Part II

Lectures to Theosophical Students

Lecture I

The Sixth Sub-Race

I have chosen for the subject of my lecture to-night one which I think is

important—the Sixth Sub-Race. Both outside and inside the Theosophical

Society a certain amount of good-humoured ridicule has been cast on

the way in which Theosophists talk about Races, Sub-Races, Root-Races,

Cycles, Rounds, and so on, some people condemning such talk as

exceedingly unpractical. Really that is not so. When our great teacher H.

P. Blavatsky traced for us _The Secret Doctrine_, that wonderful panorama

of the past evolution of the Races on our globe, she was not only giving

us the story of the past, but also presenting us with the key to the

future. And I propose to-night to try to show you how it is possible for

the Theosophist who has carefully studied the principles underlying past

evolution, to apply these to the evolution of the future, and so learn

how he may best co-operate with the divine plan which is slowly working

itself out. The advantage of Theosophical teaching is that it gives us a

definite scheme into which the evolution of mankind, stage by stage, fits

without difficulty and without blunder.

Now, if we think for a moment of what we call the larger and the smaller

cycles, we can realise that the large scheme of the Races, the smaller

scheme of the sub-races, and the evolution of man himself, all go along

parallel lines. Understanding one, we can understand all. I will pause

on the evolution of the Races, in order to remind you of the repetition,

within the limit of each race, of the smaller sub-races. We need not go

very far back. It will be enough to consider the Race that preceded our

own, the great fourth Root Race, and our own. The fourth Root Race was

the Atlantean. I only allude to it in order to remind you that from the

midst of that race the Fifth Race, in its turn, arose. Now the choosing

out of a new Race is the task of a particular Personage in the Occult

Hierarchy, whose only name, so far as we know it, is that which has been

borrowed from the Hindū, the Manu, the Man, or the Thinker, the ideal or

typical man. The Manu forms in His own mind, after the master conception

of the Planetary Logos, the plan of the man that is to be, which He will

gradually realise along the lines of natural evolution. These laws of

evolution are used by the Manu with scientific knowledge, and therefore

with certainty. In the same way that a scientific breeder, dealing with

the animal kingdom, can breed towards a desired type, so, on a higher

plane, does the Manu of the Race mould by the same laws of evolution

the physical form of the Race He desires to evolve. And always the type

is formed in the matter of the higher planes before it is reproduced in

the matter of the lower, the mental and emotional characteristics being

first conceived, and then a physical body which will best express them.

The Manu chooses the type according to the particular qualities which

are to be evolved, which are marked out for Him by the basic plan of

the constitution of man himself. Looking at your own nature, you have

certain distinct departments: the physical body; the astral body; the

mental body; the body of the higher mind, the causal; and then that

of the pure, compassionate Reason, the buddhic. Now if we take those

three types, the emotional, mental, and buddhic, we have the three with

which we are immediately concerned. Desire, or emotion, was the great

characteristic of the fourth Race. The mind was the slave of the lower

feelings; that race had as its motive power the development of the desire

nature. But in the sub-races of the fourth Race the other principles had

also to be evolved, but to a very poor degree; and as time went on, the

fifth sub-race of that began to develop the lower mind. Out of that fifth

sub-race the selection of the Manu of the time was made, and He chose out

certain families that He thought He could shape into the required type.

The first choice was not successful, the people proving too stiff-necked

and too little plastic to be moulded into the Race that was to be;

but it left behind it, in the history of the world, that marvellously

interesting people, the Hebrew, and that idea of being a “chosen people”

survives even to this day. The second and successful selection had as its

issue our own fifth Root Race. Now, side by side with the evolution of

the sub-race, came the evolution of the Root Race which was to succeed,

and that is why I have referred to the past. As the fifth sub-race of the

fourth Root Race was developed, the beginnings of the fifth Root Race,

the great Aryan Race, appeared one million years ago.

We can leave our fourth Race with its sub-races, having only regarded it

for the purpose of throwing light on the present. The evolution of the

fifth Race went on, and sub-race after sub-race was born. The earliest

of all settled in Northern India, and gradually conquered that great

peninsula, the first sub-race of the stock of the Aryans. There came

out after that the second sub-race, which wandered westward, as all the

later sub-races did; then came the third, the Irānian; then the fourth,

the Keltic; and the fifth, the Teutonic. So far we have come in the

history of the sub-races of our own fifth Root Race. Now, notice that

these overlap each other as they develop. The first of these sub-races is

still a mighty power in Asia, showing signs that its day is by no means

done, and that the Indians, if they have behind them a civilisation of

hundreds of thousands of years, have also before them a mighty future,

the first signs of which are being seen in the India of to-day. Signs,

some encouraging, some disturbing for a time, are being seen on every

hand that new life is being poured into its veins, signs of the birth of

a new Indian nation. Of the second sub-race we have not any nation at

the present time. Along the Mediterranean Basin it has left many traces

of its civilisation, which are being unburied by our archæologists; but

so little mark, so to speak, did it leave on history that a large number

of its wonders were deemed to be legends and myths. The next sub-race,

the great Persian race, is almost outworn. The Persians of to-day have

little in common with the Irānian of the past. The chief traces of

them, in fact, are on the Indian continent, the Parsīs, a race which has

dwindled and is gradually passing away. But when we come to the fourth

sub-race, the Keltic, we see great possibilities in that still. It gave

birth to the older Greece, the country of Beauty and Philosophy. It gave

birth also to Rome, with her remarkable ruling powers. It spread over

Europe, founding one nation after another from itself, and spreading

into Ireland and Scotland, made there possibilities that have not yet

all flowered into effect. In Ireland you have a strange mingling of the

remains of the fourth Root Race with the fourth sub-race of the fifth; a

great deal of the Atlantean influence still exists, many of the tutelary

deities of Ireland, the gods of the mountains, being largely they who

mingled with Atlantean life and thought, and are still exercising their

potent influences over the younger though still ancient Keltic sub-race.

There, again, we have great possibilities of revival and of growth, for

the fourth sub-race and the sixth sub-race are necessarily interlinked.

Just as the emotional nature stretches upwards and causes sympathetic

action in the spiritual nature, so with the Races and sub-races that

represent these principles upon earth; the fourth and the sixth Races,

like the fourth and sixth sub-races, are closely intertwined. Ireland has

not been kept apart for nothing; the separation between the Kelt and the

Teuton is not without its meaning. We shall find among that Keltic people

possibilities of spiritual power, and we may look possibly for some

mighty influence to flow thence into the great Christian organisation of

Rome, who is now on the balance as to whether she is to sink down along

the line that the Papal Encyclical seems to trace for her and become

the enemy of the Spirit of the Age, or whether the Modernist party in

the Roman Church is to rise into power, purify and vivify that ancient

Communion, and make her again what she ought to be, the Church of Saints,

the type and symbol of the purest and loftiest form of Christian thought.

It may be that Ireland will co-operate also in the great purification

which I pray may come to the Roman Communion, and make its revival

possible. And that is closely connected with the sixth Root Race, and

therefore partly with the sixth sub-race.

Now, after the fourth sub-race came our own; and when we find that this

fifth sub-race, the Teutonic, is carrying on so rapidly the development

of the concrete and scientific mind, when we notice that it is beginning

its last conquest, the conquest of the air, then, if we have learned

the lesson of the past, we may learn to see the signs of the sub-race

which is to succeed it. But these sub-races overlap each other, and it

is at the moment of the zenith of the one that the next is born. Go

back to the zenith of the fourth sub-race, when the fifth was beginning

to develop, when Rome was mighty, then it was that the Goths in German

forests were beginning to be born into Europe; and to draw together into

tribes, which were to grow into nations. Quietly and silently the new

sub-race was being born while its predecessor was reaching the highest

point of the civilised world of its time. Slowly it began to develop its

own peculiarities and powers, and from that day the Teutonic sub-race

has grown stronger and stronger, more and more dominant, and, though a

small minority compared with the population of the world, is dominating

that world by the force of its scientific mind, spreading everywhere, and

making itself the very crest of the advancing wave.

But let us turn away our eyes from the dazzling glow of the present to

look for the quiet places where the birth of the future is beginning to

appear. Just because the fifth sub-race is so strong and dominant, we

look over the world for the beginnings of its successor, which shall rule

the world not by the force of the concrete mind, but by the force of the

pure and compassionate Reason, which will conquer not by power but by

love, not by competition but by co-operation, and found, therefore, an

Empire that will long endure. For it is true now as ever that “They that

take the sword shall perish by the sword,” and the Empire that is to

live will be the Empire that wins its way by love and benediction, that

is a teacher and a defender, and not only a ruler. The sixth sub-race,

the Coming Race, will be born with the sixth Root Race in it, which is

to grow so much more slowly. The coming of the sixth sub-race you may

almost begin to see around you. It is not to be born in a single place,

not to belong to a single nation, for it is the type of humanity, of the

unifying Wisdom, and out of all nations and all peoples and all tongues

it will gather together its chosen for the new type of thought which is

to be born. And what that type will be we can easily outline by thinking

of the characteristics of the buddhic principle in man. What are those

characteristics? First of all, union, and hence in the outer world

co-operation. The very essence of all action in the sixth sub-race will

be the union of many to achieve a single object, and not the dominance

of one who compels others to his will. The work of the future will not

be, “Do so-and-so and follow me,” but, “Let us advance together to a

goal that we all realise as desirable of attainment.” If you are looking

for the sign of anyone who is beginning to show the marks of that sixth

sub-race to-day, you will find it in those who lead by love, sympathy,

and comprehension, and not by dominance of an imperious will; for the

qualities of that sub-race will be found scattered here and there through

the sub-race which it is gradually to supplant. You may trace out the

coming of the sixth sub-race in the scattered people found in our fifth

sub-race, in whom tenderness is the mark of power. Anyone who desires to

take part in the building of that race needs to develop now the power

to work with others rather than against them, and so, by a continual

common effort, to replace the spirit of antagonism and competition. It

is a synthesising spirit which we shall find in the forerunners of our

sixth sub-race—those who are able to unite diversity of opinion and of

character, who are able to gather round them the most unlike elements

and blend them into a common whole, who have that capacity for taking

into themselves diversities and sending out again unities, and utilising

the most different capacities, finding each its place, and welding all

together into a strong whole. That is one of the characteristics which

marks the type of being out of whom this sixth sub-race will gradually

develop. A strongly marked characteristic will be compassion. That

virtue is comparatively rare in the energetic, strongly individualised

West. Compassion is that quality which is at once affected by the

presence of weakness, answering to it with patience, with tenderness,

and with protection. You may notice how very often amongst ourselves,

taking the ordinary fifth sub-race type, the presence of weakness is

provocative. It does not call out compassion, but impatience—very

characteristic of the fifth sub-race. Quick to understand and grasp

a fact, it is impatient with the weakness and mental dulness which

cannot easily appreciate the differences which seem to it so clear.

The typical fifth sub-race civilisation is a civilisation that sees in

weakness a field to exploit, a thing to enslave, something to trample

under foot, in order to rise on it, and not to help to exist for itself.

“Inevitable,” you say, “in a bustling civilisation like this, that the

weak should go to the wall.” I do not deny that it has been inevitable

in the development of the strong individualism of the present. That

individualism is a priceless result, cheaply bought even by the suffering

it has caused. Without that strong individualism you would not have the

foundation on which the great co-operative civilisation could be built.

For you cannot synthesise weaknesses, and it was necessary to make the

strong and patient individuality in order that you might have something

to blend together into a harmony in the future that is yet to be born.

It is a very shortsighted view of human nature which sees in the growth

of a particular quality a thing which is wholly undesirable; for there

is nothing which is wholly undesirable in the evolution which is guided

by perfect Wisdom and perfect Love. The most unlovely product of the

fifth sub-race civilisation will be one of the bricks that will be built

into the foundation of the sixth sub-race and of the sixth Root Race.

For out of the strong individuality the strong virtues can be built,

and compassion is a virtue of the strong, and not of the weak. The

feeble, sentimental sympathy that comes with the poor and undeveloped

nature is not compassion. It has no power of healing in it, and no power

of protection. The person who, seeing a suffering or wrong, or even

a physical accident, goes into hysterics over it, is not the strong

helper who heals and protects. It is not the skilful nurse who goes into

hysterics over the agony of the patient in pain, leaving that patient

to suffer while she is having the cheap luxury of sentimental tears. It

is only out of the strong natures you can build up real compassion. The

compassion which does not help is useless, and help can only be given

where knowledge guides feeling, and understanding shapes the remedy.

Hence out of these strong individualities, when their object has been

changed and the greater Self has taken the place of the smaller self, out

of those the sixth sub-race, which has pure Reason for its dominating

principle, will gradually appear. When in yourselves you find the germs

of compassion, and know that that is to be part of the dominating

characteristic of the coming sub-race, then cherish these germs to the

utmost. But remember that they must grow out of the germinal feeling of

sympathy into the strong power to uplift and to save; for compassion

is the great mark of the Saviour. And the Saviour is never weak, but

strong, and out of his strength grows his compassion. You can test it

for yourself. Having to deal with someone who is very slow, you are

impatient. Why? Because you are weak. You are not strong enough to make a

question clear with slow and deliberate intent, not strong enough to bear

with the stupidity and feebleness.

The next great thing you want is the sense of unity, and that you can

never have unless you are strong. There is nothing harder in the world

than to pierce through a man’s weakness and his poor qualities, which

are on the surface, and to see within the growing power of the God.

Yet that is what you have to do if you would be truly wise. You see in

the people around you to-day a large number of faults. How far do you

see behind every fault the seed of divinity which will develop into a

virtue? Has the old Platonic idea ever struck you, that there is no

strong dividing line between the vice and virtue except the quantity

which is present? The undeveloped virtue is a vice; the virtue in excess

is also a vice. The golden mean between the two is the virtue. Take a

common illustration—cowardice on one side, recklessness on the other.

Courage is the mean between the two. And so in everything excess is

vice, whether a defect or a surplusage, and the perfect equilibrium

between them alone is virtue. If you would realise that for yourselves,

wherever you see a vice in your neighbour, you will look through the

vice to the virtue that shall be, and in the greatest faults of the

present you learn to see the promise of the future. You find a person

intolerant. He thinks you are a fool because you cannot see the same way

as he. This is apt to wake in you a similar intolerance. But if you saw

through the intolerance the growing though undeveloped love of virtue,

if you saw through the intolerance the passionate desire to find the

right and do it, the passionate hatred of all that does not seem right,

you would be very patient; for presently the flower of the virtue will

blossom out and show the beauty which all the time was within. You hear

abuse, or slander, or calumny. You think it is hateful. But the person

who is doing it in his ignorance is mistaken, and that is a reason for

compassion, and not for anger. The more cruel the ignorance may make a

person, the greater the demand for the compassion, which, because it

understands all, overcomes all; nay, does not even overcome, because to

overcome would mean separation; but realises the unity between oneself

and another, and takes the weakness of another as one’s own. Now these

things are well enough known in principle. Why not practise them? Why,

in difficulties like those we have been passing through, should there

be angry words on both sides? The Theosophist who understands has no

room for anger, but only room for compassion. These are the things that

in the sixth sub-race we shall want. All these must begin to grow now,

and germinate in the heart of every one of you who would take part in

the building of that coming sub-race. And hardest of all to develop, in

a race where separateness has been the type of greatness, is the sense

of unity. This sense of unity and of compassion will be a strength and

power which is only one for service, which makes the measure of strength

the measure of responsibility and of duty. And so your character will

be marked—if you are a candidate for the sixth sub-race—will be marked

by a great sense of duty, and a great indifference to what are called

“rights.” There is a splendid word of Mazzini that “every right grows

out of a duty discharged.” That is utterly true. It is the discharge of

duty out of which inevitably the right grows, and then the right comes

not by combat, but by the inevitable necessity of nature. Because where

everyone discharges his duty, everyone enjoys his rights without conflict

and without demand. The mark of our own sub-race is the demanding of our

rights. But to those who know the law of karma there is nothing that need

be claimed, because you possess all which is yours. The karma brings

to you everything to which you have a right; and if what is called an

injustice is done you, it is only the balancing up of an ancient wrong.

You think people can hurt you. Then you do not believe in the law of

karma. It is your own hand that strikes you, and no one else’s. No one

can injure you or wrong you, no one can commit any injustice against you.

The whole of that which you suffer comes out of your past. These people

are mere puppets who come forward to claim the debt that you have to

pay. If you really believed that, then the man who demands a debt from

you would be your friend whom you would welcome; for karma’s debts are

never demanded twice. There is no error in her account. But, as a matter

of fact, hardly any of you believe it in actual life. What you profess

does not make one scrap of difference. You do not believe unless you live

what you say you believe. And if you believed it, you would know that

no slander could wrong you, no injury hurt you, and that the words of

the Christ on His way to His Passion were absolutely true: “You could do

nothing at all against me except it were given you from above.” That is

the secret of the patience of the Christs; they know the law, they live

by it and accept it. And that utter belief in Law, and therefore the

recognition of duty, that is another of the great marks of the race that

is to be. Every one of you who works that out now in life, who, in face

of an apparent wrong, is calm and receptive, who takes an injustice as

a debt that is paid and cancelled, that man or woman is a candidate for

the coming sub-race, and for the Root Race that shall be gathered out

of its midst. For the sixth Root Race is to be taken out of the sixth

sub-race that is now being born, and according to the qualities you make

in yourselves will be the effectiveness of your candidature for both.

And now look at another side of that growing sub-race. I have laid

most stress on qualities, because qualities shape form; but it is also

true that the bodies of that sub-race will show a different type from

the bodies of the present—will be far more sensitive to all the finer

vibrations of matter, built up within the finer aggregations. And side

by side with the development of the finer and more nervous physical

body will be inevitably the greater organisation of the body that comes

next, the astral, with its corresponding senses. Now notice how in the

difference between the fourth and fifth Root Races it is the nervous

system which is the greatest physical difference. Compare the nervous

system of a Chinaman, or Japanese, with the nervous system of an Aryan,

and you will see the enormous gulf that separates the two Races. A

fourth Race man will recover easily from a tremendous laceration that

would have killed a fifth Race man by mere nervous shock, and it is in

your nervous system that there will be the great difference between

the fifth and sixth Root Races, and the change will show in the sixth

sub-race. You have to solve one of the hardest physical problems; to

have a sensitive, delicate, complicated nervous system hand in hand with

complete health. You can easily strain your system into sensitiveness,

but that is different to refining it into sensitiveness, making it

responsive to the most delicate vibrations from without, but with a

perfect sanity and health. On that you can also work. By the deliberate

use of meditation for the refining of the brain you can gradually build

up—if you do not carry it to excess—an extreme sensitiveness, and at

the same time perfect balance and sanity and health. You must not think

that with fifth Race bodies you can bring about at once sixth Race

characteristics; but within the limitations imposed upon you by your

fifth Race bodies you can gradually develop an increasing sensitiveness

which will react on the astral body, and organise and develop that at

the same time. And you will find, if you will notice the people round

you, that there are being born at the present time more and more children

who show this delicate sensitiveness, hand in hand with generosity, with

tenderness, with broadness of mind, with quick and keen intelligence.

These are children who will gradually develop into the type of the new

sub-race. When they become numerous, and become fathers and mothers

in their turn, then they will gradually prepare for the birth of the

children who will belong to the sixth Root Race. Within the one the other

will be born. Hence all of you who are parents will do rightly and wisely

to study carefully the characters and types of the children whom karma

places in your hands for training. If you see in them the dawning powers

of the coming sub-race, this greater sensitiveness, this tendency to see

where many are blind, do not force it by unwise admiration, do not check

it by equally unwise unbelief. Let the children of to-day grow up among

the healthiest possible conditions, but also amongst the most refined

that you can give them. Remember that in the training of the higher

emotions beauty is an essential factor, and that without the bringing

of beauty into home and daily life the birth and growth of the coming

sub-race will be hindered. You have to war against the ugliness of the

present-day civilisation. You have to strengthen the tendencies which

are beginning to show themselves, and which make for beauty. You must

realise that beauty is an essential part of utility; and that it is the

most narrow-minded utility which thinks that beauty can be left on one

side, and that the ugliness in daily life is not a retarding factor in

the growth of the more refined sub-race that will partially take birth

amongst us. These are very practical things. They deal with your daily

life, with the home of every one of you, and the duties that fall upon

you there. You must not let your Theosophy be outside your daily life.

If Theosophy is to be the moulding force of the race that is to be born,

it must show itself out in your lives, in your thought and action. It is

the great privilege of the Theosophical Society to be the nucleus of

that coming Root Race, and amongst our members there should be some at

least ready to take part in the building of the sixth sub-race. You would

not be amongst us if you had not had in you something to draw you along

the lines of this swifter evolution. You hardly appreciate the forces of

the past which have brought you into the Society. Some come in and drop

out again. They are those who are coming in touch with it for the first

time. Others come in and stay in for years, and then drop out. They are

in a stage a little further on, and have been in it before, and will

return to it in lives to come. There are some who, gripped by it from the

beginning, never move again in their utter fealty to its ideals, whom no

personalities can throw out of it, who belong to Theosophy rather than

have Theosophy belonging to them. These are they who have been in it many

a time before, and will come into it again, to live and die in it over

and over again, life after life. Well for you who are here to-day that

in the trials of the last few years you have not allowed personalities

to blind you to principles, nor real or imaginary faults in persons

to make you shrink in your loyalty to Theosophy itself. Persons die;

principles live. Men and women pass away with their virtues and faults,

but the Theosophical Society will endure generation after generation.

Well for you if in the storm you have been able to stand firm; great the

benediction that comes upon you that in the day of trial you have not

denied your Master, in the day of suffering you have not forsaken and

fled away.

Lecture II

The Immediate Future

You may remember that when we last met I spoke to you about the sixth

sub-race, and my speech this evening turns on the same set of ideas,

although from a different standpoint, rather more special to the Society

than to the world at large. In this lecture I am concerned rather with

the view of the nature of the Theosophical Society which was held in

its earliest days, dropped a little out of sight, and is now being very

generally recalled, so that the Society should rise to the height of its

opportunity and do the work that lies before it in the immediate future.

If you will turn back to the days of H. P. Blavatsky in India you will

find she was fond of dwelling on a particular relation held by two of

the Masters, primarily to the Society, and secondarily to the coming

civilisation of which the Society is the herald. She used to refer her

Hindū friends to the statements in their own Purānas, in which it was

said that two Kings would come at the end of the Age, and that to them

would be given the kingdom of the new and opening Age. These statements,

which are often repeated, raised in the hearers the inquiry, “Who are

the two Kings?” and then she gave them a hint that the two Kings of

the Purānas were the two Masters who were the real Founders of the

Theosophical Society. That set the keen brains of the students to work.

They promptly began to try and find out what were the names of the two

Kings. One of these students found it, wrote a paper, which was published

with H. P. Blavatsky’s approval, giving the names of the two Kings—Moru

and Devāpi—two names mentioned in many of the Purānas in relation to

the past history of the Hindūs, one of them, Moru, belonging to the

Solar Dynasty, descending directly from Rāma, one of the Avatāras—that

before Shrī Krshna—a great King, said to have retired from his throne

and to have gone to Shamballa, there to wait until he was recalled to

lead the human race; the other, whose name was given as Devāpi, was the

elder brother of the famous King of the Lunar Dynasty, to which the next

Avatāra belonged. He was the elder brother of the father of Bhīshma, and

he similarly gave up his right to the crown, retired to the same place,

and the same phrase is used with regard to him, that he was to wait

there the coming age. Now H. P. Blavatsky was very much delighted at the

ingenuity of her students, and said that the outline was correct, and it

was published. H. P. Blavatsky often referred to this function of the two

Masters who were responsible for the founding of the Society. As in these

latter days that idea of the Masters as the Founders of the Society has

been challenged, I may perhaps say I have myself seen that fact stated

in the writing of the Master “M.” I have read the letter in which He

says that He and His fellow Adept “K. H.” had taken on themselves the

responsibility of a new spiritual movement in the world; that there was

some doubt in the Lodge as to the wisdom of the movement at that time;

and that they were allowed to take that step only on the condition that

they should found and work the Society through others whom they could

direct and control. Then He went on to say that He had chosen a disciple

of his own, H. P. Blavatsky, and that He had sent her to America to

look for another disciple, H. S. Olcott, and that these were the outer

founders of the Society. Hence to me and to many others who believe that

these letters are genuine the nature of the origin of the Society cannot

be a matter of doubt.

Starting, then, from that standpoint, we find certain things were said

by H. P. Blavatsky as regards the nature of the Society, and certain

things by the Masters themselves. Both are very important for us in

consideration of the immediate future. The first of these things was

indicated by hints which the more advanced students could understand—that

the inner purpose of the Society was to prepare the world for the coming

of a new Race, and to be itself the nucleus of that Race; that one of

the Teachers was to be the Manu of the race, the other the Bodhisattva.

Now those exact facts were unpublished at the time, but they passed from

one to the other among the more advanced students of that period. Coming

into the Society in 1889, this particular fact did not come within my

knowledge until 1895. After the Coulomb struggle the Society for a time

dropped away from the occult path on which H. P. Blavatsky had started

it, and these ideas fell out of sight and were forgotten except by a

limited number. In 1895 they were re-communicated to myself by my

own Master, and have since been passed on to the older members of the

Theosophical Society.

Let us pause for a moment on the statement with regard to the Manu and

Bodhisattva. Every Root Race has for its guide a great Adept, much higher

than the great ones we call the Masters, and that office filled by a

mighty Being is an office the name of which indicates simply the man, the

thinker. The connotation is the ideal, typical man, making rather the

emphasis on the article “the.” The name is peculiarly suitable, because

each of these Manus at the head of the Root Race is the type of the

Race over which he is to preside. The types of the seven Races are part

of the plan of the Planetary Logos, and that plan is worked out, stage

after stage, by the Manus of the races. It is left to the Manu Himself

how He shall proceed with His work. He takes the responsibility of the

method He chooses. When the time comes to plan out the new Race, then the

coming Manu begins to take up His office, and always in connection with

another great Brother of His own rank, who is called the Bodhisattva.

The Manu of the Fifth Race, as you know, collected His people together

out of the fifth sub-race of the Fourth Root Race, sent out messengers

to call them together, brought them together, moulded them generation

after generation, and at last evolved them to the necessary physical

type. For the work of the Manu is double: to choose out those who show

in consciousness the germs of the new stage which is to evolve in the

coming Race; then, having chosen them out and stimulated that germ within

them, to set to work to shape the necessary bodies. Now in that far-off

time our own Manu of the fifth Root Race had to choose materials out of

the fifth sub-race, and He did not choose at all those who were regarded

as the best specimens of the day. Remember that the fourth sub-race,

like the fourth Root Race as a whole, showed out very powerfully all the

passional characteristics and the psychic qualities which accompanied

them. It was the fourth sub-race, the Toltec, which made the great

Empire, with the city of the Golden Gate as metropolis, that whose armies

spread over the known world, conquering everywhere, and in that sub-race

psychic qualities naturally played a great part. You will remember that

at the earlier stage of great emotional and passional manifestation,

psychic qualities are very largely developed before the development of

the lower mind. That evolution belongs to the astral body as a whole,

working not through the astral chakras, but through the astral centres

connected with our physical senses. The fourth sub-race carried all that

to the highest point. Children in the schools were picked out for their

paths in life by clairvoyance; and in all matters of policy, statecraft,

etc., clairvoyants were consulted, so that by the exercise of the psychic

qualities they might get the best possible knowledge to be had at the

time. Now the characteristics of the fifth sub-race were the diminution

of psychic power and the germinating of the seed of mind, and these

two things necessarily went together, so that, as that fifth sub-race

developed, the people of it were rather looked down upon by the highly

evolved psychic sub-race which preceded it. These people seemed to be

inferior; they could not use the powers which put their predecessors in

the very forefront of civilisation, and made this world and the astral

world almost one and the same. The children born with very little of

these psychic powers, the men and women who showed still less of it, were

by no means thought to have within them the promise of the future. Yet

out of these the Manu chose His material, because they showed the germ of

the mind which was specially wanted as the characteristic of the coming

Race. It did not matter that it was only a germ, or that they were much

less effective than the people of the mighty civilisation in which they

appeared. He was looking to the future, and so these people were by no

means the people whom the Atlanteans of the day would have chosen if

consulted in the matter. But the great people do not always consult with

the smaller people, who are so very sure of the rightness of their own

judgment. They have an uncomfortable way of following their own ideas;

and, as the Master “M” once said of some people who remarked that He

did not come up to their idea of an Adept, “The mark of the Adept is

not kept at Simla.” And that sentence is rather a good one to remember.

So also the mark of the disciple is not kept in London or in Chicago,

but in a very different part of the world, and to that those who know

something about it try to conform. So the choice of the Manu of the day

would have been regarded as a very poor one by the wise folk of the time.

Nevertheless he carried away his people and built them up into a great

Race.

Now there is something very instructive in that when we try to understand

the method of His choice in the light of the past, and the analogy of

principles. For we can see that if the germs of a sixth sub-race—from

which, later, a sixth Root Race will be born—are to be chosen out by Him

from the materials that the fifth sub-race affords, then the nature of

His choice probably will not be that which would be made by the leaders

of that fifth sub-race itself. Theirs to carry on to the highest point

the concrete, scientific mind, which is the glory of their sub-race.

Theosophists sometimes ask: “Why do not the great men of Science come

into the Theosophical Society?” Simply because they have their own work

to do; and their work at present is not to build the future civilisation,

but to lead to its highest point the present one. In the future, when

they shall have led that civilisation to the highest point, and when

it has taken its place at the head of the world’s thought, then will

come the time for these great minds to be reborn into another race, and

build on the splendid intellectual foundation they have laid. The work

of the world is the end that the great Ones consider, and these strong

scientific minds to-day are needed by the world to carry on the present

civilisation to the highest point. How unwise it would be to take them

away from the work that no one else can do, and set them to other work

they would do badly, not having turned their energies to the particular

qualifications that are wanted for it. And so in the wise plan of the

Manu of the fifth Race, the flower of the fifth or Teutonic sub-race

is taken in order that it may be raised up to the highest point of the

mānasic civilisation, and be carried on to its zenith of splendour

of scientific knowledge. But meanwhile it is His duty to help in the

building up of the other types—still his Race is the sixth sub-race—and

so to co-operate with His successor the Manu of the sixth Root Race.

For remember the Manu of all the sub-races of a Root Race is the same.

He is the Manu of the whole Race; when the time comes for beginning the

new Root Race, then the Manu of the Race that is regnant co-operates

with the Manu of the Race which is to come. Hence He who is to be the

Manu of the sixth Root Race, the Master “M,” the Moru of the Purānas, He

has begun His work. And He has begun it in a humble and insignificant

fashion, as the world would say, by striking the keynote of Brotherhood,

and by drawing into a Society those whose hearts thrill responsive to

that note. And why? Because the higher emotion that answers to universal

Brotherhood, to love of all, without distinction of race, sex, caste,

colour, or creed—that is the emotion, that is the germ of the buddhic

principle in man, the principle of unifying, of drawing the separated

together, of blending into one separate individualities, and making them

realise the spiritual unity which overshadows and underlies them all.

Hence universal Brotherhood is the only thing which is binding on members

of the Theosophical Society. Nothing else. The Theosophical teachings

as to Karma, Reincarnation, or the Masters, are not binding on the mind

or conscience of any member. This is an important point. It is not only

because a truth is better seen by the unfettered intellect than by an

intellect on which a dogma is imposed, though that is of importance; but

because the material which can be moulded into the Coming Race is the

material that can recognise the necessity and the beauty of universal

Brotherhood, and if that be recognised, nothing else for the moment is

necessary. Hence that is the only binding principle. Hence, also, the

attempts to narrow it down, prompted by those Dark Powers who do not

desire that the Society should grow and prosper for thousands of years

to come, the attempts to put in a little restraint here and a little

obstacle there, judging for the moment, and not for the future. That is

the inner meaning of having that one thing alone our bond of union. And

so the Manu made that the keynote to attract those who would answer,

“Yes; that is the very thing I want to join in and help.” And so the

nucleus of the great sixth Root Race began to be formed. But that is not

an immediate future, although already beginning. The sixth sub-race is

the immediate future; under the rule of the Manu of the fifth still, but

co-operating with the Manu of the Sixth, in order that those who show

signs of being fit material for the Coming Race may have a preliminary

practise of the virtues of that race. Hence the stress that H. P.

Blavatsky laid on this inner side of the working of the Theosophical

Society; and hence the need, because the time is passing rapidly,

to make public what has been kept private in the past of this inner

purpose, which has really dominated the Society from within, although not

recognised without.

Let us see how that immediate future should be recognised in its

characteristics, and thus prepared for. First of all we must understand

the words spoken long ago under the inspiration of the coming

Bodhisattva, that the Theosophical Society was to be “the corner-stone

of the future religion of humanity.” Now every sub-race has a special

religion, as it were. The religion of the fifth sub-race is Christianity.

What is the future religion of humanity in this sense? It differs from

all that have gone before. It is no longer an exclusive and separatist

faith, but a recognition that in every religion the same truths are

found; that there is only one true religion, the Divine Wisdom; and

that every separate religion is true just so far as it incorporates the

main teachings of that Divine Wisdom. The one supreme religion is the

Knowledge of God; to that everything else is subsidiary. Just in so far

as any special religion puts within the reach of its followers the means

for rising to that supreme knowledge, in so far is that religion worthy

of its place. And when that supreme test is not thoroughly answered—when

dogmas, and ceremonies, and rites become more important than this inner

truth of the gaining of individual knowledge of the Supreme—then the

religion becomes narrower, weaker, unspiritual, until a time comes when

either the religion must die or a new impulse must be poured into it to

bring it back to its original position, a channel for the knowledge of

God. Now, in the past many religions have done their work and passed

away, and we come to the present time, when certain great religions

are living. And when the great new spiritual impulse came, it was not

charged with the building of a new religion, but with the vitalising of

those great existing religions, to make them realise their underlying

foundation; they were vivified in order to help them to rise to a

more spiritual and mystic interpretation of their teachings; and when

that was done, they were to be blended together into a brotherhood

of Religions, so that all should recognise the Divine Wisdom as their

root. That was the first work of the Theosophical Society. It was done

all over the world. See how in India Hindūism was revived; in Ceylon,

Buddhism. Ask the ordinary missionary who comes over here, who is not

generally very broad-minded, and he will tell you that the great opponent

of Christianity in the East is the Theosophical Society. Then, if you

press him and ask, “But are Theosophists antagonistic to you?” “No,” he

will say, “but they strengthen the other religions, and thus prevent our

making converts.” And that is true. It is not our business to convert

people from one religion to another, but to try to make every one

realise the splendour of his own religion. Naturally, in India—except

in Travancore, where there has been a Christian Roman Catholic colony

from the very early centuries of the Church—Christianity is an alien

religion, and only grows by injuring the older religions of the land.

Naturally, then, the missionaries look on the Theosophical Society as

an opponent, because it has been the great factor in the revival of

Hindūism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and is beginning to be a factor

in the revival of Muhammadanism. Now, when you see that, and when you

come to the West and see how the same influence has been widening the

Christian Church, how mystical Christianity is spreading everywhere in a

way that would have seemed incredible some three years ago—see how narrow

it was, and look now, how everywhere the mystic thought is spreading, and

see how, in the Roman Catholic Church, the spreading of this spirit has

become so wide that the Pope is forced into fulminating against it, and

in the Modernism that he condemns we find Theosophy mentioned as one of

the forms—you will realise that that part of the work is almost done. I

do not mean that we are not to continue spreading abroad more spiritual

ideas, but that the work has been done so effectively already that it is

almost passing into the hands of the religions themselves. The clergy

are now preaching so much Theosophy that it hardly seems necessary to

continue preaching the parts they have adopted. The Theosophical teaching

as to the nature of the Christ in His birth in the human form, and His

growth into Divine Manhood—how common a doctrine that is now within all

the Churches of the West. The fact of Reincarnation is also becoming more

and more widely accepted—a doctrine no longer to be laughed at, but to

be carefully argued over, and forming a part of the deepest thought of

the Christian world. So that while we must still go on with that part

of the work, there are other parts of our work now that we ought to be

ready to take up. That religion of the future which is to include all

the religions as sects within itself, all of them going on into the

future, but recognising themselves as a Brotherhood, that is to be the

dominant religious thought of the great sixth Root Race, and in the sixth

sub-race we shall find it spreading everywhere. Now, how mighty will be

the advantage; because the moment all religions are seen to be branches

of one stock, then each religion can share with others the specialty

which it has been its duty to develop in the world. And nowadays, when

the Christian goes to India, instead of trying to convert the Hindū,

which he can never do, what he ought to do is to offer to share with

him that great special characteristic of Christianity, the principle

of self-sacrifice, and the helping of the weaker by the stronger—the

dominant note of Christianity. It is the doctrine of the Cross, the

emblem of self-sacrifice, of the coming down to the depressed in order

to lift them, leading them up side by side with ourselves. That is the

noblest thought of Christendom, typified in the mystic Christ; and that

you might well offer to share with the Hindūs, for that does not come

out so strongly in their great Faith. Rather will they bring to you in

exchange the doctrine of the immanence of God. Two things, Dr. Miller

has written, Hindūism brings to the world: the immanence of God, and the

solidarity of man. When religions exchange their best instead of finding

out each other’s weaknesses, then you have outlined the religion of the

future. Our work in that future is to continue what we have so well

begun, and spread this liberal, thoughtful, religious ideal through all

religions, destroying none, but permeating all.

Next we have to consider what we ought to do in the training of the

next generation; for there is great need that the Theosophical ideal of

education should spread through Western minds, and especially through

Britain and its empire. Religious education at the present time is in

peril; how great that peril is may be measured by the Moral Education

Congress gathered together in London last year to try to find a moral

basis that should furnish education apart from all the sanctions of

religion—a hopeless task, but none the less a sign of the peril of the

times. Now, we have had secular education in India. It has been the

English education the Government has given there. It could not give any

other because of the different religions of the country, and it was bound

not to help any one of these to the detriment of the others. The moral

result has been disastrous. It has fostered selfishness, indifference to

the country, lack of public spirit. It has given us a race of men who

have acquired from the West its superficial qualities, but not its inner

strength, not its inner capacity. And the troubles you have in India now

are largely the result of this anti-religious education, which has made

hundreds of the best Indian type skeptics, a thing which has only been

checked with the growth of the Theosophical Society throughout India. We

have turned back that irreligious wave, with the result that the Indian

Government to-day regards the Theosophical Society as the most likely

agency for training the youth of India along lines of freedom and order

at the same time. They realise that we have put our finger on the weak

point in their own system, and that our plan of giving to the child the

religion of his parents is really the way to solve that religious problem

in India. Now, over here you have to face the problem how to preserve

religion while letting dogmatism go; how to find a common ground, a few

common principles, which all Christians inculcate, leaving to a later

time in life the special sectarian divisions which the young man and

woman can acquire later if they wish. Now, in that the Theosophical

Society may well play a great part in the immediate future, strengthening

all the influences which make for the keeping of religion as an integral

part of education, helping to soften the bitter sectarianism, and

persuade the different denominations to remember that they are Christians

more than that they belong to this, that, or the other denomination. If

we succeed in that, then the service to the education of the empire will

be supreme.

Along other lines we want, if we can, to persuade the public mind to

become a little more receptive of new ideas; to lose a little of its

pride, and learn a little humility. Unless we are quite sure that

we are at the very top of human evolution, and that nothing greater

than ourselves can be evolved, then it would be the part of wisdom to

recognise that the next type, which is the type of the future, must be

different from the type of the present, and, in the beginning of its

evolution, new and strange. You may remember how J. S. Mill, in speaking

of liberty, laid immense stress on originality, and complained that

modern methods were tending to make all come to a single level; to do

away with the eccentric, even with the original. Now, for growth, variety

is wanted. Where there is no spontaneous variation in types, you have

stagnation. And yet every one of us is so fond of our own particular line

of thought that we take it almost as an offence if someone starts a new

thought which we cannot at once fit into our own mental grooves. Now, we

must try to correct that, first in ourselves, and then in the public at

large, especially in view of the coming of that mighty Teacher I have

spoken of. When He comes, the type of the sixth Root Race, He must be

very different from all of us, otherwise He would not be the type of the

new departure. How can we avoid treating Him when He comes exactly as

our predecessors of the fourth sub-race treated Him when He came last to

start the fifth? It is so easy for all of us, looking back to the mighty

Figure of the Christ, to realize something of its splendour, but we see

Him through the glamour of the religion which has made His name supreme

in many of your hearts. Try and put yourselves back in time, and see how

strange that new type would have then seemed to you, how against all your

prejudices. So different was He that He raised an antagonism so bitter

that they could not bear Him amongst them for more than three years,

and then murdered Him. It is hard for us to realise that. We are apt to

think, “If I had been there, I would have stood beside Him; I would not

have been amongst those who slew Him.” And yet there is no particular

reason to think we should not have done the same. It is a great lesson

for the immediate future. For when He comes again to bless this beginning

of a sixth sub-race, the buddhic, He will show out the qualities of

Buddhi prominently, and those are by no means very acceptable to the

modern world. Look fairly at your own minds and see how you stand on your

rights. It is the spirit of the time. If you have not what you think your

rights, you make a clamour for them. For the mānasic civilisation that

is the proper way, but those who want to go on in the new future that is

dawning have to throw all that aside. You must relinquish your “rights.”

If you are trampled on, you must recognise that it is only yourself of

the past trampling on yourself of the present: no one can trample on you

except a person who embodies your own past injustice, and is working out

that which you yourself have created. That is a very unpopular view, as

unpopular as the Sermon on the Mount. And so along many other lines of

that which is admirable from the popular standpoint—power, dominance,

the spirit which tramples down all opposition. How different from that

of the Wisdom which rules, but rules from within, “mightily and sweetly

ordering all things.” And if you will think over this in detail and work

it out, you will find you will have to change your ideal of what is

admirable, and build up on ideal on the basis of Spirit and unity, and

not on rights and claims. And that is one reason why the Theosophical

ideals very often find themselves rejected in the outer world. Those are

the qualities needed for the world as it shall be; and if we are to be

builders of that immediate future, we must develop them in ourselves.

But you may say: “Is it not rather a big assertion to make that this

Theosophical Society is really a nucleus of a great Root Race; that it is

the beginning of a sub-race? What right have you to make such a claim?”

The answer is, that looking back to the last choice, we should expect

to find the beginning of the new Race and new sub-race among those who

were not the leaders of the present, but had in them the germ of the

future. That is why our people are gathered not from the leaders and

the thinkers, but from the loving, the compassionate, the brotherly. It

seems a feeble thing, this power of Brotherhood. It is the mightiest

thing in all the world. And although it is true that we cannot expect to

find amongst us men and women of magnificent intellect and overwhelming

power of thought, we may expect to find amongst us the compassionate,

the gentle, and the loving, and those give the plastic material which

will yield itself to the fingers of the Manu to be moulded into a new

type, a higher evolution. Hence, from time to time the great shakings

that take place to shake out those who are too purely intellectual, and

who do not think the word Brotherhood is a word that ought to be heard

so much amongst us. The Masters have chosen Brotherhood as our mark, and

we cannot march in Their army if we will not bear Their sign. And so,

if mind makes us too self-assertive, too sure of our own superiority,

then we must be shaken out of this movement. So do not in this immediate

future be troubled if we still continue to go along our own quiet road of

attracting the loving and the gentle rather than those who are mighty in

their intellectual power. The thing of vital importance is the Spirit of

Brotherhood, and that we must never let go. And remember, in the whole

of the struggles of the future, as in those of the past, that they must

always rage round persons, and those who think more of personalities

than of principles are inevitably shaken out. If you make a person’s

presence or absence a reason for being in or out of the Society, you are

showing the spirit of separation, which cannot realise a principle, but

thinks only of the passing and transient personality. What can it matter

whether any one of you agrees or disagrees with Mr. Leadbeater, or with

Mr. Mead, or with anyone else? These are all persons. The principle of

the Society remain unshaken. Presidents are elected and Presidents die,

but the Society goes on. What folly, then, to give up a place in a mighty

movement because the person temporarily at the head of it is a person who

does not exactly fit into the shape you have made as your own particular

ideal. It does not matter. The Society is not bound by its President any

more than by anyone else. It is bound only by its great central principle

of Brotherhood. And so all of you who have stood through the past shaking

have shown that you care more for principles than for persons, and it

does not matter whether, so to speak, you have agreed or disagreed with

the President so long as you have stood firm within the Society; for

there lies the principle, whilst the other is only personality. Cling,

then, to that principle to which you have clung through the past storm;

recognise that whether a person be right or wrong, noble or ignoble,

great or small, that is a matter of secondary importance. The work of

the future lies in the movement, and not in the hands of any particular

individual who may happen to be here. Whether you or I come back to

this great movement in other lives depends on ourselves, and not on the

opinion that anyone else may happen to have about us. None can throw us

out of it if we are worthy to remain in it; none can keep us in it if we

are unworthy to be part of it. And realising kārmic law, realising the

greatness of the movement and its work in the future, let us join hands,

whether we agree or disagree with each other on any other matter save

that of Brotherhood, and go forward into the future that is unfolding

before us, brighter than ever the past has shone; go forward to the

making of the sub-race out of which the Root Race shall spring, under

the banner of our Manu and our Bodhisattva, the mighty Ones of years and

millennia to come.

Lecture III

The Catholic and Puritan Spirit in the Theosophical Society

The Value and Danger of Each

I want to try to trace out the somewhat difficult subject of the place of

the Puritan and the Catholic Spirit in our Society. I want to show that

both types are necessary in every great movement; that both have their

value and place, yet also their dangers. And if we realise that both are

necessary, it may help each type to be tolerant as regards the other, and

to see that each has its dangers.

Now, all the world over these two types are found; they are, in fact, two

marked temperaments, intellectual and emotional, into which, roughly,

you might throw almost all thoughtful and educated people, and even

the thoughtless and ignorant, for those also will show similar types,

although naturally less attractively, because more extreme, than they

may be among the class of people who at least are seeking to understand

themselves, and to gain some measure of equilibrium. Looked at from

the outside, the Catholic type is certainly the more attractive, and

therefore I want to impress upon you the value of the Puritan type;

because, being less attractive, its value is more likely to be

overlooked. If the Puritan spirit were completely lost, mankind would

lack that vigour and strength and tendency to free thought and free

judgment which are so essential to human evolution. Unfortunately, it has

often been united with a very cold and forbidding exterior; and if we

take the two types as we find them in the reign of Charles I., certainly

the Puritan is not very attractive from outside—hard, rather sour,

forbidding, and austere. But it is not quite fair to judge the Puritan by

that type in the reign of the Stuarts. It is not fair to pick out a type

at the moment where these two difficulties face it—danger to itself, and

the extreme evil of the type it is opposing. It is hardly fair to take

that moment for a judgment of the value of the temperament in itself.

But even if you take the Puritan of the time of Charles I. and Cromwell,

you can hardly help noticing, if you go beyond externals, the extreme

moral value of that type amid those difficult and dangerous surroundings.

Austere as it was, it was the austerity that was trying to guard itself

against continual danger of pollution, and naturally it ran into

extremes, as all reactions run, with the inevitable result that another

reaction followed on the first, and you had the loose and profligate

type of the Court of Charles II. It is the types I want to disentangle

from these special manifestations, and, looking at them apart, from all

conditions that may emphasise one characteristic or another.

Now, in what does the Puritan type exactly consist? It seems to

consist in an attitude of protest and criticism rather than of ready

acceptance of the prevailing thought of the time. The Puritan mind is

essentially critical, and critical in the modern sense of the term,

which, instead of making the critic a judge, makes him an opponent and

condemner. We must remember, however, that the true critical spirit is

absolutely necessary for human progress, even though it often slips into

condemnation and cynicism. The Puritan is always intellectual (I am

speaking of the purer type), a man in whom mind is predominant. He is of

the type that tends to separation rather than unity; he stands alone,

sufficient for himself (I say that rather than “self-sufficient,” the

second form connoting a rather unpleasant quality). We must realise the

strength of this type. The strength may slip into austerity, but that

very largely grows out of the religion to which the Puritan may happen to

be attached. You do not find him in his more aggressive form unless he

is protesting against something he regards as dangerous and mischievous.

Naturally, under these considerations he is thrown into the attitude of

combat, and hence all that is harshest and most hostile inevitably comes

to the surface. But that is not a necessary part of the Puritan spirit.

Looking at him as the intellectual man in whom emotion in this particular

life is comparatively weak, or if not weak, repressed; seeing that in him

the mental qualities are those which in this incarnation he specially

endeavours to develop; understanding that the mind can only be developed

where the qualities of analysing, comparing, and judging are active,

you can readily see how, in the face of opposition, these qualities

would turn into antagonism and protest. But I do not think antagonism

and protest are a necessary part of the Puritan spirit. In peaceful

times your Puritan would be distinguished rather as the analytical or

intellectual man, most valuable to any community into which he may be

thrown at the time. For you cannot develop the mind without developing

these analysing qualities: synthesis comes later, the one belonging to

the lower, the other to the higher Manas. Both need to be developed.

While the lower Manas is developing, you must have these qualities of

analysis, comparison, and judgment without which it is not possible to

lay a strong foundation for any belief. You must recognise the utter

necessity for the challenging, questioning, even doubting and sceptical

spirit. Only by means of this can error be detected, and the traditions

that come down from the past be gradually purified of the accretions that

have come to them during the ignorant periods through which they may have

passed. To be sceptical is no fault, but rather a virtue. If there is to

be progress at all, there must be challenging of that which has come down

from the past, so that, testing, analysing, criticising, you may be able

to separate the truth from the error. How would religion become ever more

and more spiritual if men are only to inherit, and never to examine and

understand? And since no religion or other form of thought can ever come

down through centuries without picking up a large amount of error, if we

had not this critical and challenging spirit all religions would grow

into superstitions, and that which is most valuable for the race would

gradually be covered under a mass of ignorant error. Hence at certain

times in the history of the race a great outburst of the Puritan spirit

is necessary. That alone will bring about fundamental changes, religious,

moral, and social; that alone has the courage to go forward whilst in

a minority, and test with the test of reason every belief and every

tradition. We must not, then, blind ourselves to the immense value of

this spirit in the intellectual development of man. For always, inasmuch

as religious and social order has come by some great Teacher enormously

beyond his own generation in religious, moral, and social development,

inevitably his teachings, handed down generation after generation, will

in many respects tend to be covered with superstition.

Let us pause for a moment and see what the word “superstition” means.

I do not think I can give a better definition than my old one:

“superstition is the taking of the non-essential as the essential.”

I think that you will find that that covers all the cases which you

would call superstitions—a truth originally; but in every truth there

are necessary and accessory parts. As the understanding of the truth

is clouded, the accessories take on too large a value in the minds of

people, until at last the accessory is everything and the essential

nothing.

I told once an Indian story which marks out clearly what is superstition.

There was once a very holy man in the habit of offering a sacrifice

by pouring butter into the fire—one of the ordinary Hindū ceremonies.

Morning after morning he duly performed this rite. He was much admired

by his neighbours, and the regularity of the discharge of his religious

duties led them to consider him a model worthy of imitation. This good

man happened to have a cat. As he was kindly-hearted and affectionate,

the cat loved him, and used to come up and interrupt his religious

service; so he put a collar round the cat and tied it to the bedpost

to prevent interruptions. Time went on, a few generations passed, and

then all of the people who copied this admirable saint not only offered

the sacrifice, but also considered it a part of the rite to have a

cat tied to the bedpost. Still more time went on, until at last all

that remained of the original ceremony was the cat tied to the bedpost

and nothing else. Now there is superstition: the harmless accessory

had become necessary, until it occupied the whole of the worshippers’

minds. This is often the case in religions which have lasted long, and

have had many ignorant adherents. They cannot distinguish between the

inner meaning and the outer form; and gradually the outer form becomes

everything, and the inner meaning disappears. Then comes the time when,

superstition having taken the place of truth, there rises up the critical

intellect of man, attacks the whole, and challenges the authority. Only

sometimes the critic is not evolved enough to recognise the truth at the

same time that he wars against the error. More often he takes the whole

as superstition and tries to destroy it completely. There you have the

history of many reformations. Take the great Reformation of the sixteenth

century. If you look back to that you will see that an enormous amount

of valuable truth was thrown aside in trying to get rid of the surface

error with which the truth had been covered. And so in tracing down the

growth of the Puritan spirit from the time of Luther, through Calvinistic

Switzerland, up to Scotland with John Knox, and then looking at it as it

spread over England, and became so powerful under James I. and Charles

I., you will recognise that in the whole of that there is a gradual

throwing away of everything that the mind could not grasp and understand,

and consequently a great loss of the spiritual side of things. The result

of that historically has been that the truth that was thrown away in the

getting rid of the error came back again a little later. And so with

certain fundamental tendencies in man, against which the Puritan of that

time set himself utterly—the use of images in public worship, the use of

music, the use of garments different from the everyday garments, and so

on—all these points that he threw aside as part of the Papal abomination

came back again, slowly, steadily, gradually spreading through the whole

of the Anglican Church. So that you have this remarkable object-lesson,

which it would be well for all Puritan-spirited people to remember.

You may visit a cathedral to-day. Outside the cathedral you will see

the statues which were broken by Cromwell’s soldiery; and inside the

cathedral, on or round the high altar and chancel, you will see the

modern statues placed there in order to help the devotional spirit in the

congregation.

I have purposely taken the Puritan spirit outside the Theosophical

Society so that you may look at it apart from any special question of

interest to our own Society. If you see the value of that in religion,

you will welcome its presence in the Theosophical Society. You will

realise that that spirit is wanted in order to balance and keep in check

what might otherwise be the excess of the Catholic spirit. You will

realise that our critical friends are doing us an immense service in

their criticism, and that it only becomes mischievous when the critical

spirit grows into antagonism and dislike, which need not at all accompany

it, and should not accompany it in a well-balanced and thoughtful mind.

We must have that spirit amongst us, otherwise the enthusiastic will

run away too rapidly and fall into error. The chill that sometimes it

causes is a very valuable element for mental growth. We do not want to

have nothing but chill—that will prevent growth altogether; but if we

were more tolerant with each other, then we might have the advantage of

the chill, which would keep the intellectual atmosphere clear and sharp,

without having the very life chilled out of us by criticism.

Let us now pause on what we mean by the Catholic spirit. By that I

mean the spirit which is reverent of tradition, which is willing to

submit to reasonable and recognised authority, which is willing to take

a great plan and co-operate in it, and realise that the presence of

the architect of the plan, if He be a person highly developed, say a

Master, is enough to give it authority, and that there is no lack of

freedom or dignity in accepting the plan of a greater, and working it

out to the utmost of one’s ability. It is the spirit which, largely

emotional, when it rises into love of the higher and becomes devotion,

causes sympathetic vibrations on the buddhic plane, and so begins the

awakening of the Spirit above the intellect. Again, with this Catholic

spirit you always find the love of beauty. It is artistic. It seeks to

clothe thought in forms of beauty. It loves ceremonial, takes a pleasure

in harmonised expression of thought, and desires that everything round

it should be emotionally satisfactory as well as intellectually sound.

Moreover, its mind is eminently teachable, where the Puritan is not.

Hence it is far easier to lead it along the path of what is called

Occultism. The Catholic mind very readily recognises that those above

itself in development may be able by guidance and teaching to help it

to reach knowledge which, unaided, it would be unable to achieve. The

Puritan would walk alone; the Catholic would utilise every assistance

that can be given in evolution, including the assistance of human beings

more highly developed, as well as of spiritual intelligences. And so

you have round it an atmosphere which readily responds to impulses from

the spiritual worlds, and always with this spirit you find the tendency

toward Occultism of various kinds. I do not think you ever find that

tendency in connexion with the Puritan spirit. You may find with the

Puritan spirit sometimes a lofty form of mysticism, a recognition of a

Spirit as the Life of the universe, and an attempt to realise that Spirit

within oneself. That you may reach largely by way of the intellect,

and emotion is not necessarily concerned in it. Intellectually you may

realise unity, and then pass into the mystical ideal of the One in the

Many, to be recognised in each. And you do find occasionally in the great

Puritans of the past a very noble, though somewhat stern and cold, form

of mystical belief; whereas the moment you come to Catholic mysticism,

you find yourself in an atmosphere charged with emotion. The Catholic

Mystic is swept up in a great surge of emotion to the Object of his love;

the Puritan Mystic calmly, almost coldly, recognises the greatness of the

Object of his worship, intellectually tries to realise, and by that to

some extent unifies himself with It. You have an example of the Puritan

Mystic in Cromwell. Read his letters, read the letters of the man, wrung

out of his heart by the strain of doubt and despair, and clinging, in

spite of all temptation, to his belief in the reality of a Divine Power

whose instrument he was. You will rise from that reading with a new idea

of the strength of the man, and realise that with all that strength there

was the recognition of the strength of God and of his own strength as

being only an instrument in the divine hands. But you never find the

Puritan Mystic the expression of love, of passionate affection, that are

so common among the Catholic Mystics; and more than anything else is the

difference marked when you come to deal with Occultism.

And there, in our own Society, is a point we ought to pause upon. The

Catholic type amongst us will be one that will readily respond to the

idea of the Masters, the Puritan less quickly. The Catholic mind in the

Theosophist will not only recognise the ideal of the Masters, but will be

fired with a desire to tread the path that They have trodden. There will

be a looking up of reverence, an outstretching of the hand for guidance;

a realisation that by that dependence more rapid progress may be made

than along any other line. That which is invisible will exercise a potent

attraction; he will always be trying to know something of the invisible

worlds and their inhabitants, he will always be reaching out toward these

worlds and trying to expand his consciousness into communication with

them. He will be willing to train himself with that in view, and you

will have in him the possibility of the Occultist which you will not find

in the Puritan type. For you cannot begin this part of occult knowledge

along the purely intellectual lines. The intellectual exertion will check

at once the evolution of the other vehicles. The moment you begin to

think: “What am I doing? Is it imagination? Is it hallucination?” you

check the growth of the subtler faculties of the man. You are obliged

for a time to go on without questions, feeling, sensing, groping, and

refusing to allow the mind to come in with its analysing spirit, that

chills everything down so much that these budding faculties, as it were,

shrink back from the touch of the frost, refusing to unfold. “Well,”

you say, “there is a danger. The person may become overcredulous, may

be utterly led astray.” True. It is the necessary danger of all such

research. Only step by step do you learn by experience to distinguish

between the true and false, between the thought-forms created by yourself

and the inhabitants of other worlds into which you are penetrating with

half-opened eyes. But remember that distinguishing does not do away with

the reality of the thought-form. Your own thought-forms which surround

you when you first pass on to the astral plane are real forms in astral

matter. They deceive you, yes, because they are your own creations, and

only give you back the things you are thinking about. They repeat to you

your own thoughts, and there lies the element of danger. But you can only

outgrow that by experience, exactly in the same way that the baby learns

that it cannot catch hold of the glittering thing at the end of the room,

but, to reach it, must cover a great deal of space. You do not think it

heartbreaking because the baby makes mistakes. You are content that he

shall learn. Why not be as philosophical about yourselves? You know that

they will grow out of their ignorance by experience. So will you. Those

who always want to be right are people who will never make Occultists.

The Occultist must be ready to plunge forward, and possibly tumble into

a bog, but be ready to go on again afterwards, learning by experience

to understand. Those who will not face this have not enough of the

Catholic spirit to make Occultists, and had better leave it for another

incarnation.

There is another danger, one especially seen here—the dependence upon

another. I have often been asked: “How can you develop independence

and judgment if you are always trying to do the will of another, whom

you call your Master?” The answer is simple. You look to your Master

for direction, and He may point you to some work to be done. You take

the work because He told you to do it. So far you are the obedient

servant; but your judgment, your reason, all your thought-power, all

your initiative, are taxed to the utmost in the achievement of the task.

A sensible Occultist never goes running to his Master and asking, “How

shall I do this?” He knows that is not the Master’s work. The Master has

done His part in saying “Do that.” How you do it tests you, and brings

out your strength and weakness. And the Master is far too wise to prevent

your bringing out your strength and discovering your weakness by doing

for you what He has told you to do. Hence the Occultist develops all

his faculties in the attempt to do his Master’s will. The two things

work well together, and he does not become weak but strong in realising

that the Master is greater than he, and knows far better the plan of the

work, while he himself, in carrying out his own portion of it, finds full

employment for every faculty of brain and heart.

It is scarcely possible for the typical Puritan to become an Occultist in

the life in which this side is being so strongly developed. You cannot

understand everything when you go into unknown worlds; and unless you

are willing to be ignorant, there is no possibility of discovering new

knowledge. Every pioneer of science—to quote, I think, Faraday—“runs

about like a dog with his nose to the ground, trying to find out a

trail.” That is exactly the way of the experimenter. You must search for

yourself for the trace which will guide you to the desired knowledge;

and if you will not do that, you must take the results of others, and be

content with these results for this life.

But, now, how will these two types of spirit work when they come to, say,

such a question as that of Mr. Leadbeater? You will have at once the

working of the critical intelligence which sees faults more readily than

virtues, and bad motives more readily than good. That is its weakness.

But it also has its value in pointing out certain dangers into which

the Society might otherwise slip. The Catholic spirit will be far more

ready to take it for granted that one from whom they have learned much,

whom they know to have far vaster knowledge than their own, may have

some other reason which they do not see, which would justify to the doer

what he has done, and they do not feel that curious sense that they

must save their neighbours’ souls, whether their neighbours desire it

or not. They are content to say, “This is my road, that is his”—a wider

and more generous spirit. Nevertheless, I think we should do well also

to recognise that the presence in the Society of the critical and even

judging spirit has at some times its value. But it is not a foundation

on which anything can be built, and that is sometimes forgotten. You

cannot build an enduring edifice on the grounds of protest against

someone else. It cannot endure. It is curious to notice that the same

people who condemn personality when the tendency of the personality is

love and devotion, are the people who show personality most strongly when

they antagonise and dislike. I admit to the full that principle should

guide, not personality; but I cannot admit that a love for a personality

is wrong, whilst a hatred of a personality is right and admirable. Both

may put persons above principles if the two come into clash. And it is

putting a personality above a principle when you desert the Theosophical

Society, forgetting the great principles which make it immortal, and

leave it, protesting against it, because one or two people hold views

with which you do not agree. It is the _ne plus ultra_ of personality.

Mr. Leadbeater and Mrs. Besant are both comparatively old, and cannot

at the most live very long. What utter folly, then, to desert the great

principles incarnated in the Society because of the antagonism of two

transitory personalities! If Theosophy be anything at all, then it is

everything in life, and is not to be given up for anyone, whether saint

or criminal. Suppose a hundred murderers were members of the Society, is

that any reason why you or I should go out of it? It seems to me that the

fact that we disapprove of that so much is a reason for staying in the

Society, in order to strengthen it in the hour of its peril and to carry

it through.

We need in the whole of this to study our own nature first, and find out

our weak points, and then to guard against that weakness in the time

of storm and stress. And we need, more than that, to realise that very

often when people oppose us, they oppose us because of their virtues,

and not because of their vices. That is, that the people who are utterly

against me now are against me because of their virtues. They are wrong

in the view they take—they misconstrue; that does not matter. But the

fundamental reason why they oppose is because they believe that I am

condoning what is wrong. That is a good feeling and right. But it is not

right when it goes into hatred and calumny, when people go about telling

abominable stories of all kinds which are utterly false, using them as

weapons to injure. But, none the less, the beginning lay in a virtue—the

desire to guard the Society from harm; and that ought to be recognised

even when it has run into excess. If we can do that, then, in the midst

of struggle, we shall be learning the true Theosophical spirit, which

sees the good first, and only recognises the excess afterwards. And my

suggestion is: “Train yourself, in your ordinary thinking, to see first

the good of a person or thing, and only afterwards allow yourself to see

the weakness or evil.” Then you will get all the good of your critical

spirit, and be guarded against much harm. But if you see the bad side

first, you are likely not to see the good side at all. These things test

our members, and show whether we are fit to go along this great path or

not—show whether we are ready to be part of that great Sixth Race which

is coming, or whether we are so wedded to our own opinions that outside

those we can see nothing good.

The trouble is practically over, but we should remember its lessons—a

wider tolerance, a sterner self-criticism, and a more charitable attitude

towards our fellows. You cannot be too hard in criticising yourself,

nor too tolerant and charitable towards your neighbour. Remember that

in every one of us the Self is endeavouring to express something of

himself. In our own case we have the right to criticise every obstacle

put in the way of His manifestation, to be hard in our judgment of

ourselves, pitiless in our condemnation of our every fault and weakness.

But we cannot govern the manifestation of the Self in another; hence our

criticism is useless and impertinent—does not help, but hinders; for if

the other person is wrong, as you think he is, then your harsh judgment

makes an added barrier in his way when the Self in him is trying to guide

him back to the right, whereas your charity, your tolerant respect, will

help him to realise the noblest in him. Hence the lesson of this great

shaking should be criticism of ourselves and charity to all around us.

Recognition of our own type, clear self-judgment, so that we may walk

aright and help others as much as may be; and, above all, so to purify

our own characters that we may be channels for the life that flows in the

Society, and may not soil it as it passes through ourselves. The Society

can never die by attacks from without, nor by desertions from within;

it can only die when its members are careless of their own thought,

their own character, their own ideas; that, and that alone, can make the

Society unworthy of the guidance of its Teachers. It was once said: “So

long as three men remain in the Society worthy of our Lord’s blessing it

cannot perish.” That was a word spoken by a Master in the days when the

Society was weak and struggling, and when the few people that belonged

to it feared it would never survive the storm that shook it in the time

of the Coulomb attack. Think of that if any other storm should approach

us—although we are not likely now to have another for the next twelve

years; but when a storm comes, remember that inspiring idea, that as long

as three remain in the Society it cannot perish; and add to that the vow

registered by the Higher Self: “If others depart, I will be one of the

three.”

Lecture IV

The Sacramental Life

I am to speak to you to-night on a subject of deep interest to those who

regard the religions of the world from the standpoint of Occultism. In

all the great religions we find what are called “sacraments,” to take the

Western name; and in all religions the object is the same—the endeavour

to spiritualise the ordinary life of man; to make it possible for men

and women living in the world, blinded by their bodies, unable to rise

above the material limitations—to enable those men and women to come

into direct touch with higher worlds and higher beings, and so, from the

definite sacramental act, to pass on until the whole life may become a

sacrament by the radiation of spiritual life through the material coating.

Now different religions have different numbers of sacraments, although

the essence remains the same. In Hindūism the sacraments are very

numerous. Ten are recognised as of universal application, but the number

will run up to thirty or forty if you take all the ceremonies that are

distinctly recognised as having this character among the more orthodox

Hindūs. The number, after all, is immaterial; it is the fundamental

idea which is important. As knowledge of the meaning of the sacraments

spreads, especially in the Western world, it will be found that many

things that have been put aside as superstitious will come back with

a new light and power. Certain ideas which were cast aside at the

period of the Reformation were thrown aside rather by reaction than

for any defensible reason. The way in which many of the thoughts and

dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church were pressed among the people, the

widespread ignorance of meanings while forms were carefully observed,

not unnaturally brought about a powerful reaction when reason began to

challenge the ceremonies. As occult knowledge had practically fallen into

the background among the great mass of the Roman Catholic priesthood,

there came rejection of that which could not be rationally explained.

As we are able to see the justification for very much that then was

rejected, however, we realise that many of these things will come back.

And if we think, it is not unnatural that these should return. Going back

to the early days of religion (I am thinking now of Christianity, but

it is the same in all the great religions), we find the Founder and his

immediate disciples who shape and mould the religion. As these men were

men to whom the spiritual world was familiar, and as their duty was to

make bridges between the ordinary mass of men and the great spiritual

teachings of religion, it was inevitable that in the forms of worship

laid down by them there should be in the background occult truths. Hence

we find in the early Church the great institution of the Mysteries; and

I shall want, later on, to show the relation between the Mystery, the

Sacrament, and the great legend of the Holy Grail.

Let us now consider what a sacrament really is. I do not think we can get

a better definition than in the Catechism of the Anglican Church: “An

outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”—something that

is outer, tangible, that the senses can appreciate, a material object;

then, with that, indissolubly connected, certain facts of the invisible

world, so that the outer sign is able to act as a channel for the inner

reality. But also, under the heading of “outward and visible sign,” you

want something beyond the material object; you want a material gesture

and material words. These three things are always present in a sacrament;

some material object which is the immediate channel, certain sounds or

words which make a change in the subtle material mingled with the denser

material of that object, and a gesture called often the “sign of power,”

as the words are called “words of power.” Now the gesture must be one

through which magnetism can be thrown on to the object which is affected

by the words.

Let us see how those facts are bound together in the sacrament itself,

and what is their connexion with the constitution of man and of the

worlds in which he lives. The worlds with which the man is connected,

for our present purpose, we can take as the physical, astral, mental—the

three worlds in which turns the wheel of births and death. He is in those

three—either in all of them together, as when in the physical world;

in two of them, as when in the astral world; in one only when in the

heavenly world. For remember that only in the physical world are the

three bodies available that connect him with all of the three at the

same time. In these three worlds, then, man is continually living. He

is related to them by his physical body, astral body, and mental body,

so that you have a living intelligence, a spiritual being, who, by means

of the matter that he has appropriated in these three worlds, is able to

come into contact with each of them. But now arises the question: Given

a spiritual intelligence clothed in this triple veil of matter; given

the fact that that spiritual intelligence, by the veil of matter, is in

contact with three worlds—how shall he be able to come gradually into

conscious connexion with each, so that the stream of spiritual life,

coming down from the spiritual world, may at once purify the matter of

his bodies, illuminate his consciousness in these three stages, and so

begin the great work of spiritualising the whole man? That is the problem

that religion has had to solve. So far as ordinary Protestantism is

concerned, the body has been cast aside as a very temporary possession,

only occupied by the spiritual intelligence during one brief life,

and hardly worth troubling about. Hence the body has become very much

neglected from the ordinary standpoint of Protestantism, and the reaction

against that has taken the form of materialism, so that you find people

rejecting the view of the worthlessness of the body, and falling into a

materialism in which the body is made the most important thing. Instead

of that, in the earlier days of the great faiths, the body was regarded

as a valuable possession, a thing to be made holy, to be sanctified, in

order that it might be a fitting instrument of the spiritual intelligence

therein embodied.

And so, in all these earlier days of religions, continual relationships

were being made, first between the spiritual world and the lower worlds,

and then between the embodied intelligence and the bodies that that

intelligence is wearing. Hence the sacraments which should touch both

body and consciousness, which should sanctify the material vehicles

while illuminating the spiritual intelligence, which should make the

whole man really spiritual in order that the object of incarnation might

be accomplished—that matter in all the worlds should be rendered the

obedient servant of Spirit. That was the object of the sacrament. Hence

the necessity for the material object in order that it may come into

touch with the dense body. Hence the need of the signs in order that,

by the vibrations set up, sent on to subtler planes, the subtler bodies

might be set vibrating, and be able to receive the downfall of spiritual

life. Hence also the need for the gesture, so that the magnetic force

sent out in the consecration might link together the denser and the

subtler matter by this bond of magnetism, and in that way might make

the whole of the material object a vehicle for the higher life while

preparing the bodies for the reception of that downflow.

Now let us, in order to work out these principles, take the sacrament

of Baptism. In this you know that you have the whole of these three

conditions of a sacrament present—water, the material object; the

words of power; the consecration of the water. You have the words of

consecration, praying God to sanctify this water to the mystical washing

away of sin; and then you have the sign of power—the cross made over the

water—in order that the magnetism from the fingers of the priest may

magnetise it, and be the link between the physical water and the astral

matter which interpenetrates it.

I pause for a moment on the phrase “words of power.” The whole

understanding and use of such words depends on the fact that every sound

causes certain definite vibrations. Wherever there is a sound there is

a correlated vibration. Now a mantra, or word of power, is a certain

definite succession of sounds made by an Occultist in order to bring

about certain definite results. That is as much a scientific fact as a

fact that none of you would challenge—that you can by producing a musical

note set up vibrations in a glass or rod or string which is sympathetic.

You remember the experiments of Tyndall. He would show how by a certain

sound you could shiver a piece of glass. What really happens? The glass

begins to vibrate. As the vibrations are made by the note, it repeats

them; if it is more than the glass can respond to, the particles are

torn asunder and the glass is broken. Exactly a similar line of thought

conducts you to the use and meaning of the mantra. The Occultist tries

certain sounds. He finds out what are the sounds that bring about the

vibrations that he desires. Having discovered that experimentally, he

puts those sounds into a definite order and then gives a sentence which

will reproduce that sequence of sounds whenever the sentence is uttered.

This sequence of sounds causes vibrations, which in their turn set up

vibrations in the subtle bodies. The more the mantra is repeated, the

more powerful the result. Hence the use of repetition that you find so

much in Church formulæ. Hence the use of the rosary, so that you may not

have the jar of counting in producing the vibrations that you require.

Now it is obvious that a mantra cannot be translated without losing

part of its power. It may still have a power from the thought which is

in it, but the sequence of sounds is affected. Hence the special value

of the mantra apart from the thought which the words embody. Hence the

wisdom of the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches in using their words of

power as given by the Occultists who devised them. Unfortunately, in

the Reformation, occult knowledge being at a discount, it was thought

you could translate the words of power without losing the effect. You

keep the effect caused by the thought; you lose a very large part of

the mechanical effect caused by the sounds. What is lost of ordinary

mechanical effect has to be brought about by devotion or will-power;

whereas if you produce the vibrations mechanically, you then have all

your devotion and will-power left undiminished to bring about the higher

results. There is the value of the scientific ways of dealing with the

bodies. It is not a question of consciousness now, but of the bodies, and

only secondarily of the effect on the consciousness of the vibrations

of the bodies; yet that also cannot be left out. Just as a change in

consciousness brings about a certain vibration, so does a vibration bring

about a corresponding change in consciousness. Hence to set up right

vibrations helps the consciousness to remain in a certain condition,

and we naturally find that in the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches the

effects produced by the words of the sacrament are greater than these

produced in Churches where the words of power are translated. One

advantage that comes out of that is that, in the first case, where the

priest is using the words that themselves make the vibrations, the man’s

character, devotion, and knowledge are not as important as they are in

the case where the mechanical effect is lost, and the priest must supply

by his own devotion and will-power that which could be more readily

produced by the mantra. It is out of that that has come the statement

that the unworthiness of the priest does not destroy the worth of the

sacrament. Certainly it is not as potent where the priest is unworthy,

but where the mechanism is perfect, the worker not being perfect is less

important.

Now if a clairvoyant watches what is done when a sacrament is taking

place, he sees that on the repetition of the words of consecration

and the making of the sign of power a visible change occurs in the

consecrated object. It is most marked if we turn to the Mass, or Holy

Communion. You have there on the altar the sacred elements—the bread

and the wine. According to the Roman Catholic doctrine, at the words of

power, what is called “transubstantiation” takes place. That teaching

has been very much misunderstood by the ordinary Protestant. He does not

realise that in every visible object there is an invisible and formative

idea; that that idea, working along ordinary lines, produces one of the

ordinary objects that you see around you; but that if the idea be changed

by the use of a word of power, a mantra, that that change of the idea

produces a change of astral matter, and in the etheric and even dense

physical matter also a change of vibration is set up. And although it

is true that in the densest matter the vibration is not powerful enough

to alter the arrangement of the particles, it is true that in all the

most important part of that object a change has occurred, and it is that

change which is indicated by the word “transubstantiation.” No instructed

Roman Catholic ever was foolish enough to think anything save that which

I am now putting to you. Now if that idea seems strange, let me remind

you of a simple fact which will throw light on the whole thing. Students

of organic chemistry are familiar with isometric compounds. Those

compounds are made up of exactly the same number of the same chemical

elements. Nevertheless, the chemist will tell you that according to

the inner arrangement of those elements will be the qualities of the

thing. You may have in some of the higher carbon compounds (even so low

down as where you have entering into the base only four carbon atoms)

an arrangement or rearrangement of those elements such as to give you

entirely different qualities—in one case a poison, in the other harmless.

That change of arrangement makes all the difference. Is it so strange,

then, that in changing the inner arrangement the qualities change? In

the invisible worlds these things can be seen, so that that piece of

opaque bread, when the words are spoken, utterly changes in appearance,

becoming luminous and shining out in every direction. Now the moment

one sees that, one begins to realise what a sacrament means from the

material standpoint. You are dealing with an object that can be changed

in its qualities. You are reconstituting the subtle portions of that by

the forces you are bringing to bear on it. With what object? In order

that, from the planes above the mental, spiritual power pouring down may

find a vehicle which is able to assimilate it and carry it down to the

densest plane of matter, and by that vehicle may be passed on to those

who are partakers of the sacrament. And not only do you see that change

appearing in the elements, but you see also that that change draws to the

altar numbers of those whom the Hindūs call Devas, and the Christians

call Angels, who lend their powers to the helping of the worshippers, and

change the atmosphere of the whole place to which they throng.

Now the moment anyone sees this, he realises that much has to come back

to some of the religious sects of the West in order to make them what

they ought to be. And the result of losing sight of all this inner part

of the Christian ceremonies, rites, and formulæ has been the tendency

to grow more and more materialistic, until you find that the ordinary

Protestant knows of nothing as between himself and God, nothing of the

work of all that mighty hierarchy of spiritual intelligences who form the

ladder between earth and heaven. Hence the gradual disappearance from the

modern mind of the teaching of the ministry of Angels. How much of it

has slipped out of knowledge, and how much all life has lost of beauty

by the passing away of these links between the higher and lower worlds.

When a person takes the sacrament, you have there the actual physical

touch all along the material lines, a real purification of the body as

well as illumination of the intelligence. But you may say: “Does it all

turn on this outward ceremony—these words and signs?” No. There is, in

addition to that, in the consciousness of the worshipper, a tremendous

potency which assimilates that which pours down from the higher worlds.

And although it be true that that potency is very much more readily

assimilated when all the material coverings have been tuned and made

ready to receive it, none the less is it also true that even where that

part of the sacrament is wanting it is a veritable means of grace to

those who realise the inner meaning, although not understanding the

importance of the outer form. I think that there is little doubt that,

as Occultism spreads, this will all come back to the Churches; for it is

part of the Theosophical mission to restore that which has been lost, to

bring to knowledge again that which has been forgotten.

And there are also other things in relation to this which will come

into modern life again as the truth of the sacrament is recognised. So

many discussions there have been about the Apostolic Succession, the

passing of power from one to another by a sacrament, not recognised as

a sacrament in some part of the Anglican Church, but recognised by the

Roman Catholic Church as the Sacrament of Holy Orders. There, again, a

physical passing of magnetism; there, again, a definite succession, a

hierarchy which is an image of the hierarchy in higher worlds. For always

religions have reflexions of the realities of the higher worlds, and

these reflexions have their power and their use. Now, in the ordinary

Protestant community, and even in the great Anglican Church itself,

only two sacraments are normally recognised—the sacrament of the altar

and that of the font. Outside those, as you know, the Greek and Roman

Catholic Churches have others in addition to that of Holy Orders above

mentioned—all of them, from the standpoint of the sacramental life,

important. They have the Sacrament of Confirmation; but that ought surely

to be recognised as a sacrament everywhere, for you have there the

essential parts of the sacrament and the conveying of a spiritual power.

So also they have the Sacrament of Penance, in which the spiritual power

is again conveyed which enables the penitent by effort and repentance

to regain spiritual strength when it has been injured by sin. So you

have also the Sacrament of Matrimony, and the loss of the sacramental

side of marriage has led very largely to its degradation in Protestant

countries. So also the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, which is, curiously

enough, coming back among Protestants. Look at the accounts of the Guilds

of Healing established in the Church—no less than three in the Anglican

community. They have restored the sacramental use of oil, founding

themselves upon a passage in the New Testament: “Is any sick, let him

call the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him

with oil in the name of the Lord”—a sacramental act. You have the oil as

the vehicle of the magnetism, the name of the Lord as the word of power,

and in putting on the oil ever the sign of the Cross is used. Now it

is a very significant thing that that has been brought back definitely

by members of the Anglican Church, priests and laity, to-day; and one

wonders very much why in the Roman Catholic community, with the occult

knowledge of its leaders, it has that use of sacramental oil only at the

death-moment, when its great value cannot be utilised. That is one of

the points I cannot quite make out in studying the ritual of the Roman

Catholic Church.[4]

Now, supposing that you recognise that fact of a sacrament, how would

it affect your ordinary daily life? It would gradually discipline your

mind to realise that all life is sacramental, rightly understood; that

every outer action should be connected with a spiritual truth; and in

this way all your actions would cease to be hindrances, and would tend

to become helpers. Among the Hindūs this is largely recognised, for all

the great actions of the daily life with them are sacramental. Every true

Hindū, on waking, prays that as his eyes open to the light of the day, so

his Spirit may open to the light of the inner Self. In his daily bath,

as he pours the water over his body, his prayer is, that as the water

washes the body, so may the mind be cleansed and the heart purified. All

the bodily actions are consecrated as the reflexions of the spiritual

life, and the effect of that is to make a disciplined, self-controlled,

balanced character. The daily training gradually makes the whole life

orderly; and it is not without significance that in the religions where

the sacramental life is realised, there it is that you find the type of

character that all speak of as the Saint—a man who is ever alive to the

realities of the higher world; the man who lives in the Spirit, although

also living in the body.

Now I said that this idea was connected with the Mysteries and with the

Grail. Let me try and show you how; and in this I am using the thought of

the great French writer, Schuré, who, writing on the mystical idea in

the music of Wagner, pointed out the close resemblances and differences

between the sacrifice of the Mass and the legend of the Grail. Now it

is a historical fact, apparently, that with the disappearance of the

Mysteries from Europe and the Christian Church, this legend began slowly

to work its way among the European nations. There were the Mysteries of

Jesus, and those played in the Christian Church exactly the same part

that is played by the Yoga training, say, in Hindūism or Buddhism. There

was the life of the ordinary sacraments for the ordinary believer. Those

were the means whereby the true believer came into touch with the higher

worlds. But when a man had learned all he could in the outer circle of

the Church, when he had used the sacramental means of grace so that he

was able to say that his life was pure, that he had been “for a long

time conscious of no transgression,” then he was allowed to present

himself as candidate for the Mysteries of Jesus. Within those Mysteries

the realities replaced the outer mechanism of the sacrament. There, no

longer by gift from without, as in the sacrament, but by effort and

struggle the vision of the spiritual life was attained. And when those

Mysteries passed away, not because there were not teachers, but because

there were no pupils ready to be taught, then it was that this story of

the Grail was given as an announcement, however veiled, that the ancient

Path still remained open to the worthy aspirant. For what is the inner

meaning of the Grail, and how do the main points of it connect with the

Christian sacrament? Different, yet similar. In the one it is the outer

form of bread and wine, symbolising the body and blood of Christ; in the

other, the sacred cup, in which it was said that once a year the blood

of Christ shone out with brilliant and purifying light. In both an outer

symbol. But in the sacrament that outer symbol is given to the believer,

and, without effort of his own, the greater Self outside him gives to

the weaker Self within. But in the Grail it is by effort and struggle,

by temptation and resistance, that the vision becomes possible. He has

entered on the Path where outer aid is withdrawn, and where the inner

power must replace the outer assistance. In the Church sacrament, faith

is the means whereby the truth must be attained. In the inner, vision and

knowledge take the place of faith, for the successful knight sees the

vision of the Grail—the Cup, with all its glory, is revealed before him.

And so in the outer a dogma is taught, in the inner there is knowledge.

But what is a dogma? Knowledge imposed by authority. In the Grail it is

an inner revelation, a true initiation into the Mysteries; and it is that

inner revelation which takes the place of dogma, a revelation which comes

by inner illumination instead of being taught by the outer authority of

a Church. And so you find that in that vision the dove appears—symbol of

inspiration. The inspiration of the inner revelation is ever there, and

that inner revelation belongs to the body of the Initiates, the elect

out of all humanity. They hand it on to the world outside, that which is

knowledge to them becoming dogma to the outer world. And so you can see

that in the Grail legend the teaching of the Mysteries was symbolically

conveyed, and those who were able to pierce through the meaning of the

legend had their feet placed upon the Path where the symbols became

reality; the principle running through was identical. And so the lesson

was taught that for those who cannot yet themselves build a bridge to

the higher world, the outer sacrament is given as the bridge to unite

the two; but when the man is able to make his own bridge, the sacrament

for him is no longer necessary. He can reach the worlds above without

the assistance of the bridge, and then he becomes the Knight of the

Grail. That is still true. The Churches must ever give the sacraments,

because the masses of their believers are not yet evolved enough to be

able to build their own bridge. For those who have reached the point in

spiritual manhood where the other worlds are known and are ever present

in consciousness, for them the value of the sacrament is over, and the

reality of the inner life no longer needs the grace that is conveyed by

the sacrament.

Now if you realise the facts I have been putting to you, if you

understand what the sacrament means and what its value is, you will never

speak lightly, contemptuously of it, remembering that those who need it

receive in it a real power, and that those who have gone beyond that

necessity are those who are ever the tenderest to the souls that still

require it, and are careful that with their wisdom they do not bewilder

the ignorant, that they do not lessen the means of grace for those who

are unable to reach knowledge for themselves. And inasmuch as it is the

duty of the members of the Theosophical Society to know these facts of

the different worlds, and to use them for the helping of others, they

have the duty of trying to bring back the realisation of all the immense

value which may be found in these rites which are little understood

by the more skeptical communities to-day. That your mission and your

privilege. Whether in your own religious communities you still find help

or not in these outer veils of spiritual things, that is a comparatively

small matter. As long as they help you, use them to the utmost; and when

you no longer need them, then treat them with the reverence which is due

to them, and explain them to those who do not understand them. Not very,

very long will pass before all and much more than I am saying to you will

become common knowledge in the Churches. Yours the privilege of knowing

a little sooner than the outside world; not because you are specially

favoured, but in order that you may carry knowledge to the outside world.

For every one of you ought to lead the sacramental life, and that means

that you shall be a channel by which the spiritual forces shall pour

down and spread through you to those who surround you, vivifying and

spiritualising the world. That your privilege, from the knowledge that

has come to you; that your duty, for knowledge brings responsibility. And

just in proportion as you understand the occult truths out of which the

esoteric religions have sprung, so will you try to make those religions

deeper, more vital, more spiritualising to all that belong to them, so

that you may truly act as servants of religion, for such servants every

lover of the Divine Wisdom should be.

Lecture V

Address on White Lotus Day 1909

All over the world to-day the sun in rising has seen in country after

country men and women gathering together to bear in memory those who have

passed onward through the gate of death, but who, in passing through the

gate, have remained even more living than they were when they carried the

burden of the flesh; men and women who have left their names behind them

as workers for the Ancient Wisdom in its modern dress, and whose memories

remain dear and precious because of the work they did, because of the

message they spread.

We have listened this evening to verses from the _Bhagavad-Gītā_, to

lines from _The Light of Asia_. In India, on the early morning of to-day,

words were read from that same sacred Scripture of the eastern land,

spoken there in its ancient tongue, the Sanskrit. In town after town,

village after village, the memory of those same lives is kept in mind.

There also _The Light of Asia_ has been read, and the sacred memory of

the Buddha has been recalled. And all over India, from the Northern

Himalayas down to the South, thousands of the poor have been fed by the

branches of our Society in memory of those who lived, of those who

passed away, some of whom have come back to earth again. And as the sun

came onwards along its western path, it lighted up other countries also,

which kept the same memory, used the same books, spoke the same names,

and so across Italy, and Russia, and Germany, and then in France, and now

here, and a few hours hence across the Atlantic, in America, the same

memories will be recalled, the same books will be read, the same thoughts

will be spoken and will spread from heart to heart. For all round the

globe this day is kept sacred in memory of those who died, as men say,

amongst us, but who live to carry on the mighty work that here they took

up for the brief day of mortal life. And we think of our dead, our truly

living, not with sorrow, not with mourning, but with glad hearts and

thankful lips, for we know that death is nothing but a passing from one

world to another, a dropping of one body for the more effective wearing

of a subtler, finer, more powerful one than that which, outworn, is cast

away. For we have learned, and some of us know practically, that that is

true which is written in that same Eastern Scripture of which we heard

some verses to-day, that the Dweller in the body throws aside the outworn

body as a man throws aside garments outworn; and as the man takes new

garments for his wearing, so does the Dweller in the body take new bodies

for his wearing, for new days of a never-ending, an immortal life.

And we think of those who have gone onward to-day—not only of our

greatest, but of all who have worked and striven for the same great

cause. And perhaps it is fitting that first in that great roll we should

send message of love to the one who has left us last, who laboured

so long and so faithfully in France—Dr. Pascal—the General Secretary

there, who only a few weeks since passed to the rest so well deserved.

A weary time had he in the passing; years of weakness, of suffering, of

ever-decreasing strength. And many ask, when they see so long an illness

and so much of pain, when they see a life that was bright and helpful and

full of service set to this world in so long a twilight of sadness and

suffering, sometimes they ask: “Why should one who served so well have so

long and so sad a passing to the other side?” But people do not always

understand that, when a man has worked well and done good service, ere he

goes to his rest for a little time on the other side, it is well for him

to pay the debts incurred, which otherwise would hamper the new life when

it comes back to earth; and that there can be no better karma—sad as it

may seem to the outward sight—than when these ties of the past are fully

paid before the day of passing comes, so that the new birth is unshadowed

by the shadows of the past, and debt is paid which otherwise would be

demanded when the new life is born. So that in a life like that, which

has ended sadly, as men say, with body failing and brain failing, looking

at that with seeing eyes we see the preparing for a better birth, a

greater service, and we know that it is well that the debt was paid, and

that the new life shall come unencumbered with the sad heritage of the

past. And so to our friend to-night we send messages of love and gladness

that the debt is paid, thankfulness that he has passed over, so that he

may come back again to work under conditions fairer, nobler, more full of

promise than those in which he worked so bravely and so nobly through the

life that now has closed.

And as we look back we see the faces of many friends, all of whom we

commemorate—some of our own country, some of other lands, some near at

hand, and some far off, who have passed to the other side in order that

they may return. For you remember that it is written: “Certain is death

to the born, and certain is birth to the dead.” And those who have passed

onward are some of them turning their faces earthward once again, because

the times demand fresh workers, and much is to be done in the years that

are dawning upon us.

And one man stands out strongly in the minds of all, our President, the

President-Founder, who passed away only two brief years since, and who

is residing in his Master’s home, but not altogether resting as men call

rest, inasmuch as he is ever eagerly working for the Movement he loved

and loves, and longing for the day when he shall be permitted to take

again a body to do once more the work to which for many lives he has been

devoted.

And there rises the greatest name of all, H. P. Blavatsky, the name of

her who threw down the body she was wearing on this 8th of May, which,

for her dear sake, was chosen as the day of commemoration of all our

workers who have passed onward—her name dearest and nearest to our

hearts, the Messenger of the Lodge, she who was chosen to bring back

to a world in darkness the light which she carried so bravely and

unflinchingly through a life of suffering and toil. And strange is her

recompense, that she, round whom so many quarrels arose, she who was a

sign of storm and dispute through the warrior life that she led, she

who saw the Society well-nigh crumble round her in those days of the

Coulomb plot, when all over the world it seemed that Theosophy was doomed

to popular contempt, and deserted by most who at one time had welcomed

it; she who, wherever she went, met storm and trouble, who perhaps was

more loved and more hated than anyone of our own time, she has now the

recompense that hers is the one name which is everywhere beloved through

the great Society of which she and her colleague were the founders, and

also among those who have gone out of it through the past years, those

who left it in the Judge secession, those who have gone out since;

hers is the one name that unifies, to whom all look back as teacher

and as friend. And a great and a beautiful lesson grows out of that,

that although life separates, death unifies; and those who in life went

away, as it seemed, from the movement that she made, look back to her

as founder, and round her name, among the prominent people inside and

outside the Society, there runs to-day absolute unanimity, and a peace

without one ripple of dissent.

And to me that seems a very beautiful thing, that the name that was the

name of strife and of combat has become the one name which is recognised

as the foundation of the Movement everywhere, no matter by what passing

changes that Movement may have been affected. And it carries with it a

valuable lesson. These changes that we think so much of do not matter;

all the storms and troubles are of no account; on this great advancing

tide of truth and light, it matters not what apparent storms may come,

what rocks may be in the way, what angry waves may rise and break,

what feelings may be expressed—the whole of it vanishes in the face of

the great unifier, Death; and those who were rent asunder because they

thought more of personalities than of principles, they catch sight again

of the principle when death has smoothed away the difficulties of the

persons over whom they quarrelled. And so, looking back to her to-day, we

can see in her life and death a presage of the future. None of the storms

matter, and none of the secessions and divisions count in the great work.

They are all mere trivial incidents of passing days, and the one great

Life rolls on, only the richer for the divergence, only the fuller for

the differences which it catches up and blends into one.

And on this day, looking backward to those who have gone through death’s

portal, shall we not also look forward to those who are coming back

through birth’s portal to work in the Movement in the future as they

worked in the Movement in the past? How far has it struck you, during the

days of storm and stress through which you have been passing, that to

those who believe in Reincarnation and Karma there is no possibility of

real separation, no possibility of lasting discord? For those who went

far away apparently from the Movement, or who left it by the gateway

of death, see on the other side the fundamental unity, even though on

this side, for a while, they may have been blinded by the superficial

differences, and join together in the work from which, on this side

perhaps, for the moment, they had let themselves slip away for some

trivial discord, some passing divergence of opinion. Take that great man

amongst us round whom raged the last great struggle, the one before the

struggle which is now nearing its close—W. Q. Judge—one of the greatest

and noblest workers in our Movement, even though in the last days of

his life he made the great rent in the Theosophical Society which cost

us for the time pretty well the whole Society in America. He again,

winning clearer vision on the other side after something of difficulty

and something of struggle (for the man was strong, and was not easy

to move or change even when the physical body had been cast away), he

after a while worked his way through the mistake that had been made, and

has again thrown his life force, his enormous energy into the Movement

of which the outer partial manifestation here is the Theosophical

Society, and into that Theosophical Society also. For remember that the

Theosophical Society is only the partial manifestation of that great

stream of Life which is flowing in the other worlds, and of which some

appears here. This great Theosophical stream is like one of those rivers

which flows underground, and then bubbles up above the ground so that

all can see. And the river of the Ancient Wisdom, with its source in

the Great Lodge of the Masters, is out of sight for the greater part of

its course, in worlds greater and higher than this, and then comes up

above the earthly surface and shows itself partially in what we call

the Theosophical Society; and into that River of Ages lives which have

passed onward throw their energy from the other worlds, so that they are

working in the same Movement and strengthening the same current, and are

not apart from us, but with us all the time.

And then there are some others to whose return amongst us we have the

right to look forward. One whom I may remind you of, who has not passed

through death’s gateway, although out of sight for so long, is that

faithful chelā of H. P. Blavatsky—Damodar—who left India after the great

Coulomb struggle, went up into the Himālayan region, and found his way to

his Master’s home near far-off Shigatze. He has been living and working

there ever since, and is now a man of middle age, but his return ere

very long we may without fear look forward to. He will come back to us

with all the gained knowledge that he has won during these many years’

training in the presence of the Teachers Themselves; he has already shown

himself in India, not physically, but preparing to come back when the

Movement is ready for his work, and the getting ready of it is the work

which we have to do in the few years in front. For ere many years have

gone we may look for his coming as a leader and teacher amongst us.

And of those who passed through death’s gateway some have already come

back, H. P. Blavatsky amongst them; so that in the years that come many

of you will see that strong life again manifested amongst us to take

share in the working of the Society, for which he is working now as ever

before. Remember how a Master said of him: “The brother whom you know as

H. P. Blavatsky, but we—otherwise.” One who was spoken of in such words

by the Master M. does not leave the work to which he has put his hand

because the worn-out body was thrown aside for the time—the brother whom

we know as H. P. Blavatsky, but They otherwise, the great and strong

disciple will again come amongst us to work more powerfully than in the

woman’s body that last time he wore. And others, too, who worked with

him in the earlier days—Subba Rao, whose name many yet know; he is now a

lad of nearly fifteen, in the Indian body once more, born in fact in the

same family (using the word “family” in the wider Indian sense), a lad of

fifteen, very soon to be ready again to take up his work.

And there are others, less well known, who have been reborn, and who are

preparing to take part in the great forward movement which is so soon

to begin. But before that work could begin it was necessary to have the

shaking through which we have been passing during the last three years.

I have told you often that from time to time these shakings recur, and

are necessary before a great time of onward progress. Few of you probably

will remember the progress that was made after the Coulomb trouble, but

many of you will remember the spring forward which the Society took after

the American secession. History repeats itself in small cycles as well as

in large ones, and before the great forward movement could take place it

was necessary that the shaking should occur once more, to shake out for

the moment those who were not ready to go forward.

What is the great difficulty before the world? When those who know more

and are able to teach are to come forward and live among the men and

women of the time, and bring to them the treasures they have harvested

of the Wisdom of the ancient days, the one thing that stands in the way

of their reception is the spirit which is not able to recognise greatness

when it sees it, but meets it with suspicion, doubt, slander, calumny;

which ever supplies evil motives where there is no understanding of

the reasons for action, and so paralyses those who know, and builds up

barriers which even they cannot overstep. You saw it in the life of H.

P. Blavatsky. Look back to that life of hers; see how her efforts, her

endeavours to teach and spread the Wisdom, the message with which she

was charged, were everywhere frustrated. And that has been so now for

very many centuries. When the greatest of all Teachers came, that mighty

Teacher whom in the East we call the Bodhisattva, whom in the West we

call the Christ, when He came—mightiest of spiritual Teachers, the very

spirit of Wisdom and love incarnate—He could not live three years in this

world ere He became so insupportable to the people of His day that they

slew Him, while His love for the Father was denounced as blasphemy, His

teaching denounced as coming from the devil. And that same spirit has

been seen ever since. The great teachers have ever been met with the same

spirit, and we have to change it. The chief mission of the Society at the

moment is to prepare the way of the Lord, and the only preparation that

can be made is to substitute reverence for greatness instead of suspicion

and hatred. And because that is the immediate work which lies before

us, it was necessary to shake out of the Society those whose spirit was

rather suspicion of greatness than acceptance of it when seen. For the

immediate work is the preparing of the world for the coming of greater

Ones, in order that the new impulse may be given when the new sub-race

and Root Race are to be born.

That is the immediate work, the preparation for the coming of some

of those whom I have been mentioning—Damodar, Subba Rao, H. P.

Blavatsky—not, remember, with flourish of trumpets, or with anyone

declaring “this is so-and-so” and “this is someone else,” with the

exception, perhaps, of the first named (Damodar), who went as a boy to

his Master, and is now middle-aged, but will be recognised by old Indian

friends. But others will be coming in new bodies, unknown, with no proof

of who they are. They will have to make their way, they will have to

prove their apostolate, and probably their views of things will be very

different from the views of many of those in the Theosophical Society.

Inevitably so; for people whose eyes are opened to more than one world

cannot see things, as those see them whose eyes are blind save to one;

those who see the wider horizon will have different thoughts from those

who are cabined in by the life and conventions of their day. And that is

why the great Ones are always misunderstood, for They must be other than

those to whom They come, else how could They teach? And that is where

your General Secretary spoke very truly in saying that the mind often

misleads, and the things we “think” cover over the things we “know.” Now

the things you know, you know by the light of the Spirit which is within

you; by that intuition which is the voice of the pure, not the impure

reason, speaking above the mind and through the mind, but very often in

contradiction to the mind. And in order to hear that voice of intuition,

so far as I know, there is only one way, that when once you see the Light

shine out through any human being, you hold to that human being, no

matter what the mind may say. That is what spells success, and that was

pre-eminently the case with H. P. Blavatsky, for anyone more confusing

to the ordinary mind you could not possibly come across—awkward, athwart

one’s conventions in every way; in speech, manner, actions, the very

reverse of all that you would expect. When I first met her and saw in her

the power of the Master, from that day to this I have never challenged

and never doubted her. And very, very largely because of that have come

the knowledge and power that I have won not by reasoning and arguing—“Was

she right or wrong?” “Would it not have been better if she had been

different from what she was?”—but having once seen in her the Light of

Truth, refusing to see anything else except the Messenger of the Master.

And that is what you need in the coming days, that is what some of you

have been winning through the storms of the last three years—to realise

that when once you have known a teacher to be a teacher you shall cling

to that knowledge, no matter what clouds for a time surround, no matter

what storms for a time may hide; for that means intuition, which is above

the concrete mind; it means the testimony of the God within you to the

God without you, and that cannot lie. And we have to spread that through

the whole Society in order to make the way possible for those who will

be coming amongst us during the next few years, and the greater Ones who

will come later if we can welcome the Messengers, but not otherwise. Our

years of mortal life are not those by which time is reckoned in the great

cycles of the occult world. It is true that we say: “Probably between

thirty and forty years hence a great Teacher will come back, the greatest

Teacher, the Teacher of Gods and men.” But a date like that, which is

counted by the revolutions of the world, is always a doubtful thing from

the occult standpoint; for time there is measured by consciousness, and

not by the turning of the sun. Efforts may shorten or failure may retard

the date, and hence it is always rather vaguely put; and if, when these

less great ones came we were not able to receive them, if we are repelled

by the superficial appearance and have not the intuition to recognise the

Messengers, that will inevitably delay the coming of the greater Ones.

At different times different virtues are wanted. To know the virtue of

the time and to develop it, that is wisdom. At one time courage is the

great thing wanted; at another time recognition of spiritual greatness,

and the power to hold to it, and that is the virtue wanted now. Not in

order that you and I as individuals may take part in this great work, but

in order that the world may be prepared, that the way of the Lord may be

made straight, so that He may come. For He cannot come to be a curse to

the world instead of a blessing, as He would be if the world were wholly

unprepared. And so greater and greater Ones will be coming in order that

the greatest of all may be welcomed when He appears amongst us.

Some of you think, but you think mistakenly, that you would recognise,

say, a Master, or even a Christ, if He appeared. Are you so sure? They

never have been recognised by the people of their time save by a small

minority, and why should we be different? The Christ was not recognised

when He came last; His Messengers have not been recognised since, save

by a minority. They are so different from the people of their time that

there is much to get over before you can recognise them. And it is a

good practice sometimes to throw yourself back to those days in Judea

when the Son of Man trod the earth. Realise what He would have seemed to

you then, not what he seems to you now through the vista of centuries

of the adoration of millions of men. What would he have seemed as the

vagabond travelling about on foot, with a number of half-educated

people round Him, disturbing the peace of society, antagonistic to the

respectabilities of His day, looked down upon by the aristocracy of

the time? See Him as they saw Him, and ask yourself: “Should I have

recognised the Christ?” And that is where the test has been, right

through these last three years, and where it will be as the people I

have been speaking of gradually come amongst us again. If you would

recognise them when they come, try to cultivate the power which answers

to greatness without, by cultivating greatness within, remembering that

spiritual recognition is the recognition of all those who are kindred to

yourself. If you have the virtue in you of the spiritual man you will

know spiritual men when you meet them; but if you cannot answer to Him,

then He will pass you by unknown, and probably disliked.

Now our work is clear before us: to try to change the public opinion of

the world into the attitude which is sometimes called disparagingly

hero-worship, which is essentially the thing we need at the present

time—the power to know the hero when we see him. “No man is a hero,”

it is said, “to his valet.” And people think that that means that he

is small when seen close by. Not so; but that the small soul which is

typified by the word “valet” cannot appreciate the greatness of the hero

near whom he stands. The servant soul does not recognise the greatness

of the hero, and therefore the hero is no hero to him. Only the heroic

recognises the hero; and if you can develop that in yourself which is

like a Master, then, and then alone, will you know a Master when He

comes. And the best way to cultivate it is for a time to let go that

spirit of criticism which makes people so superior to those around them.

Cultivate the faculty of admiration rather than that of criticism.

Try, when you meet a person or when you read a book, to see the good

things in the book or person, and not the faults. And the faults in the

people around you, these are no business of yours; and if you would once

understand that and live it, your path would be so much easier. So many

of you are so anxious to get other people out of their faults that you

really have no time to look after your own steps and put them in the

right way. The faults of the other people will work out through karma,

and they are not your business—a hard but true lesson. Of course, if

you are a master or a teacher, and have others in your charge, their

faults are then yours to correct; but you are not, generally speaking,

masters or guardians, and you have no responsibility to criticise or put

others right. Take out of your friends the value of the good and let

the faults go. You need not say they are virtues, you need not pretend

that you think wrong right; but you can say: “That part of the man is not

my business; let me help the God in him to manifest, and let the other

side in him wear out in its own way.” If you can do that you will be

more useful now than in any other spirit, and it is that lesson I would

ask you to take with you. Think of H. P. Blavatsky and of those who have

passed away in the spirit that they helped us, and not in the spirit that

would blind our eyes to their value, and then carry that spirit on to the

people around you, and in every one round you try to see the God, and

let the rest go. Admire the admirable, and leave aside the regrettable;

for in doing it you will help them more to conquer their faults than by

criticism.

Seeing the God in them, and loving and trusting, that will help them

to grow out of the limitations, of the blunders and errors that are

hindering the divine manifestation. And remember that is what is wanted

now, not for yourselves only but for every one around you, so that when

the Teachers come They may be able to remain in the world amongst us.

They dare not come yet, because even in the Theosophical Society They

would not be welcomed. A Master who came amongst you now would not

for the most part be very much liked by you; His ways, His views, His

thoughts would be so different, He would raise suspicion and dislike.

We saw it in the earlier days when They came out more, and were met by

judgment and criticism, until one of Them said, in the fashion in which

They look at ignorant criticism; “The standard of the Adept is not kept

at Simla, it is kept at Shamballah and I try to accommodate myself to

that.” There is a great lesson in that for all of us. The standard of

those who are passing onward into the higher life is not the standard of

the judgment of the people around them, but the standard that the Masters

hold up before them, to which they are ever trying to conform. Think of

that in your attitude to the people around you; remember that on you,

and on people like you everywhere, depends the success or the failure of

the next great manifestation of the divine life on the earth; that this

Theosophical Society, spread everywhere over the world, is literally the

John the Baptist to prepare the way for the coming of the Christ; to fill

that part is your work and duty—and need I say, your privilege, your

highest honour?

To leave the Society now, in the days which are just dawning, surely it

is bad karma enough, and you should only feel the tenderest thoughts of

pity towards any who go out from us in the days when to belong to the

movement is the greatest crown that can be given for any nobility of

past life that any one of us may have had. No words of harshness or of

condemnation, nothing that will make it harder for them to return, but

everywhere gentlest and most tolerant speech—this is our duty to our

immediate brethren; and to the world what I have told you.

And so from this White Lotus Day look forward more than backward,

rather to the work that is coming than to the difficulties that are now

well-nigh over. Remember, for your strengthening, that the only great

shaking has been here and in America, nowhere else. You can count on your

fingers practically in other countries those who have been shaken out.

You have had the struggle and have come out well. It is practically over

now. There may be some slight effort made now to make things difficult,

but what does it matter, with such hopes before us, with such strength

behind us, with such knowledge within us? Why should we allow ourselves

to be ruffled by anything that can take place in this outer world of

men? We have been through many such struggles in past lives, shall have

to go through many greater ones in lives to come; why make too much

of present-day trouble? Those whose lives are in eternity need not be

troubled with even what seem to be great difficulties to the men and

women of the world. And so to you I would say: Gather together on the

Day of Memory, but turn it now more into day of looking forward. Let the

past go; it has done its work, it is over. Turn your eyes to the work

that is opening before us, more splendid than any work of the past. And

remember it is not the Messengers who may stand in front who are the

strength of the Society, but that the life comes from the Masters and the

strength from the Lodge. Knowing that, you need not mind even if those

of us who are well known in the world make mistakes, are attacked, or

evil spoken of. Never yet a Messenger of the Lodge that went through life

without being evil spoken of, and you need not grudge us the sign of our

apostolate; for such has ever been the sign of the Messengers through

all ages. Rather rejoice with us that the stress for the time is over,

and the days of going forward are upon us; do not let the remnant of the

trouble shake any one of you, but know that the Masters are with us, and

where they are no failure can come.

Lecture VI

The Nature of the Christ

Delivered to the Christo-Theosophical Society, at the invitation of Sir

Richard and Lady Stapley, Tuesday, May 25, 1909.

It is with pleasure that I find myself amongst you, as I have often found

myself before. I think my membership in the Theosophical Society is of

about the same length as the life of your Society. We both began our

careers, so to speak, about the same time, in the same year.

The subject that I have taken is in many ways a difficult one, and one

that may very naturally arouse differences of feeling. It is, however,

one which is being discussed very much in the Christian Church at the

present time, and it is for that reason that it seemed to me that it

might be useful if we could exchange thoughts on a subject of enormous

importance. I also want to make certain suggestions which I think may

be welcomed in regard to an idea to be found in the East, which perhaps

is not quite familiar over here; and which presages a unity greater and

profounder than could be reached, I think, in any other way. Naturally,

I am putting only my own views, and they commit no one but myself. These

questions that touch alike the intellect and the heart must always be

treated reverently by those who realise the Brotherhood of man, and they

are also ideas of the profoundest importance with regard to the future of

religion and of civilisation.

In the _Hibbert Journal_ of January last the subject that I have taken

for our talk was to some extent discussed from the standpoint of one who

I suppose would be called an extremely liberal Christian. The writer is

the Rev. R. Roberts, Congregational minister, of Bradford; his name is

still in the Congregational Year-book, but I heard that he was not at

present ministering in any pulpit. I take his view as my starting-point

this afternoon. The title of his article is at first sight a little

startling from the ordinary Christian standpoint, “Jesus or Christ?”

and he distinctly puts forward the view, and argues for it with a good

deal of ability, that we have to do at once with one supposed to be a

historical person, and then apparently with what he could only regard as

a Mystical Ideal.