This ought to settle the question and show there must have been some

carelessly unnoticed mistake and if this is not sufficient, there is

something else to demonstrate it, for it is further on:

“Thus, like the revolutions of a wheel, _there is a regular succession

of death and birth_, the moral cause of which is the cleaving to

existing objects, while the instrumental cause is _Karma_ (the power

which controls the universe, prompting it to activity,) merit and

demerit. It is therefore, the great desire of all beings who would

be released _from the sorrows of successive birth_, to seek the

destruction of the moral cause the cleaving to existing objects, or

evil desire.”

“They in whom evil desire is entirely destroyed are called _Arhats_.

Freedom from evil desire insures the possession of a _miraculous_

power. At his death, the Arhat is never reincarnated; he invariably

attains nirvana—a word, by the by, falsely interpreted by the

Christian scholar and skeptical commentators. Nirvana is the world of

_cause_, in which all deceptive effects or delusions of our senses

disappear. Nirvana is the highest attainable sphere. The _pitris_ (the

pre-Adamic spirits) are considered as reincarnated by the Buddhistic

philosopher, though in a degree far superior to that of the man of

earth. Do they not die in their turn? Do not their astral bodies

suffer and rejoice, and feel the same curse of illusionary feelings as

when embodied?”

And just after this we are again made to say of Buddha and his Doctrine

of “Merit and Demerit,” or Karma:

“But this _former life_ believed in by the Buddhists, is not a life

on _this planet_ for, more than any other people, the Buddhistical

philosopher appreciated the great doctrine of cycles.”

Correct “life on this planet” by “_life in the same cycle_,” and you

will have the correct reading: for what would have appreciation of

“the great doctrine of cycles” to do with Buddha’s philosophy, had the

great sage believed but in one short life on this Earth and in the same

cycle. But to return to the real theory of reincarnation as in the

esoteric teaching and its unlucky rendering in _Isis_.

Thus, what was really meant therein, was that, the principle which

_does not reincarnate_—save the exceptions pointed out—is the _false_

personality, the illusive human Entity defined and individualized

during this short life of ours, under some specific form and name;

but that which _does_ and has to reincarnate _nolens volens_ under

the unflinching, stern rule of Karmic law—is the real EGO. This

confusing of the real immortal Ego in man, with the false and ephemeral

_personalities_ it inhabits during its Manvantaric progress, lies at

the root of every such misunderstanding. Now what is the one, and what

is the other? The first group is—

1. The immortal Spirit—sexless, formless (arupa) an emanation from the

One universal BREATH.

2. Its Vehicle—the _divine_ Soul—called the “Immortal Ego,” the “Divine

monad,” etc. etc., which by accretions from _Manas_ in which burns

the ever existing _Jiv_—the undying spark—adds to itself at the close

of each incarnation the essence of that individuality _that was_, the

aroma of the culled flower that is no more.

What is the _false_ personality? It is that bundle of desires,

aspirations, affection and hatred, in short of _action_, manifested by

a human being on this earth during one incarnation and under the form

of one personality.[140] Certainly it is not all _this_, which as a

fact for us, the deluded, material, and and materially thinking lot—is

Mr. So and So, or Mrs. somebody else—that remains immortal, or is ever

reborn.

All that bundle of _Egotism_ that apparent and evanescent “_I_”

disappears after death, as the costume of the part he played disappears

from the actor’s body, after he leaves the theatre and goes to bed.

That actor re-becomes at once the same “John Smith” or Gray, he was

from his birth and is no longer the Othello or Hamlet that he had

represented for a few hours. Nothing remains now of that “bundle”

to go to the next incarnation, except _the seed for future Karma_

that _Manas_ may have united to its immortal group, to form with

it—the disembodied _Higher Self_ in “Devachan.” As to the four lower

principles, that which becomes of them is found in most classics, from

which we mean to quote at length for our defence. The doctrine of the

_perisprit_ the “false personality,” or the remains of the deceased

under their astral form—fading out to disappear in time, is terribly

distasteful to the spiritualists, who insist upon confusing the

temporary with the immortal EGO.

Unfortunately for them and happily for us, it is not the modern

Occultists who have invented the doctrine. They are on their defense.

And they prove what they say, _i.e._, that no “_personality_” has ever

yet been “reincarnated” “on the same planet” (_our earth_, this once

there is _no_ mistake) save in the three exceptional cases above cited.

Adding to these a fourth case, _which is the deliberate, conscious

act of adeptship_; and that such an _astral_ body belongs _neither to

the body nor the soul_ still less to the immortal spirit of man, the

following is brought forward and proofs cited.

Before one brings out on the strength of undeniable manifestations,

theories as to _what_ produces them and claims at once on _prima

facie_ evidence that it is the _spirits_ of the departed mortals

that re-visit us, it behooves one to first study what antiquity has

declared upon the subject. Ghosts and apparitions, materialized and

semi-material “SPIRITS” have not originated with Allan Kardec, nor

at Rochester. If those beings whose invariable habit it is to give

themselves out for _souls_ and the phantoms of the dead, choose to do

so and succeed, it is only because the cautious philosophy of old is

now replaced by an _a priori_ conceit, and unproven assumptions. The

first question is to be settled—“Have spirits any kind of substance to

cloth themselves with?” _Answer_: That which is now called _perisprit_

in France, and a “materialized Form” in England and America, was

called in days of old _peri-psyche_, and _peri-nous_, hence was well

known to the old Greeks. Have they _a body_ whether gaseous, fluidic,

etherial, material or semi-material? No; we say this on the authority

of the occult teachings the world over. For with the Hindus _atma or

spirit_ is _Arupa_ (bodiless,) and with the Greeks also. Even in the

Roman Catholic Church the angels of Light as those of Darkness _are

absolutely incorporeal_: “_meri spiritus, omnes corporis expertes_,”

and in the words of the “SECRET DOCTRINE,” _primordial_. Emanations of

the undifferentiated Principle, the Dhyan Chohans of the ONE (First)

category or pure Spiritual Essence, are formed of the _Spirit of the

one Element_; the second category of the second Emanation of the Soul

of the Elements; the third have a “_mind_ body” to which they are

not subject, but that they can assume and govern as a body, subject

_to them_, pliant to their will in form and substance. Parting from

this (third) category, they (the spirits, angels, Devas or Dhyan

Chohans) have BODIES the first _rupa_ group of which is composed of

one element _Ether_; the second, of two—ether and fire; the third, of

three—Ether, fire and water; the fourth of four—Ether, air, fire and

water. Then comes man, who, besides the four elements, has the fifth

that predominates in him—Earth: therefore he suffers. Of the Angels,

as said by St. Augustine and Peter Lombard, their bodies are made _to

act_ not to suffer. It is earth and water, _humor et humus_, that gives

an aptitude for suffering and passivity, _ad patientiam_, and _Ether_

and _Fire_ for action. The spirits or human _monads_, belonging to the

first, or indifferentiated essence are thus incorporeal; but their

third principle (or the human Fifth—_Manas_) can in conjunction with

its vehicle become _Kama rupa_ and _Mayavi rupa_—body of desire or

“illusion body.” After death, the best, noblest, purest qualities of

_Manas_ or the _human_ soul ascending along with the divine Monad into

Devachan whence no one emerges from or returns, except at the time of

reincarnation—what is that then which appears under the double mask

of the spiritual _Ego_ or soul of the departed individual? _The Kama

rupa element with the help of elementals._ For we are taught that those

spiritual beings that can assume a form at will and appear, _i.e._,

make themselves objective and even tangible—are the angels alone (the

Dhyan Chohans) and the _nirmanakaya_[141] of the adepts, whose spirits

are clothed in sublime matter. The astral bodies—_the remnants_ and

_dregs_ of a mortal being which has been disembodied, when they do

appear, are not the individuals they claim to be, but only their

simulachres. And such was the belief of the whole of antiquity, from

Homer to Swedenborg; from the _third_ race down to our own day.

More than one devoted spiritualist has hitherto quoted Paul as

corroborating his claim that spirits do and can appear. “There is a

natural and there is a spiritual body,” etc., etc., (1 Cor. xv, 44);

but one has only to study closer the verses preceding and following the

one quoted, to perceive that what St. Paul meant was quite different

from the sense claimed for it. Surely there is a _spiritual_ body, but

it is not identical with the _astral_ form contained in the “natural”

man. The “spiritual” is formed only by our individuality _unclothed_

and _transformed after death_; for the apostle takes care to explain in

Verses 51 and 52, “_Immut abimur sed non omnes_.” Behold, I tell you

_a mystery_: we shall _not all sleep_ but we _shall all be changed_.

This corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on

immortality.

But this is no proof except for the Christians. Let us see what the old

Egyptians and the Neo-Platonists—both “_theurgists_” _par excellence_,

thought on the subject: They divided man into three principal groups

subdivided into principles as we do: pure immortal spirit; the

“Spectral Soul” (_a luminous phantom_) and the gross material body.

Apart from the latter which was considered as the terrestrial shell,

these groups were divided into six principles; (1) _Kha_ “vital body”;

(2) _Khaba_ “astral form,” or shadow, (3) _Khou_ “animal soul” (4)

_Akh_ “terrestrial intelligence;” (5) _Sa_ “the divine soul” (_or

Buddhi_;) and (6) _Sah_ or mummy, the functions of which began after

death. _Osiris_ was the highest uncreated spirit, for it was, in

one sense a generic name, every man becoming after his translation

_Osirified_, _i. e._, absorbed into _Osiris_—_Sun_ or into the glorious

divine state. It was _Khou_, with the lower portions of _Akh_ or _Kama

rupa_ with the addition of the dregs of _Manas_ remaining all behind

in the astral light of our atmosphere—that formed the counterparts

of the terrible and so much dreaded _bhoots_ of the Hindus (our

“elementaries.”) This is seen in the rendering made of the so-called

“Harris. Papyrus on magic.” (_papyrus magique_, translated by Chabas)

who calls them _Kouey_ or _Khou_, and explains that according to the

hieroglyphics they were called _Khou_ or the “revivified dead,” the

“resurrected shadows.”

When it was said of a person that he “_had a Khou_” it meant that

he was possessed by a “Spirit.” There were two kinds of _Khous_—the

justified ones,—who after living for a short time _a second life_ (_nam

onh_) faded out, disappeared; and those _Khous_ who were condemned

to wandering without rest in darkness _after dying for a second

time_—_mut, em, nam_—and who were called the _H’ou-mêtr_ (“second time

dead”) which did not prevent them from clinging to a vicarious life

after the manner of Vampires. How dreaded they were is explained in our

Appendices on Egyptian Magic and “Chinese Spirits” (_Secret Doctrine_.)

They were exorcised by Egyptian priests as the evil spirit is exorcised

by the Roman Catholic _curé_; or again the Chinese _houen_, identical

with the _Khou_ and the “Elementary,” as also with the _lares_ or

_larvæ_—a word derived from the former by _Festus_, the grammarian; who

explains that they were “the shadows of the dead _who gave no rest in

the house they were in_ either to the Masters or the servants.” These

creatures when evoked during theurgic, and especially _necromantic_

rites, were regarded, and are so regarded still, in China—as neither

the Spirit, Soul nor any thing belonging to the deceased personality

they represented, but simply, as his reflection—_simmulacrum_.

“The human soul,” says Apuleius, “is an _immortal God_” (Buddhi) which

nevertheless has his beginning. When death rids it (the Soul), from its

earthly corporeal organism, it is called _lemure_. There are among the

latter not a few which are beneficent, and which become the gods or

demons of the family, _i. e._, its domestic gods: in which case they

are called _lares_. But they are vilified and spoken of as _larvae_

when sentenced by fate to wander about, they spread around them evil

and plagues. (_Inane terriculamentum, celerum noxium malis_;) or if

their real nature is doubtful they are referred to as simply _manes_

(_Apuleius_. see—_Du Dieu de Socrate_, pp. 143-145. Edit. Niz.) Listen

to Yamblichus, Proclus, Porphyry, Psellus and to dozens of other

writers on these mystic subjects.

The Magi of Chaldea believed and _taught that the celestial or divine

soul_ would participate in the bliss of eternal light, while the animal

or _sensuous_ soul would, if good, rapidly dissolve, and if wicked, go

on wandering about in the Earth’s sphere. In this case, “it (the soul)

assumes at times the forms of various human phantoms and even those

of animals.” The same was said of the _Eidôlon_ of the Greeks, and of

their _Nephesh_ by the Rabbins: (See _Sciences Occultes_, Count de

Resie. V. II) All the _Illuminati_ of the middle ages tell us of our

_astral Soul_, the reflection of the dead or his _spectre_. At _Natal_

death (birth) the pure spirit remains attached to the _intermediate_

and _luminous_ body but as soon as its lower form (the physical body)

is dead, the former ascends heavenward, and the latter descends into

the nether worlds, or the _Kama loka_.

Homer shows us the body of Patroclus—the true image of the terrestrial

body lying killed by Hector—rising in its spiritual form, and Lucretius

shows old Ennius representing Homer himself, shedding bitter tears,

amidst the _shadows and the human simulachres_ on the shores of

Acherusia “_where live neither our bodies nor our souls_, but only our

images.”

“* * * Esse _Acherusia_ templa,

* * * Quo _neque_ permanent _animæ, neque corpora_ nostra,

_Sed quædam simulacra_ * *”

Virgil called it _imago_ “image” and in the Odyssey (I. XI) the author

refers to it as the type, the model, and at the same time the copy of

the body; since Telemachus will not recognize Ulyssus and seeks to

drive him off by saying—“No thou are not my father; thou art a demon,——

trying to seduce me!” (_Odys._ I. XVI. _v._ 194.) “Latins do not lack

significant proper names to designate the varieties of their demons;

and thus they called them in turn, _lares_, _lemures_, _geni_ and

_manes_.” Cicero, in translating Plato’s _Timaeus_ translates the word

_daimones_ by _lares_; and Festus the grammarian, explains that the

inferior or lower gods were the _souls_ of _men_, making a difference

between the two as Homer did, and between _anima bruta_ and _anima

divina_ (animal and divine souls). Plutarch (in _proble. Rom._) makes

the lares preside and inhabit the (haunted) houses, and calls them,

cruel, exacting, inquisitive, etc., etc. Festus thinks that there

are good and bad ones among the lares. For he calls them at one time

_præstites_ as they gave occasionally and watched over things carefully

(_direct apports_,) and at another—_hostileos_.[142] “However it may

be” says in his queer old French, Leloyer, “they are no better than our

devils, who, if they do appear helping sometimes men, and presenting

them with property, it is only to hurt them the better and the more

later on. _Lemures_ are also devils and _larvæ_ for they appear at

night in various human and animal forms, but still more frequently with

features that THEY _borrow from dead men_.” (_Livre des Spectres_. V.

IV p. 15 and 16).

After this little honour rendered to his Christian preconceptions, that

see Satan everywhere, Leloyer speaks like an Occultist, and a very

erudite one too.

“It is quite certain that the _genii_ and none other had mission to

watch over every newly born man, and that they were called _genii_, as

says Censorius, because they had in their charge our race, and not only

they _presided_ over every mortal being but over whole generations and

tribes, being the _genii of the people_.”

The idea of guardian angels of men, races, localities, cities, and

nations, was taken by the Roman Catholics from the prechristian

occultists and pagans. Symmachus (Epistol, I. X) writes: “As souls

are given to those who are born, so _genii_ are distributed to the

nations. Every city had its protecting genius, to whom the people

sacrificed.” There is more than one inscription found that reads:

_Genio civitates_—“to the genius of the city.”

Only the ancient profane, never seemed sure any more than the modern

whether an apparition was the _eidolon_ of a relative or the genius of

the locality. Enneus while celebrating the anniversary of the name of

his father Anchises, seeing a serpent crawling on his tomb knew not

whether that was the _genius_ of his father or the genius of the place

(Virgil). “The _manes_[143] were numbered and divided between good and

bad; those that were _sinister_, and that Virgil calls _numina larva_,

were appeased by sacrifices that they should commit no mischief, such

as sending bad dreams to those who despised them, etc:”

Tibullus shows by his line:—

_Ne tibi neglecti mittant insomnia manes._ (Eleg., 1. II.)

“Pagans thought that the _lower Souls_ were transformed after death

into _diabolical aerial_ spirits.” (Leloyer p. 22.)

The term _Eteroprosopos_ when divided into its several compound words

will yield a whole sentence, “an other than I under the features of my

person.”

It is to this terrestrial principle, the _eidolon_, the _larva_, the

_bhoot_—call it by whatever name—that reincarnation was refused in

_Isis_.[144]

The doctrines of Theosophy are simply the faithful echoes of

Antiquity. Man is a _Unity_ only at his origin and at his end. All

the Spirits, all the Souls, gods and demons emanate from and have

for their root-principle the SOUL OF THE UNIVERSE—says Porphyry (_De

Sacrifice_). Not a philosopher of any notoriety who did not believe (1)

in reincarnation (metempsychosis), (2) in the plurality of principles

in man, or that man had _two_ Souls of separate and quite different

natures; one perishable, the _Astral Soul_, the other incorruptible

and immortal; and (3) that the former was not the man whom it

represented—“neither his spirit nor his body, but his _reflection_,

at best.” This was taught by Brahmins, Buddhists, Hebrews, Greeks,

Egyptians, and Chaldeans; by the post-diluvian heirs of the prediluvian

Wisdom, by Pythagoras and Socrates, Clemens Alexandrinus, Synesius,

and Origen. the oldest Greek poets as much as the Gnostics, whom

Gibbon shows as the most refined, learned and enlightened men of all

ages (“See Decline and Fall,” etc.). But the rabble was the same in

every age: superstitious, self-opinionated, materializing every most

spiritual and noble idealistic conception and dragging it down to its

own low level, and—ever adverse to philosophy.

But all this does not interfere with that fact, that our “fifth

Race” man, analyzed esoterically as a septenary creature, was ever

_exoterically_ recognized as mundane, sub-mundane, terrestrial and

supra mundane, Ovid graphically describing him as—

“Bis duo sunt hominis; _manes_, _caro_, _spiritus_, _umbra_

Quatuor ista loca bis duo suscipiunt.

Terra tegit carnem, tumulum circumvolat umbra,

Orcus habet manes, spiritus astra petit.”

OSTENDE, _Oct., 1886_.

POETICAL OCCULTISM.

SOME ROUGH STUDIES OF THE OCCULT LEANINGS OF THE POETS.

II.

Perhaps no passage in _Light on the Path_ is more forcible than that

which warns the disciple against allowing the idea of separateness from

any evil thing or person to grow up within him. He is bidden to, “be

wary, lest too soon you fancy yourself a thing apart from the mass.”

The Bagavad-Gita utters the same truth in other words by picturing man

as led astray by the pride of self-sufficiency and the great danger

underlying the desires and passions of the individual soul. Throughout

life the student of occultism daily renews the struggle of soul against

flesh, of faith against desire. This combat is finely pictured in

Tennyson’s _Palace of Art_. It is truly an occult palace. Four courts

are made, east, west, south and north, with a squared lawn in each, and

four great fountains “stream in misty folds.” Here we are reminded of

the Garden of Eden with its four rivers, of which Eliphas Levi says:

“this description of the terrestrial paradise is resumed in the figure

of a perfect pentacle. It is circular or square, since it is equally

watered by four rivers disposed in a cross.” The square, answering to

the number four was indeed the great kabbalistic figure, representing

the Trinity in Unity. Nor is the mystic circle wanting in our occult

palace, for there are “cool rows of circling cloisters” about the

squares, and a gilded gallery that “lent broad verge to distant

lands,” and “incense streaming from a golden cup,” another mystic

symbol, representing the passive or negative side of nature. Full of

sumptuousness was this palace, built for the soul that she might dwell

in sensuous luxury, remote from the struggling world. Then the poet

shows us further into the recesses of his sweet thought, and we see in

the pictures with which the palace was hung, a portrayal of the various

life experiences of the soul as it passes from phase to phase, from

room to room of this great palace which is human life.

“Full of great rooms and small the palace stood,

All various, _each a perfect whole

From living nature_, fit for every mood

And change of my still soul.”

From high estate to low the soul thus passes, from a “glimmering land”

to “iron coast and angry wave;” from uplands of toil and harvest, to

the “high bleak crags of sorrow,” from Greece and Sicily to India or

the North, until “every landscape, as fit for every mood was there,

not less than truth designed,” a rich panorama of reincarnations.

Amongst all these the soul moves joyful and feasting, “Lord of the

senses five,” communing with herself that all these are her own in the

“God-like isolation which is hers.”

“Then of the moral instinct would she prate,

And of the rising from the dead,

As hers by right of full-accomplished Fate,

And at the last she said:

I take possession of man’s mind and deed.

I care not what the sects may brawl.

I sit as God, holding no form of creed

But contemplating all.”

So three years she throve and prospered, but in the fourth year, (mark

again the occult number of perfection,) a great dread came upon her,

she was plagued in “the abyssmal deeps of personality” with a sore

despair. The moment of choice, the turning point had come, that period

of which Esoteric Buddhism speaks as occurring for the race in the

fifth round but to which some exceptional personalities have forced

themselves in this our fourth round. Many occultists will see their

own experience mirrored in that of this tormented and lonely soul,

contemplating her “palace of strength whereof the foundation stones

were laid since her first memory,” only to see in its dark corners,

“uncertain shapes, horrible nightmares, white-eyed phantasms and

hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame.” Do we not seem to see all

the elemental world, led on by the dread Dweller of the Threshold here

confronting us? The struggle is even more powerfully depicted but the

lesson is learned; the soul may retrieve herself by a lowly life; she

throws aside her royal robes, and recognizing the need of mixing with

her kind, begs for a “cottage in the vale.”

The poet reserves for his last verse the final lesson that only when

we lead others to the heights and share these with our kind, can we

ourselves stand steadfast there:

“Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are

So lightly, beautifully built;

Perchance I may return with others there

When I have purged my guilt.”

A footnote in the September PATH states:—“After all, the whole process

of development is the process of _getting back the memory of the past_.

And that too is the teaching found in pure Buddhism, etc.” Sometimes we

are conscious of vague callings to do a certain thing, and critically

regarding ourselves, we cannot see in this life any cause. It seems the

bugle note of a past life blown almost in our face: it startles us;

sometimes we are overthrown. These memories affect us like the shadows

of passing clouds across our path, now tangible; then fading, only a

cloud. Now they start before us like phantoms, or like a person behind

you as you look at a mirror, it looks over the shoulder. If they are

indeed reminiscences of other lives, although dead and past, they yet

have a power. Hear what Lowell whispers in “_The Twilight_” of these

mysterious moments:

“Sometimes a breath floats by me,

An odor from Dreamland sent,

Which makes the ghost seem nigh me

Of a something that came and went,

Of a life lived somewhere, I know not

In what diviner sphere:

Of mem’ries that come not and go not;

Like music once heard by an ear

That cannot forget or reclaim it;

A something so shy, it would shame it

To make it a show.

A something too vague, could I name it,

For others to know:

As though I had lived it and dreamed it,

As though I had acted and schemed it

Long ago.

And yet, could I live it over,

This Life which stirs in my brain;

Could I be both maiden and lover,

Moon and tide, bee and clover,

As I seem to have been, once again.

Could I but speak and show it.

This pleasure more sharp than pain.

Which baffles and lures me so!

The world would not lack a poet,

Such as it had

In the ages glad,

Long Ago.”

Emerson, who saw further into the world of nature than any poet of our

race, gives us this:

“And as through dreams in watches of the night,

So through all creatures in their form and ways,

Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant,

Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense,

Inviting to new knowledge, _one with old_.”

The hermetic maxim, “As above so below,” sends us indeed to nature for

initiation, and the Gita follows up this nail with a hammer by saying:

“The man, O Arjoona, who, from what passeth in his own breast, whether

it be pain or pleasure, beholdeth the same in others, is esteemed a

supreme Yogi.” Analogy, Harmony, Unity, these are the words traced

over and over for us, the shining rays of the one Law. These are the

thoughts in which the poets delight. Emerson speaks again with still

clearer voice:

“Brother, sweeter is the Law

Than all the grace Love ever saw,

If the Law should thee forget.

More enamored serve it yet.

* * * * *

* * I found this;

That of goods I could not miss

If I fell within the line;

Once a member, all was mine:

Houses, banquets, gardens, fountains,

Fortune’s delectable mountains.

But if I would walk alone

Was neither cloak nor crumb my own.”

The Biblical verse:—“It is more blessed to give than to receive,” is

a great occult teaching. As we strengthen the muscles by exercise, so

we enlarge the intelligence and the heart by constantly dispensing our

means, whether these be golden thoughts, or time, or affections, all

along the line of Brotherhood. Not because of a sentiment, but because

Life is made up of vibrations which our scientists, cautious as they

are, admit may affect the farthest stars.

“Like warp and woof, all destinies

Are woven fast,

Linked in sympathy, like the keys

Of an organ vast.

Pluck but one thread, and the web ye mar;

Break but one of a thousand keys, and the paining jar

Through all will run.”

This from Whittier reminds us of the lines on Karma in _Light on the

Path_. “Remember that the threads are living,—are like electric wires,

more, are like quivering nerves. How far, then, must the stain, the

drag awry, be communicated.” Yes, the communion of saints is a living

fact. We all commune, not alone with one another; with those above us

and with those below, but essentially with our time. Not one of us can

escape its influence: we oppose its conclusions, deny its powers, and

meanwhile it speaks through us, without our knowledge, the passwords

we do not yet understand. This “dark age” is still the birth-place of

spiritual development, of an awakening belief in the supernatural, or

that which overshadows nature. We have had no more safe, practical

sober poet than Whittier, who sweetly sings the life of every day, when

he is not stirred by the fret of the times, to Freedoms larger issues.

Yet hear him describing the power of a “wizard:”

“All the subtle spirits hiding

Under earth or wave; abiding

In the caverned rock, or riding

Misty clouds, or morning breeze.

Every dark intelligence,

Secret soul, and influence

Of all things, which outward sense

Feels, or hears, or sees,—

These the wizard’s skill confessed.—”

Is not here an “outward sense” of Professor Denton’s discoveries of the

“soul of things?” But hear further the poet’s confession of faith in

the occult power of will:

“Not untrue that tale of old!

Now as then, the wise and bold

All the powers of nature hold,

Subject to their kingly will.

* * * * *

Still to such, life’s elements,

With their sterner laws dispense,

_And the chain of consequence_

_Broken in their pathway lies_.

To his aid the strong reverses,

Hidden powers and giant forces,

And the high stars in their courses,

Mingle in his strife.”

The italicized lines are almost an echo of the words of an Adept when

speaking of the possibility for the disciple, of an ultimate escape

from the laws of Karma, which give him the right to demand the secrets

of nature. “He obtains this right by having escaped from the limits of

nature, and by having freed himself from the rules which govern human

life.” So does Whittier’s initiate. For every one of us there looms a

danger in our being prone to mistake desire for will. The paradox of

Levi is sound and true: “The will obtains all that it does not desire.”

Meditation in this direction will reveal some deep and useful truths to

the practical occultist.

But to return to our poets. There are many butterfly hints to be found

fluttering through their lines. Time has spared us this one from Marvel:

“At some fruit-tree’s mossy root,

Casting the body’s vest aside

My soul into the bows does glide;

There, like a bird, it sits and sings.”

And Matthew Arnold, turned dreamer for the nonce, has netted us

one, more meaty than diaphanous, in which we find hints of periodic

Devachanic sleep, between every period of earth struggle, of man’s

threefold nature which serves to hide the memory of his other lives,

and a touch of Karma as well:

“The Guide of our dark steps a triple veil

Betwixt our senses and our sorrow keeps;

Hath sown with cloudless passages the tale

Of grief, and eased us with a thousand sleeps.”

It would sometimes seem, as in the above quotation, that the poet

himself was scarcely conscious of the full bearing of what he wrote,

as if that dim something from another life of which Lowell spoke,

had brushed him with its wing unawares. Often the higher Self speaks

out from a man’s work, to other men whose consciousness has a higher

development than his own, while it has not as yet revealed itself

to him. How many men tremble thus on the borders of the unseen. Let

us beware whom we set down as remote from our communion, “for in an

instant a veil may fall down from his spirit, and he will be far

ahead of us all.” There is an occult verse from Goethe which has been

quoted by Tyndall in one of those sad and baffled paragraphs which

darkle through the works of our scientists, shadowy witnesses that

these distinguished materialists and physicists are often nearer our

path than they or we suspect. Through such they seem to call for

deliverance. We give the verse in its setting, leaving Tyndall’s prose

to point its poetic meaning.

“As regards knowledge, physical science is polar. In one sense it

knows, or is destined to know everything. In another sense it knows

nothing. Science understands much of this intermediate phase of things

that we call nature, of which it is the product; but science knows

nothing of the origin or destiny of nature. Who or what made the sun,

and gave his rays their alleged power? Who or what made and bestowed

upon the ultimate particles of matter their wondrous power of varied

interaction? Science does not know: the mystery, though pushed back,

remains unaltered. To many of us who feel that there are more things

in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the present philosophy of

science, but who have been also taught by baffled efforts, how vain is

the attempt to grapple with the Inscrutable, the ultimate frame of mind

is that of Goethe:”

“Who dares to name His name,

Or belief in him proclaim,

Veiled in mystery as He is, the All-enfolder?

Gleams across the mind His light,

Feels the lifted soul His might;

Dare it then deny His reign, the All-upholder?”

JULIUS.

[Illustration:]

HINDU SYMBOLISM.

II.

This figure represents Brahma-Maya or Mahat-Maya, Brahma Viraj, or the

great Illusion.

The androgene or male-female, the Great Appearance, the first

revelation of the Being or Brahman (neuter), under the form of the

double-sexed first emanation. The neuter, became male and female, by

separation into the male, positive, forming the spiritual—the entities

or the noumena, and his sakti or female, the negative, or plastic,

matter, the illusionary or phenomenal existence. The sakti, is his

developing energy, force or potentiality. This symbol, the divine

type of the first male and female, which can be compared with the

terrestrial Adam before the final separation of Eve, is really in

consonance with this Adam’s perfect ideal, the Adam Kadmon or Heavenly

Adam of the Kabbalah. The Brahma-half is on the right side, the good

side, man’s, the Maya-half is on the left, the evil side, the woman’s.

So according to the Hebrew sacred writings, through Eve the woman,

evil was brought into the world. Compare with this the Greek myth of

Pandora. Issuing from the linga-yoni is the pearl chain, or connected

circle of the existences, looked upon as united atoms, and the symbol

of all the existing. It is held up by the hand on the male side.

Brahman (neuter), appears here as manifested in the male in union

with the female sakti, of the preformatory imagination, as the ante

creative monarch and Pearl King, richly decorated with the circles of

the soul-monads and atoms. On his head is the world egg cap. The veil

of the existences, upon which are woven the ideas or models of the

to-be-emanated existences, flows from the linga-yoni to the highest

part of the head and thence down the right side. He as the male, has

a tendency to twist himself upon himself and his face bears the stamp

of deep meditation. The aureole of fire is on the male side and from

it scintillate sparks upon the veil of Maya. On the Maya side, the

attitude is that of joy or dancing; the hand raised as if in play,

holds up the veil, bells are hanging on her robe and singularly the

Egyptian hieroglyphic for the water of life is shown; while the bust is

developed. Portrayed upon the veil are the prototypes of the creatures.

Compare the symbolism of the girdle of Aphrodite and that of Venus.

As the double spouse of Brahman (neuter) considered apart and in

opposition to It. The Brahma-Maya is the life in nature, of which,

Brahman (neuter) is the soul. The Brahma-Maya is that blind energy

and force, potential and powerful, and eternally fecund, which is

incessantly producing under forms which are without cessation renewed;

and which is adored in India to-day, as the Great Mother, the Universal

Mother, in other words all nature deified. Maya is the mother of Love

or Desire, the first principle or affinity of all affection, creation,

matter. She is even matter itself, but the primitive subtile matter

co-existing with God (Brahman, neuter) from all eternity, contained

in It, and symbolized by the three colors, red, white, black; the

three qualities or powers of creation, preservation and destruction,

consequently the Trimurti, and also the three _gunas_ (qualities),

Truth, Action, and Indifference, of the Bhagavadgitâ.[145] It is Maya,

who through the attraction of her beauty, causes the Most High, from

the bosom of Its ineffable profoundity, forgetting Itself, to unite

Itself, in the intoxication of desire with that divine enchantress.

The mysterious veil, which she had woven with her hands, received

entirely from both, and the thought of the Eternal Almighty became

fecundated, and fell into Time. The innumerable forms of the creatures,

represent the perfect ideals woven upon the magic tissue, the woven

warp and woof of all existence, with which veil Maya[146] envelops her

spouse and causes the recurrence of the gift of life.

ISAAC MYER.

TEACHINGS OF THE MASTER.

RECORDED BY ONE OF THE AUTHORS OF “MAN: FRAGMENTS OF FORGOTTEN HISTORY.”

(_Copyrighted._)

THE JOURNEY.

The Master stood on a great ledge of rock extending far out over a

precipice that seemed miles below. With his face lighted by the first

rays of the coming day that shot across the peaks above him and with

his hands clasped behind him he waited in silence for the coming of

the pupil to whom he had signalled. A Brother lying on the grass not

far removed from the natural platform upon which he stood, questioned

kindly the possibility of so long a journey by so feeble a student—but

the Master waited looking piercingly across the distance. His eyes

gazed intently before him turning neither to the right nor to the left,

and when in the far azure of the clouds he saw approaching the soul

that had projected itself at his bidding, he impelled his thought to

his Brother who instantly recognized the approaching visitant. The Soul

gaining in velocity every moment was in the presence of the Master

before the twinkling of an eye could be noted—and prostrate before him

could only articulate: “Master! Master!”

A touch of the purified hand pacified the terrible emotions of the new

comer, who in suppliant attitude awaited the command of the Beloved

Guru. “Rise my child,” came from the lips of the Teacher; who, when he

was obeyed continued:

“Your progress is clogged by your indifference to duty. There can

be no relations between us unless you disembody your desires and

spiritualize every thought. Imprison the latter when they wander, and

live to teach the lessons so often inculcated in your higher mind. Help

your fellow-beings to better comprehend the capabilities of the inner,

living Self.

“By the known laws of attraction and repulsion illustrate to them

the impossibility of a higher life on earth for any but clean souls.

There can be no mutuality of thought between clean and unclean

natures—and the only hope of advancement is by casting off the latter

and enveloping the real self in the shelter of noble thoughts. Teach

that it is matter that is illusionary—life that is a transitory

vision—earthly vanities that blind the eyes of the world.

“Try to speak of these secret things to the lowly and the burdened

who are often endowed with a wisdom not to be found among the other

and opposite classes. Tell them that the Spirit does have a real

existence here in matter—does exercise absolute philanthropy, divine

goodness—supreme self sacrifice; does know the power it possesses.

Return to your duty refreshed. Let the sunlight now breaking over the

hills and the mountains of Himavat radiate through your transparent

spirit. Drink of the dew of the morning and feed upon the honey

of wisdom that flows in upon your hungry Soul. Thus will you be

strengthened to meet the conflict in the plain of action wherein you

are constrained by your weakness to work. Thus will you escape from it

and find in the mountain the repose and intuition for which you are

yearning.”

The Brother whose form had lain in repose on the grass now approached

and looking intently at the disciple entranced with delight and

gratitude—said in stronger tones than the Beloved Master:

“In the land where your body lies secure from an intrusion that would

result in your absolute separation from it—the great conflict is about

to be fought. All the preliminary preparations have been made. A people

freed from many chains—fast sinking into a materialism only recognized

absolutely when some momentary impulse to generosity moves them—is to

rise or fall with this closing cycle. To such a Babe as you is revealed

a fact not perceived by the best minds among them. Go back there to

work! Obey the impulse to throw aside every barrier—to do away with

subterfuges deemed best for the personality, and go the rugged way

lone and alone. In the time of greatest need we will comfort you and

send the comforter to those whose Karma leads them to do battle in

the same field. To you the sustaining force of our Fraternity will be

contributed so long as the battle is waged for the race: the conquered

rescued from their low estate and the Light of the Logos offered to

every one who walks in the night of earth-life without guide and

compass.”—Then there was silence.

The Beloved Master touching the speaker’s uplifted head said in softest

accents: “Go now. If ye love me keep these commands.”

THE LESSONS.

The path of Wisdom is the path of duty. They are not separate roads as

many erroneously conclude. Men fail to associate wisdom with duty—they

consider them as apart. The disciple performs the action (duty), and in

so doing finds wisdom.

There is, in each incarnation, but one birth, one life, one death.

It is folly to duplicate these by persistent regrets for the past—by

present cowardice or fear of the future. There is no time—it is

eternity’s Now that man mistakes for past, present and future.

The forging of earthly chains is the occupation of the indifferent, the

awful duty of unloosing them through the sorrows of the heart is also

their occupation. Both are foolish sacrifices.

As mortal conscience is within, so also is the evidence of the spirit’s

omnipotence. The soul of man is a tangible proof to his _bodily_ senses

that he is immortal. The existence of soul is not susceptible of proof

on any but its own plane.

Compromise in the service of the weak. The starving must have food

suited to the limitations of the irritated system—but be thou firm in

thine own place of duty.

Liberate thyself from evil actions by good actions. The man accustomed

to actions cannot at once become a Muni; he must work out his

action-impelling qualities, and thus he transforms them into higher

energies.

Meditation is but a name to the bewildered; the word is not understood

until it is translated by the hungry spirit.

Fight the unknown force within you—it is evil. The good that is in you

is written without, and is apparent.

Inquire of the stranger the earthly road you seek, but ask your higher

self for the torch that will light you on your way. In the silence

of one’s own being, is lighted the candle of will and aspiration. No

wind can put it out, no heat can melt it. The flame is of the spirit’s

quality—pure and of even temperature.

There is no vacillation in the mind of the initiated. Half-knowledge is

the pitfall of the student.

Do not run aimlessly about saying lo, here is the light—lo, there

is the truth. The light that illuminates the Atma is kindled in the

mountain heights. It is the symbol of divine truth.

Wait in the morning for inspiration, at noon for guidance, and in the

evening for a full understanding of the road thou hast travelled.

Man’s higher nature is invisible or rather the Divine Principle is.

The individual human soul is universal: a right comprehension of

where there is difference and where identity between the _6th and

7th_ Principles in man will free the subject of much confusion and

misapprehension.

There is real affiliation as well as an occult connection existing

between the seven principles in man and the seven classes of minerals

under the earth. There are truths connected with the properties of the

latter which man may find out by learning the constitution of his own

sevenfold nature.

The law of embodied principles is to follow magnets. Is this not also

true of the higher nature? We draw to us the attention of the Mahatma

by a purified heart and a right development of will. From his heights

he sees the valleys below and reaches out to give to him who is

straining every faculty to receive.

Agitation that comes from mortal qualities affects the physical body

alone: this deep unrest is not felt by the Atma, for the Atma is Spirit

or pure bliss. But the ocean of matter, which includes the Soul, feels

these waves of trouble and thus is the soul bewildered, ignorantly

imagining that the spirit is affected. Learn to know the distinction

and to realize that the spirit is eternally unaffected.

Life is a compromise—hasten to acquit yourself of the debt contracted

in a former life, and remove its oppressing influence in this sphere.

When you re-enter the world of mortals again, let it be without

the three disqualifications for enlightenment, fear, passion and

selfishness: the sea of rebirths is half crossed already by the man who

has overcome these three drawbacks.

Meat for the thoughtless, wine for the weak, but devotion for him who

has overcome the appetites.

To be lord of self is to be selfless, a condition of perfect

tranquility.

Forget not this lesson—that every one is so placed in this world as to

exhibit his worst qualities. The purpose of this life is to strengthen

the weak places of the spiritual man. His external life is for this

only, therefore, all are seen at a disadvantage.

A lesson in meekness may be learned of the little child. It has come so

recently from its previous field of life that it walks with the air of

a stranger in a strange country and as one who must be led.

The divine quality is charity. Whenever it has been attained, the

remainder of the spirit’s work with the lower nature, is to acquire a

contrite heart.

(_To be continued._)

* * * * *

“Alas we reap what seed we sow; the hands that smite us are our own.”

OM.

FOOTNOTES:

[130] _I. e._, the present age of spiritual blindness.

[131] See “Transactions of the London Lodge of the Theosophical

Society,” No. 5.

[132] See charge and answer, in _Theosophist_, August, 1882.

[133] The cycle of existence during the manvantara—period before and

after the beginning and completion of which every such “monad” is

absorbed and reabsorbed in the ONE soul, _anima mundi_.

[134] Hades has surely never been meant for _Hell_. It was always

the abode of the sorrowing _shadows_ of astral bodies of the dead

personalities. Western readers should remember Kama-loka is not

_Karma_-loka, for Kama means _desire_, and Karma does not.

[135] Had this word “immediate” been put at the time of publishing

_Isis_ between the two words “no” and “reincarnation” there would have

been less room for dispute and controversy.

[136] By “sphere above,” of course “Devachan” was meant.

[137] The reader must bear in mind that the esoteric teaching maintains

that save in cases of wickedness when man’s nature attains the acme

of Evil, and human terrestrial sin reaches _Satanic_ universal

character, so to say _as some Sorcerers_ do—there is no punishment

for the majority of mankind after death. The law of retribution as

_Karma_, waits man at the threshold of his new incarnation. Man is

at best a wretched tool of evil, unceasingly forming new causes and

circumstances. He is not always (if ever) responsible. Hence a period

of rest and bliss in Devachan, with an utter temporary oblivion of all

the miseries and sorrows of life. _Avitchi_ is a _spiritual_ state of

the greatest misery and is only in store for those who have devoted

_consciously_ their lives to doing injury to others and have thus

reached its highest spirituality of EVIL.

[138] Says Apuleius: “The soul is born in this world upon leaving the

soul of the world (_anima mundi_) in which her existence precedes the

one we all know (on earth). Thus, the Gods who consider her proceedings

in all the phases of various existences and as a whole, punish her

sometimes for sins committed during an _anterior_ life. _She dies_ when

she separates herself from a body in which she crossed this life as in

a frail bark. And this is, if I mistake not, the secret meaning of the

tumulary inscription, so simple for the initiate: ”_To the Gods manes

who lived._“ But this kind of death does not annihilate the soul, it

only transforms (one portion of it) it into a _lemure_. ”_Lemures_“

are the _manes_, or ghosts, which we know under the name _tares_. When

they keep away and _show us a beneficent protection_, we honour in them

the protecting divinities of the family hearth; but if their crimes

sentence them to err, we call them _larvæ_. They become a plague for

the wicked, and the vain terror of the good.” (“Du Dieu de Socrate”

Apul. class, pp., 143-145.)

[139] “The cause of reincarnation is ignorance”—therefore there is

“reincarnation” once the writer explained the causes of it.

[140] A proof how our theosophical teachings have taken root in

every class of Society and even in English literature may be seen by

reading Mr. Norman Pearson’s article “Before Birth” in the “Nineteenth

Century” for August, 1886. Therein, theosophical ideas and teachings

are speculated upon without acknowledgment or the smallest reference

to theosophy, and among others, we see with regard to the author’s

theories on the _Ego_, the following: “How much of the _individual

personality_ is supposed to go to heaven or hell? Does the whole of the

mental equipment, good and bad, noble qualities and unholy passions,

follow the soul to its hereafter? Surely not. But if not, and something

has to be stripped off, how and when are we to draw the line? If, on

the other hand, the Soul is something distinct from all our mental

equipment, except the sense of self, are we not confronted by the

incomprehensible notion of a personality without any attributes.”

To this query the author answers as any true theosophist would: “The

difficulties of the question really spring from a misconception of

the true nature of these attributes. The components of our mental

equipment—appetites, aversions, feelings, tastes and qualities

generally—are not absolute but relative existences. Hunger and thirst

for instance are states of consciousness which arise in response to

the stimuli of physical necessities. They are not inherent elements of

the soul and _will disappear_ or become modified, etc.,” (pp. 356 and

357). In other words the theosophical doctrine is adopted, Atma and

Buddhi having culled off the _Manas_ the aroma of the personality or

_human soul_—go into Devachan: while the lower principles the astral

_simulacrum_ or false personality void of its Divine monad or spirit

will remain in the _Kama-loka_—the “Summerland.”

[141] _Nirmanakaya_ is the name given to the astral forms (_in their

completeness_) of adepts, who have progressed too high on the path of

_knowledge_ and absolute truth, to go into the state of Devachan; and

have on the other hand, deliberately refused the bliss of nirvana,

in order to help Humanity by invisibly guiding and helping on the

same path of progress elect men. But these _astrals_ are not empty

shells, but complete monads made up of the 3d, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th

principles. There is another order of _nirmanakaya_, however, of which

much will be said in the _Secret Doctrine_.—H. P. B.

Placing these parallel with the division in esoteric teaching we see

that (1) _Osiris_ is Atma; (2) _Sa_ is Buddhi; (3) _Akh_ is Manas; (4)

_Khou_ is Kama-rupa, the seat of terrestrial desires. (5) _Khaba_ is

Lingha Sarira; (6) _Kha_ is Pranatma (vital principle) (7) _Sah_, is

mummy or body.

[142] Because they drove the enemies away.

[143] From _manus_—“good,” an _antiphraris_, as Festus explains.

[144] Page 12. Vol I. of “_Isis Unveiled_” belief in reincarnation

is asserted from the very beginning, as forming part and parcel of

universal beliefs. “Metempsychosis” (or transmigration of souls) and

reincarnation being after all the same thing.

[145] These three qualities are explained by Krishna in the

_Bhagavadgitâ_, as _Satwa_ good or inactive being purely spiritual;

_Rajas_ bad and active; and _Tamas_ inactive or indifferent and

bad. They exist in every human mind and are mingled in greater or

less proportions at all times, according to the individual and also

according to his varying circumstances. His teaching in regard to the

_Tamo guna_ is the same as that taught in the Christian Bible, for

he says that for the indifferent man there is no salvation—he is as

it were “ejected like a broken cloud;” and in I James v, 6, 7, the

doubting man is declared incapable of obtaining anything, while in Rev.

iii, 16, the Laodiceans are accused of being neither cold nor hot, that

is of being indifferent, and they are condemned to be “spewed out of

the mouth,” which is the same as the fate described as awaiting those

in whom indifference predominates, Krishna declaring that they become

more and more deluded at each succeeding generation until at last they

reach the lowest round of the ladder in the shape of primordial matter.

The difference between the two schools is, that Krishna’s allows the

doctrines of Reincarnation and Karma, while the modern Christians,

blind to their own Bible, reject these supremely important laws, or

rather ignore them as yet. [ED.]

[146] _Maya_ is the sanscrit for _illusion_. [ED.]

AUM

When there was neither day nor night, neither earth or sky, neither

light nor darkness: when there was nothing that could be seen or felt

by the physical senses or the faculties of the mind, there existed the

One Great Being—God.—_Vishnu Purana._

Resignation: the action of rendering good for evil; temperance;

probity; purity; repression of the senses; knowledge of holy books,

and of the Supreme Soul; truthfulness, and abstaining from anger: such

are the ten virtues in which consists duty. * * Those who study these

ten precepts of duty, and after having studied them conform their

lives thereto, will reach to the Supreme Condition.—_Manu, Book_ vi,

_sloka_ 92.

THE PATH.

VOL. I. DECEMBER, 1886. NO. 9.

_The Theosophical Society, as such, is not responsible for any opinion

or declaration in this magazine, by whomsoever expressed, unless

contained in an official document._

Where any article, or statement, has the author’s name attached, he

alone is responsible, and for those which are unsigned, the Editor will

be accountable.

“THE THEOSOPHICAL MAHATMAS.”

It is with sincere and profound regret—though with no surprise,

prepared as I am for years for such declarations—that I have read in

the Rochester _Occult Word_, edited by Mrs. J. Cables, the devoted

president of the T. S. of that place, her joint editorial with Mr.

W. T. Brown. This sudden revulsion of feeling is perhaps quite natural

in the lady, for she has never had the opportunities given her as Mr.

Brown has; and her feeling when she writes that after “a great desire

* * to be put into communication with the Theosophical Mahatmas we

(they) have come to the conclusion that it is useless to strain the

psychical eyes toward the Himalayas * *” is undeniably shared by many

theosophists. Whether the complaints are justified, and also whether it

is the “Mahatmas” or theosophists themselves who are to blame for it is

a question that remains to be settled. It has been a pending case for

several years and will have to be now decided, as the two complainants

declare over their signatures that “we (they) need not run after

Oriental Mystics, _who deny their ability to help us_.” The last

sentence, in italics, has to be seriously examined. I ask the privilege

to make a few remarks thereon.

To begin with, the tone of the whole article is that of a true

_manifesto_. Condensed and weeded of its exuberance of Biblical

expressions it comes to this paraphrastical declaration: “We have

knocked at their door, and they have not answered us; we have prayed

for bread, they have denied us even a stone.” The charge is quite

serious; nevertheless, that it is neither just nor fair—is what I

propose to show.

As I was the first in the United States to bring the existence of our

Masters into publicity; and, having exposed the holy names of two

members of a Brotherhood hitherto unknown to Europe and America, (save

to a few mystics and Initiates of every age) yet sacred and revered

throughout the East, and especially India, causing vulgar speculation

and curiosity to grow around those blessed names, and finally leading

to a public rebuke, I believe it my duty to contradict the fitness of

the latter by explaining the whole situation, as I feel myself the

chief culprit. It may do good to some, perchance, and will interest

some others.

Let no one think withal, that I come out as a champion or a defender

of those who most assuredly need no defense. What I intend, is to

present simple _facts_, and let after this the situation be judged on

its own merits. To the plain statement of our brothers and sisters

that they have been “living on husks,” “hunting after strange gods”

without receiving admittance, I would ask in my turn, as plainly: “Are

you sure of having knocked at the right door? Do you feel certain that

you have not lost your way by _stopping so often on your journey at

strange doors, behind which lie in wait the fiercest enemies of those

you were searching for_?” Our MASTERS are not “a jealous god;” they

are simply holy mortals, nevertheless, however, higher than any in

this world, morally, intellectually and spiritually. However holy and

advanced in the science of the Mysteries—they are still men, members of

a Brotherhood, who are the first in it to show themselves subservient

to its time-honored laws and rules. And one of the first rules in it

demands that those who start on their journey _Eastward_, as candidates

to the notice and favors of those who are the custodians of those

Mysteries, should proceed by the straight road, without stopping on

every sideway and path, seeking to join other “Masters” and professors

often of the Left-Hand Science, that they should have confidence and

show trust and patience, besides several other conditions to fulfill.

Failing in all of this from first to last, what right has any man or

woman to complain of the liability of the Masters to help them?

Truly “‘The Dwellers of the threshold’ are within!”

Once that a theosophist would become a candidate for either

_chelaship_ or favours, he must be aware of the mutual pledge,

tacitly, if not formally offered and accepted between the two parties,

and, _that such a pledge is sacred_. It is a bond of _seven_ years

of probation. If during that time, notwithstanding the many human

shortcomings and mistakes of the candidate (save two which it is

needless to specify in print) he remains throughout every temptation

_true to the chosen Master_, or Masters, (in the case of _lay_

candidates), and as faithful to the Society founded at their wish and

under their orders, then the theosophist will be initiated into——

thenceforward allowed to communicate with his _guru_ unreservedly,

all his failings, save this one, as specified, may be overlooked:

they belong to his future _Karma_, but are left for the present, to

the discretion and judgment of the Master. He alone has the power of

judging whether even during those long seven years the _chela_ will

be favoured regardless of his mistakes and sins, with occasional

communications with, and from the guru. The latter thoroughly posted

as to the causes and motives that led the candidate into sins of

omission and commission is the only one to judge of the advisability or

inadvisability of bestowing encouragement; as he alone is entitled to

it, seeing that he is himself under the inexorable law of Karma, which

no one from the Zulu savage up to the highest archangel can avoid—and

that he has to assume the great responsibility of the causes created by

himself.

Thus, the chief and the only indispensable condition required in the

candidate or chela on probation, is simply unswerving fidelity to the

chosen Master and his purposes. This is a condition _sine qua non_; not

as I have said, on account of any jealous feeling, but simply because

_the magnetic rapport between the two once broken, it becomes at each

time doubly difficult to re-establish it again_; and that it is neither

just nor fair, that the Masters should strain their powers for those

whose future course and final desertion they very often can plainly

foresee. Yet, how many of those, who, expecting as I would call it

“favours by anticipation,” and being disappointed, instead of humbly

repeating _mea culpa_, tax the Masters with selfishness and injustice.

They will deliberately break the thread of connection ten times in

one year, and yet expect each time to be taken back on the old lines!

I know of one theosophist—let him be nameless though it is hoped he

will recognize himself—a quiet, intelligent young gentleman, a mystic

by nature, who, in his ill advised enthusiasm and impatience, changed

_Masters_ and his ideas about half a dozen times in less than three

years. First he offered himself, was accepted on probation and took

the vow of chelaship; about a year later, he suddenly got the idea of

getting married, though he had several proofs of the corporeal presence

of his Master, and had several favours bestowed upon him. Projects of

marriage failing, he sought “Masters” under other climes, and became an

enthusiastic Rosicrucian; then he returned to theosophy as a Christian

mystic; then again sought to enliven his austerities with a wife; then

gave up the idea and turned a spiritualist. And now having applied once

more “to be taken back as a chela” (I have his letter) and his Master

remaining silent—he renounced him altogether, to seek in the words of

the above manifesto—his old “Essenian Master and _to test the spirits_

in his name.”

The able and respected editor of the “Occult Word” and her Secretary

are right, and have chosen the only true path in which with a very

small dose of blind faith, they are sure to encounter no deceptions

or disappointments. “It is pleasant for some of us,” they say, “to

obey the call of the ‘Man of Sorrows’ who will not turn any away,

because they are unworthy or have not scored up a certain percentage of

personal merit.” How _do_ they know? unless they accept the cynically

awful and pernicious dogma of the Protestant Church, that teaches the

forgiveness of the blackest crime, provided the murderer _believes

sincerely_ that the blood of his “Redeemer” has saved him at the last

hour—what is it but _blind_ unphilosophical faith? Emotionalism is

_not_ philosophy; and Buddha devoted his long self sacrificing life to

tear people away precisely from that _evil breeding_ superstition. Why

speak of Buddha then, in the same breath? The doctrine of salvation by

_personal_ merit, and _self_ forgetfulness is the corner-stone of the

teaching of the Lord Buddha. Both the writers may have and very likely

they did—“hunt after _strange_ gods;” but these _were not our_ MASTERS.

They have “denied Him thrice” and now propose “with bleeding feet and

prostrate spirit” to “pray that He (Jesus) may take us (them) once more

under his wing,” etc. The “Nazarene Master” is sure to oblige them so

far. Still they will be “living on _husks_” _plus_ “blind faith.” But

in this they are the best judges, and no one has a right to meddle with

their private beliefs in our Society; and heaven grant that they should

not in their fresh disappointment turn our bitterest enemies one day.

Yet, to those Theosophists, who are displeased with the Society in

general, no one has ever made to you any rash promises; least of all,

has either the Society or its founders ever offered their “Masters”

as a _chromopremium_ to the best behaved. For years every new member

has been told that _he was promised nothing_, but had everything to

expect only from his own personal merit. The theosophist is left free

and untrammeled in his actions. Whenever displeased—_alia tentanda

via est_—no harm in trying elsewhere; unless, indeed one has offered

himself and is decided to win the Masters’ favors. To such especially,

I now address myself and ask: Have you fulfilled _your_ obligations

and pledges? Have you, who would fain lay all the blame on the Society

and the Masters—the latter the embodiment of charity, tolerance,

justice and universal love—have you _led the life_ requisite, and the

conditions required from one who becomes a candidate? Let him who feels

in his heart and conscience that he has,—that he has never once failed

seriously, never doubted his Master’s wisdom, never sought _other_

Master or Masters in his impatience to become an Occultist with powers;

and that he has never betrayed his theosophical duty in thought or

deed,—let him, I say, rise and _protest_. He can do so fearlessly;

there is no penalty attached to it, and he will not even receive a

reproach, let alone be excluded from the Society—the broadest and most

liberal in its views, the most Catholic of all the Societies known

or unknown. I am afraid my invitation will remain unanswered. During

the eleven years of the existence of the Theosiphical Society I have

known, out of the seventy-two regularly accepted chelas on probation

and the hundreds of _lay_ candidates—only _three_ who have not hitherto

failed, and _one only_ who had a full success. No one forces anyone

into chelaship; no promises are uttered, none except the mutual pledge

between Master and the would-be-chela. Verily, Verily, many are the

called but few are chosen—or rather few who have the patience of going

to the bitter end, if bitter we can call simple perseverance and

singleness of purpose. And what about the Society, in general, outside

of India. Who among the many thousands of members does _lead the life_?

shall any one say because he is a strict vegetarian—_elephants and cows

are that_—or happens to lead a celibate life, after a stormy youth

in the opposite direction; or because he studies the _Bhagavat-Gita_

or the “Yoga philosophy” _upside down_, that he is a theosophist

_according to the Master’s hearts_? As it is not the cowl that makes

the monk, so, no long hair with a poetical vacancy on the brow are

sufficient to make of one a faithful follower of _divine_ Wisdom.

Look around you, and behold our UNIVERSAL Brotherhood so called! The

Society founded to remedy the glaring evils of christianity, to shun

bigotry and intolerance, cant and superstition and to cultivate real

universal love extending even to the dumb brute, what has it become in

Europe and America in these eleven years of trial? In one thing only

we have succeeded to be considered higher than our Christian Brothers,

who, according to Lawrence Oliphant’s graphic expression “Kill one

another for Brotherhood’s sake and fight as devils for the love of

God”—and this is that we have made away _with every dogma_ and are

now justly and wisely trying to make away with the last vestige of

even nominal authority. But in every other respect we are as bad as

they are: backbiting, slander, uncharitableness, criticism, incessant

war-cry and ding of mutual rebukes that Christian Hell itself might be

proud of! And all this, I suppose is the Masters’ fault: THEY will not

help those who help others on the way of salvation and liberation from

selfishness—with kicks and scandals? Truly _we are_ an example to the

world, and fit companions for the holy ascetics of the snowy Range!

And now a few words more before I close. I will be asked: “And who are

you to find fault with us? Are you, who claim nevertheless, communion

with the Masters and receive daily favors from Them; Are you so holy,

faultless, and so worthy?” To this I answer: I AM NOT. Imperfect

and faulty is my nature; many and glaring are my shortcomings—and

for this my Karma is heavier than that of any other Theosophist.

_It is_—and must be so—since for so many years I stand set in the

pillory, a target for my enemies and some friends also. Yet I accept

the _trial_ cheerfully. Why? Because I know that I have, all my faults

nothwithstanding, Master’s protection extended over me. And if I have

it, the reason for it is simply this: for thirty-five years and more,

ever since 1851 that I saw any Master _bodily_ and personally for the

first time, _I have never once denied or even doubted Him_, not even in

thought. Never a reproach or a murmur against Him has escaped my lips,

or entered even my brain for one instant under the heaviest trials.

From the first I knew what I had to expect, for I was told that,

which I have never ceased repeating to others: as soon as one steps

on the Path leading to the _Ashrum_ of the blessed Masters—the last

and only custodians of primitive Wisdom and Truth—his Karma, instead

of having to be distributed throughout his long life, falls upon him

in a block and crushes him with its whole weight. He who believes in

what he professes and in his Master, will stand it and come out of the

trial victorious; he _who doubts_, the coward who fears to receive his

just dues and tries to avoid justice being done—FAILS. He will not

escape Karma just the same, but he will only lose that for which he

has risked its untimely visits. This is why having been so constantly,

so mercilessly slashed by my Karma using my enemies as unconscious

weapons, that I have stood it all. I felt sure that Master would

not permit that I should perish; that he would always appear at the

_eleventh_ hour—_and so he did_. Three times I was saved from death by

Him, the last time almost against my will; when I went again into the

cold, wicked world out of love for Him, who has taught me what I know

and made me what I am. Therefore, I do His work and bidding, and this

is what has given me the lion’s strength to support shocks—physical and

mental, one of which would have killed any theosophist who would go

on doubting of the mighty protection. Unswerving devotion to Him who

embodies the duty traced for me, and belief in the Wisdom—collectively,

of that grand, mysterious, yet actual Brotherhood of holy men—is my

only merit, and the cause of my success in Occult philosophy. And

now repeating after the _Paraguru_—my Master’s MASTER—the words He

had sent as a message to those who wanted to make of the Society a

“miracle club” instead of a Brotherhood of Peace, Love and mutual

assistance—“Perish rather, the Theosophical Society and its hapless

Founders,” I say perish their twelve years’ labour and their very

lives rather than that I should see what I do to-day: theosophists,

outvying political “rings” in their search for personal power and

authority; theosophists slandering and criticizing each other as two

rival Christian sects might do; finally theosophists refusing to _lead

the life_ and then criticizing and throwing slurs on the grandest and

noblest of men, because tied by their wise laws—hoary with age and

based on an experience of human nature milleniums old—those Masters

refuse to interfere with Karma and to play second fiddle to every

theosophist who calls upon Them and whether he deserves it or not.

Unless radical reforms in our American and European Societies are

speedily resorted to—I fear that before long there will remain but

one centre of Theosophical Societies and Theosophy in the whole

world—namely, in India; on that country I call all the blessings of my

heart. All my love and aspirations belong to my beloved brothers, the

Sons of old Aryavarta—the Motherland of my MASTER.

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

LINES FROM LOWER LEVELS.

Many will turn from this heading. Whether they really live upon the

upper levels or only imagine such to be their dwellings, these words

are probably mute to them. A laggard in the great race, one who has

only just rounded the starting buoy in stress of weather, here signals

to his unseen companions amid heavy seas. If a score of blind men,

turned loose to beat the city’s by-ways, should meet and compare

mischances, some light would presently dawn among them. We are not

isolated in spiritual experience. Though Falsehood wears myriad masks,

when Truth looks in, she turns the same face on all.

It is of the beginning of the Way that I speak. Confusions and

perplexities beset us. Most of these are of our own conjuring. The

insidious canker of Doubt is first, is worst of all. Better stop right

where you are for a lifetime than advance with this moral leprosy

unexterminated. It will spread through future existences until it has

eaten the heart to the core. Now it is in our power. Wrestle boldly

with every doubt until you have converted it to a certainty; thus you

force it to bless you in departing, as Jacob did the Angel. Why should

we doubt? The day on which I first heard of the Wisdom-Religion is

for me set apart like a potent jewel in the crest of Time. My thought

salutes its messengers with the grand old words,—“How beautiful upon

the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that

publisheth Peace.” The Peace of this religion is the proof absolute of

its Wisdom. Our vitality is exhausted with the life struggle; it seems

a dead pull against the current. Reason tells us we ought to be able

to move with the stream. Man has a false idea of his own requirements;

this is why possession satiates all. We are ignorant that the desire

for Unity lies hidden in the deeps of every human heart. This is the

Truth at the bottom of the well; it is the basic need of all mankind.

Recognise it, and you may sweep unwearied along the resistless current

of evolutionary progress. We begin to realize the inability of existing

creeds to sound and explain our Being. Every one of us craves a belief

which shall not be a formula, but Life itself, which shall develop and

complete the constituency of lives.

Our religions violate the golden rule of Architecture,—“Ornament

construction; do not construct ornamentation.” Their slight framework

is florid with theological detail, garlanded with the varying ideals

of centuries. Not so does the Master Builder plan. Yet the keystone of

each arch is the Truth manifest in the Past, that Truth which still

bears witness to Divinity to the new Age.

When men meet their belief in every department of life, when it assists

them on every plane, so that they eat better, sleep better, love

better, create better and die better by it, then will it be a vital law

to them, not a garment to be laid aside on work days. Theosophy does

all this. It informs every deed, makes of each fact a new revelation,

and testifies to more religion in one chapter of Natural Philosophy,

than in all the sermons of next Sunday. Study these grand similitudes

and we find how single is Truth, so that the three great laws of Motion

are also those of Emotion, and Newton spoke for my heart, as well as

for the universe. All life is thus related; if you doubt the validity

of theory or action, test them by this law of correspondence.

Do I revolt from the rule of gentle procedure in the teeth of wrath or

abuse. I recall the axiom of mechanics,—“Motion seeks the line of least

resistance,”—and my moral force proves itself perpetual motion by its

avoidances of friction. _Truth is the same in every part._ You shall

pass every beam of thought through this prism; if it is a pure ray each

component will have its distinct value on its own plane, and all will

blend again to Light.

Sometimes we are chilled as by a sense of isolation from the main body

of our kind. This is imaginary; you shall not think we are few, or

stand alone. Even now the thoughtful listener hears the soughing of

the rising flood of Public Opinion. This was the mainstay of Science

in her late tilt with the Church. The People, weary of barren Theology

demanded in facts, in laws, the manifestation of the Divine. Now it

begins to call Science to account for her limitations. Do we doubt the

bubbling interest in Psychology? We should scan our newspapers, novels,

magazines, boudoir gossip even, to feel the pulse of the general tide.

Science yields so far to the pressure as to explain why she cannot or

does not make thorough and sustained psychical investigations, and with

a blunt,— “so much the worse for you,” the public turns expectantly to

the broader or younger men who better gauge the tendency of our time.

This tendency is to coöperation, to unification. Science and Religion

are one, are Truth, and blindness is the portion of those who dismember

her kingdom. A pertinent case is that of a physician well known to

New York clinics who used his mesmeric power in putting patients to

sleep in the presence of his students and maintaining their complete

unconsciousness during painful operations, thus carried to successful

conclusions without the dangerous drawback of anesthetics. Less gifted

confreres frowned down the “irregularity.” This is a thinking Age, and

men are losing confidence in the judgment of scientists whose biased

attitude would bar them from jury service in the pettiest court of the

land.

Again there are those who are tried by the mistakes, the treachery,

or the public misunderstanding of other adherents of Theosophy. What

does it matter? The world swung on while Galileo recanted, and though

a disciple betrayed his Master, the Christian world still kneels.

Our noblest opponents are often unconscious Theosophists, judging

them by their fervid search for Truth. When _their hour_ strikes,

they will find her; meanwhile Wisdom needs no converts. Man passes;

_Truth is_, and needs no concern of ours. Do nut think either that the

Wisdom-Religion is only for the strong or the intellectual; it is for

all. Food is meant to sustain life, and Love to develop it, but excess

in either may kill. So those whose nature is morbid, exaggerate the

aspect of Truth and go mad of their own phantasms. Every Science, every

Art, every Religion has its list of these moral suicides and those who

confront you with it are like the old nurses who scare children from

the jam closet with “bogies.”

I said that we breed our own perplexities. Take the first day of the

new life, when with fledgling resolves aflutter we come glowing and

resolute down the stairs. We had ordered a spartan meal which Love has

spared us. Frowning, we order the dainties away and sit reflecting on

the encumbrances of earthly affection; wounded, it leaves our side.

Our plain food comes; it is ill cooked and the retarded servant has a

scowl which we resent: the household jangles and jars. The meal has

not refreshed us, and the lack of the soothing but condemned cigar

brings our irritability to a head. We hasten to lock ourselves into the

study for meditation; but a bird sings in at the window, and Love’s

voice pleads at the door. We shut out the song and chide the syren.

Why is our heart so heavy now when bent on eternal things? Knocking!

We open with a martyr face. A friend is there, a dogged churchman;

his salvation is in our hands! He chats of the weather, our club,

state politics. We broach a higher theme, we denounce, cut and thrust,

argue. Surprised he listens in courteous silence, and as he leaves us

we remember too late that he too cherishes his religion, we curse

the follies of the wretched day and call Theosophy for the nonce

“impracticable.” Brothers! the man of creeds who can hear our dogmatism

with self control is perhaps nearer the Essential than we are. He who

plunges into restraints which unhinge and irritate him is no better

than the man who loses his reason through drink. Both lack moderation,

the result is the same, and we have only to do with results. Devote

your thoughts to ascetic meals, and no Lucullus of the town is more

prostrate before his viands than yourself. Moderation declares the

sage. Accept all that comes with equal content, the thought held high

above all. When the daily functions are fulfilled I have done nothing;

the soul is no participant in these. Advance towards the Eternal and

the Transient will imperceptibly drop away from you. No shirking of

the duties of our position avails. _Comrades! The battle field is

there where the long roll finds you standing._ Your past acts enlisted

you under just that flag; fight it out there! The universal charge is

carried through the vigor of individuals, each acting from his own

headcentre and not from that of another. “The duties of a man’s own

particular calling, although not free from faults, is far preferable

to the duty of another, let it be ever so well pursued.”[147] On this

plane we are a body militant; on the next plane we shall transform this

activity, but as long as individuality exists, it would seem that each

must move in an orbit of his own. There is as much egotism in snatching

at the burden not meant for us, as in refusing that which is. Do all

necessary acts promptly and with your best ability, abandoning at once

all care for the result. Do you say this is not Theosophy? You mistake.

True Theosophy is everything that elevates or aids mankind, were it but

the singing of a ballad to lighten another’s toil. “It is not that you

must rush madly or boldly out _to do, to do_. Do what you find to do.

Desire ardently to do it, and even when you shall not have succeeded

in carrying out anything but some small duties, some words of warning,

your strong desire will strike like Vulcan upon other hearts in the

world, and suddenly you will find that done which you had longed to be

the doer of. Then rejoice, that another had been so fortunate as to

make such a meritorious Karma. Thus like the rivers running into the

unswelling passive ocean, will your desires enter into your heart.”

Drop this concern for ephemera and forms; heed essentials only. Get to

the centre of every vital fact and live there as at the heart of an

opal, darting forth prismatic rays of Love and Faith upon all created

things.

If we set out upon a journey to lands unknown, we should observe the

inhabitants, gathering the spirit of their laws from their manners,

ourselves courteous yet cautious with all. So in this passage to the

unseen, that which is essential is the spirit of things. What affair

is it of mine if this man glows with gratified desire, or that woman

shines in undue laces and coquetries? Do I know the principles of

their constitution? Can I vouch that these errors are not the mere husk

of habit, which dropping off may reveal a larger kernel of Virtue than

I possess? Nor will I hastily become the spiritual bondsman of him

who stands above me. He has not exhausted the sum of Truth; to-morrow

I shall find a fraction of my own. All these finical distinctions

are not of the Eternal. The substratum of all things is Wisdom. The

twist of Failure has its strands of silver. The pratings of the fool

dissuade men from folly. I have never done anything of myself: a

clarion impulse commands my best deeds; high thoughts radiate to me

from I know not what sphere. Ask yourself before friend or foe,—“How

does the spirit manifest in him?” For above and below it manifests

equally. The undeviating brute, true to its every principle, has a

volume of teaching for us. We cannot read until we know the alphabet

and Nature holds our primer daily before us. Do not hawk Truth about to

the careless crowd. Not because you belittle it, (that is impossible,)

nor yet yourself, (that is immaterial,) but because you must hold fast

in silence to all that you possess to support you in the tests of the

future. Nor is Truth a nostrum to be forced down the unready throat.

Thereby you disgust a man with Truth; who covets that responsibility?

Ah, gentle hearts and virile minds! Are you wounded by the wantonness

of those you long to save? These errors are perhaps their appointed

teachers in your stead. Error is not exempt from the law! Can Love

check a cyclone in mid career, or does Reason outrun the whirlwind?

Desire has a lustier voice than yours. Let these errant ones wisely

alone. Presently when success is at an ebb, or the complacent Ego is

stung by pride or pain, they will hear the low plaint of the soul.

Then, their state related to yours, they will turn to you as the

heliotrope to the sun. Trust to the law of spiritual affinity. He for

whom you have a thought will be attracted to you for it; he will in

some way ask it of you. Distrust the intellect in these replies. Only

the dwellers of the upper levels draw their thought crystal pure from

the Fountain-head of Mind. Below, sympathy is the universal solvent;

its ardent fusion welds mankind. Speak to me in our common language; it

is that of the heart. You cannot so much as tie up a straying rosetree

without sympathy. Try it, and the tender shoots are nipped as by a

frost. Do you say that it is hard that you should not help others?

Perhaps you only want to help them in your own way. The difference

between loving a man for himself, and loving him for myself, is the

difference between “heaven” and “hell.” There is no hell but that

which we create in our hearts, and selfishness is its yawning portal.

Effort for Wisdom is help for all; he who thinks wisely does a deed

of beneficence. Beneath generous yearnings lurks sometimes the wish

that this “I,” shall become influential or admired, have clients and

suitors in the anteroom. Lest I deceive myself I will mutely speed my

good wishes to all. Only when we have learned how to preserve a wise

silence, will the first stammerings of speech come to us. Speak then

from your own knowledge, simply, without trying to adorn Truth. Many of

our most valued writers are at times too transcendent, too erudite for

us of the lower level. As the great orator or actor sees one face grow

towards his from out the vast field of faces, and concentrating his

burning purpose into that focus, sees streaming thence the homogeneous

force which electrifies the throng,—so I would have each writer among

you address his thought to some especial comrade within his mind, that

you may drop this mantle of remoteness, and let us feel you tense and

vibrant with helpfulness, pressing close to our side. The West needs a

more ringing note than the mystic Orient mind. Let the spirit of your

nation speak through your work and to your fellows every word will be

an occult charm.

Why are we so impatient that we do not receive the accolade of accepted

duty from those Royal Souls who procede us on the Way? “They also serve

who only stand and wait.”[148] He who cannot wait contentedly may be

sure he cannot serve. We must master the diurnal before we can overcome

the spiritual. Some say that a heroic deed is easier than submission

to pinpricks. We may survive Niagara when a drop of water per second

on the brain is madness. Friends; the struggle for the Eternal is

not one daring deed nor yet hundreds of them. It is a calm unbroken

forgetfulness of the lower self for all time. Begin it on your present

plane. You have within you the same guide that the Masters possess.

By obeying It, they have become what they are. Hark! A voice resounds

within. “Know thy true Self; it is thy guide.” If the voice seems

silent, it is perhaps because you ask with the mind only, which is a

higher kind of curiosity. When a spiritual need cries out within you,

the answer will come with a flash to the reverent listener. But in

all the three worlds there is no power to save you but your own. When

we have exhausted the possibilities of growth on our present plane,

we rise naturally to a higher level. If here we find a Master, it is

because we have come into the region where he dwells. Better than

desiring to deserve is deserving to desire. Of this be sure. All that

is rightfully yours will come to you. So reads the Law.

As a mountain climber leans forward, treads zig-zag, counteracting

gravity and the air’s resistance, so shall you walk with care. We do

not know what moral resistance we arouse, what unseen evil lurks near,

what stone our passage may loosen to fall on those below. We do not

know the delicate adjustment of this aerial world. Keep eyes and mind

fixed on the heights above, lest the yawning abyss from which you

rose, attract you. Distrust your emotions, your thoughts above all. An

insidious thought, like a traitor in the fortress, tends outward to the

legions of evil and would deliver you up to them. Who knows where the

ripples of a hasty thought may end? We are pledged by our theosophic

vow to do naught that can dishonor our Society. What more dishonoring

than unjust, angered or vagrant fancies which corrupt the atmosphere of

others and may breed a moral pestilence. “He that hateth his brother is

a murderer.”[149] Perhaps there are times when this is literally true.

“If he does not love his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love

God, Whom he hath not seen?” Pass this word along the line;—“Eternal

vigilance is the price of safety.”

You who are inclined to dispute these thoughts, do better; ignore them.

They are a life experience, not meant for you who have it not, nor are

you once named herein. They are true from one standpoint and for those

upon the same plane. Hereafter all must alchemize virtues and vices

alike. Be not discouraged at these necessary transitions; they do not

convict you of radical error. Give me an unknown seed; its potentiality

is a secret from me, but in faith I plant and tend it. As it waxes to

the budding glories of branch and flower, and thrills with the fecund

boon of fruitage, I am no whit the loser, and hidden at the root of

this larger heritage, the same seed remains life bestowing and true.

Thus Knowledge is not final; it must expand and germinate or it is but

a dead thing. “Veil upon veil shall lift, but there shall be veil upon

veil behind.”[150]

Does he who writes thus always follow his own teachings? _No!_ A

hundred, a thousand times, no! Deluded, he climbs by devious paths and

from the very brink of attainment, falls!

“Jove strikes the Titans down. Not when they set about their mountain

piling, but when one stone more would complete the work.”[151]

Then with toil and pain he rises and cons the chart once more. Beloved

Brothers!—and there is nowhere one so lost, so estranged, so low or so

great whom this name does not call—he will have received these blows

to a benign purpose, if their teachings shall roll away a single stone

from your upward path.

J——.

POETICAL OCCULTISM.

SOME ROUGH STUDIES OF THE OCCULT LEANINGS OF THE POETS.

III.

Many will find in Whitman, the fullest measure of mystic truths,

plainly and significantly stated, to be met with in any modern poet.

For instance, a recognition of the reality of Reincarnation, and of its

necessity, constantly recurs in his poems. Passages like these attest

it: “Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand

years.” Births have brought us richness and variety, and other births

have brought us richness and variety. “And as to you Life, I reckon

you are the leavings of many deaths, (no doubt I have died myself ten

thousand times before.)” In contemplating an idiot he muses:

“And I knew for my consolation what they knew not,

I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother,

The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement,

And I shall look again in a score or two of ages,

And I shall meet the real landlord, perfect and unharmed, every inch

as good as myself.”

Are not the “agents,” mentioned above, the operations of Karmic

law? Among the last lines of the closing poem of his volume are the

following:

“I receive now again of my many translations, from my avatars

ascending, while others doubtless await me,

An unknown sphere more real than I dream’d, more direct, darts

awakening rays about me, _So long!_

Remember my words, _I may again return_.”

Neither rhyme nor verse are essential to true poetry. Even words

are but its vehicle, and not the poetry itself. Poetry is that

manifestation of the mind which excites the imagination and arouses in

responsive minds a sense of beauty. All that which does this is poetic

in quality: that which does not, which awakens no response, leaving

one cold and unimpressed, is prosaic. Poetry, therefore, possesses the

rythmic quality, for beauty appeals to no sense, except through its

power of producing rythmic action upon the brain through the nerves

of sight, hearing, etc. Rythm is a product of harmonious vibration

and produces the sensation of beauty by its play upon the nerves in a

succession of reiterated, regular groups of impressions. All sensations

of ugliness, etc., which are the causes of pain and disease, are due

to the discordant impressions made by irregularity in the series of

vibrations. Thus does strict mathematical law underlie all effects of

beauty. All poetry is in some way rythmic, and arouses rythmic action.

The highest poetry is truth made manifest in the guise of beauty. Poets

have often expressed in verse their feeling of the total inadequacy of

words to present to others the sublimity and beauty of the thoughts

which at moments occur to them. The poetic temperament is one which

enables an approach to that state which some exalted men attain in

perfection, and which is the ultimate destiny of the entire human

race. The poet perceives fragments of the Divine thought as embodied

in natural materials; he reads pages of the great book of Creation and

interprets more or less clearly the significance of the symbols that

exist on every hand in growing things, in things inanimate, in the

waters and the heavens, and in the thoughts, sentiments, passions and

emotions of men. In assuming the mental state which may be called the

_poetic attitude_, he throws himself into rapport with his Higher self,

his _atma_, and thus obtains a glimpse of the eternal truth, so much of

which his memory retains as accords with his personality and with the

nature of his mood; of this he incorporates in poetic form that which

his power of expression enables him to give. Walt Whitman characterizes

this state in his lines:

“I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons

of things,

They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen,

I cannot say to any person what I hear—I cannot say it to myself—it

is very wonderful!”

The more unconscious one becomes of physical surroundings the more

clearly does his mind act; its operations are attended with less

friction. By withdrawing his attention from bodily environment he

enters upon the plane of the higher consciousness. This accounts for

the greater ease with which mental work proceeds after one has been

engaged in it for some little time; it absorbs his attention so that

the surrounding objects and circumstances no longer distract it. In

other words, the mental machinery settles down to smooth running, after

overcoming the various hitches and obstructions attending the starting

of the train of thought. Everyone knows how earnest devotion to any

object makes him oblivious to all else. Under such conditions one, in

reality, loses consciousness and is merged in the object. Self, the

illusory Self, simply consists in a sense of the existence of the body

and the relations borne to it by surrounding objects.

Therefore, in concentration of the mind upon the object lies the true

secret of power, and the man who best knows how to do this is the most

powerful among his fellows. The best work is that done when one is

least conscious of material environment. This accounts for remarkable

examples of work done in a somnambulistic state when all consciousness

of physical surroundings is lost, and the Self becomes so absorbed

in the object that on returning to ordinary consciousness it cannot

remember the process of its most perfect activity of thought. And yet

people refuse to accept the truth of Reincarnation because they cannot

remember, in this gross physical state, their former existences through

the intervening _Devachanic_ periods when their consciousness was

lifted to a plane above the thralldom of matter!

Whoever knows anything of ceremonial magic, whether practically or

theoretically, recognizes the necessity of rythmic action, or the

institutions of a regularly recurring set of vibrations. Many will

testify to the marvels wrought by the earnest repetitions of a rythmic

formula. It seems likely that the transfer of consciousness and the

performance of phenomenal feats by Adepts are wrought by their command

of some formula or method which enables them instantly and perfectly to

achieve the harmonious condition of mental vibration crudely acquired

by novices only by elaborate processes. The logical inference may be

drawn that the purpose of the rythmic form of poetry is not only to

arouse harmonious thoughts in the minds of hearers or readers, but is

due to the fact that the poet, by subjecting his mind to a rythmic

flow of thought, opens it to the reception of impressions from the

highest source of thought. In the words “I nudge myself to listen” the

poet strikingly and graphically depicts the effort to maintain his

concentration of mind as he lies abstracted when he feels his attention

slipping away from the sublime mysteries which, in the greatness of

their wonder, are beyond his power to realize in any thoughts he may

frame. Poets are often unconscious of the full greatness of the truths

they reveal after the moment of their receptive state has passed, but

they, perhaps, awake to a sense of the true significance of their words

years after.

This concentration of mind is insisted on in the Hindu systems in many

different ways. It is called by them Ekkragrata or _one-pointedness_.

In the dialogues the expression is constantly used, and Krishna is said

to say to Arjuna (in _Bagavad-Gita_). “Has thou listened to me with

thy mind fixed on one point?” It is to bring about such a condition

that practitioners of Hatha Yoga—which in English simply means any

practice tending to develop psychical powers, such as mediumship and

the like—prescribe that the Yogee shall sit with his sight concentrated

upon the tip of his nose. And this practice, although scarcely

commendable, has a scientific basis which shows that the much belittled

Aryans had a wonderful fund of knowledge. The fixing of the eyes upon

the tip of the nose puts the focus about three inches from the eyeball,

and that produces first, concentration, because of the effort to remain

fixed, and secondly, a hypnotic state in which trance results with

psychic vision and the like. They prescribed it for another reason not

likely to be admitted by our science; three inches from the eyes was

said by them to be the clairvoyant point.

Our poet Whitman, whether he was aware of it or not, constantly

enunciated the doctrine of Karma. In “Assurances,” to be found in

_Leaves of Grass_, he says:

I need no assurances. I am a man who is pre-occupied of his own soul;

I do not doubt that from under the feet and beside the hands and face

I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant of,

calm and actual faces.

I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in

any iota of the world.

I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless;

in vain I try to think how limitless.

I do not doubt that the orbs and the systems of orbs play their swift

sports through the air on purpose, and that I shall one day be

eligible to do as much as they, and more than they.

I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on millions of years.

I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their

exteriors, and that the eyesight has another eyesight, and the

hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice.

I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are

provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the deaths

of little children are provided for.

(Did you think life was so well provided for, and Death, the purport

of all life, not well provided for?)

I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horror of them,

no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone

down, are provided for to the minutest points.

I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen anywhere at any time,

is provided for in the inherences of things.

I do not think Life provides for all and for Time and Space, but I

believe Heavenly Death provides for all.

Here he dwells upon the belief that all things are provided for. It

would be error to say that he was a fatalist, just as it is a mistake

to hold that the Mohammedan doctrine of “Kismet” is pure fatalism.

Edwin Arnold in “Pearls of the Faith,” enlarges on that pearl called

_Al-Kadar_, in these words:

“When ye say _Kismet_, say it wittingly, O, true believers! under

Allah’s throne place is not left for those accursed three, ‘Destiny,’

‘Fortune,‘ ‘Chance.’ Allah alone ruleth his children: _Kismet_ ye

shall deem each man’s alloted portion * * *”

And Whitman plainly states that the provision which is made for all the

happenings is a provision existing “in the inherences of things,” and

not a fatalistic decree by an irresponsible Almighty.

He also says that he is limitless. This is the doctrine of the

Upanishads. Everyone is limitless, for Ishwara, the Lord, dwells in the

heart of every mortal being. Jesus also, said; “the kingdom of heaven

is _within_ you.” Now the kingdom of heaven cannot be apart from God,

so that the Nazarene herein says the same thing as the Upanishads.

Again, in the lines, “I do not doubt that interiors have their

interiors, and exteriors have their exteriors, and that the eyesight

has another eyesight, and the hearing another hearing, and the voice

another voice,” Whitman might be said to be taking the words from the

mouths of those sages who in ancient India penned the Upanishads. In

those it is incessantly insisted that these interiors really are the

Universal Self which is “the eye of the eye and the hearing of the

ear.” And a knowledge of that is the key to unlock the doors of glory

and praise. As it is beautifully said in Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad:[152]

“This Self is the footstep of everything, for through it one knows

everything. And as one can find again by footsteps what was lost, thus

he who knows this finds glory and praise.”

And further, “Therefore, now, also, he who thus knows that he is

Brahman (the Self) becomes all this, and even the Devas cannot prevent

it, for he himself is their Self.”

S. B. J.

APOLLONIUS AND THE MAHATMAS.

[READ BEFORE THE MALDEN BRANCH, T. S.]

(_Concluded._)

When Apollonius asked about the wise men whom Alexander the Great was

said to have conquered and then held converse with, Phraotes said that

they were the Oxydraks, a warlike people who claimed Wisdom though

they knew nothing of consequence; the truly wise men dwelt between

the Hyphasis and Ganges. Had Alexander gone thither he could not have

conquered them, even with ten thousand Achilles and thirty thousand

Ajaxes. “For they fight not in battle against advancing enemies, but

being holy men, beloved by God, they repulse them through aerial

apparitions and lightning flashes.”

When Apollonius took his departure Phraotes gave him the following

significant letter to the Brahmins: