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The Key To Theosophy

By

H P Blavatsky

 

The Key to TheosophyDedicated by "H.P.B." To all her Pupils,

That They may Learn and Teach in their turn.

 

The Key to Theosophy

A Clear Exposition in the Form of Question and Answer

of the Ethics, Science, and Philosophy for the Study of Which

The Theosophical Society has been founded.

H.P. Blavatsky

 

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The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky

 

 

 

Preface

The purpose of this book is exactly expressed in its title, The Key to

Theosophy, and needs but few words of explanation. It is not a complete or

exhaustive textbook of Theosophy, but only a key to unlock the door that

leads to the deeper study. It traces the broad outlines of the

Wisdom-Religion, and explains its fundamental principles; meeting, at the

same time, the various objections raised by the average Western inquirer,

and endeavoring to present unfamiliar concepts in a form as simple and in

language as clear as possible. That it should succeed in making Theosophy

intelligible without mental effort on the part of the reader, would be too

much to expect; but it is hoped that the obscurity still left is of the

thought and not of the language, is due to depth and not to confusion. To

the mentally lazy or obtuse, Theosophy must remain a riddle; for in the

world mental as in the world spiritual each man must progress by his own

efforts. The writer cannot do the reader's thinking for him, nor would the

latter be any the better off if such vicarious thought were possible. The

need for such an exposition as the present has long been felt among those

interested in the Theosophical Society and its work, and it is hoped that it

will supply information, as free as possible from technicalities, to many

whose attention has been awakened, but who, as yet, are merely puzzled and

not convinced.

Some care has been taken in disentangling some part of what is true from

what is false in Spiritualistic teachings as to the postmortem life, and to

showing the true nature of Spiritualistic phenomena. Previous explanations

of a similar kind have drawn much wrath upon the writer's devoted head; the

Spiritualists, like too many others, preferring to believe what is pleasant

rather than what is true, and becoming very angry with anyone who destroys

an agreeable delusion. For the past year Theosophy has been the target for

every poisoned arrow of Spiritualism, as though the possessors of a half

truth felt more antagonism to the possessors of the whole truth than those

who had no share to boast of.

Very hearty thanks are due from the author to many Theosophists who have

sent suggestions and questions, or have otherwise contributed help during

the writing of this book. The work will be the more useful for their aid,

and that will be their best reward.

-H.P. Blavatsky

1889

Contents



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Preface

Theosophy and The Theosophical Society 1

The Meaning of the Name 1

The Policy of the Theosophical Society 4

The Wisdom-Religion, Esoteric in All Ages 7

Theosophy is Not Buddhism 12

Exoteric and Esoteric Theosophy 15

What the Modern Theosophical Society is Not 15

Theosophists and Members of the T.S. 18

The Difference Between Theosophy and Occultism 23

The Difference Between Theosophy and Spiritualism 25

Why is Theosophy Accepted? 32

The Working System of the T.S. 37

The Objects of the Society 37

The Common Origin of Man 38

Our Other Objects 44

On the Sacredness of the Pledge 45

The Relations of the T.S. to Theosophy 49

On Self-Improvement 49

The Abstract and the Concrete 52

The Fundamental Teachings of Theosophy 57

On God and Prayer 57

Is it Necessary to Pray? 61

Prayer Kills Self-Reliance 66

On the Source of the Human Soul 69

The Buddhist Teachings on the Above 71

Theosophical Teachings as to Nature and Man 77

The Unity of All in All 77

Evolution and Illusion 78

On The Septenary Constitution of Our Planet 81

The Septenary Nature of Man 83

The Distinction Between Soul and Spirit 86



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The Greek Teachings 89

On the Various Postmortem States 95

The Physical and the Spiritual Man 95

On Eternal Reward and Punishment, and on Nirvana 102

On the Various Principles in Man 109

On Reincarnation or Rebirth 115

What is Memory According to Theosophical Teaching? 115

Why Do We Not Remember Our Past Lives? 119

On Individuality and Personality 124

On the Reward and Punishment of the Ego 128

On the Kamaloka and Devachan 133

On the Fate of the Lower Principles 133

Why Theosophists Do Not Believe in the Return of Pure "Spirits" 135

A Few Words About the Skandhas 142

On Postmortem and Postnatal Consciousness 145

What is Really Meant by Annihilation 150

Definite Words for Definite Things 158

On the Nature of Our Thinking Principle 165

The Mystery of the Ego 165

The Complex Nature of Manas 170

The Doctrine is Taught in St. John's Gospel 172

On the Mysteries of Reincarnation 183

Periodical Rebirths 183

What is Karma? 186

Who Are Those Who Know? 199

The Difference Between Faith and Knowledge, Or Blind and Reasoned Faith 201

Has God the Right to Forgive? 205

What is Practical Theosophy? 209

Duty 209

The Relations of the T.S. to Political Reforms 213

On Self-Sacrifice 217

On Charity 222



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Theosophy for the Masses 224

How Members Can Help the Society 227

What a Theosophist Ought Not to Do 228

On the Misconceptions About the T.S. 237

Theosophy and Asceticism 237

Theosophy and Marriage 240

Theosophy and Education 241

Why Then is There So Much Prejudice Against the T.S.? 248

Is the Theosophical Society A Money-Making Concern? 256

The Working Staff of the T.S. 260

The "Theosophical Mahatmas" 263

Are They "Spirits of Light" or "Goblins Damned"? 263

The Abuse of Sacred Names and Terms 273

Conclusion 277

The Future of the Theosophical Society 277

Glossary 281

Appendix 345

The Theosophical Society: Information for Inquirers 345

The Legal Status of the Theosophical Society 347

Note by the editor: the

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Page numbers refer to the book edition and

have no meaning in this file. Despite careful checking for typos there

may still be a few left.

Theosophy and The Theosophical Society

The Meaning of the Name


Q. Theosophy and its doctrines are often referred to as a newfangled

religion. Is it a religion?

A. It is not. Theosophy is Divine Knowledge or Science.


Q. What is the real meaning of the term?

A. "Divine Wisdom," (Theosophia) or Wisdom of the gods, as (theogonia),

genealogy of the gods. The word 'theos' means a god in Greek, one of the

divine beings, certainly not "God" in the sense attached in our day to the

term. Therefore, it is not "Wisdom of God," as translated by some, but

Divine Wisdom such as that possessed by the gods. The term is many thousand

years old.


Q. What is the origin of the name?

A. It comes to us from the Alexandrian philosophers, called lovers of truth,

Philaletheians, from (phil) "loving," and (aletheia) "truth." The name



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Theosophy dates from the third century of our era, and began with Ammonius

Saccas and his disciples, also called Analogeticists, who started the

Eclectic Theosophical system.

As explained by Professor Wilder, they were called so because of their

practice of interpreting all sacred legends and narratives, myths and

mysteries, by a rule or principle of analogy and correspondence: so that

events which were related as having occurred in the external world were

regarded as expressing operations and experiences of the human soul. They

were also denominated Neo-Platonists. Though Theosophy, or the Eclectic

Theosophical system, is generally attributed to the third century, yet, if

Diogenes Laërtius is to be credited, its origin is much earlier, as he

attributed the system to an Egyptian priest, Pot-Amun, who lived in the

early days of the Ptolemaic dynasty. The same author tells us that the name

is Coptic, and signifies one consecrated to Amun, the God of Wisdom.

Theosophy is the equivalent of Brahma-Vidya , divine knowledge.


Q. What was the object of this system?

A. First of all to inculcate certain great moral truths upon its disciples,

and all those who were "lovers of the truth." Hence the motto adopted by the

Theosophical Society: "There is no religion higher than truth."

Eclectic Theosophy was divided under three heads:

1. Belief in one absolute, incomprehensible and supreme Deity, or infinite

essence, which is the root of all nature, and of all that is, visible and

invisible.

2. Belief in man's eternal immortal nature, because, being a radiation of

the Universal Soul, it is of an identical essence with it.

3. Theurgy, or "divine work," or producing a work of gods; from theoi,

"gods," and ergein, "to work."

The term is very old, but, as it belongs to the vocabulary of the mysteries,

was not in popular use. It was a mystic belief-practically proven by

initiated adepts and priests-that, by making oneself as pure as the

incorporeal beings-i.e., by returning to one's pristine purity of nature-man

could move the gods to impart to him Divine mysteries, and even cause them

to become occasionally visible, either subjectively or objectively. It was

the transcendental aspect of what is now called Spiritualism; but having

been abused and misconceived by the populace, it had come to be regarded by

some as necromancy, and was generally forbidden. A travestied practice of

the theurgy of Iamblichus lingers still in the ceremonial magic of some

modern Cabalists. Modern Theosophy avoids and rejects both these kinds of

magic and "necromancy" as being very dangerous. Real divine theurgy requires

an almost superhuman purity and holiness of life; otherwise it degenerates

into mediumship or black magic. The immediate disciples of Ammonius Saccas,

who was called Theodidaktos, "god-taught"-such as Plotinus and his follower

Porphyry-rejected theurgy at first, but were finally reconciled to it

through Iamblichus, who wrote a work to that effect entitled De Mysteriis,

under the name of his own master, a famous Egyptian priest called Abammon.

Ammonius Saccas was the son of Christian parents, and, having been repelled

by dogmatic Spiritualistic Christianity from his childhood, became a

Neo-Platonist, and like J. Boëhme and other great seers and mystics, is said

to have had divine wisdom revealed to him in dreams and visions. Hence his

name of Theodidaktos. He resolved to reconcile every system of religion, and

by demonstrating their identical origin to establish one universal creed

based on ethics. His life was so blameless and pure, his learning so

profound and vast, that several Church Fathers were his secret disciples.

Clemens Alexandrinus speaks very highly of him. Plotinus, the "St. John" of

Ammonius, was also a man universally respected and esteemed, and of the most

profound learning and integrity. When thirty-nine years of age he



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accompanied the Roman Emperor Gordian and his army to the East, to be

instructed by the sages of Bactria and India. He had a School of Philosophy

in Rome. Porphyry, his disciple, whose real name was Malek (a Hellenized

Jew), collected all the writings of his master. Porphyry was himself a great

author, and gave an allegorical interpretation to some parts of Homer's

writings. The system of meditation the Philaletheians resorted to was

ecstasy, a system akin to Indian Yoga practice. What is known of the

Eclectic School is due to Origen, Longinus, and Plotinus, the immediate

disciples of Ammonius.

The chief aim of the Founders of the Eclectic Theosophical School was one of

the three objects of its modern successor, the Theosophical Society, namely,

to reconcile all religions, sects, and nations under a common system of

ethics, based on eternal verities.


Q. What have you to show that this is not an impossible dream; and that all

the world's religions are based on the one and the same truth?

A. Their comparative study and analysis. The "Wisdom-Religion" was one in

antiquity; and the sameness of primitive religious philosophy is proven to

us by the identical doctrines taught to the Initiates during the mysteries,

an institution once universally diffused.

All the old worships indicate the existence of a single Theosophy anterior

to them. The key that is to open one must open all; otherwise it cannot be

the right key.

-oOo-The

Policy of the Theosophical Society


Q. In the days of Ammonius there were several ancient great religions, and

numerous were the sects in Egypt and Palestine alone. How could he reconcile

them?

A. By doing that which we again try to do now. The Neo-Platonists were a

large body, and belonged to various religious philosophies; so do our

Theosophists.

It was under Philadelphus that Judaism established itself in Alexandria, and

forthwith the Hellenic teachers became the dangerous rivals of the College

of Rabbis of Babylon. As the author of The Eclectic Philosophy very

pertinently remarks:

The Buddhist, Vedantic, and Magian systems were expounded along with the

philosophies of Greece at that period. It was not wonderful that thoughtful

men supposed that the strife of words ought to cease, and considered it

possible to extract one harmonious system from these various teachings …

Panaetius, Athenagoras, and Clement were thoroughly instructed in Platonic

philosophy, and comprehended its essential unity with the Oriental systems.

In those days, the Jew Aristobulus affirmed that the ethics of Aristotle

represented the esoteric teachings of the Law of Moses; Philo Judaeus

endeavored to reconcile the Pentateuch with the Pythagorean and Platonic

philosophy; and Josephus proved that the Essenes of Carmel were simply the

copyists and followers of the Egyptian Therapeutae (the healers). So it is

in our day. We can show the line of descent of every Christian religion, as

of every, even the smallest, sect. The latter are the minor twigs or shoots

grown on the larger branches; but shoots and branches spring from the same

trunk-the wisdom-religion. To prove this was the aim of Ammonius, who

endeavored to induce Gentiles and Christians, Jews and Idolaters, to lay

aside their contention and strife, remembering only that they were all in

possession of the same truth under various vestments, and were all the

children of a common mother. This is the aim of Theosophy likewise.



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Says Mosheim of Ammonius:

Conceiving that not only the philosophers of Greece, but also all those of

the different barbarian nations, were perfectly in unison with each other

with regard to every essential point, he made it his business so to expound

the thousand tenets of all these various sects as to show they had all

originated from one and the same source, and tended all to one and the same

end.

If the writer on Ammonius in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia knows what he is

talking about, then he describes the modern Theosophists, their beliefs, and

their work, for he says, speaking of the Theodidaktos:

He adopted the doctrines which were received in Egypt (the esoteric were

those of India) concerning the Universe and the Deity, considered as

constituting one great whole; concerning the eternity of the world … and

established a system of moral discipline which allowed the people in general

to live according to the laws of their country and the dictates of nature,

but required the wise to exalt their mind by contemplation.


Q. What is your authority for saying this of the ancient Theosophists of

Alexandria?

A. An almost countless number of well-known writers. Mosheim, one of them,

says that:

Ammonius taught that the religion of the multitude went hand-in-hand with

philosophy, and with her had shared the fate of being by degrees corrupted

and obscured with mere human conceits, superstitions, and lies; that it

ought, therefore, to be brought back to its original purity by purging it of

this dross and expounding it upon philosophical principles; and the whole

Christ had in view was to reinstate and restore to its primitive integrity

the wisdom of the ancients; to reduce within bounds the

universally-prevailing dominion of superstition; and in part to correct, and

in part to exterminate the various errors that had found their way into the

different popular religions.

This, again, is precisely what the modern Theosophists say. Only while the

great Philaletheian was supported and helped in the policy he pursued by two

Church Fathers, Clement and Athenagoras, by all the learned Rabbis of the

Synagogue, the Academy and the Groves, and while he taught a common doctrine

for all, we, his followers on the same line, receive no recognition, but, on

the contrary, are abused and persecuted. People 1,500 years ago are thus

shown to have been more tolerant than they are in this enlightened century.


Q. Was he encouraged and supported by the Church because, notwithstanding

his heresies, Ammonius taught Christianity and was a Christian?

A. Not at all. He was born a Christian, but never accepted Church

Christianity. As said of him by the same writer:

He had but to propound his instructions according to the ancient pillars of

Hermes, which Plato and Pythagoras knew before, and from them constituted

their philosophy. Finding the same in the prologue of the Gospel according

to St. John, he very properly supposed that the purpose of Jesus was to

restore the great doctrine of wisdom in its primitive integrity. The

narratives of the Bible and the stories of the gods he considered to be

allegories illustrative of the truth, or else fables to be rejected. As says

the Edinburgh Encyclopedia:

Moreover, he acknowledged that Jesus Christ was an excellent man and the

"friend of God," but alleged that it was not his design entirely to abolish

the worship of demons (gods), and that his only intention was to purify the



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ancient religion.

-oOo-The

Wisdom-Religion, Esoteric in All Ages


Q. Since Ammonius never committed anything to writing, how can one feel sure

that such were his teachings?

A. Neither did Buddha, Pythagoras, Confucius, Orpheus, Socrates, or even

Jesus, leave behind them any writings. Yet most of these are historical

personages, and their teachings have all survived. The disciples of Ammonius

(among whom Origen and Herennius) wrote treatises and explained his ethics.

Certainly the latter are as historical, if not more so, than the Apostolic

writings. Moreover, his pupils-Origen, Plotinus, and Longinus (counselor of

the famous Queen Zenobia)-have all left voluminous records of the

Philaletheian System-so far, at all events, as their public profession of

faith was known, for the school was divided into exoteric and esoteric

teachings.


Q. How have the latter tenets reached our day, since you hold that what is

properly called the wisdom-religion was esoteric?

A. The wisdom-religion was ever one, and being the last word of possible

human knowledge, was, therefore, carefully preserved. It preceded by long

ages the Alexandrian Theosophists, reached the modern, and will survive

every other religion and philosophy.


Q. Where and by whom was it so preserved?

A. Among Initiates of every country; among profound seekers after

truth-their disciples; and in those parts of the world where such topics

have always been most valued and pursued: in India, Central Asia, and

Persia.


Q. Can you give me some proofs of its esotericism?

A. The best proof you can have of the fact is that every ancient religious,

or rather philosophical, cult consisted of an esoteric or secret teaching,

and an exoteric (outward public) worship. Furthermore, it is a well-known

fact that the mysteries of the ancients comprised with every nation the

"greater" (secret) and "Lesser" (public) mysteries-e.g., in the celebrated

solemnities called the Eleusinia, in Greece. From the Hierophants of

Samothrace, Egypt, and the initiated Brahmins of the India of old, down to

the later Hebrew Rabbis, all preserved, for fear of profanation, their real

bona fide beliefs secret. The Jewish Rabbis called their secular religious

series the Merkabah (the exterior body), "the vehicle," or, the covering

which contains the hidden soul-i.e., their highest secret knowledge. Not one

of the ancient nations ever imparted through its priests its real

philosophical secrets to the masses, but allotted to the latter only the

husks. Northern Buddhism has its "greater" and its "lesser" vehicle, known

as the Mahayana, the esoteric, and the Hinayana, the exoteric, Schools. Nor

can you blame them for such secrecy; for surely you would not think of

feeding your flock of sheep on learned dissertations on botany instead of on

grass? Pythagoras called his Gnosis "the knowledge of things that are," or

[translit.Greek] "he gnosis ton onton" and preserved that knowledge for his

pledged disciples only: for those who could digest such mental food and feel

satisfied; and he pledged them to silence and secrecy. Occult alphabets and

secret ciphers are the development of the old Egyptian hieratic writings,

the secret of which was, in the days of old, in the possession only of the

Hierogrammatists, or initiated Egyptian priests. Ammonius Saccas, as his

biographers tell us, bound his pupils by oath not to divulge his higher

doctrines except to those who had already been instructed in preliminary

knowledge, and who were also bound by a pledge. Finally, do we not find the



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same even in early Christianity, among the Gnostics, and even in the

teachings of Christ? Did he not speak to the multitudes in parables which

had a two-fold meaning, and explain his reasons only to his disciples? He

says:

To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven; but unto

them that are without, all these things are done in parables

The Essenes of Judea and Carmel made similar distinctions, dividing their

adherents into neophytes, brethren, and the perfect, or those initiated.

Examples might be brought from every country to this effect.


Q. Can you attain the "Secret Wisdom" simply by study? Encyclopedias define

Theosophy pretty much as Webster's Dictionary does, i.e., as

… supposed intercourse with God and superior spirits, and consequent

attainment of superhuman knowledge by physical means and chemical processes.

Is this so?

A. I think not. Nor is there any lexicographer capable of explaining,

whether to himself or others, how superhuman knowledge can be attained by

physical or chemical processes. Had Webster said "by metaphysical and

alchemical processes," the definition would be approximately correct: as it

is, it is absurd. Ancient Theosophists claimed, and so do the modern, that

the infinite cannot be known by the finite-i.e., sensed by the finite

Self-but that the divine essence could be communicated to the higher

Spiritual Self in a state of ecstasy. This condition can hardly be attained,

like hypnotism, by "physical and chemical means."


Q. What is your explanation of it?

A. Real ecstasy was defined by Plotinus as "the liberation of the mind from

its finite consciousness, becoming one and identified with the infinite."

This is the highest condition, says Professor Wilder, but not one of

permanent duration, and it is reached only by the very, very few. It is,

indeed, identical with that state which is known in India as Samadhi. The

latter is practiced by the Yogis, who facilitate it physically by the

greatest abstinence in food and drink, and mentally by an incessant endeavor

to purify and elevate the mind. Meditation is silent and unuttered prayer,

or, as Plato expressed it,

… the ardent turning of the soul toward the divine; not to ask any

particular good (as in the common meaning of prayer), but for good

itself-for the universal Supreme Good …

-of which we are a part on earth, and out of the essence of which we have

all emerged. Therefore, adds Plato,

Remain silent in the presence of the divine ones, till they remove the

clouds from thy eyes and enable thee to see by the light which issues from

themselves, not what appears as good to thee, but what is intrinsically

good.

This is what the scholarly author of The Eclectic Philosophy, Professor

Alexander Wilder, F.T.S., describes as "spiritual photography":

The soul is the camera in which facts and events, future, past, and present,

are alike fixed; and the mind becomes conscious of them. Beyond our everyday

world of limits all is one day or state-the past and future comprised in the

present. … Death is the last ecstasis on earth. Then the soul is freed from

the constraint of the body, and its nobler part is united to higher nature

and becomes partaker in the wisdom and foreknowledge of the higher beings.



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Real Theosophy is, for the mystics, that state which Apollonius of Tyana was

made to describe thus:

I can see the present and the future as in a clear mirror. The sage need not

wait for the vapors of the earth and the corruption of the air to foresee

events … The theoi, or gods, see the future; common men the present, sages

that which is about to take place.

"The Theosophy of the Sages" he speaks of is well expressed in the

assertion, "The Kingdom of God is within us."


Q. Theosophy, then, is not, as held by some, a newly devised scheme?

A. Only ignorant people can thus refer to it. It is as old as the world, in

its teachings and ethics, if not in name, as it is also the broadest and

most catholic system among all.


Q. How comes it, then, that Theosophy has remained so unknown to the nations

of the Western Hemisphere? Why should it have been a sealed book to races

confessedly the most cultured and advanced?

A. We believe there were nations as cultured in days of old and certainly

more spiritually "advanced" than we are. But there are several reasons for

this willing ignorance. One of them was given by St. Paul to the cultured

Athenians-a loss, for long centuries, of real spiritual insight, and even

interest, owing to their too great devotion to things of sense and their

long slavery to the dead letter of dogma and ritualism. But the strongest

reason for it lies in the fact that real Theosophy has ever been kept

secret.


Q. You have brought forward proofs that such secrecy has existed; but what

was the real cause for it?

A. The causes for it were:

1. The perversity of average human nature and its selfishness, always

tending to the gratification of personal desires to the detriment of

neighbors arid next of kin. Such people could never be entrusted with divine

secrets.

2. Their unreliability to keep the sacred and divine knowledge from

desecration. It is the latter that led to the perversion of the most sublime

truths and symbols, and to the gradual transformation of things spiritual

into anthropomorphic, concrete, and gross imagery-in other words, to the

dwarfing of the god-idea and to idolatry.

-oOo-Theosophy

is Not Buddhism


Q. You are often spoken of as "Esoteric Buddhists." Are you then all

followers of Gautama Buddha?

A. No more than musicians are all followers of Wagner. Some of us are

Buddhists by religion; yet there are far more Hindus and Brahmins than

Buddhists among us, and more Christian-born Europeans and Americans than

converted Buddhists. The mistake has arisen from a misunderstanding of the

real meaning of the title of Mr. Sinnett's excellent work, Esoteric

Buddhism, which last word ought to have been spelt with one, instead of two,

d's, as then Budhism would have meant what it was intended for, merely

"Wisdom-ism" (Bodha, bodhi, "intelligence," "wisdom") instead of Buddhism,

Gautama's religious philosophy. Theosophy, as already said, is the

wisdom-religion.



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Q. What is the difference between Buddhism, the religion founded by the

Prince of Kapilavastu, and Budhism, the "Wisdomism" which you say is

synonymous with Theosophy?

A. Just the same difference as there is between the secret teachings of

Christ, which are called "the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven," and the

later ritualism and dogmatic theology of the Churches and Sects. Buddha

means the "Enlightened" by Bodha, or understanding, Wisdom. This has passed

root and branch into the esoteric teachings that Gautama imparted to his

chosen Arhats only.


Q. But some Orientalists deny that Buddha ever taught any esoteric doctrine

at all?

A. They may as well deny that Nature has any hidden secrets for the men of

science. Further on I will prove it by Buddha's conversation with his

disciple Ananda. His esoteric teachings were simply the Gupta-Vidya (secret

knowledge) of the ancient Brahmins, the key to which their modern successors

have, with few exceptions, completely lost. And this Vidya has passed into

what is now known as the inner teachings of the Mahayana school of Northern

Buddhism. Those who deny it are simply ignorant pretenders to Orientalism. I

advise you to read the Rev. Mr. Edkin's Chinese Buddhism-especially the

chapters on the Exoteric and Esoteric schools and teachings-and then compare

the testimony of the whole ancient world upon the subject.


Q. But are not the ethics of Theosophy identical with those taught by

Buddha?

A. Certainly, because these ethics are the soul of the Wisdom-Religion, and

were once the common property of the initiates of all nations. But Buddha

was the first to embody these lofty ethics in his public teachings, and to

make them the foundation and the very essence of his public system. It is

herein that lies the immense difference between exoteric Buddhism and every

other religion. For while in other religions ritualism and dogma hold the

first and most important place, in Buddhism it is the ethics which have

always been the most insisted upon. This accounts for the resemblance,

amounting almost to identity, between the ethics of Theosophy and those of

the religion of Buddha.


Q. Are there any great points of difference?

A. One great distinction between Theosophy and exoteric Buddhism is that the

latter, represented by the Southern Church, entirely denies (a) the

existence of any Deity, and (b) any conscious postmortem life, or even any

self-conscious surviving individuality in man. Such at least is the teaching

of the Siamese sect, now considered as the purest form of exoteric Buddhism.

And it is so, if we refer only to Buddha's public teachings; the reason for

such reticence on his part I will give further on. But the schools of the

Northern Buddhist Church, established in those countries to which his

initiated Arhats retired after the Master's death, teach all that is now

called Theosophical doctrines, because they form part of the knowledge of

the initiates-thus proving how the truth has been sacrificed to the

dead-letter by the too-zealous orthodoxy of Southern Buddhism. But how much

grander and more noble, more philosophical and scientific, even in its

dead-letter, is this teaching than that of any other Church or religion. Yet

Theosophy is not Buddhism.

Exoteric and Esoteric Theosophy

What the Modern Theosophical Society is Not


Q. Your doctrines, then, are not a revival of Buddhism, nor are they

entirely copied from the Neo-Platonic Theosophy?



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A. They are not. But to these questions I cannot give you a better answer

than by quoting from a paper read on "Theosophy" by Dr. J.D. Buck, F.T.S.,

No living Theosophist has better expressed and understood the real essence

of Theosophy than our honored friend Dr. Buck:

The Theosophical Society was organized for the purpose of promulgating the

Theosophical doctrines, and for the promotion of the Theosophic life. The

present Theosophical Society is not the first of its kind. I have a volume

entitled: Theosophical Transactions of the Philadelphian Society, published

in London in 1697; and another with the following title:

Introduction to Theosophy, or the Science of the Mystery of Christ; that is,

of Deity, Nature, and Creature, embracing the philosophy of all the working

powers of life, magical and spiritual, ant forming a practical guide to the

most sublime purity, sanctity, and evangelical perfection; also to the

attainment of divine vision, and the holy angelic arts, potencies, and other

prerogatives of the regeneration.

-published in London in 1855. The following is the dedication of this

volume:

To the students of Universities, Colleges, and schools of Christendom: To

Professors of Metaphysical, Mechanical, and Natural Science in all its

forms: To men and women of Education generally, of fundamental orthodox

faith: To Deists, Arians, Unitarians, Swedenborgians, and other defective

and ungrounded creeds, rationalists, and skeptics of every kind: To

just-minded and enlightened Mohammedans, Jews, and oriental

Patriarch-religionists: but especially to the gospel minister and

missionary, whether to the barbaric or intellectual peoples, this

introduction to Theosophy, or the science of the ground and mystery of all

things, is most humbly and affectionately dedicated.

In the following year (1856) another volume was issued, royal octavo, of 600



Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales

Pages, diamond type, of Theosophical Miscellanies. Of the last-named work

500 copies only were issued, for gratuitous distribution to Libraries and

Universities. These earlier movements, of which there were many, originated

within the Church, with persons of great piety and earnestness, and of

unblemished character; and all of these writings were in orthodox form,

using

the Christian expressions, and, like the writings of the eminent Churchman

William Law, would only be distinguished by the ordinary reader for their

great earnestness and piety. These were one and all but attempts to derive

and explain the deeper meanings and original import of the Christian

Scriptures, and to illustrate and unfold the Theosophic life. These works

were soon forgotten, and are now generally unknown. They sought to reform

the clergy and revive genuine piety, and were never welcomed. That one word,

Heresy, was sufficient to bury them in the limbo of all such Utopias. At the

time of the Reformation John Reuchlin made a similar attempt with the same

result, though he was the intimate and trusted friend of Luther. Orthodoxy

never desired to be informed and enlightened. These reformers were informed,

as was Paul by Festus, that too much learning had made them mad, and that it

would be dangerous to go farther. Passing by the verbiage, which was partly

a matter of habit and education with these writers, and partly due to

religious restraint through secular power, and coming to the core of the

matter, these writings were Theosophical in the strictest sense, and pertain

solely to man's knowledge of his own nature and the higher life of the soul.

The present Theosophical Movement has sometimes been declared to be an



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attempt to convert Christendom to Buddhism, which means simply that the word

Heresy has lost its terrors and relinquished its power. Individuals in every

age have more or less clearly apprehended the Theosophical doctrines and

wrought them into the fabric of their lives. These doctrines belong

exclusively to no religion, and are confined to no society or time. They are

the birthright of every human soul. Such a thing as orthodoxy must be

wrought out by each individual according to his nature and his needs, and

according to his varying experience. This may explain why those who have

imagined Theosophy to be a new religion have hunted in vain for its creed

and its ritual. Its creed is Loyalty to Truth, and its ritual "To honor

every truth by use."

How little this principle of Universal Brotherhood is understood by the

masses of mankind, how seldom its transcendent importance is recognized, may

be seen in the diversity of opinion and fictitious interpretations regarding

the Theosophical Society. This Society was organized on this one principle,

the essential Brotherhood of Man, as herein briefly outlined and imperfectly

set forth. It has been assailed as Buddhist and anti-Christian, as though it

could be both these together, when both Buddhism and Christianity, as set

forth by their inspired founders, make brotherhood the one essential of

doctrine and of life. Theosophy has been also regarded as something new

under the sun, or, at best as old mysticism masquerading under a new name.

While it is true that many Societies founded upon, and united to support,

the principles of altruism, or essential brotherhood, have borne various

names, it is also true that many have also been called Theosophic, and with

principles and aims as the present society bearing that name. With these

societies, one and all, the essential doctrine has been the same, and all

else has been incidental, though this does not obviate the fact that many

persons are attracted to the incidentals who overlook or ignore the

essentials.

No better or more explicit answer-by a man who is one of our most esteemed

and earnest Theosophists-could be given to your questions.


Q. Which system do you prefer or follow, in that case, besides Buddhist

ethics?

A. None, and all. We hold to no religion, as to no philosophy in particular:

we cull the good we find in each. But here, again, it must be stated that,

like all other ancient systems, Theosophy is divided into Exoteric and

Esoteric Sections.


Q. What is the difference?

A. The members of the Theosophical Society at large are free to profess

whatever religion or philosophy they like, or none if they so prefer,

provided they are in sympathy with, and ready to carry out one or more of

the three objects of the Association. The Society is a philanthropic and

scientific body for the propagation of the idea of brotherhood on practical

instead of theoretical lines. The Fellows may be Christians or Muslims, Jews

or Parsees, Buddhists or Brahmins, Spiritualists or Materialists, it does

not matter; but every member must be either a philanthropist, or a scholar,

a searcher into ryan and other old literature, or a psychic student. In

short, he has to help, if he can, in the carrying out of at least one of the

objects of the program. Otherwise he has no reason for becoming a "Fellow."

Such are the majority of the exoteric Society, composed of "attached" and

"unattached" members. These may, or may not, become Theosophists de facto.

Members they are, by virtue of their having joined the Society; but the

latter cannot make a Theosophist of one who has no sense for the divine

fitness of things, or of him who understands Theosophy in his own-if the

expression may be used-sectarian and egotistic way. "Handsome is, as

handsome does" could be paraphrased in this case and be made to run:

"Theosophist is, who Theosophy does."



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-oOo-Theosophists

and Members of the T.S.


Q. This applies to lay members, as I understand. And what of those who

pursue the esoteric study of Theosophy; are they the real Theosophists?

A. Not necessarily, until they have proven themselves to be such. They have

entered the inner group and pledged themselves to carry out, as strictly as

they can, the rules of the occult body. This is a difficult undertaking, as

the foremost rule of all is the entire renunciation of one's

personality-i.e., a pledged member has to become a thorough altruist, never

to think of himself, and to forget his own vanity and pride in the thought

of the good of his fellow-creatures, besides that of his fellow-brothers in

the esoteric circle. He has to live, if the esoteric instructions shall

profit him, a life of abstinence in everything, of self-denial and strict

morality, doing his duty by all men. The few real Theosophists in the T.S.

are among these members.

A. This does not imply that outside of the T.S. and the inner circle, there

are no Theosophists; for there are, and more than people know of; certainly

far more than are found among the lay members of the T.S.


Q. Then what is the good of joining the so-called Theosophical Society in

that case? Where is the incentive?

A. None, except the advantage of getting esoteric instructions, the genuine

doctrines of the "Wisdom-Religion," and if the real program is carried out,

deriving much help from mutual aid and sympathy. Union is strength and

harmony, and well-regulated simultaneous efforts produce wonders. This has

been the secret of all associations and communities since mankind existed.


Q. But why could not a man of well-balanced mind and singleness of purpose,

one, say, of indomitable energy and perseverance, become an Occultist and

even an Adept if he works alone?

A. He may; but there are ten thousand chances against one that he will fail.

For one reason out of many others, no books on Occultism or Theurgy exist in

our day which give out the secrets of alchemy or medieval Theosophy in plain

language. All are symbolical or in parables; and as the key to these has

been lost for ages in the West, how can a man learn the correct meaning of

what he is reading and studying? Therein lies the greatest danger, one that

leads to unconscious black magic or the most helpless mediumship. He who has

not an Initiate for a master had better leave the dangerous study alone.

Look around you and observe. While two-thirds of civilized society ridicule

the mere notion that there is anything in Theosophy, Occultism,

Spiritualism, or in the Cabala, the other third is composed of the most

heterogeneous and opposite elements. Some believe in the mystical, and even

in the supernatural (!), but each believes in his own way. Others will rush

single-handed into the study of the Cabala, Psychism, Mesmerism,

Spiritualism, or some form or another of Mysticism. Result: no two men think

alike, no two are agreed upon any fundamental occult principles, though many

are those who claim for themselves the ultima thule of knowledge, and would

make outsiders believe that they are full-blown adepts. Not only is there no

scientific and accurate knowledge of Occultism accessible in the West-not

even of true astrology, the only branch of Occultism which, in its exoteric

teachings, has definite laws and a definite system-but no one has any idea

of what real Occultism means. Some limit ancient wisdom to the Cabala and

the Jewish Zohar, which each interprets in his own way according to the

dead-letter of the Rabbinical methods. Others regard Swedenborg or Boëhme as

the ultimate expressions of the highest wisdom; while others again see in

mesmerism the great secret of ancient magic. One and all of those who put

their theory into practice are rapidly drifting, through ignorance, into

black magic. Happy are those who escape from it, as they have neither test



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nor criterion by which they can distinguish between the true and the false.


Q. Are we to understand that the inner group of the T.S. claims to learn

what it does from real initiates or masters of esoteric wisdom?

A. Not directly. The personal presence of such masters is not required.

Suffice it if they give instructions to some of those who have studied under

their guidance for years, and devoted their whole lives to their service.

Then, in turn, these can give out the knowledge so imparted to others, who

had no such opportunity. A portion of the true sciences is better than a

mass of undigested and misunderstood learning. An ounce of gold is worth a

ton of dust.


Q. But how is one to know whether the ounce is real gold or only a

counterfeit?

A. A tree is known by its fruit, a system by its results. When our opponents

are able to prove to us that any solitary student of Occultism throughout

the ages has become a saintly adept like Ammonius Saccas, or even a

Plotinus, or a Theurgist like Iamblichus, or achieved feats such as are

claimed to have been done by St. Germain, without any master to guide him,

and all this without being a medium, a self-deluded psychic, or a

charlatan-then shall we confess ourselves mistaken. But till then,

Theosophists prefer to follow the proven natural law of the tradition of the

Sacred Science. There are mystics who have made great discoveries in

chemistry and physical sciences, almost bordering on alchemy and Occultism;

others who, by the sole aid of their genius, have rediscovered portions, if

not the whole, of the lost alphabets of the "Mystery language," and are,

therefore, able to read correctly Hebrew scrolls; others still, who, being

seers, have caught wonderful glimpses of the hidden secrets of Nature. But

all these are specialists. One is a theoretical inventor, another a Hebrew,

i.e., a Sectarian Cabalist, a third a Swedenborg of modern times, denying

all and everything outside of his own particular science or religion. Not

one of them can boast of having produced a universal or even a national

benefit thereby, not even to himself. With the exception of a few healers-of

that class which the Royal College of Physicians or Surgeons would call

quacks-none have helped with their science Humanity, nor even a number of

men of the same community. Where are the Chaldeans of old, those who wrought

marvelous cures, "not by charms but by simples"? Where is an Apollonius of

Tyana, who healed the sick and raised the dead under any climate and

circumstances? We know some specialists of the former class in Europe, but

none of the latter-except in Asia, where the secret of the Yogi, "to live in

death," is still preserved.


Q. Is the production of such healing adepts the aim of Theosophy?

A. Its aims are several; but the most important of all are those which are

likely to lead to the relief of human suffering under any or every form,

moral as well as physical. And we believe the former to be far more

important than the latter. Theosophy has to inculcate ethics; it has to

purify the soul, if it would relieve the physical body, whose ailments, save

cases of accidents, are all hereditary. It is not by studying Occultism for

selfish ends, for the gratification of one's personal ambition, pride, or

vanity, that one can ever reach the true goal: that of helping suffering

mankind. Nor is it by studying one single branch of the esoteric philosophy

that a man becomes an Occultist, but by studying, if not mastering, them

all.


Q. Is help, then, to reach this most important aim, given only to those who

study the esoteric sciences?

A. Not at all. Every lay member is entitled to general instruction if he

only wants it; but few are willing to become what is called "working

members," and most prefer to remain the drones of Theosophy. Let it be



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understood that private research is encouraged in the T.S., provided it does

not infringe the limit which separates the exoteric from the esoteric, the

blind from the conscious magic.

-oOo-The

Difference Between Theosophy and Occultism


Q. You speak of Theosophy and Occultism; are they identical?

A. By no means. A man may be a very good Theosophist indeed, whether in or

outside of the Society, without being in any way an Occultist. But no one

can be a true Occultist without being a real Theosophist; otherwise he is

simply a black magician, whether conscious or unconscious.


Q. What do you mean?

A. I have said already that a true Theosophist must put in practice the

loftiest moral ideal, must strive to realize his unity with the whole of

humanity, and work ceaselessly for others. Now, if an Occultist does not do

all this, he must act selfishly for his own personal benefit; and if he has

acquired more practical power than other ordinary men, he becomes forthwith

a far more dangerous enemy to the world and those around him than the

average mortal. This is clear.


Q. Then is an Occultist simply a man who possesses more power than other

people?

A. Far more-if he is a practical and really learned Occultist, and not one

only in name. Occult sciences are not, as described in Encyclopedias,

… those imaginary sciences of the Middle Ages which related to the supposed

action or influence of Occult qualities or supernatural powers, as alchemy,

magic, necromancy, and astrology …

-for they are real, actual, and very dangerous sciences. They teach the

secret potency of things in Nature, developing and cultivating the hidden

powers "latent in man," thus giving him tremendous advantages over more

ignorant mortals. Hypnotism, now become so common and a subject of serious

scientific inquiry, is a good instance in point. Hypnotic power has been

discovered almost by accident, the way to it having been prepared by

mesmerism; and now an able hypnotist can do almost anything with it, from

forcing a man, unconsciously to himself, to play the fool, to making him

commit a crime-often by proxy for the hypnotist, and for the benefit of the

latter. Is not this a terrible power if left in the hands of unscrupulous

persons? And please to remember that this is only one of the minor branches

of Occultism.


Q. But are not all these Occult sciences, magic, and sorcery, considered by

the most cultured and learned people as relics of ancient ignorance and

superstition?

A. Let me remind you that this remark of yours cuts both ways. The "most

cultured and learned" among you regard also Christianity and every other

religion as a relic of ignorance and superstition. People begin to believe

now, at any rate, in hypnotism, and some-even of the most cultured-in

Theosophy and phenomena. But who among them, except preachers and blind

fanatics, will confess to a belief in Biblical miracles? And this is where

the point of difference comes in. There are very good and pure Theosophists

who may believe in the supernatural, divine miracles included, but no

Occultist will do so. For an Occultist practices scientific Theosophy, based

on accurate knowledge of Nature's secret workings; but a Theosophist,

practicing the powers called abnormal, minus the light of Occultism, will

simply tend toward a dangerous form of mediumship, because, although holding



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to Theosophy and its highest conceivable code of ethics, he practices it in

the dark, on sincere but blind faith. Anyone, Theosophist or Spiritualist,

who attempts to cultivate one of the branches of Occult science-e.g.,

Hypnotism, Mesmerism, or even the secrets of producing physical phenomena,

etc.-without the knowledge of the philosophic rationale of those powers, is

like a rudderless boat launched on a stormy ocean.

-oOo-The

Difference Between Theosophy and Spiritualism


Q. But do you not believe in Spiritualism?

A. If by "Spiritualism" you mean the explanation which Spiritualists give of

some abnormal phenomena, then decidedly we do not. They maintain that these

manifestations are all produced by the "spirits" of departed mortals,

generally their relatives, who return to earth, they say, to communicate

with those they have loved or to whom they are attached. We deny this point

blank. We assert that the spirits of the dead cannot return to earth-save in

rare and exceptional cases, of which I may speak later; nor do they

communicate with men except by entirely subjective means. That which does

appear objectively, is only the phantom of the ex-physical man. But in

psychic, and so to say, "Spiritual" Spiritualism, we do believe, most

decidedly.


Q. Do you reject the phenomena also?

A. Assuredly not-save cases of conscious fraud.


Q. How do you account for them, then?

A. In many ways. The causes of such manifestations are by no means so simple

as the Spiritualists would like to believe. Foremost of all, the deus ex

machina of the so-called "materializations" is usually the astral body or

"double" of the medium or of someone present. This astral body is also the

producer or operating force in the manifestations of slate-writing,

"Davenport"-like manifestations, and so on.


Q. You say usually-then what is it that produces the rest?

A. That depends on the nature of the manifestations. Sometimes the astral

remains, the Kamalokic "shells" of the vanished personalities that were; at

other times, Elementals. Spirit is a word of manifold and wide significance.

I really do not know what Spiritualists mean by the term; but what we

understand them to claim is that the physical phenomena are produced by the

reincarnating Ego, the Spiritual and immortal "individuality." And this

hypothesis we entirely reject. The Conscious Individuality of the

disembodied cannot materialize, nor can it return from its own mental

Devachanic sphere to the plane of terrestrial objectivity.


Q. But many of the communications received from the "spirits" show not only

intelligence, but a knowledge of facts not known to the medium, and

sometimes even not consciously present to the mind of the investigator, or

any of those who compose the audience.

A. This does not necessarily prove that the intelligence and knowledge you

speak of belong to spirits, or emanate from disembodied souls. Somnambulists

have been known to compose music and poetry and to solve mathematical

problems while in their trance state, without having ever learnt music or

mathematics. Others, answered intelligently to questions put to them, and

even, in several cases, spoke languages, such as Hebrew and Latin, of which

they were entirely ignorant when awake-all this in a state of profound

sleep. Will you, then, maintain that this was caused by "spirits"?



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Q. But how would you explain it?

A. We assert that the divine spark in man being one and identical in its

essence with the Universal Spirit, our "spiritual Self" is practically

omniscient, but that it cannot manifest its knowledge owing to the

impediments of matter. Now the more these impediments are removed, in other

words, the more the physical body is paralyzed, as to its own independent

activity and consciousness, as in deep sleep or deep trance, or, again, in

illness, the more fully can the inner Self manifest on this plane. This is

our explanation of those truly wonderful phenomena of a higher order, in

which undeniable intelligence and knowledge are exhibited. As to the lower

order of manifestations, such as physical phenomena and the platitudes and

common talk of the general "spirit," to explain even the most important of

the teachings we hold upon the subject would take up more space and time

than can be allotted to it at present. We have no desire to interfere with

the belief of the Spiritualists any more than with any other belief. The

responsibility must fall on the believers in "spirits." And at the present

moment, while still convinced that the higher sort of manifestations occur

through the disembodied souls, their leaders and the most learned and

intelligent among the Spiritualists are the first to confess that not all

the phenomena are produced by spirits. Gradually they will come to recognize

the whole truth; but meanwhile we have no right nor desire to proselytize

them to our views. The less so, as in the cases of purely psychic and

spiritual manifestations we believe in the intercommunication of the spirit

of the living man with that of disembodied personalities.

We say that in such cases it is not the spirits of the dead who descend on

earth, but the spirits of the living that ascend to the pure spiritual

Souls. In truth there is neither ascending nor descending, but a change of

state or condition for the medium. The body of the latter becoming

paralyzed, or "entranced," the spiritual Ego is free from its trammels, and

finds itself on the same plane of consciousness with the disembodied

spirits. Hence, if there is any spiritual attraction between the two they

can communicate, as often occurs in dreams. The difference between a

mediumistic and a non-sensitive nature is this: the liberated spirit of a

medium has the opportunity and facility of influencing the passive organs of

its entranced physical body, to make them act, speak, and write at its will.

The Ego can make it repeat, echo-like, and in the human language, the

thoughts and ideas of the disembodied entity, as well as its own. But the

non-receptive or non-sensitive organism of one who is very positive cannot

be so influenced. Hence, although there is hardly a human being whose Ego

does not hold free intercourse, during the sleep of his body, with those

whom it loved and lost, yet, on account of the positiveness and

non-receptivity of its physical envelope and brain, no recollection, or a

very dim, dream-like remembrance, lingers in the memory of the person once

awake.


Q. This means that you reject the philosophy of Spiritualism in toto?

A. If by "philosophy" you mean their crude theories, we do. But they have no

philosophy, in truth. Their best, their most intellectual and earnest

defenders say so. Their fundamental and only unimpeachable truth, namely,

that phenomena occur through mediums controlled by invisible forces and

intelligences-no one, except a blind materialist of the "Huxley big toe"

school, will or can deny. With regard to their philosophy, however, let me

read to you what the able editor of Light, than whom the Spiritualists will

find no wiser nor more devoted champion, says of them and their philosophy.

This is what "M.A. Oxon," one of the very few philosophical Spiritualists,

writes, with respect to their lack of organization and blind bigotry:

It is worthwhile to look steadily at this point, for it is of vital moment.

We have an experience and a knowledge beside which all other knowledge is

comparatively insignificant. The ordinary Spiritualist waxes wroth if anyone



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ventures to impugn his assured knowledge of the future and his absolute

certainty of the life to come. Where other men have stretched forth feeble

hands groping into the dark future, he walks boldly as one who has a chart

and knows his way. Where other men have stopped short at a pious aspiration

or have been content with a hereditary faith, it is his boast that he knows

what they only believe, and that out of his rich stores he can supplement

the fading faiths built only upon hope. He is magnificent in his dealings

with man's most cherished expectations. He seems to say:

You hope for that which I can demonstrate. You have accepted a traditional

belief in what I can experimentally prove according to the strictest

scientific method. The old beliefs are fading; come out from them and be

separate. They contain as much falsehood as truth. Only by building on a

sure foundation of demonstrated fact can your superstructure be stable. All

round you old faiths are toppling. Avoid the crash and get you out.

When one comes to deal with this magnificent person in a practical way, what

is the result? Very curious and very disappointing. He is so sure of his

ground that he takes no trouble to ascertain the interpretation which others

put upon his facts. The wisdom of the ages has concerned itself with the

explanation of what he rightly regards as proven; but he does not turn a

passing glance on its researches. He does not even agree altogether with his

brother Spiritualist. It is the story over again of the old Scotch body who,

together with her husband, formed a "kirk." They had exclusive keys to

Heaven, or, rather, she had, for she was "na certain aboot Jamie." So the

infinitely divided and subdivided and re-subdivided sects of Spiritualists

shake their heads, and are "na certain aboot" one another. Again, the

collective experience of mankind is solid and unvarying on this point that

union is strength, and disunion a source of weakness and failure. Shoulder

to shoulder, drilled and disciplined, a rabble becomes an army, each man a

match for a hundred of the untrained men that may be brought against it.

Organization in every department of man's work means success, saving of time

and labor, profit and development. Want of method, want of plan, haphazard

work, fitful energy, undisciplined effort-these mean bungling failure. The

voice of humanity attests the truth. Does the Spiritualist accept the

verdict and act on the conclusion? Verily, no. He refuses to organize. He is

a law unto himself, and a thorn in the side of his neighbors.


Q. I was told that the Theosophical Society was originally founded to crush

Spiritualism and belief in the survival of the individuality in man?

A. You are misinformed. Our beliefs are all founded on that immortal

individuality. But then, like so many others, you confuse personality with

individuality. Your Western psychologists do not seem to have established

any clear distinction between the two. Yet it is precisely that difference

which gives the keynote to the understanding of Eastern philosophy, and

which lies at the root of the divergence between the Theosophical and

Spiritualistic teachings. And though it may draw upon us still more the

hostility of some Spiritualists, yet I must state here that it is Theosophy

which is the true and unalloyed Spiritualism, while the modern scheme of

that name is, as now practiced by the masses, simply transcendental

materialism.


Q. Please explain your idea more clearly.

A. What I mean is that though our teachings insist upon the identity of

spirit and matter, and though we say that spirit is potential matter, and

matter simply crystallized spirit (e.g., as ice is solidified steam), yet

since the original and eternal condition of all is not spirit but

meta-spirit, so to speak, we maintain that the term spirit can only be

applied to the true individuality.


Q. But what is the distinction between this "true individuality" and the "I"

or "Ego" of which we are all conscious?



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A. Before I can answer you, we must argue upon what you mean by "I" or

"Ego." We distinguish between the simple fact of self-consciousness, the

simple feeling that "I am I," and the complex thought that "I am Mr. Smith"

or "Mrs. Brown." Believing as we do in a series of births for the same Ego,

or reincarnation, this distinction is the fundamental pivot of the whole

idea. You see "Mr. Smith" really means a long series of daily experiences

strung together by the thread of memory, and forming what Mr. Smith calls

"himself." But none of these "experiences" are really the "I" or the Ego,

nor do they give "Mr. Smith" the feeling that he is himself, for he forgets

the greater part of his daily experiences, and they produce the feeling of

Egoity in him only while they last. We Theosophists, therefore, distinguish

between this bundle of "experiences," which we call the false (because so

finite and evanescent) personality, and that element in man to which the

feeling of "I am I" is due. It is this "I am I" which we call the true

individuality; and we say that this "Ego" or individuality plays, like an

actor, many parts on the stage of life. Let us call every new life on earth

of the same Ego a night on the stage of a theater. One night the actor, or

"Ego," appears as "Macbeth," the next as "Shylock," the third as "Romeo,"

the fourth as "Hamlet" or "King Lear," and so on, until he has run through

the whole cycle of incarnations. The Ego begins his life-pilgrimage as a

sprite, an "Ariel," or a "Puck"; he plays the part of a super, is a soldier,

a servant, one of the chorus; rises then to "speaking parts," plays leading

roles, interspersed with insignificant parts, till he finally retires from

the stage as "Prospero," the magician.


Q. I understand. You say, then, that this true Ego cannot return to earth

after death. But surely the actor is at liberty, if he has preserved the

sense of his individuality, to return if he likes to the scene of his former

actions?

A. We say not, simply because such a return to earth would be incompatible

with any state of unalloyed bliss after death, as I am prepared to prove. We

say that man suffers so much unmerited misery during his life, through the

fault of others with whom he is associated, or because of his environment,

that he is surely entitled to perfect rest and quiet, if not bliss, before

taking up again the burden of life. However, we can discuss this in detail

later.

-oOo-Why

is Theosophy Accepted?


Q. I understand to a certain extent; but I see that your teachings are far

more complicated and metaphysical than either Spiritualism or current

religious thought. Can you tell me, then, what has caused this system of

Theosophy which you support to arouse so much interest and so much animosity

at the same time?

A. There are several reasons for it, I believe; among other causes that may

be mentioned is:

1. The great reaction from the crassly materialistic theories now prevalent

among scientific teachers.

2. General dissatisfaction with the artificial theology of the various

Christian Churches, and the number of daily increasing and conflicting

sects.

3. An ever-growing perception of the fact that the creeds which are so

obviously self-and mutually-contradictory cannot be true, and that claims

which are unverified cannot be real. This natural distrust of conventional

religions is only strengthened by their complete failure to preserve morals

and to purify society and the masses.



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4. A conviction on the part of many, and knowledge by a few, that there must

be somewhere a philosophical and religious system which shall be scientific

and not merely speculative.

5. A belief, perhaps, that such a system must be sought for in teachings far

antedating any modern faith.


Q. But how did this system come to be put forward just now?

A. Just because the time was found to be ripe, which fact is shown by the

determined effort of so many earnest students to reach the truth, at

whatever cost and wherever it may be concealed. Seeing this, its custodians

permitted that some portions at least of that truth should be proclaimed.

Had the formation of the Theosophical Society been postponed a few years

longer, one half of the civilized nations would have become by this time

rank materialists, and the other half anthropomorphists and phenomenalists.


Q. Are we to regard Theosophy in any way as a revelation?

A. In no way whatever-not even in the sense of a new and direct disclosure

from some higher, supernatural, or, at least, superhuman beings; but only in

the sense of an "unveiling" of old, very old, truths to minds hitherto

ignorant of them, ignorant even of the existence and preservation of any

such archaic knowledge.

It has become "fashionable," especially of late, to deride the notion that

there ever was, in the mysteries of great and civilized peoples, such as the

Egyptians, Greeks, or Romans, anything but priestly imposture. Even the

Rosicrucians were no better than half lunatics, half knaves. Numerous books

have been written on them; and tyros, who had hardly heard the name a few

years before, sallied out as profound critics and Gnostics on the subject of

alchemy, the fire-philosophers, and mysticism in general. Yet a long series

of the Hierophants of Egypt, India, Chaldea, and Arabia are known, along

with the greatest philosophers and sages of Greece and the West, to have

included under the designation of wisdom and divine science all knowledge,

for they considered the base and origin of every art and science as

essentially divine. Plato regarded the mysteries as most sacred, and Clemens

Alexandrinus, who had been himself initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries,

has declared "that the doctrines taught therein contained in them the end of

all human knowledge." Were Plato and Clemens two knaves or two fools, we

wonder, or-both?


Q. You spoke of "Persecution." If truth is as represented by Theosophy, why

has it met with such opposition, and with no general acceptance?

A. For many and various reasons again, one of which is the hatred felt by

men for "innovations," as they call them. Selfishness is essentially

conservative, and hates being disturbed. It prefers an easy-going,

unexacting lie to the greatest truth, if the latter requires the sacrifice

of one's smallest comfort. The power of mental inertia is great in anything

that does not promise immediate benefit and reward. Our age is preeminently

unspiritual and matter of fact. Moreover, there is the unfamiliar character

of Theosophic teachings; the highly abstruse nature of the doctrines, some

of which contradict flatly many of the human vagaries cherished by

sectarians, which have eaten into the very core of popular beliefs. If we

add to this the personal efforts and great purity of life exacted of those

who would become the disciples of the inner circle, and the very limited

class to which an entirely unselfish code appeals, it will be easy to

perceive the reason why Theosophy is doomed to such slow, uphill work. It is

essentially the philosophy of those who suffer, and have lost all hope of

being helped out of the mire of life by any other means. Moreover, the

history of any system of belief or morals, newly introduced into a foreign

soil, shows that its beginnings were impeded by every obstacle that



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obscurantism and selfishness could suggest. "The crown of the innovator is a

crown of thorns" indeed! No pulling down of old, worm-eaten buildings can be

accomplished without some danger.


Q. All this refers rather to the ethics and philosophy of the T.S. Can you

give me a general idea of the Society itself, its objects and statutes?

A. This was never made secret. Ask, and you shall receive accurate answers.


Q. But I heard that you were bound by pledges?

A. Only in the Arcane or "Esoteric" Section.


Q. And also, that some members after leaving did not regard themselves bound

by them. Are they right?

A. This shows that their idea of honor is an imperfect one. How can they be

right? As well said in The Path, our theosophical organ at New York,

treating of such a case:

Suppose that a soldier is tried for infringement of oath and discipline, and

is dismissed from the service. In his rage at the justice he has called

down, and of whose penalties he was distinctly forewarned, the soldier turns

to the enemy with false information-a spy and traitor-as a revenge upon his

former Chief, and claims that his punishment has released him from his oath

of loyalty to a cause.

Is he justified, think you? Don't you think he deserves being called a

dishonorable man, a coward?


Q. I believe so; but some think otherwise.

A. So much the worse for them. But we will talk on this subject later, if

you please.

The Working System of the T.S. *1)

The Objects of the Society


Q. What are the objects of the "Theosophical Society"?

A. They are three, and have been so from the beginning.

1. To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without

distinction of race, color, or creed.

2. To promote the study of Aryan *2) and other Scriptures, of the World's

religions and sciences, and to vindicate the importance of old Asiatic

literature, namely, of the Brahmanical, Buddhist, and Zoroastrian

philosophies.

3. To investigate the hidden mysteries of Nature under every aspect

possible, and the psychic and spiritual powers latent in man especially.

These are, broadly stated, the three chief objects of the Theosophical

Society.

*1) See also appendix at the end of this file

*2) H.P.B. means the original Indo-Germanic race from Northern India (see

H.P.B., The Theosophical Glossary, London, 1892

and also the glossary at the end of this file)



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Q. Can you give me some more detailed information upon these?

A. We may divide each of the three objects into as many explanatory clauses

as may be found necessary.


Q. Then let us begin with the first. What means would you resort to, in

order to promote such a feeling of brotherhood among races that are known to

be of the most diversified religions, customs, beliefs, and modes of

thought?

A. Allow me to add that which you seem unwilling to express. Of course we

know that with the exception of two remnants of races-the Parsees and the

Jews-every nation is divided, not merely against all other nations, but even

against itself. This is found most prominently among the so-called civilized

Christian nations. Hence your wonder, and the reason why our first object

appears to you a Utopia. Is it not so?


Q. Well, yes; but what have you to say against it?

A. Nothing against the fact; but much about the necessity of removing the

causes which make Universal Brotherhood a Utopia at present.


Q. What are, in your view, these causes?

A. First and foremost, the natural selfishness of human nature. This

selfishness, instead of being eradicated, is daily strengthened and

stimulated into a ferocious and irresistible feeling by the present

religious education, which tends not only to encourage, but positively to

justify it. People's ideas about right and wrong have been entirely

perverted by the literal acceptance of the Jewish Bible. All the

unselfishness of the altruistic teachings of Jesus has become merely a

theoretical subject for pulpit oratory; while the precepts of practical

selfishness taught in the Mosaic Bible, against which Christ so vainly

preached, have become ingrained into the innermost life of the Western

nations. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" has come to be the

first maxim of your law. Now, I state openly and fearlessly, that the

perversity of this doctrine and of so many others Theosophy alone can

eradicate.

-oOo-The

Common Origin of Man


Q. How?

A. Simply by demonstrating on logical, philosophical, metaphysical, and even

scientific grounds that: (a) All men have spiritually and physically the

same origin, which is the fundamental teaching of Theosophy. (b) As mankind

is essentially of one and the same essence, and that essence is

one-infinite, uncreate, and eternal, whether we call it God or

Nature-nothing, therefore, can affect one nation or one man without

affecting all other nations and all other men. This is as certain and as

obvious as that a stone thrown into a pond will, sooner or later, set in

motion every single drop of water therein.


Q. But this is not the teaching of Christ, but rather a pantheistic notion.

A. That is where your mistake lies. It is purely Christian, although not

Judaic, and therefore, perhaps, your Biblical nations prefer to ignore it.


Q. This is a wholesale and unjust accusation. Where are your proofs for such

a statement?

A. They are ready at hand. Christ is alleged to have said: "Love each other"



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and "Love your enemies;" for

… if ye love them (only) which love you, what reward (or merit) have ye? Do

not even the publicans the same? And if you salute your brethren only, what

do ye more than others? Do not even publicans so?

These are Christ's words. But Genesis says "Cursed be Canaan, a servant of

servants shall he be unto his brethren." And, therefore, Christian but

Biblical people prefer the law of Moses to Christ's law of love. They base

upon the Old Testament, which panders to all their passions, their laws of

conquest, annexation, and tyranny over races which they call inferior. What

crimes have been committed on the strength of this infernal (if taken in its

dead letter) passage in Genesis, history alone gives us an idea, however

inadequate.

At the close of the Middle Ages slavery, under the power of moral forces,

had mainly disappeared from Europe; but two momentous events occurred which

overbore the moral power working in European society and let loose a swarm

of curses upon the earth such as mankind had scarcely ever known. One of

these events was the first voyaging to a populated and barbarous coast where

human beings were a familiar article of traffic; and the other the discovery

of a new world, where mines of glittering wealth were open, provided labor

could be imported to work them. For four hundred years men and women and

children were torn from all whom they knew and loved, and were sold on the

coast of Africa to foreign traders; they were chained below decks-the dead

often with the living-during the horrible "middle passage," and, according

to Bancroft, an impartial historian, two hundred and fifty thousand out of

three and a quarter millions were thrown into the sea on that fatal passage,

while the remainder were consigned to nameless misery in the mines, or under

the lash in the cane and rice fields. The guilt of this great crime rests on

the Christian Church. "In the name of the most Holy Trinity" the Spanish

Government (Roman Catholic) concluded more than ten treaties authorizing the

sale of five hundred thousand human beings; in 1562 Sir John Hawkins sailed

on his diabolical errand of buying slaves in Africa and selling them in the

West Indies in a ship which bore the sacred name of Jesus; while Elizabeth,

the Protestant Queen, rewarded him for his success in this first adventure

of Englishmen in that inhuman traffic by allowing him to wear as his crest

"a demi-Moor in his proper color, bound with a cord, or, in other words, a

manacled negro slave."


Q. I have heard you say that the identity of our physical origin is proved

by science, that of our spiritual origin by the Wisdom-Religion. Yet we do

not find Darwinists exhibiting great fraternal affection.

A. Just so. This is what shows the deficiency of the materialistic systems,

and proves that we Theosophists are in the right. The identity of our

physical origin makes no appeal to our higher and deeper feelings. Matter,

deprived of its soul and spirit, or its divine essence, cannot speak to the

human heart. But the identity of the soul and spirit, of real, immortal man,

as Theosophy teaches us, once proven and deep-rooted in our hearts, would

lead us far on the road of real charity and brotherly goodwill.


Q. But how does Theosophy explain the common origin of man?

1. By teaching that the root of all nature, objective and subjective, and

everything else in the universe, visible and invisible, is, was, and

ever will be one absolute essence, from which all starts, and into

which everything returns. This is Aryan *) philosophy, fully

represented only by the Vedantins, and the Buddhist system. With this

object in view, it is the duty of all Theosophists to promote in every

practical way, and in all countries, the spread of non-sectarian

education.

*) See remark on the use of the word Aryan a couple of

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Q. What do the written statutes of your Society advise its members to do

besides this? On the physical plane, I mean?

A. In order to awaken brotherly feeling among nations we have to assist in

the international exchange of useful arts and products, by advice,

information, and cooperation with all worthy individuals and associations

(provided, however, add the statutes, "that no benefit or percentage shall

be taken by the Society or the 'Fellows' for its or their corporate

services"). For instance, to take a practical illustration. The organization

of Society, depicted by Edward Bellamy, in his magnificent work Looking

Backwards, admirably represents the Theosophical idea of what should be the

first great step towards the full realization of universal brotherhood. The

state of things he depicts falls short of perfection, because selfishness

still exists and operates in the hearts of men. But in the main, selfishness

and individualism have been overcome by the feeling of solidarity and mutual

brotherhood; and the scheme of life there described reduces the causes

tending to create and foster selfishness to a minimum.


Q. Then as a Theosophist you will take part in an effort to realize such an

ideal?

A. Certainly; and we have proved it by action. Have not you heard of the

Nationalist clubs and party which have sprung up in America since the

publication of Bellamy's book? They are now coming prominently to the front,

and will do so more and more as time goes on. Well, these clubs and this

party were started in the first instance by Theosophists. One of the first,

the Nationalist Club of Boston, Massachusetts, has Theosophists for

President and Secretary, and the majority of its executive belong to the

T.S. In the constitution of all their clubs, and of the party they are

forming, the influence of Theosophy and of the Society is plain, for they

all take as their basis, their first and fundamental principle, the

Brotherhood of Humanity as taught by Theosophy. In their declaration of

Principles they state:

The principle of the Brotherhood of Humanity is one of the eternal truths

that govern the world's progress on lines which distinguish human nature

from brute nature.

What can be more Theosophical than this? But it is not enough. What is also

needed is to impress men with the idea that, if the root of mankind is one,

then there must also be one truth which finds expression in all the various

religions-except in the Jewish, as you do not find it expressed even in the

Cabala.


Q. This refers to the common origin of religions, and you may be right

there. But how does it apply to practical brotherhood on the physical plane?

A. First, because that which is true on the metaphysical plane must be also

true on the physical. Secondly, because there is no more fertile source of

hatred and strife than religious differences. When one party or another

thinks himself the sole possessor of absolute truth, it becomes only natural

that he should think his neighbor absolutely in the clutches of Error or the

Devil. But once get a man to see that none of them has the whole truth, but

that they are mutually complementary, that the complete truth can be found

only in the combined views of all, after that which is false in each of them

has been sifted out-then true brotherhood in religion will be established.

The same applies in the physical world.


Q. Please explain further.

A. Take an instance. A plant consists of a root, a stem, and many shoots and

leaves. As humanity, as a whole, is the stem which grows from the spiritual

root, so is the stem the unity of the plant. Hurt the stem and it is obvious



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that every shoot and leaf will suffer. So it is with mankind.


Q. Yes, but if you injure a leaf or a shoot, you do not injure the whole

plant.

A. And therefore you think that by injuring one man you do not injure

humanity? But how do you know? Are you aware that even materialistic science

teaches that any injury, however, slight, to a plant will affect the whole

course of its future growth and development? Therefore, you are mistaken,

and the analogy is perfect. If, however, you overlook the fact that a cut in

the finger may often make the whole body suffer, and react on the whole

nervous system, I must all the more remind you that there may well be other

spiritual laws, operating on plants and animals as well as on mankind,

although, as you do not recognize their action on plants and animals, you

may deny their existence.


Q. What laws do you mean?

A. We call them Karmic laws; but you will not understand the full meaning of

the term unless you study Occultism. However, my argument did not rest on

the assumption of these laws, but really on the analogy of the plant. Expand

the idea, carry it out to a universal application, and you will soon find

that in true philosophy every physical action has its moral and everlasting

effect. Hurt a man by doing him bodily harm; you may think that his pain and

suffering cannot spread by any means to his neighbors, least of all to men

of other nations. We affirm that it will, in good time. Therefore, we say,

that unless every man is brought to understand and accept as an axiomatic

truth that by having wronged one man we wrong not only ourselves but the

whole of humanity in the long run, no brotherly feelings such as preached by

all the great Reformers, preeminently by Buddha and Jesus, are possible on

earth.

-oOo-Our

Other Objects


Q. Will you now explain the methods by which you propose to carry out the

second object?

A. To collect for the library at our headquarters of Adyar, Madras-and by

the Fellows of their Branches for their local libraries-all the good works

upon the world's religions that we can. To put into written form correct

information upon the various ancient philosophies, traditions, and legends,

and disseminate the same in such practicable ways as the translation and

publication of original works of value, and extracts from and commentaries

upon the same, or the oral instructions of persons learned in their

respective departments.


Q. And what about the third object, to develop in man his latent spiritual

or psychic powers?

A. This has to be achieved also by means of publications, in those places

where no lectures and personal teachings are possible. Our duty is to keep

alive in man his spiritual intuitions. To oppose and counteract-after due

investigation and proof of its irrational nature-bigotry in every form,

religious, scientific, or social, and cant above all, whether as religious

sectarianism or as belief in miracles or anything supernatural. What we have

to do is to seek to obtain knowledge of all the laws of nature, and to

diffuse it. To encourage the study of those laws least understood by modern

people, the so-called Occult Sciences, based on the true knowledge of

nature, instead of, as at present, on superstitious beliefs based on blind

faith and authority. Popular folklore and traditions, however fanciful at

times, when sifted may lead to the discovery of long-lost, but important,

secrets of nature. The Society, therefore, aims at pursuing this line of



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inquiry, in the hope of widening the field of scientific and philosophical

observation.

-oOo-On

the Sacredness of the Pledge


Q. Have you any ethical system that you carry out in the Society?

A. The ethics are there, ready and clear enough for whomsoever would follow

them. They are the essence and cream of the world's ethics, gathered from

the teachings of all the world's great reformers. Therefore, you will find

represented therein Confucius and Zoroaster, Lao-tzu and the Bhagavad-Gita ,

the precepts of Gautama Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth, of Hillel and his

school, as of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and their schools.


Q. Do the members of your Society carry out these precepts? I have heard of

great dissensions and quarrels among them.

A. Very naturally, since although the reform (in its present shape) may be

called new, the men and women to be reformed are the same human, sinning

natures as of old. As already said, the earnest working members are few; but

many are the sincere and well-disposed persons, who try their best to live

up to the Society's and their own ideals. Our duty is to encourage and

assist individual fellows in self-improvement, intellectual, moral, and

spiritual; not to blame or condemn those who fail. We have, strictly

speaking, no right to refuse admission to anyone-especially in the Esoteric

Section of the Society, wherein "he who enters is as one newly born." But if

any member, his sacred pledges on his word of honor and immortal Self

notwithstanding, chooses to continue, after that "new birth," with the new

man, the vices or defects of his old life, and to indulge in them still in

the Society, then, of course, he is more than likely to be asked to resign

and withdraw; or, in case of his refusal, to be expelled. We have the

strictest rules for such emergencies.


Q. Can some of them be mentioned?

A. They can. To begin with, no Fellow in the Society, whether exoteric or

esoteric, has a right to force his personal opinions upon another Fellow.

It is not lawful for any officer of the Parent Society to express in public,

by word or act, any hostility to, or preference for, any one section,

religious or philosophical, more than another. All have an equal right to

have the essential features of their religious belief laid before the

tribunal of an impartial world. And no officer of the Society, in his

capacity as an officer, has the right to preach his own sectarian views and

beliefs to members assembled, except when the meeting consists of his

co-religionists. After due warning, violation of this rule shall be punished

by suspension or expulsion.

This is one of the offenses in the Society at large. As regards the inner

section, now called the Esoteric, the following rules have been laid down

and adopted, so far back as 1880.

No Fellow shall put to his selfish use any knowledge communicated to him by

any member of the first section (now a higher "degree"); violation of the

rule being punished by expulsion.

Now, however, before any such knowledge can be imparted, the applicant has

to bind himself by a solemn oath not to use it for selfish purposes, nor to

reveal anything said except by permission.


Q. But is a man expelled, or resigning, from the section free to reveal

anything he may have learned, or to break any clause of the pledge he has



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taken?

A. Certainly not. His expulsion or resignation only relieves him from the

obligation of obedience to the teacher, and from that of taking an active

part in the work of the Society, but surely not from the sacred pledge of

secrecy.


Q. But is this reasonable and just?

A. Most assuredly. To any man or woman with the slightest honorable feeling

a pledge of secrecy taken even on one's word of honor, much more to one's

Higher Self-the God within-is binding till death. And though he may leave

the Section and the Society, no man or woman of honor will think of

attacking or injuring a body to which he or she has been so pledged.


Q. But is not this going rather far?

A. Perhaps so, according to the low standard of the present time and

morality. But if it does not bind as far as this, what use is a pledge at

all? How can anyone expect to be taught secret knowledge, if he is to be at

liberty to free himself from all the obligations he had taken, whenever he

pleases? What security, confidence, or trust would ever exist among men, if

pledges such as this were to have no really binding force at all? Believe

me, the law of retribution (Karma) would very soon overtake one who so broke

his pledge, and perhaps as soon as the contempt of every honorable man

would, even on this physical plane. As well expressed in the New York Path

just cited on this subject,

A pledge once taken, is forever binding in both the moral and the occult

worlds. If we break it once and are punished, that does not justify us in

breaking it again, and so long as we do, so long will the mighty lever of

the Law (of Karma) react upon us.

The Relations of the T.S. to Theosophy

On Self-Improvement


Q. Is moral elevation, then, the principal thing insisted upon in your

Society?

A. Undoubtedly! He who would be a true Theosophist must bring himself to

live as one.


Q. If so, then, as I remarked before, the behavior of some members strangely

belies this fundamental rule.

A. Indeed it does. But this cannot be helped among us, any more than amongst

those who call themselves Christians and act like fiends. This is no fault

of our statutes and rules, but that of human nature. Even in some exoteric

public branches, the members pledge themselves on their "Higher Self" to

live the life prescribed by Theosophy. They have to bring their Divine Self

to guide their every thought and action, every day and at every moment of

their lives. A true Theosophist ought "to deal justly and walk humbly."


Q. What do you mean by this?

A. Simply this: the one self has to forget itself for the many selves. Let

me answer you in the words of a true Philaletheian, an F.T.S., who has

beautifully expressed it in The Theosophist:

What every man needs first is to find himself, and then take an honest

inventory of his subjective possessions, and, bad or bankrupt as it may be,

it is not beyond redemption if we set about it in earnest.



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But how many do? All are willing to work for their own development and

progress; very few for those of others. To quote the same writer again:

Men have been deceived and deluded long enough; they must break their idols,

put away their shams, and go to work for themselves-nay, there is one little

word too much or too many, for he who works for himself had better not work

at all; rather let him work himself for others, for all. For every flower of

love and charity he plants in his neighbor's garden, a loathsome weed will

disappear from his own, and so this garden of the gods-Humanity-shall

blossom as a rose. In all Bibles, all religions, this is plainly set

forth-but designing men have at first misinterpreted and finally

emasculated, materialized, besotted them. It does not require a new

revelation. Let every man be a revelation unto himself. Let once man's

immortal spirit take possession of the temple of his body, drive out the

money-changers and every unclean thing, and his own divine humanity will

redeem him, for when he is thus at one with himself he will know the

"builder of the Temple."


Q. This is pure Altruism, I confess.

A. It is. And if only one Fellow of the T.S. out of ten would practice it

ours would be a body of elect indeed. But there are those among the

outsiders who will always refuse to see the essential difference between

Theosophy and the Theosophical Society, the idea and its imperfect

embodiment. Such would visit every sin and shortcoming of the vehicle, the

human body, on the pure spirit which sheds thereon its divine light. Is this

just to either? They throw stones at an association that tries to work up

to, and for the propagation of, its ideal with most tremendous odds against

it. Some vilify the Theosophical Society only because it presumes to attempt

to do that in which other systems-Church and State Christianity

preeminently-have failed most egregiously; others because they would fain

preserve the existing state of things: Pharisees and Sadducees in the seat

of Moses, and publicans and sinners revelling in high places, as under the

Roman Empire during its decadence. Fair-minded people, at any rate, ought to

remember that the man who does all he can, does as much as he who has

achieved the most, in this world of relative possibilities. This is a simple

truism, an axiom supported for believers in the Gospels by the parable of

the talents given by their Master: the servant who doubled his two talents

was rewarded as much as that other fellow-servant who had received five. To

every man it is given "according to his several ability."


Q. Yet it is rather difficult to draw the line of demarcation between the

abstract and the concrete in this case, as we have only the latter to form

our judgment by.

A. Then why make an exception for the T.S.? Justice, like charity, ought to

begin at home. Will you revile and scoff at the "Sermon on the Mount"

because your social, political and even religious laws have, so far, not

only failed to carry out its precepts in their spirit, but even in their

dead letter? Abolish the oath in Courts, Parliament, Army and everywhere,

and do as the Quakers do, if you will call yourselves Christians. Abolish

the Courts themselves, for if you would follow the Commandments of Christ,

you have to give away your coat to him who deprives you of your cloak, and

turn your left cheek to the bully who smites you on the right. "Resist not

evil, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that

hate you," for "whosoever shall break one of the least of these Commandments

and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the Kingdom of

Heaven," and "whosoever shall say 'Thou fool' shall be in danger of hell

fire." And why should you judge, if you would not be judged in your turn?

Insist that between Theosophy and the Theosophical Society there is no

difference, and forthwith you lay the system of Christianity and its very

essence open to the same charges, only in a more serious form.


Q. Why more serious?



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A. Because, while the leaders of the Theosophical Movement, recognizing

fully their shortcomings, try all they can do to amend their ways and uproot

the evil existing in the Society; and while their rules and bylaws are

framed in the spirit of Theosophy, the Legislators and the Churches of

nations and countries which call themselves Christian do the reverse. Our

members, even the worst among them, are no worse than the average Christian.

Moreover, if the Western Theosophists experience so much difficulty in

leading the true Theosophical life, it is because they are all the children

of their generation. Every one of them was a Christian, bred and brought up

in the sophistry of his Church, his social customs, and even his paradoxical

laws. He was this before he became a Theosophist, or rather, a member of the

Society of that name, as it cannot be too often repeated that between the

abstract ideal and its vehicle there is a most important difference.

-oOo-The

Abstract and the Concrete


Q. Please elucidate this difference a little more.

A. The Society is a great body of men and women, composed of the most

heterogeneous elements. Theosophy, in its abstract meaning, is Divine

Wisdom, or the aggregate of the knowledge and wisdom that underlie the

Universe-the homogeneity of eternal good; and in its concrete sense it is

the sumtotal of the same as allotted to man by nature, on this earth, and no

more. Some members earnestly endeavor to realize and, so to speak, to

objectivize Theosophy in their lives; while others desire only to know of,

not to practice it; and others still may have joined the Society merely out

of curiosity, or a passing interest, or perhaps, again, because some of

their friends belong to it. How, then, can the system be judged by the

standard of those who would assume the name without any right to it? Is

poetry or its muse to be measured only by those would-be poets who afflict

our ears? The Society can be regarded as the embodiment of Theosophy only in

its abstract motives; it can never presume to call itself its concrete

vehicle so long as human imperfections and weaknesses are all represented in

its body; otherwise the Society would be only repeating the great error and

the outflowing sacrilege of the so-called Churches of Christ. If Eastern

comparisons may be permitted, Theosophy is the shoreless ocean of universal

truth, love, and wisdom, reflecting its radiance on the earth, while the

Theosophical Society is only a visible bubble on that reflection. Theosophy

is divine nature, visible and invisible, and its Society human nature trying

to ascend to its divine parent. Theosophy, finally, is the fixed eternal

sun, and its Society the evanescent comet trying to settle in an orbit to

become a planet, ever revolving within the attraction of the sun of truth.

It was formed to assist in showing to men that such a thing as Theosophy

exists, and to help them to ascend towards it by studying and assimilating

its eternal verities.


Q. I thought you said you had no tenets or doctrines of your own?

A. No more we have. The Society has no wisdom of its own to support or

teach. It is simply the storehouse of all the truths uttered by the great

seers, initiates, and prophets of historic and even prehistoric ages; at

least, as many as it can get. Therefore, it is merely the channel through

which more or less of truth, found in the accumulated utterances of

humanity's great teachers, is poured out into the world.


Q. But is such truth unreachable outside of the society? Does not every

Church claim the same?

A. Not at all. The undeniable existence of great initiates-true "Sons of

God"-shows that such wisdom was often reached by isolated individuals,

never, however, without the guidance of a master at first. But most of the



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followers of such, when they became masters in their turn, have dwarfed the

Catholicism of these teachings into the narrow groove of their own sectarian

dogmas. The commandments of a chosen master alone were then adopted and

followed, to the exclusion of all others-if followed at all, note well, as

in the case of the Sermon on the Mount. Each religion is thus a bit of the

divine truth, made to focus a vast panorama of human fancy which claimed to

represent and replace that truth.


Q. But Theosophy, you say, is not a religion?

A. Most assuredly it is not, since it is the essence of all religion and of

absolute truth, a drop of which only underlies every creed. To resort once

more to metaphor. Theosophy, on earth, is like the white ray of the

spectrum, and every religion only one of the seven prismatic colors.

Ignoring all the others, and cursing them as false, every special colored

ray claims not only priority, but to be that white ray itself, and

anathematizes even its own tints from light to dark, as heresies. Yet, as

the sun of truth rises higher and higher on the horizon of man's perception,

and each colored ray gradually fades out until it is finally reabsorbed in

its turn, humanity will at last be cursed no longer with artificial

polarizations, but will find itself bathing in the pure colorless sunlight

of eternal truth. And this will be Theosophia.


Q. Your claim is, then, that all the great religions are derived from

Theosophy, and that it is by assimilating it that the world will be finally

saved from the curse of its great illusions and errors?

A. Precisely so. And we add that our Theosophical Society is the humble seed

which, if watered and left to live, will finally produce the Tree of

Knowledge of Good and Evil which is grafted on the Tree of Life Eternal. For

it is only by studying the various great religions and philosophies of

humanity, by comparing them dispassionately and with an unbiased mind, that

men can hope to arrive at the truth. It is especially by finding out and

noting their various points of agreement that we may achieve this result.

For no sooner do we arrive-either by study, or by being taught by someone

who knows-at their inner meaning, than we find, almost in every case, that

it expresses some great truth in Nature.


Q. We have heard of a Golden Age that was, and what you describe would be a

Golden Age to be realized at some future day. When shall it be?

A. Not before humanity, as a whole, feels the need of it. A maxim in the

Persian Javidan Khirad says:

Truth is of two kinds-one manifest and self-evident; the other demanding

incessantly new demonstrations and proofs.

It is only when this latter kind of truth becomes as universally obvious as

it is now dim, and therefore liable to be distorted by sophistry and

casuistry; it is only when the two kinds will have become once more one,

that all people will be brought to see alike.


Q. But surely those few who have felt the need of such truths must have made

up their minds to believe in something definite? You tell me that, the

Society having no doctrines of its own, every member may believe as he

chooses and accept what he pleases. This looks as if the Theosophical

Society was bent upon reviving the confusion of languages and beliefs of the

Tower of Babel of old. Have you no beliefs in common?

A. What is meant by the Society having no tenets or doctrines of its own is,

that no special doctrines or beliefs are obligatory on its members; but, of

course, this applies only to the body as a whole. The Society, as you were

told, is divided into an outer and an inner body. Those who belong to the

latter have, of course, a philosophy, or-if you so prefer it-a religious



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system of their own.


Q. May we be told what it is?

A. We make no secret of it. It was outlined a few years ago in The

Theosophist and Esoteric Buddhism, and may be found still more elaborated in

The Secret Doctrine. It is based on the oldest philosophy of the world,

called the Wisdom-Religion or the Archaic Doctrine. If you like, you may ask

questions and have them explained.

The Fundamental Teachings of Theosophy

On God and Prayer


Q. Do you believe in God?

A. That depends what you mean by the term.


Q. I mean the God of the Christians, the Father of Jesus, and the Creator:

the Biblical God of Moses, in short.

A. In such a God we do not believe. We reject the idea of a personal, or an

extra-cosmic and anthropomorphic God, who is but the gigantic shadow of man,

and not of man at his best, either. The God of theology, we say-and prove

it-is a bundle of contradictions and a logical impossibility. Therefore, we

will have nothing to do with him.


Q. State your reasons, if you please.

A. They are many, and cannot all receive attention. But here are a few. This

God is called by his devotees infinite and absolute, is he not?


Q. I believe he is.

A. Then, if infinite-i.e., limitless-and especially if absolute, how can he

have a form, and be a creator of anything? Form implies limitation, and a

beginning as well as an end; and, in order to create, a Being must think and

plan. How can the absolute be supposed to think-i.e., to have any relation

whatever to that which is limited, finite, and conditioned? This is a

philosophical, and a logical absurdity. Even the Hebrew Cabala rejects such

an idea, and therefore, makes of the one and the Absolute Deific

Principle an infinite Unity called Ain-Soph *)

*)Ain-Soph (Greek: toh pan, epeiros), the boundless or limitless, in and of

nature, the non-existing that IS, but that is not a Being.

In order to create, the Creator has to become active; and as this is

impossible for absoluteness, the infinite principle had to be shown becoming

the cause of evolution (not creation) in an indirect way-i.e., through the

emanation from itself (another absurdity, due this time to the translators

of the Cabala) of the Sephiroth.

How can the non-active eternal principle emanate or emit? The Parabrahman of

the Vedantins does nothing of the kind; nor does the Ain-Soph of the

Chaldean Cabala. It is an eternal and periodical law which causes an active

and creative force (the logos) to emanate from the ever-concealed and

incomprehensible one principle at the beginning of every Mah -Manvantara, or

new cycle of life.


Q. How about those Cabalists, who, while being such, still believe in

Jehovah, or the Tetragrammaton?

A. They are at liberty to believe in what they please, as their belief or



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disbelief can hardly affect a self-evident fact. The Jesuits tell us that

two and two are not always four to a certainty, since it depends on the will

of God to make 2 × 2 = 5. Shall we accept their sophistry for all that?


Q. Then you are Atheists?

A. Not that we know of, and not unless the epithet of "Atheist" is to be

applied to those who disbelieve in an anthropomorphic God. We believe in a

Universal Divine Principle, the root of all, from which all proceeds, and

within which all shall be absorbed at the end of the great cycle of Being.


Q. This is the old, old claim of Pantheism. If you are Pantheists, you

cannot be Deists; and if you are not Deists, then you have to answer to the

name of Atheists.

A. Not necessarily so. The term Pantheism is again one of the many abused

terms, whose real and primitive meaning has been distorted by blind

prejudice and a one-sided view of it. If you accept the Christian etymology

of this compound word, and form it of pan , "all," and theos , "god," and

then imagine and teach that this means that every stone and every tree in

Nature is a God or the one God, then, of course, you will be right, and make

of Pantheists fetish-worshippers, in addition to their legitimate name. But

you will hardly be as successful if you etymologize the word Pantheism

esoterically, and as we do.


Q. What is, then, your definition of it?

A. Let me ask you a question in my turn. What do you understand by Pan, or

Nature?


Q. Nature is, I suppose, the sumtotal of things existing around us; the

aggregate of causes and effects in the world of matter, the creation or

universe.

A. Hence the personified sum and order of known causes and effects; the

total of all finite agencies and forces, as utterly disconnected from an

intelligent Creator or Creators, and perhaps "conceived of as a single and

separate force"-as in your encyclopedias?


Q. Yes, I believe so.

A. Well, we neither take into consideration this objective and material

nature, which we call an evanescent illusion, nor do we mean by Nature, in

the sense of its accepted derivation from the Latin Natura (becoming, from

nasci, to be born). When we speak of the Deity and make it identical, hence

coeval, with Nature, the eternal and uncreate nature is meant, and not your

aggregate of flitting shadows and finite unrealities. We leave it to the

hymn-makers to call the visible sky or heaven, God's Throne, and our earth

of mud His footstool. Our deity is neither in a paradise, nor in a

particular tree, building, or mountain: it is everywhere, in every atom of

the visible as of the invisible Cosmos, in, over, and around every invisible

atom and divisible molecule; for it is the mysterious power of evolution and

involution, the omnipresent, omnipotent, and even omniscient creative

potentiality.


Q. Stop! Omniscience is the prerogative of something that thinks, and you

deny to your Absoluteness the power of thought.

A. We deny it to the absolute, since thought is something limited and

conditioned. But you evidently forget that in philosophy absolute

unconsciousness is also absolute consciousness, as otherwise it would not be

absolute.


Q. Then your Absolute thinks?



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A. No, it does not; for the simple reason that it is Absolute Thought

itself. Nor does it exist, for the same reason, as it is absolute existence,

and Be-ness, not a Being. Read the superb Cabalistic poem by Solomon Ben

Jehudah Gabirol, in the Kether-Malchut, and you will understand:

Thou art one, the root of all numbers, but not as an element of numeration;

for unity admits not of multiplication, change, or form.

Thou art one, and in the secret of Thy unity the wisest of men are lost,

because they know it not.

Thou art one, and Thy unity is never diminished, never extended, and cannot

be changed.

Thou art one, and no thought of mine can fix for Thee a limit, or define

Thee.

Thou art, but not as one existent, for the understanding and vision of

mortals cannot attain to Thy existence, nor determine for Thee the where,

the how and the why …

In short, our Deity is the eternal, incessantly evolving, not creating,

builder of the universe; that universe itself unfolding out of its own

essence, not being made. It is a sphere, without circumference, in its

symbolism, which has but one ever-acting attribute embracing all other

existing or thinkable attributes-itself. It is the one law, giving the

impulse to manifested, eternal, and immutable laws, within that

never-manifesting, because absolute law, which in its manifesting periods is

The ever-Becoming.


Q. I once heard one of your members remarking that Universal Deity, being

everywhere, was in vessels of dishonor, as in those of honor, and,

therefore, was present in every atom of my cigar ash! Is this not rank

blasphemy?

A. I do not think so, as simple logic can hardly be regarded as blasphemy.

Were we to exclude the Omnipresent Principle from one single mathematical

point of the universe, or from a particle of matter occupying any

conceivable space, could we still regard it as infinite?

-oOo-Is

it Necessary to Pray?


Q. Do you believe in prayer, and do you ever pray?

A. We do not. We act, instead of talking.


Q. You do not offer prayers even to the Absolute Principle?

A. Why should we? Being well-occupied people, we can hardly afford to lose

time in addressing verbal prayers to a pure abstraction. The Unknowable is

capable of relations only in its parts to each other, but is non-existent as

regards any finite relations. The visible universe depends for its existence

and phenomena on its mutually acting forms and their laws, not on prayer or

prayers.


Q. Do you not believe at all in the efficacy of prayer?

A. Not in prayer taught in so many words and repeated externally, if by

prayer you mean the outward petition to an unknown God as the addressee,

which was inaugurated by the Jews and popularized by the Pharisees.



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Q. Is there any other kind of prayer?

A. Most decidedly; we call it will-prayer, and it is rather an internal

command than a petition.


Q. To whom, then, do you pray when you do so?

A. To "our Father in heaven"-in its esoteric meaning.


Q. Is that different from the one given to it in theology?

A. Entirely so. An Occultist or a Theosophist addresses his prayer to his

Father which is in secret, not to an extra-cosmic and therefore finite God;

and that "Father" is in man himself.


Q. Then you make of man a God?

A. Please say "God" and not a God. In our sense, the inner man is the only

God we can have cognizance of. And how can this be otherwise? Grant us our

postulate that God is a universally diffused, infinite principle, and how

can man alone escape from being soaked through by, and in, the Deity? We

call our "Father in heaven" that deific essence of which we are cognizant

within us, in our heart and spiritual consciousness, and which has nothing

to do with the anthropomorphic conception we may form of it in our physical

brain or its fancy: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the

spirit of (the absolute) God dwelleth in you?"

One often finds in Theosophical writings conflicting statements about the

Christos principle in man. Some call it the sixth principle (Buddhi), others

the seventh (Atma). If Christian Theosophists wish to make use of such

expressions, let them be made philosophically correct by following the

analogy of the old Wisdom-Religion symbols. We say that Christos is not only

one of the three higher principles, but all the three regarded as a Trinity.

This Trinity represents the Holy Ghost, the Father, and the Son, as it

answers to abstract spirit, differentiated spirit, and embodied spirit.

Krishna and Christ are philosophically the same principle under its triple

aspect of manifestation. In the Bhagavad-Gita we find Krishna calling

himself indifferently Atma, the abstract Spirit, Kshetrajña, the Higher or

reincarnating Ego, and the Universal Self, all names which, when transferred

from the Universe to man, answer to Atma, Buddhi, and Manas. The Anugita is

full of the same doctrine.

Yet, let no man anthropomorphize that essence in us. Let no Theosophist, if

he would hold to divine, not human truth, say that this "God in secret"

listens to, or is distinct from, either finite man or the infinite

essence-for all are one. Nor, as just remarked, that a prayer is a petition.

It is a mystery rather; an occult process by which finite and conditioned

thoughts and desires, unable to be assimilated by the absolute spirit which

is unconditioned, are translated into spiritual wills and the will; such

process being called "spiritual transmutation." The intensity of our ardent

aspirations changes prayer into the "philosopher's stone," or that which

transmutes lead into pure gold. The only homogeneous essence, our

"will-prayer" becomes the active or creative force, producing effects

according to our desire.


Q. Do you mean to say that prayer is an occult process bringing about

physical results?

A. I do. Will-Power becomes a living power. But woe unto those Occultists

and Theosophists, who, instead of crushing out the desires of the lower

personal ego or physical man, and saying, addressing their Higher Spiritual

Ego immersed in Atma-Buddhic light, "Thy will be done, not mine," etc., send

up waves of will-power for selfish or unholy purposes! For this is black

magic, abomination, and spiritual sorcery. Unfortunately, all this is the



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favorite occupation of our Christian statesmen and generals, especially when

the latter are sending two armies to murder each other. Both indulge before

action in a bit of such sorcery, by offering respectively prayers to the

same God of Hosts, each entreating his help to cut its enemies' throats.


Q. David prayed to the Lord of Hosts to help him smite the Philistines and

slay the Syrians and the Moabites, and "the Lord preserved David

whithersoever he went." In that we only follow what we find in the Bible.

A. Of course you do. But since you delight in calling yourselves Christians,

not Israelites or Jews, as far as we know, why do you not rather follow that

which Christ says? And he distinctly commands you not to follow "them of old

times," or the Mosaic law, but bids you do as he tells you, and warns those

who would kill by the sword, that they, too, will perish by the sword.

Christ has given you one prayer of which you have made a lip prayer and a

boast, and which none but the true Occultist understands. In it you say, in

your dead-sense meaning: "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,"

which you never do. Again, he told you to love your enemies and do good to

them that hate you. It is surely not the "meek prophet of Nazareth" who

taught you to pray to your "Father" to slay, and give you victory over your

enemies! This is why we reject what you call "prayers."


Q. But how do you explain the universal fact that all nations and peoples

have prayed to, and worshiped a God or Gods? Some have adored and

propitiated devils and harmful spirits, but this only proves the

universality of the belief in the efficacy of prayer.

A. It is explained by that other fact that prayer has several other meanings

besides that given it by the Christians. It means not only a pleading or

petition, but meant, in days of old, far more an invocation and incantation.

The mantra, or the rhythmically chanted prayer of the Hindus, has precisely

such a meaning, as the Brahmins hold themselves higher than the common devas

or "Gods." A prayer may be an appeal or an incantation for malediction, and

a curse (as in the case of two armies praying simultaneously for mutual

destruction) as much as for blessing. And as the great majority of people

are intensely selfish, and pray only for themselves, asking to be given

their "daily bread" instead of working for it, and begging God not to lead

them "into temptation" but to deliver them (the memorialists only) from

evil, the result is, that prayer, as now understood, is doubly pernicious:

(a) It kills in man self-reliance; (b) It develops in him a still more

ferocious selfishness and egotism than he is already endowed with by nature.

I repeat, that we believe in "communion" and simultaneous action in unison

with our "Father in secret"; and in rare moments of ecstatic bliss, in the

mingling of our higher soul with the universal essence, attracted as it is

towards its origin and center, a state, called during life Samadhi, and

after death, Nirvana. We refuse to pray to created finite beings-i.e., gods,

saints, angels, etc., because we regard it as idolatry. We cannot pray to

the absolute for reasons explained before; therefore, we try to replace

fruitless and useless prayer by meritorious and good-producing actions.


Q. Christians would call it pride and blasphemy. Are they wrong?

A. Entirely so. It is they, on the contrary, who show Satanic pride in their

belief that the Absolute or the Infinite, even if there was such a thing as

the possibility of any relation between the unconditioned and the

conditioned-will stoop to listen to every foolish or egotistical prayer. And

it is they again, who virtually blaspheme, in teaching that an Omniscient

and Omnipotent God needs uttered prayers to know what he has to do!

This-understood esoterically-is corroborated by both Buddha and Jesus. The

one says:

Seek nought from the helpless Gods-pray not! but rather act; for darkness

will not brighten. Ask nought from silence, for it can neither speak nor

hear.



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And the other-Jesus-recommends: "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name (that of

Christos) that will I do." Of course, this quotation, if taken in its

literal sense, goes against our argument. But if we accept it esoterically,

with the full knowledge of the meaning of the term Christos which to us

represents Atma-Buddhi-Manas, the "self," it comes to this: the only God we

must recognize and pray to, or rather act in unison with, is that spirit of

God of which our body is the temple, and in which it dwelleth.

-oOo-Prayer

Kills Self-Reliance


Q. But did not Christ himself pray and recommend prayer?

A. It is so recorded, but those "prayers" are precisely of that kind of

communion just mentioned with one's "Father in secret." Otherwise, and if we

identify Jesus with the universal deity, there would be something too

absurdly illogical in the inevitable conclusion that he, the "very God

himself" prayed to himself, and separated the will of that God from his own!


Q. One argument more; an argument, moreover, much used by some Christians.

They say,

I feel that I am not able to conquer any passions and weaknesses in my own

strength. But when I pray to Jesus Christ I feel that he gives me strength

and that in His power I am able to conquer.

A. No wonder. If "Christ Jesus" is God, and one independent and separate

from him who prays, of course everything is, and must be possible to "a

mighty God." But, then, where's the merit, or justice either, of such a

conquest? Why should the pseudo-conqueror be rewarded for something done

which has cost him only prayers? Would you, even a simple mortal man, pay

your laborer a full day's wage if you did most of his work for him, he

sitting under an apple tree, and praying to you to do so, all the while?

This idea of passing one's whole life in moral idleness, and having one's

hardest work and duty done by another-whether God or man-is most revolting

to us, as it is most degrading to human dignity.


Q. Perhaps so, yet it is the idea of trusting in a personal Savior to help

and strengthen in the battle of life, which is the fundamental idea of

modern Christianity. And there is no doubt that, subjectively, such belief

is efficacious; i.e., that those who believe do feel themselves helped and

strengthened.

A. Nor is there any more doubt, that some patients of "Christian" and

"Mental Scientists"-the great "Deniers"-are also sometimes cured; nor that

hypnotism, and suggestion, psychology, and even mediumship, will produce

such results, as often, if not oftener. You take into consideration, and

string on the thread of your argument, successes alone. And how about ten

times the number of failures? Surely you will not presume to say that

failure is unknown even with a sufficiency of blind faith, among fanatical

Christians?


Q. But how can you explain those cases which are followed by full success?

Where does a Theosophist look to for power to subdue his passions and

selfishness?

A. To his Higher Self, the divine spirit, or the God in him, and to his

Karma. How long shall we have to repeat over and over again that the tree is

known by its fruit, the nature of the cause by its effects? You speak of

subduing passions, and becoming good through and with the help of God or

Christ. We ask, where do you find more virtuous, guiltless people,

abstaining from sin and crime, in Christendom or Buddhism-in Christian



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countries or in heathen lands? Statistics are there to give the answer and

corroborate our claims. According to the last census in Ceylon and India, in

the comparative table of crimes committed by Christians, Muslims, Hindus,

Eurasians, Buddhists, etc., etc., on two millions of population taken at

random from each, and covering the misdemeanors of several years, the

proportion of crimes committed by the Christian stands as 15 to 4 as against

those committed by the Buddhist population. No Orientalist, no historian of

any note, or traveler in Buddhist lands, from Bishop Bigandet and Abbé Huc,

to Sir William Hunter and every fair-minded official, will fail to give the

palm of virtue to Buddhists before Christians. Yet the former (not the true

Buddhist Siamese sect, at all events) do not believe in either God or a

future reward, outside of this earth. They do not pray, neither priests nor

laymen. "Pray!" they would exclaim in wonder, "to whom, or what?"


Q. Then they are truly Atheists.

A. Most undeniably, but they are also the most virtue-loving and

virtue-keeping men in the whole world. Buddhism says: Respect the religions

of other men and remain true to your own; but Church Christianity,

denouncing all the gods of other nations as devils, would doom every

non-Christian to eternal perdition.


Q. Does not the Buddhist priesthood do the same?

A. Never. They hold too much to the wise precept found in the Dhammapada to

do so, for they know that,

If any man, whether he be learned or not, consider himself so great as to

despise other men, he is like a blind man holding a candle-blind himself, he

illumines others.

-oOo-On

the Source of the Human Soul


Q. How, then, do you account for man being endowed with a Spirit and Soul?

Whence these?

A. From the Universal Soul. Certainly not bestowed by a personal God. Whence

the moist element in the jelly-fish? From the Ocean which surrounds it, in

which it lives and breathes and has its being, and whither it returns when

dissolved.


Q. So you reject the teaching that Soul is given, or breathed into man, by

God?

A. We are obliged to. The "Soul" spoken of in Genesis is, as therein stated,

the "living Soul" or Nephesh (the vital, animal soul) with which God (we say

"nature" and immutable law) endows man like every animal. Is not at all the

thinking soul or mind; least of all is it the immortal Spirit.


Q. Well, let us put it otherwise: is it God who endows man with a human

rational Soul and immortal Spirit?

A. Again, in the way you put the question, we must object to it. Since we

believe in no personal God, how can we believe that he endows man with

anything? But granting, for the sake of argument, a God who takes upon

himself the risk of creating a new Soul for every new-born baby, all that

can be said is that such a God can hardly be regarded as himself endowed

with any wisdom or prevision. Certain other difficulties and the

impossibility of reconciling this with the claims made for the mercy,

justice, equity and omniscience of that God, are so many deadly reefs on

which this theological dogma is daily and hourly broken.



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Q. What do you mean? What difficulties?

A. I am thinking of an unanswerable argument offered once in my presence by

a Singhalese Buddhist priest, a famous preacher, to a Christian

missionary-one in no way ignorant or unprepared for the public discussion

during which it was advanced. It was near Colombo, and the Missionary had

challenged the priest Megattivati to give his reasons why the Christian God

should not be accepted by the "heathen." Well, the Missionary came out of

that forever memorable discussion second best, as usual.


Q. I should be glad to learn in what way.

A. Simply this: the Buddhist priest premised by asking the padre whether his

God had given commandments to Moses only for men to keep, but to be broken

by God himself. The missionary denied the supposition indignantly. Well,

said his opponent,

… you tell us that God makes no exceptions to this rule, and that no Soul

can be born without his will. Now God forbids adultery, among other things,

and yet you say in the same breath that it is he who creates every baby

born, and he who endows it with a Soul. Are we then to understand that the

millions of children born in crime and adultery are your God's work? That

your God forbids and punishes the breaking of his laws; and that,

nevertheless, he creates daily and hourly souls for just such children?

According to the simplest logic, your God is an accomplice in the crime;

since, but for his help and interference, no such children of lust could be

born. Where is the justice of punishing not only the guilty parents but even

the innocent babe for that which is done by that very God, whom yet you

exonerate from any guilt himself?

The missionary looked at his watch and suddenly found it was getting too

late for further discussion.


Q. You forget that all such inexplicable cases are mysteries, and that we

are forbidden by our religion to pry into the mysteries of God.

A. No, we do not forget, but simply reject such impossibilities. Nor do we

want you to believe as we do. We only answer the questions you ask. We have,

however, another name for your "mysteries."

-oOo-The

Buddhist Teachings on the Above


Q. What does Buddhism teach with regard to the Soul?

A. It depends whether you mean exoteric, popular Buddhism, or its esoteric

teachings. The former explains itself in The Buddhist Catechism in this

wise:

Soul it considers a word used by the ignorant to express a false idea. If

everything is subject to change, then man is included, and every material

part of him must change. That which is subject to change is not permanent,

so there can be no immortal survival of a changeful thing.

This seems plain and definite. But when we come to the question that the new

personality in each succeeding rebirth is the aggregate of "Skandhas," or

the attributes, of the old personality, and ask whether this new aggregation

of Skandhas is a new being likewise, in which nothing has remained of the

last, we read that:

In one sense it is a new being, in another it is not. During this life the

Skandhas are continually changing, while the man A.B. of forty is identical

as regards personality with the youth A.B. of eighteen, yet by the continual



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waste and reparation of his body and change of mind and character, he is a

different being. Nevertheless, the man in his old age justly reaps the

reward or suffering consequent upon his thoughts and actions at every

previous stage of his life. So the new being of the rebirth, being the same

individuality as before (but not the same personality), with but a changed

form, or new aggregation of Skandhas, justly reaps the consequences of his

actions and thoughts in the previous existence.

This is abstruse metaphysics, and plainly does not express disbelief in Soul

by any means.


Q. Is not something like this spoken of in Esoteric Buddhism?

A. It is, for this teaching belongs both to Esoteric Budhism or Secret

Wisdom, and to the exoteric Buddhism, or the religious philosophy of Gautama

Buddha.


Q. But we are distinctly told that most of the Buddhists do not believe in

the Soul's immortality?

A. No more do we, if you mean by Soul the personal Ego, or

life-Soul-Nephesh. But every learned Buddhist believes in the individual or

divine Ego. Those who do not, err in their judgment. They are as mistaken on

this point, as those Christians who mistake the theological interpolations

of the later editors of the Gospels about damnation and hellfire, for

verbatim utterances of Jesus. Neither Buddha nor "Christ" ever wrote

anything themselves, but both spoke in allegories and used "dark sayings,"

as all true Initiates did, and will do for a long time yet to come. Both

Scriptures treat of all such metaphysical questions very cautiously, and

both, Buddhist and Christian records, sin by that excess of exotericism; the

dead letter meaning far overshooting the mark in both cases.


Q. Do you mean to suggest that neither the teachings of Buddha nor those of

Christ have been heretofore rightly understood?

A. What I mean is just as you say. Both Gospels, the Buddhist and the

Christian, were preached with the same object in view. Both reformers were

ardent philanthropists and practical altruists-preaching most unmistakably

Socialism of the noblest and highest type, self-sacrifice to the bitter end.

"Let the sins of the whole world fall upon me that I may relieve man's

misery and suffering!" cries Buddha. "I would not let one cry whom I could

save!" exclaims the Prince-beggar, clad in the refuse rags of the

burial-grounds. "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I

will give you rest," is the appeal to the poor and the disinherited made by

the "Man of Sorrows," who hath not where to lay his head. The teachings of

both are boundless love for humanity, charity, forgiveness of injury,

forgetfulness of self, and pity for the deluded masses; both show the same

contempt for riches, and make no difference between meum and tuum. Their

desire was, without revealing to all the sacred mysteries of initiation, to

give the ignorant and the misled, whose burden in life was too heavy for

them, hope enough and an inkling into the truth sufficient to support them

in their heaviest hours. But the object of both Reformers was frustrated,

owing to excess of zeal of their later followers. The words of the Masters

having been misunderstood and misinterpreted, behold the consequences!


Q. But surely Buddha must have repudiated the soul's immortality, if all the

Orientalists and his own Priests say so!

A. The Arhats began by following the policy of their Master and the majority

of the subsequent priests were not initiated, just as in Christianity; and

so, little by little, the great esoteric truths became almost lost. A proof

in point is, that, out of the two existing sects in Ceylon, the Siamese

believes death to be the absolute annihilation of individuality and

personality, and the other explains Nirvana, as we Theosophists do.



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Q. But why, in that case, do Buddhism and Christianity represent the two

opposite poles of such belief?

A. Because the conditions under which they were preached were not the same.

In India the Brahmins, jealous of their superior knowledge, and excluding

from it every caste save their own, had driven millions of men into idolatry

and almost fetishism. Buddha had to give the death-blow to an exuberance of

unhealthy fancy and fanatical superstition resulting from ignorance, such as

has rarely been known before or after. Better a philosophical atheism than

such ignorant worship for those:

Who cry upon their gods and are not heard,

Or are not heeded …

-and who live and die in mental despair. He had to arrest first of all this

muddy torrent of superstition, to uproot errors before he gave out the

truth. And as he could not give out all, for the same good reason as Jesus,

who reminds his disciples that the Mysteries of Heaven are not for the

unintelligent masses, but for the elect alone, and therefore "spake he to

them in parables"-so his caution led Buddha to conceal too much. He even

refused to say to the monk Vacchagotta whether there was, or was not an Ego

in man. When pressed to answer, "the Exalted one maintained silence."

Buddha gives to Ananda, his initiated disciple, who inquires for the reason

of this silence, a plain and unequivocal answer in the dialogue translated

by Oldenburg from the Samyutta-Nikaya:

If I, Ananda, when the wandering monk Vacchagotta asked me: "Is there the

Ego?" had answered "The Ego is," then that, Ananda, would have confirmed the

doctrine of the Samanas and Brahmans, who believed in permanence. If I,

Ananda, when the wandering monk Vacchagotta asked me, "Is there not the

Ego?" had answered, "The Ego is not," then that, Ananda, would have

confirmed the doctrine of those who believed in annihilation. If I, Ananda,

when the wandering monk Vacchagotta asked me, "Is there the Ego?" had

answered, "The Ego is," would that have served my end, Ananda, by producing

in him the knowledge: all existences (dhamma) are non-ego? But if I, Ananda,

had answered, "The Ego is not," then that, Ananda, would only have caused

the wandering monk Vacchagotta to be thrown from one bewilderment to

another: "My Ego, did it not exist before? But now it exists no longer!"

This shows, better than anything, that Gautama Buddha withheld such

difficult metaphysical doctrines from the masses in order not to perplex

them more. What he meant was the difference between the personal temporary

Ego and the Higher Self, which sheds its light on the imperishable Ego, the

spiritual "I" of man.


Q. This refers to Gautama, but in what way does it touch the Gospels?

A. Read history and think over it. At the time the events narrated in the

Gospels are alleged to have happened, there was a similar intellectual

fermentation taking place in the whole civilized world, only with opposite

results in the East and the West. The old gods were dying out. While the

civilized classes drifted in the train of the unbelieving Sadducees into

materialistic negations and mere dead-letter Mosaic form in Palestine, and

into moral dissolution in Rome, the lowest and poorer classes ran after

sorcery and strange gods, or became hypocrites and Pharisees. Once more the

time for a spiritual reform had arrived. The cruel, anthropomorphic and

jealous God of the Jews, with his sanguinary laws of "an eye for eye and

tooth for tooth," of the shedding of blood and animal sacrifice, had to be

relegated to a secondary place and replaced by the merciful "Father in

Secret." The latter had to be shown, not as an extra-Cosmic God, but as a

divine Savior of the man of flesh, enshrined in his own heart and soul, in



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the poor as in the rich. No more here than in India, could the secrets of

initiation be divulged, lest by giving that which is holy to the dogs, and

casting pearls before swine, both the Revealer and the things revealed

should be trodden under foot. Thus, the reticence of both Buddha and

Jesus-whether the latter lived out the historic period allotted to him or

not, and who equally abstained from revealing plainly the Mysteries of Life

and Death-led in the one case to the blank negations of Southern Buddhism,

and in the other, to the three clashing forms of the Christian Church and

the 300 sects in Protestant England alone.

Theosophical Teachings as to Nature and Man

The Unity of All in All


Q. Having told me what God, the Soul and Man are not, in your views, can you

inform me what they are, according to your teachings?

A. In their origin and in eternity the three, like the universe and all

therein, are one with the absolute Unity, the unknowable deific essence I

spoke about some time back. We believe in no creation, but in the periodical

and consecutive appearances of the universe from the subjective onto the

objective plane of being, at regular intervals of time, covering periods of

immense duration.


Q. Can you elaborate the subject?

A. Take as a first comparison and a help towards a more correct conception,

the solar year, and as a second, the two halves of that year, producing each

a day and a night of six months' duration at the North Pole. Now imagine, if

you can, instead of a Solar year of 365 days, eternity. Let the sun

represent the universe, and the polar days and nights of six months

each-days and nights lasting each 182 trillions and quadrillions of years,

instead of 182 days each. As the sun arises every morning on our objective

horizon out of its (to us) subjective and antipodal space, so does the

Universe emerge periodically on the plane of objectivity, issuing from that

of subjectivity-the antipodes of the former. This is the "Cycle of Life."

And as the sun disappears from our horizon, so does the Universe disappear

at regular periods, when the "Universal night" sets in. The Hindus call such

alternations the "Days and Nights of Brahm ," or the time of Manvantara and

that of Pralaya (dissolution). The Westerns may call them Universal Days and

Nights if they prefer. During the latter (the nights) All is in All; every

atom is resolved into one Homogeneity.

-oOo-Evolution

and Illusion


Q. But who is it that creates each time the Universe?

A. No one creates it. Science would call the process evolution; the

pre-Christian philosophers and the Orientalists called it emanation: we,

Occultists and Theosophists, see in it the only universal and eternal

reality casting a periodical reflection of itself on the infinite Spatial

depths. This reflection, which you regard as the objective material

universe, we consider as a temporary illusion and nothing else. That alone

which is eternal is real.


Q. At that rate, you and I are also illusions.

A. As flitting personalities, today one person, tomorrow another-we are.

Would you call the sudden flashes of the aurora borealis, the Northern

lights, a "reality," though it is as real as can be while you look at it?

Certainly not; it is the cause that produces it, if permanent and eternal,

which is the only reality, while the other is but a passing illusion.



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Q. All this does not explain to me how this illusion called the universe

originates; how the conscious to be, proceeds to manifest itself from the

unconsciousness that is.

A. It is unconsciousness only to our finite consciousness. Verily may we

paraphrase St. John and say:

… and (Absolute) light (which is darkness) shineth in darkness (which is

illusionary material light); and the darkness comprehendeth it not.

This absolute light is also absolute and immutable law. Whether by radiation

or emanation-we need not quarrel over terms-the universe passes out of its

homogeneous subjectivity onto the first plane of manifestation, of which

planes there are seven, we are taught. With each plane it becomes more dense

and material until it reaches this, our plane, on which the only world

approximately known and understood in its physical composition by Science,

is the planetary or Solar system-one sui generis, we are told.


Q. What do you mean by sui generis?

A. I mean that, though the fundamental law and the universal working of laws

of Nature are uniform, still our Solar system (like every other such system

in the millions of others in Cosmos) and even our Earth, has its own program

of manifestations differing from the respective programs of all others. We

speak of the inhabitants of other planets and imagine that if they are men,

i.e., thinking entities, they must be as we are. The fancy of poets and

painters and sculptors never fails to represent even the angels as a

beautiful copy of man-plus wings. We say that all this is an error and a

delusion; because, if on this little earth alone one finds such a diversity

in its flora, fauna, and mankind-from the seaweed to the cedar of Lebanon,

from the jellyfish to the elephant, from the Bushman and negro to the Apollo

Belvedere-alter the conditions cosmic and planetary, and there must be as a

result quite a different flora, fauna, and mankind. The same laws will

fashion quite a different set of things and beings even on this our plane,

including in it all our planets. How much more different then must be

external nature in other Solar systems, and how foolish is it to judge of

other stars and worlds and human beings by our own, as physical science

does!


Q. But what are your data for this assertion?

A. What science in general will never accept as proof-the cumulative

testimony of an endless series of Seers who have testified to this fact.

Their spiritual visions, real explorations by, and through, physical and

spiritual senses untrammeled by blind flesh, were systematically checked and

compared one with the other, and their nature sifted. All that was not

corroborated by unanimous and collective experience was rejected, while that

only was recorded as established truth which, in various ages, under

different climes, and throughout an untold series of incessant observations,

was found to agree and receive constantly further corroboration. The methods

used by our scholars and students of the psycho-spiritual sciences do not

differ from those of students of the natural and physical sciences, as you

may see. Only our fields of research are on two different planes, and our

instruments are made by no human hands, for which reason perchance they are

only the more reliable. The retorts, accumulators, and microscopes of the

chemist and naturalist may get out of order; the telescope and the

astronomer's horological instruments may get spoiled; our recording

instruments are beyond the influence of weather or the elements.


Q. And therefore you have implicit faith in them?

A. Faith is a word not to be found in theosophical dictionaries: we say

knowledge based, on observation and experience. There is this difference,



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however, that while the observation and experience of physical science lead

the Scientists to about as many "working" hypotheses as there are minds to

evolve them, our knowledge consents to add to its lore only those facts

which have become undeniable, and which are fully and absolutely

demonstrated. We have no two beliefs or hypotheses on the same subject.


Q. Is it on such data that you came to accept the strange theories we find

in Esoteric Buddhism?

A. Just so. These theories may be slightly incorrect in their minor details,

and even faulty in their exposition by lay students; they are facts in

nature, nevertheless, and come nearer the truth than any scientific

hypothesis.

-oOo-On

The Septenary Constitution of Our Planet


Q. I understand that you describe our earth as forming part of a chain of

earths?

A. We do. But the other six "earths" or globes, are not on the same plane of

objectivity as our earth is; therefore we cannot see them.


Q. Is that on account of the great distance?

A. Not at all, for we see with our naked eye planets and even stars at

immeasurably greater distances; but it is owing to those six globes being

outside our physical means of perception, or plane of being. It is not only

that their material density, weight, or fabric are entirely different from

those of our earth and the other known planets; but they are (to us) on an

entirely different layer of space, so to speak; a layer not to be perceived

or felt by our physical senses. And when I say "layer," please do not allow

your fancy to suggest to you layers like strata or beds laid one over the

other, for this would only lead to another absurd misconception. What I mean

by "layer" is that plane of infinite space which by its nature cannot fall

under our ordinary waking perceptions, whether mental or physical; but which

exists in nature outside of our normal mentality or consciousness, outside

of our three-dimensional space, and outside of our division of time. Each of

the seven fundamental planes (or layers) in space-of course as a whole, as

the pure space of Locke's definition, not as our finite space-has its own

objectivity and subjectivity, its own space and time, its own consciousness

and set of senses. But all this will be hardly comprehensible to one trained

in the modern ways of thought.


Q. What do you mean by a different set of senses? Is there anything on our

human plane that you could bring as an illustration of what you say, just to

give a clearer idea of what you may mean by this variety of senses, spaces,

and respective perceptions?

A. None; except, perhaps, that which for Science would be rather a handy peg

on which to hang a counter argument. We have a different set of senses in

dreamlife, have we not? We feel, talk, hear, see, taste and function in

general on a different plane; the change of state of our consciousness being

evidenced by the fact that a series of acts and events embracing years, as

we think, pass ideally through our mind in one instant. Well, that extreme

rapidity of our mental operations in dreams, and the perfect naturalness,

for the time being, of all the other functions, show us that we are on quite

another plane. Our philosophy teaches us that, as there are seven

fundamental forces in nature, and seven planes of being, so there are seven

states of consciousness in which man can live, think, remember and have his

being. To enumerate these here is impossible, and for this one has to turn

to the study of Eastern metaphysics. But in these two states-the waking and

the dreaming-every ordinary mortal, from a learned philosopher down to a



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poor untutored savage, has a good proof that such states differ.


Q. You do not accept, then, the well-known explanations of biology and

physiology to account for the dream state?

A. We do not. We reject even the hypotheses of your psychologists,

preferring the teachings of Eastern Wisdom. Believing in seven planes of

Kosmic being and states of Consciousness, with regard to the Universe or the

Macrocosm, we stop at the fourth plane, finding it impossible to go with any

degree of certainty beyond. But with respect to the Microcosm, or man, we

speculate freely on his seven states and principles.


Q. How do you explain these?

A. We find, first of all, two distinct beings in man; the spiritual and the

physical, the man who thinks, and the man who records as much of these

thoughts as he is able to assimilate. Therefore we divide him into two

distinct natures; the upper or the spiritual being, composed of three

principles or aspects; and the lower or the physical quaternary, composed of

four-in all seven.

-oOo-The

Septenary Nature of Man


Q. Is it what we call Spirit and Soul, and the man of flesh?

A. It is not. That is the old Platonic division. Plato was an Initiate, and

therefore could not go into forbidden details; but he who is acquainted with

the archaic doctrine finds the seven in Plato's various combinations of Soul

and Spirit. He regarded man as constituted of two parts-one eternal, formed

of the same essence as the Absoluteness, the other mortal and corruptible,

deriving its constituent parts from the minor "created" Gods. Man is

composed, he shows, of (1) A mortal body, (2) An immortal principle, and (3)

A "separate mortal kind of Soul." It is that which we respectively call the

physical man, the Spiritual Soul or Spirit, and the animal Soul (the Nous

and psuche). This is the division adopted by Paul, another Initiate, who

maintains that there is a psychical body which is sown in the corruptible

(astral soul or body), and a spiritual body that is raised in incorruptible

substance. Even James corroborates the same by saying that the "wisdom" (of

our lower soul) descendeth not from the above, but is terrestrial

("psychical," "demoniacal," see the Greek text) while the other is heavenly

wisdom. Now so plain is it that Plato and even Pythagoras, while speaking

but of three principles, give them seven separate functions, in their

various combinations, that if we contrast our teachings this will become

quite plain. Let us take a cursory view of these seven aspects by drawing

two tables.

Theosophical Division of the Lower Quaternary

Sanskrit Term Exoteric Meaning Explanation

1. Rupa, or Sthula-sarira Physical body Is the vehicle of all the

other principles during life.

1. Prana Life, or Vital principle Necessary only to a, c,

d, and the functions of the lower Manas, which

embrace all those limited to the (physical) brain.

(c) Linga- sarira Astral Body The Double, the phantom body.



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(d) Kamarupa The seat of animal desires and passions This is the center of

the animal man, where lies the line of demarcation which separates the

mortal man from the immortal entity.

Theosophical Division of the Upper Imperishable Triad

Sanskrit Term Exoteric Meaning Explanation

(e) Manas-a dual principle in its functions. Mind, Intelligence: which is

the higher human mind, whose light, or radiation links the Monad, for the

lifetime, to the mortal man. The future state and the Karmic destiny of man

depend on whether Manas gravitates more downward to Kamarupa, the seat of

the animal passions, or upwards to Buddhi, the Spiritual Ego. In the later

case, the higher consciousness of the individual Spiritual aspirations of

mind (Manas), assimilating Buddhi, are absorbed by it and form the Ego,

which goes into Devachanic bliss.

(f) Buddhi The Spiritual Soul The vehicle of pure universal spirit.

(g) Atma Spirit One with the Absolute, as its radiation.

In Mr. Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism d, e, and f, are respectively called the

Animal, the Human, and the Spiritual Souls, which answers as well. Though

the principles in Esoteric Buddhism are numbered, this is, strictly

speaking, useless. The dual Monad alone ( Atma-Buddhi) is susceptible of

being thought of as the two highest numbers (the sixth and seventh). As to

all others, since that principle only which is predominant in man has to be

considered as the first and foremost, no numeration is possible as a general

rule. In some men it is the higher Intelligence (Manas or the fifth) which

dominates the rest; in others the Animal Soul (Kamarupa) that reigns

supreme, exhibiting the most bestial instincts, etc.

-oOo-Now

what does Plato teach? He speaks of the interior man as constituted of

two parts-one immutable and always the same, formed of the same substance as

Deity, and the other mortal and corruptible. These "two parts" are found in

our upper Triad, and the lower Quaternary (see table above, ). He explains

that when the Soul, psuche, "allies herself to the Nous (divine spirit or

substance *)), she does everything aright and felicitously;" but the case is

otherwise when she attaches herself to Anoia, (folly, or the irrational

animal Soul). Here, then, we have Manas (or the Soul in general) in its two

aspects: when attaching itself to Anoia (our Kamarupa, or the "Animal Soul"

in Esoteric Buddhism) it runs towards entire annihilation, as far as the

personal Ego is concerned; when allying itself to the Nous ( Atma-Buddhi) it

merges into the immortal, imperishable Ego, and then its spiritual

consciousness of the personal that was, becomes immortal.

*) St. Paul calls Plato's nous 'spirit';but since this spirit is

'substance', Buddhi is meant then and not Atma; philosophically speaking

this (Atma) cannot be called 'substance'. We count Atma as a human

'principle' in order to not create yet more confusion. In reality it is not

a 'human' but the universal absolute principle of which buddhi, the

soul-spirit, is the vehicle. [reversely translated

note from Dutch translation - editor]

-oOo-The

Distinction Between Soul and Spirit


Q. Do you really teach, as you are accused of doing by some Spiritualists

and French Spiritists, the annihilation of every personality?



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A. We do not. But as this question of the duality-the individuality of the

Divine Ego, and the personality of the human animal-involves that of the

possibility of the real immortal Ego appearing in Seance rooms as a

"materialized spirit," which we deny as already explained, our opponents

have started the nonsensical charge.


Q. You have just spoken of psuche running towards its entire annihilation if

it attaches itself to Anoia. What did Plato, and do you mean by this?

A. The entire annihilation of the personal consciousness, as an exceptional

and rare case, I think. The general and almost invariable rule is the

merging of the personal into the individual or immortal consciousness of the

Ego, a transformation or a divine transfiguration, and the entire

annihilation only of the lower quaternary. Would you expect the man of

flesh, or the temporary personality, his shadow, the "astral," his animal

instincts and even physical life, to survive with the "spiritual Ego" and

become everlasting, eternal? Naturally all this ceases to exist, either at,

or soon after corporeal death. It becomes in time entirely disintegrated and

disappears from view, being annihilated as a whole.


Q. Then you also reject resurrection in the flesh?

A. Most decidedly we do! Why should we, who believe in the archaic esoteric

philosophy of the Ancients, accept the unphilosophical speculations of the

later Christian theology, borrowed from the Egyptian and Greek exoteric

Systems of the Gnostics?


Q. The Egyptians revered Nature-Spirits, and deified even onions: your

Hindus are idolaters, to this day; the Zoroastrians worshiped, and do still

worship, the Sun; and the best Greek philosophers were either dreamers or

materialists-witness Plato and Democritus. How can you compare!

A. It may be so in your modern Christian and even Scientific catechism; it

is not so for unbiased minds. The Egyptians revered the "One-Only-One," as

Nout; and it is from this word that Anaxagoras got his denomination Nous, or

as he calls it, nous autokrates , "the Mind or Spirit Self-potent", the

archetes kinedeos , the leading motor, or primum-mobile of all. With him the

Nous was God, and the logos was man, his emanation. The Nous is the spirit

(whether in Kosmos or in man), and the logos, whether Universe or astral

body, the emanation of the former, the physical body being merely the

animal. Our external powers perceive phenomena; our Nous alone is able to

recognize their noumena. It is the logos alone, or the noumenon, that

survives, because it is immortal in its very nature and essence, and the

logos in man is the Eternal Ego, that which reincarnates and lasts forever.

But how can the evanescent or external shadow, the temporary clothing of

that divine Emanation which returns to the source whence it proceeded, be

that which is raised in incorruptibility?


Q. Still you can hardly escape the charge of having invented a new division

of man's spiritual and psychic constituents; for no philosopher speaks of

them, though you believe that Plato does.

A. And I support the view. Besides Plato, there is Pythagoras, who also

followed the same idea.

Says Plutarch:

Plato and Pythagoras distribute the soul into two parts, the rational

(noetic) and irrational (agnoia); that part of the soul of man which is

rational is eternal; for though it be not God, yet it is the product of an

eternal deity, but that part of the soul which is divested of reason

(agnoia) dies.

The modern term Agnostic comes from Agnosis, a cognate word. We wonder why



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Mr. Huxley, the author of the word, should have connected his great

intellect with "the soul divested of reason" which dies? Is it the

exaggerated humility of the modern materialist?

Pythagoras described the Soul as a self-moving Unit (monad) composed of

three elements, the Nous (Spirit), the phren (mind), and the thumos (life,

breath or the Nephesh of the Cabalists) which three correspond to our "

Atma-buddhi," (higher Spirit-Soul), to Manas (the Ego), and to Kamarupa in

conjunction with the lower reflection of Manas. That which the Ancient Greek

philosophers termed Soul, in general, we call Spirit, or Spiritual Soul,

Buddhi, as the vehicle of Atma (the Agathon, or Plato's Supreme Deity). The

fact that Pythagoras and others state that phren and thumos are shared by us

with the brutes, proves that in this case the lower Manasic reflection

(instinct) and Kamarupa (animal living passions) are meant. And as Socrates

and Plato accepted the clue and followed it, if to these five, namely,

Agathon (Deity or Atma), Psuche (Soul in its collective sense), Nous (Spirit

or Mind), Phren (physical mind), and Thumos (Kamarupa or passions) we add

the eidolon of the Mysteries, the shadowy form or the human double, and the

physical body, it will be easy to demonstrate that the ideas of both

Pythagoras and Plato were identical with ours. Even the Egyptians held to

the Septenary division. In its exit, they taught, the Soul (Ego) had to pass

through its seven chambers, or principles, those it left behind, and those

it took along with itself. The only difference is that, ever bearing in mind

the penalty of revealing Mystery-doctrines, which was death, they gave out

the teaching in a broad outline, while we elaborate it and explain it in its

details. But though we do give out to the world as much as is lawful, even

in our doctrine more than one important detail is withheld, which those who

study the esoteric philosophy and are pledged to silence, are alone entitled

to know.

-oOo-The

Greek Teachings


Q. We have magnificent Greek and Latin, Sanskrit and Hebrew scholars. How is

it that we find nothing in their translations that would afford us a clue to

what you say?

A. Because your translators, their great learning notwithstanding, have made

of the philosophers, the Greeks especially, misty instead of mystic writers.

Take as an instance Plutarch, and read what he says of "the principles" of

man. That which he describes was accepted literally and attributed to

metaphysical superstition and ignorance. Let me give you an illustration in

point. Says Plutarch:

Man is compound; and they are mistaken who think him to be compounded of two

parts only. For they imagine that the understanding (brain intellect) is a

part of the soul (the upper Triad), but they err in this no less than those

who make the soul to be a part of the body, i.e., those who make of the

Triad part of the corruptible mortal quaternary. For the understanding

(nous) as far exceeds the soul, as the soul is better and diviner than the

body. Now this composition of the soul ( psuche) with the understanding

(nous) makes reason; and with the body (or thumos, the animal soul) passion;

of which the one is the beginning or principle of pleasure and pain, and the

other of virtue and vice. Of these three parts conjoined and compacted

together, the earth has given the body, the moon the soul, and the sun the

understanding to the generation of man.

This last sentence is purely allegorical, and will be comprehended only by

those who are versed in the esoteric science of correspondences and know

which planet is related to every principle. Plutarch divides the latter into

three groups, and makes of the body a compound of physical frame, astral

shadow, and breath, or the triple lower part, which "from earth was taken

and to earth returns"; of the middle principle and the instinctual soul, the



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second part, derived from and through and ever influenced by the moon; and

only of the higher part or the Spiritual Soul, with the tmic and Manasic

elements in it does he make a direct emanation of the Sun, who stands here

for Agathon the Supreme Deity. This is proven by what he says further as

follows:

Now of the deaths we die, the one makes man two of three and the other one

of (out of) two. The former is in the region and jurisdiction of Demeter,

whence the name given to the Mysteries, telein , resembled that given to

death, teleutan. The Athenians also heretofore called the deceased sacred to

Demeter. As for the other death, it is in the moon or region of Persephone.

Here you have our doctrine, which shows man a septenary during life; a

quintile just after death, in Kamaloka; and a threefold Ego, Spirit-Soul,

and consciousness in Devachan. This separation, first in "the Meadows of

Hades," as Plutarch calls the Kamaloka, then in Devachan, was part and

parcel of the performances during the sacred Mysteries, when the candidates

for initiation enacted the whole drama of death, and the resurrection as a

glorified spirit, by which name we mean Consciousness. This is what Plutarch

means when he says:

And as with the one, the terrestrial, so with the other celestial Hermes

doth dwell. This suddenly and with violence plucks the soul from the body;

but Prospina mildly and in a long time disjoins the understanding from the

soul.

(Proserpina, or Persephone, stands here for postmortem Karma, which is said

to regulate the separation of the lower from the higher principles: the

Soul, as Nephesh, the breath of animal life, which remains for a time in

Kamaloka, from the higher compound Ego, which goes into the state of

Devachan, or bliss.)

For this reason she is called Monogenes, only begotten, or rather begetting

one alone; for the better part of man becomes alone when it is separated by

her. Now both the one and the other happens thus according to nature. It is

ordained by Fate (Fatum or Karma) that every soul, whether with or without

understanding (mind), when gone out of the body, should wander for a time,

though not all for the same, in the region lying between the earth and moon

(Kamaloka). For those that have been unjust and dissolute suffer then the

punishment due to their offenses; but the good and virtuous are there

detained till they are purified, and have, by expiation, purged out of them

all the infections they might have contracted from the contagion of the

body, as if from foul health, living in the mildest part of the air, called

the Meadows of Hades, where they must remain for a certain prefixed and

appointed time. And then, as if they were returning from a wandering

pilgrimage or long exile into their country, they have a taste of joy, such

as they principally receive who are initiated into Sacred Mysteries, mixed

with trouble, admiration, and each one's proper and peculiar hope.

This is Nirvanic bliss, and no Theosophist could describe in plainer though

esoteric language the mental joys of Devachan, where every man has his

paradise around him, erected by his consciousness. But you must beware of

the general error into which too many even of our Theosophists fall. Do not

imagine that because man is called septenary, then quintuple and a triad, he

is a compound of seven, five, or three entities; or, as well expressed by a

Theosophical writer, of skins to be peeled off like the skins of an onion.

The principles, as already said, save the body, the life, and the astral

eidolon, all of which disperse at death, are simply aspects and states of

consciousness. There is but one real man, enduring through the cycle of life

and immortal in essence, if not in form, and this is Manas, the Mind-man or

embodied Consciousness. The objection made by the materialists, who deny the

possibility of mind and consciousness acting without matter is worthless in

our case. We do not deny the soundness of their argument; but we simply ask

our opponents,



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Are you acquainted with all the states of matter, you who knew hitherto but

of three? And how do you know whether that which we refer to as absolute

consciousness or Deity forever invisible and unknowable, be not that which,

though it eludes forever our human finite conception, is still universal

Spirit-matter or matter-Spirit in its absolute infinitude?

It is then one of the lowest, and in its manvantaric manifestations

fractioned-aspects of this Spirit-matter, which is the conscious Ego that

creates its own paradise, a fool's paradise, it may be, still a state of

bliss.


Q. But what is Devachan?

A. The "land of gods" literally; a condition, a state of mental bliss.

Philosophically a mental condition analogous to, but far more vivid and real

than, the most vivid dream. It is the state after death of most mortals.

On the Various Postmortem States

The Physical and the Spiritual Man


Q. I am glad to hear you believe in the immortality of the Soul.

A. Not of "the Soul," but of the divine Spirit; or rather in the immortality

of the reincarnating Ego.


Q. What is the difference?

A. A very great one in our philosophy, but this is too abstruse and

difficult a question to touch lightly upon. We shall have to analyze them

separately, and then in conjunction. We may begin with Spirit.

We say that the Spirit (the "Father in secret" of Jesus), or Atma, is no

individual property of any man, but is the Divine essence which has no body,

no form, which is imponderable, invisible and indivisible, that which does

not exist and yet is, as the Buddhists say of Nirvana. It only overshadows

the mortal; that which enters into him and pervades the whole body being

only its omnipresent rays, or light, radiated through Buddhi, its vehicle

and direct emanation. This is the secret meaning of the assertions of almost

all the ancient philosophers, when they said that "the rational part of

man's soul" never entered wholly into the man, but only overshadowed him

more or less through the irrational spiritual Soul or Buddhi.

Buddhi is irrational in the sense that as a pure emanation of the Universal

mind it can have no individual reason of its own on this plane of matter,

but like the Moon, who borrows her light from the Sun and her life from the

Earth, so Buddhi, receiving its light of Wisdom from Atma, gets its rational

qualities from Manas. Per se, as something homogeneous, it is devoid of

attributes.


Q. I labored under the impression that the "Animal Soul" alone was

irrational, not the Divine.

A. You have to learn the difference between that which is negatively, or

passively "irrational," because undifferentiated, and that which is

irrational because too active and positive. Man is a correlation of

spiritual powers, as well as a correlation of chemical and physical forces,

brought into function by what we call principles.

I have read a good deal upon the subject, and it seems to me that the

notions of the older philosophers differed a great deal from those of the

medieval Cabalists, though they do agree in some particulars.



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A. The most substantial difference between them and us is this. While we

believe with the Neo-Platonists and the Eastern teachings that the spirit (

Atma) never descends hypostatically into the living man, but only showers

more or less its radiance on the inner man (the psychic and spiritual

compound of the astral principles), the Cabalists maintain that the human

Spirit, detaching itself from the ocean of light and Universal Spirit,

enters man's Soul, where it remains throughout life imprisoned in the astral

capsule. All Christian Cabalists still maintain the same, as they are unable

to break quite loose from their anthropomorphic and Biblical doctrines.


Q. And what do you say?

A. We say that we only allow the presence of the radiation of Spirit (or

Atma) in the astral capsule, and so far only as that spiritual radiancy is

concerned. We say that man and Soul have to conquer their immortality by

ascending towards the unity with which, if successful, they will be finally

linked and into which they are finally, so to speak, absorbed. The

individualization of man after death depends on the spirit, not on his soul

and body. Although the word personality, in the sense in which it is usually

understood, is an absurdity if applied literally to our immortal essence,

still the latter is, as our individual Ego, a distinct entity, immortal and

eternal, per se. It is only in the case of black magicians or of criminals

beyond redemption, criminals who have been such during a long series of

lives-that the shining thread, which links the spirit to the personal soul

from the moment of the birth of the child, is violently snapped, and the

disembodied entity becomes divorced from the personal soul, the latter being

annihilated without leaving the smallest impression of itself on the former.

If that union between the lower, or personal Manas, and the individual

reincarnating Ego, has not been effected during life, then the former is

left to share the fate of the lower animals, to gradually dissolve into

ether, and have its personality annihilated. But even then the Ego remains a

distinct being. It (the spiritual Ego) only loses one Devachanic state-after

that special, and in that case indeed useless, life-as that idealized

Personality, and is reincarnated, after enjoying for a short time its

freedom as a planetary spirit almost immediately.


Q. It is stated in Isis Unveiled that such planetary Spirits or Angels, "the

gods of the Pagans or the Archangels of the Christians," will never be men

on our planet.

A. Quite right. Not "such," but some classes of higher Planetary Spirits.

They will never be men on this planet, because they are liberated Spirits

from a previous, earlier world, and as such they cannot rebecome men on this

one. Yet all these will live again in the next and far higher

Maha-Manvantara, after this "great Age," and "Brahma pralaya," (a little

period of 16 figures or so) is over. For you must have heard, of course,

that Eastern philosophy teaches us that mankind consists of such "Spirits"

imprisoned in human bodies? The difference between animals and men is this:

the former are ensouled by the principles potentially, the latter actually.

Do you understand now the difference?


Q. Yes; but this specialization has been in all ages the stumbling-block of

metaphysicians.

A. It was. The whole esotericism of the Buddhist philosophy is based on this

mysterious teaching, understood by so few persons, and so totally

misrepresented by many of the most learned modern scholars. Even

metaphysicians are too inclined to confound the effect with the cause. An

Ego who has won his immortal life as spirit will remain the same inner self

throughout all his rebirths on earth; but this does not imply necessarily

that he must either remain the Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown he was on earth, or

lose his individuality. Therefore, the astral soul and the terrestrial body

of man may, in the dark hereafter, be absorbed into the cosmical ocean of

sublimated elements, and cease to feel his last personal Ego (if it did not



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deserve to soar higher), and the divine Ego still remain the same unchanged

entity, though this terrestrial experience of his emanation may be totally

obliterated at the instant of separation from the unworthy vehicle.


Q. If the "Spirit," or the divine portion of the soul, is preexistent as a

distinct being from all eternity, as Origen, Synesius, and other

semi-Christians and semi-Platonic philosophers taught, and if it is the

same, and nothing more than the metaphysically-objective soul, how can it be

otherwise than eternal? And what matters it in such a case, whether man

leads a pure life or an animal, if, do what he may, he can never lose his

individuality?

A. This doctrine, as you have stated it, is just as pernicious in its

consequences as that of vicarious atonement. Had the latter dogma, in

company with the false idea that we are all immortal, been demonstrated to

the world in its true light, humanity would have been bettered by its

propagation.

Let me repeat to you again. Pythagoras, Plato, Timaeus of Locris, and the

old Alexandrian School, derived the Soul of man (or his higher principles

and attributes) from the Universal World Soul, the latter being, according

to their teachings, Aether (Pater-Zeus). Therefore, neither of these

principles can be unalloyed essence of the Pythagorean Monas, or our

Atma-Buddhi, because the Anima Mundi is but the effect, the subjective

emanation or rather radiation of the former. Both the human Spirit (or the

individuality), the reincarnating Spiritual Ego, and Buddhi, the Spiritual

soul, are preexistent. But, while the former exists as a distinct entity, an

individualization, the soul exists as preexisting breath, an unscient

[lacking in knowledge] portion of an intelligent whole. Both were originally

formed from the Eternal Ocean of light; but as the Fire-Philosophers, the

medieval Theosophists, expressed it, there is a visible as well as invisible

spirit in fire. They made a difference between the anima bruta and the anima

divina. Empedocles firmly believed all men and animals to possess two souls;

and in Aristotle we find that he calls one the reasoning soul,nous , and the

other, the animal soul, psuche . According to these philosophers, the

reasoning soul comes from within the universal soul, and the other from

without.


Q. Would you call the Soul, i.e., the human thinking Soul, or what you call

the Ego-matter?

A. Not matter, but substance assuredly; nor would the word matter, if

prefixed with the adjective, primordial, be a word to avoid. That matter, we

say, is coeternal with Spirit, and is not our visible, tangible, and

divisible matter, but its extreme sublimation. Pure Spirit is but one remove

from the no-Spirit, or the absolute all. Unless you admit that man was

evolved out of this primordial Spirit-matter, and represents a regular

progressive scale of principles from meta-Spirit down to the grossest

matter, how can we ever come to regard the inner man as immortal, and at the

same time as a spiritual Entity and a mortal man?


Q. Then why should you not believe in God as such an Entity?

A. Because that which is infinite and unconditioned can have no form, and

cannot be a being, not in any Eastern philosophy worthy of the name, at any

rate. An "entity" is immortal, but is so only in its ultimate essence, not

in its individual form. When at the last point of its cycle, it is absorbed

into its primordial nature; and it becomes spirit, when it loses its name of

Entity.

Its immortality as a form is limited only to its life cycle or the Maha

-Manvantara; after which it is one and identical with the Universal Spirit,

and no longer a separate Entity. As to the personal Soul-by which we mean

the spark of consciousness that preserves in the Spiritual Ego the idea of



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the personal "I" of the last incarnation-this lasts, as a separate distinct

recollection, only throughout the Devachanic period; after which time it is

added to the series of other innumerable incarnations of the Ego, like the

remembrance in our memory of one of a series of days, at the end of a year.

Will you bind the infinitude you claim for your God to finite conditions?

That alone which is indissolubly cemented by Atma (i.e., Buddhi-Manas) is

immortal. The Soul of man (i.e., of the personality) per se is neither

immortal, eternal nor divine. Says The Zohar:

The soul, when sent to this earth, puts on an earthly garment, to preserve

herself here, so she receives above a shining garment, in order to be able

to look without injury into the mirror, whose light proceeds from the Lord

of Light.

Moreover, The Zohar teaches that the soul cannot reach the abode of bliss,

unless she has received the "holy kiss," or the reunion of the soul with the

substance from which she emanated-spirit. All souls are dual, and, while the

latter is a feminine principle, the spirit is masculine. While imprisoned in

body, man is a trinity, unless his pollution is such as to have caused his

divorce from the spirit. "Woe to the soul which prefers to her divine

husband (spirit) the earthly wedlock with her terrestrial body," records a

text of The Book of the Keys, a Hermetic work. Woe indeed, for nothing will

remain of that personality to be recorded on the imperishable tablets of the

Ego's memory.


Q. How can that which, if not breathed by God into man, yet is on your own

confession of an identical substance with the divine, fail to be immortal?

A. Every atom and speck of matter, not of substance only, is imperishable in

its essence, but not in its individual consciousness. Immortality is but

one's unbroken consciousness; and the personal consciousness can hardly last

longer than the personality itself, can it? And such consciousness, as I

already told you, survives only throughout Devachan, after which it is

reabsorbed, first, in the individual, and then in the universal

consciousness. Better enquire of your theologians how it is that they have

so sorely jumbled up the Jewish Scriptures. Read the Bible, if you would

have a good proof that the writers of the Pentateuch, and Genesis

especially, never regarded nephesh, that which God breathes into Adam, as

the immortal soul. Here are some instances: "And God created … every nephesh

(life) that moveth," meaning animals; and it is said: "And man became a

nephesh" (living soul), which shows that the word nephesh was indifferently

applied to immortal man and to mortal beast. "And surely your blood of your

nepheshim (lives) will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require

it, and at the hand of man," "Escape for nephesh" (escape for thy life, it

is translated). "Let us not kill him," reads the English version. "Let us

not kill his nephesh," is the Hebrew text. "Nephesh for nephesh," says

Leviticus. "He that killeth any man shall surely be put to death," literally

"He that smiteth the nephesh of a man;" and from verse 18 and following it

reads: "And he that killeth a beast (nephesh) shall make it good … Beast for

beast," whereas the original text has it "nephesh for nephesh." How could

man kill that which is immortal? And this explains also why the Sadducees

denied the immortality of the soul, as it also affords another proof that

very probably the Mosaic Jews-the uninitiated at any rate-never believed in

the soul's survival at all.

-oOo-On

Eternal Reward and Punishment, and on Nirvana


Q. It is hardly necessary, I suppose, to ask you whether you believe in the

Christian dogmas of Paradise and Hell, or in future rewards and punishments

as taught by the Orthodox churches?

A. As described in your catechisms, we reject them absolutely; least of all



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would we accept their eternity. But we believe firmly in what we call the

Law of Retribution, and in the absolute justice and wisdom guiding this Law,

or Karma. Hence we positively refuse to accept the cruel and unphilosophical

belief in eternal reward or eternal punishment. We say with Horace:

Let rules be fixed that may our rage contain,

And punish faults with a proportioned pain;

But do not flay him who deserves alone

A whipping for the fault that he has done.

This is a rule for all men, and a just one. Have we to believe that God, of

whom you make the embodiment of wisdom, love and mercy, is less entitled to

these attributes than mortal man?


Q. Have you any other reasons for rejecting this dogma?

A. Our chief reason for it lies in the fact of reincarnation. As already

stated, we reject the idea of a new soul created for every newly-born babe.

We believe that every human being is the bearer, or Vehicle, of an Ego

coeval with every other Ego; because all Egos are of the same essence and

belong to the primeval emanation from one universal infinite Ego. Plato

calls the latter the logos (or the second manifested God); and we, the

manifested divine principle, which is one with the universal mind or soul,

not the anthropomorphic, extra-cosmic and personal God in which so many

Theists believe. Pray do not confuse.


Q. But where is the difficulty, once you accept a manifested principle, in

believing that the soul of every new mortal is created by that Principle, as

all the Souls before it have been so created?

A. Because that which is impersonal can hardly create, plan and think, at

its own sweet will and pleasure. Being a universal Law, immutable in its

periodical manifestations, those of radiating and manifesting its own

essence at the beginning of every new cycle of life, it is not supposed to

create men, only to repent a few years later of having created them. If we

have to believe in a divine principle at all, it must be in one which is as

absolute harmony, logic, and justice, as it is absolute love, wisdom, and

impartiality; and a God who would create every soul for the space of one

brief span of life, regardless of the fact whether it has to animate the

body of a wealthy, happy man, or that of a poor suffering wretch, hapless

from birth to death though he has done nothing to deserve his cruel

fate-would be rather a senseless fiend than a God. Why, even the Jewish

philosophers, believers in the Mosaic Bible (esoterically, of course), have

never entertained such an idea; and, moreover, they believed in

reincarnation, as we do.


Q. Can you give me some instances as a proof of this?

A. Most decidedly I can. Philo Judaeus says:

The air is full of them (of souls); those which are nearest the earth,

descending to be tied to mortal bodies, palindromousi authis , return to

other bodies, being desirous to live in them.

In The Zohar, the soul is made to plead her freedom before God:

Lord of the Universe! I am happy in this world, and do not wish to go into

another world, where I shall be a handmaid, and be exposed to all kinds of

pollution.

The doctrine of fatal necessity, the everlasting immutable law, is asserted



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in the answer of the Deity: "Against thy will thou becomest an embryo, and

against thy will thou art born." Light would be incomprehensible without

darkness to make it manifest by contrast; good would be no longer good

without evil to show the priceless nature of the boon; and so personal

virtue could claim no merit, unless it had passed through the furnace of

temptation. Nothing is eternal and unchangeable, save the concealed Deity.

Nothing that is finite-whether because it had a beginning, or must have an

end-can remain stationary. It must either progress or recede; and a soul

which thirsts after a reunion with its spirit, which alone confers upon it

immortality, must purify itself through cyclic transmigrations onward toward

the only land of bliss and eternal rest, called in The Zohar, "The Palace of

Love," ; in the Hindu religion, "Moksha"; among the Gnostics, "The Pleroma

of Eternal Light"; and by the Buddhists, "Nirvana." And all these states are

temporary, not eternal.


Q. Yet there is no reincarnation spoken of in all this.

A. A soul which pleads to be allowed to remain where she is, must be

preexistent, and not have been created for the occasion. In The Zohar,

however, there is a still better proof. Speaking of the reincarnating Egos

(the rational souls), those whose last personality has to fade out entirely,

it is said:

All souls which have alienated themselves in heaven from the Holy

One-blessed be His Name-have thrown themselves into an abyss at their very

existence, and have anticipated the time when they are to descend once more

on earth.

"The Holy One" means here, esoterically, the Atma, or Atma-Buddhi.


Q. Moreover, it is very strange to find Nirvana spoken of as something

synonymous with the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Paradise, since according to

every Orientalist of note Nirvana is a synonym of annihilation!

A. Taken literally, with regard to the personality and differentiated

matter, not otherwise. These ideas on reincarnation and the trinity of man

were held by many of the early Christian Fathers. It is the jumble made by

the translators of the New Testament and ancient philosophical treatises

between soul and spirit, that has occasioned the many misunderstandings. It

is also one of the many reasons why Buddha, Plotinus, and so many other

Initiates are now accused of having longed for the total extinction of their

souls-"absorption unto the Deity," or "reunion with the universal soul,"

meaning, according to modern ideas, annihilation. The personal soul must, of

course, be disintegrated into its particles, before it is able to link its

purer essence forever with the immortal spirit. But the translators of both

the Acts and the Epistles, who laid the foundation of the Kingdom of Heaven,

and the modern commentators on the Buddhist Sutra of the Foundation of the

Kingdom of Righteousness, have muddled the sense of the great apostle of

Christianity as of the great reformer of India. The former have smothered

the word psuchikos , so that no reader imagines it to have any relation with

soul; and with this confusion of soul and spirit together, Bible readers get

only a perverted sense of anything on the subject. On the other hand, the

interpreters of Buddha have failed to understand the meaning and object of

the Buddhist four degrees of Dhyana. Ask the Pythagoreans, "Can that spirit,

which gives life and motion and partakes of the nature of light, be reduced

to nonentity?" "Can even that sensitive spirit in brutes which exercises

memory, one of the rational faculties, die and become nothing?" observe the

Occultists. In Buddhist philosophy annihilation means only a dispersion of

matter, in whatever form or semblance of form it may be, for everything that

has form is temporary, and is, therefore, really an illusion. For in

eternity the longest periods of time are as a wink of the eye. So with form.

Before we have time to realize that we have seen it, it is gone like an

instantaneous flash of lightning, and passed forever. When the Spiritual

entity breaks loose forever from every particle of matter, substance, or



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form, and rebecomes a Spiritual breath: then only does it enter upon the

eternal and unchangeable Nirvana, lasting as long as the cycle of life has

lasted-an eternity, truly. And then that Breath, existing in Spirit, is

nothing because it is all; as a form, a semblance, a shape, it is completely

annihilated; as absolute Spirit it still is, for it has become Be-ness

itself. The very word used, "absorbed in the universal essence," when spoken

of the "Soul" as Spirit, means "union with." It can never mean annihilation,

as that would mean eternal separation.


Q. Do you not lay yourself open to the accusation of preaching annihilation

by the language you yourself use? You have just spoken of the Soul of man

returning to its primordial elements.

A. But you forget that I have given you the differences between the various

meanings of the word Soul, and shown the loose way in which the term Spirit

has been hitherto translated. We speak of an animal, a human, and a

spiritual, Soul, and distinguish between them. Plato, for instance, calls

"rational Soul" that which we call Buddhi, adding to it the adjective of

"spiritual," however; but that which we call the reincarnating Ego, Manas,

he calls Spirit, Nous, etc., whereas we apply the term Spirit, when standing

alone and without any qualification, to Atma alone. Pythagoras repeats our

archaic doctrine when stating that the Ego (Nous) is eternal with Deity;

that the soul only passed through various stages to arrive at divine

excellence; while thumos returned to the earth, and even the phren, the

lower Manas, was eliminated. Again, Plato defines Soul (Buddhi) as "the

motion that is able to move itself." "Soul," he adds (Laws X.), "is the most

ancient of all things, and the commencement of motion," thus calling

Atma-Buddhi "Soul," and Manas "Spirit," which we do not.

Soul was generated prior to body, and body is posterior and secondary, as

being according to nature, ruled over by the ruling soul. The soul which

administers all things that are moved in every way, administers likewise the

heavens.

Soul then leads everything in heaven, and on earth, and in the sea, by its

movements-the names of which are, to will, to consider to take care of, to

consult. to form opinions true and false, to be in a state of joy, sorrow,

confidence, fear, hate, love, together with all such primary movements as

are allied to these … Being a goddess herself, she ever takes as an ally

Nous, a god, and disciplines all things correctly and happily; but when with

Annoia-not nous-it works out everything the contrary.

In this language, as in the Buddhist texts, the negative is treated as

essential existence. Annihilation comes under a similar exegesis. The

positive state is essential being, but no manifestation as such. When the

spirit, in Buddhist parlance, enters Nirvana, it loses objective existence,

but retains subjective being. To objective minds this is becoming absolute

"nothing"; to subjective, No-thing, nothing to be displayed to sense. Thus,

their Nirvana means the certitude of individual immortality in Spirit, not

in Soul, which, though "the most ancient of all things," is still-along with

all the other Gods-a finite emanation, in forms and individuality, if not in

substance.


Q. I do not quite seize the idea yet, and would be thankful to have you

explain this to me by some illustrations.

A. No doubt it is very difficult to understand, especially to one brought up

in the regular orthodox ideas of the Christian Church. Moreover, I must tell

you one. thing; and this is that unless you have studied thoroughly well the

separate functions assigned to all the human principles and the state of all

these after death, you will hardly realize our Eastern philosophy.

-oOo-

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On the Various Principles in Man


Q. I have heard a good deal about this constitution of the "inner man" as

you call it, but could never make "head or tail on't" as Gabalis expresses

it.

A. Of course, it is most difficult, and, as you say, "puzzling" to

understand correctly and distinguish between the various aspects, called by

us the principles of the real Ego. It is the more so as there exists a

notable difference in the numbering of those principles by various Eastern

schools, though at the bottom there is the same identical substratum of

teaching.


Q. Do you mean the Vedantins, as an instance? Don't they divide your seven

principles into five only?

1. They do; but though I would not presume to dispute the point with a

learned Vedantin, I may yet state as my private opinion that they have

an obvious reason for it. With them it is only that compound spiritual

aggregate which consists of various mental aspects that is called Man

at all, the physical body being in their view something beneath

contempt, and merely an illusion. Nor is the Vedanta the only

philosophy to reckon in this manner. Lao-tzu, in his Tao Te Ching,

mentions only five principles, because he, like the Vedantins, omits to

include two principles, namely, the spirit ( Atma) and the physical

body, the latter of which, moreover, he calls "the cadaver." Then there

is the Taraka Raja-Yoga School. Its teaching recognizes only three

principles in fact; but then, in reality, their Sthulopadhi, or the

physical body, in its waking conscious state, their Sukshmopadhi, the

same body in Svapna, or the dreaming state, and their Karanopadhi or

"causal body," or that which passes from one incarnation to another,

are all dual in their aspects, and thus make six. Add to this Atma, the

impersonal divine principle or the immortal element in Man,

undistinguished from the Universal Spirit, and you have the same seven

again. They are welcome to hold to their division; we hold to ours.

[See 'Secret Doctrine', part 1, p. 182 for a clearer exposition]


Q. Then it seems almost the same as the division made by the mystic

Christians: body, soul, and spirit?

A. Just the same. We could easily make of the body the vehicle of the "vital

Double"; of the latter the vehicle of Life or Prana; of Kamarupa, or

(animal) soul, the vehicle of the higher and the lower mind, and make of

this six principles, crowning the whole with the one immortal spirit. In

Occultism every qualitative change in the state of our consciousness gives

to man a new aspect, and if it prevails and becomes part of the living and

acting Ego, it must be (and is) given a special name, to distinguish the man

in that particular state from the man he is when he places himself in

another state.


Q. It is just that which it is so difficult to understand.

A. It seems to me very easy, on the contrary, once that you have seized the

main idea, i.e., that man acts on this or another plane of consciousness, in

strict accordance with his mental and spiritual condition. But such is the

materialism of the age that the more we explain the less people seem capable

of understanding what we say. Divide the terrestrial being called man into

three chief aspects, if you like, and unless you make of him a pure animal

you cannot do less. Take his objective body; the thinking principle in

him-which is only a little higher than the instinctual element in the

animal-or the vital conscious soul; and that which places him so

immeasurably beyond and higher than the animal-i.e., his reasoning soul or

"spirit." Well, if we take these three groups or representative entities,



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and subdivide them, according to the occult teaching, what do we get?

First of all, Spirit (in the sense of the Absolute, and therefore,

indivisible All), or Atma. As this can neither be located nor limited in

philosophy, being simply that which is in Eternity, and which cannot be

absent from even the tiniest geometrical or mathematical point of the

universe of matter or substance, it ought not to be called, in truth, a

"human" principle at all. Rather, and at best, it is in Metaphysics, that

point in space which the human Monad and its vehicle man occupy for the

period of every life. Now that point is as imaginary as man himself, and in

reality is an illusion, a Maya ; but then for ourselves, as for other

personal Egos, we are a reality during that fit of illusion called life, and

we have to take ourselves into account, in our own fancy at any rate, if no

one else does. To make it more conceivable to the human intellect, when

first attempting the study of Occultism, and to solve the a-b-c of the

mystery of man, Occultism calls this seventh principle the synthesis of the

sixth, and gives it for vehicle the Spiritual Soul, Buddhi. Now the latter

conceals a mystery, which is never given to any one, with the exception of

irrevocably pledged Chelas, or those, at any rate, who can be safely

trusted. Of course, there would be less confusion, could it only be told;

but, as this is directly concerned with the power of projecting one's double

consciously and at will, and as this gift, like the "ring of Gyges," would

prove very fatal to man at large and to the possessor of that faculty in

particular, it is carefully guarded. But let us proceed with the principles.

This divine soul, or Buddhi, then, is the vehicle of the Spirit. In

conjunction, these two are one, impersonal and without any attributes (on

this plane, of course), and make two spiritual principles. If we pass onto

the Human Soul, Manas or mens, everyone will agree that the intelligence of

man is dual to say the least: e.g., the high-minded man can hardly become

low-minded; the very intellectual and spiritual-minded man is separated by

an abyss from the obtuse, dull, and material, if not animal-minded man.


Q. But why should not man be represented by two principles or two aspects,

rather?

A. Every man has these two principles in him, one more active than the

other, and in rare cases, one of these is entirely stunted in its growth, so

to say, or paralysed by the strength and predominance of the other aspect,

in whatever direction. These, then, are what we call the two principles or

aspects of Manas, the higher and the lower; the former, the higher Manas, or

the thinking, conscious Ego gravitating toward the spiritual Soul (Buddhi);

and the latter, or its instinctual principle, attracted to Kama, the seat of

animal desires and passions in man. Thus, we have four principles justified;

the last three being (1) the "Double," which we have agreed to call Protean,

or Plastic Soul; the vehicle of (2) the life principle; and (3) the physical

body. Of course no physiologist or biologist will accept these principles,

nor can he make head or tail of them. And this is why, perhaps, none of them

understand to this day either the functions of the spleen, the physical

vehicle of the Protean Double, or those of a certain organ on the right side

of man, the seat of the above-mentioned desires, nor yet does he know

anything of the pineal gland, which he describes as a horny gland with a

little sand in it, which gland is in truth the very seat of the highest and

divinest consciousness in man, his omniscient, spiritual and all-embracing

mind. And this shows to you still more plainly that we have neither invented

these seven principles, nor are they new in the world of philosophy, as we

can easily prove.


Q. But what is it that reincarnates, in your belief?

A. The Spiritual thinking Ego, the permanent principle in man, or that which

is the seat of Manas. It is not Atma, or even Atma-Buddhi, regarded as the

dual Monad, which is the individual, or divine man, but Manas; for Atma is

the Universal All, and becomes the Higher-Self of man only in conjunction

with Buddhi, its vehicle, which links it to the individuality (or divine



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man). For it is the Buddhi-Manas which is called the Causal body, (the

United fifth and sixth Principles) and which is Consciousness, that connects

it with every personality it inhabits on earth. Therefore, Soul being a

generic term, there are in men three aspects of Soul-the terrestrial, or

animal; the Human Soul; and the Spiritual Soul; these, strictly speaking,

are one Soul in its three aspects. Now of the first aspect, nothing remains

after death; of the second (nous or Manas) only its divine essence if left

unsoiled survives, while the third in addition to being immortal becomes

consciously divine, by the assimilation of the higher Manas. But to make it

clear, we have to say a few words first of all about Reincarnation.


Q. You will do well, as it is against this doctrine that your enemies fight

the most ferociously.

A. You mean the Spiritualists? I know; and many are the absurd objections

laboriously spun by them over the

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Pages of Light. So obtuse and malicious

are some of them, that they will stop at nothing. One of them found recently

a contradiction, which he gravely discusses in a letter to that journal, in

two statements picked out of Mr. Sinnett's lectures. He discovers that grave

contradiction in these two sentences: "Premature returns to earth-life in

the cases when they occur may be due to Karmic complication … "; and "there

is no accident in the supreme act of divine justice guiding evolution." So

profound a thinker would surely see a contradiction of the law of

gravitation if a man stretched out his hand to stop a falling stone from

crushing the head of a child!

On Reincarnation or Rebirth

What is Memory According to Theosophical Teaching?


Q. The most difficult thing for you to do, will be to explain and give

reasonable grounds for such a belief. No Theosophist has ever yet succeeded

in bringing forward a single valid proof to shake my skepticism. First of

all, you have against this theory of reincarnation, the fact that no single

man has yet been found to remember that he has lived, least of all who he

was, during his previous life.

A. Your argument, I see, tends to the same old objection; the loss of memory

in each of us of our previous incarnation. You think it invalidates our

doctrine? My answer is that it does not, and that at any rate such an

objection cannot be final.


Q. I would like to hear your arguments.

A. They are short and few. Yet when you take into consideration (a) the

utter inability of the best modern psychologists to explain to the world the

nature of mind; and (b) their complete ignorance of its potentialities, and

higher states, you have to admit that this objection is based on an a priori

conclusion drawn from prima facie and circumstantial evidence more than

anything else. Now what is "memory" in your conception, pray?


Q. That which is generally accepted: the faculty in our mind of remembering

and of retaining the knowledge of previous thoughts, deeds, and events.

A. Please add to it that there is a great difference between the three

accepted forms of memory. Besides memory in general you have Remembrance,

Recollection, and Reminiscence, have you not? Have you ever thought over the

difference? Memory, remember, is a generic name.


Q. Yet, all these are only synonyms.

A. Indeed, they are not-not in philosophy, at all events. Memory is simply

an innate power in thinking beings, and even in animals, of reproducing past

impressions by an association of ideas principally suggested by objective



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things or by some action on our external sensory organs. Memory is a faculty

depending entirely on the more or less healthy and normal functioning of our

physical brain; and remembrance and recollection are the attributes and

handmaidens of that memory. But reminiscence is an entirely different thing.

Reminiscence is defined by the modern psychologist as something intermediate

between remembrance and recollection, or "a conscious process of recalling

past occurrences, but without that full and varied reference to particular

things which characterizes recollection." Locke, speaking of recollection

and remembrance, says:

When an idea again recurs without the operation of the like object on the

external sensory, it is remembrance; if it be sought after by the mind, and

with pain and endeavor found and brought again into view, it is

recollection.

But even Locke leaves reminiscence without any clear definition, because it

is no faculty or attribute of our physical memory, but an intuitional

perception apart from and outside our physical brain; a perception which,

covering as it does (being called into action by the ever-present knowledge

of our spiritual Ego) all those visions in man which are regarded as

abnormal-from the pictures suggested by genius to the ravings of fever and

even madness-are classed by science as having no existence outside of our

fancy. Occultism and Theosophy, however, regard reminiscence in an entirely

different light. For us, while memory is physical and evanescent and depends

on the physiological conditions of the brain-a fundamental proposition with

all teachers of mnemonics, who have the researches of modern scientific

psychologists to back them-we call reminiscence the memory of the soul. And

it is this memory which gives the assurance to almost every human being,

whether he understands it or not, of his having lived before and having to

live again. Indeed, as Wordsworth has it:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,

Hath elsewhere had its setting,

And cometh from afar.


Q. If it is on this kind of memory-poetry and abnormal fancies, on your own

confession-that you base your doctrine, then you will convince very few, I

am afraid.

A. I did not "confess" it was a fancy. I simply said that physiologists and

scientists in general regard such reminiscences as hallucinations and fancy,

to which learned conclusion they are welcome. We do not deny that such

visions of the past and glimpses far back into the corridors of time, are

not abnormal, as contrasted with our normal daily life experience and

physical memory. But we do maintain with Professor W. Knight, that: The

absence of memory of any action done in a previous state cannot be a

conclusive argument against our having lived through it.

And every fair-minded opponent must agree with what is said in Butler's

Lectures on Platonic Philosophy:

That the feeling of extravagance with which it (preexistence) affects us has

its secret source in materialistic or semi-materialistic prejudices.

Besides which we maintain that memory, as Olympiodorus called it, is simply

fantasy, and the most unreliable thing in us.

Say Olympiodorus, in Platonis Phaed.:

The fantasy is an impediment to our intellectual conceptions; and hence,



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when we are agitated by the inspiring influence of the Divinity, if the

fantasy intervenes, the enthusiastic energy ceases: for enthusiasm and the

ecstasy are contrary to each other. Should it be asked whether the soul is

able to energize without the fantasy, we reply, that its perception of

universals proves that it is able. It has perceptions, therefore,

independent of the fantasy; at the same time, however, the fantasy attends

in its energies, just as a storm pursues him who sails on the sea.

Ammonius Saccas asserted that the only faculty in man directly opposed to

prognostication, or looking into futurity, is memory. Furthermore, remember

that memory is one thing and mind or thought is another; one is a recording

machine, a register which very easily gets out of order; the other

(thoughts) are eternal and imperishable. Would you refuse to believe in the

existence of certain things or men only because your physical eyes have not

seen them? Would not the collective testimony of past generations who have

seen him be a sufficient guarantee that Julius Caesar once lived? Why should

not the same testimony of the psychic senses of the masses be taken into

consideration ?


Q. But don't you think that these are too fine distinctions to be accepted

by the majority of mortals?

A. Say rather by the majority of materialists. And to them we say, behold:

even in the short span of ordinary existence, memory is too weak to register

all the events of a lifetime. How frequently do even most important events

lie dormant in our memory until awakened by some association of ideas, or

aroused to function and activity by some other link. This is especially the

case with people of advanced age, who are always found suffering from

feebleness of recollection. When, therefore, we remember that which we know

about the physical and the spiritual principles in man, it is not the fact

that our memory has failed to record our precedent life and lives that ought

to surprise us, but the contrary, were it to happen.

-oOo-Why

Do We Not Remember Our Past Lives?


Q. You have given me a bird's eye view of the seven principles; now how do

they account for our complete loss of any recollection of having lived

before?

A. Very easily. Since those principles which we call physical, and none of

which is denied by science, though it calls them by other names-namely, the

body, life, passional and animal instincts, and the astral eidolon of every

man (whether perceived in thought or our mind's eye, or objectively and

separate from the physical body), which principles we call Sthula-sharira,

Prana, Kamarupa, and Linga-sharira (see above).

[Those principles] are disintegrated after death with their constituent

elements, memory along with its brain, this vanished memory of a vanished

personality, can neither remember nor record anything in the subsequent

reincarnation of the Ego. Reincarnation means that this Ego will be

furnished with a new body, a new brain, and a new memory. Therefore it would

be as absurd to expect this memory to remember that which it has never

recorded as it would be idle to examine under a microscope a shirt never

worn by a murderer, and seek on it for the stains of blood which are to be

found only on the clothes he wore. It is not the clean shirt that we have to

question, but the clothes worn during the perpetration of the crime; and if

these are burnt and destroyed, how can you get at them?


Q. Aye! How can you get at the certainty that the crime was ever committed

at all, or that the "man in the clean shirt" ever lived before?

A. Not by physical processes, most assuredly; nor by relying on the



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testimony of that which exists no longer. But there is such a thing as

circumstantial evidence, since our wise laws accept it, more, perhaps, even

than they should. To get convinced of the fact of reincarnation and past

lives, one must put oneself in rapport with one's real permanent Ego, not

one's evanescent memory.


Q. But how can people believe in that which they do not know, nor have ever

seen, far less put themselves in rapport with it?

A. If people, and the most learned, will believe in the Gravity, Ether,

Force, and what not of Science, abstractions "and working hypotheses," which

they have neither seen, touched, smelt, heard, nor tasted-why should not

other people believe, on the same principle, in one's permanent Ego, a far

more logical and important "working hypothesis" than any other?


Q. What is, finally, this mysterious eternal principle? Can you explain its

nature so as to make it comprehensible to all?

A. The Ego which reincarnates, the individual and immortal-not personal-"I";

the vehicle, in short, of the Atma-Buddhic Monad, that which is rewarded in

Devachan and punished on earth, and that, finally, to which the reflection

only of the Skandhas, or attributes, of every incarnation attaches itself.

There are five Skandhas or attributes in the Buddhist teachings: Rupa (form

or body), material qualities; Vedana , sensation; Sanna , abstract ideas;

Samkhara, tendencies of mind; Vinnana, mental powers. Of these we are

formed, by them we are conscious of existence; and through them communicate

with the world about us.


Q. What do you mean by Skandhas?

A. Just what I said: "attributes," among which is memory, all of which

perish like a flower, leaving behind them only a feeble perfume. Here is

another paragraph from H.S. Olcott's Buddhist Catechism which bears directly

upon the subject. It deals with the question as follows:

The aged man remembers the incidents of his youth, despite his being

physically and mentally changed. Why, then, is not the recollection of past

lives brought over by us from our last birth into the present birth? Because

memory is included within the Skandhas, and the Skandhas having changed with

the new existence, a memory, the record of that particular existence,

develops. Yet the record or reflection of all the past lives must survive,

for when Prince Siddh rtha became Buddha, the full sequence of His previous

births were seen by Him … and any one who attains to the state of Jñana can

thus retrospectively trace the line of his lives.

This proves to you that while the undying qualities of the personality-such

as love, goodness, charity, etc.-attach themselves to the immortal Ego,

photographing on it, so to speak, a permanent image of the divine aspect of

the man who was, his material Skandhas (those which generate the most marked

Karmic effects) are as evanescent as a flash of lightning, and cannot

impress the new brain of the new personality; yet their failing to do so

impairs in no way the identity of the reincarnating Ego.


Q. Do you mean to infer that which survives is only the Soul-memory, as you

call it, that Soul or Ego being one and the same, while nothing of the

personality remains?

A. Not quite; something of each personality, unless the latter was an

absolute materialist with not even a chink in his nature for a spiritual ray

to pass through, must survive, as it leaves its eternal impress on the

incarnating permanent Self or Spiritual Ego. (Or the Spiritual, in

contradistinction to the personal Self. The student must not confuse this

Spiritual Ego with the "higher self" which is Atma, the God within us, and



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inseparable from the Universal Spirit.)

The personality with its Skandhas is ever changing with every new birth. It

is, as said before, only the part played by the actor (the true Ego) for one

night. This is why we preserve no memory on the physical plane of our past

lives, though the real "Ego" has lived them over and knows them all.


Q. Then how does it happen that the real or Spiritual man does not impress

his new personal "I" with this knowledge?

A. How is it that the servant-girls in a poor farmhouse could speak Hebrew

and play the violin in their trance or somnambular state, and knew neither

when in their normal condition? Because, as every genuine psychologist of

the old, not your modern, school, will tell you, the Spiritual Ego can act

only when the personal Ego is paralyzed. The Spiritual "I" in man is

omniscient and has every knowledge innate in it; while the personal self is

the creature of its environment and the slave of the physical memory. Could

the former manifest itself uninterruptedly, and without impediment, there

would be no longer men on earth, but we should all be gods.


Q. Still there ought to be exceptions, and some ought to remember.

A. And so there are. But who believes in their report? Such sensitives are

generally regarded as hallucinated hysteriacs, as crack-brained enthusiasts,

or humbugs, by modern materialism. Let them read, however, works on this

subject, preeminently Reincarnation, a Study of Forgotten Truth by E.D.

Walker, F.T.S., and see in it the mass of proofs which the able author

brings to bear on this vexed question. One speaks to people of soul, and

some ask "What is Soul?" "Have you ever proved its existence?" Of course it

is useless to argue with those who are materialists. But even to them I

would put the question:

Can you remember what you were or did when a baby? Have you preserved the

smallest recollection of your life, thoughts, or deeds, or that you lived at

all during the first eighteen months or two years of your existence? Then

why not deny that you have ever lived as a babe, on the same principle?

When to all this we add that the reincarnating Ego, or individuality,

retains during the Devachanic period merely the essence of the experience of

its past earth-life or personality, the whole physical experience involving

into a state of in potentia, or being, so to speak, translated into

spiritual formulae; when we remember further that the term between two

rebirths is said to extend from ten to fifteen centuries, during which time

the physical consciousness is totally and absolutely inactive, having no

organs to act through, and therefore no existence, the reason for the

absence of all remembrance in the purely physical memory is apparent.


Q. You just said that the Spiritual Ego was omniscient. Where, then, is that

vaunted omniscience during his Devachanic life, as you call it?

A. During that time it is latent and potential, because, first of all, the

Spiritual Ego (the compound of Buddhi-Manas) is not the Higher Self, which

being one with the Universal Soul or Mind is alone omniscient; and,

secondly, because Devachan is the idealized continuation of the terrestrial

life just left behind, a period of retributive adjustment, and a reward for

unmerited wrongs and sufferings undergone in that special life. It is

omniscient only potentially in Devachan, and de facto exclusively in

Nirvana, when the Ego is merged in the Universal Mind-Soul. Yet it rebecomes

quasi omniscient during those hours on earth when certain abnormal

conditions and physiological changes in the body make the Ego free from the

trammels of matter. Thus the examples cited above of somnambulists, a poor

servant speaking Hebrew, and another playing the violin, give you an

illustration of the case in point. This does not mean that the explanations

of these two facts offered us by medical science have no truth in them, for



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one girl had, years before, heard her master, a clergyman, read Hebrew works

aloud, and the other had heard an artist playing a violin at their farm. But

neither could have done so as perfectly as they did had they not been

ensouled by that which, owing to the sameness of its nature with the

Universal Mind, is omniscient. Here the higher principle acted on the

Skandhas and moved them; in the other, the personality being paralyzed, the

individuality manifested itself. Pray do not confuse the two.

-oOo-On

Individuality and Personality


Q. But what is the difference between the two?

A. Even Col. Olcott, forced to it by the logic of Esoteric philosophy, found

himself obliged to correct the mistakes of previous Orientalists who made no

such distinction, and gives the reader his reasons for it. Thus he says:

The successive appearances upon the earth, or "descents into generation," of

the tanhaically coherent parts (Skandhas) of a certain being, are a

succession of personalities. In each birth the personality differs from that

of a previous or next succeeding birth. Karma, the deus ex machina, masks

(or shall we say reflects?) itself now in the personality of a sage, again

as an artisan, and so on throughout the string of births. But though

personalities ever shift, the one line of life along which they are strung,

like beads, runs unbroken; it is ever that particular line, never any other.

It is therefore individual, an individual vital undulation, which began in

Nirvana, or the subjective side of nature, as the light or heat undulation

through aether, began at its dynamic source; is careering through the

objective side of nature under the impulse of Karma and the creative

direction of Tanha (the unsatisfied desire for existence); and leads through

many cyclic changes back to Nirvana. Mr. Rhys-Davids calls that which passes

from personality to personality along the individual chain character, or

doing. Since character is not a mere metaphysical abstraction, but the sum

of one's mental qualities and moral propensities, would it not help to

dispel what Mr. Rhys-Davids calls "the desperate expedient of a mystery" if

we regarded the life-undulation as individuality, and each of its series of

natal manifestations as a separate personality? The perfect individual,

Buddhist speaking, is a Buddha, I should say; for Buddha is but the rare

flower of humanity, without the least supernatural admixture. And as

countless generations ("four asankheyyas and a hundred thousand cycles,")

are required to develop a man into a Buddha, and the iron will to become one

runs throughout all the successive births, what shall we call that which

thus wills and perseveres? Character? One's individuality: an individuality

but partly manifested in any one birth, but built up of fragments from all

the births?


Q. I confess that I am still in the dark. Indeed it is just that difference,

then, that you cannot impress too much on our minds.

A. I try to; but alas, it is harder with some than to make them feel a

reverence for childish impossibilities, only because they are orthodox, and

because orthodoxy is respectable. To understand the idea well, you have to

first study the dual sets of principles: the spiritual, or those which

belong to the imperishable Ego; and the material, or those principles which

make up the ever-changing bodies or the series of personalities of that Ego.

Let us fix permanent names to these, and say that:

1. Atma, the "Higher Self," is neither your Spirit nor mine, but like

sunlight shines on all. It is the universally diffused "divine principle,"

and is inseparable from its one and absolute Meta-Spirit, as the sunbeam is

inseparable from sunlight.

2. Buddhi (the spiritual soul) is only its vehicle. Neither each separately,



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nor the two collectively, are of any more use to the body of man, than

sunlight and its beams are for a mass of granite buried in the earth, unless

the divine Duad is assimilated by, and reflected in, some consciousness.

Neither Atma nor Buddhi are ever reached by Karma, because the former is the

highest aspect of Karma, its working agent of itself in one aspect, and the

other is unconscious on this plane. This consciousness or mind is,

3. Manas, the derivation or product in a reflected form of Ahankara, "the

conception of I," or Ego-ship. It is, therefore, when inseparably united to

the first two, called the Spiritual Ego, and Taijasi (the radiant). This is

the real Individuality, or the divine man. It is this Ego which-having

originally incarnated in the senseless human form animated by, but

unconscious (since it had no consciousness) of, the presence in itself of

the dual monad-made of that human-like form a real man.

Mahat or the "Universal Mind" is the source of Manas. The latter is Mahat,

i.e., mind, in man. Manas is also called Kshetrajña, "embodied Spirit,"

because it is, according to our philosophy, the Manasaputras, or "Sons of

the Universal Mind," who created, or rather produced, the thinking man,

"manu," by incarnating in the third Race mankind in our Round. It is Manas,

therefore, which is the real incarnating and permanent Spiritual Ego, the

individuality, and our various and numberless personalities only its

external masks.

It is that Ego, that "Causal Body," which overshadows every personality

Karma forces it to incarnate into; and this Ego which is held responsible

for all the sins committed through, and in, every new body or

personality-the evanescent masks which hide the true Individual through the

long series of rebirths.


Q. But is this just? Why should this Ego receive punishment as the result of

deeds which it has forgotten?

A. It has not forgotten them; it knows and remembers its misdeeds as well as

you remember what you have done yesterday. Is it because the memory of that

bundle of physical compounds called "body" does not recollect what its

predecessor (the personality that was) did, that you imagine that the real

Ego has forgotten them? As well say it is unjust that the new boots on the

feet of a boy, who is flogged for stealing apples, should be punished for

that which they know nothing of.


Q. But are there no modes of communication between the Spiritual and human

consciousness or memory?

A. Of course there are; but they have never been recognized by your

scientific modern psychologists. To what do you attribute intuition, the

"voice of the conscience," premonitions, vague undefined reminiscences,

etc., etc., if not to such communications? Would that the majority of

educated men, at least, had the fine spiritual perceptions of Coleridge, who

shows how intuitional he is in some of his comments. Hear what he says with

respect to the probability that "all thoughts are in themselves

imperishable."

If the intelligent faculty (sudden 'revivals' of memory) should be rendered

more comprehensive, it would require only a different and appropriate

organization, the body celestial instead of the body terrestrial, to bring

before every human soul the collective experience of its whole past

existence (existences, rather).

And this body celestial is our Manasic Ego.

-oOo-On

the Reward and Punishment of the Ego



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Q. I have heard you say that the Ego, whatever the life of the person he

incarnated in may have been on Earth, is never visited with postmortem

punishment.

A. Never, save in very exceptional and rare cases of which we will not speak

here, as the nature of the "punishment" in no way approaches any of your

theological conceptions of damnation.


Q. But if it is punished in this life for the misdeeds committed in a

previous one, then it is this Ego that ought to be rewarded also, whether

here, or when disincarnated.

A. And so it is. If we do not admit of any punishment outside of this earth,

it is because the only state the Spiritual Self knows of, hereafter, is that

of unalloyed bliss.


Q. What do you mean?

A. Simply this: crimes and sins committed on a plane of objectivity and in a

world of matter, cannot receive punishment in a world of pure subjectivity.

We believe in no hell or paradise as localities; in no objective hellfires

and worms that never die, nor in any Jerusalem with streets paved with

sapphires and diamonds. What we believe in is a postmortem state or mental

condition, such as we are in during a vivid dream. We believe in an

immutable law of absolute Love, Justice, and Mercy. And believing in it, we

say: Whatever the sin and dire results of the original Karmic transgression

of the now incarnated Egos no man (or the outer material and periodical form

of the Spiritual Entity) can be held, with any degree of justice,

responsible for the consequences of his birth. He does not ask to be born,

nor can he choose the parents that will give him life. In every respect he

is a victim to his environment, the child of circumstances over which he has

no control; and if each of his transgressions were impartially investigated,

there would be found nine out of every ten cases when he was the one sinned

against, rather than the sinner.

It is on this transgression that the cruel and illogical dogma of the Fallen

Angels has been built. It is explained in Vol. II of The Secret Doctrine.

All our "Egos" are thinking and rational entities (Manasaputas) who had

lived, whether under human or other forms, in the precedent life cycle

(Manvantara), and whose Karma it was to incarnate in the man of this one. It

was taught in the Mysteries that, having delayed to comply with this law (or

having "refused to create" as Hinduism says of the Kumaras and Christian

legend of the Archangel Michael), i.e., having failed to incarnate in due

time, the bodies predestined for them got defiled, hence the original sin of

the senseless forms and the punishment of the Egos. That which is meant by

the rebellious angels being hurled down into Hell is simply explained by

these pure Spirits or Egos being imprisoned in bodies of unclean matter,

flesh.

Life is at best a heartless play, a stormy sea to cross, and a heavy burden

often too difficult to bear. The greatest philosophers have tried in vain to

fathom and find out its raison d'être, and have all failed except those who

had the key to it, namely, the Eastern sages. Life is, as Shakespeare

describes it:

… but a walking shadow-a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,



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Signifying nothing.

Nothing in its separate parts, yet of the greatest importance in its

collectivity or series of lives. At any rate, almost every individual life

is, in its full development, a sorrow. And are we to believe that poor,

helpless man, after being tossed about like a piece of rotten timber on the

angry billows of life, is, if he proves too weak to resist them, to be

punished by never-ending damnation, or even a temporary punishment? Never!

Whether a great or an average sinner, good or bad, guilty or innocent, once

delivered of the burden of physical life, the tired and worn-out Manu

("thinking Ego") has won the right to a period of absolute rest and bliss.

The same unerringly wise and just rather than merciful Law, which inflicts

upon the incarnated Ego the Karmic punishment for every sin committed during

the preceding life on Earth, provided for the now disembodied Entity a long

lease of mental rest, i.e., the entire oblivion of every sad event, aye, to

the smallest painful thought, that took place in its last life as a

personality, leaving in the soul-memory but the reminiscence of that which

was bliss, or led to happiness. Plotinus, who said that our body was the

true river of Lethe, for "souls plunged into it forget all," meant more than

he said. For, as our terrestrial body is like Lethe, so is our celestial

body in Devachan, and much more.


Q. Then am I to understand that the murderer, the transgressor of law divine

and human in every shape, is allowed to go unpunished?

A. Who ever said that? Our philosophy has a doctrine of punishment as stern

as that of the most rigid Calvinist, only far more philosophical and

consistent with absolute justice. No deed, not even a sinful thought, will

go unpunished; the latter more severely even than the former, as a thought

is far more potential in creating evil results than even a deed.

Verily I say unto you, that whosoever looketh at a woman to lust after her,

hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

We believe in an unerring law of Retribution, called Karma, which asserts

itself in a natural concatenation of causes and their unavoidable results.


Q. And how, or where, does it act?

A. Every laborer is worthy of his hire, saith Wisdom in the Gospel; every

action, good or bad, is a prolific parent, saith the Wisdom of the Ages. Put

the two together, and you will find the "why." After allowing the Soul,

escaped from the pangs of personal life, a sufficient, aye, a hundredfold

compensation, Karma, with its army of Skandhas, waits at the threshold of

Devachan, whence the Ego reemerges to assume a new incarnation. It is at

this moment that the future destiny of the now-rested Ego trembles in the

scales of just Retribution, as it now falls once again under the sway of

active Karmic law. It is in this rebirth which is ready for it, a rebirth

selected and prepared by this mysterious, inexorable, but in the equity and

wisdom of its decrees infallible law, that the sins of the previous life of

the Ego are punished. Only it is into no imaginary Hell, with theatrical

flames and ridiculous tailed and horned devils, that the Ego is cast, but

verily onto this earth, the plane and region of his sins, where he will have

to atone for every bad thought and deed. As he has sown, so will he reap.

Reincarnation will gather around him all those other Egos who have suffered,

whether directly or indirectly, at the hands, or even through the

unconscious instrumentality, of the past personality. They will be thrown by

Nemesis in the way of the new man, concealing the old, the eternal Ego, and


Q. But where is the equity you speak of, since these new "personalities" are

not aware of having sinned or been sinned against?

A. Has the coat torn to shreds from the back of the man who stole it, by



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another man who was robbed of it and recognizes his property, to be regarded

as fairly dealt with? The new "personality" is no better than a fresh suit

of clothes with its specific characteristics, color, form, and qualities;

but the real man who wears it is the same culprit as of old. It is the

individuality who suffers through his "personality." And it is this, and

this alone, that can account for the terrible, still only apparent,

injustice in the distribution of lots in life to man. When your modern

philosophers will have succeeded in showing to us a good reason, why so many

apparently innocent and good men are born only to suffer during a whole

lifetime; why so many are born poor unto starvation in the slums of great

cities, abandoned by fate and men; why, while these are born in the gutter,

others open their eyes to light in palaces; while a noble birth and fortune

seem often given to the worst of men and only rarely to the worthy; while

there are beggars whose inner selves are peers to the highest and noblest of

men; when this, and much more, is satisfactorily explained by either your

philosophers or theologians, then only, but not till then, you will have the

right to reject the theory of reincarnation. The highest and grandest of

poets have dimly perceived this truth of truths. Shelley believed in it,

Shakespeare must have thought of it when writing on the worthlessness of

Birth. Remember his words:

Why should my birth keep down my mounting spirit?

Are not all creatures subject unto time?

There's legions now of beggars on the earth,

That their original did spring from Kings,

And many monarchs now, whose fathers were

The riff-raff of their age …

Alter the word fathers into Egos-and you will have the truth.

On the Kamaloka and Devachan

On the Fate of the Lower Principles


Q. You spoke of Kamaloka, what is it?

A. When the man dies, his lower three principles leave him forever; i.e.,

body, life, and the vehicle of the latter, the astral body or the double of

the living man. And then, his four principles-the central or middle

principle, the animal soul or Kamarupa, with what it has assimilated from

the lower Manas, and the higher triad find themselves in Kamaloka. The

latter is an astral locality, the limbus of scholastic theology, the Hades

of the ancients, and, strictly speaking, a locality only in a relative

sense. It has neither a definite area nor boundary, but exists within

subjective space; i.e., is beyond our sensuous perceptions. Still it exists,

and it is there that the astral eidolons of all the beings that have lived,

animals included, await their second death. For the animals it comes with

the disintegration and the entire fading out of their astral particles to

the last. For the human eidolon it begins when the Atma-Buddhi-Manasic triad

is said to "separate" itself from its lower principles, or the reflection of

the ex-personality, by falling into the Devachanic state.


Q. And what happens after this?

A. Then the Kamarupic phantom, remaining bereft of its informing thinking

principle, the higher Manas, and the lower aspect of the latter, the animal

intelligence, no longer receiving light from the higher mind, and no longer

having a physical brain to work through, collapses.



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Q. In what way?

A. Well, it falls into the state of the frog when certain portions of its

brain are taken out by the vivisector. It can think no more, even on the

lowest animal plane. Henceforth it is no longer even the lower Manas, since

this "lower" is nothing without the "higher."


Q. And is it this nonentity which we find materializing in Seance rooms with

Mediums?

A. It is this nonentity. A true nonentity, however, only as to reasoning or

cogitating powers, still an Entity, however astral and fluidic, as shown in

certain cases when, having been magnetically and unconsciously drawn toward

a medium, it is revived for a time and lives in him by proxy, so to speak.

This "spook," or the Kamarupa, may be compared with the jelly-fish, which

has an ethereal gelatinous appearance so long as it is in its own element,

or water (the medium's specific aura), but which, no sooner is it thrown out

of it, than it dissolves in the hand or on the sand, especially in sunlight.

In the medium's Aura, it lives a kind of vicarious life and reasons and

speaks either through the medium's brain or those of other persons present.

But this would lead us too far, and upon other people's grounds, whereon I

have no desire to trespass. Let us keep to the subject of reincarnation.


Q. What of the latter? How long does the incarnating Ego remain in the

Devachanic state?

A. This, we are taught, depends on the degree of spirituality and the merit

or demerit of the last incarnation. The average time is from ten to fifteen

centuries, as I already told you.


Q. But why could not this Ego manifest and communicate with mortals as

Spiritualists will have it? What is there to prevent a mother from

communicating with the children she left on earth, a husband with his wife,

and so on? It is a most consoling belief, I must confess; nor do I wonder

that those who believe in it are so averse to give it up.

A. Nor are they forced to, unless they happen to prefer truth to fiction,

however "consoling." Uncongenial our doctrines may be to Spiritualists; yet,

nothing of what we believe in and teach is half as selfish and cruel as what

they preach.


Q. I do not understand you. What is selfish?

A. Their doctrine of the return of Spirits, the real "personalities" as they

say; and I will tell you why. If Devachan-call it "paradise" if you like, a

"place of bliss and of supreme felicity," if it is anything-is such a place

(or say state), logic tells us that no sorrow or even a shade of pain can be

experienced therein. "God shall wipe away all the tears from the eyes" of

those in paradise, we read in the book of many promises. And if the "Spirits

of the dead" are enabled to return and see all that is happening on earth,

and especially in their homes, what kind of bliss can be in store for them?

-oOo-Why

Theosophists Do Not Believe in the Return of Pure "Spirits"


Q. What do you mean? Why should this interfere with their bliss?

A. Simply this; and here is an instance. A mother dies, leaving behind her

little helpless children-orphans whom she adores-perhaps a beloved husband

also. We say that her "Spirit" or Ego-that individuality which is now all

impregnated, for the entire Devachanic period, with the noblest feelings

held by its late personality, i.e., love for her children, pity for those

who suffer, and so on-we say that it is now entirely separated from the



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"vale of tears," that its future bliss consists in that blessed ignorance of

all the woes it left behind. Spiritualists say, on the contrary, that it is

as vividly aware of them, and more so than before, for "Spirits see more

than mortals in the flesh do." We say that the bliss of the Devachanee

consists in its complete conviction that it has never left the earth, and

that there is no such thing as death at all; that the postmortem spiritual

consciousness of the mother will represent to her that she lives surrounded

by her children and all those whom she loved; that no gap, no link, will be

missing to make her disembodied state the most perfect and absolute

happiness. The Spiritualists deny this point blank. According to their

doctrine, unfortunate man is not liberated even by death from the sorrows of

this life. Not a drop from the life-cup of pain and suffering will miss his

lips; and whether willing or unwilling, since he sees everything now, shall

he drink it to the bitter dregs. Thus, the loving wife, who during her

lifetime was ready to save her husband sorrow at the price of her heart's

blood, is now doomed to see, in utter helplessness, his despair, and to

register every hot tear he sheds for her loss. Worse than that, she may see

the tears dry too soon, and another beloved face shine on him, the father of

her children; find another woman replacing her in his affections; doomed to

hear her orphans giving the holy name of "mother" to one indifferent to

them, and to see those little children neglected, if not ill-treated.

According to this doctrine the "gentle wafting to immortal life" becomes

without any transition the way into a new path of mental suffering! And yet,

the columns of the Banner of Light, the veteran journal of the American

Spiritualists, are filled with messages from the dead, the "dear departed

ones," who all write to say how very happy they are! Is such a state of

knowledge consistent with bliss? Then bliss stands in such a case for the

greatest curse, and orthodox damnation must be a relief in comparison to it!


Q. But how does your theory avoid this? How can you reconcile the theory of

Soul's omniscience with its blindness to that which is taking place on

earth?

A. Because such is the law of love and mercy. During every Devachanic period

the Ego, omniscient as it is per se, clothes itself, so to say, with the

reflection of the "personality" that was. I have just told you that the

ideal efflorescence of all the abstract, therefore undying and eternal

qualities or attributes, such as love and mercy, the love of the good, the

true and the beautiful, that ever spoke in the heart of the living

"personality," clung after death to the Ego, and therefore followed it to

Devachan. For the time being, then, the Ego becomes the ideal reflection of

the human being it was when last on earth, and that is not omniscient. Were

it that, it would never be in the state we call Devachan at all.


Q. What are your reasons for it?

A. If you want an answer on the strict lines of our philosophy, then I will

say that it is because everything is illusion (Maya ) outside of eternal

truth, which has neither form, color, nor limitation. He who has placed

himself beyond the veil of Maya -and such are the highest Adepts and

Initiates-can have no Devachan. As to the ordinary mortal, his bliss in it

is complete. It is an absolute oblivion of all that gave it pain or sorrow

in the past incarnation, and even oblivion of the fact that such things as

pain or sorrow exist at all. The Devachanee lives its intermediate cycle

between two incarnations surrounded by everything it had aspired to in vain,

and in the companionship of everyone it loved on earth. It has reached the

fulfillment of all its soul-yearnings. And thus it lives throughout long

centuries an existence of unalloyed happiness, which is the reward for its

sufferings in earth-life. In short, it bathes in a sea of uninterrupted

felicity spanned only by events of still greater felicity in degree.


Q. But this is more than simple delusion, it is an existence of insane

hallucinations!



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A. From your standpoint it may be, not so from that of philosophy. Besides

which, is not our whole terrestrial life filled with such delusions? Have

you never met men and women living for years in a fool's paradise? And

because you should happen to learn that the husband of a wife, whom she

adores and believes herself as beloved by him, is untrue to her, would you

go and break her heart and beautiful dream by rudely awakening her to the

reality? I think not. I say it again, such oblivion and hallucination-if you

call it so-are only a merciful law of nature and strict justice. At any

rate, it is a far more fascinating prospect than the orthodox golden harp

with a pair of wings. The assurance that

The soul that lives ascends frequently and runs familiarly through the

streets of the heavenly Jerusalem, visiting the patriarchs and prophets,

saluting the apostles, and admiring the army of martyrs.

-may seem of a more pious character to some. Nevertheless, it is a

hallucination of a far more delusive character, since mothers love their

children with an immortal love, we all know, while the personages mentioned

in the "heavenly Jerusalem" are still of a rather doubtful nature. But I

would, still, rather accept the "new Jerusalem," with its streets paved like

the show windows of a jeweler's shop, than find consolation in the heartless

doctrine of the Spiritualists. The idea alone that the intellectual

conscious souls of one's father, mother, daughter, or brother find their

bliss in a "Summerland"-only a little more natural, but just as ridiculous

as the "New Jerusalem" in its description-would be enough to make one lose

every respect for one's "departed ones." To believe that a pure spirit can

feel happy while doomed to witness the sins, mistakes, treachery, and, above

all, the sufferings of those from whom it is severed by death and whom it

loves best, without being able to help them, would be a maddening thought.


Q. There is something in your argument. I confess to having never seen it in

this light.

A. Just so, and one must be selfish to the core and utterly devoid of the

sense of retributive justice, to have ever imagined such a thing. We are

with those whom we have lost in material form, and far, far nearer to them

now, than when they were alive. And it is not only in the fancy of the

Devachanee, as some may imagine, but in reality. For pure divine love is not

merely the blossom of a human heart, but has its roots in eternity.

Spiritual holy love is immortal, and Karma brings sooner or later all those

who loved each other with such a spiritual affection to incarnate once more

in the same family group. Again we say that love beyond the grave, illusion

though you may call it, has a magic and divine potency which reacts on the

living. A mother's Ego filled with love for the imaginary children it sees

near itself, living a life of happiness, as real to it as when on earth-that

love will always be felt by the children in flesh. It will manifest in their

dreams, and often in various events-in providential protection and escape,

for love is a strong shield, and is not limited by space or time. As with

this Devachanic "mother," so with the rest of human relationships and

attachments, save the purely selfish or material. Analogy will suggest to

you the rest.


Q. In no case, then, do you admit the possibility of the communication of

the living with the disembodied spirit?

A. Yes, there is a case, and even two exceptions to the rule.

The first exception is during the few days that follow immediately the death

of a person and before the Ego passes into the Devachanic state. Whether any

living mortal, save a few exceptional cases has derived much benefit from

the return of the spirit into the objective plane is another question. The

spirit is dazed after death and falls very soon into what we call

"predevachanic unconsciousness." When the intensity of the desire in the

dying person to return for some purpose forced the higher consciousness to



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remain awake, and therefore it was really the individuality, the "Spirit"

that communicated.

The second exception is found in the Nirmanakayas.


Q. What about them? And what does the name mean for you?

A. It is the name given to those who, though they have won the right to

Nirvana and cyclic rest have out of pity for mankind and those they left on

earth renounced the Nirv ic state. This is not "Devachan," as the latter is

an illusion of our consciousness, a happy dream, and as those who are fit

for Nirvana must have lost entirely every desire or possibility of the

world's illusions.

Such an adept, or Saint, or whatever you may call him, believing it a

selfish act to rest in bliss while mankind groans under the burden of misery

produced by ignorance, renounces Nirvana, and determines to remain invisible

in spirit on this earth. They have no material body, as they have left it

behind; but otherwise they remain with all their principles even in astral

life in our sphere. And such can and do communicate with a few elect ones,

only surely not with ordinary mediums.


Q. I have put you the question about Nirmanakayas because I read in some

German and other works that it was the name given to the terrestrial

appearances or bodies assumed by Buddhas in the Northern Buddhist teachings.

A. So they are, only the Orientalists have confused this terrestrial body by

understanding it to be objective and physical instead of purely astral and

subjective.


Q. And what good can they do on earth?

A. Not much, as regards individuals, as they have no right to interfere with

Karma, and can only advise and inspire mortals for the general good. Yet

they do more beneficent actions than you imagine.


Q. To this Science would never subscribe, not even modern psychology. For

them, no portion of intelligence can survive the physical brain. What would

you answer them?

A. I would not even go to the trouble of answering, but would simply say, in

the words given to "M.A. Oxon,"

Intelligence is perpetuated after the body is dead. Though it is not a

question of the brain only … It is reasonable to propound the

indestructibility of the human spirit from what we know.


Q. But "M.A. Oxon" is a Spiritualist?

A. Quite so, and the only true Spiritualist I know of, though we may still

disagree with him on many a minor question. Apart from this, no Spiritualist

comes nearer to the occult truths than he does. Like any one of us he speaks

incessantly

… of the surface dangers that beset the ill-equipped, feather-headed muddler

with the occult, who crosses the threshold without counting the cost. Some

things that I do know of Spiritualism and some that I do not.

Our only disagreement rests in the question of "Spirit Identity." Otherwise,

I, for one, coincide almost entirely with him, and accept the three

propositions he embodied in his address of July, 1884. It is this eminent

Spiritualist, rather, who disagrees with us, not we with him.


Q. What are these propositions?



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A. They are:

1. That there is a life coincident with, and independent of the physical

life of the body.

2. That, as a necessary corollary, this life extends beyond the life of the

body. We say it extends throughout Devachan.

3. That there is communication between the denizens of that state of

existence and those of the world in which we now live.

All depend, you see, on the minor and secondary aspects of these fundamental

propositions. Everything depends on the views we take of Spirit and Soul, or

Individuality and Personality. Spiritualists confuse the two "into one." We

separate them, and say that, with the exceptions above enumerated, no Spirit

will revisit the earth, though the animal Soul may. But let us return once

more to our direct subject, the Skandhas.


Q. I begin to understand better now. It is the Spirit, so to say, of those

Skandhas which are the most ennobling, which, attaching themselves to the

incarnating Ego, survive, and are added to the stock of its angelic

experiences. And it is the attributes connected with the material Skandhas,

with selfish and personal motives. which, disappearing from the field of

action between two incarnations, reappear at the subsequent incarnation as

Karmic results to be atoned for; and therefore the Spirit will not leave

Devachan. Is it so?

A. Very nearly so. If you add to this that the law of retribution, or Karma,

rewarding the highest and most spiritual in Devachan, never fails to reward

them again on earth by giving them a further development, and furnishing the

Ego with a body fitted for it, then you will be quite correct.

-oOo-A

Few Words About the Skandhas


Q. What becomes of the other, the lower Skandhas of the personality, after

the death of the body? Are they quite destroyed?

A. They are and yet they are not-a fresh metaphysical and occult mystery for

you. They are destroyed as the working stock in hand of the personality;

they remain as Karmic effects, as germs, hanging in the atmosphere of the

terrestrial plane, ready to come to life, as so many avenging fiends, to

attach themselves to the new personality of the Ego when it reincarnates.


Q. This really passes my comprehension, and is very difficult to understand.

A. Not once that you have assimilated all the details. For then you will see

that for logic, consistency, profound philosophy, divine mercy and equity,

this doctrine of Reincarnation has not its equal on earth. It is a belief in

a perpetual progress for each incarnating Ego, or divine soul, in an

evolution from the outward into the inward, from the material to the

Spiritual, arriving at the end of each stage at absolute unity with the

divine Principle. From strength to strength, from the beauty and perfection

of one plane to the greater beauty and perfection of another, with

accessions of new glory, of fresh knowledge and power in each cycle, such is

the destiny of every Ego, which thus becomes its own Savior in each world

and incarnation.


Q. But Christianity teaches the same. It also preaches progression.

A. Yes, only with the addition of something else. It tells us of the

impossibility of attaining Salvation without the aid of a miraculous Savior,



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and therefore dooms to perdition all those who will not accept the dogma.

This is just the difference between Christian theology and Theosophy. The

former enforces belief in the Descent of the Spiritual Ego into the Lower

Self; the latter inculcates the necessity of endeavoring to elevate oneself

to the Christos, or Buddhi state.


Q. By teaching the annihilation of consciousness in case of failure,

however, don't you think that it amounts to the annihilation of Self, a in

the opinion of the non-metaphysical?

A. From the standpoint of those who believe in the resurrection of the body

literally, and insist that every bone, every artery and atom of flesh will

be raised bodily on the Judgment Day-of course it does. If you still insist

that it is the perishable form and finite qualities that make up immortal

man, then we shall hardly understand each other. And if you do not

understand that, by limiting the existence of every Ego to one life on

earth, you make of Deity an ever-drunken Indra of the Pur ic dead letter, a

cruel Moloch, a god who makes an inextricable mess on Earth, and yet claims

thanks for it, then the sooner we drop the conversation the better.


Q. But let us return, now that the subject of the Skandhas is disposed of,

to the question of the consciousness which survives death. This is the point

which interests most people. Do we possess more knowledge in Devachan than

we do in earthlife?

A. In one sense, we can acquire more knowledge; that is, we can develop

further any faculty which we loved and strove after during life, provided it

is concerned with abstract and ideal things, such as music, painting,

poetry, etc., since Devachan is merely an idealized and subjective

continuation of earth-life.


Q. But if in Devachan the Spirit is free from matter, why should it not

possess all knowledge?

A. Because, as I told you, the Ego is, so to say, wedded to the memory of

its last incarnation. Thus, if you think over what I have said, and string

all the facts together, you will realize that the Devachanic state is not

one of omniscience, but a transcendental continuation of the personal life

just terminated. It is the rest of the soul from the toils of life.


Q. But the scientific materialists assert that after the death of man

nothing remains; that the human body simply disintegrates into its component

elements; and that what we call soul is merely a temporary

self-consciousness produced as a byproduct of organic action, which will

evaporate like steam. Is not theirs a strange state of mind?

A. Not strange at all, that I see. If they say that self-consciousness

ceases with the body, then in their case they simply utter an unconscious

prophecy, for once they are firmly convinced of what they assert, no

conscious after-life is possible for them. For there are exceptions to every

rule.

-oOo-On

Postmortem and Postnatal Consciousness


Q. But if human self-consciousness survives death as a rule, why should

there be exceptions?

A. In the fundamental principles of the spiritual world no exception is

possible. But there are rules for those who see, and rules for those who

prefer to remain blind.


Q. Quite so, I understand. This is but an aberration of the blind man, who



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denies the existence of the sun because he does not see it. But after death

his spiritual eyes will certainly compel him to see. Is this what you mean?

A. He will not be compelled, nor will he see anything. Having persistently

denied during life the continuance of existence after death, he will be

unable to see it, because his spiritual capacity having been stunted in

life, it cannot develop after death, and he will remain blind. By insisting

that he must see it, you evidently mean one thing and I another. You speak

of the spirit from the spirit, or the flame from the flame-of Atma, in

short-and you confuse it with the human soul-Manas … You do not understand

me; let me try to make it clear. The whole gist of your question is to know

whether, in the case of a downright materialist, the complete loss of

self-consciousness and self-perception after death is possible? Isn't it so?

I answer, it is possible. Because, believing firmly in our Esoteric

Doctrine, which refers to the postmortem period, or the interval between two

lives or births, as merely a transitory state, I say, whether that interval

between two acts of the illusionary drama of life lasts one year or a

million, that postmortem state may, without any breach of the fundamental

law, prove to be just the same state as that of a man who is in a dead

faint.


Q. But since you have just said that the fundamental laws of the after-death

state admit of no exceptions, how can this be?

A. Nor do I say that it does admit of an exception. But the spiritual law of

continuity applies only to things which are truly real. To one who has read

and understood Mundakya Upanishad and Vedantasara all this becomes very

clear. I will say more: it is sufficient to understand what we mean by

Buddhi and the duality of Manas to gain a clear perception why the

materialist may fail to have a self-conscious survival after death. Since

Manas, in its lower aspect, is the seat of the terrestrial mind, it can,

therefore, give only that perception of the Universe which is based on the

evidence of that mind; it cannot give spiritual vision. It is said in the

Eastern school, that between Buddhi and Manas (the Ego), or Isvara and

Prajña *1) there is in reality no more difference than between a forest and

its trees, a lake and its waters, as the Mundakya teaches. One or hundreds

of trees dead from loss of vitality, or uprooted, are yet incapable of

preventing the forest from being still a forest.

1. But, as I understand it, Buddhi represents in this simile the forest,

and Manas-Taijasi *2) the trees. And if Buddhi is immortal, how can

that which is similar to it, i.e., Manas-Taijasi , entirely lose its

consciousness till the day of its new incarnation? I cannot understand

it.

*1) Isvara is the collective consciousness of the manifested godhead,

Brahma, i.e. the collective consciousness of the host of Dhyan Chohans (see

Secret Doctrine); Prajña is their individual wisdom.

*2) Taijasi means the 'radiant', as a consequence of its union with Buddhi,

i.e. Manas, the human soul, enlightened by the rays of the divine soul.

Hence Manas-Taijasi can be described as radiant intellect, the human reason

enlightened by the light of the spirit; and Buddhi-Manas is the revelation

of the divine plus the human intellect and self-consciousness.

(These two footnotes reversely translated from Dutch.[ editor])

A. You cannot, because you will mix up an abstract representation of the

whole with its casual changes of form. Remember that if it can be said of

Buddhi-Manas that it is unconditionally immortal, the same cannot be said of

the lower Manas, still less of Taijasi , which is merely an attribute.

Neither of these, neither Manas nor Taijasi , can exist apart from Buddhi,

the divine soul, because the first (Manas) is, in its lower aspect, a

quality of the terrestrial personality, and the second (Taijasi ) is



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identical with the first, because it is the same Manas only with the light

of Buddhi reflected on it. In its turn, Buddhi would remain only an

impersonal spirit without this element which it borrows from the human soul,

which conditions and makes of it, in this illusive Universe, as it were

something separate from the universal soul for the whole period of the cycle

of incarnation. Say rather that Buddhi-Manas can neither die nor lose its

compound self-consciousness in Eternity, nor the recollection of its

previous incarnations in which the two-i.e., the spiritual and the human

soul-had been closely linked together. But it is not so in the case of a

materialist, whose human soul not only receives nothing from the divine

soul, but even refuses to recognize its existence. You can hardly apply this

axiom to the attributes and qualities of the human soul, for it would be

like saying that because your divine soul is immortal, therefore the bloom

on your cheek must also be immortal; whereas this bloom, like Taijasi , is

simply a transitory phenomenon.


Q. Do I understand you to say that we must not mix in our minds the noumenon

with the phenomenon, the cause with its effect?

A. I do say so, and repeat that, limited to Manas or the human soul alone,

the radiance of Taijas itself becomes a mere question of time; because both

immortality and consciousness after death become, for the terrestrial

personality of man, simply conditioned attributes, as they depend entirely

on conditions and beliefs created by the human soul itself during the life

of its body. Karma acts incessantly: we reap in our after-life only the

fruit of that which we have ourselves sown in this.


Q. But if my Ego can, after the destruction of my body, become plunged in a

state of entire unconsciousness, then where can be the punishment for the

sins of my past life?

A. Our philosophy teaches that Karmic punishment reaches the Ego only in its

next incarnation. After death it receives only the reward for the unmerited

sufferings endured during its past incarnation.

(Some Theosophists have taken exception to this phrase, but the words are

those of Master, and the meaning attached to the word unmerited is that

given above. In the T.P.S. pamphlet No. 6, a phrase, criticized subsequently

in Lucifer, was used which was intended to convey the same idea. In form,

however, it was awkward and open to the criticism directed against it; but

the essential idea was that men often suffer from the effects of the actions

done by others, effects which thus do not strictly belong to their own

Karma-and for these sufferings they of course deserve compensation.)

The whole punishment after death, even for the materialist, consists,

therefore, in the absence of any reward, and the utter loss of the

consciousness of one's bliss and rest. Karma is the child of the terrestrial

Ego, the fruit of the actions of the tree which is the objective personality

visible to all, as much as the fruit of all the thoughts and even motives of

the spiritual "I"; but Karma is also the tender mother, who heals the wounds

inflicted by her during the preceding life, before she will begin to torture

this Ego by inflicting upon him new ones. If it may be said that there is

not a mental or physical suffering in the life of a mortal which is not the

direct fruit and consequence of some sin in a preceding existence; on the

other hand, since he does not preserve the slightest recollection of it in

his actual life, and feels himself not deserving of such punishment, and

therefore thinks he suffers for no guilt of his own, this alone is

sufficient to entitle the human soul to the fullest consolation, rest, and

bliss in his postmortem existence. Death comes to our spiritual selves ever

as a deliverer and friend. For the materialist who, notwithstanding his

materialism, was not a bad man, the interval between the two lives will be

like the unbroken and placid sleep of a child, either entirely dreamless, or

filled with pictures of which he will have no definite perception; while for

the average mortal it will be a dream as vivid as life, and full of



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realistic bliss and visions.


Q. Then the personal man must always go on suffering blindly the Karmic

penalties which the Ego has incurred?

A. Not quite so. At the solemn moment of death every man, even when death is

sudden, sees the whole of his past life marshaled before him, in its

minutest details. For one short instant the personal becomes one with the

individual and all-knowing Ego. But this instant is enough to show to him

the whole chain of causes which have been at work during his life. He sees

and now understands himself as he is, unadorned by flattery or

self-deception. He reads his life, remaining as a spectator looking down

into the arena he is quitting; he feels and knows the justice of all the

suffering that has overtaken him.


Q. Does this happen to everyone?

A. Without any exception. Very good and holy men see, we are taught, not

only the life they are leaving, but even several preceding lives in which

were produced the causes that made them what they were in the life just

closing. They recognize the law of Karma in all its majesty and justice.


Q. Is there anything corresponding to this before rebirth?

A. There is. As the man at the moment of death has a retrospective insight

into the life he has led, so, at the moment he is reborn onto earth, the

Ego, awaking from the state of Devachan, has a prospective vision of the

life which awaits him, and realizes all the causes that have led to it. He

realizes them and sees futurity, because it is between Devachan and rebirth

that the Ego regains his full manasic consciousness, and rebecomes for a

short time the god he was, before, in compliance with Karmic law, he first

descended into matter and incarnated in the first man of flesh. The "golden

thread" sees all its "pearls" and misses not one of them.

-oOo-What

is Really Meant by Annihilation


Q. I have heard some Theosophists speak of a golden thread on which their

lives were strung. What do they mean by this?

A. In the Hindu Sacred books it is said that the part of us which undergoes

periodical incarnation is the Sutratman, which means literally the "Thread

Soul." It is a synonym of the reincarnating Ego-Manas conjoined with

Buddhi-which absorbs the Manasic recollections of all our preceding lives.

It is so called, because, like the pearls on a thread, so is the long series

of human lives strung together on that one thread. In some Upanishad these

recurrent rebirths are likened to the life of a mortal which oscillates

periodically between sleep and waking.


Q. This, I must say, does not seem very clear, and I will tell you why. For

the man who awakes, another day commences, but that man is the same in soul

and body as he was the day before; whereas at every incarnation a full

change takes place not only of the external envelope, sex, and personality,

but even of the mental and psychic capacities. The simile does not seem to

me quite correct. The man who arises from sleep remembers quite clearly what

he has done yesterday, the day before, and even months and years ago. But

none of us has the slightest recollection of a preceding life or of any fact

or event concerning it … I may forget in the morning what I have dreamt

during the night, still I know that I have slept and have the certainty that

I lived during sleep; but what recollection can I have of my past

incarnation until the moment of death? How do you reconcile this?

A. Some people do recollect their past incarnations during life; but these



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are Buddhas and Initiates. This is what the Yogis call Samm -Sambuddha, or

the knowledge of the whole series of one's past incarnations.


Q. But we ordinary mortals who have not reached Samm -Sambuddha, how are we

to understand this simile?

A. By studying it and trying to understand more correctly the

characteristics and the three kinds of sleep. Sleep is a general and

immutable law for man as for beast, but there are different kinds of sleep

and still more different dreams and visions.


Q. But this takes us to another subject. Let us return to the materialist

who, while not denying dreams, which he could hardly do, yet denies

immortality in general and the survival of his own individuality.

A. And the materialist, without knowing it, is right. One who has no inner

perception of, and faith in, the immortality of his soul, in that man the

soul can never become Buddhi-Taijasi , but will remain simply Manas, and for

Manas alone there is no immortality possible. In order to live in the world

to come a conscious life, one has to believe first of all in that life

during the terrestrial existence. On these two aphorisms of the Secret

Science all the philosophy about the postmortem consciousness and the

immortality of the soul is built. The Ego receives always according to its

deserts. After the dissolution of the body, there commences for it a period

of full awakened consciousness, or a state of chaotic dreams, or an utterly

dreamless sleep undistinguishable from annihilation, and these are the three

kinds of sleep. If our physiologists find the cause of dreams and visions in

an unconscious preparation for them during the waking hours, why cannot the

same be admitted for the postmortem dreams? I repeat it: death is sleep.

After death, before the spiritual eyes of the soul, begins a performance

according to a program learnt and very often unconsciously composed by

ourselves: the practical carrying out of correct beliefs or of illusions

which have been created by ourselves. The Methodist will be Methodist, the

Muslim a Muslim, at least for some time-in a perfect fool's paradise of each

man's creation and making. These are the postmortem fruits of the tree of

life. Naturally, our belief or unbelief in the fact of conscious immortality

is unable to influence the unconditioned reality of the fact itself, once

that it exists; but the belief or unbelief in that immortality as the

property of independent or separate entities, cannot fail to give color to

that fact in its application to each of these entities. Now do you begin to

understand it?


Q. I think I do. The materialist, disbelieving in everything that cannot be

proven to him by his five senses, or by scientific reasoning, based

exclusively on the data furnished by these senses in spite of their

inadequacy, and rejecting every spiritual manifestation, accepts life as the

only conscious existence. Therefore according to their beliefs so will it be

unto them. They will lose their personal Ego, and will plunge into a

dreamless sleep until a new awakening. Is it so?

A. Almost so. Remember the practically universal teaching of the two kinds

of conscious existence: the terrestrial and the spiritual. The latter must

be considered real from the very fact that it is inhabited by the eternal,

changeless, and immortal Monad; whereas the incarnating Ego dresses itself

up in new garments entirely different from those of its previous

incarnations, and in which all except its spiritual prototype is doomed to a

change so radical as to leave no trace behind.


Q. How so? Can my conscious terrestrial "I" perish not only for a time, like

the consciousness of the materialist, but so entirely as to leave no trace

behind?

A. According to the teaching, it must so perish and in its fullness; all

except the principle which, having united itself with the Monad, has thereby



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become a purely spiritual and indestructible essence, one with it in the

Eternity. But in the case of an out-and-out materialist, in whose personal

"I" no Buddhi has ever reflected itself, how can the latter carry away into

the Eternity one particle of that terrestrial personality? Your spiritual

"I" is immortal; but from your present self it can carry away into Eternity

that only which has become worthy of immortality, namely, the aroma alone of

the flower that has been mown by death.


Q. Well, and the flower, the terrestrial "I"?

A. The flower, as all past and future flowers which have blossomed and will

have to blossom on the mother bough, the Sutratman, all children of one root

or Buddhi-will return to dust. Your present "I," as you yourself know, is

not the body now sitting before me, nor yet is it what I would call

Manas-Sutratman, but Sutratman-Buddhi.


Q. But this does not explain to me, at all, why you call life after death

immortal, infinite, and real, and the terrestrial life a simple phantom or

illusion; since even that postmortem life has limits, however much wider

they may be than those of terrestrial life.

A. No doubt. The spiritual Ego of man moves in eternity like a pendulum

between the hours of birth and death. But if these hours, marking the

periods of life terrestrial and life spiritual, are limited in their

duration, and if the very number of such stages in Eternity between sleep

and awakening, illusion and reality, has its beginning and its end, on the

other hand, the spiritual pilgrim is eternal. Therefore are the hours of his

postmortem life, when, disembodied, he stands face to face with truth and

not the mirages of his transitory earthly existences, during the period of

that pilgrimage which we call "the cycle of rebirths"-the only reality in

our conception. Such intervals, their limitation notwithstanding, do not

prevent the Ego, while ever perfecting itself, from following undeviatingly,

though gradually and slowly, the path to its last transformation, when that

Ego, having reached its goal, becomes a divine being. These intervals and

stages help towards this final result instead of hindering it; and without

such limited intervals the divine Ego could never reach its ultimate goal. I

have given you once already a familiar illustration by comparing the Ego, or

the individuality, to an actor, and its numerous and various incarnations to

the parts it plays. Will you call these parts or their costumes the

individuality of the actor himself? Like that actor, the Ego is forced to

play during the cycle of necessity, up to the very threshold of ParaNirvana,

many parts such as may be unpleasant to it. But as the bee collects its

honey from every flower, leaving the rest as food for the earthly worms, so

does our spiritual individuality, whether we call it Sutratman or Ego.

Collecting from every terrestrial personality, into which Karma forces it to

incarnate, the nectar alone of the spiritual qualities and

self-consciousness, it unites all these into one whole and emerges from its

chrysalis as the glorified Dhyani-Chohan. So much the worse for those

terrestrial personalities from which it could collect nothing. Such

personalities cannot assuredly outlive consciously their terrestrial

existence.


Q. Thus, then, it seems that, for the terrestrial personality, immortality

is still conditional. Is, then, immortality itself not unconditional?

A. Not at all. But immortality cannot touch the non-existent: for all that

which exists as Sat, or emanates from Sat, immortality and Eternity are

absolute. Matter is the opposite pole of spirit, and yet the two are one.

The essence of all this, i.e., Spirit, Force, and Matter, or the three in

one, is as endless as it is beginningless; but the form acquired by this

triple unity during its incarnations, its externality, is certainly only the

illusion of our personal conceptions. Therefore do we call Nirvana and the

Universal life alone a reality, while relegating the terrestrial life, its

terrestrial personality included, and even its Devachanic existence, to the



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phantom realm of illusion.


Q. But why in such a case call sleep the reality, and waking the illusion?

A. It is simply a comparison made to facilitate the grasping of the subject,

and from the standpoint of terrestrial conceptions it is a very correct one.


Q. And still I cannot understand, if the life to come is based on justice

and the merited retribution for all our terrestrial suffering, how in the

case of materialists, many of whom are really honest and charitable men,

there should remain of their personality nothing but the refuse of a faded

flower.

A. No one ever said such a thing. No materialist, however unbelieving, can

die forever in the fullness of his spiritual individuality. What was said is

that consciousness can disappear either fully or partially in the case of a

materialist, so that no conscious remains of his personality survive.


Q. But surely this is annihilation?

A. Certainly not. One can sleep a dead sleep and miss several stations

during a long railway journey, without the slightest recollection or

consciousness, and awake at another station and continue the journey past

innumerable other halting-places till the end of the journey or the goal is

reached. Three kinds of sleep were mentioned to you: the dreamless, the

chaotic, and the one which is so real, that to the sleeping man his dreams

become full realities. If you believe in the latter why can't you believe in

the former; according to the after-life a man has believed in and expected,

such is the life he will have. He who expected no life to come will have an

absolute blank, amounting to annihilation, in the interval between the two

rebirths. This is just the carrying out of the program we spoke of, a

program created by the materialists themselves. But there are various kinds

of materialists, as you say. A selfish, wicked Egoist, one who never shed a

tear for anyone but himself, thus adding entire indifference to the whole

world to his unbelief, must, at the threshold of death, drop his personality

forever. This personality having no tendrils of sympathy for the world

around and hence nothing to hook onto Sutratman, it follows that with the

last breath every connection between the two is broken. There being no

Devachan for such a materialist, the Sutratman will reincarnate almost

immediately. But those materialists who erred in nothing but their disbelief

will oversleep but one station. And the time will come when that

ex-materialist will perceive himself in the Eternity and perhaps repent that

he lost even one day, one station, from the life eternal.


Q. Still, would it not be more correct to say that death is birth into a new

life, or a return once more into eternity?

A. You may if you like. Only remember that births differ, and that there are

births of "still-born" beings, which are failures of nature. Moreover, with

your Western fixed ideas about material life, the words living and being are

quite inapplicable to the pure subjective state of postmortem existence. It

is just because, save in a few philosophers who are not read by the many,

and who themselves are too confused to present a distinct picture of it, it

is just because your Western ideas of life and death have finally become so

narrow, that on the one hand they have led to crass materialism, and on the

other, to the still more material conception of the other life, which the

Spiritualists have formulated in their Summerland. There the souls of men

eat, drink, marry, and live in a paradise quite as sensual as that of

Mohammed, but even less philosophical. Nor are the average conceptions of

the uneducated Christians any better, being if possible still more material.

What between truncated angels, brass trumpets, golden harps, and material

hellfires, the Christian heaven seems like a fairy scene at a Christmas

pantomime.



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It is because of these narrow conceptions that you find such difficulty in

understanding. It is just because the life of the disembodied soul, while

possessing all the vividness of reality, as in certain dreams, is devoid of

every grossly objective form of terrestrial life, that the Eastern

philosophers have compared it with visions during sleep.

-oOo-Definite

Words for Definite Things


Q. Don't you think it is because there are no definite and fixed terms to

indicate each principle in man, that such a confusion of ideas arises in our

minds with respect to the respective functions of these principles?

A. I have thought of it myself. The whole trouble has arisen from this: we

have started our expositions of, and discussion about, the principles, using

their Sanskrit names instead of coining immediately, for the use of

Theosophists, their equivalents in English. We must try and remedy this now.


Q. You will do well, as it may avoid further confusion; no two theosophical

writers, it seems to me, have hitherto agreed to call the same principle by

the same name.

A. The confusion is more apparent than real, however. I have heard some of

our Theosophists express surprise at, and criticize several essays speaking

of these principles; but, when examined, there was no worse mistake in them

than that of using the word Soul to cover the three principles without

specifying the distinctions. The first, as positively the clearest of our

Theosophical writers, Mr. A.P. Sinnett, has some comprehensive and

admirably-written passages on the "Higher Self." His real idea has also been

misconceived by some, owing to his using the word Soul in a general sense.

Yet here are a few passages which will show to you how clear and

comprehensive is all that he writes on the subject:

The human soul, once launched on the streams of evolution as a human

individuality, passes through alternate periods of physical and relatively

spiritual existence. It passes from the one plane, or stratum, or condition

of nature to the other under the guidance of its Karmic affinities; living

in incarnations the life which its Karma has preordained; modifying its

progress within the limitations of circumstances, and-developing fresh Karma

by its use or abuse of opportunities-it returns to spiritual existence

(Devachan) after each physical life-through the intervening region of

Kamaloka-for rest and refreshment and for the gradual absorption into its

essence, as so much cosmic progress, of the life's experience gained "on

earth" or during physical existence. This view of the matter will, moreover,

have suggested many collateral inferences to anyone thinking over the

subject; for instance, that the transfer of consciousness from the Kamaloka

to the Devachanic stage of this progression would necessarily be gradual;

that in truth, no hard-and-fast line separates the varieties of spiritual

conditions, that even the spiritual and physical planes, as psychic

faculties in living people show, are not so hopelessly walled off from one

another as materialistic theories would suggest; that all states of nature

are all around us simultaneously, and appeal to different perceptive

faculties; and so on … It is clear that during physical existence people who

possess psychic faculties remain in connection with the planes of

super-physical consciousness; and although most people may not be endowed

with such faculties, we all, as the phenomena of sleep, even, and especially

… those of somnambulism or mesmerism, show, are capable of entering into

conditions of consciousness that the five physical senses have nothing to do

with. We-the souls within us-are not as it were altogether adrift in the

ocean of matter. We clearly retain some surviving interest or rights in the

shore from which, for a time, we have floated off. The process of

incarnation, therefore, is not fully described when we speak of an alternate

existence on the physical and spiritual planes, and thus picture the soul as



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a complete entity slipping entirely from the one state of existence to the

other. The more correct definitions of the process would probably represent

incarnation as taking place on this physical plane of nature by reason of an

efflux emanating from the soul. The Spiritual realm would all the while be

the proper habitat of the Soul, which would never entirely quit it; and that

non-materializable portion of the Soul which abides permanently on the

spiritual plane may fitly, perhaps, be spoken of as the Higher Self.

This "Higher Self" is Atma, and of course it is "non-materializable," as Mr.

Sinnett says. Even more, it can never be "objective" under any

circumstances, even to the highest spiritual perception. For Atma or the

"Higher Self" is really Brahma, the Absolute, and indistinguishable from it.

In hours of Samadhi, the higher spiritual consciousness of the Initiate is

entirely absorbed in the one essence, which is Atma, and therefore, being

one with the whole, there can be nothing objective for it. Now some of our

Theosophists have got into the habit of using the words Self and Ego as

synonymous, of associating the term Self with only man's higher individual

or even personal "Self" or Ego, whereas this term ought never to be applied

except to the One universal Self. Hence the confusion. Speaking of Manas,

the "causal body," we may call it-when connecting it with the Buddhic

radiance-the "Higher Ego," never the "Higher Self." For even Buddhi, the

"Spiritual Soul," is not the Self, but the vehicle only of Self. All the

other "Selves"-such as the "Individual" self and "personal" self-ought never

to be spoken or written of without their qualifying and characteristic

adjectives.

Thus in this most excellent essay on the "Higher Self," this term is applied

to the sixth principle or Buddhi; and has in consequence given rise to just

such misunderstandings. The statement that

A child does not acquire its sixth principle-or become a morally responsible

being capable of generating Karma-until seven years old.

-proves what is meant therein by the Higher Self. Therefore, the able author

is quite justified in explaining that after the "Higher Self" has passed

into the human being and saturated the personality-in some of the finer

organizations only-with its consciousness

People with psychic faculties may indeed perceive this Higher Self through

their finer senses from time to time.

But so are those, who limit the term Higher Self to the Universal Divine

Principle, "justified" in misunderstanding him. For, when we read, without

being prepared for this shifting of metaphysical terms, that while

Fully manifesting on the physical plane … the Higher Self still remains a

conscious spiritual Ego on the corresponding plane of Nature.

We are apt to see in the "Higher Self" of this sentence, Atma, and in the

spiritual Ego, Manas, or rather Buddhi-Manas, and forthwith to criticize the

whole thing as incorrect.

To avoid henceforth such misapprehensions, I propose to translate literally

from the Occult Eastern terms their equivalents in English, and offer these

for future use.

[The Self and the Egos ]

The Higher Self is Atma, the inseparable ray of the Universal and One Self.

It is the God above, more than within, us. Happy the man who succeeds in

saturating his inner Ego with it!

The Spiritual divine Ego is the Spiritual soul or Buddhi, in close union

with Manas, the mind-principle, without which it is no Ego at all, but only



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the Atmic Vehicle.

The Inner, or Higher "Ego" is Manas, the "Fifth" Principle, so-called,

independently of Buddhi. The Mind-Principle is only the Spiritual Ego when

merged into one with Buddhi-no materialist being supposed to have in him

such an Ego, however great his intellectual capacities. It is the permanent

Individuality or the "Reincarnating Ego."

The Lower, or Personal "Ego" is the physical man in conjunction with his

lower Self, i.e., animal instincts, passions, desires, etc. It is called the

"false personality," and consists of the lower Manas combined with Kamarupa,

and operating through the Physical body and its phantom or "double."

The remaining principle Prana, or Life, is, strictly speaking, the radiating

force or Energy of Atma-as the Universal Life and the One Self-Its lower or

rather (in its effects) more physical, because manifesting, aspect. Prana or

Life permeates the whole being of the objective Universe; and is called a

principle only because it is an indispensable factor and the deus ex machina

of the living man.


Q. This division being so much simplified in its combinations will answer

better, I believe. The other is much too metaphysical.

A. If outsiders as well as Theosophists would agree to it, it would

certainly make matters much more comprehensible.

On the Nature of Our Thinking Principle

The Mystery of the Ego


Q. I perceive in the quotation you brought forward a little while ago from

The Buddhist Catechism a discrepancy that I would like to hear explained. It

is there stated that the Skandhas-memory included-change with every new

incarnation. And yet, it is asserted that the reflection of the past lives,

which, we are told, are entirely made up of Skandhas, "must survive." At the

present moment I am not quite clear in my mind as to what it is precisely

that survives, and I would like to have it explained. What is it? Is it only

that "reflection," or those Skandhas, or always that same Ego, the Manas?

A. I have just explained that the reincarnating Principle, or that which we

call the divine man, is indestructible throughout the life cycle:

indestructible as a thinking Entity, and even as an ethereal form. The

"reflection" is only the spiritualized remembrance, during the Devachanic

period, of the ex-personality, Mr. A. or Mrs. B.-with which the Ego

identifies itself during that period. Since the latter is but the

continuation of the earth-life, so to say, the very acme and pitch, in an

unbroken series, of the few happy moments in that now past existence, the

Ego has to identify itself with the personal consciousness of that life, if

anything shall remain of it.


Q. This means that the Ego, notwithstanding its divine nature, passes every

such period between two incarnations in a state of mental obscuration, or

temporary insanity.

A. You may regard it as you like. Believing that, outside the One Reality,

nothing is better than a passing illusion-the whole Universe included-we do

not view it as insanity, but as a very natural sequence or development of

the terrestrial life. What is life? A bundle of the most varied experiences,

of daily changing ideas, emotions, and opinions. In our youth we are often

enthusiastically devoted to an ideal, to some hero or heroine whom we try to

follow and revive; a few years later, when the freshness of our youthful

feelings has faded out and sobered down, we are the first to laugh at our

fancies. And yet there was a day when we had so thoroughly identified our

own personality with that of the ideal in our mind-especially if it was that



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of a living being-that the former was entirely merged and lost in the

latter. Can it be said of a man of fifty that he is the same being that he

was at twenty? The inner man is the same; the outward living personality is

completely transformed and changed. Would you also call these changes in the

human mental states insanity?


Q. How would you name them, and especially how would you explain the

permanence of one and the evanescence of the other?

A. We have our own doctrine ready, and to us it offers no difficulty. The

clue lies in the double consciousness of our mind, and also, in the dual

nature of the mental principle. There is a spiritual consciousness, the

Manasic mind illumined by the light of Buddhi, that which subjectively

perceives abstractions; and the sentient consciousness (the lower Manasic

light), inseparable from our physical brain and senses. This latter

consciousness is held in subjection by the brain and physical senses, and,

being in its turn equally dependent on them, must of course fade out and

finally die with the disappearance of the brain and physical senses. It is

only the former kind of consciousness, whose root lies in eternity, which

survives and lives forever, and may, therefore, be regarded as immortal.

Everything else belongs to passing illusions.


Q. What do you really understand by illusion in this case?

A. It is very well described in the just-mentioned essay on "The Higher

Self." Says its author:

The theory we are considering (the interchange of ideas between the Higher

Ego and the lower self) harmonizes very well with the treatment of this

world in which we live as a phenomenal world of illusion, the spiritual

plane of nature being on the other hand the noumenal world or plane of

reality. That region of nature in which, so to speak, the permanent soul is

rooted is more real than that in which its transitory blossoms appear for a

brief space to wither and fall to pieces, while the plant recovers energy

for sending forth a fresh flower. Supposing flowers only were perceptible to

ordinary senses, and their roots existed in a state of Nature intangible and

invisible to us, philosophers in such a world who divined that there were

such things as roots in another plane of existence would be apt to say of

the flowers: "These are not the real plants; they are of no relative

importance, merely illusive phenomena of the moment."

This is what I mean. The world in which blossom the transitory and

evanescent flowers of personal lives is not the real permanent world; but

that one in which we find the root of consciousness, that root which is

beyond illusion and dwells in the eternity.


Q. What do you mean by the root dwelling in eternity?

A. I mean by this root the thinking entity, the Ego which incarnates,

whether we regard it as an "Angel," "Spirit," or a Force. Of that which

falls under our sensuous perceptions only what grows directly from, or is

attached to this invisible root above, can partake of its immortal life.

Hence every noble thought, idea, and aspiration of the personality it

informs, proceeding from and fed by this root, must become permanent. As to

the physical consciousness, as it is a quality of the sentient but lower

principle, (Kamarupa or animal instinct, illuminated by the lower manasic

reflection), or the human Soul-it must disappear. That which displays

activity, while the body is asleep or paralyzed, is the higher

consciousness, our memory registering but feebly and inaccurately-because

automatically-such experiences, and often failing to be even slightly

impressed by them.


Q. But how is it that Manas, although you call it Nous, a "God," is so weak

during its incarnations, as to be actually conquered and fettered by its



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body?

A. I might retort with the same question and ask:

How is it that he, whom you regard as "the God of Gods" and the One living

God, is so weak as to allow evil (or the Devil) to have the best of him as

much as of all his creatures, whether while he remains in Heaven, or during

the time he was incarnated on this earth?

You are sure to reply again: "This is a Mystery; and we are forbidden to pry

into the mysteries of God." Not being forbidden to do so by our religious

philosophy, I answer your question that, unless a God descends as an

Avatara, no divine principle can be otherwise than cramped and paralyzed by

turbulent, animal matter. Heterogeneity will always have the upper hand over

homogeneity, on this plane of illusions, and the nearer an essence is to its

root-principle, Primordial Homogeneity, the more difficult it is for the

latter to assert itself on earth. Spiritual and divine powers lie dormant in

every human Being; and the wider the sweep of his spiritual vision the

mightier will be the God within him. But as few men can feel that God, and

since, as an average rule, deity is always bound and limited in our thought

by earlier conceptions, those ideas that are inculcated in us from

childhood, therefore, it is so difficult for you to understand our

philosophy.


Q. And is it this Ego of ours which is our God?

A. Not at all; "A God" is not the universal deity, but only a spark from the

one ocean of Divine Fire. Our God within us, or "our Father in Secret" is

what we call the Higher Self, Atma. Our incarnating Ego was a God in its

origin, as were all the primeval emanations of the One Unknown Principle.

But since its "fall into Matter," having to incarnate throughout the cycle,

in succession, from first to last, it is no longer a free and happy god, but

a poor pilgrim on his way to regain that which he has lost. I can answer you

more fully by repeating what is said of the Inner Man:

From the remotest antiquity mankind as a whole have always been convinced of

the existence of a personal spiritual entity within the personal physical

man. This inner entity was more or less divine, according to its proximity

to the crown. The closer the union the more serene man's destiny, the less

dangerous the external conditions. This belief is neither bigotry nor

superstition, only an ever-present, instinctive feeling of the proximity of

another spiritual and invisible world, which, though it be subjective to the

senses of the outward man, is perfectly objective to the inner ego.

Furthermore, they believed that there are external and internal conditions

which affect the determination of our will upon our actions. They rejected

fatalism, for fatalism implies a blind course of some still blinder power.

But they believed in destiny or Karma, which from birth to death every man

is weaving thread by thread around himself, as a spider does his cobweb; and

this destiny is guided by that presence termed by some the guardian angel,

or our more intimate astral inner man, who is but too often the evil genius

of the man of flesh or the personality. Both these lead on Man, but one of

them must prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the

stern and implacable law of compensation and retribution steps in and takes

its course, following faithfully the fluctuating of the conflict. When the

last strand is woven, and man is seemingly enwrapped in the net-work of his

own doing, then he finds himself completely under the empire of this

self-made destiny. It then either fixes him like the inert shell against the

immovable rock, or like a feather carries him away in a whirlwind raised by

his own actions.

Such is the destiny of the Man-the true Ego, not the Automaton, the shell

that goes by that name. It is for him to become the conqueror over matter.

-oOo-

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The Complex Nature of Manas


Q. But you wanted to tell me something of the essential nature of Manas, and

of the relation in which the Skandhas of physical man stand to it?

A. It is this nature, mysterious, Protean, beyond any grasp, and almost

shadowy in its correlations with the other principles, that is most

difficult to realize, and still more so to explain. Manas is a principle,

and yet it is an "Entity" and individuality or Ego. He is a "God," and yet

he is doomed to an endless cycle of incarnations, for each of which he is

made responsible, and for each of which he has to suffer. All this seems as

contradictory as it is puzzling; nevertheless, there are hundreds of people,

even in Europe, who realize all this perfectly, for they comprehend the Ego

not only in its integrity but in its many aspects. Finally, if I would make

myself comprehensible, I must begin by the beginning and give you the

genealogy of this Ego in a few lines.


Q. Say on.

A. Try to imagine a "Spirit," a celestial Being, whether we call it by one

name or another, divine in its essential nature, yet not pure enough to be

one with the All, and having, in order to achieve this, to do purify its

nature as to finally gain that goal. It can do so only by passing

individually and personally, i.e., spiritually and physically, through every

experience and feeling that exists in the manifold or differentiated

Universe. It has, therefore, after having gained such experience in the

lower kingdoms, and having ascended higher and still higher with every rung

on the ladder of being, to pass through every experience on the human

planes. In its very essence it is thought, and is, therefore, called in its

plurality Manasaputra, "the Sons of the (Universal) mind." This

individualized "Thought" is what we Theosophists call the real human Ego,

the thinking Entity imprisoned in a case of flesh and bones. This is surely

a Spiritual Entity, not Matter, and such Entities are the incarnating Egos

that inform the bundle of animal matter called mankind, and whose names are

Manasa or "Minds." But once imprisoned, or incarnate, their essence becomes

dual: that is to say, the rays of the eternal divine Mind, considered as

individual entities, assume a two-fold attribute which is (a) their

essential inherent characteristic, heaven-aspiring mind (higher Manas), and

(b) the human quality of thinking, or animal cogitation, rationalized owing

to the superiority of the human brain, the Kama-tending or lower Manas. One

gravitates toward Buddhi, the other, tending downward, to the seat of

passions and animal desires. The latter have no room in Devachan, nor can

they associate with the divine triad which ascends as one into mental bliss.

Yet it is the Ego, the Manasic Entity, which is held responsible for all the

sins of the lower attributes, just as a parent is answerable for the

transgressions of his child, so long as the latter remains irresponsible.


Q. Is this "child" the "personality"?

A. It is. When, therefore, it is stated that the "personality" dies with the

body it does not state all. The body, which was only the objective symbol of

Mr. A. or Mrs. B., fades away with all its material Skandhas, which are the

visible expressions thereof. But all that which constituted during life the

spiritual bundle of experiences, the noblest aspirations, undying

affections, and unselfish nature of Mr. A. or Mrs. B. clings for the time of

the Devachanic period to the Ego, which is identified with the spiritual

portion of that terrestrial Entity, now passed away out of sight. The Actor

is so imbued with the role just played by him that he dreams of it during

the whole Devachanic night, which vision continues till the hour strikes for

him to return to the stage of life to enact another part.


Q. But how is it that this doctrine, which you say is as old as thinking

men, has found no room, say, in Christian theology?



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A. You are mistaken, it has; only theology has disfigured it out of all

recognition, as it has many other doctrines. Theology calls the Ego the

Angel that God gives us at the moment of our birth, to take care of our

Soul. Instead of holding that "Angel" responsible for the transgressions of

the poor helpless "Soul," it is the latter which, according to theological

logic, is punished for all the sins of both flesh and mind! It is the Soul,

the immaterial breath of God and his alleged creation, which, by some most

amazing intellectual jugglery, is doomed to burn in a material hell without

ever being consumed, while the "Angel" escapes scot-free, after folding his

white pinions and wetting them with a few tears. Aye, these are our

"ministering Spirits," the "messengers of mercy" who are sent, Bishop Mant

tells us:

… to fulfill

Good for Salvation's heirs, for us they still

Grieve when we sin, rejoice when we repent …

Yet it becomes evident that if all the Bishops the world over were asked to

define once for all what they mean by Soul and its functions, they would be

as unable to do so as to show us any shadow of logic in the orthodox belief!

-oOo-The

Doctrine is Taught in St. John's Gospel


Q. To this the adherents to this belief might answer, that if even the

orthodox dogma does promise the impenitent sinner and materialist a bad time

of it in a rather too realistic Inferno, it gives them, on the other hand, a

chance for repentance to the last minute. Nor do they teach annihilation, or

loss of personality, which is all the same.

A. If the Church teaches nothing of the kind, on the other hand, Jesus does;

and that is something to those, at least, who place Christ higher than

Christianity.


Q. Does Christ teach anything of the sort?

A. He does; and every well-informed Occultist and even Cabalist will tell

you so. Christ, or the fourth Gospel at any rate, teaches reincarnation as

also the annihilation of the personality, if you but forget the dead letter

and hold to the esoteric Spirit. Remember the parable spoken of by St. John.

What does the parable speak about if not of the upper triad in man? Atma is

the Husbandman-the Spiritual Ego or Buddhi (Christos) the Vine, while the

animal and vital Soul, the personality, is the "branch."

I am the true vine, and my Father is the Husbandman. Every branch in me that

beareth not fruit he taketh away … As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself

except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the

Vine-ye are the branches. If a man abide not in me he is cast forth as a

branch, and is withered and cast into the fire and burned.

Now we explain it in this way. Disbelieving in the hellfire which theology

discovers as underlying the threat to the branches, we say that the

"Husbandman" means Atma, the Symbol for the infinite, impersonal Principle,

while the Vine stands for the Spiritual Soul, Christos, and each "branch"

represents a new incarnation.


Q. But what proofs have you to support such an arbitrary interpretation?

1. Universal symbology is a warrant for its correctness and that it is not

arbitrary. Hermas says of "God" that he "planted the Vineyard," i.e.,



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he created mankind. In the Cabala, it is shown that the Aged of the

Aged, or the "Long Face," plants a vineyard, the latter typifying

mankind; and a vine, meaning Life. The Spirit of "King Messiah" is,

therefore, shown as washing his garments in the wine from above, from

the creation of the world. [Zohar XL, 10] And King Messiah is the Ego

purified by washing his garments (i.e., his personalities in rebirth),

in the wine from above, or Buddhi. Adam, or A-Dam, is "blood." The Life

of the flesh is in the blood (nephesh-soul). And Adam-Kadmon is the

Only-Begotten. Noah also plants a vineyard-the allegorical hotbed of

future humanity. As a consequence of the adoption of the same allegory,

we find it reproduced in the Nazarene Codex. Seven vines are

procreated-which seven vines are our Seven Races with their seven

Saviors or Buddhas-which spring from Iukabar Zivo, and Ferho (or

Parcha) Raba waters them.[Codex Nazareus, iii, pp. 60,61] When the

blessed will ascend among the creatures of Light, they shall see

Iavar-Xivo, Lord of Life, and the First Vine.[Cod. Naz., ii, p.281]

These Cabalistic metaphors are thus naturally repeated in the Gospel

according to St. John.

Let us not forget that in the human system-even according to those

philosophies which ignore our septenary division-the Ego or thinking man is

called the Logos, or the Son of Soul and Spirit. "Manas is the adopted Son

of King *** and Queen ***" (esoteric equivalents for Atma and Buddhi), says

an occult work. He is the "man-god" of Plato, who crucifies himself in Space

(or the duration of the life cycle) for the redemption of Matter. This he

does by incarnating over and over again, thus leading mankind onward to

perfection, and making thereby room for lower forms to develop into higher.

Not for one life does he cease progressing himself and helping all physical

nature to progress; even the occasional, very rare event of his losing one

of his personalities, in the case of the latter being entirely devoid of

even a spark of spirituality, helps toward his individual progress.


Q. But surely, if the Ego is held responsible for the transgressions of its

personalities, it has to answer also for the loss, or rather the complete

annihilation, of one of such.

A. Not at all, unless it has done nothing to avert this dire fate. But if,

all its efforts notwithstanding, its voice, that of our conscience, was

unable to penetrate through the wall of matter, then the obtuseness of the

latter proceeding from the imperfect nature of the material is classed with

other failures of nature. The Ego is sufficiently punished by the loss of

Devachan, and especially by having to incarnate almost immediately.


Q. This doctrine of the possibility of losing one's soul-or personality, do

you call it?-militates against the ideal theories of both Christians and

Spiritualists, though Swedenborg adopts it to a certain extent, in what he

calls Spiritual death. They will never accept it.

A. This can in no way alter a fact in nature, if it be a fact, or prevent

such a thing occasionally taking place. The universe and everything in it,

moral, mental, physical, psychic, or Spiritual, is built on a perfect law of

equilibrium and harmony. As said before (see Isis Unveiled), the centripetal

force could not manifest itself without the centrifugal in the harmonious

revolutions of the spheres, and all forms and their progress are the

products of this dual force in nature. Now the Spirit (or Buddhi) is the

centrifugal and the soul (Manas) the centripetal spiritual energy; and to

produce one result they have to be in perfect union and harmony. Break or

damage the centripetal motion of the earthly soul tending toward the center

which attracts it; arrest its progress by clogging it with a heavier weight

of matter than it can bear, or than is fit for the Devachanic state, and the

harmony of the whole will be destroyed. Personal life, or perhaps rather its

ideal reflection, can only be continued if sustained by the two-fold force,

that is by the close union of Buddhi and Manas in every rebirth or personal

life. The least deviation from harmony damages it; and when it is destroyed



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beyond redemption the two forces separate at the moment of death. During a

brief interval the personal form (called indifferently Kamarupa and

Mayavirupa), the spiritual efflorescence of which, attaching itself to the

Ego, follows it into Devachan and gives to the permanent individuality its

personal coloring (pro tem, so to speak), is carried off to remain in

Kamaloka and to be gradually annihilated. For it is after the death of the

utterly depraved, the unspiritual and the wicked beyond redemption, that

arrives the critical and supreme moment. If during life the ultimate and

desperate effort of the Inner Self (Manas), to unite something of the

personality with itself and the high glimmering ray of the divine Buddhi, is

thwarted; if this ray is allowed to be more and more shut out from the

ever-thickening crust of physical brain, the Spiritual Ego or Manas, once

freed from the body, remains severed entirely from the ethereal relic of the

personality; and the latter, or Kamarupa, following its earthly attractions,

is drawn into and remains in Hades, which we call the Kamaloka. These are

"the withered branches" mentioned by Jesus as being cut off from the Vine.

Annihilation, however, is never instantaneous, and may require centuries

sometimes for its accomplishment. But there the personality remains along

with the remnants of other more fortunate personal Egos, and becomes with

them a shell and an Elementary. As said in Isis Unveiled, it is these two

classes of "Spirits," the shells and the Elementaries, which are the leading

"Stars" on the great spiritual stage of "materializations." And you may be

sure of it, it is not they who incarnate; and, therefore, so few of these

"dear departed ones" know anything of reincarnation, misleading thereby the

Spiritualists.


Q. But does not the author of Isis Unveiled stand accused of having preached

against reincarnation?

A. By those who have misunderstood what was said, yes. At the time that work

was written, reincarnation was not believed in by any Spiritualists, either

English or American, and what is said there of reincarnation was directed

against the French Spiritists, whose theory is as unphilosophical and absurd

as the Eastern teaching is logical and self-evident in its truth. The

Reincarnationists of the Allan Kardec School believe in an arbitrary and

immediate reincarnation. With them, the dead father can incarnate in his own

unborn daughter, and so on. They have neither Devachan, Karma, nor any

philosophy that would warrant or prove the necessity of consecutive

rebirths. But how can the author of Isis Unveiled argue against Karmic

reincarnation, at long intervals varying between 1,000 and 1,500 years, when

it is the fundamental belief of both Buddhists and Hindus?


Q. Then you reject the theories of both the Spiritists and the

Spiritualists, in their entirety?

A. Not in their entirety, but only with regard to their respective

fundamental beliefs. Both rely on what their "Spirits" tell them; and both

disagree as much with each other as we Theosophists disagree with both.

Truth is one; and when we hear the French spooks preaching reincarnation,

and the English spooks denying and denouncing the doctrine, we say that

either the French or the English "Spirits" do not know what they are talking

about. We believe with the Spiritualists and the Spiritists in the existence

of "Spirits," or invisible Beings endowed with more or less intelligence.

But, while in our teachings their kinds and genera are legion, our opponents

admit of no other than human disembodied "Spirits," which, to our knowledge,

are mostly Kamalokic Shells.


Q. You seem very bitter against Spirits. As you have given me your views and

your reasons for disbelieving in the materialization of, and direct

communication in seances, with the disembodied spirits-or the "spirits of

the dead"-would you mind enlightening me as to one more fact? Why are some

Theosophists never tired of saying how dangerous is intercourse with

spirits, and mediumship? Have they any particular reason for this?



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A. We must suppose so. I know I have. Owing to my familiarity for over half

a century with these invisible, yet but too tangible and undeniable

"influences," from the conscious Elementals, semi-conscious shells, down to

the utterly senseless and nondescript spooks of all kinds, I claim a certain

right to my views.


Q. Can you give an instance or instances to show why these practices should

be regarded as dangerous?

A. This would require more time than I can give you. Every cause must be

judged by the effects it produces. Go over the history of Spiritualism for

the last fifty years, ever since its reappearance in this century in

America-and judge for yourself whether it has done its votaries more good or

harm. Pray understand me. I do not speak against real Spiritualism, but

against the modern movement which goes under that name, and the so-called

philosophy invented to explain its phenomena.


Q. Don't you believe in their phenomena at all?

A. It is because I believe in them with too good reason, and (save some

cases of deliberate fraud) know them to be as true as that you and I live,

that all my being revolts against them. Once more I speak only of physical,

not mental or even psychic phenomena. Like attracts like. There are several

high-minded, pure, good men and women, known to me personally, who have

passed years of their lives under the direct guidance and even protection of

high "Spirits," whether disembodied or planetary. But these Intelligences

are not of the type of the John Kings and the Ernests who figure in seance

rooms. These Intelligences guide and control mortals only in rare and

exceptional cases to which they are attracted and magnetically drawn by the

Karmic past of the individual. It is not enough to sit "for development" in

order to attract them. That only opens the door to a swarm of "spooks,"

good, bad, and indifferent, to which the medium becomes a slave for life. It

is against such promiscuous mediumship and intercourse with goblins that I

raise my voice, not against spiritual mysticism. The latter is ennobling and

holy; the former is of just the same nature as the phenomena of two

centuries ago, for which so many witches and wizards have been made to

suffer. Read Glanvil and other authors on the subject of witchcraft, and you

will find recorded there the parallels of most, if not all, of the physical

phenomena of nineteenth century "Spiritualism."


Q. Do you mean to suggest that it is all witchcraft and nothing more?

A. What I mean is that, whether conscious or unconscious, all this dealing

with the dead is necromancy, and a most dangerous practice. For ages before

Moses such raising of the dead was regarded by all the intelligent nations

as sinful and cruel, inasmuch as it disturbs the rest of the souls and

interferes with their evolutionary development into higher states. The

collective wisdom of all past centuries has ever been loud in denouncing

such practices. Finally, I say, what I have never ceased repeating orally

and in print for fifteen years: While some of the so-called "spirits" do not

know what they are talking about, repeating merely-like poll-parrots-what

they find in the mediums' and other people's brains, others are most

dangerous, and can only lead one to evil. These are two self-evident facts.

Go into Spiritualistic circles of the Allan Kardec school, and you find

"spirits" asserting reincarnation and speaking like Roman Catholics born.

Turn to the "dear departed ones" in England and America, and you will hear

them denying reincarnation through thick and thin, denouncing those who

teach it, and holding to Protestant views. Your best, your most powerful

mediums, have all suffered in health of body and mind. Think of the sad end

of Charles Foster, who died in an asylum, a raving lunatic; of Slade, an

epileptic; of Eglinton-the best medium now in England-subject to the same.

Look back over the life of D.D. Home, a man whose mind was steeped in gall

and bitterness, who never had a good word to say of anyone whom he suspected

of possessing psychic powers, and who slandered every other medium to the



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bitter end. This Calvin of Spiritualism suffered for years from a terrible

spinal disease, brought on by his intercourse with the "spirits," and died a

perfect wreck. Think again of the sad fate of poor Washington Irving Bishop.

I knew him in New York, when he was fourteen, and he was undeniably a

medium. It is true that the poor man stole a march on his "spirits," and

baptized them "unconscious muscular action," to the great gaudium of all the

corporations of highly learned and scientific fools, and to the

replenishment of his own pocket. But de mortuis nil nisi bonum; his end was

a sad one. He had strenuously concealed his epileptic fits-the first and

strongest symptom of genuine mediumship-and who knows whether he was dead or

in a trance when the postmortem examination was performed? His relatives

insist that he was alive, if we are to believe Reuter's telegrams. Finally,

behold the veteran mediums, the founders and prime movers of modern

spiritualism-the Fox sisters. After more than forty years of intercourse

with the "Angels," the latter have led them to become incurable sots, who

are now denouncing, in public lectures, their own life-long work and

philosophy as a fraud. What kind of spirits must they be who prompted them,

I ask you?


Q. But is your inference a correct one?

A. What would you infer if the best pupils of a particular school of singing

broke down from overstrained sore throats? That the method followed was a

bad one. So I think the inference is equally fair with regard to

Spiritualism when we see their best mediums fall a prey to such a fate. We

can only say: Let those who are interested in the question judge the tree of

Spiritualism by its fruits, and ponder over the lesson. We Theosophists have

always regarded the Spiritualists as brothers having the same mystic

tendency as ourselves, but they have always regarded us as enemies. We,

being in possession of an older philosophy, have tried to help and warn

them; but they have repaid us by reviling and traducing us and our motives

in every possible way. Nevertheless, the best English Spiritualists say just

as we do, wherever they treat of their belief seriously. Hear "M.A. Oxon"

confessing this truth:

Spiritualists are too much inclined to dwell exclusively on the intervention

of external spirits in this world of ours, and to ignore the powers of the

incarnate Spirit.

Why vilify and abuse us, then, for saying precisely the same? Henceforward,

we will have nothing more to do with Spiritualism. And now let us return to

Reincarnation.

On the Mysteries of Reincarnation

Periodical Rebirths


Q. You mean, then, that we have all lived on earth before, in many past

incarnations, and shall go on so living?

A. I do. The life cycle, or rather the cycle of conscious life, begins with

the separation of the mortal animal-man into sexes, and will end with the

close of the last generation of men, in the seventh round and seventh race

of mankind. Considering we are only in the fourth round and fifth race, its

duration is more easily imagined than expressed.


Q. And we keep on incarnating in new personalities all the time?

A. Most assuredly so; because this life cycle or period of incarnation may

be best compared to human life. As each such life is composed of days of

activity separated by nights of sleep or of inaction, so, in the incarnation

cycle, an active life is followed by a Devachanic rest.


Q. And it is this succession of births that is generally defined as



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reincarnation?

A. Just so. It is only through these births that the perpetual progress of

the countless millions of Egos toward final perfection and final rest (as

long as was the period of activity) can be achieved.


Q. And what is it that regulates the duration, or special qualities of these

incarnations?

A. Karma, the universal law of retributive justice.


Q. Is it an intelligent law?

A. For the Materialist, who calls the law of periodicity which regulates the

marshaling of the several bodies, and all the other laws in nature, blind

forces and mechanical laws, no doubt Karma would be a law of chance and no

more. For us, no adjective or qualification could describe that which is

impersonal and no entity, but a universal operative law. If you question me

about the causative intelligence in it, I must answer you I do not know. But

if you ask me to define its effects and tell you what these are in our

belief, I may say that the experience of thousands of ages has shown us that

they are absolute and unerring equity, wisdom, and intelligence. For Karma

in its effects is an unfailing redresser of human injustice, and of all the

failures of nature; a stern adjuster of wrongs; a retributive law which

rewards and punishes with equal impartiality. It is, in the strictest sense,

"no respecter of persons," though, on the other hand, it can neither be

propitiated, nor turned aside by prayer. This is a belief common to Hindus

and Buddhists, who both believe in Karma.


Q. In this Christian dogmas contradict both, and I doubt whether any

Christian will accept the teaching.

A. No; and Inman gave the reason for it many years ago. As he puts it, while

… the Christians will accept any nonsense, if promulgated by the Church as a

matter of faith … the Buddhists hold that nothing which is contradicted by

sound reason can be a true doctrine of Buddha.

They do not believe in any pardon for their sins, except after an adequate

and just punishment for each evil deed or thought in a future incarnation,

and a proportionate compensation to the parties injured.


Q. Where is it so stated?

A. In most of their sacred works. Consider the following Theosophical tenet:

Buddhists believe that every act, word, or thought has its consequence,

which will appear sooner or later in the present or in the future state.

Evil acts will produce evil consequences, good acts will produce good

consequences: prosperity in this world, or birth in heaven (Devachan) … in

the future state.


Q. Christians believe the same thing, don't they?

A. Oh, no; they believe in the pardon and the remission of all sins. They

are promised that if they only believe in the blood of Christ (an innocent

victim!), in the blood offered by Him for the expiation of the sins of the

whole of mankind, it will atone for every mortal sin. And we believe neither

in vicarious atonement, nor in the possibility of the remission of the

smallest sin by any god, not even by a "personal Absolute" or "Infinite," if

such a thing could have any existence. What we believe in, is strict and

impartial justice. Our idea of the unknown Universal Deity, represented by

Karma, is that it is a Power which cannot fail, and can, therefore, have

neither wrath nor mercy, only absolute Equity, which leaves every cause,



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great or small, to work out its inevitable effects. The saying of Jesus:

"With what measure you mete it shall be measured to you again," neither by

expression nor implication points to any hope of future mercy or salvation

by proxy. This is why, recognizing as we do in our philosophy the justice of

this statement, we cannot recommend too strongly mercy, charity, and

forgiveness of mutual offenses. Resist not evil, and render good for evil,

are Buddhist precepts, and were first preached in view of the implacability

of Karmic law. For man to take the law into his own hands is anyhow a

sacrilegious presumption. Human Law may use restrictive not punitive

measures; but a man who, believing in Karma, still revenges himself and

refuses to forgive every injury, thereby rendering good for evil, is a

criminal and only hurts himself. As Karma is sure to punish the man who

wronged him, by seeking to inflict an additional punishment on his enemy,

he, who instead of leaving that punishment to the great Law adds to it his

own mite, only begets thereby a cause for the future reward of his own enemy

and a future punishment for himself. The unfailing Regulator affects in each

incarnation the quality of its successor; and the sum of the merit or

demerit in preceding ones determines it.


Q. Are we then to infer a man's past from his present?

A. Only so far as to believe that his present life is what it justly should

be, to atone for the sins of the past life. Of course-seers and great adepts

excepted-we cannot as average mortals know what those sins were. From our

paucity of data, it is impossible for us even to determine what an old man's

youth must have been; neither can we, for like reasons, draw final

conclusions merely from what we see in the life of some man, as to what his

past life may have been.

-oOo-What

is Karma?


Q. But what is Karma?

A. As I have said, we consider it as the Ultimate Law of the Universe, the

source, origin, and fount of all other laws which exist throughout Nature.

Karma is the unerring law which adjusts effect to cause, on the physical,

mental, and spiritual planes of being. As no cause remains without its due

effect from greatest to least, from a cosmic disturbance down to the

movement of your hand, and as like produces like, Karma is that unseen and

unknown law which adjusts wisely, intelligently, and equitably each effect

to its cause, tracing the latter back to its producer. Though itself

unknowable, its action is perceivable.


Q. Then it is the "Absolute," the "Unknowable" again, and is not of much

value as an explanation of the problems of life?

A. On the contrary. For, though we do not know what Karma is per se, and in

its essence, we do know how it works, and we can define and describe its

mode of action with accuracy. We only do not know its ultimate Cause, just

as modern philosophy universally admits that the ultimate Cause of anything

is "unknowable."


Q. And what has Theosophy to say in regard to the solution of the more

practical needs of humanity? What is the explanation which it offers in

reference to the awful suffering and dire necessity prevalent among the

so-called "lower classes."

A. To be pointed, according to our teaching all these great social evils,

the distinction of classes in Society, and of the sexes in the affairs of

life, the unequal distribution of capital and of labor-all are due to what

we tersely but truly denominate Karma.



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Q. But, surely, all these evils which seem to fall upon the masses somewhat

indiscriminately are not actual merited and individual Karma?

A. No, they cannot be so strictly defined in their effects as to show that

each individual environment, and the particular conditions of life in which

each person finds himself, are nothing more than the retributive Karma which

the individual generated in a previous life. We must not lose sight of the

fact that every atom is subject to the general law governing the whole body

to which it belongs, and here we come upon the wider track of the Karmic

law. Do you not perceive that the aggregate of individual Karma becomes that

of the nation to which those individuals belong, and further, that the

sumtotal of National Karma is that of the World? The evils that you speak of

are not peculiar to the individual or even to the Nation, they are more or

less universal; and it is upon this broad line of Human interdependence that

the law of Karma finds its legitimate and equable issue.


Q. Do I, then, understand that the law of Karma is not necessarily an

individual law?

A. That is just what I mean. It is impossible that Karma could readjust the

balance of power in the world's life and progress, unless it had a broad and

general line of action. It is held as a truth among Theosophists that the

interdependence of Humanity is the cause of what is called Distributive

Karma, and it is this law which affords the solution to the great question

of collective suffering and its relief. It is an occult law, moreover, that

no man can rise superior to his individual failings, without lifting, be it

ever so little, the whole body of which he is an integral part. In the same

way, no one can sin, nor suffer the effects of sin, alone. In reality, there

is no such thing as "Separateness"; and the nearest approach to that selfish

state, which the laws of life permit, is in the intent or motive.


Q. And are there no means by which the distributive or national Karma might

be concentrated or collected, so to speak, and brought to its natural and

legitimate fulfillment without all this protracted suffering?

A. As a general rule, and within certain limits which define the age to

which we belong, the law of Karma cannot be hastened or retarded in its

fulfillment. But of this I am certain, the point of possibility in either of

these directions has never yet been touched. Listen to the following recital

of one phase of national suffering, and then ask yourself whether, admitting

the working power of individual, relative, and distributive Karma, these

evils are not capable of extensive modification and general relief. What I

am about to read to you is from the pen of a National Savior, one who,

having overcome Self, and being free to choose, has elected to serve

Humanity, in bearing at least as much as a woman's shoulders can possibly

bear of National Karma. This is what she says:

Yes, Nature always does speak, don't you think? only sometimes we make so

much noise that we drown her voice. That is why it is so restful to go out

of the town and nestle awhile in the Mother's arms. I am thinking of the

evening on Hampstead Heath when we watched the sun go down; but oh! upon

what suffering and misery that sun had set! A lady brought me yesterday a

big hamper of wild flowers. I thought some of my East-end family had a

better right to it than I, and so I took it down to a very poor school in

Whitechapel this morning. You should have seen the pallid little faces

brighten! Thence I went to pay for some dinners at a little cookshop for

some children. It was in a back street, narrow, full of jostling people;

stench indescribable, from fish, meat, and other food, all reeking in a sun

that, in Whitechapel, festers instead of purifying. The cookshop was the

quintessence of all the smells. Indescribable meat-pies at 1d., loathsome

lumps of 'food' and swarms of flies, a very altar of Beelzebub! All about,

babies on the prowl for scraps, one, with the face of an angel, gathering up

cherrystones as a light and nutritious form of diet. I came westward with

every nerve shuddering and jarred, wondering whether anything can be done



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with some parts of London save swallowing them up in an earthquake and

starting their inhabitants afresh, after a plunge into some purifying Lethe,

out of which not a memory might emerge! And then I thought of Hampstead

Heath, and-pondered. If by any sacrifice one could win the power to save

these people, the cost would not be worth counting; but, you see, they must

be changed-and how can that be wrought? In the condition they now are, they

would not profit by any environment in which they might be placed; and yet,

in their present surroundings they must continue to putrefy. It breaks my

heart, this endless, hopeless misery, and the brutish degradation that is at

once its outgrowth and its root. It is like the banyan tree; every branch

roots itself and sends out new shoots. What a difference between these

feelings and the peaceful scene at Hampstead! and yet we, who are the

brothers and sisters of these poor creatures, have only a right to use

Hampstead Heaths to gain strength to save Whitechapels.


Q. That is a sad but beautiful letter, and I think it presents with painful

conspicuity the terrible workings of what you have called "Relative and

Distributive Karma." But alas! there seems no immediate hope of any relief

short of an earthquake, or some such general engulfment!

A. What right have we to think so while one-half of humanity is in a

position to effect an immediate relief of the privations which are suffered

by their fellows? When every individual has contributed to the general good

what he can of money, of labor, and of ennobling thought, then, and only

then, will the balance of National Karma be struck, and until then we have

no right nor any reasons for saying that there is more life on the earth

than Nature can support. It is reserved for the heroic souls, the Saviors of

our Race and Nation, to find out the cause of this unequal pressure of

retributive Karma, and by a supreme effort to readjust the balance of power,

and save the people from a moral engulfment a thousand times more disastrous

and more permanently evil than the like physical catastrophe, in which you

seem to see the only possible outlet for this accumulated misery.


Q. Well, then, tell me generally how you describe this law of Karma?

A. We describe Karma as that Law of readjustment which ever tends to restore

disturbed equilibrium in the physical, and broken harmony in the moral

world. We say that Karma does not act in this or that particular way always;

but that it always does act so as to restore Harmony and preserve the

balance of equilibrium, in virtue of which the Universe exists.


Q. Give me an illustration.

A. Later on I will give you a full illustration. Think now of a pond. A

stone falls into the water and creates disturbing waves. These waves

oscillate backwards and forwards till at last, owing to the operation of

what physicists call the law of the dissipation of energy, they are brought

to rest, and the water returns to its condition of calm tranquility.

Similarly all action, on every plane, produces disturbance in the balanced

harmony of the Universe, and the vibrations so produced will continue to

roll backwards and forwards, if its area is limited, till equilibrium is

restored. But since each such disturbance starts from some particular point,

it is clear that equilibrium and harmony can only be restored by the

reconverging to that same point of all the forces which were set in motion

from it. And here you have proof that the consequences of a man's deeds,

thoughts, etc. must all react upon himself with the same force with which

they were set in motion.


Q. But I see nothing of a moral character about this law. It looks to me

like the simple physical law that action and reaction are equal and

opposite.

A. I am not surprised to hear you say that. Europeans have got so much into

the ingrained habit of considering right and wrong, good and evil, as



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matters of an arbitrary code of law laid down either by men, or imposed upon

them by a Personal God. We Theosophists, however, say that "Good" and

"Harmony," and "Evil" and "Dis-harmony," are synonymous. Further we maintain

that all pain and suffering are results of want of Harmony, and that the one

terrible and only cause of the disturbance of Harmony is selfishness in some

form or another. Hence Karma gives back to every man the actual consequences

of his own actions, without any regard to their moral character; but since

he receives his due for all, it is obvious that he will be made to atone for

all sufferings which he has caused, just as he will reap in joy and gladness

the fruits of all the happiness and harmony he had helped to produce. I can

do no better than quote for your benefit certain passages from books and

articles written by our Theosophists-those who have a correct idea of Karma.


Q. I wish you would, as your literature seers to be very sparing on this

subject?

A. Because it is the most difficult of all our tenets. Some short time ago

there appeared the following objection from a Christian pen:

Granting that the teaching in regard to Theosophy is correct, and that "man

must be his own savior, must overcome self and conquer the evil that is in

his dual nature, to obtain the emancipation of his soul," what is man to do

after he has been awakened and converted to a certain extent from evil or

wickedness? How is he to get emancipation, or pardon, or the blotting out of

the evil or wickedness he has already done?

To this Mr. J.H. Conelly replies very pertinently that no one can hope to

"make the theosophical engine run on the theological track." As he has it:

The possibility of shirking individual responsibility is not among the

concepts of Theosophy. In this faith there is no such thing as pardoning, or

"blotting out of evil or wickedness already done," otherwise than by the

adequate punishment therefore of the wrong-doer and the restoration of the

harmony in the universe that had been disturbed by his wrongful act. The

evil has been his own, and while others must suffer its consequences,

atonement can be made by nobody but himself.

The condition contemplated … in which a man shall have been "awakened and

converted to a certain extent from evil or wickedness," is that in which a

man shall have realized that his deeds are evil and deserving of punishment.

In that realization a sense of personal responsibility is inevitable, and

just in proportion to the extent of his awakening or "converting" must be

the sense of that awful responsibility. While it is strong upon him is the

time when he is urged to accept the doctrine of vicarious atonement.

He is told that he must also repent, but nothing is easier than that. It is

an amiable weakness of human nature that we are quite prone to regret the

evil we have done when our attention is called, and we have either suffered

from it ourselves or enjoyed its fruits. Possibly, close analysis of the

feeling would show us that thing which we regret is rather the necessity

that seemed to require the evil as a means of attainment of our selfish ends

than the evil itself.

Attractive as this prospect of casting our burden of sins "at the foot of

the cross" may be to the ordinary mind, it does not commend itself to the

Theosophic student. He does not apprehend why the sinner by attaining

knowledge of his evil can thereby merit any pardon for or the blotting out

of his past wickedness; or why repentance and future right living entitle

him to a suspension in his favor of the universal law of relation between

cause and effect. The results of his evil deeds continue to exist; the

suffering caused to others by his wickedness is not blotted out. The

Theosophical student takes the result of wickedness upon the innocent into

his problem. He considers not only the guilty person, but his victims.



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Evil is an infraction of the laws of harmony governing the universe, and the

penalty thereof must fall upon the violator of that law himself. Christ

uttered the warning, "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee," and

St. Paul said, "Work out your own salvation. Whatsoever a man soweth, that

shall he also reap." That, by the way, is a fine metaphoric rendering of the

sentence of the Pur as far antedating him-that "every man reaps the

consequences of his own acts."

This is the principle of the law of Karma which is taught by Theosophy.

Sinnett, in his Esoteric Buddhism, rendered Karma as "the law of ethical

causation." "The law of retribution," as Mme. Blavatsky translates its

meaning, is better. It is the power which

Just though mysterious, leads us on unerring

Through ways unmarked from guilt to punishment.

But it is more. It rewards merit as unerringly and amply as it punishes

demerit. It is the outcome of every act, of thought, word, and deed, and by

it men mold themselves, their lives and happenings. Eastern philosophy

rejects the idea of a newly created soul for every baby born. It believes in

a limited number of monads, evolving and growing more and more perfect

through their assimilation of many successive personalities. Those

personalities are the product of Karma and it is by Karma and reincarnation

that the human monad in time returns to its source-absolute deity.

E.D. Walker, in his Reincarnation, offers the following explanation:

Briefly, the doctrine of Karma is that we have made ourselves what we are by

former actions, and are building our future eternity by present actions.

There is no destiny but what we ourselves determine. There is no salvation

or condemnation except what we ourselves bring about … Because it offers no

shelter for culpable actions and necessitates a sterling manliness, it is

less welcome to weak natures than the easy religious tenets of vicarious

atonement, intercession, forgiveness, and deathbed conversions … In the

domain of eternal justice the offense and the punishment are inseparably

connected as the same event, because there is no real distinction between

the action and its outcome … It is Karma, or our old acts, that draws us

back into earthly life. The spirit's abode changes according to its Karma,

and this Karma forbids any long continuance in one condition, because it is

always changing. So long as action is governed by material and selfish

motives, just so long must the effect of that action be manifested in

physical rebirths. Only the perfectly selfless man can elude the gravitation

of material life. Few have attained this, but it is the goal of mankind.

And then the writer quotes from The Secret Doctrine:

Those who believe in Karma have to believe in destiny, which, from birth to

death, every man is weaving, thread by thread, around himself, as a spider

does his cobweb, and this destiny is guided either by the heavenly voice of

the invisible prototype outside of us, or by our more intimate astral or

inner man, who is but too often the evil genius of the embodied entity

called man. Both these lead on the outward man, but one of them must

prevail; and from the very beginning of the invisible affray the stern and

implacable law of compensation steps in and takes its course, faithfully

following the fluctuations. When the last strand is woven, and man is

seemingly enwrapped in the network of his own doing, then he finds himself

completely under the empire of this self-made destiny … An Occultist or a

philosopher will not speak of the goodness or cruelty of Providence; but,

identifying it with Karma-Nemesis, he will teach that, nevertheless, it

guards the good and watches over them in this as in future lives; and that

it punishes the evil-doer-aye, even to his seventh rebirth-so long, in

short, as the effect of his having thrown into perturbation even the

smallest atom in the infinite world of harmony has not been finally



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readjusted. For the only decree of Karma-an eternal and immutable decree-is

absolute harmony in the world of matter as it is in the world of spirit. It

is not, therefore, Karma that rewards or punishes, but it is we who reward

or punish ourselves according to whether we work with, through and along

with nature, abiding by the laws on which that harmony depends, or-break

them. Nor would the ways of Karma be inscrutable were men to work in union

and harmony, instead of disunion and strife. For our ignorance of those

ways-which one portion of mankind calls the ways of Providence, dark and

intricate; while another sees in them the action of blind fatalism; and a

third simple chance, with neither gods nor devils to guide them-would surely

disappear if we would but attribute all these to their correct cause … We

stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making and the riddles of

life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring

us. But verily there is not an accident of our lives, not a misshapen day,

or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or

in another life … The law of Karma is inextricably interwoven with that of

reincarnation … It is only this doctrine that can explain to us the

mysterious problem of good and evil, and reconcile man to the terrible and

apparent injustice of life. Nothing but such certainty can quiet our

revolted sense of justice. For, when one unacquainted with the noble

doctrine looks around him and observes the inequalities of birth and

fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one sees honor paid to fools and

wastrels, on whom fortune has heaped her favors by mere privilege of birth,

and their nearest neighbor, with all his intellect and noble virtues-far

more deserving in every way-perishing for want and for lack of sympathy-when

one sees all this and has to turn away, helpless to relieve the undeserved

suffering, one's ears ringing and heart aching with the cries of pain around

him-that blessed knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and

men as well as their supposed Creator … This law, whether conscious or

unconscious, predestines nothing and no one. It exists from and in eternity

truly, for it is eternity itself; and as such, since no act can be coequal

with eternity, it cannot be said to act, for it is action itself. It is not

the wave which drowns the man, but the personal action of the wretch who

goes deliberately and places himself under the impersonal action of the laws

that govern the ocean's motion. Karma creates nothing, nor does it design.

It is man who plants and creates causes, and Karmic law adjusts the effects,

which adjustment is not an act but universal harmony, tending ever to resume

its original position, like a bough, which, bent down too forcibly, rebounds

with corresponding vigor. If it happen to dislocate the arm that tried to

bend it out of its natural position, shall we say it is the bough which

broke our arm or that our own folly has brought us to grief? Karma has never

sought to destroy intellectual and individual liberty, like the god invented

by the Monotheists. It has not involved its decrees in darkness purposely to

perplex man, nor shall it punish him who dares to scrutinize its mysteries.

On the contrary, he who unveils through study and meditation its intricate

paths, and throws light on those dark ways, in the windings of which so many

men perish owing to their ignorance of the labyrinth of life, is working for

the good of his fellowmen. Karma is an absolute and eternal law in the world

of manifestation; and as there can only be one Absolute, as one Eternal,

ever-present Cause, believers in Karma cannot be regarded as atheists or

materialists, still less as fatalists, for Karma is one with the Unknowable,

of which it is an aspect, in its effects in the phenomenal world.

Another able Theosophic writer says:

Every individual is making Karma either good or bad in each action and

thought of his daily round, and is at the same time working out in this life

the Karma brought about by the acts and desires of the last. When we see

people afflicted by congenital ailments it may be safely assumed that these

ailments are the inevitable results of causes started by themselves in a

previous birth. It may be argued that, as these afflictions are hereditary,

they can have nothing to do with a past incarnation; but it must be

remembered that the Ego, the real man, the individuality, has no spiritual

origin in the parentage by which it is reembodied, but it is drawn by the



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affinities which its previous mode of life attracted round it into the

current that carries it, when the time comes for rebirth, to the home best

fitted for the development of those tendencies … This doctrine of Karma,

when properly understood, is well calculated to guide and assist those who

realize its truth to a higher and better mode of life, for it must not be

forgotten that not only our actions but our thoughts also are most assuredly

followed by a crowd of circumstances that will influence for good or for

evil our own future, and, what is still more important, the future of many

of our fellow-creatures. If sins of omission and commission could in any

case be only self-regarding, the fact on the sinner's Karma would be a

matter of minor consequence. The effect that every thought and act through

life carries with it for good or evil a corresponding influence on other

members of the human family renders a strict sense of justice, morality, and

unselfishness so necessary to future happiness or progress. A crime once

committed, an evil thought sent out from the mind, are past recall-no amount

of repentance can wipe out their results in the future. Repentance, if

sincere, will deter a man from repeating errors; it cannot save him or

others from the effects of those already produced, which will most

unerringly overtake him either in this life or in the next rebirth.

Mr. J.H. Conelly proceeds-The

believers in a religion based upon such doctrine are willing it should

be compared with one in which man's destiny for eternity is determined by

the accidents of a single, brief earthly existence, during which he is

cheered by the promise that "as the tree falls so shall it lie"; in which

his brightest hope, when he wakes up to a knowledge of his wickedness, is

the doctrine of vicarious atonement, and in which even that is handicapped,

according to the Presbyterian Confession of Faith.

By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and

angels are predestinated unto everlasting life and others foreordained to

everlasting death.

These angels and men thus predestinated and foreordained are particularly

and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that

it cannot be either increased or diminished … As God hath appointed the

elect unto glory … Neither are any other redeemed by Christ effectually

called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only.

The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel

of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth,

for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to

ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin to the praise of his

glorious justice.

This is what the able defender says. Nor can we do any better than wind up

the subject as he does, by a quotation from a magnificent poem. As he says:

The exquisite beauty of Edwin Arnold's exposition of Karma in The Light of

Asia tempts to its reproduction here, but it is too long for quotation in

full. Here is a portion of it:

Karma-all that total of a soul

Which is the things it did, the thoughts it had,

The "self" it wove with woof of viewless time

Crossed on the warp invisible of acts.

* * * * *

Before beginning and without an end,



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As space eternal and as surety sure,

Is fixed a Power divine which moves to good,

Only its laws endure.

It will not be despised of anyone;

Who thwarts it loses, and who serves it gains;

The hidden good it pays with peace and bliss,

The hidden ill with pains.

It seeth everywhere and marketh all;

Do right-it recompenseth! Do one wrong-

The equal retribution must be made,

Though Dharma tarry long.

It knows not wrath nor pardon; utter-true,

Its measures mete, its faultless balance weighs;

Times are as naught, tomorrow it will judge

Or after many days.

* * * * *

Such is the law which moves to righteousness,

Which none at last can turn aside or stay;

The heart of it is love, the end of it

Is peace and consummation sweet. Obey.

And now I advise you to compare our Theosophic views upon Karma, the law of

Retribution, and say whether they are not both more philosophical and just

than this cruel and idiotic dogma which makes of "God" a senseless fiend;

the tenet, namely, that the "elect only" will be saved, and the rest doomed

to eternal perdition!


Q. Yes, I see what you mean generally; but I wish you could give some

concrete example of the action of Karma?

A. That I cannot do. We can only feel sure, as I said before, that our

present lives and circumstances are the direct results of our own deeds and

thoughts in lives that are past. But we, who are not Seers or Initiates,

cannot know anything about the details of the working of the law of Karma.


Q. Can anyone, even an Adept or Seer, follow out this Karmic process of

readjustment in detail?

A. Certainly: "Those who know" can do so by the exercise of powers which are

latent even in all men.

-oOo-Who

Are Those Who Know?



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Q. Does this hold equally of ourselves as of others?

A. Equally. Aa just said, the same limited vision exists for all, save those

who have reached in the present incarnation the acme of spiritual vision and

clairvoyance. We can only perceive that, if things with us ought to have

been different, they would have been different; that we are what we have

made ourselves, and have only what we have earned for ourselves.


Q. I am afraid such a conception would only embitter us.

A. I believe it is precisely the reverse. It is disbelief in the just law of

retribution that is more likely to awaken every combative feeling in man. A

child, as much as a man, resents a punishment, or even a reproof he believes

to be unmerited, far more than he does a more severe punishment, if he feels

that it is merited. Belief in Karma is the highest reason for reconcilement

to one's lot in this life, and the very strongest incentive towards effort

to better the succeeding rebirth. Both of these, indeed, would be destroyed

if we supposed that our lot was the result of anything but strict Law, or

that destiny was in any other hands than our own.


Q. You have just asserted that this system of Reincarnation under Karmic law

commended itself to reason, justice, and the moral sense. But, if so, is it

not at some sacrifice of the gentler qualities of sympathy and pity, and

thus a hardening of the finer instincts of human nature?

A. Only apparently, not really. No man can receive more or less than his

deserts without a corresponding injustice or partiality to others; and a law

which could be averted through compassion would bring about more misery than

it saved, more irritation and curses than thanks. Remember also, that we do

not administer the law, if we do create causes for its effects; it

administers itself; and again, that the most copious provision for the

manifestation of just compassion and mercy is shown in the state of

Devachan.


Q. You speak of Adepts as being an exception to the rule of our general

ignorance. Do they really know more than we do of Reincarnation and after

states?

A. They do, indeed. By the training of faculties we all possess, but which

they alone have developed to perfection, they have entered in spirit these

various planes and states we have been discussing. For long ages, one

generation of Adepts after another has studied the mysteries of being, of

life, death, and rebirth, and all have taught in their turn some of the

facts so learned.


Q. And is the production of Adepts the aim of Theosophy?

A. Theosophy considers humanity as an emanation from divinity on its return

path thereto. At an advanced point upon the path, Adeptship is reached by

those who have devoted several incarnations to its achievement. For,

remember well, no man has ever reached Adeptship in the Secret Sciences in

one life; but many incarnations are necessary for it after the formation of

a conscious purpose and the beginning of the needful training. Many may be

the men and women in the very midst of our Society who have begun this

uphill work toward illumination several incarnations ago, and who yet, owing

to the personal illusions of the present life, are either ignorant of the

fact, or on the road to losing every chance in this existence of progressing

any farther. They feel an irresistible attraction toward occultism and the

Higher Life, and yet are too personal and self-opinionated, too much in love

with the deceptive allurements of mundane life and the world's ephemeral

pleasures, to give them up; and so lose their chance in their present birth.

But, for ordinary men, for the practical duties of daily life, such a

far-off result is inappropriate as an aim and quite ineffective as a motive.



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Q. What, then, may be their object or distinct purpose in joining the

Theosophical Society?

A. Many are interested in our doctrines and feel instinctively that they are

truer than those of any dogmatic religion. Others have formed a fixed

resolve to attain the highest ideal of man's duty.

-oOo-The

Difference Between Faith and Knowledge, Or Blind and Reasoned Faith


Q. You say that they accept and believe in the doctrines of Theosophy. But,

as they do not belong to those Adepts you have just mentioned, then they

must accept your teachings on blind faith. In what does this differ from

that of conventional religions?

A. As it differs on almost all the other points, so it differs on this one.

What you call "faith," and that which is blind faith, in reality, and with

regard to the dogmas of the Christian religions, becomes with us

"knowledge," the logical sequence of things we know, about facts in nature.

Your Doctrines are based upon interpretation, therefore, upon the secondhand

testimony of Seers; ours upon the invariable and unvarying testimony of

Seers. The ordinary Christian theology, for instance, holds that man is a

creature of God, of three component parts-body, soul, and spirit-all

essential to his integrity, and all, either in the gross form of physical

earthly existence or in the etherealized form of post-resurrection

experience, needed to so constitute him forever, each man having thus a

permanent existence separate from other men, and from the Divine. Theosophy,

on the other hand, holds that man, being an emanation from the Unknown, yet

ever present and infinite Divine Essence, his body and everything else is

impermanent, hence an illusion; Spirit alone in him being the one enduring

substance, and even that losing its separated individuality at the moment of

its complete reunion with the Universal Spirit.


Q. If we lose even our individuality, then it becomes simply annihilation.

A. I say it does not, since I speak of separate, not of universal

individuality. The latter becomes as a part transformed into the whole; the

dewdrop is not evaporated, but becomes the sea. Is physical man annihilated,

when from a fetus he becomes an old man? What kind of Satanic pride must be

ours if we place our infinitesimally small consciousness and individuality

higher than the universal and infinite consciousness!


Q. It follows, then, that there is, de facto, no man, but all is Spirit?

A. You are mistaken. It thus follows that the union of Spirit with matter is

but temporary; or, to put it more clearly, since Spirit and matter are one,

being the two opposite poles of the universal manifested substance-that

Spirit loses its right to the name so long as the smallest particle and atom

of its manifesting substance still clings to any form, the result of

differentiation. To believe otherwise is blind faith.


Q. Thus it is on knowledge, not on faith, that you assert that the permanent

principle, the Spirit, simply makes a transit through matter?

A. I would put it otherwise and say-we assert that the appearance of the

permanent and one principle, Spirit, as matter is transient, and, therefore,

no better than an illusion.


Q. Very well; and this, given out on knowledge not faith?

A. Just so. But as I see very well what you are driving at, I may just as

well tell you that we hold faith, such as you advocate, to be a mental



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disease, and real faith, i.e., the pistis of the Greeks, as "belief based on

knowledge," whether supplied by the evidence of physical or spiritual

senses.


Q. What do you mean?

A. I mean, if it is the difference between the two that you want to know,

then I can tell you that between faith on authority and faith on one's

spiritual intuition, there is a very great difference.


Q. What is it?

A. One is human credulity and superstition, the other human belief and

intuition. As Professor Alexander Wilder says in his "Introduction to the

Eleusinian Mysteries,"

It is ignorance which leads to profanation. Men ridicule what they do not

properly understand … The undercurrent of this world is set towards one

goal; and inside of human credulity … is a power almost infinite, a holy

faith capable of apprehending the most supreme truths of all existence.

Those who limit that "credulity" to human authoritative dogmas alone, will

never fathom that power nor even perceive it in their natures. It is stuck

fast to the external plane and is unable to bring forth into play the

essence that rules it; for to do this they have to claim their right of

private judgment, and this they never dare to do.


Q. And is it that "intuition" which forces you to reject God as a personal

Father, Ruler, and Governor of the Universe?

A. Precisely. We believe in an ever unknowable Principle, because blind

aberration alone can make one maintain that the Universe, thinking man, and

all the marvels contained even in the world of matter, could have grown

without some intelligent powers to bring about the extraordinarily wise

arrangement of all its parts. Nature may err, and often does, in its details

and the external manifestations of its materials, never in its inner causes

and results. Ancient pagans held on this question far more philosophical

views than modern philosophers, whether Agnostics, Materialists, or

Christians; and no pagan writer has ever yet advanced the proposition that

cruelty and mercy are not finite feelings, and can therefore be made the

attributes of an infinite god. Their gods, therefore, were all finite. The

Siamese author of the Wheel of the Law, expresses the same idea about your

personal god as we do; he says:

A Buddhist might believe in the existence of a god, sublime above all human

qualities and attributes-a perfect god, above love, and hatred, and

jealousy, calmly resting in a quietude that nothing could disturb, and of

such a god he would speak no disparagement not from a desire to please him

or fear to offend him, but from natural veneration; but he cannot understand

a god with the attributes and qualities of men, a god who loves and hates,

and shows anger; a Deity who, whether described as by Christian Missionaries

or by Mohammedans or Brahmins, or Jews, falls below his standard of even an

ordinary good man.


Q. Faith for faith, is not the faith of the Christian who believes, in his

human helplessness and humility, that there is a merciful Father in Heaven

who will protect him from temptation, help him in life, and forgive him his

transgressions, better than the cold and proud, almost fatalistic faith of

the Buddhists, Vedantins, and Theosophists?

A. Persist in calling our belief "faith" if you will. But once we are again

on this ever-recurring question, I ask in my turn: faith for faith, is not

the one based on strict logic and reason better than the one which is based

simply on human authority or-hero-worship? Our "faith" has all the logical



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force of the arithmetical truism that two and two will produce four. Your

faith is like the logic of some emotional women, of whom Tourgenyeff said

that for them two and two were generally five, and a tallow candle into the

bargain. Yours is a faith, moreover, which clashes not only with every

conceivable view of justice and logic, but which, if analyzed, leads man to

his moral perdition, checks the progress of mankind, and positively making

of might, right-transforms every second man into a Cain to his brother Abel.


Q. What do you allude to?

-oOo-Has

God the Right to Forgive?

A. To the Doctrine of Atonement; I allude to that dangerous dogma in which

you believe, and which teaches us that no matter how enormous our crimes

against the laws of God and of man, we have but to believe in the

self-sacrifice of Jesus for the salvation of mankind, and his blood will

wash out every stain. It is twenty years that I preach against it, and I may

now draw your attention to a paragraph from Isis Unveiled, written in 1875.

This is what Christianity teaches, and what we combat:

God's mercy is boundless and unfathomable. It is impossible to conceive of a

human sin so damnable that the price paid in advance for the redemption of

the sinner would not wipe it out if a thousandfold worse. And furthermore,

it is never too late to repent. Though the offender wait until the last

minute of the last hour of the last day of his mortal life, before his

blanched lips utter the confession of faith, he may go to Paradise; the

dying thief did it, and so may all others as vile. These are the assumptions

of the Church, and of the Clergy; assumptions banged at the heads of your

countrymen by England's favorite preachers, right in the "light of the

nineteenth century," …

-this most paradoxical age of all. Now to what does it lead?


Q. Does it not make the Christian happier than the Buddhist or Brahmin?

A. No; not the educated man, at any rate, since the majority of these have

long since virtually lost all belief in this cruel dogma. But it leads those

who still believe in it more easily to the threshold of every conceivable

crime, than any other I know of. Let me quote to you once more:

If we step outside the little circle of creed and consider the universe as a

whole balanced by the exquisite adjustment of parts, how all sound logic,

how the faintest glimmering sense of Justice, revolts against this Vicarious

Atonement! If the criminal sinned only against himself, and wronged no one

but himself; if by sincere repentance he could cause the obliteration of

past events, not only from the memory of man, but also from that

imperishable record, which no deity-not even the most Supreme of the

Supreme-can cause to disappear, then this dogma might not be

incomprehensible. But to maintain that one may wrong his fellowman, kill,

disturb the equilibrium of society and the natural order of things, and

then-through cowardice, hope, or compulsion, it matters not-be forgiven by

believing that the spilling of one blood washes out the other blood

spilt-this is preposterous! Can the results of a crime be obliterated even

though the crime itself should be pardoned? The effects of a cause are never

limited to the boundaries of the cause, nor can the results of crime be

confined to the offender and his victim. Every good as well as evil action

has its effects, as palpably as the stone flung into calm water. The simile

is trite, but it is the best ever conceived, so let us use it. The eddying

circles are greater and swifter as the disturbing object is greater or

smaller, but the smallest pebble, nay, the tiniest speck, makes its ripples.

And this disturbance is not alone visible and on the surface. Below, unseen,

in every direction-outward and downward-drop pushes drop until the sides and



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bottom are touched by the force. More, the air above the water is agitated,

and this disturbance passes, as the physicists tell us, from stratum to

stratum out into space forever and ever; an impulse has been given to

matter, and that is never lost, can never be recalled! …

So with crime, and so with its opposite. The action may be instantaneous,

the effects are eternal. When, after the stone is once flung into the pond,

we can recall it to the hand, roll back the ripples, obliterate the force

expended, restore the etheric waves to their previous state of non-being,

and wipe out every trace of the act of throwing the missile, so that Time's

record shall not show that it ever happened, then, then we may patiently

hear Christians argue for the efficacy of this Atonement,

-and cease to believe in Karmic Law. As it now stands, we call upon the

whole world to decide, which of our two doctrines is the most appreciative

of deific justice, and which is more reasonable, even on simple human

evidence and logic.


Q. Yet millions believe in the Christian dogma and are happy.

A. Pure sentimentalism overpowering their thinking faculties, which no true

philanthropist or Altruist will ever accept. It is not even a dream of

selfishness, but a nightmare of the human intellect. Look where it leads to,

and tell me the name of that pagan country where crimes are more easily

committed or more numerous than in Christian lands. Look at the long and

ghastly annual records of crimes committed in European countries; and behold

Protestant and Biblical America. There, conversions effected in prisons are

more numerous than those made by public revivals and preaching. See how the

ledger-balance of Christian justice (!) stands: Red-handed murderers, urged

on by the demons of lust, revenge, cupidity, fanaticism, or mere brutal

thirst for blood, who kill their victims, in most cases, without giving them

time to repent or call on Jesus. These, perhaps, died sinful, and, of

course-consistently with theological logic-met the reward of their greater

or lesser of fences. But the murderer, overtaken by human justice, is

imprisoned, wept over by sentimentalists, prayed with and at, pronounces the

charmed words of conversion, and goes to the scaffold a redeemed child of

Jesus! Except for the murder, he would not have been prayed with, redeemed,

pardoned. Clearly this man did well to murder, for thus he gained eternal

happiness! And how about the victim, and his, or her family, relatives,

dependents, social relations; has justice no recompense for them? Must they

suffer in this world and the next, while he who wronged them sits beside the

"holy thief" of Calvary, and is forever blessed? On this question the clergy

keep a prudent silence. (Isis Unveiled) And now you know why

Theosophists-whose fundamental belief and hope is justice for all, in Heaven

as on earth, and in Karma-reject this dogma.


Q. The ultimate destiny of man, then, is not a Heaven presided over by God,

but the gradual transformation of matter into its primordial element,

Spirit?

A. It is to that final goal to which all tends in nature.


Q. Do not some of you regard this association or "fall of spirit into

matter" as evil, and rebirth as a sorrow?

A. Some do, and therefore strive to shorten their period of probation on

earth. It is not an unmixed evil, however, since it ensures the experience

upon which we mount to knowledge and wisdom. I mean that experience which

teaches that the needs of our spiritual nature can never be met by other

than spiritual happiness. As long as we are in the body, we are subjected to

pain, suffering and all the disappointing incidents occurring during life.

Therefore, and to palliate this, we finally acquire knowledge which alone

can afford us relief and hope of a better future.



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What is Practical Theosophy?

Duty


Q. Why, then, the need for rebirths, since all alike fail to secure a

permanent peace?

A. Because the final goal cannot be reached in any way but through life

experiences, and because the bulk of these consist in pain and suffering. It

is only through the latter that we can learn. Joys and pleasures teach us

nothing; they are evanescent, and can only bring in the long run satiety.

Moreover, our constant failure to find any permanent satisfaction in life

which would meet the wants of our higher nature, shows us plainly that those

wants can be met only on their own plane, to wit-the spiritual.


Q. Is the natural result of this a desire to quit life by one means or

another?

A. If you mean by such desire "suicide," then I say, most decidedly not.

Such a result can never be a "natural" one, but is ever due to a morbid

brain disease, or to most decided and strong materialistic views. It is the

worst of crimes and dire in its results. But if by desire, you mean simply

aspiration to reach spiritual existence, not a wish to quit the earth, then

I would call it a very natural desire indeed. Otherwise voluntary death

would be an abandonment of our present post and of the duties incumbent on

us, as well as an attempt to shirk Karmic responsibilities, and thus involve

the creation of new Karma.


Q. But if actions on the material plane are unsatisfying, why should duties,

which are such actions, be imperative?

A. First of all, because our philosophy teaches us that the object of doing

our duties to all men and to ourselves the last, is not the attainment of

personal happiness, but of the happiness of others; the fulfillment of right

for the sake of right, not for what it may bring us. Happiness, or rather

contentment, may indeed follow the performance of duty, but is not and must

not be the motive for it.


Q. What do you understand precisely by "duty" in Theosophy? It cannot be the

Christian duties preached by Jesus and his Apostles, since you recognize

neither?

A. You are once more mistaken. What you call "Christian duties" were

inculcated by every great moral and religious Reformer ages before the

Christian era. All that was great, generous, heroic, was, in days of old,

not only talked about and preached from pulpits as in our own time, but

acted upon sometimes by whole nations. The history of the Buddhist reform is

full of the most noble and most heroically unselfish acts.

Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another; love as brethren,

be pitiful, be courteous; not rendering evil for evil, or railing for

railing; but contrariwise, blessing …

-was practically carried out by the followers of Buddha, several centuries

before Peter. The Ethics of Christianity are grand, no doubt; but as

undeniably they are not new, and have originated as "Pagan" duties.


Q. And how would you define these duties, or "duty," in general, as you

understand the term?

A. Duty is that which is due to Humanity, to our fellowmen, neighbors,

family, and especially that which we owe to all those who are poorer and

more helpless than we are ourselves. This is a debt which, if left unpaid

during life, leaves us spiritually insolvent and morally bankrupt in our



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next incarnation. Theosophy is the quintessence of duty.


Q. So is Christianity when rightly understood and carried out.

A. No doubt it is; but then, were it not a lip-religion in practice,

Theosophy would have little to do amidst Christians. Unfortunately it is but

such lip-ethics. Those who practice their duty towards all, and for duty's

own sake, are few; and fewer still are those who perform that duty,

remaining content with the satisfaction of their own secret consciousness.

It is-…

the public voice

Of praise that honors virtue and rewards it,

-which is ever uppermost in the minds of the "world renowned"

philanthropists. Modern ethics are beautiful to read about and hear

discussed; but what are words unless converted into actions? Finally: if you

ask me how we understand Theosophical duty practically and in view of Karma,

I may answer you that our duty is to drink without a murmur to the last

drop, whatever contents the cup of life may have in store for us, to pluck

the roses of life only for the fragrance they may shed on others, and to be

ourselves content but with the thorns, if that fragrance cannot be enjoyed

without depriving someone else of it.


Q. All this is very vague. What do you do more than Christians do?

A. It is not what we members of the Theosophical Society do-though some of

us try our best-but how much farther Theosophy leads to good than modern

Christianity does. I say-action, enforced action, instead of mere intention

and talk. A man may be what he likes, the most worldly, selfish and

hard-hearted of men, even a deep-dyed rascal, and it will not prevent him

from calling himself a Christian, or others from so regarding him. But no

Theosophist has the right to this name, unless he is thoroughly imbued with

the correctness of Carlyle's truism: "The end of man is an action and not a

thought, though it were the noblest"-and unless he sets and models his daily

life upon this truth. The profession of a truth is not yet the enactment of

it; and the more beautiful and grand it sounds, the more loudly virtue or

duty is talked about instead of being acted upon, the more forcibly it will

always remind one of the Dead Sea fruit. Cant is the most loathsome of all

vices; and cant is the most prominent feature of the greatest Protestant

country of this century-England.


Q. What do you consider as due to humanity at large?

A. Full recognition of equal rights and privileges for all, and without

distinction of race, color, social position, or birth.


Q. When would you consider such due not given?

A. When there is the slightest invasion of another's right-be that other a

man or a nation; when there is any failure to show him the same justice,

kindness, consideration, or mercy which we desire for ourselves. The whole

present system of politics is built on the oblivion of such rights, and the

most fierce assertion of national selfishness. The French say: "Like master,

like man." They ought to add, "Like national policy, like citizen."


Q. Do you take any part in politics?

A. As a Society, we carefully avoid them, for the reasons given below. To

seek to achieve political reforms before we have effected a reform in human

nature, is like putting new wine into old bottles. Make men feel and

recognize in their innermost hearts what is their real, true duty to all

men, and every old abuse of power, every iniquitous law in the national



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policy, based on human, social, or political selfishness, will disappear of

itself. Foolish is the gardener who seeks to weed his flowerbed of poisonous

plants by cutting them off from the surface of the soil, instead of tearing

them out by the roots. No lasting political reform can be ever achieved with

the same selfish men at the head of affairs as of old.

-oOo-The

Relations of the T.S. to Political Reforms


Q. The Theosophical Society is not, then, a political organization?

A. Certainly not. It is international in the highest sense in that its

members comprise men and women of all races, creeds, and forms of thought,

who work together for one object, the improvement of humanity; but as a

society it takes absolutely no part in any national or party politics.


Q. Why is this?

A. Just for the reasons I have mentioned. Moreover, political action must

necessarily vary with the circumstances of the time and with the

idiosyncrasies of individuals. While from the very nature of their position

as Theosophists the members of the T.S. are agreed on the principles of

Theosophy, or they would not belong to the society at all, it does not

thereby follow that they agree on every other subject. As a society they can

only act together in matters which are common to all-that is, in Theosophy

itself; as individuals, each is left perfectly free to follow out his or her

particular line of political thought and action, so long as this does not

conflict with Theosophical principles or hurt the Theosophical Society.


Q. But surely the T.S. does not stand altogether aloof from the social

questions which are now so fast coming to the front?

A. The very principles of the T.S. are a proof that it does not-or, rather,

that most of its members do not-so stand aloof. If humanity can only be

developed mentally and spiritually by the enforcement, first of all, of the

soundest and most scientific physiological laws, it is the bounden duty of

all who strive for this development to do their utmost to see that those

laws shall be generally carried out. All Theosophists are only too sadly

aware that, in Occidental countries especially, the social condition of

large masses of the people renders it impossible for either their bodies or

their spirits to be properly trained, so that the development of both is

thereby arrested. As this training and development is one of the express

objects of Theosophy, the T.S. is in thorough sympathy and harmony with all

true efforts in this direction.


Q. But what do you mean by "true efforts"? Each social reformer has his own

panacea, and each believes his to be the one and only thing which can

improve and save humanity?

A. Perfectly true, and this is the real reason why so little satisfactory

social work is accomplished. In most of these panaceas there is no really

guiding principle, and there is certainly no one principle which connects

them all. Valuable time and energy are thus wasted; for men, instead of

cooperating, strive one against the other, often, it is to be feared, for

the sake of fame and reward rather than for the great cause which they

profess to have at heart, and which should be supreme in their lives.


Q. How, then, should Theosophical principles be applied so that social

cooperation may be promoted and true efforts for social amelioration be

carried on?

A. Let me briefly remind you what these principles are-universal Unity and

Causation; Human Solidarity; the Law of Karma; Reincarnation. These are the



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four links of the golden chain which should bind humanity into one family,

one universal Brotherhood.


Q. How?

A. In the present state of society, especially in so-called civilized

countries, we are continually brought face to face with the fact that large

numbers of people are suffering from misery, poverty, and disease. Their

physical condition is wretched, and their mental and spiritual faculties are

often almost dormant. On the other hand, many persons at the opposite end of

the social scale are leading lives of careless indifference, material

luxury, and selfish indulgence. Neither of these forms of existence is mere

chance. Both are the effects of the conditions which surround those who are

subject to them, and the neglect of social duty on the one side is most

closely connected with the stunted and arrested development on the other. In

sociology, as in all branches of true science, the law of universal

causation holds good. But this causation necessarily implies, as its logical

outcome, that human solidarity on which Theosophy so strongly insists. If

the action of one reacts on the lives of all, and this is the true

scientific idea, then it is only by all men becoming brothers and all women

sisters, and by all practicing in their daily lives true brotherhood and

true sisterhood, that the real human solidarity, which lies at the root of

the elevation of the race, can ever be attained. It is this action and

interaction, this true brotherhood and sisterhood, in which each shall live

for all and all for each, which is one of the fundamental Theosophical

principles that every Theosophist should be bound, not only to teach, but to

carry out in his or her individual life.


Q. All this is very well as a general principle, but how would you apply it

in a concrete way?

A. Look for a moment at what you would call the concrete facts of human

society. Contrast the lives not only of the masses of the people, but of

many of those who are called the middle and upper classes, with what they

might be under healthier and nobler conditions, where justice, kindness, and

love were paramount, instead of the selfishness, indifference, and brutality

which now too often seem to reign supreme. All good and evil things in

humanity have their roots in human character, and this character is, and has

been, conditioned by the endless chain of cause and effect. But this

conditioning applies to the future as well as to the present and the past.

Selfishness, indifference, and brutality can never be the normal state of

the race-to believe so would be to despair of humanity-and that no

Theosophist can do. Progress can be attained, and only attained, by the

development of the nobler qualities. Now, true evolution teaches us that by

altering the surroundings of the organism we can alter and improve the

organism; and in the strictest sense this is true with regard to man. Every

Theosophist, therefore, is bound to do his utmost to help on, by all the

means in his power, every wise and well-considered social effort which has

for its object the amelioration of the condition of the poor. Such efforts

should be made with a view to their ultimate social emancipation, or the

development of the sense of duty in those who now so often neglect it in

nearly every relation of life.


Q. Agreed. But who is to decide whether social efforts are wise or unwise?

A. No one person and no society can lay down a hard-and-fast rule in this

respect. Much must necessarily be left to the individual judgment. One

general test may, however, be given. Will the proposed action tend to

promote that true brotherhood which it is the aim of Theosophy to bring

about? No real Theosophist will have much difficulty in applying such a

test; once he is satisfied of this, his duty will lie in the direction of

forming public opinion. And this can be attained only by inculcating those

higher and nobler conceptions of public and private duties which lie at the

root of all spiritual and material improvement. In every conceivable case he



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himself must be a center of spiritual action, and from him and his own daily

individual life must radiate those higher spiritual forces which alone can

regenerate his fellowmen.


Q. But why should he do this? Are not he and all, as you teach, conditioned

by their Karma, and must not Karma necessarily work itself out on certain

lines?

A. It is this very law of Karma which gives strength to all that I have

said. The individual cannot separate himself from the race, nor the race

from the individual. The law of Karma applies equally to all, although all

are not equally developed. In helping on the development of others, the

Theosophist believes that he is not only helping them to fulfill their

Karma, but that he is also, in the strictest sense, fulfilling his own. It

is the development of humanity, of which both he and they are integral

parts, that he has always in view, and he knows that any failure on his part

to respond to the highest within him retards not only himself but all, in

their progressive march. By his actions, he can make it either more

difficult or more easy for humanity to attain the next higher plane of

being.


Q. How does this bear on the fourth of the principles you mentioned, viz.,

Reincarnation?

A. The connection is most intimate. If our present lives depend upon the

development of certain principles which are a growth from the germs left by

a previous existence, the law holds good as regards the future. Once grasp

the idea that universal causation is not merely present, but past, present,

and future, and every action on our present plane falls naturally and easily

into its true place, and is seen in its true relation to ourselves and to

others. Every mean and selfish action sends us backward and not forward,

while every noble thought and every unselfish deed are stepping-stones to

the higher and more glorious planes of being. If this life were all, then in

many respects it would indeed be poor and mean; but regarded as a

preparation for the next sphere of existence, it may be used as the golden

gate through which we may pass, not selfishly and alone, but in company with

our fellows, to the palaces which lie beyond.

-oOo-On

Self-Sacrifice


Q. Is equal justice to all and love to every creature the highest standard

of Theosophy?

A. No; there is an even far higher one.


Q. What can it be?

A. The giving to others more than to oneself-self-sacrifice. Such was the

standard and abounding measure which marked so preeminently the greatest

Teachers and Masters of Humanity-e.g., Gautama Buddha in History, and Jesus

of Nazareth as in the Gospels. This trait alone was enough to secure to them

the perpetual reverence and gratitude of the generations of men that come

after them. We say, however, that self-sacrifice has to be performed with

discrimination; and such a self-abandonment, if made without justice, or

blindly, regardless of subsequent results, may often prove not only made in

vain, but harmful. One of the fundamental rules of Theosophy is, justice to

oneself-viewed as a unit of collective humanity, not as a personal

self-justice, not more but not less than to others; unless, indeed, by the

sacrifice of the one self we can benefit the many.


Q. Could you make your idea clearer by giving an instance?



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A. There are many instances to illustrate it in history. Self-sacrifice for

practical good to save many, or several people, Theosophy holds as far

higher than self-abnegation for a sectarian idea, such as that of "saving

the heathen from damnation," for instance. In our opinion, Father Damien,

the young man of thirty who offered his whole life in sacrifice for the

benefit and alleviation of the sufferings of the lepers at Molokai, and who

went to live for eighteen years alone with them, to finally catch the

loathsome disease and die, has not died in vain. He has given relief and

relative happiness to thousands of miserable wretches. He has brought to

them consolation, mental and physical. He threw a streak of light into the

black and dreary night of an existence, the hopelessness of which is

unparalleled in the records of human suffering. He was a true Theosophist,

and his memory will live forever in our annals. In our sight this poor

Belgian priest stands immeasurably higher than-for instance-all those

sincere but vain-glorious fools, the Missionaries who have sacrificed their

lives in the South Sea Islands or China. What good have they done? They went

in one case to those who are not yet ripe for any truth; and in the other to

a nation whose systems of religious philosophy are as grand as any, if only

the men who have them would live up to the standard of Confucius and their

other sages. And they died victims of irresponsible cannibals and savages,

and of popular fanaticism and hatred. Whereas, by going to the slums of

Whitechapel or some other such locality of those that stagnate right under

the blazing sun of our civilization, full of Christian savages and mental

leprosy, they might have done real good, and preserved their lives for a

better and worthier cause.


Q. But the Christians do not think so?

A. Of course not, because they act on an erroneous belief. They think that

by baptizing the body of an irresponsible savage they save his soul from

damnation. One church forgets her martyrs, the other beatifies and raises

statues to such men as Labro, who sacrificed his body for forty years only

to benefit the vermin which it bred. Had we the means to do so, we would

raise a statue to Father Damien, the true, practical saint, and perpetuate

his memory forever as a living exemplar of Theosophical heroism and of

Buddha- and Christ-like mercy and self-sacrifice.


Q. Then you regard self-sacrifice as a duty?

A. We do; and explain it by showing that altruism is an integral part of

self-development. But we have to discriminate. A man has no right to starve

himself to death that another man may have food, unless the life of that man

is obviously more useful to the many than is his own life. But it is his

duty to sacrifice his own comfort, and to work for others if they are unable

to work for themselves. It is his duty to give all that which is wholly his

own and can benefit no one but himself if he selfishly keeps it from others.

Theosophy teaches self-abnegation, but does not teach rash and useless

self-sacrifice, nor does it justify fanaticism.


Q. But how are we to reach such an elevated status?

A. By the enlightened application of our precepts to practice. By the use of

our higher reason, spiritual intuition, and moral sense, and by following

the dictates of what we call "the still small voice" of our conscience,

which is that of our Ego, and which speaks louder in us than the earthquakes

and the thunders of Jehovah, wherein "the Lord is not."


Q. If such are our duties to humanity at large, what do you understand by

our duties to our immediate surroundings?

A. Just the same, plus those that arise from special obligations with regard

to family ties.


Q. Then it is not true, as it is said, that no sooner does a man enter into



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the Theosophical Society than he begins to be gradually severed from his

wife, children, and family duties?

A. It is a groundless slander, like so many others. The first of the

Theosophical duties is to do one's duty by all men, and especially by those

to whom one's specific responsibilities are due, because one has either

voluntarily undertaken them, such as marriage ties, or because one's destiny

has allied one to them; I mean those we owe to parents or next of kin.


Q. And what may be the duty of a Theosophist to himself?

A. To control and conquer, through the Higher, the lower self. To purify

himself inwardly and morally; to fear no one, and nought, save the tribunal

of his own conscience. Never to do a thing by halves; i.e., if he thinks it

the right thing to do, let him do it openly and boldly, and if wrong, never

touch it at all. It is the duty of a Theosophist to lighten his burden by

thinking of the wise aphorism of Epictetus, who says:

Be not diverted from your duty by any idle reflection the silly world may

make upon you, for their censures are not in your power, and consequently

should not be any part of your concern.


Q. But suppose a member of your Society should plead inability to practice

altruism by other people, on the ground that "charity begins at home,"

urging that he is too busy, or too poor, to benefit mankind or even any of

its units-what are your rules in such a case?

A. No man has a right to say that he can do nothing for others, on any

pretext whatever. "By doing the proper duty in the proper place, a man may

make the world his debtor," says an English writer. A cup of cold water

given in time to a thirsty wayfarer is a nobler duty and more worth, than a

dozen of dinners given away, out of season, to men who can afford to pay for

them. No man who has not got it in him will ever become a Theosophist; but

he may remain a member of our Society all the same. We have no rules by

which we could force any man to become a practical Theosophist, if he does

not desire to be one.


Q. Then why does he enter the Society at all?

A. That is best known to him who does so. For, here again, we have no right

to prejudge a person, not even if the voice of a whole community should be

against him, and I may tell you why. In our day, vox populi (so far as

regards the voice of the educated, at any rate) is no longer vox dei, but

ever that of prejudice, of selfish motives, and often simply that of

unpopularity. Our duty is to sow seeds broadcast for the future, and see

they are good; not to stop to enquire why we should do so, and how and

wherefore we are obliged to lose our time, since those who will reap the

harvest in days to come will never be ourselves.

-oOo-On

Charity


Q. How do you Theosophists regard the Christian duty of charity?

A. What charity do you mean? Charity of mind, or practical charity in the

physical plane?


Q. I mean practical charity, as your idea of Universal brotherhood would

include, of course, charity of mind.

A. Then you have in your mind the practical carrying out of the commandments

given by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount?



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Q. Precisely so.

A. Then why call them "Christian"? Because, although your Savior preached

and practiced them, the last thing the Christians of today think of is to

carry them out in their lives.


Q. And yet many are those who pass their lives in dispensing charity?

A. Yes, out of the surplus of their great fortunes. But point out to me that

Christian, among the most philanthropic, who would give to the shivering and

starving thief, who would steal his coat, his cloak also; or offer his right

cheek to him who smote him on the left, and never think of resenting it?


Q. Ah, but you must remember that these precepts have not to be taken

literally. Times and circumstances have changed since Christ's day.

Moreover, He spoke in Parables.

A. Then why don't your Churches teach that the doctrine of damnation and

hellfire is to be understood as a parable too? Why do some of your most

popular preachers, while virtually allowing these "parables" to be

understood as you take them, insist on the literal meaning of the fires of

Hell and the physical tortures of an "Asbestos-like" soul? If one is a

"parable," then the other is. If Hellfire is a literal truth, then Christ's

commandments in the Sermon on the Mount have to be obeyed to the very

letter. And I tell you that many who do not believe in the Divinity of

Christ-like Count Leo Tolstoi and more than one Theosophist-do carry out

these noble, because universal, precepts literally; and many more good men

and women would do so, were they not more than certain that such a walk in

life would very probably land them in a lunatic asylum-so Christian are your

laws!


Q. But surely everyone knows that millions and millions are spent annually

on private and public charities?

A. Oh, yes; half of which sticks to the hands it passes through before

getting to the needy; while a good portion or remainder gets into the hands

of professional beggars, those who are too lazy to work, thus doing no good

whatever to those who are really in misery and suffering. Haven't you heard

that the first result of the great outflow of charity towards the East-end

of London was to raise the rents in Whitechapel by some twenty percent?


Q. What would you do, then?

A. Act individually and not collectively; follow the Northern Buddhist

precepts:

Never put food into the mouth of the hungry by the hand of another.

Never let the shadow of thy neighbor (a third person) come between thyself

and the object of thy bounty.

Never give to the Sun time to dry a tear before thou hast wiped it.

Again

Never give money to the needy, or food to the priest, who begs at thy door,

through thy servants, lest thy money should diminish gratitude, and thy food

turn to gall.


Q. But how can this be applied practically?

A. The Theosophical ideas of charity mean personal exertion for others;

personal mercy and kindness; personal interest in the welfare of those who

suffer; personal sympathy, forethought and assistance in their troubles or



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needs. It is important to note that we Theosophists do not believe in giving

money, if we had it, through other people's hands or organizations. We

believe in giving to the money a thousandfold greater power and

effectiveness by our personal contact and sympathy with those who need it.

We believe in relieving the starvation of the soul, as much if not more than

the emptiness of the stomach; for gratitude does more good to the man who

feels it, than to him for whom it is felt. Where's the gratitude which your

"millions of pounds" should have called forth, or the good feelings provoked

by them? Is it shown in the hatred of the East-End poor for the rich? In the

growth of the party of anarchy and disorder? Or by those thousands of

unfortunate working girls, victims to the "sweating" system, driven daily to

eke out a living by going on the streets? Do your helpless old men and women

thank you for the workhouses; or your poor for the poisonously unhealthy

dwellings in which they are allowed to breed new generations of diseased,

and rickety children, only to put money into the pockets of the insatiable

Shylocks who own houses? Therefore it is that every sovereign of all those

"millions," contributed by good and would-be charitable people, falls like a

burning curse instead of a blessing on the poor whom it should relieve. We

call this generating national Karma, and terrible will be its results on the

day of reckoning.

-oOo-Theosophy

for the Masses


Q. And you think that Theosophy would, by stepping in, help to remove these

evils, under the practical and adverse conditions of our modern life?

A. Had we more money, and had not most of the Theosophists to work for their

daily bread, I firmly believe we could.


Q. How? Do you expect that your doctrines could ever take hold of the

uneducated masses, when they are so abstruse and difficult that

well-educated people can hardly understand them?

A. You forget one thing, which is that your much-boasted modern education is

precisely that which makes it difficult for you to understand Theosophy.

Your mind is so full of intellectual subtleties and preconceptions that your

natural intuition and perception of the truth cannot act. It does not

require metaphysics or education to make a man understand the broad truths

of Karma and Reincarnation. Look at the millions of poor and uneducated

Buddhists and Hindus, to whom Karma and reincarnation are solid realities,

simply because their minds have never been cramped and distorted by being

forced into an unnatural groove. They have never had the innate human sense

of justice perverted in them by being told to believe that their sins would

be forgiven because another man had been put to death for their sakes. And

the Buddhists, note well, live up to their beliefs without a murmur against

Karma, or what they regard as a just punishment; whereas the Christian

populace neither lives up to its moral ideal, nor accepts its lot

contentedly. Hence murmuring and dissatisfaction, and the intensity of the

struggle for existence in Western lands.


Q. But this contentedness, which you praise so much, would do away with all

motive for exertion and bring progress to a stand-still.

A. And we, Theosophists, say that your vaunted progress and civilization are

no better than a host of will-o'-the-wisps, flickering over a marsh which

exhales a poisonous and deadly miasma. This, because we see selfishness,

crime, immorality, and all the evils imaginable, pouncing upon unfortunate

mankind from this Pandora's box which you call an age of progress, and

increasing pari passu with the growth of your material civilization. At such

a price, better the inertia and inactivity of Buddhist countries, which have

arisen only as a consequence of ages of political slavery.



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Q. Then is all this metaphysics and mysticism with which you occupy yourself

so much, of no importance?

A. To the masses, who need only practical guidance and support, they are not

of much consequence; but for the educated, the natural leaders of the

masses, those whose modes of thought and action will sooner or later be

adopted by those masses, they are of the greatest importance. It is only by

means of the philosophy that an intelligent and educated man can avoid the

intellectual suicide of believing on blind faith; and it is only by

assimilating the strict continuity and logical coherence of the Eastern, if

not esoteric, doctrines, that he can realize their truth. Conviction breeds

enthusiasm, and "Enthusiasm," says Bulwer Lytton, "is the genius of

sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it;" while Emerson

most truly remarks that "every great and commanding movement in the annals

of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm." And what is more calculated to

produce such a feeling than a philosophy so grand, so consistent, so

logical, and so all-embracing as our Eastern Doctrines?


Q. And yet its enemies are very numerous, and every day Theosophy acquires

new opponents.

A. And this is precisely that which proves its intrinsic excellence and

value. People hate only the things they fear, and no one goes out of his way

to overthrow that which neither threatens nor rises beyond mediocrity.


Q. Do you hope to impart this enthusiasm, one day, to the masses?

A. Why not? Since history tells us that the masses adopted Buddhism with

enthusiasm, while, as said before, the practical effect upon them of this

philosophy of ethics is still shown by the smallness of the percentage of

crime amongst Buddhist populations as compared with every other religion.

The chief point is, to uproot that most fertile source of all crime and

immortality-the belief that it is possible for them to escape the

consequences of their own actions. Once teach them that greatest of all

laws, Karma and Reincarnation, and besides feeling in themselves the true

dignity of human nature, they will turn from evil and eschew it as they

would a physical danger.

-oOo-How

Members Can Help the Society


Q. How do you expect the Fellows of your Society to help in the work?

A. First by studying and comprehending the theosophical doctrines, so that

they may teach others, especially the young people. Secondly, by taking

every opportunity of talking to others and explaining to them what Theosophy

is, and what it is not; by removing misconceptions and spreading an interest

in the subject. Thirdly, by assisting in circulating our literature, by

buying books when they have the means, by lending and giving them and by

inducing their friends to do so. Fourthly, by defending the Society from the

unjust aspersions cast upon it, by every legitimate device in their power.

Fifth, and most important of all, by the example of their own lives.


Q. But all this literature, to the spread of which you attach so much

importance, does not seem to me of much practical use in helping mankind.

This is not practical charity.

A. We think otherwise. We hold that a good book which gives people food for

thought, which strengthens and clears their minds, and enables them to grasp

truths which they have dimly felt but could not formulate-we hold that such

a book does a real, substantial good. As to what you call practical deeds of

charity, to benefit the bodies of our fellowmen, we do what little we can;

but, as I have already told you, most of us are poor, whilst the Society



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itself has not even the money to pay a staff of workers. All of us who toil

for it, give our labor gratis, and in most cases money as well. The few who

have the means of doing what are usually called charitable actions, follow

the Buddhist precepts and do their work themselves, not by proxy or by

subscribing publicly to charitable funds. What the Theosophist has to do

above all is to forget his personality.

-oOo-What

a Theosophist Ought Not to Do


Q. Have you any prohibitory laws or clauses for Theosophists in your

Society?

A. Many, but-alas!-none of them are enforced. They express the ideal of our

organization, but the practical application of such things we are compelled

to leave to the discretion of the Fellows themselves. Unfortunately, the

state of men's minds in the present century is such that, unless we allow

these clauses to remain, so to speak, obsolete, no man or woman would dare

to risk joining the Theosophical Society. This is precisely why I feel

forced to lay such a stress on the difference between true Theosophy and its

hard-struggling and well-intentioned, but still unworthy vehicle, the

Theosophical Society.


Q. May I be told what are these perilous reefs in the open sea of Theosophy?

A. Well may you call them reefs, as more than one otherwise sincere and

well-meaning F.T.S. has had his Theosophical canoe shattered into splinters

on them! And yet to avoid certain things seems the easiest thing in the

world to do. For instance, here is a series of such negatives, screening

positive Theosophical duties:

No Theosophist should be silent when he hears evil reports or slanders

spread about the Society, or innocent persons, whether they be his

colleagues or outsiders.


Q. But suppose what one hears is the truth, or may be true without one

knowing it?

A. Then you must demand good proofs of the assertion, and hear both sides

impartially before you permit the accusation to go uncontradicted. You have

no right to believe in evil, until you get undeniable proof of the

correctness of the statement.


Q. And what should you do then?

A. Pity and forbearance, charity and long-suffering, ought to be always

there to prompt us to excuse our sinning brethren, and to pass the gentlest

sentence possible upon those who err. A Theosophist ought never to forget

what is due to the shortcomings and infirmities of human nature.


Q. Ought he to forgive entirely in such cases?

A. In every case, especially he who is sinned against.


Q. But if by so doing, he risks to injure, or allow others to be injured?

What ought he to do then?

A. His duty; that which his conscience and higher nature suggests to him;

but only after mature deliberation. Justice consists in doing no injury to

any living being; but justice commands us also never to allow injury to be

done to the many, or even to one innocent person, by allowing the guilty one

to go unchecked.



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Q. What are the other negative clauses?

A. No Theosophist ought to be contented with an idle or frivolous life,

doing no real good to himself and still less to others. He should work for

the benefit of the few who need his help if he is unable to toil for

Humanity, and thus work for the advancement of the Theosophical cause.


Q. This demands an exceptional nature, and would come rather hard upon some

persons.

A. Then they had better remain outside the T.S. instead of sailing under

false colors. No one is asked to give more than he can afford, whether in

devotion, time, work, or money.


Q. What comes next?

A. No working member should set too great value on his personal progress or

proficiency in Theosophic studies; but must be prepared rather to do as much

altruistic work as lies in his power. He should not leave the whole of the

heavy burden and responsibility of the Theosophical Movement on the

shoulders of the few devoted workers. Each member ought to feel it his duty

to take what share he can in the common work, and help it by every means in

his power.


Q. This is but just. What comes next?

A. No Theosophist should place his personal vanity, or feelings, above those

of his Society as a body. He who sacrifices the latter, or other people's

reputations on the altar of his personal vanity, worldly benefit, or pride,

ought not to be allowed to remain a member. One cancerous limb diseases the

whole body.


Q. Is it the duty of every member to teach others and preach Theosophy?

A. It is indeed. No fellow has a right to remain idle, on the excuse that he

knows too little to teach. For he may always be sure that he will find

others who know still less than himself. And also it is not until a man

begins to try to teach others, that he discovers his own ignorance and tries

to remove it. But this is a minor clause.


Q. What do you consider, then, to be the chief of these negative

Theosophical duties?

A. To be ever prepared to recognize and confess one's faults. To rather sin

through exaggerated praise than through too little appreciation of one's

neighbor's efforts. Never to backbite or slander another person. Always to

say openly and direct to his face anything you have against him. Never to

make yourself the echo of anything you may hear against another, nor harbor

revenge against those who happen to injure you.


Q. But it is often dangerous to tell people the truth to their faces. Don't

you think so? I know one of your members who was bitterly offended, left the

Society, and became its greatest enemy, only because he was told some

unpleasant truths to his face, and was blamed for them.

A. Of such we have had many. No member, whether prominent or insignificant,

has ever left us without becoming our bitter enemy.


Q. How do you account for it?

A. It is simply this. Having been, in most cases, intensely devoted to the

Society at first, and having lavished upon it the most exaggerated praises,

the only possible excuse such a backslider can make for his subsequent

behavior and past short-sightedness, is to pose as an innocent and deceived



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victim, thus casting the blame from his own shoulders onto those of the

Society in general, and its leaders especially. Such persons remind one of

the old fable about the man with a distorted face, who broke his

looking-glass on the ground that it reflected his countenance crookedly.


Q. But what makes these people turn against the Society?

A. Wounded vanity in some form or other, almost in every case. Generally,

because their dicta and advice are not taken as final and authoritative; or

else, because they are of those who would rather reign in Hell than serve in

Heaven. Because, in short, they cannot bear to stand second to anybody in

anything. So, for instance, one member-a true "Sir Oracle"-criticized, and

almost defamed every member in the T.S. to outsiders as much as to

Theosophists, under the pretext that they were all untheosophical, blaming

them precisely for what he was himself doing all the time. Finally, he left

the Society, giving as his reason a profound conviction that we were all

(the Founders especially)-Frauds! Another one, after intriguing in every

possible way to be placed at the head of a large Section of the Society,

finding that the members would not have him, turned against the Founders of

the T.S., and became their bitterest enemy, denouncing one of them whenever

he could, simply because the latter could not, and would not, force him upon

the Members. This was simply a case of an outrageous wounded vanity. Still

another wanted to, and virtually did, practice black-magic-i.e., undue

personal psychological influence on certain Fellows, while pretending

devotion and every Theosophical virtue. When this was put a stop to, the

Member broke with Theosophy, and now slanders and lies against the same

hapless leaders in the most virulent manner, endeavoring to break up the

society by blackening the reputation of those whom that worthy "Fellow" was

unable to deceive.


Q. What would you do with such characters?

A. Leave them to their Karma. Because one person does evil that is no reason

for others to do so.


Q. But, to return to slander, where is the line of demarcation between

backbiting and just criticism to be drawn? Is it not one's duty to warn

one's friends and neighbors against those whom one knows to be dangerous

associates?

A. If by allowing them to go on unchecked other persons may be thereby

injured, it is certainly our duty to obviate the danger by warning them

privately. But true or false, no accusation against another person should

ever be spread abroad. If true, and the fault hurts no one but the sinner,

then leave him to his Karma. If false, then you will have avoided adding to

the injustice in the world. Therefore, keep silent about such things with

everyone not directly concerned. But if your discretion and silence are

likely to hurt or endanger others, then I add: Speak the truth at all costs,

and say, with Annesly, "Consult duty, not events." There are cases when one

is forced to exclaim, "Perish discretion, rather than allow it to interfere

with duty."


Q. Methinks, if you carry out these maxims, you are likely to reap a nice

crop of troubles!

A. And so we do. We have to admit that we are now open to the same taunt as

the early Christians were. "See, how these Theosophists love one another!"

may now be said of us without a shadow of injustice.


Q. Admitting yourself that there is at least as much, if not more,

backbiting, slandering, and quarreling in the T.S. as in the Christian

Churches, let alone Scientific Societies-What kind of Brotherhood is this? I

may ask.



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A. A very poor specimen, indeed, as at present, and, until carefully sifted

and reorganized, no better than all others. Remember, however, that human

nature is the same in the Theosophical Society as out of it. Its members are

no saints: they are at best sinners trying to do better, and liable to fall

back owing to personal weakness. Add to this that our "Brotherhood" is no

"recognized" or established body, and stands, so to speak, outside of the

pale of jurisdiction. Besides which, it is in a chaotic condition, and as

unjustly unpopular as is no other body. What wonder, then, that those

members who fail to carry out its ideal should turn, after leaving the

Society, for sympathetic protection to our enemies, and pour all their gall

and bitterness into their too willing ears! Knowing that they will find

support, sympathy, and ready credence for every accusation, however absurd,

that it may please them to launch against the Theosophical Society, they

hasten to do so, and vent their wrath on the innocent looking-glass, which

reflected too faithfully their faces. People never forgive those whom they

have wronged. The sense of kindness received, and repaid by them with

ingratitude, drives them into a madness of self-justification before the

world and their own consciences. The former is but too ready to believe in

anything said against a society it hates. The latter-but I will say no more,

fearing I have already said too much.


Q. Your position does not seem to me a very enviable one.

A. It is not. But don't you think that there must be something very noble,

very exalted, very true, behind the Society and its philosophy, when the

leaders and the founders of the Movement still continue to work for it with

all their strength? They sacrifice to it all comfort, all worldly

prosperity, and success, even to their good name and reputation-aye, even to

their honor-to receive in return incessant and ceaseless obloquy, relentless

persecution, untiring slander, constant ingratitude, and misunderstanding of

their best efforts, blows, and buffets from all sides-when by simply

dropping their work they would find themselves immediately released from

every responsibility, shielded from every further attack.


Q. I confess, such a perseverance seems to me very astounding, and I

wondered why you did all this.

A. Believe me for no self-gratification; only in the hope of training a few

individuals to carry on our work for humanity by its original program when

the Founders are dead and gone. They have already found a few such noble and

devoted souls to replace them. The coming generations, thanks to these few,

will find the path to peace a little less thorny, and the way a little

widened, and thus all this suffering will have produced good results, and

their self-sacrifice will not have been in vain. At present, the main,

fundamental object of the Society is to sow germs in the hearts of men,

which may in time sprout, and under more propitious circumstances lead to a

healthy reform, conducive of more happiness to the masses than they have

hitherto enjoyed.

On the Misconceptions About the T.S.

Theosophy and Asceticism


Q. I have heard people say that your rules require all members to be

vegetarians, celibates, and rigid ascetics; but you have not told me

anything of the sort yet. Can you tell me the truth once for all about this?

A. The truth is that our rules require nothing of the kind. The Theosophical

Society does not even expect, far less require of any of its members that

they should be ascetics in any way, except-if you call that asceticism-that

they should try and benefit other people and be unselfish in their own

lives.


Q. But still many of your members are strict vegetarians, and openly avow



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their intention of remaining unmarried. This, too, is most often the case

with those who take a prominent part in connection with the work of your

Society.

A. That is only natural, because most of our really earnest workers are

members of the Inner Section of the Society, which I told you about before.


Q. Oh! Then you do require ascetic practices in that Inner Section?

A. No; we do not require or enjoin them even there; but I see that I had

better give you an explanation of our views on the subject of asceticism in

general, and then you will understand about vegetarianism and so on.


Q. Please proceed.

A. As I have already told you, most people who become really earnest

students of Theosophy, and active workers in our Society, wish to do more

than study theoretically the truths we teach. They wish to know the truth by

their own direct personal experience, and to study Occultism with the object

of acquiring the wisdom and power, which they feel that they need in order

to help others, effectually and judiciously, instead of blindly and at

haphazard. Therefore, sooner or later, they join the Inner Section.


Q. But you said that "ascetic practices" are not obligatory even in that

Inner Section?

A. No more they are; but the first thing which the members learn there is a

true conception of the relation of the body, or physical sheath, to the

inner, the true man. The relation and mutual interaction between these two

aspects of human nature are explained and demonstrated to them, so that they

soon become imbued with the supreme importance of the inner man over the

outer case or body. They are taught that blind unintelligent asceticism is

mere folly; that such conduct as that of St. Labro which I spoke of before,

or that of the Indian Fakirs and jungle ascetics, who cut, burn, and

macerate their bodies in the most cruel and horrible manner, is simply

self-torture for selfish ends, i.e., to develop will-power, but is perfectly

useless for the purpose of assisting true spiritual, or Theosophic,

development.


Q. I see, you regard only moral asceticism as necessary. It is as a means to

an end, that end being the perfect equilibrium of the inner nature of man,

and the attainment of complete mastery over the body with all its passions

and desires?

A. Just so. But these means must be used intelligently and wisely, not

blindly and foolishly; like an athlete who is training and preparing for a

great contest, not like the miser who starves himself into illness that he

may gratify his passion for gold.


Q. I understand now your general idea; but let us see how you apply it in

practice. How about vegetarianism, for instance?

A. One of the great German scientists has shown that every kind of animal

tissue, however you may cook it, still retains certain marked

characteristics of the animal which it belonged to, which characteristics

can be recognized. And apart from that, everyone knows by the taste what

meat he is eating. We go a step farther, and prove that when the flesh of

animals is assimilated by man as food, it imparts to him, physiologically,

some of the characteristics of the animal it came from. Moreover, occult

science teaches and proves this to its students by ocular demonstration,

showing also that this "coarsening" or "animalizing" effect on man is

greatest from the flesh of the larger animals, less for birds, still less

for fish and other cold-blooded animals, and least of all when he eats only

vegetables.



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Q. Then he had better not eat at all?

A. If he could live without eating, of course it would. But as the matter

stands, he must eat to live, and so we advise really earnest students to eat

such food as will least clog and weight their brains and bodies, and will

have the smallest effect in hampering and retarding the development of their

intuition, their inner faculties, and powers.


Q. Then you do not adopt all the arguments which vegetarians in general are

in the habit of using?

A. Certainly not. Some of their arguments are very weak, and often based on

assumptions which are quite false. But, on the other hand, many of the

things they say are quite true. For instance, we believe that much disease,

and especially the great predisposition to disease which is becoming so

marked a feature in our time, is very largely due to the eating of meat, and

especially of tinned meats. But it would take too long to go thoroughly into

this question of vegetarianism on its merits; so please pass onto something

else.


Q. One question more. What are your members of the Inner Section to do with

regard to their food when they are ill?

A. Follow the best practical advice they can get, of course. Don't you grasp

yet that we never impose any hard-and-fast obligations in this respect?

Remember once for all that in all such questions we take a rational, and

never a fanatical, view of things. If from illness or long habit a man

cannot go without meat, why, by all means let him eat it. It is no crime; it

will only retard his progress a little; for after all is said and done, the

purely bodily actions and functions are of far less importance than what a

man thinks and feels, what desires he encourages in his mind, and allows to

take root and grow there.


Q. Then with regard to the use of wine and spirits, I suppose you do not

advise people to drink them?

A. They are worse for his moral and spiritual growth than meat, for alcohol

in all its forms has a direct, marked, and very deleterious influence on

man's psychic condition. Wine and spirit drinking is only less destructive

to the development of the inner powers, than the habitual use of hashish,

opium, and similar drugs.

-oOo-Theosophy

and Marriage


Q. Now to another question; must a man marry or remain a celibate?

A. It depends on the kind of man you mean. If you refer to one who intends

to live in the world, one who, even though a good, earnest Theosophist, and

an ardent worker for our cause, still has ties and wishes which bind him to

the world, who, in short, does not feel that he has done forever with what

men call life, and that he desires one thing and one thing only-to know the

truth, and to be able to help others-then for such a one I say there is no

reason why he should not marry, if he likes to take the risks of that

lottery where there are so many more blanks than prizes. Surely you cannot

believe us so absurd and fanatical as to preach against marriage altogether?

On the contrary, save in a few exceptional cases of practical Occultism,

marriage is the only remedy against immorality.


Q. But why cannot one acquire this knowledge and power when living a married

life?



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A. My dear sir, I cannot go into physiological questions with you; but I can

give you an obvious and, I think, a sufficient answer, which will explain to

you the moral reasons we give for it. Can a man serve two masters? No! Then

it is equally impossible for him to divide his attention between the pursuit

of Occultism and a wife. If he tries to, he will assuredly fail in doing

either properly; and, let me remind you, practical Occultism is far too

serious and dangerous a study for a man to take up, unless he is in the most

deadly earnest, and ready to sacrifice all, himself first of all, to gain

his end. But this does not apply to the members of our Inner Section. I am

only referring to those who are determined to tread that path of

discipleship which leads to the highest goal. Most, if not all of those who

join our Inner Section, are only beginners, preparing themselves in this

life to enter in reality upon that path in lives to come.

-oOo-Theosophy

and Education


Q. One of your strongest arguments for the inadequacy of the existing forms

of religion in the West, as also to some extent the materialistic philosophy

which is now so popular, but which you seem to consider as an abomination of

desolation, is the large amount of misery and wretchedness which undeniably

exists, especially in our great cities. But surely you must recognize how

much has been, and is being done to remedy this state of things by the

spread of education and the diffusion of intelligence.

A. The future generations will hardly thank you for such a "diffusion of

intelligence," nor will your present education do much good to the poor

starving masses.


Q. Ah! But you must give us time. It is only a few years since we began to

educate the people.

A. And what, pray, has your Christian religion been doing ever since the

fifteenth century, once you acknowledge that the education of the masses has

not been attempted till now-the very work, if ever there could be one, which

a Christian, i.e., a Christ-following church and people, ought to perform?


Q. Well, you may be right; but now-A.

Just let us consider this question of education from a broad standpoint,

and I will prove to you that you are doing harm not good, with many of your

boasted improvements. The schools for the poorer children, though far less

useful than they ought to be, are good in contrast with the vile

surroundings to which they are doomed by your modern Society. The infusion

of a little practical Theosophy would help a hundred times more in life the

poor suffering masses than all this infusion of (useless) intelligence.


Q. But, really-A.

Let me finish, please. You have opened a subject on which we Theosophists

feel deeply, and I must have my say. I quite agree that there is a great

advantage to a small child bred in the slums, having the gutter for

playground, and living amid continued coarseness of gesture and word, in

being placed daily in a bright, clean schoolroom hung with pictures, and

often gay with flowers. There it is taught to be clean, gentle, orderly;

there it learns to sing and to play; has toys that awaken its intelligence;

learns to use its fingers deftly; is spoken to with a smile instead of a

frown; is gently rebuked or coaxed instead of cursed. All this humanizes the

children, arouses their brains, and renders them susceptible to intellectual

and moral influences. The schools are not all they might be and ought to be;

but, compared with the homes, they are paradises; and they slowly are

reacting on the homes. But while this is true of many of the Board schools,

your system deserves the worst one can say of it.



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Q. So be it; go on.

A. What is the real object of modern education? Is it to cultivate and

develop the mind in the right direction; to teach the disinherited and

hapless people to carry with fortitude the burden of life (allotted them by

Karma); to strengthen their will; to inculcate in them the love of one's

neighbor and the feeling of mutual interdependence and brotherhood; and thus

to train and form the character for practical life? Not a bit of it. And

yet, these are undeniably the objects of all true education. No one denies

it; all your educators admit it, and talk very big indeed on the subject.

But what is the practical result of their action? Every young man and boy,

nay, every one of the younger generation of schoolmasters will answer: "The

object of modern education is to pass examinations," a system not to develop

right emulation, but to generate and breed jealousy, envy, hatred almost, in

young people for one another, and thus train them for a life of ferocious

selfishness and struggle for honors and emoluments instead of kindly

feeling.


Q. I must admit you are right there.

A. And what are these examinations-the terror of modern boyhood and youth?

They are simply a method of classification by which the results of your

school teaching are tabulated. In other words, they form the practical

application of the modern science method to the genus homo, qua

intellection. Now "science" teaches that intellect is a result of the

mechanical interaction of the brain-stuff; therefore it is only logical that

modern education should be almost entirely mechanical-a sort of automatic

machine for the fabrication of intellect by the ton. Very little experience

of examinations is enough to show that the education they produce is simply

a training of the physical memory, and, sooner or later, all your schools

will sink to this level. As to any real, sound cultivation of the thinking

and reasoning power, it is simply impossible while everything has to be

judged by the results as tested by competitive examinations. Again, school

training is of the very greatest importance in forming character, especially

in its moral bearing. Now, from first to last, your modern system is based

on the so-called scientific revelations: "The struggle for existence" and

the "survival of the fittest." All through his early life, every man has

these driven into him by practical example and experience, as well as by

direct teaching, till it is impossible to eradicate from his mind the idea

that "self," the lower, personal, animal self, is the end-all, and be-all,

of life. Here you get the great source of all the after-misery, crime, and

heartless selfishness, which you admit as much as I do. Selfishness, as said

over and over again, is the curse of humanity, and the prolific parent of

all the evils and crimes in this life; and it is your schools which are the

hotbeds of such selfishness.


Q. That is all very fine as generalities, but I should like a few facts, and

to learn also how this can be remedied.

A. Very well, I will try and satisfy you. There are three great divisions of

scholastic establishments, board, middle-class and public schools, running

up the scale from the most grossly commercial to the idealistic classical,

with many permutations and combinations. The practical commercial begets the

modern side, and the ancient and orthodox classical reflects its heavy

respectability even as far as the School Board pupil teacher's

establishments. Here we plainly see the scientific and material commercial

supplanting the effete orthodox and classical. Neither is the reason very

far to seek. The objects of this branch of education are, then, pounds,

shillings, and pence, the summum bonum of the nineteenth century. Thus, the

energies generated by the brain molecules of its adherents are all

concentrated on one point, and are, therefore, to some extent, an organized

army of educated and speculative intellects of the minority of men, trained

against the hosts of the ignorant, simple-minded masses doomed to be



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vampirized, lived, and sat upon by their intellectually stronger brethren.

Such training is not only untheosophical, it is simply unchristian. Result:

The direct outcome of this branch of education is an overflooding of the

market with money-making machines, with heartless selfish men-animals-who

have been most carefully trained to prey on their fellows and take advantage

of the ignorance of their weaker brethren!


Q. Well, but you cannot assert that of our great public schools, at any

rate?

A. Not exactly, it is true. But though the form is different, the animating

spirit is the same: untheosophical and unchristian, whether Eton and Harrow

turn out scientists or divines and theologians.


Q. Surely you don't mean to call Eton and Harrow "commercial"?

A. No. Of course the Classical system is above all things respectable, and

in the present day is productive of some good. It does still remain the

favorite at our great public schools, where not only an intellectual, but

also a social education is obtainable. It is, therefore, of prime importance

that the dull boys of aristocratic and wealthy parents should go to such

schools to meet the rest of the young life of the "blood" and money classes.

But unfortunately there is a huge competition even for entrance; for the

moneyed classes are increasing, and poor but clever boys seek to enter the

public schools by the rich scholarships, both at the schools themselves and

from them to the Universities.


Q. According to this view, the wealthier "dullards" have to work even harder

than their poorer fellows?

A. It is so. But, strange to say, the faithful of the cult of the "Survival

of the fittest" do not practice their creed; for their whole exertion is to

make the naturally unfit supplant the fit. Thus, by bribes of large sums of

money, they allure the best teachers from their natural pupils to

mechanicalize their naturally unfit progeny into professions which they

uselessly overcrowd.


Q. And you attribute all this to what?

A. All this is owing to the perniciousness of a system which turns out goods

to order, irrespective of the natural proclivities and talents of the youth.

The poor little candidate for this progressive paradise of learning, comes

almost straight from the nursery to the treadmill of a preparatory school

for sons of gentlemen. Here he is immediately seized upon by the workmen of

the materio-intellectual factory, and crammed with Latin, French, and Greek

Accidence, Dates, and Tables, so that if he have any natural genius it is

rapidly squeezed out of him by the rollers of what Carlyle has so well

called "dead vocables."


Q. But surely he is taught something besides "dead vocables," and much of

that which may lead him direct to Theosophy, if not entirely into the

Theosophical Society?

A. Not much. For of history, he will attain only sufficient knowledge of his

own particular nation to fit him with a steel armor of prejudice against all

other peoples, and be steeped in the foul cesspools of chronicled national

hate and bloodthirstiness; and surely, you would not call that-Theosophy?


Q. What are your further objections?

A. Added to this is a smattering of selected, so-called, Biblical facts,

from the study of which all intellect is eliminated. It is simply a memory

lesson, the "Why" of the teacher being a "Why" of circumstances and not of

reason.



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Q. Yes; but I have heard you congratulate yourself at the ever-increasing

number of the Agnostics and Atheists in our day, so that it appears that

even people trained in the system you abuse so heartily do learn to think

and reason for themselves.

A. Yes; but it is rather owing to a healthy reaction from that system than

due to it. We prefer immeasurably more in our Society Agnostics, and even

rank Atheists, to bigots of whatever religion. An Agnostic's mind is ever

opened to the truth; whereas the latter blinds the bigot like the sun does

an owl. The best-i.e., the most truth-loving, philanthropic, and honest-of

our Fellows were, and are, Agnostics and Atheists (disbelievers in a

personal God). But there are no free-thinking boys and girls, and generally

early training will leave its mark behind in the shape of a cramped and

distorted mind. A proper and sane system of education should produce the

most vigorous and liberal mind, strictly trained in logical and accurate

thought, and not in blind faith. How can you ever expect good results, while

you pervert the reasoning faculty of your children by bidding them believe

in the miracles of the Bible on Sunday, while for the six other days of the

week you teach them that such things are scientifically impossible?


Q. What would you have, then?

A. If we had money, we would found schools which would turn out something

else than reading and writing candidates for starvation. Children should

above all be taught self-reliance, love for all men, altruism, mutual

charity, and more than anything else, to think and reason for themselves. We

would reduce the purely mechanical work of the memory to an absolute

minimum, and devote the time to the development and training of the inner

senses, faculties, and latent capacities. We would endeavor to deal with

each child as a unit, and to educate it so as to produce the most harmonious

and equal unfoldment of its powers, in order that its special aptitudes

should find their full natural development. We should aim at creating free

men and women, free intellectually, free morally, unprejudiced in all

respects, and above all things, unselfish. And we believe that much if not

all of this could be obtained by proper and truly theosophical education.

-oOo-Why

Then is There So Much Prejudice Against the T.S.?


Q. If Theosophy is even half of what you say, why should there exist such a

terrible ill-feeling against it? This is even more of a problem than

anything else.

A. It is; but you must bear in mind how many powerful adversaries we have

aroused ever since the formation of our Society. As I just said, if the

Theosophical Movement were one of those numerous modern crazes, as harmless

at the end as they are evanescent, it would be simply laughed at-as it is

now by those who still do not understand its real purport-and left severely

alone. But it is nothing of the kind. Intrinsically, Theosophy is the most

serious Movement of this age; and one, moreover, which threatens the very

life of most of the time-honored humbugs, prejudices, and social evils of

the day-those evils which fatten and make happy the upper ten and their

imitators and sycophants, the wealthy dozens of the middle classes, while

they positively crush and starve out of existence the millions of the poor.

Think of this, and you will easily understand the reason of such a

relentless persecution by those others who, more observant and

clear-sighted, do see the true nature of Theosophy, and therefore dread it.


Q. Do you mean to tell me that it is because a few have understood what

Theosophy leads to, that they try to crush the Movement? But if Theosophy

leads only to good, surely you cannot be prepared to utter such a terrible

accusation of faithlessness, heartlessness, and treachery even against those



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few?

A. I am so prepared, on the contrary. I do not call the enemies we have had

to battle with during the first nine or ten years of the Society's existence

either powerful or "dangerous"; but only those who have arisen against us in

the last three or four years. And these neither speak, write, nor preach

against Theosophy, but work in silence and behind the backs of the foolish

puppets who act as their visible marionettes. Yet, if invisible to most of

the members of our Society, they are well known to the true "Founders" and

the protectors of our Society. But they must remain for certain reasons

unnamed at present.


Q. And are they known to many of you, or to yourself alone?

A. I never said I knew them. I may or may not know them-but I know of them,

and this is sufficient; and I defy them to do their worst. They may achieve

great mischief and throw confusion into our ranks, especially among the

faint-hearted, and those who can judge only by appearances. They will not

crush the Society, do what they may. Apart from these truly dangerous

enemies-"dangerous," however, only to those Theosophists who are unworthy of

the name, and whose place is rather outside than within the T.S.-the number

of our opponents is more than considerable.


Q. Can you name these, at least, if you will not speak of the others?

A. Of course I can. We have to contend against:-1.

The hatred of the Spiritualists, American, English, and French;

2. The constant opposition of the clergy of all denominations;

3. Especially the relentless hatred and persecution of the missionaries in

India;

4. This led to the famous and infamous attack on our Theosophical Society by

the Society for Psychical Research, an attack which was stirred up by a

regular conspiracy organized by the missionaries in India.

5. We must count the defection of various prominent (?) members, for reasons

I have already explained, all of whom have contributed their utmost to

increase the prejudice against us.


Q. Cannot you give me more details about these, so that I may know what to

answer when asked-a brief history of the Society, in short; and why the

world believes all this?

A. The reason is simple. Most outsiders knew absolutely nothing of the

Society itself, its motives, objects, or beliefs. From its very beginning

the world has seen in Theosophy nothing but certain marvelous phenomena, in

which two-thirds of the non-Spiritualists do not believe. Very soon the

Society came to be regarded as a body pretending to the possession of

"miraculous" powers. The world never realized that the Society taught

absolute disbelief in miracle or even the possibility of such; that in the

Society there were only a few people who possessed such psychic powers and

but few who cared for them. Nor did it understand that the phenomena were

never produced publicly, but only privately for friends, and merely given as

an accessory, to prove by direct demonstration that such things could be

produced without dark rooms, spirits, mediums, or any of the usual

paraphernalia. Unfortunately, this misconception was greatly strengthened

and exaggerated by the first book on the subject which excited much

attention in Europe-Mr. Sinnett's The Occult World. If this work did much to

bring the Society into prominence, it attracted still more obloquy,

derision, and misrepresentation upon the hapless heroes and heroine thereof.

Of this the author was more than warned in The Occult World, but did not pay

attention to the prophecy-for such it was, though half-veiled.



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Q. For what, and since when, do the Spiritualists hate you?

A. From the first day of the Society's existence. No sooner the fact became

known that, as a body, the T.S. did not believe in communications with the

spirits of the dead, but regarded the so-called "spirits" as, for the most

part, astral reflections of disembodied personalities, shells, etc., than

the Spiritualists conceived a violent hatred to us and especially to the

Founders. This hatred found expression in every kind of slander,

uncharitable personal remarks, and absurd misrepresentations of the

Theosophical teachings in all the American Spiritualistic organs. For years

we were persecuted, denounced, and abused. This began in 1875 and continues

to the present day. In 1819, the headquarters of the T.S. were transferred

from New York to Bombay, India, and then permanently to Madras. When the

first branch of our Society, the British T.S., was founded in London, the

English Spiritualists came out in arms against us, as the Americans had

done; and the French Spiritists followed suit.


Q. But why should the clergy be hostile to you, when, after all, the main

tendency of the Theosophical doctrines is opposed to Materialism, the great

enemy of all forms of religion in our day?

A. The Clergy opposed us on the general principle that "He who is not with

me is against me." Since Theosophy does not agree with any one Sect or

Creed, it is considered the enemy of all alike, because it teaches that they

are all, more or less, mistaken. The missionaries in India hated and tried

to crush us because they saw the flower of the educated Indian youth and the

Brahmins, who are almost inaccessible to them, joining the Society in large

numbers. And yet, apart from this general class hatred, the T.S. counts in

its ranks' many clergymen, and even one or two bishops.


Q. And what led the S.P.R. to take the field against you? You were both

pursuing the same line of study, in some respects, and several of the

psychic researchers belonged to your society.

A. First of all we were very good friends with the leaders of the S.P.R.;

but when the attack on the phenomena appeared in the Christian College

Magazine, supported by the pretended revelations of a menial, the S.P.R.

found that they had compromised themselves by publishing in their

"Proceedings" too many of the phenomena which had occurred in connection

with the T.S. Their ambition is to pose as an authoritative and strictly

scientific body; so that they had to choose between retaining that position

by throwing overboard the T.S. and even trying to destroy it, and seeing

themselves merged, in the opinion of the Sadducees of the grand monde, with

the "credulous" Theosophists and Spiritualists. There was no way for them

out of it, no two choices, and they chose to throw us overboard. It was a

matter of dire necessity for them. But so hard pressed were they to find any

apparently reasonable motive for the life of devotion and ceaseless labor

led by the two Founders, and for the complete absence of any pecuniary

profit or other advantage to them, that our enemies were obliged to resort

to the thrice-absurd, eminently ridiculous, and now famous "Russian spy

theory," to explain this devotion. But the old saying, "The blood of the

martyrs is the seed of the Church," proved once more correct. After the

first shock of this attack, the T.S. doubled and tripled its numbers, but

the bad impression produced still remains. A French author was right in

saying, "Calomniez, calomniez toujours et encore, il en restera toujours

quelque chose." Therefore it is, that unjust prejudices are current, and

that everything connected with the T.S., and especially with its Founders,

is so falsely distorted, because based on malicious hearsay alone.

A, Yet in the 14 years during which the Society has existed, you must have

had ample time and opportunity to show yourselves and your work in their

true light?



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A. How, or when, have we been given such an opportunity? Our most prominent

members had an aversion to anything that looked like publicly justifying

themselves. Their policy has ever been: "We must live it down;" and "What

does it matter what the newspapers say, or people think?" The Society was

too poor to send out public lecturers, and therefore the expositions of our

views and doctrines were confined to a few Theosophical works that met with

success, but which people often misunderstood, or only knew of through

hearsay. Our journals were, and still are, boycotted; our literary works

ignored; and to this day no one seems even to feel quite certain whether the

Theosophists are a kind of Serpent-and-Devil worshipers, or simply "Esoteric

Buddhists"-whatever that may mean. It was useless for us to go on denying,

day after day and year after year, every kind of inconceivable cock-and-bull

stories about us; for, no sooner was one disposed of, than another, a still

more absurd and malicious one, was born out of the ashes of the first.

Unfortunately, human nature is so constituted that any good said of a person

is immediately forgotten and never repeated. But one has only to utter a

slander, or to start a story-no matter how absurd, false, or incredible it

may be, if only it is connected with some unpopular character-for it to be

successful and forthwith accepted as a historical fact. Like Don Basilio's

Calumnia, the rumor springs up, at first, as a soft gentle breeze hardly

stirring the grass under your feet, and arising no one knows whence; then,

in the shortest space of time, it is transformed into a strong wind, begins

to blow a gale, and forthwith becomes a roaring storm! A slander among news,

is what an octopus is among fishes; it sucks into one's mind, fastens upon

our memory, which feeds upon it, leaving indelible marks even after the

slander has been bodily destroyed. A slanderous lie is the only master-key

that will open any and every brain. It is sure to receive welcome and

hospitality in every human mind, the highest as the lowest, if only a little

prejudiced, and no matter from however base a quarter and motive it has

started.


Q. Don't you think your assertion altogether too sweeping? The Englishman

has never been over-ready to believe in anything said, and our nation is

proverbially known for its love of fair play. A lie has no legs to stand

upon for long, and-A.

The Englishman is as ready to believe evil as a man of any other nation;

for it is human nature, and not a national feature. As to lies, if they have

no legs to stand upon, according to the proverb, they have exceedingly rapid

wings; and they can and do fly farther and wider than any other kind of

news, in England as elsewhere. Remember lies and slander are the only kind

of literature we can always get gratis, and without paying any subscription.

We can make the experiment if you like. Will you, who are so interested in

Theosophical matters, and have heard so much about us, will you put me

questions on as many of these rumors and "hearses" as you can think of? I

will answer you the truth, and nothing but the truth, subject to the

strictest verification.


Q. Before we change the subject, let us have the whole truth on this one.

Now, some writers have called your teachings "immoral and pernicious."

Others, on the ground that many so-called "authorities" and Orientalists

find in the Indian religions nothing but sex-worship in its many forms,

accuse you of teaching nothing better than Phallic worship. They say that

since modern Theosophy is so closely allied with Eastern, and particularly

Indian, thought, it cannot be free from this taint. Occasionally, even, they

go so far as to accuse European Theosophists of reviving the practices

connected with this cult. How about this?

A. I have heard and read about this before; and I answer that no more

utterly baseless and lying slander has ever been invented and circulated.

"Silly people can see but silly dreams," says a Russian proverb. It makes

one's blood boil to hear such vile accusations made without the slightest

foundation, and on the strength of mere inferences. Ask the hundreds of



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honorable English men and women who have been members of the Theosophical

Society for years whether an immoral precept or a pernicious doctrine was

ever taught to them. Open The Secret Doctrine, and you will find

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Page denouncing the Jews and other nations precisely on account of this

devotion to Phallic rites, due to the dead letter interpretation of nature

symbolism, and the grossly materialistic conceptions of her dualism in all

the exoteric creeds. Such ceaseless and malicious misrepresentation of our

teachings and beliefs is really disgraceful.


Q. But you cannot deny that the Phallic element does exist in the religions

of the East?

A. Nor do I deny it; only I maintain that this proves no more than does its

presence in Christianity, the religion of the West. Read Hargrave Jenning's

Rosicrucians, if you would assure yourself of it. In the East, the Phallic

symbolism is, perhaps, more crude, because more true to nature, or, I would

rather say, more naive and sincere than in the West. But it is not more

licentious, nor does it suggest to the Oriental mind the same gross and

coarse ideas as to the Western, with, perhaps, one or two exceptions, such

as the shameful sect known as the "Maharaja," or Vallabhacharya sect.


Q. A writer in the Agnostic journal-one of your accusers-has just hinted

that the followers of this disgraceful sect are Theosophists, and "claim

true Theosophic insight."

A. He wrote a falsehood, and that's all. There never was, nor is there at

present, one single Vallabhacharya in our Society. As to their having, or

claiming Theosophic insight, that is another fib, based on crass ignorance

about the Indian Sects. Their "Maharaja" only claims a right to the money,

wives, and daughters of his foolish followers and no more. This sect is

despised by all the other Hindus.

But you will find the whole subject dealt with at length in The Secret

Doctrine, to which I must again refer you for detailed explanations. To

conclude, the very soul of Theosophy is dead against Phallic worship; and

its occult or esoteric section more so even than the exoteric teachings.

There never was a more lying statement made than the above. And now ask me

some other questions.

-oOo-Is

the Theosophical Society A Money-Making Concern?


Q. Agreed. Well, have either of the Founders, Colonel H.S. Olcott or H.P.

Blavatsky, ever made any money, profit, or derived any worldly benefit from

the T.S., as some papers say?

A. Not one penny. The papers lie. On the contrary, they have both given all

they had, and literally beggared themselves. As for "worldly benefits,"

think of the slanders and vilification they have been subjected to, and then

ask the question!


Q. Yet I have read in a good many missionary organs that the entrance fees

and subscriptions much more than covered all expenses; and one said that the

Founders were making twenty thousand pounds a year!

A. This is a fib, like many others. In the published accounts of January,

1889, you will find an exact statement of all the money ever received from

any source since 1879. The total received from all sources (entrance fees,

donations, etc., etc.) during these ten years is under six thousand pounds,

and of this a large part was contributed by the Founders themselves from the

proceeds of their private resources and their literary work. All this has

been openly and officially admitted, even by our enemies, the Society for

Psychical Research. And now both the Founders are penniless: one, too old



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and ill to work as she did before, unable to spare time for outside literary

work to help the Society in money, can only write for the Theosophical

cause; the other keeps laboring for it as before, and receives as little

thanks for it.


Q. But surely they need money to live?

A. Not at all. So long as they have food and lodging, even though they owe

it to the devotion of a few friends, they need little more.


Q. But could not Madame Blavatsky, especially, make more than enough to live

upon by her writings?

A. When in India she received on the average some thousand rupees a year for

articles contributed to Russian and other papers, but gave it all away to

the Society.


Q. Political articles?

A. Never. Everything she has written throughout the seven years of her stay

in India is all there in print. It deals only with the religions, ethnology,

and customs of India, and with Theosophy-never with politics, of which she

knows nothing and cares less. Again, two years ago she refused several

contracts amounting together to about 1,200 rubles in gold per month; for

she could not accept them without abandoning her work for the Society, which

needed all her time and strength. She has documents to prove it.


Q. But why could not both she and Colonel Olcott do as others-notably many

Theosophists-do: follow out their respective professions and devote the

surplus of their time to the work of the Society?

A. Because by serving two masters, either the professional or the

philanthropic work would have had to suffer. Every true Theosophist is

morally bound to sacrifice the personal to the impersonal, his own present

good to the future benefit of other people. If the Founders do not set the

example, who will?


Q. And are there many who follow it?

A. I am bound to answer you the truth. In Europe about half-a-dozen in all,

out of more than that number of Branches.


Q. Then it is not true that the Theosophical Society has a large capital or

endowment of its own?

A. It is false, for it has none at all. Now that the entrance fee of £1 and

the small annual due have been abolished, it is even a doubtful question

whether the staff at the headquarters in India will not soon be starved to

death.


Q. Then why not raise subscriptions?

A. We are not the Salvation Army; we cannot and have never begged; nor have

we ever followed the example of the Churches and sects and "taken up

collections." That which is occasionally sent for the support of the

Society, the small sums contributed by some devoted Fellows, are all

voluntary donations.


Q. But I have heard of large sums of money given to Mme. Blavatsky. It was

said four years ago that she got £5,000 from one rich, young "Fellow," who

went out to join them in India, and £10,000 from another wealthy and

well-known American gentleman, one of your members who died in Europe four

years ago.



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A. Say to those who told you this, that they either themselves utter, or

repeat, a gross falsehood. Never has "Madame Blavatsky" asked or received

one penny from the two above-named gentlemen, nor anything like that from

anyone else, since the Theosophical Society was founded. Let any man living

try to substantiate this slander, and it will be easier for him to prove

that the Bank of England is bankrupt than that the said "Founder" has ever

made any money out of Theosophy. These two slanders have been started by two

high-born ladies, belonging to the London aristocracy, and have been

immediately traced and disproved. They are the dead bodies, the carcasses of

two inventions, which, after having been buried in the sea of oblivion, are

once more raised on the surface of the stagnant waters of slander.


Q. Then I have been told of several large legacies left to the T.S. One-some

£8,000-was left to it by some eccentric Englishman, who did not even belong

to the Society. The other-£3,000 or £4,000-were testated by an Australian

F.T.S. Is this true?

A. I heard of the first; and I also know that, whether legally left or not,

the T.S. has never profited by it, nor have the Founders ever been

officially notified of it. For, as our Society was not then a chartered

body, and thus had no legal existence, the Judge at the Court of Probate, as

we were told, paid no attention to such legacy and turned over the sum to

the heirs. So much for the first. As for the second, it is quite true. The

testator was one of our devoted Fellows, and willed all he had to the T.S.

But when the President, Colonel Olcott, came to look into the matter, he

found that the testator had children whom he had disinherited for some

family reasons. Therefore, he called a council, and it was decided that the

legacy should be refused, and the moneys passed to the legal heirs. The

Theosophical Society would be untrue to its name were it to profit by money

to which others are entitled virtually, at any rate on Theosophical

principles, if not legally.


Q. Again, and I say this on the authority of your own Journal, The

Theosophist, there's a R ja of India who donated to the Society 25,000

rupees. Have you not thanked him for his great bounty in the January

Theosophist for 1888?

A. We have, in these words, "That the thanks of the Convention be conveyed

to H.H. the Mah r ja … for his promised generous gift of Rupees 25,000 to

the Society's Fund." The thanks were duly conveyed, but the money is still a

"promise," and has never reached the Headquarters.


Q. But surely, if the Mah r ja promised and received thanks for his gift

publicly and in print, he will be as good as his promise?

A. He may, though the promise is 18 months old. I speak of the present and

not of the future.


Q. Then how do you propose to go on?

A. So long as the T.S. has a few devoted members willing to work for it

without reward and thanks, so long as a few good Theosophists support it

with occasional donations, so long will it exist, and nothing can crush it.


Q. I have heard many Theosophists speak of a "power behind the Society" and

of certain "Mahatmas," mentioned also in Mr. Sinnett's works, that are said

to have founded the Society, to watch over and protect it.

A. You may laugh, but it is so.

-oOo-The

Working Staff of the T.S.



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Q. These men, I have heard, are great Adepts, Alchemists, and what not. If,

then, they can change lead into gold and make as much money as they like,

besides doing all kinds of miracles at will, as related in Mr. Sinnett's The

Occult World, why do not they find you money, and support the Founders and

the Society in comfort?

A. Because they did not found a "miracle club." Because the Society is

intended to help men to develop the powers latent in them through their own

exertions and merit. Because whatever they may or may not produce in the way

of phenomena, they are not false coiners; nor would they throw an additional

and very strong temptation on the path of members and candidates: Theosophy

is not to be bought. Hitherto, for the past 14 years, not a single working

member has ever received pay or salary from either the Masters or the

Society.


Q. Then are none of your workers paid at all?

A. Till now, not one. But as everyone has to eat, drink, and clothe himself,

all those who are without any means of their own, and devote their whole

time to the work of the Society, are provided with the necessaries of life

at the Headquarters at Madras, India, though these "necessaries" are humble

enough, in truth! But now that the Society's work has increased so greatly

and still goes on increasing (owing to slanders) in Europe, we need more

working hands. We hope to have a few members who will henceforth be

remunerated-if the word can be used in the cases in question. For every one

of these Fellows, who are preparing to give all their time to the Society,

are quitting good official situations with excellent prospects, to work for

us at less than half their former salary.


Q. And who will provide the funds for this?

A. Some of our Fellows who are just a little richer than the rest. The man

who would speculate or make money on Theosophy would be unworthy to remain

in our ranks.


Q. But you must surely make money by your books, magazines, and other

publications?

A. The Theosophist of Madras, alone among the magazines, pays a profit, and

this has regularly been turned over to the Society, year by year, as the

published accounts show. Lucifer is slowly but steadily engulfing money,

never yet having paid its expenses-thanks to its being boycotted by the

pious booksellers and railway stalls. The Lotus, in France-started on the

private and not very large means of a Theosophist, who has devoted to it his

whole time and labor-has ceased to exist, owing to the same causes, alas!

Nor does the New York Path pay its way, while the Revue Théosophique of

Paris has only just been started, also from the private means of a

lady-member. Moreover, whenever any of the works issued by the Theosophical

Publishing Company in London do pay, the proceeds will be devoted to the

service of the Society.


Q. And now please tell me all you can about the Mahatmas. So many absurd and

contradictory things are said about them, that one does not know what to

believe, and all sorts of ridiculous stories become current.

A. Well may you call them "ridiculous!"

The "Theosophical Mahatmas"

Are They "Spirits of Light" or "Goblins Damned"?


Q. Who are they, finally, those whom you call your "Masters"? Some say they

are "Spirits," or some other kind of supernatural beings, while others call

them "myths."



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A. They are neither. I once heard one outsider say to another that they were

a sort of male mermaids, whatever such a creature may be. But if you listen

to what people say, you will never have a true conception of them. In the

first place they are living men, born as we are born, and doomed to die like

every other mortal.


Q. Yes, but it is rumored that some of them are a thousand years old. Is

this true?

A. As true as the miraculous growth of hair on the head of Meredith's

Shagpat. Truly, like the "Identical," no Theosophical shaving has hitherto

been able to crop it. The more we deny them, the more we try to set people

right, the more absurd do the inventions become. I have heard of Methuselah

being 969 years old; but, not being forced to believe in it, have laughed at

the statement, for which I was forthwith regarded by many as a blasphemous

heretic.


Q. Seriously, though, do they outlive the ordinary age of men?

A. What do you call the ordinary age? I remember reading in The Lancet of a

Mexican who was almost 190 years old; but I have never heard of mortal man,

layman, or Adept, who could live even half the years allotted to Methuselah.

Some Adepts do exceed, by a good deal, what you would call the ordinary age;

yet there is nothing miraculous in it, and very few of them care to live

very long.


Q. But what does the word Mahatma really mean?

A. Simply a "great soul," great through moral elevation and intellectual

attainment. If the title of "Great" is given to a drunken soldier like

Alexander, why should we not call those "Great" who have achieved far

greater conquests in Nature's secrets, than Alexander ever did on the field

of battle? Besides, the term is an Indian and a very old word.


Q. And why do you call them "Masters"?

A. We call them "Masters" because they are our teachers; and because from

them we have derived all the Theosophical truths, however inadequately some

of us may have expressed, and others understood, them. They are men of great

learning, whom we term Initiates, and still greater holiness of life. They

are not ascetics in the ordinary sense, though they certainly remain apart

from the turmoil and strife of your western world.


Q. But is it not selfish thus to isolate themselves?

A. Where is the selfishness? Does not the fate of the Theosophical Society

sufficiently prove that the world is neither ready to recognize them nor to

profit by their teaching? Of what use would Professor Clerk Maxwell have

been to instruct a class of little boys in their multiplication table?

Besides, they isolate themselves only from the West. In their own country

they go about as publicly as other people do.


Q. Don't you ascribe to them supernatural powers?

A. We believe in nothing supernatural, as I have told you already. Had

Edison lived and invented his phonograph two hundred years ago, he would

most probably have been burnt along with it, and the whole attributed to the

devil. The powers which they exercise are simply the development of

potencies lying latent in every man and woman, and the existence of which

even official science begins to recognize.


Q. Is it true that these men inspire some of your writers, and that many, if

not all, of your Theosophical works were written under their dictation?



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A. Some have. There are passages entirely dictated by them verbatim, but in

most cases they only inspire the ideas and leave the literary form to the

writers.


Q. But this in itself is miraculous; is, in fact, a miracle. How can they do

it?

A. My dear Sir, you are laboring under a great mistake, and it is science

itself that will refute your arguments at no distant day. Why should it be a

"miracle," as you call it? A miracle is supposed to mean some operation

which is supernatural, whereas there is really nothing above or beyond

Nature and Nature's laws. Among the many forms of the "miracle" which have

come under modern scientific recognition, there is Hypnotism, and one phase

of its power is known as "Suggestion," a form of thought transference, which

has been successfully used in combating particular physical diseases, etc.

The time is not far distant when the World of Science will be forced to

acknowledge that there exists as much interaction between one mind and

another, no matter at what distance, as between one body and another in

closest contact. When two minds are sympathetically related, and the

instruments through which they function are tuned to respond magnetically

and electrically to one another, there is nothing which will prevent the

transmission of thoughts from one to the other, at will; for since the mind

is not of a tangible nature, that distance can divide it from the subject of

its contemplation, it follows that the only difference that can exist

between two minds is a difference of state. So if this latter hindrance is

overcome, where is the "miracle" of thought transference, at whatever

distance?


Q. But you will admit that Hypnotism does nothing so miraculous or wonderful

as that?

A. On the contrary, it is a well-established fact that a Hypnotist can

affect the brain of his subject so far as to produce an expression of his

own thoughts, and even his words, through the organism of his subject; and

although the phenomena attaching to this method of actual thought

transference are as yet few in number, no one, I presume, will undertake to

say how far their action may extend in the future, when the laws that govern

their production are more scientifically established. And so, if such

results can be produced by the knowledge of the mere rudiments of Hypnotism,

what can prevent the Adept in Psychic and Spiritual powers from producing

results which, with your present limited knowledge of their laws, you are

inclined to call "miraculous"?

1. Then why do not our physicians experiment and try if they could not do

as much? *)

*) Like e.g. prof. Bernheim and Dr. C. Lloyd Tuckey in England, profs.

Beaunis and Ligeois in Nancy, Delboeuf in Liège, Burot en Bourru in

Rochefort, Fontain and Sigard in Bordeaux, Forel in Zrich, and the

physicians Despine in Marseille, Van Renterghem and Van Eeden in Amsterdam,

Wetterstrand in Stockholm, Schrenck-Notzing in Leipzig and many other

respected physicians and writers.

A. Because, first of all, they are not Adepts with a thorough understanding

of the secrets and laws of psychic and spiritual realms, but materialists,

afraid to step outside the narrow groove of matter; and, secondly, because

they must fail at present, and indeed until they are brought to acknowledge

that such powers are attainable.


Q. And could they be taught?

A. Not unless they were first of all prepared, by having the materialistic

dross they have accumulated in their brains swept away to the very last



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atom.


Q. This is very interesting. Tell me, have the Adepts thus inspired or

dictated to many of your Theosophists?

A. No, on the contrary, to very few. Such operations require special

conditions. An unscrupulous but skilled Adept of the Black Brotherhood

("Brothers of the Shadow," and Dugpas, we call them) has far less

difficulties to labor under. For, having no laws of the Spiritual kind to

trammel his actions, such a Dugpa "sorcerer" will most unceremoniously

obtain control over any mind, and subject it entirely to his evil powers.

But our Masters will never do that. They have no right, except by falling

into Black Magic, to obtain full mastery over anyone's immortal Ego, and can

therefore act only on the physical and psychic nature of the subject,

leaving thereby the free will of the latter wholly undisturbed. Hence,

unless a person has been brought into psychic relationship with the Masters,

and is assisted by virtue of his full faith in, and devotion to, his

Teachers, the latter, whenever transmitting their thoughts to one with whom

these conditions are not fulfilled, experience great difficulties in

penetrating into the cloudy chaos of that person's sphere. But this is no

place to treat of a subject of this nature. Suffice it to say, that if the

power exists, then there are Intelligences (embodied or disembodied) which

guide this power, and living conscious instruments through whom it is

transmitted and by whom it is received. We have only to beware of black

magic.


Q. But what do you really mean by "black magic"?

A. Simply abuse of psychic powers, or of any secret of nature; the fact of

applying to selfish and sinful ends the powers of Occultism. A hypnotist,

who, taking advantage of his powers of "suggestion," forces a subject to

steal or murder, would be called a black magician by us. The famous

"rejuvenating system" of Dr. Brown-Sequard, of Paris, through a loathsome

animal injection into human blood-a discovery all the medical papers of

Europe are now discussing-if true, is unconscious black magic.


Q. But this is medieval belief in witchcraft and sorcery! Even Law itself

has ceased to believe in such things?

A. So much the worse for law, as it has been led, through such a lack of

discrimination, into committing more than one judiciary mistake and crime.

It is the term alone that frightens you with its "superstitious" ring in it.

Would not law punish an abuse of hypnotic powers, as I just mentioned? Nay,

it has so punished it already in France and Germany; yet it would

indignantly deny that it applied punishment to a crime of evident sorcery.

You cannot believe in the efficacy and reality of the powers of suggestion

by physicians and mesmerizers (or hypnotists), and then refuse to believe in

the same powers when used for evil motives. And if you do, then you believe

in Sorcery. You cannot believe in good and disbelieve in evil, accept

genuine money and refuse to credit such a thing as false coin. Nothing can

exist without its contrast, and no day, no light, no good could have any

representation as such in your consciousness, were there no night, darkness,

nor evil to offset and contrast them.


Q. Indeed, I have known men, who, while thoroughly believing in that which

you call great psychic, or magic powers, laughed at the very mention of

Witchcraft and Sorcery.

A. What does it prove? Simply that they are illogical. So much the worse for

them, again. And we, knowing as we do of the existence of good and holy

Adepts, believe as thoroughly in the existence of bad and unholy Adepts,

or-Dugpas.


Q. But if the Masters exist, why don't they come out before all men and



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refute once for all the many charges which are made against Mme. Blavatsky

and the Society?

A. What charges?


Q. That they do not exist, and that she has invented them. That they are men

of straw, "Mahatmas of muslin and bladders." Does not all this injure her

reputation?

A. In what way can such an accusation injure her in reality? Did she ever

make money on their presumed existence, or derive benefit, or fame,

therefrom? I answer that she has gained only insults, abuse, and slanders,

which would have been very painful had she not learned long ago to remain

perfectly indifferent to such false charges. For what does it amount to,

after all? Why, to an implied compliment, which, if the fools, her accusers,

were not carried away by their blind hatred, they would have thought twice

before uttering. To say that she has invented the Masters comes to this: She

must have invented every bit of philosophy that has ever been given out in

Theosophical literature. She must be the author of the letters from which

Esoteric Buddhism was written; the sole inventor of every tenet found in The

Secret Doctrine, which, if the world were just, would be recognized as

supplying many of the missing links of science, as will be discovered a

hundred years hence. By saying what they do, they are also giving her the

credit of being far cleverer than the hundreds of men-many very clever and

not a few scientific men-who believe in what she says, inasmuch as she must

have fooled them all! If they speak the truth, then she must be several

Mahatmas rolled into one like a nest of Chinese boxes; since among the

so-called "Mahatma letters" are many in totally different and distinct

styles, all of which her accusers declare that she has written.


Q. It is just what they say. But is it not very painful to her to be

publicly denounced as "the most accomplished impostor of the age, whose name

deserves to pass to posterity," as is done in the Report of the Society for

Psychical Research?

A. It might be painful if it were true, or came from people less rabidly

materialistic and prejudiced. As it is, personally she treats the whole

matter with contempt, while the Mahatmas simply laugh at it. In truth, it is

the greatest compliment that could be paid to her. I say so, again.


Q. But her enemies claim to have proved their case.

A. Aye, it is easy enough to make such a claim when you have constituted

yourself judge, jury, and prosecuting counsel at once, as they did. But who,

except their direct followers and our enemies, believe in it?


Q. But they sent a representative to India to investigate the matter, didn't

they?

A. They did, and their final conclusion rests entirely on the unchecked

statements and unverified assertions of this young gentleman. A lawyer who

read through his report told a friend of mine that in all his experience he

had never seen "such a ridiculous and self-condemnatory document." It was

found to be full of suppositions and "working hypotheses" which mutually

destroyed each other. Is this a serious charge?


Q. Yet it has done the Society great harm. Why, then, did she not vindicate

her own character, at least, before a Court of Law?

A. Because:-1.

As a Theosophist, it is her duty to leave unheeded all personal insults.

2. Neither the Society nor Mme. Blavatsky had any money to waste over such a



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lawsuit.

3. It would have been ridiculous for both to be untrue to their principles,

because of an attack made on them by a flock of stupid old British wethers,

who had been led to butt at them by an over-frolicsome lambkin from

Australia.


Q. This is complimentary. But do you not think that it would have done real

good to the cause of Theosophy, if she had authoritatively disproved the

whole thing once for all?

A. Perhaps. But do you believe that any English jury or judge would have

ever admitted the reality of psychic phenomena, even if entirely

unprejudiced beforehand? And when you remember that they would have been set

against us already by the "Russian Spy" scare, the charge of Atheism and

infidelity, and all the other slanders that have been circulated against us,

you cannot fail to see that such an attempt to obtain justice in a Court of

Law would have been worse than fruitless! All this the psychic researchers

knew well, and they took a base and mean advantage of their position to

raise themselves above our heads and save themselves at our expense.


Q. The S.P.R. now denies completely the existence of the Mahatmas. They say

that from beginning to end they were a romance which Madame Blavatsky has

woven from her own brain?

A. Well, she might have done many things less clever than this. At any rate,

we have not the slightest objection to this theory. As she always says now,

she almost prefers that people should not believe in the Masters. She

declares openly that she would rather people should seriously think that the

only Mahatmaland is the grey matter of her brain, and that, in short, she

has evolved them out of the depths of her own inner consciousness, than that

their names and grand ideal should be so infamously desecrated as they are

at present. At first she used to protest indignantly against any doubts as

to their existence. Now she never goes out of her way to prove or disprove

it. Let people think what they like.


Q. But, of course, these Masters do exist?

A. We affirm they do. Nevertheless, this does not help much. Many people,

even some Theosophists and ex-Theosophists, say that they have never had any

proof of their existence. Very well; then Mme. Blavatsky replies with this

alternative: If she has invented them, then she has also invented their

philosophy and the practical knowledge which some few have acquired; and if

so, what does it matter whether they do exist or not, since she herself is

here, and her own existence, at any rate, can hardly be denied? If the

knowledge supposed to have been imparted by them is good intrinsically, and

it is accepted as such by many persons of more than average intelligence,

why should there be such a hullabaloo made over that question? The fact of

her being an impostor has never been proved, and will always remain sub

judice; whereas it is a certain and undeniable fact that, by whomsoever

invented, the philosophy preached by the "Masters" is one of the grandest

and most beneficent philosophies once it is properly understood. Thus the

slanderers, while moved by the lowest and meanest feelings-those of hatred,

revenge, malice, wounded vanity, or disappointed ambition-seem quite unaware

that they are paying the greatest tribute to her intellectual powers. So be

it, if the poor fools will have it so. Really, Mme. Blavatsky has not the

slightest objection to being represented by her enemies as a triple Adept,

and a "Mahatma" to boot. It is only her unwillingness to pose in her own

sight as a crow parading in peacock's feathers that compels her to this day

to insist upon the truth.


Q. But if you have such wise and good men to guide the Society, how is it

that so many mistakes have been made?



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A. The Masters do not guide the Society, not even the Founders; and no one

has ever asserted that they did: they only watch over, and protect it. This

is amply proved by the fact that no mistakes have been able to cripple it,

and no scandals from within, nor the most damaging attacks from without,

have been able to overthrow it. The Masters look at the future, not at the

present, and every mistake is so much more accumulated wisdom for days to

come. That other "Master" who sent the man with the five talents did not

tell him how to double them, nor did he prevent the foolish servant from

burying his one talent in the earth. Each must acquire wisdom by his own

experience and merits. The Christian Churches, who claim a far higher

"Master," the very Holy Ghost itself, have ever been and are still guilty

not only of "mistakes," but of a series of bloody crimes throughout the

ages. Yet, no Christian would deny, for all that, his belief in that

"Master"-I suppose?-although his existence is far more hypothetical than

that of the Mahatmas; as no one has ever seen the Holy Ghost, and his

guidance of the Church, moreover, their own ecclesiastical history

distinctly contradicts. Errare humanum est. Let us return to our subject.

-oOo-The

Abuse of Sacred Names and Terms


Q. Then, what I have heard, namely, that many of your Theosophical writers

claim to have been inspired by these Masters, or to have seen and conversed

with them, is not true?

A. It may or it may not be true. How can I tell? The burden of proof rests

with them. Some of them, a few-very few, indeed-have distinctly either lied

or were hallucinated when boasting of such inspiration; others were truly

inspired by great Adepts. The tree is known by its fruits; and as all

Theosophists have to be judged by their deeds and not by what they write or

say, so all Theosophical books must be accepted on their merits, and not

according to any claim to authority which they may put forward.


Q. But would Mme. Blavatsky apply this to her own works-The Secret Doctrine,

for instance?

A. Certainly; she says expressly in the Preface that she gives out the

doctrines that she has learnt from the Masters, but claims no inspiration

whatever for what she has lately written. As for our best Theosophists, they

would also in this case far rather that the names of the Masters had never

been mixed up with our books in any way. With few exceptions, most of such

works are not only imperfect, but positively erroneous and misleading. Great

are the desecrations to which the names of two of the Masters have been

subjected. There is hardly a medium who has not claimed to have seen them.

Every bogus swindling Society, for commercial purposes, now claims to be

guided and directed by "Masters," often supposed to be far higher than ours!

Many and heavy are the sins of those who advanced these claims, prompted

either by desire for material gain, vanity, or irresponsible mediumship.

Many persons have been plundered of their money by such societies, which

offer to sell the secrets of power, knowledge, and spiritual truth for

worthless gold. Worst of all, the sacred names of Occultism and the holy

keepers thereof have been dragged in this filthy mire, polluted by being

associated with sordid motives and immoral practices, while thousands of men

have been held back from the path of truth and light through the discredit

and evil report which such shams, swindles, and frauds have brought upon the

whole subject. I say again, every earnest Theosophist regrets today, from

the bottom of his heart, that these sacred names and things have ever been

mentioned before the public, and fervently wishes that they had been kept

secret within a small circle of trusted and devoted friends.


Q. The names certainly do occur very frequently now-a-days, and I never

remember hearing of such persons as "Masters" till quite recently.



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A. It is so; and had we acted on the wise principle of silence, instead of

rushing into notoriety and publishing all we knew and heard, such

desecration would never have occurred. Behold, only fourteen years ago,

before the Theosophical Society was founded, all the talk was of "Spirits."

They were everywhere, in everyone's mouth; and no one by any chance even

dreamt of talking about living "Adepts," "Mahatmas," or "Masters." One

hardly heard even the name of the Rosicrucians, while the existence of such

a thing as "Occultism" was suspected even but by very few. Now all that is

changed. We Theosophists were, unfortunately, the first to talk of these

things, to make the fact of the existence in the East of "Adepts" and

"Masters" and Occult knowledge known; and now the name has become common

property. It is on us, now, that the Karma, the consequences of the

resulting desecration of holy names and things, has fallen. All that you now

find about such matters in current literature-and there is not a little of

it-all is to be traced back to the impulse given in this direction by the

Theosophical Society and its Founders. Our enemies profit to this day by our

mistake. The most recent book directed against our teachings is alleged to

have been written by an Adept of twenty years' standing. Now, it is a

palpable lie. We know the amanuensis and his inspirers (as he is himself too

ignorant to have written anything of the sort). These "inspirers" are living

persons, revengeful and unscrupulous in proportion to their intellectual

powers; and these bogus Adepts are not one, but several. The cycle of

"Adepts," used as sledge-hammers to break the theosophical heads with, began

twelve years ago, with Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten's "Louis" of Art Magic and

Ghostland, and now ends with the "Adept" and "Author" of The Light of Egypt,

a work written by Spiritualists against Theosophy and its teachings. But it

is useless to grieve over what is done, and we can only suffer in the hope

that our indiscretions may have made it a little easier for others to find

the way to these Masters, whose names are now everywhere taken in vain, and

under cover of which so many iniquities have already been perpetrated.


Q. Do you reject "Louis" as an Adept?

A. We denounce no one, leaving this noble task to our enemies. The

Spiritualistic author of Art Magic, etc., may or may not have been

acquainted with such an Adept-and saying this, I say far less than what that

lady has said and written about us and Theosophy for the last several

years-that is her own business. Only when, in a solemn scene of mystic

vision, an alleged "Adept" sees "spirits" presumably at Greenwich, England,

through Lord Rosse's telescope, which was built in, and never moved from,

Parsonstown, Ireland, I may well be permitted to wonder at the ignorance of

that "Adept" in matters of science. This beats all the mistakes and blunders

committed at times by the Chelas of our Teachers! And it is this "Adept"

that is used now to break the teachings of our Masters!


Q. I quite understand your feeling in this matter, and think it only

natural. And now, in view of all that you have said and explained to me,

there is one subject on which I should like to ask you a few questions.

A. If I can answer them I will. What is that?

Conclusion

The Future of the Theosophical Society


Q. Tell me, what do you expect for Theosophy in the future?

A. If you speak of Theosophy, I answer that, as it has existed eternally

throughout the endless cycles upon cycles of the Past, so it will ever exist

throughout the infinitude of the Future, because Theosophy is synonymous

with everlasting truth.


Q. Pardon me; I meant to ask you rather about the prospects of the

Theosophical Society.



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A. Its future will depend almost entirely upon the degree of selflessness,

earnestness, devotion, and last, but not least, on the amount of knowledge

and wisdom possessed by those members, on whom it will fall to carry on the

work, and to direct the Society after the death of the Founders.


Q. I quite see the importance of their being selfless and devoted, but I do

not quite grasp how their knowledge can be as vital a factor in the question

as these other qualities. Surely the literature which already exists, and to

which constant additions are still being made, ought to be sufficient?

A. I do not refer to technical knowledge of the esoteric doctrine, though

that is most important; I spoke rather of the great need which our

successors in the guidance of the Society will have of unbiased and clear

judgment. Every such attempt as the Theosophical Society has hitherto ended

in failure, because, sooner or later, it has degenerated into a sect, set up

hard-and-fast dogmas of its own, and so lost by imperceptible degrees that

vitality which living truth alone can impart. You must remember that all our

members have been bred and born in some creed or religion, that all are more

or less of their generation both physically and mentally, and consequently

that their judgment is but too likely to be warped and unconsciously biased

by some or all of these influences. If, then, they cannot be freed from such

inherent bias, or at least taught to recognize it instantly and so avoid

being led away by it, the result can only be that the Society will drift off

onto some sandbank of thought or another, and there remain a stranded

carcass to molder and die.


Q. But if this danger be averted?

A. Then the Society will live on into and through the twentieth century. It

will gradually leaven and permeate the great mass of thinking and

intelligent people with its large-minded and noble ideas of Religion, Duty,

and Philanthropy. Slowly but surely it will burst asunder the iron fetters

of creeds and dogmas, of social and caste prejudices; it will break down

racial and national antipathies and barriers, and will open the way to the

practical realization of the Brotherhood of all men. Through its teaching,

through the philosophy which it has rendered accessible and intelligible to

the modern mind, the West will learn to understand and appreciate the East

at its true value. Further, the development of the psychic powers and

faculties, the premonitory symptoms of which are already visible in America,

will proceed healthily and normally. Mankind will be saved from the terrible

dangers, both mental and bodily, which are inevitable when that unfolding

takes place, as it threatens to do, in a hotbed of selfishness and all evil

passions. Man's mental and psychic growth will proceed in harmony with his

moral improvement, while his material surroundings will reflect the peace

and fraternal goodwill which will reign in his mind, instead of the discord

and strife which is everywhere apparent around us today.


Q. A truly delightful picture! But tell me, do you really expect all this to

be accomplished in one short century?

A. Scarcely. But I must tell you that during the last quarter of every

hundred years an attempt is made by those "Masters," of whom I have spoken,

to help on the spiritual progress of Humanity in a marked and definite way.

Towards the close of each century you will invariably find that an

outpouring or upheaval of spirituality-or call it mysticism if you

prefer-has taken place. Some one or more persons have appeared in the world

as their agents, and a greater or less amount of occult knowledge and

teaching has been given out. If you care to do so, you can trace these

movements back, century by century, as far as our detailed historical

records extend.


Q. But how does this bear on the future of the Theosophical Society?



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A. If the present attempt, in the form of our Society, succeeds better than

its predecessors have done, then it will be in existence as an organized,

living, and healthy body when the time comes for the effort of the twentieth

century. The general condition of men's minds and hearts will have been

improved and purified by the spread of its teachings, and, as I have said,

their prejudices and dogmatic illusions will have been, to some extent at

least, removed. Not only so, but besides a large and accessible literature

ready to men's hands, the next impulse will find a numerous and united body

of people ready to welcome the new torch-bearer of Truth. He will find the

minds of men prepared for his message, a language ready for him in which to

clothe the new truths he brings, an organization awaiting his arrival, which

will remove the merely mechanical, material obstacles and difficulties from

his path. Think how much one, to whom such an opportunity is given, could

accomplish. Measure it by comparison with what the Theosophical Society

actually has achieved in the last fourteen years, without any of these

advantages and surrounded by hosts of hindrances which would not hamper the

new leader. Consider all this, and then tell me whether I am too sanguine

when I say that if the Theosophical Society survives and lives true to its

mission, to its original impulses through the next hundred years-tell me, I

say, if I go too far in asserting that earth will be a heaven in the

twenty-first century in comparison with what it is now!

finis

Glossary

Absoluteness When predicated of the Universal Principle, it denotes an

abstraction, which is more correct and logical than to apply the adjective

absolute to that which can have neither attributes nor limitations.

Adam Kadmon (Heb.)

Archetypal man, Humanity. The "Heavenly man" not fallen into sin. Cabalists

refer it to the Ten Sephiroth on the plane of human perception.

In the Cabala Adam Kadmon is the manifested Logos corresponding to our third

Logos, the unmanifested being the first paradigmic ideal man, and

symbolizing the universe in abscondito, or in its "privation" in the

Aristotelian sense.

The first Logos is "the light of the World," the second, and the third, its

gradually deepening shadows.

Adept (Lat. adeptus) In Occultism, one who has reached the stage of

initiation and become a master in the Science of Esoteric Philosophy.

Aether (Gr.) With the Ancients, the Divine luminiferous substance which

pervades the whole universe; the "garment" of the Supreme Deity, Zeus, or

Jupiter. With the Moderns, Ether, for the meaning of which, in physics and

chemistry, see Webster's Dictionary, or some other. In Esotericism, Aether

is the third principle of the Kosmic Septenary, matter (earth) being the

lowest, and akasha, the highest.

Agathon (Gr.) Plato's Supreme Deity, lit. "the good." Our Alaya or the Soul

of the World.

Agnostic A word first used by Professor Huxley, to indicate one who believes

nothing which cannot be demonstrated by the senses.

Ahankara (Sans.) The conception of "I," self-consciousness or self-identity;

the "I," or egoistical and Mayavic principle in man, due to our ignorance

which separates our "I" from the Universal One-Self. Personality, egoism

also.



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Ain-Soph (Heb.) The "Boundless" or "Limitless" Deity emanating and

extending. Ain-Soph is also written En-Soph and Ain-Suph, for no one, not

even the Rabbis, are quite sure of their vowels. In the religious

metaphysics of the old Hebrew philosophers, the One Principle was an

abstraction like Parabrahman, though modern Cabalists have succeeded by mere

dint of sophistry and paradoxes in making a "Supreme God" of it, and nothing

higher. But with the early Chaldean Cabalists Ain-Soph was "without form or

being" with "no likeness with anything else." That Ain-Soph has never been

considered as the "Creator" is proved conclusively by the fact that such an

orthodox Jew as Philo calls "creator" the Logos, who stands next the

"Limitless One," and is "the Second God." "The Second God is in its

(Ain-Soph's) wisdom," says Philo in Quæst et Solut. Deity is no-thing; it is

nameless, and therefore called Ain-Soph-the word Ain meaning nothing.

Alchemy (Arabic Ul-Khemi) the chemistry of nature. Ul-Khemi or Al-Kimia,

however, is really an Arabianized word, taken from the Greek 'chemeia' from

'chumos': "juice," extracted from a plant. Alchemy deals with the finer

forces of nature and the various conditions of matter in which they are

found to operate. Seeking under the veil of language, more or less

artificial, to convey to the uninitiated so much of the Mysterium Magnum as

is safe in the hands of a selfish world, the Alchemist postulates as his

first principle, the existence of a certain Universal Solvent in the

homogeneous substance from which the elements were evolved; which substance

he calls pure gold, or summum materiae. This solvent, also called menstruum

universale, possesses the power of removing all the seeds of disease out of

the human body, of renewing youth, and prolonging life. Such is the lapis

philosophorum (philosopher's stone). Alchemy first penetrated into Europe

through Geber, the great Arabian sage and philosopher, in the eighth century

of our era; but it was known and practiced long ages ago in China and Egypt.

Numerous papyri on Alchemy, and other proofs that it was the favorite study

of Kings and Priests, have been exhumed and preserved under the generic name

of Hermetic treatises. Alchemy is studied under three distinct aspects,

which admit of many different interpretations, viz.: the Cosmic, the Human,

and the Terrestrial.

These three methods were typified under the three alchemical

properties-sulphur, mercury, and salt. Different writers have stated that

these are three, seven, ten, and twelve processes respectively; but they are

all agreed there is but one object in Alchemy, which is to transmute gross

metals into pure gold. But what that gold really is, very few people

understand correctly. No doubt there is such a thing in Nature as

transmutation of the baser metal into the nobler; but this is only one

aspect of Alchemy, the terrestrial, or purely material, for we see logically

the same process taking place in the bowels of the earth. Yet, besides and

beyond this interpretation, there is in Alchemy a symbolical meaning, purely

psychic and spiritual. While the Cabalist-Alchemist seeks for the

realization of the former, the Occultist-Alchemist, spurning the gold of the

earth, gives all his attention to and directs his efforts only towards the

transmutation of the baser quaternary into the divine upper trinity of man,

which when finally blended, is one. The spiritual, mental, psychic, and

physical planes of human existence are in Alchemy compared to the four

elements-fire, air, water, and earth, and are each capable of a three-fold

constitution, i.e., fixed, unstable, and volatile. Little or nothing is

known by the world concerning the origin of this archaic branch of

philosophy; but it is certain that it antedates the construction of any

known Zodiac, and as dealing with the personified forces of nature, probably

also any of the mythologies of the world. Nor is there any doubt that the

true secrets of transmutation (on the physical plane) were known in the days

of old, and lost before the dawn of the so-called historical period. Modern

chemistry owes its best fundamental discoveries to Alchemy, but regardless

of the undeniable truism of the latter, that there is but one element in the

universe, chemistry placed metals in the class of elements, and is only now

beginning to find out its gross mistake. Even some encyclopedists are forced

to confess that if most of the accounts of transmutation are fraud or



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delusion,

… yet some of them are accompanied by testimony which renders them probable.

By means of the galvanic battery even the alkalis have been discovered to

have a metallic basis. The possibility of obtaining metal from other

substances which contain the ingredients composing it, of changing one metal

into another … must therefore be left undecided. Nor are all Alchemists to

be considered impostors. Many have labored under the conviction of obtaining

their object, with indefatigable patience and purity of heart, which is

soundly recommended by Alchemists as the principal requisite for the success

of their labors.

Alexandrian School See Alexandrian Philosophers.

Alexandrian Philosophers This famous school arose in Alexandria, Egypt,

which city was for long ages the seat of learning and philosophy. It was

famous for its library, founded by Ptolemy Soter at the very beginning of

his reign-a library which once boasted 700,000 rolls, or volumes (Aulus

Gellius), for its museum, the first real Academy of Sciences and Arts, for

its world-renowned scholars, such as Euclid, the father of scientific

geometry; Apollonius of Perga, the author of the still-extant work on conic

sections; Nicomachus, the arithmetician: for astronomers, natural

philosophers, anatomists such as Herophilus and Erasistratus; physicians,

musicians, artists, etc. But it became still more famous for its eclectic,

or new Platonic school, founded by Ammonius Saccas in 173 ad, whose

disciples were Origen, Plotinus, and many other men now famous in history.

The most celebrated schools of the Gnostics had their origin in Alexandria.

Philo-Judaeus, Josephus, Iamblichus, Porphyry, Clement of Alexandria,

Eratosthenes the astronomer, Hypatia, the virgin philosopher, and numberless

other stars of second magnitude, all belonged at various times to these

great schools, and helped to make of Alexandria one of the most justly

renowned seats of learning that the world has ever produced.

Altruism from Alter, other. A quality opposed to Egoism. Actions tending to

do good to others, regardless of self.

Ammonius Saccas A great and good philosopher who lived in Alexandria between

the second and third centuries of our Era, the founder of the Neo-Platonic

School of the Philaletheians or "lovers of truth." He was of poor birth and

born of Christian parents, but endowed with such prominent, almost divine

goodness as to be called Theodidaktos, the "God-taught." He honored that

which was good in Christianity, but broke with it and the Churches at an

early age, being unable to find in Christianity any superiority over the old

religions.

Analogeticists The disciples of Ammonius Saccas (see above) so called

because of their practice of interpreting all sacred legends, myths, and

mysteries by a principle of analogy and correspondence, which rule is now

found in the Cabalistic system, and preeminently so in the schools of

Esoteric philosophy in the East.

Ananda (Sans.) Bliss, joy, felicity, happiness. A name of a favorite

disciple of Gautama, the Lord Buddha.

Anaxagoras A famous Ionian philosopher, who lived 500 bc, studied philosophy

under Anaximenes of Miletus, and settled in the days of Pericles, at Athens.

Socrates, Euripides, Archelaus, and other distinguished men and philosophers

were among his disciples and pupils. He was a most learned astronomer, and

was one of the first to explain openly that which was taught by Pythagoras

secretly-viz., the movements of the planets, the eclipses of the sun and

moon, etc. It was he who taught the theory of chaos, on the principle that

"nothing comes from nothing," ex nihilo nihil fit-and of atoms, as the

underlying essence and substance of all bodies, "of the same nature as the

bodies which they formed." These atoms, he taught, were primarily put in



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motion by nous (universal intelligence, the Mahat of the Hindus), which nous

is an immaterial, eternal, spiritual entity; by this combination the world

was formed, the material gross bodies sinking down, and the ethereal atoms

(or fiery ether) rising and spreading in the upper celestial regions.

Antedating modern science by over 2,000 years, he taught that the stars were

of the same material as our earth, and the sun a glowing mass; that the moon

was a dark uninhabitable body, receiving its light from the sun; and beyond

the aforesaid science he confessed himself thoroughly convinced that the

real existence of things, perceived by our senses, could not be demonstrably

proved. He died in exile at Lampsacus, at the age of seventy-two.

Anima Mundi (Lat.) The "Soul of the World," the same as Alaya of the

Northern Buddhists; the divine Essence which pervades, permeates, animates,

and informs all things, from the smallest atom of matter to man and god. It

is in a sense "the seven-skinned Mother" of the stanzas in The Secret

Doctrine; the essence of seven planes of sentience, consciousness, and

differentiation, both moral and physical. In its highest aspect it is

Nirvana; in its lowest, the Astral Light. It was feminine with the Gnostics,

the early Christians, and the Nazarenes; bisexual with other sects, who

considered it only in its four lower planes, of igneous and ethereal nature

in the objective world of forms, and divine and spiritual in its three

higher planes. When it is said that every human soul was born by detaching

itself from the Anima Mundi, it is meant, esoterically, that our higher Egos

are of an essence identical with It, and Mahat is a radiation of the ever

unknown Universal Absolute.

Anoia (Gr.) is "want of understanding," "folly"; and is the name applied by

Plato and others to the lower Manas when too closely allied with Kama, which

is characterized by irrationality (agnoia). The Greek agnoia is evidently a

derivative of the Sanskrit ajñana (phonetically agnyana), or ignorance,

irrationality, and absence of knowledge.

Anthropomorphism From the Greek Anthropos, man. The act of endowing God or

the gods with a human form and human attributes or qualities.

Anugita (Sans.) One of the Upanishads. A very occult treatise.

Apollo Belvidere Of all the ancient statues of Apollo, the son of Jupiter

and Latona, called Phoebus, Helios, the radiant, and the Sun-the best and

most perfect is the one of this name, which is in the Belvidere Gallery in

the Vatican, at Rome. It is called the Pythian Apollo, as the god is

represented in the moment of his victory over the serpent Python. The statue

was found in the ruins of Antium in 1503.

Apollonius of Tyana A wonderful philosopher born in Cappadocia about the

beginning of the first century; an ardent Pythagorean, who studied the

Phoenician sciences under Euthydemus, and Pythagorean philosophy and other

subjects under Euxenus of Heraclea. According to the tenets of the

Pythagorean school he remained a vegetarian the whole of his long life, ate

only fruit and herbs, drank no wine, wore vestments made only of plant

fibers, walked barefooted and let his hair grow to the full length, as all

the Initiates have done before and after him. He was initiated by the

priests of the temple of Aesculapius (Asclepios) at Aegae, and learnt many

of the "miracles" for healing the sick wrought by the God of medicine.

Having prepared himself for a higher initiation by a silence of five years,

and by travel-visiting Antioch, Ephesus, and Pamphylia and other parts-he

repaired via Babylon to India, alone, all his disciples having abandoned him

as they feared to go to the "land of enchantments." A casual disciple,

Damis, whom he met on his way, accompanied him, however, on his travels. At

Babylon he got initiated by the Chaldeans and Magi, according to Damis,

whose narrative was copied by one named Philostratus one hundred years

later. After his return from India, he showed himself a true Initiate in

that the pestilence, earthquakes, deaths of kings, and other events, which

he prophesied, duly happened.



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At Lesbos, the priests of Orpheus got jealous of him, and refused to

initiate him into their peculiar mysteries, though they did so several years

later. He preached to the people of Athens and other States the purest and

noblest ethics, and the phenomena he produced were as wonderful as they were

numerous, and well authenticated. "How is it," inquires Justin Martyr, in

dismay,

How is it that the talismans (telesmata) of Apollonius have power, for they

prevent, as we see, the fury of the waves, and the violence of the winds,

and the attacks of wild beasts; and whilst our Lord's miracles are preserved

by tradition alone, those of Apollonius are most numerous, and actually

manifested in present facts?

But an answer is easily found to this, in the fact that, after crossing the

Hindu Koosh, Apollonius had been directed by a king to the abode of the

Sages, whose abode it may be to this day, and who taught him their

unsurpassed knowledge. His dialogues, with the Corinthian Menippus, give to

us truly the esoteric catechism, and disclose (when understood) many an

important mystery of nature. Apollonius was the friend, correspondent, and

guest of kings and queens, and no wonderful or "magic" powers are better

attested than his. Towards the close of his long and wonderful life he

opened an esoteric school at Ephesus, and died at the ripe old age of one

hundred years.

Archangel Highest, supreme angel. From the two Greek words, arch, "first,"

and angelos, "messenger."

Arhat (Sans.) also pronounced and written Arahat, Arhan, Rahat, etc., "the

worthy one," a perfected Aryan, one exempt from reincarnation, "deserving

Divine honors." This was the name first given to the Jain, and subsequently

to the Buddhist holy men initiated into the esoteric mysteries. The Arhat is

one who has entered the last and highest path, and is thus emancipated from

rebirth.

Arians The followers of Arius, a presbyter of the Church in Alexandria in

the fourth century. One who holds that Christ is a created and human being,

inferior to God the Father, though a grand and noble man, a true adept,

versed in all the divine mysteries.

Aristobulus An Alexandrian writer, and an obscure philosopher. A Jew who

tried to prove that Aristotle explained the esoteric thoughts of Moses.

Aryan (Sans.) Lit., "the holy"; those who had mastered the aryasatyani and

entered the aryamarga path to Nirvana or Moksha, the great "fourfold" path.

They were originally known as ishis. But now the name has become the epithet

of a race, and our Orientalists, depriving the Hindu Brahmins of their

birthright, have made ryans of all Europeans. Since, in esotericism, the

four paths or stages can only be entered through great spiritual development

and "growth in holiness," they are called the aryamarga. The degrees of

Arhatship, called respectively Srotapatti, Sakridagamin, Anagamin, and

Arhat, or the four classes of aryas, correspond to the four paths and

truths.

Aspect The form (Rupa) under which any principle in septenary man or nature

manifests is called an aspect of that principle in Theosophy.

Astral Body The ethereal counterpart or double of any physical

body-Doppelgänger.

Astrology The science which defines the action of celestial bodies upon

mundane affairs, and claims to foretell future events from the positions of

the stars. Its antiquity is such as to place it among the very earliest

records of human learning. It remained for long ages a secret science in the



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East, and its final expression remains so to this day, its esoteric

application only having been brought to any degree of perfection in the West

during the lapse of time since Varaha Mihira wrote his book on Astrology,

some 1400 years ago. Claudius Ptolemy, the famous geographer and

mathematician who founded the system of Astronomy known under his name,

wrote his Tetrabiblos, which is still the basis of modern Astrology, in 135

ad. The science of Horoscopy is studied now chiefly under four heads, viz.:

1. Mundane, in its application to meteorology, seismology, husbandry.

2. State or Civic, in regard to the future of nations, Kings, and rulers.

3. Horary, in reference to the solving of doubts arising in the mind upon

any subject.

4. Genethliacal in connection with the future of individuals from birth unto

death.

The Egyptians and the Chaldeans were among the most ancient votaries of

Astrology, though their modes of reading the stars and the modern methods

differ considerably. The former claimed that Belus, the Bel or Elu of the

Chaldeans, a scion of the Divine Dynasty, or the dynasty of the King-gods,

had belonged to the land of Chemi, and had left it to found a colony from

Egypt on the banks of the Euphrates, where a temple, ministered by priests

in the service of the "lords of the stars," was built. As to the origin of

the science, it is known on the one hand that Thebes claimed the honor of

the invention of Astrology; whereas, on the other hand, all are agreed that

it was the Chaldeans who taught that science to the other nations. Now

Thebes antedated considerably, not only "Ur of the Chaldeans," but also

Nipur, where Bel was first worshipped-Sin, his son (the moon), being the

presiding deity of Ur, the land of the nativity of Terah, the Sabean and

Astrolater, and of Abram, his son, the great Astrologer of Biblical

tradition. All tends, therefore, to corroborate the Egyptian claim. If later

on the name of Astrologer fell into disrepute in Rome and elsewhere, it was

owing to the frauds of those who wanted to make money of that which was part

and parcel of the Sacred Science of the Mysteries, and who, ignorant of the

latter, evolved a system based entirely on mathematics, instead of

transcendental metaphysics with the physical celestial bodies as its Upadhi

or material basis. Yet, all persecutions notwithstanding, the number of

adherents to Astrology among the most intellectual and scientific minds was

always very great. If Cardan and Kepler were among its ardent supporters,

then later votaries have nothing to blush for, even in its now imperfect and

distorted form. As said in Isis:

Astrology is to exact astronomy, what psychology is to exact physiology. In

astrology and psychology one has to step beyond the visible world of matter

and enter into the domain of transcendent spirit.

Athenagoras A Platonic Philosopher of Athens, who wrote an apology for the

Christians in 177 ad, addressed to Marcus Aurelius, to prove that the

accusations brought against them, viz., that they were incestuous and ate

murdered children, were untrue.

Atma (Sans.) The Universal Spirit, the divine monad, "the seventh

Principle," so called, in the exoteric "septenary" classification of man.

The Supreme Soul.

Aura (Gr. and Lat.) A fine, delicate invisible essence or fluid that

emanates from human, animal, and other bodies. It is a psychic effluvium

partaking of both the mind and the body, as there is both an electro-vital

and at the same time an electro-mental aura; called in Theosophy the akashic

or magnetic aura. In R.C. Martyrology, a Saint.

Avatara (Sans.) Divine incarnation. The descent of a god or some exalted



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Being who has progressed beyond the necessity for rebirth, into the body of

a simple mortal. Krishna was an Avatara of Vishnu. The Dalai-Lama is

regarded as an Avatara of Avalokitesvara and the Tashi-Lama as one of

Tson-kha-pa, or Amitabha. These are two kinds of Avataras: one born from

woman and the other "parentless," Anupapadaka.

Beness A term coined by Theosophists to render more accurately the essential

meaning of the untranslatable word Sat. The latter word does not mean Being,

for the term Being presupposes a sentient consciousness of existence. But as

the term Sat is applied solely to the absolute principle, that universal,

unknown, and ever unknowable principle which philosophical Pantheism

postulates, calling it the basic root of Kosmos and Kosmos itself, it could

not be translated by the simple term Being. Sat, indeed, is not even, as

translated by some Orientalists, "the incomprehensible Entity," for it is no

more an "Entity" than a non-entity, but both. It is as said absolute

Beness-not "Being"-the one, secondless, undivided and indivisible All-the

root of nature both visible and invisible, objective and subjective,

comprehensible and-never to be fully comprehended.

Bhagavad-Gita (Sans.) Lit., "the Lord's Song," a portion of The Mahabharata,

the great epic poem of India. It contains a dialogue wherein Krisha (the

"Charioteer") and Arjuna (his Chela) have a discussion upon the highest

spiritual philosophy. The work is preeminently occult or esoteric.

Black Magic Sorcery; necromancy, or the raising of the dead and other

selfish abuses of abnormal powers. This abuse may be unintentional; still it

has to remain "black" magic whenever anything is produced phenomenally

simply for one's own gratification.

Böhme, Jacob A mystic and great philosopher, one of the most prominent

Theosophists of the medieval ages. He was born about 1575 at Old Diedenberg,

some two miles from Görlitz (Silesia), and died in 1624, being nearly fifty

years old. When a boy he was a common shepherd, and, after learning to read

and write in a village school, became an apprentice to a poor shoemaker at

Görlitz. He was a natural clairvoyant of the most wonderful power. With no

education or acquaintance with science he wrote works which are now proved

to be full of scientific truths; but these, as he himself says of what he

wrote, he "saw as in a Great Deep in the Eternal." He had "a thorough view

of the universe, as in chaos," which yet opened itself in him, from time to

time, "as in a young planet," he says. He was a thorough born mystic, and

evidently of a constitution which is most rare; one of those fine natures

whose material envelope impedes in no way the direct, even if only

occasional, intercommunication between the intellectual and spiritual Ego.

It is this Ego which Jacob Böhme, as so many other untrained mystics,

mistook for God. "Man must acknowledge," he writes, "that his knowledge is

not his own, but from God, who manifests the Ideas of Wisdom to the Soul of

Man in what measure he pleases." Had this great Theosophist been born 300

years later he might have expressed it otherwise. He would have known that

the "God" who spoke through his poor uncultured and untrained brain was his

own Divine Ego, the omniscient Deity within himself, and that what that

Deity gave out was not "what measure he pleased," but in the measure of the

capacities of the mortal and temporary dwelling it informed.

Book of the Keys An ancient Cabalistic work. The original is no longer

extant, though there may be spurious and disfigured copies and forgeries of

it.

Brahma (Sans.) The student must distinguish between the neuter Brahma, and

the male Creator of the Indian Pantheon, Brahmâ . The former Brahma or

Brahman is the impersonal, Supreme, and uncognizable Soul of the Universe,

from the essence of which all emanates, and into which all returns; which is

incorporeal, immaterial, unborn, eternal, beginningless, and endless. It is

all-pervading, animating the highest god as well as the smallest mineral

atom. Brahmâ, on the other hand, the male and the alleged Creator, exists in



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his manifestation periodically only, and passes into pralaya, i.e.,

disappears and is annihilated as periodically. (see below)

Brahmâ's Day A period of 2,160,000,000 years, during which Brahmâ, having

emerged out of his Golden Egg (Hiranyagarbha), creates and fashions the

material world (for he is simply the fertilizing and creative force in

Nature). After this period the worlds being destroyed in turn by fire and

water, he vanishes with objective nature; and then comes the Night of Brahmâ

(see below).

Brahmâ's Night A period of equal duration to Brahmâ's Day, in which Brahmâ

is said to be asleep. Upon awakening he recommences the process, and this

goes on for an age of Brahmâ composed of alternate "Days" and "Nights," and

lasting for 100 years of 2,160,000,000 each. It requires fifteen figures to

express the duration of such an age, after the expiration of which the

Maha-Pralaya or Great Dissolution sets in, and lasts in its turn for the

same space of fifteen figures.

Brahma-Vidya (Sans.) The knowledge or Esoteric Science about the true nature

of Brahma and Brahmâ.

Buddha (Sans.) "The enlightened." Generally known as the title of Gautama

Buddha, the Prince of Kapilavastu, the founder of modern Buddhism. The

highest degree of knowledge and holiness. To become a Buddha one has to

break through the bondage of sense and personality; to acquire a complete

perception of the real Self, and learn not to separate it from all the other

Selves; to learn by experience the utter unreality of all phenomena,

foremost of all the visible Kosmos; to attain a complete detachment from all

that is evanescent and finite, and to live while yet on earth only in the

immortal and everlasting.

Buddhi (Sans.) Universal Soul or Mind. Maha -Buddhi is a name of Mahat; also

the Spiritual Soul in man (the sixth principle exoterically), the vehicle of

atma, the seventh, according to the exoteric enumeration.

Buddhism the religious philosophy taught by Gautama Buddha. It is now split

into two distinct churches: the Southern and Northern. The former is said to

be the purer, as having preserved more religiously the original teachings of

the Lord Buddha. The Northern Buddhism is confined to Tibet, China, and

Nepal. But this distinction is incorrect. If the Southern Church is nearer,

and has not, in fact, departed, except perhaps in trifling dogmas, due to

the many councils held after the death of the Master, from the public or

exoteric teachings of Sakyamuni, the Northern Church is the outcome of

Siddhartha Buddha's esoteric teachings which he confined to his elect

Bhikshus and Arhats. Buddhism, in fact, cannot be justly judged in our age

either by one or the other of its exoteric popular forms. Real Buddhism can

be appreciated only by blending the philosophy of the Southern Church and

the metaphysics of the Northern Schools. If one seems too iconoclastic and

stern, and the other too metaphysical and transcendental, events being

overcharged with the weeds of Indian exotericism-many of the gods of its

Pantheon having been transplanted under new names into Tibetan soil-it is

due to the popular expression of Buddhism in both churches.

Correspondentially, they stand in their relation to each other as

Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. Both err by an excess of zeal and

erroneous interpretations, though neither the Southern nor the Northern

Buddhist clergy have ever departed from Truth consciously, still less have

they acted under the dictates of priestocracy, ambition, or an eye to

personal gain and power, as the later churches have.

Buddhi-Taijas (Sans.) A very mystic term, capable of several

interpretations. In Occultism, however, and in relation to the human

principles (exoterically), it is a term to express the state of our dual

Manas, when, reunited during a man's life, it bathes in the radiance of

Buddhi, the Spiritual Soul. For Taijas means the radiant, and Manas,



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becoming radiant in consequence of its union with Buddhi, and being, so to

speak, merged into it, is identified with the latter; the trinity has become

one; and, as the element of Buddhi is the highest, it becomes Buddhi-Taijas

. In short, it is the human soul illuminated by the radiance of the divine

soul, the human reason lit by the light of the Spirit or Divine

Self-Consciousness.

Cabala (Heb.)

The hidden wisdom of the Hebrew Rabbis of the middle ages derived from the

older secret doctrines concerning divine things and cosmogony, which were

combined into a theology after the time of the captivity of the Jews in

Babylon.

All the works that fall under the esoteric category are termed Cabalistic.

Caste Originally the system of the four hereditary classes into which Indian

population was divided: Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Sudra-(a)

descendant of Brahmâ; (b) warrior; (c) mercantile, and (d) the lowest or

agricultural Sudra class. From these four, hundreds of divisions and minor

castes have sprung.

Causal Body This "body," which is in reality no body at all, either

objective or subjective, but Buddhi the Spiritual Soul, is so-called because

it is the direct cause of the Sushupti state leading to the Turiya state,

the highest state of Samadhi. It is called Karanopadhi, "the basis of the

cause," by the "Taraka Raja" Yogis, and in the Vedanta System corresponds to

both the Vijñanamaya and Anandamayakosha (the latter coming next to Atma,

and therefore being the vehicle of the Universal Spirit). Buddhi alone could

not be called a "Causal body," but becomes one in conjunction with Manas,

the incarnating Entity or Ego.

Chela (Sans.) A disciple. The pupil of a Guru or Sage, the follower of some

Adept, or a school of philosophy.

Chréstos (Gr.) The early gnostic term for Christ. This technical term was

used in the fifth century bc by Aeschylus, Herodotus and others. The

Manteumata pythocresta, or the "Oracles delivered by a Pythian God" through

a pythoness, are mentioned by the former (Cho. 901), and Pythocréstos is

derived from chrao. Chrésterion is not only "the test of an oracle," but an

offering to, or for, the oracle. Chréstes is one who explains oracles, a

"prophet and soothsayer," and Chrésterios, one who serves an oracle or a

God. The earliest Christian writer, Justin Martyr, in his first Apology,

calls his coreligionists Chréstians. "It is only through ignorance that men

call themselves Christians, instead of Chréstians," says Lactantius The

terms Christ and Christians, spelt originally Chrést and Chréstians, were

borrowed from the Temple vocabulary of the Pagans. Chréstos meant, in that

vocabulary, "a disciple on probation," a candidate for hierophantship; who,

when he had attained it, through Initiation, long trials and suffering, and

had been anointed (i.e., "rubbed with oil," as Initiates and even Idols of

the Gods were, as the last touch of ritualistic observance), was changed

into Christos-the "purified" in esoteric or mystery language. In mystic

symbology, indeed, Christes or Christos meant that the "way," the Path, was

already trodden and the goal reached; when the fruits of the arduous labor,

uniting the personality of evanescent clay with the indestructible

Individuality, transformed it thereby into the immortal Ego. "At the end of

the way stands the Christes," the Purifier; and the union once accomplished,

the Chréstos, the "man of sorrow" became Christos himself. Paul, the

Initiate, knew this, and meant this precisely, when he is made to say in bad

translation, "I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you," the

true rendering of which is, "… until you form the Christos within

yourselves." But the profane, who knew only that Chréstos was in some way

connected with priest and prophet, and knew nothing about the hidden meaning

of Christos, insisted, as did Lactantius and Justin Martyr, on being called



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Chréstians instead of Christians. Every good individual, therefore, may find

Christ in his "inner man," as Paul expresses it, whether he be Jew, Muslim,

Hindu, or Christian.

Christ See Chréstos.

Christian Scientist A newly-coined term for denoting the practitioners of a

healing art by will. The name is a misnomer, since Buddhist or Jew, Hindu or

Materialist can practice this new form of Western Yoga with like success if

he can only guide and control his will with sufficient firmness. "Mental

Scientists" is another rival school. These work by a universal denial of

every disease and evil imaginable, and claim, syllogistically, that since

Universal Spirit cannot be subject to the ailing of flesh, and since every

atom is Spirit and in Spirit, and since, finally, they-the healers and the

healed-are all absorbed in this Spirit or Deity, there is not, nor can there

be, such a thing as disease. This prevents in nowise both Christian and

Mental Scientists from succumbing to disease and nursing chronic diseases

for years in their own bodies just like other ordinary mortals.

Clairaudience The faculty-whether innate or acquired by occult training-to

hear things at whatever distance.

Clairvoyance A faculty of seeing with the inner eye or spiritual sight. As

now used, it is a loose and flippant term, embracing under its meaning both

a happy guess due to natural shrewdness or intuition, and also that faculty

which was so remarkably exercised by Jacob Böhme and Swedenborg. Yet even

these two great seers, since they could never rise superior to the general

spirit of the Jewish Bible and Sectarian teachings, have sadly confused what

they saw, and fallen far short of true clairvoyance.

Clemens Alexandrinus A Church Father and voluminous writer, who had been a

Neo-Platonist and a disciple of Ammonius Saccas. He was one of the few

Christian philosophers between the second and third centuries of our era, at

Alexandria.

College of Rabbis A college at Babylon; most famous during the early

centuries of Christianity, but its glory was greatly darkened by the

appearance in Alexandria of Hellenic teachers, such as Philo-Judaeus,

Josephus, Aristobulus, and others. The former avenged themselves on their

successful rivals by speaking of the Alexandrians as Theurgists and unclean

prophets. But the Alexandrian believers in thaumaturgy were not regarded as

sinners and impostors when orthodox Jews were at the head of such schools of

"hazim." There were colleges for teaching prophecy and occult sciences.

Samuel was the chief of such a college at Ramah; Elisha, at Jericho. Hillel

had a regular academy for prophets and seers; and it is Hillel, a pupil of

the Babylonian College, who was the founder of the sect of the Pharisees and

the great orthodox Rabbis.

Cycle (Gr. Kuklos) The ancients divided time into endless cycles, wheels

within wheels, all such periods being of various durations, and each marking

the beginning or end of some event either cosmic, mundane, physical, or

metaphysical. There were cycles of only a few years, and cycles of immense

duration, the great Orphic cycle referring to the ethnological change of

races lasting 120,000 years, and that of Cassandrus of 136,000, which

brought about a complete change in planetary influences and their

correlations between men and gods-a fact entirely lost sight of by modern

astrologers.

Deist One who admits the possibility of the existence of a God or gods, but

claims to know nothing of either, and denies revelation. An agnostic of

olden times.

Deva (Sans.) A god, a "resplendent" Deity, Deva-Deus, from the root div, "to

shine." A Deva is a celestial being-whether good, bad or indifferent-which



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inhabits "the three worlds," or the three planes above us. There are 33

groups or millions of them.

Devachan (Sans.) The "Dwelling of the Gods." A state intermediate between

two earth-lives, and into which the Ego ( Atma-Buddhi-Manas, or the Trinity

made one) enters after its separation from Kamarupa, and the disintegration

of the lower principles, after the death of the body, on Earth.

Dhammapada (Sans.) A work containing various aphorisms from the Buddhist

Scriptures.

Dhyana (Sans.) One of the six Paramitas of perfection. A state of

abstraction which carries the ascetic practicing it far above the region of

sensuous perception, and out of the world of matter. Lit., contemplation.

The six stages of Dhyani differ only in the degrees of abstraction of the

personal Ego from sensuous life.

Dhyani-Chohans (Sans.) Lit., "The Lords of Light." The highest gods,

answering to the Roman Catholic Archangels. The divine Intelligences charged

with the supervision of Kosmos.

Double The same as the Astral body or "Doppelgänger."

Ecstasis (Gr.) A psycho-spiritual state; a physical trance which induces

clairvoyance, and a beatific state which brings on visions.

Ego (Lat.) "I"; the consciousness in man of the "I am I," or the feeling of

I-am-ship. Esoteric philosophy teaches the existence of two Egos in man, the

mortal or personal, and the higher, the divine or impersonal, calling the

former "personality," and the latter "individuality."

Egoity (from the word Ego). Egoity means "individuality"-never

"personality," as it is the opposite of Egoism or "selfishness," the

characteristic par excellence of the latter.

Eidolon (Gr.) The same as that which we term the human phantom, the Astral

form.

Elementals (Spirits of the Elements) The creatures evolved in the Four

Kingdoms, or Elements-Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. They are called by the

Cabalists, Gnomes (of the Earth), Sylphs (of the Air), Salamanders (of the

Fire), and Undines (of the Water), except a few of the higher kinds and

their rulers. They are rather the forces of nature than ethereal men and

women. These forces, as the servile agents of the occultist, may produce

various effects; but if employed by elementaries (Kamarupas)-in which case

they enslave the mediums-they will deceive. All the lower invisible beings

generated on the fifth, sixth, and seventh Planes of our terrestrial

atmosphere are called Elementals-Peris, Devs, Djins, Sylvans, Satyrs, Fauns,

Elves, Dwarfs, Trolls, Norns, Kobolds, Brownies, Nixies, Goblins, Pinkies,

Banshees, Moss People, White Ladies, Spooks, Fairies, etc., etc.

Eleusinia (Gr.) The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most famous and the most

ancient of all the Greek mysteries (save the Samothracian), and were

performed near the hamlet of Eleusis, not far from Athens. Epiphanius traces

them to the days of Iacchos (1800 bc) They were held in honor of Demeter,

the great Ceres, and the Egyptian Isis; and the last act of the performance

referred to a sacrificial victim of atonement and a resurrection, when the

Initiate was admitted to the highest degree of Epopt. The festival of the

Mysteries began in the month of Boëdromion (September), the time of

grape-gathering, and lasted from the 15th to the 22nd-seven days. The Hebrew

Feast of Tabernacles-the feast of ingatherings-in the month of Ethanim (the

seventh) also began on the 15th and ended on the 22nd of that month. The

name of the month (Ethanim) is derived, according to some, from Adonim,

Adonia, Attenim, Ethanim, and was in honor of Adonai, or Adonis (Tham),



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whose death was lamented by the Hebrews in the groves of Bethlehem. The

sacrifice of "Bread and Wine" was performed both in the Eleusinia and during

the Feast of Tabernacles.

Emanation (the doctrine of) is in its metaphysical meaning opposed to

evolution, yet one with it. Science teaches that, physiologically, evolution

is a mode of generation in which the germ that develops the fetus preexists

already in the parent, the development and final form and characteristics of

that germ being accomplished by nature; and that (as in its cosmology) the

process takes place blindly, through the correlation of the elements and

their various compounds. Occultism teaches that this is only the apparent

mode, the real process being Emanation, guided by intelligent forces under

an immutable Law. Therefore, while the Occultists and Theosophists believe

thoroughly in the doctrine of Evolution as given out by Kapila and Manu,

they are Emanationists rather than Evolutionists. The doctrine of Emanation

was at one time universal. It was taught by the Alexandrian, as well as by

the Indian philosophers, by the Egyptian, the Chaldean, and Hellenic

Hierophants, and also by the Hebrews (in their Cabala, and even in Genesis).

For it is only owing to deliberate mistranslation that the Hebrew word asdt

was translated "angels" from the Septuagint, while it means Emanations,

Aeons, just as with the Gnostics. Indeed, in Deuteronomy the word asdt or

ashdt is translated as "fiery law," whilst the correct rendering of the

passage should be, "from his right went (not a fiery law, but) a fire

according to law," viz., that the fire of one flame is imparted to and

caught up by another-like as in a trail of inflammable substance. This is

precisely Emanation, as shown in Isis Unveiled.

In Evolution, as it is now beginning to be understood, there is supposed to

be in all matter an impulse to take on a higher form-a supposition clearly

expressed by Manu and other Hindu philosophers of the highest antiquity. The

philosopher's tree illustrates it in the case of the zinc solution. The

controversy between the followers of this school and the Emanationists may

be briefly stated thus: The Evolutionist stops all inquiry at the borders of

"the unknowable." The Emanationist believes that nothing can be evolved-or,

as the word means, unwombed or born-except it has first been involved, thus

indicating that life is from a spiritual potency above the whole.

Esoteric Hidden, secret. From the Greek Esotericos-"inner," concealed.

Esoteric Bodhism Secret wisdom or intelligence, from the Greek Esotericos,

"inner," and the Sanskrit Bodhi, "knowledge," in contradistinction to

Buddhi, "the faculty of knowledge or intelligence," and Buddhism, the

philosophy or Law of Buddha (the Enlightened). Also written "Budhism," from

Budha (Intelligence, Wisdom) the Son of Soma.

Exoteric (Gr.) Outward, public; the opposite of esoteric or hidden.

Extra-Cosmic Outside of Kosmos or Nature. A nonsensical word invented to

assert the existence of a personal god independent of or outside Nature per

se; for as Nature, or the Universe, is infinite and limitless there can be

nothing outside it. The term is coined in opposition to the Pantheistic idea

that the whole Kosmos is animated or informed with the Spirit of Deity,

Nature being but the garment, and matter the illusive shadows, of the real

unseen Presence.

Eurasians An abbreviation of "European-Asians." The mixed colored races; the

children of the white fathers, and the dark mothers of India, and vice

versa.

Ferho (Gnostic). The highest and greatest creative power with the Nazarene

Gnostics (Codex Nazaraeus).

Fire-Philosophers The name given to the Hermetists and Alchemists of the

Middle Ages, and also to the Rosicrucians. The latter, the successors of



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Theurgists, regarded fire as the symbol of Deity. It was the source, not

only of material atoms, but the container of the Spiritual and Psychic

Forces energizing them. Broadly analyzed, Fire is a triple principle;

esoterically, a septenary, as are all the rest of the elements. As man is

composed of Spirit, Soul, and Body, plus a fourfold aspect; so is Fire. As

in the works of Robert Flood (de Fluctibus), one of the famous Rosicrucians,

fire contains-Firstly, a visible flame (body); secondly, an invisible,

astral fire (soul); and thirdly, spirit. The four aspects are (a) heat

(life), (b) light (mind), (c) electricity (Kamic or molecular powers), and

(d) the synthetic essences, beyond spirit, or the radical cause of its

existence and manifestation. For the Hermetist or Rosicrucian, when a flame

is extinct on the objective plane, it has only passed from the seen world

into the unseen; from the knowable into the unknowable.

Gautama (Sans.) A name in India. It is that of the Prince of Kapilavastu,

son of Sudhodana, the Sâkya King of a small territory on the borders of

Nepal, born in the seventh century bc, now called the "Savior of the world."

Gautama or Gotama was the sacerdotal name of the Sâkya family. Born a simple

mortal, he rose to Buddhaship through his own personal and unaided merit; a

man-verily greater than any God!

Gebirol Salomon Ben Jehudah, called in literature Avicebron. An Israelite by

birth, a philosopher, poet, and Cabalist; a voluminous writer and a mystic.

He was born in the eleventh century at Malaga (1021), educated at Saragossa,

and died at Valencia in 1070, murdered by a Mohammedan. His

fellow-religionists called him Salomon, the Sephardi, or the Spaniard, and

the Arabs, Abu Ayyub Suleiman-ben ya'hya Ibn Dgebirol, whilst the

Scholastics named him Avicebron (see Myers' Quabbalah). Ibn Gebirol was

certainly one of the greatest philosophers and scholars of his age. He wrote

much in Arabic, and most of his manuscript have been preserved. His greatest

work appears to be The Megôr Hayyim, i.e., The Fountain of Life, "one of the

earliest exposures of the secrets of the Speculative Cabala," as his

biographer informs us.

Gnosis (Gr.) Lit. "knowledge." The technical term used by the schools of

religious philosophy, both before and during the first centuries of

so-called Christianity, to denote the object of their enquiry. This

spiritual and sacred knowledge, the Gupta-Vidya of the Hindus, could only be

obtained by Initiation into Spiritual Mysteries of which the ceremonial

"Mysteries" were a type.

Gnostics (Gr.) The philosophers who formulated and taught the "Gnosis" or

knowledge. They flourished in the first three centuries of the Christian

Era. The following were eminent: Valentinus, Basilides, Marcion, Simon

Magus, etc.

Golden Age The ancients divided the life cycle into the Golden, Silver,

Bronze, and Iron Ages. The Golden was an age of primeval purity, simplicity,

and general happiness.

Great Age There were several "Great Ages" mentioned by the ancients. In

India it embraced the whole Maha-Manvantara the "Age of Brahmâ ," each "Day"

of which represents the Life Cycle of a chain, i.e., it embraces a period of

Seven Rounds. Thus while a "Day" and a "Night" represent, as Manvantara and

Pralaya, 8,640,000,000 years, an "age" lasts through a period of

311,040,000,000,000; after which the Pralaya or dissolution of the universe

becomes universal. With the Egyptian and Greeks the "Great Age" referred

only to the Tropical, or Sidereal year, the duration of which is 25,868

solar years. Of the complete age-that of the Gods-they said nothing, as it

was a matter to be discussed and divulged only at the Mysteries, and during

the Initiation Ceremonies. The "Great Age" of the Chaldeans was the same in

figures as that of the Hindus.

Guhya-Vidya (Sans.) The secret knowledge of mystic-mantras.



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Gupta-Vidya (Sans.) The same as Guhya-Vidya . Esoteric or secret science,

knowledge.

Gyges "The ring of Gyges" has become a familiar metaphor in European

literature. Gyges was a Lydian, who, after murdering the King Candaules,

married his widow. Plato tells us that Gyges descending once into a chasm of

the earth, discovered a brazen horse, within whose opened side was the

skeleton of a man of gigantic stature, who had a brazen ring on his finger.

This ring when placed on his own finger made him invisible.

Hades (Gr.), or Aides, the "invisible," the land of shadows; one of whose

regions was Tartarus, a place of complete darkness, as was also the region

of profound dreamless sleep in Amenti. Judging by the allegorical

description of the punishments inflicted therein, the place was purely

Karmic. Neither Hades nor Amenti were the Hell still preached by some

retrograde priests and clergymen; and whether represented by the Elysian

Fields or by Tartarus, they could only be reached by crossing the river to

the "other shore." As well expressed in the "Egyptian Belief," the story of

Charon, the ferryman (of the Styx) is to be found not only in Homer, but in

the poetry of many lands. The River must be crossed before gaining the Isles

of the Blest. The Ritual of Egypt described a Charon and his boat long ages

before Homer. He is Khu-en-na, "the hawk-headed steersman." (See Hell.)

Hallucinations A state produced sometimes by physiological disorders,

sometimes by mediumship, and at others by drunkenness. But the cause that

produces the visions has to be sought deeper than physiology. All such,

particularly when produced through mediumship, are preceded by a relaxation

of the nervous system, generating invariably an abnormal magnetic condition

which attracts to the sufferer waves of astral light. It is these latter

that furnish the various hallucinations, which, however, are not always, as

physicians would explain them, mere empty and unreal dreams. No one can see

that which does not exist-i.e., which is not impressed-in or on the astral

waves. But a seer may perceive objects and scenes (whether past, present, or

future) which have no relation whatever to himself; and perceive, moreover,

several things entirely disconnected with each other at one and the same

time, so as to produce the most grotesque and absurd combinations. But

drunkard and seer, medium and adept see their respective visions in the

astral light; only while the drunkard, the madman, and the untrained medium,

or one in a brain fever, see, because they cannot help it, and evoke jumbled

visions unconsciously to themselves without being able to control them, the

adept and the trained Seer have the choice and the control of such visions.

They know where to fix their gaze, how to steady the scenes they wish to

observe, and how to see beyond the upper outward layers of the astral light.

With the former such glimpses into the waves are hallucinations; with the

latter they become the faithful reproduction of what actually has been, is,

or will be taking place. The glimpses at random, caught by the medium, and

his flickering visions in the deceptive light, are transformed under the

guiding will of the adept and seer into steady pictures, the truthful

representation of that which he wills to come within the focus of his

perception.

Hell A term which the Anglo-Saxon race has evidently derived from the name

of the Scandinavian goddess, Hela, just as the word ad, in Russian and other

Slavonian tongues expressing the same conception, is derived from the Greek

Hades, the only difference between the Scandinavian cold Hell, and the hot

Hell of the Christians, being found in their respective temperatures. But

even the idea of these overheated regions is not original with the

Europeans, many people having entertained the conception of an underworld

climate; as well we may, if we localize our Hell in the center of the earth.

All exoteric religions-the creeds of the Brahmins, Buddhists, Zoroastrians,

Mohammedans, Jews, and the rest, made their Hells hot and dark, though many

were more attractive than frightful. The idea of a hot Hell is an

afterthought, the distortion of an astronomical allegory. With the Egyptians



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Hell became a place of punishment by fire not earlier than the 17th or 18th

Dynasty, when Typhon was transformed from a God into a Devil. But at

whatever time they implanted this dread superstition in the minds of the

poor ignorant masses, the scheme of a burning Hell and souls tormented

therein is purely Egyptian. Ra (the Sun) became the Lord of the Furnace, in

Karr, the Hell of the Pharaohs, and the sinner was threatened with misery

"in the heat of infernal fires." "A lion was there," says Dr. Birch, "and

was called the roaring monster." Another describes the place as "the

bottomless pit and lake of fire, into which the victims are thrown" (compare

Revelation). The Hebrew word gaï-hinnom (gehena) had never really the

significance given to it in Christian orthodoxy.

Hermas An ancient Greek writer, of whose works only a few fragments now

remain extant.

Hierogrammatists (Gr.) The title given to those Egyptian priests who were

entrusted with the writing and reading of the sacred and secret records. The

"scribes of the secret records" literally. They were the instructors of the

neophytes preparing for initiation.

Hierophant From the Greek Hierophantes, literally "he who explains sacred

things," a title belonging to the highest adepts in the temples of

antiquity, who were the teachers and expounders of the Mysteries, and the

Initiators into the final great Mysteries. The Hierophant stood for the

Demiurge, and explained to the postulants for Initiation the various

phenomena of creation that were produced for their tuition.

He was the sole expounder of the exoteric secrets and doctrines. It was

forbidden even to pronounce his name before an uninitiated person. He sat in

the East, and wore as symbol of authority, a golden globe, suspended from

the neck. He was also called Mystagogus.

Hillel A great Babylonian Rabbi of the century preceding the Christian Era.

He was the founder of the sect of the Pharisees, a learned and a saintly

man.

Hinayana (Sans.) The "Smaller Vehicle," a Scripture and a School of the

Buddhists, contrasted with the Mahayana, "The Greater Vehicle." Both schools

are mystical. (See Mahayana.) Also in exoteric superstition, the lowest form

of transmigration.

Homogeneity From the Greek words homos, "the same," and genos, "kind." That

which is of the same nature throughout, undifferentiated, non-compound, as

gold is supposed to be.

Hypnotism (Gr.) A name given by Dr. Braid to the process by which one man of

strong will-power plunges another of weaker mind into a kind of trance; once

in such a state the latter will do anything suggested to him by the

hypnotist. Unless produced for beneficial purposes, the Occultists would

call it black magic or sorcery. It is the most dangerous of practices,

morally and physically, as it interferes with the nerve fluids.

Iamblichus A great Theosophist and an Initiate of the third century. He

wrote a great deal about the various kinds of demons who appear through

evocation, but spoke severely against such phenomena. His austerities,

purity of life, and earnestness were great. He is credited with having been

levitated ten cubits high from the ground, as are some modern Yogis, and

mediums.

Illusion In Occultism everything finite (such as the Universe and all in it)

is called Illusion or Maya .

Individuality One of the names given in Theosophy and Occultism to the human

Higher Ego. We make a distinction between the immortal and divine and the



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mortal human Ego which perishes. The latter or "Personality" (personal Ego)

survives the dead body but for a time in Kamaloka: the Individuality

prevails forever.

Initiate From the Latin Initiatus. The designation of anyone who was

received into and had revealed to him the mysteries and secrets of either

Masonry or Occultism. In times of antiquity they were those who had been

initiated into the arcane knowledge taught by the Hierophants of the

Mysteries; and in our modern days those who have been initiated by the

adepts of mystic lore into the mysterious knowledge, which, notwithstanding

the lapse of ages, has yet a few real votaries on earth.

Isvara (Sans.) The "Lord" or the personal god, divine spirit in man.

Literally Sovereign (independent) existence. A title given to Siva and other

gods in India. Siva is also called Isvaradeva, or sovereign deva.

Iu-Kabar Zivo Gnostic term. The "Lord of the Aeons" in the Nazarene system.

He is the procreator (Emanator) of the seven holy lives (the seven primal

Dhyani-Chohans or Archangels, each representing one of the cardinal

virtues), and is himself called the third life (third Logos). In the Codex

he is addressed as the Helm and Vine of the food of life. Thus he is

identical with Christ (Christos) who says: "I am the true vine and my Father

is the husbandman." It is well known that Christ is regarded in the Roman

Catholic Church as the "Chief of the Aeons," as also is Michael, "who is as

God." Such also was the belief of the Gnostics.

Javidan Khirad (Pers.) A work on moral precepts.

Jñana (Sans.) Knowledge: Occult Wisdom.

Josephus Flavius A historian of the first century; a Hellenized Jew who

lived in Alexandria and died at Rome. He was credited by Eusebius with

having written the 16 famous lines relating to Christ, which were most

probably interpolated by Eusebius himself, the greatest forger among the

Church Fathers. This passage, in which Josephus, who was an ardent Jew and

died in Judaism, is nevertheless made to acknowledge the Messiahship and

divine origin of Jesus, is now declared spurious both by most of the

Christian Bishops (Lardner among others) and even by Paley (See his Evidence

of Christianity). It was for centuries one of the weightiest proofs of the

real existence of Jesus, the Christ.

Kamaloka (Sans.) The semi-material plane, to us subjective and invisible,

where the disembodied "personalities," the astral forms called Kamarupa,

remain until they fade out from it by the complete exhaustion of the effects

of the mental impulses that created these eidolons of the lower animal

passions and desires. (See Kamarupa.) It is the Hades of the ancient Greeks

and the Amenti of the Egyptians-the land of Silent Shadows.

Kamarupa (Sans.) Metaphysically and in our esoteric philosophy it is the

subjective form created through the mental and physical desires and thoughts

in connection with things of matter, by all sentient beings: a form which

survives the death of its body. After that death, three of the seven

principles-or, let us say, planes of the senses and consciousness on which

the human instincts and ideation act in turn-viz., the body, its astral

prototype, and physical vitality, being of no further use, remain on earth;

the three higher principles, grouped into one, merge into a state of

Devachan, in which state the Higher Ego will remain until the hour for a new

reincarnation arrives, and the eidolon of the expersonality is left alone in

its new abode. Here the pale copy of the man that was, vegetates for a

period of time, the duration of which is variable according to the element

of materiality which is left in it, and which is determined by the past life

of the defunct. Bereft as it is of its higher mind, spirit, and physical

senses, if left alone to its own senseless devices, it will gradually fade

out and disintegrate. But if forcibly drawn back into the terrestrial



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sphere, whether by the passionate desires and appeals of the surviving

friends or by regular necromantic practices-one of the most pernicious of

which is mediumship-the "spook" may prevail for a period greatly exceeding

the span of the natural life of its body. Once the Kamarupa has learnt the

way back to living human bodies, it becomes a vampire feeding on the

vitality of those who are so anxious for its company. In India these

Eidolons are called Pisachas-and are much dreaded.

Kapilavastu (Sans.) The birthplace of the Lord Buddha, called the "yellow

dwelling," the capital of the monarch who was the father of Gautama Buddha.

Kardec, Allan The adopted name of the Founder of the French Spiritists,

whose real name was Rivaille. It was he who gathered and published the

trance utterances of certain mediums and afterwards made a "philosophy" of

them between the years 1855 and 1870.

Karma (Sans.) Physically, action; Metaphysically, the Law of Retribution;

the Law of Cause and Effect or Ethical Causation. It is Nemesis only in the

sense of bad Karma. It is the eleventh Nidana in the concatenation of causes

and effects in orthodox Buddhism; yet it is the power that controls all

things, the resultant of moral action, the metaphysical Samskâra, or the

moral effect of an act committed for the attainment of something which

gratifies a personal desire. There is the Karma of merit and the Karma of

demerit. Karma neither punishes nor rewards; it is simply the one Universal

Law which guides unerringly and, so to say, blindly, all other laws

productive of certain effects along the grooves of their respective

causations. When Buddhism teaches that "Karma is that moral Kernel (of any

being) which alone survives death and continues in transmigration" or

reincarnation, it simply means that there remains nought after each

personality, but the causes produced by it, causes which are undying, i.e.,

which cannot be eliminated from the Universe until replaced by their

legitimate effects, and so to speak, wiped out by them. And such causes,

unless compensated during the life of the person who produced them with

adequate effects, will follow the reincarnated Ego and reach it in its

subsequent incarnations until a full harmony between effects and causes is

fully reestablished. No "personality"-a mere bundle of material atoms and

instinctual and mental characteristics-can, of course, continue as such in

the world of pure spirit. Only that which is immortal in its very nature and

divine in its essence, namely, the Ego, can exist forever. And as it is that

Ego which chooses the personality it will inform after each Devachan, and

which receives through these personalities the effects of the Karmic causes

produced, it is, therefore, the Ego, that Self, which is the "moral Kernel"

referred to, and embodied Karma itself, that "which alone survives death."

Kether (Heb.)

The Crown, the highest of the ten Sephiroth; the first of the supernal

Triad. It corresponds to the Macroprosopus, Vast Countenance, or Arikh

Anpin, which differentiates into Chokmah and Binah.

Krishna (Sans.) The most celebrated Avatara of Vishnu, the "Savior" of the

Hindus and the most popular god. He is the eighth Avatara, the son of Devaki

, and the nephew of Kansa, the Indian Herod, who while seeking for him among

the shepherds and cowherds who concealed him, slew thousands of their

newly-born babes. The story of Krishna's conception, birth, and childhood

are the exact prototype of the New Testament story. The missionaries, of

course, try to show that the Hindus stole the story of the Nativity from the

early Christians who came to India.

Kshetrajña or Kshetrajñesvara (Sans.) Embodied Spirit in Occultism, the

conscious Ego in its highest manifestations; the reincarnating Principle, or

the "Lord" in us.

Kumara (Sans.) A virgin boy or young celibate. The first Kumaras are the



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seven sons of Brahmâ , born out of the limbs of the god in the so-called

Ninth Creation. It is stated that the name was given to them owing to their

formal refusal to "procreate" their species, and thus they "remained Yogis"

according to the legend.

Labro, St. A Roman Saint solemnly beatified a few years ago. His great

holiness consisted in sitting at one of the gates of Rome night and day for

forty years, and remaining unwashed through the whole of that time, the

result of which was that he was eaten by vermin to his bones.

Lao-tzu (Chin.) A great Sage, Saint, and Philosopher, who preceded

Confucius.

Law of Retribution (See Karma).

Linga-sharîra (Sans.) "Astral body," i.e., the aerial symbol of the body.

This term designates the doppelgänger, or the "astral body" of man or

animal. It is the eidolon of the Greeks, the vital and prototypal body, the

reflection of the man of flesh. It is born before man and dies or fades out

with the disappearance of the last atom of the body.

Logos (Gr.) The manifested deity with every nation and people; the outward

expression or the effect of the Cause which is ever concealed. Thus, speech

is the logos of thought; hence, in its metaphysical sense, it is aptly

translated by the terms Verbum, and the Word.

Long Face A Cabalistic term, Areekh Anpeen in Hebrew; or "Long Face," in

Greek, Macroprosopus, as contrasted with "Short Face," or Zeir Anpeen, the

Microprosopus. One relates to Deity, the other to man, the "little image of

the great form."

Longinus, Dionysius Cassius A famous critic and philosopher, born in the

very beginning of the third century (about 213). He was a great traveler,

and attended at Alexandria the lectures of Ammonius Saccas, the founder of

Neo-Platonism, but was rather a critic than a follower. Porphyry (the Jew

Malek or Malchus) was his pupil before he became the disciple of Plotinus.

It is said of him that he was a living library and a walking museum. Towards

the end of his life he became the instructor in Greek literature of Zenobia,

Queen of Palmyra. She repaid his services by accusing him before the Emperor

Aurelius of having advised her to rebel against the latter, a crime for

which Longinus, with several others, was put to death by the Emperor in 273.

Macrocosm (Gr.) The "Great Universe" or Kosmos, literally.

Magic The "great" Science. According to Deveria and other Orientalists,

"Magic was considered as a sacred science inseparable from religion" by the

oldest and most civilized and learned nations. The Egyptians, for instance,

were a most sincerely religious nation, as were, and are still, the Hindus.

"Magic consists of, and is acquired by, the worship of the gods," says

Plato. Could, then, a nation which, owing to the irrefragable evidence of

inscriptions and papyri, is proved to have firmly believed in magic for

thousands of years, have been deceived for so long a time? And is it likely

that generations upon generations of a learned and pious hierarchy, many

among whom led lives of self-martyrdom, holiness, and asceticism, would have

gone on deceiving themselves and the people (or even only the latter) for

the pleasure of perpetuating belief in "miracles"? Fanatics, we are told,

will do anything to enforce belief in their god or idols. To this we reply:

In such cases Brahmins and Egyptian Rekhget-amens or Hierophants, would not

have popularized the belief in the power of man by magic practices, to

command the services of the gods: which gods are in truth but the occult

powers or potencies of Nature, personified by the learned priests

themselves, who reverenced only in them the attributes of the one unknown

and nameless Principle.



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As Proclus, the Platonist, ably puts it:

Ancient priests, when they considered that there is a certain alliance and

sympathy in natural things to each other, and of things manifest to occult

powers, and discovered that all things subsist in all, fabricated a sacred

science from this mutual sympathy and similarity … and applied for occult

purposes both celestial and terrene natures, by means of which, through a

certain similitude, they deduced divine natures into this inferior abode.

Magic is the science of communicating with, and directing supernal

supramundane potencies, as well as commanding those of lower spheres; a

practical knowledge of the hidden mysteries of nature which are known only

to the few, because they are so difficult to acquire without falling into

sin against the law. Ancient and medieval mystics divided magic into three

classes-Theurgia, Goetia, and Natural Magic.

Theurgia has long since been appropriated as the peculiar sphere of the

Theosophists and metaphysicians,

-says Kenneth Mackenzie.

Goetia is black magic, and "natural" or white magic has risen with healing

in its wings to the proud position of an exact and progressive study.

The remarks added by our late learned brother are remarkable:

The realistic desires of modern times have contributed to bring magic into

disrepute and ridicule … Faith (in one's own self) is an essential element

in magic, and existed long before other ideas which presume its

preexistence. It is said that it takes a wise man to make a fool; and a

man's idea must be exalted almost to madness, i.e., his brain

susceptibilities must be increased far beyond the low miserable status of

modern civilization, before he can become a true magician, for a pursuit of

this science implies a certain amount of isolation and an abnegation of

self.

A very great isolation certainly, the achievement of which constitutes a

wonderful phenomenon, a miracle in itself. Withal, magic is not something

supernatural. As explained by Iamblichus,

… they, through the sacerdotal theurgy, announce that they are able to

ascend to more elevated and universal essences, and to those that are

established above fate, viz., to god and the demiurgos: neither employing

matter, nor assuming any other things besides, except the observation of a

sensible time.

Already some are beginning to recognize the existence of subtle powers and

influences in nature, in which they have hitherto known nought. But, as Dr.

Carter Blake truly remarks:

The nineteenth century is not that which has observed the genesis of new,

nor the completion of old, methods of thought …

-to which Mr. Bonwick adds, that:

… if the Ancients knew but little of our mode of investigation into the

secrets of Nature, we know still less of their mode of research.

Magic, Black (See above). Sorcery, abuse of powers.

Magic, Ceremonial Magic, according to Cabalistic rites worked out, as

alleged by the Rosicrucians and other mystics, by invoking Powers higher

spiritually than Man, and commanding Elementals who are far lower than



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himself on the scale of being.

Magic, White or "Beneficent Magic," so called, is divine magic, devoid of

selfishness, love of power, of ambition or material gain, and bent only on

doing good to the world in general and one's neighbor in particular. The

smallest attempt to use one's abnormal powers for the gratification of self

makes of these powers sorcery or Black Magic.

Maha-Manvantara (Sans.) Lit., the great interludes between the Manus-the

period of universal activity. Manvantara here implies simply a period of

activity as opposed to Pralaya or rest-without reference to the length of

the cycle.

Mahat (Sans.) Lit. "The Great One." The first principle of Universal

Intelligence and consciousness. In the Puranic philosophy, the first product

of root-nature or Pradhana (the same as Mûlaprakiti); the producer of Manas

the thinking principle, and of Ahankâra, Egotism or the feeling of "I am I"

in the lower Manas.

Mahatma (Sans.) Lit., "Great Soul." An adept of the highest order. An

exalted being, who having attained to the mastery over his lower principles,

is therefore living unimpeded by the "man of flesh." Mahatmas are in

possession of knowledge and power commensurate with the stage they have

reached in their spiritual evolution. Called in Pali Rahats and Arahats.

Mahayana (Sans.) A school of Buddhist philosophy; lit., the "Great Vehicle."

A mystical system founded by Nagarjuna. Its books were written in the second

century bc.

Manas (Sans.) Lit., the "Mind." The mental faculty which makes of a man an

intelligent and moral being, and distinguishes him from the mere animal; a

synonym of Mahat. Esoterically, however, it means, when unqualified, the

Higher Ego or the sentient reincarnating Principle in man. When qualified it

is called by Theosophists Buddhi-Manas, or the spiritual soul, in

contradistinction to its human reflection-Kama-Manas.

Manasaputra (Sans.) Lit., the "Sons of Mind" or mind-born Sons; a name given

to our Higher Egos before they incarnated in mankind. In the exoteric though

allegorical and symbolical Purânas (the sacred and ancient writings of

Hindus), it is the title given to the mind-born Sons of Brahmâ , the Kumâra.

Manas Sutratman (Sans.) Two words meaning mind (Manas) and Thread Soul

(Sutratman). It is, as said, the synonym of our Ego, or that which

reincarnates. It is a technical term of Vedantic philosophy.

Manas-Taijas (Sans.) Lit., the "radiant" Manas; a state of the Higher Ego

which only high metaphysicians are able to realize and comprehend. The same

as "Buddhi-Taijas " (see above).

Mantras (Sans.) Verses from the Vedic works, used as incantations and

charms. By Mantras are meant all those portions of the Vedas which are

distinct from the Brâhmanas, or their interpretation.

Manu (Sans.) The great Indian legislator. The name comes from the Sanskrit

root man, to think, man really standing only for Svayambhuva, the first of

the Manus, who started from Svayambhu , the Self-Existent, who is hence the

Logos and the progenitor of mankind. Manu is the first legislator-almost a

divine being.

Manvantara (Sans.) A period of manifestation, as opposed to Pralaya

(dissolution or rest); the term is applied to various cycles, especially to

a Day of Brahmâ -4,320,000,000 Solar years-and to the reign of one

Manu-308,448,000. Lit., Manvantara-"between Manus."



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Master A translation from the Sanskrit Guru, "Spiritual teacher," and

adopted by the Theosophists to designate the Adepts, from whom they hold

their teachings.

Materializations In Spiritualism the word signifies the objective appearance

of the so-called "spirits of the dead," who reclothe themselves occasionally

in matter; i.e., they form for themselves out of the materials at hand found

in the atmosphere and the emanations of those present, a temporary body

bearing the human likeness of the defunct, as he appeared when alive.

Theosophists accept the phenomenon of "materialization," but they reject the

theory that it is produced by "Spirits," i.e., the immortal principles of

disembodied persons. Theosophists hold that when the phenomena are

genuine-which is a fact of rarer occurrence than is generally believed-they

are produced by the larvae, the eidolons, or Kamalokic "ghosts" of the dead

personalities. (See Kamaloka and Kamarupa.) As Kamaloka is on the

earth-plane and differs from its degree of materiality only in the degree of

its plane of consciousness, for which reason it is concealed from our normal

sight, the occasional apparition of such shells is as natural as that of

electric balls and other atmospheric phenomena. Electricity as a fluid, or

atomic matter (for Occultists hold with Maxwell that it is atomic), is ever,

though invisibly, present in the air and manifests under various shapes, but

only when certain conditions are present to "materialize" the fluid, when it

passes from its own onto our plane and makes itself objective. Similarly

with the eidolons of the dead. They are present around us, but being on

another plane do not see us any more than we see them. But whenever the

strong desires of living men and the conditions furnished by the abnormal

constitutions of mediums are combined together, these eidolons are drawn-nay

pulled down from their plane onto ours and made objective. This is

necromancy; it does no good to the dead, and great harm to the living, in

addition to the fact that it interferes with a law of nature. The occasional

materialization of the "astral bodies" or doubles of living persons is quite

another matter. These "astrals" are often mistaken for the apparitions of

the dead, since, chameleon-like, our own "elementaries" along with those of

the disembodied and cosmic Elementals, will often assume the appearance of

those images which are strongest in our thoughts. In short, at the so-called

"materialization seances," it is those present and the medium who create the

peculiar apparition. Independent "apparitions" belong to another kind of

psychic phenomena.

Materialist Not necessarily only one who believes in neither God nor soul,

nor the survival of the latter, but also any person who materializes the

purely spiritual; such as believe in an anthropomorphic deity, in a soul

capable of burning in hell fire, and a hell and paradise as localities

instead of states of consciousness. American "Substantialists," a Christian

sect, are materialists, as also the so-called Spiritualists.

Maya (Sans.) Illusion; the cosmic power which renders phenomenal existence

and the perceptions thereof possible. In Hindu philosophy that alone which

is changeless and eternal is called reality: all that which is subject to

change through decay and differentiation, and which has, therefore, a

beginning and an end, is regarded as Maya -illusion.

Mediumship A word now accepted to indicate that abnormal

psycho-physiological state which leads a person to take the fancies of his

imagination, his hallucinations, real or artificial, for realities. No

entirely healthy person on the physiological and psychic planes can ever be

a medium. That which mediums see, hear, and sense, is "real" but untrue; it

is either gathered from the astral plane, so deceptive in its vibrations and

suggestions, or from pure hallucinations, which have no actual existence,

but for him who perceives them. "Mediumship" is a kind of vulgarized

mediatorship in which one afflicted with this faculty is supposed to become

an agent of communication between a living man and a departed "Spirit."

There exist regular methods of training for the development of this

undesirable acquirement.



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Merkabah (Heb.)

A chariot. The Cabalists say that the Supreme, after he had established the

ten Sephiroth-which, in their totality, are Adam Kadmon, the Archetypal Man,

used them as a chariot or throne of glory in which to descend upon the souls

of men.

Mesmerism The term comes from Mesmer, who rediscovered this magnetic force

and its practical application toward the year 1775, at Vienna. It is a vital

current that one person may transfer to another; and through which he

induces an abnormal state of the nervous system that permits him to have a

direct influence upon the mind and will of the subject or mesmerized person.

Metaphysics From the Greek meta, beyond, and physica, the things of the

external material world. It is to forget the spirit and hold to the dead

letter, to translate it beyond nature or supernatural, as it is rather

beyond the natural, visible, or concrete. Metaphysics, in ontology and

philosophy is the term to designate that science which treats of the real

and permanent being as contrasted with the unreal, illusionary, or

phenomenal being.

Microcosm The "little" Universe meaning man, made in the image of his

creator, the Macrocosm, or "great" Universe, and containing all that the

latter contains. These terms are used in Occultism and Theosophy.

Mishnah (Heb.) Lit., "a repetition" from the word Shânâh, "to repeat"

something said orally. A summary of written explanations from the oral

traditions of the Jews and a digest of the Scriptures on which the later

Talmud was based.

Moksha (Sans.) The same as Nirvana; a postmortem state of rest and bliss of

the "Soul-pilgrim."

Monad It is the Unity, the One; but in occultism it often means the unified

duad, Atma-Buddhi-or that immortal part of man which incarnating in the

lower kingdoms and gradually progressing through them to Man, finds thence

way to the final goal-Nirvana.

Monas (Gr.) The same as the Latin Monad, "the only," a Unit. In the

Pythagorean system the Duad emanates from the higher and solitary Monas,

which is thus the First Cause.

Monogenes (Gr.) Literally, the "only-begotten," a name of Proserpine and

other gods and goddesses, as also of Jesus.

Mundakya Upanishad (Sans.) Lit., the "Mundaka esoteric doctrine." A work of

high antiquity; it has been translated by Raja Ram Mohun Roy.

Mysteries, Sacred They were enacted in the ancient temples by the initiated

Hierophants for the benefit and instruction of candidates. The most solemn

and occult were certainly those which were performed in Egypt by "the band

of secret-keepers," as Mr. Bonwick calls the Hierophants. Maurice describes

their nature very graphically in a few lines. Speaking of the Mysteries

performed in Philae (the Nile-island), he says:

It was in these gloomy caverns that the grand mystic arcana of the goddess

(Isis) were unfolded to the adoring aspirant, while the solemn hymn of

initiation resounded through the long extent of these stony recesses.

The word mystery is derived from the Greek mu , "to close the mouth," and

every symbol connected with them had a hidden meaning. As Plato and many of

the other sages of antiquity affirm, these mysteries were highly religious,

moral, and beneficent as a school of ethics. The Grecian Mysteries, those of



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Ceres and Bacchus, were only imitations of the Egyptian, and the author of

Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought informs us that our own word "chapel or

capella is said to be the caph-el or college of El, the solar divinity." The

well-known Cabiri are associated with the mysteries.

In short, the Mysteries were in every country a series of dramatic

performances, in which the mysteries of Cosmogony and nature in general were

personified by the priests and neophytes, who enacted the parts of various

gods and goddesses, repeating supposed scenes (allegories) from their

respective lives. These were explained in their hidden meaning to the

candidates for initiation and incorporated into philosophical doctrines.

Mystery Language The sacerdotal secret "jargon" used by the initiated

priests, and employed only when discussing sacred things. Every nation had

its own "mystery" tongue, unknown to all save those admitted to the

Mysteries.

Mystic From the Greek word mysticos. In antiquity, one belonging to those

admitted to the ancient mysteries; in our own times, one who practices

mysticism, holds mystic, transcendental views, etc.

Mysticism Any doctrine involved in mystery and metaphysics, and dealing more

with the ideal worlds than with our matter-of-fact, actual universe.

Nazarene Codex The Scriptures of the Nazarenes and of the Nabotheans also.

According to sundry Church Fathers, Jerome and Epiphanius especially, they

were heretical teachings, but are in fact one of the numerous Gnostic

readings of cosmogony and theogony, which produced a distinct sect.

Necromancy The raising of the images of the dead, considered in antiquity

and by modern occultists as a practice of Black Magic. Iamblichus, Porphyry,

and other theurgists deprecated the practice no less than Moses, who

condemned the "witches" of his day to death, the said witches being often

only mediums, e.g., the case of the Witch of Endor and Samuel.

Neo-Platonists A school of philosophy which arose between the second and

third century of our era, and was founded by Ammonius Saccas, of Alexandria.

The same as the Philaletheians, and the Analogeticists; they were also

called Theurgists and by various other names. They were the Theosophists of

the early centuries. Neo-Platonism is Platonic philosophy plus ecstasy,

divine R®ja-Yoga.

Nephesh (Heb.)

Breath of Life, Anima, Mens Vitae, appetites. The term is used very loosely

in the Bible. It generally means Prana, "life"; in the Cabala it is the

animal passions and the animal soul. Therefore, as maintained in

theosophical teachings, Nephesh is the Prana-Kama Principle, or the vital

animal soul in man.

Nirmanakaya (Sans.) Something entirely different in esoteric philosophy from

the popular meaning attached to it, and from the fancies of the

Orientalists. Some call the Nirmanakaya body "Nirvana with remains"

(Schlagintweit), on the supposition, probably, that it is a kind of Nirvanic

condition during which consciousness and form are retained. Others say that

it is one of the Trikaya (three bodies) with "the power of assuming any form

of appearance in order to propagate Buddhism." Again, that "it is the

incarnate Avatara of a deity." Occultism, on the other hand, says that

Nirmanakaya, although meaning literally a transformed "body," is a state.

The form is that of the Adept or Yogi who enters, or chooses, that

postmortem condition in preference to the Dharmakaya or absolute Nirvanic

state. He does this because the latter Kaya separates him forever from the

world of form, conferring upon him a state of selfish bliss, in which no

other living being can participate, the adept being thus precluded from the



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possibility of helping humanity, or even devas. As a Nirmanakaya, however,

the adept leaves behind him only his physical body, and retains every other

principle save the Kamic, for he has crushed this out forever from his

nature during life, and it can never resurrect in his postmortem state.

Thus, instead of going into selfish bliss, he chooses a life of

self-sacrifice, an existence which ends only with the life cycle, in order

to be enabled to help mankind in an invisible, yet most effective, manner.

Thus a Nirmanakaya is not, as popularly believed, the body "in which a

Buddha or a Bodhisattva appears on earth," but verily one who, whether a

Chutuktu or a Khubilkhan, an adept or a Yogi during life, has since become a

member of that invisible Host which ever protects and watches over humanity

within Karmic limits. Mistaken often for a "Spirit," a Deva, God himself,

etc., a Nirmanakaya is ever a protecting, compassionate, verily a guardian,

angel to him who is worthy of his help. Whatever objection may be brought

forward against this doctrine, however much it is denied, because, forsooth,

it has never hitherto been made public in Europe, and therefore, since it is

unknown to Orientalists, it must needs be a "myth of modern invention"-no

one will be bold enough to say that this idea of helping suffering mankind

at the price of one's own almost interminable self-sacrifice, is not one of

the grandest and noblest that was ever evolved from the human brain.

Nirvana (Sans.) According to the Orientalists, the entire "blowing-out,"

like the flame of a candle, the utter extinction of existence. But in the

exoteric explanations it is the state of absolute existence and absolute

consciousness, into which the Ego of a man who had reached the highest

degree of perfection and holiness during life, goes after the body dies, and

occasionally, as is the case of Gautama Buddha and others, during life.

Nirvanee (Sans.) One who has attained Nirvana-an emancipated Soul. That

Nirvana means something quite different from the puerile assertions of

Orientalists, every scholar who has visited India, China, or Japan, is well

aware. It is "escape from misery," but only from that of matter, freedom

from Klesha, or Kama, and the complete extinction of animal desires. If we

are told that Abhidharma defines Nirvana as "a state of absolute

annihilation" we concur, adding to the last word the qualification "of

everything connected with matter or the physical world," and this simply

because the latter (as also all in it) is illusion or Maya . Sakyamuni

Buddha said in the last moments of his life: "the spiritual body is

immortal." As Mr. Eitel, the scholarly Sinologist, explains it:

The popular exoteric systems agree in defining Nirvana negatively as a state

of absolute exemption from the circle of transmigration; as a state of

entire freedom from all forms of existence, to begin with, freedom from all

passion and exertion; a state of indifference to all sensibility.

-and he might have added "death of all compassion for the world of

suffering." And this is why the Bodhisattvas who prefer the Nirmanakaya to

the Dharmakaya vesture stand higher in the popular estimation than the

Nirvanees. But the same scholar adds that:

Positively (and esoterically) they define Nirvana as the highest state of

spiritual bliss, as absolute immortality through absorption of the Soul

(Spirit rather) into itself, but preserving individuality, so that, e.g.,

Buddhas, after entering Nirvana, may reappear on earth-i.e., in the future

Manvantara.

Noumena (Gr.) The true essential nature of Being as distinguished from the

illusive objects of sense.

Nous (Gr.) A Platonic term for the Higher Mind or Soul. It means Spirit as

distinct from animal-Soul, Psyche; divine consciousness or mind in man. The

name was adopted by the Gnostics for their first conscious Aeon, which, with

the Occultists, is the third logos, cosmically, and the third principle

(from above) or Manas, in man. (See Nout.)



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Nout (Eg.) In the Egyptian Pantheon it meant the "One-only-One," because it

does not proceed in the popular or exoteric religion higher than the third

manifestation which radiates from the Unknowable and the Unknown in the

esoteric philosophy of every nation. The Nous of Anaxagoras was the Mahat of

the Hindus-Brahmâ , the first manifested deity-"the Mind or spirit

Self-potent." This creative principle is the primum mobile of everything to

be found in the Universe-its Soul or Ideation. (see "Seven Principles" in

man.)

Occultism See Occult Sciences.

Occult Sciences The science of the secrets of nature-physical and psychic,

mental and spiritual; called Hermetic and Esoteric Sciences. In the west,

the Cabala may be named; in the east, mysticism, magic, and Yoga philosophy.

The latter is often referred to by the Chelas in India as the seventh

"Darshana" (school of philosophy), there being only six Darshanas in India

known to the world of the profane. These sciences are, and have been for

ages, hidden from the vulgar, for the very good reason that they would never

be appreciated by the selfish educated classes, who would misuse them for

their own profit, and thus turn the Divine science into black magic, nor by

the uneducated, who would not understand them. It is often brought forward

as an accusation against the Esoteric Philosophy of the Cabala, that its

literature is full of "a barbarous and meaningless jargon," unintelligible

to the ordinary mind. But do not exact Sciences-medicine, physiology,

chemistry, and the rest-plead guilty to the same impeachment? Do not

official scientists veil their facts and discoveries with a newly-coined and

most barbarous Graeco-Latin terminology? As justly remarked by our late

Brother, Kenneth Mackenzie,

… to juggle thus with words, when the facts are so simple, is the art of the

Scientists of the present time, in striking contrast to those of the

seventeenth century, who called spades, and not "agricultural implements."

Moreover, whilst their "facts" spades would be as simple, and as

comprehensible if rendered in ordinary language, the facts of Occult Science

are of so abstruse a nature, that in most cases no words exist in European

languages to express them. Finally our "jargon" is a double necessity-(a)

for describing clearly these facts to one who is versed in the occult

terminology; and (b) for concealing them from the profane.

Occultist One who practices Occultism, an adept in the Secret Sciences, but

very often applied to a mere student.

Occult World, The The name of the first book which treated of Theosophy, its

history, and certain of its tenets. Written by A.P. Sinnett, then editor of

the leading Indian paper, The Pioneer, of Allahabad, India.

Olympiodorus The last Neo-platonist of fame and celebrity in the school of

Alexandria. He lived in the sixth century under the Emperor Justinian. There

were several writers and philosophers of this name in pre-Christian as in

post-Christian periods. One of these was the teacher of Proclus, another a

historian in the eighth century, and so on.

Origen A Christian Churchman, born at the end of the second century,

probably in Africa, of whom little, if anything, is known, since his

biographical fragments have passed to posterity on the authority of

Eusebius, the most unmitigated falsifier that has ever existed in any age.

The latter is credited with having collected upwards of one hundred letters

of Origen (or Origenes Adamantius), which are now said to have been lost. To

Theosophists, the most interesting of all the works of Origen is his

Doctrine of the Preexistence of Souls. He was a pupil of Ammonius Saccas,

and for a long time attended the lectures of this great teacher of

philosophy.



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Panaenus A Platonic philosopher in the Alexandrian school of the

Philaletheians.

Pandora In Greek Mythology, the first woman on earth, created by Vulcan out

of clay to punish Prometheus and counteract his gift to mortals. Each God

having made her a present of some virtue, she was made to carry them in a

box to Prometheus, who, however, being endowed with foresight, sent her

away, changing the gifts into evils. Thus, when his brother Epimetheus saw

and married her, when he opened the box, all the evils now afflicting

humanity issued from it, and have remained since then in the world.

Pantheist One who identifies God with nature and vice versa. If we have to

regard Deity as an infinite and omnipresent Principle, this can hardly be

otherwise; nature being thus simply the physical aspect of Deity, or its

body.

Parabrahm (Sans.) A Vedantin term meaning "beyond Brahmâ ." The Supreme and

the absolute Principle, impersonal and nameless. In the Vedas it is referred

to as That.

Paranirvana (Sans.) In the Vedantic philosophy the highest form of

Nirvana-beyond the latter.

Parsis or Parsees The present Persian followers of Zoroaster, now settled in

India, especially in Bombay and Guzerat; sun and fire worshipers. One of the

most intelligent and esteemed communities in the country, generally occupied

with commercial pursuits. There are between 50,000 and 60,000 now left in

India where they settled some 1,000 years ago.

Personality The teachings of Occultism divide man into three aspects-the

divine, the thinking or rational, and the irrational or animal man. For

metaphysical purposes also he is considered under a septenary division, or,

as it is agreed to express it in Theosophy, he is composed of seven

principles, three of which constitute the Higher Triad, and the remaining

four the lower Quaternary. It is in the latter that dwells the Personality

which embraces all the characteristics, including memory and consciousness,

of each physical life in turn. The Individuality is the Higher Ego (Manas)

of the Triad considered as a Unity. In other words the Individuality is our

imperishable Ego which reincarnates and clothes itself in a new Personality

at every new birth.

Phallic Worship or Sex Worship; reverence and adoration shown to those gods

and goddesses which, like Shiva and Durga in India, symbolize respectively

the two sexes.

Philadelphians Lit., "those who love their brother-man." A sect in the

seventeenth century, founded by one Jane Leadly. They objected to all rites,

forms, or ceremonies of the Church, and even to the Church itself, but

professed to be guided in soul and spirit by an internal Deity, their own

Ego or God within them.

Philaletheians See Neo-Platonists.

Philo Judaeus A Hellenized Jew of Alexandria, a famous historian and

philosopher of the first century, born about the year 30 bc, and died

between the years 45 and 50 ad Philo's symbolism of the Bible is very

remarkable. The animals, birds, reptiles, trees, and places mentioned in it

are all, it is said,

…allegories of conditions of the soul, of faculties, dispositions, or

passions; the useful plants were allegories of virtues, the noxious of the

affections of the unwise and so on through the mineral kingdom; through

heaven, earth, and stars; through fountains and rivers, fields and



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dwellings; through metals, substances, arms, clothes, ornaments, furniture,

the body and its parts, the sexes, and our outward condition.

All of which would strongly corroborate the idea that Philo was acquainted

with the ancient Cabala.

Philosopher's Stone A term in Alchemy; called also the Powder of Projection,

a mysterious principle having the power of transmuting the base metals into

pure gold. In Theosophy it symbolizes the transmutation of the lower animal

nature of man into the highest divine.

Phren A Pythagorean term denoting what we call the Kama-Manas, still

overshadowed by Buddhi-Manas.

Plane From the Latin Planus (level, flat), an extension of space, whether in

the physical or metaphysical sense. In Occultism, the range or extent of

some state of consciousness, or the state of matter corresponding to the

perceptive powers of a particular set of senses or the action of a

particular force.

Planetary Spirits Rulers and governors of the Planets. Planetary Gods.

Plastic Used in Occultism in reference to the nature and essence of the

astral body, or the "Protean Soul." (See "Plastic Soul" in the Theosophical

Glossary.)

Pleroma "Fullness," a gnostic term used also by St. Paul. Divine world or

the abode of gods. Universal space divided into metaphysical Aeons.

Plotinus A distinguished Platonic philosopher of the third century, a great

practical mystic, renowned for his virtues and learning. He taught a

doctrine identical with that of the Vedantins, namely, that the spirit soul

emanating from the One Deific Principle was after its pilgrimage on earth

reunited to it. (See Theosophical Glossary.)

Porphyry (Porphyrius). His real name was Malek, which led to his being

regarded as a Jew. He came from Tyre, and having first studied under

Longinus, the eminent philosopher-critic, became the disciple of Plotinus,

at Rome. He was a Neo-Platonist and a distinguished writer, specially famous

for his controversy with Iamblichus regarding the evils attending the

practice of Theurgy, but was, however, finally converted to the views of his

opponent. A natural-born mystic he followed, like his master Plotinus, the

pure Indian Raja-Yoga system, which, by training, leads to the union of the

soul with the oversoul of the universe, and of the human with its divine

soul, Buddhi-Manas. He complains, however, that in spite of all his efforts,

he reached the highest state of ecstasy only once, and that when he was

sixty-eight years of age, while his teacher Plotinus had experienced the

supreme bliss six times during his life. (See "Porphyry," in the

Theosophical Glossary)

Pot-Amun A Coptic term meaning "one consecrated to the god Amun," the

Wisdom-god. The name of an Egyptian priest and occultist under the

Ptolemies.

Prajña (Sans.) A term used to designate the "Universal Mind." A synonym of

Mahat.

Pralaya (Sans.) Dissolution, the opposite of Manvantara, one being the

period of rest and the other of full activity (death and life) of a planet,

or of the whole universe.

Prana (Sans.) Life Principle, the breath of life, Nephesh.

Protean Soul A name for Mayavi-Rupa or thought-body, the higher astral form



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which assumes all forms and every form at the will of an adept's thought.

(See "Plastic Soul" in the Theosophical Glossary)

Psychism The word is used now to denote every kind of mental phenomena,

e.g., mediumship as well as the higher form of sensitiveness. A newly-coined

word.

Purânas (Sans.) Lit., "the ancient," referring to Hindu writings or

Scriptures, of which there is a considerable number.

Pythagoras The most famous mystic philosopher, born at Samos about 586 bc,

who taught the heliocentric system and reincarnation, the highest

mathematics and the highest metaphysics, and who had a school famous

throughout the world. (See for fuller particulars, Theosophical Glossary)

Quaternary The four lower "principles in man," those which constitute his

personality (i.e., Body, Astral Double, Prana or life, organs of desire, and

lower Manas, or brain-mind), as distinguished from the Higher Ternary or

Triad, composed of the higher Spiritual Soul, Mind, and Atma (Higher Self).

Recollection, Remembrance, Reminiscence Occultists make a difference between

these three functions. As, however, a glossary cannot contain the full

explanation of every term in all its metaphysical and subtle differences, we

can only state here that these terms vary in their applications, according

to whether they relate to the past or the present birth, and whether one or

the other of these phases of memory emanates from the spiritual or the

material brain; or, again, from the "Individuality" or the "Personality."

Reincarnation or Rebirth The once universal doctrine, which taught that the

Ego is born on this earth an innumerable number of times. Now-a-days it is

denied by Christians, who seem to misunderstand the teachings of their own

gospels. Nevertheless, the putting on of flesh periodically and throughout

long cycles by the higher human Soul (Buddhi-Manas) or Ego is taught in the

Bible as it is in all other ancient scriptures, and "resurrection" means

only the rebirth of the Ego in another form. (See Theosophical Glossary)

Reuchlin, John A great German philosopher and philologist, Cabalist and

scholar. He was born at Pfortzheim in Germany, in 1455, and early in youth

was a diplomat. At one period of his life he held the high office of judge

of the tribunal at Tubingen, where he remained for eleven years. He was also

the preceptor of Melancthon, and was greatly persecuted by the clergy for

his glorification of the Hebrew Cabala, though at the same time called the

"Father of the Reformation." He died in 1522, in great poverty, the common

fate of all who in those days went against the dead-letter of the Church.

Sacred Science The epithet given to the occult sciences in general, and by

the Rosicrucians to the Cabala, and especially to the Hermetic philosophy.

Samadhi The name in India for spiritual ecstasy. It is a state of complete

trance, induced by means of mystic concentration.

Samkhara One of the five Buddhist Skandhas or attributes. (See Skandhas.)

"Tendencies of mind."

Samma -Sambuddha The sudden remembrance of all one's past incarnations, a

phenomenon of memory obtained through Yoga. A Buddhist mystic term.

Samothrace An island in the Grecian Archipelago, famous in days of old for

the mysteries celebrated in its temples. These mysteries were

world-renowned.

Samyuttaka-Nikaya One of the Buddhist Sutras.

Sanna (Pali ) One of the five Skandhas, or attributes, meaning "abstract



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ideas."

Seance A term now used to denote a sitting with a medium for sundry

phenomena. Used chiefly among the Spiritualists.

Self There are two Selves in men-the Higher and the Lower, the Impersonal

and the Personal Self. One is divine, the other semi-animal. A great

distinction should be made between the two.

Sephiroth A Hebrew Cabalistic word, for the ten divine emanations from

Ain-Soph, the impersonal, universal Principle, or Deity. (See Theosophical

Glossary)

Skandhas The attributes of every personality, which after death form the

basis, so to say, for a new Karmic reincarnation. They are five in the

popular or exoteric system of the Buddhists: i.e., Rupa, form or body, which

leaves behind it its magnetic atoms and occult affinities; Vedana ,

sensations, which do likewise; Sanjna , or abstract ideas, which are the

creative powers at work from one incarnation to another; Samkhara,

tendencies of mind; and Vijñana, mental powers.

Somnambulism "Sleep walking." A psycho-physiological state, too well known

to need explanation.

Spiritism The same as the above, with the difference that the Spiritualists

reject almost unanimously the doctrine of Reincarnation, while the

Spiritists make of it the fundamental principle in their belief. There is,

however, a vast difference between the views of the latter and the

philosophical teachings of Eastern Occultists. Spiritists belong to the

French School founded by Allan Kardec, and the Spiritualists of America and

England to that of the "Fox girls," who inaugurated their theories at

Rochester, U.S.A. Theosophists, while believing in the mediumistic phenomena

of both Spiritualists and Spiritists, reject the idea of "spirits."

Spiritualism The modern belief that the spirits of the dead return on earth

to commune with the living. (See Spiritism.)

St. Germain, Count A mysterious personage, who appeared in the last century

and early in the present one in France, England, and elsewhere.

Sthula-Sharira The Sanskrit name for the human physical body, in Occultism

and Vedanta philosophy.

Sthulopadhi The physical body in its waking, conscious state (Jagrat).

Sukshmopadhi The physical body in the dreaming state (Svapna), and

Karanopadhi, "the causal body."

Summerland The fancy name given by the Spiritualists to the abode of their

disembodied "Spirits," which they locate somewhere in the Milky Way. It is

described on the authority of returning "Spirits" as a lovely land, having

beautiful cities and buildings, a Congress Hall, Museums, etc., etc.

Swedenborg, Emanuel A famous scholar and clairvoyant of the past century, a

man of great learning, who has vastly contributed to Science, but whose

mysticism and transcendental philosophy placed him in the ranks of

hallucinated visionaries. He is now universally known as the Founder of the

Swedenborgian sect, or the New Jerusalem Church. He was born at Stockholm

(Sweden) in 1688, from Lutheran parents, his father being the Bishop of West

Gothland. His original name was Swedberg, but on his being ennobled and

knighted in 1719 it was changed to Swedenborg. He became a Mystic in 1743,

and four years later (in 1747) resigned his office (of Assessor

Extraordinary to the College of Mines) and gave himself up entirely to

Mysticism. He died in 1772.



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Taijas (Sans.) From tejas "fire," meaning the "radiant," the "luminous," and

referring to the Manasa-Rupa, "the body of Manas," also to the stars, and

the star-like shining envelopes. A term in Vedanta philosophy, having other

meanings besides the Occult signification just given.

Taraka Raja-Yoga (Sans.) One of the Brahmanical Yoga systems, the most

philosophical, and in fact the most secret of all, as its real tenets are

never given out publicly. It is a purely intellectual and spiritual school

of training.

Tetragrammaton (Gr.) The deity-name in four letters, which are in their

English form IHVH. It is a Cabalistic term and corresponds on a more

material plane to the sacred Pythagorean Tetraktys. (See Theosophical

Glossary)

Theodidaktos (Gr.) The "God taught," a title applied to Ammonius Saccas.

Theogony From the Greek theogonia, lit., the "Genesis of the Gods."

Theosophia (Gr.) Lit., "divine wisdom or the wisdom of the gods."

Therapeutae, or Therapeuts (Gr.) A school of Jewish mystic healers, or

esotericists, wrongly referred to, by some, as a sect. They resided in and

near Alexandria, and their doings and beliefs are to this day a mystery to

the critics, as their philosophy seems a combination of Orphic, Pythagorean,

Essenian, and purely Cabalistic practices. (See Theosophical Glossary)

Theurgy From the Greek theiourgiá. Rites for bringing down to earth

planetary and other Spirits or Gods. To arrive at the realization of such an

object, the Theurgist had to be absolutely pure and unselfish in his

motives. The practice of theurgy is very undesirable and even dangerous in

the present day. The world has become too corrupt and wicked for the

practice of that which such holy and learned men as Ammonius, Plotinus,

Porphyry, and Iamblichus (the most learned Theurgist of all) could alone

attempt with impunity. In our day theurgy or divine, beneficent magic is but

too apt to become goëtic, or in other words Sorcery. Theurgy is the first of

the three subdivisions of magic, which are theurgic, goëtic, and natural

magic.

Thread Soul The same as Sutratman (see above).

Thumos (Gr.) A Pythagorean and Platonic term; applied to an aspect of the

human soul, to denote its passionate Kamarupic condition: almost equivalent

to the Sanskrit word tamas: "the quality of darkness," and probably derived

from the latter.

Timaeus of Locris A Pythagorean philosopher, born at Locris. He differed

somewhat from his teacher in the doctrine of metempsychosis. He wrote a

treatise on the Soul of the World and its nature and essence, which is in

the Doric dialect and still extant.

Triad or Trinity In every religion and philosophy-the three in One.

Universal Brotherhood The subtitle of the Theosophical Society, and the

first of the three objects professed by it.

Upadhi (Sans.) Basis of something, substructure; as in Occultism-substance

is the Upadhi of Spirit.

Upanishad (Sans.) Lit., "Esoteric Doctrine." The third Division of the

Vedas, and classed with revelations (sruti or "revealed word"). Some 150 of

the Upanishads still remain extant, though no more than about twenty can be

fully relied upon as free from falsification. These are all earlier than the



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sixth century bc. Like the Cabala, which interprets the esoteric sense of

the Bible, so the Upanishads explain the mystic sense of the Vedas.

Professor Cowell has two statements regarding the Upanishads as interesting

as they are correct. Thus he says:

These works have (1) … one remarkable peculiarity, the total absence of any

Brahmanical exclusiveness in their doctrine … They breathe an entirely

different spirit, a freedom of thought unknown in any earlier work except

the Rig-Veda hymns themselves; and (2) the great teachers of the higher

knowledge (Gupta-Vidya ), and Brahmins, are continually represented as going

to Kshatriya Kings to become their pupils (Chelas).

This shows conclusively that (a) the Upanishads were written before the

enforcement of caste and Brahmanical power, and are thus only second in

antiquity to the Vedas; and (b) that the occult sciences or the "higher

knowledge," as Cowell puts it, is far older than the Brahmins in India, or

even of them as a caste. The Upanishads are, however, far later than

Gupta-Vidya , or the "Secret Science" which is as old as human philosophical

thought itself.

Vahan (Sans.) "Vehicle," a synonym of Upadhi.

Vallabhachâryas Sect (Sans.), or the "Sect of the Maharâjas," a licentious

phallic-worshipping community, whose main branch is at Bombay. The object of

the worship is the infant Krishna. The Anglo-Indian Government was compelled

several times to interfere in order to put a stop to its rites and vile

practices, and its governing Maharâja, a kind of High Priest, was more than

once imprisoned, and very justly so. It is one of the blackest spots of

India.

Vedanta (Sans.) Meaning literally, the "end of all knowledge." Among the six

Darshanas or the schools of philosophy, it is also called Uttara Mimansa ,

or the "later" Mimansa. There are those who, unable to understand its

esotericism, consider it atheistical; but this is not so, as Shankaracharya,

the great apostle of this school, and its popularizer, was one of the

greatest mystics and adepts of India.

Vidya (Sans.) Knowledge, or rather "Wisdom-Knowledge."

Vijñana (Sans.) One of five Skandhas; meaning literally, "mental powers."

(See Skandhas.)

Wisdom-Religion The same as Theosophy. The name given to the secret doctrine

which underlies every exoteric scripture and religion.

Yoga (Sans.) A school of philosophy founded by Patañjali, but which existed

as a distinct teaching and system of life long before that sage. It is

Yajñavalkya, a famous and very ancient sage, to whom the White Yajur-Veda,

the Satapatha-Brahmana and the Brihak-Aranyaka are attributed and who lived

in pre-Mahabharatean times, who is credited with inculcating the necessity

and positive duty of religious meditation and retirement into the forests,

and who, therefore, is believed to have originated the Yoga doctrine.

Professor Max Müller states that it is Yajñavalkya who prepared the world

for the preaching of Buddha. Patañjali's Yoga, however, is more definite and

precise as a philosophy, and embodies more of the occult sciences than any

of the works attributed to Yajñavalkya.

Yogi or Yogin (Sans.) A devotee, one who practices the Yoga system. There

are various grades and kinds of Yogis, and the term has now become in India

a generic name to designate every kind of ascetic.

Yuga (Sans.) An age of the world of which there are four, which follow each

other in a series, namely, Krita (or Satya) Yuga, the golden age; Treta

-Yuga, Dvapara-Yuga, and finally Kali-Yuga, the black age-in which we now



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are.

Zenobia The Queen of Palmyra, defeated by the Emperor Aurelianus. She had

for her instructor Longinus, the famous critic and logician in the third

century ad (See Longinus.)

Zivo, Kabar (or Yukabar) The name of one of the creative deities in the

Nazarene Codex. (See Isis Unveiled.)

Zohar (Heb.) The Book of Splendor, a Cabalistic work attributed to Simeon

Ben Iochai, in the first century of our era. (See for fuller explanation

Theosophical Glossary)

Zoroastrian One who follows the religion of the Parsis, sun, or

fire-worshippers.

Appendix

-oOo-The

Theosophical Society: Information for Inquirers

The Theosophical Society was formed at New York, November 17th, 1875. Its

founders believed that the best interests of Religion and Science would be

promoted by the revival of Sanskrit, Pali, Zend, and other ancient

literature, in which the Sages and Initiates had preserved for the use of

mankind truths of the highest value respecting man and nature. A Society of

an absolutely unsectarian character, whose work should be amicably

prosecuted by the learned of all races, in a spirit of unselfish devotion to

the research of truth, and with the purpose of disseminating it impartially,

seemed likely to do much to check materialism and strengthen the waning

religious spirit. The simplest expression of the objects of the Society is

the following:

1. To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without

distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color.

2. To promote the study of ryan and other Eastern literatures, religions,

and sciences.

3. A third object-pursued by a portion only of the members of the Society-is

to investigate unexplained laws of nature and the psychical powers of man.

No person's religious opinions are asked upon his joining, nor is

interference with them permitted, but everyone is required, before

admission, to promise to show towards his fellow-members the same tolerance

in this respect as he claims for himself.

The headquarters, offices, and managing staff are at Adyar, a suburb of

Madras, where the Society has a property of twenty-seven acres and extensive

buildings, including one for the Oriental Library, and a spacious hall

wherein the General Council meets annually in Convention, on the 27th of

December.

The Society is not yet endowed, but there is a nucleus of a Fund, the income

from the investment of which will go towards defraying the current expenses;

these have hitherto been met by the proceeds of entrance-fees, donations,

and a small annual subscription from each member. But by the Revised Rules

of 1889, the Society has been placed upon a basis of voluntary

contributions, and is therefore entirely dependent for maintenance upon the

generosity of its Fellows and others, as Entrance Fees and Annual Dues are

abolished. No salaries are paid; all work is done by volunteers, who receive

simple food and necessary clothing, when their private circumstances require

such allowances.



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The Official Trustee for all Society property is the President for the time

being, and legacies and bequests should invariably be made in his name, in

the legal phraseology of the Code of the country where the testator executes

his Will. If left to the Society by name, the bequest becomes void in law.

The President's full address is Henry Steel Olcott, Adyar, Madras, India.

The Society, as a body, eschews politics and all subjects outside its

declared sphere of work. The Rules stringently forbid members to compromise

its strict neutrality in these matters.

Many Branches of the Society have been formed in various parts of the world,

and new ones are constantly being organized. Each branch frames its own

bylaws and manages its own local business without interference from

Headquarters; provided only that the fundamental rules of the Society are

not violated. Branches lying within certain territorial limits (as for

instance, America, British Islands, Ceylon, etc., have been grouped for

purposes of administration in territorial Sections). For particulars, see

the Revised Rules of 1889, where all necessary information with regard to

joining the Society, etc., will also be found.

There have been founded up to date (1889) 173 Branches of the Society. For

particulars see the Rules, etc., of the Theosophical Society, to be had on

application to the Recording Secretary of the Theosophical Society, Adyar,

Madras; or to the General Secretaries of the Sections.

In England, Dr. A. Keightley, 7 Duke Street, Adelphi, London. In America,

William
Q. Judge, P.O. Box 2659, New York.

-oOo-The

Legal Status of the Theosophical Society

The following Official Report, on which was granted a Decree of

Incorporation to the St. Louis Theosophical Society, is an important

document, as putting on record the view taken of the Theosophical

Society-after a careful examination of witnesses on oath-by an American

Court of Law.

1. The petitioner is not a religious body. I report this negative finding

for the reason that the word Theosophical contained in petitioners' name

conveys a possible religious implication. The statutory phrase "society

formed for religious purposes" applies, I suppose, only to an organization

formed in part for worship, worship being an individual act involving

adoration and perhaps emotional power, both being of necessity individual

acts, or else to an organization formed for a propagation of a religious

faith. Merely to teach a religion as one may teach algebra, is not, I think,

a religious work, as the word religious is used in the Statute and the

Constitution. A man may occupy a collegiate chair of Professor of Religions

and as such teach the tenets of many religions. These different religions

being variant and antagonistic, the Professor could not by any possibility

worship under all. Nay, he might even be irreligious. Hence, merely teaching

religions is not a religious work in the statutory sense. It will be noted

that in article two of this society's constitution, the word religion is

used in the plural. To teach religions is educational, not religious. "To

promote the study of religions" is in part to promote the study of the

history of man. I add the subordinate finding that the society has no

religious creed and practices no worship.

2. The petitioner proposes to promote the study of literature and sciences.

These objects are expressly within the terms of the Statute.

3. Cognate with the last objects is that of investigating "unexplained laws

of nature and psychical powers latent in man." These two phrases, taken in



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their apparent meaning, are unobjectionable. But there is reason to believe

that they form a meaning other than the apparent one.

The court will take notice of the commonly accepted meaning of the word

Theosophy. Though I am ignorant of Theosophy, I think it is supposed to

include among other things manifestations and phenomena, physical and

psychical, that are violations of the laws now known by physicists and

metaphysicians, and perhaps not explained or claimed to be explained or

understood even by Theosophists themselves. In this group may be included

Spiritualism, mesmerism, clairvoyance, mind-healing, mind-reading and the

like. I took testimony on this question, and found that while a belief in

any one of these sorts of manifestations and phenomena is not required,

while each member of the society is at liberty to hold his own opinion, yet

such questions form topics of inquiry and discussion, and the members as a

mass probably believers individually in phenomena that are abnormal and in

powers that are superhuman as far as science now knows. It is undoubtedly

the right of any citizen to hold whatever opinions he pleases on these

subjects, and to endeavor at his pleasure to investigate the unexplained and

to display the latent. But the question here is: Shall the Court grant a

franchise in aid of such endeavor? Voodooism is a word applied to the

practices of guileful men among the ignorant and superstitious who inflict

impostures upon guileless men among the ignorant and superstitious. No Court

would grant a franchise in furtherance of such practices. The Court then

will stop to inquire into the practices and perhaps the reputation of the

enterprise which seeks judicial aid. I am not meaning to make a comparison

between voodooism and this group of phenomena which for convenience (though

I know not whether accurately) I will call occultism. I only take voodooism

as a strong case to show the Court ought to inquire. If we now inquire into

occultism we shall find that it has been occasionally used, as is reported,

for the purposes of imposture. But this goes for nothing against its

essential character. Always and everywhere bad men will make a bad use of

anything for selfish ends. The object of this society, whether attainable or

not, is undeniably laudable, assuming that there are physical and psychical

phenomena unexplained, and that Theosophy seeks to explain them. Assuming

that there are human powers yet latent, it seeks to discover them. It may be

that absurdities and impostures are in fact incident to the nascent stage of

its development. As to an understanding like that of occultism, which

asserts powers commonly thought superhuman, and phenomena commonly thought

supernatural, it seemed to me that the Court, though not assuming to

determine judicially the question of their verity, would, before granting to

occultism a franchise, inquire whether at least it had gained the position

of being reputable or whether its adherents were merely men of narrow

intelligence, mean intellect, and omnivorous credulity. I accordingly took

testimony on that point, and find that a number of gentlemen in different

countries of Europe, and also in this country, eminent in science, are

believers in occultism. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, a writer of large and

varied learning, and of solid intellect, is asserted to have been an

occultist, an assertion countenanced by at least two of his books. The late

President Wayland, of Brown University, writing of abnormal mental

operations as shown in clairvoyance, says:

The subject seems to me well worthy of the most searching and candid

examination. It is by no means deserving of ridicule, but demands the

attention of the most philosophical inquiry.

Sir William Hamilton, probably the most acute and, undeniably, the most

learned of English metaphysicians that ever lived, said at least thirty

years ago:

However astonishing, it is now proved beyond all rational doubt that in

certain abnormal states of the nervous organism perceptions are possible

through other than the ordinary channels of the senses.

By such testimony Theosophy is at least placed on the footing of



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respectability. Whether by further labor it can make partial truths complete

truths, whether it can eliminate extravagances and purge itself of

impurities, if there are any, are probably questions upon which the Court

will not feel called upon to pass. I perceive no other feature of the

petitioners' constitution that is obnoxious to legal objection, and

accordingly I have the honor to report that I show no cause why the prayer

of the petitioners should not be granted.

- AUGUST W. ALEXANDER,

Amicus Curiae.



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