with the wand of light And love that never grew weary The evil things of night. They said, as dawn glimmered hoary, "We will show yourselves for an hour;" And the children were changed to a glory By the beautiful magic of power. The fire-kings smiled on their faces And called them by olden names, Till they towered like the starry races All plumed with the twilight flames. They talked for a while together, How the toil of ages oppressed; And of how they best could weather The ship of the world to its rest. The dawn in the room was straying: The children began to blink, When they heard a far voice saying, "You can grow like that if you think!" The sun came in yellow and gay light: They tumbled out of the cot, And half of the dream went with daylight And half was never forgot. --July 15, 1896 The Chiefs of the Air Their wise little heads with scorning They laid the covers between: "Do they think we stay here till morning?" Said Rory and Aileen. When out their bright eyes came peeping The room was no longer there, And they fled from the dark world creeping Up a twilight cave of air. They wore each one a gay dress, In sleep, if you understand, When earth puts off its grey dress To robe it in faeryland. Then loud o'erhead was a humming As clear as the wood wind rings; And here were the air-boats coming And here the airy kings. The magic barks were gleaming And swift as the feathered throng: With wonder-lights out-streaming They blew themselves along. And up on the night-wind swimming, With pose and dart and rise, Away went the air fleet skimming Through a haze of jewel skies. One boat above them drifted Apart from the flying bands, And an air-chief bent and lifted The children with mighty hands. The children wondered greatly, Three air-chiefs met them there, They were tall and grave and stately With bodies of purple air. A pearl light with misty shimmer Went dancing about them all, As the dyes of the moonbow glimmer On a trembling waterfall. The trail of the fleet to the far lands Was wavy along the night, And on through the sapphire starlands They followed the wake of light. "Look down, Aileen," said Rory, "The earth's as thin as a dream." It was lit by a sun-fire glory Outraying gleam on gleam. They saw through the dream-world under Its heart of rainbow flame Where the starry people wander; Like gods they went and came. The children looked without talking Till Roray spoke again, "Are those our folk who are walking Like little shadow men? "They don't see what is about them, They look like pigmies small, The world would be full without them And they think themselves so tall!" The magic bark went fleeting Like an eagle on and on; Till over its prow came beating The foam-light of the dawn. The children's dream grew fainter, Three air-chiefs still were there, But the sun the shadow painter Drew five on the misty air. The dream-light whirled bewild'ring, An air-chief said, "You know. You are living now, my children, Ten thousand years ago." They looked at themselves in the old light, And mourned the days of the new Where naught is but darkness or cold light, Till a bell came striking through. "We must go," said the wise young sages: It was five at dawn by the chimes, And they ran through a thousand ages From the old De Danaan Times. --August 15, 1896 The Palaces of the Sidhe Two small sweet lives together From dawn till the dew falls down, They danced over rock and heather Away from the dusty town. Dark eyes like stars set in pansies, Blue eyes like a hero's bold-- Their thoughts were all pearl-light fancies, Their hearts in the age of gold. They crooned o'er many a fable And longed for the bright-capped elves, The faery folk who are able To make us faery ourselves. A hush on the children stealing They stood there hand in hand, For the elfin chimes were pealing Aloud in the underland. And over the grey rock sliding, A fiery colour ran, And out of its thickness gliding The twinkling mist of a man-- To-day for the children had fled to An ancient yesterday, And the rill from its tunnelled bed too Had turned another way. Then down through an open hollow The old man led with a smile: "Come, star-hearts, my children, follow To the elfin land awhile." The bells above them were hanging, Whenever the earth-breath blew It made them go clanging, clanging, The vasty mountain through. But louder yet than the ringing Came the chant of the elfin choir, Till the mountain was mad with singing And dense with the forms of fire. The kings of the faery races Sat high on the thrones of might, And infinite years from their faces Looked out through eyes of light. And one in a diamond splendour Shone brightest of all that hour, More lofty and pure and tender, They called him the Flower of Power. The palace walls were glowing Like stars together drawn, And a fountain of air was flowing The primrose colour of dawn. "Ah, see!" said Aileen sighing, With a bend of her saddened head Where a mighty hero was lying, He looked like one who was dead. "He will wake," said their guide, "'tis but seeming, And, oh, what his eyes shall see I will know of only in dreaming Till I lie there still as he." They chanted the song of waking, They breathed on him with fire, Till the hero-spirit outbreaking, Shot radiant above the choir. Like a pillar of opal glory Lit through with many a gem-- "Why, look at him now," said Rory, "He has turned to a faery like them!" The elfin kings ascending Leaped up from the thrones of might, And one with another blending They vanished in air and light. The rill to its bed came splashing With rocks on the top of that: The children awoke with a flashing Of wonder, "What were we at?" They groped through the reeds and clover-- "What funny old markings: look here, They have scrawled the rocks all over: It's just where the door was: how queer!" --September 15, 1896 The Voice of the Wise They sat with hearts untroubled, The clear sky sparkled above, And an ancient wisdom bubbled From the lips of a youthful love. They read in a coloured history Of Egypt and of the Nile, And half it seemed a mystery, Familiar, half, the while. Till living out of the story Grew old Egyptian men, And a shadow looked forth Rory And said, "We meet again!" And over Aileen a maiden Looked back through the ages dim: She laughed, and her eyes were laden With an old-time love for him. In a mist came temples thronging With sphinxes seen in a row, And the rest of the day was a longing For their homes of long ago. "We'd go there if they'd let us," They said with wounded pride: "They never think when they pet us We are old like that inside." There was some one round them straying The whole of the long day through, Who seemed to say, "I am playing At hide-and-seek with you." And one thing after another Was whispered out of the air, How God was a big kind brother Whose home was in everywhere. His light like a smile come glancing From the cool, cool winds as they pass; From the flowers in heaven dancing And the stars that shine in the grass, And the clouds in deep blue wreathing, And most from the mountains tall, But God like a wind goes breathing A heart-light of gold in all. It grows like a tree and pushes Its way through the inner gloom, And flowers in quick little rushes Of love to a magic bloom. And no one need sigh now or sorrow Whenever the heart-light flies, For it comes again on some morrow And nobody ever dies. The heart of the Wise was beating In the children's heart that day, And many a thought came fleeting, And fancies solemn and gay. They were grave in a way divining How childhood was taking wings, And the wonder world was shining With vast eternal things. The solemn twilight fluttered Like the plumes of seraphim, And they felt what things were uttered In the sunset voice of Him. They lingered long, for dearer Than home were the mountain places Where God from the stars dropt nearer Their pale, dreamy faces. Their very hearts from beating They stilled in awed delight. For Spirit and children were meeting In the purple, ample night. Dusk its ash-grey blossoms sheds on violet skies Over twilight mountains where the heart-songs rise, Rise and fall and fade again from earth to air: Earth renews the music sweeter. Oh, come there. Come, ma cushla, come, as in ancient times Rings aloud and the underland with faery chimes. Down the unseen ways as strays each tinkling fleece Winding ever onward to a fold of peace, So my dreams go straying in a land more fair; Half I tread the dew-wet grasses, half wander there. Fade your glimmering eyes in a world grown cold: Come, ma cushla, with me to the mountain's fold, Where the bright ones call us waving to and fro: Come, my children, with me to the Ancient go. --October 15, 1896 A Dawn Song While the earth is dark and grey How I laugh within: I know In my breast what ardours gay From the morning overflow. Though the cheek be white and wet In my heart no fear may fall: There my chieftain leads, and yet Ancient battle-trumpets call. Bend on me no hasty frown If my spirit slight your cares: Sunlike still my joy looks down Changing tears to beamy airs. Think me not of fickle heart If with joy my bosom swells Though your ways from mine depart: In the true are no farewells. What I love in you I find Everywhere. A friend I greet In each flower and tree and wind-- Oh, but life is sweet, is sweet. What to you are bolts and bars Are to me the hands that guide To the freedom of the stars Where my golden kinsmen bide. From my mountain top I view: Twilight's purple flower is gone, And I send my song to you On the level light of dawn. --November 15, 1896 --An Ancient Eden Our legends tell of aery fountains upspringing in Eri, and how the people of long ago saw them not but only the Tuatha de Danaan. Some deem it was the natural outflow of water at these places which was held to be sacred; but above fountain, rill and river rose up the enchanted froth and foam of invisible rills and rivers breaking forth from Tir-na-noge, the soul of the island, and glittering in the sunlight of its mystic day. What we see here is imaged forth from that invisible soul and is a path thereto. In the heroic Epic of Cuculain Standish O'Grady writes of such a fountain, and prefixes his chapter with the verse from Genesis, "And four rivers went forth from Eden to water the garden," and what follows in reference thereto. The Fountain of Shadowy Beauty --A Dream I would I could weave in The colour, the wonder, The song I conceive in My heart while I ponder, And show how it came like The magi of old Whose chant was a flame like The dawn's voice of gold; Who dreams followed near them A murmur of birds, And ear still could hear them Unchanted in words. In words I can only Reveal thee my heart, Oh, Light of the Lonely, The shining impart. Between the twilight and the dark The lights danced up before my eyes: I found no sleep or peace or rest, But dreams of stars and burning skies. I knew the faces of the day-- Dream faces, pale, with cloudy hair, I know you not nor yet your home, The Fount of Shadowy Beauty, where? I passed a dream of gloomy ways Where ne'er did human feet intrude: It was the border of a wood, A dreadful forest solitude. With wondrous red and fairy gold The clouds were woven o'er the ocean; The stars in fiery aether swung And danced with gay and glittering motion. A fire leaped up within my heart When first I saw the old sea shine; As if a god were there revealed I bowed my head in awe divine; And long beside the dim sea marge I mused until the gathering haze Veiled from me where the silver tide Ran in its thousand shadowy ways. The black night dropped upon the sea: The silent awe came down with it: I saw fantastic vapours flit As o'er the darkness of the pit. When, lo! from out the furthest night A speck of rose and silver light Above a boat shaped wondrously Came floating swiftly o'er the sea. It was no human will that bore The boat so fleetly to the shore Without a sail spread or an oar. The Pilot stood erect thereon And lifted up his ancient face, (Ancient with glad eternal youth Like one who was of starry race.) His face was rich with dusky bloom; His eyes a bronze and golden fire; His hair in streams of silver light Hung flamelike on his strange attire Which starred with many a mystic sign, Fell as o'er sunlit ruby glowing: His light flew o'er the waves afar In ruddy ripples on each bar Along the spiral pathways flowing. It was a crystal boat that chased The light along the watery waste, Till caught amid the surges hoary The Pilot stayed its jewelled glory. Oh, never such a glory was: The pale moon shot it through and through With light of lilac, white and blue: And there mid many a fairy hue Of pearl and pink and amethyst, Like lightning ran the rainbow gleams And wove around a wonder-mist. The Pilot lifted beckoning hands; Silent I went with deep amaze To know why came this Beam of Light So far along the ocean ways Out of the vast and shadowy night. "Make haste, make haste!" he cried. "Away! A thousand ages now are gone. Yet thou and I ere night be sped Will reck no more of eve or dawn." Swift as the swallow to its nest I leaped: my body dropt right down: A silver star I rose and flew. A flame burned golden at his breast: I entered at the heart and knew My Brother-Self who roams the deep, Bird of the wonder-world of sleep. The ruby body wrapped us round As twain in one: we left behind The league-long murmur of the shore And fleeted swifter than the wind. The distance rushed upon the bark: We neared unto the mystic isles: The heavenly city we could mark, Its mountain light, its jewel dark, Its pinnacles and starry piles. The glory brightened: "Do not fear; For we are real, though what seems So proudly built above the waves Is but one mighty spirit's dreams. "Our Father's house hath many fanes; Yet enter not and worship not, For thought but follows after thought Till last consuming self it wanes. "The Fount of Shadowy Beauty flings Its glamour o'er the light of day: A music in the sunlight sings To call the dreamy hearts away Their mighty hopes to ease awhile: We will not go the way of them: The chant makes drowsy those who seek The sceptre and the diadem. "The Fount of Shadowy Beauty throws Its magic round us all the night; What things the heart would be, it sees And chases them in endless flight. Or coiled in phantom visions there It builds within the halls of fire; Its dreams flash like the peacock's wing And glow with sun-hues of desire. We will not follow in their ways Nor heed the lure of fay or elf, But in the ending of our days Rest in the high Ancestral Self." The boat of crystal touched the shore, Then melted flamelike from our eyes, As in the twilight drops the sun Withdrawing rays of paradise. We hurried under arched aisles That far above in heaven withdrawn With cloudy pillars stormed the night, Rich as the opal shafts of dawn. I would have lingered then--but he-- "Oh, let us haste: the dream grows dim, Another night, another day, A thousand years will part from him "Who is that Ancient One divine From whom our phantom being born Rolled with the wonder-light around Had started in the fairy morn. "A thousand of our years to him Are but the night, are but the day, Wherein he rests from cyclic toil Or chants the song of starry sway. "He falls asleep: the Shadowy Fount Fills all our heart with dreams of light: He wakes to ancient spheres, and we Through iron ages mourn the night. We will not wander in the night But in a darkness more divine Shall join the Father Light of Lights And rule the long-descended line." Even then a vasty twilight fell: Wavered in air the shadowy towers: The city like a gleaming shell, Its azures, opals, silvers, blues, Were melting in more dreamy hues. We feared the falling of the night And hurried more our headlong flight. In one long line the towers went by; The trembling radiance dropt behind, As when some swift and radiant one Flits by and flings upon the wind The rainbow tresses of the sun. And then they vanished from our gaze Faded the magic lights, and all Into a Starry Radiance fell As waters in their fountain fall. We knew our time-long journey o'er And knew the end of all desire, And saw within the emerald glow Our Father like the white sun-fire. We could not say if age or youth Were on his face: we only burned To pass the gateways of the Day, The exiles to the heart returned. He rose to greet us and his breath, The tempest music of the spheres, Dissolved the memory of earth, The cyclic labour and our tears. In him our dream of sorrow passed, The spirit once again was free And heard the song the Morning-Stars Chant in eternal revelry. This was the close of human story; We saw the deep unmeasured shine, And sank within the mystic glory They called of old the Dark Divine. Well it is gone now, The dream that I chanted: On this side the dawn now I sit fate-implanted. But though of my dreaming The dawn has bereft me, It all was not seeming For something has left me. I fell in some other World far from this cold light The Dream Bird, my brother, Is rayed with the gold light. I too in the Father Would hide me, and so, Bright Bird, to foregather With thee now I go. --December 15, 1896 A New Earth "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims within his ken." I who had sought afar from earth The faery land to greet, Now find content within its girth, And wonder nigh my feet. To-day a nearer love I choose And seek no distant sphere, For aureoled by faery dews The dear brown breasts appear. With rainbow radiance come and go The airy breaths of day, And eve is all a pearly glow With moonlit winds a-play. The lips of twilight burn my brow, The arms of night caress: Glimmer her white eyes drooping now With grave old tenderness. I close mine eyes from dream to be The diamond-rayed again, As in the ancient hours ere we Forgot ourselves to men. And all I thought of heaven before I find in earth below, A sunlight in the hidden core To dim the noon-day glow. And with the Earth my heart is glad, I move as one of old, With mists of silver I am clad And bright with burning gold. --February 1896 Duality "From me spring good and evil." Who gave thee such a ruby flaming heart, And such a pure cold spirit? Side by side I know these must eternally abide In intimate war, and each to each impart Life from their pain, with every joy a dart To wound with grief or death the self-allied. Red life within the spirit crucified, The eyes eternal pity thee, thou art Fated with deathless powers at war to be, Not less the martyr of the world than he Whose thorn-crowned brow usurps the due of tears We would pay to thee, ever ruddy life, Whose passionate peace is still to be at strife, O'erthrown but in the unconflicting spheres. --March 15, 1896 (This is unsigned, but in AE's "Collected Poems") The Element Language In a chapter in the Secret Doctrine dealing with the origin of language, H.P. Blavatsky makes some statements which are quoted here and which should be borne well in mind in considering what follows. "The Second Race had a 'Sound Language,' to wit, chant-like sounds composed of vowels alone." From this developed "monosyllabic speech which was the vowel parent, so to speak, of the monosyllabic languages mixed with hard consonants still in use among the yellow races which are known to the anthropologist. The linguistic characteristics developed into the agglutinative languages.... The inflectional speech, the root of the Sanskrit, was the first language (now the mystery tongue of the Initiates) of the Fifth Race." The nature of that language has not been disclosed along with other teaching concerning the evolution of the race, but like many other secrets the details of which are still preserved by the Initiates, it is implied in what has already been revealed. The application to speech of the abstract formula of evolution which they have put forward should result in its discovery, for the clue lies in correspondences; know the nature of any one thing perfectly, learn its genesis, development and consummation, and you have the key to all the mysteries of nature. The microcosm mirrors the macrocosm. But, before applying this key, it is well to glean whatever hints have been given, so that there may be less chance of going astray in our application. First, we gather from the Secret Doctrine that the sounds of the human voice are correlated with the forces, colours, numbers and forms. "Every letter has its occult meaning, the vowels especially contain the most occult and formidable potencies." (S.D., I, 94) and again it is said "The magic of the ancient priests consisted in those days in addressing their gods in their own language. The speech of the men of earth cannot reach the Lords, each must be addressed in the language of his respective element"---is a sentence which will be shown pregnant with meaning. "The book of rules" cited adds as an explanation of the nature of that element- language: "It is composed of Sounds, not words; of sounds, numbers and figures. He who knows how to blend the three, will call forth the response of the superintending Power" (the regent-god of the specific element needed). Thus this "language is that of incantations or of Mantras, as they are called in India, sound being the most potent and effectual magic agent, and the first of the keys which opens the door of communication between mortals and immortals." (S.D. I, 464) From these quotations it will be seen that the occult teachings as to speech are directly at variance with the theories of many philologists and evolutionists. A first speech which was like song-- another and more developed speech which is held sacred--an esoteric side to speech in which the elements of our conventional languages (i.e. the letters) are so arranged that speech becomes potent enough to guide the elements, and human speech becomes the speech of the gods--there is no kinship between this ideal language and the ejaculations and mimicry which so many hold to be the root and beginning of it. Yet those who wish to defend their right to hold the occult teaching have little to fear from the champions of these theories; they need not at all possess any deep scholarship or linguistic attainment; the most cursory view of the roots of primitive speech, so far as they have been collected, will show that they contain few or no sounds of a character which would bear out either the onomatopoetic or interjectional theories. The vast majority of the roots of the Aryan language express abstract ideas, they rarely indicate the particular actions which would be capable of being suggested by any mimicry possible to the human voice. I have selected at random from a list of roots their English equivalents, in order to show the character of the roots and to make clearer the difficulty of holding such views. The abstract nature of the ideas, relating to actions and things which often have no attendant sound in nature, will indicate what I mean. What possible sounds could mimic the sense of "to move, to shine, to gain, to flow, to burn, to blow, to live, to possess, to cover, to fall, to praise, to think"? In fact the most abstract of all seem the most primitive for we find them most fruitful in combination to for other words. I hope to show this clearly later on. It is unnecessary to discuss the claims of the interjectional theory, as it is only a theory, and there are few roots for which we could infer even a remote origin of this nature. The great objection to the theory that speech was originally a matter of convention and mutual agreement, is the scarcity of words among the roots which express the wants of primitive man. As it is, a wisdom within or beyond the Aryan led him to construct in these roots with their abstract significance an ideal foundation from which a great language could be developed. However as the exponents of rival theories have demolished each other's arguments, without anyone having established a clear case for himself, it is not necessary here to do more than indicate these theories and how they may be met. In putting forward a hypothesis more in accord with the doctrine of the spiritual origin of man, and in harmony with those occult ideas concerning speech already quoted, I stand in a rather unusual position, as I have to confess my ignorance of any of these primitive languages. I am rather inclined however, to regard this on the whole as an advantage for the following reasons. I think primitive man (the early Aryan) chose his words by a certain intuition which recognised an innate correspondence between the thought and the symbol. Para passu with the growing complexity of civilization language lost it spiritual character, "it fell into matter," to use H.P. Blavatsky's expression; as the conventional words necessary to define artificial products grew in number, in the memory of these words the spontaneity of speech was lost, and that faculty became atrophied which enable man to arrange with psychic rapidity ever new combinations of sounds to express emotion and thought. Believing then that speech was originally intuitive, and that it only need introspection and a careful analysis of the sounds of the human voice, to recover the faculty and correspondences between these sounds and forces, colours, forms, etc., it will be seen why I do not regard my ignorance of these languages as altogether a drawback. The correspondences necessarily had to be evolved out of my inner consciousness, and in doing this no aid could be derived from the Aryan roots as they now stand. In the meaning attached to each letter is to be found the key to the meaning and origin of roots; but the value of each sound separately could never be discovered by an examination of them in their combinations, though their value and purpose in combination to form words might be evident enough once the significance of the letters is shewn. Any lack of knowledge then is only a disadvantage in this, that it limits the area from which to choose illustrations. I have felt it necessary to preface what I have to say with this confession, to show exactly the position in which I stand. The correspondences between sounds and forces were first evolved, and an examination of the Aryan roots proved the key capable of application. -------- Note:--In an article which appeared in the Theosophist, Dec. 1887, I had attempted, with the assistance of my friend Mr. Chas. Johnston, to put forward some of the ideas which form the subject matter of this paper. Owing to the numerous misprints which rendered it unintelligible I have felt it necessary to altogether re-write it. ---G.W.R. -------- It is advisable at this point to consider how correspondences arose between things seeming so diverse as sounds, forms, colors and forces. It is evident that they could only come about through the existence of a common and primal cause reflecting itself everywhere in different elements and various forms of life. This primal unity lies at the root of all occult philosophy and science; the One becomes Many; the ideas latent in Universal Mind are thrown outwards into manifestation. In the Bhagavad-Gita (chap. IV) Krishna declares: "even though myself unborn, of changeless essence, and the lord of all existence, yet in presiding over nature--which is mine--I am born but through my own maya, the mystic power of self-ideation, the eternal thought in the eternal mind." "I establish the universe with a single portion of myself and remain separate;" he says later on, and in so presiding he becomes the cause of the appearance of the different qualities. "I am in the taste in water, the light in the sun and moon, the mystic syllable OM in all the Vedas, sound in space, the masculine essence in men, the sweet smell in the earth, the brightness in the fire" etc. Pouring forth then from one fountain we should expect to find correspondences running everywhere throughout nature; we should expect to find all these things capable of correlation. Coexistent with manifestation arise the ideas of time and space, and these qualities, attributes or forces, which are latent and unified in the germinal thought, undergo a dual transformation; they appear successively in time, and what we call evolution progresses through Kalpa after Kalpa and Manvantara after Manvantara: the moods which dominate these periods incarnate in matter, which undergoes endless transformations and takes upon itself all forms in embodying these sates of consciousness. The order in which these powers manifest is declared in the Puranas, Upanishads and Tantric works. It is that abstract formula of evolution which we can apply alike to the great and little things in nature. This may be stated in many ways, but to put it briefly, there is at first one divine Substance-Principle, Flame, Motion or the Great Breath; from this emanate the elements Akasa, ether, fire, air, water and earth; the spiritual quality becoming gradually lessened in these as they are further removed from their divine source; this is the descent into matter, the lowest rung of manifestation. "Having consolidated itself in its last principle as gross matter, it revolves around itself and informs with the seventh emanation of the last, the first and lowest element." (S.D. I, p. 297) This involution of the higher into the lower urges life upwards through the mineral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, until it culminates in spiritually and self consciousness. It is not necessary here to go more into detail, it is enough to say that the elements in nature begin as passive qualities, their ethereal nature becomes gross, then positive and finally spiritual, and this abstract formula holds good for everything in nature. These changes which take place in the universe are repeated in man its microcosm, the cosmic force which acts upon matter and builds up systems of suns and planets, working in him repeats itself and builds up a complex organism which corresponds and is correlated with its cosmic counterpart. The individual spirit Purusha dwells in the heart of every creature, its powers ray forth everywhere; they pervade the different principles or vehicles; they act through the organs of sense; they play upon the different plexuses; every principle and organ being specialised as the vehicle for a particular force or state of consciousness. All the sounds we can utter have their significance; they express moods; they create forms; they arouse to active life within ourselves spiritual and psychic forces which are centered in various parts of the body. Hence the whole organism of man is woven through and through with such correspondences; our thoughts, emotions, sensations, the forces we use, colours and sounds acting on different planes are all correlated among themselves, and are also connected with the forces evolving present about us, in which we live and move. We find such correspondences form the subject matter of many Upanishads and other occult treatises; for example in Yajnavalkyasamhita, a treatise on Yoga philosophy, we find the sound "Ra" associated with the element of fire, Tejas Tatwa, with the God Rudra, with a centre in the body just below the heart. Other books add, as correspondences of Tejas Tatwa, that its colour is red, its taste is hot, its form is a triangle and its force is expansion. The correspondences given in different treatises often vary; but what we can gather with certainty is that there must have existed a complete science of the subject; the correlation of sound with such things, once understood, is the key which explains, not only the magic potency of sound, but also the constuction of those roots which remain as relics of the primitive Aryan speech. The thinking principle in man, having experiences of nature through its vehicles, the subtle, astral and gross physical bodies, translates these sensations into its own set of correspondences: this principle in man, called the Manas, is associated with the element of akasa, whose property is sound; the Manas moves about in akasa, and so all ideas which enter into the mind awaken their correspondences and are immediately mirrored in sound. Let us take as an instance the perception of the colour red; this communicated to the mind would set up a vibration, causing a sound to be thrown outwards in mental manifestation, and in this way the impulse would arise to utter the letter R, the correspondence of this colour. This Manasic principle in man, the real Ego, is eternal in its nature; it exists before and after the body, something accruing to it from each incarnation; and so, because there is present in the body of man this long-traveled soul, bearing with it traces of its eternal past, these letters which are the elements of its speech have impressed on them a correspondence, not only with the forces natural to its transitory surroundings, but also with that vaster evolution of nature in which it has taken part. These correspondences next claim our attention. The correspondences here suggested do not I think at all exhaust the possible significance of any of the letters. Every sound ought to have a septenary relation to the planes of consciousness, and the differentiations of life, force and matter on each. Complete mastery of these would enable the knower to guide the various currents of force, and to control the elemental knower to guide the various currents of force, and to control the elemental beings who live on the astral planes, for these respond, we are told, "when the exact scale of being to which they belong is vibrated, whether it be that of colour, form, sound or whatever else," (Path, May, 1886) These higher interpretations I am unable to give; it requires the deeper being to know the deeper meaning. Those here appended may prove suggestive; I do not claim any finality or authority for them, but they may be interesting to students of the occult Upanishads where the mystic power of sound is continually dwelt upon. The best method of arranging the letters is to begin with A and conclude with M or OO: between these lie all the other letters, and their successive order is determined by their spiritual or material quality. Following A we get letters with an ethereal or liquid sound, such as R, H, L or Y; they become gradually harsher as they pass from the A, following the order of nature in this. Half way we get letters like K, J, TCHAY, S, or ISH; then they become softer, and the labials, like F, B and M, have something of the musical quality of the earlier sounds. If we arrange them in this manner, it will be found to approximate very closely to the actual order in which the sounds arise in the process of formation. We begin then with A--This represents God, creative force, the Self, the I, the beginning or first cause. "Among letters I am the vowel A," says Krishna in the Bagavad. It is without colour, number or form. R--This is motion, air, breath or spirit; it is also abstract desire, and here we find the teaching of the Rig-Veda in harmony. "Desire first arose in It which was the primal germ of mind, and which sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered in their hearts to be the bond which connects Entity with non-Entity." The corresponding colour of this letter is Red. H (hay) and L--Motion awakens Heat and Light which correspond respectively to H and L. That primordial ocean of being, says the book of Dzyan, was "fire and heat and motion:" which are explained as the noumenal essences of these material manifestations. The colour of H is Orange, of L yellow. L also conveys the sense of radiation. Y (yea)--This letter signifies condensation, drawing together, the force of attraction, affinity. Matter at the stage of evolution to which this refers is gaseous, nebulous, or ethereal: the fire- mists in space gather together to become worlds. The colour Y is green. W (way)--Water is the next element in manifestation: in cosmic evolution it is spoken of as chaos, the great Deep; its colour, I think, is indigo. After this stage the elements no longer manifest singly, but in pairs, or with a dual aspect. G (gay) and K--Reflection and Hardness; matter becomes crystalline or metalic: the corresponding colour is blue. S and Z--A further differentiation; matter is atomic: the abstract significance of number or seed is attached to these letters: their colour is violet. J and Tchay--Earth and gross Substance: this is the lowest point in evolution; the worlds have now condensed into solid matter. The colour of these letters is orange. N and Ng--Some new forces begin to work here; the corresponding sounds have, I think, the meaning of continuation and transformation or change: these new forces propel evolution in the upward or ascending arc: their colour is yellow. D and T--The colour of these letters is red. The involution of the higher forces into the lower forms alluded to before now begins. D represents this infusion of life into matter; it is descent and involution, death or forgetfulness, perhaps, for a time to the incarnating power. T is evolution, the upward movement generating life; the imprisoned energies surge outwards and vegetation begins. Ith and Ish--These correspond respectively to growth or expansion and vegetation; the earth, as Genesis puts it, "puts forth grass and herbs and trees yielding fruit." The colour of these letters is green. B and P--After the flora the fauna. B is Life or Being, animal and human. Humanity appears; B is masculine, P feminine. P has also a meaning of division, differentiation or production, which may refer to maternity. The colour here is blue. F and V--The colour is violet. Evolution moves still upwards, entering the ethereal planes once more. Lightness and vastness are the characteristics of this stage: we begin to permeate with part of our nature the higher spheres of being and reach the consummation in the last stage, represented by M--which has many meanings; it is thought, it is the end or death to the personality, it is the Receiver into which all flows, it is also the Symbol of maternity in a universal sense, it has this meaning when the life impulse (which is always represented by a vowel) follows it, as in "ma." It is the Pralaya of the worlds; the lips close as it is uttered. Its colour is indigo. O--The last vowel sound symbolizes abstract space, the spirit assumes once more the garment of primordial matter; it is the Nirvana of eastern philosophy. I will now try to show how the abstract significance of these sound reveals a deeper meaning in the roots of Aryan language than philologists generally allow. Prof. Max Muller says in the introduction to Biographies of Words. "Of ultimates in the sense of primary elements of language, we can never hope to know anything," and he also asserts that the roots are incapable of further analysis. I will endeavour now to show that this further analysis can be made. I should not be understood to say that all the so-called roots can be made to yield a secret meaning when analysed. Philologists are not all agreed as to what constitutes a root, or what words are roots, and in this general uncertainty it should not be expected that these correspondences, which as I have said are not complete, will apply in every instance. There are many other things which add to the difficulty; a root is often found to have very many different meanings; some of these may have arisen in the manner I suggest, and many more are derived from the primary meanings and are therefore not intuitive at all. The intuition will have to be exercised to discover what sensations would likely be awakened by the perception of an action or object; or if the root has an abstract significance, the thought must be analysed in order to discover its essential elements. I described previously the manner in which I thought a single sensation, the perception of the colour Red, would suggest its correspondence in sound, the letter R. Where the idea is more complex, a combination of two, tree or four sounds are necessary to express it, but they all originate in the same way. The reader who desires to prove the truth of the theory here put forward can adopt either of two methods; he can apply the correspondences to the roots, or he may try for himself to create words expressing simple, elemental ideas by combining the necessary letters; and then, if he turns to the roots, he will probably find that many of the words he has created in this way were actually used long ago, and this pratice will enable him more easily to understand in what sense, or on what plane, any particular letter should be taken. I think it probably that in the Sacred Language before mentioned, this could at once have been recognized by a difference in the intonation of the voice. This may have been a survival to some extent of the chanting which was the distinguishing characteristic of the speech of the Second Race. (Secret Doctrine, vol. II, p. 198) In the written language it is not easily possible to discover this without much thought, unless endeavour has previously been made to re-awaken the faculty of intuitive speech, which we formerly possessed and which became atrophied. It is not possible here to go into the analysis of the roots at much length: I can only illustrate the method which will be found to apply more surely where the roots express most elemental conceptions. Let us take as example the root, Wal, to boil. Boiling is brought about by the action of fire upon water, and here we find the letters W, water, and L, light or fire, united. In War, to well up as a spring, the sounds for water and motion are combined. A similar idea is expressed in Wat, to well out; the abstract significance of T, which is to evolve, come forth or appear, being here applied to a special action. A good method to follow in order to understand how the pure abstract meaning of a letter may be applied in many different ways, is to take some of the roots in which any one letter is prominent and then compare them. Let us take D. It has an abstract relation to involution or infusion; it may be view in two ways, either as positive or negative; as the exertion of force or the reception of force. Now I think if we compare the following roots a similarity of action will be found to underlie them all. Id, to swell; Ad, to eat; Dhu, to put; Da, to bind; Ad, to smell; Du, to enter; Da, to suck. I am not here going exhaustively to analyse the roots, as this is not an essay upon philology, but an attempt to make clear some of the mysteries of sound; those who wish to study this side of the subject more fully can study with this light the primitive languages. A few more examples must suffice. The root, Mar, to die, may be variously interpreted as the end of motion, the cessation of breath, or the withdrawal of spirit, R being expressive of what on various planes is motion, spirit, air and breath. In Bur, to be active, life and movement are combined,: in Gla, to glow, reflection and light; the same idea is in Gol, a lake. We find combined in Kar, to grind, hardness and motion: in Thah, to generate, expansion and heat; in Pak, to comb, division and hardness, the suggestion being division with some hard object; the same idea is in Pik, to cut. In Pis, to pound, the letters for division and matter in its molecular state are combined: in Fath, to fly, lightness and expansion: in Yas, to gird, drawing together and number; in Rab, to be vehement, energy and life; in Rip, to break, energy and division. In Yudh, to fight, the meaning suggested may be, coming together to destroy. Without further analysis the reader will be able to detect the relation which the abstractions corresponding to each letter bear to the defined application in the following words. Ak, to be sharp; Ank, to bend; Idh, to kindle; Ar, to move; Al, to burn; Ka, to sharpen; Har, to burn; Ku, to hew; Sa, to produce; Gal, to be yellow or green; Ghar, to be yellow or green; Thak, to thaw; Tar, to go through; Thu, to swell; Dak, to bite; Nak, to perish; Pa, to nourish, to feed; Par, to spare; Pi, to swell, to be fat; Pu, to purify; Pu, to beget; pau, little; Put, to swell out; Flu, to fly, to float; Bar, to carry; Bhu, to be, to become; Bla, to blow as a flower; Ma, to think; Mak, to pound; Mi, to diminish; Mu, to shut up, to enclose; Yas, to seethe, to ferment; Ys, to bind together, to mix; Yuk, to yoke, to join; Ra, to love; Rik, to furrow; Luh, to shine; Rud, to redden, to be red; Lub, to lust [?]; Lu, to cast off from; Wag, to be moist; Wam, to spit out; So, to sow, to scatter; Sak, to cut, to cleave; Su, to generate; Swa, to toss; Swal, to boil up; Ska, to cut; Skap, to hew; Sniw, to snow; Spew, to spit out; Swid, to sweat; etc. An analysis of some sacred words and the names of Deities may now prove interesting. It has been said that before we can properly understand the character of any deity we would have to know the meaning and the numbers attached to each letter in the name, for in this way the powers and functons of the various gods were indicated. If we take as examples names familiar to everyone, Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra, the three aspects of Parabrahm in manifestation, and analyse them in the same way as the roots, they will be found to yield up their essential meaning. Form the union of B, life, R, breath, and Ma, the producer, I would translate Brahma as "the creative breath of life." Vishnu similarly analysed is the power that "pervades, expands, and preserves;" I infer this from the union of V, whose force is pervasion, Sh, expansion, and N, continuation. Rudra is "the breath that absorbs the breath." Aum is the most sacred name of all names; it is held to symbolize the action of the Great breath from its dawn to its close: it is the beginning, A, the middle, U, and the close M. It is also an affirmation of the relation of our spiritual nature to the universal Deity whose aspects are Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra. I shall have more to say of the occult power of this word later on. Taken in conjunction with two other words, it is "the threefold designation of the Supreme Being." Om Tat Sat has a significance referable to a still higher aspect of Deity than that other Trinity; the Om here signifies that it is the All; Tat that it is self-existent or self-evolved; I think the repetition of the T in Tat gives it this meaning: Sat would signify that in it are contained the seeds of all manifestation. H.P. Blavatsky translates this word as Be-ness, which seems to be another way of expressing the same idea. The mystic incantation familiar to all students of the Upanishads, Om, bhur, Om, Bhwar, Om, Svar," is an assertion of the existence of the Divine Self in all the three worlds or Lokas. Loka is generally translated as a place; the letters suggest to me that a place or world is only a hardening or crystalization of Fire or Light. In Bhur Loka the crystalization of the primordial element of Fire leaves only one principle active, the life principle generally called Prana. Bhur Loka then is the place where life is active; we have B, life, and R, movement, to suggest this. In the word Bhuvar a new letter, V, is inserted: this letter, as I have said, corresponds to the Astral world, so the Bhuvar Loka is the place where both the Astral and Life principles are active. It is more difficult to translate Svar Loka: there is some significance attached here to the letter S, which I cannot grasp. It might mean that this world contains the germs of Astral life; but this does not appear sufficiently distinctive, Svar Loka is generally known as Devachan, and the whole incantation would mean that the Deity is present throughout the Pranic, Astral and Devachanic worlds. It is interesting to note what is said in the Glossary by H.P.B., about these three words (p. 367): they are said to be "lit by and born of fire," and to possess creative powers. The repetition of them with the proper accent should awaken in the occultist the powers which correspond to the three worlds. I think by these examples that the student will be able to get closer to the true significance of incantation; those who understand the occult meaning of the colours attached to the letters will be able to penetrate deeper than others into these mysteries. I may here say something about the general philosophy of incantation. There is said to be in nature a homogenous sound or tone which everywhere stirs up the molecules into activity. This is the "Word" which St. John says was in the beginning (the plane of causation); in another sense it is the Akasa of occult science, the element of sound, it is the Pythagorean "music of the spheres." The universe is built up, moulded and sustained by this element which is everywhere present, though inaudible by most men at this stage of evolution. It is not sound by the physical ears, but deep in the heart sometimes may be heard "the mystic sounds of the Akasic heights." The word Aum represents this homogeneous sound, it stirs up a power which is latent in it called the Yajna. The Glossary says that this "is one of the forms of Akasa within which the mystic word calls it into existence:" it is a bridge by means of which the soul can cross over to the world of the Immortals. It is this which is alluded to in the Nada-Bindu Upanishad. "The mind becoming insensible to the external impressions, becomes one with the sound, as milk with water, and then becomes rapidly absorbed in chidakas (the Akasa where consciousness pervades). The sound..... serves the purpose of a lure to the ocean waves of Chitta (mind), ...the serpent Chitta through listening to the Nada is entirely absorbed in it, and becoming unconscious of everything concentrates itself on the sound." We may quote further from another Upanishad. "Having left behind the body, the organs and objects of sense, and having seized the bow whose stick is fortitude and whose string is asceticism, and having killed with the arrow of freedom from egoism the first guardian, ....he crosses by means of the boat Om to the other side of the ether within the heart, and when the ether is revealed he enters slowly, as a miner seeking minerals enters a mine, into the hall of Brahman. ...Thenceforth, pure, clean, tranquil, breathless, endless, imperishable, firm, unborn, and independent, he stands in his own greatness, and having seen the Self standing in his own greatness, he looks at the wheel of the world." Let no one think that this is all, and that the mere repetition of words will do anything except injure those who attempt the use of these methods without further knowledge. It has been said (Path, April, 1887) that Charity, Devotion, and the like virtues are structural necessities in the nature of the man who would make this attempt. We cannot, unless the whole nature has been purified by long services and sacrifice, and elevated into mood at once full of reverence and intense will, become sensitive to the subtle powers possessed by the spiritual soul. What is here said about the Aum which is the name of our own God, and the way in which it draws forth the hidden power will serve to illustrate the method in using other words. The Thara-Sara Upanishad of Sukla-Yajur Veda says "Through Om is Brahm produced: through Na is Vishnu produced; through Ma is Rudra produced, etc." All these are names of gods; they correspond to forces in man and nature, in their use the two are united, and the man mounts upwards to the Immortals. I have been forced to compress what I had to say in these articles, I have only been able to suggest rather than put forward ideas, for my own knowledge of these correspondences is very incomplete. As far as I know the subject has been untouched hitherto, and this must be my excuse for the meagre nature of the information given. I hope later on to treat of the relation of sound and colour to form and to show how these correspondences will enable us to understand the language which the gods speak to us through flowers, trees, and natural forms. I hope also to be able to show that it was a knowledge of the relation of sound to form which dictated the form of the letters in many primaeval alphabets. --5/15, 6/15, 7/15, 8/15, 9/15, 1893 At the Dawn of the Kaliyuga * Where we sat on the hillside together that evening the winds were low and the air was misty with light. The huge sunbrowned slope on which we were sitting was sprinkled over with rare spokes of grass; it ran down into the vagueness underneath where dimly the village could be seen veiled by its tresses of lazy smoke. Beyond was a bluer shade and a deeper depth, out of which, mountain beyond mountain, the sacred heights of Himalay rose up through star-sprinkled zones of silver and sapphire air. How gay were our hearts! The silent joy of the earth quickened their beating. What fairy fancies alternating with the sweetest laughter came from childish lips! In us the Golden Age whispered her last, and departed. Up came the white moon, her rays of dusty pearl slanting across the darkness from the old mountain to our feet. "A bridge!" we cried, "Primaveeta, who long to be a sky-walker, here is a bridge for you!" Primaveeta only smiled; he was always silent; he looked along the gay leagues of pulsating light that lead out to the radiant mystery. We went on laughing and talking; then Primaveeta broke his silence. "Vyassa," he said, "I went out in thought, I went into the light, but it was not that light. I felt like a fay; I sparkled with azure and lilac; I went on, and my heart beat with longing for I knew not what, and out and outward I sped till desire stayed and I paused, and the light looked into me full of meaning. I felt like a spark, and the dancing of the sea of joy bore me up, up, up!" "Primaveeta, who can understand you?" said his little sister Vina, "you always talk of the things no one can see; Vyassa, sing for us." "Yes! yes! let Vyassa sing!" they all cried; and they shouted and shouted until I began:-- "Shadowy petalled, like the lotus, loom the mountains with their snows: Through the sapphire Soma rising, such a flood of glory throws As when the first in yellow splendour Brahma from the lotus rose. "High above the darkening mounds where fade the fairy lights of day, All the tiny planet folk are waving us from far away; Thrilled by Brahma's breath they sparkle with the magic of the gay. "Brahma, all alone in gladness, dreams the joys that throng in space, Shepherds all the whirling splendours onward to their resting place, Where at last in wondrous silence fade in One the starry race." "Vyassa is just like Primaveeta, he is full of dreams to-night," said Vina. And indeed I was full of dreams; my laughter had all died away; a vague and indescribable unrest came over me; the universal air around seemed thrilled by the stirring of unknown powers. We sat silent awhile; then Primaveeta cried out: "Oh, look, look, look, the Devas! the bright persons! they fill the air with their shining." We saw them pass by and we were saddened, for they were full of solemn majesty; overhead a chant came from celestial singers full of the agony of farewell and departure, and we knew from their song that the gods were about to leave the earth which would nevermore or for ages witness their coming. The earth and the air around it seemed to tingle with anguish. Shuddering we drew closer together on the hillside while the brightness of the Devas passed onward and away; and clear cold and bright as ever, the eternal constellations, which change or weep not, shone out, and we were alone with our sorrow. To awed we were to speak, but we clung closer together and felt a comfort in each other; and so, crouched in silence; within me I heard as from far away a note of deeper anguish, like a horn blown out of the heart of the ancient Mother over a perished hero: in a dread moment I saw the death and the torment; he was her soul-point, the light she wished to shine among men. What would follow in the dark ages to come, rose up before me in shadowy, over-crowding pictures; like the surf of a giant ocean they fluctuated against the heavens, crested with dim, giantesque and warring figures. I saw stony warriors rushing on to battle; I heard their fierce hard laughter as they rode over the trampled foe; I saw smoke arise from a horrible burning, and thicker and blacker grew the vistas, with here and there a glow from some hero-heart that kept the true light shining within. I turned to Primaveeta who was crouched beside me: he saw with me vision for vision, but, beyond the thick black ages that shut me out from hope, he saw the resurrection of the True, and the homecoming of the gods. All this he told me later, but now our tears were shed together. Then Primaveeta rose up and said, "Vyasa, where the lights were shining, where they fought for the True, there you and I must fight; for, from them spreads out the light of a new day that shall dawn behind the darkness." I saw that he was no longer a dreamer; his face was firm with a great resolve. I could not understand him, but I determined to follow him, to fight for the things he fought for, to work with him, to live with him, to die with him; and so, thinking and trying to understand, my thought drifted back to that sadness of the mother which I had first felt. I saw how we share joy or grief with her, and, seized with the inspiration of her sorrow, I sang about her loved one:-- "Does the earth grow grey with grief For her hero darling fled? Though her vales let fall no leaf, In our hearts her tears are shed. "Still the stars laugh on above, Not to them her grief is said; Mourning for her hero love In our hearts her tears are shed. "We her children mourn for him, Mourn the elder hero dead; In the twilight grey and dim In our hearts the tears are shed." "Vyassa," they said, "you will break our hearts." And we sat in silence and sorrow more complete till we heard weary voices calling up to us from the darkness below: "Primaveeta! Vyassa! Chandra! Parvati! Vina! Vasudeva!" calling all our names. We went down to our homes in the valley; the breadth of glory had passed away from the world, and our hearts were full of the big grief that children hold. --October 15, 1893 -------------- * Note--Kaliyuga. The fourth, the black or iron age, our present period, the duration of which is 432,000 years. It began 3,102 years B.C. at the moment of Krishna's death, and the first cycle of 5,000 years will end between the years 1897 and 1898. -------------- The Meditation of Parvati Parvata rose up from his seat under the banyan tree. He passed his hand unsteadily over his brow. Throughout the day the young ascetic had been plunged in profound meditation, and now, returning from heaven to earth, he was dazed like one who awakens in darkness and knows not where he is. All day long before his inner eye burned the light of the Lokas, until he was wearied and exhausted with their splendours; space glowed like a diamond with intolerable lustre, and there was no end to the dazzling processions of figures. He had seen the fiery dreams of the dead in Swargam. He had been tormented by the sweet singing of the Gandharvas, whose choral song reflected in its ripples the rhythmic pulse of Being. He saw how the orbs, which held them, were set within luminous orbs still of wider circuit, and vaster and vaster grew the vistas, and smaller seemed the soul at gaze, until at last, a mere speck of life, he bore the burden of innumerable worlds. Seeking for Brahma, he found only the great illusion as infinite as Brahma's being. If these things were shadows, the earth and the forests he returned to, viewed at evening, seemed still more unreal, the mere dusky flutter of a moth's wings in space. Filmy and evanescent, if he had sunk down as through a transparency into the void, it would not have been wonderful. Parvati turned homeward, still half in trance: as he threaded the dim alleys he noticed not the flaming eyes that regarded him from the gloom; the serpents rustling amid the undergrowths; the lizards, fire-flies, insects, the innumerable lives of which the Indian forest was rumourous; they also were but shadows. He paused half unconsciously at the village, hearing the sound of human voices, of children at play. He felt a throb of pity for these tiny being who struggled and shouted, rolling over each other in ecstasies of joy; the great illusion had indeed devoured them before whom the Devas once were worshipers. Then close beside him he heard a voice; its low tones, its reverence soothed him: there was something akin to his own nature in it; it awakened him fully. A little crowd of five or six people were listening silently to an old man who read from a palm-leaf manuscript. Parvati knew his order by the orange-coloured robes he wore; a Bhikshu of the new faith. What was his delusion? The old man lifted his head for a moment as the ascetic came closer, and then he continued as before. He was reading the "Legend of the Great King of Glory." Parvati listened to it, comprehending with the swift intuition and subtlety of a mystic the inner meaning of the Wonderful Wheel, the elephant Treasure, the Lake and palace of Righteousness. He followed the speaker, understanding all until he came to the meditation of the King: then he heard with vibrating heart, how "the Great King of Glory entered the golden chamber, and set himself down on the silver couch. And he let his mind pervade one quarter of the world with thoughts of Love: and so the second quarter, and so the third, and so the fourth. And thus the whole wide world, above below, around and everywhere, did he continue to pervade with heart of Love, far-reaching, grown great, and beyond measure." When the old Bhikshu had ended, Parvati rose up, and went back again into the forest. He had found the secret of the True--to leave behind the vistas, and enter into the Being. Another legend rose up in his mind, a fairy legend of righteousness, expanding and filling the universe, a vision beautiful and full of old enchantment; his heart sang within him. He seated himself again under the banyan tree; he rose up in soul; he saw before him images, long-forgotten, of those who suffer in the sorrowful old earth; he saw the desolation and loneliness of old age, the insults to the captive, the misery of the leper and outcast, the chill horror and darkness of life in a dungeon. He drank in all their sorrow. For his heart he went out to them. Love, a fierce and tender flame arose; pity, a breath from the vast; sympathy, born of unity. This triple fire sent forth its rays; they surrounded those dark souls; they pervaded them; they beat down oppression. While Parvati, with spiritual magic, sent forth the healing powers, far away at that moment, in his hall, a king sat enthroned. A captive was bound before him; bound, but proud, defiant, unconquerable of soul. There was silence in the hall until the king spake the doom, the torture, for this ancient enemy. The king spake: "I had thought to do some fierce thing to thee, and so end thy days, my enemy. But, I remember with sorrow, the great wrongs we have done to each other, and the hearts made sore by our hatred. I shall do no more wrong to thee. Thou art free to depart. Do what thou wilt. I will make restitution to thee as far as may be for thy ruined state." Then the soul no might could conquer was conquered, and the knees were bowed; his pride was overcome. "My brother!" he said, and could say no more. To watch for years a little narrow slit high up in the dark cell, so high that he could not reach up and look out; and there to see daily a little change from blue to dark in the sky had withered that prisoner's soul. The bitter tears came no more; hardly even sorrow; only a dull, dead feeling. But that day a great groan burst from him: he heard outside the laugh of a child who was playing and gathering flowers under the high, grey walls: then it all came over him, the divine things missed, the light, the glory, and the beauty that the earth puts forth for her children. The narrow slit was darkened: half of a little bronze face appeared. "Who are you down there in the darkness who sigh so? Are you all alone there? For so many years! Ah, poor man! I would come down to you if I could, but I will sit here and talk to you for a while. Here are flowers for you," and a little arm showered them in handfuls; the room was full of the intoxicating fragrance of summer. Day after day the child came, and the dull heart entered into human love once more. At twilight, by a deep and wide river, sat an old woman alone, dreamy, and full of memories. The lights of the swift passing boats, and the lights of the stars, were just as in childhood and the old love-time. Old, feeble, it was time for her to hurry away from the place which changed not with her sorrow. "Do you see our old neighbour there?" said Ayesha to her lover. "They say she once was as beautiful as you would make me think I am now. How lonely she must be! Let us come near and speak to her"; and the lover went gladly. Though they spoke to each other rather than to her, yet something of the past--which never dies when love, the immortal, has pervaded it--rose up again as she heard their voices. She smiled, thinking of years of burning beauty. A teacher, accompanied by his chelas, was passing by the wayside where a leper was sitting. The teacher said, "Here is our brother whom we may not touch. But he need not be shut out from truth. We may sit down where he can listen." He sat down on the wayside beside the leper, and his chelas stood around him. He spoke words full of love, kindliness, and pity, the eternal truths which make the soul grow full of sweetness and youth. A small old spot began to glow in the heart of the leper, and the tears ran down his withered cheeks. All these were the deeds of Parvati, the ascetic; and the Watcher who was over him from all eternity made a great stride towards that soul. --November 15, 1893 A Talk by the Euphrates Priest Merodach walked with me at evening along the banks of the great river. "You feel despondent now," he said, "but this was inevitable. You looked for a result equal to your inspiration. You must learn to be content with that alone. Finally an inspiration will come for every moment, and in every action a divine fire reveal itself." "I feel hopeless now. Why is this? Wish and will are not less strong than before." "Because you looked for a result beyond yourself, and, attached to external things, your mind drew to itself subtle essences of earth which clouded it. But there is more in it than that. Nature has a rhythm, and that part of us which is compounded of her elements shares in it. You were taught that nature is for ever becoming: the first emanation in the great deep is wisdom: wisdom changes into desire, and an unutterable yearning to go outward darkens the primeval beauty. Lastly, the elements arise, blind, dark, troubled. Nature in them imagines herself into forgetfulness. This rhythm repeats itself in man: a moment of inspiration--wise and clear, we determine; then we are seized with a great desire which impels us to action; the hero, the poet, the lover, all alike listen to the music of life, and then endeavour to express its meaning in word or deed; coming in contact with nature, its lethal influence drowses them; so baffled and forgetful, they wonder where the God is. To these in some moment the old inspiration returns, the universe is as magical and sweet as ever, a new impulse is given, and so they revolve, perverting and using, each one in his own way, the cosmic rhythm." "Merodach, what you say seems truth, and leaving aside the cosmic rhythm, which I do not comprehend, define again for me the three states." "You cannot really understand the little apart from the great; but, applying this to your own case, you remember you had a strange experience, a God seemed to awaken within you. This passed away; you halted a little while, full of strange longing, eager for the great; yet you looked without on the hither side of that first moment, and in this second period, which is interchange and transition, your longing drew to you those subtle material essences I spoke of, which, like vapour surround, dull and bewilder the mind with strange phantasies of form and sensation. Every time we think with longing of any object, these essences flow to us out of the invisible spheres and steep us with the dew of matter: then we forget the great, we sleep, we are dead or despondent as you are despondent." I sighed as I listened. A watchfulness over momentary desires was the first step; I had thought of the tasks of the hero as leading upwards to the Gods, but this sleepless intensity of will working within itself demanded a still greater endurance. I neared my destination; I paused and looked round; a sudden temptation assailed me; the world was fair enough to live in. Why should I toil after the far-off glory? Babylon seemed full of mystery, its temples and palaces steeped in the jewel glow and gloom of evening. In far-up heights of misty magnificence the plates of gold on the temples rayed back the dying light: in the deepening vault a starry sparkle began: an immense hum arose from leagues of populous streets: the scents of many gardens by the river came over me: I was lulled by the splash of fountains. Closer I heard voices and a voice I loved: I listened as a song came "Tell me, youthful lover, whether Love is joy or woe? Are they gay or sad together On that way who go?" A voice answered back "Radiant as a sunlit feather, Pure and proud they go; With the lion look together Glad their faces show." My sadness departed; I would be among them shortly, and would walk and whisper amid those rich gardens where beautiful idleness was always dreaming. Merodach looked at me. "You will find these thoughts will hinder you much," he said. "You mean--" I hesitated, half-bewildered, half-amazed. "I say that a thought such as that which flamed about you just now, driving your sadness away, will recur again when next you are despondent, and so you will accustom yourself to find relief on the great quest by returning to an old habit of the heart, renewing what should be laid aside. This desire of men and women for each other is the strongest tie among the many which bind us: it is the most difficult of all to overcome. The great ones of the earth have passed that way themselves with tears." "But surely, Merodach, you cannot condemn what I may say is so much a part of our nature--of all nature." "I did not condemn it, when I said it is the strongest tie that binds us here: it is sin only for those who seek for freedom." "Merodach, must we then give up love?" "There are two kinds of love men know of. There is one which begins with a sudden sharp delight--it dies away into infinite tones of sorrow. There is a love which wakes up amid dead things: it is a chill at first, but it takes root, it warms, it expands, it lays hold of universal joys. So the man loves: so the God loves. Those who know this divine love are wise indeed. They love not one or another: they are love itself. Think well over this: power alone is not the attribute of the Gods; there are no such fearful spectres in that great companionship. And now, farewell, we shall meet again." I watched his departing figure, and then I went on my own way. I longed for that wisdom, which they only acquire who toil, and strive, and suffer; but I was full of a rich life which longed for excitement and fulfilment, and in that great Babylon sin did not declare itself in its true nature, but was still clouded over by the mantle of primeval beauty. --December 15, 1893 The Cave of Lilith Out of her cave came the ancient Lilith; Lilith the wise; Lilith the enchantress. There ran a little path outside her dwelling; it wound away among the mountains and glittering peaks, and before the door, one of the Wise Ones walked to and fro. Out of her cave came Lilith, scornful of his solitude, exultant in her wisdom, flaunting her shining and magical beauty. "Still alone, star gazer! Is thy wisdom of no avail? Thou hast yet to learn that I am more powerful knowing the ways of error than you who know the ways of truth." The Wise One heeded her not, but walked to and fro. His eyes were turned to the distant peaks, the abode of his brothers. The starlight fell about him; a sweet air came down the mountain path, fluttering his white robe; he did not cease from his steady musing. Like a mist rising between rocks wavered Lilith in her cave. Violet, with silvery gleams her raiment; her face was dim; over her head rayed a shadowy diadem, the something a man imagines over the head of his beloved---looking closer at her face he would have seen that this was the crown he reached out to, that the eyes burnt with his own longing, that the lips were parted to yield to the secret wishes of his heart. "Tell me, for I would know, why do you wait so long? I, here in my cave between the valley and the height blind the eyes of all who would pass. Those who by chance go forth to you come back to me again, and but one in ten thousand passes on. My delusions are sweeter to them than truth. I offer every soul its own shadow; I pay them their own price. I have grown rich, though the simple shepards of old gave me birth. Men have made me; the mortals have made me immortal. I rose up like a vapour from their first dreams, and every sigh since then and every laugh remains with me. I am made up of hopes and fears. The subtle princes lay out their plans of conquest in my cave, and there the hero dreams, and there the lovers of all time write in flame their history. I am wise, holding all experience, to tempt, to blind, to terrify. None shall pass by. Why, therefore, dost thou wait?" The Wise One looked at her and she shrank back a little, and a little her silver and violet faded, but out of her cave her voice still sounded: "The stars and the starry crown are not yours alone to offer, and every promise you make, I make also. I offer the good and the bad indifferently. The lover, the poet, the mystic, and all who would drink of the first Fountain, I delude with my mirage. I was the Beatrice who led Dante upward: the gloom was in me, and the glory was mine also, and he went not out of my cave. The stars and the shining of heaven were delusions of the infinite I wove about him. I captured his soul with the shadow of space; a nutshell would have contained the film. I smote on the dim heart-chords the manifold music of being. God is sweeter in the human than the human in God: therefore he rested in me." She paused a little, and then went on. "There is that fantastic fellow who slipped by me--could your wisdom not keep him? He returned to me full of anguish, and I wound my arms round him like a fair melancholy, and now his sadness is as sweet to him as hope was before his fall. Listen to his song." She paused again. A voice came up from the depths chanting a sad knowledge-- "What of all the will to do? It has vanished long ago, For a dream shaft pierced it through From the unknown Archer's bow. What of all the soul to think? Some one offered it a cup Filled with a diviner drink, And the flame has burned it up. What of all the hope to climb? Only in the self we grope To the misty end of time; Truth has put an end to hope. What of all the heart to love? Sadder than for will or soul, No light lured it on above; Love has found itself the whole." "Is it not pitiful? I pity only those who pity themselves. Yet he is mine more surely than ever. This is the end of human wisdom. How shall he now escape? What shall draw him up?" "His will shall awaken," said the Wise One. "I do not sorrow over him, for long is the darkness before the spirit is born. He learns in your caves not to see, not to hear, not to think, for very anguish flying your delusions." "Sorrow is a great bond," Lilith said. "It is a bond to the object of sorrow. He weeps what thou can never give him, a life never breathed in thee. He shall come forth, and thou shalt not see him at the time of passing. When desire dies, will awakens, the swift, the invisible. He shall go forth, and one by one the dwellers in your caves will awaken and pass onwards; this small old path will be trodden by generation after generation. You, too, oh, shining Lilith, will follow, not as mistress, but as hand-maiden." "I shall weave spells," Lilith cried. "They shall never pass me. With the sweetest poison I will drug them. They will rest drowsily and content as of old. Were they not giants long ago, mighty men and heroes? I overcame them with young enchantment. Will they pass by feeble and longing for bygone joys, for the sins of their proud exultant youth, while I have grown into a myriad wisdom?" The Wise One walked to and fro as before, and there was silence, and I thought I saw that with steady will he pierced the tumultuous gloom of the cave, and a heart was touched here and there in its blindness. And I thought I saw that Sad Singer become filled with a new longing to be, and that the delusions of good and evil fell from him, and that he came at last to the knees of the Wise One to learn the supreme truth. In the misty midnight I hear these three voices, the Sad Singer, the Enchantress Lilith, and the Wise One. From the Sad Singer I learned that thought of itself leads nowhere, but blows the perfume from every flower, and cuts the flower from every tree, and hews down every tree from the valley, and in the end goes to and fro in waste places gnawing itself in a last hunger. I learned from Lilith that we weave our own enchantment, and bind ourselves with out own imagination; to think of the true as beyond us, or to love the symbol of being, is to darken the path to wisdom, and to debar us from eternal beauty. From the Wise One I learned that the truest wisdom is to wait, to work, and to will in secret; those who are voiceless today, tomorrow shall be eloquent, and the earth shall hear them, and her children salute them. Of these three truths the hardest to learn is the silent will. Let us seek for the highest truth. --February 15, 1894 A Strange Awakening Chapter I. That we are living in the Dark Age we all know, yet we do not realise half its darkness. We endure physical and moral suffering; but, fortunately or unfortunately, we are oblivious of the sorrow of all sorrows--the Spiritual Tragedy. Such a rust has come over the pure and ancient spirit of life, that the sceptre and the diadem and the starry sway we held are unremembered; and if anyone speaks of these things he is looked at strangely with blank eyes, or with eyes that suspect madness. I do not know whether to call him great, or pity him, who feels such anguish; for although it is the true agony of the crucifixion, it is only gods who are so martyred. With these rare souls memory is not born: life flows on, and they with it go on in dreams: they are lulled by lights, flowers, stars, colours, and sweet odours, and are sheltered awhile from heaven and hell; then in some moment the bubble bursts, and the god awakens and knows himself, and he rises again with giant strength to conquer; or else he succumbs, and the waves of Lethe, perhaps in mercy, blot out his brief knowledge. I knew such an one many years ago, and I tell of him because I know of no deeper proof of the existence of a diviner nature than that man's story. Arthur Harvey, as I have heard people describe him, in his early years was gentle, shy, and given to much dreaming. He was taken from school early, came up from the country to the city, and was put to business. He possessed the apathy and unresisting nature characteristic of so many spiritual people, and which is found notably among the natives of India; so he took his daily confinement at first as a matter of course, though glad enough when it was over, and the keen sweet air blew about him in spring or summer evenings, and the earth looked visionary, steeped in dew and lovely colour, and his soul grew rich with strange memories and psychic sensations. And so day-by-day he might have gone on with the alternation of work and dream, and the soul in its imaginings might never have known of the labours of the mind, each working by habit in its accustomed hour, but for an incident which took place about two years after his going to business. One morning his manager said: "Harvey, take this letter; deliver it, and wait for an answer." He started up eagerly, glad for the unwonted freedom from his desk. At the door, as he went out, the whole blinding glory of the sunlight was dashed on him. He looked up. Ah! what spaces illimitable of lustrous blue. How far off! How mighty! He felt suddenly faint, small, mean, and feeble. His limbs trembled under him: he shrank from the notice of men as he went on his way. Vastness, such as this, breaking in upon the eye that had followed the point of the pen, unnerved him: he felt a bitter self-contempt. What place had he amid these huge energies? The city deafened him as with one shout: the tread of the multitude; the mob of vehicles; glitter and shadow; rattle, roar, and dust; the black smoke curled in the air; higher up the snowy and brilliant clouds, which the tall winds bore along; all were but the intricate and wondrous workings of a single monstrous personality; a rival in the universe who had absorbed and wrested from him his own divine dower. Out of him; out of him, the power-- the free, the fearless--whirled in play, and drove the suns and stars in their orbits, and sped the earth through light and shadow. Out of him; out of him; never to be reconquered; never to be regained. The exultant laugh of the day; the flame of summer; the gigantic winds careering over the city; the far-off divine things filled him with unutterable despair. What was he amid it all? A spark decaying in its socket; a little hot dust clinging together. He found himself in a small square; he sat down on a bench; his brain burning, his eyes unseeing. "Oh! my, what's he piping over?" jeered a grotesque voice, and a small figure disappeared, turning somersaults among the bushes. "Poor young man! Perhaps he is ill. Are you not well, sir?" asked a sympathetic nurse. He started up, brought to himself, and muttering something unintelligible, continued his journey through the city. The terrible influence departed, and a new change came over him. The laugh of the urchin rankled in his mind: he hated notice: there must be something absurd or out of the common in his appearance to invoke it. He knew suddenly that there was a gulf between him and the people he lived among. They were vivid, actual, suited to their places. How he envied them! Then the whole superficies of his mind became filled with a desire to conceal this difference. He recalled the various characteristics of those who worked along with him. One knew all topical songs, slang and phrases; another affected a smartness in dress; a third discussed theatres with semi-professional knowledge. Harvey, however, could never have entered the world, or lived in it, if he had first to pass through the portals of such ideas! He delivered his letter; he was wearied out, and as he returned he noticed neither sky nor sunlight, and the hurrying multitudes were indifferent and without character. He passed through them; his mind dull like theirs; a mere machine to guide rapid footsteps. That evening, a clerk named Whittaker, a little his senior in the office, was struck by Harvey's curious and delicate face. "I say, Harvey," he said, "how do you spend your evenings?" Harvey flushed a little at the unwonted interest. "I take long walks," he said. "Do you read much?" "A little." "Do you go to the theatre?" "No." "Never?" "Never." "Whew! what a queer fellow! No clubs, classes, music-halls-- anything of the sort, eh?" "No," said Harvey, a little bitterly, "I know nothing, nobody; I am always alone." "What an extraordinary life! Why, you are out of the universe completely. I say," he added, "come along with me this evening. I will initiate you a little. You know you must learn your profession as a human being." His manner was very kindly; still Harvey was so shy that he would have found some excuse, but for that chance expression, "out of the universe." Was not this apartness the very thing he had just been bitterly feeling? While he hesitated and stammered in his awkwardness, the other said: "There, no excuses! You need not go to your lodgings for tea. Come along with me." They went off together through the darkening streets. One cheerful and irreverent, brimful of remark or criticism; the other silent, his usual dreaminess was modified, but had not departed, and once, gazing up through the clear, dark blue, where the stars were shining, he had a momentary sense as if he were suspended from them by a fine invisible thread, as a spider hung from her roof; suspended from on high, where the pure and ancient aether flamed around the habituations of eternity; and below and about him, the thoughts of demons, the smoke, darkness, horror and anguish of the pit. Chapter II. I Cannot tell all the steps by which the young soul came forth from its clouds and dreams, but must hurry over the years. This single incident of his boyhood I have told to mark the character and tendency of his development; spirituality made self-conscious only in departing; life, a falling from ideals which grew greater, more beautiful and luminous as the possibility of realizing them died away. But this ebbtide of inner life was not regular and incessant, but rather after the fashion of waves which retreat surely indeed, but returning again and again, seem for moments to regain almost more than their past altitude. His life was a series of such falls and such awakenings. Every new experience which drew his soul from its quietude brought with it a revelation of a spiritual past, in which, as it now seemed, he had been living unconsciously. Every new experience which enriched his mind seemed to leave his soul more barren. The pathetic anguish of these moments had little of the moral element, which was dormant and uncultivated rather than perverted. He did not ponder over their moral aspect, for he shared the superficial dislike to the ethical, which we often see in purely artistic natures, who cannot endure the entrance of restraint or pain upon their beauty. His greatest lack was the companionship of fine men or noble women. He had shot up far beyond the reach of those whom he knew, and wanting this companionship he grew into a cynical or sensuous way of regarding them. He began to write: he had acquired the faculty of vigourous expression by means of such emotions as were tinged with a mystical voluptuousness which was the other pole to his inner, secret and spiritual being. The double strain upon his energies, which daily work and nightly study with mental productiveness involved, acted injuriously upon his health, and after a year he became so delicate that he could carry on neither one nor other of his avocations without an interval of complete rest. Obtaining leave from his employers, he went back for a period of six weeks to the village where he had been born. Here in the early summer and sunshine his health rapidly improved; his mind even more than his body drank deep draughts of life; and here, more than at any period in his life, did his imagination begin to deal with mighty things, and probe into the secret mysteries of life, and here passed into the long descended line by which the human spirit passed from empire; he began to comprehend dimly by what decadence from starry state the soul of man is ushered into the great visible life. These things came to him not clearly as ideas, but rather as shadowy and shining vision thrown across the air of dawn of twilight as he moved about. Not alone did this opulence of spiritual life make him happy, another cause conspired with it to this end. He had met a nature somewhat akin to his own: Olive Rayne, the woman of his life. As the days passed over he grew eager not to lose any chance of speech with her, and but two days before his departure he walked to the village hoping to see her. Down the quiet English lane in the evening he passed with the rapid feet that bear onward unquiet or feverish thought. The clear fresh air communicated delight to him; the fields grown dim, the voice of the cuckoo, the moon like a yellow globe cut in the blue, the cattle like great red shadows driven homeward with much unnecessary clamour by the children; all these flashed in upon him and became part of him: ready made accessories and backgrounds to his dreams, their quietness stilled and soothed the troubled beauty of passion. His pace lessened as he came near the village, half wondering what would serve as excuse for visits following one so soon upon the other. Chance served as excuse. He saw her grey dress, her firm upright figure coming out from among the lilac brushes at the gate of her father's house. She saw Harvey coming towards her and waited for him with a pleasant smile. Harvey, accustomed to introspect and ideal imaginings, here encountered no shock gazing upon the external. Some last light of day reflected upward from the white gate-post, irradiated her face, and touched with gold the delicate brown hair, the nosrtils, lips, chin, and the lilac of her throat. Her features were clear-cut, flawless; the expression exquisitely grave and pure; the large grey eyes had that steady glow which shows a firm and undisturbed will. In some undefinable way he found himself thinking of the vague objects of his dreams, delicate and subtle things, dew, starlight, and transparencies rose up by some affinity. He rejected them--not those--then a strong warrior with a look of pity on his face appeared and disappeared: all this quick as a flash before she spoke. "I am going doctoring," she said. "Old nurse Winder is ill, and my father will not be back until late." Mr. Rayne was the country doctor. "May I go with you?" he asked. "Oh, yes, why not? But I have first to call at two or three places on the way." He went with her. He was full of wonder at her. How could she come out of her own world of aspiration and mystic religion and show such perfect familiarity, ease and interest in dealing with these sordid village complaints, moral and physical? Harvey was a man who disliked things like these which did not touch his sense of beauty. He could not speak to these people as she did: he could not sympathize with them. The pain of the old woman made him shrink into himself almost with more disgust than pity. While Olive was bending over her tenderly and compassionately, he tried to imagine what it was inspired such actions and such self-forgetfulness. Almost it seemed for a moment to him as if some hidden will in the universe would not let beauty rest in its own sphere, but bowed it down among sorrows continually. He felt a feeling of relief as they came out agin into the night. It was a night of miracle and wonder. Withdrawn far aloft into fairy altitudes, the stars danced with a gaiety which was more tremendous and solemn than any repose. The night was wrought out of a profusion of delicate fires. The grass, trees, and fields glowed with the dusky colours of rich pottery. Everywhere silence; everywhere the exultant breathing of life, subtle, universal, penetrating. Into the charmed heart fell the enchantment we call ancient, though the days have no fellows, nor will ever have any. Harvey, filled up with this wonder, turned to his companion. "See how the Magician of the Beautiful blows with his mystic breath upon the world! How tremulous the lights are; what still ness! How it banishes the memory of pain!" "Can you forget pain so easily? I hardly noticed the night--it is wonderful indeed. But the anguish it covers and enfolds everywhere I cannot forget." "I could not bear to think of pain at any time, still less while these miracles are over and around us. You seem to me almost to seek pain like a lover. I cannot understand you. How can you bear the ugly, the mean, the sordid--the anguish which you meet. You-- so beautiful?" "Can you not understand?" she said, almost impetuously. "Have you never felt pity as universal as the light that floods the world? To me a pity seems to come dropping, dropping, dropping from that old sky, upon the earth and its anguish. God is not indifferent. Love eternal encircles us. Its wishes are for our redemption. Its movements are like the ripples starting from the rim of a pond that overcome the outgoing ripples and restore all to peace. "But what is pain if there is this love?" asked Harvey. "Ah, how can I answer you? Yet I think it is the triumph of love pushing back sin and rebellion. The cry of this old nature being overcome is pain. And this is universal, and goes on everywhere, through we cannot comprehend it; and so, when we yield to this divine love, and accept the change, we find in pain a secret sweetness. It is the first thrill that heralds an immense dawn." "But why do you say it is universal? Is not that a frightful thought?" "If God is the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, then the life of Christ on earth was a symbol--must be a symbol--of what endures for ever: the Light and Darkness for ever in conflict: a crucifixion in eternity." This belief, so terrible, so pathetic, so strange, coming from this young girl affected Harvey profoundly. He did not reject it. The firmness and surety of her utterance, the moral purity of her character, appealed to him who felt his own lack of clear belief and heroic purpose. Like all spiritual people, he assimilated easily the spiritual moods of those whom he came into contact with. Coming from her, the moral, pathetic, and Christian doctrine had that element of beauty which made it blend with his ideal paganism. As he went homewards he pondered over her words, her life, her thoughts. He began to find an inexpressible beauty in her pity, as a feeling welling up from unknown depths, out of the ancient heart of things. Filled with this pity he could overcome his dislike of pain and go forth as the strong warrior of his momentary vision. He found himself repeating again and again her words: "We find in pain a secret sweetness--a secret sweetness--a secret sweetness." If he could only find it, what might he not dare, to what might he not attain? And revolving all these things upon his restless pillow, there came over him one of those mystic moods I have spoken of: wandering among dim originals, half in dream and half in trance, there was unfolded within him this ancient legend of the soul:-- There was a great Gloom and a great Glory in nature, and the legions of darkness and the glorious hosts were at war perpetually with one another. Then the Ancient of Days, who holds all this within himself, moved the Gloom and the Glory together: the Sons of the Bright Fire he sent into the darkness, and the children of Darkness he brought unto the gates of the day. And in the new life formed out of the union of these two, pain, self-conscious, became touched with a spiritual beauty, and those who were of the Hosts of Beauty wore each one a Crown of Thorns upon the brow. Chapter III. Harvey rose up early; as he walked to and fro in the white dawn, he found the answers to every question in his mind: they rose up with a sweet and joyful spontaneity. Life became filled with happiest meaning: a light from behind the veil fell upon the things he had before disliked, and in this new light, pain, sorrow, and the old moralities were invested with a significance undreamt of before. In admitting into his own mind Olive Rayne's ideas, he removed something of their austerity: what he himself rejected, seen in her, added another and peculiar interest to the saintly ideal of her which he had formed. She had once said, peace and rest were inconceivable while there existed strife and suffering in nature. Nowhere could there be found refuge; drawing near unto the divine, this pain only became wider, more intense, almost insufferable, feeling and assimilating the vastness of divine sorrow brooding over the unreclaimed deep. This pity, this consciousness of pain, not her own, filling her own, filling her life, marked her out from everyone he knew. She seemed to him as one consecrated. Then this lover in his mystic passion passed in the contemplation of his well-beloved from the earthly to the invisible soul. He saw behind and around her a form unseen by others; a form, spiritual, pathetic, of unimaginable beauty, on which the eternal powers kept watch, which they nourished with their own life, and on which they inflicted their own pain. This form was crowned, but with a keen- pointed radiance from which there fell a shadowy dropping. As he walked to and fro in the white dawn he made for her a song, and inscribed it. To One Consecrated Your paths were all unknown to us: We were so far away from you, We mixed in thought your spirit thus-- With whiteness, stars of gold, and dew. The mighty mother nourished you: Her breath blew from her mystic bowers: Their elfin glimmer floated through The pureness of your shadowy hours. The mighty mother made you wise; Gave love that clears the hidden ways: Her glooms were glory to your eyes; Her darkness but the Fount of Days. She made all gentleness in you, And beauty radiant as the morn's: She made our joy in yours, then threw Upon your head a crown of thorns. Your eyes are filled with tender light, For those whose eyes are dim with tears; They see your brow is crowned and bright, But not its ring of wounding spears. We can imagine no discomfiture while the heavenly light shines through us. Harvey, though he thought with humility of his past as impotent and ignoble in respect of action, felt with his rich vivid consciousness that he was capable of entering into her subtlest emotions. He could not think of the future without her; he could not give up the hope of drawing nigh with her to those mysteries of life which haunted them both. His thought, companioned by her, went ranging down many a mystic year. He began to see strange possibilities, flashes as of old power, divine magic to which all the world responded, and so on till the thought trembled in vistas ending in a haze of flame. Meanwhile, around him was summer: gladness and youth were in his heart, and so he went on dreaming-- forecasting for the earth and its people a future which belongs only to the spiritual soul--dreaming of happy years even as a child dreams. Later on that evening, while Olive was sitting in her garden, Dr. Rayne came out and handed her a bundle of magazines. "There are some things in these which may interest you, Olive," he said: "Young Harvey writes for them, I understand. I looked over one or two. They are too mystical for me. You will hardly find them mystical enough." She took the papers from him without much interest, and laid them beside her on the seat. After a time she took them up. As she read her brows began to knit, and her face grew cold. These verses were full of that mystical voluptuousness which I said characterised Harvey's earlier productions; all his rich imagination was employed to centre interest upon moments of half-sensual sensations; the imagery was used in such a way that nature seemed to aid and abet the emotion; out of the heart of things, out of wild enchantment and eternal revelry shot forth into the lives of men the fires of passion. Nothing could be more unlike the Christ-soul which she worshiped as underlying the universe and on which she had reliance. "He does not feel pity; he does not understand love," she murmured. She felt a cold anger arise; she who had pity for most things felt that a lie had been uttered defiling the most sacred things in the Holy of Holies, the things upon which her life depended. She could never understand Harvey, although he had been included in the general kindliness with which she treated all who came near her; but here he seemed revealed, almost vaunting an inspiration from the passionate powers who carry on their ancient war against the Most High. The lights were now beginning to fade about her in the quiet garden when the gate opened, and someone came down the path. It was Harvey. In the gloom he did not notice that her usual smile was lacking, and besides he was too rapt in his own purpose. He hesitated for a moment, then spoke. "Olive," he said tremulously, "as I came down the lanes to say good-bye to you my heart rebelled. I could not bear the thought: Olive, I have learned so many things from you; your words have meant so much to me that I have taken them as the words of God. Before I knew you I shrank from pain; I wandered in search of a false beauty. I see now the purpose of life--to carry on the old heroic battle for the true; to give the consolation of beauty to suffering; to become so pure that through us may pass that divine pity which I never knew until you spoke, and I then saw it was the root of all life, and there was nothing behind it--such magic your words have. My heart was glad this morning for you at this truth, and I saw in it the power which would transfigure the earth. Yet all this hope has come to me through you; I half hold it still through you. To part from you now--it seems to me would be like turning away from the guardian of the heavenly gateway. I know I have but little to bring you. I must make all my plea how much you are to me when I ask can you love me." She had hardly heard a word of all he said. She was only conscious that he was speaking of love. What love? Had he not written of it? It would have emptied Heaven into the pit. She turned and faced him, speaking coldly and deliberately: "You could speak of love to me, and write and think of it like this!" She placed her hand on the unfortunate magazines. Harvey followed the movement of her arm. He took the papers up, then suddenly saw all as she turned and walked away,--what the passion of these poems must have seemed to her. What had he been in her presence that could teach her otherwise? Only a doubter and questioner. In a dreadful moment his past rose up before him, dreamy, weak, sensual. His conscience smote him through and through. He could find no word to say. Self-condemned, he moved blindly to the gate and went out. He hardly knew what he was doing. Before him the pale dry road wound its way into the twilight amid the hedges and cottages. Phantasmal children came and went. There seemed some madness in all they were doing. Why did he not hear their voices? They ran round and round; there should have been cries or laughter or some such thing. Then suddenly something seemed to push him forward, and he went on blankly and walked down the lane. In that tragic moment his soul seemed to have deserted him, leaving only a half- animal consciousness. With dull attention he wondered at the muffled sound of his feet upon the dusty road, and the little puffs of smoke that shot out before them. Every now and then something would throb fiercely for an instant and be subdued. He went on and on. His path lay across some fields. He stopped by force of habit and turned aside from the road. Again the same fierce throb. In a wild instant he struggled for recollection and self-mastery, and then the smothered soul rushed out of the clouds that oppressed it. Memories of hope and shame: the morning gladness of his heart: the brilliant and spiritual imaginations that inspired him: their sudden ending: the degradation and drudgery of the life he was to return to on the morrow: all rose up in tumultuous conflict. A feeling of anguish that was elemental and not of the moment filled him. Drifting and vacillating nature--he saw himself as in a boat borne along by currents that carried him, now near isles of beauty, and then whirled him away from their vanishing glory into gloomy gulfs and cataracts that went down into blackness. He was master neither of joy nor sorrow. Without will: unpractical; with sensitiveness which made joy a delirium and gloom a very hell; the days he went forward to stretched out iron hands to bind him to the deadly dull and commonplace. These vistas, intolerable and hopeless, overcame him. He threw himself down in his despair. Around his head pressed the cool grasses wet with dew. Strange and narrow, the boundary between heaven and hell! All around him primeval life innocent and unconscious was at play. All around him, stricken with the fever of life, that Power which made both light and darkness, inscrutable in its workings, was singing silently the lovely carol of the flowers. Chapter IV. Little heaps of paper activities piled themselves up, were added to, diminished, and added to again, all the day long before Harvey at his desk. He had returned to his work: there was an unusual press of business, and night after night he was detained long beyond the usual hours. The iron hand which he had foreseen was laid upon him: it robbed him even of his right to sorrow, the time to grieve. But within him at moments stirred memories of the past, poignant anguish and fierce rebellion. With him everything transformed itself finally into ideal images and aspects, and it was not so much the memory of an incident which stung him as the elemental sense of pain in life itself. He felt that he was debarred from a heritage of spiritual life which he could not define even to himself. The rare rays of light that slanted through the dusty air of the office, mystic gold fallen through inconceivable distances from the pure primeval places, wakened in him an unutterable longing: he felt a choking in his throat as he looked. Often, at night, too, lifting his tired eyes from the pages flaring beneath the bright gas jet, he could see the blueness deepen rich with its ancient clouds of starry dust. What pain it was to him, immemorial quiet, passivity and peace, though over it a million tremors fled and chased each other throughout the shadowy night! What pain it was to let the eyes fall low and see about him the pale and feverish faces looking ghostly through the hot, fetid, animal, and flickering air! His work over, out into the night he would drag himself wearily-- out into the night anywhere; but there no more than within could he escape from that power which haunted him with mighty memories, the scourge which the Infinite wields. Nature has no refuge for those in whom the fire of spirit has been kindled: earth has no glory for which it does not know a greater glory. As Harvey passed down the long streets, twinkling with their myriad lights fading into blue and misty distances, there rose up before him in the visionary air solemn rows of sphinxes in serried array, and starlit pyramids and temples--greatness long dead, a dream that mocked the lives around him, hoarding the sad small generations of humanity dwindling away from beauty. Gone was the pure and pale splendour of the primeval skies and the lustre of the first-born of stars. But even this memory, which linked him in imagination to the ideal past, was not always his: he was weighted, like all his race, with an animal consciousness which cried out fiercely for its proper life, which thirsted for sensation, and was full of lust and anger. The darkness was not only about him, but in him, and struggled there for mastery. It threw up forms of meanness and horrible temptations which clouded over his soul; their promise was forgetfulness; they seemed to say: "Satisfy us, and your infinite longing shall die away: to be of clay is very dull and comfortable; it is the common lot." One night, filled with this intolerable pain, as he passed through the streets he yielded to the temptation to kill out this torturing consciousness: he accosted one of the women of the streets and walked away with her. She was full of light prattle, and chattered on and on. Harvey answered her not a word; he was set on his stony purpose. Child of the Stars! what had he to do with these things? He sought only his soul's annihilation. Something in this terrible silence communicated itself to his companion. She looked at his face in the light of a lamp; it was white, locked, and rigid. Child of the Stars, no less, though long forgetful, she shuddered at this association. She recoiled from him crying out "You brute--you brute!" and then fled away. The unhappy man turned homeward and sat in his lonely room with stupid, staring eyes, fixed on darkness and vacancy until the pale green light of dawn began to creep in upon him. Into this fevered and anguished existence no light had yet come. Drunken with wretchedness, Harvey could not or would not think; and the implacable spirit which followed him deepened and quickened still more the current of his being, and the GLOOM and the GLORY of his dream moved still nearer to each other. Mighty and mysterious spirit, thou who crownest pain with beauty, and by whom the mighty are bowed down from their seats, under they guidance, for such a crowning and for such agony, were coiled together the living streams of evil and good, so that at last the man might know himself--the soul--not as other than Thee! The ways by which he was brought to that moment were unremembered; the sensations and thoughts and moods which culminated in the fire of self-consciousness could be retraced but vaguely. He had gone out of the city one Sunday, and lying down in the fields under the trees, for a time he grew forgetful of misery. He went once more into the world of dreams. He, or the creature of his imagination, some shadow of himself, lived in and roamed through antique forests where the wonderful days were unbroken by sense of sorrow. Childhood shared in an all-pervading exultation; through the pulses of youth ran the fiery energy that quickened the world; and this shadow of the dreamer dwelling amid the forests grew gradually into a consciousness of a fiery life upon which the surface forms were but films: he entered this kingdom of fire; its life became his life; he knew the secret ways to the sun, and the sunny secrets living in the golden world. "It was I, myself," rushed into Harvey's mind: "It was I. Ah, how long ago!" Then for the first time, his visions, dreams and imaginations became real to him, as memories of a spirit traveling through time and space. Looking backwards, he could nowhere find in the small and commonplace surroundings of his life anything which could have suggested or given birth to these vivid pictures and ideas. They began to move about swiftly in his mind and arrange themselves in order. He seemed to himself to have fallen downwards through a long series of lines of ever- lessening beauty--fallen downwards from the mansions of eternity into this truckling and hideous life. As Harvey walked homewards through the streets, some power must have guided his steps, for he saw or knew nothing of what was about him. With the sense of the reality of his imaginations came an energy he had never before felt: his soul took complete possession of him: he knew, though degraded, that he was a spirit. Then, in that supreme moment, gathered about him the memories of light and darkness, and they became the lips through which eternal powers spake to him in a tongue unlike the speech of men. The spirit of light was behind the visions of mystical beauty: the spirit of darkness arrayed itself in the desires of clay. These powers began to war within him: he heard voices as of Titans talking. The spirit of light spake within him and said--"Arouse now, and be thou my voice in this dead land. There are many things to be spoken and sung--of dead language the music and significance, old world philosophies; you will be the singer of the sweetest songs; stories wilder and stranger than any yet will I tell you--deeds forgotten of the vaporous and dreamy prime. The voice came yet again closer, full of sweet promise, with magical utterance floating around him. He became old--inconceivably old and young together. He was astonished in the wonders of the primal world. Chaos with tremendous agencies, serpentine powers, strange men-beasts and men-birds, the crude first thought of awakening nature was before him; from inconceivable heights of starlike purity he surveyed it; he went forth from glory; he descended and did battle; he warred with behemeths, with the flying serpents and the monstrous creeping things. With the Lords of Air he descended and conquered; he dwelt in a new land, a world of light, where all things were of light, where the trees put forth leaves of living green, where the rose would blossom into a rose of light and lily into a white radiance, and over the vast of gleaming plains and through the depths of luminous forests, the dreaming rivers would roll in liquid and silver flame. Often he joined in the mad dance upon the highlands, whirling round and round until the dark grass awoke fiery with rings of green under the feet. And so, on and on through endless transformations he passed, and he saw how the first world of dark elements crept in upon the world of beauty, clothing it around with grossness and veiling its fires; and the dark spirits entered by subtle ways into the spheres of the spirits of light, and became as a mist over memory and a chain upon speed; the earth groaned with the anguish. Then this voice cried within him--"Come forth; come out of it; come out, oh king, to the ancestral spheres, to the untroubled spiritual life. Out of the furnace, for it leaves you dust. Come away, oh king, to old dominion and celestial sway; come out to the antique glory!" Then another voice from below laughed at the madness. Full of scorn it spake, "You, born of clay, a ruler of stars? Pitiful toiler with the pen, feeble and weary body, what shall make of you a spirit?" Harvey thrust away this hateful voice. From his soul came the impulse to go to other lands, to wander for ever and ever under the star-rich skies, to be a watcher of the dawn and eve, to live in forest places or on sun-nurtured plains, to merge himself once more in the fiery soul hidden within. But the mocking voice would not be stifled, showing him how absurd and ridiculous it was "to become a vagabond," so the voice said, and finally to die in the workhouse. So the eternal spirit in him, God's essence, conscious of its past brotherhood, with the morning stars, the White Aeons, in its prisonhouse writhed with the meanness, till at last he cried, "I will struggle no longer; it is only agony of spirit to aspire here at all; I will sit and wait till the deep darkness has vanished." But the instruction was not yet complete; he had learned the primal place of spirit; he had yet to learn its nature. He began to think with strange sadness over the hopes of the world, the young children. He saw them in his vision grow up, bear the burden in silence or ignorance; he saw how they joined in dragging onward that huge sphinx which men call civilization; there was no time for loitering amid the beautiful, for if one paused it was but to be trampled by the feet of the many who could not stay or rest, and the wheels of the image ground that soul into nothingness. He felt every pain almost in an anguish of sympathy. Helpless to aid, to his lips came the cry to another which immemorial usage has made intuitive in men. But It is high and calm above all appeal; to It the cries from all the sorrowing stars sound but as one great music; lying in the infinite fields of heaven, from the united feelings of many universes It draws only a vast and passionless knowledge, without distinction of pleasure or pain. From the universal which moves not and aids not, Harvey in his agony turned away. He himself could fly from the struggle; thinking of what far place or state to find peace, he found it true in his own being that nowhere could the soul find rest while there was still pain or misery in the world. He could imagine no place or state where these cries of pain would not reach him: he could imagine no heaven where the sad memory would not haunt him and burn him. He knew then that the nature of the soul was love eternal; he knew that if he fled away a divine compassion would compel him to renew his brotherhood with the stricken and suffering; and what was best forever to do was to fight out the fight in the darkness. There was a long silence in Harvey's soul; then with almost a solemn joy he grew to realize at last the truth of he himself--the soul. The fight was over; the Gloom and the Glory were linked together, and one inseparably. Harvey was full of a sense of quietness, as if a dew fell from unseen places on him with soothing and healing power. He looked around. He was at the door of his lodgings. The tall narrow houses with their dull red hues rose up about him; from their chimneys went up still higher the dark smoke; but behind its nebulous wavering the stars were yet; they broke through the smoke with white lustre. Harvey looked at them for a moment, and went in strangely comforted. The End --March 15-June 15, 1894 The Midnight Blossom --"Arhans are born at midnight hour..... together with the holy flower that opes and blooms in darkness."--The Voice of the Silence We stood together at the door of our hut: we could see through the gathering gloom where our sheep and goats were cropping the sweet grass on the side of the hill: we were full of drowsy content as they were. We had naught to mar our own happiness--neither memory nor unrest for the future. We lingered on while the vast twilight encircled us; we were one with its dewy stillness. The lustre of the early stars first broke in upon our dreaming: we looked up and around: the yellow constellations began to sing their choral hymn together. As the night deepened they came out swiftly from their hiding places in depths of still and unfathomable blue; they hung in burning clusters; they advanced in multitudes that dazzled: the shadowy shining of night was strewn all over with nebulous dust of silver, with long mists of gold with jewels of glittering green. We felt how fit a place the earth was to live on, with these nightly glories over us, with silence and coolness upon its lawns and lakes after the consuming day. Valmika, Kedar, I and Ananda watched together; through the rich gloom we could see far distant forests and lights--the lights of village and city in King Suddhodana's realm. "Brothers," said Valmika, "How good it is to be here, and not yonder in the city where they know not peace, even in sleep." "Yonder and yonder," said Kedar, "I saw the inner air full of a red glow where they were busy in toiling and strife. It seemed to reach up to me; I could not breathe. I climbed the hills at dawn to laugh where the snows were, and the sun is as white as they are white." "But, brothers, if we went down among them and told them how happy we were, and how the flowers grow on the hillside, and all about the flocks, they would surely come up and leave all sorrow. They cannot know or they would come." Ananda was a mere child though so tall for his years. "They would not come," said Kedar. "All their joy is to haggle and hoard. When Siva blows upon them with his angry breath they will lament, or when the Prets in fierce hunger devour them." "It is good to be here," repeated Valmika drowsily, "to mind the flocks and be at rest, and to hear the wise Varunna speak when he comes among us." I was silent. I knew better than they that busy city which glowed beyond the dark forests. I had lived there until, grown sick and weary, I had gone back to my brothers on the hillside. I wondered would life, indeed, go on ceaselessly until it ended in the pain of the world. I said within myself--Oh, mighty Brahma, on the outermost verges of they dream are our lives; thou old invisible, how faintly through our hearts comes the sound of thy song, the light of thy glory! Full of yearning to rise and return, I strove to hear in the heart the music Anahata had spoken of in our sacred scrolls. There was silence, and then I thought I heard sounds, not glad, a myriad murmur. As I listen it deepened, it grew into passionate prayer and appeal and tears, as if the cry of the long- forgotten souls of men went echoing through empty chambers. My eyes filled with tears, for it seemed world-wide, and to sigh from out many ages, long agone, to be and yet to be. "Ananda! Ananda! where is the boy running to?" cried Valmika. Ananda had vanished into the gloom. We heard his glad laugh below and then another voice speaking. Presently up loomed the tall figure of Varunna. Ananda held his hand and danced beside him. We could see by the starlight his simple robe of white. I could trace clearly every feature of the grave and beautiful face, the radiant eyes; not by the starlight I saw, but because a silvery shining rayed a little way into the blackness around the dark hair and face. Valmika, as elder, first spake. "Holy sir, be welcome. Will you come in and rest?" "I cannot stay now. I must pass over the mountain ere dawn; but you may come a little way with me--such of you as will." We assented gladly--Kedar and I; Valmika remained. Then Ananda prayed to go. We bade him stay, fearing for him the labour of climbing and the chill of the snows, but Varunna said: "Let the child come; he is hardy; he will not tire if he holds my hands." So we set out together and faced the highlands that rose and rose above us; we knew well the way even at night. We waited in silence for Varunna to speak, but for nigh two hours we mounted without words, save for Ananda's shouts of delight and wonder at the heavens spread above us. But I was hungry for an answer to my thoughts, so I spake. "Master, Valmika was saying, ere you came, how good it was to be here rather than in the city where they are full of strife, and Kedar thought their lives would flow on into fiery pain and no speech would avail. Ananda, speaking as a child indeed, said if one went down among them they would listen to his story of the happy life. But, Master, do not many speak and interpret the sacred writings, and how few they are who lay to heart the words of the gods! They seem, indeed, to go on through desire into pain, and even here upon our hills we are not free, for Kedar felt the hot glow of their passion and I heard in my heart their sobs of despair. Master, it was terrible, for they seemed to come from the wide earth over, and out of ages far away." "There is more of the true in the child's hope than in your despair, for it is of much avail to speak though but a few listen. Better is the life which aids, though in sorrow, than the life which withdraws from pain unto solitude. Yet it is not well to speak without power, for only the knower of Brahma can interpret the sacred writings truly. It is well to be free ere we speak of freedom; then we have power and many hearken." "But who would leave joy for sorrow, and who being one with Brahma may return to give council?" "Brother," said Varunna, "here is the hope of the world. Though many seek only for the eternal joy, yet the cry you heard has been heard by great ones who have turned backwards, called by these beseeching voices. The small old path stretching far away leads through many wonderful beings to the place of Brahma; there is the first fountain, the world of beautiful silence, the light that has been undimmed since the beginning of time--the joy where life fades into being; but turning backwards, the small old path winds away into the world of men, it enters every sorrowful heart, and the way of him who would tread therethro' is stayed by its pain and barred by its delusion. This is the way the great ones go; they turn with the path from the door of Brahma the warriors and the strong ones: they move along its myriad ways; they overcome darkness with wisdom and pain with compassion. After many conquered worlds, after many races of men, purified and uplifted they go to greater than Brahma. In these, though few, is the hope of the world; these are the heroes for whom, returning, the earth puts forth her signal fires, and the Devas sing their hymns of welcome." We paused where the plateau widened out; there was scarce a ripple in the chill air; in quietness the snows glistened, a light reflected from the crores of stars that swung with gay and glittering motion above us. We could hear the immense heart-beat of the world in the stillness; we had thoughts that went ranging through the heavens, not sad, but full of solemn hope. "Brothers! Master! Look, the wonderful thing! and another, and yet another!" We heard Ananda calling; we looked and saw the holy blossom--the midnight flower--oh, may the earth again put forth such beauty--it grew up from the snows with leaves of delicate crystal, a nimbus encircled each radiant bloom, a halo pale yet lustrous. I bowed down before it lost in awe. I heard Varunna say:--"The earth, indeed puts forth her signal fires, and the Devas sing their hymn; listen!" We heard a music as of beautiful thought moving along the high places of the earth, full of infinite love and hope and yearning. "Brothers, be glad, for One is born who has chosen the greater way. Now I must pass onwards. Kedar, Narayan, Ananda, farewell! Nay, no further; it is long way to return, and the child will tire." He went on and passed from our sight. But we did not return; we remained long, long in silence, looking at the sacred flower. Vow, taken long ago, be strong in our hearts to-day. Here where the pain is fiercer, to rest is more sweet. Here where beauty dies away, it is more joy to be lulled in dreams. Here the good, the true, our hope, seem but a madness born of ancient pain. Out of rest, dream, or despair, let us arise. Let us go the way the Great Ones go. --July, 1894 The Story of a Star The emotion that haunted me in that little cathedral town would be most difficult to describe. After the hurry, rattle, and fever of the city, the rare weeks spent here were infinitely peaceful. They were full of a quaint sense of childhood, with sometimes a deeper chord touched--the giant and spiritual things childhood has dreams of. The little room I slept in had opposite its window the great grey cathedral wall; it was only in the evening that the sunlight crept round it and appeared in the room strained through the faded green blind. It must have been this silvery quietness of colour which in some subtle way affected me with the feeling of a continual Sabbath; and this was strengthened by the bells chiming hour after hour: the pathos, penitence, and hope expressed by the flying notes coloured the intervals with faint and delicate memories. They haunted my dreams, and I heard with unutterable longing the astral chimes pealing from some dim and vast cathedral of the cosmic memory, until the peace they tolled became almost a nightmare, and I longed for utter oblivion or forgetfulness of their reverberations. More remarkable were the strange lapses into other worlds and times. Almost as frequent as the changing of the bells were the changes from state to state. I realised what is meant by the Indian philosophy of Maya. Truly my days were full of Mayas, and my work-a-day city life was no more real to me than one of those bright, brief glimpses of things long past. I talk of the past, and yet these moments taught me how false our ideas of time are. In the ever-living yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow are words of no meaning. I know I fell into what we call the past and the things I counted as dead for ever were the things I had yet to endure. Out of the old age of earth I stepped into its childhood, and received once more the primal blessing of youth, ecstasy, and beauty. But these things are too vast and vague to speak of; the words we use to-day cannot tell their story. Nearer to our time is the legend that follows. I was, I thought, one of the Magi of old Persia, inheritor of its unforgotten lore, and using some of its powers. I tried to pierce through the great veil of nature, and feel the life that quickened it within. I tried to comprehend the birth and growth of planets, and to do this I rose spiritually and passed beyond earth's confines into that seeming void which is the matrix where they germinate. On one of these journeys I was struck by the phantasm, so it seemed, of a planet I had not observed before. I could not then observe closer, and coming again on another occasion it had disappeared. After the lapse of many months I saw it once more, brilliant with fiery beauty--its motion was slow, rotating around some invisible centre. I pondered over it, and seemed to know that the invisible centre was its primordial spiritual state, from which it emerged a little while and into which it then withdrew. Short was its day; its shining faded into a glimmer, and then into darkness in a few months. I learned its time and cycles; I made preparations and determined to await its coming. The Birth of a Planet At first silence and then an inner music, and then the sounds of song throughout the vastness of its orbit grew as many in number as there were stars at gaze. Avenues and vistas of sound! They reeled to and fro. They poured from a universal stillness quick with unheard things. They rushed forth and broke into a myriad voices gay with childhood. From age and the eternal they rushed forth into youth. They filled the void with reveling and exultation. In rebellion they then returned and entered the dreadful Fountain. Again they came forth, and the sounds faded into whispers; they rejoiced once again, and again died into silence. And now all around glowed a vast twilight; it filled the cradle of the planet with colourless fire. I felt a rippling motion which impelled me away from the centre to the circumference. At that centre a still flame began to lighten; a new change took place, and space began to curdle, a milky and nebulous substance rocked to and fro. At every motion the pulsation of its rhythm carried it farther and farther away from the centre, it grew darker, and a great purple shadow covered it so that I could see it no longer. I was now on the outer verge, where the twilight still continued to encircle the planet with zones of clear transparent light. As night after night I rose up to visit it they grew many-coloured and brighter. I saw the imagination of nature visibly at work. I wandered through shadowy immaterial forests, a titanic vegetation built up of light and colour; I saw it growing denser, hung with festoons and trailers of fire, and spotted with the light of myriad flowers such as earth never knew. Coincident with the appearance of these things I felt within myself, as if in harmonious movement, a sense of joyousness, an increase of self-consciousness; I felt full of gladness, youth, and the mystery of the new. I felt that greater powers were about to appear, those who had thrown outwards this world and erected it as a place in space. I could not tell half the wonder of this strange race. I could not myself comprehend more than a little of the mystery of their being. They recognised my presence there, and communicated with me in such a way that I can only describe it by saying that they seemed to enter into my soul breathing a fiery life; yet I knew that the highest I could reach to was but the outer verge of their spiritual nature, and to tell you but a little I have many times to translate it, for in the first unity with their thought I touched on an almost universal sphere of life, I peered into the ancient heart that beats throughout time; and this knowledge became change in me, first, into a vast and nebulous symbology, and so down through many degrees of human thought into words which hold not at all the pristine and magical beauty. I stood before one of this race, and I thought, "What is the meaning and end of life here?" Within me I felt the answering ecstasy that illuminated with vistas of dawn and rest, it seemed to say: "Our spring and our summer are unfolding into light and form, and our autumn and winter are a fading into the infinite soul." I thought, "To what end is this life poured forth and withdrawn?" He came nearer and touched me; once more I felt the thrill of being that changed itself into vision. "The end is creation, and creation is joy: the One awakens out of quiescence as we come forth, and knows itself in us; as we return we enter it in gladness, knowing ourselves. After long cycles the world you live in will become like ours; it will be poured forth and withdrawn; a mystic breath, a mirror to glass your being." He disappeared while I wondered what cyclic changes would transmute our ball of mud into the subtle substance of thought. In that world I dared not stay during its period of withdrawal; having entered a little into its life, I became subject to its laws: the Power on its return would have dissolved my being utterly. I felt with a wild terror its clutch upon me, and I withdrew from the departing glory, from the greatness that was my destiny--but not yet. From such dreams I would be aroused, perhaps by a gentle knock at my door, and my little cousin Margaret's quaint face would peep in with a "Cousin Robert, are you not coming down to supper?" Of these visions in the light of after thought I would speak a little. All this was but symbol, requiring to be thrice sublimed in interpretation ere its true meaning can be grasped. I do not know whether worlds are heralded by such glad songs, or whether any have such a fleeting existence, for the mind that reflects truth is deluded with strange phantasies of time and place in which seconds are rolled out into centuries and long cycles are reflected in an instant of time. There is within us a little space through which all the threads of the universe are drawn; and, surrounding that incomprehensible centre the mind of man sometimes catches glimpses of things which are true only in those glimpses; when we record them the true has vanished, and a shadowy story-- such as this--alone remains. Yet, perhaps, the time is not altogether wasted in considering legends like these, for they reveal, though but in phantasy and symbol, a greatness we are heirs to, a destiny which is ours, though it be yet far away. --August 15, 1894 How Theosophy Affects One's View of Life --A Paper Read Before the Dublin Lodge. In asking you to consider with me the influence of the system of thought called Theosophy upon one's view of all the things which are included in the term Life, I have to preface my remarks by the confession that I have not extracted my ideas from portly volumes, or indeed, engaged in any great research; and I have further to ask you to believe that what you will hear is the most unbiased statement, as far as possible, on the subjects which will necessarily come under notice. The outlook of any individual mind is not a constant quantity; it is to some extent determined by education, environment, and the innate tendencies; but it is always subject to alteration; it is constantly feeling the influence of subtle forces and circumstances, and it changes with every fresh experience and every new sensation. Still these influences seldom evince their presence by a great reversal of the mental attitude, and we are best able to sense them by seeing how the actions of the individual, which are very largely the voluntary or involuntary expression of his standpoint, represent at different times changes in that standpoint. Indeed, one's own experience will supply plenty of material to work upon; for, I daresay no one will insist that his present attitude towards the rest of the universe is identical with that of ten or five years ago, or even one year. A little examination will show that the mental processes which precede some definite action are altered in some important manner from those of 1890. The question which is of importance is to find out how the change has come about, and whether one is to allow extraneous events to mast his mental conclusions, or one is to become, through wisdom acquired by effort, the conscious master of his destiny. Theosophy has for its leading tenet the absolute unity in essence and correlation of all life, whether visible, invisible, material, intellectual, spiritual, and this affords at once a clue to the consideration of the present subject; for, according to the view which the individual thinker takes of the powers and relations of the mind itself will be his view of the duties and responsibilities which these powers and relations involve; in other words, Ethics or moral philosophy must be based upon metaphysics. Now, I wish to be as brief as possible in pointing out the theosophic view of the mind, and soul, and their powers and relations; and were it not that it is necessary for the unity of my remarks, I would take refuge in referring to the numerous able, intellectual, and forcible expositions of this matter which you have heard in this room. Theosophy, to put it as concisely as possible, accepts the universe as "the unfolding of a Divine life, functioning in every form of living and nonliving thing." Man is viewed as a compound being, a spark of this divine universal spirit being clothed with the body. The immortal indestructible part of man consists of this spark of universal spirit, its vehicle the human spirit, and the mind or intellectual faculties. It uses as a dwelling the body, with its animal life, its passions and appetites, to which mankind is so prone to attach tremendous importance. The connecting link is the mind, which, being full of agitation, strong, and obstinate, senses all the material existence, is moved by the hopes and fears, and the storm of existence. The lesson, ever insisted on as having to be learnt, is that the lower part of man, the body, and its attachments, have to be conquered and purified; and the only way to teach it its true functions is by suffering; and when this is done, we shall have got somewhere nearer the goal, when we shall identify our consciousness with our true self, not with the illusion. The powers of the mind to sense all existence, and its relations towards the rest of our being as the connecting link, bearing the contact with external things towards the soul, and at times being the vehicle of the Wisdom which is one of the attributes of that which has no attribute: I say, then, these powers and relations of the mind, which one finds everywhere treated of in Theosophical literature, are the determining factors in the formation of our Ethics. And since, from Socrates down, we are taught that self-knowledge is necessary for guidance of one's conduct, the knowledge of the mind and its capacities is at once shadowed forth as of immense value. It has at least three elementary powers--viz., the power of knowing, the power of feeling, and the power of acting. These powers, though distinguishable, are not separable; but rather when we distinguish knowledge, feeling, and action, what we call by these names will be found, when accurately examined, to be combinations of the three elements, differing only in respect to the element which preponderates. Locke would have us suppose that when I say "I know," it means that an object is inserted into my consciousness as into a bag. But no bag could produce the phenomenon of knowledge. To produce it requires the putting forth of an active power, which we call intelligence. The knowledge of an object always produces in the mind some emotion with regard to it: this emotion is normally pleasure. Sometimes the difficulties which beset the acquisition of knowledge are so great and cause such dissatisfaction and pain that the mind is tempted to banish them, together with the object which excites them, from its consciousness. Knowledge and the emotions to which it gives rise induce those actions which are the result of the inherent activity of the mind stimulated by them. Thus we see that the antecedents of all action include intelligence as an active power: and Ethics, more particularly Theosophical Ethics, are seen to have practical value, and not merely a speculative interest. Having digressed thus far from my subject, the point to which I proceed to address myself is, the working out on the individual of the system of which I have tried to shadow forth the greater truths. The first class I will deal with are the indifferent. To them, Theosophy presents the widest possible field of, and reasons for, activity that can be desired. It shows that no action is without its direct permanent result, and that consequently the position of the indifferent is absolutely untenable. No one who has studied Theosophical literature can ever find there a justification for mere laissez-faire. It points out the enormous value of what we call trifles, and the comparatively trifling value of what the indifferent would take most note. Theosophy always insists on action in some direction, preferably conscious, well-directed action, with pure motive. The Agnostic is, as it were, Theosophy's special care--It shows him at once the directions in which further, fuller, and greater knowledge of every branch of science or philosophy can be gained. It says to him "pursue your previous method of inquiry, and remember, taking nothing for granted, do not accept other's authority. Seek for knowledge: we can only point the way we have ourselves gone. Investigate every nook and corner of your mind, and learn how to control it and your sense perceptions. Then you will no longer mistrust your results as possibly imperfect, but you will have attained to some closer contact with Truth." To both the Agnostic and the indifferent, the study of Theosophy will bring a consciousness of the responsibility towards others, which is the basis of our universal brotherhood. It will tend to remove the personal element which has hitherto done so much to cloud and obscure one's investigations; and it will gradually lead to the elimination of the anxiety as to results, which will bring us (by the removal of remorse or approval) to calmness of mind, in which condition great work can be achieved. The appeal of theosophy to the scientific investigator is practically identical with the last. It will show him what so many of his confreres are more or less tacitly recognizing, that the hopeless and soul-deadening belief of the Materialist (that all the growth of the race, the struggling towards a higher life, the aspirations towards virtue shall absolutely vanish, and leave no trace), is a crushing mental burden which leads to absolute negation; it will show the spiritual nature of man in perfect consistence with the true theories, and as dependent on fundamental laws and causes. Coming from the region of unbelief to belief, to use these words in their narrowest sense, let us consider what way Theosophy will affect a believer in doctrines of some system of religious thought. To take the ordinary Protestant first; Theosophy is apparently likely to fail on account of its taking away the personality of the Deity, and the habit of prayer: for to both of these doctrines the earnest churchman is attached. But if it does do so, what does it substitute? It puts forward an atonement, not an atonement of 1,861 years ago, but a daily atonement to be carried out in each one's life, and having as great an influence on one's fellows; it suggests the possibilities are within each one of us, if we but seek the true path. Also, and this is a small point, it removes the horrible canker of church government, which ministers so powerfully to the idea of separateness and personality: and lastly, it offers, in place of mouthing prayers to a God whom one is taught to fear ten times to the once that love is insisted on, a union with that higher self which, if pursued, brings peace, wisdom, an infinite compassion, and an infinite love. What has Theosophy to offer to the Roman Catholic? All that it offers to the Protestant; with this addition, that not merely one woman is exalted, but all womankind as being of the same essence and spirit of all nature. It shows that there is no superiority, but that by effort, by training, by aspiration, everyone, both man and woman, shall be found worthy of being taken into heaven, and joined again to the one source of life and being. It shows the whole doctrine of saintliness and blessedness to have a source in Truth, though overlaid and altered. And what of the other sheep? What of that soul which, feeling compelled by its intuitions to recognise the essential divinity of man, yet find no expression in the churches which will fit into its emotional nature? What of him whom, for want of a better word, I shall call a Symbolist, who is always striving to express in some form of art or thought, that divine energy which is wisdom, consciousness, and energy all in one? Does not Theosoophy afford the very best outlet for his soul force? Are not its ideas on a level with, if not higher than, what his most sublime moments of feeling can bring before him? Surely if anyone can find peace in its bosom, the symbolist, ever struggling to express his sense of the True, the Beautiful, which are, after all, but a second reflection of the Higher mind, with its knowledge of the essence of all life, can therein do his noblest work for Humanity in company with those who, having previously done all they could for the race through a sense of duty arising from intuitions they declined to recognise, have found in the doctrines of Theosophy the broadest possible field for such work, and the purest motive. And now, changing from particular types, how do we look upon Theosophy as a power in Ethics? We find the elimination of the selfish instinct insisted upon as necessary for the progress of the Ego through its material envelope to a full and complete knowledge of its higher self; we find the doctrine of Brotherhood put forward in its noblest aspects; we find as a necessary corollary that responsibility is increased and widened with an accompanying sense of power to accept and carry on that responsibility; with the growth of higher feeling within us comes a sense of added strength; we learn gradually to work without consideration or anxiety for results; we grow more tolerant of our neighbor's shortcomings, and less so of our own; we find that by disengaging ourselves from the objects of the senses, we become indifferent to small troubles, and more free to assist our neighbor when they press on him; with the knowledge of the causes of present conditions lying in past action, and our present actions going to be the causes of future conditions, we place ourselves in a position to work to the full extent of our powers to set in motion such causes as will bring about the happiest results for Humanity as a whole; we learn to look upon death, not as the opening of the spiritual life, but as a release from a weight which keeps under the spiritual life, which is always with us, now as well as before birth and after death; we learn to sense the methods by which the universe works out its destiny; we find every day growing stronger that sense of immortality, of absolute union with the universal soul, which at first merely manifested itself in strange feelings and emotions; we find the clues to the control of our physical and mental faculties, and are not surprised to discover the ten-thousand- fold increase in value these faculties then bear; we put ourselves more and more in harmony with what we feel to be the source of all Truth; we find ourselves gradually able to give expression to those dumb feelings which we could not find words for, of its grandeur and greatness; until finally we come, after many incarnations, after suffering, after despair sometimes, to a knowledge which transcends all human knowledge, to a bliss which is above our present ideas, to a peace which the world cannot give, which surpasseth all understanding, and are then ready to give up that bliss and peace, and to use that knowledge for the divine compassion towards our fellows who are following. But how are we to hope for this progress? What are we to do to realize these ideas? Is it by wishing for it that this state will come about? Is there no everyday way of getting forward? These are some of the questions which will rise naturally to the lips of any here who are not thoroughly acquainted with Theosophical ideas: and what have we to say in reply? Are we to confess Theosophy is a doctrine only for the learned, the cultured, the wealthy? Are we to acknowledge that Christianity or Agnosticism is more practical, easier for the men in the street to grasp? Are we to say that Theosophy is not a gospel for to-day? No: a thousand times no! If there is one result of a study of Theosophy, it is the gaining of Hope, a sure and certain Hope, which soon becomes Trust, and later, knowledge. I affirm most strongly that there is no one to whom Theosophy in some of its myriad aspects does not appeal, and appeal strongly enough to cause it to be the ruling passion of his existence; but I do also affirm as strongly, that in Theosophy, as in all other things, what are necessary are, pure motive and perseverance. It costs no one anything to spend an hour a day in meditation on some aspect of life; in thinking of our eternal nature and striving to place ourselves en rapport with our highest ideals of purity, nobility, Truth. Then cannot we get the idea of universal brotherhood firmly fixed in our consciousness as an actual reality to be attained, and always act upon that basis. To me, the thought of the absolute unity of all life, affords as high an ideal for putting into practical shape as my deficient development allows me. Cannot we get this ideal or some other ideal so essential a part of our thought that it colours all our feelings, emotions and actions? We will then be doing our part in the struggle. We will not be of the Laodiceans, who were neither hot nor cold. Let us try this: let us see whether it will have such an effect, and if we, by our personal experience, have convinced ourselves of the reality of this, let us progress further, and by further trial find out the greater truths beyond. Reincarnation and Karma are essentially doctrines for the poor and needy; mental and physical. Intellectual subtleties are not needed in Theosophy: it is spiritual perception, and who will dare say to the poor that they have less of this than their fellows? The only region where the "exclusiveness" argument can have even a momentary hold is with regard to Occultism. There is in most people's mind a distrust of anything secret. But remember, believe only in what your own test has shown you to be true: and learn not to condemn those who have found some irresistible impulse urging them forward to seek further. Besides, anyone who is not clear in his motive in studying Occultism had better pause before he pledges himself to anything, or undertakes that the result of which he does not know even dimly. And before passing from this digression, let me insist strongly once again on the fact that true progress will come only to those who seek to attain it. They who would be something more Than those who feast and laugh and die, will hear The voice of duty, as the note of war, Nerving their spirit to great enterprise, And knitting every sinew for the charge. Again, get rid of indolence, or its synonym, indifference. The real hereditary sin of human nature is indolence. Conquer that, and you will conquer the rest. We cannot afford to rest with what we have done; we must keep moving on. In this, indeed, to stand still is to go back--worse still, to keep others back. In conclusion I may, perhaps, be permitted to give you a few remarks as to the influence Theosophy has had upon myself. It has furnished me with satisfactory reasons for living and working; it has infused an earnestness in that work which I prize as one of the valuable things of my life's experience. It has ministered to that inmost sense of worship and aspiration which all of us possess; it has shown me that by expanding one's consciousness in that of the universe, one gains more knowledge and opportunity for helping on humanity; and it has pointed out where the materials for a scientific basis of ethics can be found, and also what will be the outlines of the future building; and finally it has shown that if the objects of our desires be changed, and many things we held dear are no longer prized, it is owning simply to the acquirement of larger and fuller interests. --September 15, 1894 Comfort We are continually called upon to give comfort, and it is a problem to many what to say. For there are people who can see no outlet from their pain other than this, that they shall obtain that which they desire. The lover longs for the one who is absent or cold; the poor demand wealth; the tortured cry out for relief from suffering; and so on through all phases of human life we continually meet such people. We, perhaps free from such afflictions, have schooled ourselves into a heroic mood. These are not things to sorrow over, we think; therefore, we are in a dilemma. We cannot aid them, for their ideals often seem ignoble to us--their wish accomplished would only bring on the renewal of old pain, and bind them closer to the weary wheel. Yet we cannot be cold, we who would identify ourselves with all life, for the soul must "lend its ear to every cry of pain, like as the lotus bares its heart to drink the morning sun." In the many cases where the suffering is unavoidable, and cannot be otherwise received, what are we to do? Some, a little above the ignoble view that the only relief is in the satisfaction of desire, say reverently to those in pain: "It is God's will," and some accept it as such with dull resignation. But with some the iron has entered the soul--the words are empty. "What have I to do with God, or He with me?" they demand in their hearts. They join in the immemorial appeal and fierce revolt which at all times the soul of man makes against any external restraint. We who are disciples of old wisdom may touch some chord in them which may awaken eternal endurance. It is not, we say, a pain imposed upon us by any eternal power; but the path we tread is one which we ourselves very long ago determined. To the question, "What have we to do with God?" we make answer that we are the children of Deity--bright sparks born in the Divine flame, the spirit in its primal ecstacy reflected in itself the multitudinous powers that throng in space. It was nourished by divine love, and all that great beauty thrilled through it and quickened it. But from this vision which the spirit had, it passed to climb to still greater heights--it was spiritual, it might attain divinity. The change from the original transcendental state of vision to that other state of being, of all-pervading consciousness, could only be accomplished by what is known as the descent into matter where spirit identifies itself with every form of life, and assimilates their essences. This cyclic pilgrimage it undertook, foreseeing pain, but "preferring free will to passive slavery, intellectual, self- conscious pain, and even torture, 'while myriad time shall flow,' to inane, imbecile, instinctual beatitude," foreseeing pain, but knowing that out of it all would come a nobler state of life, a divinity capable of rule, a power to assist in the general evolution of nature. It is true in the experience of many that going deep within themselves, an elemental consciousness whispers comfort; it says all will be well with us; it is our primal will which so orders. And so we justify the pain and hearts that break; and that old appeal and fierce revolt we make dies out in the inner light which shines from "the Goal, the Comforter, the Lord, the Witness, the resting-place, the Asylum, the Friend." We can then once more go forth with the old, heroic, Titan will for mastery, seeking not to escape, but rather to meet, endure, and assimilate sorrow and joy alike; for so we can permeate all life--life which is in its essence one. This is the true centre on which all endurance must rest; this is the comfort the soul may take to itself; and beyond and after this we may say we struggle in a chaos indeed, but in a chaos whose very disorder is the result of law. That law is justice that cannot err. Out of confidence in this justice may spring up immortal hopes; our motives, our faith shall save us. We may dare more, give ourselves away more completely, for is not the root of this law declared to be beauty, harmony, compassion. We may trust that our acts shall have full fruition, and remain careless of the manner, nor seek for such results. We may look upon it if we will as the sweetest of the sweetest, the tenderest of the tenderest; and this is true, though still it is master of the fiery pain. Above all it is the law of our own being; it is at one with our ancestral self. In all this lies, I think, such consolation as we may take and offer for pain. Those who comprehend, in their resignation, shall become one with themselves; and out of this resignation shall arise will to go forth and fulfil our lofty destiny. --May 15, 1894 The Ascending Cycle The teaching of the Secret Doctrine divides the period during which human evolution proceeds upon this globe into seven periods. During the first three-and-a-half of these, the ethereal humanity who appeared in the First Race gradually become material in form, and the psychic spirituality of the inner man is transformed into intellectuality. During the remaining three-and-a-half periods, there is a gradual dematerialization of form; the inner man by slow degrees rises from mere brain intellection to a more perfected spiritual consciousness. We are told that there are correspondences between the early and later periods of evolution; the old conditions are repeated, but upon higher planes; we re-achieve the old spirituality with added wisdom and intellectual power. Looked at in this way we shall find that the Seventh Race corresponds to the first; the Sixth to the Second; and the Fifth Race (which is ours) corresponds with the Third. "We are now approaching a time," says the Secret Doctrine, "when the pendulum of evolution will direct its swing decidedly upward, bringing humanity back on a parallel line with the primitive Third Root Race in spirituality." That is, there will be existing on the earth, about the close of Fifth Race, conditions in some way corresponding with those prevailing when the Third Race men began their evolution. Through this period may be yet distant hundreds of thousands of years, still it is of interest to forecast that future as far as may be, for the future is concealed in the present, and is the outcome of forces working to-day. We may find out from this enquiry the true nature of movements like the Theosophical Society. One of the most interesting passages in the Secret Doctrine is that which describes the early Third Race. "It was not a Race, this progeny. It was at first a wondrous Being, called the 'Initiator," and after him a group of semi-divine and semi-human beings." Without at all attempting to explain the real nature of this mysterious Being or Race, we may assume that one of the things hinted at is the consciousness of united being possessed by these ancient Adepts. Walking abroad over the earth as instructors of a less progressed humanity, their wisdom and power had a common root. They taught truth from a heart-perception of life, ever fresh and eternal, everywhere pervading nature and welling up in themselves. This heart-perception is the consciousness of unity of inner being. The pendulum of evolution which in its upward swing will bring humanity backwards on a parallel line with the primitive Third Root Race, should bring back something corresponding to this primeval hierarchy of divine sages. We should see at the end of the Kaliyuga a new brotherhood formed from those who have risen out of material life and aims, who have conquered self, who have been purified by suffering, who have acquired strength and wisdom, and who have wakened up to the old magical perception of their unity in true Being. "At the end of the Kali, our present age, Vishnu, or the "Everlasting King,' will appear as Kalki, and establish righteousness upon earth. The minds of those who live at that time shall be awakened and become pellucid as crystal." --(Secret Doctrine, II, 483) Passing beyond the turning point of evolution, where the delusion of separateness is complete, and moving on the that future awaiting us in infinite distances, when the Great Breath shall cease its outward motion and we shall merge into the One--on this uphill journey in groups and clusters men will first draw closer together, entering in spirit their own parent rays before being united in the source of all light and life. Such a brotherhood of men and women we may expect will arise, conscious in unity, thinking from one mind and acting from one soul. All such great achievements of the race are heralded long before by signs which those who study the lives of men may know. There is a gestation in the darkness of the womb before the living being appears. Ideals first exist in thought, and from thought they are outrealized into objective existence. The Theosophical Society was started to form the nucleus of a universal brotherhood of humanity, and its trend is towards this ideal. May we not justifiably suppose that we are witnessing to-day in this movement the birth of a new race corresponding to the divine Initiators of the Third; a race which shall in its inner life be truly a "Wondrous Being." I think we will perform our truest service to the Society by regarding it in this way as an actual entity whose baby years and mystical childhood we should foster. There are many people who know that it is possible by certain methods to participate in the soul-life of a co-worker, and if it is possible to do this even momentarily with one comrade, it is possible so to participate in the vaster life of great movements. There will come a time to all who have devoted themselves to this idea, as H.P. Blavatsky and some others have done, when they will enter into the inner life of this great Being, and share the hopes, the aspirations, the heroism, and the failures which must be brought about when so many men and women are working together. To achieve this we should continually keep in mind this sense of unity; striving also to rise in meditation until we sense in the vastness the beating of these innumerable hearts glowing with heroic purpose: we should try to humanize our mysticism; "We can only reach the Universal Mind through the minds of humanity," and we can penetrate into their minds by continual concentration, endeavouring to realise their thoughts and feelings, until we carry always about with us in imagination, as [wrote] Walt Whitman, "those delicious burdens, men and women." --November 15, 1893 The Mystic Nights' Entertainment We went forth gay in the twilight's cover; The dragon Day with his ruddy crest Blazed on the shadowy hills hung over The still grey fields in their dewy rest. We went forth gay, for all ancient stories Were told again in our hearts as we trod; Above were the mountain's dawn-white glories; We climbed to it as the throne of God. We pitched our tents in a sheltered nook on the mountain side. We were great with glee during the day, forecasting happy holidays remote from the crowded city. But now as we sat round the camp fire at dusk silence fell upon us. What were we to do in the long evenings? I could see Willie's jolly face on the other side of the fire trying to smother a yawn as he refilled his pipe. Bryan was watching the stars dropping into their places one by one. I turned to Robert and directed the general attention to him as a proper object for scorn. He had drawn a pamphlet on some scientific subject from his breast-pocket and was trying to read it by the flickering light. "Did you come up to the mountains for this," I asked, "to increase your knowledge of the Eocene age? Put it by, or--we will send it up as a burnt offering to the stars." "Well," he said, looking rather ashamed, "one must do something, you know. Willie has his pipe, Bryan is holding some mysterious intercourse with the planets, and you have the fire to take care of. What is one to do?" This went to the root of the matter. I pondered over it awhile, until an idea struck me. "There is Bryan. Let him tell us a story. He was flung into life with a bundle of old legends. He knows all mystery and enchantment since the days of the Rishees, and has imagined more behind them. He has tales of a thousand incarnations hidden away in secretness. He believes that everything that happened lives still in the memory of Nature, and that he can call up out of the cycles of the past heroic figures and forgotten history, simply by his will, as a magician draws the elemental hordes together." "Have a dragon and a princess in it," said Willie, settling himself into an attitude of listening. "Or authentic information about Eocene man," suggested Robert. "I could not tell a story that way," said Bryan simply. "I could never invent a story, though all the characters, heroes and princess, were to come and sit beside me so that I could describe them as they really were. My stories come like living creatures into my mind; and I can only tell them as they tell themselves to me. Today, as I lay in the sunlight with closed eyes, I saw a haze of golden light, then twilight trees appeared and moving figures and voices speaking; it shaped itself into what is hardly a story, but only an evening in some legendary existence." We waited while Bryan tried to recall his misty figures. We were already in sympathy with his phantasmal world, for the valleys below us were dim-coloured and quiet, and we heard but rarely and far away the noises of the village; the creatures of the mountain moved about in secretness, seeking their own peculiar joys in stillness amid dews and darkness. After a little Bryan began. The Gardens of Twilight I saw in my vision one of the heroes of the antique world. He rode for many, many days, yet saw no kindly human face. After long wanderings and toils he came to the Gardens of Twilight, the rich and rare gardens of the primeval world, known by rumour to the ancient Greeks as the Hesperides. He looked around with wonder; the place was all a misty dazzle with light, a level light as of evening that flowed everywhere about; the air was rich with the scent of many blossoms; from each flower rose an odour that hovered about it as a delicate vapour. While he gazed, one of the spirits of the garden came nigh him in the guise of a beautiful human child. "How came you here?" "I wandered for many years," he said, "I fought with the dragons that lie coiled in citron scales on the highways; I warred against oppression; I made justice to prevail, and now that peace is on the land I might have rested with peace in mine own heart, but I could not yet. So I left behind the happy hearths and homes of men and rode onward, a secret fire burning ceaselessly within me; I know not in what strange home it will be still. But what gardens are these?" "They are the Gardens of Twilight," answered the child. "How beautiful then must be the Gardens of Day! How like a faint fine dust of amethyst and gold the mist arises from the enchanted odorous flowers! Surely some spirit things must dwell within the air that breaks so perpetually into hues of pearl and shell!" "They are the servants of Zeus," the child said. "They live within these wandering airs; they go forth into the world and make mystery in the hearts of men." "Was it one such guided me thither?" "I do not know; but this I know, whether led by the wandering spirits or guided by their own hearts, none can remain here safely and look upon the flowers save those who understand their mystery or those who can create an equal beauty. For all others deadly is the scent of the blossoms; stricken with madness, they are whirled away into the outer world in fever, passion and unending hunger and torment." "I do not care if I pass from them," said the wanderer. "It is not here my heart could be still and its desire cease, but in the first Fount." They passed on and went deeper into the Gardens of Twilight, which were ever-changing, opalescent, ever-blushing with new and momentary beauty, ever-vanishing before the steady gaze to reveal beneath more silent worlds of mystic being. Like vapour, now gorgeous and now delicate, they wavered, or as the giant weeds are shadowing around the diver in the Indian wave sun-drenched through all its deeps of green. Sometimes a path would unfold, with a million shining flowers of blue, twinkling like stars in the Wilky Way, beneath their feet, and would wind away delicately into the faery distances. "Let us rest," said the child, leaning against a tree. She began swaying a hand to and fro among the flowers; as her fingers touched the bell-like blooms of burning amethyst they became stained with the rich colour; she seemed to lose herself in dreams as one who toils not for delight, living ever amid rich joys. He wondered if she was as unreal as the gardens, and remembering her words, they seemed familiar as if they were but echoes of the unuttered thoughts that welled up as he moved about. While he watched the flitting phantasmagoria with a sense expectant of music which never came, phantasmagoria with a sense expectant of music which never came, there arose before him images of peace, vanishing faster than passion, and forms of steadfast purity came nigh, attired, priestess-like, in white and gold; they laid their heads against his breast; as he looked down, their eyes, eager and flamelike, grew passionate and full of desire. He stretched out his hand to pluck blossoms and twine wreaths for their beautiful heads. "Do not! Do not!" cried the child. "See how every blossom has its guardian!" There were serpents coiling about the roots of every flower, or amid the leaves, waiting with undulating head and forked tongue to strike the uncautious hand. He shook off the drowsy influence of the scents and o'er-burdened air; the forms vanished. He remembered the child's words: "None can remain in safety an equal beauty." He began to ponder over the meaning of the gardens. "While we sit here, late lingerers in the glory of twilight, I will tell you a story which my fancy brings me," he said. "I thought one came here long ago and built himself a mighty world in a dream of many hundred years." "He had lived with kings and counselors; he had wrought in magical arts, and the great and wise of the earth were his fellows. When a time came for him to depart he turned away sadly from the towers of men. He passed, without knowing it, through the strange defiles which lead to these gardens; but the light did not break upon him in iridescent waves foamy with flowers and sparkling with vanishing forms; the light was hidden in the bosom of the twilight; it was all-pervading but invisible; the essence of the light bathed his soul; the light was living; the light was exhaustless; by it everything was born; touched by it everything went forth in ecstasy, blind, seeking for realization. "The magician brought with him the seeds of human desire and wisdom and aspiration. The light broke into his moody forgetfulness and kindled long-forgotten fires. He awoke from his darkness and saw before him in happiest vistas the island city of his lounging. Around him were the men and women he knew; acting on his secret wishes the multitudes hailed him as king, they bowed before him as wise, they worshiped him as all-powerful.. It was not strange to him, and rapt in royal imaginations for countless years he held sway over the island city. He dreamed of it as a poet, and there was no more beautiful city than this city of his dream. There were places that shot up, pinnacle upon pinnacle, amid the jewel- light of the stars; there were courts and porticoes full of mysterious glory and gloom, magnificence and darkness; there were fountains that jetted their pearly mists into the light; around them with summer in their hearts lay the island inhabitants, each one an angel for beauty. As the dream of the magician deepened in rapture, the city wavered and changed more continually; its towers pierced more daringly into the way of the stars; for the darkness below he summoned birds of fire from the aerial deeps; they circled the palaces with flaming wings; they stained the air with richest dyes and rained forth emerald and blue and gold on the streets and sculptured walls and the inhabitants in their strange joys. "His dream changed; he went forth no more but shut himself up in his palace with his wisest princes, and as he took counsel with them, the phantasmal and brilliant towers without faded and fell away as a butterfly droops its wings. For countless years he lived in the intoxication of thought; around him were sages who propounded wisest laws, and poets who sang of love, humanity and destiny. As his dream deepened still more in its rapture, they sang of mightier themes; there was continual music and light; there was no limit of glory or dominion which the human soul might not aspire to; his warriors stepped from star to star in dreams of conquest, and would have stayed the seraph princess of the wind and wave and fire, to make more radiant the retinue of this magician of the Beautiful. "Again his desire changed. He sought to hold no further sway over these wide realms beyond him; he shut himself up in an inner chamber in lonely meditation, and as he entered into a deeper being the sages and poets, who were with him at his royal feasts, vanished and were no more. He, the wise mind, pondered within himself, finding joy in the continual inward birth of thought following thought, as in lonely seas wave rolls upon wave. From all things he had known or experienced he drew forth their essence and hidden meaning, and he found that he had been no less a king in his old unconsciousness than he now was, and that at all times nature had been obeisant and whatever had happened had still been by his own will. Through the light, thin fretted by the fire of his aspirations, he sometimes seemed to see the shining Law in all things and the movement through the thought-swept fields of heaven of the universal imagination. He saw that this, too, had been a minister to him. He drew nigh to himself--divinity. The last rapture of his soul was his radiant self-conception. Save for this vesture the light of illusion fell from him. He was now in a circle of whitest fire, that girdled and looked in upon the movements of worlds within its breast. He tried to expand and enter this flaming circle; myriads of beings on its verges watched him with pity; I felt their thought thrilling within me. "He will never attain it!" "Ah, the Beautiful Bird, his plumage is stained!" "His glory will drag him down!" "Only in invisible whiteness can he pass!" "How he floats upwards, the Beautiful Bird!" "These voices of universal compassion did not reach him, rapt in aspiration and imperious will. For an instant--an eternity--the infinitudes thrilled him, those infinitudes which in that instant he knew he could never enter but as one with all on the days of the great return. All that longed, all that aspired and dared, all but the immortal were in that movement destroyed, and hurled downwards from the highest heaven of life, the pilgrim spark began once more as a child to live over again the round of human days." "The spirit of the place o'ermastered you," said the child. "Here may come and dream; and their dream of joy ended, out of each dreaming sphere comes forth again in pain the infant spirit of man." "But beyond this illusive light and these ever-changing vistas-- what lies? I am weary of their vanishing glories. I would not wish to mount up through dreams to behold the true and fall away powerlessly, but would rather return to earth, though in pain, still eager to take up and renew the cyclic labours." "I belong to the gardens," said the child; "I do not know what lies beyond. But there are many paths leading far away." Before them where they stood branched out paths of rich flowers. Here a region of pinks lured on to vistas of delicate glory; there ideal violet hues led to a more solemn beauty; here the eyes were dazzled by avenues of rich, radiant, and sunny green; another in beautiful golden colours seemed to invite to the land of the sun, and yet another winded away through soft and shadowy blues to remote spiritual distances. There was one, a path of white flowers ending in light no eye could pierce. "I will choose this--the path of white flower," he said, waving farewell to the child. I watched the antique hero in my vision as he passed into the light; he seemed to shine, to grow larger; as he vanished from my eyes he was transfigured, entering as a god the region of gods." "Did you really dream all that?" said Willie. "How jolly it must be! It is like stepping from sphere to sphere. Before the night of one day you are in the morning of another. I suppose you have some theory about it all--as wonderful as your gardens?" "Yes!" said our sceptic, "I had an uneasy consciousness it was not all pure story. I felt an allegory hiding its leanness somewhere beneath the glow and colour." "What I want to know is how these things enter the imagination at all!" "With what a dreadfully scientific spirit you dissect a fantasy! Perhaps you might understand if you recall what sometimes happens before sleep. At first you see pictures of things, landscapes, people you know; after a time people and places unknown before begin to mingle with them in an ever-widening circle of visions; the light on which these things are pictured is universal, though everyone has around himself his own special sphere of light; this is the mirror of himself--his memory; but as we go deeper into ourselves in introspection we see beyond our special sphere into the great of universal light, the memorial tablet of nature; there lie hidden the secrets of the past; and so, as Felix said a little while ago, we can call up and renew the life of legend and tradition. This is the Astral Light of the mystics. Its deeper and more living aspect seems to inflame the principle of desire in us. All the sweet, seductive, bewitching temptations of sense are inspired by it. After death the soul passing into this living light goes on thinking, thinking, goes on aspiring, aspiring, creating unconsciously around itself its own circumstance in which all sweetest desires are self-fulfilled. When this dream- power is exhausted the soul returns again to earth. With some this return is due to the thirst for existence; with some to a perception of the real needs of soul." "Do you really believe all that?" "Oh, yes! But that is only a general statement." "I wonder at your capacity for believing in these invisible spheres. As for me I cannot go beyond the world I live in. When I think of these things some dreadful necessity seems heaped upon me to continue here--or, as you might put it, an angel with a flaming sword keeps everywhere the avenues to the Tree of Life." "Oh!" said Willie, "it seems to me a most reasonable theory. After all, what else could the soul do after death but think itself out? It has no body to move about in. I am going to dream over it now. Good-night!" He turned into the tent and Robert followed him. "Well, I cannot rest yet," said Bryan, "I am going up for a little to the top of the hill. Come, Felix, these drowsy fellows are going to hide themselves from the face of night." We went up, and leaning on a boulder of rock looked out together. Away upon the dream-built margin of space a thousand tremors fled and chased each other all along the shadowy night. The human traditions, memories of pain, struggle, hope and desire floated away and melted in the quietude until at last only the elemental consciousness remained at gaze. I felt chilled by the vacancies. I wondered what this void was to Bryan. I wished to see with his eyes. His arm was around my shoulder. How I loved him--my nearest--my brother! The fierce and tender flame, comrade to his spirit, glowed in my heart. I felt a commingling of nature, something moved before my eyes. "Look, Bryan!" I whispered, "this is faery!" A slight upright figure, a child, stood a little apart shedding a delicate radiance upon the dusky air. Curiously innocent, primeval, she moved, withdrawn in a world only half-perceived of gorgeous blossoms and mystic shadows. Through her hair of feathery brown drifting about her the gleam of dust of gold and of rich colour seemed to come from her dress. She raised her finger-tips from the flowers and dashed the bright dew aside. I felt something vaguely familiar about the gesture. Then Bryan said, "It is one of the Children of Twilight." It was a revelation of his mind. I had entered into the forms of his imagination. "This is wonderful Bryan! If I can thus share in the thought of one, there can be no limit to the extension of this faculty. It seems at the moment as if I could hope to finally enter the mind of humanity and gaze upon soul, not substance." "It would be a great but terrible power. As often as not we imagine ourselves into demons. Space is thronged with these dragon-like forms, chimaeras of the fearful mind. Every thought is an entity. Some time or other I think we will have to slay this brood we have brought forth." But as we turned backwards I had no dread or thought of this future contest. I felt only gay hopes, saw only ever-widening vistas. The dreams of the Golden Age, of far-off happy times grew full of meaning. I people all the future with their splendour. The air was thronged with bright supernatural beings, they moved in air, in light; and they and we and all together were sustained and thrilled by the breath of the Unknown God. As we drew nigh to the tent, the light of the fire still flickering revealed Robert's face within. He was sleeping. the warmth of the sun had not yet charmed away the signs of study and anxious thought. "Do you know the old tradition that in the deepest sleep of the body the soul goes into itself. I believe he now knows the truth he feared to face. A little while ago he was here; he was in doubt; now he is gone unto all ancient things. He was in prison; now the Bird of Paradise has wings. We cannot call him by any name, for we do not know what he is. We might indeed cry aloud to his glory, as of old the Indian sage cried to a sleeper, 'Thou great one, clad in raiment; Soma: King!" But who thinking what he is would call back the titan to this strange and pitiful dream of life? Let us breath softly to do him reverence. It is now the Hour of the King, "Who would think this quite breather From the world had taken flight? Yet within the form we see there Wakes the Golden King to-night. "Out upon the face of faces He looked forth before his sleep; Now he knows the starry races Haunters of the ancient deep; "On the Bird of Diamond Glory Floats in mystic floods of song; As he lists, Time's triple story Seems but as a day is long. "When he wakes--the dreamy-hearted-- He will know not whence he came, And the light from which he parted Be the seraph's sword of flame; "And behind its host supernal Guarding the lost Paradise, And the Tree of Life eternal From the weeping human eyes." "You are an enchanter, Bryan. As you speak I half imagine the darkness sparkles with images, with heroes and ancient kings who pass, and jeweled seraphs who move in flame. I feel mad. The distance rushes at me. The night and stars are living, and--speak unknown things! You have made me so restless I will never sleep." I lay down. The burden of the wonder and mystery of existence was upon me. Through the opening of the tent the warm night air flowed in; the stars seemed to come near--nearer--full of kindly intent--with familiar whispering; until at last I sank back into the great deep of sleep with a mysterious radiance of dream showering all about me. Night The Second The skies were dim and vast and deep Above the vales of rest; They seemed to rock the stars asleep Beyond the mountain's crest. Oh, vale and stars and rocks and trees, He gives to you his rest, But holds afar from you the peace Whose home is in His breast! The massy night, brilliant with golden lights enfolded us. All things were at rest. After a long day's ramble among the hills, we sat down again before our fire. I felt, perhaps we all felt, a mystic unquiet rebelling against the slumbrous mood of nature rolled round her hills and valleys. "You must explain to us, Bryan, why it is we can never attain a real quiet, even here where all things seem at peace." "We are aliens here, and do not know ourselves. We are always dreaming of some other life. These dreams, if we could only rightly interpret them, would be the doors through which we might pass into a real knowledge of ourselves." "I don't think I would get much wisdom out of my dreams," said Willie. "I had a dream last night; a lot of little goblin fellows dancing a jig on the plains of twilight. Perhaps you could tell us a real dream?" "I remember one dream of a kind I mean, which I will tell you. It left a deep impression upon me. I will call it a dream of The Northern Lights I awoke from sleep with a cry. I was hurled up from the great deep and rejected of the darkness. But out of the clouds and dreams I built up a symbol of the going forth of the spirit--a symbol, not a memory--for if I could remember, I could return again at will and be free of the unknown land. But in slumber I was free. I sped forth like an arrow. I followed a secret hope, breasting the currents of life flowing all about me. I tracked these streams winding in secretness far away. I said, "I am going to myself. I will bathe in the Fountain of Life;" and so on and on I sped northwards, with dark waters flowing beneath me and stars companioning my flight. Then a radiance illumined the heavens, the icy peaks and caves, and I saw the Northern Lights. Out of the diamond breast of the air I looked forth. Below the dim world shone all with pale and wintry green; the icy crests flickered with a light reflect from the shadowy auras streaming over the horizon. Then these auras broke out in fire, and the plains of ice were illumined. The light flashed through the goblin caves, and lit up their frosty hearts and the fantastic minarets drooping above them. Light above in solemn array went forth and conquered the night. Light below with a myriad flashing spears pursued the gloom. Its dazzling lances shivered in the heart of the ice: they sped along the ghostly hollows; the hues of the orient seemed to laugh through winter; the peaks blossomed with starry and crystalline flowers, lilac and white and blue; they faded away, pearl, opal and pink in shimmering evanescence; then gleams of rose and amethyst traveled slowly from spar to spar, lightened and departed; there was silence before my eyes; the world once more was all a pale and wintry green. I thought of them no more, but of the mighty and unseen tides going by me with billowy motion. "Oh, Fountain I seek, thy waters are all about me, but where shall I find a path to Thee?" Something answered my cry, "Look in thy heart!" and, obeying the voice, the seer in me looked forth no more through the eyes of the shadowy form, but sank deep within itself. I knew then the nature of these mystic streams; they were life, joy, love, ardour, light. From these came the breath of life which the heart drew in with every beat, and from thence it was flashed up in illumination through the cloudy hollows of the brain. They poured forth unceasingly; they were life in everyone; they were joy in everyone; they stirred an incommunicable love which was fulfilled only in yielding to and adoration of the vast. But the Fountain I could not draw nigh unto; I was borne backwards from its unimaginable centre, then an arm seized me, and I was stayed. I could see no one, but I grew quiet, full of deep quiet, out of which memory breathes only shadowiest symbols, images of power and Holy Sages, their grand faces turned to the world, as if in the benediction of universal love, pity, sympathy, and peace, ordained by Buddha; the faces of the Fathers, ancient with eternal youth, looking forth as in the imagination of the mystic Blake, the Morning Stars looked forth and sang together. A sound as of an "OM" unceasing welled up and made an auriole of peace around them. I would have joined in the song, but could not attain to them. I knew if I had a deeper love I could have entered with them into unending labours amid peace; but I could only stand and gaze; in my heart a longing that was worship, in my thought a wonder that was praise. "Who are these?" I murmured? The Voice answered, "They are the servants of the Nameless One. They do his bidding among men. They awaken the old heroic fire of sacrifice in forgetful hearts." Then the forms of elder life appeared in my vision. I saw the old earth, a fairy shadow ere it yet had hardened, peopled with ethereal races unknowing of themselves or their destinies and lulled with inward dreams; above and far away I saw how many glittering hosts, their struggle ended, moved onward to the Sabbath of Eternity. Out of these hosts, one dropped as a star from their heart, and overshadowed the olden earth with its love. Where ever it rested I saw each man awakening from his dreams turned away with the thought of sacrifice in his heart, a fire that might be forgotten, but could never die. This was the continual secret whisper of the Fathers in the inmost being of humanity. "Why do they not listen?" I marveled. Then I heard another cry from the lower pole, the pit; a voice of old despair and protest, the appeal of passion seeking its own fulfilment. Alternate with the dawn of Light was the breath of the expanding Dark where powers of evil were gathered together. "It is the strife between light and darkness which are the world's eternal ways," said the Voice, "but the light shall overcome and the fire in the heart be rekindled; men shall regain their old angelic being, and though the dark powers may war upon them, the angels with their love shall slay them. Be thou ready for the battle, and see thou use only love in the fight. Then I was hurried backward with swift speed, and awoke. All I knew was but a symbol, but I had the peace of the mystic Fathers in my heart, and the jeweled glory of the Northern Lights all dazzling about my eyes. "Well, after a dream like that," said Willie, "the only thing one can do is to try and dream another like it." --Oct. 15, 1894-Jan. 15, 1895 On the Spur of the Moment I am minded to put down some intuitions about brotherhood and trust in persons. A witty friend writes, "Now that I have made up my mind, I intend looking at the evidence." A position like that is not so absurd as at first it seems. It is folly only to those who regard reason alone and deny the value of a deep-seated intuition. The intuitive trust which so many members of the T.S. have in William Q. Judge, to my mind shows that he is a real teacher. In their deepest being they know him as such, and what is knowledge there becomes the intuition of waking hours. When a clamour of many voices arises making accusations, pointing to time, place and circumstance; to things which we cannot personally investigate, it is only the spirit within us can speak and decide. Others with more knowledge may give answering circumstances of time, place and act; but, with or without these, I back up my intuition with the reason--where the light breaks through, there the soul is pure. Says a brother truly: "The list of his works is endless, monumental; it shows us an untiring soul, an immense and indomitable will, a total ignoring of himself for the benefit of his fellow-members. This is not the conduct of the charlatan, not of the self-seeker. It is that of one of those brave and long-tried souls who have fought their way down through the vistas of time so that they might have strength to battle now for those who may be weaker." Others may have been more eloquent and learned, but who has been so wise? Others may have written more beautifully, but who with such intimations of the Secret Spirit breathing within? Others have explained intellectually tattvas, principles and what not, but who like him has touched the heart of a hidden nobility? Has he not done it over and over again, as here? "Do what you find to do. Desire ardently to do it, and even when you shall not have succeeded in carrying out anything but some small duties, some words of warning, your strong desire will strike like Vulcan upon some other hearts in the world, and suddenly you will find that done which you had longed to be the doer of. Then rejoice that another has been so fortunate as to make such a meritorious Karma." Or he speaks as a hero: "To fail would be nothing, but to stop working for Humanity and Brotherhood would be awful." Or as one who loves and justifies it to the end: "We are not Karma, we are not the law, and it is a species of that hypocrisy so deeply condemned by it for us to condemn any man. That the law lets a man live is proof that he is not yet judged by that higher power." To know of these laws is to be them to some extent. "What a man thinks, that he is, that is the old secret." The temple of Spirit is inviolate. It is not grasped by speech or by action. "Whom the Spirit chooses, by him it is gained. The Self chooses his body as its own." When the personal tumult is silence, then arises the meditation of the Wise within. Whoever speaks out of that life has earned the right to be there. No cunning can stimulate its accents. No hypocrisy can voice its wisdom. Whose mind gives out light--it is the haunt of the Gods. Does this seem to slight a guarantee for sincerity, for trust reposed? I know of none weightier. Look back in memory; of the martyrdom of opposing passions, out of the last anguish came forth the light. It was no cheap accomplishment. If some one meets us and speaks knowing of that law, we say inwardly, "I know you have suffered, brother!" But here is one with a larger wisdom than ours. Here is one whose words today have the same clear ring. "The world knows him not." His own disciples hardly know him: he has fallen like Lucifer. But I would take such teaching as he gives from Lucifer himself, and say, "His old divinity remains with him still." "After all you may be mistaken," someone says. "The feet of no one are set infallibly on the path." It may be so. Let us take that alternative. Can we reject him or any other as comrades while they offer? Never. Were we not taught to show to those on whom came the reaction from fierce effort, not cold faces, but the face of friendship, waiting for the wave of sure return? If this was a right attitude for us in our lesser groups, it is then right for the whole body to adopt. The Theosophical Society as a whole should not have less than the generous spirit of its units. It must exercise the same brotherly spirit alike to those of good or evil fame. Alike on the just and the unjust shines the Light of It, the Father-Spirit. Deep down in our hearts have we not all longed, longed, for that divine love which rejects none? You who think he has erred, it is yours to give it now. There is an occult law that all things return to their source, their cycles accomplished. The forces we expend in love and anger come back again to us thrilled with the thought which accepted or rejected them. I tell you, if worse things were true of him than what are said, if we did our duty simply, giving back in gratitude and fearlessness the help we had received from him, his own past would overcome the darkness of the moment, would strengthen and bear him on to the light. "But," some push it further; "it is not of ourselves, but of this Society and its good name, we think. How can it accomplish its high mission in the world if we seem to ignore in our ranks the presence of the insincere person or fraud?" I wish, my brothers, we could get rid of these old fears. Show, form, appearance and seeming, what force have they? A faulty face matters nothing. The deep inner attitude alone has power. The world's opinion implicates none of us with the Law. Our action many precipitate Karma, may inconvenience us for an hour; but the end of life is not comfort but celestial being; it is not in the good voice of the world today we can have any hope: its evil voice may seem to break us for a little; but love, faith and gratitude shall write our history in flame on the shadowy aura of the world, and the Watchers shall record it. We can lose nothing; the Society can lose nothing. Our only right is in the action, and half the sweetness of life consists in loving much. While I wrote, I thought I felt for a moment the true spirit of this pioneer body we belong to. Like a diver too long under seas, emerging I inhaled the purer air and saw the yellow sunlight. To think of it! what freedom! what freshness! to sail away from old report and fear and custom, the daring of the adventurer in our hearts, having a reliance only upon the laws of life to justify and sustain us. --February 1895 The Legends of Ancient Eire A Reverend and learned professor in Trinity College, Dublin, a cynic and a humorist, is reported once to have wondered "why the old Irish, having a good religion of their own, did not stick to it?" Living in the "Celtic twilight," and striving to pierce backward into the dawn, reading romance, tradition and history, I have endeavoured to solve something of the mystery of the vast "Celtic phantasmagoria," I can but echoe the professor. In these legends, prodical of enchantment, where Gods, heroes and bright supernatural beings mingle, are at league or war together, I have found not misty but clear traces of that old wisdom-religion once universal. There are indeed no ancient Irish Scriptures I am aware of, but they were not needed. To those who read in the Book of Life, philosophy and scripture are but as blinds over the spiritual vision. But we today-- lost children of the stars--but painfully and indirectly catch glimpses of the bright spheres once our habitations, where we freely came and went. So I will try to tell over again some of these old stories in the light of philosophy spoken later. What was this old wisdom-religion? It was the belief that life is one; that nature is not dead but living; the surface but a veil tremulous with light--lifting that veil hero and sage of old time went outwards into the vast and looked on the original. All that they beheld they once were, and it was again their heritage, for in essence they were one with it--children of Deity. The One gave birth to the many, imagining within itself the heaven of heavens, and the heavens, and spheres more shadowy and dim, growing distant from the light. Through these the Rays ran outward, falling down through many a starry dynasty to dwell in clay. Yet--once God or Angel-- that past remains, and the Ray, returning on itself, may reassume its old vesture, remains, entering as a God into the Ancestral Self. Every real scripture and every ancient myth, to be understood truly, must be understood in this light. God, the angelic hierarchies, the powers divine and infernal, are but names for the mightier Adam in whose image man was made and who is the forgotten Self in humanity. Mystic symbolism is the same the world over, and applying it to the old Celtic romances, phantasy and faeryland are transformed into history and we are reading about the ancient Irish Adepts. Ireland was known long ago as the Sacred Island. The Gods lived there: for the Tuatha De Dannans who settled in Eire after conquering the gigantic races of Firbolgs and Fomorians (Atlanteans) were called Gods, differing in this respect from the Gods of ancient Greece and India, that they were men who had made themselves Gods by magical or Druidical power. They were preeminently magi become immortal by strength of will and knowledge. Superhuman in power and beauty, they raised themselves above nature; they played with the elements; they moved with ease in the air. We read of one Angus Oge, the master magician of all, sailing invisibly "on the wings of the cool east wind"; the palace of that Angus remains to this day at New Grange, wrought over with symbols of the Astral Fire and the great Serpentine Power. The De Dannans lived in the heart of mountains (crypts for initiation), and today the peasant sometimes sees the enchanted glow from the green hills he believes they still inhabit. Perhaps he believes not foolishly, for, once truly occult, a place is preserved from pollution until the cycle returns, bringing back with it the ancient Gods again. The cycles of the Gods is followed in Irish tradition by the cycle of the heroes. The Gods still mingled with them and presumably taught them, for many of these heroes are Druids. Fin, the hero of a hundred legends, Cuchullin, Dairmud, Oisin and others are wielders of magical powers. One of the most beautiful of these stories tells of Oisin in Tir-na-noge. Oisin with his companions journeys along by the water's edge. He is singled out by Niam, daughter of Mannanan, king of Tir-na-noge, the land of the Gods. She comes on a white horse across the seas, and mounting with her Oisin travels across the ocean; after warring with a giant Fomor he passes into Tir-na-noge, where for a hundred years he lives with Niam and has all that heart could wish for. But desire for Eire arises within him and returning, he falls off the magic steed, and becomes an old man weary with years. It is purely occult. Oisin, Niam, her white steed, Tir-na-noge, the waters they pass over, are but names which define a little our forgotten being. Within Oisin, the magician, kindles the Ray, the hidden Beauty. Let us call it by what name we will, so that we spare the terms of academic mysticism or psychology. It is the Golden Bird of the Upanishads; the Light that lighteth every man; it is that which the old Hermetists knew as the Fair or the Beautiful--for Niam means beauty; it is the Presence, and when it is upon a man every other tie breaks; he goes alone with It, he is a dying regret, an ever-increasing joy. And so with Oisin, whose weeping companions behold him no more. He mounts the white horse with Niam. It is the same as the white horse of the Apocalypse, whereon one sits called Faithful and True. It is the power on which the Spirit rides. Who is there, thinking, has felt freed for a moment from his prison-house, and looking forth has been blinded by the foam of great seas, or has felt his imagination grow kingly in contemplation--he has known its impelling power; the white horse is impatient of restraint. As they pass over the waters "they saw many wonderful things on their journey--islands and cities, lime-white mansions, bright greenans and lofty palaces." It is the mirror of heaven and earth, the astral light, in whose glass a myriad illusions arise and fleet before the mystic adventures. Haunt of a false beauty--or rather a veil hung dazzling before the true beauty, only the odour or incense of her breath is blown through these alluring forms. The transition from this to a subtler sphere is indicated. A hornless deer, chased by a white hound with red ears, and a maiden tossing a golden lure, vanishes for ever before a phantom lover. The poet whose imagination has renewed for us the legend has caught the true significance of these hurrying forms: "The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their eyes and sighed." "Do not heed these forms!" cried Niam. Compare with this from another source: "Flee from the Hall of Learning, it is dangerous in its perfidious beauty. .... Beware, lest dazzled by illusive radiance thy Soul should linger and be caught in its deceptive light. .... It shines from the jewel of the Great Ensnarer." There are centres in man corresponding to these appearances. They give vision and entrance into a red and dreadful world, where unappeasable desire smites the soul--a dangerous clairvoyence. But in the sphere beyond their power has to be conquered, and here Oisin wars with the giant Fomor. De Dannan and Romorian passed from Eire wrestle still in the invisible world, say the legends. We, too-- would-be mystics--are met on the threshold of diviner spheres by terrible forms embodying the sins of a living past when we misused our spiritual powers in old Atlantean days. These forms must be conquered and so Oisin battles with Fomor and releases the power-- a princess in the story. This fight with the demon must be fought by everyone who would enter the land of the Gods, whether in conscious occult adventure or half-consciously after death, when the strange alchemist Nature separates the subtile from the gross in the soul in this region which Oisin passes through. Tir-na-noge, the land of Niam, is that region the soul lives in when its grosser energies and desires have been subdued, dominated and brought under the control of light; where the Ray of Beauty kindles and illuminates every form which the imagination conceives, and where every form tends to its archetype. It is a real region which has been approached and described by the poets and sages who, at all times, have endeavoured to express something of the higher realities. It is not distant, but exists in earth as the soul within the body, and may be perceived through and along with the surface forms. In a sense it corresponds with the Tibetan Devachan, and in this region Oisin lives for a hundred years, until desire to see Eire once more arises and he parts from Niam. Nor the details of his return, the drowsy land in which he slumbers; how he fell off the white horse and became an old man with the weariness of his hundreds of years upon him--I must refer the reader to the legends. He will read not alone of Oisin, but of many an old hero, who, hailed by the faery (divine) voice, went away to live in the heart of green hills (to be initiated) or to these strange worlds. Dear children of Eire, not alone to the past but to today belong such destinies. For if we will we can enter the enchanted land. The Golden Age is all about us, and heroic forms and imperishable love. In that mystic light rolled round our hills and valleys hang deed and memories which yet live and inspire. The Gods have not deserted us. Hearing our call they will return. A new cycle is dawning and the sweetness of the morning twilight is in the air. We can breathe it if we will but awaken from our slumber. II. In the recently published Story of Early Gaelic Literature, attention is directed to the curious eastern and pantheistic character of some archaic verse. Critics are for ever trying to show how some one particular antique race was the first begetter of religion and mystic symbolism. Perplexed by the identity between the myths and traditions of different countries, they look now here, now there, for the original. But it was not in any land but out of the Christ-Soul of the universe that true wisdom at all times was begotten. Some ignorant peasant, some Jacob Boehme, is pure and aspires, and lo! the God stirs within him and he knows the things that were taught in elder days and by unknown people. Our own land, long ago, had its Initiates in whom the eye of the seer was open. This eye, concealed in the hollow of the brain, is the straight gate and the narrow way through which alone the mortal may pass and behold the immortal. It is now closed in most men. Materialism, sensuality and dogmatic belief have so taken the crown and sceptre from their souls that they enter the golden world no more knowingly--they are outcast of Eden. But the Tuatha De Dannans were more than seers or visionaries. They were magicians--God and man in one. Not alone their thought went out into the vast, but the Power went along with it. This mystic Power is called the Serpentine Fire. It is spiritual, electric, creative. It develops spirally in the ascetic, mounting from centre to centre, from the navel to the heart;* [* "He that believeth on me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters. This spake he of the Spirit."--John, vii, 38] from thence it rises to the head. He is then no more a man but a God; his vision embraces infinitude. The action of this Power was symbolized in many ways, notably by the passage of the sun through the zodiacal signs * (centres in the psychic body) [* "The twelve signs of the Zodiac are hidden in his body."---Secret Doctrine, II, 619] A stone serpent was found a little while ago in Ireland marked with twelve divisions. The archaic verses alluded to have the same meaning: "I am the point of the lance of battle. [The spinal cord, the Sushumna nadi of Indian Psychology.] I am the God who creates in the head of man the fire of the thought. Who is it throws light into the meeting on the mountain? [The meeting of the mortal and the immortal on Mount Meru, the pineal gland.] Who announces the ages of the moon? [The activity of the inner astral man.] Who teaches the place where courses the sun?" [Spirit.] The Serpentine Power is the couch of the sun, the casket of spirit. Hence the Druids or Magi who had mastered this power were called Serpents. Though St. Patrick is said to have driven the serpents out of Ireland, traces still remain of the serpent wisdom. Lest the interpretation given should seem arbitrary I will trace further explicit references to the third eye. Diarmuid, the hero and darling of so many story-tellers, whose flight with Grania forms one of the most mystic episodes in Celtic romance, is described as having a spot in the centre of his forehead which fascinated whoever gazed. He is called the "Son of the Monarch of Light." He is the Initiate, the twice-born. This divine parentage has the sense in which the words were spoken. "Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again." In the same sense a Druid is described as "full of his God." From the mystic Father descends the Ray, the Child of Light. It is born in man as mind, not reasoning: earthly not sensual, but as the heaven-aspiring, thinking mind. In itself it is of the nature of fire. The man who knows it becomes filled with light, aye, he moves about in light within himself. The following description of a giant, taken from the story of Diarmuid, refers to still another aspect of our occult nature. "He has, but one eye only in the fair middle of his black forehead. .... He is, moreover, so skilled in magic that fire could not burn him, water could not drown him, and weapons would not wound him. ...... He is fated not to die until there be struck upon him three blows of the iron club he has. He sleeps in the top of that Quicken tree by night, and he remains at its foot by day to watch it. .... The berries of the tree have the virtues of the trees of faeryland." The Quicken tree is the network of nerves in the magnetic astral body. Readers of the Upanishads will remember the description of the arteries, thin as a hair split a thousand times, which proceed from the heart, and in which the Ego rests during deep sleep. It has just the same significance in the legend. The meaning will be still better understood by a comparison of the youthful Finn in his encounter with a similar one-eye Titan. There is a most interesting version of this in Curtin's Irish Myths and Folk-Tales. Too long to quote in its entirety, the story runs as follows. Finn meets a giant who carries a salmon in his hand. This Titan has "but one eye as large as the sun in the heavens." He gives the fish to Finn to cook. The moment the giant closed his eye he began to breathe heavily. "Every time he drew breath he dragged Finn, the spit, the salmon, and all the goats to his mouth, and every time drove a breath out of himself he threw them back to the places they were in before." While Finn is cooking the salmon he burns it, and in trying to hide the blister he burns his thumb. To ease the pain he put his thumb between his teeth, and chewed it through to the bone and marrow. He then received the knowledge of all things. He was drawn up the next minute to the giant's eye, and plunged the hot spit (a bar of red-hot iron, says another account) into the eye of the giant. He passes the infuriate giant at the door of the cave something after the fashion of Ulysses, by bringing the flocks out and himself escaping under the fleece of the largest goat or ram. The meaning of this story, with all its quaint imagery, is not difficult. It is an allegory describing the loss of the third eye. The cave is the body. The fish is a phallic symbol, and the cooking of it refers to the fall of the early ethereal races into generation and eventually into gross sensuality. The synthetic action of the highest spiritual faculty, in which all the powers of man are present, is shown by the manner in which everything in the cave is dragged up to the giant's head. When Finn destroys the eye by plunging into it a bar of red-hot iron, it simply means that the currents started in the generative organs rose up through the spinal cord to the brain, and, acting upon the pineal gland, atrophied or petrified it. The principle of desire is literally the spirit of the metal iron, and a clairvoyent could see these red fires mounting up by the way of the spinal canal to the brain and there smothering any higher feelings. The escape of Finn under the fleece of the ram means that, having destroyed the spiritual eye, he could only use the organ of psychic clairvoyance, which is symbolized here, as in the mysticism of other countries, by the ram. This symbolism, so grotesque and unmeaning today, was once perfectly lucid and was justified in its application. A clairvoyant could see in the aura of man around every centre the glow, colour and form which gave rise to the antique symbol. One of the Gods is described as "surrounded by a rainbow and fiery dews." Cuchullin, whose hair, dark (blue?) close to the skin, red beyond, and ending in brilliant gold, makes Professor Rhys elaborate him into a solar myth, is an adept who has assimilated the substance of the three worlds, the physical, the psychic and the heavenworld; therefore his hair (aura) shows the three colours. He has the sevenfold vision also, indicated by the seven pupils in his eyes. Volumes of unutterably dreary research, full of a false learning, have been written about these legends. Some try to show that much of the imagery arose from observation of the heavenly bodies and the procession of the seasons. But who of the old bards would have described nature other than as she is? The morning notes of Celtic song breathe the freshness of spring and are full of joy in nature. They could communicate this much better than most of their critics could do. It is only the world within which could not be rendered otherwise than by myth and symbol. We do not need scholarship so much as a little imagination to interpret them. We shall understand the divine initiators of our race by believing in our own divinity. As we nourish the mystic fire, we shall find many things of the early world, which now seem grotesque and unlovely to our eyes, growing full of shadowy and magnificent suggestion. Things that were distant and strange, things abhorrent, the blazing dragons, winged serpents and oceans of fire which affrighted us, are seen as the portals through which the imagination enters a more beautiful, radiant world. The powers we dared not raise our eyes to--heroes, dread deities and awful kings--grow as brothers and gay children around the spirit in its resurrection and ascension. For there is no pathway in the universe which does not pass through man, and no life which is not brother to our life. --March-April, 1895 Review: "Lyrics" by R.H. Fitzpatrick [London: W. Stewart and Co.] While one race sinks into night another renews its dawn. The Celtic Twilight is the morning-time and the singing of birds is prophetic of the new day. We have had to welcome of late years one sweet singer after another, and now comes a volume of lyrics which has that transcendental note which is peculiar to our younger writers. It is full of the mystery and commingling of the human and the divine soul: "Hail, thou living spirit! Whose deep organ blown By lips that more inherit Than all music known; Art is but the echo of thy mysterious tone." These lyrics, I imagine, have been wrought in solitary wanderings, in which the forms and shows of things and human hopes and fears have been brooded upon until the intensity of contemplation has allied them with that soul of Nature in which the poet finds the fulfilment of all dreams and ideals. And in this refining back to an Over-Soul there is no suggestion of the student of academic philosophy, no over-wrought intellectualism. Such references arise naturally out of his thought and illuminate it. One can imagine how such lyrics were engendered: "I stood and twirled a feathered stalk, Or drank the clover's honey sap, Happiest without talk. "The summer tidal waves of night Slowly in silence rippled in: They steeped the feet of blazing light, And hushed day's harsher din." This aloofness from conflict, it if has hindered him from fully accepting and justifying life, the highest wisdom of the poet, has still its compensations. He has felt the manifold meaning of the voices through whose unconsciousness Nature speaks, the songs of birds, the aerial romance and intermingling of light and shadow, and has vision of the true proportion of things in that conflict he has turned his back on: "All things sip, And sip at life; but Time for ever drains The ever-filing cup in rivalship, And wipes the generations from his lip, While Art looks down from his serene domains." --June 15, 1895 --"YES, AND HOPE." They bring none to his or to her terminus or to be content and full, Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings. To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings and never be quiet again. --Whitman Here is inspiration--the voice of the soul. And we, who professed to bring such wisdom, what have we to say? Have we uttered with equal confidence such hopes, or with such daring and amplitude of illustration? Let us confess we have not. There are one or two exceptions which will occur to everyone. Now, as we adventure afresh, let us see what it is has brought despondency and failure in our work upon us in the past. I think it is because we have been saying things we have never realized; we have been repeating without imagination the words of those few leaders. We have lowered their heroic tone because we thought we were speaking to a fallen people who could not respond to our highest. But it was not the way, it was not the way. It is not with the dust we have brotherhood, but with the ancient spirit it clouds over. To this spirit we must speak heart to heart as we know how. I would not willingly recognize aught in anyone but the divine. Often indeed the form or surface far removed from beauty makes us falter, and we speak to that form and so the soul is not stirred; it will not respond. But an equal temper arouses it. To whoever hails in it the lover, the hero, the magician, it will answer, but not to him who accosts it as Mr. So-and-So. Every word which really inspires is spoken as if the Golden Age had never passed. The great teachers ignore the personal identity and speak to the eternal pilgrim. Do we not treasure most their words which remind us of our divine origin? So we must in our turn speak. How often do we not long to break through the veils which divide us from some one, but custom, convention, or a fear of being misunderstood prevent us, and so the moment departs whose heat might have burned through every barrier. Out with it-- out with it, the hidden heart, the love that is voiceless, the secret tender germ of an infinite forgiveness. That speaks to the heart. That pierces through many a vesture of the Soul. Our companion struggles in some labyrinth of passion. We help him, we think with ethics, with the moralities. Ah, very well they are; well to know and to keep, but wherefore? For their own sake? No, but that the King may arise in his beauty. We write that in letters, in books, but to the face of the fallen who brings back remembrance? Who calls him by his secret name? Let a man but feel for that is his battle, for that his cyclic labor, and a warrior who is invincible fights for him and he draws upon divine powers. Let us but get that way of looking at things which we call imaginative, and how everything alters. For our attitude to man and to nature, expressed or not, has something of the effect of ritual, of evocation. As our aspiration so is our inspiration. We believe in life universal, in a brotherhood which links the elements to man, and makes the glow-worm feel far off something of the rapture of the seraph hosts. Then we go out into the living world, and what influences pour through us! We are "at league with the stones of the field." The winds of the world blow radiantly upon us as in the early time. We feel wrapt about with love, with an infinite tenderness that caresses us. Alone in our rooms as we ponder, what sudden abysses of light open within us! The Gods are so much nearer than we dreamed. We rise up intoxicated with the thought, and reel out seeking an equal companionship under the great night and the stars. Let us get near to realities. We read too much. We think of that which is "the goal, the Comforter, the Lord, the Witness, the resting- place, the asylum and the Friend." Is it by any of these dear and familiar names? Alas, our souls are becoming mere bundles of theories. We follow the trail of the Monad, but often it is only in the pages of The Secret Doctrine. And we talk much of Atma, Buddhi, and Manas. Could we not speak of them in our own tongue and the language of today will be as sacred as any of the past. No wonder that the Manasa do not incarnate. We cannot say we do pay reverence to these awful powers. We repulse the living truth by our doubts and reasonings. We would compel the Gods to fall in with our philosophy rather than trust in the heavenly guidance. We make diagrams of them. Ah, to think of it, those dread deities, the divine Fires, to be so enslaved! We have not comprehended the meaning of the voice which cried, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord," or this, "Lift up your heads O y gates. Be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in." Nothing that we read is useful unless it calls up living things in the soul. To read a mystic book truly is to invoke the powers. If they do not rise up plumed and radiant, the apparitions of spiritual things, then is our labor barren. We only encumber the mind with useless symbols. They knew better ways long ago. "Master of the Green-waving Planisphere, ..... Lord of the Azure Expanse, .... it is thus we invoke," cried the magicians of old. And us, let us invoke them with joy, let us call upon them with love, the Light we hail, or the Divine Darkness we worship with silent breath, hymning it in our hearts with quietude and more enraptured awe. That silence cries aloud to the Gods. Then they will approach us. Then we may learn that speech of many colors, for they will not speak in our mortal tongue; they will not answer to the names of men. Their names are rainbow glories. Yet these are mysteries and they cannot be reasoned out or argued over. We cannot speak truly of them from report, or description, or from what another has written. A relation to the thing in itself alone is our warrant, and this means we must set aside our intellectual self-sufficiency and await guidance. It will surely come to those who wait in trust, a glow, a heat in the heart announcing the awakening of the Fire. And, as it blows with its mystic breath into the brain, there is a hurtling of visions, a brilliance of lights, a sound as of great waters vibrant and musical in their flowing, and murmurs from a single yet multitudinous being. In such a mood, when the far becomes near, the strange familiar, and the infinite possible, he wrote from whose words we get the inspiration: "To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings and never be quiet again." Such a faith and such an unrest be ours: faith which is mistrust of the visible; unrest which is full of a hidden surety and radiance. We, when we fall into pleasant places, rest and dream our strength away. Before every enterprise and adventure of the soul we calculate in fear our power to do. But remember, "Oh, disciple, in thy work for thy brother thou has many allies; in the winds, in the air, in all the voices of the silent shore." These are the far-wandered powers of our own nature and they turn again home at our need. We came out of the Great Mother-Life for the purposes of soul. Are her darlings forgotten where they darkly wander and strive? Never. Are not the lives of all her heroes proof? Though they seem to stand alone the eternal Mother keeps watch on them, and voices far away and unknown to them before arise in passionate defence, and hearts beat warm to help them. Aye, if we could look within we would see vast nature stirred on their behalf, and institutions shaken, until the truth they fight for triumphs, and they pass, and a wake of glory ever widening behind them trails down the ocean of the years. Thus the warrior within us works, or, if we choose to phrase it so, it is the action of the spiritual will. Shall we not, then, trust in it and face the unknown defiant and fearless of its dangers. Though we seem to go alone to the high, the lonely, the pure, we need not despair. Let no one bring to this task the mood of the martyr or of one who thinks he sacrifices something. Yet let all who will come. Let them enter the path, "Yes, and hope," facing all things in life and death with a mood at once gay and reverent, as beseems those who are immortal--who are children today, but whose hands tomorrow may grasp the sceptre, sitting down with the Gods as equal and companions. --August 1895 Content Who are exiles? as for me Where beneath the diamond dome Lies the light on hill or tree There my palace is and home. We are outcasts from Deity; therefore we defame the place of our exile. But who is there may set apart his destiny from the earth which bore him? I am one of those who would bring back the old reverence for the Mother, the magic, the love. I think, metaphysician, you have gone astray. You would seek within yourself for the fountain of life. Yes, there is the true, the only light. But do not dream it will lead you further away from the earth, but rather deeper into its heart. By it you are nourished with those living waters you would drink. You are yet in the womb and unborn, and the Mother breathes for thee the diviner airs. Dart out thy furthest ray of thought to the original, and yet thou has not found a new path of thine own. Thy ray is still enclosed in the parent ray, and only on the sidereal streams are you borne to the freedom of the deep, to the sacred stars whose distance maddens, and to the lonely Light of Lights. Let us, therefore, accept the conditions and address ourselves with wonder, with awe, with love, as we well may, to that being in whom we move. I abate no jot of those vaster hopes, yet I would pursue that ardent aspiration, content as to here and today. I do not believe in a nature red with tooth and claw. If indeed she appears so terrible to any it is because they themselves have armed her. Again, behind the anger of the Gods there is a love. Are the rocks barren? Lay thy brow against them and learn what memories they keep. Is the brown earth unbeautiful? Yet lie on the breast of the Mother and thou shalt be aureoled with the dews of faery. The earth is the entrance to the Halls of Twilight. What emanations are those that make radiant the dark woods of pine! Round every leaf and tree and over all the mountains wave the fiery tresses of that hidden sun which is the soul of the earth and parent of they soul. But we think of these things no longer. Like the prodigal we have wandered far from our home, but no more return. We idly pass or wait as strangers in the halls our spirit built. Sad or fain no more to live? I have pressed the lips of pain: With the kisses lovers give Ransomed ancient powers again. I would raise this shrinking soul to a more universal acceptance. What! does it aspire to the All, and yet deny by its revolt and inner protest the justice of Law. From sorrow we shall take no less and no more than from our joys. For if the one reveals to the soul the mode by which the power overflows and fills it here, the other indicates to it the unalterable will which checks excess and leads it on to true proportion and its own ancestral ideal. Yet men seem for ever to fly from their destiny of inevitable beauty; because of delay the power invites and lures no longer but goes out into the highways with a hand of iron. We look back cheerfully enough upon those old trials out of which we have passed; but we have gleaned only an aftermath of wisdom and missed the full harvest if the will has not risen royally at the moment in unison with the will of the Immortal, even though it comes rolled round with terror and suffering and strikes at the heart of clay. Through all these things, in doubt, despair, poverty, sick feeble or baffled, we have yet to learn reliance. "I will not leave thee or forsake thee," are the words of the most ancient spirit to the spark wandering in the immensity of its own being. This high courage brings with it a vision. It sees the true intent in all circumstance out of which its own emerges to meet it. Before it the blackness melts into forms of beauty, and back of all illusions is seen the old enchanter tenderly smiling, the dark, hidden Father enveloping his children. All things have their compensations. For what is absent here there is always, if we seek, a nobler presence about us. Captive, see what stars give light In the hidden heart of clay: At their radiance dark and bright Fades the dreamy King of Day. We complain of conditions, but this very imperfection it is which urges us to arise and seek for the Isles of the Immortals. What we lack recalls the fulness. The soul has seen a brighter day than this and a sun which never sets. Hence the retrospect: "Thou has been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, the sapphire, emerald .... Thou was upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire." We would point out these radiant avenues of return; but sometimes we feel in our hearts that we sound but cockney choices, as guides amid the ancient temples, the cyclopean crypts sanctified by the mysteries. To be intelligible we replace the opalescent shining by the terms of the anatomist, and we speak of the pineal gland and the pituitary body in the same breath with the Most High. Yet when the soul has the vision divine it knows not it has a body. Let it remember, and the breath of glory kindles it no more; it is once again a captive. After all, it does not make the mysteries clearer to speak in physical terms and do violence to our intuitions. If we ever use these centres, as fires we shall see them, or they shall well up within us as fountains of potent sound. We may satisfy people's minds with a sense correspondence, and their souls may yet hold aloof. We shall only inspire by the magic of a superior beauty. Yet this too has its dangers. "Thou has corrupted thy wisdom by reason of they brightness," continues the seer. If we follow too much the elusive beauty of form we will miss the spirit. The last secrets are for those who translate vision into being. Does the glory fade away before thee? Say truly in they heart, "I care not. I will wear the robes I am endowed with today." Thou are already become beautiful, being beyond desire and free. Night and day no more eclipse Friendly eyes that on us shine, Speech from old familiar lips, Playmates of a youth divine. To childhood once again. We must regain the lost state. But it is to the giant and spiritual childhood of the young immortals we must return, when into their clear and translucent souls first fell the rays of the father-beings. The men of old were intimates of wind and wave and playmates of many a brightness long since forgotten. The rapture of the fire was their rest; their outgoing was still consciously through universal being. By darkened images we may figure something vaguely akin, as when in rare moments under the stars the big dreamy heart of childhood is pervaded with quiet and brimmed full with love. Dear children of the world so tired today-- so weary seeking after the light. Would you recover strength and immortal vigor? Not one star alone, your star, shall shed its happy light upon you, but the All you must adore. Something intimate, secret, unspeakable, akin to thee will emerge silently, insensibly, and ally itself with thee as thou gatherest thyself from the four quarters of the earth. We shall go back to the world of the dawn, but to a brighter light than that which opened up this wondrous story of the cycles. The forms of elder years will reappear in our vision, the father-beings once again. So we shall grow at home amid these grandeurs, and with that All-Presence about us may cry in our hearts, "At last is our meeting, Immortal. Oh, starry one, now is our rest!" Brothers weary, come away; We will quench the heart's desire Past the gateways of the day In the rapture of the fire. --October 15, 1895 The Enchantment of Cuchullain --By AE and Aretas (G.W. Russell and James M. Pryse) While our vision, backward cast, Ranged the everliving past, Through a haze of misty things-- Luminous with quiverings Musical as starry chimes-- Rose a hero of old times, In whose breast the magic powers Slumbering from primeval hours, Woke at the enchantment wild Of Aed Abrait's lovely child; Still for all her Druid learning With the wild-bird heart, whose yearning Blinded at his strength and beauty, Clung to love and laughed at duty. Warrior chief, and mystic maid, Through your stumbling footsteps strayed, This at least in part atones-- Jewels were your stumbling-stones! I. The Birds of Angus The birds were a winging rapture in the twilight. White wings, grey wings, brown wings, fluttered around and over the pine trees that crowned the grassy dun. The highest wings flashed with a golden light. At the sound of voices they vanished. "How then shall we go to the plains of Murthemney? We ought not to be known. Shall we go invisibly, or in other forms? We must also fly as swiftly as the birds go." "Fly! yes, yes, we shall--fly as the birds. But we shall choose fairer forms than these. I know where the Birds of Angus flock. Come, Liban, come!" The crypt beneath the dun was flooded with light, silvery and golden, a light which came not from the sun nor from the moon; a light not born from any parent luminary, and which knew nothing opaque. More free than the birds of the air were the shadowy forms of the two daughters of Aed Abrait, as they gazed out from that rock-built dun upon a place their mortal feet had never trod. Yet timidly Liban looked at her more adventurous sister. Fand floated to the centre of the cavern, erect and radiant. Her eyes followed the wavy tremulous motion of the light as it rolled by. They seemed to pierce through earth and rock, and search out the secret hollows of the star, to know the vastness, and to dominate and compel the motion of the light. Her sister watched her half curiously and half in admiration and wonder. As the floating form grew more intense the arms swayed about and the lips murmured. A sheen as of many jewels played beneath the pearly mist which enrobed her; over her head rose the crest of the Dragon; she seemed to become one with the shining, to draw it backwards into herself. Then from far away came a wondrous melody, a sound as of the ancient chiming of the stars. The sidereal rivers flowed by with more dazzling light, and the Birds of Angus were about them. "Look, Liban, look!" cried the Enchantress. "These of old were the chariots of the children of men. On these the baby offspring of the Gods raced through the nights of diamond and sapphire. We are not less than they though a hundred ages set us apart. We will go forth royally as they did. Let us choose forms from among these. If the Hound should see us he will know we have power." With arms around each other they watched the starry flocks hurtling about them. The birds wheeled around, fled away, and again returned. There were winged serpents; might which would put to flight the degenerate eagle; plumage before which the birds of paradise would show dull as clay. These wings dipt in the dawn flashed ceaselessly. Ah, what plumage of white fire rayed out with pinions of opalescent glory! What feathered sprays of burning amethyst! What crests of scarlet and gold, of citron and wavy green! They floated by in countless multitudes; they swayed in starry clusters dripping with light, singing a melody caught from the spheres of the Gods, the song which of old called forth the earth from its slumber. The sound was entrancing. Oh, fiery birds who float in the purple rivers of the Twilight, ye who rest in the great caverns of the world, whoever listens to your song shall grow faint with longing, for he shall hear the great, deep call in his heart and his spirit shall yearn to go afar; whatever eyes see you shall grow suddenly blinded with tears for a glory that has passed away from the world, for an empire we no longer range. "They bring back the air of the ancient days. Ah! now I have the heart of the child once again. Time has not known me. Let us away with them. We will sweep over Eri and lead the starry flocks as the queen birds." "If we only dared. But think, Fand, we shall have every wizard eye spying upon us, and every body who can use his freedom will follow and thwart us. Not these forms, but others let us take. Ah, look at those who come in grey and white and brown! Send home the radiant ones. We will adventure with these." "Be it so. Back to your fountains, O purple rivers! King-Bird, Queen-Bird, to your home in the hollows lead your flock!" So she spoke, but her words were shining and her waving arms compelled the feathered monarchs with radiations of outstretched flame. To the others: "Rest here awhile, sweet singers. We shall not detain you captive for long." So she spoke, but her hands that caressed laid to sleep the restless pulsations of the wings and lulled the ecstatic song. Night, which to the eye of the magian shows more clearly all that the bright day conceals, overspread with a wizard twilight the vast hollow of the heavens. Numberless airy rivulets, each with its own peculiar shining, ran hither and thither like the iridescent currents streaming over a bubble. Out of still duskier, more darkly glowing and phantasmal depths stared the great eyes of space, rimmed about with rainbow-dyes. As night moved on to dawn two birds shot forth from the dun, linked together by a cord of golden fire. They fled southwards and eastwards. As they went they sang a song which tingled the pulses of the air. In the dark fields the aureoles around the flowers grew momentarily brighter. Over the mountain homes of the Tuatha de Danaans rose up shadowy forms who watched, listened, and pondered awhile. The strayed wanderers amid the woods heard the enraptured notes and forgot their sorrows and life itself in a hurricane of divine remembrance. Where the late feast was breaking up the melody suddenly floated in and enwreathed the pillared halls, and revellers became silent where they stood, the mighty warriors in their hands bowed low their faces. Still on and on swept the strange birds flying southwards and eastwards. Still in many a peasant cot Lives the story unforgot, While the faded parchments old Still their rhyming tale unfold. There is yet another book Where thine eager eyes may look. There within its shining pages Lives the long romance of ages, Liban, Fand, their glowing dreams, Angus's birds, the magic streams Flooding all the twilight crypt, Runes and spells in starry script; Secrets never whispered here In the light are chanted clear. Read in the tales of Eri If the written word be weary. Never is there day so gleaming But the dusk o'ertakes it; Never night so dark and dreaming But the dawn awakes it: And the soul has nights and days In its own eternal ways. II. Cuchullain's Dream The air was cool with the coming of winter; but with the outer cold came the inner warmth of the sun, full of subtile vitality and strength. And the Ultonians had assembled to light the yearly fire in honor of the Sun-God, at the seven-days' feast of Samhain. There the warriors of Ulster rested by the sacred fire, gazing with closed eyes upon the changing colors of the sun-breath, catching glimpses of visions, or anon performing feats of magic when they felt the power stirring within their breasts. They sang the songs of old times, of the lands of the West, where their forefathers live ere the earth-fires slew those lands, and the sea-waves buried them, leaving only the Eri, the isle where dwelt men so holy that the earth-fires dared not to assail it, and the ocean stood at bay. Lightly the warriors juggled with their great weapons of glittering bronze; and each told of his deeds in battle and in the chase; but woe to him who boasted or spoke falsely, magnifying his prowess, for then would his sword angrily turn of itself in its scabbard, convicting him of untruth. Cuchullain, youngest but mightiest of all the warriors, sat moodily apart, his beardless chin resting in the palms of his hands, his eyes staring fixedly at the mirror-like surface of the lake upon whose sloping bank he rested. Laeg, his charioteer, lying at full length upon the greensward near by, watched him intently, a gloomy shadow darkening his unusually cheerful face. "It's a woman's trick, that," he muttered to himself, "staring into the water when trying to see the country of the Sidhe, and unworthy of a warrior. And to think of him doing it, who used to have the clearest sight, and had more power for wonder-working than anyone else in the lands of the West! Besides, he isn't seeing anything now, for all the help of the water. When last I went to the dun some women of the Sidhe told me they had looked up Cuchullain and found he was getting too dim-eyed to see anything clearly now, even in his sleep. Its true enough, but to hear it said even by women!" And the discontented charioteer glanced back contemptuously at a group of women a short distance away, who were following with their eyes a flock of wild birds circling over the plain. "I suppose they want those birds," he continued, conversing familiarly with himself. "Its the way of women to want everything they see, especially if its something hard to catch, like those wild birds." But Laeg's cynicism was not so deep as to keep his glance from lingering upon the bevy of graceful maidens and stately matrons. Their soft laughter reached his ear through the still evening air; and watching their animated gestures he idly speculated upon the plane he felt sure they were arranging. "Yes; they want the birds. They wish to fasten the wings to their shoulders, to make themselves look like the women of the Sidhe. They know Cuchullain is the only man who can get the birds for them, but even Emer, his wife, is afraid to ask him. Of course they will coax that patient Ethne to do it. If she succeeds, she'll get no thanks; and if she fails, she'll have all the blame, and go off by herself to cry over the harsh words spoken by Cuchullain in his bad temper. That's the way of Ethne, poor girl." He was right in his conjecture, for presently Ethne left the group and hesitatingly approached the giant warrior, who was still gazing vacantly at the glassy surface of the water. She touched him timidly on the shoulder. Slowly he raised his head, and still half dazed by his long staring, listened while she made her request. He rose to his feet sleepily, throwing out his brawny arms and expanding his chest as he cast a keen glance at the birds slowly circling near the ground. "Those birds are not fit to eat," he said, turning to her with a good-natured smile. "But we want the wings to put on our shoulders. It would be so good of you to get them for us," said Ethne in persuasive tones. "If it's flying you wish to try," he said, with a laugh, "you'll need better wings than those. However, you shall have them if I can get within throwing distance of them." He glanced around for Laeg. That far-seeing individual was already yoking the horses to the chariot. A moment later, Cuchullain and the charioteer were dashing across the plain behind the galloping steeds. As they neared the birds, Cuchullain sent missiles at them from his sling with such incredible rapidity and certainty of aim that not one of the flock escaped. Each of the women was given two of the birds; but when Ethne, who had modestly held back when the others hurried forward to meet the returning chariot, came to receive her share, not one remained. "As usual," said Laeg stolidly, "if anyone fails to get her portion of anything, its sure to be Ethne." "Too sure," said Cuchullain, a look of compassion softening his stern features. He strode over to Ethne, and placing his hand gently on her head said: "Don't take your disappointment to heart, little woman; when any more birds come to the plains of Murthemney, I promise to get for you the most beautiful of them all." "There's a fine brace of them now, flying towards us," exclaimed Laeg, pointing across the lake. "And I think I hear them singing. Queer birds, those; for I see a cord as of red gold between them." Nearer and nearer swept the strange beings of the air, and as their weird melody reached the many Ultonians at the Samhain fire, the stalwart warriors, slender maidens, the youthful and the time-worn, all felt the spell and became as statues, silent, motionless, entranced. Alone the three at the chariot felt not the binding influences of the spell. Cuchullain quietly fitted a smooth pebble into his sling. Ethne looked appealingly at Laeg, in whose sagacity she greatly trusted. A faint twinkle of the eye was the only sign that betrayed the thought of the charioteer as he tried to return her glance with a look of quiet unconcern. She hastened after Cuchullain, who had taken his stand behind a great rock on the lake shore which concealed him from the approaching birds. "Do not try to take them," she entreated; "there is some strange power about them which your eyes do not see; I feel it, and my heart is filled with dread." The young warrior made no reply, but whirling his sling above his head sent the missile with terrific force at the two swan-like voyagers of the air. It went far astray, and splashed harmlessly into the lake, throwing up a fountain of spray. Cuchullain's face grew dark. Never before in war or the chase had he missed so easy a mark. Angrily he caught a javelin from his belt and hurled it at the birds, which had swerved from their course and were now flying swiftly away. It was a mighty cast, even for the strong arm of the mightiest warrior of Eri; and the javelin, glittering in the sun, was well on the downward curve of its long flight, its force spent, when its point touched the wing of the nearest bird. A sphere of golden flame seemed to glitter about them as they turned downward and disappeared beneath the deep waters of the lake. Cuchullain threw himself upon the ground, leaning his broad shoulders against the rock. "Leave me," he said in sullen tones to Ethne; "my senses are dull with sleep from long watching at the Samhain fire. For the first time since I slew the hound of Culain my right arm has failed me. My eyes are clouded, and strange music murmurs in my heart." His eyes closed, his heavy breathing was broken by sighs, and anguish distorted his features. Ethne watched him awhile, and then stole quietly back to where the warriors were and said to them: "Cuchullain lies slumbering by yonder rock, and he moans in his sleep as if the people of the Sidhe were reproaching his soul for some misdeed. I fear those birds that had the power behind them. Should we not waken him?" But while they held council, and some were about to go and awaken him. Fergus mac Roy, foster-father of Cuchullain, arose, and all drew back in awe, for they saw the light of the Sun-God shining from his eyes, and his voice had the Druid ring as he said in stern tones of command: "Touch him not, for he sees a vision; the people of the Sidhe are with him; and from the far distant past, even from the days of the sunken lands of the West, I see the hand of Fate reach out and grasp the warrior of Eri, to place him on a throne where he shall rule the souls of men." To Cuchullain it did not seem that he slept; for though his eyelids fell, his sight still rested on the calm surface of the lake, the shining sand on the shore, and the great brown rock against which he reclined. But whence came the two maidens who were walking toward him along the glistening sand? He gazed at them in speechless wonder; surely only in dreamland could so fair a vision be seen. In dreamland, yes; for a dim memory awoke in his breast that he had seen them before in the world of slumber. One wore a mantle of soft green, and her flaxen hair, strangely white but with a glint of gold, fell about her shoulders so thickly it seemed like a silken hood out of which looked a white face with gleaming violet eyes. The other maiden had dark brown eyes, very large, very luminous; her cheeks were rosy, with just a hint of bronzing by the sunshine, a dimple in her chin added to the effect of her pouting red lips; her dark brown hair was unbound and falling loosely over her deep crimson mantle, which reached from her waist in five heavy folds. The recumbent warrior felt a weird spell upon him. Powerless to move or speak, he saw the two maidens advance and stand beside him, the sunlight gleaming upon their bare arms and bosoms. They smiled upon him and uplifted their arms, and then from their fingers there rained down upon him blinding lightnings, filaments of flame that stung like whipcords, a hail of rainbow sparks that benumbed him, darting flames that pierced him like javelins; and as he gazed upward through that storm of fire, writhing in his agony, he saw still their white arms waving to and from, weaving a network of lightnings about him, their faces smiling upon him, serene and kindly; and in the eyes of her with the crimson mantle he read a tenderness all too human. Eyes that shone with tenderness; white arms that wove a rainbow-mesh of torturing fires about him; his anguish ever increasing, until he saw the arms stop waving, held for an instant aloft, and then swept downward with a torrent of flame and a mighty crash of sound like the spears of ten thousand warriors meeting in battle, and then--he was alone, staring with wide-open eyes at the blue, cloud-mirroring surface of the lakes and the white sand gleaming on the shore. "Trouble me not with questions," said Cuchullain to the warriors gathered about him. "My limbs are benumbed and refuse to obey me. Bear me to my sick-bed at Tete Brece." "Shall we not take you to Dun Imrish, or to Dun Delca, where you may be with Emer?" said they. "No," he replied, a shudder convulsing his strong frame; "bear me to Tete Brece. And when they had done so, he dwelt there for a year, and on his face was always the look of a slumberer who is dreaming; not once did he smile, nor did he speak one word during that year. When the soul has many lives Fettered by Forgetfulness, Hands that burst its long-worn gyves Cruel seem and pitiless. Yet they come all tenderly, Loved companions of the past; And the sword that sets us free Turns our pain to peace at last. III. What shadows turn his eyes away Who fain would scale the heavenly heights; There shines the beauty of a day, And there the ancient Light of Lights. And while he broods on visions dim And grows forgetful of his fate, The chariot of the Sun for him And all the tribal stars await. The Slumber of Cuchullain, and the Message of Angus Within the door at Tete Brece, under the shadow of the thatch, the couch of Cuchullain was placed, so that if he willed he could gaze over the rich green fields to the distant rim of blue hills. Yet rarely opened he his eyes or gazed with outward understanding during that weary year. Often the watchers round his bed, looking on the white rigid face, wondered if he were indeed living. But they dared not awaken him, for the seers had found that his slumber was filled with mystic life, and that it was not lawful to call him forth. Was the gloom of the great warrior because he was but the shadow of his former self, or was that pale form indeed empty? So pondered Fergus, Conail, Lugard and Ethne, faithful companions. But he in himself was wrapped in a mist of visions appearing fast and vanishing faster. The fiery hands that smote him had done their work well, and his darkness had become bright with remembrance. The majesty of elder years swept by him with reproachful glance, and the hero cowered before the greatness of his own past. Born out of the womb of the earth long ago in the fulness of power--what shadow had dimmed his beauty? He tracked and retraced countless steps. Once more he held sceptred sway over races long since in oblivion. He passed beyond the common way until the powers of the vast knew and obeyed him. As he looked back there was one always with him. Lu, the Sun-God, who in the bright days of childhood had appeared to him as his little feet ran from home in search for adventures. Remote and dim, nigh and radiant, he was always there. In solemn initiations in crypts beneath the giant hills he rose up, gemmed and starred with living fires, and grew one with the God, and away, away with him he passed into the lands of the immortals, or waged wars more than human, when from the buried lands of the past first came the heroes eastward to Eri and found the terrible Fomorian enchanters dwelling in the sacred isle. In dream Cuchullain saw the earth- scorning warriors rise up and wage their battle in the bright aether, and the great Sun-Chieftain, shining like gold, lead his glittering hosts. In mountainous multitudes the giantesque phantoms reeled to and from, their mighty forms wreathed in streams of flame, while the stars paled and shuddered as they fought. There was yet another face, another form, often beside him; whispering, luring, calling him away to he knew not what wild freedom. It was the phantom form of the child of Aed Abrait, with dark flowing tresses, mystic eyes, her face breathing the sweetness of the sun, with all the old nobility of earth, but elate and apart, as one who had been in the crystal spheres of the unseen and bathed in its immortalizing rivers and drunk the starry dews. Come, Cu. Come, O hero," she whispered. "There are fiery fountains of life which will renew thee. We will go where the Sidhe dwell, where the golden life-breath flows up from the mountains in a dazzling radiance to the ever-shining regions of azure and pearl under the stars. Glad is everything that lives in that place. Come, Cu, come away." And she passed from beside him with face half turned, calling, beckoning, till in his madness he forgot the bright Sun-God and the warriors of Eri awaiting his guidance. It was again the feast of Samhain. About twilight in the evening a shadow darkened the door. A man in blue mantle stood outside; he did not enter but looked around him a little while and then sat down, laughing softly to himself. Fergus, Conail and Lugard rose simultaneously, glad of the pretence of warning off the intruder as a relief from their monotonous watch. "Do you not know," said Conail sternly, "that one lies ill here who must not be disturbed?" The stranger arose. "I will tell you a tale," he said. "As I was strolling through the trees I saw a radiance shining around the dun, and I saw one floating in that light like a mighty pillar of fire, or bronze ruddy and golden: a child of the Sun he seemed; the living fires curled about him and rayed from his head. He looked to the north and to the west, to the south and to the east, and over all Eri he shot his fiery breaths rainbow-colored, and the dark grew light before him where he gazed. Indeed if he who lies here were well he would be mightiest among your warriors. But I think that now he clasps hands with the heroes of the Sidhe as well, and with Druid power protects the Ultonians. I feel happy to be beside him." "It is Lu Lamfada guarding the hero. Now his destiny will draw nigh to him again," thought Cu's companions, and they welcomed the stranger. "I see why he lies here so still," he continued, his voice strange like one who is inspired while he speaks. "The Sidhe looked out from their mountains. They saw a hero asleep. They saw a God forgetful. They stirred him to shame by the hands of women. They showed him the past. They said to Fand and Libau, 'Awake him. Bring him to us. Let him come on the night of Samhain.' They showed the chosen one from afar, in a vision while hid in their mountains. The Tuatha de Danaans, the immortals, wish for Cuchullain to aid them. The daughters of Aed Abrait are their messengers. If Fand and Liban were here they would restore the hero." "Who are you?" asked Laeg, who had joined them. "I am Angus, son of Aed Abrait." While he spoke his form quivered like a smoke, twinkling in misty indistinctness in the blue twilight, and then vanished before their eyes. "I wonder now," muttered Laeg to himself, "if he was sent by the Sidhe, or by Liban and Fand only. When one has to deal with women everything is uncertain. Fand trusts more in her beauty to arouse him than in her message. I have seen her shadow twenty times cooing about him. It is all an excuse for love-making with her. It is just like a woman. Anything, however, would be better for him than to lie in bed." He went off to join the others. Cuchullain was sitting up and was telling the story of what happened last Samhain. "What should I do?" he asked. "Go to the wise King," said Laeg, and so they all advised, for ever since the day when he was crowned, and the Druids had touched him with fire, a light of wisdom shone about Concobar the King. "I think you should go to the rock where the women of the Sidhe appeared to you," said Concobar when appealed to. So Laeg made ready the chariot and drove to the tarn. Night came ere they reached it, but the moon showed full and brilliant. Laeg waited a little way apart, while Cuchullain sat himself in the black shadow of the rock. As the warrior gazed into the dark, star-speckled surface of the waters, a brightness and a mist gathered over them, and there, standing with her robe of green down--dropping to her feet and trailing on the wave, her pale flaxen hair blown around her head, was Liban. She smiled strangely as before, looking through him with her subtle eyes. "I am one of the Sidhe," she said, and her voice sounded like a murmur of the water. "You also, O warrior, though forgetful, are one of us. We did not indeed come to injure you, but to awaken remembrance. For now the wild clouds of demons gathered from the neighboring isles and we wish your aid. Your strength will come back to you exultant as of old. Come with me, warrior. You will have great companions. Labraid, who wields the rapid fires as you the sword, and Fand, who has laid aside her Druid wisdom longing for you." "Whither must I go with you, strange woman?" asked Cuchullain. "To Mag-Mell." "I will send Laeg with you," said Cuchullain. I do not care to go to an unknown place while I have my duties here." He then went to Laeg, asking him to go with Liban. "He is longing to go," thought Laeg, "but he mistrusts his power to get away. He has forgotten all he knew and did not wish to appear nothing before a woman. However, it can do no harm if I go and see what they do." Oh, marvel not if in our tale The gleaming figures come and go, More mystic splendors shine and pale Than in an age outworn we know. Their ignorance to us were wise: Their sins our virtue would outshine: A glory passed before their eyes: We hardly dream of the divine. In world may come romance, With all the lures of love and glamour; And woesome tragedy will chance To him whom fairy forms enamour. There slain illusions live anew To stay the soul with coy caresses; But he who only loves the True Slays them again, and onward presses. For golden chains are yet but chains, Enchanted dreams are yet but dreaming; And ere the soul its freedom gains It bursts all bonds, destroys all seeming. IV. The Maidens of the Sidhe "Yes, I'll go with the maid in the green mantle," muttered Laeg to himself; "but I'll don the crimson mantle of five folds which it is my right to wear in the land of the Sidhe, even though my earthly occupation is only the driving of a war-chariot." He began chanting softly; a golden gleam as of sunshine swept circling about him; then as the chant ceased a look of wild exultation came to his face, and he threw up his arms, so that for an instant he had the aspect he wore when guiding the great war-chariot of Cuchullain into the thick of battle. His swaying form fell softly upon the greensward, and above it floated a luminous figure clad in a crimson mantle, but whose face and bare arms were of the color of burnished bronze. So impassive and commanding was his face that even Liban faltered a little as she stole to his side. Cuchullain watched the two figures as they floated slowly over the dark expanse of the lake, till they suddenly disappeared, seemingly into its quiet surface. Then with his face buried in his hands he sat motionless, absorbed in deep thought, while he waited until the return of Laeg. The recumbent form of Liban rose from the crouch where it had lain entranced. Before her stood the phantom figure of Laeg. All in the house save herself were asleep, but with the conscious sleep of the Sidhe, and their shades spoke welcome to Laeg, each saying to him in liquid tones such as come never from lips of clay: "Welcome to you, Laeg; welcome because of her who brings you, of him who sent you, and of yourself." He saw about him only women of the Sidhe, and knew that he was in one of the schools established by the wise men of Eri for maidens who would devote their lives to holiness and Druid learning; maidens who should know no earthly love but fix their eyes ever on the light of the Sun-god. But not seeing Fand among them, he turned with an impatient gesture to Liban. She read his gesture aright, and said: "My sister dwells apart; she has more knowledge, and presides over all of us." Leaving the room, she walked down a corridor, noiselessly save for the rustle of her long robe of green, which she drew closely about her, for the night was chill. An unaccustomed awe rested upon her, and to Laeg she whispered: "The evil enchanters have power tonight, so that your life would be in danger if you had not the protection of a maiden of the Sun." But a smile wreathed for an instant the bronze-hue face of the shadowy charioteer, as he murmured in tones of kindness near to pity, softening his rude words: "Till now nor Cuchullain nor I have ever felt the need of a woman's protection, and I would much rather he were here now than I." Drawing aside a heavy curtain, Liban entered her sister's room. They saw Fand seated at a little table. A scroll lay on it open before her, but her eyes were not fixed on it. With hands clasped under her chin she gazed into the vacancies with eyes of far-away reflection and longing. There was something pathetic in the intensity and wistfulness of the lonely figures. She turned and rose to meet them, a smile of rare tenderness lighting up her face as she saw Liban. The dim glow of a single lamp but half revealed the youthful figure, the pale, beautiful face, out of which the sun-colours had faded. Her hair of raven hue was gathered in massy coils over her head and fastened there by a spiral torque of gleaming gold. Her mantle, entirely black, which fell to her feet, made her features seem more strangely young, more startlingly in contrast with the monastic severity of the room. It was draped round with some dark unfigured hangings. A couch with a coverlet of furs, single chair of carved oak, the little table, and a bronze censer from which a faint aromatic odor escaping filled the air and stole on the sense, completed the furniture of the room, which might rather have been the cell of some aged Druid than the chamber of one of the young maidens of Eri, who were not overgiven to ascetic habits. She welcomed Laeg with the same terms of triple welcome as did the mystic children of the sun who had first gathered round him. Her brilliant eyes seemed to read deep the soul of the charioteer. Then Liban came softly up to her, saying: "Oh, Fand, my soul is sad this night. The dark powers are gathering their strength to assail us, and we shall need to be pure and strong. Yet you have said that you feel no longer the Presence with you; that Mannanan, the Self of the Sun, shines not in your heart!" Fan placed her hand upon her sister's flaxen head, saying with a voice mingled joy and pathos: "Peace, child; you, of us all, have least to fear, for though I, alas! am forsaken, yet He who is your Father and Yourself is even now here with you." Liban fell on her knees, with her hands clasped and her eyes uplifted in a rapture of adoration, for above her floated one whom she well knew. Yet unheeding her and stern of glance, with his right arm outstretched, from which leaped long tongues of flame, swordlike, into space, Labraid towered above gazing upon foes unseen by them. Slowly the arm fell and the stern look departed from the face. Ancient with the youth of the Gods, it was such a face and form the toilers in the shadowy world, mindful of their starry dynasties, sought to carve in images of upright and immovable calm amid the sphinxes of the Nile or the sculptured Gods of Chaldaea. So upright and immovable in such sculptured repose appeared Labraid, his body like a bright ruby flame, sunlit from its golden heart. Beneath his brows his eyes looked full of secrecy. The air pulsing and heaving about him drove Laeg backward from the centre of the room. He appeared but a child before this potent spirit. Liban broke out into a wild chant of welcome: "Oh see now how burning, How radiant in might, From battle returning The Dragon of Light! Where wert thou, unsleeping Exile from the throne, In watch o'er the weeping, The sad and the lone. The sun-fires of Eri Burned low on the steep; The watchers were weary Or sunken in sleep; And dread were the legions Of demons who rose From the uttermost regions Of ice and of snows; And on the red wind borne, Unspeakable things From wizard's dark mind borne On shadowy wings. The darkness was lighted With whirlwinds of flame; The demons affrighted Fled back whence they came. For thou wert unto them The vision that slays: Thy fires quivered through them In arrowy rays. Oh, light amethystine, Thy shadow inspire, And fill with the pristine Vigor of fire. Though thought like a fountain Pours dream upon dream, Unscaled is the mountain Where thou still dost gleam, And shinest afar like The dawning of day, Immortal and starlike In rainbow array." But he, the shining one, answered, and his voice had that melody which only those know whom the Sun-breath has wafted into worlds divine: "Vaunt not, poor mortal one, nor claim knowledge when the Gods know not. He who is greatest among all the sons of evil now waits for the hour to strike when he may assail us and have with him all the hosts of the foes of light. What may be the issue of the combat cannot be foreseen by us. Yet mortals, unwise, ever claim to know when even the Gods confess ignorance; for pride blinds all mortals, and arrogance is born of their feebleness." Unabashed she cried out: "Then rejoice, for we have awakened Cu, the warrior-magician of old times, and his messenger is her." Then he answered gently, pityingly: "We need the help of each strong soul, and you have done well to arouse that slumbering giant. If through his added strength we conquer, then will he be the saviour of Eri; beloved by the Gods, he will cease to be a wild warrior on earth, and become a leader of mortals, aiding them on the way to the immortals. Wisely have you awakened him, and yet--" He smiled, and such was the pity in his smiling glance that Liban bowed her head in humiliation. When she raised it he was gone, and Laeg also had vanished. She arose, and with a half-sob threw herself into the arms of her sister. So they stood, silent, with tearless eyes; for they were too divine for tears, although, alas! too human. Slowly the chariot rolled on its homeward way, for Laeg, seeing the weakness and weariness of Cuchullain, held the great steeds in check; their arched necks and snorting breath resenting the restraint, while the impatient stamping of their hoofs struck fire from the pebbly road. "Well," said Cuchullain moodily, "tell me what happened after you went away with that woman of the Sidhe." Briefly and without comment of his own Laeg stated what he had seen. Then long Cuchullain pondered; neither spoke, and the silence was broken only by the stamping of the steeds and the rumble of the chariot wheels. Dark clouds drifted athwart the moon, and the darkness gave more freedom of speech, for Cuchullain said in measured, expressionless tones: "And what do you think of all this?" "What do I think?" burst forth Laeg with sudden fire; "I think you had better be leaving those women of the Sidhe alone, and they you. That Fand would lose her soul for love, and the spell they've cast over you is evil, or it wouldn't make a warrior like you as helpless as a toddling babe." In letting loose his pent-up wrath Laeg had unconsciously loosened as well the reined-in steeds, who sprang forward impetuously, and the jolting of the car was all that Cuchullain could bear in his enfeebled state. Recovering himself, the charioteer drew them in check again, inwardly upbraiding himself for carelessness. Sorrowful and broken was the voice of the warrior as he said: "On the morrow, Laeg, you shall bear a message to Emer. Tell her the Sidhe have thrown a spell of helplessness upon me while deceiving me with false visions of my aiding them in their war with the evil enchanters. Ask Emer to come to me, for her presence may help to rouse me from this spell that benumbs my body and clouds my mind." Then Laeg sought to console him, saying: "No, no; the Sidhe wrong no one. Their message to you was true; but their messengers were women, and you were a warrior. That is why the mischance came, for it is ever the way with a woman to become foolish over a warrior, and then there is always a muddle. And when Emer comes--," he checked his indiscreet utterance by pretending to have a difficulty in restraining the horses, and then added confusedly: "Besides, I'd rather be in your plight than in Fand's." "Has Emer come?" asked Cuchullain, drawing himself up on his couch and resting on his elbow. "Yes," said Laeg dejectedly; "I have brought her. She has been talking to me most of the journey. Now she'll be after talking to you, but you needn't mind; it isn't her ususal way, and she isn't as unreasonable as might be expected. She puts most of the blame of your illness on me, though perhaps that is because it was me she was talking to. Insists that as I can go to the Plain of Fire where the Sidhe live I ought to be able to find a way of curing you. She has expressed that idea to me many times, with a fluency and wealth of illustration that would make a bard envious. Here she comes now. I'll just slip out and see if the horses are being properly cared for." He had not overstated the case, for the sweet face of Emer was clouded with wrath as she approached the sick-bed of her husband. Bitterly she reproached him for what she claimed was only a feigned illness, and expressed her conviction that no theory would account for his conduct save that, faithless to her his wife, he had fallen in love. But Cuchullain made no answer, for not only was he invincible in battle, but also wise in the matter of holding his tongue when a woman warred against him with words. "You are looking stronger," said Laeg, when next he saw him alone. "Yes," he returned, "the speech of Emer has roused me a little from my torpor. I have been thinking that possibly we were wrong in disregarding the message brought by the women of the Sidhe. They surely have power to break this spell, and doubtless would have done so had you not fled from them so inconsiderately." "I was thinking the same when Emer was coming here with me," observed Laeg. "Her speech roused me a little too." Cuchullain was silent awhile and then said reflectively: "Do you think we could find Liban again?" "There would be no difficulty about that," Laeg replied drily. "Then," said Cuchullain with sudden energy, "let us go once more to the rock of the visions." Our souls give battle when the host Of lurid lives that lurk in Air, And Ocean's regions nethermost, Come forth from every loathsome lair: For then are cloudland battles fought With spears of lightning, swords of flame, No quarter given, none besought, Till to the darkness whence they came The Sons of Night are hurled again. Yet while the reddened skies resound The wizard souls of evil men Within the demon ranks are found, While pure and strong the heroes go To join the strife, and reck no odds, For they who face the wizard foe Clasp hands heroic with the gods. What is the love of shadowy lips That know not what they seek or press, From whom the lure for ever slips And fails their phantom tenderness? The mystery and light of eyes That near to mine grow dim and cold; They move afar in ancient skies Mid flame and mystic darkness rolled. Oh, hero, as thy heart o'erflows In tender yielding unto me, A vast desire awakes and grows Unto forgetfulness of thee. V. The Mantle of Mannanan Again Liban stood before them, and her eyes were full of reproach. "You doubt the truth of my message," she said. "Come, then, to the Plain of Fire, and you shall see the one who sent me." "I doubt you not," said Cuchullain quietly; "but it is not fitting that I should go when the message is brought by a woman, for such is the warning I have had in vision from Lu Lamfada. Laeg shall go with you, and if he brings back the same message, then I shall do the bidding of the Sidhe, and wage war against the evil enchanters, even as when a lad I vanquished the brook of wizards at Dun-mic-Nectan." "Where did Liban take you this time, Laeg? Have you brought back a message from the Sidhe?" "I have seen the Chief," said Laeg, whose doubts had vanished and whose whole manner had changed. "Cuchullain, you must go. You remember how we went together to Brusna by the Boyne, and what wonders they showed us in the sacred crypt. Yet this is a place more marvelous--thrice. Well indeed did Liban call it the Plain of Fire, for a breath of fire is in the air for leagues and leagues around. On the lake where the Sidhe dwell the fishers row by and see nothing, or, mayhap, a flicker of phantasmal trees around the dun. These trees are rooted in a buried star beneath the earth; when its heart pulsates they shine like gold, aye, and are fruited with ruby lights. Indeed this Labraid is one of the Gods. I saw him come through the flaming rivers of the underworld. He was filled with the radiance. I am not given to dread the Sidhe, but there was that in him which compelled awe: for oh, he came from the homes that were anciently ours--ours who are fallen, and whose garments once bright are stained by the lees of time. He greeted me kindly. He knew me by my crimson mantle with five folds. He asked for you; indeed they all wish to have you there." "Did he say aught further?" "No, he spoke but little; but as I returned by Mag Luada I had a vision. I saw you standing under the sacred Tree of Victory. There were two mighty ones, one on each side of you, but they seemed no greater than you." "Was Fand there?" asked Cuchullain. "Yes," said Laeg reluctantly; "I saw her and spoke to her, although I did not wish to. I feared for myself. Ethne and Emer are beautiful women, but this woman is not like them. She is half divine. The holiest Druids might lose his reason over her." "Let us go thither," said Cuchullain. The night was clear, breathless, pure as diamond. The giant lights far above floated quietly in the streams of space. Below slept the lake mirroring the shadowy blue of the mountains. The great mounds, the homes of the Sidhe, were empty; but over them floated a watchful company, grave, majestic, silent, waiting. In stately procession their rich, gleaming figures moved to and fro in groups of twos and threes, emblazoning the dusky air with warm colors. A little apart, beyond the headland at the island's edge, two more commanding than the rest communed together. The wavering water reflected head-long their shining figures in its dark depths; above them the ancient blue of the night rose as a crown. These two were Labraid and the warrior of Murthemney restored to all his Druid power. Terrible indeed in its beauty, its power, its calm, was this fiery phantasmal form beside the king of the Sidhe. "We came to Eri many, many ages ago," said Labraid; "from a land the people of today hold no memory of. Mighty for good and for evil were the dwellers in that land, but its hour struck and the waters of the ocean entomb it. In this island, which the mighty Gods of Fire kept apart and sacred, we made our home. But after long years a day came when the wise ones must needs depart from this also. They went eastward. A few only remained to keep alive the tradition of what was, the hope of what will be again. For in this island, it is foretold, in future ages will arise a light which will renew the children of time. But now the world's great darkness has come. See what exhalations arise! What demons would make Eri their home!" Away at the eastern verge a thick darkness was gathering; a pitchy blackness out of which a blood--red aerial river rolled and shot its tides through the arteries of the night. It came nigher. It was dense with living creatures, larvae, horrible shapes with waving tendrils, white withered things restless and famished, hoglike faces, monstrosities. As it rolled along there was a shadowy dropping over hamlet and village and field. "Can they not be stayed? Can they not be stayed?" rang the cry of Fand. The stern look on Cuchullain's face deepened. "Is it these pitiful spectres we must wage war against? Labraid, it is enough. I will go--alone. Nay, my brother, one is enough for victory." Already he was oblivious of the Sidhe, the voices of Fand and Laeg calling him. A light like a wonder-mist broke dazzling about him. Through a mist of fire, an excess of light, they saw a transcendent form of intensest gold treading the air. Over the head of the god a lightning thread like a serpent undulated and darted. It shed a thousand dazzling rays; it chanted in a myriad tones as it went forward. Wider grew the radiant sphere and more triumphant the chant as he sped onward and encountered the overflow of hell. Afar off the watchers saw and heard the tumult, cries of a horrible conflict, agonies of writhing and burning demons scorched and annihilated, reeling away before the onset of light. On and still on he sped, now darkened and again blazing like the sun. "Look! look!" cried Laeg, breathless with exultation as the dazzling phantom towered and waved its arms on the horizon. "They lied who said he was powerless," said Fand, no less exultant. "Cu, my darling," murmured the charioteer; "I know now why I loved you, what burned within you." "Shall we not go and welcome him when he returns?" said Liban. "I should not advise it," Laeg answered. "Is it to meet that fury of fire when he sinks back blind and oblivious? He would slay his dearest friend. I am going away from here as fast as I can." Through the dark forests at dawn the smoke began to curl up from dun and hamlet, and, all unconscious of the war waged over their destinies, children awoke to laugh and men and women went forth to breathe the sweet air of morning. Cuchullain started from a dream of more ancient battles, of wars in heaven. Through the darkness of the room he saw the shadowy forms of the two daughters of Aed Abrait; not as before, the mystic maidens armed with Druid power, but women, melting, tender, caressing. Violet eyes shining with gratitude; darker eyes burning with love, looked into his. Misty tresses fell over him. "I know not how the battle went," he sighed. "I remember the fire awoke. .... Lu was with me. .... I fell back in a blinding mist of flame and forgot everything." "Doubt it not. Victory went with thee, warrior," said Liban. "We saw thee: it was wonderful. How the seven splendors flashed and the fiery stars roved around you and scattered the demons!" "Oh, do not let your powers sink in sleep again," broke forth Fand. "What are the triumphs of earthly battles to victories like these? What is rule over a thousand warriors to kingship over the skyey hosts? Of what power are spear and arrow beside the radiant sling of Lu? Do the war-songs of the Ultonians inspire thee ever like the terrible chant of fire? After freedom can you dwell in these gloomy duns? What are the princeliest of them beside the fiery halls of Tir-na-noge and the flame-built cities of the Gods? As for me, I would dwell where the great ones of ancient days have gone, and worship at the shrine of the silent and unutterable Awe." "I would go indeed," said Cuchullain; "but still--but still--: it is hard to leave the green plains of Murthemney, and the Ultonians who have fought by my side, and Laeg, and--" "Laeg can come with us. Nor need Conchobar, or Fergus or Conail be forgotten. Far better can you aid them with Druid power than with the right arm a blow may make powerless in battle. Go with Laeg to Iban-Cind-Trachta. Beside the yew-tree there is a dun. There you can live hidden from all. It is a place kept sacred by the might of the Sidhe. I will join you there." A month passed. In a chamber of the Dun the Yew-tree, Fand, Cuchullain and Laeg were at night. The two latter sat by an oaken table and tried by divination to peer into the future. Fand, withdrawn in the dark shadow of a recess, lay on a couch and looked on. Many thoughts went passing through her mind. Now the old passion of love would rise in her heart to be quenched by a weary feeling of futility, and then a half-contempt would curl her lips as she saw the eagerness of her associates. Other memories surged up. "Oh, Mannanan, Father-Self, if thou hadst not left me and my heart had not turned away! It was not a dream when I met thee and we entered the Ocean of Fire together. Our beauty encompassed the world. Radiant as Lu thy brother of the Sun we were. Far away as the dawn seems the time. How beautiful, too, was that other whose image in the hero enslaves my heart. Oh, that he would but know himself, and learn that on this path the greatest is the only risk worth taking! And now he holds back the charioteer also and does him wrong." Just then something caused her to look up. She cried out, "Laeg, Laeg, do you see anything?" "What is it?" said Laeg. Then he also looked and started. "Gods!" he murmured. "Emer! I would rather face a tempest of Formorian enchanters." "Do you not see?" repeated Fand scornfully. "It is Emer the daughter of Forgall. Has she also become one of the Sidhe that she journeys thus?" "She comes in dream," said Laeg. "Why do you intrude upon our seclusion here? You know my anger is no slight thing," broke out Cuchullain, in ready wrath hiding his confusion. The shadow of Emer turned, throwing back the long, fair hair from her face the better to see him. There was no dread on it, but only outraged womanly dignity. She spake and her voice seemed to flow from a passionate heart far away brooding in sorrowful loneliness. "Why do I come? Has thou not degraded me before all the maidens of Eri by forsaking me for a woman of the Sidhe without a cause? You ask why I come when every one of the Ultonians looks at me in questioning doubt and wonder! But I see you have found a more beautiful partner." "We came hither, Laeg and I, to learn the lore of the Sidhe. Why should you not leave me here for a time, Emer? This maiden is of wondrous magical power: she is a princess in her own land, and is as pure and chaste to this hour as you." "I see indeed she is more beautiful than I am. That is why you are drawn away. Her face has not grown familiar. Everything that is new or strange you follow. The passing cheeks are ruddier than the pale face which has shared your troubles. What you know is weariness, and you leave it to learn what you do not know. The Ultonians falter while you are absent from duty in battle and council, and I, whom you brought with sweet words when half a child from my home, am left alone. Oh, Cuchullain, beloved, I was once dear to thee, and if today or tomorrow were our first meeting I should be so again." A torrent of self-reproach and returning love overwhelmed him. "I swear to you," he said brokenly, through fast-flowing tears, "you are immortally dear to me, Emer." "Then you leave me," burst forth Fand, rising to her full height, her dark, bright eyes filled with a sudden fire, an image of mystic indignation and shame. "If indeed," said Emer softly, "joy and love and beauty are more among the Sidhe than where we dwell in Eri, then it were better for thee to remain." "No, he shall not now," said Fand passionately. "It is I whom he shall leave. I long foresaw this moment, but ran against fate like a child. Go, warrior, Cu; tear this love out of thy heart as I out of mine. Go, Laeg, I will not forget thee. Thou alone hast thought about these things truly. But now--I cannot speak." She flung herself upon the couch in the dark shadow and hid her face away from them. The pale phantom wavered and faded away, going to one who awoke from sleep with a happiness she could not understand. Cuchullain and Laeg passed out silently into the night. At the door of the dun a voice they knew not spake: "So, warrior, you return. It is well. Not yet for thee is the brotherhood of the Sidhe, and thy destiny and Fand's lie far apart. Thine is not so great but it will be greater, in ages yet to come, in other lands, among other peoples, when the battle fury in thee shall have turned to wisdom and anger to compassion. Nations that lie hidden in the womb of time shall hail thee as friend, deliverer and saviour. Go and forget what has passed. This also thou shalt forget. It will not linger in thy mind; but in thy heart shall remain the memory and it will urge thee to nobler deeds. Farewell, warrior, saviour that is to be!" As the two went along the moon lit shore mighty forms followed, and there was a waving of awful hands over them to blot out memory. In the room where Fand lay with mad beating heart tearing itself in remorse, there was one watching with divine pity. Mannanan, the Golden Glory, the Self of the Sun. "Weep not, O shadow; thy days of passion and pain are over." breathed the Pity in her breast. "Rise up, O Ray, from thy sepulchre of forgetfulness. Spirit come forth to they ancient and immemorial home." She rose up and stood erect. As the Mantle of Mannanan enfolded her, no human words could tell the love, the exultation, the pathos, the wild passion of surrender, the music of divine and human life interblending. Faintly we echo--like this spake the Shadow and like this the Glory. The Shadow Who art thou, O Glory, In flame from the deep, Where stars chant their story, Why trouble my sleep? I hardly had rested, My dreams wither now: Why comest thou crested And gemmed on they brow? The Glory Up, Shadow, and follow The way I will show; The blue gleaming hollow To-night we will know, And rise mid the vast to The fountain of days; From whence we had pass to The parting of ways. The Shadow I know thee, O Glory: Thine eyes and thy brow With white fire all hoary Come back to me now. Together we wandered In ages agone; Our thoughts as we pondered Were stars at the dawn. The glory has dwindled, My azure and gold: Yet you keep enkindled The Sun-fire of old. My footsteps are tied to The heath and the stone; My thoughts earth-allied-to-- Ah! leave me alone. Go back, thou of gladness, Nor wound me with pain, Nor spite me with madness, Nor come nigh again. The Glory Why tremble and weep now, Whom stars once obeyed? Come forth to the deep now And be not afraid. The Dark One is calling, I know, for his dreams Around me are falling In musical streams. A diamond is burning In depths of the Lone Thy spirit returning May claim for its throne. In flame-fringed islands Its sorrows shall cease, Absorbed in the silence And quenched in the peace. Come lay thy poor head on My breast where it glows With love ruby-red on Thy heart for its woes. My power I surrender: To thee it is due: Come forth, for the splendor Is waiting for you. --The End --November 15, 1895-March 15, 1896 Shadow and Substance Many are the voices that entreat and warn those who would live the life of the Magi. It is well they should speak. They are voices of the wise. But after having listened and pondered, oh, that someone would arise and shout into our souls how much more fatal it is to refrain. For we miss to hear the fairy tale of time, the aeonian chant radiant with light and color which the spirit prolongs. The warnings are not for those who stay at home, but for those who adventure abroad. They constitute an invitation to enter the mysteries. We study and think these things were well in the happy prime and will be again the years to come. But not yesterday only or tomorrow--today, today burns in the heart the fire which made mighty the heroes of old. And in what future will be born the powers which are not quick in the present? It will never be a matter of greater ease to enter the path, though we may well have the stimulus of greater despair. For this and that there are times and seasons, but for the highest it is always the hour. The eternal beauty does not pale because its shadow trails over slime and corruption. It is always present beneath the faded mould whereon our lives are spent. Still the old mysterious glimmer from mountain and cave allures, and the golden gleams divide and descend on us from the haunts of the Gods. The dark age is our darkness and not the darkness of life. It is not well for us who in the beginning came forth with the wonder-light about us, that it should have turned in us to darkness, the song of life be dumb. We close our eyes from the many-coloured mirage of day, and are alone soundless and sightless in the unillumined cell of the brain. But there are thoughts that shine, impulses born of fire. Still there are moments when the prison world reels away a distant shadow, and the inner chamber of clay fills full with fiery visions. We choose from the traditions of the past some symbol of our greatness, and seem again the Titans or Morning Stars of the prime. In this self-conception lies the secret of life, the way of escape and return. We have imagined ourselves into forgetfulness, into darkness, into feebleness. From this strange and pitiful dream of life, oh, that we may awaken and know ourselves once again. But the student too often turns to books, to the words sent back to him, forgetful that the best of scriptures do no more than stand as symbols. We hear too much of study, as if the wisdom of life and ethics could be learned like ritual, and of their application to this and that ephemeral pursuit. But from the Golden One, the child of the divine, comes a voice to its shadow. It is stranger to our world, aloof from our ambitions, with a destiny not here to be fulfilled. It says: "You are of dust while I am robed in opalescent airs. You dwell in houses of clay, I in a temple not made by hands. I will not go with thee, but thou must come with me." And not alone is the form of the divine aloof but the spirit behind the form. It is called the Goal truly, but it has no ending. It is the Comforter, but it waves away our joys and hopes like the angel with the flaming sword. Though it is the Resting-place, it stirs to all heroic strife, to outgoing, to conquest. It is the Friend indeed, but it will not yield to our desires. Is it this strange, unfathomable self we think to know, and awaken to, by what is written, or by study of it as so many planes of consciousness. But in vain we store the upper chambers of the mind with such quaint furniture of thought. No archangel makes his abode therein. They abide only in the shining. How different from academic psychology of the past, with its dry enumeration of faculties, reason, cognition and so forth, is the burning thing we know. We revolted from that, but we must take care lest we teach in another way a catalogue of things equally unliving to us. The plain truth is, that after having learned what is taught about the hierarchies and various spheres, many of us are still in this world exactly where we were before. If we speak our laboriously-acquired information we are listened to in amazement. It sounds so learned, so intellectual, there must need be applause. But by-and-by someone comes with quiet voice, who without pretence speaks of the "soul" and uses familiar words, and the listeners drink deep, and pay the applause of silence and long remembrance and sustained after-endeavor. Our failure lies in this, we would use the powers of soul and we have not yet become the soul. None but the wise one himself could bend the bow of Ulysses. We cannot communicate more of the true than we ourselves know. It is better to have a little knowledge and know that little than to have only hearsay of myriads of Gods. So I say, lay down your books for a while and try the magic of thought. "What a man thinks, that he is; that is the old secret." I utter, I know, but a partial voice of the soul with many needs. But I say, forget for a while that you are student, forget your name and time. Think of yourself within as the titan, the Demi-god, the flaming hero with the form of beauty, the heart of love. And of those divine spheres forget the nomenclature; think rather of them as the places of a great childhood you now return to, these homes no longer ours. In some moment of more complete imagination the thought-born may go forth and look on the olden Beauty. So it was in the mysteries long ago and may well be today. The poor dead shadow was laid to sleep in forgotten darkness, as the fiery power, mounting from heart to head, went forth in radiance. Not then did it rest, nor ought we. The dim worlds dropped behind it, the lights of earth disappeared as it neared the heights of the Immortals. There was One seated on a throne, One dark and bright with ethereal glory. I arose in greeting. The radiant figure laid its head against the breast which grew suddenly golden, and father and son vanished in that which has no place nor name. --January 15, 1896 On W. Q. Judge's Passing It is with no feeling of sadness that I think of this withdrawal. He would not have wished for that. But with a faltering hand I try to express one of many incommunicable thoughts about the hero who has departed. Long before I met him, before even written words of his had been read, his name like an incantation stirred and summoned forth some secret spiritual impulse in my heart. It was no surface tie which bound us to him. No one ever tried less than he to gain from men that adherence which comes from impressive manner. I hardly thought what he was while he spoke; but on departing I found my heart, wiser than my brain, had given itself away to him; an inner exaltation lasting for months witnessed his power. It was in that memorable convention in London two years ago that I first glimpsed his real greatness. As he sat there quietly, one among many, not speaking a word, I was overcome by a sense of spiritual dilation, of unconquerable will about him, and that one figure with the grey head became all the room to me. Shall I not say the truth I think? Here was a hero out of the remote, antique, giant ages come among us, wearing but on the surface the vesture of our little day. We, too, came out of that past, but in forgetfulness; he with memory and power soon regained. To him and to one other we owe an unspeakable gratitude for faith and hope and knowledge born again. We may say now, using words of his early years: "Even in hell I lift up my eyes to those who are beyond me and do not deny them." Ah, hero, we know you would have stayed with us if it were possible; but fires have been kindled that shall not soon fade, fires that shall be bright when you again return. I feel no sadness, knowing there are no farewells in the True: to whosoever has touched on that real being there is comradeship with all the great and wise of time. That he will again return we need not doubt. His ideals were those which are attained only by the Saviours and Deliverers of nations. When or where he may appear I know not, but I foresee the coming when our need invokes him. Light of the future aeons, I hail, I hail to thee! --April 15, 1896 Self-Reliance Perhaps it is now while we are in a state of transition, when old leaders have gone out of sight and the new ones have not yet taken their place in the van, that we ought to consider what we are in ourselves. Some questions we ought to ask ourselves about this movement: where its foundations were laid? what the links are? where is the fountain of force? what are the doors? You answer the first and you say "America," or you say "India." But if that old doctrine of emanations be true it was not on earth but in the heavenworld where our minds immortal are linked together. There it was born and well born, and grew downwards into earth, and all our hopes and efforts and achievements here but vaguely reflect what was true and perfect in intent above, a compact of many hearts to save the generations wandering to their doom. Wiser, stronger, mightier than we were those who shielded us in the first years; who went about among us renewing memory, whispering in our hearts the message of the meaning of life, recalling the immemorial endeavor of the spirit for freedom, knowledge, mastery. But it is our movement and not the movement of the Masters only. It is our own work we are carrying on; our own primal will we are trying to give effect to. Well may the kingly sages depart from bodies which were torment and pain to them. They took them on for our sakes, and we may wave them a grateful farewell below and think of the spheres invisible as so much richer by their presence, more to be longed for, more to be attained. I think indeed they are nearer heart and mind there than here. What is real in us can lose no brotherhood with such as they through death. Still flash the lights from soul to soul in ceaseless radiance, in endless begetting of energy, thought and will, in endless return of joy and love and hope. I would rather hear one word of theirs in my heart than a thousand in my ears. I would rather think of my guide and captain as embodied in the flame than in the clay. Although we may gaze on the grave, kindly face living no more, there can be no cessation of the magic influence, the breath of fire, which flowed aforetime from the soul to us. We feel in our profoundest hearts that he whom they call dead is living, is alive for evermore. He has earned his rest, a deep rest, if indeed such as he cease from labor. As for us, we may go our ways assured that the links are unbroken. What did you think the links were? That you knew some one who knew the Masters? Such a presence and such a Companion would indeed be an aid, a link. But I think where ever there is belief in our transcendent being, in justice, our spiritual unity and destiny, wherever there is brotherhood, there are unseen ties, links, shining cords, influx from and unbroken communication with the divine. So much we have in our own natures, not enough to perfect us in the mysteries, but always enough to light our path, to show us our next step, to give us strength for duty. We should not always look outside for aid, remembering that some time we must be able to stand alone. Let us not deny our own deeper being, our obscured glory. That we accepted these truths, even as intuitions which we were unable intellectually to justify, is proof that there is that within us which has been initiate in the past, which lives in and knows well what in the shadowy world is but a hope. There is part of ourselves whose progress we do not comprehend. There are deeds done in unremembered dream, and a deeper meditation in the further unrecorded silences of slumber. Downward from sphere to sphere the Immortal works its way into the flesh, and the soul has adventures in dream whose resultant wisdom is not lost because memory is lacking here. Yet enough has been said to give us the hint, the clue to trace backwards the streams of force to their fount. We wake in some dawn and there is morning also in our hearts, a love, a fiery vigor, a magnetic sweetness in the blood. Could we track to its source this invigorating power, we might perhaps find that as we fell asleep some olden memory had awakened in the soul, or the Master had called it forth, or it was transformed by the wizard power of Self and went forth to seek the Holy Place. Whether we have here a guide, or whether we have not, one thing is certain, that behind and within the "Father worketh hitherto." A warrior fights for us. Our thoughts tip the arrows of his quiver. He wings them with flame and impels them with the Holy Breath. They will not fail if we think clear. What matters it if in the mist we do not see where they strike. Still they are of avail. After a time the mists will arise and show a clear field; the shining powers will salute us as victors. I have no doubt about our future; no doubt but that we will have a guide and an unbroken succession of guides. But I think their task would be easier, our way be less clouded with dejection and doubt, if we placed our trust in no hierarchy of beings, however august, but in the Law of which they are ministers. Their power, though mighty, ebbs and flows with contracting and expanding nature. They, like us, are but children in the dense infinitudes. Something like this, I think, the Wise Ones would wish each one of us to speak: "O Brotherhood of Light, though I long to be with you, though it sustains me to think you are behind me, though your aid made sure my path, still, if the Law does not permit you to act for me today, I trust in the One whose love a fiery breath never ceases; I fall back on it with exultation: I rely upon it joyfully." Was it not to point to that greater life that the elder brothers sent forth their messengers, to tell us that it is on this we ought to rely, to point us to grander thrones than they are seated on? It is well to be prepared to face any chance with equal mind; to meet the darkness with gay and defiant thought as to salute the Light with reverence and love and joy. But I have it in my heart that we are not deserted. As the cycles went their upward way the heroic figures of the dawn reappear. Some have passed before us; others in the same spirit and power will follow: for the new day a rearisen sun and morning stars to herald it. When it comes let it find us, not drowsy after our night in time, but awake, prepared and ready to go forth from the house of sleep, to stretch hands to the light, to live and labor in joy, having the Gods for our guides and friends. --May 15, 1896 The Mountains While we live within four walls we half insensibly lose something of our naturalness and comport ourselves as creatures of the civilization we belong to. But we never really feel at home there, though childhood may have wreathed round with tender memories old rooms and the quaint garden-places of happy unthinking hours. There is a house, a temple not built with hands; perhaps we thought it a mere cabin when we first formed it, and laid aside humbly many of our royal possessions as we entered, for the heavens and the heaven of heavens could not contain all of our glory. But now it seems vast enough, and we feel more at home there, and we find places which seem nearer of access to our first life. Such are the mountains. As I lie here on the monstrous mould of the hillside covered with such delicate fringes of tiny green leaves, I understand something of his longing who said: "I lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my aid." Oh, but the air is sweet, is sweet. Earth-breath, what is it you whisper? As I listen, listen, I know it is no whisper but a chant from profoundest deeps, a voice hailing its great companions in the aether spaces, but whose innumerable tones in their infinite modulations speak clear to us also in our littleness. Our lips are stilled with awe; we dare not repeat what here we think. These mountains are sacred in our Celtic traditions. Haunt of the mysteries, here the Tuatha de Danaans once had their home. We sigh, thinking of the vanished glory, but look with hope for the fulfilment of the prophecy which the seer of another line left on record, that once more the Druid fires should blaze on these mountains. As the purple amplitude of night enfold them, already the dark mounds seem to throw up their sheeny illuminations; great shadowy forms, the shepherds of our race, to throng and gather; the many-coloured winds to roll their aerial tides hither and thither. Eri, hearth and home of so many mystic races, Isle of Destiny, there shall yet return to thee the spiritual magic that thrilled thee long ago. As we descend and go back to a life, not the life we would will, not the life we will have, we think with sorrow of the pain, the passion, the partings, through which our race will once more return to nature, spirit and freedom. We turned back mad from the mystic mountains All foamed with red and with faery gold; Up from the heart of the twilight's fountains The fires enchanted were starward rolled. We turned back mad--we thought of the morrow, The iron clang of the far-away town: We could not weep in our bitter sorrow But joy as an arctic sun went down. --May 15, 1896 Works and Days When we were boys with what anxiety we watched for the rare smile on the master's face ere we preferred a request for some favor, a holiday or early release. There was wisdom in that. As we grow up we act more or less consciously upon intuitions as to time and place. My companion, I shall not invite you to a merrymaking when a bitter moment befalls you and the flame of life sinks into ashes in your heart; nor yet, however true and trusted, will I confide to you what inward revelations of the mysteries I may have while I sense in you a momentary outwardness. The gifts of the heart are too sacred to be laid before a closed door. Your mood, I know, will pass, and tomorrow we shall have this bond between us. I wait, for it can be said but once: I cannot commune magically twice on the same theme with you. I do not propose we should be opportunists, nor lay down a formula; but to be skillful in action we must work with and comprehend the ebb and flow of power. Mystery and gloom, dark blue and starshine, doubt and feebleness alternate with the clear and shining, opal skies and sunglow, heroic ardor and the exultation of power. Ever varying, prismatic and fleeting, the days go by and the secret of change eludes us here. I bend the bow of thought at a mark and it is already gone. I lay the shaft aside and while unprepared the quarry again fleets by. We have to seek elsewhere for the source of that power which momentarily overflows into our world and transforms it with its enchantment. On the motions of an inner sphere, we are told, all things here depend; on spheres of the less evanescent which, in their turn, are enclosed in spheres of the real, whose solemn chariot movements again are guided by the inflexible will of Fire. In all of these we have part. This dim consciousness which burns in my brain is not all of myself. Behind me it widens out and upward into God. I feel in some other world it shines with purer light: in some sphere more divine than this it has a larger day and a deeper rest. That day of the inner self illuminates many of our mortal days; its night leaves many of them dark. And so the One Ray expanding lives in many vestures. It is last of all the King-Self who wakes at the dawn of ages, whose day is the day of Brahma, whose rest is his rest. Here is the clue to cyclic change, to the individual feebleness and power, the gloom of one epoch and the glory of another. The Bright Fortnight, the Northern Sun, Light and Flame name the days of other spheres, and wandering on from day to day man may at last reach the end of his journey. You would pass from rapidly revolving day and night to where the mystical sunlight streams. The way lies through yourself and the portals open as the inner day expands. Who is there who has not felt in some way or other the rhythmic recurrence of light within? We were weary of life, baffled, ready to forswear endeavor, when half insensibly a change comes over us; we doubt no more but do joyfully our work; we renew the sweet magical affinities with nature: out of a heart more laden with love we think and act; our meditations prolong themselves into the shining wonderful life of soul; we tremble on the verge of the vast halls of the gods where their mighty speech may be heard, their message of radiant will be seen. They speak a universal language not for themselves only but for all. What is poetry but a mingling of some tone of theirs with the sounds that below we utter? What is love but a breath of their very being? Their every mood has colors beyond the rainbow; every thought rings in far-heard melody. So the gods speak to each other across the expanses of ethereal light, breaking the divine silences with words which are deeds. So, too, they speak to the soul. Mystics of all time have tried to express it, likening it to peals of faery bells, the singing of enchanted birds, the clanging of silver cymbals, the organ voices of wind and water bent together--but in vain, in vain. Perhaps in this there is a danger, for the true is realized in being and not in perception. The gods are ourselves beyond the changes of time which harass and vex us here. They do not demand adoration but an equal will to bind us consciously in unity with themselves. The heresy of separateness cuts us asunder in these enraptured moments; but when thrilled by the deepest breath, when the silent, unseen, uncomprehended takes possession of thee, think "Thou art That," and something of thee will abide for ever in It. All thought not based on this is a weaving of new bonds, of illusions more difficult to break; it begets only more passionate longing and pain. Still we must learn to know the hidden ways, to use the luminous rivers for the commerce of thought. Our Druid forefathers began their magical operations on the sixth day of the new moon, taking the Bright Fortnight at its flood-time. In these hours of expansion what we think has more force, more freedom, more electric and penetrating power. We find too, if we have co-workers, that we draw from a common fountain, the same impulse visits us and them. What one possess all become possessed of; and something of the same unity and harmony arises between us here as exists for all time between us in the worlds above. While the currents circulate we are to see to it that they part from us no less pure than they came. To this dawn of an inner day may in some measure be traced the sudden inspirations of movements, such as we lately feel, not all due to the abrupt descent into our midst of a new messenger, for the elder Brothers work with law and foresee when nature, time, and the awakening souls of men will aid them. Much may now be done. On whosoever accepts, acknowledges and does the will of the Light in these awakenings the die and image of divinity is more firmly set, his thought grows more consciously into the being of the presiding god. Yet not while seeking for ourselves can we lay hold of final truths, for then what we perceive we retain but in thought and memory. The Highest is a motion, a breath. We become it only in the imparting. It is in all, for all and goes out to all. It will not be restrained in a narrow basin, but through the free-giver it freely flows. There are throngs innumerable who await this gift. Can we let this most ancient light which again returns to us be felt by them only as a vague emotion, a little peace of uncertain duration, a passing sweetness of the heart? Can we not do something to allay the sorrow of the world? My brothers, the time of opportunity has come. One day in the long-marshaled line of endless days has dawned for our race, and the buried treasure-houses in the bosom of the deep have been opened to endow it with more light, to fill it with more power. The divine ascetics stand with torches lit before the temple of wisdom. Those who are nigh them have caught the fire and offer to us in turn to light the torch, the blazing torch of soul. Let us accept the gift and pass it on, pointing out the prime givers. We shall see in time the eager races of men starting on their pilgrimage of return and facing the light. So in the mystical past the call of light was seen on the sacred hills; the rays were spread and gathered; and returning with them the initiate-children were buried in the Father-Flame. --June 15, 1896 The Childhood of Apollo It was long ago, so long that only the spirit of earth remembers truly. The old shepherd Tithonius sat before the door of his hut waiting for his grandson to return. He watched with drowsy eyes the eve gather, and the woods and mountains grow dark over the isles-- the isles of ancient Greece. It was Greece before its day of beauty, and day was never lovelier. The cloudy blossoms of smoke curling upward from the valley sparkled a while high up in the sunlit air, a vague memorial of the world of men below. From that too the colour vanished, and those other lights began to shine which to some are the only lights of day. The skies dropped close upon the mountains and the silver seas, like a vast face brooding with intentness; there was enchantment, mystery, and a living motion in its depths, the presence of all-pervading Zeus enfolding his starry children with the dark radiance of aether. "Ah!" murmured the old man, looking upward, "once it was living; once it spoke to me. It speaks not now, but it speaks to others I know--to the child who looks and longs and trembles in the dewy night. Why does he linger now? He is beyond his hour. Ah, there now are his footsteps!" A boy came up the valley driving the grey flocks which tumbled before him in the darkness. He lifted his young face for the shepherd to kiss. It was alight with ecstasy. Tithonius looked at him with wonder. A light golden and silvery rayed all about the him so that his delicate ethereal beauty seemed set in a star which followed his dancing footsteps. "How bright your eyes!" the old man said, faltering with sudden awe. "Why do your white limbs shine with moonfire light?" "Oh, father," said the boy Apollo, "I am glad, for everything is living tonight. The evening is all a voice and many voices. While the flocks were browsing night gathered about me: I saw within it and it was living everywhere; and all together, the wind with dim- blown tresses, odour, incense and secret-falling dew, mingled in one warm breath. They whispered to me and called me 'Child of the Stars,' 'Dew Heart,' and 'Soul of Fire.' Oh, father, as I came up the valley the voices followed me with song; everything murmured love; even the daffodils, nodding in the olive gloom, grew golden at my feet, and a flower within my heart knew of the still sweet secret of the flowers. Listen, listen!" There were voices in the night, voices as of star-rays descending. "Now the roof-tree of the midnight spreading Buds in citron, green, and blue: From afar its mystic odors shedding, Child, on you." Then other sweet speakers from beneath the earth, and from the distant waters and air followed in benediction, and a last voice like a murmur from universal Nature: "Now the buried stars beneath the mountains And the vales their life renew, Jetting rainbow blooms from tiny fountains, Child, for you. "As within our quiet waters passing Sun and moon and stars we view, So the loveliness of life is glassing, Child, in you. "In the diamond air the sun-star glowing Up its feathered radiance threw; All the jewel glory there was flowing, Child, for you. "And the fire divine in all things burning Yearns for home and rest anew, From its wanderings far again returning, Child, to you." "Oh, voices, voices," cried the child, "what you say I know not, but I ray back love for love. Father, what is it they tell me? They embosom me in light and I am far away even though I hold your hand." "The gods are about us. Heaven mingles with the earth," said Tithonius trembling. "Let us go to Diotima. She has grown wise brooding for many a year where the great caves lead to the underworld. She sees the bright ones as they pass by where she sits with shut eyes, her drowsy lips murmuring as nature's self." That night the island seemed no more earth set in sea, but a music encircled by the silence. The trees long rooted in antique slumber were throbbing with rich life; through glimmering bark and drooping leaf a light fell on the old man and boy as they passed, and vague figures nodded at them. These were the hamadryad souls of the wood. They were bathed in tender colours and shimmering lights draping them from root to leaf. A murmur came from the heart of every one, a low enchantment breathing joy and peace. It grew and swelled until at last it seemed as if through a myriad pipes that Pan the earth spirit was fluting his magical creative song. They found the cave of Diotima covered by vines and tangled strailers at the end of the island where the dark-green woodland rose up from the waters. Tithonius paused, for he dreaded this mystic prophetess; but a voice from within called them: "Come in, child of light; come in, old shepherd, I know why you seek me!" They entered, Tithonius trembling with more fear than before. A fire was blazing in a recess of the cavern and by it sat a majestic figure robed in purple. She was bent forward, her hand supporting her face, her burning eyes turned on the intruders. "Come hither, child," she said, taking the boy by the hands and gazing into his face. "So this frail form is to be the home of the god. The gods choose wisely. They take no warrior wild, no mighty hero to be their messenger to men, but crown this gentle head. Tell me--you dream--have you ever seen a light from the sun falling upon you in your slumber? No, but look now; look upward." As she spoke she waved her hands over him, and the cavern with its dusky roof seemed to melt away, and beyond the heavens the heaven of heavens lay dark in pure tranquillity, a quiet which was the very hush of being. In an instant it vanished and over the zenith broke a wonderful light. "See now," cried Diotima, "the Ancient Beauty! Look how its petals expand and what comes forth from its heart!" A vast and glowing breath, mutable and opalescent, spread itself between heaven and earth, and out of it slowly descended a radiant form like a god's. It drew nigh radiating lights, pure, beautiful, and starlike. It stood for a moment by the child and placed its hand on his head, and then it was gone. The old shepherd fell upon his face in awe, while the boy stood breathless and entranced. "Go now," said the Sybil, "I can teach thee naught. Nature herself will adore you and sing through you her loveliest song. But, ah, the light you hail in joy you shall impart in tears. So from age to age the eternal Beauty bows itself down amid sorrows that the children of men may not forget it, that their anguish may be transformed smitten through by its fire." --November 15, 1896 The Awakening of the Fires When twilight flutters the mountains over The faery lights from the earth unfold, And over the hills enchanted hover The giant heroes and gods of old: The bird of aether its flaming pinions Waves over earth the whole night long: The stars drop down in their blue dominions To hymn together their choral song: The child of earth in his heart grows burning Mad for the night and the deep unknown; His alien flame in a dream returning Seats itself on the ancient throne. When twilight over the mountains fluttered And night with its starry millions came, I too had dreams; the thoughts I have uttered. Come from my heart that was touched by the flame I thought over the attempts made time after time to gain our freedom; how failure had followed failure until at last it seemed that we must write over hero and chieftain of our cause the memorial spoken of the warriors of old, "They went forth to the battle but they always fell;" and it seemed to me that these efforts resulted in failure because the ideals put forward were not in the plan of nature for us; that it was not in our destiny that we should attempt a civilization like that of other lands. Though the cry of nationality rings for ever in our ears, the word here has embodied to most no other hope than this, that we should when free be able to enter with more energy upon pursuits already adopted by the people of other countries. Our leaders have erected no nobler standard than theirs, and we who, as a race, are the forlorn hope of idealism in Europe, sink day by day into apathy and forget what a past was ours and what a destiny awaits us if we will but rise responsive to it. Though so old in tradition this Ireland of today is a child among the nations of the world; and what a child, and with what a strain of genius in it! There is all the superstition, the timidity and lack of judgment, the unthought recklessness of childhood, but combined with what generosity and devotion, and what an unfathomable love for its heroes. Who can forget that memorable day when its last great chief was laid to rest? He was not the prophet of our spiritual future; he was not the hero of our highest ideals; but he was the only hero we knew. The very air was penetrated with the sobbing and passion of unutterable regret. Ah, Eri, in other lands there is strength and mind and the massive culmination of ordered power, but in thee alone is there such love as the big heart of childhood can feel. It is this which maketh all thy exiles turn with longing thoughts to thee. Before trying her to indicate a direction for the future, guessed from brooding on the far past and by touching on the secret springs in the heart of the present, it may make that future seem easier of access if I point out what we have escaped and also show that we have already a freedom which, though but half recognized, is yet our most precious heritage. We are not yet involved in a social knot which only red revolution can sever: our humanity, the ancient gift of nature to us, is still fresh in our veins: our force is not merely the reverberation of a past, an inevitable momentum started in the long ago, but is free for newer life to do what we will with in the coming time. I know there are some who regret this, who associate national greatness with the whirr and buzz of many wheels, the smoke of factories and with large dividends; and others, again, who wish that our simple minds were illuminated by the culture and wisdom of our neighbours. But I raise the standard of idealism, to try everything by it, every custom, every thought before we make it our own, and every sentiment before it finds a place in our hearts. Are these conditions, social and mental, which some would have us strive for really so admirable as we are assured they are? Are they worth having at all? What of the heroic best of man; how does that show? His spirituality, beauty and tenderness, are these fostered in the civilizations of today? I say if questions like these bearing upon that inner life wherein is the real greatness of nations cannot be answered satisfactorily, that it is our duty to maintain our struggle, to remain aloof, lest by accepting a delusive prosperity we shut ourselves from our primitive sources of power. For this spirit of the modern, with which we are so little in touch, is one which tends to lead man further and further from nature. She is no more to him the Great Mother so reverently named long ago, but merely an adjunct to his life, the distant supplier of his needs. What to the average dweller in cities are stars and skies and mountains? They pay no dividends to him, no wages. Why should he care about them indeed. And no longer concerning himself about nature what wonder is it that nature ebbs out of him. She has her revenge, for from whatever standpoint of idealism considered the average man shows but of pigmy stature. For him there is no before or after. In his material life he has forgotten or never heard of the heroic traditions of his race, their aspirations to godlike state. One wonders what will happen to him when death ushers him out from the great visible life to the loneliness amid the stars. To what hearth or home shall he flee who never raised the veil of nature while living, nor saw it waver tremulous with the hidden glory before his eyes? The Holy Breath from the past communes no more with him, and if he is oblivious of these things, though a thousand workman call him master, within he is bankrupt, his effects sequestered, a poor shadow, an outcast from the Kingdom of Light. We see too, that as age after age passes and teems only with the commonplace, that those who are the poets and teachers falter and lose faith: they utter no more of man the divine things the poets said of old. Perhaps the sheer respectability of the people they address deters them from making statements which in some respects might be considered libelous. But from whatever cause, from lack of heart or lack of faith, they have no real inspiration. The literature of Europe has had but little influence on the Celt in this isle. Its philosophies and revolutionary ideas have stayed their waves at his coast: they had no message of interpretation for him, no potent electric thought to light up the mystery of his nature. For the mystery of the Celt is the mystery of Amergin the Druid. All nature speaks through him. He is her darling, the confidant of her secrets. Her mountains have been more to him than a feeling. She has revealed them to him as the home of her brighter children, her heroes become immortal. For him her streams ripple with magical life and the light of day was once filled with more aerial rainbow wonder. Though thousands of years have passed since this mysterious Druid land was at its noonday, and long centuries have rolled by since the weeping seers saw the lights vanish from mountain and valley, still this alliance of the soul of man and the soul of nature more or less manifestly characterizes the people of this isle. The thought produced in and for complex civilizations is not pregnant enough with the vast for them, is not enough thrilled through by that impalpable breathing from another nature. We have had but little native literature here worth the name until of late years, and that not yet popularized, but during all these centuries the Celt has kept in his heart some affinity with the mighty beings ruling in the unseen, once so evident to the heroic races who preceded him. His legends and faery tales have connected his soul with the inner lives of air and water and earth, and they in turn have kept his heart sweet with hidden influence. It would make one feel sad to think that all that beautiful folklore is fading slowly from the memory that held it so long, were it not for the belief that the watchful powers who fostered its continuance relax their care because the night with beautiful dreams and deeds done only in fancy is passing: the day is coming with the beautiful real, with heroes and heroic deeds. It may not be well to prophecy, but it is always permissible to speak of our hopes. If day but copies day may we not hope for Ireland, after its long cycle of night, such another glory as lightened it of old, which tradition paints in such mystic colours? What was the mysterious glamour of the Druid age? What meant the fires on the mountains, the rainbow glow of air, the magic life in water and earth, but that the Radiance of Deity was shining through our shadowy world, that it mingled with and was perceived along with the forms we know. There it threw up its fountains of life- giving fire, the faery fountains of story, and the children of earth breathing that rich life felt the flush of an immortal vigour within them; and so nourished sprang into being the Danaan races, men who made themselves gods by will and that magical breath. Rulers of earth and air and fire, their memory looms titanic in the cloud stories of our dawn, and as we think of that splendid strength of the past something leaps up in the heart to confirm it true for all the wonder of it. This idea of man's expansion into divinity, which is in the highest teaching of every race, is one which shone like a star at the dawn of our Celtic history also. Hero after hero is called away by a voice ringing out of the land of eternal youth, which is but a name for the soul of earth, the enchantress and mother of all. There as guardians of the race they shed their influence on the isle; from them sprang all that was best and noblest in our past, and let no one think but that it was noble. Leaving aside that mystic sense of union with another world and looking only at the tales of battle, when we read of heroes whose knightly vows forbade the use of stratagem in war, and all but the equal strife with equals in opportunity; when we hear of the reverence for truth among the Fianna, "We the Fianna of Erin never lied, falsehood was never attributed to us"--a reverence for truth carried so far that they could not believe their foemen even could speak falsely--I say that in these days when our public life is filled with slander and unworthy imputation, we might do worse than turn back to that ideal Paganism of the past, and learn some lessons of noble trust, and this truth that greatness of soul alone insures final victory to us who live and move and have our being in the life of God. In hoping for such another day I do not of course mean the renewal of the ancient order, but rather look for the return of the same light which was manifest in the past. For so the eternal Beauty brings itself to the memory of man from time to time brooding over nations, as in the early Aryan heart, suffusing life and thought with the sun-sense of pervading Deity, or as in Greece where its myriad rays, each an intuition of loveliness, descended and dwelt not only in poet, sage and sculptor, but in the general being of the people. What has been called the Celtic renaissance in literature is one of the least of the signs. Of far more significance is the number of strange, dreamy children one meets, whose hearts are in the elsewhere, and young people who love to brood on the past, I speak of which is all the world to them. The present has no voice to interpret their dreams and visions, the enraptured solitude by mountain or shore, or what they feel when they lie close pressed to the bosom of the earth, mad with the longing for old joys, the fiery communion of spirit with spirit, which was once the privilege of man. These some voice, not proclaiming an arid political propaganda, may recall into the actual: some ideal of heroic life may bring them to the service of their kind, and none can serve the world better than those who from mighty dreams turn exultant to their realisation: who bring to labour the love, the courage, the unfailing hope, which they only possess who have gone into the hidden nature and found it sweet at heart. So this Isle, once called the Sacred Isle and also the Isle of Destiny, may find a destiny worthy of fulfilment: not to be a petty peasant republic, nor a miniature duplicate in life and aims of great material empires, but that its children out of their faith, which has never failed may realise this imemorial truth of man's inmost divinity, and in expressing it may ray the light over every land. Now, although a great literature and great thought may be part of our future, it ought not to be the essential part of our ideal. As in our past the bards gave way before the heroes, so in any national ideal worthy the name, all must give way in its hopes, wealth, literature, art, everything before manhood itself. If our humanity fails us or become degraded, of what value are the rest? What use would it be to you or to me if our ships sailed on every sea and our wealth rivaled the antique Ind, if we ourselves were unchanged, had no more kingly consciousness of life, nor that overtopping grandeur of soul indifferent whether it dwells in a palace or a cottage? If this be not clear to the intuition, there is the experience of the world and the example of many nations. Let us take the highest, and consider what have a thousand years of empire brought to England. Wealth without parallel, but at what expense! The lover of his kind must feel as if a knife were entering his heart when he looks at those black centres of boasted prosperity, at factory, smoke and mine, the arid life and spiritual death. Do you call those miserable myriads a humanity? We look at those people in despair and pity. Where is the ancient image of divinity in man's face: where in man's heart the prompting of the divine? There is nothing but a ceaseless energy without; a night terrible as hell within. Is this the only way for us as a people? Is nature to be lost; beauty to be swallowed up? The crown and sceptre were taken from us in the past, our path has been strewn with sorrows, but the spirit shall not be taken until it becomes as clay, and man forgets that he was born in the divine, and hears no more the call of the great deep in his heart as he bows himself to the dust in his bitter labours. It maddens to think it should be for ever thus, with us and with them, and that man the immortal, man the divine, should sink deeper and deeper into night and ignorance, and know no more of himself than glimmers upon him in the wearied intervals of long routine. Here we have this hope that nature appeals with her old glamour to many, and there is still the ancient love for the hero. In a land where so many well nigh hopeless causes have found faithful adherents, where there has been so much devotion and sacrifice, where poverty has made itself poorer still for the sake of leader and cause, may we not hope that when an appeal is made to the people to follow still higher ideals, that they will set aside the lower for the higher, that they will not relegate idealism to the poets only, but that it will dwell in the public as the private heart and make impossible any nations' undertaking inconsistent with the dignity and beauty of life? To me it seems that here the task of teacher and writer is above all to present images and ideals of divine manhood to the people whose real gods have always been their heroes. These titan figures, Cuculain, Finn, Oscar, Oisin, Caolte, all a mixed gentleness and fire, have commanded for generations that spontaneous love which is the only true worship paid by men. It is because of this profound and long- enduring love for the heroes, which must be considered as forecasting the future, that I declare the true ideal and destiny of the Celt in this island to be the begetting of humanity whose desires and visions shall rise above earth illimitable into godlike nature, who shall renew for the world the hope, the beauty, the magic, the wonder which will draw the buried stars which are the souls of men to their native firmament of spiritual light and elemental power. For the hero with us there is ample scope and need. There are the spectres of ignoble hopes, the lethal influences of a huge material civilisation wafted to us from over seas, which must be laid. Oh, that a protest might be made ere it becomes more difficult, ere this wild, beautiful land of ours be viewed only as a lure to draw money from the cockney tourist, and the immemorial traditions around our sacred hills be of value only to advertise the last hotel. Yet to avert the perils arising from external causes is but a slight task compared with the overcoming of obstacles already existent within. There is one which must be removed at whatever cost, though the hero may well become the martyr in the attempt. It is a difficulty which has its strength from one of the very virtues of the people, their reverence for religion. This in itself is altogether well. But it is not well when the nature of that religion enables its priests to sway men from their natural choice of hero and cause by the threat of spiritual terrors. I say that where this takes place to any great extent, as it has with us, it is not a land a freeman can think of with pride. It is not a place where the lover of freedom can rest, but he must spend sleepless nights, must brood, must scheme, must wait to strike a blow. To the thought of freedom it must be said to our shame none of the nobler meaning attaches here. Freedom to speak what hopes and ideals we may have; to act openly for what cause we will; to allow that freedom to others--that liberty is denied. There are but too many places where to differ openly from the priest in politics is to provoke a brawl, where to speak as here with the fearlessness of print would be to endanger life. With what scorn one hears the aspiration from public freedom from lips that are closed with the dread by their own hearthside! Let freedom arise where first it is possible in the hearts of men, in their thoughts, in speech between one and another, and then the gods may not deem us unworthy of the further sway of our national life. I would that some of the defiant spirit of the old warrior brood were here, not indeed to provoke strife between man and man, or race and race, but rather that we might be fearless in the spirit of one who said "I do not war against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers"--and against influences which fetter progress, against an iron materialism where the beauty of life perishes, let us revolt, let us war for ever. But with all this I, like others who have narrowly watched the signs of awakening life, do not doubt but that these things will pass as greater potencies throng in and impel to action. Already the rush of the earth-breath begins to fill with elation our island race and uplift them with the sense of power; and through the power sometimes flashes the glory, the spiritual radiance which will be ours hereafter, if old prophecy can be trusted and our hearts prompt us true. Here and there some rapt dreamer more inward than the rest sees that Tir-na-noge was no fable, but is still around him with all its mystic beauty for ever. The green hills grow alive with the star-children fleeting, flashing on their twilight errands from gods to men. When the heart opens to receive them and the ties which bind us to unseen nature are felt our day will begin and the fires awaken, our isle will be the Sacred Island once again and our great ones the light-givers to humanity, not voicing new things, but only of the old, old truths one more affirmation; for what is all wisdom, wherever uttered, whether in time past or today, but the One Life, the One Breath, chanting its innumerable tones of thought and joy and love in the heart of man, one voice throughout myriad years whose message eterne is this--you are by your nature immortal, and you may be, if you will it, divine. --Jan. 15, Feb. 15, 1897 Our Secret Ties Our deepest life is when we are alone. We think most truly, love best, when isolated from the outer world in that mystic abyss we call soul. Nothing external can equal the fulness of these moments. We may sit in the blue twilight with a friend, or bend together by the hearth, half whispering, or in a silence populous with loving thoughts mutually understood; then we may feel happy and at peace, but it is only because we are lulled by a semblance to deeper intimacies. When we think of a friend, and the loved one draws nigh, we sometimes feel half-pained, for we touched something in our solitude which the living presence shut out; we seem more apart, and would fain cry out--"Only in my deep heart I love you, sweetest heart; call me not forth from this; I am no more a spirit if I leave my throne." But these moods, though lit up by intuitions of the true, are too partial, they belong too much to the twilight of the heart, they have too dreamy a temper to serve us well in life. We should wish rather for our thoughts a directness such as belongs to the messengers of the gods, swift, beautiful, flashing presences bent on purposes well understood. What we need is that this interior tenderness shall be elevated into seership, that what in most is only yearning or blind love shall see clearly its way and hope and aim. To this end we have to observe more intently the nature of the interior life. We find, indeed, that it is not a solitude at all, but dense with multitudinous being: instead of being alone we are in the thronged highways of existence. For our guidance when entering here many words of warning have been uttered, laws have been outlined, and beings full of wonder, terror, and beauty described. Yet there is a spirit in us deeper than our intellectual being which I think of as the Hero in man, who feels the nobility of its place in the midst of all this, and who would fain equal the greatness of perception with deeds as great. The weariness and sense of futility which often falls upon the mystic after much thought is due, I think, to this, that here he has duties demanding a more sustained endurance just as the inner life is so much vaster and more intense than the life he has left behind. Now, the duties which can be taken up by the soul are exactly those which it feels most inadequate to perform when acting as an embodied being. What shall be done to quiet the heart-cry of the world: how answer the dumb appeal for help we so often divine below eyes that laugh? It is sadder than sorrow to think that pity with no hands to heal, that love without a voice to speak, should helplessly heap their pain upon pain while earth shall endure. But there is a truth about sorrow which I think may make it seem not so hopeless. There are fewer barriers than we think: there is, in fact, an inner alliance between the soul who would fain give and the soul who is in need. Nature has well provided that not one golden ray of all our thoughts is sped ineffective through the dark; not one drop of the magical elixirs love distills is wasted. Let us consider how this may be. There is a habit we nearly all have indulged in: we often weave little stories in our minds expending love and pity upon the imaginary beings we have created. But I have been led to think that many of these are not imaginary, that somewhere in the world beings are thinking, loving, suffering just in that way, and we merely reform and live over again in our life the story of another life. Sometimes these faraway intimates assume so vivid a shape, they come so near with their appeal for sympathy that the pictures are unforgettable, and the more I ponder over them the more it seems to me that they often convey the actual need of some soul whose cry for comfort has gone out into the vast, perhaps to meet with an answer, perhaps to hear only silence. I will supply an instance. I see a child, a curious, delicate little thing, seated on the doorstep of a house. It is an alley in some great city; there is a gloom of evening and vapour over the sky; I see the child is bending over the path; he is picking cinders and arranging them, and, growing closer, as I ponder, I become aware that he is laying down in gritty lines the walls of a house, the mansion of his dream. Here spread along the pavement are large rooms, these for his friends, and a tiny room in the centre, that is his own. So his thought plays. Just then I catch a glimpse of the corduroy trousers of a passing workman, and a heavy boot crushes through the cinders. I feel the pain in the child's heart as he shrinks back, his little love-lit house of dreams all rudely shattered. Ah, poor child, building the City Beautiful out of a few cinders, yet nigher, truer in intent than many a stately, gold- rich palace reared by princes, thou wert not forgotten by that mighty spirit who lives through the falling of empires, whose home has been in many a ruined heart. Surely it was to bring comfort to hearts like thine that that most noble of all meditations was ordained by the Buddha. "He lets his mind pervade one quarter of the world with thoughts of Love, and so the second, and so the third, and so the fourth. And thus the whole wide world, above, below, around, and everywhere, does he continue to pervade with heart of Love far-reaching, grown great, and beyond measure." The love, though the very fairy breath of life, should by itself and so imparted have a sustaining power some may question, not those who have felt the sunlight fall from distant fiends who think of them; but, to make clearer how it seems to me to act, I say that love, Eros, is a being. It is more than a power of the soul, though it is that also; it has a universal life of its own, and just as the dark heaving waters do not know what jewel lights they reflect with blinding radiance, so the soul, partially absorbing and feeling the ray of Eros within it, does not know that often a part of its nature nearer to the sun of love shines with a brilliant light to other eyes than its own. Many people move unconscious of their won charm, unknowing of the beauty and power they seem to others to impart. It is some past attainment of the soul, a jewel won in some old battle which it may have forgotten, but none the less this gleams on its tiara and the star-flame inspires others to hope and victory. If is true here than many exert a spiritual influence they are unconscious of, it is still truer of the spheres within. Once the soul has attained to any possession like love, or persistent will, or faith, or a power of thought, it comes into psychic contact with others who are struggling for these very powers. The attainment of any of these means that the soul is able to absorb and radiate some of the diviner elements of being. The soul may or may not be aware of the position it is placed in and its new duties, but yet that Living Light, having found a way into the being of any one person, does not rest there, but sends its rays and extends its influence on and on to illumine the darkness of another nature. So it comes that there are ties which bind us to people other than those whom we meet in our everyday life. I think they are more real ties, more important to understand, for if we let our lamp go out some far away who had reached out in the dark and felt a steady will, a persistent hope, a compassionate love, may reach out once again in an hour of need, and finding no support may give way and fold the hands in despair. Often indeed we allow gloom to overcome us and so hinder the bright rays in their passage; but would we do it so often if we thought that perhaps a sadness which besets us, we do not know why, was caused by some heart drawing nigh to ours for comfort, that our lethargy might make it feel still more its helplessness, while our courage, our faith, might cause "our light to shine in some other heart which as yet has no light of its own." --March 15, 1897 Priest or Hero? "I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, No one kneels to another, nor to one of his kind that lived thousands of years ago." ---Walt Whitman I have prefixed some ideas about spiritual freedom addressed to the people of Ireland with these lines from the poet of another land, because national sentiment seems out of date here, the old heroism slumbers, alien thought and an exotic religion have supplanted our true ideals and our natural spirituality. I hope that the scornful words of one who breathed a freer air might sting to shame those who have not lost altogether the sentiment of human dignity, who have still some intuitions as to how far and how wisely a man may abase himself before another, whether that other claim divine authority or not. For this is the true problem which confronts us as a nation, and all else is insignificant beside. We have found out who are the real rulers here, who dictate politics and public action with no less authority than they speak upon religion and morals, It was only the other day that a priest, one of our rulers, declared that he would not permit a political meeting to be held in his diocese and this fiat was received with a submission which showed how accurately the politician gauged the strength opposed to him. And this has not been the only occasion when this power has been exerted: we all know how many national movements have been interfered with or thwarted; we know the shameful revelations connected with the elections a few years back; we know how a great leader fell; and those who are idealists, God's warriors battling for freedom of thought, whose hope for the world is that the intuitions of the true and good divinely implanted in each man's breast shall supersede tradition and old authority, cannot but feel that their opinions, so much more dangerous to that authority than any political ideal, must, if advocated, bring them at last to clash with the priestly power. It is not a war with religion we would fain enter upon; but when those who claim that heaven and hell shut and open at their bidding for the spirit of man, use the influence which belief in that claim confers, as it has been here, to fetter free-will in action, it is time that the manhood of the nation awoke to sternly question that authority, to assert its immemorial right to freedom. There live of old in Eri a heroic race whom the bards sang as fearless. There was then no craven dread of the hereafter, for the land of the immortals glimmered about them in dream and vision, and already before the decaying of the form the spirit of the hero had crossed the threshold and clasped hands with the gods. No demon nature affrighted them: from them wielding the flaming sword of will the demons fled away as before Cuculain vanished in terror shadowy embattled hosts. What, I wonder, would these antique heroes say coming back to a land which preserves indeed their memory but emulates their spirit no more? We know what the bards thought when heroic Ireland became only a tradition; when to darkened eyes the elf-lights ceased to gleam, luring no more to the rich radiant world within, the Druidic mysteries, and the secret of the ages. In the bardic tales their comrade Ossian voices to Patrick their scorn of the new. Ah, from the light and joy of the faery region, from that great companionship with a race half divine, come back to find that but one divine man had walked the earth, and as for the rest it was at prayer and fasting they ought to be! And why? Because, as Patrick explained to Ossian, if they did not they would go to hell. And this is the very thing the Patricks ever since have been persuading the Irish people to believe, adding an alien grief unto their many sorrows, foisting upon them a vulgar interpretation of the noble idea of divine justice to cow them to submission with the threat of flame. Ossian, chafing and fuming under the priestly restriction, declared his preference for hell with the Finians to paradise with Patrick. His simple heroic mind found it impossible to believe that the pure, gentle but indomitable spirits of his comrades could be anywhere quenched or quelled, but they must at last arise exultant even from torment. When Ossian rejects the bribe of paradise to share the darker world and the fate of his companions, there spake the true spirit of man; spark of illimitable deity; shrouded in form, yet radiating ceaselessly heroic thoughts, aspirations, deathless love; not to be daunted, rising again and again from sorrow with indestructible hope; emerging ever from defeat, its glooms smitten through and through with the light of visions vast and splendid as the heavens. Old bard, old bard, from Tir-na-noge where thou, perchance wrapt by that beauty which called thee from earth, singest immortal songs, would that one lightning of they spirit could pierce the hearts now thronged with dread, might issue from lips which dare not speak. I do not question but that the heroic age had its imperfections, or that it was not well that its too warlike ardour was tempered by the beautiful, pathetic and ennobling teaching of Christ. The seed of new doctrines bore indeed many lovely but exotic blossoms in the saintly times, and also many a noxious weed. For religion must always be an exotic which makes a far-off land sacred rather than the earth underfoot: where the Great Spirit whose home is the vast seems no more a moving glamour in the heavens, a dropping tenderness at twilight, a visionary light on the hills, a voice in man's heart; when the way of life is sought in scrolls or is heard from another's lips. The noxious weed, the unendurable bitter which mingled with the sweet and true in this exotic religion was the terrible power it put into the hands of men somewhat more learned in their ignorance of God than those whom they taught: the power to inflict a deadly wrong upon the soul, to coerce the will by terror from the course conscience had marked out as true and good. That power has been used unsparingly and at times with unspeakable cruelty whenever those who had it thought their influence was being assailed, for power is sweet and its use is not lightly laid aside. As we read our island history there seems a ruddy emblazonry on every page, a hue shed from behind the visible, the soul dropping its red tears of fire over hopes for ever dissolving, noble ambitions for ever foiled. Always on the eve of success starts up some fatal figure weaponed with the keys of the hereafter, brandishing more especially the key of the place of torment, warning most particularly those who regard that that key shall not get rusty from want of turning if they disobey. It has been so from the beginning, from the time of the cursing of Tara, where the growing unity of the nations was split into fractions, down to the present time. I often doubt if the barbarities in eastern lands which we shudder at are in reality half so cruel, if they mean so much anguish as this threat of after-torture does to those who believe in the power of another to inflict it. It wounds the spirit to the heart: its consciousness of its own immortality becomes entwined with the terror of as long enduring pain. It is a lie which the all- compassionate Father-Spirit never breathed into the ears of his children, a lie which has been told here century after century with such insistence that half the nation has the manhood cowed out of it. The offence of the dead chief whose followers were recently assailed weighed light as a feather in the balance when compared with the sin of these men and their shameful misuse of religious authority in Meath a little while ago. The scenes which took place there, testified and sworn to by witness in the after trials, were only a copy of what generally took place. They will take place again if the necessity arises. That is a bitter fact. A dim consciousness that their servitude is not to God's law but to man's ambition is creeping over the people here. That is a very hopeful sign. When a man first feels he is a slave he begins to grow grey inside, to get moody and irritable. The sore spot becomes more sensitive the more he broods. At last to touch it becomes dangerous. For, from such pent-up musing and wrath have sprung rebellions, revolutions, the overthrow of dynasties and the fall of religions, aye, thrice as mighty as this. That Thought of freedom lets loose the flood-gates of an illimitable fire into the soul; it emerges from its narrow prison-cell of thought and fear as the sky-reaching genie from the little copper vessel in the tale of Arabian enchantment; it lays hand on the powers of storm and commotion like a god. It would be politic not to press the despotism more; but it would be a pity perhaps if some further act did not take place, just to see a nation flinging aside the shackles of superstition; disdainful of threats, determined to seek its own good, resolutely to put aside all external tradition and rule; adhering to its own judgment, though priests falsely say the hosts of the everlasting are arrayed in battle against it, though they threaten the spirit with obscure torment for ever and ever: still to persist, still to defy, still to obey the orders of another captain, that Unknown Deity within whose trumpet-call sounds louder than all the cries of men. There is great comfort, my fellows, in flinging fear aside; an exultation and delight spring up welling from inexhaustible deeps, and a tranquil sweetness also ensues which shows that the powers ever watchful of human progress approve and applaud the act. In all this I do not aim at individuals. It is not with them I would war but with tyranny. They who enslave are as much or more to be pitied than those whom they enslave. They too are wronged by being placed and accepted in a position of false authority. They too enshrine a ray of the divine spirit, which to liberate and express is the purpose of life. Whatever movement ignores the needs of a single unity, or breeds hate against it rather than compassion, is so far imperfect. But if we give these men, as we must, the credit of sincerity, still opposition is none the less a duty. The spirit of man must work out its own destiny, learning truth out of error and pain. It cannot be moral by proxy. A virtuous course into which it is whipt by fear will avail it nothing, and in that dread hour when it comes before the Mighty who sent it forth, neither will the plea avail it that its conscience was in another's keeping. The choice here lies between Priest and Hero as ideal, and I say that whatever is not heroic is not Irish, has not been nourished at the true fountain wherefrom our race and isle derive their mystic fame. There is a life behind the veil, another Eri which the bards knew, singing it as the Land of Immortal Youth. It is not hidden from us, though we have hidden ourselves from it, so that it has become only a fading memory in our hearts and a faery fable upon our lips. Yet there are still places in this isle, remote from the crowded cities where men and women eat and drink and wear out their lives and are lost in the lust for gold, where the shy peasant sees the enchanted lights in mountain and woody dell, and hears the faery bells pealing away, away, into that wondrous underland whither, as legends relate, the Danann gods withdrew. These things are not to be heard for the asking; but some, more reverent than the rest, more intuitive, who understand that the pure eyes of a peasant may see the things kings and princes, aye, and priests, have desired to see and have not seen; that for him may have been somewhat lifted the veil which hides from men the starry spheres where the Eternal Beauty abides in the shining--these have heard and have been filled with the hope that, if ever the mystic truths of life could be spoken here, there would be enough of the old Celtic fire remaining to bring back the magic into the isle. That direct relation, that vision, comes fully with spiritual freedom, when men no longer peer through another's eyes into the mysteries, when they will not endure that the light shall be darkened by transmission, but spirit speaks with spirit, drawing light from the boundless Light alone. Leaving aside the question of interference with national movements, another charge, one of the weightiest which can be brought against the priestly influence in this island, is that it has hampered the expression of native genius in literature and thought. Now the country is alive with genius, flashing out everywhere, in the conversation even of the lowest; but we cannot point to imaginative work of any importance produced in Ireland which has owed its inspiration to the priestly teaching. The genius of the Gael could not find itself in their doctrines; though above all things mystical it could not pierce its way into the departments of super-nature where their theology pigeon-holes the souls of the damned and the blessed. It knew of the Eri behind the veil which I spoke of, the Tir-na-noge which as a lamp lights up our grassy plains, our haunted hills and valleys. The faery tales have ever lain nearer to the hearts of the people, and whatever there is of worth in song or story has woven into it the imagery handed down from the dim druidic ages. This is more especially true today, when our literature is beginning to manifest preeminent qualities of imagination, not the grey pieties of the cloister, but natural magic, beauty, and heroism. Our poets sing Ossian wandering the land of the immortals; or we read in vivid romance of the giant chivalry of the Ultonians, their untamable manhood, the exploits of Cuculain and the children of Rury, more admirable as types, more noble and inspiring than the hierarchy of little saints who came later on and cursed their memories. The genius of the Gael is awakening after a night of troubled dreams. I returns instinctively to the beliefs of its former day and finds again the old inspiration. It seeks the gods on the mountains, still enfolded by their mantle of multitudinous traditions, or sees them flash by in the sunlit diamond airs. How strange, but how natural is all this! It seems as if Ossian's was a premature return. Today he might find comrades come back from Tir-na-noge for the uplifting of their race. Perhaps to many a young spirit starting up among us Caolte might speak as to Mongan, saying: "I was with thee, with Finn." Hence, it may be, the delight with which we hear Standish O'Grady declaring that the bardic divinities will remain: "Nor, after centuries of obscuration, is their power to quicken, purify, and exalt, yet dead. Still they live and reign, and shall reign." After long centuries--the voice of a spirit ever youthful, yet older than all the gods, who with its breath of sunrise- coloured flame jewels with richest lights the visions of earth's dreamy-hearted children. Once more out of the Heart of the Mystery is heard the call of "Come away," and after that no other voice has power to lure: there remain only the long heroic labours which end in companionship with the gods. These voices do not stand for themselves alone. They are heralds before a host. No man has ever spoken with potent utterance who did not feel the secret urging of dumb, longing multitudes, whose aspirations and wishes converge on and pour themselves into fearless heart. The thunder of the waves is deeper because the tide is rising. Those who are behind do not come only with song and tale, but with stern hearts bent on great issues, among which, not least, is the intellectual liberation of Ireland. That is an aim at which some of our rulers may well grow uneasy. Soon shall young men, fiery- hearted, children of Eri, a new race, roll our their thoughts on the hillsides, before your very doors, O priests, calling your flocks from your dark chapels and twilight sanctuaries to a temple not built with hands, sunlit, starlit, sweet with the odour and incense of earth, from your altars call them to the altars of the hills, soon to be lit up as of old, soon to be the blazing torches of God over the land. These heroes I see emerging. Have they not come forth in every land and race when there was need? Here, too, they will arise. Ah, may darlings, you will have to fight and suffer: you must endure loneliness, the coldness of friends, the alienation of love; warmed only by the bright interior hope of a future you must toil for but may never see, letting the deed be its own reward; laying in dark places the foundations of that high and holy Eri of prophecy, the isle of enchantment, burning with druidic splendours, bright with immortal presences, with the face of the everlasting Beauty looking in upon all its ways, divine with terrestrial mingling till God and the world are one. There waits brooding in this isle a great destiny, and to accomplish it we must have freedom of thought. That is the greatest of our needs, for thought is the lightning-conductor between the heaven- world and earth. We want fearless advocates who will not be turned aside from their course by laughter or by threats. Why is it that the spirit of daring, imaginative enquiry is so dead here? An incubus of spiritual fear seems to beset men women so that they think, if they turn from the beaten track seeking the true, they shall meet, not the divine with outstretched hands, but a demon; that the reward for their search will not be joy or power but enduring pain. How the old bard swept away such fears! "If thy God were good," said Ossian, "he would call Finn into his dun." Yes, the heroic heart is dear to the heroic heart. I would back the intuition of an honest soul for truth against piled-up centuries of theology. But this high spirit is stifled everywhere by a dull infallibility which is yet unsuccessful, on its own part, in awakening inspiration; and, in the absence of original though, we pick over the bones of dead movements, we discuss the personalities of the past, but no one asks the secrets of life or of death. There are despotic hands in politics, in religion, in education, strangling any attempt at freedom. Of the one institution which might naturally be supposed to be the home of great ideas we can only say, reversing the famous eulogy on Oxford, it has never given itself to any national hero or cause, but always to the Philistine. With the young men who throng the literary societies the intellectual future of Ireland rests. In them are our future leaders. Out of these as from a fountain will spring--what? Will we have another generation of Irishmen at the same level as today, with everything in a state of childhood, boyish patriotism, boyish ideals, boyish humour? Or will they assimilate the aged thought of the world and apply it to the needs of their own land? I remember reading somewhere a description by Turgenieff of his contemporaries as a young man; how they sat in garrets, drinking execrably bad coffee or tea. But what thoughts! They talked of God, of humanity, of Holy Russia; and out of such groups of young men, out of their discussions, emanated that vast unrest which has troubled Europe and will trouble it still more. Here no questions are asked and no answers are received. There is a pitiful, blind struggle for a nationality whose ideas are not definitely conceived. What is the ideal of Ireland as a nation? It drifts from mind to mind, a phantom thought lacking a spirit, but a spirit which will surely incarnate. Perhaps some of our old heroes may return. Already it seems as if one had been here; a sombre Titan earlier awakened than the rest who passed before us, and sounded the rallying note of our race before he staggered to his tragic close. Others of brighter thought will follow to awaken the fires which Brigid in her vision saw gleaming beyond dark centuries of night, and confessed between hope and tears to Patrick. Meanwhile we must fight for intellectual freedom; we must strive to formulate to ourselves what it is we really wish for here, until at last the ideal becomes no more phantasmal but living; until our voices in aspiration are heard in every land, and the nations become aware of a new presence amid their councils, a last and most beautiful figure, as one after the cross of pain, after the shadowy terrors, with thorn-marks on the brow from a crown flung aside, but now radiant, ennobled after suffering, Eri, the love of so many dreamers, priestess of the mysteries, with the chant of beauty on her lips and the heart of nature beating in her heart. --April 15-May 15, 1897 The Age of the Spirit I am a part of all that I have met: Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untraveled world ..... ....... Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. --Ulysses We are no longer children as we were in the beginning. The spirit which, prompted by some divine intent, flung itself long ago into a vague, nebulous, drifting nature, though it has endured through many periods of youth, maturity, and age, has yet had its own transformations. Its gay, wonderful childhood gave way, as cycle after cycle coiled itself into slumber, to more definite purposes, and now it is old and burdened with experiences. It is not an age that quenches its fire, but it will not renew again the activities which gave it wisdom. And so it comes that men pause with a feeling which they translate into weariness of life before the accustomed joys and purposes of their race. They wonder at the spell which induced their fathers to plot and execute deeds which seem to them to have no more meaning than a whirl of dust. But their fathers had this weariness also and concealed it from each other in fear, for it meant the laying aside of the sceptre, the toppling over empires, the chilling of the household warmth, and all for a voice whose inner significance revealed itself but to one or two among myriads. The spirit has hardly emerged from the childhood with which nature clothes it afresh at every new birth, when the disparity between the garment and the wearer becomes manifest: the little tissue of joys and dreams woven about it found inadequate for shelter: it trembles exposed to the winds blowing out of the unknown. We linger at twilight with some companion, still glad, contented, and in tune with the nature which fills the orchards with blossom and sprays the hedges with dewy blooms. The laughing lips give utterance to wishes--ours until that moment. Then the spirit, without warning, suddenly falls into immeasurable age: a sphynx-like regard is upon us: our lips answer, but far from the region of elemental being we inhabit, they syllable in shadowy sound, out of old usage, the response, speaking of a love and a hope which we know have vanished from us for evermore. So hour by hour the scourge of the infinite drives us out of every nook and corner of life we find pleasant. And this always takes place when all is fashioned to our liking: then into our dream strides the wielder of the lightning: we get glimpse of the great beyond thronged with mighty, exultant, radiant beings: our own deeds become infinitesimal to us: the colours of our imagination, once so shining, grow pale as the living lights of God glow upon them. We find a little honey in the heart which we make sweeter for some one, and then another lover, whose forms are legion, sighs to us out of its multitudinous being: we know that the old love is gone. There is a sweetness in song or in the cunning reimaging of the beauty we see; but the Magician of the Beautiful whispers to us of his art, how we were with him when he laid the foundations of the world, and the song is unfinished, the fingers grow listless. As we receive these intimations of age our very sins become negative: we are still pleased if a voice praises us, but we grow lethargic in enterprises where the spur to activity is fame or the acclamation of men. At some point in the past we struggled mightily for the sweet incense which men offer to a towering personality: but the infinite is for ever within man: we sighed for other worlds and found that to be saluted as victor by men did not mean acceptance by the gods. But the placing of an invisible finger upon our lips when we would speak, the heart-throb of warning where we would love, that we grow contemptuous of the prizes of life, does not mean that the spirit has ceased from its labours, that the high-built beauty of the spheres is to topple mistily into chaos, as a mighty temple in the desert sinks into the sand, watched only by a few barbarians too feeble to renew its ancient pomp and the ritual of its once shining congregations. Before we, who were the bright children of the dawn, may return as the twilight race into the silence, our purpose must be achieved, we have to assume mastery over that nature which now overwhelms us, driving into the Fire-fold the flocks of stars and wandering fires. Does it seem very vast and far away? Do you sigh at the long, long time? Or does it appear hopeless to you who perhaps return with trembling feet evening after evening from a little labour? But it is back of all these things that the renewal takes place, when love and grief are dead; when they loosen their hold on the spirit and its sinks back into itself, looking out on the pitiful plight of those who, like it, are the weary inheritors of so great destinies: then a tenderness which is the most profound quality of its being springs up like the outraying of the dawn, and if in that mood it would plan or execute it knows no weariness, for it is nourished from the First Fountain. As for these feeble children of the once glorious spirits of the dawn, only a vast hope can arouse them from so vast a despair, for the fire will not invigorate them for the repetition of petty deeds but only for the eternal enterprise, the purpose of the immemorial battle waged through all the ages, the wars in heaven, the conflict between Titan and Divinity, which were part of the never-ending struggle of the human spirit to assert its supremacy over nature. Brotherhood, the declaration of ideals and philosophies, are but calls to the hosts, who lie crushed by this mountain nature piled above them, to arise again, to unite, to storm the heavens and sit on the seats of the mighty. As the titan in man ponders on this old, old purpose wherefor all its experience was garnered, the lightnings will once more begin to play through him and animate his will. So like the archangel ruined let us arise from despair and weariness with inflexible resolution, pealing once more the old heroic shout to our fallen comrades, until those great powers who enfold us feel the stirring and the renewal, and the murmur runs along the spheres, "The buried Titan moves once again to tear the throne from Him." --June 1897 A Thought Along the Road They torture me also.--Krishna The night was wet: and, as I was moving down the streets, my mind was also journeying on a way of its own, and the things which were bodily present before me were no less with me in my unseen traveling. Every now and then a transfer would take place, and some of the moving shadows in the street would begin walking about in the clear interior light. The children of the city, crouched in the doorways, or racing through the hurrying multitude and flashing lights, began their elfin play again in my heart; and that was because I had heard these tiny outcasts shouting with glee. I wondered if the glitter and shadow of such sordid things were thronged with magnificence and mystery for those who were unaware of a greater light and deeper shade which made up the romance and fascination of my own life. In imagination I narrowed myself to their ignorance, littleness, and youth, and seemed for a moment to flit amid great uncomprehended beings and a dim wonderful city of palaces. Then another transfer took place and I was pondering anew, for a face I had seen flickering through the warm wet mist haunted me; it entered into the realm of the interpreter, and I was made aware by the pale cheeks, and by the close-shut lips of pain, and by some inward knowledge, that there the Tree of Life was beginning to grow, and I wondered why it is that it always springs up through a heart in ashes: I wondered also if that which springs up, which in itself is an immortal joy, has knowledge that its shoots are piercing through such anguish; or again, if it was the piercing of the shoots which caused the pain, and if every throb of the beautiful flame darting upward to blossom meant the perishing of some more earthly growth which had kept the heart in shadow. Seeing to how so many thoughts spring up from such a simple thing, I questioned whether that which started the impulse had any share in the outcome, and if these musing of mine in any way affected their subject. I then began thinking about those secret ties on which I have speculated before, and in the darkness my heart grew suddenly warm and glowing, for I had chanced upon one of those shining imaginations which are the wealth of those who travel upon the hidden ways. In describing that which comes to us all at once, there is a difficulty in choosing between what is first and what is last to say: but, interpreting as best I can, I seemed to behold the onward movement of a Light, one among many Lights, all living, throbbing, now dim with perturbations, and now again clear, and all subtly woven together, outwardly in some more shadowy shining, and inwardly in a greater fire, which, though it was invisible, I knew to be the Lamp of the World. This Light which I beheld I felt to be a human soul, and these perturbations which dimmed it were its struggles and passionate longings for something, and that was for a more brilliant shining of the light within itself: it was in love with its own beauty, enraptured by its own lucidity; and I saw that as these things were more beloved they grew paler, for this light is the love which the Mighty Mother has in her heart for her children, and she means that it shall go through each one unto all, and whoever restrains it in himself is himself shut out; not that the great heart has ceased in its love for that soul, but that the soul has shut itself off from influx, for ever imagination of man is the opening or the closing of a door to the divine world: now he is solitary, cut off, and, seemingly to himself, on the desert and distant verge of things: and then his thought throws open the swift portals; he hears the chant of the seraphs in his heart, and he is made luminous by the lighting of a sudden aureole. This soul which I watched seemed to have learned at last the secret love: for, in the anguish begotten by its loss, it followed the departing glory in penitence to the inmost shrine where it ceased altogether; and because it seemed utterly lost and hopeless of attainment and capriciously denied to the seeker, a profound pit arose in the soul for those who, like it were seeking, but still in hope, for they had not come to the vain end of their endeavors. I understood that such pity is the last of the precious essences which make up the elixir of immortality, and when it is poured into the cup it is ready for drinking. And so it was with this soul which drew brilliant with the passage of eternal light through its new purity of self-oblivion, and joyful in the comprehension of the mystery of the secret love, which, though it has been declared many times by the greatest of teachers among men, is yet never known truly unless the Mighty Mother has herself breathed it in the heart. And now that the soul had divined this secret, the shadowy shining which was woven in bonds of union between it and its fellow-lights grew clearer; and a multitude of these strands were, so it seemed, strengthened and placed in its keeping: along these it was to send the message of the wisdom and the love which were the secret sweetness of its own being. Then a spiritual tragedy began, infinitely more pathetic than the old desolation, because it was brought about by the very nobility of the spirit. This soul, shedding its love like rays of glory, seemed itself the centre of a ring of wounding spears: it sent forth love and the arrowy response came hate-impelled: it whispered peace and was answered by the clash of rebellion: and to all this for defence it could only bare more openly its heart that a profounder love from the Mother Nature might pass through upon the rest. I knew this was what a teacher, who wrote long ago, meant when he said: "Put on the whole armour of god," which is love and endurance, for the truly divine children of the Flame are not armed otherwise: and of those protests, sent up in ignorance or rebellion against the whisper of the wisdom, I saw that some melted in the fierce and tender heat of the heart, and there came in their stead a golden response which made closer the ties, and drew these souls upward to an understanding and to share in the overshadowing nature: and this is part of the plan of the Great Alchemist, whereby the red ruby of the heart is transmuted into the tenderer light of the opal; for the beholding of love made bare acts like the flame of the furnace, and the dissolving passions, through an anguish of remorse, the lightnings of pain, and through an adoring pity, are changed into the image they contemplate and melt in the ecstasy of self-forgetful love, the spirit which lit the thorn-crowned brows, which perceived only in its last agony the retribution due to its tormentors, and cried out, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Now although the love of the few may alleviate the hurt due to the ignorance of the mass, it is not in the power of anyone to withstand for ever this warfare; for by the perpetual wounding of the inner nature it is so wearied that the spirit must withdraw from a tabernacle grown too frail to support the increase of light within and the jarring of the demoniac nature without: and at length comes the call which means, for a while, release, and a deep rest in regions beyond the paradise of lesser souls. So, withdrawn into the Divine Darkness, vanished the Light of my dream. And now it seemed as if this wonderful weft of souls intertwining as one being must come to naught; and all those who through the gloom had nourished a longing for the light would stretch out hands in vain for guidance: but that I did not understand the love of the Mother, and that although few, there is no decaying of her heroic brood; for, as the seer of old caught at the mantle of him who went up in the fiery chariot, so another took up the burden and gathered the shining strands together: and to this sequence of spiritual guides there is no ending. Here I may say that the love of the Mother, which, acting through the burnished will of the hero, is wrought to highest uses, is in reality everywhere, and pervades with profoundest tenderness the homeliest circumstance of daily life; and there is not lacking, even among the humblest, an understanding of the spiritual tragedy which follows upon every effort of the divine nature bowing itself down in pity to our shadowy sphere; an understanding in which the nature of the love is gauged through the extent of the sacrifice and pain which is overcome. I recall the instance of an old Irish peasant, who, as he lay in hospital wakeful from a grinding pain in his leg, forgot himself in making drawings, rude yet reverently done, of incidents in the life of the Galilean teacher. One of these which he showed me was a crucifixion, where, amidst much grotesque symbolism, were some tracings which indicated a purely beautiful intuition; the heart of this crucified figure, no less than the brow, was wreathed about with thorns and radiant with light: "For that," said he, was where he really suffered." When I think of this old man, bringing forgetfulness of his own bodily pain through contemplation of the spiritual suffering of his own, nobly undergone, had given him understanding, and he had laid his heart in love against the Heart of Many Sorrows, seeing it wounded by unnumbered spears yet burning with undying love. Though much may be learned by observance of the superficial life and actions of a spiritual teacher, it is only in the deeper life of meditation and imagination that it can be truly realized; for the soul is a midnight blossom which opens its leaves in dream, and its perfect bloom is unfolded only where another sun shines in another heaven: there it feels what celestial dews descend on it, and what influences draw it up to its divine archetype: here in the shadow of earth root intercoils with root and the finer distinctions of the blossom are not perceived. If we knew also who they really are, who sometimes in silence, and sometimes with the eyes of the world at gaze, take upon them the mantle of teacher, an unutterable awe would prevail; for underneath a bodily presence not in any sense beautiful may burn the glory of some ancient divinity, some hero who laid aside his sceptre in the enchanted land to rescue old-time comrades fallen into oblivion: or again, if we had the insight of the simple old peasant into the nature of this enduring love, out of the exquisite and poignant emotions kindled would arise the flame of a passionate love which would endure long aeons of anguish that it might shield, though but for a little, the kingly hearts who may not shield themselves. But I too, who write, have launched the rebellious spear, or in lethargy have ofttimes gone down the great drift numbering myself among those who not being with must needs be against: therefor I make no appeal; they only may call who stand upon the lofty mountains; but I reveal the thought which arose like a star in my soul with such bright and pathetic meaning, leaving it to you who read to approve and apply it. --July 15, 1897 The Fountains of Youth I heard that a strange woman, dwelling on the western coast, who had the repute of healing by faery power, said a little before she died, "There's a cure for all things in the well at Ballykeele": and I know not why at first, but her words lingered with me and repeated themselves again and again, and by degrees to keep fellowship with the thought they enshrined came more antique memories, all I had heard or dreamed of the Fountains of Youth; for I could not doubt, having heard these fountains spoken of by people like herself, that her idea had a druid ancestry. Perhaps she had bent over the pool until its darkness grew wan and bright and troubled with the movements of a world within and the agitations of a tempestuous joy; or she had heard, as many still hear, the wild call to "Come away," from entreating lips and flame- encircled faces, or was touched by the star-tipped fingers, and her heart from the faery world came never back again to dwell as before at ease in this isle of grey mists and misty sunlight. These things are not fable only, for Ireland is still a land of the gods, and in out of the way places we often happen on wonderlands of romance and mystic beauty. I have spoken to people who have half parted from their love for the world in a longing for the pagan paradise of Tir-na-nog, and many who are outwardly obeisant to another religion are altogether pagan in their hearts, and Meave the Queen of the Western Host is more to them than Mary Queen of Heaven. I was told of this Meave that lately she was seen in vision by a peasant, who made a poem on her, calling her "The Beauty of all Beauty": and the man who told me this of his friend had himself seen the jetted fountains of fire-mist winding up in spiral whirls to the sky, and he too had heard of the Fountains of Youth. The natural longing in every heart that its youth shall not perish makes one ponder and sigh over this magical past when youth, ecstasy, and beauty welled from a bountiful nature at the sung appeal of her druid children holding hand in hand around the sacred cairn. Our hearts remember: A wind blows by us fleeting Along the reedy strand: And sudden our hearts are beating Again in the druid-land. All silver-pale, enchanted, The air-world lies on the hills, And the fields of light are planted With the dawn-frail daffodils. The yellow leaves are blowing The hour when the wind-god weaves, And hides the stars and their glowing In a mist of daffodil leaves. We stand in glimmering whiteness, Each face like the day-star fair, And rayed about in its brightness With a dawn of daffodil air. And through each white robe gleaming, And under each snow-white breast, Is a golden dream-light streaming Like eve through an opal west. One hand to the heart, another We raise to the dawn on high; For the sun in the heart is brother To the sun-heart of the sky. A light comes rising and falling, As ringed in the druid choir We sing to the sun-god, calling By his name of yellow fire. The touch of the dew-wet grasses, The breath of the dawn-cool wind, With the dawn of the god-light passes And the world is left behind. We drink of a fountain giving The joy of the gods, and then-- The Land of the Ever-living Has passed from us again. Passed far beyond all saying, For memory only weaves On a silver dawn outraying A cloud of daffodil leaves. And not indirectly through remembrance only, but when touched from within by the living beauty, the soul, the ancient druid in man, renews its league with the elements; and sometimes as the twilight vanishes and night lays on the earth her tender brow, the woods, the mountains, the clouds that tinted like seraphim float in the vast, and the murmur of water, wind and trees, melt from the gaze and depart from the outward ear and become internal reveries and contemplations of the spirit, and are no more separate but are part of us. Yet these vanishings from us and movements in worlds not realized, leave us only more thirsty to drink of a deeper nature where all things are dissolved in ecstasy, and heaven and earth are lost in God. So we turn seeking for the traces of that earlier wisdom which guided man into the Land of Immortal Youth, and assuaged his thirst at a more brimming flood of the Feast of Age, the banquet which Manannan the Danann king instituted in the haunt of the Fire-god, and whoever partook knew thereafter neither weariness, decay, not death. These mysteries, all that they led to, all that they promised for the spirit of man, are opening today for us in clear light, their fabulous distance lessens, and we hail these kingly ideals with as intense a trust and with more joy, perhaps, than they did who were born in those purple hours, because we are emerging from centuries indescribably meagre and squalid in their thought, and every new revelation has for us the sweetness of sunlight to one after the tears and sorrow of a prison-house. The well at Ballykeele is, perhaps, a humble starting-point for the contemplation of such mighty mysteries; but here where the enchanted world lies so close it is never safe to say what narrow path may not lead through a visionary door into Moy Argatnel, the silver Cloudland of Manannan, where "Feet of white bronze Glitter through beautiful ages." The Danann king with a quaint particularity tells Bran in the poem from which these lines are quoted, that "There is a wood of beautiful fruit Under the prow of thy little skiff." What to Bran was a space of pale light was to the eye of the god a land of pure glory, Ildathach the Many-coloured Land, rolling with rivers of golden light and dropping with dews of silver flame. In another poem the Brugh by the Boyne, outwardly a little hillock, is thus described: "Look, and you will see it is the palace of a god." Perhaps the mystic warriors of the Red Branch saw supernatural pillars blazoned like the sunset, and entered through great doors and walked in lofty halls with sunset-tinted beings speaking a more beautiful wisdom than earth's. And they there may have seen those famous gods who had withdrawn generations before from visible Eire: Manannan the dark blue king, Lu Lamfada with the sunrise on his brow and his sling, a wreath of rainbow flame, coiled around him, the Goddess Dana in ruby brilliance, Nuada silver-handed, the Dagda with floating locks of light shaking from him radiance and song, Angus Oge, around whose head the ever-winging birds made music, and others in whose company these antique heroes must have felt the deep joy of old companionship renewed, for were not the Danann hosts men of more primeval cycles become divine and movers in a divine world. In the Brugh too was a fountain, to what uses applied the mystical imagination working on other legends may make clearer. The Well of Connla, the parent fountain of many streams visible and invisible, was the most sacred well known in ancient Ireland. It lay itself below deep waters at the source of the Shannon, and these waters which hid it were also mystical, for they lay between earth and the Land of the Gods. Here, when stricken suddenly by an internal fire, the sacred hazels of wisdom and inspiration unfolded at once their leaves and blossoms and their scarlet fruit, which falling upon the waters dyed them of a royal purple; the nuts were then devoured by Fintann the Salmon of Knowledge, and the wisest of the druids partook also. This was perhaps the greatest of the mysteries known to the ancient Gael, and in the bright phantasmagoria conjured up there is a wild beauty which belongs to all their tales. The suddenly arising dreams of a remote divinity, the scarlet nuts tossing on the purple flood, the bright immortals glancing hither and thither, are pictures left of some mystery we may not now uncover, thought tomorrow may reveal it, for the dawn- lights are glittering everywhere in Ireland. Perhaps the strange woman who spoke of the well at Ballykeele, and the others like her, may know more about these fountains than the legend-seekers who so learnedly annoted their tales. They may have drunken in dreams of the waters at Connla's well, for many go to the Tir-na-nog in sleep, and some are said to have remained there, and only a vacant form is left behind without the light in the eyes which marks the presence of a soul. I make no pretence of knowledge concerning the things which underlie their simple speech, but to me there seems to be for ever escaping from legend and folk-tale, from word and custom, some breath of a world of beauty I sigh for but am not nigh to as these are. I think if that strange woman could have found a voice for what was in her heart she would have completed her vague oracle somewhat as I have done: There's a cure for all things in the well at Ballykeele, Where the scarlet cressets o'erhang from the rowan trees; There's a joy-breath blowing from the Land of Youth I feel, And earth with its heart at ease. Many and many a sun-bright maiden saw the enchanted land With star-faces glimmer up from the druid wave: Many and many a pain of love was soothed by a faery hand Or lost in the love it gave. When the quiet with a ring of pearl shall wed the earth And the scarlet berries burn dark by the stars in the pool, Oh, its lost and deep I'll be in the joy-breath and the mirth, My heart in the star-heart cool. --September 15, 1897 
14587	----	THE CREST-WAVE OF EVOLUTION A Course of Lectures in History, Given to the Graduates' Class in the Raja-Yoga College, Point Loma, in the College-Year 1918-1919.* by KENNETH MORRIS CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION II. HOMER III. GREEKS AND PERSIANS IV. AESCHYLUS AND ATHENS V. SOME PERICLEAN FIGURES VI. SOCRATES AND PLATO VII. THE MAURYAS OF INDIA VIII. THE BLACK-HAIRED PEOPLE IX. THE DRAGON AND THE BLUE PEARL X. "SUCH A ONE" XI. CONFUCIUS THE HERO XII. TALES FROM A TAOIST TEACHER XIII. MANG THE PHILOSOPHER, AND BUTTERFLY CHWANG XIV. THE MANVANTARA OPENS XV. SOME POSSIBLE EPOCHS IN SANSKRIT LITERATURE XVI. THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME XVII. ROME PARVENUE XVIII. AUGUSTUS XIX. AN IMPERIAL SACRIFICE XX. CHINA AND ROME: THE SEE-SAW XXI. CHINA AND ROME: THE SEE-SAW (Continued) XXII. EASTWARD HO! XXIII. "THE DRAGON, THE APOSTATE, THE GREAT MIND" XXIV. FROM JULIAN TO BODHIDHARMA XXV. TOWARDS THE ISLANDS OF THE SUNSET XXVI. "SACRED IERNE OF THE HIBERNIANS" XXVII. THE IRISH ILLUMINATION ------------ * Serialized in _Theosophical Path_ in 27 Chapters from March, 1919 through July, 1921. ----------- I. INTRODUCTORY These lectures will not be concerned with history as a record of wars and political changes; they will have little to tell of battles, murders, and sudden deaths. Instead, we shall try to discover and throw light on the cyclic movements of the Human Spirit. Back of all phenomena, or the outward show of things, there is always a noumenon in the unseen. Behind the phenomena of human history, the noumenon is the Human Spirit, moving in accordance with its own necessities and cyclic laws. We may, if we go to it intelligently, gain some inkling of knowledge as to what those laws are; and I think that would be, in its way, a real wisdom, and worth getting. But for the most part historical study seeks knowledge only; and how it attains its aim, is shown by the falseness of what passes for history. In most textbooks you shall find, probably, a round dozen of lies on as many pages. And these in themselves are fruitful seeds of evil; they by no means end with the telling, but go on producing harvests of wrong life; which indeed is only the Lie incarnate on the plane of action. The Eternal _Right Thing_ is what is called in Sanskrit SAT, the True; it opposite is the Lie, in one fashion or another, always; and what we have to do, our mission and _raison d'etre_ as students of Theosophy, is to put down the Lie at every turn, and chase it, as far as we may, out of the field of life. For example, there is the Superior-Race Lie: I do not know where it shall not be found. Races A, B, C, and D go on preaching it for centuries; each with an eye to its sublime self. In all countries, perhaps, history is taught with that lie for mental background. Then we wonder that there are wars. But Theosophy is called onto provide a true mental background for historical study; and it alone can do so. It is the mission of Point Loma, among many other things, to float a true philosophy of history on to the currents of world-thought: and for this end it is our business to be thinkers, using the divine Manasic light within us to some purpose. H.P. Blavatsky supplied something much greater than a dogma: she--like Plato --gave the world a method and a spur to thought: pointed for it a direction, which following, it might solve all problems and heal the wounds of the ages. A false and foolish notion in the western world has been, tacitly to accept the Greeks and Hebrews of old for the two fountains of all culture since; the one in secular matter, the other in religion and morality. Of the Hebrews nothing need be said here; but that true religion and morality have their source in the ever-living Human Spirit, not in any sect, creed, race, age, or bible. I doubt there has been any new discovery in ethics since man was man; or rather, all discoveries have been made by individuals for themselves; and each, having discovered anything, has found that that same principle was discovered a thousand times before, and written a thousand times. There is no platitude so platitudinous, but it remains to burst upon the perceptions of all who have not yet perceived it, as a new and burning truth; and on the other hand, there is no startling command to purity or compassion, that has not been given out by Teachers since the world began.--As for Greece, there was a brilliant flaming up of the Spirit there in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries B.C.; and its intensity, like the lights of an approaching automobile, rather obscures what lies beyond. It is the first of which we have much knowledge; so we think it was the first of all. But in fact civilization has been traveling its cyclic path all the time, all these millions of years; and there have been hundreds of ancient great empires and cultural epochs even in Europe of which we know nothing. I had intended to begin with Greece; but these unexplored eras of old Europe are too attractive, and this first lecture must go to them, or some of them. Not to the antecedents of Greece, in Crete and elsewhere; but to the undiscovered North; and in particular to the Celtic peoples; who may serve us as an example by means of which light may be thrown on the question of racial growth, and on the racial cycles generally. The Celtic Empire of old Europe affects us like some mysterious undiscovered planet. We know it was there by its effects on other peoples. Also, like many other forgotten histories, it has left indications of its achievement in a certain spirit, an uplift, the breath of an old traditional grandeur that has come down. But to give any historical account of it--to get a telescope that will reach and reveal it--we have not to come to that point yet. Still, it may be allowed us to experiment with all sorts of glasses. To penetrate that gloom of ancient Europe may be quite beyond us; but guessing is permitted. Now the true art of guessing lies in an intuition for guiding indications. There is something in us that knows things directly; and it may deign at times to give hints, to direct the researches, to flash some little light on that part of us which works and is conscious in this world, and which we call our brain-minds. So although most or all of what I am going to say would be called by the scientific strictly empirical, fantastic and foolish, yet I shall venture; aware that their Aristotelio-Baconian method quite breaks down when it comes to such a search into the unknown; and that this guessing, guided by what seems to be a law, would not, perhaps, have been sneered at by Plato. Guided by what seems to be a law;--guided, at any rate, by the knowledge that there are laws; that "God geometrizes," as Plato says: that which is within flows outward upon a design; that life precipitates itself through human affairs as it does through the forms of the crystals; that there is nothing more haphazard about the sequence of empires and civilizations, than there is about the unfolding of petals of a flower. In both cases it is the eternal rhythm, the Poetry of the Infinite, that manifests; our business is to listen so carefully as to hear, and apprehend the fact that what we hear is a poetry, a vast music, not a chaotic cacophony: catch the rhythms--perceive that there is a design--even if it takes us long to discover what the design may be. You know Plato's idea that the world is a dodecahedron or twelve-sided figure. Now in Plato's day, much that every schoolboy knows now, was esoteric--known only to the initiated. So I think Plato would have known well enough that this physical earth is round; and that what he meant when he spoke of the dodecahedron, was something else. This, for example: that on the plane of causes--this outer plane being that of effects --there are twelve (geographical) centers, aspects, foci, facets, or what you like to call them: twelve _laya centers,_ as I think the Secret Doctrine would say: through which the forces from within play on the world without. You have read, too, in _The Secret Doctrine,_ Professor Crooke's theory, endorsed by H.P. Blavatsky, as to how the chemical elements were deposited by a spiral evolutive force, a creative impulse working outward in the form of a caduceus or lemniscate, or figure '8.' Now suppose we should discover that just as that force deposited in space, in its spiral down-working, what Crookes calls the seeds of potassium, beryllium, boron, and the rest--so such another creative force, at work on the planes of geographical space and time, rouses up or deposits in these, according to a definite pattern, this nation and that in its turn, this great age of culture after that one; and that there is nothing hap-hazard about the configuration of continents and islands, national boundaries, or racial migrations? H.P. Blavatsky tells us that the whole past history of the race is known to the Guardians of the Secret Wisdom; that it is all recorded, nothing lost; down to the story of every tribe since the Lords of Mind incarnated. And that these records are in the form of a few symbols; but symbols which, to those who can interpret or disintegrate them, can yield the whole story. What if the amount of the burden of history, which seems so vast to us who know so very little of it, were in reality, if we could know it all, a thing that would put but slight tax on the memory; a thing we might carry with us in a few slight formulae, a few simple symbols? I believe that it is so; and that we may make a beginning, and go some little way towards guessing what these formulae are. As thus: A given race flowered and passed; it had so many centuries of history before its flowering; it died, and left something behind. Greece, for example. We may know very little --you and I may know very little--of the details of Greek history. We cannot, perhaps, remember the date of Aegospotami, or what happened at Plataea: we may have the vaguest notion of the import of Aeschylus, or Sophocles, or Plato. But still there is a certain color in our conscious perceptions which comes from Greece: the 'glory that was Greece' means something, is a certain light within the consciousness, to everyone of us. The Greeks added something to the wealth of the human spirit, which we all may share in, and do. An atmosphere is left, which surrounds and adheres to the many tangible memorials; just as an atmosphere is left by the glories of the Cinquecento in Italy, with its many tangible memorials. But indeed, we may go further, and say that an atmosphere is left, and that we can feel it, by many ages and cultures which have left no tangible memorials at all; or but few and uninterpretable ones, like the Celtic. And that each has developed some mood, some indefinable inward color--which we perceive and inherit. Each different: you cannot mistake the Chinese or the Celtic color for the Greek; thought it might be hard to define your perception of either, or of their difference. It would be hard to say, for instance, that this one was crimson, the other blue; not quite so hard to say that this one affects us as crimson does, that other as blue does. And yet we can see, I think, that by chasing our impressions to their source, there might be some way of presenting them in symbolic form. There might be some way of reducing what we feel from the Greeks, or Chinese, or Celts, into a word, a sentence; of writing it down even in a single hieroglyph, of which the elements would be such as should convey to something in us behind the intellect just the indefinable feeling either of these people give us. In the Chinese writing, with all its difficulty, there is something superior to our alphabets: an element that appeals to the soul directly, or to the imagination directly, I think. Suppose you found a Chinese ideogram--of course there is no such a one--to express the forgotten Celtic culture; and it proved in analysis, to be composed of the signs for twilight, wind, and pine trees; or wind, night, and wild waters; with certain other elements which not the brain-mind, but the creative soul, would have to supply. In such a symbol there would be an appeal to the imagination--that great Wizard within us--to rise up and supply us with quantities of knowledge left unsaid. Indeed, I am but trying to illustrate an idea, possibilities.... I think there is a power within the human soul to trace back all growths, the most profuse and complex, to the simple seed from which they sprung; or, just as a single rose or pansy bloom is the resultant, the expression, of the interaction and interplay of innumerable forces--so the innumerable forces whose interaction makes the history of one race, one culture, could find their ultimate expression in a symbol as simple as a pansy or rose bloom--color, form and fragrance. So each national great age would be a flower evolved in the garden of the eternal; and once evolved, once bloomed, it should never pass away; the actual blossom withers and falls; but the color, the form, the fragrance,--these remain in the world of causes. And just as you might press a flower in an album, or make a painting of it, and preserve its scent by chemical distillation or what not--and thereby preserve the whole story of all the forces that went to the production of that bloom--and they are, I suppose, in number beyond human computation--so you might express the history of a race in a symbol as simple as a bloom... And that there is a power, an unfolding faculty, in the soul, which, seeing such a symbol, could unravel from it, by meditation, the whole achievement of the race; its whole history, down to details; yes, even down to the lives of every soul that incarnated in it: their personal lives, with all successes, failures, attempts, everything. Because, for example, the light which comes down to us as that of ancient Greece is the resultant, the remainder of all the forces in all the lives of all individual Greeks, as these were played on by the conditions of place and time. Time:--at such and such a period, the Mood of the Oversoul is such and such. Place:--the temporal mood of the Oversoul, playing through that particular facet of the dodecahedron, which is Greece. The combinations and interplay of these two, plus the energies for good or evil of the souls there incarnate, give as their resultant the whole life of the race. There is perhaps a high Algebra of the Soul by which, if we understood its laws, we could revive the history of any past epoch, discover its thought and modes of living, as we discover the value of the unknown factor in an equation. Pythagoras must have his pupils understand music and geometry; and by music he intended, all the arts, every department of life that came under the sway of the Nine Muses. Why?--Because, as he taught, God is Poet and Geometer. Chaos is only on the outer rim of existence; as you get nearer the heart of thing, order and rhythm, geometry and poetry, are more and more found. Chaos is only in our own chaotic minds and perceptions: train these aright, and you shall hear the music of the spheres, perceive the reign of everlasting Law. These impulses from the Oversoul, that create the great epochs, raising one race after another, have perfect rhythm and rhyme. God sits harping in the Cycle of Infinity, and human history is the far faint echo of the tune he plays. Why can we not listen, till we hear and apprehend the tune? Or History is the sound heard from far, of the marching hosts of angels and archangels; the cyclic tread of their battalions; the thrill and rumble and splendor of their drums and fifes:--why should we not listen till the whole order of their cohorts and squadrons is revealed?--I mean to suggest that there are laws, undiscovered, but discoverable--discoverable from the fragments of history we possess--by knowing which we might gain knowledge, even without further material discoveries, of the lost history of man. Without moving from Point Loma, or digging up anything more important that hard-pan, we may yet make the most important finds, and throw floods of light on the whole dark problem of the past. H.P. Blavatsky gave us the clews; we owe it to her to use them. Now I want to suggest a few ideas along these lines that may throw light on ancient Europe; of which orthodox history tells us of nothing but the few centuries of Greece and Rome. As if the people of three thousand years hence should know, of the history of Christendom, only that of Italy from Garibaldi onward, and that of Greece beginning, say, at the Second Balkan War. That is the position we are in with regard to old Europe. Very like Spain, France, Britain, Germany and Scandinavia played as great parts in the millennia B.C., as they have done in the times we know about. All analogy from the other seats of civilization is for it; all racial memories and traditions--tradition is racial memory--are for it; and I venture to say, all reason and common sense are for it too. Now I have to remind you of certain conclusions worked out in an article 'Cyclic Law in History,' which appeared some time back in _The Theosophical Path:_--that there are, for example, three great centers of historical activity in the Old World: China and her surroundings; West Asia and Egypt; Europe. Perhaps these are major facets of the dodecahedron. Perhaps again, were the facts in our knowledge not so desperately incomplete, we should find, as in the notes and colors, a set of octaves: that each of these centers was a complete octave, and each phase or nation a note. Do you see where these leads? Supposing the note _China_ is struck in the Far Eastern Octave; would there not be a vibration of some corresponding note in the octave Europe? Supposing the Octave _West Asia_ were under the fingers of the Great Player, would not the corresponding note in Europe vibrate? Now let us look at history. Right on the eastern rim of the Old World is the Chino-Japanese field of civilization. It has been, until lately, under pralaya, in a night or inactive period of its existence, for something over six centuries: a beautiful pralaya in the case of Japan; a rather ugly one, recently, in the case of China. Right on the western rim of the Old World are the remnants of the once great Celtic people. Europe at large has been very much in manvantara, a day or waking period, for a little over six hundred years. Yet of the four racial roots or stocks of Europe, the Greco-Latin, Teutonic, Slavic, and Celtic, the last-named alone has been under pralaya, sound asleep, during the whole of this time. Let me interject here the warning that it is no complete scheme that is to be offered; only a few facts that suggest that such a scheme may exist, could we find it. Before Europe awoke to her present cycle of civilization and progress, before the last quarter of the thirteenth century, the Chinese had been in manvantara, very much awake, for about fifteen hundred years. When they went to sleep, the Celts did also. I pass by with a mere note of recognition the two dragons, the one on the Chinese, the other on the Welsh flag; just saying that national symbols are not chose haphazard, but are an expression of inner things; and proceed to give you the dates of all the important events in Chinese and Celtic, chiefly Welsh, history during the last two thousand years. In 1911 the Chinese threw off the Manchu yoke and established a native republic. In 1910 the British Government first recognized Wales as a separate nationality, when the heir to the throne was invested as Prince of Wales at Carnarvon. Within a few years a bill was passed giving Home Rule to Ireland; and national parliaments at Dublin and at Cardiff are said to be among the likelihoods of the near future. The eighteenth century, for manvantara, was a singularly dead time in Europe; but in China, for pralaya, it was a singularly living time, being filled with the glorious reigns of the Manchu emperors Kanghu and Kien Lung. In Wales it saw the religious revival which put a stop to the utter Anglicization of the country, saved the language from rapid extinction, and awakened for the first time for centuries a sort of national consciousness. Going back, the first great emperor we come to in China before the Manchu conquest, was Ming Yunglo, conqueror of half Asia. His contemporary in Wales was Owen Glyndwr, who succeeded in holding the country against the English for a number of years; there had been no Welsh history between Glyndwr and the religious revival. In 1260 or thereabouts the Mongols completed the conquest of China, and dealt her then flourishing civilization a blow from which it never really recovered. About twenty years later the English completed the conquest of Wales, and dealt her highly promising literary culture a blow from which it is only now perhaps beginning to recover. In the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries the great Sung artists of China were painting infinity or their square feet of silk: painting Natural Magic as it has never been painted or revealed since. In those same centuries the Welsh bards were writing the Natural Magic of the Mabinogion, one of the chief European repositories of Natural Magic; and filling a remarkable poetical literature with the same quality:--and that before the rest of Europe had, for the most part, awakened to the spiritual impulses that lead to civilization. In the seventh and eighth centuries, when continental Europe was in the dead vast and middle of pralaya, Chinese poetry, under Tang Hsuan-tsong and his great predecessors, was in its Golden Age--a Golden Age comparable to that of Pericles in Athens. In the seventh and eighth centuries, Ireland was sending out scholars and thinkers as missionaries to all parts of benighted Europe: Ireland in her golden age, the one highly cultured country in Christendom, was producing a glorious prose and poetry in the many universities that starred that then by no means distressful island. In 420, China, after a couple of centuries of anarchy, began to re-establish her civilization on the banks of the Yangtse. In 410, the Britons finally threw off the Roman yoke, and the first age of Welsh poetry, the epoch of Arthur and Taliesin, which has been the light of romantic Europe ever since, began. Does it not seem as if that great Far Eastern note could not be struck without this little far western note vibrating in sympathy? Very faintly; not in a manner to be heard clearly by the world; because in historical times the Celtic note has been as it were far up on the keyboard, and never directly under the Master-Musician's fingers. And when you add to it all that this Celtic note has come in the minds of literary critics rather to stand as the synonym for Natural Magic--you all know what is meant by that term;--and that now, as we are discovering the old Chinese poetry and painting, we are finding that Natural Magic is really far more Chinese than Celtic--that where we Celts have vibrated to it minorly, the great Chinese gave it out fully and grandly--does it not add to the piquancy of the 'coincidence?' Now there is no particular reason for doubting the figures of Chinese chronology as far back as 2350 B.C. Our Western authorities do doubt all before about 750; but it is hard to see why, except that 'it is their nature to.' The Chinese give the year 2356 as the date of the accession of the Emperor Yao, first of the three canonized rulers who have been the patriarchs, saints, sages, and examples for all ages since. In that decade a manvantara of the race would seem to have begun, which lasted through the dynasties of Hia and Shang, and halfway through the Chow, ending about 850. During this period, then, I think presently we shall come to place the chief activities and civilization of the Celts. From 850 to 240--all these figures are of course approximations: there was pralaya in China; on the other side of the world, it was the period of Celtic eruptions--and probably, disruption. While Tsin Shi Hwangti, from 246 to 213, was establishing the modern Chinese Empire, the Gauls made their last incursion into Italy. The culmination of the age Shi Hwangti inaugurated came in the reign of Han Wuti, traditionally the most glorious in the Chines annals. It lasted from 140 to 86 B.C.; nor was there any decline under his successor, who reigned until 63. In the middle of that time--the last decade of the second century--the Cimbri, allied with the Teutones, made their incursion down into Spain. Opinion is divided as to whether this people was Celtic or Teutonic; but probably the old view is the true one, that the word is akin to Cimerii, Crimea, and Cymry, and that they were Welshmen in their day. When Caesar was in Gaul, the people he conquered had much to say about their last great king. Diviciacos, whose dominions included Gaul and Britain; they looked back to his reign as a period of great splendor and national strength. He lived, they said, about a hundred years before Caesar's coming--or was contemporary with Han Wuti. But the empire of the Celtic Kings was already far fallen, before it was confined to Gaul, Britain, and perhaps Ireland. When first we see this people they were winning a name for fickleness of purpose: making conquests and throwing them away; which things are the marks of a race declining from a high eminence it had won of old through hard work and sound policy. We shall come to see that personal or outward characteristics can never be posited as inherent in any race. Such things belong to ages and stages in the race's growth. Whatever you can say of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, now, has been totally untrue of them at some other period. We think of the Italians as passionate, subtle of intellect, above all things artistic and beauty-loving. Now look at them as they were three centuries B.C.: plodding, self- contained and self-mastered, square-dealing and unsubtle, above all things contemning beauty, wholly inartistic. But a race may retain the same traits for a very long time, if it remains in a back-water, and is unaffected by the currents of evolution. So we may safely say of the Celts that the fickleness for which they were famed in Roman times was not a racial, but a temporal or epochal defect. They were not fickle when they held out (in Wales) for eight centuries against the barbarian onslaughts which brought the rest of the Roman empire down in two or three; or when they resisted for two hundred years those Normans who had conquered the Anglo-Saxons in a decade. This very quality, in old Welsh literature, is more than once given as a characteristic of extreme age; "I am old, bent double; I am fickly rash." says Llywarch Hen. I think that gives the clew to the whole position. The race was at the end of its manvantaric period; the Race Soul had lost control of the forces that bound its organism together; centrifugalism had taken the place of the centripetal impulse that marks the cycles of youth and growth. It had eaten into individual character; whence the tendency to fly off at tangents. We see the same thing in any decadent people; by which I mean, any people at the end of one of its manvantaras, and on the verge of a pralaya. And remember that a pralaya, like a night's rest or the Devachanic sleep between two lives, is simply a means for restoring strength and youth. How great the Celtic nations had been in their day, and what settled and civilized centuries lay behind them, one may gather from two not much noticed facts. First: Caesar, conqueror of the Roman world and of Pompey, the greatest Roman general of the day, landed twice in Britain, and spent a few weeks there without accomplishing anything in particular. But it was the central seat and last stronghold of the Celts; and his greatest triumph was accorded him for this feat; and he was prouder of it than anything else he ever did. He set it above his victories over Pompey. Second: the Gauls, in the first century B.C., were able to put in the field against him three million men: not so far short of the number France has been able to put in the field in the recent war. Napoleon could hardly, I suppose, have raised such an army--in France. Caesar is said to have killed some five million Gauls before he conquered them. By ordinary computations, that would argue a population of some thirty millions in the Gaulish half of the kingdom of Diviciacos a century after the latter's death; and even if that computation is too high, it leaves the fact irrefutable that there was a very large population; and a large population means always a long and settled civilization. Diviciacos ruled only Gaul and Britain; possible Ireland as well; he may have been a Gaul, a Briton, or an Irishman; very likely there was not much difference in those days. It will be said I am leaving out of account much that recent scholarship has divulged; I certainly am leaving out of account a great many of the theories of recent scholarship, which for the most part make confusion worse confounded. But we know that the lands held by the Celts--let us boldly say, with many of the most learned, the Celtic empire--was vastly larger in its prime than the British Isles and France. Its eastern outpost was Galatia in Asia Minor. You may have read in _The Outlook_ some months ago an article by a learned Serbian, in which he claims that the Jugo-Slavs of the Balkans, his countrymen, are about half Celtic; the product of the fusion of Slavic in-comers, perhaps conquerors, with an original Celtic population. Bohemia was once the land of the Celtic Boii; and we may take it as an axiom, that no conquest, no racial incursion, ever succeeds in wiping out the conquered people; unless there is such wide disparity, racial and cultural, as existed, for example, between the white settlers in America and the Indians. There are forces in human nature itself which make this absolute. The conquerors may quite silence the conquered; may treat them with infinite cruelty; may blot out all their records and destroy the memory of their race; but the blood of the conquered will go on flowing through all the generation of the children of the conquerors, and even, it seems probable, tend ever more and more to be the prevalent element. The Celts, then, at one time or another, have held the following lands: Britain and Ireland, of course; Gaul and Spain; Switzerland and Italy north of the Po; Germany, except perhaps some parts of Prussia; Denmark probably, which as you know was called the Cimbric Chersonese; the Austrian empire, with the Balkan Peninsula north of Macedonia, Epirus and Thrace, and much of southern Russia and the lands bordering the Black Sea. Further back, it seems probable that they and the Italic people were one race; whose name survives in that of the province of Liguria, and in the Welsh name for England, which is Lloegr. So that in the reign of Diviciacos their empire had already shrunk to the meerest fragment of its former self. It had broken and shrunk before we get the first historical glimpses of them; before they sacked Delphi in 279 B.C.: before their ambassadors made a treaty with Alexander; and replied to his question as to what they feared: "Nothing except that the skies should fall." Before they sacked Rome in 390. All these historic eruptions were the mere sporadic outburst of a race long past its prime and querulous with old age, I think Two thousand years of severe pralaya, almost complete extinction, utter insignificance and terrible karma awaited them; and we only see them, pardon the expression, kicking up their heels in a final plunge as a preparation for that long silence. Some time back I discussed these historical questions, particularly the correspondence between Celtic and Chinese dates, with Dr. Siren and Professor Fernholm; and they pointed out to me a similar correspondence between the dates of Scandinavian and West Asian history. I can remember but one example now: Gustavus Vasa, father of modern Sweden, founder of the present monarchy, came to the throne in 1523 and died in 1560. The last great epoch of the West Asian Cycle coincides, in the west, and reign of Suleyman the Magnificent in Turkey, from 1520 to 1566. At its eastern extremity, Babar founded the Mogul Empire in India in 1526; he reigned until 1556. On the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the Moguls ceased to be a great power; the Battle of Pultowa, in 1709, put an end to Sweden's military greatness. It is interesting to compare the earliest Celtic literature we have, with the earliest literature of the race which was to be the main instrument of Celtic bad karma in historical times--the Teutons. Here, as usual, common impressions are false. It is the latter, the Teutonic, that is in the minor key, and full of wistful sadness. There is an earnestness about it: a recognition of, and rather mournful acquiescence in, the mightiness of Fate, which is imagined almost always adverse. I quote these lines from William Morris, who, a Celt himself by mere blood and race, lived in and interpreted the old Teutonic spirit as no other English writer has attempted to do, mush less succeeded in doing: he is the one Teuton of English literature. He speaks of the "haunting melancholy" of the northern races--the "Thought of the Otherwhere" that "Waileth weirdly along through all music and song From a Teuton's voice or string: ..." Withal it was a brave melancholy that possessed them; they were equal to great deeds, and not easily to be discouraged; they could make merry, too; but in the midst of their merriment, they could not forget grim and hostile Fate:-- "There dwelt men merry-hearted and in hope exceeding great, Met the good days and the evil as they went the ways of fate." It is literature that reveals the heart of a people who had suffered long, and learnt from their suffering the lessons of patience, humility, continuity of effort: those qualities which enable them, in their coming manvantaric period, to dominate large portions of the world. But when we turn to the Celtic remains, the picture we find is altogether different. Their literature tells of a people, in the Biblical phrase, "with a proud look and a high stomach." It is full of flashing colors, gaiety, titanic pride. There was no grayness, no mournful twilight hue on the horizon of their mind; their 'Other-World' was only more dawn-lit, more noon-illumined, than this one; Ireland of the living was sun-bright and sparkling and glorious; but the 'Great Plain' of the dead was far more sun-bright and sparkling than Ireland. It is the literature of a people accustomed to victory and predominance. When they began to meet defeat they by no means acquiesced in it. They regarded adverse fate, not with reverence, but with contempt. They saw in sorrow no friend and instructress of the human soul; were at pains to learn no lesson from her; instead, they pitted what was their pride, but what they would have called the glory of their own souls, against her; they made no terms, asked no truce; but went on believing the human--or perhaps I should say the Celtic--soul more glorious than fate, stronger to endure and defy than she to humiliate and torment. In many sense it was a fatal attitude, and they reaped the misery of it; but they gained some wealth for the human spirit from it too. The aged Oisin has returned from Fairyland to find the old glorious order in Ireland fallen and passed during the three centuries of his absence. High Paganism has gone, and a religion meek, inglorious, and Unceltic has taken its mission thereto: tells him the gods are conquered and dead, and that the omnipotent God of the Christians reigns alone now.--"I would thy God were set on yonder hill to fight with my son Oscar!" replies Oisin. Patrick paints for him the hell to which he is destined unless he accepts Christianity; and Oisin answers: "Put the staff in my hands! for I go to the Fenians, thou cleric, to chant The warsongs that roused them of old; they will rise, making clouds with their breath. Innumerable, singing, exultant; and hell underneath them shall pant, And demons be broken in pieces, and trampled beneath them in death." "No," says Patrick; "none war on the masters of hell, who could break up the world in their rage"; and bids him weep and kneel in prayer for his lost soul. But that will not do for the old Celtic warrior bard; no tame heaven for him. He will go to hell; he will not surrender the pride and glory of his soul to the mere meanness of fate. He will "Go to Caolte and Conan, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair And dwell in the house of the Fenians, be they in flames or at feast." So with Llywarch Hen, Prince of Cumberland, in his old age and desolation. His kingdom has been conquered; he is in exile in Wales; his four and twenty sons, "wearers of golden torques, proud rulers of princes," have been slain; he is considerably over a hundred years old, and homeless, and sick; but no whit of his pride is gone. He has learnt no lesson from life excepts this One: that fate and Karma and sorrow are not so proud, not so skillful to persecute, as the human soul is capable of bitter resentful endurance. He is titanically angry with destiny; but never meek or acquiescent. Then if you look at their laws of war, you come to know very well how this people came to be almost blotted out. If they had a true spiritual purpose, instead of mere personal pride, I should say the world would be Celtic-speaking and Celtic-governed now. Yet still their reliance was all on what we must call spiritual qualities. The first notice we get in classical literature of Celts and Teutons--I think from Strabo--is this: "The Celts fight for glory, the Teutons for plunder." Instead of plunder, let us say material advantage; they knew why they were fighting, and went to get it. But the Celtic military laws--Don Quixote in a fit of extravagance framed them! There must be no defensive armor; the warrior must go bare-breasted into battle. There are a thousand things he must fear more than defeat or death--all that would make the glory of his soul seem less to him. He must make fighting his business, because in his folly it seemed to him that in it he could best nourish that glory; not for what material ends he could gain. Pitted against a people--with a definite policy, he was bound to lose in the long run. But still he endowed the human spirit with a certain wealth; still his folly had been a true spiritual wisdom at one time. The French at Fontenoy, who cried to their English enemies, when both were about to open fire: _"Apres vous, messieurs! "_ were simply practicing the principles of their Gaulish forefathers; the thrill of honor, of _'Pundonor'_ as the Spaniard says, was much more in their eyes than the chance of victory. Now, in what condition does a race gain such qualities? Not in sorrow; not in defeat, political dependence or humiliation. The virtues which these teach are of an opposite kind; they are what we may call the plebeian virtues which lead to success. But the others, the old Celtic qualities, are essentially patrician. You find them in the Turks; accustomed to sway subject races, and utterly ruthless in their dealings with them; but famed as clean and chivalrous fighters in a war with foreign peoples. See how the Samurai, the patricians of never yet defeated Japan, developed them. They are the qualities the Law teaches us through centuries of domination and aristocratic life. They are developed in a race accustomed to rule other races; a race that does not engage in commerce; in an aristocratic race, or in an aristocratic caste within a race. Here is the point: the Law designs periods of ascendency for each people in its turn, that it may acquire these qualities; and it appoints for each people in its turn Periods of subordination, poverty and sorrow, that it may develop the opposite qualities of patience, humility, and orderly effort. Would it not appear then, that in those first centuries B. C. when Celts and Teutons were emerging into historical notice, the Teutons were coming out of a long period of subordination, in which they had learnt strength--the Celts out of a long period of ascendency, in which they had learnt other things? The Teuton, fresh from his pralayic sleep, was unconquerable by Rome. The Celt, old, and intoxicated with the triumphs of a long manvantara, could not repel Roman persistence and order. Rome. too, was rising, or in her prime; had patience, and followed her material plans every inch of the way to success. Where she conquered, she imposed her rule. But whatever material plan were set before the Celt, some spiritual red-herring, some notion in his mind, was sure to sidetrack him before he had come half way to its accomplishment. He had enough of empire-building; and thirsted only after dreams. Brennus turned from a burnt Rome, his pride satisfied. Vercingetorix, decked in all his gold, rode seven times--was it seven times?--round the camp of Caesar: defeat had come to him; death was coming; but he would bathe his soul in a little pomp and glory first. Whether you threw your sword in the scales, or surrendered to infamous Caesar, the main thing was that you should kindle the pride in your eye, and puff up the highness of your stomach. . . . So the practical Roman despised him, and presently conquered him. Here is another curious fact: the greater number, if not all, of the words in the Teutonic languages denoting social order and the machinery of government, are of Celtic derivation. Words such as _Reich_ and _Amt,_ to give two examples I happen to remember out of a list quoted by Mr. T. W. Rollestone in one of his books. And now I think we have material before us wherewith to reconstruct a sketch or plan of ancient European history. Let me remind you again that our object is simply the discovery of Laws. That, in the eyes of the Law, there are no most favored nations. That there are no such things as permanent racial characteristics; but that each race adopts the characteristics appropriate to its stage of growth. It is a case of the pendulum swing, of ebb and flow. For two thousand years the Teutons have been pressing on and, dominating the Celts. They started at the beginning of that time with the plebeian qualities--and have evolved, generally speaking, a large measure of the patrician qualities. The Celts, meanwhile, have been pushed to the extremities of the world; their history has been a long record of disasters. But in the preceding period the case was just the reverse. Then the Celts held the empire. They ruled over large Teutonic populations. Holding all the machinery of government in their hands, they imposed on the languages of their Teuton subjects the words concerned with that machinery; just as in Welsh now our words of that kind are mostly straight from the English. It does not follow that there was any sudden rising of Teutons against dominant Celts; more probably the former grew gradually stronger as the latter grew gradually weaker, until the forces were equalized. We find the Cimbri and Teutones allied on equal terms against Rome. According to an old Welsh history, the _Brut Tyssilio,_ there were Anglo-Saxons in Britain before Caesar's invasion; invited there by the Celts, and living in peace under the Celtic kings. To quote the _Brut Tyssilio_ a short time ago would have been to ensure being scoffed at on all sides; but recently professor Flinders Petrie has vindicated it as against both the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Caesar himself. English Teutonic was first spoken in Britain probably, some two or three centuries B.C.; and it survived there, probably, in remote places, through the whole of the Roman occupation; then, under the influence of the rising star of the Teutons, and reinforced by new incursions from the Continent, finally extinguished the Latin of the roman province, and drove Celtic into the west. But go back from those first centuries B.C. and you come at last to a time when the Celtic star was right at the zenith, the Teutonic very low. Free Teutons you should hardly have found except in Scandinavia; probably only in southern Sweden: for further north, and in most of Norway, you soon came to ice and the Lapps and _terra incognita._ And even Sweden may have been under Celtic influence--for the Celtic words survive there --but hardly so as to affect racial individuality; just as Wales and Ireland are under English rule now, yet retain their Celtic individuality. And then go back a few more thousand years again, and you would probably find the case again reversed; and Teutons lording it over Celts, and our present conditions restored. It is by suffering these poles of experience, now pride and domination, now humiliation and adversity, that the races of mankind learn. Europe is not a new sort of continent. Man, says one of the Teachers, has been much what he is any time these million years. History has been much what it is now, ebbing and flowing. Knowledge, geographical and other, has receded, and again expanded. Europe has been the seat of empires and civilizations, all Europe, probably, for not so far short of a million years; there has been plenty of time for it to multiply terrible karma-- which takes the occasion to expend itself sometimes--as now. I mistrust the theory of recent Aryan in-pourings from Asia. The Huns came in when the Chinese drove them; and the Turks and Mongols have come in since; but there is nothing to show that the Slavs, for example, when they first appear in history, had come in from beyond the Urals and the Caspian. Slavs and Greco- Latins, Teutons and Celts, I think they were probably in Europe any time these many hundreds of thousands of years. Or rather, I think there were Europeans--Indo-Europeans, Aryans, call them what you will--where they are now at any time during such a period. Because race is a thing that will not bear close investigation. It is a phase; an illusion; a temporary appearance taken on by sections of humanity. There is nothing in it to fight about or get the least hot over. It is a camouflage; there you have the very word for it. What we call Celts and Teutons are simply portions of the one race, humanity, camouflaged up upon their different patterns. So far as flood and ultimate physical heredity are concerned, I doubt there is sixpenny-worth of difference between any two of the lot. "Oi mesilf," said Mr. Dooley, speaking as a good American citizen, "am the thruest and purest Anglo-Saxon that iver came out of Anglo-Saxony." We call ourselves Anglo-Saxons because we speak English (a language more than half Latin); when in reality we are probably Jews, Turks, infidels or heretics, if all were known. What is a Spaniard? A Latin, you answer pat. Yes; he speaks a Latin-derived language; and has certain qualities of temperament which seem to mark him as more akin to the French and Italians, than to those whom we, just as wisely, dub 'Teutonic' or 'Slavic.' But in fact he may have in his veins not a drop of blood that is not Celtic, or not a drop that is not Teutonic, or Moorish, or Roman, or Phoenician, or Iberian, or God knows what. Suppose you have four laya centers in Europe: four Foci through which psychic impulses from the Oversoul pour through into this world. A Mediterranean point, perhaps in Italy; a Teutonic point in Sweden; a Celtic point in Wales-Ireland (formerly a single island, before England rose out of the sea); and a Slavic point, probably in Russia. The moment comes for such and such a 'race' to expand; the Mediterranean, for example. The Italian laya center, Rome, quickens into life. Rome conquers Italy, Gaul, Spain, Britain, the East; becomes _Caput Mundi._ Countries that shortly before were Celtic in blood, become, through no material change in that blood, Latin; by language, and, as we say, by race. The moment comes for a Teutonic expansion. The laya center in Sweden quickens; there is a Swedish or Gothic invasion of Celtic lands south of the Baltic; the continental Teutons presently are freed. It is the expansion of a spirit, of a psychic something. People that were before Celts (just as Mr. Dooley is an Anglo-Saxon) become somehow Teutons. The language expands, and carries a tradition with it. Head measurements show that neither Southern Germany nor England differs very much towards Teutonicism from the Mediterranean type; yet the one is thoroughly Teutonic, the other Anglo-Saxon. Sometimes the blood may be changed materially; often, I suppose, it is changed to some extent; but the main change takes place in the language and tradition; sometimes in tradition alone. There was a minor Celtic quickening in the twelfth century A. D.; then Wales was in a fervor of national life. She had not the resources, or perhaps the will, for outside conquest. But her Authurian legend went forth, and drove Beowulf and Child Horn out of the memory of the English, Charlemagne out of the memory of the French; invaded Germany, Italy, even Spain: absolutely installed Welsh King Arthur as the national hero of the people his people were fighting; and infused chivalry with a certain uplift and mysticism through-out western Europe. Or again, in the Cinquecento and earlier, the Italian center quickened; and learning and culture flowed up from Italy through France and England; and these countries, with Spain, become the leaders in power and civilization. England since that Teutonic expansion which made her English was spent, has grown less and less Teutonic, more and more Latin; the Italian impulse of the Renaissance drove her far along that path. In the middle of the eleventh century, her language was purely Teutonic; you could count on the fingers of your hand the words derived from Latin or Celtic. And now? Sixty percent of all English words are Latin. At the beginning of the fifth century, after nearly three hundred years of Roman occupation, one can hardly doubt that Latin was the language of what is now England. Celtic, even then I imagine, was mainly to be heard among the mountains. See how that situation is slowly coming back. And the tendency is all in the same direction. You have taken, indeed, a good few words from Dutch; and some two dozen from German, in all these centuries; but a Latin word has only to knock, to be admitted and made welcome. Teachers of composition must sweat blood and tears for it, alas, to get their pupils to write English and shun Latin. In a thousand years' time, will English be as much a Latin language as French is? Quite likely. The Saxon words grow obsolete; French ones come pouring in. And Americans are even more prone to Latinisms than Englishmen are: they 'locate' at such and such a place, where an English man would just go and live there. Before Latin, Celtic was the language of Britain. Finally, says W.Q. Judge, Sanskrit will become the universal language. That would mean simply that the Fifth Root Race will swing back slowly through all the linguistic changes that it has known in the past, till it reaches its primitive language condition. Then the descendants of Latins, Slavs, Celts, and Teutons will proudly boast their unadulterated Aryan-Sanscrit heredity, and exult over their racial superiority to those barbarous Teutons, Celts, Slavs, and Latins of old, of whom their histories will lie profusely. II. Homer When the Law designs to get tremendous things out of a race of men, it goes to work this way and that, making straight the road for an inrush of important and awakened souls. Having in mind to get from Greece a startling harvest presently, it called one Homer, surnamed Maeonides, into incarnation, and endowed him with high poetic genius. Or he had in many past lives so endowed himself; and therefore the Law called him in. This evening I shall work up to him, and try to tell you a few things about him, some of which you may know already, but some of which may be new to you. What we may call a European manvantara or major cycle of activity--the one that preceded this present one--should have begun about 870 B. C. Its first age of splendor, _of which we know anything,_ began in Greece about 390 years afterwards; we may conveniently take 478, the year Athens attained the hegemony, as the date of its inception. Our present European manvantara began while Frederick II was forcing a road for civilization up from the Moslem countries through Italy; we may take 1240 as a central and convenient date. The first 390 years of it--from 1240 to 1632--saw Dante and all the glories of the Cinquecento in Italy; Camoens and the era of the great navigators in Portugal; Cervantes and his age in Spain; Elizabeth and Shakespeare in England. That will suggest to us that the Periclean was not the first age of splendor in Europe in that former manvantara; it will suggest how much we may have lost through the loss of all records of cultural effort in northern and western Europe during the four centuries that preceded Pericles. Of course we cannot certainly say that there were such ages of splendor. But we shall see presently that during every century since Pericles--during the whole historical period--there has been an age of splendor somewhere; and that these have followed each other with such regularity, upon such a definite geographical and chronological plan, that unless we accept the outworn conclusion that at a certain time--about 500 B. C.--the nature of man and the laws of nature and history underwent radical change, we shall have to believe that the same thing had been going on--the recurrence of ages of splendor--back into the unknown night of time. And that geographical and chronological plan will show us that such ages were going on in unknown Europe during the period we are speaking of. In the manvantara 2980 to 1480 B.C., did the Western Laya Center play the part in Europe, that the Southern one did in the manvantara 870 B.C. to 630 A.D.? Was the Celtic Empire then, what the roman Empire became in the later time? If so, their history after the pralaya 1480 to 870 may have been akin to that of the Latin, in this present cycle; no longer a united empire, they may have achieved something comparable to the achievements of France, Spain, and Italy in the later Middle Ages. At least we hear the rumblings of their marches and the far shoutings of their aimless victories until within a century or two of the Christian era. Then, what was Italy like in the heyday of the Etruscans, or under the Roman kings? The fall of Tarquin--an Etruscan--was much more epochal, much more disastrous, than Livy guessed. There were more than seven kings of Rome; and their era was longer than from 753 to 716; and Rome--or perhaps the Etruscan state of which it formed a part--was a much greater power then, than for several centuries after their fall. The great works they left are an indication. But only the vaguest traditions of that time came down to Livy. The Celts sacked Rome in 390 B.C., and all the records of the past were lost; years of confusion followed; and a century and a half and more before Roman history began to be written by Ennius in his epic _Annales._ It was a break in history and blotting out of the past; such as happened in China in 214 B.C., when the ancient literature was burnt. Such things take place under the Law. Race-memory may not go back beyond a certain time; there is a law in Nature that keeps ancient history esoteric. As we go forward, the horizon behind follows us. In the ages of materialism and the low places of racial consciousness, that horizon probably lies near to us; as you see least far on a level plain. But as we draw nearer to esotericism, and attain elevations nearer the spirit, it may recede; as the higher you stand, the farther you see. Not so long ago, the world was but six thousand years old in European estimation. But ever since Theosophy has been making its fight to spiritualize human consciousness, _pari passu_ the horizon of the past has been pushed back by new and new discoveries. What comes down to us from old Europe between its waking and the age of Pericles? Some poetry, legends, and unimportant history from Greece; some legends from Rome; the spirit or substance of the Norse sagas; the spirit or substance of the Welsh Mabinogi and the Arthurian atmosphere; and of the Irish tales of the Red Branch and Fenian cycles. The actual tales as we get them were no doubt retold in much later times; and it is these late recensions that we have. What will remain of England in the memory of three or four thousand years hence? Unless this Theosophical Movement shall have lifted human standards to the point where that which has hitherto been esoteric may safely be kept public, this much:--an echo only of what England has produced of eternal truth;--something from Shakespeare; something from Milton; and as much else in prose and poetry from the rest. But all the literature of this and all past ages is and will then still be in being; in the hidden libraries of the Guardians of Esoteric Science, from which they loose fragments and hints on the outer world as the occasion cyclically recurs, and as their wisdom directs. How do they loose such fragments of old inspiration? It may be by putting some manuscript in the way of discovery; it may be by raising up some man of genius who can read the old records on inner planes, and reproduce in epic or drama something of a long past splendor to kindle the minds of men anew. In that way Greece was kindled. Troy fell, says H. P. Blavatsky, nearly five thousand years ago. Now you will note that a European manvantara began in 2980 B. C.; which is very nearly five thousand years ago. And that this present European manvantara or major cycle was lit up from a West Asian Cycle; from the Moors in Spain; from Egypt through Sicily and Italy; and, in its greatest splendor; when Constantinople fell, and refugees therefrom came to light the Cinquecento in Italy. Now Constantinople is no great way from Troy; and, by tradition, refugees came to Italy from Troy, once. Was it they in part, who lit up that ancient European cycle of from 2980 to 1480 B. C.? In the Homeric poems a somewhat vague tradition seems to come down of the achievements of one of the European peoples in that ancient cycle. Sometime then Greece had her last Pre-periclean age of greatness. What form it took, the details of it, were probably as much lost to the historic Greeks as the details of the Celtic Age are to us. But Homer caught an echo and preserved the atmosphere of it. As the Celtic Age bequeaths to us, in the Irish and Welsh stories, a sense of style--which thing is the impress of the human spirit triumphant over all hindrances to its expression;--so that long past period bequeathed through Homer a sense of style to the later Greeks. It rings majestically through his lines. His history is perhaps not actual history in any recognizable shape. Legends of a long lost glory drifted down to a poet of mightiest genius; and he embodied them, amplified them, told his message through them; perhaps reinvented half of them. Even so Geoffrey of Monmouth (without genius, however) did with the rumors that came down to him anent the ancient story of his own people; and Spenser followed him in the _Faery Queen,_ Malory in his book, and Tennyson in the _Idylls of the King._ Even in that last, from the one poem _Morte D'Arthur_ we should get a sense of the old stylish magnificence of the Celtic epoch; for the sake of a score of lines in it, we can forgive Tennyson the rest of the Idylls. But Tennyson was no Celt himself; only, like Spenser and Malory, an anglicizer of things Celtic. How much more of the true spirit would have come down to Homer, a Greek of genius, writing of traditional Greek glory, and thrilled with racial uplift. Where did he live? Oh, Goodness knows! When? Goodness knows again. (Though we others may guess a little, I hope.) We have Herodotus for it, that Homer lived about four hundred years before his own time; that is to say, to give a date, in 850; and I like the figure well; for if Dante came in as soon as possible after the opening of this present manvantara, why not Homer as soon as possible after the opening of the last one? At such times great souls do come in; or a little before or a little after; because they have a work of preparation to do; and between Dante and Homer there is much parallelism in aims and aspirations: what the one sought to do for Italy, the other sought to do for Greece. But this is to treat Homer as if he had been one real man; whereas everybody knows 'it has been proved' (a) that there was no such person; (b) that there were dozens of him; (c) that black is white, man an ape, and the soul a fiction. Admitted. A school of critics has cleaned poor old blind Maeonides up very tidily, and left not a vestige of him on God's earth--just as they have, or their like have, cleaned up the Human Soul. But there is another school, who have preserved for him some shreds at least of identity. Briefly put, you can 'prove up what may be classed as brain-mind evidence--grammar, microscopic examination of text and forms and so on--that Homer is a mere airy myth; but to do so you must be totally oblivious of the spiritual facts of style and poetry. Take these into account, and he rises with wonderful individuality from the grave and nothingness into which you have relegated him. The Illiad does not read like a single poem; there are incompatibilities between its parts. On the other hand, there is, generally speaking, the impress of a single creative genius. One master made the Homeric style. The Iliad, as we know it, may contain passages not his; but--_he wrote the Iliad._ What does not follow is, that he ever sat down and said: "Now let us write an epic." Conditions would be against it. A wandering minstrel makes ballads, not epics; for him Poe's law applies: that is a poem which can be read or recited at a single sitting. The unity of the Iliad is one not of structure, but of spirit; and the chances are that the complete works of any great poet will be a unity of spirit. Why should we not suppose that in the course of a long life a great poet--whose name may not have been Homer--that may have been only _what he was called_--his real name may have been (if the critics will have it so) the Greek for Smith, or Jones, or Brown, or Robinson--but he was _called_ Homer anyhow--why should we not suppose that he, filled and fascinated always with one great traditionary subject, wrote now one incident as a complete poem; ten years later another incident; and again, after an interval, another? Each time with the intention to make a complete and separate poem; each time going to it influenced by the natural changes of his mood; now preoccupied with one hero or god, now with another. The Tennyson in his twenties, who wrote the fairylike _Lady of Shalott,_ was a very different man in mood and outlook from the Mid-Victorian Tennyson who wrote the execrable _Merlin and Vivien;_ but both were possessed with the Arthurian legend. At thirty and at fifty you may easily take different views of the same men and incidents. The Iliad, I suggest, may be explained as the imperfect fusion of many poems and many moods and periods of life of a single poet. It was not until the time of Pisistratus, remember, that it was edited into a single epic. Now these many poems, before Pisistratus took them in hand, had been in the keeping for perhaps three centuries of wandering minstrels--Rhapsodoi, Aoidoi, Citharaedi and Homeridae, as they were called--who drifted about the Isles of Greece and Asiatic mainland during the long period of Greek insignificance and unculture. The first three orders were doubtless in existence long before Homer was born; they were the bards, trouveurs and minnesingers of their time; their like are the instruments of culture in any race during its pralayas. So you find the professional story-tellers in the East today. But the Homeridae may well have been--as De Quincey suggests--an order specially trained in the chanting of Homeric poems; perhaps a single school founded in some single island by or for the sake of Homer. We hear that Lycurgus was the first who brought Homer--the works, not the man--into continental Greece; importing them from Crete. That means, probably, that he induced Homeridae to settle in Sparta. European continental Greece would in any case have been much behind the rest of the Greek world in culture; because furthest from and the least in touch with West Asian civilization. Crete was nearer to Egypt; the Greeks of Asia Minor to Lydia; as for the islanders of the Cyclades and Sporades, the necessity of gadding about would have brought them into contact with their betters to the south and east, and so awakened them, much sooner than their fellow Greeks of Attica, Boeotia, and the Peloponnese. Where did Homer live? Naturally, as a wandering bard, all over the place. We know of the seven cities that claimed to be his birthplace: _Smyrna, Chias, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodos, Argos, Athenae Orbis de patria certat, Homere, Tua._ Of these Smyrna probably has the best chance of it; for he was Maeonides, the son of Maeon, and Maeon was the son of Meles; and the Maeon and the Meles are rivers by Smyrna. But De Quincey makes out an excellent case for supposing he knew Crete better than any other part of the world. Many of the legends he records; many of the superstitions--to call them that;--many of the customs he describes: have been, and are still, peculiar to Crete. Neither the smaller islands, nor continental Greece, were very suitable countries for horse-breeding; and the horse does not figure greatly in their legends. But in Crete the friendship of horse and man was traditional; in Cretan folk-lore, horses still foresee the doom of their masters, and weep. So they do in Homer. There is a certain wild goat found only in Crete, of which he give a detailed description; down the measurement of its horns; exact, as sportsmen have found in modern times. He mentions the _Kubizeteres,_ Cretan tumblers, who indulge in a 'stunt' unknown elsewhere. They perform in couples; and when he mentions them, it is in the dual number. Preternatural voices are an Homeric tradition: Stentor "spoke loud as fifty other men"; when Achilles roared at the Trojans, their whole army was frightened. In Crete such voices are said to be still common: shepherds carry on conversations at incredible distances--speak to, and are answered by, men not yet in sight.--Dequincey gives several other such coincidences; none of them, by itself, might be very convincing; but taken all together, they rather incline one to the belief that Smith, or Brown, or Jones, _alias_ Homer, must have spent a good deal of his time in Crete;--say, was brought up there. Now Crete is much nearer Egypt than the rest of Greece is; and may very likely have shared in a measure of Egyptian culture at the very beginning of the European manvantara, and even before. Of course, in past cycles it had been a great center of culture itself; but that was long ago, and I am not speaking of it. In the tenth century A.D., three hundred years before civilization, in our own cycle, had made its way from the West Asian Moslem world into Christendom, Sicily belonged to Egypt and shared in its refinement--was Moslem and highly civilized, while Europe was Christian and barbarous; later it became a main channel through which Europe received enlightenment. May not Crete have played a like part in ancient times? I mean, is it not highly probable? May it not have been--as Sicily was to be--a mainly European country under Egyptian influence, and a seat of Egyptianized culture? Let us, then, suppose Homer a Greek, born early in the ninth century B.C., taken in childhood to Crete, and brought up there in contact with cultural conditions higher than any that obtained elsewhere among his own people. But genius stirs in him, and he is Greek altogether in the deep enthusiasms proper to genius: so presently he leaves Crete and culture, to wander forth among the islands singing.-- _En delo tote Proton ego Kai Homeros aoidoi Melpomen,_ says Hesiod: "Then first in Delos did I and Homer, two Aoidoi, perform as musical reciters." Delos, of course, is a small island in the Cyclades. He would have had some training, it is likely, as an Aoidos: a good founding in the old stories which were their stock in trade, and which all pointed to the past glory of his race. In Crete he had seen the culture of the Egyptians; in Asia Minor, the strength and culture of the Lydians; now in his wanderings through the isles he saw the disunion and rudeness of the Greeks. But the old traditions told him of a time when Greeks acted together and were glorious: when they went against, and overthrew, a great West Asian Power strong and cultured like the Lydians and Egyptians. Why should not he create again the glory that once was Greece? _Menin aeide, Thea, Peleiadeo Achileos!_ --Goddess, aid me to sing the wrath (and grandeur) of a Greek hero!--Let the Muses help him, and he will remind his people of an ancient greatness of their own: of a time when they were united, and triumphed over these now so much stronger peoples! So Dante, remembering ancient Rome, evoked out of the past and future a vision of United Italy; so in the twelfth century a hundred Welsh bards sand of Arthur. I think he would have created out of his own imagination the life he pictures for his brazen-coated Achaeans. It does not follow, with any great poet, that he is bothering much with historical or other accuracies, or sticking very closely even to tradition. Enough that the latter should give him a direction; as Poet-creator, he can make the details for himself. Homer's imagination would have been guided, I take it, by two conditions: what he saw of the life of his semi-barbarous Greek country men; and what he knew of civilization in Egyptianized Crete. He was consciously picturing the life of Greeks; but Greeks in an age traditionally more cultured than his own. Floating legends would tell him much of their heroic deed, but little of their ways of living. Such details he would naturally have to supply for himself. How would he go to work? In this way, I think. The Greeks, says he, were in those old ages, civilized and strong, not, as now, weak, disunited and half barbarous. Now what is strength like, and civilization? Why, I have them before me here to observe, here in Crete. But Crete is Egyptianized; I want a Greek civilization; culture as it would appear if home-grown among Greeks.--I do not mean that he consciously set this plan before himself; but that naturally it would be the course that he, or anyone, would follow. Civilization would have meant for him Cretan civilization: the civilization he knew: that part of the proposition would inhere in his subconsciousness. But in his conscious mind, in his intent and purpose, would inhere a desire to differentiate the Greek culture he wanted to paint, from the Egyptianized culture he knew. So I think that the conditions of life he depicts were largely the creation of his own imagination, working in the material of Greek character, as he knew it, and Cretan-Egyptian culture as he knew that. He made his people essentially Greeks, but ascribed to them also non-Greek features drawn from civilized life. One sees the same thing in the old Welsh Romances: tales from of old retold by men fired with immense racial hopes, with a view to fostering such hopes in the minds of their hearers. The bards saw about them the rude life and disunion of the Welsh, and the far greater outward culture of the Normans; and their stock in trade was a tradition of ancient and half-magical Welsh grandeur. When they wrote of Cai--Sir Kay the Seneschal--that so subtle was his nature that when it pleased him he could make himself as tall as the tallest tree in the forest, they were dealing in a purely celtic element: the tradition of the greatness of, and the magical powers inherent in, the human spirit; but when they set him on horseback, to ride tilts in the tourney ring, they were simply borrowing from, to out do, the Normans. Material culture, as they saw it, included those things; therefore they ascribed them to the old culture they were trying to paint. Lying was traditionally a Greek vice. The Greek lied as naturally as the Persian told the truth. Homer wishes to set forth Ulysses, one of his heroes, adorned with all heroic perfections. He was so far Greek as not to think of lying as a quality to detract; he proudly makes Ulysses a "lord of lies." Perhaps nothing in Crete itself would have taught him better; if we may believe Epimenides and Saint Paul. On the other hand, he was a great-hearted and compassionate man; compassionate as Shakespeare was. Now the position of women in historical Greece was very low indeed; the position of women in Egypt, as we know, was very high indeed. This was a question to touch such a man to the quick; the position he gives women is very high: very much higher than it was in Periclean Athens, with all the advance that had been made by that time in general culture. Andromache, in Homer, is the worthy companion and helpmeet of Hector; not a Greek, but Egyptian idea. Homer's contemporary, Hesiod, tells in his _Works and Days_ of the plebeian and peasant life of his time. Hesiod had not the grace of mind or imagination to idealize anything; he sets down the life of the lower orders with a realism comparable to that of the English Crabbe. It is an ugly and piteous picture he gives. Homer, confining himself in the main to the patrician side of things, does indeed give hints that the lot of the peasant and slave was miserable; he does not quite escape some touches from the background of his own day. Nor did Shakespeare, trying to paint the life of ancient Athens, escape an English Elizabethan Background; Bully Bottom and his colleagues are straight from the wilds of Warwickshire; the Roman mob is made up of London prentices, cobblers and the like. Learned Ben, on the other hand, contrives in his _Sejanus_ and his _Catiline,_ by dint and sheer intellect and erudition, to give us correct waxwork and clockwork Romans; there are no anachronisms in Ben Johnson; never a pterodactyl walks down _his_ Piccadilly. But Shakespeare rather liked to have them in his; with his small Latin and less Greek, he had to create his human beings--draw them from the life, and from the life he saw about him. The deeper you see into life, the less the costumes and academic exactitudes matter; you keep your imagination for the great things, and let the externals worry about themselves. Now Homer was a deal more like Shakespeare than Ben; but there was this difference: he was trying to create Greeks of a nobler order than his contemporaries. Men in those days, he says, were of huger stature than they are now. And yet, when his imagination is not actually at work to heighten and ennoble the portrait of a hero, real Greek life of his own times does not fail sometimes--to obtrude on him. So he lets in bits now and again that belong to the state of things Hesiod describes, and confirm the truth of Hesiod's dismal picture. Well, he wandered the islands, singing; "laying the nexus of his songs," as Hesiod says in the passage from which I quoted just now, "in the ancient sacred hymns." As Shakespeare was first an actor, then a tinkerer of other men's plays, then a playwright on his own account; so perhaps Homer, from a singer of the old hymns, became an improver and restorer of them, then a maker of new ones. He saw the wretched condition of his people, contrasted it with the traditions he found in the old days, and was spurred up to create a glory for them in his imagination. His feelings were hugely wrought upon by compassion working as yoke-fellow with race-pride. You shall see presently how the intensity of his pity made him bitter; how there must have been something Dantesque of grim sadness in his expression: he had seen suffering, not I think all his own, till he could allow to fate no quality but cruelty. Impassioned by what we may call patriotism, he attacked again and again the natural theme for Greek epic: the story of a Greek contest with and victory over West Asians; but he was too great not to handle even his West Asians with pity, and moves us to sympathy with Hector and Andromache often, because against them too was stretched forth the hand of the great enemy, fate. In different moods and at different times, never thinking to make an epic, he produced a large number of different poems about the siege of Troy. And the Odyssey? Well, the tradition was that he wrote it in his old age. Its mood is very different from that of the Iliad; and many words used in it are used with a different meaning; and there are words that are not used in the Iliad at all. Someone says, it comes from the old age of the Greek epic, rather than from that of Homer. I do not know. It is a better story than the Iliad; as if more nearly cast at one throe of a mind. Yet it, too, must be said not to hang together; here also are discrepant and incompatible parts. There is all tradition for it that the Homeric poems were handed down unwritten for several centuries. Well; I can imagine the Aoidoi and Citharaoidoi and the rest learning poems from the verbal instruction of other Aoidoi and Citharaoidoi, and so preserving them from generation to generation to generation. But I cannot imagine, and I do think it is past the wit of man to imagine, long poems being composed by memory; it seems to me Homer must have written or dictated them at first. Writing in Greece may have been an esoteric science in those times. It is now, anywhere, to illiterates. In Caesar's day, as he tells us, it was an esoteric science among the Druids; they used it, but the people did not. It seems probable that writing was not in general use among the Greeks until long after Homer; but, to me, certain that Homer used it himself, or could command the services to those who did. But there was writing in Crete long before the Greco-Phoenician alphabet was invented; from the time of the first Egyptian Dynasties, for example. And here is a point to remember: alphabets are invented; systems of writing are lost and reintroduced; but it is idle to talk of the invention of writing. Humanity has been writing, in one way or another, since Lemurian days. When the Manasaputra incarnated, Man became a poetizing animal; and before the Fourth Race began, his divine Teachers had taught him to set his poems down on whatever he chanced at the time to be using as we use paper. Now, what more can we learn about the inner and real Homer? What can I tell you in the way of literary criticism, to fill out the picture I have attempted to make? Very little; yet perhaps something. I think his historical importance is greater, for us now, than his literary importance. I doubt you shall find in him as great and true thinking, as much Theosophy or Light upon the hidden things, as there is in Virgil for example. I doubt he was an initiate, to understand in that life and with his conscious mind the truths that make men free. Plato did not altogether approve of him; and where Plato dared lead, we others need not fear to follow. I think the great Master-Poets of the world have been such because, with supreme insight into the hidden, they presented a great Master-Symbol of the Human Soul. I believe that in the Iliad Homer gives us nothing of that sort; and that therefore, in a certain sense, he is constantly over-rated. He pays the penalty of his over-whelming reputation: his fame is chiefly in the mouths of those who know him not at all, and use their hats for speaking-trumpets. We have in English no approximately decent translation of him. Someone said that Pope served him as Puck served Bully Bottom, what time Peter Quince was moved to cry: "Bless thee Bottom, how thou art translated!" It is not so; to call Pope an ass would be to wrong a faithful and patient quadruped; than which Pope was as much greater in intellect as he was less in all qualities that call for true respect. Yet often we applaud Homer, only upon a knowledge of Pope; and it is safe to say that if you love Pope you would loathe Homer. Pope held that water should manifest, so to say, through Kew or Versailles fountains; but it was essentially to be from the Kitchen-tap--or even from the sewer. Homer was more familiar with it thundering on the precipices, or lisping on the yellow sands of time-forgotten Mediterranean islands. Which pronunciation do you prefer for his often-recurring and famous sea-epithet: the thunder-on-the-precipices of _poluphloisboio thalasses,_ or the lisping-on-the-sands of _ poluphleesbeeo thalassace?_ (pardon the attempted phonetics).--For truly there are advocates of either; but neither I suppose would have appealed much to Mr. Pope. As to his style, his manner or movement: to summarize what Mathew Arnold says of it (the best I can do): it is as direct and rapid as Scott's; as lucid as Wordsworth's could be; but noble like Shakespeare's or Milton's. There is no Dantesque periphrasis, nor Miltonian agnostic struggle and inversion; but he calls spades, spades, and moves on to the next thing swiftly, clearly, and yet with exultation. (Yet there is retardation often by long similes.) And he either made a language for himself, or found one ready to his hand, as resonant and sonorous as the loll and slap of billows in the hollow caverns of the sea. As his lines swing in and roll and crash, they swell the soul in you, and you hear and grow great on the rhythm of the eternal. This though we really, I suppose, are quite uncertain as to the pronunciation. But give the vowels merely a plain English value, certain to be wrong, and you still have grand music. Perhaps some of you have read Mathew Arnold's great essay _On Translating Homer,_ and know the arguments wherewith wise Matthew exalts him. A Mr. Newman had translated him so as considerably to out-Bottom Bottom; and Arnold took up the cudgels--to some effect. Newman had treated him as a barbarian, a primitive; Arnold argued that it was Homer, on the contrary, who might have so looked on us. There is, however, perhaps something to be said on Mr. Newman's side. Homer's huge and age-long fame, and his extraordinary virtues, were quite capable of blinding even a great critic to certain things about him which I shall, with great timidity, designate imperfections: therein following De Quincey, who read Greek from early childhood as easily as English, and who, as a critic, saw things sometimes. _Bonus dormitat Homerus,_ says Horace; like the elder Gobbo, he "something smacked." He was the product of a great creative force; which did not however work in a great literary age: and all I am going to say is merely a bearing out of this. First there is his poverty of epithets. He repeats the same ones over and over again. He can hardly mention Hector without calling him _megas koruthaiolos Hector,_--"great glittering- helmeted Hector"; or (in the genitive) _Hectoros hippodamoio_-- "of Hector the tamer of war-steeds." Over and over again we have _anax andron Agamemnon;_ or "swift-footed Achilles." Over and over again is the sea _poluphloisbois-terous,_ as if he could say nothing new about it. Having discovered one resounding phrase that fits nicely into the hexameter, he seems to have been just content with the splendor of sound, and unwilling so to stir his imagination as to flash some new revelation on it. As if Hamlet should never be mentioned in the play, without some such epithet as "the hesitating Dane."...... But think how the Myriad-minded One positively tumbles over himself in hurling and fountaining up new revelatory figures and epithets about everything: how he could not afford to repeat himself, because there were not enough hours in the day, days in the year, nor years in one human lifetime, in which to ease his imagination of its tremendous burden. He had Golconda at the root of his tongue: let him but pass you the time of day, and it shall go hard but he will pour you out the wealth of Ormus or of Ind. A plethora, some have said: never mind; wealth was nothing to him, because he had it all. Or note how severe Milton, almost every time he alludes to Satan, throws some new light of majestic gloom, inner or outer, with a new epithet or synonym, upon his figure or his mind. Even of mere ancillaries and colorless lines, Homer will make you a resounding glory. What means this most familiar one, think you: _Ten d'apameibomenos prosephe koruthaiolos Hector?_ --Surely here some weighty splendid thing is being revealed? But no; it means: "Answering spake unto her great glittering-helmeted Hector;" or _tout simplement,_ 'Hector answered.' And hardly can anyone open his lips, but it must be brought in with some variation of that sea-riding billow, or roll of drums: _Ton d'emeibet epeita anax andron Agamemnon. Hos phato. Ten d'outi prosephe nephelegereta Zeus_ --whereafter at seven lines down we get again: _Ten de meg' ochthesas prosephe nephelegereta Zeus;_ --in all of which I think we do get something of primitivism and unskill. It is a preoccupation with sound where there is no adequate excuse for the sound; after the fashion of some orators, whom, to speak plainly, it is a weariness to hear. But you will remember how Shakespeare rises to his grandest music when he has fatefullest words to utter; and how Milton rolls in his supreme thunders each in its recurring cycle; leads you to wave-crest over wave-trough, and then recedes; and how the crest is always some tremendous thing in vision, or thought as well as sound. So he has everlasting variation; manages his storms and billows; and so I think his music is greater in effect than Homer's--would still be greater, could we be sure of Homer's tones and vowel- values; as I think his vision goes deeper into the realm of the Soul and the Eternal. Yet is Homer majestic and beautiful abundantly. If it is true that his reputation gains on the principle of _Omne ignotum pro magnifico_--because he is unknown to most that praise him--let none imagine him less than a wonderful reservoir of poetry. His faults--to call them that--are such as you would expect from his age, race, and peculiar historic position; his virtues are drawn out of the grandeur of his own soul, and the current from the Unfathomable that flowed through him. He had the high serious attitude towards the great things, and treated them highly, deeply and seriously. We may compare him to Dante: who also wrote, in an age and land not yet literary or cultured, with a huge racial inspiration. But Dante had something more: a purpose to reveal in symbol the tremendous world of the Soul. Matthew Arnold speaks of the Homeric poems as "the most important poetical monument existing." Well; cultured Tom, Dick and Harry would say much the same thing; it is the orthodox thing to say. But with great deference to Matthew, I believe they are really a less important monument than the poems of Aeschylus, Dante, Shakespeare, or Milton, or I suppose Goethe--to name only poets of the Western World; because each of these created a Soul- symbol; which I think the Iliad at any rate does not. Here, to me, is another sign of primitivism. If there is paucity of imagination in his epithets, there is none whatever in his surgery. I do not know to what figure the casualty list in the Iliad amounts; but believe no wound or death of them all was dealt in the same bodily part or in the same way. Now Poetry essentially turns from these physical details; her preoccupations are with the Soul. "From Homer and Polygnotus," says Goethe, "I daily learn more and more that in our life here above the ground we have, properly speaking, to enact Hell." A truth, so far as it goes: this Earth is hell; there is no hell, says H.P. Blavatsky, but a man- bearing planet. But we demand of the greatest, that they shall see beyond hell into Heaven. Homer achieves his grandeur oftenest through swift glimpses of the pangs and tragedy of human fate; and I do not think he saw through the gloom to the bright Reality. Watching the Greek host from the walls of Troy, Helen says: "Clearly the rest I behold of the dark-eyed sons of Achaia; Known to me well are the faces of all; their names I remember; Two, two only remain whom I see not among the commanders, Castor, fleet in the car, Polydeukes, brave with the cestus-- Own dear brethren of mine,--one parent loved us as infants. Are they not here in the host, from the shores of loved Lacedaimon? Or, though they came with the rest in the ships that bound through the waters, Dare they not enter the fight, or stand in the council of heroes, All for fear of the shame and the taunts my crime has awakened?" And then: _Hos phato. Tous d'ede kalechen phusizoos aia, En Lakedaimoni authi, phile en patridi gaie._ "--So spake she; but they long since under Earth were reposing There in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lacedaimon." [From Dr. Hawtrey's translation, quoted by Matthew Arnold in _On Translating Homer._] There it is the sudden antithesis from her gentle womanly inquiry about her brothers to the sad reality she knows nothing, that strikes the magical blow, and makes the grand manner. Then there is that passage about Peleus and Cadmos: "Not even Peleus Aiacides, nor godlike Cadmos, might know the happiness of a secure life; albeit the highest happiness known to mortals was granted them: the one on the mountain, the other in seven-gated Thebes, they heard the gold-snooded Muses sing." You hear the high pride and pathos in that. To be a poet, he says: to have heard the gold-snooded Muses sing: is the highest happiness a mortal can know; he is mindful of the soul, the Poet-creator in every man, and pays it magnificent tribute; he acknowledges what glory, what bliss, have been his own; but not the poet, he says, not even he, may enjoy the commonplace happiness of feeling secure against dark fate. It is the same feeling that I spoke of last week as so characteristic of the early Teutonic literature; but there it appears without the swift sense of tragedy, without the sudden pang, the grand manner. The pride is lacking quite: the intuition for a divinity within man. But Homer sets the glory of soul-hood and pet-hood against the sorrow of fate: even though he finds the sorrow weighs it down. Caedmon or Cynewulf might have said: "It is given to none of us to be secure against fate; but we have many recompenses." How different the note of Milton: "Those other two, equal with me in fate, So were I equal with them in renown--" or: "Unchanged, though fallen on evil days; On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues, In darkness, and by dangers compassed round." And Llywarch, or Oisin, would never have anticipated the blows of fate; when the blows fell, they would simply have been astonished at fate's presumption. We might quote many instances of this proud pessimism in Homer: _Kai se, geron, to prin men, akouomen, olbion einai_-- "Thou to, we hear, old man, e'en thou was at once time happy;" _Hos gar epeklosanto theoi deiloisi brotoisin Zoein achnumenous. Autoi de l'akedees eisin_-- "The Gods have allotted to us to live thus mortal and mournful, Mournful; but they themselves live ever untouched by mourning." Proud--no; it is not quite proud; not in an active sense; there is a resignation in it; and yet it is a kind of haughty resignation. As if he said: We are miserable; there is nothing else to be but miserable; let us be silent, and make no fuss about.--It is the restraint--a very Greek quality--the depth hinted at, but never wailed over or paraded at all--that make in these cases his grand manner. His attitude is, I think, nearer the Teutonic than the Celtic:--his countrymen, like the Teutons, were accustomed to the pralaya, the long racial night. But he and the Celts achieved the grand manner, which the Teutons did not. His eyes, like Llywarch's or Oisin's, were fixed on a past glory beyond the nightfall. But where does this Homeric mood lead us? To no height of truth, I think. Katherine Tingley gave us a keynote for the literature of the future and the grandest things it should utter,--for the life, the art, the poetry of a coming time that shall be Theosophical, that is, lit with the splendor and beauty of the Soul--when she spoke that high seeming paradox that "Life is Joy." Let us uncover the real Life; all this sorrow is only the veil that hides it. God knows we see enough of the veil; but the poet's business is to tear it down, rend it asunder, and show the brightness which it hides. If the personality were all, and a man's whole history were bounded by his cradle and his grave; then you had done all, when you had presented personalities in all their complexity, and made your page teem with the likenesses of living men, and only shown the Beyond, the Governance, as something unknowable, adverse and aloof. But the Greater Part of a man is eternal, and each of his lives and deaths but little incidents in a vast and glorious pilgrimage; and when it is understood that this is the revelation to be made, this grandeur the thing to be shadowed forth, criticism will have entered upon its true path and mission. I find no such Soul-symbol in the Iliad: the passion and spiritual concentration of whose author, I think, was only enough to let him see this outward world: personalities, with their motive-springs of action within themselves: his greatness, his sympathy, his compassion, revealed all that to him; but he lacked vision for the Meanings. I found him then less than Shakespeare: whose clear knowledge of human personalities-- ability to draw living men--was but incidental and an instrument; who but took the tragedy of life by the way, as he went to set forth the whole story of the soul; never losing sight of Karma, and that man is his own adverse destiny; finishing all with the triumph of the soul, the Magician, in _The Tempest._ And I count him less than that Blind Titan in Bardism, who, setting out to justify the ways of God to men, did verily justify the ways of fate to the Soul; and showed the old, old truth, so dear to the Celtic bards, that in the very depths of hell the Soul has not yet lost all her original brightness; but is mightily superior to hell, death, fate, sorrow and the whole pack of them;--I count him less than the "Evening Dragon" of _Samson Agonistes,_ whose last word to us is "Nothing is here for tears; nothing to wail Or knock the breast; no weakness or contempt." And I found him less that One with the grand tragic visage, whose words so often quiver with unshed tears, who went forth upon his journey .... _pei dolci pomi Promessi a me per lo verace Duca; Ma fino al centro pria convien ch'io tomi:_-- "to obtain those sweet apples (of Paradise) promised me by my true Leader; but first is"--convien--how shall you translate the pride and resignation of that word?--"it behoves," we must say, "it convenes"--"first it is convenient that I should fall as far as to the center (of hell);"--who must end the gloom and terror of that journey, that fall, with _E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle,_ "And then we came forth to behold again the Stars;" and who came from his ascent through purifying Purgatory with _Rifatto si, come piante novelle Rinnovellate di novella fronda, Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle_-- "So made anew, like young plants in spring with fresh foliage, I was pure and disposed to come forth among the Stars;"--and who must end his _Paradiso_ and his life-work announcing _L'amor che muove il sole e le altre stelle,_ "The Love that moves the sun and the other Stars." Ah, glory to this Dante! Glory to the man who would end nothing but with the stars! III. GREEKS AND PERSIANS Now to consider what this Blind Maeonides did for Greece. Sometime last Century a Black Potentate from Africa visited England, and was duly amazed at all he saw. Being a very important person indeed, he was invited to pay his respects to Queen Victoria. he told her of the many wonders he had seen; and took occasion to ask her, as the supreme authority, how such things came to be. What was the secret of England's greatness? --She rose to it magnificently, and did precisely what a large section of her subjects would have expected of her. She solemnly handed him a copy of the Bible, and told him he should find his answer in that. She was thinking, no doubt, of the influence of Christian teaching; if called on for the exact passage that had worked the wonder, very likely she would have turned to the Sermon on the Mount. Well; very few empires have founded their material greatness on such texts, as _The meek shall inherit the earth._ They take a shorter road to it. If a man ask of thee thy coat, and thou give him thy cloak also, thou dost not (generally) build thyself a world-wide commerce. When he smiteth thee on they left cheek, and thou turnest to him thy right for the complementary buffet, thou dost not (as a rule) become shortly possessed of his territories. Queen Victoria lived in an age when people did not notice these little discrepancies; so did Mr. Podsnap. And yet there was much more truth in her answer than you might think. King James's Bible is a monument of mighty literary style; and one that generations of Englishmen have regarded as divine, a message from the Ruler of the Stars. They have been reading it, and hearing it read in the churches, for three hundred years. Its language has been far more familiar to them than that of any other book whatsoever; more common quotations come from it, probably, than from all other sources combined. The Puritans of old, like the Nonconformists now, completely identified themselves with the folk it tells about: Cromwell's armies saw in the hands of their great captain "the sword of the Lord and of Gideon." When the Roundhead went into battle, or when the Revivalist goes to prayer meeting, he heard and hears the command of Jehovah to "go up to Ramoth Gilead and prosper"; to "smite Amalek hip and thigh." Phrases from the Old Testament are in the mouths of millions daily; and they are phrases couched in the grand literary style. Now the grand style is the breathing of a sense of greatness. When it occurs you sense a mysterious importance lurking behind the words. It is the accent of the eternal thing in man, the Soul; and one of the many proofs of the Soul's existence. So you cannot help being reminded by it of the greatness of the soul. There are periods when the soul draws near its racial vehicle, and the veils grow thin between it and us: through all the utterances of such times one is apt to hear the thunder from beyond. Although the soul have no word to say, or although it message suffer change in passing through the brain-mind, so that not high truth, but even a lie may emerge--it still comes, often, ringing with the grand accents. Such a period was that which gave us Shakespeare and Milton, and the Bible, and Brown, and Taylor, and all the mighty masters of English prose. Even when their thought is trivial or worse, you are reminded, by the march and mere order of their words, of the majesty of the Soul. When Deborah sings of that treacherous murderess, Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite, that before she slew her guest and ally Sisera, "He asked water and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish,"--you are aware that, to the singer, no question of ethics was implied. Nothing common, nothing of this human daily world, inheres in it; but sacrosanct destinies were involved, and the martialed might of the Invisible. It was part of a tremendous drama, in which Omnipotence itself was protagonist. Little Israel rose against the mighty of this world; but the Unseen is mightier than the mighty; and the Unseen was with little Israel. The application is false, unethical, abominable--as coming through brain-minds of that kind. But you must go back behind the application, behind the brain-mind, to find the secret of the air of greatness that pervades it. It is a far-off reflection of this eternal truth: that the Soul, thought it speak through but one human being, can turn the destinies and overturn the arrogance of the world. When David sang, "Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered; yea, let all his enemies be scattered!" he, poor brain-mind, was thinking of his triumphs over Philistines and the like; with whom he had better have been finding a way to peace;--but the Soul behind him was thinking of its victories over him and his passions and his treacheries. So such psalms and stories, though their substance be vile enough, do by their language yet remind us somehow of the grandeur of the Spirit. That is what style achieves. Undoubtedly this grand language of the Bible, as that of Milton and Shakespeare in a lesser degree--lesser in proportion as they have been less read--has fed in the English race an aptitude, an instinct, for action on a large imperial scale. It is not easy to explain the effect of great literature; but without doubt it molds the race. Now the ethic of the Old Testament, its moral import, is very mixed. There is much that is true and beautiful; much that is treacherous and savage. So that its moral and ethical effects have been very mixed too. But its style, a subtler thing than ethics, has nourished conceptions of a large and seeping sort, to play through what ethical ideas they might find. The more spiritual is any influence--that is, the less visible and easy to trace--the more potent it is; so style in literature may be counted one of the most potent forces of all. Through it, great creative minds mold the destinies of nations. Let Theosophy have expression as noble as that of the Bible--as it will--and of that very impulse it will bite deep into the subconsciousness of the race, and be the nourishment of grand public action, immense conceptions, greater than any that have come of Bible reading, because pure and true. Our work is to purify the channels through which the Soul shall speak; the Teachers have devoted themselves to establishing the beginnings of this Movement in right thought and right life. But the great literary impulse will come, when we have learned and earned the right to use it. Now, what the Bible became to the English, Homer became to the Greeks--and more also. They heard his grand manner, and were billed by it with echoes from the Supermundane. _Anax andron Agamemnon_--what Greek could hear a man so spoken of, and dream he compounded of common clay? Never mind what this king of men did or failed to do; do but breathe his name and titles, and you have affirmed immortality and the splendor of the Human Soul! The _human_ Soul? "Tush!" said they, "the Greek Soul! he was a Greek as we are!".... And so Tomides, Dickaion and Harryotatos, Athenian tinkers and cobblers, go swaggering back to their shops, and dream grand racial dreams. For this is a much more impressionable people than the English; any wind from the Spirit blows in upon their minds quickly and easily. Homer in Greece --once Solon, or Pisistratus, or Hopparchus, had edited and canonized him, and arranged for his orderly periodical public reading (as the Bible in the churches)--had an advantage even over the Bible in England. When Cromwell and his men grew mighty upon the deeds of the mighty men of Israel, they had to thrill to the grand rhythms until a sort of miracle had been accomplished, and they had come to see in themselves the successors and living representatives of Israel. But the Greek, rising on the swell of Homer's roll and boom, had need of no such transformation. The uplift was all for him; his by hereditary right; and no pilfering necessary, from alien creed or race. We have seen in Homer an inspired Race-patriot, a mighty poet saddened and embittered by the conditions he saw and his own impotence to change them.--Yes, he had heard the golden-snooded sing; but Greeks were pygmies, compared with the giants who fought at Ilion! There was that eternal contrast between the glory he had within and the squalor he saw without. Yes, he could sing; he could launch great songs for love of the ancients and their magnificence. But what could a song do? Had it feet to travel Hellas; hands to flash a sword for her; a voice and kingly authority to command her sons into redemption?--Ah, poor blind old begging minstrel, it had vastly greater powers and organs than these! Lycurgus, it is said, brought singers or manuscripts of your poems into Sparta; because, blind minstrel, he had a mind to make Sparta great-souled; and he knew that you were the man to do it, if done it could be. Then for about two hundred and sixty years, without much fuss to come into history, you were having your way with your Greeks. Your music was ringing in the ears of mothers; their unborn children were being molded to the long roll of your hexameters. There came to be manuscripts of you in every city: corrupt enough, many of them, forgeries, many of them; lays fudged up and fathered on you by venal Rhapsodoi, to chant in princely houses whose ancestors it was a good speculation to praise. You were everywhere in Greece: a great and vague tradition, a formless mass of literature: by the time Solon was making laws for Athens, and Pisistratus was laying the foundations of her stable government and greatness. And then you were officially canonized. Solon, Pisistratus, or one of the Pisistratidae, determined that you should be, not a vague tradition and wandering songs any longer, but the Bible of the Hellenes. From an obscure writer of the Alexandrian period we get a tale of Pisistratus sending to all the cities of Greece for copies of Homeric poems, paying for them well; collating them, editing them out of a vast confusion; and producing at last out of the matter thus obtained, a single more or less articulate Iliad. From Plato and others we get hints leading to the supposition that an authorized state copy was prepared; that it was ordained that the whole poem should be recited at the Panathenaic Festivals by relays of Rhapsodoi; this state copy being in the hands of a prompter whose business it was to see there should be no transgression by the chanters.* The wandering songs of the old blind minstrel have become the familiar Sacred Book of the brightest-minded people in Greece. ------ * For a detailed account of all this see De Quincey's essay Homer and the Homeridae. ------ Some sixty years pass, and now look what happens. A mighty Power in Asia arranges a punitive expedition against turbulent islanders and coast-dwellers on its western border. But an old blind minstrel has been having his way with these: and the punitive expedition is to be of the kind not where you punish, but where you are punished;--has been suggesting to them, from the Olympus of his sacrosanct inspiration, the idea of great racial achievement, till it has become a familiar thing, ideally, in their hearts.--The huge armies and the fleets come on; Egypt has gone down; Lydia has gone down; the whole world must go down before them. But there is an old blind minstrel, long since grown Olympian in significance, and throned aloft beside Nephelegereta Zeus, chanting in every Greek ear and heart. Greeks rise in some sort to repel the Persian: Athens and Sparta, poles apart in every feeling and taste, find that under the urge of archaic hexameters and in the face of this common danger, they can co-operate after a fashion. The world is in a tumult and threatens to fall; but behind all the noise and ominous thunder, by heaven, you can hear the roll of hexameters, and an old blind sorrow-stricken bard chanting. The soul of a nation is rising, the beat of her wings keeping time to the music of olden proud resounding lines. Who led the Grecian fleet at Salamis?--Not Spartan Eurygiades, but an old blind man dead these centuries. Who led the victors at Marathon? Not sly Athenian Miltiades, but an old dead man who had only words for his wealth: blind Maeonides chanting; and with his chanting marshaling on the roll of his hexameters mightier heroes than ever a Persian eye could see: the host that fought at Ilion; the creatures of his brain; Polymechanos Odysseus, and Diomedes and Aias; Podargos Achilles; Anas andron Agamemnon. The story of the Persian Wars comes to us only from the Greek side; so all succeeding ages have been enthusiastically Prohellene. We are to think that Europe since has been great and free and glorious, because free and cultured Greeks then held back a huge and barbarous Asian despotism. All of which is great nonsense. Europe since has not been great and free and glorious; very often she has been quite the reverse. She has, at odd times, been pottering around her ideal schemes of government; which Asia in large part satisfied herself that she had found long ago. As for culture and glory, the trumps have now been with the one, now with the other. And the Persians were not barbarians by any means. And when you talk of Asia, remember that it is as far a cry from Persia to China, as from Persian to England. Let us have not more of this preoccupation with externals, and blind eyes to the Spirit of Man. I suppose ballot-boxes and referenda and recalls and the like were specified, when it was said _Of such is the kingdom of Heaven?_... But Persia would not have flowed out over Europe, if Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea had gone the other way. Empires wax and wane like the moon; they ebb and flow like the tides; and are governed by natural law as these are; and as little depend, ultimately, upon battle, murder, and sudden death; which are but effects that wisdom would evitate; we are wrong in taking them for causes. Two things you can posit about any empire: it will expand to its maximum; then ebb and fall away. Though the daily sun sets not on its boundaries, the sun of time will set on its decay; because all things born in time will die; and no elixer of life has been found, nor ever will be. There is an impulse from the inner planes; it strikes into the heart of a people; rises there, and carries them forward upon an outward sweep; then recedes, and leaves them to their fall. Its cycle may perhaps be longer or shorter; but in the main its story is always the same, and bound to be so; you cannot vote down the cycles of time. What hindered Rome from mastery of Europe; absolute mastery; and keeping it forever? Nothing--but the eternal Cyclic Law. So Persia. She was the last phase of that West Asian manvantara which began in 1890 and was due to end in 590 B. C. As such a phase, a splendor-day of thirteen decades should have been hers; that, we find, being always the length of a national illumination. She began under Cyrus in 558; flowed out under Cambyses and Darius to her maximum growth--for half the thirteen decades expanding steadily. Then she touched Greece, where a younger cycle was rising, and recoiled. She should have been at high tide precisely three years before-Marathon--a half-cycle after the accession of Cyrus, or in 493;--and was. Then the Law-pronounced its _Thus far and no further;_ and enforced it with Homer's songs, and Greek valor, and Darius' death, and Xerxes' fickle childishness (he smacked the Hellespont because it was naughty). These things together brought to naught the might and ambition and bravery of Iran; but had they been lacking, the Law would have found other means. Though Xerxes and Themistocles had both sat at home doing nothing, Alexander would still have marched east in his time, and Rome conquered the world. So discount all talk of Greece's having saved Europe, which was never in danger. But you may say Persia saved Greece: that her impact kindled the fires--was used by the Law for that purpose--which so brilliantly have illumined Europe since. Persia rose in the evening of that West Asian manvantara; the empires of its morning and noon, as Assyria chiefly, had been slower of growth, longer of life, smaller of expanse; and for her one, had several periods of glory. A long habit of empire -building had been formed there, which carried Persia rapidly and easily to her far limits. Assyria, the _piece de resistance_ of the whole manvantara, with huge and long effort had created, so to say, an astral mold; of which Persia availed herself, and overflowed its boundaries, conquering regions east and west Assyria never knew. But if she found the mold and the habit there to aid her, she came too late for the initial energies of the morning, or the full forces of the manvantaric noon. Those had been wielded by the great Tiglath Pilesers and Assurbanipals of earlier centuries; fierce conquerors, splendid builders, ruthless patrons of the arts. What was left for the evening and Persia could not carry her outward her full thirteen decades, but only half of them: sixty-five years her tides were rising, and then she touched Greece. Thence-forward she remained stationary within her borders, not much troubled internally, until the four -twenties. To a modern eye, she seems on the decline since Marathon; to a Persian of the time, probably, that failure on the Greek frontier looked a small matter enough. A Pancho Villa to chase; if you failed to catch him, pooh, it was nothing! Xerxes is no Darius, true: Artaxerxes I, no Cyrus, nor nothing like. But through both their reigns there is in the main good government in most of the provinces; excellent law and order; and a belief still in the high civilizing mission of the Persians. Peace, instead of the old wars of conquest; but you would have seen no great falling off. Hystaspes himself had been less conqueror than consolidator; the Augustus of the Achaemenids, greater at peace than at war;--though great at that too, but not from land-frontiers; and indeed, had ample provocation, as those things go, for his punitive expedition that failed. For the rest, he had strewn the coast with fine harbors, and reclaimed vast deserts with reservoirs and dikes; had explored the Indus and the ocean, and linked Egypt and Persia by a canal from the Red Sea to the Nile. Well; and Xerxes carried it on; he too played the great Achaemenid game; did he not send ships to sail round Africa? If there was no more conquering, it was because there was really nothing left to conquer; who would bother about that Greece?--Darius Hystaspes was the last strong kind, yes; but Datius Nothus was the first gloomy tyrant, or at least his queen, bloodthirsty Parysatis, was; which was not til 434. So that Persia too had her good thirteen decades of comfortable, even glorious, years. Whereafter we see her wobbling under conflicting cyclic impulses down to her final fall. For lack of another to take her place, she was still in many ways the foremost power; albeit here and there obstreperous satraps were always making trouble. When Lysander laid Athens low in 404, it was Persian financial backing enabled him to do it; but Cyrus might march in to her heart, and Xenophon out again, but two years later, and none to say them effectually nay. Had there been some other West Asian power, risen in 520 or thereabouts, to outlast Persia and finish its day with the end of the great cycle in 390, one supposes the Achaemenids would have fallen in the four-twenties, and left that other supreme during the remaining years. But there was none. The remains of Nineveh and Babylon slept securely in the Persian central provinces; there was nothing there to rise; they had their many days long since. Egypt would have done something, if she could; would have like to;--but her own cycles were against her. She had the last of her cyclic days under the XXVIth Dynasty. In 655 Psamtik I reunited and resurrected her while his overlord Assurbanipal was wrecking his--Assurbanipal's--empire elsewhere; thirteen decades afterwards, in 525, she fell before Cambyses. Thirteen decades, nearly, of Persian rule followed, with interruptions of revolt, before she regained her independence in 404;--stealing, you may say, the nine years short from the weakness of Persia. Then she was free for another half -cycle, less one year; a weak precarious freedom at best, lost to Artaxerxes Ochus in 340. All but the first fourteen years of it fell beyond the limits of the manvantara; the West Asian forces were spent. Egypt was merely waiting til the Greek cycle should have sunk low enough and on to the military plane; and had not long to wait. She paid back most of her nine years to Persia; then hailed Alexander as her savior; and was brought by him, to some extent, under the influence of European cycles; to share then in what uninteresting twilight remained to Greece, and presently in the pomps and crimsons of Rome. Persia, too, was waiting for that Greek military cycle; until it should rise, however, something had to be going on in West Asia. The Athenian first half-cycle--sixty-five years from the inception of the hegemony--ended in 413, when the Peloponnesian War entered its last, and for Athens, disastrous, phase. Another half-cycle brings us to the rise of Philip; who about that time became dominant in Greece. But not yet had a power consolidated, which could contest with Persia the hegemony of the world. Having enabled Sparta to put down Athens, the western satraps turned their attention to finding those who should put down Sparta. Corinth, Thebes, Argos and Athens were willing; and Pharnabazus financed them for war in 395. A year after, he and Conon destroyed the Spartan fleet. In 387 came the Peace of Antalicidas, by which Persia won what Xerxes had fought for of old; the suzerainty of Greece. But she was not strong; her cycle was long past; she stood upon the wealth and prestige of her better days, and the weakness of her contemporaries. Internally she was falling to pieces until Artaxerxes Ochus, between 362 and 338, wading through blood and cruelty, restored her unity, wore out her resources, and left her apparently as great as under Xerxes, but really ready to fall at a touch. He prepared the way for Alexander. So ended an impulse that began, who knows when? on a high spiritual plane in the pure religion of the Teacher we call Zoroaster; a high system of ethics expressed in long generations of clean and noble lives. From that spirituality the impulse descending reached the planes of intellect and culture; with results we cannot measure now; nothing remains but the splendor of a few ruins in the wilderness--the course the lion and the lizard keep. It reached the plane of military power, and flowed over all the lands between the Indus and the Nile; covering them with a well-ordered, highly civilized and wisely governed empire. Then it began to ebb; meeting a counter-impulse arising in Eastern Europe. Which, too, had it source on spiritual planes; in the heart and on the lyre of blind Maeonides; and worked downward and outward, till it had wrought on this plane a stable firmness in Sparta, an alertness in Athens. It contacted then the crest of the Persian wave, and received from the impact huge accession of vigor. It blossomed in the Age of Pericles on the plane of mind and creative imagination. It came down presently on to the plane of militarism, and swelled out under Alexander as far as to the eastern limits of the Persian Empire he overthrew. Where it met a tide beginning to rise in India; and receded or remained stationary before that. And at last it was spent, and itself overthrown by a new impulse arisen in Italy; which took on impetus from contact with Greece, as Greece had done from contact with Persia. The Greeks of Homer's and Hesiod's time, before the European manvantara, elsewhere begun, had reached or quickened them, were uncouth and barbarous enough; they may have stood, to their great West Asian neighbors, as the Moors of today to the nations of Europe; they may have stood, in things cultural, to the unknown nations of the north or west already at that time awakened, as the Chinese now and recently to the Japanese. Like Moors, like Chinese, they had behind them traditions of an ancient greatness; but pralaya, fall, adversity, squalor, had done their work on them, developing the plebeian qualities. Now that they have emerged into modern history, as then when they were emerging into ancient, we find them with many like characteristics; a turn for democracy, for example; the which they assuredly had not when they were passing into pralaya under the Byzantine Empire. A turn for democracy; plebeian qualities; these are the things one would expect after pralaya, if that pralaya had been at all disastrous. With the ancient Greeks, the plebeian qualities were not all virtues by any means; they retained through their great age many of the vices of plebeianism. They won their successes for the most part on sporadic impulses of heroism; shone by an extraordinary intellectual and artistic acumen. But taking them by and large, they were too apt to ineffectualize those successes, in the fields of national and political life, by extraordinary venality and instability of character. I shall draw here deeply on Professor Mahaffy, who very wisely sets out to restore the balance as between Greeks and Persians, and burst bubble-notions commonly held. Greek culture was extremely varied, and therein lay its strength; you can find all sorts of types there; and there are outstanding figures of the noblest. But on the whole, says Mahaffy--I think rightly--there was something sordid, grasping, and calculating: _noblesse oblige_ made little appeal to them--was rather foreign to their nature. Patricianism did exist; in Sparta; perhaps in Thebes. Of the two Thebans we know best, Pindar was decidedly a patrician poet, and Epaminondas was a very great gentleman; now Thebes, certainly, must have been mighty in foregone manvantaras, as witness her five cycles of myths, the richest in Greece. In her isolation she had doubtless carried something of that old life down; and then, too, she had Pindar. Nor was Sparta any upstart;--of her we have only heard Athenians speak. But outside of these two, you hardly find a Greek _gentleman_ in public life; hardly that combination of personal honor, contempt of commerce, class-pride, leisured and cultured living;--with, very often, ultra-conservatism, narrowness of outlook, political ineptitude and selfishness. The Spartans had many of these instincts, good and bad. They reached their cultural zenith in the seventh century or earlier; probably Lycurgus had an eye to holding off that degeneration which follows on super-refinement; and hence the severe life he brought in. My authority makes much of the adoration the other Greeks accorded them; who might hate and fight with Sparta, but took infinite pride in her nonetheless. Thus they told those tales of the Spartan mothers, and the Spartan boy the fox nibbled; thus their philosophers, painting an Utopia, took always most of its features from Lacedaemon. All of which I quote for the light's sake it throws on the past of Greece: the past of her past, and the ages before her history. Or really, on the whole history of the human race; for I think it is what you shall find always, or almost always. I spoke of the Celtic qualities as having been of old patrician; they are plebeian nowadays, after the long pralaya and renewal. As a pebble is worn smooth by the sea, so the patrician type, with its refinements and culture, is wrought out by the strong life currents that play through a race during its manvantaric periods. Pralaya comes, with conquest, the overturning of civilization, mixture of blood; all the precious results obtained hurled back into the vortex;--and then to be cast up anew with the new manvantara, a new uncouth formless form, to be played on, shaped and infused by the life-currents again. In Greece an old manvantara had evolved patricianism and culture; which the pralaya following swept all away, except some relics perhaps in Thebes the isolated and conservative, certainly in Sparta. Lycurgus was wise in his generation when he sought by a rigid system to impose the plebeian virtues on Spartan patricianism. Wise in his generation, yes; but he could work no miracle. Spartan greatness, too, was ineffectual: there is that about pouring new wine into old bottles. Sparta was old and conservative; covered her patrician virtues with a rude uncultural exterior; was inept politically--as old aristocracies so commonly are; she shunned that love of the beautiful and the things of the mind which is the grace, as Bushido--to use the best name there is for it--is the virtue, of the patrician. You may say she was selfish and short-sighted; true; and yet she began the Peloponnesian War not without an eye to freeing the cities and islands from the soulless tyranny an Athenian democracy had imposed on them: when there is a war, some men will always be found, who go in with unselfish high motives.-- Being the patrician state, and the admired of all, it was she naturally who assumed the hegemony when the Persian came. But she had foregone the graces of her position, and her wits, through lack of culture, were something dull. She lost that leadership presently to a young democratic Athens endowed with mental acumen and potential genius; who, too, gained immeasurably from Sparta, because she knew how to turn everything to the quickening of her wits--this having at her doors so contrasting a neighbor, for example.--Young? Well, yes; I suspect if there had ever been an Athenian glory before, it was ages before Troy fell. She plays no great part in the legends of the former manvantara; Homer has little to say about her. She had paid tribute at one time to Minos, king of Crete; her greatness belonged not to the past, but to the future. As all Greeks admired the Spartans--what we call a 'sneaking' admiration--so too they admired the Persians; who were gentleman in a great sense, and in most moral qualities their betters. Who was _Ho Basileus, The King_ par excellence? Always 'the Great King, the King of the Persians.' Others were mere kings of Sparta, or where it might be. And this Great King was a far-way, tremendous, golden figure, moving in a splendor as of fairy tales; palaced marvelously, so travelers told, in cities compared with which even Athens seemed mean. Greek drama sought its subjects naturally in the remote and grandiose; always in the myths of prehistory, save once--when Aeschylus found a kindred atmosphere, and the material he wanted, in the palace of the Great King. To whom, as a matter of history, not unrecorded by Herodotus, his great chivalrous barons accorded a splendid loyalty,--and loyalty is always a thing that lies very near the heart of Bushido. Most Greeks would cheerfully sell their native city upon an impulse of chagrin, revenge, or the like. Xerxes' ships were overladen, and there was a storm; the Persian lords gaily jumped into the sea to lighten them. Such Samurai action might not have been impossible to Greeks,--Spartans especially; but in the main their eyes did not wander far from the main chance. You will think of many exceptions; but this comes as near truth, probably, as a generalization may. We should understand their temperament; quick and sensitive, capable of inspiration to high deeds; but, en masse, rarely founded on enduring principles. That jumping into the seas was nothing to the Persians; they were not sung to it; it was not done in defense of home, or upon a motive of sudden passion, as hate or the like; but permanent elements in their character moved them to it quietly, as to the natural thing to do. But if Greeks had done it, with what kudos, like Thermopylae, it would have come down! They were great magnificoes, very lordly gentlemen, those Persian nobles; _hijosdalgo,_ as they say in Spain; men of large lives, splendor and leisure, scorning trade; mighty huntsmen before the Lord. Of the Greeks, only the Spartans were sportsmen; but where the Spartans hunted foxes and such-like small fry, The Persians followed your true dangerous wild-fowl: lions, leopards, and tigers. A great satrap could buy up Greece almost at any time; could put the Greeks to war amongst themselves, and finance his favorite side out of his own pocket. On such a scale they lived; and travelers and mercenaries brought home news of it to Greece; and Greeks whose wealth might be fabulous strove to emulate the splendor they heard of. The Greeks made better heavy armor--one cause of the victories; but for the most part the Persian crafts and manufactures outshone the Greek by far. All these things I take from Mahaffy, who speaks of their culture as "an ancestral dignity for superior to, and different from, the somewhat mercantile refinement of the Greeks." The secret of the difference is this: the West Asian manvantara, to which the Persians belonged, was more than a thousand years older than the European manvantara, to which the Greeks belonged; so the latter, beside the former, had an air of _parvenu._ The Greeks dwelt on the Persian's borders; and fought him when they must; intrigued with or against him when they might; called him barbarian for self-respect's sake--and admired and envied him always. Had he been really a barbarian, in contact with their superior civilization, he would have become degraded by the contact; in such cases it always happens that the inferior sops up the vices only of his betters. But Alexander found the Persians much the same courtly-mannered, lordly-living, mighty huntsmen they had been when Herodotus described them; and was ambitious that his Europeans should mix with them on equal terms and learn their virtues. Where and when did this high tradition grow up? There was not time enough, I think, in that half cycle between the rise of Cyrus and Marathon. In truth we are to see in these regions vistas of empires receding back into the dimness, difficult to sort out and fix their chronology. Cyrus overthrew the Assyrian; from whose yoke his people had freed themselves some fifteen years or so before. The Medes had been rising since the earlier part of that seventh century; sometime then they brought the kindred race of Persians under their sway. Sometime then, too, I am inclined to think, lived the Teacher Zoroaster: about whose date there is more confusion than about that of any other World Reformer; authorities differ within a margin of 6000 years. But Taoism, Confucianism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Pythagoreanism all had their rise about this time; the age of religions began then; it was not a thing of chance, but marked a definite change in the spiritual climate of the world. The _Bundahish,_ the Parsee account of it, says that he lived 258 years before Alexander; almost all scholars reject the figure--once more, "it is their nature to." But you will note that 258 is about as much as to say 260, which is twice the cycle of thirteen decades; I think the probabilities are strong that the _Bundahish_ is right. The chief grounds for putting him much earlier are these: Greek accounts say, six thousand years before the Greek time; and there are known to have been kings in those parts, long before Cyrus, by the name or title of Mazdaka,--which word is from Mazda, the name of the God-Principle in Zoroastrianism. The explanation is this: you shall find it in H.P. Blavatsky: there were many Zoroasters; this one we are speaking of was the last (as Gautama was the last of the Buddhas); and of course he invented nothing, taught no new truth; but simply organized as a religion ideas that had before belonged to the Mysteries. Where then did his predecessors teach?--Where Zal and Rustem thundered as they might; in the old Iran of the _Shah Nameh,_ the land of Kaikobad the Great and Kaikhusru. Too remote for all scholars even to agree that it existed; set by those who do believe in it at about 1100 B.C.--we hear of a "Powerful empire in Bactria"-- which is up towards Afghanistan; I take it that it was from this the Persian tradition came--last down to, and through, the period of the Achaemenidae. What arts, what literature, these latter may have had, are lost; nothing is known of their creative and mental culture; but, to quote Mahaffy once more, it is exceedingly unlikely they had none. Dio Chrysostom, in the first century B.C., says that "neither Homer nor Hesiod sang of the chariots and horses of Zeus so worthily as Zoroaster"; which may mean, perhaps, that a tradition still survived in his time of a great Achaemenian poetry. Why then is this culture lost, since if it existed, it was practically contemporary with that of the Greeks? Because contemporaneity is a most deceiving thing; there is nothing in it. Persia now is not contemporary with Japan; nor modern China with Europe or America. The Achaemenians are separated from us by two pralayas; while between us and the Greeks there is but one. When our present Europe has gone down, and a new barbarism and Middle Ages have passed over France, Britain and Italy, and given place in turn to a new growth of civilization--what shall we know of this Paris, and Florence, and London? As much and as little as we know now of Greece and Rome. We shall dig them up and reconstruct them; found our culture on theirs, and think them very wonderful for mere centers of (Christian) paganism; we shall marvel at their genius, as shown in the fragments that go under the names of those totally mythological poets, Dante and Milton; and at their foul cruelty, as shown by their capital punishment and their wars. And what shall we know of ancient Athens and Rome? Our scholars will sneer at the superstition that they ever existed; our theologians will say the world was created somewhat later. Or indeed, no; I think it will not be so. I think we shall have established an abiding perception of truth: Theosophy will have smashed the backbone of this foolish Kali-Yuga as a little, before then. So that Creasy is all out in his estimate of the importance of Marathon and the other victories. Wars are only straws to show which way the current flows; and they do that only indifferently. They are not the current themselves, and they do not direct it; and were men wise enough to avoid them, better than the best that was ever won out of war would be won by other means that the Law would provide. And yet the Human Spirit will win something out of all eventualities, even war, if Kama and the Cycles permit. In a non-political sense the Persian Wars bore huge harvest for Greece; the Law used them to that end. The great effort brought out all the latent resources of the Athenian mind: the successes heightened Greek racial feeling to a pitch. --What! we could stand against huge Persia?--then we are not unworthy of the men that fought at Ilion, our fathers; the race and spirit of _anax andron Agamemnon_ is not dead! Ha, we can do anything; there are no victories we may not win! And here is the dead weight and terror of the war lifted from us; and there is no anxiety now to hold our minds. We may go forth conquering and to conquer; we may launch our triremes on immaterial seas, and subdue unknown empires of the spirit!--And here is Athens the quick-witted, hegemon of Greece; her ships everywhere on the wine-dark seas; her citizens everywhere; her natural genius swelled by an enormous sense of achievement; her soul, grown great under a great stress, now freed from the stress and at leisure to explore:--in contact with opposite-minded Sparta; in contact with conservative and somewhat luxuriously-living slow Thebes;--with a hundred other cities;--in contact with proud Persia; with Egypt, fallen, but retaining a measure of her old profound sense of the Mysteries and the reality of the Unseen; --from all these contacts and sources a spirit is born in Athens that is to astonish and illumine the world. And Egypt is now in revolt from the Persian; and intercourse with her is easier than ever before in historical times; and the triremes, besides what spiritual cargoes they may be bringing in from her, are bringing in cargoes of honest material papyrus to tempt men to write down their thoughts.--So the flowering of Greece became inevitable; the Law intended it, and brought about all the conditions. IV--AESCHYLUS AND HIS ATHENS Greece holds such an eminence in history because the Crest-Wave rolled in there when it did. She was tenant of an epochal time; whoever was great then, was to be remembered forever. But the truth is, Greece served the future badly enough. The sixth and fifth centuries B. C. were an age of transition, in which the world took a definite step downward. There had been present among men a great force to keep the life of the nations sweet: that which we call the Mysteries of Antiquity. Whether they had been active continuously since this Fifth Root Race began, who can say? Very possibly not; for in a million years cycles would repeat themselves, and I dare say conditions as desolate as our own have obtained. There may have been withdrawals, and again expansions outward. But certainly they were there at the dawn of history, and for a long time before. What their full effect may have been, we can only guess; for when the history that we know begins, they were already declining:--we get no definite news, except of the Iron Age. The Mysteries were not closed at Eleusis until late in the days of the Roman Empire; and we know that such a great man as Julian did not disdain to be initiated. But they were only a remnant then, an ever-indrawing source of inspiration; already a good century before Pericles they must have ceased to rule life. Pythagoras--born, probably, in the five-eighties--had found it necessary, to obtain that with which spirituality might be reawakened, to travel and learn what he could in India, Egypt, Chaldaea, and, according to Porphyry and tradition, among the Druids in Gaul--and very likely Britain, their acredited headquarters. From these countries he brought home Theosophy to Greek Italy; and all this suggests that he--and the race--needed something that Eleusis could no longer give. About the same time Buddha and the founder of Jainism in India, Laotse and Confucius in China, and as we have seen, probably also Zoroaster in Persia, all broke away from the Official Mysteries, more or less, to found Theosophical Movements of their own; --which would indicate that, at least from the Tyrrhenian to the Yellow Sea, the Mysteries had, in that sixth century, ceased to be the efficient instrument of the White Lodge. The substance of the Ancient Wisdom might remain in them; the energy was largely gone. Pisistratus did marvels for Athens; lifting her out of obscurity to a position which should invite great souls to seek birth in her. He died in 527; two years later a son was born to the Eupatrid Euphorion at Eleusis; and I have no doubt there was some such stir over the event, on Olympus or on Parnassus, as happened over a birth at Stratford-on-Avon in 1564, and one in Florence in the May of 1265. In 510, Hippias, grown cruel since the assassination of his brother, was driven out from an Athens already fomenting with the yeast of new things. About that time this young Eleusinian Eupatrid was set to watch grapes ripening for the vintage, and fell asleep. In his dream Dionysos, God of the Mysteries, appeared to him and bade him write tragedies for the Dionysian Festival. On waking, he found himself endowed with genius: beset inwardly with tremendous thoughts, and words to clothe them in; so that the work became as easy to him as if he had been trained to it for years. He competed first in 499--against Choerilos and Pratinas, older poets--and was defeated; and soon afterwards sailed for Sicily, where he remained for seven years. The dates of Pythagoras are surmised, not known; Plumptre, with a query, gives 497 for his death. I wonder whether, in the last years of his life, that great Teacher met this young Aeschylus from Athens; whether the years the latter spent in Sicily on this his first visit there, were the due seven years of his Pythagorean probation and initiation? "Veniat Aeschylus," says Cicero, "non poeta solum, sed etiam Pythagoreus: sic enim accepimus ";--and we may accept it too; for that was the Theosophical Movement of the age; and he above all others, Pythagoras having died, was the great Theosophist. They had the Eleusinian Mysteries at Athens, and Most of the prominent Athenians must have been initiated into them--since that was the State Religion; but Aeschylus alone in Athens went through life clothed in the living power of Theosophy. Go to the life of such a man, if you want big clues as to the inner history of his age;--the life of Aeschylus, I think, can interpret for us that of Athens. There are times when the movement of the cycles is accelerated, and you can see the great wheel turning; this was one. Aeschylus had proudly distinguished himself at Marathon; and Athens, as the highest honor she could do him for that, must have his portrait appear in the battle-picture painted for a memorial of the victory. He fought, too, at Artemisium and Salamis; with equal distinction. In 484 he won the first of thirteen annual successes in the dramatic competitions. These were the years during which Athens was really playing the hero; the years of Aristides' ascendency. In 480 Xerxes burned the city; but the people fought on, great in faith. In 479 came Plataea, Aeschylus again fighting. Throughout this time, he, the Esotericist and Messenger of the Gods, was wholly at one with his Athens--an Athens alive enough then to the higher things to recognize the voice of the highest when it spoke to her--to award Aeschylus, year after year, the chief dramatic prize. Then in 478 or 477 she found herself in a new position: her heroism and intelligence had won their reward, and she was set at the head of Greece. Six years later Aeschylus produced _The Persians,_ the first of the seven extant out of the seventy or eighty plays he wrote; in it he is still absolutely the patriotic Athenian. In 471 came the _Seven against Thebes;_ from which drama, I think, we get a main current of light on the whole future history of Athens. Two men, representing two forces, had guided the city during those decades. On the one hand there was Aristides, called the Just--inflexible, incorruptible, impersonal and generous; on the other, Themistocles--precocious and wild as a boy; profligate as a youth and young man; ambitious, unscrupulous and cruel; a genius; a patriot; without moral sense. The policy of Aristides, despite his so-called democratic reforms, was conservative; he persuaded Greece, by sound arguments, to the side of Athens: he was for Athens doing her duty by Greece, and remaining content. That of Themistocles was that she should aim at empire by any means: should make herself a sea-power with a view to dominating the Greek world. Oh, to begin with, doubtless with a view to holding back the Persians; and so far his policy was sane enough; but his was not the kind of mind in which an ambitious idea fails to develop in ambitious and greedy directions; and that of mastery of the seas was an idea that could not help developing fatally. He had been banished for his corruption in 471; but he had set Athens on blue water, and bequeathed to her his policy. Henceforward she was to make for supremacy, never counting the moral cost. She attacked the islands at her pleasure, conquered them, and often treated the conquered with vile cruelty. The _Seven against Thebes_ was directed by Aeschylus against the Themistoclean, and in support of the Aristidean, policy. Imperialistic ambitions, fast ripening in that third decade of the fifth century, were opposed by the Messenger of the Gods. His valor in four battles had set him among the national heroes; he had been, in _The Persians,_ the laureate of Salamis; by the sheer grandeur of his poetry he had won the prize thirteen times in succession.--And by the bye, it is to the eternal credit of Athenian intelligence that Athens, at one hearing of those obscure, lofty and tremendous poems, should have appreciated them, and with enthusiasm. Try to imagine _Samson Agonistes_ put on the stage today; with no academical enthusiasts or eclat of classicism to back it; but just put on before thirty thousand sight-seers, learned and vulgar, statesman and cobbler, tinker and poet; the mob all there; the groundlings far out-numbering the elite:--and all not merely sitting out the play, but roused to a frenzy of enthusiasm; and Milton himself, present and acting, the hero of the day. That, despite Mr. Whistler and the _Ten O'Clock_--seems really to have been the kind of thing that happened in Athens. Tomides was there, with his companions-- little Tomides, the mender of bad soles--and intoxicated by the grand poetry; understanding it, and never finding it tedious;-- poetry they had had no opportunity to study in advance, they understood and appreciated wildly at first hearing. One cannot imagine it among moderns.--And Milton is clear as daylight beside remote and difficult Aeschylus. To catch the latter's thought, we need the quiet of the study, close attention, reading and re-reading; and though of course time has made him more difficult; and we should have understood him better, with no more than our present limited intelligence, had we been his countrymen and contemporaries; yet it remains a standing marvel, and witness to the far higher general intelligence of the men of Athens. The human spirit was immensely nearer this plane; they were far more civilized, in respect to mental culture, than we are. Why?--The cycles have traveled downward; our triumphs are on a more brutal plane; we are much farther from the light of the Mysteries than they were. And yet they were going wrong: the great cycle had begun its down-trend; they were already preparing the way for our fool-headed materialism. In the _Seven against Thebes_ Aeschylus protested against the current of the age. Three years later, Athens, impatient of criticism, turned on him. He is acting in one of his own plays--one that been lost. He gives utterance, down there in the arena, to certain words-- tremendous words, as always, we must suppose: words hurled out of the heights of an angry eternity-- _"Aeschylus' bronze-throat eagle-bark for blood,"_ --and Athens, that used to thrill and go mad to such tones when they proclaimed the godlike in her own soul and encouraged her to grand aspirations--goes mad now in another sense. She has grown used to hear warning in them, and something in alliance with her own stifled conscience protesting against her wrong courses; and such habituation rarely means acquiescence or soothed complacency. Now she is smitten and stung to the quick. A yell from the mob; uproar; from the tiers above tiers they butt, lurch, lunge, pour forward and down: the tinkers and cobblers, demagogs and demagoged: intent--yes--to kill. But he, having yet something to say, takes refuge at the altar; and there even a maddened mob dare not molest him. But the prize goes to a rising star, young Sophocles; and presently the Gods' Messenger is formally accused and tried for "Profanation of the Mysteries." Revealing secrets pertaining to them, in fact. And now note this: his defense is that he did not know that his lines revealed any secret--was unaware that what he had said pertained to the Mysteries. Could he have urged such a plea, had it not been known he was uninitiated? Could he have known the teachings, had he not been instructed in a school where they were known? He, then, was an initiate of the Pythagoreans, the new Theosophical Movement upon the new method; not of Orthodox Eleusis, that had grown old and comatose rather, and had ceased to count.--Well, the judges were something saner than the mob; memory turned again to what he had done at Marathon, what at Arternisium and Plataea; to his thirteen solid years of victory (national heroism on poetico-dramatic fields); and to that song of his that "saved at Salamis": _"O Sons of Greeks, go set your country free!"_ --and he was acquitted: Athens had not yet fallen so low as to prepare a hemlock cup for her teacher. But meanwhile he would do much better among his old comrades in Sicily than at home; and thither he went. He returned in 458, to find the Age of Pericles in full swing; with all made anew, or in the making; and the time definitely set on its downward course. 'Reform' was busy at abolishing institutions once held sacred; was the rage;--that funeral speech of Pericles, with its tactless vaunting of Athenian superiority to all other possible men and nations, should tell us something. When folk get to feel like that, God pity and forgive them!--it is hard enough for mere men to. Aeschylus smote at imperialism in the _Agamemnon_--the first play of this last of his trilogies; and at the mania for reforming away sacred institutions in the _Eumenides_--where he asserts the divine origin of the threatened Areopagus. Popular feeling rose once more against him, and he returned to Sicily to die. Like so many another of his royal line, apparently a failure. And indeed, a failure he was, so far as his Athens was concerned. True, Athenian artistic judgment triumphed presently over the Athenian spite. Though it was the rule that no successful play should be performed more than once, they decreed that 'revivals' of Aeschylus should always be in order. And Aristophanes testifies to his lasting popularity--when he shows little Tomides with a bad grouch over seeing a play by Theognis, when he had gone to the theater "expecting Aeschylus";--and when he shows Aeschylus and Euripides winning, because his poetry had died with him, and so he had it there for a weapon--whereas Aeschylus's was still alive and on earth. Yes; Athens took him again, and permanently, into favor: took the poet, but not the Messenger and his message. For she had gone on the wrong road in spite of him: she had let the divine force, the influx of the human spirit which had come to her as her priceless cyclic opportunity, flow down from the high planes proper to it, on to the plane of imperialism and vulgar ambition; and his word had been spoken to the Greeks in vain--as all Greek history and Karma since has been proclaiming. But in sooth he was not merely for an age, but for all time; and his message, unlike Pindar's whom all Greece worshiped, and far more than Homer's or that of Sophocles--is vital today. Aeschylus, and Plato, and Socrates who speaks through Plato, and Pythagoras who speaks through all of them, are the Greeks whose voices are lifted forever for the Soul. Even the political aspect of his message--the only one I have touched on--is vital. It proclaims a truth that underlies all history: one, I suspect, that remains for our Theosophical Movement to impress on the general world-consciousness so that wars may end: namely, that the impulse of Nationalism is a holy thing, foundationed upon the human spirit: a means designed by the Law for humanity's salvation. But like all spiritual forces, it must be kept pure and spiritual, or instead of saving, it will damn. In its inception, it is vision of the Soul: of the Racial or National Soul--which is a divine light to lure us away from the plane of personality, to obliterate our distressing and private moods; to evoke the divine actor in us, and merge us in a consciousness vastly greater than out own. But add to that saving truth this damning corolary: _I am better than thou; my race than thine; we have harvests to reap at your expense, and our rights may be your wrongs:_--and you have, though it appear not for awhile, fouled that stream from godhood:--you have debased your nationalism and made it hellish. Upon your ambitions and your strength, now in the time of your national flowering, you may win to your desire, if you _will;_ because now the spirit is quickening the whole fiber of your national self; and the national will must become, under that pressure, almost irresistibly victorious. The Peoples of the earth shall kneel before your throne; you shall get your vulgar empire;--but you shall get it presently, as they say, "where the chicken got the axe": _Vengeance is mine, saith the Law; I will repay._ The cycle, on the plane to which you have dragged it down, will run its course; your high throne will go down with it, and yourself shall kneel to races you now sniff at for 'inferior.' You have brought it on to the material plane, and are now going upward on its upward trend there gaily-- "Ah, let no evil lust attack the host Conquered by greed, to plunder what they ought not; For yet they need return in safety home, Doubling the goal to run their backward race" [_Agamemnon,_ Plumtre's translation] The downtrend of the cycle awaits you--the other half--just as the runner in the foot-races to win, must round the pillar at the far end of the course, and return to the starting-place.--That is among the warnings Aeschylus spoke in the _Agamemnon_ to an Athens that was barefacedly conquering and enslaving the Isles of Greece to no end but her own wealth and power and glory. The obvious reference is of course to the conquerors of Troy. I have spoken of this Oresteian Trilogy as his _Hamlet;_ with the _Prometheus Bound_--another tremendous Soul-Symbol--it is what puts him in equal rank with the four supreme Masters of later Western Literature. I suppose it is pretty certain that Shakespeare knew nothing of him, and had never heard of the plot of his _Agamemnon._ But look here:-- There was one Hamlet King of Denmark, absent from control of his kingdom because sleeping within his orchard (his custom always of an afternoon). And there was one Agamemnon King of Men, absent from control of his kingdom because leading those same Men at the siege of Troy. Hamlet had a wife Gertrude; Agamemnon had a wife Clytemnestra. Hamlet had a brother Claudius; who became the lover of Gertrude. Agamemnon had a cousin Aegisthos, who became the paramour of Clytemnestra. Claudius murdered Hamlet, and thereby came by his throne and queen. Clytemnestra and Aegisthos murdered Agamemnon, and Aegisthos thereby became possessed of his throne and queen. Hamlet and Gertrude had a son Hamlet, who avenged his father's murder. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra had a son Orestes, who avenged his father's murder. There, however, the parallel ends. Shakespeare had to paint the human soul at a certain stage of its evolution: the 'moment of choice,' the entering on the path: and brought all his genius to bear on revealing that. He had, here, to teach Karma only incidentally; in _Macbeth,_ when the voice cried 'Sleep no more!' he is more Aeschylean in spirit. That dreadful voice rings through Aeschylus; who was altogether obsessed with the majesty and awfulness of Karma. It is what he cried to Athens then, and to all ages since, reiterating _Karma_ with terrible sleep-forbidding insistency from dark heights.--I have quoted the wonderful line in which Browning, using similes borrowed from Aeschylus himself, sums up the effect of his style: 'Aeschylus' bronze-throat eagle-bark for blood,' which compensates for the more than Greek--unintelligibility of Browning's version of the _Agamemnon:_ it gives you some color, some adumbration of the being and import of the man. How shall we compare him with those others, his great compeers on the Mountain of Song? Shakespeare--as I think--throned upon a peak where are storms often, but where the sun shines mostly; surveying all this life, and with an eye to the eternal behind: Dante--a prophet, stern, proud, glad and sorrowful; ever in a great pride of pain or agony of bliss; surveying the life without,--only to correlate it with and interpret it by the vaster life within that he knew better;--this Universe for him but the crust and excoriata of the Universe of the Soul. Milton--a Titan Soul hurled down from heaven, struggling with all chaos and the deep to enunciate--just to proclaim and put on everlasting record-- those two profound significant words, _Titan_ and _Soul,_ for a memorial to Man of the real nature of Man. Aeschylus--the barking of an eagle--of Zeus the Thunderer's own eagle out of ominous skies above the mountains: a thing unseen as Karma, mysterious and mighty as Fate, as Disaster, as the final Triumph of the Soul; sublime as death; a throat of bronze, superhumanly impersonal; a far metallic clangor of sound, hoarse or harsh, perhaps, if your delicate ears must call him so; but grand; immeasurably grand; majestically, ominously and terribly grand;-- ancestral voices prophesying war, and doom, and all dark tremendous destinies;--and yet he too with serenity and the Prophecy of Peace and bliss for his last word to us: he will not leave his avenging Erinyes until by Pallas' wand and will they are transformed into Eumenides, bringers of good fortune. Something like that, perhaps, is the impression Aeschylus leaves on the minds of those who know him. They bear testimony to the fact that, however grand his style--like a Milton Carlylized in poetry--thought still seems to overtop it and to be struggling for expression through a vehicle less than itself. Says Lytton, not unwisely perhaps: "His genius is so near the verge of bombast, that to approach his sublime is to rush into the ridiculous"; and he goes on to say that you might find the nearest echo of his diction in Shelley's _Prometheus;_ but of his diction alone; for "his power is in concentration--that of Shelley in diffuseness." "The intellectuality of Shelley," he says, "destroyed; that of Aeschylus only increased his command over the passions. The interest he excites is startling, terrible, intense." Browning tried to bring over the style; but left the thought, in an English _Double-Dutched,_ far remoter than he found it from our understanding. The thought demands in English a vehicle crystal-clear; but Aeschylus in the Greek is not crystal-clear: so close-packed and vast are the ideas that there are lines on lines of which the best scholars can only conjecture the meaning.--In all this criticism, let me say, one is but saying what has been said before; echoing Professor Mahaffy; echoing Professor Gilbert Murray; but there is a need to give you the best picture possible of this man speaking from the eternal.--Unless Milton and Carlyle had co-operated to make it, I think, any translation of the _Agamemnon_--which so many have tried to translate--would be fatiguing and a great bore to read. It may not be amiss to quote three lines from George Peel's _David and Bethsabe,_ which have been often called Aeschylean in audacity:-- "At him the thunder shall discharge his bolt, And his fair spouse, with bright and fiery wings, Sit ever burning on his hateful wings;" His--the thunder's--fair spouse is the lightning. Imagine images as swift, vivid and daring as that, hurled and flashed out in language terse, sudden, lofty--and you may get an idea of what this eagle's bark was like. And the word that came rasping and resounding on it out of storm-skies high over Olympus, for Athens then and the world since to hear, was KARMA. He took that theme, and drove it home, and drove it home, and drove it home. Athens disregarded the rights and sufferings of others; was in fact abominably cruel. Well; she should hear about Karma; and in such a way that she should--no, but she _should_-- give ear. Karma punished wrong-doing. It was wrong-doing that Karma punished. You could not do wrong with impunity.--The common thought was that any extreme of good fortune was apt to rouse the jealousy of the Gods, and so bring on disaster. This was what Pindar taught--all-worshiped prosperous Pindar, Aeschylus' contemporary, the darling poet of the Greeks. The idea is illustrated by Herodotus' story of the Ring of Polycrates. You remember how the latter, being tyrant of Samos, applied to Amasis of Egypt for an alliance. But wary Amasis, noting his invariable good luck, advised him to sacrifice something, lest the Gods should grow jealous: so Polycrates threw a ring into the sea, with the thought thus to appease Nemesis cheaply; but an obliging fish allowed itself to be caught and served up for his supper with the ring in its internal economy; on hearing of which, wary Amasis foresaw trouble, and declined the alliance with thanks. Such views or feelings had come to be Greek orthodoxy; you may take it that whatever Pindar said was not far from the orthodoxies--hence his extreme popularity: we dearly love a man who tells us grandly what we think ourselves, and think it right to think. But such a position would not do for Aeschylus. He noted his doctrine only to condemn it. "There live an old saw framed in ancient days In memories of men, that high estate, Full grown, brings forth its young, nor childless dies, But that from good success Springs to the race a woe insatiable. But I, apart from all, Hold this my creed alone: Ill deeds along bring forth offspring of ill Like to their parent stock." Needless to say the translation--Dean Plumptre's in the main-- fails to bring out the force of the original. We must remember that for his audiences the story he had to tell was not the important thing. They knew it in advance; it was one of their familiar legends. What they went to hear was Aeschylus' treatment of it; his art, his poetry, his preaching. That was what was new to them: the thing for which their eyes and ears were open. We go to the theater, as we read novels, for amusement; the Athenians went for aesthetic and religious ends. So Aechylus had ready for him an efficient pulpit; and was not suspect for using it. We like Movies shows because they are entertaining and exciting; the Athenian would have damned them because they are inartistic. I said, he had a pulpit ready for him; yet, as nearly as such a statement can come to truth, it was he himself who invented the drama. It was, remember, an age of transition: things were passing out from the inner planes: the Mysteries were losing their virtue. The Egyptian Mysteries had been dramatic in character; the Eleusinian, which were very likely borrowed or copied or introduced from Egypt, were no doubt dramatic too. Then there had been festivals among the rustics, chiefly in honor of Dionysos not altogether in his higher aspects, with rudimentary plays of a coarse buffoonish character. By 499, in Athens, these had grown to something more important; in that year the wooden scaffolding of the theater in which they were given broke down under the spectators; and this led to the building of a new theater in stone. It was in 499 Aeschylus first competed; the show was still very rudimentary in character. Then he went off to Sicily; and came back with the idea conceived of Greek Tragedy as an artistic vehicle or expression--and something more. He taught the men who had at first defeated him, how to do their later and better work; and opened the way for all who came after, from Sophocles to Racine. He took to sailing this new ship of the drama as near as he might to the shore-line of the Mysteries themselves;--indeed, he did much more than this; for he infused into his plays that wine of divine life then to be found in its purity and vigor only or chiefly in the Pythagorean Brotherhood.--And now as to this new art-form of his. De Quincey, accepting the common idea that the Dionysian Theater was built to seat between thirty and forty thousand spectators (every free Athenian citizen), argues that the formative elements that made Greek Tragedy what it was were derived from these huge dimensions. In such a vast building (he asks) how could you produce such a play as _Hamlet?_--where the art of the actor shows itself in momentary changes of expression, small byplay that would be lost, and the like. The figures would be dwarfed by the distances; stage whispers and the common inflexions of the speaking voice would be lost. So none of these things belonged to Greek Tragedy. The mere physical scale necessitated a different theory of art. The stature of the actors had to be increased, or they would have looked like pygmies; their figures had to be draped and muffled, to hide the unnatural proportions thus given them. A mask had to be worn, if only to make the head proportionate to the body; and the mask had to contain an arrangement for multiplying the voice, that it might carry to the whole audience. That implied that the lines should be chanted, not spoken;--though in any case, chanted they would be, for they were verse, not prose; and the Greeks had not forgotten, as we have, that verse is meant to be chanted. So here, to begin with, the whole scheme implied something as unlike actual life as it well could be. And then, too, there was the solemnity of the occasion--the religious nature of the whole festival. Thus, in substance De Quincey; who makes too little, perhaps, of the matter of that last sentence; and too much of what goes before. We may say that it was rather the grand impersonal theory of the art that created the outward condition; not the conditions that created the theory. Mahaffy went to Athens and measured the theater; and found it not so big by any means. They could have worked out our theories and practice in it, had they wanted to, so far as that goes. Coarse buffoonish country festivals do not of themselves evolve into grand art or solemn occasions; you must seek a cause for that evolution, and find it in an impulse arisen in some human mind. Or minds indeed; for such impulses are very mysterious. The Gods sow their seed in season; we do not see the sowing, but presently mark the greening of the brown earth. The method of the Mysteries--drama serious and religious--had been drifting outwards: things had been growing to a point where a great creative Soul could take hold of them and mold them to his wish. If Aeschylus was not an Initiate of Eleusis, he had learnt, with the Pythagoreans, the method of the Mysteries of all lands. He knew more, not less, than the common pillars of the Athenian Church and State. I imagine it was he, in those thirteen consecutive years of his victories, who in part created, in part drew from his Pythagorean knowledge, those conventions and circumstances for Tragedy which suited him--rather than that conventions already existing imposed formative limits on him. His genius was aloof, impersonal, severe, and of the substance of the Eternal; such as would need precisely those conventions, and must have created them had they not been there. Briefly, I believe that this is what happened. Sent by Pythagoras to do what he could for Athens and Greece, he forged this mighty bolt of tragedy to be his weapon. The theory of modern drama is imitation of life. It has nothing else and higher to offer; so, when it fails to imitate, we call it trash. But the theory of Aeschylean Tragedy is the illumination of life. Illumination of life, through a medium quite unlike life. Art begins on a spiritual plane, and works down to realism in its decadence; then it ceases to be art at all, and becomes merely copying what we imagine to be nature,--nature, often, as seen through a diseased liver and well-atrophied pineal gland. True art imitates nature only in a very selective and limited way. It chooses carefully what it shall imitate, and all to the end of illumination. It paints a flower, or a sunset, not to reproduce the thing seen with the eyes, but to declare and set forth that mood of the Oversoul which the flower or the sunset expressed. Flower-colors or sunset-colors cannot be reproduced in pigments; but you can do things with pigments and a brush that can tell the same story. Or it can be done in words, in a poem; or with the notes of music;--in both of which cases the medium used is still more, and totally, unlike the medium through which the Oversoul said its say in the sky or the blossom. Nature is always expressing these moods of the Oversoul; but we get no news of them, as a rule, from our own sight and hearing; we must wait for the poets and artists to interpret them. Life is always at work to teach us life; but we miss the grand lessons, usually, until some human Teacher enforces them. His methods are the same as those of the artists: between whose office and his there was at first no difference;--_Bard_ means only, originally, an Adept Teacher. Such a one selects experiences out of life for his pupils, and illumines them through the circumstances under which they are applied; just as the true artist selects objects from nature, and by his manner of treating them, interprets the greatness that lies beyond. So the drama-theory of Aeschylus. He took fragments of possible experience, and let them be seen through a heightened and interpretative medium; with a light at once intense and somber- portentous thrown on them; and this not to reproduce the externalia and appearance of life, but to illumine its inner recesses; to enforce, in plays lasting an hour or so, the lessons life may take many incarnations to teach. This cannot be done by realism, imitation or reproduction of the actual; than which life itself is always better. What keeps us from seeing the meanings of life? Personality. Not only our own, but in all those about us. Personality dodges and flickers always between our eyes and the solemn motions, the adumbrations of the augustness beyond. We demand lots of personality in our drama; we call it character-drawing. We want to see fellows like ourselves lounging or bustling about, and hear them chattering as we do;--fellows with motives (like our own) all springing from the personality. Human life is what interests us: we desire to drink deep of it, and drink again and again. The music that we wish to hear is the "still, sad music of humanity";--that is, taking our theory at its best, and before you come down to sheer 'jazz' and ragtime. But what interested Aeschylus was that which lies beyond and within life. He said: 'You can get life in the Agora, on the Acropolis, any day of the week; when you come to the theater you shall have something else, and greater.' So he set his scenes, either in a vast, remote, and mysterious antiquity, or--in _The Persians_--at Susa before the palace of the Great King: a setting as remote, splendid, vast, and mysterious, to the Greek mind of the day, as the other. Things should not be as like life, but as unlike life, as possible. The plays themselves, as acted, were a combination of poetry, dance, statuesque poses and motions and groupings; there was no action. All the action was done off the scenes. They did not portray the evolution of character; they hardly portrayed character--in the personal sense--at all. The _dramatis personae_ are types, symbols, the expression of natural forces, or principles in man. In our drama you have a line, an extension forward in time; a progression from this to that point in time;--in Greek Tragedy you have a cross-section of time--a cutting through the atom of time that glimpses may be caught of eternity. There was no unfoldment of a story; but the presentation of a single mood. In the chanted poetry and the solemn dance-movements a situation was set forth; what led up to it being explained retrospectively. The audience knew what was coming as well as the author did: that Agamemnon, for instance, was to be murdered. So all was written to play on their expectations, not on their surprise. There was a succession of perfect pictures; these and the poetry were to hold the interest, to work it up: to seize upon the people, and lead them by ever-heightening accessions of feeling into forgetfulness of their personal lives, and absorption in the impersonal harmony, the spiritual receptivity, from which the grand truths are visible. The actors' masks allowed only the facial expression of a single mood; and it was a single mood the dramatist aimed to produce: a unity; one great word. There could be no grave-diggers; no quizzing of Polonious; no clouds very like a whale. The whole drama is the unfoldment of a single moment: that, say, in which Hamlet turns on Caudius and kills him--rather, leads him out to kill him. To that you are led by a little sparse dialog, ominous enough, and pregnant with dire significance, between two or three actors; many long speeches in which the story is told in retrospect; much chanting by the chorus--Horatio multiplied by a dozen or so--to make you feel Hamlet's long indecision, and to allow you no escape from the knowledge that Claudius' crime would bring about its karmic punishment. It is a unity: one thunderbolt from Zeus;--first the growl and rumbling of the thunders; then the whirr of the dread missile,--and lo, the man dead that was to die. And through the bolt so hurled, so effective, and with it--the eagle-bark--Aeschylus crying _Karma!_ to the Athenians. So it has been said that Aeschylean Tragedy is more nearly allied to sculpture; Shakespearean Tragedy to the Epic. Think how that unchanging mask, that frozen moment of expression, would develop the quality of tragic irony. In it Clytemnestra comes out to greet the returning Agamemnon. She has her handmaids carpet the road for him with purple tapestries; she makes her speeches of welcome; she alludes to the old sacrifice of Iphigenia; she tells him how she has waited for his return;-- and all the while the audience knows she is about to kill him. They listen to her doubtful words, in which she reveals to them, who know both already, her faithlessness and dire purpose; but to her husband, seems to reveal something different altogether. With Agamemnon comes Cassandra from fallen Troy: whose fate was to foresee all woes and horror, and to forthtell what she saw-- and never to be believed; so now when she raises her dreadful cry, foreseeing what is about to happen, and uttering warning-- none believe her but the audience, who know it all in advance. And then there are the chantings of the chorus, a group of Argive elders. They know or guess how things stand between the queen and her lover; they express their misgiving, gathering as the play goes on; they recount the deeds of violence of which the House of Atreus has been the scene, and are haunted by the foreshadowings of Karma. But they many not understand or give credence to the warnings of Cassandra: Karma disallows fore-fending against the fall of its bolts. Troy has fallen, they say: and that was Karma; because Paris, and Troy in supporting him, had sinned against Zeus the patron of hospitality,--to whom the offense rose like vultures with rifled nest, wheeling in mid-heaven on strong oars of wings, screaming for retribution. --You may not that Aeschylus' freedom from the bonds of outer religion is like Shakespeare's own: here Zeus figures as symbol of the Lords of Karma; from him flow the severe readjustments of the Law;--but in the _Prometheus Bound_ he stands for the lower nature that crucifies the Higher. Troy, then, had sinned, and has fallen; but (says the Chorus) let the conquerors look to it that they do not overstep the mark; let there be no dishonoring the native Gods of Troy; (the Athenians had been very considerably overstepping the mark in some of their own conquests recently;)--let there be no plundering or useless cruelty; (the Athenians had been hideously greedy and cruel;)--or Karma would overtake it own agents, the Greeks, who were not yet out of the wood, as we say--who had not yet returned home. This was when the beacons had announced the fall of Troy, and before the entry of Agamemnon. Clytemnestra is not like Gertrude, but a much grander and more tragical figure. Shakespeare leaves you in no doubt as to his queen's relation to Claudius; he enlarges on their guilty passion _ad lib._ Aeschylus never mentions love at all in any of his extant plays; only barely hints at it here. It may be supposed to exist; it is an accessory motive; it lends irony to Clytemnestra's welcome to Agamemnon--in which only the audience and the Chorus are aware that the lady does protest too much. But she stands forth in her own eyes as an agent of Karma-Nemesis; there is something very terrible and unhuman about her. Early in the play she reminds the Chorus how Agamemnon, is setting out for Troy, sacrificed his and her daughter Iphigenia to get a fair wind: a deed of blood whose consequences must be feared--something to add to the Chorus's misgivings, as they chant their doubtful hope that the king may safely return. In reality Artemis had saved Igphigenia; and though Clytemnestra did not know this, in assuming the position of her daughter's avenger she put herself under the karmic ban. And Agamemnon did not know it: he had intended the sacrifice: and was therefore, and for his supposed ruthlessness at Troy, under the same ban himself. Hence the fate that awaited him on his return; and hence because of Clytemnestra's useless crime--when she and Aegisthos come out from murdering him, and announce what they have done, the Chorus's dark foretellings--to come true presently --of the Karma that is to follow upon it. And here we must guard ourselves against the error--as I think it is that Aeschylus set himself to create the perfect and final art-form as such. I think he was just intent on announcing Karma to the Athenians in the most effective way possible: bent all his energies to making that--and that the natural result of that high issue clear and unescapable; purpose was this marvelous art-form--which Sophocles took up later, and in some external ways perhaps perfected. Then came Aristotle after a hundred years, and defining the results achieved, tried to make Shakespeare impossible. The truth is that when you put yourself to do the Soul's work, and have the great forces of the Soul to back you therein, you create an art-form; and it only remains for the Aristotelian critic to define it. Then back comes the Soul after a thousand years, makes a new one, and laughs at the Aristotles. The grand business is done by following the Soul--not by conforming to rules or imitating models. But it must be the Soul; rules and models are much better than personal whims; they are a discipline good to be followed as long as one can.-- You will note how Aeschylus stood above the possibilities of actualism with which we so much concern ourselves; in the course of some sixteen hundred lines, and without interval or change of act or scene, he introduces the watchman on the house-top who first sees the beacons that announce the fall of Troy, on the very night that Troy fell,--and the return of Agamemnon in his chariot to Argos. In the _Choephori_ or _Libation-Pourers,_ the second play of the trilogy, Orestes returns from his Wittenberg, sent by Apollo to avenge his father. The scene again is in front of the house of Atreus. Having killed Aegistlios within, Orestes comes out to the Chorus; then Clytemnestra enters; he tells her what he has done, and what he intends to do; and despite her pleadings, leads her in to die beside her paramour. He comes out again, bearing (for his justification) the blood-stained robe of Agamemnon;--but he comes out distraught and with the guilt of matricide weighing on his soul. The Chorus bids him be of good cheer, reminding him upon what high suggestion he has acted; but in the background he, and he alone, sees the Furies swarming to haunt him, "like Gorgons, dark-robed, and all their tresses hang entwined with many serpents; and from their eyes is dropping loathsome blood." He must wander the world seeking purification. In the _Eumenides_ we find him in the temple of Loxias (the Apollo) at Delphi, there seeking refuge with the god who had prompted him to the deed. But even there the Furies haunt him-- though for weariness--or really because it is the shrine of Loxias--they have fallen asleep. From them even Loxias may not free him; only perhaps Pallas at Athens may do that; Loxias announces this to him and bids him go to Athens, and assures him meanwhile of his protection. To Athens then the scene changes, where Orestes' case is tried: Apollo defends him; Pallas is the judge; the Furies the accusers; the Court of the Areopagus the jury. The votes of these are equally divided; but Athene gives her casting vote in his favor; and to compensate the Erinyes, turns them into Eumenides--from Furies to goddesses of good omen and fortune. Orestes is free, and the end is happy. No doubt very pretty and feeble of the bronze-throated Eagle- barker to make it so. What! clap on an exit to these piled-up miseries?--he should have plunged us deeper in woe, and left us to stew in our juices; he Should have shunned this detestable effeminacy, worthy only of the Dantes and Shakespeares. But unfortunately he was an Esotericist, with the business of helping, not plaguing, mankind: he must follow the grand symbolism of the story of the Soul, recording and emphasizing and showing the way to its victories, not its defeats. He had the eye to see deep into realities, and was not to be led from the path of truth eternal by the cheap effective expedients of realism. He must tell the whole truth: building up, not merely destroying; and truth, at the end, is not bitter, but bright and glorious. It is the triumph and purification of the soul; and to that happy consummation all sorrow and darkness and the dread Furies themselves, whom he paints with all the dark flame-pigments of sheerest terror, are but incidental and a means. And the meaning of it all? Well, the meaning is as vast as the scheme of evolution itself, I suppose. It is _Hamlet_ over again, and treated differently; that which wrote _Hamlet_ through Shakespeare, wrote this Trilogy through Aeschylus. I imagine you are to find in the _Agamemnon_ the symbol of the Spirit's fall into matter--of the incarnation (and obscuration) of the Lords of Mind--driven thereto by ancient Karma, and the result--of the life of past universes. Shakespeare deals with this retrospectively, in the Ghost's words to Hamlet on the terrace. The 'death' of the Spirit is its fall into matter. And just as the ghost urges Hamlet to revenge, so Apollo urges Orestes; it is the influx, stir, or impingement of the Supreme Self, that rouses a man, at a certain stage in his evolution, to lift himself above his common manhood. This is the most interesting and momentous event in the long career of the soul: it takes the place, in that drama of incarnations, that the marriage does in the modern novel. Shakespeare, whose mental tendencies were the precise opposite of Aeschylus's--they ran to infinite multiplicity and complexity, where the other's ran to stern unity and simplicity (of plot)--made two characters of Polonius and Gertrude: Polonius,--the objective lower world, with its shallow wisdom and conventions; Gertrude,--Nature, the lower world in it subjective or inner relation to the soul incarnate in it. Aeschylus made no separate symbol for the former. Shakespeare makes the killing of Polonius a turning-point; thenceforth Hamlet must, will he nill he, in some dawdling sort sweep to his revenge. Aeschylus makes that same turning-point in the killing of Clytemnestra, whereafter the Furies are let loose on Orestes. If you think well what it means, it is that "leap" spoken of in _Light on the Path,_ by which a man raises himself "on to the path of individual accomplishment instead of mere obedience to the genii which rule our earth." He can no longer walk secure like a sheep in the flock; he has come out, and is separate; he has chosen a captain within, and must follow the Soul, and not outer convention. That step taken, and the face set towards the Spirit-Sun--the life of the world forgone, that a way may be fought into the Life of the Soul:--all his past lives and their errors rise against him; his passions are roused to fight for their lives, and easy living is no longer possible. He must fly then for refuge to Loxias the Sun-God, the Supreme Self, who can protect him from these Erinyes--but it is Pallas, Goddess of the Inner Wisdom, of the true method of life, that can alone set him free. And it is thus that Apollo pleads before her for Orestes who killed his mother (Nature) to avenge his Father (Spirit):--a man, says he, is in reality the child of his father, not of his mother:--this lower world in which we are incarnate is not in truth our parent or originator at all, but only the seed-plot in which we, sons of the Eternal, are sown, the nursery in which we grow to the point of birth;--but we ourselves are in our essence flame of the Flame of God. So Pallas--and you must think of all she implied--Theosophy, right living, right thought and action, true wisdom--judges Orestes guiltless, sets him free, and transforms his passions into his powers. V. SOME PERICLEAN FIGURES Yoshio Markino (that ever-delightful Japanese) makes an illuminating comparison between the modern western and the ancient eastern civilizations. What he says amounts to this: the one is of Science, the other of the Human Spirit; the one of intellect, the other of intuition; the one has learnt rules for carrying all things through in some shape that will serve--the other worked its wonders by what may be called a Transcendental Rule of Thumb. But in fact it was a reliance on the Human Spirit, which invited the presence thereof;--and hence results were attained quite unachievable by modern scientific methods. What Yoshio says of the Chinese and Japanese is also true of all the great western ages of the past. We can do a number of things,-- that is, have invented machinery to do a number of things for us,--but with all our resources we could not build a Parthenon: could not even reproduce it, with the model there before our eyes to imitate.* ------ * I quote Prof. Mahaffy in his _Problems of Greek History._ He also points out that it is beyond the powers of modern science in naval architecture to construct a workable model of a Greek trireme. ------ It stands as a monument of the Human Spirit: as an age-long witness to the presence and keen activity of that during the Age of Pericles in Athens. It was built at almost break-neck speed, yet remains a thing of permanent inimitable beauty, defying time and the deliberate efforts of men and gunpowder to destroy it. The work in it which no eye could see was as delicate, as exquisite, as that which was most in evidence publicly; every detail bore the deliberate impress of the Spirit, a direct spiritual creation. There is no straight line in it; no two measurements are the same; but by a divine and direct intuition, every difference is inevitable, and an essential factor in the perfection of the whole. As if the same creative force had made it, as makes of the sea and mountains an inescapable perfection of beauty. It is one of the many mighty works wherewith Pericles and his right-hand man Pheidias, and his architects Ictinus and Callicrates, adorned Athens. It would serve no purpose to make a list of the great names of the age; which you know well enough already. The simple fact to note is this: that at a certain period in the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. the Crest-Wave of Evolution was, so far as we can see, flowing through a very narrow channel. The Far Eastern seats of civilization were under pralaya; the life-forces in West Asia were running towards exhaustion, or already exhausted; India, it is true, is hidden from us; we cannot judge well what was going on there; and so was most of Europe. Any scheme of cycles that we can put forward as yet must necessarily be tentative and hypothetical; what we do not know is, to what we do know, as a million to one; I may be quite wrong in giving Europe as long a period for its manvantaras as China; possibly there were no manvantaric activities in Europe, in that period, before the rise of Greece. But whether or no, this particular time belongs, of all European countries, to Greece: the genius of the world, the energy of the human spirit, was mainly concentrated there; and of Greece, in the single not too large city of Athens. It is true I am rather enamored of the cycle of a hundred and thirty years; prejudiced, if you like, in its favor; it is also true that genius was speaking through at least one world-important Athenian voice-- that of Aeschylus--before the age of Pericles began. Still, these dates are significant: 477, in which year Athens attained the hegemony of Greece, and 347, in which Plato died. It was after 477 that Aeschylus eagle-barked the grandest part of his message from the Soul, and that the great Periclean figures appeared; and though Athenians of genius out-lived Plato, he was the last world-figure and great Soul-Prophet; the last Athenian equal in standing to Aeschylus. When those thirteen decades had passed, the Soul had little more to say through Athens.-- Aristotle?--I said, _the Soul_ had little more to say. . . . About midway through that cycle came Aegospotami, and the destruction of the Long Walls and of the Empire; but these did not put an end to Athenian significance. Mahaffy very wisely goes to work to dethrone the Peloponnesian War--as he does, too, the Persian--from the eminence it has been given in the textbooks ever since. As usual, we get a lopsided view from the historians: in this case from Thucydides, who slurred through a sort of synopsis of the far more important and world-interesting mid-fifth century, and then dealt microscopically with these twenty-five years or so of trumpery raidings, petty excursions and small alarms. That naval battle at Syracuse, which Creasy puts with Marathon in his famous fifteen, was utterly unimportant: tardy Nicias might have won all through, and still Athens would have fallen. Her political foundations were on the sand. Under Persia you stood a much better chance of enjoying good government and freedom: Persian rule was far less oppressive and cruel. The states and islands subject to Athens had no self-government, no representation; they were at the mercy of the Athenian mob, to be taxed, bullied, and pommeled about as that fickle irresponsible tyranny might elect or be swayed to pommel, tax, and bully them. Thucydides was a great master of prose style, and so could invest with an air of importance all the matter of his tale. Besides, he was the only contemporary historian, or the only one that survives. So the world ever since has been tricked into thinking this Peloponnesian War momentous; whereas really it was a petty family squabble among that most family-squabblesome of peoples, the Greeks.--In most of which I am only quoting Mahaffy; who, whether intentionally or not, deals with Greek history in such a way as to show the utter unimportance, irrelevance, futility, of war. Greek history is merely a phase of human history. We have looked for its significance exclusively in political and cultural regions; but this is altogether a mistake. The Greeks did not invent culture; there had been greater cultures before, only they are forgotten. All that about the "evolution of Political freedom," of the city state, republicanism, etc., is just nonsense. As far as I can see, the importance of Greece lies in this: human history, the main part of it, flowing in that age through the narrow channel of Greece, came down from sacred to secular; from the last remnants of a state of affairs in which the Lodge, through the Mysteries, had controlled life and events, to the beginnings of one in which things were to muddle through under the sweet guidance of brain-minds and ordinary men. The old order had become impossible; the world had drifted too far from the Gods. So the Gods tried a new method: let loose a new great force in the world; sent Teachers to preach openly (sow broadcast, and let the seed take its chances) what had before been concealed and revealed systematically within the Established Mysteries. What Athens did with that new force has affected the whole history of Europe since; apparently mostly for weal; really, nearly altogether for woe. Aristides, with convincing logic, had been able to persuade all Greece to act against a common danger under an Athens then morally great, and feeling this new force from the God-world as a wine in the air, a mental ozone, an inspiration from the subliminal to heroic endeavor. But his policy perished when the visible need for it subsided; it gave way to the Themistoclean, which passed into the Periclean policy; and that, says Mahaffy, "was so dangerous and difficult that no cautious and provident thinker could have called it secure." Which also was Plato's view of it; who went so far as to say that Pericles had made the Athenians lazy, sensual, and frivolous. When we find Aeschylus at the start at odds with it, and Plato at the end condemning it wholesale,--for my part I think we hardly need bother to argue about it further. Both were men who saw from a standpoint above the enlightenment of the common brain-mind. It is not the present purpose to treat history as a matter of wars and politics; details of which you can get from any textbook; our concern is with the motions of the human spirit, and the laws that work from behind. As to these motions, and the grand influxes, there is this much we can rely on: they come by law, in their regular cycles; and we can invite their coming, and insure their stability when they do come. The more I study history, the more the significance of my present surroundings impresses me. We stand here upon a marvelous isthmus in time; behind us lies a world of dreary commonplaces called the civilization of Christendom; before us--who knows what possibilities? Nothing is certain about the future--even the near future;--except that it will be immensely unlike the past. Whatever we have learned or failed to learn, large opportunities are given us daily for discovering those inward regions whence all light shines down into the world. Genius is one method of the Soul's action; one aspect of its glory made manifest. We are given opportunities to learn what invites and what hinders its outflow. To all common thinking, it is a thing absolutely beyond control of the will; that cannot be called down, nor its coming in anywise foretold. But we know that the Divine Self would act, were the obstructions to its action removed; and that the obstructions are all in the lower nature of man. Worship the Soul in all thoughts and deeds, and sooner or later the Soul will pour down through the channel thus made for it; and its inflow will not be fitful and treacherous, but sure, stable, equable and redeeming. This is where all past ages of brilliance have failed. Cyclically they were bound to come: the fields ripened in due season; but the wealth of the harvest depended on the reapers. The Elizabethan Age, with all its splendid quickening of the English mind, was coarse and wicked to a degree. All through the wonderful Cinquecento, when each of a dozen or more little Italian city-states was producing genius enough to furnish forth a good average century in modern Europe or America, Italy was also a hotbed of unnatural vices, lurid crimes, wickedness to stock the nine circles of Malebolge. So too Athens at the top of her glory became selfish, grasping, conscienceless and cruel; and those nameless vices grew up and grew common in her which probably account for the long dark night that has spread itself over Greece ever since. It is a strange situation, that looks like an anomaly: that wherever the Human Spirit presses in most, and raises up most splendor of genius, there, and then the dark forces that undermine life are most at work. But we should have no difficulty in understanding it. At such times, by such influxes, the whole inner kingdom of man is roused and illumined; and not only the intellect and all noble qualities are quickened, but the passions also. The race, and the individual, are stirred to the deepest depths, and no part of you may have rest. What then will happen, unless you have the surest moral training for foundation? The force which rouses up the highest in you, rouses up also the lowest; and there must be battle-royal and victory at last, or surrender to hell. Through lack of training, and ignorance of the laws of the inner life, the Higher will be handicapped; the lower will have advantage through its own natural impulse downward, increased by every success it is allowed to gain. And so all these ages of creative achievement exhaust themselves; every victory of the passions drawing down the creative force from the higher planes, to waste it on the lower; till at last what had been an attempt of the Spirit to lift humanity up on to nobler lines of evolution, and to open a new order of ages, expires in debauchery, weakness, degeneracy, physical and moral death. The worst fate you could wish a man is genius without moral strength. It wrecks individuals, and it wrecks nations. I said we stand now on an isthmus of time; fifth-century Greece stood on such another. For reasons that we have seen, there was to be a radical difference between the ages that preceded, and the ages that followed it; its influence was not to wear out, in the west, for twenty-five hundred years. It was to give a keynote, in cultural effort, to a very long future. So all western ages since have suffered because of its descent from lofty ideals to vulgar greed and ambition; from Aristides to Themistocles and Pericles. We shall see this Athenian descent in literature, in art, in philosophy. If Athens had gone up, not down, European history would have been a long record of the triumphs of the spirit:--not, as it has been in the main, one of sorrow and disaster. At the beginning of the Greek age in literature, we find the stupendous figure of Aeschylus. For any such a force as he was, there is--how shall I say?--a twofold lineage or ancestry to be traced: there are no sudden creations. Take Shakespeare, for example. There was what he found read to his hand in English literature; and what he brought into England out of the Unknown. In his outwardness, the fabric of his art--we can trace this broad river back to a thinnish stream by the name of Chaucer; or he was growth, recognizably, of the national tree of which Chaucer was the root, or lay at the root. The unity called English poetry had grown naturally from that root to this glorious flower: the sparkle, with, brightness, and above all large hold upon the other life that one finds in Shakespeare--one finds at least the rudiments of them in Chaucer also. But there is another, an exoteric element in him which one finds nowhere in English literature before him: the Grandeur from within, the high Soul Symbol. In him suddenly that portentous thing appears, like a great broad river emerging from the earth.--Of which we do not say, however, that they have had no antecedent rills and fountain; we know that they have traveled long beneath the mountains, unseen; they sank under the earth-surface somewhere, and are not special new creations. Looking back behind Shakespeare, from this our eminence in time, we can see beyond the intervening heights this broad water shine again over the plain in Dante; and beyond him some glimmer of it in Virgil; until at last we see the far-off sheen of it in Aeschylus, very near the backward horizon of time. We can catch no glimpse of it farther, because that horizon is there. We can trace Aeschylus' outward descent--as Shakespeare's from Chaucer--from the nascent Greek drama and the rudimentary plays at the rustic festivals; but the grand river of his esotericism --there it shines, as large and majestic, at least, as in Shakespeare; and it was, no more than his, a special creation or new thing. Our horizon lies there, to prevent our vision going further; but from some higher time-eminence in the future, we shall see it emerge again in the backward vastnesses of pre-history; again and again. The grandeur of Aeschylus his no parent in Greek, or in western extant literature; or if we say that it has a parent in Homer (which I doubt, because not seeing the Soul Symbols in Homer), it is only putting matters one step further back.... But behind Greece, there were the lost literatures of Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt, of which we know nothing; aye, and for a guess, lost and mighty literatures from all parts of Europe too. If I could imagine it otherwise, I would say so. Almost suddenly, during Aeschylus' lifetime, another Greek Art came into being. When he was a boy, sculpture was still a very crude affair; or perhaps just beginning to emerge from that condition. The images that come down to us, say from Pisistratus' time and earlier, are not greatly different from the 'primitive' carvings of many so-called savage peoples of our own day. That statement is loose and general; but near enough the mark to serve our purpose. You may characterize them as rude imitations of the human form, without any troublesome realism, and with a strong element of the grotesque. Says the _Encyclopeadia Britannica_ (from which the illustration is taken): "The statues of the gods began either with stiff and ungainly figures roughly cut out of the trunk of a tree, or with the monstrous and symbolical representations of Oriental art.... In early decorations of vases and vessels one may find Greek deities represented with wings, carrying in their hands lions or griffins, bearing on their heads lofty crowns. But as Greek art progressed it grew out of this crude symbolism... What the artists of Babylonia and Egypt express in the character of the gods by added attribute or symbol, swiftness by wings, control of storms by the thunderbolt, traits of character by animal heads, the artists of Greece work more and more fully into the scultptural type; modifying the human subject by the constant addition of something which is above the ordinary levels of humanity, until we reach the Zeus of Pheidias or the Dimeter of Cnidus. When the decay of the high ethical art of Greece sets in, the Gods become more and more warped to the merely human level. They lose their dignity, but they never lose their charm." In which, I think, much light is once more thrown on the inner history of the race, and the curious and fatal position Greece holds in it. For here we see Art emerging from its old Position as a hand-maid to the Mysteries and recognized instrument of the Gods or the Soul; from sacred becoming secular; from impersonal, personal. There is, perhaps, little enough in pre-Pheidian Greek sculpture that belongs to the history of Art at all (I do not speak of old cycles and manvantaras, the ages of Troy and Mycenae, but of historical times; I cast no glance now behind the year 870 B. C.). For the real art that came next before the Pheidian Greek, we have to look to Egypt and Mesopotamia. Take Egypt first. There the sculptor thinks of himself far less as artist than as priest and servant of the Mysteries: that is, of the great Divine heart of Existence behind this manifested world, and the official channel which connected It with the latter. The Gods, for him, are frankly unhuman--superhuman-- unlike humanity. We call them 'forces of Nature'; and think ourselves mighty wise for having camouflaged our ignorance with this perfectly meaningless term. We have dealt so wisely with our thinking organs, that do but give us a sop of words, and things in themselves we shall never bother about:--like the Grave-digger, who solved the whole problem of Ophelia's death and burial with his three branches of an act. But the Egyptian, with mental faculties unrotted by creedal fatuities like our own, would not so feed 'of the chameleon's dish,'--needed something more than words, words, and words. He knew also that there were elements in their being quite unlike any we are conscious of in ours. So he gave them purely symbolic forms: a human body, for that which he could posit as common to themselves and humanity; and an animal mask, to say that the face, the expression of their consciousness, was hidden, and not to be expressed in terms of human personality. While affirming that they were conscious entities, he stopped short of personalizing them. What was beneath the mask or symbol belonged to the Mysteries, and was not to be publicly declared. But when he came to portraying men, especially great kings, he used a different method. The king's statue was to remain through long ages, when the king himself was dead and Osirified. The artist knew--it was the tradition of his school--what the Osirified dead looked like. Not an individual sculptor, but a traditional wisdom, was to find expression. What sculptor's name is known? Who wrought the Vocal Memnon?--Not any man; but the Soul and wisdom and genius of Egypt. The last things bothered about were realism and personality. There were a very few conventional poses; the object was not to make a portrait, but to declare the Universal Human Soul;--it was hardly artistic, in any modern acceptation of the word; but rather religious. Artistic it was, in the highest and truest sense: to create, in the medium of stone, the likeness or impression of the Human Soul in its grandeur and majesty; to make hard granite or syenite proclaim the eternal peace and aloofness of the Soul.--Plato speaks of those glimpses of "the other side of the sky" which the soul catches before it comes into the flesh;--the Egyptian artist was preoccupied with the other side of the sky. How wonderfully he succeeded, you have only to drop into the British Museum to see. There is a colossal head there, hung high on the wall facing the stairs at the end of the Egyptian Gallery; you may view it from the ground, or from any point on the stairs; but from whatever place you look at it, if you have any quality of the Soul in you, you go away having caught large glimpses of the other side of the sky. You are convinced, perhaps unconsciously, of the grandeur and reality of the Soul. Having watched Eternity on that face many times, I rejoiced to find this description of it in De Quincey;--if he was not speaking of this, what he says fits it admirably: "That other object which for four and twenty years in the British Museum struck me as simply the sublimest sight which in this sight-seeing world I had seen. It was the memnon's head, then recently brought from Egypt. I looked at it, as the reader must suppose in order to understand the depth which I have here ascribed to the impression, not as a human but as a symbolic head; and what it symbolized to me were: (1) the peace which passeth understanding. (2) The eternity which baffles and confounds all faculty of computation--the eternity which had been, the eternity which was to be. (3) The diffusive love, not such as rises and falls upon waves of life and mortality, not such as sinks and swells by undulations of time, but a procession, an emanation, from some mystery of endless dawn. You durst not call it a smile that radiated from those lips; the radiation was too awful to clothe itself in adumbrations of memorials of flesh." Art can never reach higher than that,--if we think of it as a factor in human evolution. What else you may say of Egyptian sculpture is of minor importance: as, that it was stiff, conventional, or what not; that each figure is portrayed sitting bolt upright, hands out straight, palms down, upon the knees, and eyes gazing into eternity. Ultimately we must regard Art in this Egyptian way: as a thing sacred, a servant of the Mysteries; the revealer of the Soul and the other side of the sky. You may have enormous facility in playing with your medium; may be able to make your marble quite fluidic, and flow into innumerable graceful forms; you may be past master of every intricacy, multiplying your skill to the power of n;--but you will still in reality have made no progress beyond that unknown carver who shaped his syenite, or his basalt, into the "peace which passeth understanding"--"the eternity which baffles and confounds all faculty of computation." If we turn to Assyria, we find much the same thing. This was a people far less spiritual than the Egyptians: a cruel, splendid, luxurious civilization deifying material power. But you cannot look at the great Winged Bulls without knowing that there, too, the motive was religious. There is an eternity and inexhaustible power in those huge carvings; the sculptors were bent on one end:--to make the stone speak out of superhuman heights, and proclaim the majesty of the Everlasting.--In the Babylonian sculptures we see the kings going into battle weaponless, but calm and invincible; and behind and standing over, to protect and fight for them, terrific monsters, armed and tiger-headed or leopard-headed--the 'divinity that hedges a king' treated symbolically. As always in those days, though many veils might hide from the consciousness of Assyria and later Babylon the beautiful reality of the Soul of Things, the endeavor, the _raison d'etre,_ of Art was to declare the Might, Power, Majesty, and dominion which abide beyond our common levels of thought. Now then: that great Memnon's head comes from behind the horizon of time and the sunset of the Mysteries; and in it we sample the kind of consciousness produced by the Teaching of the Mysteries. Go back step by step, from Shakespeare's "Glamis hath murdered Sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more."; to Dante's "The love that moves the Sun and the other Stars"; to Talesin's "My original country is the Region of the Summer Stars"; to Aeschylus's bronze-throat eagle-bark at blood;--and the next step you come to beyond (in the West)--the next expression of the Human Soul--marked with the same kind of feeling--the same spiritual and divine hauteur--is, for lack of literary remains, this Egyptian sculpture. The Grand Manner, the majestic note of Esotericism, the highest in art and literature, is a stream flowing down to us from the Sacred Mysteries of Antiquity. It is curious that a crude primtivism in sculpture--and in architecture too--should have gone on side by side, in Greece, during the seventh and sixth centuries B. C., with the very finished art of the Lyricists from Sappho to Pindar; but apparently it did. (They had wooden temples, painted in bright reds and greens; I understand without pillared facades.) I imagine the explanation to be something like this: You are to think of an influx of the Human Spirit, proceeding downward from its own realms towards these, until it strikes some civilization --the Greek, in this case. Now poetry, because its medium is less material, lies much nearer than do the plastic arts to the Spirit on its descending course; and therefore receives the impulse of its descent much sooner. Perhaps music lies higher again; which is why music was the first of the arts to blossom at all in this nascent civilization of ours at Point Loma. Let me diverge a little, and take a glance round.--At any such time, the seeds of music may not be present in strength or in a form to be quickenable into a separately manifesting art; and this may be true of poetry too; yet where poetry is, you may say music has been; for every real poem is born out of a pre-existing music of its own, and is the _inverbation_ of it. The Greek Melic poets (the lyricists) were all musicians first, with an intricate musical science, on the forms of which they arranged their language; I do not know whether they wrote their music apart from the words. After the Greek, the Italian illumination was the greatest in western history; there the influx, beginning in the thirteenth century, produced first its chief poetic splendor in Dante before that century had passed; not raising an equal greatness in painting and sculpture until the fifteenth. In England, the Breath that kindled Shakespeare never blew down so far as to light up a great moment in the plastic arts: there were some few figures of the second rank in painting presently; in sculpture, nothing at all (to speak of). Painting, you see, works in a little less material medium than sculpture does. Dante's Italy had not quite plunged into that orgy of vice, characteristic of the great creative ages, which we find in the Italy of the Cinquecento. But England, even in Shakespeare's day, was admiring and tending to imitate Italian wickedness. James I's reign was as corrupt as may be; and though the Puritan reaction followed, the creative force had already been largely wasted: notice had been served to the Spirit to keep off. Puritanism raised itself as a barrier against the creative force both in its higher and lower aspects: against art, and against vice;--probably the best thing that could happen under the circumstances; and the reason why England recovered so much sooner than did Italy.--On the other hand, when the influx came to Holland, it would seem to have found, then, no opportunities for action in the non-material arts: to have skipped any grand manifestation in music or poetry: and at once to have hit the Dutchman 'where he lived' (as they say),--in his paintbox.--But to return:- Sculpture, then, came later than poetry to Greece; and in some ways it was a more sudden and astounding birth. Unluckily nothing remains--I speak on tenterhooks--of its grandest moment. Progress in architecture seems to have begun in the reign of Pisistratus; some time in the next sixty years or so the Soul first impressed its likeness on carved stone. I once saw a picture--in a lantern lecture in London--of a pre-Pheidian statue of Athene; dating, I suppose, from the end of the sixth century B. C. She is advancing with upraised arm to protect--someone or something. The figure is, perhaps, stiff and conventional; and you have no doubt it is the likeness of a Goddess. She is not merely a very fine and dignified woman; she is a Goddess, with something of Egyptian sublimity. The artist, if he had not attained perfect mastery of the human form--if his medium was not quite plastic to him--knew well what the Soul is like.--The Greek had no feeling, as the Egyptian had, for the _mystery_ of the Gods; at his very best (once he had begun to be artistic) he personalized them; he tried to put into his representations of them, what the Egyptian had tried to put into his representations of men; and in that sense this Athene is, after all, only a woman;--but one in whom the Soul is quite manifest. I have never been able to trace this statue since; and my recollections are rather hazy. But it stands, for me, holding up a torch in the inner recesses of history. It was the time when Pythagoras was teaching; it was that momentous time when (as hardly since) the doors of the Spiritual were flung open, and the impulse of the six Great Teachers was let loose on the world. Hithertoo Greek carvers had been making images of the Gods, symbolic indeed--with wings, thunderbolts and other appurtenances;--but trivially symbolic; mere imitation of the symbolism, without the dignity or religious feeling, of the Egyptians and Babylonians; as if their gods and worship had been mere conventions, about which they had felt nothing deep;--now, upon this urge from the God-world, a sense of the grandeur of the within comes on them; they seek a means of expressing it: throw off the old conventions; will carve the Gods as men; do so, their aspiration leading them on to perfect mastery: for a moment achieve Egyptian sublimity; but--have personalized the Gods; and dear knows what that may lead to presently. The came Pheidias, born about 496. Nothing of his work remains for us; the Elgin Marbles themselves, from the Parthenon, are pretty certainly only the work of his pupils. But there are two things that tell us something about his standing: (1) all antiquity bears witness to the prevailing quality of his conceptions; their sublimity. (2) He was thrown into prison on a charge of impiety, and died there, in 442. Here you will note the progress downward. Aeschylus had been so charged, and tried--but acquitted. Pheidias, so charged, was imprisoned. Forty-three years later Socrates, so charged, was condemned to drink the hemlock. Of Aeschylus and Socrates we can speak with certainty: they were the Soul's elect men. Was Pheidias too? Athens certainly was turning away from the Soul; and his fate is a kind of half-way point between the fates of the others. He appears in good company. And that note of sublimity in his work bears witness somewhat. We have the work of his pupils, and know that in their hands the marble--Pheidias himself worked mostly in gold and ivory--had become docile and obedient, to flow into whatever forms they designed for it. We know what strength, what beauty, what tremendous energy, are in those Elgin marbles. All the figures are real, but idealized: beautiful men and horses, in fullest most vigorous action, suddenly frozen into stone. The men are more beautiful than human; but they are human. They are splendid unspoiled human beings, reared for utmost bodily perfection; athletes whose whole training had been, you may say, to music: they are music expressed in terms of the human body. Yes; but already the beauty of the body outshone the majesty of the Soul. It was the beauty of the body the artists aimed at expressing: a perfect body--and a sound mind in it: a perfectly healthy mind in it, no doubt (be cause you cannot have a really sound and beautiful body without a sound healthy mind)--was the ideal they sought and saw. Very well, so far; but, you see, Art has ceased to be sacred, and the handmaid of the Mysteries; it bothers itself no longer with the other side of the sky. In Pheidias' own work we might have seen the influx at that moment when, shining through the soul plane, its rays fell full on the physical, to impress and impregnate that with the splendor of the Soul. We might have seen that it was still the Soul that held his attention, although the body was known thoroughly and mastered: that it was the light he aimed to express, not the thing it illumined. In the work of his pupils, the preoccupation is with the latter; we see the physical grown beautiful under the illumination of the Soul; not the Soul that illumines it. The men of the Egyptian sculptors had been Gods. The Gods of these Greek sculptors were men. Perfect, glorious, beautiful men --so far as externals were concerned. But men--to excite personal feeling, not to quell it into nothingness and awe. The perfection, even at that early stage and in the work of the disciples of Pheidias, was a quality of the personality. It was indeed marvelously near the point of equilibrium: the moment when Spirit enters conquered matter, and stands there enthroned. In Pheidias himself I cannot but think we should have found that moment as we find it in Aeschylus. But you see, it is when that has occurred: when Spirit has entered matter, and made the form, the body, supremely beautiful; it is precisely then that the moment of peril comes--if there is not the wisdom present that knows how to avoid the peril. The next and threatening step downward is preoccupation with, then worship of, the body. The Age of Pericles came to worship the body: that was the danger into which it fell; that was what brought about the ruin of Greece. That huge revelation of material beauty; and that absence of control from above; the lost adequacy of the Mysteries, and the failure of the Pythagorean Movement;--the impatience of spiritual criticism, heedlessness of spiritual warning;--well, we can see what a turning-point the time was in history. On the side of politics, selfishness and ambition were growing; on the side of personal life, vice. . . . It is a thing to be pondered on, that what has kept Greece sterile these last two thousand years or so is, I believe, the malaria; which is a thing that depends for its efficacy on mosquitos. Great men simply will not incarnate in malarial territory; because they would have no chance whatever of doing anything, with that oppression and enervation sapping them. Greece has been malarial; Rome, too, to some extent; the Roman Campagna terribly; as if the disease were (as no doubt it is) a Karma fallen on the sites of old-time tremendous cultural energies; where the energies were presently wrecked, drowned and sodden in vice. Here then is a pretty little problem in the workings of Karma: on what plane, through what superphysical links or channels, do the vices of an effete civilization transform themselves into that poor familiar singer in the night-time, the mosquito? Greece and Rome, in their heyday, were not malarial; if they had been, no genius and no power would have shone in them. In the Middle Ages, before people knew much about sanitary science and antiseptics and the like, a great war quickly translated itself into a great pestilence. Then we made advances and discovered Listerian remedies and things, and said: Come now; we shall fight this one; we shall have slaughtered millions lying about as we please, and get no plague out of it; we are wise and mighty, and Karma is a fool to us; we are the children of MODERN CIVILIZATION; what have Nature and its laws to do with us? Our inventions and discoveries have certainly put them out of commission.--And sure enough, the mere foulness of the battlefield, the stench of decay, bred no pest; our Science had circumvented the old methods through which Natural Law (which is only another way of saying Karma) worked; we had cut the physical links, and blocked the material channels through which wrong-doing flowed into its own punishment.--Whereupon Nature, wrathful, withdrew a little; took thought for her astral and inner planes; found new links and channels there; passed through these the causes we had provided, and emptied them out again on the physical plane in the guise of a new thing, Spanish Influenza;--and spread it over three continents, with greater scope and reach than had ever her old-fashioned stench-bred plagues that served her well enough when we were less scientific. Whereof the moral is: _He laughs loudest who laughs last;_ and just now, and for some time to come, the laugh is with Karma. Say until the end of the Maha-Manvantara; until the end of manifested Time. When shall we stop imagining that any possible inventions or discoveries will enable us to circumvent the fundamental laws of Nature? Not the printing-press, nor steam, nor electricity, nor aerial navigation, nor _vril_ itself when we come to it, will serve to keep civilizations alive that have worn themselves out by wrong-doing--or even that have come to old age and the natural time when they must die. But their passings need not be ghastly and disastrous, or anything but honorable and beneficial, if in the prime and vigor of their lifetimes they would learn decently to live. But to return to our muttons, which is Greece; and now to the literature again:-- After Aeschylus, Sophocles. The former, a Messenger of the Gods, come to cry their message of _Karma_ to the world; and in doing so, incidentally to create a supreme art-form;--the latter, a "good easy soul who lives and lets live, founds no anti-school, upsets no faith."--thus Browning sums him up. A "faultless" artist enamored of his art; in which, thinks he (and most academic critics with him) he can improve something on old Aeschylus; a man bothered with no message; a beautiful youth; a genial companion, well-loved by his friends--and who is not his friend?--all through his long life; twenty times first-prize winner, and never once less than second.--Why, solely on the strength of his _Antigone,_ the Athenians appointed him a strategos in the expedition against Samos; with the thought that one so splendidly victorious in the field of drama, could not fail of victory in mere war. But don't lose hope!--upon an after-thought (perhaps) they appointed Pericles too; who suggested to his poet-colleague that though master of them all in his own line, he had better on the whole leave the sordid details of command to himself, Pericles, who had more experience of that sort. What more shall we say of Sophocles?--A charming brilliant fellow in his cups--of which, as of some other more questionable pleasures, report is he was too fond; a man worshiped during his life, and on his death made a hero with semi-divine honors;--does that sound like the story of a Messenger of the Gods? He was born at Colonos in Attica, in 496; of his hundred or so of dramas, seven come down to us. His age saw in him the very ideal of a tragic poet; Aristotle thought so too; so did the Alexandrian critics, and most moderns with them. "Indeed," says Mahaffy, "it is no unusual practice to exhibit the defects of both Aeschylus and Euripides by comparison with their more successful rival." Without trying to give you conclusions of my own, I shall read you a longish passage from Gilbert Murray, who is not only a great Greek scholar, but a fine critic as well, and a poet with the best translations we have of Greek tragedy to his credit; he has made Euripides read like good English poetry. Comparing the _Choephori_ of Aeschylus, the second play in the Oreseian Trilogy, with the _Electra_ of Sophocles, which deals with the same matter, he says: "Aeschylus... had felt vividly the horror of his plot; he carries his characters to the deed of blood on a storm of confused, torturing, half-religious emotion; the climax is of course, the mother-murder, and Orestes falls into madness after it. In the _Electra_ this element is practically ignored. Electra has no qualms; Orestes shows no signs of madness; the climax is formed not by the culminating horror, the matricide, but by the hardest bit of work, the slaying of Aegisthos! Aeschylus has kept Electra and Clytemnestra apart; here we see them freely in the hard unloveliness of their daily wrangles. Above all, in place of the cry of bewilderment that closes the _Choephori_--'What is the end of all this spilling of blood for blood?'--the _Electra_ closes with an expression of entire satisfaction... Aeschylus takes the old bloody saga in an earnest and troubled spirit, very different from Homer's, but quite as grand. His Orestes speaks and feels as Aechylus himself would... Sophocles... takes the saga exactly as he finds it. He knows that those ancient chiefs did not trouble about their consciences; they killed in the fine old ruthless way. He does not try to make them real to himself at the cost of making them false to the spirit of the epos... "The various bits of criticism ascribed to him--'I draw men as they ought to be drawn; Euripides draws them as they are'; 'Aeschylus did the right thing, but without knowing it'--all imply the academic standpoint... Even his exquisite diction, which is such a marked advance on the stiff magnificence of his predecessor, betrays the lesser man in the greater artist. Aeschylus's superhuman speech seems like natural superhuman speech. It is just the language that Prometheus would talk, that an ideal Agamemnon or Atossa might talk in the great moments. But neither Prometheus nor Oedipus nor Electra, nor anyone but an Attic poet of the highest culture, would talk as Sophocles makes them. It is this which has established Sophocles as the perfect model, not only for Aristotle, but in general for critics and grammarians; while the poets have been left to admire Aeschylus, who 'wrote in a state of intoxication,' and Euripedes, who broke himself against the bars of life and poetry." You must, of course, always allow for a personal equation in the viewpoint of any critic: you must here weight the "natural superhuman diction" against the "stiff magnificence" Professor Murray attributes to Aeschylus; and get a wise and general view of your own. What I want you to see clearly is, the descent of the influx from plane to plane, as shown in these two tragedians. The aim of the first is to express a spiritual message, grand thought. That of the second is to produce a work of flawless beauty, without regard to its spiritual import. What was to Aeschylus a secondary object; the purely artistic--was to Sophocles the whole thing. Aeschylus was capable of wonderful psychological insight. Clytemnestra's speech to the Chorus, just before Agamemnon's return, is a perfect marvel in that way. But the tremendous movement, the August impersonal atmosphere as ".... gorgeous Tragedy In sceptered pall comes sweeping by." --divests it of the personal, and robes it in a universal symbolic significance: because he has built like a titan, you do not at first glance note that he has labored like a goldsmith, as someone has said. But in Sophocles the goldsmithry is plain to see. His character-painting is exquisite: pathetic often; just and beautiful almost always. I put in the almost in view of that about the "hard unloveliness" of Electra's "daily wrangles" with her mother. The mantle of the religious Egyptians had fallen on Aeschylus: but Sophocles' garb was the true fashionable Athenian chiton of his day. He was personal, where the other had been impersonal; faultless, where the other had been sublime; conventionally orthodox, where through Aeschylus had surged the super-credal spirit of universal prophecy. And then we come to third of the trio: Euripides, born in 480. "He was," says Professor Murray, "essentially representative of his age, yet apparently in hostility to it; almost a failure of the stage--he won only four prizes in fifty years of production-- yet far the most celebrated poet in Greece." Athens hated, jeered at, and flouted him just as much as she honored and adored Sophocles; yet you know what happened to those Athenian captives at Syracuse who could recite Euripides. Where, in later Greek writings, we come on quotations from the other two once or twice, we come on quotations from Euripides dozens of times. The very fact that eighteen of his plays survive, to seven each of Aeschylus' and Sophocles', is proof of his larger and longer popularity. He had no certain message from the Gods, as Aeschylus had; his intensely human heart and his mighty intellect kept him from being the 'flawless artist' that Sophocles was. He questioned all conventional ideas, and would not let the people rest in comfortable fat acquiescence. He came to make men 'sit up and think.' He did not solve problems, but raised them, and flung them at the head of the world. He must stir and probe things to the bottom; and his recurrent unease, perhaps, mars the perfection of his poetry. Admetus is to die, unless someone will die for him; recollect that for the Greekish mob, death was the worst of all possible happenings. Alcestis his wife will die for him; and he accepts her sacrifice. Now, that was the old saga; and in Greek conventional eyes, it was all right. Woman was an inferior being, anyhow; there was nothing more fitting that Alcestis should die for her lord.--Here let me make a point plain: you cannot look back through Greece to a Golden Age in Greece; it is not like Egypt, where the farther you go into the past, the greater things you come to;--although in Egypt, too, there would have been rises and falls of civilization. In Homer's days, in Euripides', they had these barbarous ideas about women; and these foolish exoteric ideas about death; historic Greece, like modern Europe from the Middle Ages, rises from a state of comparative barbarism, lightlessness; behind which, indeed, there were rumors of a much higher Past. These great Greeks, Aeschylus, Euripides, Plato, brought in ideas which were as old as the hills in Egypt, or in India; but which were new to the Greece of their time--of historic times; they were, I think, as far as their own country was concerned, innovators and revealers; not voicers of a traditional wisdom; it may have been traditional once, but that time was much too far back for memory. I think we should have to travel over long, long ages, to get to a time when Eleusis was a really effective link with the Lodge--to a period long before Homer, long before Troy fell.--But to return to the story of Alcestis:-- You might take it on some lofty impersonal plane, and find a symbol in it; Aeschylus would have done so, somehow; though I do not quite see how. Sophocles would have been aware of nothing wrong in it; he would have taken it quite as a matter of course. Euripides saw clearly that Admetus was a selfish poltroon, and rubbed it in for all he was worth. And he could not leave it at that, either; but for pity's sake must bring in Hercules at the end to win back Alcestis from death. So the play is great-hearted and tender, and a covert lash for conventional callousness; and somehow does not quite hang together:--leaves you just a little uncomfortable. Browning calls him, in _Balaustion's Adventure,_ ".... Euripides The human, with his droppings of warms tears"; --it is a just verdict, perhaps. Without Aeschylus' Divine Wisdom, or Sophocles' worldly wisdom, he groped perpetually after some means to stay the downward progress of things; he could not thunder like the one, nor live easily and let live, like the other.--I do not give you these scraps of criticism (which are not my own, but borrowed always I think), for the sake of criticism; but for the sake of history;--understand them, and you have the story of the age illumined. You can read the inner Athens here, in the aspirations and in the limitations of Euripides, and in the contempt in which Athens held him; as you can read it in the grandeur of Aeschylus, and the Athenian acceptance of, and then reaction against, him; and in the character of Sophocles and his easy relations with his age. When Euripides came, the light of the Gods had gone. He was blindish; he would not accept the Gods without question. Yet was he on the side of the Gods whom he could not see or understand; we must count him on their side, and loved by them. He was not panoplied, like Aeschylus or Milton, in their grim and shining armor; yet what armor he wore bore kindred proud dints from the hellions' batterings. Or perhaps mostly he wore such marks as wounds upon his own flesh. . . . Not even a total lack of humor, which I suppose must be attributed to him, can make him appear less than a most sympathetic, an heroic figure. He was the child and fruitage and outcast of his age, belonging as much to an Athens declining and inwardly hopeless, as did Aeschylus (at first) to Athens in her early glory. He was not so much bothered (like Sophocles) with no message, as bothered with the fact that he had no clear and saving message. His realism--for compared with the other two, he was a sort of realist--was the child of his despair; and his despair, of the atmosphere of his age. He was, or had been, in close touch with Socrates (you might expect it); lived a recluse somewhat, taking no part in affairs; married twice, unfortunately both times; and his family troubles were among the points on which gentlemanly Athens sneered at him. A lovely lyricist, a restless thinker; tender-hearted; sublime in pity of all things weak and helpless and defeated:--women especially, and conquered nations. Prof. Murray says: "In the last plays dying Athens is not mentioned, but her death- struggle and her sins are constantly haunting us; the Joy of battle is mostly gone; the horror of war is left. Well might old Aeschylus pray, 'God grant that I may sack no city!' if the reality of conquest is what it appears in the last plays of Euripides. The conquerors there are as miserable as the conquered; only more cunning, and perhaps more wicked." He died the year before Aegospotami, at the court of Archelaus of Macedon. One is glad to think he found peace and honor at last. Athens heard with a laugh that some courtier there had insulted him; and with astonishment that the good barbarous Archelaus had handed said courtier over to Euripides to be scourged for his freshness. I don't imagine that Euripides scourged him though-to amount to anything. VI. SOCRATES AND PLATO By this time you should have seen, rather than any picture of Greece and Athens in their heyday, an indication of certain universal historical laws. As thus (to go back a little): an influx of the Spirit is approaching, and a cycle of high activities is about to begin. A great war has cleared off what karmic weight has been hanging over Athens;--Xerxes, you will remember, burnt the town. Hence there is a clearness in the inner atmosphere; through which a great spiritual voice may, and does, speak a great spiritual message. But human activities proceed, ever increasing their momentum, until the atmosphere is no longer clear, but heavy with the effluvia of by no means righteous thought and action. The Spirit is no more visibly present, but must manifest if at all through a thicker medium; and who speaks now, speaks as artist only,--not as poet--or artist-prophet. Time goes on, and the inner air grows still thicker; till men live in a cloud, through which truths are hardly to be seen. Then those who search for the light are apt to cry out in despair; they become realists struggling to break the terrible molds of thought:--and if you can hear the Spiritual in them at all, it is not in a positive message they have for men, but in the greatness of their heart and compassion. They do not build; they seek only to destroy. There seems nothing else for them to do. So in England, Wordsworth opened this last cycle of poetry; coming when there was a clear atmosphere, and speaking more or less clearly through it his message from the Gods. You hear a like radiant note of hope in Shelley; and something of it in Keats, who stood on the line that divides the Poet-Prophet from the Poet-Artist. Then you come to the ascendency of Tennyson, whose business in life was to be the latter. He tried the role of prophet; he lived up to the highest he could: strove towards the light much more gallantly than did Sophocles, his Athenian paradigm. But the atmosphere of his age made him something of a failure at it: no clear light was there for him to find, such as could manifest through poetry. Then you got men like Matthew Arnold with his cry of despair, and William Morris with his longing for escape; then the influence of Realism. So many poets recently have an element of Euripides in them; a will to do well, but a despair of the light; a tendency to question everything, but little power to find answers to their questions. Then there were some few who, influenced (consciously or not) by H.P. Blavatsky, that great dawn-herald, caught glimpses of the splendor of a dawn--which yet we wait for. Euripides, with the Soul stirring within and behind him, "broke himself on the bars of life and poetry," as Professor Murray says. He was so hemmed in by the emanations of the time that he could never clearly enunciate the Soul. Not, at any rate, in an unmixed way, and with his whole energies. Perhaps his favorite device of a _Deus ex Machina_--like Hercultes in the _Alcestis_ --is a symbolical enunciation of it, and intended so to be. Perhaps the cause of the unrest he makes us feel is this: he knew that the highest artistic method was the old Aeschylean symbolic one, and tried to use it; but at the same time was compelled by the gross emanations of the age, which he was not quite strong enough to rise above, to treat his matter not symbolically, but realistically. He could not help saying: "Here is the epos you Athenians want me to treat,--that my artist soul forces me to treat; here are the ideas that make up your conventional religion;--now look at them!" And forth-with he showed them, in there exoteric side, sordid, ugly and bloody;-- and then, on the top of that showing, tried to twist them round to the symbolic impersonal plane again; and so left a discord not properly solved, an imperfect harmony; a sense of loss rather than gain; of much torn down, and nothing built up to take its place. The truth was that the creative forces had flowed downward until the organs of spiritual vision were no longer open; and poetry and art, the proper vehicles of the higher teaching in any age approximately golden, could no longer act as efficient channels for the light. To turn to England again: Tennyson was, generally speaking, most successful when most he was content to be merely the artist in words, and least so when he assumed the office of Teacher; because almost all he found to teach was brain-mind scientific stuff; which was what the age called for, and the desired diet of Mid-Victorian England. Carlyle, who was a far greater poet essentially, and a far greater teacher actually, fitted himself to an age when materialism had made unpoetic; and eschewed poetry and had no use for it; and would have had others eschew it also. In our own time we have realists like Mr. Masefield. They are called realists because they work on the plane which has come, in the absence of anything spiritual, to seem that of the realities; the region of outside happenings, of the passions in all their ugly nakedness, of sorrow, misery, and despair. Such men may be essentially noble; we may read in them, under all the ugliness and misery they write down, just one quality of the Soul;--its unrest in and distaste for those conditions; but the mischief of it is that they make the sordidness seem the reality; and the truth about them is that their outlook and way of writing are simply the result of the blindness of the Soul;--its temporary blindness, not its essential glory. But the true business of Poetry never changes; it is to open paths into the inner, the beautiful, the spiritual world. Just when things were coming to this pass H. P. Blavatsky went to England; and though she did not touch the field of creative literature herself, brought back as you know a gleam of light and beauty into poetry that may yet broaden out and redeem it. She was born when the century was thirty-one years old; and, curiously enough, there was a man born in Attica about 469, or when _his_ century was thirty-one years old, who, though he did not himself touch the field of literature, was the cause why that light rose to shine in it which has shone most brilliantly since all down the ages; that light which we could not afford to exchange even for the light of Aeschylus. If one of the two were about to be taken from us, and we had our choice which it should be, we should have to cry, _Take Aeschylus, but leave us this!_ --Ay, and take all other Greek literature into the bargain!--But to return to the man born in 469. He was the son of humble people; his father was a stone-cutter in a small way of business; his mother a midwife. He himself began life as a sculptor,--a calling, in its lower reaches, not so far above that of his father. A group of the Graces carved by him was still to be seen on the road to the Acropolis two hundred years after; and they did not adorn Athens with mean work, one may guess; the Athens of Pericles and Pheidias. But, successful or not, he seems soon to have given it up. Of his youth we know very little. Spintharus, one of the few that knew him then and also when he had become famous, said that he was a man of terrible passions: anger hardly to be governed, and vehement desires; "though," he added, "he never did anything unfair." * By 'unfair' you may understand 'not fitting'--a transgression of right action. He set out to master himself: a tremendous and difficult realm to master. ------ * Gilbert Murray: _Ancient Greek Literature_ ------ We hardly begin to know him till he was growing old; and then he was absolute monarch of that realm. We do not know when he abandoned his art; or how long it was before he had won some fame as a public teacher. We catch glimpse of him as a soldier: from 432 to 429 he served at the siege of Potidaea; at Delium in 424; and at Amphipolis in 422. Thus to do the hoplite, carrying a great weight of arms, at forty-seven, he needed to have some constitution; and indeed he had;--furthermore, he played the part with distinguished bravery--though wont to fall at times into inconvenient fits of abstraction. Beyond all this, for the outside of the man, we may say that he was of fascinating, extreme and satyr-like ugliness and enormous sense of humor; that he was a perpetual joke to the comic poets, and to himself; an old fellow of many and lovable eccentricities; and that you cannot pick one little hole in his character, or find any respect in which he does not call for love. And men did love him; and he them. He saw in the youth of Athens, whose lives so often were being wasted, Souls with all the beautiful possibilities of Souls; and loved them as such, and drew them towards their soulhood. Such love and insight is the first and strongest weapon of the Teacher: who sees divinity within the rough-hewn personalities of men as the sculptor sees the God within the marble; and calls it forth. He was wont to joke over his calling; his mother, said he, had been a midwife, assisting at the birth of men's bodies; he himself was a midwife of souls. How he drew men to him--of the power he had--let Alcibiades bear witness. "As for myself," says Alcibiades, "were I not afraid you would think me more drunk than I am, I would tell you on oath how his words have moved me--ay, and how they move me still. When I listen to him my heart beats with a more than Corybantic excitement; he has only to speak and my tears flow. Orators, such as Pericles, never moved me in this way-- never roused my soul to the thought of my servile condition: but this man makes me think that life is not worth living so long as I am what I am. Even now, if I were to listen, I could not resist. So there is nothing for me but to stop my ears against this siren's song and fly for my life, that I may not grow old sitting at his feet. No one would ever think that I had shame in me; but I am ashamed in the presence of Socrates." Poor Alciabes! whom Socrates loved so well, and tried so hard to save; and who could only preserve his lower nature for its own and for his city's destruction by stopping his ears against his Teacher! Alcibiades, whose genius might have saved Athens... only Athens would not be saved... and he could not have saved her, because he had stopped his ears against the man who made him ashamed; and because his treacherous lower nature was always there to thwart and overturn the efficacy of his genius;--what a picture of duality it is! Socrates gave up his art; because art was no longer useful as an immediate lever for the age. He knew poetry well, but insisted, as Professor Murray I think says, on always treating it as the baldest of prose. There was poetry about, galore; and men did not profit by it: something else was needed. His mission was to the Athens of his day; he was going to save Athens if he could. So he went into the marketplace, the agora, and loafed about (so to say), and drew groups of young men and old about him, and talked to them. The Delphic Oracle had made pronouncement: _Sophocles is wise; Euripides is wiser; but Socrates is the wisest of mankind._ Sometimes, you see, the Delphic Oracle could get off a distinctly good thing. But Socrates, with his usual sense of humor, had never considered himself in that light at all; oldish, yes; and funny, and ugly, by all means;--but wise! He thought at first, he used to say, that the Oracle must be mistaken, or joking; for Athens was full of reputed wise men, sophists and teachers of philosophy like Prodicus and Protagoras; whereas he himself, heaven knew--. Well, he would go out and make a trial of it. So he went, and talked, and probed the wisdom of his fellow-citizens; and slowly came round to the belief that after all the Delphic Oracle might not have been such a fool. For he knew his ignorance; but the rest were ignorant without knowing it. This was his own way of telling the story; and you can never be sure how much camouflage was in it;--and yet, too, he was a giant humorist. Anyhow, he did show men their ignorance; and you all know his solemn way of doing it. He drew them on with sly questionings to see what idiots they were; and then drew them on with more sly questionings to perceive at least a few sound ethical truths. He took that humble patient means of saving Athens: by breaking down false opinions and instilling true ones. It was beginning quite at the bottom of things. Where we advertise a public lecture, he button-holed a passer-by; and by the great power of his soul won a following presently. To rouse up a desire for right living in the youth of Athens: if he could do that, thought he, he might save Athens for the world. I wonder what the cycles of national glory would come to, how long they might last, if only the Teachers that invade to save them could have their way. Always we see the same picture: the tremendous effort of the Gods to redeem these nations in the times of their creative greatness; to lift them on to a spiritual plane, that the greatness may not wane and become ineffective. There is the figure that stands before the world, about whose perfection or whose qualities you may wrangle if you will; he is great; he is wonderful; he stirs up love and animosity;--but behind him are the Depths, the Hierarchies, the Pantheons. Socrates' warning Voice, the Daimon that counseled him in every crisis, has always been a hard nut for critics to crack. He was an impostor, was he? Away with you for a double fool! His life meets you so squarely at every point; there was no atom in his being that knew how to fear or lie.... Well, no; but he was deluded; he mistook--. Man, there is more value in the light word of Socrates affirming, than in a whole world full of evidence denying, of such maunderers as you! See here; he was the most sensible of men; balanced; keeping his head always;--a mind no mood or circumstances could deflect from rational self-control, either towards passion or ecstasy. One explanation remains--as in the case of Joan, or of H.P. Blavatsky;--he was neither deceiving nor deceived, but what he claimed to hear, he did hear; and it was the voice of One that stood behind him, and might not appear in history at all, or in the outer world at all: a greater than he, and his Teacher; whose bodily presence might have been in Greece the while, or anywhere else. How dare we pretend, because we can do a few things with a piston or a crucible, that we know the limits of natural and spiritual law? It is a strange figure to find in Greece; drawn thither, one would say, by the attraction of opposites. He must have owed some of his power to his being such a contrast to all things familiar. Personal beauty was extremely common, and he was comically ugly. The Athenians were one of the best-educated populations of ancient or modern times--far ahead of ourselves; and he was ill-educated, and acted as a public teacher. He was hen-pecked at home, in an age when the place of woman was a very subordinate and submissive one; and he was the butt of all joke-lovers abroad, and himself enjoyed the joke most of all. And he quietly stood alone, against the mob and his fellow-judges, for the hapless victors of Arginusae in 406; and he quietly stood alone against the Thirty Tyrants during their reign of terror in 404, disobeying them at peril of his life. But Strip him of the "thing of sinews and muscles," as he called his outer self; forget the queer old personality that appears in the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes, or for that matter in the _Memorabilia_ of Xenophon--and what kind of picture of Socrates should we see? The humor would not go, for it is a universal quality; it has been said no Adept was ever without it; could you draw aside the veil of Mother Isis herself, and draw it suddenly, I suspect you should surprise a laugh vanishing from her face. So the humor would remain; and with it there would be ... something calm, aloof, unshakable, yet vitally affectioned towards Athens, the Athenians, humanity; something unsurprised at, far less hoping or fearing anything from, life or death; in possession of "the peace which passeth understanding"; native to "the eternity that baffles all faculty of computation";--something that drew all sorts and conditions of Athenians to him, good and bad, Plato and Alcibiades, by "that diffusive love, not such as rises and falls upon waves of life and mortality, not such as sinks and swells by undulations of time, but a procession, an emanation, from some mystery of endless dawn."--In point of fact, to get a true portrait of Socrates you have to look at the Memnon's head. The Egyptian artists carved it to be the likeness of the Perfect Man, the Soul, always in itself sublime, absolute master of its flesh and personality. That was what Socrates was. Well; the century ended, with that last quarter of it in which the Lodge makes always its outward effort. Socrates for the Lodge had left no stone unturned; he had made his utmost effort dally. The democracy had been reinstated, and he was understood to be a moderate in politics. And the democracy was conventional-minded in religion; and he was understood to be irreligious, a disturber and innovator. And the democracy was still smarting from the wound; imposed on it by Critias and Charmides, understood to have been his disciples; and could not forget the treacheries of Alcibiades, another. And there were vicious youths besides, whom he had tried and failed to save; they had ruined themselves, and their reputable parents blamed and hated him for the ruin, not understanding the position. And he himself had seen so many of his efforts come to nothing: Alcibiades play the traitor; Critias and Charmides, the bloody tyrant;--he had seen many he had labored for frustrate his labors; he had seen Athens fallen. He had done all he could, quietly, unfailingly and without any fuss; now it was time for him to go. But going, he might yet strike one more great blow for the Light. So with quiet zest and humor he entered upon the plans of his adversaries, accepting his trial and sentence like--_like Socrates;_ for there is no simile for him, outside himself. He turned it all masterfully to the advantage of the Light he loved. You all know how he cracked his grand solemn joke when the death sentence was passed on him. By Athenian law, he might suggest an alternative sentence; as, to pay a fine, or banishment. Well, said he; death was not certainly an evil; it might be a very good thing; whereas banishment was certainly an evil, and so was paying a fine. And besides, he had no money to pay it. So the only alternative he could suggest was that Athens should support him for the rest of his life in the Prytaneum as a public benefactor. Not a smile from him; not a tremor. He elected deliberately; he chose death; knowing well that, as things stood, he could serve humanity in no other way so well. So he put aside Crito's very feasible plan for his escape, and at the last gathered his friends around him, and discoursed to them. On Reincarnation. It was an old tradition, said he; and what could be more reasonable than that the soul, departing to Hades, should return again in its season:--the living born from the dead, as the dead are from the living? Did not experience show that opposites proceed from opposites? Then life must proceed from, and follow, death. If the dead came from the living, and not the living from the dead, the universe would at last be consumed in death. Then, too, there was the doctrine that knowledge comes from recollection; what is recollected must have been previously known. Our souls must have existed then, before birth. . . . Why did he talk like that: thus _reasoning_ about reincarnation, and not stating it as a positive teaching? Well; there would be nothing new and startling about it, to the Greeks. They knew of it as a teaching both of Pythagoras and of the Orphic Mysteries: that is, those did who were initiates or Pythagoreans. But it was not public teaching, known to the multitude; and except among the Pythagoreans, sophistry and speculation had impaired its vitality as a matter of faith or knowledge. (So scientific discovery and the spread of education have impaired the vitality now of Christian presentations of ethics.) So that to have announced it positively, at that time, would have served his purpose but little: men would have said, "We have heard all that before; had he nothing better to give us than stale ideas from the Mysteries or Pythagoras?" What he wanted to do was to take it out of the region of religion, where familiarity with it had bread an approach to contempt; and restate it robbed of that familiarity, and clothed anew in a garb of sweet reasonableness. So once more, and as ususal, he assumed ignorance, and approached the whole subject in a quiet and rational way, thus: I do not say that this is positively so; I do not announce it as a dogma. Dogmas long since have lost their efficacy, and you must stand or fall now by the perceptions of your own souls, not by what I or any authority may tell you. But as reasoning human beings, does it not appeal to you? And the very spirit in which he approached it and approached his death was precisely the one to engrave his last spoken ideas on the souls of his hearers as nothing else could. No excitement; no uplift or ecstasy of the martyr; quiet reasoning only; full, serene, and, for him, common-place command of the faculties of his mind. The shadow of death made no change in Socrates; how then should they misunderstand or magnify the power of the shadow of death?--"How shall we bury you?" asks Crito. Socrates turns to the others present, and says: "I cannot persuade Crito that I here am Socrates--I who am now reasoning and ordering discourse. He imagines Socrates to be that other, whom he will see by and by, a corpse."--So the scene went on until the last moment, when "Phaedo veiled his face, and Crito started to his feet, and Apollodorus, who had never ceased weeping all the time, burst out into a loud and angry cry which broke down everyone but Socrates." Someone has said that there is nothing in tragedy or history so moving as this death of Socrates, as Plato tells it. And yet its tragic interest, its beauty, is less important, to my thinking, than the insight it gives us into the methods and mental workings of an Adept. Put ourselves into the mind of Socrates. He is going to his death; which to him is about the same as, to us, going to South Ranch or San Diego. You say I am taking the beauty and nobility out of it; but no; I am only trying to see what beauty and nobility look like from within. To him, then, his death is in itself a matter of no personal moment. But the habit of his lifetime has been to turn every moment into a blow struck for the Soul, for the Light, for the Cause of Sublime Perfection. And here now is the chance to strike the most memorable blow of all. With infinite calmness he arranges every detail, and proceeds to strike it. He continues to play the high part of Socrates,--that is all. You might go to death like a poet, in love with Death's solemn beauty, you might go to her like a martyr, forgetting the awe of her in forevision of the splendor that lies beyond. But this man broadly and publicly goes to her like Socrates. He will allow her no fascination, no mystery; not even, nor by any means, equality with the Soul of Man. . . . And Apollodorus might weep then, and burst into an angry cry; and Crito and Phaedo and the rest might all break down--_then;_ but what were they to think afterwards? When they remembered how they had seen Death and Socrates, those two great ones, meet; and how the meeting had been as simple, as unaffected, as any meeting between themselves and Socrates, any morning in the past, in the Athenian _agora?_ And when Death should come to them, what should they say but this: 'There is nothing about you that can impress me; formerly I conversed with one greater than you are, and I saw you pay your respects to Socrates.' Could he, could any man have proclaimed the Divinity in Man, its real and eternal existence, in any drama, in any poem, in any glorious splendor of rhetoric with what fervor soever of mystical ecstasy endued--with such deadly effectiveness, such inevitable success, as in this simple way he elected? There are men whose actions seem to spring from a source super-ethical: it is cheap to speak of them as good, great, beautiful or sublime: these are but the appearances they assume as we look upwards at them. What they are in themselves is: (1) Compassionate;--it is the law of their being to draw men upwards towards the Spirit; (2) Impersonal;--there is a non-being or vacuity in them where we have our passions, likings, preferences, dislikes and desires. They are, in the Chinese phrase, "the equals of Heaven and Earth"; "Earth, heaven, and time, death, life and they Endure while they shall be to be." So Socrates, having failed in his life-attempt to save Athens, entered with some gusto on that great _coup de main_ of his death: to make it a thing which first a small group of his friends should see; then that Greece should see; then that thirty coming centuries and more should see; presented it royally to posterity, for what, as a manifestation of the Divine in man, it might be worth. And look! what is the result? Scarcely is the 'thing of muscles and sinews' cold: scarcely has high Socrates forgone his queer satyr-like embodiment: when a new luminary has risen into the firmament,--one to shine through thirty centuries certainly, "Brighter than Jupiter--a blazing star Brighter than Hesper shining out to sea" --one that is still to be splendid in the heavens wherever in Europe, wherever in America, wherever in the whole vast realm of the future men are to arise and make question and peer up into the beautiful skies of the Soul. A Phoenix in time has arisen from the ashes of Socrates: from the glory and solemnity of his death a Voice is mystically created that shall go on whispering _The Soul_ wherever men think and strive towards spirituality. --Ah indeed, you were no failure, Socrates--you who were disappointed of your Critias, your Charmides, your Alcibiades, your whole Athens; you were not anything in the very least like a failure; for there was yet one among your disciples-- He says, that one, that he was absent through illness during that last scene of his Teacher's life. I do not know; it has been thought that may have been merely a pretense, an artistic convention, to give a heightened value of impersonality to his marvelous prose:--for it was he who wrote down the account of the death of Socrates for us: that tragedy so transcendent in its beauty and lofty calm. But this much is certain: that day he was born again: became, from a gilded youth of Athens, an eternal luminary in the heavens, and that which he has remained these three-and-twenty hundred years: the Poet-Philosopher of the Soul, the Beacon of the Spirit for the western world.... He had been a brilliant young aristocrat among the crowd that loved to talk with Socrates: the very best thing that Athens could produce in the way of birth, charm, talent, and attainments;--it is a marvel to see one so worshiped of Fortune in this world, turn so easily to become her best adored in the heaven of the Soul. On his father's side he was descended from Codrus, last king of Athens; on his mother's, from Solon: you could get nothing higher in the way of family and descent. In himself, he was an accomplished athlete; a brilliant writer of light prose; a poet of high promise when the mood struck him-- and he had ideas of doing the great thing in tragedy presently; trained unusually well in music, and in mathematics; deeply read; with a taste for the philosophies; a man, in short, of culture as deep and balanced as his social standing was high. But it seemed as though the Law had brought all these excellencies together mainly to give the fashionable Athenian world assurance of a man; for here he was in his thirty-first year with nothing much achieved beyond--his favorite pursuit--the writing of _mimes_ for the delectation of his set: "close studies of little social scenes and conversations, seen mostly in the humorous aspect." * He had consorted much with Socrates; at the trial, when it was suggested that a fine might be paid, and the hemlock evitated, it was he who had first subscribed and gone about to raise a sum. But now the death of his friend and Teacher struck him like a great gale amidships; and he was transformed, another man; and the great Star Plato rose, that shines still; the great Voice Plato was lifted to speak for the Soul and to be unequaled in that speaking, in the west, until H.P. Blavatsky came. ------ * Murray: _Ancient Greek Literature:_--whence all this as to Plato's youth. ------ But note what a change had taken place with the ending of the fifth century. Hitherto all the great Athenians had been great Athenians. Aeschylus, witness of eternity, had cried his message down to Athens and to his fellow-citizens; he had poured the waters of eternity into the vial of his own age and place. I speak not of Sophocles, who was well enough rewarded with the prizes Athens had to give him. Euripides again was profoundly concerned with his Athens; and though he was contemned by and held aloof from her, it was the problems of Athens and the time that ate into his soul. Socrates came to save Athens; he did not seek political advancement, but would hold office when it came his way; was enough concerned in politics to be considered a moderate-one cause of his condemnation; but above all devoted himself to raising the moral tone of the Athenian youth and clearing their minds of falsity. Finally, he gave loyalty to his city and its laws as one reason for rejecting Crito's plan for his escape. What he hoped and lived for was, to save Athens; and he was the more content to die, when he saw that this was no longer possible. But Plato had no part nor lot in Athens. He loathed her doctrine of democracy, as knowing it could come to no good. He had affiliations, like Aeschylus, in Sicily, whither he made certain journeys; and might have stayed there among his fellow Pythagoreans, but for the irascible temper of Dionysius. But much more, and most of all, his affiliations were in the wide Cosmos and all time: as if he foresaw that on him mainly would devolve the task of upholding spiritual ideas in Europe through the millenniums to come. He dwelt apart, and taught in the Groves of Academe outside the walls. Let Athens' foolish politics go forward as they might, or backward--he would meddle with nothing. It has been brought against him that he did nothing to help his city 'in her old age and dotage'; well, he had the business of thousands of coming years and peoples to attend to, and had no time to be accused, condemned, and executed by a parcel of obstreperous cobblers and tinkers hot-headed over the petty politics of their day. The Gods had done with Athens, and were to think now of the great age of darkness that was to come. He was mindful of a light that should arise in Egypt, after some five hundred years; and must prepare wick and oil for the Neo-Platonists. He was mindful that there should be a thing called the Renaissance in Italy; and must attend to what claims Pico di Mirandola and others should make on him for spiritual food. He must consider Holland of the seventeenth century, and England: the Platonists of Cambridge and Amsterdam;--must think of Van Helmont; and of a Vaughan who 'saw eternity the other night'; of a Traherne, who should never enjoy the world aright without some illumination from his star; of a young Milton, _penseroso,_ out watching the Bear in some high lonely tower with thrice-great Hermes, who should unsphere his spirit, "..... to unfold What worlds and what vast regions hold The immortal mind that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshy nook"; --no, but he must think of all times coming; and how, whenever there should be any restlessness against the tyranny of materialism and dogma, a cry should go up for _Plato._--So let Isocrates, the 'old man eloquent,'--let a many-worded not unpeculant patriotic Demosthenes who knew nothing of the God-world--attend to an Athens wherein the Gods were no longer greatly interested;--the great Star Plato should rise up into mid-heaven, and shine not in, but high over Athens and quite apart from her; drawing from her indeed the external elements of his culture, but the light and substance from that which was potent in her no longer. I said Greece served the future badly enough. Consider what might have been. The pivot of the Mediterranean world, in the sixth century, was not Athens, but in Magna Graecia: at Croton, where Pythagoras had built his school. But the mob wrecked Croton, and smashed the Pythagorean Movement as an organization; and that, I take it, and one other which we shall come to in time, were the most disastrous happenings in European history. Yes; the causes why Classical civilization went down; why the Dark Ages were dark; why the God in Man his been dethroned, and suffered all this crucifixion and ignominy the last two thousand years. Aeschylus, truly, received some needed backing from the relics of the Movement which he found still existent in Sicily; but what might he not have written, and what of his writings might not have come down to us, preserved there in the archives, had he had the peace and elevation of a Croton, organized, to retire to? Whither, too, Socrates might have gone, and not to death, when Athens became impossible; where Plato might have dwelt and taught; revealing, to disciples already well-trained, much more than ever he did reveal; and engraving, oh so deeply! on the stuff of time, the truths that make men free. And there he should have had successors and successors and successors; a line to last perhaps a thousand or two thousand years; who never should have let European humanity forget such simple facts as Karma and Reincarnation. But only at certain times are such great possibilities presented to mankind; and a seed-time once passed, there can be no sowing again until the next season comes. It is no good arguing with the Law of Cycles. Plato may not have been less than Pythagoras; yet, under the Law, he might not attempt-- it would have been folly for him to have attempted--that which Pythagoras had attempted. So he had to take another line altogether; to choose another method; not to try to prevent the deluge, which was certain now to come; not even to build an ark, in which something should be saved; but, so to say, to strew the world with tokens which, when the great waters had subsided, should still remain to remind men of those things it is of most importance they should know. This is the way he did it. He advanced no dogma, formulated no system; but what he gave out, he gave rather as hypotheses. His aim was to set in motion a method of thinking which should lead always back to the Spirit and Divine Truth. He started no world- religion; founded no church--not even such a quite unchurchly church as that which came to exist on the teachings of Confucius. He never had the masses practicing their superstitions, nor a priesthood venting its lust of power, in his name. Instead, he arranged things so, that wherever fine minds have aspired to the light of the Spirit, Plato has been there to guide them on their way. So you are to see Star-Plato shining, you are to hear that voice from the Spheres at song, when Shelley, reaching his topmost note, sang: "The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life like a dome of many-coloured glass Stains the white radiance of Eternity";-- and when Swinburne sings of Time and change that: "Songs they can stop that earth found meet, But the Stars keep their ageless rhyme; Flowers they can slay that Spring thought sweet, But the Stars keep their Spring sublime, Actions and agonies control, And life and death, but not the Soul." In a poetic age--in the time of Aeschylus, for example--Plato would have been a poet; and then perhaps we should have had to invent another class of poets, one above the present highest; and reserve it solely for the splendor of Plato. Because Platonism is the very Theosophic Soul of Poetry. But he came, living when he did, to loathe the very name of poetry: as who should say: "God pity you! I give you the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and you make answer, 'Charming Plato, how exquisitely poetic is your prose!'" So his bitterness against poetry is very natural. Poetry is the inevitable vehicle of the highest truth; spiritual truth is poetry. But the world in general does not know this. Like Bacon, it looks on poetry as a kind of pleasurable lying. Plato went through the skies Mercury to the Sun of Truth, its nearest attendant planet; and therefore was, and could not help being, Very-Poet of very-poets. But Homer and others had lied loudly about the Gods; and, thought Plato, the Gods forbid that the truth he had to declare--a vital matter-- should be classed with their loud lying. He masked the batteries of his Theosophy; camouflaged his great Theosophical guns; but fired them off no less effectively, landing his splendid shells at every ganglionic point in the history of European thought since. Let a man soak his soul in Plato; and it shall go hard but the fair flower Theosophy shall spring up there presently and bloom. He prepares the soil: suggesting the way to, rather than precisely formulating, the high teachings. The advantage of the grand Platonic camouflage has been twofold: on the one hand you could hardly dwarf your soul with dogmatic acceptation of Platonism, because he gave all his teachings--even Reincarnation--as hypotheses,--and men do not as a rule crucify their mental freedom on an hypothesis. On the other hand, how was any Church eager to burn out heresy and heretics to deal with him? He was not to be stamped out; because his influence depended on no continuity of discipleship, no organization; because he survived merely as a tendency of thought. No churchly fulminations might silence his batteries; because he had camouflaged them, and they were not to be seen. Of course he did not invent his ideas; they are as old as Theosophy. The Lodge sent him to proclaim them in the way he did: the best way possible, since the Pythagorean effort had failed of its greatest success. What we owe to him--his genius and inestimable gift to the world--is precisely that matchless camouflage. It has been effective, in spite of efforts-- That, for instance, of a forward youth who came to Athens and studied under him for twenty years, and whom Plato called the intellect of the school, saying that he spurned his Teacher as colts do their mothers. A youth, it is said, who revered Plato always; and only gradually grew away from thinking of himself as a Platonist. But he never could have understood the inwardness of Plato or Platonism, for his mind turned as naturally to scientific or brain-mind methods, as Plato's did to mysticism and the illumination of the Soul. He adopted much of the teaching, but gave it a twist brain-mindwards; yet not such a twist, either, but that the Neo-Platonists in their day, and certain of the Arab and Turkish philosophers after them, could re-Platonize it to a degree and admit him thus re-Platonized into their canon. I am not going to trouble you much with Aristotle; let this from the Encyclopedia suffice: "Philosophic differences" it says "are best felt by their practical effects: philosophically, Platonism is a philosophy of universal forms, Aristotelianism is a philosophy of individual substances: practically, Plato makes us think first of the supernatural and the kingdom of heaven, Aristotle of the natural and the whole world." Or briefly, Aristotle took what he could of Plato's inspiration, and turned it from the direction of the Soul to that of the Brain-mind. The most famous of Plato's disciples, he did what he could, or what he could not help doing, to spoil Plato's message. But Plato's method had guarded that, so that for mystics it should always be there, Aristotle or no. But for mere philosophers, seeming to improve on it, he had something tainted it. It descended, as said, through the Neo-Platonists--who turned it back Plato-ward--to the Moslems: through Avicenna, who Aristotelianized, to Averroes, who Platonized it again; and from him to Europe; where Bacon presently gave it another twist to out-Aristotle Aristotle (as someone said) to stagger the Stagirite--and passed it on as the scientific method of today. According to Coleridge, every man is by nature either a Platonist or an Aristotelian; and there is some truth in it. And meanwhile, though the huge Greek illumination could die but slowly, Greece was growing uninteresting. For Pheidias of the earlier century, we have in Plato's time Praxiteles, whose carved gods are lounging and pretty nincom--- well, mortals; "they sink," says the Encyclopedia, "to the human level, or indeed, sometimes almost below it. They have grace and charm in a supreme degree, but the element of awe and reverence is wanting."--We have an Aphrodite at the bath, a 'sweet young thing' enough, no doubt; an Apollo Sauroctonos, "a youth leaning against a tree, and idly striking with an arrow at a lizard." A certain natural magic has been claimed for Praxiteles and his school and contemporaries; but if they had it, they mixed unholy elements with it.--And then came Alexander, and carried the dying impetus eastward with him, to touch India with it before it quite expired; and after that Hellenism became Hellenisticism, and what remained of the Crest-Wave in Greece was nothing to lose one little wink of sleep over. VII. THE MAURYAS OF INDIA "Some talk of Alexander" may be appropriate here; but not much. He was Aristotle's pupil; and apart from or beyond his terrific military genius, had ideas. Genius is sometimes, perhaps more often than we suspect, an ability to concentrate the mind into a kind of impersonality; almost non-existence, so that you have in it a channel for the great forces of nature to play through. We shall find that Mr. Judge's phrase 'the Crest-Wave of Evolution' is no empty one: words were things, with him and in fact, as he says; and it is so here. For this Crest-Wave is a force that actually rolls over the world as a wave over the face of the sea, raising up splendors in one nation after another in order _geographically,_ and with no haphazard about it. Its first and largest movement is from East to West; producing (as far as I can see) the great manvantaric periods (fifteen hundred years apiece) in East Asia, West Asia, and Europe; each of these being governed by its own cycles. But it has a secondary movement as well; a smaller motion within the larger one; and this produces the brilliant days (thirteen decades long for the most part) that recur in the manvantaras. Thus: China seems to have been in manvantara from 2300 to 850 B. C.; West Asia, from 1890 to 390; Europe, from 870 B. C. to 630 A. D. So in the time of Alexander West Asia was newly dead, and China waiting to be reborn. The Crest-Wave, in so far as it concerned the European manvantara, had to roll westward from Greece (in its time) to awaken Italy; but in its universal aspect--in its strongest force--it had to roll eastward, that its impulse might touch more important China when her time for awaking should come. It is an impetus, of which sometimes we can see the physical links and lines along which it travels, and sometimes we cannot. The line from Greece to China lies through Persia and India. But Persia was dead, in pralaya; you could expect no splendor, no mark of the Crest-Wave's passing, there. So Alexander, rising by his genius and towering ideas to the plane where these great motions are felt, skips you lightly across dead Persia, knocks upon the doors of India to say that it is dawn and she must be up and doing; and subsides. I doubt he carried her any cultural impulse, in the ordinary sense; it is _our_ Euro-American conceit to imagine the Greek was the highest thing in civilization in the world at that time. We may take it that Indian civilization was far higher and better in all esentials; certainly the Greeks who went there presently, and left a record, were impressed with that fact. You shall see; out of their own mouths we will convict them. It is the very burden of Megasthenes' song. Alexander had certain larger than Greek conceptions, which one must admire in him. Though he overthrew the Persians, he never made the mistake of thinking them an inferior race. On the contrary, he respected them highly; and proposed to make of them and his Greeks and Mecedoinians one homogeneous people, in which the Persian qualities of aristocracy should supply a need he felt in Europeans. The Law made use of his intention, partially, and to the furtherance of its own designs.--His method of treating the conquered was (generally) far more Persian or Asiatic than Greek; that is to say, far more humane and decent than barbarous. He took a short cut to his broad ends, and married all his captains to Persian ladies, himself setting the example; whereas most Greeks would have dealt with the captive women very differently. So that it was a kind of enlightenment he set out with, and carried across Persia, through Afghanistan, and into the Punjab,--which, we may note, was but the outskirts of the real India, into which he never penetrated; and it may yet be found that he went by no means so far as is supposed; but let that be. So now, at any rate, enough of him; he has brought us where we are to spend this evening. For a student of history, there is something mysterious and even --to use a very vile drudge of a word--'unique' about India. Go else where you will, and so long as you can posit certainly a high civilization, and know anything of its events, you can make some shift to arrange the history. None need boggle really at any Chinese date after about 2350 B.C.; Babylon is fairly settled back to about 4000; and if you cannot depend on assigned Egyptian dates, at least there is a reasonably know sequence of dynasties back through four or five millennia. But come to India, and alas, where are you? All out of it, chronologically speaking; enough; very likely, the flotsam and jetsam of several hundred thousand years. I have no doubt the Puranas are crowded with history; but how much of what is related is to be taken as plain fact; how much as 'blinds'; how much as symbolism--only the Adepts know. The three elements are mingled beyond the wit of man to unravel them; so that you can hardly tell whether any given thing happened in this or that millennium, Root-Race period, or Round of Worlds, or Day of Brahma. You are in the wild jungles of fairyland; where there are gorgeous blooms, and idylls, dreamlit, beautiful and fantastical, all in the deep midwood lonliness; and time is not, and the computations of chronology are an insult to the spirit of your surroundings. History, in India, was kept an esoteric science, and esoteric all the ancient records remain now; and I dare say any twice-born Brahmin not Oxfordized knows far more about it than the best Max Mullers of the west, and laughs at them quietly. Until someone will voluntarily lift that veil of esotericism, the speculations of western scholars will go for little. Why it should be kept esoteric, one can only guess; I think if it were known, the cycles and patterns of human history would cease to be so abstruse and hidden from us: we should know too much for our present moral or spiritual status. As usual, our own _savants_ are avid to dwarf all dates, and bring everything within the scope of a few thousand years; as for the native authorities, they simply try confusions with us; if you should trust them too literally, or some of them, events such as the Moslem conquest will not take place for a few centuries yet. They do not choose that their ancient history should be known; so all things are in a hopeless muddle. One thing to remember is this: it is a continent, like Europe; not a country, like France. The population is even more heterogeneous than that of Europe. Only one sovereign, Aurangzeb --at least for many thousands of years--was ever even nominally master of the whole of it. There are two main divisions, widely different: Hindustan or Aryavarta, north of the Vindhya Mountains and the River Nerbudda; and Dakshinapatha or the Deccan, the peninsular part to the south. The former is the land of the Aryans; the people of the latter are mainly non-Aryan--a race called the Dravidians whom, apparently, the Aryans conquered in Hindustan, and assimilated; but whom in the Deccan, though they have influenced them largely, and in part molded their religion, they never quite conquered or supplanted. Well; never is a long day; dear knows what may have happened in the long ages of pre-history. The Aryans came down into India through its one open door--that in the northwest. But when?--Oh, from about 1400 to 1200 B.C., says western scholarship; which has spent too much ingenuity altogether over discovering the original seat of the Aryans, and their primal civilization. After Sir William Jones and others had introduce Sanskrit to western notice, and its affinity had been discovered to that whole chain of languages which is sometimes called Indo-European, the theory long held that Sanskrit was the parent of all these tongues, and that all their speakers had emigrated at different times from somewhere in Central Asia. But in the scientific orthodoxies fashion reigns and changes as incontinently as in dress. Scholars rose to launch a new name for the race: _Indogermanic;_ and to prove Middle-Europe the Eden in which it was created. Then others, to dodge that Eden about through every corner of Europe; which at least must have the honor;--it could not be conceded to _inferior_ Asia. All the languages of the group were examined and worried for evidence. Men said, 'By the names of trees we shall run it to earth'; and this was the doxy that was ortho-for some time. Light on a tree-name common to all the languages, and find in what territory that tree is indigenous: that will certainly be the place. As thus; I will work out for you a suggestion given in the encyclopaedia, that you may see what strictly scientific methods of reasoning may lead to:-- Perhaps the two plant names most universally met with in all Aryan languages, European or Asiatic, are _potato_ and _tobacco._ 'From Greenland's icy mountains to Ceylon's sunny isle, Whereever prospect pleases, And only man is vile.'--you shall nearly always hear the vile ones calling the humble tuber of their mid-day meal by some term akin to _potato,_ and the subtle weed that companions their meditations, by some word like _tobacco._ _Argal,_ the Aryan race used these two words before their separation; and if the two words, the two plants also. You follow the reasoning?--Now then, seek out the land where these plants are indigenous; and if haply it shall be found they both have one original habitat, why, there beyond doubt you shall find the native seat of the primitive Aryans. And, glory be to Science! they do; both come from Virginia. Virginia, then, is the Aryan Garden of Eden. Ah but, strangely enough, we do find one great branch of the race--the Teutons--unacquainted with the word _potato._ You may argue that the French are too: but luckily, Science has the seeing eye; Science is not to be cheated by appearances. The French say _pomme de terre;_ but this is evidently only a corruption--_potater, pomdeter_--twisted at some late period by false analogy into _pomme de terre,_ ('apple of the earth'.) But the Teuton has _kartoffel,_ utterly different; argal again, the Teutons must have separated from the parent stem before the Aryans had discovered that the thing was edible and worth naming. They, therefore, were the first to leave Virginia: paddle their own canoes off to far-away Deutschland before ever the mild Hindoo set out for Hindustan, the Greek for Greece, or the Anglo-Saxon for Anglo-Saxony. But even the Teutons have the word _tobacco._ Come now, what a light we have here thrown on the primitive civilization of our forefathers! They knew, it seems, the virtures of the weed or ever they had boiled or fried a single murphy; they smoked first, and only ate long afterwards: and the Germans who led that first expedition out from the fatherland of the race, must have gone with full tobacco-pouches and empty lunch-bags. What a life-like picture rises before our eyes! These first Aryans were a dreamy contemplative people; tobacco was the main item in their lives, the very basis of their civilization.--Then presently, after the Teutons had gone, someone must have let his pipe go out for a few minutes--long enought to discover that he was hungry, and that a fair green plant was growing at his door, with a succulent tuber at the root of it which one could EAT. Think of the joy, the wonder, of that momentous discovery! Did he hide it away, lest others should be as happy as himself? Were ditectives set to watch him, to spy out the cause of a habit of sleek rotundity that was growing upon him at last visibly? We shall never know. Or did he call in his neighbors at once and annouce it? Did someone ask: 'What shall we name this God-given thing?'--and did another reply: 'It looks to me like a _potato;_ let's call it that!'? That at least must have been how it came by it name. They received the suggestion with acclamations: and all future out-going expeditions took sacks of it with them; and their descendants have continued to call it _potato_ to this day. For you must not that being the only food with a name common to all the languages--or almost all --it must be supposed to have been the only food they knew of before their separation. Even the words for _father, mother, fire, water,_ and the like, have a greater number of different roots in the Aryan languages than have these blessed two. To say the truth, a dawning perception of the possibilities of this kind of reasoning chilled the enthusiasm of the Aryan-hunters a good deal; it was the bare bodkin that did quietus make for much philological pother and rout. No; if you are to prove racial superiority or exclusiveness, you had much better avail yourself of the simplicity of a stout bludgeon, than rely upon the subtleties of brain-mind argumentation; for time past is long, and mostly hidden; and lots of things have happened to account for your proofs in ways you would never suspect. The long and short of it is, that after pursuing the primitive Aryans up hill and down dale through all parts of Europe, Science is forced to pronouce her final judgement thus: _We really know nothing about it._ The ancestors of this Fifth Root-Race emigrated to Central Asia to escape the fate of Atlantis; whither too went several Atlantean peoples, such as the forefathers of the Chinese,--who were not destined to be destroyed. It is a vast region, and there was room for them all. That emigration may have been as long a process as that of the Europeans in our own time to America; probably it was; or longer. But it happened, at any rate, a million years ago; and in a million years a deal of water will flow under the bridges. You may call English a universal language now; it might conceivably become so absolutely, after a few centuries. But history will go on and time, and the cyclic changes inherent in natural law. These are not to be dodged by railways, turbines, aeroplanes; you cannot evitate their action by inventing printing-presses;--which, I suppose, have been invented and forgotten dozens of times 'since created man.' In a million years from now the world will have contracted and expanded often. We have seen, in our little period called historical, hardly anything but expansion; though there have been contractions, too. But contractions there will be, major ones; it is quite safe to foretell that; because action and reaction are equal and opposite: it is a fundamental law. Geography will re-become, what it was in the times we call ancient, an esoteric science; the races will be isolated, and there will be no liners on the seas, and Europe and Asia will be fabulous realms of faerie for our more or less remote descendants. Then what will have become of the once universal English language?--It will have split into a thousand fragment tongues, as unlike as Dutch and Sanskrit; and philology--the great expansion having happened again--will have as much confusion to unravel in the Brito-Yankish, as it has now in the Indo-European.--In a million years?--Bless my soul, in a poor little hundred thousand! The Aryan languages, since they began to be, have been spreading out and retreating, mixing and changing and interchanging; one imposed on another, hidden under another, and recrudescing through another; through ten or a hundred thousand years,--or however long it may be; just as they have been doing in historical times. You find Persian half Arabicized; Armenian come to be almost a dialect of Persian; Latin growing up through English; Greek almost totally submerged under Latin, Slavonic, and Turkish, and now with a tendency to grow back into Greek; Celtic preserving in itself an older than Aryan syntax, and conveying that in its turn to the English spoken by Celts. Language is, to say the truth, a shifting kaleidoscopic thing: a momentary aspect of racial expression. In a thousand years it becomes unintelligible; we are modifying ours every day, upon laws whose nature can be guessed. Yet ultimately all is a symphony and ordered progression, with regular rhythms recurring; it only seems a chaos, and unmusical, because we hear no more than the fragment of a bar. You all know the teaching of _The Secret Doctrine_ about the Root-Races of Humanity, of which this present one, generally called the Aryan, is the fifth; and how each is divided into seven sub-races; each sub-race into seven family-races; and each family-race into innumerable nations and tribes. According to that work, this Fifth Root-Race has existed a million years. The period of a sub-race is said to be about 210,000 years; and that of a family-race, about 30,000. So then, four sub-races would have occupied the first 840,000 years of the Fifth Race's history; and our present fifth sub-race would have been in being during the last 160,000 years; in which time five family-races would have flourished and passed; and this present sixth family-race would be about ten millenniums old. Now, no single branch of the Aryans: by which term I mean the sixth family-race; I shall confine it to that, and not apply it to the Fifth Root-Race as a whole,--no single race among the Aryans has been universal, or dominant, or prominent even, during the whole of the last ten thousand years. The Teutons (including Anglo-Saxons), who loom so largely now, cut a very small figure in the days when Latin was, in its world, something more universal than English is in ours; and a few centuries before that, you should have heard Celtic, and little else, almost anywhere in Europe. This shows how fleeting a thing is the sovereignty of any language; within the three thousand years we know about, three at least of the Aryan language-groups have been 'universal'; within the last ten milleniums there has been time enough, and to spare, for a 'universality' each of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Slavonic, Latin, Teutonic, and Celtic. So evidently none of these is the language of the family-race: we may speak of the Aryan Family-Race; not of the Celtic or Slavonic. But it does not follow that the whole sub-race is not Aryan too. Mr. Judge says somewhere that Sanskrit will be the universal language again. Supposing that there were some such scheme of evolution here, as in the world-chain? You know the diagram in _The Secret Doctrine,_ with the teaching as to the seven rounds. _As above, so below;_ when H. P. Blavatsky seems to be giving you a sketch of cosmic evolution, often she is at the same time, if you can read it, telling you about the laws that govern your own and the race's history. I suspect some such arrangement as this: when the sub-race began, 160,000 years ago, Sanskrit was its 'universal' language; spoken by all the Aryans that moved out over Europe and into India. An unaccountable Sanskrit inscription has been found in Asia Minor;* and there is Lithuania, a little speech-island in northeastern Central Europe, where a nearly Sanskrit language, I believe, survives. Then Sanskrit changed imperceptibly (as American is changing from English) into the parent language of the Persian group, which became the general speech of the sub-race except in India, where Sanskrit survived as a _seed-speech_ for future resurrection. Then, perhaps _pari passu_ with further westward expansion, Persian changed into the parent of the Slavonic group, itself living on as a seed-speech in Iran; and so on through all the groups; in each case the type-language of a group remaining, to expand again after the passage of ages and when its cycle should return, in or about its corresponding psychic center on the geographical plane. Then this evolution, having reached its farthest limit, began to retrace its course; I would not attempt to say in what order the language groups come: which is globe A in the chain, which Globe D, and so on; but merely suggest that a 'family race' may represent one round from Sanskrit to Sanskrit; and the whole Fifth Sub-race, seven such complete rounds. ------ * _Ancient India,_ by E. J. Rapson ------ What came before? What was the Fourth Sub-race? Well: I imagine we may have the relic, the _sishta_ or seed of it, in the Hamitic peoples and languages: the Libyans, Numidians, Egyptians, Iberians, and Pelasgians of old; the Somalis, Gallas, Copts, Berbers, and Abyssinians of today. We are almost able to discern a time--but have not guessed when it was--when this Iberian race, having perhaps its central seat in Egypt, held all or most lands as far as Ireland to the west, and Japan and New Zealand eastward; we find them surviving, mixed with, but by no means submerged under, Aryan Celts in Spain--which is Iberia; we find their name (I imagine) in that of Iverne, Ierine, Hibernia, or Ireland; we know that they gave the syntax of their language to that of the Celts of the British Isles; and that the Celtic races of today are mainly Iberian in blood--I daresay all Europe is about half Iberian in blood, as a matter of fact;--that the Greeks found them in Greece: I suspect that the main difference between Sparta and Athens lay in the fact that Sparta was pure Aryan, Athens mainly Iberian.--It seems to me then that we can almost get a glimpse of the sub-race preceding our own. Some have been puzzled by a seeming discrepancy between Katherine Tingley's statement that Egypt is older than India, and H. P. Blavatsky's, that Menes, founder of the Egyptian monarchy, went from India to Egypt to found it. But now suppose that something like this happened--would it not solve the problem?--In 158,000 B. C., or at the time this present Aryan Sub-race began, Egypt, one state in the huge Iberian series, was already a seat of civilization as old as the Iberian race. There may have been an Iberian Empire, almost world-wide; which again may have split into many kingdoms; and as the star of the whole race was declining, we may suppose Egypt in some degree of pralaya; or again, that it may have been an outlying and little-considered province _at that time._ In Central Asia the Sanskrit-speaking tribe begins to increase and multiply furiously. They pour down into Iberian Hindustan. They are strong, and the Gods are leading them; the Iberians have grown world-weary with the habit of long empire. The Iberian power goes down before them; the Iberians become a subject people. But there is one Menes among the latter, of the royal house perhaps, who will not endure subjection. He stands out as long as he may; then sails west with his followers for Iberian lands that the Aryans have not disturbed, and are not likely to. In their contests with the invaders of India, they have thrown off all world-weariness, and become strong; Prince Menes is hailed in Egypt (as the last of the Ommevads, driven out from the East by the Abbasids, was hailed in Spain); he wakens Egypt, and founds a new monarchy there.--I am telling the tale of very ancient and unknown conditions in terms of historic conditions we know about and can understand; it is only the skeleton of the story I would stand for. And to put Menes back at 160,000 years ago--what an amusing idea that will seem!--But the truth is we must wage war against this mischievous foreshortening of history. I have no doubt there have been empires going, from time to time, in Egypt, since before Atlantis fell; people have the empire-building instinct, and it is an eminently convenient place for empire-building. I have no doubt there have been dozens of different Meneses--that is, founders of Egyptian monarchies,--with thousands of years between each two. But I think probably the one that came from India to do it, came about the time when the fifth sub-race rose to supplant the fourth as that section of humanity in which evolution was chiefly interested. Which last phrase in itself is rank heresy, and smacks of the 'white man's burden,' and all such nonsense as that. We might learn a lesson here. Think: since that time, during how many thousands of years, off and on, has not that old sub-race been the darling of evolution, the seat of the Crest-Wave, and place where all things were doing? All the Setis, the grand Rameseses and Thothmeses came since then; all the historic might and glory of Egypt. You never know rightly when to say that the life of a sub-race is ended; the two-hundred-and-ten-century period cannot, I imagine, include it from birth to death; but can only mark the time between the rise of one, and the rise of another.-- But now to India. We have no knowledge of the last time when Sanskrit was spoken: it has always been, in historic or quasi-historic ages, what it is now--literary language preserved by the high castes. In the days of the Buddha it had long given place to various vernaculars grown out of it: Pali, and what are called the Prakrits.--We have lost memory of what I may call the archetypal languages of Europe: the common ancestor of the Celtic group, for instance; or that Italian from which Latin and the lost Oscan and Savellian and the rest sprang. No matter; they remain in the ideal world, and I doubt not in the course of our cyclic evolution we shall return to them, take them up, and pass through them again. But it seems to me that in the land of Esoteric History, where Manu provided in advance against the main destructiveness of war, the archetypal language of the whole sub-race has been preserved. The Aryans went down into India, and there, at the extreme end of the Aryan world, enjoyed some of the advantages of isolation: they were in a backwater, over which the tides of the languages did not flow. By esotericizing their history, I imagine they have really kept it intact, continuous, and within human memory; as we have not done with ours. As if that which is to be preserved forever, must be preserved in secret; and silence were the only durable casket for truth. The Greeks, they say, were very gifted liars; but I do not see why we should suppose them lying, when they sang the superiorities of Indian things and people;--_as they did._ The Indians, says Megasthenes, were taller than other men, and of greater distinction and prouder bearing. The air and water of their land were the purest in the world; so you would expect in the people, the finest culture and skill in the arts. Almost always they gathered two harvests in the years; and _famine had never visited India._--You see, railways, quick communications, and all the appliances of modern science and invention cannot do as much for India in pralaya, as her own native civilization could do for her in manvantara.--Then he goes on to show how that civilization guarded against famine and many other things; and incidentally to prove it not only much higher than the Greek, but much higher than our own. I said Manu provided in advance against the main destructiveness of war: here was the custom, which may have been dishonored in the breach sometimes, but still _was the custom._--The whole continent was divided into any number of kingdoms; mutually antagonistic often, but with certain features of homogeneity that made the name Aryavarta more than a geographical expression. I am speaking of the India Megasthenes saw, and as it had been then for dear knows how long. It had made concessions to human weakness, yes; had fallen, as I think, from an ancient unity; it had not succeeded in abolishing war. It was open to any king to make himself a Chakravartin, or world-sovereign, if he disposed of the means for doing so: which means were military. As this was a well-recognised principle, wars were by no means rare. But with them all, what a Utopia it was, compared to Christendom! There was never a draft or conscription. Of the four castes, the Kshatriya or warrior alone did the fighting. While the conches brayed, and the war- cars thundered over Kurukshetra; while the pantheons held their breath, watching Arjun and mightiest Karna at battle--the peasants in the next field went on hoeing their rice; they knew no one was making war on them. They trusted Gandiva, the goodly bow, to send no arrows their way; their caste was inviolable, and sacred to the tilling of the soil. Megasthenes notes it with wonder. War implied no ravaging of the land, no destruction of crops, no battering down of buildings, no harm whatever to non-combatants. Kshatriya fought Kshatriya. If you were a Brahmin: which is to say, a theological student, or a man of letters, a teacher or what not of the kind--you were not even called up for physical examination. If you were a merchant, you went on quietly with your 'business as usual.' A mere patch of garden, or a peddler's tray, saved you from all the horrors of a questionnaire. Kshatriya fought Kshatriya, and no one else; and on the battlefield, and nowhere else. The victor became possessed of the territory of the vanquished; and there was no more fuss or botheration about it. And the vanquished king was not dispossessed, Saint Helenaed, or beheaded. Simply, he acknowledged his conqueror as his overlord, paid him tribute; perhaps put his own Kshatriya army at his disposal; and went on reigning as before. So Porus met Alexander without the least sense of fear, distrust, or humiliation at his defeat. "How shall I treat you?" said the Macedonian. Porus was surprised.--"I suppose," said he in effect, "as one king would treat another"; or, "like a gentleman." And Alexander rose to it; in the atmosphere of a civilization higher than anything he knew, he had the grace to conform to usage. Manu imposed his will on him. Porus acknowledged him for overlord, and received accretions of territory.--This explains why all the changes of dynasty, and the many conquests and invasions have made so little difference as hardly to be worth recording. They effected no change in the life of the people. Even the British Raj has been, to a great degree, molded to the will of Manu. Each strong native state is ruled by its own Maharaja, who acknowledges the Kaiser-i-Hind at London for his overlord, and lends him at need his Moslem or Kshatriya army.--All of which proves, I think, the extreme antiquity of the svstem: which is so firmly engraved in the prototypal world--the astral molds are so strong--that no outside force coming in has been able materially to change it. The Greek invasion goes wholy unnoticed in Indian literature. Which brings us back to Alexander. If he got as far as to the Indus;--he got no farther. There were kingdoms up there in the northwest--perhaps no further east than Afghanistan and Baluchistan--which had formed part of the empire of Darius Hystaspes, and sent contingents to fight under Xerxes in Greece; and these now Alexander claimed as Darius Codomannus's successor. But even in these outlying regions, he found conditions very different from those in Persia: there was no "unquestionable superiority of the European to the Asiatic," nor nothing like. Had he gone further, and into the real India of the Ganges valley, his name, it is likely, would not have come down synonymous with victory; presentlv we will call Megasthenes to witness again as to the "unquestionable superiority of the Asiatic to the European." But thither the Macedonians refused to follow their king; and I suppose he wept rather over their insubordination, than for any overwhelmment with a sense of terrene limits. For he knew well that there was plenty more world to conquer, could one conquer it: rich and mighty kingdoms beyond that Thar Desert his soldiers are said to have refused to cross. He knew, because there were many to tell him: exiled princes and malcontents from this realm and that, each with his plan for self-advancement, and for using the Macedonia as a catspaw. Among them one in particular: as masterful a man as Alexander, and a potential world-conqueror himself. He was (probably) a more or less illegitimate scion of the House of Nanda, then reigning in Magadha; which country, now called Behar, had been growing at the expense of its Gangetic neighbors for some centuries. King Suddhodana, the Buddha's father, had reigned over the Sakyas in Nepaul as a tributary under the king of Magadha; which statement I let pass, well aware that the latest western scholarship has revolutionized the Sakyas into a republic--perhaps with soviets,--and King Suddhodana himself into a mere ward politician. This Sandrakottos, as the Greeks called him, had many tales to tell of the wealth of his kinsman's kingdom, and of the extreme unpopularity of its ruler:-and therefore of the ease with which Alexander might conquer it and hand it over to him. But two of a trade seldom agree; both he and his host were born to rule empires; and presently he offended susceptibilities, and had to flee the camp. Whereupon he shortly sharked up a list of landless reprobates, Kshatriyas at a loose end, for food and diet; and the enterprise with a stomach in't was, as soon as Alexander's back was turned, to drive out the Macedonian garrisons. This done, he marched eastward as king of the Indus region, conquered Magadha, slew his old enemy the Nanda king with all male members of the family, and reigned in his stead as Chandragupta I, of the house of Maurya. That was in 321. Master then of a highly trained army of about 700,000, he spread his empire over all Hindustan. In 305, Seleucus Nicator, Alexander's successor in Asia, crossed the Indus with an army, and was defeated; and in the treaty which followed, gave up to Chandragupta all claim to the Indian provinces, together with the hand of his daughter in marriage.--and received by way of compensation 500 elephants that might come in useful in his wars elsewhere. Also he sent Megisthenes to be his ambassador at Pataliputra, Chandragupta's capital; and Megasthenes wrote; and in a few quotations from his lost book that remain, chiefly in Arrian,--we get a kind of window wherethrough to look into India: the first, and perhaps the only one until Chinese travelers went west discovering. Here let me flash a green lantern. If at some future time it should be shown that the Chandragupta Maurya of the Sanskrit books was not the same person as the Sandacottos of Megasthenes; nor his son Bindusara Amitraghata, the Amitrochidas of the Greeks; nor his son and successor, Asoka, the Devanampiya Piadasi whose rock-cut inscriptions remain scattered over India; nor the Amtiyako Yonaraja--the "Ionian King Antiochus" apparently,--Atiochus Theos, Selecus Nicator's granson: as is supposed; nor yet the other four kings mentioned in the same instricption in a Sanskrit disguise as contemporaries, Ptolemy Philadelphos of Egypt (285-247); Magas of Cyrene (285-258); Antigonus Gonatas of Macedon (277-239), and Alexander of Epirus, who began to reign in 272;--if all these identifications should fall to the ground, let no one be surprised. There are passages in the writings of H. P. Blavatsky that seem to suggest there is nothing in them; and yet, after studying those passages, I do not find that she says so positively: her attitude seems rather one of withholding information for the time being; she supplies none of a contrary sort. The time may not have been ripe then for unveiling so much of Indian history; nor indeed, in those days, had the pictures of these kings, and particularly of Asoka, so clearly emerged: inscriptions have been deciphered since, which have gone to fill out the outline; and the story, as it his been pieced together now, has an air of verisimilitude, and hangs together. Without the Greek identifications, and the consequent possibility of assigning dates to Chandragupta and his son, we should know indeed that there was a great Maurya empire, which lasted a matter of thirteen decades and a few odd years; but we should hardly know when to place it. Accepting the Greek identifications, and placing the Mauryas where we do in time--you shall see how beautifully the epoch fits into the universal cycles, and confirms the teaching as to Cyclic Law. So, provisionally, I shall accept them, and tell the tale. First a few more items from Megasthenes as to India under Chandragupta. There was no slavery, he notes; all Indians were free, and not even were there aliens enslaved. Crime of any kind was rare; the people were thoroughly law-abiding. Thievery was so little known, that doors went unlocked at all times; there was no usury, and a general absence of litigation. They told the truth: as a Greek, he could not help noticing that. The men were exceptionally brave; the women, chaste and virturous. But "in contrast to the general simplicity of their style, they loved finery and ornaments. Their robes were worked in gold, adorned with precious stones, and they wore flowered garments of the finest muslin. Attendants walking behind held umbrellas over them...." The system of government was very highly and minutely evolved. "Of the great officers of state, some have charge of the markets, others of the city, others of the soldiers; others superintend the canals, and measure the land, or collect the taxes; some construct roads and set up pillars to show the by-roads and distances from place to place. Those who have charge of the city are divided into six boards of five members apiece: The first looks after industrial art. The second attends to the entertainment of strangers, taking care of them, sound or sick, and in the event of their death, burying them and sending their property to their relatives." The third board registered births and deaths; the fourth, fifth and sixth had supervision of things commercial. Military affairs were as closely organized: there were Boards of Infantry, Cavalry, War Chariots, Elephants, Navy, and Bullock Transport. And behind all these stood Chandragupta himself, the superman, ruthless and terrifically efficient; and Chanakya, his Macchiavellian minister: a combination to hurry the world into greatness. And so indeed they did. Under Asoka, Chandragupta's grandson, the age culminated. H. P. Blavatsky says positively that he was born into Buddhism; this is not the general view; but one finds nothing in his edicts, really, to contradict it. His father Bindusara, of whom we know nothing, may have been a Buddhist. But it would appear that Asoka in his youth was the most capable, and also the most violent and passionate of Bindusara's sons. During his father's lifetime, he held one of the great vice-royalties into which the empire was divided; he succeeded to the throne in 271. His domains at that time included all Aryavarta, with Baluchistan, and as much of Afghanistan as lies south of the Hindoo Koosh; and how much of the Deccan it is difficult to determine. Nine years later he extended this realm still further, by the conquest of the Kalingas, whose country lay along the coast northward from Madras. At the end of that war he was master of all India north of a line drawn from Pondicherry to Cannanore in the south; while the tip of the Deccan and Ceylon lay at least within his sphere of influence. He was easily the strongest monarch of his day. In China--between which country and India there was no communication: they had not discovered each other, or they had lost sight of each other for ages--an old order was breaking to pieces, and all was weakness and decay. In the West, Greek civilization was in decadence, with the successors of Alexander engaged in profitless squabbles. Rome, a power only in Italy, was about to begin her long struggle with Carthage; overseas nobody minded her. The Crest-Wave was in India, the strongest power and most vigorous civilization, so far as we can tell, in the world, and at the head of India stood this Chakravartin, victorious Asoka, flushed with conquest, and a whole world tempting him out to conquer.-- He never went to war again. For twenty-nine years after that conquest of the Kalingas, until his death in 233, he reigned in unbroken peace. He left his heart to posterity in many edicts and inscriptions cut on rocks and pillars; thirty-five of these remain, or have so far been discovered and read. In 257, or five years after the Kalinga War, he published this: "Devanamipiya Piadasi"-- It means literally 'the Beloved of the Gods, the Beautiful of Countenance'; but it is really a title equivalent to "His Gracious Majesty,' and was borne by all the Maurya kings;-- "Devanampiya Piadasi feels remorse on account of the conquest of the Kalingas; because, during the subjugation of a preciously unconquered country slaughter, death, and taking away captives of the people necessarily occur; whereat His Majesty feels profound sorrow and regret..." It would be in keeping with the Southern Buddhist tradition as to the ungovernable violence of Asoka's youth, that he should have introduced into war horrors quite contrary to Manu and Indian custom; but here I must say that H. P. Blavatsky, though she does not particularize, says that there were really two Asokas, two 'Devanampiya Piadasis,' the first of whom was Chandragupta himself, from whose life the tradition of the youthful violence may have been drawn; and there remains the possibility that this Kalinga War was waged by Chandragupta, not Asoka; and that it was he who made this edict, felt the remorse, and became a Buddhist. However, to continue (tentatively):-- "The loss of even the hundredth or the thousandth part of the persons who were then slain, carried away captive, or done to death in Kalinga would now be a matter of deep regret to His Majesty. Although a man should do him any injury, Devanampiya Piadasi holds that it must patiently be borne, so far as it possibly can be borne... for His Majesty desires for all animate beings security, control over the passions, peace of mind, and joyousness. And this is the chief of conquests, in His Majesty's opinion: the Conquest of Duty." Some time later he took the vows of a Buddhist monk, 'entered the Path'; and, as he says, 'exerted himself strenuously.' He has been called the 'Constantine of Buddhism'; there is much talk among the western learned, about his support of that movement having contributed to its decay. They draw analogy from Constantine; even hint that Asoka embraced Buddhism, as the latter did Christianity, from political motives. But the analogy is thoroughlv false. Constantine was a bad man, a very far-gone case; and there was little in the faith he adopted, or favored, as it had come to be at that time, to make him better;--even if he had really believed in it. And it was a defined religio- political body, highly antagonistic to the old state religion of Rome, that he linked his fortunes with. But no sovereign so mighty in compassion is recorded in history as having reigned, as this Asoka. He was the most unsectarian of men. Buddhism as it came to him, and as he left it, was not a sect, but a living spiritual movement. For what is a sect?--Something _cut off_-- from the rest of humanity, and the sources of inner life. But for Asoka, as for the modern Theosophical Movement, there was no religion higher than--_Dharma_--which word may be translated, 'the (higher) Law,' or 'truth.' or 'duty.' He never ceased to protect the holy men of Brahminism. Edict after edict exhorts his people to honor them. He preached the Good Law; he could not insist too often that different men would have different conceptions as to this _Dharma._ Each, then, must follow his own conception, and utterly respect his neighbors'. The Good Law, the Doctrine of the Buddhas, was universal; because the objective of all religions was the conquest of the passions and of self. All religions must manifest on this plane as right action and life; and that was the evangel he proclaimed to the world. There was no such sharp antagonism of sects and creeds. There is speculation as to how he managed, being a world-sovereign --and a highly efficient one--to carry out the vows of a Buddhist monk. As if the begging bowl would have been anything of consequence to such an one! It is a matter of the status of the soul; not of outward paraphernalia. He was a practical man; intensely so; and he showed that a Chakravartin could tread the Path of the Buddhas as well as a wandering monk. One can imagine no Tolstoyan playing at peasant in him. His business in life was momentous. "I am never satisfied with my exertions and my dispatch of business," he says. "Work I must for the public benefit,--and the root of the matter is in exertion and dispatch of business, than which nothing is more efficacious for the public welfare. And for what end do I toil? For no other end than that I may discharge my debt to animate beings." And again: "Devanampiya Piadasi desires that in all places men of all religions may abide, for they all desire purity of mind and mastery over the senses." Well; for nine and twenty years he held that vast empire warless; even though it included within its boundaries many restless and savage tribes. Certainly only the greatest, strongest, and wisest of rulers could do that; it has not been done since (though Akbar came near it). We know nothing as to how literature may have been enriched; some think that the great epics may have come from this time. If so, it would only have been recensions of them, I imagine. But in art and architecture his reign was everything. He built splendid cities, and strewed the land with wonderful buildings and monoliths. Patna, the capital, in Megasthenes' time nine miles long by one and a half wide, and built of wood, he rebuilt in stone with walls intricately sculptured. Education was very widespread or universal. His edicts are sermons preached to the masses: simple ethical teachings touching on all points necessary to right living. He had them carved on rock, and set them up by the roadsides and in all much-frequented places, where the masses could read them; and this proves that the masses could read. They are all vibrant with his tender care, not alone for his human subjects, but for all sentient beings. "Work I must.... that I may discharge my debt to all things animate." And how he did work without one private moment in the day or night, as his decrees show, in which he should be undisturbed by the calls of those who needed help. He specifies; he particularizes; there was no moment to be considered private, or his personal own. And even then he was not content. There were foreign lands; and those, too, were entitled to his care. I said that the southern tip of India, with Ceylon, were within his sphere of influence: his sphere of influence was much wider than that, however. Saying that a king's sphere of influence is wherever he can get his will done, Asoka's extended westward over the whole Greek world. Here was a king whose will was benevolence; who sought no rights but the right to do good; whose politics were the service of mankind:--it is a sign of the Brotherhood of Man, that his writ ran, as you may say--the writ of his great compassion,--to the Mediterranean shore:-- "Everywhere in the dominions of Devanampiya Piadasi, and likewise in the neighboring realms, such as those of the Chola, Pandya, Satiyaputra and Keralaputra, in Ceylon, in the dominions of the Greek king Antiochus, and in those of the other kings subordinate to that Antiochus--everywhere, on behalf of His Majesty, have two kinds of hospitals been founded: hospitals for men, and hospitals for beasts. Healing herbs, medicinal for man and medicinal for beasts, wherever they were lacking, have been imported and planted. On the roads, trees have been planted, and wells have been dug for the use of men and beasts." And everywhere, in all those foreign realms, he had his missionaries preaching the Good Law. And some of these came to Palestine, and founded there for him an order at Nazareth called the Essenes; in which, some century or two later, a man rose to teach the Good Law--by name, Jesus of Nazareth.--Now consider the prestige, the moral influence, of a king who might keep his agents, unmolested, carrying out his will, right across Asia, in Syria, Greece, Macedonia, and Egypt; the king of a great, free, and mighty people, who, if he had cared to, might have marched out world-conquering; but who preferred that his conquests should be the conquests of duty. Devanampiya Piadasi: the Gracious of Mien, the Beloved of the Gods: an Adept King like them of old time, strayed somehow into the scope and vision of history. VIII. THE BLACK-HAIRED PEOPLE Greece shone between 478 and 348,--to give the thirteen decades of her greatest spiritual brightness. Then came India in 321; we lose sight of her after the death of Asoka in the two-thirties, but know the Maurya Empire lasted its thirteen decades (and six years) until 185. Then China flamed up brilliantly under the Western House of Han from 194 to 64;--at which time, however, we shall not arrive for a few weeks yet. Between these three national epochs there is this difference: the Greek Age came late in its manvantara; which opened (as I guess), roughly speaking, some three hundred and ninety years before:--three times thirteen decades, with room for three national flowerings in Europe--among what peoples, who can say?-- We cannot tell where in its manvantara the Indian Age may have come: whether near the beginning, or at the middle. But in China we are on firm ground, and the firmest of all. A manvantara, a fifteen-century cycle, began in the two-forties B. C.; this Age of Han was its first blossom and splendid epoch; and we need feel no surprise that it was not followed by a night immediately, but only by a twilight and slight dimming of the glories for about thirteen decades again, and then the full brilliance of another day. Such things are proper to peoples new-born after their long pralaya; and can hardly happen, one would say, after the morning of the manvantara has passed. Thus in our own European cycle, Italy the first-born was in full creative energy from about 1240 to 1500: twenty-six decades;--whereas the nations that have held hegemony since have had to be content each with its thirteen. And now to take bird's-eye views of China as a whole; and to be at pains to discover what relation she bears, historically, to ourselves and the rest of the globe. Do you remernber how Abraham haggled with the Lord over the Cities of the Plain? Yahveh was for destroying them off hand for their manifold sins and iniquities; but Abraham argued and bargained and brought him down till if peradventure there should be found ten righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah, the Lord promised he would spare them. But ten righteous there were not, nor nothing near; so the Cities of the Plain went down. I suppose the Crest-Wave rarely passes from a race without leaving a wide trail of insanity in its wake. The life forces are strong; the human organisms through which they play are but--as we know them. Commonly these organisms are not directed by the Divine Soul, which has all too little of the direction of life in its hands; so the life-currents drift downward, instead of fountaining up; and exhaust these their vehicles, and leave them played out and mentally--because long since morally--deficient. So come the cataclysmic wars and reigns of terror that mark the end of racial manvantaras: it is a humanity gone collectively mad. On the other hand, none can tell what immense safeguarding work may be done by the smallest sane co-ordinated effort upwards. If peradventure the ten righteous shall be found--but they must be righteous, and know what they are doing--I will spare, and not destroy, saith the Lord. (He said nothing about respectabilities. I dare say there was quite a percentage of respectable chapel-going Sabbath-observing folk in the Cities of the Plain.) And yet there must be always that dreadful possibility--which perhaps has never become actual since the fall of Atlantis--that a whole large section of mankind should go quite mad, and become unfit to carry on the work of evolution. It is a matter of corrupting the streams of heredity; which is done by vice, excess, wrong living; and these come of ignorance. Heaven knows how near it we may be today; I do not think Christendom stands, or has stood, so very far, from the brink. And yet it is from the white race, we have supposed, that the coming races will be born; this is the main channel through which human evolution is intended to flow.--We are in kall-yuga; the Mysteries are dead, and the religions have taken their place: there has been no sure and certain link, organized on this plane, between the world and its Higher Self. Each succeeding civilization, under these circumstances, has run a greater risk. Of what race are we? I say, of no race at all, but can view the matter as Human Souls, reincarnating egos, prepared to go where the Law bids us. Races are only temporary institutions set up for the convenience of the Host of Souls. We see, I suppose, the results of such a breakdown in Africa. Atlanteans were segregated there; isolated; and for a million years degenerated in that isolation to what they are. But their ancestors, before that segregation began, had better airships than we have; were largely giants, in more respects than the physical, were we are pygmies. Now they are--whatever may be their potentialities, whatever they may become--actually an inferior reace. And it is a racial stock that shows no signs of dying out. What then?--I suppose indeed there must be backward races, to house backward egos;--though for that matter you would think that our Londons and Chicagos and the rest, with their slums, would provide a good deal of accommodation. Or consider the Redskins, here and in South America: whether Atlanteans, or of some former subrace of the Fifth, at least not Aryans. Take the finest tribes among them, such as the Navajos. Here is a very small hereditary stream, kept pure and apart: of fine physique; potentially of fine mentality; unsullied with vices of any sort: a people as much nearer than the white man to natural spirituality, as to natural physical health. It is no use saying they are so few. Two millenniums ago, how many were the Anglo-Saxons? Three millenniums ago, how many were the Latins? Supposing the white race in America failed. The statistics of lunacy--of that alone--are a fearful _Mene, Tekel Upharsin_ written on our walls, for any Daniel with vision to read. I think Naure must also take into account these possibilities. Does she keep in reserve hereditary streams and racial stocks other than her great and main ones, _in case of accidents?_ Are the Redskins among these? _The Secret Doctrine_ seems to hint sometimes that the founders of our Fifth Root Race were of Lemurian rather than Atlantean descent. Nowhere is it actually said so; but there are a number of passages that read, to me, as if they were written with that idea, or theory, or fact, in mind. Is it, possibly, that a small pure stream of Lemurian heredity had been kept aloof through all the years of Atlantis, in reserve;--some stream that may have been, at one time, as narrow as the tribe of Navajos?--This may be a very bold conclusion to draw from what is said in _The Secret Doctrine;_ it may have no truth in it whatever: other passages are to be found, perhaps, that would at least appear to contradict it. But if it is true, it would account for what seems like a racial anomaly--or more than one. Science leans to the conclusion that the Australian aborigines are Aryan: they are liker Aryans than anything else. But we know from _The Secret Doctrine_ that they are among the few last remnants of the Lemurians. Again, the Ainos of Japan are very like Europeans: they have many physical features in common with the Caucasians, and none in common with the peoples of East Asia. Yet they are very low down in the scale of evolution:--not so low as the Australian Blackfellow, but without much occasion for giving themselves airs. A thousand years of contact with the much- washing Japanese have never suggested to them why God made soap and water. Like many other people, they have the legend of the flood: remember, as you may say, the fall of Atlantis; but unlike us upstarts of the Fourth and Fifth Races, they have also a legend of a destruction of the world by fire and earthquake--a cataclysm that lasted, they say, a hundred days. Is it a memory of the fate of Lemuria? Is a new Root-Race developed, not from the one immediately preceding it, but from the one before? Is Mercury's caduceus, here too, a symbol of the way evolution is done? Did the Law keep in reserve a Sishta or Seed-Race from Lemuria, holding it back from Atlantean development during the whole period of the Atlanteans;--holding it, all that while, in seclusion and purity --and therefore in a kind of pralaya;--at the right moment, to push its development, almost suddenly, along a new line, not parallel to the Atlantean, but _sui generis,_ and to be Aryan Fifth presently?--Is the Law keeping in reserve a _Sishta_ or Seed-Race of Atlantean stock, holding that in reserve and apart all through our Aryan time, to develop from it at last the beginnings of the Sixth, on the new continent that will appear? Or to do so, at any rate, should the main Aryan stock fail at one of the grand crises in its evolution, and become of too corrupt heredity to produce fitting vehicles for the egos of the Sixth to inhabit? When we have evolved back to Sanskrit for the last time: when the forces of civilization have played through and exhausted for the last time the possibilities of each of the groups of Aryan languages, so that it would be impossible to do anything more with them--for languages do become exhausted: we cannot write English now as they could in the days of Milton and Jeremy Taylor; not necessarily because we are smaller men, but because the fabric of our speech is worn much thinner, and will no longer take the splendid dyes;--and when that final flowering of Sanskrit is exhausted too--will the new Sixth Race language, as a type, be a derivation from the Aryan? Then how?--Or will it, possibly, be as it were a new growth sprung out of the grave of Fourth Race Chinese, or of one of that Atlantean group through which, during all these millions of years, such great and main brain-energies have not on the whole been playing as they have been through the Aryans; and which might therefore, having lain so long fallow, then be fit for new strange developments and uses? All of which may be, and very likely is, extremely wide of the mark. Such ideas may be merest wild speculation, and have no truth in them at all. And yet I think that if they were true, they would explain a thing to me otherwise inexplicable: China. We are in the Fifth Root-Race, and the fifth sub-race thereof: that is, beyond the middle point. And yet one in every four of the inhabitants of the globe is a Fourth Race Chinaman; and I suppose that if you took all the races that are not Caucasian, or Fifth Race, you would find that about half the population of the world is Atlantean still. Take the languages. A Sanskrit word, or a Greek, or Old Gothic, or Latin, is a living organism, a little articulate being. There is his spine, the root; his body, the stem; his limbs and head, the formative elements, prefixes and suffixes, case-endings and what not. Let him loose in the sentence, and see how he wriggles gaily from state to state: with a flick of the tail from nominative to genitive, from singular to plural: declaring his meaning, not by means of what surroundings you put about him, but by motions, changes, volitions so to say, of his own. 'Now,' says he, 'I'm _pater,_ and the subject; set me where you will, and I am still the subject, and you can make nothing else of me.' Or, 'Now,' says he, 'I'm _patrem,_ and the object; go look for my lord the verb, and you shall know what's done to me; be he next door, or ten pages away, I am faithful to him.' _Patrem filius amat,_ or _filius amat patrem,_ or in whatever order it may be, there is no doubt who does, and who (as they say) _suffers_ the loving.--But now take a word in English. You can still recognise him for the same creature that was once so gay and jumpy-jumpy: _father_ is no such far cry from _pater:_--but oh what a change in sprightliness of habits is here! Time has worn away his head and limbs to almost unrecognisable blunt excrescences. Bid him move off into the oblique cases, and if he can help it, he will not budge; you must shove him with a verb; you must goad him with a little sharp preposition behind; and then he just _lumps_ backward or forward, and there is no change for the better in him, as you may say. No longer will he declare his meaning of himself; it must depend on where you choose to put him in the sentence.--Among the mountains of Europe, the grand Alps are the parvenus; the Pyrenees look down on them; and the Vosges on the Pyrenees; and--pardon me!--the little old time-rounded tiny Welsh mountains look down on them all from the heights of a much greater antiquity. They are the smallest of all, the least jagged and dramatic of all; time and the weather have done most to them. The storm, like the eagle of Gwern Abwy in the story, has lighted on their proud peaks so often, that that from which once she could peck at the stars in the evening, rises now but a few thousand feet from the level of the sea. Time and springs and summers have silenced and soothed away the startling crags and chasms, the threatening gestures of the earth at infinity, and clothed them over with a mantle of quietness and green fern and heather and dreams. When the Fifth Race was younger, its language was Alpine: in Gothic, in Sanskrit, in Latin, you can see the crags and chasms. French, Spanish and Italian are Pyrenean, much worn down. English is the Vosges. Chinese is hardly even the Welsh mountains. Every word is worn perfectly smooth and round. There is no sign left at all of prefix or suffix, root or stem. There are no parts of speech: any word without change can do duty for any part of speech. There is no sign of case or number: all has been reduced to an absolute simplicity, beyond which there is no going. Words can end with no consonant but the most rounded of all, the nasal liquids _n_ and _ng._ There is about as much likeness to the Aryan and Semitic languages--you can trace about as much analogy between them--as you can between a centipede and a billiard-ball. There are definite laws governing the changes of language. You know how the Latin _castrum_ became in English _ciaster_ and then _chester;_ the change was governed by law. The same law makes our present-day vulgar say _cyar_ for _car;_ that word, in the American of the future, will be something like chair. The same law makes the same kind of people say _donchyer_ for _don't you;_ some day, alas! even that will be classical and refined American. Well; we know that that law has been at work in historic times even on the Chinese billiard-ball: where Confucius said _Ts'in_ like a gentleman, the late Yuan Shi Kai used to say _Ch'in._ So did the Dowager Empress; it was eminently the refined thing to do. So we ourselves have turned _Ts'in_ into _China._--And that is the one little fact--or perhaps one of the two or three little facts--that remain to convince us that Chinese and its group of kindred languages grew up on the same planet, and among the same humankind, that produced Sanskrit and Latin. But does not that suggest also the possibility that Alpine Aryan might some day--after millions of years--wear down or evolve back even into billiard-ball Chinese? That human language is _one thing;_ and all the differences, the changes rung on that according to the stages of evolution? In the Aryan group of languages, the bond of affinity is easily recognisable: the roots of the words are the same: _Pitri, pater, vater,_ are clearly but varying pronunciations of the same word. In the Turanic group, however--Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, Tatar, Mongol and Manchu--you must expect no such well-advertised first-cousinship. They are grouped together, not because of any likeness of roots: not because you could find one single consonant the same in the Lappish or Hungarian, say, and in the Mongol or Manchu words for _father_--you probably could not;--but because there may be syntactical likenesses, or the changes and assimilations of sounds may be governed by the same laws. Thus in Turkic--I draw upon the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_--there is a suffix z, preceded by a vowel, to mean your: _pederin_ is 'father'; 'your father' becomes _pederiniz;_ _dostun_ means 'friend'; 'your friend' becomes not _dostuniz,_ but _dostunus;_ and this trick of assimilating the vowel of the suffix is the last one in the stem is an example of the kind of similarities which establish the relationship of the group. As for likeness of roots, here is a specimen: _gyordunus_ is the Turkish for the Finnish _naikke._--So here you see a degree of kinship much more remote than that you find in the Aryan. Where, say, Dutch and Gaelic are brothers--at least near relations and bosom friends,--Turkish and Mongol are about fifteenth cousins by marriage twice removed, and hardly even nod to each other in passing. And yet Turks and Mongols both claim descent from the sons of a common father: according to legends of both peoples, the ancestor of the Turks was the brother of the ancestor of the Mongols. (Always remember that in speaking of Turks thus scientifically, one does not mean the Ottomans, who inherit their language, but are almost purely Caucasian or even Aryan, in blood.) Now take the Monosyllabic or South-Eastern Asiatic Group: Chinese, Burmese, Siamese, Annamese, and Tibetan. Here there are only negatives, you might say, to prove a relationship. They do not meet on the street; they pass by on the other side, noses high in the air; each sublimely unaware of the other's existence. They suppose they are akin--through Adam; but whould tell you that much has happened since then. Their kinship consists in this: the words are each are billiard-balls--and yet, if you will allow the paradox, of quite different shapes. Thus I should call a Tibetan name like _nGamri-srong-btsan_ a good jagged angular sort of billiard-ball; and a Chinese one like _T'ang Tai-tsong_ a perfectly round smooth one of the kind we know.--The languages are akin, because each say, where we should say 'the horse kicked the man,' _horse agent man kicking completion,_ or words to that effect,--dapped out nearly in spherical or angular disconnected monosyllables. But the words for _horse_ and _man,_ in Chinese and Tibetan, have respectively as much phonetic likeness as _geegee_ and _equus,_ and _Smith_ and _Jones._ As to the value and possibilities of such languages, I will quote you two pronouncements, both from writers in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica._ One says: "Chinese has the greatest capacity of any language ever invented"; the other, "The Chinese tongue is of unsurpass jejuneness." In the whole language there are only about four or five hundred sounds you could differentiate by spelling, as to say, _shih,_ pronounced like the first three letters in the word _shirt_ in English. That vocable may mean: _history,_ or _to employ,_ or _a corpse, a market, a lion, to wait on, to rely upon, time, poetry, to bestow, to proclaim, a stone, a generation, to eat, a house,_ and all such things as that;--I mention a few out of the list by way of example.* Now of course, were that all to be said about it, Chinamen would no doubt sometimes get confused: would think you meant a corpse, when you were really talking about poetry, and so on. But there is a way of throwing a little breathing in, a kind of hiatus: thus _Ts'in_ meant one country, and _Tsin_ another one altogether; and you ought not to mix them, for they were generally at war, and did not mix at all well. That would potentially extend the number of sounds, or words, or billiard-balls, from the four hundred and twenty in modern polite Pekinese, or the twelve hundred or so in the older and less cultured Cantonese, to twice as many in each case. Still that would be but a poor vocabulary for the language with the vastest literature in the world, as I suppose the Chinese is. Then you come to the four tones, as a further means of extending it. You pronounce _shih_ one tone--you sing it on the right note, so to say, and it means _poetry;_ you take that tone away, and give it another, the dead tone, and very naturally it becomes _a corpse:_--as, one way, and another I have often tried to impress on you it really does.--Of course the hieroglyphs, the written words, run into hundreds of thousands; for the literature, you have a vocabulary indeed. But you see that the spoken language depends, to express its meaning, upon a different kind of elements from those all our languages depend on. We have solid words that you can spell: articles built up with the bricks of sound-stuff we call letters: _c-a-t_ cat, _d-o-g_ dog, and so on;--but their words, no; nothing so tangible: all depends on little silences, small hiatuses in the vocalizition,--and above all, _musical tones._ Now then, which is the more primitive? Which is nearer the material or intellectual, and which, the spiritual, pole? ------- * _Encyclopaedia Britannica:_ article, China: Language. ------- More primitive--I do not know. Only I think when the Stars of Morning sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy; when primeval humanity first felt stirring within it the Divine fire and essence of the Lords of Mind; when the Sons of the Fire mist came down, and found habitation for themselves in the bodies of our ancestors; when they saw the sky, how beautiful and kindly it was; and the wonder of the earth, and that blue jewel the sea; and felt the winds of heaven caress them, and were aware of the Spirit, the Great Dragon, immanent in the sunlight, quivering and scintillant in the dim blue diamond day; "They prayed, but their worship was only The wonder of nights and of days," --when they opened their lips to speak, and the first of all the poems of the earth was made:--it was song, it was tone, it was music they uttered, and not brute speech such as we use, it was intoned vowels, as I imagine, that composed their language: seven little vowels, and seven tones or notes to them perhaps: and with these they could sing and tell forth the whole of the Glory of God. And then--was it like this?--they grew material, and intellectual, and away from the child-state of the Spirit; and their tones grew into words; and consonants grew on to the vowels, to make the vast and varied distinctions the evolving intellect needed for its uses; and presently you had Atlantis with its complex civilization--its infinitely more complex civilization even than our own; and grammar came ever more into being, ever more wonderful and complex, to correspond with the growing curves and involutions of the ever more complex-growing human brain; and a thousand languages were formed--many of them to be found still among wild tribes in mid-Africa or America--as much more complex than Sanskrit, as Sanskrit is than Chinese: highly declensional, minutely syntactical, involved and worked up and filigreed beyond telling;--and that was at the midmost point and highest material civilization of Atlantis. And then the Fourth Race went on, and its languages evolved; back, in the seventh sub-race, to the tonalism, the chanted simplicity of the first sub-race;--till you had something in character not intellectual, but spiritual:--Chinese. And meanwhile--I am throwing out the ideas as they come, careless if the second appears to contradict the first: presently a unity may come of them;--meanwhile, for the purposes of the Fifth Root-Race, then nascent, a language-type had grown up, intellectual as any in Atlantis, because this Fifth Race was to be intellectual too,-- but also spiritual: not without tonalistic elements: a thing to be chanted, and not dully spoken:--and there, when the time came for, it to be born, you had the Sanskrit. But now for the Sixth Root-Race: is that to figure mainly on the plane of intellect? Or shall we then take intellectual things somewhat for granted, as having learnt them and passed on to something higher? Look at those diagrams of the planes and globes in _The Secret Doctrine,_ and see how the last ones, the sixth and seventh, come to be on the same level as the first and second. Shall we be passing, then, to a time when, in the seventh, our languages will have no need for complexity: when our ideas, no longer personal but universal and creative, will flow easily from mind to mind, from heart to heart on a little tone, a chanted breath of music; when mere billiard-balls of syllables will serve us, so they be rightly sung:--until presently with but seven pure vowel sounds, and seven tones to sing them to, we shall be able to tell forth once more the whole of the Glory of God? Now then, is Chinese primitive, or is it an evolution far away and ahead of us? Were there first of all billiard-balls; and did they acquire a trick of coalescing and running together; this one and that one, in the combination, becoming subordinate to another; until soon you had a little wriggling creature of a word, with his head of prefix, and his tail of suffix, to look or flicker this way or that according to the direction in which he wished to steer himself, the meaning to be expressed;--from monosyllabic becoming agglutinative, synthetic, declensional, complex--Alpine and super-Sanskrit in complexity;--then Pyrenean by the wearing down of the storms and seasons; then Vosges, with crags forest-covered; then green soft round Welsh mountains; and then, still more and more worn down by time and the phonetic laws which decree that men shall (in certain stages of their growth) be always molding their languages to an easier and easier pronunciation,--stem assimilating prefix and suffix, and growing intolerant of changes within itself;--fitting itself to the weather, rounding off its angles, coquetting with euphony;-- dropping harsh consonants; tending to end words with a vowel, or with only the nasal liquids n and ng, softest and roundest sounds there are;--till what had evolved from a billiard-ball to an Alpine crag, had evolved back to a billiard-ball again, and was Chinese? Is it primitive, or ultimate? I am almost certain of this, at any rate: that as a language-type, it stands somewhere midway between ours and spiritual speech. How should that be; when we are told that this people is of the Fourth, the most material of the Races; while we are on the proud upward arc of the Fifth? And how is it that H. P. Blavatsky speaks of the Chinese civilization as being younger than that of the Aryans of India, the Sanskrit speakers,--Fifth certainly? Is this, possibly, the explanation: that the ancestors of the Chinese, a colony from Atlantis some time perhaps long before the Atlantean degeneration and fall, were held under major pralaya apart from the world-currents for hundreds of thousands of years, until some time later than 160,000 years ago--the time of the beginning our our sub-race? A pralaya, like sleep, is a period of refreshment, spiritual and physical; it depends upon your mood as you enter it, to what degree you shall reap its benefits: whether it shall regenerate you; whether you shall arise from it spiritually cleansed and invigorated by contact with the bright Immortal Self within. Africa entered such a rest-period from an orgy of black magic, and her night was filled with evil dreams and sorceries, and her people became what they are. But if China entered it guided by white Atlantean Adepts, it would have been for her Fairyland; it would have been the Fortunate Islands; it would have been the Garden of Siwang Mu, the paradise of the West; and when she came forth it would have been--it might have been--with a bent not towards intellectual, but towards spiritual achievements. Compare her civilization, in historic times, with that of the West. Historic times are very little to go by, but they are all we have at present.--She attained marvelous heights; but they were not the same kind of heights the West has attained. Through her most troublous, stirring, and perilous times, she carried whole provinces of Devachan with her. It was while she was falling to pieces, that Ssu-K'ung T'u wrote his divinely delicate meditations. When the iron most entered her soul, she would weep, but not tear her hair or rage and grow passionate; she would condescend to be heart-broken, but never vulgar. In her gayest moments, wine-flushed and Spring-flushed, she never forgot herself to give utterance to the unseemly. There is no line in her poetry to be excused or regretted on that score. She worshipped Beauty, as perhaps only Greece and France in the West have done; but unlike Greece or France, she sought her divinity only in the impersonal and dispassionate: never mistook for its voice, the voices of the flesh. She sinned much, no doubt; but not in her pursuit of the Beautiful; not in her worship of Art and Poetry. She was faithful to the high Gods there. She never produced a figure comparable to, nor in the least like, our Homers and Aeschyluses, Dantes and Miltons and Shakespeares. But then, the West has never, I imagine, produced a figure comparable to her Li Pos, Tu Fus, Po Chu-is or Ssu-k'ung T'us: giants in lyricism--one might name a hundred of them--beside whom our Hugos and Sapphos and Keatses were pygmies. Nor have we had any to compare with her masters of landscape-painting: even the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ comes down flat-footed with the statement that Chinese landscape-painting is the highest the world has seen.--And why?--Because it is based on a knowledge of the God-world; because her eyes were focused for the things 'on the other side of the sky'; because this world, for her, was a mere reflexion and thin concealment of the other, and the mists between her and the Divine 'defecate' constantly, in Coleridge's curious phrase, 'to a clear transparency.' Things seen were an open window into the Infinite; but with us, heaven knows, that window is so thick filthy with selfhood, so cobwebbed and begrimed with passion and egotism and individualism and all the smoke and soot of the brain-mind, that given an artist with a natural tendency to see through, he has to waste half his life first in cleaning it with picks and mattocks and charges of dynamite. So it becomes almost inevitable that when once you know Chinese painting, all western painting grows to look rather coarse and brutal and materialistic to you. But, you say, no Aeschylus or Shakespeare? No Dante or Homer? No epic--no great drama! Pooh! you say, where is the great creative energy? Where is the sheer brain force?-- It is to us a matter of course that the type of our great ones is the highest possible type. Well; it may be: but the deeper you go into thinking it over, the less certain you are likely to become as to the absoluteness of standards. The time to award the prizes is not yet; all we can do is to look into the nature of the differences. Warily let us go to work here! Where, you asked, are the great creative energies? Well; in the West, certainly, they have flowed most where they can most be seen as _energies._ I think, through channels nearer this material plane: nearer the plane of intellect, at any rate.--No: there is no question where the sheer brain force has been: it has been in the West. But then, where was it more manifest, in Pope or in Keats? In Pope most emphatically. But off with your head if you say he gave the greater gift.--Or I will leave Pope, and go to his betters; and say that Keats, when he caught in his net of words the fleeting beauty of the world, was far nearer the Spirit than was Bacon when with tremendous intellectual energy he devised his philosophy: there was a much longer evolution behind the ease and effortless attainment of the one, than behind the other's titanic brain-effort. Yet, so far as the putting forth of brain energies is concerned, there is no question: Bacon was much the greater man. So in all creative work, in all thought, we must call the West incomparably greater in brain energy. And I am not making such a foolish comparison as between modern or recent conditions in the two races. You see it if you set the greatest Eastern ages, the Han, the T'ang, the Sung, or the Fujiwara, against the Periclean, Augustan, Medicean, Elizabethan, or Louis Quatorze. In the West, the spiritual creative force came down and mingled itself more forcefully with the human intellect: had a much more vigorous basis in that, I think, to work in and upon. It has reached lower into the material, and played on matter more powerfully-- and, be it said, on thought and intellection too. We are so accustomed to thinking of spirituality as something that, outside the plane of conduct, can only play through thought and intellection, or perhaps religious emotion, that to speak of the high spirituality of China will sound, to most, absurd. On the whole, you must not go to China for thought or intellection. Least of all you must go there for what we commonly understand by religious emotion;--they don't readily gush over a personal god. It will seem entirely far-fetched to say that in China the creative forces have retained much more of their spirituality: have manifested perhaps not less greatly than in the West, but on planes less material, nearer their spiritual source. It will seem so the more because until very recently China has been constantly misrepresented to us. And yet I think it is pretty much the truth. In all their creative art the Spirit has been busy suggesting itself, not through ideas, or the forms of intellection, but through the more subtle perceptions and emotions that lie behind. It gives us, if we are at all gifted or educated to see, pure vistas of Itself. Compare Michelangelo's Moses with the Dai Butsu at Kamakura:--as I think Dr. Siren does in one of his lectures. The former is a thing of titanic, even majestic energies; but they are energies physical and mental: a grand triumph on what is called in Sanskrit philosophy the Rajasic plane. The second suggests, not energy and struggle, but repose and infinite calm. In the Moses, we sense warfare, with victory, to attain and to hold its attainment; in the Dai Butsu, something that has passed through all that aeons ago. In which is the greater sum of energies included? In the Dai Butsu certainly; wherein we see no sign of what we commonly call energies at all. The one is human struggling up towards Godhood; the other, Godhood looking down with calm limitless compassion upon man. Such need no engines and dynamics to remove the mountains: they bid them rise up, and be cast into the sea; and are obeyed. Or take a great Chinese landscape and a great Western one: a Ma Yuan, say, and a--whom you please. To the uninstructed it seems ridiculous to compare them. This took a whole year to paint; it is large; there is an enormous amount of hard work in it; huge creative effort, force, exertion, went to make it. That--it was done perhaps in an hour. That mountain is but a flick of the brush; yonder lake but a wash and a ripple. It is painted on a little trumpery fan--a mere square foot of silk. Yes; but on that square foot, by the grace of the Everlasting Spirit, are 'a thousand miles of space': much more--there is Infinity itself. Watch; and that faint gray or sepia shall become the boundless blue; and you shall see dim dragons wandering: you shall see Eternal Mystery brooding within her own limitless home. Far, far more than in the western work, there is an open window into the Infinite: that which shall remind us that we are not the poor clay and dying embers we seem, but a pat of the infinite Mystery. The Spirit is here; not involved in human flesh and intellection, but impersonal and universal. What do you want:--to be a great towering personality; or to remember that you are a flame of the Fire which is God? Oh, out upon these personal deities, and most ungodly personalities of the West! I thank China for reminding me that they are cheap and nasty nothingnesses at the best! We rather demand of our art, at its highest, that it shall be a stimulant, and call to our minds the warfare in which we are engaged: the hopeless-heroic gay and ever mournful warfare of the soul against the senses. Well; that battle has to be fought; there is nothing better than fighting it--until it is won. Let us by all means hear the snarling of the trumpets; let us heed the battle-cries of the Soul. But let us not forget that somewhere also the Spirit is at peace: let us remember that there is Peace, beyond the victory. In Chinese art and poetry we do not hear the war-shouts and the trumpets: broken, there, are the arrow and the bow; the shield, the sword, the sword and the battle.--But--_the Day-Spring from on high hath visited us._ What element from the Divine is in it, does not concern itself with this earth-life; tells you nothing in criticism of life. There is naught in it of the Soul as Thinker, nor of the Soul as Warrior. But surely it is something for us, immersed here in these turbid Rajasika regions, to be reminded sometimes that the Sattvic planes exist; it is something for us to be given glimpses of the pure quietudes of the Spirit in its own place. I am the better, if I have been shown for an instant the delicate imperishable beauty of the Eternal. "We are tired who follow after Truth, a phantasy that flies; You with only look and laughter Stain our hearts with richest dyes."-- They do indeed; with look and laughter--or it may be tears. Now, what does it all mean? Simply this, I think: that the West brings down what it can of the Spirit into the world of thought and passion; brings it down right here upon this bank and shoal of time; but China rises with you into the world of the Spirit. We do not as a rule allow the validity of the Chinese method. We sometimes dub Keats, at his best a thorough Chinaman, 'merely beautiful.' I have rather put the case for China; because all our hereditary instincts will rise with a brief for the West. But the truth is that the Spirit elects its own methods and its own agents, and does this through the one, that through the other. When I read _Hamlet,_ I have no doubt Shakespeare was the greatest poet that ever lived. When I read Li Po, I forget Shakespeare, and think that among those who sing none was ever so wonderful as this Banished Angel of the Hills of Tang. I forget the Voice that cried 'Sleep no more!' and Poetry seems to me to have spoken her final word in what you would perhaps call trivialities about the Cold Clear Spring or the White Foam Rapid: she seems to me to have accomplished all she can in such bits of childlike detachment and wonder as this: "The song-birds, the pleasure-seekers, have flown long since; but this lonely cloud floats on, drifting round in a circle. He and Ching-ting Mountain gaze and gaze at each other, and never grow weary of gazing"; --the 'lonely cloud' being, of course, Li Po himself. He has shown me Man the brother of the Mountains, and I ask no more of him. The mountains can speak for themselves. He had no moral purpose, this Banished Angel for whose sake the Hills of T'ang are a realm in the Spirit, inerasible, and a beautiful dream while the world endures. Po Chu-i, says Mr. Arthur Waley, blamed him for being deficient in _feng_ and _ya,_--by which we may understand, for present purposes, much what Matthew Arnold meant by 'criticism of life.' But does it not serve a spiritual purpose that our consciousness should be lifted on to those levels where personality is forgotten: that we should be made to regain, while reading, the child-state we have lost? Li Po died a child at sixty: a magical child: always more or less naughty, if we are to believe all accounts, especially his own; but somehow never paying the penalty we pay for our naughtiness,--exile from the wonder-world, and submersion in these intolerable personalities. You read Milton, and are cleaned of your personality by the fierce exaltation of the Spirit beating through. You read Li Po-type of hundreds of others his compatriots--and you are also cleaned of your personality; but by gentle dews, by wonderment, by being carried up out of it into the diamond ether. It seems to me that both affirmed the Divine Spirit. Milton waged grand warfare in his affirmation. Li Po merely said what he saw. So I think that among the Aryans the Spirit has been fighting in and into the great turbid current of evolution; and that among the Chinese it has not been so much concerned with that stream, but rather to sing its own untrammeled expression. A great drama or epic comes of the presence and energy of the Spirit working in a human mind. A great lyric comes of the escape of the consciousness from the mind, and into the Spirit. The West has produced all the great dramas and epics, and will persist in the view that the Spirit can have no other expression so high as in these forms. Very likely the West is right; but I shall not think so next time I am reading Li Po or Ssu-k'ung T'u--or Keats. And I have seen small mild Japanese jujitsu men 'put it all over,' as they say, big burly English wrestlers without seeming to exert themselves in any way, or forgoing their gentle methods and manner; and if you think of jujitsu rightly, it is, to our wrestling and boxing, much what Wu Taotse and Ku Kai-chih are to Rembrandt and Michelangelo, or the Chinese poets to ours. If we go into the field of philosophy, we find much the same thing. Take Confucianism. It is inappropriate, in some ways, to call Confucius a great thinker (but we shall see that he was something very much more than that). He taught no religion; illuminated in nowise the world of mind; though he enabled millions to illumine it for themselves. He made hardly a ripple in his own day; and yet, so far as I can see, only the Buddha and Mohammed, of the men whose names we know, have marshaled future ages as greatly as he did. _Flow his way!_ said he to history; and, in the main, it did. He created an astral mold for about a quarter of humanity, which for twenty-four centuries has endured. He did it by formulating a series of rules for the conduct of personal and national life; or rather, by showing what kind of rules they should be, and leaving others to formulate them;--and so infused his doctrine with his will and example, that century after century flowed into the matrix he had made for them. To create such a stable matrix, the Aryan mind, in India, worked through long spiritual-intellectual exploration of the world of metaphysics: an intensive culture of all the possibilities of thought. We in the West have boggled towards the same end through centuries of crass political experiment. Confucius, following his ancient models, ignored metaphysics altogether: jumped the life to come, and made his be-all and his end-all here:--in what was necessary, in deeds and thought and speech, to make individual, social, and political life staid, sincere, orderly, quiet, decent, and happy. He died a broken- hearted failure; than whom perhaps no man except the Lord Buddha ever succeeded more highly. Laotse is his complement. Laotse's aim is not the activity, but the quiescence of mind, self, intellect: "in the NO THING seeking the lonely Way." You forgo everything--especially selfhood;--you give up everything; you enter upon the heritage of No Thing;--and you find yourself heir to the Universe, to wonder, to magic. You do with all your complicated egoity as the camel did with his cameltiness before he could enter the needle's eye; then--heigh presto!--it is the Elixir of Life you have drunk; it is freedom you have attained of the roaming-place of Dragons!--It amounts, truly, to the same thing as Aryan Theosophy; but where the latter travels through and illuminates immense realms of thought and metaphysic, Taoism slides gently into the Absolute; as who should laugh and say, _You see how easy it is!_ And you do not hear of the Path of Sorrow, as with the Aryans; Tao is a path of sly laughter and delight. Then from Japan we get Shinto; still less a system of metaphysics or dogma. The Shinto temple, empty but for air, is symbolic of the creed whose keynotes are purity and simplicity. Taoism, Confucianism, and Shinto are the three great native creations, in religion, of what I shall call the Altaic mind. There have been, indeed, profound thinkers and metaphysicians both in Japan and China; but their mental activities have been for the most part fruitage from the Aryan seed of Buddhism. A word here as to that phrase 'Altaic mind.' What business has one to class the Chinese and Japanese together, and to speak of them (as I shall) as 'Altaic'--the _Altaic Race?_ In the first place this term, like 'Latin' or 'Anglo-Saxon,' has the virtue of being quite meaningless. It is utterly silly and inappropriate from every standpoint; but as I need a term to include China and all the peoples that have derived their historic culture from her, I shall beg leave to use it. Neither Japanese nor Corean belong to the billiard-ball group of languages. There is a syntactical likeness between these two, but none in vocabulary; where the Japanese vocabulary came from, Omniscience perhaps may know.--A syntax outlasts a vocabulary by many ages: you may hear Celts now talk English with a syntax that comes from the sub-race before our own: Iberian, and not Aryan. So we may guess here a race akin to the Coreans conquered at some time by a race whose vocables were Japanese--whence they came, God knows. Only one hears that in South America the Japanese pick up the Indian languages a deal more easily than white folk do, or than they do Spanish or English. But this is a divergence; we should be a little more forward, perhaps, if we knew who were the Coreans, or whence they came. But we do not. They are not Turanic--of the Finno-Turko-Mongol stock (by language); they are not speakers of billiard-balls, allied to the Chinese, Burmese, and Tibetans. But the fact is that neither blood-affinity nor speech-affinity is much to the purpose here; we have to do with affinities of culture. During the period 240 B. C.--1260 A. D. a great civilization rose, flowered, and waned in the Far East; it had its origin in China, and spread out to include in its scope Japan, Corea, and Tibet; probably also Annam and Tonquin, though we hear less of them;--while Burma, Assam, and Siam, and those southerly regions, though akin to China in language, seem to have been always more satellite to India. Mongols and Manchus, though they look rather like Chinese, and have lived rather near China, belong by language and traditionally by race to another group altogether--to that, in fact, which includes the very Caucasian-looking Turks and Hungarians; as to what culture they have had, they got it from China after the Chinese manvantara had passed. The Chinese themselves are only homogeneous in race in the sense that Europe might be if the Romans had conquered it all, and imposed their culture and language on the whole continent. The staid, grave, dignified, and rather stolid northern Chinaman differs from the restless and imaginative Cantonese not much less than the Japanese does from either. This much you can say: Chinese, Japanese, and Coreans have been molded into a kind of loose unity by a common culture; the peoples of China into a closer homogeneity by a common culture-language, written and spoken,--and by the fact that they have been, off and on during the last two thousand years, but most of the time, under the same government. As to Corea, though in the days of Confucius it was unknown to the Chinese, the legends of both countries ascribe the founding of its civilization and monarchy to a Chinese minister exiled there during the twelfth century B. C. Japanese legendary history goes back to 600 B. C.;--that is, to the closing of the Age of the Mysteries, and the opening of that of the Religions:-- I imagine that means that about that time a break with history occurred, and the past was abolished: a thing we shall see happen in ancient China presently. But I suppose we may call Shotoku Daishi the Father of historical Japan;--he who, about the end of the sixth century A. D., brought in the culture impetus from the continent. About that time, too, Siam rose to power; and soon afterwards T'ang Taitsong imposed civilization on Tibet.--So there you have the 'Altaic' Race; Altaic, as Mr. Dooley is Anglo-Saxon. To speak of them as 'Mongolian' or 'Mongoloid,' as is often done, is about as sensible as to speak of Europeans and Americans as 'Hunnoid,' because the Huns once conquered part of Europe. It conveys derogation--which Altaic does not. I have compared their achievement with that of the West: we have one whole manvantara and a pralaya of theirs to judge by, as against two fragments of western manvantaras with the pralaya intervening. It is not much; and we should remember that there are cycles and epicycles; and that Japan, or old China herself, within our own lifetime, may give the lie to everything. But from the evidence at hand one is inclined to draw this conclusion: That in the Far East you have a great section of humanity in reserve;--in a sense, in a backwater of evolution: nearer the Spirit, farther from the hot press and conflict of the material world;--even in its times of highest activity, not in the van of the down-rush of Spirit into matter, as the western races have been in theirs;--but held apart to perform a different function. As if the Crest-Wave of Evolution needed what we might call Devachanic cycles of incarnation, and found them there during the Altaic manvantaras of manifestation. Not that their history has been empty of tragedies; it has been very full of them; and wars--some eight or nine Napoleons in their day have sat on the Dragon Throne. But still, the worlds of poetry, delight, wonder, have been nearer and more accessible to the Chinaman, in his great ages, than to us in ours; as they have been, and probably are now, nearer to the Japanese. And I do not know how that should be, unless the Law had taken those Atlanteans away, kept them apart from the main stream--not fighting the main battle, but in reserve--for purposes that the long millenniums of the future are to declare. IX. THE DRAGON AND THE BLUE PEARL The horizon of Chinese history lies near the middle of the third millennium B. C. The first date sinologists dare swear to is 776; in which year an eclipse of the sun is recorded, that actually did happen: it is set down, not as a thing interesting in itself, but as ominous of the fall of wicked kings. Here, then, in the one place where there is any testing the annals, it appears they are sound enough; which might be thought to speak well for them. But our scholars are so damnebly logical, as Mr. Mantalini would say, that to them it only proves this: you are to accept no date earlier. One general solar indorsement will not do; you must have an eclipse for everything you believe, and trust nothing unless the stars in their courses bear witness. Well; we have fortunately Halley's Comet in the Bayeux Tapestry for our familiar 1066; but beware! everything before that is to be taken as pure fudge! The fact is there is no special reason for doubting either chronology or sequence of events up to about 2357 B. C., in which year the Patriarch Yao came to the throne. He was the first of those three, Yao, Shun, and Yu, who have been ever since the patterns for all Chinese rulers who have aspired to be Confucianly good. "Be like Yao, Shun, and Yu; do as they did";-- there you have the word of Confucius to all emperors and governors of states. Yao, it is true, is said to have reigned a full century, or but one year short of it. This is perhaps the first improbability we come to; and even of this we may say that some people do live a long time. None of his successors repeated the indiscretion. Before him came a line of six sovereigns with little historic verisimilitude: they must be called faint memories of epochs, not actual men. The first of them, Fo-hi (2852-2738), was half man, half dragon; which is being interpreted, of course, an Adept King;--or say a line of Adept Kings. As for the dates given him, I suppose there is nothing exact about them; that was all too far back for memory; it belongs to reminiscence. Before Fo- hi came the periods of the Nest-Builders, of the Man-Kings, the Earth-Kings, and the Heaven-Kings; then P'an K'u, who built the worlds; then, at about two and a quarter million years before Confucius, the emanation of Duality from the Primal One. All this, of course, is merely the exoteric account; but it shows at least that--the Chinese never fell into such fatuity as we of the West, with our creation six trumpery millenniums ago. This much we may say: about the time when Yao is said to have come to the throne a manvantara began, which would have finished its course of fifteen centuries in 850 or so B. C. It is a period we see only as through a glass darkly: what is told about it is, to recent and defined history, as a ghost to a living man. There is no reason why it should not have been an age of high civilization and cultural activities; but all is too shadowy to say what they were. To its first centuries are accredited works of engineering that would make our greatest modern achievements look small: common sense would say, probably the reminiscence of something actual. Certainly the Chinese emerged from it, and into daylight history, not primitive but effete: senile, not childlike. That may be only a racial peculiarity, a national prejudice, of course. And where should you look, back of 850 B. C., to find actual history--human motives, speech and passions--or what to our eyes should appear such? As things near the time-horizon, they lose their keen outlines and grow blurred and dim. The Setis and Thothmeses are names to us, with no personality attaching; though we have discovered their mummies, and know the semblance of their features, our imagination cannot clothe them with life. We can hear a near Napoleon joking, but not a far-off Rameses. We can call Justinian from his grave, and traverse the desert with Mohammed; but can bold no converse with Manu or Hammurabi;-- because these two dwell well this side of the time-horizon, but the epochs of those are far beyond it. The stars set: the summer evenings forget Orion, and the nights of winter the beauty of Fomalhaut: though there is a long slope between the zenith _Now_ and the sea-rim, what has once gone down beyond the west of time we cannot recall or refashion. So that old Chinese manvantara is gone after the Dragon Fo-hi and the Yellow Emperor, after the Man-Kings and the Earth-Kings and the Heaven-Kings; and Yao, Shun, and Yu the Great, and the kings of Hia, and Shang, and even Chow, are but names and shadows, _Quo pater, Aeneas, quo dires Tullus et Ancus,_ --we cannot make them interestingly alive. But it does not follow that they did not live when they are supposed to have lived, or do the things attributed to them. Their architecture was ephemeral, and bears no witness to them; they built no pyramids to flout time; they raised no monument but a people, a culture, an idea, that still endures. Then, too, we shall see that at the beginning of the last Chinese manvantara a conscious attempt was made to break wholly with the past,--to wipe it from human memory, and begin all anew. Such a thing happened in Babylon once; there had been a Sargon in remote antiquity with great deeds to his credit; thousands of years after, another Sargon arose, who envied his fame; and, being a kind, and absolute, decreed that all the years intervening should never have existed--merged his own in the personality of his remote predecessor, and so provided a good deal of muddlement for archaeologists to come. Indeed, such a thing almost happened in France at the Revolution. It is said that in some French schools now you find children with a vague idea that things more or less began with the taking of the Bastille: that there was a misty indefinable period between the 12th of October (or on whatever day it was Eve's apple ripened) and the glorious 14th of July:--an age of prehistory, wandered through by unimportant legendary figures such as Jeanne Darc, Henri Quatre, Louis Quatorze, which we may leave to the superstitious--and come quickly to the real flesh and blood of M. de Mirabeau and Citizen Danton.--Even so, in our own time, China herself, wearied with the astral molds and inner burdens of two millenniums, has been writhing in a fever of destruction: has burnt down the Hanlin College, symbol and center of a thousand years of culture; destroyed old and famous cities; sent up priceless encyclopaedias in smoke; replaced the Empire with a republic, and the Dragon of wisdom with five meaningless stripes;--breaking with all she was in her brilliant greatness, and all she has been since in her weakness and squalid decline.-- We ask why history is not continuous; why there are these strange hiatuses and droppings out?--the answer is simple enough. It is because Karma, long piled up, must sometime break out upon the world. The inner realms become clogged with the detritus of ages and activity, till all power to think and do is gone: there is no room nor scope left for it. The weight of what has been thought and done, of old habit, presses down on men, obstructs and torments them, till they go mad and riot and destroy. The manvantara opens: the Crest-Wave, the great tide of life, rushes in. It finds the world of mind cluttered up and encumbered; there is an acute disparity between the future and the past, which produces a kind of psychic maelstrom. Blessed is that nation then, which has a man at its head who can guide things, so that the good may not go with the bad, the useful with the useless! The very facts that Ts'in Shi Hwangti, when the manvantara opened at the beginning of the third century B.C., was driven (you may say) to do what ruthless drastic things he did.-- and that his action was followed by such wonderful results--are proof enough that a long manvantara crowded with cultureal and national activities had run it course in the past, and clogged the astral, and made progress impossible. But what he did do, throws the whole of that past manvantara, and to some extent the pralaya that followed it, into the realm of shadows.--He burnt the literature. In a few paragraphs let me summarize the history of that past age whose remnants Ts'in Shi Hwangti thus sought to sweep away.--Yao adopted Shun for his successor; in whose reign for nine years China's Sorrow, that mad bull of waters, the Hoangho, raged incessantly, carrying the world down towards the sea. Then Ta Yu, who succeeded Shun on the throne presently, devised and carried through those great engineering works referred to above: --cut through mountains, yoked the mad bull, and saved the world from drowning. He was, says H. P. Blavatsky, an Adept; and had learnt his wisdom from the Teachers in the snowy Range of SiDzang or Tibet. His dynasty, called the Hia, kept the throne until 1766; ending with the downfall of a cruel weakling. Followed then the House of Shang until 1122; set up by a wise and merciful Tang the Completer, brought to ruin by a vicious tyrant Chousin. It was Ki-tse, a minister of this last, and a great sage himself, who, fleeing from the persecutions of his royal master, established monarchy, civilization, and social order in Corea. Another great man of the time was Won Wang, Duke of the Palatinate of Chow, a state on the western frontier whose business was to protect China from the Huns. Really, those Huns were a thing to marvel at: we first hear of them in the reign of the Yellow emperor, two or three centuries before Yao; they were giving trouble then, a good three millenniums before Attila. Won Wang, fighting on the frontier, withstood these kindly souls; and all China looked to him with a love he deserved. Which of course roused King Chousin's jealousy; and when a protest came from the great soldier against the debaucheries and misgovernment at the capital, the king roused himself and did what he could; imprisoned the protestant, as he dared not kill him. During the three years of his imprisonment Won Wang compiled the mysterious I-King, of Book of Changes; of which Confucius said, that were another half century added to his life, he would spend them all in studying it. No western scholar, one may safely say, has ever found a glimmer of meaning in it; but all the ages of China have held it profounder than the profound. His two sons avenged Won Wang; they roused the people, recruited an army in their palatinate--perhaps enlisted Huns too--and swept away Chousin and his dynasty. They called their new royal house after their native land, Chow; Wu Wang, the elder of the two, becoming its first king, and his brother the Duke of Chow, his prime minister. I say _king;_ for the title was now _Wang_ merely; though there had been _Hwangtis_ or Emperors of old. Won Wang and his two sons are the second Holy Trinity of China; Yao, Shun, and Ta Yu being the first. They figure enormously in the literature: are stars in the far past, to which all eyes, following the august example of Confucius, are turned. There is a little to be said about them: they are either too near the horizon, or too little of their history has been Englished, for us to see them in their habit as they lived; yet some luster of real greatness still seems to shine about them. It was the Duke of Chow, apparently, who devised or restored that whole Chinese religio-political system which Confucius revivified and impressed so strongly on the stuff of the ideal world--for he could get no ruler of his day to establish it in the actualities--that it lasted until the beginning of a new manvantara is shatter it now. That it was based on deep knowledge of the hidden laws of life there is this (among a host of other things) to prove: Music was an essential part of it. When, a few years ago, the tiny last of the Manchu emperors came to the throne, an edict was published decreeing that, to fit him to govern the empire, the greatest care should be taken with his education in music. A wisdom, truly, that the west has forgotten! When William of Normandy conquered England, he rewarded his followers with fiefs: in England, while English land remained so to be parceled out; afterwards (he and his successors) with unconquered lands in Wales, and then in Ireland. they were to carve out baronies and earldoms for themselves; and the Celtic lands thus stolen became known as the Marches: their rulers, more or less independent, but doing homage to the king, as Lords Marchers. The kings of Chow adopted the same plan. Their old duchy palatinate became the model for scores of others. China itself--a very small country then--southern Shansi, northern Homan, western Shantung--was first divided up under the feudal system; the king retaining a domain, known as Chow, in Homan, for his own. Then princes and nobles--some of the blood royal, some of the old shang family, some risen from the ranks--were given warrant to conquer lands for themselves from the barbarians beyond the frontier: so you go rid of the ambitious, and provided Chow with comfortable buffers. They went out, taking a measure of Chinese civilization with them, and conquered or cajoled Huns, Turks, Tatars, Laos, shans, Annamese, and all that kind of people, into accepting them for their rulers. It was a work, as you may imagine, of centuries; with as much history going forward as during any centuries you might name. The states thus formed were young, compared to China; and as China grew old and weak, they grew into their vigorous prime. The infinity of human activities that has been! These Chow ages seem like the winking of an eye; but they were crowded with great men and small, great deeds and trivialities, like our own. The time will come when our 'Anglo-Saxon' history will be written thus: England sent out colonies, and presently the colonies grew stronger and more populous than England;--and it will be enough, without mention of the Pitts and Lincolns, the Washingtons and Gladstones, that now make it seem so full and important. By 850 the balance of power had left or was leaving the Chow king at Honanfu. His own subjects had grown unwarlike, and he could hardly command even their allegiance; for each man's feudal duty was first to his own duke, marquis, earl, viscount, or baron;-- strangely enough, there were those five degrees of nobility in ancient China as in modern England. Of these nobles, each with his court and feudal dominion, there were in what we may call China Proper some unascertainable number between thirteen and a hundred and fifty: mostly small and insignificant, but mostly, too, full of schemes and ambitions. But it was the Lords Marchers that counted. One after another of them had wrested from the Chow the title of _Wang_ or King; it was not enough for them to be dukes and marquises. Then came a time when a sort of Bretwalda-ship was established; to be wielded by whichever of them happened to be strongest--and generally to be fought for between whiles: a glorious and perpetual bone of contention. International law went by the board. The Chow domain, the duchies and marquisates, lay right in the path of the contestants--midmost of all, and most to be trampled. Was Tsin to march all round the world, when a mere scurry across neutral (and helpless) Chow would bring it at the desired throat of Ts'u?--A question not to be asked!--there at Honanfu sat the Chow king, head of the national religion, head of the state with its feudatories, receiving (when it suited them to pay it) the annual homage of all those loud and greedy potentates, who for the rest kicked him about as they pleased, and ordered each other to obey him,--for was he not still the son of Heaven, possessor of the Nine Tripods of sovereignty, the tripods of Ta Yu?--So the centuries passed, growing worse and worse ever, from the ninth to the sixth: an age of anarchy, bad government, disorder, crime and clash of ambitions: when there was a decline of virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world;--and we know what manner of incarnation, at such times, is likely to happen. Conditions had outgrown the astral molds made for them in the last manvantara: the molds that had been made for a small homogeneous China. The world had expanded, and was no longer homogeneous: China herself was not homogeneous; and she found on all sides of her very heterogeneous Ts'ins, Tsins, Ts'is, Ts'us, Wus and Yuehs; each of whom, like so many Great Powers of our own times, had the best of intentions to partake of her sacramental body when God's will so should be.--Indeed, the situation was very much as we have seen it. Then, as now (or recently), China was old, inert, tired, and unwarlike; must depend on her cunning, and chiefly on their divisions, for what protection she might get against the rapacious and strong. She was dull, sleepy and unimaginative, and wanted only to be left alone; yet teemed, too, with ambitious politicians, each with his sly wires to pull. Her culture, ancient and decrepit, was removed by aeons from all glamor of beginnings.--For a good European parallel, in this respect, you might go to Constantinople in the Middle Ages, when it hung ripe on the bough, so to say, and waiting to fall into Latin, Turkish, Bulgar, or even Russian jaws, whichever at the psychic moment should be gaping and ready beneath. There too was the sense of old age and sterility; of disillusionment; of all fountains and inspirations run dry.--In ancient Grecce, it was no such far cry back from the essential modernity of Pericles' or of Plato's time to the antiquity of Homer's. In India, the faery light of an immemorial dawn mingles so with the facts of history that there is no disentangling myth from matter-of-fact; if you should prove almost any king to have reigned quite recently, his throne would still be somehow set in the mellow past and near the fountains of time. Augustan Rome, modern in all its phases, stands not so far in front of a background peopled with nymphs and Sibyls: a past in which the Great Twin Brothers might fight at Lake Regillus, and stern heroes make fantastic sacrifices for Rome. Even modern Europe is much less modern than Medieval Constantinople or Chow China. We can breathe still the mysterious atmosphere of the Middle Ages; you shall find still, and that not in remote countries only, fairy-haunted valleys; a few hours out from London, and you shall be in the heart of druidry, and among peoples whose life is very near to Poetry. But China, in those first pre-Confucian centuries, was desperately prosaic: not so much modern, as pertaining to an ugly not impossible future. Antiquity was far, far away. The dawn with its glow and graciousness; noon and the prime with their splendor, were as distant and unimaginable as from our Amercan selves the day when Charlemain with all his peers went down. If you can imagine an American several hundred years from now--one in which Point Loma had never been; several hundred years more unromantic than this one; an America fallen and grown haggard and toothless; with all impulse to progress and invention gone; with centrifugal tendencies always loosening the bond of union; advancing, and having steadily advanced, further from all religious sanctions, from anything she may retain of the atmosphere of mystery and folklore and the poetry of racial childhood; you may get a picture of the mental state of that China. A material civilization, with (except in war areas) reasonable security of life and goods, remained to her. Her people lived in good houses, wore good clothes, used chairs and tables, chopsticks, plates and dishes of pottery; had for transit boats, carts and chariots,* wheelbarrows I suppose, and "cany wagons light." They had a system of writing, the origin of which was lost in remote antiquity; a large literature, of which fragments remain. They were home-loving, war-hating, quiet, stagnant, cunning perhaps, quite un-enterprising; they lived in the valley of the Hoangho, and had not discovered, or had forgotten, the Yangtse to the south of them, and the sea to the east. They might have their local loyalties and patriotism of the pork-barrel, and a certain arrogance of race: belief in the essential superiority of the Black-haired People to the barbarians on their borders; but no high feeling for Chu Hia-- All the Chinas;--no dream of a possible national union and greatness. Some three hundred of their folk-ballads come down to us, which are as unlike the folk-ballads of Europe as may be. They do not touch on the supernatural; display no imagination; there are no ghosts or fairies; there is no glory or delight in war; there is no glory in anything;--but only an intense desirability in _home,_--in staying at home with your family, and doing your I work in the fields. And nothing of what we should call romance, even in this home-love: the chief tie is that between parents and children, not that between husband and wife, and still less that between lovers. There is much moralizing and wistful sadness.--Such was the life of the peasants; at the other pole was the life of the courts: intrigue and cunning, and what always goes with cunning--ineptitude; a good measure of debauchery; some finicking unimportant refinement; each man for self and party, and none for Gods and Men. We have to do, not with the bright colors of the childhood of a race, but with the grayness of its extreme old age. Those who will may argue that you can have old age with never a prime, youth, or childhood behind it. Some say that Laotse was born at sixty-one, or seventy, or eighty-two years old--a few decades more or less are not worth bothering about--whence his name _lao tse,_ the _old son_ (but _tse_ may also mean Teacher or Philosopher). But I misdoubt the accuracy of such accounts, myself. I think it likely he was a baby to begin with, like the majority of us. And I imagine his country had been young, too, before she grew old;--as young as America, and as vigorous. ------ * _Chinese Literature:_ Giles;--whence also much else in these articles. ------ Among such a people, how much should you expect to find of the Sacred Mysteries?--There were the Nine Tripods of Ta Yu with the king at Honanfu, to say that his kinghood had behind it symbolic sanctions; there was the Book of Changes; there was the system of the Duke of Chow, more dishonored in the breach than honored in the observance.... For the rest, you might as well look for the Eleusinia in Chicago. Who could believe in religion, those days?--Well; it was the pride of some of the little duchies and marquisates to keep up a reputa-tion for orthodoxy: there was Lu in Shantung, for example,-very strict.* (As strictness went, we may say.) And if you wished to study ritual, you went up to Honanfu to do so; where, too, was the National or Royal Library, where profitable years might be spent. But who, except enthusiasts, was to treat religion seriously? --when one saw the doddering Head of Religion yearly flouted, kicked about and hustled in his own capital by his Barbarian Highness the 'King'--so he must now style himself and be styled, where in better days 'Count Palatine' or 'Lord Marcher' would have served his turn well enough--of Ts'in or Tsin or Ts'i or Ts'u, who would come thundering down with his chariots when he pleased, and without with-your-leave or by-your-leave, march past the very gates of Honanfu;--and lucky if he did march past, and not come in and stay awhile; --on his way to attacking his Barbarian Highness the 'King' of somewhere else. The God that is to be sincerely worshiped must, as this world goes, be able now and then to do some little thing for his vicegerent on earth; and Heaven did precious little in those days for the weakling King-pontiff puppets at Honanfu. A mad world, my masters! ------ * _Ancient China Simplified:_ E. Harper Parker;--also much drawn on. ------ Wherein, too, we had our symbols:--the Dragon, the Sky-wanderer, with something heavenly to say; but alas! the Dragon had been little visible in our skies of Chu Hia these many years or centuries;--the Tiger, brute muscularity, lithe terrible limbs, fearful claws and teeth,--we knew him much better! This, heaven knew, was the day of the Tiger of earthly strength and passions; were there not those three great tigers up north, Ts'in, Tsin, and Ts'i; and as many more southward; and all hungry and strong?--And also, some little less thought of perhaps, the Phoenix, Secular Bird, that bums itself at the end of each cycle, and arises from its ashes young and dazzling again: the Phoenix --but little thought of, these days; for was not the world old and outworn, and toppling down towards a final crash? The days of Chu Hia were gone, its future all in the long past; no one dared dream of a time when there should be something better than Yen diddling Lu, or Ts'u beating Ts'i at a good set-to with these new sixty-warrior-holding chariots. Who should think of the Phoenix--and of a new age to come when there should be no more Yen and Lu and Chow and Tsin and Ts'in, but one broad and mighty realm, a Middle, a Celestial Kingdom,--such a Chu Hia as time had no memory of;--to whose throne the Hun himself should bow, or whose hosts should drive him out of Asia;--a Chu Hia to whom tribute should come from the uttermost ends of the earth? Who should dream of the Secular Bird now,-- as improbable a creature, in these dark days of the Tiger, as that old long-lost Sky-wanderer the Dragon himself? Let be; let three little centuries pass; let the funeral pyre but be kindled, and quite burn itself out; and let the ashes grow cold-- And behold you now, this Phoenix of the World, bright and dazzling, rising up from them! Behold you now this same Black-haired People, young, strong, vigorous, gleaming with all the rainbow hues of romance and imagination; conquering and creative, and soon to strew the jewels of faerie over all the Eastern World. . . . But this is to anticipate: to take you on to the second century B. C.; whereas I want you now in the sixth.--I said that you should find better chances for study in the Royal Library at Honanfu, could you get together the means for journeying thither, than anywhere else in Chu Hia. That was particularly true in the latter part of that sixth century: because there was a man by the name of Li Urh, chief librarian there, from whom, if you cared to, you might hear better things than were to be found in the books in his charge. His fame, it appears, has gone abroad through the world; although his chief aim seems to be to keep in the shadows and not be talked about. Scholars resort to him from far and near; one of them, the greatest of all, who came to him in the year 517 and was (if we are to believe accounts) treated without too much mercy, came out awestruck, and said: "Today I have seen the Dragon."--What! that little old man with the bald head and straggly lank Chirese beard?--Like enough, like enough! --they are not all, as you look at them with these physical eyes, to be seen winged and wandering the heavens. . . . But wandering the heavens, this one, yes! He has the blue ether about him, even there in the Library among the books.--He has a way of putting things in little old quiet paradoxes that seem to solve all the problems,--to take you out of the dust and clatter of this world, into the serenity of the Dragon-world where all problems are solved, or non-existent. Chu Hia is all a fuss and turmoil, and running the headlong Gadarene road; but the Old Philosopher--as he has come to be called--has anchorage right outside of and above it, and speaks from the calmness of the peaks of heaven. A kind of school forms itself around him; his wisdom keeps provincials from returning home, and the young men of the capital from commonplace courses. Though he has been accredited with much authorship, I think he wrote nothing; living among books, he had rather a contempt for them,--as things at the best for patching up and cosseting life, new windings and wrappings for its cocoon;--whereas he would have had the whole cocoon stripped away, and the butterfly beautifully airing its wings. Be that as it may, there are, shall we say, stenographers among his disciples, and his sayings come down to us. They have to do with the Way, the Truth, and the Life; which things, and much else, are included in Chinese in the one word _Tao._ "The main purpose of his studies" says Ssema Tsien (the 'Father of Chinese History'), "was to keep himself concealed and unknown." In this he succeeded admirably, so far as all future ages were to concerned; for Ssema himself, writing in the reign of Han Wuti some four centuries later, could be by no means sure of his identity. He tells us all we know, or think we know, about Laotse:--that he was born in a village in southern Honan; kept the Royal Library at Honanfu; met Confucius there in 517; and at last rode away on his ox into the west, leaving the _Tao Teh King_ with the Keeper of the Pass on the frontier;--and then goes on to say that there were two other men "whom many regarded as having been the real Laotse"; one of the Lao Lai, a contemporary of Confucius, who wrote fifteen treatises on the practices of the school of Tao; the other, a "Grand Historiographer of Chow," Tan by name, who lived some century and a quarter later. To me this is chiefly interesting as a suggestion that the 'School of Tao' was a thing existent and well-established at that time, and with more than one man writing about it. It may we'll have been. Taoists ascribe the foundation of their religion to the Yellow Emperor, twenty-eight centuries B. C.; but there never was time Tao was not; nor, I suppose, when there was quite no knowledge of it, even in China. In the old manvantara, past now these three hundred years, the Black-haired People had wandered far enough from such knowledge;--with the accumulation of complexities, with the piling up of encumberments of thought and deed during fifteen hundred busy years of intensive civilization. As long as that piling up had not entirely covered away Tao, the Supreme Simplicity, the Clear Air;--as long as men could find scope to think and act and accomplish things;--so long the manvantara lasted; when nothing more that was useful could be accomplished, and action could no longer bring about its expectable results (because all that old dead weight was there to interpose itself between new causes set in motion and their natural outcome)--then the pralaya set in. You see, that is why pralayas do set in; why they must;--why no nation can possibly go on at a pitch of greatness and high activity beyond a certain length of time.--And all that activity of the manvantara--all that fuss and bustle to achieve greatness and fortune--it had all been an obscuration of and moving away from Tao. The Great Teachers come into this world out of the Unknown, bringing the essence of their Truth with them. We know well what they will teach: in some form or another it will be Theosophy; it will be the old self-evident truths about Karma and the two natures of man. But how they will teach it: what kind of sugar-coating or bitter aloes they will prescribe along with it: --that, I think, depends on reactions from the age they come in and the people whom they are to teach. It is almost certain, as I said, that Li Urh the Old Philosopher left no writings. "Who knows, does not tell," said he; and Po Chu-i quotes this, and pertinently adds: "What then of his own five thousand words and more.--the _Tao Teh King._" That book was proved centuries ago, in China, not to have come, as it stands, even from Laotse's age; because there are characters in it that were invented long afterwards. The wisest thing to believe is that it is made up mostly of his sayings, taken down by his disciples in the Pitman of the time; and surviving, with accretions and losses perhaps, through the disquiet of the next two centuries, and the burning of the books, and everything. Because whatever vicissitudes may have befallen it, one does hear in its maxims the tones of a real voice: one man's voice, with a timbre in it that belongs to the Lords of Wisdom. And to me, despite Lao Lai and Tan the Grand Historiographer, it is the voice of an old man in the seclusion of the Royal Library: a happy little bald-headed straggly-bearded old man anxious to keep himself unknown and unapplauded; it is a voice attuned to quietness, and to mental reactions from the thunder of the armies, the drums and tramplings and fuss and insolence of his day. I thoroughly believe in the old man in the Royal Library, and the riding away on oxback at last into the west,--where was Si Wang Mu's Faery Garden, and the Gobi Desert, with sundry oases therein whereof we have heard. I can hear that voice, with childlike wonder in it, and Adept-like seriousness, and childlike and Adept-like laughter not far behind, in such sayings as these: "Tao is like the emptiness of a vessel; and the use of it, we may say, must be free from all self-sufficiency. How deep and mysterious it is, as if it were the author of all things! We should make our sharpness blunt, and unravel the complications of things. . . . How still and clear is Tao, a phantasm with the semblance of permanence! I do not know whose son it is. It might appear to have been before God." We see in Christendom the effects of belief in a personal God, and also the inefficacy of mere ethics. Believers make their God in their own image, and nourish their personalities imitating an imitation of themselves. At the best of times they take their New Testament ethics, distil from these every virtue and excellent quality, and posit the result as the characteristics of their Deity:--the result, plus a selfhood; and therefore the great delusion and heresy, Separateness, is the link that binds the whole together. It is after all but a swollen personality; and whether you swell your personalitv with virtues or vices, the result is an offense. There is a bridge, razor-edged, between earth and heaven; and you can never carry that load across it. Laotse, supremely ethical in effect, had a cordial detestation-- take this gingerly!--of un-re-enforced ethics. "When the great Tao is lost," says he, "men follow after charity and duty to one's neighbor." Again: "When Tao is lost, virtue takes its place. When virtue is lost, benevolence succeeds to it. When benevolence is lost, justice ensues. When justice is lost, then we have expediency." He does not mean, of course, that these things are bad; but simply that they are the successive stages of best, things left when Tao is lost sight of; none of them in itself a high enough aim. They are all included in Tao, as the less in the greater. He describes to you the character of the man of Tao; but your conduct is to be the effect of following Tao; and you do not attain Tao by mere practice of virtue; though you naturally practise virtue, without being aware of it, while following Tao. It all throws wonderful light on the nature of the Adept; about whom you have said nothing at all when you have accredited him with all the virtues. Joan was blemishless; but not thereby did she save France;--she could do that because, as Laotse would have said, being one with Tao, she flowed out into her surroundings, accomplishing absolutely her part in the universal plan. No compilation of virtues would make a Teacher (such as we know): it is a case of the total absence of everything that should prevent the natural Divine Part of man from functioning in this world as freely and naturally as the sun shines or the winds blow. The sun and the stars and the tides and the wind and the rain--there is that perfect glowing simplicity in them all: the Original, the Root of all things, Tao. _Be like them,_ says Laotse, impersonal and simple. "I hold fast to and cherish Three Precious Things," he says: "Gentleness, Economy, Humility." Why? So, you would say, do the ethics of the New Testament; such is the preaching of the Christian Churches. But (in the latter case) for reasons quite unlike Laotse's. For we make of them too often virtues to be attained, that shall render us meek and godly, acceptable in the eyes of the Lord, and I know not what else: riches laid up in heaven; a pamperment of satisfaction; easily to become a cloak for self- righteousness and, if worse can be, worse. But _tut!_ Laotse will not be bothered with riches here or elsewhere. With him these precious things are simply absences that come to be when obstructive presences are thrown off. No sanctimoniousness for the little Old Man in the Royal Library! He would draw minds away to the silence of the Great Mystery, which is the fountain of laughter, of life, the unmarred; and he would have them abide there in absolute harmony. Understand him, and you understand what he did for China. It is from that Inner Thing, that Tao, that all nourishment comes and all greatness. You must go out with your eyes open to search for it: watch for Dragons in the sky; for the Laugher, the Golden Person, in the Sun: watch for Tao, ineffably sparkling and joyous--and quiet-- in the trees; listen for it in the winds and in the sea-roar; and have nothing in your own heart but its presence and omnipresence and wonder-working joy. How can you flow out to the moments, and capture the treasure in them; how can you flow out to Tao, and inherit the stars, and have the sea itself flowing in your veins;--if you are blocked with a desire, or a passion for things mortal, or a grudge against someone, or a dislike? Beauty is Tao: it is Tao that shines in the flowers: the rose, the bluebell, the daffodil--the wistaria, the chrysanthemum, the peony--they are little avatars of Tao; they are little gateways into the Kingdom of God. How can you know them, how can you go in through them, how can you participate in the laughter of the planets and the angelic clans, through their ministration, if you are preoccupied with the interests or the wants of contemptible you, the personality? Laotse went lighting little stars for the Black-haired People: went pricking the opacity of heaven, that the Light of lights might filter through. If you call him a philosopher, you credit him with an intellectualism that really he did not bother to possess. Rather he stood by the Wells of Poetry, and was spiritual progenitor of thousands of poets. There is no way to Poetry but Laotse's Way. You think you must go abroad and see the world; you must not; that is only a hindrance: a giving the eyes too many new externals, to hinder them from looking for that which you may see, as he says, 'through your own window.' If you traverse the whole world seeking, you will never come nearer to the only thing that counts, which is Here, and Now. Seek to feed your imagination on outward things, on doings and events, and you will perhaps excite, but surely soon starve it. But at the other pole, the inner "How deep and mysterious is Tao, as if it were the author of all things!" And then I hear someone ask him whence it originated--someone fishing for a little metaphysics, some dose of philosophy. What! catch Laotse? "I know," said Confucius, "how birds fly, beasts run, fishes swim. But the runner may be snared, the swimmer hooked, the flyer shot with an arrow. But there is the Dragon; I cannot tell how he mounts on the wind through the clouds and rises into heaven." No; you cannot hook, snare, or shoot the Dragon. "I do not know whose son Tao is," says Laotse. "It might appear to have been before God." So I adhere to the tale of the old man in the Royal Library, holding wonderful quiet conversations there; that "it might appear to have been before God" is enough to convince me. There was a man once*--I forget his name, but we may call him Cho Kung for our purposes; he was of affable demeanor, and an excellent flautist; and had an enormous disbelief in ghosts, bogies, goblins, and 'supernatural' beings of every kind. It seized him with the force of a narrow creed; and he went forth to missionarize, seeking disputants. He found one in the chief Librarian of some provincial library; who confessed to a credulousness along that line, and seemed willing to talk. Here then were grand opportunities--for a day's real enjoyment, with perchance a creditable convert to be won at the end of it. Behold them sitting down to the fray, in the shadows among the books: the young Cho Kung, affable (I like the word well), voluble and earnest; the old Librarian, mild, with little to say but _buts_ and _ifs,_ and courteous even beyond the wont in that "last refuge of good manners," China. All day long they sat; and affable Cho, like Sir Macklin in the poem, "Argued high and argued low, And likewise argued round about him"; --until by fall of dusk the Librarian was fairly beaten. So cogent were Cho's arguments, so loud and warm his eloquence, so entirely convincing his facts adduced--his modern instances, as you may say--that there really was nothing for the old man to answer. Ghosts were not; genii were ridiculously unthinkable; supernatural beings could not exist, and it was absurd to think they could. The Librarian had not a leg to stand on; that was flat. Accordingly he rose to his feet--and bowed.--"Sir," said he, with all prescribed honorifics, "undoubtedly you are victorious. The contemptible present speaker sees the error of his miserable ways. He is convinced. It remains for him only to add"--and here something occurred to make Cho rub his eyes--"that he is himself a supernatural being."--And with that his form and limbs distend, grow misty--and he vanishes in a cloud up through the ceiling.--You see, those old librarians in China had a way of doing things which was all their own. ------ * The story is told in Dr. H. H. Giles' _Dictionary of Chinese Biography._ ------ So Li Urh responded to the confusions of his day. Arguments?-- You could hardly call them so; there is very little arguing, where Tao is concerned. The Tiger was abroad, straining all those lithe tendons,--a tense fearful symmetry of destruction burning bright through the night-forests of that pralaya: grossest and wariest energies put forth to their utmost in a race between the cunning for existence, a struggle of the strong for power.--"It is the way of Tao to do difficult things when they are easy; to benefit and not to injure; to do and not to strive." Come out, says Laotse, from all this moil and topsey- turveydom; stop all this striving and botheration; give things a chance to right themselves. There is nothing flashy or to make a show about in Tao; it vies with no one. Let go; let be; find rest of the mind and senses; let us have no more of these fooleries, war, capital punishment, ambition; let us have self- emptiness. Just be quiet, and this great Chu Hia will come right without aid of governing, without politics and voting and canvassing and such.--_Here and Now_ and _What comes by_ were his prescriptions. He was an advocate of the Small State. Aristotle would have had no government ruling more than ten thousand people; Laotse would have had his State of such a size that the inhabitants could all hear the cocks crowing in foreign lands; and he would have had them quite uneager to travel abroad. What he taught was a total _bouleversement_ of the methods of his age. "It is the way of Tao not to act from personal motives, to conduct affairs--without feeling the trouble of them, to taste without being aware of the flavor, to account the great as the small and the small as the great, to recompense injury with kindness." The argument went all against him. Their majesties of Ts'in and Tsin and Ts'i and Ts'u were there with their drums and tramplings; the sixty warrior-carrying chariots were thundering past;--who should hear the voice of an old quiet man in the Royal Library? Minister This and Secretary That of Lu and Chao and Cheng were at it with their wire-pullings and lobbyings and petty diddlings and political cheateries--(it is all beautifully modern); what had the world to do with self-emptiness and Tao? The argument was all against him; he hadn't a leg to stand on. There was no Tao; no simplicity; no magic; no Garden of Si Wang Mu in the West; no Azure Birds of Compassion to fly out from it into the world of men. Very well then; he, being one with that non-existent Tao, would ride away to that imaginary Garden; would go, and leave-- A strand torn out of the rainbow to be woven into the stuff of Chinese life. You could not tell it at the time; you never would have guessed it--but this old dull tired squalid China, cowering in her rice-fields and stopping her ears against the drums and tramplings, had had something--some seed of divinity, thrown down into her mind, that should grow there and be brooded on for three centuries or so, and then-- There is a Blue Pearl, Immortality; and the Dragon, wandering the heavens, is forever in pursuit or quest of it. You will see that on the old flag of China, that a foolish republicanism cast away as savoring too much of the Manchu. (But it was Laotse and Confucius, Han Wuti and Tang Taitsong, and Wu Taotse and the Banished Angel that it savored of really.) Well, it was this Blue Pearl that the Old Philosopher, riding up through the pass to the Western Gate of the world, there to vanish from the knowledge of men;--it was this Blue Pearl that, stopping and turning a moment there so high up and near heaven, he tossed back and out into the fields of China;--and the Dragon would come to seek it in his time.--You perhaps know the picture of Laotse riding away on his ox. I do not wonder that the beast is smiling. For it really was the Blue Pearl: and the Lord knew what it was to do in China in its day. It fell down, you may say, from the clear ether of heaven into the thick atmosphere of this world; and amidst the mists of human personality took on all sorts of iridescences; lit up strange rainbow tints and fires to glow and glisten more and more wonderfully as the centuries should pass; and kindle the Chinese imagination into all sorts of opal glowings and divine bewilderments and wonderments;--and by and by the wonder-dyed mist-ripples floated out to Japan, and brought to pass there all sorts of nice Japanese cherry-blossomy and plum- blossomy and peonyish things, and Urashima-stories and Bushido- ish and Lafcadioish and badger-teakettle things:--reawakened, in fact, the whole of the faery glow of the Eastern World. It is not to be thought that here among the mists and personalities the Pearl could quite retain all its pure blueness of the ether. It is not to be thought that Taoism, spread broadcast among the people, could remain, what it was at the beginning, an undiluted Theosophy. The lower the stratum of thought into which it fell, the less it could be Thought-Spiritual, the stuff unalloyed of Manas-Taijasi. Nevertheless, it was the Pearl Immortality, with a vigor and virtue of its own, and a competence for ages, on whatever plane it might be, to work wonders. Among thinking and spiritual minds it remained a true Way of Salvation. Among the masses it came to be thought of presently as personal immortality and the elixir of life. Regrettable, you may say; but this is the point: nothing was ever intended to last forever. You must judge Taoism by what it was in its day, not by what it may be now. Laotse had somehow flashed down into human consciousness a vision of Infinity: had confronted the Chinese mind with a conviction of the Great Mystery, the Divine Silence. It is simply a fact that that is the fountain whose waters feed the imagination and make it grow and bloom. Search for the Secret in chatter and outward sights and deeds, and you soon run to waste and nothingness; but seek here, and you shall find what seemed a void, teeming with lovely forms. He set the Chinese imagination, staggered and stupefied by the so long ages of manvantara, and then of ruin, into a glow of activity, of grace, of wonder; men became aware of the vast world of the Within; as if a thousand Americas had been discovered. It supplied the seed of creation for all the poets and artists to come. It made a new folklore; revivified the inner atmosphere of mountains and forests; set the fairies dancing; raised Yellow Crane Pagodas to mark the spot where Wang Tzu-chiao flew on the Crane to heaven in broad daylight. It sent out the ships of Ts'in Shi Hwangti presently to seek the Golden Islands of Peng-lai, where the Immortals give cups of the elixir to their votaries; in some degree it sent the armies of Han Wuti in search of the Garden of Si Wang Mu. The ships found (perhaps) only the Golden Islands of Japan; the armies found certainly Persia, India, and even the borders of Rome;--and withal, new currents, awakening and inter-national, to flow into China and make splendid the Golden Age of Han. X. "SUCH A ONE" "I produce myself among creatures, O son of Bharata, whenever there is a decline of Virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world: and thus I incarnate from age to age for the preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked, and the establishment of righteousness."--_Bhagavad-Gita_ "The world had fallen into decay, and right principles had perished. Perverse discourses and oppressive deeds had grown rife; ministers murdered their rulers and sons their fathers. Confucius was frightened at what he saw, and undertook the work of reformation."--Mencius Men were expecting an avatar in old Judaea; and, sure enough, one came. But they were looking for a national leader, a Messiah, to throw off for them the Roman yoke; or else for an ascetic like their prophets of old time: something, in any case, out of the way;--a personality wearing marks of avatarship easily recognisable. The one who came, however, so far from leading them against the Romans, seemed to have a good deal of sympathy with the Romans. He consorted with centurions and tax-gatherers, and advised the Jews to render unto Roman Caesar the things which were his: which meant, chiefly, the tribute. And he was not an ascetic, noticeably; bore no resemblance to their prophets of old time; but came, as he said, 'eating and drinking'; even went to marriage-feasts, and that by no means to play killjoy;-- and they said, 'Behold, a gluttonous man and a winebibber!' (which was a lie).--Instead of supporting the national religion, as anyone with half an eye to his interests would have done, he did surprising things in the temple with a whip of small cords.-- "Here," said they, "let us crucify this damned fellow!" And they did. Aftertimes, however, recognised him as an avatar; and then so perverse is man!--as the one and only possible avatar. If ever another should appear, said our western world, it could but be this one come again; and, because the doctrine of avatars is a fundamental instinct in human nature, they expected that he would come again. So when the pressure of the times and the intuition of men warned them that a great incarnation was due, they began to look for his coming. That was in our own day, say in the last half-century; during which time a mort of books have been written about a mysterious figure turning up in some modern city, whom you could not fail to recognise by certain infallible signs. Generally speaking, the chief of these were: long hair, and a tendency to make lugubrious remarks beginning with _Verily, verily I say unto you._ In actual life, too, lots of men did grow their hair long and cultivate the _verily-verily_ habit; hoping that, despite their innate modesty, their fellow-men might not fail to take the hint and pierce the disguise afforded, often by a personal morality you might call _oblique._ But if an avatar had come, it is fairly certain that he or she would have followed modern fashions in hair and speech; first, because real avatars have a sense of humor; and secondly, because his or her business would have been to reform, not the language or style of hair-dressing, but life.--'He or she' is a very vile phrase; for the sake of novelty, let us make the feminine include the masculine, and say 'she' simply.--Her conversation, then, instead of being peppered with archaic _verilies_ and _peradventures,_ would have been in form much like that of the rest of us. It is quite unlikely she would have shone at Pleasant Sunday Afternoons, or Bazaars of the Young Women's Christian Association; quite unlikely that she would have been in any sense whatever a pillar of the orthodoxies. As she would have come to preach _Truth,_ you may suppose Truth needed, and therefore lacking; and so, that her teachings would have been at once dubbed vilest heterodoxy, and herself a charlatan. "Below with eddy and flow the white tides creep On the sands." Says Ssu-k'ung T'u,-- "..... in no one form may Tao abide. But changes and shifts like the wide wing-shadows asweep On the mountainside"; --the sea is one, but the tides drift and eddy; the roc, or maybe the dragon, is one, but the shadow of his wings on the mountain sward shifts and changes and veers. When you think you have set up a standard for Tao: when you imagine you have grasped it in you hands:--how fleet it is to vanish! "The man of Tao," said the fisherman of the Mi-lo to Ch'u Yuan, "does not quarrel with his surroundings, but adapts himself to them";--and perhaps there you have the best possible explanation of the nature of those Great souls who come from time to time to save the world. I think we take the Buddha as the type of them; and expect not only a life and character that _we can recognise_ as flawless, but also a profundity of revelation in the philosophy and ethics. But if no two blades of grass are alike, much less are two human Souls; and in these Great Ones, it is the picture of Souls we are given. When we think that if all men were perfect, all would be alike, we err with a wide mistake. The nearer you get to the Soul, and the more perfect is the expression of it, the less is there monotony or similarity; and almost the one thing you may posit about any avatar is, that he will be a surprise. Tom and Dick and Harry are alike: 'pipe and stick young men'; 'pint and steak young men'; they get born and marry and die, and the grass grows over them with wondrous alikeness; but when the Masters of Men come, all the elements are cast afresh. Everyone has a place to fill in the universal scheme; he has a function to perform, that none else can perform; a _just what he can do,_--which commonly he falls far short of doing. When he does it, fully and perfectly, then he is on the road of progress; that road opens up to him; and presently, still exercising the fulness of his being, he becomes a completeness, like Heaven and Earth; their 'equal,' in the Chinese phrase; or as we say, a Perfect Man or Adept. Does anyone know what place in history he is to fill? I cannot tell; I suppose an Adept, incarnated, would be too busy filling it to have time or will to question. But here perhaps we have the nearest thing possible to a standard for measuring them; and here the virtue of Taoism, and one greatest lesson we may learn from it. Are we to judge by the impressiveness of the personality? No; the Man of Tao is not a personality at all. He makes one to use, but is not identified with it; his personality will not be great or small, or enchanting or repellent, but simply adapted to the needs.--Is it the depth and fulness of the philosophv he gives out? No; it may be wiser and also more difficult to keep silent on main points, than to proclaim them broadcast; and for this end he may elect even not to know (with conscious brain-mind) too much;--not to have the deep things within his normal consciousness. But he comes into the world to meet a situation; to give the course of history a twist in a desired direction; and the sign and measure of his greatness is, it seems to me, his ability to meet the situation at all points, and to do just what is necessary for the giving of the twist,--no more and no less. And then, of course, it takes a thousand years or so before you can judge. One is not speaking of common statesmen, who effect quick changes that are no changes at all, but of the Men who shepherd the Host of Souls. I like to imagine, before the birth of Such a One, a consultation of the Gods upon the Mountain of Heaven. A synod of the kind (for China) would have taken place in the sixth century B. C., no doubt; because in those days certainly there was a "decline of virtue and an insurrection of vice and injustice in the world." Transport yourselves then, say in the year 552, to the peaks of Tien Shan of Kuen Lun, or high Tai-hsing, or the grand South Mountain; and see the Pantheon assembled. They look down over Chu Hia; they know that in three centuries or so a manvantara will be beginning there, and grow anxious lest anything has been left undone to insure its success. They note Laotse (whom they sent some fifty years earlier) at his labors; and consider, what those labors would achieve for the Black- haired People. He would bring light to the most excellent minds; the God of Light said, "I have seen to that." He would in time waken the lute-strings of the Spirit, and set Chu Hia all a-song; the God of Music said, "I have seen to that." They foresaw Wu Taotse and Ma Yuan; they foresaw Ssu-k'ung T'u and the Banished Angel; and asked "Is it not enough?" And the thought grew on them that it was not enough, till they sighed with the apprehensions that troubled them. Only a few minds among the millions, they foresaw, would have proper understanding of Tao. Now, Gods of whatever land they may be, there are those three Bardic Brothers amongst them: He of Light, who awakens vision; He of Song, who rouses up the harmonies and ennobling vibrations; and He of Strength, whose gloves hold all things fast, and neither force nor slipperiness will avail against them. It was this third of them, Gwron, who propounded the plan that satisfied the Pantheon. I will send one among them, with the "Gloves for his treasure," said he. They considered how it would be with Such a One: going among men as the Gods' Messenger, and with those two Gloves for his treasure.--"This way will it be," they said. "Not having the treasure of the God of Light, he will seem as one without vision of the God-world or remembrance whence he came. Not having the treasure of the God of Music, he will awaken little song with the Bards. But having the Gloves, he will hold the gates of hell shut, so far as shut they may be, through all the cycle that is coming." With that the council ended. But Plenydd God of Light and Vision thought: "Though my treasure has gone with the Old Philosopher, and I cannot endow this man with it, I will make him Such a One as can be seen by all men; I will throw my light on him, that he may be an example through the age of ages." And Alawn God of Music thought: "Though my lute has gone with Laotse, I will confer boons on this one also. Such a One he shall be, as draws no breath but to tunes of my playing; the motions of his mind, to my music, shall be like the motions of the ordered stars."-- And they both thought: "It will be easy for me to do as much as this, with his having the Gloves of Gwron on his hands." At that time K'ung Shuhliang Heih, Commander of the district of Tsow, in the Marquisate of Lu in Shantung, determined to marry again. Now China is a vast democracy: the most democratic country in the world. Perhaps I shall come to proving that presently; for the moment I must ask you to let it pass on the mere statement, satisfied that it is true. Despite this radical democracy, then, she has had two noble families. One is descended from a famous Patriot-Pirate of recent centuries, known to Westerners as Koxinga; with it we have no concern. The other is to be found in the town of K'iuh-fow in Shantung, in the ancient Marquisate of Lu. There are about fifty thousand members of it, all bearing the surname K'ung; its head has the title of 'Duke by Imperial Appointment and hereditary right'; and, much prouder still, 'Continuator of the Sage.' Dukes of England sometimes trace their descent from men who came over with William the Conqueror: a poor eight centuries is a thing to be proud of. There may be older families in France, Italy, and elsewhere. Duke K'ung traces his, through a line of which every scion appears more of less in history, to the son of this K'ung Shuhliang Heih in the sixth century B.C.; who in turn traced his, through a line of which every scion appeared in history, and all, with one possible exception, very honorably, to a member of the Imperial House of Shang who, in 1122 B.C., on the fall of that house, was created Duke of Sung in Honan by the first of the Chows. The House of Shang held the throne for some five centuries, beginning with Tang the Comnpleter in 1766, who traced his descent from the Yellow Emperor in mythological times. Duke K'ung, then, is descended in direct male line from sovereigns who reigned beyond the horizon of history,--at the latest, near the beginning of the third millennium B.C. The family has been distinguished for nearly five thousand years. The matter is not unimportant; since we are to talk of a member of this family. We shall understand him better for remembering the kind of heredity that lay behind him: some seventy generations of nobility, all historic. Only one royal house in the world now is as old as his was then: that of Japan. Some generations before, the K'ung family had lost their duchy of Sung and emigrated to Lu; where, in the early part of the sixth century, its head, this Shuhliang Heih, had made a great name for himself as a soldier. He was now a widower, and seventy years old; and saw himself compelled to make a second marriage, or the seventy illustrious generations of his ancestors would be deprived of a posterity to offer them sacrifices. So he approached a gentlman of the Yen family, who had three eligible daughters. To these Yen put the case, leaving to them to decide which should marry K'ung.--"Though old and austere," said he, "he is of the high descent, and you need have no fear of him." Chingtsai, the youngest, answered that it was for their father to choose.--"Then you shall marry him," said Yen. She did; and when her son was to be born, she was warned in a dream to make pilgrimage to a cave on Mount Ne. There the spirits of the mountain attended; there were signs and portents in the heavens at the nativity. The _k'e-lin,_ a beast out of the mythologies, appeared to her; and she tied a white ribbon about its single horn. It is a creature that appears only when things of splendid import are to happen. Three years after, the father died, leaving his family on the borders of poverty. At six, Ch'iu, the child, a boy of serious earnest demeanor, was teaching his companions to play at arranging, according to the rites, toy sacrificial vessels on a toy altar. Beyond this, and that they were poor, and that he doted on his mother--who would have deserved it,--we know little of his boyhood. "At fifteen," he tells us himself, "his mind was bent on learning." Nothing in the way of studies, seems to have come amiss to him; of history, and ritual, and poetry, he came to know all that was to be known. He loved music, theory and practice; held it to be sacred: "not merely one of the refinements of life, but a part of life itself." It is as well to remember this; and that often, in after life, he turned dangerous situations by breaking into song; and that his lute was his constant companion. He used to say that a proper study of poetry--he was not himself a poet, though he compiled a great anthology of folk-poems later--would leave the mind without a single depraved thought. Once he said to his son: "If you do not learn the Odes, you will not be fit to talk to." "Poetry rouses us," said he, "courtesy upholds us; music is our crown." You are, then, to see in him no puritan abhorring beauty, but a man with artistic perceptions developed. At what you might call the other pole of knowledge, he was held to know more about the science of war than any man living; and I have no doubt he did. If he had consented to use or speak about or let others use that knowledge, he might have been a great man in his day; but he never would. At nineteen, according to the custom, he married; and soon afterwards accepted minor official appointments: Keeper of the Granaries, then Superintendent of the Public Parks in his native district. He made a name for himself by the scrupulous discharge of his duties, that came even to the ears of the Marquis; who, when his son was born, sent the young father a complimentary present of a carp.--It would have been two or three years before the beginning of the last quarter of the century when he felt the time calling to him, and voices out of the Eternal; and threw up his superintendentship to open a school. Not an ordinary school by any means. The Pupils were not children, but young men of promise and an inquiring mind; and what he had to teach them was not the ordinary curriculum, but right living, the right ordering of social life, and the right government of states. They were to pay; but to pay according to their means and wishes; and he demanded intelligence from them; --no swelling of the fees would serve instead.--"I do not open the truth," said he, "to one not eager after knowledge; nor do I teach those unanxious to explain themselves. When I have presented one corner of a subject, and the student cannot learn from it the other three for himself, I do not repeat the lesson." He lectured to them, we read, mainly on history and poetry, deducing his lessons in life from these. His school was a great success. In five years he had acquired some two thousand pupils: seventy or eighty of them, as he said, "men of extraordinary ability." It was that the Doors of the Lodge had opened, and its force was flowing through him in Lu, as it was through the Old Philosopher in Honanfu.--By this time he had added archery to his own studies, and (like William Q. Judge) become proficient. Also he had taken a special course in music theory under a very famous teacher. "At thirty he stood firm." Two of his disciples were members of the royal family; and Marquis Chao regarded him with favor, as the foremost educationist in the state. He had an ambition to visit the capital (of China); where, as no where else, ritual might be studied; where, too, was Laotse, with whom he longed to confer. Marquis Chao, hearing of this, provided him with the means; and he went up with a band of his pupils. There at Loyang, which is Honanfu, we see him wandering rapt through palaces and temples, examining the sacrificial vessels, marveling at the ancient art of Shang and Chow. But for a few vases, it is all lost. He did interview Laotse; we cannot say whether only once or more often. Nor, I think, do we know what passed; the accounts we get are from the pen of honest _Ben Trovato; Vero,_ the modest, had but little hand in them. We shall come to them later. And now that he stands before the world a Teacher, we may drop his personal name, K'ung Ch'iu, and call him by the title to which paeans of praise have been swelling through all the ages since: K'ung Futse, K'ung the Master; latinized, Confucius. It is a name that conveys to you, perhaps, some associations of priggishness and pedantry: almost whereever you see him written of you find suggestions of the sort. Forgo them at once: they are false utterly. Missionaries have interpreted him to the West; who have worked hard to show him something less than the Nazarene. They have set him in a peculiar light; and others have followed them. Perhaps no writer except and until Dr. Lionel Giles (whose interpretation, both of the man and his doctrine, I shall try to give you), has shown him to us as he was, so that we can understand why he has stood the Naional Hero, the Savior and Ideal Man of all those millions through all these centuries. We have been told again and again that his teaching was wholly unspiritual; that he knew nothing of the inner worlds; never mentions the Soul, or 'God'; says no word to lighten for you the "dusk within the Holy of holies." He was all for outwardness, they say: a thorough externalist; a ritualist cold and unmagnetic.--It is much what his enemies said in his own day; who, and not himself, provide the false-interpreters with their weapons. But think of the times, and you may understand. How would the missionaries feel, were Jesus translated to the Chinese as a fine man in some respects--considering--but, unfortunately! too fond of the pleasures of the table; "a gluttonous man and a winebibber "? They were stirring times, indeed; when all boundaries were in flux, and you needed a new atlas three times a year. Robbers would carve themselves new principalities overnight; kingdoms would arise, and vanish with the waning of a moon. What would this, or any other country, become, were law, order, the police and every restraining influence made absolutely inefficient? Were California one state today; a dozen next week; in July six or seven, and next December but a purlieu to Arizona?--Things, heaven knows, are bad enough as they are; there is no dearth of crime and cheatery. Still, the police and the legal system do stand between us and red riot and ruin. In China they did not; the restraints had been crumbling for two or three centuries. Human nature, broadly speaking, is much of a muchness in all lands and ages: I warrant if you took the center of this world's respectability, which I should on the whole put in some suburb of London;--I warrant that if you relieved Clapham,--whose crimes, says Kipling very wisely, are 'chaste in Martaban,'--of police and the Pax Britannica for a hundred years or so, lurid Martaban would have little pre-eminence left to brag about. The class that now goes up primly and plugly to business in the City day by day would be cutting throats a little; they would be making life quite interesting. Their descendants, I mean. It would take time; Mother Grundy would not be disthroned in a day. But it would come; because men follow the times, and not the Soul; and are good as sheep are, but not as heroes. So in Chow China. But the young Confucius knew his history. He looked back from that confusion to a wise Wu Wang and Duke of Chow; to a Tang the Completer, whose morning bath-tub was inscribed with this motto from _The New Way:_ "If at any time in his life a man can make a new man of himself, why not every morning?" Most of all he looked back to the golden and sinless age of Yao and Shun and Yu, as far removed from him, nearly, as pre-Roman Britain is from us: he saw them ruling their kingdom as a strong benevolent father rules his house. In those days men had behaved themselves: natural virtue had expressed itself in the natural way. In good manners; in observation of the proprieties, for example.--In that wild Martaban of Chow China, would not a great gentleman of the old school (who happened also to be a Great Teacher) have seen a virtue in even quiet Claphamism, that we cannot? It was not the time for Such a One to slight the proprieties and 'reasonable conventions of life.' The truth is, the devotion of his disciples has left us minute pictures of the man, so that we see him ... particular as to the clothes he wore; and from this too the West gathers material for its charge of externalism. Well; and if he accepted the glossy top-hats and black Prince Albert coats;--only with him they were caps and robes of azure, carnation, yellow, black, or white; this new fashion of wearing red he would have none of:--I can see nothing in it but this: the Great Soul had chosen the personality it should incarnate in, with an eye to the completeness of the work it should do; and seventy generations of noble ancestry would protest, even in the matter of clothing, against red riot and ruin and Martaban. He is made to cite the 'Superior Man' as the model of excellence; and that phrase sounds to us detestably priggish. In the _Harvard Classics_ it is translated (as well as may be) 'true gentleman,' or 'princely man'; in which is no priggish ring at all. Again, he is made to address his disciples as "My Children," at which, too, we naturally squirm a little: what he really called them was 'My boys,' which sounds natural and affectionate enough. Supposing the Gospels were translated into Chinese by someone with the gluttonous-man-and-winebibber bias; --what, I wonder, would he put for _Amen, amen lego humin?_ Not "Verily, verily I say unto you"! But I must go on with his life. Things had gone ill in in Lu during his absence: threee great clan chieftains had stopped fighting among themselves to fight instead against their feudal superior, and Marquis Chao had been exiled to Ts'i. It touched Confucius directly; his teaching on such matters had been peremptory: he would 'rectify names': have the prince prince, and the people his subjects:--he would have law and order in the state, or the natural harmony of things was broken. As suggested above, he was very much a man of mark in Lu; and a protest from him,--which should be forth-coming-- could hardly go unnoticed. With a band of disciples he followed his marquis into Ts'i: it is in Chihli, north of Lu, and was famous then for its national music. On the journey he heard Ts'i airs sung, and 'hurried forward.' One of the first things he did on arriving at the capital was to attend a concert (or something equivalent); and for three months thereafter, as a sign of thanksgiving, he ate no flesh. "I never dreamed," said he, "that music could be so wonderful." The fame of his Raja-Yoga School (that was what it was) had gone abroad, and Duke Ching of Ts'i received him well;--offered him a city with its revenues; but the offer was declined. The Duke was impressed; half inclined to turn Confucianist; wished to retain him with a pension, to have him on hand in case of need;-- but withal he was of doubtful hesitating mind about it, and allowed his prime minister to dissuade him. "These scholars," said the latter, "are impractical, and cannot be imitated. They are haughty and self-opinionated, and will never rest content with an inferior position. Confucius has a thousand peculiarities";--this is the gluttonous-man-and-winebibber saying, which the missionary interpreters have been echoing since;--"it would take ages to exhaust all he knows about the ceremonies of going up and down. This is not the time to examine into his rules of propriety; your people would say you were neglecting them."--When next Duke Ching was urged to follow Confucius, he answered: "I am too old to adopt his doctrines." The Master returned to Lu; lectured to his pupils, compiled the Books of Odes and of History; and waited for the disorders to pass. Which in time they did, more or less. Marquis Ting came to the throne, and made him chief magistrate of the town of Chungtu. Now was the time to prove his theories, and show whether he was the Man to the core, that he had been so assiduously showing himself, you may say, on the rind. Ah ha! now surely, with hard work before him, this scholar, theorist, conventional formalist, ritualist, and what else you may like to call him, will be put to shame,--shown up empty and foolish before the hard-headed men of action of his age. Who, indeed,--the hard-headed men of action-- have succeeded in doing precisely nothing but to make confusion worse confounded; how much less, then, will this Impractical One do! Let us watch him, and have our laugh...--On the wrong side of your faces then; for lo now, miracles are happening! He takes control; and here at last is one city in great Chu Hia where crime has ceased to be. How does he manage it? The miracle looks but the more miraculous as you watch. He frames rules for everything; insists on the proprieties; morning, noon, and night holds up an example, and, says he, relies on the power of that.--Example? Tush, he must be beheading right and left!--Nothing of the sort; he is all against capital punishment, and will have none of it. But there is the fact: you can leave your full purse in the streets of Chung-tu, and pick it up unrifled when you pass next; you can pay your just price, and get your just measure for it, fearing no cheateries; High Cost of Living is gone; corners in this and that are no more; graft is a thing you must go elsewhere to look for;--there is none of it in Chung-tu. And graft, let me say, was a thing as proper to the towns of China then, as to the graftiest modern city you might mention. The thing is inexplicable--but perfectly attested. Not quite inexplicable, either: he came from the Gods, and had the Gloves of Gwron on his hands: he had the wisdom you cannot fathom, which meets all events and problems as they come, and finds their solution in its superhuman self, where the human brain-mind finds only dense impenetrability.--Marquis Ting saw and wondered.--"Could you do this for the whole state?" he asked.--"Surely; and for the whole empire," said Confucius. The Marquis made him, first Assistant-Superintendent of Works, then Minister of Crime. And now you shall hear Chapter X of the _Analects,_ to show you the outer man. All these details were noted down by the love of his disciples, for whom nothing was too petty to be recorded; and if we cannot read them without smiling, there is this to remember: they have suffered sea-change on their way to us: sea-change and time-change. What you are to see really is: (1) a great Minister of State, utterly bent on reproving and correcting the laxity of his day, performing the ritual duties of his calling--as all other duties--with a high religious sense of their antiquity and dignity; both for their own sake, and to set an example. what would be thought of an English Archbishop of Canterbury who behaved familiarly or jocularly at a Coronation Service?--(2) A gentleman of the old school, who insists on dressing well and quietly, according to his station. That is what he would appear now, in any grade of society, and among men the least capable of recognising his inner greatness: 'race' is written in every feature of his being; set him in any modern court, and with half an eye you would see that his family was a thousand years or so older than that of anyone else present, and had held the throne at various times. Here is a touch of the great gentleman: he would never fish with a net, or shoot at a bird on the bough; it was unsportsmanlike. (3) A very natural jovial man, not above "changing countenance" when fine meats were set on his table:--a thing that directly contradicts the idea of a cold, ever play-acting Confucius. A parvenu must be very careful; but a scion of the House of Shang, a descendant of the Yellow Emperor, could unbend and be jolly without loss of dignity;--and, were he a Confucius, would. "A gentleman," said he, "is calm and spacious"; he was himself, according to the _Analects,_ friendly, yet dignified; inspired awe, but not fear; was respectful, but easy. He divided mankind into three classes: Adepts or Sages; true Gentlemen; and the common run. He never claimed to belong to the first, though all China knows well that he did belong to it. He even considered that he fell short of the ideal of the second; but as to that, we need pay no attention to his opinion. Here, then, is Chapter X: "Amongst his own countryfolk Confucius wore a homely look, like one who has no word to say. In the ancestral temple and at court his speech was full, but cautious. At court he talked frankly to men of low rank, winningly to men of high rank. In the Marquis's presence he looked intent and solemn. "When the Marquis bade him receive guests, his face seemed to change, his knees to bend. He bowed left and right to those behind him, straightened his robes in front and behind, and sped forward, his elbows spread like wings. When the guest had left, he always reported it, saying: 'The guest has ceased to look back.' "Entering the palace gate he stooped, as though it were too low for him. He did not stand in the middle of the gate, nor step on the threshold. Passing the throne, his face seemed to change, his knees to bend; and he spoke with bated breath. Mounting the royal dais, he lifted his robes, bowed his back and masked his breathing till it seemed to stop. Coming down, his face relaxed below the first step, and bore a pleased look. From the foot of the steps he sped forward, his elbows spread like wings; and when again in his seat, he looked intent as before. He held his hands not higher than in bowing, nor lower than in giving a present. He wore an awed look and dragged his feet, as though they were fettered." Which means that he felt the royal office to be sacred, as the seat of authority and government, the symbol and representative of heaven, the fountain of order: in its origin, divine. He treated Marquis Ting as if he had been Yao, Shun, or Yu; or rather, the Marquis's throne and office as if one of these had held them. There is the long history of China to prove he was wise in the example he set. "When presenting royal gifts his manner was formal; but he was cheerful at the private audience.--This gentleman was never arrayed in maroon or scarlet; even at home he would not wear red or purple. In hot weather he wore unlined linen clothes, but always over other garments. Over lambskin he wore black; over fawn he wore white; over fox-skin he wore yellow. At home he wore a long fur robe with the right sleeve short. He always had his night-gown half as long again as his body. In the house he wore fox- or badger-skin for warmth. When out of mourning there was nothing wanting from his girdle. Except for court-dress, he was sparing of stuff. He did not wear lamb's wool, or a black cap, on a visit of condolence. On the first day of the moon he always went to court in court dress. On fast days he always donned clothes of pale hue, changed his food, and moved from his wonted seat. He did not dislike his rice cleaned with care, nor his hash copped small. He would not eat sour or mouldy rice, putrid fish, or tainted meat. Aught discolored or high, badly cooked, or out of season, he would not eat. He would not eat what was badly cut, or a dish with the wrong sauce. A choice of meats could not tempt him to eat more than he had a relish for. To wine alone he set no limit; but he never drunk more than enough. He did not drink brought wine, or eat ready-dried meat. He did not eat much. Ginger was never missing at his table. "After sacrifice at the palace he would not keep the meat over-night; at home, not more than three days. If kept longer, it was not eaten. He did not talk at meals, nor in bed. Though there were but coarse rice and vegetables, he made his offering with all reverence. If his mat were not straight, he would not sit down. When drinking with the villagers, when those with slaves left, he left too. At the village exorcisms he donned court dress, and stood on the eastern steps. "When sending inquiries to another land, he bowed twice and saw his messenger out. On K'ang's making him a present of medicine, he accepted it with a low bow, saying: 'I do not know; I dare not taste it.' His stables having been burnt, the Master, on his return from court, said: 'Is anyone hurt?' He did not ask after the horses." Set down in perfect good faith to imply that his concern was for the sufferings of others, not for his personal loss: and without perception of the fact that it might imply callousness as to the suffering of the horses. We are to read the recorder's mind, and not the Master's, in that omission.-- "When the marquis sent him baked meat, he set his mat straight, and tasted it first. When the Marquis sent him raw meat, he had it cooked for sacrifice. When the Marquis sent him a living beast, he had it reared. When dining in attendance on the Marquis, the latter made the offering; Confucius ate of things first. On the Marquis coming to see him in sickness, he turned his face to the east and had his court dress spread across him, with the girdle over it. When summoned by the Marquis, he walked, without waiting for his carriage. On entering the Great Temple, he asked how each thing was done. When a friend died who had no home, he said: 'It is for me to bury him.' When a friend sent a gift, even of a carriage and horses, he did not bow. He only bowed for sacrificial meat. He would not lie in a bed like a corpse. At home he unbent. "On meeting a mourner, were he a friend, his face changed. Even in every-day clothes, when he met anyone in full dress, or a blind man, his face grew staid. When he met men in mourning, he bowed over the cross-bar. Before choice meats he rose with a changed look. At sharp thunder or fierce wind, his countenance changed. In mounting his chariot he stood straight and grasped the cord. When in his chariot, he did not look round, speak fast, or point." There you have one side of the outer man; and the most has been made of it. "Always figuring, always posturing," we hear. I merely point to the seventy noble generations, the personality made up of that courtly heredity, whose smallest quite spontaneous acts and habits seemed to men worth recording, as showing how the perfect gentleman behaved: a model. Another side is found in the lover of poetry, the devotee of music, the man of keen and intense affections. Surely, if a _poseur,_ he might have posed when bereavement touched him; he might have assumed a high philosophic calm. But no; he never bothered to; even though reproached for inconsistency. His mother died when he was twenty-four; and he broke through all rites and customs by raising a mound over her grave; that, as he said, he might have a place to turn to and think of as his home whereever he might be on his wanderings. He mourned for her the orthodox twenty-seven months; then for five days longer would not touch his lute. On the sixth day he took it and began to play; but when he tried to sing, broke down and wept. One is surprised; but there is no posing about it. Yen Hui was his saint John, the Beloved disciple. "When Yen Hui died," we read, "the Master cried, 'Woe is me! I am undone of Heaven! I am undone of Heaven!' When Yen Hui died the Master gave way to grief. The disciples said: 'Sir, you are giving way.'--'Am I giving way?' said he. 'If for this man I do not give way, for whom shall I give way?... Hui treated me as a son his father; I have failed to treat him as a father his son.'" Confucius was old then, and near his own death... But what I think you will recognise in his speech, again and again, is the peculiarly spontaneous... indeed impetuous ... ring of it. He had that way of repeating a sentence twice that marks a naturally impetuous man.--Of his sense of humor I shall speak later. He dearly loved his disciples, and was homesick when away from them.--"My batch of boys, ambitious and hasty--I must go home to them! I must go home to them!" said he. Once when he was very ill, Tse Lu "moved the disciples to act as ministers":--to behave to him as if he were a king and they his ministers.--"I know, I know!" said Confucius; "Tse Lu has been making believe. This show of ministers, when I have none,--whom will it deceive? Will it deceive Heaven? I had rather die in your arms, my boys, than be a king and die in the arms of my ministers."--"Seeing the disciple Min standing at his side in winning strength, Tse Lu with warlike front, Jan Yu and Tse Kung fresh and strong, the Master's heart was glad," we read. He considered what he calls 'love' the highest state,--the condition of the Adept or Sage; but that other thing that goes by the same name,--of that he would not speak;--nor of crime,--nor of feats of strength, --nor of doom,--nor of ghosts and spirits. Anything that implied a forsaking of middle lines, a losing of the balance, extravagance,--he abhorred.--And now back to that other side of him again: the Man of Action. The task that lay before him was to reform the state of Lu. Something was rotten in it; it needed some reforming.--The rotten thing, to begin with, was Marquis Ting himself; who was of such stuff as Confucius referred to when he said: "You cannot carve rotten wood." But brittle and crumbling as it was, it would serve his turn for the moment; it would give him the chance to show twenty-five Chinese centuries the likeness of an Adept at the head of a state. So it should be proved to them that Such a One--they call him _Such a One_ generally, I believe, to avoid the light repetition of a name grown sacred--is no impractical idealist merely, but a Master of Splendid Successes here in this world: that the Way of Heaven is the way that succeeds on earth--if only it be honestly tried. Ting was by no means master in his own marquisate. As in England under Stephen, bold bad robber barons had fortified their castles everywhere, and from these strongholds defied the government. The mightiest magnate of all was the Chief of Clan Chi, who ordered things over his royal master's head, and was very much a power for the new Minister of Crime to reckon with. A clash came before long. Ex-marquis Chao--he that had been driven into exile--died in Ts'i; and his body was sent home for burial with his ancestors. Chi, who had been chief among those responsible for the dead man's exile, by way of insulting the corpse, gave orders that it should be buried outside the royal cemetery; and his orders were carried out. Confucius heard of it, and was indignant. To have had the corpse exhumed and reburied would have been a new indignity, I suppose; therefore he gave orders that the cemetery should be enlarged so as to include the grave; --and went down and saw it done.--"I have done this on your behalf," he informed Chi, "to hide the shame of your disloyalty. To insult the memory of a dead prince is against all decency." The great man gnashed his teeth; but the Minister of Crime's action stood. He turned his attention to the robber-barons, and reduced them. I do not know how; he was entirely against war; but it is certain that in a very short time those castles were leveled with the ground, and the writ of the Marquis ran through Lu. He hated capital punishment; but signed the death warrant for the worst of the offenders;--and that despite the protest of some of his disciples, who would have had him consistent above all things. But his back was up, and the man was executed. One makes no excuse for it; except perhaps, to say that such an action, isolated, and ordained by Such a One, needs no excuse. He was in the habit of fulfilling his duty; and duty may at times present itself in strange shapes. It was a startling thing to do; and Lu straight-way, as they say, sat right up and began to take concentrated notice of a situation the like of which had not been seen for centuries. He had the final decision in all legal cases. A father brought a charge against his son; relying on the bias of the Minister whose life had been so largely given to preaching filial piety. "If you had brought up your son properly," said Confucius, "this would not have happened"; and astounded plaintiff, defendant, and the world at large by putting both in prison for three months. In a year or so he had done for Lu what he had done for Chung-tu during his magistracy. By this time Ts'i and Sung and Wei and the whole empire were taking notice too. There was actually a state where crime was unknown; where law ruled and the government was strong, and yet, the people more than contented; a state--and such a state!-- looming ahead as the probable seat of a Bretwalda. Lu with the hegemony! This old orthodox strict Lu!--this home of lost causes!--this back number, and quaint _chinoiserie_ to be laughed at!--As if Morgan Shuster had carried on his work in Persia until Persia had become of a strength to threaten the world. Lu was growing strong; and Ts'i--renowned military Ts'i--thought she ought to be doing something. Thus in our own time, whenever somnolent obsolete Turkey tried to clean her house, Russia, land-hungry and looking to a Thanksgiving Dinner presently, felt a call to send down emissaries, and--see that the cleaning should not be done. Duke Ching of Ts'i, at the first attempt, bungled his plans badly. He would not strike at the root of things, Confucius; perhaps retained too much respect for him; perhaps simply did not understand; but at that harmless mutton Marquis Ting who Confucius had successfully camouflaged up to look like a lion. To that end he formally sought an alliance with Lu, and the Lu Minister of Crime concurred. He intended that there should be more of these alliances. An altar was raised on the frontier, where the two princes were to meet and sign the treaty. Duke Ching had laid his plans; but they did not include the presence of Confucius at the altar as Master or the Ceremonies on the side of Lu. There he was, however; and after all, it could hardly make much difference. The preliminary rites went forward. Suddenly, a roll of drums; a rush of 'savages' out of ambush;--there were savage tribes in those parts;--confusion; the Marquis's guard, as the Duke's, is at some little distance; and clearly it is for the Marquis that these 'savages' are making. But Confucius is there. He steps between the kidnappers and his master, "with elbows spread like wings" hustles the latter off into safety; takes hold of the situation; issues sharp orders to the savages--who are of course Ts'i troops in disquise: _Attention! About face!--Double march!_--snaps out the words of command in right military style, right in the presence of their own duke, who stands by amazed and helpless;--and off they go. Then spaciously clears the matter up. Finds, no doubt, that it is all a mistake; supplies, very likely, an easy and acceptable explanation to save Ching's face; shortly has all things peaceably _in status quo._ Then brings back his marquis, and goes forward with the treaty; but now as Master of the Ceremonies and something more. There had been a land question between Lu and Ts'i: Lu territory seized some time since by her strong neighbor, and the cause of much soreness on the one hand and exultation on the other. By the time that treaty had been signed Duke Ching of Ts'i had ceded back the land to Marquis Ting of Lu,--a thing assuredly he had never dreamed of doing; and an alliance had been established between the two states. Since the Duke of Chow's time, Lu had never stood so high. Was our man a prig at all? Was he a pedant? have those who have sedulously spread that report of him in the West told the truth about him? Or--hath a pleasant little lie or twain served their turn? Duke Ching went home and thought things over. He had learned his lesson: that ting was but a camouflage lion, and by no means the one to strike at, if business was to be done. He devised a plan, sweet in it simplicity, marvelous in its knowledge of what we are pleased to call 'human' nature. He ransacked his realm for beautiful singing and dancing girls, and sent the best eighty he could find to his dear friend and ally of Lu. Not to make the thing too pointed, he added a hundred and twenty fine horses-- with their trappings. What could be more appropriate than such a gift? It worked. Ting retired to his harem, and day after day passed over a Lu unlighted by his countenance. Government was at a standstill; the great Minister of Crime could get nothing done. The Annual Sacrifice was at hand; a solemnity Confucius hoped would remind Ting of realities and bring him to his right mind. According to the ritual, a portion of the offering should be sent to each high official of the state: none came to Confucius. Day after day he waited; but Ting's character was quite gone: the lion-skin had fallen off, and the native egregious muttonhood or worse stood revealed.--"Master," said Tse Lu, "it is time you went." But he was very loath to go. At last he gathered his disciples, and slowly went out from the city. He lingered much on the way, looking back often, still hoping for sight of the messenger who should recall him. But none came. That was in 497. The old century had ended about the time he took office; and with it, of course, the last quarter in which, as always, the Doors of the Lodge were open, and the spiritual influx pouring into the world. So the effort of that age had its consummation and fine flower in the three years of his official life: to be considered a triumph. Now, Laotse had long since ridden away into the West; the Doors were shut; the tides were no longer flowing; and the God's great Confucius remained in a world that knew him not. As for holding office and governing states, he had done all that was necessary. XI. CONFUCIUS THE HERO He had done enough in the way of holding office and governing states. Laotse had taught that of old time, before Tao was lost, the Yellow Emperor sat on his throne and all the world was governed without knowing it. Confucius worked out the doctrine thus: True government is by example; given the true ruler, and he will have the means of ruling at his disposal, and they will be altogether different from physical force. 'Example' does not covey it either: his thought was much deeper. There is a word _li_--I get all this from Dr. Lionel Giles--which the egregious have been egregiously translating 'the rules of propriety'; but which Confucius used primarily for a state of harmony within the soul, which should enable beneficent forces from the Infinite to flow through into the outer world;--whereof a result would also be, on the social plane, perfect courtesy and politeness, these the most outward expression of it. On these too Confucius insisted which is the very worst you can say about him.--Now, the ruler stands between Gods and men; let his _li_ be perfect--let the forces of heaven flow through him unimpeded,--and the people are regenerated day by day: the government is by regeneration. Here lies the secret of all his insistence on loyalty and filial piety: the regeneration of society is dependent on the maintenance of the natural relation between the Ruler who rules-- that is, lets the _li_ of heaven flow through him--and his people. They are to maintain such an attitude towards him as will enable them to receive the _li._ In the family, he is the father; in the state, he is the king. In very truth, this is the Doctrine of the Golden Age, and proof of the profound occult wisdom of Confucius: even the (comparatively) little of it that was ever made practical lifted China to the grand height she has held. It is hinted at in the _Bhagavad-Gita:_--"whatsoever is practised by the most excellent men"; again, it is the Aryan doctrine of the Guruparampara Chain. The whole idea is so remote from modern practice and theory that it must seem to the west utopian, even absurd; but we have Asoka's reign in India, and Confucius's Ministry in Lu, to prove its basic truth. During that Ministry he had flashed the picture of such a ruler on to the screen of time: and it was enough. China could never forget. But if, knowing it to have been enough,--knowing that the hour of the Open Door had passed, and that he should never see success again,--he had then and there retired into private life, content to teach his disciples and leave the stubborn world to save or damn itself:--enough it would not have been. He had flashed the picture on to the screen of time, but it would have faded. Twenty years of wandering, of indomitability, of disappointment and of ignoring defeat and failure, lay before him: in which to make his creation, not a momentary picture, but a carving in jade and granite and adamant. It is not the ever-victorious and successful that we take into the adyta of our hearts. It is the poignancy of heroism still heroism in defeat,-- "unchanged, though fallen on evil years," --that wins admittance there. Someone sneered at Confucius, in his latter years, as the man who was always trying to do the impossible. He was; and the sneerer had no idea what high tribute he was paying him. It is because he was that: the hero, the flaming idealist: that his figure shines out so clear and splendidly. His outer attempts--to make a Man of Marquis This or Duke That, and a model state of Lu or Wei--these were but carvings in rotten wood, foredoomed to quick failure. All the material of the world was rotten wood: he might have learned that lesson;--only there are lessons that Such a One never learns. Well; we in turn may learn a lesson from him: applicable now. The rotten wood crumbled under his hands time and again: under his bodily hands;--but it made no difference to him. He went on and on, still hoping to begin his life's work, and never recognising failure; and by reason and virtue of that, the hands of his spirit were carving, not in rotten wood, but in precious jade and adamant spiritual, to endure forever. On those inner planes he was building up his Raja-Yoga; which time saw to it should materialize and redeem his race presently. Confucius in the brief moment of his victory illuminated the world indeed; but Confucius in the long years of his defeat has bowed the hearts of twenty-five centuries of the Black-haired People. We can see this now; I wonder did he see it then? I mean, had that certain knowledge and clear vision in his conscious mind, that was possessed in the divinity of his Soul--as it is in every Soul. I imagine not; for in his last days he--the personality-- could give way and weep over the utter failure of his efforts. One loves him the more for it: one thinks his grandeur only the more grand. It is a very human and at last a very pathetic figure--this Man that did save his people. Due west from Lu, and on the road thence to Honanfu the Chow capital, lay the Duchy of Wei; whither now he turned his steps. He had no narrow patriotism: if his own Lu rejected him, he might still save this foreign state, and through it, perhaps, All the Chinas. He was at this time one of the most famous men alive; and his first experience in Wei might have been thought to augur well. On the frontier he was met by messengers from a local Wei official, begging for their master an interview:-- "Every illustrious stranger has granted me one; let me not ask it of you, Sir, in vain." Confucius complied; was conducted to the yamen, and went in, leaving his disciples outside. To these the magistrate came out, while the Master was still resting within.--"Sirs," said he, "never grieve for your Teacher's fall from office. His work is but now to begin. These many years the empire has been in perilous case; but now Heaven has raised up Confucius, its tocsin to call the people to awakenment."--A wise man, that Wei official! At the capital, Duke Ling received him with all honor, and at once assigned him a pension equal to the salary he had been paid as Minister of Crime in Lu. He even consulted him now and again; but reserved to himself liberty to neglect the advice asked for. However, the courtiers intrigued; and before the year was out, Confucius had taken to his wanderings again: he would try the state of Ch'in now, in the far south-east. "If any prince would employ me," said he, "within a twelvemonth I should have done something considerable; in three years the government would be perfect." He was to pass through the town of Kwang, in Sung; it had lately been raided by a robber named Yang Hu, in face and figure resembling himself. Someone who saw him in the street put it abroad that Yang Hu was in the town, and followed him to the house he had taken for the night. Before long a mob had gathered, intent on vengeance. The situation was dangerous; the mob in no mood to hear reason;--and as to that, Yang Hu also would have said that he was not the man they took him for,--very likely would have claimed to be the renowned Confucius. The disciples, as well they might be, were alarmed: the prospect was, short shrift for the whole party.--"Boys," said the Master, "do you think Heaven entrusted the Cause of Truth to me, to let me be harmed by the towns-men of Kwang? "--The besiegers looked for protests, and then for a fight. What they did not look for was to hear someone inside singing to a lute;--it was that great musician Confucius. When he sang and played you stopped to listen; and so did the Kwang mob now. They listened, and wondered, and enjoyed their free concert; then made reasonable inquiries, and apologies,--and went their ways in peace. In those South-eastern states there was no prospect for him, and after a while he returneci to Wei. He liked Duke Ling personally, and the liking was mutual; time and again he went back there, hoping against hope that something might be done,--or seeing no other horizon so hopeful. Now Ling had a consort of some irregular kind: Nantse, famed for her beauty and brilliance and wickedness. Perhaps _ennuyee,_ and hoping for contact with a mind equal to her own, she was much stirred by the news of Confucius' return, and sent to him asking an interview. Such a request was a characteristic flouting of the conventions on her part; for him to grant it would be much more so on his. But he did grant it; and they conversed, after the custom of the time, with a screen between, neither seeing the other. Tse Lu was much disturbed; considering it all a very dangerous innovation, inconsistent in Confucius, and improper. So in the eyes of the world it would have seemed. But Nantse held the Duke, and Confucius might influence Nantse. He never let conventions stand in his way, when there was a chance of doing good work by breaking them. One suspects that the lady wished to make her vices respectable by giving them a seeming backing by incarnate virtue; and that to this end she brought about the sequel. Duke Ling was to make a Progress through the city; and requested Confucius to follow his carriage in another. He did so; not knowing that Nantse had seen to it that she was to be sitting at the Duke's side. Her position and reputation even in those days needed some regularizing; and she had chosen this means to do it. But to the people, the spectacle was highly symbolic; and Confucius heard their jeers as he passed:--Flaunting Vice in front, Slighted Virtue in the rear.--"I have met none," said he, "who loves virtue more than women." It was time for him to go; and now he would try the south again. In reality, perhaps, it matter little whither he went or where he stayed: there was no place for him anywhere. All that was important was, that he should keep up the effort. An official in Sung, one Hwan Tuy, held the roads against him, accusing him of "a proud air and many desires; an insinuating habit and a wild will." From this time on he was subject to persecution. The "insinuating habit" reminds one of an old parrot-cry one has heard: "She hypnotizes them." He turned westward from this opposition, and visited one state, and then another; in neither was there any disposition to use him. He had found no more likely material than Duke Ling of Wei, who at least was always glad to see and talk with him:--might not be jade to carve, but was the wood least rotten at hand. But at Wei, as usual, there was nothing but disappointment in store. Pih Hsih, a rebel, was holding a town in Tsin, modern Shansi, against the king of that state; and now sent messengers inviting Confucius to visit him. Tse Lu protested: had he not always preached obedience to the Powers that Were, and that the True Gentleman did not associate with rebels?--"Am I a bitter gourd," said Confucius, "to be hung up out of the way of being eaten?" He was always big enough to be inconsistent. He had come to see that the Powers that Were were hopeless, and was for catching at any straw. But something delayed his setting out; and when he reached the Yellow River, news came of the execution of Tsin of two men whom he admired. "How beautiful they were!" said he; "how beautiful they were! This river is not more majestic! And I was not there to save them!" The truth seems to be that he would set out for any place where the smallest opening presented itself; and while that opening existed, would not be turned aside from his purpose; but if it vanished, or if something better came in sight, he would turn and follow that. Thus he did not go on into Tsin when he heard of these executions; but one, when he was on the road to Wei and a band of roughs waylaid him and made him promise never to go there again, he simply gave the promise and went straight on. At Wei now Duke Ling was really inclined to use him;--but as his military adviser. It was the last straw; he left, and would not return in Ling's lifetime. He was in Ch'in for awhile; and then for three years at Ts'ae, a new state built of the rebellion of certain subjects or vassals of the great sourthern kingdom of Ts'u. On hearing of his arrival, the Duke of Ts'ae had the idea to send for Tse Lu, who had a broad reputation of his own as a brave and practical man, and to inquire of him what kind of man the master really was. But Tse Lu, as we have seen, was rigid as to rebels, and vouchsafed no answer.--"You might have told him," said Confucius, "that I am simply one who forgets his food in the pursuit of wisdom, and his sorrows in the joys of attaining it, and who does not perceive old age coming on." Missionary writers have cast it at him, that were of old he had preached against rebellion, now he was willing enough to "have rebels for his patrons";--"adversity had not stiffened his back, but had made him pliable." Which shows how blind such minds are to real greatness. "They have nothing to draw with, and this well is deep." He sought no "patrons," now or at another time; but tools with which to work for the redemption of China; and he was prepared to find them anywhere, and take what came to hand. His keynote was _duty._ The world went on snubbing, ignoring, insulting, traducing, and persecuting him; and he went on with the performance of his duty;--rather, with the more difficult task of searching for the duty he was to perform. This resorting to rebels, like that conversing with Nantse, shows him clearly not the formalist and slave of conventions he has been called, but a man of highest moral courage. What he stood for was not forms, conventions, reules, proprieties, or anything of the sort; but the liens of least resistance in his high endeavor to lift the world: lines of least resistance; middle lines; common sense.--As ususal, there was nothing to be done with the Duke of Ts'ae. Wandering from state to state, he came on recluses in a field by the river, and sent Tse Lu forward to ask one of them the way to the ford. Said the hermit:--"You follow one who withdraws from court to court; it would be better to withdraw from the world altogether."--"What!" said Confucius when it was told him; "shall I not associate with mankind? If I do not associate with mankind, with whom shall I associate?" In which answer lies a great key to Confucianism; turn it once or twice, and you get to the import of his real teaching. He never would follow the individual soul into its secrecies; he was concerned with man only as a fragment of humanity. He was concerned with man _as_ humanity. All that the West calls (personal) religion he disliked intensely. Any desire or scheme to save your own soul; any right-doing for the sake of a reward, either here or hereafter, he would have bluntly called wrong- doing, anti-social and selfish. (I am quoting in substance from Dr. Lionel Giles.) He tempted no one with hopes of heaven; frightened none with threats of hell. It seemed to him that he could make a higher and nobler appeal,--could strike much more forcibly at the root of evil (which is selfishness), by saying nothing about rewards and punishments at all. The one inducement to virtue that he offered was this: By doing right, you lead the world into right-doing. He was justified in saying that Man is divine; because this divine appeal of his was effective; not like the West's favorite appeal to fear, selfish desire, and the brutal side of our nature. "Do right to escape a whipping, or a hanging, or hell-fire," says Christendom; and the nations reared on that doctrine have risen and fallen, risen and fallen; a mad riot of people struggling into life, and toppling back into death in a season; so that future ages and the far reaches of history will hardly remember their names, too lightly graven upon time. But China, nourished on this divine appeal, however far she may have fallen short of it, has stood, and stood, and stood. In the last resort, it is the only inducement worth anything; the only lever that lifts.--There is that _li,_--that inevitable rightness and harmony that begins in the innermost _when there is the balance_ and duty is being done, and flows outward healing and preserving and making wholesome all the phases of being;--let that harmony of heaven play through you, and you are bringing mankind to virtue; you are pouting cleansing currents into the world. How little of the tortuosity of metaphysics is here;--but what grand efficacity of super-ethics! You remember what _Light on the Path_ says about the man who is a link between the noise of the market-place and the silence of the snow-capped Himalayas; and what it says about the danger of seeking to sow good karma for oneself,--how the man that does so will only be sowing the giant weed of selfhood. In those two passages you find the essence of Confucianism and the wisdom and genius of Confucius. It is as simple as A B C; and yet behind it lie all the truths of metaphysics and philosophy. He seized upon the pearl of Theosophic thought, the cream of all metaphysics, where metaphysics passes into action,--and threw his strength into insisting on that: Pursue virtue because it is virtue, and that you may (as you will,--it is the only way you can) bring the world to virtue; or negatively, in the words of _Light on the Path:_ "Abstain (from vice) because it is right to abstain--not that yourself shall be kept clean." And now to travel back into the thought behind, that you may see if Confucius was a materialist; whether or not he believed in the Soul;--and that if he was not a great original thinker, at least he commanded the ends of all great, true and original thinking. Man, he says, is naturally good. That is, collectively. _Man_ is divine and immortal; only _men_ are mortal and erring. Were there a true brotherhood of mankind established, a proper relation of the parts to the whole and to each other,--you would have no difficulty with what is evil in yourself. The lower nature with its temptations would not appear; the world-old battle with the flesh would be won. But separate yourself in yourself,--consider yourself as a selfhood, not as a unit in society;--and you find, there where you have put yourself, evil to contend with a-plenty. Virtue inheres in the Brotherhood of Man; vice in the separate personal and individual units. Virtue is in That which is no man's possession, but common to all: namely, the Soul--though he does not enlarge upon it as that; perhaps never mentions it as the Soul at all;--vice is in that which each has for himself alone: the personality. Hence his hatred of religiosity, of personal soul-saving. You were to guard against evil in the simplest way: by living wholly in humanity, finding all you motives and sources of action there. If you were, in the highest sense, simply a factor in human society, you were a good man. If you lived in yourself alone,--having all evil to meet there, you were likely to succumb to it; and you were on the wrong road anyway. Come out, then; think not of your soul to be saved, nor of what may befall you after death. You, as you, are of no account; all that matters is humanity as a whole, of which you are but a tiny part.--Now, if you like, say that Confucius did not teach Theosophy, because, _so far as we know,_ he said nothing about Karma or Reincarnation. I am inclined to think him one of the two or three supreme historical Teachers of Theosophy; and to say that his message, so infinitely simple, is one of the most wonderful presentations of it ever given. It is this entire purity from all taint of personal religion; this distaste for prayer and unrelish for soul-salvation; this sweet clean impersonality of God and man, that makes the missionary writers find him so cold and lifeless. But when you look at him, it is a marvelously warm-hearted magnetic man you see: Such a One as wins hearts to endless devotion. Many of the disciples were men who commanded very much the respect of the world. The king of Ts'u proposed to give Confucius an independent duchy: to make a sovereign prince of him, with territories absolutely his own. But one of his ministers dissuaded him thus: "Has your majesty," said he, "any diplomatist in your service like Tse Kung? Or anyone so fitted to be prime minister as Yen Huy? Or a general to compare with Tse Lu? . . . If K'ung Ch'iu were to acquire territory, with such men as these to serve him, it would not be to the prosperity of Ts'u."--And yet those three brilliant men were content--no, proud--to follow him on his hopeless wanderings, sharing all his long sorrow; they were utterly devoted to him. Indeed, we read of none of his disciples turning against him;--which also speaks mighty well for the stuff that was to be found in Chinese humanity in those days. Tse Kung was told that some prince or minister had said that he, Tse Kung, was a greater man than Confucius. He answered: "The wall of my house rises only to the height of a man's shoulders; anyone can look in and see whatever excellence is within. But the Master's wall is many fathoms in height; so that who fails to find the gateway cannot see the beauties of the temple within nor the rich apparel of the officiating priests. It may be that only a few will find the gate. Need we be surprised, then, at His Excellency's remark?" Yen Huy said:--"The Master knows how to draw us after him by regular steps. He broadens our outlook with polite learning, and restrains our impulses by teaching us self-control." Only once, I think, is he recorded to have spoken of prayer. He was very ill, and Tse Lu proposed to pray for his recovery. Said Confucius: "What precedent is there for that?"--There was great stuff in that Tse Lu: a bold warriorlike nature; not very pliable; not too easy to teach, I imagine, but wonderfully paying for any lesson taught and learned. He figures often as the one who clings to the letter, and misses vision of the spirit of the teaching; so now the Master plays him a little with this as to precedent,--which weighed always more strongly with Tse Lu than with Confucius.--"In the _Eulogies,"_ said Tse Lu, (it is a lost work), "it is written: 'We pray to you, O Spirits of Heaven and Earth."--"Ah!" said Confucius, "my prayers began long, long ago." But he never did pray, in the Western sense. His _life_ was one great intercession and petition for his people. As to his love of ritual: remember that there are ceremonies and ceremonies, some with deep power and meaning. Those that Confucius upheld came down to him from Adept Teachers of old; and he had an eye to them only as outward signs of a spiritual grace, and means to it. "Ceremonies indeed!" said he once; "do you think they are a mere matter of silken robes and jade omaments? Music forsooth! Can music be a mere thing of drums and bells?"--Or of harps, lutes, dulcimers, sackbuts, psalteries, and all kinds of instruments, he might have added; all of which, together with all rites, postures, pacings, and offerings, were nothing to him unless channels through which the divine _li_ might be induced to flow. Yet on his wanderings, by the roadside, in lonely places, he would go through ceremonies with his disciples. Why?--Why is an army drilled? If you go to the root of the matter, it is to make _one_ the consciousness of the individual soldiers. So Confucius, as I take it, in his ceremonies sought to unify the consciousness of his disciples, that the _li_ might have passage through them. I say boldly it was a proof of that deep occult knowledge of his,--which he never talked about. They asked him once if any single ideogram conveyed the whole law of life.--"Yes," he said; and gave them one compounded of two others, which means 'As heart':--the missionaries prefer to render it 'reciprocity.' His teaching--out of his own mouth we convict him--was the Doctrine of the Heart. He was for the glow in the heart always; not as against, but as the one true cause of, external right action. But the Heart doctrine cannot be defined in a set of rules and formulae; so he was always urging middle lines, common sense. That is the explanation of his famous answer when they asked him whether injuries should be repaid with kindness. What he said amounts to this: "For goodness sake, use common sense! I have given you 'as heart' for your rule."--We know Katherine Tingley's teaching: not one of us but has been helped and saved by it a thousand times. I can only say that, in the light of that, the more you study Confucius, the greater he seems; the more extraordinary the parallelisms you see between her method and his. Perhaps it is because his method has been so minutely recorded. We do not find here merely ethical precepts, or expositions of philosophic thought: what we see is a Teacher guiding and adjusting the lives of his disciples. When he had been three years at Ts'ae, the King of Ts'u invited him to his court. Ts'u, you will remember, lay southward towards the Yangtse, and was, most of the time, one of the six Great Powers.* Here at last was something hopeful; and Confucius set out. But Ts'ae and Ch'in, though they had neglected him, had not done so through ignorance of his value; and were not disposed to see his wisdom added to the strength of Ts'u. They sent out a force to waylay him; which surrounded him in the wilderness and held him besieged but unmolested for seven days. Food ran out, and the Confucianists were so enfeebled at last that they could hardly stand. We do not hear that terms were offereed, as that they should turn back or go elsewhere: the intention seems to have been to make an end of Confucius and Confucianism altogether,--without bloodshed. Even Tse Lu was shaken.--"Is it for the Princely Man," said he, "to suffer the pinch of privation?"--"Privation may come his way," Confucius answered; "but only the vulgar grow reckless and demoralized under it." So saying he took his lute and sang to them, and hearing him they forgot to fear. Meanwhile one of the party had won through the lines, and brought word to Ts'u of the Master's plight; whereat the king sent a force to his relief, and came out from the capital to receive him in state. The king's intentions were good; but we have seen how his ministers intrigued and diverted them. In the autumn of that year he died, having become somewhat estranged from the Master. His successor was one from whom no good could be expected, and Confucius returned to Wei. ------- * _Ancient China Simplified:_ by Prof. E. Harper Parker; from which book the account of the political condition and divisions of the empire given in these lectures is drawn. ------ Duke Ling was dead, and his grandson, Chuh, was on the throne. There had been a complication of family crimes plottings: Chuh had driven out his father, who in turn had attempted the life of his own mother, Nantse. Chuh wished to employ Confucius, but not to forgo his evil courses: it was a situation that could not be sanctioned. For six years the Master lived in retirement in Wei, watching events, and always sanguine that his chance would come. He was not sixty-nine years old; but hoped to begin his life's work presently. Then suddenly he was in demand,--in two quarters. There was a sort of civil war in Wei, and the chief of one of the factions came to him for advice as to the best means of attacking the other. Confucius was disgusted. Meanwhile Lu had been at war with Ts'i; and Yen Yu, a Confucianist, put in command of the Lu troops, had been winning all the victories in sight. Marquis Ting now slept with his fathers, and Marquis Gae reigned in his stead; also there was a new Chief of Clan Chi to run things:-- Gae to reign, Chi to rule. They asked Yen Yu where he had learned his so victorious generalship; and he answered, "from Confucius."--If a mere disciple could do so much, they thought, surely the Master himself could do much more: as, perhaps, lead the Lu armies to universal victory. So they sent him a cordial invitation, with no words as to the warlike views that prompted it. High in hope, Confucius set out; these fourteen years his native country had been pulling at his heart-strings, and latterly, more insistently than ever. But on his arrival he saw how the land lay. Chi consulted him about putting down brigandage: Chi being, as you might say, the arch-brigand of Lu.--"If you, Sir, were not avaricious," said Confucius, "though you offered men rewards for stealing, they would cleave to their honesty." There was nothing to be done with such men as these; he went into retirement, having much literary work to finish. That was in 483. In 482 his son Li died; and a year later Yen Huy, dearest of his disciples. We have seen how he gave way to grief. There is that strange mystery of the dual nature; even in Such a One. There is the human Personality that the Great Soul must work through. He had performed his function; he had fulfilled his duty; all that he owed to the coming ages he had paid in full. But the evidence goes to show that he was still looking forward for a chance to begin, and that every disappointmtnt hurt the outward man of him: that it was telling on him: that it was a sad, a disappointed, even a heart-broken old man that wept over Yen Huy.--In 481, we read, a servant of the Chief of Clan Chi caught a strange one-horned aninial, with a white ribbon tied to its horn. None had seen the like of it; and Confucius, being the most learned of men, was called in to make pronouncement. He recognised it at once from his mother's description: it was the _k'e-lin,_ the unicorn; that was the ribbon Chingtsai had decked it with in the cave on Mount Ne the night of his birth. He burst into tears. "For whom have you come?" he cried; "for whom have you come?" And then: "The course of my doctrine is run, and wisdom is still neglected, and success is still worshiped. My principles make no progress: how will it be in the after ages?" --Ah, could he have know!--I mean, that old weary mind and body; the Soul which was Confucius knew. Yen Huy, Tse Lu, and Tse Kung: those were the three whom he had loved and trusted most. Yen Huy was dead; Tse Lu, with Tse Kao, another disciple, he had left behind in Wei holding office under the duke. Now news came that a revolution had broken out there. "Tse Kao will return," said he; "but Tse Lu will die." So it fell. Tse Kao, finding the duke's cause hopeless, made his escape; but Tse Lu fought the forlorn hope to the end, and died like a hero. Only Tse Kung, of the three, was left to him. Who one morning, when he went to the Master's house, found him walking to and fro before the door crooning over this verse: "The great mountain must crumble, The strong beam must break. The wise man must wither like a flower." Heavy-hearted, Tse Kung followed him in.--"What makes you so late?" said Confucius; and then: "According to the rites of Hia, the dead lay in state at the top of the eastern steps, as if he were the host. Under the Shangs, it was between the two pillars he lay, as if he were both host and guest. The rite of the Chows is for him to lie at the top of the western steps, as if he were the guest. I am a man of Shang,"--it will be remembered that he was descended from that royal house; "and last night I dreamed that I was sitting between the pillars, with offerings set out before me. No intelligent monarch arises; no prince will make me his teacher. My time has come to die."--That day he took to his bed; his passing was a week later. On the banks of the Sze his disciples buried him; and for three years mourned at his grave. But Tse Kung built himself a cabin at the graveside, and remained there three years longer. "All my life," said he, "I have had heaven above my head, but I do not know its height. I have had earth beneath my feet, but I have not known its magnitude. I served Confucius: I was like a thirsty man going with his pitcher to the river. I drank my fill, but I never knew the depth of the water." And Tse Kung was right; and what he felt then, one feels now. You read Boswell, and have your Johnson in the hollow of your hand: body, soul, and spirit: higher triad and lower quaternary. Of Confucius we have a picture in some respects even more detailed than Boswell's of Johnson; but when we have said everything, we still feel that nothing has been said. Boswell lets you in through his master's church-door; shows you nave and aisle, vault and vestry; climbs with you to the belfry; stands with you at the altar and in the pulpit; till you have seen everything there is to see. But with Confucius as with every Adept the case is quite different. "The Master's wall is fathomless," said Tse Kung; but he and the other disciples took care that China at least should find the gate of entry; and it is still possible for us to go in, and "see the beauty of the temple, the richness of the robes of the officiating priests." You go through everything; see him under all sorts of circumstances; and ask at last: "Is this all?"--No, says your guide; "see here!" and flings one last door open. And that, like the door in Lord Dunsaney's play, opens on to the vastness of the stars. What is it that baffles us and remains undefined and undefinable? Just this: TAO: the Infinite Nature. You can survey the earth, and measure it with chains; but not Space, in which a billion leagues is nowise different from an inch or two, --it bears the same proportion to the whole. There was his infinite trust;--and his unbroken silence as to the Things he trusted in. Time and the world went proving to him year by year that his theories were all impracticable, all wrong; that he was a failure; that there was not anything for him to do, and never would be a chance for him to do it;--and all their arguments, all the sheer dreadful tyranny of fact, had no weight with him at all: he went on and on. What was his sword of strength? Where were the Allies in whom he trusted? How dared he pit K'ung Ch'iu of Lu against time and the world and me?--The Unseen was with him, and the Silence; and he (perhaps) lifted no veil from the Unseen, and kept silent as to the silence;--and yet maintained his Movement, and held his disciples together, and saved his people,--as if he himself had been the Unseen made visible, and the Silence given a voice to speak. And with it all there was the human man who suffered. I think you will love him the more for this, from the _Analects:_ "The Minister said to Tse Lu, Tseng Hsi, Jan Yu, and Kung-hsi Hua as they sat beside him: 'I may be a day older than you are, but forget that. You are wont to say, "We are unknown." Well; had ye a name in the world, what would ye do?'" "Tse Lu answered lightly: 'Give me charge of a land of a thousand chariots, crushed between great neighbors, overrun by soldiery and oppressed by famine; in three years' time I should have put courage and high purpose into the people.'" "The Master smiled,--'What wouldst thou do, Ch'iu?' he said." "Jan Yu answered: 'Had I charge of sixty or seventy square miles, or from fifty to sixty, in three years' time I would give the people plenty. As for courtesy, music and the like, they could wait for these for the rise of a Princely Man.'" "'And what wouldst thou do, Chih?' said the Master." "Kung-hsi Hua answered: 'I would speak of the things I fain would learn, not of what I can do. At service in the Ancestral Temple, or at the Grand Audience, clad in black robe and cap, I fain would fill a small part.'" "'And thou, Tien?' said the Master." "Tseng Hsi stopped playing, pushed away his still sounding lute, rose up, and made answer: 'My choice would be unlike those of the other three.'" "'What harm in that?' said the Master. 'Each but speaks his mind.'" "Tseng Hsi said: 'In the last days of Spring, and clad for the season, with five or six grown men and six or seven lads, I would bathe in the waters of Yi, all fanned by the breeze in the Rain God's Glade, and wander home with song.'" "The Master sighed.--'I hold with Tien,' said he." Very, very human, I say; very Chinese. But here is that which was not human but divine: he never turned from his path to satisfy these so human and Chinese longings; the breeze in the Rain God's Glade never blew for him. It is just as well to remember, when you read of the ceremonies, the body bent under the load of the scepter, the carefully chosen (as it may seem) and habitually worn expression of face on passing or approaching the throne, the "elbows spread like wings":--all the formal round of proprieties;--that it was the last days of Spring, and the waters of Yi, and the breeze in the Rain God's Glade, that were calling to his Chinese heart. Yes; he was very human; listen to this:--Yuan Jang awaited the Master squatting on the ground. "The Master said:--'Unruly when young, unmentioned as man, undying when old,--this spells _Good-for-nothing';_ and hit him on the leg with his staff." Which brings one naturally to his sense of humor. Once he was passing through a by-street when a man of the district shouted:--"Great is Confucius the Philosopher! Yet for all his wide learning he has nothing which can bring him fame!" The Master turned to his disciples and said:--"What shall I take up? Shall I take up charioteering?--or archery?--I must certainly take up charioteering!" His disciples once were expecting him at the city of Ch'ing; and Tse Kung asked a man who was coming from the east gate if he had seen him there.--"Well," said the man, "there is a man there with a forehead like Yao, a neck like Kao Yao, his shoulders on a level with those of Tse-ch'an, but wanting below the waist three inches of the height of Yu;--and altogether having the forsaken appearance of a stray dog." Tse Kung recognised the description and hurried off to meet the Master, to whom he reported it _verbatim._ Confucius was hugely delighted. "A stray dog!" said he; "fine! fine!" Unluckily, no contemporary photographs of Yao and Yu and the others have come down; so the description is not as enlightening now as it may have been then. "Tse Kung," we read, "would compare one man with another." The Master said:--"What talents Tse has! Now I have no time for such things!" I keep on hearing in his words accents that sound familiar. When he was at Loyang--Honanfu--one of the things that struck him most was a bronze statue in the Temple of the Imperial Ancestors, with a triple, clasp on its mouth. One does not wonder. A Great Soul from the God World, he kept his eyes resolutely on the world of men; as if he remembered, nothing of the splendor, and nothing foresaw. . . . Indeed, I cannot tell; one would give much to know what really passed between him and Laotse. If you say that no word of his lightens, for you that 'dusk within the Holy of holies',--at least he gives you the keys, and leaves you to find and open the 'Holy of holies' for yourself if you can. There are lost chapters, that went at the Burning of the Books; and an old-fashioned Chinaman would often tell you of any Western idea or invention his countrymen may not have known, that you should have found all in the lost chapters of Confucius. It may be;--and that you should have found there better things, too, than Western ideas and inventions. There is a passage in the _Analects_ that tells how the disciples thought he was 'keeping back from them some part of his doctrine: "No, no," he answered; "if I should not give it all to you, to whom should I give it?" Distinctly, then, this suggests that there was an esotericism, a side not made public; and there is no reason to suppose that it has been made public since. But it is recorded that he would lift no veils from the Other-worlds. "If you do not understand life," said he, "how can you understand death?" Well; we who are stranded here, each on his desert island of selfhood, thrust out after knowledge: peer for signs at all the horizons;--are eager to inquire, and avid of the Unknown--which also we imagine to be something outside of our own being. But suppose a man, as they say one with Tao, in which all knowledge rests in solution: what knowledge would he desire? After what would he be inquisitive? And how much, desiring it, would he possess? What is the end of being, after all? To perform your function, your duty; what men and the world,--ay, and the far suns and stars,--are requiring of you:--that is all. Not to gain infinite knowledge; but to have at, every step what knowledge you need; that so you may fill your place in the Universe, meeting all contours and flowing into them; restoring and maintaining the Harmony of Things. So we hear much about this performance of duty. But in reality, to do one's duty is to sing with the singing spheres; to have the Top of Infinity for the roof of one's skull, and the bottom of the Great Deep for one's footsoles: to be a compendium, and the Equal, of Heaven and Earth. The password into the Tao of Laotse is Silence; Confucius kept the great Silence more wonderfully than Laotse did--or so it seems to me now. Laotse said: _Sing with the singing spheres, and behold, your duty is doing itself uder your hands._ The password into the Tao of Confucius is _Duty:_ he said merely _Do that, and,_--the rest is silence. He may have played that _rest_ on his lute; we are not to hear it in his words. There was a knowledge that Laotse, enthroned in his silence, had no means of using; that Confucius riding the chariot of duty, had no occasion to possess. Now whether you call Tao _duty,_ or _silence,_--what should the Man of Tao desire beyond the fulness of it? All the light is there for him; all the suns are kindled for him;--why should he light wax candles? That is, for himself: he will light them fast enough where others may be in need. To us, a great poem may be a great thing: but to them who have the fulness of which the greatest poem is but a little glimpse--what should it matter to them? And of the infinite knowledge at his disposal, would the Man of Tao choose to burden himself with one little item of which there was no present need? So when they say, "Confucius was nobody; there is no evidence that he knew the great secrets"; answer them:--"Yes, there is. He knew that supreme secret, how to _teach,_ which is the office of a Teacher: he knew how to build up the inner life of his disciples; to coax, train, lure the hidden god into manifestation in them." And for evidence you can give them this: Tse Kung--who, you remember, was always comparing this man with that--asked which was the better, Shih or Shang. (They were two disciples.) Confucius answered: "Shih goes too far; Shang not far enough." Said Tse Kung (just as you or I would have done):-- "Then Shih is the better man?"--"Too far," replied Confucius, "is not better than not far enough."--To my ears there is more occultism in that than in a thousand ethical injunctions.--Or answered;--"Whilst thy father and they elder brother are alive, how canst thou do all thou art taught?" Jan Yu said:--"Shall I do all I am taught?" The Master said:--"Do all thou art taught." Kung-hsi Hua said: "Yu asked, 'Shall I do all I am taught?' and you spoke, Sir, of father and elder brother. Ch'iu asked, 'Shall I do all I am taught?' and you answered: 'Do all thou art taught.' I am puzzled, and make bold to ask you, Sir." The Master said:--"Ch'iu is bashful, so I egged him on. Yu has the pluck of two, so I held him back." Think it over! Think it over! This though occurs to me: Was that sadness of his last days caused by the knowledge that the School could not continue after his death; because the one man who might have succeeded him as the Teacher, Yen Huy, was dead? So far as I know, it did not go on; there was no one to succeed him. That supreme success, that grand capture of future ages for the Gods, was denied him; or I daresay our own civilization might have been Confucian--BALANCED --now. But short of that--how sublime a figure he stands! If he had known that for twenty-five centuries or so he was to shine within the vision of the great unthinking masses of his countrymen as their supreme example; their anchor against the tides of error, against abnormalities, extravagances, unbalance; a bulwark against invading time and decay; a check on every bad emperor, so far as check might be set at all; a central idea to mold the hundred races of Chu Hia into homogeneity; a stay, a prop, a warning against headlong courses at all times of cyclic downtrend;--if he had known all this, he would, I think, have ordered his life precisely as he did. Is there no strength implied, as of the Universal, and not of any personal, will, however titanic, in the fact that moment after moment, day after day, year after year, he built up this picture, gave the world this wonderful assurance of a man? In his omissions, no less than in his fulfilments. He taught,--so far as we know,--nothing but what the common mind might easily accept; nothing to miss the mark of the intelligence of dull Li or Ching toiling in the rice-field;--nor yet too paltry for the notice of the Hwangti on the Dragon Throne. Laotse had come in the spirit of Plenydd the Light-bringer; in the spirit of Alawn, to raise up presently sweet profusions of song. He illuminated the inner worlds; his was the urge that should again and again, especially later when reinforced by Buddhism, prick up the Black-haired People to heights of insight and spiritual achievement.--But the cycles of insight and spiritual achievement, these too, must always run their course and fall away; there is no year when it is always Spring. Dark moments and seasons come; and the Spirit becomes hidden; and what you need most is not illumination,--which you cannot get; or if you could, it would be hell, and not heaven, that would be illuminated for you; not a spur to action,--for as things are constituted, any spur at such a time would drive you to wrong and exorbitant action:--what you need is not these, but simply stability to hold on; simply the habit of propriety, the power to go on at least following harmless conventions and doing harmless things; not striking out new lines for yourself, which would certainly be wrong lines, but following as placidly as may be lines that were laid down for you, or that you yourself laid down, in more righteous and more luminous times. A strong government, however tyrannical, is better than an anarchy in which the fiend in every man is let loose to run amuck. Under the tyranny, yes, the aspiring man will find himself hindered and thwarted; but under the anarchy, since man is no less hell than heaven, the gates of hell will be opened, and the Soul, normally speaking, can only retire and wait for better times:--unless it be the Soul of a Confucius, it can but wait till Karma with ruthless hands has put down the anarchy and cleared things up. Unless it be the Soul of a Confucius; and even Such a One is bound to be a failure in his own day. But see what he did. The gates of hell were swung wide, and for the time being, not the hosts of the Seraphim and Cherubim,--not the armed Bodhisatvas and Dhyanis,--could have forced them back on their hinges: "the ripple of effect," we read, "thou shalt let run its course." But in the ideal world he erected a barrier against them. He set up a colossal statue with arms outthrown to bar the egress; the statue of Confucius preaching the Balanced Life. With time it materialized, so to say, and fell into place. You can never certainly stop the gates of hell,--in this stage of our evolution. But perhaps as nearly as it can be done, he did it. Rome fell, and Christendom made a mess of things; it has never yet achieved that union which is the first condition of true civilization. But China, older than Rome, despite her sins and vicissitudes, has made a shift to stand. I shall come to comparing the two histories presently; then you will see. When the pralaya came on her, and the forces of life all went elsewhere--as they do and must from every civilization in their season,--China lost two of her treasures: Plenydd's vision, and Alawn's gift of song, were taken from her. But this stability; these Gloves of Gwron; this instinct for middle courses and the balance, this Doctrine of the Mean and love of plain sane doings: she has retained enough of this to keep her in being. And it was K'ung Ch'iu of Lu that gave it to her. Shall we not call him Such a One as only the Gods send? Someone told me the other day what he had seen a couple of Chinamen do in a Californian garden. They had a flower-bed to plant, about forty feet long; and each a basket of seedlings to plant it with, and a slip of wood for a model, with mystic unintelligible signs inscribed thereon: WELCOME HOME in English capitals. One went to one end of the bed and the other to the other, and they began their planting. They made no measurements or calculations; used no rod or line; but just worked ahead till they met in the middle. When that happened, and the job was done, the bed was inscribed, in perfectly formed and proportioned English capitals made of young plants, WELCOME HOME. There was no crowding or omission. To account for it you have twenty-four centuries of Confucianism,--of Katherine Tingley's doctrine of Middle Lines, the Balanced Life. It is a very small thing; but it may help us to understand. XII. TALES FROM A TAOIST TEACHER Confucius died in 478: the year, it may be noted, in which Athens attained her hegemony: or just when the Greek Cycle thirteen decades was opening. Looking backward thirteen decades from that, we come to 608 B.C.; four years after which date, according to the usually accepted tradition, Laotse was born. Thus we find the cycle preceding that of Greece mainly occupied, in China, by the lives of the two great Teachers. We should have seen by this time that these two lives were, so to say, parts of a single whole: co-ordinated spiritually, if not in an organization on this plane. Laotse, like H.P. Blavatsky, brought the Teachings; he illuminated the inner worlds. That was his work. We can see little of him as he accomplished it: and only the smallest fragment of his doctrine remains:--five thousand words, out of his whole long life. But since we have had in our own time an example of how these things are done, we may judge him and his mission by this analogy; also by the results. Then came Confucius, like Katherine Tingley, to link this wisdom with individual and national life. The teachings were there; and he had no need to restate them: he might take the great principles as already enounced. But every Teacher has his own method, and his need to accentuate this or that: so time and history have had most to say about the differences between these two. What Confucius had to do, and did, was to found his school, and show in the lives of his disciples, modeled under his hands, how the wisdom of the Ages (and of Laotse) can be made a living power in life and save the world. Contrasting the efforts of that age and this, we may say that then, organization, such as we have now, was lacking. Confucius did not come as the official successor of Laotse; Laotse, probably, had had no organized school that he could hand over to Confucius. He had taught, and his influence had gone far and wide, affecting the thought of the age; but he had had no trained and pledged body of students to whom he could say: 'Follow this man when I am gone; he is my worthy successor.'-- All of which will be laughed at: I firmly believe, however, that it is an accurate estimate of things. When you come to think of it, it was by the narrowest margine that H. P. Blavatsky, through Mr. Judge--and his heroism and wisdom alone to be thanked for it!--had anything beyond the influence of her ideas and revelation to hand on to Katherine Tingley. In the way of an organization, I mean. Very few among her disciples had come to have any glimmering of what discipleship means, or were prepared to follow her accredited successors. And Confucius, in his turn, had no established center for his school; it was a thing that wandered the world with him, and ceased, as in organization (however hazy) to exist when he died. Nothing remained, then, of either Teacher for posterity except the ideas and example. And yet I have hinted, and shall try to show, that tremendous results for good followed: that the whole course of history was turned in an upward direction. You may draw what inferences you will. The matter is profoundly significant. Thirteen decades after the death of Confucius, Plato died in Greece; and about that time two men arose in China to carry forward, bring down, and be the expositors of, the work of the two great Teachers of the sixth and seventh centuries. These were Chwangtse for Taoism, and Mangtse or Mencius for Confucius: the one, the channel through which spiritual thought flowed to the quickening of the Chinese imagination; the other, the man who converted the spiritual thought of Confucius into the Chinese Constitution. Alas! they were at loggerheads: a wide breach between the two schools of thought had come to be by their time; or perhaps it was they who created it. We shall arrive at them next week; tonight, to introduce you to Liehtse, a Taoist teacher who came sometime between Laotse and Chwangtse;--perhaps in the last quarter of the fifth century, when Socrates was active in Greece. Professor De Groot, of Holland, speaks boldly of Confucius as a Taoist; and though I dislike many of this learned Dutchman's ideas, this one is excellent. His thesis is that Laotse was no more an innovator than Confucius; that both but gave a new impulse to teachings as old as the race. Before Laotse there had been a Teacher Quan, a statesman-philosopher of the seventh century, who had also taught the Tao. The immemorial Chinese idea had been that the Universe is made of the interplay of two forces, _Yang_ and _Yin,_ positive and negative;--or simply the Higher and the Lower natures. To the Yang, the Higher, belong the _Shen_ or gods,--all conscious beneficent forces within and without man. To the Yin or lower belong the _kwei,_ the opposite of gods: _fan_ means foreign; and _Fan Kwei_ is the familiar Chinese term for white men. From Shen and Tao we get the term _Shentao,_ which you know better as _Shinto,_--the Way of the Gods; or as well, the Wisdom of the Gods; as good an equivalent of our term _Theosophy_ as you should find; perhaps indeed better than _Theosophy_ itself; for it drives home the idea that the _Wisdom_ is a practical _Way of Life._ Shentao, the Taoism of the Higher Nature, then, was the primeval religion of the Chinese;--Dr. De Groot arrives at this, though perhaps hardly sees how sensible a conclusion he has reached. In the sixth century B.C. it was in a fair way to becoming as obsolete as Neoplatonism or Gnosticism in the nineteenth A.D.; and Laotse and Confucius simply restated some aspects of it with a new force and sanction;--just as H.P. Blavatsky, in the _Key to Theosophy,_ begins, you will remember, with an appeal to and restatement of the Theosophy of the Gnostics and Neoplatonists of Alexandria. It may seem a kind of divergence from our stream of history, to turn aside and tell stories from the _Book of Liehtse;_ but there are excuses. Chinese history, literature, thought-- everything--have been such a closed book to the West, that those scholars who have opened a few of its pages are to be considered public benefactors; and there is room and to spare for any who will but hold such opened pages up;--we are not in the future to dwell so cut off from a third of mankind. Also it will do us good to look at Theosophy from the angle of vision of another race. I think Liehtse has much to show us as to the difference between the methods of the Chinese and Western minds: the latter that must bring most truths down through the brain-mind, and set them forth decked in the apparel of reason; the former that is, as it seems to me, often rather childlike as to the things of the brain-mind; but has a way of bringing the great truths down and past the brain-mind by some circuitous route; or it may be only by a route much more direct than ours. The West presents its illuminations so that they look big on the surface; you say, This is the work of a great mind. A writer in the _Times Literary Supplement_ brought out the idea well, in comparing the two poetries. What he said was, in effect, as follows:--the Western poet, too often, dons his singing robe before he will sing; works himself up; expects to step out of current life into the Grand Manner;--and unless the Soul happens to be there and vocal at the time, achieves mostly _pombundle._ The Chinaman presents his illumination as if it were nothing at all,--just the simplest childish-foolish thing; nothing in the world for the brain-mind to get excited about. You take very little notice at the time: more of their quaint punchinello _chinoiserie,_ you say. Three weeks after, you find that it was a clear voice from the supermundane, a high revelation. The Chinese poet saunters along playing a common little tune on his Pan-pipes. Singing robes?-- None in the world; just what he goes to work in. Grand Manner?-- 'Sir,' says he, 'the contemptible present singer never heard of it; wait for that till the coming of a Superior Man.'--'Well,' you say, 'at least there is no danger of _pombundle';_ and indeed there is not. But you rather like the little tune, and stop to listen . . . and then . . . Oh God! the Wonder of wonders has happened, and the Universe will never be quite the dull, fool, ditchwater thing it was to you before . . . Liehtse gives one rather that kind of feeling. We know practically nothing about him.--I count three stages of growth among the sinologists: the first, with a missionary bias; the second, with only the natural bias of pure scholarship and critical intellectualism, broad and generous, but rather running at times towards tidying up the things of the Soul from off the face of the earth; the third, with scholarship plus sympathy, understanding, and a dash of mystical insight. The men of the first stage accepted Liehtse as a real person, and called him a degenerator of Taoism, a teacher of immoral doctrine;--in the _Book of Liehtse,_ certainly, such doctrine is to be found. The men of the second stage effectually tidied Liehtse up: Dr. H. A. Giles says he was an invention of the fertile brain of Chwangtse, and his book a forgery of Han times. Well; people did forge ancient literature in those days, and were well paid for doing so; and you cannot be quite certain of the complete authenticity of any book purporting to have been written before Ts'in Shi Hwangti's time. Also Chwangtse's brain was fertile enough for anything;--so that there was much excuse for the men of the second stage. But then came Dr. Lionel Giles* who belongs to the third stage, and perhaps _is_ the third stage. He shows that though there is in the _Book of Liehtse_ a residue or scum of immoral teaching, it is quite in opposition to the tendency of the teaching that remains when this scum is removed; and deduces from this fact the sensible idea that the scum was a later forgery; the rest, the authentic work of a true philosopher with an original mind and a style of his own. Such a man, of course, might have lived later than Chwangtse, and taken his nom de plume of Liehtse from the latter's book; but against this there is the fact that Liehtse's teaching forms a natural link between Chtangtse's and that of their common Master Laotse; and above all--and herein lies the real importance of him--the real Liehtse treats Confucius as a Teacher and Man of Tao. But by Chwangtse's time the two schools had separated: Confucius was Chwangtse's butt;--we shall see why. And in the scum of Liehtse he is made fun of in Chwangtse's spirit, but without Changtse's wit and style. ------ * Whose translation of parts of the _Book of Liehtse,_ with an invaluable preface, appears in the _Wisdom of the East Series;_ from which translation the passages quoted in this lecture are taken;--as also are many ideas from the preface. ------ So that whoever wrote this book,--whether it was the man referred to by Chwangtse when he says: "There was Liehtse again; he could ride upon the wind and go wheresoever he wished, staying away as long as thirteen days,"--or someone else of the same name, he did not take his non de plume from that passage in Chwangtse, because he was probably dead when Chwangtse wrote it. We may, then, safely call him a Taoist Teacher of the fifth century,--or at latest of the early fourth. The book's own account of itself is, that it was not written by Liehtse, but compiled from his oral teaching by his disciples. Thus it begins: "Our Master Liehtse live in the Cheng State for forty years, and no man knew him for what he was. The prince, his ministers, and the state officials looked upon him as one of the common herd. A time of dearth fell upon the state, and he was preparing to emigrate to Wei, when his disciples said to him: 'Now that our Master is going away without any prospect of returning, we have ventured to approach him, hoping for instruction. Are there no words from the lips of Hu-Ch'iu Tsu-lin that you can impart to us?'--Lieh the Master smiled and said: 'Do you suppose that Hu Tzu dealt in words? However, I will try to repeat to you what my Teacher said on one occasion to Po-hun Moujen. I was standing by and heard his words, which ran as follows.'" Then come some rather severe metaphysics on cosmogony: really, a more systematic statement of the teaching thereon which Laotse referred to, but did not (in the _Tao Teh King_) define. 'More systematic,'--and yet by no means are the lines laid down and the plan marked out; there is no cartography of cosmogenesis; . . . but seeds of meditation are sown. Of course, it is meaningless nonsense for the mind to which all metaphysics and abstract thought are meaningless nonsense. Mystics, however, will see in it an attempt to put the Unutterable into words. One paragraph may be quoted: "There is life, and That which produces life; form, and That which imparts form; sound, and That which causes color; taste, and That which causes taste. The source of life is death; but That which produces life never comes to an end." Remember the dying Socrates: 'life comes from death, as death from life.' We appear, at birth, out of that Unseen into which we return at death, says Liehtse; but that which produces life, --which is the cause of this manifestation (you can say, the Soul),--is eternal. "The origin of form is matter; but That which imparts form has no material existence." No; because it is the down-breathing spirit entering into matter; matter being the medium through which it creates, or to which it imparts, form. "The form to which the clay is modeled is first united with"--or we may say, projected from--"the potter's mind." "The genesis of sound lies in the sense of hearing; but That which causes sound is never audible to the ear. The source of color"--for 'source' we might say, the 'issuing-point'--"is vision; but That which produces color never manifests to the eye. The origin of taste lies in the palate; but That which causes taste is never perceived by that sense. All these pehnomena are functions of the Principle of Inaction--the inert unchanging Tao." One is reminded of a passage in the _Talavakara-Upanishad:_ "That which does not speak by speech, but by which speech is expressed: That alone shalt thou know as Brahman, not that which they here adore. "That which does not think by mind, but by which mind is itself thought: That alone shalt thou know as Brahman, not that which they here adore." And so it continues of each of the sense-functions. After this, Liehtse for the most wanders from story to story; he taught in parables; and sometimes we have to listen hard to catch the meaning of them, he rarely insists on it, or drives it well home, or brings it down to levels of plain-spokenness at which it should declare itself to a westem mind. Here, again, is the Chinese characteristic: the touch is lighter; more is left to the intuition of the reader; the lines are less heavily drawn. They rely on a kind of intelligence in the readers, akin to the writers', to see those points at a glance, which we must search for carefully. Where each word has to be drawn, a little picture taking time and care, you are in no danger of overlavishness; you do not spill and squander your words, "intoxicated," as they say, "with the exuberance of your verbosity." Style was forced on the Chinese; ideograms are a grand preventive against pombundle.--I shall follow Liehtse's method, and go from story to story at random; perhaps interpreting a little by the way. We saw how Confucius insisted on balance: egging on Jan Yu, who was bashful, and holding back Tse Lu, who had the pluck of two;-- declaring that Shih was not a better man than Shang, because too far is not better than not far enough. The whole Chinese idea is that this balance of the faculties is the first and grand essential. Your lobsided man can make no progress really;--he must learn balance first. An outstanding virtue, talent, or aptitude, is a deterrent, unless the rest of the nature is evolved up to it;--that is why the Greatest Men are rarely the most striking men; why a Napoleon catches the eye much more quickly than a Confucius; something stands out in the one,--and compels attention; but all is even in the other. You had much better not have genius, if you are morally weak; or a very strong will, if you are a born fool. For the morally weak genius will end in moral wreck; and the strong-willed fool--a plague upon him! This is the truth, knowledge of which has made China so stable; and ignorance of which has kept the West so brilliant and fickle,--of duality such poles apart,--so lobsided and, I think, in a true sense, so little progressive. For see how many centuries we have had to wait while ignorance, bigotry, wrong ideas, and persecution, have prevented the establishment on any large scale of a Theosophical Movement--and be not too ready to accept a whirl of political changes, experiment after experiment,--and latterly a spurt of mechanical inventions,--for True Progress: which I take to mean, rightly considered, the growth of human egos, and freedom and an atmosphere in which they may grow. But these they had in China abundantly while China was in manvantara; do not think I am urging as our example the fallen China of these pralayic times. Balance was the truth Confucius impressed on the Chinese mentality: the saving Truth of truths, I may say; and it is perhaps the truth which most of all will stand connected with the name of Katherine Tingley in the ages to come:--the saving Truth of truths, which will make a new and better world for us. You must have it, if you are to build solidly; it is the foundation of any true social order; the bedrock on which alone a veritable civilization can be built. Oh, your unbalanced genius can produce things of startling beauty; and they have their value, heaven knows. The Soul watches for its chances, and leaps in at surprising moments: the arm clothed in white samite may reach forth out of the bosom of all sorts of curious quagmires; and when it does, should be held in reverence as still and always a proof of the underlying divinity of man. But--there where the basis of things is not firmly set: where that mystic, wonderful reaching out is not from the clear lake, but from turbidity and festering waters-- where the grand balance has not been acquired:--You must look to come on tragedy. The world has gained something from the speech of the Soul there; but the man through whom It spoke;--it has proved too much for him. The vibrations were too strong, and shattered him. Think of Keats . . . and of thousands of others, poets, musicians, artists. Where you get the grand creations, the unfitful shining,--there you get evidence of a balance: with genius--the daimonic force--no greater than, perhaps not so keen as, that of those others, you find a strong moral will. Dante and Milton suffered no less than others from those perils to which all creative artists are subject: both complain bitterly of inner assailments and torment; but they had, to balance their genius, the strong moral urge to fight their weaknesses all through life. It could not save their personalities from suffering; but it gave the Soul in each of them a basis on which to build the grand steadfast creations.--All of which Chinese Liehtse tells you without comment, and with an air of being too childish-foolish for this world, in the following story:-- Kung-hu and Chi-ying fell ill, and sought the services of the renowned doctor, Pien-chiao. He cured them with his drugs; then told them they were also suffering from diseases no drugs could reach, born with them at their birth, and that had grown up with them through life. "Would you have me grapple with these?" said he.--"Yes," said they; but wished first to hear the diagnosis.-- "You," he said to kung-hu, "have strong mental powers, but are weak in character; so, though fruitful in plans, you are weak in decision." "You," he said to Chi-ying, "are stong of will, though stupid; so there is a narrowness in your aims and a want of foresight. Now if I can effect an exchange of hearts between you, the good will be equally balanced in both." They agreed at once: Kung-hu, with the weaker will, was to get the smaller mental powers to match it; Chi-ying was to get a mentality equal to his firm will. We should think Kung-hu got very much the worst of the bargain; but he, and Dr. Pien-chiao, and Liehtse, and perhaps Chinamen generally, thought and would think nothing of the kind. To them, to have balanced faculties was far better than to have an intellect too big for one's will-power; because such balance would afford a firm basis from which will and intellect might go forward in progress harmoniously. So Pien-chiao put both under a strong anaesthetic, took out their hearts, and made the exchange (the heart being, with the Chinese, the seat of mentality); and after that the health of both was perfect.--You may laugh; but after all there is a grandeur in the recognition implied, that the intellect is not the man, but only one of his possessions. The story is profoundly characteristic: like Ah Sin's smile in the poem, "childlike and bland"; but hiding wonderful depths of philosophy beneath. Laotse showed his deep Occult wisdom when he said that the Man of Tao "does difficult things while they are still easy." Liehtse tells you the story of the Assitant to the Keeper of the Wild Beasts at Loyang. His name was Lian yang, and his fame went abroad for having a wonderful way with the creatures in his charge. Hsuan Wang, the Chow king, heard of it; and sent orders to the Chief Keeper to get the secret from Liang, lest it should die with him.--"How is it," said the Keeper, "that when you feed them, the tigers, wolves, eagles, and ospreys all are tame and tractable? That they roam at large in the park, yet never claw and bite one another? That they propagate their species freely, as if they were wild? His Majesty bids you reveal to me the secret." A touch of nature here: all zoologists know how difficult it is to get wild beasts to breed in captivity. Lian Yang answered: "I am only a humble servant, and have really no secret to tell. I fear the king has led you to expect something mysterious. As to the tigers: all I can say is that, like men, when yielded to they are pleased and when opposed they are angry. Nothing gives way either to pleasure or to anger without a cause; and anger, by reaction, will follow pleasure, and pleasure anger. I do not excite the tigers' joy by giving them live creatures to kill, or whole carcasses to tear up. I neither rouse their anger by opposing them, nor humor them to make them pleased. I time their periods of hunger and anticipate them. It is my aim to be neither antagonistic nor compliant; so they look upon me as one of themselves. Hence they walk about the parks without regretting the tall forests and broad marshes, and rest in the enclosure without yearning for lonely mountain or dark vale. It is merely using common sense." And there Liehtse leaves it in all its simplicity; but I shall venture to put my spoke in, and add that he has really given you a perfect philosophy for the conduct of life: for the government of that other and inner tiger, the lower nature, especially; it is always that, you will remember, for which the Tiger stands in Chinese symbology;--and also for education, the government of nations--everything. Balance,--Middle lines,--Avoidance of Extremes,--Lines of Least Resistance:--by whom are we hearing these things inculcated daily? Did they not teach Raja-Yoga in ancient China? Have not our school and its principles a Chinese smack about them? Well; it was these principles made China supremely great; and kept her alive and strong when all her contemporaries had long passed into death; and, I hope, have ingrained something into her soul and hidden being, which will make her rise to wonderful heights again. You can hear Laotse in them; it is the practical application of Laotse's doctrine. But can you not equally hear the voice of Confucius: "too far is not better than not far enough"? Western ethical teaching has tended towards inculcating imitation of the soul's action: this Chinese teaching takes the Soul for granted; says very little about it; but shows you how to provide the soul with the conditions through and in which it may act. "Love your enemies;"--yes; that is fine; it is what the Soul, the Divine Part of us, does;--but we are not in the least likely to do it while suffering from the reaction from an outburst of emotion; ethics grow rather meaningless to us when, for example, we have toppled over from our balance into pleasure, eaten not wisely but too well, say; and then toppled back into the dumps with an indigestion. But where the balance is kept you need few ethical injunctions; the soul is there, and may speak; and sees to all that. Hu-Chiu Tzu-lin, we read, taught Liehtse these things. Said he: "You must familiarize yourself with the Theory of Consequents before you can talk of regulating conduct." Liehtse said:--"Will you explain what you mean by the Theory of Consequents?" "Look at your shadow," said his teacher; "and you will know." Liehtse turned his head and looked at his shadow. When his body was bent the shadow was crooked; when upright, it was straight. Thus it appeared that the attributes of straightness and crookedness were not inherent in the shadow, but corresponded to certain positions in the body . . . . "Holding this Theory of Consequents," says Liehtse, "is to be at home in the antecedent." Now the antecedent of the personality is the Soul; the antecedent of the action is the motive; the antecedent of the conduct of life is the relation in which the component faculties of our being stand to each other and to the Soul. If the body is straight, so is the shadow; if the inner harmony or balance is attained and held to--well; you see the point. "The relative agrees with its antecedent," say the grammar books, very wisely. It is karma again: the effect flowing from the cause. "You may consider the virtues of Shennung and Yuyen," says Liehtse; "you may examine the books of Yu, Kia, Shang, and Chow,"--that is, the whole of history;--"you may weight the utterances of the great Teachers and Sages; but you will find no instance of preservation or destruction, fulness or decay, which has not obeyed this supreme Law of Causality." Where are you to say that Liehtse's Confucianism ends, and his Taoism begins? It is very difficult to draw a line. Confucius, remember, gave _"As-the-heart"_ for the single character that should express his whole doctrine. Liehtse is leading you inward, to see how the conduct of life depends upon Balance, which also is a word that may translate _Tao._ Where the balance is, there we come into relations with the great Tao. There is nothing supra-Confucian here; though soon we may see an insistence upon the Inner which, it may be supposed, later Confucianism, drifting toxards externalism, would hardly have enjoyed.--A man in Sung carved a mulberry-leaf in jade for his prince. It took three years to complete, and was so well done, so realistic in its down and glossiness, that if placed in a heap of real mulberry-leaves, it could not be distinguished from them. The State pensioned him as a reward; but Liehtse, hearing of it, said: "If God Almighty took three years to complete a leaf, there would be very few trees with leaves on them. The Sage will rely less on human skill and science, than on the evolution of Tao." Lung Shu came to the great doctor Wen Chih, and said to him: "You are the master of cunning arts. I have a disease; can you cure it, Sir?" "So far," said Wen Chih, "you have only made known your desire. Please let me know the symptoms of your disease." They were, utter indifference to the things and events of the world. "I hold it no honor to be praised in my own village, nor disgrace to be decried in my native State. Gain brings me no joy, loss no sorrow. I dwell in my home as if it were a mere caravanserai, and regard my native district as though it were one of the barbarian kingdoms. Honors and rewards fail to rouse me, pains and penalties to overawe me, good or bad fortune to influence me; joy or grief to move me. What disease is this? What remedy will cure it?" * ------ * I may say here that though I am quoting the speeches more or less directly from Dr. Lionel Giles' translation, too many liberties are being taken, verbally, with the narative parts of these stories, to allow quotation marks and small type. One contracts and expands (sparingly, the latter); but gives the story. ------ Wen Chih examined his heart under X-rays;--really and truly that is in effect what Liehtse says.--"Ah," said he, "I see that a good square inch of your heart is hollow; you are within a little of being a true Sage. Six of the orifices are open and clear, and only the seventh is blocked up. This last is doubtless due to the fact that you are mistaking for a disease what is in reality an approach to divine enlightenment. It is a case in which my shallow art is of no avail." I tell this tale, as also that other about the exchange of hearts, partly to suggest that Liehtse's China may have had the actuality, or at least a reminiscence, of scientific knowledge since lost there, and only discovered in Europe recently. In the same way one finds references to automatic oxen, self-moving chariots, traveling by air, and a number of other things which, as we read of them, sound just like superstitious nonsense. There are old Chinese drawings of pterodactyls, and suchlike unchancey antediluvian wild fowl. _Argal,_ (you would say) the Chinese knew of these once; although Ptero and his friends have been extinct quite a few million years, one supposes. Or was it superstition again? Then why was it not superstition in Professor So-and-so, who found the bones and reconstructed the beastie for holiday crowds to gaze upon at the Crystal Palace or the Metropolitan Museum? Knowledge does die away into reminiscence, and then into oblivion; and the chances are that Liehtse's time retained reminiscences which have since become oblivion-hidden;--then rediscovered in the West.--But I tell the tale also for a certain divergence marked in it, between Taoist and Confucian thought. Laotse would have chuckled over it, who brooded much on 'self-emptiness' as the first step towards illumination. Confucius would have allowed it; but it would not have occurred to him, unsuggested. Now here is something still further from Confucianism; something prophetic of later Taoist developments, though it still contains Laotse's thought, and--be it said--deep wisdom. Fan Tsu Hua was a bully and a charlatan, who by his trickery had won such hold over the king of Tsin that anyone he might recommend was surely advanced to office, and anyone he cried down would lose his all. So it was said he had magic to make the rich poor and the poor rich. He had many disciples, who were the terror of the peaceably disposed. One day they saw an old weak man approaching, 'with weather-beaten face and clothes of no particular cut.' A chance for sport not to be neglected, they thought; and began to hustle him about in their usual fashion, 'slapping him on the back, and what not.' But he--Shang Ch'iu K'ai was his name--seemed only full of joy and serenity, and heeded nothing. Growing tired of their fun at last, they would make an end of it; and led him to the top of a high cliff. "Whoever dares throw himself over," said one of them, "will find a hundred ounces of silver," which certainly he had not had with him at the top, and none of them had put there. It was a wonder; and still more a wonder his being unhurt; but you can make chance account for most things, and they meant to get rid of him. So they brought him to the banks of the river, saying: "A pearl of great price is here, to be had for the diving." In he went without a word, and disappeared duly; and so, thought they, their fun had come to a happy end. But no: as they turned to go, up he came, serene and smiling, and scrambled out. "Well; did you find the pearl?" they asked. "Oh yes," said Shang; "it was just as your honors said." He showed it to them; and it was indeed a pearl of great price. Here was something beyond them; the old man, clearly, was a favorite of Fortune; Fan their master himself must deal with him. So they sent word ahead, and brought him to the palace of Fan. Who understood well the limitations of quack magic: if he was to be beaten at these tricks, where would his influence be? So he heaped up riches in the courtyard, and made a great fire all round.--"Anyone can have those things," he announced, "who will go in and get them." Shang quietly walked through the flames, and came out with his arms full; not a hair of his head was singed. And now they were filled with consternation; they had been making a mock of Tao these years; and here evidently was a real Master of Tao, come to expose them.--"Sir," they said, "we did not know that you posessed the Secret, and were playing you tricks. We insulted you, unaware that you were a divine man. But you have leaped from the cliff, dived into the Yellow River, and walked through the flames without injury; you have shown us our stupidity, blindness, and deafness. We pray you to forgive us, and to reveal to us the Secret." He looked at them in blank amazement.--"What is this you are telling me?" said he. "I am only old Shang Ch'iu K'ai the peasant. I heard that you, Sir, by your magic could make the poor rich. I wanted to be rich, so I came to you. I believed in you absolutely, and in all your disciples said; and so my mind was made one; I forgot my body; I saw nothing of cliffs or fire or water. But now you say you were decieving me, my soul returns to its perplexity, and my eyes and ears to their sight and hearing. What terrible dangers I have escaped! My limbs freeze with horror to think of them." Tsai Wo, continues Liehtse, told this story to Confucius.--"Is this so strange to you?" said the latter. "The man of perfect faith can move heaven and earth, and fly to the six cardinal points without hindrance. His powers are not confined to walking in perilous places and passing through water and fire. If Shang Ch'iu K'ai, whose motive was greed and whose belief was false, found no obstacle in external things, how much more certainly will it be so when the motive is pure and both parties sincere?" I will finish it with what is really another of Liehtse's stories,--also dealing with a man who walked through fire uninjured, unconscious of it because of the one-pointedness of his mind. The incident came to the ears of Marquis Wen of Wei, who spoke to Tsu Hsia, a disciple of Confucius, about it.--"From what I have heard the Master say," said Tsu Hsia, "the man who achieves harmony with Tao enters into close relations with outer objects, and none of them has power to harm or hinder him."--"Why, my friend," said the Marquis, "cannot you do all these marvels?"--"I have not yet succeeded," said Tsu Hsia, "in cleansing my heart from impurities and discarding brainmind wisdom."--"And why," said the Marquis, "cannot the Master himself" (Confucius, of course) "perform such feats?"--"The Master," said Tsu Hsia, "is able to perform them; but _he is also able to refrain from performing them."_--which, again, he was. Here is another example: Hui Yang went to visit Prince K'ang of Sung. The prince, however, stamped his foot, rasped his throat, and said angrily:-- "The things I like are courage and strength. I am not fond of your good and virtuous people. What can a stranger like you have to teach me?" "I have a secret," said Hui Yang, "whereby my opponent, however brave or strong, can be prevented from harming me either by thrust or blow. Would not Your Highness care to know that secret?" "Capital!" said the Prince; "that is certainly something I should like to hear about." "True," said Hui yang, "when you render his stabs or blows ineffectual, you cover your opponent with shame. But my secret will make him, however brave or strong, afraid to stab or strike at all." "Better still," said the Prince; "let me hear about it." "It is all very well for him to be afraid to do it." said Hui Yang; "but that does not imply he has no will to do it. Now, my secret would deprive him even of the will." "Better and better," said Prince K'ang; "I beseech you to reveal it to me." "Yes," said Hui Yang; "but this not having the will to injure does not necessarily connote a desire to love and do good. But my secret is one whereby every man, woman, and child in the empire shall be inspired with the friendly desire to love and do good to each other. This is much better than the possession of mere courage and strength. Has Your Highness no mind to acquire such a secret as this?" The Prince confessed that, on the contray, he was most anxious to learn it. "It is nothing else than the teachings of Confucius and Mo Ti," said Hui Yang. A main idea of Taoism--one with which the Confucius of orthodox Confucianism did not concern himself--is the possibility of creating within one's outer and mortal an inner and immortal self; by subduing desire, by sublimating away all impurities, by concentration. The seed of that Immortality is hidden in us; the seed of mastery of the inner and outer worlds. Faith is the key. Shang Ch'iu K'ai, whose "faith had made him whole," walked through fire. "Whoso hath faith as a grain of mustard-seed," said Jesus, can move mountains. It sounds as if he had been reading the _Book of Liehtse;_ which is at pains to show how the thing is done. T'ai-hsing and Wang-wu, the mountains, stood not where they stand now, but in the south of the Chi district and north of Ho-yang. I like the tale well, and shall tell it for its naive Chinesity. The Simpleton of the North Mountain, an old man of ninety, dwelt opposite to them, and was vexed in spirit because their northern flanks blocked the way for travelers, who had to go round. So he called his family together and broached a plan.--"Let us put forth our utmost strength and clear away this obstacle," said he; "let us cut right through the mountains till we come to Han-yin." All agreed except his wife. "My goodman," said she, "has not the strength to sweep away a dung-hill, let alone such mountains as T'ai-hsing and Wang-wu. Besides, where will you put the earth and stones?" They answered that they would throw them on the promontory of P'o-hai. So the old man, followed by his son and grandson, sallied forth with their pickaxes, and began hewing away at the rocks and cutting up the soil, and carting it away in baskets to the promontory. A widow who lived near by had a little boy who, though he was only just shedding his milk-teeth, came skipping along to give them what help he could. Engrossed in their toil they never went home except once at the turn of the season. The Wise Old Man of the River-bend burst out laughing and urged them to stop. "Great indeed is your witlessness!" said he. "With the poor remaining strength of your declining years you will not succeed in removing a hair's-breadth of the mountains, much less the whole vast mass of rock and soil." With a sigh the Simpleton of the North Mountain answered:--"Surely it is you who are narrow-minded and unreasonable. You are not to be compared with the widow's son, despite his puny strength. Though I myself must die, I shall leave my son behind me, and he his son. My grandson will beget sons in his turn, and those sons also will have sons and grandsons. With all this posterity my line will not die out; while on the other hand the mountains will receive no increment or addition. Why then should I despair of leveling them to the ground at last?"--The Wise Old Man of the River-bend had nothing to say in reply. Chinese! Chinese!--From whatever angle you look at it, it smacks of the nation that saw Babylon fall, and Rome, and may yet-- But look now, at what happened. There was something about the project and character of the Simpleton of the North Mountain, that attracted the attention of the Serpent-Brandishing deities. They reported the matter to Almighty God; who was interested; and perhaps was less patient than the simpleton.--I do not quite know who this person translated 'Almighty God' may be; I think he figures in the Taoist hierarchy somewhere below Laotse and the other Adepts. At any rate he was in a position to order the two sons of K'ua O--and I do not know who K'ua O and his sons were-- to expedite matters. So the one of them took up T'ai-hsing, and the other Wu-wang, and transported them to the positions where they remain to this day to prove the truth of Liehtse's story. Further proof:--the region between Ts'i in the north and Han in the south--that is to say, northern Homan--is still and has been ever since, an unbroken plain. And perhaps, behind this naive Chinesity, lie grand enunciations of occult law. . . . I will end with what is probably Liehtse's most famous story-- and, from a purely literary standpoint, his best. It is worthy of Chwangtse himself; and I tell it less for its philosophy than for its fun. One morning a fuel-gatherer--we may call him Li for convenience, though Liehtse leaves him nameless--killed a deer in the forest; and to keep the carcass safe till he went home in the evening, hid it under a pile of brushwood. His work during the day took him far and when he looked for the deer again, he could not find it. "I must have dreamed the whole thing," he said;--and satisfied himself with that explanation. He made a verse about it as he trudged home through the woods, and went crooning: At dawn in the hollow, beside the stream, I hid the deer I killed in the dream; At eve I sought for it far and near; And found 'twas a dream that I killed the deer. He passed the cottage of Yen the woodman--Yen we may call him, though Liehtse calls him nothing.--who heard the song, and pondered. "One might as well take a look at the place," thought he; it seemed to him it might be such and such a hollow, by such and such a stream. Thither he went, and found the pile of brushwood; It looked to him a likely place enough to hide a deer under. He made search, and there the carcass was. He took it home and explained the matter to his wife. "Once upon a time," said he, "a fuel-gatherer dreamed he had killed a deer and forgotten where he had hidden it. Now I have got the deer, and here it is; so his dream came true, in a way."--"Rubbish!" she answered. "It was you must have dreamed the fuel-gatherer and his dreim. You must have killed the deer yourself, since you have it there; but where is your fuel-gatherer?" That night Li dreamed again; and in his dream saw Yen fetch the deer from its hiding-place and bring it home. So in the morning he went to Yen's house and there, sure enough, the deer was. They argued the matter out, but to no purpose. Then they took it before the magistrate, who gave judgment as follows: "The plaintiff began with a real deer and an alleged dream; and now comes forward with a real dream and an alleged deer. The defendant has the deer the plaintiff dreamed, and wants to keep it. According to his wife, however, the plaintiff and the deer are both but figments of the defendant's dream. Meanwhile, there is the deer; which you had better divide between you." The case was reported to the Prince of Cheng, whose opinion was that the magistrate had dreamed the whole story, himself. But his Prime Minister said: "If you want to distinguish between dream and waking, you would have to go back to the Yellow Emperor or Confucius. As both are dead, you had better uphold the magistrate's decision." * ------ * The tale is told both in Dr. Lionel Giles's translation mentioned above, and also, with verbal differences, in Dr. H. A. Giles's work on _Chinese Literature._ The present telling follows now one, now the other version, now goes its own way;-- and pleads guilty to adding the verse the woodman crooned. ------ XIII. MANG THE PHILOSOPHER, AND BUTTERFLY CHWANG Liehtse's tale of the Dream and the Deer leads me naturally to this characteristic bit from Chwangtse:*-- "Once upon a time, I, Chwangtse, dreamed I was a butterfly fluttering hither and thither; to all intents and purposes a veritable butterfly. I followed my butterfly fancies, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I awoke, and there I lay, a man again. Now how am I to know whether I was then, Chwangtse dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am Chwang?" ------ * Which, like nearly all the other passages from him in this lecture, is quoted from Dr. H. A. Giles's _Chinese Literature,_ in the Literatures of the World series; New York, Appleton. ------ For which reason he is, says Dr. Giles, known to this day as "Butterfly Chwang"; and the name is not all inappropriate. He flits from fun to philosophy, and from philosoply to fun, as if they were dark rose and laughing pansy; when he has you in the gravest depths of wisdom and metaphysic, he will not be content till with a flirt of his wings and an aspect gravely solemn he has you in fits of laughter again. His is really a book that belongs to world-literature; as good reading, for us now, as for any ancient Chinaman of them all. I think he worked more strenuously in the field of sheer intellect--stirred the thought stuff more--than most other Chinese thinkers,--and so is more akin to the Western mind; he carves his cerebrations more definitely, and leaves less to the intuition. The great lack in him is his failure to appreciate Confucius; and to explain that, before I go further with Butterfly Chwang, I shall take a glance at the times he lived in. They were out of joint when Confucius came; they were a couple of centuries more so now. Still more was the Tiger stalking abroad: there were two or three tigers in particular, among the Great Powers, evidentlv crouching for a spring--that should settle things. Time was building the funeral pyre for the Phoenix, and building it of the debris of ruined worlds. In the early sixth century, the best minds were retiring in disgust to the wilds;--you remember the anchorite's rebuke to Tse-Lu. But now they were all coming from their retirement--the most active minds, whether the best or not--to shout their nostrums and make confusion worse confounded. All sorts of socialisms were in the air, raucously bellowed by would-be reformers. A "loud barbarian from the south" (as Mencius called him--I do not know who he was) was proclaiming that property should be abolished, and all goods held in common. One Yang Chu was yelling universal egoism: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Against him, one Mo Ti had been preaching universal altruism;--but I judge, not too sensibly, and without appeal to philosophy or mysticism. Thought of all kinds was in a ferment, and the world filled with the confused noise of its expression; clear voices were needed, to restate the message of the Teachers of old. Then Mencius arose to speak for Confucius in this China so much further progressed along the Gadarene road. A strong and brilliant man, he took the field strongly and brilliantly, and filled the courts of dukes and kings with a roll of Confucian drums. Confucius, as I have tried to show you, had all Mysticism divinely behind and backing him, though he said little about it; Mencius, I think, had none. Mencius remade a Confucius of his own, with the mystical elements lacking. He saw in him only a social reformer and teacher of ethics; and it is the easiest thing in the world to see Confucius only through Mencian spectacles. I would not fall into the mistake of undervaluing Mencius. He was a very great man; and the work he did for China was enormous, and indispensable. You may call him something between the St. Paul and the Constantine of Confucianism. Unlike Constantine, he was not a sovereign, to establish the system; but he hobnobbed with sovereigns, and never allowed them to think him their inferior; and it was he who made of Confucianism a system that could be established. Unlike St. Paul, he did not develop the inner side of his Master's teachings; but he so popularized them as to ensure their triumph. He took the ideas of Confucius, such of them as lay within his own statesmanlike and practical scope of vision, restated and formulated them, and made of them what became the Chinese Constitution. A brave and honest thinker, essentially a man of action in thought, he never consciously deteriorated or took away from Confucius' doctrine. It is more as if some great President or Prime Minister, at some future time, should suddenly perceive that H.P. Blavatsky had brought that which would save his nation; and proceed to apply that saving thing, as best he might, in the field of practical politics and reform--or rather to restate it in such a way that (according to his view) it might be applied. He put the constituents parts of society in order of importance as follows: the People; the Gods; the Sovereign: and this has been a cardinal principle in Chinese polity. He saw clearly that the Chow dynasty could never be revived; and arrived at the conclusion that a dynasty was only sacred while it retained the "mandate of heaven." Chow had lost that; and therefore it was within the rights of Heaven, as you may say, to place its mandate elsewhere;--and within the rights of the subject--as the logic of events so clearly proved Chow had lost the mandate--to rebel. Confucius had hoped to revivify Chow--had begun with that hope, at any rate: Mencius hoped to raise up some efficient sovereign who should overturn Chow. The Right of Rebellion, thus taught by him, is another fundamental Chinese principle. It works this way: if there was discontent, there was misrule; and it was the fault of the ruler. If the latter was a local magistrate, or a governor, prefect, or viceroy, you had but to make a demonstration, normally speaking, before his yamen: this was technically a 'rebellion' within Mencius' meaning; and the offending authority must report it to Pekin, which then commonly replaced him with another. (It would get to Pekin's ears anyway; so you had better--and ususally did--report it yourself.) If the offender was the Son of Heaven, with all his dynasty involved-- why, then one had to rebel in good earnest; and it was to be supposed that if Heaven had really given one a mandate, one would win. The effect was that, although nominally absolute, very few emperors have dared or cared to fly quite in the face of Confucius, or Mencius, of their religio-political system, of the Board of Censors whose business it was to criticize the Throne, and of a vast opinion. There was the tradition an emperor ruled for the people. The office of ruler was divine; the man that held it was kept an impersonality as much as possible. He changed his name on coming to the throne, and perhaps several times afterwards: thus we speak of the great emperors Han Wuti and Tang Taitsong; who might, however, be called more exactly, Liu Ch'e, who was emperor during the period _Wuti_ of the Han Dynasty; Li Shihmin, who filled the throne during the T'ang period called _Taitsong._ Again, there was the great idea, Confucio-Mencian, that the son of Heven must be 'compliant': leading rather than driving. He promulgated edicts, but they were never rigidly enforced; a certain voluntaryism was allowed as to the carrying out of them: if one of them was found unsuccessful, or not to command popular approval, another could be--and was--issued to modify or change it. So that the whole system was far removed from what we think of as an 'Oriental Despotism'; on the contrary, there was always a large measure of freedom and self-government. You began with the family: the head of that was its ruler, and responsible for order in his little realm. But he governed by consent and affection, not by force. Each village-community was self-governing; the headman in it taking the place of the father in the family; he was responsible for order, so it was his business to keep the people happy;--and the same principle was extended to fit the province, the viceroyalty, the empire. Further, there was the absence of any aristocracy or privileged class; and the fact that all offices were open to all Chinamen (actors excepted)--the sole key to open it being merit, as attested by competitive examinations. The system is Mencian; the inspiration behind it from Confucius. It is the former's working out of the latter's superb idea of the _li._ The Mencian system has broken down, and been abolished. It had grown old, outworn and corrupt. But it was established a couple of centuries before that of Augustus, and has been subject to the same stress of time and the cycles; and only broke down the other day. Time will wear out anything made by man. There is no garment, but the body will out-grow or out-wear it; no body, but the soul will outlive it and cast it away. Mencius, inspired by his Master Confucius, projected a system that time took two thousand years and more to wear out in China. It was one that did much or everything to shield the people from tyranny. Whether a better system has been devised, I do not know; but should say not--in historical times. As to the inspiration behind it--well, lest you should doubt the value of Confucius, compare the history of Europe with that of China. We have disproportioned ideas, and do not see these things straight. The Chinese Empire was founded some two centuries before the Roman: both composed of heterogeneous elements. Both, after about four centuries, fell; but China, after about four centuries more, came together and was great again. Fifteen hundred years after Ts'in Shi Hwangti had founded China, her manvantara then having ended, and her whole creative cycle run through, she fell to the Mongols. Fifteen hundred years after Julius Caesar had founded his empire, the last wretched remnant of it fell to the Turks. But China first compelled her conquerors to behave like Chinamen, and then, after a century, turned them out. The Turks never became Greek or Roman, and so far have not quite been turned out. The roman empire disappeared, and never reunited;--that is what has been the matter with Europe ever since. Europe, in her manvantara, has wasted three parts of her creative force in wars and disunion. But China, even in her pralaya, became a strong, united power again under the Mings (1368-1644)--the first of them--a native dynasty. Conquered again, now by the Manchus, she mader her conquerors behave like Chinamen,--imposed on them her culture;--and went forth under their banners to conquer. The European pralaya (630-1240) was a time barren of creation in art and literature, and in life uttterly squalid and lightless The Chinese pralaya, after the Mongol Conquest, took a very long time to sink into squalidity. The arts, which had died in Europe long before Rome fell, lived on in China, though with ever-waning energy, through the Mongol and well into the Ming time: the national stability, the force of custom, was there to carry them on. What light, what life, what vigor was there in Rome or Constantinople a century and a half after Alaric or Heraclius? But Ming Yunglo, a century and a half after the fall of Sung, reigned in great splendor; sent his armies conquering to the Caspian, and his navies to the conquest of Ceylon, the discovery of Africa, the gathering in of the tribute of the Archipelago and the shores of the Indian Ocean. Until the end of the eighteenth century the minor arts and crafts--pottery and bronzes--of which there was nothing to speak of in Europe in the corresponding European age--were flourishing wonderfully; and in the seventeenth and eighteeenth centuries, under Kanghi and Kienlung, China was once more a great military power. She chased and whipped the Goorkhas down through the Himalays and into India, only twenty years before England fought difficult and doubtful campaigns with those fierce little mountaineers. You may even say she has been better off in her pralaya, in many ways, and until recently, than most of Europe has been in most of _her_ manvantara. In Kienlung's reign, for example (1735-1795) there were higher standards of life, more security, law, and order, than in the Europe of Catherine of Russia, Frederick the Great, Louis XV and the Revolution, and the English Georges. There was far less ferment of the Spirit, true; less possibility of progress;--but that is merely to say that China was in pralaya, Europe in high manvantara. The explanation is that a stability had been imparted to that Far Eastern civilization, which Europe has lacked altogether; whose history, for all its splendid high- lights, has had thousands of hideous shadows; has not been so noble a thing as we tacitly and complacently assume; but a long record of wars, confusions, disorder, and cruelities, with only dawning now the possibility of that union which is the first condition of true progress, as distinguished from the riot of material inventions and political experiments that has gone by that name.--But now, back to Mencius again. In all things he tried to follow Confucius; beginning early by being born in the latter's own district of Tsow in Shantung, and having a woman in ten thousand for his mother;--she has been the model held up to all Chinese mothers since. He grew up strong in body and mind, thoughtful and fearless; a tireless student of history, poetry, national institutions, and the lives of great men. Like Confucius, he opened a school, and gathered disciples about him: but there was never the bond of love here, that there had been between Confucius and Tse Lu, Yen Huy, and the others. These may have heard from their Master the pure deep things of Theosophy; one would venture the statement that none of Mencius' following heard the like from him. He saw in Confucius that which he himself was fitted to be, and set out to become. He went from court to court, and everywhere, as a great scholar, was received with honor. (You will note as one more proof of an immemorial culture, that then, as now the scholar, as such, was at the very top of the social scale. There was but one word for _scholar_ and _official._)--He proposed, like Confucius, that some king should make him his minister; and like Confucius, he was always disappointed. But in him we come on none of the soft lights and tones that endear Confucius to us; he fell far short of being Such a One. A clear, bold mind, without _atmosphere,_ with all its lines sharply defined.... he made free to lecture the great ones of the earth, and was very round with them, even ridiculing them at his pleasure. He held the field for Confucius--not the Taoist, but the Mencian Confucius--against all comers; smote Yang Chu the Egotist hip and thigh; smote gentle Mo Ti, the Altruist; preached fine and practical ethics; and had no patience with those dreamers of the House of Laotse.--A man sent from the Gods, I should say, to do a great work; even though-- And then there was that dreamer of dreams, of Butterfly dreams,-- subtle mystical humorous Chwangtse: how could it be otherwise than that clear-minded clarion-throated Philosopher Mang should afford him excellent play? Philosopher Mang (Philosopher of the Second Class, so officially entitled), in the name of his Master K'ung Ch'iu, fell foul of Dreamer Chwang; how could it be otherwise than that Dreamer Chwang should aim his shafts, not a Mang merely, but (alas!) at the one whose name was always on Mang's lips?--"Confucius says, Confucius says, Confucius says"-- cries Philosopher Mang.--"Oh hang your Confucius!" thinks Chwang the Mystic; "let us have a little of the silence and splendor of the Within!" (Well, Confucius would have said the same thing, I think.) "Let me tell you a tale," says Chwang; and straight goes forward with it. "It was the time of the autumn floods. Every stream poured into the river, which swelled in its turbid course. The banks were so far apart that from one to the other you could not tell a cow from a horse. "Then the Spirit of the River laughed for joy that all the beauty of the earth was gathered to himself. Down with the current he journeyed east, until he reached the Ocean. There looking eastward, and seeing no limit to its expanse of waves, his countenance changed. As he gazed out, he sighed, and said to the Spirit of the Ocean: 'A vulgar proverb says that he who has heard but a part of the truth thinks no one equal to himself. Such a one am I. "'When formerly I heard people detracting from the learning of Confucius, or underrating the heroism of Po I. I did not believe. But now that I have looked on your inexhaustibility-- alas for me had I not reached your abode! I should have been forever a laughing-stock to those of comprehensive enlightenment.' "To which the Spirit of the Ocean answered: 'You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog,--the creature of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect,--the creature of a season. You cannot speak of Tao to a pedant; his scope is too restricted. But now that you have emerged from your narrow sphere, and have seen the great sea, you know your own insignificance, and I can speak of great principles. "Have you never heard of the Frog of the Old Well? The Frog said to the Turtle of the Eastern Sea, 'Happy indeed am I! I hop on the rail around the well. I rest in the hollow of some broken brick. Swimming, I gather the water under my arms and shut my mouth tight. I plunge into the mud, burying my feet and toes. Not one of the cockles, crabs, or tadpoles I see around me is my match. Why do you not come, Sir, and pay me a visit?'" "Now the Turtle of the Eastern Sea had not got its left leg down ere its right leg had stuck fast, so it shrank back and begged to be excused. It then described the sea, saying, 'A thousand leagues would not measure its breadth, nor a thousand fathoms its depth. In the days of Yu the Great there were nine years of flood out of ten; but this did not add to its contents. In the days of T'ang there were seven years of drought out of eight, but this did not narrow its span. Not to be affected by volume of water, not to be affected by duration of time--this is the happiness of the Eastern Sea.' At this the Frog of the Old Well was considerably astonished, and knew not what to say next. And for one whose knowledge does not reach to the positive-negative domain the attempt to understand me is like a mosquito trying to carry a mountain, or an ant to swim the Yellow River,--they cannot succeed." If Chwangtse had lived before Mencius, or Mencius after Chwangtse, Chwangtse could have afforded to see Confucius in his true light, as Liehtse did; but the power and influence of the mind of Mencius were such that in his time there was no looking at the Master except through his glasses. We do not know what happened when Laotse and Confucius met; but I suspect it was very like what happened when Mr. Judge met Madame Blavatsky. But Butterfly Chwang, the rascal, undertook to let us know; and wrote it out in full. He knew well enough what would happen if he met Mencius; and took that as his model. He wanted Mencius to know it too. He itched to say to him, "Put away, sir, your flashy airs," and the rest; and so made Laotse say it to Confucius. It shows how large Philosopher Mang had come to loom, that anyone could attribute "flashy airs" to that great-hearted simple Gentleman K'ung Ch'iu. One thing only I believe in about that interview: Confucius' reputed speech on coming forth from it to his disciples:--"There is the Dragon; I do not know how he mounts upon the wind and rises about the clouds. Today I have seen Laotse, and can only compare him to the Dragon." He _would have said_ that; it has definite meaning; the Dragon was the symbol of the spirit, and so universally recognised.--Confucius appears to have taken none of his disciples into the Library; and Confucianist writers have had nothing to say about the incident, except that it occurred, I believe. Chwangtse, and all Taoist writers after him, show Confucius taking his rating very quietly;--as indeed, he would have done, had Laotse been in a mood for quizzing. For Confucius never argued or pressed his opinions; where his words were not asked for and listened to, he retired. But it is not possible the recognition should have been other than mutual: the great Laotse would have known a Man when he saw him. I like the young imperturbable K'ung Jung, precocious ten-year-old of some seven centuries later. His father took him up to the capital when the Dragon Statesman Li Ying was the height of his power; and the boy determined on gaining an interview with Li. He got admission to the latter's house by claiming blood-relationship. Asked by the great man wherein it lay, says he very sweetly: "Your ancestor Laotse and my ancestor Confucius were friends engaged in the search for truth; may we not then be said to be of the same family?"-- "Cleverness in youth," sneered a bystander, "does not mean brilliancy in later life."--"You, Sir," says Ten-years-old, turning to him, "must have been a very remarkable boy." * ------- * Giles: _Chinese Literature._ ------- The truth is, both Mencius and Chwangtse stood a step lower and nearer this world than had the two they followed: whose station had been on the level platform at the top of the altar. But Mencius descending had gone eastward; Chwangtse towards the west. He was all for getting at the Mean, the Absolute Life, beyond the pairs of opposites;--which is, indeed, the central Chinese thought, Confucian or Taoist, the _raison d'etre_ of Chinese longevity, and the saving health of China. But unfortunately he --Chwangtse--did not see that his own opposite, Philosopher Mang, was driving him an inch or two away from the Middle Line. So, with a more brilliant mind (a cant phrase that!) he stands well below Laotse; just as Mencius stands below K'ung Ch'iu. The spiritual down-breathing had reached a lower plane: soon the manvantara was to begin, and the Crest-Wave to be among the black-haired People. For all these Teachers and Half-Teachers were but early swallows and forerunners. Laotse and Confucius had caught the wind at its rising, on the peaks where they stood very near the Spirit; Chwangtse and Mangtse caught it in the region of the intellect: the former in his wild valley, the latter on his level prosaic plain. They are both called more daring thinkers than their predecessors; which is merely to say that in them the Spirit figured more on the intellectual, less on its own plane. They were lesser men, of course. Mencius had lost Confucius' spirituality; Chwangtse, I think, something of the sweet sanifying influence of Laotse's universal compassion. Well, now: three little tales from Chwangtse, to illustrate his wit and daring; and after then, to the grand idea he bequeathed to China. "Chwangtse one day saw an empty skull, bleached, but still preserving its shape. Striking it with his riding-whip, he said: 'Was thou once some ambitious citizen whose inordinate yearnings brought him to this pass?--some statesman who plunged his country in ruin, and perished in the fray?--some wretch who left behind him a legacy of shame?--some beggar who died in the pangs of hunger and cold? Or didst thou reach this state by the natural course of old age?' "He took the skull home, and slept that night with it under his head for a pillow, and dreamed. The skull appeared to him in his dream, and said: 'You speak well, Sir; but all you say has reference to the life of mortals, and to mortal troubles. In death there are none of these things. Would you like to hear about death?' "Cwangtse, however, was not convinced, and said: 'Were I to prevail upon God to let your body be born again, and your bones and flesh be renewed, so that you could return to your parents, to your wife and to the friends of your youth--would you be willing?' "At this the skull opened its eyes wide and knitted its brows and said: 'How should I cast aside happiness greater than that of a king, and mingle once again in the toils and troubles of mortality?'" Here is the famous tale of the Grand Augur and the Pigs:-- "The Grand Augur, in his ceremonial robes, approached the shambles and thus addressed the Pigs:-- "'Why,' said he, 'should you object to die? I shall fattan you for three months. I shall discipline myself for ten days and fast for three. I shall strew fine grass, and place you bodily upon a carved sacrificial dish. Does not this satisfy you? "'Yet perhaps after all,' he continued, speaking from the pigs' point of view, 'it is better to live on bran and escape the shambles... "'No,' said he; speaking from his own point of view again. 'To enjoy honor when alive one would readily die on a war-shield or in the haeadsman's basket.' "So he rejected the pigs' point of view and clung to his own. In what sense, then, was he different from the pigs?" And here, the still more famous tale of the Sacred Tortoise:-- "Chwantse was fishing in the river P'u when the Prince of Ch'u sent two high officials to ask him to take charge of the administration. "Chwangtse went on fishing, and without turning his head said: 'I have heard that in Ch'u there is a sacred tortoise which has been dead now some three thousand years. And that the prince keeps this tortoise carefully enclosed in a chest on the altar of his ancestral temple. Now if this tortoise had its choice, which would it prefer: to be dead, and have its remains venerated; or to be alive, and wagging its tail in the mud?' "'Sir,' replied the two officials, 'it would rather be alive, and wagging its tail in the mud.' "'Begone!' cried Chwangtse. 'I too will wag my tail in the mud!'" Well; so much for _Butterfly;_ now for _Chwang_--and to introduce you to some of his real thought and teaching. You will not have shot so wide of the mark as to see in his story of the skull traces of pessimism: Chwantse had none of it; he was a very happy fellow; like the policeman in the poem, ".....a merry genial wag Who loved a mad conceit." But he was by all means and anyhow for preaching the Inner as against the outer. Yet he did not dismiss this world, either, as a vain delusion and sorrowful mockery;--the gist of his teaching is this: that men bear a false relation to the world; and he desired to teach the true relation. He loved the Universe, and had a sublime confidence in it as the embodiment and expression of Tao; and would apply this thought as a solvent to the one false thing in it: the human personality, with its heresy of separateness. Dissolve that,--and it is merely an idea; in the words of a modern philosopher, _all in the mind,_--and you have the one true elixir flowing in your veins, the universal harmony; are part of the solemn and glorious pageant of the years. The motions of the heavenly bodies, the sweetness of Spring and the wistfulness of Autumn, flaunting Summer and Winter's beauty of snow--all are parcel of yourself, and within the circle of your consciousness. Often he rises to a high poetic note;--it is largely the supreme beauty of his style which keeps his book, so thouroughly unorthodox, still alive and wagging its tail among his countrymen. Chwangtse will not help you through the examinations; but he is mighty good to read when your days of competing are over; as I think it is Dr. Giles who says. Like his contemporary Diogenes, he would have his dead body cast out to the vultures; but the spirit of his wish was by no means cynical. "When Chwangtse was about to die," he writes (anticipating things pleasantly), "his disciples expressed a wish to give him a splendid funeral. But he said: 'With heaven and earth for my coffin and shell, and the sun, moon, and stars for my burial regalia; with all creation to escort me to the grave-- is not my funeral already prepared?'" He speaks of the dangers of externalism, even in the pursuit of virtue; then says: "The man who has harmony within, though he sit motionless like the image of a dead man at a sacrifice, yet his Dragon Self will appear; though he be absorbed in silence, his thunder will be heard; the divine power in him will be at work, and heaven will follow it; while he abides in tranquillity and inaction, the myriads of things and beings will gather under his influence."--"Not to run counter to the natural bias of things," he says, "is to be perfect." It is by this running counter--going aginst the Law, following our personal desires and so forth,--that we create karma,--give the Universe something to readjust,--and set in motion all our troubles. "He who fully understands this, by storing it within enlarges the heart, and with this enlargement brings all creation to himself. Such a man will bury gold on the hillside, and cast pearls into the sea."-- sink a plummet into that, I beseech you; it is one of the grand utterances of wonder and wisdom.--"He will not struggle for wealth or strive for fame; rejoice over longevity, or grieve at an early death. He will get no elation from success, nor chagrin from failure; he will not account the throne his private gain, no look on the empire of the world as glory personal. His glory is to know that all thigns are one, and life and death but phases of the same existence." Why call that about burying gold and casting pearls into the sea one of the supreme utterances?--Well; Chwangtse has a way of putting a whole essay into a sentence; this is a case in point. We have discussed Natural Magic together many times; we know how the ultimate beauty occurs when something human has flowed out into Nature, and left its mysterious trace there, upon the mountains, or by the river-brink, "By paved fountain, or by rushy brook. Or on the beached margent of the sea." Tu Fu saw in the blues and purples of the morning-glory the colors of the silken garments of the lost poet Ssema Hsiangju, of a thousand years before--that is, of the silken garments of his rich emotion and adventures. China somehow has understood this deep connexion between man and Nature; and that it is human thought molds the beauty and richness, or hideousness and sterility of the world. Are the mountains noble? They store the grandeur and aspirations of eighteen millions of years of mankind. Are the deserts desolate and terrible? It was man made the deserts: not with his hands, but with his thought. Man is the fine workshop and careful laboratory wherein Nature prepares the most wonderful of her wonders. It is an instinct for this truth that makes Chinese poetry the marvel that it is.--So the man of Tao is enriching the natural world: filling the hills with gold, putting pearls in the sea. I do not know where there is a more pregnant passage than this following,--a better acid (of words) to corrode the desperate metal of selfhood; listen well, for each clause is a volume. "Can one get Tao to possess it for one's own?" asks Chwangtse; and answers himself thus: "Your very body is not your own; how then should Tao be?--If my body is not my own, whose is it, pray?--It is the delegated image of God. Your posterity is not your own; it is the delegated exuviae of God. You move, but know not how; you are at rest, but know not why; you taste, but know not the cause; these are the operations of universal law. How then should you get Tao so as to possess it for your own?" Now then, I want to take one of those clauses, and try to see what Chwangtse really meant by it. "Your individuality is not your own, but the delegated adaptability of God."--There is a certain position in the Scheme of Things Entire,--a point, with a relation of its own to the rest of the Scheme, to the Universe;-- as the red line has a relation of its own to the rest of the spectrum and the ray of light as a whole..... From that point, from that position, there is a work to be done, which can be done from no other. The Lonely Eternal looks out through these eyes, because it must see all things; and there are things no eyes can see but these, no other hands do. This point is an infinitesimal part of the whole; but without its full and proper functioning, the Whole falls short in that much:--because of your or my petty omissions, the Universe limps and goes lame.--Into this position, as into all others impartially, the One Life which is Tao flows, adapting itself through aeons to the relations which that point bears to the Whole: and the result and the process of this adaptation is--your individuality or mine. _You_ are not the point, the position: because it is merely that which you hold and through which you function; it is yours, but not you. What then are _you?_ That which occupies and adapts itself to the point? But that is Tao, the Universal. You can only say it is you, if from _you_ you subtract all _you_-ness. Your individuality, then, is a temporary aspect of Tao in a certain relation to the totality of Tao, the One Thing which is the No Thing:--or it is the "delegated adaptability of God." How and wherein adaptable?--The Infinite, occupying this position, has formed therein all sorts of attachments and dislikes; and each one of them hinders it adaptability. Your surroundings have reflected themselves on you: and the sum of the reflexions is your personality,--the little cage of I-am-ness from which it is so hard to escape. Every reflected image engraves itself on the stuff of yourself by the sensation of attachment or repulsion which it arouses. When it says, "The One becomes the Two"--which is the way in one form or another all ancient philosophy sums up the beginning of things;--this is what is meant: the 'One' is Tao; the 'Two' is this conditioned world, whose nature and essence is to appear as pairs of opposites--to be attractive, or to repel. The pigs' point of view was that it was better to live on bran and escape the shambles; the Grand Augur's, that the pomp and ceremony of the sacrifice, the public honor, ought more than to compensate them for the momentary inconvenience of being killed. Opposite ways of thinking; points of view: which cherishing, Grand Augur and pigs alike dwelt on the plane of externals; and so there was no real difference between them. When you stand for you, and I for myself, it is six of one and half a dozen of the other; but when either of us stand for That which is both of us, and all else,-- then we touch reality; then there is no longer conflict, or opposites; no longer false appearances,--but the presence and cognition of the True. Here let me note what seems to me a radical superiority in Chinese methods of thought. You may take the _Bhagavad-Gita,_ perhaps, as the highest expression of Aryan religio-philosophic thinking. There we have the Spirit, the One, shown as the self of the Universe, but speaking through, and as, Krishna, a human personality. Heaven forbid that I should suggest there is anthropomorphism in this. Still, I think our finest mystical and poetic perceptions of the Light beyond all lights do tend to crystallize themselves into the shape of a _Being;_ we do tend to symbolize and figure that Wonder as ..... an Individuality .....in some indefinable splendid sort. Often you find real mystics, men who have seen with their own eyes so to say, talking about _God, the Lord,_ the _Great King,_ and what not of the like; and though you know perfectly well what they mean, there was yet that necessity on them to use those figures of speech. But in China, no. There, they begin from the opposite end. Neither in Laotse nor in Confucius, nor in their schools, can you find a trace of personalism. Gods many, yes; as reason and common sense declare; but nothing you can call a god is so ancient, constant, and eternal as Tao, "which would appear to have been before God." Go to their poets, and you find that the rage is all for Beauty as the light shining through things. The grass-blade and the moutain, the moonlit water and the peony, are lit from within and utterly adorable: not because God made them; not as reminding you of the Topmost of any Hierarchy of Being; but, if you really go to the bottom of it, because there is no personality in them,--and so nothing to hinder the eternal wonder, impersonal Tao, from shining through.--As if _we_ came through our individuality to a conception of the Divine; but _they,_ through a perception of the divine, to a right understanding of their individuality. It amounts to _us_ to fall into gross hideous anthropomorphism; the worst of them into superstitions of their own.--When one quotes Chwangtse as speaking of "the delegated adaptability of _God,_" one must remember that one has to use some English word for his totally impersonal _Tao_ or _Tien,_ or even _Shangti,_ or whatever it may be. This Tao, you say, something far off,--a principle in philosophy or a metaphysical idea,--may be very nice to discuss in a lecture or write poetry about; but dear me! between whiles we have a great deal to do, and really--But no! it is actually, as Mohammed said, "nearer to thee than thy jugular vein." It is a simple adjustment of oneself to the Universe,--of which, after all, one cannot escape being a part; it is the attainment of a true relationship to the whole. What obscures and hinders that, is simply our human brain-mind consciousness. "Consider the lilies of the field," that attain a perfection of beauty. The thing that moves us, or ought to move us, in flowers, trees, seas and mountains, is this: that lacking this fretting, gnawing sense of I-am-ness, their emanations are pure Tao, and may reach us along the channel we call beauty: may flood our being through "the gateway of the eyes." Beauty is Tao made visible. The rose and peony do not feel themselves 'I,' distinct from 'you' and the rest; they are in opposition to nothing; they do not fall in love, and have no aversions: they simply worship Heaven and are unanxious, and so beautiful. When we know this, we see what beauty means; and that it is not something we can afford to ignore and treat with stoic indifference or puritan dislike. It is Tao visible; I call every flower an avatar of God. Now you see how Taoism leads to poetry; is the philosophy of poetry; is indeed _Poetics,_ rather than _Metephysics._ Think of all the little jewels you know in Keats, in Shelley, or Wordsworth: the moments when the mists between those men and the divine "defecated to a thin transparency";--those were precisely the moments when the poets lost sight of their I-am-ness and entered into true relations with the Universe. A daffodil, every second of its life, holds within itself all the real things poets have ever said, or will ever say, about it; and can reach our souls directly with edicts from the Dragon Throne of the Eternal.--I watched the linarias yesterday, and their purple delicacy assured me that all the filth, all the falsehood and tragedy of the world, should pass and be blown away; that the garden was full of dancing fairies, joy moving them to their dancing; that it was my own fault if I could not see Apollo leaning down out of the Sun; and my own fatuity, and that alone, if I could not hear the Stars of Morning singing together, and all the sons of God shouting for you. And it was the truth they were telling; the plain, bald, naked truth;--they have never learned to lie, and do not know what it means. There is no sentimentalism in this; only science. We live in a Universe absolutely soaked through with God,--or with Poetry, which is perhaps a better name for It; a Universe peopled thick with Gods. But it is all very far from our common thoughts and conceptions; that is why it sounds to most people like sentimental nonsense and 'poetry.' No wonder Plato hated that word;--since it is made a hand-grenade, in the popular mind, to fling at every truth. And yet Poetry 'gets in on us,' too, occasionally, and accomplishes for "the woods and waters wild" the work they cannot do for themselves;--the work they cannot do, cause we will not look at them, cannot see them, and have forgotten their ancient language, being too much immersed in a rubbishing gabble of our own. What Toism, and especially Chwangtse as I think, did for the Chinese was to publish the syntax and vocabulary of that ancient language; to make people understand how to take these grand protagonists of Tao; how to communicate familiarly with these selfless avatars of the Most High. Listen to this: the thought is close-packed, but I think you will follow it:-- "The true Sage rejects all distinction of this and that," that is to say, of subjective, or that which one perceives within one's own mind and consciousness, and objective, or that which is perceived as existing outside of them;--he does not look upon the mountain or the daffodil as things different or apart from his own conscious being. "He takes his refuge in Tao, and places himself in subjective relations with all things"; he keeps the mountain within him; the scent of the daffodil, and her yellow candle-flame of beauty, are within the sphere and circle of himself; "...the little wave of Breffny goes stumbling through his soul." "Hence it is said"--this is Chwangtse again--"that there is nothing like the light of Nature. "Only the truly intelligent understand this principle of the identity of things. They do not view things as apprehended by themselves, but transfer themselves into the position of the things viewed."--And there, I may say, you have it: the last is the secret of the wonder-light in all Far Eastern Poetry and Art; more, it is the explanation of all poetry everywhere. It is the doctrine, the archeus, the _Open Sesame,_ the thyme- and lavender- and sweetwilliam-breathed Secret Garden of this old wizardly Science of Song;--who would go in there, and have the dark and bright blossoms for his companions, let him understand this. For Poetry is the revelation of the Great Life beyond the little life of this human personality; to tap it, you must evict yourself from the personal self; "transfer yourself into the position of the things viewed," and not see, but _be,_ the little stumbling wave or the spray of plum-blossom, thinking its thoughts.--"Viewing things thus," continues our Chwangtse, "you are able to comprehend and master them. So it is that to place oneself in inner relation with externals, without consciousness of their objectivity,--this is Tao. But to wear out one's intellect in an obstinate adherence to the objectivity--the apartness--of things, not recognizing that they are all one--this is called _Three in the Morning._--'What do you mean by _Three in the Morning?'_ asked Tse Yu.--'A keeper of monkeys,' Tse Chi replied, 'said with regard to their daily ration of chestnuts that each monkey should have three in the morning and four at night. At this the monkeys were very angry; so he said that they might have four in the morning and three at night; whereat they were well pleased. The number of nuts was the same; but there was an adaptation to the feelings of those concerned.'"-- which, again, means simply that to follow Tao and dodge until it is altogether sloughed off the sense of separateness, is to follow the lines of least resistance. All these ideas are a natural growth from the teachings of Laotse; but Butterfly Chwang, in working them out and stating them so brilliantly, did an inestimable service to the ages that were to come. XIV. THE MANVANTARA OPENS Laotse's Blue Pearl was already shining into poetry. Ch'u Yuan, the first great poet, belongs to this same fourth century; it is a long step from the little wistful ballads that Confucius gathered to the "wild irregular meters," * splendid imagery, and be it said, deep soul symbolism of his great poem the Li Sao (Falling into Trouble). The theme of it is this: From earliest childhood Ch'u Yuan had sought the Tao, but in vain. At last, banished by the prince whose minister he had been, he retired into the wilds, and was meditating at the tomb of Shun in Hupeh, in what was then the far south. There the Phoenix and the Dragon came to him, and bore him aloft, past the West Pole, past the Milky Way, past even the Source of the Hoangho, to the Gates of Heaven. Where, however, there was no admittance for him; and full of sorrow he returned to earth. ------ * _Chinese Literature,_ by Dr. H. A. Giles. What is said about the _Li Sao_ here comes from that work--except the suggestions as to its inner meaning. ------ On the banks of the Mi-lo a fisherman met him, and asked him the cause of his trouble.--"All the world is foul," answered Ch'u Yuan, "and I alone am clean."--"If that is so," said the fisherman, "why not plunge into the current, and make its foulness clean with the infection of your purity? The Man of Tao does not quarrel with his surroundings, but adjusts himself to them." Ch'u Yuan took the hint: leaped into the Mi-lo;--and yearly since then they have held the Dragon-boat Festival on the waters of Middle China to commemorate the search for his body.-- Just how much of this is in the _Li Sao,_--where the poem ends,-- I do not clearly gather from Professor Giles's account; but the whole story appears to me to be a magnificent Soul Symbol: of that Path which leads you indeed on dragon flights to the borders of the Infinite, but whose end, rightly considered, is in this world, and to be as it were drowned in the waters of this world, with your cleanness infecting them to be clean,--and lighting them for all future ages with beauty, as with little dragon-boats luminous with an inner flame. Ch'u Yuan had followers in that and the next century; but perhaps his greatness was hardly to be approached for a thousand years. But we were still in Tiger-time, and with quite the worst of it to come. Here lay the Blue Pearl scintillating rainbows up through the heavy atmosphere; but despite its flashing and up-fountaining those strange dying-dolphin hues and glories, you could never have told, in Tiger-time, what it really was. The Dragon was yet a long way off; though indeed it must be allowed that flight, when Chwangtse wrote and Ch'u Yuan sung, was surprised with the far churr of startling wings under the stars. Ears intent to listen were surprised; but only for a moment;-- there was that angry howling again from the northern hills and the southern forests: the two great Tigers of the world face to face, tails lashing;--and between them and in their path, Chow quite prone,--the helpless Black-haired People trembling or chattering frivolously. Not for such an age as that Chwangtse and Ch'u Yuan wrote, but indeed you may say for all time. What light from the Blue Pearl could then shine forth and be seen, would, in the thick fog and smoke-gloom, take on wild fantastic guise; which, as we shall see, it did:--but what Chwangtse had written remained, pure immortality, to kindle up better ages to come. When China should be ready, Chwangtse and the Pearl would be found waiting for her. The manvantara had not yet dawned; but we may hurry on now to its dawning. The Crest-Wave was still in India when China plunged into the abyss from which her old order of ages never emerged. Soon after Asoka came to the throne of Magadha, in 284 B.C., Su Tai, wise prime minister to the Lord of Chao, took occasion to speak-- seriously to his royal master as to the latter's perennial little wars with Yen.* "This morning as I crossed the river," said he, "I saw a mussel open its shell to the sun. Straight an oyster-catcher thrust in his bill to eat the mussel; which promptly snapped the shell to and held the bird fast.--'If it doesn't rain today or tomorrow,' said the oyster-catcher, 'there'll be a dead mussel here.'--'And if you don't get out of this by today or tomorrow,' said the mussel, 'there'll be a dead oyster-catcher.' Meanwhile up came a fisherman and carried them both off. I fear Ts'in will be our fisherman." ------ * The tale is taken from Dr. H.A. Gile's _Chinese Literature._ ------ Which duly came to pass. Even in Liehtse's time Ts'in characteristics were well understood: he tells a sly story of a neighboring state much infested by robbers. The king was proud of a great detective who kept them down; but they soon killed the Pinkerton, and got to work again. Then he reformed himself,--and the robbers found his kingdom no place for them. In a body they crossed the Hoangho into Ts'in;--and bequeathed to its policy their tendencies and aptitudes. Ts'in had come to be the strongest state in China. Next neighbor to the Huns, and half Hun herself, she had learned warfare in a school forever in session. But she had had wise rulers also, after their fashion of wisdom: who had been greatly at pains to educate her in all the learning of the Chinese. So now she stood, an armed camp of a nation, enamored of war, and completely civilized in all external things. Ts'u, her strongest rival, stretching southward to the Yangtse and beyond, had had to deal with barbarians less virile than the Huns; and besides, dwelling as Ts'u did among the mountains and forests of romance, she had some heart in her for poetry and mysticism, whereas Ts'in's was all for sheer fighting. Laotse probably had been a Ts'u man; and also Chwangtse and Ch'u Yuan; and in after ages it was nearly always from the forests of Ts'u that the great winds of poetry were blown. Still--he had immense territories and resources, and the world looked mainly to her for defense against the northern Tiger Ts'in. Soon after Su Tai told his master the parable of the mussel and the oyster-catcher the grand clash came, and the era of petty wars and raidings was over. Ts'u gathered to herself most of the rest of China for her allies, and there was a giant war that fills the whole horizon, nearly, of the first half of the third century B. C. New territories were involved: the world had expanded mightily since the days of Confucius. "First and last," says Ssema Tsien, "the allies hurled a million men against Ts'in." But to no purpose; one nation after another went down before those Hun-trained half-Huns from the north-west. In 257 Chau Tsiang king of Ts'in took the Chow capital, and relieved Nan Wang, the last of the Chows, of the Nine Tripods of Ta Yu, the symbols of his sacred sovereignty; --the mantle of the Caliphate passed from the House of Wen Wang and the Duke of Chow. The world had crumbled to pieces: there had been changes of dynasty before, but never (in known history) a change like this. The Chows had been reigning nearly nine hundred years; but their system had been in the main the same as that of the Shangs and Hias, and of Yao, Shun, and Ta Yu: it was two millenniums, a century, and a decade old. A Chinaman, in Chau Tsiang's place, would merely have reshaped the old order and set up a new feudal-pontifical house instead of Chow; which could not have lasted, because old age had worn the old system out. But these barbarians came in with new ideas. A new empire, a new race, a new nation was to be born. Chau Tsiang died in 251; and even then one could not clearly foresee what should follow. In 253 he had performed the significant sacrifice to Heaven, a prerogative of the King-Pontiff: but he had not assumed the title. Resistance was still in being. His son and successor reigned three days only; and _his_ son, another nonentity, five years without claiming to be more than King of Ts'in. But when this man died in 246, he left the destinies of the world in the hands of a boy of thirteen; who very quickly showed the world in whose hands its destinies lay. Not now a King of Ts'in; not a King-Pontiff of Chow;--not, if you please, a mere _wang_ or king at all;--but Hwangti, like that great figure of mythological times, the Yellow Emperor, who had but to sit on his throne, and all the world was governed and at peace. The child began by assuming that astounding title: _Ts'in Shi Hwangti,_ the First August Emperor: peace to the ages that were past; let them lie in their tomb; time now should begin again!--Childish boyish swank and braggadocio, said the world; but very soon the world found itself mistaken. _Hwangti;_--but no sitting on his throne in meditation, no letting the world be governed by Tao, for him! If you have read that delightful book _Through Hidden Shensi,_ by Mr. F. A. Nichols, the city of Hienfang, or Changan, or, by its modern name, Singanfu or Sian-fu in Shensi, will be much more than a name to you. Thither it was that the Dowager Empress fled with her court from Pekin at the time of the Boxer Rebellion; there, long ago, Han Wuti's banners flew; there Tang Taitsong reigned in all his glory and might; there the Banished Angel sang in the palace gardens of Tang Hsuantsong the luckless: history has paid such tribute of splendor to few of the cities of the world. At Hienfang now this barbarian boy and Attila-Napoleon among kings built his capital;--built it right splendidly, after such ideas of splendor as a young half-Hun might cherish. For indeed, he had but little and remote Chinese heredity in him; was of the race of Attila and Genghiz, of Mahmoud of Ghazna, Tamerlane, and all the world-shaking Turkish conquerors. --Well, but these people, though by nature and function destroyers, have been great builders too: building hugely, monumentally, and to inspire awe, and not with the faery grace and ephemeral loveliness of the Chinese;--though they learned the trick of that, too,--as they learned in the west kindred qualities from the Saracens. Grand Pekin is of their architecture; which is Chinese with a spaciousness and monumental solemnity added. Such a capital Ts'in She Hwangti built him at Hien fang or Changan. In the Hall of audience of his palace within the walls he set up twelve statues, each (I like this barbarian touch) weighing twelve thousand pounds. Well; _we_ should say, each costing so many thousand dollars; you need not laugh; I am not sure but that the young Hun had the best of it. And without the walls he built him, too, a Palace of Delight with many halls and courtyards; in some of which (I like this too) he could drill ten thousand men. All of this was but the trappings and the suits of his sovereignty: he let it be known he had the substance as well. No great strategist himself, he commanded the services of mighty generals: one Meng-tien in especial, a bright particular star in the War-God's firmament. An early step to disarm the nations, and have all weapons sent to Changan; then, with these, to furnish forth a great standing army, which he sent out under Meng-tien to conquer. The Middle Kingdom and the quondam Great Powers were quieted; then south of the Yangtse the great soldier swept, adding unknown regions to his master's domain. Then rorth and west, till the Huns and their like had grown very tame and wary;--and over all these realms the Emperor spread his network of fine roads and canals, linking them with Changan: what the Romans did for Europe in road-building, he did for China. He had, of course, a host of relatives; and precedent loomed large to tell him what to do with them: the precedent of the dynasty-founders of old. Nor were they themselves likely to have been backward in reminding him. Wu Wang had come into possession of many feudal dominions, and had made of the members of his family dukes and marquises to rule them. Ts'in Shi Hwangti's empire was many times the size of Wu Wang's; so he was in a much better position to reward the deserving. We must remember that he was no heir to a single sovereignty, but a Napoleon with a Europe at his feet. Ts'in and Ts'u and Tsin and the others were old-established kingdoms, with as long a history behind them as France or England has now; and that history had been filled with wars, mutual antagonisms and hatreds. Chow itself was like an Italy before Garibaldi;--with a papacy more inept, and holding vaguer sway:--it had been at one time the seat of empire, and it was the source of all culture. He had to deal, then, with a heterogeneity as pronounced as that which confronted Napoleon; but he was not of the stuff for which you prepare Waterloos. No one dreamed that he would treat the world other than as such a heterogeneity. His relations expected to be made the Jeromes, Eugenes, and Murats of the Hollands, Spains, and Sicilies to hand. The world could have conceived of no other way of dealing with the situation. But Ts'in Shi Hwangti could, very well. He abolished the feudal system. He abolished nationalities and national boundaries. There should be no more Ts'in and Tsin and Ts'u; no more ruling dukes and marquises. Instead, there should be an entirely new set of provinces, of which he would appoint the governors, not hereditary; and they should be responsible to him: promotable when good, dismissable and beheadable on the first sign of naughtiness. It was an idea of his own; he had no foreign history to go to for models and precedents, and there had been nothing like it in Chinese History. Napoleon hardly conceived such a tremendous idea, much less had he the force to carry it out. Even the achievement of Augustus was smaller; and Augustus had before him models in the history of many ancient empires. Now what was the ferment behind this man's mind;--this barbarian --for so he was--of tremendous schemes and doings? The answer is astonishing, when one thinks of the crude ruthless human dynamo he was. It was simply _Taoism:_ it was Laotse's Blue Pearl;-- but shining, of course, as through the heart of a very London Particular of Hunnish-barbarian fogs. No subtleties of mysticism; no Chwangtsean spiritual and poetry-breeding ideas, for him!--It has fallen, this magical Pearl, into turbid and tremendous waters, a natural potential Niagara; it has stirred, it has infected their vast bulk into active Niagarahood. He was on fire for the unknown and the marvelous; could conceive of no impossible--it should go hard, he thought, but that the subtler worlds that interpenetrate this one should be as wonderful as this world under Ts'in Shi Hwangti. Don't argue with him; it is dangerous!--certainly there was an Elixir of Life, decantable into goblets, from which Ts'in Shi Hwangti might drink and become immortal,--the First August Emperor, and the only one forever! Certainly there were those Golden Islands eastward, where Gods dispensed that nectar to the fortunate;--out in your ships, you there, and search the waves for them! And certainly, too, there were God knew what of fairylands and paradises beyond the western desert; out, you General Meng-tien, with your great armies and find them! He did tremendous things, and all the while was thus dreaming wildly. From the business of state he would seize hours at intervals to lecture to his courtiers on Tao;--I think _not_ in a way that would have been intelligible to Laotse or Chwangtse. Those who yawned were beheaded, I believe. How would such a prodigy in time appear to his own age? Such cataclysmic wars as Ts'in had been waging for the conquest of China take society first, so to say, upon its circumference, smash that to atoms, and then go working inwards. The most conservative and stable elements are the last and least affected. The peasant is killed, knocked about, transported, enclaved; but when the storm is over, and he gets back to his plough and hoe and rice-field again, sun and wind and rain and the earth-breath soothe him back to and confirm in what he was of old: only some new definite spiritual impulse or the sweep of the major cycles can change him much,--and then the change is only modification. At the other end of society you have the Intellectuals. In England, Oxford is the home and last refuge of lost causes. A literary culture three times as old as modern Oxford's, as China's was then, will be, you may imagine, fixed and conservative. It is a mental mold petrified with age; the minds participating must conform to it, solidify, and grow harder in the matrix it provides than granite or adamant. We have seen how in recent times the Confucian literati resisted the onset of westernism. All these steam-engines and telegraphs seemed to them fearfully crude and vulgar in comparison with the niceties of literary style, the finesses of time-taking ceremonious courtesies, that had been to them and to their ancestors time out of mind the true refinements of life, and even the realities. China rigid against the West was not a semi-barbarism resisting civilization, but an excessively perfected culture resisting the raw energies of one still young and, in its eyes, still with the taint of savagery: brusque manners, materialistic valuations. Ts'in Shi Hwangti in his day had to meet a like opposition. The wars had broken up the structure of society, but not the long tradition of refined learning. That had always seemed the quarter from which light and leading must come; but it had long ceased to be a quarter from which light or leading could come. Mencius had been used to rate and ridicule the ruling princes; and scholars now could not understand that Mencius and his ruling princes and all their order were dead. They could not understand that they were not Menciuses, nor Ts'in Shi Hwangti a kinglet such as he had dealt with. Now Mencius had been a great man,--a Man's son, as they say;--and very likely he and Ts'in Shi Hwangti might have hit it off well enough. But there was no Mencius, no Man's son, among the literati now. The whole class was wily, polite, sarcastic, subtle, unimaginative, refined to a degree, immovable in conservatism. The Taoist teachers had breathed in a new spirit, but it had not reached them. How would Ts'in Shi Hwangti, barbarian, wild Taoist, and man of swift great action, appear to them? Of course they could not abide him; and had not the sense to fear. They were at their old game of wire-pulling: would have the feudal system back, with all the old inefficiency; in the name of Ta Yu and the Duke of Chow they would do what they might to undo the strivings of this Ts'in upstart. So all the subtleties of the old order were arrayed against him,--pull devil, pull baker. He knew it; and knew the extreme difficulty of striking any ordinary blow to quiet them. He had challenged Time Past to the conflict, and meant to win. Time Future was knocking at the doors of the empire, and he intended it should come in and find a home. His armies had crossed the Gobi, and smelt out unending possibilities in the fabulous west; they had opened up the fabulous south, the abode of Romance and genii and dragons. It was like the discovery of the Americas: a new world brought over the horizon. His great minister, Li Ssu had invented a new script, the Lesser Seal, easier and simpler than the old one; Meng-tien, conqueror of the Gobi, had invented the camel's-hair brush wherewith to write gracefully on silk or cloth, instead of difficultly with stylus on bamboo-strips as of old. It was the morning stir of the new manvantara; and little as the emperor might care for culture, he heard the Future crying to him. He heard, too, the opposing murmur of the still unconquered Past. The literati stood against him as the Papacy against Frederick II of Sicily: a less open opposition, and one harder to meet. He did not solve the problem till near the end of his reign. In 213 he called a great meeting in the Hall of Audience at Changan. See the squat burly figure enthroned in grand splendor; the twelve weighty statues arranged around; the chief civil and military officers of the empire, thorough Taoists like himself, gathered on one side; the Academies and Censorates, all the leaders of the literati, on the other. The place was big enough for a largish meeting. Minister Li Ssu rises to describe the work of the Emperor; whereafter the latter calls for expressions of opinion. A member of his household opines that he "surpasses the very greatest of his predecessors": which causes a subdued sneer to run through the ranks of scholars. One of them takes the floor and begins to speak. Deprecates flattery guardedly, as bad for any sovereign; considers who the greatest of these predecessors were:--Yao, Shun, and Yu, 'Tang the Completer, Wu Wang; and--implies a good deal. Warms to his work at last, and grows bitter; almost openly pooh poohs all modern achievements; respectfully--or perhaps not too respectfully--advocates a return to the feudal-- "Silence!" roars Attila-Napoleon from his throne; and motions Li Ssu to make answer. The answer was predetermined, one imagines. It was an order that five hundred of the chief literati present should retire and be beheaded, and that thousands more should be banished. And that all books should be burned. Attila-Napoleon's orders had a way of being carried out. This was one. He had meanwhile been busy with the great material monument of his reign: the Wall of China; and with cautious campaigns yearly to the north of it; and with personal supervision of the Commissariat Department of all his armies everywhere; and with daily long _hikes_ to keep himself in trim. Now the Wall came in useful. To stretch its fifteen hundred miles of length over wild mountains and valleys in that bleak north of the world, some little labor was needed; and scholars and academicians were many and, for most purposes, useless; and they needed to be brought into touch with physical realities to round out their characters;--then let them go and build the wall. He buried enough of them--alive, it is to be feared: an ugly Ts'in custom, not a Chinese,--to make melons ripen in mid-winter over their common grave; the rest he sentenced to four years of wall-building,--which meant death. That, too, was the penalty for concealing books. He was now in dead earnest that the Past should go, and history begin again; to be read forever afterwards in this order,--the Creation, the Reign of Ts'in Shi Hwangti. But he spared books on useful subjects: that is to say, on Medicine, Agriculture, and Magic. So ancient China is to be seen now only as through a glass darkly; if his great attempt had been quite successful, it would not be to be seen at all. His crimes made no karma for China; they are not a blot on her record;--since they were done by an outside barbarian,--a mere publican and Ts'inner. From our standpoint as students of history, he was a malefactor of the first order; even when you take no account of his ruthless cruelty to men;--and so China has considered him ever since. Yet Karma finds ruthless agents for striking its horrible and beneficial blows; (and woe unto them that it finds!). It seems that Ts'in Shi Hwangti did draw the bowstring back--by this very wickedness,--far back--that sent the arrow China tearing and blazing out through the centuries to come. The fires in which the books were burned were the pyre of the Phoenix,--the burning of the astral molds,--the ignition and annihilation of the weight and the karma of two millenniums. The Secular Bird was to burn and be consumed to the last feather, and be turned to ashes utterly, before she might spring up into the ether for her new flight of ages. One wonders what would happen if a Ts'in Shi Hwangti were to arise and do by modern Christendom what this one did by ancient China. I say nothing about the literati, but only about the literature. Would burning it be altogether an evil? Nearly all that is supremely worth keeping would live through; and its value would be immensely enhanced. First the newspapers would go, that sow lies broadcast, and the seeds of national hatreds. The light literature would go, that stands between men and thought. The books of theology would go, and the dust of creedalism that lies so thick on men's minds. A thousand bad precedents that keep us bound to medievalism would go with the law-books: there would be a chance to pronounce, here and now as human beings, on such things as capital punishment;--which remains, though we do not recognise the fact, solely because it has been in vogue all these centuries, and is a habit hard to break with. History would go; yes;--but a mort of pernicious lies would go with it. Well, well; one speaks of course in jest (partly). But when all is said, China was not unfortunate in having a strong giant of a man, a foreigner withal, at her head during those crucial decades. Ts'in Shi Hwangti guarded China through most of that perilous intermission between the cycles. It was the good that he did that mostly lived after him. In 210 he fell ill, took no precautions, and died,--in his fiftieth year. A marvelous mausoleum was built for him: a palace, with a mountain heaped on top, and the floor of it a map of China, with the waters done in quicksilver. Whether his evil deeds were interred with his bones, who can say?--certainly his living wives were, and the thousands of living workmen who had built the mausoleum. Ts'innish doings, not Chinese. In the _Book of Odes,_ Confucius preserved a Ts'in ballad mourning over men so buried alive with their dead king. The strong hand lifted, rebellion broke out, and for awhile it looked as if Chu Hia must sink into the beast again. His feeble son got rid of Meng-tien, poisoned Li Ssu, offered the feeblest resistance to the rebels, and then poisoned himself. After four years of fighting,--what you might call "unpleasantness all round,"--one Liu Pang achieved the throne. He had started life as a beadle; joined Ts'in Shi Hwangti's army, and risen to be a general; created himself after the emperor's death Prince of Han; and now had the honor to inaugurate, as Emperor Kaotsu, the greatest of the Chinese dynasties. In the two-fifties strong barbarous Ts'in had swallowed unmanly worn-out China, and for half a century had been digesting the feast. Then--to mix my metaphors a little--China flopped up to the surface again, pale, but smiling blandly. In the sunlight she gathered strength and cohesion, and proceeded presently to swallow Ts'in and everything else in sight; and emerged soon young, strong, vigorous, and glowing-hearted to the conquest of many worlds in the unknown. What was Ts'in, now is Shensi Province, the very Heart of Han: the Shensi man today is the Son of Han, _Ts'in_ Englished; but in Shensi, the old Ts'in, in their tenderest moods, they call it _Han_ still,--the proudest most patriotic name there is for it. Not at once was the Golden Age of Han to dawn: half a thirteen-decade cycle from the opening of the manvantara in the two-forties had to pass first. Ts'in Shi Hwangti had mapped out a great empire; it fell to the Hans to consolidate it. Han Kaotsu followed somewhat in the footsteps of his predecessor, less the cruelty and barbarism, and most of the strength. The sentiment of the empire was Chinese, not Ts'innish; so, though not a brilliant or always a fortunate soldier, he was able to assert his sway over the greater part of China Proper. Chinesism had spread over territories never before Chinese, and wherever it had spread, the people were glad of a Chinese dynasty; besides, his rule was tactful and kindly. They were glad that the Gods of the Soil of Han were to be worshipped now, and those of Ts'in disthroned; and that the Ts'in edicts were annulled;--as they were with one important exception: those relating to literature. A cultureless son of the proletariat himself. Han Kaotsu felt no urge towards resurrecting that; and perhaps it was as well that the sleeping dogs should be let lie awhile. The wonder is that the old nationalities did not reassert themselves; but they did not, to any extent worth mentioning; and perhaps this is the best proof of Han Kaotsu's real strength. Ts'in Shi Hwangti had dealt soundly with the everlasting Hun in his time; but when he died, the Hun recovered. They kept Han Kaotsu busy, so that his saddle, as he said, was his throne. They raided past the capital and down into Ssechuan; once very nearly captured the emperor; and had to be brought out at last with a Chinese princess for the Hun king. Generally speaking, the Hans would have lived at peace with them if they could, and were ready to try better means of solving the problem than war. But it certainly was a problem; for in these Huns we find little traces of human nature that you could work upon. But China was a big country by that time, and only a part of it, comparatively small, suffered from the Huns. For the rest, Han Kaotsu was popular, his people were happy, and his reign of twelve years was a breathing-time in which they gathered strength. He kept a hundred thousand workmen busy on public works, largely road- and bridge-building: a suspension bridge that he built, a hundred and fifty yards long, and crossing a valley five hundred feet below, is still in use,--or was during the last century. He died in 194. He was succeeded, nominally, by his son Han Hweiti; really by his widow, the empress Liu Chi: one of the three great women who have ruled China. At this time the Huns, under their great Khan Mehteh, were at the height of their power. Khan Mehteh made advances to the Empress: "I should like," said he, "to exchange what I have for what I have not." You and I may think he meant merely a suggestion for mutual trade; but she interpreted it differently, thanked him kindly, but declined the flattering proposal on the score of her age and ugliness. Her hair and teeth, she begged him to believe, were quite inadequate, and made it impossible for her to think of changing her condition.--I do not know whether it was vanity or policy. But it was she, or perhaps her puppet son the emperor, who started the great Renaissance. A commission was appointed for restoring the literature: among its members, K'ung An-kuo, twelfth in descent from Confucius. Books were found, that devotion had hidden in dry wells and in the walls of houses; one Fu Sheng, ninety years old, repeated the Classics word for word to the Commissioner, all from his memory. The restrictions gone, a mighty reaction set in; and China was on fire to be her literary self again. A great ball was set rolling; learning went forward by leaps and bounds. The enthusiasm, it must be said, took directions legitimate and the reverse;--bless you, why should any written page at all be considered lost, when there were men in Han with inventive genius of their own, and a pretty skill at forgery? The Son of Heaven was paying well; to it, then, minds and calligraphic fingers! So there are false chapters of Chwangtse, while many true ones have been lost. And I can never feel sure of Confucius' own _Spring and Autumn Annals,_ wherein he thought lay his highest claim to human gratitude, and the composition of which the really brilliant-minded Mencius considered equal to the work of Ta Yu in bridling China's Sorrow;--but which, as they come down to us, are not impressive.--The tide rolled on under Han Wenti, from 179 to 156: a poet himself, a man of peace, and a reformer of the laws in the direction of mercy. Another prosperous reign followed; then came the culmination of the age in the Golden Reign of Han Wuti, from 140 to 86. The cyclic impulse had been working mainly on spiritual and intellectual planes: Ssema Tsien, the Father of Chinese History, gives gloomy pictures of things economic.* "When the House of Han arose," says Ssema, "the evils of their predecessors had not passed away. Husbands still went off to the wars; old and young were employed in transporting food, production was almost at a standstill, and money was scarce. The Son of Heaven had not even carriage horses of the same color; the highest civil and military authorities rode in bullock carts; the people at large knew not where to lay their heads. The coinage was so heavy and cumbersome that the people themselves started a new issue at a fixed standard of value. But the laws were lax, and it was impossible to prevent the grasping from coining largely, buying largely, and then holding for a rise in the market. Prices went up enormously:"--it sounds quite modern and civilized, doesn't it?--"rice sold at a thousand cash per picul; a horse cost a hundred ounces of silver." ------ * The passages quoted are taken from Dr. Giles's work on _Chinese Literature._ ------ Under the Empress Liu Chi and her successors these conditions were bettered; until, when a half cycle had run its course, and Han Wuti had been some twenty years on the throne, prosperity came to a culmination. Says Ssema Tsien: "The public granaries were well-stocked; the government treasuries full... The streets were thronged with the horses of the people, and on the highroads, whole droves were to be seen, so that it became necessary to forbid the public use of mares. Village elders ate meat and drank wine. Petty government clerkships lapsed from father to son, and the higher offices of state were treated as family heirlooms. For a spirit of self-respect and reverence for the law had gone abroad, and a sense of charity and duty towards one's neighbor kept men aloof from disgrace and crime." There had been in Kansuh, the north-westernmost province of China Proper, a people called the Yueh Chi or White Scythians, whom the Huns had driven into the far west; by this time they were carving themselves an empire out of the domains of the Parthians, and penetrating into north-west India, but Han Wuti knew nothing of that. All that was known of them was, that somewhere on the limits of the world they existed, and were likely to be still at loggerheads with their ancient foes the Huns. Han Wuti had now been on the throne seven years, and was and had been much troubled by the Hun problem: he thought it might help to solve it if those lost Yueh Chi could be raked up out of the unknown and made active allies. To show the spirit of the age, I will tell you the story of Chang Ch'ien, the general whom he sent to find them. Chang Ch'ien set out in 139; traversed the desert, and was duly captured by the Huns. Ten years they held him prisoner; then he escaped. During those ten years he had heard no news from home: a new emperor might be reigning, for aught he knew; or Han Wuti might have changed his plans. Such questions, however, never troubled him: he was out to find the Yueh Chi for his master, and find them he would. He simply went forward; came presently to the kingdom of Tawan, in the neighborhood of Yarkand; and there preached a crusade against the Huns. Unsuccessfully: the men of Tawn knew the Huns, but not Han wuti, who was too far away for a safe ally; and they proposed to do nothing in the matter. Chang Ch'ien considered. Go back to China?--Oh dear no! there must be real Yueh C'hi somewhere, even if these Tawanians were not they. On he went, and searched that lonely world until he did find them. They liked the idea of Hun-hurting; but again, considered China too far away for practical purposes. He struck down into Tibet; was captured again; held prisoner a year; escaped again,--and got back to Changan in 126. A sadder and a wiser man, you might suppose; but nothing of the kind! Full, on the contrary, of brilliant schemes; full of the wonder and rumor of the immense west. These he poured into Han Wuti's most sympathetic ears; and the emperor started now in real earnest upon his Napoleonic career. The frontier was no longer at the Great Wall. Only the other day Sir Aurel Stein discovered, in the far west, the long straight furrows traced by the feet of Han Wuti's sentinels on guard; the piles of reed-stalks, at regular intervals, set along the road for fire-signals; documents giving details as to the encampments, the clothes and arrows served out to the soldiers, the provisions made for transforming armies of conquest into peaceful colonies. All these things the sands covered and preserved. And behind these outposts was a wide empire full of splendor outward and inward; full of immense activities, in literature, in engineering, in commerce. New things and ideas came in from the west: international influences to reinforce the flaming up of Chinese life. The moving force was still Taoism; the Blue Pearl, sunk deep in the now sunlit waters of the common consciousness, was flashing its rainbows. Ts'in Shi Hwangti, for all his greatness, had been an uncouth barbarian; Han Wuti was a very cultured gentleman of literary tastes,--a poet, and no mean one. He too was a Taoist; an initiate of the Taoism of the day; which might mean in part that he had an eye to the Elixir of Life; but it also meant (at least) that he had a restless, exorbitant, and gorgeous imagination. Such, indeed, inflamed the whole nation; which was rich, prosperous, energetic, progressive, and happy. Ts'in ideas of bigness in architecture had taken on refinement in Chinese hands; the palaces and temples of Han Wuti are of course all lost, but by all accounts they must have been wonderful and splendid. Very little of the art comes down: there are some bas-reliefs of horses, fine and strong work, realistic, but with redeeming nobleness. How literature had revived may be gathered from this: in Han Wuti's Imperial Library there were 3123 volumes of the Classics and commentaries thereupon; 2705 on Philosophy; 1318 of Poetry; 2528 on Mathematics; 868 on Medicine; 790 on the Science of War. His gardens at Changan were famous; he had collectors wandering the world for new and ornamental things to stock them; very likely we owe many of our garden plants and shrubs to him. He consecrated mountains and magnificent ceremonies; and for the sake of the gods and genii appeared as flaming splendors over Tai-hsing and the other sacred heights. For the light of Romance falls on him; he is a shining half faery figure.--Outwardly there was pomp, stately manners, pageantry, high magnificence; inwardly, a burning-up of the national imagination to ensoul it. The Unseen, with all its mystery and awe or loveliness, was the very nearly visible: not a pass nor lake nor moor nor forest but was crowded with the things of which wonder is made. Muh Wang, the Chow king, eight centuries before, had ridden into the West and found the garden of that Faery Queen whose Azure Birds of Compassion fly out into this world to sweeten the thoughts of men. Bless you, Han Wuti married the lady, and had her to abide peaceably in his palace, and to watch with him "The lanterns glow vermeil and gold, Azure and green, the Spring nights through, When loud the pageant galeons drew To clash in mimic combating, And their dark shooting flames to strew Over the lake at Kouen Ming." From about 130 to 110 Han Wuti was Napoleonizing: bringing in the north-west; giving the Huns a long quietus in 119; conquering the south with Tonquin; the southern coast provinces, and the lands towards Tibet. Ssema Tsien tells us that "mountains were hewn through for many miles to establish a trade-route through the south-west and open up those remote regions"; that was a scheme of Chang Ch'ien's, who had ever an eye to penetrating to India. There was a dark side to it. Vast sums of money were eaten up, and estravagance in private life was encouraged. Says Ssema: "From the highest to the lowest, everyone vied with his neighbor in lavishing money on houses and appointments and apparel, altogether beyond his means. Such is the everlasting law of the sequence of prosperity and decay.... Merit had to give way to money; shame and scruples of conscience were laid aside; laws and punishments were administered with severer hand." It is a very common thing to see signs of decline and darkness in one's own age; and Ssema himself had no cause to love the administration of Han Wuti; under which he had been punished rather severely for some offense. Still, what he says is more or less what you would expect the truth to be. And you will note him historian of the life of the people; not mere recounter of court scandals and chronicler of wars: conscious, too, of the law of cycles;--all told, something a truer historian than we have seen too much of in the West.--Where, indeed, we are wedded to politics, and must have our annalists chronicle above all things what we call political growth; not seeing that it is but a circle, and squirreling round valiantly in a cage to get perpetually in high triumph to the place you started from; a foolish externality at best. But real History mirrors for us the motions of the Human Spirit and the Eternal. I said that what Ssema tells us is what you would expect the truth to be; this way:--After half a cycle of that adventurous and imaginative spirit, eyes jaundiced a little would surely find excuse enough for querulous vision. There is, is there not, something Elizabethan in that Chang Ch'ien, taking the vast void so gaily, and not to be quenched by all those fusty years imprisoned among the Huns, but returning only the more fired and heady of imagination? If he was a type of Han Wuti's China, we may guess Ssema was not far out, and that vaulting ambition was overleaping itself a little; that men were buying automobiles who by good rights should have ridden in a wheelbarrow. Things did not go quite so well with the great emperor after his twenty flaming Napoleonic years; his vast mountain-cleaving schemes were left unfinished; Central Asia grew more troublesome again, and he had to call off Chang Ch'ien from an expedition into India by way of Yunnan and Tibet and the half-cleaved mountains, to fight the old enemy in the north-west. But until the thirteen decades were passed, and Han Chaoti, his successor, had died in 63 B.C., the vast designs were still upspringing; high and daring enterprise was still the characteristic of the Chinese mind. The thirteen decades, that is, from the accession of Han Hueiti and the beginning of the Revival of Literature in 194. XV. SOME POSSIBLE EPOCHS IN SANSKRIT LITERATURE Han Chaoti died in 63 B.C.; his successor is described as a "boor of low tastes";--from that time the great Han impetus goes slowing down and quieting. China was recuperating after Han Wuti's flare of splendor; we may leave her to recuperate, and look meanwhile elsewhere. And first to that most tantalizing of human regions, India; where you would expect something just now from the cyclic backwash. As soon as you touch this country, in the domain of history and chronology, you are certain, as they say, to get 'hoodooed.' Kali-Yuga began there in 3102 B.C., and ever since that unfortunate event, not a single soul in the country seems to have had an idea of keeping track of the calendar. So-and-so, you read, reigned. When?--Oh, in 1000 A.D. Or in 213 A.D. Or in 78 A.D. Or in a few million B.C., or 2100 A.D. Or he did not reign at all. After all, what does it matter?--this is Kali-Yuga, and nothing can go right.--You fix your eyes on a certain spot in time, which, according to your guesses at the cycles, should be important. Nothing doing there, as we say. Oh no, nothing at all: this is Kali-Yuga, and what should be doing? .... Well, if you press the point, no doubt somebody was reigning, somewhere.--But, pardon my insistence, if seems--. Quite so, quite so! as I said, somebody must have been reigning.--You scrutinze; you bring your lenses to bear; and the somebody begins to emerge. And proves to be, say, the great Samundragupta, emperor of all India (nearly); for power and splendor, almost to be mentioned with Asoka. And it was the Golden Age of Music, and perhaps some other things.--Yes, certainly; the Guptas were reigning then, I forgot. But why bother about it? This is Kali-Yuga, and what does anything matter?--And you come away with the impression that your non-informant could reveal enough and plenty, if he had a mind to. Which is, indeed, probably the case. All this nonchalant indefiniteness means nothing more, one suspects, than that the Brahmans have elected to keep the history of their country unknown to us poor Mlechhas. Then there are Others, too: the Guardians of Esotericism in a greater sense; who have not chosen so far that Indian history should be known. So we can only take dim foreshadowings, and make guesses. We saw the Maurya dynasty,--that one seemingly firm patch to set your feet on in the whole morass of the Indian past,--occupy the thirteen decades from 320 to 190 B.C., (or we thought we did); now the question is, from that _pied-a-terre_ whither shall we jump? If you could be sure that the ebb of the wave would be equal in length to its inrush,--the night to the day:--that the minor pralaya would be no longer or shorter than the little manvantara that preceded it--why, then you might leap out securely for 60 B.C., with a comfortable feeling that there would be some kind of turning-point in Indian history there or thereabouts. Sometimes things do happen so, beautifully, as if arranged by the clock. But unfortunately, enough mischief may be done in thirteen decades to take a much longer period to disentangle; and again, it is only when you strike an average for the whole year, that you can say the nights are equal to the days. We are trying to see through to the pattern of history; not to dogmatize on such details as we may find, nor claim on the petty strength of them to be certain of the whole. So, our present leap (for we shall make it), while not quite in the dark, must be made in the dusk of an hour or so after sunset. There must be an element of faith in it: very likely we shall splash and sink gruesomely. Well, here goes then! From 190 B.C. thirteen decades forward to 60 B.C., and,--squish! But, courage! throw out your arm and clutch--at this trailing root, _57 B. C.,_ here within easy reach; and haul yourself out. So; and see, now you are standing on something. What it is, _Dios lo sabe!_ But there is an Indian era that begins in 57 B.C.; for a long time, dates were counted from that year. That era rises in undefined legendary splendor, and peters out ineffectually you don't just know where. There is nothing to go upon but legends, with never a coin nor monument found to back them;--never mind; dates you count eras from are generally those in which important cycles begin. The legends relate to Vikramaditya king of Ujjain,--which kingdom is towards the western side of the peninsula, and about where Hindoostan and the Deccan join. He is the Arthur-Charlemain of India, the Golden Monarch of Romance. In the lakes of his palace gardens the very swans sang his praises daily-- "Glory be to Vikramajeet Who always gives us pearls to eat"; and when he died, the four pillars that supported his throne rose up, and wandered away through the fields and jungle disconsolate: they would not support the dignity of any lesser man.* Such tales are told about him by every Indian mother to her children at this present day, and have been, presumably, any time these last two thousand years. ------ * _India through the Ages,_ by Mrs. Flora Annie Steel. ------ Of his real existence Historical Research cannot satisfy itself at all;--or it half guesses it may have discovered his probable original wandering in disguise through the centuries of a thousand years or so later. But you must expect that sort of thing in India. At his court, says tradition, lived the "Nine Gems of Literature," --chief among them the poet-dramatist Kalidasa; whom Historical Research (western) rather infers lived at several widely separated epochs much nearer our own day. Well; for the time being let us leave Historical Research (western) to stew in its own (largely poisonous) juices, and see how it likes it,--and say that there are good cyclic chances of something large here, in the half-cycle between the Ages of Han Wuti and Augustus. We may note that things Indian must be dealt with differently from things elsewhere. You take, for example, the old story about the Moslem conquerors of Egypt burning the Alexandrian Library. The fact that this is mentioned for the first time by a Christian who lived six hundred years after the supposed event, while we have many histories written during those six hundred years which say nothing about it at all,--is evidence amounting to proof that it never happened; especially when you take into account the known fact that the Alexandrian Library had already been thoroughly burnt several times. But you can derive no such negativing certainty, in India, from the fact that Vikramaditya and Ujjain and Kalidasa may never have been mentioned together, not associated with the era of 57 B.C., in any extant writing known to the west that comes from before several centuries later. Because the Brahman were a close corporation that kept the records of history, and kept them secret; and gave out bits when it suited them. Say that in 1400 (or whenever else it may have been) they first allowed it to be published that Kalidasa flourished at Vikrmaditya's court:--they may have been consciously lying, but at least they were talking about what they knew. They were not guessing, or using their head-gear wrongfully, their lying was intentional, or their truth warranted by knowledge. And no motive for lying is apparent here.--It would be very satisfactory, of course, were a coin discovered with King Vikrmaditya's image and superscription nicely engraved thereon: _Vikramaditya De Gratia: Uj. Imp.; Fid. Def.; 57 B.C._ But in this wicked world you cannot have everything; you must be thankful for what you can get. You may remember that Han Wuti, to solve the Hun problem, sent Chang Ch'ien out through the desert to discover the Yueh Chi' and that Chang found them at last in Bactria, which they had conquered from Greeks who had held it since Alexander's time. He found them settled and with some fair degree of civilization; spoke of Bactria under their sway as a "land of a thousand cities";--they had learned much since they were nomads driven out of Kansuh by the Huns. Also they were in the midst of a career of expansion. Within thirty years of his visit to them, or by 100 B.C., they had spread their empire over eastern Persia, at the expense of the Parthians; and thence went down into India conquering. By 60 B.C. they held the Punjab and generally the western parts of Hindoostan; then, since they do not seem to have got down into the Deccan, I take it they were held up. By whom?--Truly this is pure speculation. But the state of Malwa, of which Ujjain was the capital, lay right in their southward path; if held up they were, it would have been, probably, by some king of Ujjain. Was this what happened?--that the peril of these northern invaders roused Malwa to exert its fullest strength; the military effort spurring up national feeling; the national feeling, creative energies spiritual, mental and imaginative;--until a great age in Ujjain had come into being. It is what we often see. The menace of Spain roused England to Elizabethanism; the Persian peril awakend Athens. So King Vikramaditya leads out his armies, and to victory; and the Nine Gems of Literature sing at his court. It is a backwash from Han Wuti's China, that goes west with Chang Ch'ien to the Yueh Chi, and south with them into India. And we can look for no apex of literary creation at this time, either in China or Europe. In the Roman literature of that cycle it is the keen creative note we miss: Virgil, the nearest to it, cannot be said to have possessed quite; and Han literature was probably its first culmination under Han Wuti, and its second under the Eastern Hans. One suspects that great creation is generally going on somewhere, and is not displeased to find hints of its presence in India; is inclined to think this may have been, after all, the Golden Age of the Sanskrit Drama.--At which there can be at any rate no harm in taking a glance at this point; and, retrospectively, at Sanskrit literature as a whole;--a desperately inadequate glance, be it said. I ask you here to remember the three periods of English Poetry, with their characteristics; and you must not mind my using my Welsh god-names in connexion with them. First, then, there was the Period of Plenydd,--of the beginnings of _Vision;_ when the eyes of Chaucer and his lyricist predecessors were opened to the world out-of-doors; when they began to see that the skies were blue, fields and forests green; that there were flowers in the meadows and woodlands; and that all these things were delectable. Then there was the Period of Gwron, Strength; when Marlowe and Shakespeare and Milton evolved the Grand Manner; when they made the great March-Music, unknown in English before, and hardly achieved by anyone since:--the era of the great Warrior-poetry of the Tragedies and of _Paradise Lost._ Then came, with Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley, the Age of Alawn, lasting on until today; when the music of intonation brought with it romance and mystery and Natural Magic with its rich glow and wizard insight. And you will remember how English Poetry, on the uptrend of a major cycle, is a reaching from the material towards the spiritual, a growth toward that. Though Milton and Shakespeare made their grand Soul-Symbols,--by virtue of a cosmic force moving them as it has moved no others in the language,--you cannot find in their works, or in any works of that age, such clear perceptions or statements of spiritual truth as in Swinburne's _Songs before Sunrise;_ nor was the brain-mind of either of those giants of the Middle Period capable of such conscious mystic thought as Wordsworth's. There was an evolution upward and inward; from Chaucer's school-boy vision, to Swinburne's (in that one book) clear sight of the Soul. We appear to find in Sanskrit literature,--I speak in a very general sense,--also such great main epochs or cycles. First a reign of Plenydd, of Vision,--in the Age of the Sacred Books. Then a reign of Gwron,--in the Age of the heroic Epics. Then a reign of Alawn, in the Age of the Drama. But the direction is all opposite. The cycle is not upward, from the sough of a beastly Iron Age towards the luminance of a coming Golden; but downward from the peaks and splendors of the Age of Gold to where the outlook is on to this latter hell's-gulf of years. Plenydd, when he first touched English eyes, he was Plenydd the Lord of Spiritual vision, the Seer into the Eternities. Wordsworth at his highest only approaches,-- Swinburne in _Hertha_ halts at the portals of, the Upanishads. Now, what may this indicate? To my mind, this: that you are not to take these Sanskrit Sacred Books as the fruitage of a single literary age. They do not correspond with, say, the Elizabethan, or the Nineteenth-Century, poetry of England; but are rather the cream of the output of a whole period as long (at least) as that of all English literature; the blossoming of a Racial Mind during (at least) a manvantara of fifteen hundred years. I do not doubt that the age that gave birth to the _Katha-Upanishad,_ gave birth to all manner of other things also; flippancies and trivialities among the rest;--just as in the same England, and in the same years, Milton was dictating _Samson Agonistes,_ and Butler was writing the stinging scurrilities of _Hudibras._ But the Sanskrit Hudibrases are lost; as the English one will be, even if it takes millenniums to lose it. Full-flowing time has washed away the impermanencies of that ancient age, and left standing but the palaces built upon the rock of the Soul. The Soul made the Upanishads, as it mide _Paradise Lost;_ it made the former in the Golden Age, and the latter in this Age of Iron; the former through men gifted with superlative vision; the latter through a blind old bard. Therein lies the difference: all our bards, our very greatest, have been blind,--Dante and Shakespeare, no less than Milton. Full-flowing Time washed away the impermanencies of that ancient age, and left standing but the rock-built palaces of the Soul; and these,--not complete, perhaps;--repaired to a degree by hands more foolish;--a little ruinous in places,--but the ruins grander and brighter than all the pomps, all the new-fangled castles of genii, of later times, --come down to us as the Sacred Books of India, the oldest extant literature in the world. How old? We may put their epoch well before the death of Krishna in 3102 B. C.,--well before the opening of the Kali-Yuga; we may say that it lasted a very long time;--and be content that if all scholarship, all western and modern opinion, laughs at us now,--the laugh will probably be with us when we have been dead a long time. Or perhaps sooner. They count three stages in this Vedic or pre-classical literature, wherefrom also we may infer that it was the output of a great manvantara, not of a mere day of literary creation. These three, they say, are represented by the Vedas, the Brahmanas, and the Upanishads. The Vedas consist of hymns to the Gods; and in a Golden Age you might find simple hymns to the Gods a sufficient expression of religion. Where, say, Reincarnation was common knowledge; where everybody knew it, and no one doubted it; you would not bother to make poems about it: --you do not make poems about going to bed at night and getting up in the morning--or not as a rule. You make poems upon a reaction of surprise at perceptions which seem wonderful and beautiful,-- and in a Golden Age, the things that would seem wonderful and Beautiful would be, precisely, the Sky, the Stars, Earth, Fire, the Winds and Waters. Our senses are dimmed, or we should see in them the eternally startling manifestations of the Lords of Eternal Beauty. It is no use arguing from the Vedic hymns, as some folk do, a 'primitive' state of society; we have not the keys now to the background, mental and social, of the people among whom those hymns arose. Poetry in every succeeding age has had to fight harder to proclaim the spiritual truth proper to her native spheres: were all spiritual truth granted, she would need do nothing more than mention the Sky, or the Earth, and all the wonder, all the mystery and delight connoted by them would flood into the minds of her hearers. But now she must labor difficultly to make those things cry through; she gains in glory by the resistance of the material molds she must pierce. So the Vedas tell us little unless we separate ourselves from our preconceptions about 'primitive Aryans'; whose civilization may have been at once highly evolved and very spiritual. The _Brahmanas_ are priest-books; the _Upanishads,_ it is reasonable to say are Kshattriya-books;--you often find in them Brahmans coming to Kshattriyas to learn the Inner Wisdom. The _Brahmanas_ are books of ritual; the _Upanishads_ came much later that the _Brahmanas:_ that they represent a reaction towards spirituality from the tyranny of a priestly caste. But probably the day of the Kshattriyas was much earlier than that of the priests. The Marlow-Shakespear-Milton time was the Kshattriya period in English poetry; also the period during which the greatest souls incarnated, and produced the greatest work. So, perhaps, in this manvantara of the pre-classical Sanskrit literature, the Rig-Veda with its hymns represents the first, the Chaucerian period; but a Golden Age Chaucerian, simple and pure,--a time in which the Mysteries really ruled human life, and when to hymn the Gods was to participate in the wonder and freeddom of their being. Think, perhaps, as the cycle mounted to its hour of noon, esotericism opened its doors to pour forth an illumination yet stronger and more saving: mighty egos incarnated, and put in writing the marvelous revelations of the _Upanishads:_ there may have been a descent towards matter, to call forth these more explicit declarations of the Spirit. The exclusive caste-system had not been evolved by any means, nor was to be for many ages: the kings are at the head of things; and they, not the priests, the chief custodians of the Deeper Wisdom.--And then, later, the Priest-cast made its contribution, evolving in the _Brahmanas_ the ritual of their order; with an implication, ever growing after the beginning of the Kali-Yuga, that only by this ritual salvation could be attained. Not that it follows that this was the idea at first. Ritual has its place: hymns and chantings, so they be the right ones, performed rightly, have their decided magical value; we can understand that in its inception and first purity, this Brahmana literature may have been a growth or birth, under the aegis of Alawn of the Harmonies, of the magic of chanted song. And having said all this, and reconsidering it, one feels that to attribute these three branches of literature to a single manvantara is a woeful foreshortening. I suppose the Rig-Veda is as old as the Aryan Sub-race, which, according to our calculations, must have begun some 160,000 years ago. The _Upanishads_ affect us like poetry; even in Max Muller's translation, which is poor prose, they do not lose altogether their uplift and quality of song. They sing the philosophy of the divine in Man; I suppose we may easily say they are the highest thing in extant literature. They do not come to us whole or untainted. We may remember what the Swami Dayanand Sarasvati said to H. P. Blavatsky: that he could show the excellent "Moksh Mooller" that "what crossed the Kalapani from India to Europe were only the bits of rejected copies of some passages from our sacred books." Again, Madame Blavatsky says that the best part of the Upanishads was taken out at the time Buddha was preaching; the Brahmans took it out, that he might not prove too clearly the truth of his teachings by appeals to their sacred books. Also the Buddha was a Kshattriya; so the ancient eminence of the Kshattriyas had to be obscured a little;--it was the Brahmans, by that time, who were monopolizing the teaching office. And no doubt in the same way from time to time much has been added: the Brahmans could do this, being custodians of the sacred literature. Yet in spite of all we get in them a lark's song,-- but a spiritual lark's song, floating and running in the golden glories of the Spiritual Sun; a song whose verve carries us openly up into the realms of pure spirit; a wonderful radiance and sweetness of dawn, of dawn in its fresh purity, its holiness,--haunted with no levity or boisterousness of youth, but with a wisdom gay and ancient,--eternal, laughter-laden, triumphant,--at once hoary and young,--like the sparkle of snows on Himalaya, like the amber glow in the eastern sky. Here almost alone in literature we get long draughts of the Golden Age: not a Golden Age fought for and brought down into our perceptions (which all true poetry gives us), but one actually existing, open and free;--and not merely the color and atmosphere of it, but the wisdom. One need not wonder that Madame Blavatsky drew so freely on India for the nexus of her teachings. That country has performed a marvelous function, taking all its ages together, in the life of humanity; in preserving for us the poetry and wisdom of an age before the Mysteries had declined; in keeping open for us, in a semi-accessible literature, a kind of window into the Golden Age.--Well; each of the races has some function to fulfil. And it is not modern India that has done this; she has not done it of her own good will,--has had no good will to do it. It is the Akbars the Anquetil Duperrons and Sir William Joneses, --and above all, and far above all, H. P. Blavatsky,--whom we have to thank. So much, then, for the age of the Vedic literature. It passed, and we come to an age when that literature had become sacred. It seems to me that in the natural course of things it would take a very long time for this to happen. You may say that in the one analogy we have whose history is well known,--the _Koran,_--we have an example of a book sacred as soon as written. But I do not believe the analogy would hold good here. The _Koran_ came as the rallying-standard of a movement which was designed to work quick changes in the outer fabric of the world; it came when the cycles had sunk below any possibility of floating spiritual wisdom on to the world-currents;--and there were the precedents of Judaism and Christianity, ever before the eyes of Mohammed, for making the new religious movement center about a Book. But in ancient India, I take it, you had some such state of affairs as this: classes there would be, according to the natural differences of egos incarnating; but no castes; religion there was,--that is to say, an attention to, an aspiration towards, the spiritual side of life; but no religions,--no snarling sects and jangling foolish creeds. Those things (a God's mercy!) had not been invented then, nor were to be for thousands of years. The foremost souls, the most spiritual, gravitated upward to the headship of tribes and nations; they were the _kings,_ as was proper they should be: King-Initiates, Teachers as well as Rulers of the people. And they ordained public ceremonies in which the people, coming together, could invoke and participate in the Life from Above. So we read in the Upanishads of those great Kshattriya Teachers to whom Brahmans came as disciples. Poets made their verses; and what of these were good, really inspired, suitable--what came from the souls of Poet-Initiates,-- would be used at such ceremonies: sung by the assembled multitudes; and presently, by men specially trained to sing them. So a class rose with this special function; and there were other functions in connexion with these ceremonies, not proper to be performed by the kings, and which needed a special training to carry out. Here, then, was an opening in life for men of the right temperament;--so a class arose, of _priests:_ among whom many might be real Initiates and disciples of the Adept-Kings. They had the business of taking care of the literature sanctioned for use at the sacrifices,--for convenience we may call all the sacred ceremonies that,--at which they performed the ritual and carried out the mechanical and formal parts. It is very easy to imagine how, as the cycles went on and down, and the Adept-Kings ceased to incarnate continuously, these religious officials would have crystallized themselves into a close corporation, an hereditary caste; and what power their custodianship of the sacrificial literature would have given them;--how that literature would have come to be not merely sacred in the sense that all true poetry with the inspiration of the Soul behind it really is;--but credited with an extra-human sanction. But it would take a long time. When modern creeds are gone, to what in literature will men turn for their inspiration? --To whatever in literature contains real inspiration, you may answer. They will not sing Dr. Watts's doggerel in their churches; but such things perhaps as Wordsworth's _The World is too much with us,_ or Henley's _I am the Captain of my Soul._ And then, after a long time and many racial pralayas, you can imagine such poems as these coming to be thought of as not merely from the Human Soul, an ever-present source of real inspiration, --but as revelations by God himself, from which not one jot or tittle should be taken without blasphemy; given by God when he founded his one true religion to mankind. We lose sight of the spirit, and exalt the substance; then we forget the substance, and deify the shadow. We crucify our Saviors when they are with us; and when they are gone, we crucify them worse with our unmeaning worship and dogmas made on them. Well, the age of the Vedas passed, and pralayas came, and new manvantaras; and we come at last to the age of Classical Sanskrit; and first to the period of the Epics. This too is a Kshattriya age. Whether it represents a new ascendency of the Kshattriyas, or simply a continuance of the old one: whether the priesthood had risen to power between the Vedas and this, and somewhat fallen from it again,--or whether their rise was still in progress, but not advanced to the point of ousting the kings from their lead,--who can say? But this much, perhaps, we may venture without fear: the Kshattriyas of the Epic age were not the same as those of the Upanishads. They were not Adept-Kings and Teachers in the same way. By Epic age, I mean the age in which the epics were written, not that of which they tell. And neither the _Mahabharata_ nor the _Ramayana_ was composed in a day; but in many centuries;--and it is quite likely that on them too Brahmanical hands have been tactfully at work. Some parts of them were no doubt written in the centuries after Christ; there is room enough to allow for this, when you think that the one contains between ninety and a hundred thousand, the other about twenty-four thousand couplets;--the _Mahabharata_ being about seven times, the _Ramayana_ about twice as long as the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ combined. So the Age of the Epics must be narrowed down again, to mean the age that gave birth to the nuclei of them. As to when it may have been, I do not know that there is any clue to be found. Modern criticism has been at work, of course, to reduce all things to as commonplace and brain-mind a basis as possible; but its methods are entirely the wrong ones. Mr. Romesh Dutt, who published abridged translations of the two poems in the late nineties, says of the _Mahabharata_ that the great war which it tells of "is believed to have been fought in the thirteenth or fourteenth century before Christ"; and of the _Ramayana,_ that it tells the story of nations that flourished in Northern India about a thousand years B. C.--Is believed by whom, pray? It is also believed, and has been from time immemorial, in India, that Krishna, who figures largely in the _Mahabharata,_ died in the year 3102 B.C.; and that he was the eighth avatar of Vishnu; and that Rama, the hero of the _Ramayana,_ was the seventh. Now brain-mind criticism of the modern type is the most untrustworthy thing, because it is based solely on circumstantial evidence; and when you work upon that, you ought to go very warily;--it is always likely that half the circumstances remain un-discovered; and even if you have ninety and nine out of the hundred possible, the hundredth, if you had it, might well change the whole complexion of the case. And this kind of criticism leads precisely nowhere, does not build anything, but pulls down what was built of old. So I think we must be content to wait for real knowledge till those who hold it may choose to reveal it; and meanwhile get back to the traditional starting-point; --say that the War of the Kuravas and Pandavas happened in the thirty-second century B.C.; Rama's invasion of Lanka, ages earlier; and that the epics began to be written, as they say, somewhere between the lives of Krishna and Buddha,--somewhere between 2500 and 5000 years ago. Why before Buddha?--Because they are still Kshattriya works; written before the Brahman ascendency, though after the time when the Kshattriyas were led by their Adept-Kings;--and because Buddha started a spiritual revolt (Kshattriya) against a Brahman ascendency well established then,--a revolt that by Asoka's time had quite overthrown the Brahman power. Why, then, should we not ascribe the epics to this Buddhist Kshattriya period? To Asoka's reign itself, for example?--Well, it has been done; but probably not wisely. Panini in his _Grammar_ cites the Mahabharata as an authority for usage; and even the westernest of criticism is disinclined, on the evidence, to put Panini later than 400 B.C. Goldstucker puts him in the seventh century B.C. _En passant,_ we may quote this from the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ as to Panini's _Grammar:_ "For a comprehensive grasp of linguistic facts, and a penetrating insight into the structure of the vernacular language, this work stands probably unrivalled in the literature of any language."--Panini, then, cites the _Mahabharata;_ Panini lived certainly before Asoka's time; the greatness of his work argues that he came in a culminating period of scholarship and literary activity, if not of literary creation; the reign of Asoka we may surmise was another such period;--and from all this I think we may argue without much fear that the the nucleus and original form of it, was written long before the reign of Asoka. Besides, if it had been written during the Buddhist ascendency, one fancies we should find more Buddhism in it than we do. There is some;--there are ideas that would be called Buddhist; but that really only prove the truth of the Buddha's claim that he taught nothing new. But a Poem written in Asoka's reign, one fancies, would not have been structurally and innately, as the _Mahabharata_ is, martial. There is this difference between the two epics,--I speak of the nucleus-poems in each case;--the _Mahabharata_ seems much more a natural growth, a national epic,--the work not of one man, but of many poets celebrating through many centuries a tradition not faded from the national memory;--but the _Ramayana_ is more a structural unity; it bears the marks of coming from one creative mind: even western criticism accepts Valmiki (whoever he may have been) as its author. To him it is credited in Indian tradition; which ascribes the authorship of the _Mahabharata_ to Vyasa, the reputed compiler of the _Vedas;_--and this last is manifestly not to be taken literally; for it is certain that a great age elapsed between the _Vedas_ and the Epics. So I think that the _Mahabharata_ grew up in the centuries, many or few, that followed the Great War,--or, say, during the second millennium B.C.; that in that millennium, during some great 'day' of literary creation, it was redacted into a single poem;-- and that, the epic habit having thus been started, a single poet, Valmiki, in some succeeding 'day,' was prompted to make another epic, on the other great traditional saga-cycle, the story of Rama. But since that time, and all down through the centuries, both poems have been growing _ad lib._ This is an endeavor to take a bird's-eye view of the whole subject; not to look at the evidence through a microscope, in the modern critical way. It is very unorthodox, but I believe it is the best way: the bird's eye sees most; the microscope sees least; the former takes in whole landscapes in proportion; the latter gets confused with details that seem, under that exaggeration, too highly important,--but which might be negatived altogether could you see the whole thing at once. A telescope for that kind of seeing is not forthcoming; but the methods of thought that H. P. Blavatsky taught us supply at least the first indications of what it may be like: they give us the first lenses. As our perceptions grow under their influence, doubtless new revelations will be made; and we shall see more, and further. All we can do now is to retire from the confusion brought about by searching these far stars with a microscope; to look less at the results of such searching, than at the old traditions themselves, making out what we can of them through what Theosophic lenses we have. We need not be misled by the ridiculous idea that civilization is a new thing. It is only the bias of the age; the next age will count it foolishness.--But to return to our epics.-- First to the _Mahabharata._ It is, as it comes down to us, not one poem, but a large literature. Mr. Dutt compares it, both for length and variety of material, to the sermons of Jeremy Taylor and Hooker, Locke's and Hobbes's books of Philosophy, Blackstone's _Commentaries,_ Percy's Ballads, and the writings of Newman, Pusey, and Keble,--all done into blank verse and incorporated with _Paradise Lost._ You have a martial poem like the _Iliad,_ full of the gilt and scarlet and trumpetings and blazonry of war;--and you find the _Bhagavad-Gita_ a chapter in it. Since it was first an epic, there have been huge accretions to it: Whosever fancy it struck would add a book or two, with new incidents to glorify this or that locality, princely house, or hero. And it is hard to separate these accretions from the original,--from the version, that is, that first appeared as an epic poem. Some are closely bound into the story, so as to be almost integral; some are fairly so; some might be cut out and never missed. Hence the vast bulk and promiscuity of material; which might militate against your finding in it, as a whole, any consistent Soul-symbol. And yet its chief personages seem all real men; they are clearly drawn, with firm lines;--says Mr. Dutt, as clearly as the Trojan and Achaean chiefs of Homer. Yudhishthira and Karna and Arjuna; Bhishma and Drona and the wild Duhsasan, are very living characters;--as if they had been actual men who had impressed themselves on the imagination of the age, and were not to be drawn by anyone who drew them except from the life. That might imply that poets began writing about them not so long after they lived, and while the memory of them and of their deeds was fresh. We are to understand, however,--all India has so understood, always,--that the poem is a Soul-symbol, standing for the wars of Light and Darkness; whether this symbol was a tradition firmly in the minds of all who wrote it, or whether it was imposed by the master-hand that collated their writings into an epic for the first time. For it would seem that of the original writers, some had been on the Kurava, some on the Pandava side; though in the symbol as it stands, it is the Pandavas who represent the Light, the Kurava,-- the darkness. There are traces of this submerged diversity of opinion. Just as in the _Iliad_ it is the Trojan Hector who is the most sympathetic character, so in the _Mahabharata_ it is often to some of the Kurava champions that our sympathies unavoidably flow. We are told that the Kurava are thoroughly depraved and villainous; but not seldom their actions belie the assertion,--with a certain Kshattriya magnamity for which they are given no credit. Krishna fights for the sons of Pandu; in the _Bhagavad-Gita_ and elsewhere we see him as the incarnation of Vishnu,--of the Deity, the Supreme Self. As such, he does neither good nor evil; but ensures victory for his protegees. Philosophically and symbolically, this is sound and true, no doubt, but one wonders whether the poem (or poems) ran so originally; whether there may not be passages written at first by Kuravist poets; or a Brahminical superimposition of motive on a poem once wholly Kshattriya, and interested only in showing forth the noble and human warrior virtues of the Kshattriya caste. I imagine that in that second millennium B. C., in the early centuries of Kali-Yuga, you had a warrior class with their bards, inspired with high Bushido feeling,--with chivalry and all that is fine in patricianism--but no longer under the leadership of Adept Princes;--the esoteric knowledge was now mainly in the hands of the Priest-class. The Kshattriya bards made poems about the Great War, which grew and coalesced into a national epic. Then in the course of the centuries, as learning in its higher branches became more and more a possession of the Brahmans,--and since there was no feeling against adding to this epic whatever material came handy,--Brahmin esotericists manipulated it with great tact and finesse into a symbol of the warfare of the Soul. There is the story of the death of the Kurava champion Bhishma. The Pandavas had been victorious; and Duryodhana the Kurava king appealed to Bhishma to save the situation. Bhishma loved the Pandava princes like a father; and urged Duryodhana to end the war by granting them their rights,--but in vain. So next day, owing his allegiance to Duryodhana, he took the field; and "As a lordly tusker tramples on a field of feeble reeds, As a forest conflagration on the parched woodland feeds, Bhishma rode upon the warriors in his mighty battle car. God nor mortal chief could face him in the gory field of war." * ------ * The quotations are from Mr. Romesh Dutt's translation. ------ Thus victorious, he cried out to the vanquished that no appeal for mercy would be unheard; that he fought not against the defeated, the worn-out, the wounded, or "a woman born." Hearing this, Krishna advised Arjuna that the chance to turn the tide had come. The young Sikhandin had been born a woman, and changed afterwards by the Gods into a man. Let Sikhandin fight in the forefront of the battle, and the Pandavas would win, and Bhishma be slain.--Arjuna, who loved Bhishma as dearly as Bhishma loved him and his brothers, protested; but Krishna announced that Bhishma was so doomed to die, and on the following day; a fate decreed, and righteously to be brought about by the stratagem. So it happened: "Bhishma viewed the Pandav forces with a calm unmoving face; Saw not Arjun's bow Gandiva, saw not Bhima's mighty mace; Smiled to see the young Sikhandin rushing to the battle's fore Like the white foam on the billow when the mighty storm winds roar; Thought upon the word he plighted, and the oath that he had sworn, Dropt his arms before the warrior that was, but a woman born;" --and so, was slain.... and the chiefs of both armies gathered round and mourned for him.--Now it seems to me that the poets who viewed sympathetically the magnanimity of Bhishma, which meets you on the plane of simple human action and character, would not have viewed sympathetically, or perhaps conceived, the strategem advised by Krishna,--which you have to meet, to find it acceptable, on the planes of metaphysics and symbolism. There is a quality in it you do not find in the _Illiad._ Greek and Trojan champions, before beginning the real business of their combats, do their best to impart to each other a little valuable self-knowledge: each reveals carefully, in a fine flow of hexameters, the weak points in his opponent's character. They are equally eloquent about their own greatnesses, which stir their enthusiasm highly;--but as to faults, neither takes thought for his own; each concentrates on the other's; and a war of words is the appetiser for the coming banquet of deeds. Before fighting Hector, Achilles reviled him; and having killed him, dragged his corpse shamefully round the walls of Troy. But Bhishma, in his victorious career, has nothing worse to cry to his enemies than--_Valiant are ye, noble princes!_ and if you think of it on the unsymbolic plane, there is a certain nobility in the Despondency of Arjuna in the _Bhagavad-Gita._ Says the _Encyclopaedia Brittanica:_ "To characterize the Indian Epics in a single word: though often disfigured by grotesque fancies and wild exaggerations, they are yet noble works, abounding in passages of remarkable descriptive power; and while as works of art they are far inferior to the Greek epics, in some respects they appeal far more strongly to the romantic mind of europe, namely, by the loving appreciation of natural beauty, their exquisite delineation of womanly love and devotion, and their tender sentiment of mercy and forgiveness." --Precisely because they come from a much higher civilization that the Greek. From a civilization, that is to say, older and more continuous. Before Rome fell, the Romans were evolving humanitarian and compassionate ideas quite unlike their old-time callousness. And no, it was not the influence of Christianity; we see it in the legislation of Hadrian for example, and especially in the anti-Christian Marcus Aurelius. These feeling grow up in ages unscarred by wars and human cataclysms; every war puts back their growth. The fall of Rome and the succeeding pralaya threw Europe back into ruthless barbarity. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries humanism began to grow again; and has been gaining ground especially since H. P. Blavatsky began her teaching. But not much more than a century ago they were publicly hanging, drawing, and quartering people in England; crowds were gathering at Tyburn or before the Old Bailey to enjoy an execution. We have hardly had four generations in Western Europe in which men have not been ruthless and brutal barbarians with a sprinkling of fine spirits incarnate among them; no European literature yet has had time to evolve to the point where it could portray a Yudhishthira, at the end of a national epic, arriving at the gates of heaven with his dog,--and refusing to enter because the dog was not to be admitted. There have been, with us, too great ups and downs of civilization; too little continuity. We might have grown to it by now, had that medieval pralaya been a quiet and natural thing, instead of what it was:-- a smash-up total and orgy of brutalities come as punishment for our sins done in the prime of manvantara. A word or two as to the _Ramayana._ Probably Valmiki had the other epic before his mental vision when he wrote it; as Virgil had Homer. There are parallel incidents; but his genius does not appear in them;--he cannot compete in their own line with the old Kshattriya bards. You do not find here so done to the life the chargings of lordly tuskers, the gilt and crimson, the scarlet and pomp and blazonry, of war. The braying of the battle conches is muted: all is cast in a more gentle mold. You get instead the forest and its beauty; you get tender idylls of domestic life.--This poem, like the _Mahabharata,_ has come swelling down the centuries; but whereas the latter grew by the addition of new incidents, the _Ramayana_ grew by the re-telling of old ones. Thus you may get book after book telling the same story of Rama's life in the forest-hermitage by the Godavari; each book by a new poet in love with the gentle beauty of the tale and its setting, and anxious to put them into his own language. India never grows tired of these Ramayanic repetitions. Sita, the heroine, Rama's bride, is the ideal of every good woman there; I suppose Shakespeare has created no truer or more beautiful figure. To the _Mahabharata,_ the _Ramayana_ stands perhaps as the higher Wordsworth to Milton; it belongs to the same great age, but to another day in it. Both are and have been wonderfully near the life of the people: children are brought up on them; all ages, castes, and conditions make them the staple of their mental diet. Both are semi-sacred; neither is quite secular; either relates the deeds of an avatar of Vishnu; ages have done their work upon them, to lift them into the region of things sacrosanct. And now at last we come to the age of King Vikramaditya of Ujjain,--to the Nine Gems of Literature,--to a secular era of literary creation,--to the Sanskrit Drama, and to Kalidisa, its Shakespeare;--and to his masterpiece, _The Ring of Sakoontala._ There is a tendency with us to derive all things Indian from Greek sources. Some Greek writer says the Indians were familiar with Homer; whereupon we take up the cry,--The _Ramayana_ is evidently a plagiarism from the _Iliad;_ the abduction of Sita by Ravan, of the abduction of Helen by Paris; the siege of Lanka, of the siege of Troy. And the _Mahabharata_ is too; because,--because it must be; there's a deal of fighting in both. (So Macedon plagiarized its river from Monmouth.) We believe a Greek at all times against an Indian; forgetting that the Greeks themselves, when they got to India, were astounded at the truthfulness of the people they found there. Such strained avoidance of the natural lie,--the harmless, necessary lie that came so trippingly to a Greek tongue,--seemed to them extraordinary.--So too our critics naturally set out from the position that the Indian Drama must have been an offshoot or imitation of the Greek. But fortunately that position had to be quitted _toute de suite;_ for the Indian theory is much nearer the English than the Greek;--much liker Shakespeare's than Aeschylus's. _Sakoontal_ is romantic; it came in a Third or Alawn Period; of all Englishmen, Keats might most easily have written it; if _Endymion_ were a play, _Endymion_ would be the likest thing to it in English. You must remember that downward trend in the Great Cycle; that make each succeeding period in Sanskrit literature a descent from the heights of esotericism towards the personal plane. That is what brings Kalidasa on to a level with Keats. Behind _Sakoontala,_ as behind _Endymion,_ there is a Soul-symbol; only Kalidasa, like Keats, is preoccupied in his outer mind more with forest beauty and natural magic and his romantic tale of love. It marks a stage in the descent of literature from the old impersonal to the modern personal reaches: from tales told merely to express the Soul-Symbol, to tales told merely for the sake of telling them. The stories in the _Upanishads_ are glyphs pure and simple. In the epics, they have taken on much more human color, though still exalting and ennobling,--and all embodying, or molded to, the glyph. Now, in _The Ring of Sakoontala,_--and it is typical of its class,--we have to look a little diligently for the glyph; what impresses us is the stillness and morning beauty of the forest, and,--yes, it must be said.--the emotions, quite personal, of King Dushyanta and Sakoontala, the hero and heroine. She is a fairy's child, full beautiful; and has been brought up by her foster-father, the yogi Kanwa, in his forest hermitage. While Kanwa is absent, Dushyanta, hunting, follows an antelope into that quiet refuge; finds Sakoontala, loves and marries her. Here we are amidst the drowsy hum of bees, the flowering of large Indian forest blossoms, the scent of the jasmine in bloom; it is what Keats would have written, had his nightingale sung in an Indian jungle.--The king departs for his capital, leaving with Sakoontala a magical ring with power to reawaken memory of her in his heart, should he ever forget. But Durvasas, a wandering ascetic, passes by the hermitage; and Sakoontala, absorbed in her dreams, fails to greet him; for which he dooms her to be forgotten by her husband. She waits and waits, and at last seeks the unreturning Dushyanta at his court; who, under the spell of Durvasas, fails to recognise her. If what she claims is true, she can produce the ring?--But no; she has lost it on her journey through the forest. He repudiates her; whereupon she is caught up by the Gods into the Grove of Kasyapa beyond the clouds. But the ring had fallen into a stream in the forest, and a fish had swallowed it, and a fisherman had caught the fish, and the police had caught the fisherman .... and so it came into the hands of Dushyanta again; who, at sight of it, remembered all, and was plunged in grief over his lost love. Years pass, and Indra summons him at last to fight a race of giants that threaten the sovereignty of the Gods. In the course of that warfare, mounting to heaven in the car of Indra, Dushyanta comes to the Grove of Kasyapa, and is reunited with Sakoontala and with their son, now grown into an heroic boy. As in _The Tempest_ a certain preoccupation with the magical beauty of the island dims the character-drawing a little, and perhaps thereby makes the symbol more distinct,--so in Sakoontala. It is a faery piece: begining in the morning calm and forest magic; then permitting passion to rise, and sadness to follow; ending in the crystal and blue clearness of the upper air. In this we see the basic form of the Soul-Symbol, which is worked out in the incidents and characters. Dushyanta, hunting in the unexplored forest, comes to the abode of holiness, finds and loves Sakoontala;--and from their union is born the perfect hero,--Sarva-Damana, the 'All-tamer.'--Searching in the impersonal and unexplored regions within us, we do at some time in our career of lives come to the holy place, get vision of our Immortal Self; from the union of which with this, our human personality is to be born some time that new being we are to become,--the Perfect Man or Adept. But that first vision may be lost; I suppose almost always is;--and there are wanderings and sorrows, forgetfulness and above all heroic services to be performed, before the final reunion can be attained. XVI. THE BEGINNINGS OF ROME We have seen an eastward flow of cycles: which without too much Procrusteanizing may be given dates thus:--Greece, 478 to 348; Maurya India, 320 to 190; Western Han China, 194 to 63; in this current, West Asia, being then in long pralaya, is overleaped. We have also seen a tide in the other direction; it was first Persia that touched Greece to awakenment; and there is that problematical Indian period (if it existed), thirteen decades after the fall of the Mauryas, and following close upon the waning of the first glory of the Hans. So we should look for the Greek Age to kindle something westward again, sooner or later;-- which of course it did. 478 to 348; 348 to 218; 218 to 88 B.C.; 88 B.C. to 42 A. D.: we shall see presently the significance of those latter dates in Roman history. Meanwhile to note this: whereas Persia woke Greece at a touch, thirteen decades elapsed before Greece began to awake Italy. It waited to do so fully until the Crest-Wave had sunk a little at the eastern end of the world; for you may note that the year 63 B.C., in which Han Chaoti died, was the year in which Augustus was born. With him in the same decade came most of the luminaries that made his age splendid: Virgil in 70; Horace in 65; Vipsanius Agrippa in 63; Cilnius Maecenas in what precise year we do not know. The fact is that the influx of vigorous light-bearing egos, as it decreased in China, went augmenting in Italy: which no doubt, if we could trace it, we should find to be the kind of thing that happens always. For about four generations the foremost souls due to incarnate crowd into one race or quarter of the globe; then, having exhausted the workable heredity to be found there,--_used up_ that racial stream,--they must go elsewhere. There you have the _raison d'etre,_ probably, of the thirteen-decade period. It takes as a rule about four generations of such high life to deplete the racial heredity for the time being,--which must then be left to lie fallow. So now, America not being discovered, and there being no further eastward to go, we must jump westward the width of two continents (nearly), and (that last lecture being parenthetical as it were) come from Han Chaoti's death to Augustus' birth, from China to Rome. But before dealing with Augustus and the Roman prime, we must get some general picture of the background out of which he and it emerged: this week and next we must give to early and to Republican Rome. And here let me say that these two lectures will be, for the most part, a very bare-faced plagiarism; summarizing facts and conclusions taken from a book called _The Grandeur that was Rome,_ by Mr. J. C. Stobart, of the English Cambridge. One greatest trouble about historical study is, that it allows you to see no great trends, but hides under the record of innumerable fidgety details the real meanings of things. Mr. Stobart, with a gift of his own for taking large views, sees this clearly, and goes about to remedy it; he does not wander with you through the dark of the undergrowth, labeling bush after bush; but leads you from eminence to eminence, generalizing, and giving you to understand the broad lie of the land: he makes you see the forest in spite of the trees. As this is our purpose, too, we shall beg leave to go with him; only adding now and again such new light as Theosophical ideas throw on it;--and for the most part, to avoid a tautology of acknowledgments, or a plethora of footnotes in the PATH presently, letting this one confession of debt serve. The learning, the pictures, the marshaling of facts, are all Mr. Stobart's. In the fifth and sixth centuries A. D., when the old manvantara was closing, Europe was flung into the Cauldron of Regeneration. Nations and fragments of nations were thrown in and tossing and seething; the broth of them was boiling over, and,--just as the the Story of Taliesin, flooding the world with poison and destruction: and all that a new order of ages might in due time come into being. One result that a miscellany of racial heterogeneities was washed up into the peninsular and island extremities of the continent. In the British you had four Celtic and a Pictish remnant,--not to mention Latins galore,--pressed on by three or four sorts of Teutons. In Spain, though it was less an extremity of Europe than a highway into Africa, you had a fine assortment of odds and ends: Suevi, Vandals, Goths and what not; superimposed on a more or less homogenized collection of Iberians, Celts, Phoenicians, and Italians;--and in Italy you had Italians broken up into numberless fragments, and overrun by all manner of Lombards, Teutons, Slavs, and Huns. Welded by cyclic stress, presently first England, then Spain, and lastly Italy, became nations; in all three varying degrees of homogeneity being attained. But the next peninsula, the Balkan, has so far reached no unity at all; it remains to this day a curious museum of racial oddments, to the sorrow of European peace; and each of them represents some people strong in its day, and perhaps even cultured. What the Balkan peninsula has been in our own time, the Apennine peninsula was after the fall of Rome, and also before the rise of Rome: a job-lot of race-fragments driven into that extremity of Europe by the alarms and excursions of empires in dissolution whose history time has hidden. The end of a manvantara, the break-up of a great civilization and the confusion that followed, made the Balkans what they are now, and Italy what she was in the Middle Ages. The end of an earlier manvantara, the break-up of older and forgotten civilizations, made Italy what she was in the sixth century B.C. Both peninsulas, by their mere physical geography, seem specially designed for the purpose. Italy is divided into four by the Apennines, and is mostly Apennines. Everyone goes there: conquerors, lured by the _dono fatale,_ and for the sake of the prizes to be gathered; the conquered, because it is the natural path of escape out of Central Europe. The way in is easy enough; it is only the way out that is difficult. The Alps slope up gently on the northern side; but sharply fall away in grand precipices on the southern. There, too, they overlook a region that would always tempt invaders: the great rich plain the Po waters; a land no refugees could well hope to hold. It has been in turn Cisalpine Gaul, the Plain of the Lombards, and the main part of Austrian Italy; this thrice a possession of conquerors from the north. It is the first of the four divisions. There never would be safety in it for refugees; you would not find in it a great diversity of races living apart; conquerors and conquered would quickly homogenize,--unless the conquerors had their main seat in, and remained in political union with, transalpine realms. Refugees would still and always have to move on, if they desired to keep their freedom. Three ways would be open to them, and three destinies, according to which way they chose. They might go down into the long strip of Adriatic coastland, where there are no natural harbors--and remain isolated and unimportant between the mountain barrier and the sea. Those who occupied this _cul de sac_ have played no great part in history: the isolated never do.--Or they might cross the Apennines and pour down into the lowlands of Etruria and Latium, where are rich lands, some harbors, and generally, fine opportunities for building up a civilization. Draw-backs also, for a defeated remnant: Etruria is not too far from Lombardy to tempt adventurers from the north, the vanguard of the conquering people;--although again, the Apennine barrier might make their hold on that middle region precarious. They might come there conquering; but would form, probably, no very permanent part of the northern empire: they would mix with the conquered, and at any weakening northward, the mixture would be likely to break away. So Austria had influence and suzerainty and various crown appanages in Tuscany; but not such settled sway as over the Lombard Plain. Then, too, this is a region that, in a time of West Asian manvantara and European pralaya, might easily tempt adventurers from the Near East. But the main road for true refugees is the high Apennines; and this is the road most of them traveled. Their fate, taking it, would be to be pressed southward along the backbone of Italy by new waves and waves of peoples; and among the wild valleys to lose their culture, and become highlandmen, bandit tribes and raiding clans; until the first comers of them had been driven down right into the hot coastlands of the heel and toe of Italy. Great material civilizations rarely originate among mountains: outwardly because of the difficulty of communications; inwardly, I suspect, because mountain influences pull too much away from material things. Nature made the mountains, you may say, for the special purpose of regenerating effete remnants of civilizations. Sabellians and Oscans, Samnites and Volscians and Aequians and dear knows what all:--open your Roman Histories, and in each one of the host of nation-names you find there, you may probably see the relic of some kingdom once great and flourishing north or south of the Alps;--just as you can in the Serbians, Roumanians, Bulgars, Vlachs, and Albanians in the next peninsula now. One more element is to be considered there in the far south. Our Lucanian and Bruttian and Iapygian refugees,--themselves, or some of them, naturally the oldest people in Italy, the most original inhabitants,--would find themselves, when they arrived there, very much de-civilized; but, because the coast is full of fine harbors, probably sooner or later in touch with settlers from abroad. It is a part that would tempt colonists of any cultured or commercial peoples that might be spreading out from Greece or the West Asian centers or elsewhere; and so it was Magna Graecia of old, and a mixing-place of Greek and old Italian blood; and so, since, has been held by Saracens, Normans, Byzantines, and Spaniards. The result of all this diversity of racial elements would be that Italy could only difficultly attain national unity at any time; but that once such unity was attained, she would be bound to play an enormous part. No doubt again and again she has been a center of empire; it is always your ex-melting-pot that is. Who were the earliest Italians? The earliest, it least, that we can guess at?--Once on a time the peninsula was colonized by folk who sailed in through the Straits of Gibraltar from Ruta and Daitya, those island fragments of Atlantis; and (says Madame Blavatsky) you should have found a pocket of these colonists surviving in Latium, strong enough for the most part to keep the waves of invaders to the north of them, and the refugees to the high Apennines. Another relic of them you would have found, probably, driven down into the far south; and such a relic, I understand, the Iapygians were. One more ethnic influence,--an important one. Round about the year 1000 B.C., all Europe was in dead pralaya, while West Asia was in high manvantara: under which conditions, as I suggested just now, such parts as the Lombard Plain and Tuscany might tempt West Asians of enterprise;--as Spain and Sicily tempted the Moslems long afterwards. Supposing such a people came in; they would be, while the West Asian manvantara was in being, much more cultured and powerful than their Italian neighbors; but the waning centuries of their manvantara would coincide with the first and orient portion of the European one; so, as soon as that should begin to touch Italy, things would begin to equalize themselves; till at last, as Europe drew towards noon and West Asia towards evening, these West Asians of Etruria would go the way of the Spanish Moors. There you have the probable history of the Etruscans. All Roman writers say they came from Lydia by sea; which statement could only have been a repetition of what the Etruscans said about themselves. The matter is much in dispute; but most likely there is no testimony better than the ancient one. Some authorities are for Lydia; some are for the Rhaetian Alps; some are for calling the Etruscans 'autochthonous,'--which I hold to be, like _Mesopotamia,_ a 'blessed word.' Certainly the Gauls drove them out of Lombardy, and some of them, as refugees, up into the Rhaetian Alps,--sometime after the European manvantara began in 870. We cannot read their language, and do not know enough about it to connect it even with the Turanian Group; but we know enough to exclude it, perhaps, from every other known group in the Old World,--certainly from the Aryan. There is something absolutely un-Aryan (one would say) about their art, the figures on their tombs. Great finish; no primitivism; but something queer and grotesque about the faces.... However, you can get no racial indications from things like that. There is a state of decadence, that may come to any race,--that has perhaps in every race cycles of its own for appearing,--when artists go for their ideals and inspiration, not to the divine world of the Soul, but to vast elemental goblinish limboes in the sub-human: realms the insane are at home in, and vice-victims sometimes, and drug-victims I suppose always. Denizens of these regions, I take it, are the models for some of our cubists and futurists. . . . I seem to see the same kind of influence in these Etruscan faces. I think we should sense something sinister in a people with art-conventions like theirs;--and this accords with the popular view of antiquity, for the Etruscans had not a nice reputation. The probability appears to be that they became a nation in their Italian home in the tenth or eleventh century B.C.; were at first war-like, and spread their power considerably, holding Tuscany, Umbria, Latium, with Lombardy until the Gauls dispossessed them, and presently Corsica under a treaty with Carthage that gave the Carthaginians Sardinia as a _quid pro quo._ Tuscany, perhaps, would have been the original colony; when Lombardy was lost, it was the central seat of their power; there the native population became either quite merged in them, or remained as plebeians; Umbria and Latium they possessed and ruled as suzerains. The Tuscan lands are rich, and the _Rasenna,_ as they called themselves, made money by exporting the produce of their fields and forests; also crude metals brought in from the north-west,--for Etruria was the clearing-house for the trade between Gaul and the lands beyond, and the eastern Mediterranean. From Egypt, Carthage, and Asia, they imported in exchange luxuries and objects of art; until in time the old terror of their name,--as pirates, not unconnected with something of fame for black magic; one finds it as early as in Hesiod, and again in the _Medea _of Euripides,--gave place to an equally ill repute for luxurious living and sensuality. We know that in war it was a poor thing to put your trust in Etruscan alliances. According to their own account of it, they were destined to endure as a distinct people for about nine centuries; which is probably what they did. Their power was at its height about 600 B.C. As they began to decline, certain small Italian cities that had been part of their empire broke away and freed themselves; particularly in Latium, where lived the descendants of those old-time colonists from Ruta and Daitya,--priding themselves still on their ancient descent, and holding themselves Patricians or nobles, with a serf population of conquered Italians to look down upon. Or, of course, it may have been _vice versa:_ that the Atlanteans were the older stock, nearer the soil, and Plebeians; and that the Patricians were later conquerors lured or driven down from Central Europe. At any rate, as their empire diminished, Etruria stood like some alien civilized Granada in the midst of surrounding medieval barbarism; for Italy, in 500 B.C., was simply medieval. Up in the mountains were war-like highlanders: each tribe with its central stronghold,--like Beneventum in Samnium, which you could hardly call a city, I suppose: it was rather a place of refuge for times when refuge was needed, than a group of homes to live in; in general, the mountains gave enough sense of security, and you might live normally in your scattered farms.--But down in the lowlands you needed something more definitely city-like: at once a group of homes and a common fortress. So Latium and Campania were strewn with little towns by river and seashore, or hill-top built with more or less peaceful citadel; each holding the lands it could watch, or that its citizen armies could turn out quickly to defend. Each was always at war or in league with most of the others; but material civilization had not receded so far as among the mountaineers. The latter raided them perpetually, so they had to be tough and abstemious and watchful; and then again they raided the mountaineers to get their own back, (with reasonable interest); and lastly, lest like Hotspur they should find such quiet life a plague, and want work, it was always their prerogative, and generally their pleasure, to go to war with each other.--A hard, poor life, in which to be and do right was to keep in fit condition for the raidings and excursions and alarms; ethics amounted to about that much; art or culture, you may say, there was none. Their civilization was what we know as Balkanic, with perpetual Balkanic eruptions, so to speak. Their conception of life did not admit of the absence of at least one good summer campaign. Mr. Stobart neatly puts it to this effect: no man is content to live ambitionless on a bare pittance and the necessaries; he must see some prospect, some margin, as well; and for these folk, now that they had freed themselves from the Etruscans, the necessaries were from their petty agriculture, the margin was to be looked for in war. Among these cities was one on the Tiber, about sixteen miles up from the mouth. It had had a great past under kings of its own, before the Etruscan conquest; very likely had wielded wide empire in its day. A tradition of high destiny hung about it, and was ingrained in the consciousness of its citizens; and I believe that this is always what remains of ancient greatness when time, cataclysms, and disasters have wiped all actual memories thereof away. But now, say in 500 B.C., we are to think of it as a little peasant community in an age and land where there was no such wide distinction between peasant and bandit. It had for its totem, crest, symbol, what you will, very appropriately, a she-wolf.... Art or culture, I said, there was none;--and yet, too, we might pride ourselves on certain great possessions to be called (stretching it a little), _in that line;_ which had been left to us by our erstwhile Etruscan lords, or executed for us by Etruscan artists with their tongues in their cheeks and sides quietly shaking.--Ha, you men of Praeneste! you men of Tibur! sing small, will you? _We_ have our grand Jupiter on the Capitoline, resplendent in vermilion paint; what say you to that? Paid for him, too, (a surmise, this!) with cattle raided from your fields, my friends! Everything handsome about us, you see; but not for this must you accuse us of the levity of culture. We might patronize; we did not dabble.--One seems to hear from those early ages, echoes of tones familiar now. Ours is the good old roast beef and common sense of--I mean, the grand old _gravitas_ of Rome. What! you must have a Jupiter to worship, mustn't you? No sound as by Parliament-Established-Religion of Numa Pompilius, Sir, and the world would go to the dogs! And, of course, vermilion paint. It wears well, and is a good bloody color with no levity about it; besides, can be seen a long way off--whereby it serves to keep you rascals stirred up with jealousy, or should. So: we have our vermilion Jupiter and think of ourselves very highly indeed. Yes; but there is a basis for our boasting, too;--which boasting, after all, is mainly a mental state; we aim to be taciturn in our speech, and to proclaim our superiority with sound thumps, rather than like wretched Greeks with poetry and philosophy and such. We do possess, and love,--at the very least we aim at,--the thing we call _gravitas;_ and--there are points to admire in it. The legends are full of revelation; and what they reveal are the ideals of Rome. Stern discipline; a rigid sense of duty to the state; unlimited sacrifice of the individual to it; stoic endurance in the men; strictest chastity in the women:--there were many and great qualities. Something had come down from of old, or had been acquired in adversity: a saving health for this nation. War was the regular annual business; all the male population of military age took part in it; and military age did not end too early. It was an order that tended to leave no room in the world but for the fittest, physically and morally, if not mentally. There was discipline, and again and always discipline: _paterfamilias_ king in his household, with power of life and death over his children. It was a regime that gave little chance for loose living. A sterile and ugly regime, Nevertheless; and, later, they fell victims to its shortcomings. Vice, that wrecks every civilization in its turn, depend upon it had wrecked one here: that one of which we get faint reminiscences in the stories of the Roman kings. Then these barren and severe conditions ensued, and vice was (comparatively speaking) cleaned out. What were the inner sources of this people's strength? What light from the Spirit shone among them? Of the Sacred Mysteries, what could subsist in such a community?--Well; the Mysteries had, by this time, as we have seen, very far declined. Pythagoras had made his effort in this very Italy; he died in the first year of the fifth century soon after the expulsion of the kings, according to the received chronology;--in reality, long before there is dependable history of Rome at all. There had been an Italian Golden Age, when Saturn reigned and the Mysteries ruled human life. There were reminiscences of a long past splendor; and an atmosphere about them, I think, more mellow and peace-lipped than anything in Hesiod or Homer. I suppose that from some calmer, firmer, and more benignant Roman Empire manvantaras back, when the Mysteries were in their flower and Theosophy guided the relations of men and nations, some thin stream of that divine knowledge flowed down into the pralaya; that an echo lingered,--at Cumae, perhaps, where the Sibyl was,-- or somewhere among the Oscan or Sabine mountains. Certainly nothing remained, regnant and recognised in the cities, to suggest a repugnance to the summer campaigns, or that other nations had their rights. Yet there was something to make life sweeter than it might have been. They said that of old there had been a King in Rome who was a Messenger of the Gods and link between earth and heaven; and that it was he had founded their religion. Was Numa Pompilius, a real person?--By no means, says modern criticism. I will quote you Mr. Stobart:-- "The Seven Kings of Rome are for the most part mere names which have been fitted by rationalizing historians, presumably Greek, with inventions appropriate to them. Tomulus is simply the patron hero of Rome called by her name. Numa, the second, whose name suggests _numen,_ was the blameless Sabine who originated most of the old Roman cults, and received a complete biography largely borrowed from that invented for Solon." --He calls attention, too, to the fact that Tarquin the Proud is made a typical Greek Tyrant, and is said to have been driven out of Rome in 510,--the very year in which that other typical Greek Tyrant, Hippias, was driven out of Athens;--so that on the whole it is not a view for easy unthinking rejection. But Madame Blavatsky left a good maxim on these matters: that tradition will tell you more truth than what goes for history will; and she is quite positive that there is much more truth in the tales about the kings than in what comes down about the early Republic. Only you must interpret the traditions; you must understand them. Let us go about, and see if we can arrive at something. Before the influx of the Crest-Wave began, Rome was a very petty provincial affair, without any place at all in the great sweep of world-story. Her annals are about as important as those of the Samnium of old, of which we know nothing; or those, say, of Andorra now, about which we care less. Our school histories commonly end at the Battle of Acium; which is the place where Roman history becomes universal and important: a point wisely made and strongly insisted on by Mr. Stobart. I shows how thoroughly we lack any true sense of what history is and is for. We are so wrapped up in politics that our vision of the motions of the Human Spirit is obscured. There were lots of politics in Republican Rome, and you may say none in the empire; so we make for the pettiness that obsesses us, and ignore the greatness whose effects are felt yet. Rome played at politics: old-time conqueror-race Patricians against old-time conquered-race Plebians: till the two were merged into one and she grew tired of the game. She played at war until her little raidings and conquests had carried her out of the sphere of provincial politics, and she stood on the brink of the great world. Then the influx of important souls began; she entered into history, presently threw up politics forever, and performed, so far as it was in her to do so, her mission in the world. What does History care for the election results in some village in Montenegro? Or for the passage of the Licinian Rogations, or the high exploits of Terentilius Harsa? Yet, too, we must get a view of this people in pralaya, that we may understand better the workings of the Human Spirit in its fulness. But we must see the forest, and not lose sight and sense of it while botanizing over individual trees. We must forget the interminable details of wars and politics that amount to nothing; that so we may apprehend the form, features, color, of this aspect of humanity. Here is a mighty river: the practical uses of mankind are mainly concerned with it as far up as it may be navigable; or at most, as far up as it may be turning mills and watering the fields of agriculture. There may be regions beyond when poets and mythologists may bring great treasures for the Human Spirit; but do you do well to treat such treasures as plug material for exchange and barter? They call for another kind of treatment. The sober science of history may be said to start where the nations become navigable, and begin to affect the world. You can sail your ships up the river Rome to about the beginning of the third century B.C., when she began to ermerge from Italian provincialism and to have relations with foreign peoples: Pyrrhus came over to fight her in 280. What is told of the century before may be true or not; as a general picture it is probably true enough, and only as a general picture does it matter; its details are supremely unimportant. The river here is pouting through the gorges, or shallowly meandering the meads. It is watering Farmer Balbus's fields; Grazier Ahenobarbus's cows drink at it; idle Dolabell angles in its quiet reaches: there are bloody tribal affrays yearly at its fords. It is important, certainly, to Babbus and Dolabella, and the men slain in the forays;--but to us others--. And then at 390 there are falls and dangerous rapids; you will get no ships beyond these. The Gauls poured down and swept away everything: the records were burnt; and Rome, such as it was, had to be re-founded. Here is a main break with the past; something like Ts'in Shi Hwangti's Book-burning; and it serves to make doubly uncertain all that went before. Go further now, and you must take to the wild unmapped hills. There are no fields beyond this; the kine keep to the lush lowland meadows; rod and line must be left behind,--and angler too, unles he is prepared for stiff climbing, and no marketable recompense. Nor yet, perhaps, for some time, much in things unmarketable: I will not say there is any great beauty of scenery in these rather stubborn and arid hills. As to the fourth century, then (or from 280 to 390)--we need not care much which of Ahenobarbus's cows was brindled, or which had the crumpled horn, or which broke off the coltsfoot bloom with lazy ruthless hoof. As to the fifth,--we need not try to row the quinqueremes of history beyond that Gaulish waterfall. We need not bother with the weight Dolabella claims for the trout he says he caught up there: that trout has been cooked and eaten these twenty-three hundred years. Away beyond, in the high mountains, there may be pools haunted by the nymphs; you cannot sail up to them, that is certain; but there may be ways round..... Here, still in the foot-hills, is a pool that does look, if not _nymphatic,_ at least a little fishy, as they say; the story of Rome's dealings with Lars Porsenna. It even looks as if something historical might be caught in it. The Roman historians have been obviously camouflaging: they do not want you to examine this too closely. Remember that all these things came down by memory, among a people exceedingly proud, and that had been used to rely on records,--which records had been burnt by the Gauls. Turn to your English History, and you shall probably look in vain in it for any reference to the Battle of Patay; you shall certainly find Agincourt noised and trumpted _ad lib._ Now battles are never decisive; they never make history; the very best of them might just as well not have been fought. But at Patay the forces which made it inevitable France should be a nation struck down into the physical plane and made themselves manifest: as far as that plane is concerned, the centuries of French history flow from the battlefield of Patay. But what made trumpery Agincourt was only the fierce will of a cruel, ambitious fighting king; and what flowed from it was a few decades of war and misery. That by way of illustration how history is envisaged and taught: depend upon it, by every people; it is not peculiar to this one or that.--Well then, the fish we are at liberty to catch in this particular Roman pool is a period during which Rome was part of the Etruscan Empire. The fact is generally accepted, I believe; and is, of course, the proposition we started from. How long the period was, we cannot say. The Tarquins were from Tarquinii in Etruria; perhaps a line of Etruscan governors. The gentleman from Clusium who swore by the Nine Gods was either a king who brought back a rebellious Rome to temporary submission, or the last Etruscan monarch in whose empire it was included. But here is the point: whether fifty or five hundred years long--and perhaps more likely the former than the latter--this period of foreign rule was long enough to make a big break in the national tradition, and to throw all preceding events out of perspective. At the risk of _longueurs_--and other things--let me take an illustration from scenes I know. I have heard peasants in Wales talking about events before the conquest;--people who have never learnt Welsh history out of books, and have nothing to go on but local legends;--and placing the old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago at "over a hundred years back, I shouldn' wonder." It is the way of tradition to foreshorten things like that,--Nothing much has happened in Wales since those ancient battles with the English; so the six or seven centuries of English rule are dismissed as "over a hundred years." Rome under the Etruscans, like Wales under the English, would have had no history of her own: there would have been nothing to impress itself on the race-memory. Such times fade out easily: they seem to have been very short, or are forgotten altogether. But this same Welsh peasant, who thus forgets and foreshortens recent history, always remembers that there were kings of Wales once. Perhaps, if he were put to it to write a history, with no books to guide him, he would name you as many as seven of them, and supply each with more or less true stories. In reality, of course, there were eight centuries of Welsh kings; and before them, the Roman occupation,--which he also remembers, but very vaguely; and before that, he has the strongest impression that there were ages of wide sovereignty and splendor. The kings he would name, naturally, are the ones that made the most mark.--I think the Romans, in constructing or making Greeks construct for them their ancient history, did very much the same kind of thing. They remembered the names of seven kings, with tales about them, and built on those. There were the kings who had stood out and stood for most; and the Romans remembered what they stood for. So here I think we get real history; whereas in the stories of republican days we may see the efforts of great families to provide themselves with a great past. But I doubt we could take anything _aupied de la lettre;_ or that it would profit us to do so if we could. Here is a pointer: we have seen how in India a long age of Kshattriya supremacy preceded the supremacy of the Brahmins. Now observe Kshattriya Romulus followed by Brahmin Numa. I do not see why Madame Blavatsky shold have so strongly insisted on the truth of the story of the roman Kings unless there were more in it than mere pralayic historicity. Unless it were of bigger value, that is, than Andorran or Montenegrin annals. Rome, after the Etruscan domination, was a meanly built little city; but there were remains from pre-Etruscan times greater than anything built under the Republic. Rome is a fine modern capital now; but there were times in the age of papal rule, when it was a miserable depopulated village of great ruins, with wolves prowling nightly through the weed-grown streets. Yet even then the tradition of _Roma Caput Mundi_ reigned among the wretched inhabitants,--witness Rienzi: it was the one thing, besides the ruins, to tell of ancient greatness. Some such feeling, borne down out of a forgotten past, impelled Republican Rome on the path of conquest. It was not even a tradition, at that time; but the essence of a tradition that remained as a sense of high destinies. Who, then, was Romulus?--Some king's son from Ruta or Daitya, who came in his lordly Atlantean ships, and builded a city on the Tiber? Very likely. That would be, at the very least, as far back as nine or ten thousand B.C.; which is contemptibly modern, when you think of the hundred and sixty thousand years of our present sub-race. The thing that is in the back of my mind is, that Rome is probably as old as that sub-race, or nearly so; but wild horses should not drag from me a statement of it. Rome, London, Paris,--all and any of them, for that matter.--But a hundred and sixty thousand or ten thousand, no man's name could survive so long, I think, as a peg on which to hang actual history. It would pass, long before the ten millenniums were over, into legend; and become that of a God or demigod,--whose cult, also, would need reviving, in time, by some new avatar. Now (as remarked before) humanity has a profound instinct for avatars; and also (as you would expect) for Reincarnation. The sixth-century Britons were reminded by one of their chieftains of some mighty king or God of prehistory; the two got mixed, and the mixture came down as the Arthur of the legend. This is what I mean by 'reviving the cult.' Now then, who was Romulus?--Some near or remote descendant of heroic refugees from fallen Troy, who rebuilt Rome or reestablished its sovereignty?--Very likely, again;--I mean, very likely both that and the king's son from Ruta or Daitya. And lastly, very likely some tough little peasant-bandit restorer, not so long before the Etruscan conquest, whom the people came to mix up witl mightier figures half forgotten. . . . . We see his history, as the Romans did, through the lens of a tough little peasant-bandit city; through the lens of a pralaya, which makes pralayic all objects seen. It is like the Irish peasant-girl who has seen the palace of the king of the fairies; she describes you something akin to the greatest magnificence she knows,--which happens to be the house of the local _squireen._ Now the Etruscan domination, as we have noted, could probably not have begun before 1000 B.C.; at which time, to go by our hypothesis as to the length and recurrence of the cycles, Europe was in dead pralaya, and had been since 1480. So that, possibly, you would have had between 1480 and 1000 a Rome in pralaya, but independent--like Andorra now, or Montenegro. The stories we get about the seven kings would fit such a time admirably. They tell of pralayic provincials; and Rome, during that second half of the second millennium B.C., would have been just that. But again, if the seven kings had been just that and nothing more, I cannot see why H. P. Blavatsky should have laid such stress on the essential truth of their stories. She is particular, too, about the Arthurian legend:--saying that it is at once symbolic and actually historical,--which latter, as concerns the sixth-century Arthur, it is not and she would not have considered it to be: no Briton prince of that time went conquering through Europe. So there must be some further value to the tales of the Roman kings; else why are they so much better than the Republican annals? Why?--unless all history except the invented kind or the distorted-by-pride-or-politics kind is symbolic; and unless we could read in these stories the record, not merely of some pre-Etruscan pralayic centuries, but of great ages of the past and of the natural unfoldment of the Human Spirit in history through long millenniums? Evolution is upon a pattern; understand the drift of any given thousand years in such a way that you could reduce it to a symbol, and probably you have the key to all the past. So I imagine there would be seven interpretations to these kings, as to all other symbols. Romulus may represent a Kshattriya, and Numa a Brahmin domination in the early ages of the sub-race. Actual men, there may yet be mirrored in them the history--shall we say of the whole sub-race? Or Root-race? Or the whole natural order of human evolution? It is business for imaginative meditation,--which is creative or truth-finding meditation. But now let us try, diffidently, to search out the last, the historic, pre-Etruscan Numa. If you examined the Mohammedan East, now in these days of its mid-pralaya and disruption: Turkey especially, or Egypt: you should find constantly the tradition of Men lifted by holiness and wisdom and power above the levels of common humanity: Unseen Guardians of the race,--a Great Lodge or Order of them. In Christendom, in its manvantara, you find no trace of this knowledge; but it may surprise you to know that it is so common among the Moslems, that according to the Turkish popular belief, there is always a White Adept somewhere within the mosque of St. Sophia,--hidden under a disguise none would be likely to penetrate. There are hundreds of stories. The common thought is that representatives of this Lodge, or their disciples, often appear; are not so far away from the world of men; may be teaching, quite obscurely, or dropping casual seeds of the Secret Wisdom, in the next village. Well; I imagine pralayic conditions may allow benign spiritual influences to be at work, sometimes, nearer the surface of life than in manvantara. The brain-mind is less universally dominant; there is not the same dense atmosphere of materialism. You get on the one hand a franker play of the passions, and no curbs imposed either by a sound police system or a national conscience; in pralaya time there is no national conscience, or, I think, national consciousness,--no feeling of collective entity, of being a nation,--at all; perhaps no public opinion. As it is with a man when he sleeps: the soul is not there; there is nothing in that body that feels then 'I am I'; nothing (normally) that can control the disordered dreams. . . . Hence, in the sleeping nation, the massacres, race-wars, mob-murders, and so on; which, we should remember, affect parts, not the whole, of the race. But on the other hand that very absence of brain-mind rule may imply Buddhic influences at work in quiet places; and one cannot tell what unknown graciousnesses may be happening, that our manvantaric livelinesses and commercialism quite forbid. . . . Believe me, if we understood the laws of history, we should waste a deal less time and sanity in yelling condemnations. Italy then was something like Turkey is now. Dear knows whom you might chance on, if you watched with anointed eyes . . . in St. Sophia . . . or among the Sabine hills. Somewhere or other, as I said just now, reminiscences of the Mysteries would have survived. I picture an old wise man, one of the guardians of those traditions, coming down from the mountains, somewhere between 1500 and 1000 B. C., to the little city on the Tiber; touching something in the hearts of the people there, and becoming,--why not?--their king. For I guess that this one was not so different from a hundred little cities you should have found strewn over Italy not so long ago. The ground they covered,--and this is still true,--would not be much larger than the Academy Garden; their streets but six or seven feet across. Their people were a tough, stern, robberish set; but with a side, too, to which saintliness (in a high sense) could make quick appeal. Intellectual culture they had none; the brain-mind was the last thing you should look for (in ancient Rome at least);--and just because it was dormant, one who knew how to go about it could take hold upon the Buddhic side. That was perhaps what this Numa Pompilius achieved doing. There would be nothing extraordinary in it. The same thing may be going on in lots of little cities today, in pralayic regions: news of the kind does not emerge. We have a way of dividing time into _ancient and modern;_ and think the one forever past, the other forever to endure. It is quite silly. There are plenty of places now where it is 753 B.C.; and no doubt there were plenty then where it was pompous 1919.--Can anyone tell me, by the bye, what year it happens to be in Europe now? How much Numa may have given his Romans, who can say? Most of it may have worn away, before historic times, under the stress of centuries of summer campaigns. But something he did ingrain into their being; and it lasted, because not incompatible with the life they knew. It was the element that kept that life from complete vulgarity and decay. You have to strip away all Greekism from your conceptions, before you can tell what it was. The Greek conquest was the one Rome did not survive. Conquered Greece overflowed her, and washed her out; changed her traditions, her religion, the whole color of her life. If Greece had not stepped in, myth-making and euhemerizing, who would have saved the day at Lake Regillus? _Not_ the Great Twin Brothers from lordly Lace-daemon, be sure. Who then? Some queer uncouth Italian nature-spirit gods? One shakes one's head in doubt: the Romans did not personalize their deities like the Greeks. Cato gives the ritual to be used at cutting down a grove; says he--"This is the proper Roman way to cut down a grove. Sacrifice with a pig for a peace-offering. This is the verbal formula: 'Whether thou art a god or a goddess to whom that grove is sacred,' "--and so on. Their gods were mostly like that: potentialities in the unseen, with whom good relations must be kept by strict observance of an elaborate ritual. There were no stories about them; they did not marry and have families like the good folk at Olympus. Which is perhaps a sign of this: that Numa's was a religion, the teaching of a (minor) Teacher who came long after the Mysteries had disappeared. Because in the Mysteries, cosmogenesis was taught through dramas which were symbolic representations of its events and processes; and out of these dramas grew the stories about the gods. But when the real spiritual teaching has ceased to flow through the Mysteries, and the stones are accepted literally, and there is nothing else to maintain the inner life of the people,--a Teacher of some kind must come to state things in plainer terms. This, I take it, is what happened here; and the very worn-outness of conditions that this implies, implies also tremendous cultural and imperial activities in forgotten time; I imagine Italy, then, at two or three thousand B.C., was playing a part as much greater outwardly than Greece was, as her part now is greater than Greece's, and has been during recent centuries. This, then, is what Numa's religion did for Rome:--it peopled the woods and fields and hills with these impersonal divinities; it peopled the moments of the day with them; so that nothing in space or time, no near familiar thing or duty, was material wholly, or pertained to this world alone;--there was another side to it, connected with the unseen and the gods. There were Great Gods in the Pantheon; but your early Roman had no wide-traveling imagination; and they seemed to him remote and uncongenial rather,--and quickly took on Greekishness when the Greek influence began. Minerva, vaguely imagined, assumed soon the attributes of the very concretely imagined Pallas; and so on. But he had nearer and Numaish divinities much more a part of his life,--which indeed largely consisted of rituals in their honor. There were Lares and Penates and Manes, who made his home a kind of temple, and the earth a kind of altar; there were deities presiding over all homely things and occasions; formless impersonal deities; presences to be felt and remembered, not clothed imaginatively with features and myths:--Cuba, who gave the new-born child its first breath; Anna Perenna of the recurring year; hosts of agricultural gods without much definition, and the unseen genii of wood, field, and mountain. Everything, even each individual man, had a god-side: there was something in it or him greater, more subtle, more enduring, than the personality or outward show.--To the folk-lorist, of course, it is all 'primitive Mediterranean' religion or superstition; but the inner worlds are wonderful and vast, if you begin to have the smallest inkling of an understanding of them. I think we may recognise in all this the hand of a wise old Pompilius from the Sabine hills, at work to keep the life of his Romans, peasant-bandits as they were, clean in the main and sound. Yes, there were gross elements: among the many recurring festivals, some were gross and saturnalian enough. The Romans kept near Nature, in which are, both animal and cleansing forces; but the high old _gravitas_ was the virtue they loved. And supposing Numa established their religion, it does not follow that he established what there came to be of grossness in it. They kept near Nature; very near the land, and the Earth Breath, and the Earth Divinities, and the Italian soil,--and that southern laya center and gateway into the inner world which, I am persuaded, is in Italy. There are many didactic poems in world-literature,--poems dealing with the operations of agriculture;-- and they are mostly as dull as you would expect, with that for their subject; but one of them, and one only, is undying poetry. That one is the Roman one. Its author was a Celt, and his models were Greek; and he was rather a patient imitative artist than greatly original and creative;--but he wrote for Rome, and with the Italian soil and weather for his inspiration; and their forces pouring through him made his didactics poetry, and poetry they remain after nineteen centuries. Nothing of the kind comes from Greece. As if whenever you broke the Italian soil, a voice sang up to you from it: _Once Saturn reigned in Italy!_ It is this that brings Cincinnatus back to his cabbage-field from the war,--and politics, as to something sacred, a fountain at which life may be renewed. Plug souls; no poetry in them;--but the Earth Breath cleanses and heals and satisfies them. In place of a literature, they have wild unpoetical chants to their Mayors to raise as they go into battle; for art and culture, they have that bright vermilion Jove; nothing from the Spirit to comfort them in these! But put the ex-dictator to hoe his turnips, and he is in a dumb sort of way in communication at once with the Spirit and all deepest sources of comfort.--What is Samnite gold to me, when I have my own radishes to toast,--sacred things out of my own sacred soil? The Italian sun shines down on me, and warms more than my physicality and limbs. See, I strike my hoe into Italy, and the sacred essences of Earth our Mother flow up to me, and quiet my mind from anxious and wasting thought, and fill me with calmness and vigor and Italy, and her old quaint immemorial gods! Not that the Roman had any conception, patriotically speaking, about Italy; it was simply the soil he was after,--which happened to be Italian. Not for him, in the very slightest, Filicaia's or Mazzini's dream! Good practical soul, what would he have done with dreaming?--But he had his feet on the ground, and was soaked through, willy nilly, with its forces; he lived in touch with realities, with the seasons and the days and nights,--how we do forget those great, simple, life-giving, cleansing things!--and his mind was molded to what he owed to the soil, to the realities, to _Dea Roma;_--and Duty became a great thing in his life. Out of all this comes something that makes this narrow little cultureless bandit city almost sympathetic to us,--and very largely indeed admirable. They knew how to keep their heads. There were those two races among them,--races or orders;--and a mort of politics between the two. Greek cities, in like manner but generally less radically divided, knew no method but for one side to be perpetually banishing the other, turn and turn about, and wholesale; but these spare, tough Romans effect compromise after compromise, till Patricians and Plebs are molten down into one common type. They are not very brilliant, even at their native game of war: given a good general, their enemies are pretty sure to trounce them. Pyrrhus, a fine tactician but no great strategist, does so several times;--and then they reply to his offers of peace, that they make no peace with enemies still camped on Italian soil.-- Comes next a real master-strategist, Hannibal; and senate and people, time after time, are forced (like Balbus in the poem) "With a frankness that I'm sure will charm ye To own it is all over with the army." He wipes them out in a most satisfactory and workmanlike manner. Their leading citizens, _ipso facto_ their generals (amateur soldiers always cabbage-hoers at heart) afford him a good deal of amusement; as if you should send out the mayor of Jonesville, Arkansaw, against a Foch or a Hindenburg. One of them, a fool of a fellow, blunders into a booby-trap and loses the army which is almost the sole hope of Rome; and comes home, utterly defeated, --to be gravely thanked by the Senate for not committing suicide after his defeat: "for not despairing of the Republic." Ah, there is real Great Stuff in that; they are admirable peasant bandits after all! Most people would have straight court martialed and beheaded the man; as England hanged poor Admiral Byng _pour encourager les autres._ And all the while they have been having the sublime impudence to keep an army in Spain conquering there. How to account for this unsubduability? Well; there is Numa's teaching; and what you might call a latent habit of _Caput-Mundi-ship:_ imperial seeds in the soil. There is that indestructible god-side to everything; especially, behind and above this city on the seven hills, there is divine eternal ROME. So, after the Gaulish conquest, they rejected proffered and more desirable Etruscan sites, and came back and provided _Dea Roma_ with a new out-ward being; the imperial seeds, molds of empire, were on the Seven Hills, not at Veii. So, when this still greater peril of Hannibal so nearly submerged them, they took final victory for granted,--could conceive of no other possibility,--and placidly went forward while being whipped in Italy with the adventure in Spain. There was one thing they could not imagine: ultimate defeat. It was a kind of stupidity with them. They were a stupid people. You might thrash them; you might give them their full deserts (which were bad), and fairly batter them to bits; all the world might think them dead; dozens of doctors might write death-certificates; you might have Rome coffined and nailed down, and be riding gaily to the funeral;--but you could not convince _her_ she was dead; and at the very graveside, sure enough, the 'pesky critter' (as they say) would be bursting open the coffin lid; would finish the ceremony with you for the corpse, and then ride home smiling to enjoy her triumph, thank God for his mercies,--and get back to her hoe and her cabbages as quickly as might be. It is this that to my mind makes it philosophically certain that she had had a vast antiquity as the seat of empire; I mean, before the Etruscan domination. _Dea Roma,_--the Idea of Rome,-- was an astral mold almost cast in higher than astral stuff: it was so firmly fixed, so unalterably there, that I cannot imagine a few centuries of peasant-bandits building it,--unimaginative tough creatures at the best. No; it was a heritage; it was built in thousands of years, and founded upon forgotten facts. There was something in the ideal world, the deposit of long ages of thinking and imagining. How, pray, are nations brought into being? By men thinking and willing and imagining them into being. Such men create an astral matrix; with walls faint and vague at first, but ever growing stronger as more and more men reinforce them with new thought and will and imagination. But in Rome we see from the first the astral mold so strong that the strongest party feelings, the differences of a conqueror and a conquered race, are shaped by it into compromise after compromise. And then, too, an instinct among those peasant-bandits for empire: an instinct that few European peoples have possessed; that it took the English, for example, a much longer time to learn than it took the Romans. For let us note that even in those early days it was not such a bad thing to come under Roman sway; if you took it quietly, and were misled by no patriotic notions. That is, as a rule. Unmagnanimous always to men, Rome was not without justice, and even at times something quite like magnanimity, to cities and nations. She was no Athens, to exploit her subject peoples ruthlessly with never a troubling thought as to their rights. She had learned compromise and horse sense in her politics it home: if her citizens owed her a duty, --she assumed a responsibility towards them. It took her time to learn that; but she learned it. She went conquering on the same principle. Her plebeians had won their rights; in other towns, mostly, the plebeians had not. Roman dominion meant usually a betterment of the conditions of the plebs in the towns annexed, and their entering in varying degrees upon the rights the plebs had won at Rome. She went forward taking things as they came, and making what arrangements seemed most feasible in each case. She made no plans in advance; but muddled trough like an Englishman. She had no Greek or French turn for thinking things out beforehand; her empire grew, in the main, like the British, upon a subconscious impulse to expand. She conquered Italy because she was strong; much stronger inwardly in spirit than outwardly in arms; and because (I do but repeat what Mr. Stobart says: the whole picture really is his) what should she do with her summer holidays, unless go on a campaign?--and because while she had still citizens without land to hoe cabbages in, she must look about and provide them with that prime necessity. All of which amounts to saying that she began with a habit of empire-winning,--which must have been created in the past. On her toughness the spirited Gaul broke as a wave, and fell away. On her narrow unmagnanimity the chivalrous mountain Samnite bore down, and like foam vanished. She had none of the spiritual possibilities of the Gaul; but the Crest-Wave was coming, and the future was with Italy. She had none of the high-souled chivalry of the Samnite; but she was the heart of Italy, and the point from which Italy must expand. She was hard, tough, and based on the soil; and that soil, as it happened, the laya center,--a sort of fire-fountain from within and the unseen. You stood on the Seven Hills, and let heaven and hell conspire together, you _could not_ be defeated. Gauls, Samnites, Latins,--all that ever attacked her,--were but taking a house-cloth to dry up a running spring. The Crest-Wave was coming to Italy; whose vital forces, all centrifugal before, must now be made to turn and flow towards the center. That was Rome; and as they would not flow to her of their own good will, out she must go and gather them in. Long afterwards, when the Caesars and Augusti of the West left her for Milan and Ravenna, it was because the Crest-Wave was departing, the forces turning centrifugal, and Italy breaking to pieces; long afterwards again, in the eighteen-seventies, when the Crest-Wave was returning, Italy must flow in centripetally to Rome; no Turin, no Florence would do. So, by 264 B.C., she had conquered Italy. Then, still land-hungry, she stepped over into Sicily, invited by certain rascals in Messana, and light-heartedly challenged the Mistress of the Western Seas. At this point the stream is leaving Balbus's fields and Ahenobarbus's cattle, and coming to the broad waters, where the ships of the world ride in. XVII. ROME PARVENUE * The Punic War was not forced on Rome. She had no good motive for it; not even a decent excuse. It was simply that she was accustomed to do the next thing; and Carthage presented itself as the next thing to fight,--Sicily, the next thing to be conquered. The war lasted from 264 to 241; and at the end of it Rome found herself out of Italy; mistress of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. The Italian laya center had expanded; Italy had boiled over. It was just the time when Ts'in at the other end of the world was conquering China, and the Far Eastern Manvantara was beginning. Manvantaras do not begin or end anywhere, I imagine, without some cyclic event marking it in all other parts of the world. --------- * This lecture, like the preceding one, is based on Mr. J. H. Stobart's, _The Grandeur that was Rome._ --------- We have heard much talk of how disastrous the result would have been if Carthage, not Rome, had won. But Carthage was a far and belated outpost of West Asia and of a manvantara that had ended over a century before:--there was no question of her winning. Though we see her only through Roman eyes, we may judge very well that no possibility of expansion was left in her. There was no expansive force. She threw out tentacles to suck in wealth and trade, but was already dead at heart. All the greatness of old West Asia was concentrated, in her, in two men: Hamilcar Barca and his son: they shed a certain light and romantic glory over her, but she was quite unworthy of them. Her prowess at any time was fitful: where money was to be made, she might fight like a demon to make it; but she was never a fighting power like Rome. She won her successes at first because her seat was on the sea, and the war was naval, and sea-battles were won not by fighting but by seamanship. If Carthage had won, they say;--but Carthage could not have won, because the cycles were for Rome. You will note how that North African rim is tossed between European and West Asian control, according to which is in the ascendant. Now that Europe's up, and West Asia down, France, Italy, and England hold it from Egypt to the Atlantic; and in a few centuries' time, no doubt it will be quite Europeanized. But West Asia, early in its last manvantara, flowed out over it from Arabia, drove out all traces of Europeanism, and made it wholly Asiatic. Before that, while a European manvantara was in being, it was European, no less Roman than Italy; and before that again, while the Crest-Wave was in West Asia, it was West Asian, under Egypt and Phoenician colonies. As for its own native races, they belong, I suppose, to the fourth, the Iberian Sub-race; and now in the days of our fifth Sub-race (the Aryan), seem out of the running for wielding empires of their own. So if Carthage had won then, things would only have been delayed a little; the course of history would have been much the same. Rome might have been destroyed by Hannibal; she would have been rebuilt when Hannibal had departed; then gone on with her expansion, perhaps in other directions,--and presently turned, and come on Carthage from elsewhere; or absorbed her quietly, and let her do the carrying trade of the Mediterranean 'under the Roman flag' as you might say,--or something of that sort. Rome eradicated Carthage for the same reason that the Spaniards eradicated the Moors: because the West Asian tide, to which Moors and Carthaginians belonged, had ebbed or was ebbing, and the European tide was flowing high. Hamilcar indeed, and Hannibal, seem to have been touched by cyclic impulses, and to have felt that a Spanish Empire might have received the influx which a West Asian town in Africa could not. But Italy's turn came before Spain's; and all Hamilcar's haughty heroism, and Hannibal's magnanimous genius, went for nothing; and Rome, the admirable and unlovely, that had suffered the Caudine Forks, and then conquered Samnium and beheaded that noble generous Samnite Gaius Pontius, conquered in turn the conqueror at Cannae, and did for his reputation what she had done with the Samnite hero's person: chopped its head off, and dubbed him in perfect sincerity 'perfidus Hannibal.' Over that corpse she stood, at the end of the third century B.C., mistress of Italy and the Italian islands; with proud Carthage at her feet; and the old cultured East, that had known of her existence since the time of Aristotle at least, now keenly aware of her as the strongest thing in the Mediterranean world. Now while she had been a little provincial town in an Italy deep in pralaya, Numa's religion, what remained of it, had been enough to keep her life from corruption. Each such impulse from the heaven-world's, in its degree, an elixiral tincture to sweeten life and keep it wholesome; some, like Buddhism, being efficient for long ages and great empires; some only for tiny towns like early Rome. What we may call the exoteric basis of Numaism was a ritual of many ceremonies connected with home-life and agriculture, and designed to keep alive a feeling for the sacredness of these. It was calculated for its cycle: you could have given no high metaphysical system to peasant-bandits of that type;--you could not take the Upanishads to Afghans or Abyssinians today. But as soon as that cycle was ended, and Rome was called on to come out into the world, there was need of a new force and a new sanction. Has it occurred to you to wonder why, in that epochal sixth century B.C., when in so many lands the Messengers of Truth were turning away from the official Mysteries, and preaching their Theosophy upon a new plan broadcast among the peoples, Pythagoras, after wandering the east and west to gather up the threads of wisdom, should have elected not to return to Greece, but to settle in Italy and found his Movement there? I suppose the reason was this: He knew in what direction the cycles should flow, and that the greatest need of the future ages would be for a redeemed Italy; he foresaw, or Those who sent him foresaw, that it was Italy should mold the common life of Europe for a couple of thousand years. Greece was rising then, chiefly on the planes of intellect and artistic creation; but Italy was to rise after a few centuries on planes much more material, and therefore with a force much more potent and immediate in its effects in this world. The Age of Greece was nearer to the Mysteries; which might be trusted to keep at least some knowledge of Truth alive; the Age of Italy, farther away and on a lower plane, would be in need of a Religion. So he chose Croton, a Greek city, because if he had gone straight to the barbarous Italians, he could have said nothing much at that time,--and hoped that from a living center there, the light might percolate up through the whole peninsula, and be ready for Rome when Rome was ready for it. He left Athens to take care of itself;--much as H. P. Blavatsky chose New York at first, and not immediately the then world-capitals Paris and London;--I suppose we may say that Magna Graecia stood to old Greece in his time as America did to western Europe forty years ago. Had his Movement succeeded; had it struck well up into the Italian lands; how different the whole after-history of Europe might have been! Might?--certainly would have been! But we know that a revolution at Croton destroyed, at the end of the sixth century, the Pythagorean School; after which the hope and messengers of the Movement-- Aeschylus, Plato--worked in Greece; and that although the Pythagorean individual Lucanians, Iapygians, and even Samnites-- that noble Gaius Pontius of the Caudin Forks was himself a Pythagorean and a pupil of the Pythagorean Archytas,--it was, in the Teacher's own lifetime, practically broken up and driven out into Sicily, where those two great Athenians contacted it. We have seen that it was not effectless; and, what glimmer of it came down, through Plato, into the Middle Ages. But its main purpose: to supply nascent Italy with a saving World-Religion; had been defeated. Of all the Theosophical Movements of the time, this so far as we know was the only one that failed. Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, each lasted on as a grand force for human upliftment; but Pythagoreanism, as an organized instrument of the Spirit, passed. When Aeschylus made his protests in Athens, the Center of the Movement to which he belonged had already been smashed. Plato did marvels; but the cycle had gone by and gone down, and it was too late for him to attempt that which Pythagoras had failed to accomplish. So Rome, when she needed it most, lacked divine guidance; so drifted out on to the high seas of history pilotless and rudderless;--so _Weltpolitik_ only corrupted and vulgarized her. She had no Blue Pearl of Laotse to render her immortal; no Confucian Doctrine of the Mean to keep her sober and straight; and hence it came that, though later a new start was made, and great men arose, once, twice, three times, to do their best for her, she fell to pieces at last, a Humpty-Dumpty that all the king's horses and all the king's men could never reweld into one;--and the place she should have filled in history as Unifier of Europe was only filled perfunctorily and for a time; and her great duty was never rightly done. _Hinc lacrimae aetatum_--hence the darkness and miseries of the Christian Era! Take your stand here, at the end of the Punic War, on the brink of the Age of Rome; and you feel at once how fearfully things have gone down since you stood, with Plato, looking back over the Age of Grecce. There is nothing left now of the high possibilities of artistic creation. Of the breath of spirituality that still remained in the world then, now you can find hardly a trace. A Cicero presently, for a Socrates of old; it is enough to tell you how the world has fallen. Some fall, I suppose, was implied in the cycles; still Rome might have gone to her more material duties with clean heart, mind, and hands; she might have built a structure, as Ts'in Shi Hwangti and Han Wuti did, to endure. It would not be fair to compare the Age of Han with the Augustan; the morning glory of the East Asian, with the late afternoon of the European manvantara; and yet we cannot but see, if we look at both dispassionately and with a decent amount of knowledge, how beneficently, the Eastern Teachers had affected their peoples, and what a dire thing it was for Europe that the work of the Western Teacher had failed. Chow China and Republican Rome fell to pieces in much the same way: in a long orgy of wars and ruin;--but the rough barbarian who rebuilt China found bricks to his hand far better than he knew he was using,-- material with a true worth and vitality of its own,--a race with elements of redemption in its heredity; whereas the great statesman, the really Great Soul who rebuilt Rome, had to do it, if the truth should be told, of materials little better than stubble and rottenness. Roman life, when Augustus came to work with it for his medium, was fearfully infected with corruption; one would have said that no power human or divine could have saved it. That he did with it as much as he did, is one of the standing wonders of time. But now back to the place where we left Rome: in 200 B.C., at the end of the Carthaginian War. No more now of Farmer Balbus's fields; no more of the cows of Ahenobarbus; Dolabella's rod and line, and his fish-stories, shall not serve us further. It is the navigable river now; on which we must sail down and out on to the sea. Already the little Italian city is being courted by fabulously rich Egypt, the doyen of culture since Athens declined; and soon she is to be driven by forces outside her control into conquest of all the old seats of Mediterranean civilization;--and withal she is utterly unfitted for the task in any spiritual or cultural sense: she is still little more than the same narrow little provincial half-barbarous Rome she has always been. No grand conceptions have been nourished in her by a literature of her own with high lights couched in the Grand-Manner; no olden Homer has sung to her, with magnificent roll of hexameters to set the wings of her soul into magnificent motion. Beyond floating folk ballads she has had no literature at all; though latterly, she is trying to supply the place of one with a few slave-made translations from the Greek, and a few imitations of the decadent Greek comedy of Alexandria;--also there has been a poet Naevius, whom--she found altogether too independent to suit her tastes; and a Father Ennius,--uncouth old bone of her bone, (though he too Greek by race) who is struggling to mold her tough inflexible provincial dialect into Greek meter of sorts,--and thereby doing a real service for poets to come. And there is a Cato the Censor, writing prose; Cato, typical of Roman breadth of view; with, for the sum of a truly national political wisdom, yelping at Rome continually that fool's jingo cry of his:--your finest market in the western seas, your richest potential commercial asset, must be destroyed. There you have the high old Roman conception of _Weltpolitik;_ whereby we may understand how little fitted Rome was for _Weltpolitik_ at all; how hoeing cabbages and making summer campaigns,--as Mr. Stobart says, with a commissariat put up for each soldier in a lunch-bag by his wife,--were still her metier,--the Italian soil, whether in actual or only potential possession--held already, or by the grace of God soon to be stolen--still her inspiration. And this Italian soil she was now about to leave forever. The forces that led her to world-conquest were twofold, inner and outer. The inner one was the summer campaign habit, formed during several centuries; and the fact that she could form no conception of life that did not include it: the impulse to material expansion was deep in her soul, and ineradicable. She might have followed it, perhaps, north and westward; finished with Spain; gone up into Gaul (though in Gaul she might have found, even at that time, possibly, an unmanageable strength); she might even have carried her own ultimite salvation up into Germany. But we have seen Darius flow victorious eastward towards India, but unsuccessful when he tried the passes of the west; and Alexander follow him in the same path, and not turn westward at all. So you may say an eastward habit had been formed, and inner-channels were worn for conquest in that direction, but none in the other. Besides,--and this was the outer of the two forces,--the East was crying out to Rome. There were pirates on the other side of the Adriatic; and for the safety of her own eastern littoral she had been dealing with them, as with Spain, during and before the terrible Hannibalic time. To sit securely at home she must hold the Illyrian coast: and, she thought, or events proved it to her, to hold that coast safely, she must go conquering inland. Then again Egypt had courted her alliance, for regions. The Ptolemy of the time was a boy; and Philip of Macedon ind Antiochus of Syria had hatched a plan to carve up his juicy realm for their own most delectable feasting. It was the very year after peace--to call it that--had been forced on prostrate Carthage; and you might think an exhausted Rome would have welcomed a breathing time, even at the expense of losing her annual outing. And so indeed the people were inclined to do. But the summer was icumen in; and what were consuls and Senate for? Should they be as these irresponsibles of the comitia? Should they fail to look about them and take thought?--As if someone should offer you a cottage (with all modern appointments) by the seaside, or farmhouse among the mountains, free of rent for July and August, here were all the respectabilities of the East cooingly inviting Rome to spend her summer with them; they to provide all accessories for a really enjoyable time. In this way eastern politics assorted themselves,--thus was the Levant divided: on the one hand you had the traditional seats of militariasm; on the other, famous names--and the heirs to the glory (a good deal tarnished now) that once had been Greece. The former were Macedon and Syria, or Macedon with Syria in the background; what better could you ask that a good square se-to with these? Oh, one at a time; that was the fine old Roman way; _divide et impera;_ Mecedon now, and, a-grace of God, Syria--But let be; we are talking of this summer; for next, the Lord (painted bright vermilion) it may be hoped will provide. So for the present Philip of Mecedon figures as the desired enemy.--As to the other side, the famous names to be our allies, they are: Egypt, chief seat in recent centuries of culture and literature, and incidentally the Golconda of the time, endowed past dreaming of with commerce, wealth, and industries; and Rhodes, rich and republican, and learned too; and the sacred name of Athens; and Pergamum in Asia, cultured Attalus's kingdom. Are we not to ally ourselves with the arts and humanities, with old fame, with the most precious of traditions?--For Rome, it must be said, was not all Catos: there was something in her by this time that could thrill to the name of Greece. And Philip had been in league with Hannibal, though truly he had left him shamefully unsupported. _Philip had been in league with Hannibal--with Hannibal!_--Why, it was a glorious unsought fight, such as only fortune's favored soldiers might attain. The comitia vote against it? They say Hannibal has made them somewhat tired?--Nonsense! let 'em vote again! let 'em vote again!--They do so; assured pithily that it is only a question whether we fight Philip in Macedon, or he us on our own Italian soil. Of course, if you put it that way, it is Hobson's choice: the voting goes all right this time. So we are embarked on the great Eastern Adventure; and Flamininus sets out for Greece. Now your simple savage is often a gentleman. I don't mean your Congo Quashi or Borria Bungalee from the back-country blocks of New South Wales--our Roman bore no resemblance to them; but say your Morocco kaid, your desert chieftain from Tunis or Algiers. Though for long generations he has lost his old-time civilized attainments, he retains in full his manners, his native dignity, his wild Saharan grace. But banish him to Paris, and see what happens. He buys up automobiles,--and poodles,--and astrolabes, --and patent-leather boots,--and a number of other things he were much better without. He exchanges his soul for a pass into the _demi-monde;_ and year by year sees him further sunk into depths of vulgarism. This is precisely what in a few generations happened to Rome. But meanwhile she was at an apex; touched by some few luminous ideals here and there, and producing some few great gentlemen. Unprovincial egos; like Scipio Africanus had been edging their way into Roman incarnation; they were swallows of a still far-off summer; they stood for Hellenization, and the modification of Roman rudeness with a little imported culture. Rome had conquered Magna Graccia, and had seen something there; had felt a want in herself, and brought in slaves like Livius Andronicus to supply it. Flamininus himself was really a very great gentleman: a patrician, type of the best men there were in Rome. He went to Greece thrilled with generous feelings, as to a sacred land. When he restored to the Greek cities their freedom,-- handed them back to their own uses and devices, after freeing them from Philip,--it was with an infinite pride and a high simplicity. We hear of him overcome in his speech to their representatives on that occasion, and stopping to control the lump in his throat: conqueror and master of the whole peninsula and the islands, he was filled with reverence, as a great simple-hearted gentleman might be, for the ancient fame and genius of the peoples at his feet. He and his officers were proud to be admitted to the Games and initiated at Eleusis. I think this is the finest chapter in early Roman history. There is the simplicity, pride, and generosity of the Roman gentleman, confronted with a culture he was able to admire, but conscious he did not possess;--and on the other hand the fine flow of Greek gratitude to the liberator of Greece, in whom the Greeks recognised that of old time, and which had been so rare in their own life. At this moment Rome blossomed: a beautiful bloom, we may say. But it was a fateful moment for her, too. The Greeks had long lost what capacity they had ever had for stable politics. Flamininus might hand them back their liberties with the utmost genuineness of heart; but they were not in a condition to use the gift. Rome soon found that she had no choice but to annex them, one way or another. They were her proteges; and Antiochus attacked them;--so then Antiochus had to be fought and conquered. That fool had great Hannibal with him, and resources with which Hannibal might have crushed Rome; but it did not suit Antiochus that the glory should be Hannibal's. Then presently Attalus bequeathed Pergamum to the Senate; which involved Rome in Asia Minor. So step by step she was compelled to conquer the East. Now there was a far greater disparity of civilization between Rome and this Hellenistic Orient and half-orientalized Greece, than appeared afterwards between the Romans and Spaniards and Gauls. Spain, very soon after Augustus completed its conquest, was producing most of the brightest minds in Latin literature: the influx of important egos had hardly passed from Italy before it began to appear in Spain. Had not Rome become the world metropolis, capable of attracting to herself all elements of greatness from every part of the Mediterranean world, we should think of the first century A.D., as a great Spanish Age. Gaul, too, within a couple of generations of Ceasar's devastating exploits there, had become another Egypt for wealth and industries. The grandson's of the Vercingetorixes and Dumnorixes were living more splendidly, and as culturedly, in larger and better villas than the patricians of Italy; as Ferrero shows. We may judge, too, that there was a like quick rise of manvantaric conditions in Britain after the Claudian conquest: we have news of Agricola's speaking of the "labored studies of the Gauls," as if that people were then famed for learning,--to which, he said, he preferred the "quick wits and natural genius of the Britons." And here I may mention that, even before the conquest of Gaul, Caesar's own tutor was a man of that nation, a master of Greek and Latin learning;--but try to imagine a Roman tutoring Epaminondas or Pelopidas! So we may gather that a touch from Italy--by that time highly cultured,--was enough to light up those Celtic countries at once; and infer from that that no such long pralayic conditions had obtained in them as had obtained in Italy during the centuries preceding the Punic Wars. Spain at thirteen decades before Scipio, Gaul at as much before Caesar, Britain at as much before Caesar or Claudius, may well have been strong and cultured countries: because you wake quickly after the thirteen decade period of rest, but slowly after the long pralayas. Roman Italy woke very slowly at the touch of Greece; and woke, not like Spain and Gaul afterwards at Rome's touch, to culture; not to learning or artistic fertility. What happened was what always does happen when a really inferior civilization comes in contact with a really superior one. Rome did not become civilized in any decent sense: she simply forwent Roman virtues and replaced them with Greek vices; and made of these, not the vices of a degenerate culture, but the piggishness of cultureless boors.--Behold her Gadarene stations, after Flamininus's return:-- Millions of money, in indemnities, loot, and what not,--in bribes before very long,--are flowing in to her. Where not so long since she was doing all her business with stamped lumps of bronze or copper, a pound or so in weight, in lieu of coinage, nor feeling the need of anything more handy,--now she is receiving yearly, monthly, amounts to be reckoned in millions sterling; and has no more good notion what to do with them than ever she had of old. If the egos (of Crest-Wave standing) had come in as quickly as did the shekels, things might have gone manageably; but they did not by any means. Her great misfortune was to enter the world-currents only on the material plane; to find her poor little peasant-bandit-souled self mistress of the world and its money, and still provincial to the core and with no ideas of bigness that were not of the earth earthy; with nothing whatever that was both spiritual and Roman to thrill to life the higher side of her;--a multimillionaire that could hardly read or write, and knew no means of spending her money that was not essentially vulgar. She had given up her sole means of salvation--which was hoeing cabbages; her slaves did all that for her now;--and so was at a loss for employment; and Satan found plenty of mischief for her idle hands to do. There were huge all-day-long banquets, where you took your emetic from time to time to keep you going. There were slaves,--armies of them; to have no more than a dozen personal attendants was poverty. There were slaves from the East to minister to your vices; some might cost as much as five thousand dollars; and there were dirt-cheap Sardinians and 'barbarians' of all sorts to run your estates and farms. All the work of Italy was done by slave labor; and the city swarmed with an immense slave population; the country slaves with enough of manhood left in them to rise and butcher and torture their masters when they could; the city slaves, one would say, in no condition to keep the semblance of a soul in them at all,--living dead. For the most part both were shamefully treated; Cato,-- high old Republican Cato, type of the free and nobly simple Roman--used to see personally to the scourging of his slaves daily after dinner, as a help to his digestion.--So the rich wasted their money and their lives. They bought estates galore, and built villas on them; Cicero had--was it eighteen?-- country-houses. They bought up Greek art-treasures, of which they had no appreciation whatever,--and which therefore only helped to vulgarize them. Such things were costly, and thought highly of in Greece; so Rome would have them for her money, and have them _en masse._ Mummius brought over a shipload; and solemnly warned his sailors that they would have to replace any they might break or lose. The originals, or such substitutes as the sailors might supply,--it was all one to him. As to literature,--well, we have seen how it began with translations made by a Greek slave, Livius Andronicus, who put certain Hellenistic comedies and the Odyssey into Latin ballad meters; the kind of verse you would expect from a slave ordered promiscuously by his master to get busy and do it. Then came Father Ennius; and here I shall diverge a little to try to show you what (as I think) really happened to the soul of Rome. It was a queer set-out, this job that Ennius attempted,--of making a real Roman poem, an epic of Roman history. Between old Latin and Greek there was the same kind of difference as between French and English: one fundamental in the rhythm of the languages. I am giving my own explanation of a very puzzling problem; and needless to say, it may be wrong. The ancient Roman ballads were in what is called Saturnian meter, which depends on stress and accent; it is not unlike the meter of the Scotch and English ballads. That means that old Latin was spoken like English is, with syllabic accent. But Greek was not. In that, what counted, what made the meters, was tone and quantity. Now we have that in English too; but it is a subtler and more occult influence in poetry than accent is. In English, the rhythm of a line of verse depends on the stresses; but where there is more than rhythm,--where there is music,--quantity is a very important factor. For example, in the line "That carried the take to Sligo town to be sold," you can hear how the sound is held up on the word _take,_ because the _k_ is followed by the _t_ in _to;_ and what a wonderful musical effect is given thereby to the line. All the swing and lilt and rhythm of Greek poetry came in that way; there were no stresses, no syllabic accents; the accents we see written were to denote the tones the syllables should be--shall I say _sung on?_ Now French is an example of a language without stresses; you know how each syllable falls evenly, all taking an unvarying amount of time to enounce. I imagine the basic principle of Greek was the same; only that you had to add to the syllables a length of sound where two consonants combining after a vowel retarded the flow of tone, as in _take to_ in the line quoted just now. Now if you try to write a hexameter in English on the Greek principle, you get something without the least likeness either to a Greek hexameter or to music; because the language is one of stresses, not, primarily, of tones. "This is the forest pimeval; the murmuring pines and the hemlocks." will not do at all; there is no Greek spondee in it but--_rest prime_--; and Longfellow would have been surprised if you had accused that of spondeeism. What you would get would be something like these--I forget who was responsible for them: "Procession, complex melodies, pause, quantity, accent, After Virgilian precedent and practice, in order." Lines like these could never be poetry; poetry could never be couched in lines like these;--simply because poetry is an arrangement of words upon a frame-work of music: the poet has to hear the music within before his words can drop naturally into the places in accordance with it. You could not imitate a French line in English, because each of the syllables would have to be equally stressed; you could not imitate an English line in French, because in that language there are none of the stresses on which an English line depends for its rhythm. But when I read Chaucer I am forced to the conclusion that what he tried to do was precisely that: to imitate French music; to write English without regard to syllabic accent. The English lyrics of his time and earlier depend on the principle of accent: Sum'--mer is'--i-cum'--en in, Loud'--e sing'--cuccu'; --but time and again in Chaucer's lines we find that if we allow the words their natural English stresses, we break up the music altogether; whereas if we read them like French, without syllabic accent, they make a very reasonable music indeed. Now French had been in England the language of court and culture; it was still spoken in polite circles at Stratforde-at-le-Bowe; and Chaucer was a courtier, Anglo-French, not Anglo-Saxon; and he had gone to France for his first models, and had translated a great French poem; and Anglo-Saxon verse-methods were hardly usable any longer. So it may well have appeared to him that serious poetry was naturally French in meter and method. There was no model for what he wanted to do in English; the English five-iambic line had not been invented, and only the popular lyricists, of the proletariat, sang in stresses. And anyhow, as the upper classes, to which he belonged more or less, were only growing out of French into English, very likely they pronounced their English with a good deal of French accent. Now it seems to me that something of the same kind, with a difference, is what happened with Ennius. You are to understand him as, though Greek by birth, _Romanior ipsis Romanis:_ Greek body, but ultra-Roman ego. One may see the like thing happen with one's own eyes at any time: men European-born, who are quite the extremest Americans. In his case, the spark of his Greek heredity set alight the Roman conflagration of his nature. He was born in Calabria, a Roman subject, in 239; and had fought for Rome before Cato, then quaestor, brought him in his train from Sardinia in 204. A glance at the cycles, and a measuring-up of things with our thirteen-decade yardstick, will suggest the importance of the time he lived in. The _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ gives A.D. 42 as the date for the end of the golden Age of Latin Literature. Its first great names are those of Cicero, Caesar, and Lucretius. Thirteen decades before 42 A.D., or in 88 B.C., these three were respectively eighteen, fourteen, and eight years old; so we may fairly call that Golden Age thirteen decades long, and beginning in 88. Thirteen decades back from that bring us to 218; and as much more from that, to 348. You will remember 348 as the year of the death of Plato, which we took as marking the end of the Golden Age of Greek. In 218 Ennius was twenty-one. He was the Father of Latin Poetry; as Cato the Censor, seven years his junior, was the Father of Latin Prose. So you see, he came right upon a Greek cycle; right upon the dawn of what should have been a new Greek day, with the night of Hellenisticism in between. And he took, how shall I put it?--the forces of that new day, and transmuted them, in himself as crucible, from Greek to Roman... A sort of Channel through which the impulse was deflected from Greek to Latin... I think that, thtilled with a patriotism the keener-edged because it was acquired, he went to work in this way:--He was going to make one of these long poems, like those (inferior) Greek fellows had; and he was going to make it in Latin. (I do not know which was his native language, or which tradition he grew up in.) He didn't see why we Romans should not have our ancient greatness sung in epic; weren't we as good as Homer's people, anyhow? Certainly we were; and a deal better! Well, of course there was our old Saturnian meter; but that wasn't the kind of way serious poetry was written. Serious poetry was written in hexameters. If Greek was his native tongue, he may have spoken Latin all his life, of course, with a Greek accent; and the fact that he was sitting down to make up his 'poem' in a meter which no native-born Latin speaker could hear as a meter at all, may have been something of which he was profoundly unconscious. But that is what he did. He ignored (mostly) the stresses and accents natural to Latin, and with sweet naivete made a composition that would have scanned if it had been Greek, and that you could make scan by reading with a Greek rhythm or accent. The Romans accepted it. That perhaps is to say, that he had no conception at all of poetry as words framed upon an inner music. I think he was capable of it; that most Romans of the time, supposing they had had the conviction of poethood, would have been capable of it. It was the kind of people they were. But that was not all there was to Ennius, by any means. A poet-soul had incarnated there; he had the root of the matter in him; it was only the racial vehicle that was funny, as you may say. He was filled with a high conception of the stern grandeur Romans admired; and somehow or other, his lines carry the impress of that grandeur at times: there is inspiration in them. And now comes the point I have fetched all this compass to arrive at. By Spenser's time, or earlier, in England, all traces of Chaucer's French accent had gone; the language and the poetry had developed on lines of their own, as true expressions of the national soul. But in Rome, not so. Two centuries later great Roman poetry was being written: a major poet was on the scenes, --Virgil. He, I am certain, wrote with genuine music and inspiration. We have accounts of his reading of his own poems; how he was carried along by the music, chanting the lines in a grand voice that thrilled all who heard. He chanted, not spoke, them; poets always do. They formed themselves, grew in his mind, to a natural music already heard there, and existent before the words arose and took shape to it. That music is the creative force at work, the whirr of the loom of the Eternal; it is the golden-snooded Muses at song. And therefore he was not, like Ennius, making up his lines on an artificial foreign plan; to my mind that is unthinkable;--he was writing in the Latin spoken by the cultured; in Latin as all cultured Romans spoke it. But, _mirabile dictu,_ it was Latin as Ennius had composed it: he was writing in Ennius' meter. I can only understand that Greek had so swamped the Latin soul, that for a century or more cultured Latin had been spoken in quantity, not in accent; in the Greek manner, and with the Greek rhythm. Ennius had come to be appreciable as meter and music to Roman ears; which he certainly could not have been in his own day. So we may say that there is in a sense no Roman literature at all. Nothing grew out of the old Saturnian ballad-meter,--except perhaps Catullus, who certainly had no high inspiring impersonal song to sing. The Roman soul never grew up, never learned to express itself in its own way; before it had had time to do so, the Greek impulse that should have quickened it, swamped it. You may think of Japan, swamped by Chinese culture in the sixth century A.D., as a parallel case; but no; there Buddhism, under real spiritual Teachers, came in at the same time, and fostered all that was noblest in the Japanese soul, so that the result was fair and splendid. A more cognate case is that of the Turks, who suffered through suddenly conquering Persia while they were still barbarous, and taking on, outwardly, Persian culture wholesale; Turkish and Latin literature are perhaps on a par for originality. But if the Greek impulse had touched and wakened Rome under the aegis of Pythagoreanism,--Rome might have become, possibly, as fine a thing as Japan. True, the Crest-Wave had to roll in to Rome presently, and to raise up a great literature there. But whose is the greatest name in it? A Gaul's, who imitated Greek models. There is something artificial in the combination; and you guess that whatever most splendid effort may be here, the result cannot be supreme. The greatest name in Latin prose, too,--Livy's--was that of a Gaul. And herefrom we may gather what mingling of forces is needed to produce the great ages and results in literature. You have a country; a tract of earth with the Earth-breath playing up through the soil of it; you have the components or elements of a race mixed together on that soil, and molded by that play of the Earth-breath into homogeneity, and among them, from smallest beginnings in folk-verse, the body of a literature must grow up. Then in due season it must be quickened: on the outer plane by an impulse from abroad,--intercourse with allies, or resistance to an invader; and on the inner, by an inrush of Crest-Wave egos. There must be that foreign torch applied,--that spark of inter-nationalism; and there must be the entry of the vanguard of the Host of Souls with its great captains and marshals, bringing with them, to exhibit once more in this world, the loot of many lands and ages and old incarnations; which thing they shall do through a sudden efflorescence of the literature that has grown up slowly to the point of being ready for them. Such natural growth happened in Greece, in China; in our own cycle, in France, Italy, England: where the trees of the nation literatures received buddings and manurings from abroad, but produced always their own natural national fruit:--Shakespeare was your true English apple, grown from the Chaucer stock; although in him flower for juices the sweetness and elixir of all the world and the ancient ages. But in Rome, before the stock was more than a tiny seedling, a great branch of Greece was grafted on it,--and a degenerate Greece at that--and now we do not know even what kind of fruit-tree that Roman stock should have grown to be. How, then, did this submersion and obliteration of the Roman soul come to pass? It is not difficult to guess. Greek meant culture: if you wanted culture you learnt Greek. All education was in Greek hands. The Greek master spoke Latin to his boys; no doubt with a Greek accent. So cultured speech, cultured Latin, came to mean Latin without its syllabic stresses; spoken, as nearly as might be, with Greek evenness and quantity.--As if French should so submerge us, that we spoke our United States dapping out syllable by syllable like Frenchmen. But it is a fearful thing for a nation to forgo the rhythm evolved under the stress of its own Soul,--especially when what it takes on instead is the degenerate leavings of another: Alexandria, not Athens. This Rome did. She gained the world, and lost her own soul; and the exchange profited her as little as you might expect. Imitation of culture is often the last touch that makes the parvenu unbearable; it was so in Rome. One likes better in some ways Cato's stult old Roman attitude: who scorned Greek all his life for sheer foppery, while he knew of nothing better written in it than such trash as poetry and philosophy; but at eighty came on a Greek treatise on manure and straightway learned the language that he might read and enjoy something profitable and thoroughly Roman in spirit.--Greek artists flocked to Rome; and doubtless the more fifth-rate they were the better a thing they made of it: but it was risky for good men to rely on Roman appreciations. Two flute-players are contending at a concert; Greek and perhaps rather good. Their music is soon drowned in catcalls: What the dickens do we Romans want with such _footling tootlings?_ Then the presiding magistrate has an idea. He calls on them to quit that fooler and get down to business:--Give us our money's worth, condemn you to it, ye naughty knaves: _fight!_--And fight they must, poor things, while the audience, that but now was bored to death, howls with rapture. So Rome passed away. Where now is the simple soul who, while his feet were on his native soil and he asked nothing better than to hoe his cabbages and turn out yearly for patriotic throat-cuttings, was reputable--nay, respect-worthy,--and above all, not a little picturesque? Alas! he is no more.--You remember Kelly,--lovable Kelly, who in his youth, trotting the swate ould bogs of Cohhacht, heard poetry in every sigh of the wind,--saw the hosts of the Danaan Sidhe riding their flamey steeds through the twilight,--listened, by the cabin peat-fire in the evenings, to tales of Finn MacCool and Cuculain and the ancient heroes and Gods of Ireland?--Behold this very Kelly now!--What! is this he?--this raucous, pushing, red-haired, huge-handed, green-necktied vulgarian who has made his pile bricklaying in Chicago;--this ward-politician; this--Well, well; _Sic transit gloria mundi!_ And the Roman cad of the second century B.C. was worse than a thousand Kellys. He had learned vice from past-masters in the Levant; and added to their lessons a native brutality of his own. His feet were no longer on the Italian soil; _that_ was nothing sacred to him now. His moral went as his power grew. His old tough political straightforwardness withered at the touch of Levantine trickery; his subjects could no longer expect a square deal from him. He sent out his gilded youth to govern the provinces, which they simply fleeced and robbed shamelessly; worse than Athens of old, and by much. The old predatory instinct was there still: Hellenisticism had supplied no civilizing influence to modify that. But it was there minus whatever of manliness and decency had once gone with it. Karma travels by subtle and manifold links from the moral cause to the physical effect. There are historians who will prove to you that the ruin of Rome came of economic causes: which were, in fact, merely some of the channels through which Karma flowed. They were there, of course; but we need not enlarge on them too much. The secret of it all is this: a people without the Balance of the Faculties, without the saving doctrine of the Mean, with but one side of their character developed, was called by cyclic law, while still semi-barbarian, to assume huge responsibilities in the world. Their qualities were not equal to the task. The sense of the Beautiful, their feeling for Art and Poetry, had not grown up with their mateial strength. Why should it? some may ask; are not strength and moral enough?--No; they are not: because it is only the Balance which can keep you on the right path; strength without the beauty sense,--yes, even fortitude, strength of will,--turns at the touch of quickening time and new and vaster conditions, into gaucherie, disproportion, brutality; ay, it is not strength:--the saving quality of strength, morale, dribbles out and away from it: only the Balance is true strength. The empires that were founded upon uncompassion, through they swept the world in a decade, within a poor century or so were themselves swept away. Rome, because she was only strong, was weak; her virtues found no exit into life except in things military; the most material plane, the farthest from the Spirit. Her people were not called, like the Huns or Mongols, to be a destroyer race: the Law designed them for builders. But to build you must have the Balance, the proportionate development spiritual, moral, mental, and physical: it is the one foundation. Rome's grand assets at the start were a sense of duty, a natural turn for law and order: grand assets indeed, if the rest of the nature be not neglected or atrophied. In Rome it was, largely. To be strong-willed and devoted to duty, and without compassion: --that means that you are in train to grow a gigantic selfhood, which Nature abhors; emptiness of compassion is the vacuum nature most abhors. You see a strong man with his ambitions: scorning vices, scorning weakness; scorning too, and lashing with his scorn, the weak and vicious; bending men to his will and purposes. Prophesy direst sorrow for that man! Nature will not be content that he shall travel his chosen path till a master of selfishness and a great scourge for mankind has been evolved in him. She will give him rope; let him multiply his wrong-doings; because, paradoxically, in wrong-doing is its own punishment and cure. His selfishness sinks by its own weight to the lowest levels; prophesy for him that in a near life he shall be the slave of his body and passions, yet keeping the old desire to excel;--that common vice shall bring him down to the level of those he scorned, while yet he forgets not the mountain-tops he believed his place of old. Then he shall be scourged with self-contempt, the bitterest of tortures; and the quick natural punishments of indulgence shall be busy with him, snake-locked Erinyes with whips of wire. In that horrible school, struggling to rise from it, he shall suffer all that a human being can in ignominy, sorrow and shame;--and at last shall count it all well worth the while, if it has but taught him That which is no atribute, but Alaya's self,--Compassion. So Karma has its ministrants within ourselves; and the dreadful tyrants within are to be disthroned by working and living, not for self, but for man. This is why Brotherhood is the doctrine and practice that could put a stop to the awful degeneratioin of mankind. Rome was strong without compassion; so her strength led her on to conquests, and her conquests to vices, and her vices to hideous ruin and combustion. She loved her _gravitas,_--which implied great things;--but contemned the Beautiful; and so, when a knowledge of the Beautiful would have gone far to save her, by maintaining in her a sense of proportion and the fitness of things--she lost her morale and became utterly vulgarian. But think of China, taking it as a matter of course that music was an essential part of government; or of France, with her _Ministre des Beaux Arts_ in every cabinet. Perhaps; these two, of all historical nations, have made the greatest achievements; for you must say that neither India nor Greece was a nation.--As for Rome, with all her initial grandeur, it would be hard to find another nation of her standing that made such an awful mess of it as she did; one refers, of course, to Republican Rome; when Augustus had had his way with her, it was another matter. She took the Gadarene slope at a hand-gallop; and there you have her history during the second century B.C. Not till near the end of that century did the egos of the Crest-Wave begin to come in in any numbers. From the dawn of the last quarter, there or thereabouts, all was an ever-growing rout and riot; the hideous toppling of the herd over the cliff-edge. It was a time of wars civil and the reverse; of huge bloody conscriptions and massacre; reforms and demagogism and murder of the Gracchi:-- Marius and Sulla cat and dog;--the original Spartican movement, that wrecked Italy and ended with six thousand crucifixions along the road to Capua;--ended so, and not with a slave conquest and wiping-out of Rome, simply because Spartacus's revolted slave-army was even less disciplined than the legions that Beast-Crassus decimated into a kind of order and finally conquered them with. It was decade after decade of brutal devasting wars, --wars chronic and incurable, you would say: the untimely wreck and ruin of the world. It is a strange gallery of portraits that comes down to us from this time: man after notable man arising without the qualities that could save Rome. Here are a few of the likenesses, as they are given Dr. Stobart: there were the Gracchi, with so much that was fine in them, but a ruining dash of the demagog,--an idea that socialism could accomplish anything real;--and no wisdom to see through to ultimite causes. There was Marius, simple peasant with huge military genius: a wolf of a soldier and foolish lamb of a politician; a law-maker who, captured by the insinuations and flatteries of the opposite side, swears to obey his own laws "so far as they may be legal." There was Sulla, of the class of men to which Alcibiades and Alexander belonged, but an inferior specimen of the class and unscrupulous rip, and a brave successful commander; personally beautiful, till his way of living made his face "like a mulberry sprinkled with flour";-- with many elements of greatness always negatived by sudden fatuities; much of genius, more of fool, and most of rake-helly demirep; highly cultured, and plunderer of Athens and Delphi; great general, who maintained his hold on his troops by unlimited tolerance of undiscipline. There was Crassus the millionaire, and all his millions won by cheatery and ugly methods; the man with the slave fire-brigade, with which he made a pretty thing out of looting at fires. There was Cicero, with many noble and Roman qualities and a large foolish vanity: thundering orator with more than a _soupcon_ of the vaudeville favorite in him: a Hamlet who hardly showed his real fineness until he came to die. And there was Pompey;--real honesty in Pompey, perhaps the one true-hearted gentleman of the age: a man of morale, and a great soldier,--who might have done something if his general intelligence had been as great as his military genius and his sense of honor:--surely Pompey was the best of the lot of them; only the cursed spite was that the world was out of joint, and it needed something more than a fine soldier and gentleman to set it right.--And then Caesar--could he not do it? Caesar, the Superman,--the brilliant all-round genius at last,--the man of scandalous life--scandalous even in that cesspool Rome,--the epileptic who dreamed of world-dominion,--the conqueror of Gaul, says H.P. Blavatsky, because in Gaul alone the Sacred Mysteries survived in their integrity, and it was his business, on behalf of the dark forces against mankind, to quench their life and light for ever;--could not this Caesar do it? No; he had the genius; but not that little quality which all greatest personalities,--all who have not passed beyond the limits of personality: tact, impersonality, the power that the disciple shall covet, to make himself as nothing in the eyes of men:-- and because he lacked that for armor, there were knives sharpened which should reach his heart before long.--And then, in literature, two figures mentionable: Lucretius, thinker and philosopher in poetry: a high Roman type, and a kind of materialist, and a kind of God's warrior, and a suicide. And Catullus: no noble type; neither Roman nor Greek, but Italian perhaps; singing in the old Saturnian meters with a real lyrical fervor, but with nothing better to sing than his loves.--And then, in politics again, Brutus: type, in sentimental history of the Republican School, of the high old roman and republican virtues; Brutus of the "blood-bright splendor," the tyrant-slayer and Roman Harmodios-Aristogeiton; the adored of philosophic French liberty-equality-fraternity adorers; Shakespeare's "noblest Roman of them all";--O how featly Cassius might have answered, when Brutus accused him of the "itching palm," if he had only been keeping _au fait_ with the newspapers through the preceding years! _"Et tu, Brute,"_ I hear him say, quoting words that should have reminded his dear friend of the sacrd ties of friendship,-- "Art thou the man will rate thy Cassius thus? This is the most unkindest cut of all; For truly I have filched a coin or two:-- Have been, say, _thrifty;_ gathered here and there _Pickings,_ we'll call them; but, my Brutus, thou-- Didst thou not shut the senators of Rhodes (I think 'twas Rhodes) up in their senate-house, And keep them there unfoddered day by day. Until starvation forced them to disgorge All of their million to thee? Didst not thou--" Brutus is much too philosophical, much to studious, to listen to qualities of that kind, and cuts the conversation short right there. Cassius was right: that about starving the senators of his province that surrendered their wealth was precisely what our Brutus did.--Then there was Anthony, the rough brave soldier,--a kind of man of the unfittest when the giants Pompey and Caesar had been in; Anthony, master of Rome for awhile,--and truly, God knows Rome will do with bluff Mark Anthony for her master!--It is a very interesting list; most of them queer lobsided creatures, fighting with own hands or for nothing in particular; most with some virtues: Then that might have saved Rome, if, as Mrs Poyser said, "they are hatched again, and hatched different." XVIII. AUGUSTUS We left Rome galloping down the Gadarene slope, and scrimmaging for a vantage point whence to hurl herself headlong. Down she came; a riot and roaring ruin: doing those things she ought not to have done, and leaving undone those things she ought to have done, and with no semblance of health in her. There was nothing for it but the downfall of the world; good-bye civilization and all that was ever upbuilded of old. Come now; we should become good Congo forester in our time, with what they call 'long pig' for our daintiest diet. It is a euphemism for your brother man. But supposing this mist-filled Gadarene gulf were really bridgable: supposing there were another side beyond the roar of hungry waters and the horror; and that mankind,--European mankind,--might pass over, and be saved, were there but staying the rout for a moment, and affording a means to cross? There is a bardic proverb in the Welsh: _A fo Ben, bydded Bont:_--'He who is Chief, let him be the bridge': Bran the Blessed said it, when he threw down his giant body over the gulf, so that the men of the Island of the Mighty might pass over into Ireland. And the end of an old cycle, and the beginning of a new, when there is--as in our Rome at that time--a sort of psychic and cyclic impasse, a break-down and terrible chasm in history, if civilization is to pass over from the old conditions to the new, a man must be found who can be the bridge. He must solve the problems within himself; he must care so little for, and have such control of, his personality, that he can lay it down, so to speak, and let humanity cross over upon it. History may get no news of him at all; although he is then the Chief of Men, and the greatest living;--or it may get news, only to belittle him. His own and the after ages may think very little of him; he may possess no single quality to dazzle the imagination:--he may seem cold and uninteresting, a crafty tyrant;--or an uncouth old ex-rail-splitter to have in the White House;--or an illiterate peasant-girl to lead your armies; yet because he is the bridge, he is the Chief; and you may suspect someone out of the Pantheons incarnate in him. For the truth of all which, humanity has a sure instinct. When there is a crisis we say, _Look for the Man._ Rome thought (for the most part) that she had found him when Caesar, having conquered Pompey, came home master of the world. If this phoenix and phenomenon in time, now with no competitor above the horizons, could not settle affairs, only Omnipotence could. Every thinking (or sane) Roman knew that what Rome needed was a head; and now at last she had got one. Pompey, the only possible alternative, was dead; Caesar was lord of all things. Pharsalus, the deciding battle, was fought in 48; he returned home in 46. From the year between, in which he put the finishing touches to his supremacy, you may count the full manvantara of Imperial Rome: fifteen centuries until 1453 and the fall of the Eastern Empire. All opinion since has been divided as to the character of Caesar. To those whose religion is democracy, he is the grand Destroyer of Freedom; to the worshipers of the Superman, he is the chief avatar of their god. Mr. Stobart,* who deals with him sanely, but leaning to the favorable view, says he was "not a bad man, for he preferred justice and mercy to tyranny and cruelty, and had a passion for logic and order"; and adds, "he was a man without beliefs or illusions or scruples." He began by being a fop and ultra-extravagant; and was always, if we may believe accounts, a libertine of the first water. He was, of course, an epileptic. In short, there is nothing in history to give an absolutely sure clue to his real self. But there is that passage in Madame Blavatsky, which I have quoted before, to the effect that he was an agent of the dark forces, and conquered Gaul for them, to abolish the last effective Mysteries; and I think in the light of that, his character, and a great deal of history besides, becomes intelligible enough.--I will be remembered that he stood at the head of the Roman religion, as Potifex Maximus. ------ * On whose book, _The Grandeur that was Rome,_ this paper also largely leans. ------ But it was not the evil that he did that (obviously) brought about his downfall. Caesar was fortified against Karma by the immensity of his genius. Whom should he fear, who had conquered Pompeius Magnus? None in the roman world could reach so high as to his elbow;--for sheer largeness of mind, quickness and daring, he stoood absolutely the Superman among pygmies. He knew his aim, and could make or wait for it; and it was big and real. Other men crowed or fumbled after petty and pinch-beck ends; impossible rhetorical republicanisms; vain senatorial prestiges; --or pleasure pure and simple--say rather, very complex and impure. Let them clack, let them fumble! Caesar would do things and get things done. He wore the whole armor of his greatness, and could see no chink or joint in it through which a hostile dagger might pierce. Even his military victories were won by some greater than mere military greatness.--Karma, perhaps, remembering the Mysteries at Gaulish Bibracte, and the world left now quite lightless, might have a word to say; might even be looking round for shafts to speed. But what, against a man so golden-panoplied? "Tush!" saith Caesar, "there are no arrows now but straws." One such straw was this: (a foolish one, but it may serve)-- Rome for centuries has been amusing herself on all public occasions with Fourth of July rhetoric against kings, and in praise of tyrannicides. Rome for centuries has been cherishing in her heart what she calls a love of Freedom,--to scourge your slaves, steal from your provincials, and waste your substance in riotous living. All of which Julius Caesar,--being a real man, mind you,--holds in profoundest contempt for driveling unreality; which it certainly is. But unrealities are awfully real at times. Unluckily, with all his supermannism, he retained some traces of personality. He was bald, and sensitive about it; he always had been a trifle foppish. So when they gave him a nice laurel wreath for his triumph over Pompey, he continued, against all precedent, to wear it indefinitely,--as hiding certain shining surfaces from the vulgar gaze.... "H'm," said Rome, "he goes about the next thing to crowned!" And here is his statue, set up with those of the Seven Kings of antiquity; he allowing it, or not protesting.--They remembered their schoolboy exercises, their spoutings on many Latins for Glorious Fourth; and felt very badly indeed. Then it was unlucky that, being too intent on realities, he could not bother to rise when those absurd old Piccadilly pterodactyls the Senators came into his presence; that he filled up their ridiculous house promiscuously with low-born soldiers and creatures of his own. And that there was a crowd of foolish prigs and pedants in Rome to take note of these so trivial things, and to be more irked by them than by all the realities of his power:--a lean hungry Cassius; an envious brusque detractor Casca; a Brutus with a penchant for being considered a philosopher, after a rather maiden-auntish sort of conception of the part,--and for being considered a true descendant of his well-known ancestor: a cold soul much fired with the _ignis fatuus_ of Republican slave-scourging province-fleecing freedom. An unreal lot, with not the ghost of a Man between them;--what should the one Great Man of the age find in them to disturb the least ofhis dreams? Came, however, the Ides of March in B.C. 44; and the laugh once more was with Karma,--the one great final laugher of the world. Caesar essayed to be Chief of the Romans: he who is chief, let him be the bridge;--this one, because of a few ludicrous personal foibles, has broken down now under the hurry and thunder of the marching cycles. The fact being that your true Chief aspires only to the bridgehood; whereas this one overlooked that part of it, intent on the chieftaincy.--And now, God have mercy on us! there is to be all the round of wars and proscriptions and massacres over again: _Roma caput mundi_ herself piteously decapitate; and with every booby and popinjay rising in turn to kick her about at his pleasure;--and here first comes Mark Anthony to start the game, it seems. Well; Mark Anthony managed wisely enough at that crisis; you would almost have said, hearing him speak at Caesar's funeral, that there was at least a ha'porth of brains hidden somewhere within that particularly thick skull of his. Half an hour changes him from a mere thing alive on sufferance--too foolish to be worth bothering to kill--into the master of Rome. And yet probably it was not brains that did it, but the force of genuine feeling: he loved dead Caesar; he was trying now to be cautious, for his own skin's sake: was repressing himself;--but his feelings got the better of him,--and were catching,-- and set the mob on fire. Your lean and hungry ones; your envious detractors; your thin maiden-auntish prig republican philosophers:--all very wisely sheer off. Your grand resounding Cicero,--_vox et praeterea almost nihil_ (he had yet to die and show that it was _almost,_ not _quite,_) sheers off too, into the country, there to busy himself with an essay on the _Nature of the Gods_ (to contain, be sure, some fine eloquence), and with making up his mind to attack Anthony on behalf of Republican Freedom.--Anthony's next step is wise too: he appoints himself Caesar's executor, gets hold of the estate, and proceeds to squander it right and left buying up for himself doubtful support.--All you can depend on is the quick coming-on of final ruin and dismay: of all impossibilities, the most impossible is to imagine Mark Anthony capable of averting it. As to Caesar's heir, so nominated in the will--the persona from whom busy Anthony has virtually stolen the estate,--no one gives him a thought. Seeing who he was, it would be absurd to do so. And then he turned up in Rome, a sickly youth of eighteen; demanded his moneys from Anthony; dunned him till he got some fragment of them;--then borrowed largely on his own securities, and proceeded to pay--what prodigal Anthony had been much too thrifty to think of doing--Ceasar's debts. Rome was surprised. This was Caesar's grand-nephew, Octavius; who had been in camp at Apollonia in Illyricum since he had coolly proposed to his great-uncle that the latter, being Dictator, and about to start on his Parthian campaign, should make him his Master of the Horse. He had been exempted from military service on account of ill-health; and Julius had a sense of humor; so he packed him off to Apollonia to 'finish' a military training that had never begun. There he had made a close friend of a rising young officer by the name of Vipsanius Agrippa; a man of high capacities who, when the news came of Caesar's death, urged him to lose no time, but rouse the legions in their master's name, and march on Rome to avenge his murder.--"No," says Octavius, "I shall go there alone." Landing in Italy, he heard of the publication of the will, in which he himself had been named heir. That meant, to a very vast fortune, and to the duty of revenge. Of the fortune, since it was now in Mark Anthony's hands, you could predict nothing too surely but its vanishment; as to the duty, it might also imply a labor for which the Mariuses and Sullas, the Caesars and Pompeys, albeit with strong parties at their backs, had been too small men. And Octavius had no party, and he was no soldier, and he had no friends except that Vipsanius back in Apollonia. His mother and step-father, with whom he stayed awhile on his journey, urged him to throw the whole matter up: forgo the improbably fortune and very certain peril, and not rush in where the strongest living might fear to tread. Why, there was Mark Anthony, Caesar's lieutenant--the Hercules, mailed Bacchus, Roman Anthony--the great dashing captain whom his soldiers so adored-- even he was shilly-shallying with the situation, and not daring to say _Caesar shall be avenged._ And Anthony, you might be sure, would want no competitor--least of all in the boy named heir in Caesar's will.--"Oh, I shall go on and take it up," said Octavius; and went. And paid Caesar's debts, as we have seen, presently: thereby advertising his assumption of all responsibilities. Anthony began to be uneasy about him; the Senatorial Party to make advances to him; people began to suspect that, possibly, this sickly boy might grow into a man to be reckoned with. I am not going to follow him in detail through the next thirteen years. It is a tortuous difficult story; to which we lack the true clues, unless they are to be found in the series of protrait-busts of him taken during this period. The makers of such busts were the photographers of the age; and, you may say, as good as the best photographers. Every prominent Roman availed himself of their services. Mr. Baring-Gould, in his _Tragedy of the Caesars,_ arranges, examines, and interprets these portraits of Augustus; I shall give you the gist of his conclusions, which are illuminating.--First we see a boy with delicate and exceedingly beautiful features, impassive and unawakend: Octavius when he came to Rome. A cloud gathers on his face, deepening into a look of intense anguish; and with the anguish grows firmness and the clenched expression of an iron will: this is Octavian in the dark days of the thirties.--the anguish passes, but leaves the firmness behind: the strength remains, the beauty remains, and a light of high serenity has taken the place of the aspect of pain: this is Augustus the Emperor. The same writer contrasts this story with that revealed by the busts of Julius: wherein we see first a gay insouciant dare-devil youth, and at last a man old before his time; a face sinister (I should say) and haunted with ugly sorrow. We get no contemporary account of Augustus; no interpeting biography from the hand of any one who knew him. We have to read between the lines of history, and with what intuition we can muster: and especially the story of that lonely soul struggling through the awful waters of the years that followed Caesar's death. We see him allying himself first with one party, then with another; exercising (apparently) no great or brilliant qualities, yet by every change thrown nearer the top; till with Anthony and Lepidus he is one of the Triumvirate that rules the world. Then came those cruel proscriptions. This is the picture commonly seen:--a cold keen intellect perpetually dissembling; keen enough to deceive Anthony, to decieve the senate, to decieve Cicero and all the world; cruel for policy's sake, without ever a twinge of remorse or compunciton: a marble-cold impassive _mind,_ and no heart al all, with master-subtlety achieving mastery of the world.--Alas! a boy in his late teens and early twenties, so nearly friendless, and with enemies so many and so great... A boy "up aginst" so huge and difficult circumstances always, that (you would say) there was no time, no possibility, for him to look ahead: in every moment the next agonizing perilous step that must be taken vast enough to fill the whole horizon of his mind, of any human mind perhaps;--ay, so vast and compelling that every day with wrenches and torsion that horizon must be pushed back and back to contain them,--a harrowing painful process, as we may read on his busts... As to the proscriptions, Dio, a writer, as Mr. Baring-Gould says, "never willing to allow a good quality to one of the Caesars, or to put their conduct in other than an unfavorable light," says that they were brought about mainly--"by Lepidus and Anthony, who, having been long in honor under Julius Caesar, and having held many offices in state and army, had acquired many enemies. But as Octavian was associated with them in power, an appearance of complicity attached to him. But he was not cruel by nature, and he had no occasion for putting many to death; moreover, he had resolved to imitate the example of his adoptive father. Added to this, he was young, was just entering on his career, and sought rather to gain hearts than to alienate them. No sooner was he in sole power than he showed no signs of severity, and at that time he caused the death of very few, and saved very many. He proceeded with the utmost severity against such as betrayed their [proscribed?] masters or friends; but was most favorable to such as helped the proscribed to escape." It was that "appearance of complicity" that wrote the anguish on his face: the fact that he could not prevent, and saw no way but to have a sort of hand in, things his nature loathed. In truth he appears to us now rather like a pawn, played down the board by some great Chess-player in the Unseen: moving by no volition or initiative of its own through perils and peace-takings to Queenhood on the seventh square. But we know that he who would enter the Path of Power must use all the initiative, all the volition, possible in any human being, to attain the balance, to master the personality, to place himself wholly and unreservedly in the power, under the control, of the Higher thing that is "within and yet without him"' The Voice of his Soul, that speaks also through the lips of his Teacher; whether that Teacher be embodied visibly before men or not. He obeys; he follows the gleam; he sufferes, and strives, and makes no question; and his striving is all for more power to obey and to follow. In this, I think, we have our clue to the young Octavian.--'Luck' always favored him; not least when, in dividing the world, Anthony chose the East, gave Lepidus Africa, and left the most difficult and dangerous Italy to the youngest partner of the three. He had two friends, men of some genius both: Vipsanius Agrippa the general, and Cilnius Maecenas the statesman. Both appear to us as great personalities; the master whom they served so loyally and splendidly remains and Impersonality,--which those who please may call a 'cold abstraction.' While Octavian was away campaigning, Maecenas, with no official position, ruled Rome on his behalf; and so wisely that Rome took it and was well content. As for those campaigns, 'luck' or Agrippa won them for him; in Octavian himself we can see no qualities of great generalship. And indeed, it is likely he had none; for he was preeminently a man of peace. But they always were won. Suetonius makes him a coward; yet he was one that, when occasion arose, would not think twice about putting to sea in an open boat during a storm; and once, when he heard that Lepidus was preparing to turn against him, he rode alone into that general's camp, and took away the timid creature's army without striking a blow: simply ordered the soldiers to follow him, and they did. If he seems now a colorless abstraction, he could hardly have seemed so then to Lepidus' legions, who deserted their own general--and paymaster--at his simple word of command. Or to Agrippa, or to Maecenas, great men who desired nothing better than to serve him with loyal affection. Maecenas was an Etruscan; a man of brilliant mind and culture; reputed somewhat luxurious when he had nothing to do, but a very dynamo when there was work.--A man, be it said, of great ideals on his own account: we see it in his influence on Virgil and Horace. In his last years some coldness, unexplained, sprung up between him and his master; yet when Maecenas died, it was found he had made Augustus his sole heir.--But now Augustus is still only Octavian, moving impassively and impersonally to his great destiny; as if no thing of flesh and blood and common human impulses, but a cosmic force acting;--which indeed the Impersonal Man always is. What he did, seems to have done, or could not help doing, always worked out right, whether it carries for us an ethical look or no. The problems and difficulties that lay between that time and Peace flowed to him: and as at the touch of some alchemical solvent, received their solution. We get one glimpse of the inner man of him, of his beliefs or religion. He believed absolutely in his _Genius_ (in the Roman sense); his luck, or his Karma, or--and perhaps chiefly--that God-side of a man which Numaism taught existed:--what we should call, the Higher Law, the Warrior, and the Higher Self. There, as I think, you have the heart of his mystery; he followed that, blindly,--and made no mistakes. In the year 29 B.C. it led him back to Rome in Triumph, having laid the world at his feet. He had been the bridge over that chasm in the cycles; the Path through all the tortuosities of that doubtful and wayward time; over which the Purposes of the Gods had marched to their fulfilment. He had been strong as destiny, who seemed to have little strength in his delicate body. With none of Caesar's dash and brilliance, he had repeated Caesar's achievement; and was to conquer further in spiritual "regions Caesar never knew." With none of Anthony's soldiership, he had easily brought Anthony down.--Why did Cleopatra lose Actium for Anthony? We face the almost inexplicable again in the whole story of Octavian's dealings with Cleopatra. She is one of the characters history has most venomously lied about. Mr. Wiegand has shown some part of the truth about her in his biography; but I do not think he has solved the whole problem; for he takes the easy road of making Octavian a monster. Now Augustus, beyond any question, was one of the most beneficent forces that ever appeared in history; and no monster can be turned, by the mere circumstance of success achieved, into that. Cleopatra had made a bid to solve the world-problem on an Egyptian basis: first through Caesar, then through Anthony. We may dismiss the idea that she was involved in passionate attachments; she had a grand game to play, with World-stakes at issue. The problem was not to be solved through Caesar, and it was not to be solved through Anthony; but it had been solved by Octavian. There was nothing more for her to do, but step aside and be no hindrance to the man who had done that work for the Gods that she had tried and been unable to do. So she sailed away from Actium. Julius Caesar in his day had married her; and young Caesarion their son was his heir by Egyptian, but not by Roman, law. When, in the days of Caesar's dictatorship, she brought the boy to Rome, Caesar refused to recognise her as his wife, or to do the right thing by Caesarion. To do either would have endangered his position in Rome; where by that time he had another wife, the fourth or fifth in the series. He feared the Romans; and they feared Egypt and its Queen. It seemed very probably at that time that the headship of the world might pass to Egypt; which was still a sovereign power, and immensely rich, and highly populated, and a compact kingdom;--whereas the Roman state was everywhere ill-defined, tenebrous, and falling to pieces. At this distance it is hard to see in Egypt anything of strength or morale that would have enable it to settle the world's affairs; as hard, indeed, as it is to see anything of the kind in Rome. But Rome was haunted with the bogey idea; and terribly angry, aftewards, with Anthony for his Egyptian exploits; and hugely relieved when Actium put an end to the Egyptian peril. Egypt, it was thought, if nothing else, might have starved Italy into submission. But in truth the cycles were all against it: Cleopatra was the only Egyptian that counted,--the lonely Spacious Soul incarnate there. When Octavian reached Alexandria, all he did was to refuse to be influenced by the queen's wonderfully magnetic personality. He appears to me to have been uncertain how to act: to have been waiting for clear guidance from the source whence all his guidance came. He also seems to have tried to keep her from committing suicide. It is explained commonly on the supposition that he intended she should appear in his triumph in Rome; and that she killed herself to escape that humiliation. I think it is one of those things whose explanation rests in the hands of the Gods, and is not known to men. You may have a mass of evidence, that makes all humanity certain on some point; and yet the Gods, who have witnessed the realities of the thing, may know that those realities were quite different. Then her two elder children were killed; and no one has suggested, so far as I know, that it was not by Octavians's orders. It is easy, even, to supply him with a motive for it; one in keeping with accepted ideas of his character:--as he was Caesar's heir, he would have wished Caesar's own children out of the way;--and Caesar's children by that (to Roman ideas) loathed Egyptian connexion. His family honor would have been touched.... Up to this point, then, such a picture as this might be the true portrait of him:--a sickly body, with an iron will in it; a youth with no outstanding brilliancies, who never lost his nerve and never made mistakes in policy; with no ethical standars above those of his time:--capable of picking his names coldly on the proscription lists; capable of having Cleopatra's innocent children killed;--one, certainly, who had followed the usual custom of divorcing one wife and marrying another as often as expediency suggested. Above all, following the ends of his ambition unerringly to the top of success. The ends of his ambition?--That is all hidden in the intimate history of souls. How should we dare say that Julius was ambitious, Augustus not? Both apparently aimed at mastery of the world; from this human standpoint of the brain-mind there is nothing to choose, and no means of discrimination. But what about the standpoint of the Gods? Is there no difference, as seen from their impersonal altitudes, between reaching after a place for your personality, and supplying a personality to fill a place that needs filling? There is just that difference, I think, between the brilliant Julius and the staid Octavian. The former might have settled the affairs of the world,--as its controller and master and the dazzling obvious mover of all the pieces on the board. I do not believe Octavian looked ahead at all to see any shining pinnacle or covet a place on it; but time and the Law hurled one situation after another at him, and he mastered and filled them as they came because it was the best thing he could do.... If we say that the two men were as the poles apart, there are but tiny indications of the difference: the tactlessness and small vanities that advertise personality in the one; the supreme tact and balance that affirm impersonality in the other. The personality of Julius must tower above the world; that of Augustus was laid down as a bridge for the world to pass over. Julius gave his monkeys three chestnuts in the morning and four at night;--you remember Chwangtse's story;--and so they grew angry and killed him. Augustus adjusted himself; decreed that they should have their four in the morning. His personality was always under command, and he brought the world across on it. It never got in the way; it was simply the instrument wherewith he (or the Gods) saved Rome. He--we may say he--did save Rome. She was dead, this time; dead as Lazarus, who had been three days in the tomb, etc. He called her forth; gave her two centuries of greatness; five of some kind of life in the west; fifteen, all told, in west and east. Julius is always bound to make on the popular eye the larger impression of greatness. He retains his personality with all its air of supermanhood; it is easy to see him as a live human being, to imagine him in his habit as he lived,--and to be astounded by his greatness. But Augustus is hidden; the real man is covered by that dispassionate impersonality that saved Rome. If all that comes down about the first part of his life is true, and has been truly interpreted, you could not call him _then_ even a good man. But the record of his reign belies every shadow that has been cast on that first part. It is altogether a record of beneficence. H.P. Blavatsky speaks of Julius as an agent of the dark forces. Elsewhere she speaks of Augustus as an Initiate. Did she mean by that merely an initiate of the Official Mysteries as they still existed at Eleusis and elsewhere? Many men, good, bad and indifferent, were that: Cicero,--who was doubtless, as he says, a better man for his initiation: Glamininus and his officers; most of the prominent Athenians since the time of Pericles and earlier. I dare say it had come to mean that though you might be taught something about Karma and Reincarnation, you were not taught to make such teachings a living power in your own life or that of the world. There is nothing of the Occultists, nothing of the Master Soul, in the life and actions of Cicero; but there was very much, as I shall try to show, in the life and actions of Augustus. And, we gather from H.P. Blavatsky, the only Mysteries that survived in their integrity to anything like this time had been those at Bibracte which Caesar destroyed. (Which throws light, by the bye, on Lucan's half-sneering remark about the Druids,--that they alone had real knowledge about the Gods and the things beyond this life.) So it seems to me that Augustus' initiation implied something much more real,--much more a high status of the soul,--than could have been given him by any semi-public organized body within the Roman world. Virgil, in the year 40 B.C., being then a pastoral poet imitating Theocritus,--nothing very serious,--wrote a strange poem that stands in dignity and depth of purpose far above anything in his model. This was the Fourth Eclogue of his Bucolics, called the _Pollio._ In it he invokes the "Sicilian Muse" to inspire him to loftier strains; and proceeds to sing of the coming of a new cycle, the return of a better age, to be ushered in, supposedly, by a 'child' born in that year:-- _Ultima Cumaci venit jam carminis aetas; Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo; Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna; Jam nora progenies coelo demittitur alto._ This was taken in the Middle Ages as referring to the birth of Jesus; and on the strength of having thus prophesied, Virgil came to be looked on as either a true prophet or a black magician. Hence his enormous reputation all down the centuries as a master of the secret sciences. The chemist is the successor to the alchemist; and in Wales we still call a chemist _fferyll,_ which is _Virgil_ Cymricized. Well; his reputation was not altogether undeserved; he did know much; you can find Karma, Reincarnation, Devachan, Kama-loka--most of the Theosophical teachings as to the postmortem-prenatal states,-- taught in the Sixth Book of the _Aeneid._ But as to this _Pollio_ Eclogue: even in modern textbooks one often sees it asserted that he must have been familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures;--because in the Book of Isaiah the coming of a Messiah to the Jews is prophesied in terms not very unlike those he used. To my mind this is far-fetched: Virgil had Gaul behind him, if you must look for explanations in outside things; and at least in after ages Celtic Messianism was as persistent a doctrine as Jewish. A survival, of course; in truth the initiated or partly initiated among all ancient peoples knew that avatars come. Virgil, if he understood as much about Theosophy as he wrote into the Sixth Aeneid, would also have known, from whatever source he learnt it, the truth about cycles and Adept Messengers. There has been much speculation as to who the child born in the year of Pollio's consulship, who was to bring in the new order of ages, could have been. But we may note that in the language of Occultism (and think of Virgil as an Occultist), the 'birth of a child' had always been a symbolical way of speaking of the inititation of a candidate into the (true) Mysteries. So that it does not follow by any means that he meant an actual baby born in that year; he may have intended, and probably did intend, some Adept then born into his illumination,--or that, according to Virgil's own ideas, might be thought likely soon to be. One cannot say; he was a very wise man, Virgil. At least it indicates a feeling,--perhaps peculiar to himself, perhaps general,--that the world stood on the brink of a great change in the cycles, and that an Adept Leader might be expected, who should usher the new order in. His eyes may have been opened to the possibilities of the young Octavian. It is possible that the two were together at school in Rome, studying rhetoric under Epidius, in the late fifties; and certainly Virgil had recently visited Rome and there interviewed the Triumvir Octavian; and had obtained from him an order for the restitution of his parental farm near Mantua, which had been given to one of the soldiers of Philippi after that battle. Two or three of the Eclogues are given to the praises of Octavian; whom, even as early as that, Virgil seems to have recognised as the future or potential savior of Rome. The points to put side by side are these: Virgil, a Theosophist, expected the coming of an avatar, an Initiate who should save Rome;--H.P. Blavatsky speaks of Augustus as an Initiate;--Augustus did save Rome. When did he become an Initiate? Was there, at some time, such a change in his life that it was as if a new Soul had come in to take charge of that impersonal unfailing personality? There are tremendous mysteries connected with incarnation; the possibility of a sudden accession of entity, so to say,--a new vast increment of being. As Octavius and Octavian, the man seems like one without will or desires of his own, acting in blind obedience to impersonal forces that aimed at his supremacy in the Roman world. As Augustus, he becomes another man altogether, almost fathomlessly wise and beneficient; a Master of Peace and Wisdom. He gave Rome Peace, and taught her to love peace. He put _Peace_ for a legend on the coinage; and in the west _Pax,_ in the east _Irene,_ became favorite names to give you children. He did what he could to clean Roman life; to give the people high ideals; to make the empire a place,--and in this he succeeded,--where decent egos could incarnate and hope to progress; which, generally speaking, they cannot in a chaos. His fame as a benefactor of the human race spread marvelously: in far-away India (where at that time the Secret Wisdom and its Masters were much more than a tradition), they knew of him, and struck coins in his honor; coins bearing the image and superscription of this Roman Caesar. I said that he went to work like an Occultist: like one with an understanding of the inner laws of life, and power to direct outward things in accordance with that knowledge. Thus:--the task that lay before him was to effect a complete revolution. Rome could not go on under the old system any longer. That system had utterly broken down; and unless an efficient executive could be evolved, there was nothing for it but that the world should go forward Kilkenny-catting itself into non-existence. Now an efficient executive meant one-man rule; or a king, by whatsoever name he might be called. But the tradition of centureis made a king impossible. There were strongly formed astral molds; and whoever should attempt to break them would, like Caesar, ensure his own defeat. Whoever actually should break them,--well, the result of breaking astral molds is always about the same. H.P. Blavatsky said that she came to break molds of mind; and so she did; but it was not in politics; and the while she was laying her trains of thought-dynamite, and exploding them gloriously, she was also building up fair and glorious mansions of thought to house those made homeless. The situation we are looking at here is on a different plane, the political. You break the astral molds there; and they may be quite worthless, quite effete and contemptible,--yet they are the things which alone keep the demon in man under restraint. It is the old peril of Revolutions. They may be started with the best of intentions, in the name of the highest ideals; but, unless there be super-human strength (like Ts'in Shi Hwangti's) or superhuman wisdom (like Augustus') to guide them, as surely as they succeed in breaking the old molds, they degenerate into orgies,--blood, vice, and crime. Augustus effected his revolution and kept all that out; he substituted peace and prosperity for the blood and butchery of a century. And it was because he went to work with the knowledge of an Occultist that he was able to do so. He carefully abstained from breaking the molds. He labored to keep them all intact,--for the time being, and until new ones should have been formed. Gently and by degrees he poured a new force and meaning into them; which, in time, would necessarily destroy them; but mean-while others would have been growing. He took no step without laboriously ascertaining that there were precedents for it. Rome had been governed by Consuls and Tribunes; well, he would accept the consulate, and the tribuniciary power; because it was necessary now, for the time being at any rate, that Rome should be governed by Augustus. It is as well to remember that it was the people who insisted on this last. The Republican Party might subsist among the aristocracy, the old governing class; but Augustus was the hero and champion of the masses. Time and again he resigned: handed back his powers to the senate, and what not;--whether as a matter of form only, and that he might carry opinion along with him; or with the real hope that he had taught things at last to run themselves. In either case his action was wise and creditable; you have to read into him mean motives out of your own nature, if you think otherwise. Let there be talk of tyrants, and plots arising, with danger of assassination,--and what was to become of re-established law, order, and the Augustan Peace? The fact was that the necessities of the case always compelled the senate to reinstate him: it was too obvious that things could not run themselves. If there had been any practicable opposition, it could always have made those resignations effectual; or at least it could have driven him to a show of illegalism, and so, probably, against the point of some fanatic theorist's dagger. In 23 B.C. there was a food shortage; and the mob besieged the senate house, demanding that new powers should be bestowed on the Caesar: they knew well what mind and hands could save them. But he would run up no new (corrugated iron or reinforced concrete) astral molds, nor smash down any old ones. There should be no talk of a king, or, perpetual dictator. Chief citizen, as you must have a chief,--since a hundred years had shown that haphazard executives would not work. _Primus inter Pares_ in the senate: _Princeps,_--not a new title, nor one that implied royalty,--or meant anything very definite; why define things, anyhow, now while the world was in flux? Mr. Stobart, who I think comes very near to showing Augustus as he really was, still permits himself to speak of him as "chilly and statuesque." But can you imagine the mob so in love with a chilly and statuesque--tyrant, or statesman, or politician,--as to besiege the senate-house and clamor for an extension of his powers? And this chilly statuesque person was the man who delighted in sharing in their games with children! Another reason why there was no talk of a king: he was no Leader of a spiritual movement, but merely dealing with politics, with which the cycles will have their way: a world of ups and downs, not stable because linked to the Heart of Things. Supposing he should find one to appoint as his worthy successor: with the revolutions of the cycles, could that one hope to find another to succeed him? Political affairs move and have their being at best in a region of flux, where the evils, and especially the duties, of the day are sufficient therefor. In attending to these,-- performing the duties, fighting the evils,--Augustus laid down the lines for the future of Rome. He tried to revive the patriciate; he wanted to have, cooperating with him, a governing class with the ancient sense of responsibility and turn for affairs. But what survived of the old aristocracy was wedded to the tradition of Republicanism, which meant oligarchy, and doing just what you liked or nothing at all. The one thing they were not prepared to do was to cooperate in saving Rome. At first they showed some eagerness to flatter him; but found that flattery was not what he wanted. Then they were inclined to sulk, and he had to get them to pass a law making attendance at the senate compulsory. Mean views as to his motives have become traditional; but the only view the facts warrant is this: he lent out his personality, not ungrudgingly, to receive the powers and laurels that must fall upon the central figure in the state, while ever working to vitalize what lay outward from that to the circumference, that all Romans might share with him the great Roman responsibility of running and regenerating the world. Where there was talent, he opened a way for it. He made much more freedom than had ever been under the Republic; gave all classes functions to perform; and curtailed only the freedom of the old oligarchy to fleece the provinces and misdirect affairs. And meanwhile the old Rome that he found on his return in 29,-- brick-built ignobly at best, and now decaying and half in ruins, --was giving place to a true imperial city. In 28, eighty-two temples were built or rebuilt in marble; among the rest, one to Apollo on the Palatine, most magnificent, with a great public library attached. The first public library in Rome had been built by Asinius Pollio nine years before; soon they became common. Agrippa busied himself building the Pantheon; also public baths, of which he was responsible for a hundred and seventy within the limits of the city. Fair play to the Romans, they washed. All classes had their daily baths; all good houses had hot baths and swimming-tanks. The outer Rome he found in brick and left in marble:--but the inner Rome he had to rebuild was much more ruinous than the outer; as for the material he found it built of--well, it would be daring optimism and euphemism to call those Romans _bricks_--says someone. Time had brought southern Europe to the point where national distinctions were disappearing. No nation could now stand apart. Greek or Egyptian or Gaul, all were, or might be, or soon would be, Romans; and if any ego with important things to say should incarnate anywhere, what he said should be heard all round the Middle Sea. This too is a part of the method of natural Law; which now splits the world into little fragments, the nations, and lets them evolve apart, bringing to light by the intensive culture of their nationalisms what hidden possibilities lie latent in their own soils and atmospheres;--an anon welds them into one, that all these accomplished separate evolutions may play upon each other, interact,--every element quickening and quickened by the contact. In the centrifugal or heterogenizing cycles national souls are evolved; in the centripetal or homogenizing they are given freedom to affect the world. We have seen what such fusion meant for China; perhaps some day we may see what such fusion may mean for the world entire. In Augustus' time, fusion was to do something for the Mediterranean basin. If he had been an Occultist, to know it, his great cards lay in Italy and Spain: the former with her cycle of productiveness due to continue, shall we say until about 40 A.D.?--the latter with hers due soon to begin. Well, it does look rather as if he knew it. We shall see presently how he dealt with Italy; within two years of his triumph he was turning his attention to Spain, still only partly conquered. We may picture that country, from its first appearance in history until this time we are speaking of, as in something like modern Balkan conditions. Hamilcar Barca, a great proud gentlman, the finest fruit of an ancient culture, had thought no scorn to marry a Spanish lady; as a king of Italy nowadays found it nowise beneath him to marry a Montenegrin princess. In either case it meant no unbridgable disparity in culture. Among any of the Spanish people you should have found men who would have been at home in Greek or Carthaginian drawing-rooms, so to say; though the break-up of a forgotten civilization there had left the country in fragments and small warfares and disorder. If you read the earliest Spanish accounts of their conquests in the new world, you cannot escape the feeling that, no such long ages ago, Spain was in touch with America; not so many centuries, say, before Hamilcar went to Spain. Such accounts are no doubt unscientific; but may be the more intuitional and true and indicative for that. When Augustus turned his eyes on Spain, Basque and Celtic chieftains in the northern mountains and along the shores of Biscay, the semi-decivilized _membra disjecta_ of past civilizations, were always disposed to make trouble for the Roman south. He could not have left them alone, except at the cost of keeping huge garrisons along the border, with perpetual alarms for the province. So he went there in person, and began the work of conquering those mountains in B.C. 27. It was a long and difficult war with hideous doings on both sides: the Romans crucified the Spaniards, and the Spaniards jeered at them from their crosses. This because Augustus was too sick to attend to things himself; half the time he was at death's door. Not till he could afford to take Agrippa from work elsewhere was any real progress made. But at one point we see his own hand strike into it; and the incident is very instructive. Spain had her Vercingetorix in one Corocotta, a Celt who kept all Roman efforts useless and all Roman commanders tantalized and nervous till a reward of fifty thousand dollars was offered for his capture. Augustus, recovered a little, was in camp; and things were going ill with the Spainiards. One day an important-looking Celt walked in, and demanded to see the Caesar upon business connected with the taking of Corocotta. Led into the Caesar's presence, he was asked what he wanted.--"Fifty-thousand dollars," said he; "I am Corocotta." Augustus laughed long and loud; shook hands with him heartily; paid him the money down, and gave him his liberty into the bargain; whereafter soon this _Quijote espanol_ married a Roman wife, and as Caius Julius Corocottus "lived happily ever after." It was a change from the 'generous' Julius' treatment of Vercingetorix; but that Rome profited by the precedent thus established, we may judge from Claudius' treatment of the third Celtic hero who fell into Roman hands,--Caradoc of Wales. Spain was only one of the many places where the frontier had to be settled. The empire was a nebulous affair; you could not say where it began and ended; and to bring all out of this nebulosity was one of the labors that awaited Augustus. Even a Messenger of the Gods is limited by the conditions he finds in the world; and is as great as his age will allow him to be. Though an absolute monarch, he cannot change human nature. He must concentrate on points attackable, and do what he can; deflect currents in the right direction; above all, sow ideals, and wait upon the ministrations of time. He must take conditions as he finds them, following the lines of least resistance. It is nothing to him that posterity may ask, Why did he not change this or that?--and add he was no better than he should be. At once to change outer things and ways of feeling that have grown up through centuries is not difficult but impossible; and sometimes right courses, violently taken, are wronger than wrong ones. Augustus was a man of peace, if anybody ever was, yet (as in Spain) made many wars. The result of this Spanish conquest was that the Pax Romana came into Spain, bringing with it severa centuries of high prosperity; the world-currents flowed in there at once and presently the light of Spain, such as it was at that time, shone out over the Roman world. Most of the great names of the first century A.D. are those of Spaniards. After Spain, the most immediate frontier difficulty was with Parthia; and there Augustus won his greatest victory. At Carrhae the Parthians had routed Crassus and taken the Roman eagles. Rome was responsible for the provinces of Asia; and she was nominally at war with Parthia,--so those provinces were in trim to be overrun at any time. The war, then, must be finished; and could Rome let it end on terms of a Parthian victory? Where (it would be argued) would then be Roman prestige? Where Roman authority (a more real and valuable thing)? Where the Pax Romana?--All very true and sound; everybody knew that for the war to reopen was only a question of time;--Julius had been on the point of marching east when the liberators killed him. Yes, said Augustus; the matter must be attended to. But Parthia was a more of less civilized power: a state at least with an established central government; and when you have that, there is generally the chance to settle things by tact instead of by fighting. He found a means. He opened negotiations, and brought all his tact to bear. He was the chief, and a bridge again. Over which presently came Phraates king of Parthia, amenable and well-disposed, to return the eagles and such of the prisoners as were still alive. Rome had won back her prestige; Parthia was undegraded; peace had won a victory that war would have spent itself in vain striving after. But the frontier was enormous, and nowhere else marched with that of an established power. There was no winning by peace along that vast northern line from the Black to the North Sea, at the most vital spot of which an unlucky physical geography makes Italy easily invadable and rather hard to defend. Negotiations would not work here, since there was no union to negotiate with; only ebullient German tribes whose game was raiding and whose trade plunder. So the Alps had to be held, and a line drawn somewhere north of them,--say along the Danube and the Rhine or Elbe; a frontier that could be made safe with a minimum of soldiers. All this he did; excluding adventurous schemes: leaving Britain, for example, alone;--and was able to reduce the army, before he died, to a mere handful of 140,000 men.--Varus and his lost legions? Well; there is something to be said about that. Augustus was old, and the generals of the imperial family, who knew their business, were engaged elsewhere. And Germany was being governed by a good amiable soul by the name of Quintilius Varus, who persisted in treating the Germans as if they had been civilized Italians. And there was a young Cheruscan who had become a Roman citizen, spoke Latin fluently, and had always been a good ally of Rome. His Latin cognomen was Arminius; of which German patriotism has manufactured a highly improbable _Hermann._ The trustful Varus allowed himself to be lured by this seemingly so good friend into the wilds of the Saltus Teutobergiensis, where the whole power of the Cheruscans fell on and destroyed him. Then Tiberius came, and put the matter right; but there was an ugly half hour of general panic first. There had been no thought of adding Germany to the empire but only as to whether the frontier should be on the Elbe or the Rhine. Varus' defeat decided Augustus for the Rhine. Now we come to what he did for Italy: his second trump card, if we call Spain his first. Spain belonged to the future, Italy to the present. Her cycle was half over, and she had done nothing (in B.C. 29) very worthy with it. First, an effort should be made towards the purificatior of family-life: a pretty hopeless task, wherein at last he was forced to banish his own daughter for notorious evil-living. He made laws; and it may be supposed that they had some effect _in time._ A literary impulse towards high dignified ideals, however, may be much more effective than laws. He had Maecenas with his circle of poets. Of course, poetry written to order, or upon imperial suggestion, is not likely to be of the highest creative kind. But the high creative forces were not flowing in that age; and we need not blame Augustan patronage for the limitations of Augustan literature. There is no time to argue the question; this much we may say: the two poets who worked with the emperor, and wrote under his influence and sometimes at his suggestion, left work that endures in world-literature; that is noble and beautiful, and still interesting. I mean Virgil and Horace, of course. Ovid, who was not under that influence, but of the faction opposed to it, wrote stuff that it would be much better were lost entirely. The poet's was the best of pulpits, in those days: poets stood much nearer the world then than for all the force of the printing-press they can hope to do now. So, if they could preach back its sacredness to the soil of Italy; if they could recreate the ideal of the old agricultural life; something might be done towards (among other things) checking the unwholesome crowding to the capital,--as great an evil then as now. Through Maecenas and directly Augustus influenced Virgil, the laureate; who responded with his _Georgics._ It is a wonderful work. Virgil was a practical farmer; he tells you correctly what to do. But he makes a work of art of it all poetical. He suffuses his directions for stock-raising and cabbage-hoeing with the light of mythology and poetry. He gives you the Golden Age and Saturn's Italy, and makes the soil seem sacred. He had the Gaul's feeling for grace and delicacy, and brought in Celtic beauty to illumine the Italian world. The lines are impregnated with the soul, the inner atmosphere, of the Italian land; full of touches such as that lovely _Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba,_ of violets and popies and narcissus; quinces and chestnut trees. All that is of loveliness in rural (and sacred) Italy is there; the landscapes are there, still beautiful; and the dignity and simplicity of the old agricultural life. It is a practial treatise on farming; yet a living poem. Horace too played up for his friend Maecenas and for Caesar. Maecenas gave him that Sabine farm; and Horace made Latin songs to Greek meters about it: made music that is a marvel to this day, so that it remains a place of pilgrimage, and you can still visit, I believe, that _fons Bandusia splendidiot vitro_ that he loved so well and set such sweet music to. He give you that country as Virgil gives you the valley vistas, not unfringed with mystery, of Appenines and the north. Between them, Italy is there, as it had never been interpreted before. If--in Virgil at least--there is a direct practical purpose, there is no less marvelous art and real vision of Nature. And then Augustus set both of them to singing the grandeur of Rome; to making a new patriotism with their poetry; to inspiring Roman life with a sense of dignity,--a thing it needed sorely: Virgil in the _Aeneid_ (where also, as we have seen, he taught not a little Theosophy); Horace in the _Carmen Saeculare_ and some of the great Odes of the third and fourth books. The lilt of his lines is capable of ringing, and does so again and again, into something very like the thrill and resonance of the Grand Manner. Listen for it especially in the third and fourth lines of this: _Quid debeas, o Roma, Neronibus Testis Metaurum flumen et Hasdrubal Devictus, et pulcher fugatis Ille dies Latio tenebris._ I am not concerned here to speak of his limitations; nor of Virgil's; who, in whatever respect the _Aeneid_ may fall short, does not fail to cry out in it to the Romans. Remember the dignity and the high mission of Rome!--By all these means Augustus worked towards the raising of Roman ideals. To that end he wrote, he studied, he made orations. He searched the Latin and Greek literatures; and any passage he came on that illumined life or tended towards upliftment, he would copy out and send to be read in the senate; or he would read it there himself to the senators; or publish it as an edict. There is a touch of the Teacher in this, I think. He has given Rome Peace; he is master of the world, and now has grown old. He enjoys no regal splendor, no pomp or retinue; his life is as that of any other senator, but simpler than most. And his mind is ever brooding over Rome, watchful for the ideas that may purify Roman life and raise it to higher levels. Many things occurred to sadden his old age. His best friends were dead; Varus was lost with his legions; there had been the tragedy of Julia, whom he had loved well, and the deaths of the young princes, her sons. He was a man of extraordinarily keen affections, and all these losses came home to him sorely. But against every sadness he had his own achievements to set. There was Rome in its marble visibly about him, that he had found in brick and in ruins; Rome now capable of centuries of life, that had been, when he came to it, a ghastly putridity. XIX. AN IMPERIAL SACRIFICE "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" This is the secret of writing: look at the external things until you see pulsating behind them the rhythm and beauty of the Eternal. Only look for it, and persist in your search, and presently the Universal will be revealed shining through the particular, the sweep of everlasting Law through the little object, and happenings of a day. Come to history with the same intent and method, and at last things appear in their true light. Here, too, as in a landscape, is the rhythm of the Eternal; here are the Basic Forms. I doubt if the evidence of the annalists is ever worth much, unless they had an eye to penetrate to these. When one sees behind the supposed fact narrated and the judgments pronounced the glimmering up of a basic form, one guesses one is dealing with a true historian. Recently I read a book called _The Tragedy of the Caesars,_ by the novelist Baring-Gould; and in it the life of a certain man presented in a sense flatly contradictory to the views of nineteen centuries anent that man; but it seemed to me at last an account that had the rhythm, the basic form, showing through. So in this lecture what I shall try to give you will be Mr. Baring-Gould's version of this man's life, with efforts of my own to go further and make quite clear the basic form. What does one mean by 'basic form'? In truth it is hard to define. Only, this world, that seems such a heterogeneous helter-skelter of mournful promiscuities, is in fact the pattern that flows from the loom of an Eternal Weaver: a beautiful pattern, with its rhythms and recurrences; there is no haphazard in it; it is not mechanical,--yet still flawless as the configuarations of a crystal or the petals of a perfect flower. The name of the man we are to think of tonight has come down as a synonym for infamy: we imagine him a gloomy and bloodthirsty tyrant; a morose tiger enthroned; a gross sensualist;--well, I shall show you portraits of him, to see whether you can accept him for that. The truth is that aristocratic Rome, degenerate and frivolous, parrot-cried out against the supposed deneracy of the imperial, and for the glories of the old republican, regime; for the days when Romans were Romans, and 'virtuous.' One came to them in whom the (real) ancient Roman honor more appeared than in another man in Italy, perhaps before or since;--and they could not understand the honor, and hated the man. They captured his name in a great net of lies; they breathed a huge fog of lies about him, which come down to us as history. Now to see whether a plain tale may not put them down. Once more take your stand, please, on the Mountain of the Gods: the time, in or about the year 39 B.C.:--and thence try to envisage the world as Those do who guide but are not involved in the heats and dusts of it. The Western World; in which Rome, _caput mundi,_ was the only thing that counted. _Caput mundi;_ but a kind of idiot head at that: inchoate, without co-ordination; maggots scampering through what might have been the brain; the life fled, and that great rebellion of the many lives which we call decay having taken its place. And yet, it was no true season for Rome to be dead; it was no natural death; not so much decent death at all as the death in life we call madness. For the Crest-Wave men were coming in; it was the place where they should be. The cycle of Italy had begun, shall we say, in 94 B.C., and would end in 36 A.D.; --for convenience one must give figures, though one means only approximations by them;--and not until after that latter date would souls of any caliber cease to be incarnate in Roman bodies. Before that time, then, the madness had to be cured and Rome's mission had to be fulfilled. The mission was, to homogenize the world. That was the task the Law had in mind for Rome; and it had to be done while the Crest-Wave remained in Italy and important egos were gathered in Rome. Some half dozen strong souls, under the Gods' special agent Octavian, had gone in there to do the work; but the Crest-Wave had flowed into Rome when Rome was already vice-rotten; and how could she expect to run her whole thirteen decades a great and ruling people? None of those strong souls could last out the whole time. Octavian himself, should he live to be eighty, would die and not see the cycle finished: twenty years of it would remain--to be filled by one worthy to succeed him, or how should his work escape being undone? The world must be made homogensous, and Rome not its conqueror and cruel mistress, but its well-respected heart and agreed-on center; and all this must be accomplished, and established firmly, before her cyclic greatness had gone elsewhere:--that is, before 37 A.D. The Republic, as we have seen, had had its method of ruling the provinces: it was to send out young profligates to fleece and exploit them, and make them hate Rome. This must be changed, and a habit formed of ruling for the benefit of the subject peoples. Two or three generations of provincials must have grown up in love with Rome before the end of the cycle, or the Empire would then inevitably break. By 37 A.D., the Crest-Wave would have left Italy, and would be centering in Spain. Spain, hating Rome, would shake off the Roman yoke; she would have the men to do it;--and the rest of the world would follow suit. Even if Spain should set herself to the Gods' work of union-making, what path should she take towards it? Only that of conquest would be open; and how should she hope to conquer, and then wipe out the evil traces of her conquering, and create a homogeneity, all within her possible cycle of thirteen decades? Rome's great opportunity came, simply because Rome had done the conquering before ever the Crest-Wave struck her; in days when the Crest-Wave was hardly in Europe at all. Even so, it would be a wonder if all could be finished in the few years that remained. By Rome it never could have been done at all: it was the office of a Man, not of a state or nation. The Man who should do it, must do it from Rome: and Rome had first to be put into such condition as to be capable of being used. It devolved upon Augustus to do that first, or his greater work would be impossible. He had to win Rome to acquiescence in himself as Princeps. So his primary need was a personality of infinite tact; and _that_ he possessed. He was the kind of man everybody could like; that put everyone at ease; that was friendly and familiar in all sorts of society; so he could make that treacherous quagmire Rome stable enough to be his _pied-a-terre._ That done, he could stretch out his arms thence to the provinces, and begin to weld them into unity. For this was the second part and real aim of his work: to rouse up in the Empire a centripetalism, with Rome for center, before centripetalism, in Rome itself, should have given place to the centrifugal forces of national death. Rome ruled the world, and Augustus Rome, by right of conquest; and that is the most precarious right of all, and must always vanish with a change in the cycles. He had to, and did, transmute it into a stable right: first with respect to his own standing in Rome,--which might be done, with _tact_ for weapon,-- in a few years; then with respect to Rome's standing in the world,--which could not be done in less than a couple of lifetimes, and with the best of good government as means. If the work should be interrupted too early it would all fall to pieces. So then he must have one successor at least, a soul of standing equal to his own: one that could live and reign until 37 A.D. Let the Empire until that year be ruled continuously from Rome in such a manner as to rouse up Roman--that is, World, --patriotism in all its provinces, and the appearance of the Crest-Wave in a new center would not be the signal for a new break-up of the world. The problem was, then, to find the man able to do this. The child: for he must not be a man yet. And seeing what was at stake, he must be better equipped than Augustus: he must be trained from childhood by Augustus. Because he was to work in the midst of much more difficult conditions. Augustus had real men to help him: the successor probably would have none. When the Crest-Wave struck it, Rome was already mean and corrupt and degenerate. Augustus, not without good human aid, might hope to knock it into some kind of decency during the apex-time of the thirteen decades. His reign would fall, roughly, in the third quarter of the cycle, which is the best time therein; but his successor would have to hold out through the last quarter, which is the very worst. The Crest-Wave would then be passing from Italy: Rome would be becoming ever a harder place for a Real Man to live and work in. Meaner and meaner egos would be sneaking into incarnation; decent gentlemanly souls would be growing ever more scarce. By 'mean egos' I intend such as are burdened with ingrate personalities: creatures on whom sensuality has done its disintegrating work; whose best pleasure is to exempt themselves from any sense of degradation caused by fawning on the one strong enough to be their master, by tearing down as they may his work and reputation, circulating lies about him, tormenting him in every indirect way they can. Among such as these, and probably quite lonely among the, the successor of Augustus would lave to live, fulfilling Heaven's work in spite of them. Where to find a Soul capable, or who would dare undertake the venture? Well; since it was to be done, and for the Gods,--no doubt the Gods would have sent their qualified man into incarnation. In B.C. 39 Octavian proclaimed a general amnesty; and among these who profited by it was a certain member of the Claudian gens,--one of that Nero family to which Rome owed so much-- _Testis Metaurum flumen et Hasdrubal Devictus_ He had been a friend of Caesar's and an enemy of Octavian's; and had been spending his time recently in fleeing from place to place in much peril; as had also his wife, aged eighteen, and their three-year-old son. On one occasion this lady was hurrying by night through a forest, and the forest took fire; she escaped, but not until the heat singed the cloak in which the baby boy in her arms was wrapped. Now they returned, and settled in their house on the Palatine not far from the house of Octavian. In Rome at that time marriage was not a binding institution. To judge by the lives of those prominent enough to come into history, you simply married and divorced a wife whenever convenient. Octavian some time before had married Scribonia, to patch up an alliance with her kins-man Sextus Pompey, then prominent on the high seas in the role--I think the phrase is Mr. Stobart's--of gentleman-pirate. As she was much older than himself, and they had nothing in common, it occurred to no one that, now the utility of the match had passed, he would not follow the usual custom and divorce her. He met Livia, the wife of this Tiberius Claudius Nero, and duly did divorce Livia. A new wedding followed, in which Claudius Nero acted the part of father to his ex-wife, and gave her away to Octavian. It all sounds very disgraceful; but this must be said: the great Augustus could never have done his great work so greatly had he not had at his side the gracious figure of the empress Livia,-- during the fifty-two years that remained to him his serenest counselor and closest friend. And then--there was the boy: I believe the most important element in the transaction. His father died soon afterwards, and he came to live in the palace, under the care of his mother,--and of Augustus; who had now within his own family circle the two egos with whom he was most nearly concerned, and without whom his work would have been impossible. So I think we may put aside the idea that the marriage with Livia was an 'affair of the heart,' as they call it:--a matter of personal and passional atraction. He was guided to it, as always, by his _Genius,_ and followed the promptings of the Gods. But,--Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. The divorced Scribonia never forgave Augustus. She became the center of a faction in society that hated him, hated Livia, loathed and detested the whole Claudian line. There must have been bad blood in Scribonia. Her daughter Julia became profligate. Of Julia's five children, Agrippa Postumus went mad through his vices; Julia inherited her mother's tendencies, and came to a like end. Agrippina, a bitter and violent woman, became the evil genius of the next reign. Of this Agrippina's children, Drusus and Caligula went mad and her daughter was the mother of the madman Nero. To me the record suggest this: that the marriage with, not the divorce of, Scribonia was a grave mistake on the part of Octavian; bringing down four generations of terible karma. He was afloat in dangerous seas at that time, and a mere boy to take arms against them: did he, trusting in material alliances and the aid of Sextus Pirate, forget for once to trust in his _Genius_ within? We have seen how the lines of pain became deeply graven on his face during the years that followed Caesar's death. A high soul, incarnating, must take many risks; and before it has found itself and tamed the new personality, may have sown griefs for itself to be reaped through many lives. The descendants of Augustus and Scribonia were the bane of Augustus and of Rome. But Livia was his good star, and always added to his peace. But now, back to the household on the Palatine, in the thirties B.C. Julia (Scribonia's daughter), pert, witty, bold, and daring, was the darling of her father, whom she knew well how to amuse. Drusus, the younger son of Livia and Claudius Nero, was a bold handsome boy of winning manners and fine promise, generally noticed and loved. To these two you may say Augustus stood in only human relations: the loving, careful, and _jolly_ father, sharing in all their games and merriment. He always liked playing with children: as emperor, would often stop in his walks through the streets to join in a game with the street-boys. But with Livia's elder son, Tiberius, he was different. Tiberius had no charm of manner: Drusus his brother quite put him in the shade. He carried with him the scars of his babyhood's perilous adventures, and the terror of that unremembered night of fire. He was desperately shy and sensitive; awkward in company; reserved, timid, retiring, silent. Within the nature so pent up were tense feelings; you would say ungovernable, only that he always did govern them. He went unnoticed; Drusus was the pet of all; under such conditions how much harmony as a rule exists between two brothers? But Tiberius loved Drusus with his whole heart; his thoughts knew no color of jealousy; unusual harmony was between them until Drusus died.--The world said Augustus disliked the boy: we shall see on what appearances that opinion was based. But Tiberius, then and ever afterwards, held for Augustus a feeling deeper and stronger than human or filial affection: it was that, with the added reverence of a disciple for his Teacher.--You shall find these intense feelings sometimes in children of his stamp; though truly children of the stamp of Tiberius are rare enough; for with all his tenderness, his over-sensitiveness and timidity, put him to some task, whisper to him _Duty!_--and the little Tiberius is another child altogether: unflinching, silent, determined, pertinacious, ready to die rather than give in before the thing is most whole-souledly done. Augustus, merriest and most genial of men, never treated him as he did Julia and Drusus: there were no games and rompings with Tiberius. Let this grave child come into the room, and all ended; as if the Princeps were a school-boy caught at it by some stern prowling schoolmaster. Indeed, it was common talk that Augustus, until the last years of his life, never smiled in Tiberius' presence; that his smile died always on his stepson's entry; the joke begun went unfinished; he became suddenly grave and restrained;--as, I say, in the presence of a soul not to be treated with levity, but always upon a considered plan. The children grew up, and people began to talk of a successorship to Augustus in the Principate. It would be, of course, through Julia, his daughter. He married her to Marcellus, aged seventeen, his sister Octavia's son, who he adopted. Marcellus and Julia, then, would succeed him; no one thought of retiring Tiberius. Marcellus, however, died in a couple of years; and folk wondered who would step into his place. Augustus gave Julia to Vipsanius Agrippa, the man who had won so many campaigns for him. Agrippa was as old as the Princeps, but of much stronger constitution; and so, likely to outlive him perhaps a long while. Very appropriate, said Rome: Agrippa will reign next: an excellent fellow. No one thought of shy Tiberius.--Agrippa, by the way, was a strong man and a strict disciplinarian,--with soldiers, at any rate: it might be hoped also with wives. It was just as well for lady Julia to be under a firm hand. Ten years later Agrippa died, and the heirship presumptive passed to his two eldest children by Julia: the princes Caius and Lucius. Augustus adopted them in due course. Heirship presumptive means here, that they were the ones Rome presumed would be the heirs: a presumption which Augustus, without being too definite, encouraged. The Initiate Leaders and Teachers of the world do not, as a rule, as far as one can judge, advertise well beforehand the identity of their successors.--As for Tiberius;--why, said Rome, his stepfather does not even like him. Drusus, now, and _his_ children,--ah, that might be a possibility. For the marriages of the two brothers told a tale. Drusus had married into the sacred Julian line: a daughter of Octavia and Mark Anthony; his son Germanicaus was thus a grand-nephew of Augustus, and a very great pet. But Tiberius had made a love-match, with a mere daughter of Agrippa by some former wife: an alliance that could not advance him in any way. Her name was Vipsania; the whole intensity of his pent-up nature went into his feeling for her; he was remarkably happily married;--that is, for the human, the tender, sensitive, and affectionate side of him. Meanwhile both brothers had proved their worth. At twenty-two, Tiberius set up a kind in Armenia, and managed for Augustus the Parthian affair, whereby the standards of Crassus were returned. There were Swiss and German campaigns: in which Drusus was rather put where he might shine,--and he did shine;--and Tiberius a little in the shade. But Drusus in Germany fell from his horse, and died of his injuries; and then Tiberius was without question the first general of his age, and ablest man under the Princeps. As a soldier he was exceedingly careful of the welfare of his men; cautious in his strategy, yet bold; reserved; he made his own plans, and saw personally to their carrying out;-- above all, he never made mistakes and never lost a battle. His natural shyness and timidity and awkwardness vanished as soon as there was work to be done: in camp, or on the battlefield, he was a very different man from the shy Tiberius of Roman society. Gossip left his name untouched. It took advantage of Augustus; natural _bonhomie,_ and whispered tales agains _him_ galore: even said that Livia retained her hold on him by taking his indiscretions discreetly;--which is as much as to say that an utterly corrupt society judged that great man by its own corrupt standards. But Tiberius was too austere; his life chilled even Roman gossip into silence. There was also his patent devotion to Vipsania..... You could only sneer at him, if at all, for lack of spirit. He had, then, great and magnificent qualities; but the scars of his babyhood peril remained. There was that timid and clinging disposition; that over-sensitiveness that came out when he was away from camp, or without immediate business to transact, or in any society but that of philosophers and occultists:--for we do know that he was a student of Occult Philosophy. He had grand qualities; but felt, beneath his reserve, much too strongly; had a heart too full of pent-up human affections. But it is written: _"Before the Soul can stand in the prescence of the Masters, its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart."_ It devolved upon his Teacher to break that heart for him; so that he might stand in the presence of the Masters. Agrippa had died; and for Julia's sake it was wise and better to provide her with a husband. Augustus hesitated long before he dared take the tremendous step he did: as one doubtful whether it would accomplish what he hoped, or simply kill at once the delicate psychic organism to be affected by it. Then he struck, --hurled the bolt. Let Tiberius put away Vipsania and marry Julia. Put away that adored Vipsania:--marry that Julia,--whom every single instinct in his nature abhorred! Incompatible:--that is the very least and mildest thing you can say about it;--but he must say nothing, for he is speaking to her father. He resists a long time, in deep anguish; but there is one word that for Tiberius was ever a clarion call to his soul. What, cries he, is this terrible thing you demand of me?--and his Teacher answers: _Duty._ Duty to Rome, that the Julian and Claudian factions may be united; duty to the empire, that my successors, Caius and Lucius, may have, after I am gone, a strong man for their guardian.--You will note that, if you please. Augustus had just adopted these two sons of Julias; they were, ostensibly, to be his successors; there was no bait for ambition in this sacrifice Tiberius was called on to make; he would not succeed to the Principate; the marriage would not help him; there was to be nothing in it for him but pure pain. In the name of duty he was called on to make a holocaust of himself. He did it; and the feet of his soul were indeed washed in the blood of his heart. He said no word; he divorced Vipsania and explained nothing. But for months afterwards, if he should chance to meet her, or see her in the street far off, he could not hide the fact that his eyes filled with tears.--Then Rome in its own kindly way took upon itself the duty or pleasure of helping him out a little: gossip got to work to soothe the ache of his wound. "Vipasania," said gossip;--"you are well rid of her; she was far from being all that you thought her." Probably he believed nothing of it; but the bitterness lay in its being said. A shy man is never popular. His shyness passes for pride, and people hate him for it. Tiberius was very shy. So society was always anxious to take down his pride a little. The truth was, he was humble to the verge of self-distrust. He did his best for Julia: lived under the same roof with her for a few agonized months, and discovered what everyone knew or suspected about her. The cup of his grief was now quite full; and indeed, worse things a man could hardly suffer. Austere, reserved, and self-controlled as he was, at sight of Vipsania he could not hide his tears. But it is written: _"Before the eyes can see, they must become incapable of tears."_ --He was the butt of Roman gossip: in all rancorous mouths because of the loved Vipsania; in all tattling mouths because of the loathed Julia; laughed at on both accounts; sympathized with by nobody; hearing all whispers, and fearfully sensitive to them. But _"Before the ear can hear, it must have lost its sensitiveness."_ The storm was upon him; the silence was ahead; he was rocked and shaken and stunned by the earthquakes and thunders of Initiation: when a man has to be hopeless, and battered, and stripped of all things: a naked soul afflicted with fiery rains and torments; and to have no pride to back him; and no ambition to back him; and no prospect before him at all, save such as can be seen with the it may be unopened eyes of faith. This is the way Tiberius endured his trials:-- All Rome knew what Julia was, except Augustus. So it is said; and perhaps truly; for here comes in the mystery of human duality: a thing hard enough to understand in ourselves, that are common humanity; how much harder the variety that appears in one such as Augustus! You may say, He must have known. Well, there was the Adept Soul; that, I doubt not, would have known. But perhaps it is that those who have all knowledge at their beck and call, have the power to know or not know what they will?--to know what shall help, not to know what shall hinder their work? Julia was not to be saved: was, probably, tainted with madness like so many of her descendants:--then what the Adept Soul could not forfend, why would the human personality, the warn-hearted father, be aware of? Had that last known, how should he escape being bowed down with grief: then in those years when all his powers and energies were needed? Octavian had gone through storm and silence long since: in the days of the Triumvirate, and his enforced partnership in its nefarious deeds;--now his personal mind and his hands were needed to guide the Empire: and needed clear and untrammeled with grief... Until Tiberius should be ready; at least until Tiberius.... So I imagine it possible that the soul of Augustus kept from its personality that wounding knowledge about Julia. Tiberius was not the one to interfere with its purposes. Why did he not get a divorce? The remedy was clear and easy; and he would have ceased to be the laughing stock of Rome. He did not get a divorce; or try to; he said no word; he would not lighten his own load by sharing it with the Teacher he loved. He would not wound that Teacher to save himself pain or shame. Augustus had made severe laws for punishing such offenses as Julia's; and--well, Tiberius would bear his griefs alone. No sound escaped him. But, as no effort of his could help or save her, live with Julia, or in Rome, he could not. His health broke down; he threw up all offices, and begged leave to retire to Rhodes. Augustus was (apparently) quite unsympathetic; withheld the permission until (they say) Tiberius had starved himself for four days to show it was go or die with him. And no, he would not take Julia; and he would give no reason for not taking her. Well; what was Augustus to do, having to keep up human appearances, and suit his action to the probabilities? What, but appear put out, insulted, angry? Estrangement followed; and Tiberius went in (apparent) disgrace. I find the explanation once more in _Light on the Path;_ thus-- "In the early state in which a man is entering upon the silence he loses knowledge of his friends, of his lovers, of all who have been near and dear to him: _and also loses sight of his teachers._" So in this case. "Scarce one passes through," we read, "without bitter complaint." But I think Tiberius did. How else to explain the incident I cannot guess. Or indeed, his whole life. Tacitus' account does not hang together at all; the contraditions trip each other up, and any mud is good enough to fling. Mr. Baring-Gould's version goes far towards truth; but the well is deep for his tackle, and only esotericism, I think, can bring up the clear water. Whether Augustus knew all personally, or was acting simply on the promptings of his inner nature, or of Those who stoood behind him,--he took the course, it seems to me, which as an Occult Teacher he was bound to take. His conduct was framed in any case to meet the needs of his disciple's initiation. He, for the Law, had to break that disciple's outer life; and then send him lonely into the silence to find the greater life within. Truly these waters are deep; and one may be guessing with the utmost presumption. But hear _Light on the Path_ again; and judge whether the picture that emerges is or is not consistent. It says: "Your teacher or your predecessor, may hold your hand in his, and give you the utmost sympathy the human heart is capable of. But when the silence and the darkness come, you lose all knowledge of him: you are alone, and he cannot help you; not because his power is gone, but because you have invoked your great enemy." --Tiberius was alone, and Augustus could not help him; and he went off, apparently quite out of favor, to seven years of voluntary exile in Rhodes, there to don the robe of a philosopher, and study philosophy and "astrology," as they say. Let us put it, the Esoteric Wisdom; I think we may. The truth about Julia could not be kept from Augustus forever. It came to his ears at last; when his work was by so much nearer completion, and when Tiberius was by so much nearer his illumination. The Princeps did his duty, thought it made an old man of him: he banished Julia according to his own law. Then it was the wronged husband who stepped in and interceded; who wrote pleading letters to his stepfatehr, imploring him to have mercy on the erring woman: to lighten her punishment; to let her mother, at least, be with her in her exile. He knew well what tales Julia had been telling her father about him; and how Augustus had seemed to believe them; but "a courageous endurance of personal injustice" is demanded of the disciple; and very surely it was found in him. Rome heard of his intercession, and sneered at him for his weak-spiritedness; as kindly letter-writers failed not to let him know. "Look for the flower to bloom in the silence that follows the storm, not till then." The flower bloomed in this case during those seven years at Rhodes; then Tiberius was fit to return. Outer events shaped themseves to fit inner needs and qualifications: here now at last was the Man who was to succeed Augustus, duly and truly prepared, worthy and well-qualified: initiated, and ready to be named before the world Heir to the Principate. Within a few months of each other Caius and Lucius, the hitherto supposed successors designate, died; their brother Agrippa Postumus was already showing signs of incipient madness. True, there were many of the Julian line still alive and available, were Augustus (as had been thought) bent on making Julian blood the qualification necessary: there was Germanicus, married to Agrippina; he the son of Drusus and Antonia, Octavia's daughter; she the daughter of Julia, and so grand-daughter of Augustus himself: there were these two with their several children. But all else might wait upon the fact that Tiberius, the real man, was now ready. The Princeps adopted him, and no one was left to doubt who was to be the successor. The happiest years in Tiberius's life began: he had at last the full, unreserved, and undisguised friendship of his Teacher. His portarait-busts taken at this period show for the fist and only time a faint smile on his gravely beautiful face. Also he was given plenty of work. His great German campaigns followed quickly; and the quelling of the Pannanian insurrection that called him back from the Rhine; and Varus' defeat while Tiberius was in Pannonia; and Tiberius's triumphant saving of the situation. It was then, when the frontier was broken and all the world aquake with alarm, that he consulted his generals; the only time he ever did so. Says Velleius Paterculus, who served uner him:--"There was no ostentation in his conduct; it was marked by solid worth, practicality, humaneness. He took as much care of any one of us who happened to be sick, as if that one's health were the main object of his concern." Ambulances, he continues, were always in attendance, with a medical staff, warm baths, suitable food, etc., for the sick. "The general often admonished, rarely punished; taking a middle part, dissembling his knowledge of most faults, and preventing the commission of others.... He preferred the approval of his own conscience to the acquisition of renown." He returned to Rome in triumph in the autumn of A.D. 12; and dismissed his chief captives with present, instead of butchering them in the fine old Roman way. He was at the height of his fame; undeniably Rome's savior, and surely to be Princeps on his Teacher's death. Augustus, in letters that remain, calls him "the only strength and stay of the Empire." "All who were with you," says he, "admit that this verse suits you:" 'One man by vigilance has restored the state.' Whenever anything happens that requires more than ordinary consideration, or when I am out of humor, then, by Hercules, I long for the presence of my dear Tiberius; and Homer's lines rise in my mind: 'Bold from his prudence, I could e'en aspire To dare with him the burning rage of fire.' "When I hear that you are worn out with incessant fatigue, the Gods confound me if I am not all in a quake. So I entreat you to spare yourself, lest, should we hear of your being ill, the news prove fatal to your mother and myself, and the Roman people be alarmed for the safety of the Empire. I pray heaven to preserve you for us, and bless you with health now and ever,--if the Gods care a rush for the Roman people. ....Farewell, my dearest Tiberius; may good success attend you, you best of all generals, in all that you undertake for me and for the Muses." Two years later Augustus died, and Tiberius became emperor; and the persecution broke out that was not to end till his death. Let us get the whole situation firmly in mind. There was that clique in high society of men who hated the Principate because it had robbed them of the spoils of power. It gathered first round Scribonia, because she hated Augustus for divorcing her; then round Julia, because she was living in open contempt of the principles her father stood for. Its chief bugbear of all was Tiberius, because he was the living embodiment of those principles; and because Julia, the witty and brilliant, hated him above all things and made him in the salons the butt for her shafts. Its darling poet was Ovid; whose poetic mission was, in Mr. Stobart's phrase, "to gild uncleannes with charm." Presently Augustus sent him into exile: whiner over his own hard lot. But enough of unsavory him: the clique remained and treasured his doctrine. When Caius and Lucius died, it failed not to whisper that of course Tiberius had poisoned them; and during the next twenty-five years you could hardly die, in Rome, without the clique's buzzing a like tale over your corpse.--A faction that lasted on, handing down its legends, until Suetonius and Tacitus took them up and immortalized them; thus creating the Tiberius of popular belief and "history," deceiving the world for twenty centuries. The Augustan system implied no tyranny; not even absolutism:--it was through no fault of its founder, or of his successor, that the constitutional side of it broke down. Remember the divine aim behind it all: to weld the world into one. So you must have the provinces, the new ones that retaineed their national identity, under Adept rule; there must be no monkeying by incompetents there. Those provinces were, absolutely all in the hands of Caesar. But in Rome, and Italy, and all quiet and long-settled parts, the senate was to rule; and Augustus' effort, and especially Tiberius' effort, was to make it do so. But by this time, you may say, there was nothing resembling a human ego left among the senators: when the Manasaputra incarnated, these fellows had been elsewhere. They simply could not rule. Augustus had had constantly to be intervening to pull them out of scrapes; to audit their accounts for them, because they could not do the sums themselves; to send down men into their provinces to put things right whenever they went wrong. Tiberius was much more loath to do this. At times one almost suspects him of being at heart a republican, anxious to restore the Republic the first moment it might be practicable. That would be, when the whole empire was one nation and some few souls to guide things should have appeared. At any rate (in his latter years) it must have seemed still possible that the Principate should continue: there was absolutely no one to follow him in it. So the best thing was to leave as much as possible the senate's duty to the senate, that responsibility might be aroused in them. For himself, he gave his whole heart and mind to governing the provinces of Caesar. He went minutely into finances; and would have his sheep sheared, not flayed. His eyes and hands were everywhere, to bring about the Brotherhood of Man. There is, perhaps, evidence in the Christian Evangels: where we see the Jewish commonalty on excellent good terms with the Roman soldier, and Jesus consorting freindily with Tiberius' centurions and tax-gatherers; but the Jewish national leaders as the enemies of both--of the Romans, and of the democratic Nazarene. If this emperor's life had come down through provincial, and not metropolitan, channels, we should have heard of him as the most beneficent of men. Indeed, Mr. Baring-Gould argues that among the Christians a tradition came down of him as of one "very near the Kingdom of God." It may be so; and such a view may even be the reflexion of the Nazarene Master's own opinion as to Tiberius. At any rate, we must suppose that at that time the Christian Movement was still fairly pure: its seat was in the provinces, far from Rome; and its strength among humble people seeking to live the higher life. But those who were interested to lie against Tiberius, and whose lies come down to us for history, were all metropolitans, and aristocrats, and apostles of degeneracy. I do not mean to include Tacitus under the last head; but he belonged to the party, and inherited the tradition. It was on the provinces that Tiberius had his hand, not on the metropolis. He hoped the senators would do their duty, gave them every chance to; he rather turned his eyes away from their sphere, and kept them fixed on his own. We must understand this well: the histories give but accounts of Roman and home affairs; with which, as they were outside his duty, Tiberius concerned himself as little as he might. But the senate's conception of duty-doing was this: flatter the Caesar in public with all the ingenuity and rhetoric God or the devil has given you; but for the sake of decency slander him in private, and so keep your self-respect.--I abased my soul to Caesar, I? Yes, I know I licked his shoes in the senate house; but that was merely camouflage. At Agrippina's _at home_ I made up for it; was it not high-souled I who told that filthy story about him?--which, (congratulate me!) I invented myself. How dare you then accuse me of being small-spirited, or one to reverence any man soever?--So these maggots crawled and tumbled; untill they brought down their own karma on their heads like the Assyrian in the poem, or a thousand of bricks. Constitutuionalism broke down, and tyranny came on awfully in its place; and those who had not upheld the constitution suffered from the tyranny. But it was not heroic Tiberius who was the tyrant. He was unpopular with the crowd, because austere and taciturn; he would not wear the pomps and tinsels, or swagger it in public to their taste. He was too reserved; he was not a good mixer: if you fell on your knees to him, he simply recoiled in disgust. He would not witness the gladiatorial games, with their sickening senseless bloodshed; nor the plays at the theatre, with their improprieties. In these things he was an anomaly in his age, and felt about them as would any humane gentleman today. So it was easy for his enemies to work up popular feeling aginst him. At the funeral of Augustus he had to read the oration. A lump in his throat prevented him getting through with it, and he handed the paper to his son Drusus to finish. "Oh!" cried his enemies then and Tacitus after them, "what dissimulation! what rank hypocrisy! when in reality he must be overjoyed to be in the dead man's shoes." When that same Drusus (his dear son and sole hope) died some years later, he so far controlled his feelings that none saw a muscle of his face moved by emotion while he read the oration. "Oh!" cried his enemies then and Tacitus after them, "what a cold unfeeling monster!" Tiberius, with an absolute eye for reading men's thoughts, knew well what was being said on either occasion. When Augustus died, his one surviving grandson, Agrippa Postumus, was mad and under restraint in the island of Planasia, near Elba. A plot was hatched to spirit him away to the Rhine, and have him there proclaimed as against Tiberius by the legions. One Clemens was deputed to do this; but when Clemens reached Planasia, he found Agrippa murdered. Says Suetonius: "It remained doubtful whether Augustus left the order (for the murder) in his last moments, to prevent any public disturbance after his death; or whether Livia issued it in the name of Augustus, or whether it was issued with or without the knowledge of Tiberius."--Tacitus in the right,--though truly this Agrippa Postumus was a peculiarly violent offensive idiot, and Augustus knew well what the anti-Claudian faction was capable of. Nor can one credit that gracious lady Livia with it; though it was she who persuaded Tiberius to hush the thing up, and rescind his order for a public senatorial investigation. For an order to that effect he issued; and Tacitus, _more suo,_ puts it down to his hypocrisy. Tacitus' method with Tiberius is this: all his acts of mercy are to be attributed to weak-spiritedness; all his acts of justice, to blood-tyranny; everything else to hypocrisy and dissimulation. Neither Augustus, nor yet Livia, then, had Agrippa killed; must we credit it to Tiberius? Less probably, I think, it was he than either of the others: I can just imagine Augustus taking the responsibility for the sake of Rome, but not Tiberius criminal for his own sake. Here is an explanation which incriminates neither: it may seem far-fetched; but then many true things do. We know how the children of darkness hate the Messengers of Light. Tiberius stood for private and public morality; the Julian-republican clique for the opposite. He stood for the nations welded into one, the centuries to be, and the high purposes of the Law. They stood for anarchy, civil war, and the old spoils system.--Down him then! said they. And how?--Fish up mad Postumus, and let's have a row with the Legions of the Rhine.--Yes; that sounds pretty--for you who are not in the deep know of the thing. But how far do you think the Legions of the Rhine are going to support this young revolting-habited madman against the first general of the age? You are green; you are crude, my friends;--but go to it; your plot shall do well. But we, the cream and innermost of the party,--we have another. Let the madman be murdered,--and who shall be called the murderer? I believe they argued that way;--and very wisely; for Tiberius still carries the odium of the murder of Agrippa Postumus. Why did he allow himself to be dissuaded from the public investigation? Was it weakness? His perturbation when he heard of the murder, and his orders for the investigation, were natural enough. One can perhaps understand Livia, shaken with the grief of her great bereavement, fearing the unknown, fearing scandal, fearing to take issue with the faction whose strength and bitterness she knew, pleading with her son to let the matter be. Was it weakness on his part, that he concurred? This much must be allowed: Tiberius was always weak at self-defense. Had he taken prompt steps against his personal enemies, it might have been much better for him, in a way. But then and always his eyes were upon the performance of his duty; which he understood to be the care of the empire, not the defense of himself. We called Augustus the bridge; Tiberius was the shield. He understood the business of a shield to be, to take shafts, and make no noise about it. Proud he was; with that sublime pride that argues itself capable of standing all things, so that the thing it cares for--which is not its own reputation--is unhurt. You shall see. We might call it unwisdom, if his work had suffered by it; but it was only his peace, his own name--and eventually his enemies-- that suffered. He brought the world through. Detail by detail, Mr. Baring-Gould takes the incidents of his reign, and show how the plot was worked up against him, and every happening, all his deeds and motives, colorless or finely colored, given a coat of pitch. We can only glance at one or two points here: his relations with Germanicus, and with Agrippina; the rise and fall of Sejanus. Germanicus, his nephew, was fighting on the Rhine when Tiberius came to the throne. There was a mutiny; which Germanicus quelled with much loss of dignity and then with much bloodshed. To cover the loss of dignity, he embarked on gay adventures against the Germans; and played the fool a little, losing some few battles. Tiberius, who understood German affairs better than any man living, wanted peace in that quarter; and recalled Germanicus; then, lest there should be any flavor of disgrace in the recall, sent him on a mission to the East. Your textbooks will tell you he recalled him through jealousy of his brilliant exploits. Germanicus being something flighty of disposition, the emperor sent with him on his new mission a rough old fellow by the name of Calpurnius Piso to keep a weather eye open on him, and neutralize, as far as might be, extravagant actions. The choice, it must be said, was a bad one; for the two fought like cat and dog the better part of the time. Then Germanicus died, supposing that Piso had poisoned him; and Agrippina his wife came home, an Ate shrieking for revenge. She had exposed her husband's naked body in the marketplace at Antioch, that all might see he had been poisoned; which shows the kind of woman she was. Germanicus was given a huge funeral at Rome; he was the darling of the mob, and the funeral was really a demonstration against Tiberius. then Piso was to be tried for the murder: a crabbed but honest old plebeian of good and ancient family, who Tiberius knew well enough was innocent. There were threats of mob violence if he should be acquitted; and the suggestion studiously sown that Piso, guilty, had been set on to the murder by the Princeps. Tiberius, knowing the popular feeling, did not attend the funeral of his nephew. It was a mistake in policy, perhaps; but his experience had been unpleasant enought at the funeral of Augustus. Tacitus says he stayed away fearing lest the public, peering into his face thus from close to, might see the marks of dissimulation in it, and realize that his grief was hypocrisy. How the devil did Tacitus know? Yet what he says comes down as gospel. This sort of thing went on continually, and provided him a poor atmosphere in which to do his great and important work. As he grew older, he retired more and more. He trusted in his minister Sejanus who had once heroically save his life: an exceedingly able, but unfortunately also an exceedingly wicked man. Sejanus became his link with Rome and the senate; and used that position, and the senate's incompetence, to gather into his own hands a power practically absolute in home affairs. Home affairs, be it always remembered, were what the Princeps expected the senate to attend to: their duty, under the constitution. Instead, however, they fawned on Sejanus _ad lib._ Sejanus murdered Tiberius' son Drusus, and aspired to the hand of Livilla, his widow: she was the daughter of Germanicus and Agrippina; and she certainly, and Agrippina probably, were accessories to the murder of Drusus. For Agrippina was obsessed with hatred for Tiberius: with the idea that he had murdered her husband, and with thirst for revenge. Sejanus was thus in a fair way to the ends of his ambition: to be named the successor to the Principate. Then Tiberius found him out; and sent a message to a senate engaged in Sejanus-worship, demanding the punishment of the murderers of Drusus. Sejanus had built up his power by fostering the system of delation. There was no public prosecutor in the Roman system: when any wrong had been done, it was anyone's business to prosecute. The end of education was rhetoric, that you might get on in life. The first step was to bring an accusation against some public man, and support it with a mighty telling speech. If you succeeded, and killed your man,--why, then your name was made. On this system, with developments of his own, Sejanus had built; had employed one half of Rome informing against the other. It took time to bring about; but he had worked up by degrees a state of things in which all went in terror of him; and the senate was eager perpetually to condemn any one he might recommend for condemnation. When Tiberius found him out, they lost their heads entirely, and simply tumbled over themselves in their anxiety to accuse, condemn, and execute each other. Everyone was being informed against as having been a friend of Sejanus, and therefore an enemy of their dear Princeps; who was away at Capri attending to his duty; and whose ears, now Sejanus was gone, they might hope to reach with flatteries. You supped with your friend overnight; did your best to diddle him into saying something over the wine-cups;--then rose betimes in the morning to accuse him of saying it: only too often to find that he, (traitorly wretch!) had risen half an hour earlier and accused you; so you missed your breakfast for nothing; and dined (we may hope) in a better world. Thus during the last years of the reign there was a Terror in Rome: in the senate's sphere of influence; the senatorial class the sufferers and inflictors of the suffering. Meanwhile Tiberius in his retirement was still at his duty; his hold on his provinces never relaxed. When the condemned appealed to him, the records show that in nearly every case their sentences were commuted. Tiberius' enemies were punishing themselves; but the odium of it has been fastened on Tiberius. He might have interfered, you say?--What! with Karma? I doubt. His sane, balanced, moderate character comes out in his own words again and again: he was a wonderful anomaly in that age. Rome was filled with slanders against him; and the fulsome senate implored him to punish the slanderers. "We have not much time to spare," Tiberius answered; "we need not involve ourselves in this additional business." "If any man speaks ill of me, I shall take care so to behave as to be able to give a good accound of my words and acts, and so confound him. If he speaks ill of me after that, it will be time enough for me to think about hating him." Permission was asked to raise a temple to him in Spain; he refused to grant it, saying that if every emperor was to be worshiped, the worship of Augustus would lose its meaning. "For myself, a mere mortal, it is enough for me if I do my duties as a mortal; I am content if posterity recognises that... This is the only temple I desire to have raised in my honor,--and this only in men's hearts."--the senate, in a spasm of flattery, offered to swear in advance to all his acts. He forbade it, saying in effect that he was doing and proposed to do his best; but all things human were liable to change, and he would not have them endorsing the future acts of one who by the mere failure of his faculties might do wrong. In those sayings, I think, you get the man: perhaps a disciple only, and never actually a Master; perhaps never absolutely sure of himself, but only of his capacity and determination to do his duty day by day: his own duty, and not other men's:--never setting himself on a level with his Teacher; or thinking himself able, of his own abilities, to run the world, as Augustus had had the power and the mission to do,--but as probably no man might have had the power to do in Tiberius' time;--and by virtue of that faith, that high concentration on duty, carrying the world (but not Rome) through in spite of Rome, which had become then a thing incurable, nothing more than an infection and lamentable scab. He left it altogether in his last years; its atmosphere and bitterness were too much for him. Form the quiet at Capri he continued to rule his provinces until the end; ever hoping that if he did his duty, someone or some spirit might arise in the senate to do theirs. Tacitus explains his retirement--as Roman society had explained it when it happened,--thus: Being then seventy-two years old, Tiberius, whose life up to that time had been irreproachable and untouched by gossip, went to Capri to have freedom and privacy for orgies of personal vice. But why did he not stay at Rome for his orgies: doing at Rome as the Romans did, and thereby perhaps earning a measure of popularity? Over the bridge Augustus, western humanity had made the crossing; but on the further shore, there had to be a sacrifice to the Fates. Tiberius was the sacrifice. And that sacrifice was not in vain. We get one glimpse through provincial (and therefore undiseased) eyes of the empire he built up in the provinces. It is from Philo Judaeus, a Jewish Theosophist of Alexandria, who came to Rome in the reign of Caligula, Tiberius' successor. (Tiberius, it must be said, appointed no successor; there was none for him to appoint.) Caligula, says Philo, "....succeeded to an empire that was well organized, tending everywhere to conceed--north, south, east, and west brought into friendship; Greeks and barbarians routed, soldiers and civilians linked together in the bonds of a happy peace." That was the work of Tiberius. In the Gospel narrative, Jesus is once made to allude to him; in the words quoted at the head of this paper: "Render unto Caesar"--who was Tiberius--"the things which are Caesar's" I think it is about time it should be done: that the wreath of honor should at last be laid on the memory of this brave, just, sane, and merciful man; this silent duty-doer, who would speak no word in his own defense; this Agent of the Gods, who endured all those years of crucifixion, that he might build up the Unity of Mankind. Says Mr. Baring-Gould: "In the galleries of Rome, of Naples, Florence, Paris, one sees the beautiful face of Tiberius, with that intellectual brow and sensitive mouth, looking pleadingly at the passer-by, as though seeking for someone who would unlock the secret of his story and vindicate his much aspersed memory." XX. CHINA AND ROME: THE SEE-SAW That mankind is a unit;--that the history of the world, however its waters divide,--whatever islands and deltas appear,--is one stream;--how ridiculous it is to study the story of one nation or group of nations, and leave the rest ignored, coming from your study with the impression (almost universal,) that all that counts of the history of the world is the history of your own little corner of it:--these are some of the truths we should have gathered from our survey of the few centuries we have so far glanced at. For take that sixth century B.C. The world seems all well split up. No one in China has ever heard of Greece; no one in Italy of India. What do the Greeks know about Northern Europe, or the Chinese about the Indians or Persians?--And yet we find in Italy, in Persia, in India, in China, men appearing,-- phenomenal births,--evolved far above their fellows: six of them, to do the same work: Founders of Religions, all contemporary more or less; all presenting to the world and posterity the same high passwords and glorious countersigns. Can you conceive that their appearance, all in that one epoch, was a matter of chance? Is not some prearrangement suggested,--a _put-up job,_ as they say: a definite plan formed, and a definite end aimed at? Then by whom? Can you escape the conclusion that, behind all this welter of races and separate histories aloof or barking at each other, there is yet somewhere, within the ringfence of humankind, incarnate or excarnate, One Center from which all the threads and currents proceed, and all the great upward impulses are directed? Those Six Teachers came, and did their work; then two or three centuries passed; time enough for the seeds they sowed to sprout a little; and we come to another phase of history, a new region in time. High spiritual truth has been ingeminated in all parts of the world where the ancient vehicle of truth-dissemination (the Mysteries) has declined; A Teacher, a Savior, has failed to appear only in the lands north and west of Italy, because there among the Celts, and there alone, the Mysteries are still effective:--so you may say the seeds of spirituality have been well sown along a great belt stretching right across the Old World. Why? In preparation for what? For something, we may suppose. Certainly for something: for example, for the next two thousand five hundred years,--the last quarter, I would say, of a ten-millennium cycle, which was to end with a state of things in which every part of the world should be know to, and in communication with, every other part. So now in the age that followed that of the Six Teachers, in preparation for that coming time (our own), the attempt must be made to weld nations into unities. Nature and Law compel it: whose direction now is towards grand centripetalism, where before they had ordained heterogeneity and the scattering and aloofness of peoples. But Those who sent out the great six Teachers have a hand to play here: they have to put the welding process through upon their own designs. They start at the fountain of the cyclic impulses, on the eastern rim of the world: as soon as the cycle rises there, they strike for the unification of nations. Then they follow the cycle westward. To West Asia?--Nothing could be done there, because this was the West Asian pralaya; those parts must wait for Mohammed. In Europe then,--Greece?--No; its time and vigor had passed; and the Greeks are not a building people. They must bide their time, then, till the wave hits Italy, and what they have done in China, attempt to do there. Only, what they had done in China was a mere Ts'in Shi Hwangti,-- because Laotse and Confucius had not failed spiritually to prepare the ground,--they must send forth Adept-souled Augustus and Tiberius to do,--if human wisdom and heroism could do it,--in Italy;--because Pythagoras' Movement had failed. The Roman Empire was the European attempt at a China; China was the Asiatic creation of a Rome. We call the Asiatic creation, _China, Ts'in-a;_ it may surprise you to know that they called the European attempt by the same name: Ta _Ts'in,_ 'the Great Ts'in.' Put the words _Augustus Primus Romae_ into Chinese, and without much straining they might read, _Ta Ts'in Shi Hwangti._ The whole period of the Chinese manvantara is, from the two-forties B.C. to the twelve-sixties A.D., fifteen centuries. The whole period of the Roman Empire, Western and Eastern, is from the forties B.C. to the Fourteen-fifties A.D., fifteen centuries. The first phase of the Chinese Empire, from Ts'in Shi Hwangti to the fall of Han, lasted about 460 years; the Western Roman Empire, from Pharsalus to the death of Honorius, lasted about as long. Both were the unifications of many peoples; both were overturned by barbarians from the north: Teutons in the one case, Tatars in the other. But after that overturnment, China, unlike Rome, rose from her ashes many times, and still endures. Thank the success of Confucius and Laotse; and blame the failure of Pythagoreanism, for that! But come now; let me draw up their histories as it were in parallel columns, and you shall see the likeness clearly; you shall see also, presently, how prettily time and the laws that govern human incarnation played battledore and shuttlecock with the two: what a game of see-saw went on between the East and West. From 300 to 250 B.C. there was an orgy of war in which old Feudal China passed away forever, and from which Ts'in emerged Mistress of the world. From 100 to 50 B. C. there was an orgy of war in which Republican Rome passed away forever, and out of which Caesar emerged World-Master. Caesar's triumph came just two centuries after Ts'in Shi Hwangti's accession; Kublai Khan the Turanian, who smashed China, came just about as much before Mohammed II the Turanian, who swept away the last remnant of Rome. In the first cycles of the two there is a certain difference in procedure. In China, a dawn twilight of half a cycle, sixty-five years, from the fall of Chow to the Revival of Literature under the second Han, preceded the glorious age of the Western Hans. In Rome, the literary currents were flowing for about a half-cycle before the accession of Augustus: that half-cycle formed a dawn-twilight preceding the glories of the Augustan Age. It was just when the reign of Han Wuti was drawing towards a sunset a little clouded,--you remember Ssema Ts'ien's strictures as to the national extravagance and its results,--that the Crest-Wave egos began to come in in Rome. Cicero, eldest of the lights of the great cycle of Latin literature, would have been about twenty when Han Wuti died in 86. We counted the first "day" of the Hans as lasting from 194 (the Revival of the Literature) to the death of Han Wuti's successor in 63; in which year, as we saw, Augustus was born. During the next twenty years the Crest-Wave was rolling more and more into Rome: where we get Julius Caesar's career of conquest;-- it was a time filled with wine of restlessness, and, you may say, therewith 'drunk and disorderly.' Meanwhile (from 61 to 49) Han Suenti the Just was reigning in China. His "Troops of justice" became, after a while, accustomed to victory; but in defensive wars. Here it was a time of sanity and order, as contrasted with the disorder in Rome; of pause and reflexion compared with the action and extravagance of the preceding Chinese age. It was Confucian and ethical; no longer Taoist and daringly imaginative; Confucianism began to consolidate its position as the state system. So in England Puritan sobriety followed Elizabethanism. Han Wuti let nothing impede the ferment of his dreams: Han Suenti retrenched, and walked quietly and firmly. His virtues commanded the respect of Central Asia: the Tatars brought him their disputes for arbitration, and all the regions west of the Caspian sent him tribute. China forwent her restless and gigantic designs, and took to quietude and grave consideration.--So we may perhaps distribute the characteristics of these two decades thus between the three great centers of civilization: in China, the stillness that follows an apex time; in India, creation at its apex; in Rome, the confusion caused by the first influx of Crest-Wave Souls. As Octavian rose to power, the House of Han declined. We hear of a gorging Vitellius on the throne in the thirties; then of several puppets and infants during the last quarter of the century; in A.D. 1, of the dynasty overthrown by a usurper, Mang Wang, who reigned until A.D. 25. Thus the heyday of Augustan Rome coincides with the darkest penumbra of China. Then Kwang-wuti, the eldest surviving Han prince, was reinstated; but until two years before the death of Tiberius, he had to spend his time fighting rebels. Now turn to Rome. While Han Kwang-wuti was battling his way towards the restitution of Han glories, Tiberius, last of the Roman Crest-Wave Souls, was holding out grimly for the Gods until the cycle should have been completed, and he could say that his and their work was done. For sixty-five years he and his predecessor had been welding the empire into one: now, that labor had been so far accomplished that what dangerous times lay ahead could hardly imperil it. So far it had been a case of Initiate appointing Initiate to succeed him: Augustus, Tiberius;--but whom should Tiberius appoint? There was no one. The cycle was past, and for the present Rome was dead; and on the brink of that unfortunate place to which (they say) the wicked dead must go. Tiberius finally had had to banish Agrippina, her mischief having become too importunate. You remember she was the daughter of Julia and Agrippa, and Germanicus' widow. His patience with her had been marvelous. Once, at a public banquet, to do her honor he had picked a beautiful apple from the dish, and handed it to her: with a scowl and some ostentation, she gave it to the attendant behind her, as who should say: 'I know your designs; but you do not poison me this time'; all present understood her meaning well. Once, when he met her in the palace, and she passed him with some covert insult, he stopped, laid a hand on her shoulder, and said: "My little woman, it is no hurt to you that you do not reign." But his patience only encouraged her in her machinations; and at last he was compelled to banish her. Also to keep one of her sons in strictest confinement; of which the historians have made their for him discreditable tale: the truth is, it was an heroic effort on his part to break the boy of his vices by keeping him under close and continuous supervision. But that is more easily said than done, sometimes; and this Drusus presently died a madman. He then took the youngest son of Agrippina to live with him at Capri; that he, Tiberius, might personally do the best with him that was to be done; for he foresaw that this youth Caius would succeed him; his own grandson, Tiberius Gemellus, being much younger. He foresaw, too, that Caius, once on the throne, would murder Gemellus; which also happened. But there was nothing to be done. Had he named his grandson his successor, a strong regent would have been needed to carry things through until that successor's majority, and to hold the Empire against the partisans of Caius. There was no such strong man in sight; so, what had to come, had to come. _Apres lui le deluge:_ Tiberius knew that. _Le deluge_ was the four years' terror of the reign of Caius, known as Caligula; who, through no good will of his own, but simply by reason of his bloodthirsty mania, amply revenged the wrongs done his pedecessor. Karma put Caligula on the throne to punish Rome. The reign was too short, even if Caligula had troubled his head with the provinces, for him to spoil the good work done in them during the preceding half-cycle. He did not so trouble his head; being too busy murdering the pillars of Roman society. Then a gentleman who had been spending the afternoon publicly kissing his slippers in the theater, experienced, as they say, a change of heart, and took thought to assassinate him on the way home; whereupon the Praetorians, let loose and having a thoroughly good time, happened on a poor old buffer of the royal house by the name of Claudius; and to show their sense of humor, made him emperor _tout de suite._ The senate took a high hand, and asserted _its_ right to make those appointments; but Claudius and the Praetorians thought otherwise; and the senate, after blustering, had to crawl. They besought him to allow them the honor of appointing him.--what a difference the mere turn of a cycle had made: from Augustus bequeathing the Empire to Tiberius, ablest man to ablest man, and all with senatoral ratification; to the jocular appointment by undisciplined soldiery of a sad old laughingstock to succeed a raging maniac. Claudius was a younger brother of Germanicus; therefore Tiberius' nephew, Caligula's uncle, and a brother-in-law to Agrippina. Mr. Baring-Gould says that somewhere deep in him was a noble nature that had never had a chance: that the soul of him was a jewel, set in the foolish lead of a most clownish personality. I do not know; certainly some great and fine things came from him; but whether they were motions of his own soul (if he had one), or whether the Gods for Rome's sake took advantage of his quite negative being, and prompted it to their own purposes, who can say?--Sitting down, and keeping still, and saying nothing, the old man could look rather fine, even majestic; one saw traces in him of the Claudian family dignity and beauty. But let hm walk a few paces, and you noted that his feet dragged and his knees knocked together, and that he had a paunch; and let him get interested in a conversation, and you heard that he first spluttered, and then roared. Physical wakness and mental backwardness had made him the despair of Augustus: he was the fool of the family, kept in the background, and noticed by none. Tiberius, in search of a successor, had never thought of him; had rather let things go to mad Caligula. He had never gone into society; never associated with men of his own rank; but chose his companions among small shopkeepers and the 'Arries and 'Arriets of Rome, who, 'tickled to death' at having a member of the reigning family to hobnob with them in their back-parlors, would refrain from making fun of his peculiatities. Caligula had enjoyed using him as a butt, and so had spared his life. He had never even learned to behave at table: and so, when he came to the throne, made a law that table-manners should no longer be incumbent on a Roman gentleman. All this is recorded of him; one would hardly believe it, but that his portraits bear it out.* ------ * The accounts of Claudius and Nero are from _The Tragedy of the Caesars,_ by S. Baring-Gould. ------ For all that he did well at first. He made himself popular with the mob, cracking poor homely jokes with them at which they laughed uproariously. He paid strict attention to business: made some excellent laws; wisely extended Roman citizenship among the subject peoples; undertook and pushed through useful public works. Rome was without a decent harbor: corn from Egypt had to be transshipped at sea and brought up the Tiber in lighters; which resulted in much inconvenience, and sometimes shortage of food in the city. Claudius went down to Ostia and looked about him; and ordered a harbor dredged out and built there on a large scale. The best engineers of the day said it was impossible to do, and would not pay if done. But the old fool stuck to his views and made them get to work; and they found it, though difficult and costly, quite practicable; and when finished, it solved the food problem triumphantly. This is by way of example.--Poor old fool! it was said he never forgot a kindness, or remembered an injury. He came soon, however, to be managed by various freedmen and rascals and wives; all to the end that aristocratic Rome should be well punished for its sins. One day when he was presiding in the law courts, someone cried out that he was an old fool,--which was very true.--and threw a large book at him that cut his face badly,--which was very unkind. And yet, all said, through him and through several fine and statesmanlike measures he put through, the work of Augustus and Tiberius in the empire at large was in many ways pushed forward: he did well by the provinces and the subject races, and carried on the grand homogenization of the world. He reigned thirteen years; then came Nero. If one accepts the traditional view of him, it is not without evidence. His portraits suggest one ensouled by some horrible elemental; one with no human ego in him at all. The accounts given of his moods and actions are quite credible in the light of the modern medical knowledge as to insanity; you would find men like Tacitus Nero in most asylums. Neither Tacitus nor Suetonius was in the habit of taking science as a guide in their transcriptions; they did not, in dealing with Tiberius for example, suit their facts to the probabilities, but just set down the worst they had heard said. What they record of him is unlikely, and does not fit in with his known actions. But in drawing Nero, on the contrary, they made a picture that would surprise no alienist. Besides, Tacitus was born some seventeen years after Tiberius died; but he was fourteen years old at the death of Nero, and so of an age to have seen for himself, and remembered. Nero did kill his mother, who probably tried to influence him for good; and he did kill Seneca, who certainly did. His reign is a monument to the rottenness of Rome; his fall, a proof, perhaps, of the soundness of the provinces. For when _they_ felt the shame of his conduct, they rose and put him down; Roman Gaul and Germany and Spain and the East did. Here is a curious indication: Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, who made such a sorry thing of the two years (68 and 69) they shared in the Principate, had each done well as a provincial governor. In the provinces, then, the Tiberian tradition of honest efficient government suffered not much, if any, interruption. The fact that Rome itself stood the nine years of Nero's criminal insanity,--and even, so far as the mob was concerned, liked it (for his grave was long kept strewn with flowers)--shows what a people can fall to, that the Crest-Wave had first made rotten, and then left soulless. By the beginning of 70, things were comfortably in the hands of Vespasian, another provincial governor; under whom, and his son Titus after him, there were twelve years of dignified government; and seven more of the same, and then seven or eight of tyranny, under his second son, Domitian. Against the first two of these Flavians nothing is to be said except that the rise of their house to the Principate was by caprice of the soldiery. Vespasian was an honest Sabine, fond of retiring to his native farm; he brought in much good provincial blood with him into Roman society.--Then in 96 came a revolution which placed the aged senator Nerva on the throne; who set before himself the definite policy--as it was intended he should--of replacing personal caprice by legality and constitutionalism as the instrument of government. He reigned two years, and left the empire to Trajan; who was strong enough as a general to hold his position, and as a statesman, to establish the principles of Nerva. And so things began to expand again; and a new strength became evident, the like of which had not been seen since (at least) the death of Tiberius. Octavian returned to Rome, sole Master of the world, in B.C. 29. A half-cycle on from that brings us to 36 A.D., the year before Tiberius died: that half-cycle was one, for the Empire all of it, and for Rome most of it, of bright daylight. The next half-cycle ends in 101, in the third year of Trajan: a time, for the most part, of decline, of twilight. You will notice that the Han day lasted the full thirteen decades before twilight came; the Roman, but six decades and a half. We ought to understand just how far this second Roman half-cycle was an age of decline: just how much darkneww suffused the twilight it was. We talk of representative government; as if any government were ever really anything else. Men get the government that represents them; that represent their intelligence, or their laxity, or their vices:--whether it be sent in by the ballot or by a Praetorian Guard with their caprice and spears. In a pralayic time there is no keen national consciousness, no centripetalism. There was none in Rome in those days; or not enough to counteract the centrifugalism that simply did not care. The empire held together, because Augustus and Tiberius had created a centripetalism in the provinces; and these continued in the main through it all to enjoy the good government the first two emperors had made a tradition in them, and felt but little the hands of the fools or madmen reigning in Rome. And then, blood from the provinces was always flowing into Rome itself; particularly in the Flavian time; and supplied or fed a new centripetalism there which righted things in the next half-cycle. It was Rome, not the provinces, that Nero and Caligula represented in their day; the time was transitional; you may call Otho and Vitellius the first bungling shots of the provinces at having a hand in things at the center; wholesome Vespasian was their first representative emperor: Nerva and those that followed him represented equally the provinces and a regenerated Rome.--This tells you what Nero's Rome was, and how it came to tolerate Nero; when Vitellius came in with his band of ruffians from the Rhine, and the streets flowed with blood day after day, the places of low resort were as full as ever through it all; while carnage reigned in the forums, riotous vice reigned within doors. But look outside of Rome, and the picture is very different. The Spaniard, Gaul, Illyrian, Asiatic and the rest, were enjoying the Roman Peace. There was progress; if not at the center, everywhere between that and the periphery of civilization. Life, even in Italy (in the country parts) was growing steadily more cultured, serious, and dignified; and in all remote regions was assimilating its standards to the best in Italy. From the Scottish Lowlands to the Cataracts of the Nile a single people was coming into being; it was a wide and well-tilled field in which incarnate souls might grow. The satirists make lurid pictures of the evils Rome; and the evils were there, with perhaps not much to counter-balance them, _in Rome._ Paris has been latterly the capital of civilization; and one of its phases as such has been to be the capital of the seven deadly sins. The sins are or were there: Paris provided for the sinners of the world, in her capacity of world-metropolis; just as she provided for the artists, the _litteratuers,_ and so on. Foolish people drew from that the conclusion that therefore Frenchmen were more wicked than other people: whereas in truth the life of provincial France all along has probably been among the soundest of any. So we must offset Martial's and Juvenal's pictures of the calm and gracious life in the country: virtuous life, often, with quiet striving after usefulness and the higher things. He reveals to us, in the last quarter of the century, interiors in northern Italy, by Lake Como; you should have found the like anywhere in the empire. And where, since Rome fell, shall you come on a century in which Britain, Gaul, Spain, Italy, the Balkans, Asia and Africa, enjoyed a Roman or any kind of peace? Be not deceived: there has been no such success in Europe since as the empire that Augustus the Initiate made, and for which Tiberius his disciple was crucified. Yet they captured it, as I find things, out of the jaws of failure and disaster. Failure: that of Pythagoreanism six centuries before;--disaster: Caesar's conquest of Gaul and destruction of the Mysteries there. Men come from the Masters of the World to work on this plane or on that: to found an empire perhaps, or to start a spiritual movement. Augustus came commissioned to the former, not to the latter, work. Supposing in his time the Gaulish Mysteries had been intact. We may trust him to have established relations somehow: he would have had close and friendly relations with the Gaulish hierophants; even if he had conquered the people, he would not have put out their light. But I imagine he would have found a means to union without conquest. Then what would have happened? We have seen that the cyclic impulse did touch Gaul at that time; it made her vastly rich, hugely industrial;--as Ferero says, the Egypt of the West. That, and nothing better than that, because she had lost her spiritual center, and might not figure as the world Teacher among nations. But, you say, Augustus proscribed Druidism--which sounds like carrying on Julius' nefarious work. He did, I believe;--but why? Because Julius had seen to it that the white side of Druidism had perished. The Druids were magicians; and now it was the dark magic and its practitioners that remained among them,--at least in Gaul. So of course Augustus proscribed it. Remember how France has stood, these last seven centuries, as the teacher of the arts and civilization to Europe; and this idea that she might have been, and should have been, something far higher to the Roman world, need not seem at all extravagant. I think it was a possibility; which Caesar had been sent by the kings of night to forestall. And so, that Augustus lacked that reinforcement by which he might have secured for Europe a unity as enduring as the Chinese Teachers secured for the Far East. And yet the Lodge did not leave Rome lightless; there was much spiritual teaching in the centuries of the Empire; indeed, a new out-breathing in each century, as an effort to retrieve the great defeat;--and this has been the inner history of europe ever since. This: raidings from the Godworld: swift cavalry raidings, that took no towns as a rule, nor set up strongholds here on hell's border; yet did each time, no doubt, carry off captives. Set up no strongholds;--that is, until our own times; so what we have missed is the continuous effort; the established base 'but here upon this bank and shoal,' from which the shining squadrons of the Gods might ride. Such a base was lost when Caesar conquered Gaul; then some substitute for Gaul had to be found. It was Greece and the East; where, as you may say, abjects and orts of truth came down; not the live Mysteries, but the _membra disjecta_ of the vanished Mysteries of a vanished age. With these the Teachers of the Roman world had to work, distilling out of them what they might of the ancient Theosophy. So latterly H.P. Blavasky must gather up fragments in the East for the nexus of her teaching; she must find seeds in old sarcophagi, and plant and make them grow in this soil so uncongenial; because there was no well-grown Tree patent to the world, with whose undeniable fruitage she might feed the nations. This was one great difficulty in her way; whe had to introduce Theosphy into a world that had forgotten it ever existed. So,--but with a difference,--in that first century. The difference was that Pythagoreanism, the nexus, was only six hundrd years away, and the memory of it fairly fresh. Stoicism was the most serious living influence within the empire; a system that concerned itself with right and brave living, and was so far spiritual; but perhaps not much further. The best in men reacted against the sensuality of the mid-century, and made Stoicism strong; but this formed only a basis of moral grit for the higher teaching; of which, while we know it was there, there is not very much to say. I shall come to it presently; meanwhile, to something else.--In literature, this was the cycle of Spain: the Crest-Wave was largely there during the first thirteen decades of the Christian era. Seneca was born in Cordova about 3 B. C.; Hadrian, the last greatman of Spanish birth (though probably of Italian race), died in 138. Seneca was a Stoic: a man with many imperfections, of whom history cannot make up its mind wholly to approve. He was Nero's tutor and minister during the first five golden years of the reign; his government was wise and beneficent, though, it is said, sometimes upheld by rather doubtful means. In the growing gloom and horror of the nightmare reign of Nero, he wrote many counsels of perfection; his notes rise often, someone has said, to a sort of falsetto shriek; but then, the wonder is he could sing at all in such a hell's cacophony. A man with obvious weaknesses, perhaps; but fighting hard to be brave and hopeful where there was nothing in sight to encourage bravery or foster hope; when every moment was pregnant with ghastly possibilities; when death and abominable torture hobnobbed in the Roman streets with riots of disgusting indulgence, abnormal lusts, filthiness parading unabashed. He speaks of the horrors, the gruesome impalings; deprecating them in a general way; not daring to come down to particulars, and rebuke Nero. Well; Nero commanded the legions, and was kittle cattle to rebuke. If sometimes you see tinsel and tawdriness about poor Seneca, look a little deeper, and you seem to see him writing it in agony and bloody sweat. . . . He was among the richest men in Rome, when riches were a deadly peril: he might even, had he been another man, have made himself emperor; perhaps the worst thing against him is that he did not. His counsels and aspirations were much better than his deeds;--which is as much as to say his Higher Self than his lower. He stood father-confessor to Roman Society: a Stoic philosopher in high, luxurious, and most perilous places: he cannot escape looking a little unreal. Someone in some seemingly petty difficulties, writes asking him to sue his influence on his behalf; and he replies with a dissertation on death, and what good may lie in it, and the folly of fearing it. Cold comfort for his correspondent; a tactless, strained, theatrical thing to do, we may call it. But what strain upon his nerves, what hideous knowledge of the times and of evils he did not see his way to prevent, what haunting sense of danger, must have driven him to that fervid hectic eloquence that now seems so unnatural! One guesses there may be a place in the Pantheons or in Valhalla of the heroes for this poor not untawdry not unheroic Seneca. One sees in him a kind of Hamlet, hitting in timorous indecision on the likely possibility of converting his Claudius by a string of moral axioms and eloquence to a condition that should satisfy the Ghost and undo the something rotten in the state.... Yet the Gods must have been grateful to him for the work he did in holding for Stoicism and aspiration a center in Rome during that dreadful darkness. Perhaps only the very strongest, in his position, could have done better; and then perhaps only by killing Nero.* ------ * Dill: _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius._ ------ But there was a greater than Seneca in Rome, even in Nero's reign;--there intermittently, and not to abide: Appollonius of Tyana, presumably the real Messenger of the age:--and by the change that had come over life by the second century, we may judge how great and successful. But there is not getting at the reality of the man now. We have a _Life_ of him, written about a hundred years after his death by Philostratus, a Greek sophist, for the learned Empress Julia Domna, Septimius Severus' wife; who, no doubt, chose for the work the best man to hand; but the age of great literature was past, and Philostratus resurrects no living soul. The account may be correct enough in outline; the author was painstaking; visited the sites of his subject's exploits, and pressed his inquiries; he claims to have based his story on the work of Damis of Neneveh, a disciple of Apollonius who accompanied him everywhere. But much is fabulous: there is a gorgeous account of dragons' in India, and the methods used in hunting them; and you know nothing of the real Apollonius when you have read it all. Here, in brief, is the outline of the story: Apollonius was born at Tyana in Cappodocia somewhere about the year 1 A.D., and died in the reign of Nerva at nearly a hundred: tradition ascribed to his birth its due accompaniment of signs and portents. At sixteen he set himself under Pythagorean discipline; kept silence absolute for five years; traveled, healing and teaching, and acquired a great renown throughout Asia Minor. He went by Babylon and Parthia to India; spent some time there as the pupil of certain Teachers on a sacred mountain; they, it appears, expected his coming, received him and taught him; ever afterwards he spoke of himself as a disciple of the Indian Master Iarchus. Nothing in the book is more interesting than the curious light it throws on popular beliefs of the time in the Roman World as to the existence of these Indian masters of the Secret Wisdom;--India, of course, included the region north of the Himalayas. Later he visited the Gymnosophists of the Tebaid in Egypt; according to the account, these were of a lower standing than the Indian Adepts; and Apollonius came among them not as a would-be disciple, but as an equal, or superior.--He was persecuted in Rome by Nero; but over awed Tigellinus, Nero's minister, and escaped. He met Vespasian and Titus at Alexandria, soon after the fall of Jerusalem; and was among those who urged Vespasian to take the throne. He was arrested in Rome by Domitian, and tried on charges of sorcery and treason; and is said to have escaped his sentence and execution by the simple expedient of vanishing in broad daylight in court. One wonders why this from his defense before Domitian, as Philostratus gives it, has not attracted more comment; he says: "All unmixed blood is retained by the heart, which through the blood-vessels sends it flowing as if through canals over the entire body."--According to tradition, he rose from the dead, appeared to several to remove their doubts as to a life beyond death, and finally bodily ascended into heaven. Reincarnation was a very cardinal point in his teaching; perhaps the name of Neo-Pythagoreanism, given to his doctrine, is enough to indicate in what manner it illuminated the inner realms and laws which Stoicism, intent only on brave conduct and the captaincy of one's own soul, was unconcerned to inquire into. Another first century Neo-Pythagorean Teacher was Moderatus of Gades in Spain. The period of Apollonius's greatest influence would have corresponded with the reigns of Vespasian and Titus, from 69 to 83; the former, when he came to the throne, checked the orgies of vice and brought in an atmosphere in which the light of Thesophy might have more leave to shine. The certainty is that the last third of the first century wrought an enormous change: the period that preceded it was one of the worst, and the age that followed it, that of the Five Good Emperors, was the best, in known European history.--Under the Flavians, from 69 to 96,--or roughly, during the last quarter,--came the Silver Age, the second and last great day of Latin literature: with several Spanish and some Italian names,--foam of the Crest-Wave, these latter, as it passed over from Spain to the East. It will, by the way, help us to a conception of the magnitude of the written material at the disposal of the Roman world, to remember that Pliny the Elder, in preparing his great work on Natural History, consulted six thousand published authorities. That was in the reign of Nero; it makes one feel that those particular ancients had not so much less reading matter at their command than we have today. Of the great Flavian names in literature, we have Tacitus; Pliny the Younger, with his bright calm pictures of life; Juvenal, with his very dark ones: these were Italians. Juvenal was a satirist with a moral purpose; the Spaniard Martial, contemporary, was a satirist without one. Martial drew from life, and therefore his works, though coarse, are still interesting. We learn from him what enormous activity in letters was to be found in those days in his native Spain; where every town had its center of learning and apostles and active propaganda of culture. Such things denote an ancient cultural habit, lapsed for a time, and then revived. Another great Spainiard, and the best man in literature of the age, was Quintilian: gracious, wise, and of high Theosophic ideals, especially in education. He was born in A.D. 35; and was probably the greatest literary critic of classical antiquity. For twenty years, from 72 until his death, he was at the head of the teaching profession in Rome. The "teaching" was, of course, in rhetoric. Rome resounded with speech-makings; and Gaul, Spain, and Africa were probably louder with it than Rome. Though the end of education then was to turn out speech-makers,--as it is now to turn out money-makers,--I do not see but that the Romans had the best of it,--Quintilian saw through all to fundamental truths; he taught that your true speech-maker must be first a true man. He went thoroughly into the training of the orator,--more thoroughly, even from the standpoint of pure technique, than any other Greek or Roman writer;--but would base it all upon character, balance of the faculties,--in two words, Raja-Yoga. Pliny the Younger was among his pupils, and owed much to him; also is there to prove the value of Quintilian's method;--for Quintilian turned out Pliny a true gentlman. Prose in those days,--that is, rhetoric,--was tending ever more to flamboyancy and extravagance: a current which Quintilian stood against valiantly. We find in him, as critic, just judgment, sane good taste, wide and generous sympathies;--a tendency to give the utmost possible credit even where compelled in the main to condemn;--as he was in the case of Senaca. He had the faculty of hitting off in a phrase the whole effect of a man's style; as when he speaks of the "milky richness of Livy," and the "immortal swiftness of Sallust." * ------ * _Encyclopaedia Britannica;_ article 'Quintilian' ------ So then, to sum up a little: I think we gain from these times a good insight into cyclic workings. First, we shall see that the cycles are there, and operative: action and reaction regnant in the world,--a tide in the affairs of men; and strong souls coming in from time to time, to manipulate reactions, to turn the currents at strategic points in time; making things, despite what evils may be ahead, flow on to higher levels than their own weight would carry them to: thus did Augustus and Tiberius; --or throwing them down, as the merry Julius did, from bright possibilities to a sad and lightless actuality. For perhaps we have been suffering because of Julius' exploit ever since; and certainly, no matter what Neros and Caligulas followed them, the world was a long time the better for the ground the great first two Principes captured from hell.--And next, we shall learn to beware of being too exact, precise, and water-tight with out computations and conceptions of these cycles: we shall see that nature works in curves and delicate wave-lines, not in broken off bits and sudden changes. Rome was going down in Tiberius' reign: she was bad enough then, heaven knows; though we may put her passing below the meridian at or near the end of it;-- conveniently, in the year 36. And then, what with (1) the tenseness of the gloom and the severity of suffering in the reigns of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian;--and (2) the inflow of new and cleaner blood from the provinces at all times but especially under Vespasian; and above all, (3) the Theosophic impulse whose outward visible sign is the mission of Apollonius and Moderatus:--we find her ready to emerge into light in 96, when Nerva came to the throne, instead of having to wait the five more years for the end of the half-cycle;--although we may well suppose it took that time at least for Nerva and Trajan to clear things up and settle them. So we may keep this scheme of dates in memory as indicative: a (rough) half-cycle before 29 B.C., that of dawn and darkest hour preceding it; 29 B.C. to 36 A.D. daylight; 36 to 101, night and the beginnings of a new dawn. And now we must turn to China. Dusk came on in Rome with the death of Tiberius in A.D. 37; but what is dusk in the west is dawn in the east of the world. In 35 Han Kwang-wuti had put down the Crimson-Eyebrow rebellion, and seated himself firmly on the throne. The preceding half-cycle, great in Rome under Augustus and Tiberius, had been a time, first of puppet emperors, then of illegalism and usurpation, then of civil war. Han Kwang-wuti put an end to all that, and opened, in 35, a new cycle of his own. But there is also an old cycle to be taken into account: the original thirteen-decade period of the Hans, that began in 194, and ended its first "day" in 63 or so,--to name convenient dates. I should, if I believed in this cyclic law, look for a recurrence of that: a new day to dawn, under its influence, in 66 or 67 A.D., thirteen decades after the old one ended,--and to last until 196 or 197. But on the other hand, here is Han Kwang-wuti starting things going in 35, a matter of thirty-two years ahead of time,--catching the flow of force just as it diminished in Rome.--And this thirty-two years, you may note, with what odd months we may suppose thrown in, is in itself a quarter-cycle. Now cyclic impulses waste; a second day of splendor will commonly be found a Silver Age, where the first was Golden: it will often be more perfect and refined, but much less vigorous, than the first. So I should look for the second "day" of the Hans to come on the whole with less light to shine and less strength to endure than its predecessor; I should expect a gentleness as of late afternoon in place of the old noontide glory. But then there is the complication induced by Han Kwang-wuti, who started his cycle in 35.... or more probably his half-cycle;--I should look for it to be no more than that, on account of this same wastage of the forces;--this also has to be taken into consideration. Brooding over the whole situation, I should foretell the history of this second Han Dynasty in this way: from 35 to 67,--the latter date the point where the old and new cycles intersect,-- would be a static time: of consolidation rather than expansion; of the gathering of the wave, not of its outburst into any splendor of foam. Between 67 and 100, or when the two cycles coincide, I should look for great things and doings; for some echo or repetition of the glories of Han Wuti,--perhaps for a finishing and perfecting of his labors. From then on till 197 I should expect static, but weakening conditions: static mainly till 165, weakening rapidly after. Advise me, please, if this is clear.--Well, if you have followed so far, you have a basis for understanding what is to come. The dynasty, as thus re-established by Kwang-wuti, is known as that of the Eastern Hans; for this reason:--just as late in the days of the Roman empire, Diocletian was stirred by cyclic flowing east-ward to move his capital from Rome to Nicomedia,-- Constantine changed it afterwards to Byzantium,--so was Han Kwang-wuti to move his from Changan in Shensi, in the west, eastward to Loyang or Honanfu,--the old Chow capital,--in Honan. While Rome was weltering under Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, China was recovering herself, getting used to a calm equanimity, under Haii Kwang-wuti: the conditions in the two were as opposite as the poles. She dwelt in quietness at home, and held her own, and a little more, on the frontiers. In 57, two years before Nero went mad and took the final plunge into infamy, Han Kwang-wuti died, and Han Mingti succeeded him. As Nero went down, Han Mingti went up. His ninth or tenth year, remember, was to be that of the recurrence of the old Han cycle. It was the year in which the provinces rose against Nero,--the lowest point of all in Rome. I do not know that it was marked by anything special in China; the fact being that all the Chinese sixties were momentous. In the third Year of his reign Han Mingti dreamed a dream: he saw a serene and "Golden Man" descending towards him out of the western heavens. It would mean, said his brother, to whom he spoke of it, the Golden God worshiped in the West,--the Buddha. Buddhism had first come into China in the reign of Tsin Shi Hwangti; but that imperial ruffian had made short work of it:-- he threw the missionaries into prison, and might have dealt worse with them, but that a "Golden Man" appeared in their cell in the night, and opened all doors for their escape. Buddhist scriptures, probably, were among the books destroyed at the great Burning. So there may have been Buddhists in China all through the Han time; but if so, they were few, isolated and inconspicuous; it is Han Mingti's proper glory, to have brought Buddhism in. He liked well his brother's interpretation, and sent inquirers into the west. In 65 they returned, with scriptures, and an Indian missionary, Kashiapmadanga,--who was followed shortly by Gobharana, another. A temple was built at Loyang, and under the emperor's patronage, the work of translating the books began.--We have seen before how some touch from abroad is needed to quicken an age into greatness: such a touch came now to China with these Indian Buddhists;--who, in all likelihood, may also have been in their degree Messengers of the Lodge. In the usual vague manner of Indian chronology, the years 57 and 78 A.D. are connected with the name of a great king of the Yueh Chi, Kanishka, whose empire covered Northern India. Almost every authority has a favorite point in time for his habitat; but these dates, not so far apart but that he may well have been reigning in both, will do as well as another. You will note that 72 A.D. (which falls between them) is a matter of thirteen decades from 58 B.C., the date sometimes ascribed to that much-legended Vikramaditya of Ujjain. Or, if we go back to the (fairly) settled 321 B.C. of Chandragupta Maurya, and count forward thirteen-decade periods from that, we get 191 for the end of the Mauryas (it happened about then); 61 for Vikramaditya (which may well be); 69 for Kanishka,--which also is likely enough, and would make him contemporary with Han Mingti. As the years 57 and 78 are both ascribed to him, it may possibly be that they mark the beginning and end of his reign respectively. We know very little about him, except that he was a very great king, a great Buddhist, a man of artistic tastes, and a great builder; that he loved the beautiful hills and valleys of Cashmere; and that his reign was a wonderful period in sculptue, --that of the Gandhara or Greco-Buddhist School. Again, he is credited (by Hiuen Tsang) with convening the Fourth Buddhist Council: following in this, as in other matters, the example of Asoka. We are at liberty I suppose, if we like, to assign that cyclic year 69 to the meeting of this Council: this year or its neighborhood. So that all this may have had something to do with the missionary activity that responded to Han Mingti's appeal. But there is something else to remember; something of far higher importance; namely, that during all this period of her most uncertain chronology, India was in a peculiar position: the Successors of the Buddha were more or less openly at work there;--a long line of Adept leaders and teachers that can be traced (I believe) through some thirteen centuries from Sakya-muni's death. We may suppose, not unreasonably, that Kashiapmadanga and Gobharana were disciples and emissaries of the then Successor. It is, so far, and with so little translated, extremely hard to get at the undercurrents in these old Chinese periods; but I suspect a strong spiritual influence, Buddhist at that, in the great events of the years that followed. For China proceeded to strike into history in such a way that the blow resounded, if not round the world, at least round as much of it as was discovered before Columbus; and she did it in such a nice, clean, artistic and quiet way, and withal so thoroughly, that I cannot help feeling that that glorious warriorlike Northern Buddhism of the Mahayana had something to do with it. It was not Han Mingti himself who did it, but one of his sevants; of whom, it is likely, you have never heard; although east or west there have been, probably, but one or two of his trade so great as he, or who have mattered so much to history. His name was Pan Chow; his trade, soldiering. He began his career of conquest about the time the major Han Cycle was due to recur,--in the sixties; maintained it through three reigns, and ended it at his death about when the Eastern Han half-cycle, started in 35, was due to close;--somewhere, that is, about 100 A.D., while Trajan was beginning a new day and career of conquest in Rome. XXI. CHINA AND ROME: THE SEE-SAW (CONTINUED) During the time of Chinese weakness Central Asia had relapsed from the control the great Han Wuti had imposed on it, and that Han Suenti had maintained by his name for justice; and the Huns had recovered their power. One wonders what these people were; of whom we first catch sight in the reign of the Yellow Emperor, nearly 3000 B.C.; and who do not disappear from history until after the death of Attila. During all those three millenniums odd they were predatory nomads, never civilized: a curse to their betters, and nothing more. And their betters were, you may say, every race they contacted. It seems as if, as in the human blood, so among the races of mankind, there were builders and destroyers. I speculate as to the beginnings of the latter: they cannot be . . . races apart, of some special creation;--made by demons, where it was the Gods made men. . . . "To the Huns," says Gibbon, "a fabulous origin was assigned worthy of their form and manners,--that the witches of Scythia, who for their foul and deadly practices had been driven from society, had united in the desert with infernal spirits, and that the Huns were the offspring of this execrable conjunction." But it seems to me that it is in times of intensive civilization, and in the slums of great cities, that Nature--or anti-Nature--originates noxious human species. I wonder if their forefathers were, once on a time, the hooligans and yeggmen of some very ancient Babylon Bowery or the East End of some pre-Nimrodic Nineveh? Babylon was a great city,--or there were great cities in the neighborhood of Babylon, before the Yellow Emperor was born. One of these may have had, God knows when, its glorious freedom-establishing revolution, its up-fountaining of sansculottes,--patriots whose predatory proclivities had erstwhile been checked of their free brilliance by busy-body tyrannical police;--and then this revolution may have been put down, and the men of the underworld who made turned out now from their city haunts, driven into the wilderness and the mountains,--may have taken,--would certainly have taken, one would say,--not to any industry, (they knew none but such as are wrought by night unlawfully in other men's houses); not to agriculture, which has ever had, for your free spirit, something of degradation in it;--but to pure patriotism, freedom and liberty, as their nature was: first to cracking such desultory cribs as offered,--knocking down defenseless wayfarers and the like: then to bolder raidings and excursions;--until presently, lo, they are a great people; they have ridden over all Asia like a scirocco; they have thundered rudely at the doors of proud princes,--troubling even the peace of the Yellow Emperor on his throne. Well,--but isn't the stature stunted, physical, as well as mental and moral, when life is forced to reproduce itself, generation after generation, among the unnatural conditions of slums and industrialism? . . . Can you nourish men upon poisons century by century, and expect them to retain the semblance of men? They had bothered Han Kwang-wuti; who could do little more than hold his own against them, and leave them to his successor to deal with as Karma might decree. Karma, having as you might say one watchful eye on Rome and Europe, and what need of chastisement should arise after awhile at that western end of the world, provided Han Mingti with this Pan Chow; who, being a soldier of promise, was sent upon the Hun war-path forthwith. Then the miracles began to happen. Pan Chow strolled through Central Asia as if upon his morning's constitutional: no fuss; no hurry; little fighting,--but what there was, remarkably effective, one gathers. Presently he found himself on the Caspian shore; and if he had left any Huns behind him, they were hardly enough to do more than pick an occasional pocket. He started out when the Roman provinces were rising to make an end of Nero; in the last year of Domitian, from his Caspian headquarters he determined to discover Rome; and to that end sent an emissary down through Parthia to take ship at the port of Babylon for the unknown West. The Parthians (who were all against the two great empires becoming acquainted, because they are making a good thing of it as middle-men in the Roman-Chinese caravan trade), knew better, probably, than to oppose Pan Chow's designs openly; but their agents haunted the quays at Babylon, tampered with west-going skippers, and persuaded the Chinese envoy to go no farther. But I wonder whether some impulse achieved flowing across the world from east to west at that time, even though its physical link or channel was thus left incomplete? It was in that very year that Nerva re-established constitutionalism and good government in Rome. Pan Chow worked as if by magic: seemed to make no effort, yet accomplished all things. For nearly forty years he kept that vast territory in order, despite the huge frontier northward, and the breeding-place of nomad nations beyond. All north of Tibet is a region of marvels. Where you were careful to leave only the village blacksmith under his spreading chestnut-tree, or the innkeeper and his wife, for the sake of future travelers, let a century or two pass, and their descendants would be as the sea-sands for multitude; they would have founded a power, and be thundering down on an empire-smashing raid in Persia or China or India: Whether Huns, Sienpi, Jiujen, Turks, Tatars, Tunguses, Mongols, Manchus: God knows what all, but all destroyers. But as far as the old original Huns were concerned, Pan Chow settled their hash for them. Bag and baggage he dealt with them; and practically speaking, the land of their fathers knew them no more. Dry the starting tear! here your pity is misplaced. Think of no vine-covered cottages ruined; no homesteads burned; no fields laid waste. They lived mainly in the saddle; they were as much at home fleeing before the Chinese army as at another time. A shunt here; a good kick off there: so he dealt with them. It is in European veins their blood flows now;--and prides itself on its pure undiluted Aryanism and Nordicism, no doubt. I suppose scarcely a people in continental Europe is without some mixture of it; for they enlisted at last in all foraying armies, and served under any banner and chief. Pan Chow felt that they belonged to the (presumably) barbarous regions west of the Caspian. Ta Ts'in in future might deal with them; by God's grace, Han never should. He gently pushed them over the brink; removed them; cut the cancer out of Asia. Next time they appeared in history, it was not on the Hoangho, but on the Danube. Meanwhile, they established themselves in Russia; moved across Central Europe, impelling Quadi and Marcomans against Marcus Aurelius, and then Teutons of all sorts against the whole frontier of Rome. In the sixties, for Han Mingti, Pan Chow set that great wave in motion in the far east of the world. Three times thirteen decades passed, and it broke and wasted in foam in the far west: in what we may call the Very First Battle of the Marne, when Aetius defeated Attila in 451. I can but think of one thing better he might have done: shipped them eastward to the remote Pacific Islands; but it is too late to suggest that now. But I wonder what would have happened if Pan Chow had succeeded in reaching his arm across, and grasping hands with Trajan? He had not died; the might of China had not begun to recede from its westward limits, before the might of Rome under that great Spaniard had begun to flow towards its limits in the east. Through the bulk of the second century China remained static, or weakening. Her forward urge seems to have ended with the death of Pan Chow, or at the end of the half-cycle Han Kwang-wuti began in 35. We might tabulate the two concurrent Han cycles, for the sake of clearness, and note their points of intersection, thus: --Western Han Cycle, 130 years --Eastern Han Half-Cycle, 65 yrs --35 A.D. Opened by Han Kwang-wuti. --A static and consolidating time until 67 A.D., thirteen decades from the death of Han Chaoti. Introduction of Buddhism in 65. --The period of Pan Chao's victories; the Golden Age of the Eastern Hans, lasting until (about): --100 A. D. the end of the Eastern Han 'Day'; death of Pan Chow. --Continuance of Day under this, and supervention of Night under this Cycle, produce: --A static, but weakening period until: --165, the year in which a new Eastern Han Day should begin. A weak recrudescence should be seen. --197: the year in which the main or original Han Cycle should end. We should expect the beginnings of a downfall. By or before: --230, the end of the second, feeble, Eastern Han Day, the downfall would have been completed. Now to see how this works out. The first date we have to notice is 165. Well; in the very scant notices of Chinese history I have been able to come on, two events mark this date; or rather, one marks 165, and the other 166. To take the latter first: we saw that at a momentous point in Roman history,--in the year of Nerva's accession, 96,--China tried to discover Rome. In 166 Rome actually succeeded in discovering China. This year too, as we shall see, was momentous in Roman history. You may call it a half cycle after the other; for probably the ambassadors of King An-Tun of Ta Ts'in who arrived at the court of Han Hwanti at Loyang in 166, had been a few years on their journey. You know King An-tun better by his Latin name of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. The event for 165 is the foundation of the Taoist Church, under the half-legendary figure of its first Pope, Chang Taoling; whose lineal descendants and successors have reigned Popes of Taoism from their Vatican on the Dragon-Tiger Mountain in Kiangsi ever since. They have not adverertised their virtues in their names, however: we find no Innocents and Piuses here: they are all plain Changs; his reigning Holiness being Chang the Sixth-somethingth. It was from Buddhism that the Taoists took the idea of making a church of themselves. Taoism and Buddhism from the outset were fiercely at odds; and yet the main splendor of China was to come from their inner coalescence. Chu Hsi, the greatest of the Sung philosophers of the brilliant twelfth century A.D., says that "Buddhism stole the best features of Taoism; Taoism stole the worst features of Buddhism: as if the one took a jewel from the other, and the other recouped the loss with a stone." * This is exact: the jewel stolen by Buddhism was Laotse's Blue Pearl,--Wonder and Natural Magic; the stone that Taoism took instead was the priestly hierarchy and church organization, imitated from the Buddhists, that grew up under the successors of Chang Taoling. ------ * _Chinese Literature:_ H.A. Giles ------ If Laotse founded any school or order at all, it remained quite secret. I imagine his mission was like Plato's, not Buddha's: to start ideas, not a brotherhood. By Ts'in Shi Hwangti's time, any notions that were wild, extravagant, and gorgeous were Taoism; which would hardly have been, perhaps, had there been a Taoist organization behind them;--although it is not safe to dogmatize. It was, at any rate, mostly an inspiration to the heights for the best minds, and for the masses (including Ts'in Shi Hwangti) a rumor of tremendous things. After Han Wuti's next successor, the best minds took to thinking Confucianly: which was decidedly a good thing for China during the troublous times before and after the fall of the Western Hans. Then when Buddhism came in, Taoism came to the fore again, spurred up to emulation by this new rival. I take it that Chang Taoling's activities round about this year 165 represent an impulse of the national soul to awakenment under the influence of the recurrence of the Eastern Han Day half-cycle. What kind of reality Chang Taoling represents, one cannot say: whether a true teacher in his degree, sent by the Lodge, around whom legends have gathered; or a mere dabbler in alchemy and magic. Here is the story told of him; you will note an incident or two in it that suggest the former possibility. He retired to the mountains of the west to study magic, cultivate purity of life, and engage in meditation; stedfastly declining the offers of emperors who desired him to take office. Laotse appeared to him in a vision, and gave him a treatise in which were directions for making the 'Elixir of the Dragon and the Tiger.' While he was brewing this, a spirit came to him and said: "On the Pesung Mountain is a house of stone; buried beneath it are the Books of the Three Emperors (Yao, Shun, and Yu). Get these, practise the discipline they enjoin, and you will attain the power of ascending to heaven." He found the Pesung Mountain; and the stone house; and dug, and discovered the books; which taught him how to fly, to leave his body at will, and to hear all sounds the most distant. During a thousand days he disciplined himself; a goddess came to him, and taught him to walk among the stars; then he learned to cleave the seas and the mountains, and command the thunder and the winds. He fought the king of the demons, whose hosts fled before him "leaving no trace of their departing footsteps." So great slaughter he wrought in that battle that, we are told, "various divinities came with eager haste to acknowledge their faults." In nine years he gained the power of ascending to heaven. His last days were spent on the Dragon-Tiger Mountain; where, at the age of a hundred and twenty-three, he drank the elixir, and soared skyward in broad daylight;--followed (I think it was he) by all the poultry in his barnyard, immortalized by the drops that fell from the cup as he drank. He left his books of magic, and his magical sword and seal, to his descendants; but I think the Dragon-Tiger Mountain did not come into their possession until some centuries later. I judge that the tales of the Taoist _Sennin_ or Adepts, if told by some Chinese-enamored Lafcadio, would be about the best collection of fairy-stories in the world; they reveal a universe so deliciously nooked and crannied with bewildering possibilities:--as indeed this our universe is;--only not all its byways are profitable traveling. It is all very well to cry out against superstition; but we are only half-men in the West: we have lost the faculty of wonder and the companionship of extrahuman things. We walk our narrow path to nowhere safely trussed up in our personal selves: or we not so much walk at all, as lie still, chrysalissed in them:--it may be just as well, since for lack of the quality of balance, we are about as capable of walking at ease and dignity as is a jellyfish of doing Blondin on the tight-rope. China, in her pralaya and dearth of souls, may have fallen into the perils of her larger freedom, and some superstition rightly to be called degrading: in our Middle Ages, when we were in pralaya, we were superstitious enough; and being unbalanced, fell into other evils too such as China never knew: black tyrannies of dogmatism, burnings of heretics wholesale. But when the Crest-Wave Egos were in China, that larger freedom of hers enabled her, among other things, to achieve the highest heights in art: the Yellow Crane was at her disposal, and she failed not to mount the heavens; she had the glimpses Wordsworth pined for; she was not left forlorn. This merely for another blow at that worst superstition of all: Unbrotherliness, and our doctrine of Superior Racehood.--Many of the tales are mere thaumatolatry: as of the man who took out his bones and washed them once every thousand years; or of the man who would fill his mouth with rice-grains, let them forth as a swarm of bees to gather honey in the valley,--then readmit them into his mouth as to a hive, where they became rice again,--presumably "sweetened to taste." But in others there seems to be a core of symbolism and recognition of the fundamental things. There was a man once,--the tale is in Giles's Dictionary of Chinese Biography, but I forget his name--who sought out the Sennin Ho Kwang (his name might have been Ho Kwang); and found him at last in a gourd-flask, whither he was used to retire for the night. In this retreat Ho Kwang invited our man to join him; and he was enabled to do so; and found it, once he had got in, a fair and spacious palace enough. Three days he remained there learning; while fifteen years were passing in China without. Then Ho Kwang gave him a rod, and a spell to say over it; and bade him go his ways. He would lay the rod on the ground, stand astride of it, and speak the spell; and straight it became a dragon for him to mount and ride the heavens where he would. Thenceforth for many years he was a kind of Guardian Spirit over China: appearing suddenly wherever there was distress or need of help: at dawn in mountain Chungnan by Changan town in the north; at noon, maybe, by the southern sea; at dusk he might be seen a-dragon-back above the sea-mists rolling in over Yangtse;--and all in the same day. But at last, they say, he forgot the spell, and found himself riding the clouds on a mere willow wand;--and the wand behaving as though Newton had already watched that aggravating apple;--and himself, in due course dashed to pieces on the earth below.--There is some fine symbolism here; the makings of a good story. And now we come to 197, "the year in which (to quote our tabulation above) the main or original Han Cycle should end," and in which "we should expect the beginnings of a downfall." The Empire, as empires go, is very old now: four hundred and forty odd years since Ts'in Shi Hwangti founded it; as old as Rome was (from Julius Caesar's time) when the East and West split under Arcadius and Honorius; nearly three centuries older than the British Empire is now;--the cyclic force is running out, centripetalism very nearly wasted. In these one-nineties we find two non-entitous brothers quarreling for the throne: who has eyes to see, now, can see that the days of Han are numbered. All comes to an end in 220, ten years before the third half-cycle (and therefore second 'day') of the Eastern Han series; there is not force enough left to carry things through till 230. Han Hienti, the survivor of the two brothers aforesaid, retired into private life; the dynasty was at an end, and the empire split in three. In Ssechuan a Han prince set up a small unstable throne; another went to Armenia, and became a great man there; but in Loyang the capital, Ts'ao Ts'ao, the man who engineered the fall of the Hans, set his son as Wei Wenti on the throne. He was a very typical figure, this Ts'ao Ts'ao: a man ominous of disintegration. You cannot go far in Chinese poetry without meeting references to him. He rose during the reign of the last Han,--the Chien-An period, as it is called, from 196 to 221,--by superiority of energies and cunning, from a wild irregular youth spent as hanger-on of no particular position at the court,--the son of a man that had been adopted by a chief eunuch,--to be prime minister, commander of vast armies (he had at one time, says Dr. H. A. Giles, as many as a million men under arms), father of the empress; holder of supreme power; then overturner of the Han, and founder of the Wei dynasty. Civilization had become effete; and such a strong wildling could play ducks and drakes with affairs. But he could not hold the empire together. Centrifugalism was stronger than Ts'ao Ts'ao. The cycles and all else here become confused. The period from 220 to 265--about a half-cycle, you will note, from 196 and the beginning of the Chien-An time, or the end of the main Han Cycle,--is known as that of the San Koue or Three Kingdoms: its annals read like Froissart, they say; gay with raidings, excursions, and alarms. It was the riot of life disorganized in the corpse, when organized life had gone. A great historical novel dealing with this time,--one not unworthy, it is said, of Scott,--remains to be translated. Then, by way of reaction, came another half-cycle (roughly) of reunion: an unwarlike period of timid politics and a super-refined effeminate court; it was, says Professor Harper Parker, "a great age of calligraphy, belles lettres, fans, chess, wine-bibbing and poetry-making." Then, early in the fourth century, China split up again: crafty ladylike Chinese houses ruling in the South; and in the north a wild medley of dynasties, Turkish, Tungus, Tatar, and Tibetan,-- even some relics of the Huns: sometimes one at a time, sometimes half a dozen all together. Each barbarian race took on hastily something of Chinese culture, and in turn imparted to it certain wild vigorous qualities which one sees very well in the northern art of the period: strong, fierce, dramatic landscapes: Nature painted in her sudden and terrific moods. China was still in manvantara, though under obscuration; she still drew her moiety of Crest-Wave souls: there were great men, but through a lack of co-ordination, they failed to make a great empire or nation. So here we may take leave of her for a couple of centuries. Just why the vigor of the Crest-Wave was called off in the two-twenties, causing her to split then, we shall see presently. Back now to Rome, at the time of the death of Pan Chow the Hun-expeller and the end of the one glorious half-cycle of the Eastern Hans. As China went down, Rome came up. Pan Chow died early in the reign of Trajan, the first great Roman conqueror since Julius Caesar; and only the Caspian Sea, and perhaps a few years, divided Trajan's eastern outposts from the western outposts of the Hans. We need not stay with this Spaniard longer than to note that here was a case where grand military abilities were of practical value: Trajan used his to subserve the greatness of his statesmanship; only a general of the first water could have brought the army under the new constitutional regime. The soldiers had been setting up Caesars ever since the night they pitched on old Claudius in his litter; now came a Caesar who could set the soldiers down.--His nineteen years of sovereignty were followed by the twenty-one of Hadrian: a very great emperor indeed; a master statesman, and queer mass of contradictions whose private life is much better uninquired into. He was a mighty builder and splendid adorner of cities; all that remained unsystematized in the Augustan system, he reduced to perfect system and order. His laws were excellent and humane; he introduced a special training for the Civil Service, which wrought enormous economies in public affairs: officials were no longer to obtain their posts by imperial appointment, which might be wise or not, but because of their own tested efficiency for the work.--Then came the golden twenty-three years of Antoninus Pius, from 138 to 161: a time of peace and strength, with a wise and saintly emperor on the throne. The flower Rome now was in perfect bloom: an urbane, polished, and ordered civilization covered the whole expanse of the empire. Hadrian had legislated for the down-trodden: no longer had you power of life and death over your slaves; they were protected by the law like other men; you could not even treat them harshly. True, there was slavery, --a canker; and there were the gladiatorial games; we may feel piously superior if we like. But there was much humanism also. There was no proletariat perpetually on the verge of starvation, as in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe. If we can look back now and say, There this, that, or the other sign of oncoming decay; the thing could not last;--it will also be remarkably easy for us, two thousand years hence, to be just as wise about these present years 'of grace.' It is perhaps safe to say, --as I think Gibbon says--that there was greater happiness among a greater number then than there has been at any time in Christendom since. Gibbon calculates that there were twice as many slaves as free citizens: we do know that their number was immense,--that it was not unusual for one man to own several thousand. But they were well treated: often highly educated; might become free with no insuperable difficulty:--their position was perhaps comparable with that of slaves in Turkey now, who are insulted if you call them servants. Gibbon estimates the population at a hundred and twenty millions; many authorities think that figure too high; but Gibbon may well be right, or even under the mark,--and it may account for the rapid decline that followed the age of the Antonines. For I suspect that a too great population is a great danger, that hosts at such times pour into incarnation, besides those that have good right to call themselves human souls;--that the maxim "fewer children and better ones" is based upon deep and occult laws. China in her great days would never appear to have had more than from fifty to seventy millions: the present enormous figures have grown up only since the Manchu conquest. There was no great stir of creative intellect and imagination in second century Rome: little noteworthy production in literature after Trajan's death. The greatest energies went into building; especially under Hadrian. The time was mainly static,--though golden. There were huge and opulent cities, and they were beautiful; there was enormous wealth; an even and widespread culture affecting to sweetness and light the lives of millions-- by race Britons, Gauls, Moors, Asiatics or what not, but all proud to be Romans; all sharing in the blessings of the Roman Citizenship and Peace. Not without self-government, either, in local affairs: thus we find Welsh clans in Britain still with kings, and stranger still, with senates, of their own. It was the quiet and perfect moment at the apex of a cycle: the moment that precedes descent. The old impulse of conquest flickered up, almost for the last time, under Trajan, some of whose gains wise Hadrian wisely abandoned. Under whom it was, and under the first Antonine, that the empire stood in its perfect and final form: neither growing nor decreasing; neither on the offensive nor actively on the defensive. Now remember the cycles: sixty-five years of manvantara under Augustus and Tiberius,--B.C. 29 to A. D. 36. Then sixty-five mostly of pralaya from 36 to 101; and now sixty-five more of mnavantara under the Five Good Emperors (or three of them), from 101 to 166. But why stop at 166, you ask. Had not Marcus Aurelius, the best of them all, until 180 to reign?--He had; and yet the change came in 166; after that year Rome stood on the defensive until she fell. It was in that year, you will remember, that King An-tun Aurelius's envoys reached Loyang by way of Bumiah and the sea. But note this: Domitian was killed, and Nerva came to the throne, and Rome had leave to breathe freely again, in five years before the half-cycle of shadows should have ended: the two years of Nerva, and the first three of Trajan, we may call borrowed by the dawning manvantara from the dusk of the pralaya that was passing. Now if we took the strictness of the cycles _au_ very _pied de lettre,_ we should be a little uneasy about the last five years of that manvantara; we should expect them at least to be filled with omens of coming evil; we should expect to find in them a dark compensation for the five bright years at the tail of the old pralaya.--Well, cycles have sometimes a pretty way of fulfilling expectations. For see what happened:-- Marcus Aurelius came to the throne in 161: a known man, not untried; one, certalnly, to keep the Golden Age in being,--if kept in being it might be. Greatly capable in action, saintly in life and ideals: what could Rome ask better? Or what had she to fear?--The king is the representative man: it must have been a wonderful Rome, we may note in passing, that was ruled by and went with and loved well those two saintly philosophic Antonines enthroned.--Nothing, then, could seem more hopeful. Under the circumstances it was rather a mean trick on the part of Father Tiber (to whom the Romans pray), that before a year was out he must needs be breeding trouble for his votaries: overflowing, the ingrate, and sweeping away large parts of his city; wasting fields and slaughtering men (to quote Macaulay again); drowning cattle wholesale, and causing shortage of supplies. And he does but give the hint to the other gods, it seems; who are not slow to follow suit. Earthquakes are the next thing; then fires; then comes in Beelzebub with a plague of insects. There is no end to it. The legions in Britain,--after all this long peace and good order,--grow frisky: mind them of ancient and profitable times when you might catch big fish in troubled waters;--and try to induce their general to revolt. Then Parthian Vologaeses sees his chance; declares war, annihilates a Roman army, and overruns Syria. Verus, co-emperor by a certain too generous unwisdom that remains a kind of admirable fly in the ointment of the character of Aurelius, shows his mettle against the Parthians,--taking his command as a chance for having a luxurious fling beyond the reach and supervision of his severe colleague;--and things would go ill indeed in the East but for Avidius Cassius, Verus' second in command. This Cassius returns victorious in 165, and brings in his wake disaster worse than any Parthians:--after battle, murder, and sudden death come plague, pestilence, and famine. In 166 the first of these latter three broke out, devastated Rome, Italy, the empire in general; famine followed;--it was thought the end of all things was at hand. It was the first stroke of the cataclysm that sent Rome down. . . . Then came Quadi and Marcomans, Hun-impelled, thundering on the doors of Pannonia; and for the next eleven years Aurelius was busy fighting them. Then Avidius Cassius revolted in Asia;--but was soon assassinated. Then the Christians emerged from their obscurity, preachers of what seemed anti-national doctrine; and the wise and noble emperor found himself obliged to deal with them harshly. He _was_ wise and noble,--there is no impugning that; and he _did_ deal with them harshly: we may regret it; as he must have regretted it then. So the reign marks a definite turning-point: that at which the empire began to go down. In it the three main causes of the ruin of the ancient world appeared: the first of the pestilences that depopulated it; the first incursion of the barbarians that broke it down from without; the new religion that, with its loyalty primarily to a church, an _imperium in imperior,_ undermined Roman patriotism from within. Nero's persecution of the Christians had been on a different footing: a madman's lust to be cruel, the sensuality that finds satisfaction in watching torture: there was neither statecraft nor religion in it; but here the Roman state saw itself threatened. It was threatened; but it is a pity Aurelius could find no other way. In himself he was the culmination of all the good that had been Roman: a Stoic, and the finest fruit of Stoicism,--which was the finest fruit of philosophy unillumined (as I think) by the spiritual light of mysticism. He practised all the virtues; but (perhaps) we do not find in him that knowledge of the Inner Laws and Worlds which alone can make practise of the virtues a saving energy in the life of nations, and the imspiration of great ages and awakener of the hidden god in the creative imagination of man. The burden of his _Meditations_ is self-mastery: a reasoning of himself out of the power of the small and great annoyances of life;--this is to stand on the defensive; but the spiritual World-Conqueror must march out, and flash his conquering armies over all the continents of thought. An underlying sadness is to be felt in Aurelius's writings. He lived greatly and nobly for a world he could not save... that could not be saved, so far as he knew. He died in 180; and another Nero, without Nero's artistic instincts, came to the throne in his son Commodus; pralaya, military rule, disruption, had definitely set in. Now anciently a manvantara had begun in Western Asia somewhere about 1890 B.C.; had lasted fifteen centuries, as the wont of them appears to be; and had given place to pralaya about 390; and that, in turn, was due to end in or about 220 A.D. We should, if we had confidence in these cycles, look for what remained of the Crest-Wave in Europe to be wandering flickeringly eastward about this time. Hitherto it had been in two of the three world-centers of civilization: in China and in Europe; now for a few centuries it was to be divided between three.--I am irrigating the garden, and get a fine flow from the faucet, which gives me a sense of inward peace and satisfaction. Suddenly the fine flow diminishes to a miserable dribble, and all my happiness is gone. I look eastward, to the next garden below on the slope; and see my neighbors busy there: their faucet has been turned on, and is flowing royally; and I know where the water is going. The West-Asian faucet was due to be turned on in the two-twenties; now watch the spray from the sprinklers in the Chinese and Roman gardens. In those two-twenties we saw China split into three; and it rather looked as if the manvantara had ended. I shall not look at West Asia yet, but leave it for a future lecture. But in Europe, with Marcus Aurelius died almost the last Italian you could call a Crest-Wave Ego. The cyclic forces, outworn and old, produced after that no order that you can go upon: events followed each other higgledipiggledy and inertly;-- but it was the Illyrian legions that put him on the throne. Note that Illyria: it is what we shall soon grow accustomed to calling _Jugoslavia._ Severus's reign of eighteen years, from 193 to 211, was the only strong one, almost the only one not disgraceful, until 268; by which time the Roman world was in anarchy, split into dozens, with emperors springing up like mushrooms everywhere. Then came a succession of strong soldiers who reestablished unity: Claudius Gothicaus, an Illyrian peasant; Aurelian, an Illyrian peasant; Tacitus, a Roman senator, for one year only; Probus, an Illyrian peasant; Caus, an Illyrian; then the greatest of all statesmen since Hadian, who refounded the empire on a new plan,--the Illyrian who began life as Docles the slave, rose to be Diocles the soldier, and finally, in 284, tiaraed Diocletian reigning with all the pomp and mystery and magnificence of an Eastern King of kings. He it was who felt the cyclic flow, and moved his capital to Nicomedia, which is about fifty miles south and east from Constaintinople. One can speak of no Illyrian cycle; rather only of the Crest-Wave dropping a number of strong men there as it trailed eastward towards West Asia. The intellect of the empire, in that third century, and the spiritual force, all incarnated in the Roman West-Asian seats; in Egypt, Asia Minor, and Syria, as we shall see in a moment. But you not how bueautifully orderly, in a geographical sense, are the movements of the Wave in Roman world and epoch: beginning in Italy in the first century B.C.; going west to Spain about A.D. 1,--and to Gaul too, though there kindling chiefly material and industrial greatness; passing through Italy again in the late first and in the second century, in the time of the Glavians and the five Good Emperors; then in the third like a swan flying eastward, with one wing, the material one, stretched over Illyria raising up mighty soldiers and administrators there, and the other, the spiritual wing, over Egypt, there fanning (as we shall see) the fires of esotericism to flame. For it was in that third century, while disaster on disaster was engulfing the power and prestige of Rome, that the strongest spiritual movement of all the Roman period came into being. History would not take much note of the year in which a porter in Alexandria was born; so the birth-date of the man we come to now is unknown. It would have been, however, not later than 180; since he had among his pupils one man at least born not later than 185. According to Eusebius, he was born a Christian; and H.P. Blavatsky, in _The Key to Theosophy,_ seems to accept, or at least not to contradict, this view. I think she often did allow popular views on non-essentials to pass, for lack of time and immediate need to contradict them. But Eusebius (of who she has much to say, and none of it complimentary to his truthfulness) is, I believe, the sole authority for it; and scholars since have found good reason for supposing that he was mixing this man with another of the same name, who _was_ a Christian; whereas (it is thought) this man was not. Be that as it may, we know almost nothing about him; except that he began life as a porter, with the job of carrying goods in sacks; whence he got the surname Sakkophoros, latter shortened to Saccas;--from which you will have divined by this time that his personal name was Ammonius. We know also that early in the third century he had gathered disciples about him, and was teaching them a doctrine he called _Theosophy;_ very properly, since it was and is the Wisdom of the gods or divine Wisdom. An eclectic system, as they say; wherein the truths in all such philosophies and religions as come handy were fitted together and set forth. But in truth all this was but the nexus of his teaching: Theosophy, then as now, is eclectic only in this sense: that some truth out of it underlies all religions and systems; which they derive from it, and it from them nothing. All through the long West-Asian pralaya,--West-Asian includes Egyptian,--the seeds of the Esoteric Wisdom remained in those parts; they lacked vitalization, because the world-currents were not playing there then; but they survived in Egypt from the Egyptian Mysteries of old; and as in India you might have found men who knew about them, but not how to use them for the uplifting of the world,--so doubtless you should have found such men in Egypt during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Hence the statement of Diogenes Laertius, that the Theosophy of Ammonius Saccas originated with one Pot Ammun, a priest of Ptolemaic times: who, perhaps, was one of those who transmitted the doctrine in secret. The seeds were there, then; and how that the Crest Wave was coming back to West Asia, it was possible for Ammonius to quicken them; and this he did. But it had not quite come back; so he made nothing public. He wrote nothing; he had his circle of disciples, and what he taught is to be know from them. Among them was Origen, who was born, or became, a Christian; but who introduced into, or emphasized in, his Christianity much sound Theosophical teaching; very likely he was deputed to capture Christianity, or some part of it, for truth. Here I may offer a little explanation of something that may have puzzled some of us: it will be remembered that Mr. Judge says somewhere that Reincarnation was condemned by the Council of Constantinople; and that in a series of learned articles which appeared in THE THEOSOPHICAL PATH recently, the late Rev. S.J. Neill contradicted this asserion. The truth seems to be this: Origen taught, if not Reincarnation, at least the pre-existence of souls; and, says the _Encyclopaedia Britannica:_ "It is true that many scholars deny that Origen [read, his teachings] was condemned by this council [of Constantinople, A.D. 553]; but Moller rightly holds that the condemnation is proved." Another pupil of Ammonius was Cassius Longinus, born in 213 at Emessa (Homs) in Asia Minor. Later he taught Platonism for thirty years at Athens; then in the two-sixties went east to the court of Zenobia at Palmyra,--whose brilliant empire, though it fell before the Illyrian Aurelian, was a sign in its time that the Crest-Wave had come back to West Asia. Longinus became her chief counselor; it was by his advice that she resisted Aurelian;--who pardoned the Arab queen, and, after she had paraded Rome in his triumph, became very good friends with her; but condemned her counselor to death. But Longinus I think had failed to follow in the paths laid down for him by his Teacher: we find him in disagreement with that Teacher's successor. Who was Plotinus, born of Roman parents at Lycopolis in Egypt. It is from his writings we get the best account of Ammonius' doctrine. He was with the latter until 243; then joined Gordian III's expedition against Persia, with a view to studying Persian and Indian philosophies at their source. But Gordian was assassinated; and Plotinus, after a stay at Antioch, made his way to Rome and opened a school there. This was in the so-called Age of the Thirty Tyrants, when the central government was at its weakest. Gallienus was emperor in Rome, and every province had an emperorlet of its own;--it was before the Illyrian peasant-soldiers had set affairs on their feet again. A lazy erratic creature, this Gallienus; says Gibbon: "In every art that he attempted his lively genius enable him to succeed; and, as his genius was destitute of judgement, he attempted every art, except the important ones of war and government. He was master of several curious but useless sciences, a ready orator, an elegant poet, a skilful gardener, an excellent cook, and a most contemptible prince." Yet he had a curious higher side to his nature, wherewith he might have done much for humanity,--if he had ever bothered to bring it to the fore. He, and his wife, were deeply interested in the teachings of Plotinus. Such a man may sometimes be 'run,' and made the instrument of great accomplishment: a morass through which here and there are solid footholds; if you can find them, you may reach firm ground, but you must walk infinitely carefully. It is the old tale of the Prince with the dual nature, and the Initiate who tries to use him for the saving of the world,--and fails. Plotinus knew what he was about. Was it last week we were talking of the endless need of the ages: a stronghold of the Gods to be established in this world, whence they might conduct their cyclic raidings? What had Pythagoras tried to do in his day?--Found a Center of Learning in the West, in which the Laws of Life, physical, mental, moral, and spiritual, should be taught. He did found it,--at Croton; but Croton was destroyed, and all the history of the next seven centuries suffered from the destruction. Then--it was seven centuries after his death,-- Ammonius Saccas arose, and started things again; and left a successor who was able to carry them forward almost to the point where Pythagoras left them. For the fame of this Neo-Platonic Theosophy had traveled by this time right over the empire; and Plotinus in Rome, and in high favor with Gallienus, was a man on whom all eyes were turned. He proposed to found a Point Loma in Campania; to be called Platonopolis. Things were well in hand; the emperor and empress were enthusiastic:--as your Gallieneuses will be, for quarter of an hour at a time, over any high project. But certain of his ministers were against it; and he wobbled; and delayed; and thought of something else; and hung fire; and presently was killed. And Claudius, the first of the Illyrian emperors, who succeeded him, was much to busy defeating the Goths to come to Rome even,--much less could he pay attention to spiritual projects. Two years later Plotinus died, in 270;--and the chance was not to come again for more than sixteen centuries. But Neo-Platonism was not done with yet, by any means. Plotinus left a successor in his disciple Porphyry, born at Tyre or at Batanea in Syria in 233. You see they were all West Asians, at least by birth: the first spiritual fruits of the Crest-Wave's influx there. Porphyry's name was originally Malchus (the Arabic _Malek,_ meaning _king_); but as a king was a wearer of the purple, someone changed it for him to Porphyry or 'Purple.' In 262 he went to Rome to study under Plotinus, and was with him for six years; then his health broke down, and he retired to Sicily to recover. In 273 he returned,--Plotinus had died three years before, and opened a Neo-Platonic School of his own. He taught through the last quarter of that century, while the Illyrian emperors were smashing back invaders on the frontiers or upstart emperors in the provinces. Without imperial support, no Platonopolis could have been founded; and there was no time for any of those Illyrians to think of such things.--even if they had had it in them to do so, as they had not:--witness Aurelian's execution of Longinus. The time had gone by for that highest of all victories: as it might have gone by in our own day, but for events in Chicago, in February, 1898. When Porphyry died in 304, he left a successor indeed; but now one that did not concern himself with Rome. It was Iamblichus, born in the Lebanon region; we do not know in what year; or much about him at all, beyond that he was an aristocrat, and well-to-do; and that he conducted his Theosophic activities mainly from his native city of Chalcis. he died between 330 and 333; thus through thirteen decades, from the beginning of the third century, these four great Neo-Platonist Adepts were teaching Theosophy in the Roman world;--Ammonius in Egypt; Plotinus and Porphyry,--the arm of the Movement stretched westward to save, if saved they might be, the Roman west Europe, --in Rome itself; then, since that was not be done, Iamblichus in Syria. We hear of no man to be named as successor to Iamblichus; I imagine the great line of Teachers came to an end with him. Yet, as we shall see, their impulse, or movement, or propaganda, did not cease then: it did not fail to reach an arm down into secular history, and to light up one fiery dynamic soul on the Imperial Throne, who did all that a God-ensouled Man could do to save the dying Roman world. Diocletian, that great but quite unillumined pagan, was dead; the new order, that subverted Rome at last, had been established by Constantine; and the House of Constantine, with all that it implied, was in power. But a year or two before the death of Iamblichus it chanced that a Great Soul stole a march on the House of Constantine, and (as you may say) surreptitiously incarnated in it, for the Cause of the Gods and Sublime Perfection. And to him, in his lonely and desolate youth, kept in confinement or captivity by the Christian on the throne, came one Maximus of Smyrna, a disciple of Iamblichus;-- and lit in the soul of Prince Julian that divine knowledge of Theosophy wherewith afterwards he made his splendid and tragic effort for Heaven. XXII. EASTWARD HO! The point we start out from this evening is, in time, the year 220 A.D., in place, West Asia: 220, or you may call it 226,-- sixty-five years, a half-cycle, after 161 and the accession of Marcus Aurelius; and therewith, in Rome, the beginning of the seasons prophetic of decline. So now we are in 226; look well around you; note your whereabouts;--for there is no resting here. You have seen? you have noted? On again then, I beseech you; and speedily. And, please, backwards: playing as it were the crab in time; and not content till the whole pralaya is skipped, and you stand on the far shore, in the sunset of an elder day: looking now forward, into futurity, from 390, perhaps 394 B.C.; over first a half-cycle of Persian decline,--long melancholy sands and shingle, to--there on the edge of the great wan water,--that July in 330 when mean Satrap Bessus killed his king, Codomannus, last of the Achaemenidae, then in flight from Alexander;--and the House of Cyrus and Darius came to an end. What a time it was that drifted into Limbo then! One unit of history; one phase of the world's life-story! It had seen all those world-shaking Tiglath-pilesers eastward; all those proud Osirified kings by the Nile;--and now it was over; had died in its last stronghold, Persia, and there was nowhere else for it to be reborn; and, after a decent half-cycle of lying in state under degenerate descendants of the great Darius, had been furied (cataclysmal obsequies!) beneath a landslide of Hellenistic Macedonianism. Its old civilization, senile long since, was gone, and a new kind from the west superimposed;--Babylon was a memory vague and splendid;--the Assyrian had gone down, and should never re-arise:--Egypt of the Pharaohs had fallen forever and ever;--Aryan Persia was over-run;-- "Iran indeed had gone, with all his rose, And Jamshyd's seven-ringed cup, where no one knows:" --And the angel that recorded their deeds and misdeed had written _Tamam_ on the last page, sprinkled sand over the ink,--shut the volume, and put it away on the shelf;--and with a _Thank God that's done with!_ settled down to snooze for six hundred years and ten. For what had he to do with what followed? With Alexander's wedding-feast in 324,--when upwards of ten thousand couples, the grooms all Macedonian, the brides all Persian, were united: what had he to do with the new race young Achilles Redivivus thus proposed to bring into being? These were mere Macedonian doings, to be recorded by his brother angel of Europe; as also were the death of Alexander, and his grand schemes that came to nothing. There was no West Asia now; only Europe: all was European and Hellenized to the borders of India, with periodical overflowings beyond;--just as, long afterwards, Spain was a province of West Asia; and just as Egypt now is submerged under a European power. Only the trouble is that the seed of something native always remains in regions so overflowed with an alien culture; and Alexander dreamed never of what might lie quiescent, resurrectable in time, in the mountains of Persis, the Achaemenian land, out of the path of the eastward march of his phalanxes;--or indeed, in those wide deserts southward, parched Araby, that none but a fool--and such was not Alexander--would trouble to invade or think of conquering: something that should in its time reassert West Asia over all Hellenedom, in Macedonia itself, and West beyond the Pillars of Hercules and the limits of the world. But let that be: it need trouble no one in this year of 324 B.C.! Only remember that "that which hath been shall be again, and there is nothing new under the sun." In this study of comparative history one finds after awhile that there are very few dates that count, and they are very easy to keep in mind. The same decades are important everywhere; and this because humanity is one, and however diversified on the outside, inwardly all history is the history of the one Host of Souls. Take 320 B.C. Alexander is dead three years, but the world is still vibrating with him. Chandragupta Maurya has just started his dynasty and great age in India, which is to last its thirteen decades until the neighborhood of 190. Seleucus Nicataor, the only one of the Macedonian _diadochi_ who has not divorced his Persian bride, is about to set up for himself a sovereignty in Babylon,--which Scipio Africanus, thirteen decades afterwards, struck from the list of the Great Powers when he defeated Seleucus' descendant Antiochus at Magnesia,--in 190 again; at which time the Romans first broke into Asia. And it was in the one-nineties, too, that the second Han Emperor came to the Dragon Thone, and the glorious age of the Western Hans began. Though the Seleucidae possessed for some time a great part of Darius Hystaspes' empire,--and, except Egypt, all the old imperial seats of the foregone manvantara,--they do not belong to West Asia at all; their history is not West-Asian, but European; they are a part of that manvantara whose forces were drifting West from Greece to Italy. The history of all the Macedonian kingdoms is profoundly uninteresting. There was enough of Greek in them to keep them polished; enough of Macedonian to keep them essentially barbarous; they sopped up some of the effeteness of the civilizations they had displaced, Egyptian and Asiatic; but the souls of those old civilizations remained aloof. There was mighty little Egypt in the Egypt of the Ptolemies: what memories and atmosphere of a grand antiquity survived, hid in the crypts and pyramids; all one saw was a sullen fanatic people scorning their conquerors. So too in Seleucus' Babylon there was little evidence of the old Childacan wisdom, or the Assyrian power, or the pride and chivalry of the Persian. It was Europe occupying West Asia; and not good Europe at that; and only able to do so (as is always the case) because the Soul of West Asia was temporarily absent. The Seleucidae maintained a mimic greatness in tinsels until 190 and Scipio and Magnesia; then a mere rising-tide-lapped sand-castle of a kingdom until, in 64 B.C., Pompey made what remained of it a Roman province,--just twice thirteen decades after the marriage-feast at Babylon; just when the great age of the Western Hans was ending, and when Augustus was thinking of being born, and (probably or possibly) Vikramaditya of starting up a splendor at Ujjain. What Pompey took,--what remained for him to take,--consisted only of Syria; all the eastern part of the Seleucid empire had gone long since. In 255 Diodotus, the Seleucid satrap of Bactria, rebelled and made himself a kingdom; and that the kingdom might become an empire, went further on the war-path. On the eastern shores of the Caspian he defeated one of the myriad nomad tribes of Turanian stock that haunt those parts,--first cousins, a few times removed perhaps, to our friends the Huns; a few more times removed, to that branch of their race that had, so to say, married above them and become thus a sort of poor relations to the aristocracy,--the Ts'inners who were at that time finishing up their conquest of China. Thus while the far eastern branch of the family was prospering mightily, the far western was getting into trouble: I may mention that they were known, these far westerners, as the _Parni;_ and that their chief had tickled his pride with assumption of the Persian name of Arsaces;--just as I dare say you should find various George Washingtons and Pompey the Greats now swaying empire in the less explored parts of Africa. South of this Parnian country lies what is now the province of Khorasan, mountainous; then a Seleucan satrapy known as Parthia;--also inhabited by Turanians, but of a little more settled sort; the satrap was Andragoras, who, like Diodotus in Bactria (only not quite so much so), had made himself independent of the reigning Antiochus (II). With him Arsaces found refuge after his defeat by Diodotus, and there spent the next seven years:--whether enjoying Andragoras' hospitality, or making trouble for him, this deponent knoweth not. In 248, however, he proceeeded to slay him and to reign in his stead. Two years later, Arsaces died, and his brother Tiridates succeeded him and carried on the good work; he was driven out by Seleucus II in 238, but returned to it when the latter was called westward by rebellions soon after. Thenceforward the Parthian kingdom was, as you might say, a fact in nature; though until a half-cycle had passed, a small and unimportant one, engaged mostly in reinvogorating the native Turanianism of the Parthians with fresh Parnian importations from the northern steppes. Then, in 170, Mithradates I came to the throne, and seriously founded an empire. He fought Eucratidas of Bactria, and won some territory from him. He fought eastward as far as to the Indus; then conquered Meida and Babylonia in the west. In 129 Demetrius II Nicator, the reigning Seleucid, attacked Mithradates' son, Phraates II, and was defeated; and the lands east of the Euphrates definitely passed from Seleucid to Parthian control. Why not, then, count as manvantaric doings in West Asia this rise of the Parthians to power? Why relegate them and their activities to the dimness of pralaya? Says the _Encyclopaedia Britannica:_ "The Parthian Empire as founded by the conquests of Mithradates I and restored, once by Mithradates II (the Great, c. 124 to 88 B.C.), and again by Phraates II (B.C. 76 to 70), was, to all exterior appearances, a continuation of the Achaemenid dominion. Thus the Arsacids now began to assume the old title 'King of kings' (the shahanshah of modern Persia), though previously their coins as a rule had borne only the legend 'great king.' The official version preserved by Arrian in his _Parthica,_ derives the line of These Parnian nomads from [the Achaemenian] Artaxerxes II. In reality however the Parthian empire was totally different from its predecessor, both externally and internally. It was anything rather than a world empire. The countries west of the Euphrates never owned its dominion, and even of Iran itself not one half was subject to the Arsacids. There were indeed vassal states on every hand, but the actual possessions of the kings--the provinces governed by their satraps--consisted of a rather narrow strip of land stretching from the Euphrates and north Babylonia through southern Media and Parthia as far as north-western Afghanistan... Round these provinces lay a ring of minor states which as a rule were dependent on the Arsacids. They might, however, partially transfer their allegiance on the rise of a new power (e.g. Tigranes in Armenia) or a Roman invasion. Thus it is not without justice that the Arsacid period is described, in the later Persian and Arabian tadition, as the period of the 'kings of the part-kingdoms'--among which the Ashkanians (i.e. the Arsacids) had won the first place.... "It may appear surprising that the Aracids made no attempt to incorporate the minor states in the empire and create a great and united dominion, such as existed under the Achaemenids and was afterwards restored by the Sassanians. This fact is the clearest symptom of the weakness of their empire and of the small power wielded by their King of kings. In contrast alike with its predecessors and successors the Arsacid dominion was peculiarly a chance formation--a state which had come into existence through fortuitous external circumstances, and had no firm foundation within itself, or any intrinsic _raison d'etre._" A Turanian domination over Iran, it had leave to exist only because the time was pralaya. When a man dies, life does not depart from his body; but only that which sways and organizes life; then life, ungoverned and disorganized, takes hold and riots. So with the seats of civilization. One generally finds that at such times some foreign power receives, as we are getting to say, a mandate (but from the Law) to run these dead or sleeping or disorganized regions,--until such time as they come to life again, and proceed to evict the mandataries.--As well to remember this, now that we are proposing, upon a brain-mind scheme, to arrange for ourselves what formerly the Law saw to:-- the nations that are now to be great and proud manditaries, shall sometime themselves be mandataried; and those that are mandataried now, shall then arrange their fate for them; there is no help for it: you cannot catch Spring in a trap, or cage up Summer lest he go.--It seems now we must believe in a new doctrine: that certain 'Nordics' are the Superior Race, and you must be blue-eyed and large and blond, or you shall never pass Peter's wicket. One of these days we shall have some learned ingenious Hottentot arising, to convince us poor others of the innate superiority of Hottentottendom, and that we had better bow down! . . . But to return: The Parthians remained little more than Central-Asian nomads: something between the Huns who destroved civilization, and the Turks who cultivated it for all they were worth (in a Central Asian-nomad sort of way). All their magnates were Turanian; they retained a taste for tent-life; their army and fighting tactics where of the desert-horseman type: mounted bowmen, charging and shooting, wheeling and scattering in flight,--which put not your trust in, or 'ware the "Parthian shot." They were not armed for close combat; and were quite defenseless in winter, when the weather slackened their bow-string. True, Aryan Iran put its impress on them: so that presently their kings wore long beards in the Achaemenian fashion, made for themselves an Achaemenian descent, called themselves by Achaemenian names. They took on, too, the Achaemenian religion of Zoroaster:--so, but much more earnestly and adventurously and _opera-bouffe_ grimly. Ts'in Shi Hwangti took on the quest of Tao. There was also a stratum of Hellenistic culture in their domains, and they took on something of that. When they conquered Babylonia, it was inevitable that they should move their headquarters down into that richest and most thickly-populated part of their realm--to Seleucia, the natural capital, one might suppos?--a huge Hellenistic city well organized for world-commerce.--But let these nomad kings come into it with their horde, and what would become of the ordered civic life? Nomads do not take well to life in great cities; they love the openness of their everlasting plains, and the narrrow streets and high buildings irk their sensibilities. For this reason, and perhaps because they recognised their deficienceies, they shunned Seleucia; and built themselves lumbering straggling gawky Ctesiphon across the Tigris to be their chief capital;--for they had many; not abiding to be long in one place, but gadding about as of old. Still, Greek culture was not to be denied. They coined money, copying the inscriptions on the coins of the Seleucids, and copyting them ever worse and worse. Not until after 77 A.D., and then only occasionally, do Parthian coins bear inscriptions in Aramaic. Yet sometimes we hear of their being touched more deeply with Greekness. Orodes I,--he who defeated Crassus,-- spoke good Greek, and Greek tragedies were played at his court.-- As with nomads generally, it was always easy for a Parthian king to shark up a great army and achieve a striking victory; but as a rule impossible to keep the horde so sharked up thogether for solid conquests; and above all, it was impossible to organize anything. But they played their part in history: striking down to cut off the flow of Greek culture eastward. It had gone, upon Alexander's impulse, up into Afghanistan and down into India; may even have touched Han China,--probably did. I do not suppose that the touch could have done anything but good in India and China; where culture was well-established, older, and in all essentials higher, than in Greece. But in Persia itself the case was different. Persia was under pralaya, in retreat among its original mountains; and submergence under Hellenisticism might have meant for its oblivion of its own native Persianism. Consder: of the two great centers of West-Asian culture, Egypt fell under Greek, and then under Roman, dominion; and the old Egyptian civilization became, so far as we can tell, utterly a thing of the past. When Egypt rose again, under the Esotericist Sultans of the tenth century A.D., I dare not quite say that her new glory was linked by nothing whaterver to the ancient glory of the Pharaohs; but that would be the general--as it is the obvious--view. Fallen into pralaya, she had no positive strength of her own to oppose to the active manvantaric influence of Greekism under the Ptolemies; and in Roman days it was her imported Greekism that she opposed to the Romans, not her own old and submerged Khemism. Her soul was buried very deep indeed, if it remained with her at all. In Persia, on the other hand, West Asia retained much more clearly its cultural identity. Persianism was submerged for about thirteen decades under the Seleucids; then the Parthians cut in, and the drowning waters were drained away. The Parthians had no superior culture to impose on the Persians; whereas the Greeks had,--because theirs was active and in manvantara, while that of the Persians themselves was negative, because in pralaya. One might say roughly that a nation under the dominance of a people more highly or actively cultured than itself, tends to lose the integrity of its own culture,--as has happened in Ireland and Wales under English rule:--they take on, not advantageously, an imitation of the culture of their rulers. But under the dominance of a stronger, but less advanced, people, they tend to seek refuge the more keenly in their own cultural sources: as the Finns and Poles have done under the Russians. This explains in part the difference between Egypt and Persia it the dawn of the new West-Asian manvantara. We have seen that in the former the seeds were ready to sprout, and did,--in Ammonius Saccas and his movement. They were Egyptian seeds; but the soil and fertilizers were so Greek that the blossom when it appeared seemed not Egyptian, not West-Asian, but Neo-Greek; and turned not to the rising, but to the setting sun. The new growth affiliated itself to the European manvantara that was passing, not to the West-Asian one that was to begin. Persia was in a different position. Certain events went to quicken the Persian seed within the Parthian empire. One was the rise of the Yueh Chi. During the period between the end of the brilliance of the Western, and the beginning of that of the Eastern Hans, these people were consolidating an empire in Northern India, and figuring there as the Kushan Dynasty: their power culminated, probably, in the reign of Kanishka. They had wrested from the Parthians some of their eastern provinces;--really, the overlordship of these rather than the sovereignty, for the Parthians held all things lightly except the ground they happened to be camping on; and this made a change in the center of Parthian gravity which was of enormous help to the Persians. The heart of Persiandom was the province of Fars or Persis, the mountain-land lying to the east of the Persian Gulf, and between it and the Great Persian Desert. Mesopotamia, where were Ctesiphon, the Parthian's chief capital, and Seleucia, their greatest city,--the richest and most populated part of their empire, stretches northward from the very top of the gulf, a long way from Fars; and the main routes eastward from Mesopotamia run well to the north of the latter avoiding its mountains and desert beyond. So this province is remote, and well calculated to maintain appreciable independence of any empire not born in itself. The Parthian writ had never run there much; nor had the Median in the days when the Medes were in power; though of that empire, as of the Parthian, it had been more or less nominally a dependent province. It was from these mountains that a chieftain came, in the five-fifties B.C., to over turn Astyages the Mede's sovereignty, and replace it with his own Achaemenian Persian; and to take Persianism out of mountain Fars, and spread it over all West Asia. Back to Fars, when the Achaemenians fell, that Persianism receded; there to maintain itself unimportantly aloof through the Seleucid and Arsacid ages; probably never very seriously menaced by Greekism, even in Seleucid times, because so remote from the routes of trade and armies. The conquests of the Yueh Chi put Fars still nearer the circumference of Parthia: threw the center of that more definitely into Mesopotamia, and closed the avenues eastward. The change made Fars the more conscious of herself. But there were Persians all over the Parthian domain; and had been ever since they first went down out of their mountains under Cyhrus to conquer. It was in accordance with what I may call the Law of Cyclic Backwashes, that the rise of Yueh Chi should have stirred up Persian feeling in them everywhere. Thus: the impulse of Han Wuti's westward activities passed as a quickening into the Yueh Chi; and on from them, not into the Parthians, who were but an unreality and mirage of empire, but into these Persians, the true possessors of the land whose turn it was to be quickened. They began remembering, now, their ancient greatness; and turning their eyes to their still half-independent ancestral mountains, whence--dared they hope it?--another Cyrus might appear. Then came another psychic impulse, from the west: when Trajan's eastward victories shook the Parthian power again. Then,--you will remember how the Roman world was shaken at the time of Marcus Aurelius' accession: how Vologaeses seized the opportunity to attack; how Verus the co-emperor went against him, and made a mess of things; how Avidius Casius (who brought back the plague to Rome) saved the situation. In doing so, he conferred unwittingly untold benefits on the Persian subjects of Parthia. He destroyed Seleucia as a punitive measure. Now Seleucia had been the cultureal capital of the Parthian empire; and it was a Greek city. Its culture was Greek; and Greek culture had ever been, for Persianism, a graver danger and more present check than Parthian ignorance; or it submerged and abashed, where the other only ignore, the Persian spirit. So when Seleucia was wiped out, in 165, the chief and real enemy of the National Soul had vanished. The Persians might no longer look to Hellenism for their cultural inspiration; might no more set up _Its_ light against the Parthian darkness; they must find a light instead proper to their own souls;--and must look towards mountain Fars to find it. Within a half-cycle they were up. They were due to be up, as you will remember, in the two-twenties: the decade in which we saw the stream in China, as in Rome, diminish. Troubles had begun in Rome in 162, the second year of Aurelisus. 162 plus 65 are 227. In 227 Persia rose and Parthia vanished. In the second century A.D. there had been a man in Fars named Papak the son of Sassan, who took as his motto the well-known lines from Marlowe: "Is it not passing brave to be a king And ride in triumph through Persepolis?" --Persepolis, indeed, was gone, and only its vast and pillared ruins remained in the wilderness; but near by the town of Istakhr had grown up, to be what Persepolis had been in the old Achaemenian days,--the heart and center of Fars, which is spiritually, the heart and center of all Iran. Papak thought he would make Istakhr serve his purpose; and did;--and reigned there in due course without ever a Parthian to say him nay. In 212 he died; and what he had been and desired to be, that his son Ardashir would be in turn, and much more also. This Ardashir was very busy remembering the story of the Achaemenidae: men, like himself, of Fars; men, like himself, of the One and Only True Religion: but further, conquerors of the world and Kings of the kings of Iran and Turan. And if they, why not he?--So he goes to it, and from king of Istakhr becomes king of Fars; and then unobtrusively takes in Karmania eastward;--until news of his doings comes to the ears of his suzerain Artabanus King of Parthis, who does not like it. Artabanus has recently (217) received in indemnity a matter of seven and a half million dollars from a well-whipped Roman emperor; and is not prepared to see his own uderlings give themselves airs;--so whistles up his horde of cavalry, and marches south and east to settle things. Three battles, and the Parthian empire is a thing of the past; and Ardashir (which is Artaxerxes) the son of Papak the son of Sassan sits in the great seat of the Achaemenidae. Now this is the key to all the history of the west in those times; and we may include West Asia in the west:--the world was going down, and each new phase of civilization was something worse than the one before. I cannot but see degeneracy, and with every age a step further from ancient truth: Rome with less light than Greece; the Sassanians a feebble copy of the Achaemenians:--knowledge of the Realities receding ever into the past. A new spirit had been coming in since the beginning of the Christian era, or since the living flame of the last-surviving Mysteries was quenched. It is one we are but painfully struggling away from now; it has tainted all life west of China since. China, with her satellite nations, alone in the main escaped it: I mean, the spirit of religious intolerance. The odium of introducing it belongs not (as you might think) to one particular religious body, but to the evil in humanlty; on which, since the Mysteries were destroyed, there had been no effective check. The corner-stone of true religion is the Divine Spirit omnipresent in Nature; the Divine Soul in Man. As well forbid the rest of men to breathe the air you breathe, or walk under your private stretches of sky, as try to peg yourself out a special claim in these! You cannot do it, and the first instinct of man should be that you cannot do it. But lose sight of these Divine Things; lose the sense that perceives them, their essential universality, their inevitable universality;--and where are you? What are you to do about the inner life?--Why, for lack of reality, you shall take a sham: you shall hatch up some formula of words; or better still, take the formula already hatched that comes handiest; call it your creed or confession of faith; fix your belief on that, as supreme and infallible, the sure and certain key to the mysteries within and around you;-- then you may cease to think of those mysteries altogether; the word-formula will be enough; it is that, not thought, not action, that saves. I believe in--such and such an arrangement of consonants and vowels;--and therefore I am saved, and highly superior; and you, poor reptile, who possess not this arrangement, but some other and totally false one;--you, thank God, are damned. You are lost; you shall go to hell; I scorn and look down on you from the heights of the special favor of the Maker of the Stars and Suns: as if I lay already snug in Abraham's bosom, and watched you parched and howling.--The Mysteries were gone; there was no Center of Light in the West, from which the thought-essence of common sense might seep out purifying year by year into men's minds; Theosophy the grand antiseptic was not; so such tomfoolery as this came in to take its place. You must react to this from indifference, and to indifference from this;--two poles of inner darkness, and wretched unthinking humanity wobbling between them;--so long as you have no Light. What then is the Light?--Why, simply something you cannot confine in a church or bottle in a creed: and this is a proposition that needs no proving at all, because it is self-evident. There was a fellow in English Wiltshire once, they say, who planted a hedge about his field to keep in the cuckoo from her annual migration. The spirit of Cuckoo-hedging came in, in the first centuries A. D. It was totally unknown to the Roman polity. Whatever inner things any man or nation chose to bear witness to, said the Roman state, were to be supposed to exist; and might be proclaimed, were they not subversive of the public order, for the benefit of any that needed them. There were two exceptions: Druidism; we have glanced at a possible reason why it was proscribed in Gaul by Augustus; another reason may been that the Druids clung to the memories of Celtic--and so anti-Roman--great things forelost. The other exception was the first historical world-religion that proclaimed the doctrine,--_Believe or be damned!_ Over the portals of the first century A.D., says H.P. Blavatsky, the words "the Karma of Israel" are written. Judaism had never tried to impress itself on the world, as the religion that was born from it did.--It is rarely that one finds sane views taken as to Jewish history; it is a history, and a race, that provoke extreme feelings. A small people, originally exiled from India, that had had eight thousand years of vicissitudes since; sometimes, it is necessary to think, high fortunes;--no doubt an age of splendor once under their great king Solomon, or some one else for whom the traditional Solomon stands; oftenest, perhaps, subjected to their powerful neighbors in Egypt, Babylon, or Assyria, and latterly Rome: you may say that no doubt they were in the long run no better and no worse than the rest of mankind. They had great qualities, and the failings correspondent. They had, like all other races, their champions of the Light, their Prophets and wise Rabbis; and in ages of darkness their stiff necked fierce materialism incased in dogma and inthroned in high places in the national religion. Their history has been lifted to a bad eminence,--bad for them and the rest of us,--by the ignorance of the last two millenniums; in reality, that history, sanely understood, and not gathered too much from their own records, amply explains their failings and their virtues, and should leave us not unduly admiring, nor unfraternally the reverse. They were human; which means, subject to human duality, to cycles of light, and cycles of darkness. The centuries after the sixth B.C. were, as we have seen, a cycle of growing darkness for most of the world. The position of the Jews, a small people surrounded by great ones, and therefore always liable to be trampled on, had intensified their national feeling to an extraordinary pitch; and their religion was the one lasting bond of their nationality. So, at the beginning of the Christian era, they were notoriously the most difficult people to govern in the Roman world. The passing of the Egyptian Mysteries had left those Egyptians who still were Egyptian sullenly fanatical; but the reaction from ancient greatness kept that fanaticism aloof,--the energies were dormant: Egypt, thoroughly conquered, turned her face from the world, and hoped for nothing. But the Jews maintained an inextinguishable hope; they nourished on it a fighting spirit which entered fiercely into the religion that was for them the one and only truth, and that lifted them in their own estimation high above the rest of mankind. Romans and Egyptians alike worshiped the Gods, though they called them by different names; but the Jews abhorred the Gods. The Maker of Sirius and Canopus and the far limits of the galaxy was a good Jew like themselves, their peculiar property; He had his earthly headquarters in Jerusalem; spoke, I suppose, only Hebrew, and considered other languages gibberish; of all this earth, was only interested in a tiny corner at the south-east end of the Mediterrancan; and of all the millions of humanity only in the million or two of his Chosen People. I say at once that, considering their history, and the universal decline of the Mysteries, and the gathering darkness of the age, there is nothing surprising in their attitude. Much oppression, many conquests,--never accepted by themselves,--had driven them in on themselves and kept their racial self-consciousness at a perpetual boiling-point; and it all went into their religion, which compensated them with unearthly dignities for the indignities they suffered on earth .... _them_.... the Chosen People of the Lord! It bred in them scorn of the Gentiles, for which there was no solvent in the Roman polity, the Roman citizenship, the Roman peace.--There must have been always noble protest-ants among them. The common people,--as the picture in the Gospels shows,--were ready enough to fraternize humanly with Gentiles and Romans; but the fact remains that at the time Judaism gave birth to Christianity, this narrow fierce antagonism to all other religions was the official attitude of the Jewish church. It was, perhaps, the darkest moment in Jewish spiritual history; and it was the moment chosen by a Teacher as that in which he should be born a Jew. The story in the Gospels cannot, I suppose, be taken as _au pied de lettre_ historical; but no doubt it gives a general picture which is true enough. And the picture it gives shows the Jewish proletariat in very favorable contrast with the officials heads of the church and state. They, the common people, received the Teacher well; to them, he was a gracious figure whom they came in multitudes to hear. He was in fierce opposition to the hierarchic aristocracy,--the "scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites," as he called them: the body that nourished the tradition of exclusiveness and intolerance. He preached pure ethics to the people, and they loved him for it. He gathered round him disciples,--men eager to learn from him that which it would have been ridiculous to have tried to teach the mob: the Secret Wisdom, without which to keep them sweet, ethics become sentimentalism, and philosophy a cold corpse. It is a law in the Schools of this Wisdom that seven years of training are necessary before the disciple can reach that grade of insight and self-mastery which will enable him in turn to become a Teacher: seven years at the very least. Within four years of the beginning of his mission, before, in the nature of things, one single disciple could have been more than half-trained, the hierarchic aristrocracy had had this Teacher crucified. Who, then, was to transmit his doctrine? he wrote nothing of it down; in the truest sense it never can be written down: had never had time to teach it; from any writings whatsoever each student can only gain the nexus of what he is to learn from life; for teaching does not mean giving dissertations, arguments, proofs; enunciating principles, and explaining them, or the like. It means, so far as one dare try to express it, bringing such experiences to bear on the lives of those who are to be taught, as shall awaken their own inner perceptions to truth. So this Man's doctrine _was never transmitted._ His disciples, good and earnest men, as we may imagine, had not the weapons spiritual wherewith to wage effective warfare for the Light. Supposing H.P. Blavatsky had died in 1879....? The next step was, the inevitable materialization of the whole movement. It followed the course all such movements must follow, that are without spiritual leadership at the head, spiritual wisdom at the core. It reacted against the exclusiveness of Judaism,--and at the same time inherited it. Feelings of that sort lie far deeper than the articles of belief; a change of creed will not remove them; it needs special, defined, and herculean efforts to remove them. You might, for example, react from a bigoted creed to one whose sole proclaimed article was universal toleration, and become a fierce bigot in that,--for the creed, not the idea; because creeds always obscure ideas: when a creed is formulated, it means that ideas are shelved. So now Chrisitianity inherited the Chosen People dogma, but transferred it from a racial-ecclesiastical to a wholly ecclesiastical basis; and, since every Teacher comes upon a cyclic impusle outward, took on a missionary spirit. The Chosen People now were the members of the church, who might belong to any race. Within that churchly pale you were saved; you were a special protege of the Maker of Sirius and Canopus and the far limits of the galaxy; who had--for a dogma had to be invented to explain the untimely disastrous death of the Teacher,--incarnated and been crucified in Judea. Outside that pale you were damned,--from Caesar on his throne to the smallest newsboy yelling false news in the Forum. While such a spirit had been confined to the Jews, it had been comparatively harmless; now it was spreading broadcast through the Roman world, an entirely new thing, and the darkest and most ominous yet. Whom, then, shall we blame? These sectarians?--No: to understand is to forgo the imagined right apportioning blame. It was that humanity had entered on a dark region in time: a region whose terrors had not been forefended; to be entered perforce by a humanity, or section of humanity, that had no Center of Light established in its midst. Had Croton of Pythagoras survived; or the Mysteries at Gaulish Bibracte: had there been but one firm foothold for the Lodge in the world of men;--I think none of these things could have come about; and that for the same reason that you cannot have total darkness in a room in which a lamp is lighted. But this darkness was total: intolerance is the negation of spiritual light. Of all the various movements in the Roman world that had not actual members of the Lodge behind and moving them, Christianity had the greatest impetus; and it was the one that first entered into this murk and deadly gloom. So that it may seem, to an impartial but not too deeply-seeing eye, as if it were Christianity that invented the gloom. Not so; nor Judaism neither; nor any Christians nor Jews. It was the men who burned Croton; the man who killed the Mysteries in Gaul. For every disaster there are causes far and far back. Christianity had spread, by this third century, perhaps as much through the Parthian empire as through the Roman. The Zoroastrians had been as tolerant as the Romans; much more so to Christianity;--though the motive of their toleration had been pure indifference to everything religious; whereas in Rome there was statesmanship and wisdom behind theirs. The Persians reacted against Parthianism in all its manifestations. They were shocked at Parthian indifference. The Persian is as naturally religious as the Hindoo: and has the virtues and vices of the religious temperament. The virtues are a tendency to mysticism, a need to concern oneself with the unseen; the vices, a non-immunity to fanaticism and bigotry. They came down now from their mountains determined to combat the slackness; the indifference, the materialism of the world. The virus of intolerance was in the air,--a spirit like the germ of plague or any epidemic; one religion catches it from another. Let it be about, and you are in danger of catching it, unless your faith is based on actual inner enlightenment, and not faith at all, but knowledge; or unless you have a Teacher so enlightened to adjust you, and keep you too busy to catch it;--or unless you are totally heedless of the unseen. The Persians were not indifferent, but very much in earnest; and they had no knowledge, but only faith: so they stood in peculiar danger. And presently a Teacher came to them, and they rejected him. His name was Mani; he was born in Ctesiphon, of noble Persian family, probably in 215; and came forward as a Teacher (according to the Mohammedan tradition, which is the most trustworthy) at the coronation of Sapor I, Ardashir's successor, in 242. Sapor at first was disposed to hear him; but the Magi moved heaven and earth to change that disposition. Ardashir had bound church and state together in the closest union: no worship but the Zoroastrian was allowed in his dominions. This was mainly aimed at the Christians, and must have caused them much discomfort. But Mani, it would seem, rose against all this narrow-ness. It has been said that he taught Reincarnation, and again denied;--this much he taught certainly,--that all religions are founded on one body of truth. He drew his own doctrine from Zoroistrianism, Christianity (chiefly Gnostic), and Buddhism; taking from each what he found to be true. Manichaeism spread quickly, through the Roman world as well as through Persia; in the former it replaced Mithraism, another Persian growth, that had come to be preeminently the religion of the Roman soldier. Sapor looked on him favorably; Hormizd, the heir apparent, was more or less a disciple; but the Magi agitated. They arranged a great debate before the king, and therein convinced him; persuaded him, at least, to withdraw from the Teacher the light of his countenance;--and Mani found it expedient, or perhaps was compelled, to go into exile. In China; where the fimily of the Ts'ao Ts'ao who expelled the Eastern Hans, was reigning as the House of Wei in the north. There Mani busied himself, less in teaching his religion than in studying Chinese civilization,-- especially its arts and crafts, and most of all, carpet-weaving. Presently he ventured back to Persia, with a large knowledge of Chinese methods and a large collection of specimens;--with which he gave a new impetus to Persian art and manufactures. Hormizd came to the throne in 271, and befriended him and his doctrine; but reigned only a single year. His successor Bahram I in the name of Zoroastrianism had him flayed and crucified. So Sassanian history is, on the whole, uninteresting. Their culture stood for no great ideas; only for a narrow persecuting church. West Asia was not ready yet for great and world-important doings; it must wait for these till Mohammed, who struck into the very least promising quarter of it, and kindled in the barbarous wilderness a light to redeem the civilization of the western world. I shall hardly have to turn to the Sassanians again; so will say here what is to be said. We have seen that their empire was quite unlike the Parthian; it was a reversion to, and copy in small of, the Achaemenian of Cyrus and Darius. It never attained the size of that; and only late in its existence, and to a small degree, overflowed the Parthian limits. But it was a well-organized state, with a culture of its own; and enough military power to stand throughout its existence the serious rival of Rome. Its arts and crafts became famous, --thanks largely to Mani; in architecture it revived the Achaemenian tradition, with modifications of its own; and passed the result on to the Arabs when they rose, to be the basis of the Saracenic Style. There was a fairly extensive literature: largely religious, but with much also in _belles lettres,_ re-tellings of the old Iranian sagas, and the like. Its history is mainly the record of gigantic wars with Rome; these were diversified later by tussles with the Turks, Ephthalites or White Huns, _et hoc genus omne._ Its whole period of existence lasted from 227 to 637; 410 years;--which we may compare with the 426 of the Hans, and the Roman 424 from the accession of Augustus to the final division of the empire. Of its cycles, there is a little information forthcoming; but we may say this: Sapor I came to the throne in 241, succeeding his father Ardashir; he had on the whole a broad outlook; favored Mani at first; was at pains to bring in teachers of civilization from all possible sources;--with his reign the renaissance of the arts and learning, such as it was,--and it was by no means contemptible,-- began. Three times thirteen decades from that, and we are at 631. The thirteen decades (less a year) from 499 to 628 are mainly filled with the reigns of Kavadh I and the two Chosroeses,-- "Kai-Kobad the great and Kai-Khusru," --all three strong kings and conquerors. When Chosroes II was killed in 628, after a war with Heraclius that began brilliantly and ended in disaster,--the empire practically fell: split up under several pretenders, to be an easy prey for the Moslems a few years later. Was the whole Sassanian period divisible into a day, a night, and a day? Information is not at hand whereby one might gauge the life of the people, and say. The last thirteen decades, certainly, seem to have left their mark as an age of glory on the Persian imagination, and to have been remembered as such in the days of Omar Khayyam.--And here we must leave the Sassanians, having other fish to fry. We saw the Crest-Wave strike Rome (at Nerva's accession) in 96; then, 131 years later, raise up Ardashir and Persia in 227; --and so, I suppose, should incline to look east again, and jump another thirteen decades, and land in India, in 357 or thereabouts,--praying God to keep us from a bad fall. _India_ I allow; but look before you leap;--or, if you will, in mid-air turn over in your minds the old Indian cycles, as far as you know them, and see if they offer you any prospect of a landing-place. As thus: there were the Mauryas, 320 to 190 B. C.; thence on thirteen decades to 60 B.C.,--and near enough to the reputed 58 of the reputed Vikramaditya of Ujjain. On again (thirteen decades as usual) to the seventies A.D.--and good enough in all conscience for that slippery Kanishka who so dodges in and out among the early centuries, and is fitted with a new date by everyone who has to do with him. On again, from 70 to 200; nothing doing there, I regret to say, (that we know about). Never mind; on thence to 320,--the nearest point to our 357; let us land in the three-twenties then, and see what happens. On solid ground: for India, remarkably solid. There actually was a Golden Age there at that time; and everybody seems to agree that it lasted, say, one hundred and twenty-nine years; from 326 to 455. This you will note, was the period of the last phase of the Roman Empire: that of its rapid decline. In 323 Constantine came to the throne, and began making Chrisitianity the state religion; in 330 he moved his capital. After 456, no emperor ruled in the west but for puppets set up by the German Ricimer, two set up by Constantinople, and Romulus Augustulus, the last,--and all within twenty years. There is no bright spot within the whole thirteen decades, except the two years of Julian. The faucet was turned on in India; and the Roman garden went waterless, and wilted. What happened was this: in 320, one Chandragupta Gupta married the Pincess of Magadha; and an era was dated from their coronation on the 26th of February in that year. Their son Samudragupta succeeded his father in 326, and reigned until 375. It is characteristic of India that this, probably the greatest monarch since Asoka, is absolutely unmentioned in any history or contemporary literature: the sole evidence for his reign and greatness comes from coins and inscriptions. One of the latter is to be found on a pillar originally set up and inscribed by Asoka, now in the fort at Allahabad. It shows him a mighty conqueror, reigning over all Hindustan; victorious in the Deccan; and, by influence and alliances, dominant from Ceylon to the Oxus. His coins picture him playing on the lyre; the inscriptions speak of him as a poet and musician; in his reign began a great renaissance in art, architecture, literature, and perhaps especially in music,--a renaissance which reached its culmination in the reign of his successor. Another thing to note: when of old time Pushyamitra overturned the Buddhist Mauryas, he showed his Brahmin orthodoxy by performing the great Horse Sacrifice;--a sign that the ancient religion had come back in triumph. They let loose a horse to wander where it would, and followed it with an army for a whole year; then sacrificed it. Samudragupta performed the same rites;--and it is known that the Gupta age was one of strong reaction against Buddhism. I know that it is disputed now that there was ever a persecution of the Buddhists in India; but the tradition remains; and one of the Teachers, in a letter that appears either in the _Occult World_ or _Esoteric Buddhism,_ speaks of India as a land from which the Light of the Lodge had been driven with the followers of the Buddha. Certainly there were Buddhists in India long after this time: even a great Buddhist king in the seventh century: but it seems more than probably that the spirit of intolerance went east with the eastward cyclic flow we have noted this evening: from Christianity to Zoroastrianism: from Zoroastrianism under the Sassanids to Brahminism under the Guptas. Not, perhaps, that there was actual persecution, yet. Emissaries from the king of Ceylon found the shrine at Buddhagaya fallen into decay; and they themselves were not well treated at the site. The Buddhist kind, however, determined to remedy things as well as he could. He sent ambassadors with rich gifts to Samundragupta; who called the gifts tribute, and permitted him, on consideration thereof, to restore the shrine. The monastery then built by the Sinhalese was afterwards visited by Hiuen Tsang; who describes it as having three storeys, six halls, three towers, and accommodation for a thousand monks. "On it," says Hiuen Tsang, "the utmost skill of the artist has been employed; the ornamentation is in the richest colors, and the statue of Buddha is cast in gold and silver, decorated with gems and precious stones." A revolution took place in architecture in this age: the Buddhist style was abandoned, for something which, says Mrs. Flora Annie Steel: * ".....more ornate, less self-evident, served to reflect the new and elaborate pretensions of the priesthood." ------ * To whose book _India through the Ages,_ I am indebted for these facts concerning the Gupta Age. ------ It is summed up, says Mrs. Steel, in the words: "...._cucumber and gourd_... tall curved vimanas or towers, exactly like two thirds of a cucumber stuck in the ground and surmounted by a flat gourd-like 'amalika.' .... Exquisite in detail, perfect in the design and execution of their ornamentation, the form of these temples leaves much to be desired. The flat blob at the top seems to crush down the vague aspirings of the cucumber, which, even if unstopped, must erelong have ended in an earthward curve again." The age culminated in the next reign, that of Chandragupta II Vikramaditya. Heaven knows how to distingusih between him and his half-mythological namesake of B.C. 58 and Ujjain. Very possibly the Nine Gems of Literature and Kalidasa and _The Ring of Sakoontala_ belong to this reign really. At any rate it was a wonderful time. Fa-hien, the Chinese Buddhist traveler, obligingly visited India during its process, and left a picture of conditions. Personal liberty, says Mrs. Steel, was the keynote feature. There was no capital punishment; no hard pressure of the laws; there were excellent hospitals and charitable institutions of all sorts.--We are to see in the whole age, I imagine, a period of great brilliance, and of humaneness resulting from eight centuries of the really civilizing influence of Buddhism: far higher conditions than you should have found elsewhere to east or west at that time;--and also, the moment when the impulse of culture had reached its outward limit, and the reaction against the spiritual sources of culture began. Chandragupta Vikramaditya reigned until 413; Kumaragupta, great and successful also, until 455. Then, thirteen decades after Samudragupta's accession, came Skandagupta; and with him, the White Huns. He defeated them on a large scale in the fifties; but they returned again and again to the attack; during the next thirty years their pressure was breaking up the empire; till when Skandagupta died in 480, it fell to pieces. XXIII. "THE DRAGON, THE APOSTATE, THE GREAT MIND" The time is the middle of the fourth century A.D. The top of the Crest-Wave is in India, now the greatest country in the world. The young Samudragupta, about thirty years old now, has been filling the whole peninsula with his renown as warrior, poet, conqueror, patron of arts and letters, musician. The Hindus are a busy and efficient people, masterly in this material world. Their colonies are spread over Java, Sumatra, and the other islands; Formosa (think where it lies) has a Sanskrit, but not yet (so far as we know) a Chinese, name; all those seas are filled with Indian shipping.--And with Arab shipping, too, by the way; or are coming to be so; and spray of the Wave (in the shape of Indian and Arab ships) is falling in the port of Canton. But China as a whole is in a deep trough of sea: an intriguing, ceremonious, ultra-elegant, and wily-weak court and dynasty have lately been expelled from precarious sovereignty at Changan in the North to Nankin south of the Yangtse; there to abide a little while un-overturned, looking down in lofty impotent contempt on the uncouth Wether Huns, Tunguses, and Tibetans who are sharing and quarreling over the ancient seats of the Black-haired People in the Hoangho basin, after driving this same precious House of Tsin into the south.--Persia is on the back of the Wave, something lower than the Crest: Sapor II, a dozen or so years older than Samudragupta, has been on the throne since some months before his (Sapor's) birth; and has now grown up into a particularly vigorous monarch; conquering here and there; persecuting the Christians with renewed energy since Constantine took them into favor;--and of late years unmercifully banging about Constantius son of Constantine in the open field, and besieging and sometimes taking his fortresses. This, you may say, with one hand: with the other he has been very busy with his neighbors in the north-east, the nomads; he has been punishing them a little; and incidentally founding, as a protection against their in roads, the city of New Sapor in Khorassan,--famed later as Nai-shapur, and the birthplace of a certain Tent-maker of song-rich memory. In Armenia an Arsacid-- that is, Parthian--house has survived and holds sovereignty: and Armenia is a sort of weak Belgium between Persia and Rome; inclining to the latter, of course, because ruled by Arsacids, who are the natural dynastic enemies of the Sassanids of Persia. Rome has turned Christian; so, to cement his alliance with Rome and insure Roman aid against powerful Persia, the Armenian king has had himself coverted likewise, and his people follow suit with great piety;--which sends Shah Sapor, King of the kings of Iran and Turan, Brother of the Sun and Moon, to it with a missionary as well as a dynastic zeal; and a war that is to be of nearly thirty years' duration has been in process along the frontier since 336. Persia, better called a kingdom, perhaps, than an empire, commands about forty millions of subjects; as against imperial Rome's--who can say? The population there must have gone down by many millions since the days of the Antonines, with all the civil wars, plagues, pestilences, and famines that have harrowed the years between. The sons of Constantine have succeeded to the throne of their father; and the portions of Constantine II, the eldest of the three, and Constans, the youngest, have at last fallen into the hands, or the web, of Constantius,--a sort of cross between a spider, an octopus, and an elderly maiden aunt,--and in general about as unpleasant a creature as ever sat on a throne. Constantine the Great, indeed, had willed the succession into the hands of a much larger number of his relatives; but this Constantius, his father once decently buried, had taken time by the forelock, and insured things to his two brothers and himself by killing out two of his uncles and seven of their sons; so that now, Constantine II and Constans being dead, no male scions of the house of Constantius Chlorus remain as possible rivals to him, except two boys who had been at the time of the massacre, the one too young, and the other too sickly, to count. We shall come to them by and by. Christianity is well established; though Constantius, followed his father's wise example, is deferring his baptism until the last possible moment: he partly knows the weakness of his nature, and desires to have license for a little pleasant sinning until the end, with the certainty of a glorious resurrection to follow in despite of it.--Dismiss your kindly apprehensions; God was good to Constantius; no untimely accident cut him off unbaptized; his plan worked excellently, and providing an Arian heretic may go to heaven, in heaven he is to this day, singing his Alleluias with the best of them,--and perhaps between whiles arguing it out with the various uncles and cousins he murdered. Meanwhile, however, priests and bishops are the great men of his empire; and they enjoy immunities from duties and taxation to an extent that throws the whole rational order of government out of gear. Thus, for example, the upkeep of the great roads and posts system,--the lines of communication,--falls upon a certain class called the Decurions, who in each district at their own expense have to maintain all in order. But churchmen,--an enormous class now,--are immune from the decurionship; and are allowed further the use of the post-horses and inns free of cost;--with the result that, practically speaking, no one else can use them at all. Because these churchmen are forever hurrying hither and thither to conference, council, or synod; there each sect,-- Arian and Athanasian chiefly,--to damn to eternal perdition (and temporal excommunication when possible) the vile heretics of the other: Homoiousian to thunder against Homoousian, Homoousian against Homoiousian: _Arius contra Athanasium,_ and _Athanasius contra mundum:_--till the air of the whole Roman world is thick with the fumes of brimstone and the stench of the Nether Pit. Taxation, on those left to tax, falls an intolerable burden; --we have seen how Shah Sapor is dealing with one end of the empire;--at the other end, in Gaul, one Magnentius rose against Constantius, and the latter thoughtfully invited in the Germans to put him down and help themselves to what they found handy;-- and a certain Chnodomar, a king in those trans-Rhenish regions, has taken him much at his word. Result: a strip forty miles wide along the left bank of the Rhine from source to mouth has been conquered and annexed; three times as much this side is a perfectly desolate No-man's land; forty-five important cities, including Cologne and Strasbourg, have been reduced to ashes, with innumerable smaller towns and villages; all open towns in north-eastern Gaul have been abandoned; the people of the walled cities are starving on what corn they can grow on vacant corner lots and in their own back-gardens; hundreds of thousands have been killed out, or carried off into slavery in Germany; and King Chnodomar has every reason to think that God is behaving in a very reasonable manner.--As for the rest of the empire, whatever may be its population in human bodies, there is a plentiful lack of human souls to inhabit them; the Roman world has fallen on evil years, truly, but is by no means unchanged;-- and the one thing you can prophesy with any decent security is that affairs cannot go on in this way much longer. Rome has conducted a number of funerals in her day, of this nation and that conquered and put an end to; not much intuition is required now, to foresee that the next funeral will be her own.--(Though indeed, I doubt you should have found half-a-dozen in the Roman world who could foresee it.) Now there is a Way, narrow and most difficult to find,--a Way of conducting the affairs of this life and this world, in balance, in equilibrium; in that fine I condition through which alone the life-renewing forces from the vaster worlds within may flow down, and keep existence here in harmony, and forefend decay. This was, of course, the essence of Chinese thought, Confucian and Taoist. You maintained the inner harmony, and the forces of heaven might use you as their channel. You found Tao (the Way), and grew never old; you succeeded in all enterprises; walked through life unruffled,--duty flowing, beautifully accomplished, at every moment from your hands. You met with no snags or adjusted yourself always to conditions as they arose, and over-rode them in quietest triumph.--They said that, possessing Tao, one might live on many times the common threescore years and ten; very likely there is some truth in it; it seems as if it were true at any rate, of the life of nations. China caught glimpses, and lived on and on; grew old, and reviewed her youth time and again. But normally, what do we find with these un-Taoist nations of the West?--They go easily for some period; then it becomes harder and harder for them to adjust theniselves to conditions. They become clogged with the detritus of old thought and action. What is the meaning of the incessant need we see for reform? Under whatever form of government a nation may be, it arises perpetually; it carries us around the ring of the-archies and-cracies, and there is no finality anywhere.--No; there is no straight line of political progress; but round in a ring you go! You turn out your kings, because they are tyrannical: which means that their government is no longer efficient, and cannot cope with affairs; there is a lack of adjustment between the inner and the outer, between the needs and the provision made to meet them. The monarchy, which was at first representative and the true expression of the nation,--because it, or anything else, when there was no detritus, but things were new and the inner air uncluttered, gave freedom to the national aspirations to pour themselves out in action,--gives such freedom no longer; it irks; it misfits; you feel it chafing everywhere. And yet it has not ceased by any means to be representative: it represents now a nation which has lost its adjustment to the inner things and is clogged up by the detritus of old thought and action, and it is that detritus that irks and misfits and chafes you. So you rise and smash an astral mold or two; turn out your kings; shout freedom and liberty, and are very glorious for a time under a totally free and independent republic;--which means, at once or after a while, government by a class. And this succeeds just as well and badly as its predecessor; neither has found Tao, the Way,--following which, your detritus should be consumed as it goes, and life lifted above the sway of Karma. So once more the detritus accumulates, and blocks the channels; and the life of the nation labors and is oppressed. Need arises for reforms; and the reforms are difficultly carried through; the franchise is extended, and there is loud talk about political growth and what not; we see the millennium at hand, and ourselves its predestined enjoyers. And the old process repeats itself, till you have a very full-fledged democracy:--you make all the men vote, and all the women; and presently no doubt all the children; but even when you have all adult dogs and cats and cows voting as well,--you will not find that that order is Tao, the Way, any more than the others were. The presence of a cow or two, or an ass or two, more or less, in your parliament will not really insure efficiency of administration. The detritus grows again, under the most democratic of democracies; and weighs things down;--and you cast about for new methods of reform. Democratic government, somehow, does nothing of what was expected of it; is not the panacea;--you see that, to bring the chaos of affairs into order, you must stop all this jabber and tinkering, and set up some undivided council,--some Man, for God's sake!--a Dictator who can keep his own and other people's mouths shut and hands busy, and get things done unimpeded. So you make one more grand reform for the sake of efficiency, and set up your Imperator, and have peace, and decent government; and you have, wittingly or not, started up old bugbear Monarchy again; and things go well for a time. But, bless you, you have not found the Way; you know nothing about Tao, which is not to be discovered in the fields of politics, and has nothing whatever to do with forms of government. So you go in search once more for a political method of dealing with that one and only oppressing thing, the detritus,--your karma;--and away you go squirreling round the changes again; and all this you call political evolution, as I dare say the squirrel does his own gyrations in his cage;--whereas if you found Tao,--if you lived balancedly,-- if you kept open the channels between this and the God-world,-- there would be no political evolution at all--no squirreling,-- but only calm, untrammeled beautiful life. All the claptrap about Western Superiority to the Orient, and the growth of freedom in the West, in contrast with Eastern political immobility, simply means that the Orient is less fond of squirreling than we are; taking its aces by and large, there has been a little more Tao with them than with us: more consuming the detritus as they went; more balanced living, and thus more keeping the channels open.--At least, I imagine so. Now Rome was very old; and, since Augustus' day, the detritus had grown and grown. Diocletian had devoted a political sagacity amounting in some respects to genius to setting things right, and had accomplished something. He had moved out of Rome itself, where the psychic atmosphere was too thickly encumbered; had gone eastward, where the air, after long pralaya, was clearer; had propped up imperial authority, now for the first time, with the definite insignia of imperial state: wore a tiara, was to be kneeled to, addressed as _Dominus,_ and so forth:--all outward expedients, and Brummagem substitutes for that inner adjustment which Laotse called Tao: the Way that you are to seek by retreating within, and by advancing boldly without; and not by any one road, because it is not found by devotion alone, nor by religous contemplation alone, or by ardent progress, self-sacrificing labor, or studious observation of life, alone; but the whole nature of man must be used wisely by the one who desire to enter it. Diocletian knew nothing of this; so, great statesman as he was, his methods were effective only while he sat on the throne; in his old age and retirement he had to watch, from his palace at Spalato, the empire he had piloted banging about in a thousand storms again; and to plead in vain to those to whom he had given their thrones for the safety and life of his own wife and daughter;--the total failure of his life and labors thus miserably brought home to him before he died. "Where there is no vision the people perish," said that learned Hebrew of old, King Solomon; and by that one saying proclaimed his right to his title of 'the Wise.' Look into it, and you have almost the whole philosophy of history. The incessant need of humanity is this thing _Vision:_ men and nations go mad for lack of it: they seek in hell the joys of heaven which should be theirs, and which they cannot see. It means vision of the Inner Worlds, of the heaven that lies around us. Oh, nothing spooky or foolish; one is far from meaning the Astral Light. People who go burrowing into that are again seeking a substitute for Vision, and a very poisonous one.--If I may speak of a personal experience: coming to Point Loma from London was like coming from the bottom of the sea into the upper ether. There, in the heart of that old civilization, the air is thick with detritus; here--if only because a long pralaya and fallow time have made the land new,--the detritus is negligible; perhaps it is not even forming, but consumed as we go; because at least we have glimpses of the Way. Result: the mental outlook that extended there, in visionary moments, to some six inches, before one's nose, here has broadened out to take in some seas and mountains; in comparison, it runs to far horizons. I take it that this is the experience of us all. So this is what that wise Solomon meant: "When the detritus has accumulated to the point where, like a thick fog, it shuts away all vision of the True, then the nation must go into abeyance; it must fall."--Rome was very near that point. One wishes one could say something about those Inner Worlds of Beauty. When the voices of self are silenced, and desires abashed and at peace,--how they shine through! This outer world, truly, reflects them; but another and ugly world of our own making. .....is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers,-- For this, for everything, we are out of tune. Sometimes; not always, thank God! Look again: there are the mountains, and above them the mournful glories of the anti-sunset; the mute and golden trumpetings of the dawn; --there is the sea, and over it the wistfulness and pomp and pageantry of the setting sun, and the gentleness of heaven at evening;--there is the whole drama of Day with its tremendous glories; and the huge mystery of Night-time: Niobe Night, silent in the heavens, "Glittering magnificently unperturbed;" --and there are the flowers in the garden, those _Praelarissimi_ and _Nobilisimi_ in the Court of God, the Pansy, the Blue Larkspur, the Purple Anemone;--and what are all these things?-- Just symbols; just mirrorings of a beauty in the World of Ideas within; just places where the Spirit has touched matter, and matter, at that fiery and creative touch, has flamed up into the likeness of God, which is Beauty.--What is Vision?--It is to have luminous forms rising in the imagination, like Wordsworth had, like Shelley; it is with shut eyes to see the beauty and wonder of the Gods; it is to have no grayness or dearth or darkness within; but to have the 'bliss of solitude' crowded with beautiful squadrons of deities, trembling with the light of legions on legions of suns. For: Not all we are here Where this darkness oppresses us; Not this oblivion Of Beauty expresses us. Gaze not on it, To be stained with its stain; The Lonely All-Beautiful Calls us again. In galleried palaces, Turquoise blue, With the sweetness of many suns Filtering through,-- In the Suns's own garden, Where galaxies flame For lilac and daffodil, Each on his stem,-- Where apple-bloom Capricorn Hangs from his tree, Glittering dim o'er The dim blue sea,-- And billowing dim o'er The dim blue lawns Of heaven come the nebular Sunsets and dawns,-- We too have the regallest Part of our being, Far beyond dreaming of, Hearing of, seeing. And the Lonely All-Beautiful Calls to us here:-- "My knights, my commissioned, My children dear! "The hell where affrighted, Enchanted, ye roam,-- Ye set forth to make it A heaven for my home!" --And it is Vision, not to mistake mankind for less or other than Deific Essence cruelly encumbered over with oblivion; it is to see the flame of Eternal Beauty and valiant Godhood in all men; and not to rest or sit content without doing something to uncover that Beauty, to rescue that Godhood.--You go into the slums of a great city; and you do not wonder that the God-essence, inmingling and involved in the clay which is (the lower) man, goes there quite distraught and unrecognizable; where life is so far from the great reflexion of the Worlds of Beauty; where the Sun is no bright brother and confidential friend, but a breeder up of pestilences; where the sky is shut away and there are no flowers to bloom;--whether we like it or no, these things, the unperverted manifestations of the formative pressure of the Spirit, are needed to keep men sane. Beauty you must have, to nourish the Divine within you; alas for him that thinks he may attain to the Good or the True, and in a thin meager or Puritan spirit, strives to shut out their divine sister from his needs and aspirations!--But there, in our hideous modern conditions, there is no vision, without or within; so men go mad with fearful lusts and despairs; and it is the van of the Battle, in one sense, between Godhood and Chaos; and reeks with the slaughter and bloodshed and the madness of that conflict; there too the Holy Spirit of Man is incarnate; there the Host of Souls;--but in the shock and din and the carnage, there on the slippery brink of yet unconquered hell,--all the divine descent and ancient glory of the Host is forgotten:--_there is no Vision, and the people perish._ (It may seem I go a long way round to come to him; but in reality I am already trying to draw you a character-sketch of the subject of this evening's lecture: to present you the permanent part and significance of a strange incarnation of Vision that appeared in Rome's dark and dying days: the man to whom Saint Gregory Nazianzen, in his grand attack, applied that ringing triplet of epithets I have taken for the title of the lecture: "The Dragon, the Apostate, the Great Mind." Know him first in his impersonality thus: a great white flame of Vision; a tremendous Poet of the Gods in action;--and then, when you come to his personality, with what it might have retained of personality, of hereditary impairments, perhaps, that should have vanished had he lived past his young manhood, these will not hinder you from understanding the greatness and beauty and tragedy of that life apparently wasted. But we shall come to him in our time.) Back in the sixth century B. C., when all those Great Teachers came: when the forces that until then had been pent up in the Mysteries were suddenly let loose upon the world,--and the more vehement for their having been so pent up, and their now being so let loose;--what a flood of vision they brought with them! In Greece, to rouse up almost at once that wonderful wave of artistic creation; in Persia, to create quickly a splendid and chivalrous empire; in India, (so far as we know) to pervade as an ethical illumination the life of the people for some centuries before manifesting in art or empire; in China, to work in a twofold current, on one side upon the imagination, on the other upon the moral conceptions of the race, until the Chinese manvantara began. Its effect in each case was according to the cyclic position of the country at the time: those, seemingly, being the most fortunate, that had to wait longest for the full fruition. Thus it struck China in the midst of pralaya, and lay in the soil fructifying until the pralaya had passed; then, appearing and re-appearing according to cyclic law, was a saving health in the nation for fifteen centuries at least;--India, I imagine, when the manvantara there some five centuries old, and under a minor shadow; which shadow once passed, it produced its splendors in the Maurya time; and was in all effective for a thousand years. But it came to Persia in the autumn of the great cycle, when the forces it brought had to ripen quickly, and descend at once on to the military (the lowest) plane;--and to Greece just at noon or early summer,--just before the most intellectual moment,--and so there, too, had no time to ripen, but must burst out at once in artistic creation without ever a chance first to work in and affect the moral life of the race. This last is what Pythagoras at Croton had in mind to do: had Croton endured, there would have been a stable moral basis for the intellectual spendors.--I believe that you have here the very archeus and central clue to history. In China, it was enough for Laotse to float his magical ideas, and for confucius to give out his extremely simple (but highly efficient) philosophy, and to provide his grand Example; in India it was enough for the Lord Buddha to teach his wisdom and to found his Order; he might trust the future to them;--For Persia, one cannot say: the facts as to Zoroaster are not enough known; there might seem to have been some failure there too;--but in Greece, it was imperative that Pythagoras should establish his Lomaland; nothing else could save the forces from squandering themselves at once, in that momentous time, on the intellectual and artistic planes, and leaving life unredeemed and unaffected. Which indeed they did; and thence on it Europe we see century by century vision waning and the world on a downward path, until the moment comes when a new effort may be made. Augustus calls a halt then; moves heaven and earth; works like ten Herculeses, along all lines, to bring about an equilibrium in outer affairs; and so far succeeds that in his time one or two men may have the Vision, at any rate:--Virgil may catch more than glimpses of the Inner Beauty, and leave the outer world a litle less forlorn. But in place of the rush and fine flow of the Grecian Age, what painful strivings we find in the Augustan!--When too, Teachers labor to illumine the vastnesses within; Apollonius; Moderatus; shall we add, the Nazarene?--So the downward tendency is checked; in the following centuries we see a slow pushing upward,--in the heroic effort of the Stoics, not after Vision--that was beyond their scope and ken,--but after at least that which should bring it back,--a noble method of life. And then, at last, a dawn eastward: and the bugles of the Spirits of the Dawn heard above the Pyramids, heard over the shadowy plains where Babylon was of old;--and out of that yellow glow in the sky come, now that the cycle permits them, masters of the Splendid vision. They come with something of light from the ancient Mysteries of Egypt; with some shining from Star Plato, and from Pythagoras; and at their coming light up the dark worlds and the intense blue deeps of the sky,--wherein you can see now, under their guidance, immeasurable and beautiful things to satisfy the highest cravings of your heart: winged Aeons on Aeons, ring above ring,--mystery emanating mystery, beauty, beauty, from here up to the Throne of the Lonely All-Beautiful.-- What growth there had been in Roman Europe, to prepare the way for the spread of Neo-Platonism, I cannot say; but imagine Gnosticism had something to do with it; and that Gnosticism was a graft on the parent stem of Christianity set there by some real Teacher who came later than Jesus. If we knew more of the realities about Simon Magus on the one hand, and Paul of Tarsus on the other, we might have clearer light on the whole problem; at present must be content with saying this much:--that Gnosticism, with its deep mystical truths, emerges into the light of well-founded history about neck and neck with orthodox Christianity; was considered a branch of the same movement, equally Christian; but was at least tinged with esoteric truth, and deeply Hellenized, and perhaps Persianized;--whereas the orthodox branch was the legitimate heir of exoteric Judaism. How much of real vision there may have been in Gnosticism; how much of mere speculation, which is but a step towards vision,--I am not prepared to guess; but have little doubt that Gnostic activities made ready the ground for Neo-Platonism; so that when the latter's Manasaputric light incarnated, it found fit rupas to inhabit. This was the Lodge's most important effort to sow truth in Europe since Pythagoras. Says even the _Enyclopaedia Britannica_ (without help from Esotericism): "Neo-Platonism is in one aspect ... the consummation of ancient philosophy. Never before in Greek or Roman speculation had the consciousness of man's dignity and superiority to Nature received such adequate expression.... From the religious and moral point of view, it must be admitted that the ethical 'mood' which Neo-Platonisni endeavored to create and maintain is the highest and purest ever reached by antiquity.... It is a proof of the strength of the moral instincts of mankind that the only phase of culture which we can survey in all its stages from beginning to end culminated not in materialism but in the highest idealism." It asserted the Gods, the great stars and luminaries of the Inner World; it asserted the Divinity of Man,--superior, truly, as the _Encyclopaedia_ says to (the lower) Nature, but of the Higher, one part or factor in the whole. It came into Europe trailing clouds of splendor and opening the heavens of Vision. The huge menace and perils of the age, the multiplying disasters, were driving men to seek spiritual refuge of some kind; and there were, in the main, two camps that offered it:--this of Neo-Platonism, proclaiming Human Divinity and strong effort upward in the name of that; and that other which proclaimed human helplessness, and that man is a poor worm and weakling, originally sinful, and with nothing to hope from his own efforts, but all from the grace, help, or mercy of Extracosmic Intervention. It was a terribly comfortable doctrine, this last, for a race staggering towards the end of its manvantara under a fearful load of detritus, a culture old and thoroughly tired. No wonder Europe chose this path, and not the Neo-Platonist path of flaming idealism and endeavor. Ammonius, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus,--they had worked wonders; but not the crowning wonder of that which could save the age and the age to come: Plotinus had failed of that, because there no tool at hand for the Gods, but a silly, weak Gallienus.--So now Constantine has made the great change; and the empire that was Roman is now Roman no longer: You owe your first allegiance now, not to the state or to the emperor at its head, but to an _imperium_ within the state which claims immunity from laws and duties: the kingdom is divided within itself, and must look for the fate of divided kingdoms. Zeus on Olympus now weighs the Roman empire in his scales,--and finds the fate is death, and no help for it: there are to be thirteen decades of moribundity, and then Christian burial, with Odoacer and sundry other the like barbarians to be mourners and heirs; and then,--blackest night over the western world for God knows how long: night, with nightmare and horror, and no Vision, no beautiful dreams, no refreshment, no peace. For the party that Constantine has now made dominant despises cordially all the ancient light of Hellenism; Aeschylus, Homer, Plato, Sophocles, Euripides,-- everyone you could in any sense a light-bearer that came of old, to bring mankind even the merest brain-mind culture,--these people condemn and abhor for heathen, and take pleasure in the thought that they are now, and have been since they died, and shall be forever, frizzling in the nether fires: they condemn the substance of their writings, and will draw no ideas, no saving grace, from them whatever;--will learn from them nothing in the world but grammar and eloquence with which to thunder at them and all their like from barren raucous pulpits. So, Vision having gone, culture is to go too, and all you can call civilization; and therewith law and order, and the decencies of life: all that _soap_ stands symbol for is to be anathema maranatha; all that the Soul stands symbol for is to be anathema maranatha;--a pretty prospect! Zeus sighs in heaven, and his sigh is a doleful thunder prophetic of the gloom that is to overspread all the western skies for many centuries to come. --And then comes Helios, the Unconquered Sun, and lays a hand on his arm, and says: "Not so fast!; Never despair yet; look down--_there!_" And the Gods look down: to a gloomy castle upon a crag in the wild mountains of Cappadocia; and they see there a youth, a captive banished to that desolate grand region: well-attended, as befits a prince of the royal blood, but lonely and overshadowed; --not under fear, because fear is no part of his nature; but yet never knowing when the order for his death may come. They read all this in his mind, his atmosphere. They see him deep in his books: a soul burning with earnestness, but discontented, and waiting for something: all the images of Homer rising about him beckoning on the one hand, and on the other a grim something that whispers, These are false; I alone am true! --"What of him?" says Zeus; "he too is a Christian."--"Watch!" says Sol Invictus; "I have sent my man to him."--And they watch; and sure enough, presently they see a man coming into this youth's presence, and pointing upwards towards themselves; and they see the youth look up, and the shadow pass from his eyes as a great blaze of light and splendor breaks before him,--as he catches sight of them, the Gods, and his eye meets theirs, and he rises, illumined and smiling;--and they know that in the Roman world there is this one man with the Grand Vision; this man who may yet (if they play their cards well) wear the Roman diadem;-- that there is vision in the Roman world again, and it may be the people shall not perish. It was Julian, "the Dragon, the Apostate, the Great Mind"; I thank thee, Gregory of Nazianzus, for teaching me that word!--and the one that came to him there in Cappadocia was Maximus of Smyrna, Iamblichus' disciple. His story has been told and re-told; I expect you know it fairly well. How he was a son of Julius Constantius, son of Constantius Chlorus,--and thus a nephew of Constantine the Great, and a first cousin to the Octopus-Spider-Maiden Aunt Constantius then on the throne;--how he because of his infancy, and his half-brother Gallus because of a delicate constitution which made it seem impossible he should grow up, were spared when Constantius had the rest of the family massacred;--how he was banished and confined in that Cappadocian castle;--of Gallus' short and evil reign that ended, poor fool that he was, in his being lured into the spider-web of Constantius and beheaded;--how Julian was called then to the court at Milan, expecting a like fate;--how he spent seven months there, spied on at every moment, and looking for each to be his last;--how he was saved and befriended by the noble Empress Eusebia (a strangely beautiful figure to find in those sinister surroundings);--and sent presently to the University of Athens, there to spend the happiest moments of his life;--then called back to be made Caesar: he who had never been anything but a student and a dreamer, called from his books and dreams at twenty-four, and set to learn (as Caesar) his elementary drill,-- which he found very difficult to learn indeed;--and then sent to fight the Germans in Gaul. How Constantius tried always to thwart him while he was there: setting underlings over him with power to undo or prevent all he might attempt or do;--how in spite of it all he fought the Germans, and drove them across the Rhine, and followed them up, and taught them new lessons in their own remote forests; and took the gorgeous Chnodomar, their king, prisoner; and sent for him, prepared to greet friendlily one so great in stature and splendid in bearing; but was disgusted when the gentleman, on coming into his presence, groveled on the floor and whined for his life,--whereupon Julian, instead of treating him like a gentleman as he had intended, packed him off to his (Chnodomar's) old ally the Maiden Aunt at Milan to see what they would make of each other;--how he fought three campaigns victoriously beyond the Rhine; restored the desolated Cisrhenish No-man's land, and brought in from Britain, in six hundred corn-ships, an amount Gibbon calculates at 120,000 quarters of wheat to feed its destitute population.--And this fact is worth nothing: if Britain could export all that wheat, it surface was not, as some folks hold, mainly under forest: it was a well-cultivated country, you may depend, with agriculture in a very flourishing condition,--as Gibbon does not fail to point out. --And you know, probably, how Julian loved his Paris, and governed Gaul thence in civil affairs in such a manner that Paris and Gaul loved him;--how his own special legions, his pets, his Tenth, so to say, were the _Celts_ and _Petulants,_ and after these, the _Herulians_ and _Batavians_ (or shall I say _Dutchmen?_);--how Constantius tried to deprive him of these, ordering him to send them off to him for wars with Sapor in the east;--how Julian sorrowfully bade them go, judging well by Gallus his brother's experience (whom Constantius had treated in the same way as a first step towards cutting off his head) what the next thing should be;--but how they, (bless their Celtic and Petulant and Herulian and Dutch hearts!) told him very plainly that that kind of thing would not wash with them: "Come!" said they; "no nonsense of this sort; be you our emperor, and _condemn_ that old lady your cousin Constantius!--or we kill you right now." Into his bed-room in Paris they poured by night with those terms,--an ultimatum; whether or not with a twinkle in their eyes when they proposed the alternative, who can say?--What was a young hero to do, whom the Gods had commissioned to strike the grand blow for them; and who never should strike it, that was certain, if Constantius should have leave to take away from him, first his Celts and Petulants, and then his head? So he accepts; and writes kindly and respectfully to his Maiden Aunt-- Spidership the Emperor telling him he must manage _without_ the legions, and _with_ a Co-Augustus to share the empire with him,-- ruling (it was to be hoped in perfect harmony with himself) the west and leaving the east to Constantius. However, all will not do: Constantius writes severe and haughtily, Send the men, and let's hear no more of that presumptuous fooling about the second Augustus!--So Julian marches east; whither, accompanying him, the lately rebellious Celts and Petulants are ready enough to go now; and Constantius might after all have fallen in battle, and so missed his saving baptism; but his plans had gone agley, and the whole situation was extremely disturbing; and you never knew what might happen: and really, when you thought how you had treated this Julian's father, and his two brothers, and numberless uncles and cousins, you might fear the very worst;-- and so, good maiden-auntish soul, he fell into a sadness, and thence into a decline; and while Julian and his Petulants were yet a long way off, got baptized respectably, and slipped off to heaven. And you know, too, probably, how Julian, being now sole emperor, reigned: working night and day; wearing out relays of secretaries, but never worn out himself; making the three years of his reign, as I think Gibbon says, read like thirty; disestablishing Christianity, and refounding Paganism,--not the Paganism that had been of old, but a new kind, based upon compassion, human brotherhood, and Theosophical ethics, and illumined by his own ever-present vision of the Gods;--how he reformed the laws; governed; made his life-giving hand felt from the Scottish Wall to the Nile Cataracts;--instilled new vigor into everything; forced toleration upon the Christians, stopping dead their mutual persecutions, and recalling from banishment those who had been banished by their co-religionists of other sects;--made them rebuild temples they had torn down, and disgorge temple properties they had plundered;--and amidst all this, and much more also, found time in the wee small hours of the nights to do a good deal of literary work: Theosophical treatises, correspondence, sketches....--And you will know of the spotless purity, the asceticism, of his life; and how he stedfastly refused to persecute;--whereby his opponents complained that, son of Satan as he was, he denied them the glory of the martyr's crown;--and of his plan to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, and to re-establish Jews and Judaism in their native land:--of his letter to the Jewish high priest or chief Rabbi, beginning "My brother";--of the charitable institutions he raised, and dedicated to the Lord of Vision, his God the Unconquered Sun;--of his contests with frivolity and corruption at Antioch, and his friendship with the philosophers;--and then, of his Persian expedition, with its rashness,--its brilliant victories,--its over-rashness and head-strong advance;--of the burning of the fleet, and march into the desert; and retreat; and that sudden attack,--the Persian squadrons rising up like afreets out of the sands, from nowhere; and Julian rushing unarmed through the thickest of the fight, turning, first here, then there, confusion into firmness, defeat into victory;--and of the arrow, Persian or Christian, that cut across his fingers and pierced his side; and how he fainted as he tried to draw it out; and recovered, and called for his horse and armor; and fainted again; and was carried into a tent hastily run up for him:--and of the scene there in the night, that made those who were with him think of the last scene in the life of Socrates; Julian dying, comforting his mourning officers; cheering them; talking to them quietly about the beauty and dignity of death, and the divinity of the Soul; then suddenly inquiring why Anatolius was not present,--and learning that Anatolius had fallen,--and (strange inconsistency!) the dying man breaking into tears of the death of his friend.--And you will know of the hopeless march of the army back under ignominious Jovian, all Shah Sapor's hard terms accepted;--and the doom of the Roman Empire sealed. That was the Man: that is the record, outwardly, of a Soul fed upon the immensities of Vision. Vision is the keynote of him: the intense reality to him of the ever-beautiful compassionate Gods.... It is true there was a personality attached; and all his defenders since have found much in it that they wished had not been there. A lack of dignity, it is said; a certain self-consciousness... Well; he was very young; he died a very boy at thirty-two; he never attained to years of discretion:--in a sense we may allow that much. You say, he might very well have followd the reaonable conventions of life; and condescended, when emperor, not to dress as a philosopher of the schools. So he might. They laughed at his ways, at his garb, at his beard;-- and he went the length of sitting up one night to write the _Misopogon,_ a skit upon his personality. Only philosophers wore beards in those days; it was thought most unsuitable in an emperor. I do not know what the men of Antioch said about it; but he speaks of it as unkempt and,--in the Gibbonistic euphemism,--_populous;_ indeed, names the loathsome cootie outright, which Gibbon was much too Gibbonish to do. In the nature of things, this was a libel. I read lately an article, I think by an Irish writer, on the eccentricities of youthful genius. It often happens that a soul of really fine caliber, with a great work to do in the world, will waste a portion of his forces, at the outset, in fighting the harmless conventions. But as his real self grows into mastery, all this disappears, and he comes to see where his battle truly lies. Julian died before he had had time quite to outgow the eccentricities; but for all that, not before he had shown the world what the Soul in action is like. Every great soul, incarnating, has still this labor to carry through as prolog to his life's work:--he must conquer the new personality, with all its hereditary tendencies; he must mold it difficultly to the perfect expression of the glory and dignity of himself. Julian had to take up a body in which on the one side ran the warrior blood of Claudius Gothicus and Constantius Chlorus, on the other, the refinement and culture of the senatorial house of the Anicii. Two such streams, coming together, might well need some harmonizing: might well produce, for example, an acute self-consciousness,--to be mastered. What he got from them, for world-service, was on the one hand his superb military leadership and mastery of affairs; on the other, his intense devotion to learning and culture. Thus the two streams of heredity appeared, dominated by his own quality of Vision. The paternal stream, by his generation, had grown much vitiated: it was pure warriorism in Claudius Gothicus, and even in Constantius Chlorus; it was warriorism refined with subtlety and cruelty in Constantine I; it was mere fussy treacherous cruelty in the Spider-Octopus,--and sensual brutality in Julian's brother Gallus. The vices of the latter may indicate how great a self-conqueror the unstained Julian was. He was a Keats in imperial affairs, dying when he had given no more than a promise of what he should become. He laws, his valor, his victories, his writings, are no more than _juvenilia:_ they are equal to the grand performance, not the promise, of many who are counted great. He came out from his overshadowment and long seclusion, from him books and dreams; was thrown into conditions that would have been difficult for an experienced statesman, and won through them all triumphantly; was set to conduct a war that would have taxed the genius of a Caesar, a Tiberius, or an Aurelius,--and swept through to as signal victories as any of theirs. He learnt the elements of drill, and was straight sent to conquer the conquering Germans; and did it brilliantly. He came to a Gaul as broken and hopeless as Joan of Arc's France; and found within himself every quality needed to heal it and make it whole. Joan conquered with her Vision; Julian conquered with his. He set out with this before his eyes and in his soul:--The Gods are there; the beautiful Gods; uttermost splendor of divinity is at the heart of things. The glory of the Gods and of their world filled his eyes; and the determination filled his soul to make this outer world conform to the beauty of his vision. The thing he did not care about,--did not notice, except in a humourous way,--was that queer thing of a personality that had been allotted to himself. How could he have succeeded, in the world that then was?--And yet even a Christian poet was constrained to say,--and to rise, says Gibbon, above his customary mediocrity in saying it,--that though Julian was hateful to God, he was altogether beneficent to mankind. I do not know how to explain the Persian expedition. He himself said, when dying, that he had loved and sought peace, and had but gone to war when driven to it. We cannot see now what were the driving factors. Did he go to reap glory that he might have used, or thought he might have used, in his grand design? Did he go to break a way into India, perhaps there to find a light beyond any that was in Rome? ... Or was it the supreme mistake of his life.... one would say the only mistake? It failed, and he died, and his grand designs came to nothing; and Rome went out in utter darkness. And men sneered at him then, and have been sneering at him ever since, for his failure. Perhaps we must call it that; it was a forlorn hope at the best of times. But you cannot understand him, unless you think of him as a Lord of Vision lonely in a world wholly bereft of it: a man for whom all skies were transparent, and the solid earth without opacity, but with the luminous worlds shining through wherein Apollo walks, and all the Masters of Light and Beauty;--unless you think of him as a Lord of Vision moving in an outer world, a phase of civilization, old, tired, dying, dull as ditch-water, without imagination, with no little vestige of poetry, no gleam of aspiration,--with wit enough to sneer at him, and no more; by no means with wit enough to allow him to save it from itself and from ruin. XXIV. FROM JULIAN TO BODHIDHARMA When the news came drifting back over the Roman world that the Emperor had been killed in Persia, and that an unknown insignificant Jovian reigned in his stead;--and while three parts of the population were rejoicing that there was an end of the Apostate and his apostasy; and half the rest, that there was an end of this terrible strenuosity, this taking of the Gods (good harmless useful fictions--probably fictions) so fearfully in earnest: I wonder how many there were to guess how near the end of the world had come? The cataclysm was much more sudden and over-whelming than we commonly think; and to have prophesied, in Roman society, in the year 363, that in a century's time the empire and all its culture would be things of the past (in the West), would have sounded just as ridiculous, probably, as such a prophesy concerning Europe and its culture would have sounded in a London drawing-room fifteen years ago. There were signs and portents, of course, for the thoughtful; and no doubt some few Matthew Arnolds in their degree to be troubled by them. And of course (as in our own day, but perhaps rather more), an idea with cranks that at any moment Doomsday might come. But while the world endured, and the Last Trump had not sounded, of course the Roman empire would stand.--Christianity? Well, yes; it had grown very strong; and the extremists among the Christians were rabid enough against culture of any sort. But there were also Christians who, while they hated the olden culture of Paganism, were ambitious to supply a Christian literature in prose and verse to take the place of the Classical. There had been an awful devastation of Gaul; the barbarians of the north had been, now and again, uneasy and troublesome; but see how Julian--even he, with the Grace of God all against him--had chastised them! The head of the Roman State would always be the Master of the World. And strangely enough, this was an idea that persisted for centuries; facts with all their mordant logic were impotent to kill it. Hardly in Dante's time did men guess that the Roman empire and its civilization were gone. Life, when Julian died, was still capable of being a very graceful and dignified affair,--outwardly, at any rate. On their great estates in Gaul, in Britain, in Italy, great and polished gentlemen still enjoyed their _otium cum dignitate._ The culture of the great past still maintained itself amongst them; although thought and all mental vigor were buried deep under the detritus. In fourth century Gaul there was quite a little literary renaissance; centering, as you might expect, in the parts furthest from German invasion. Its leading light was born in Bordeaux in the three-thirties; and was thus (to link things up a little) a younger contemporary of the Indian Samudragupta. He was Ausonius: teacher of rhetoric, tutor to the prince Gratian, consul, country gentleman, large land-owner, and, in a studious uninspired reflective way, a goodish poet. Also a convert to Christianity, but unenthusiastic:--altogether, a dignified and polished figure; such as you might find in England now, in the country squire who has held important offices in India in his time, hunts and shoots in season, manages his estates with something between amateur and professional interest, reads Horace for his pleasure, and even has a turn for writing Latin verses. Ausonius leaves us a picture of the life of his class: a placid, cultured life, with quite a strong ethical side to it; sterile of any deep thought or speculation; far removed from unrest.-- Another respresentative man was his friend Symmachus at Rome: also highly cultured and of dignified leisure; a very upright and capable gentleman widely respected for his sterling honesty; a pagan, not for any stirring of life within his heart or mind, but simply for love of the ancient Roman idea,--sheer conservatism;--for much the same reasons, in fact, as make the Englishman above-mentioned a staunch member of the English Church. There were many such men about: admirable men; but unluckily without the great constructive energies that might, under Julian's guidance for example, have saved the empire. But the empire! In that crisis,--in that narrow pass in time! It is not excellent gentlemen that can do such near-thaumaturgic business; but only disciples; for the proposition is, as I understand it, to link this world with the God-world, and hold fast through thunders and cataclysm, so that what shall come through,--what shall be when the thunder is stilled and the cataclysm over,-- shall flow on and up onto a new order of cycles, higher, nearer the Spirit. . . . . No; it is not to be done by amiable gentlemen, or excellent administrators, or clever politicians. . . . Julian had come flaming down into the world, to see if he could rouse up and call together those who should do it; but his bugles had sounded in the empty desert, and died away over the sands. There were tremendous energies abroad; but they were all with the Destroyers, and were to be, ever increasingly: with such men as, at this time, Saint Martin of Tours, that great tearer-down of temples; or in the next century, Saint Cyril of Alexandria and Peter the Reader, the tearers-to-pieces of Hypatia. Perhaps the greatest energies of all you should have found, now and later, in the Christian mob of Alexandria,--wild beasts innocent of nothing but soap and water. It was Symmachus who was chosen by the Roman Senate to remonstrate with the emperor Valentinian against the removal of the altar and statue of Victory,--the Pagan symbols,--from the senate house. I quote you Gibbon's summary of a part of his petition: "The great and incomprehensible Secret of the Universe eludes the enquiry of man. Where reason cannot instruct, custom may be permitted to guide; and every nation seems to consult the dictates of prudence by a faithful attachment to those rites and opinions which have received the sanction of ages. If those ages have been crowned with glory and prosperity--if the devout people have frequently obtained the blessings which they have solicited at the altars of the Gods--it must appear still more advisable to persist in the same salutary practise and not to risk the unknown perils that may attend any rash inovations. The test of antiquity and success, (continues Gibbon), was applied with singular advantage to the Religion of NUMA, and Rome herself, the celestial genius that presided over the fates of the city, is introduced by the orator to plead her own cause before the tribunal of the emperors. 'Most excellent princes,' says the venerable matron, 'fathers of your country! pity and respect my age, which has hitherto flowed in an uninterrupted course of piety. Since I do not repent, enjoy my domestic institutions. This religion has reduced the world under my laws. These rites have repelled Hannibal from the city, and the Gauls from the Capitol. Were my grey hairs reserved for such intolerable disgrace? I am ignorant of the new system I am required to adopt; but I am well assured that the correction of old age is always an ungrateful and ignominious office.'" Symmachus was addressing a Christian emperor; and it was an ill thing then, as in the days of Hadrian, to argue with the master of the legions. Still, the method he chooses is interesting: it holds a light up to the inwardness of the age, and shows it dead. This was at twenty-one years after the death of the Dragon-Apostate; whose appeal had all been to the realities and the divinity of man and the living splendor of the Gods he knew and loved. That splendor, said he, should burn away the detritus, and make Romans men and free again. But Symmachus, for all his admirable restraint, his rhetorical excellence, his good manners and gentlemanly bearing,--which I am sure we should admire,-- appeals really only to the detritus; to nothing in the world that could possibly help or save Rome. The Christians wanted to be free of it, because they felt its weight; the Pagans wanted to keep it, because they found it warm and comfortable. Symmachus sees nothing higher or better than custom; the secret of the universe, says he, is unknowable; there is no inner life. --He was confuted by a much more alive and less estimable man: Ambrose, bishop of Milan,--with whom, also, both he and Ausonius were on friendly terms. Ambrose's argument, too, is illuminating: like the King of Hearts', it was in the main that "you were not to talk nonsense." How ridiculous, said he, to impute the victories of old Rome to the Religion of Numa and favor of the Gods,--when the strength and valor of the Roman soldier were quite enough to account for all. Thus he appears in the strange role of a rationalist. Christianity, he continued, was the one and only true religion; and all the rest--etc., etc., etc. Ambrose and his party were fighting towards a definite and positive end; knew what they wanted, and meant to get it. Of course they won. Symmachus and the senate were fighting only for a sentiment about the past, and had no chance at all. And it really did not matter: Rome was doomed anyway. But in passing I must e'en linger on a note of sublimity in this petition of Symmachus: of sublime faith;--when he makes Dea Roma refer to her history as having "hitherto flowed in an uninterrupted course of piety." It makes one think that they taught Roman history in their schools then much in the same way that we teach our national histories in our schools today; here and in England, and no doubt elsewhere, _"An uninterrupted course of piety!"_ quotha. Marry come up! But all this is anticipating the years a little: looking into the eighties, whereas we have not finished with the sixties yet. Julian died in 363, on the 26th of June; and within a couple of years, you may say,--many said so then,--the Gods began to avenge him. Nature herself took a hand, to warn a degenerate world. In 365 came an earthquake; gollowed by a huge withdrawal of the sea, so that you could explore dry-shod the antres of the sea-gods. And then a tidal wave which threw large ships up onto the roofs of houses two miles inland, and killed in Alexandria alone fifty thousand people.--"Aha!" said the Pagans, "we told you so."--"Nothing of the kind!" said the Christians in reply; "did not we set a saint on the beach at Epidaurus, before whom the oncoming billow stopped, bowed its head, and retired?" Well; no doubt that was so; but Alexandria was a perfect hotbed of saints, one of whom, you might think, might have been lured down to the beach and the perilous proximity of water for the occasion. But let it pass! Ten years later the Law began to marshal its armies seriously for the destruction of an obsolete world. The Huns crossed the Volga, and fell upon the Ostrogoths, who had had a Middle-European empire up through Austria and Germany. The Ostrogoths, somewhat flattened out, joined with the Huns to fall upon the Visigoths; who theeupon poured down through the Balkans to fall upon the Romans; and defeated and killed the emperor Valens at Adianople in 378. Theodosius, from 379 to 395, held precariously together a frontier cracking and bulging all along the line as it had never cracked and bulged before. When he died, the empire finally split: of his two sons, Arcadius taking the East, Honorius the West. In Honorius' half, from now on it is a record of ruin hurrying on the footsteps of ruin. Ended the quiet _otium cum dignitate_ of the great country gentlemen; the sterile culture, the somewhat puritan morality, the placid refined life we read of in Ausonius. You shall see now the well-ordered estate laid waste;--the peasants killed or hiding in the woods;--the mansion smashed, and its elegant furniture;--the squire, the kindly-severe religious matron his mother the young wife,--gracious lady of the house,-- and the bonny children:--they are hacked corpses lying at random in the wrecked salons, or in the trampled garden where my lady's flowers now grow wild. The land went out of cultivation; the populace, what remained of it, crowded into the walled cities, there to frowse in mental and physical stuffiness until the Middle Ages were passed,--or else took to the wilds under any vigorous mind, and became bandits. The open country was all trodden down by wave after wave of marauding, murdering, beer-swilling, turbulent giants from the north,--or by the still more dreaded dwarfish horsemen whose forefathers Pan Chow had driven long since out of Asia. They poured down into Greece; they, poured down through Gaul and Spain into Africa; into Italy; host after host of them;--civilization was a pathetic sand-castle washed over and over by ruining seas. Rome, indeed, could still command generals at times: Stilicho, Aetius, and afterwards Belisarius and Narses; but they were all pitiful Partingtons swishing their mops round against a most ugly Atlantic. In 410 Rome itself was sacked by Alaric; in the same year Britain, and then Brittany, rose and threw off the Roman yoke. In the four-fifties came the keen point of the Hunnish terror, putting the fear of death on even the worst of the barbarians that had wrecked the Roman world. In 476, the pretense of a Western Empire was abandoned.--So now to follow the great march of the cycles eastward; with this warning: that next week we shall glance at a little backwash in the other direction, and see the disembodied soul of this now closed phase of human culture 'go west.' The split with Rome was altogether of value to the Eastern empire of Constantinople. That empire lasted, from the time of Arcadius to that of Constantine IX and Mohammed the Conqueror, "one thousand and fifty-eight years," says Gibbon, "in a state of premature and perpetual decay."--A statement which, taken as an example of Gibbonese, is altogether delightful; but for the true purposes of history it may need a little modification. The position of this Byzantine Empire was a curious one: European in origin, mainly West-Asian in location. Its situation permitted it to last on so long into the West-Asian manvantara; its origin doomed that long survival to be, for the most part, devoid of the best characteristics of life. Yet during most of the European pralaya it was far and away the richest and most civilized power in Christendom; and, except during the reigns of extraordinary kings in the west, like Charlemagne, the strongest too. It specialized in military science; and the well-trained Byzantine soldiers and highly scientific generals had little to fear, as a rule, from the rude energies and huge stature of the northern and western hordes. But culture remained there in the sishta state, and could do nothing until it was transplanted. There were cycles: weaknesses and recoveries; on the whole its long life-period matters very little to history; it only became of great importance when it died. The reason why it did not succumb when Rome did was that the tides of life in the whole empire had long been flowing eastward, and were now gathered there almost wholly: there was much more activity in the east; there were much bigger cities, and a much greater population. So that part was harder to penetrate and conquer: there was more resistance there. The barbarian deluge flowed down where it might flow down most easily: following, as deluges and everything else gifted with common sense always do, the lines of least resistance. The way through Gaul and Spain was quite open; the way into Italy nearly so;--but the way into Asia was blocked by Constantinople. That city is naturally one of the strongest in the world, in a military sense; and, you would say, inevitably the capital of an empire. If Dardanus had had a little more intuition, and had founded his Troy on the Golden Horn instead of on the Dardanelles, Anax andron Agamemnon and his chalcho-chitoned Achaeans, I dare say, would have gone home to Greece much sadder and wiser men;--or more probably, not at all. But Troy is near enough to that inevitable site to argue the strong probability of its having been, perhaps long before Priam's time, a great seat of empire, trade, and culture. If one dug in Constantinople itself, I dare say one should find the remains of cities that had been mighty. Events of the last seven years have shown how difficult it is to attack, how easy to defend. Since its foundation by Constantine it has been besieged nine times, and only twice taken by foreign enemies. When the Turks took it, they had already overflowed all the surrounding territories; and they were the strongest military power in the world, and the Byzantines were among the weakest.--So it stood there in the fifth century to hold back the hordes of northern Europe from the rich lands of Asia Minor and Syria: a strength much beyond the power of those barbarians to tackle; while all Europe west-ward was being trampled to death. Further, the peace imposed on Jovian by Shah Sapor in 364 lasted, with one small intermission of war, and that successful for the Romans, for a hundred and thirty-eight years; during which time, also, the powers that were at Constantinople ruled mainly wisely and with economy. They were generally not the reigning emperor, but his wife or mother or aunt, or someone like that. So then, in the year 400 we find the world in this condition:-- western Europe going "With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition;" --the Eastern Empire weakish, but fairly quiet and advancing towards prosperity: in pralaya certainly, and so to remain for thirteen decades (395 to 527) from the death of Theodosius to the accession of Justinian;--Persia, under an energetic and intelligent Yazdegird II (399 to 420), a strongish military power: Yazdegird held his barons well in hand, and even made a brave effort to broaden the religious outlook; he tried to stop the persecution of the Christians, and allowed them to organize a national church, the Nestorian;--India, still and until 456, at the height of her glory:--there is a continual rise as you go eastward, with the climax in India. The next step is China; to which now after all these centuries we return. As we have seen, since the Hans fell there had been a confusion of ephemeral kingdoms jostling and hustling each other across the stage of time: there had been too much history altogether; too many wars, heroes, adventures and wild escapades. Life was too riotous and whirling an affair: China seemed to have sunk into a mere Europe, a kind of Kilkenny Christendom. Not that culture ever became extinct; indeed, through this whole period the super-refinement that had grown up under the Hans persisted side by side with the barbarian excursions and alarms. It was not, as in Rome, a case of major pralaya: men did not resort to savagery; literary production seems never to have run quite so sterile. But things were in the melting-pot, centripetalism had gone; little dynasties flared up quickly and expired; and amidst all those lightning changes there was no time for progress, or deep concerns, or for the Soul of the Black-haired People to be stirring to manifestation. You will, I dare say, have learned to look for a rise in China at any falling-time in Europe; so would consider something should have happened there in 365, the year of the great earthquake and tidal wave, when the fifty thousand Alexandrians were drowned,-- the second year after Julian's death. Well; in that 365 Tao Yuan-ming was born, who later became known as Tao Chien: in Japanese, Toemmei. There had been poets all along. During the last thirty years of the Hans, 190 to 220, there had been the Seven Scholars of the Chien An Period: among them that jolly K'ung Jung who, because he was a descendant of Confucius, claimed blood-relationship with the descendants of Laotse. Ts'ao Ts'ao himself wrote songs: he was that bold bad adventurer and highly successful general who turned out the last Han and set his own son on the throne as Wei Wenti; who also was a poet, as was his brother Ts'ao Chih. Of Ts'ao Chih a contemporary said: "If all the talent in the world were divided into ten parts, Ts'ao Chih would have eight of them."--"Who, then, would have the other two?" asked somebody.--"I should have one of them myself," was the answer, "and the rest of the world the other." Ts'ao Chih enriched the language with one of its most familiar and delicious quotations: "The Superior Man takes precautions, And avoids giving rise to suspicion: He does not pull up his shoes in a melon patch, Nor adjust his cap while passing through an orchard of plums." It is indicative of his own position at court. Later in the third century came the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, a "club of rather bibulous singers"; and there are names of many scholars besides to say that the time was not too barren; yet on the whole it was, I suppose, a period of slump in literary production, as it was of confusion in politics. But when Julian had been dead two years in the west of the world, Tao Yuan-ming was born in the east: I do not say the creator of a new time; but certainly a sign of its coming. A large amount of his poetry survives; and it is filled with a new spirit. Like Wordsworth, he went back to nature. Ambition, of course, had been a great mark of the age: men raced after office, and scrambled for the spoils. Tao Yuan-ming was called to fill an official post, and went up reluctantly to the capital; but very soon escaped back to the things he loved: the mountains, and his chrysanthemum garden, and the country, where he could hear the dogs barking in the far farms, and see the chickens scratching in the lanes. We do not find in him, perhaps, the flood of Natural Magic that came with the poets of the Great Age three or four centuries later; but we do find a heart-felt worship of the great unspoiled world under the sky: he is there to say that China was returning to her real strength, which is Nature-worship. While he pottered about in the front garden, he tells us, his wife pottered about in the back garden; they made an idol of their chrysanthemums, and started or nourished the cult which has flourished so strongly since in Japan. He was I suppose the greatest poet since Ch'u Yuan, who came some seven centuries earlier; it is from him we get the story some of you may know under the title _Red Peach-Blossom Inlet._ For about half a cycle (sixty-five years) barbarian dynasties had been holding the north; with the result that the center of gravity of the real Black-haired People had been shifted from the puritan landscapes of North China to the pagan landscapes of the Yangtse Valley,--a region of mountains and forests and lakes and wild waters: Tsu the land of Laotse and Ch'u Yuan, and I think Chwangtse too. It is here are the Hills of T'ang, the metropolis of Natural Magic perhaps for all the world; and the mind and imagination of China, centered here, were receiving a new polarization; something richer and more luminous was being born. Contemporary with Tao Yuan-ming was Ku Kaichih, the first supreme name in painting. Fenollosa speaks of a "White Lotus Club," organized by Hui Yuan, A Buddhist priest, and consisteing of "mountain-climbers and thinkers,"--Tao Yuan-ming being a member. One would like to get at the heart of what happened in that last quarter of the fourth century. This is what we see on our side: Canton and Yangtse ports were being visited more and more by Hindu, Arab, and Sassanian traders, bringing in new things and ideas: the Hindus, especially, an impetus towards culture from the splendor of the gupta period, then at its topmost height. Also ther were new inventions, such as that of paper, which was an incentive to literary output. The Chinese mind, in the south especially, was quickened on the one hand by the magical wind from the mountains, and on the other by a wind from the great world over-seas: the necessary nationalistic and international quickenings. But deeper quickenings also were taking place. India was fast becoming, under the Gupta reaction towards Brahmanism, no place for the Buddhists; and the Hindu ships that put in at Canton and the Yangtse were bringing much to China besides merchandise. A great propaganda of Buddhism was in process; by Indian monks, and now too for the first time by native Chinese. We read of a missionary who went about preaching to an indifferent world; then in sorrow took to the mountains, and proclaimed the Good Law to the mountain boulders; and they "nodded as it were their heads in assent." * But there is evidence that China was fast becoming the spiritual metropolis of the world: Buddhism was drifting in, and mingling among the mountains with mountain Taoism, that dear and hoary magic of the Eastern World; and the result was an atmosphere in which astounding events were to happen. ------ * Giles _Dictionary of Chinese Biography;_ from which work, and from the same author's _Chinese Literature,_ the facts, quotations, and enecdotes given in this lecture are taken. ------ In 401, Kumarajiva, the seventeenth Buddhist Patriarch, came from India and took up his residence at the court at Changan, where a Tibetan family was then reigning over the north; and this, when you think that these Patriarchs were (as I believe) no popes elected by a conclave of churchly dignities, but the Spiritual Successors of the Buddha, each appointed by his predecessor, an event momentous enough in itself. Still, Kumarajiva came (it would appear) but to prepare the way for the great change that was impending; left behind him a successor in India, or one to fill the office at his death; in India the headquarters of Buddhism remained. Two years before his arrival, Fa Hian, a Chinese Buddhist monk, had set out on foot from Central China, walked across the Gobi Desert, and down through Afghanistan into India, a pilgrim to the sacred places: a sane and saintly man, from whom we learn most of what we know about the Gupta regime. He returned by sea in 412, landing at Kiao-chao in Santung,--a place latterly so sadly famous,--bringing with him spiritual and quickening influences. In the south, meanwhile, another Indian teacher, Buddhabhadra, had been at work. Before very long, a Renaissance was in full flow. The political events that led up to it were these: between 304 and 319 a Tatar family by the name of Liu, from Manchuria, succeeded in driving the House of Tsin out of northern China: these Tsins were that effete, ladylike, chess-playing, fan-waving, high-etiquettish dynasty I have spoken of before. In 319 they took up their abode in Nanking, and there ruled corruptly for a hundred years, leaving the north to the barbarians. In 420, a soldier in their employ, Liu-yu by name, deposed the last Tsin emperor, and set himself on the throne as the first sovereign of the Liu-song Dynasty. He was a capable man, and introduced some vigor and betterment into affairs; he found conditions ripe for a renaissance of civilization; and in his reign we may say that the renaissance took shape. 420 is, so far as a date can be given for what was really a long process, a convenient date to give. We have seen Persia rise in the two-twenties; India in the three-twenties; we shall not go far wrong in giving the four-twenties to China. That decade, too, marks a fresh step downward in the career of Rome: Honorius died in 423. Fenollosa is definite upon 420 for the inception of the great age of the Southern Renaissance of art. That age culminated in the first half of the next century, and ended with the passing of the Liang dynasty in the five-fifties: a matter of thirteen decades again; which, I take it, is further reason for considering our four-twenties epochal. I fancy we shall grow used to finding the twenties in each century momentous, and marked by great political and spiritual re-shapings of the world. We shall find this in our historical studies; in the next few years we may find it in current events too; and what we shall see may remind us that in these decades the sun generally rises in some new part of the world,--the sun of culture and power. Naturally enough:--in the last quarter of each century you have the influx of spiritual forces; which influx, it is to be supposed, can hardly fail to produce changes inwardly,--a new temperature, new conditions in the world of mind. So there must be readjustments; there is a disharmony between outer and inner things, between the world of causes and the world of effects; and one commonly finds the first two decades of the new century filled with the noise and confusion of readjustment. New wine has been poured into the old skin-bottles of the world; and ferments, explodes, rends them. Then, in the twenties or so, things calm down, and it is seen that readjustments have been made. By 'readjustments,' one does not mean the treaties of statesmen and the like; brain-mind affairs for the most part, that amount to nothing. One means a new direction taken by the tide of incarnating souls. As if the readjusting cataclysms had blocked their old channels of these, and opened new ones... A new _arpeggio_ chord, but rather a faint and broken one, sounds in the five-twenties, or begins then. At Constantinople the thirteen pralayic and recuperative decades since the death of Theodosius and the split with the West have ended. Now an emperor dies; and it becomes a question which of several likely candidates can lay out his money to best advantage and secure the succession. There is an official of some sort at court there, one Justin, a Balkan peasant by birth; you will do well to bribe him heavily, for he, probably, can manage the affair for you,-- One of the candidates does so: hands him a large sum, on the assurance from Justin that he shall be the man. But the old fellow has peasant shrewdness, shall we say; and the money is _used_ most thriftily; but not as its donor intended. Justin duly ascends the throne. Nothing very promising in that, to insure manvantaric times coming in. But the old man remembers a nephew of his back there in Bulgaria or Jugoslavia or where it may have been; and sends for him, and very wisely lets him do most of the running of things. In 527, this nephew succeeds to the purple on his uncle's death: as Justinian; and, for Europe and the Byzantine empire, and for the times,--that is to say, 'considering,' --manvantaric doings do begin. A man of hugely sanguine temperament, inquisitive and enterprising and impulsive, he had the fortune to be served by some great men: Tibonian, who drew up the Pandects; Belisarius and Narses, who thrashed the barbarians; the architect who built Saint Sophia. Against these assets to his reign of thirty-eight years you must set the factions of the circus, at Constantinople itself; and bloody battle over the merits of the Greens, the Blues, the Whites, etc. But certainly Justinian contrived to strike into history as no other Byzantine emperor did; with his law code, and with his church. So now enough of him. Four years after the accession of this greatest of the Byzantines, the greatest of the Sassanids came to the throne in Persia: Chosroes Anushirwan: a wise and victorious reign until 579. There was an 'Endless Peace' sworn with Rome in 533; and not peace merely, but friendship and alliance; it was to last for all time, and did last for seven years. The Chosroes, jealous of the western victories of Justinian, listened to the pleadings of the Ostrogoths, and declared war; peace came again in 563, on the basis of a yearly tribute from Rome to Persia,-- but with compensations, such as toleration for the Christians in Persia.--there were reforms in the army and in taxation; improvements in irrigation; encouragement of learning; revision of the laws; some little outburst in literature and culture generally: the culmination, in all but extent of territory, of the whole Sassanian period.--We may throw in one item from the future,--that is from 620: in that year Sassanian Persia had flowed out to the full limits of the empire of Darius Hystaspes: held Egypt, Syria, all West Asia to within a mile of the walls of Constantinople. Within three years the fall had begun; within twenty it was completed. As to India, this (520) is among the hidden times: the Ephthalites had overturned the Guptas; they were Huns of the Hunniest; they had over-turned the Guptas and all else (in the north). Tales come down of the fiendishness of their kings: of a man that for his sport would have elephants hurled from the top of precipices; it may be that the Indian manvantara closed with the Gupta fall;--though we get the finical dandiacal 'great' reign of Harsha in 700. The light certainly was dying from India now: the Crest-Wave had been there, in all its splendor; they had made good use of it in all but the spiritual sense, and very bad use of it in that. The year in which you may say (as nearly as history will tell you) the light died there, was precisely this year of 520; and that effected a change in the spiritual center of gravity of the world of the most momentous kind: so much so that we may think of a new order of ages as beginning then; and looking at world-history as a whole, we may say, Here endeth the lesson that began where we took things up in the time of the Six Great Teachers; and here beginneth a new chapter,-- with which these lectures will hardly concern themselves. But we may glance at the event that opens it. It made very little stir at the time. It was merely the landing at Canton of an old man from India: a 'Blue-eyed Brahmin,'--but a Buddhist, and the head of all the Buddhists at that;--and his preaching there until Liang Wuti, the emperor at Nanking, had heard of his fame, and invited him to court; and his retirement thence to a cave-temple in the north. Beyond this there is very little to tell you. He was a king's son from southern India; his name Bodhidharma; and one would like to know what the records of the Great Lodge have to say about him. For he stands in history as the founder of the Dhyana or Zen School, another form of the name of which is _Dzyan;_ when one reads _The Voice of the Silence,_ or the Stanzas in _The Secret Doctrine,_ one might remember this. Outwardly,--I think this is true,--he refused to cut into history at all: was a grand Esoteric figure, whose campaigns, (super-Napoleonic, more mirific than those of Genghiz Khan), were all fought on spiritual planes whence no noise of the cannonading could be heard in this outer world. He was the twenty-eighth Successor of the Buddha; of a line of Masters that included such great names as those of Vasubandhu, and of Nagarjuna, founder of the Mahayana,--"one of the four suns that illumine the world." We have seen that he had been preceded: Kumarajiva had come to China a century before; but experimentally, leaving the Center of the Movement in India; there must have been thousands of disciples in the Middle Kingdom in 520 when Bodhidharma came, bringing with him the Buddha's alms-bowl, the symbol of the Patriarchate, to make in China his headquarters and that of his successors. For a thousand years the Buddha's Movement had been in India a living link with the Lodge;--in that land of esoteric history which hides from us what it means to be so linked and connected. Now India had failed. The Guptas had reigned in great splendor; but they had flourished upon a reaction away from the Light. I suppose it means this: that the burden of fighting upward had been too much for this people, now wearied with old age; they had dropped the burden and the struggle, and found in the relief a phantom of renewed youth to last them a little day. Whatever may be true of Buddhism now,--however the long cycles may have wasted its vitality, and to whatever depths it may have fallen,--we should remember this: that certainly for about fourteen centuries there was contained within it a living link with the Masters' Lodge. It was not like any other existing religion (so far as one knows): like none of the dominant religions of today, at any rate. At its head, apparently, through all those long centuries, was a line of Adepts, men of spiritual genius, members of the Lodge. So what Bodhidharma's coming meant, I take it, was that in China that was established actually which in the West first Pythagoras, and then Plotinus had tried to establish, and tried in vain. It was, as you may say, the transplanting of the Tree of Life from a soil that had grown outworn to one in which it could flourish; and the result was, it appears to me, a new impulse given to the ages, to all history. Hitherto, in the main, we have seen (except in China) a downward trend of cycles; from this point an upward trend began. We have been dealing, latterly, with dullish centuries, and history in a febrile and flickering mood;--but give this wonderful change time to take effect, and the centuries begin to flame up, and history to become a roaring conflagration. We might here spy out into that time, which will lie beyond the scope of these lecture; and see the glory of the T'angs begin in China in 618; Corea's one historic age of splendor, in art and also in military prowess, at its highest point about 680; the era of Shotoku Daishi, saint, sage, prince and protagonist of civilization in Japan, from about 580 to 620; the rise of Siam, and of Tibet, into strength and culture and Buddhism, in the first half of the seventh century;-- then, looking westward, the wonderful career of Mohammed in Arabia, who gave the impetus that rescued civilization first in West Asia and then, when in the thirteenth century a new European manvantara was ready to open, in Europe also: rescued civilization first in West Asia and then, when in the thirteenth century a new European manvantara was ready to open, in Europe also; an impetus which worked on the intellectual-cultural plane until it had brought things to the point where H. P. Blavatsky might come to give things a huge twist towards the spiritual,-- and where Katherine Tingley might accomplish that which all the ages had been expecting, and the whole creation groaning and travailing to see. Oh, on brain-mind lines you can trace no connexion; but then the plane of causes lies deeper than the brain-mind. We may understand now, I think, what place the Buddha holds in human history: how it was not for nothing that he was _the Buddha,_ the central Avatar, the topmost and Master Figure of humanity for these last twenty-five hundred years, with what other sublime men appeared as it were subordinate to him, and the guides of tributary streams: Laotse and Confucius preparing the way for him in China; Pythagoras carrying his doctrine into the West.... Well; here is scope for thought; and for much thought that may be true and deep, and illuminative of future ages; and _yet not convenient to write down at this time._ But to Bodhidharma again. H. P. Blavatsky affirmed that Buddhism had an esoteric as well as an exoteric side: an affirmation that was of course disputed. But here is this from a Chinese writer quoted by Edkins: "Tathagata taught great truths and the causes of things. He became the instructor of men and devas; saved multitudes, and spoke the contents of more than five hundred books. Hence arose the Kiaumen or Exoteric branch of the system, and it was believed to hold the tradition of the words of the Buddha. Bodhidharma brought from the Western Heaven the seal of truth, and opened the Fountain of Dhyana in the east. He pointed directly to Buddha's heart and nature, swept away the parasitic growth of book instruction, and thus established the Esoteric branch of the system containing the doctrine of the heart, the tradition of the Heart of Buddha. Yet the two branches, while presenting of necessity a different aspect, form but one whole." Now that Doctrine of the Heart had always been in existence; it does not mean that Bodhidharma invented anything. But in a line of Teachers, each will have its own methods, and, if there is progress, there will be new and deeper revelations. The Buddha gave out so much, as the time permitted him; Nagarjuna, founding the Mahayana, so much further; Bodhidharma, now that with the move to China a new lease of life had come, gave out, or rather taught to his disciples, so much more again of the doctrine that in its fulness is and always has been the doctrine of the Lodge. Lian Wuti, the emperor at Nanking, had been at the end of the fifth century a general in the service of the last scion of a dying dynasty there, and a devout Taoist; in 502 he became the first of a new dynasty, the Liang; and presently, a devout Buddhist. Chinese historians love him not; Fenollosa describes him as too generous-minded and other-worldly for success. Yet he held the throne for nearly fifty years; a time in which art was culminating and affairs advancing through splendor and unwisdom to a downfall. Twice he took the yellow robe and alms-bowl, and went forth through his domains, emperor still, but mendicant missionary preaching the Good Law.--The Truth? the Inner doctrine?--I learn most about this poor Lian Wuti from the record of an interview held once between him and the 'Blue-eyed Brahmin' Master of Dzyan. Lian Wuti invited Bodhidharma to court, and Bodhidharma came. Said the emperor: --"Since my accession I have been continually building temples, transcribing books, and admitting new monks to take the vows. How much merit may I be supposed to have accumulated?" --"None," said Bodhidharma. --"And why none?" --"All this," said the Master, "is but the insignificant effect of an imperfect cause not complete in itself; it is but the shadow that follows the substance, and without real existence." --"Then what," asked Wuti, "is real merit?" --"It consists in purity and enlightenment, depth and completeness; in being wrapped in thought while surrounded by vacancy and stillness. Merit such as this cannot be won by worldly means." Wuti, I suppose, found this kind of conversation difficult, and changed the subject,--with an exotericist's question. Said he: --"Which is the most important of the holy doctrines?" --"Where all is emptiness," said Bodhidharma, "nothing can be called holy." A neat compliment, thinks good externalist Wuti, may improve things.--"If nothing can be called holy," says he, "who is it then that replies to me?"--holiness being a well-known characteristic of Bodhidharma himself. Who answered merely: --"I do not know"; and went his ways. The final comment on the interview is given by a Japanese writer thus: "Can an elephant associate with rabbits?" For the rest, he spent the remaining years of his life in a cave-temple near Honanfu; and died after appointing a Chinaman his successor. Besides this small stock of facts there is a sort of legend; as for example: After leaving the court of Lian, he crossed the Yangtse on a reed,--a theme in sacred art for thousands ever since,--and because of this miraculous crossing, is worshiped still by Yangtse boatman as their patron saint,--on the 28th of February in each year.--Once, as he sat in meditation, sleep overcame him; and on waking, that it might never happen again, he cut off his eyelids. But they fell on the earth, took root and sprouted; and the plant that grew from them was the first of all tea plants,--the symbol (and cause!) of eternal wakefulness. He is represented in the pictures as being footless; in his missionary travels, it is said, he wore away his feet. Thus where there is no known life-story, but all hidden away beneath a veil of esotericism and a Master's seclusion, myths have grown, and a story has been made.--He sat there in his cave silent through the years, they say; his face to the wall. Chih Kuang came to him, asking to be taught the doctrine; and for seven days stood in the snow at the cave-mouth, pleading and unnoticed. Then, to show that he was in earnest, he drew his sword and sliced off his left arm; and the Master called him in, and taught him.--Legend again, no doubt. I imagine we can only judge of the man and of his astounding greatness by the greatness of the ages he illumined. It was as if he gave, in East Asia, the signal for nation after nation to leap into brilliant being. As for China, she became something new. The Age of Han had been golden, strong, manly, splendid. But Han was like other empires here and there about the world. Henceforth during her cycle China was to be as a light-giving body, a luminary wondrous in the firmament with a shining array of satellite kingdoms circling about her. Her own Teachers of a thousand years before had prepared the way for it: Confucius when he gave her stability; Laotse when he dropped the Blue Pearl into her fields. That Pearl had shone, heaven knows. Now Ta-mo, this Bodhidharma, breathed on it; and it glowed, and flame shot up from it, and grew, and foamed up beautiful, till it was a steady fountain of wonder-fire spraying the far stars. Heretofore we have had a background of Taoist wizardry: in its highest aspects, Natural Magic,--the Keatsism of the waters and the wild, the wood, the field, and the mountain; henceforth there was to be a sacred something shining through and inmingled with this: the urge of the Divine Soul, the holy purposes of evolution. We may say this in Art, to take that one field alone, the most perfect, the fullest, the divinest, expression of Natural Magic "whereof this world holds record" was to come in the school of the Successors of Bodhidharma, directly the result of his 'Doctrine of the Heart.' His school remained esoteric; but it was established, not among the secret mountains, nor in far unvisited regions; but there in the midst of imperial China: an extension of the Lodge, you may say, visible among men. Bodhidharma--are you to call him a _Messenger_ at all? He hardly came out into the world. It was known he was there; near by was the northern capital;--he taught disciples, when they had the strength to insist on it. Yet he dwelt aloof too, and wrapped about in the seclusion Masters must have, to carry on their spiritual work. One must suppose that Messengers of the Lodge had been very busy in China between 375 and 400, in the days of Tao Yuang-ming and Ku Kai-chih; that they had been very busy again in the last quarter of the fifth century; for it seems as if somehow or other there was such an atmosphere in China in the first half of the sixth century,--when ordinarily speaking the Doors of the Spiritual World would be shut,--that the Lodge was enabled partly to throw off its seclusion, and it was possible for at least one of its Members to take up his abode there, and to be known to the world as doing so. A Messenger was sent out into the Chinese world from the School of Bodhidarma in 575: Chih-i, the founder of the Tientai School which was the spiritual force underlying the glory of the T'ang age; but he was a Messenger from the Dzyan School of Bodhidharma, not its Head. As far as I have been able to gather the threads of it, the line of those Heads, the Eastern Patriarchs, Bodhidharma's successors, was as follows: He died in or about 536, having appointed Chi Kuang to succeed him. Chi Kuang appointed Hui Ssu, called the "Chief of the Chunglung School of the followers of Bodhidharma." Hui Ssu died in 576, having sent out Chih-i into the world the year before, and having appointed Seng T'san to succeed him as head of Dzyan. Seng T'san died in 606; Tao Hsin, his successor, in 651; Hung Jen, his, in 675. Hung Jen, it appears, left two successors: Lu Hui-neng in the south, and Shen Hsiu in the north. It was the last quarter of the century: I imagine Lu Hui-neng was the Messenger sent out into the world; he spent the rest of his life teaching in the neighborhood of Canton; I imagine Shen Hsiu remained the Head of the Esoteric School. After that the line disappears; but the school attained its greatest influence in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in China, and later still in Japan.--All these were men living not quite in the world: it was known that they were there, and where they might be found. After Shen Hsiu, the last Northern Chinese Patriarch, the line probably withdrew to Tibet, which had lately come into relations with China, and where civilization had been established through the efforts of T'ang Taitsong. And now I will close this lecture with a saying of Shen Hsiu's which, in this modified form, is very familiar to all of you: "Mind is like a mirror: it gathers dust while it reflects. It needs the gentle breezes of soul wisdom to brush away the dust of our illusions." XXV. TOWARDS THE ISLANDS OF THE SUNSET I had not thought to speak to you further about Celtic things. But there is something in them here which concerns the spiritual history of the race; something to note, that may help us to understand the Great Plan. So, having beckoned you last week to the edge of the world and the fountain of dawn, and to see Bodhidharma standing there and evoking out of the deep a new order of ages, I find myself now lured by a westward trail, and must jump the width of two continents with you, and follow this track whither it leads: into the heart and flame of mysterious sunset. I hope, and the Gwerddonau Llion, the Green Spots of the Flood,--Makarn Nesoi, Tirnanogue, the Islands of the Blest. We saw that while the great flow of the cycles from dying Rome ran in wave after wave eastward, there was a little backwash also, by reason of which almost the last glow we saw in the west was in fourth century Gaul, in the literary renaissance there which centers round the name of Ausonius. Now in later history we find every important French cycle tending to be followed by one in England: as Chaucer followed Jean de Meung; Shakespeare, Ronsard and the Pleyade; Dryden and Pope, Moliere and Racine; Wordsworth and Shelley, the Revolution. And we have seen China wake in 420; and we have noted, in the first of these lectures, the strange fact that whenever China 'gets busy,' we see a sort of reflexion of it among the Celts of the west. And we shall come presently to one of the most curious episodes in history,-- the Irish Renaissance in the sixth century: when all Europe else was dead and buried under night and confusion, and Ireland only, standing like a white pillar to the west, a blazing beacon of culture and creative genius. Now if you see a wave rising in fourth-century Gaul, and a wave breaking into glorious foam in sixth- and seventh-century Ireland,--what would you suspect?-- Why, naturally, that it was the same wave, and had flowed through the country that lies between: common sense would tell you to expect something of a Great Age in fifth- and early sixth-century Britain. And then comes tradition,--which is nine times out of ten the truest vehicle of history,--and shouts that your expectations are correct. For within this time came Arthur. You know that in the twelfth century Geoffrey of Monmouth published what he claimed to be a History of the Kings of Britain from the time of the coming there of the Trojans; and that it was he mainly who was responsible for floating the Arthurian Legend on to the wide waters of European literature. What percentage of history there may be in his book; how much of it he did not "make out of whole cloth," but founded on genuine Welsh or Breton traditions, is at present unknowable;--the presumption being that it is not much. But here is a curious fact that I only came on this week. The Romans were expelled from Britain in 410, remember. Arthur passed from the world of mortals on the night after Camlan, that "last weird battle in the west," when "All day long the noise of battle rolled Among the mountains by the wintry sea, Till all King Arthur's Table, man by man, Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their lord King Arthur." Now the reign of Arthur may be supposed to represent the culmination of a national revival among the British Celts; and, --this is the detail I was pleased to come upon,--according to Geoffrey, Camlan was fought in 542;--a matter of thirteen decades (and two years) after the expulsion of the Romans. So that, I say, it looks as if there were some cyclic reality behind it. Geoffrey of Monmouth did not know that such periods of national revival do last as a general rule for thirteen decades. He had some other guide to help him to that 542 for Camlan. History knows practically nothing about fifth-century Britain. It has been looking at it, since scientific methods came in, through Teutonic (including Anglo-Saxon) or Latin eyes; and seen very little indeed but confusion. Britain like the rest of the western empire, suffered the incursions of northern barbarism; but unlike most of the rest, it fought, and not as a piece of Rome, but as Celtic Britain;--fought, and would not compromise nor understand that it was defeated. It took eight centuries of war, and the loss of all England, and the loss of all Wales, to teach, it that lesson; and even then it was by no means sure. In the twelve-eighties, when last Llewelyn went to war, he was still hoping, not to save Wales from the English, but to re-establish the Celtic Kingdom of Britain, Arthur's Empire, and to wear the high crown of London. The men that marched to Bosworth Field under Harri Tudor, two centuries later, went with the same curious hope and assurance. It was a racial mold of mind, and one of extraordinary strength and persistence,--and one totally unjustified by facts in what were then the present and future. But I do not believe such molds can ever be fudged up out of nothing: _ex nihilo nihil_ is as true here as elsewhere. So we must look for the cause and formation of this mold in the past. Something, I think, within that first cycle of Welsh history must have impressed it on the Welsh mind: some national flowering; some great figure, one would say.--Arthur? He is like Vikramaditya of Ujjain; no one know whether he existed at all. There is no historic evidence; but rather the reverse. But then there are all those mountains and things named after him, "from the top of Pengwaed in Cornwall to the bottom of Dinsol in the North"; and, there is the Arthurian Legend, with such great vitality that it drove out the national Saxon legends from England, and quenched the Charlemagne legend in France, and made itself master of the mind of western Europe in the Middle Ages;-- I imagine there would have been an Arthur. Some chieftain who won battles; held up the Saxon advance for a long time, probably; and reminded his people of some ancient hero, or perhaps of a God Artaios, thought to be reincarnate in him. Not that I believe that the mold of mind of which we have been speaking could have been created in the fifth and sixth centuries. Whoever Arthur was--the Arthur of that time,--however great and successful, he could but have reigned over some part of Britain, precariously resisting and checking the barbarians; but tradition tells of a very Chakravartin, swaying the western world. No; that mold certainly was a relic of the lost Celtic empire. It had grown dim during the Roman domination; but it had survived, and the coming in of the Crest-Wave had put new life into it. Nothing could have put new life into it, it seems to me, but such a coming in of the Crest-Wave,--to make it endure and inspire men as it did. I think it is certain the Crest-Wave, --a backwash of it, a little portion of it, but enough to make life hum and the age important,--was among the Welsh between 410 and 542. The wave was receding towards the Western Laya-Center; and gathered force as it rolled from Ausonius' Gaul to Taliesin's Wales, and from Tallesin's Wales to Ireland. Let us look at the probabilities in Britain in 410, seeing what we can. Three hundred years of Roman rule had left that province, I cannot doubt, rich and populous, with agriculture in a better condition than it has been since:--remember the corn Julian brought thence to feed Gaul. We must think of a large population, Roman and Romanized, mixed of every race in the Roman world, in the cities; and of another population, still Celtic, in the mountains of northern England, in the western Scottish Lowlands, and especially in Wales. It was the former element, the cities, that appealed to Aetius for help against the Picts and Scots; the latter, dwelling in less accessible places, fought as soon as they felt the invaders' pressure. Wales itself had never been all held by the Romans. The legions had covered the south from Caerleon in Monmouthshire to Saint Davids in Penfro, a region held by Silures and Gaelic Celts. They had marched along the northern coast to the island of Mona, establishing, just as Edward the Conqueror did in his day, strongholds from which to dominate the dangerous mountains: these regions also were held by Gaels. But just south of those mountains, in what are now the counties of Meirionydd and Montgomery, there was a great piece of Wales which they seem never to have penetrated; and it was held by the Cymric Ordovices, Welsh, not Irish, by language. About this time there was a great upheaval of the Irish; who conquered western Scotland, and established there sooner or later the Scottish kingdom of history. They also invaded Wales and England, and sent their fleets far and wide: they were the 'Picts and Scots' of the history-books. There seems also to have been an invasion and conquest of Wales, from the north, by the Welsh; who, joining forces with the Welsh Ordovices whom they found already in the unconquered un-Roman part, established in the course of time the kingdom and House of Cunedda, which reigned till the Edwardian Conquest. It is pretty safe to say that the Romanized cities and the Romanized population generally offered no great resistance to the Saxons; mixed with them fairly readily, and went to form perhaps the basis of the English race; that they lost their language and culture is due to the fact that they were cut off from the sources of these on the continent, and, being of an effete civilization, were far less in vigor than the Saxon incomers. And as we saw in the first of these lectures, there was probably a large Teutonic or Saxon element in Britain since before the days of Julius Caesar. But there seems to have been a time during those thirteen decades that followed the eviction of the Romans, when the Celtic element, wakened to life and receiving an impulse from the Crest-Wave, caught up the sovereignty that the Romans had dropped, remembered its Ancient greatness, and nourished vigorous hopes. To the Welsh mind, the age has appeared one of old unhappy far-off things,--unhappy, because of their tragic ending at Camlan;-- but grandiose. Titanic vague figures loom up: Arthur, the type of all hero-kings; Taliesin, type of all prophet-bards; Merlin, type of magicians. Tennyson caught the spirit of it in the grand moments of the _Morte D'Arthur;_ and missed it by a thousand miles elsewhere in the _Idylls._ The spirit, the atmosphere, is that of a glory receding into the unknown and the West of Wonder; into Lyonnesse, into Avallon, into the Sunset Isles. There is a sense of being on the brink of the world; with the 'arm clothed in white samite' reaching in from a world beyond,--that Otherworld to which the wounded Arthur, barge-borne over the nightly waters by the Queens of Faerie, went to heal him of his wounds, and to await the cyclic hour for his retum. He is the symbol of--what shall we say?--civilization, culture, or the spiritual sources of these, the light that alone can keep them sweet and wholesome; that light has died from the broken Roman world, and passes now west-ward through the Gates of the Sunset: through Wales, through Ireland, the Laya-Center; into the Hidden, the Place of the Spirit; into Avallon, which is Ynys Afallen, the 'Isle of Apple-trees';--whence to return in its time:--_Rex quondam, rexque futurus._ There is a poem by Myrddin Gwyllt, traditionally of the sixth century, about that Garth of Apple-trees; which he will have a secret place in the Woods of Celyddon, the Occult Land, and not an island in the sea at all; and in this poem it has always seemed to me that one gets a clue to the real and interesting things of history. He claims in it to be the last of the white-robed Guardians of the Sacred Tree, the fruit of which none of the black-robed,--no 'son of a monk,'--shall ever enjoy. There has been a battle, in which the true order of the world has gone down; but there Myrddin stays to guard the 'Tree' against the 'Woodmen,'--whom also he seems to identify with the 'black-robed' and the priests Myrddin Gwyllt, by the by, is one of the two figures in Welsh tradition who have combined to become the Merlin of European tradition; the other was Myrddin Emrys the magician. I take great risks, gentlemen but wish to give you a taste, as I think the sound of some lines from the original may, and doubt any translation can, of the old and haughty sense of mystery and grandeur embodied in the poem; because it is this feeling, perhaps the last echo of the Western Mysteries, that is so characteristic of the literature that claims to come down to us from this age: Afallen beren, bren ailwyddfa, Cwn coed cylch ei gwraidd dywasgodfa; A mi ddysgoganaf dyddiau etwa Medrawd ac Arthus modur tyrfa; Camlan darwerthin difiau yna; Namyn saith ni ddyraith o'r cymanfa. Afallen bere, beraf ei haeron, A dyf yn argel yn argoed Celyddon; Cyt ceiser ofer fydd herwydd ei hafon, Yn y ddel Cadwaladr at gynadl Rhyd Theon, A Chynan yn erbyn cychwyn y Saeson. Cymru a orfydd; cain fydd ei Dragon; Caffant pawb ei deithi; llawen fi Brython! Caintor cyrn elwch cathl heddwch a hinon. What it means appears to be something of this sort: Sweet and beautiful Tree of the trees! The Wood-dogs guard the circle of its roots; But I will foretell, a day shall be When Modred and Authur shall rush to the conflict; Again shall they come to the Battle at Camlan, And but seven men shall escape from that meeting. Sweet Apple-tree, sweetest its fruitage! It grows in secret in the Woods of Celyddon; In vain shall they seek it on the banks of its stream there, Till Cadwaladr shall come to Rhyd Theon, And Cynan, opposing the tumult of Saxons, Wales shall arise then; bright shall be her Dragon; All shall have their just reward; joy is me for the Brython! The horns of joy shall sound then the song of peace and calmness.... The sweet fruits of the Tree, he says, are the "prisoners of words," (_carcharorion geirau_)--which is just what one would say, under a stress of inspiration, about the truths of the Secret Wisdom;--and they shall not be found, he says,--they shall be sought in vain,--until the _Maban Huan,_ the 'Child of the Sun,' shall come. The whole poem is exceedingly obscure; a hundred years ago, the wise men of Wales took it as meaning much what I think it means: the passing of the real wisdom of the Mysteries,--of Neo-druidism,--away from the world and the knowledge of men, to a secret place where the Woodmen, the Black-robed, could not find to destroy it;--until, after ages, a Leader of the Hosts of Light should come--you see it is here Cadwaladr, but Cadwaladr simply means 'Battle-Leader,' --and the age-old battle between light and darkness, Arthur and Modred, should be fought again, and this time won, and the Mysteries re-established.--If I have succeeded in conveying to you anything of the atmosphere of this poem, I have given you more or less that of most of the poetry attributed to this period; there is a large mass of it: some of the poems, like the long _Gododin_ of Aneurin, merely telling of battles; others, like the splendid elegies of Llywarch Hen, being laments,--but with a marvelous haughty uplift to them; and others again, those attributed to Taliesin, strewn here and there with passages that . . . move me strangely . . . and remind me (to borrow a leaf from the Imagists) of a shower of diamonds struck from some great rock of it; and of a sunset over purple mountains; and of the Mysteries of Antiquity; and of the Divine Human Soul. Much of this poetry is unintelligible; much of it undoubtedly of far later origin; and the names of Taliesin and Myrddin, all through the centuries spells for Celts to conjure with, are now the laughing-stock of a brand-new scholarship that has tidied them up into limbo in the usual way. It is what happens when you treat poetry with the brain-mind, instead of with the creative imagination God gave you to treat it with: when you dissect it, instead of feeding your soul with it. But this much is true, I think: out of this poetry, the occasional intelligible flashes of it, rings out a much greater note than any I know of in our Welsh literature since: a sense of much profounder, much less provincial things: the Grand Manner,--of which we have had echoes since, in the long centuries of our provincialism; but only I think echoes; --but you shall find something more than echoes of it, say in Llywarch Hen, in a sense of heroic uplift, of the titanic unconquerableness that is in the Soul;--and in Taliesin, in a sense of the wizardly all-pervadingness of that Soul in space and time: "I know the imagination of the oak-trees." "Not of father and mother, When I became, My creator created me; But of nine-formed faculties, Of the Fruit of fruits, Of the fruit of primordial God; Of primroses and mountain flowers, Of the blooms of trees and shrubs, Of Earth, of an earthly course, When I became,-- Of the blooms of the nettle, Of the foam of the Ninth Wave. I was enchanted by Math Before I became immortal. I was enchanted by Gwydion, The purifier of Brython, Of Eurwys, of Euron, Of Euron, of Modron,-- Of Five Battalions of Initiates, High Teachers, the children of Math." --Now Math--he was a famous wizard of old--means 'sort,' 'kind'; and so implies such ideas as 'differentiation,' 'heterogeneity.' To say that you were enchanted by Math before you became immortal, is as much as to say that before the great illumination, the initiation, one is under the sway of this illusionary world of separatenesses;--as for being 'enchanted by Gwydion,' that name is, I suppose, etymologically the same as the Sanskrit _Vidya,_ or _Budha;_ he is the 'Purifier' of those 'Five Battalions of--_'Celfyddon,'_ the word is 'artists,' 'skillful ones'; but again I imagine, it is connected with the word _Celi,_ 'occult' or 'secret'; so that being 'enchanted by' him would mean simply, being initiated into the Occult Wisdom. It is difficult for a student of symbolism not to believe that there were Theosophical activities in fifth- and sixth-century Britain. Another glimpse of the feeling of the age you get in the two oldest Arthurian romances: _The Dream of Rhonobwy,_ and _Culhwch and Olwen._ They were written, in the form in which we have them, not until the last centuries of Welsh independence,--when there was another national illumination; and indeed all the literature of this early time comes to us through the bards of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They transmitted it; wrote it down; added to and took away from it; altered it: a purely brain-mind scholarship might satisfy itself that they invented it; but criticism, to be of any use at all, must be endowed with a certain delicacy and intuition; it must rely on better tools than the brain-mind. Matthew Arnold, who had such qualifications, compared the work of the later bards to peasants' huts built on and of the ruins of Ephesus; and it is still easier for us, with the light Theosophy throws on all such subjects, to see the greater and more ancient work through the less and later. I shall venture to quote from _Culhwch and Olwen:_ a passage that some of you may know very well already. Culhwch the son of Cilydd the son of the Prince of Celyddon rides out to seek the help of Arthur: "And the youth pricked forth upon a steed with head dappled gray, of four winters old, firm of limb, with shell-formed hoofs, having a bridle of linked gold on his head, and upon him a saddle of costly gold. In his hands were two spears of silver, sharp, well-tempered, headed with steel, three ells in length, of an edge to wound the wind and cause blood to flow, and that faster than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of reed-grass upon the earth when the dew of June is at its heaviest. A gold-hilted sword was at his side, the blade of which was of gold, bearing a cross of inlaid gold of the hue of the lightning of heaven; his war-horn was of ivory. Before him were two brindled white-breasted greyhounds, having strong collars of rubies about their necks, reaching from the shoulder to the ear. And the one that was on the right side bounded across to the left side, and the one that was on the left to the right, and like two sea-swallows sported they around him. And his courser cast up four sods with his four hoofs like four swallows in the air, now above his head and now below. About him was a four-cornered cloth of purple, having an apple of gold at each corner; and every one of the apples was of the value of a hundred kine. And there was precious gold of the value of three hundred kine upon his shoes and upon his stirrups, from his knee to the tip of his toe. And the blade of reed-grass bent not beneath him, as he journeyed towards the gates of Arthur's palace." So far we have the glittering imagination of the twelfth-century bard; you might think working in a medium not wholly Celtic, but Norman-influenced as well; imagining his Arthurian Culhwch in terms of the knights he had seen at the courts of the Lords Marchers,--were it not that just such descriptions are the commonplaces of Irish Celticism, where they come from a time and people that had never seen Norman knights at all. But now you begin to leave regions where Normans can be remembered or imagined at all: "Spake the youth, 'Is there a porter?'--'There is; and unless thou holdest thy peace, small will be thy welcome. I am the porter of Arthur's hall on the first day of January in every year; and on every other day than this the post is filled by Huandaw, and Gogigwc, and Llaescenym, and Penpingion who goeth upon his head to save his feet, neither towards the heavens nor towards the earth, but like a rolling stone upon the floor of the court.'--'Open thou the portal.'--'I will not open it.'-- 'Wherefore not?'--'The knife is in the meat and the drink is in the horn, and there is revelry in Arthur's court; and no man may enter but a craftsman bearing his craft, or the son of the king of a privileged country. But there will be refreshment for thy dogs and for thy horse, and for thee there will be collops cooked and peppered, and luscious wine and mirthful song,--and food for fifty men shall be set before thee in the guest chamber, where the stranger and the sons of other countries eat, who come not into the precincts of the palace of Arthur. Said the youth, 'That will I not do. If thou openest the portal, it is well. If thou dost not open it, I will bring disgrace upon thy lord and an evil report upon thee. And I will set up three shouts at this very gate, than which none were ever more deadly, from the top of Pengwaed in Cornwall to the bottom of Dinsol in the North, and to Esgair Oerfel in Ireland.'--'Whatsoever clamor thou mayest make,' said Glewlwyd Gafaelfawr, against the rules of Arthur's court thou shalt not enter until I first go and consult with Arthur.' "Then Glewlwyd went into the hall. And Arthur said to him, 'Hast thou news from the gate?'--Half of my life is past, and half of thine. I was heretofore in Caer Se and As Se, in Sach and Salach, in Lotor and Ffotor, in India the Greater and India the Less. And I was with thee in the Battle of Dau Ynyr, when the twelve hostages were brought from Norway. And I have also been in Europe and in Africa and in the islands of Corsica, and in Caer Brythwch and Brythach and Ferthach; and I was present when thou didst conquer Greece in the East. And I have have been in Caer Oeth and Annoeth and Caer Nefenhir: nine supreme sovereigns, handsome men, saw we there; but never did I behold a man of equal dignity to him who is now at the door of the portal.' Then said Arthur:--'If walking thou didst enter here, return thou running. And everyone that beholds the light, and everyone that opens and shuts the eye, let him show him respect and serve him; some with gold-mounted drinking-horns, others with collops cooked and peppered, until such time as food and drink can be set before him." Culhwch came in, and asked a boon of Arthur; and Arthur answered that he should receive whatsoever his tongue might name, "as far as the wind dries and the rain moistens and the sun revolves and the sea encircles and the earth extends; save only my ship and my mantle, and Caledfwlch my sword, and Rhongomiant my lance, and Wynebgwrthucher my shield, and Carnwenhau my dagger and Gwen Hwyfar my wife. By the truth of heaven thou shalt receive it cheerfully, name what thou wilt." So Culhwch made his request;-- and it is really here that the ancient ages come trooping in:-- "I crave of thee that thou obtain for me Olwen the daughter of Yspaddaden Head of Giants; and this boon I seek likewise at the hands of thy warriors. I seek it from Cai, and Bedwyr, and Greidawl Galldonyd, and Greid the son of Eri, and Cynddelig Cyfarwvdd, and Tathal Cheat-the-Light, and Maelwys the son of Baeddan, and"--well, there are hundreds of them; but I must positively give you a few; they are all, it is likely, the denizens of ancient Celtic God-worlds and fairy-worlds and goblin-worlds,--"and Duach and Grathach and Nerthach the sons of Gwawrddur Cyrfach (these men came forth from the confines of hell); and Huell the son of Caw (he never yet made a request at the hands of any lord.) And Taliesin the Chief of Bards, and Manawyddan son of the Boundless, and Cormorant the son of Beauty (no one struck him in the Battle of Camlan by reason of his ugliness; all thought he was an auxiliary devil. Hair had he upon him like the hair of a stag). And Sandde Bryd Angel (no one touched him with a spear in the Battle of Camlan by reason of his beauty; all thought he was a ministering angel). And Cynwyl Sant (the third man who escaped from the Battle of Camlan; and he was the last that parted from Authur upon Henrtoen his horse). And Henwas the Winged the son of Erim; (unto these three men belonged these three peculiarities: with Henbedestyr there was not anyone that could keep pace, either on horseback or on foot; with Henwas Adeiniog no fourfooted beast could run the distance of an acre, much less could it go beyond it; and as to Sgilti Ysgawndroed, when he intended to go on a message for his lord, he never sought to find a path, but knowing whither he was to go, if his way led through a wood he went along the tops of the trees. During his whole life a blade of grass bent not beneath his feet, much less did it break, so light was his tread.) Teithi Hen the son of Gwynhan (his dominions were swallowed by the sea, and he himself barely escaped, and he came to Arthur; and his knife had this peculiarity: from the time he came there no haft would ever remain on it; and owing to this a sickness came on him, and he pined away during the remainder of his life, and of this he died.) Drem the son of Dremidyd (when the gnat arose in the morning with the sun, Drem could see it from Gelli Wis in Cornwall as far off as Pen Blathaon in North Britain.) And Eidol the son of Ner, and Glwyddyn Saer (who built Ehangwen, Arthur's hall.) Henwas and Henwyneb, (an old companion unto Arthur). Gwallgoyc another. (When he came to a town, though there were three hundred houses in it, if he wanted anything, he would let sleep come to the eyes of no man until he had it.) Osla Gyllellfawr (he bore a short broad dagger. When Arthur and his hosts came before a torrent, they would seek a narrow place where they might cross the water, and lay the sheathed dagger across the torrent, and it would be a bridge enough for the armies of the Three Islands of the Mighty and the three islands near thereby, with all their spoils.) The sons of Llwch Llawyniog from beyond the raging sea. Celi and Cueli and Gilla Coes Hydd, (who could clear three hundred acres at a bound: the chief leaper of Ireland was he). Sol and Gwadyn Ossol and Gwadyn Odyeith. (Sol could stand all day upon one foot. Gwadyn Ossol, if he stood upon the top of the highest mountain in the world, it would become a level plain under his feet. Gwadyn Odyeith,--the soles of his feet emitted sparks when they struck upon things hard, like the heated mass drawn out of the forge. He cleared the way for Arthur when they came to any stoppage.) Hireerwm and Hiratrwm (the day they went upon a visit three cantref provided for their entertainment, and they feasted until noon and drank until night and they they devoured the heads of vermin as if they had never eaten anything in their lives. When they made a visit they left neither the fat not the lean, the hot nor the cold, the sour nor the sweet, the fresh not the salt, the boiled nor the raw.) Huarwar the son of Aflawn (who asked Arthur such a boon as would satisfy him; it was the third great plague of Cornwall when he received it. None could get a smile from him but when he was satisfied.) Sugyn the sone of Sugnedydd (who could suck up the sea on which there were three hundred ships, so broad-chested he was). Uchtryd Faryf Draws (who spread his red untrimmed beard over the eight-and-forty rafters that were in Arthur's hall). Bwlch and Cyfwlch and Sefwlch the three sons of Cleddyf Cyfwlch, the three grandsons of Cleddyf Difwlch. (Their three shields were three gleaming glitterers. Their three spears were three pointed piercers. Their three swords were three griding gashers,--Gles, and Glessic, and Gleisad.) Clust the son of Clustfeinad; (though he were buried seven cubits beneath the earth, he would hear the ant fifty miles off rise from her nest in the norning). Medyr the son of Methredydd; (from Belli Wic he could in a twinkling")-- Well; one must stop somewhere; Culhwch himself was in no hurry to. He went on until the armies of the Island of the Mighty and the chief ladies of Arthur's court, with all their peculiarities, had been enumerated. But here, I say, you are let into an elder world; beyond this one in space, beyond it in time. You are on the precipice edge of the world's end, and mist fills the chasm before you; and out of the mist, things vast and gigantic, things half human and things not half human, present themselves, stirring your wonder, and withdraw leaving your imagination athirst. "These men came forth from the confines of hell" .... Who wrote of them had news, I think, of terrific doings in Atlantis, when earth shook to the tread of giant hosts. I confess that to me all things European, after this, look a little neat and dapper. I look from the cliffs at the limit of things, out over .....the sunset bound of Lyonnesse, A land of old upheaven from the abyss By fire, to sink into the abyss again; Where fragments of forgotten people dwelt: --it is not in this world; belongs not to this Fifth Race; but is more ancient, fantasmal, and portentous. Has it ever occurred to you that no body of men, no movement, no nation for that matter, can choose for itself a symbol that does not actually express it? The flags of the nations are all, for those that can read them, the sign manuals of the souls of the nations, wherein the status of each is written plain; though those that chose the symbol, and those that glory in it, may have no idea how they are thus revealing or exposing themselves.--No, I am not going to speak of the Dragon; which, by all traditions, was the symbol chosen for the monarchy set up by the fifth-century Britons; nor to remind you--and yet it is worth remembering,-- that the Dragon is the symbol of the Esoteric Wisdom;--I am going to speak of something else.--You take some form, some picture; and it seems to you in some inexplicable way inspiring; and you adopt it, and say _In hoc signo vincam._ Why? You know nothing about symbolism; and yet, if you have any inner life, those who understand symbolism can read your inner life in you symbol. That is because symbolism is a universal science, real, and with nothing arbitrary about it; and because something in your subconsciousness wiser than you has directed you choice, and means you to be expressed. Take one of the most universal symbols of all: the Cross. In one form or another we find it all over the world. In ancient Egypt, where it is called the _Ankh,_ and is drawn as a capital T with a circle above. There it symbolizes life in the largest sense. The circle above stands for Spirit; the Tau or cross below, for matter: thus it pictures the two in their true relation the one to the other.--The Christian Church, as it grew up in the last centuries of the Roman empire, chose for itself a symbol,--in which Constantine went forth to conquer. It was the four limbs of the cross: simply the symbol of Matter. But somehow, the Christian Church in the Celtic Isles did not adopt this symbol, or rather this form of it. It took what is called the Celtic Cross: the Cross, which is matter, with the Circle, which is Spirit, imposed over the upper part of it. Now if you brought a man from India, or China, or anywhere, who knew nothing about European history or Christianity, but understood the ancient science of symbolism; and showed him these two crosses, the Celtic and the Latin; he would tell you at once that the one, the Latin, stood for a movement wholly unspiritual; and that the other, the Celtic, stood for a movement with some spiritual light in it. How much, I am not prepared to say. One of the chief formative forces in Christian theology was Saint Augustine of Hippo, born in 354, died in 430. He taught that man was Originally sinful, naturally depraved; and that no effort of his own will could make him otherwise: all depended on the Grace of God, something from without, absolutely beyond control of volition. Then rose up a Welshman by the name of Morgan,--or he may have been an Irishman; some say so; only Morgan is a Welsh, not an Irish name; and evidence is lacking that there were Irish Christians at that time; he was a Celt, 'whatever';--and went to Rome, teaching and preaching. His doctrine was that man is not originally sinful and naturally depraved; he had the temerity to declare that pagans, especially those who had never heard of Christianity, were not by God's ineffable mercy damned to everlasting hell; that unbaptized infants were not destined to frizzle eternally; that what a man ought to do, that he had the power, within his own being, to do; and that his salvation lay in his own hands. They translated his Welsh name (which means 'Sea-born') into the Greek--Pelagius; and dubbed his damnable heresy 'Pelagianism'; and it was a heresy that flourished a good deal in the Celtic Isles;--his writings came down in Ireland. The incident is not much in itself; but something. Not that the Celtic Church of David and Patrick was Pelagian; it was not. In the matter of doctrine it is impossible to distinguish it from the Church on the continent. But Pelagianism may suggest that there were in Britain relics of an elder light. Did some echo of ancient wisdom, Druidic, survive in Britain from Pre-roman days? It is a question that has been much fought over; and one that, nowadays, the learned among my countrymen answer very rabidly in the negative. You have but to propound it in a whisper, to make them foam heartily at the mouth. Bless you, they know that it didn't, and can prove it over and over; because--because--it couldn't have, and you are a fool for thinking it could. Here is the position taken by modern scholarship (as a rule): we know nothing about the philosophy of the Druids, and do not believe they had one. They could not have had one; and the classical writers who said they had simply knew nothing about it. It may be useful to quote what some of these classical writers say. "They (the Druids) speak the language of the Gods," says Diodorus Siculus (v, 31, 4); who describes them also as "exhorting combatants to peace, and taming them like wild beasts by enchantment" (v, 31, 5). They taught men, says Diogenes Laertius, "to worship the Gods, to do no evil, and to exercise courage" (6). They taught "many things regarding the stars and their motions, the extent of the universe and the earth, and the nature of things, and the power and might of the immortal Gods," says Caesar (iv, 14.); and Strabo speaks of their teaching in moral science (iv, 4, 4). "And ye, ye Druids," says Lucan, "to you only is given knowledge or ignorance (whichever it be) of the Gods and the powers of heaven. . . . From you we learn that the borne of man's ghost is not the senseless grave, not the pale realm of the monarch below." (i, 451 sq,) "The Druids wish to impress this in particular: that souls do not perish, but pass from one to another after death." (Caesar, iv, 14) Diodorus testifies that "among them the doctrine of Pythagoras prevailed, that the souls of men are immortal, and after completing their term of existence, live again, the soul passing into another body" (v, 28). Says Valerius Maximus: "They would fain make us believe that the souls of men are immortal. I would be tempted to call these breeches-warers fools, if their doctrine were not the same as that of the mantle-clad Pythagoras"; and he goes on to speak of the Celtic custom of lending money to be repaid in a future life (vi, 6, 10). Timagenes, Strabo, and mela also bear witness to their teaching the immortality of the soul. I may say at once that I copy all these quotations from a book written largely to prove that the Druids were savage medicine-men with no philosophy at all: it is, _The Religion of the Ancient Celts,_ by Canon MacCulloch. The argument used by this learned divine is very simple. The Druids were savage medicine-men, and could have known nothing about Pythagoras' teachings or Pythagoras himself. Therefore they didn't. All the classical writers were exaggerating, or inventing, or copying from one another.--It never occurs to our Canon to remember Iamblichus' statement that the Druids did not borrow or learn from Pythagoras, but Pythagoras from them. He quotes with no sign of doubt the things said by the classical writers about barbaric Druid rites; never dreaming that in respect to these there may have been invention, exaggeration, or copying one from another-- and that other chiefly the gentle Julius who--but I have mentioned _his_ exploit before. Holding to such firm preconceptions as these,--and being in total ignorance of the fact that the Esoteric Wisdom was once universal, and therefore naturally the same with Pythagoras as with anyone else who had not lost it, whether he and the Druids had ever heard of each other or not,--it becomes quite easy for my learned countryment to scout the idea that any such doctrine or system could have survived among the Britons until the fifth century, and revived then. Yet Nennius, by the way, asserts that Vortigern (the king who called in the Saxons) had 'Magi' with him; which word in the Irish text appears as 'Druids': and Canon MacCulloch himself speaks of this as evidence of a recrudescence of Druidism at that time. With those quotations from the classical writers in view--if with nothing else,--I think we may call Reincarnation.... the characteristic doctrine of Druidism. It so appeared to the Romans; it was that doctrine, which with themselves had been obscured by skepticism, worldliness, and the outwornness of their spiritual perceptions, that struck them as the most noteworthy, most surprising thing in Druidic teaching. It stood in sharp contrast, too, with the beliefs of Christianity; so that, supposing it, and the system that taught it, had died during the Roman occupation of Britain, there really was nowhere from which it might have been regained. Wales has been, until very recently, extraordinarily cut off from the currents of civilization and world-thought. She has dwelt aloof among her mountains, satisfied with an interesting but exceedingly narrow little culture of her own. You might almost say that from the time the Romans left Britain there was no channel through which ideas might flow in to her; and this idea, especially, was hardly in Europe to flow in. And yet this idea has curiously persisted in Wales, as a tradition among the unlettered, even to our own day. Dr. Evans-Wentz, of Berkeley, Oxford, and Rennes Universities, in this present twentieth century, found old people among the peasantry who knew something about it, had heard of it from their elders; there was nothing new or unfamiliar about it to them; and this though nearly all Welsh folklore, even belief in the fairies, almost suffered extinction during the Religious Revivals of the eighteenth century and since. They say the chapels frightened the fairies out of Wales; it is not quite true; but you can understand how wave after wave of fervid Calvinism would have dealt with a tradition like that of Reincarnation. And yet echoes of it linger, and Dr. Wentz found them. I myself remember hearing of a servant-girl from the mountains to whom her mistress (from whom I heard it) introduced the subject. The girl expressed no surprise whatever: indeed to goodness she shouldn' wonder, so there; her father was a druid, miss, indeed and had told her about it when she was a child. We have collateral evidence,--in Nennius, I believe,--for the existence of several famed poets among the Welsh at that time; and Tallesin' is one of the names mentioned. Seventy-seven poems come down ascribed to him: I quoted some lines from one of them; here now are some line from another. The child Taliesin is discovered in the court of Maelgwr Gwynedd, where he has confounded the bards with his magic; and is called forth to explain himself. He does so in the following verses: Primary Chief Bard am I to Elphin, And my original country is the Region of the Summer Stars; Idno and Heinin called me Merddin; At length every being shall call me Taliesin. I was with my Lord in the highest sphere When Lucifer fell into the depths of hell; I have borne a banner before Alexander; I know the names of the stars from north to south. I was in Canaan when Absalom was slain; I was in the Court of Don (the Milky Way) before the birth of Gwydion; I was on the high cross of the merciful Son of God; I have been three periods in the prison of Arianrhod. I was in Asia with Noah in the Ark; I saw the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; I was in India when Rome was built; I am now come here to the remnant of the Trojans. I was with my Lord in the ass's manger; I strengthened Moses through the waters of Jordan; I was in the firmament from the Cauldron of Ceridwen I shall be on earth until the day of doom. * ------ * I quote it from Mr. T.W. Rollestone's _Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race._ The poem appeares in the _Hanes Taliesin,_ in Lady Guest's _Mabinogion._ ------ Now, what would common sense have to say about things like that? Simply, I think, that they are echoes that came down in Wales through the ages, of a teaching that once was known. They do not,--they would not,--no one would expect them to,--give the true and exact features and the inwardness of such teaching, but they do reflect the haunting reminiscences of a race that once believed in Reincarnation so firmly, that people were ready to lend money not to be repaid until a future life on earth. If you can prove that that poem not written until the thirteenth, or sixteenth, or eighteenth century, all the better; it only shows the greater strength, the longer endurance, of the tradition; and therefore, the greater reality of that from which the tradition came. It is the ghost of something which once was living; and the longer you can show the ghost surviving,--the more living in its day was the something it survived from. Your Tamerlanes and Malek Rics can be used to frighten babies for centures;--their ghosts walk in that sense; their memories linger;--but your Tomlinsons die and are done with, and no wind carries rumors of them after. And the name of Taliesin,--whom you may say we know to have been a Welsh poet of the sixth century,--is made the peg on which to hang these floating reminiscences of Druidic teaching;--and the story told about him,--a story replete with universal symbolism, --is, for anyone who has studied that science, clearly symbolic of the initiation of a Teacher of the Secret Doctrine. What is it accounts for race-persistence? _Not_ just what you see on the physical plane. There is what we should call an astral mold; and this is fed and nourished,--its edges kept firm and distinct,--by forces from the plane of causes, the thought-plane. When this mold has been well established,--as by centuries of national greatness and power,--all sorts of waves of outer circumstance may roll over the race, and apparently wash its raciality clean away; and yet something in the unseen operates to resist, and, when the waves recede, to raise up first the old race-consciousness, and finally national existence again. Take Ireland for example. It has been over-run and over-run so much that many authorities would deny the existence of any Celtic blood there at all. But what is absolutely undeniable is that a distinct and well-defined racial type exists there; and that it corresponds largely to the racial type--I do not mean physical so much as spiritual,--that the Greek and Roman writers ascribed to the Celtic Gauls. It is often claimed that an Irishman is merely an inferior kind of Englishman, and that there is little difference in blood between the two; but those who make this claim most loudly would not dream of denying the difference of the mental types; they are generally the ones who see most difference. Why was it that the children of the Norman invaders of Ireland became _Hiberniores ipsis Hiberniis?_ Because of the astral mold, certainly. It is race-consciousness that makes race, and not the other way; and there is something behind that makes race-consciousness; so that even where calamity has smashed up the latter and put it altogether in abeyance, the seeds of it remain, in the soil and on the inner planes, to sprout again in their day; when the Crest-Wave rolls in; when Souls come to revive them. It may be that this will never happen, of course; but it seems to me that where Nature wishes to put an end to these racial recrudescences, she must take strong steps. Though the British Celts had been under Roman rule for four centuries, their language today is Celtic.--Why?--Because there was what you may call a very old, well-established and strong Celtic-speaking astral mold. We absorbed a large number of Latin words; but assimilated them to the Celtic mold so that you would never recognise them; whereas in a page of English the Latin borrowings stand out by the score. Look at that _ascend,_ for instance: Latin _ascendere_ parading itself naked and unashamed, and making no pretense whatever to be anything else. You shall find _ascendere,_ too, on any page of Welsh; or rather, you shall not find him, by reason of his skillful camouflage. He has cut off his train, as in English; but he has cut off more of it: the _d_ of the stem, as well as the ending. He has altered both his vowels, and one of his three remaining consonants; and appears as _esgyn,_ to walk the pages undetected for an alien by that vigilant police, the Celtic sense of euphony. He is typical of a thousand others. Wherefore the difference?--The English were a new people in process of formation, and besides with a whole heap of Latin blood in them from the Roman province; their mold was faintly formed, or only forming; but the Celts had formed theirs rigidly in ancient times. Again: when in the ninth century Hywel Dda king of Wales codified the laws of his country, the result was a Celtic code without, I think, any relation to Roman law; though Roman law had prevailed in Roman Britain for three centuries or so. What strong Celtic molds must have persisted, to cause this! Roman law imposed itself on nearly all Europe, including many peoples that never were under Roman rule; and yet here was this people, that had been all that time under the Romans, oblivious of Roman law, uninfluenced by it, practically speaking;--and returning at the first opportunity to the kind of laws they had had before the Romans were born or thought of. Druidism had been proscribed, as a practice, during Roman times. The worship of the Celtic Gods had continued; but they had been assimilated to those of the empire;--which would be a much more difficult thing to do were the Gods, as your modern learned suppose, mere fictions of the superstitious, and not the symbols of, or the Powers behind, the forces of Nature. So Celtic religion outwardly was submerged in Roman religion; and then later. Christianity came in. But the science, the institutions, and the philosophy of the Druids had been part and parcel of the inner life of the race perhaps as long as their laws and language had; and your Celt runs by nature to religion, or even to religiosity,--ultra-religion. Is it likely that, while he kept his laws and language, he let his religion go? And when it was not an arbitrary farrago of dogmas, like some we might mention; but a philosophy of the soul so vivid that he counted death little more to fuss about than going to sleep? When should those old ideas have reappeared,--when should the racial astral molds have been brought out and furbished up with new strength to make them endure? Why, when the Roman dominion came to an end; when the people were turning for inspiration to their own things, and away from Latin things; when they were forgoing Latin for Celtic; reviving Celtic laws and customs; trying to forget they had been subjected to foreigners, and to remember and resurrect the old Monarchy of Britain. Christianity would not give them all the difference from Romanism that they wanted,--that the most ardent among them wanted: the Romans were Christians too;--but there was that other ancient thing which the Romans had proscribed. It still existed, in Ireland for example; and for that matter, there were plenty of places in Britain where the Roman arm could never have reached it. Matthew Arnold saw these things in his day, and argued for the Neo-druidism of the sixth century. He was a man accustomed to deal in ideas. You may easily train your mind to an acuteness and sagacity in dealing with grammatical roots, and forms, that will not help you in dealing with ideas. To sum up, then: I believe there was an influx of the Crest-Wave into Britain, from about 410 to 540: a national awakenment, with something of greatness to account for the Arthurian legend; and with something of spiritual illumination, through a revival of Druidic Wisdom to account for the rumor of Taliesin. I am not sure but that this influenced the Celtic Church: I am not sure but that David, and Cadoc, and Teilo, and Padarn, fathers of that church, were men pervious to higher influences; and that the monastery-colleges they presided over were real seats of lerning, unopposed to, if not in league with, the light. XXVI. "SACRED IERNE OF THE HIBERNIANS" * "I could not put the pen aside Till with my heart's love I had tried To fashion some poor skilless crown For that dear head so low bowed down." --From the Celtic It is but a step from Wales to Ireland. From the one, you can see the "fair hills of holy Ireland" in the heart of any decent sunset; from the other, you can see Wales shining landed in in any shining dawn. No Roman legion ever landed in Ireland; yet all through Roman times boats must have been slipping across and across; there must have been constant communication, and there was, really, no distinction of race. There was a time, I believe, when they were joined, one island; and all the seas were east of the Severn. Both peoples were a mixture of Gaels and Cymry; only it happens that the Gaelic or Q language survived in Ireland; the Cymric or P language in Wales. So, having touched upon Wales last week, and shown the Crest-Wave flowing in there, this week, following that Wave westward, I invoke the land of Ireland! Shining, shining sea! Fertile, fertile mountain! Gladed, gladed wood! Abundant river, abundant in water! Fish-abounding lake! It was what Amargin the Druid sang, when the Gael first came into Ireland. Here is the story of their coming:-- ------ * The stories told in this and the following lecture, and the translations of Irish poems, etc., are taken from Mr. T.W. Rollertone's delightful _Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race,_ or from M. de Jubainville's _Irish Mythological Cycle,_ translated and published in Dublin in the 'nineties. ------ Bregon built a tower in Spain. He had a son named Ith; and one fine evening in winter Ith was looking out over the horizon from Bregon's tower, and saw the coast of Ireland in the distance; for "it is on a winter's evening when the air is pure that one's sight carries farthest." So says the eleventh century bard who tells the tale: he without knowing then that it was not in Spain was Bregon's tower, but on the Great Plain, which is in the Atlantic, and yet not in this world at all. Now this will tell you what you ought to know about Ireland, and why it is we end our lectures with her. We saw Wales near the border of things; looking out from that cliff's edge on to the unknown and unseen, and aware of mysterious things beyond. Now we shall see Ireland, westward again, down where the little waves run in and tumble; sunlit waves along shining sands; and with boats putting out at any time; and indeed, so lively an intercourse going forward always, that you never can be quite sure whether it is in mortal Ireland or immortal Fairyland you are,-- "So your soul goes straying in a land more fair; Half you tread the dew-wet grasses, half wander there." For the wonder of Ireland is, that it is the West Pole of things; there is no place else nearer the Unseen; its next-door neighbor-land westward is this Great Plain, whither sail the Happy Dead in their night-dark coracles,--to return, of course, in due season; and all the peoplings of Ireland were from this Great Plain. So you see why the Crest-Wave, passing from dying Europe, "went west" by way of Ireland. I will tell you about that Great Plain: it is "A marvelous land, full of music, where primrose blossoms on the hair, and the body is white as snow. "There none speaks of _mine and thine;_ white are the teeth and black the brows; eyes flash with many-colored lights, and the hue of the fox-glove is on every cheek. . . . "Though fair are the plains of Ireland, few of them are so fair as the Great Plain. The ale of Ireland is heady, but headier far the ale of the Great Country. What a wonder of a land it is! No youth there grows to old age. Warm streams flow through it; the choicest mead and wine. Men there are always comely and blemishless." Well; Ith set sail from the Great Plain, with three times thirty warriors, and landed at Corcaguiney in the south-west of Ireland; and at that time the island inhabited less by men than by Gods; it was the Tuatha De Danaan, the Race of the Danaan Gods, that held the kingship there. Little wonder, then, that the first name of Ireland we get in the Greek writings is "Sacred Ierne, populous with the Hibernians." Well now, he found MacCuill, MacCecht, and MacGrene the Son of the Sun, arranging to divide the kingdom between them; and they called on him to settle how the division should be.--"Act," said he, "according to the laws of justice, for the country you dwell in is a good one; it is rich in fruit and honey, in wheat and in fish; and in heat and cold it is temperate." From that they thought he would be designing to conquer it from them, and so forestalled his designs by killing him; but his companions escaped, and sailed back to the Great Plain. That was why the Milesians came to conquer Ireland. The chiefs of them were Eber Finn, and Eber Donn, and Eremon, and Amargin the Druid: the sons of Mile, the son of Bile the son of Bregon; thus their grandfather was the brother of that Ith whom the Gods of Ireland slew. It was on a Thursday, the first of May, and the seventeenth day of the moon, that the Milesians arrived in Ireland; and as he set his right foot on the soil of it, Amargin chanted this poem: I am the wave of the Ocean; I am the murmur of the billow; I am the ox of the seven combats; I am the vuture upon the rock; I am a tear of the sun; I am the fairest of plants; I am a wild boar in valor; I am a salmon in the water; I am a lake in the plain; I am a word of science; I am the spear-point that gives battle; I am the god who creates in the head the fire of thought. Who is it that enlightens the assembly upon the mountain, if not I? Who telleth the ages of the moon, if not I? Who showeth the place where the sun goes to rest? They went forward to Tara, and summoned the kings of the Danaan Gods to give up the island to them; who asked three days to consider whether they would give battle, or surrender, or quit Ireland. On that request Amargin gave judgment: that it would be wrong for the Milesians to take the Gods unprepared that way; and that they should go to their ships again, and sail out the distance of nine waves from the shore, and then return; then if they could conquer Ireland fairly in battle, it should be theirs. So they embarked, and put the nine waves between themselves and the shore, and waited. And the Danaans raised up a druid mist and a storm against them, whereby Ireland seemed to them no more than the size of a pig's back in the water; and by reason of that it has the name of Innis na Wic, the Island of the Pig. But if the Gods had magic, Amargin had better magic; and he sang that Invocation to the Land of Ireland; and at that the storm fell and the mist vanished. Then Eber Donn was exulting in his rage at the thought of putting the inhabitants to death; but the thought in his mind brought the storm again, and his ship went down, and he was drowned. But at last the remnant of them landed, and fought a battle with the Gods, and defeated them; whereafter the Gods put a druid invisibility on themselves, and retired into the hills; and there in their fairy palaces they remain to this day; indeed they do. They went back into the inwardness of things; whence, however, they were always appearing, and again vanishing into it; and all the old literature of Ireland is thridded through with the lights of their magic and their beauty, and their strange forthcomings and withdrawings. For example: There was Midir the Proud, one of them. In the time of the great Caesar, Eochaid Airem was high king of Ireland; and he had for his queen Etain, reborn then as a mortal,--but a Danaan princess at one time, and the wife of Miidir. It was a fine evening in the summer, and Eochaid Airem was looking from the walls of Tara and admiring the beauty of the world. He saw an unknown warrior riding towards him; clad in purple tunic; his hair yellow as gold, and his blue eyes shining like candles. A five-pointed lance was in his hand; his shield was ornamented with beads of gold. --"A hundred thousand welcomes to you," said the high king. "Who is it you are?" --"I know well who you are," said the warrior, "and for a long time." --"What name is on you?" said Eochaid. --"Nothing illustrious about it in the world," said the other. "I am Midir of Bregleith." --"What has brought you hither?" --"I am come to play at chess with you." --"I have great skill at chess," said the high king; and indeed, he was the best at it in Ireland, in those days. --"We shall see about that," said Midir. --"But the queen is sleeping in her chamber now," said Eochaid; "and it is there the chessboard is." --"Little matter," said Midir, "I have here a board as good as yours is." And that was the truth. His chessboard was of silver, glittering with precious stones at each corner. From a satchel wrought of shining metal he took his chessmen, which were of pure gold. Then he arranged them on the board.--"Play you," said he. --"I will not play without a stake," said the king. --"What will the stake be?" said Midir. --"All one to me," said Eochaid. --"If you win," said Midir, "I will give you fifty broad-chested horses with slim swift feet." --"And if you win," said Eochaid Airem, sure of victory, "I will give you whatever you demand." Midir won that game, and demanded Etain the queen. But the rules of chess are that the vanquished may claim his revenge,--a second game, that is, to decide the matter; and the high king proposed that it should be played at the end of a year. Midir agreed, and vanished. The year ended, and Eochaid was at Tara; he had had the palace surrounded by a great armed host against Midir; and Etain was there with him. Here is the description of Etain: "A clear comb of silver was held in her hand, the comb was adorned with gold; and near her, as for washing, was a basin of silver whereon four birds had been chased, and there were little bright gems of carbuncles on the rim of the basin. A bright purple mantle waved round her; and beneath it another mantle with fringes of silver: the outer one clasped over her bosom with a golden brooch. A tunic she wore, with a long hood that might cover her head attached to it; it was stiff and glossy with green silk beneath red embroidery of gold, and clasped over her breast with marvelously wrought clasps of gold and silver, so that men saw the bright gold and the green silk flashing against the sun. On her head were two tresses of golden hair, and each tress plaited into four strands, and at the end of each strand a little ball of gold. Each of her two arms was as white as the snow of a single night, and each of her two cheeks of the hue of the foxglove. Even and small the teeth in her head, and they shone like pearls. Her eyes were blue as the blue hyacinth, her lips delicate and crimson. . . . White as snow, or the foam of the wave, was her neck. . . . Her feet were slim and white as the ocean foam; evenly set were her eyes, and the eyebrows of a bluish black, such as you see on the shell of a beetle." --What I call on you to note about that is something very unpoetic. It is not the flashing brightness, the grace, the evidence of an eye craving for beauty, and of a hand sure in the creation of beauty;--but the dress. The Irish writers got these ideas of dress without having contacted, for example, classical civilization, or any foreign civilization. The ideas were home-grown, the tradition Irish. The writer was describing what he was familiar with: the kind of dress worn by an Irish princess before Ireland had seen foreign fashions and customs. He was heightening picture for artistic effect, no doubt; but he was drawing with his eye on the object. I am inclined to think that imagination always must work upon a basis of things known; just as tradition must always be based on fact. Now then: try, will you, to imagine primitive savages dressing like that, or sufficiently nearly like that for one of their bards to work up such a picture on the actualities he had seen. I think you cannot do it. And this picture is not extraordinary; it is typical of what we commonly find in the ancient Irish stories. What it proves is that the Ireland that emerges into history, war-battered and largely decivilized by long unsettled conditions as she was, remembered and was the inheiritor of an Ireland consummately civilized.--But to return to the hall of Eochaid Airem: Every door in it was locked; and the whole place filled with the cream of the war-host of the Gael, and apprehension on everyone, they not knowing would it be war and violence with Midir, or what it would be. So it had been all day; so it was now in the dusk of the evening. Then suddenly there stood Midir in the midst of them: Midir the Proud; never had he seemed fairer than then. No man had seen him enter; none knew how he had come. And then it was but putting his spear in his left hand for him, and putting his right arm about the waist of Etain, and rising through the air with her, and vanishing through the roof. And when the men of Ireland rushed out from the hall, they saw two swans circling above Tara and away, their long white necks yoked together with a yoke of moon-bright silver. It was a long time the Gods were ruling in Ireland before the Milesians came. King after king reigned over them; and there are stories on stories, a rich literature for another nation, about the time of these Danaan Gods alone. One of them was Lir, the Boundless Deep. He had four children by his first wife; when she died, he married her sister, Aoife by name. Aoife was jealous of the love he had for his children, and was for killing them. But when it came to doing it, "her womanhood overcame her," and instead she put swanhood on the four of them, and the doom that swans they should be from that out for nine hundred years: three hundred on Lake Derryvaragh in West Meath, three hundred on the Straits of Moyle between Ireland and Scotland, three hundred on the Atlantic by Erris and Innishglory. After that the enchantment would end. For that, Bov Derg, one of the Gods, changed her into a demon of the air, and she flew away shrieking, and was heard of no more. But there was no taking the fate from the swan-children; and the Danaans sought them on their lake, and found they had human speech left to them, and the gift of wonderful Danaan music. From all parts they came to the lake to talk with them and to hear them singing; and that way it was for three hundred years. Then they must depart, Fionuala and her three brothers, the swan-children, and wing their way to the northern sea, and be among the wild cliffs and the foam; and the worst of loneliness and cold and storm was the best fate there was for them. Their feathers froze to the rocks on the winter nights; but they filled the drear chasms of the tempest with their Danaan singing. It was Fionuala wrapped her plumage about her brothers, to keep them from the cold; she was their leader, heartening them. And if it was bad for them on the Straits of Moyle, it was worse on the Atlantic; three hundred years they were there, and bitter sorrow the fate on them. When their time to be freed was near, they were for flying to the palace of Lir their father, at the hill of the White Field in Armagh. But long since the Milesians had come into Ireland, and the Danaans had passed into the hills and the unseen; and with the old centuries of their enchantment heavy on them, their eyes had grown no better than the eyes of mortals: gorse-grown hills they saw, and green nettles growing, and no sign of the walls and towers of the palace of Lir. And they heard the bells ringing from a church, and were frightened at the "thin, dreadful sound." But afterwards, in their misery, they took refuge with the saint in the church, and were converted, and joined him in singing the services. Then, after a while, the swanhood fell from them, and they became human, with the whole of their nine centuries heavy on them. "Lay us in one grave," said Fionuala to the saint; "and place Conn at my right hand, and Fiachra at my left, and Aed before my face; for there they were wont to be when I sheltered them many a winter night upon the seas of Moyle." So it was they were buried; but the saint sorrowed for them till the end of his days. And there, if you understand it, you have the forgotten story of Ireland. She was once Danaan, and fortunate in the Golden Age. Then she was enchanted, and fell from her high estate; and sorrow and the wildness of ages of decivilizing wars were her portion; but she retained her wonderful Danaan gift of song. Then came Christianity, and she sang her swan-song in the services of the Church;--when she had overcome her terror of the ominous sound of the bells. She became human again: that is, enjoyed one more period of creative greatness, a faint revival of her old splendor; and then,--Ah, it was a long time ago; a long time the hermit had been sorrowing over her grave! But listen, by the lake of Derryvaragh, on the seas of Moyle, or by Erris and Innishglory, and you will hear still the ghostly echoes of the singing of Danaan swans. _Danaan_ swans: music better than of the world of men! O Swan-child, come from the grave, and be bright as you were of old When you sing o'er the sun-bright wave in the Danaans' Age of Gold! Are you never remembering, darling, the truth that you knew well then, That there's nobody dies from the world, asthore, but is born in the world again. It brings me naturally to the place where we take her up in our history. At the end of the fourth century, "the sea," says the Roman poet Claudian, "was foamy with the hostile oars of the Irish." Niall of the Nine Hostages was high king of Tara; and he was all for a life on the ocean wave and a home on the rolling deep. He raided the coasts of Britain annually, and any other coasts that came handy, carrying off captives where he might. One of these was a boy named Sucat, from Glamorgan: probably from Glamorgan, though it might have been from anywhere between the Clyde and the Loire. In time this Sucat escaped from his Irish slavery, entered the Church, took the Latin name of Patrick, and made it his business to Christianize Ireland. That was about the time when the Britons were throwing off the Roman yoke. He was at the height of his career in the middle of the fifth century. Even if he did not make a clean and bloodless sweep of the whole country, Patrick was one of the most successful Christian missionaries that ever preached. There was some opposition by the druids, but it was not successful. He went to the courts of the kings, and converted them; and to say you had baptized a king, was as good as to say you had his whole clan captured; for it was a fractious unnatural clansman who would not go where his chieftain led. We are in an atmosphere altogether different from the rancor and fanaticism of the continent. Patrick,--there must have been something very winning and kindly about the man,-- roused no tradition of animosity. He never made Ireland hate her pagan past. When the Great Age came,--which was not till later, --not till the Crest-Wave had passed from Wales,--and Christian Irishmen took to writing down the old legends and stories, they were very tender to the memories of the Gods and heroes. It was in pity for the Children of Lir, that were turned into swans, that they were kept alive long enough to be baptized and sent to heaven. Can you fancy Latona and her children so received by Greekish or Latin monks into the Communion of Saints? But the Irish Church was always finding excuses for the salvation of the great figures of old. Some saint called up Cuculain from hell, converted him, and gave him a free pass that Peter at the Gates should honor. There was Conchobar MacNessa again. He was king of Ulster in the days of the Red Branch, the grand heroic cycle of Irish legend; Cuculain was the chief of his warriors. A brain-ball was driven through the skull of Conchobar from a sling; but sure, his druid doctors would never be phased by a trifle like that. They bound up the wound and healed him in a cauldron of cure; but warned him never to get excited or over-exert himself, or the brain-ball would come out and he would die; barring such accidents, he would do splendidly. And so he did for some years. Then one day a darkness came over the world, and he put his druids to finding out the cause of it. They told him they saw in their vision three crosses on a hill in the east of the world, and three men nailed on them; and the man in the middle with the likeness of the Son of God. With that the battle-fury came on Conchobar, and he fell to destroying the trees of the forest with his sword. "Oh that I were there!" he cried; "thus would I deal with his enemies." With the excitement and over-exertion, out came the brain-ball, and he died. And if God Almighty would not take Conchobar MacNessa, pagan as he was, into heaven for a thing like that,--sure, God Almighty was not half such a decent kindly creature as the Irish monk who invented the yarn. So nothing comes down to us that has not passed the censorship of a race-proud priesthood, with perhaps never a drop of the wine of true wisdom in them, to help them discriminate and truth to shine through what they were passing on; but still, with a great deal of the milk of human kindness as a substitute, so far as it might be. They treasured the literary remains of druid days; liberally twisting them, to be sure, into consonance with Christian ideas of history and the fitness of things; but still they treasured them, and drew from them inspiration. Thus the whole past comes down euhemerized, cooked, and touched up. It comes down very glorious,--because the strongest feeling in Irish hearts was Irishism, race-consciousness. Whereas the Latin Church was fiercely against antiquity and all its monuments, the Celtic Church in Ireland was anxious above all things to preserve Celtic antiquity,--having first brought it into line with the one true faith. The records had to be kept,--and made to tally with the Bible. The godhood of the Gods had to be covered away, and you had to treat them as if they had been respectable children of Adam,--more or less respectable, at any rate. A descent from Noah had to be found for the legendary kings and heroes; and for every event a date corresponding with that of someone in the Bible. Above all, you had to pack the whole Irish past into the few thousand years since Noah came out of the Ark.--You get a glimpse in Wales of the struggle there was between Hebrao-Christian chronology and the Celtic sense of the age of the world: in the pedigree of an ancient family, where, it is said, about half way down the line this entry occurs after one of the names: "In his time Adam was expelled from Paradise." In Ireland, indeed, there was at least one man from before the Flood living in historic times: Fintan, whom, with others, Noah sent into the western world while the Ark was building. Here is one of Fintan's poems: "If you inquire of me concerning Ireland, I know and can relate gladly all the invasions of it since the beginning of the delightful world. Out of the east came Cessair, a woman, daughter of Bith, with her fifty maidens, with her three men. The flood came upon Bith on his mountain without mystery; on Ladru at Ard Ladran; on Cessair at Cull Cesra. As for me, for the space of a year, beneath the rapid flood, on the height of a mighty wave, I enjoyed sleep which was exceeding good. Then, in Ireland, I found my way above the waters until Partholan came out of the East, from the land of the Greeks. Then, in Ireland, I enjoyed rest; Ireland was void till the son of Agnoman came, Nemed with the delightful manners. The Fir Bolg and the Fir Galioin came a long time after, and the Fir Domnan also; they landed at Erris in the west. Then came the Tuatha De Danaan in their hood of mist. I lived with them for a long time, though their age is far removed. After that came the sons of Mile out of Spain and the south. I lived with them; mighty were their battles. I had come to a great age, I do not conceal it, when the pure faith was sent to Ireland by the King of the Cloudy Heaven. I am the fair Fintan son of Bochra; I proclaim it aloud. Since the flood came here I am a great personage in Ireland." In the middle of the sixth century he was summoned as a witness by the descendants of Niall of the Nine Hostages against King Dermot MacKerval, in a dispute as to the ancient divisions of Ireland. He came to Tara with nine companies in front of him, and nine companies behind: they were his descendants. This, mind you, is in strictly historical times. The king and his people received him kindly, and after he had rested a little, he told them his story, and that of Tara from its foundation. They asked him to give them some proof of his memory. "Right willingly," said Fintan. "I passed one day through a wood in West Munster; I brought home with me a red berry of the yew-tree, which I planted in my kitchen-garden, and it grew there till it was as tall as a man. Then I took it up, and re-planted it on the green lawn before the house, and it grew there until a hundred champions could find room under its foliage, to be sheltered there from wind and rain, and cold and heat. I remained so, and my yew remained so, spending our time alike, until at last all its leaves fell off from decay. When afterwards I thought of turning it to some profit, I went to it, and cut it from its stem; and I made of it seven vats, and seven keeves, and seven stans, and seven churns, and seven pitchers, and seven milans, and seven medars, with hoops for all. I remained so with my yew vessels until their hoops all fell off from decay and old age. After that I re-made them; but could only get a keeve out of the vat, and a stan out of the keeve, and a mug out of the stan, and a cilorn out of the mug, and a milan out of the cilom, and a medar out of the milan; and I leave it to Almighty God that I do not know where their dust is now, after their dissolution with me from decay." * ------ * De Jubainville, _Irish Mythological Cycle;_ when also Fintan's poem quoted above. ------ Now here is a strange relic of the Secret Teaching that comes down with this legend of Fintan. Each of the four Cardinal Points, it was said, had had its Man appointed to record all the wonderful events that had taken place in the world.* One of them was this Fintan, son of Bochra, son of Lamech, whose duty was to preserve the histories of Spain and Ireland, and the West in general. As we have seen, Spain is a glyph for the Great Plain, the Otherworld. ------ * See _The Secret Doctrine,_ for the Thesophical teaching. ------ From this universal euhemerization,--this loving preservation and careful cooking of the traditions by the Christian redactors of them,--we get certain results. One is that ancient Ireland remains for us in the colors of life: every figure flashes before our eyes in a golden mellow light of morning, at once extremely real and extremely magical: not the Greek heroic age appears so flooded with dawn-freshness, so realistic, so minutely drawn, nor half so lit with glamor. Another result is that, while strange gleams of Esotericism shine through,--as in that about the Four Recorders of the Four Cardinal Points,--things that it seemed undangerous to the monks, because they did not understand their significance, to let pass,--we hear nothing in Irish literature about the philosophy of the Druids. Ireland retains her belief in magic to this day; and his would be a hard skull that could know Ireland intimately and escape that belief. So it seemed nothing irreligious to the monks to let the Druids remain magicians. But philosophy was another matter entirely; and must be ruled out as conflicting with the Christian scheme of things. From this silence our Druid-Medicine-men Theorists draw great comfort and unction for their pet belief. Reincarnation appears in some stories as a sort of thing that might happen in special cases; because "God is good to the Irish," and might be willing to give them sometimes another chance. But nothing is allowed to come down to imply it was known for a law in Nature; no moral or philosophic bearing is attached to it. This is just what you would expect. The Christian censors of the literature had rejected it as unchristian doctrine. They would hate to have it thought that Irishmen could ever have believed in such things; they would cover such belief up in every possible way. You would find peasant-bards in Wales to this day, men learned in the national tradition, who are deacons in their chapels and druids of the Gorsedd, and firm believers in Druidism. They have founded a Gorsedd here in America lately, with an active propaganda of Druidism, and lecturers touring. They think of it as a kind of Pre-christian Christianity; and would open their eyes wide to hear that Reincarnation was the cornerstone teaching in it. This may throw a little light on the attitude of those early Irish Christians.--But on the other hand there were tales that could not be preserved at all, that you could not tell at all, without bringing a touch of reincarnation into them. The universal doctrine survived in that way in Ireland, as it survived as a rumor in the folk-lore in Wales. There is the story, for instance, of Mongan son of Fiachta, a historical chieftain killed in 625. According to Tigernach, the oldest of the Irish annalists, Finn MacCool died in A.D. 274. Finn, you will remember, is the central figure of the Fenian Cycle of sagas; he was the father of Oisin and the leader of the Fenians; next to Cuculain, he is the chiefest hero of Irish legend. I quote this story from M. de Jubainville.* ------ * But without word-for-word exactitude; hence the absence of inverted commas. The same remark applies to all the stories quoted, or nearly quoted, from Mr. Rollerstone'e book. ------ Mongan had a quarrel with Forgoll, his chief bard or _file,_ as to the place where Fothad Airgtech king of Ireland had been slain by Cailte, one of Finn's companions. Mongan said it was on the banks of the Lame in Ulster, near his own palace; Forgoll said it was at Dubtar in Leinster. Forgoll, enraged at being contradicted by a mere layman, threatened to pronounce awful incantations against Mongan, which might put rat-hood on him, or anything. The end of it was that Mongan was given three days to prove his statement; if he should not have done so by that time, he and all his possessions were to become the property of the file. Two days passed, and half the third, and Mongan did nothing, but remained at his ease entirely, never troubling in the world. As for his wife, poor woman, from the moment he made the wager her tears had not ceased to flow.--"Make an end of weeping," said he; "help will certainly come to us." Forgoll came to claim his bond.--"Wait you till the evening," said Mongan. Evening came, and if help was coming, there was no sign of it. Mongan sat with his wife in the upper chamber; Forgoll out before them waiting to take possession of everything. Pitiless and revengeful the look of Forgoll; the queen weeping and walling; Mongan himself with no sign of care on him.--"Be not you sorrowful, woman," said he; "the one who is coming to help us is not far off; I hear his footsteps on the Labrinne." It is the River Caragh, that flows into Dingle bay in the southwest; a hundred leagues from where they were in the palace at Donegore in the north-east of Antrim. With that she was quiet for awhile; but nothing happened, and she began weeping again.--"Hush now!" said Mongan; "I hear the feet of the one that will help us crossing the Maine." It is another river in Kerry, between the Caragh and the north-east: on the road, that is, between Mongan's palace and the Great Plain. That way he was consoling her again and again; and she again and again breaking out with her lamentations. He was hearing the footsteps at every river between Kerry and Antrim: at the Liffey, and then the Boyne, and then the Dee, and after that, at Carlingford Lough, and at last at Larne Water, a little to the south of the palace.--"Enough of this folly," said Forgoll; "pay you me what is mine." A man came in from the ramparts;--"What news with you?" asks Mongan.--"There is a warrior like the men of old time approaching from the south, and a headless spear-shaft in his hand."--"I told you he would be coming," said Mongan. Before the words were out from between his teeth, the warrior had leaped the three ramparts into the middle of the dun, and in a moment was there between Mongan and the file in the hall.--"What is it is troubling you?" said he. --"I and the file yonder have made a wager about the death of Fothad Airgtech," said Mongan. "The file said he died at Dubtar in Leinster; I said it was false." --"Then the file has lied," said the warrior. --"Thou wilt repent of that," cried Forgoll. --"That is not a good speech," said the warrior. "I will prove what I say." Then he turned to Mongan. "We were with thee, Finn MacCool," said he,-- --"Hush!" said Mongan; _"it is wrong for thee to reveal a secret."_ --"Well then," said the warrior, "we were with Finn coming from Alba. We met Fothad Airgtech near here, on the banks of Larne Water. We fought a battle with him. I cast my spear at him, so that it went through his body, and the iron head quitted the shaft, and went into earth beyond, and remained there. This is the shaft of that spear," said he, holding up the headless shaft he had with him. "The bare rock from which I hurled it will be found, and the iron head is in the earth a little to the east of it; and the grave of Fothad Airgtech a little to the east of that again. A stone chest is round his body; in the chest are his two bracelets of silver, and his two arm-rings, and his collar of silver. Over the grave is a stone pillar, and on the end of the pillar that is in the earth is Ogham writing, and it says, 'Here is Fothad Airgtech. He was fighting with Finn when Cailte slew him.'" Cailte had been one of the most renowned of Finn's companions; he had come now from the Great Plain to save his old master. You will note that remark of the latter's when Cailte let the fact escape him that he, Mongan, had been Finn: "Hush! it is wrong for the to reveal a secret." That was the feeling of the Christian redactors. Reincarnation was not a thing for baptized lips to speak about. But we are anticipating things: the coming of Patrick did not bring about the great literary revival which sent all these stories down to us. Patrick Christianized Ireland: converted the kings and established the church; and left the bulk of the people pagan-hearted and pagan-visioned still,--as, glory be to God, they have been ever since. I mean by that that under all vicissitudes the Irish have never quite lost sight of the Inner Life at the heart of things, as most of the rest of us have. Time and men and circumstance, sorrow and ignorance and falsity, have conspired to destroy the race; but there is a vision there, however thwarted and hedged in,--and the people do not perish: their woods and mountains are still full of a gay or mournful, a wailing or a singing, but always a beautiful, life. Patrick was a great man; but he never could drive out the Danaan Gods, who had gone into the hills when the Milesians came. He drove out the serpents, they say; and a serpent was a name for a Druid Adept: Taliesin says, in one of his poems, _'Wyf dryw, wyf sarff,'_ 'I am a druid, I am a serpent'; and we know from H.P. Blavatsky how universal this symbol was, with the meaning of an Initiate of the Secret Wisdom. So perhaps Patrick did evict his Betters from that land of evictions; it may be so;--but not the God-life in the mountains. But I judge from the clean and easy sweep he made of things that Druidism was at a low pass in Ireland when he came. It had survived there five centuries since its vital center and link with the Lodge had been destroyed at Bibracte by Caesar; and, I suppose, thus cut off, and faced with no opposition to keep it pure and alert, might well, and would naturally have declined. Its central light no longer burning, political supremacy itself would have hastened its decay; fostering arrogance for spirituality, and worldliness for true Wisdom. How then about the theory that some life and light remained or was revivable in it in Britain? Why claim that for Britain, which one would incline to deny to Ireland and Gaul?-- Well; we know that Druidism did survive in Gaul a long time after the Romans had proscribed it. But Gaul became very thoroughly Romanized. The Romans and their civilization were everywhere; the Celtic language quite died out; (Breton was brought in by emigrants from Britain;)--and where the Celtic language had died, unlikely that Celtic thought would survive. But in Britain, as we have seen, while the Romans and their proscription were near enough to provide a salutary opposition and constant peril, there were many places in which the survivors of Suetonius' massacre in Mona might have taken refuge. I take it that in Ireland it suffered through lack of opposition; in Gaul, it died of too effective opposition; but in Britain there were midway conditions that may well have allowed it to live on. Beyond Christianizing the country, it does not appear that Patrick did much for it. It is not clear that Ireland made any progress in material civilization then,--or for that matter, at any time since. We should know by this time that these things are a matter of law. Patrick found her essentially in pralaya, essentially under the influence of centrifugalism; and you cannot turn the ebbing tide, and make it flow before its time. There was a queer mixture of intensive culture and ruthless barbarism: an extreme passion on the one hand for poetry and the things of the spirit,--and on the other, such savagery as continual warfare always brings in its train. The literary class was so strong that in the little kingdom of Tir Conall in Donegal alone the value of ten thousand dollars of the revenue was set aside yearly for its support and purposes;--whereby one would imagine that for all things else they could but have had a nickel or so left. This is culture with a vengeance. There was, besides, wonderful skill in arts and crafts, intricate designing in jewelry-work;--and all this is not to be called by another name than the relics of a high civilization. But there was no political unity; or only a loose bond under the high kings at Tara, who had forever to be fighting to maintain their authority. There was racial, but not national consciousness. But where in Europe was there national consciousness? We should remember that it only began to exist, or to reincarnate from times beyond the horizon of history, in the thirteenth century A.D. There would be a deal less sneering at Ireland were only these facts known. England was perhaps the first country in which it became effective: the wars of the first and third Edwards called it into being there. Joan lit the fires of it in France; she mainly;--in the fourteen-twenties and thirties. Spain had to wait for Ferdinand and Isabel; Sweden for Gustavus Vasa; Holland for William the Silent; Italy for Victor Emmanuel; Germany for Bismarck. Wales was advancing towards it, in an imperfect sort of way, rather earlier than England; but the Edwardian conquest put the whole idea into abeyance for centuries. So too Ireland: she was half-conquered by the Normans, broken, racked, ruined and crucified, a century before the idea of Nationhood had come into existence, and while centrifugalism was still the one force in Europe. It is thus quite beside the point to say that she was never a nation, even in the days of her native rule. Of course she was not. Nor was England, in those times; nor any other. In every part of the continent the centrifugal forces were running riot; though in some there were strong fighting kings to hold things together. This by way of hurling one more spear at the old cruel doctrine of race inferiorities and superiorities: at Unbrotherliness and all its wicked works and ways. I was the European pralaya; when your duty to your neighbor was everywhere and always to fight him, to get in the first blow; to kill him before he killed you, and thank God for his mericies. So Ireland was not exceptional in that way. Where she was exceptional, bless her sweet heart, lay, as we shall see, in the fact that while all the rest were sunk in ignorance and foulest barbarism, and mentall utterly barren,--she alone had the grace to combine her Kilkenny Cattery with an exquisite and wonderful illumination of culture. While she tore herself to pieces with one hand, with the other she was holding up the torch of learning,--and a very real learning too, --to benighted Europe; and _then_ (bedad!) she found another hand again, to be holding the pen with it, and to produce a literature to make the white angels of God as green as her own holy hills with envy! _That_ was Ireland! The Crest-Wave rolled in to her; the spiritual forces descended far enough to create a cultural illumination, but not far enough to create political stability. We have seen before that they touch the artistic creative planes, in their descent, before they reach the more material planes. So her position is perfectly comprehensible. The old European manvantara was dying; elsewhere it was dead. Its forces, when they passed away through Ireland, were nearly exhausted; in no condition whatever to penetrate to the material plane and make political greatnesses and strengths. But they found in her very soil and atmosphere a spiritual something which enabled them to produce a splendor of literary creation that perhaps had had no parallel in Europe since Periclean days: Yes, surely Ireland was much more creative than Augustan Rome. Have any of you heard of literary savages? Of wild men of the woods, your true prognathous primitives, that in a bare couple of generations, and upon no contact with civilized races, rose from their native pithecanthropism to be the wonderful beacon of the West or East? You have not, and cannot imagine it; nor could it ever be. A great literary habit is only acquired in long ages of settled civilization; and there were long ages of settled civilization behind Ireland;--and when, about thirteen decades after Patrick's coming, she flamed up into cultural creation, she was but returning to what was proper to her soul; in the midst of her dissolution, she was but groping after an olden self. That olden self, very likely, she had even by that time more than half forgotten; and we now can only see it refracted, as it were, through the lens of those first Christian centuries, and with the eyes of those Christian monks and bards. How would they have seen them?--There was that spirit of euhemerization: of making ancient things conform to new Christian ideas. They had the Kilkenny Catterwauling in their ears daily; would they have allowed to any Pagan times a quieter less dissonant music? Could they have imagined it, indeed?--I doubt. Kilkennyism would have appeared to them the natural state of things. Were you to look back into Paganism for your Christian millennium, to come not till Christ came again? Were you to search there for peace on earth and mercy mild?--there in the long past, when all the near past was war?--Besides, there was that ancientest of Mariners, Noah, but a few thousand years back; and you had to make things fit. So I find nothing in it conclusive, if the legends tell of no conditions different from those Patrick found: Kilkenny Cattery in politics, intensive culture in the things of the spirit; and I see no difficulty in the co-existence of the two. The cultured habit had grown in forgotten civilized ages; the Cattery was the result of national or racial pralaya; of the break-up of the old civilization, and the cyclic necessary night-time between it and the birth of another. Let us remember that during the Thirty Years War, in mid-manvantara, Europeans sunk into cannibalism; let us remember the lessons of our own day, which show what a very few years of war, so it be intense enough, can do toward reducing civilized to the levels of savage consciousness. So when we find Ireland, in this fourth century, always fighting,-- and the women as well as the men; and when we find a tribe in Scotland, the Attacotti, with a reputation for cannibalism;--we need not for a moment imagine that things had always been like that. It is not that man is naturally a savage, and may from the heights of civilization quickly relapse into savagery; it is that he is a dual being, with the higher part of his nature usually in abeyance, and its place taken, when it is taken at all, by the conventions of law and order; and so the things that are only thought, or perhaps secretly practised, in times of civilization, as soon as war has broken down the conventions, find their full expression in action,--and others along with them. So Patrick found Ireland, what she has been mostly since, a grand Kilkenny Cattery; but with the literary habit of an older and better day surviving, and nearly ready to be awakened into transcendent splendor. The echoes of the Danaan music were ringing in her still; and are now, heaven knows;--and how would they not be, when what to our eyes are the hills of her green with fern, to eyes anointed, and to the vision of the spirit, are the palaces of the Danaan Sidhe, and the topless towers of Fairyland? I shall come to my history next week; meanwhile here for you is the _Song of Finn in Praise of May,_ a part of it, as Mr. Rollertone translates it, to give a taste of the literary habit of Pre-christian Ireland: May day! delightful day! Bright colors play the vales along; Now wakes at morning's slender ray, Wild and gay, the blackbird's song. Now comes the bird of dusty hue, The loud cuckoo, the summer lover; Broad-branching trees are thick with leaves; The bitter evil time is over. Swift horses gather nigh, Where half dry the river goes; Tufted heather crowns the height; Weak and white the bog-down blows. Corncrake singing, from eve til morn, Deep in corn, the strenuous bird; Sings the virgin waterfall, White and tall, her one sweet word. Loaded bough of little power Goodly flower-harvests win; Cattle roam with muddy flanks; Busy ants go out and in. --------- Carols loud the lark on high, Small and shy, his tireless lay, Singing in wildest, merriest mood Of delicate-hued delightful May. And here, from the same source, are the _Delights of Finn,_ as his son Oisin sang them to Patrick: These are the things that were dear to Finn,-- The din of battle, the banquet's glee, The bay of his hounds through the rough glen ringing, And the blackbird singing in Letterlee. The Shingle grinding along the shore, When they dragged his war-boats down to the sea; The dawn-wind whistling his spears among. And the magic song of his ministrels three. Whereby you may know, if you consider it rightly, what great strain of influence flows in from the Great Plain and the Land of Youth, that may yet help towards the salvation of Europe. When you turn your eyes on the diaphanous veil of the Mighty Mother, and see it sparkling and gleaming like that, it is but a step to seeing the motions of the Great Life behind; but a step to seeing 'Eternal Beauty wander on her way;' --that Beauty which is the grand Theophany or manifestation of God. It would not be, it could not exist, but that the Spirit is here; but that the Gods are here, and clearly visible; talk not of the Supreme Self, and shut your eyes meanwhile to the Beauty of the World which is the light that shines from It, and the sign of Its presence! And the consciousness of this Beauty is one which, since Ireland, thrilled from the Otherworld, arose and sang, has been forcing itself ever more and more through the minds, chiefly of poets, of a Europe exiled from truth. I cannot over-estimate the importance of this delight in and worship of Beauty in Nature, which the wise Chinese considered the path to the highest things in Art. Europe has inherited, mainly from the Greeks and the time the western world fell into ignorance, a preoccupation with human personality: in Art and Literature, I mean, as well as in life. We are individuals, and would peg out claims for ourselves even in the Inner World; and by reason of that the Inner World is mostly shut away from us;--for there, as the poem I quoted about the Great Plain says, "none talk of 'mine' and 'thine.'" But down through the centuries of Christendom, after our catching it so near its source in magical Ireland, comes this other music: this listening, not for the voices of passion, and indecision, and the self-conceit which is the greatest fool's play of all, within our personal selves,--but for the meditations of the Omnipresent as they are communicated through the gleam on water, through the breath and delicacy of flowers, through the 'blackbird's singing in Letterlee,' --this tendency to 'seek in the Impersonal' (Nature is impersonal) 'for the Eternal Self.' So here, in these fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, I find the forces 'going west,' through Gaul, through Wales, through Ireland, to the Great Plain; there to recover themselves bathing in the magical Fountain of Youth which is so near to the island the Greeks called "Sacred Ierne of the Hibernians." It may be that the finest part of them has not come back yet; but will re-emerge, spiritual and saving, through this same gateway. One would be ashamed of the Host of the Gods, were they not doing strenuous battle in the unseen for the regeneration of this poor Ireland, that will yet mean so much to the world: and one would marvel at the hellions, indeed one would, were they in their turn not moving heaven and earth, with their best battle-breaking champions in the fore-front, to maintain their strangle-hold on her tortured and beautiful soul. XXVII. THE IRISH ILLUMINATION We put 420 for a date to the Southern Renaissance in China, and 410 to the age that became Arthurian in Wales. The next thing in China is 527, and the coming of Bodhidharma; the next thing in Celtdom is 520, and the coming of Findian. He was an Irishman, and had been studying in Wales; where, certainly, there was great activity in churchly circles in those days. Get a map of that country, and note all the place-names beginning with _Llan,_--and you will see. There are countless thousands of them. 'Llan' means 'the holy place of,' and the rest of the name will be that of the saint who taught or preached there: of whom, I believe, only David appears in the Catholic calendar. They were most of them active in the fifth and sixth centuries. Findian, according to the _Encyclopaedia Britannica,_ had come under the influence of three of the foremost of them: David, Gildas, and Catwg the Wise; who were perhaps great men, if we may judge by the results of their teaching, as Findian transmitted it to those that came after him. We have seen that Patrick opened no kind of golden age in Ireland, gave no impulse to civilization or letters. The church he founded had fallen on rather evil days since his death; and now Findian came to reform things in the light of what he had learned in Wales. He began by founding at Clonard a monastery on the Welsh plan. That was some twenty-two years before Geoffrey's date for the passing of Arthur. By the time Camlan had been fought, and the Crest-Wave had left Wales, Findian had made a channel through which it might flow into Ireland, and in the five-forties the Irish illumination began. We must say a word or two as to the kind of institution he founded. There were several of them in Wales,--to be called colleges, or even universities, as rightly as monasteries:--one at Bangor in the north; two or three in Glamorgan; one at Saint Davids. Students flocked to them by the thousands; there was strict discipline, the ascetic life,--and also serious study, religious and secular. It was all beautifully simple: each student lived in his own hut, "of clay and wattles made," --or, where stone might be plentiful, as it is in most parts of Wales, of stone. Like a military camp, the whole place would be surrounded with fosse and vallum. They grew their own corn and vegetables, milked their own cows, fished in the streams, and supported themselves. The sky roofed their lecture-halls; of which the walls, if there were any, were the trees and the mountains. But these places were real centers of learning, the best there were in Europe in those days; and you needed not to be a monk to attend them. In Wales the strain of the Saxon wars kept them from their full fruition. Celtic warfare was governed by a certain code: thus, you, went to war only at such and such a time of the year; invaded your neighbor's territory only through such and such a stretch of his frontier; and no one need trouble to guard more than the recognized doorway of his realm. Above all, you never took an army through church lands. So through all the wars the Britons might be waging among themselves to keep their hands in, the monastery-colleges remained islands of peace, on friendly terms with all the combatants. But Wales, with no natural frontier, lay very open to invaders who knew no respect for religion or learning. Twelve hundred of the student-monks of Bangor, for example, were slaughtered in 613 by the Saxon Ethelfrith;--whereafter the rest fled to Bardsey Island in Cardigan Bay, and the great college at Bangor ceased to be. Augustine of Canterbury, sent by the Pope to convert the English, had summoned the Welsh bishops to a conference, and ordered them to come under his sway and conform to Rome. They hardly knew why, but disliked the idea. Outwardly, their divergence from Catholicism was altogether trivial: they had their own way of shaving their heads for the tonsure, and their own times for celebrating Easter,--though truly, these are the kind of things over which you fight religious wars. However, it was not these details that worried them so much; but an uneasy sense they derived, perhaps, from the tone of Augustine's summons. The story runs that they took counsel among themselves, and agreed that if he were a man sent from God, they would find him humble-minded and mannered; whereof the sign should be, that he would rise to greet them when they entered. But Augustine had other ideas; and as the ambassador of the Vicar of Christ, rose to greet no man. So still, not quite knowing why, they would have no dealings with him; and went their ways after refusing to assimilate their Church of the Circled Cross to his of the Cross Uncircled;--whereupon he, to teach them a sound lesson, impelled the Saxon kings to war. Fair play to him, he was dead before that war brought about the massacre of the monks of Bangor,--who had marched to Chester to pray for the Briton arms. But when Findian went back to Ireland he found no such difficulties in his way. Not till two hundred and seventy-five years later was that island disturbed by foreign invaders; and whatever domestic Kilkenny Cattery might be going forward, the colleges were respected. His school at Clonard quickly grew* till its students numbered three thousand; and in the forties, he sent out twelve of the chief of them to found other such schools throughout the island. Then the great age began; and for the next couple of thirteen-decade periods Ireland was a really brilliant center of light and learning. Not by any means merely, or even chiefly, in theology; there was a wonderful quickening of mental energies, a real illumination. The age became, as we have seen, a sort of literary clearing-house for the whole Irish past. If the surviving known Gaelic manuscripts were printed, they would fill nearly fifty thousand quarto volumes, with matter that mostly comes from before the year 800,--and which is still not only interesting, but fascinating. ------ * _Encyclopaedia Britannica,_ article 'Ireland'; whence all re Findian and the colleges. ------ The truth is, we seem to have in it the relics and wreckage of the literary output of a whole foregone manvantara, or perhaps several. For in the vast mass of epics and romances that comes down, one distinguishes three main cycles: the _Mythological,_ the _Red Branch,_ and the _Fenian._ The first deals with the Five Races that invaded or colonized Ireland: Partholanians, Nemedians, Firbolgs, Gods, and Irish;--in all of it I suspect the faint memories and _membra disjecta_ of old, old manvantaras: indeed, the summing up of the history of created man. You will have noted that the number of the races, as in Theosophic teaching, is five. M. de Jubainville points out that the creation of the world, or its gradual assumption of its present form, goes on _pari passu_ with the evolution of its humanities, and under their eyes; thus, when Partholan, the first invader, arrived, there were but three lakes in Ireland, and nine rivers, and one plain. This, too, is an echo of the secret doctrine; and incidentally indicates how tremendously far back that first invasion was thought to have been. The Partholanians came into Ireland from the Great Plain, the "Land of the Living," as the Irish called it, which is also the Land of the Dead:--in other words, they came _into_ this world, and not from another part of it. Their peculiarity was that they were "no wiser the one than the other "; an allusion to the mindlessness of the early humanities before the Manasaputra incarnated in the mid-Third Root Race. Again, before their coming, there was a people in Ireland called the Fomorians: they came up from the sea, were gigantic and deformed; some of them with but one foot or one arm, some with the heads of horses or goats. That will remind you of the "water-men, terrible and bad" in the Stanzas of Dzyan: the first attempts of the Earth or unaided Nature to create men. But when the Partholanians fought with and defeated these Fomoroh, they were said to have "freed Ireland from a foreign foe"; this though the Fomorians were there first, and though the Partholanians were "invaders," and utterly ceased to be after a time, so that no drop of their blood runs in Irish veins. Why, then, does Ireland identify itself with the one race, and discard the other as "foreign foes"?-- Because the Partholanians represent the first human race, but the Fomoroh or 'Water-men' were unhuman, and a kind of _lusus naturae._ 'Fomoroh,' by the way, may very well be translated 'Water-men'; _fo_ I take to be the Greek _upo,_ 'under,' and 'mor' is the 'sea.' Now the Battle of Mag Itha, between Partholan and the Fomorians, is a very late invention; not devised, I think, until the eleventh century. And of course there was no war or contact between the First Race and the Water-men, who had been destroyed long before. This is a good example of what came down in Pagan Ireland, and how the Christian redactors treated it. They had heard of the existence of the Fomoroh before the coming of Partholan, and thought it wise to provide the latter with a war against them. Later, as we shall see, the Fomoroh stood for the over-sea people westward,--the Atlantean giant-sorcerers. The second race of invaders, the Nemedians, were also given a war with the Fomorians,--in the story of the seige of Conan's Tower. But this story is told by Nennius as applying to the Milesians, the Fifth Race Irish, and not to the Second Race Nemedians; and probably relates to events in comparatively historical tiems,-- say a million years ago, or between that and the submersion of Poseidonis about nine thousand B.C. One would imagine that Ireland, from its position, must have been a main battle-ground between the men of the Fifth and the Atlanteans, between the White and the Black Magicians. Mr. Judge's _Bryan Kinnavan_ stories indicate that it was a grand stronghold of the former. The Nemedians were akin to the Partholanians: the Second Race to the First,--both mindless: they came after their predecessors had all died out; and in their turn died or departed to the last man. So we find in _The Secret Doctrine_ that the first two humanities passed utterly and left no trace. If I go into all this a little fully, it is because it illustrates so well the system of _blinds_ under which the Inner Teaching was hidden, and at the same time revealed, by the Initiate of every land. These Celtic things seem never to have come under the eye of Mme. Blavatsky at all; or how she might have drawn on them! I think that nowhere else in the mythologies are the Five Root-Races, the four past and the one existent, mentioned so clearly as here in Ireland. For historic reasons at which we have glanced,--the Roman occupation, which was hardly over before the Saxon invasions began,--Wales has preserved infinitely less of the records of ancient Celtic civilization than Ireland has; and yet Professor Kund Meyer told me,--and surely no living man is better qualified to make suct a statement,--that the whole of the forgotten Celtic mythology might yet be recovered from old MSS. hidden away in Welsh private libraries that have never been examined. How much more then may be hoped for from Ireland! The third invasion was by a threefold people: the Fir Domnan, or Men of the Goddess Domna; the Fir Bolg, or Men of the Sacks; and the Galioin. From these races there were still people in Connacht in the seventeenth century who claimed their decent. Generally all three are called by the one name of Firbolgs. They were "avaricious, mean, uncouth, musicless, and inhospitable." Then came the Tuatha De Danaan, "Gods and false gods," as Tuan MacCarell told St. Finnen, "from whom everyone knows the Irish men of learning are descended. It is likely they came into Ireland from heaven, hence their knowledge and the excellence of their teaching." Thus Tuan, who has just been made to allude to them as "Gods and _false gods._" This Tuan, I should mention, originally came into Ireland with Partholan; and, that history might be preserved, kept on reincarnating there, and remembering all his past lives. These Danaans conquered, and then ruled over, the Firbolgs: it is a glyph of the Third or Lemurian Race, of which the first three (and a half) sub-races were mindless--the Fir Domnan, Fir Bolg and Galioin; then the Lords of Mind incarnated and reigned over them, the Tuatha De Danaan, wafted down from heaven in a druid cloud. So far we have a pretty exact symbolic rendering of the Theosophic teaching. The Danaans conquered the Firbolgs, it is said, at the Battle of Moytura. Now there were two Battles of Moytura, of which this was the first; it alludes to the incarnation of the Manasaputra, and with it the clear symbolic telling of human history comes to an end. So much, being very remote, was allowed to come down without other disguise than that which the symbols afforded. But at this point, which is the beginning of the mind-endowed humanity we know, a mere eighteen million years ago, further blinds became necessary. History, an esoteric science, had still more to be camouflaged, lest memories should seize upon indications too readily, and find out too much. Why this should be, it is not the time to argue; enough to say that the wisdom of antiquity decreed it. There has always been some doubt as to the Second Battle of Moytura. Because of a certain air with which it is invested, scholars think now, for the most part, that it was a later invention. But I do not think so: I think that air comes from the extra layer of symbolism that is laid over it; from the second coating of camouflage; from the fact that the few years between the two battles represent several million years,--about which the mythological history is silent, running them all together, like street-lights you see a long way off. What happened was this: In the first battle Nuada, king of the Danaans, lost his hand; and, because a king must be blemishless, lost his kinghood too. It went to Bres son of Elatha; whose mother was Danaan, but whose unknown father was of the Fomoroh. Note the change: the first battle was with the Firbolgs, the mindless humanity of the early third Race; now we are to deal with Fomorians, who have come to symbolize the Black Magicians of Atlantis: the second half of the Lemurian, and nearly the whole of the Atlantean period, have elapse.--In person, Bres was handsome like the Danaans; in character he was Fomorian altogether. This is the sum of the history of later Lemuria and of Atlantis; Moytura, and Nuada's loss of his hand and kinghood there, symbolize the incarnation of the Manasaputra,--descent of Spirit into matter,-- and therewith, in time, their forgetting their own divinity. I should say that it is Bres himself, rather than the Fomorians as a whole, who stands symbol just now for the Atlantean sorcerers. There is a subtle connexion between the Firbolgs and Fomoroh: the former are the men, the latter the Gods, of the same race; the Firbolgs stood originally for the mindless men of the early third, men evolving up out of the lower kingdoms towards the point of becoming human and mind-endowed; the Fomorians were the Gods or so to say Spiritual Powers of those lower worlds; the forces in opposition to upward evolution. So we see Bres of that dual lineage: with magic from his Danaan mother, and blackness from his Fomorian father: the Atlanteans, inheriting mind from the Manasaputra, but turning their divine inheritance to the uses of chaos and night. As his reign represents the whole Atlantean period, we might expect it to have begun well enough, and worsened as it went. This was so; had he shown his colors from the first, it is not to be thought that the Danaans would have tolerated him at all. But it came to be, as time went on, that he oppressed Ireland abominably; and at last they rose and drove him out. Nuada, whose missing hand had been replaced with one of silver, was restored in the kingship; henceforth he is called Nuada of the Silver Hand. Here we have the return or redescent of the Divine Dynasties who came to lead the men of the early Fifth Race against the Atlantean giants. I shall beg leave now to tell you the story of the Second Battle of Moytura. Perhaps it was in Ireland that the White Adepts of the Fifth made their first stand against the Atlanteans? Perhaps thence it first got its epithet, _Sacred_ Ierne?--Bres, driven out by the Gods, took refuge with his father the Fomorian king beyond the western sea; who gave him an army with which to reconquer his lost dominions. Now we come to the figure who represents the Fifth Race. There are in Europe perhaps a dozen cities named after Lugh Lamfada, the Irish (indeed Celtic) Sun-god: Lyons, the most important of them, was Lug-dunum, the _dun_ or fortress of Lugh. Lugh was a kind of counterpart to Bres; he was the son of Cian, a Danaan, and a daughter of the Fomorian champion Balor of the Mighty Blows, or of the Evil Eye. The story of his birth is like that of Perseus, son of Zeus and Danae. Danae's son, you remember, was fated to kill his grandfather Acrisius; so Acrisius shut Danae in an inaccessable tower, that no son might be born to her. The antiquity of the whole legend is suggested by this nearness of the Greek and Irish versions;--even to the similarity of the names of Dana and Danae: though Dana was not the mother of Lugh, but of the whole race of the Gods: _Tuatha De Danaan_ means, the 'Race of the Gods the Children of Dana.' So you see it comes from the beginnings of the Fifth Race, a million years ago; but how much better the history of that time is preserved in the Irish than in the Greek version! As if the Irish took it direct from history and symbolism, and the Greeks from the Irish. And why not? since in the nature of things Ireland must have been so much nearer the scene of action. Lugh grew up among his mother's people, but remembered his divine descent on his father's side; and when it came to the War of the Fomoroh against Ireland, was for fighting for his father's people. So he set out for Tara, where Nuada and the Gods were preparing to meet the invasion; and whoever beheld him as he came, it seemed to them as if they had seen the sun rising on a bright day in summer.--"Open thou the portal!" said he; but the knife was in the meat and the mead in the horn, and no man might enter but a craftsman bearing his craft. "Oh then, I am a craftsman," said Lugh; "I am a good carpenter." There was an excellent carpenter in Tara already, and none other needed.-"It is a smith I am," said Lugh. But they had a smith there who was professor of the three new designs in smithcraft, and none else would be desired. Then he was a champion; but they had Ogma son of Ethlenn for champion, and would not ask a better. Then he was a harper; and a poet; and an antiquary; and a necromancer; and an artificer; and a cup-bearer. But they were well supplied with men of all those crafts, and there was no place for him.-- "Then go and ask the king," said Lugh, "if he will not be needing a man who is excellent in all those crafts at once"; and that way he got admission. After that he was drawing up the smiths and carpenters, and inquiring into their abilities, and giving them their tasks in preparation for the battle. There was Goibniu, the smith of the Danaans.--"Though the men of Ireland should be fighting for seven years," said Goibniu, "for every spear that falls off its handle, and for every sword that breaks, I will put a new weapon in its place; and no erring or missing cast shall be thrown with a spear of my making; and no flesh it may enter shall ever taste the sweets of life after;--and this is more than Dub the smith of the Fomorians can do." And there was Creidne the Brazier: he would not do less well than Goibniu the Smith would; and there was Luchtine the Carpenter: evil on his beard if he did less than Creidne;--and so with the long list of them. It was on the first day of November the battle began; and when the sun went to his setting, the weapons of the Fomorians were all bent and notched, but those of the Gods were like new. And new they were: new and new after every blow struck or cast thrown. For with three strokes of his hammer Goibniu would be fashioning a spear-head, and after the third stroke there could be no bettering it. With three chippings of his knife, Luchtine had cut a handle for it; and at the third chipping there would be no fault to find with the handle either by Gods or men. And as quickly as they made the spear-heads and the shafts, Creidne the Brazier had the rivets made to rivet them; and if there were bettering those rivets, it would not be by any known workmanship. When Goibniu had made a spear-head, he took it in his tongs, and hurled it at the lintel of the door so that it stuck fast there, the socket outward. When Luchtine had made a spear-haft, he hurled it out at the spear-head in the lintel; and it was good hurling, not to be complained of: the end of the haft stuck in the socket, and stuck firm. And as fast as those two men did those two things, Creidne had his rivets ready, and threw them at the spear-head; and so excellent his throwing, and the nicety of his aim, no rivet would do less than enter the holes in the socket, and drive on into the wood of the shaft;--and that way there was no cast of a spear by the Gods at the hellions, but there was a new spear in the smithy ready to replace it. Then the Fomoroh sent a spy into the camp of the Gods, who achieved killing Goibniu with one of the latter's own spears; and by reason of that it was going ill with the Gods the next day in the battle. And it was going worse with them because of Balor of the Mighty Blows, and he taking the field at last for the Fomorians,-- "Balor as old as a forest, his mighty head helpless sunk, And an army of men holding open his weary and death-dealing eye," --for wherever his glances fell, there death came. They fell on Nuada of the Silver Hand, and he died,--albeit it is well known that he was alive, and worshiped in Britain in Roman times, for a temple to him has been found near the River Severn.--Then came Lugh to avenge Nuada, and a bolt from his sling tore like the dawn ray, like the meteor of heaven, over Moytura plain, and took the evil eye of Balor in the midst, and drove it into his head; and then the Fomorians were routed. And this, in truth, like Camlan and Kurukshetra, is the battle that is forever being fought: Balor comes death-dealing still; and still the sling of Lugh Lamfada is driving its meteor shafts through heaven and defeating him. As for the defeat of the Gods by the Milesians, and their retirement into the mountains,--that too is actual history told under a thinnish veil of symbolism: the Fifth Race having been started, the Sons of Wisdom, its first Gods and Adept Kings, who had sown the seeds of all bright things that were to be in its future civilizations, withdrew into the Unseen. All this and much more,--the whole Mythological Cycle,-- represents what came over into Irish literature from ancient manvantaric periods, and the compression of the records of millions of years. A century seems a very long time while it is passing; but at two or three millenniums ago, no longer than a few autumns and winters; and at a million years' distance, the doings and changes, the empires and dynasties of a hundred centuries, look to the eyes of racial memory like the contents of a single spring. So it is the history and wisdom of remote multiplied ages that come down to us in these tales. But with the Heroic Cycle we seem to be entering a near manvantara. This is the noon-period of Irish literature, the Shakespeare-Milton time; where the other was the dawn or Chaucer period. Or the Mythological Cycle is the Vedic, and the Heroic, the Epic, period, to take an Indian analogy; and this fits it better, because the Irish, like the Indian, dawn-period is immensely ancient and of immense duration. But when you come to the Heroic time, with the stories of the high king Conary Mor, and of the Red Branch Warriors, with for _piece de resistance_ the epic _Tann Bo Cuailgne,_ you seem (as you do in the _Mahabharata_) to be standing upon actual memories, as much historical as symbolic. Here all the figures, though titanic, are at least half human, with a definite character assigned to all of importance. They revel in huge dramatic action; move in an heroic mistless sunlight. You can take part in the daily life of the Red Branch champions as you can in that of the Greeks before Troy; they seem real and clear-cut; you can almost remember Deirdre's beauty and the sorrow of the doom of the Children of Usna; you have a shrewd notion what Cuculain looked like, and what Conall Carnach; you are familiar with the fire trailed from the chariot wheels, the sods kicked up by the horses' hoofs; you believe in them all, as you do in Odysseus and Ajax, in Bhishma and Arjuna, in Hamlet and Falstaff;--as I for my part never found it possible to believe in Malory's and Tennyson's well-groomed gentlemen of the Table Round. And then, after long lapse, came another age, and the Cycle of the Fenians. It too is full of excellent tales, but all less titanic and clearly-defined: almost, you might say, standing to the Red Branch as Wordsworth and Keats to Shakespeare and Milton. The atmosphere is on the whole dimmer, the figures are weaker; there is not the same dynamic urge of creation. You come away with an impression of the beauty of the forest through which the Fenians wandered and camped, and less with an impression of the personalities of the Fenians themselves. There is abundant Natural Magic, but not the old Grand Manner; and you would not recognise Finn or Oisin or Oscar, if you ment them, so easily as you would Cuculain or Fergus MacRoy or Naisi. Civilization appears to have declined far between the two ages, to have become much less settled,--as it naturally would, with all that fighting going on. I take it that all the stories of both cycles relate to ages of the breakup of civilization: peaceful and civilized times leave less impress on the racial memory. The Fenians are distinctly further from such civilized times, however, than are the Red Branch: they are a nomad company, but the Red Branch had their capital at Emain Macha by Armagh in Ulster. But what mystery, what sparkling magic environs them! Mr. Rollerstone cites this as an example: Once three beautiful unknown youths joined Finn's company; but stipulated that they should camp apart, and be left alone during the nights. After awhile it fell out what was the reason for this: one of them died between every dusk and dawn, and the other two had to be watching him. That is all that is said; but it is enough to keep your imagination at work a long while. --And then, the manvantara dies away in a dolphin glory of mystical colors in the many tales of wondrous voyages and islands in the Atlantic: such as the Voyage of Maelduin, of which Tennyson's version gives you some taste of the brightness, but none at all of the delicacy and mysterious beauty and grace. Except the classical, this is the oldest written literature in Europe; and I doubt there is any other that gives us such a wide peep-hole into lost antiquity. Yes; perhaps it is the best lens extant, west of India. It is a lens, of course, that distorts: the long past is shown through a temperament,--made into poetry and romance; not left bare scientific history. But perhaps poetry and romance are after all the truest and final form of history. Perhaps, in looking at recent ages, we are balked of seeing their true underlying form by the dust of events and the clamor of details; for eyes anointed they might resolve themselves into Moyturas and Camlans endlessly fought; into magical weapons magically forged; into Cuculains battling eternally at the Watcher's Ford, he alone withstanding the great host of this world's invaders, while all his companions are under a druid sleep. . . . It is the most splendid scene or incident in the _Tann Bo Cuailgne;_ and I cannot think of it, but it calls up before my mind's eye another picture: that of a little office in New York, and a desk, and rows of empty seats; and another Irishman, lecturing to those empty seats . . . . but to all humanity, really . . . . from the ranks of which his companions should come to him presently; he would hold back the hosts of darkness alone, waiting for their coming. And I cannot think of this latter picture but it seems to me as if: Cuculain rode from out the ages' prime, The hero time, spacious and girt with gold, For he had heard this earth was stained with crime. With loud hoof-thunder, clangor, ring and rhyme, With chariot-wheels flame-trailing where they rolled, Cuculain rode from out the ages' prime. I saw his eyes, how darkening, how sublime, With what impatient pity and power ensouled; (For he had heard this earth was stained with crime!) Song on his lips--I heard the chant and chime. The stars themselves danced to in days of old:-- Cuculain rode from out the ages' prime. Love sped him on to out-speed the steeds of Time: No bliss for him, and this world left a-cold, Which, he had heard, was stained with grief and crime. Here in this Iron Age's gloom and grime The Ford of Time, the waiting years, to hold, Cuculain came . . . . and from the Golden prime Brought light to save this world grown dark with crime.... Well; from the schools of Findian and his disciples missionaries soon began to go out over Europe. To preach Christianity, yes; but distinctly as apostles of civilization as well. Columba left Ireland to found his college at Iona in 563; and from Iona, Aidan presently went into Northumbria of the Saxons, to found his college at Lindisfarne. Northumbria was Christianized by these Irishmen; and there, under their auspices, Anglo-Saxon culture was born. In Whitby, one of their foundations, Caedmon arose to start the poetry: a pupil of Irish teachers. At the other end of England, Augustine from Rome had Christianized Kent; but no culture came in or spread over England from Augustine and Kent and Rome; Northumbria was the source of it all. You have only to compare _Beowulf,_ the epic the Saxons brought with them from the continent, with the poetry of Caedmon and Cynewulf, or with such poems as _The Phoenix,_ to see how Irishism tinged the minds of these Saxon pupils of Irish teachers with, as Stopford Brooke says, "a certain imaginative passion, a love of natural beauty, and a reckless wildness curiously mingled with an almost scientific devotion to metrical form." Ireland meanwhile was the heart of a regular circulation of culture. Students poured in from abroad, drawn by the fame of her learning; we have a poem in praise of generous Ireland from an Anglo-Saxon prince who spent his exile there in study. Irish teachers were at the court of Charlemagne; Irish teachers missionarized Austria and Germany. When the Norsemen discovered Iceland, they found Irish books there; probably Irish scholars as well, for it has been noted (by Matthew Arnold) that the Icelandic sagas, unlike any other Pre-Christian Teutonic literature, bear strong traces of the Celtic quality of Style. They had their schools everywhere. You hear of an Irish bishop of Tarentum in the latter part of the seventh century; and a hundred years later, of an Irish bishop of Salzburg in Austria. This was Virgil--in Irish, Fergil, I imagine a native name of Salzburg: a really noteworthy man. He taught, _at that time,_ that the world is a globe, and with people living at the antipodes; for which teaching he was called to order by the Pope: but we do not hear of his retracting. Last and greatest of them all was Johannes Scotus Erigena, who died in 882: a very bright particular star, and perhaps the one of the largest magnitude between the Neo-Platonists and the great mystics of later times, who came long after the new manvantara had dawned. He is not to be classed with the Scholastics; he never subordinated his philosophy to theology; but approached the problems of existence from a high, sane, and Theosophic standpoint: an independent and illuminated thinker. He taught at the court of Charles the Bald of France; and was invited to Oxford by Alfred in 877, and died abbot of Malmesbury five years later,--having in his time propounded many tough nuts of propositions for churchmen to crack and digest if they could. As, that authority should be derived from reason, and not, as they thought, vice versa; and that "damnation was simply the consciousness of having failed to fulfill the divine purpose,"-- and not, as their pet theory was, a matter of high temperature of eternal duration. The following are quotations from his work _De Divisione Naturae;_ I take them from M. de Jubainville's _Irish Mythological Cycle,_ where they are given as summing up Erigena's philosophy,--and as an indication of the vigorous Pantheism of Pre-christian Irish thought. "We are informed by all the means of knowledge that beneath the apparent diversity of beings subsists the One Being which is their common foundation." "When we are told that God makes all things, we are to understand that God is in all things, that he is the substantial essence of all things. For He alone possesses in himself all that which may be truly said to exist. For nothing which is, is truly of itself, but God alone; who alone exists _per se,_ spreading himself over all things, and communicating to them all that which in them truly corresponds to the notion of being." I think we can recognise here, under a not too thick disguise of churchly phraseology, the philosophy of the _Bhagavad-Gita._ Again: "Do you not see how the creator of the universality of things hold the first rank in the divisions of Nature? Not without reason, indeed; since he is the basic principle of all things, and is inseparable from all the diversity which he created, without which he could not exist as creator. In him, indeed, immutably and essentially, all things are; he is in himself division and collection, the genus and the species, the whole and the part of the created universe." "What is a pure idea? It is, in proper terms, a theophany: that is to say, a manifestator of God in the human soul." You would be mildly surprised, to say the least of it, to hear at the present day a native, say in Abyssinia, rise to talk in terms like these: it is no whit less surprising to hear a man doing so in ninth-century Europe. But an Irishman in Europe in those days was much the same thing as an Oxford professor in the wilds of Abyssinia would be now;--with this difference: that Ireland is a part of Europe, and affected by the general European cycles (we must suppose). Europe then was in thick pralaya (as Abyssinia is now); but in the midst of it all there was Ireland, with her native contrariness, behaving better than most people do in high manvantara. The impulse that made that age great for her never came far enough down to awaken great creation in the plastic arts; but it touched the fringes of them, and produced marvelous designing, in jewel-work, and it the illumination of manuscripts. Concerning the latter, I will quote this from Joyce's Short History of Ireland; it may be of interest:-- "Its most marked characteristic is interlaced work formed by bands, ribbons and cords, which are curved and twisted and interwoven in the most intricate way, something like basket work infinitely varied in pattern. These are intermingled and alternated with zigzags, waves, spirals, and lozenges; while here and there among the curves are seen the faces or forms of dragons, serpents, or other strange-looking animals, their tails or ears or tongues elongated and woven till they become merged or lost in the general design. . . . The pattern is so minute and complicated as to require the aid of a magnifying glass to examine it. . . . Miss Stokes, who has examined the _Book of Kells,_ says of it: 'No effort hitherto made to transcribe any one page of it has the perfection of execution and rich harmony of color which belongs to this wonderful book. It is no exaggeration to say that, as with the microscopic works of Nature, the stronger the magnifying power brought to bear on it, the more is this perfection seen. No single false interlacement or uneven curve in the spirals, no faint tiace of a trembling hand or wandering thought can be detected.'" The same author tells us that someone took the trouble to count, through a magnifying glass, in the _Book of Armagh,_ in a "small space scarcely three quarters of an inch in length by less than half an inch in width, no less than one hundred and fifty-eight interlacements of a slender ribbon pattern formed of white lines edged with black ones."--One of these manuscripts, sometimes, would be given as a king's ransom. An unmasculine art, it may be said; and enormous laborious skill spent upon tribial creation. But once again, the age was pralaya; all Europe was passing into, or quite sunk in, pralaya. The Host of Souls was not then holding the western world; there was but a glint and flicker of their wings over Ireland as they passed elsewhere; there was no thorough entering in to take possession. But the island (perhaps) is the Western Lay-center, and a critical spot; the veils of matter there are not very thick; and that mere glint and flicker was enough to call forth all this wonderful manifestation of beauty. If I emphasize over-much, it is because all this talk about 'inferior races,'--and because Ireland has come in for so much opprobrium, one way and another, on that score. But people do not know, and they will not think, that those races are superior in which the Crest-Wave is rearing itself; and that their superiority cannot last: the Crest-Wave passes from one to another, and in the nature of things can never remain in any one for longer than its due season. It is as certain that it will pass sometime from the regions it fills with strength and glory now, as that it will sometime thrill into life and splendor the lands that are now forlorn and helpless; and for my part, seeing what the feeble dying away of it, or the far foam flung,--no more than that,--raised up in Ireland once, I am anxious to see the central glory of it rise there; I am keen to know what will happen then. It will rise there, some time; and perhaps that time may not be far off.--Oh if men could only look at these national questions with calm scientific vision, understanding the laws that govern national and racial life! There would be none of these idiotic jealousies then; no heart-burnings or contempt or hatred as between the nations; there would be none of this cock-a-doodling arrogance that sometimes makes nations in their heyday a laughing-stock for the Gods. Instead we should see one single race, Humanity; poured now into one national mold, now into another; but always with the same duality: half divine, half devilish-idiotic; --and while making the utmost best of each mold as they came to inhabit it, the strong would find it their supreme business to help the weak, and not exploit or contemn them. But it will need the sound sense of Theosophy,--knowledge of Reincarnation, the conviction of Human Brotherhood,--to work this change in mankind. Well; now to the things that brought Ireland down. In 795 the Norwegians began their ravages, and they seem to have had a peculiar spite against the monastery-colleges. That at Armagh was sacked nine times in the ninth, and six times in the tenth century. In the same period Glendalough was plundered seven times; Clonard four times; Clonmacnois five times betnveen 838 and 845, and often afterwards. These are only samples: there were scores of the institutions, and they were all sacked, burnt, plundered, and ravaged, again and again. The scholars fled abroad, taking their precious manuscripts with them; for which reason many of the most valuable of these have been found in monasteries on the continent. The age of brilliance was over. For a couple of centuries, the Norwegians, and then the Danes, were ruining Ireland; until Brian Boru did their quietus make at Clontarf in 1014. Before the country had had time to recover, the Norman conquest began: a thing that went on for centuries, and never really finished; and that was much more ruinous even than the invasions of the Norsemen. As to the Celtic Church, which had fostered all that brilliance, its story is soon told. In Wales, the Norman and Plantagenet kings of England were at pains to bring the see of St. Davids under the sway of Canterbury and into close communion with Rome: they and the Roman Church fought hand in hand to destroy Celtic liberties. The Church of the Circled Cross had never been an independent organization in the sense that the Greek Church was: it had never had its own Patriarchs or Popes; it was always in theory under Rome. But secular events had kept the two apart; and while they did so, the Celtic Church was virtually independent. In the eleventh and twelfth Centuries the Welsh Church fought hard for its existence; but Norman arms backed by Papal sanction proved too strong for it; and despite the valor of the princes, and especially of that gallant bishop-historian Gerald the Welshman, it succumbed. As to Ireland: an English Pope, Adrian IV, born Nicholas Brakespeare, presented the island to King Henry II; and King Henry II with true courtesy returned the compliment by presenting it to the Pope. The Synod of Cashel, called by Henry in 1172, put Ireland under Rome; and the Church of the Circled Cross ceased to be. There, in short and simple terms, you have the history of it. And therein, too, as I guess, you may see all sorts of interesting phases of karmic working. For the Church of the Circled Cross, that had done so well by Ireland in some things, had done marvelously badly in others. There was a relic of political stability in ancient Ireland,--in the office of the High-kings of Tara. It is supposed now that it had grown up, you may say out of nothing: had been established by some strong warrior, to maintain itself as it might under such of his successors as might be strong too. I have no doubt, on the other hand, that it was really an ancient institution, once firmly grounded, that had weakened since the general decay of the Celtic Power. The Gods in their day had had their capital at Tara; and until the middle of the fifth century A.D. Tara stood there as the symbol of national unity. When Patrick came the position was this: all Ireland was divided into innumerable small kingdoms with their kinglets, with the Ard-righ of Tara as supreme over them all as he could make himself. The hopefullest thing that could have happened would have been the abolition of the kingdoms and kinglets, and the establishment of the Ard-righ's authority as absolute and final. Dermot son of Fergus Kervall became High-king in 544. A chief named Aed Guairy murdered one of Dermot's officers, and sought sanctuary with St. Ruadan of Lorrha, one of Findian's twelve apostles, to whom he was related. The king hailed him forth, and brought him to Tara for trial. Thereupon the whole Church of Ireland rose to a man against the mere layman, the king, who had dared thus defy the spiritual powers. They came to Tara in a body, fasted against him, and laid their heavy curse on him, on Tara, and, in the result, on the kingship.--"Alas!" said Dermot, "for the iniquitous contest that ye have waged against me, seeing that it is Ireland's good I pursue, and to preserve her discipline and royal right; but it is Ireland's unpeace and murderousness ye endeavor after." * ------ * I quote this from Mr. Rollerstone's book. ------ Which was true. The same trouble came up in England six centuries later, and might have ended in the same way. But the dawn of a manvantara was approaching then, and the centrifugal forces in England were slowly giving place to the centripetal: national unity was ahead, and the first two strong Williams and Henrys were able in the main to assert their kingly supremacy. But in the Irish time not manvantara, but pralaya, was coming; and this not for Ireland only, but for all Europe. In the natural order of things, the centrifugal forces were increasing always. That is why Dermot MacKervall failed, where Henry II in part suceeded. There was nothing in the cycles to support him against the saints. Tara, accursed, was abandoned, and fell into ruin; and the symbol and center of Irish unity was gone. The High-kingship, thus bereft of its traditional seat, grew weaker and weaker; and Ireland, except by Brian Boru, a usurper, was never after effectively governed. So when the Norsemen came there was no strong secular power to defend the monasteries from them, and the karma of St. Ruadan's churchly arrogance and ambition fell on them. And when Strongbow and the Normans came, there was no strong central monarchy to oppose them: the king of Leinster invited them in, and the king of Ireland lacked the backing of a united nation to drive them out; and Ireland fell. Well; we have seen how often things tend to repeat themselves,-- but on a higher level,--after the lapse of fifteen centuries. Patrick, probably, was born in or about 387. In 1887 or thereabouts Theosophy was brought into Ireland. Patrick's coming led eventually to the period of the Irish illumination; the coming of Theosophy led in a very few years to the greatest Irish illumination, in poetry and drama especially, that had been since Ireland fell. But Patrick did not complete things; nor did that first touch of Theosophy in the 'eighties and 'nineties of last century. Theosophy, known in those days only to a score or so of Irishmen, kindled wonderful fires: you know that English literature is more alive in Ireland now than anywhere else in the English-speaking world; and that that whole Celtic Renaissance was born in the rooms of the Dublin Theosophical Society. Yet there were to be eventualities: the Dublin Lodge was only a promise; the Celtic Renaissance is only a promise. Theosophy only bides its time until the storm of the world has subsided. It will take hold upon marvelous Ireland yet; it will take hold upon Sacred Ierne. What may we not expect then? When she had but a feeble candle of Truth, in those ancient times, she stood up a light-giver to the nations; how will it be when she has the bright sun shining in her heart? ------------- So now we have followed the history of the world, so far as we might, for about a thousand years. We have seen the Mysteries decline in Europe, and nothing adequate rise to take their place; and, because of that sorrowful happening, the fall of European civilization into an ever-increasing oblivion of the Spiritual things. We have seen how in the East, in India and China, spiritual movements did arise, and succeed in some sort in taking the place of the Mysteries; and how in consequence civilization there did in the main, for long ages, go forward undeclining and stable. And we have watched the Crest-Wave, indifferent to all national prides and conceits, flow from one race to another, according to a defined geographical and temporal plan: one nation after another enjoying its hour of greatness, and none chosen of the Law or the Spirit to be lifted forever above its fellows;--but a regular circulation of splendor about the globe, like the blood through the veins: Greece, India, China; Rome, Spain, Rome, Egypt, Persia, India, China: each repeating itself as the cycles of its own lifetime might permit. And then, as the main current passed eastward from dying Europe, a reserve of it, a little European _Sishta,_ passing west: from Gaul to Britain, from Britain to Ireland; from Ireland to Tirnanogue and Wonderland,* there to hide for some centuries until the Great Wave should roll westward again from China through Persia, Egypt, Africa, Sicily and Spain, up into Europe: when the Little Wave, returning magic-laden out of the Western Paradise should roll back Europewards again through Ireland, twelfth-century Wales and Brittany; and spray Christendom with foam from the sea! that wash the shores of Fairyland: producing first what there was of mystery and delicacy to uplift mankind in feudal chivalry; then the wonder-note in poetry which has probably been one of the strongest and subtlest antidotes against deathly materialism. Hence one may understand the _raison d'etre_ for that strange correspondence between Chinese and Celtic happenings which we have noted: the main wave rolls east; the backwash west; and they touch simultaneously the extremities of things, which extremities are, Celtdom and China. In both you get the sense of being at the limits of the world,--of having beyond you only nonmaterial and magical realms:--Peng-lai in the East, Hy Brasil in the West;--the Fortunate Islands of the Sunset, and the Fortunate Islands of the Dawn. We have seen opportunities coming to each nation in turn; but that how they used them depended on themselves: on whether they would turn them to spiritual or partly spiritual, or to wholly material uses: whether they would side, in their hour of prosperity, with the Gods--as China did to some extent; or with the hellions, as in the main Europe did. And above all, we have seen how the Gods will never accept defeat, but return ever and again to the attack, and are in perpetual heroic rebellion against the despotism of materialism and evil and human blindness; and we know that the victory they so often failed to achieve of old, they are out to win now, and in the way of winning it: that we are in the crisis and most exciting of times, standing to make the future ages golden; that the measure of the victory the Gods shall win is somewhat in our own hands to decide. The war-harps that played victory to Heaven at Moytura of old are sounding in our ears now, if we will listen for them; and when Point Loma was founded, it was as if once more the shaft of Lugh the Sunbright took the eye of Balor Balcbeimnech in the midst. And so, at this point, we take leave of our voyaging together through the past. ------ * Perhaps, if we knew anything about American history, to America. One is tempted to put two and two together, in the light of what we have seen, and note what they come to. The great American Empires fell before Cortes and Pizarro, between 1520 and 1533. That surely marked the end of a manvantaa or fifteen hundred years period of cultural activity; which then would have begun between 20 and 33 A.D.--upon a backwash of the cycle from Augustan Rome? We are not to imagine that any outward link would be necessary. Is it possibly a fact that in those centuries, the first five of our era roughly, when both Europe and China were somewhat sterile for the most part,--the high tide of culture and creation was mainly in the antipodes of each other, America and India? And that after the fall of the Tang glory in China (750) and the Irish illumination in the west (775), some new phase of civilization began, somewhere between the Rio Grande del Norte and the borders of Chile? The Incaic Empire, like the Han and the Western Roman, we know lasted about four centuries, or from the region of 1100-A.D.--But there we must leave it, awaiting the work of discovery.