a subterranean part of the Temple of Ceres called the crypt of
Proserpine, listened with throbbing emotions to _the celestial history
of Psyche_.
What is the human soul? A portion of the mighty soul of the world,
a spark of the divine spirit, an immortal monad. Still, though its
possible future opens out into the unfathomable splendours of divine
consciousness, its mysterious dawn dates back to the origin of
organized matter. To become what it is in present-day humanity, it
must have passed through all the reigns of nature, the whole scale of
beings gradually developing through a series of innumerable existences.
The spirit which fashions the worlds and condenses cosmic matter into
enormous masses manifests itself with varying intensity and an ever
greater concentration in the successive reigns of nature. A blind and
confused force in the mineral, individualized in the plant, polarized
in the sensations and instincts of animals, it stretches towards
the conscious monad in this slow elaboration; and the elementary
monad is visible in the most inferior of animals. The animal and
spiritual element accordingly exists in every kingdom, though only in
infinitesimal quantities in the lower kingdoms. The souls which exist
in the state of germs in the lower kingdoms stay there without moving
away for immense periods of time, and it is only after great cosmic
revolutions that, in changing planets, they pass to a higher reign.
All they can do during a planet’s period of life is to mount a few
degrees. Where does the monad begin? As well ask at what hour a nebula
was formed or a sun shone for the first time. Anyhow, what constitutes
the essence of any man must have evolved for millions of years through
a chain of lower planets and kingdoms, keeping through all these
existences an individual principle which follows it everywhere. This
obscure but indestructible individuality constitutes the divine seal of
the monad in which God wills to manifest himself through consciousness.
The higher one ascends in the series of organisms, the more the
monad develops the principles latent in it. Polarized force becomes
capable of sensation, capacity of sensation becomes instinct, and
instinct becomes intelligence. In proportion as the flickering flame
of consciousness is lit, this soul becomes more independent of the
body, more capable of existing freely. The fluid, nonpolarized soul
of minerals and vegetables is bound to the elements of earth. That
of animals, strongly attracted by terrestrial fire, stays there for
some time after leaving its body, and then returns to the surface
of the globe to re-incarnate in its species without ever having the
possibility of leaving the lower layers of the air. These are peopled
with elementals or animal souls which play their part in atmospheric
life and have a great occult influence over man. The human soul alone
comes from the sky, and returns there after death. At what period of
its long cosmic existence has the elementary become the human soul?
Through what incandescent crucible, what ethereal flame has it passed?
The transformation has been possible in an interplanetary period only
by the meeting of human souls already fully formed which have developed
in the elementary soul its spiritual principle and have impressed their
divine prototype like a seal of fire in its plastic substance.
But what journeys and incarnations, what planetary cycles must still
be traversed for the human soul thus formed to become the man we are
acquainted with! According to the esoteric traditions of India and
Egypt, the individuals of whom mankind at present consists, began their
human existence on other planets, in which matter is far less dense
than our own. Man’s body was then almost vaporous, his incarnations
light and easy. His faculties of direct spiritual perception were
evidently very powerful and subtile in this first human phase; reason
and intelligence on the other hand were in an embryonic condition. In
this half-corporeal, half-spiritual state, man saw spirits, everything
was full of splendour and charm to his eyes, full of music to his
ears. He could hear the harmony of the spheres. He neither thought nor
reflected, scarcely even willed, but simply lived, drinking in sounds,
forms and light, floating like a dream from life to death and from
death to life. It was this that the Orphic poems called _the heaven
of Saturn_. It is only by becoming incarnate on planets ever denser
and denser that man became materialized, according to the doctrine
of Hermes. By becoming incarnate in denser matter, humanity has lost
its spiritual sense, but by an ever-increasing struggle with the
outside world, it has powerfully developed its reason, intelligence
and will. The earth is the last rung of this descent into matter which
Moses calls the exit from paradise, and Orpheus, the fall into the
sublunary circle. From these depths man can, with difficulty, reascend
the circles in a series of new existences and regain his spiritual
faculties by the free exercise of his intellect and will-power. Then
only, say the disciples of Hermes and Orpheus, does man acquire by his
_action_ the consciousness and the possession of the divine; then only
does he become the _son of God_. Those who have borne this name on
earth must, before appearing among us, have descended and remounted the
dreadful spiral.
Then what is the humble Psyche at its origin? A passing breath, a
floating germ, a wind-swept bird, migrating from life to life. And yet,
after innumerable lapses, and millions of years, it has become the
daughter of God and no longer recognizes any other home than heaven!
This is why Greek poetry, so profound and luminous in its symbolism,
compared the soul sometimes to the winged insect, sometimes to the
earth-worm, and again to the heavenly butterfly. How often has it been
a chrysalis, and how often a winged creature of light? Though it will
never know this, it still feels that it has wings!
Such is the vertiginous past of the human soul. It affords us an
explanation of its present condition and enables us to glimpse into its
future.
What is the position of divine Psyche in earth life? The slightest
reflection suffices to show us that we could not imagine a stranger or
more tragic one, since being painfully roused to consciousness in the
dense atmosphere of earth, the soul has entwined itself in the folds
of the body. Only through it does the soul live, breathe, and think,
and yet it is not the body. In proportion as it develops, it feels
increasing within itself a quivering light, something invisible and
immaterial which it calls its spirit, its conscience. Yes, man has an
innate sentiment of his triple nature, for, even in his instinctive
language, he distinguishes his body from his soul, and his soul from
his spirit. The soul, however, captive and troubled, struggles between
its two companions as between the thousand twining folds of a serpent
and an invisible genius calling it, whose presence, however, can only
be felt by passing gleams and the beating of his wings. At times this
body absorbs it to such an extent that it is only through its passions
and sensations that the soul lives; with the body it rolls in the
blood-stained orgies of anger or the dense mist of carnal pleasures,
until, of its own accord, it becomes terrified by reason of the
profound silence of its invisible companion. Then again, attracted by
the latter, it rises to such lofty heights of thought, that it forgets
the existence of the body until a peremptory call reminds it of its
presence. And yet an inner voice tells it that between itself and the
invisible guest the bond cannot be broken, whilst death will break its
connection with the body.
Tossed to and fro between the two in an eternal struggle, the soul
seeks in vain for happiness and truth. In vain does it seek to find
itself in passing sensations, in fugitive thoughts, in the world which
changes like a mirage. Finding that nothing is lasting, troubled and
driven about like a leaf in the wind, it has doubts of itself and of
a divine world which is only revealed to it by its own pain and the
impossibility it feels of reaching this world. Human ignorance is
written in the contradictions of pretended sages, and human sadness
in the unfathomable hunger of the human glance. Finally, whatever the
range of his knowledge, birth and death shut in man between two fatal
bounds. These are two gates of darkness, beyond which he sees nothing.
The flame of his life is lit as he enters the one and extinguished as
he leaves the other. Can it be so with the soul? If not, then what
becomes of it?
Many have been the replies which philosophers have given to this
poignant problem. In its essence that given by theosophical initiates
of all times is the same. It is in accord with universal feeling and
the inner spirit of religions. The latter has expressed the truth only
under superstitious or symbolical forms. The esoteric doctrine opens
up far wider perspectives; its affirmations are strictly related to
the laws of universal evolution. This is what initiates, instructed
by tradition and by the many experiences of psychic life, have said
to man: That which is restless in thyself, which thou callest thy
soul, is an ethereal double of the body which contains in itself an
immortal spirit. The spirit builds and forms for itself, by its own
activity, its spiritual body. Pythagoras calls it _the subtile chariot
of the soul_, because it is destined to remove it from earth after
death. _This spiritual body is the organ of the spirit_, its sensitive
envelope and instrument of volition; it serves to animate the body,
which would otherwise remain inert. In apparitions of the dying or the
dead, _this double_ becomes visible, under circumstances, however,
which always presuppose a special nervous condition of the seer. The
degree of fineness, power and perfection of the spiritual body varies
according to the quality of the spirit which it contains, and between
the substance of souls woven in the astral light, though impregnated
with the imponderable fluids of earth and heaven, there are more
numerous distinctions, greater differences than between all earthly
bodies and all states of ponderable matter. This astral body, though
far finer and more perfect than the earthly one, is not immortal as is
the monad which it contains. It changes and becomes purified according
to its different environments. The spirit is perpetually moulding and
transforming it into its own image; it never leaves it however, though
it unrobes itself of it by degrees; it is continually clothing itself
with more ethereal substances. This was the teaching of Pythagoras, who
could not conceive of abstract spiritual entity, the formless monad.
Spirit in itself, whether in the far-away sky or on earth, must have
an organ; that organ is the living soul, whether bestial or sublime,
obscure or radiant, retaining, however, the human form, the image of
God.
What happens at death? When the final hour approaches, the soul
generally has a presentiment of its coming separation from the body.
It sees over again its earthly existence in abridged scenes rapidly
succeeding one another and of startling clearness. When the exhausted
life stops in the brain, the soul becomes perplexed and altogether
loses consciousness. If it is holy and pure, its spiritual senses
have already been aroused by gradual detachment from matter. Before
dying, in some way or other, if only by the introspection of its own
state, it has already felt the presence of another world. Beneath the
silent, distant appeals, the vague beams of the Invisible, earth has
already lost its consistence, and when the soul finally leaves the
cold corpse, rejoicing in its deliverance, it feels itself carried
away into a glorious light, towards the spiritual family to which it
belongs. It is not so, however, with the ordinary man, whose life has
been divided between material instincts and higher aspirations. He
awakes in a state of semi-consciousness, as though in the torpor of a
nightmare. No longer has he an arm to stretch forth or a voice to cry
out with; still, he remembers and suffers, existing, as he does, in a
limbus of darkness and terror. All that he sees is the body from which
he is detached, but for which he still feels an invincible attraction.
It is for it that he lived; and now, what is it? In terror he looks
for himself in the icy fibres of his brain, in the stagnant blood of
his veins, and no longer finds himself. Is he dead or living? He would
like to see, to hold on to something, but he cannot see, he can take
hold of nothing. Darkness is all around, chaos within. He sees only one
thing, and this thing attracts and terrifies him at the same time--the
sinister phosphorescence of his own earthly tenement; and the nightmare
recommences.
This state may be prolonged for months or years. Its duration depends
on the strength of the material instincts of the soul. Still, good or
evil, infernal or celestial, this soul will gradually become conscious
of itself and of its new condition. Once free from its body, it will
escape into the abysses of the terrestrial atmosphere, whose electric
streams carry it here and there, and whose many-shaped inhabitants,
wandering about, more or less like itself, it is beginning to perceive,
like fugitive flashes in a thick mist. Then there begins a desperate,
vertiginous struggle on the part of the soul, which is still dull and
heavy, to rise into the upper strata of the air, to free itself from
earthly attraction and reach, in the heaven of our planetary system,
the region proper to it and which friendly guides alone can show it.
But before this can take place, a long period must often intervene.
This phase of the life of the soul has borne different names in
religions and mythologies. Moses called it Horeb; Orpheus, Erebus;
Christianity, Purgatory, or _the Valley of the Shadow of Death_. The
Greek initiates identified it with the cone of shadow which the earth
is always trailing behind it, which shadow reaches as far as the moon;
for this reason they called it the _abyss of Hecate_. In these mirky
depths, say the disciples of Orpheus and of Pythagoras, are tossed to
and fro the souls which make desperate efforts to reach the circle of
the moon, though the violence of the winds beats them back to earth
by thousands. Homer and Virgil compare them with whirling leaves, or
swarms of birds maddened by the tempest.
The moon played an important part in ancient esoterism. On its surface,
facing the heavens, the souls were regarded as purifying their astral
body before continuing their celestial ascent. It was also supposed
that heroes and great spirits took up their abode for a time on the
portion of its surface turned towards the earth, in order to clothe
themselves in bodies appropriate to our world before reincarnation.
There was attributed to the moon, in a certain measure, the power to
magnetize the soul for earthly incarnation, and to demagnetize it
for its heavenly abode. In a general way, these assertions, to which
initiates attached a meaning that was at once real and symbolical,
signified that the soul must pass through an intermediary stage of
purification and free itself from the impurities of earth before
continuing its journey.
In what terms can one describe the arrival of the pure soul into its
own world? The earth has disappeared like a dream. A fresh sleep, a
delightful swoon now envelops it as in a caressing embrace. All that it
now sees is its winged guide carrying it away with lightning rapidity
into the depths of space. What can we say of its awakening in the
vales of some ethereal star, devoid of elemental atmosphere, where
everything--mountains, flowers and vegetation--is of an exquisite,
sensitive and eloquent nature? Above all else, what can one say of
those luminous forms, men and women, surrounding it like a sacred
procession, to initiate it into the sacred mystery of its new life?
Are they gods or goddesses? No; they are souls like itself; the wonder
consists in the fact that their inmost thoughts beam forth in their
countenance, that tenderness and love, desire or fear radiate through
those diaphanous bodies in a scale of luminous colorations. Here, body
and countenance are no longer the mask of the soul; the transparent
soul appears in its real form, shining forth in the clear light of
unpolluted truth. Psyche has returned to her divine home. The secret
light in which she laves herself, which emanates from her and returns
in the smile of beloved ones; this light of great felicity is the soul
of the world wherein she is conscious of the presence of God! No more
obstacles now! She will love and know; she will live with no other
limit than her own desire to soar. Strange and marvellous happiness!
She feels that strong, profound affinities unite her to all her
companions. For in the life beyond, those who do not love flee from one
another; those alone meet together who understand one another. With
them she will celebrate the divine mysteries in more beautiful temples,
in a more perfect communion. These will be living poems, ever new,
each soul of which will be a strophe, and each one will live again
its life in that of others. Then, quivering with delight, she will
spring forth into the radiance on high, to the call of the Messengers,
the winged Spirits, those who are called Gods, for they have escaped
the circle of generations. Led on by these sublime intelligences, she
will try to decipher the great poem of the Secret Word, to understand
what she can grasp of the symphony of the universe. She will receive
hierarchical information from the circles of Divine Love; she will
endeavour to see the Essences which the animating Spirits scatter
throughout the worlds; she will contemplate the glorified Spirits,
living rays of the God of Gods, but without being able to bear their
blinding glory which makes suns look pale as smoky lamps! Then, when
she returns terrified from these dazzling flights--for she shudders
in presence of such immensities--she will hear from afar the call of
beloved voices, and will fall back on the golden strands of her star,
beneath the rose-coloured veil of a billowy sleep, peopled with forms
clothed in white, and filled with sweet perfumes and melodious strains.
Such is the heavenly life of the soul, scarcely conceived of by our
earth-clouded minds, but divined by initiates, lived by seers and
demonstrated by the law of analogy and universal concordance. In vain
do our rude imagery and imperfect language attempt to translate it;
each living soul, however, feels the germ of this life in its hidden
depths. Though in our present condition it is impossible for us to
realize it, the philosophy of occultism has formulated its psychical
conditions. The idea of ethereal constellations, invisible to us,
though forming part of our solar system and serving as an abode for
happy souls, is often found in the secrets of esoteric tradition.
Pythagoras calls it a counterpart of the earth: the _antichthone_,
lit up by the central Fire, _i.e._, by the divine light. At the end
of the _Phaedo_, Plato describes this spiritual land at some length,
though in disguised fashion. He says that it is as light as air, and is
surrounded by an ethereal atmosphere. In the other life, we see that
the soul preserves the whole of its individuality. Of its terrestrial
existence it retains none but noble memories, leaving the others to
fall into that forgetfulness which the poets called the waves of Lethe.
Freed from all defilement, the human soul feels its consciousness
restored, so to speak. From without the universe, it has come back to
within it; Cybele-Maïa, the soul of the world, has, with deep yearning,
drawn it back to her bosom. Here, Psyche will work out her dream,
that dream continually broken and ever being recommenced on earth. She
will work it out in accordance with her earthly effort and acquired
intelligence, but she will magnify it an hundredfold. Crushed hopes
will again revive beneath the dawn of her divine life; the gloomy
sunsets of earth will kindle into the dazzling light of day. Though man
had lived only one hour of enthusiasm or self-denial, that single pure
note, torn away from the discordant scale of his earthly life, will
be repeated in his after-life in marvellous progressions and æolian
harmonies. The fugitive delights that we obtain from the enchantment
of music, the ecstasy of love or the raptures of charity are only
the stray notes of a harmony to which we shall then be listening. Is
this simply saying that such life will be only one long dream, one
magnificent hallucination? What is there truer than that which the soul
feels within itself and which it realizes by its divine communion with
other souls? Initiates, being consistent and transcendent idealists,
have always thought that the only real and lasting things on earth are
manifestations of spiritual Beauty, Love and Truth. As the after-life
can have no other object than this Truth, this Beauty and this Love for
those who make them the object of their lives, they are convinced that
heaven will be truer than earth.
The heavenly life of the soul may last hundreds or thousands of years,
according to its degree or strength of impulse. It belongs, however,
only to the perfect, to the most sublime souls, to those which have
passed beyond the circle of generations, to prolong it indefinitely.
The latter have not only attained to temporary rest, but to immortal
action in truth; they have created wings for themselves. Being light
itself, they are inviolable; seeing across the worlds, they rule them.
The rest are carried along by an inflexible law to re-incarnation, in
order to undergo a fresh trial, and to rise to a higher rung or to fall
lower if they fail.
The spiritual, like the terrestrial life, has its beginning, its apogee
and its decline. When this life is exhausted, the soul feels itself
overcome with heaviness, giddiness and melancholy. An invincible force
once again attracts it to the struggles and sufferings of earth. This
desire is mingled with terrible dread and a mighty grief at leaving
divine life. But the time has come; the law must be obeyed. The
heaviness increases, a sensation of dimness is felt. The soul no longer
sees its companions of light except through a veil, and this veil, ever
denser and denser, gives a presentiment of the coming separation. It
hears their sad farewells; the tears of the blest, the loved ones whom
it is leaving, fall over it like heavenly dew which will leave in its
heart the burning thirst of an unknown happiness. Then--with solemn
oaths--_it promises_ to remember--to remember the light when in the
world of darkness, to remember truth when in the world of falsehood,
and love when in the world of hatred. The return, the immortal crown,
can only be acquired at this cost. It awakens in a dense atmosphere;
ethereal constellation, diaphanous souls, oceans of light--all have
disappeared. And now it is back on earth, in the abyss of birth and
death. Nevertheless, it has not yet lost its celestial memory; the
winged guide still visible to its eyes points out the woman who is to
be its mother. The latter bears within her womb the germ of a child,
but this germ will only live if the spirit comes in to animate it.
Then for nine months is accomplished the most impenetrable mystery of
earthly life, that of incarnation and maternity.
The mysterious fusion operates slowly but with perfect wisdom--organ
by organ, fibre by fibre. Accordingly as the soul plunges into that
warm cavern, which roars and swarms with life, in proportion as it
feels itself caught up in the meanderings of the viscera with their
thousand recesses and folds, the consciousness of its divine life
becomes effaced and dies out. For between it and the light above are
interposed waves of blood and tissues of flesh, crushing it and filling
it with darkness. This distant light is already nothing more than a
dying flicker. Finally, a terrible pang compresses it in a vice; a
bloody convulsion tears it from the mother soul and fastens it down
into a throbbing, palpitating body. The child is born, a pitiful image
of earth, and he cries aloud with fright. The memory of the celestial
regions however has returned to the occult depths of the Unconscious;
it will only be revived either by Knowledge or by Pain, by Love or by
Death!
Accordingly, the law of incarnation and disincarnation unfolds to us
the real meaning of life and death. It constitutes the principal phase
in the evolution of the soul, enabling us to follow it backwards and
forwards right into the depths of nature and divinity. For this law
reveals to us the rhythm and measure, the reason and object of the
soul’s immortality. From being abstract or fantastic, it makes it
living and logical by showing the correspondences of life and death.
Terrestrial birth is death from the spiritual point of view, and
death is a celestial resurrection. The alternation of both lives is
necessary for the development of the soul, and each of them is at once
the consequence and the explanation of the other. Whosoever is imbued
with these truths is at the very heart of the mysteries, at the centre
of initiation.
But, we shall be asked, what is there to prove for us the continuity
of the soul, of the monad, the spiritual entity through all these
existences, since it loses the memory of them in succession? What is
there to prove, we shall reply, the identity of your person during
waking existence and during sleep? You wake up every morning from
a state as strange, as inexplicable as death; you rise from this
condition of nothingness to return to it again at night. Was it
nothingness? No, for you have been dreaming, and your dreams have
been as real to you as the reality of the waking state. A change in
the physiological conditions of the brain has modified the relations
of soul and body and displaced your psychical point of view. You were
the same individual but you found yourself in another environment, and
living another existence. In magnetized subjects, somnambulists and
clairvoyants, sleep develops new faculties which to us seem miraculous,
though they are the natural faculties of the soul when detached from
the body. Once aroused, these clairvoyants no longer remember what
they have seen, said or done during their lucid sleep, but they
remember perfectly well in one sleep what happened in the previous
one, and at times predict with mathematical certainty what will happen
in the next. They have, then, two consciousnesses as it were, two
alternate lives entirely distinct from one another, but each of which
has its own rational continuity. They roll themselves round the same
individuality like cords of different colours round an invisible thread.
Consequently, it is in a very deep sense that the initiate poets of old
called sleep _the brother of death_. A veil of forgetfulness separates
the sleeping from the waking state, like birth and death, and, just
as our earthly life is divided into two parts always alternating, so
also the soul, in the immensity of its cosmic evolution, alternates
between incarnation and spiritual life, between earth and heaven.
This alternate passage from one plane of the universe to another,
this reversing of the poles of its being, is no less necessary for
the development of the soul than alternate waking and sleeping is
necessary for the bodily life of man. When passing from one existence
to the other, we need the waters of Lethe. In this present existence,
a salutary veil conceals from us past and future alike. But oblivion
is not complete, since light passes through the veil. Innate ideas
alone prove a former existence. There is more, however; we are born
with a world of vague remembrances, mysterious impulses, divine
presentiments. In children born of gentle quiet parents we find
outbursts of wild passions which atavism does not sufficiently explain,
and which come from a former existence. Sometimes in the humblest life
we find fidelity to a sentiment or an idea, altogether sublime and
inexplicable. Is not this a result of the promises and oaths of the
celestial life? The occult memory the soul has kept of them is stronger
than all earthly reasoning. According as it attaches itself to this
memory or abandons it, is it seen to overcome or to succumb. True faith
consists in this mute fidelity of the soul to itself. For this reason,
one may conceive that Pythagoras like all theosophists considered
bodily life as a necessary elaboration of the will, and heavenly life
as a spiritual growth, an accomplishment.
Lives follow without resembling one another, but a pitiless logic
links them together. Though each of them has its own law and special
destiny, the succession is controlled by a general law, which might
be called _the repercussion of lives_.[17] In accordance with this
law, the actions of one life have, fatally, their repercussion in
the following one. Not only will man be born again with the instincts
and faculties he has developed in his preceding incarnation, but the
very manner of his existence will be largely determined by the good
or bad use he has made of his liberty in the preceding life. There is
no word or action which has not its echo in eternity, says a proverb.
According to esoteric doctrine, this proverb is literally applied
from one life to another. Pythagoras considered that the apparent
injustice of destiny, the difformity and wretchedness of one’s lot,
misfortunes of every kind, find their explanation in the fact that each
existence is the reward or the punishment of the former one. A criminal
life engenders one of expiation, an imperfect life, one of trial. A
good life determines a mission, a superior life, a perfected mission
by the re-establishment of initiation and the spiritual selection
of marriages. In this way races follow one another and humanity
progresses. The initiates of old saw much further into the future than
those of our days. They acknowledged that a time would come when the
great mass of people constituting present-day humanity would pass on
to another planet, there to begin a new cycle. In the series of cycles
of which the planetary chain consists, the whole of humanity will
develop the intellectual, spiritual and transcendent principles which
great initiates have developed in themselves in this life, and will
thus bring them to general fruition. It goes without saying that such a
development embraces not merely thousands, but millions of years, and
that it will bring about changes in human conditions such as we cannot
at present form any imagination of. In expressing them, Plato says that
in those times the gods will really inhabit the temples of men. It is
logical to admit that in the planetary chain, _i.e._ in the successive
evolutions of our humanity on other planets, its incarnations should
become more and more ethereal in their nature, insensibly approaching
the purely spiritual state of that eighth sphere which is outside the
circle of generation, and by which the divine state was denoted by
theosophists of old. It is also natural that, as all do not start from
the same point, and many loiter on the way or fall back, the number of
the elect should continually diminish in this marvellous ascent. Our
earth-limited intelligences are dazed by this conception, but heavenly
intelligences contemplate it without the least fear, just as we regard
a single life. Is not the evolution of souls, thus understood, in
conformity with the unity of the Spirit, the principle of principles;
with the homogeneity of Nature, the law of laws; and with the
continuity of movement, the force of forces? Seen through the prism of
spiritual life, a solar system does not constitute a material mechanism
only, but a living organism, a celestial kingdom in which souls travel
from world to world like the very breath of God animating it.
What then is the final end of man and humanity, according to esoteric
doctrine? After so many lives, deaths, re-births, periods of calm and
poignant awakings, is there any limit to the labours of Psyche? Yes,
say the initiates, when the soul has definitely conquered matter,
when, developing all its spiritual faculties, it has found in itself
the principle and end of all things, then, incarnation being no longer
necessary, it will enter the divine state by a complete union with the
divine intelligence. Since we have scarcely any presentiment of the
spiritual life of the soul after each earthly life, how shall we form
any idea of this perfect life which must follow the whole series of
its spiritual existences? This heaven of heavens will be to all former
happiness as the ocean is to a river. In the mind of Pythagoras, the
apotheosis of man was not a plunge into unconsciousness, but rather
creative activity in supreme consciousness. The soul which has become
pure spirit does not lose its individuality, but rather perfects
it as it rejoins its archetype in God. It remembers all its former
existences, which it regards as so many ladders to reach the point at
which it embraces and penetrates the universe. In this state, man is no
longer man, as Pythagoras said, but demi-god. For in his entire being
he reflects the ineffable light with which God fills immensity. For
him, knowledge is power; love is creation; being is radiating truth and
beauty.
Is this a definite limit? Spiritual eternity has other measures than
solar time, though it, too, has its stages, norms, and cycles. They
entirely transcend human conception, however. Still, the law of
progressive analogy in the ascending scale of nature allows of our
affirming that the spirit, once it has reached this sublime state,
can no longer return, that though the visible worlds change and pass
away, the invisible world, which is its _raison d’être_, its source and
basis, and of which the divine Psyche forms a part, is immortal.
It was in such a brilliant perspective that Pythagoras ended the
history of the _divine Psyche_. The last word had died away on the
lips of the sage, but the meaning of that incommunicable truth
remained suspended in the motionless air of the crypt. Each listener
believed that he had finished the dream of lives, and was awaking
to life in the mighty peace and boundless ocean of the one life. The
naphtha lamps quietly lit up the statue of Persephone, standing there
in the character of a heavenly reaper; they revived her symbolical
history in the sacred frescoes of the sanctuary. At times, a priestess
who had entered a state of ecstasy under the harmonious voice of
Pythagoras seemed to incarnate in her attitude and the radiance of her
countenance the unspeakable beauty of the vision she saw. Then, the
disciples--seized with a thrill of religious emotion--looked on in
silence. Soon, however, the master, with a slow commanding gesture,
brought back to earth the inspired prophetess. By degrees the tension
of her features was relieved, she sank back into the arms of her
companions and fell into a profound lethargy, from which she awoke
troubled and sorrowful, and apparently exhausted after her heavenly
flight.
Then, leaving the crypt they mounted to the gardens of Ceres just as
morning was beginning to dawn over the sea, and the stars to disappear
from mortal sight.
FOURTH DEGREE--EPIPHANY
_The adept.--The woman initiate.--Love
and marriage._
With Pythagoras we have now reached the summit of initiation in ancient
times. From these heights the earth appears drowned in shadow, like
a dying star. Sidereal perspectives open out--and the vision from
on high, the epiphany of the universe,[18] is unfolded before one’s
wondering gaze in its entirety. The object of his instruction, however,
was not the absorption of man in contemplation or ecstasy. The master
had brought his disciples into the unmeasurable regions of the Kosmos,
plunging them into the abyss of the invisible. After this terrifying
journey, the true initiates were to return to earth better, stronger
and more prepared for the trials of life.
The initiation of the intelligence was to be followed by that of the
will, the most difficult of all. The disciple had now to become imbued
with truth in the very depths of his being, to put it into practice
in everyday life. To attain to this ideal, one must, according to
Pythagoras, unite three kinds of perfection: the realization of truth
in intelligence, of virtue in soul and of purity in body. This latter
was to be maintained by a prudent system of hygiene and a well-balanced
chastity. This was demanded not as an end but as a means to an end. All
bodily excesses leave marks, impurities, so to speak, in the astral
body, the living organism of the soul, and consequently in the mind.
For the astral body participates in all the acts of the physical body;
indeed, it is the former which gives effect to them, the material body
being, without it, nothing but an inert mass. Accordingly the body
must be pure for the soul to be pure also. Then the soul, continually
enlightened by the intelligence, must acquire courage, self-denial,
devotion and faith, in a word, virtue, by which a second nature must
be made to replace the first. Finally, the intellect must reach wisdom
through knowledge, so that in everything it may be able to distinguish
good from evil and see God in the smallest of beings as well as in the
immensity of worlds. On reaching these heights, man becomes an adept;
and, if he possesses sufficient energy, he enters into possession of
new faculties and powers. The inner senses of the soul expand, and
the senses of the body are dominated by the radiant will. His bodily
magnetism, penetrated by the potency of his astral soul, electrified
by his will, acquires an apparently miraculous power. At times he
cures the sick by the laying on of hands or simply by his presence.
His look alone often penetrates the thoughts of men. Sometimes, in the
waking state, he sees events taking place afar off.[19] He acts at a
distance by the concentration of thought and will on such persons as
are attached to him by bonds of personal sympathy, causing his image
to appear to them as though his astral body could be transported out
of his material body. The appearance of the dying or the dead to their
friends affords exactly the same phenomenon. The apparition however
which the dying man or the soul of the dead man generally produces
through an unconscious desire, in the last few moments of life or in
the second death, is generally produced by the adept when in perfect
health and consciousness. Still, he can only do this during sleep, and
a sleep which is almost always of a lethargic nature. Finally, the
adept feels himself as it were surrounded and protected by invisible
beings, superior spirits of light, who lend him their strength and aid
him in his mission.
Adepts are rare, but even more rare are those who attain to this
power. Greece knew but three: Orpheus at the dawn of Hellenism,
Pythagoras at its apogee, and Apollonius of Tyana in its final decline.
Orpheus was the mighty and inspired initiator of Greek religion;
Pythagoras, the organizer of esoteric science and the philosophy of
the schools; Apollonius, the moralizing stoic and popular magician
of the decadence. In all three, however, in spite of differences and
degrees, there beams the divine ray, the mind passionately inflamed for
the salvation of souls, indomitable energy clothed in gentleness and
serenity. But do not draw too near these mighty, calm brows; a silent
fire is beneath, the furnace of an ardent but ever restrained will.
Pythagoras accordingly represents to us an adept of the highest type,
possessed of the scientific mind and cast in philosophic mould to which
the spirit of modern times most nearly approaches. But he himself
neither could, nor pretended to make perfect adepts of his disciples.
A great inspirer is always at the beginning of every great epoch.
His disciples and their pupils form the magnetic chain which carries
his thought out into the world. In the fourth degree of initiation,
Pythagoras therefore contented himself with teaching his followers how
to apply his doctrine to life. The _Epiphany_, the vision from above,
set forth an ensemble of profound, regenerating views on things of
earth.
_The origin of good and evil_ remains an incomprehensible mystery for
whomsoever has not taken into account the origin and the end of things.
A morality which does not consider the final destiny of man will be
merely utilitarian and very imperfect. Besides, human liberty does not
really exist for such as always feel themselves the slaves of their
passions, nor does it by right exist for such as believe neither in the
soul nor in God, for whom life is a lightning flash between two states
of darkness. The first live in the servitude of the soul, enchained by
the passions; the latter in the slavery of intelligence limited to the
physical world. It is not so for the religious man, or for the true
philosopher, nor with much greater reason for the theosophist initiate
who realizes truth in the trinity of his being and the unity of his
will. To understand the origin of good and evil, the initiate regards
_the three worlds_ with the spiritual eye. He sees the murky world
of matter and animalism in which inevitable _Destiny_ holds sway. He
sees the luminous world of the Spirit which, for us, is the invisible
world, the immense hierarchy of liberated souls who are themselves
_Providence_ in action, the world where divine law reigns. Between
the two he catches a dim glimpse of humanity, the lower elements of
which plunge into the natural world whilst the higher ones touch the
divine spheres. The genius and spirit of humanity is _Liberty_; for
the moment man perceives truth and error, he is free to choose, to
associate with Providence in accomplishing truth, or, by following
error, to fall beneath the law of destiny. The act of will joined to
that of intelligence is nothing but a mathematical point, but from this
point springs forth the spiritual universe. Every spirit partially
feels by instinct what the theosophist totally understands by his
intellect: that Evil is what causes man to descend to the fatality of
matter, and that Good is what makes him rise towards the divine law of
the Spirit. His true destiny is to be ever rising higher, and that from
his own efforts. But to do this he must also be free to descend again
to the very lowest. The circle of liberty widens out to the infinitely
great in proportion as one ascends, it shrinks to the infinitely small
in proportion as one descends. The higher one rises, the freer he
becomes; for the more one enters into light, the more power for good
he acquires. And the more one descends, the more enslaved does he
become; for each fall into evil diminishes the intelligence of the
true and the capacity for good. Destiny accordingly reigns over the
past, Liberty over the future, and Providence over both, _i.e._ over
the ever-existing present, which may be called Eternity.[20] From
the combined action of Destiny, Liberty and Providence spring the
innumerable destinies, the hells and the paradises of souls. Evil,
being discord with divine law, is not the work of God but that of
man, and has only a relative, an apparent and transitory existence.
Good, being accord with divine law, alone really and eternally
exists. Neither the priests of Delphi and Eleusis, nor the initiate
philosophers would ever reveal these profound thoughts to the people,
who might have misunderstood and misused them. In the Mysteries this
doctrine was symbolically represented by the mutilation of Dionysos,
though what was called _the sufferings of God_ was hidden from the
profane by an impenetrable veil.
The greatest of all religious and philosophical discussions deal with
the question of the origin of good and evil. We have just seen that
esoteric teachings hold the key to this question. There is another
important question on which the social and political problem depends:
_the inequality of human conditions_. In the very spectacle of evil
and pain there is something terrifying. Their apparently arbitrary and
unjust distribution may be said to be the origin of all hatred, revolt
and denial. Here again the profound esoteric teaching brings into our
earthly darkness its sovereign light of peace and hope. The diversity
of souls, conditions and destinies can indeed only be justified by
plurality of existences and the doctrine of reincarnation. If man is
born for the first time into this life, what explanation can be given
of the innumerable evils which seem to fall on him as the effect of
chance? How can it be admitted that there is such a thing as eternal
justice, when some are born under conditions which fatally bring about
misery and humiliation, whilst others are born fortunate and live the
happiest of lives? If, however, it is true that we have lived other
lives, and shall do so again after death, that through all these
existences there reigns the law of recurrence and repercussion--then
the differences of soul, of condition and destiny, will be nothing but
the results of previous lives and the manifold applications of this
law. Differences of condition spring from an unequal employment of
liberty in past lives, and intellectual differences from the fact that
men belong to extremely different degrees of evolution, which range
from the semi-animal condition of retrogressing races to the angelic
states of saints and the divine kingship of genius. In reality earth
resembles a vessel, and all we who inhabit it are travellers coming
from far-away lands, dispersing, by degrees, in every direction of
the compass. The doctrine of reincarnation gives a _raison d’être_,
in accordance with eternal justice and logic, for the most terrible
suffering as well as for the most envied happiness. The idiot will now
be understood by us if we think that his dull, stupid condition, of
which he is half conscious and from which he suffers, is the punishment
for a criminal use of his intelligence in another life. All the
degrees of physical and moral suffering, of happiness and misfortune
in their innumerable varieties, will appear to us as the natural and
wisely-graduated blossomings of the instincts and actions, the faults
and virtues of a long past, for in its occult depths the soul retains
everything it accumulates in its divers existences. According to hour
and influence, the former births reappear and disappear, and destiny,
or rather the spirits who control it, proportion the soul’s kind of
reincarnation to its degree and quality. Lysis expresses this truth,
beneath a veil, in the _Golden Verses_--
“Thou wilt likewise know, that men draw upon themselves
their own misfortunes voluntarily, and of their own free
choice. Unhappy that they are! They neither see nor
understand that their good is near them.”
Far from weakening the sentiment of brotherhood and of the solidarity
of all men, such teaching is bound to strengthen it. We owe help,
sympathy and charity to all; for we are all of the same race, though
we have reached different stages. All suffering is sacred, for pain
is the test of the soul. All sympathy is divine, for it enables us to
feel, as by a magnetic thrill, the invisible chain binding together
all the worlds. The virtue of grief is the reason of genius. Sages and
saints, prophets and divine creators shine with more resplendent beauty
in the eyes of those who know that they too come forth from universal
evolution. How many lives, what innumerable victories have been needed
to acquire this might which fills us with wonder? What heavens have
already been traversed to bring to us this innate light of genius? We
know not; but these lives have been lived, these heavens do exist.
The conscience of nations is not mistaken; the prophets have not lied
in calling these men the sons of God, messengers from heavenly places.
Their mission is demanded by eternal Truth, they are protected by
invisible legions and the living Word speaks in them!
There is one difference in men springing from the primitive essence
of individuals, and another, as we have just said, coming from the
degree of spiritual evolution to which they have attained. From this
latter point of view, we see that men may be placed in four classes,
comprising every subdivision and degree.
1. In the great majority of men, the will acts especially in the body.
These may be designated as _instinctive_ persons. Their sphere includes
not only physical work, but also the exercise and development of the
intelligence in the physical world, consequently commerce and industry.
2. In the second degree of human development the will, and consequently
the consciousness, has its abode in the soul, _i. e._ in sensitiveness,
reacted on by intelligence, which constitutes understanding. These are
_animic, or passionate persons_. According to temperament, they are
fitted to become warriors, artists or poets. The great majority of
savants and literary men belong to this class. They live in relative
ideas, modified by passions or limited by a fixed horizon, without
rising to the height of pure Idea or Universality.
3. In a third class of men, a far rarer one, the will has acquired
the habit of acting principally in pure intellect, of setting free
the intelligence, in its special function, from the tyranny of the
passions and of the limits of matter, thus giving all their conceptions
a character of universality. These are the _intellectual_ persons.
They include such heroes as perish in martyrdom for their country, the
highest type of poets, and especially true philosophers and sages,
those whose mission it is, according to Pythagoras and Plato, to govern
humanity. In these men, passion is not extinct; for without it nothing
could be effected; it constitutes fire and electricity in the moral
world. The passions have here become the servants of intelligence,
whilst in the former category intelligence is, oftener than not, the
slave of the passions.
4. The loftiest human ideal is realized by a fourth class of men,
those who have added to the dominion of the intelligence over soul
and instinct, that of the will over their whole being. They exercise
supreme mastery through the control and possession of all their
faculties. In the human trinity they have realized unity. Owing to
this marvellous concentration, which collects together all the powers
of life, their will, by projecting itself into others, acquires an
almost limitless strength, a radiating and creative magic. These
men have borne different names in history. They are primordial men,
_adepts_, _great initiates_, sublime geniuses who transform and
metamorphose humanity. So rare are they that they may be counted in
history; Providence scatters them here and there at long intervals of
time, like stars in the heavens.[21]
Evidently this last category is outside of all rule or classification,
still, such a constitution of human society as takes no account of
the first three categories, without granting each its normal function
and the means needed for self-development, is merely external, it is
anything but _organic_. It is clear that, in primitive times, probably
dating back to the Vedic epoch, the Brahmans of India founded the
division of society into castes on the ternary principle. In time,
however, this division, so just and fruitful a one, became changed into
an aristocratic and sacerdotal privilege. The principle of vocation
and initiation was replaced by that of heredity. The closed castes
finally became petrified and the irretrievable decadence of India
followed. Egypt, which maintained, during the rule of the Pharaohs, the
ternary constitution with the movable and open castes, the principle
of initiation as applied to the priesthood and that of examination
and control of all military and civil functions, existed for a
period ranging between five and six thousand years without a change
of constitution. As for Greece, her lively, versatile temperament
caused her to pass rapidly from aristocracy to democracy, and from
the latter to tyranny. She turned round in this vicious circle like
a sick man passing from fever to lethargy and back again to fever.
Perhaps she needed this excitement to produce her unparalleled work:
the translation of the profound though obscure wisdom of the East
into clear, universal language; the creation of the Beautiful by Art;
and the foundation of an open and reasonable science following on a
secret, intuitive initiation. And none the less was she indebted to
the principle of initiation for her religious organization and her
loftiest inspirations. Speaking from a social and political standpoint,
it may be said that she always lived in whatever was provisional
and excessive. Pythagoras, in his capacity as an adept, had well
understood, from the heights of initiation, the eternal principles
which control society, and was following out the plan of a mighty
reform in accordance with these truths. Soon we shall see how his
school and himself suffered shipwreck in the storms of democracy.
From the pure, undefiled summits of his teachings the life of the
worlds rolls on, in accordance with the rhythm of Eternity. Glorious
epiphany! Beneath the magic rays, however, of the unveiled firmament,
earth, humanity and life also unfold to us their secret depths. To feel
the presence of God, the infinitely great must be recognized in the
infinitely small. This is what the disciples of Pythagoras experienced
when, to crown his teaching, the master demonstrated to them how
eternal Truth is manifested in the union of man and woman in marriage.
The beauty of the sacred numbers they had heard and contemplated in the
Infinite they were about to recognize at the very heart of life, for
them God was reflected in the great mystery of Sex and Love.
Antiquity had grasped an important truth which succeeding ages have too
long misunderstood. Woman, effectively to fulfil her duties as wife
and mother, needs special instruction and initiation. Hence a purely
feminine initiation; that is to say, one reserved altogether for women.
This existed in India, where in Vedic times the woman was a priestess
at the domestic altar. In Egypt it dates back to the mysteries of Isis.
Orpheus organized this initiation in Greece. Right on to the decay
of paganism we see it flourishing in the Dionysiac mysteries as well
as in the temples of Juno, Diana, Minerva and Ceres. It consisted of
symbolic rites and ceremonies, in festivals by night as well as in
special instruction given by aged priestesses or by the high priest,
and dealing with the most private concerns of married life. Advice and
regulations were given regarding the relations between the sexes, the
times of the year and month favourable for healthy conception. The
highest importance was attached to the physical and moral hygiene of
woman during pregnancy, so that the sacred work, the creation of the
child, might be accomplished in accordance with divine law. In a word,
the science of conjugal life and the art of maternity were taught. The
latter extended to some years after the birth of the child. Up to the
age of seven, the children remained in the gynæceum--which the husband
never entered--under the mother’s exclusive control. The wisdom of
antiquity looked upon the child as being a delicate plant, which, if
it is to be kept from wasting away, needs the warm, cheering atmosphere
of a mother’s love. The father would stunt its growth, a mother’s kiss
and embrace are needed to enable it to blossom forth; a woman’s mighty
encircling love to protect from outside attack this soul which a new
life fills with terror and dismay. It is because woman consciously
fulfilled these lofty functions which antiquity regarded as divine,
that she was in very truth the priestess of the family, the guardian of
the sacred fire of life, the Vesta of the hearth. Feminine initiation
may accordingly be regarded as the veritable reason of the beauty of
the race, its robust descendants and the length of duration of the
family in Greek and Roman antiquity.[22]
In establishing a section for women in his Institute, Pythagoras merely
deepened and refined what already existed. The women he initiated
received from him, along with rites and precepts, the final principles
of their functions. In this way he bestowed the consciousness of
their _rôle_ on such as were deserving of it. He revealed to them the
transfiguration of love in perfect marriage, which is the blending
of two souls at the very centre of life and truth. Is not man in his
strength the representative of the creative spirit and principle? And
does not woman in the totality of her power personify nature in its
plastic force, its wonderful realizations, at once terrestrial and
divine? Then if these two beings succeed in a complete mingling of
body, soul and spirit, they will form between them an epitome of the
universe. To believe in God, however, woman needs to see him living in
man; and to effect this, man must be an initiate. He alone, by reason
of his profound knowledge of life and creative will-power, is capable
of fecundating the feminine soul, of transforming it by means of his
divine ideal. This ideal the loved one gives him back manifold in her
vibrating thoughts, her keen sensations and profound divinations. She
sends him back his image transfigured by enthusiasm, she _becomes_
his ideal, for she realizes it by the power of love in her own soul.
Through her he becomes living and visible, he is made flesh and blood.
For if man creates through desire and will, woman, both physically and
spiritually, brings into being through love.
In her _rôle_ as lover or wife or mother or being inspired, she
is no less great and is even more divine than man. For love is
self-forgetfulness. The woman who forgets self and loses herself in
her love must ever be sublime. In such self-abasement she finds her
celestial re-birth, her crown of light and the immortal radiance of her
entire being.
In modern literature love has been reigning as a master for the past
two centuries. This is not the purely sensual love, born of bodily
beauty, as in the poetry of old, nor is it the insipid worship of an
abstract and conventional ideal as in the middle ages; it is rather a
love both sensual and psychic which gives full scope to its liberty and
individual fancy. Oftener than not both sexes wage war in love itself.
There is the revolt of the woman against man’s egoism and brutality;
the scorn of the man at woman’s deceit and vanity, carnal exclamations
and the ineffectual wrath of the victims to voluptuousness, the slaves
to debauchery. With all this we find deep-rooted passions and terrible
attractions, all the more powerful from being trammeled and fettered
by worldly conventions and social institutions. Hence a love full of
passion and storm, of moral ruin and tragic catastrophe, on which the
modern novel and drama are almost exclusively based. One might say that
tired man, finding God neither in religion nor in science, in despair
seeks for him in woman. And he does well, but it is only through the
initiation of the great truths that he will find Him in Her and Her in
Him. In these souls, which know neither themselves nor one another,
which sometimes leave one another with mutual maledictions, there
is, as it were, a mighty desire for self-penetration, for finding in
such intermingling a happiness that is impossible. In spite of the
aberrations, the outbursts of debauchery resulting therefrom, this
desperate search is necessary; it springs from an unconscious divinity.
It will be a vital element in the reconstruction of the future. For
when man and woman have found themselves and one another through the
channels of profound love and initiation, the fusion of the two will be
the radiating and creative force _par excellence_.
It is only quite recently, then, that psychic love, the soul’s
love-passion, has entered into literature and through it into universal
consciousness. It has its origin, however, in the initiation of the
past. The reason Greek literature scarcely mentions it, is that it was
a most rare exception. Another reason may be found in the profound
secrecy of the mysteries. And yet religious and philosophic tradition
have handed down traces of the woman initiate. Away behind official
poetry and philosophy appear a few half-veiled though luminous woman
forms. We have already mentioned Theoclea who inspired Pythagoras;
later on will come Corinna, the priestess, ofttimes the fortunate
rival of Pindar, who himself was the greatest initiate among the Greek
lyric poets; finally, the mysterious Diotima appeared at the banquet
of Plato to give the supreme revelation of Love. By the side of these
exceptional _rôles_ the Greek woman exercised her veritable priesthood
at the fireside and in the gynæceum. Indeed, she created those heroes,
artists and poets whose sublime deeds, sculptures and songs we so
greatly admire. It was she who conceived them in the mystery of love,
who formed them in her womb with the desire and love of beauty, who
brought them to birth after protecting them beneath her motherly wings.
It must be added that for the man and woman who are real initiates
the creation of the child has an infinitely finer signification and
greater importance than for us. When father and mother know that the
soul of the child existed previous to its birth on earth, conception
becomes a sacred act, the summons of a soul to submit to incarnation.
Between the incarnate soul and the mother there is almost always
considerable similarity. Just as evil-minded and wicked women attract
spirits possessed of demons, divine spirits are attracted to gentle
tender-hearted mothers. Is not this invisible soul, long waited for,
which is to come and finally appears--so wonderfully and yet so
surely--something divine in its nature? Painful will be its birth and
imprisonment in flesh. For though a dense veil gathers between itself
and the heaven it has left, though it no longer remembers--alas! it
suffers none the less on that account! Sacred and divine is the task of
the mother who is to create for it a fresh dwelling, to mitigate the
harshness of its prison and render the trial easier to bear.
Thus we see that the teaching of Pythagoras, which had begun by the
divine trinity in the profound recesses of the Absolute, ended in the
human trinity at the centre of life. In Father, Mother and Child, the
initiate could now recognize the Spirit, Soul and Heart of the living
universe. For him this final initiation constituted the foundation
of the social work, conceived of in all the height and beauty of the
ideal, a building to whose construction each initiate had to bring his
stone.