Part I

Produced by Thierry Alberto, Sankar Viswanathan, and the

Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

London Lectures

of 1907

By

Annie Besant

President of the Theosophical Society

London and Benares

The Theosophical Publishing Society

City Agents: Lund, Humphries & Co., Ltd.

Adyar, Madras: The _Theosophist_ Office

New York: John Lane

Chicago: The Theosophical Book Concern

1907

* * * * *

Contents

PART I

PSYCHISM AND SPIRITUALITY

THE PLACE OF MASTERS IN RELIGIONS

THEOSOPHY AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

PART II

THE PLACE OF PHENOMENA IN THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL AUTHORITY

THE RELATION OF THE MASTERS TO THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

THE FUTURE OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

PART III

THE VALUE OF THEOSOPHY IN THE WORLD OF THOUGHT

PART IV

THE FIELD OF WORK OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

* * * * *

Part I

Psychism and Spirituality

The Place of Masters in Religions

Theosophy and the Theosophical Society

_Three public Lectures delivered in the smaller Queen's Hall,

London, on 16th, 23rd, and 30th June 1907._

Psychism and Spirituality

Our subject to-night consists of two words: psychism--spirituality. I

am going to speak to you on the subjects denoted by these two words,

because there is so much confusion about them in ordinary

conversation, in ordinary literature, and out of that confusion much

of harm arises. People think of one thing and use the name of the

other, and so continually fall into blunders and mislead others with

whom they talk. I want to-night to draw a sharp and intelligible

division between psychism and spirituality; if possible, to explain

very clearly what each of them means; so that, thoroughly

understanding the meaning of the things, people may choose for

themselves which of the two they desire to evolve, or unfold, within

themselves. For if a person, desiring to unfold the spiritual nature,

uses the means which are only adapted for developing the psychic

nature, disappointment, possibly danger, will result; while, on the

other hand, if a person desires to develop the psychic nature, and

thinks that he will reach that development quickly by unfolding his

spiritual powers, he also is equally doomed to disappointment; but in

the second case, only to disappointment for a time. For while it is

not true that the great psychic is necessarily a spiritual person, it

is true that the great spiritual person is inevitably a psychic. All

the powers of Nature are subject to the Spirit, and hence, when a man

has truly unfolded his spiritual nature, there is nothing in the lower

world which is not open to him and obedient to his will. In that

sense, then, the man who follows the spiritual path will not

ultimately be disappointed if he is seeking psychic development, but

the very seeking for it will, on the spiritual path, act as a certain

barrier. I shall return to the point again presently, and show you in

what sense, and why, it is true that the development of the psychic

powers may hinder the unfolding of the spiritual.

Now, to distinguish clearly between the two, I will begin with two

brief definitions. They will be expanded naturally in the course of

the lecture, but I will define each of these two words in a single

sentence so as to make the definition clear and brief. Spirituality is

the Self-realisation of the One; psychism is the manifestation of the

powers of consciousness through organised matter. Each word of that

definition has its own value. We are far too apt, in our ordinary

thought and talking, to limit the words "psychical," "psychic," or

"psychism" in a quite illegitimate way, and the popular use of the

term is illegitimate. It is generally used amongst us to mean unusual

manifestations of the powers of consciousness, whereas, properly

speaking, the word ought to cover every outer manifestation of

consciousness, whether on the physical, on the astral, on the mental,

or on the buddhic plane. It does not matter in what world you

are moving, in what matter your consciousness is acting; so long as

it is utilising organised matter for its own expression so long are

those manifestations psychic, and are properly included under the term

psychism. You may perhaps wonder why I lay stress on this. You will

see it at once if I remind you that unless we keep this definition in

mind--accurate, legitimate as it is--we shall be making a division

between the manifestation of the consciousness on the physical and on

the astral and mental planes, between its manifestation in the

physical and those in the astral and mental bodies; and if we do that

the whole of our thought will be on mistaken lines. You need

practically to be pressed back to what you know of consciousness on

the physical plane, before you can thoroughly follow its

manifestations on the astral and on the mental. If you try to separate

off manifestations which are the same in kind though differing in

degree, according to the fineness of the matter which is employed, if

you try to separate them off, you will always regard what you call

psychism--that is, astral and mental manifestations in the subtler

bodies--in an artificial and unwise manner. If, on the other hand, you

realise that consciousness is one, that its manifestation on any plane

is conditioned by the matter of the plane, that it is one in essence,

only varying in degree according to the lessening or the increase of

the resistance of the matter of the planes, then you will not be

inclined to take up exaggerated views with regard to what people are

so fond of calling psychism. You will not denounce it in the foolish

way of many people, because in denouncing it you will know that you

denounce all intellectual manifestations, an absurdity of which very

few people are likely to be guilty; if you take your intellectual

manifestations in the physical world as admirable things, to be always

encouraged, strengthened, developed, then you will be compelled, by

parity of reasoning, to understand that the manifestations of the same

consciousness in finer matter, astral or mental, are equally worthy,

and no more worthy, of development, of consideration. You will not

find yourself in the absurdly illogical position of declaring it a

good thing to train the physical plane consciousness, while it is

dangerous to cultivate the astral and mental plane consciousness. You

will understand that all psychism is of the same kind, that on each

plane the development of psychism has its own laws; but that it is

absurd to admire the working of consciousness on the lower plane, and

shrink from it as something dangerous, almost diabolical, when it

appears on a plane higher than the physical.

It is this rational and common-sense view which I want to impress upon

you to-night, to get you out of the region of mystery, marvel, wonder,

and fear, which to so many people surround what is called psychism; to

make you understand that you are unfolding consciousness, showing out

your powers on one plane after another according to the organisation

and the fineness of the bodies in which your consciousness is working;

and that if you will only keep your common sense and reason, if you

will only not allow yourself to be terrified by what at present is

unusual, you may then walk along the psychic pathway in the astral or

mental world, as resolutely, and with as great an absence of hysteria,

as you walk along the psychic pathway in the physical world. That is

the general idea; and, of course, this is the meaning in which, after

all, the word is often used down here. When you say "psychology" you

do not mean only the workings of consciousness in astral and mental

bodies; you mean the whole consciousness of the man, the workings of

the mind, wherever the mind is active; the whole of that you include

under "psychology." Why, then, when you change its form, should you

narrow it down, as though that which is mind on one plane is not also

mind on all planes on which the mind is able to function?

Now let us consider for a moment the workings of the mind on the

physical plane: they are familiar. There is, however, one important

point about them. In the materialistic science of the last century you

had very widely spread, amongst scientific men, the view that thought

was only the result of certain kinds of vibration in certain kinds of

matter. I need not dwell on that. But you are aware that both in

England, and more especially in France and Germany, most elaborate

disquisitions were written to prove that thought was only the product

of nervous matter. You rarely, I think never, now find a well-trained

scientist prepared to commit himself to that position. Those who

survive as representatives of that same school may do so, but they are

literally survivals. The mass of psychologists of to-day admit that

the manifestations of mind cannot any longer be regarded as the

results of vibrations in the physical brain, that at least we must go

beyond these limitations when dealing with the results of the study

of consciousness, as it is now studied amongst scientific men. They

will no longer, then, regard thought as the product of matter. They

certainly will not be prepared to go as far as I now propose to go,

and say that the thinking organism is the production of thought--the

very antithesis, you will agree, of the other position, but which is

vital to the understanding of the unfolding of the powers of

consciousness through matter. It is recognised in ordinary biology

that the function appears before the organ. There I am on safe

scientific ground. It is recognised that the exercise of the function

gradually builds up the organ. All the researches into the simpler

forms of organisms go to prove that. It is also recognised that when

the exercise of the function has built the organ in a very simple

form, the exercise of the function continually improves the organ

which originally it builded. So far we are hand in hand with ordinary

science. I think I shall not go too far in saying that a large number

of the more scientific psychologists of to-day will at least agree

that the brain as you find it in the adult man is very largely the

result of the exercise of thinking through the earlier years of life.

I do not think they would go so far as to say that thinking has

literally produced it. They would, however, judging by very many

things that have been said, be willing to admit that by hard thinking

we can improve our apparatus of thought. That is one reason for

thinking hard--in order to think better. And the harder you think, the

more will your thinking instrument improve.

In my next step, however, I cannot by any stretching of ordinary

science persuade it to accompany me, or give me a foundation; for the

point is that your consciousness, working on the next plane above the

one on which the organ of consciousness is being built, is the shaper

of that mechanism. To put it concretely: your physical brain is built

up from the astral plane, and it is your consciousness working in

matter finer than the physical which builds up the brain in the

forming child within the limits laid down by karma. Now, that is a

general law for healthy evolution. You will see the importance of this

law a little further on. Every body which we possess--physical,

astral, mental, buddhic--is always built up by consciousness

working in the plane next above it; the next plane, or world, is a

world very much more "next" than you are next each other sitting

here--not far away beyond the stars, removed by great spaces. It is

interpenetrating you in every portion of your being. It is only "next"

in the sense that the solids, liquids, and gases of your bodies are

next each other in the body--not far away, but here. So that the

working is of the closest and most intimate kind. Some of you who are

students of Theosophical literature will remember that H.P.B. has

spoken of all of us as working in the astral consciousness. You will

see that you are not working with a physical consciousness in the

literal sense of the term, if you think for a moment. How much do you

know of the consciousness working in the various cells and tissues of

your physical body? Practically nothing, except when you are ill. Only

when the body is disorganised do you become conscious of that working.

Normally, the motion of your blood, the building up by assimilation

of your muscles and nerves, the life of your cells, the protective

action of some of the living cells in your body--the "devourers," as

they are called--go on without your knowledge, without your thought,

without your giving one moment's conscious attention to them. In the

Perfect Man, the consciousness of all this is ever present, but in us,

imperfect, it is not; we are not yet sufficiently vitalised and

unfolded to carry on the whole of our consciousness, with full

awareness of all its activities. We are only able to manage a very

small part of it, and so have let go the consciousness that keeps at

work the physical body, to concentrate ourselves in a higher world,

and utilise the nervous mechanism as the apparatus of our thinking.

That law obtains, then, all through. If you want to organise and build

up your astral body, you can only do it from the mental plane. You

must raise your thought to a higher power by concentration, by regular

meditation, by deliberately working on the consciousness, before you

can raise it to that power from which it shall be able to organise

your astral body, as it has already organised your physical body. That

is the reason why meditation is necessary in all these things; because

without the creative power of thought we cannot organise the body in

the world which is nearest to the physical.

Now, supposing that we recognise that our consciousness working in the

physical brain, the instrument over which we have complete control, is

continually at work contacting the outer world, using the brain as an

instrument on which it can play, and continually bringing down from

higher worlds impressions which it transmits more or less perfectly

to the physical plane, we need not dwell upon our ordinary thinking.

Let us take thinking a little more unusual, where the finer part of

the brain, its etheric matter, is being more largely vitalised, more

definitely used. The powers of the imagination--the creative

power--the artistic powers, all creative in their nature, these

utilise most the ethers of the brain, and, by working in those, bring

into activity the lower and coarser matter of the dense brain. Now,

the thought passes from the consciousness through vehicle after

vehicle to find its clear expression here. But do you not have many

mental impressions that are not clear, not well defined, and yet which

impress you deeply, and of which you feel sure? They are of many

kinds, and reach you in many ways. What is important to you is simply

this for the moment: that being surrounded by the astral and mental

worlds, contacts from these are continually touching you, continually

causing changes in your consciousness. If your astral body were

thoroughly organised like your physical, the impressions made would be

clear and sharp like the physical. If your mental body were well

organised, the impressions of that plane, the heavenly plane, would be

clear and sharp like the physical. But as the astral and mental bodies

at this stage of evolution are not well organised, the impressions

received by them, causing changes in the consciousness, are vague and

indeterminate, and it is these which are generally called "psychic."

And when you have a Psychical Research Society, it is not dealing with

the ordinary processes of thought, but with those which are not

ordinary; and all those things to which it gives many strange names

are all workings of the consciousness, in sheaths or bodies of which

it has not yet gained the mastery, which it has not yet definitely

organised for its purposes. Slowly and gradually they become

organised, and strenuous thinking is the method for the astral body,

and the working of the pure reason is the method for the mental body.

Let us consider with regard to this, whether there is any other way of

bringing the astral body and mental body into activity. For you may

have noticed that I used the word "normal" evolution, orderly

evolution on the lines of natural evolution, always from above. But

you may stimulate it from below. It is possible to stimulate the

astral body, at least, from the physical plane, but you do it at the

cost of higher evolution a little later on, and the reason you can do

it is simple enough. In the astral body are all the centres of your

senses. You know how after death a man's desires are the same as they

were during his physical life. You know how in dreams your desires

resemble desires that you may have in your waking consciousness. The

centre of all your psychic powers, of your conscious powers, the

centres of these are in the astral, and if (especially with your

senses, each of which has its own centre in the astral body) you

overstrain the physical senses down here, you will get an action on

the astral plane, but an unhealthy, because disorderly one, one not

going along the line of evolution but trying to create from below

instead of from above. None the less, you may have some results, and

in the two famous Indian systems for developing the powers of the

consciousness, and for unfolding the consciousness itself, you have

this recognised, and you read of Raja Yoga and of Hatha Yoga, of the

Kingly Yoga and of the Yoga of Effort. The Yoga of Effort is Hatha

Yoga, and is practised by physical means and followed by physical

effects. The eye is stimulated in certain ways, and the effect of

straining the physical eye is to bring about a certain limited kind of

clairvoyance. You can gain it in that way by gazing into crystals, and

so on. They do stimulate the centre of physical sight, but not the

astral; and that is why they cannot go very far. You can get a certain

amount of clairvoyance by these means, but you are only expanding your

physical sight, and working on centres of the astral body connected

with the physical organ of vision, the eye. The true astral sight is

an entirely different thing. That comes from a centre of its own in

the astral body. It has to be created from the mental body, as the

organ of the physical was from the astral. The centre of that sight

will be in the mental body and not in the astral, and only the organ

of it in the astral body. The method of the Kingly, the Raja Yoga, is

always by thought--concentrate, meditate, contemplate, think: by that

means, in a healthy, normal, natural way you will inevitably develop

the powers of sight on the astral, as in the course of Nature the

powers of sight were developed on the physical plane. And if you

realise that your consciousness is one, building its bodies for its

fuller and more complete expression, that you are here in order to

become masters of matter instead of its slaves, to become lords of

matter, using every organ of matter for knowledge of the world to

which that matter belongs, and not to be blinded by it, as we are for

so long a time in our climb upwards, then you will see that this

natural development of astral powers is inevitable in the course of

evolution, and all that you can do is to quicken it, following the

line which Nature has traced. As Nature slowly will evolve in every

human being the power of using the astral body as freely as you use

the physical body now, so can you quicken the coming of that day for

yourselves by understanding the powers of thought and turning them to

the object you desire to obtain. There are many ways in which this may

be done, and many rules you may learn for your guidance. Those rules

may be summed up under two heads: clear and strenuous thinking,

discipline for the bodies that you are trying to evolve; and also, I

should add, for the body below them in evolution. Those are the two

great laws for the safe evolution of these so-called psychic powers,

what I call the powers of the consciousness on the astral and mental

planes. There must be a discipline for the bodies, for you have to

choose the material which will serve you best in the work you are

doing out of the innumerable combinations of matter with which Nature

presents you. You must choose the combinations that will serve your

purpose, which you can utilise in the building of the organs of sense

on plane after plane. Just as really as the man who is a drunkard will

injure his nervous system by his excesses, and by supplying coarse and

over-active compounds will injure the physical body, so making it a

less useful instrument for the man--as any excess, not only

drunkenness, but gluttony, profligacy, and so on--as these injure the

physical body as an instrument of consciousness, and to have full and

perfect consciousness here we must train, discipline, build up our

body with knowledge and with self-control, so also is that true on the

higher planes. A regimen is necessary when you are dealing with the

organisation of the subtler matter of the astral and mental worlds,

for you cannot build up your physical body out of the coarser

combinations of matter on the physical, and have finer combinations on

the astral and mental. The bodies have to match each other. They have

to correspond with each other; and as you find all sorts of

combinations related the one to the other on every plane, you must

choose your combinations on the physical if you desire to choose them

also on the astral and mental. You cannot make your physical body

coarse, and organise the astral and mental bodies for the finer

purposes of the man; and you must settle that in your minds if you

wish to try to develop these higher powers of consciousness. Not only

because if you gather together the coarser materials of the astral

world, you will find yourself hampered by them in the higher

expression of consciousness, but also because the presence of these

combinations in you exposes you to a number of dangers on the astral

plane. The purer the elements of your astral body, the safer you are

in your earlier wanderings on that plane. It is important to mention

this, because in some of the schools of thought which are trying only

to develop astral powers, you will find that they deliberately use

other methods in order to make their astral body active. Many schools

of the "left hand path" in India will use spirits, wines, meats of all

sorts, in order to bring about a certain astral condition, and they

succeed, because by these means they attract to themselves, and for a

time govern, the elemental powers of those lower planes--the

elementals of the lower astral worlds. So that you may find that an

Indian, who knows a little of this and wants to use it for his own

purposes, will deliberately use these things which are attractive to

the elementals of those lower worlds, and gather them around him and

use them. But he does it knowing what he does, and aiming at that

which he desires to conquer. But amongst those who practise black

magic of the higher kinds--of the mental kinds--you have an asceticism

as stern and rigid as has ever been used by those who are trying to

develop their higher bodies for nobler ends. It is a mistake to think

that the brothers of the dark side are, as a rule, licentious and

indifferent to what you call morality. On the contrary, they are

exceedingly strict. Their faults are the faults of the mind, not the

faults of the lower desires, of the organs of the different bodies

which may gratify them. Their faults are the more dangerous faults of

mental powers misused for personal ends. But they realise very well

that if they want the mental powers and the higher ranges of those

powers, they must be as rigid in the discipline of the lower bodies as

any pupil of the White Lodge could be. Take it, then, that to develop

in this way, a regimen for the bodies, as well as the strict working

and training of the mind, is absolutely necessary. But with these the

result is sure. You cannot set a time for the result, for it depends

where the worker is beginning in his present life. In all these

matters Nature's laws will not permit of what is called miraculous

growth, and if you find persons developing psychic powers very

rapidly, when perhaps they have been meditating only a few months, it

is because in a previous life they have cultivated these powers and

are taking up their lessons again in a more advanced class of

evolution, and not in the infant class, as many do in the present

life. So that there are differences. Some now beginning are not likely

to succeed in their present incarnation; but if that discourages them,

one can only say: "If you do not do it now, you will have to begin

again next life, and so on and on and on. For Nature's laws cannot be

violated, and Nature knows no favoritism and no partiality. Some time

or other you have to begin, and the sooner you begin the sooner will

you succeed."

Now the whole of this, you will remark, is the training, the

organising of _bodies_. And psychism implies that. You must train,

purify, organise, in order that the powers of the consciousness may

show forth. You will see very fully now why at the beginning I urged

you to realise that the whole of these manifestations are similar in

kind, so that when you find someone saying to you: "Oh! So-and-so is a

psychic," as though that were to condemn the person; "Such-and-such a

person is a mere clairvoyant," and so on, as though the fact of

possessing clairvoyance were a disadvantage rather than an advantage;

then the proper answer is: "Are you prepared to go the whole way with

that?" Many Indians do so (it is the point to which I said I would

return); they say that the siddhis, the powers of consciousness

manifested on the lower planes, are hindrances to the spiritual life.

And so they are in a sense. The spiritual life goes inwards: all

psychic powers go outwards. It is the same Self in either case--the

Self turning inwards on Itself, or the Self going outwards to the

world of objects. But it does not make one scrap of difference whether

it goes out to physical, astral, or mental objects: it is all the

objective consciousness, and therefore the very reverse of the

spiritual. But the Indian does not shrink from that as ordinarily the

man in the West does. He is perfectly honest. He says: "Yes, the

powers of the intellect applied to the objects of the world are a

hindrance in the spiritual life. We do not want them, do not care to

think about it. We give up all the objects of the physical plane when

seeking the Self." And if you are prepared to say that, then by all

means turn aside from psychism, but do not at one and the same time

encourage intellectuality on the physical plane and denounce what you

call psychism on the others, because that is mere folly. If it is

better to be blind here than to see--and the Indian will tell you it

often is, because it shuts out all the distracting objects of the

physical plane--if you are prepared to say that, and say: "Yes, I

would rather be blind than see," then you may go on to denounce seeing

on the astral plane. But if you value your physical sight, why not

value the astral sight--it is a stage higher--as well? and the mental

sight--which is a stage higher yet--as well? Why denounce astral and

mental, and praise up the physical? Why admire the power of sight of

the painter, who sees more shades than you can see, and denounce the

sight of the clairvoyant, who sees very much more than the cleverest

painter? They all belong to the object world; they all lead the Self

away from the realisation of himself, and they are all exactly on the

same level. It seems strange when one sees the same person exalting

the psychic on the physical plane and denouncing it on the astral and

mental.

But now let us turn to "spirituality" and see what that means. "The

Self-realisation of the One"; not the declaring that all men are one,

that all men are brothers: we can all do that. Anyone who has reached

a certain stage of intellectual knowledge will recognise the unity of

mankind; will say, with the writer in the Christian book, that God has

made all men of one blood--quoted again from what is called a Pagan

book. That intellectual recognition of the unity is practically

universal among educated people; but very few are prepared to carry

out the intellectual recognition into practical life and practical

training. Now for the development of what are called psychic faculties

some amount of retirement from the world is very useful. For the

development of the spiritual consciousness no such retirement is

necessary. In fact, for the most part, except in the earlier stages

perhaps, seclusion is a mistake; for the world is the best place for

the unfolding of the sense of unity, and best amongst men and women

and children can we call out the powers of the spiritual life. And

that for a simple reason. In the lower world the Spirit shows itself

out by love, by sympathy; and the more we can love, the more we can

sympathise, the greater will be the unfolding of the consciousness of

the Self within. It was a true word of the early Christian Initiate,

that if a man loves not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he

love God whom he hath not seen? And if the perfection of the

spiritual consciousness be that vision of the Supreme, the

consciousness which knows itself to be one with God, then the way to

the realisation will be by the partial realisation of loving sympathy,

for which the world is the most fitting field, and our brethren around

us the natural stimulus. Love, sacrifice, these are the manifestations

of the Spirit on the physical plane, as is right knowledge also. For

the Spirit is not a one-sided thing, but a Trinity, and knowledge is

as necessary as love. The special value of love lies in its unifying

power, and in the fact that it makes what the world calls sacrifice

natural and delightful. You know it in your own experience. Just in

proportion as you love another is it a joy and not a sorrow to give up

things in order that the happiness of the other may be increased. It

is no sacrifice for a mother to give up personal enjoyment for the

sake of giving it to her children. A deeper joy is felt in the

happiness of the child than could possibly have been felt in the

enjoyment of the thing by herself; a sweeter, finer, profounder

happiness is the enjoyment of the happiness of the beloved. And that a

little widens out the consciousness, and hence family life is one of

the best schools for spiritual unfolding; for in the continual

sacrifices of the family life, springing from love and rendered joyful

by affection, the Self feels itself a larger Self, and reaches the

sense of unity with those immediately around. And after the family the

public life, the life of the community, the life of the nation: these

also are schools for the unfolding of the spiritual consciousness. For

the man who is a good citizen of the community feels the life of the

community as his own life, and so becomes conscious of a larger Self

than the narrow self of the family. And the man who loves his nation,

his Self widens out to the boundaries of the nation, and he is

conscious of a larger Self than the self of the family, or the

community within the State. And just in proportion as the love

widening does not grow superficial and shallow (for if you have only a

certain amount of water and you make your dish wider and wider, the

water will become shallower and shallower) does it approach spiritual

love. Too often love becomes unreal with those who try to love the

far-off when they do not love the near. But if you avoid the

temptation, and remembering that the Spirit has no limitations, and

that you can draw and draw and draw on the love within you and never

find the bottom of the source of love; if you are strong enough to do

that, then the love of the family, of the community, of the State,

will widen out into the love of humanity, and you shall know yourself

as one with all, and not only with your family, or your community, or

your nation. All these local loves are schoolmasters to bring us to

the wider love of man. But do not blunder in the idea that you can

have the wider unless you have gone through the narrower; for the bad

husband, the bad citizen, the bad patriot, will never make a real

lover of humanity. He must learn his alphabet before he can read in

this book of love, and must spell out the letters before he may

pronounce the word. None the less, these successive stages are all

stages towards the spiritual life, and prepare the man for the

consciously spiritual realisation. And if you would really train

yourself for the unfolding of this life within you, practise it on

those who are nearest to you by meeting them with love and sympathy in

the daily paths of life. Not only those whom you like, but those you

care not for as well; not with those who love you only, but with those

who dislike you also. Remember that you have to break down

barriers--barriers of the bodies that bar you out from your fellow

Selves in the worlds around you, and that breaking down of the

barriers is part of the training in the spiritual life. Only as

barrier after barrier is broken down, only as wall after wall is

levelled to the ground, will the freedom of the Spirit become possible

in manifestation on every plane and in every world. The Spirit is ever

free in his own nature and his own life, but, confined within the

barriers of the body, he has to learn to transcend them, before, on

these planes of matter, he can realise the divine freedom which is his

eternal birthright. So long as you feel yourself separate from others,

so long are you shut out from the realisation of the unity; so long as

you say "my" and "mine," so long the realisation of the Spirit is not

yet possible for you. Love of individual possessions, not only

physical but moral and mental, not the vulgar pride of physical wealth

only, but moral pride, intellectual pride, everything that says "I" as

against "you," and does not realise that I and you are one--all this

is against the spiritual life. Hardest of all lessons when brought

down to practical life; most difficult of all attainments when effort

is made to realise it, and not only to talk about it and imagine it.

It is best practised by continual renunciation of the individual

possessions on every plane, and the constant thought of unity. When

you are trying to live the life of the Spirit, you will try to be

pure. You do well, but why? In order that you may be pure, and leave

your impure brethren in their impurity? Oh no! You must try to be

pure, in order that there may be more purity in the world to share

amongst all men, because you are pure. You are not wanting to be purer

than others, but only gathering purity that you may spread it in every

direction, and most joyous when your own purity lifts someone from the

mire, who is trampled into it under the feet of the world. You want to

be wise. You do well; for wisdom is a splendid possession. But why? In

order that you may look down on the ignorant and say: "I am wiser than

thou," as the pure man might say: "I am holier than thou"? Oh no! but

in order that the wisdom that you gather may enlighten the ignorant,

and become theirs and not only yours. Otherwise it is no spiritual

thing; for spirituality does not know "myself" and "others"; it only

knows the One Self, of whom all forms are manifestations.

We dare not call ourselves spiritual until we have reached that point

which none of us as yet has reached, for to reach it means to become a

Christ. When, looking at the lowest and basest and most ignorant and

vilest, we can say: "That is myself, in such-and-such a garb," and say

it feeling it, rejoicing in it--because if there are two of you, and

one is pure and the other impure, and the two are one, then neither is

perfect, but both are raised above the level of the lowest--that is

the true atonement, the real work of the Christ; and the birth of

Christ within you means the willingness to throw down all walls of

separation, and the stature of Christ within you means that you have

accomplished it.

For the most part we claim our unity above; we do not take pride in

claiming our unity below; we are glad to say, "Yes, I also am Divine;

I am a Christ in the making; I am one with Him." Harder to say: "I am

one with the lowest of my brethren, sharing with them the same Divine

life." Yet our Divinity is only realised as we recognise that same

Divinity in others. You may remember that exquisite story of Olive

Schreiner, breathing the very essence first of the unspiritual, and

then of the spiritual life. In the first case a woman, pure and

spotless, her garments shining with whiteness, and her feet shod as

with snow, went up to the Gates of Heaven and trod the golden streets.

And as she trod them in her shining robes the angels shuddered back,

and said: "See, her garments are blood-spotted, and her sandals are

stained with mire and blood." From the throne the Christ asked:

"Daughter, how is it that your garments are blood-spotted and your

sandals stained?" And she answered: "Lord, I was walking in miry ways,

and I saw a woman there down in the mire, and I stepped upon her that

I might keep my sandals clean." The Christ and the angels vanished,

and the woman fell from heaven, and wandered again in the miry ways of

earth. Once again she came to the heavenly portal and trod the golden

streets, and this time she was not alone. Another woman was with her,

and the garments of both were blood-flecked, and the sandals of both

were stained with the mire and blood of earth. But the angels seeing

them pass by, cried out: "See how whitely their garments shine! And

see how white are their feet!" And the Christ, when they came before

the throne, said: "How come ye here in garments that are soiled?" And

the answer came: "I saw this my sister trampled upon, and I bent down

to lift her up, and in the picking of her up my garments were soiled,

but I have brought her with me to Thy presence." And the Christ smiled

and lifted them up beside Him, and the angels sang for joy. For it is

not the sin and the shame that are shared that soil the garments of

the Spirit, and leave upon it the mire of earth.

If, then, you would lead the spiritual life, go downwards as well as

upwards. Feel your unity with the sinner as well as with the saint.

For the only thing that makes you divine is the Spirit that lives in

every human heart alike, in all equally dwelling, and there is no

difference in the divinity of the Spirit, but only in the stage of its

manifestation. And just as you and I climb upwards and show more of

the spiritual life in the lower worlds, should we raise our brethren

with us, and know the joy of the redeemer, and the power of the life

that saves. For Those whom we call Masters, Those who are the Christs

of the world, Those are reverenced and beloved, because to Them there

is no difference, but the sinner is as beloved as the saint--nay,

sometimes more, because compassion flows out to the weaker more than

to the strong.

Such is the spiritual life; such the goal that every man who would

become spiritual must place before his eyes. Very different from the

psychic, and not to be confused with it--the unfolding of the divinity

in man, and not the purification and the organisation of the

vehicles. Both are good, both necessary, and I finish with the words

with which I began, that while to be psychic is no proof of

spirituality, to be spiritual is to possess every power in heaven and

on earth. Choose ye each your road. Tread whichever you will, but

beware that by the growth of your powers here, in separation, you do

not delay the growth of the spirituality which is the realisation of

the unity of the Self. For everything which divides becomes evil, by

the very fact of its dividing; every power which is shared is a wing

to carry us upwards, but every power that is kept for the lower self

is a clog that holds us down to earth.

The Place of Masters in Religions

Everyone of us who belongs to any special religion can trace back along

the line of his religion further and further into the past, until he

comes to its beginning, its first Teacher. And round that Teacher is

usually a group of men and women who to the Founder of the religion are

disciples, but to those who accept the religion later are teachers,

apostles. And this is invariably true. The Hebrew, if you ask him, will

trace back his religion to the time of the great legislator Moses, and

behind Him to a yet more heroic figure, Abraham, the "friend of God."

Look back to some yet older faith, the faith of Egypt, of Chaldea, of

Persia, of China, of India, and you will find exactly the same thing is

true. The Parsi, representative of a splendid tradition, but whose

religion, as it now, is, as has been well said, "a religion of

fragments" only--he will trace back his religion to his own great

Prophet, the Prophet of the Fire, who led the exodus from the centre of

Asia and guided His people into what we now call the land of Persia.

Egypt, if you ask her story, will show you heroic figures of her past,

and amongst them that great King and Priest, Osiris, who, slain, as the

old legend tells us, rises again, as Lord and Judge of His people.

Buddhism, spread in the far East, will trace back its story to the

Buddha, and will declare in addition to that, that not only is the

Buddha the Teacher of that particular faith, but that a living

person still exists on the earth as Teacher, as Protector, whom they

call the Bodhisattva, the wise and the pure. India will tell

you of a great group of teachers gathered round their Manu, the

tradition of whose laws is still preserved, and is still used as the

basis of the social legislation administered now by the English rulers.

And round that great Lawgiver of the past, wise men are gathered whose

names are known throughout the land, each of them standing at the head

of some noble Indian family, that traces its ancestry backward and

backward till it ends in the Sage, the Teacher. And this is equally true

of more modern religions. Take the Christian religion, and the Christian

traces his religion back until it finds its source in the personality of

the Prophet of Judea, of Jesus the Christ. And it is interesting, as one

of those strange parallels which meet us often in the comparative study

of religions, that just as the Buddhist has his Buddha and

also his Bodhisattva, so the Christian has the two names:

Christ, representing the living Spirit, a stage in the spiritual

unfolding, the name representing a stage, an office, rather than a

special man, and joined to that the individual name of Jesus, in order

to mark the intimate connection, as some would say the identity, between

the two. But just as among the Buddhists the distinction is drawn,

so among the early Christians you will find a similar distinction was

made between the man Jesus and the spiritual Christ. So that in those

early days many of those who were called "Gnostics" divided the two in a

similar fashion, although uniting them at a certain stage of the

teaching, of the ministry. And if you take the latest born of the

religions, the Mussulman, the religion of Islam, that again is traced

backward to a Prophet, the Prophet Muhammad, the great Prophet of

Arabia. Universally this is true, that the religion traces itself back

to a single mighty figure, whom some call a "God-man," a man too divine

to be regarded as wholly like those amongst whom he lived and moved and

taught; above them and yet of them, closely bound to them by a common

humanity, although raised above them by a manifestation of the God

within, mightier, more complete, more compelling, than the manifestation

in the ordinary men and women around Him. So with all religions, and in

that thought of the divine figure, the Founder of every faith, you have

the fullest, the truest, the most perfect conception of that which we

Theosophists call the ideal of the Master. All such mighty beings by the

Theosophist would be given the name of Master. And not by the

Theosophist alone, for that word in other religions has been applied to

the Founder, the Chief of the faith. Nay, to the Christian it should

come with special force, with special significance, for it was the name

that Christ the Teacher chose as best expressing His own relationship to

those who believed on Him, to those who followed Him. "Neither be ye

called masters," He said; "for one is your Master, even Christ." And so

again you may remember that, in speaking to His disciples, He said: "Ye

call Me Master and Lord, and ye say well, for so I am." So that to the

Christian heart the name Master should be above all other names sacred

and beloved, since it was the chosen name of their own Teacher, the name

that He claimed from His disciples, that name that He used as

representing His relation to them. So this idea of a Master in religion

certainly should be one which comes with no alien sound, no foreign

significance, among those who look up to the Master Christ. And exactly

the same idea is that of a Master in any great religion; it is a common

idea--it signifies the Founder, the Teacher, divine and yet human. To

that point I will return later.

Let us study the central idea of these Masters a little more closely,

and see what are the special characteristics which mark Them in the

religions of the past. If you go back very, very far, you will always

find that the Master wears a double character: ruler, law-giver, on the

one side; teacher upon the other. In all the old civilisations this is

characteristic; for in those days the idea had not arisen of sacred and

secular, or sacred and profane, as we say in the modern world. To the

old civilisations there was no such thing as sacred history and profane

history; no division was made between sacred science and secular

science; all history was sacred, all science was divine. And so much was

that the case that, when you find an ancient pupil asking of an ancient

teacher as to divine science, the answer was given: "There are two forms

of divine science, the higher and the lower." And the lower divine

science was made up of all the things that now you call literature,

science, and art; all those were run over by name, and summed up under

the heading of the lower divine science. The higher, supreme Science

was that knowledge of God, to which accurately the word Wisdom ought

only to be applied. So that to their thought Deity was everywhere, and

there was only variety in the manifestations of Deity. All Nature was

sacred. God expressed Himself in every object, in every form. All that

could be said was that through one form more of His glory came than

through another. The form might be more or less transparent, but the

inner radiant light was the same in all. And it was natural, inevitable,

with such a conception of Nature and of God, that the Master, the

Founder, of a religion should unite in His sole person the office alike

of the Priest and of the King. And so you find it. The only likeness in

modern days is not now a very fortunate one in the eyes of many--the

King-Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. For so ill had the duties of

the King been performed in that high seat, that the people lost the

sense of the divinity, and revolted against it, and cast it off, and

left that Pontiff shorn of his royal character. But far back in the old

civilisations, in the one person the two offices were united. The

Pharaoh of Egypt was truly the Lord of the triple diadem, but also the

supreme Priest in every temple of his land. So also in Chaldea, in

India, and in many another land; and wherever that is the case you find

a certain outline given to the civilisation, differing in detail, but

marvellously similar in the broad touches of that sketch. You find that

in those days the Priest-King, the Ruler of the land and the supreme

Teacher of his people, shaped the polity of the nation as he shaped the

doctrines taught in the temples of the religion. Both the religion and

the polity have the keynote of duty. And always with increasing power

there came greater weight of responsibility, heavier burden of duty; and

the freest in those civilisations were the poorest. Those who were

regarded as the children of the national household were ever cared for

with extremest care. The very fact that they were the lowest in

development gave them the greatest claim on the divine Man who ruled, so

that all through the note of those civilisations is the note which

to-day would be called socialistic--with one enormous difference, that

the most wise ruled. The result, in a sense, would be the result that

the Socialist dreams of, the absence of poverty, the universality of

some form of work done for the State as a whole, a duty of each man to

bear a share of the burden; but the burden grew lighter and lighter as

it came downwards to the younger members of the family, of the nation;

the duty the most burdensome was placed on the highest. And you will

find that, while still the tradition remained, it was very difficult

sometimes to get rulers and governors of large States and small. It

comes out in the Chinese books. The Emperor sends down word that

So-and-so is to be governor of a State, and So-and-so, in those

degenerate days, generally tried to escape from it, because of the

tremendous burden that the governorship imposed. For in the case of the

old Rulers, in the days when the divine Kings were the Kings and Priests

of the people, anything that was wrong in the nation was related to the

Ruler, and not to the people at large. Remember the words of one great

Teacher of later days, Confucius, when a King turned to him and said:

"Master, why is there robbery, why is there murder in my land? How shall

I stop it?" His stern answer was: "If you, O King, did not steal and

murder, there would be no robbery and no murder in your land." Always

the highest with the weight of responsibility; the younger with the

right to enjoy, to be happy, to be cared for. Where food was short, they

were the last to starve, and the King the first; where anything went

short of material things, they were the first to be given their share,

and the King the last. Such was the outline of the social organisation.

Slight traces of it remain even to the present day. You can see traces

of it in the civilisation that was destroyed in Peru by the conquerors,

the Spanish conquerors, of that land. Some traces of it still remain in

India, although degraded and decayed. The note is always the same: the

higher, the more burdened; the higher, the harder the life; the higher,

the greater the duty. For that is the type of the Master, and the idea

ran through the whole of the civilisation. He, the Priest-King, mighty

in knowledge and in power, must bear upon his broad shoulders the burden

that would crush a weaker man. And so downwards through all the degrees

of ruler, in proportion to the power and its expansion, so in proportion

the weight and the responsibility.

They passed away from earth as humanity grew out of its infant stage.

My phrase is too strong--I should not have said: "They passed away

from earth." They passed away into silence, not from earth; thereon

many of Them still remain. But They drew back from the outer position,

from outer power, and became the great company of Elder Brothers of

humanity, only some of whom remained in close touch with the race.

And that is the next point in the idea of the Master. Those who

founded a religion were bound to remain wearing the body of man, fixed

to the earth, bound to the outward semblance of humanity, so long as

the religion lived upon earth which They had given to it. That was the

rule: no liberation for the Man who founded a religion until all who

belonged to that religion had themselves passed out of it, into

liberation, or into another faith, and the religion was dead. The

death of a religion is the liberation from all bondage of the Master

who gave it to the world. He in a very real sense is incarnate in the

religion that He bestows. While that religion lives and teaches, while

men still find in it the expression of their thought, so long that

divine Man must remain, and guide and protect and help the religion

which He gave to earth. Such is the law. No Master may leave our

humanity while that which He started as a human school is still

existing upon earth. Some have passed away, and would no longer be

spoken of as Masters--the name given to Them in the occult world is

different--but Those who have passed away have passed away because

Their religions are dead: the Masters of ancient Egypt, of ancient

Chaldea, have gone from this earth into the mighty company of Those

who no longer bear the burden of the flesh. But the Masters of every

living religion live on earth, and are the links, for the people of

that religion, between God and man; the Master is the divine Man, one

with his brothers, who look to him for help, one with the God around

and above, and through Him the spiritual life is ever flowing. The

word "mediator," applied in the Christian scriptures to the Christ,

signifies a real and living relation. There are such mediators between

God and man, and they are all God-men, true Christs. Such links

between the God without and the God within us are necessary for the

helping by the one, and for the manifestation of the other. The God

within us, unfolding his powers, answers to the God without us, and

the link is the God-man who shares the manifested nature of divinity,

and yet remains one with His brethren in the flesh. A bondage, yes.

But a voluntary bondage--a bondage assumed in the day in which the

Messenger came forth from the great White Lodge to bring a new

revelation, to found a new divine kingdom upon earth. Heavy the

responsibility of a divine Man who takes upon Himself the tremendous

burden of speaking out to the world a new Word in the divine

revelation. All that grows out of it makes the heavy burden of His

destiny. Everything which happens within that communion of which He is

the centre must react upon Him, and He is ultimately responsible; and

as that divine Word is always spoken in a community of men and women

imperfect, sinning, ignorant, that Word is bound to be distorted and

twisted, because of the medium in which it works. That is why every

such Teacher is called a "sacrifice"--Himself at once the sacrificer

and the sacrifice, the greatest sacrifice that man may make to man, a

sacrifice so mighty that none in whom Deity is not unfolded to the

greatest height compatible with human limitation is strong enough to

make it, is strong enough to endure it. That is the true sacrifice of

the Christ; not a few hours' agony in dying, but century after century

of crucifixion on the cross of matter, until salvation has been won

for the people who bear His name, or until they have passed under some

other Lord. Hence is that road always called "the Way of the Cross."

Long before Christianity came to birth, the "Way of the Cross" was

known to every Initiate, and Those were said to tread it who

volunteered for the mighty service of proclaiming the old message

again in the ears of the world of the time. A sacrifice: for none may

tell, who volunteers for the service, what lies before the religion

that He founds, what shall be the deeds of the community that He

begins on earth. And every sin and crime of that religion, or that

Church, falls into the scales of Karma stamped with the name of the

Founder. He is responsible for it, and bearing that responsibility is

the mighty sacrifice He makes; and the result is inevitable; for in a

world imperfect no perfection can be perfectly mirrored. As the

sun-ray falling upon water is twisted and distorted, so is it with the

rays of a perfect truth falling in amongst a community of imperfect

men; and no action down here can be a perfect action, for "action," it

is written in an ancient book, "is surrounded with evil as a fire is

surrounded with smoke." The imperfection of the medium makes the smoke

round every Word of Fire, every Word of Truth. And the Founder must

endure the pungency of the smoke, if He would speak the Word of Fire.

The realisation of that, however dimly, however imperfectly, makes the

passion of gratitude in the human heart to those Men who bear their

infirmities and open up the way to God for man. It is that which in

some forms of popular Christianity has been distorted in speaking of

the sacrifice of the Christ, when it has been made a sacrifice, not

for man, sinful and foolish, but to the Father of all perfection, who

needs no sacrifice of suffering in order to reconcile Him to the

children sprung from His life. That is one of the distortions of the

ignorance of man; that the falsification which has been spoken in the

name of religion and has obscured the perfect love of God--for every

divine Man who comes out is a manifestation of the divine heart, and a

revelation of God to man. And how could it be that the Master of

Compassion, who wins human hearts by the tenderness of His love, could

be a Revealer of God, if there were not in God a compassion mightier

than His own, and profounder than His humanity, as God is greater than

man? But the splendor of the truth dazzled the eyes of those to whom

it was presented, and their own ignorance, and fear, and limitation,

imposed upon that perfect sacrifice the terrible aspect of a sacrifice

to God--an aspect which it assumed, not only in Christianity, but in

other faiths as well. For the most part, not always, in the elder

religions they understood that the story of the life and death was an

allegory, a "myth," as they called it, revealing a deeper truth. And

so they avoided the pain and the sense of revulsion which has roused

the conscience of civilised man to revolt against the cruder

presentments of the doctrine; the great truth of the sacrifice is

true, but it is not a legal, a contract, sacrifice, made between man's

representative and God; but the effort of the divine to make itself

understood, and the voluntary binding of the sacrifice to the cross

of matter until His people are set free. And then, as I said, He

passes on into other worlds, to other work, and is no longer called a

Master of the Wisdom.

Now, looking at this idea, let us ask: "What is the work of these

Masters in the religions of the world, and why is it that this thought

of the Masters has been so revived in the modern world, and made so

much more living, in a sense, than it has been for many a long year?"

In the early days of Christianity, as I said, you find the idea; but

it has largely vanished from the Churches as a living truth, and they

think of Jesus, the Christian Master, as risen from the dead and

ascended into heaven. And the materialising spirit of ignorance has

made the ascent a going away, and the Man has gone, although the God

remains. But that is only a materialisation of the older truth; for,

according to the truth, heaven is not a faraway place to which people

go. No one _goes_ there; they only open their eyes and see it on every

side around them. For heaven is a state of the psychic life which is

realised in the higher bodies, the bodies of the mental plane, and it

does not need to go hither and thither, North, South, East, or West,

to find it; for, as the great Teacher said: "Behold, the Kingdom of

Heaven is within you"--not far away, beyond the sun or moon or stars.

And the ascension of Jesus to heaven, as the Church of England puts

it--in words that sound very strange in modern ears, because they have

lost their mystic meaning and are only taken in what S. Paul used to

call the "carnal" interpretation--in the fourth article of the Church

of England, was that He ascended into heaven, taking with Him His

"flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man's

nature." Now when you take that in the literal and crude

signification, naturally the thoughtful man revolts against it. What

is this about a physical body and physical bones going up through the

air into the sky? And where has it gone to? The modern man cannot

believe it in that sense, and so he loses the spiritual verity

enshrined in words of symbolism and of allegory. For the fact that

Jesus the Master went away, but still dwells on earth in the flesh,

that is the truth which the article tries to indicate; and not that He

is gone far away into a far-off heaven to sit at the right hand of

God, whence He shall come again to judge. He lives in the body, and

also lives in the midst of the Church, which is His true mystical

body; and so long as that Church exists, so long as that Church is

found on earth, so long its Master shall live within it, and shall

dwell in a human body. He is not gone away, He has not ascended

anywhere in the literal sense, but is permeating the whole of His

Communion, and living upon earth until the last Christian has passed

away to liberation, or is born into some other faith. That is the

inner meaning. He lives and may be reached. And if the teachings of

the Theosophical Society have any value for the Christian Church, it

is because they are bringing back to live in Christian hearts this

living truth of the bodily ever-presence of the Christ amongst them.

Theosophists who are Christians, and remain within the limits of the

Christian Church, have gained a vivid view of this real humanity of

Jesus. They learn that He may be reached as truly now as when He

walked near the sea of Galilee, or taught in the streets of Jerusalem,

that they may know Him with as real a sense of His presence, may

learn from Him as truly as any apostle or disciple in the past, that

it is a living and real presence--not only, as the Roman Catholic

Church says, in the Sacrament of the altar, but in the experience of

the Christian heart. And it has never been left without a witness.

Look all through the history of the Christian Church, and see how one

after another has come into living touch with the Master Jesus. Every

great saint has proclaimed his own experience as regards his contact

with his Lord. And only in comparatively modern days, and in parts

only of the Christian Church, has that great and vivifying truth been

lost sight of. The Greek Church has never lost it; the Roman Catholic

Church has never lost it. The testimony of the saints in those ancient

communions bears witness to the continuing connection between the

Christian and the Christ. You find it in some of the extreme

Protestant communities also, where they bear a living testimony to the

reality of the personal communion. Not through books and churches

only, but within the living heart of man, visible sometimes even to

physical eyes, shining out in the vision of the saint, speaking in the

rapture of the prophet--it has never quite passed away from

Christianity. It is coming back more strongly year after year, coming

back with increased vitality, with more reality and strength behind

it; coming back because the Christ within the Church, finding that

forgetfulness was coming over the modern mind, has, as in the olden

days, used a scourge of whipcord instead of only the voice of love.

For inasmuch as the voice of love was not listened to, and the reality

of His presence was being forgotten, He has used the whip of what is

called the Higher Criticism to drive men out of books back to the

living Master of the Christian faith. When you build the house of your

faith on books and manuscripts, on councils and traditions, you are

building on the sand, and the storm has come--the storm of criticism,

of investigation, of scholarship, and the house of faith totters,

because it is founded on the sand. But build the house of your faith

on the rock of human experience, on the one rock on which every true

Church is founded, the individual touch between the human Spirit and

the divine, the personal experience of the human man on earth with the

divine Man in the heaven, beside and around him, and you build the

house of your faith on a rock that nothing can shake nor destroy, and

it will shelter you, no matter what storms may rage outside. And so,

as in the temple, the whip has been used in order that men may learn

what they would not learn by the gentle instruction spoken only in the

words of the friend. The enemy has been used for it, the foe, the

assailant, who has made sharp his weapons, and has cut many of the old

manuscripts in pieces; and the result of that is that the Christian

Church is thrown back upon the Christ Himself, no longer seen dimly

through history, but in vivid reality before the eyes of the heart of

the Christian, and that He will give to Christianity a new life. The

mystic belief will come back, and the literal interpretations will

fall away. And when that is done, then Christianity shall have renewed

its youth and its power, and shall know that the Master is living in

His Church, and is still the Master of life and death, as in the olden

days.

And by a very real instinct you will find that the most earnest

Christians cling to the humanity of Jesus, and that is the value of

the Master to us, when inside our hearts is written the truth of His

existence. If there were only such men as we, and God, the gulf would

be too vast, the difference too terrible--nothing to encourage us to

believe that Divinity was within us. We seem so trivial, so foolish,

so childish, that we hardly dare sometimes to believe that we are

truly God. It seems impossible for us in our modern life, with all the

follies in which we spend ourselves, with all the childish ambitions

and terrors with which we amuse or frighten ourselves. This little

modern life seems so petty and so vulgar that we scarcely dare to

believe ourselves divine. We speak of the old heroic days, and think

that if we had lived then, we too should have been heroic, as the

heroes and martyrs and saints of earlier times. But in truth humanity

is just as divine to-day, as it ever was in the past. And if the

divine were manifested in us as it was in the great ones of the past,

we should be heroic as they were; it is not circumstances that make

the difference, but only that the God within us is more in the stage

of childhood than in those mighty ones of the past, in which He had

risen to the stature of divine manhood. And when we think of the

Masters and realise that They are; still more, perhaps, when in some

happy moment we catch a glimpse of such divine Men, or feel Their

presence closer than that of a human friend, ah! then it is that the

inspiration which flows from Them, as from a ceaseless source,

encourages and vivifies the life within. For we realise that it was

not so very, very long ago that They were as we are, plunged down in

the trivialities of earth; that They have climbed above them by the

unfolding of the God within. And what They have done, you and I may

also do. They are a constant inspiration and encouragement for

humanity. They are men, and only God as we are God; the only

difference being that They have God more manifest in Them than He is

in us. They also in Their day were weak and foolish; They also strove

and struggled, as we strive and struggle now; They also failed, as we

are failing now; They also blundered, as we are blundering now; and

They have risen above it all, strength after strength revealed in

Them, wisdom and power and love growing ever more and more divine. And

what They have done, you and I can do. For They are truly but the

first fruits of humanity, the promise of the harvest, and not

something strange, miraculous, and far away. The Christian clings to

the manhood of Jesus for the reason that as "He hath suffered, being

tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted." And it is a

true instinct, a wise faith, for it is by coming into touch with such

links between humanity and God, that you and I in time will become

divine. In Him that divine seed of Spirit has unfolded into flower and

fruit. When you sow a seed in the soil of your garden, you sow it in

the full belief that it will grow, that it will become a plant with

leaf and flower and fruit. And you believe it by all the promise of

the past, which has proved that out of such seeds grow such flowers;

all that is behind you to make your faith a reasonable faith; and when

you plant that trivial thing, a little larger than a pin's head, and

hide it in the darkness of the ground out of sight, you have a living

faith within you that out of that seed shall grow the perfect flower.

Have the same faith for the seed of divinity that is planted within

you, though it be planted in the darkness of your heart. Even if at

present the first little shoot has not come up above the darkness of

the soil in which it is buried, none the less the seed is there; it

will grow and ripen into the perfect fruit. It must be so. There are

no failures for the divine Husbandman, no seed which is not living,

which falls from His hands into the ground. And near us the Masters

stand ever, the living truth of what man can be--nay, what he shall be

in the centuries to come. They are proofs of what you and I shall be,

the finished copies of the statues which lie as yet so rough, so

unhewn, in the marble of our humanity. That is Their value for all

men, and part of Their work is to help us to become what They are, to

foster in us every shoot of the spiritual life, to strengthen in us

every effort and struggle towards the light. Theirs the glorious work,

not only of building up mighty faiths, but of living in them, and

pouring out spiritual life on the heart of each who enters within the

portals of those faiths. That is Their splendid work; and if Theosophy

is doing much in all the religions of the world to make them more real

to their adherents, and give to them fresh vitality and strength and

vigor, it is only because it is the latest impulse from the Masters of

the WISDOM, and so is the most convenient channel through which that

life may be poured into all the religions of the world. Only the

latest of the impulses. All religions have been born out of such an

impulse, and the only difference between this and the earlier impulses

is that while they each founded a religion and round that religion a

wall was built, so that there were believers inside the wall and

unbelievers outside, round this spiritual forthstreaming no walls are

to be built, but the waters are to spread everywhere without

limitation, without exception. That is the specialty in the message of

Theosophy. It belongs to all alike. As much yours, though you do not

call it by that name, perhaps, as it is theirs who call it by that

name. It is only living, because it lives in every religion; it is

only true, because it comes from the same Masters of the eternal

WISDOM, belongs equally to all, to every religion that cares to take

any of the truth that it has re-proclaimed. And all over the world the

glad message is going. There is not one religion which is now living,

amongst whose adherents Theosophy is not spreading, and making them

better members of their religions than they were before. For there is

many a man and woman, in East and West alike, who had gone away from

the religion into which they were born, because the mystic element had

vanished and the literal sense of the doctrines was in truth the

letter which killeth, while the spirit that was life seemed to have

escaped. Many such men and women, in East and West, have come back

with joy to the religion in which they were born, in realising that it

is only an expression of the one divine WISDOM, and that the Masters

of the WISDOM live and move amongst us.

And it may be that if the world grows more spiritual, it may be that

if Spirit again becomes triumphant over matter, after passing through

the darkness which was necessary in order that the intellect might be

thoroughly developed and might learn its powers and its limitations;

it may be that, in days to come, when the world is more spiritualised

than to-day, climbing as it is again the upward arc, these living

Masters of the world's religions will come amongst us again visibly as

in the earlier days. It is not They who keep back in silence. It is we

who shut Them out, and make Their presence a danger rather than an

encouragement and an inspiration. And every one of you--no matter what

your faith may be, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Theosophist,

what matters it?--every one of you who makes the Master of your own

faith a living reality, part of your life, nearer than friend and

brother, every such believer and worker is hastening the day of joy

when the world shall be ready for the open reception of the Masters,

that They may move visibly amongst humanity once more. That it may be

so, open your heart to every breath of truth; that it may be so, open

your eyes to every ray from the one eternal Sun. In the past the world

would have none of the Masters. They slew the Christ; they made the

prophets outcasts. And until in our heart the love of the Master

awakens, until with passionate longing, with continual insistence, we

call to the divine Men the welcome, without which They may not come,

They must remain hidden. Only when there comes up from heart after

heart one vast chant of devotion and appeal, only then will They come

to the many as They have already come to the few, and show out the

visible splendor of Their manhood, as the glory of Their divinity has

ever been upon the earth.

Theosophy and the Theosophical Society

I want to put before you clearly and plainly what Theosophy means, and

what is the function of the Theosophical Society. For we notice very

often, especially with regard to the Society, that there is a good

deal of misconception touching it, and that people do not realise the

object with which it exists, the work that it is intended to perform.

It is very often looked upon as the expression of some new religion,

as though people in becoming Theosophists must leave the religious

community to which he or she may happen to belong. And so a profound

misconception arises, and many people imagine that in some way or

other it is hostile to the religion which they profess. Now Theosophy,

looked at historically or practically, belongs to all the religions of

the world, and every religion has an equal claim to it, has an equal

right to say that Theosophy exists within it. For Theosophy, as the

name implies, the Divine WISDOM, the WISDOM of God, clearly cannot be

appropriated by any body of people, by any Society, not even by the

greatest of the religions of the world. It is a common property, as

free to everyone as the sunlight and the air. No one can claim it as

his, save by virtue of his common humanity; no one can deny it to his

brother, save at the peril of destroying his own claim thereto. Now

the meaning of this word, both historically and practically, the

WISDOM, the Divine WISDOM, is a very definite and clear meaning; it

asserts the possibility of the knowledge of God. That is the point

that the student ought to grasp; this knowledge of God, not the belief

in Him, not the faith in Him, not only vague idea concerning Him, but

the _knowledge_ of Him, is possible to man. That is the affirmation of

Theosophy, that is its root-meaning and its essence.

And we find, looking back historically, that this has been asserted in

the various great religions of the world. They all claim that man can

know, not only that man can believe. Only in some of the more modern

faiths, in their own modern days, the knowledge has slipped into the

background, and the belief, the faith, looms very large in the mind of

the believer. Go back as far as you will in the history of the past,

and you will find the most ancient of religions affirming this

possibility of knowledge. In India, for instance, with its antique

civilisation, you find that the very central idea of Hinduism is

this supreme knowledge, the knowledge of God. As I pointed out to you

the other day with regard to this old Eastern religion, all knowledge

is regarded in a higher or a lower degree as the knowledge of God; for

there is no division, as you know, in that ancient faith, between the

secular and the sacred. That division is a modern division, and was

unknown in the ancient world. But they did make a division in

knowledge between the higher and the lower; and the lower knowledge,

or the lower science, called the "lower divine science," was that

which you will call "science" nowadays, the study of the external

world. But it also included all that here we speak of as Literature,

as Art, as Craft--everything, in fact, which the human brain can study

and the human fingers can accomplish--the whole of that, in one grand

generalisation, was called "Divine Wisdom," but it was the lower

divine Wisdom, the inferior knowledge of God. Then, beside, or rather

above that, came the Supreme Knowledge, the higher, the superior, that

beyond which there was no knowledge, which was the crown of all. Now,

that supreme knowledge is declared to be "the knowledge of Him by Whom

all things are known"--a phrase indicating the Supreme Deity. It was

that which was called the supreme knowledge, or, _par excellence_, the

Divine Knowledge, and that old Hindu thought is exactly the same as

you have indicated by the name Theosophy.

So, again, classical students may remember that among the Greeks and

the early Christians there was what was called the Gnosis, the

knowledge, the definite article pointing to that which, above all

else, was to be regarded as knowledge or wisdom. And when you find

among the Neo-Platonists this word Gnosis used, it always means, and

is defined to mean, "the knowledge of God," and the "Gnostic" is "a

man who knows God." So, again, among the early Christians. Take such a

man as Origen. He uses the same word in exactly the same sense; for

when Origen is declaring that the Church has medicine for the sinner,

and that Christ is the Good Physician who heals the diseases of men,

he goes on to say that the Church has also the Gnosis for the wise,

and that you cannot build the Church out of sinners; you must build it

out of Gnostics. These are the men who know, who have the power to

help and to teach; and there can be no medicine for the diseased, no

upholder of the weak, unless, within the limits of the religion, the

Gnostic is to be found. And so Origen lays immense stress on the

Gnostic, and devotes page after page to a description of him: what he

is, what he thinks, what he does; and to the mind of that great

Christian teacher, the Gnostic was the strength of the Church, the

pillar, the buttress of the faith. And so, coming down through the

centuries, since the Christian time, you will find the word Gnostic

used every now and again, but more often the term "Theosophist" and

"Theosophy"; for this term came into use in the later school, the

Neo-Platonists, and became the commonly accepted word for those who

claimed this possibility of knowledge, or even claimed to _know_. And

a phrase regarding this is to be found in the mystic Fourth Gospel,

that of S. John, where into the mouth of the Christ the words are put,

that the "knowledge of God is eternal life"--not the faith, nor the

thought, but the knowledge--again declaring the possibility of this

Gnosis. And the same idea is found along the line of the Hermetic

Science, or Hermetic Philosophy, partly derived from Greece and partly

from Egypt. The Hermetic philosopher also claimed to know, and claimed

that in man was this divine faculty of knowledge, above the reason,

higher than the intellect. And whenever, among the thoughtful and the

learned, you find reference made to "faith," as where, in the Epistle

to the Hebrews, it is said to be "the _evidence_ of things not seen,"

the same idea comes out, and Faith, the real Faith, is only this

intense conviction which grows out of the inner spiritual being of

man, the Self, the Spirit, which justifies to the intellect, to the

senses, that there is God, that God truly exists. And this is so

strongly felt in the East that no one there wants to argue about the

existence of God; it is declared that that existence cannot be proved

by argument. "Not by argument," it is written, "not by reasoning, not

by thinking, can the Supreme Self be known." The only proof of Him is

"the conviction in the Spirit, in the Self." And thus Theosophy, then,

historically, as you see, always makes the affirmation that man can

know; and after that supreme affirmation that God may be known, then

there comes the secondary affirmation, implied really in that, and in

the fact of man's identity of nature with the Supreme, that all things

in the universe can be known--things visible and invisible, subtle and

gross. That is, so to speak, a secondary affirmation, drawn out of the

first; for clearly if in man resides the faculty to know God as God,

then every manifestation of God may be known by the faculty which

recognises the identity of the human Spirit with the Supreme Spirit

that permeates the universe at large. So in dictionaries and in

encyclopedias you will sometimes find Theosophy defined as the idea

that God, and angels, and spirits, may hold direct communication with

men; or sometimes, in the reverse form, that men can hold

communication with spirits, and angels, and even with God Himself;

and although that definition be not the best that can be given, it has

its own truth, for that is the result of the knowledge of God, the

inevitable outcome of it, the manifestation of it. The man who knows

God, and knows all things in Him, is evidently able to communicate

with any form of living being, to come into relation with anything in

the universe of which the One Life is God.

In modern days, and among scientific people, the affirmation which is

the reverse of this became at one time popular, widely accepted--not

Gnostic but "Agnostic," "without the Gnosis"; that was the position

taken up by Huxley and by many men of his own time of the same school

of thought. He chose the name because of its precise signification; he

was far too scientific a man to crudely deny, far too scientific to be

willing to speak positively of that of which he knew nothing; and so,

instead of taking up the position that there is nothing beyond man,

and man's reason, and man's senses, he took up the position that man

was without possibility of knowledge of what there might be, that his

only means of knowledge were the senses for the material universe, the

reason for the world of thought. Man, by his reason, could conquer

everything in the realm of thought, might become mighty in intellect,

and hold as his own domain everything that the intellect could grasp

at its highest point of growth, its highest possibility of attainment.

That splendid avenue of progress Huxley, and men like Huxley, placed

before humanity as the road along which it might hope to walk, full of

the certainty of ultimate achievement. But outside that, beyond the

reason in the world of thought and the senses in the material world,

Huxley, and those who thought like him, declared that man was unable

to pierce--hence "Agnostic," "without the Gnosis," without the

possibility of plunging deeply into the ocean of Being, for there the

intellect had no plummet. Such, according to science at one time, was

man; and whatever man might hope for, whatever man might strive for,

on, as it were, the portal of the spiritual universe was written the

legend "without knowledge." Thither man might not hope to penetrate,

thither man's faculties might never hope to soar; for when you have

defined man as a reasoning being, you have given the highest

definition that science was able to accept, and across the spiritual

nature was written: "imagination, dream, and phantasy."

And yet there is much in ordinary human history which shows that man

is something more than intellect, as clearly as it shows that the

intellect is greater than the senses; for every statesman knows that

he has to reckon with what is sometimes called "the religious

instinct" in man, and that however coldly philosophers may reason,

however sternly science may speak, there is in man some upwelling

power which refuses to take the agnosticism of the intellect, as it

refuses to accept the positivism of the senses; and with that every

ruler of men has to deal, with that every statesman has to reckon.

There is something in man which from time to time wells up with

irresistible power, sweeping away every limit which intellect or

senses may strive to put in its path--the religious instinct. And even

to take that term, that name, even that is to join on this part of

man's nature to a part of nature universal, which bears testimony in

every time, and in every place, that to every instinct in the living

creature there is some answer in the nature outside itself. There is

no instinct known in plant, in animal, in man, to which nature does

not answer; nature, which has woven the demand into the texture of the

living creature, has always the supply ready to meet the demand; and

strange indeed it would be, well-nigh incredible, if the profoundest

instinct of all in nature's highest product on the physical plane, if

that ineradicable instinct, that seeking after God and that thirst for

the Supreme, were the one and only instinct in nature for which there

is no answer in the depths and the heights around us. And it is not

so. That argument is strengthened and buttressed by an appeal to

experience; for you cannot, in dealing with human experience and the

testimony of the human consciousness, leave entirely out of court,

silenced, as though it were not relevant, the continual testimony of

all religions to the existence of the spiritual nature in man. The

spiritual consciousness proves itself quite as definitely as the

intellectual or the sensuous consciousness proves itself--by the

experience of the individual, alike in every religion as in every

century in which humanity has lived, has thought, has suffered, has

rejoiced. The religious, the spiritual nature, is that which is the

strongest in man, not the weakest; that which breaks down the barriers

of the intellect, and crushes into silence the imperious demands of

the senses; which changes the whole life as by a miracle, and turns

the face of the man in a direction contrary to that in which he has

been going all his life. Whether you take the facts of conversion, or

whether you take the testimony of the saint, the prophet, the seer,

they all speak with that voice of authority to which humanity

instinctively bows down; and it was the mark of the spiritual man when

it was said of Jesus, the Prophet: "He taught them as one having

authority, and not as the scribes." For where the spiritual man

speaks, his appeal is made to the highest and the deepest part in

every hearer that he addresses, and the answer that comes is an answer

that brooks no denial and permits no questioning. It shows its own

imperial nature, the highest and the dominant nature in the man, and

where the Spirit once has spoken the intellect becomes obedient, and

the senses begin to serve.

Now Theosophy, in declaring that this nature of man can know God,

bases that statement on identity of nature. We can know--it is our

continual experience--we can know that which we share, and nothing

else. Only when you have appropriated for yourself something from the

outside world can you know the similar things in the outside world.

You can see because your eye has within it the ether of which the

waves are light; you can hear because your ear has in it the ether and

the air whose vibrations are sound; and so with everything else.

Myriads of things exist outside you, and you are unconscious of them,

because you have not yet appropriated to your own service that which

is like unto them in outer nature. And you can know God for exactly

the same reason that you can know by sight or hearing--because you are

part of God; you can know Him because you share His nature. "We are

partakers of the Divine Nature," says the Christian teacher. "Thou art

That," declares the Hindu. The Sufi cries out that by love man and

God are one, and know each other. And all the religions of the world

in varied phrase announce the same splendid truth of man's Divinity.

It is on that that Theosophy founds its affirmation that the knowledge

of God is possible to man; that the foundation, then, of Theosophy,

that the essence of its message.

And the value of it at the time when it was re-proclaimed to the world

was that it was an affirmation in the face of a denial. Where Science

began to cry "agnosticism," Theosophy came to cry out "gnosticism." At

the very same time the two schools were born into the modern world,

and the re-proclamation of Theosophy, the supreme knowledge, was the

answer from the invisible worlds to the nescience of Science. It came

at the right time, it came in the right form, as in a few moments we

shall see; but the most important thing of all is that it came at the

very moment when Science thought itself triumphant in its nescience.

This re-proclamation, then, of the most ancient of all truths, was the

message of Theosophy to the modern world. And see how the world has

changed since that was proclaimed! It is hardly necessary now to make

that affirmation, so universal has become the acceptance of it. It is

almost difficult to look back to the year 1875, and realise how men

were thinking and feeling then. I can remember it, because I was in

it. The elder amongst you can remember it, for the same reason. But

for the younger of you, who have begun to think and feel in the later

times, when this thought was becoming common, you can scarcely realise

the change in the intellectual atmosphere which has come about during

these last two-and-thirty years. Hardly worth while is it to proclaim

it now, it is so commonplace. If now you say: "Man can know God," the

answer is: "Of course he can." Thirty-two years ago it was: "Indeed he

cannot." And that is to be seen everywhere, all over the world, and

not only among those people who were clinging blindly to a blind

faith, desperately sticking to it as the only raft which remained for

them to save them from being submerged in materialism. It is

recognised now on all hands; literature is full of it; and it is not

without significance that some months ago _The Hibbert Journal_--which

has in it so much of the advanced thought of the day, for which

bishops and archbishops and learned clerics write--it is not without

significance that that journal drew its readers' attention to "the

value of the God-idea in Hinduism." And the only value of it was

this, for man: that man is God, and therefore can know God; and the

writer pointed out that that was the only foundation on which, in

modern days, an edifice that could not be shaken could be reared up

for the Spirit in man. That is the religion of the future, the

religion of the Divine Self; that the common religion, the universal

religion, of which all the religions that are living in the world will

be recognised as branches, as sects of one mighty religion, universal

and supreme. For just as now in Christianity you have many a sect and

many a church, just as in Hinduism we find many sects and many

schools, and as in every other great religion of the world at the

present time there are divisions between the believers in the same

religion, so shall it be--very likely by the end of this century--with

all the religions of the world; there will be only one religion--the

knowledge of God--and all religious sects under that one mighty and

universal name.

And then, naturally, out of this knowledge there must spring a large

number of other knowledges subservient to it, that which you hear so

much about in Theosophical literature, of other worlds, the worlds

beyond the physical, worlds that are still material, although the

matter be of a finer, subtler kind; all that you read about the

astral, and mental, and buddhic planes, and so on--all these

lower knowledges find their places naturally, as growing out of the

one supreme knowledge. And at once you will ask: "Why?" If you are

really divine, if your Self is the same Self of which the worlds are a

partial expression, then it is not difficult to see that that Self in

you, as it unfolds its divine powers, and shapes the matter which it

appropriates in order to come in contact with all the different parts

of the universe, that that Self, creating for itself bodies, will be

able to know every material thing in the universe, just as you know

the things of the physical plane through the physical body. For it is

all on the same lines: that which enables you to know is not only

body--that is the medium between you and the physical world--but the

Knower in you is that which enables you to know, the power of

perception which is of consciousness, and not of body. When

consciousness vanishes, all the organs of consciousness are there, as

perfect as ever, but the Knower has left them, and knowledge

disappears with him; and so, whether it be in a swoon, in a fainting

fit, in sleep, or in death, the perfect instrument of the physical

body becomes useless when the hand of the master workman drops it. The

body is only his tool, whereby he contacts the things in a universe

which is not himself; and the moment he leaves it, it is a mere heap

of matter, doomed to decay, to destruction. But just as he has that

body for knowledge here, so he has other bodies for knowledge

otherwhere, and in every world he can know, he who is the Knower, and

every world is made up of objects of knowledge, which he can perceive,

examine, and understand.

And the world into which you shall pass when you go through the portal

of death, that is around you at every moment of your life here, and

you only do not know it because your instrument of knowledge there is

not yet perfected, and ready there to your hand; and the heavenly

world into which you will pass out of the intermediate world next to

this, that is around you now, and you only do not know it because your

instrument of knowledge there has not yet been fashioned. And so with

worlds yet higher, knowledge of them is possible, because the Knower

is yourself and is God, and you can create your instruments of

knowledge according to your wisdom and your will.

Hence Theosophy includes the whole of this vast scheme or field of

knowledge; and the whole of it is yours, yours to possess at your

will. Hence Theosophy should be to you a proclamation of your own

Divinity, with everything that flows therefrom; and all the knowledge

that may be gathered, all the investigations that may be made, they

are all part of this great scheme. And the reason why all the

religions of the world teach the same, when you come to disentangle

the essence of their teaching from the shape in which they put it, the

reason that they all teach the same is that they are all giving you

fragments of knowledge of the other worlds, and these worlds are all

more real than the world in which you are; and they all teach the same

fundamental truths, the same fundamental moral principles, the same

religious doctrines, and use the same methods in order that men may

come into touch with the other worlds. The sacraments do not belong to

Christianity alone, as sometimes Christians think; every religion has

its sacraments, some more numerous than others, but all have some. For

what is a sacrament? It is the earthly, the physical representative of

a real correspondence in nature; as the catechism of the Church of

England phrases it: "An outward and visible sign of an inward and

spiritual grace." It is a true definition. A sacrament is made up of

the outer and inner, and you cannot do without either. The outer thing

is correlated to the inner, and is a real means of coming into touch

with the higher, and is not only a symbol, as some imagine. The great

churches and religions of the past always cling to that reality of the

sacrament, and they do well. It is only in very modern times, and

among a comparatively small number of Christian people, that the

sacrament has become only a symbol, instead of a channel of living and

divine power. And much is lost to the man who loses out of his

religion the essential idea of the sacrament; for it is the link

between the spiritual and the physical, the channel whereby the

spiritual pours down into the physical vehicle. Hence the value that

all religions put upon sacraments, and their recognition of their

reality, and their priceless service to mankind. And so with many

other things in ceremonies and rites, common to all the different

faiths--the use of musical sounds, a use which tunes the bodies so

that the spiritual power may be able to manifest through them and by

them. For just as in your orchestra you must tune the instruments to a

single note, so must you tune your various bodies in order that

harmoniously they may allow the spiritual force to come through from

the higher to the lower plane. It is a real tuning, a real making of

harmonious vibrations; and the difference between the vibrations that

are harmonious and the vibrations that are discordant, from this point

of view, is this: when all the bodies vibrate together, all the

particles and their spaces correspond, so that you get solid

particles, then spaces, and then solid particles, and spaces again,

corresponding through all the bodies; whereas in the normal condition

the bodies do not match in that way, and the spaces of one come

against the solid parts of the other, and so you get a block. When

sounds are used, the mystical sounds called mantras in Hinduism,

the effect of those is to change the bodies from this condition to

that, and so the forces from without can come into the man, and the

forces in him may flow out to others. That is the value of it. You are

able to produce mechanically a result which otherwise has to be

produced by a tremendous exertion of the will; and the man of

knowledge never uses more force than is necessary in order to bring

about what he desires, and the Occultist--who is the wise man on many

planes--he uses the easiest way always to gain his object. Hence the

use of music, or mantras, in every faith. Pythagoras used music in

order to prepare his disciples to receive his teachings. The Greek and

the Roman Catholic Churches use special forms of music to produce a

definite effect upon the worshippers who hear them. All of you must be

aware that there are some kinds of music which have the remarkable

effect upon you, of lifting you higher than you can rise by your own

unassisted effort. Even the songs of illiterate Christian bodies do

have some effect upon them, in raising them to a higher level,

although they possess little of the true quality of the mantra. In

Theosophy you find all these things dealt with scientifically--a mass

of knowledge, but all growing out of the original statement that man

can know God.

Now it is clear that in all that, there is nothing which a man of any

faith cannot accept, cannot study. I do not mean that he will accept

everything that a Theosophist would say; but I mean that the knowledge

is knowledge of a kind which he will be wise to study, and to

appropriate so far as it recommends itself to his reason and his

intuition. And that is all the man need do--study. All this knowledge

is spread out for you freely: you can take it, if you will. The

Theosophical Society, which spreads it broadcast everywhere, claims in

it no property, no proprietary rights, but gives it out freely

everywhere. The books in which much of it is written are as free to

the non-Theosophist as to the Theosophist. The results of Theosophical

investigation are published freely that all who choose may read.

Everything is done that can be done by the Society to make the whole

thing common property; and nothing gives the true Theosophist more

delight than when he sees the Theosophical teachings coming out in

some other garb which gives them a different name, but hands them on

to those who might be frightened perhaps by the name "Theosophy." And

so, when we find a clergyman scattering broadcast to his congregation

Theosophical teaching as Christian, we say: "See, our work is bearing

fruit"; and when we find the man who does not label himself

"Theosophist" giving any of these truths to the world, we rejoice,

because we see that our work is being done. We have no desire to take

the credit of it, nor to claim it as ours at all; it belongs to every

man who is able to see it, quite as much as it does to anyone who may

call himself "Theosophist." For the possession of truth comes of right

to the man who can see the truth, and there is no partiality in the

world of intellect or of Spirit. The only test for a man's fitness to

receive is the ability to perceive; and the only claim he has to see

by the light is the power of seeing.

And that, perhaps, may explain to you what some think strange in our

Society--we have no dogmas. We do not shut out any man because he does

not believe Theosophical teachings. A man may deny every one of them,

save that of human brotherhood, and claim his place and his right

within our ranks. But his place and his right within our ranks are

founded on the very truths that he denies; for if man could not know

God, if there were no identity of nature in every man with God, then

there would be no foundation for our reception of him, nor any reason

for welcoming him as a brother. Because there is only one life, and

one nature, therefore the man who denies is God, as is he who affirms.

Therefore each has a right to come; only the one who affirms knows why

he welcomes his brother, and the one who denies is ignorant, and knows

not why he has a right within our ranks. But those of us who try to be

Theosophists in reality, as well as in name, we understand why it is

that we make him welcome, and it is based on this sane idea, that a

man can see the truth best by studying it, and not by repeating

formulae that he does not understand. What is the use of putting a

dogma before a man and saying: "You must repeat that before you can

come into my Church"? If the man repeats it not understanding it, he

is outside, no matter how much you bring him in; and if he sees it,

there is no need to make that as a portal to your fellowship. And we

believe, we of the Theosophical Society, that just because the

intellect can only do its best work in its own atmosphere of freedom,

truth has the best chance of being seen when you do not make any

conditions as to the right of investigation, as to the claim to seek.

To us, truth is so supreme a thing that we do not desire to bind any

man with conditions as to how, or where, or why, he shall seek it.

These things, we say, we know are true; and because we know they are

true, come amongst us, even though you do not believe them, and find

out for yourself whether they be true or not. And the man is better

worth having when he comes in an unbeliever, and wins to the knowledge

of the truth, than is the facile believer who acknowledges everything

and never gets a real grip upon truth at all. We believe that truth is

only found by seeking, and that the true bond is the love of truth,

and the effort to find it; that that is a far more real bond than the

repetition of a common creed. For the creed can be repeated by the

lips, but the seeing of truth as true can only come from the intellect

and the spirit, and to build on the intellect and the spirit is a

firmer foundation than to build on the breath of the lips. Hence our

Society has no dogmas. Not that it does not stand for any truths, as

some people imagine. Its name marks out the truth for which it stands:

it is the Theosophical Society; and that shows its function and its

place in the world--a Society that asserts the possibility of the

knowledge of God; that is its proclamation, as we have seen, and all

the other truths that grow out of that are amongst our teachings. The

Society exists to spread the knowledge of those truths, and to

popularise those teachings amongst mankind. "But," you may say, "if it

be the fact that you throw out broadcast all your teachings, that you

write them in books that every man can buy, what is, then, the good of

being a member of the Theosophical Society? We should not have any

more as members than we have as non-members." That is not quite true,

but it may stand as true for the moment. Why should you come in? For

no reason at all, unless to you it is the greatest privilege to come

in, and you desire to be among those who are the pioneers of the

thought of the coming days. No reason at all: it is a privilege. We do

not beg you to come in; we only say: "Come if you like to come, and

share the glorious privilege that we possess; but if you would rather

not, stay outside, and we will give you everything which we believe

will be serviceable and useful to you." The feeling that brings people

into our Society is the feeling that makes the soldier spring forward

to be amongst the pioneers when the army is going forth. There are

some people so built that they like to go in front and face

difficulties, so that other people may have an easier time, and walk

along a path that has already been hewn out for them by hands stronger

than their own. That is the only reason why you should come in: no

other. Do not come to "get"; you will be disappointed if you do. You

can "get" it outside. Come in to give, to work, to be enrolled amongst

the servants of humanity who are working for the dawn of the day of a

nobler knowledge, for the coming of the recognition of a spiritual

brotherhood amongst men. Come in if you have the spirit of the pioneer

within you, the spirit of the volunteer; if to you it is a delight to

cut the way through the jungle that others may follow, to tread the

path with bruised feet in order that others may have a smooth road to

lead them to the heights of knowledge. That is the only advantage of

coming in: to know in your own heart that you realise what is coming,

and are helping to make it come more quickly for the benefit of your

fellow-men; that you are working for humanity; that you are co-workers

with God, in making the knowledge of Him spread abroad on every side;

that you are amongst those to whom future centuries will look back,

thanking you that you saw the light when all men thought it was dark,

and that you recognised the coming dawn when others believed the

earth was sunk in midnight. I know of no inspiration more inspiring,

of no ideal that lifts men to greater heights, of no hope that is so

full of splendor, no thought that is so full of energy, as the

inspiration, and the ideal, and the hope, and the thought, that you

are working for the future, for the day that has not yet come. There

will be so many in the days to come who will see the truth, so many in

the unborn generations who will live from the hour of their birth in

the light of the Divine WISDOM. And what is it not to know that one is

bringing that nearer? to feel that this great treasure is placed in

your hands for the enriching of humanity, and that the bankruptcy of

humanity is over and the wealth is being spread broadcast on every

side? What a privilege to know that those generations in the future,

rejoicing in the light, will feel some touch of thanks and gratitude

to those who brought it when the days were dark, to those whose faith

in the Self was so strong that they could believe when all other

things were against it, to those whose surety of the divine knowledge

was so mighty that they could proclaim its possibility to an agnostic

world. That is the only reason why you should come into the vanguard,

that the only reason why you should join the ranks of the pioneers.

Hard work and little reward, hard words and little praise, but the

knowledge that you work for the future, and that with the co-operation

of Deity the final result is sure.