The fact that the Occult Sciences have been withheld from the world at
large, and denied by the Initiates to Humanity, has often been made matter
of complaint. It has been alleged that the Guardians of the Secret Lore
were selfish in withholding the “treasures” of Archaic Wisdom; that it was
positively criminal to keep back such knowledge—“if any”—from the men of
Science, etc.
Yet there must have been some very good reasons for it, since from the
very dawn of History such has been the policy of every Hierophant and
“Master.” Pythagoras, the first Adept and real Scientist in pre‐Christian
Europe, is accused of having taught in public the immobility of the earth,
and the rotatory motion of the stars around it, while he was declaring to
his privileged Adepts his belief in the motion of the Earth as a planet,
and in the heliocentric system. The reasons for such secresy, however, are
many and were never made a mystery of. The chief cause was given in _Isis
Unveiled_. It may now be repeated.
From the very day when the first mystic, taught by the first
Instructor of the “divine Dynasties” of the early races, was
taught the means of communication between this world and the
worlds of the invisible host, between the sphere of matter and
that of pure spirit, he concluded that to abandon this mysterious
science to the desecration, willing or unwilling, of the profane
rabble—was to lose it. An abuse of it might lead mankind to speedy
destruction; it was like surrounding a group of children with
explosive substances, and furnishing them with matches. The first
divine Instructor initiated but a select few, and these kept
silence with the multitudes. They recognised _their_ “God” and
each Adept felt the great “SELF” within himself. The Âtman, the
Self, the mighty Lord and Protector, once that man knew him as the
“I am,” the “Ego Sum,” the “Asmi,” showed his full power to him
who could recognise the “still small voice.” From the days of the
primitive man described by the first Vedic poet, down to our
modern age, there has not been a philosopher worthy of that name,
who did not carry in the silent sanctuary of his heart the grand
and mysterious truth. If initiated, he learnt it as a sacred
science; if otherwise, then, like Socrates, repeating to himself
as well as his fellow‐men, the noble injunction, “O man, know
thyself,” he succeeded in recognising his God within himself. “Ye
are Gods,” the king‐psalmist tells us, and we find Jesus reminding
the scribes that this expression was addressed to other mortal
men, claiming for themselves the same privilege without any
blasphemy. And as a faithful echo, Paul, while asserting that we
are all “the temple of the living God,” cautiously remarked
elsewhere that after all these things are only for the “wise,” and
it is “unlawful” to speak of them.(97)
Some of the reasons for this secresy may here be given.
The fundamental law and master‐key of practical Theurgy, in its chief
applications to the serious study of cosmic and sidereal, of psychic and
spiritual, mysteries was, and still is, that which was called by the Greek
Neoplatonists “Theophania.” In its generally‐accepted meaning this is
“communication between the Gods (or God) and those initiated mortals who
are spiritually fit to enjoy such an intercourse.” Esoterically, however,
it signifies more than this. For it is not only the presence of a God, but
an actual—howbeit temporary—incarnation, the blending, so to say, of the
personal Deity, the Higher Self, with man—its representative or agent on
earth. As a general law, the Highest God, the Over‐soul of the human being
(Âtma‐Buddhi), only overshadows the individual during his life, for
purposes of instruction and revelation; or as Roman Catholics—who
erroneously call that Over‐soul the “Guardian Angel”—would say, “It stands
outside and watches.” But in the case of the theophanic mystery, it
incarnates itself in the Theurgist for purposes of revelation. When the
incarnation is temporary, during those mysterious trances or “ecstasy,”
which Plotinus defined as
The liberation of the mind from its finite consciousness, becoming
one and identified with the Infinite,
this sublime condition is very short. The human soul, being the offspring
or emanation of its God, the “Father and the Son” become one, “the divine
fountain flowing like a stream into its human bed.”(98) In exceptional
cases, however, the mystery becomes complete; the Word is made Flesh in
real fact, the individual becoming divine in the full sense of the term,
since his personal God has made of him his permanent life‐long
tabernacle—“the temple of God,” as Paul says.
Now that which is meant here by the _personal_ God of Man is, of course,
not his seventh Principle alone, as _per se_ and in essence that is merely
a beam of the infinite Ocean of Light. In conjunction with our Divine
Soul, the Buddhi, it cannot be called a Duad, as it otherwise might,
since, though formed from Âtmâ and Buddhi (the two higher Principles), the
former is no entity but an emanation from the Absolute, and indivisible in
reality from it. The personal God is not the Monad, but indeed the
prototype of the latter, what for want of a better term we call the
_manifested_ Kâranâtmâ(99) (Causal Soul), one of the “seven” and chief
reservoirs of the human Monads or Egos. The latter are gradually formed
and strengthened during their incarnation‐cycle by constant additions of
individuality from the personalities in which incarnates that androgynous,
half‐spiritual, half‐terrestrial principle, partaking of both heaven and
earth, called by the Vedântins Jîva and Vijñânamaya Kosha, and by the
Occultists the Manas (mind); that, in short, which uniting itself
partially with the Monad, incarnates in each new birth. In perfect unity
with its (seventh) Principle, the Spirit unalloyed, it is the divine
Higher Self, as every student of Theosophy knows. After every new
incarnation Buddhi‐Manas culls, so to say, the aroma of the flower called
personality, the purely earthly residue of which—its dregs—is left to fade
out as a shadow. This is the most difficult—because so transcendentally
metaphysical—portion of the doctrine.
As is repeated many a time in this and other works, it is not the
Philosophers, Sages, and Adepts of antiquity who can ever be charged with
idolatry. It is they in fact, who, recognising divine unity, were the only
ones, owing to their initiation into the mysteries of Esotericism, to
understand correctly the ὑπόνοια (hyponéa), or under‐meaning of the
anthropomorphism of the so‐called Angels, Gods, and spiritual Beings of
every kind. Each, worshipping the one Divine Essence that pervades the
whole world of Nature, reverenced, but never worshipped or idolised, any
of these “Gods,” whether high or low—not even his own personal Deity, of
which he was a Ray, and to whom he appealed.(100)
The holy Triad emanates from the One, and is the Tetraktys; the
gods, daimons, and souls are an emanation of the Triad. Heroes and
men repeat the hierarchy in themselves.
Thus said Metrodorus of Chios, the Pythagorean, the latter part of the
sentence meaning that man has within himself the seven pale reflections of
the seven divine Hierarchies; his Higher Self is, therefore, in itself but
the refracted beam of the direct Ray. He who regards the latter as an
Entity, in the usual sense of the term, is one of the “infidels and
atheists,” spoken of by Epicurus, for he fastens on that God “the opinions
of the multitude”—an anthropomorphism of the grossest kind.(101) The Adept
and the Occultist know that “what are styled the Gods are only the first
principles” (Aristotle). None the less they are intelligent, conscious,
and _living_ “Principles,” the Primary Seven Lights _manifested_ from
Light _unmanifested_—which to us is Darkness. They are the
Seven—exoterically four—Kumâras or “Mind‐Born Sons” of Brahmâ. And it is
they again, the Dhyân Chohans, who are the prototypes in the æonic
eternity of lower Gods and hierarchies of divine Beings, at the lowest end
of which ladder of being are we—men.
Thus perchance Polytheism, when philosophically understood, may be a
degree higher than even the Monotheism of the Protestant, say, who limits
and conditions the Deity in whom he persists in seeing the Infinite, but
whose supposed actions make of that “Absolute and Infinite” the most
absurd paradox in Philosophy. From this standpoint Roman Catholicism
itself is immeasurably higher and more logical than Protestantism, though
the Roman Church has been pleased to adopt the exotericism of the heathen
“multitude” and to reject the Philosophy of pure Esotericism.
Thus every mortal has his immortal counterpart, or rather his Archetype,
in heaven. This means that the former is indissolubly united to the
latter, in each of his incarnations, and for the duration of the cycle of
births; only it is by the spiritual and intellectual Principle in him,
entirely distinct from the lower _self_, never through the earthly
personality. Some of these are even liable to break the union altogether,
in case of absence in the moral individual of binding, _viz._, of
spiritual ties. Truly, as Paracelsus puts it in his quaint, tortured
phraseology, man with his three (compound) Spirits is suspended like a
fœtus by all three to the matrix of the Macrocosm; the thread which holds
him united being the “Thread‐Soul,” Sûtrâtmâ, and Taijasa (the “Shining”)
of the Vedântins. And it is through this spiritual and intellectual
Principle in man, through Taijasa—the Shining, “because it has the
luminous internal organ as its associate”—that man is thus united to his
heavenly prototype, never through his lower inner self or Astral Body, for
which there remains in most cases nothing but to fade out.
Occultism, or Theurgy, teaches the means of producing such union. But it
is the actions of man—his personal merit alone—that can produce it on
earth, or determine its duration. This lasts from a few seconds—a flash—to
several hours, during which time the Theurgist or Theophanist is that
overshadowing “God” himself; hence he becomes endowed for the time being
with relative omniscience and omnipotence. With such perfect (divine)
Adepts as Buddha(102) and others such a hypostatical state of avatâric
condition may last during the whole life; whereas in the case of full
Initiates, who have not yet reached the perfect state of Jîvanmukta,(103)
Theopneusty, when in full sway, results for the high Adept in a full
recollection of everything seen, heard, or sensed.
Taijasa has fruition of the supersensible.(104)
For one less perfect it will end only in a partial, indistinct
remembrance; while the beginner has to face in the first period of his
psychic experiences a mere confusion, followed by a rapid and finally
complete oblivion of the mysteries seen during this super‐hypnotic
condition. The degree of recollection, when one returns to his waking
state and physical senses, depends on his spiritual and psychic
purification, the greatest enemy of spiritual memory being man’s physical
brain, the organ of his sensuous nature.
The above states are described for a clearer comprehension of terms used
in this work. There are so many and such various conditions and states
that even a Seer is liable to confound one with the other. To repeat: the
Greek, rarely‐used word, “Theophania,” meant more with the Neoplatonists
than it does with the modern maker of dictionaries. The compound word,
“Theophania” (from “theos,” “God,” and “phainomai,” “to appear”), does not
simply mean “a manifestation of God to man by _actual_ appearance”—an
absurdity, by the way—but the actual presence of a God in man, a _divine_
incarnation. When Simon the Magician claimed to be “God the Father,” what
he wanted to convey was just that which has been explained, namely, that
he was a _divine_ incarnation of his own Father, whether we see in the
latter an Angel, a God, or a Spirit; therefore he was called “that power
of God which is called great,”(105) or that power which causes the Divine
Self to enshrine itself in its lower self—man.
This is one of the several mysteries of being and incarnation. Another is
that when an Adept reaches during his lifetime that state of holiness and
purity that makes him “equal to the Angels,” then at death his
apparitional or astral body becomes as solid and tangible as was the late
body, and is transformed into the real man.(106) The old physical body,
falling off like the cast‐off serpent’s skin, the body of the “new” man
remains either visible or, at the option of the Adept, disappears from
view, surrounded as it is by the Âkâshic shell that screens it. In the
latter case there are three ways open to the Adept:
(1.) He may remain in the earth’s sphere (Vâyu or Kâma‐loka), in that
ethereal locality concealed from human sight save during flashes of
clairvoyance. In this case his astral body, owing to its great purity and
spirituality, having lost the conditions required for Âkâshic light (the
nether or terrestrial ether) to absorb its semi‐material particles, the
Adept will have to remain in the company of disintegrating shells—doing no
good or useful work. This, of course, cannot be.
(2.) He can by a supreme effort of will merge entirely into, and get
united with, his Monad. By doing so, however, he would (_a_) deprive his
Higher Self of posthumous Samâdhi—a bliss which is not real Nirvâna—the
astral, however pure, being too earthly for such state; and (_b_) he would
thereby open himself to Karmic law; the action being, in fact, the outcome
of personal selfishness—of reaping the fruits produced by and for
oneself—alone.
(3.) The Adept has the option of renouncing conscious Nirvâna and rest, to
work on earth for the good of mankind. This he can do in a two‐fold way:
either, as above said, by consolidating his astral body into physical
appearance, he can reassume the self‐same personality; or he can avail
himself of an entirely new physical body, whether that of a newly‐born
infant or—as Shankarâchârya is reported to have done with the body of a
dead Râjah—by “entering a deserted sheath,” and living in it as long as he
chooses. This is what is called “continuous existence.” The Section
entitled “The Mystery about Buddha” will throw additional light on this
theory, to the profane incomprehensible, or to the generality simply
_absurd_. Such is the doctrine taught, everyone having the choice of
either fathoming it still deeper, or of leaving it unnoticed.
The above is simply a small portion of what might have been given in _Isis
Unveiled_, had the time come then, as it has now. One cannot study and
profit by Occult Science, unless one gives himself up to it—heart, soul,
and body. Some of its truths are too awful, too dangerous, for the average
mind. None can toy and play with such terrible weapons with impunity.
Therefore it is, as St. Paul has it, “unlawful” to speak of them. Let us
accept the reminder and talk only of that which is “lawful.”
The quotation on p. 56 relates, moreover, only to psychic or spiritual
Magic. The practical teachings of Occult Science are entirely different,
and few are the strong minds fitted for them. As to ecstasy, and such like
kinds of self‐illumination, this may be obtained by oneself and without
any teacher or initiation, for ecstacy is reached by an inward command and
control of Self over the physical Ego; as to obtaining mastery over the
forces of Nature, this requires a long training, or the capacity of one
born a “natural Magician.” Meanwhile, those who possess neither of the
requisite qualifications are strongly advised to limit themselves to
purely spiritual development. But even this is difficult, as the first
necessary qualification is an unshakable belief in one’s own powers and
the Deity within oneself; otherwise a man would simply develop into an
irresponsible medium. Throughout the whole mystic literature of the
ancient world we detect the same idea of spiritual Esoterism, that the
personal God exists within, nowhere outside, the worshipper. That personal
Deity is no vain breath, or a fiction, but an immortal Entity, the
Initiator of the Initiates, now that the heavenly or Celestial Initiators
of primitive humanity—the Shishta of the preceding cycles—are no more
among us. Like an under‐current, rapid and clear, it runs without mixing
its crystalline purity with the muddy and troubled waters of dogmatism, an
enforced anthropomorphic Deity and religious intolerance. We find this
idea in the tortured and barbarous phraseology of the _Codex Nazaræus_,
and in the superb Neoplatonic language of the Fourth Gospel of the later
Religion, in the oldest _Veda_ and in the _Avesta_, in the _Abhidharma_,
in Kapila’s _Sânkhya_, and the _Bhagavad Gîtâ_. We cannot attain Adeptship
and Nirvâna, Bliss and the “Kingdom of Heaven,” unless we link ourselves
indissolubly with our Rex Lux, the Lord of Splendour and of Light, our
immortal God within us. “Aham eva param Brahman”—“I am verily the Supreme
Brahman”—has ever been the one living truth in the heart and mind of the
Adepts, and it is this which helps the Mystic to become one. One must
first of all recognise one’s own immortal Principle, and then only can one
conquer, or take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence. Only this has to be
achieved by the higher—not the middle, nor the third—man, the last one
being of dust. Nor can the second man, the “Son”—on this plane, as his
“Father” is the Son on a still higher plane—do anything without the
assistance of the first, the “Father.” But to succeed one has to identify
oneself with one’s divine Parent.
The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second [inner, our
higher] man is the Lord from heaven.... Behold, I show you a
mystery.(107)
Thus says Paul, mentioning but the dual and trinitarian man for the better
comprehension of the non‐initiated. But this is not all, for the Delphic
injunction has to be fulfilled: man must know himself in order to become a
perfect Adept. How few can acquire the knowledge, however, not merely in
its inner mystical, but even in its literal sense, for there are two
meanings in this command of the Oracle. This is the doctrine of Buddha and
the Bodhisattvas pure and simple.
Such is also the mystical sense of what was said by Paul to the
Corinthians about their being the “temple of God,” for this meant
Esoterically:
Ye are the temple of [the, or your] God, and the Spirit of [a, or
your] God dwelleth in you.(108)
This carries precisely the same meaning as the “I am verily Brahman” of
the Vedântin. Nor is the latter assertion more blasphemous than the
Pauline—if there were any blasphemy in either, which is denied. Only the
Vedântin, who never refers to his body as being himself, or even a part of
himself, or aught else but an illusory form for others to see him in,
constructs his assertion more openly and sincerely than was done by Paul.
The Delphic command “Know thyself” was perfectly comprehensible to every
nation of old. So it is now, save to the Christians, since, with the
exception of the Mussulmans, it is part and parcel of every Eastern
religion, including the Kabalistically instructed Jews. To understand its
full meaning, however, necessitates, first of all, belief in Reincarnation
and all its mysteries; not as laid down in the doctrine of the French
Reincarnationists of the Allan Kardec school, but as they are expounded
and taught by Esoteric Philosophy. Man must, in short, know who he was,
before he arrives at knowing what he is. And how many are there among
Europeans who are capable of developing within themselves an absolute
belief in their past and future reincarnations, in general, even as a law,
let alone mystic knowledge of one’s immediately precedent life? Early
education, tradition and training of thought, everything is opposing
itself during their whole lives to such a belief. Cultured people have
been brought up in that most pernicious idea that the wide difference
found between the units of one and the same mankind, or even race, is the
result of chance; that the gulf between man and man in their respective
social positions, birth, intellect, physical and mental capacities—every
one of which qualifications has a direct influence on every human
life—that all this is simply due to blind hazard, only the most pious
among them finding equivocal consolation in the idea that it is “the will
of God.” They have never analysed, never stopped to think of the depth of
the opprobrium that is thrown upon their God, once the grand and most
equitable law of the manifold re‐births of man upon this earth is
foolishly rejected. Men and women anxious to be regarded as Christians,
often truly and sincerely trying to lead a Christ‐like life, have never
paused to reflect over the words of their own _Bible_. “Art thou Elias?”
the Jewish priests and Levites asked the Baptist.(109) Their Saviour
taught His disciples this grand truth of the Esoteric Philosophy, but
verily, if His Apostles comprehended it, no one else seems to have
realised its true meaning. No; not even Nicodemus, who, to the assertion:
“Except a man be born again(110) he cannot see the Kingdom of God,”
answers: “How can a man be born when he is old?” and is forthwith reproved
by the remark: “Art thou a master in Israel and knowest not these
things?”—as no one had a right to call himself a “Master” and Teacher,
without having been initiated into the mysteries (_a_) of a spiritual re‐
birth through water, fire and spirit, and (_b_) of the re‐birth from
flesh.(111) Then again what can be a clearer expression as to the doctrine
of manifold re‐births than the answer given by Jesus to the Sadducees,
“who deny that there is any resurrection,” _i.e._, any re‐birth, since the
dogma of the resurrection in the flesh is now regarded as an absurdity
even by the intelligent clergy:
They who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world
[Nirvâna](112) ... neither marry ... neither can they die any
more,
which shows that they had already died, and more than once. And again:
Now that the dead are raised even Moses shewed ... he calleth the
Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob, for he is not a God of the dead but of the living.(113)
The sentence “now that the dead _are raised_” evidently applied to the
then actual re‐births of the Jacobs and the Isaacs, and not to their
future resurrection; for in such case they would have been still dead in
the interim, and could not be referred to as “the living.”
But the most suggestive of Christ’s parables and “dark sayings” is found
in the explanation given by him to his Apostles about the blind man:
Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born
blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this [blind, physical] man
sinned nor his parents; but that the works of [his] God should be
made manifest in him.(114)
Man is the “tabernacle,” the “building” only, of his God; and of course it
is not the temple but its inmate—the vehicle of “God”(115)—that had sinned
in a previous incarnation, and had thus brought the Karma of cecity upon
the new building. Thus Jesus spoke truly; but to this day his followers
have refused to understand the words of wisdom spoken. The Saviour is
shown by his followers as though he were paving, by his words and
explanation, the way to a preconceived programme that had to lead to an
intended miracle. Verily the Grand Martyr has remained thenceforward, and
for eighteen centuries, the Victim crucified daily far more cruelly by his
clerical disciples and lay followers than he ever could have been by his
allegorical enemies. For such is the true sense of the words “that the
works of God should be made manifest in him,” in the light of theological
interpretation, and a very undignified one it is, if the Esoteric
explanation is rejected.
Doubtless the above will be regarded as fresh blasphemy. Nevertheless
there are a number of Christians whom we know—whose hearts go out as
strongly to their ideal of Jesus, as their souls are repelled from the
theological picture of the official Saviour—who will reflect over our
explanation and find in it no offence, but perchance a relief.