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ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT
A BROAD OUTLINE OF THEOSOPHICAL DOCTRINES
BY
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
[OCCULTUS]
SECOND POINT LOMA EDITION
THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY
POINT LOMA, CALIFORNIA
1910
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1890,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
BY WILLIAM Q. JUDGE.
[Illustration: Logo]
THE ARYAN THEOSOPHICAL PRESS
Point Loma, California
DEDICATED TO
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY
WITH LOVE
AND GRATITUDE
BY
THE AUTHOR
TO THE READER
Echoes from the Orient was written by Mr. Judge sixteen years ago (1890)
as a series of papers for a well known periodical. The author wrote
under the name of "_Occultus_," as it was intended that his personality
should be hidden until the series was completed. The value of these
papers as a popular presentation of Theosophical teaching was at once
seen and led to their publication in book form. As Mr. Judge wrote in
his "Antecedent Words" to the earlier edition:
"The restrictions upon the treatment of the subject growing out of the
popular character of the paper in which they were published precluded
the detail and elaboration that would have been possible in a
philosophical or religious periodical. No pretense is made that the
subject of Theosophy as understood in the Orient has been exhaustively
treated, for, believing that millions of years have been devoted by the
sages who are the guardians of Theosophical truth to its investigation,
I think no one writer could do more than to repeat some of the echoes
reaching his ears."
The reader should remember that the scope and influence of the
Theosophical Movement have since that time (1890) greatly expanded, the
work of THE UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD AND THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY now reaching
nearly every country in the world.
Point Loma, California, 1906
ECHOES FROM THE ORIENT.
I.
What appears to the Western mind to be a very strange superstition
prevails in India about wonderful persons who are said to be of immense
age, and who keep themselves secluded in places not accessible to the
ordinary traveler. So long has this been current in India that the name
applied to these beings is well known in the Sanskrit language:
"Mahâtma," a compound of two words, _maha_, great, and _âtma_, soul. The
belief in the existence of such persons is not confined to the ignorant,
but is shared by the educated of all castes. The lower classes look upon
the Mahâtmas as a sort of gods, and think most of their wonderful powers
and great age. The pundits, or learned class, and educated Hindus in
general, have a different view; they say that Mahâtmas are men or souls
with unlimited knowledge of natural laws and of man's history and
development. They claim also that the Mahâtmas--or Rishees, as they
sometimes call them--have preserved the knowledge of all natural laws
for ages, not only by tradition among their disciples, but also by
actual records and in libraries existing somewhere in the many
underground temples and passages in India. Some believers assert that
there are also stores of books and records in secluded parts all over
that part of Thibet which is not known to Europeans, access to them
being possible only for the Mahâtmas and Adepts.
The credence given to such a universal theory grows out of an old Indian
doctrine that man is a spiritual being--a soul, in other words--and
that this soul takes on different bodies from life to life on earth in
order at last to arrive at such perfect knowledge, through repeated
experience, as to enable one to assume a body fit to be the
dwelling-place of a Mahâtma or perfected soul. Then, they say, that
particular soul becomes a spiritual helper to mankind. The perfected men
are said to know the truth about the genesis of worlds and systems, as
well as the development of man upon this and other planets.
Were such doctrines held only in India, it would be natural to pass the
subject by with this brief mention. But when it is found that a large
body of people in America and Europe hold the same beliefs, it is
interesting to note such an un-Western development of thought. The
Theosophical Society was founded in New York in 1875, with the avowed
object of forming a nucleus for a Universal Brotherhood, and its
founders state that they believe the Indian Mahâtmas directed them to
establish such a society. Since its foundation it has gained members in
all countries, including people of wealth as well as those in moderate
circumstances, and the highly cultured also. Within its ranks there
flourish beliefs in the Mahâtmas of India and in Reïncarnation and its
twin doctrine, Karma. This last holds that no power, human or divine,
can save one from the consequences of acts performed, and that in this
life we are experiencing the results due to us for all acts and thoughts
which were ours in the preceding incarnation.
This has brought out a large body of literature in books and magazines
published in the United States, England, India, and elsewhere.
Newspapers are published in the interest of the new-old cult in the
vernacular of Hindûstan and also in old Ceylon. Even Japan has its
periodicals devoted to the same end, and to ignore so wide-spread a
movement would bespeak ignorance of the factors at work in our
development. When such an eminent authority as the great French savant,
Emile Burnouf, says that the Theosophical movement must be counted as
one of the three great religious influences in the world to-day, there
is no need of an excuse for presenting its features in detail to readers
imbued with the civilization of the West.
II.
In my former paper I merely hinted at the two principal doctrines
promulgated by the Theosophical Society; it is well now to notice the
fact that the Society itself was organized amid a shout of laughter,
which at intervals ever since has been repeated. Very soon after it
launched forth it found a new member in a Bavarian gentleman, Baron
Henry Louis de Palm, who not long thereafter died and obligingly left
his body to be cremated.
The funeral was held at Masonic Hall, New York city, and attracted
widespread attention from both press and public. It was Theosophical in
its character, and while conducted with befitting dignity in view of the
solemnity of the occasion, was along distinctly original lines. All this
of course, drew forth satire from the press, but served the purpose of
gaining some attention for the young Society. Its history since then has
been remarkable, and it is safe to say that no other similar body in
this century has drawn to itself so much consideration, stirred up such
a thinking among people on mystical subjects, and grown so rapidly amid
the loudest derision and against the fiercest opposition, within the
short space of fifteen years.
While the press has been sneering and enemies have been plotting, the
workers in the Society have established centers all over the world, and
are to-day engaged persistently in sending out Theosophical literature
into every nook and corner of the United States. A glance at the
Theosophical map shows a line of Branches of the Society dotting a strip
of this country which reaches from the city of New York to the Pacific
Coast; at either end this belt spreads out to take in Boston and New
Orleans in the East and San Francisco and San Diego in the West; while
near the middle of the continent there is another accumulation of
centers. This is claimed to be strictly and mystically Theosophical,
because at each end of the magic line of effort and at its central point
there is an accumulation of nucleï. It is a fact that the branches of
the Society in America are rapidly running up into the first hundred.
For some little time there existed in Washington a Branch of the Society
called the Gnostic, but it never engaged in any active work. After it
had been once incontinently dissolved by its president, who thereafter
withdrew, leaving the presidency in the hands of another, the governing
body of the American Theosophists formally dischartered the Gnostic, and
its members joined other Branches. There is, however, to-day a
Washington Branch named boldly after the much lauded and belittled Mme.
H. P. Blavatsky, while the Theosophical map shows an accumulation of
influences in Washington that point to an additional Branch, and inquiry
in official quarters discloses the fact that the matter is already
mooted.
The Theosophical map of which I have spoken is a curiosity, an anomaly
in the nineteenth century. Few of the members are allowed to see it; but
those who are say that it is a register of the actual state, day by day,
of the whole United States Section--a sort of weather map, with areas of
pressure and Theosophical humidity in all directions. Where a Branch is
well founded and in good condition, the spot or sensitive surface shows
clearness and fixity. In certain places which are in a formative
condition there is another appearance symptomatic of a vortex that may
soon bring forth a Branch; while, wherever the principle of
disintegration has crept into an existing organization, there the
formerly bright and fixed spots grow cloudy. By means of this map, those
who are managing the real growth of the movement can tell how it is
going and aid it intelligently. Of course all this sounds ridiculous in
our age; but, whether true or false, there are many Theosophists who
believe it. A similar arrangement would be desirable in other branches
of our civilization.
The grand theories of the Theosophists regarding evolution, human races,
religions and general civilization, as well as the future state of man
and the various planets he inhabits, should engage our more serious
attention; and of these I propose to speak at another time.
III.
The first Echo from the burnished and mysterious East which reverberated
from these pages sounded the note of Universal Brotherhood. Among the
men of this day such an idea is generally accepted as vague and utopian,
but one which it will do no harm to subscribe to; they therefore quickly
assent, and as quickly nullify the profession by action in the opposite
direction. For the civilization of to-day, and especially of the United
States, is an attempt to accentuate and glorify the individual. The
oft-repeated declaration that any born citizen may aspire to occupy the
highest office in the gift of the nation is proof of this, and the
Mahâtmas who guard the truth through the ages while nations are
decaying, assert that the reaction is sure to come in a relapse into the
worst forms of anarchy. The only way to prevent such a relapse is for
men to really practice the Universal Brotherhood they are willing to
accept with the tongue. These exalted beings further say that all men
are--as a scientific and dynamic fact--united, whether they admit it or
not; and that each nation suffers, on the moral as well as the physical
plane, from the faults of all other nations, and receives benefit from
the others also even against its will. This is due to the existence of
an imponderable, tenuous medium which interpenetrates the entire globe,
and in which all the acts and thoughts of every man are felt and
impressed, to be afterward reflected again. Hence, say the Adepts, the
thoughts or the doctrines and beliefs of men are of the higher
importance, because those that prevail among people of a low character
are just as much and as easily reflected upon the earth as are the
thoughts and beliefs of persons occupying a higher plane of culture.
This is a most important tenet, if true; for, with the aid of the
discoveries just now admitted by science respecting hypnotism, we are at
once able to see that an enormous hypnotizing machine is about. As this
tenuous medium--called by the men of the East "Akàsa" and by the
mediæval philosophers the "Astral Light"--is entirely beyond our
control, we are at the mercy of the pictures made in it and reflected
upon us.
If to this we add the wonderfully interesting doctrine of Reïncarnation,
remembering also that the images made in the Astral Light persist for
centuries, it is at once seen that upon returning again to earth-life we
are affected for good or evil by the conduct, the doctrine and the
aspirations of preceding nations and men. Returning here now, for
instance, we are moved, without our knowledge, by the impressions made
in the Astral Light at the time when the Indians, the Spaniards and the
harsh Puritans lived upon the earth. The words of the immortal
Shakspere--
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones,
receive a striking exemplification under this doctrine. For, as the evil
thoughts and deeds are the more material and therefore more firmly
impacted into the Astral Light, while the good, being spiritual, easily
fade out, we are in effect at the mercy of the evil done. And the Adepts
assert that Shakspere was, unconsciously to himself, inspired by one of
their own number. I shall refer again to this branch of the subject. The
scheme of evolution put forth by these beings and their disciples is so
broad, deep and far-reaching as to stagger the ordinary mind. It takes
in with ease periods of years running up into trillions and
quadrillions. It claims that man has been on earth for millions of years
more than science yet is willing to admit. It is not bound by the narrow
scheme of biblical chronologists, nor startled by the magnificent age of
civilizations which disappeared long ago. The keepers of this doctrine
say that they and their predecessors lived in those older times, and
have preserved not only the memory of them, but also complete records.
These records, moreover, are not merely on perishable paper and palm
leaf, but on imperishable stone. They point to such remains as the
statues twenty-seven feet high found on Easter Island; to rows of
gigantic statues in Asia, that by their varying heights show the gradual
diminution of human stature, which kept pace with other degenerations;
and, to crown all, they say that they possess to-day in the East the
immense and well guarded collections of records of all sorts. Not only
are these records said to relate to the physical history of man, but
also to his astral and spiritual evolution.
Before closing this paper, I can only indicate one of their basic
doctrines in the scheme of evolution. That is, that the evolution of the
inner, astral form of man came first in order, and continued for an
immense number of years before his physical structure was built up
around it. This, with other portions of the doctrine, is vital and will
aid much in an understanding of the complex questions presented to us
by the history of the human race, both that which is known and that
which is still resting on conjecture.
IV.
The records to which in my last paper I referred, as having been kept by
the Adepts and now in the possession of their present representatives
and successors--Adepts also--relate not only to the birth of planets in
this solar system, but also to the evolution and development of man,
through the various kingdoms of nature, until he reaches the most
perfect condition which can be imagined. The evolution of the human
being includes not only the genesis of his mortal frame, but, as well,
the history of the inner man, whom they are accustomed to call the real
one.
This, then, brings us to a very interesting claim put forward for the
Wisdom Religion, that it pretends to throw light not only upon man's
emotions and mental faculties, but also upon his pre-natal and
post-mortem states, both of which are of the highest interest and
importance. Such questions as, "Where have I come from?" and, "What
shall be my condition after death?" trouble and confuse the minds of all
men, ignorant or cultured. Priests and thinkers have, from time to time,
formulated theories, more or less absurd, as to those pre-natal and
post-mortem states, while the Science of to-day laughs in derision at
the idea of making any inquiry into the matter whatever. Theologians
have offered explanations, all of which relate only to what they suppose
will happen to us after death, leaving entirely out of view and wholly
unanswered the natural question, "What were we before we were born
here?" And, taking them on their own ground, they are in a most
illogical position, because, having once postulated immortality for the
soul--the real man--they cannot deny immortality in either direction.
If man is immortal, that immortality could never have had a beginning,
or else it would have an end. Hence their only escape from the dilemma
is to declare that each soul is a special creation. But this doctrine of
a special creation for each soul born upon the earth, is not dwelt upon
or expounded by the priests, inasmuch as it is deemed better to keep it
discreetly in the background.
The Wisdom Religion, on the other hand, remains logical from beginning
to end. It declares that man is a spiritual being, and allows of no
break in the chain of anything once declared immortal. The Ego of each
man is immortal; "always was existent, always will be, and never can be
nonexistent;" appearing now and again, and reäppearing, clothed in
bodies on each occasion different, it only appears to be mortal; it
always remains the substratum and support for the personality acting
upon the stage of life. And in those appearances as mortal, the
questions mooted above--as to the pre-natal and post-mortem states--are
of vital interest, because knowledge or ignorance concerning them alters
man's thought and action while an actor on the stage, and it is
necessary for him to know in order that he may so live as to aid in the
grand upward sweep of the evolutionary wave.
Now the Adepts have for ages pursued scientific experimentation and
investigation upon those lines. Seers themselves of the highest order,
they have recorded not only their own actual experiences beyond the veil
of matter, on both sides, but have collected, compared, analyzed and
preserved the records of experiences of the same sort by hundreds of
thousands of lesser seers, their own disciples; and this process has
been going on from time immemorial. Let Science laugh as it may, the
Adepts are the only true scientists, for they take into account every
factor in the question, whereas Science is limited by brain-power, by
circumstance, by imperfection of instruments, and by a total inability
to perceive anything deeper than the mere phenomena presented by matter.
The records of the visions and experiences of the greater and lesser
seers, through the ages, are extant to-day. Of their mass, nothing has
been accepted except that which has been checked and verified by
millions of independent observations; and therefore the Adepts stand in
the position of those who possess actual experimental knowledge of what
precedes the birth of the Ego in a human form, and what succeeds when
the "mortal coil" is cast away.
This recording of experiences still goes on; for the infinity of the
changes of Nature in its evolution permits of no stoppage, no "last
word," no final declaration. As the earth sweeps around the sun, it not
only passes through new places in its orbit, but, dragged as it is by
the sun through his greater orbit, involving millions of millions of
years, it must in that larger circle enter upon new fields in space and
unprecedented conditions. Hence the Adepts go farther yet and state
that, as the phenomena presented by matter to-day are different from
those presented a million years ago, so matter will in another million
of years show different phenomena still. Indeed, if we could translate
our sight to that time, far back in the past of our globe, we could see
conditions and phenomena of the material world so different from those
now surrounding us that it would be almost impossible to believe we had
ever been in such a state as that then prevailing. And the changes
toward the conditions that will prevail at a point equally remote in
advance of us, in time, and which will be not less than those that have
occurred, are in progress now. Nothing in the material world endures
absolutely unchanged in itself or its conditions, even for the smallest
conceivable portion of time. All that _is_, is forever in process of
_becoming_ something else. This is not mere transcendentalism, but is
an old established doctrine called, in the East, "the doctrine of the
constant, eternal change of atoms from one state into another."
V.
The ancient doctrine of the constant, eternal change of every atom from
state to state, is founded upon, or rather grows out of, another which
postulates that there is no such thing as dead matter. At every
conceivable point in the universe there are lives; nowhere can be found
a spot that is dead; and each life is forever hastening onward to higher
evolution. To admit this, we must of course grant that matter is never
perceived by the eye or through any instrument. It is but the phenomena
of matter that we recognize with the senses, and hence, say the sages,
the thing denominated "matter" by us is an illusion. Even the protoplasm
of the schools is not the original matter; it is simply another of the
phenomena. This first original matter is called by Paracelsus and others
primordial matter, the nearest approach to which in the Eastern school
is found in the Sanskrit word _mulaprakriti_. This is the root of
matter, invisible, not to be weighed, or measured, or tested with any
instrument of human invention. And yet it is the only real matter
underlying all the phenomena to which we erroneously give its name. But
even it is not dead, but full of the lives first referred to.
Now, bearing this in mind, we consider the vast solar system, yet vast
only when not compared with the still greater aggregation of stars and
planets around it. The great sidereal year covered by the sun in going
through the twelve signs of the zodiac includes over 25,000 mortal years
of 365 days each. While this immense circuit is being traversed, the sun
drags the whole solar system with him around his own tremendous orbit,
and we may imagine--for there are no observations on the point--that,
while the 25,000 years of travel around the zodiac have been passing,
the solar system as a whole has advanced along the sun's own orbit only
a little distance. But after millions of years shall have been consumed
in these progresses, the sun must bring his train of planets to stellar
space where they have never been before; here other conditions and
combinations of matter may very well obtain--conditions and states of
which our scientists have never heard, of which there never has been
recorded one single phenomenon; and the difference between planetary
conditions then and now will be so great that no resemblance shall be
observed.
This is a branch of cyclic law with which the Eastern sages are
perfectly familiar. They have inquired into it, recorded their
observations, and preserved them. Having watched the uncountable lives
during cycles upon cycles past, and seen their behavior under different
conditions in other stellar spaces long ago left behind, they have some
basis upon which to draw conclusions as to what will be the state of
things in ages yet to come.
This brings us to an interesting theory offered by Theosophy respecting
life itself as exhibited by man, his death and sleep. It relates also to
what is generally called "fatigue." The most usual explanation for the
phenomenon of sleep is that the body becomes tired and more or less
depleted of its vitality and then seeks repose. This, says Theosophy, is
just the opposite of the truth, for, instead of having suffered a loss
of vitality, the body, at the conclusion of the day, has more life in it
than when it waked. During the waking state the life-waves rush into the
body with greater intensity every hour, and, we being unable to resist
them any longer than the period usually observed, they overpower us and
we fall asleep. While sleeping, the life waves adjust themselves to the
molecules of the body; and when the equilibrium is complete we again
wake to continue the contest with life. If this periodical adjustment
did not occur, the life current would destroy us. Any derangement of the
body that tends to inhibit this adjustment is a cause of sleeplessness,
and perhaps death. Finally, death of the body is due to the inequality
of the contest with the life force; it at last overcomes us, and we are
compelled to sink into the grave. Disease, the common property of the
human race, only reduces the power of the body to adjust and resist.
Children, say the Adepts, sleep more than adults, and need earlier
repose, because the bodily machine, being young and tender, is easily
overcome by life and made to sleep.
Of course, in so short an article, I cannot elaborate this theory; but,
although not probably acceptable now to Science, it will be one day
accepted as true. As it is beginning to be thought that electricity is
all-pervading, so, perhaps, ere long it will be agreed that life is
universal even in what we are used to calling dead matter.
As, however, it is plain to any observant mind that there seems to be
more or less intelligence in the operations of this life energy, we
naturally approach another interesting Theosophical doctrine as to the
beings and hierarchies directing this energy.
VI.
While studying these ancient ideas, we may as well prepare ourselves to
have them clash with many long-accepted views. But since Science has
very little save conjecture to offer when it attempts to solve the great
problems of genesis and cosmo-genesis, and, in the act of denying old
dogmas, almost always starts with a hypothesis, the Theosophist may feel
safe. In important matters, such as the heat of the sun or the history
of the moon there is no agreement between scientists or astronomers.
Newton, Pouillet, Zöllner, Secchi, Fizeau, Waterston, Rosetti, and
others all differ about the sun, the divergence between their estimates
of its heat being as high as 8,998,600 degrees.
If we find the Adepts stating that the moon is not a mass thrown off
from the earth in cooling, but, on the contrary, is the progenitor of
this globe, we need not fear the jeers of a Science that is as uncertain
and unsafe in many things as it is positive.
Had I to deal only with those learned men of the schools who abide by
the last utterance from the mouths of the leaders of Science, I should
never attempt the task of speaking of the beings and hierarchies who
guide the lives of which I wrote in my last. My pen would drop from a
hand paralyzed by negations. But the spiritual beliefs of the common
people will still be in vogue when the learned materialist has passed
away. The great Immanuel Kant said: "I confess I am much disposed to
assert the existence of immaterial natures in the world, and to place my
own soul in the class of these beings. It will hereafter, I know not
where nor when, yet be proved that the human soul stands, even in this
life, in indissoluble connection with all immaterial natures in the
spirit world, that it reciprocally acts upon these, and receives
impressions from them." And the greater number of men think so also.
That there are hierarchies ruling in the universe is not a new idea. It
can be easily found to-day in the Christian Church. The early fathers
taught it, St. Paul spoke of it, and the Roman Catholic Church has it
clearly now in the Book of Ritual of the Spirits of the Stars. The four
archangels who guard the four cardinal points represent the groups of
rulers in the ancient system, or the heads of each group. In that system
the rulers are named Dhyan Chôhans. Although the Theosophical philosophy
does not postulate a personal God, whether extra- or intra-cosmic, it
cannot admit that Nature is left unaided in her work, but asserts that
the Dhyan Chôhans aid her, and are constantly occupied in directing the
all-pervading life in its evolutionary movement. Mme. Blavatsky,
speaking on this subject in her _Secret Doctrine_, quotes from the old
_Book of Dzyan_ thus:
"An army of the Sons of Light stands at each angle, the Lipika in the
middle wheel."
The four angles are the four quarters, and the "middle wheel" is the
center of space; and that center is everywhere, because as space is
illimitable, the center of it must be wherever the cognizing
consciousness is. And the same author, using the _Disciple's Catechism_,
writes:
"What is it that ever is? Space, the Anupadaka. What is it that ever
was? The germ in the Root. What is it that is ever coming and going? The
great Breath. Then there are three eternals? No, the three are one. That
which ever is is one; that which ever was is one; that which is ever
being and becoming is also one; and this is space."
In this parentless and eternal space is the wheel in the center where
the Lipika are, of whom I cannot speak; at the four angles are the Dhyan
Chôhans, and doing their will among men on this earth are the
Adepts--the Mahâtmas. The harmony of the spheres is the voice of the
Law, and that voice is obeyed alike by the Dhyan Chôhan and the
Mahâtma--on their part with willingness, because they are the law; on
the part of men and creatures because they are bound by the adamantine
chains of the law which they do not understand.
When I said that nothing could be spoken about the Lipika, I meant that,
because of their mysterious nature and incomprehensible powers, it is
not possible to know enough to say anything with either sense or
certainty. But of the Dhyan Chôhans and the Adepts we may know
something, and are often given, as it were, tangible proof of their
existence. For the Adepts are living men, using bodies similar to ours;
they are scattered all over the earth in all nations; they know each
other, but not according to mere forms and Masonic signs of recognition,
unless we call natural, physical, and astral signs Masonic. They have
times when they meet together and are presided over by some among their
number who are more advanced in knowledge and power than the rest; and
these higher Adepts again have their communications, at which that One
who presides is the highest; from these latter begins the communication
with the Dhyan Chôhans. All in their several degrees do that work which
pertains to their degree, and although only to the Highest can be
ascribed any governance or guidance of nature and mankind, yet the very
least occupies an important place in the whole scheme. Freemasons and
the numerous mock-Rosicrucians of the day will probably not unanimously
accept this view, inasmuch as these Adepts have not submitted to their
ritual; but that there has always been a widespread--and, if you please,
a sometimes sneaking--belief in such beings and orders, is not difficult
to discern or prove.
VII.
An old argument for the existence of an extra-cosmic--a personal--God,
is this very intelligence that appears to pervade nature, from which the
conclusion is drawn that there is a being who is the intelligent
director. But Theosophy does not admit any such God, for he is neither
necessary nor possible. There are too many evidences of implacability in
the operations of nature for us to be able for very long to cherish the
notion of a personal God. We see that storms will rage and overwhelm
good and bad together; that earthquakes have no respect for age, sex or
rank, and that wherever a natural law has to act it will do so
regardless of human pain or despair.
The Wisdom Religion in postulating hierarchies such as those I have
previously referred to, does not thereby outline a personal God. The
difference between the personal God--say Jehovah for one--and the Lipika
with the hosts of the Dhyan Chôhans, is very great. Law and order, good
sense, decency and progress are all subservient to Jehovah, sometimes
disappearing altogether under his beneficent sway; while in the Wisdom
Religion the Dhyan Chôhans can only follow the immutable laws eternally
traced in the Universal Mind, and this they do intelligently, because
they are in fact men become gods. As these eternal laws are
far-reaching, and as Nature herself is blind, the hierarchies--the hosts
at the angles--have to guide the evolutionary progress of matter.
In order to grasp the doctrine better, let us take one period of
manifestation such as that we are now in. This began millions of
millions of years ago, succeeding a vast period of darkness or
hibernation. It is called Chaos in the Christian scheme. And preceding
that period of sleep there were eternally other periods of activity or
manifestation. Now, in those prior periods of energy and action the same
evolutionary progress went on, from and out of which came great
beings--men perfected and become what to us are gods, who had aided in
countless evolutions in the eternal past. These became Dhyan Chôhans and
took part in all succeeding evolutions. Such is the great goal for a
human soul to strive after. Before it the paltry and impossible rewards
of the Christian heaven turn to dross.
The mistake must not be made of confining these great evolutionary
periods and the beings spoken of, to our miserable earth. We are only in
the chain. There are other systems, other spaces where energy,
knowledge and power are exercised. In the mysterious Milky-Way there are
spots vast in size and incomprehensibly distant, where there is room for
many such systems as ours; and even while we now watch the assemblage of
stars, there is some spot among them where the vast night of death is
spreading remorselessly over a once fair system.
Now these beings, under the sway of the law as they are, seem perhaps to
be sometimes implacable. Occasions are met where to mortal judgment it
would seem to be wise or just to save a city from destruction, or a
nation from decay, or a race from total extinction. But if such a fate
is the natural result of actions performed or a necessary step in the
cyclic sweep, it cannot be averted. As one of the Masters of this noble
science has written:
"We never pretended to be able to draw nations in the mass to this or
that crisis in spite of the _general drift of the world's cosmic
relations_. The cycles must run their rounds. Periods of mental and
moral light and darkness succeed each other as day does night. The major
and minor yugas must be accomplished _according to the established order
of things_. And we, borne along on the mighty tide, can only modify and
direct some of its minor currents. If we had the powers of the imaginary
personal God, and the immutable laws were but toys to play with, then,
indeed, might we have created conditions that would have turned this
earth into an Arcadia for lofty souls."
And so in individual cases--even among those who are in direct relations
with some Adept--the law cannot be infringed. Karma demands that such
and such a thing should happen to the individual, and the greatest God
or the smallest Adept cannot lift a finger to prevent it. A nation may
have heaped up against its account as a nation a vast amount of bad
Karma. Its fate is sure, and although it may have noble units in it,
great souls even who are Adepts themselves, nothing can save it, and it
will "go out like a torch dipped in water."
Such was the end of ancient Egypt, of whose former glory no man of this
day knows aught. Although to us she appears in the historical sky as a
full-risen sun, she yet had her period of growth, when mighty Adepts sat
upon the throne and guided the people. She gradually reached a high
point of power and then her people grew material; the Adepts retired;
pretended Adepts took their place, and gradually her glory waned until
at last the light of Egypt became darkness. The same story was repeated
in Chaldea and Assyria and also upon the surface of our own America.
Here a great, a glorious civilization once flourished, only to disappear
as the others did; and that a grand development of civilization is
beginning here again is one of the operations of the just and perfect
law of Karma to the eye of the Theosophist, but one of the mysterious
workings of an irresponsible providence to those who believe in a
personal God who giveth the land of other men to the good Christian. The
development of the American nation has a mysterious but potent
connection with the wonderful past of the Atlanteans, and is one of
those great stories outlined in the book of fate by the Lipika to whom I
referred last week.
VIII.
Among the Adepts the rise and fall of nations and civilizations are
subjects which are studied under the great cyclic movements. They hold
that there is an indissoluble connection between man and every event
that takes place on this globe, not only the ordinary changes in
politics and social life, but all the happenings in the mineral,
vegetable and animal kingdoms. The changes in the seasons are for and
through man; the great upheavals of continents, the movements of immense
glaciers, the terrific eruptions of volcanoes, or the sudden
overflowings of great rivers, are all for and through man, whether he be
conscious of it or present or absent. And they tell of great changes in
the inclination of the axis of the earth, past and to come, all due to
man.
This doctrine is incomprehensible to the Western nineteenth century, for
it is hidden from observation, opposed to tradition and contradicted by
education. But the Theosophist who has passed beyond the elementary
stages knows that it is true nevertheless. "What," says the worshipper
of Science, "has man got to do with the Charleston earthquake, or with
the showers of cosmic dust that invade our atmosphere? Nothing."
But the Adept, standing on the immeasurable height where centuries lie
under his glance, sees the great cycles and the lesser ones rolling
onward, influenced by man and working out their changes for his
punishment, reward, experience and development.
It is not necessary now to try to make it clear how the thoughts and
deeds of men effect any changes in material things; that I will lay down
for the present as a dogma, if you please, to be made clear later on.
The great subject of cycles has been touched upon, and brings us close
to a most fascinating statement made by the Theosophical Adepts. It is
this, that the cycles in their movement are bringing up to the surface
now, in the United States and America generally, not only a great glory
of civilization which was forgotten eleven thousand or more years ago,
but also the very men, the monads--the egos, as they call them--who were
concerned so many ages since in developing and bringing it to its final
lustre. In fact, we of the nineteenth century, hearing of new
discoveries and inventions every day, and dreaming of great advances in
all arts and sciences, are the same individuals who inhabited bodies
among the powerful and brilliant as well as wicked, Atlanteans, whose
name is forever set immortal in the Atlantic Ocean. The Europeans are
also Atlantean monads; but the flower, so to speak, of this revival or
resurrection, is and is to be on the American continent. I will not say
the United States, for mayhap, when the sun of our power has risen
again, there may be no United States for it to rise upon.
Of course, in order to be able to accept in any degree this theory, it
is essential that one should believe in the twin Theosophical doctrines
of Karma and Reïncarnation. To me it seems quite plain. I can almost see
the Atlanteans in these citizens of America, sleepy, and not well aware
who they are, but yet full of the Atlantean ideas, which are only
prevented from full and clear expression by the inherited bodily and
mental environment which cramps and binds the mighty man within. This
again is Nemesis-Karma that punishes us by means of these galling
limitations, penning up our power and for the time frustrating our
ambition. It is because, when we were in Atlantean bodies, we did
wickedly, not the mere sordid wicked things of this day, but high deeds
of evil such as by St. Paul were attributed to unknown spiritual beings
in high places. We degraded spiritual things and turned mighty powers
over nature to base uses; we did _in excelsis_ that which is hinted at
now in the glorification of wealth, of material goods, of the individual
over the spiritual and above the great Man--Humanity. This has now its
compensation in our present inability to attain what we want or to
remove from among us the grinding-stones of poverty. We are, as yet,
only preparers, much as we may exalt our plainly crude American
development.
Herein lies the very gist of the cycle's meaning. It is a preparatory
cycle with much of necessary destruction in it; for, before
construction, we must have some disintegration. We are preparing here in
America a new race which will exhibit the perfection of the glories
that I said were being slowly brought to the surface from the long
forgotten past. This is why the Americas are seen to be in a perpetual
ferment. It is the seething and bubbling of the older races in the
refining-pot, and the slow coming up of the material for the new race.
Here, and nowhere else, are to be found men and women of every race
living together, being governed together, attacking nature and the
problems of life together, and bringing forth children who combine, each
one, two races. This process will go on until in the course of many
generations there will be produced on the American continents an
entirely new race; new bodies; new orders of intellect; new powers of
the mind; curious and unheard-of psychic powers, as well as
extraordinary physical ones; with new senses and extensions of present
senses now unforeseen. When this new sort of body and mind are
generated--then other monads, or our own again, will animate them and
paint upon the screen of time the pictures of 100,000 years ago.
IX.
In dealing with these doctrines one is compelled now and then to greatly
extend the scope and meaning of many English words. The word "race" is
one of these. In the Theosophical scheme, as given out by the sages of
the East, seven great races are spoken of. Each one of these includes
all the different so-called races of our modern ethnology. Hence the
necessity for having seven great root-races, sub-races, family races,
and countless offshoot races. The root-race sends off sub-races, and
these divide into family groups; all, however, being included in the
great root-race then undergoing development.
The appearance of these great root-races is always just when the world's
development permits. When the globe was forming, the first root-race was
more or less ethereal and had no such body as we now inhabit. The
cosmic environment became more dense and the second race appeared, soon
after which the first wholly disappeared. Then the third came on the
scene, after an immense lapse of time, during which the second had been
developing the bodies needed for the third. At the coming of the fourth
root-race it is said that the present human form was evolved, although
gigantic and in some respects different from our own. It is from this
point--the fourth race--that the Theosophical system begins to speak of
man as such.
The old book quoted by Mme. Blavatsky has it in this wise:
"Thus two by two on the seven zones the third race gave birth to the
fourth;" and,
"The first race on every zone was moon-colored; the second, yellow, like
gold; the third, red; the fourth, brown, which became black with sin."
Topinard, in his _Anthropology_, gives support to this, as he says that
there are three fundamental colors in the human organism--red, yellow
and black. The brown race, which became black with sin, refers to the
Atlantean sorcerer race of which I spoke in my last; its awfully evil
practices, both mental and physical, having produced a change in the
color of the skin.
The evolution of these seven great races covers many millions of years,
and it must not be forgotten that when the new race is fully evolved the
preceding race disappears, as the monads in it have been gradually
reïncarnated in the bodies of the new race. The present root-race to
which we belong, no matter what the sub-race or family we may be in, is
the fifth. It became a separate, distinct and completely-defined race
about one million years ago, and has yet many more years to serve before
the sixth will be ushered in. This fifth race includes also all the
nations in Europe, as they together form a family race and are not to
be divided off from each other.
Now, the process of forming the foundation, or great spinal column, for
that race which is to usher in the sixth, and which I said is now going
on in the Americas, is a slow process for us. Obliged as we are by our
inability to judge or to count except by relativity, the gradual coming
together of nations and the fusion of their offspring over and over
again so as to bring forth something new in the human line, is so
gradual as to seem almost without progress. But this change and
evolution go on nevertheless, and a very careful observer can see
evidences of it. One fact deserves attention. It is the inventive
faculty displayed by Americans. This is not accorded much force by our
scientists, but the Occultist sees in it an evidence that the brains of
these inventors are more open to influences and pictures from the astral
world than are the brains of the older nations. Reports have been
brought to me by competent persons of children, boys and girls, who were
born with most abnormal faculties of speech, or memory or otherwise, and
some such cases I have seen myself. All of these occur in America, and
many of them in the West. There is more nervousness here than in the
older nations. This is accounted for by the hurry and rush of our
civilization; but such an explanation really explains nothing, because
the question yet remains, "Why is there such hurry and push and change
in the United States?" Such ordinary arguments go in a circle, since
they leave out of sight the fundamental reason, so familiar to the
Theosophist, that it is human evolution going on right before our eyes
in accordance with cyclic laws.
The Theosophical Adepts believe in evolution, but not that sort which
claims an ape as our ancestor. Their great and comprehensive system is
quite able to account for rudimentary muscles and traces of organs
found complete only in the animal kingdom without having to call a
pithecoid ape our father, for they show the gradual process of building
the temple for the use of the divine Ego, proceeding ceaselessly, and in
silence, through ages upon ages, winding in and out among all the forms
in nature in every kingdom, from the mineral up to the highest. This is
the real explanation of the old Jewish, Masonic and archaic saying that
the temple of the Lord is not made with hands and that no sound of
building is heard in it.
X.
It is well now to say, more definitely than I have as yet, a few words
of the two classes of beings, one of which has been much spoken of in
Theosophical literature, and also by those on the outside who write of
the subject either in seriousness or in ridicule. These two classes of
exalted personages are the Mahâtmas and Nirmânakâyas.
In respect to the Mahâtmas, a great many wrong notions have currency,
not only with the public, but as well with Theosophists in all parts of
the world.
In the early days of the Theosophical Society the name Mahâtma was not
in use here, but the title then was "Brothers." This referred to the
fact that they were a band of men who belonged to a brotherhood in the
East. The most wonderful powers and, at times, the most extraordinary
motives were attributed to them by those who believed in their
existence.