so-called affords of the immense chaos of the antediluvian period.
Modern researches and discoveries have confirmed it step by step. To
quote Roisel, who devoted a remarkable book to the Atlanteans, a work
less well-known than those of Scott Elliott and Rudolf Steiner, but one
that does not admit of the slightest doubt:
“It is proved that, long before the historic ages, the Atlanticans
had acquired a marvellous science whose elements mankind is hardly
beginning to reconstitute and whose mighty relics are found in
ancient Gaul, Egypt, Persia, India and the central portion of the
American continent. More than ten thousand years before our era, they
knew the precession of the equinoxes, the slow changes which many
stars experience in their courses and the thousand secrets of nature.
They had processes of which modern industry has not yet fathomed the
mysteries.”
9
The outcome of these studies is that humanity never underwent a
disaster to be compared with the disappearance of Atlantis. It will
perhaps need thousands of years to repair that loss and to reascend
to the level of a civilization which had certainties of which we
laboriously glean the scattered remnants, regarding the origin and
movements of the universe, the energy of matter, the unknown forces
of this and other worlds, the life beyond the grave and a social
organization and political economy similar to those of the bees.
Nothing could better prove the uselessness of man’s effort than this
unparalleled loss, if we did not strive to hope in spite of all.
A nation of wonderful metallurgists, who had discovered the means of
tempering copper for which we are still seeking, a nation of fabulous
engineers, whose geometry, as Professor Smyth tells us, began where
Euclid’s ends, they lifted and transported to enormous distances, by
mysterious methods, rocks weighing fifteen hundred tons and strewed
the world with those fantastic moving stones known as “mad stones”
and “stones of truth,” stones weighing five hundred tons and so
ingeniously poised on one of their corners that a child can move them
with its finger, whereas the united impetus of two hundred men would
be incapable of overturning them, stones which, from the geological
point of view, never belong to the spot where they are found. A nation
of explorers who had traversed and colonized the whole surface of
the earth, a nation of scholars, mathematicians and astronomers,
they appear to have been above all things ruthless rationalists and
logicians, endowed with, so to speak, a metallic brain, the lateral
lobes of which were much more highly developed than ours. They applied
their incomparable faculties exclusively to the study of the exact
sciences; and the sole object of their energies was the conquest of
truth. But the study of the invisible and the infinite, under their
powerful scrutiny, itself becomes an exact science; and the main idea
of their cosmogony, by virtue of which everything issues from the ocean
of cosmic matter or from the boundless waves of the eternal ether, soon
to return and to reemerge, disfigured and overladen with numberless
myths by the imagination of their degenerate descendants or settlers:
this main idea forms the base of every religion. It is improbable that
man will ever discover one to equal it or replace it.
10
It is in the sacred books of India that we find the surest and most
plentiful traces of this cosmogony or of this revelation. Less than a
century ago, men were almost wholly unaware of the existence of these
sacred books. Their interpreters have taken two different paths. On
the one hand, scholars whom we may describe as official have supplied
translations of a certain number of texts, which might also be called
official, texts which they do not always understand and which their
readers understand even less. On the other hand, initiates, genuine
or pretended, with the assistance of adepts of an occult fraternity,
have suggested a new and more impressive interpretation of these same
texts or of others still more secret. They still, rightly or wrongly,
inspire a certain distrust. We are obliged to admit the authenticity
and the antiquity of certain traditions, of certain primitive and
essential writings, though it is impossible to assign an approximate
date to them, so completely are they merged in the mists of the
prehistoric ages. But they are almost incomprehensible without keys and
commentaries; and it is here that our doubts and hesitations begin. A
large number of those commentaries are likewise very ancient and in
their turn need keys; others appear to be more recent; lastly, others
seem to be contemporary; and it is often difficult to draw a dividing
line between that which may well exist in the original and that which
the interpreters believe to exist in the original or which they more or
less deliberately add to it. Now the most striking, the most impressive
and in any case the most lucid part of the doctrine is often contained
in the commentaries.
Next, as I have observed, comes the question of the keys, which
is intimately connected with the foregoing. These keys are more
or less workable and command more or less respect; sometimes they
seem fanciful or arbitrary; they are delivered only with curious
precautions, singly and grudgingly; and they are apt to unlock several
superimposed meanings. And all this is accompanied by fantastic
reticences, by so-called dangerous or terrible secrets, withheld at
the decisive moment, and by revelations which, it is contended, cannot
be communicated until many centuries have elapsed. Doors through which
we were about to pass are slammed in our faces just as we were at last
catching a glimpse of a long-promised horizon; and behind each of them
hides a supreme initiate, a still living master, the sacred guardian
of the ultimate mysteries, who knows all things, but can or will say
nothing.
Observe, moreover, that a host of more or less intelligent
_illuminati_, of elderly women and unbalanced spinsters, of
simple-minded people who accept, blindly and off-hand, that which
they do not understand, of discontented, unsuccessful, vain or crafty
persons who fish in troubled waters, in a word, all the usual suspect
mob that gathers round any more or less mysterious doctrine, science
or phenomenon, has discredited these first esoteric interpretations,
of which the very source is none too dear. Lastly, let us add that the
burning of the famous library of Alexandria, in which all the knowledge
of the east was amassed, the destruction in the sixteenth century,
under the Mogul Akbar, of thousands of Sanskrit volumes, the systematic
and merciless demolition, especially during the first few centuries
of the Church and in the Middle Ages, of all that referred or alluded
to this dreaded and embarrassing revelation, have deprived us of our
best means of control. The adepts, it is true, assert on the other hand
that the true texts, as well as the ancient commentaries which alone
enable them to be understood, still exist in the secret crypts and
subterranean libraries of Thibet or the Himalayas, libraries of books
more innumerable than any which we possess in the west, and that they
will reappear in a more enlightened age. It is possible, but in the
meanwhile they are of no help to us.
11
Be this as it may, what we have is enough to perplex us greatly;
and the control allowed by the fragments which have been saved from
historic antiquity absolutely removes all suspicion of more or less
recent fraud or deception in respect of the essentials. Moreover, any
fraud or deception of this nature seems hardly possible and would be
so ingenious that we should be obliged to marvel at it as a phenomenon
almost as remarkable as that whereof it would be seeking to give the
illusion; and we should have to admit that the mind of man has never
insinuated itself so far into the infinity of time and space, or
into the origin of things, and has never risen to such heights. Had
this revelation profited by all the attainments of our latter-day
science and thought, it could not have furnished us with theories
more satisfactory, more logical, more coherent, more plausible, more
synthetic, or worthier of the infinity which they strive to embrace
and often seem to attain, on the rhythm of the eternities, the ebb
and flow of the eternal Becoming, the never-ending cycle and the
periodic existences of the ego, the birth, movement and evolution of
the worlds, the divine breath and the intelligence that animate it, on
Maya, the eternal illusion of ignorance, the struggle for life, natural
selection, the gradual development and transformation of stars and
men, the functions and energies of the ether, immortal and infallible
justice, the intermolecular and fantastic activity of matter, on the
nature of the soul and the existence of the vast, nameless power that
governs the universe, in a word, on all the riddles that assail and all
the mysteries that overwhelm us.
But, let us hasten to repeat it, there could not seriously be any
question of fraud, because the texts or traditions that might be
regarded with suspicion are corroborated by other texts, such as the
sacred inscriptions of Egypt, which no one thinks of contesting. At
most we may come upon a few passages antedated by the imprudent
zeal of adepts or commentators, a few interpolations which merely
embroider the majestic lines. Taking it as a whole, we have to do with
a revelation which dates back infinitely farther than all that we
have called the prehistoric ages, wherefore it is legitimate that our
astonishment should be unbounded.
12
Very good, it will be said, this interpretation of the universe, this
anthropocosmogenesis is the loftiest, the most spacious, the most
wonderful, the most unassailable that has ever been conceived; it
teems in every part with human thought and imagination; but what is
it all based upon? When all is said, we have here only magnificent
hypotheses, boldly disguised as authoritative, dogmatic and peremptory
declarations, but every one incapable of verification. This is the
objection which I myself put forward, a little hastily, in one of the
early chapters of _Our Eternity_.
It is indeed undeniable that we shall not for some time to come, that
perhaps we shall never know the truth about the origin and the end of
the universe or any of the other problems which these declarations
profess to solve. But it is curious to note that science, despite
itself, is daily drawing nearer to one or other of these declarations
and that it is unable to set aside or to contradict any of them. There
is for example, a certain study of the genesis of the elements, by the
well-known chemist, Sir William Crookes, which unconsciously becomes
plainly occultist, while the discovery of the radioactivity of matter
reproduces precisely the theory of vortices of the initiate Anaxagoras.
It is the same, _mutatis mutandis_, with the function attributed to
the ether, the latest, indispensable postulate of our scientists. It
is the same with the supreme and essential functions of certain minute
glands of which modern medicine is only now beginning to rediscover
the importance and which probably hold hidden the primordial secrets
of life: the thyroid gland, which directs growth and intelligence;
the suprarenal gland, which governs the unconscious muscle that is the
heart; and the pineal gland, the most mysterious of all, which brings
us into relation with the unknown worlds. It is the same again with
astronomy, when the manifest insufficiency of our so-called cosmic
laws, notably that of gravitation, propounds a host of questions which
only the cosmogony of the east is able to answer. But this would
require a long enquiry, which I am not qualified to undertake.
For the rest, nothing obliges us to accept these declarations as
dogmas. There is no question here of a religion which imposes upon us
its blind faith, its _Credo quia absurdum_. We are quite entitled to
regard them as mere hypotheses, as immense, incomparable antediluvian
poems, of which the Mosaic Genesis is but a disfigured fragment.
But, even as hypotheses or poems, it must be admitted that they are
prodigious, that we have nothing better, nothing more probable to set
against them and that, in view of their incontestable antiquity, of
their prehistoric origin, they seem really superhuman.
Must we admit, as the occultists contend, that they come to us from
beings superior to man, from more spiritual entities, living under
unknown conditions, who occupied our earth or the neighbouring planets
before our coming; from a Lemuro-Atlantean civilization which, in
its megalithic monuments, has left indelible traces in the memory of
the peoples and on the face of our earth? It is quite possible; but
here again we are free to await the confirmations of Hindu, Egyptian,
Chaldean, Assyrian and Persian archæology, which on this point, as on
so many others, has not spoken its last word.
13
I am well aware that this revelation, as apparently all those which
may be made in the course of time, dates back to and ends in the
unknowable, the insoluble mystery of divinity, of being, or existence;
and it necessarily stops short before the barrier of this unknowable,
which is as impenetrable and impregnable as a cliff that is infinite in
every dimension and formed of a single block of black diamond. There is
nothing to be done; we can but halt; we cannot even seek to outflank
it, to approach it from the other side, for the other side, if we could
reach it, would necessarily be like the side in front of us, seeing
that the non-existence of everything would be just as inexplicable,
just as incomprehensible as its existence. It is true that, in the
secret recesses of the doctrine, the universe and all that it contains
is known as Maya, that is to say, the eternal illusion, so that the two
irreconcilable mysteries unite in a still greater mystery which man’s
intelligence can no longer approach.
Fundamentally, the primitive riddle, the primordial mystery not
being elucidated, all the rest illumines only the steps that lead
from comparative knowledge to absolute ignorance. It will probably
be the same with all the revelations that may address themselves to
man’s intelligence so long as he continues on this planet, for this
intelligence doubtless has limits which no effort can enlarge. But in
the meantime it is certain that these steps, which lead to nothing,
nevertheless, at the first onset and from the earliest days led him
to the highest point which his intelligence has attained or can hope
to attain. The most ancient explanation embraces straightway all the
attempts at explanation that have hitherto been offered. It harmonizes
the positivism of science with the most transcendental idealism; it
accepts matter and spirit; it reconciles the mechanical impulsion
of atoms and worlds with their intelligent guidance. It gives us
an unconditioned divinity, “a causeless cause of all the causes,”
worthy of the universe which is this divinity itself and of which all
the divinities that have succeeded it in all our religions are but
scattered, mutilated and unrecognizable members. It offers us, lastly,
in its law of Karma, by virtue of which each being undergoes in his
successive lives the consequences of his actions and gradually purifies
himself, the loftiest, justest and most unassailable, the most fertile,
consoling and hopeful moral principle that could ever be proposed to
man. Because of all this it appears worthy of investigation, respect
and admiration.
14
This respect and admiration, however, do not militate against our
liberty to choose or reject many things, or to reserve them while we
wait for further light. When we are told, for instance, that the Cosmos
is guided by an infinite series of hierarchies of sensient beings, each
having a mission to fulfil, which are the agents of the Karmic and
Cosmic laws; when it is added that each of these beings was a man in
an earlier Manvantara, or is preparing to become one in the present or
in a future Manvantara, that they are perfected men, or nascent men,
and that, in their higher and less material spheres, they do not differ
morally from terrestrial human beings save in that they do not possess
the sense of personality and of emotional nature; when, lastly, we are
assured that what we call unconscious Nature is in reality a complex of
forces manipulated by semi-intelligent beings (Elementals) directed by
the High Planetary Spirits (Dhyani-Shohans), whose total forms the Word
Manifest of the non-manifest Logos and constitutes at the same time
both the intelligence of the universe and its immutable law, we can do
homage to the ingenuity of these speculations, as to that of thousands
of others which perhaps embrace the truth more closely than our best
and most recent scientific hypotheses; we are free to take what we
please from them and to leave what we please. All this, I grant, is
by no means proved, is not verified, or cannot be verified, save in
certain details, whereas the great fundamental outlines will probably
always escape the control of our unequipped intelligence. But what we
must, I repeat, admire without reserve is the prodigious spiritual
edifice offered by the sum total of this revelation, the immense
intellectual effort which, since the dawn of humanity, has attempted
to unravel the unfathomable chaos of the origin, structure, progress,
direction and end of the universe and which appears to have succeeded
to this extent, that hitherto nothing has been found that equals it, or
is not inspired by it or, often unconsciously, returns to it.
15
I said in the first part of this essay that too lofty a revelation,
even were it incontestable, would have hardly any influence upon our
life, that it would change little in it, that it would occur too far
from us in the immensity of space and that it would not sink into our
hearts and minds. Was it thus with that of which we are now speaking,
which is the only truly superhuman and yet acceptable and almost
unassailable revelation that we have had? Yes and no, according to the
point of view which we take up. All that it contains of too great a
character, except its notion of eternity, has not really modified our
ideas, has not permeated into our habits. It has not even profoundly
affected the peoples who have handed it down to us and who, abandoning
any endeavour to understand it, have transformed it into a barbarous
and monstrous anthropomorphic polytheism. It is more or less the same
everywhere. All the religions, from the pagan religions of China and
Japan, Gaul and ancient Germany, Mexico and Peru, down to Christianity
with its variants and its offshoots, have issued from it; but all
have not been able to live and govern men, save by disfiguring and
mutilating it, by dwarfing it to the lowest stature of the souls of
their time, by altering it beyond recognition. It is therefore highly
probable that matters would be the same with any other and greater
revelation, if such were possible, even though this had all the signs
of a divine, direct, authentic, indubitable, irrefutable, irrecusable
revelation, in a word, with that which we are still awaiting without
daring to hope for it.
THE NECESSARY SILENCE
XVII
THE NECESSARY SILENCE
1
The practitioners of occult science in the east tell us of certain
dwellers in the solitudes of Thibet and the Himalayas, Initiates,
Masters, heirs to the wisdom of the “Sons of Light,” or the “Seven
Primordials,” who possess the seven keys which enable them to
understand the sacred prehistoric texts. They are said to be the silent
depositories of the secret of the intermolecular or interetheric
forces, by the aid of which the races of beings who preceded man upon
this earth used to transport to enormous distances monoliths of more
than five hundred tons’ weight, which have no relation to the stones
that surround them and whose arrangement and astronomical orientation
manifestly reveal the intervention of an intelligent and even a highly
scientific mind.
These monoliths are sometimes carved, as for instance the famous
colossal idols in the valley of Bamian, in Afghanistan, of which one is
173 feet high, or the five hundred and fifty monsters of Easter Island,
in Polynesia, which, we may observe in passing, remain one of the most
insoluble and perplexing riddles in the world. Hewn out of basalt,
reclining or standing erect upon their platforms, these sculptures,
one of which measures over 90 feet in height, are undoubtedly the most
ancient human effigies to be found upon our earth. Official science
ascribes to them an antediluvian origin, while esoteric tradition
regards them as portraits of the giants of the last Atlantean race,
which became degenerate and lapsed into witchcraft shortly before the
disappearance of the mysterious continent whereof Easter Island is
supposed to be merely one of the loftier summits to-day emerging from
the lonely Pacific.
I have before me as I write the photographs of some of these haunting
giants; and I do not believe that in our most oppressive nightmares
it would be possible to imagine faces more formidable, more impassive
and unfeeling, more eternally ferocious, more coldly supercilious,
more pitilessly disdainful and icily omnipotent. Are they Selenites or
Martians, with their tightly-closed, implacable mouths and those eyes
of theirs, hollow, like wells of malediction, or protuberant and framed
in an airman’s goggles? They are not in any way simian, as one might
have supposed, but rather represent demoniacal and abstract entities,
such as evil, doom and fatality. They seem not so much inhuman as
prehuman or posthuman; and they bear a horrible relation to certain
ancestral memories which slumber in the marrow of our bones, warning us
that such faces undoubtedly once existed.
2
But let us return to our great Initiates. They are, it appears, reputed
to be the guardians of the irresistible and incommensurable sidereal
force, the force which supports and directs the worlds and which is
capable, if it were misused, of destroying in a moment the whole human
species, all that lives upon the earth and this very earth itself;
but it is also capable, if it were wisely tamed, of ensuring man an
ultimate royalty, perhaps access to other heavenly bodies and, in any
case, a power so great that the Golden Age which existed of old, thanks
to the subjection of this force, might flourish once more upon our
planet.
All this is possible; and, for the moment, we need not go into the
matter. But that, possessing the secret of this force and of many
others, transmitted from Hierophant to Candidate, or, as they say
“from mouth to ear,” the experts in occult science do not divulge it
and place it at the service of humanity: this is the great reproach
brought against them; and for all those who are not aware that the
end of Initiation is not power and material happiness but wisdom,
development and the uplifting of the inner being it is the best proof
that they are cheats and impostors. It may be that, driven into a
corner, they are silent because they have nothing to tell us; but the
argument is not so unanswerable as those who avail themselves of it
are inclined to think. We shall perhaps see this before long. It is
indeed not impossible that one day some accident of knowledge will
place one or other of our scientists in a position analogous to that
of these Masters or Initiates. To him also the terrible question of
the necessary silence will then present itself. We have but lately
witnessed in this war the insensate and demoniacal use which man has
made of certain inventions. What will happen if other energies are
placed in his hands, energies far more formidable, which we seem to be
on the point of discovering and releasing?