»?,a-. >T;W>
Tfi€ VORJ-D-Ky^fGRy
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
l-V^
r^
THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
THE
WORLD-MYSTERY
FOUR ESSAYS
BY
G. R. S. MEAD, B.A., M.R.A.S.
LONDON :
THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY,
7, DUKE STREET, ADELPHI, W.C.
madras: " THEOSOrillST " OFFICE, ADYAR.
BENARES : THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY.
1895
CONTENTS.
PAGE
The World-Soul - - - i
The Vestures of the Soul - - 8i
The Web of Destiny - - - 113
True Self-Reliance - - - 143
19S5144
Ashcharyyavat pasliyati kashchidenam
Ashcharyyavad vadati tathaiva chanyah
Ashchavyyavach chainamanyah shrinoti
Shrutvapycnam veda na chaiva kashchit.
One sees this as a wonder,
As a wonder, too, one speaks of it,
As a wonder one hears of it,
And having heard, knows it not anyone.
Bhagavad GJta, II. 29.
'Cs ovv lyivcTO . . 7rpo<; tijv yrjv fiTTciv, wcnrep
T^KOvacv, OTi ' ITav 6 /Acyas Ti6vr]Kev ' • oi <j>6r]vaL Se
Traucra/xcvov atTov, Kat yeviaOai jxiyav ov)( evos dXXa
TToXXuiv crTevay/xbi' afxa Oavfxa(rfJi(3 /xe/JLLyfJLevov.
And so he called out to the land, as he had heard, " Pan, the Great, is
dead." And hardly had he ceased, when there arose a mighty cry, not oi
one, but of many, mingled with wonderment.
Plutarch, On the Cessation of Oracles, xvii.
'iSov', jxvcTTripiQV vjXLV Acyoj.
Behold, I tell you a mystery.
I. Corinthians, xv. 51.
THE WORLD-SOUL.
The task that I propose to myself is no light
one ; it is no less than to discuss some of the
opinions of my fellow-men on Deity, and to
point out, if possible, some common ground of
agreement or reconciliation between the innu-
merable ideas put forward on this inexhaustible
topic. I shall not write either as an avowed
monotheist, pantheist, theist, or atheist, for I
conceive that a real student of theosophy is
sufficiently imbued with the spirit of the great
law of expansion and progress, not to condemn
himself or herself to the narrowing limits of any
of these sectarian ideas, which cannot fail to
bring him in conflict with the prejudices of some
section or other of his brother-men.
I hope to find this common ground of agree-
ment, for at any rate the theist, pantheist, or
monotheist, in the concept of the World-Soul,
in one or other of its aspects ; although I despair
of finding much sympathy from the so-called
2 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
atheist, whose intellectual negation is frequently,
if not invariably, stultified by his actions. For
do we not find the avowed atheist searching for
the reason of that which he denies to have any
intelligent operation ; do we not find him
frequently striving for an ideal which can never
be attained, if, as he supposes, the present is
the outcome of the past interaction of blindly
driving force and matter ? Why, again, should
he work for the improvement of the race if that
race, as he himself, is to depart into the void
together with the producer of his and its con-
sciousness ? For the body dies and the earth
will also die. And if consciousness is a product
of organized matter, then the disruption of that
organism means inevitably the dissipation of
consciousness. Why, then, this effort to bene-
fit that which must, on his own hypothesis,
tend inevitably to annihilation ?
From the materialists, then, this essay,
perchance, will gain little intellectual sympathy,
although I may venture to hope that the ideals
of their fellow-men, which will be brought
forward, will meet, if not with reverential
consideration, at least with respect. Nor will
it be any part of my task to criticize, except in
THE WORLD-SOUL. 3
the briefest manner, any of the crude expressions
of man's aspiration to the Divine, but rather
to put forward a number of instances of the
more perfect expressions of great minds and
great teachers who have in some measure
sensed the actuahty of that mysterious bond
that makes all men one.
First, then, let me say that the term World-
Soul is not intended in this essay to carry the
technical meaning of the platonic or neoplatonic
All-Soul or Soul of the Universals {^vxyj tov Travros
or Tuiv oAwv); and so in order to express in some
way what the term World-Soul is intended to
mean, it will be necessary to give a meaning to
the words " soul " and " world." By " soul "
is intended the underlying "something" under
every manifested form, that something which
is the life, consciousness or intelligence, or
whatever term is preferred, which makes it that
form and no other. Nor should we exclude
anything, not even that which in these latter
days is called " inanimate," from our sympathy,
for to our greater Selves naught that exists,
nay, not even the grain of sand, is in-animate,
for then it would be soid-\ess, and the Divine
would have been excluded from part of itself.
4 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
And now let us start with ourselves in our
enquiry, where we find a soul encased in a body,
a body made of many "lives," of infinite
infinitesimal cells, each the "form" of a soul.
And yet the soul of man is not composed of these
" lives " ; the consciousness of man is not
simply the product or sum of their conscious-
ness, nor is his intelligence a compound of
their intelligence. The. soul of man is one, a
self-centred unit, indestructible, imperish-
able, self-motive ; it dies not nor comes into
being.
Next, let us, taking this as a starting-point,
use analogy to aid us, as we pass within, into
the region of ideas. For analogy is the only
method we can employ, if we wish to widen our
understanding, and without it we might well
doubt the possibility of knowledge. Every
thing, or rather every soul, is the mirror
of every other soul, just as in the Mona-
dology of Leibnitz ; and if it were not that
a knowledge of one soul comprises the
knowledge of all other souls, and that kosmos
is contained potentially in every atom, then
were our striving towards wisdom vain and our
aspiration to reality likewise vain. Taking,
THE WORLD-SOUL. 5
then, the example of the human soul, enshrined
in a universe of "lives," whether we regard it
as it were a sun in the midst of its system, or as
an ocean of light in which the "lives" are
bathed, let us try to conceive that there is
another and more mighty Life, a Divine Soul,
of which the human souls are " hves," and
which we may term the Soul of Humanity. And
yet this Soul is not made up of the souls of men,
but is a unit of itself, self-motive, and itself and
naught else. Further — for the human mind is
so' constituted that nothing short of infinitude
can suffice it — that this Divine Soul is in its
turn a Life, one of an infinite number of
" Lives " of a like degree, that enshrine a Soul
transcending them as much as man transcends
the "lives" of the universe of his body. And
further still, that that which transcends the
Divine is, in its turn, , . . But why go
further ? Is not the series infinite ? Where
can we set the term, or place a boundary, or
limit infinitude ? " So far shalt thou go ! " and
then the mind loses itself in the stupendous
height of its soaring and must return to earth
to rest its wings.
Thus towards infinity we rise in our ideation,
6 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
conceiving every atom as the shrine of a soul ;
every stone, animal, man ; every globe, and
system, and universe ; every system of universes,
and universe of systems — as the shrine of a
Soul. For our universe is neither the first nor
the last of its kind ; their number is infinite.
And when the consummation of our present
universe is perfected there will be "another
Word on the tongue of the Ineffable," for the
Ineffable speaks infinitely, or, as our Brahman
brethren say, there are " crores of crores of
Brahmas," or universes.
Thus an infinity in one direction of thought,
and equally so an infinity in the other direction.
For are not the " lives " of the body, too, the
souls of a universe of other invisible " lives " ;
and these, each in its turn, the suns of still more
invisible universes, until the infinitely small
blends with the infinitely great and all is One.
Perhaps )^ou may have thought that in this
concept we have nothing but an infinite series
of eternally separated entities ; of infinite divi-
sion ; of a chaos of multiplicity ; of a stupendous
separateness ? This might be so if it stood
alone ; but as in all things here below, we can
have no manifestation without the help of
THE WORLD-SOUL. 7
contraries, we must take its twin concept to
complete it.
In pluribus Uniiin ci Uniun in pluribus ; One
in many and in many One. " The essential
unity of all souls with the Over-Soul " is a
fundamental postulate of the Wisdom of all
ages. That is to say all souls are one in
essence, whatever forms they may ensoul.
But what is more ; what is almost an over-
powering thought, necessary though it be to
universal progress ; not only the human soul,
but even the soul of the very grain of dust has
the potentiality of expanding its consciousness
into the All-consciousness. Every soul is
endowed with the power of giving and receiving
with respect to every other soul ; of passing
through every stage of consciousness ; of
expanding; just as the One, the All-Soul, so to
say, contracted itself into manifestation, into the
Many, subordinating itself to itself, that every
soul might know and become every other soul,
by virtue of that Love which is the cause of
existence.
Thus, then, every soul aspires to union with
its own essence ; and this constitutes the
religious spirit of mankind ; and also our love
8 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
of wisdom and our search for certainty. This
constitutes that Path to the Knowledge of
Divine Things, which we to-da}' call Theosophy ;
that synthesis of true religion, philosophy and
science ; of right aspiration, right thought and
right observation, which the world is ever
blindly seeking.
The World-Soul, then, for us, is the One Soul
of Humanity, which will differ for each soul in
proportion to the state of consciousness it has
arrived at. No two souls are alike, just as no
two blades of grass or grains of sand are alike,
for then, as has been well said, there would be
no reason why one should be in a particular
place or state and not the other, and so the
Reason of the universe be stultified.
The term " world," in our present enquiry,
therefore, will be limited to the cycle of mani-
festation of our particular humanity, for this is
our present world ; the collective embodiment
of that Divine Soul, which may consequently
be referred to as the World-Soul.
This source of his being, this essence of his
nature, this something that transcends him-
self in his highest self-consciousness, man calls
by many names, of which the one which ob-
THE WORLD-SOUL. 9
tains most generally in the Western world, and
in the English tongue, is " God,"
And here, much as I shrink from hurting the
feelings of any devout believer, I would protest
against the tendency of nearly all unreflecting
religionists to limit the illimitable, to crystal-
lize the fountain of their being, and to materia-
lize That, which it is blasphemy to name, much
less to attempt to dress in the tawdry rags of
our own mental equipment. There are those
who will talk to you of " God" as they would
of a personal acquaintance, who profess a fami-
liarity that would outrage our feelings of
decency if the object of their remarks were
even a wise and holy man whom we had
learned to reverence. There are others who
have such limited notions of the Divine that
they cling with desperation to terms that have
their origin in the vulgarest misunderstanding,
and who dub those who will not use their
Shibboleths as "atheists," simply because
they cannot understand that there is a reve-
rence of the mind that transcends terms of the
emotions ; that there is an aspiration that
transcends all endeavour to give the names of
human qualities to That which is beyond all
\
10 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
qualities, and to which their pious jargon is
blasphemy. If such reverence is " atheism,"
then we had better change our terms and cease
to use words that no longer possess meaning.
Let all men agree that no definition is possi-
ble, and that any enunciation of the mystery is
but a temporary stepping stone to higher and
still higher things, and there will no longer be
seen the sad spectacle of human beings trying
to pour the ocean into a waterpot.
For after all what do men fear in the des-
peration with which they cling to such limiting
terms ? To me they appear to fear that, where
all is so vague and abstract, the goal they pro-
pose to themselves would, without definition,
seem too far off for them to ever hope to reach
it. But surely they have the infinitude within
their own nature ? Is there not a " Christ "
potential in every man which is his true Self;
and beyond, the " Fatherhood " ; and beyond,
the "Father of all Fatherhoods" ; and beyond —
Infinitude? But all within the nature and in
the essence of every man ; nothing is without,
nothing which is not of the same essence ; all
is That . . . ! Is it so strange to "go home " ?
Is it an abstract void, a negation, to know
THE WORLD-SOUL. ir
the Self's true Being ? Or, on the other hand,
is this a mere exaggeration of the personal
man ? Is this dictated by self-pride and self-
conceit ? If such reverent aspiration is thus
condemned by any, they will first have to show
that the great world-teachers have lied, for the
word of no lesser men can come before their
teaching. One and all, the great teachers have
inculcated this wisdom ; and it requires but
little study to find how admirably it explains
all the apparent contradictions in the exoteric
expressions of the world-scriptures.
" Be humble if thou wouldst attain to wis-
dom." Yes, but do not debase yourself;
humility is not slavishness ; reverence is not
fawning. How can Deity take pleasure in that
which a noble-minded man could never view
without the greatest pity ? "I am but as a
worm in thy sight," David is made to sa}^ and
there are those who rejoice to echo the words,
and declare that without the " Grace of God,"
they must continue worms.
But how can even the body, much less the
man, the mind, or thinker, be so debased ?
Each is most honourable in its own dominion,
and only dishonourable in proportion as it fails
12 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
to "do its mystery " in sacrifice to the Self,
whose " Grace " is its very Hfe and being and
the well-spring of its action. It is the duty of
man to " worship" the Deity and not to grovel.
To present that which is "worthy" to the Self,
and not to delight in debasement
" And so . . . with fear and trembling
work out your own salvation : for the worker
in you, both as to willing and working for well-
pleasing, is Deity."
(w<TT€. . . /A€Ta cf)6/3oV KOI TpOjXOV Ti]V caUTuJv CTOiTTJpLaV
KaTepya.t,€(T$€. 0€os yap Icttlv o ivepywv tv i'fuv Kat to
OiXuv Koi TO ivepyetv virep Tqs evSoKia?. — Philippians
ii. 12, 13.)
And if that worker is the Divine Self, what
reason is there that it should humble itself, or
debase itself, for the very power that makes
man work out his own salvation is that Deity
itself ?
We shall now be able to understand the
words of Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gitd (vii.
21, 22) :
" Whichever form [of deity] a worship-
per longs with faith to worship, in that form I
make his faith steady. Endowed with that
faith he seeks to propitiate it. in that Jorm] ,
THE WORLD-SOUL. 13
and obtains therefrom his profitable desires
which are in truth bestowed by me."
(Y yo yam yam tanH})ibhakiah shraddhaydrchchitum
ichchhati,
Tasyd tasydchaldm shraddhdm tdmcva viddhdmy-
aham,
Sa tayd shraddhyd yuhUistasydrddhanamlhate,
Labhatc cha tatah kdjiuin mayaiva vihitdn hitdn.)
And again (ix. 23) :
" Even those devotees of other deities who
worship with faith, they too, O Son of Kunti,
worship me indeed, though not as it is laid
down."
(Yo'py anyadevatd bhaktd yajante shraddhydnvitdh,
Te'pi nidmeva Kaunteya yajantyavidhipiirvakam.)
For Krishna is the World-Soul, the Self of
all men (x. 20) :
" O Lord of doubt, I am the Self seated in
the heart of all beings. I am the beginning and
middle and end of all creatures."
(Aham dtnid, Guddkcsha, sarvabhiltdshyasthitah,
Aham ddishchamadhyancha bhutdndnianta eva cha.)
And now that no one may think that all this
is a bald assertion and an unsupported state-
14 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
ment, let us collect the evidences of wisdom
from all climes and races and times, evidences
as grand and unimpeachable as any that the
modern scientist possesses for his five-sense
facts.
The wealth of material is so great that it is
difficult to cull a passage here and there and
leave so much unnoticed. Neither is it easy to
know in what order to take the world-religions ;
which to take first or which last.
As, however, we must start somewhere, let
us begin with the oldest scriptures of our Aryan
race, the Vedas, and then the oldest of the
Puranas. Next let us take a glance at Taoism,
the most mystical of the creeds of the far East ;
then pass to the Avesta, that ancient scripture
of the Parsis ; and so on to Egj'pt ; first quot-
ing from the Zohar and other kabalistic wTitings
which contain the wisdom of the Chaldaeans
and a key to the misunderstood scriptures of
the Jews. Egypt will lead us to speak of the
wisdom of Hermes and the Gnosis of those who
are now known generally as Gnostics ; and this
will lead to a quotation from Paul and some
reference to the Greek and Roman philosophy,
and the ancient systems of Orpheus and other
THE WORLD-SOUL. 15
great teachers. Finally we shall find identical
ideas among the Scandinavian peoples, and a
striking confirmation in Mohammedan Sufiism.
All, all without exception, sensed the World-
Soul, hymned of it, sought union therewith ;
for of what else could they speak ? Only they
glorified that which it was in its essence, and
did not worship its grossest and most im-
permanent manifestation, the surface of five-
sense nature. Such an idolatry was reserved
to the latter end of the nineteenth century,
when human intellect worships the ground its
body treads on, the gross body of the World-
Soul, and has forgotten whence it came and
whither it will return. Our times are an age
of the deification of matter and the consequent
fall of ideals !
Thus, then, let us first turn to that myste-
rious link with the past, the Rig Veda. Who
knows whence it came ? Who can tell its
origin ? Perchance those who have kept the
record since the great Deluge of Atlantis could
name its transmitters, and tell of those who
withdrew to the " Sacred Island."
Among prayers to the Supreme Principle, the
World-Soul, first must come the famous Gayatri,
i6 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
" the holiest verse in the Vedas," It runs as
follows, in what Wilson calls, " Sir William
Jones's translation of a paraphrastic interpre-
tation."
" Let us adore the supremacy of that Divine
Sun, the Godhead, Who illuminates all. Who
recreates all, from \\'hom all proceed, to Wliom
all must return, \\'hom we invoke to direct our
understandings aright in our progress toward
His holy seat." (Sir W. Jones' Works, xiii.
3^7-)
This mantra is found in the loth Hymn of
the 4th Ashtaka (Eighth) of the Samhita (Col-
lection) of the Rig Veda, not as in the above
expanded paraphrase, but in an abbreviated
form, for " such is the fear entertained of pro-
faning this text, that copyists of the Vedas not
unfrequently refrain from transcribing it," says
Wilson. {Vishnu Purdna, ii. 251.) " It is the
duty of every Brahman to repeat it mentally in
his morning and evening devotions," and it is
to be suspected that the western world has not
yet received the correct text, though Sir
William Jones may have got a version nearer
the truth than his successors. It is well known
that the Brahmans are the proudest and most
THE WORLD-SOUL. 17
exclusive people in the world where the secrets
of their religion are concerned, and it is reason-
able to suppose that a mantra that pertains to
their initiation would not be lightly revealed.
The subtle metaphysical and mystical inter-
pretations of this most sacred formula, especi-
ally those of the Vedanta School, testify to its
sanctity. The number of interpretations also
that the words of the mantra lend themselves
to are almost innumerable. The phrasing, for
instance, can be taken as neuter or masculine
and so on.
Perhaps the spirit of the central thought of
the oriental religious world may be further
explained by another Hymn, translated by Sir
William Jones. It reiterates that most stupen-^
dous intuition of the human mind, that feeling
of identity with the World-Soul, in a magnifi-
cent litany which runs as follows :
" May that Soul of mine, w^hich mounts aloft
in my waking hours, as an ethereal spark, and
which, even in my slumber, has a like ascent,
soaring to a great distance, as an emanation
from the light of lights, be united by devout
meditation with the Spirit supremely blest, and
supremely intelligent !
B
i8 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
" May that Soul of mine, by an agent similar
to which the low-born perform their menial
works, and the wise, deeply versed in sciences,
duly solemnize their sacrificial rite ; that Soul,
which was itself the primal oblation placed
within all creatures, be united by devout medi-
tation with the Spirit supremely blest, and
supremely intelligent !
" May that Soul of mine, which is a ray of
perfect wisdom, pure intellect and permanent
existence, which is the unextinguishable light
fixed within created bodies, without which no
good act is performed, be united by devout
meditation with the Spirit supremely blest, and
supremely intelligent !
" May that Soul of mine, in which, as an
immortal essence, may be comprised whatever
has past, is present, or will be hereafter ; by
which the sacrifice, where seven ministers
officiate, is properly solemnized, be united by
devout meditation with the Spirit supremely
blest, and supremely intelligent !
" May that Soul of mine, into which are
inserted, like the spokes of a wheel in the axle
of a car, the holy texts of the Vedas ; into which
is interwoven all that belongs to created forms.
THE WORLD-SOUL. 19
be united by devout meditation with the Spirit
supremely blest, and supremely intelligent !
" May that Soul of mine, which, distributed
in other bodies, guides mankind, as a skilful
charioteer guides his rapid horses with reins ;
that Soul which is fixed in my breast, exempt
from old age, and extremely swift in its course,
be united, by divine meditation, with the Spirit
supremely blest, and supremely intelligent ! "
(Sir W. Jones' Works, xiii. 372, 373.)
Such is an instance of the advanced theosophy
of the Vedas, in the face of which it is difficult
to understand the crude criticisms of the
Weber-Miillerite School of materialistic scholar-
ship, who would set it all down to the
imaginings of a primitive pastoral people. The
theosophical student is glad to turn to such a
fair estimate as that of Barth, who says :
" Neither in the language nor in the thought
of the Rig Veda have I been able to discover
that quality of primitive natural simplicity
which so many are fain to see in it. The
poetry it contains appears to me, on the contrary,
to be of a singularly refined character and
artificially elaborated, full of allusions and
reticences, of pretensions to mysticism and
20 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
theosophic insight ; and the manner of its
expression is such as reminds one more fre-
quently of the phraseology in use among certain
small groups of initiated than the poetic
language of a large community." {The Religions
of India, p. xiii.)
Truly so ; and perhaps before long the
methods of the Veda may be better understood,
and it will be recognized how that the powers
of nature and the moral attributes of man are
fitter symbols of a divine theogony than personi-
fications which include all the vices and
pettiness of animal-man.
As H. W. Wallis says {Cosmogony of the Rig
Veda, p. 8) :
"The deities oi the Rig F^rfa differ essentially
from the Gods of Greek or Scandinavian
mythology and of the Mahdbhdrata, in the
abstract and almost impersonal nature of their
characters. They are little more than factors
in the physical and moral order of the world,
apart from which none, except perhaps Indra,
has a self-interested existence."
To the Greek, Scandinavian and Mahabhara-
tan deities, we may add the Pantheons of other
nations as well, and also their Indras, Zeuses,
THE WORLD-SOUL. 21
Jehovahs, and the rest, whose " self-interest "
is expHcable seeing that they were but the
representations of the time-period or manifes-
tations of a certain world, for there are crores
of Brahmas, Jupiters and Jehovahs in the ideal
Kosmos. It is time that the western nations
should remember their birth-place. We are
not Semites but Aryans, a younger branch of
the great Aryan Race, perchance, but still
Aryans and not Semites. And being so we
should remember the wisdom of our fathers
and put aside the crude conceptions of the
Semites as to Deity. Jehovah is in his place
as the God of a small warlike nomad tribe, but
entirely out of place in the Religion of those
who profess to be followers of the Christ. It is
high time to lay aside such gross anthropomor-
phism, which the learned Jews themselves
rejected, as their Kabalah and Philo well
testify. The curse of Christendom to-day is
belief in this "jealous" and "self-interested"
Jehovah as the One God, an idea alien to Aryan
thought. Direful indeed has been the effect of
the " curse " of the " chosen people " on their
spoliators. They were robbed of their Scrip-
tures, deprived of them by force, and the
22 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
ravished maiden of the Semites, forced against
her will into the arms of the marauding Aryans,
has used her " magic arts " against the tribe
that holds her prisoner, for to-day she imprisons
the minds of those who hold her body captive.
In other words, the western nations, being the
youngest of the Aryan family, and lusty only in
body, have in their ignorance worshipped the
dead letter of that w-hich they have not under-
stood, and so debased their minds and
characters with a bibliolatry scarce paralleled
in the history of the world. Let us hope that
this is passed and that the end of the nineteenth
century may see the " prodigal son " return
" home," and chastened by the experience of
his exile, show his real heredity in an activity
that his more sluggish elder brother in the
East, who has never left home, can never
manifest in such abundance, because of his very
passivity. The Ar3'ans have an ancestral
religion, and every Aryan in the West should
see to it that he does not pursue after other
Gods.
Of course I speak of the crude exoteric God
of the Hebrew populus, and not of the Mystery
Deity, the Father, preached to the Jews by the
THE WORLD-SOUL. 23
Initiate, whom the West calls Jesus of Nazareth.
For did he not say that his hearers were " of
their father the Devil," for they were " Abra-
ham's seed " and " Abraham " was the ruler of
this world ? Nor do I mean any disrespect to
the Jews of to-day, who are no more the Jews
of the Bible, than we are Goths or Vandals, or
woad-besmeared Britons. I do not write about,
or for, " bodies," I am writing for " minds "
and " souls " whose ancestry is divine, and not
of the Lord of the Body, call him by what
name you will.
How long will the perverse mind of man
persist in telling us the fashion in which " God
created " the world ; how long will men blas-
phemously speak of That which is unutterable,
and degrade the majesty of their Divine Souls
into the poor imaginings of the animal minds
which think in terms of their gross bodies, and
of naught else ? More reverently indeed did
our ancestors phrase the mystery when they
were yet uncontaminated by the mire of their
earthly tabernacles, and a huckstering commer-
ciahsm and a pseudo-science that gropes, on
hands and knees, with eyes fixed on the surface
of things, had not dragged the ideals of
\
24 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
humanity down to the dust. How different
are the beginnings of cosmogony as sung of in
the Rig Veda ! The passage is famihar to
western students in the noble verse of Cole-
brooke. The following, however, is another
version :
" The non-existent was not, and the existent
was not at that time ; there was no air or sky
beyond ; what was covering in ? and where ?
under shelter of what ? was there water — a
deep depth ?
" Death was not nor immortality then, there
was no discrimination of night and day : that
one thing breathed without a wind of its own
self ; apart from it there was nothing else at all
beyond.
" Darkness there was, hidden in darkness, in
the beginning, everything here was an indiscrimi-
nate chaos ; it was void covered with emptiness,
all that was ; that one thing was born b}' the
power of warmth.
" So in the beginning arose desire, which was
the first seed of mind ; the wise found out by
thought, searching in the heart, the parentage
of the existent in the non-existent.
" Their line was stretched across ; what was
THE WORLD-SOUL. 25
above ? what was below ? there were generators,
there were mighty powers ; svadha, [nature per-
haps] below, the presentation of offerings above.
"Who knoweth it forsooth? who can an-
novnice it here ? whence it was born, whence this
creation is ? The gods came by the creating of
it [i.e., the one thing) ; who then knoweth
whence it is come into being ?
" Whence this creation [lit. emission] is come
into being, whether it was ordained or no — He
whose eye is over all in the highest heaven, He
indeed knoweth it, or may be He knoweth it
not." (Wallis, Cosmogony of the Rig Veda, pp.
59, 60. [R. v., X. 129] .)
Even such wooden translation cannot prevent
the grandeur of the original occasionally peep-
ing through, how much more noble then would
be the translation of one who was whole-hearted
in his version ?
Notice the last lines. The World-Soul may
know, or perchance even it knoweth not. For
there are other World-Souls, and as among men
most are ignorant of their own genesis so amid
the World- Souls, some — the few perchance —
may know, the many be ignorant ; none
knoweth absolutelv but the One.
26 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
Passing next to a later Ar3-an Scripture, let
us read how the great sect of the Vaishnavas
hymn the deity, as written in the Vishnu
Pnrdna (I. i.) :
" OM ! glory to Him who dwells in all beings
(Vasudeva). Victory be to Thee, Thou heart-
pervading one (Pundarikaksha) ; adoration be
to Thee, Thou cause of the existence of all
things (Vishvabhavana) ; glory be to Thee,
Lord of the senses (Hrishikesha), the Supreme
Spirit (Mahapurusha), the ancient of birth
(Purvaja)."
And later in the same work we read (v. 14-
16, Wilson's Translation) :
" Salutation to Thee, Who art uniform and
manifold, all-pervading. Supreme Spirit, of
inconceivable glory, and \\^ho art simple
existence ! Salutation to Thee, O inscrutable,
Who art Truth, and the essence of oblations !
Salutation to Thee, O Lord, Whose nature is
unknown. Who art beyond Primeval Matter,
Who existest in five forms, ^ as one with the
^ These are given by Wilson (i. 3) as: i. Bhutatman,
one with created things, or Pundarikaksha ; 2. Pradhanat-
man, one with Crude Nature, or Vishvabhavana ; 3. Indriy-
atman, one with the Senses, Hrishikesha ; 4.^Paramatman,
Supreme Spirit, or Mahapurusha; and 5. Atman, Living
Soul, animating Nature, and existing before it, or Purvaja.
THE WORLD-SOUL. 27
Elements, with the Faculties, with Matter,
with the Living Soul, with Supreme Spirit !
Show favour, O Soul of the Universe, essence
of all things, perishable or eternal, whether
addressed b}' the designation of Brahma,
Vishnu, Shiva, or the like. I adore Thee, O
God I Parameshvara, Supreme Lord, rather! ,
Whose nature is indescribable. Whose purposes
are inscrutable. Whose name, even, is unknown ;
for the attributes of appellation or kind are not
applicable to Thee, Who art That, the supreme
Brahma [neuter] eternal, unchangeable, un-
created [Aja, unborn, rather,] But as the
accomplishment of our objects cannot be
attained except through some specific form,
Thou art termed by us Krishna, Achyuta [the
Imperishable] , Ananta [the Endless,] or Vishnu.
Thou, unborn (divinity), art all the object of
these impersonations ; Thou art the Gods, and
all other beings ; Thou art the whole World ;
Thou art all. Soul of the Universe, thou art
exempt from change ; and there is nothing
except Thee in this whole existence. Thou
art Brahma [male] , Pashupati [Shiva, ' Lord of
(sacred) animals '] , Aryaman, Dhatri, and
28 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
V'idhatri;* thou art Indra,* Air, Fire, the Regent
of the Waters ;' the God of WeaUh,* and Judge
of the Dead ;^ and Thou, although but one,
> AryamAn and Dbitri are two of the Twelve Adityas, or
Sons of Aditi, the " Mother," which were seven originally,
MArttanda, the "rejected" Sun being the eighth. Later
they became the Twelve Sun Gods. V'idhitri is the
arranger or disposer, the Kosniokrat6r or Demiurge, and is
added as a title to Brahml, V'lshvakarman and KAma,
the Er6s of the Orphic fragments. As Dr Muir says :
" This KAma or Desire, not of sexual enjoyment, but of good
in general, is celebrated in a curious hymn of the Atharva
Vida : ' KAma was born first [the Orphic Pr6togonos] . Him,
i:eitber gods, nor fathers, nor men have equalled Thou art
saperioT to these, and for ever great ■."
* The "Zens dwelling in the ^ther" of Homer (Zeit
aldifn yaiiM' — Iliad, ii. 412) ; in the .£ther, the abode of the
Gods The Pater ^Ether of Virgil.
* V'aruna (Ooaroona), the Regent of the Astral Waters of
Space , the Uranus (Oaranos) of the Greeks, who was emascu-
lated and dethroned by Cronus (Time; at the instigation of
his mother and wife Ga?a lEArth) From the drops of his
blood sprang the " r . the early Races, and
from the foam i.' ..is limbs in the sea,
sprang Venus-Ap:.. -... w.^.^., . ... t , 1&0-195.)
* Kuvera. the keeper of the treasures of the Earth, lord of
the Earth, called the Egg of Jewels, Ratnagarbha.
* Antaka the " Ender." a title of Yama, the ' Restrainer,"
tt- ' - -- I ■ • . -:- .. - ,j tells us that Yama
" .e first that departed
tt.;... _. - ^iys :" He it was who
found out the way to the home whicb cannot be taken away
' Those who are now born (followi by their own paths 10 the
place whither our ancient fathers have departed ' " This, in
the more direct tradition of the \'edas, is a glyph of the
Third Race that brought
" . . . . death into the world
And all oar woe. with loss of Eden "
THE WORLD-SOUL. 29
presidest over the world, with various energies
addressed to various purposes. Thou, identical
with the solar ray, Greatest the universe; all
elementary substance is composed of Thy
qualities ; and Thy supreme form is denoted by
the imperishable term Sat. ... To Him
who is one with True Knowledge ; who is, and
is not, perceptible (sat and asat, ' real ' and
'unreal'), I bow. Glory be to Him, the Lord
Vasudeva !"
The same strain of adoration is still further
emphasized in the hymn of the Yogins when
Vishnu, in the Boar Incarnation, or Varaha
Avatara, raised the Earth out of the Waters
(Ibid., i. 63) :
" Thou art, O God, there is no supreme
condition but Thou."
Or again, as the God Brahma prays to the
Supreme Hari (Vishnu) {Ibid., i. 139) :
" We glorify Him, Who is all things ; the
But Yama, in the later traditions Pitripati and PretarAja,
the " Lord of the Manes" and " King of the Ghosts," was
also Dharmaraja, "King of Justice," our Sch^es who judge
ourselves, in the clear Alcashic Light, while Chitragupta (the
" Hidden Painting or Writing "). the Scribe of Yama, reads
the imprint of our virtues and our vices from the Agra-,
sandhani or "Great Record," the Tablets of the Imperishable
Memory of the Astral Light. Yama is represented as of a
green colour, clothed with red.
30 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
Lord supreme over all ; unborn, imperishable ;
the protector of the mighty ones of creation,
the unperceived/ indivisible Naraj-ana ; the
smallest of the small, the largest of the largest
Elements ; in Whom are all things ; from
Whom are all things ; ^^^ho was before exis-
tence ; the God Who is all beings ; Who is the
end of ultimate objects ; Who is beyond final
Spirit, and is one with Supreme Soul ; Who is
contemplated, as the cause of final liberation,
by sages anxious to be free."
As the Avatara Krishna, He is hymned of by
Indra after his defeat by Him. (Ibid., v. 103.)
" Who is able to overcome the unborn, un-
constituted Lord, Who has willed to become a
mortal, for the good of the world ?"
And when Krishna is nailed by the arrow to
the tree, and the Kali Yuga begins, this is how
Arjuna, his beloved companion, laments the
departure'^of the ^Christ-Spirit, of That which
" unites Entity to Non-entity." {Ibid., v.
161, 162.)
" Hari, Who was our strength, our might.
1 Aprakasha : Fitzedward Hall tells us that the commen-
tator explains this to mean " self-illuminated."
THE WORLD-SOUL. 31
our heroism, our prowess, our prosperity, our
brightness, has left us, and departed. Deprived
of him, our friend, ilkistrious, and ever kindly
speaking, we have become as feeble as if made
of straw. Purushottama, who was the living
vigour of my weapons, my arrows, and my bow,
is gone. As long as we looked upon Him,
fortune, fame, wealth, dignity never abandoned
us. But Govinda is gone from among us. . . .
Not I alone, but Earth, has grown old, miser-
able and lustreless, in His absence. Krishna
. . . . is gone !"
Let us next pass to China and the Far East.
Lao-tze, perhaps the greatest of the Chinese
masters, teaches as follows, in his sublime
work the Tao-teh-king, or "The Book of the
Perfection of Nature " {A Study on the Popular
Religion of the Chinese, by J. J. M. de Groot :
translated from the Dutch in Les Annales du
Musee Guimct, ii. 692 etseq.):
"There was a time when Heaven and Earth
did not exist, but only an unlimited Space in
which reigned absolute immobility. All the
visible things and all that which possess
existence, were born in that Space from a
powerful principle, which existed by Itself, and
32 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
from Itself developed Itself, and which made
the heavens revolve and preserved the universal
life ; a principle as to which philosophy declares
we know not the name, and which for that
reason it designates by the simple appellation
Tao, which we may nearly describe as the
Universal Soul of Nature, the Universal Energy
of Nature, or simply as Nature."
And in speaking of the mysterious Tao, the
That which cannot be translated, the nameless
principle, we may with advantage quote from
an essay by a sympathetic scholar, who writes
as follows {Taoism, an essay by Frederic H.
Balfour, in Religious Systems of the World, p. yy):
" We are told that it has existed from all
eternity. Chuang-tze, the ablest writer of the
Taoist school, says that there never was a time
when it was not. Lao-tze, the reputed founder
of Taoism, affirms that the image of it existed
before God Himself. It is all pervasive ; there
is no place where it is not found. It fills the
Uni\-erse with its grandeur and sublimity ; }-et
it is so subtle that it exists in all its plenitude
in the tip of a thread of gossamer. It causes
the sun and moon to revolve in their appointed
orbits, and gives life to the most microscopic
THE WORLD-SOUL. 3^
insect. Formless, it is the source of every form
we see ; inaudible, it is the source of every
sound we hear ; invisible, it is that which lies
behind every external object in the world; in-
active, it yet produces, sustains and vivifies
every phenomenon which exists in all the
spheres of being. It is impartial, impersonal,
and passionless ; working out its ends with the
remorselessness of Fate, yet abounding in
beneficence to all."
And later on he quotes as follows from
Chuang-tze :
" There was a time when all things had a
beginning. The time when there was yet no
beginning had a beginning itself. There was a
beginning to the time when the time that had
no beginning had not begun. There is
existence and there is also non-existence. In
the time which had no beginning there existed
Nothing. . . . When the time which had
no beginning had not yet begun, then there
also existed Nothing. Suddenly, there was
Nothing ; but it cannot be known, respecting
existence and non-existence, what was certainly
existing and what was not."
I have given the above as a specimen of
c
34 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
subtle metaphysical speculation, and also as an
example to show the utter inadequacy of words
to express ideas. The mind loses itself in en-
deavouring to transcend itself, even to the
extent of appearing entirely incomprehensible
to those who have not seriously approached the
contemplation of that supreme intuition of
humanity, the essential Unity of all things.
But no one should think that this No-thing
is an empty abstraction and mere negation; it
transcends our iinite concepts, but is no less the
One Reality because of that. It is the right
perception of these great problems that inspires
such noble concepts of existence and calm
contemplation of " death " as those expressed
in the words of Lieh-tze :
" Death is to life as going away is to coming.
How can we know that to die here is not to be
born elsewhere ? How can we tell whether, in
their eager rush for life, men are not under a
delusion ? How can I tell whether, if I die to-
day, my lot may not prove far preferable to
what I was when I was originally born ? . . . .
Ah ! men know the dreadfulness of death ; but
they do not know its rest. . . . How ex-
cellent is it, that from all antiquity Death has
THE WORLD-SOUL. 35
been the common lot of men ! It is repose for
the good man, and a hiding-away of the bad.
Death is just a going home again. The dead
are those who have gone home, while we, who
are living, are still wanderers." {Op. cit., p. 8i.)
Aye; death is indeed a "going home," but a
" going home " that need not be delayed until
the body dies. Some theosophists have heard
of those who "go home" when they have
" died " to their lower natures; and then they
know the real nature of this illusory existence,
although, as the Rishi Narada reported, it was
very pleasant for those "who had forgotten
their birth-place." The Soul of Humanity, the
World-Soul, weeps for her children, who forget
their Mother and, "prodigal sons" that they
are, fill their bellies with husks of the swine.
Continuing our depredations from the shelves
of the world-library, we pass to ancient Persia
or whatever country gave to the world the
wisdom of the old Avesta. Written in a language
hardl}' yet plainly decipherable, it may well be
approached to the Vedas in antiquity, and its
language be referred to one of the first branch-
lets of the mother of Sanskrit.
In the Avesta of the Parsis, Zarvana Akarna,
36 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
" Time without Bounds," is the ineffable All ;
in this arises Ahura Mazda, the World-Soul,
whose names are many. He is The Being
and the One Existence; the One, Who was,
Who is and Who shall always be. He is Pure
Spirit and the Spirit of Spirits ; Omniscient
and Omnipotent, the Supreme Sovereign. He
is beneficent, benevolent, and merciful to
all. In the Dinkard (ii. 8i), He is described
as :
" Supreme sovereign, wise creator, supporter,
protector, giver of good things, virtuous in
actions and merciful."
Let us now see what the Kabalah has to
teach us, and mark the difference of its great
large spirit from the glorification of the "jealous
God," the "God of armies," to whom so-called
Christian nations pray to bless their respective
arms in fratricidal wars. To-day sees Christian
Europe armed to the teeth in honour of Jehovah,
while the "Father" of Jesus, the "God of
Love " is set on one side and forgotten.
Solomon ben Yehudah Ibn Gebirol, of
Cordova, the greatest of the mediaeval kabalistic
adepts, thus sings of the World-Soul, or the
Supreme Principle, in one of his philosophical
THE WORLD-SOUL. 37
Hymns, called "The Kether Malkuth," or
" Crown of the Kingdom."
"Thou art God, Who supports, by Thy
Divinity, all the things formed, and sustains all
the existences by Thy Unity. Thou art God,
and there is not any distinction established
between Thy Divinity, Thy Unity, Thy
Eternity, and Thy Existence ; because all is
only one mystery, and, although the names may
be distinct, all have only one meaning. Thou
art Wise, Wisdom which is the fountain of life,
floweth from Thee, and compared with Thy
Wisdom, all the knowledge of mankind is
foolishness. Thou art Wise, being from all
eternity, and Wisdom was always nourished by
Thee. Thou art Wise, and Thou hast not ac-
quired Thy Wisdom from another than Thy-
self. Thou art Wise, and from Thy Wisdom
Thou hast made a determining Will, as the
workman or artist does, to draw the Existence
from the No-Thing, as the light which goes out
of the eye extends itself. Thou didst draw from
the Source of Light without the impression of
any seal, that is, form, and Thou madest all
withoutanyinstrument." {My er'sQabbalah, p. 3.)
See how differently the mind of this learned
38 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
Jew regarded the "creation" of the Universe
from the absurdity of the dead-letter dogma of
"creation out of nothing." Just as the artist
fashions the pot out of the clay, so does the
Deity, out of its Wisdom which is Itself, emanate
or evolve a determining Will to draw the
" Existence" from the "No-Thing," the poten-
tiality of that same Wisdom, for it is No-Thing
in that it transcends all and ever}' thing we can
think of, that is to say, the highest conceptions
of human thought. But It is no more
" Nothing" than is Deity the " Unconscious."
The No-Thing is not " nothing," the Non-
conscious is not "unconscious," but both are
attributes expressive of our ignorance, while
asserting that That transcends all things and
all consciousness.
So that we should do well to bear in mind
the wise words of the Zohar and appl}- the in-
junction contained therein to the words of the
Hymn of the master of the Kabalah we have
just cited, being well assured that he would
have permitted none of his pupils to take the
words of his instruction for the real mystery
itself. Says the Zohar (III. fol. 1526; in
Myer's Qabbalah, p. 102) :
THE WORLD-SOUL. 39
" Woe to the man who sees in the Thorah
(Law) only simple recitals and ordinary words.
. . . Each word of the Thorah contains an
elevated meaning and a sublime mystery. The
recitals of the Thorah are the vestments of the
Thorah. Woe to him who takes this garment
for the Thorah itself."
Or, again, as Origen, perhaps the most
philosophical of all the Church Fathers, writes :
" Where can we find a mind so foolish as to
suppose that God acted like a common hus-
bandman, and planted a paradise in (the
Garden of) Eden, towards the East ; and
placed in it a Tree of Life visible and palpable,
so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily
teeth obtained life ? And, again, that one was
a partaker of good and evil by masticating
what was taken from the tree ? And if God is
said to walk in the paradise in the evening,
and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not
suppose that anyone doubts that these things
figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the
history having taken place in appearance, and
not literally." (Origen's Works, Clark's Ed.,
cited, 315 et seq., Bk. iv. c. 2.)
But then Origen was once the disciple of
40 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
Pantsenus, after the latter's return from India,
who was also the teacher of Clement.
Yet one more citation from the Zohar, before
we leave the Kabalah, in order to vindicate the
writers of that famous collection of books called
the Bible, which is almost universally mis-
understood.
"The Ancient of the Ancients, the Unknown of
the Unknown, has a form, }-et also has not any
form. It has a form through which the
Universe is maintained. It also has not any
form as It cannot be comprehended." {Zohar,
" Idra Zuta," iii. 288a ; Myer, ibid., p. 274.)
Passing from Chaldsea and Judaea to Egypt
and its hoary wisdom, this is what M.
Gaston Maspero, the learned French Egyp-
tologist, in his Hisioire d'Orioit, writes con-
cerning the ideas of the Egyptians on the
Soul of the World :
" In the beginning was the Noon, the
Primordial Ocean, in the infinite depths of
which floated the germs of all things. From
all eternity God generated Himself and gave
birth to Himself in the bosom of this liquid
mass, as yet without form and without use.
This God of the Egyptians, One Being only,
THE WORLD-SOUL. 41
perfect, endowed with knowledge and un-
fallacious intelligence, incomprehensible in so
far as no one can say in what He is in-
comprehensible. He is the One Only One, He
Who exists essentially. Who alone lives in
substance, the sole generator in the Heaven
and on the Earth Who is not generated, the
Father of Fathers, the Mother of Mothers."
(Quoted by M. E. Amehneau in his Essai siir le
Gnosticisme Egyptien, in the series of Les
Annales du Mnsee Giiimet, Tom. xiv. 282.)
The Supreme God of the Mysteries whom
the Greeks named Ammon, the Egyptians
called Amen. As M. E. de Rouge says
{Melanges d' Archeologie, p. 72): "The name
Amen means ' hidden,' ' enveloped,' and by
extension ' mystery.' .... This God
then was called Amen because He represented
all that was most secret in Divinity." In a
Hymn to Ammon Ra, speaking of the name
Amen, it is said (Grebaut, Hymne a Amnion
Ra) : " Mysterious is his name even more than
his births." And, in the invocations, which M.
Na^•ille has collected under the title of
Litanie du Soleil, the same God is called "Lord
of the hidden spheres," the " Mysterious One,"
42 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
the " Hidden." (Amelineau, op. cit., p.
285.)
Here also must be appended a magnificent
Hymn to the Sun, the symbol of the World-
Soul, in which we can see peeping through the
mysticism of both the initiatory Psalms of the
Old Testament and certain concepts in the New.
Thus it runs :
" The Princes of Heaven all daily behold the
glory of the King's Crown, upon the head of
Thee, the Mighty Prince, which is the Crown
of Power, which is the Crown of the Endurance
of Thy Government, an Image of Th}' might.
'• Songs of praise to the Creator of Egypt,
and of the Shining Bark of the Lord (the Sun).
Make those to fear, who hate Thee, make Thine
enemies to blush, Lord and Prince of the very
shining Star-house ; Thou Who hast joined
together Thy plantation, Thou Who seest the
Murderer of Thy Child of Man, the Righteous.
Let me go to Thee ; unite me with Thee ; let
me look upon Thy Sunlight, King of the
Universe !
" Praise to Thy Face, Beaming Light in the
Firmament, to Thee, to the Shining Lord of
the Heaven's Bark, to the Creator and Ruler
THE WORLD-SOUL. 43
Who renders justice to all men, who delight to
see Thee walking in the Web of Thy Splendour."
(From Uhlemann's Book of the Dead, as quoted
in Uunlap's Sud : The Mysteries ofAdoni, p. 187.)
Let us now turn to another Book of Wisdom,
and hear what Hermes, the thrice greatest,^
has to tell us of the mystery. In the treatise
called Pceuiandres, the World-Mind, Pcemandres,
the " Mind of the Absolute" (6 t^s av6€VTia<; voGs)^
mirrored in the Higher Ego of the Initiate,
thus speaks to his lower consciousness :
" Say well, O Thou ! speaking such things.
I myself, the Mind, am present with the holy
and good, and pure and merciful, with those
living piously ; and my presence becomes a
help ; and forthwith they are cognizant of all
things, and lovingly propitiate the Father, and
give thanks, praising and singing hymns to
Him in ranks [in their orders, rather] , from
affection ; and before delivering over the body
to its own death, they detest the senses, know-
ing their operations ; or rather I, The Mind,
will not suffer the operations of the body which
' On the Rosetta stone he is called simply " Great, Great,
Great" — /i-e'ya?, /i.£yas, fj.eya<;.
44 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
happen, to be accomplished ; for being door-
keeper, I will shut out the incomings of the evil
and base operations, cutting off desires."^
Although it is impossible in the short space
at my disposal to attempt an analysis of the
various passages cited, still I would briefly
suggest to students a few hints as to interpre-
tation. The Father is here, as in cognate
schools of philosophical mysticism, the Atma-
Buddhi in Kosmos and Man, and the hymns
the " music of the spheres " of man's septenary
nature, which sing in harmony only when man
becomes one with the great Soul of Nature.
The idea is well expressed by Dryden, who
writes :
''From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began ;
From harmony to harmony,
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in man."'
The teaching, however, as to the loathing^ of
f 1 From Chambers' translation (p. 12), which is as accurate
and painstaking 'as may be, considering the translator's
strong sectarian bias. The Pcemandycs, however, has yet to
be translated by a true theosophical student.
2 Mvo-ttTTecr^at is a very strong word, meaning to abomi-
nate, detest, loathe ; used of filth and foulness.
THE WORLD-SOUL. 45
the senses is different to the wiser instruction
of the Upanishads, where we learn that both
longing and detestation are equally bonds of
attachment, and that pure freedom can never
be won by such means.
Mark well also the curious expression that
the Mind is the "door-keeper," both the great
Mind and the mind of man ; the one keeping
the doors or gates of the great planes of the
septenary universe, the other guarding the
portals of the seven "principles." And here
we may do well to call to mind H. P. Blavatsky's
words : " In that mansion called the human
body the brain is the front door, and the only
one which opens out into Space." {Lucifer,
vii. 182.)
Let us — as the preceding sentences naturally
lead up to it — pause here a moment to learn
the path of the Soul up to the " Father," w'hen
death overtakes the body, and when the seven
corruptible are put off for the incorruptible,
according to the Hermetic Gnosis.
" ' You have well taught me,' I said, ' all
things as I desired, O Mind ! But tell me
further about the ascent that is to be.'
" To these things Poemandres said: 'First,
46 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
indeed, in the dissolution of the body material,
it deHvers up the body itself unto alteration,
the form which thou hast becomes invisible,
and delivers the character deprived of energy
to the demon (daimon), and the senses of the
body return back to their respective sources,
becoming portions, and again united together
with the energies. And passion and desire
depart to the irrational nature.
"'And thus the residue hastens upwards
through the Harmony, and gives up to the first
zone the energy of increase and that of
decrease ; and to the second the machination
of the evils and the fraud deenergized ; and to
the third the concupiscent deception deener-
gized ; and to the fourth the pride of domineer-
ing without means of satisfaction ; and to the
fifth the unholy boldness and the rashness of
the audacity ; and to the sixth the evil covet-
ings after wealth, deenergized ; and to the
seventh zone insidious falsehood.
"'And, then, denuded from the operations
[energizings] of the Harmony, it becomes
energizing at the eighth nature, having its
proper power, and along with the entities
[essences] hymning The Father. Those
THE WORLD-SOUL. 47
being present at this his coming there, rejoice
together, and being made Hke to those who are
with Him, he hears also the Powers who are
above the eighth nature in a certain sweet voice
hymning The God. And then in order they
mount upward to The Father, and they deHver
themselves up to the Powers, and becoming
Powers they become in God. This is the good
end of those attaining knowledge, to be made
Divine. For the rest, why delayest thou ? Is
it not that having accepted all things, thou
mayest become guide to those who are worthy ;
so that the race of mankind through thee may
be saved by God ? ' " (Chambers, pp. 13, 14.)
One might almost think that the treatise was
written by the same hand that inscribed for us
that wonderful relic of Egyptian Gnosticism
called the Pistis Sophia. Who can tell whence
was the original source of this hoary tradition
of wisdom ?
The passage loses much in translation for the
general reader, and it is difficult to recognise
that nearly every word is a precise technical
term, just as are the terms in the opening
chapters of the Gospel according to John.
It is easy to see that the first paragraph
48 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
refers to the dissolution of the lower four prin-
ciples, whereas the second paragraph refers to
the seven aspects of the lower mind, and the
last to the mysteries of the Higher Ego, of the
Primordial Emanations in the Pleroma, of the
Hierarchies of the Sons of the Mind, and of the su-
preme realisation of the N irvana of Atma-Buddhi.
What the idea of the Egyptian Initiate was
concerning this attainment, and how difficult
it is to treat of such lofty themes without the
grossest self-contradictions, we may learn from
the following passage :
" Holy The God, The Father of the Uni-
versals, Whose counsel is perfected by His own
powers. Holy The God Who willeth to know
and is known by His own. Holy Thou art
W^ho by Word hast constituted the Entities.
Thou art Holy, of Whom all nature was born
as the image. Thou art Holy Whom the
nature formed not. Thou art Holy Who art
stronger than all power. Thou art Holy Who
art greater than all excellence. Thou art Holy
Who art superior to praises. Accept rational
sacrifices pure from soul and heart, intent upon
Thee, O unspeakable, ineffable, invoked by
silence !" (Ibid., pp. 15, ib.)
THE WORLD-SOUL. 49
The inability of human words to express that
which must ever escape expression — for even
the Universe itself is incapable of expressing
It, seeing that there is an infinite number of
Universes — and the failure of the human mind
to express the Divine Mind arc well shown in
the following passage also :
" This the God is superior to a name ; This
the unmanifest ; This the most manifest, to be
contemplated by the mind ; This visible to the
eyes ; This incorporeal, multicorporeal — yea,
rather of every body ; for there is nothing
which This is not. For This is above all
things. And because of this He has all names,
that He is One Father, and because of this he
has not a name that He is Father of all. Who,
then, is able to bless, to sing praises of
{evXoyrja-aL) Thee, Concerning Thee, or to Thee ?
Looking whither shall I bless Thee, above,
below, within, without ? for there is no con-
dition, no place about Thee, nor anything else
of the Entities ; for all things are in Thee, all
things from Thee, having given all things and
receiving nothing ; for Thou hast all things,
and nothing that Thou hast not.
"When, O Father ! shall I hymn Thee ? for
D
50 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
neither Thine hour nor time is it possible to
ascertain : concerning what also shall I hymn ?
concerning what things Thou hast made, or
concerning those Thou hast not made ? con-
cerning those Thou hast made manifest, or
concerning those Thou hast concealed ? Where-
fore, also, shall I hymn Thee ? As if being of
myself, as if having something mine own ? as
being another ? For Thou art what I may be,
Thou art what I may do, Thou art what I may
speak, for Thou art all things, and there is
nothing else that Thou art not." (Ibid., pp.
41, 42.)
In all the various exoteric presentations of
the Wisdom-Religion, the World-Soul was
Intelligence, and was symbolized indifferently
in personifications which were male and female,
androgjme or sexless ; in Egypt and Phoenicia,
in Babylon and China, in India and Greece.
The Universal Mind of Pythagoras was an
attribute of deity universally recognized in
antiquity, Athena was Wisdom, and Bacchus
the Divine Mind, for the philosopher and
initiate. Thus we shall have no difficulty in
understanding why Poemandres is the Mind,
and also, by the light of the interpretation of
THE WORLD-SOUL. 51
the Esoteric Philosophy outHned by H. P.
Blavatsky, why there are seven spheres in the
Harmony, We must all be musicians and
learn to sing sweetly on Apollo's heptachord
before we " can hear the powers which are
above the eighth nature in a certain sweet voice."
We must learn to play on the seven-stringed
lute of the radiant Sun-God, and modulate the
harmonies of our own septenary nature, for :
"Seven sounding letters sing the praise of me,
The immortal God, the Almighty Deity ;
Father of all, that cannot wearied be.
I am the eternal viol of all things,
Whereby the melody so sweetly rings
Of heavenly music."
(Oliver, The Pythagorean Triangle, p. 175.)
Passing next to the cognate schools of so-
called Gnosticism, of those who "tried to
know," let us take a thought or two that comes
from the minds of the great masters of the
Gnosis.
Epiphanius professes to describe the cere-
mony whereby the Heracleonitaj prepared a
dying brother for the next world. The words
of power wherewith the soul might break the
52 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
seals and burst open the gates of the Nether
World in its passage to rest, are given as
follows :
"I, the Son from the Father, the Father
Preexisting, but the Son in the present time,
am come to behold all things both of others
and of my own, and things not altogether of
others, but belonging unto Achamoth [one of
the aspects of Akasha, the World-SouF , who
is feminine, and hath created them for herself.
But I derive my own origin from the Preexisting
One, and I am going back unto my own from
which I have come." {Adv. Hcev., xxxvi. 3.
Cf. also Irenaeus, Adv. Hcer., I. xxi. 5.)
There were many of such mystic formulae
containing occult truths which students of
theosophy will instantly recognize, such as, for
instance, the garnering of the harvest of life-
experiences by the Higher Ego, quoted by
Epiphanius from the lost Gospel of Philip, which
tells us :
" I have known myself, I have collected my-
self from all parts, neither have I begotten sons
unto the Ruler of this World, but I have
plucked up the roots, and gathered together
the scattered members. I know thee who thou
THE WORLD-SOUL. 53
art, for I am one from above." [King's Gnostics
and their Remains, p. 333.)
But let us take a passing glance at the chief
of these great "heresies."
In the system of Simon, the Soul of the
World was called Fire (Pur), as we learn from
his Great Revelation. {Philosophumena, vi. i.)
Menander, his disciple, called it the (Divine)
Thought, Ennoia (Irenaeus, Adv. Hcbv., I. xxiii.)
and Satornilus, the disciple of Menander,
named it the Unknown Father (Pater Agnostos).
{Pliilos., vii. 2.)
As we pass down the corridors of history we
find the disciple of the latter, Basilides, one of
the most famous masters of the Gnosis, re-
naming this Un-nameable of many names, and
calling it by the mysterious appellation Abraxas,
in the transliteration of the mystery-tongue.
This was the Unborn Father, Pater Innatus,
" He who is not." (Irenaeus, Adv. Hcbv., I.
xxiv. ; the iv to dyeVvj/Tov, according to Epiphanius,
Adv. Hcbv., XXIV. i.)
This he did for the comprehension of the
"many," for the "few" he had a further
teaching :
"It was when naught was; nor was that
54 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
naught aught of that which is, but (to speak)
nakedly, and so as to avoid suspicion, and with-
out any contrivance, It was in fine not even
One." (Philos., vii. i.)
It was, in one of its aspects, the One (i),
which is Naught (o), the Perfect Number lo in
the divine manifestation of the " Primary
Creation " of the Gods. But even such a
metaphysical definition as the above was a
materialization to the subtle intellect and
spiritual intuition of Basilides, for he says
{ibid.) :
" That is not absolutely unspeakable which
is so called ; inasmuch as we call it * Unspeak-
able,' but That is not even 'The Unspeakable.'
So that That which is not even ' The Unspeak-
able cannot be named ' The Unspeakable,' for
It is beyond all name that can be named."
Carpocrates, who follows next in date, like
Satornilus, speaks of the Unknown Father,
the Ungenerable, Pater Ingenitus, according to
the text of Irenseus. {Philos., viii. 4.)
Finally, the God of the Valentinian Gnosis
was called Bythos, the Depth, from which
came all the iEons. This was not called the
Father until the primal Syzygy or Double,
THE WORLD-SOUL. 55
Sige (Silence), emanated in the All-Unity.
This was the Noon of the Egyptians. " Thou
art the First-born of the Gods ; Thou, from
Whom I came forth." "Thou art the One
creating Himself," we read in the Book of the
Dead.
Among prayers to the Supreme Principle are
to be remarked the mystic invocations in the
Coptic MSS., brought back from Abyssinia,
and preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford,
and in the British Museum. These are treatises
on the Egyptian Gnosis. In the concluding
section, the Saviour, the First Mystery, thus
addresses the hidden " Father " in the mystic
celebration of the initiatory rite of which a
fragment remains in the " Sacrament " of the
churches. The "prayer" is in the mystery
language, untranslatable by the "profane," and
runs as follows :
" Hear me, Father, Father of all Fatherhood,
Boundless Light ! aeeiouu, iao, aoi, oia, psinother,
thernops, nopsither, zagoure, pagoure nethmomauth,
nepsiomauth, marachachtha, thubarrhabau, tharna-
chachan, zorokothora, leou, Sabaoth.^' {aerjiovoy, law,
awL, wia, if/LVioOep, OeproxJ/, vo)i//i^ep, t,ayovpr], Trayovprj,
ViOju^fxawd, viil/ioixauiO, /xapa^a^^a, Oio^appaPav, Oap-
56 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
va)^a^av, l^opOKoOopa, Itov, '^a/3aw6.) (Schwartze S
Pistis-Sophia, pag. 125.)
The theosophical student will at once perceive
the method of permutation of the first m3'Stery
names, and will remember the seven, five, and
three-vowelled names used in the Secret Doctrine.
Though the full interpretation, however, will
probably remain unknown for many a long year
to come, from the work itself we learn :
"This is the name of the Immortal AAA
Qilil -^ and this is the Name of the Voice which
is the Cause of the Motion of the Perfect
Man m."
And again immediately following the invoca-
tion we read :
"This is the interpretation thereof: iota, the
Universe has come forth; alpha, they shall
return within ; 66, there shall be an End of
Ends." {Ibid.,pagg. 3S7y35^-)
No kabalistic method I have yet applied for
obtaining a numerical solution has produced
any satisfactory result, except that the sum of
the digits of the seven-vowelled name is seven,
and the sum of the whole invocation is likewise
1 " The Father of the Pleroma.'' C/. Notice siir le Papyrus
Gnostiqiie Bruce. M. E. Amelineau, p. 113.
THE WORLD-SOUL. 57
seven. The work has all to be done, and
though no theosophist has yet publicly solved
the method of this deeply-concealed mysticism,
we should bear in mind that no scholar has
even attempted a solution other than the
wildest speculation bred of a diseased philology.
Let us next take the purely Gnostic teaching
of Paul in his first Letter to the Colossians.
(i. i2-ig.)
" Giving thanks to the Father who fits us for
a share in the Inheritance of the Holy in the
Light ; who preserved us from the Power of
the Darkness, and translated us into the King-
dom of the Son of his Love, in Whom we have
our Redemption,^ the Remission of Sins, Who
is the Image of God, the Invisible, the First-
born of every Foundation. For in Him are
founded all things, in the Heavens and on Earth,
visible and invisible, whether Thrones or
Dominions, Rulerships^ or Powers. All things
were founded through Him and for Him.
And He is before all, and in Him all things
^ The Authorised Version adds " through his blood," but
this is not in the original.
^ Archai, " Beginnings," a Hierarchy of ^Eons, the same
term used in the opening words of the Gospel according to John,
' In the Beginning was the Word."
58 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
unite (lit., stand together). And He is the
Head of the Body of the Assembly/ Who is
the Beginning,^ the First-born from the
Dead,^ that He might be in all things Himself
supreme. For it seemed good that all the
Fullness^ should dwell in Him."
The spirit and terminology of the whole
passage is entirely Gnostic, and can only be
understood by a student of Gnosticism. The
identity of every Soul with the Over-Soul has
been, is, and will be a fundamental doctrine of
the Gnosis. The glorified initiate, the Christ,
is the man, who, perfected by the sufferings
and consequent experience of many births,
finally becomes at one with the Father, the
World-Soul, from which he came forth, and at
last arises from the Dead ; he, indeed, is the
first-born, the perfected, self-conscious Mind, or
Man, containing in himself the whole divine
creation or Pleroma, for he is one with the
hierarchies of spiritual Beings who gave him
1 Ecclesia, one of the iEons.
^ Arche, the Primaeval JEon.
^ The uninitiated.
* Pleroma, the totality of the /Eons, the synthesis of their
Hierarchies. Cf. Epiphanius, Adv. Har., I. iii. 4, who shows
the Valentinians quoting this text.
THE WORLD-SOUL. 59
birth, and instead of being the Microcosm, as
when among the Dead, has become the
Macrocosm or the World-Soul itself. Through
the power of this spiritual union do we win our
Redemption from the bonds of matter and thus
attain the Remission of Sins, which, according
to the wise among the Gnostics, was in the
hand of the last and supreme Mystery alone,
our own Higher Self, that which is at the same
time our Judge and Saviour, sending forth the
Sons of its Love, all Rays of the great Ocean
of Compassion, into the Darkness of Matter,
that Matter may become self-conscious and so
perfected. In plainer words, these Rays are
each the Higher Ego in every child of the Man
(Anthropos), proceeding from their Divine
Source (Buddhi) — itself that Ocean of Love and
Compassion which is the Veil of the Innomin-
able and Incognizable Self (Atman).
It must not, however, be supposed that such
ideas were foreign to the greater minds of
Greece and Rome. As has already been said,
all that can be attempted in this essay is to
select a few passages here and there. Pytha-
goras and Plato, and the Neoplatonic and Neo-
pythagorean writers, can supply us with innu-
6o THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
merable quotations, but as alread}' much has
been given from their works in theosophical
writings, it will be sufficient to acknowlqdge
the deep debt of gratitude humanity owes these
great thinkers, and to show that there are other
less known philosophers in this connection who
can yield us evidence. For instance, Xeno-
phanes, the principal leader of the Eleatic sect,^
described God as a Great Being, incompre-
hensible —
" Incorporeal in substance, and figure
globular ; and in no respect similar to man.
That He is all sight and hearing, but does not
breathe. That He is all things ; the Mind and
Wisdom ; not generate but eternal, impassible
and immutable." (Oliver, Tlie Pythagorean
Triangle, 49.)
Lucian also makes Cato say :
" God makes Himself known to all the
world ; He fills up the whole circle of the
Universe, but makes His particular abode in
the centre, which is the Soul of the Just,"
{Ibid., 51.)
Nor were these philosophical concepts
^atpco-is — lit., a school, a heresy ; e.g., atpccrts 'EA./\7;vtK>),
a study of Greek literature (Polyb., xl. 6, 3).
THE WORLD-SOUL. 6i
evolved by "civilization," for we find the same
ideas again and again reiterated in the "Orphic
Fragments," which must be given an original
antiquity at least contemporaneous with the
Trojan War period. Let me here attempt a
translation of one of these hymns.
" Zeus is the first. Zeus that rules the
thunder is the last. Zeus is the beginning (lit.,
head). Zeus the middle. From Zeus were all
things made. Zeus is male. Zeus, the im-
perishable, is a maid. Zeus is the foundation
of the Earth and starry Heaven. Zeus is the
Breath (Air) of all. Zeus the whirl of un-
wearied Fire. Zeus is the root of the Sea
(Water). Zeus is Sun and Moon. Zeus is
King. Zeus Himself the Supreme Parent of
all. There is but one Power, One Daimon,
One Great Chief of all. One royal frame in
which all things circle. Fire, and Water, and
Earth, and yEther, Night and Day, and Metis
(Wisdom) the first Parent, and all-pleasing
Eros (Love). For all these are in the great
body of Zeus. Would'st thou see his head and
fair faces ? The radiant heaven, round which
his golden locks of gleaming stars wave in the
space above in all their beauty. On either side
62 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
two golden taurine horns, the rising and the
setting of the Gods, the paths of the celestials.
His e3'es the Sun and the opposing Moon ; His
Mind that never lies the imperishable kingly
^Ether." (From the text of Cory, as found in
Eusebius, PrcBp. Evan., HI, Proclus, Tim., and
Aristotle, De Miind.)
Let us now turn to the lore of our Scandina-
vian forefathers, to the prose Edda, which
simply repeats a still more hoary tradition lost
in the night of time. Thus it speaks of the
World-Soul, of the Supreme Deity and the
Primordial State of the Universe :
" Gangler thus began his discourse : ' Who
is the first or eldest of the Gods ? '
" ' In our language,' replied Har, ' He is
called Alfadir (All-Father, or the Father of All) ;
but in the old Asgard He had twelve names.'
" ' Where is this God ? ' said Gangler ;
'what is His power? and what hath He done
to display His glory ? '
"'He liveth,' replied Har, 'from all ages,
He governeth all realms, and swayeth all things
great and small.'
"'He hath formed,' added Jafnhar, 'heaven
THE WORLD-SOUL. 63
and earth, and the air, and all things thereto
belonging.'
" ' And what is more,' continued Thridi, ' He
hath made man, and given him a soul which
shall live and never perish, though the body
shall have mouldered away or have been burned
to ashes.'
" ' But with what did He begin, or what was
the beginning of things ? ' demanded Gangler.
"' Hear,' replied Har, 'what is said in the
Voluspa^ :
" 'Twas time's first dawn,
When naught yet was,
Nor sand nor sea,
Nor cooling wave ;
Earth was not there,
Nor heaven above.
Naught save a void
And yawning gulf."
(From L A. Blackwell's translation, appended
to Bishop Percy's translation of M. Mallet's
Northern Antiquities, Bohn's Edition, pp. 400,
401.)
1 The Volu or Volo-spa, meaning " The Song of the Pro-
phetess," is a kind of sibylline song containing the whole
system of Scandinavian mythology.
64 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
And now we have almost done with our
serried ranks of witnesses ; multitudes have not
been called into court, but are waiting if need
be to convince the present age that man is of a
divine nature and not a congeries of molecules.
Let us, therefore, conclude our case by citing
from mystical Mohammedan Sutiism, which
will tell us why Allah is supreme in the hearts
of so many millions of our fellow-men.
The passionate longing for union with the
World-Soul, with the Source of our Being, is
magnificently portrayed b}' the mystical Persian
poets. Thus Jami, in his Yihnfn Zuleykhd, sings :
" Dismiss every vain fancy, and abandon every
doubt ;
Blend into One every spirit, and form and place;
See One — know One — speak of One —
Desire One — chant of One — and seek One."
{Religious Systems of the World, Art., " Sikhism,"
p. 306.)
And again :
" In solitude where Being signless dwelt
And all the universe still dormant lay.
Concealed in selflessness, One Being was,
Exempt from ' I ' or ' Thou '-ness, and apart
THE WORLD-SOUL. 65
From all duality ; Beauty Supreme,
Unmanifest, except unto Itself
By Its own light, yet fraught with power to charm
The souls of all ; concealed in the Unseen,
An Essence pure, unstained by aught of ill."
{Ibid, p. 328.)
Perhaps some may be surprised that I
have omitted from the numerous citations
already adduced any reference to Buddhism. I
have done so, not because the idea of the
World-Soul is absent from that system, but
because, for the most part, it is difficult to find
therein anything in the nature of prayers or
adoration to a Supreme Principle. The protest
of Gautama against the externalization of the
Divine was so strong, that his followers, as it
seems to me, have in course of time leaned to
extremes, and preferred to express their aspira-
tions rather in terms of denial of material
qualities than in positive terms of definition of
spiritual attributes. But what after all is
Nirvana but a synonym of the World- Soul ?
And this is well shown by the more transcendent
term Parinirvana, which provides for infinite
extension of the concept.
The word nir-vdna means literally " blown
E
66 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
out," " extinguished," as of a fire ; but it also
means "tamed," as, for instance, a-nirvdna,
used of an elephant, not tamed, or one just
caught or wild. There is no doubt whatever
that the term describes a state in which the
lower nature is entirely tamed, though it is to
be regretted that a more positive teaching does
not obtain in the so-called Southern Church of
Buddhism. Its greatest metaphysicians, how-
ever, declare that the state of Nirvana is of
such a nature that no words can even hint at its
reality, much less describe it, and that it is not
wise to inculcate material ideas, however lofty,
in the minds of the people. Therefore it is
that in popular Buddhism we are met with such
apparently self-contradictory statements as :
"They who, by steadfast mind, have become
exempt from evil desire, and well-trained in the
teachings of Gautama ; they, having obtained
the fruit of the fourth Path, and immersed
themselves in that ambrosia, have received
without price, and are in the enjoyment of
Nirvana. Their old Karma is exhausted, no
new Karma is being produced ; their hearts are
free from the longing after future life ; the cause
of their existence being destroyed, and no new
THE WORLD-SOUL. 67
yearnings springing up within them, they, the
wise, are extinguished hke this lamp." (Ratana
Stitia, 7, 14. J
One naturally asks : If they are extinguished,
how can they enjoy Nirvana ? But such con-
tradictions are the lot of all popular presenta-
tions of rehgion, and in fact, it seems to be in
the nature of things that Truth can only be
stated in a paradox. Nothing but a study of
esotericism will reconcile the exoteric systems
with each other and with themselves ; nor will
anything else persuade an orthodox Buddhist
that there is salvation without the " teachings
of Gautama," or a Brahman without the Vedas,
or a Christian without the Bible. How differ-
ent is the spirit that animates some among the
Lamas, who consider it a sin, not only to say,
but even to think, that their religion is superior
to that of any other man !
Let me then venture on a positive exposition
among all this over-cautious negation, and sug-
gest that the Nirvanic state is the plane of con-
sciousness of the World-Soul. Of course this
is not orthodox Buddhism, either of the Nor-
thern or Southern Church, as known to us, but
it enables us to reconcile Buddhism with the
68 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
other world systems, and also to see how the
esoteric interpretation is the connecting link be-
tween all of them, and how it completes their
insufficient statements.
The "great heresy" of the "pilgrim soul" is
the feeling of " separateness." With men, the
senses, and especially the brain-mind, is that
which keeps us from the rest, for they produce
the illusion of an external universe, whereas it is
the heart that binds us to our fellows, and
which alone can make us one with all men
and with all nature. And though I do not wish
to fall into the error of transferring our present
conditions to that of the World-Soul, and thus
becoming guilty of materializing and anthropo-
morphizing that which transcends our present
consciousness, still I think that the suggestion of
an analogy may not be harmful. As in man
the head externalizes and separates, and the
heart binds and looks within, so, I would
imagine, there is an external state of conscious-
ness of the World-Soul, and also an internal
consciousness. Thus we find a " head-doctrine "
and a " heart-doctrine " in every religion, and
a goal that can be reached by pursuing either.
Nirvana can be reached by two Paths. By one
THE WORLD-SOUL. 69
an external state of consciousness can be
arrived at, by the other a union with " all that
lives and breathes." Of course, the external
state mentioned is one internal and subjective
to our present senses, but it differs from that full
reality of the heart that beats in compassion
with all hearts, just as the gratification of the
senses and intellect differs from the calm of a
noble soul conscious of striving for truth and
purity in the midst of the most unfavourable
surroundings.
Nor is the intuition of the heart doctrine
absent from any of the best religionists of to-
day. The most advanced thinkers of Christen-
dom utterly reject the idea of an eternal joy in
Heaven, spent in vain adoration and inactive
bliss. With true intuition they conceive that
the joy of Heaven would be incomplete so long
as others suffer. The grim Calvinism of a
Tertullian who counted it one of the joys of his
Heaven to look down upon the tortures of the
damned in Hell, finds approbation only among
the ignorant. The larger minds of the Church
will have none of it, just as some Buddhists
count the Pratyeka Buddha, he who obtains
the Nirvana of the " eye," a symbol of spiritual
70 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
selfishness. For like as the "spooks" in a
sea)ice-TOom rejoice to masquerade as ^reat
characters, and call themselves Homer, and
Dante, and Jesus, so do countless religionists
love to call themselves Christians and Budd-
hists, whereas they have as little claim to the
title as the irresponsible " spooks."
To me, then, the attainment of Nirvana, or
the " Peace of God," or Moksha (Liberation),
or whatever name you choose to call it by, is
the attainment of the degree of consciousness
of the World-Soul. For although I have
referred it to Heaven as an illustration, I would
rather connote this with Svarga or Devachan,
or whatever name is given to the state of bliss
between two earth-lives. But this is not
becoming the World-Soul, or a World-Soul, any
more than the possession of a human body con-
stitutes an entity a man. To become the
World-Soul, the Nirvana of the " eye " must
be renounced, just as the world of external sen-
sation must be renounced to become one with
the Higher Ego, who commands : " Leave all
that thou hast, and follow Mc," in that "ye
brought nothing into the world, neither shall
ye take anything out."
THE WORLD-SOUL. 71
Nirvana must be renounced ; for until every
Soul of man has attained Nirvana, the World-
Soul has no rest, and he who would be one with
it must take up the burden of a like responsi-
bility ; and just as the adept purifies the atoms
of his body from the taint of passion in order
to reach the knowledge of the Self, so must the
Nirmanakaya aid in purifying the souls, whose
purification will enable that World-Soul to
ascend to a more glorious state of activity.
And though we make these distinctions in
order to give some faint idea of the mystery,
still all is the Self sacrificing Itself to Itself,
and selfishness and selflessness are words that
lose their meanings in an intuition that escapes
all words.
But to return to popular Buddhism. Though
there is little evidence of any cult of a Supreme
Principle, in the ordinary sense of the word, in
the Southern Church, in the Northern Church
it is different. The cult of one or other of the
Bodhisattvas is extensively practised, if we
are to depend upon the authorities : and we
find prayers addressed to Manjushri, the per-
sonification of Wisdom, and to Avalokite-
shvara, the " merciful protector and preserver
72 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
of the world and of men," who are invoked
and prayed to as, for example, by Fa Hian
{Buddhism, by T. W. Rhys Davids, p. 203) just
as Shiva or Vishnu is worshipped by orthodox
Hindus.
How the esoteric interpretation throws light
on the misunderstanding of the exoteric rituals,
students of the Esoteric Philosophy know from
the works of H. P. Blavatsky ; and the World-
Soul, Adi-Buddha, which emanates the five
(according to the Esoteric Philosophy, seven)
Dhyani-Buddhas, shows the identity of con-
ception with the other great religions.
Perhaps it may also have caused surprise that
the Upanishads have not been cited ; but that
has not been for lack of passages, for the whole
object of these mystical scriptures is to inculcate
the identity of man with the All.
This is the key-note of the Aryan religion,
and every Upanishad persistently reiterates it.
As H. P. Blavatsky, but for whose teaching
these essays would not have been written, says
in that inexhaustable store-house of instruction,
and information. The Secret Doctrine (i. 330) :
" Not till the Unit is merged in the All,
whether on this or any other plane, and Subject
THE WORLD-SOUL. ^l
and Object alike vanish in the absolute negation
of the Nirvanic State (negation, only from our
plane), not until then is scaled that peak of
Omniscience — the knowledge of things-in-them-
selves ; and the solution of the yet more awful
riddle approached, before which even the
highest Dhyan Chohan must bow in silence
and ignorance — the unspeakable mystery of
That which is called by the Vedantins,
Parabrahman."
Of course this may be denied by the theist,
but remember that definition, even of the most
metaphysical character, will land the definer in
the most preposterous contradictions. The
reader may also object: what does Madame
Blavatsky know of the highest Dhyan Chohan
(Spiritual Existence) ? To which, if I may
venture to say so, her reply would be, as it has
been to many another question : " Thus have I
heard." In other words, the teaching is that
of those whom H. P. Blavatsky knew had
knowledge. But that is not all ; for the explan-
ations contained in The Secret Doctrine were
never meant to rest on mere assertion, and the
statement above quoted finds its support in all
the great world-religions, as may be amply seen
74 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
even from the few quotations adduced in this
article.
I have also, it will be remarked, avoided any
selections from the heterogeneous Scriptures
which are now called the Old Testament, pre-
ferring to give citations from the Kabalah.
Perhaps also some readers may be surprised
that I have also refrained from giving the
prayer of Christendom from the New Testament,
commonly known as the " Lord's Prayer."
But my reason for this is that it was not a
Christian prayer originally, but a Jewish one,
and that even James, the "brother of the
Lord," gives a teaching directly opposed to one
of its principal clauses. This prayer is found
almost verbatim in the Jewish Kadish, and runs
as follows :
"Our Father, which art in heaven, be
gracious to us, O Lord our God ; hallowed be
Thy name ; and let the remembrance of Thee
be glorified in heaven above, and upon earth
here below. Let Thy kingdom reign over us,
now and for ever. Thy holy men of old said :
* Remit and forgive unto all men whatsoever
they have done against me.' And lead us not
into temptation, but deliver us from the evil
THE WORLD-SOUL. 75
thin^. For Thine is the Kingdom, and Thou
shalt reign in glory, for ever and for ever
more.^
Moreover if James is any authority, we find
ourselves placed on the horns of a theological
dilemma, for he says :
" Let no one, when he is tempted, say 'I am
tempted of the Deity': for the Deity cannot be
tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man."^
A teaching more in harmony with the direc-
tion to " enter into tliy closet, and when thou
hast shut thy door pray to thy Father in secret.''
(Matthew vi. 6, tw irarpi aov tw ev rw KpvTrrM.)
This does not mean that being in a physical
closet, the prayer is thus "in secret." But
that this prayer, or contemplation, is to be
made to, or on, the " Father in Secret," within
the " chamber of the heart," as the Greek
text proves beyond any question.
And now, in closing, let me again say that I
1 Gerald Massey, The Natural Genesis, ii. 469. Version
from A Critical Examination of the Gospel History, p. log. Of.
Basnage, Hist, desjnifs, p. 374.
-James, i. 13. The words used for tempted, etc., are all from
the verb irei.pa.^op.aL, and are identical with the word used in
the prayer as found in the texts of Matthew [vi. 13) and Luke
(xi. 4), viz., w€ipaa/J.6i.
76 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
think that both the behevers in a Personal God
and those who refuse to give any attribute to
Deity may find some common ground of
agreement in the concept of the World-Soul.
Of course, it is only to the broad-minded that
any appeal is made.
In our days unorthodoxy is no longer a term
of reproach ; it has now securely saddled re-
proach on the back of orthodoxy. And for this
desirable state of affairs we owe many thanks to
fearless free thought, to the unwinking scrutiny
of scientific observation, and the logic of scien-
tific methods. But the pendulum begins to
swing to the extreme, and it is time to protest
against freedom developing into licence, and
the newly-fashioned idols of orthodox science
being substituted for the crumbling idols of
orthodox religion. Religious thinkers are be-
ginning to broaden in every direction, and
though Churchmen still hold persistently to the
term " Personal " God, which owes its genesis
to an ignorant blunder, they will, under
pressure, so sublimate the concept that it is
easy to perceive that the words have no longer
for them their just meaning, and that for some
reason best known to themselves, or for some
THE WORLD-SOUL,
17
undefined fear, or conservative policy, they
prefer to call white black. The thcist con-
tends that men must have something to lean on,
and that to take away the personality of Deity
would be to destroy the hope of the Christian
world. But why so ? Is there not a Christ in
every man to lean upon ? Nay, is not the
Christ the very Man himself, if he would but
know Himself? What more is requisite ?
But the orthodox world has so long been
reciting invocations to Jehovah that they have
forgotten the teachings of their Founder who
spoke of the " Father in Secret " — no new
teaching, as the above quotations amply prove,
but a repetition of the old, old mystery. And
yet the more advanced Christians are almost
invariably ashamed of Jehovah and do not care
to have his exploits referred to. They try to
explain it by airily referring to a partial revela-
tion to the Jews, preluding a full revelation to
themselves. If you refer to the injustice of
leaving other world-religions out in the cold,
they generally maintain a freezing silence and
regard you henceforward as a dangerous dis-
turber of the public morals. Or they will talk
of monotheism and polytheism, and beg the
78 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
question by assuming that Judaism, in its
present dead-letter orthodox garb, is mono-
theism, whereas in reahty it should rather be
called monolatry.
No doubt some who read this and call them-
selves Christians, will see here an additional
reason for condemning theosophical writers as
anti-Christian, and in disgust will inform their
friends that theosophy is an enemy of Christ
and a child of that interesting creation of the
human brain which is called the Devil. And
perhaps they are partially right from their own
point of view, for it certainly is destructive of
their dogmas and superstitions ; but whether
such dogmas and superstitions were taught by
the Christ is another question.
But equally so is theosophy destructive of
dogmas and superstitions in Brahmanism, or
Buddhism, or Taoism, or Mohammedanism,
and so to the bigoted externahst of each of these
religions it must be anti-Brahmanical, anti-
Buddhistic, and so on. Whereas the theoso-
phist claims that he is not really an enemy of
any religion, but, on the contrary, as true a
believer as any of such religionists.
In such a pitiable state of affairs, our task
THE WORLD-SOUL. 79
should be to bring once more to the sight of
men the old ideals of humanity, trusting
that the memory of the past may come back
once more, and that all men, without distinction
of race, caste, creed or sex, ma}^ recognize a
common possession in them. And may they
weld us together in those bonds of harmony
and brotherhood which have only been loosed
by licence, but which freedom will once more
place on our willing hands !
Vasdiisi jh-iiaiii yathd vilidya
Navani ffrihnati naro 'pardiii
Tatha shartrdni vihdya jiriuiny-
Aiiydni sanydti navdiii dehi.
As a man casting off worn-out
garments takes other new
ones, so the lord of the body
casting off worn-out bodies
enters other new ones. —
Bhagavad GtxA, ii. 22.
8i
THE VESTURES OF THE
SOUL.
Handbooks and pamphlets on theosophy —
as sketched in the system of the Esoteric
Philosophy that has been so prominently
brought forward by H. P. Blavatsky — are to-
day so numerous, that almost all my readers
must be aware of what have been called the
seven "principles" of man. That is to say,
that man is regarded from seven points of view,
although in reality he is ever one entity. This
has been done, in order that we may get a
clearer idea of the complex nature of the
vehicles, sheaths, garments, or vestures, in
which the divine consciousness manifests itself
in the case of the human being. For as in all
sciences, so in the greatest science of all — that
of the human soul — we must resort to analysis,
if we would have a clear conception of the
problem before us.
There are many systems, all of which divide
F
82 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
the nature of man, each in its own way. In
the present essay, however, I shall not insist
on any precise division, but shall endeavour to
give you some idea of what some of these soul-
vestures may be. And by Soul I mean the
divine consciousness in man — which is spoken
of sometimes as the Self — and not the restricted
idea that is more generally connoted with the
term in the w^estern world. Of this Self, the
Bhagavad Gltd speaks as follows (ii. 20) :
"This is not born, nor dies it ever, nor
having once been will it not be again. Un-
born, eternal, everlasting, ancient, this is not
slain though the body be slain."
Aye, no matter how^ sublime and god-like the
body or vesture may be — for even that gar-
ment of God by which men behold Him, as
Goethe says, the whole conceivable universe,
woven in the loom of time, even this will perish
in the eternities. But the Self is {ibid., ii. 24.) :
" Eternal, all-pervading, stable, immovable,
ancient — this is said to be the unmanifestable,
this the unthinkable, this the unchangeable."
Therefore, as Krishna says :
" Knowing it to be such, pray do not grieve."
Yes, the Soul has many a garment besides
VESTURES OF THE SOUL. 83
the "coats of skin" that covered the spiritual
nakedness of our primeval Selves, in the
childhood of our present humanity. It was
left to the dulled intellect of our present age
and its immediate predecessors to clothe the
naked physical bodies of a pictorial Adam and
Eve with the skins of wild beasts, stitched to-
gether, forsooth, by the " Lord God " himself.
It is high time to end such a theological farce
and publish a revised edition of this grand soul-
myth, which, if Carlyle had not anticipated us,
we might very appropriately call the " sartor
resartus," or stitcher re-stitched. Let us first
trace the descent of the Soul, or Self, as it in-
volves downwards, clothing itself in several main
vestures and other minor ones, according to the
teaching of the Vedantic philosophers and seers
of ancient India. You will find the passage in
that mystical treatise. The Dream of Rdvan,
(London : The Theosophical Publishing Society,
1895). The " Four States and Tabernacles of
Man " are described as follows :
"There are four spheres of existence, one
enfolding the other^ — (i) the inmost sphere of
1 That is to say, interpenetrating each other, and not like
the skins of the onion.
84 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
Turiya [lit., the fourth] , in which the indivi-
duahzed spirit Hves the ecstatic Hfe ;^ (2) the
sphere of transition, or Lethe, in which the
spirit, phinged in the ocean of Agnana >on-
wisdom] or total unconsciousness f and utterly
forgetting its real Self,^ undergoes a change of
gnostic tendency [polarity?] ;* and from not
knowing at all, or absolute unconsciousness,
emerges on the hither side of that Lethean
boundary to a false or reversed knowledge of
things (Viparita Gnana), under the influence of
an illusive Pragfia, or belief in, and tendency to,
knowledge outward from itself, in which delusion
it thoroughly believes, and now endeavours to
realize : whereas the true knowledge which it
had in the state of Turiya, or the ecstatic life,
was all li'ithin itself, in which it intuitively
knew and experienced all things. And from
the sphere of Pragna, or out-knowdng — this
struggle to reach and recover outside itself all
that it once possessed within itself, and lost —
1 On its own plane of true spiritual consciousness.
2 As we know consciousness.
8 Because of this vesture of Agnina.
4 That is to say of recovering its primal wisdom or Gnana,
which is the same word as Gnosis.
VESTURES OF THE SOUL 85
to regain for the lost intuition an objective
perception through the senses and understand-
ing — in which the spirit became an intelHgence —
it merges into (3) the third sphere of dreams,
where it beheves in a universe of Hght and
shade, and where all existence is in the way of
A-bhasa, or phantasm. There it imagines itself
into the Lingadeha (Psyche)^ or subtle, semi-
material, ethereal, soul, composed of a vibrating
or knowing pentad, and a breathing or undula-
ting pentad. The vibrating or knowing pen-
tad consists of simple consciousness radiating
into four different forms of knowledge — (a) the
egoity or consciousness of self; (b) the ever-
changing, devising, wishing mind, imagination
or fancy ; (c) the thinking, reflecting, remem-
bering faculty ; and (d) the apprehending and
determining understanding or judgment.^
" The breathing or undulating pentad con-
tains the five vital aurae — namely, the breath of
life, and the four nervous aethers that produce
1 This is the Astral Soul, not the Astral Body of the
Esoteric Philosophy.
- This is the Lower Mind or Manas of the Esoteric Philo-
sophy, and the Antahkarana or Inner Organ of the Vedan-
tins, consisting of [a) Ahankara, ib) Chittam, k) Manas,
{d) Buddhi.
86 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
sensation, motion, and the other vital
phenomena.
** From this subtle personification and
phantasmal sphere, in due time it progresses
into (4) the fourth or outmost sphere, where
matter and sense are triumphant ; where the
universe is believed a solid reality ; where all
things exist in the mode of A-kara,^ substantial
form ; and where that — which successively for-
got itself from spirit into absolute unconscious-
ness and awoke on this side of that boundary
of oblivion into an intelligence struggling out-
ward, and from this outward struggling
intelligence imagined itself into a conscious,
feeling, breathing, nervous soul, prepared for
further clothing — [where that which does all
thisj now out-realises itself from soul into a
body, with five senses or organs of perception,
and five organs of action, to suit it for knowing
and acting in the external world, which it once
held within, but has now wrought out of itself.'^
1 From d-Ii)i, to bring towards or down, to make or form
wholly.
- The five organs of sensation are the skin, eyes, nose, ears,
tongue, corresponding to the simple consciousness and the
four different forms of knowledge of the vibrating or know-
ing pentad, viz., the Lower Mind. The five organs of action
VESTURES OF THE SOUL. 87
(i) The first or spiritual state was ecstasy ; (2)
from ecstasy it forgot itself into deep sleep ;
(3) from profound sleep it awoke out of un-
consciousness, but still within itself, into the
internal world of dreams ; (4) from dreaming
it passed finally into the thoroughly waking
state, and the outer world of sense. Each state
has an embodiment of ideas or language of its
own. (i) The universal, eternal, ever-present
intuitions that be eternally with the spirit in
the first, are in the second utterly forgotten for
a time, and (2) then emerge reversed, limited,
and translated into divided successive intellec-
tions, or gropings, rather, of a struggling and
as yet unorganized intelligence, having reference
to place and time, and an external historical
world, which it seeks but cannot all at once
realize outside itself. In the third (3) they be-
come pictured by a creative fantasy into phan-
tasms of persons, things and events, in a world
of light and shade within us, which is visible
even when the eyes are sealed in dreaming
are the mouth, hands, feet, and the two lower organs, cor-
responding to the breath of life and the four nervous aethers,
which are the five vital aurae of the breathing or undulating
pentad.
88 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
slumber, and is a prophecy and forecast shadow
of the sohd world that is coming. In the fourth
(4) the out-forming or objectivity is complete.
They are embodied by the senses into hard
external realities in a world without us. That
ancient seer (Kavi Purana) which the Gitd and
Mahdhhdraia mention as abiding in the breast
of each, is (i) first a prophet and poet ; then
(2) he falls asleep and awakes as a blindfold
logician and historian, without materials for
reasoning, or a world for events, but groping
towards them ; next (3) a painter with an ear
for inward phantasmal music, too ; at last (4)
a sculptor carving out hard palpable solidities."
I have ventured on this lengthy quotation
because it is one of the plainest statements I
have yet found of the famous but difficult
system of \'edantic psychology. It has to be
carefully thought out to be fully appreciated,
but will well repay the trouble by bringing to
light many fresh beauties which a cursory first
reading will necessarily slur over. It is a most
beautiful idea, that of the self-same Self being
successively clothed in Vestures which transform
it first into a poet and prophet, in a state out
of time and space ; then a blindfold logician
VESTURES OF THE SOUL. 89
and historian, in time and space, in a sort of
external historical world, with which it is not
yet in touch, and where its operations are
compared to divided successive intellections or
gropings ; next a painter and musician limning
images on the phantasmal surface of things,
and with an ear for inward harmony ; and lastly
a sculptor, carving out objects in three dimen-
sional space.
As may be seen from the above, the four, or
rather three states — for it would be wrong to
term the highest a state, in that it represents
the Self in its own essence — correspond to the
three great Vestures of the Soul, and we are
told that an adept can separate them one
from another, and clothe the Self in which he
will.
These Vestures are again composed of several
Garments, which are generally spoken of as
Sheaths (Koshas). Starting from below, we
have first the Food Sheath, formed from food
by the alchemy of nature. This is transformed
by the vital aurae into protoplasm, and so trans-
formed into blood, flesh, bone, muscle, skin,
etc., eventuating finally into our physical body
— truly graphically described as a "coat of skin."
go THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
This is called the Food Garment or Sheath ( Anna-
maya Kosha).^ Next we have the fivefold Garment
of the life breath, the undulating pentad, for it
energises in long rhythmic waves. This is
called the Life Sheath (Prana-maya Kosha).
Following this comes the Garment of the
vibrating pentad whose wave lengths are
shorter and more rapid, for thought is
more rapid than even the life forces in
the body. This latter Garment is two-
fold : one Sheath being connected with
determination, understanding and judgment ;
the other wdth the faculty which refers all
things to what we call " ourselves " —
our illusive personalities — with the ever-chang-
ing, devising, wishing mind, imagination, or
fancy, and the thinking, expecting, remembering
faculty. No doubt a clearer definition could be
made, but the traditional method of the
Vedantic schools has based its classification on
1 I should, however, like to be informed why the modern
Vedantic classification omits the Anna.-yasa-ma.ya Kosha,
which, in the second Anuvaka of Taittir'tyopanishad, is given
as entirely distinct from either the Anna-maya or Prina-
maya Kosha. The Sheath composed of the essence {rasa) of
food should correspond with the Linga Sharira of the Eso-
teric Philosophy.
VESTURES OF THE SOUL. 91
the five developed senses, and publicly ignores
the septenary division, which alone can provide
a truly scientific classification. But as the
purpose of this present paper is not to criticize
but to give some idea of the Garments of the
Soul, we will proceed. The two Garments just
referred to are called the Mind and Knowledge
Sheaths (Mano-maya and Vi-gnana-maya Ko-
shas). And above them is that Lethean Vesture
which, though it may prevent us from knowing
our true Selves as long as we identify ourselves
with our temporary Garments, is nevertheless a
blessed vesture of forgetfulness of the misery
and shame of our past lives, when we once more
don it and enter into the much needed rest
from our labours. This has thus been appro-
priately termed the Garment of Bliss (Ananda-
maya Kosha).
But all our misery consists in our imagining
ourselves apart from the Self. And to destroy
this misery we must begin by freeing ourselves
from the illusion of mistaking these various
Garments for our real Selves. This must be
done gradually, beginning wath the lowest, the
Food Garment.
The illusion I refer to is stated in such false
92 TPIE WORLD-MYSTERY.
ideas as :^ I am a male ; I am a female ; I am
born ; I live ; I grow ; I change ; I decay ; I
shall hereafter die ; I am a child, a youth, an
old man ; I am a priest, a physician, a trades-
man ; a total abstainer, a drunkard.
Again the illusion of identifying oneself with
the Life Garment is revealed by such thoughts
as : I am hungry ; I am thirsty ; I am strong ;
I am brave ; I am the talker, the walker, the
giver ; I am dumb, I am lame.
So again with the Mind Garment, by such
conceptions as : I am one that thinks, or fancies,
or grieves, or am deluded ; I am the hearer,
toucher, the taster and he who smells ; I am
deaf, or blind.
And then with the Garment of Knowledge
or Discrimination, by such thoughts as : I am
intelligent ; I am going to Heaven ; I am a
learned person ; I am indifferent to sensual
pleasures.
And so finally with the Garment of Bliss, by
thinking : I am happy ; I am content ; I am
ignorant or vicious ; I am wise ; I am foolish.
' I have adapted the following from the translation of the
" Meditations of Vasudeva " — Lucifer, September, 1892, pp.
24 ct scqq., now also published in book form.
VESTURES OF THE SOUL. 93
The last example must be taken as the
reflection of the characteristics of this Garment
in the embodied state. When freed from the
body, this Garment is freed from the idea of
what we call the " I."
Again, the very same ideas, though with a
different nomenclature, are to be found in the
books of wisdom, of ancient Egypt. Let us
select a few passages from the Divine Pyinandey
of Hermes Trismegistus, which still retains
some of the old ideas, no matter how garbled
by translation, re-translation and mis-trans-
lation. In the Fourth Book called " The Key,"
we read (Everard's Translation, pp. 25 et
seqq.) :
" 46. But the Soul of Man is carried in this
manner : The Mind is in Reason, Reason in
the Soul, The Soul in the Spirit, The Spirit in
the Body."
That is to say the Soul of Man, or the Self,
is clothed : first with the Blissful Garment of
Mind ; then with the Knowing Garment of
Reason ; then with the Garment of Fancy and
the rest, called by Hermes the Soul ; next with
the Garment of Life or Spirit ; and last of all
by the Gross Body. For as Hermes says :
94 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
" 47. The Spirit [i.e., Life or Pranaj being
diffused and going through the veins, and
arteries, and blood, both moveth the hving
creature, and after a certain manner beareth it.
"48. Wherefore some also have thought the
Soul to be blood, being deceived in Nature, not
knowing that first the Spirit must return into
the Soul, and then the blood is congealed, and
the veins and arteries emptied, and then the
living thing dieth : and this is the death of the
Body."
And further on he says, speaking of the
change which takes place at death :
" 56. When the Soul [or Lower Mind] runs
back into itself, the Spirit is contracted into the
blood, and the Soul into the Spirit. But the
Mind I Higher Mindj being made pure, and free
from these clothings, and being Divine by
Nature, taking a Fiery Body [or Vesture] ,^
rangeth abroad in every place, leaving the Soul
to judgment and to the punishment it hath
deserved."
This refers to the post-mortem state of the
1 This will explain the mystical meaning of the "chariot
of fire," in which Elijah is carried to Heaven, and much
else.
VESTURES OF THE SOUL. 95
cast-off lower Garments which endure for a
time in a state which the Esoteric Philosophy-
calls Kama Loka or the Place of Desire. Fur-
ther on again Hermes speaks more distinctly
of these Garments when he says :
" 59. The disposition of these Clothings or
Covers is done in an Earthly Body ; for it is
impossible that the Mind [the Higher] should
establish or rest itself, naked, and of itself in an
Earthly Body ; neither is the Earthly Body
able to bear such immortality : and, therefore,
that it might suffer so great virtue, the Mind
compacted, as it were, and took to itself the
passable Body of the Soul [Lower Mind] as a
Covering or Clothing. And the Soul being also
in some sort Divine, useth the Spirit [Prana]
as her Minister or Servant ; and the Spirit
governeth the living things [that is to say, the
Body which is composed of myriads of 'lives'] .
" 60. When therefore the Mind is separated,
and departeth from the Earthly Body, presently
it puts on its Fiery Coat, which it could not do,
having to dwell in an Earthly Body.
" 61. For the Earth cannot suffer Fire, for it
is all burned of a small spark ; therefore is the
Water poured round about the Earth, as a wall
96 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
or defence, to withstand the flame of Fire.
[That is to say, the Physical Body is first of all
clad in an Astral Garment or Body.]
" 62. But the Mind being the most sharp or
swift of all the Divine Cogitations, and more
swift than all the Elements, hath the Fire for
its Body.
" 63. For the Mind, which is the Workman
of all, useth the Fire as his Instrument in his
Workmanship ; and he that is the Workman of
all useth it to the making of all things, as it is
used by Man to the making of Earthly things
only. For the Mind that is upon Earth ]the
Lower Mind] , void or naked of Fire, cannot do
the business of men, nor that which is other-
wise the affairs of God.
" 64. But the Soul of Man [the Lower
Manas, the Ray from the Higher Mindj , and
yet not every one, but that which is pious and
religious, is Angelic and Divine. And such a
Soul, after it is departed from the Body, having
striven the strife of Piety, becomes either Mind
or God.
" 65. And the strife of Piety is to know God
[the Selfj , and to injure no Man ; and this way
it becomes Mind.
VESTURES OF THE SOUL. 97
" 66, But the impious Soul abidcth in its
own offence, punished of itself, and seeking an
Earthly and Human Body to enter into.
" 67. For no other Body is capable of a
Human Soul, neither is it lawful for a Man's
Soul to fall into the Body of an unreasonable
living thing : For it is the Law or Decree of
God to preserve a Human Soul from so great a
contumely and reproach."
Here we have an unbroken ray of light shining
out of the darkness from the Mysteries of
Ancient Egypt. The secret teaching of the
temples differed entirely from the popular
superstition ; and though the populace were
taught that they risked to be reincarnated in
the bodies of animals, in order that fear might
generate virtue, the better instructed were
taught the higher doctrine. The same obtains
unconsciously in Christianity to-day. Hell for
the ignorant, a more enlightened teaching for
those who can understand.
In the collection of heterogeneous books,
commonly known as the Bible, the persistent
mistranslation of purely technical terms has
resulted in a simple trichotomy of man into
Body, Soul and Spirit, which is in itself
G
98 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
insufficient to represent the thought of the
writers of the several books. For instance,
Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians (ch. xv),
says that every seed has its appropriate body,
that there are many kinds of " Fleshes," and
also Heavenly and Earthly Bodies (o-oj/xara
iTTovpavia, Koi croi/xaTa CTrt'ycta). In this connection he
speaks of the Bodies of the Sun, Moon and
Stars which he calls " Glories " (So^at), and
which we may compare with the " Fiery Ves-
ture " mentioned by Hermes — Sidereal Bodies,
to use the words of Paracelsus. Later on he
speaks of a Psychic and Pneumatic, or Spiritual,
Body {el caTL (TMfxa ipv)^LK6v, ecrrt Koi TrvevfxaTLKOv) ,
in connection with which he says that the " first
birth " is into a Living Soul {^f/vxrjv t,u)(Tav), where-
as the " second birth " will be into a Vivifying
Spirit (TTvevfjLa ^oiTTOLovv). The " first man " is
said to be of the earth, or rather of liquid earth,
and hence called " choic " — reminding us of the
Gnostic fourfold division into Choic, Hylic,
Psychic and Pneumatic Bodies, but difficult to
sort out from the Paulinian text as it stands.
Further on we read of the " image " of the
Choic Man and of the " image " of the Heavenly
Man, purely technical terms again. It was in
VESTURES OF THE SOUL. 99
one of these Bodies that this Initiate was wrapt
to the Third Heaven,^ which Heavens — no
matter how many so ever they be — have each
an appropriate Vesture of Purity. And there
he heard those " ineffable words " (apprjTa p^fi-ara)
which cannot be spoken ; they can no more be
expressed in human speech than can the ocean
oe contained in a water pot.
What the learned Gnostics and Kabalists
taught concerning the " coats of skins " of our
allegorical First Parents in the mystical Garden
of Eden I have already told you, but in order
that the idea may not rest merely on my asser-
tion, here is one out of many passages from
their books. It is taken from the Zohar, the
kabalistic " Book of Splendour " (ii. 2296 ;
quoted in Mackenzie's Royal Masonic Cyclopcedia,
p. 411) :
" When Adam dwelled in the Garden of
Eden, he was dressed in the celestial garment
which is a garment of heavenly light. But
when he was expelled from the Garden of Eden,
and became subject to the wants of this world,
what is written ? ' The Lord God [Elohim]
1 II. Corinthians, xii. 2.
100 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
made coats of skins unto Adam and to his wife,
and clothed them ' {Gen., iii. 21), for prior to
this they had garments of light — light of that
light which was used in the Garden of Eden."
For as the Zohnr says elsewhere (ii. 76a ;
ihid., p. 412) :
" The mystery of the earthly man is after the
mystery of the Heavenly Man. And just as we
see in the firmament above, covering all things,
different signs which are formed of the stars and
planets, and which contain secret things and
profound mysteries, studied by those who are
wise and expert in those signs ; so these are in
the skin [Astral Body rather^ which is the
cover of the body of the son of man, and which
is like the sky which covers all things, signs,
and features, which are the stars and planets of
the skin, indicating secret things and profound
mysteries."
There is a curious Rabbinical tradition with
regard to these " coats of skins " which may
not be without interest, if quoted in this con-
nection. It is found in the Yaschar or Scpher
Hatyaschar, " The Book of the Just," more
commonly known as " The Book of the Genera-
tions of Adam " or " The Book of the History
VESTURES OF THE SOUL. loi
of Man " which has been translated into French
by the Chevaher P. L. B. Drach. The legend
runs as follows (see Migne, Dictionnairc des
Apocryphes, torn. ii. coll. 1102, 1150) :
" After the death of Adam and Eve, these
coats were given to Enoch, son of Jared.
Enoch, at the time of his being taken to God,
gave them to his son Mathusalah. After the
death of Mathusalah, Noah took them and kept
them with him in the Ark. Ham stole them
and hid them so successfully that his brethren
were unable to find them. Ham gave them
secretly to his eldest son Chus, who made a
mystery of it to his brothers and sons. When
Nimrod reached the age of twenty years, he
(Chus) clothed him with this vesture, which
gave him extraordinary strength."
It was only when Nimrod was stripped of this
garment that he could be killed.
We have all heard of Joseph's " coat of many
colours" {Genesis, xxxy'ii. ^) — ^(tTwva ttoikIKov, as
the Septuagint translation has it — but few have
any idea that this is a symbolical Garment of
the Soul, woven of a warp and woof of beams
from the Spiritual Sun, just as the prismatic
rays originate from a ph3''sical beam of sunlight.
102 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
Such again is the Garment that all must be
clothed in when the King Initiate comes in to
inspect the guests, as we are told in the Gospel
according to Matthew (xxii. ii.). This " wedding
garment " {Ivhvfxa y6.fx.Qv) is no mortal dress, but
a Garment of the Soul, a very real Vesture that
we have to weave for ourselves. It must be " a
coat (xtTwv) .... without seam, woven
from the top throughout " {John, xix. 23), the
same which Joseph's Brethren brought back to
his Father (Atma) when they had sold the
Beloved Son (Manas) into the slavery of incar-
nation in the Egypt of the body, and for which
the soldiers cast lots when the Christ is
crucified.
This is a very old story, but its interpretation
is as old as the story itself, for I am simply
repeating what the sages of old taught their
disciples. And this brings me towards the
completion of my task where I would try to
convey to you some slight idea of the
three Great Vestures of Initiation which cor-
respond to the three higher Principles of Man
according to the classification of the Esoteric
Philosophy. In that marvellous relic of Gnostic
Philosophy called the Pistis-Sophia (see Lucifer,
VESTURES OF THE SOUL. 103
April, 1890, p. Ill, and June, 1890, pp. 321,
322), the three vestures of the Glorified Christos
or perfected man — what we may all be in some
future birth — are thus described :
" And the Disciples saw not Jesus because of
the great Light with which he was surrounded,
or which proceeded from him. For their eyes
were darkened because of it. But they gazed
upon the Light only, shooting forth great rays
of light. Nor were the rays equal to one
another, and the Light was of divers modes and
various aspect, from the lower to the higher
part thereof, each ray more admirable than its
fellow in infinite manner, in the great radiance
of the immeasurable Light. It stretched from
the earth to the heaven. ... It was of
three degrees, one surpassing the other in
infinite manner. The second, which was in the
midst, excelled the first which was below it, and
the third, the most admirable of all, surpassed
the other twain."
The Master explains this mystery to his
Disciples as follows :
" Rejoice, therefore, in that the time is come
that I should put on my Vesture.
" Lo ! I have put on my Vesture and all
104 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
power has been given me by the First Mystery.
Yet a Httle while and I will tell you every
Mystery and every Completion ; henceforth
from this hour I will conceal naught from you,
but in Perfectness will I perfect you in all
Completion, and all Perfectioning and every
Mystery, which indeed are the End of all Ends,
and the Completion of all Completions, and
the Wisdom (Gnosis) of all Wisdoms. Hearken!
I will tell you all things which have befallen
me.
" It came to pass, when the sun had risen
in the places of the East, a great Stream of
Light descended, in which was my Vesture,
which I placed in the Four-and-twentieth
Mystery. And I found the Mystery on my
Vesture written in Five \\^ords, which
pertain to the Height. Zama Zama Ozza
Rachama Ozai.^ And this is the inter-
1 Compare the Pancha-Kosha or Five Sheaths of the
Vedantins previously referred to. For an explanation of the
number five, and the pentagon, see Secret Doctrine, ii. pp.
575-580. In one of the books of the Perataj Gnostics
mention is made of a dodecagonal pyramid (dudeKaytliviov
wvpa/xlda) in a sphere of the colour of night (vvkt6xpovv).
This pyramid— every side of which was a regular pentagon —
had a door leading into it which was painted with varigated
colours {woiKiXais x/"^a's)- (See Philosophumena, v. 14.) It
VESTURES OF THE SOUL. 105
pretation thereof : The Mj-stcry which is
without ill the World, because of which the
Universe was made, is all Evolution and all
Progress ; it projected all emanations and all
things therein. Because of it every Mystery
exists and the Regions [Lokas] thereof. Come
to us, for we are thy fellow members. We are
all one with thee. We are one and the same,
and thou art one and the same. That is the
First Mystery, which was from the beginning
in the Ineffable, before it came forth there-
from ; and its name is all of us.
" Now, therefore, we all live together for thee
at the last Limit ; which also is the last
Mystery from the Interiors. That also is a
part of us. Now, therefore, we have sent thee
thy Vesture, which indeed is thine from the
beginning, which thou didst place in the last
is through this fivefold door that the Soul passes from the
Spiritual World, which is now darkness to us because of our
ignorance, into the Solar Universe, which was sj?mbolized
by the Platonic Solid called the Dodecahedron. This door
is of many colours, Hke Joseph's coat, for what we call
colours here below are the witnesses to very real powers or
forces in spiritual nature. In the passage from the Pistis-
Sophia these are referred to as the five " Words " written on
the Vesture of the Christos. They are the five attributes of
the Spiritual Body of the Yogacharya School of Buddhism,
which will be referred to later on.
io6 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
Limit, which also is the last Mystery from the
Interiors, until its time should be fulfilled ac-
cording to the command of the First Mystery,
Lo ! its time being now completed, / will give
it thee. Come to us ! For we all stand by
thee to clothe thee with the First Mystery, and
all its Glory by command of the same, because
that the First Mystery, coming into manifesta-
tion, gave us two vestures to clothe thee
besides the one, which we have sent thee, since
thou art worthy of them and art prior to us,
and came into being before ns. For this cause,
therefore, the First Mystery sent for thee
through us the Mystery of all its Glory, two
Vestures."
The text then goes on to detail the Hier-
archies and iEons, Powers and Gods, which
compose these Heavenly Garments — corres-
ponding detail for detail with the whole emana-
tive potencies of the Universe wherebj' the
Garment of Deity is woven, and then continues
its magnificent exposition ; the living Powers
which form the Vesture speaking as follows on
the Great Day " Be with us " — the moment of
the Supreme Initiation :
" Behold, therefore, we have sent thee this
VESTURES OF THE SOUL. 107
Vesture, which no one has known from the First
Precept dow^nwards, because the radiance of
its Light had been hidden therein, nor did the
Spheres and all the Regions downward from
the first Precept (know it). Make haste, there-
fore, clothe thyself with this Vesture. Come to
us ; for ever, until the time appointed by the
Ineffable was fulfilled, we have been in need of
thee, to clothe thee with the two Vestures by
the Command of the First Mystery. Lo, then,
that time is fulfilled. Come, therefore, to us
quickly, that we may put them on thee, until
thou fulfillest every Ministry of the Perfections
of the First Mystery, appointed by the Ineffable.
Come to us quickly, we will put them upon
thee according to the command of the First
Mystery ; for the time that yet remains is very
short. Thou art coming to us and wilt leave
the World. Come, therefore ; quickly shalt
thou receive all thy Glory, the Glory of the
First Mystery."
These three Vestures are the three Buddhic
Robes described in the Voice of the Silence (pp.
96, 97). They may be described as the Body
of Transformation (Nirmana-kaya), the Body of
Bliss (Sambhoga-kaya), and the Body of the
io8 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
Law (Dharma-kaya). Very little is publicly
known of these Transcendent Vestures, even
by the Buddhists themselves, so that the
accounts we have in the books of various
Oriental scholars arc contradictory and mis-
leading. The highest is the Vesture of the
Law which H. P. Blavatsky tells us is void of
all attributes, and describes it as an " ideal
breath." If this Vesture is assumed every
possible connection with the earth is at an
end, and, therefore, the Buddhas of Compassion
lay it aside that they may still remain and
work on for humanity. Nevertheless, Eitel in
his Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary {sub voc,
" Pancha Dharma-kaya ") speaks of the five
attributes of this Vesture — which he calls " the
Spiritual Body in five portions" (!) — and
describes them as follows :
" I. Precept .... exemption from
all materiality (Rupa).
" 2. Tranquillity .... exemption
from all sensations (Vedana).
" 3. Wisdom .... exemption from
all consciousness (Sangna).
" 4. Emancipation (Moksha) . . . .
exemption from all moral activity (Karma).
VESTURES OF THE SOUL. 109
"5. Intelligent views .... exemp-
tion from all knowledge (Vigiiana)."
In other words, exemption from the five
Skandhas or groups of qualities.
These " attributes," it will be seen, arc all
negations, and the first is, strangely enough,
called " Precept," the identical idea preserved
in the term " First Precept " used by the
Gnostic writer. More, there are five of them,
the precise number of " Words " written on
the lowest Vesture of the Gnostic narrative.
These three Bodies are the Trinity in every
religion. In Buddhism the ineffable Ocean of
Light and Compassion is called Bodhi. By
bathing or being " baptized " in this, man
becomes a Buddha or Enlightened. These
three Vestures are thus said to consist of
** Essential Bodhi " (Dharmakaya), " Re-
flected Bodhi " (Sambhogakaya), and " Prac-
tical Bodhi " (Nirmanakaya). (See Eitel,
op. cit., sub voc, " Trikaya.") And it is the
last, the Vesture of Practical Bodhi, which
is assumed by the Christs and Buddhas of
Compassion who help on man's salvation.
Perhaps it may not be without interest, when
remembering the important part pla}-ed by
no THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
" sheep " in Christian symbology, to learn that
the three S}'mbohcal vehicles of the saints across
the river of life, or conditioned existence, are
said by the Buddhists to be :
1. Sheep, i.e., Shravakas — Hearers or
Disciples.
2. Deer, i.e., Praty-ekaBuddhas — Solitaries,
they who obtain salvation for themselves but
are unable to impart their wisdom to others.
3. Oxen, i.e., Bodhi-sattvas — they of the
essence (Sattva) of Bodhi, or Compassion and
Wisdom. (See Eitel, sub voc, " Triyana."
Further information may be obtained from
Schlagintweit's Buddhism in Tibet, p. 38.)
But the present theme is too lofty a one for a
pen like my own, and the Doctrine of the Great
Renunciation of the two higher Vestures — to
don the comparatively lowly one of the
Nirmanakaya — has been treated of, in some
measure, in other theosophical writings.
What has been said, however, as to these
Robes woven of Nature Powers — which are
really Human Powers, if we would only " help
Nature and work on with her " — what little has
been said may perhaps enable us to better
understand the grand passage from the Book
VESTURES OF THE SOUL, iii
of the Golden Pvcccpis (Voice of the Silence, ist cd.,
p. 72), which tell us of the birth of a Master, as
follows :
" Behold, the mellow light that floods the
Eastern sky. In songs of praise both heaven
and earth unite. And from the four-fold mani-
fested Powers a chant of love ariseth, both from
the flaming Fire and flowing Water, and from
sweet-smelling Earth and rushing Wind.
" Hark ! . . . from the deep unfathom-
able vortex of that golden light in which the
Victor bathes. All Nature's wordless voice in
thousand tones ariseth to proclaim :
" * Joy unto ye, O men of Earth. A Pilgrim
hath returned back from the other shore. A
new Arhan is born.' " —
Feeling himself, his own low self the whole ;
When he by sacred sympathy might make
The whole one self. Self, that no alien knows !
Self, far dififused as fancy's wing can travel !
Self, spreading still I oblivious of its own,
Yet all of all possessing. — Coleridge.
Out of the furnace of man's life and its black smoke, winged flames
arise, flames purified, that soaring onward, 'neath the karniic eye, weave
in the end the fabric glorified of the three vestures of the Path.
Book of the Golden Precepts.
113
THE WEB OF DESTINY.
How familiar to every child born of Christian
parents is the phrase, " God created the world
out of nothing" ! It is a matter of belief, the
reason cannot grasp it ; it is absurd and there-
fore pertains to the domain of faith. Credo
quia ahsurdiun ! And yet I was told by a Jesuit
father that it was a " postulate of pure reason " ;
that as I was a rational being and had heard
the truth, it was nothing but the obstinacy of
my heart that prevented my acceptance of the
dogma, and for that same obduracy I was
rightly and property condemned to Hell. I
thought that it was the obduracy and uncharit-
ableness of someone else's heart that so con-
demned me, and departed less of a " Christian "
of that kind than ever.
Nevertheless there is good in the dogma, for
good and evil are hidden in all things. The
good in it is that the human soul shrinks from
admitting anything else than God in the bound-
H
114 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
less fields of being. Nothing but God. And
the universe, what of that ? " Verily God
created it." But how ? " Out of nothing —
but himself," I think I hear the small voice
whisper.
The dogma of " creation out of nothing " has
its good side, for it is an attempt, when rightly
understood, to bring home to the uninstructed
mind the great truth that deity in its own
nature does not perform the function of a
fabricator, that its "creations" are those of
will, transcendent and spiritual, and that the
" creatures " of its divine creation in their turn
carry out the behests of the divine will, and
emanate and evolve, build and fashion, the
w^ondrous fabric of the universe.
The evil side of the doctrine is the use made
of it bv an ignorant priesthood to dwarf the
human mind b}' ever imposing upon its natural
questionings the dull weight of an unintelligible
dogma, which crushes its sprouting life and
terrifies the half-awakened intelligence with the
nightmare of a vengeful deity that punishes
every timid turning of the soul to higher light.
Fortunately, however, there has been, long
before this curious priest-made dogma (for it is
THE WEB OF DESTINY. 115
not to be found in the scriptures) was invented,
and there still is, another view of the matter
which avoids the Scylla and Charybdis of the
extremes which I have pointed out above — a
view which supplies a golden mean or passage-
way along which the soul can sail in safety.
In the Vedic scriptures the Eternal is said to
have thought the universe out of himself, by the
self-emanative power of self-contemplation. In
other words, the Supreme Being evolved or
created the universe out of himself; that is to
say, that Deity is both the efficient and material
cause of the universe.
Many commentaries have been written upon
the Vedas, and the habit of some of them is to
argue out the great statements in the original
scriptures, bringing forward objection after
objection. In fact, in the commentaries, there
is a familiar dramatic character who is always
turning up, called the " objector." " How then
can it be possible," interrupts the objector,
" that God can be both the material and
efficient cause? The potter makes his pots out
of clay. The potter is not the same as the
clay ; the efficient and material causes are not
the same person. The potter does not make
ii6 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
the pot out of himself." And then the writer
of the commentary rephes, using a simile found
in the sacred scripture itself, " Even as the
spider spins its thread out of itself and with-
draws it again, so this universe is spun out of
the Supreme and is again withdrawn." It is,
however, carefully stated that a simile must not
be confounded with an identit}-. The Supreme
does not weave the garment of the universe out
of himself in precisely the same manner as the
spider spins its web, but the simile of the spider
is, at any rate, a nearer approach to the reality
than the crude analogy of the potter.
So we read in the Shvetdsvatara Upanishad
(vi. lo) : " May the One God, who, like the
spider, through his own nature, encases himself
with many threads, which are produced by the
first [Nature] ; make us one with the Supreme."
And again in the Mundaka Upanishad (i. 7) :
" As the spider casts out and draws in [its web]
. . . . so is produced the universe from the
Indestructible."
The ideas of a spider and of a web are found
over and over again in the sacred books of the
Hindus ; so much so that it is borne in upon
the mind of the careful reader that such a
THE WEB OF DESTINY. 117
frequent simile must correspond to a very im-
portant fact in nature. But there is another
simile that is even more graphic. It is the
figure of the chrysalis and the butterfly, of the
silkworm and the cocoon. And here let me
quote one passage out of many which will give
3'ou a foretaste of what this essay designs to
treat of.
The vast Indian epic, called the Mahabharata
or Great War, is many times larger than the
Ihad of the Greeks, and its epic dress is only
the setting for long religious and philosophical
discourses. One of its great divisions or books
is called the Book of Peace, and one of the sub-
divisions of this Book is entitled the Book of
the Laws of Freedom. In it we read as fol-
lows :
" As the silkworm spinning its cocoon shuts
in itself on every side in every way by means of
its self-made threads, even so the soul, though
in reality it transcends all attributes, invests
itself on every side with attributes [and thus
deprives itself of freedom] ." (Sec. ccciv.)
This cannot but remind us of the graceful
myth of Psyche among the Greeks. Psyche,
the soul, painted and sculptured with butterfly
ii8 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
wings — the soul that wings its joyful flight
from the chrysalis of the body — is a figure so
innate with life and beauty that the mind is at
once held captive by the sweet graciousness of
so fair a conceit.
Let us next turn to another ancient book,
fragments of which are given by H. P. Blavatsky,
where we shall find the same idea of a web and
its spinning. One of the Stanzas of Dzyan
runs as follows :
" Father-Alother spin a Web, whose upper
end is fastened to Spirit, the Light of the One
Darkness, and the lower one to its shadowy
end, Matter ; and this Web is the Universe,
spun out of the Two Substances made in One."
Father-Mother is the graphic name for the
Eternal when viewed as emanating the universe
out of its own essence. Spirit and Matter are
names for the modes of its existence as viewed
by little men. Spirit is that Light of which
the author of the Book of Genesis speaks as
created by the divine fiat that willed " let there
be light." It is the Light of the One Darkness,
because Spirit is the brightest light that the
inner eye of man can bear ; and yet beyond
this the intuition declares there is that which
THE WEB OF DESTINY, iig
transcends even this most glorious light, but
upon which no mortal can look and live, for to
see it he must become immortal. And this is,
therefore, darkness to mortal gaze, and so is
not inappropriately termed the One Darkness.
So, then. Father- Mother spin the web of the
universe out of the two substances, Spirit and
Matter, which really are not two in essence but
one, for they are Father-Mother essentially.
In this connection it is hardly necessary to
remind the reader of the words put into the
mouth of the Erdgeist by the genius of Goethe :
" Thus at the roaring loom of Time I pi}',
And weave for God the garment thou see'st
Him by."
This garment of God is the universe. The
loom of the Erdgeist roars as the shuttles fly on
their cyclic journey back and forth ; but their
roaring is no chaotic cacophony, but the " har-
monious song" of the " spheres."
It may be useful to remark here that with
regard to the idea of a cocoon (for the garment
or web is ever spheroidal), the symbol of an
egg, or embryonic germ, is an index of the
same idea, and its frequent occurrence in the
120 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
old religions is because of the marvellous
manner in which so universal a phenomenon in
nature shadows forth the manner of the inner
workings of the creative energy.
Yet one more instance of the same idea, this
time from the hieroglyphics of ancient Khem.
Several of the inscriptions on the tombs of the
kings in the ancient sacred city of Thebes have
been translated by Edouard Naville, the French
Egyptologist, and embodied in his book. La
Litanie du Soleil. A few sentences dealing w'ith
the present subject, together with M. Naville's
excellent commentary, were translated in the
May number of Lucifer (1894), under the head-
ing, " The Gods and their Dwellings." Speak-
ing of Teb Temt, the term for the Supreme
Being in these old records, M. Naville writes:
" He is a being enclosed in an envelope,
which is neither a sphere nor an egg, but more
closely resembling the latter. The symbol
which represents the envelope Teb has exactly
the shape of the cocoon of the silkworm. This
is, no doubt, the origin of the tradition handed
on to us by Eusebius, which attributes the form
of to the universe."
It would be easy to multipl}' quotations and
THE WEB OF DESTINY. 121
produce much evidence of the frequency of this
idea in ancient scriptures, but sufficient has
been said to warrant a fuller exposition than if
the conception were of very rare occurrence.
Now, the study of the allegorical descriptions
of creation and the origin of the universe that
are found in every scripture, would be of only
minor importance if they had but a remote
bearing on human affairs. If primordial pro-
cesses and the development of long series of
hierarchies are simply to serve as a pretext for
airy metaphysical speculation, they can only be
of interest for a very limited class of minds.
If, on the other hand, the processes of the great
world are directly applicable to the processes
of the little world, if the history of the universe
is also the history of man, then the study of
such processes is of very vital interest to us, for
they teach us the history of the spirit and soul
in man, and so wean him from the illusion that
he is a mere body, and the powers of man only
such as the physical body will permit him to
wield. We have all heard the trite old aphorism,
commonly called Hermetic, " as above so
below," and some have met with it elsewhere
and have learned to realise its truth, for it
122 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
helps the solution of the great problem of life
in a manner that no other method will. Analogy
of processes and the great fact that man is
potentially deity, that "This is That," as the
grand logion of the Vedas has it, is the only
means whereby a solution of the problem can
be attempted ; and a religion or a philosophy,
or a science, that neglects this central fact ends
nowhere but in confusion. As the Kathopanishad
(II. iv. lo) has it : " What verily is here below
that is there ; what is there is likewise here.''
That is to say, what is true of the universe is
true of man, what is true of man is true of the
universe ; what is true of little man, the little
world, is true of the heavenly man, the great
world.
Let us, then, bear this in mind and apply it
to the subject in hand, our " web of destiny."
The web of destiny is not one but three, not
single but threefold, for are there not three
worlds? The threads of the web are gross,
subtle, and subtler than subtle, for is not man
spirit, soul and body ? And is not man God,
did he but know it ? There is but one Self
"hidden in the heart of all creatures." It is
the bodies that make the Self seem different, for
THE wj:i; oi*' dj:stiny. 123
it is one for all. These bodies are webs (A
destiny, self-evolved, self-woven. There are
those who think th;i.t man is but his physical
body ; not so say the scriptures. The seers of
truth speak of man as spirit, soul and bfjdy, and
the wisest say that the Self is beyond. In iii.in,
the Self is enwrapped, and yet nf;t rcrdly
enwrapped — for all words are incapable of truly
stating the mystery — in a spiritual body or
spirit, in a psychic body or Sf;iil, ?i.rid in ;i,
physical body ; three webs of destiny, or, if you
prefer it, one web of triple texture. The spiri-
tual, psychic and material vestures clothe the
Self in a triple disguise that produces this seem-
ing separateness which is called the "great
heresy" by those who know the Self. The
Vedantic psychologists call them the gross,
subtle and causal vestures or disguises, and the
early Christian mystics, the so-called Gnostics,
classified mankind into the Hylics, Psychics
and Pneumatics. These Greek names signified
that men were to be distinguished according to
the bonds in which they were bound, according
to the error in which they were plunged, for
Hyle means matter, and Psyche soul, and
Pneuma spirit.
124 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
But these vestures are living vestures, for
there is the material life, and the psychic life,
and the spiritual life ; three oceans of life and
consciousness, and yet not three but one, for
they are the Self. For what is more precious
to man than life ; what does he cling to with
such desperation ? He clings to the Self, for
life is the Self. Through life alone can we
have some conception of God here in this
world. Life is God.
And so we have three bodies and three lives,
the habitual or material life, the emotional or
psychic life, and the intuitional or spiritual life,
and yet all is one — the Self. Here we have
the seven-fold nature of the Esoteric Philo-
sophy, so much talked of and so little under-
stood ; and yet it is a natural classification, an
unavoidable classification. It is by what the
Vedantins call the " false attribution " of the
Self to the gross vesture or physical body that
the "waking" consciousness, or habitual life,
is experienced ; by the false attribution of the
Self to the subtle vesture, or psychic body, that
the " dreaming " consciousness, or emotional
life, is sensed ; and by the false attribution of
the Self to the causal vesture, or spiritual body,
THE WEB OF DESTINY. 125
that the " deep sleeping " consciousness, or
noetic Hfe, is enjoyed. Now these terms
" deep sleeping," " dreaming " and "waking"
are very inadequate, and are only the reflections
or memories of the three great lives, or states
of consciousness, in our small brains. For
what we call dream is only a memory, and
what we call deep sleep is only a reminiscence,
a vague feeling, that we have slept ill or well.
These three states appear to us in our normal
consciousness as waking and dreaming and
deep sleep ; but there is a waking conscious-
ness appropriate to each of the three bodies of
man, and a dreaming state, and one of so-called
deep sleep; and beyond all is the "fourth,"
the " peace that passeth all understanding."
Here below in this world we are wrapped
round in a triple vesture, for all things centre
together here in the battlefield of good and
evil. The triple " carapace of selfhood " im-
prisons and confines us.
In the " interspace," or "middle distance,"
there are but two vestures, if complete sever-
ance from physical bonds can be achieved ; but
if not, the shadows cast by the blackness of
the sins committed in the body are reflected
126 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
into the world of the soul and accompany it
on its passage through the " hall of learning."
In the highest world there is but one, the
vesture of causation; and in this "heaven-
world " the disciple learns the past and future.
They say the wise ones can separate these three
vestures at will, can assume and lay them aside,
for the Self strides through the three worlds in
the twinkling of an eye.
The mystics of the early days of the Chris-
tian era, now condemned as heretics, knew of
these sacred things and understood the mean-
ing of the outward rites and symbols. Thus
they called those who had no thought for any-
thing but the body and its pleasures the "dead."
These were the Hyhcs, the " sepulchres," for
they were indeed dead to higher things ; such
men and women were naturally without the
community of real " Christians ; " not placed
without by any man-made ordinances, but
naturally outside the " church" or assembly of
saints. For to enter therein they had to " rise
from the dead " and be baptized. This baptism
was no outer form ; the outer form was but a
symbol. It was a real natural process open to
all men, not to be given by favouritism, not to
THE WEB OF DESTINY. 127
be withheld by mortal hands. And there were
two great baptisms, the lesser and the greater.
The baptism of water and the baptism of fire
or of the holy spirit. These were the lesser
and the greater mysteries that we hear of among
the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Persians and
elsewhere. For what is the baptism of water ?
We know what water is here on earth ; but just
as the " dreaming " state is but a memory and
reflection of the true state of the soul in our
waking consciousness, so is the water of the
earth a reflection of the true water of nature.
" On my soul, gentlemen, ye have never seen
the true earth," says Eugenius Philalethes,
and he might have added, " On my soul, good
friends, ye have never seen the true water of
life." For this water is the ocean of soul-life,
the " astral " ocean, that causes the soul-sight
to live. It was only when the pilgrim had
learned to put on his subtle vesture at will and
was " doused " into the waters of the ocean of
pure astral light and life, that he was indeed
baptized with water. And yet these were but
the lesser mysteries. Those who were illumined
by this natural initiation were called Psychics.
But the greater mysteries pertained to the
128 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
perfect, the just. The baptism of fire was the
reception of the spiritual influx of divine hght
and hfe. The breath of the Holy Spirit (air)
vivified and energised their spiritual bodies, and
thus they were called Pneumatics.
Beyond these greater mysteries, transcendent
and unspeakable as they are said to be, there
was something grander and greater and more
wondrous. Beyond the three states is the
" fourth " ; the Self, the Father, is ever waiting
on the threshold for his children. It is the
mystery of the At-one-ment, the baptism of
blood, when the very life and essence of deity
is given that man may be one with the Highest.
Pity it is that these high things are so degraded
in our age. But we arc in the mire and must
make the best of it.
Let us now return to our three vestures, the
karmic webs that we have woven for our weal
and woe. The third depends on the second,
and the second on the first. The physical body
is the product of the psychic, and the psychic
of the spiritual. Or in other words, the gross
vesture is "precipitated" through the force-
mould of the psychic vesture, by means of the
character and experience stored up in the spiri-
THE WEB OF DESTINY. 129
tual vesture. Each vesture has its appropriate
Hfe-span. The " shadow-man " Hves longer
than the physical, it may be but a few years, it
may be centuries, for its life-span is as variable
as that of the physical vesture, though its
normal life is of greater length. But both these
life-cycles are governed by the great life-cycle
of the spiritual body. The gross and subtle
bodies have their root in the causal. This is
the perennial root living throughout the
"eternity." On this "all the worlds depend,"
as the scripture saith, or in other words, from
it grow all the bodies, gross and subtle, that
serve as vestures for the reincarnating Lord.
And seeing that these psychic and physical
bodies sprout forth from it and die down into
it, as the summer and winter of its great year
cause the warm life now to be breathed forth
and then to be withdrawn, it needs must be
that all causation rests with it ; that it is the
karmic storehouse of all that each man was, is,
and will be; that (to use another simile), it is
the very "book of the recording angel." It is
because of this that the whole past of a man
surrounds him on every side ; it is impressed
on his psychic vesture (the sidereal or astral
I
130 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
man), for it is the " influence of the stars " ; it
is stamped upon his physical frame and features.
But these " stars " are not the stars of heaven,
and the predictions of astrologists and cheiro-
mantists and the rest are based on a correspon-
dence and not on a reahty. True astrology
deals with something higher.
Nor need we go further than the mythology
of the Book of Genesis to gain a conviction of
the truth of this triple nature of man. For
there is first the man made in the " image" of
God, and then the Adam of " red-earth," who
dwelt in paradise, no physical region as we now
understand the word. The paradisiacal body
is the soul, and not until man is cast out of
Paradise does God lastly fashion for him his
" coat of skin." Only when man is born into
physical life is he clad in the gross vesture of
the material body. Can anyone be so foolish
as to think that God actually made for Adam
and Eve garments from the skins of animals
wherewith to clothe them ? Let us leave such
crudities to the uninstructed congregations of
our " little Bethels," and proceed to see whether
it is possible for man to escape from the triple
web of his destiny ; and how the passivity of the
THE WEB OF DESTINY. 131
three great oceans of life may be changed into
the activity of the three great Hghts ; and how
that the triple-tongued flame may burst forth
and destroy the webs and join the ineffable
Grand Master, the Fire Self.
Perhaps some may think that, as I am
writing about destiny, I should therefore,
enter into a long disquisition on freewill and
necessity ; but I have no desire to enter into
that endless squirrel-wheel of controversy.
Freewill and necessity are mutually dependent ;
each exists because of the other ; remove one
and the other ceases to be. They are a pair
of opposites, and the best religion and philo-
sophy teach that there is that which transcends
all pairs of opposites, and that man in his
inmost nature can reach that all-desirable goal
which is a solution of the great problem of
manifested existence.
But, again, someone may ask, surely this
web of destiny is not eternal ? By no means ;
to be eternal, in the absolute sense of the word,
it needs must be woven with the shuttle of the
eternal will. That is to say, that into all our
acts and words and thoughts we must put the
whole of the eternal will of the universe.
132 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
Surely this is impossible in the very nature of
things ! That which we think to be ourselves,
that which acts in us, is not the Self but that
which we think to be ourselves. It is not a
reality, but an ever-changing and impermanent
something. For no matter how long it may
persist, aye, even for an " eternity," it is not
eternal in the absolute sense of the word. The
Eternal, the One Reality, knows no change.
The web of the universe is woven with the
shuttle of divine love — love for all that lives and
breathes. It is that deific desire for universal
good or harmony ; it is a perpetual self-sacri-
fice, giving of its life and light to all without
distinction. Thus it is in the " above," but in
the " below," here in the world of men, the
shuttle whereby we weave our web of destiny is
the shuttle of desire. This is selfishness ; a
power that concretes, that draws to itself for
itself. We weave our webs of destiny from the
warp and woof of things of sensation and of
matter by means of the shuttle of desire. But
as this lower desire is no stronger than our-
selves, our lower natures, it cannot be that the
fabric it weaves should be eternal. It is made
up of ever-changing and impermanent materials,
THE WEB OF DESTINY. 133
and so must cease when the energy that pro-
duced it is exhausted.
What is most important to reaHsc, however,
is that this web is a Kving thing. What we
call matter is only negative life ; but the web
of destiny extends beyond matter into the
realms of feeling, emotion, volition and mind.
Thought is one of the most important sub-
stances from which it is woven. As the Dham-
mapada of the Buddhists says (x. 3) :
" All that we are is the result of what we
have thought ; it is founded on our thoughts,
it is made up of our thoughts."
This is the great teaching brought out so
powerfully in the Gospel of Christendom ;
"He who casteth his eyes on a woman to lust
after her, has committed adultery already with
her in his heart. '^ That is to say, in his soul,
within in the region of his mind which is so
potent a region of his universe. Though this
teaching is not explained at length in the
Christian canon, in the Buddhist and Vedic
canon there are numberless dissertations on
the nature and power of thought. One example
will suffice. In the Maitrdyana Upanishad (vi.
34, Max Miiller's Translation), we read :
134 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
" Thought alone causes the round of a new-
birth and a new death ; let a man therefore
strive to purify his thoughts. What a man
thinks, that he is : this is the old secret. If
the thoughts of men were so fixed on the
Eternal, as they are on the things of this world,
who would not be freed from bondage ? "
This is the same teaching as that of the Ser-
mon on the Mount : " The pure in heart shall
see God."
This vesture of thought and the rest, then,
is a very real thing. It is alive, it lives in us.
This was also the belief of ancient Egypt.
After the death of the body, the soul was said
to pass forth on its path through the different
regions of the Amenti. Just as the soul had
shed off its body, so did the spirit shed off its
psychic vestures, as it passed back into its own
state, and these vestures, just as the body here
below consists of countless " lives," consisted
of living " beings," were woven out of living
threads. In the Litany of the Sun already
referred to, mention is made of " prayers to
divers beings which have to serve as envelope
to the essence of the Defunct."
And now the question arises, "If this is so.
THE WEB OF DESTINY. 135
how is it possible to avoid for ever weaving this
awful web of destiny more and more densely
round ourselves. Thoughts come into our
mind unbidden. It is impossible for one to get
rid of them."
Now in the Roman Catholic Church there is
a teaching that there is no sin, if a man does
not join his " will " to the thought. This is
precisely the teaching of the other religions I
have referred to, and is consonant with the
whole of what I have previously written. There
is a continual procession of thoughts ever pass-
ing through our minds — empty shapes, shadows
and images. We can reject these shadows and
let them pass on or arrest them by fixing our
attention upon them. If we go further and
give our consent to them we put our desire
into them, and so breathe into them the breath
of our life. They then become part of us, we
have ensouled them, they are our children. If
our desire is selfish and impure, then these
children of ours are of a like nature, and we
weave round ourselves and into our nature evil
and impure forces.
I know that these things have been written
of over and over again, but the story will not
136 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
spoil for retelling. As we live, every moment
we give birth to that which will be our self in
a future existence and a future life. We give
birth to a child. And if we, the dual parent of
this child, are impure, passionate and immoral,
the child we generate will be of like nature.
Just as diseased and immoral parents, parents
who procreate children in drunkenness and in
obedience to the dictates of mere animal lust,
give birth to abortions, crippled, lunatic and
vicious children, so does each one of us give birth
to an abortion if we are slaves of our desires.
But if, on the other hand, we strive to trans-
mute our lower desire into the divine love and
will, then we may give birth to a divine child
which will in time grow into the full stature of
the Heavenly Man. This is the " second birth,"
the spiritual creation, spoken of by the Christ
in the Gospel. This is why the Brahmans,
not those who are born into a physical caste,
but those who truly know Brahman, or the
Eternal, are rightly called the "twice-born."
Yes, wc can escape from our web of destiny
by weaving for ourselves the glorious vesture
of the spirit, the "wedding garment," the
" coat woven without scam of the Christ."
THE WEB OF DESTINY. 137
As the Book of Peace {Mahdbhdrata, Shanti
Parvan, Mokshadharma Parvan, ccci.) says :
"By casting off, through the aid of Yoga,
these five faults — attachment, heedlessness,
covetousness, lust and wrath, a man attains to
freedom. As large fishes, breaking through
the net, pass into their own clement [to sport
in blessedness] , after the same manner Yogins
[breaking through the net of lust, wrath and
the rest] become cleansed of all sins and attain
to the blessed state of freedom. As powerful
animals, breaking through the nets with
which the hunters surround them, escape into
the blessed state of freedom, after the same
manner Yogins, freed from all bonds, attain
to the sinless path that leads to liberation.
Feeble beings, entangled in acts, are surely
destroyed. Even such is the case with those
destitute of Yoga-power. As weak fishes,
fallen into the net, become entangled in it,
even so men destitute of the power of Yoga,
encounter destruction [amid the bonds of the
world]. Bound by the bonds of their acts,
they that are weak meet with destruction, while
they that are possessed of strength break
through them."
/
138 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
" The kingdom of heaven is to be attained
by violence." Yoga means union, the striving
/ for union with the divinity that is in the heart
of all creatures. This is the at-one-ment that
is the consummation of all religion. Yoga-
power is the strength of the spiritual life, the
energizing of the divine will. It is to be
developed by " brooding " upon it ; by service
of the Eternal, that is, by dedicating the whole
of one's life to the Self; and by faith, that is,
by faith and confidence in the possibility of
such union.
It is said that the Supreme Being created
the universe by means of such brooding (Tapas).
By wrapping oneself round with this great
spiritual power, by ever living in it, by realising
the great Presence of the Eternal, the germ of
the divine child will develop within. This
brooding is the formation of a virgin womb,
from which the immaculate child shall be born.
This brooding is also heat and fire. It is thus
that the three streams of life and conscious-
ness (see p. 124) no longer continue as passive
oceans of external existence, each on its own
plane, but change into active energies which
become three fires, or rather a triple-tongued
THE WEB OF DESTINY. 139
flame that finally blazes forth into the great
fire and light of the universe.
Without doubt we can cast off our old gar-
ments of desire and stand in the purified robes
of divine will and universal compassion. To
cast off our old squalid raiment we must practise
non-attachment to it. We must be willing to
stand naked before our Self, and this we cannot
do unless we love that Self. There is a nega-
tive and a positive method to be followed. The
practice of non-attachment to the things of
matter, to our possessions in this world, and to
all that we think is oitrs within, is absolutely
necessary, but this alone is not sufficient, it
must also be accompanied by the positive love
of the highest and the best, of the Self within.
Both these forces are necessary. But there is
danger even here, there is danger that a man
should seek that Self for himself alone, should
love that Self that so he may gain salvation for
his own sake. Therefore it is, that he who
would gain true wisdom, and live and realise
the Self here on earth, must learn to love that
Self in all that lives and breathes and not in
himself alone. Then and not till then will he
be on the path of final liberation from the delu-
140 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
sion of that spiritual ignorance which causes
him to weave his web of destiny.
This is the doctrine of the Christ, the saviour,
the spirit within, the one from whom the many
come if we could but understand it. This is
also the teaching of Egypt of old. To quote
yet once more from the inscriptions on the
tombs of the kings of ancient Thebes :
"The kingly ' Osiris ' is an intelligent essence ;
those who are born from him create him ; they
rest when they have caused the kingly ' Osiris '
to be born."
The kingly Osiris is that highest vesture
of the Self, the spirit or spiritual body. It is
the causal vesture, the karmic record, from
which the soul proceeds. The personalities all
come forth from the divine individuality accord-
ing to that karmic record. The many came
forth for the one. This is the perennial root
from which we came forth and into which we
return, and by " we " I mean the " I am I," the
person we think we are for one life, and not the
real " I am " that is for the eternity. This " I
am " is an " intelligent essence." " Those who
are born from him " are our personalities, and
it is the personal man who, by his efforts at
THE WEB OF DESTINY. 141
self-purification and aspiration to this divine
prototype within, shall grow like unto the spiri-
tual man. So that at last he shall become at
one with the Christ within, and so " create "
the kingly .Osiris. And then shall we be at
"rest," then shall we have found refuge in the
" Self of Peace," then shall we have reached
that " peace of God that passeth all understand-
ing," and the web of our destiny shall be the
same as that of the self-made and self-appointed
destiny of God.
Deum te igitur scito esse.
Know then that thou art God.
Cicero, Somkium Scipionis.
Om! Peace, peace, peace!
143
TRUE SELF-RELIANCE
A STUDY FROM CICERO AND THE
UPANISHADS.
What am I ? Whence came I ? Whither
do I journey ? Verily, the voice of one crying
in the wilderness, mourning, and not to be
comforted either by the lifeless dogmas of an
effete theology or the cold denials of a material-
istic science. It is from the sages of old, from
the wise of the past, that the answer comes.
That art thou. From That didst thou come.
Into That shalt thou return. Aye, That art
thou ! That is thy Self, none other. Such
were the final words whispered into the ear of
the disciple in the golden days of ancient
Aryavarta. True then, true countless ages
before, true for the rest of the eternity. No-
where else is to be found true Self-reliance,
nowhere else that peace which none can take
away.
144 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
A cold creed ! do I hear some one say ? Nay,
not cold. It is a truth that transcends enthu-
siasm, that surpasses all hope, that merges the
highest ideal of love into an endless, boundless
compassion for all that lives and breathes. For
thus runs the Upanishad :
" Now will I tell thee the ancient mj'stery of
the Highest. . . .
" That true Man, who wakes when we sleep,
accomplishing every desire — that is called the
Shining, the Highest, the Deathless. In that
all the spheres are contained, and no one goes
beyond. Aye, this [true Man] is That
[the Universal Soul] .
" As fire, though one, on entering into the
world, [pervading] form after form, takes the
form [of what it enters] , so the Inner Self of
all creatures, though one, takes on shape after
shape, and yet [remains] apart.
" As air, though one, on entering into the
world, [pervading] form after form, takes the
form [of what it enters] , so the Inner Self of
all creatures, though one, takes on shape after
shape, and yet [remains] apart.
" As the sun, the means by which the whole
world sees, is not sullied by the outer impurities
TRUE SELF-RELIANCE. 145
which our eyes behold, so the Inner Self of all
creatures, being one, is not sullied by the misery
of the world, but [remains] apart [from it] .
" It is this Inner Self of all creatures, the
Lord of the Will, who, though one, causes the
one form to appear manifold. The wise who
find this abiding in themselves, theirs is blessed-
ness everlasting, and not others'.
"The eternal among the non-eternal, the
conscious among the unconscious, who, though
one, fulfils the desires of many. The wise who
find this abiding in themselves, theirs is peace
everlasting, and not others'.
"'This is That' — so runs the burthen of
their thoughts — the transcendent bliss that
beggars all description." {Kathopanishad,
Adhyaya ii., Valli v. 6-14.)
The Upanishad then proceeds to explain
that this Higher Self is self-luminous, and the
cause, not only of the light on earth, but also
of that in the heaven. The Self shines by its
own light, it is self-motive within.
This is the secret of true Self-reliance ; no-
where else is a lasting basis to be found,
nowhere else unchanging certitude. In this
self-motivity resides the essence of immortahty
K
146 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
and nowhere else ; it is the one spark of divinity
in man. A man must grow from within with-
out, for such is the law. All other growth is
artificial and unnatural, deceptive and illusory.
No one from without can give us peace and
blessedness ; these must perforce come from
within, from the Inner Self of all creatures —
our true Higher Self.
Even should a Master — a Ji\'anmukta, one
who has attained union, while still in the body,
with that Higher Self — cast the mantle of his
power round the disciple, should he wrap him
in his aura, even then, it were to no profit, if
the disciple is not ready to burst the veils of
his Soul with self-effort.
If the nature of the disciple does not respond
of its own will, and grow of its own energy, the
artificial exaltation would be not only unprofit-
able but even injurious. For the instant the
protecting wall were removed, the reaction
would sweep the unprepared neophyte off his
feet. The passions and desires that had been
curbed and held back by the external power of
the teacher would fiercely spring forth, and the
lassitude of the pupil's will, following the
artificial stimulus, would be unable to check
TRUE SELF-RELIANCE. 147
their wild career. And that is why it is so
difficult even for a Master to interfere with the
natural growth of the disciple. This is what is
meant by saying that even sages dare not inter-
fere with the growth of karmic seeds. Nature
must work on in her own way, and growth
must proceed /ro;7i within without and never from
without within.
This applies to all of us, especially in the
mental attitude we take up in Theosophy.
The perfect fruit of nature is the birth of the
true Man. It is no artificial creation, but a
natural steady growth ; a birth with pain and
sorrow, with mighty throes suffered and joyfully
endured. But to be perfect it must be self-born,
it must be divine, and that which is born from
another than the Self is other than divine,
subject to death and decay.
We imcst work out our own salvation, wisely,
humbly, nobly. There are no swaddling clothes
for the Self, no apron-strings to tie the soul
to ; from the very beginning it must walk of itself,
of its own energy and force. There is no spoon-
meat, no nursing, no whimperings to be hushed.
It is a Man, no animal embrj^o. It strides
forth as a giant from the egg that envelops it.
148 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
They who have conquered are Shepherds of
Compassion, not sheep, are Lions of Mercy,
not deer. They are the Christs and the
Buddhas, and it is their will that all shall be
like unto them, all be one with them.
Let us not, then, weakly repeat the words of
others, and reflect the thoughts of others, but
if the words are good and the thoughts wise,
strive to develop in ourselves the spirit that
dictated such words or induced such thoughts.
The Lodge does not wish for the mere monkey-
dom of external imitation, or the parrot-like
repetition of words. It requires companions on
whom reliance can be placed, because such
companions rely on that Self which is the Self
of the Lodge.
The secret of the Self is that it is self-motive.
As Cicero writes, repeating the noble doctrine
of the Stoics and of the Mysteries :
" Strive on, with the assurance that it is not
thou who art subject to death, but thy body.
For that which is really thyself is not the being
which thy bodily shape declares. But the real
man is the thinking principle of each, and not
the form which can be pointed to with the
finger. Of this, then, be sure, that thou art
TRUE SELF-RELIANCE. 149
God ; inasmuch as deity is that which has will,
sense, memory, foresight ; and rules, regulates
and moves the body it has in charge, just as
the Supreme Deity does the Universe. And
Hke as Eternal Deity guides the universe, which
is in a certain degree subject to decay, so the
sempiternal soul moves the destructible body.
Now that which is ever in motion is eternal.
Whereas that which communicates motion to
something else, and which is set in motion by
an external cause, must necessarily cease to
exist when its motion is exhausted."
And then (as Macrobius says), repeating the
PhcBclrus of Plato, word by word, Tully con-
tinues :
" That, therefore, which has the principle of
motion in itself, seeing that it can never fail
itself, is the only eternal existence, and, more-
over, is the source and causative principle of
motion to all other bodies endowed with move-
ment. The causative principle, however, can
have no antecedent cause. For all things
spring from this principle, which cannot, in
the nature of things, be generated from any-
thing else : for if it were so, it would cease to be
the principal cause. And if this is without begin-
150 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
ning, it can evidently have no end, for if the prin-
ciple of causation were destroyed, it could not
be re-born from anything else, nor give birth to
anj'thing out of itself, for all things must neces-
sarily be generated from the causative prin-
ciple. The principle of motion, therefore,
comes from that which is endowed with self-
movement ; and this can suffer neither birth
nor death ; otherwise every heaven would col-
lapse, and every nature necessarily come to a
standstill, seeing that it could no longer obtain
that force by which it was originally impelled.
" Since, therefore, it is evident that that only
is eternal which is self-motive, who is there to
deny that this is a rational attribute of souls ?
For everything that is set in motion by external
impulse is destitute of the soul principle,
whereas everything ensouled is energized by
an interior and self-created motion ; for this is
the soul's proper nature and power. And if it
alone of all things has the attribute of self-
movement, it surely is not subject to birth but
is eternal."^
1 From The Dream of Seipio, in Cicero's Dc RepiihUca, vi. In
commenting on this passage, Macrobius (Commcntarius in
Somnium Scipkuiis, II. xiii) gives a number of syllogisms
which may be useful to set down here.
TRUE SELF-RELIANCE. 151
But there are those who rely on their intellect,
on their strength, on their wealth, or position,
their beauty, their relatives or their friends. This
is not true Self-reliance, for all these pass away.
Intellect will fade in its turn, just as the body
fades in its small cycle, for :
" Thou art the sheath of the Highest, [which
in its turn isj enveloped in the intellect."
{Taittirtyakopanishad, Valli i, Anuvaka i. i.)
Intellect is but an envelope, a veil to be
removed, a garment to be purified, before the,
true Self shines forth.
Strength and wealth and position and beauty
are even more impermanent : strength and
beauty fade even before the body wears out, and
1. The soul is self-motive : Whatever is self-motive is
ever in motion : Therefore the soul is ever in motion.
2. The soul is ever in motion : Whatever is ever in motion
is immortal : Therefore the soul is immortal.
3. The soul is self-motive : Whatever is self-motive is the
principle of motion : Therefore the soul is the principle of
motion.
4. The soul is the principle of motion : Whatever is the
principle of motion is not subject to birth : Therefore the
soul is not subject to birth.
5. The soul is not subject to birth : Whatever is not sub-
ject to birth is immortal : Therefore the soul is immortal.
6. The soul is self-motive: Whatever is self-motive is the
principle of motion : Whatever is the principle of motion is
not subject to birth : Whatever is not subject to birth is
immortal : Therefore the soul is immortal. (Aurelii Macrobii
Qua Extant Omnia, Patavii, 1736.)
152 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
wealth and position must be abandoned when
Yama speaks the word.
Friends and relations, parents, husband, wife
and children, are but weaklings like ourselves —
to mourn and rejoice with — all subject to the
sway of Death. There is but one place of
peace, but one source of true reliance.
"That place [of peace] which all the sacred
writings sing of, proclaimed by all who strive to
purify their nature, for the sake of which men enter
the service of the Highest, that place [of peace]
will I in brief recount to thee. It is the ' Om.'
" Aye, that word is the Highest, that the
Supreme. He who knows this, all that he longs
for is his.
" That is the best on which to rely, that the
most excellent. He who relies on that, waxes
great in the heaven-world.
" He, the [harmonious] singer, is not born,
he dies not. He [came] not any whence, nor
any one was he. Unborn, eternal, everlasting,
ancient — this is not slain when the body is slain.
" If the slayer thinks he slays, or if the slain
thinks he is slain, both are deluded. He slays
not, nor is slain.
** Smaller than small, greater than great, is
TRUE SELF-RELIANCE. 153
the Self of a man, hidden in the secret chamber
[of his heart] .
" It is by the favour of the Lord [the Logos]
that a man beholds the majesty of the Self,
[but only when he is] without preconceived
notions and free from distress.
" Sitting It goes far, resting It journeys every-
where. Who but myself can know that which
rejoices and rejoices not.
"The wise man who regards the Self as
bodiless among bodies, as ever-abiding among the
fleeting, as the mighty Sovereign, he grieves not.
*' This Self is not to be obtained by much
instruction, nor by intellectual study, nor by holy
writ. Him whom It enfolds by him is It gain-
ed. The Self enfolds the very soul of the man.
"But he who has not turned his back on
evil-doing, who is not at peace, and not con-
trolled, who is not of quiet mind, he, even with
knowledge, cannot gain It." {KatJiopanishad,
Adhyaya i, Valli ii. 15-24.)
It is in the Self that we find the source of all
moral sanction. It is the "still small voice"
— " the voice of the silence " — the voice that
grows into a roar of thunder if the Law is
transgressed. Then it becomes the "great
154 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
terror '' — the one thing that the disciple fears,
for it is by the Law of his higher nature that he
condemns himself — to continued bondage in the
meshes of the karmic net he has supphed threads
for the weaving of by neglect of duty. As in
the Great World so in the little world, as in
the Universal Self so in the individual self, as
in the Kosmos so in man. " That art thou ! "
As It emanated Itself, so dost thou emanate
thyself, O little man ! Thou canst give birth
to Chaos or to the Son of Righteousness, and
thou wilt. Therefore, choose. Transgression
of the Law creates difference, and so a depar-
ture from the Self; union with the Law provides
the conditions for the Self to show forth its
glory. Learn, then, from what takes place in
the Great World " unconsciously," what must
be done in the little world by the conscious will
of him who would be free.
" In the beginning this [manifested world]
was non-existent. Thence, veril}', the existent
arose. That made its own self. Wherefore is
it called the self-made. Now that self-made
verily is essence, for only when a man attains
to the essence is he filled with blessedness.
For who could live, who could breathe, if that
TRUE SELF-RELIANCE. 155
blessedness were not in the quintessence [of the
heart] ? For it is that which causes blessedness.
" For when a man finds fearless reliance in
that which no eye can see, which transcends all
selves, which caniiot be defined and which needs
no support — then has he ceased from fear.
Whereas, should a man make were it but
a speck^ within It — then fear arises for him.
This is ever a terror for him who knows and
ponders upon it.
"For thus says the scripture: 'From terror of
That the wind blows, from terror the sun rises.' "
{Taittiriyakopanishad, Valli i, Anuvaka viii. i.)
And again :
"The whole emanated universe trembles in
Its Breath, That is the Great Terror, an up-raised
thunderbolt. They who know it, become im-
mortal." {Kathopanishad, Adhyaya, ii, Valli vi. 2.)
For no man can flee from the Self, no man
can escape from his conscience. The Law
enfolds him in his own doings, from which
there is no escape until he takes refuge with
that Law. As the King- Psalmist says :
1 This expression is given up by the commentators and
translators. I would suggest that it may mean the most
simple organism, which modern science affirms to be little
else than a sac or " stomach." The trained seers and initiates
of old were familiar with such primary orgsxiisms psychically.
156 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
" Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? or
whither shall I flee from thy presence ?
" If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:
if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art
there also." (Psalms, cxxxix. 7, 8.)
For :
" That which is down here in a man and that
which is over there in the sun, both are one.
" He who thus knows, on leaving this sphere,
first passes into the food-self, thence into the
life-self, thence into the sense-self, thence into
the mind-self, thence into the self of blessed-
ness, and identifying himself with the spheres
beyond, experiencing what he wills,^ assuming
whatsoever form he desires, he sings this hymn :
" ' Havu, havu, havu ! Food am I, food am
I, food am I ! I am the food-cater, the food-
eater, the food-eater ! I blend them, I blend
them, I blend them ! ^ I am the First-born of
Righteousness. Before the gods was I in the
centre of the Immortal. He who gives me,
verily he preserves me. I consume him as
food, who consumes food.
1 Lit., " eating whatever food he desires."
~ That is to say, I am object (food) and subject (food-eater),
and I am the union of both object and subject, the one con-
sciousness.
TRUE SELF-RELIANCE. 157
" ' I have flooded the world, I the Golden
Light. So even does he who thus knows.' "
{Taittiriyahopanishad, Valli iii, Anuvaka x. 4-6.)
He who has thus conquered, who has become
the First-born of Righteousness, who verily is
a Twice-born (Dvija), a true Knower of the
Highest (Brahma-vid), he verily is :
" The [true] Sun in the Highest — [for] thus
stands the doctrine, and thus the exposition
thereof.
" In the beginning this was non-existent.
The non-existent then became existent. It
developed. It turned into an Egg. It lay for
the measure of a cycle. It broke in twain.
The halves were one of silver, the other of gold. . ,
" Thence was born the Sun. When he was
born shouts of joy arose." (Chhcindogyopantshad,
Prapathaka iii, Khanda i. 1-3.)
Here we have the whole story of the spiritual
evolution in man. The darkness of the soul
before it begins to long for final release, for
true wisdom. The alchemical separation of
the subtle from the fixed, of the higher from
the lower, of Spirit from Matter, and the birth
of the unclouded Mind, the vSon of Righteous-
ness. Only when the Master is born do all
158 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
the Powers rejoice and a mighty shout of glad-
ness rends the universe. Aye :
" In Him, heaven, earth and the interspace
are woven, and the sensory with all the life-
currents. Know Him alone as the Self; away with
other words. He is the Bridge to Immortality.
"There [in the heart] where the currents
(Nadis) meet, like spokes in a nave. He moves
about within, becoming manifold. Chanting the
' Om,' thus meditate on Him. May all blessing
attend you to cross beyond the darkness !
" He the all-wise, the all-knowing, to whom
is all the glory in the world. He is the Self,
established in the shining city of the Highest,
in the quintessence [in the heart] .
" He is enshcathed within the sensory, is ruler
of the envelope of the life-currents, and finally
rests in [the outer sheath of] nutriment. It is
by meditating on the heart, that the wise by
their knowledge behold that Blessed Immortal
Form which shines forth [to their sight] .
"The knot in the heart is loosed, all doubts
are solved, and all deeds (Karma) perish, when
a man once sees the vision of that which is
both high and low.
" In the highest golden envelope dwells the
TRUE SELF-RELIANCE. 159
passionless, partless one, the Highest. He is
the pure Light of all lights, and that they know
who know the Self.
" In that [Light] no sun shines, nor the
moon and the stars, nor shine those flashings
over there, much less this earthly fire. It is
because of the shining of this Self that all shines
after it, by its shining that all this is so bright.
" This, the immortal Highest, is before, the
Highest is behind, to the right hand and to the
left, gone forth above and below. The Highest
is verily all this. It is the best ! " {Mundak-
opanishad, Mundaka, ii, Khanda ii, 5-11.)
The doctrine is mystic and mysterious, the
antipodes of the apparent clearness of modern
scientific theories, " for the gods love mystery
and hate familiarity," as Rishi Yajnavalkya
says in the Brihaddranyaka. And yet again
more mysteriously than ever :
" There, in the quintessence, within the
heart, dwells the [true] Man (Purusha), of the
nature of mind, immortal, resplendent hke gold.
"There, above the palate, like a breast-
nipple it hangs — that is the Womb of Indra.^
' The "astral fire."
i6o THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
" There, where the ends of the hair start,
having passed through the skull, chanting
' Bhuh,' he is supported in Fire ; chanting
' Bhuvah,' in Water ; chanting ' Suvah,' in the
Sun ; chanting ' Mahah,' in the Highest.
" He obtains kingship over himself, he obtains
lordship over the mind. He becomes lord of
speech, of sight, of hearing, of understanding.
"Thence he becomes that Highest whose
body is quintessence, the true Self, that sports
in life, of blissful mind, immortal, in perfect
peace." {Taittinyakopanishad, Valli i, Anu-
vaka vi, i, 2.)
And yet once again, to finally remind us of
the nature of true Self-reliance, reliance on the
Self— that Self which :
" Does not age with the age of the body, nor
is it killed with the wounding of the body.
That is the true cit}' of the Highest. In it all
desires are contained. It is the Self, sinless,
ageless, deathless, griefless, hungerless and
thirstless, willing the True, desiring the True."
{Chhdnvogyopanishad, Prapathaka Niii, Khanda
i,5-)
Women's Printing Society, Limited, 66, Whitcomb St., W.C.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
Los AiigeUs
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.
\^^'^
fj)
URL
REC/n I n-
OKlON |»ki t
LO/URL ^^
JAN 6
1990 .
Form L9-Series 4939
^
3 1158 00031 3667
UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY
AA 000 774 253 9
1 ^^