evolution of spirit from matter. What follows that we may infer from
analogy. The process of unfolding doubtless continues on planes of which
we have no conception, but obviously need not dread to encounter.
Of course we have moved slowly forward in our various stages of
development from whatever we were before we took on human qualities up
to our present degree of attainment. It is not hard to believe that we
have developed superior understanding and the other higher attributes of
humanity only as our growing needs and opening opportunities have called
for them.
The evolution of species and the laws governing the development of
physical organs as they became necessary for the growth and preservation
of the infinite variety of living things have been a favorite study for
materialistic scientists for the past century. More than that, long ago
the learned Jean Baptiste Lamarck formulated four propositions that are
now accepted as self-evident.
First. Life, by its proper forces, tends continually to increase the
volume of every body possessing it, and to enlarge its parts up to a
limit which it brings about. This covers the phenomenon of growth to
maturity.
Second. The production of a new organ in an animal body results from the
supervention of a new want continuing to make itself felt, and a new
movement which this want gives birth to and encourages.
This is shown in the long neck of the giraffe, which enables him to feed
on the tender top leaves of tall tropical plants, and in the camel's
hump which supplies him with vigor during long intervals without
feeding, and the receptacle for water, which enables him to traverse
long stretches of barren and streamless lands.
Third. The development of organs and their force of action are
constantly in ratio to the employment of those organs.
The kangaroo, a large animal carrying its young for safety in a natural
pouch, stands erect and never uses its fore legs in walking. It leaps
forward in prodigious bounds, propelled by the muscular power of its
tail, which has grown and developed beyond even the hind legs in
strength; while the fore legs have dwindled to insignificant size and
importance.
Fourth. All which has been laid down or changed in the organization of
individuals in the course of their life, is conserved by generation and
transmitted to the new individuals which proceed from those which have
undergone these changes.
This is because evolution carries us constantly beyond certain needs and
progress does not let us go back to those needs, neither in our own
persons nor in those of our posterity. Man and beast alike have only and
always such organs as they require and no others. The laws of heredity
are not whimsical or recalcitrant, and the changes brought about by
evolution are carried forward by them in strict obedience to its
demands. Recognizing this fact, but building from a false premise, the
followers of Darwin search for a link to connect humanity with the
tailless apes of earlier periods, assuming that man was developed from
them, and that the ape is the link between mankind and the next lower
order of being. There is absolutely nothing in support of this theory
beyond a resemblance in the physical conformation. And that is far more
likely to result from the ape being a descendant of prehistoric man.
All these speculators stop short at any valuable foundation on which to
build theories. They see in evolution only the generation and
development of living organisms and the reason or cause of the infinite
variety of form, color and habits.
Kant and Laplace theorized vaguely on the formation of the solar system
from a gaseous condition to its present character, but they shared the
perplexity of all biological thinkers when they endeavored to peer
behind the mechanical beginning in search of a First Cause. It is
probable that even the mechanical beginning had never a first hour or
day or year or era. And so Science, bound and boxed up in materialism,
observes the growth and development of species and placidly stops at
that, having begun with a guess and ended with—a bundle of axiomatic
conclusions.
But the philosophy of the ancients, backed up by the teachings of the
divine men who from time to time have come back to us, and endorsed by
our own inner convictions, tells us that evolution is the concerted
effort of all the atoms that comprise the Universe to return to a
condition not recognized by science—the condition of spirit which is
the ultimate aim of everything.
And every infinitesimal atom is alive and has a consciousness of its
own. They cluster together and form living organisms, developing and
progressing in even pace with those organisms, flying off into space as
their work goes on and rushing together to build up some other organism.
Had we ultra-microscopic vision we could see them streaming from us
continually and being replaced by corresponding streams of new atoms.
And each one of these has its own divine spark. It is a living entity.
They abide with us according to our attraction, some shunning us, others
preferring us. Evil people attract such atoms as have just come from
others of like disposition and leave their impress upon them and gain
nothing good from them. Every evil thought taints every atom of the
stream that we contact with at the time. They advance in their
evolutions no faster than does humanity and reach spirituality when we
do and not sooner or later. Man arrives finally at this condition
clothed in the "spiritual body" of which theologians speak without any
idea or comprehension of its true nature.
All who would shun contact with the particles that emanate from vile
people must live the life that repels such atoms. Those who live a life
of pure thought and fraternal consideration draw towards them atoms of
such quality as makes their personality pleasant and attractive and
their bearing gracious. No pure life builds up a vile personality. There
are other ways to recognize traits of character besides the mere facial
expression. Even scientists know that.
It is therefore evident that every one should shun evil thought just as
he would any other deadly and destructive infection. It rests with every
man to carry forward with him on his upward journey all the material
that goes toward his own physical composition.
There is no one who has not attracted all grades of atoms to him, and it
is well to bear in mind that they are the very same that have formed the
bodies of all the population of the world, man and beast, since life
first was. There has been no addition, no diminution. Nothing in nature
is ever destroyed. Nothing ever ceases to be. There is no place to
banish material. It must be spiritualized and we must be the medium.
And, therefore, it is no poetic fancy to say that we are of one common
clay and that humanity is all one. Every man, at every moment, is
building and rebuilding himself of the same materials, particle for
particle as have built up every other man. Prince or pauper, saint or
demon, society flower or foul tramp, we are all of the very same dust
and we can determine which sort we shall use for our own bodies. It is
not a question of proximity. It is entirely one of sympathy and
character and affinity. We evolve as fast as our thoughts and conduct
permit, and we purify our souls and our bodies alike and together.
If we recognize the brotherhood of humanity we need no reminding to see
that it is our duty to ourselves—to our personal selves as well as to
our spiritual selves, to help to make cleaner and sweeter the whole
world through our own mental, moral and the resultant spiritual
cleanness. That will not hurry evolution much in each separate instance,
but by the contagion of sympathy and the dynamic power of thought these
beneficent, physical atoms can be attracted to us and we can carry about
with us their gentle influence for good.
That is the secret of the curative influence of sweetsouled people upon
those who are sick in mind or body, and if people could understand these
influences as they are and value them justly we should soon see a
happier world with less sorrow, less injustice, less sickness and a far
wider recognition of the material as well as spiritual truth that
brotherhood is an universal fact in Nature, and that our evolution can
never be complete until all realize it and live accordingly.
THE CYCLE OF LIFE.
BY MARY KONOPNITSKY.
TRANSLATED FROM THE POLISH BY V. A. H.
PRELUDE.
In the new morn, that dawns above the world, I put aside the black and
sombre harp, that plays and sings so sadly. For, from the ocean's
farthest shore, with the first daybreak blushes, with the golden arrows
of the sun, there comes on rosy wings, all radiant with fiery auroras, a
new song, a bird of the arriving spring.
In the new morn, that dawns above the world, I stretch the golden
strings, I weave them from the day-beams, I paint them with the iris
dew. For through the mould of sorrows, there breaks the music of
mountain waterfalls; their vernal voice and chime now reach me from
every rock and rill, and a new flowery raiment is again woven for the
earth.
In the new morn, that dawns above the world, I tie fresh golden cords of
sound,—not for the pain, not for the longing in the gloom, not for the
old complaint of the lonely heart. I send them into the blue infinitudes
unrestrained, I launch them from globe to globe, into the farthest
space. From star to star there glistens of my strings the golden grate.
I.
I am a ray. The fount of Light I cannot circumscribe. And yet I fly.
Through the dark nights I fly, through stars and pallid moons; I kindle
ephemeral scintillations, I send out my trembling light towards
infinity's eternal flame, from which shines forth the sun of all the
suns. And now I darken, totter, pale; I lose my breath, my hope, I
smoulder like a spark.
And lo! again I energize my rays, cast into endless skies; again I
illume myself and burn; I reach forth, I fly in space as a fiery ribbon
from the spindle of the spirit. Now my tiny ray approaches the great
sun; it is already burning with eternity's first blush. As an arrow I
sling myself into the bright path, illuminated by the rosy dawn. I am a
ray—the fount of Light I cannot circumscribe. Let me, then, be
encompassed by its dome.
II.
I am a spark of eternity; and I am a pilgrim. Even to-day shall I pass
away, after a while, after an hour's stroke, together with the smoke of
the shepherd's fire, which writhes in blue strands over the forest in
the eve, and disappears in the tears of dew before the night. Even
to-day shall I be divorced from that power, which holds me here from the
twilight to the twilight, and the sun shall not see me more with his
golden eyes.
I am a spark of eternity. Beyond the cold ashes I shall exist even to
the dawn, ... And then in my own embers shall I wax in brightness, glow
as gold and burn as ruby; I shall pass through the grayness of the dust
of this my bed, and before the rosy dawn shall have bathed herself in
dew, before the sun shall have lifted his golden gaze from beyond the
sea, I shall strike into the flames of life.
III.
How many dawns, how many twilights have I passed? Do I know it myself?
Through how many gates of body and of soul have I entered into life, as
an eternal voyager, who is born daily, now here, now there, from the
sleep of death, in the earliest morn.
And then, exhausted, I departed to the West, through the great twilight
dusk, which, all blazing with gold and red as blood, led me into the
silent fields of blue, upon the dreamy meadows of the moon, all heaving
with the beating of the wings of Psyche-butterflies, where I sought my
sleep, and my head leaning on eternity's great bosom, I rested after a
life and before a life.
IV.
Myself—the gate, and myself—the path, once only in this cycle have I
issued from the Divine Light. Once only blew its breath for all bodies
and souls, once only has it in the morning of Day opened its bosom of
luminous archetypal thought,—and all subsequent myriads of forms,
before and now, were sculptured by myself.
Lo! I emerge from the conflagration of blood; I come in the likeness of
a child, I who am a lion, crouching for the powers of the heavens and of
the earth. And I depart into the night, through the blood and through
the pain, crouching as a shadow, for the dawn and for the day. After a
time, after a moment I increase in strength, I spring up in the dust. My
germ of existence now feels hunger of life; it attracts life's forces
and lifts green blades above the grave. The sun now warms it for a new
day of its immortal labor.
V.
With no gift am I favored in my early hour. All my radiance have I spun
myself through many nights and shadows. And all my powers upon the earth
and in the heavens have I obtained from my own mystic depths. Every form
I have, it is of ages' toil, it is an effort of many births, a battle of
many darkling deaths.
What light have I, by a promethean labor, through thousand lives, spark
by spark have I stolen it from the sun, spark by spark have I seized it
from the blushes of the morning. The rosy coral of the dawns, and
lilies' whiteness have I plucked unseen in the gardens of the night from
the silvery stars. There is no color and no sound upon the waving
meadows, among the nests of eagles or of nightingales, which through the
ages, in ruins' coldness and scorching heat of life I have not worked
out from a laughter to a groan,—alive by my own self.
VI.
And my right is to upwards grow through all the worlds. And my right is
to expand my heart through all the worlds. In storms, in silence I burst
the bars of death's prisons, and strike the metal of the all-awakening
bell!
Lightning of life, and thunderbolt of life I let into the dark camera of
death, into the house of dust. And touched by a spark of the spirit the
dust explodes with life, the soil opens, waving the flowers of new
spring, and again breathes joyous in the splendor of the day.
VII.
The soul-bird builds her cage herself,—with songs and flapping of her
wings,—and enters then its gates all fascinated with the life.
But soon the winged guest, from the infinity, newcomer, striking her
prison's trellis-wall, reddens her golden pinions with the ruby blood.
She hushes then in the dusky shadows of her house; a longing eats her
heart away for the freedom of the dawn.
Till overcome with pain she strikes her breast against the walls and
breaks the cage herself.
With songs and flapping of her wings, from the dusk, called life, she
flies away near to the gates of the eternal light.
VIII.
Upon the dark and stormy roads I walk, bare-footed, poor; I onward pass,
naked and hungry, through life's cold and night; only one light can
brighten there my way and feed my strength,—the light of daring,
burning in my breast; it helps me more than stars and more than moons.
No sun in heaven can kindle it in me, but I must get it from myself,
striking my spirit against the hard experiences of life, that the breast
might catch the spark as does dry tinder when the steel strikes the
flint.
IX.
With me do I carry the enemy, whether I leave my threshold, or return
back to my home.
With me do I bring the traitor, and he is my heart's shadow,—the
thunderbolt striking me.
With its storm it will scatter the roof of my dwelling, set fire to my
house.
And then suddenly stopping, the sails of my boat will be folded, and
down will it sink.
(_To be continued._)
GODS, HEROES AND MEN.
BY AMOS J. JOHNSON.
According to Theosophy every man is a God incarnate. In his real nature,
each man is a spark from the Divine Flame, which descends from the
Infinite Fountain of Life and courses through Eternity on a pilgrimage,
the purpose of which we can but faintly conceive.
Great mystics have said that "the universe exists for the sake of the
soul's experience," and that the purpose of life is that the soul may
reach perfection. The term embraces infinity, perfect virtue, wisdom,
power, perfect altruism. Each department of Nature must be carried on to
a full completeness and the soul may not rest content with achieving
merely its own perfection, but must labor for the perfection of the
great Whole.
Reaching from the One White Light of Absolute Being down to the tiniest
atom of matter, each plane of existence is governed by Divine
Intelligences. All one can say is that after reaching to the highest
conception possible to us of the Divine Intelligences that rise above us
and to the highest knowledge attainable of the Divine Worlds, still
stretching far beyond the highest, beyond the utmost reach of human
thought, there exists: What? "An omnipresent, eternal, boundless and
immutable Principle, on which all speculation is impossible, since it
transcends the power of human conception and can only be dwarfed by any
human expression or similitude. It is beyond the reach and power of
thought, unthinkable and unspeakable."
This is the postulate of sublime and everlasting Deity. As far as we may
go in endless Eternity, yet above and beyond all there reigneth absolute
Law.
Recognizing then, that the great unknowable Deity is beyond our ken, our
study must be confined to the lesser Deities, though some of these seem
unknowable; but we may partially learn the relation they bear to men.
All the great religions present a series of divine Presences, and
generally a triune Godhead stands as the primal object of all adoration.
The Hebrew Bible traces three Deities, the highest of these being the
Most High God, supreme ruler over all, and synonymous with Law; the
second Deity is God, the Elohim, a great hierarchy, or rather a series
of hierarchies of Gods, who formed the earth and filled it with living
creatures and endowed man with his human nature; while the third in rank
among the ancient Hebrews was Jehovah, who stands as their tribal Deity.
The distinction between the Most High God and Jehovah is clearly shown
in Deuteronomy (32: 8-9), where it says: "When the Most High divided the
nations, their inheritance, when He separated the Sons of Adam, He set
the bounds of the people.... The Lord's [Jehovah's] portion is his
people, Jacob is the lot of His inheritance."
The New Testament also gives a triple Godhead in the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. Among the Brahmins, Brahma is the Creator, Vishnu the
Preserver and Siva the Destroyer; with the Greeks it was Uranos, Kronos
and Zeus; and with the Egyptians, Osiris, Isis and Horus. These were not
necessarily the most powerful Gods in the Pantheon, but those most
popularly known. The Hindus, for instance, are said to call their chief
Deity, Zyaus—which bears a close resemblance to the Greek Zeus; and the
Egyptians called their Unknown God, Amen or Ammon. All religions tell
also of lesser divinities, as archangels and angels.
Theosophy, the Wisdom Religion, shows the three Logoi which have
proceeded from the Unknowable Principle; these Logoi are respectively
the First Cause, the Spirit of the Universe, and the Universal
World-Soul. From the Manifested Logos, the Universal Oversoul, spring
hundreds of classes of divine beings, and these in their turn are the
progenitors of the lower classes of beings. From God down to the lowest
mineral monad, there is a direct chain of heredity, binding all of
existence into one great universal whole. Humanity is the child of the
Gods and traces its heredity through all the divine hierarchies to the
Unknowable Root of all.
The traditions of all old nations tell of a Golden Age when Gods and
Demigods lived among men. Greek mythology gives the following account of
the formation of the Earth and heavens: "Before earth and sea and heaven
were created, all things wore one aspect, to which we give the name
Chaos—a confused and shapeless mass, in which, however, slumbered the
seeds of things. Earth, sea and air were all mixed up together; so the
earth was not solid, the sea was not fluid, and the air was not
transparent. God and Nature at last interposed and put an end to this
discord, separating earth from sea, and heaven from both. Then one of
the Gods gave His services in arranging the Earth. The air being
cleared, the stars began to appear, fishes took possession of the sea,
birds of the air and beasts of the land. But a nobler race was wanted,
and Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus made man in the image of the
Gods. Then Prometheus went to heaven and lit his torch at the chariot of
the Sun, and brought down fire to man. He taught him to make weapons to
subdue the animals, tools to cultivate the ground, and introduced arts
and commerce."
The "fire" which Prometheus brought, refers not to a physical flame, but
to "mind." Prometheus stands for the hierarchy which endowed physical
man with his mental faculties, and it is related that when mankind was
supplied with the "divine fire" the Gods became jealous of the new race,
and in revenge they chained Prometheus to a rock where a vulture feasted
on his liver, which was renewed as fast as devoured. He thus stands
forth as the first Saviour of humanity, and his sufferings represent the
first crucifixion.
Mythology is written in glyph and symbol, but if one stops to analyze
these mystic tales, volumes may be found hidden beneath the outer husk.
Perhaps it was not revenge—but Law—which caused Prometheus to be
chained to the rock. He assumed the task of raising man to Godhood and
incarnated in the animal form that the lower entity might be better
aided. Thus the rock to which he was chained becomes humanity itself,
and the vulture represents the desires and passions of the lower man.
Humanity has always had divine Teachers. Schools of Magi or Wise Ones
were established on the old Lemurian continent, and were open to all who
were worthy. These schools or temples were known to the public down to a
period as late as 2000 years ago, when they closed to the world at
large. But the light has been kept burning in hidden places even to the
present day. The Great Lodge has maintained a continuous existence ever
since its establishment millions of years ago, and it is from this Lodge
that all the great Teachers of the world have come—Krishna, Buddha,
Jesus, and all others. A recent Messenger from the Lodge was H. P.
Blavatsky, who founded the Theosophical Society and Universal
Brotherhood. Through this channel the archaic teachings are again being
presented to the world at large. All who desire to learn the mysteries
of life, all who desire to advance along the Path which leads from
manhood to Godhood are welcome to the archaic wisdom.
If the applicant for divine knowledge will purify his nature and be
brotherly to his neighbor, then he may gain the greatest profit by a
study of Theosophy, for then its teachings will be illuminated by a
greater light than intellect itself can ever shed. The true men of
to-day are those who are able to subdue their lower nature and make it
obedient to the behests of the spiritual man. It is a heavy task, but in
the end will lead to a higher life.
The course of training at first is very simple, being concerned with the
commonest of daily duties. If one is irritable, quick-tempered,
censorious, lazy, selfish or unjust, his first steps upon the Path will
consist in correcting these faults. One must make a persistent struggle
to become industrious, self-controlled and sweet tempered, and not until
these qualities are developed need one be anxious for anything beyond.
If one fails in some respects or in all respects he need not be
discouraged, but should try again, and keep on trying until he does
succeed.
The evolution from man to Hero or Seer, and from Seer to Perfection can
not take place in a single life, for one life is not sufficient to
furnish either time or environment for the many lines of development
that are required. Before the man can become one of the company of the
great Helpers of Humanity, he must be purged of every weakness and
defilement. He does not need Their learning, but he must have Their
purity.
"What good is soap to a negro, and advice to a fool?"
"Do not make a wicked man thy companion, nor act on the advice of a
fool."—_Gems from the East._
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUICIDE.
BY T. B. WILSON.