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 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-) 
 
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