and Engraving Dept. SCENE FROM "THE AROMA OF ATHENS" IN THE CENTER
IS PHARNABAZOS, THE PERSIAN ENVOY TO ATHENS, WITH HIS SUITE AND
ATTENDANTS]
[Illustration: Copyright by Katherine Tingley, 1911 Lomaland Photo. and
Engraving Dept. ANOTHER SCENE IN "THE AROMA OF ATHENS" CENTRAL FIGURES
ARE PERIKLES AND PHEIDIAS]
[Illustration: Copyright by Katherine Tingley, 1911 Lomaland Photo. and
Engraving Dept. ARCHERS IN "THE AROMA OF ATHENS"]
[Illustration: Copyright by Katherine Tingley, 1911 Lomaland Photo. and
Engraving Dept. ANOTHER SCENE IN "THE AROMA OF ATHENS"]
WHAT ARE THE BASES OF AN INTELLIGENT BELIEF IN REINCARNATION? by F. S.
Darrow, A. M., Ph. D. (Harv.)
Reflection inevitably reveals the limitations of the actual, the
confines of the present. So narrow is the sphere within which our
daily life revolves that even the man who most prides himself on his
avoidance of philosophy is forced, perhaps unconsciously, to construct
a theory of metaphysics. How is it possible to do our daily duties
without forming a working hypothesis as to the nature of the world
within which those duties lie? Inarticulate and crude as the theory
may be, each and every man is forced to adopt a life-hypothesis and
by it, as best he can, to mold his actions. No specious reasoning can
free us from speculation. Therefore it is a solemn duty which we owe
to ourselves to choose intelligently our hypothesis as to life and its
meaning. This duty can be trusted neither to chance nor to tradition.
To shirk a moral responsibility incurs grave consequences.
It is necessary that our life-hypothesis shall fulfil two conditions:
it must be thinkable and it must be livable. Life leads to thought
about life; but our judgment must concern itself with life. Therefore
what we believe must be both logical and practical. Logical because
fact makes the appeal to logic, and practical because logic must answer
fact. Our life-hypothesis, since its subject-matter is the Self and the
World in which the Self lives, must be both universal and particular.
In answering the query, What are the bases of an intelligent belief
in Reincarnation? we are primarily concerned with the Self. Without
considering the nature of the Self in detail, let me postulate that by
the Self I mean the Real You and the Real I, the Individual Life, which
expresses itself through your physical nature and through mine, the
Individuality at the basis of the Personality, the Character underlying
the physical man.
The conception of reincarnation or rebirth of soul, I grant, is
speculative, since it ranges far beyond the cramped present. So, if it
is to become part of our life-hypothesis it must be both logical and
practically imperative. If logic and practical requirements combine
in their demands, then we must conclude that reincarnation has been
demonstrated to be true in so far as any hypothesis can be. The most
probable is and must be accepted actually as the true.
Many circumstances suggest that the Self existed previously to its
birth in the present body. Poetry voices the thought as follows:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Children frequently instinctively believe that they have lived before.
The poets do not monopolize those tantalizingly vague sensations of
familiarity, which sometimes accompany strange and apparently novel
experiences.
Sometimes a breath floats by me,
An odor from Dreamland sent,
Which makes the ghost seem nigh me
Of a something that came and went
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not
In what diviner sphere:
Of mem'ries that come not and go not:
Like music once heard by an ear
That cannot forget or reclaim it--
A something so shy, it would shame it
To make it a show:
A something too vague, could I name it
For others to know:
As though I had lived it and dreamed it,
As though I had acted and schemed it
Long ago.
Whittier voices the impression of many when he says:
A presence strange at once and known
Walked with me as my guide:
The skirts of some forgotten life
Trailed noiseless at my side.
So, too, the recurrence of the seasons, the ebb and flow and re-ebb of
the tides, the cycles of day and night, the phenomenon of genius, and
countless other things, suggest that the old is continually reborn. Yet
classing all these together they amount merely to presumptive evidence,
hints at possibilities, but not proof.
We are born with a sense of Justice, a sense which extends at least as
far as our private rights. Further, justice is so valued that we regard
Deity as perfectly just. The kernel of justice is: "As a man sows so
shall he reap." The effect must be equal to the cause. To talk of the
justice of a god who creates Souls is to babble nonsense. Personal
responsibility is an indispensable requirement for the maintenance of
justice, and personal responsibility can exist only if souls are the
creators of their own destinies. Otherwise "Justice" is a mockery and
a delusion. Therefore, if we are to believe that the Universe is ruled
justly, eternal pre-existence of soul must be a fact.
The books say well, my brothers, each man's life
The outcome of his former living is:
The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woes,
The bygone right breeds bliss.
So is a man's fate born.
_Ex nihilo nihil fit_--from nothing nothing is made. Nineteenth century
science has succeeded in proving what the world's thinkers have long
believed. Matter and energy are indestructible. "Creation" in the sense
of manufacture out of nothing is unthinkable. If the soul is one with
the Universal Energy, "it is not a thing of which a man may say, 'It
hath been, it is about to be, or is to be hereafter,' for it is without
birth and meeteth not death." "Nature is nothing less than the ladder
of resurrection, which step by step leads upward." The eternal Soul,
now linked to a mortal body, has lived before and will live hereafter.
The last and most important of the logical imperatives demanding a
belief in reincarnation is the thesis: Immortality of soul demands
complete eternity of soul. That which has a beginning, of necessity
has an end. The child is born, grows into youth and manhood, lives its
life, but it dies. Death's fingers clutch at birth. That which is born
is mortal. Thus the soul must be birthless if it is to be deathless. It
must have lived before its present body and it will outlive any body
which it may hereafter enliven. Reincarnation is merely the natural
corollary to eternity.
Let us now turn to the practical considerations reinforcing our
belief. Even when discouraged we feel that life has a purpose and a
meaning. This is, to keep adding to experience and to knowledge. The
amount actually experienced and learned within the limits of a single
life is so small in comparison with the possibilities of experience
and knowledge that it can only serve as an introduction into deeper
mysteries. The scholar does not graduate until he has fulfilled the
requirements of a definite standard. The knowledge and experience of
one life is surely too low a standard to admit of graduation from
earth. Our globe is a school and the souls are the scholars. What is
once gained is never lost. "Be ye perfect even as your Father who is
in heaven is perfect." Think of the hope! An infinite future with the
possibility of an infinite progress in knowledge and attainment!
Ambition, zeal, and love, demand an infinity to express themselves.
Love of work, love of learning, love of loved ones, presuppose by their
existence the complete eternity of the Soul. So, too, all our impulses
which tend toward expansion and increase, all those which break loose
from the present into the expanse of the future, require that the soul
be immortal and consequently eternal.
Notice, aside from logic, what a belief in rebirth and in the eternity
of the Soul, means. It gives hope in the perfectibility of man,
inspiration in his divinity, and comfort in the trials of life, trials
that are just and capable of teaching greater knowledge. There is no
inspiration which in the future cannot be attained by honest effort.
These are a few of the blessings which the philosophy of Theosophy has
to offer to you and to me, a philosophy of soul-evolution that is an
ever-present help in trouble, one that is both logical and practical, a
"religious science, and a scientific religion." Search within yourself
and listen to the message of Theosophy: Truth
takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe;
There is an inmost center in us all,
Where truth abides in fulness.
THE VICTORY OF THE DIVINE IN MAN: by Rev. S. J. Neill
Nothing moves on with even flow. It seems to be inherent in the very
nature of the universe that there should be ripples in the great
Life-Current of Existence, just as there are waves in the sea. A
well-known scientist once asked me if I had ever noticed how a stream
of water, perfectly smooth, apparently flowing over a sheet of quite
smooth glass would nevertheless produce ripples. There is no known
explanation of this except it be that the water at its source had
received unequal impulse which it never lost. So in the universe, the
great impulse of the Creative Word in manifestation stamps cyclic law
on all things. We see this in the coming and going of the seasons; in
the recurrence of day and night; in the ebb and flow of the sea. Human
life too, is made up of cycles great and small. The seven ages of human
life, mentioned by Shakespeare, are distinctly marked. The four ages
corresponding to the changing seasons of the year, are also well known.
The wise note and take advantage of cyclic law. To educate during the
time of youth is like sowing seed in the springtime. Many people have
distinct moods at certain times: at one time they are happy, hopeful,
buoyant; at another time they are miserable and despondent. No doubt
much of this moodiness is the result of people allowing themselves to
drift. We can, if we _will strongly enough_, rise above this condition
of things. We can cast out the morose, sullen, discontented states of
mind, and make the character firm and strong, calm and hopeful. We can
cultivate a good temper and a sunny atmosphere. Just as man can make a
clearing in the forest or on the hillside, so we can make a clearance
within our minds and in our mental atmosphere. And the happy feeling
thus produced will be part of the harvest we shall reap, for it will
return and return, it will become cyclic, until at last it will be most
truly natural for us to dwell in light and sunshine. And we ourselves
shall be producers of light and sunshine. Joy and peace will attend our
steps, and wherever we come it will be a sunny place.
We can do this; we can rise above circumstances and control them
because at the center of our being the Light of Life ever shines forth.
Dwelling in Time, and therefore to some extent subject to heat and
cold, summer and winter, joy and sorrow, we can, nevertheless, rise
above these things. We can create surroundings for ourselves. The more
we are truly alive the more we shall be able to do this. It may be
that the birds by some act of will, to them as simple as breathing,
can change their polarity and thus remain poised in air without a
motion. It should be possible, and it is possible, for us to change
our moral or spiritual polarity when we will, and rise above all
terrestrial attractions. All holy scriptures regard this as certain.
The _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_ on nearly every page speaks of man overcoming his
lower nature and being master of circumstances. The Bible teaches the
same thing: "Cease to do evil; learn to do well." "Resist the Devil and
he will flee from you." "Overcome evil with good." "Do good hoping for
nothing again." Jesus treats his disciples as men who have within them
a divine possibility, and says: "Where I am, there shall ye be also."
There is much darkness in the world, much evil; but we can lessen it;
we can to some extent remove it and annihilate it; and in the end we
can, if we so will, produce the reign of light everywhere.
As the moral sense in us is more and more sensitive we shall regard
many things as wrong which now we do not so regard. Just as we now
regard many things as wrong which people in a less advanced stage do
not regard as evil at all. The brighter the light, the deeper the
shadows. In this sense Light and Dark are the world's Eternal ways. But
a time will come when, as St. Paul says, "Mortality will be swallowed
up of Life"; when the Great Light will shine so fully within us and
around us that there will be nothing to cast a shadow.
Is this not some of the meaning of such places as that in the book of
Revelation, where it says, "and there shall be no night there; and they
need no lamp, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them
light"? Or as we read in the _Gitâ_, "neither the sun nor the moon nor
the fire enlighteneth that place; from it there is no return; it is my
supreme abode." It is also written that "the path of the just is as a
shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day."
Surely all this means, if words mean anything, that perfection can be
and will be reached; and that even here a large degree of perfection
may be attained. "Each victory will help us some other to win." Each
step we mount upward over our lower selves gives us a wider horizon and
a heavenlier air to breathe. The foes we slay today, we shall never
have to fight again. We not only become stronger but we become _much
stronger relatively_ as our foes are weaker and fewer.
The more we live with perfect unselfishness then the more we come into
the "Path of the Just." But if we do good things even, looking for the
reward, we do not take the highest path. It is much to understand the
nature of these two paths, for it is written: "Knowing these two paths,
O Son of Prithâ, the man of meditation is not deluded." Or, in other
words, though we dwell in Time, and our lower nature belongs to it, yet
in our inmost and only true Self, we belong, not to Time, but to the
Eternal; that is our Home and Place of Peace always.
The man who retires often to this fortress, to this place of peace,
though he may have to pass through much suffering, will be raised above
its destroying influence. Like the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace
he will pass through the fire of affliction and not a hair will be
singed nor even the smell of fire be on his garments.
We are assured that Nirvâna is on both sides of death. We can take the
highest path now, and the sooner we take it the sooner shall we reach
the goal. So bright a hope should give us greater strength.
[Illustration: Copyright by Katherine Tingley, 1911 ASPASIA]
[Illustration: Copyright by Katherine Tingley, 1911 Lomaland Photo. and
Engraving Dept. ATHENIAN SOLDIERS]
[Illustration: Copyright by Katherine Tingley, 1911 Lomaland Photo. and
Engraving Dept. "HEKTOR CHIDING PARIS" TABLEAU PRESENTED IN "THE AROMA
OF ATHENS"]
[Illustration: Copyright by Katherine Tingley, 1911 Lomaland Photo. and
Engraving Dept. "THETIS BRINGING THE ARMOR TO ACHILLES" ANOTHER TABLEAU
IN "THE AROMA OF ATHENS"]
ANCIENT AMERICA: by an Archaeologist
Like an oasis in a desert, like a moment of silence and a sound of
distant bells amid a din of discordant sounds, comes a brief note on
prehistoric America in the midst of a monthly review devoted to a
résumé of the Babel of modern thought. Bewildered with foolish spite of
party politics, disgusted with lucubrations on "The Coming Christ," and
a new Elixir of Life discovered in Africa, the reader achieves a moment
of silence and inward joy inspired by this paragraph on an ancient City
of the Sun, with its illustrations of the sublime architecture and
sculpture of that epoch. These pictures inspire a reverence, similar in
nature, if different in quality, to that which the ancient classical
architecture and statues inspire; it is more akin to that inspired by
ancient Egypt. It speaks of a _spirit_, so different from any that
pervades our modern life, yet arousing in the soul a response as of
something familiar--familiar but very deep and ancient.
We read that in the _Bulletin of the Pan-American Union_ a writer
describes Chichén Itzá. The Itzás were a tribe of the Mayas, whose
civilization reached a height equaled by no other people of the Western
hemisphere. They excelled in architecture, sculpture, printing, and
astronomy. The pyramid on which the temple stands is 195 feet long on
each side at the base and covers nearly an acre. It is made of nine
terraces of faced masonry. Up the center of each of its four sides
rises a stairway thirty-seven feet wide. A picture of a temple façade,
in rectangular massive style like that of Egypt and covered with
elaborate symbolic carving, while up from the roof rise tropical plants
that have grown there, is labeled, "View of an Ancient Monastery"
(so-called). The impression it gives is anything but that given by the
idea of a monastery. Its spirit is alien to that of any spirit familiar
to the times in which monasteries have prevailed.
It is awe-inspiring to think that this continent of America has behind
it such a past, more ancient than Egypt, as great and perhaps greater.
The Red Men must, many of them at least, be the remote descendants of
this past.
There is something about their physiognomy that reminds us of the faces
on the ancient pottery and carving; a broad-featured bronzed type--what
one might call a solar type. Peoples like the Zuñis and Moquis have
mysteries, into which but few white men have even partially penetrated;
which shows they are the remnants of a once greater race, a part of
whose knowledge they preserve in memory.
This subject of ancient America has not yet received from
archaeologists the attention it deserves. Nevertheless there are
explorers who study in this field, and the results of their researches
are frequently written up for the Sunday editions. In this way the
public gets acquainted with the subject independently of academical
instruction. Such periodicals as the _National Geographical Magazine_
and _Records of the Past_ often give beautiful illustrated accounts of
the ruins.
Thus we read that Dr. Max Uhle, director of the University of
California's archaeological work in Peru, has discovered that a great
civilization flourished at least 2000 years before the Incas, and that
a highly cultured race was in existence in Peru before the Trojan war.
In Guerrero, Mexico, in a region south of the Balsas River, over
an area of fifty square miles, there are remains of thousands of
prehistoric dwellings and scores of pyramids. The sculptured tablets
bear the usual mystic geometrical symbols of the ancient Science of
Life.
A mining engineer, Mr. A. Lafave, is reported to have discovered
in Arizona a prehistoric city older than Babylon or Nineveh, but
nevertheless the center of a civilization very highly advanced. Great
architectural skill is shown, and the symbol of what is called a
sun-god was found.
The British Museum recently acquired the collection of pottery and
other relics discovered by Mr. Hubert Myring in the Chimcana Valley of
Peru and stated by him to be at the lowest estimate 7000 years old.
Yet this pottery shows the highest possible degree of skill, while the
subjects represented prove that the artists had the materials of a
highly cultured and complex civilization to draw upon.
In Ecuador Dr. Marshall H. Saville of Columbia University discovered
many tombs, and the objects collected show that the district was
densely populated by a highly civilized people.
Writing from New Orleans, May 13, Charles F. Lummis of Los Angeles
records his excavations at Quiriguá, Guatemala. A trackless jungle had
to be cleared, and numerous monuments of heroic size were found; one
was twenty-six feet above ground and sixteen feet below and weighed
about 140,000 pounds. The greatest discovery was a palace which must
have been magnificent. It was surrounded by columns and the frieze was
covered with carved heads.
The ruined temples of Palenque, Uxmal, Chichén Itzá, etc., have often
been described. The mysterious hieroglyphics of the Mayas have yet to
be deciphered; and when they are we shall have another epoch-making
revelation like that following the deciphering of the Egyptian
hieroglyphics by Champollion.
Dr. Heath, a writer on Peruvian Antiquities, gives an account of the
incredible size and quantity of the ruins, from which the following is
selected. (See _Kansas City Review of Science and Industry_, Nov. 1878)
The coast of Peru extends from Tumbez to the river Loa, a distance
of 1233 miles. Scattered over this whole extent there are thousands
of ruins ... while nearly every hill and spire of the mountains
have upon them or about them some relic of the past; and in every
ravine, from the coast to the central plateau, there are ruins of
walls, cities, fortresses, burial vaults, and miles and miles of
terraces and water-courses.... Of granite, porphyritic lime and
silicated sandstone, these massive colossal cyclopean structures have
resisted the disintegration of time, geological transformations,
earthquakes, and the sacrilegious destructive hand of the warrior and
treasure-seeker. The masonry composing these walls, temples, houses,
towers, fortresses, or sepulchres, is uncemented, held in place by the
incline of the walls from the perpendicular, and by the adaptation
of each stone to the place designed for it, the stones having from
six to many sides, each dressed and smoothed to fit another or others
with such exactness that the blade of a small penknife cannot be
inserted in any of the seams thus formed.... These stones ... vary
from one-half cubic foot to 1500 cubic feet of solid contents, and if
in the many many millions of stones you could find one that would fit
in the place of another, it would be purely accidental.
Speaking of the terraces, he says:
Estimating five hundred ravines in the 1200 miles of Peru, and ten
miles of terraces of fifty tiers to each ravine, which would only be
five miles of twenty-five tiers to each side, we have 250,000 miles of
stone wall, averaging three to four feet high--enough to encircle this
globe ten times.
The mention of hieroglyphs yet undeciphered, which may any day prove
the key to a new revelation of history, receives apposite illustration
in an article in the _Los Angeles Times_ (Sunday magazine edition) for
May 14. This describes the discovery of several cylinders, resembling
the clay cylinders of Babylonian civilization, which have been
deciphered; and it is thought that these may prove the Rosetta stone of
American Egypt. They are about three inches long by an inch and a half
in diameter, hollow, the walls a quarter of an inch thick. The clay
has turned to stone, thus being preserved, and the inscriptions repeat
hieroglyphs known to correspond to familiar phrases.
The account in which this occurs is that of a discovery made by Prof.
William Niven, a field archaeologist of Mexico City; and his statements
as to the age and value of his finds are confirmed by Dr. Edward E.
Seler, head of the National School of Archaeology of the Republic of
Mexico. The latter authority declares the ruins and relics to be the
evidences of a civilization new to archaeology, though bearing some
resemblance to the ruins of the Tigris and Euphrates. This center of
civilization lies about forty minutes' ride from Mexico City, under the
suburb of Azcapotzalco.
It is eighteen feet beneath the surface, and from it have been produced
pottery of a type different from any hitherto found in Mexico, an
entire goldsmith's outfit with patterns and molds for the making of
ornaments of gold and silver, pendants and rings and beads of jade,
copper knives _which cut like steel_, skulls containing teeth whose
cavities are filled with cement and turquoise, the cylinders just
mentioned, and many other objects.