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The Mahatma
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to A P Sinnett
Letters 1 to 25
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The
Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
Letter No. 1
Received
Simla about
Esteemed
Brother and Friend,
Precisely
because the test of the
skeptics
-- it is unthinkable. See it in what light you will -- the world is yet in its
first
stage of
disenthralment if not development, hence -- unprepared. Very true, we work by
natural
not supernatural means and laws. But, as on the one hand Science would find
itself
unable (in its present state) to account for the wonders given in its
name, and on the
other
the ignorant masses would still be left to view the phenomenon in the light of
a
miracle;
everyone who would thus be made a witness to the occurrence would be thrown
off
his balance and the results would be deplorable. Believe me, it would be so --
especially
for yourself who originated the idea, and the devoted woman who so foolishly
rushes
into the wide open door leading to notoriety. This door, though opened by so
friendly
a hand as yours, would prove very soon a trap -- and a fatal one indeed for
her.
And
such is not surely your object?
Madmen
are they, who, speculating but upon the present, wilfully shut their eyes to
the
past
when made already to remain naturally blind to the future! Far be it from me,
to
number
you with the latter -- therefore will I endeavour to explain. Were we to accede
to
your
desires know you really what consequences would follow in the trail of success?
The
inexorable shadow which follows all human innovations moves on, yet few are
they,
who
are ever conscious of its approach and dangers. What are then to expect they,
who
would
offer the world an innovation which, owing to human ignorance, if believed in,
will
surely be attributed to those dark agencies the two-thirds of humanity believe
in and
dread
as yet? You say -- half
Pioneer on its day of
publication. I beg to say that if the people believed the thing true
they
would kill you before you could make the round of
believed
true, -- the least that could happen would be the loss of your reputation and
good
name,
-- for propagating such ideas.
The
success of an attempt of such a kind as the one you propose, must be calculated
and
based
upon a thorough knowledge of the people around you. It depends entirely upon
the
social
and moral conditions of the people in their bearing on these deepest and most
mysterious
questions which can stir the human mind -- the deific powers in man and
the
possibilities
contained in nature. How many, even of your best friends, of those who
surround
you, who are more than superficially interested in these abstruse problems? You
could
count them upon the fingers of your right hand. Your race boasts of
having.liberated
in
their century, the genius so long imprisoned in the narrow vase of dogmatism
and
intolerance -- the genius of knowledge, wisdom and freethought. It says that in
their
turn
ignorant prejudice and religious bigotry, bottled up like the wicked Jin of
old, and
sealed
up by the Solomons of science rests at the bottom of the sea and can never,
escaping
to the surface again, reign over the world as it did in days of old; that the
public
mind
is quite free, in short, and ready to accept any demonstrated truth. Aye; but
is it
verily
so, my respected friend? Experimental knowledge does not quite date from 1662,
when
Bacon, Robert Boyle and the Bishop of
their
"
before
the Royal Society found itself becoming a reality upon the plan of the
"Prophetic
Scheme"
an innate longing for the hidden, a passionate love for and the study of nature
had
led men in every generation to try and fathom her secrets deeper than their
neighbours
did. Roma ante Romulum fuit -- is an axiom taught to us in your English
schools.
Abstract enquiries into the most puzzling problems did not arise in the brain
of
Archimedes
as a spontaneous and hitherto untouched subject, but rather as a reflection of
prior
enquiries in the same direction and by men separated from his days by as long a
period
-- and far longer -- than the one which separates you from the great
Syracusian.
The
vril of the "Coming Race" was the common property of races now
extinct. And, as
the
very existence of those gigantic ancestors of ours is now questioned -- though
in the
Himavats, on the very
territory belonging to you we have a cave full of the skeletons of
these
giants -- and their huge frames when found are invariably regarded as isolated
freaks
of nature, so the vril or Akas -- as we call it -- is looked upon
as an impossibility, a
myth.
And, without a thorough knowledge of Akas, its combinations and
properties, how
can
Science hope to account for such phenomena? We doubt not but the men of your
science
are open to conviction; yet facts must be first demonstrated to them, they must
first
have become their own property, have proved amenable to their own modes of
investigation,
before you find them ready to admit them as facts. If you but look into
the
Preface to the
"Micrographia" you will find in Hooke's suggestions that the intimate
relations
of objects were of less account in his eyes than their external operation on
the
senses
-- and
Hookeses
are many. Like this learned but ignorant man of old your modern men of
science
are less anxious to suggest a physical connexion of facts which might unlock
for
them
many an occult force in nature, as to provide a convenient "classification
of
scientific
experiments"; so that the most essential quality of an hypothesis is not
that it
should
be true but only plausible -- in their opinion.
So
far for Science -- as much as we know of it. As for human nature in general, it
is the
same
now as it was a million of years ago: Prejudice based upon selfishness; a
general
unwillingness
to give up an established order of things for new modes of life and thought
--
and occult study requires all that and much more --; pride and stubborn
resistance to
Truth
if it but upsets their previous notions of things, -- such are the
characteristics of
your
age, and especially of the middle and lower classes. What then would be the
results
of
the most astounding phenomena, supposing we consented to have them produced?
However
successful, danger would be growing proportionately with success. No choice
would
soon remain but to go on, ever crescendo, or to fall in this endless
struggle with
prejudice
and ignorance killed by your own weapons. Test after test would be required.
and
would have to be furnished; every subsequent phenomenon expected to be more
marvellous
than the preceding one. Your daily remark is, that one cannot be expected to
believe
unless he becomes an eye-witness. Would the lifetime of a man suffice to
satisfy
the
whole world of skeptics? It may be an easy matter to increase the original
number of
believers
at Simla to hundreds and thousands. But what of the hundreds of millions of
those
who could not be made eye-witnesses? The ignorant -- unable to grapple with the
invisible
operators -- might some day vent their rage on the visible agents at work; the
higher
and educated classes would go on disbelieving as ever, tearing you to shreds as
before.
In common with many, you blame us for our great secrecy. Yet we know
something
of human nature for the experience of long centuries -- aye, ages -- has taught
us.
And, we know, that so long as science has anything to learn, and a shadow of
religious
dogmatism lingers in the hearts of the multitudes, the world's prejudices have
to
be
conquered step by step, not at a rush. As hoary antiquity had more than one
Socrates
so
the dim Future will give birth to more than one martyr. Enfranchised science
contemptuously
turned away her face from the Copernican opinion renewing the theories
of
Aristarchus Samius -- who "affirmeth that the earth moveth circularly
about her own
centre"
years before the Church sought to sacrifice Galileo as a holocaust to the
Bible.
The
ablest mathematician at the Court of Edward VI -- Robert Recorde -- was left to
starve
in jail by his colleagues, who laughed at his
discoveries
"vain phantasies." Wm. Gilbert of
died
poisoned, only because -- this real founder of experimental science in
has
had the audacity of anticipating Galileo; of pointing out Copernican's fallacy
as to the
"third
movement," which was gravely alleged to account for the parallelism of the
earth's
axis
of rotation! The enormous learning of the Paracelsi, of the Agrippas and the
Deys
was
ever doubted. It was science which laid her sacrilegious hand upon the great
work
"De
Magnete" -- "The Heavenly White Virgin" (Akas) and
others. And it was the
illustrious
"Chancellor of
won
the name of the Father of Inductive Philosophy, permitted himself to speak of
such
men
as the above-named as the "Alchemicians of the Fantastic philosophy."
All
this is old history, you will think. Verily so; but the chronicles of our
modern days do
not
differ very essentially from their predecessors. And we have but to bear in
mind the
recent
persecutions of mediums in
sorcerers
in
the
only salvation of the genuine proficients in occult sciences lies in the
skepticism of
the
public: the charlatans and the jugglers are the natural shields of the
"adepts." The
public
safety is only ensured by our keeping secret the terrible weapons which might
otherwise
be used against it, and which, as you have been told became deadly in the
hands
of the wicked and selfish.
I
conclude by reminding you that such phenomena as you crave, have ever been
reserved
as
a reward for those who have devoted their lives to serve the goddess Saraswati
-- our
Aryan
Many
of your suggestions are highly reasonable and will be attended to. I listened
attentively
to the conversation which took place at Mr. Hume's. His arguments are perfect
from
the standpoint of exoteric wisdom. But, when the time comes and he is allowed
to.have
a full glimpse into the world of esoterism, with its laws based upon
mathematically
correct
calculations of the future -- the necessary results of the causes which we are
always
at liberty to create and shape at our will but are as unable to control their
consequences
which thus become our masters -- then only will, both you and he
understand
why to the uninitiated our acts must seem often unwise, if not actually
foolish.
Your
forthcoming letter I will not be able to fully answer without taking the advice
of
those
who generally deal with the European mystics. Moreover the present letter must
satisfy
you on many points you have better defined in your last; but it will no doubt
disappoint
you as well. In regard to the production of newly devised and still more
startling
phenomena demanded of her with our help, as a man well acquainted with the
strategy,
you must remain satisfied with the reflection that there is little use in
acquiring
new
positions until those that you have already reached are secured, and your
Enemies
full
aware of your right to their possession. In other words, you had a greater
variety of
phenomena
produced for yourself and friends than many a regular neophyte has seen in
several
years. First, notify the public of the production of the note, the cup and the
sundry
experiments
with the cigarette papers, and let them digest these. Get them to work for an
explanation.
And as except upon the direct and absurd accusation of deceit they will
never
be able to account for some of these, while the skeptics are quite satisfied
with their
present
hypothesis for the production of the brooch -- you will then have done real
good
to
the cause of truth and justice to the woman who is made to suffer for it. Isolated
as it
is,
the case under notice in the Pioneer becomes less than worthless -- it
is positively
injurious
for all of you -- for yourself as the Editor of that paper as much as for
anyone
else,
if you pardon me for offering you that which looks like advice. It is neither
fair to
yourself
nor to her, that, because the number of eye-witnesses does not seem sufficient
to
warrant
the public attention, your and your lady's testimony should go for nothing.
Several
cases combining to fortify your position as truthful and intelligent witness to
the
various
occurrences, each of these gives you an additional right to assert what you
know.
It
imposes upon you the sacred duty to instruct the public and prepare them for
future
possibilities
by gradually opening their eyes to the truth. The opportunity should not be
lost
through a lack of as great confidence in your own individual right of assertion
as that
of
Sir Donald Stewart. One witness of well known character outweighs the evidence
of
ten
strangers; and if, there is anyone in
--
the Editor of the Pioneer. Remember that there was but one hysterical
woman alleged
to
have been present at the pretended ascension, and that the phenomenon has never
been
corroborated
by repetition. Yet for nearly 2,000 years countless milliards have pinned
their
faith upon the testimony of that one woman -- and she not over trustworthy.
TRY
-- and first work upon the material you have and then we will be the first to
help
you
to get further evidence. Until then, believe me, always your sincere friend,
Koot'
Hoomi Lal Singh..The
Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------
Letter No. 4
Apparently
received 5th November {1880}.
Madam
and Colonel O. arrived at our house,
1st,
1880. Col. O. went to
11th.
Both returned to
Amrita
Saras, Oct. 29.
My
Dear Brother,
I
could assuredly make no objection to the style which you have kindly adopted,
in
addressing
me by name, since it is, as you say, the outcome of a personal regard even
greater
than I have as yet deserved at your hands. The conventionalities of the weary
world,
outside our secluded "Ashrums," trouble us but little at any time;
least of all now,
when
it is men not ceremony-masters, we seek, devotion, not mere observances. More
and
more a dead formalism is gaining ground, and I am truly happy to find so unexpected
an
ally in a quarter where, hitherto there have not been too many -- among the
highly
educated
classes of English Society. A crisis, in a certain sense, is upon us now, and
must
be
met. I might say two crises -- one, the Society's, the other for Tibet. For, I
may tell you
in
confidence, that Russia is gradually massing her forces for a future invasion
of that
country
under the pretext of a Chinese War. If she does not succeed it will be due to
us;
and
herein, at least we will deserve your gratitude. You see then, that we have
weightier
matters
than small societies to think about; yet, the T.S. must not be neglected. The
affair
has
taken an impulse, which, if not well guided, might beget very evil issues.
Recall to
mind
the avalanches of your admired Alps, that you have often thought about, and
remember
that at first their mass is small and their momentum little. A trite comparison
you
may say, but I cannot think of a better illustration, when viewing the gradual
aggregation
of trifling events, growing into a menacing destiny for the Theos. Soc. It
came
quite forcibly upon me the other day as I was coming down the defiles of
Kouenlun
--
Karakorum you call them -- and saw an avalanche tumble. I had gone personally
to our
chief
to submit Mr. Hume's important offer, and was crossing over to Lhadak on my way
home.
What other speculations might have followed I cannot say. But just as I was
taking
advantage
of the awful stillness which usually follows such cataclysm, to get a clearer
view
of the present situation and the disposition of the "mystics" at
Simla, I was rudely.recalled
to
my senses. A familiar voice, as shrill as the one attributed to Saraswati's
peacock
-- which, if we may credit tradition, frightened off the King of the Nagas --
shouted
along the currents "Olcott has raised the very devil again! . . . The
Englishmen
are
going crazy. . . . Koot Hoomi, come quicker and help me!" -- and in
her excitement
forgot
she was speaking English. I must say, that the "Old Lady's" telegrams
do strike
one
like stones from a catapult!
What
could I do but come? Argument through space with one who was in cold despair,
and
in a state of moral chaos was useless. So I determined to emerge from the
seclusion
of
many years and spend some time with her to comfort her as well as I could. But
our
friend
is not one to cause her mind to reflect the philosophical resignation of Marcus
Aurelius.
The fates never wrote that she could say: "It is a royal thing, when one
is doing
good
to hear evil spoken of himself." . . . I had come for a few days, but now
find that I
myself
cannot endure for any length of time the stifling magnetism even of my own
countrymen.
I have seen some of our proud old Sikhs drunk and staggering over the
marble
pavement of their sacred
against
Yog Vidya and Theosophy, as a delusion and a lie, declaring that English
Science
had
emancipated them from such "degrading superstitions," and saying that
it was an
insult
to
mysteries
of nature; or that any living man can or ever could perform any phenomena! I
turn
my face homeward to-morrow.
The
delivery of this letter may very possibly be delayed for a few days, owing to
causes
which
it will not interest you for me to specify. Meanwhile, however, I have
telegraphed
you
my thanks for your obliging compliance with my wishes in the matters you allude
to
in
your letter of the 24th inst. I see with pleasure, that you have not failed to
usher me
before
the world as a possible "confederate." That makes our number ten,
I believe? But I
must
say, that your promise was well and loyally fulfilled. Received at Umritsur on
the
27th
inst., at
minutes
later, and had an acknowledgment wired to you from
same
afternoon. Our modes of accelerated delivery and quick communications are not
then,
as you will see, to be despised by the Western world, or even the Aryan,
English-speaking
and
skeptical Vakils.
I
could not ask a more judicial frame of mind in an ally than that in which you
are
beginning
to find yourself. My Brother, you have already changed your attitude toward
us
in a distinct degree: what is to prevent a perfect mutual understanding one
day!
Mr.
Hume's proposition has been duly and carefully considered. He will, no doubt,
advise
you
of the results as expressed in my letter, to him. Whether he will give our
"modes of
action"
as fair a trial as yourself -- is another question. Our Maha (the
"Chief") has
allowed
me to correspond with both of you, and even -- in case an Anglo-Indian Branch
is
formed -- to come some day in personal contact with it. It now depends entirely
on
you.
I cannot tell you more. You are quite right as to the standing of our
friends in the
Anglo-Indian
world having been materially improved by the Simla visit; and, it is also
true,
though you modestly refrain from saying so, that we are mainly indebted to you
for.this.
But
quite apart from the unlucky incidents of the Bombay publications, it is not
possible that there
should be much more at best than a benevolent neutrality shown by
your
people toward ours. There is so very minute a point of contact between the two
civilisations
they respectively represent, that one might almost say they could not touch at
all.
Nor would they but for the few -- shall I say eccentrics? -- who, like you,
dream
better
and bolder dreams than the rest; and provoking thought, bring the two together
by
their
own admirable audacity. Has it occurred to you that the two
not
influenced, may at least have not been prevented, by those who might have done
so,
because
they saw the necessity for that much agitation to effect the double result of
making
a needed diversion after the Brooch Grenade, and, perhaps, of trying the
strength
of
your personal interest in occultism and theosophy? I do not say it was so;
I but enquire
whether
the contingency ever presented itself to your mind. I have already caused it to
be
intimated
to you that if the details given in the stolen letter had been anticipated in
the
Pioneer -- a much more
appropriate place, and where they would have been handled to
better
advantage -- that document would not have been worth anyone's while to purloin
for
the Times of
Colonel
Olcott is doubtless "out of time with the feelings of English people"
of both
classes;
but nevertheless more in time with us than either. Him we can trust
under all
circumstances,
and his faithful service is pledged to us come well, come ill. My dear
Brother,
my voice is the echo of impartial justice. Where can we find an equal devotion?
He
is one who never questions, but obeys; who may make innumerable mistakes out of
excessive
zeal but never is unwilling to repair his fault even at the cost of the
greatest
self-humiliation;
who esteems the sacrifice of comfort and even life something to be
cheerfully
risked whenever necessary; who will eat any food, or even go without; sleep
on
any bed, work in any place, fraternise with any outcast, endure any privation
for the
cause.
. . . I admit that his connection with an A. I. Branch would be "an
evil" -- hence, he
will
have no more to do with it than he has with the British, (London Branch). His
connection
will be purely nominal, and may be made more so, by framing your Rules
more
carefully than theirs; and giving your organization such a self-acting system
of
Government
as would seldom if ever require any outside interference. But to make an
independent
A.I.B. with the self-same objects, either in whole or apart, as the Parent
Society
and with the same directors behind the scenes would be not only to deal a
mortal
blow
at the Theos. Soc. but also put upon us a double labour and anxiety without the
slightest
compensating advantage that any of us can perceive. The Parent S. has never
interfered
in the slightest degree with the British T.S., nor indeed with any other
Branch,
whether
religious or philosophical. Having formed, or caused to be formed a new branch,
the
Parent S. charters it (which it cannot now do without our Sanction and
signatures),
and
then usually retires behind the scenes, as you would say. Its further
connection with
the
subject branches is limited to receiving quarterly accounts of their doings and
lists of
the
new Fellows, ratifying expulsions -- only when specially called upon as an
arbitrator
to
interfere on account of the Founders' direct connection with us -- etc., etc.;
it never
meddles
otherwise in their affairs except when appealed to as a sort of appelate court.
And
the latter depending on you, what is there to prevent your Society from
remaining
virtually
independent? We are, even more generous than you British are to us. We will
not
force upon, nor even ask you to sanction a Hindu "Resident" in your
Society,
to.watch the interests of the Parent Paramount
Power when we have once declared you
independent;
but will implicitly trust to your loyalty and word of honour. But if you now
so
dislike the idea of a purely nominal executive supervision by Col. Olcott -- an
American
of your own race -- you would surely rebel against dictation from a Hindu,
whose
habits and methods are those of his own people, and whose race, despite your
natural
benevolence, you have not yet learnt to tolerate, let alone to love or respect.
Think
well
before you ask for our guidance. Our best, most learned. and highest adepts are
of
the
races of the "greasy Tibetans"; and the Penjabi Singhs -- you know
the lion is
proverbially
a dirty and offensive beast, despite his strength and courage. Is it certain
that
your
good compatriots would more easily forgive our Hindu solecisms in manners than
those
of their own kinsmen of
this
was doubtful. National prejudices are apt to leave one's spectacles undimmed.
You
say
"how glad we should be, if that one (to guide you) were yourself," meaning
your
unworthy
correspondent. My good Brother, are you certain, that the pleasant impression
you
now may have from our correspondence, would not instantly be destroyed upon
seeing
me? And which of our holy Shaberons has had the benefit of even the little
university
education and inkling of European manners that has fallen to my share? An
instance:
I desired Mad. B. to select among the two or three Aryan Punjabees who study
Yog Vidya, and our
natural mystics, one, whom -- without disclosing myself to him too
much
I could designate as an agent between yourself and us, and whom I was anxious
to
dispatch
to you, with a letter of introduction, and have him speak to you of Yoga and
its
practical
effects. This young gentleman who is as pure as purity itself, whose
aspirations
and
thoughts are of the most spiritual ennobling kind, and who merely through
self-exertion
is
able to penetrate into the regions of the formless worlds -- this young man is
not
fit for -- a drawing-room. Having explained to him that the greatest good might
result
for
his country if he helped you to organize a Branch of English mystics by proving
to
them
practically to what wonderful results led the study of
guarded
and very delicate terms to change his dress and turban before starting for
slovenly. You are to
tell Mr. Sinnett -- she said -- that you bring him a letter from our
Brother
K., with whom he corresponds. But, if he asks you anything either of him or the
other
Brothers answer him simply and truthfully that you are not allowed to expatiate
upon
the subject. Speak of Yog and prove to him what powers you have attained. This
young
man who had consented wrote later on the following curious letter:
"Madam," he
said,
"you who preach the highest standards of morality, of truthfulness, etc.,
you would
have
me play the part of an imposter. You ask me to change my clothes at the
risk of
giving
a false idea of my personality and mystifying the gentleman you send me to. And
what
if he asks me if I personally know Koot'hoomi, am I to keep silent and allow
him to
think
I do? This would be a tacit falsehood, and guilty of that, I would be thrown
back
into
the awful whirl of transmigration!" Here is an illustration of the
difficulties under
which
we have to labour. Powerless to send to you a neophyte before you have
pledged
yourself
to us -- we have to either keep back or despatch to you one who at best would
shock
if not inspire you at once with disgust! The letter would have been given him
by
my
own hand; he had but to promise to hold his tongue upon matters he knows
nothing
about
and could give but a false idea of, and to make himself look cleaner. Prejudice
and
dead
letter again. For over a thousand years, -- says Michelet, -- the Christian
Saints.never
washed
themselves! For how long will our Saints dread to change their clothes for
fear
of being taken for Marmaliks and the neophytes of rival and cleaner sects!
But
these, our difficulties, ought not to prevent you from beginning your work.
Colonel
O.
and Mad. B. seeming willing to become personally responsible for both
yourself and
Mr.
Hume, if you yourself are ready to answer for the fidelity of any man your
party may
choose
as the leader of the A.I.T.S., we are content that the trial shall be made. The
field
is
yours and no one will be allowed to interfere with you except myself on behalf
of our
Chiefs
when you once do me the honour to prefer me to the others. But before one
builds
the
house he makes the plan. Suppose you draft a memorandum as to the constitution
and
policy
of management of the A.I. Society you have in mind and submit it for
consideration?
If our Chiefs agree to it -- and it is not surely they who would show
themselves
obstructive in the universal onward march, or retard this movement to a
higher
goal -- then you will at once be chartered. But they must first see the plan;
and I
must
ask you to remember that the new Society shall not be allowed to disconnect
itself
with
the Parent Body, though you are at liberty to manage your affairs in your own
way
without
fearing the slightest interference from its President so long as you do not
violate
the
general Rules. And upon this point I refer you to Rule 9. This is the first
practical
suggestion
coming from a Cis and Trans-Himalayan "cave-dweller"
whom you have
honoured
with your confidence.
And
now about yourself personally. Far be it from me to discourage one so willing
as
yourself
by setting up impossible barriers to your progress. We never whine over the
inevitable
but try to make the best of the worst. And though we neither push nor draw
into
the mysterious domain of occult nature those who are unwilling; never shrink
from
expressing
our opinions freely and fearlessly, yet we are ever as ready to assist those
who
come
to us; even to -- agnostics who assume the negative position of "knowing
nothing
but
phenomena and refuse to believe in anything else." It is true that
the married man
cannot
be an adept, yet without striving to become "a Raja Yogi" he
can acquire certain
powers
and do as much good to mankind and often more, by remaining within the
precincts
of this world of his. Therefore, shall we not ask you to precipitately change
fixed
habits of life, before the full conviction of its necessity and advantage has
possessed
you.
You are a man to be left to lead himself, and may be so left with safety. Your
resolution
is taken to deserve much: time will effect the rest. There are more ways than
one
for acquiring occult knowledge. "Many are the grains of incense destined
for one and
the
same altar: one falls sooner into the fire, the other later -- the difference
of time is
nothing,"
remarked a great man when he was refused admission and supreme initiation
into
the mysteries. There is a tone of complaint in your question whether there ever
will
be
a renewal of the vision you had, the night before the picnic day. Methinks,
were you to
have
a vision nightly, you would soon cease to "treasure" them at all. But
there is a far
weightier
reason why you should not have a surfeit -- it would be a waste of our
strength.
As
often as I, or any of us can communicate with you, whether by dreams, waking
impressions,
letters (in or out of pillows) or personal visits in astral form -- it will be
done.
But remember that Simla is 7,000 feet higher than
be
surmounted at the latter are tremendous. I abstain from encouraging you to
expect too
.much,
for, like yourself, I am loathe to promise what, for various reasons, I may not
be
able
to perform.
The
term "Universal Brotherhood" is no idle phrase. Humanity in the mass
has a
paramount
claim upon us, as I try to explain in my letter to Mr. Hume, which you had
better
ask the loan of. It is the only secure foundation for universal morality. If it
be a
dream,
it is at least a noble one for mankind and it is the aspiration of the true
adept.
Yours
faithfully,
Koot'
Hoomi Lal Singh..The
Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------
Letter No. 5
{Received
November 1880}
My
Dear Friend,
I
have your letter of November 19th, abstracted by our special osmosis from
the envelope
at
postman
just now. I am sorry to see that she has once more proved inaccurate and led
you
into
error; but this is chiefly my own fault, as I often neglect to give her an
extra rub over
her
poor sick head, now, when she forgets and mixes up things more than usual. I
did not
ask
her to tell you "to give up the idea of the A.I. Branch as nothing would
come of it,"
but
-- "to give up the idea of the Anglo-Indian Branch in co-operation with
Mr. Hume, as
nothing
would come of it." I will send you his answer to my letter and my final
epistle
and
you will judge for yourself. After reading the latter, you will please seal and
send it
to
him, simply stating that you do so on my behalf. Unless he asks the question
you better
not
let him know you have read his letter. He may be proud of it, but -- should
not.
My
dear, good friend, you must not bear me a grudge for what I say to him of the
English
in
general. They are haughty. To us especially, so that we regard it as a
national feature.
And,
you must not confound your own private views -- especially those you have now
--
with
those of your countrymen in general. Few, if any -- (of course with such
exceptions
as
yourself, where intensity of aspirations makes one disregard all other
considerations) --
would
ever consent to have "a nigger" for a guide or leader, no more than a
modern
Desdemona
would choose an Indian Othello nowadays. The prejudice of race is intense,
and
even in free
vibrates
in your own remark about "a man of the people unused to refined ways"
and "a
foreigner
but a gentleman," the latter being the man to be preferred. Nor would a
Hindu
be
likely to have such a lack of "refined ways" disregarded in him were
he "an adept"
twenty
times over again; and this very same trait appears prominent in Viscount
Amberley's
criticism on the "underbred Jesus." Had you paraphrased your sentence
and
said:
-- "a foreigner but no gentleman" (according to English
notions) you could not have
added
as you did, that he would be thought the fittest. Hence, I say it again, that
the
majority
of our Anglo-Indians, among whom the terms "Hindu" or
"Asiatic" is generally
coupled
with a vague yet actual idea of one who uses his fingers instead of a bit of
cambric,
and who abjures soap -- would most certainly prefer an American to "a
greasy
Tibetan."
But you need not tremble for me. Whenever I make my appearance –
whether.astrally or physically -- before my
friend A. P. Sinnett, I will not forget to invest a certain
sum
in a square of the finest Chinese silk to carry in my chogga pocket, nor
to create an
atmosphere
of sandal-wood and cashmere roses. This is the least I could do in atonement
for
my countrymen. But then, you see, I am but a slave of my masters; and if,
allowed to
gratify
my own friendly feeling for you, and attend to you individually, I may
not be
permitted
to do as much for others. Nay, to tell truth, I know I am not permitted
to do so,
and
Mr. Hume's unfortunate letter has contributed much to it. There is a distinct
group or
section
in our fraternity who attend to our casual and very rare accessions of another
race
and
blood, and who brought across the threshold Captain Remington and two other
Englishmen
during this century. And these "Brothers" -- do not habitually use
floral
essences.
So
the test of the 27th was no test phenomenon? Of course, of
course. But did you try to
get,
as you said you would, the original MSS. of the
but
plethoric friend, Mrs. B., were even proved to be my multum in parvo, my
letter-writer,
and
to manufacture my epistles, yet, unless she were ubiquitous or had the gift of
flying
from
she
have written for me the dispatch in my own hand-writing at
after
your letter was received by her at
said
you would send for it, for, with this dispatch in your possession, no
"detractors"
would
be very strong, nor even the sceptical logic of Mr. Hume prevail.
Naturally
you imagine that the "nameless revelation" -- which now re-echoes in
--
would have been pounced upon far more eagerly than even it was, by the Times
of
printed
the account, the T. of I. could never have published "A day with
Madame B.,"
since
that nice bit of American "sensationalism" would not have been
written by Olcott at
all.
It would not have had its raison d'etre. Anxious to collect for his
Society every proof
corroborative
of the occult powers of what he terms the 1st Section, and seeing that you
remained
silent, our gallant Colonel felt his hand itch until it brought everything to
light,
and
-- plunged everything into darkness and consternation! . . . "Et voici
pourquoi nous
n'irons
plus au bois," as the French song goes.
Did
you write "tune"? Well, well; I must ask you to buy me a pair of
spectacles in
adopt
my old fashioned habit of "little lines" over the "m's."
Those bars are useful, even
though
"out of tune and time" with modern caligraphy. Besides, bear in mind,
that these
my
letters, are not written but impressed or precipitated and then all
mistakes corrected.
We
will not discuss, at present, whether your aims and objects are so widely
different
from
those of Mr. Hume's; but if he may be actuated by "a purer and broader
philanthropy,"
the way he sets to work to achieve these aims will never carry him beyond
pure
theoretical disquisitions upon the subject. No use now in trying to represent
him in
any
other light. His letter that you will soon read -- is, as I say to himself,
"a monument
of
pride and unconscious selfishness." He is too just and superior a man to be
guilty of
petty
vanities; but his pride climbs like that of the mythical Lucifer; and, you may
believe.me –
if I have any experience in human nature --
when I say, that this is Hume -- au
naturel. It is no
hasty conclusion of mine based upon any personal feeling, but the
decision
of the greatest of our living adepts -- the Shaberon of Than -- La. Of whatever
question
he touches his treatment is the same: a stubborn determination to make
everything
either fit his own foregone conclusions or -- sweep it away by a rush of
ironical
and adverse criticism. Mr. Hume is a very able man and -- Hume to the core.
Such
a state of mind offers little attraction, as you will understand, to any of us
who
might
be willing to come and help him.
No; I do not and never
will "despise" any "feeling" however it may clash with my
own
principles,
when it is expressed as frankly and openly as yours. You may be, and
undoubtedly
are, moved by more egotism than broad benevolence for mankind. Yet as
you
confess it without mounting any philanthropical stilts, I tell you candidly
that you
have
far more chances than Mr. Hume to learn a good bit of occultism. I, for one,
will do
all
I can for you, under the circumstances and restrained as I am by fresh orders.
I will
not
tell you to give up this or that, for, unless you exhibit beyond any doubt the
presence
in
you of the necessary germs it would be as useless as it would be cruel.
But I say --
TRY.
Do not despair. Unite to yourself several determined men and women and make
experiments
in mesmerism and the usual so-called "spiritual" phenomena. If you
act in
accordance
with prescribed methods you are sure to ultimately obtain results. Apart from
this,
I will do my best and -- who knows! Strong will creates and sympathy
attracts even
adepts,
whose laws are antagonistic to their mixing with the uninitiated. If you are
willing
I
will send you an Essay showing why in
Brotherhood, i.e., an
association of "affinities" of strong magnetic yet dissimilar forces
and
polarities centred around one dominant idea, is necessary for successful
achievements
in occult sciences. What one will fail to do -- the combined many will
achieve.
Of course you will have -- in case you organise -- to put up with Olcott at the
head
of the Parent Society, hence -- nominally the President of all the existing
Branches.
But
he will be no more your "leader " than he is the leader of the
British Theos. Society,
which
has its own President, its own Rules and Bye-laws. You will be chartered
by him,
and
that's all. In some cases he will have to sign a paper or two -- 4 times a year
the
accounts
sent in by your Secretary; yet he has no right to interfere either with
your
administration
or modes of action, so long as these do not clash with the general Rules,
and
he certainly has neither the ability nor the desire of being your leader. And,
of course,
you
(meaning the whole Society) will have besides your own President chosen by
yourselves,
"a qualified professor of occultism" to instruct you. But, my good
friend,
abandon
all notion that this "Professor" can bodily appear and instruct you
for years to
come.
I may come to you personally -- unless you drive me off, as Mr. Hume did
-- I
cannot come to ALL.
You may get phenomena and proofs, but even were you to fall into
the
old error and attribute them to "Spirits" we could but show you your
mistake by
philosophical
and logical explanations; no adept would be allowed to attend your
meetings.
Of
course you ought to write your book. I do not see, why in any case it should be
impracticable.
Do so, by all means, and any help I can give you I will. You ought to put
yourself
immediately in correspondence with Lord Lindsay, and take the Simla.phenomena
and
your correspondence with me as the subject. He is intensely interested in
all
such experiments, and being a theosophist and upon the General Council is sure
to
welcome
your overtures. Take the ground that you belong to the T.S., that you are the
widely
known Editor of the "Pioneer," and that, knowing how great an
interest he takes
in
the "spiritual" phenomena you submit to his consideration the very
extraordinary
things
which took place at Simla, with such additional details as have not been
published.
The
best of the British Spiritualists could, with proper management, be converted
into
Theosophists.
But neither Dr. Wyld, nor Mr. Massey, seem to have the requisite force. I
advise
you to confer personally with Lord Lindsay upon the theosophical situation at
home
and in
suggest
will pave the way.
Even
if Madame B. might "be induced" to give the A.I. Society any
"practical
instruction"
I am afraid she has remained too long a time outside the adytum to be of
much
use for practical explanations. However, though it does not depend upon
me, I will
see
what I can do in this direction. But I fear she is sadly in need of a few
months of
recuperative
villagiatura, on the glaciers, with her old Master before she can be
entrusted
with
such a difficult task. Be very cautious with her in case she stops with you on
her
way
down home. Her nervous system is terribly shaken, and she requires every care.
Will
you
please spare me needless trouble by informing me of the year, date, and hour of
Mrs.
Sinnett's
birth?
Ever
yours sincerely,
Koot'
Hoomi..The Mahatma
Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------
Letter No. 6
Received
at
No
-- you do not "write too much." I am only sorry to have so little
time at my disposal;
hence
-- to find myself unable to answer you as speedily as I otherwise would. Of
course
I have to read every
word you write: otherwise I would make a fine mess of it. And
whether
it be through my physical or spiritual eyes the time required for it is
practically
the
same. As much may be said of my replies. For, whether I "precipitate"
or dictate them
or
write my answers myself, the difference in time saved is very minute. I have to
think it
over,
to photograph every word and sentence carefully in my brain before it can be
repeated
by "precipitation." As the fixing on chemically prepared surfaes of
the images
formed
by the camera requires a previous arrangement within the focus of the object to
be
represented, for otherwise -- as often found in bad photographs -- the legs of
the sitter
might
appear out of all proportion with the head, and so on, so we have to first
arrange
our
sentences and impress every letter to appear on paper in our minds before it
becomes
fit
to be read. For the present, it is all I can tell you. When science will
have learned more
about
the mystery of the lithophyl (or lithobiblion) and how the impress of
leaves comes
originally
to take place on stones, then will I be able to make you better understand the
process.
But you must know and remember one thing: we but follow and servilely copy
nature in her works.
No;
we need argue no longer upon the unfortunate question of a "Day with Mad.
B." It is
the
more useless, since you say, you have no right to crush and grind your uncivil
and
often
blackguardly opponents in the "Pioneer" -- even in your own
defence -- your
proprietors
objecting to the mention of occultism altogether. As they are Christians it is
no
matter of great wonder. Let us be charitable and hope they will get their own
reward:
die
and become angels of right and Truth -- winged paupers of the Christian heaven.
Unless
you join several, and organize somehow or other, I am afraid I will
prove but of
little
help for you practically. My dear friend, I have my "proprietors"
also. For reasons
best
known to themselves they have set their foot upon the idea of teaching isolated
individuals.
I will correspond with you and give you proofs from time to time of my
existence
and presence. To teach or instruct you -- is altogether another question. Hence
to
sit with your lady is more than useless. Your magnetisms are too similar and --
you
will
get nothing..I will translate my Essay and send it to you as soon as I
can. Your idea of corresponding
with
your friends and fellows is the next best thing to do. But do not fail to write
to Lord
Lindsay.
I
am a little "too hard" upon Hume, you say. Am I? His is a highly
intellectual and, I
confess,
a spiritual nature too. Yet, he is every bit of him "Sir Oracle." It
may be that it is
the
very exuberance of that great intellect which seeks issue through every chink,
and
never
loses an opportunity to relieve the fulness of the brain, which overflows with
thought.
Finding in his quiet daily life too meagre a field with but "Moggy"
and Davison
to
sow upon -- his intellect bursts the dam and pounces upon every imagined event,
every
possible
though improbable fact his imagination can suggest, to interpret it in his own
conjectural
way. Nor do I wonder that such a skilled workman in intellectual mosaic as
he,
finding suddenly, the most fertile of quarries, the most precious of
colour-stores in
this
idea of our Fraternity and the T.S. -- should pick out ingredients from it to
daub our
faces
with. Placing us before a mirror which reflects us as he finds us in his own
fertile
imagination
he says: "Now, you mouldy relics of a mouldy Past, look at yourselves how
you
really are!" A very, very excellent man our friend Mr. Hume, but
utterly unfit for
moulding
into an adept.
As
little, and far less than yourself does he seem to realize our real object in
the formation
of
an A.I. Branch. The truths and mysteries of occultism constitute, indeed, a
body of the
highest
spiritual importance, at once profound and practical for the world at large.
Yet, it
is
not as a mere addition to the tangled mass of theory or speculation in the
world of
science
that they are being given to you, but for their practical bearing on the
interests of
mankind.
The terms "unscientific," "impossible,"
"hallucination," "impostor," have
hitherto
been used in a very loose, careless way, as implying in the occult phenomena
something
either mysterious and abnormal, or a premeditated imposture. And this is why
our
chiefs have determined to shed upon a few recipient minds more light upon the
subject,
and to prove to them that such manifestations are as reducible to law as the
simplest
phenomena of the physical universe. The wiseacres say: "The age of
miracles is
past,"
but we answer, "it never existed!" While not unparalleled, or without
their
counterpart
in universal history, these phenomena must and WILL come with an
overpowering
influence upon the world of sceptics and bigots. They have to prove both
destructive
and constructive -- destructive in the pernicious errors of the past, in
the old
creeds
and superstitions which suffocate in their poisonous embrace like the Mexican
weed
nigh all mankind; but constructive of new institutions of a genuine,
practical
Brotherhood
of Humanity where all will become co-workers of nature, will work for the
good
of mankind with and through the higher planetary Spirits --
the only "Spirits" we
believe
in. Phenomenal elements, previously unthought of -- undreamt of -- will soon
begin
manifesting themselves day by day with constantly augmented force, and disclose
at
last the secrets of their mysterious workings. Plato was right: ideas rule
the world; and,
as
men's minds will receive new ideas, laying aside the old and effete, the
world will
advance:
mighty revolutions will spring from them; creeds and even powers will crumble
before
their onward march crushed by the irresistible force. It will be just as
impossible to
resist
their influx, when the time comes, as to stay the progress of the tide. But all
this
will
come gradually on, and before it comes we have a duty set before us; that
of.sweeping
away
as much as possible the dross left to us by our pious forefathers. New
ideas
have to be planted on clean places, for these ideas touch upon the most
momentous
subjects.
It is not physical phenomena but these universal ideas that we study, as to
comprehend
the former, we have to first understand the latter. They touch man's true
position
in the universe, in relation to his previous and future births; his origin and
ultimate
destiny; the relation of the mortal to the immortal; of the temporary to the
eternal;
of the finite to the infinite; ideas larger, grander, more comprehensive,
recognising
the universal reign of Immutable Law, unchanging and unchangeable in
regard
to which there is only an ETERNAL Now, while to uninitiated mortals time is
past
or
future as related to their finite existence on this material speck of dirt.
This is what we
study
and what many have solved.
And
now it is your province to decide which will you have: the highest philosophy
or
simple
exhibitions of occult powers. Of course this is by far not the last word
between us
and
-- you will have time to think it over. The Chiefs want a
"Brotherhood of Humanity,"
a
real Universal Fraternity started; an institution which would make itself known
throughout
the world and arrest the attention of the highest minds. I will send you my
Essay. Will you be my
co-worker and patiently wait for minor phenomena? I think I
foresee
the answer. At all events the holy lamp of spiritual light burning in you
(however
dimly)
there is hope for you, and -- for me, also. Yes; put yourself in search after
natives
if
there are no English people to be had. But think you, the spirit and power of
persecution
gone from this enlightened age? Time will prove. Meanwhile, being human I
have
to rest. I took no sleep for over 60 hours.
Ever
yours truly,
KOOT'
HOOMI..The Mahatma
Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------
Letter No. 8
Received
through
{Mr.
and Mrs. Sinnett and their young son were on their way to
During
the trip Sinnett wrote and published The Occult World. he returned
alone
July 5, Mrs. Sinnett being too ill to travel.}
My
dear friend, you are certainly on the right path: the path of deeds and
actions, not
mere
words -- may you live long and keep on!. . . I hope this will not be regarded
by you
as
an encouragement to be "goody goody" -- a happy expression which made
me laugh --
but
you indeed step in as a kind of Kalka Avatar dispelling the shadows of
"Kali-yug" --
the
black night of the perishing T.S. and driving away before you the fata
morgana of its
Rules. I must cause
the word fecit to appear after your name in invisible but indelible
characters
on the list of the General Council, as it may prove some day a secret door to
the
heart of the sternest of Hobilgans. . . .
Though
a good deal occupied -- alas, as usual, I must contrive to send you a somewhat
lengthy
farewell epistle before you take up a journey that may have most important
results
-- and not alone for our cause. . . . You understand, do you not, that it is no
fault of
mine
if I cannot meet you as I would? Nor is it yours, but rather that of
your life-long
environment
and a special delicate task I have been entrusted with since I knew you.
Do
not
blame me then, if I do not show myself in more tangible shape, as not you
alone, but I
myself
might desire! When I am not permitted to do so for Olcott -- who has toiled for
us
these
five years, how could I be for others who have undergone none of his training
as
yet?
This applies equally to the case of the Lord Crawford and Balcarres, an
excellent
gentleman
-- imprisoned by the world. His is a sincere and noble, though may be a little
too
repressed nature. He asks what hope he may have? I say -- every hope. For
he has that
within
himself that so very few possess: an exhaustless source of magnetic fluid
which, if
he
only had the time, he could call out in torrents and need no other master than
himself.
His
own powers would do the work and his own great experience be a sure guide for
him.
But,
he would have to guard against, and avoid every foreign influence --
especially those
antagonistic
to the nobler study of MAN as an integral Brahm, the microcosm free and
entirely
independent of either the help or control of the invisible agencies the
"new
dispensation"
(bombastic word!) calls "Spirits." His Lordship will understand my
meaning
without any further explanation: he is welcome to read this if he chooses, if
the
opinions
of an obscure Hindu interest him. Were he a poor man, he might have become
an
English Dupotet, with the addition of great scientific attainments in exact
science. But.alas --! what the peerage has gained psychology has lost. . . .
And yet it is not too late.
But
see, even after mastering magnetic science and giving his powerful mind to the
study
of
the noblest branches of exact science, how even he has failed to lift more than
a small
corner
of the veil of mystery. Ah! that whirling, showy, glittering world, full of
insatiable
ambition,
where family and the State parcel out between them a man's nobler nature, as
two
tigers a carcase, and leave him without hope or light! How many recruits could
we
not
have from it, if no sacrifice were exacted! His Lordship's letter to you
exhales an
influence
of sincerity tinged with regret. This is a good man at heart with latent capacity
for
being a far better and a happier one. Had his lot not been cast as it has, and
had his
intellectual
power all been turned upon Soul-culture, he would have achieved much more
than
he ever dreamt. Out of such material were adepts made in the days of Aryan
glory.
But
I must dwell no longer upon this case; and I crave his Lordship's pardon if, in
the
bitterness
of my regret I over-stepped in any way the bounds of propriety, in this too
free
"psychometrical
delineation of character" as the American mediums would express it . . .
full
measure only bounds excess" but -- I dare go no further. Ah, my too
positive and yet
impatient
friend, if you but had such latent capacities!
The
"direct communication" with me of which you write in your supplement
note, and
the
"enormous advantage" that it would bring "to the book itself, if
it can be conceded,"
would
be so conceded at once, did it depend but of me alone. Though it is not often
judicious
to repeat oneself, yet I am so anxious that you should realize the present
impracticability
of such an arrangement, were it even conceded by our Superiors, that I
will
indulge in a brief retrospect of principles stated.
We
might leave out of the question the most vital point -- one, you would hesitate
perhaps
to believe -- that the refusal concerns as much your own salvation (from
the
standpoint
of your worldly material considerations) as my enforced compliance with our
time
honoured Rules. Again I might cite the case of Olcott (who, had he not
been
permitted
to communicate face to face -- and without any intermediary -- with us, might
have
subsequently shown less zeal and devotion but more discretion) and his fate up
to
the
present. But, the comparison would doubtless appear to you strained. Olcott --
would
you
say -- is an enthusiast, a stubborn, unreasoning mystic, who goes headlong
before
him,
blindfolded, and who will not allow himself to look forward with his own eyes.
While
you are a sober, matter-of-fact man of the world, the son of your generation of
cool
thinkers;
ever keeping fancy under the curb, and saying to enthusiasm: "Thus far
shalt
thou
go and no farther." . . . Perhaps you are right -- perhaps not. "No
Lama knows where
the
ber-chhen will hurt him until he puts it on," says a Tibetan
proverb. However, let that
pass,
for I must tell you now that for opening "direct communication" the
only possible
means
would be: (1) For each of us to meet in our own physical bodies. I being
where I
am,
and you in your own quarters, there is a material impediment for me. (2)
For both to
meet
in our astral form -- which would necessitate your "getting out" of
yours, as well as
my
leaving my body. The spiritual impediment to this is on your part. (3)
To make you
hear
my voice either within you or near you as "the old lady" does. This
would be
feasible
in either of two ways: (a) My chiefs have but to give me permission to set up
the
conditions
-- and this for the present they refuse; or (b) for you to hear my voice, i.e.,
my
natural voice without
any psycho-physiological tamasha being employed by me (again as.we often
do among ourselves). But then, to do this, not only have one's spiritual senses
to
be
abnormally opened, but one must himself have mastered the great secret -- yet
undiscovered
by science -- of, so to say abolishing all the impediments of space; of
neutralising
for the time being the natural obstacle of intermediary particles of air and
forcing
the waves to strike your ear in reflected sounds or echo. Of the latter you
know as
yet
only enough to regard this as an unscientific absurdity. Your physicists, not
having
until
recently mastered acoustics in this direction, any further than to acquire a
perfect (?)
knowledge
of the vibration of sonorous bodies and of reverberations through tubes, may
sneeringly
ask: "Where are your indefinitely continued sonorous bodies, to conduct
through
space the vibrations of the voice?" We answer that our tubes, though
invisible,
are
indestructible and far more perfect than those of modern physicists, by whom
the
velocity
of the transmission of mechanical force through the air is represented as at
the
rate
of 1,100 feet a second and no more -- if I mistake not. But then, may there not
be
people
who have found more perfect and rapid means of transmission, from being
somewhat
better acquainted with the occult powers of air (akas) and having plus
a more
cultivated
judgment of sounds? But of this we will argue later on.
There
is still more serious inconvenience; an almost insurmountable obstacle -- for
the
present,
and one, under which I myself am labouring, while even I do no more than
correspond
with you, a simple thing that any other mortal could do. It is my utter
inability
to
make you understand my meaning in my explanation of even physical phenomena,
let
alone
the spiritual rationale. This is not the first time I mention it. It is, as
though a child
should
ask me to teach him the highest problems of
studying
the elementary rules of arithmetic. Only the progress one makes in the study of
Arcane
knowledge from its rudimental elements, brings him gradually to understand our
meaning.
Only thus, and not otherwise, does it, strengthening and refining those
mysterious
links of sympathy between intelligent men -- the temporarily isolated
fragments
of the universal Soul and the cosmic Soul itself -- bring them into full
rapport.
Once
this established, then only will these awakened sympathies serve, indeed, to
connect
MAN with -- what for the want of a European scientific word more competent to
express
the idea, I am again compelled to describe as that energetic chain which binds
together
the material and Immaterial Kosmos, -- Past, Present, and Future -- and quicken
his
perceptions so as to clearly grasp, not merely all things of matter, but of
Spirit also. I
feel
even irritated at having to use these three clumsy words -- past, present and
future!
Miserable
concepts of the objective phases of the Subjective Whole, they are about as ill
adapted
for the purpose as an axe for fine carving. Oh, my poor, disappointed friend,
that
you
were already so far advanced on THE PATH, that this simple transmission of
ideas
should
not be encumbered by the conditions of matter, the union of your mind with ours
--
prevented
by its induced incapabilities! Such is unfortunately the inherited and
self-acquired
grossness
of the Western mind; and so greatly have the very phrases expressive
of
modern thoughts been developed in the line of practical materialism, that it is
now next
to
impossible either for them to comprehend or for us to express in their own
languages
anything
of that delicate seemingly ideal machinery of the Occult Kosmos. To some little
extent
that faculty can be acquired by the Europeans through study and meditation but
--
that's
all. And here is the bar which has hitherto prevented a conviction of the
theosophical
truths from gaining wider currency among Western Nations; caused.
theosophical
study to be cast aside as useless and fantastic by Western philosophers. How
shall
I teach you to read and write or even comprehend a language of which no
alphabet
palpable, or words audible
to you have yet been invented! How could the phenomena of
our
modern electrical science be explained to -- say, a Greek philosopher of the
days of
Ptolemy
were he suddenly recalled to life -- with such an unbridged hiatus in
discovery
as
would exist between his and our age? Would not the very technical terms be to
him an
unintelligible
jargon, an abracadabra of meaningless sounds, and the very instruments
and
apparatuses used, but "miraculous" monstrosities? And suppose, for
one instant, I
were
to describe to you the hues of those colour rays that lie beyond the
so-called "visible
spectrum"
-- rays invisible to all but a very few even among us; to explain, how we can
fix
in space any one of the so-called subjective or accidental colours --
the complement,
(to
speak mathematically) moreover, of any other given colour of a dichromatic
body
(which
alone sounds like an absurdity), could you comprehend, do you think, their
optical
effect
or even my meaning? And, since you see them not, such rays, nor can know them,
nor
have you any names for them as yet in Science, if I were to tell you: --
"My good
friend
Sinnett, if you please, without moving from your writing desk, try search for,
and
produce
before your eyes the whole solar spectrum decomposed into fourteen prismatic
colours
(seven being complementary), as it is but with the help of that occult light
that
you
can see me from a distance as I see you" . . . . what think you, would be
your answer?
What
would you have to reply? Would you not be likely enough to retort by telling me
in
your
own quiet, polite way, that as there never were but seven (now three) primary
colours,
which, moreover, have never yet by any known physical process -- been seen
decomposed
further than the seven prismatic hues -- my invitation was as
"unscientific"
as
it was "absurd"? Adding that my offer to search for an imaginary
solar "complement"
being
no compliment to your knowledge of physical science -- I had better, perhaps,
go
and
search for my mythical "dichromatic" and solar "pairs" in
Thibet, for modern science
has
hitherto been unable to bring under any theory even so simple a phenomenon as
the
colours
of all such dichromatic bodies. And yet -- truth knows -- these colours
are
objective
enough!
So
you see, the insurmountable difficulties in the way of attaining not only Absolute
but
even
primary knowledge in Occult Science, for one situated as you are. How could you
make
your self understood -- command in fact, those semi-intelligent Forces,
whose
means
of communicating with us are not through spoken words but through sounds and
colours,
in correlations between the vibrations of the two? For sound, light and colours
are
the main factors in forming these grades of Intelligences, these beings, of
whose very
existence
you have no conception, nor are you allowed to believe in them --
Atheists and
Christians,
materialists and Spiritualists, all bringing forward their respective arguments
against
such a belief -- Science objecting stronger than either of these to such a
"degrading
superstition"!
Thus,
because they cannot with one leap over the boundary walls attain to the
pinnacles
of
Eternity; because we cannot take a savage from the centre of
comprehend
at once the Principia of
make
an unlettered child write a new Iliad in old Achaian Greek; or an ordinary
painter
depict
scenes in Saturn or sketch the inhabitants of Arcturus –
because of all this our.very existence is denied! Yes; for this reason are
believers
in us pronounced impostorsand fools, and the very science which leads
to
the highest goal of the highest knowledge,to the real tasting of the Tree of
Life
and
Wisdom -- is scouted as a wild flight of Imagination!
Most
earnestly do I ask you not to see in the above a mere ventilation of personal
feeling.
My
time is precious and I have none to lose. Still less ought you to see in this
an effort to
disgust
or dissuade you from the noble work you have just begun. Nothing of the kind;
for
what I now say may avail for as much as it can and no more; but -- vera pro
gratis -- I
WARN
you, and will say no more, apart from reminding you in a general way, that the
task
you are so bravely undertaking, that Missio in partis infidelium -- is
the most
ungrateful,
perhaps, of all tasks! But, if you believe in my friendship for you, if you
value
the
word of honour of one who never -- never during his whole life
polluted his lips with
an
untruth, then do not forget the words I once wrote to you (see my last letter) of
those
who engage themselves in the occult sciences; he who does it "must either reach the goal
or
perish. Once fairly started on the way to the great Knowledge, to doubt
is to risk
insanity;
to come to a dead stop is to fall; to recede is to tumble backward, headlong
into
an
abyss." Fear not, -- if you are sincere, and that you are -- now.
Are you as sure of
yourself,
as to future?
But
I believe it quite time to turn to less transcendental and what you would call
less
gloomy
and more mundane matters. Here, no doubt, you will be much more at home.
Your
experience, your training, your intellect, your knowledge of the exterior world,
in
short,
all combine to aid you in the accomplishment of the task you have undertaken.
For,
they
place you on an infinitely higher level than myself as regards the
consideration of
writing
a book, after your Society's "own heart." Though the interest I take
in it may
amaze
some who are likely to retort on me and my colleagues with our own arguments,
and
to remark that our "boasted elevation over the common herd" (our
friend Mr. Hume's
words)
-- above the interests and passions of ordinary humanity, must militate against
our
having
any conception of the ordinary affairs of life -- yet I confess that I do take
an
interest
in this book and its success, as great as in the success in life of its future
author.
I
hope that at least you will understand that we (or most of us) are far
from being the
heartless,
morally dried up mummies some would fancy us to be. "Mejnoor" is very
well,
where
he is -- as an ideal character of a thrilling -- in many respects truthful
story. Yet,
believe
me, few of us would care to play the part in life of a dessicated pansy between
the
leaves
of a volume of solemn poetry. We may not be quite the "boys" -- to
quote Olcott's
irreverent
expression when speaking of us -- yet none of our degree are like the
stern hero
of
Bulwer's romance. While the facilities of observation secured to some of us by
our
condition
certainly give a greater breadth of view, a more pronounced and impartial, as a
more
widely spread humaneness -- for answering
it
is . . . "the business of 'magic' to humanise our natures with
compassion" for the whole
mankind
as all living beings, instead of concentrating and limiting our affections to
one
predilected
race -- yet few of us (except such as have attained the final negation of
Moksha)
can so far enfranchise ourselves from the influence of our earthly connection
as
to
be insusceptible in various degrees to the higher pleasures, emotions, and
interests of.the common run of humanity. Until final emancipation reabsorbs the
Ego, it must be
conscious
of the purest sympathies called out by the esthetic effects of high art, its
tenderest
cords respond to the call of the holier and nobler human attachments. Of
course,
the
greater the progress towards deliverance, the less this will be the case,
until, to crown
all,
human and purely individual personal feelings -- blood-ties and friendship,
patriotism
and
race predilection -- all will give away, to become blended into one universal
feeling,
the
only true and holy, the only unselfish and Eternal one -- Love, an Immense Love
for
humanity
-- as a Whole! For it is "Humanity" which is the great Orphan,
the only
disinherited
one upon this earth, my friend. And it is the duty of every man who is
capable
of an unselfish impulse, to do something, however little, for its welfare.
Poor,
poor
humanity! It reminds me of the old fable of the war between the Body and its
members:
here too, each limb of this huge "Orphan" -- fatherless and
motherless --
selfishly
cares but for itself. The body uncared for suffers eternally, whether
the limbs are
at
war or at rest. Its suffering and agony never cease. . . . And who can blame it
-- as your
materialistic
philosophers do -- if, in this everlasting isolation and neglect it has evolved
gods,
unto whom "it ever cries for help but is not heard!" . . . Thus --
"Since
there is hope for man only in man
I
would not let one cry whom I could save! . . ."
Yet
I confess that I, individually, am not yet exempt from some of the terrestrial
attachments.
I am still attracted toward some men more than toward others, and
philanthropy
as preached by our Great Patron -- "the Saviour of the World -- the
Teacher
of
Nirvana and the Law . . . ." has never killed in me either individual
preferences of
friendship,
love -- for my next of kin, or the ardent feeling of patriotism for the country
--
in
which I was last materially individualized. And, in this connection, I may some
day,
unasked,
offer a bit of advice to my friend Mr. Sinnett, to whisper into the ear of the
Editor
of the PIONEER En attendant -- "May I beg the former to inform Dr.
Wyld, the
Prest.
of the British T.S., of the few truths concerning us as shown above? Will you
kindly
undertake to persuade this excellent gentleman, that not one of the humble
"dew
drops"
which, assuming under various pretexts the form of vapour, have at various
periods
disappeared in the space to congeal in the white Himalayan clouds, have ever
tried
to slip back into the shining
hanging
by the legs or by making unto themselves another "coat of skin" out
of the sacred
cow-dung
of the thrice "holy cow"! The British President labours under the
most original
ideas
about us, whom he persists in calling "Yogis," without allowing the
slightest
margin
to the enormous differences which exist even between "Hatha and Raj
Yog." This
mistake
must be laid at the door of Mrs. B. -- the able editor of "The Theosophist";
who
fills
up her volumes with the practices of divers Sannyasis and other "blessed
ones" from
the
plains, without ever troubling herself with a few additional lines of
explanation.
And
now, to still more important matters. Time is precious and material (I mean
writing
material)
is still more so. "Precipitation" -- in your case having become
unlawful; lack of
--
whether ink or paper -- standing no better chance for "Tamasha," and
I, being far away
from
home, and at a place where a stationer's shop is less needed than breathing
air, our.correspondence threatens to break very abruptly, unless I manage my
stock in hand
judiciously.
A friend promises to supply me in case of great need with a few stray sheets,
memento
relics of his grandfather's will, by which he disinherited him and thus made
his
"fortune."
But, as he never wrote one line but once, he says -- for the last eleven years,
except
on such "double superfin glace" made at Thibet as you might
irreverently mistake
for
blotting paper in its primitive days, and that the will is drawn upon a like
material --
we
might as well turn to your book at once. Since you do me the favour of asking
my
opinion,
I may tell you that the idea is an excellent one. Theosophy needs such help,
and
the
results will be what you anticipate in
I
lay no restrictions upon your making use of anything I may have written to you
or Mr.
Hume,
having full confidence in your tact and judgment as to what should be printed
and
how
it should be presented. I must only ask you for reasons upon which I must be
silent
(and
I am sure you will respect that silence) not to use one single word or
passage from
my last letter to you --
the one written after my long silence, no date, and the first one
forwarded
to you by our "old lady." I just quoted from it at page 4. Do me the
favour, if
my
poor epistles are worth preserving, to lay it by in a separate and sealed
envelope. You
may
have to unseal it only after a certain period of time has elapsed. As to the
rest -- I
relinquish
it to the mangling tooth of criticism. Nor would I interfere with the plan you
have
roughly sketched out in your mind. But I would strongly recommend you in its
execution
to lay the greatest stress upon small circumstances -- (could you oblige me
with
some
receipt for blue ink?!) which tend to show the impossibility of fraud or
conspiracy.
Reflect
well, how bold a thing it is to endorse phenomena as adeptic which the
Spiritsts.
have
already stamped as proofs of mediumship and skeptics as legerdemain. You should
not
omit one jot or tittle of collateral evidence that supports your position,
something you
have
neglected doing in your "A" letter in the Pioneer. For
instance, my friend tells me
that
it was a thirteenth cup and the pattern unmatchable, in Simla at least. (1) The pillow
was
chosen by yourself -- and yet the word "pillow" occurs in my note to
you, just as the
word
"tree" or anything else would have been substituted, had you chosen
another
depository,
instead of the pillow. You will find all such trifles serving you as the most
powerful
shield for yourself against ridicule and sneers. Then you will of course, aim
to
show
that this Theosophy is no new candidate for the world's attention, but only the
restatement
of principles which have been recognised from the very infancy of mankind.
The
historic sequence ought to be succinctly yet graphically traced through the
successive
evolutions
of philosophical schools, and illustrated with accounts of the experimental
demonstrations
of occult power ascribed to various thaumaturgists. The alternate
breakings-out
and subsidences of mystical phenomena, as well as their shiftings from one
centre
to another of population, show the conflicting play of the opposing forces of
spirituality
and animalism. And lastly it will appear that the present tidal-wave of
phenomena,
with its varied effects upon human thought and feeling, made the revival of
Theosophical
enquiry an indispensable necessity. The only problem to solve is the
practical
one, of how best to promote the necessary study, and give to the spiritualistic
movement
a needed upward impulse. It is a good beginning to make the inherent
capabilities
of the inner, living man better comprehended. To lay down the scientific
proposition
that since akrshu (attraction) and Prshu (repulsion) are the law
of nature,.there can be no intercourse or relations between clean and unclean
Souls -- embodied or
disembodied;
and hence, ninety-nine hundredths of supposed spiritual communications,
are,
prima facie false. Here is as great a fact to work upon as you can find,
and it cannot
be
made too plain. So, while a better selection might have been made for the Theosophist
in
the way of illustrative anecdotes, as, for instance, well authenticated
historical cases,
yet
the theory of turning the minds of phenomenalists into useful and suggestive
channels
away
from mere mediumistic dogmatism was the correct one.
What
I meant by the "Forlorn Hope" was that when one regards the magnitude
of the task
to
be undertaken by our theosophical volunteers, and especially the multitudinous
agencies
arrayed, and to be arrayed, in opposition, we may well compare it, to one of
those
desperate efforts against overwhelming odds that the true soldier glories to
attempt.
You
have done well to see the "large purpose" in the small beginnings of
the T.S. Of
course,
if we had undertaken to found and direct it inpropria persona very
likely it would
have
accomplished more and made fewer mistakes, but we could not do this, nor was it
the
plan: our two agents are given the task and left -- as you now are -- to do the
best they
could
under the circumstances. And much has been wrought. Under the surface of
Spiritualism,
runs a current that is wearing a broad channel for itself. When it reappears
above
ground its effects will be apparent. Already many minds like yours are
pondering
the
question of occult law -- forced upon the thinking public by this agitation.
Like you,
they
are dissatisfied with what has been hitherto attainable and clamour for better.
Let
this
-- encourage you.
It
is not quite accurate that by having such minds in the Society they would be
"under
conditions
more favourable for observation" for us. Rather put it, that by the act of
joining
other sympathisers in this organization they are stimulated to effort and
incite
each
other to investigate. Unity always gives strength: and since Occultism in our
days
resembles
a "Forlorn Hope," union and co-operation are indispensable.
indeed
imply a concentration of vital and magnetic force against the hostile currents
of
prejudice
and fanaticism.
I
wrote a few words in the Maratha boy's letter, only to show you that he was
obeying
orders in submitting
his views to you. Apart from his exaggerated idea about huge fees,
his
letter is in a way worth considering. For Damodar is a Hindu -- and knows the
mind
of
his people at
can
be found in all
misty
form of his own ideas even before I could give them the right direction. All
quick
thinkers
are hard to impress -- in a flash they are out and away in "full
cry," before half
understanding
what one wants to have them think. This is our trouble with both Mrs. B.
and
O. The frequent failure of the latter to carry out the suggestions he sometimes
receives
-- even when written, is almost wholly due to his own active mentality
preventing
his distinguishing our impressions from his own conceptions. And Missus B.'s
trouble
is (apart from physical ailment) that she sometimes listens to two or more of
our
voices
at once; e.g., this morning while the "Disinherited," whom I have
accommodated
with
space for a footnote -- was talking with her on an important matter, she lent
an ear to.
one
of ours, who is passing through Bombay from Cyprus, on his way to Thibet -- and
so
got
both in an inextricable confusion. Women do lack the power of
concentration.
And
now, my good friend and co-worker -- an irremediable paperless condition
obliges
me
to close. Farewell, until your return, unless you will be content, as hitherto,
to pass
our
correspondence through the accustomed channel. Neither of us would prefer this.
But
until
authority is given to change it must be even so. Were she to die to-day -- and
she is
really
sick -- you would not receive more than two, or at most three more letters from
me
(through
Damodar or Olcott, or through already established emergent agencies), and then,
that
reservoir of force being exhausted -- our parting would be FINAL. However, I
will
not
anticipate; events might bring us together somewhere in
meet
or not, during your trip, be assured that my personal good wishes will attend
you.
Should
you actually need now and again the help of a happy thought as your work
progresses,
it may, very likely be, osmosed into your head -- if sherry bars not the
way, as
it
has already done at
May
the "deep Sea" deal gently with you and your house.
Ever
yours,
K.
H.
P.S.
-- The "friend" of whom the Lord Lindsay speaks in his letter to you,
is, I am sorry
to
say, a true skunk mephitis, who managed to perfume himself with
ess-bouquet in his
presence
during their palmy days of friendship, and so avoided being recognised by his
natural
stench. It is Home -- the medium, a convert to Roman Catholicism, then to
Protestantism,
and finally to the Greek Church. He is the bitterest and most cruel enemy
O.
and Mad. B. have, though he has never met either of them. For a certain time he
succeeded
in poisoning the Lord's mind, and prejudiced him against them. I do not like
saying
anything behind a man's back, for it looks like back-biting. Yet in view of
some
future
events I feel it my duty to warn you, for this one is an exceptionally bad man
--
hated
by the Spiritualists and mediums as much as he is despised by those -- who have
learned
to know him. Yours is a work which clashes directly with his. Though a poor
sickly
cripple, a paralysed wretch, his mental faculties are as fresh and as alive as
ever to
mischief.
He is no man to stop before a slanderous accusation -- however vile and lying.
So
-- beware.
K.
H.
FOOTNOTE:
1.
So, at least, Mrs. S. says; I myself did not search the crockery shops; so too,
the bottle
filled
with water I filled with my own hand -- was one of the four only that the
servants
had
in the baskets, and these four bottles had but just been brought back empty by
these.peons from their fruitless search after water, when you sent them to the
little brewery
with
a note. Hoping to be excused for the interference and with my most respectful
regards
to the lady.
Yours,
etc.
The
"Disinherited" (return to text).The
Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------
Letter No. 9
From
K.H., first letter received on return to
staying
with Madame B. at
Welcome
good friend and brilliant author, welcome back! Your letter at hand, and I am
happy
to see your personal experience with the "Elect" of
But,
I foresee, that more than ever now, you will become an incarnate note of
interrogation.
Beware! If your questions are found premature by the powers that be,
instead
of receiving my answers in their pristine purity you may find them transformed
into
yards of drivel. I am too far gone to feel a hand on my throat whenever
trenching on
the
limits of forbidden topics; not enough to avoid feeling myself -- uncomfortably
so --
like
a worm of yesterday before our "Rock of Ages." My Cho-Khan. We must
all be
blindfolded before we
can pass onward; or else, we have to remain outside.
And
now, what about the book? Le quart d'heure de Rabelais is
striking, and, finds me, if
not
quite insolvent, yet quasitrembling at the idea that the first instalment
offered may be
found
below the mark; the price claimed -- inadequate with my poor resources; myself
led
pro bono publico to trespass beyond the terrible -- "hitherto shalt
thou go, and no
further,"
and the angry wave of the Cho-Khan's wrath swamping me blue ink and all! I
fondly
hope you will not make me lose "my situation."
Quite
so. For, I have a dim notion that you will be very impatient with me. I have a
very
clear
notion that you need not be. It is one of the unfortunate necessities of life
that
imperial
needs do sometimes force one apparently to ignore the claims of
friendship, not
to
violate one's word, but to put off and lay aside for a while the too impatient
expectations
of neophytes as of inferior importance. One such need that I call imperial is
the
need of your future welfare; the realization of the dream dreamt by you in
company
with
S.M. That dream -- shall we call it a vision? -- was, that you, and Mrs. K. --
why
forget
the Theos. Soc.? -- "are all parts of a large plan for the manifestations
of occult
philosophy
to the world." Yes; the time must come, and it is not far -- when all of
you
will
comprehend aright the apparently contradictory phases of such manifestations;
forced
by the evidence to reconcile them. The case not being so at present, meanwhile
--
remember:
it is because we are playing a risky game and the stakes are human souls that I
ask
you to possess yours in patience. Bearing in mind that I have to look after
your
"Soul"
and mine too, I propose to do so at whatever cost, even at the risk of being
misunderstood
by you as I was by Mr. Hume. The work is made the more difficult by my
being
a lonely labourer in the field, and that, as long as I fail to prove to my
superiors
that.you,
at least -- mean business; that you -- are in right good earnest. As I am
refused
higher
help, so will you fail to easily find help in that Society in which you move,
and
which
you try to move. Nor will you find, for a certain time much joy in those
directly
concerned.
Our old lady is weak and her nerves are worked to a fiddle string; so is her
jaded
brain. H.S.O. is far away -- in exile -- fighting his way back to salvation
--
compromised
more than you imagine by his Simla indiscretions -- and establishing
theosoph.
schools. Mr. Hume -- who once promised to become a champion fighter in that
Battle
of Light against Darkness -- now preserves a kind of armed neutrality wondrous
to
behold.
Having made the mirific discovery that we are a body of antidiluvian Jesuits of
fossiles
-- self-crowned with oratorial flourishes, he rested but to accuse us of
intercepting
his letters to H.P.B.! However, he finds some comfort by thinking "what a
jolly
argument he shall have elsewhere (Angel Linnean ornithological Society,
perhaps)
with
the entity which is represented by the name "Koothoomi." Verily has
our very
intellectual,
once mutual friend, a flood of words at his command which would suffice to
float
a troop ship of oratorious fallacies. Nevertheless -- I respect him. . . . But
who next?
C.
C. Massey? But then he is the hapless parent of about half a dozen of illegitimate
brats.
He is a most charming, devoted friend; a profound mystic; a generous, noble
minded
man, a gentleman -- as they say -- every inch of him; tried as gold; every
requisite
for a student of occultism, but none for an adept, my good
friend. Be it as it
may,
his secret is his own, and I have no right to divulge it. Dr. Wyld? -- a
christian to the
back
bone. Hood? -- a sweet nature, as you say; a dreamer, and an idealist in mystic
matters,
yet -- no worker. S. Moses? Ah! here we are. S.M. has nearly upset the
theosoph.
ark
set afloat three years back: and, he will do his level best to do it over again
--- our
Imperator
notwithstanding. You doubt? Listen.
His
is a weird, rare nature. His occult psychical energies are tremendous; but they
have
lain
dormant, folded up within him and unknown to himself, when, some eight years or
so,
Imperator threw his eye upon him and bid his spirit soar. Since then, a new
life has
been
in him, a dual existence, but his nature could not be changed. Brought up as a
theological
student, his mind was devoured by doubts. Earlier, he betook himself to
Mount
Athos, where, immuring himself in a monastery, he studied Greek Eastern
religion,
and it is there that he was first noticed by his "Spirit guide"
(!!) Of course, Greek
casuistry
failed to solve his doubts, and he hurried on to
as
little. From thence he wandered to
dry
christian theology he did not give up its presumable founder with all that. He
needed
an
ideal and he found it in the latter. For him Jesus is a reality, a once
embodied, now a
disembodied
Spirit, who, "furnished him with an evidence of his personal
identity" -- he
thinks,
-- in no less a degree than other "Spirits" -- Imperator among the
rest -- have.
Nevertheless,
neither the religions of Jesus nor yet his words, as recorded in the Bible and
believed
by S.M. authentic -- are fully accepted by that restless Spirit of his. Imperator,
on
whom the same fate devolved later on, fares no better. His mind is too
positive. Once
impressed
it becomes easier to efface characters engraved upon titanium than
impressions
made
upon his brain.
Whenever
under the influence of Imperator -- he is all alive to the realities of
Occultism,
and
the superiority of our Science over Spiritualism. As soon as left alone and
under the.pernicious guidance of those he firmly believes having identified
with disembodied Souls
--
all becomes confusion again! His mind will yield to no suggestions, no reasonings
but
his
own, and those are all for Spiritualistic theories. When the old theological
fetters had
dropped
off, he imagined himself a free man. Some months later, he became the humble
slave
and tool of the "Spirits"! It is but when standing face to face with
his inner Self that
he
realizes the truth that there is something higher and nobler than the
prittle-prattle of
pseudo
Spirits. It was at such a moment that he heard for the first the voice of Imperator,
and
it was, as he himself puts it: "as the voice of God speaking to his inner
Self." That
voice
has made itself familiar to him for years, and yet he very often heeds it not.
A
simple
query: Were Imper. what he believes, nay -- knows him to be, he thinks,
-- would
not
he have made S.M.'s will completely subservient to his own by this time? Alone
the
adepts,
i.e. the embodied spirits -- are forbidden by our wise and
intransgressible laws to
completely
subject to themselves another and a weaker will, -- that of free born man. The
latter
mode of proceeding is the favourite one resorted to by the "Brothers of
the
Shadow,"
the Sorcerers, the Elementary Spooks, and, as an isolated exception -- by the
highest Planetary
Spirits, those, who can no longer err. But these appear on Earth but at
the
origin of every new human kind; at the junction of, and close of the two
ends of the
great
cycle. And, they remain with man no longer than the time required for the
eternal
truths
they teach to impress themselves so forcibly upon the plastic minds of the new
races
as to warrant them from being lost or entirely forgotten in ages hereafter, by
the
forthcoming
generations. The mission of the planetary Spirit is but to strike the KEY
NOTE
OF TRUTH. Once he has directed the vibration of the latter to run its course
uninterruptedly
along the catenation of that race and to the end of the cycle -- the denizen
of
the highest inhabited sphere disappears from the surface of our planet -- till
the
following
"resurrection of flesh." The vibrations of the Primitive Truth are what
your
philosophers
name "innate ideas."
Imperator,
then, had repeatedly told him that "in occultism alone he should seek for,
and
will find a phase of
truth not yet known to him." But that did not prevent S.M. at all from
turning
his back upon occultism whenever a theory of it clashed with one of his own
preconceived
Spiritualistic ideas. To him mediumship appeared as the Charter of his
Soul's
freedom, as resurrection from Spiritual death. He had been allowed to enjoy it
only
so
far as it was necessary for the confirmation of his faith: promised that the
abnormal
would
yield to the normal; ordered to prepare for the time when the Self within him
will
become
conscious of its spiritual, independent existence, will act and talk face to
face
with
its Instructor, and will lead its life in Spiritual Spheres normally and
without
external
or internal mediumship at all. And yet once conscious of what he terms
"external
Spirit
action" he recognised no more hallucination from truth, the false from the
real:
confounding
at times Elementals and Elementaries, embodied from disembodied Spirit,
though
he had been oft enough told of, and warned against "those spirits that
hover about
the
Earth's sphere" -- by his "Voice of God." With all that he
firmly believes to have
invariably
acted under Imper's direction, and that such spirits as have come to him came
by
his "guide's" permission. In such a case H.P.B. was there by Imper's
consent? And
how
do you reconcile the following contradictions. Ever since 1876, acting under
direct
orders,
she tried to awake him to the reality of what was going on around and in him.
That
she must have acted either according to or against Imper's will -- he
must know, as.in the latter case she might boast of being stronger, more
powerful than his "guide" who
never
yet protested against the intrusion. Now what happens? Writing to her from Isle
of
Wight,
in 1876, of a vision lasting for over 48 consecutive hours he had, and during
which
he walked about, talked as usual, but did not preserve the slightest
remembrance of
anything
external, he asks her to tell him whether it was a vision or a hallucination.
Why
did
he not ask + I-r? "You can tell me for you were there," he
says. . . . "You -- changed,
yet
yourself -- if you have a Self. . . . I suppose you have, but into that
I do not pry." . . .
At
another time he saw her in his own library looking at him, approaching and
giving him
some
masonic signs of the Lodge he knows. He admits that he "saw her as clearly
as he
saw
Massey -- who was there." He saw her on several other occasions, and
sometimes
knowing
it was H.P.B. he could not recognise her. "You seem to me from your
appearance
as from your letters so different at times, the mental attitudes so various,
that
it
is quite conceivable to me, as I am authoritatively told, that you are a bundle
of
Entities.
. . . I have absolute faith in you." In every letter of his he
clamoured for a "living
Brother"
to her unequivocal statement that there was one already having charge of him,
he
strongly objected. When helped to get free from his too material body,
absent from it
for
hours and days sometimes his empty machine run during that period from afar and
by
external, living influence,
-- as soon as back, he would begin labouring under the
irradicable
impression of having been all that time the vehicle for another intelligence,
a
disembodied
not embodied Spirit, truth never once flashing across his mind.
"Imperator,"
he
wrote to her, "traverses your idea about mediumship. He says there should
be no real
antagonism
between the medium and the adept." Had he used the word "Seer"
instead of
"medium"
the idea would have been rendered more correctly, for a man becomes rarely
an
adept without being born a natural Seer. Then again. In September, 1875, he
knew
nothing
of the Brothers of the Shadow -- our greatest, most cruel, and -- why not
confess
--
our most potential Enemies. In that year he actually asked the old lady whether
Bulwer
had
been eating underdone pork chops and dreaming when he described "that
hideous
Dweller
of the Threshold." "Make yourself ready," she answered --
"in about twelve
months
more you will have to face and fight with them." In October, 1876, they
had
begun
their work upon him. "I am fighting" -- he wrote -- "a hand to
hand battle with all
the
legions of the Fiend for the past three weeks. My nights are made hideous with
their
torments,
temptations and foul suggestions. I see them all around, glaring at me,
gabbling,
howling, grinning! Every form of filthy suggestion, of bewildering doubt, of
mad
and shuddering fear is upon me . . . I can understand Zanoni's Dweller now . .
. I
have
not wavered yet . . . and their temptations are fainter, the presence less
near, the
horror
less. . . ."
One
night she had prostrated herself before her Superior, one of the few they fear,
praying
him to wave his hand across the ocean, lest S.M. should die, and the Theos.
Soc.
lose
its best subject. "He must be tried" was the answer. He imagines that
+ Imper. had
sent
the tempters because he S.M. was one of those Thomases who must see; he
would
not believe that +
could not help their coming. Watch over him he did -- he could not
drive
them away unless the victim, the neophyte himself, proved the strongest. But
did
these
human fiends in league with the Elementaries prepare him for a new life as be
thought
they would? Embodiments of those adverse influences which beset the inner Self
struggling
to be free and to progress, they would never have returned had he successfully.conquered
them by asserting his own independent WILL, by giving up his mediumship,
his
passive will. Yet they did.
You
say of + -- "Imperator -- is certainly not his (S.M.'s) astral soul, and
assuredly, also,
he
is not from a lower World than our own -- not an earth-bound Spirit." No
one ever said
he
was anything of the kind. H.P.B. never told you he was S.M.'s astral soul, but
that
what
he often mistook for + was his own higher Self, his divine atman --
not linga Sarira
or
astral Soul, or the Kama rupa the independent doppelganger --
again. + cannot
contradict
himself; + cannot be ignorant of the truth, so often misrepresented by S.M.; +
cannot
preach the occult Sciences and then defend mediumship, not even in that highest
form
described by his pupil. Mediumship is abnormal. When in further development the
abnormal
has given way to the natural, the controls are shaken off, and passive
obedience
is
no longer required, then the medium learns to use his will, to exercise his own
power,
and
becomes an adept. The process is one of development and the neophyte has to go
to
the
end. As long as he is subject to occasional trance -- he cannot be an adept.
S.M.
passes
the two-thirds of his life in Trance.
To
your question -- Is Imperator "a Planetary Spirit" and "may a
Planetary Spirit have
been
humanly incarnated," I will first say that there can be no Planetary
Spirit that was
not
once material or what you call human. When our great Buddha -- the patron of
all the
adepts,
the reformer and the codifier of the occult system, reached first Nirvana on
earth,
he
became a Planetary Spirit; i.e. -- his spirit could at one and the same
time rove the
interstellar
spaces in full consciousness, and continue at will on Earth in his
original and
individual
body. For the divine Self had so completely disfranchised itself from matter
that
it could create at will an inner substitute for itself, and leaving it in the
human form
for
days, weeks, sometimes years, affect in no wise by the change either the vital
principle
or the physical mind of its body. By the way, that is the highest form of
adeptship
man can hope for on our planet. But it is as rare as the Buddhas themselves,
the
last
Khobilgan who reached it being Sang-Ko-Pa of Kokonor (XIV Century), the
reformer
of esoteric as well as of vulgar Lamaism. Many are those who "break
through
the
egg-shell," few who, once out are able to exercise their Nirira
namastaka fully, when
completely
out of the body. Conscious life in Spirit is as difficult for some
natures as
swimming,
is for some bodies. Though the human frame is lighter in its bulk than water,
and
that every person is born with the faculty, so few develop in themselves the
art of
treading
water that death by drowning is the most frequent of accidents. The planetary
Spirit
of that kind (the Buddha like) can pass at will into other bodies -- of more or
less
etherialised
matter, inhabiting other regions of the Universe. There are many other grades
and
orders, but there is no separate and eternally constituted order of
Planetary Spirits.
Whether
Imperator is a "planetary" embodied or disembodied, whether he is an
adept in
flesh
or out of it, I am not at liberty to say, any more than he would himself to
tell S.M.
who
I am, or may be, or even who H.P.B. is. If he himself chooses to be silent on
that
subject
S.M. has no right to ask me. But then our friend, S.M. ought to know.
Nay: he
firmly
believes he does. For in his intercourse with that personage there came a time
when
not satisfied with + assurances, or content to respect his wishes that he,
Imperator
&
Co. should remain impersonal and unknown save by their assumed titles, S.M.
wrestled
with him, Jacob-like, for months on the point of that spirit's identity. He
was the.Biblical flim-flam all over again. "I pray thee tell me thy
name" -- and though answered:
"Wherefore
is it that thou dost ask after my name?" -- what's in a name? -- he
allowed
S.M.
to label him like a portmanteau. And so, he is at rest now, for be has
"seen God face
to
face"; who, after wrestling, and seeing that he prevailed not, said
"let me go" and was
forced
to come to the terms offered by Jacob. S. Moses. I strongly advise you for your
own
information to put that question to your friend. Why should he be
"anxiously
awaiting"
my reply, since he knows all about + ? Did not that "Spirit" tell
him a story one
day, -- a queer
story, something what he may not divulge about himself and forbid him
ever mentioning it? What
more does he want? That fact, that he seeks to learn through me
the
true nature of +, is a pretty good proof in itself that he is not as sure of
his identity as
he
believes he is, or rather would make believe he is. Or is the question a blind?
-- which?
I
may answer you, what I said to G. H. Fechner one day, when he wanted to know
the
Hindu
view on what he had written -- "You are right; . . . 'every diamond, every
crystal,
every
plant and star has its own individual soul, besides man and animal . . .' and,
'there is
a
hierarchy of souls from the lowest forms of matter up to the World Soul' . . .;
but, you
are
mistaken when adding to the above the assurance that 'the spirits of the
departed hold
direct psychic
communication with Souls that are still connected with a human body' --
for,
they do not." The relative position of the inhabited worlds in our Solar
System would
alone
preclude such a possibility. For I trust you have given up the queer idea -- a
natural
result
of early Xtian training -- that there can possibly be human intelligences
inhabiting
purely spiritual regions?
You will then as readily understand the fallacy of the christians --
who
would burn immaterial souls in a material physical hell -- as the
mistake of the
more
educated spiritualists, who lullaby themselves with the thought that any other
but
the
denizens of the two worlds immediately interlinked with our own can possibly
communicate
with them? However etherial and purified of gross matter they may be, the
pure
Spirits are still subject to the physical and universal laws of matter. They cannot
if
even
they would span the abyss that separates their worlds from ours. They can be
visited
in Spirit, their
Spirit cannot descend and reach us. They attract, they cannot be attracted,
their
Spiritual polarity being an insuperable difficulty in the way. (By-the-bye you
must
not
trust Isis literally. The book is but a tentative effort to divert the
attention of the
Spiritualists
from their preconceptions to the true state of things. The author was made to
hint
and point out in the true direction, to say what things are not, not
what they are.
Proof
reader helping, a few real mistakes have crept in as on page 1, chapter 1,
volume 1,
where
divine Essence is made emanating from Adam instead of the reverse.)
Once
fairly started upon that subject, I will endeavour to explain to you still
clearer where
lies
the impossibility. You will thus be answered in regard to both Planetary
Spirits and --
seance
room "Spirits."
The
cycle of intelligent existences commences at the highest worlds or planets --
the term
"highest"
meaning here the most spiritually perfect. Evoluting from cosmic matter --
which
is akasa, the primeval not the secondary plastic medium, or Ether of
Science
instinctively
suspected, unproven as the rest -- man first evolutes from this matter in
its
most
sublimated state, appearing at the threshold of Eternity as a perfectly Etherial
-- not
Spiritual
Entity, say -- a Planetary Spirit. He is but one remove from the universal
and.Spiritual World Essence -- the Anima Mundi of the Greeks, or that
which humanity in its
spiritual
decadence has degraded into a mythical personal God. Hence, at that stage, the
Spirit
-- man is at best an active Power, an immutable, therefore an unthinking
Principle
(the
term "immutable" being again used here but to denote that state for
the time being,
the
immutability applying here but to the inner principle which will vanish and
disappear
as
soon as the speck of the material in him will start on its cyclic work of
Evolution and
transformation).
In his subsequent descent, and in proportion of the increase of matter he
will
assert more and more his activity. Now, the congeries of the star-worlds
(including
our
own planet) inhabited by intelligent beings may be likened to an orb or rather
an
epicycloid
formed of rings like a chain -- worlds inter-linked together, the totality
representing
an imaginary endless ring, or circle. The progress of man throughout the
whole
-- from its starting to its closing points meeting on the highest point of its
circumference
-- is what we call the Maha Yug or Great Cycle, the Kuklos, whose
head is
lost
in a crown of absolute Spirit, and its lowest point of circumference in absolute
matter
--
to viz. the point of cessation of action of the active principle. If
using a more familiar
term
we call the Great Cycle the Macrokosm and its component parts or the
inter-linked
star
worlds Microkosms, the occultists' meaning in representing each of the
latter as
perfect
copies of the former will become evident. The Great is the Prototype of the
smaller
cycles: and as such, each star world has in its turn its own cycle of Evolution
which
starts with a purer and ends with a grosser or more material nature. As they
descend,
each world presents itself naturally more and more shadowy, becoming at the
"antipodes"
absolute matter. Propelled by the irresistible cyclic impulse the
Planetary
Spirit
has to descend before he can reascend. On his way he has to pass through the
whole
ladder of Evolution, missing no rung, to halt at every star world as he would
at a
station;
and, besides the unavoidable cycle of that particular and every respective star
world
to perform in it his own "life-cycle" to, viz.: returning and
reincarnating as many
times
as he fails to complete his round of life in it, as he dies on it before
reaching the age
of
reason as correctly stated in Isis. Thus far Mrs. Kingsford's idea that
the human Ego is
being
reincarnated in several successive human bodies is the true one. As to its
being
reborn
in animal forms after human incarnation it is the result of her loose
way of
expressing
things and ideas. Another WOMAN -- all over again. Why, she confounds
"Soul
and Spirit," refuses to discriminate between the animal and the spiritual
Egos the
Jivatma (or
Linga-Sharir) and the Kama-Rupa (or Atma-Rupa), two as different things
as
body
and mind, and -- mind and thought are! That is what happens.
After circling, so to
say,
along the arc of the cycle, circling along and within it (the daily and yearly
rotation
of
the Earth is as good an illustration as any) when the Spirit-man reaches our
planet,
which
is one of the lowest, having lost at every station some of the etherial and
acquired
an
increase of material nature, both spirit and matter have become pretty much
equilibrized
in him. But then, he has the Earth's cycle to perform; and, as in the process
of
involution and evolution downward, matter is ever striving to stifle spirit,
when arrived
to
the lowest point of his pilgrimage, the once pure Planetary Spirit will be
found
dwindled
to -- what Science agrees to call a primitive or Primordial man -- amidst a
nature
as primordial -- speaking geologically, for physical nature keeps pace with the
physiological
as well as the spiritual man, in her cyclic career. At that point the great Law
begins
its work of selection. Matter found entirely divorced from spirit is thrown
over
into
the still lower worlds -- into the sixth "GATE" or "way
of rebirth" of the vegetable.
and
mineral worlds, and of the primitive animal forms. From thence, matter ground
over
in
the workshop of nature proceeds soulless back to its Mother Fount; while
the Egos
purified
of their dross are enabled to resume their progress once more onward. It is
here,
then,
that the laggard Egos perish by the millions. It is the solemn moment of
the
"survival
of the fittest," the annihilation of those unfit. It is but matter (or
material man)
which
is compelled by its own weight to descend to the very bottom of the
"circle of
necessity"
to there assume animal form; as to the winner of that race throughout the
worlds
-- the Spiritual Ego, he will ascend from star to star, from one world to
another,
circling
onward to rebecome the once pure planetary Spirit, then higher still, to
finally
reach
its first starting point, and from thence -- to merge into MYSTERY. No adept has
ever
penetrated beyond the veil of primitive Kosmic matter. The highest, the most
perfect
vision
is limited to the universe of Form and Matter.
But
my explanation does not end here. You want to know why it is deemed supremely
difficult
if not utterly impossible for pure disembodied Spirits to communicate
with men
through
mediums or Phantomosophy. I say, because: --
(a) On account of the
antagonistic atmospheres respectively surrounding these worlds;
(b) Of the entire
dissimilarity of physiological and spiritual conditions; and --
(c) Because that chain
of worlds I have just been telling you about, is not only an
epicycloid but an
elliptical orbit of existences, having, as every ellipse, not one but two
points
-- two foci, which can never approach each other; Man being at one focus
of it and
pure
Spirit at the other.
To
this you might object. I can neither help it, nor change the fact, but there is
still
another
and far mightier impediment. Like a rosary composed of white and black beads
alternating
with each other, so that concatenation of worlds is made up of worlds of
CAUSES
and worlds of EFFECTS, the latter -- the direct result produced by the former.
Thus
it becomes evident that every sphere of Causes and our Earth is one -- is not
only
inter-linked
with, and surrounded by, but actually separated from its nearest neighbour --
the
higher sphere of Causality -- by an impenetrable atmosphere (in its spiritual
sense) of
effects
bordering on, and even inter-linking, never mixing with -- the next sphere: for
one
is
active, the other -- passive, the world of causes positive, that of
effects -- negative. This
passive
resistance can be overcome but under conditions, of which your most learned
Spiritualists
have not the faintest idea. All movement is, so to say polar. It is very
difficult
to convey my meaning to you at this point; but I will go to the end. I am aware
of
my failure to bring before you these -- to us -- axiomatical truths -- in any
other form
but
that of a simple logical postulate -- if so much -- they being capable of
absolute and
unequivocal
demonstration, but to the highest Seers. But, I'll give you food for thinking
if
nothing
else.
The
intermediary spheres, being but the projected shadows of the Worlds of Causes
-- are
negatived
by the last. They are the great halting places, the stations in which the new Self-Conscious
Egos to be -- the
self-begotten progeny of the old and disembodied Egos of.our planet -- are
gestated. Before the new phoenix, re-born of the ashes of its parents can
soar
higher, to a better, more spiritual, and perfect world -- still a world of
matter -- it has
to
pass through the process of a new birth, so to say; and, as on our earth, where
the two-thirds
of
infants are either still-born or die in infancy, so in our "world of
effects." On
earth
it is the physiological and mental defects, the sins of the progenitors which
are
visited
upon the issue: in that land of shadows, the new and yet unconscious Ego-foetus
becomes
the just victim of the transgressions of its old Self, whose karma --
merit and
demerit
-- will alone weave out its future destiny. In that world, my good friend, we
find
but
unconscious, self-acting, ex-human machines, souls in their transition state,
whose
dormant
faculties and individuality lie as a butterfly in its chrysalis; and
Spiritualists
would
yet have them talk sense! Caught at times, into the vortex of the abnormal
"mediumistic"
current, they become the unconscious echoes of thoughts and ideas
crystallized
around those present. Every positive, well-directed mind is capable of
neutralizing
such secondary effects in a seance room. The world below ours is worse yet.
The
former is harmless at least; it is more sinned against by being disturbed, than
sinning;
the
latter allowing the retention of full consciousness as being a hundred-fold
more
material,
is positively dangerous. The notions of hells and purgatory, of paradises and
resurrections
are all caricatured, distorted echoes of the primeval one Truth, taught
humanity
in the infancy of its races by every First Messenger -- the Planetary Spirit
mentioned
on the reverse of page the third -- and whose remembrance lingered in the
memory
of man as Elu of the Chaldees, Osiris the Egyptian, Vishnu, the first Buddhas
and
so on.
The
lower world of effects is the sphere of such distorted Thoughts; of the most
sensual
conceptions,
and pictures; of anthropomorphic deities, the out-creations of their creators,
the
sensual human minds of people who have never out-grown their brutehood on
earth.
Remembering
thoughts are things -- have tenacity, coherence, and life, -- that they are
real
entities -- the rest will become plain. Disembodied -- the creator is attracted
naturally
to
its creation and creatures; sucked in -- by the Maelstrom dug out by his own
hands. . . .
But
I must pause, for volumes would hardly suffice to explain all that was said by
me in
this
letter.
In
reference to your wonder that the views of the three mystics "are far from
being
identical,"
what does the fact prove? Were they instructed by disembodied, pure, and
wise
Spirits -- even by those of one remove from our earth on the higher plane --
would
not
the teachings be identical? The question arising: "May not Spirits as well
as men
differ
in ideas?" Well, then their teaching -- aye, of the highest of them since
they are the
"guides"
of the three great London Seers -- will not be more authoritative than those of
mortal
men. "But, they may belong to different spheres?" Well; if in the
different spheres
contradictory
doctrines are propounded, these doctrines cannot contain the Truth, for
Truth
is One, and cannot admit of diametrically opposite views; and pure
Spirits who see
it
as it is, with the veil of matter entirely withdrawn from it -- cannot
err. Now, if we
allow
of different aspects or portions of the Whole Truth being visible to different
agencies
or intelligences, each under various conditions, as for example various
portions
of
the one landscape develop themselves to various persons, at various distances
and
from
various standpoints -- if we admit the fact of various or different
agencies.(individual Brothers for instance) endeavouring to develop the Egos
of different
individuals,
without subjecting entirely their wills to their own (as it is forbidden) but
by
availing
themselves of their physical, moral, and intellectual idiosyncracies; if we add
to
this
the countless kosmical influences which distort and deflect all efforts to
achieve
definite
purposes: if we remember, moreover, the direct hostility of the Brethren of the
Shadow
always on the watch to perplex and haze the neophyte's brain, I think we shall
have
no difficulty in understanding how even a definite spiritual advance may to a
certain
extent
lead different individuals to apparently different conclusions and theories.
Having
confessed to you that I had no right to interfere with Imperator's secrets and
plans,
I must say that so far, however, he has proved the wisest of us. Had our policy
been
the same, had I, for instance allowed you to infer and then believe (without
stating
anything
positive myself) that I was a "disembodied angel" -- a Spirit of
pellucid
electroidal
essence, from the Super-Stellar phantasmatical zone -- we would both be
happier.
You -- you would not have worried your head as to "whether agencies of
that
sort
will always remain necessary" and I -- would not find myself under the
disagreeable
necessity
of having to refuse a friend a "personal interview and direct communication."
You
might have implicitly believed anything coming from me; and I would have felt
less
responsible
for you before my "GUIDES." However, time will show what may or may
not
be done in that direction. The book is out, and we have to patiently wait for
the results
of
that first serious shot at the enemy. Art Magic and Isis emanating
from women and as
it
was believed, Spiritualists -- could never hope for a serious hearing. Its
effects will at
first
be disastrous enough, for the gun will recoil and the shot rebounding will
strike the
author
and his humble hero, who are not likely to flinch. But it will also graze the
old
lady,
reviving in the Anglo-Indian press last year's outcry. The Hersites and
literary
Philistines
will go hard to work, the flings, squibs and coups de bec falling thick
upon her
--
though aimed at you alone, as the Editor of the Pioneer is far from
being beloved by
his
colleagues of India. Spiritualistic papers have already opened the campaign in
London
and
the Yankee editors of the Organs of "Angels" will follow suit, the
heavenly
"Controls"
ejaculating their choicest scandalum magnatum. Some men of science --
least
of
all their admirers -- the parasites who bask in the sun and dream they are
themselves
that
sun -- are not likely to forgive you the sentence -- really much too flattering
-- which
ranges
the comprehension of a poor, unknown Hindoo "So far beyond the science and
philosophy
of
to
realize the existence of such powers in man, etc." But what of that? It
was all foreseen
and
was to be expected. When the first hum and ding-dong of adverse criticism is
hushed,
thoughtful
men will read and ponder over the book, as they have never pondered over the
most
scientific efforts of Wallace and Crookes to reconcile modern science with
Spirits,
and
-- the little seed will grow and thrive.
In
the meantime I do not forget my promises to you. As soon as installed in your
sleeping
chamber
I will try and. . . . [Here three lines in the original letter have been
completely
erased
apparently by the writer thereof. -- ED].
I
hope to be permitted to do so much for you. If, for generations we have
"shut out the
world
from the Knowledge of our Knowledge," it is on account of its absolute
unfitness;.
and
if, notwithstanding proofs given, it still refuses yielding to evidence, then
will we at
the
End of this cycle retire into solitude and our kingdom of silence once more. .
. . We
have
offered to exhume the primeval strata of man's being, his basic nature, and lay
bare
the
wonderful complications of his inner Self -- something never to be achieved by
physiology
or even psychology in its ultimate expression -- and demonstrate it
scientifically.
It matters not to them, if the excavations be so deep, the rocks so rough and
sharp,
that in diving into that, to them, fathomless ocean, most of us perish in the
dangerous
exploration; for it is we who were the divers and the pioneers and the men of
science
have but to reap where we have sown. It is our mission to plunge and bring the
pearls
of Truth to the surface; theirs -- to clean and set them into scientific
jewels. And, if
they
refuse to touch the ill-shapen, oyster-shell, insisting that there is, nor cannot
be any
precious
pearl inside it, then shall we once more wash our hands of any responsibility
before
human-kind. For countless generations hath the adept builded a fane of
imperishable
rocks, a giant's Tower of INFINITE THOUGHT, wherein the Titan dwelt,
and
will yet, if need be, dwell alone, emerging from it but at the end of every
cycle, to
invite
the elect of mankind to co-operate with him and help in his turn enlighten
superstitious
man. And we will go on in that periodical work of ours; we will not allow
ourselves
to be baffled in our philanthropic attempts until that day when the foundations
of
a new continent of thought are so firmly built that no amount of opposition and
ignorant
malice guided by the Brethren of the Shadow will be found to prevail.
But
until that day of final triumph someone has to be sacrificed -- though we
accept but
voluntary
victims. The ungrateful task did lay her low and desolate in the ruins of
misery,
misapprehension,
and isolation: but she will have her reward in the hereafter for we never
were
ungrateful. As regards the Adept -- not one of my kind, good friend, but
far higher --
you
might have closed your book with those lines of Tennyson's "Wakeful
Dreamer" --
you
knew him not --
"How
could ye know him? Ye were yet within
The
narrower circle; he had well nigh reached
The
last, which, with a region of white flame,
Pure
without heat, into a larger air
Up-burning,
and an ether of black blue,
Invests
and ingirds all other lives. . . ."
I'll
close. Remember then on the 17th of July and. . . . [Here again six lines in
the original
have
been deleted. -- ED.] . . . ., to you will become the sublitnest of realities.
Farewell.
Sincerely
yours,
K.
H..The Mahatma Letters
to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 10
(Transcribed
from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting. -- Ed)
{Hume's
article appeared in the November Theosophist.}
NOTES
BY K.H. ON A "PRELIMINARY CHAPTER" HEADED "GOD" BY HUME,
INTENDED
TO PREFACE AN EXPOSITION OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY
(ABRIDGED).
Received
at Simla, 1881-? '82.
Neither
our philosophy nor ourselves believe in a God, least of all in one whose
pronoun
necessitates
a capital G. Our philosophy falls under the definition of Hobbes. It is
preeminently
the science of effects by their causes and of causes by their effects, and
since
it is also the science of things deduced from first principle, as Bacon defines
it,
before
we admit any such principle we must know it, and have no right to admit even
its
possibility.
Your whole explanation is based upon one solitary admission made simply
for
argument's sake in October last. You were told that our knowledge was limited
to this
our
solar system: ergo as philosophers who desired to remain worthy of the name we
could
not either deny or affirm the existence of what you termed a supreme,
omnipotent,
intelligent
being of some sort beyond the limits of that solar system. But if such
an
existence
is not absolutely impossible, yet unless the uniformity of nature's law breaks
at
those
limits we maintain that it is highly improbable. Nevertheless we deny most
emphatically
the position of agnosticism in this direction, and as regards the solar system.
Our
doctrine knows no compromises. It either affirms or denies, for it never
teaches but
that
which it knows to be the truth. Therefore, we deny God both as philosophers and
as
Buddhists.
We know there are planetary and other spiritual lives, and we know there is in
our
system no such thing as God, either personal or impersonal. Parabrahm is not a
God,
but
absolute immutable law, and Iswar is the effect of Avidya and Maya, ignorance
based
upon
the great delusion. The word "God" was invented to designate the
unknown cause
of
those effects which man has either admired or dreaded without understanding
them,
and
since we claim and that we are able to prove what we claim -- i.e. the
knowledge of
that
cause and causes we are in a position to maintain there is no God or Gods
behind
them.
The
idea of God is not an innate but an acquired notion, and we have but one thing
in
common
with theologies -- we reveal the infinite. But while we assign to all
the.phenomena that proceed from the infinite and limitless space, duration and
motion,
material, natural, sensible and known (to us at least) cause, the theists assign them
spiritual, super-natural
and unintelligible an un-known causes. The God of the
Theologians
is simply and imaginary power, un loup garou as d'Holbach expressed it
-- a
power
which has never yet manifested itself. Our chief aim is to deliver humanity of
this
nightmare,
to teach man virtue for its own sake, and to walk in life relying on himself
instead
of leaning on a theological crutch, that for countless ages was the direct
cause of
nearly
all human misery. Pantheistic we may be called -- agnostic NEVER. If people are
willing
to accept and to regard as God our ONE LIFE immutable and unconscious in its
eternity
they may do so and thus keep to one more gigantic misnomer. But then they will
have
to say with Spinoza that there is not and that we cannot conceive any other
substance
than God; or as that famous and unfortunate philosopher says in his fourteenth
proposition,
"practer Deum neque dari neque concepi potest substantia" -- and thus
become
Pantheists . . . . who but a Theologian nursed on mystery and the most absurd
super-naturalism
can imagine a self existent being of necessity infinite and omnipresent
outside the manifested
boundless universe. The word infinite is but a negative which
excludes
the idea of bounds. It is evident that a being independent and omnipresent
cannot
be limited by anything which is outside of himself; that there can be nothing
exterior
to himself -- not even vacuum, then where is there room for matter? for that
manifested
universe even though the latter limited. If we ask the theist is your God
vacuum,
space or matter, they will reply no. And yet they hold that their God
penetrates
matter
though he is not himself matter. When we speak of our One Life we also say that
it
penetrates, nay is the essence of every atom of matter; and that therefore it
not only has
correspondence
with matter but has all its properties likewise, etc. -- hence is material,
is
matter itself. How can
intelligence proceed or emanate from non-intelligence -- you kept
asking
last year. How could a highly intelligent humanity, man the crown of reason, be
evolved
out of blind unintelligent law or force! But once we reason on that line, I may
ask
in my turn, how could congenital idiots, non-reasoning animals, and the rest of
"creation"
have been created by or evoluted from, absolute Wisdom, if the latter is a
thinking
intelligent being, the author and ruler of the Universe? How? says Dr. Clarke
in
his
examination of the proof of the existence of the Divinity. "God who hath
made the
eye,
shall he not see? God who hath made the ear shall he not hear?" But
according to
this
mode of reasoning they would have to admit that in creating an idiot God is an idiot;
that
he who made so many irrational beings, so many physical and moral monsters,
must
be
an irrational being. . . .
.
. . We are not Adwaitees, but our teaching respecting the one life is identical
with that of
the
Adwaitee with regard to Parabrahm. And no true philosophically brained Adwaitee
will
ever call himself an agnostic, for he knows that he is Parabrahm and identical
in
every
respect with the universal life and soul -- the macrocosm is the microcosm and
he
knows
that there is no God apart from himself, no creator as no being. Having found
Gnosis
we cannot turn our backs on it and become agnostics.
.
. . . Were we to admit that even the highest Dyan Chohans are liable to err
under a
delusion,
then there would be no reality for us indeed and the occult sciences would be
as.great a chimera as that God. If there is an absurdity in denying that which
we do not
know
it is still more extravagant to assign to it unknown laws.
According
to logic "nothing" is that of which everything can truly be denied
and nothing
can
truly be affirmed. The idea therefore either of a finite or infinite nothing is
a
contradiction
in terms. And yet according to theologians "God, the self existent being
is a
most
simple, unchangeable, incorruptible being; without parts, figure, motion,
divisibility,
or any other such properties as we find in matter. For all such things so
plainly
and necessarily imply finiteness in their very notion and are utterly
inconsistent
with
complete infinity." Therefore the God here offered to the adoration of the
XIXth
century
lacks every quality upon which man's mind is capable of fixing any judgment.
What
is this in fact but a being of whom they can affirm nothing that is not
instantly
contradicted.
Their own Bible their Revelation destroys all the moral perceptions they
heap
upon him, unless indeed they call those qualities perfections that every other
man's
reason
and common sense call imperfections, odious vices and brutal wickedness. Nay
more
he who reads our Buddhist scriptures written for the superstitious masses will
fail to
find
in them a demon so vindictive, unjust, so cruel and so stupid as the
celestial tyrant
upon
whom the Christians prodigally lavish their servile worship and on whom their
theologians
heap those perfections that are contradicted on every page of their Bible.
Truly
and veritably your theology has created her God but to destroy him piecemeal.
Your
church is the fabulous Saturn, who begets children but to devour them.
(The Universal Mind) --
A few reflections and arguments ought to support every new
idea
-- for instance we are sure to be taken to task for the following apparent
contradictions.
(1) We deny the existence of a thinking conscious God, on the grounds
that
such a God must either be conditioned, limited and subject to change, therefore
not
infinite,
or (2) if he is represented to us as an eternal unchangeable and independent
being,
with not a particle of matter in him, then we answer that it is no being but an
immutable
blind principle, a law. And yet, they will say, we believe in Dyans, or
Planetaries
("spirits" also), and endow them with a universal mind, and this
must be
explained.
Our
reasons may be briefly summed up thus:
(1)
We deny the absurd proposition that there can be, even in a boundless and
eternal
universe
-- two infinite eternal and omni-present existences.
(2)
Matter we know to be eternal, i.e., having had no beginning (a) because
matter is
Nature
herself (b) because that which cannot annihilate itself and is indestructible
exists
necessarily
-- and therefore it could not begin to be, nor can it cease to be (c) because
the
accumulated
experience of countless ages, and that of exact science show to us matter (or
nature)
acting by her own peculiar energy, of which not an atom is ever in an absolute
state
of rest, and therefore it must have always existed, i.e., its materials
ever changing
form,
combinations and properties, but its principles or elements being absolutely
indestructible..(3)
As to God -- since no one has ever or at any time seen him or it -- unless
he or it is the
very essence and nature of this boundless eternal matter,
its energy and motion, we
cannot
regard him as either eternal or infinite or yet self existing. We refuse to
admit a
being
or an existence of which we know absolutely nothing; because (a) there is no
room
for
him in the presence of that matter whose undeniable properties and qualities we
know
thoroughly
well (b) because if he or it is but a part of that matter it is ridiculous to
maintain
that he is the mover and ruler of that of which he is but a dependent part and
(c)
because
if they tell us that God is a self existent pure spirit independent of matter
-- an
extra-cosmic
deity, we answer that admitting even the possibility of such an
impossibility,
i.e., his existence, we yet hold that a purely immaterial spirit cannot
be an
intelligent
conscious ruler nor can he have any of the attributes bestowed upon him by
theology
and thus such a God becomes again but a blind force. Intelligence as found in
our
Dyan Chohans, is a faculty that can appertain but to organized or animated
being --
however
imponderable or rather invisible the materials of their organizations.
Intelligence
requires
the necessity of thinking; to think one must have ideas; ideas suppose senses
which
are physical material, and how can anything material belong to pure spirit? If
it be
objected
that thought cannot be a property of matter, we will ask the reason why? We
must
have an unanswerable proof of this assumption, before we can accept it. Of the
theologian
we would enquire what was there to prevent his God, since he is the alleged
creator
of all -- to endow matter with the faculty of thought; and when answered that
evidently
it has not pleased Him to do so, that it is a mystery as well as an
impossibility,
we
would insist upon being told why it is more impossible that matter should
produce
spirit
and thought, than spirit or the thought of God should produce and create
matter.
We
do not bow our heads in the dust before the mystery of mind -- for we have
solved it
ages ago. Rejecting
with contempt the theistic theory we reject as much the automaton
theory,
teaching that states of consciousness are produced by the marshalling of the
molecules
of the brain; and we feel as little respect for that other hypothesis -- the
production
of molecular motion by consciousness. Then what do we believe in? Well, we
believe
in the much laughed at phlogiston (see article "What is force and
what is matter?"
Theosophist,
September), and in what some natural philosophers would call nisus the
incessant
though perfectly imperceptible (to the ordinary senses) motion or efforts one
body
is making on another -- the pulsations of inert matter -- its life. The bodies
of the
Planetary
spirits are formed of that which Priestley and others called Phlogiston and for
which
we have another name -- this essence in its highest seventh state forming that
matter
of which the organisms of the highest and purest Dyans are composed, and in its
lowest
or densest form (so impalpable yet that science calls it energy and force)
serving
as
a cover to the Planetaries of the 1st or lowest degree. In other words we
believe in
MATTER
alone, in matter as visible nature and matter in its invisibility as the
invisible
omnipresent
omnipotent Proteus with its unceasing motion which is its life, and which
nature
draws from herself since she is the great whole outside of which nothing can
exist.
For
as Bellinger truly asserts "motion is a manner of existence that flows
necessarily out
of
the essence of matter; that matter moves by its own peculiar energies; that its
motion is
due
to the force which is inherent in itself; that the variety of motion and the
phenomena
that
result proceed from the diversity of the properties of the qualities and of the
combinations
which are originally found in the primitive matter" of which nature is
the.assemblage and of which your science knows less than one of our Tibetan
Yak-drivers of
Kant's
metaphysics.
The
existence of matter then is a fact; the existence of motion is another fact, their
self
existence
and eternity or indestructibility is a third fact. And the idea of pure spirit
as a
Being
or an Existence -- give it whatever name you will -- is a chimera, a gigantic
absurdity.
Our ideas on Evil. Evil
has no existence per se and is but the absence of good and exists
but
for him who is made its victim. It proceeds from two causes, and no more than
good
is
it an independent cause in nature. Nature is destitute of goodness or malice;
she follows
only
immutable laws when she either gives life and joy, or sends suffering [and]
death,
and
destroys what she has created. Nature has an antidote for every poison and her
laws
a reward for every suffering. The butterfly devoured by a bird becomes that
bird,
and
the little bird killed by an animal goes into a higher form. It is the blind
law of
necessity
and the eternal fitness of things, and hence cannot be called Evil in Nature.
The
real
evil proceeds from human intelligence and its origin rests entirely with
reasoning
man
who dissociates himself from Nature. Humanity then alone is the true source of
evil.
Evil
is the exaggeration of good, the progeny of human selfishness and greediness.
Think
profoundly
and you will find that save death -- which is no evil but a necessary law, and
accidents
which will always find their reward in a future life -- the origin of
every evil
whether
small or great is in human action, in man whose intelligence makes him the one
free
agent in Nature. It is not nature that creates diseases, but man. The latter's
mission
and
destiny in the economy of nature is to die his natural death brought by old
age; save
accident,
neither a savage nor a wild (free) animal die of disease. Food, sexual
relations,
drink,
are all natural necessities of life; yet excess in them brings on disease,
misery,
suffering,
mental and physical, and the latter are transmitted as the greatest evils to
future
generations,
the progeny of the culprits. Ambition, the desire of securing happiness and
comfort
for those we love, by obtaining honours and riches, are praiseworthy natural
feelings
but when they transform man into an ambitious cruel tyrant, a miser, a selfish
egotist
they bring untold misery on those around him; on nations as well as on
individuals.
All this then -- food, wealth, ambition, and a thousand other things we have
to
leave unmentioned, becomes the source and cause of evil whether in its
abundance or
through
its absence. Become a glutton, a debauchee, a tyrant, and you become the
originator
of diseases, of human suffering and misery. Lack all this and you starve, you
are
despised as a nobody and the majority of the herd, your fellow men, make
of you a
sufferer
your whole life. Therefore it is neither nature nor an imaginary Deity that has
to
be
blamed, but human nature made vile by selfishness. Think well over these
few words;
work
out every cause of evil you can think of and trace it to its origin and you
will have
solved
one-third of the problem of evil. And now, after making due allowance
for evils
that
are natural and cannot be avoided, -- and so few are they that I challenge the
whole
host
of Western metaphysicians to call them evils or to trace them directly to an
independent
cause -- I will point out the greatest, the chief cause of nearly two thirds of
the
evils that pursue humanity ever since that cause became a power. It is religion
under
whatever
form and in whatsoever nation. It is the sacerdotal caste, the priesthood
and
the.churches; it is in those illusions that man looks upon as sacred, that he
has to search out
the
source of that multitude of evils which is the great curse of humanity and that
almost
overwhelms
mankind. Ignorance created Gods and cunning took advantage of the
opportunity.
Look at
It
is priestly imposture that rendered these Gods so terrible to man; it is
religion that
makes
of him the selfish bigot, the fanatic that hates all mankind out of his own
sect
without
rendering him any better or more moral for it. It is belief in God and Gods that
makes
two-thirds of humanity the slaves of a handful of those who deceive them under
the
false pretence of saving them. Is not man ever ready to commit any kind of evil
if told
that
his God or Gods demand the crime?; voluntary victim of an illusionary God, the
abject
slave of his crafty ministers. The Irish, Italian and Slavonian peasant will
starve
himself
and see his family starving and naked to feed and clothe his padre and pope.
For
two
thousand years India groaned under the weight of caste, Brahmins alone feeding
on
the
fat of the land, and to-day the followers of Christ and those of Mahomet are
cutting
each
other's throats in the names of and for the greater glory of their respective
myths.
Remember
the sum of human misery will never be diminished unto that day when the
better
portion of humanity destroys in the name of Truth, morality, and universal
charity,
the
altars of their false gods.
If
it is objected that we too have temples, we too have priests and that our lamas
also live
on
charity . . . let them know that the objects above named have in common with
their
Western
equivalents, but the name. Thus in our temples there is neither a god nor gods
worshipped,
only the thrice sacred memory of the greatest as the holiest man that ever
lived.
If our lamas to honour the fraternity of the Bhikkhus established by our
blessed
master
himself, go out to be fed by the laity, the latter often to the number of 5 to
25,000
is
fed and taken care of by the Samgha (the fraternity of lamaic monks) the
lamassery
providing
for the wants of the poor, the sick, the afflicted. Our lamas accept food,
never
money,
and it is in those temples that the origin of evil is preached and impressed
upon
the
people. There they are taught the four noble truths -- ariya sakka, and
the chain of
causation,
(the 12 nid[ci]anas) gives them a solution of the problem of the origin and
destruction
of suffering.
Read
the Mahavagga and try to understand not with the prejudiced Western mind but
the
spirit
of intuition and truth what the Fully Enlightened one says in the 1st
Khandhaka.
Allow
me to translate it for you.
"At
the time the blessed Buddha was at Uruvella on the shores of the river
Nerovigara
as he rested under the Boddhi tree of wisdom after he had
become
Sambuddha, at the end of the seventh day having his mind fixed
on
the chain of causation he spake thus: 'from Ignorance spring the
samkharas
of threefold nature -- productions of body, of speech, of
thought.
From the samkharas springs consciousness, from consciousness
springs
name and form, from this spring the six regions (of the six senses
the
seventh being the property of but the enlightened); from these springs
contact
from this sensation; from this springs thirst (or desire,
tanha)
from thirst attachment, existence, birth, old age and death,
grief,.lamentation, suffering, dejection and despair. Again by the destruction
of
ignorance,
the Sankharas are destroyed, and their consciousness name and
form,
the six regions, contact, sensation, thirst, attachment (selfishness),
existence,
birth, old age, death, grief, lamentation, suffering, dejection,
and
despair are destroyed. Such is the cessation of this whole mass of
suffering."
Knowing
this the blessed one uttered this solemn utterance. "When the real nature
of
things
becomes clear to the meditating Bikshu, then all his doubts fade away since he
has
learned
what is that nature and what its cause. From ignorance spring all the evils.
From
knowledge
comes the cessation of this mass of misery, and then the meditating Brahmana
stands
dispelling the hosts of Mara like the sun that illuminates the sky."
Meditation
here means the superhuman (not supernatural) qualities, or arhatship in its
highest
of spiritual powers.
Copied
out Simla, Sept. 28, 1882..The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 11
Transcribed
from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting. -- ED.
Received
by A.O.H., June 30th, 1882.
Simple
prudence misgives me at the thought of entering upon my new role of an
"instructor."
If M. satisfied you but little I am afraid of giving you still less
satisfaction
since
besides being restrained in my explanations, -- for there are a thousand things
I will
have
to leave unrevealed -- by my vow of silence I have far less time at my disposal
than
he
has. However, I'll try my best. Let it not be said that I failed to recognise
your present
sincere
desire to become useful to the Society, hence to Humanity, for I am deeply
alive
to
the fact that none better than yourself in India is calculated to disperse the
mists of
superstition
and popular error by throwing light on the darkest problems. But before I
answer
your questions and explain our doctrine any further, I'll have to preface my
replies
with
a long introduction. First of all and again I will draw your attention to the
tremendous
difficulty of finding appropriate terms in English which would convey to the
educated
European mind even an approximately correct notion about the various subjects
we
will have to treat upon. To illustrate my meaning I'll underline in red the
technical
words
adopted and used by your men of Science and which withal are absolutely
misleading
not only when applied to such transcendental subjects as on hand but even
when
used by themselves in their own system of thought.
To
comprehend my answers you will have first of all to view the eternal Essence,
the
Swabavat
not as a compound element you call spirit-matter, but as the one element for
which
the English has no name. It is both passive and active, pure Spirit Essence in
its
absoluteness,
and repose, pure matter in its finite and conditioned state, -- even as an
unponderable
gas or that great unknown which science has pleased to call Force. When
poets
talk of the "shoreless ocean of immutability" we must regard the term
but as a
jocular
parodox, since we maintain that there is no such thing as immutability -- not
in
our
Solar system at least. Immutability say the theists and Christians "is an
attribute of
God"
and forthwith they endow that God with every mutable and variable quality and
attribute,
knowable as unknowable, and believe that they have solved the unsolvable and
squared
the circle. To this we reply if that which the theists call God, and
science "Force"
and
"Potential Energy," were to become immutable but for one
instant even during the
Maha-Pralaya
a period when even Brahm the creative architect of the world is said to
have
merged into non-being, then there could be no manwantara, and space alone would
reign
unconscious and supreme in the eternity of time. Nevertheless, Theism
when.speaking of mutable immutability is no more absurd than materialistic
science talking of
"latent potential
energy," and the indestructibility of matter and force. What are we to
believe
as indestructible? Is it the invisible something that moves matter or the
energy of
moving
bodies! What does modern science know of force proper, or say the forces, --
the
cause
or causes of motion. How can there be such a thing as potential energy, i.e.,
an
energy
having latent inactive power since it is energy only while it is
moving matter, and
that
if it ever ceased to move matter it would cease to be, and with it
matter itself would
disappear.
Is force any happier term? Some thirty-five years back a Dr. Mayer offered the
hypothesis
now accepted as an axiom that force in the sense given it by modern science,
like
matter is indestructible namely when it ceases to be manifest in one
form it still
exists
and has only passed into some other form. And yet your men of science
have not
found
a single instance where one force is transformed into another, and Mr.
Tyndall tells
his
opponents that "in no case is the force producing the motion annihilated
or changed
into
anything else." Moreover we are indebted to modern science for the novel
discovery
that
there exists a quantitative relation between the dynamic energy producing
something
and
the "something" produced. Undoubtedly there exists a quantitive
relation between
cause
and effect, between the amount of energy used in breaking one's neighbour's
nose,
and
the damage done to that nose, but this does not solve one bit more the mystery
of
what
they are pleased to call correlations, since it can be easily proved (and that on
the
authority
of that same science) that neither motion nor energy is indestructible and that
the
physical forces are in no way or manner convertible one into another. I will
cross-examine
them
in their own phraseology and we will see whether their theories are
calculated
to serve as a barrier to our "astounding doctrines." Preparing as I
do to
propound
a teaching diametrically opposed to their own it is but just that I should
clear
the
ground of scientific rubbish lest what I have to say should fall on a too
encumbered
soil
and only bring forth weeds. "This potential and imaginary materia prima
cannot exist
without
form," says
exists
but in their imagination. Can they say the same quantity of energy has always
been
moving
the matter of the Universe? Certainly not so long as they teach that when the
elements
of the material cosmos, elements which had first to manifest themselves in
their
uncombined
gaseous state, were uniting the quantity of matter -- moving energy was a
million
times greater than it is now when our globe is cooling off. For
where did the heat
that
was generated by this tremendous process of building up a universe go to? To
the
unoccupied
chambers of space they say. Very well, but if it is gone for ever from the
material universe and
the energy operative on earth has never and at no time been the
same,
then how can they try to maintain the "unchangeable quantity of
energy," that
potential
energy which a body may sometimes exert, the FORCE which passes from one
body
to another producing motion and which is not yet "annihilated or changed
into
anything
else." Aye, we are answered, "but we still hold to its
indestructibility; while it
remains
connected with matter, it can never cease to be, or less or more."
Let us see
whether
it is so. I throw a brick up to a mason who is busy building the roof of a
temple.
He
catches it and cements it in the roof. Gravity overcame the propelling energy
which
started
the upward motion of the brick, and the dynamic energy of the ascending brick
until
it ceased to ascend. At that moment it was caught and fastened to the
roof. No
natural
force could now move it, therefore it possesses no longer potential energy. The
motion
and the dynamic energy of the ascending brick are absolutely annihilated..Another
example from their own text books. You fire a
gun upward from the foot of a hill
and
the ball lodges in a crevice of the rock on that hill. No natural force
can, for an
indefinite
period move it, so the ball as much as the brick has lost its potential energy.
"All
the motion and energy which was taken from the ascending ball by gravity is
absolutely
annihilated, no other motion or energy succeeds and gravity has received no
increase
of energy." Is it not true then that energy is indestructible! How then is
it that
your
great authority teaches the world that "in no case is the force producing
the motion
annihilated
or changed into anything else"?
I
am perfectly aware of your answer and give you these illustrations but to show
how
misleading
are the terms used by scientists, how vacillating and uncertain their theories
and
finally how incomplete all their teachings. One more objection and I
have done. They
teach
that all the physical forces rejoicing in specific names such as gravity,
inertia,
cohesion,
light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, are convertible one
into
another?
If so the force producing must cease to be as the force produced becomes
manifest.
"A flying cannon ball moves only from its own inherent force of
inertia." When
it
strikes it produces heat and other effects but its force of inertia is not the
least
diminished.
It will require as much energy to start it again at the same velocity as it did
at
first.
We may repeat the process a thousand times and as long as the quantity of
matter
remains
the same its force of inertia will remain the same in quantity. The same in the
case
of gravity. A meteor falls and produces heat. Gravity is to be held to account
for this,
but
the force of gravity upon the fallen body is not diminished. Chemical
attraction
draws
and holds the particles of matter together, their collision producing heat. Has
the
former
passed into the latter? Not in the least, since drawing the particles again
together
whenever
these are separated it proves that it, the chemical affinity is not decreased,
for it
will
hold them as strongly as ever together. Heat they say generates and produces
electricity
yet they find no decrease in the heat in the process. Electricity produces heat
we
are told? Electrometers show that the electrical current passes through some
poor
conductor,
a platinum wire say and heats the latter. Precisely the same quantity of
electricity,
there being no loss of electricity, no decrease. What then has been
converted
into
heat? Again electricity is said to produce magnetism.
I
have on the table before me primitive electrometers in whose vicinity chelas
come the
whole
day to recuperate their nascent powers. I do not find the slightest decrease in
the
electricity
stored. The chelas are magnetized, but their magnetism or rather that of their
rods is not that electricity
under a new mask. No more than the flame of a thousand
tapers
lit at the flame of the Fo lamp is the flame of the latter. Therefore if
by the
uncertain
twilight of modern science it is an axiomatic truth "that during vital
processes
the
conversion only and never the creation of matter or force
occurs" (Dr. J. R. Mayer's
organic
motion in its connection with nutrition) -- it is for us but half a truth. It
is neither
conversion nor creation,
but something for which science has yet no name.
Perhaps
now you will be prepared to better understand the difficulty with which we will
have
to contend. Modern science is our best ally. Yet it is generally that same
science
which
is made the weapon to break our heads with. However you will have to bear in
mind
(a) that we recognise but one element in Nature (whether spiritual or
physical).outside
which
there can be no Nature since it is Nature itself (1), and which as the Akasa
pervades
our solar system every atom being part of itself pervades throughout space and
is space in fact,
which pulsates as in profound sleep during the pralayas and the universal
Proteus,
the ever active Nature during the Manwantaras; (b) that consequently spirit and
matter
are one, being but a differentiation of states not essences, and
that the Greek
philosopher
who maintained that the Universe was a huge animal penetrated the
symbolical
significance of the Pythagorean monad (which becomes two, then three and
finally
having become the tetracktis or the perfect square (thus evolving out of itself
four
and
involuting three forms the sacred seven) -- and thus was far in advance of all
the
scientific
men of the present time; (c) that our notions of "cosmic matter" are
diametrically
opposed to those of western science. Perchance if you remember all this we
will
succeed in imparting to you at least the elementary axioms of our esoteric
philosophy
more
correctly than heretofore. Fear not my kind brother; your life is not ebbing
away
and
it will not be extinct before you have completed your mission. I can sayno
more
except
that the Chohan has permitted me to devote my spare time to instruct those who
are
willing to learn, and you will have work enough to "drop" your
Fragments at intervals
of
two or three months. My time is very limited yet I will do what I can.
But I can
promise
nothing beyond this. I will have to remain silent as to the Dyan Chohans
nor can
I
impart to you the secrets concerning the men of the seventh round. The
recognition of
the
higher phases of man's being on this planet is not to be attained by mere
acquirement
of
knowledge. Volumes of the most perfectly constructed information cannot reveal
to
man
life in the higher regions. One has to get a knowledge of spiritual facts by
personal
experience
and from actual observation, for as Tyndall puts it "facts looked directly
at are
vital,
when they pass into words half the sap is taken out of them." And because
you
recognise
this great principle of personal observation, and are not slow to put into
practice
what you have acquired in the way of useful information, is perhaps the reason
why
the hitherto implacable Chohan my Master has finally permitted me to devote to
a
certain
extent a portion of my time to the progress of the Eclectic. But I am but one
and
you
are many, and none of my Fellow Brothers with the exception of M. will help me
in
this
work, not even our semi-European Greek Brother who but a few days back remarked
that
when "every one of the Eclectics on the Hill will have become a Zetetic
then will he
see
what he can do for them." And as you are aware there is very little hope
for this. Men
seek
after knowledge until they weary themselves to death, but even they do not feel
very
impatient
to help their neighbour with their knowledge; hence there arises a coldness, a
mutual
indifference which renders him who knows inconsistent with himself and
inharmonious
with his surroundings. Viewed from our standpoint the evil is far greater on
the
spiritual than on the material side of man: hence my sincere thanks to you and
desire
to
urge your attention to such a course as shall aid a true progression and
achieve wider
results
by turning your knowledge into a permanent teaching in the form of articles and
pamphlets.
But
for the attainment of your proposed object, viz. -- for a clearer comprehension
of the
extremely
abstruse and at first incomprehensible theories of our occult doctrine never
allow
the serenity of your mind to be disturbed during your hours of literary labour,
nor
before
you set to work. It is upon the serene and placid surface of the unruffled mind
that
the
visions gathered from the invisible find a representation in the visible
world..Otherwise you would vainly seek those visions, those flashes of sudden
light which have
already
helped to solve so many of the minor problems and which alone can bring the
truth
before the eye of the soul. It is with jealous care that we have to guard our
mind-plane
from
all the adverse influences which daily arise in our passage through earth-life.
Many
are the questions you ask me in your several letters, I can answer but few.
Concerning
Eglinton I will beg you to wait for developments. In regard to your kind lady
the
question is more serious and I cannot undertake the responsibility of making
her
change
her diet as ABRUPTLY as you suggest. Flesh and meat she can give up at any
time
as it can never hurt; as for liquor with which Mrs. H. has long been sustaining
her
system,
you yourself know the fatal effects it may produce in an enfeebled constitution
were
the latter to be suddenly deprived of its stimulant. Her physical life is not a
real
existence
backed by a reserve of vital force, but a factitious one fed upon the spirit of
liquor
however small the quantity. While a strong constitution might rally after the
first
shock
of such a change as proposed, the chances are that she would fall into a
decline. So
would
she if opium or arsenic were her chief sustenance. Again I promise nothing yet
will
do in this direction what I can. "Converse with you and teach you through
astral
light?"
Such a development of your psychical powers of hearing, as you name, -- the
Siddhi
of hearing occult sounds would not be at all the easy matter you imagine. It
was
never
done to any one of us, for the iron rule is that what powers one gets he
must himself
acquire. And when
acquired and ready for use the powers lie dumb and dormant in their
potentiality
like the wheels and clockwork inside a musical box; and only then does it
become
easy to wind up the key and set them in motion. Of course you have now more
chances
before you than my zoophagous friend Mr. Sinnett, who were he even to give up
feeding
on animals would still feel a craving for such a food, a craving over which he
would
have no control and, -- the impediment would be the same in that case. Yet
every
earnestly
disposed man may acquire such powers practically. That is the finality
of it;
there
are no more distinctions of persons in this than there are as to whom the sun
shall
shine
upon or the air give vitality to. There are the powers of all nature before
you; take
what you can.
Your
suggestion as to the box I will think over. There would have to be some
contrivance
to
prevent the discharge of power when once the box was charged, whether during
transit
or
subsequently: I will consider and take advice or rather permission. But I must
say the
idea
is utterly repugnant to us as everything else smacking of spirits and
mediumship. We
would
prefer by far using natural means as in the last transmission of my letter to
you. It
was
one of M's chelas who left it for you in the flower-shed, where he entered
invisible to
all
yet in his natural body, just as he had entered many a time your museum and
other
rooms,
unknown to you all, during and after the "Old Lady's" stay. But
unless he is told
to
do so by M. he will never do it, and that is why your letter to me was
left unnoticed.
You
have an unjust feeling towards my Brother, kind sir, for he is better and more
powerful
than I -- at least he is not as bound and restricted as I am -- I have asked H.
P.
B.
to send you a number of philosophical letters from a Dutch Theosophist at
Penang --
one
in whom I take an interest: you ask for more work and her -- one is some. They
are
translations,
originals of those portions of Schoppenhauer which are most in affinity with
our
Arhat doctrines. The English is not idiomatic but the material is
valuable. Should you.be disposed to utilise any portion of it, I would
recommend your opening a direct
correspondence
with Mr. Sanders, F.T.S. -- the translator. Schoppenhauer's philosophical
value
is so well known in the western countries that a comparison or connotation of
his
teachings
upon will, etc., with those you have received from ourselves might be
instructive.
Yes I am quite ready to look over your 50 or 60 pages and make notes on the
margins:
have them set up by all means and send them to me either through little
"Deb"
or
Damodar and Djual Kul will transmit them. In a very few days, perhaps
to-morrow,
your
two questions will be amply answered by me.
Meanwhile
Yours
sincerely,
K.
H.
P.S.
-- The Tibetan translation is not quite ready yet.
FOOTNOTE:
1.
Not in the sense of Natus "born" but Nature as the sum total
of everything visible and
invisible,
of forms and minds, the aggregate of the known (and unknown), causes and
effects,
the universe in short infinite and uncreated and endless, as it is without a
beginning.
(return to text).The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 12
Your
hypothesis is far nearer the truth than Mr. Hume's. Two factors must be kept in
view
-- (a) a fixed period, and (b) a fixed rate of development nicely adjusted to
it.
Almost
unthinkably long as is a Mahayug, it is still a definite term, and within it
must be
accomplished
the whole order of development, or to state it in occult phraseology: the
descent
of Spirit into matter and its return to the re-emergence. A chain of beads, and
each
bead a world -- is an illustration already made familiar to you. You have
already
pondered
over the life impulse beginning with each Manvantara to evolve the first
of
these
worlds; to perfect it; to people it successively with all the aerial forms of
life. And
after
completing on this first world seven cycles -- or revolutions of development --
in
each
kingdom as you know -- passing forward down the arc -- to similarly evolve the
next
world in the chain, perfect it, and abandon it. Then to the next and next and
next --
until
the sevenfold round of world-evolutions along the chain is run through and the
Mahayug
comes to its end. Then chaos again -- the Pralaya. As this
life-impulse (at the
seventh
and last round from planet to planet) moves on it leaves behind it dying and --
very
soon -- "dead planets."
The
last seventh round man having passed on to a subsequent world, the precedent
one
with
all its mineral, vegetable and animal life (except man) begins to gradually die
out,
when
with the exit of the last animalcule it is extinguished, or as H.P.B. has it --
snuffed
out
(minor or partial pralaya). When the Spirit-man reaches the last
bead of the chain and
passes
into final Nirvana, this last world also disappears or passes into
subjectivity. Thus
are
there among the stellar galaxies births and deaths of worlds ever following
each other
in
the orderly procession of natural Law. And -- as said already -- the last bead
is strung
upon
the thread of the "Mahayuga."
When
the last cycle of man-bearing has been completed by that last fecund earth; and
humanity
has reached in a mass the stage of Buddhahood and passed out of the objective
existence
into the mystery of Nirvana -- then "strikes the hour;" the seen
becomes the
unseen,
the concrete resumes its pre-cyclic state of atomic distribution.
But
the dead worlds left behind the on-sweeping impulse do not continue dead.
Motion is
the
eternal order of things and affinity or attraction its handmaid of all works.
The thrill
of
life will again re-unite the atoms, and it will stir again in the inert planet
when the time
comes.
Though all its forces have remained statu quo and are now asleep, yet
little by
little
it will -- when the hour re-strikes -- gather for a new cycle of
man-bearing
maternity,
and give birth to something still higher as moral and physical types than
during
the preceding manvantara. And its "cosmic atoms already in a
differentiated state"
(differing -- in the
producing force, in the mechanical sense, of motions and effects).remain
statu quo as well as globes and everything else in the process of
formation." Such
is
the "hypothesis fully in accordance with (your) (my) note." For, as
planetary
development
is as progressive as human or race evolution, the hour of the Pralaya's
coming
catches the series of worlds at successive stages of evolution; (i.e.) each has
attained
to some one of the periods of evolutionary progress -- each stops there, until
the
outward
impulse of the next manvantara sets it going from that very point --
like a
stopped
time-piece re-wound. Therefore, have I used the word
"differentiated."
At
the coming of the Pralaya no human, animal, or even vegetable entity will be
alive to
see
it, but there will be the earth or globes with their mineral kingdoms; and all
these
planets
will be physically disintegrated in the pralaya, yet not destroyed; for they
have
their
places in the sequence of evolution and their "privations" coming
again out of the
subjective,
they will find the exact point from which they have to move on around the
chain
of "manifested forms." This, as we know, is repeated endlessly
throughout
ETERNITY.
Each man of us has gone this ceaseless round, and will repeat it for ever and
ever.
The deviation of each one's course, and his rate of progress from Nirvana to
Nirvana
is governed by causes which he himself creates out of the exigencies in which
he
finds
himself entangled.
This
picture of an eternity of action may appal the mind that has been accustomed to
look
forward
to an existence of ceaseless repose. But their concept is not supported by the
analogies
of nature, nor -- and ignorant though I may be thought of your Western
Science,
may I not say? -- by the teachings of that Science. We know that periods of
action
and rest follow each other in everything in nature from the macrocosm with its
Solar
Systems down to man and its parent-earth, which has its seasons of activity
followed
by those of sleep; and that in short all nature, like her begotten living forms
has
her
time for recuperation. So with the spiritual individuality, the Monad which
starts on
its
downward and upward cyclic rotation. The periods which intervene between each
great
manvantarian "round" are proportionately long to reward for
the thousands of
existences
passed on various globes; while the time given between each "race
birth" -- or
rings as you call them
-- is sufficiently lengthy to compensate for any life of strife and
misery
during that lapse of time passed in conscious bliss after the re-birth of the Ego.
To
conceive
of an eternity of bliss or woe, and to offset it to any conceivable
deeds of merit
or
demerit of a being who may have lived a century or even a millenium in the
flesh, can
only
be proposed by one who has never yet grasped the awful reality of the word
Eternity,
nor pondered upon the law of perfect justice and equilibrium which pervades
nature.
Further instructions may be given you, which will show how nicely justice is
done
not
to man only but also his subordinates, and throw some light, I hope, upon the
vexed
question
of good and evil.
And
now to crown this effort of mine (of writing) I may as well pay an old debt,
and
answer
an old question of yours concerning earth incarnations. Koot'humi answers some
of
your queries -- at least began writing yesterday but was called off by duty --
but I may
help
him anyhow. I trust you will not find much difficulty -- not as much as
hitherto -- in
making
out my letter. I have become a very plain writer since he reproached me
with.making you lose your valuable time over my scrawlings. His rebuke struck
home, and as
you
see I have amended my evil ways.
Let
us see what your Science has to tell us about Ethnography and other matters.
The
latest
conclusions to which your wise men of the West seem to have arrived briefly
stated
are
the following. The theories even approximately correct I venture to underline
with
blue.
[These passages appear in bold type. -- ED.]
(1)
The earliest traces of man they can find disappear beyond the close of a period
of
which
the rock-fossils furnish the only clue they possess.
(2)
Starting thence they find four races of men who have successively inhabited
Europe
(a)
The race of the river Drift -- mighty hunters (perchance Nimrod?) who dwelt
in the
then sub-tropical climate of Western Europe, who used chipped
stone implements of
the
most primitive kind and were contemporary with the rhinoceros and the
mammoth; (b) the
so-called cave-men, a race developed during the glacial period (the
Esquimaux being now, they say, its only type) and which possessed finer weapons and
tools
of chipped stone since they made with wondrous accuracy pictures of various
animals
they were familiar with, simply with the aid of sharp pointed flints on the
antlers
of
reindeer and on bones and stones; (c) the third race -- the men of the
Neolithic age are
found
already grinding their stone implements, building houses and boats and
making
pottery,
in short -- the lake dwellers of Switzerland; and finally (d) appears the
fourth
race,
coming from Central Asia. These are the fair complexioned Aryans who intermarry
with
the remnant of the dark Iberians -- now represented by the swarthy Basks of
Spain.
This
is the race which they consider as the progenitors of you modern peoples of
Europe.
(3)
They add moreover, that the men of the river Drift, preceded the glacial period
known
in
geology as the Pleistocene and originated some 240,000 years ago, while
human
beings
generally (see Geikie, Dawkins, Fiske and others) inhabited Europe at least
100,000 years earlier.
With
one solitary exception they are all wrong. They come near enough yet miss the
mark
in every case. There were not four but five races; and we are
that fifth with
remnants
of the fourth. (A more perfect evolution or race with each mahacyclic round);
while
the first race appeared on earth not half a million of years ago (Fiske's
theory) --
but
several millions. The latest scientific theory is that of the German and
American
professors
who say through Fiske: "we see man living on the earth for perhaps half a
million
years to all intents and purposes dumb."
He
is both right and wrong. Right about the race having been "dumb," for
long ages of
silence
were required, for the evolution and mutual comprehension of speech, from the
moans
and mutterings of the first remove of man above the highest anthropoid (a race
now
extinct since "nature shuts the door behind her" as she advances, in
more than one
sense)
-- up to the first monosyllable uttering man. But he is wrong in saying all the
rest..By the bye, you ought to come to some agreement as to the terms used when
discussing
upon
cyclic evolutions. Our terms are untranslateable; and without a good knowledge
of
our
complete system (which cannot be given but to regular initiates) would suggest
nothing
definite to your perceptions but only be a source of confusion as in the case
of
the
terms "Soul" and "Spirit" with all your metaphysical
writers -- especially the
Spiritualists.
You
must have patience with Subba Row. Give him time. He is now at his tapas and
will
not
be disturbed. I will tell him not to neglect you but he is very jealous and
regards
teaching
an Englishman as a sacrilege.
Yours
M.
P.S.
-- My writing is good but the paper rather thin for penmanship. Cannot write
English
with
a brush though; would be worse..The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 13
[Mr.
Sinnett's Queries in ordinary type with M.'s Replies in bold type. --
Ed.]
Cosmological
Notes and Queries and M.'s Replies. Received January,
1882.
Allahabad.
(1)
I conceive that at the close of a pralaya the impulse given by the Dhyan
Chohans does
not
develop from chaos, a succession of worlds simultaneously, but seriatim. The
comprehension
of the manner in which each in succession ensues from its predecessor as
the
impact of the original impulse might perhaps be better postponed till after I
am
enabled
to realize the working of the whole machine -- the cycle of worlds -- after all
its
parts
have come into existence.
(1) Correctly conceived. Nothing in nature springs into
existence suddenly all being
subjected to the same law of gradual evolution. Realize but
once the process of the
mahacycle, of one
sphere and you have realized them all. One man is born like
another man, one race evolves, develops, and declines like
another and all other
races. Nature follows the same groove from the
"creation" of a universe down to
that of a moskito. In studying esoteric cosmogony, keep a
spiritual eye upon the
physiological process of human birth; proceed from cause to
effect establishing [The
original
letter has a small portion missing at this point, hence the incompleteness of
the
following
lines. -- ED]. . . . . . . . . . go along, analogies between the. . . . . .
. . . . . man
and that of a world. In our doctri . . . . . . . . will
find necessary the synthetic me . . . . .
. . . . . you will have to embrace the whole . . . . . . .
. . . . -- that is to say to blend the
macrocosm. . . . .
. . . -- cosm together -- before you are ena . . . . . . . . . to study the
parts separately or analyze them with profit to your
understanding. Cosmology is
the physiology of the universe spiritualized, for there is
but one law.
(2)
Taking the middle of a period of activity between two pralayas, i.e., of a
manvantara --
what
I understand to happen is this. Atoms are polarized in the highest region of
spiritual
efflux from behind the veil of primitive cosmic matter. The magnetic impulse
which
has accomplished this result flits from one mineral form to another within the
first
sphere
till having run the round of existence in that kingdom of the first sphere it
descends
in a current of attraction to the second sphere.
(2) Polarize themselves during the process of motion and
propelled by the
irresistible Force at work. In Cosmogony and the work of
nature the positive and
the negative or the active and passive forces correspond to
the male and female.principles. Your spiritual efflux comes not from
"behind the veil" but is the male
seed falling into the veil of cosmic matter. The active is attracted by the
passive
principle and the Great Nag, the serpent emblem of the
eternity, attracts its tail to
its mouth forming thereby a circle (cycles in the eternity)
in that incessant pursuit of
the negative by the positive. Hence the emblem of the lingam thephallus and the eteis.
The one and chief attribute of the universal spiritual
principle -- the unconscious
but ever active life-giver -- is to expand and shed; that
of the universal material
principle to gather in and fecundate. Unconscious and non-existing
when separated,
they become consciousness and life when brought together.
Hence again -- Brahma,
from the root "brih" the Sanskrit for "to
expand, grow or to fructify. Brahma being
but the vivifying expansive
force of nature in its eternal evolution.
(3)
Do worlds of effects intervene between the worlds of activity in the series of
descent?
(3) The worlds of effects are not lokas or localities. They
are the shadow of the world
of causes their souls-- worlds having like men their seven principles which
develop
and grow simultaneously with the body. Thus the bodyof man is
wedded to and
remains for ever within the body of his planet; his
individual jivatma life principle
that which is called in physiology animal spirits returns
after death to its source --
Fohat; his linga
shariram will be drawn into Akasa; his Kamarupawill
recommingle
with the Universal Sakti-- the Will-Force, or universal energy; his "animal
soul"
borrowed from the breath of Universal Mind will
return to the Dhyan Chohans; his
sixth principle -- whether drawn into or ejected from the
matrix of the Great
Passive Principle must remain in its own sphere -- either
as part of the crude
material or as an individualized entity to be reborn in a
higher world of causes. The
seventh will carry it from the Devachanand follow
the new Ego to its place of re -birth.
. . .
(4)
The magnetic impulse which cannot yet be conceived of as an individuality --
enters
the
second sphere in the same (the mineral) kingdom as that to which it belonged in
sphere
I and runs the round of mineral incarnations there passing on to sphere III.
Our
earth
is still a sphere of necessity for it. Hence it passes into the upward series
-- and from
the
highest of these passes into the vegetable kingdom of sphere I.
Without
any new impulse of creative force from above, its career round the cycle of
worlds
as a mineral principle has developed some new attractions or polarization which
cause
it to assume the lowest vegetable form -- in vegetable forms it passes
successively
through
the cycle of worlds, the whole being still a circle of necessity (as no
responsibility
can yet have accrued to an unconscious individuality, and therefore it
cannot
at any stage of its progress do anything to select one or other of divergent
paths).
Or
is there something in the life even of a vegetable which, though not
responsibility,
may
lead it up or down at this critical stage of its progress?
Having
completed the whole cycle as a vegetable the growing individuality expands on
the
next circuit into an animal form..(4) The evolution of the worlds cannot be
considered apart from the evolution of
everything created or having being on these worlds. Your
accepted conceptions of
cosmogony -- whether from the theological or scientific
standpoints -- do not enable
you to solve a single anthropological, or even ethnical
problem and they stand in
your way whenever you attempt to solve the problem of the
races on this planet.
When a man begins to talk about creation and the origin of
man, he is butting
against the facts incessantly. Go on saying: "Our
planet and man were created --
and you will be fighting against hard facts for
ever, analyzing and losing time over
trifling details -- unable to ever grasp the whole. But
once admit that our planet and
ourselves are no more creations than the iceberg now
before me (in our K.H.'s
home) but that both planet and man are -- states for a given
time; that their present
appearance -- geological and anthropological -- is
transitory and but a condition
concomitant of that stage of evolution at which they have
arrived in the descending
cycle -- and all will become plain. You will easily
understand what is meant by the
"one and only" element or principle in the
universe and that androgynous; the
seven-headed serpent Ananda
of Vishnu, the Nag around Buddha
-- the great dragon
eternity biting with its active head its passive tail, from
the emanations of which
spring worlds, beings and things. You will comprehend the
reason why the first
philosopher proclaimed ALL -- Maya -- but that one
principle, which rests during
the maha-pralayas only -- the "nights of Brahm." . . .
Now think: the Nag awakes. He heaves a heavy breath and the
latter is sent like an
electric shock all along the wire encircling Space. Go to your
fortepiano and execute
upon the lower register of keys the seven notes of the
lower octave -- up and down.
Begin pianissimo;
crescendo from the first key and having
struck fortissimoon the last
lower note go back diminuendogetting
out of your last note a hardly perceptible
sound -- "morendo pianissimo" (as I luckily for
my illustration find it printed in one
of the musick pieces in K.H.'s old portmanteau). The first
and the last notes will
represent to you the first and last spheres in the cycle of
evolution -- the highest! the
one you strike onceis our planet. Remember you have to reverse the order on
the
fortepiano: begin with the seventh note, not with the
first. The seven vowels chanted
by the Egyptian priests to the seven rays of the rising sun
to which Memnon
responded, meant but that. The one Life-principlewhen
in action runs in circuits even
as known in physical science. It runs the round in human
body, where the head
represents, and is to the Microcosmos (the physical world
of matter) what the
summit of the cycle is to the Macrocosmos (the world of
universal spiritual Forces);
and so with the formation of worlds and the great
descending and ascending "circle
of necessity." All is one Law. Man has his seven
principles, the germs of which he
brings with him at his birth. So has a planet or a world.
From first to last every
sphere has its world of effects, the passing through which
will afford a place of final
rest to each of the human principles -- the seventh
principle excepted. The world No.
A is born; and with it, clinging like barnacles to the
bottom of a ship in motion --
evolute from its first breath of life, the living beings of
its atmosphere, from the
germs hitherto inert, now awakening to life with the first
motion of the sphere. With
sphere A, begins the mineral kingdom and runs the round of
mineral evolution. By
the time it is completed sphere B comes into objectivity
and draws to itself the.lifewhich has completed its round on sphere A, and has become
a surplus.(The fount
of life being inexhaustible, for it is the true Arachnea
doomed to spin out its web
eternally -- save the periods of pralaya). Then
comes vegetable life on sphere A, and
the same process takes place. On its downward course
"life" becomes with every
state coarser, more material; on its upward more shadowy.
No -- there is, nor can
there be any responsibility until the time when matter and
spirit are properly
equilibrized. Up to man"life" has no responsibility in whatever form;
no more than
has the foetus who in his mother's womb passes through all
the forms of life -- as a
mineral, a vegetable, an animal to become finally Man.
(5)
Where does it get the animal soul, its fifth principle, from? Has the
potentiality of this
resided
from the first in the original magnetic impulse which constituted the mineral,
or
at
every transition from the last world on the ascending side to sphere I does it,
so to
speak,
pass through an ocean of spirit and assimilate some new principle?
(5) Thus you see his fifth
principle is evolved from within himself, man
having as you
well say "the potentiality" of all the seven
principles as a germ, from the very
instant he appears in the first world of causes as a
shadowy breath, which
coagulates with, and is hardened together with the parent
sphere.
Spirit or LIFE is indivisible. And when we speak of the
seventh principle it is
neither quality nor quantity nor yet form that are meant,
but rather the
spaceoccupied in
that ocean of spirit by the results or effects -- (beneficent as are
all
those of a co-worker with nature) -- impressed thereon.
(6)
From the highest animal (non-human) form in sphere I -- how does it get to
sphere II?
It
is inconceivable that it can descend to the lowest animal form there, but
otherwise how
can
it go through the whole circle of life on each planet in turn?
If
it runs its cycle in a spiral (i.e., from form 1 of sphere I to form 1 of
sphere II, etc. --
then
to form 2 of sphere I, II, III, etc., and then to form 3 of sphere I. . . .
nth) then it
seems
to me that the same rule must apply to the mineral and vegetable
individualities if
they
have such, and yet some things I have been told seem to militate against that. (State
them and they will be answered and explained.)
For
the moment I must work on that hypothesis however.
(Having
swept through the cycle in the highest animal form the animal soul in its next
plunge
into the ocean of spirit acquires the seventh principle which endows it with a
sixth.
This determines its future on Earth, and at the close of the earth life has
sufficient
vitality
to keep an attraction of its own for the seventh principle, or loses this and
ceases
to
exist as a separate entity. All this misconceived.)
Seventh principle always there as a latent force in every
one of the principles -- even
body. As the macrocosmic Wholeit is present
even in the lower sphere, but there is
nothing there to assimilate it to itself..(6) Why,
"inconceivable?" The highest animal form in sphere I or A being
irresponsible,
there is no degradation for it to merge into sphere II or B as the most
infinitesimal of that sphere. While on its upward course,
as you were told, man finds
even the lowest animal form there-- higher than
he was himself on earth. How do
you know that men and animals and even life in its
incipient stage is not a thousand
times higher there, than it is here? Besides which, every
kingdom (and we have
seven -- while you have but three) is subdivided into seven degrees or
classes. Man
(physically) is a compound of all the kingdoms, and
spiritually -- his individuality is
no worse for being shut up within the casing of an ant than
it is for being inside a
king. It is not the outward
or physical shape that dishonours and
pollutes the five
principles -- but the mental perversity. Then it is
but at his fourth round when
arrived at the full possession of his Kama-energy and is
completely matured, that
man becomes fully
responsible, as at the sixth he may become
a Buddha and at the
seventh before the Pralaya -- a "Dyan Chohan."
Mineral, vegetable, animal-man, all
of these have to run their seven rounds during
the period of earth's activity -- the
Maha Yug. I will
not enter here on the details of mineral and vegetable evolution, but
I will notice only man -- or -- animal-man. He starts
downward as a simply spiritual
entity -- an unconscious seventh principle (a Parabrahm in
contradistinction to Para-parabrahm)
-- with the germs of the other six principles lying latent
and dormant in
him. Gathering solidity at every sphere -- his six pr. when
passing through the
worlds of effects, and his outward form in the worlds of
causes (for these worlds or
stages on the descending side we have other names) when he
touches our planet he is
but a glorious bunch of light upon a sphere itself yet pure
and undefiled (for
mankind and every living thing on it increase in their
materiality with the planet).
At that stage our globe is like the head of a newly born
babe -- soft, and with
undefined features, and man -- an Adam before the breath of life was breathed into his
nostrils (to quote
your own bungled up Scriptures for your better comprehension).
For man and (our planets) nature -- it is day -- the first (see
distorted tradition in
your Bible). Man No. 1 makes his appearance at the apex of
the circle of the sphere s
on sphere No. 1, after the completion of the seven rounds
or periods of the two
kingdoms (known to you) and thus he is said to be created
on the eighth day (see
Bible Chapter 11; note verses 5 and 6 and think what is
meant there by "mist" --
and verse 7 wherein LAW the Universal great fashioner is
termed "God" by
Christians and Jews, and understood as Evolutionby
Kabalists). During this first
round "animal-man" runs, as you say, his cycle in
a spiral. On the descending arc --
whence he starts
after the completion of the seventh round of animal life on his own
individual sevenrounds -- he has to enter every sphere not as a lower animal as you
understand it but as a lower man. Since during
the cycle which preceded his round
as a man he performed it as the highest type of animal.
Your "Lord God," says
Bible, chapter I, verses 25 and 26 -- after having made all said: "Let
us make man in
our image," etc., and creates man -- an androgyne ape!
(extinct on our planet) the
highest in intelligence in the animal kingdom and whose
descendants you find in the
anthropoids of to-day. Will you deny the possibility of the
highest anthropoid in the
next sphere being higher in intelligence than some men down
here -- savages for
instance, the African dwarf-race and our own Veddahs of
such "degradation" to go through as soon as he
has reached the fourth stage of his.cyclic rounds. Like the lower lives and beings
during his first, second and third
round and while he is an irresponsible compound of pure matter and purespirit
(none of them as yet defiled by the consciousness of their
possible purposes and
applications) from sphere I, where he has performed his local sevenfold
round of
evolutionary process from the lowest class of the highestspecies of
-- say --
anthropoids up to rudimentary man certainly enters No. 2 as
an ape (the last word
being used for your better comprehension). At this round or
stage his individuality
is as dormant in him as that of a foetus during his period
of gestation. He has no
consciousness, no sense, for he begins as a rudimentary
astral man and lands on our
planet as a primitive physical man. So far it is a mere
passing on of mechanical
motion. Volition and consciousness are at the same time
self-determining and
determined by causes, and the volition of man his
intelligence and consciousness will
awake but when his fourth principle
(seriatim) contact
with the Kamas or energizing forces of all the forms man has
passed through in his previous three rounds. The present
mankind is at its
fourthround
(mankind as a genus or a kind not a RACE nota
bene) of the post-pralayancycle
of evolution; and as its various races, so the individual
entities in them
are unconsciously to themselves performing their local earthly
sevenfold cycles --
hence the vast difference in the degrees of their
intelligence, energy and so on. Now
every individuality will be followed on its ascending arc
by the Law of retribution --
Karma and death accordingly. The perfect man or the entity
which reached full
perfection, (each of his seven principles being matured)
will not be reborn here. His
local terrestrial cycle is completed and he has to either proceed
onward or -- be
annihilated as an individuality. (The incomplete entities
have to be reborn or
reincarnated). (1)On their fifth round after a partial Nirvana when the
zenith of the
grand cycle is reached, they will be held responsible
henceforth in their descents
from sphere to sphere, as they will have to appear on this
earth as a still more
perfect and intellectual race. This downward course has not
yet begun but will soon.
Only how many -- oh, how many will be destroyed on their
way!
The above said is the rule. The Buddhas and Avatars form the
exception as verily we
have yet some
Avatars left to us on earth.
(7)
The animal soul having in successive passages round the cycle lost, so to
speak, the
momentum
which previously carried it past the divergent path downward which strikes
off
here, falls into the lower world, in the relatively brief cycle in which its
individuality
is
dissipated.
But
this would only be the case with the animal soul which had not, in its union
with
spirit,
developed a durable sixth principle. If it had done this, and if the sixth
principle
drawing
to itself the individuality of the complete man, had withered the interior
fifth
principle
by so doing -- as the aloe's flower, when thrown up, withers its leaves -- then
the
animal soul would not have cohesion enough to enter on another existence in a
lower
world
and would be soon dissipated in the sphere of this earth's attraction..(7)
Reforming your conceptions on what I gave you above you will understand now
better.
The whole individuality is centred in the three middle or
3rd, 4th and 5th principles.
During earthly life it is all in the fourth the centre of
energy, volition -- will. Mr.
Hume has perfectly defined the difference between personality
and individuality.
The former hardly survives -- the latter, to run
successfully its seven-fold downward
and upward course has to assimilate to itself the eternal
life-power residing but in
the seventh and then blend the three (fourth, fifth and seventh)
into one -- the sixth.
Those who succeed in doing so become Buddhs, Dyan Chohans,
etc. The chief object
of our struggles and initiations
is to achieve this union while yet on
this earth. Those
who will be successful have nothing to fear of during the
fifth, sixth and seventh
rounds. But this is a mystery. Our beloved K.H. is on his
way to the goal -- the
highest of all beyond as on this sphere.
I have to thank you for all you have done for our two
friends. It is a debt of gratitude
we oweyou.
M.
For some short time you will not hear of, or from me --
PREPARE.
FOOTNOTE:
1.
By-the-bye, I'll re-write for you pages 345 to 357, Vol. I., of Isis --
much jumbled, and
confused
by Olcott, who thought he was improving it! (return
to text).The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 14
[Transcribed
from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting -- ED.]
Letter
from K.H. Answering Queries. Received by A.O.H., July 9th, 1882.
(1)
We understand that the man-bearing cycle of necessity of our solar system
consists of
thirteen
objective globes, of which ours is the lowest, six above it in the ascending,
and
six
in the descending cycle with a fourteenth world lower still than ours. Is this
correct?
(1) The number is not quite correct. There are seven
objective and seven subjective
globes (I have been just permitted for the first time to
give you the right figure), the
worlds of causes and of effects. The former have our earth
occupying the lower
turning point where spirit-matter equilibrates. But do not
trouble yourself to go into
calculations even on this correct basis for it will only
puzzle you, since the infinite
ramifications of the number seven (which is one of our
greatest mysteries) being so
closely allied and interdependent with the seven principles
of Nature and man -- this
figure is the only one I am permitted (so far) to give you.
What I can reveal I do so
in a letter I am just finishing.
(2)
We understand that below man you reckon not three kingdoms as we do (mineral,
vegetable
and animal) but seven. Please enumerate and explain these.
(2) Below man there are three in the objective and three in
the subjective region,
with man a septenary. Two of the three former none but an
initiate could conceive
of; the third is the Inner kingdom -- below the crust of
the earth which we could
name but would feel embarrassed to describe. These seven
kingdoms are preceded
by other and numerous septenary stages and combinations.
(3)
We understand that the monad, starting in the highest world of the descending
series,
appears
there in a mineral encasement, and there goes through a series of seven
encasements
representing the seven classes into which the mineral kingdom is divided,
and
that this done it passes to the next planet and does likewise (I purposely say
nothing
of
the worlds of results, where it takes on the development the result of what it
has gone
through
in the last world and the necessary preparation for the next) and so on right
through
the thirteen spheres, making altogether 91 mineral existences. (a) Is this
correct?
(b)
If so, what are the classes we are to reckon in the mineral kingdom? Also (c)
How
does
the monad get out of one encasement into another; in the case of inherbations
and
incarnations,
the plant and animal dies, but so far as we know the mineral does not die, so
how
does the monad in the first round get out of one into another inmetalliation?
(d) And.has every separate molecule of the mineral a monad or only those groups
of molecules
where
definite structure is observable such as crystals?
(3) Yes; in our string of worlds it starts at globe
"A" of the descending series and
passing through all the preliminary evolutions and
combinations of the first three
kingdoms it finds itself encased in its first mineral form
(in what I call race when
speaking of man and what we may call class in general) --
of class 1 -- there. Only it
passes through seveninstead of "through the thirteen spheres" even
omitting the
intermediate "worlds of results." Having passed
through its seven great classes of
inmetalliation (a good word this) with their septenary
ramifications -- the monad
gives birth to the vegetable kingdom and moves on to the
next planet "B."
(a) As you now see, except as to the numbers. (b) Your
geologists divide, I believe,
stones into three great groups -- of Sandstone, granite and
chalk; or the
sedimentary, organic, and igneous, following their physical
characteristics just as
the psychologists and spiritualists divide man into the
trinity of body, soul, and
spirit. Our method is totally different. We divide minerals
(also the other kingdoms)
according to their occult properties, i.e., according to the
relative proportion of the
seven universal principles which they contain. I am sorry
to refuse you, but I
cannot, am not permitted to answer your question. To
facilitate for you a question of
simple nomenclature, however, I would advise you to study
perfectly the seven
principles in man, and thus to divide the seven great
classes of the minerals
correspondentially. For instance, the group of the
sedimentary would answer to the
compound (chemically speaking) body of man or his first
principle; the organic to
the second (some call it third) principle or jiva, etc.,
etc. You must exercise your own
intuitions in that. Thus you might also intuite certain
truths even as to their
properties. I am more than willing to help you but things
have to be divulged
gradually.(c) By
occult osmosis.The plant and animal leave their carcases behind
when life is extinct. So does the mineral only at longer
intervals, as its rocky body is
more lasting. It dies at the end of every manwantariccycle,
or at the close of one
"Round" as you would call it. It is explained in
the letter I am preparing for you. (d)
Every molecule is part of the Universal Life. Man's soul
(his fourth and fifth
principle) is but a compound of the progressed entities of
the lower kingdom. The
superabundance or preponderance of one over another
compound will often
determine the instincts and passions of a man, unless these
are checked by the
soothing and spiritualizing influence of his sixth
principle.
(4)
Please note, we call the Grand Cycle that the monad has performed in the
mineral
kingdom
a "round" which we understand to contain thirteen (seven) stations,
or objective,
more
or less material worlds. At each of these stations it performs what we call a
"world
ring,"
which includes seven inmetalliations, one in each of the seven classes of that
kingdom.
Is this accepted for nomenclature and correct?
(4) I believe it will lead to a further confusion. A Round
we are agreed to call the
passage of a monad from globe "A" to globe
"Z" (or "G") through the encasement
in all and each of the four kingdoms, viz., as a mineral, a
vegetable, an animal and.man or the Deva kingdom. The "world ring" is
correct. M. advised Mr. Sinnett
strongly to agree upon a nomenclature before going any
further. A few stray facts
were given to you par
contrebande and on the smuggling
principle hitherto. But now
since you seem really and seriously determined to study and
utilize our philosophy --
it is time we should begin to work seriously. Because we
are constrained to deny to
our friends an insight into the higher Mathematics it is no
reason why we should
refuse to teach them arithme tic. The monad performs not
only "world rings" or
seven major inmetalliations, inherbations, zoonisations (?)
and incarnations -- but
an infinitude of sub-rings or subordinate whirls all in
series of sevens. As the
geologist divides the crust of the earth into great
divisions, sub-divisions, minor
compartments and zones; and the botanist his plants into
orders, classes and
species, and the zoologist his subjects into classes,
orders and families, so we have
our arbitrary classifications and our nomenclature. But
besides all this being
incomprehensible to you, volumes upon volumes out of the
Books of Kiu-te and
others would have to be written. Their commentaries are
worse still. They are filled
with the most abstruse mathematical calculations the key to
most of which are in the
hands of our highest adepts only, since showing as they do
the infinitude of the
phenomenal manifestations in the side projections of the one Force they are
again
secret. Therefore I doubt whether I will be allowed to give
you for the present
anything beyond the mere unitary or root idea. Anyhow I
will do my best.
(5)
We understand that in each of your other six kingdoms, a monad similarly
performs a
complete
round, in each round stopping in each of the thirteen stations, and there
performing
in each a world ring of seven lives, one in each of the seven classes into
which
each of the 6 said kingdoms are divided. Is this correct, and, if so, will you
give us
the
seven classes of these six kingdoms?
(5) If by kingdoms the seven kingdoms or regions of the
earth are meant -- and I do
not see how it can mean anything else -- then the query is
answered in my reply to
your Question (2) and if so then the five out of the seven
are already enumerated.
The first two are related as well as the third, to the
evolution of the elementals and
of the Inner kingdom.
(6)
If we are right then the total existences prior to the man-period is 637. Is
this correct?
Or
are there seven existences in each class of each kingdom, 4,459? Or what are
the total
numbers
and how divided? One point more. In these lower kingdoms is the number of
lives,
so to speak, invariable, or does it vary, and, if so, how, why, and within what
limits?
(6) Not being permitted to give you the whole truth, or
divulge the number of
isolated fractions, I am unable to satisfy you by giving
you the total number. Rest
assured my dear Brother, that to one who does not seek to
become a practical
occultist these numbers are immaterial. Even our high
chelas are refused these
particulars to the moment of their initiation into
adeptship. These figures as I have
already said are so interwoven with the profoundest
psychological mysteries that to
divulge the key to such figures, would be to put the rod of
power within the reach of.all the clever men who would read your book. All that
I can tell you is that within
the Solar Manwantara the number of existences or vital
activities of the monad is
fixed, but there are local variations in number in minorsystems,
individual worlds,
rounds, and world rings, according to circumstances. And in
this connexion
remember also that human personalities are
often blotted out, while the entities
whether single or compound complete all the minor and major
circles of necessities
under whatsoever form.
(7)
So far we hope we are tolerably correct, but when we come to Man we have got
muddled.
(7) And no wonder, since you were not given the correct
information.
(7a)
Does the monad as Man (ape-man and upwards) make one or seven rounds as above
defined?
We gathered the latter.
(7a) As a man-ape he performs just as many rounds and rings
as every other race or
class; i.e., he performs one Round and in every planet from
"A" to "Z" has to go
through seven chief races of ape -like man, as many
sub-races, etc., etc. (See
Supplementary Notes) as the above described race.
(7b)
At each round does his world circle consist of seven lives in
seven races (49) or of
only
seven lives in one race? We are not certain how you use the word race, whether
there
is only one race to each station of each round, i.e., one race to each world
circle or
whether
there are seven races (with their seven branchlets and a life in each in either
case)
in each world circle? Nay, from your use of the words "and through each of
these
Man
has to evolute before he passes on to the next higher race and that seven
times," we
are
not sure that there are not seven lives in each branchlet as you call it, sub-race
we
will,
if you like, say. So now there may be seven rounds each with seven races, each
with
seven
sub-races, each with seven incarnations = 13 x 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 = 31, = 313 lives,
or
one
round with seven races and seven sub-races and a life in each = 13 x 7 x 7 =
637 lives
or
again 4,459 lives. Please set us right here stating the normal number of lives
(the exact
numbers
will vary owing to idiots, children, etc., not counting) and how divided.
(7b) As the above described race: i.e., at each planet --
our earth included -- he has
to perform seven rings through seven races (one in each)
and seven multiplied by
seven offshoots. There are seven root-races, and seven
sub-races or offshoots. Our
doctrine treats anthropology as an absurd empty dream of
the religionists and
confines itself to ethnology. It is possible that my
nomenclature is faulty: you are at
liberty in such a case to change it. What I call
"race" you would perhaps term
"stock" though sub-race expresses better what we
mean than the word family or
division of the genus homo. However, to set you right so
far I will say -- one life in
each of the seven root-races; seven lives in each of the 49
sub-races -- or 7 x 7 x 7 =
343 and add 7 more. And then a series of lives in offshoot
and branchlet races;
making the total incarnations of man in each station or
planet 777. The principle of
acceleration and retardation applies itself in such a way,
as to eliminate all the.inferior stocks and leave but a single superior one to
make the last ring. Not much to
divide over some millions of years that man passes on one
planet. Let us take but
one million of years -- suspected and now accepted by your
science -- to represent
man's entire term upon our earth in this Round; and
allowing an average of a
century for each life, we find that whereas he has passed
in all his lives upon our
planet (in this Round) but 77,700 years he has been in the
subjective spheres 922,300
years. Not much encouragement for the extreme modern
re-incarnationists who
remember their several previous existences!
Should you indulge in any calculations do not forget that
we have computed above
only full average lives of consciousness and
responsibility. Nothing has been said as
to the failures of Nature in abortions, congenital idiots,
death of children in their
first septenary cycles, nor of the exceptionsof which
I cannot speak. No less have you
to remember that average human life varies greatly according
to the Rounds.
Though I am obliged to withhold information about many
points yet if you should
work out any of the problems by yourself it will be my duty
to tell you so. Try to
solve the problem of the 777 incarnations.
(8)
"M" said all mankind is in the fourth round, the fifth has not yet
commenced but soon
will.
Was this a slip? If not, then collating this with your present remarks we
gather that
all
mankind is on the fourth round (though in another place you seemed to say we
are on
the
fifth round). That the highest people now on earth belong to the first sub-race
of the
fifth
race, the majority to the seventh sub-race of the fourth race but with remnants
of the
other
sub-races of the fourth race and the seventh sub-race of the third race. Pray
set us
quite
right on this.
(8)
"M "knows very little English and hates writing. But
even I might have used
very well the same expression. A few drops of rain do not
make a monsoon though
they presage it. The fifth round has not commenced on our
earth and the races and
sub-races of one round must not be confounded with those of
another round. The
fifth round mankind may be said to have
"commenced" when there shall not be left
on the planet which precedes ours a single man of that
round and on our earth not
one of the fourth round. You should know also that the
casual fifth round men (and
very few and scarce they are) who come in upon us as avant
couriers do not beget on
earth fifth round progeny. Plato and Confucius were fifth
round men and our Lord
a sixth round man (the mystery of his avatar is spoken of
in my forthcoming letter)
and not even Gautama Buddha's son was anything but a fourth
round man.
Our mystic terms in their clumsy re-translation from the
Sanskrit into English are
as confusing to us as they are to you -- especially to
"M" unless in writing to you one
of us takes his pen as
an adept and uses it from the first
word to the last, in this
capacity he is quite as liable to "slips" as any
other man. No, we are not in the fifth
round, but fifth round men have been coming in for the last
few thousand years. But
what is such a petty stretch of time in comparison with
even one million of the
several millions of years embraced in man's occupancy of
earth in a single round..K.H.
Please examine carefully the few additional things I give
you on the fly-leaves.
Damodar has received orders to send you No. 3 of Terry's
letters -- a good material
for pamphlet No. 3 of Fragments of Occult Truth.
This figure roughly represents the development of humanity
on a planet -- say our
earth. Man evolves in seven major or root-races; 49 minor
races; and the
subordinate races or offshoots, the branchlet races coming
from the latter are not
shown.
The arrow indicates the direction taken by the evolutionary
impulse.
?? I, II, III, IV, etc., are the seven major or root-races.
?? 1, 2, 3, etc., are the minor races.
?? a, a, a, are the subordinate or offshoot races.
?? N, the initial and terminal point of evolution on the
planet.
?? S, the axial point where the development equilibrates or
adjusts itself in each
race evolution.
?? E, the equatorial points where in the descending arc
intellect overcomes
spirituality and in the ascending arc spirituality
outstrips intellect.
(N.B.
-- The above in D.K.'s hand -- the rest in K.H.'s. -- A.P.S.)
P.S. -- In his hurry D.J.K. has made his figure incline
somewhat out of the
perpendicular but it will serve as a rough memorandum. He
drew it to represent
development on a single planet; but I have added a word or
two to make it apply as
well (which it does) to a whole manwantaric chain of
worlds.
K.H.
Supplementary Notes.
Whenever any question of evolution or development in any
Kingdom presents itself
to you bear constantly in mind that everything comes under
the Septenary rule of
series in their correspondences and mutual relation
throughout nature.
In the evolution of man there is a topmost point, a bottom
point, a descending arc,
and an ascending arc. As it is "Spirit" which
transforms itself into "matter" and
(not "matter" which ascends -- but) matter which resolves once more into spirit, of
course the first race evolution and the last on a planet
(as in each round) must be
more etherial, more spiritual, the fourth or lowermost one
most physical
(progressively of course in each round) and at the same
time -- as physical
intelligence is the masked manifestation of spiritual
intelligence -- each evoluted race in
the downward arc must be more physically intelligent than
its predecessor, and each.in the upward arc have a more refined form of
mentality commingled with spiritual
intuitiveness.
The first race (or stock) of the first round after a solarmanwantara
(kindly wait for
my forthcoming letter before you allow yourself to be
repuzzled or remuddled. It
will explain a good deal) would then be a god man race of
an almost impalpable
shape, and so it is; but then comes the difficulty to the
student to reconcile this fact
with the evolution of man from the animal-- however
high his form among the
anthropoids. And yet it is reconcilable, for whomsoever
will hold religiously to a
strict analogy between the works of the two worlds, the
visible and the invisible --
one world, in fact, as one is working within itself so to
say. Now there are -- there
must be "failures"
in the etherial races of the many classes of Dyan Chohans or
Devas as well as among men. But still as these failures are
too far progressed and
spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from their Dyan
Chohanship into the vortex
of a new primordial evolution through the lower kingdoms --
this then happens.
When a new solar system is to be evolved these Dyan Chohans
are (remember the
Hindu allegory of the Fallen Devas hurled by Siva into
Andarah who are allowed by
Parabrahm to consider it as an intermediate state where
they may prepare
themselves by a series of rebirths in that sphere for a
higher state -- a new
regeneration) born in by the influx "ahead" of
the elementals and remain as a latent
or inactive spiritual force in the aura of the nascent world
of a new system until the
stage of human evolution is reached. Then Karma has reached
them and they will
have to accept to the last drop in the bitter cup of
retribution. Then they become an
activeForce, and
commingle with the Elementals, or progressed entities of the
pure
animal kingdom to develope little by little the full type
of humanity. In this
commingling they lose their high intelligence and
spirituality of Devaship to regain
them in the end of the seventh ring in the seventh round.
Thus we have:
1st Round. -- An
ethereal being -- non-intelligent, but super-spiritual. In each of the
subsequent races and sub-races and minor races of evolution
he grows more and
more into an encased or incarnate being, but still
preponderatingly etherial. And
like the animal and vegetable he develops monstrous bodies
correspondential with
his coarse surroundings.
2nd Round. -- He is
still gigantic and etherial, but growing firmer and more
condensed in body -- a more physical man, yet still less
intelligent than spiritual; for
mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than the
physical frame and the mind
would not develop as rapidly as the body.
3rd Round. -- He
has now a perfectly concrete or compacted body; at first the form
of a giant ape, and more intelligent (or rather cunning)
than spiritual. For in the
downward arc he has now reached the point where his
primordial spirituality is
eclipsed or over-shadowed by nascent mentality. In the last
half of this third round
his gigantic stature decreases, his body improves in
texture (perhaps the microscope.might help to demonstrate this) and he becomes
a more rational being -- though still
more an ape than a Deva man.
4th round. --
Intellect has an enormous development in this round. The dumb races
will acquire our human speech, on our globe, on which from the 4th race
language is
perfected and knowledge in physical things increases. At
this half-way point of the
fourth round, Humanity passes the axial point of the minor manwantaric circle.
(Moreover, at the middle point of every major or root race evolution
of each round,
man passes the equator of his course on that planet, the
same rule applying to the
whole evolution or the seven rounds of the minor Manwantara
-- 7 rounds divided
by 2 = 3 1/2 rounds). At this point then the world teems
with the results of
intellectual activity and spiritual decrease. In
the first half of the fourth race,
sciences, arts, literature and philosophy were born,
eclipsed in one nation, reborn in
another. Civilization and intellectual developme nt
whirling in septenary cycles as
the rest; while it is but in the latter half that the
spiritual Ego will begin its real
struggle with body and mind to manifest its transcendental
powers. Who will help in
the forthcoming gigantic struggle? Who? Happy the man who
helps a helping hand.
5th Round. -- The
same relative development, and the same struggle continues.
6th Round.
7th Round.
Of these we need not speak.
The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 15
[Transcribed
from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting. K.H.'s repies are in
bold
type. -- ED.]
From
K.H. to A.O.H. Received July 10th, 1882.
(1)
Does every mineral form, vegetable, plant, animal, always contain within it
that entity
which
involves the potentiality of development into a planetary spirit? At this
present day
in
this present earth is there such an essence or spirit or soul -- the name is
immaterial in
every
mineral, etc.
(1) Invariably; only rather call it the germ of a future
entity, which it has been for
ages. Take the human foetus. From the moment of its first
planting until it.completes its seventh month of gestation it repeats in
miniature the mineral,
vegetable, and animal cycles it passed through in its
previous encasements, and only
during the last two, develops its future human entity. It
is completed but towards
the child's seventh year. Yet it existed without any increase or decrease aeons on
aeons before it worked its way onward, through and in the womb of
mother nature
as it works now in its earthly mother's bosom. Truly said a
learned philosopher who
trusts more to his intuitions than the dicta of modern
science. "The stages of man's
intra-uterine existence embody a condensed record of some
of the missing pages in
Earth's history." Thus you must look back at the
animal, vegetable and mineral
entities. You must take each entity at its starting point
in the manvantaric course as
the primordial cosmic atom already differentiated by the
first flutter of the
manvantaric life breath. For the potentiality which
develops finally in a perfected
planetary spirit lurks in, is in fact that
primordial cosmic atom. Drawn by its
"chemical affinity"
(?) to coalesce with other like atoms the aggregate sum of such
united atoms will in time become a man-bearing globe after
the stages of the cloud,
the spiral and sphere of fire -mist and of the
condensation, consolidation, shrinkage
and cooling of the planet have been successively passed
through. But mind, not
every globe becomes a "man bearer." I simply
state the fact without dwelling
further upon it in this connection. The great difficulty in
grasping the idea in the
above process lies in the liability to form more or less
incomplete mental conceptions
of the working of the oneelement, of its inevitable
presence in every imponderable
atom, and its subsequent ceaseless and almost illimitable
multiplication of new
centres of activity without affecting in the least its own
original quantity. Let us take
such an aggregation of atoms destined to form our globe and
then follow, throwing a
cursory look at the whole, the special work of such atoms.
We will call the
primordial atom A. This being not a circumscribed centre of
activity but the initial
point of a manwantaric whirl of evolution, gives birth to
new centres which we may
term B, C, D, etc., incomputably. Each of these capital
points gives birth to minor
centres, a, b, c, etc. And the latter in the course of
evolution and involution in time
develops into A's, B's, C's, etc., and so form the roots or
are the developing causes of
new genera, species, classes, etc., ad infinitum. Now
neither the primordial A and its
companion atoms, nor their derived a's, b's, c's, have lost
one tittle of their original
force or life-essence by the evolution of their
derivatives. The force there, is not
transformed into something else as I have already shown in
my letter, but with each
development of a new centre of activity from withinitself
multiplies ad infinitum
without ever losing a particle of its nature in quantity or
quality. Yet acquiring as it
progresses something plus in its differentiation. This
"force" so-called, shows itself
truly indestructible but does not correlate and
is not convertible in the sense
accepted by the Fellows of the R.S., but rather may be said
to grow and expand into
"something else" while neither its own
potentiality nor being are in the least
affected by the transformation. Nor can it well be called force since the
latter is but
the attribute of Yin Sin (Yin Sin or the one "Form of
existence" also Adi-Buddhi or
Dharmakaya the mystic, universally diffused essence) when
manifesting in the
phenomenal world of senses namely only your old
acquaintance Fohat. See in this
connexion Subba Row's article "Aryan Arhat Esoteric
Doctrines" on the seven-fold
principles in man; his review of your Fragments, pp. 94 and
95. The initiated.Brahmin calls it (Yin Sin and Fohat) Brahman and Sakti when
manifesting as that
force. We will perhaps be nearer correct to call it infinite life and
the source of all life
visible and invisible, an essence inexhaustible ever
present, in short Swabhavat. (S.
in its universal application, Fohat when manifesting
throughout our phenomenal
world or rather the visible universe hence in its
limitations). It is pravritti when
active, nirvritti when passive. Call it the Sakti of
Parabrahma, if you like, and say
with the Adwaitees (Subba Row is one) that Parabrahm plus
Maya becomes Iswar
the creative principle -- a power commonly called God which
disappears and dies
with the rest when pralaya comes. Or you may hold with the
northern Buddhist
philosophers and call it Adi-Buddhi the
all-pervading supreme and absolute
intelligence with its periodically manifesting Divinity --
"Avalokiteshvara" (a
manwantaric intelligent nature crowned with humanity) --
the mystic name given by
us to the hosts of the Dyan Chohans (N.B., the solar Dyan
Chohans or the host of
only our solar system) taken collectively, which host
represents the mother source,
the aggregate amount of all the intelligences that were are
or ever will be whether
on our string of man-bearing planets or on any part or
portion of our solar system.
And this will bring you by analogy to see that in its turn
Adi-Buddhi (as its very
name translated literally implies) is the aggregate
intelligence of the universal
intelligences including that of the Dyan Chohans even of
the highest order. That is
all I dare now to tell you on this special subject, as I
fear I have already transcended
the limit. Therefore whenever I speak of humanity without
specifying it you must
understand that I mean not humanity of our fourth round as
we see it on this speck
of mud in space but the whole host already evoluted.
Yes as described in my letter -- there is but one element
and it is impossible to
comprehend our system before a correct conception of it is
firmly fixed in one's
mind. You must therefore pardon me if I dwell on the
subject longer than really
seems necessary. But unless this great primary fact is
firmly grasped the rest will
appear unintelligible. This element then is the -- to speak
metaphysically -- one sub-stratum
or permanent cause of all manifestations in the phenomenal
universe. The
ancients speak of the five cognizable elements of ether,
air, water, fire, earth, and of
the one incognizable element (to the uninitiates) the 6th
principle of the universe --
call it Purush Sakti, while to speak of the seventh outside
the sanctuary was
punishable with death. But these five are but the
differentiated aspects of the one.
As man is a seven-fold being so is the universe -- the
septenary microcosm being to
the septenary macrocosm but as the drop of rainwater is to
the cloud from whence it
dropped and whither in the course of time it will return.
In that one are embraced
or included so many tendencies for the evolution of air,
water, fire, etc. (from the
purely abstract down to their concrete condition) and when
those latter are called
elements it is to indicate their productive potentialities
for numberless form changes
or evolution of being. Let us represent the unknown
quantity as X; that quantity is
the one eternal immutable principle -- and A, B, C, D, E,
five of the six minor
principles or components of the same; viz., the principles
of earth, water, air, fire
and ether (akasa) following the order of their spirituality
and beginning with the
lowest. There is a sixth principle answering to the sixth
principle Buddhi, in man (to
avoid confusion remember that in viewing the question from
the side of the.descending scale the abstract All or eternal principle would be
numerically
designated as the first, and the phenomenal universe as the
seventh, and whether
belonging to man or to the universe -- viewed from the
other side the numerical
order would be exactly reversed) but we are not permitted
to name it except among
the initiates. I may however hint that it is connected with
the process of the highest
intellection. Let us call it N. And besides these, there is
under all the activities of the
phenomenal universe an energizing impulse from X, call this
Y. Algebraically
stated, our equation would therefore read A+B+C+D+E+N+Y=X.
Each of these six
letters represents, so to speak, the spirit or abstraction
of what you call elements
(your meagre English gives me no other word). This spirit
controls the entire line of
evolution, around the whole manwantaric cycle in its own department.
The
informing, vivifying, impelling, evolving cause,behind the
countless phenomenal
manifestations in that department of Nature. Let us work
out the idea with a single
example. Take fire. D -- the primal igneous principle
resident in X -- is the ultimate
cause of every phenomenal manifestation of fire on all the
globes of the chain. The
proximate causes are the evoluted secondary igneous
agencies which severally
control the sevendescents of fire on each planet. (Every element having its
seven
principles and every principle its seven sub-principles and
these secondary agencies
before doing so, have in turn become primary causes.) D is
a septenary compound of
which the highest fraction is pure spirit. As we see it on
our globe it is in its coarsest,
most material condition, as gross in its way as is man in
his physical encasement. In
the next preceding globe to ours fire was less gross than
here: on the one before that
less still. And so the body of flame was more and more pure
and spiritual less and
less gross and material on each antecedent planet. On the
first of all in the
manwantaric chain, it appeared as an almost pure objective
shining -- the Maha
Buddhi, sixth principle of the eternal light. Our
globe being at the bottom of the arc
where matter exhibits itself in its grossest form along
with spirit -- when the fire
element manifests itself on the globe next succeeding ours
in the ascending arc it will
be less dense than as we see it. Its spiritual quality will
be identical with that which
fire had on the globe preceding ours in the descending
scale; the second globe of the
ascending scale will correspond in quality with that of the
second anterior globe to
ours in the descending scale, etc. On each globe of the
chain there are seven
manifestations of fire of which the first in order will
compare as to spiritual quality
with the last manifestation on the next preceding planet:
the process being reversed,
as you will infer, with the opposite arc. The myriad
specific manifestations of these
six universal elements are in their turn but the offshoots,
branches or branchlets of
the one single primordial "Tree of Life."
Take Darwin's genealogical tree of life of the human race
and others and bearing
ever in mind the wise old adage, "As below so
above" -- that is the universal system
of correspondences -- try to understand by analogy. Thus
will you see that in this
day on this present earth in every mineral, etc., there is
such a spirit. I will say more .
Every grain of sand, every boulder or crag of granite, is that spirit
crystallized or
petrified. You hesitate. Take a primer of geology and see
what science affirms there
about the formation and growth of minerals. What is the
origin of all the rocks,
whether sedimentary or igneous. Take a piece of granite or
sandstone and you find.one composed of crystals, the other of grains of various
stones (organic rocks or
stones formed out of the remains of once living plants and
animals, will not serve
our present purpose: they are the relics of subsequent
evolutions while we are
concerned but with the primordial ones). Now sedimentary
and igneous rocks are
composed, the former of sand gravel and mud, the latter of
lava. We have then but
to trace the origin of the two. What do we find? We find
that one was compounded
of three elements or more accurately three several
manifestations of the one
element, -- earth, water and fire, and that the other was
similarly compounded
(though under different physical conditions) out of cosmic
matter -- the imaginary
materia prima itself
one of the manifestations (6th principle) of the one element. How
then can we doubt that a mineral contains in it a spark of
the One as everything else
in this objective nature does?
(2)
When the pralaya commences what becomes of the Spirit that has not worked its
way
up
to man?
(2) . . . The period necessary for the completion of the
seven local or earthly -- or
shall we call it -- globe-rings (not to speak of the seven
Rounds in the minor
manwantaras followed by their seven minor pralayas) -- the
completion of the so-called
mineral cycle is immeasurably longer than that of any other
kingdom. As you
may infer by analogy every globe before it reaches its
adult period, has to pass
through a formation period -- also septenary. Law in Nature
is uniform and the
conception, formation, birth, progress and development of
the child differs from
those of the globe only in magnitude. The globe has two
periods of teething and of
capillature -- its first rocks which it also sheds to make room
for new -- and its ferns
and mosses before it gets forest. As the atoms in the body
change [every] seven years
so does the globe renew its strata every seven cycles. A
section of a part of Cape
Breton coalfields shows seven ancient soils with remains of
as many forests, and
could one dig as deep once more seven other sections would
be found following. . . .
There are three kinds of pralayas and manwantara: --
1. The universal or Maha pralaya and manwantara.
2. The solar pralaya and manwantara.
3. The minor pralaya and manwantara.
When the pralaya No. 1 is finished the universal manwantara
begins. Then the
whole universe must be re-evoluted de novo. When the
pralaya of a solar system
comes it affects that solar system only. A solar pralaya =
7 minor pralayas. The
minor pralayas of No. 3 concern but our little string of
globes, whether man-bearing
or not. To such a string our Earth belongs.
Besides this within a minor pralaya there is a condition of
planetary rest or as the
astronomers say "death," like that of our present
moon -- in which the rocky body.of the planet survives but the life impulse has
passed out. For example. Let us
imagine that our earth is one of a group of seven planets
or man-bearing worlds
more or less eliptically arranged. Our earth being at the
exact lower central point of
the orbit of evolution, viz., half way round -- we will
call the first globe A, the last Z.
After each solar pralaya there is a complete destruction
of our system and after each
solar p. begins the absolute objective reformation of our
system and each time
everything is more perfect than before.
Now the life impulse reaches "A" or rather that
which is destined to become "A"
and which so far is but cosmic dust. A centre is formed in
the nebulous matter of the
condensation of the solar dust disseminated through space
and a series of three
evolutions invisible to the eye of flesh occur in
succession, viz., three kingdoms of
elementals or nature forces are evoluted: in other words
the animal soul of the
future globe is formed; or as a Kabalist will express it,
the gnomes, the salamanders,
and the undines are created. The correspondence between a
mother-globe and her
child-man may be thus worked out. Both have their seven
principles. In the Globe,
the elementals (of which there are in all seven species)
form (a) a gross body, (b) her
fluidic double (linga
sariram), (c) her life principle
(jiva); (d) her fourth principle
kama rupa is formed by her creative impulse working from
centre to
circumference; (e) her fifth principle (animal soul or Manas, physical
intelligence) is
embodied in the vegetable (in germ) and animal kingdoms;
(f) her sixth principle (or
spiritual soul, Buddhi) is man (g) and her seventh
principle (atma) is in a film of
spiritualized akasa that surrounds her. The three
evolutions completed: palpable
globe begins to form. The mineral kingdom fourth in the
whole series, but first in
this stage leads the way. Its deposits are at first
vaporous soft and plastic, only
becoming hard and concrete in the seventh ring. When this
ring is completed it
projects its essence to globe B -- which is already passing
through the preliminary
stages of formation and mineral evolution begins on that
globe. At this juncture the
evolution of the vegetable kingdom commences on globe A.
When the latter has
made its seventh ring its essence passes on to globe B. At
that time the mineral
essence moves to globe C and the germs of the animal
kingdom enter A. When the
animal has seven rings there, its life principle goes to
globe B, and the essences of
vegetable and mineral move on. Then comes man on A, an
ethereal foreshadowing
of the compact being he is destined to become on our earth.
Evolving seven parent
races with many offshoots of sub-races, he, like the preceding
kingdoms completes
his seven rings and is then transferred successively to
each of the globes onward to
Z. From the first man has all the seven principles included
in him in germ but none
are developed. If we compare him to a baby we will be
right; no one has ever, in the
thousands of ghost stories current, seen the ghost of an
infant, though the
imagination of a loving mother may have suggested to her
the picture of her lost
babe in dreams. And this is very suggestive. In each of the
rounds he makes one of
the principles develop fully. In the first round his
consciousness on our earth is dull
and but feeble and shadowy, something like that of an
infant. When he reaches our
earth in the second round he has become responsible in a
degree, in the third he
becomes so entirely. At every stage and every round his
development keeps pace,
with the globe on which he is. The descending arc from A to
our earth is called the.shadowy, the ascending to Z the "luminous" .
. . We men of the fourth round are
already reaching the latter half of the fifth race of our
fourth round humanity, while
the men (the few earlier comers) of the fifth round, though
only in their first race
(or rather class), are yet immeasurably higher than we are
-- spiritually if not
intellectually; since with the completion or full
development of this fifth principle
(intellectual soul) they have come nearer than we have, are
closer in contact with
their sixth principle Buddhi. Of course many are the
differentiated individuals even
in the fourth r. as germs of principles are not equally
developed in all, but such is
the rule.
. . . Man comes on globe "A" after the other
kingdoms have gone on. (Dividing our
kingdoms into seven, the last four are what exoteric
science divides into three. To
this we add the kingdom of man or the Deva kingdom. The
respective entities of
these we divide into germinal, instinctive, semi-conscious,
and fully conscious). . . .
When all kingdoms have reached globe Z they will not move
forward to re-enter A
in precedence of man, but under a law of retardation
operative from the central
point -- or earth -- to Z and which equilibrates a
principle of acceleration in the
descending arc -- they will have just finished their
respective evolution of genera
and species, when man reaches his highest development on
globe Z -- in this or any
round. The reason for it is found in the enormously greater
time required by them
to develop their infinite varieties as compared with man;
the relative speed of
development in the
rings therefore naturally increases as
we go up the scale from the
mineral. But these different rates are so adjusted by man
stopping longer in the
inter-planetary spheres of rest, for weal or woe -- that
all kingdoms finish their
work simultaneously on the planet Z. For example, on our
globe we see the
equilibrating law manifesting. From the first appearance of
man whether speechless
or not to his present one as a fourth and the coming fifth
round being the structural
intention of his organization has not radically changed.
Ethnological characteristics
however varied, affecting in no way man as a human being. The
fossil of man or his
skeleton whether of the period of that mammalian branch of
which he forms the
crown, whether cyclop or dwarf can be still recognised at a
glance as a relic of man.
Plants and animals meanwhile have become more and more
unlike what they were. .
. . The scheme with its septenary details would be
incomprehensible to man had he
not the power as the higher Adepts have proved of
prematurely de veloping his 6th
and 7th senses -- those which will be the natural endowment
of all in the
corresponding rounds. Our Lord Buddha -- a 6th r. man --
would not have
appeared in our epoch, great as were his accumulated merits
in previous rebirths
but for a mystery. . . . Individuals cannot outstrip the humanity of their
round any
further than by one remove, for it is mathematically
impossible -- you say (in effect):
if the fountain of life flows ceaselessly there should be
men of all rounds on the earth
at all times, etc. The hint about planetary rest may dispel
the misconception on this
head.
When man is perfected qua a given round on Globe A he
disappears thence (as had
certain vegetables and animals). By degrees this Globe
loses its vitality and finally
reaches the moon stage, i.e., death, and so remains while
man is making his seven.rings on Z and passing his inter-cyclic period before
starting on his next round. So
with each Globe in turn.
And now as man when completing his seventh ring upon A has
but begun his first
on Z and as A dies when he leaves it for B, etc., and as he
must also remain in the
inter-cyclic sphere after Z, as he has between every two
planets, until the impulse
again thrills the chain, clearly no one can be more than
one round ahead of his kind.
And Buddha only forms an exception by virtue of the mystery. We have
fifth round
men among us because we are in the latter half of our
septenary earth ring. In the
first half this could not have happened. The countless
myriads of our fourth round
humanity who have outrun us and completed their seven rings
on Z, have had time
to pass their inter-cyclic period begin their new round and
work on to globe D
(ours). But how can there be men of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th
and 7th rounds? We
represent the first three and the sixth can only come at
rare intervals and
prematurely like Buddhas (only under prepared conditions)
and that the last-named
the seventh are not yet evolved! We have traced man out of a
round into the
Nirvanic state between Z and A. A was left in the last
round dead. As the new round
begins it catches the new influx of life, reawakens to
vitality and begets all its
kingdoms of a superior order to the last. After this has
been repeated seven times
comes a minor pralaya; the chain of globes are not
destroyed by disintegration and
dispersion of their particles but pass in abscondito. From
this they will re-emerge in
their turn during the next septenary period. Within one
solar period (of a p. and m.)
occur seven such minor periods, in an ascending scale of
progressive development.
To recapitulate there are in the round seven planetary or
earth rings for each
kingdom and one obscuration of each planet. The minor
manwantara is composed
of seven rounds, 49 rings and 7 obscurations, the solar
period of 49 rounds, etc.
The periods with pralaya and manwantara are called by
Dikshita "Surya
manwantaras and pralayas." Thought is baffled in
speculating how many of our
solar pralayas must come before the great Cosmic night --
but that will come.
. . . In the minor pralayas there is no starting de novo -- only
resumption of arrested
activity. The vegetable and animal kingdoms which at the
end of the minor
manwantara had reached only a partial development are not
destroyed. Their life or
vital entities, call some of them nati if you will --
find also their corresponding night
and rest -- they also have a Nirvana of their own. And why
should they not, these
foetal and infant entities. They are all like ourselves
begotten of the one element. . . .
As we have our Dyan Chohans so have they in their several
kingdoms elemental
guardians and are as well taken care of in the mass as is
humanity in the mass. The
one element not only fills space and isspace, but interpenetrates
every atom of
cosmic matter.
When strikes the hour of the solar pralaya -- though the
process of man's advance
on his last seventh round is precisely the same, each
planet instead of merely passing
out of the visible into the invisible as he quits it in
turn is annihilated. With the
beginning of the seventh Round of the seventh minor
manwantara, every kingdom.having now reached its last cycle, there remains on
each planet after the exit of man
but the maya of once living and existing forms. With every
step he takes on the
descending and ascending arcs as he moves on from Globe to
Globe the planet left
behind becomes an empty chrysaloidal case. At his departure
there is an outflow
from every kingdom of its entities. Waiting to pass into higher
forms in due time
they are nevertheless liberated: for to the day of that
evolution they will rest in their
lethargic sleep in space until again energized into life in
the new solar manwantara.
The old elementals -- will rest until they are called to
become in their turn the bodies
of mineral, vegetable and animal entities (on another and a
higher string of globes)
on their way to become human entities (see Isis) while the
germinal entities of the
lowest forms, and in that time of general perfection there
will remain but few of
such -- will hang in space like drops of water suddenly
turned to icicles. They will
thaw at the first hot breath of a solar manwantara and form
the soul of the future
globes. . . . The slow development of the vegetable kingdom
provided for by the
longer inter-planetary rest of man. . . . When the solar
pralaya comes the whole
purified humanity merges into Nirvana and from that
inter-solar Nirvana will be
reborn in higher systems. The string of worlds is destroyed
and vanishes like a
shadow from the wall in the extinguishment of light. We
have every indication that
at this very moment such a solar pralaya is taking place
while there are two minor
ones ending somewhere.
At the beginning of the solar manwantara the hitherto
subjective elements of the
material world now scattered in cosmic dust -- receiving
their impulse from the new
Dyan Chohans of the new solar system (the highest of the
old ones having gone
higher) -- will form into primordial ripples of life and
separating into differentiating
centres of activity combine in a graduated scale of seven
stages of evolution. Like
every other orb of space our Earth has before obtaining its
ultimate materiality --
and nothing now in this world can give you an idea of what
this state of matter is --
to pass through a gamut of seven stages of density. I say
gamut advisedly since the
diatonic scale best affords an illustration of the
perpetual rythmic motion of the
descending and ascending cycle of Swabhavat -- graduated as
it is by tones and
semi-tones.
You have among the learned members of your society one
Theosophist who without
familiarity with our occult doctrine, has yet intuitively
grasped from scientific data
the idea of a solar pralaya and its manwantara in their beginnings.
I mean the
celebrated French astronomer Flammarion -- "La
Resurrection et la Fin des
Mondes" (Chapter 4 res.). He speaks like a true seer.
The facts are as he surmises
with slight modifications. In consequence of the secular
refrigeration (old age rather
and loss of vital power), solidification and desiccation of
the globes, the earth arrives
at a point when it begins to be a relaxed conglomerate. The
period of child-bearing
is gone by. The progeny are all nurtured, its term of life
is finished. Hence "its
constituent masses cease to obey those laws of cohesion and
aggregation which held
them together." And becoming like a cadaver which
abandoned to the work of
destruction would leave each molecule composing it free to
separate itself from the
body for ever to obey in future the sway of new influences.
The attraction of the.moon (would that he could know the full extent of its
pernicious influence) would
itself undertake the task of demolition by producing a
tidal wave of earth particles
instead of an aqueous tide.
His mistake is that he believes a long time must be devoted
to the ruin of the solar
system: we are told that it occurs in the twinkling of an
eye but not without many
preliminary warnings. Another error is the supposition that
the earth will fall into
the sun. The sun itself is first to disintegrate at the
solar pralaya.
. . . Fathom the nature and essence of the sixth principle
of the universe and man
and you will have fathomed the greatest mystery in this our
world -- and why not --
are you not surrounded by it? What are its familiar
manifestations, mesmerism, Od
force, etc. -- all different aspects of one force capable
of good and evil applications.
The degrees of an Adept's initiation mark the seven stages
at which he discovers the
secret of the sevenfold principles in nature and man and
awakens his dormant
powers...The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 16
[Mr.
Sinnett's queries to which K.H. replies in this letter are printed in
bold
type. -- ED.]
(1) The remarks appended to a letter in the last Theosophist,page
226, Col. 1, strike
me as very important and as qualifying -- I do not say
contradicting -- a good deal of
what we have hitherto been told in re Spiritualism.
We had heard already of a spiritual condition of life in
which the redeveloped Ego
enjoyed a conscious existence for a time before
reincarnation in another world; but
that branch of the subject has hitherto been slurred over.
Now some explicit
statements are made about it; and these suggest further
enquiries.
In the Deva Chan (I have lent my Theosophist
to a friend; and have not got it at
hand
to refer to but that if I remember rightly is the name given
to the state of spiritual
beatitude described) the new Ego retains complete
recollection of his life on earth
apparently. Is that so or is there any misunderstanding on
that point on my part?
(1)
The Deva-Chan, or land of "Sukhavati," is allegorically described
by our Lord
Buddha
himself. What he said may be found in the Shan-Mun-yi-Tung. Says
Tathagata: --
"Many
thousand myriads of systems of worlds beyond this (ours) there is a region of
Bliss
called Sukhavati . . . . This region is encircled with seven rows
of railings, seven
rows
of vast curtains, seven rows of waving trees; this holy abode of Arahats
is governed
by
the Tathagatas (Dhyan Chohans) and is possessed by the Bodhisatwas. It hath seven
precious
lakes, in the midst of which flow crystaline waters having 'seven and one'
properties,
or distinctive qualities (the 7 principles emanating from the ONE). This, O,
Sariputra
is the 'Deva Chan.' Its divine Udarnbara flower casts a root in the shadow
of
every earth, and
blossoms for all those who reach it. Those born in the blessed region are
truly
felicitous, there are no more griefs or sorrows in that cycle for them.
. . . Myriads of
Spirits
(Lha) resort there for rest and then return to their own regions. (1) Again, O,
Sariputra,
in that land of joy many who are born in it are Avaivartyas . . .(2)
etc., etc.
(2) Now except in the fact that the duration of existence
in the Deva Chan is limited,
there is a very close resemblance between that condition
and the Heaven of ordinary
religion (omitting anthropomorphic ideas of God).
(2)
Certainly the new Ego once that it is reborn, retains for a certain time
-- proportionate
to
its Earth-life, a "complete recollection of his life on earth." (3) (See your
preceding.query.) But it can never return on earth, from the Deva Chan,
nor has the latter -- even
omitting
all "anthropomorphic ideas of God" -- any resemblance to the paradise
or
heaven
of any religion, and it is H.P.B.'s literary fancy that suggested to her the
wonderful
comparison.
(3) Now the question of importance -- is who goes to Heaven
-- or Deva Chan? Is this
condition only attained by the few who are very good, or by
the many who are not
very bad, -- after the lapse in their case of a longer
unconscious incubation or
gestation.
(3)
"Who goes to Deva Chan?" The personal Ego of course, but beatified,
purified, holy.
Every
Ego -- the combination of the sixth and seventh principles -- which, after the
period
of unconscious gestation is reborn into the Deva-Chan, is of necessity as innocent
and
pure as a new-born babe. The fact of his being reborn at all, shows the
preponderance
of
good over evil in his old personality. And while the Karma (of evil) steps
aside for the
time
being to follow him in his future earth-reincamation, he brings along with him
but
the
Karma of his good deeds, words, and thoughts into this Deva-Chan.
"Bad" is a
relative
term for us -- as you were told more than once before, -- and the Law of
Retribution
is the only law that never errs. Hence all those who have not slipped down
into
the mire of unredeemable sin and bestiality -- go to the Deva Chan. They will
have to
pay
for their sins, voluntary and involuntary, later on. Meanwhile, they are
rewarded;
receive
the effects of the causes produced by them.
Of
course it is a state, one, so to say, of intense selfishness, during
which an Ego reaps
the
reward of his unselfishness on earth. He is completely engrossed in the
bliss of all his
personal
earthly affections, preferences and thoughts, and gathers in the fruit of his
meritorious
actions. No pain, no grief nor even the shadow of a sorrow comes to darken
the
bright horizon of his unalloyed happiness: for, it is a state of perpetual
"Maya" . . .
Since
the conscious perception of one's personality on earth is but an evanescent
dream
that
sense will be equally that of a dream in the Deva-Chan -- only a hundred fold
intensified.
So much so, indeed, that the happy Ego is unable to see through the veil, the
evils,
sorrows and woes to which those it loved on earth may be subjected to. It lives
in
that
sweet dream with its loved ones -- whether gone before, or yet remaining on
earth; it
has
them near itself, as happy, as blissful and as innocent as the disembodied
dreamer
himself;
and yet, apart from rare visions, the denizens of our gross planet feel it not.
It is
in
this, during such a condition of complete Maya that the Souls or
astral Egos of pure,
loving
sensitives, labouring under the same illusion, think their loved ones come down
to
them
on earth, while it is their own Spirits that are raised towards those in the
Deva-Chan.
Many
of the subjective spiritual communications -- most of them when the
sensitives
are pure minded -- are real; but it is most difficult for the uninitiated medium
to
fix
in his mind the true and correct pictures of what he sees and hears. Some of
the
phenomena
called psychography (though more rarely) are also real. The spirit of the
sensitive
getting odylised, so to say, by the aura of the Spirit in the Deva-Chan,
becomes
for
a few minutes that departed personality, and writes in the hand writing
of the latter, in
his
language and in his thoughts, as they were during his life time. The two
spirits
become
blended in one; and, the preponderance of one over the other during
such.phenomena determines the preponderance of personality in the
characteristics exhibited
in
such writings, and "trance speaking." What you call
"rapport" is in plain fact an
identity
of molecular vibration between the astral part of the incarnate medium and the
astral
part of the disincarnate personality. I have just noticed an article on
smell by some
English
Professor (which I will cause to be reviewed in the Theosophist and say
a few
words),
and find in it something that applies to our case. As, in music, two different
sounds
may be in accord and separately distinguishable, and this harmony or discord
depends
upon the synchronous vibrations and complementary periods; so there is rapport
between
medium and "control" when their astral molecules move in accord. And
the
question
whether the communication shall reflect more of the one personal idiosyncracy,
or
the other, is determined by the relative intensity of the two sets of
vibrations in the
compound
wave of Akasa. The less identical the vibratory impulses the more
mediumistic
and less spiritual will be the message. So then, measure your medium's
moral
state by that of the alleged "controlling" Intelligence, and your
tests of genuineness
leave
nothing to be desired.
(4) Or are there great varieties of condition within the
limits, so to speak, of Deva
Chan, so that an appropriate state is dropped into by all,
from which they will be
born into lower and higher conditions in the next world of
causes. It is no use
multiplying hypotheses. We want some information to go
upon.
(4)
Yes; there are great varieties in the Deva-Chan states, and, it is all as you
say. As
many
varieties of bliss, as on earth there are shades of perception and of
capability to
appreciate
such reward. It is an ideated paradise, in each case of the Ego's own making,
and
by him filled with the scenery, crowded with the incidents, and thronged with
the
people
he would expect to find in such a sphere of compensative bliss. And it is that
variety
which guides the temporary personal Ego into the current which will lead
him to
be
reborn in a lower or higher condition in the next world of causes. Everything
is so
harmoniously
adjusted in nature -- especially in the subjective world, that no mistake can
be
ever committed by the Tathagatas -- or Dhyan Chohans -- who guide the impulses.
(5) On the face of the idea, a purely spiritual state would
only be enjoyable to the
entities highly spiritualized in this life. But there are
myriads of very good people
(morally) who are not spiritualized at all. How can they be
fitted to pass, with their
recollections of this life from a material to a spiritual
condition of existence.
(5)
It is "a spiritual condition" only as contrasted with our own grossly
"material
condition,"
and, as already stated -- it is such degrees of spirituality that constitute
and
determine
the great "varieties" of conditions within the limits of Deva-Chan. A
mother
from
a savage tribe is not less happy than a mother from a regal palace, with her lost
child
in her arms; and although as actual Egos, children prematurely dying before the
perfection
of their septenary Entity do not find their way to Deva-Chan, yet all the same
the
mother's loving fancy finds her children there, without one missing that her
heart
yearns
for. Say -- it is but a dream, but after all what is objective life itself but
a
panorama
of vivid unrealities? The pleasures realized by a Red Indian in his "happy
hunting
grounds" in that Land of Dreams is not less intense than the ecstasy felt
by a.connoisseur who passes aeons in the wrapt delight of
listening to divine Symphonies by
imaginary
angelic choirs and orchestras. As it is no fault of the former, if born a
"savage"
with
an instinct to kill -- though it caused the death of many an innocent animal --
why, if
with
it all, he was a loving father, son, husband, why should he not also enjoy his
share of
reward?
The case would be quite different if the same cruel acts had been done by an
educated
and civilized person, from a mere love of sport. The savage in being reborn
would
simply take a low place in the scale, by reason of his imperfect moral
development;
while the Karma of the other would be tainted with moral delinquency. .
. .
Every
one but that ego which, attracted by its gross magnetism, falls into the
current that
will
draw it into the "planet of Death" -- the mental as well as physical
satellite of our
earth
-- is fitted to pass into a relative "spiritual" condition
adjusted to his previous
condition
in life and mode of thought. To my knowledge and recollection H.P.B.
explained
to Mr. Hume that man's sixth principle, as something purely spiritual could not
exist,
or have conscious being in the Deva-Chan, unless it assimilated some of
the more
abstract
and pure of the mental attributes of the fifth principle or animal Soul: its manas
(mind)
and memory. When man dies his second and third principles die with him; the
lower
triad disappears, and the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh principles form the
surviving
Quaternary. (Read again page 6 in Fragments of O.T.) (4) Thenceforth it is a
"death"
struggle between the Upper and Lower dualities. If the upper wins, the sixth,
having
attracted to itself the quintessence of Good from the fifth -- its nobler
affections,
its
saintly (though they be earthly) aspirations, and the most Spiritualised
portions of its
mind
-- follows its divine elder (the 7th) into the "Gestation"
State; and the fifth and
fourth
remain in association as an empty shell -- (the expression is quite
correct) -- to
roam
in the earth's atmosphere, with half the personal memory gone, and the more
brutal
instincts
fully alive for a certain period -- an "Elementary" in short. This is
the "angel
guide"
of the average medium. If, on the other hand, it is the Upper Duality which
is
defeated,
there, it is the fifth principle that assimilates all that there may be left of
personal recollection
and perceptions of its personal individuality in the sixth. But, with
all
this additional stock, it will not remain in Kama-Loka -- "the
world of Desire" or our
Earth's
atmosphere. In a very short time like a straw floating within the attraction of
the
vortices
and pits of the Maelstrom, it is caught up and drawn into the great whirlpool
of
human
Egos; while the sixth and seventh -- now a purely Spiritual, individual MONAD,
with
nothing left in it of the late personality, having no regular
"gestation" period to pass
through:
(since there is no purified personal Ego to be reborn), after a more or
less
prolonged
period of unconscious Rest in the boundless Space -- will find itself reborn in
another
personality on the next planet. When arrives the period of "Full
Individual
Consciousness"
-- which precedes that of Absolute Consciousness in the Pari-Nirvana --
this
lost personal life becomes as a torn out page in the great Book of
Lives, without even
a
disconnected word left to mark its absence. The purified monad will neither
perceive
nor
remember it in the series of its past rebirths -- which it would had it gone to
the
"World
of Forms" (rupa-loka) -- and its retrospective glance will not
perceive even the
slightest
sign to indicate that it had been. The light of Samma-Sambuddh --
".
. . that light which shines beyond our mortal ken.The line of all the lives in
all the worlds " --
throws
no ray upon that personal life in the series of lives foregone.
To
the credit of mankind, I must say, that such an utter obliteration of an
existence from
the
tablets of Universal Being does not occur often enough to make a great
percentage. In
fact,
like the much mentioned "congenital idiot" such a thing is a lusus
naturae -- an
exception,
not the rule.
(6) And how is a spiritual existence in which everything
has merged into the sixth
principle, compatible with that consciousness of individual
and personal material
life which must be attributed to the Ego in Deva-Chan if he
retains his earthly
consciousness as stated in the Theosophist Note.
(6)
The question is now sufficiently explained, I believe: the sixth and seventh
principles
apart
from the rest constitute the eternal imperishable, but also unconscious "Monad."
To
awaken
in it to life the latent consciousness, especially that of personal individuality,
requires
the monad plus the highest attributes of the fifth -- the "animal
Soul"; and it is
that
which makes the ethereal Ego that lives and enjoys bliss in the
Deva-Chan. Spirit, or
the
unalloyed emanations of the ONE -- the latter forming with the seventh and
sixth
principles
the highest triad -- neither of the two emanations are capable of assimilating
but
that which is good, pure and holy; hence, no sensual, material or unholy
recollection
can
follow the purified memory of the Ego to the region of Bliss. The Karma
for these
recollections
of evil deeds and thought will reach the Ego when it changes its personality
in
the following world of causes. The Monad, or the "Spiritual
Individuality," remains
untainted
in all cases. "No sorrow or Pain for those born there (in the Rupa-Loka
of
Deva-Chan);
for this is the Pure-land. All the regions in Space possess such lands
(Sakwala), but this
land of Bliss is the most pure." In the Djnana Prasthana Shaster, it
is
said:
"by personal purity and earnest meditation, we overleap the limits of the
World of
Desire,
and enter in the World of Forms."
(7) The period of gestation between Death and Deva-Chan has
hitherto been
conceived by me at all events as very long. Now it is said
to be in some cases only a
few days, in no cases (it is implied) more than a few years.
This seems plainly stated,
but I ask if it can be explicitly confirmed because it is a
point on which so much
turns.
(7)
Another fine example of the habitual disorder in which Mrs. H.P.B.'s mental
furniture
is
kept. She talks of "Bardo" and does not even say to her readers what
it means! As in
her
writing room confusion is ten times confounded, so in her mind are crowded
ideas
piled
in such a chaos that when she wants to express them the tail peeps out before
the
head.
"Bardo" has nothing to do with the duration of time in the case you
are referring to.
"Bardo"
is the period between death and rebirth -- and may last from a few years to a
kalpa.
It is divided into three sub-periods (1) when the Ego delivered of its
mortal coil
enters
into Kama-Loka (5) (the abode of Elementaries); (2) when it enters into its
"Gestation
State"; (3) when it is reborn in the Rupa-Loka of Deva-Chan.
Sub-period (1).may last from a few minutes to a number of years -- the
phrase "a few years" becoming
puzzling
and utterly worthless without a more complete explanation; Sub-period (2) is
"very
long"; as you say, longer sometimes than you may even imagine, yet
proportionate
to
the Ego's spiritual stamina; Sub-period (3) lasts in proportion to the
good KARMA,
after
which the monad is again reincarnated. TheAgama Sutra saying: --
"in all these
Rupa-Lokas, the Devas
(Spirits) are equally subjected to birth, decay, old age, and death,"
means
only that an Ego is borne thither then begins fading out and finally
"dies," i.e.,
falls
into that unconscious condition which precedes rebirth; and ends the Sloka with
these
words -- "As the devas emerge from these heavens, they enter the lower
world
again:"
i.e, they leave a world of bliss to be reborn in a world of causes.
(8) In that case, and assuming that Deva-Chan is not solely
the heritage of adepts
and persons almost as elevated, there is a condition of
existence tantamount to
Heaven actually going on, from which the life of Earth may
be watched by an
immense number of those who have gone before! (9) And for
how long? Does this
state of spiritual beatitude endure for years? for decades?
for centuries?
(8)
Most emphatically "the Deva-Chan is not solely the heritage of
adepts," and most
decidedly
there is a "heaven" -- if you must use this astro-geographical
Christian term --
for
"an immense number of those who have gone before." But "the life
of Earth" can be
watched by none of
these, for reasons of the Law of Bliss plus Maya, already given.
(9)
For years, decades, centuries and milleniums, oftentimes -- multiplied by
something
more.
It all depends upon the duration of Karma. Fill with oil Den's little cup, and
a city
Reservoir
of water, and lighting both see which burns the longer. The Ego is the
wick and
Karma
the oil: the difference in the quantity of the latter (in the cup and the
reservoir)
suggesting
to you the great difference in the duration of various Karmas. Every
effect
must
be proportionate to the cause. And, as man's terms of incarnate existence bear
but a
small
proportion to his periods of inter-natal existence in the manvantaric cycle, so
the
good
thoughts, words, and deeds of any one of these "lives" on a globe are
causative of
effects,
the working out of which requires far more time than the evolution of the
causes
occupied.
Therefore, when you read in the Jats and other fabulous stories of the
Buddhist
Scriptures
that this or the other good action was rewarded by Kalpas of several figures of
bliss,
do not smile at the absurd exaggeration, but bear in mind what I have said.
From a
small
seed, you know, sprung a tree whose life endures now for 22 centuries; I mean
the
Anuradha-pura
Bo tree. Nor must you laugh, if ever you come across Pindha-Dhana or
any
other Buddhist Sutra and read: "Between the Kama-Loka and the
Rupa-Loka there is
a
locality, the dwelling of 'Mara' (Death). This Mara filled with passion and
lust, destroys
all
virtuous principles, as a stone grinds corn. (6) His palace is 7000 yojanas square, and
is
surrounded by a seven-fold wall," for you will feel now more
prepared to understand
the
allegory. Also, when Beal, or Burnouf, or Rhys Davids in the innocence of their
Christian
and materialistic souls indulge in such translations as they generally do, we
do
not
bear them malice for their commentaries, since they cannot know any better. But
what
can the following mean: -- "The names of the Heavens" (a
mistranslation; lokas are
not
heavens but localities or abodes) of Desire, Kama-Loka -- so called,
because the
beings
who occupy them are subject to desires of eating, drinking, sleeping and
love..They are otherwise called the abodes of the five (?) orders of
sentient creatures -- Devas,
men,
asuras, beasts, demons" (Lantan Sutra, trans. by S. Beal). They
mean simply that,
had
the reverend translator been acquainted with the true doctrine a little better
-- he
would
have (1) divided the Devas into two classes -- and called them the "Rupa-devas"
and
the "Arupa-devas" (the "form" -- or
objective, and the "formless" or subjective Dhyan
Chohans; and (2) --
would have done the same for his class of "men," since there are
shells, and
"Mara-rupas" -- i.e. bodies doomed to annihilation. All these are:
(1)
"Rupa-devas" -- Dhyan Chohans (7) having forms;
(2)
"Arupa-devas"[-- Dhyan Chohans] having no forms
{[above
are] Ex-men.
(3)
"Pisachas" -- (two-principled) ghosts.
(4)
"Mara-rupa" -- Doomed to death (3 principled).
(5)
Asuras -- Elementals -- having human form
(6)
Beasts -- [Elementals] 2nd class -- animal Elementals
{[Asuras
and Beasts are] Future men.
(7)
Rakshasas (Demons) Souls or Astral Forms of sorcerers; men who have
reached the
apex
of knowledge in the forbidden art. Dead or alive they have, so to say cheated
nature;
but
it is only temporary -- until our planet goes into obscuration, after
which they have
nolens volens to be annihilated.
It
is these seven groups that form the principal divisions of the Dwellers
of the subjective
world
around us. It is in stock No. 1, that are the intelligent Rulers of this
world of
Matter,
and who, with all this intelligence are but the blindly obedient instruments of
the
ONE;
the active agents of a Passive Principle.
And
thus are misinterpreted and mistranslated nearly all our Sutras; yet even under
that
confused
jumble of doctrines and words, for one who knows even superficially the true
doctrine,
there is firm ground to stand upon. Thus, for instance in enumerating the seven
lokas
of the "Kama-Loka" the Avatamsaka Sutra, gives as the seventh,
the "Territory of
Doubt."
I will ask you to remember the name as we will have to speak of it hereafter.
Every
such "world" within the Sphere of Effects has a Tathagata, or
"Dhyan Chohan" --
to
protect and watch over, not to interfere with it. Of course, of all men,
spiritualists will
be
the first to reject and throw off our doctrines to "the limbo of exploded
superstitions."
Were
we to assure them that every one of their "Summerlands" had seven
boarding
houses
in it, with the same number of "Spirit Guides" to "boss" in
them, and call these
"angels,"
Saint Peters, Johns, and St. Ernests, they would welcome us with open arms.
But
whoever heard of Tathagats and Dhyan Chohans, Asuras and
Elementals?.Preposterous! Still, we are happily allowed -- by our friends (Mr.
Eglinton, at least) -- to
be
possessed "of a certain knowledge of Occult Sciences" (Vide "Light").
And thus, even
this
mite of "Knowledge" is at your service, and is now helping me to
answer your
following
question:
Is there any intermediate condition between the spiritual
beatitude of Deva-Chan,
and the forlorn shadow life of the only half conscious
elementary reliquiaeof human
beings who have lost their sixth principle. Because if so
that might give a locus standi
in imagination to the Earnests and Joeys of the spiritual
mediums -- the better sort
of controlling "spirits." If so surely that must
be a very populous world? from
which any amount of "spiritual" communications
might come.
Alas,
no; my friend; not that I know of. From "Sukhavati" down to the
"Territory of
Doubt"
there is a variety of Spiritual States; but I am not aware of any such
"intermediate
condition."
I have told you of the Sakwalas (though I cannot be enumerating them since it
would
be useless); and even of Avitchi -- the "Hell" from which
there is no return (7a),
and
I have no more to tell about. "The forlorn shadow" has to do the best
it can. As soon
as
it has stepped outside the Kama-Loka, and crossed the "Golden
Bridge" leading to the
"Seven
Golden Mountains" the Ego can confabulate no more, with easy-going mediums.
No
"Earnest" or "Joey" has ever returned from the Rupa Loka
-- let alone the Arupa-Loka
--
to hold sweet intercourse with mortals.
Of
course there is a "better sort" of reliquiae; and the
"shells" or the "earth-walkers" as
they
are here called, are not necessarily all bad. But even those that are
good, are made
bad
for the time being by mediums. The "shells" may well not care, since
they have
nothing
to lose, anyhow. But there is another kind of "Spirits," we have lost
sight of: the
suicides and those killed
by accident. Both kinds can communicate, and both have to pay
dearly
for such visits. And now I have again to explain what I mean. Well, this class
is
the
one that the French Spiritists call -- "les Esprits Souffrants." They
are an exception to
the
rule, as they have to remain within the earth's attraction, and in its
atmosphere -- the
Kama-Loka -- till the
very last moment of what would have been the natural duration of
their
lives. In other words, that particular wave of life-evolution must run on to
its shore.
But
it is a sin and cruelty to revive their memory and intensify their suffering by
giving
them
a chance of living an artificial life; a chance to overload their Karma,
by tempting
them
into opened doors, viz., mediums and sensitives, for they will have to pay
roundly
for
every such pleasure. I will explain. The suicides, who, foolishly hoping
to escape life,
found
themselves still alive, -- have suffering enough in store for them from that
very
life.
Their punishment is in the intensity of the latter. Having lost by the rash act
their
seventh
and sixth principles, though not for ever, as they can regain both -- instead
of
accepting
their punishment, and taking their chances of redemption, they are often made
to regret life and
tempted to regain a hold upon it by sinful means. In the Kama-Loka, the
land
of intense desires, they can gratify their earthly yearnings but through a living
proxy;
and
by so doing, at the expiration of the natural term, they generally lose their monad
for
ever.
As to the victims of accident -- these fare still worse. Unless they were so
good and
pure,
as to be drawn immediately within the Akasic Samadhi, i.e. to fall into
a state of
quiet
slumber, a sleep full of rosy dreams, during which, they have no recollection
of the.accident, but move and live among their familiar friends and scenes,
until their natural
life-term
is finished, when they find themselves born in the Deva-Chan -- a gloomy fate
is
theirs. Unhappy shades, if sinful and sensual they wander about -- (not shells,
for their
connection
with their two higher principles is not quite broken) -- until their death-hour
comes.
Cut off in the full flush of earthly passions which bind them to familiar
scenes,
they
are enticed by the opportunities which mediums afford, to gratify them
vicariously.
They
are the Pisachas, the Incubi, and Succubi of mediaeval
times. The demons of thirst,
gluttony,
lust and avarice, -- elementaries of intensified craft, wickedness and cruelty;
provoking
their victims to horrid crimes, and revelling in their commission! They not
only
ruin their victims, but these psychic vampires, borne along by the torrent of
their
hellish
impulses, at last, at the fixed close of their natural period of life -- they
are carried
out
of the earth's aura into regions where for ages they endure exquisite suffering
and end
with
entire destruction.
But
if the victim of accident or violence, be neither very good, nor very bad -- an
average
person
-- then this may happen to him. A medium who attracts him, will create for him
the
most undesirable of things: a new combination of Skandhas and a new and
evil
Karma. But let me give
you a clearer idea of what I mean by Karma in this case.
In
connection with this, let me tell you before, that since you seem so interested
with the
subject,
you can do nothing better than to study the two doctrines -- of Karma and
Nirvana
-- as profoundly as you can. Unless you are thoroughly well acquainted with the
two
tenets -- the double key to the metaphysics of Abidharma -- you will always
find
yourself
at sea in trying to comprehend the rest. We have several sorts of Karma and
Nirvana
in their various applications -- to the Universe, the world, Devas, Buddhas,
Bodhisatwas,
men and animals -- the second including its seven kingdoms. Karma and
Nirvana
are but two of the seven great MYSTERIES of Buddhist metaphysics; and but
four
of the seven are known to the best orientalists, and that very imperfectly.
If
you ask a learned Buddhist priest what is Karma? -- he will tell you that Karma
is what
a
Christian might call Providence (in a certain sense only) and a Mahomedan -- Kismet,
fate
or destiny (again in one sense). That it is that cardinal tenet which teaches
that, as
soon
as any conscious or sentient being, whether man, deva, or animal dies, a new
being
is
produced and he or it reappears in another birth, on the same or another
planet, under
conditions
of his or its own antecedent making. Or, in other words that Karma is
the
guiding
power, and Trishna (in Pali Tanha) the thirst or desire to
sentiently live -- the
proximate
force or energy, the resultant of human (or animal) action, which, out of the
old
Skandhas (8) produce the new group that form the new being and control the nature
of
the birth itself. Or to make it still clearer, the new being, is
rewarded and punished for
the
meritorious acts and misdeeds of the old one; Karma representing an
Entry Book, in
which
all the acts of man, good, bad, or indifferent, are carefully recorded to his
debit and
credit
-- by himself, so to say, or rather by these very actions of his. There, where
Christian
poetical fiction created, and sees a "Recording" Guardian Angel,
stern and
realistic
Buddhist logic, perceiving the necessity that every cause should have its effect
--
shows
its real presence. The opponents of Buddhism have laid great stress upon the
alleged
injustice that the doer should escape and an innocent victim be made to suffer,
--.since the doer and the sufferer are different beings. The fact is, that while
in one sense
they
may be so considered, yet in another they are identical. The "old
being" is the sole
parent
-- father and mother at once -- of the "new being." It is the former
who is the
creator
and fashioner, of the latter, in reality; and far more so in plain truth, than
any
father
in flesh. And once that you have well mastered the meaning of Skandhas you
will
see
what I mean.
It
is the group of Skandhas, that form and constitute the physical and mental
individuality
we
call man (or any being). This group consists (in the exoteric teaching) of five
Skandhas,
namely: Rupa -- the material properties or attributes; Vedana --
sensations;
Sanna -- abstract
ideas; Sankhara -- tendencies both physical and mental; and Vinnana --
mental
powers, an amplification of the fourth -- meaning the mental, physical and
moral
predispositions.
We add to them two more, the nature and names of which you may learn
hereafter.
Suffice for the present to let you know that they are connected with, and
productive
of Sakkayaditthi, the "heresy or delusion of individuality"
and of Attavada
"the
doctrine of Self," both of which (in the case of the fifth principle the
soul) lead to the
maya of heresy and
belief in the efficacy of vain rites and ceremonies; in prayers and
intercession.
Now,
returning to the question of identity between the old and the new "Ego."
I may
remind
you once more, that even your Science has accepted the old, very old fact
distinctly
taught by our Lord (9), viz. -- that a man of any given age, while sentiently
the
same,
is yet physically not the same as he was a few years earlier (we say seven years
and
are
prepared to maintain and prove it): buddhistically speaking, his Skandhas have
changed.
At the same time they are ever and ceaselessly at work in preparing the
abstract
mould,
the "privation" of the future new being. Well then, if it is
just that a man of 40
should
enjoy or suffer for the actions of the man of 20, so it is equally just that
the being
of
the new birth, who is essentially identical with the previous being -- since he
is its
outcome
and creation -- should feel the consequences of that begetting Self or
personality.
Your Western law which punishes the innocent son of a guilty father by
depriving
him of his parent, rights and property; your civilized Society which brands
with
infamy
the guileless daughter of an immoral, criminal mother; your Christian Church
and
Scriptures
which teach that the "Lord God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children
unto
the third and fourth generation" are not all these far more unjust and
cruel than
anything
done by Karma? Instead of punishing the innocent together with the culprit, the
Karma
avenges and rewards the former, which neither of your three western
potentates
above
mentioned ever thought of doing. But perhaps, to our physiological remark the
objectors
may reply that it is only the body that changes, there is only a molecular
transformation,
which has nothing to do with the mental evolution; and that the Skandhas
represent
not only a material but also a set of mental and moral qualities. But is there,
I
ask,
either a sensation, an abstract idea, a tendency of mind, or a mental power,
that one
could
call an absolutely non-molecular phenomenon? Can even a sensation or the most
abstractive
thoughts which is something, come out of nothing, or be nothing?
Now,
the causes producing the "new being" and determining the nature of Karma
are, as
already
said -- Trishna (or "Tanha") -- thirst, desire for
sentient existence and Upadana --.which is the realization or
consummation of Trishna or that desire. And both of these the
medium
helps to awaken and to develop nec plus ultra in an Elementary, be he a
suicide
or
a victim. (10)
The rule is, that a person who dies a natural death, will remain from "a
few
hours to several short years," within the earth's attraction, i.e., in the
Kama-Loka. But
exceptions
are, in the case of suicides and those who die a violent death in general.
Hence,
one of such Egos, for instance, who was destined to live -- say 80 or 90 years,
but
who
either killed himself or was killed by some accident, let us suppose at the age
of 20 --
would
have to pass in the Kama Loka not "a few years," but in his
case 60 or 70 years,
as
an Elementary, or rather an "earth-walker"; since he is not,
unfortunately for him, even
a
"shell." Happy, thrice happy, in comparison, are those
disembodied entities, who sleep
their
long slumber and live in dream in the bosom of Space! And woe to those whose
Trishna will attract
them to mediums, and woe to the latter, who tempt them with such an
easy
Upadana. For in grasping them, and satisfying their thirst for life, the
medium helps
to
develop in them -- is in fact the cause of -- a new set of Skandhas, a
new body, with far
worse
tendencies and passions than was the one they lost. All the future of this new
body
will
be determined thus, not only by the Karma of demerit of the previous set
or group
but
also by that of the new set of the future being. Were the mediums and
Spiritualists but
to
know, as I said, that with every new "angel guide" they welcome with
rapture, they
entice
the latter into an Upadana which will be productive of a series of
untold evils for
the
new Ego that will be born under its nefarious shadow, and that with every
seance --
especially
for materialization -- they multiply the causes for misery, causes that will
make
the
unfortunate Ego fail in his spiritual birth, or be reborn into a worse
existence than
ever
-- they would, perhaps, be less lavishing their hospitality.
And
now, you may understand why we oppose so strongly Spiritualism and mediumship.
And,
you will also see, why, to satisfy Mr. Hume, -- at least in one direction, -- I
got
myself
into a scrape with the Chohan, and mirabile dictu! -- with both
the sahibs, "the
young
men by the name of" -- Scott and Banon. To amuse you I will ask H.P.B. to
send
you
with this a page of the "Banon papyrus," an article of his that he
winds up with a
severe
literary thrashing of my humble self. Shadows of the Asuras, in what a passion
she
flew
upon reading this rather disrespectful criticism! I am sorry she does not print
it, upon
considerations
of "family honour" as the "Disinherited" expressed it. As
to the Chohan,
the
matter is more serious; and, he was far from satisfied that I should have
allowed
Eglinton
to believe it was myself. He had permitted this proof of the power in living
man
to
be given to the Spiritualists through a medium of theirs, but had left the
programme
and
its details to ourselves; hence his displeasure at some trifling consequences.
I tell
you,
my dear friend, that I am far less free to do as I like than you are in the
matter of the
Pioneer. None of us
but the highest Chutuktus are their full masters. But I digress.
And
now that you have been told much and had explained a good deal, you may as well
read
this letter to our irrepressible friend -- Mrs. Gordon. The reasons given may
throw
some
cold water on her Spiritualistic zeal, though I have my reasons to doubt it.
Anyhow
it
may show her that it is not against true Spiritualism that we set
ourselves, but only
against
indiscriminate mediumship and -- physical manifestations, -- materializations
and
trance-possessions
especially. Could the Spiritualists be only made to understand the
difference
between individuality and personality, between individual and
personal.immortality and some other truths, they would be more easily
persuaded that Occultists
may
be fully convinced of the monad's immortality, and yet deny that of the
soul -- the
vehicle
of the personal Ego; that they can firmly believe in, and themselves
practice
spiritual
communications and intercourse with the disembodied Egos of the Rupa-Loka,
and
yet laugh at the insane idea of "shaking hands" with a
"Spirit"!; that finally, that as
the
matter stands, it is the Occultists and the Theosophists who are true
Spiritualists,
while
the modern sect of that name is composed simply of materialistic phenomenalists.
And
once that we are discussing "individuality" and
"personality," it is curious that
H.P.B.
when subjecting poor Mr. Hume's brain to torture with her muddled explanations,
never
thought -- until receiving the explanation from himself, of the difference that
exists
between
individuality and personality -- that it was the very same doctrine she had
been
taught:
that of Paccika-Yana, and of Amita-Yana. The two terms as above
given by him
are
the correct and literal translation of the Pali, Sanskrit, and even of the
Chino-Tibetan
technical
names for the many personal entities blended in one Individuality --
the long
string
of lives emanating from the same Immortal MONAD. You will have to remember
them:
--
(I)
The Paccika Yana -- (in Sanskrit "Pratyeka") means literally
-- the "personal vehicle"
or
personal Ego, a combination of the five lower principles. While --
(2)
The Amita-Yana -- (in Sanskrit "Amrita") is translated:
"The immortal vehicle," or the
Individuality, the
Spiritual Soul, or the Immortal monad -- a combination of the fifth,
sixth
and seventh. (11)
It appears to me that one of our great difficulties in
trying to understand the
progress of affairs turns on our ignorance so far of the divisions of the
seven
principles. Each has in turn its seven elements we are
told: can we be told something
more concerning the seven-fold constitution of the fourth
and fifth principles
especially. It is evidently in the divisibility of these
that the secret of the future and
of many psychic phenomena here during life, resides.
Quite
right. But I must be permitted to doubt whether with the desired explanations
the
difficulty
will be removed, and you will become able to penetrate "the secret of
psychic
phenomena."
You, my good friend, whom I had once or twice the pleasure of hearing
playing
on your piano in the quiet intervals between dress-coating and a
beef-and-claret
dinner
-- tell me, could you favour me as readily, as with one of your easy waltzes
-- with
one
of Beethoven's Grand Sonatas? Pray, pray have patience! Yet, I would not refuse
you
by
any means. You will find the fourth and the fifth principles, divided into
roots and
Branches
on a fly-sheet herein enclosed, if I find time. (12) And now, how long do you
propose
to abstain from interrogation marks?
Faithfully,
K.
H..P.S. -- I hope I have now removed all cause for reproaches -- my
delay in answering your
queries
notwithstanding, -- and that my character is re-established. Yourself and Mr.
Hume
have received now more information about the A.E. Philosophy than was ever
given
out to non-initiates within my knowledge. Your sagacity, my kind friend,
will have
suggested
long ago, that it is not so much because of your combined personal virtues --
though
Mr. Hume I must confess, has run up a large claim since his conversion --
or my
personal
preferences for either of you, as for other and very apparent reasons. Of all
our
semi-chelas
you two are the most likely to utilise for the general good the facts given
you.
You must regard them received in trust for the benefit of the whole Society; to
be
turned
over, and employed and re-employed in many ways and in all ways that are good.
If
you (Mr. Sinnett) would give pleasure to your trans-Himalayan friend, do not
suffer
any
month to pass without writing a Fragment, long or short for the magazine, and
then,
issuing
it as a pamphlet -- since you so call it. You may sign them as "A
Lay-Chela of
K.H.,"
or in any way you choose. I dare not ask the same favour of Mr. Hume, who has
already
done more than his share in another direction.
I
will not answer your query about your Pioneer connection just now: something
may be
said
on both sides. But at least take no rash decision. We are at the end of the cycle,
and
you
are connected with the T.S.
Under
favour of my Karma -- I mean to answer to-morrow Mr. Hume's long and kind
personal
letter. The abundance of MSS. from me of late shows that I have found a little
leisure,
their blotched, patchy and mended appearance also proves that my leisure has
come
by snatches, with constant interruptions, and that my writing has been done in
odd
places
here and there, with such materials as I could pick up. But for the RULE that
forbids
our using one minim of power until every ordinary means has been tried and
failed,
I might, of course, have given you a lovely "precipitation" as
regards chirography
and
composition. I console myself for the miserable appearance of my letters with
the
thought
that perhaps, you may not value them the less, for these marks of my personal
subjection
to the way-side annoyances which you English so ingeniously reduce to a
minimum with your
appliances of sorts. As your lady once kindly remarked, they take
away
most effectually the flavour of miracle, and make us as human beings, more
thinkable
entities, -- a wise reflection for which I thank her.
H.P.B.
is in despair: the Chohan refused permission to M. to let her come this year
further
than
the Black Rock, and M. very coolly made her unpack her trunks. Try to console
her,
if
you can. Besides, she is really wanted more at Bombay than Penlor. Olcott is on
his
way
to Lanka and Damodar packed up to Poona for a month, his foolish austerities
and
hard
work having broken down his physical constitution. I will have to look after
him,
and
perhaps, to take him away, if it comes to the worst.
Just
now I am able to give you a bit of information, which bears upon the so often
discussed
question of our allowing phenomena. The Egyptian operations of your blessed
countrymen
involve such local consequences to the body of Occultists still remaining
there
and to what they are guarding, that two of our adepts are already there, having
joined
some Druze brethren and three more on their way. I was offered the
agreeable.privilege of becoming an eye-witness to the human butchery, but --
declined with thanks.
For
such great emergency is our Force stored up, and hence -- we dare not waste it
on
fashionable
tamasha.
In
about a week -- new religious ceremonies, new glittering bubbles to amuse the
babes
with,
and once more I will be busy night and day, morning, noon, and evening. At
times I
feel
a passing regret that the Chohans should not evolute the happy idea of allowing
us
also
a "sumptuary allowance" in the shape of a little spare time. Oh, for
the final Rest! for
that
Nirvana where -- "to be one with Life, yet -- to live not." Alas,
alas! having
personally
realized that: --
".
. . the Soul of Things is sweet,
The
Heart of Being is celestial Rest,"
one
does long for -- eternal REST!
Yours,
K.
H.
FOOTNOTES:
1.
Those who have not ended their earth rings. (return
to text)
2.
Literally -- those who will never return -- the seventh round men, etc. (return to text)
3.
See back -- (1) of your questions. (return to
text)
4.
O.T. stands for Occult Truth. -- ED. (return to
text)
5.
Tibetan: Yuh-Kai. (return to text)
6.
This Mara, as you may well think, is the allegorical image of the sphere called
the
"Planet
of Death" -- the whirlpool whither disappear the lives doomed
to destruction. It is
between
Kama and Rupa-Lokas that the struggle takes place. (return to text)
7.
The Planetary Spirits of our Earth are not of the highest, as you may well
imagine --
since,
as Subba Row says in his criticism upon Oxley's work that no Eastern Adept
would
like
to be compared with an angel or a Deva.
See May Theosophist. (return to text).7a. In Abidharma
Shastra (Metaphysics) we read: -- "Buddha taught that on the outskirts
of all the Sakwalas, there
is a black interval, without Sun or moonlight for him who falls
into
it. There is no re-birth from it. It is the cold Hell, the great
Naraka." This is Avitchi.
(return
to text)
8.
I remark that in the second as well as in the first edition of your Occult
World the same
misprint
appears, and that the word Skandha is spelt Shandba -- on page
130. As it now
stands
I am made to express myself in a very original way for a supposed Adept.
(return
to text)
9.
See the Abhidharma Kosha Vyakhya, the Sutta Pitaka, any Northern
Buddhist book, all
of
which show Gautama Buddha saying that none of these Skandhas is the soul; since
the
body
is constantly changing, and that neither man, animal, nor plant is ever the
same for
two
consecutive days or even minutes. "Mendicants! remember that there is
within man
no abiding principle whatever,
and that only the learned disciple who acquires wisdom,
in
saying 'I am' -- knows what he is saying." (return to text)
10.
Alone the Shells and the Elementals are left unhurt, though the morality
of the
sensitives
can by no means be improved by the intercourse. (return
to text)
11.
To avoid a fresh surprise and confusion at the news of the fifth keeping
company with
the
sixth and seventh, please turn to page 3, et sec. [answer to question 5]
(return to text)
12.
I did not find time. Will send it a day or two later. (return to text).The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 17
[K.H.'s
Replies to Mr. Sinnett's queries are printed in bold type. -- ED.]
Received
Simla, June, 1882
(1)
Some fifth round men have already begun to appear on earth. In what way are
they
distinguishable
from fourth round men of the seventh earthly incarnation? I suppose they
are
in the first incarnation of the fifth round that that a tremendous advance will
be
achieved
when the fifth round people get to their seventh incarnation.
(1) The natural-born Seers and clairvoyants of Mrs. A.
Kingsford's and Mr.
Maitland's types; the great adepts of whatsoever country;
the geniuses -- whether in
arts, politics or religious reform. No great physical
distinction yet: too early and will
come later on.
Quite so. If you turn to Appendix No. I (1) you will find it
explained.
(2)
But if a 1st-5th round man devoted himself to occultism and became an adept,
would
he
escape further earthly incarnations?
(2)No; if we except Buddha -- a sixth round being, as he
had run so successfully the
race in his previous incarnations as to outrun even his
predecessors. But then such a
man is to be found in a billion of human
creatures. He differed from other men as
much in his physical appearance as in spirituality and
knowledge. Yet even he
escaped further reincarnations but on this earth; and, when
the last of the sixth
round men of the third ring is gone out of this earth, the
Great Teacher will have to
get reincarnated on the next planet. Only, and since He
sacrificed Nirvanic bliss and
Rest for the salvation of his fellow creatures He will be
re -born in the highest -- the
seventh ring of the
upper planet. Till then He will overshadow
every decimillenium
(let us rather say and add "hasovershadowed
already" a chosen individual who
generally overturned the destinies of nations. See Isis, Vol. I, pp.
34 and 35 last and
first para. on the pages).
(3)
Is there any essential spiritual difference between a man and a woman, or is
sex a
mere
accident of each birth -- the ultimate future of the individual furnishing the
same
opportunities?
(3) A mere accident -- as you say. Generally a chance work
yet guided by individual
Karma, -- moral aptitudes, characteristics and deeds of a
previous birth..(4) The majority of the
superior classes of civilized countries on earth now, I understand
to
be seventh "ring" people (i.e. of the seventh earthly incarnation) of
the fourth round.
The
Australian aborigines I understand to be of a low ring? which? and are the
lower and
inferior
classes of civilized countries of various rings or of the ring just below the
seventh.
And are all seventh ring people born in the superior classes or may not some be
found
among the poor?
(4) Not necessarily. Refinement, polishedness, and
brilliant education, in your sense
of these words have very little to do with the course of
higher Nature's Law. Take a
seventh ring African or a fifth ring Mongolian and you can
educate him -- if taken
from the cradle -- save his physical appearance, and
transform him into the most
brilliant and accomplished English lord. Yet, he will still
remain, but an outwardly
intellectual parrot. (See Appendix No. 11).
(5)
The Old Lady told me that the bulk of the inhabitants of this country are in
some
respects
less advanced than Europeans though more spiritual. Are they on a lower ring of
the
same round -- or does the difference refer to some principle of national cycles
which
has
nothing to do with individual progress?
(5) Most of the peoples of India belong to the oldest or
the earliest branchlet of the
fifth human Race. I have desired M. to end his letter to
you with a short summary of
the last scientific theory of your learned Ethnographers
and Naturalists, to save
myself work. Read what he writes and then turn to No. III
of my Appendix.
What
is the explanation of "Ernest" and Eglinton's other guide? Are they
elementaries
drawing
their conscious vitality from him or elementals masquerading? When
"Ernest"
took
that sheet of "Pioneer" notepaper how did he contrive to get it
without mediumship
at
this end?
I can assure you it is not worth your while nowto study the
true natures of the
"Ernests" and "Joeys" and "other
guides" as unless you become acquainted with
the evolution of the corruptions
of elemental dross, and those of the
seven principles
in man -- you would ever find yourself at a loss to
understand -- what they really
are; there are no written statutes for them, and they can
hardly be expected to pay
their friends and admirers the compliment of truth, silence
or forbearing. If some
are related to them as some soullessphysical
mediums are -- they shall meet. If not --
better leave them alone. They gravitate but to their likes
-- the mediums; and their
relation is not made but forced by foolish and sinful
phenomena-mongers. They are
both elementaries and elementals -- at best a low,
mischievous, degrading jangle.
You want to embrace too much knowledge at once, my dear
friend; you cannot
attain at a bound all the mysteries. See however Appendix
-- which is in reality a
letter.
I do not know Subba Rao -- who is a pupil of M. At least --
he knows very little of
me. Yet I know, he will neverconsent to
come to Simla. But if ordered by Morya will
teach from Madras, i.e., correct the MSS. as M. did,
comment upon them, answer.questions, and be very, very useful. He has
a perfect reverence and adoration for --
H.P.B.
K. H.
FOOTNOTE:
1.
See Letter No. 18. -- ED. (return to text).The
Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 18
Received
Simla, June, 1882.
APPENDIX
(I)
Every Spiritual Individuality has a gigantic evolutionary journey to perform a
tremendous
gyratory progress to accomplish. First -- at the very beginning of the great
Mahamanvantaric
rotation, from first to last of the man-bearing planets, as on each of
them,
the monad has to pass through seven successive races of man. From the dumb
offshoot
of the ape (the latter strongly differentiating from the now known specimens)
up
to
the present fifth race, or rather variety, and through two more races,
before he has done
with
this earth only; and then on to the next, higher and higher still. . . . But we
will
confine
our attention but to this one. Each of the seven races send seven ramifying
branchlets
from the Parent Branch: and through each of these in turn man has to
evolute
before
he passes on to the next higher race; and that -- seven times. Well may
you open
wide
your eyes, good friend, and feel puzzled -- it is so. The branchlets typify
varying
specimens
of humanity -- physically and spiritually -- and no one of us can miss one
single
rung of the ladder. With all that there is no reincarnation as taught by
the London
Seeress
-- Mrs. A.K., as the intervals between the re-births are too
immeasurably long to
permit
of any such fantastic ideas. Please, bear in mind, that when I say
"man," I mean a
human
being of our type. There are other and innumerable manvantaric chains of globes
bearing
intelligent beings -- both in and out of our solar system -- the crowns or
apexes of
evolutionary
being in their respective chains, some -- physically and intellectually --
lower,
others immeasurably higher than the man of our chain. But beyond mentioning
them
we will not speak of these at present.
Through
every race then, man has to pass making seven successive entrances and exits
and
developing intellect to degrees from the lowest to the highest in succession.
In short,
his
earth-cycle with its rings and sub-rings is the exact counterpart of the
Great Cycle --
only
in miniature. Bear in mind again, that the intervals even between these special
"race
re-incarnations"
are enormous, as even the dullest of the African Bushmen has to reap the
reward
of his Karma, equally with his brother Bushman who may be six times more
intelligent.
Your
Ethnographers and anthropologists would do well to ever keep in their minds
this,
unvarying
septenary law which runs throughout the works of nature. From Cuvier -- the
late
grand master of Protestant Theology -- whose Bible-stuffed brain made him
divide
mankind
into but three distinct varieties of races -- down to Blumenbach who divided
them
into five -- they were all wrong. Alone Pritchard, who prophetically
suggested.seven comes near the right mark. I read in the Pioneer of June
12th forwarded to me by
H.P.B.
a letter on the Ape Theory by A.P.W. which contains a most excellent
exposition
of
the Darwinian hypothesis. The last paragraph page 6 column 1 would be regarded
--
barring
a few errors -- as a revelation in a millenium or so, were it to be
preserved.
Reading
the nine lines from line 21 (counting from the bottom) you have a fact of
which
few
naturalists are yet prepared to accept the proof. The fifth, sixth and seventh
races of
the
Fifth Round -- each succeeding race evoluting with and keeping pace, so
to say with
the
"Great Cycle" rounds -- and the fifth race of the fifth round, having
to exhibit a
perceptible
physical and intellectual as well as moral differentiation towards its fourth
"race"
or "earthly incarnation" you are right in saying that a "tremendous
advance will be
achieved
when the fifth round people get to their seventh incarnation."
(II)
Nor has wealth nor poverty, high or low birth any influence upon it, for this
is all a
result
of their Karma. Neither has -- what you call -- civilization much to do with
the
progress.
It is the inner man, the spirituality, the illumination of the physical
brain by the
light
of the spiritual or divine intelligence that is the test. The
Australian, the Esquimaux,
the
Bushmen, the Veddahs, etc., are all side-shooting branchlets of that Branch
which
you
call "cave-men" -- the third race (according to your Science
-- the second)that
evoluted
on the globe. They are the remnants of the seventh ring cave-men, remnants
"that
have ceased to grow and are the arrested forms of life doomed to eventual decay
in
the
struggle of existence" in the words of your correspondent?
See
"Isis" Chapter 1, -- " . . . . . the Divine Essence (Purusha)
like a luminous arc"
proceeds
to form a circle -- the mahamanvantaric chain; and having attained the highest
(or
its first starting point) bends back again and returns to earth (the first
globe) bringing
a
higher type of humanity in its vortex -- "thus seven times. Approaching
our earth it
grows
more and more shadowy until upon touching ground it becomes as black as night
--"
i.e.
it is matter outwardly, the Spirit or Purusha being concealed under a
quintuple
armour
of the first five principles. Now see underlined three lines on page 5 for the
word
"mankind"
read human races, and for that of "civilization" read Spiritual
evolution of that
particular race and
you have the truth which had to be concealed at that incipient
tentative
stage of the Theosophical Society.
See
again pp. 13 last paragraph and 14 first paragraph, and note the underlined
lines
about
Plato. Then see p. 32 remembering the difference between the Manvantaras as
therein
calculated and the MAHAMANVANTARAS (complete seven round between
two
Pralayas, -- the four Yugs returning seven times, once for each race.
Having done so
far
take your pen and calculate. This will make you swear -- but this will not hurt
your
Karma
much: lip-profanity finds it deaf. Read attentively in this connection (not
with the
swearing
process but with that of evolution) pp. 301 last line "and now comes a
mystery .
.
." and continue on to p. 304. "Isis" was not unveiled but
rents sufficiently large were
made
to afford flitting glances to be completed by the student's own intuition. In
this
curry
of quotations from various philosophic and esoteric truths purposely veiled,
behold
our
doctrine, which is now being partially taught to Europeans for the first
time..(III) As said in my answer on your notes, most of the peoples of India --
with the
exception
of the Semitic (?) Moguls -- belong to the oldest branchlet of the
present fifth
Human
race, which was evoluted in Central Asia more than one million of years ago.
Western
Science finding good reasons for the theory of human beings having inhabited
Europe
400,000 years before your era -- this cannot so shock you as to prevent your
drinking
wine to-night at your dinner. Yet Asia, has as well as Australia, Africa,
America
and
the most northward regions -- its remnants -- of the fourth -- even of the
third race
(cave-men
and Iberians). At the same time, we have more of the seventh ring men of the
fourth
race than Europe and more of the first ring of the fifth round, as, older than
the
European
branchlets, our men have naturally come in earlier. Their being "less
advanced"
in
civilization and refinement trouble their spirituality but very little, Karma
being an
animal
which remains indifferent to pumps and white kid gloves. Neither your knives
nor
forks,
operas and drawing-rooms will any more follow you in your onward progress than
will
the dead-leaf coloured robes of the British Esthetics prevent the proprietors
thereof
and
wearers from having been born among the ranks of those, who will be regarded --
do
what
they may -- by the forthcoming sixth and seventh round men as flesh-eating and
liquor-drinking
"savages" of the "Royal Society Period." It depends on you,
to so
immortalize
your name, as to force the future higher races to divide our age and call the
sub-division
-- the "Pleisto-Sinnettic Period" but this can never be so long as
you labour
under
the impression that "the purposes we have now in view would be met by
reasonable temperance
and self-restraint." Occult Science is a jealous mistress and
allows
not a shadow of self-indulgence; and it is "fatal" not only to
the ordinary course of
married
life but even to flesh and wine drinking. I am afraid that the
archaeologists of the
seventh
round, when digging out and unearthing the future Pompeii of Punjab -- Simla,
one
day, instead of finding the precious relics of the Theosophical
"Eclectic," will fish
out
but some petrified or vitreous remains of the "Sumptuary allowance."
Such is the
latest
prophecy current at Tzigadze.
And
now to the last question. Well, as I say, the "guides" are both
elementals and
elementaries
and not even a decent "half and half" but the very froth in the mug
of the
mediumistic
beer. The several "privations" of such sheets of notepaper were
evoluted
during
E's stay in Calcutta in Mrs. G's atmosphere -- since she frequently received
letters
from
you. It was then an easy matter for the creatures in following E's unconscious
desire
to
attract other disintegrated particles from your box, so as to form a double. He
is a
strong
medium, and were it not for an inherent good nature and other good qualities,
strongly
counteracted by vanity, sloth, selfishness, greediness for money and with other
qualities
of modern civilization a total absence of will, be would make a superb Dugpa
yet,
as I said he is "a good fellow" every inch of him; naturally truthful,
under control --
the
reverse. I would if I could save him from. . . .
NOTE.
-- The rest of the original letter is missing. It is in K.H.'s hand
writing.
-- ED..The Mahatma
Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 19
[Fragments
in K.H.'s writing. -- ED.]
Attached
to Proofs of Letter on Theosophy. Received August 12th, 1882.
Yes;
verily known and as confidently affirmed by the adepts from whom
--
"No
curtain hides the spheres Elysian,
Nor
these poor shells of half transparent dust;
For
all that blinds the spirit's vision
Is
pride and hate and lust."
(Not for publication)
Exceptional
cases, my friend. Suicides can and generally do, but not so with the
others.
The
good and pure sleep a quiet blissful sleep, full of happy visions of earth-life
and have
no
consciousness of being already for ever beyond that life. Those who were
neither good
nor
bad, will sleep a dreamless, still a quiet sleep; while the wicked will in
proportion to
their
grossness suffer the pangs of a nightmare lasting years: their thoughts become
living
things,
their wicked passions -- real substance, and they receive back on their heads
all
the
misery they have heaped upon others. Reality and fact if described would
yield a far
more
terrible Inferno than even Dante had imagined!.The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 20a
[The
original letter of A.O.H. to K.H. has some passages numbered and
underlined
with blue pencil by K.H. These are printed in bold type. The
numbers
refer to K.H.'s replies, for which see post Letter No. 20c. -- ED.]
Received
August, 1882.
10[X]
My
dear Master,
In
speaking of Fragments No. III of which you will receive proofs soon, I said it
was far
from
satisfactory though I had done my best.
It
was necessary to advance the doctrine of the Society another stage, so as
gradually to
open
the eyes of the spiritualists -- so I introduced as the most pressing matter
the Suicide
etc.
view given in your last letter to S.
Well
it is this that seems to me most unsatisfactory and it will lead to anumber
of
questions that I shall feel puzzled to reply to.
Our
first doctrine is that the majority of objective phenomena were due to shells.
1½ and
2½
principled shells, i.e. principles entirely separated from their sixth and
seventh
principles.
But
as a further (1) development we admit that there are some spirits, i.e.
5th and 4th
principles
not wholly dissevered from their sixth and seventh which also may be potent in
the
seance room. These are the spirits of suicides and the victims of accident or
violence.
Here
the doctrine is that each particular wave of life must run on to its appointed
shore
and
with the exception of the very good, that all spirits prematurely
divorced from the
lower
principles, must remain on earth, until the foredestined hour of what would
have
been
the natural death strikes.
Now
this is all very well but this being so, it is clear that in opposition to
our former
doctrine, shells will be few and spirits many (2).
For
what difference can there be to take the case of suicides, whether these be
conscious
or
unconscious, whether the man blows his brains out, or only drinks or womanizes
himself
to death, or kills himself by over-study? In each case equally the normal
natural.hour of death is anticipated and a spirit and not a shell the result --
or again what
difference
does it make whether a man is hung for murder, killed in battle, in a railway
train
or a powder explosion, or drowned or burnt to death, or knocked over by cholera
or
plague,
or jungle fever or any of the other thousand and one epidemic diseases of which
the
seeds were not ab initio, in his constitution, but were introduced therein in
consequence
of his happening to visit a particular locality or undergo a given experience,
both
of which he might have avoided? Equally in all cases the normal death hour is
anticipated
and a spirit instead of a shell the result.
In
England it is calculated that not 15% of the population reach their normal
death period
--
and what with fevers and famines and their sequeloe, I fear the
percentage is not much
larger
here even -- where the people are mostly vegetarian and as a rule live under
less
unfavourable
sanitary conditions.
So
then the great bulk of all the physical phenomena of spiritualists ought
apparently to
be
due to these spirits and not to shells. I should be glad to have further
information on
this
point.
There
is a second point (3) very often as I understand the spirits of very
fair average good
people
dying natural deaths, remain some time in the earth's atmosphere -- from
a few
days
to a few years -- why cannot such as these communicate? And if they can this is
a
most
important point that should not have been overlooked.
(4)
And thirdly it is a fact that thousands of spirits do appear in pure circles
and teach the
highest
morality and moreover tell very closely the truths as to the unseen world
(witness
Alan
Kardec's books pages on pages of which are identical with what you yourself
teach)
and
it is unreasonable to suppose that such are either shells or bad spirits. But
you have
not
given us any opening for any large number of pure high spirits -- and until the
whole
theory
is properly set forth and due place made for these which seem to me a
thoroughly
well
established fact, you will never win over the spiritualists. I dare say it is
the old story
--
only part of the truth being told to us and the rest reserved -- if so
it is merely cutting
the
Society's throat. Better to tell the outside world nothing -- than to
tell them half truths
the
incompleteness of which they detect at once, the result being a contemptuous
rejection
of what is truth and though they cannot accept it in this fragmentary
state.
Yours
affectionately,
A.
O. Hume.
The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 20b.[Letter from Mr. Sinnett to H.P.B. on the backs of the
pages of which is
part
of a long letter from K.H. (No. 20c) re queries of Hume's. The
passages
in bold type have been underlined in blue by K.H. -- ED.]
Received
August 1882.
Simla,
July 25th.
My
Dear Old Lady,
I
began to try to answer N.D.K.'s letter at once so that if K.H. really meant the
note to
appear
in this immediately "next" appearing Theosophist for August it might
just be in
time.
But I soon got into a tangle. Of course we have received no information that
distinctly
covers the question now raised, though I suppose we ought to be able to
combine
bits into an answer. The difficulty turns on giving the real explanation of
Eliphas
Levi's enigma in your note in the October Theosophist.
If
he refers to the fate of this, at present existing race of mankind his
statement that the
intermediate
majority of Egos are ejected from nature or annihilated, would be in direct
conflict
with K.H.'s teaching. ** They do not die without remembrance, if they
retain
remembrance
in Devachan and again recover remembrance (even of past personalities as
of
a book's pages) at the period of full individual consciousness preceding that
of
absolute
consciousness in Pari-Nirvana.
But
it occurred to me that E.L. may have been dealing with humanity as a whole, not
merely
with the fourth round men. Great numbers of fifth round personalities are
destined to perish I understand, and these might be his
intermediate useless portion
of mankind. But then the individual spiritual monads, as I understand
the matter, do not
perish
whatever happens, and if a monad reaches the fifth round with all his previous
personalities
preserved in the pages of his book awaiting future perusal, he would not
be
ejected
and annihilated because some of his fifthround pages were "unfit for
publication."
So
again there is a difficulty in reconciling the two statements.
X.
But again is it conceivable that a spiritual monad though surviving the
rejection of its
third
and fourth round pages, cannot survive the rejection of fifth and sixth round
pages.
That
failure to lead good lives in these rounds means the annihilation of the whole
individual
who will never then get to the seventh round at all.
But
on the other hand if that were so the Eliphas Levi case would not be met by
such a
hypothesis,
for long before then the individuals who had become co-workers with
nature for evil would have been themselves annihilated by
the obscuration of the
planet X. between the
fifth and sixth rounds -- if not by the obscuration between the
fourth
and the fifth, for to every round there is one obscuration we are told. (5)
There is
another
difficulty here because some fifth rounders being here already it is not clear
when
the
obscuration comes on. Will it be behind the avant couriers of the fifth
round, who.will not count as commencing the fifth, that epoch only really
beginning after the existing
race
has totally decayed out -- but this idea will not work.
Having
got so far in my reflections yesterday, I went up to Hume to see if he could
make
out
the puzzle and so enable me to write what was wanted for this post. But on
looking
into
it and looking back to the October Theosophist we came to the conclusion that
the
only
possible explanation was that the October Theosophist note was utterly wrong
and
totally
at variance with all our later teaching. Is that really the solution? I do not
think so
or
K.H. would not have set me to reconcile the two.
But
you will see that at present, with the best will in the world I am utterly
unable to do
the
job set me, and if my dear Guardian and Master will kindly look at these
remarks he
will
see the dilemma in which I am placed.
And
then in the way which will be the least trouble to himself either through you
or
directly
he will perhaps indicate the line which the required explanation ought to take.
Manifestly
it cannot be done for the August number, but I am inclined to believe he never
intended
this as the time is now so short.
We
all feel so sorry for you, over-worked amid the heat and the flies. When you
have got
the
August number off your hands you might perhaps be able to take flight for here,
and
get
a little rest amongst us. You know how glad at any time we should be to see
you.
Meanwhile
my own individual plans are a little uncertain. I may have to return to
Allahabad,
in order to leave Hensman free to go as special correspondent to Egypt. I am
fighting
my proprietors tooth and nail to avert this result -- but for a few days still
the
issue
of the struggle will be uncertain.
Ever
Yours,
A.
P. S.
P.S. -- As you may
want to print the letter in this number, I return it herewith, but hope
that
this may not be the case and that you will send it me back again so that
I may duly
perform
my little task with the help of a few words as to the line to be followed.
{The
articles mentioned were published in the September Theosophist.}.The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 20c
Received
August, 1882.
**Except in so far, that
he constantly uses the terms "God" and "Christ" which taken
in
their
esoteric sense simply mean "Good" -- in its dual aspect of the
abstract and the
concrete and nothing
more dogmatic, Eliphas Levi is not in any direct conflict with our
teachings.
It is again a straw blown out of a hay-stack and accused by the wind to belong
to
a hay-rick. Most of those, whom you may call, if you like, candidates
for Deva Chan --
die
and are reborn in the Kama-Loka "without remembrance"; though (and
just because)
they
do get some of it back in the Deva-Chan. Nor can we call it a full, but only a partial
remembrance.
You would hardly call "remembrance" a dream of yours; some particular
scene
or scenes, within whose narrow limits you would find enclosed a few persons --
those
whom you loved best, with an undying love, that holy feeling that alone
survives,
and
-- not the slightest recollection of any other events or scenes? Love and
Hatred are
the
only immortal feelings, the only survivors from the wreck of Ye-damma,
or the
phenomenal
world. Imagine yourself then, in Deva-Chan with those you may have loved
with
such immortal love; with the familiar, shadowy scenes connected with them for a
background
and -- a perfect blank for everything else relating to your interior, social,
political,
literary and social life. And then, in the face of that spiritual, purely
cogitative
existence,
of that unalloyed felicity which, in proportion with the intensity of the
feelings
that
created it, last from a few to several thousand years, -- call it the
"personal
remembrance
of A. P. Sinnett" -- if you can. Dreadfully monotonous! -- you may think.
--
Not
in the least -- I answer. Have you experienced monotony during -- say -- that
moment
which
you considered then and now so consider it -- as the moment of
the highest bliss
you
have ever felt? -- Of course not. -- Well no more will you experience it there,
in that
passage
through the Eternity in which a million of years is no longer than a second.
There,
where there is no consciousness of an external world there can be no
discernment
to
mark differences, hence, -- no perception of contrasts of monotony or variety;
nothing
in
short, outside that immortal feeling of love and sympathetic attraction whose
seeds are
planted
in the fifth, whose plants blossom luxuriantly in and around the fourth, but
whose
roots
have to penetrate deep into the sixth principle, if it would survive the lower
groups.
(And
now I propose to kill two birds with one stone -- to answer your and Mr. Hume's
questions
at the same time) -- remember, both, that we create ourselves our devachan
as
our
avitchi while yet on earth, and mostly during the latter days and even
moments of our
intellectual,
sentient lives. That feeling which is the strongest in us at that supreme hour;
when,
as in a dream, the events of a long life, to their minutest details, are
marshalled in
the
greatest order in a few seconds in our vision (1) -- that feeling will become the
fashioner
of our bliss or woe, the life principle of our future existence. In the
latter we
have
no substantial being, but only a present and momentary existence, -- whose
duration.has no bearing upon, as no effect, or relation to its being -- which
as every other effect of
a
transitory cause will be as fleeting, and in its turn will vanish and cease to
be. The real
full
remembrance of our lives will come but at the end of the minor cycle -- not
before. In
Kama
Loka those who retain their remembrance, will not enjoy it at the supreme hour
of
recollection.
-- Those who know they are dead in their physical body -- can only be
either
adepts
or -- sorcerers; and these two are the exceptions to the general rule.
Both having
been
"co-workers with nature," the former for good, the latter --
for bad, in her work of
creation
and in that of destruction, they are the only ones who may be called immortal
--
in
the Kabalistic and the esoteric sense of course. Complete or true immortality,
-- which
means
an unlimited sentient existence, can have no breaks and stoppages, no
arrest of
Self-consciousness.
And even the shells of those good men whose page will not be found
missing
in the great Book of Lives at the threshold of the Great Nirvana, even they
will
regain
their remembrance and an appearance of Self-consciousness, only after the sixth
and
seventh principles with the essence of the 5th (the latter having to furnish
the
material
for even that partial recollection of personality which is necessary for the
object
in
Deva Chan) -- have gone to their gestation period, not before. Even in
the case of
suicides
and those who have perished by violent death, even in their case, consciousness
requires
a certain time to establish its new centre of gravity, and evolve, as Sir W.
Hamilton
would have it -- its "perception proper" henceforth to remain distinct
from
"sensation
proper." Thus, when man dies, his "Soul" (fifth prin.) becomes
unconscious
and
loses all remembrance of things internal as well as external. Whether his stay
in
Kama
Loka has to last but a few moments, hours, days, weeks, months or years;
whether
he
died a natural or a violent death; whether it occurred in his young or old age,
and,
whether
the Ego was good, bad, or indifferent, -- his consciousness leaves him as
suddenly
as the flame leaves the wick, when blown out. When life has retired from the
last
particle in the brain matter, his perceptive faculties become extinct forever,
his
spiritual
powers of cogitation and volition -- (all those faculties in short, which are
neither
inherent in, nor acquirable by organic matter) -- for the time being. His Mayavi
rupa may be often
thrown into objectivity, as in the cases of apparitions after death; but,
unless
it is projected with the knowledge of (whether latent or potential), or, owing
to the
intensity
of the desire to see or appear to someone, shooting through the dying brain,
the
apparition
will be simply -- automatical; it will not be due to any sympathetic
attraction,
or
to any act of volition, and no more than the reflection of a person passing
unconsciously
near a mirror, is due to the desire of the latter.
Having
thus explained the position, I will sum up and ask again why it should be
maintained
that what is given by Eliphas Levi and expounded by H.P.B., is "in direct
conflict"
with my teaching? E.L. is an Occultist, and a Kabalist, and writing for those
who
are supposed to know the rudiments of the Kabalistic tenets, uses the peculiar
phraseology
of his doctrine, and H.P.B. follows suit. The only omission she was guilty of,
was
not to add the word "Western" between the two words
"Occult" and doctrine (see
third
line of Editor's note).She is a fanatic in her way, and is unable to
write with
anything
like system and calmness, or to remember that the general public needs all the
lucid
explanations that to her may seem superfluous. And, as you are sure to remark
--
"but
this is also our case; and you too seem to forget it," -- I will
give you a few more
explanations.
As remarked on the margin of the October Theosophist -- the word."immortality"
has for the initiates and occultists quite a different meaning. We call
"immortal"
but the one Life in its universal collectivity and entire or Absolute
Abstraction;
that which has neither beginning nor end, nor any break in its continuity.
Does
the term apply to anything else? Certainly it does not. Therefore the earliest
Chaldeans
had several prefixes to the word "immortality," one of which is the
Greek,
rarely-used
term -- panaeonic immortality, i.e. beginning with the manvantara and
ending
with the pralaya of our Solar Universe. It lasts the aeon, or
"period" of our pan or
"all nature."
Immortal then is he, in the panaeonic immortality whose distinct
consciousness
and perception of Self under whatever form -- undergoes no disjunction
at
any
time not for one second, during the period of his Egoship. Those periods
are several
in
number, each having its distinct name in the secret doctrines of the Chaldeans,
Greeks,
Egyptians
and Aryans, and, were they but amenable to translation, -- which they are not,
at
least so long as the idea involved remains inconceivable to the Western mind --
I could
give
them to you. Suffice for you, for the present to know, that a man, an Ego like
yours
or
mine, may be immortal from one to the other Round. Let us say I begin my
immortality
at the present fourth Round, i.e., having become a full adept (which
unhappily
I am not) I arrest the hand of Death at will, and when finally obliged to
submit
to
it, my knowledge of the secrets of nature puts me in a position to retain my
consciousness
and distinct perception of Self as an object to my own reflective
consciousness
and cognition; and thus avoiding all such dismemberments of principles,
that
as a rule take place after the physical death of average humanity, I
remain as
Koothoomi
in my Ego throughout the whole series of births and lives across the
seven
worlds
and Arupa-lokas until finally I land again on this earth among the fifth
race men
of
the full fifth Round beings. I would have been, in such a case --
"immortal" for an
inconceivable
(to you) long period, embracing many milliards of years. And yet am
"I"
truly immortal for all
that? Unless I make the same efforts as I do now, to secure for
myself
another such furlough from Nature's Law, Koothoomi will vanish and may
become
a Mr. Smith or an innocent Babu, when his leave expires. There are men who
become
such mighty beings, there are men among us who may become immortal during
the
remainder of the Rounds, and then take their appointed place among the highest
Chohans,
the Planetary conscious "Ego-Spirits." Of course the Monad
"never perishes
whatever
happens," but Eliphas speaks of the personal not of the Spiritual
Egos, and you
have
fallen into the same mistake (and very naturally too) as C.C.M.; though I must
confess
the passage in Isis was very clumsily expressed, as I had already
remarked to
you,
about this same paragraph in one of my letters long ago. I had to
"exercise my
ingenuity"
over it -- as the Yankees express it, but, succeeded in mending the hole, I
believe,
-- as I will have to many times more, I am afraid, before we have done with Isis.
It
really ought to be re-written for the sake of the family honour.
X It is certainly inconceivable,
therefore, there is no mortal use to discuss the subject.
X You misconceived the
teaching, because you were not aware of what you are now told:
(a)
who are the true co-workers with nature; and (b) that it is by no means all
the evil co-workers,
who
drop into the eighth sphere and are annihilated. (2).The potency for evil is as
great in man -- aye -- greater -- than the potentiality for good.
An
exception to the rule of nature, that exception, which in the case of adepts
and
sorcerers
becomes in its turn a rule, has again its own exceptions. Read carefully
the
passage
that C.C.M. left unquoted -- on pp. 352-353, Isis Volume I, Para. 3.
Again she
omits
to distinctly state that the case mentioned relates but to those powerful
sorcerers
whose
co-partnership with nature for evil affords to them the means of forcing her hand,
and
thus accord them also panaeonic immortality. But oh, what kind of immortality,
and
how
preferable is annihilation to their lives! Don't you see that everything you
find in Isis
is
delineated, hardly sketched -- nothing completed or fully revealed. Well the
time has
come,
but where are the workers for such a tremendous task?
Says
Mr. Hume (see affixed letter (3) marked passages -- 10 [X] and 1, 2, 3).
And now
when
you have read the objections to that most unsatisfactory doctrine -- as
Mr. Hume
calls
it -- a doctrine which you had to learn first as a whole, before proceeding to
study it
in
parts, -- at the risk of satisfying you no better, I will proceed to explain
the latter.
(1)
Although not "wholly dissevered from their sixth and seventh
principles" and quite
"potent"
in the seance room, nevertheless to the day when they would have died a natural
death,
they are separated from the higher principles by a gulf. The sixth and seventh
remain
passive and negative, whereas, in cases of accidental death the higher
and the
lower
groups mutually attract each other. In cases of good and innocent Egos,
moreover,
the
latter gravitates irresistibly toward the sixth and seventh, and thus -- either
slumbers
surrounded
by happy dreams, or, sleeps a dreamless profound sleep until the hour strikes.
With
a little reflection, and an eye to eternal justice and fitness of things, you
will see
why.
The victim whether good or bad is irresponsible for his death, even if
his death
were
due to some action in a previous life or an antecedent birth; was an act, in
short, of
the
Law of Retribution, still, it was not the direct result of an act
deliberately committed
by
the personal Ego of that life during which he happened to be killed. Had
he been
allowed
to live longer he may have atoned for his antecedent sins still more
effectually:
and
even now, the Ego having been made to pay off the debt of his maker (the
previous
Ego)
is free from the blows of retributive justice. The Dhyan Chohans who have no
hand
in
the guidance of the living human Ego, protect the helpless victim when
it is violently
thrust
out of its element into a new one, before it is matured and made fit and ready
for it.
We
tell you what we know, for we are made to learn it through personal experience.
You
know
what I mean and I CAN SAY NO MORE! Yes; the victims whether good or bad
sleep,
to awake but at the hour of the last Judgment, which is that hour of the
supreme
struggle
between the sixth and seventh, and the fifth and fourth at the threshold of the
gestation
state. And even after that, when the sixth and seventh carrying off a portion
of
the
fifth have gone into their Akasic Samadhi, even then it may happen that the
spiritual
spoil
from the fifth will prove too weak to be reborn in Deva-Chan; in which case it
will
there
and then reclothe itself in a new body, the subjective "Being"
created from the
Karma
of the victim (or no-victim, as the case may be) and enter upon a new
earth-existence
whether
upon this or any other planet. In no case then, -- with the exception of
suicides
and shells, is there any possibility for any other to be attracted to a seance
room.
And
it is clear that "this teaching is not in opposition to our
former doctrine" and that
while
"shells" will be many, -- Spirits very few..(2) There is a
great difference in our humble opinion. We, who look at it from a stand-point
which
would prove very unacceptable to Life Insurance Companies, say, that there
are
very few if any of the men who indulge in the above enumerated vices, who feel
perfectly
sure that such a course of action will lead them eventually to premature death.
Such
is the penalty of Maya. The "vices" will not escape their
punishment; but it is the
cause not the effect
that will be punished, especially an unforeseen though probable
effect.
As well call a suicide a man who meets his death in a storm at sea, as
one who
kills
himself with "over-study." Water is liable to drown a man, and too
much brain-work
to
produce a softening of the brain which may carry him away. In such a case no
one
ought
to cross the Kalapani nor even to take a bath for fear of getting faint
in it and
drowned
(for we all know of such cases;) nor should a man do his duty, least of all
sacrifice
himself for even a laudable and highly-beneficent cause, as many of us --
(H.P.B.
for one) -- do. Would Mr. Hume call her a suicide were she to drop down
dead
over
her present work? Motive is everything and man is punished in a case of direct
responsibility,
never otherwise. In the victim's case the natural hour of death was
anticipated
accidentally, while in that of the suicide, death is brought on
voluntarily and
with
a full and deliberate knowledge of its immediate consequences. Thus a man who
causes
his death in a fit of temporary insanity is not a felo de se to
the great grief and
often
trouble of the Life Insurance Companies. Nor is he left a prey to the
temptations of
the
Kama Loka but falls asleep like any other victim. A Guiteau will not
remain in the
earth's
atmosphere with his higher principles over him -- inactive and paralysed, still
there.
Guiteau is gone into a state during the period of which, he will be ever
firing at his
President, thereby
tossing into confusion and shuffling the destinies of millions of
persons;
where he will be ever tried and ever hung. Bathing in the
reflections of his deeds
and
thoughts -- especially those he indulged in on the scaffold, . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
[Two
lines in original have been deleted here. -- ED.] his fate. As for those who
were
"knoched
over by cholera, or plague, or jungle fever" they could not have succumbed
had
they
not the germs for the development of such diseases in them from birth.
"So
then, the great bulk of the physical phenomena of Spiritualists" my dear
brother, are
not "due to these
Spirits" but indeed -- to "shells."
(3)
"The Spirits of very fair average good people dying natural deaths remain
. . . in the
earth's
atmosphere from a few days to a few years," the period depending on their
readiness
to meet their -- creature not their creator; a very abstruse subject you
will learn
later
on, when you too are more prepared. But why should they
"communicate"? Do
those
you love communicate with you during their sleep objectively? Your Spirits, in
hours
of danger, or intense sympathy, vibrating on the same current of thought --
which
in
such cases, creates a kind of telegraphic spiritual wires between your two
bodies --
may
meet and mutually impress your memories; but then you are living, not dead
bodies.
But
how can an unconscious 5th principle (see supra) impress or communicate
with a
living
organism, unless it has already become a shell? If, for certain reasons
they remain
in
such a state of lethargy for several years, the spirits of the living may
ascend to them,
as
you were already told; and this may take place still easier than in Deva Chan,
where
the
Spirit is too much engrossed in his personal bliss to pay much attention
to an
intruding
element. I say -- they cannot..(4) I am sorry to contradict your
statement. I know of no "thousands of spirits" who do
appear
in circles -- and moreover positively do not know of one "perfectly pure
circle" --
and
"teach the highest morality." I hope I may not be classed with
slanderers in addition
to
other names lately bestowed upon me, but truth compels me to declare that Allan
Kardec
was not quite immaculate during his lifetime, nor has become a very pure
Spirit
since.
As to teaching the "highest morality," we have a Dugpa-Shammar not
far from
where
I am residing. Quite a remarkable man. Not very powerful as a sorcerer but
excessively
so, as a drunkard, a thief, a liar, and -- an orator. In this latter role he
could
give
points to and beat Messrs. Gladstone, Bradlaugh, and even the Rev. H. W.
Beacher --
than
whom, there is no more eloquent preacher of morality, and no greater breaker of
his
Lord's Commandments in the U.S.A. This Shapa-tung Lama, when thirsty, can make
an
enormous audience of "yellow-cap" laymen weep all their yearly supply
of tears, with
the
narrative of his repentance and suffering in the morning, and then get drunk in
the
evening
and rob the whole village by mesmerising them into a dead sleep. Preaching and
teaching
morality with an end in view proves very little. Read "J.P.T.'s"
article in Light
and
what I say will be corroborated.
(To
A.P.S. (5).) The "obscuration" comes on only when the last man of
whatever Round
has
passed into the sphere of effects. Nature is too well, too mathematically
adjusted to
cause
mistakes to happen in the exercise of her functions. The obscuration of the
planet
on
which are now evoluting the races of the fifth Round men -- will, of course
"be behind
the
few avant couriers" who are now here. But before that time comes we
will have to
part,
to meet no more, as the Editor of the Pioneer and his humble
correspondent.
And
now having shewn that the October Number of the Theosophist was
not utterly
wrong, nor was it at
"variance with the later teaching," may K.H. set you to
"reconcile the
two"?
To
reconcile you still more with Eliphas, I will send you a number of his MSS. --
that
have
never been published, in a large, clear, beautiful handwriting with my comments
all
through.
Nothing better than that can give you a key to Kabalistic puzzles.
I
have to write to Mr. Hume this week; to give him consolation, and to show, that
unless
he
has a strong desire to live, he need not trouble himself about Deva-Chan.
Unless a
man
loves well or hates as well, he will be neither in Deva-Chan nor
in Avitchi. "Nature
spews
the luke-warm out of her mouth" means only that she annihilates their personal
Egos
(not the shells, nor yet the sixth principle) in the Kama Loka and the
Deva-Chan.
This
does not prevent them from being immediately reborn -- and, if their lives were
not
very
very bad, -- there is no reason why the eternal Monad should not find
the page of
that
life intact in the Book of Life.
K.
H.
FOOTNOTES:.1.
That vision takes place when a person is already proclaimed dead. The brain is
the last
organ
that dies. (return to text)
2.
Annihilated suddenly as human Egos and personalities, lasting
in that world of pure
matter
under various material forms an inconceivable length of time before they can
return
to primeval matter. (return to text)
3.
See ante Letter No. 20a. -- ED. (return to text).The
Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 22
[Transcribed
from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting. -- ED.]
Extract
from Letter by K.H. to Hume. Received for my perusal towards
the
end of season 1882. (A.P.S.)
Did
it ever strike you, -- and now from the standpoint of your Western science and
the
suggestion
of your own Ego which has already seized up the essentials of every truth,
prepare
to deride the erroneous idea -- did you ever suspect that Universal, like
finite,
human
mind might have two attributes, or a dual power -- one the voluntary and
conscious,
and the other the involuntary and unconscious or the mechanical power. To
reconcile
the difficulty of many theistic and anti-theistic propositions, both these
powers
are
a philosophical necessity. The possibility of the first or the voluntary and
conscious
attribute
in reference to the infinite mind, notwithstanding the assertions of all the
Egos
throughout
the living world -- will remain for ever a mere hypothesis, whereas in the
finite
mind it is a scientific and demonstrated fact. The highest Planetary Spirit is
as
ignorant
of the first as we are, and the hypothesis will remain one even in Nirvana, as
it is
a
mere inferential possibility, whether there or here.
Take
the human mind in connexion with the body. Man has two distinct physical
brains;
the
cerebrum with its two hemispheres at the frontal part of the head -- the source
of the
voluntary
nerves; and the cerebellum, situated at the back portion of the skull -- the
fountain
of the involuntary nerves which are the agents of the unconscious or mechanical
powers
of the mind to act through. And weak and uncertain as may be the control of man
over
his involuntary, such as the blood circulation, the throbbings of the heart and
respiration,
especially during sleep -- yet how far more powerful, how much more
potential
appears man as master and ruler over the blind molecular motion -- the laws
which
govern his body (a proof of this being afforded by the phenomenal powers of the
Adept
and even the common Yogi) than that which you will call God, shows over
the
immutable
laws of Nature. Contrary in that to the finite, the "infinite mind,"
which we
name
so but for argument's sake, for we call it the infinite FORCE -- exhibits but
the
functions
of its cerebellum, the existence of its supposed cerebrum being admitted as
above
stated, but on the inferential hypothesis deduced from the Kabalistic theory
(correct
in every other relation) of the Macrocosm being the prototype of the Microcosm.
So
far as we know the corroboration of it by modern science receiving but
little
consideration
-- so far as the highest Planetary Spirits have ascertained (who remember
well
have the same relations with the trans-cosmical world, penetrating behind the
primitive
veil of cosmic matter as we have to go behind the veil of this, our gross
physical
world --) the infinite mind displays to them as to us no more than the
regular.unconscious throbbings of the eternal and universal pulse of Nature,
throughout the
myriads
of worlds within as without the primitive veil of our solar system.
So
far -- WE KNOW. Within and to the utmost limit, to the very edge of the
cosmic veil
we
know the fact to be correct -- owing to personal experience; for the
information
gathered
as to what takes place beyond -- we are indebted to the Planetary Spirits, to
our
blessed
Lord Buddha. This of course may be regarded as second-hand information. There
are
those who rather than to yield to the evidence of fact will prefer regarding
even the
planetary
gods as "erring" disembodied philosophers if not actually liars. Be
it so.
Everyone
is master of his own wisdom -- says a Tibetan proverb and he is at liberty
either
to
honour or degrade his slave --. However I will go on for the benefit of those
who may
yet
seize my explanation of the problem and understand the nature of the solution.
It
is the peculiar faculty of the involuntary power of the infinite mind -- which
no one
could
ever think of calling God, -- to be eternally evolving subjective matter into
objective
atoms (you will please remember that these two adjectives are used but in a
relative
sense) or cosmic matter to be later on developed into form. And it is likewise
that
same
involuntary mechanical power that we see so intensely active in all the fixed
laws
of
nature -- which governs and controls what is called the Universe or the Cosmos.
There
are
some modern philosophers who would prove the existence of a Creator from
motion.
We
say and affirm that that motion -- the universal perpetual motion which never
ceases
never
slackens nor increases its speed not even during the interludes between the
pralayas,
or "nights of Brahma" but goes on like a mill set in motion, whether
it has
anything
to grind or not (for the pralaya means the temporary loss of every form, but by
no
means the destruction of cosmic matter which is eternal) -- we say this
perpetual
motion
is the only eternal and uncreated Deity we are able to recognise. To regard God
as
an
intelligent spirit, and accept at the same time his absolute immateriality is
to conceive
of
a nonentity, a blank void; to regard God as a Being, an Ego and to place his
intelligence
under a bushel for some mysterious reasons -- is a most consummate
nonsense;
to endow him with intelligence in the face of blind brutal Evil is to make of
him
a fiend -- a most rascally God. A Being however gigantic, occupying space and
having
length breadth and thickness is most certainly the Mosaic deity;
"No-being" and a
mere
principle lands you directly in the Buddhistic atheism, or the Vedantic
primitive
Acosmism. What lies
beyond and outside the worlds of form, and being, in worlds and
spheres
in their most spiritualized state -- (and you will perhaps oblige us by telling
us
where
that beyond can be, since the Universe is infinite and limitless) is useless
for
anyone
to search after since even Planetary Spirits have no knowledge or perception of
it.
If
our greatest adepts and Bodhisatvas have never penetrated themselves beyond our
solar
system,
-- and the idea seems to suit your preconceived theistic theory wonderfully, my
respected
Brother -- they still know of the existence of other such solar systems, with
as
mathematical
a certainty as any western astronomer knows of the existence of invisible
stars
which he can never approach or explore. But of that which lies within the
worlds
and
systems, not in the trans-infinitude -- (a queer expression to use) -- but in
the cis-infinitude
rather,
in the state of the purest and inconceivable immateriality, no one ever
knew
or will ever tell, hence it is something non-existent for the universe. You are
at.liberty to place in this eternal vacuum the intellectual or voluntary powers
of your deity --
if
you can conceive of such a thing.
Meanwhile
we may say that it is motion that governs the laws of nature; and that it
governs
them as the mechanical impulse given to running water which will propel them
either
in a direct line or along hundreds of side furrows they may happen to meet on
their
way
and whether those furrows are natural grooves or channels prepared artificially
by
the
hand of man. And we maintain that wherever there is life and being, and in
however
much
spiritualized a form, there is no room for moral government, much less for a
moral
Governor
-- a Being which at the same time has no form nor occupies space! Verily if
light
shineth in darkness, and darkness comprehends it not, it is because such is the
natural
law, but how more suggestive and pregnant with meaning for one who knows,
to
say
that light can still less comprehend darkness, nor ever know it since it kills
wherever
it
penetrates and annihilates it instantly. Pure yet a volitional Spirit is an
absurdity for
volitional
mind. The result of organism cannot exist independently of an organized brain,
and
an organized brain made out of nihil is a still greater fallacy. If you ask me
"Whence
then
the immutable laws? -- laws cannot make themselves" -- then in my turn I
will ask
you
-- and whence their supposed Creator? -- a creator cannot create or make
himself. If
the
brain did not make itself, for this would be affirming that brain acted before
it existed,
how
could intelligence, the result of an organized brain, act before its creator
was made.
All
this reminds one of wrangling for seniorship. If our doctrines clash too much
with
your
theories then we can easily give up the subject and talk of something else.
Study the
laws
and doctrines of the Nepaulese Swabhavikas, the principal Buddhist
philosophical
school
in India, and you will find them the most learned as the most scientifically
logical
wranglers
in the world. Their plastic, invisible, eternal, omnipresent and unconscious
Swabhavat
is Force or Motion ever generating its electricity which is life.
Yes:
there is a force as limitless as thought, as potent as boundless will, as
subtile as the
essence
of life so inconceivably awful in its rending force as to convulse the universe
to
its
centre would it but be used as a lever, but this Force is not God, since
there are men
who
have learned the secret of subjecting it to their will when necessary. Look around
you
and see the myriad manifestations of life, so infinitely multiform; of life, of
motion,
of
change. What caused these? From what inexhaustible source came they, by what
agency?
Out of the invisible and subjective they have entered our little area of the
visible
and
objective. Children of Akasa, concrete evolutions from the ether, it was force
which
brought
them into perceptibility and Force will in time remove them from the sight of
man.
Why should this plant in your garden to the right, have been produced with such
a
shape
and that other one to the left with one totally dissimilar? Are these not the
result of
varying
action of Force -- unlike correlations? Given a perfect monotony of activities
throughout
the world, and we would have a complete identity of forms, colours, shapes
and
properties throughout all the kingdoms of nature. It is the motion with
its resulting
conflict,
neutralization, equilibration, correlation, to which is due the infinite
variety
which
prevails. You speak of an intelligent and good -- (the attribute is rather
unfortunately
chosen) -- Father, a moral guide and governor of the universe and man. A
certain
condition of things exists around us which we call normal. Under this nothing
can.occur which transcends our every-day experience "God's immutable
laws." But suppose
we
change this condition and have the best of him without whom even a hair of your
head
will not fall, as they tell you in the West. A current of air brings to me from
the lake
near
which, with my fingers half frozen I now write to you this letter -- I change
by a
certain
combination of electrical magnetic odyllic or other influences the current of
air
which
benumbs my fingers into a warmer breeze; I have thwarted the intention of the
Almighty,
and dethroned him at my will! I can do that, or when I do not want Nature to
produce
strange and too visible phenomena, I force my nature-seeing, nature-influencing
self
within me, to suddenly awake to new perceptions and feelings and thus am my own
Creator
and ruler.
But
do you think that you are right when saying that "the laws arise."
Immutable laws
cannot
arise, since they are eternal and uncreated, propelled in the Eternity and that
God
himself
if such a thing existed, could never have the power of stopping them. And when
did
I say that these laws were fortuitous per se. I meant their blind
correlations, never the
laws,
or rather the law -- since we recognise but one law in the Universe, the law of
harmony,
of perfect EQUILIBRIUM. Then for a man endowed with so subtle a logic,
and
such
a fine comprehension of the value of ideas in general and that of words
especially --
for
a man so accurate as you generally are to make tirades upon an "all wise,
powerful
and
love-ful God" seems to say at least strange. I do not protest at all as
you seem to
think
against your theism, or a belief in an abstract ideal of some kind, but I
cannot help
asking
you, how do you or how can you know that your God is all wise, omnipotent and
love-ful,
when everything in nature, physical and moral, proves such a being, if he does
exist
to be quite the reverse of all you say of him? Strange delusion and one which
seems
to
overpower your very intellect.
The
difficulty of explaining the fact that "unintelligent Forces can give rise
to highly
intelligent
beings like ourselves," is covered by the eternal progression of cycles,
and the
process
of evolution ever perfecting its work as it goes along. Not believing in
cycles, it
is
unnecessary for you to learn that which will create but a new pretext for you,
my dear
Brother,
to combat the theory and argue upon it ad infinitum. Nor did I ever
become
guilty
of the heresy I am accused of -- in reference to spirit and matter. The
conception of
matter
and spirit as entirely distinct, and both eternal could certainly never have
entered
my
head, however little I may know of them, for it is one of the elementary and
fundamental
doctrines of Occultism that the two are one, and are distinct but in their
respective
manifestations, and only in the limited perceptions of the world of senses. Far
from
"lacking philosophical breadth" then, our doctrines show, but one
principle in
nature,
-- spirit-matter or matter-spirit, the third the ultimate Absolute or the
quintessence
of
the two, -- if I may be allowed to use an erroneous term in the present
application --
losing
itself beyond the view and spiritual perceptions of even the "Gods"
or Planetary
Spirits.
This third principle say the Vedantic Philosophers -- is the only reality,
everything
else being Maya, as none of the Protean manifestations of spirit-matter or
Purusha
and Prakriti have ever been regarded in any other light than that of temporary
delusions
of the senses. Even in the hardly outlined philosophy of Isis this idea
is clearly
carried
out. In the book of Kiu-te, Spirit is called the ultimate sublimation of
matter, and
matter
the crystallization of spirit. And no better illustration could be afforded
than in the.very simple phenomenon of ice, water, vapour and the final
dispersion of the latter, the
phenomenon
being reversed in its consecutive manifestations and called the Spirit failing
into
generation or matter. This trinity resolving itself into unity, -- a doctrine
as old as the
world
of thought -- was seized upon by some early Christians, who had it in the
schools
of
Alexandria, and made up into the Father, or generative spirit; the Son or
matter, --
man;
and into the Holy Ghost, the immaterial essence, or the apex of the equilateral
triangle,
an idea found to this day in the pyramids of Egypt. Thus once more it is proved
that
you misunderstand my meaning entirely, whenever for the sake of brevity I use a
phraseology
habitual with the Western people. But in my turn I have to remark that your
idea
that matter is but the temporary allotropic form of spirit differing from it as
charcoal
does
from diamond is as unphilosophical as it is unscientific from both the Eastern
and
the
Western points of view, charcoal being but a form of residue of matter, while
matter
per se is
indestructible, and as I maintain coeval with spirit -- that spirit which we
know
and
can conceive of. Bereaved of Prakriti, Purusha (Spirit) is unable to manifest
itself,
hence
ceases to exist -- becomes nihil. Without spirit or Force, even that
which Science
styles
as "not living" matter, the so-called mineral ingredients which feed
plants, could
never
have been called into form. There is a moment in the existence of every
molecule
and
atom of matter when, for one cause or another, the last spark of spirit or
motion or
life
(call it by whatever name) is withdrawn, and in the same instant with the
swiftness
which
surpasses that of the lightning glance of thought the atom or molecule or an
aggregation
of molecules is annihilated to return to its pristine purity of intra-cosmic
matter.
It is drawn to the mother fount with the velocity of a globule of quicksilver
to the
central
mass. Matter, force, and motion are the trinity of physical objective nature,
as the
trinitarian
unity of spirit-matter is that of the spiritual or subjective nature. Motion is
eternal
because spirit is eternal. But no modes of motion can ever be conceived unless
they
be in connection with matter.
And
now to your extraordinary hypothesis that Evil with its attendant train of sin
and
suffering
is not the result of matter, but may be perchance the wise scheme of the moral
Governor
of the Universe. Conceivable as the idea may seem to you trained in the
pernicious
fallacy of the Christian, -- "the ways of the Lord are inscrutable"
-- it is utterly
inconceivable
for me. Must I repeat again that the best Adepts have searched the
Universe
during milleniums and found nowhere the slightest trace of such a
Machiavellian
schemer -- but throughout, the same immutable, inexorable law. You must
excuse
me therefore if I positively decline to lose my time over such childish
speculations.
It is not "the ways of the Lord" but rather those of some extremely
intelligent
men in everything but some particular hobby, that are to me incomprehensible.
As
you say this need "make no difference between us" -- personally. But
it does make a
world
of difference if you propose to learn and offer me to teach. For the life of me
I
cannot
make out how I could ever impart to you that which I know since the very A.B.C.
of
what I know, the rock upon which the secrets of the occult universe, whether on
this or
that
side of the veil, are encrusted, is contradicted by you invariably and a
priori. My
very
dear Brother, either we know something or we do not know anything. In the first
case
what is the use of your learning, since you think you know better? In the
second case
why
should you lose your time? You say it matters nothing whether these laws are
the.expression of the will of an intelligent conscious God, as you think, or
constitute the
inevitable
attributes of an unintelligent, unconscious "God," as I hold. I say,
it matters
everything,
and since you earnestly believe that these fundamental questions (of spirit
and
matter -- of God or no God) "are admittedly beyond both of us" -- in
other words that
neither
I nor yet our greatest adepts can know no more than you do, then what is there
on
earth
that I could teach you? You know that in order to enable you to read you have
first
to
learn your letters -- yet you want to know the course of events before and
after the
Pralayas,
of every event here on this globe on the opening of a new cycle, namely a
mystery
imparted at one of the last initiations, as Mr. Sinnett was told, -- for my
letter to
him
upon the Planetary Spirits was simply incidental -- brought out by a question
of his.
And
now you will say I am evading the direct issue. I have discoursed upon
collateral
points,
but have not explained to you all you want to know and asked me to tell you. I
"dodge"
as I always do. Pardon me for contradicting you, but it is nothing of the kind.
There
are a thousand questions I will never be permitted to answer, and it would be
dodging
were I to answer you otherwise than I do. I tell you plainly you are unfit to
learn,
for
your mind is too full and there is not a corner vacant from whence a previous
occupant
would not arise, to struggle with and drive away the newcomer. Therefore I do
not
evade, I only give you time to reflect and deduce and first learn well what was
already
given you before you seize on something else. The world of force, is the world
of
Occultism
and the only one whither the highest initiate goes to probe the secrets of
being.
Hence
no-one but such an initiate can know anything of these secrets. Guided by his
Guru
the chela first discovers this world, then its laws, then their centrifugal
evolutions
into
the world of matter. To become a perfect adept takes him long years, but at
last he
becomes
the master. The hidden things have become patent, and mystery and miracle
have
fled from his sight forever. He sees how to guide force in this direction or
that -- to
produce
desirable effects. The secret chemical, electric or odic properties of plants,
herbs,
roots,
minerals, animal tissue, are as familiar to him as the feathers of your birds
are to
you.
No change in the etheric vibrations can escape him. He applies his knowledge,
and
behold
a miracle! And he who started with the repudiation of the very idea that
miracle is
possible,
is straightway classed as a miracle worker and either worshipped by the fools
as
a
demi-god or repudiated by still greater fools as a charlatan! And to show you
how exact
a
science is occultism let me tell you that the means we avail ourselves of are
all laid
down
for us in a code as old as humanity to the minutest detail, but everyone of us
has to
begin
from the beginning, not from the end. Our laws are as immutable as those of
Nature,
and they were known to man and eternity before this strutting game cock, modern
science,
was hatched. If I have not given you the modus operandi or begun by the
wrong
end,
I have at least shown you that we build our philosophy upon experiment and
deduction
-- unless you choose to question and dispute this fact equally with all others.
Learn
first our laws and educate your perceptions, dear Brother. Control your
involuntary
powers
and develop in the right direction your will and you will become a teacher
instead
of
a learner. I would not refuse what I have a right to teach. Only I had to study
for fifteen
years
before I came to the doctrines of cycles and had to learn simpler things at
first.
But
do what we may, and whatever happens I trust we will have no more arguing which
is
as profitless as it is painful..The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 23a
[K.H.'s
Comments etc. appear in bold type. -- ED.]
Received
at Simla: Oct. 1882.
Herewith
-- apologizing for their number, I send a few notes of interrogation. Perhaps
you
will be so kind as to take them up from time to time and answer them by ones
and
twos
as leisure and time allow.
Memo -- At convenience
to send A.P.S. those unpublished notes of Eliphas Levi's with
annotations
by K.H.
Sent long ago to our "Jacko" friend.
I
(1)
There is a very interesting allusion in your last, when speaking of Hume you
speak of
certain
characteristics he brought back with him from his last incarnation.
(2)
Have you the power of looking back to the former lives of persons now living,
and
identifying
them?
(3)
In that case would it be improper personal curiosity -- to ask for any
particulars of my
own?
I
(1) All of us, we bring some characteristics from our
previous incarnations. It is
unavoidable.
(2) Unfortunately, some of us have. I, for one do not like
to exercise it.
(3) "Man know thyself," saith the Delphian
oracle. There is nothing "improper" --
certainly in such a curiosity. Only would it not be still
more proper to study our own
present personality before attempting to learn anything of
its creator, -- predecessor,
and fashioner, -- the man that was?Well, some
day I may treat you to a little story --
no time now -- only I promise no details; a simple sketch,
and a hint or two to test
your intuitional powers..II
[For
K.H.'s replies to these queries see post Letter 23b. -- ED.]
(1)
Is there any way of accounting for what seems the curious rush of human progress
within
the last two thousand years, as compared with the relatively stagnant condition
of
the
fourth round people up to the beginning of modern progress?
(2)
Or has there been at any former period during the habitation of the earth by
fourth
round
men, civilizations as great as our own in regard to intellectual development
that
have
utterly passed away?
(3)
Even the fifth race (own) of the fourth round began in Asia a million years
ago. What
was
it about for the 998,000 years preceding the last 2,000? During that period
have
greater
civilizations than our own risen and decayed?
(4)
To what epoch did the existence of the Continent of Atlantis belong, and did
the
cataclysmical
change which produced its extinction come into any appointed place in the
evolution
of the round, -- corresponding to the place occupied in the whole manvantaric
evolution
by obscurations?
(5)
I find that the most common question asked about occult philosophy by fairly
intelligent
people who begin to enquire about it is "Does it give any explanation of
the
origin
of evil?" That is a point on which you have formerly promised to touch,
and which
it
might be worth while to take up before long.
(6)
Closely allied to this question would be another often put. "What is the
good of the
whole
cyclic process if spirit only emerges at the end of all things pure and
impersonal as
it
was at first before its descent into matter?" (And the portions taken
away from the
fifth?) My answer is
that I am not at present engaged in excusing, but in investigating the
operations
of Nature. But perhaps there may be a better answer available.
(7)
Can you, i.e., is it permitted ever to answer any questions relating to
matters of
physical
science? If so -- here are some points, that I should greatly like dealt with.
(8)
Have magnetic conditions anything to do with the precipitation of rain, or is
that due
entirely
to atmospheric currents at different temperatures encountering other currents
of
different
humidities, the whole set of motions being established by pressures,
expansions,
etc.,
due in the first instance to solar energy? If magnetic conditions are engaged,
how do
they
operate and how could they be tested?
(9)
Is the sun's corona, an atmosphere? of any known gases? and why does it assume
the
rayed
shape always observed in eclipses?.(10) Is the photometric value of light
emitted by stars a safe guide to their magnitude, (1)
and
is it true as astronomy assumes faute de mieux in the way of a theory, that
per square
mile
the sun's surface emits as much light as can be emitted from any body?
(11)
Is Jupiter a hot and still partially luminous body and to what cause, as solar
energy
has
probably nothing to do with the matter, are the violent disturbances of
Jupiter's
atmosphere
due?
(12)
Is there any truth in the new Siemens theory of solar combustion, -- i.e., that
the sun
in
its passage through space gathers in at the poles combustible gas (which is
diffused
through
all space in a highly attenuated condition), and throws it off again at the
equator
after
the intense heat of that region has again dispersed the elements which
combustion
temporarily
united?
(13)
Could any clue be given to the causes of magnetic variations, -- the daily
changes at
given
places, and the apparently capricious curvature of the isogonic lines which
show
equal
declinations? For example -- why is there a region in Eastern Asia where the
needle
shows
no variation from the true north, though variations are recorded all round that
space?
(Have your Lordships anything to do with this peculiar condition of things?)
(14)
Could any other planets besides those known to modern astronomy (I do not mean
mere
planetoids) be discovered by physical instruments if properly directed?
(15)
When you wrote "Have you experienced monotony during that moment which you
considered
then and now so consider it, -- as the moment of the highest bliss you have
ever
felt?"
Did
you refer to any specific moment and any specific event in my life, or were you
merely
referring to an X quantity -- the happiest moment whatever it might have been?
(16)
You say: -- "Remember we create ourselves, our Deva Chan, and our Avitchi
and
mostly
during the latter days and even moments of our sentient lives."
(17)
But do the thoughts on which the mind may be engaged at the last moment
necessarily hinge on
to the predominant character of its past life? Otherwise it would
seem
as if the character of a person's Deva Chan or Avitchi might be capriciously
and
unjustly
determined by the chance which brought some special thought uppermost at last?
(18)
"The full remembrance of our lives will come but at the end of the "minor
cycle."
Does
"minor cycle" here mean one round, or the whole Manvantara of our
planetary
chain?
That
is, do we remember our past lives in the Deva Chan of world Z at the end of
each
round,
or only at the end of the seventh round?.(I9) You say "And even the shells
of those good men whose pages will not be found
missing
in the great book of lives: -- even they will regain their remembrance and an
appearance
of self consciousness only after the sixth and seventh principles with the
essence
of the fifth have gone to their gestation period."
(20)
A little later on: -- "Whether the personal Ego was good, bad or
indifferent, his
consciousness
leaves him as suddenly as the flame leaves the wick -- his perceptive
faculties become
extinct for ever." (Well? can a physical brain once dead retain
its
perceptive faculties: that which will perceive in the shell
is something that perceives
with a borrowed or reflected light. See notes.)
Then
what is the nature of the remembrance and self-consciousness of the shell? This
touches
on a matter I have often thought about -- wishing for further explanation --
the
extent
of personal identity in elementaries.
(21)
The spiritual Ego goes circling through the worlds, retaining what it possesses
of
identity
and self-consciousness, always neither more nor less (a) But it is
continually
evolving
personalities, in which at all events the sense of identity while it remains
united
with
them is very complete. (b) Now these personalities I understand to be
absolutely
new
evolutions in each case. A. P. Sinnett is, for what it is worth, -- absolutely
a new
invention.
Now it will leave a shell behind which will survive for a time (c) assuming
that
the
spiritual monad temporarily engaged in this incarnation will find enough decent
material
in the fifth to lay hold of. (d) That shell will have no consciousness
directly after
death,
because "it requires a certain time to establish its new centre of gravity
and evolve
its
perception proper." (e) But how much consciousness will it have
when it has done
this?
(f) Will it still be A. P. Sinnett of which the spiritual Ego,
will think, even at the last,
as
of a person it had known -- or will it be conscious that the individuality is
gone? Will it
be
able to reason about itself at all, and to remember anything of its once higher
interests.
Will
it remember the name it bore? (g) or is it only inflated with
recollections of this sort
in
mediumistic presence, remaining asleep at other times? (h) And is it
conscious of
losing
anything that feels like life as it gradually disintegrates?
(22)
What is the nature of the life that goes on in the "Planet of Death?"
Is it a physical
reincarnation
with remembrance of past personality, or an astral existence as in Kama
Loka?
Is it an existence with birth, maturity and decay, or a uniform prolongation of
the
old
personality of this earth under penal conditions?
(23)
What other planets of those known to ordinary science, besides Mercury, belong
to
our
system of worlds?
Are
the more spiritual planets -- (A, B & Y, Z) -- visible bodies in the sky or
are all those
known
to astronomy of the more material sort?
(24)
Is the Sun (a) as Allan Kardec says: -- a habitation of highly
spiritualized beings? (b)
Is
it the vertex of our Manvantaric chain? and of all the other chains in this
solar system
also?.(25)
You say: -- it may happen -- "that the spiritual spoil from the fifth will
prove too
weak
to be reborn in Deva Chan, in which case it's sixth will then and there
reclothe itself
in
a new body -- and enter upon a new earth existence, whether upon this or any
other
planet."
(26)
This seems to want further elucidation. Are these exceptional cases in which
two
earth
lives of the same spiritual monad may occur closer together than the thousand
years
indicated
by some previous letters as the almost inevitable limit of such successive lives?
(27)
The reference to the case of Guiteau is puzzling. I can understand his being in
a state
in
which the crime he committed is ever present to his imagination, but how does
he "toss
into
confusion and shuffle the destinies of millions of persons?"
(28)
Obscurations are a subject at present wrapped in obscurity.
They
take place after the last man of any given round has passed on to the next
planet.
But
I want to make out how the next superior round forms are evolved. When the
fifth
round
spiritual monads arrive what fleshly habitations are ready for them? Going back
to
the
only former letter in which you have dealt with obscurations I find: -- (a) "We
have
traced
man out of a round into the Nirvanic state between Z and A. "A" was
left in the
last
round dead. (See note.) As the new round begins it catches the new influx of
life,
reawakens
to vitality, and begets all its kingdoms of a superior order to the last."
(29)
But has it to begin at the beginning again between each
round,
and evolve human forms from animal, these last from vegetable, etc. If so to
what
round
do the first imperfectly evolved men belong? Ex hypothesi to the fifth; but the
fifth
should
be a more perfect race in all respects.
FOOTNOTE:
1.
Considered of course in connection with distance as guessed by parallax. (return to
text)..The
Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 23b
[K.H.'s
Replies to the Queries in Letter 23a II. -- ED.]
II
(I)
The latter end of a very important cycle. Each Round, each ring, as every race
has its
great
and its smaller cycles, on every planet that mankind passes through.
Our
fourth Round Humanity has its one great cycle, and so have her races and
sub-races.
The
"curious rush" is due to the double effect of the former -- the
beginning of its
downward
course; -- and of the latter (the small cycle of your "sub-race")
running on to
its
apex. Remember, you belong to the fifth Race, yet you are but a Western sub-race.
Notwithstanding
your efforts, what you call civilization is confined only to the latter and
its
off-shoots in America. Radiating around, its deceptive light may seem to throw
its rays
on
a greater distance than it does in reality. -- There is no "rush" in
China, and of Japan
you
make but a caricature.
A
student of occultism ought not to speak of the "stagnant condition of the
fourth Race
people"
since history knows next to nothing of that condition "up to the
beginning of
modern
progress" of other nations but the Western. What do you know of America,
for
instance,
before the invasion of that country by the Spaniards? Less than two centuries
prior
to the arrival of Cortez there was as great a "rush" towards progress
among the sub-races
of
Peru and Mexico as there is now in Europe and the U.S.A. Their sub-race ended
in
nearly total annihilation through causes generated by itself; so will yours at
the end of
its
cycle. We may speak only of the "stagnant conditions" into which,
following the law
of
development, growth, maturity and decline every race and sub-race falls into
during its
transition
periods. It is that latter condition your Universal History is
acquainted with,
while
it remains superbly ignorant of the condition even India was in, some ten
centuries
back.
Your sub-races are now running toward the apex of their respective cycles, and
that
History
goes no further back than the periods of decline of a few other sub-races
belonging
most of them to the preceding fourth Race. And what is the area and the period
of
time embraced by its Universal eye? -- At the utmost stretch -- a few,
miserable
dozens
of centuries. A mighty horizon, indeed! Beyond -- all is darkness for it,
nothing
but
hypotheses. . . . .
(2)
No doubt there was. Egyptian and Aryan records and especially our Zodiacal
tables
furnish
us with every proof of it besides our inner knowledge. Civilization is
an
inheritance,
a patrimony that passes from race to race along the ascending and descending
paths
of cycles. During the minority of a sub-race, it is preserved for it by its
predecessor,.which disappears, dies out generally, when the former "comes
to age." At first, most of
them
squander and mismanage their property, or leave it untouched in the ancestral
coffers.
They reject contemptuously the advices of their elders and prefer, boy-like,
playing
in the streets to studying and making the most of the untouched wealth stored
up
for
them in the records of the Past. Thus during your transition period -- the
middle ages --
Europe
rejected the testimony of Antiquity, calling such sages as Herodotus and other
learned
Greeks -- the Father of Lies, until she knew better and changed the appellation
into
that of "Father of History." Instead of neglecting, you now
accumulate and add to
your
wealth. As every other race you had your ups and downs, your periods of honour
and
dishonour, your dark midnight and -- you are now approaching your brilliant
noon.
The
youngest of the fifth race family you were for long ages the unloved and the
uncared
for,
the Cendrillon in your home. And now, when so many of your sisters have died;
and
others
still are dying, while the few of the old survivors, now in their second
infancy,
wait
but for their Messiah -- the sixth race -- to resurrect to a new life and start
anew with
the
coming stronger along the path of a new cycle -- now that the Western
Cendrillon has
suddenly
developed into a proud wealthy Princess, the beauty we all see and
admire --
how
does she act? Less kind hearted than the Princess in the tale, instead of
offering to
her
elder and less favoured sister, the oldest now, in fact since she is nearly
"a million
years
old" and the only one who has never treated her unkindly, though
she may have
ignored
her, -- instead of offering her, I say, the "Kiss of peace" she
applies to her the lex
talionis with a
vengeance that does not enhance her natural beauty. This, my good friend,
and
brother, is not a far stretched allegory but -- history.
(3)
Yes; the fifth race -- ours -- began in Asia a million years ago. What was it
about for
the
998,000 years preceding the last 2,000? A pertinent question; offered moreover
in
quite
a Christian spirit that refuses to believe that any good could ever have come
out
from
anywhere before and save Nazareth. What was it about? Well, it
was occupying
itself
pretty well in the same way as it does now -- craving Mr. Grant Allen's pardon,
who
would
place our primitive ancestor the "hedgehoggy" man, in the early part
of the Eocene
Age!
Forsooth, your scientific writers bestride their hypothesis most fearlessly, I
see. It
will
really be pity to find their fiery steed kicking and breaking their heads some
day;
something
that is unavoidably in store for them. In the Eocene Age -- even in its
"very
first
part," the great cycle of the fourth Race men, the Atlanteans -- had
already reached
its
highest point, and the great continent, the father of nearly all the present
continents --
showed
the first symptoms of sinking -- a process that occupied it down to 11,446
years
ago,
when its last island, that, translating its vernacular name, we may call with
propriety
Poseidonis
-- went down with a crash. By the bye, whoever wrote the Review of
Donnelly's
Atlantis is right: Lemuria can no more be confounded with the Atlantic
Continent
than Europe with America. Both sunk and were drowned with their high
civilizations
and "gods," yet between the two catastrophes, a short period of about
700,000
years elapsed; "Lemuria" flourishing and ending her career just at
about that
trifling
lapse of time before the early part of the Eocene Age, since its race was the third.
Behold,
the relics of that once great nation in some of the flat headed aborigines of
your
Australia!
No less right is the review in rejecting the kind attempt of the author to
people
India
and Egypt with the refuse of Atlantis. No doubt your geologists are very
learned;
but
why not bear in mind that, under the continents explored and fathomed by them,
in.the bowels of which they have found the "Eocene Age" and forced it
to deliver them its
secrets,
there may be, hidden deep in the fathomless, or rather unfathomed ocean
beds,
other,
and far older continents whose stratums have never been geologically explored;
and
that they may some (lay upset entirely their present theories, thus
illustrating the
simplicity
and sublimity of truth as connected with inductive "generalization"
in
opposition
to their visionary conjectures. Why not admit -- true no one of them has ever
thought
of it -- that our present continents, have -- like "Lemuria"
and "Atlantis" -- been
several times already, submerged
and had the time to reappear again, and bear their new
groups
of mankind and civilization; and that, at the first great geological upheaval,
at the
next
cataclysm -- in the series of periodical cataclysms that occur from the
beginning to
the
end of every Round, -- our already autopsized continents will go down,
and the
Lemurias
and Atlantises come up again. Think of the future geologists of the sixth and
seventh
races. Imagine them digging deep in the bowels of what was Ceylon and Simla,
and
finding implements of the Veddahs, or of the remote ancestor of the civilized
Pahari --
every
object of the civilized portions of humanity that inhabited those regions
having
been
pulverized to dust by the great masses of travelling glaciers, -- during the
next
glacial
period -- imagine him finding only such rude implements as now found among
those
savage tribes; and forthwith declaring that during that period primitive man
climbed
and
slept on the trees, and sucked the marrow out of animal bones after breaking
them --
as
civilized Europeans no less than the Veddahs will often do -- hence jumping to
the
conclusion
that in the year 1882 A.D., mankind was composed of "man-like
animals,"
black-faced,
and whiskered, "with prominent prognathous and large pointed canine
teeth."
True, a Grant Allen of the sixth race, may be not so far from fact and truth in
his
conjecture
that during the "Simla period" -- these teeth were used in the
combats of the
"males"
for grass widows -- but then metaphors has very little to do with anthropology
and
geology. Such is your Science. To return to your questions.
Of
course the 4th race had its periods of the highest civilization. Greek and
Roman and
even
Egyptian civilization are nothing compared to the civilizations that began with
the
3rd
race. Those of the second were not savages but they could not be called
civilized.
And
now, reading one of my first letters on the races (a question first touched by
M.)
pray,
do not accuse either him or myself of some new contradiction. Read it over and
see,
that
it leaves out the question of civilizations altogether and mentions but the
degenerate
remnants
of the fourth and third races, and gives you as a corroboration the latest
conclusions
of your own Science. Do not regard an unavoidable incompleteness as
inconsistency.
You now ask me a direct question, and, I answer it. Greeks and Romans
were
small sub-races, and Egyptians part and parcel of our own
"Caucasian" stock. Look
at
the latter and at India. Having reached the highest civilization and what is
more:
learning -- both went
down. Egypt as a distinct sub-race disappearing entirely (her Copts
are
a hybrid remnant). India -- as one of the first and most powerful off-shoots of
the
mother
Race, and composed of a number of sub-races -- lasting to these times, and
struggling
to take once more her place in history some day. That History catches but a
few
stray, hazy glimpses of Egypt, some 12,000 years back; when, having already
reached
the apex of its cycle thousands of years before, the latter had begun going
down.
What
does, or can it know of India 5,000 years ago, or of the Chaldees --
whom it.confounds most charmingly with the Assyrians, making of them one day
"Akkadians," at
another
Turanians and what not? We say then, that your History is entirely at
sea.
We
are refused by the Journal of Science -- words repeated and quoted by
M.A. (Oxon)
with
a rapture worthy of a great medium -- any claim whatever for "higher
knowledge."
Says
the reviewer: "Suppose the Brothers were to say 'point your telescope to
such and
such
a spot in heavens, and you will find a planet yet unknown to you; or dig into
the
earth.'
. . . etc., and you will find a mineral,' etc." Very fine, indeed, and
suppose that was
done,
what would be the result? Why a charge of plagiarism -- since everything of
that
kind,
every "planet and mineral" that exists in space or inside the earth,
are known and
recorded
in our books thousands of years ago; more; many a true hypothesis was timidly
brought
forward by their own scientific men and as constantly rejected by the majority
with
whose preconceptions it interfered. Your intention is laudable but
nothing that I may
give
you in answer will ever be accepted from us. Whenever discovered that "it
is verily
so,"
the discovery will be attributed to him who corroborated the evidence -- as in
the
case
of Copernicus and Galileo, the latter having availed himself but of the Pythagorean
MSS.
But
to return to "civilizations." Do you know that the Chaldees were at
the apex of their
Occult
fame before what you term as the "bronze Age"? That the
"Sons of Ad" or the
children
of the Fire Mist preceded by hundreds of centuries the Age of Iron, which was
an
old age already, when what you now call the Historical Period -- probably
because
what
is known of it is generally no history but fiction -- had hardly begun. We hold
-- but
then
what warrant can you give the world that we are right? -- that far
"greater
civilizations
than our own have risen and decayed." It is not enough to say as some of
your
modern writers do -- that an extinct civilization existed before Rome and
Athens
were
founded. We affirm that a series of civilizations existed before,
as well as after the
Glacial
Period, that they existed upon various points, of the globe, reached the apex
of
glory
and -- died. Every trace and memory had been lost of the Assyrian and Phoenikean
civilizations
until discoveries began to be made a few years ago. And now they open a
new,
though not by far one of the earliest pages in the history of mankind. And yet
how
far
back do those civilizations go in comparison with the oldest? -- and even them,
history
is shy to accept. Archeo-geology has sufficiently demonstrated that the memory
of
man runs back vastly further than history has been willing to accept, and the
sacred
records
of once mighty nations preserved by their heirs are still more worthy of trust.
We
speak
of civilizations of the anteglacial period; and (not only in the minds of the
vulgar
and
the profane but even in the opinion of the highly learned geologist) the claim
sounds
preposterous.
What would you say then to our affirmation that the Chinese -- I now speak
of
the inland, the true Chinaman, not of the hybrid mixture between the fourth and
the
fifth
Races now occupying the throne -- the aborigines, who belong in their unallied
nationality
wholly to the highest and last branch of the fourth Race, reached their highest
civilization
when the fifth had hardly appeared in Asia, and that its first off-shoot was
yet
a
thing of the future. When was it? Calculate. You cannot think that we, who have
such
tremendous
odds against the acceptance of our doctrine would deliberately go on
inventing Races and
sub-races (in the opinion of Mr. Hume) were not they a matter of
undeniable
fact. The group of islands off the Siberian coast discovered by Nordeneskjol.of
the "Vega" was found strewn with fossils of horses, sheep, oxen,
etc., among gigantic
bones
of elephants, mammoths, rhinoceroses and other monsters belonging to periods
when
man -- says your science -- had not yet made his appearance on earth. How came
horses
and sheep to be found in company with the huge "ante-diluvians"? The
horse, we
are
taught in schools -- is quite a modern invention of nature, and no man ever
saw its
pedactyl
ancestor. The group of the Siberian islands may give the lie to the comfortable
theory.
The region now locked in the fetters of eternal winter uninhabited by man --
that
most
fragile of animals, -- will be very soon proved to have had not only a tropical
climate
-- something your science knows and does not dispute, -- but having been
likewise
the seat of one of the most ancient civilisations of that fourth race, whose
highest
relics
now we find in the degenerated Chinaman, and whose lowest are hopelessly (for
the
profane scientist) intermixed with the remnants of the third. I told you before
now,
that
the highest people now on earth (spiritually) belong to the first sub-race of
the fifth
root Race; and those
are the Aryan Asiatics; the highest race (physical intellectuality) is
the
last sub-race of the fifth -- yourselves the white conquerors. The majority of
mankind
belongs
to the seventh sub-race of the fourth Root race, -- the above mentioned
Chinamen
and their off-shoots and branchlets (Malayans, Mongolians, Tibetans,
Javanese,
etc., etc., etc.) and remnants of other sub-races of the fourth -- and the
seventh
sub-race
of the third race. All these, fallen, degraded semblances of humanity are the
direct
lineal descendants of highly civilized nations neither the names nor memory of
which
have survived except in such books as Popalvul and a few others unknown
to
Science.
(4)
To the Miocene times. Everything comes in its appointed time and place in the
evolution
of Rounds, otherwise it would be impossible for the best seer to calculate the
exact
hour and year when such cataclysms great and small have to occur. All an adept
could
do would be to predict an approximate time; whereas now events that
result in
great
geological changes may be predicted with as mathematical a certainty as
eclipses
and
other revolutions in space. The sinking of Atlantis (the group of continents
and isles)
begun
during the Miocene period -- as certain of your continents are now
observed to be
gradually
sinking -- and it culminated -- first, in the final disappearance of the
largest
continent
an event coincident with the elevation of the
last
of the fair
Solon,
that Atlantis (i.e. the only remaining large island) had perished 9,000 years
before
their
time. This was not a fancy date, since they had for milleniums preserved most
carefully
their records. But then, as I say, they spoke but of the "Poseidonis"
and would
not
reveal even to the great Greek legislator their secret chronology. As there are
no
geological
reasons for doubting, but on the contrary, a mass of evidence for accepting the
tradition,
Science has finally accepted the existence of the great continent and
Archipelago
and thus vindicated the truth of one more "fable." It now teaches, as
you
know
that Atlantis, or the remnants of it lingered down to post-tertiary times, its
final
submergence
occurring within the palaeozoic ages of American history! Well, truth and
fact
ought to feel thankful even for such small favours in the previous absence of
any, for
so
many centuries. The deep sea explorations -- especially those of the Challenger
have
fully
confirmed the reports of geology and palaeontology. The great event -- the
triumph
of
our "Sons of the Fire Mist" the inhabitants of
"Shambullah" (when yet an island in the.
Central
Asian Sea) over the selfish but not entirely wicked magicians of
Poseidonis
occurred
just 11,446 ago. Read in this connection the incomplete and partially veiled
tradition,
in Isis, Volume I, p. 588-94, and some things may become still plainer
to you.
The
corroboration of tradition and history, brought forward by Donnelly I find in
the
main
correct; but you will find all this and much more in Isis.
(5)
It certainly does, and I have touched upon the subject long ago. In my notes on
Mr.
Hume's
MSS., "On God" -- that he kindly adds to our Philosophy, something
the latter
had
never contemplated before -- the subject is mentioned abundantly. Has he
refused
you
a look into it? For you -- I may enlarge my explanations, but not before you
have
read
what I say of the origin of good and evil on those margins. Quite enough was
said by
me
for our present purposes. Strangely enough I found a European author -- the
greatest
materialist
of his times, Baron d'Holbach -- whose views coincide entirely with the views
of
our philosophy. When reading his Essais sur la Nature, I might have
imagined I had
our
book of Kiu-ti before me. As a matter of course and of temperament our Universal
Pundit
will try to catch at those views and pull every argument to pieces. So far he
only
threatens
me to alter his Preface and not to publish the philosophy under his own
name.
Cuneus cuneum, tradit:
I begged him not to publish his essays at all.
M.
thinks that for your purposes I better give you a few more details upon
Atlantis since
it
is greatly connected with evil if not with its origin. In the
forthcoming Theosophist you
will
find a note or two appended to Hume's translation of Eliphas Levi's Preface in
connection
with the lost continent. And now, since I am determined to make of the
present
answers a volume -- bear your cross with Christian fortitude and then,
perhaps,
after
reading the whole you will ask for no more for some time to come. But what can
I
add
to that already told? I am unable to give you purely scientific information
since we
can
never agree entirely with Western conclusions; and that ours will be rejected
as
"unscientific."
Yet both geology and palaeontology bear witness to much we have to say.
Of
course your Science is right in many of her generalities, but her premises are
wrong,
or
at any rate -- very faulty. For instance she is right in saying that while the
new
America
was forming the ancient Atlantis was sinking, and gradually washing away; but
she
is neither right in her given epochs nor in the calculations of the duration of
that
sinking.
The latter -- is the future fate of your British Islands the first on the list
of
victims
that have to be destroyed by fire (submarine volcanos) and water, France and
other
lands will follow suit. When they reappear again, the last seventh Sub-race of
the
sixth
Root race of present mankind will be flourishing on "Lemuria" and
"Atlantis" both
of
which will have reappeared also (their reappearance following immediately the
disappearance
of the present isles and continents), and very few seas and great waters
will
be found then on our globe, waters as well as land appearing and disappearing
and
shifting
periodically and each in turn.
Trembling
at the prospect of fresh charges of "contradictions" at some future
incomplete
statement
I rather explain what I mean by this. The approach of every new
"obscuration"
is
always signalled by cataclysms -- of either fire or water. But, apart from this,
every
"Ring"
or Root Race has to be cut in two, so to say, by either one or the other. Thus,
having
reached the apex of its development and glory the fourth Race -- the
Atlanteans.were destroyed by water; you find now but their degenerated,
fallen remnants, whose
sub-races,
nevertheless, aye -- each of them, had its palmy days of glory and relative
greatness.
What they are now -- you will be some day the law of cycles being one and
immutable.
When your race -- the fifth -- will have reached at its zenith of physical
intellectuality,
and developed the highest civilization (remember the difference we make
between
material and spiritual civilizations); unable to go any higher in
its own cycle --
its
progress towards absolute evil will be arrested (as its predecessors the
Lemurians and
Atlanteans,
the men of the third and fourth races were arrested in their progress toward
the
same) by one of such cataclysmic changes; its great civilization destroyed, and
all the
sub-races
of that race will be found going down their respective cycles, after a
short
period
of glory and learning. See the remnants of the Atlanteans, -- the old Greeks
and
Romans
(the modern belong all to the fifth Race); see how great and how short, how
evanescent
were their days of fame and glory! For, they were but sub-races of the seven
off-shoots
of the "root race." No mother Race, any more than her sub-races and
off-shoots,
is
allowed by the one Reigning Law to trespass upon the prerogatives of the Race
or
Sub-race that will follow it; least of all -- to encroach upon the knowledge
and powers
in
store for its successor. "Thou shalt not eat of the fruit of Knowledge of
Good and Evil
of
the tree that is growing for thy heirs" we may say with more right than
would be
willingly
conceded us by the Humes of your Sub-race. This "tree" is in our
safe-keeping,
entrusted
to us by the Dhyan Chohans, the protectors of our Race and the Trustees for
those
that are coming. Try to understand the allegory, and to never lose sight of the
hint
given
you in my letter upon the Planetaries. (1) At the beginning of each Round, when
humanity
reappears under quite different conditions than those afforded for the birth of
each
new race and its sub-races, a "Planetary" has to mix with these
primitive men, and to
refresh
their memories, and reveal to them the truths they knew during the preceding
Round.
Hence the confused traditions about Jehovahs, Ormazds, Osirises, Brahms, and
the
tutti quanti. But that happens only for the benefit of the first Race.
It is the duty of the
latter
to choose the fit recipients among its sons, who are "set apart" to
use a Biblical
phrase
-- as the vessels to contain the whole stock of knowledge, to be divided
among the
future
races and generations until the close of that Round. Why should I say more
since
you
must understand my whole meaning; and that I dare not reveal it
in full. Every race
had
its adepts; and with every new race, we are allowed to give them out as much of
our
knowledge
as the men of that race deserve it. The last seventh Race will have its Buddha
as
every one of its predecessors had; but, its adepts will be far higher than any
of the
present
race, for among them will abide the future Planetary, the Dhyan Chohan whose
duty
it will be to instruct or "refresh the memory" of the first race of
the fifth Round men
after
this planet's future obscuration.
En Passant, to show to
you that not only were not the "races" invented by us, but
that
they
are a cardinal dogma with the Lama Buddhists and with all who study our
esoteric
doctrine,
I send you an explanation on a page or two in Rhys Davids "Buddhism,"
--
otherwise
incomprehensible, meaningless and absurd. It is written with the special
permission
of the Chohan (my Master) and -- for your benefit. No Orientalist has
ever
suspected
the truths contained in it, and -- you are the first Western man (outside
to
whom it is now explained..(6) What emerges at the end of all things is not only
"
pure
and impersonal spirit," but the
collective
"personal" remembrances skimmed off every new fifth principle in the
long
series
of being. And, if at the end of all things -- say in some million of millions
years
hence,
Spirit will have to rest in its pure, impersonal non-existence, as the
ONE or the
absolute,
still there must be "some good" in the cyclic process, since
every purified Ego
has
the chance in the long interims between objective being upon the planets
to exist as a
Dhyan
Chohan -- from the lowest "Deva-Chanee" to the highest Planetary,
enjoying the
fruits
of its collective lives.
But
what is "Spirit" pure and impersonal per se? Is it possible
that you should not have
realized
yet our meaning? why, such a Spirit is a nonentity, a pure abstraction,
an
absolute
blank to our senses -- even to the most spiritual. It becomes something only
in
union
with matter -- hence it is always something since matter is infinite and
indestructible
and non-existent without Spirit which, in matter is Life.
Separated from
matter
it becomes the absolute negation of life and being, whereas
matter is inseparable
from
it. Ask those who offer the objection, whether they know anything of
"life" and
"consciousness"
beyond what they now feel on earth. What conception can they have --
unless
natural born seers -- of the state and consciousness of one's individuality after
it
has
separated itself from gross earthly body? What is the good of the whole
process of
life
on earth -- you may ask them, in your turn -- if, we are as good as
"pure" unconscious
entities
before birth, during sleep, and, at the end of our career? Is not death,
according to
the
teachings of Science, followed by the same state of unconsciousness as the one
before
birth? Does not life
when it quits our body become as impersonal as it was before it
animated
the foetus? Life, after all, -- the greatest problem within the ken of human
conception
is a mystery that the greatest of your men of Science will never solve. In
order
to
be correctly comprehended, it has to be studied in the entire series of its
manifestations,
otherwise it can never be, not only fathomed, but even comprehended in
its
easiest form -- life, as a state of being on this earth. It can never be
grasped so long as
it
is studied separately and apart from universal life. To solve the great problem
one has
to
become an occultist; to analyze and experience with it personally, in all its
phases, as
life
on earth, life beyond the limit of physical death, mineral, vegetable, animal
and
spiritual
life; life in conjunction with concrete matter as well as life present in the
imponderable
atom. Let them try and examine, or analyze life apart from organism, and
what
remains of it? Simply a mode of motion; which, unless our doctrine of the
all-Pervading,
infinite,
omnipresent Life is accepted -- though it be accepted on no better
terms
than a hypothesis only a little more reasonable than their scientific hypotheses
which
are all absurd -- has to remain unsolved.
Shall
they object? Well, we will answer them by using their own weapons. We will say
that
it is, and will remain for ever demonstrated that since motion is all-pervading
and
absolute
rest inconceivable, that under whatever form or mask motion may appear,
whether
as light, heat, magnetism, chemical affinity or electricity -- all these must
be but
phases
of One and the same universal omnipotent Force, a Proteus they bow to, as the
Great
"Unknown" -- (See Herbert Spencer) and we, simply call the "One
Life" the "One
Law"
and the "One Element." The greatest, the most scientific minds on
earth, have been
keenly
pressing forward toward a solution of the mystery, leaving no
bye-path.unexplored,
no
thread loose or weak in this darkest of labyrinths for them, and all had to
come
to the same conclusion -- that of the Occultists when given only partially --
namely,
that
life in its concrete manifestations is the legitimate result and consequence of
chemical
affinity; as to life in its abstract sense, life pure and simple -- well, they
know
no
more of it to-day, than they knew in the incipient stage of their Royal Society.
They
only
know that organisms in certain solutions previously free from life will spring
up
spontaneously
(Pasteur and his biblical piety notwithstanding) -- owing to certain
chemical
compositions of such substances. If, as I hope, in a few years, I am entirely
my
own
master -- I may have the pleasure of demonstrating to you on your own writing
table
that
life as life is not only transformable into other aspects or phases of
the all-pervading
Force,
but that, it can be actually infused into an artificial man. Frankenstein is a
myth
only
so far as he is the hero of a mystic tale; in nature -- he is a possibility;
and the
physicists
and physicians of the last sub-race of the sixth Race will inoculate life and
revive
corpses, as they now inoculate small-pox, and often less comely diseases.
Spirit,
life
and matter, are not natural principles existing independently of each other,
but the
effects
of combinations produced by eternal motion in Space; and they better learn it.
(7)
Most undoubtedly I am so permitted. But then comes the most important point:
how
far
satisfactory will my answers appear -- even to you? That not every new law
brought
to
light is regarded as adding a link to the chain of human knowledge is shown by
the ill-grace
with
which every fact unwelcome for some reasons to science, is received by its
professors.
Nevertheless, whenever I can answer you -- I will try to do so,
only hoping
that
you will not send it as a contribution from my pen to the Journal of
Science.
(8)
Most assuredly they have. Rain can be brought on in a small area of space --
artificially
and without any claim to miracle or superhuman powers, though its secret is
no
property of mine that I should divulge it. I am now trying to obtain permission
to do
so.
We know of no phenomenon in nature entirely unconnected with either magnetism
or
electricity
-- since, where there are motion, heat, friction, light, there magnetism and
its
alter ego (according
to our humble opinion) -- electricity will always appear, as either
cause
or effect -- or rather both if we but fathom the manifestation to its origin.
All the
phenomena
of earth currents, terrestrial magnetism and atmospheric electricity, are due
to
the
fact that the earth is an electrified conductor, whose potential is ever
changing owing
to
its rotation and its annual orbital motion, the successive cooling and heating
of the air,
the
formation of clouds and rain, storms and winds, etc. This you may perhaps, find
in
some
text book. But then Science would be unwilling to admit that all these changes
are
due
to akasic magnetism incessantly generating electric currents which tend
to restore the
disturbed
equilibrium. By directing the most powerful of electric batteries, -- human
frame
electrified by a certain process, you can stop rain on some given point
by making
"a
hole in the rain cloud," as the occultists term it. By using other
strongly magnetized
implements
within, so to say, an insulated area -- rain can be produced artificially. I
regret
my inability to explain to you the process more clearly. You know the effects
produced
by trees and plants on rain clouds; and how their strong magnetic nature
attracts
and
even feeds those clouds over the tops of the trees. Science explains it
otherwise,
maybe.
Well, I cannot help it, for such is our knowledge and the fruits of milleniums
of
observations
and experience. Were the present to fall into the hands of Hume,
he
would.be sure to remark that I am vindicating the charge publicly brought by
him against us:
"Whenever
unable to answer your arguments (?) they (we) calmly reply that their (our)
rules
do not admit of this or that." -- Charge notwithstanding, I am compelled
to answer
that
since the secret is not mine I cannot make of it a marketable commodity. Let
some
physicists
calculate the amount of heat required to vaporize a certain quantity of water.
Then,
let them compute the quantity of rain needed to cover an area -- say, of one
square
mile
to a depth of one inch. For this amount of vaporization they will
require, of course,
an
amount of heat that would be equal to at least five million tons of coal. Now
the
amount
of energy of heat that would be equal to at least five million tons of coal.
Now
the
amount of energy of which this consumption of heat would be the equivalent
corresponds
(as any mathematician could tell you) -- to that which would be required to
raise
a weight of upwards of ten million tons, one mile high. How can one man generate
such
amount of heat and energy? Preposterous, absurd! -- we are all lunatics, and
you
who
listen to us will be placed in the same category if you ever venture to repeat
this
proposition.
Yet I say, that one man alone can do it, and very easily if he is but
acquainted
with a certain "physico-spiritual" lever in himself, far more
powerful than that
of
Archimedes. Even simple muscular contraction is always accompanied with
electric
and
magnetic phenomena, and there is the strongest connection between the magnetism
of
the earth, the changes of weather and man, who is the best barometer
living, if he but
knew
to decipher it properly; again, the state of the sky can always be ascertained
by the
variations
shown by magnetic instruments. It is now several years that I had an
opportunity
of reading the deductions of science upon this subject; therefore, unless I go
to
the trouble of catching up what I may have remained ignorant of, I do not know
the
latest
conclusions of Science. But with us, it is an established fact that it is the
earth's
magnetism
that produces wind, storms, and rain. What science seems to know of it, is but
secondary
symptoms always induced by that magnetism and she may very soon find out
her
present errors. Earth's magnetic attraction of meteoric dust, and the direct
influence of
the
latter upon the sudden changes of temperature especially in the matter of heat
and
cold,
is not a settled question to the present day, I believe. (2) It was doubted whether
the
fact
of our earth passing through a region of space in which there are more or less
of
meteoric
masses has any bearing upon the height of our atmosphere being increased or
decreased,
or even upon the state of weather. But we think we could easily prove it; and
since
they accept the fact that the relative distribution and proportion of land and
water
on
our globe may be due to the great accumulation upon it of meteoric dust;
snow --
especially
in our northern regions -- being full of meteoric iron and magnetic particles;
and
deposits of the latter being found even at the bottom of seas and oceans, I
wonder
how
Science has not hitherto understood that every atmospheric change and
disturbance
was
due to the combined magnetism of the two great masses between which our
atmosphere
is compressed! I call this meteoric dust a "mass" for it is really
one. High
above
our earth's surface the air is impregnated and space filled with
magnetic, or
meteoric
dust, which does not even belong to our solar system. Science having luckily
discovered,
that, as our earth with all the other planets is carried along through space,
it
receives
a greater proportion of that dust matter on its northern than on its southern
hemisphere,
knows that to this are due the preponderating number of the continents in the
former
hemisphere, and the greater abundance of snow and moisture. Millions of such
meteors
and even of the finest particles reach us yearly and daily and all our
temple.knives
are
made of this "heavenly" iron, which reaches us without having undergone
any
change
-- the magnetism of the earth keeping them in cohesion. Gaseous matter is
continually
added to our atmosphere from the never ceasing fall of meteoric strongly
magnetic
matter, and yet it seems with them still an open question whether magnetic
conditions
have anything to do with the precipitation of rain or not! I do not know
of any
"set
of motions established by pressures, expansions, etc., due in the first
instance to
solar energy."
Science makes too much and too little at the same time of "solar
energy"
and
even of the Sun itself; and the Sun has nothing to do whatever with rain and
very
little
with heat. I was under the impression that science was aware that the glacial
periods
as
well as those periods when temperature is "like that of the carboniferous
age" -- are
due
to the decrease and increase or rather to the expansion of our atmosphere,
which
expansion
is itself due to the same meteoric presence? At any rate, we all know,
that the
heat
that the earth receives by radiation from the sun is at the utmost one third
if not less
of
the amount received by her directly from the meteors.
(9)
Call it a chromosphere or atmosphere, it can be called neither; for it is
simply the
magnetic
and ever present aura of the sun, seen by astronomers only for a brief
few
moments
during the eclipse and by some of our chelas -- whenever they like -- of course
while
in a certain induced state. A counterpart of what the astronomers call the red
flames
in
the "corona" may be seen in Reichenbach's crystals or in any other
strongly magnetic
body.
The head of a man -- in a strong ecstatic condition, when all the electricity
of his
system
is centred around the brain, will represent -- especially in darkness -- a
perfect
simile
of the Sun during such periods. The first artist who drew the aureoles about
the
heads
of his Gods and Saints, was not inspired, but represented it on the authority
of
temple
pictures and traditions of the sanctuary and the chambers of initiation where
such
phenomena
took place. The closer to the head or to the aura-emitting body -- the stronger
and
the more effulgent the emanation (due to hydrogen science tells us, in the case
of the
flames);
hence -- the irregular red flames around the Sun or the "inner corona."
The fact
that
these are not always present in equal quantity shows only the constant
fluctuation of
the
magnetic matter and its energy, upon which also depend the variety and number
of
spots.
During periods of magnetic inertia the spots disappear, or rather remain
invisible.
The
further the emanation shoots out the more it loses in intensity, until
gradually
subsiding
it fades out; hence -- the "outer corona," its rayed shape being due
entirely to
the
latter phenomenon whose effulgence proceeds from the magnetic nature of the
matter
and
the electric energy and not at all from intensely hot particles as asserted by
some
astronomers.
All this is terribly unscientific, nevertheless a fact, to which, I may
add
another
by reminding you that the Sun we see is not at all the central planet of our
little
Universe,
but only its veil or it's reflection. Science has tremendous odds
against studying
that
planet which luckily for us we have not: foremost of all -- the constant
tremours of
our
atmosphere which prevent them from judging correctly the little they do see.
This
impediment
was never in the way of the ancient Chaldee and Egyptian astronomers; nor
is
it an obstacle to us, for we have means of arresting, or counteracting such
tremours --
acquainted
as we are with all the akasic conditions. No more than the rain secret,
would
this
secret -- supposing we do divulge it -- be of any practical use to your men of
Science
unless
they become Occultists and sacrifice long years to the acquirement of powers.
Only
fancy a Huxley or a Tyndall studying Yog-vidya! hence the many mistakes
into.which they fall and the conflicting hypotheses of your best authorities.
For instance: the
Sun
is full of iron vapours -- a fact that was demonstrated by the spectroscope
showing
that
the light of the corona consisted largely of a line in the green part of the
spectrum,
very
nearly coinciding with an iron line. Yet Professors Young and Lockyer rejected
that,
under
the witty pretext, if I remember, that, if the corona were composed of minute
particles
like a dust cloud (and it is this that we call "magnetic matter")
these particles
would
(1) fall upon the sun's body, (2) comets were known to pass through this vapour
without
any visible effect on them; (3) Professor Young's spectroscope showed that the
coronal
line was not identical with the iron one, etc. Why they should call those
objections
"scientific" is more than we can tell.
(1)
The reason why the particles -- since they call them so -- do not fall
upon the sun's
body,
is self-evident. There are forces co-existent with gravitation of which they
know
nothing;
besides that other fact that there is no gravitation properly speaking; only
attraction
and repulsion. (2) How could comets be affected by the said passage since their
"passing
through" is simply an optical illusion; they could not pass within the
area of
attraction
without being immediately annihilated by that force, of which no vril can
give
an
adequate idea, since there can be nothing on earth that could be compared with
it.
Passing
as the comets do through a "reflection" no wonder that the said vapour
has "no
visible
effect on these light bodies." (3) The coronal line may not seem identical
through
the
best "grating spectroscope," nevertheless, the corona contains
iron as well as other
vapours.
To tell you of what it does consist is idle, since I am unable to translate the
words
we use for it, and that no such matter exists (not in our planetary system, at
any
rate)
-- but in the sun. The fact is, that what you call the Sun is simply the
reflection of
the
huge "store-house" of our System wherein ALL its forces are generated
and
preserved;
the Sun being the heart and brain of our pigmy Universe, we might compare
its
faculae -- those millions of small, intensely brilliant bodies of which
the Sun's surface
away
from the spots is made up -- with the blood corpuscles of that luminary --
though
some
of them as correctly conjectured by science are as large as Europe. Those blood
corpuscles
are the electric and magnetic matter in its sixth and seventh state. What are
those
long white filaments twisted like so many ropes, of which the penumbra of
the Sun
is
made up? What -- the central part that is seen like a huge flame ending in
fiery spires,
and
the transparent clouds, or rather vapours formed of delicate threads of silvery
light,
that
hangs over those flames -- what -- but magneto-electric aura -- the phlogiston
of the
Sun?
Science may go on speculating for ever, yet so long as she does not renounce
two or
three
of her cardinal errors she will find herself groping for ever in the dark. Some
of her
greatest
misconceptions are found in her limited notions on the law of gravitation; her
denial
that matter may be imponderable; her newly invented term
"force" and the absurd
and
tacitly accepted idea, that force is capable of existing per se, or of
acting any more
than
life, outside, independent of, or in any other wise than through matter:
in other
words
that force is anything but matter in one of her highest states,
-- the last three on the
ascending
scale being denied because only science knows nothing of them; and her utter
ignorance
of the universal Proteus, its functions and importance in the economy of nature
--
magnetism and electricity. Tell Science that even in those days of the decline
of the
Roman
Empire, when the tatooed Britisher used to offer to the Emperor Claudius his
nazzur of
"electron" in the shape of a string of amber beads that even then,
there were yet.men remaining aloof from the immoral masses, who knew more of
electricity and
magnetism
than they, the men of science, do now, and science will laugh at you as
bitterly
as she now does over your kind dedication to me. Verily, when your astronomers
speaking
of sun-matter, term those lights and flames as "clouds of
vapour" and "gases
unknown
to science" (rather!) -- chased by mighty whirlwinds and cyclones --
whereas
we
know it to be simply magnetic matter in its usual state of activity -- we feel
inclined to
smile
at the expressions. Can one imagine the "Sun's fires fed with purely
mineral
matter"
-- with meteorites highly charged with hydrogen giving the "Sun a
far-reaching
atmosphere
of ignited gas"? We know that the invisible Sun is composed
of that which
has
neither name, nor can it be compared to anything known by your science -- on
earth;
and
that its "reflection" contains still less of anything like
"gases," mineral matter, or fire,
though
even we when treating of it in your civilized tongue are compelled to use such
expressions
as "vapour" and "magnetic matter." To close the subject,
the coronal changes
have
no effect upon the earth's climate, though spots have -- and Professor
N. Lockyer is
mostly
wrong in his deductions. The Sun is neither a solid nor a liquid,
nor yet a gaseous
globe;
but a gigantic ball of electro-magnetic Forces, the store-house of universal life
and
motion, from which the
latter pulsate in all directions, feeding the smallest atom as the
greatest
genius with the same material unto the end of the Maha Yug.
(10)
I believe not. The stars are distant from us, at least 500,000 times as far as
the Sun
and
some as many times more. The strong accumulation of meteoric matter and the
atmospheric
tremours are always in the way. If your astronomers could climb on the
height
of that meteoric dust, with their telescopes and havanas they
might trust more than
they
can now in their photometers. How can they? Neither the real degree of
intensity of
that
light can be known on earth -- hence no trustworthy basis for calculating
magnitudes
and
distances can be had, -- nor have they hitherto made sure in a single instance (except
in
the matter of one star in Cassiopeia) which stars shine by reflected and which
by their
own
light. The working of the best double star photometers is deceptive. Of this I
have
made
sure, so far back as in the spring of 1878 while watching the observations made
through
a Pickering photometer. The discrepancy in the observations upon a star (near
Gamma
Ceti) amounted at times to half a magnitude. No planets but one have hitherto
been
discovered outside of the solar system, with all their photometers, while we
know
with
the sole help of our spiritual naked eye a number of them; every completely
matured
Sun-star
having like in our own system several companion planets in fact. The famous
"polarization
of light" test is as about trustworthy as all others. Of course, the mere
fact of
their
starting from a false premise cannot vitiate either their conclusions or
astronomical
prophecies,
since both are mathematically correct in their mutual relations, and that it
answers
the given object. The Chaldees nor yet our old Rishis had either your
telescopes
or
photometers; and yet their astronomical predictions were faultless, the
mistakes, very
slight
ones in truth -- fathered upon them by their modern rivals -- proceeding from
the
mistakes
of the latter.
You
must not complain of my too long answers to your very short questions, since I
answer
you for your instruction as a student of occultism, my "lay" chela,
and not at all
with
a view of answering the Journal of Science. I am no man of science with
regard to,
or
in connection with modern leraning. My knowledge of your Western Sciences is
very.limited in fact; and you will please bear in mind that all my answers are
based upon, and
derived
from, our Eastern occult doctrines regardless of their agreement or disagreement
with
those of exact science. Hence, I say: --
"The
sun's surface emits per square mile, as much light (in proportion) as
can be emitted
from
any body." But what can you mean in this case by "light"? The
latter is not an
independent
principle; and, I rejoiced at the introduction, with a view to facilitate means
of
observation -- of the "diffraction spectrum;" since by abolishing all
these imaginary
independent
existences, such as -- heat, actinism, light, etc., it rendered to Occult Science
the
greatest service, by vindicating in the eyes of her modern sister our very
ancient
theory
that every phenomenon being but the effect of the diversified motions of what
we
call
Akasha (not your ether) there was in fact, but one element, the causative
Principle of
all.
But since your question is asked with a view to settling a disputed point in
modern
science
I will try to answer it in the clearest way I can. I say then, no, and will
give you
my
reasons why. They cannot know it, for the simple reason that heretofore they
have in
reality
found no sure means of measuring the velocity of light. The experiments made by
Fizeau
and Cornu known as the two best investigators of light in the world of science,
notwithstanding
the general satisfaction at the results obtained, are not a trustworthy data
neither
in respect to the velocity with which sunlight travels nor to its quantity. The
methods
adopted by both these Frenchmen are yielding correct results (at any rate
approximately correct,
since there is a variation of 227 miles per second between the
result
of the observations of both experimenters albeit made with the same apparatus)
--
only
as regards the velocity of light between our earth and the upper regions of its
atmosphere.
Their toothed wheel, revolving at a known velocity records, of course,
the
strong
ray of light which passes through one of the niches of the wheel, and then has
its
point
of light obscured whenever a tooth passes -- accurately enough. The instrument
is
very
ingenious and can hardly fail to give splendid results on a journey of a few
thousand
metres
there and back; there being between the Paris observatory and its
fortifications no
atmosphere,
no meteoric masses to impede the ray's progress; and that ray finding quite a
different
quality of a medium to travel upon than the ether of Space, the ether between
the
Sun and the meteoric continent above our heads, the velocity of light
will of course
show
some 185,000 and odd miles per second, and your physicists shout
"Eureka"! Nor
do
any of the other devices contrived by science to measure that velocity since
1887
answer
any better. All they can say is that their calculations are so far correct.
Could they
measure
light above our atmosphere they would soon find that they were wrong.
(11)
It is -- so far; but is fast changing. Your science has a theory, I believe,
that if the
earth
were suddenly placed in extremely cold regions -- for instance where it would
exchange
places with Jupiter -- all our seas and rivers would be suddenly transformed
into
solid mountains; the air, -- or rather a portion of the aeriform substances
which
compose
it -- would be metamorphosed from their state of invisible fluid owing to the
absence
of heat into liquids (which now exist on Jupiter, but of which men have no idea
on
earth). Realize, or try to imagine the -- reverse condition, and it will
be that of Jupiter
at
the present moment..The whole of our system is imperceptibly shifting its
position in space. The relative
distance
between planets remaining ever the same, and being in no wise affected by the
displacement
of the whole system; and the distance between the latter and the stars and
other
suns being so incommensurable as to produce but little if any perceptible
change for
centuries
and milleniums to come; -- no astronomer will perceive it telescopically, until
Jupiter
and some other planets, whose little luminous points hide now from our sight
millions
upon millions of stars (all but some 5000 or 6000) -- will suddenly let us have
a
peep
at a few of the Raja-Suns they are now hiding. There is such a king-star
right behind
Jupiter,
that no mortal physical eye has ever seen during this, our Round. Could it be
so
perceived
it would appear, through the best telescope with a power of multiplying its
diameter
ten thousand times, -- still a small dimensionless point, thrown into the
shadow
by
the brightness of any planet; nevertheless -- this world is thousands of times
larger
than
Jupiter. The violent disturbance of its atmosphere and even its red spot that
so
intrigues
science lately, are due -- (1) to that shifting and (2) to the influence of
that Raja-Star.
In
its present position in space imperceptibly small though it be -- the metallic
substances
of which it is mainly composed are expanding and gradually transforming
themselves
into aeriform fluids -- the state of our own earth and its six sister globes
before
the first Round -- and becoming part of its atmosphere. Draw your inferences
and
deductions
from this, my dear "lay" chela, but beware lest in doing so you
sacrifice your
humble
instructor and the occult doctrine itself, on the altar of your wrathful
Goddess --
modern science.
(12)
I am afraid not much, since our Sun is but a reflection. The only great truth
uttered
by
Siemens is that inter-stellar space is filled with highly attenuated matter,
such as may
be
put in air vacuum tubes, and which stretches from planet to planet and from
star to
star.
But this truth has no bearing upon his main facts. The sun gives all and
takes back
nothing from its
system. The sun gathers nothing "at the poles" -- which are always
free
even
from the famous "red flames" at all times, not only during the
eclipses. How is it
that
with their powerful telescopes they have failed to perceive any such
"gathering"
since
their glasses show them even the "superlatively fleecy clouds" on the
photosphere?
Nothing
can reach the sun from without the boundaries of its own system in the
shape of
such
gross matter as "attenuated gases." Every bit of matter in all
its seven states is
necessary
to the vitality of the various and numberless systems -- worlds in formation,
suns
awakening anew to life, etc., and they have none to spare even for their best
neighbours
and next of kin. They are mothers, not stepmothers, and would not take away
one
crumb from the nutrition of their children. The latest theory of radiant energy
which
shows
that there is no such thing in nature, properly speaking, as chemical light, or
heat
ray
is the only approximately correct one. For indeed, there is but one thing --
radiant
energy
which is inexhaustible and knows neither increase nor decrease and will
go on
with
its self-generating work to the end of the Solar manvantara. The absorption of
Solar
Forces
by the earth is tremendous; yet it is, or may be demonstrated that the latter
receives
hardly 25 per cent. of the chemical power of its rays, for these are despoiled
of
75
per cent. during their vertical passage through the atmosphere at the moment
they
reach
the outer boundary "of the aerial ocean." And even those rays lose
about 20 per
cent.
in illuminating and caloric power -- we are told. What with such a waste must
then
be
the recuperative power of our Father-Mother Sun? Yes; call it "Radiant
Energy" if you.will: we call it Life -- all-pervading, omnipresent life,
ever at work in its great laboratory
--
the SUN.
(13)
None can ever be given by your men of Science, whose "bumptiousness"
makes
them
declare that only to those for whom the word magnetism is a mysterious agent
the
supposition
that the Sun is a huge magnet can account for the production by that body of
light,
heat and the causes of magnetic variations as perceived on our earth. They are
determined
to ignore and thus reject the theory suggested to them by Jenkins of the
R.A.S.
of the existence of strong magnetic poles above the surface of the
earth. But the
theory,
is the correct one nevertheless, and one of these poles revolves around the
north
pole
in a periodical cycle of several hundred years. Halley and Handsteen -- besides
Jenkins
-- were the only scientific men that ever suspected it. Your question is again
answered
by reminding you of another exploded supposition. Jenkins did his best
some
three
years ago to prove that it is the north end of the compass needle that is the
true
north
pole, and not the reverse as the current scientific theory maintains. He was
informed
that the locality in Boothia where Sir James Ross located the earth's north
magnetic
pole, was purely imaginary: it is not there. If he (and we) are
wrong, then the
magnetic
theory that like poles repel and unlike poles attract, must also be declared a
fallacy;
since if the north end of the dipping needle is a south pole then its
pointing to the
ground
in Boothia -- as you call it -- must be due to attraction? And if there
is anything
there
to attract it, why is it that the needle in London is attracted neither to the
ground in
Boothia
nor to the earth's centre? As very correctly argued, if the north pole of the
needle
pointed
almost perpendicularly to the ground in Boothia, it is simply because it was
repelled
by the true north magnetic pole when Sir J. Ross was there about half a century
ago.
No;
our "Lordships" have nothing to do with the inertia of the needle. It
is due to the
presence
of certain metals in fusion in that locality. Increase of temperature
diminishes
magnetic
attraction, and a sufficiently high temperature destroys it often altogether.
The
temperature
I am speaking of is, in the present case rather an aura, an emanation than
anything
science knows of. Of course, this explanation will never hold water with
the
present
knowledge of science. But we can wait and see. Study magnetism with the help
of
occult doctrines, and then that which now will appear incomprehensible, absurd
in the
light
of physical science, will become all clear.
(14)
They must be. Not all of the Intra-Mercurial planets, nor yet those in the
orbit of
Neptune
are yet discovered, though they are strongly suspected. We know that such exist
and
where they exist; and that there are innumerable planets "burnt
out" they say, -- in
obscuration we say; --
planets in formation and not yet luminous, etc. But then "we
know"
is of little use to science, when the Spiritualists will not admit our
knowledge.
Edison's
tasimeter adjusted to its utmost degree of sensitiveness and attached to a
large
telescope
may be of great use when perfected. When so attached the "tasimeter"
will
afford
the possibility not only to measure the heat of the remotest of visible stars,
but to
detect
by their invisible radiations stars that are unseen and otherwise undetectable,
hence
planets
also. The discoverer, an F.T.S., a good deal protected by M. thinks that if, at
any
point
in a blank space of heavens -- a space that appears blank even through a
telescope.of the highest power -- the tasimeter indicates an accesion of
temperature and does so
invariably,
this will be a regular proof that the instrument is in range with the stellar
body
either
non-luminous or so distant as to be beyond the reach of telescopic vision. His
tasimeter, he says,
"is affected by a wider range of etheric undulations than the eye can
take
cognizance of." Science will hear sounds from certain planets
before she sees them.
This
is a prophecy. Unfortunately I am not a Planet, -- not even a
"planetary." Otherwise I
would
advise you to get a tasimeter from him and thus avoid me the trouble of
writing to
you.
I would manage then to find myself "in range" with you.
(15)
No, good friend; I am not as indiscreet as all that, I left you simply to your
own
reminiscences.
Every mortal creature, even the less favoured by Fortune, has such
moments
of relative happiness at some time of his life. Why shouldn't you?
Yes,
it was an X quantity I referred to.
(16)
It is a widely spread belief among all the Hindus that a person's future
pre-natal state
and
birth are moulded by the last desire he may have at the time of death. But this
last
desire,
they say, necessarily hinges on to the shape which the person may have given to
his
desires, passions, etc., during his past life. It is for this very reason, viz.
-- that our last
desire
may not be unfavourable to our future progress -- that we have to watch our
actions
and control our passions and desires throughout our whole earthly career.
(17)
It cannot be otherwise. The experience of dying men -- by drowning and
other
accidents
-- brought back to life, has corroborated our doctrine in almost every case.
Such
thoughts
are involuntary and we have no more control over them than we would over
the
eye's
retina to prevent it perceiving that colour which affects it most. At the last
moment,
the
whole life is reflected in our memory and emerges from all the forgotten nooks
and
corners
picture after picture, one event after the other. The dying brain dislodges
memory
with
a strong supreme impulse, and memory restores faithfully every impression
entrusted
to it during the period of the brain's activity. That impression and thought
which
was
the strongest naturally becomes the most vivid and survives so to say all the
rest
which
now vanish and disappear for ever, to reappear but in Deva Chan. (3) No man dies
insane
or unconscious -- as some physiologists assert. Even a madman, or one in
a fit of
delirium, tremens will
have his instant of perfect lucidity at the moment of death, though
unable
to say so to those present. The man may often appear dead. Yet from the last
pulsation,
from and between the last throbbing of his heart and the moment when the last
spark
of animal heat leaves the body -- the brain thinks and the Ego lives
over in those
few
brief seconds his whole life over again. Speak in whispers, ye, who assist at a
death-bed
and
find yourselves in the solemn presence of Death. Especially have you to keep
quiet
just after Death has laid her clammy hand upon the body. Speak in whispers, I
say,
lest
you disturb the quiet ripple of thought, and hinder the busy work of the Past
casting
on
its reflection upon the Veil of the Future.
(18)
Yes; the "full" remembrance of our lives (collective lives)
will return back at the end
of
all the seven Rounds, at the threshold of the long, long Nirvana that
awaits us after we
leave
Globe Z. At the end of isolated Rounds, we remember but the sum total of our
last.impressions, those we had selected, or that have rather forced themselves
upon us and
followed
us in Deva Chan. Those are all "probationary" lives with large
indulgences and
new
trials afforded us with every new life. But at the close of the minor cycle,
after the
completion
of all the seven Rounds, there awaits us no other mercy but the cup of
good
deeds,
of merit, outweighing that of evil deeds and demerit in
the scales of Retributive
Justice.
Bad, irretrievably bad must be that Ego that yields no mite from its
fifth
Principle,
and has to be annihilated, to disappear in the Eighth Sphere. A
mite, as I say,
collected
from the Personal Ego suffices to save him from the dreary Fate. Not so after
the
completion of the great cycle: either a long Nirvana of Bliss (unconscious
though it
be
in the, and according to, your crude conceptions); after which -- life as a
Dhyan
Chohan
for a whole Manvantara, or else "Avitchi Nirvana" and a
Manvantara of misery
and
Horror as a ---- you must not hear the word nor I -- pronounce or write
it. But "those"
have
nought to do with the mortals who pass through the seven spheres. The collective
Karma
of a future Planetary is as lovely as the collective Karma of a ---- is
terrible.
Enough.
I have said too much already.
(19)
Verily so. Until the struggle between the higher and middle duad begins -- (with
the
exception of suicides who are not dead but have only killed
their physical triad, and
whose Elemental parasites, therefore, are not naturally
separated from the Ego as in real
death) -- until that
struggle, I say, has not begun and ended, no shell can realize its
position.
When the sixth and seventh principles are gone, carrying off with them the
finer,
spiritual portions of that, which once was the personal consciousness of
the fifth,
then
only does the shell gradually develop a kind of hazy consciousness of its own
from
what
remains in the shadow of personality. No contradiction here, my dear friend, --
only
haziness
in your own perceptions.
(20)
All that which pertains to the materio-psychological attributes and sensations
of the
five
lower skandhas; all that which will be thrown off as a refuse by the newly born
Ego
in
the Deva Chan, as unworthy of, and not sufficiently related to the purely spiritual
perceptions,
emotions and feelings of the sixth, strengthened, and so to say, cemented by
a
portion of the fifth, that portion which is necessary in the devachan for the
retention of a
divine
spiritualized notion of the "I" in the Monad -- which would
otherwise, have no
consciousness
in relation to object and subject at all -- all this "becomes extinct
for ever":
namely
at the moment of physical death, to return once more, marshalling before the
eye
of
the new Ego at the threshold of Deva Chan and to be rejected by It. It will
return for
the
third time fully at the end of the minor cycle, after the
completion of the seven
Rounds
when the sum total of collective existences is weighed --
"merit" -- in one cup,
"demerit"
in the other cup of the scales. But in that individual, in the Ego --
"good, bad,
or
indifferent" in the isolated personality, -- consciousness leaves
as suddenly as "the
flame
leaves the wick." Blow out your candle, good friend. The flame has left that
candle
"for
ever"; but are the particles that moved, their motion producing the objective
flame
annihilated
or dispersed for all that? Never. Relight the candle and the same
particles
drawn
by mutual affinity will return to the wick. Place a long row of candles on your
table.
Light one and blow it out; then light the other and do the same; a third and
fourth,
and
so on. The same matter, the same gaseous particles -- representing in our case
the
Karma of the
personality -- will be called forth by the conditions given them by your.match,
to produce a new luminosity; but can we say that candle No. 1 has not had its
flame
extinct for ever? Not even in the case of the "failures of nature,"
of the immediate
reincarnation
of children and congenital idiots, etc., that so provoked the wrath of
C.C.M.,
can we call them the identical ex-personalities; though the whole of
the same
life-principle and identically the same MANAS (fifth principle) re-enters a new body and
may
be truly called a "reincarnation of the personality" --
whereas, in the rebirth of the
Egos
from devachans and avitchis into Karmic life it is only the
spiritual attributes of the
Monad
and its Buddhi that are reborn. All we can say of the reincarnated
"failures" is,
that
they are the reincarnated Manas, the fifth principle of Mr. Smith or
Miss Grey, but
not
certainly that these are the reincarnations of Mr. S. and Miss G. Therefore,
the
explanation,
clear and concise (though perhaps less literary than you might make it) given
to
C.C.M. in the Theosophist in answer to his spiteful hit in Light,
is not only correct but
candid also; and both
yourself and C.C.M. were unjust to Upasika and even to myself
who
told her what to write; since even you mistook my wail and lament at the
confused
and
tortured explanations in Isis (for its incompleteness no one but
we, her inspirers are
responsible)
and my complaint of having had to exercise all my "ingenuity" to make
the
thing
plain, for an avowal of ingeniousness in the sense of cunning and craft,
whereas
ingenuousness -- a
sincere desire (though very difficult of realization) to mend and clear
up
the misconception -- was meant by me. I do not know of anything since the very
beginning
of our correspondence that displeased the Chohan so much as that. But we
must
not return to the subject again.
But
what is then "the nature of the remembrance and self-consciousness of the
shell?"
you
ask. As I said in your note -- no better than a reflected or borrowed light.
"Memory"
is
one thing, and "perceptive faculties" quite another. A madman may
remember very
clearly
some portions of his past life; yet he is unable to perceive anything in its
true light
for
the higher portion of his Manas and his Buddhi are paralysed in
him, have left him.
Could
an animal -- a dog, for instance -- speak, he would prove you that his memory
in
direct
relation to his canine personality, is as fresh as yours; nevertheless his
memory and
instinct
cannot be called "perceptive faculties." A dog remembers that his master
thrashed
him
when the latter gets hold of his stick -- at all other times he has no
remembrance of it.
Thus
with a shell; once in the aura of a medium, all he perceives through the
borrowed
organs
of the medium and of those in magnetic sympathy with the latter, he will
perceive
very
clearly -- but not further than what the shell can find in the
perceptive faculties and
memories
of circle and medium -- hence often the rational and at times highly
intelligent
answers;
hence also a complete oblivion of things known to all but that medium and
circle.
The shell of a highly intelligent, learned, but utterly unspiritual man who
died
natural
death, will last longer and the shadow of his own memory helping -- that
shadow
which
is the refuse of the sixth principle left in the fifth -- he may deliver
discourses
through
trance speakers and repeat parrot-like that which he knew of and thought much
over
it, during his life-time. But find me one single instance in the annals
of Spiritualism
where
a returning shell of a Faraday or a Brewster (for even they were made to fall
into
the
trap of mediumistic attraction) said one word more than it knew during its
life-time.
Where
is that scientific shell, that ever gave evidence of that, which is claimed on
behalf
of
the "disembodied Spirit" -- namely, that a free Soul, the
Spirit disenthralled from its
body's
fetters perceives and sees that which is concealed from living mortal
eyes?.Challenge the Spiritualists fearlessly, I say! Defy the best, the most
reliable of mediums --
Stainton
Moses for one -- to give you through that high disembodied shell, that he
mistakes
for the "Imperator" of the early days of his mediumship, to tell you
what you
will
have hidden in your box, if S.M. does not know it; or to repeat to you a line
from a
Sanskrit
manuscript unknown to his medium, or anything of that kind. Prohpudor! Spirits
they
call them? Spirits with personal remembrances? As well call personal
remembrances
the sentences screeched out by a parrot. Why don't you ask C.C.M. to test
+?
Why not settle his and your mind at rest by suggesting to him to ask a friend
or an
acquaintance
unknown to S.M. -- to select an object the nature of which will remain
in its
turn
unknown to C.C.M., and then see whether + will be able to name that object --
something
possible even to a good clairvoyant. Let the "Spirit" of Zollner --
now that he
is
in the "fourth dimension of space," and has put up an appearance
already with several
mediums
-- tell them the last word of his discovery, complete his astro-physical
philosophy.
No; Zollner when lecturing through an intelligent medium, surrounded with
persons
who read his works, are interested in them -- will repeat on various tones that
which
is known to others (not even that which he alone knew, most probably),
the
credulous,
ignorant public confounding the post-hoc with the propter-hoc and
firmly
convinced
of the Spirit's identity. Indeed, it will be worth your while to
stimulate
investigation
in this direction. Yes; personal consciousness does leave everyone at death;
and
when even the centre of memory is re-established in the shell, it will remember
and
speak
out its recollections but through the brain of some living human being.
Hence --
(21)
-- A more or less complete, still dim recollection of its personality, and of
its purely
physical life. As in
the cases of complete insanity the final severance of the two higher
duads
(7th 6th and 5th 4th) at the moment of the former going into gestation, digs an
impassable
gulf between the two. It is not even a portion of the fifth that is carried
away --
least
of all 2 1/2 principles as Mr. Hume crudely puts it in his Fragments that
go into
Deva
Chan leaving but l 1/2 principles behind. The Manas shorn of its finest
attributes,
becomes
like a flower from which all the aroma has suddenly departed, a rose crushed,
and
having been made to yield all its oil for the attar manufacture
purposes; what is left
behind
is but the smell of decaying grass, earth and rottenness.
(a)
Question the second is sufficiently answered, I believe. (Your second para.)
The
Spiritual
Ego goes on evolving personalities, in which "the sense of
identity" is very
complete while living.
After their separation from the physical Ego, that sense returns
very
dim, and belongs wholly to the recollections of the physical man. The
shell may be a
perfect
Sinnett when wholly engrossed in a game of cards at his club, and when either
losing
or winning a large sum of money -- or a Babu Smut Murky Dass trying to cheat
his
principal
out of a sum of rupees. In both cases -- ex-editor and Babu will -- as shells,
remind
anyone who will have the privilege of enjoying an hour's chat with the
illustrious
dis-embodied
angels, more of the inmates of a lunatic asylum made to play parts in
private
theatricals as means of hygienic recreation, than of the Caesars and Hamlets
they
would
represent. The slightest shock will throw them off the track and send them off
raving..(b)
An error. A. P. Sinnett is not "an absolutely new invention."
He is the child and
creation
of his antecedent personal self; the Karmic progeny for all he knows, of
Nonius
Asprena,
Consul of the Emperor Domitian -- (94 A.D.) together with Arricinius
Clementus,
and friend of the Flamen Dealis of that day (the high priest of Jupiter
and
chief
of the Flamenes) or of that Flamens himself -- which would
account for A.P.
Sinnett's
suddenly developed love for mysticism. A.P.S. -- the friend and brother of K.H.
will
go to Deva Chan; and A.P.S., the Editor and the lawn-tennis man; the Don
Juan, in a
mild way, in the palmy
days of "Saints, Sinners and Sceneries," identifying himself by
mentioning
a usually covered mole or scar, -- will, perhaps, be abusing the Babus through
a
medium to some old friend in California or London.
(c)
It will find "enough decent material" and to spare. A few
years of Theosophy will
furnish
it.
(d)
Perfectly correctly defined.
(e)
As much as there is of the personality -- in A.P.S.'s reflection in the
looking glass -- of
the
real, living A.P.S.
(f)
The Spiritual Ego will not think of the A.P.S. the shell, any more than
it will think of
the
last suit of clothes it wore; nor will it be conscious that the individuality
is gone, since
that
only individuality and Spiritual personality it will then behold
in itself alone. Nosce
te ipsum is a direct
command of the oracle to the Spiritual monad in Deva Chan; and
the
"heresy
of Individuality" is a doctrine propounded by Tathagatha with an
eye to the
Shell.
The latter whose bumptiousness is as proverbial as that of the medium when
reminded
that it is A.P.S. -- will echo out: "Of course, no doubt, hand me
over some
preserved
peaches I devoured with such an appetite for breakfast, and a glass of
claret!" --
and
who after this who knew A.P.S. at Allahabad, will dare doubt his identity? And,
when
left alone for one short instant by some disturbance in the circle, or the
thought of
the
medium wandering for a moment to some other person -- that shell will begin to
hesitate
in its thoughts whether it is A.P.S., S. Wheeler, or Ratigan; and end by
assuring
itself
it is Julius Caesar. (g) -- and by finally "remaining asleep."
(h)
No; it is not conscious of this loss of cohesion. Besides, such a feeling in a
shell being
quite
useless for nature's purposes, it could hardly realize something that could be
never
even
dreamed by a medium or its affinities. It is dimly conscious of its own
physical
death
-- after a prolonged period of time though -- that's all. The few exceptions to
this
rule
-- cases of half successful sorcerers, of very wicked persons passionately
attached to
Self
-- offer a real danger to the living. These very material shells, whose last
dying
thought
was Self, -- Self, -- Self -- and to live, to live! will often feel it
instinctively. So
do
some suicides -- though not all. What happens then is terrible for it becomes a
case of
post mortem licanthropy.
The shell will cling so tenaciously to its semblance of life that it
will
seek refuge in a new organism in any beast -- in a dog, a hyæna, a bird when no
human
organism is close at hand -- rather than submit to annihilation.
(22)
A question I have no right to answer..(23) Mars and four other planets of which
astronomy knows yet nothing. Neither A, B,
nor
Y, Z, are known; nor can they be seen through physical means however perfected.
(24)
Most decidedly not. Not even a Dhyan Chohan of the lower orders could approach
it
without
having its body consumed, or rather annihilated. Only the highest
"Planetary" can
scan
it. (b) Not unless we call it the vertex of an angle. But it is the vertex of
all the
"chains"
collectively. All of us dwellers of the chains -- we will have to evolute, live
and
run
the up and down scale in that highest and last of the septenaries chains (on the
scale
of
perfection) before the Solar Pralaya snuffs out our little system.
(25
& 26) . . . "in which case it" -- the "it"
relates to the sixth and seventh principles, not
to
the fifth, for the manas will have to remain a shell in each case; only
in the one in hand
it
will have no time to visit mediums: for it begins sinking down to the eighth
sphere
almost
immediately. "Then and there" in the eternity may be a mighty long
period. It
means
only that the monad having no Karmic body to guide its rebirth falls
into non-being
for
a certain period and then reincarnates -- certainly not earlier than a thousand
or
two
thousand years. No, it is not an "exceptional case." Save a few
exceptional cases in
the
case of the initiated such as our Teshu-Lamas and the Boddhisatwas and a few
others,
no
monad gets ever reincarnated before its appointed cycle.
(27)
"How does he toss into confusion." . . . If instead of doing to-day
something you
have
to do you put it off till the next day -- does not even this -- invisibly and
imperceptibly
at first, yet as forcibly -- throw into confusion many a thing, and in some
cases
even shuffle the destinies of millions of persons, for good, for evil, or
simply in
connection
with a change, -- may be unimportant in itself -- still a change? And do
you
mean
to say that such an unexpected, horrid murder has not influenced the destinies
of
millions?
(28)
Here we are, again. Verily ever since I had the folly of touching upon this
subject --
i.e.
of harnessing the cart before the horse -- my nights are bereft of their
hitherto
innocent
sleep! For Heaven's sake take into consideration the following facts and put
them
together, if you can. (1) The individual units of mankind remain 100 times
longer in
the
transitory spheres of effects than on the globes; (2) The few men of the
fifth Round do
not
beget children of the fifth but of your fourth Round. (3) That the
"obscurations" are
not
Pralayas, and that they last in a proportion of 1 to 10,
i.e., if a Ring or whatever we
call
it, the period during which the seven Root races have to develop and reach
their last
appearance
upon a globe during that Round -- lasts say 10 millions of years, (of
course it
lasts
far longer) then the "obscuration" will last no longer than one million.
When our
globe
having got rid of its last fourth Round men and a few, very few of the fifth,
goes to
sleep,
during the period of its rest the fifth Round men will be resting in their
devachans
and
Spiritual lokas -- far longer at any rate than the fourth Round
"angels" in theirs since
they
are far more perfect. A contradiction, and a "lapsus calami of
M." -- says Hume;
because
M. wrote something quite correct though he is no more infallible than I am and
might
have expressed himself, more than once, very carelessly.."I want to make
out how the next superior Round forms are evolved." My friend, try to
understand
that you are putting me questions pertaining to the highest initiations. That I
can
give you a general view, but that I dare not nor will I enter upon
details -- though I
would
if I could satisfy you. Do not you feel that it is one of the highest
mysteries than
which
there is no higher one?
(a)
"Dead" but to resurrect in greater glory. Is not what I say, plain?
(29)
Of course not, since it is not destroyed, but remains crystallized, so
to say -- statu
quo. At each Round
there are less and less animals -- the latter themselves evoluting into
higher
forms. During the first Round it is they that were the "kings of creation."
During
the
seventh men will have become Gods and animals -- intelligent beings.
Draw your
inferences.
Beginning with the second Round, already evolution proceeds on quite a
different
plan. Everything is evolved and has but to proceed on its cyclic journey and
get
perfected.
It is only the first Round that man becomes from a human being on Globe B. a
mineral,
a plant, an animal on Planet C. The method changes entirely from the second
Round;
but -- I have learned prudence with you; and will say nothing before the
time for
saying
it has come. And now, you had a volume; when will you digest it? Of how many
contradictions
will I have to be suspected before you understand the whole correctly?
Yours
nevertheless, and very sincerely,
K.
H.
FOOTNOTES:
1.
The letter in answer to yours, I believe, where you question me about C.C.M.,
S.M.
and
Mrs. K. (return to text)
2.
Dr. Phipson in 1867 and Cowper Ranyard in 1879 both urged the theory but it was
rejected
then. (return to text)
3.
Good gracious! had I forgotten in my hurry to add the last five words, would
not I have
caught
it as a charge of flat contradiction! (return
to text).The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 24b
[A]
At
this stage of our correspondence, misunderstood as we generally seem to be,
even by
yourself,
my faithful friend, it may be worth our while and useful for both, that you
should
be posted on certain facts -- and very important facts -- connected with adept-ship.
Bear
in mind then, the following points.
(1)
An adept -- the highest as the lowest -- is one only during the exercise of
his occult
powers.
(2)
Whenever these powers are needed, the sovereign will unlocks the door to the inner
man
(the adept,) who can emerge and act freely but on condition that his jailor --
the
outer man will be
either completely or partially paralyzed -- as the case may require; viz:
either
(a) mentally and physically; (b) mentally, -- but not physically; (c)
physically but
not
entirely mentally; (d) neither, -- but with an akasic film interposed between
the outer
and
the inner man.
(3)
The smallest exercise of occult powers then, as you will now see, requires an
effort.
We
may compare it to the inner muscular effort of an athlete preparing to use his
physical
strength.
As no athlete is likely to be always amusing himself at swelling his veins in
anticipation
of having to lift a weight, so no adept can be supposed to keep his will in
constant
tension and the inner man in full function, when there is no immediate
necessity
for
it. When the inner man rests the adept becomes an ordinary man, limited
to his
physical
senses and the functions of his physical brain. Habit sharpens the intuitions
of
the
latter, yet is unable to make them supersensuous. The inner adept is ever
ready, ever
on
the alert, and that suffices for our purposes. At moments of rest then, his
faculties are
at
rest also. When I sit at my meals, or when I am dressing, reading or otherwise
occupied
I
am not thinking even of those near me; and, Djual Khool can easily break his
nose to
blood,
by running in the dark against a beam, as he did the other night -- (just
because
instead
of throwing a "film" he had foolishly paralyzed all his outer senses
while talking
to
and with a distant friend) -- and I remained placidly ignorant of the fact. I
was not
thinking of him --
hence my ignorance.
From
the aforesaid, you may well infer, that an adept is an ordinary mortal, at all
the
moments
of his daily life but those -- when the inner man is acting.
Couple
this with the unpleasant fact that we are forbidden to use one particle of our
powers
in connexion with the Eclectics (for which you have to thank your
President and.him alone -- ) and that the little that is done, is, so to
say, smuggled in -- and then
syllogize
thusly: --
?? K.H. when writing to us is not an adept.
?? A non-adept -- is fallible.
?? Therefore, K.H. may very easily commit mistakes; --
Mistakes
of punctuation -- that will often change entirely the whole sense of a sentence;
idiomatic
mistakes -- very likely to occur especially when writing as hurriedly as I do;
mistakes
arising from occasional confusion of terms that I had to learn from you --
since
it
is you who are the author of "rounds" -- "rings" --
"earthly rings" -- etc. etc. Now with
all
this, I beg leave to say, that after having carefully read over and over our
"Famous
Contradictions"
myself; after giving them to be read to M.; and then to a high adept
whose
powers are not in the Chohan's chancery sequestered by Him to prevent
him from
squandering
them upon the unworthy objects of his personal predilections; after doing all
this
I was told by the latter the following: "It is all perfectly correct.
Knowing what you
mean,
no more than any other person acquainted with the doctrine, can I find in these
detached
fragments anything that would really conflict with each other. But, since many
sentences
are incomplete, and the subjects scattered about without any order, I do not
wonder
that your "lay chelas" should find fault with them. Yes; they do
require a more
explicit
and clear exposition."
Such
is the decree of an adept -- and I abide by it; I will try to complete
the information
for
your sake.
In
one and only case -- marked on your pages and my answers (I2A) and (12B),
the last --
is
the "plaintiff" entitled to a hearing, but not to a farthing even --
for damages; since, as
in
law, no one -- either plaintiff or defendant -- has a right to plead ignorance
of that law,
so
in Occult Sciences, the lay chelas ought to be forced to give the benefit of
the doubt to
their
gurus in cases, in which, owing to their great ignorance of that science they
are
likely
to misinterpret the meaning -- instead of accusing them point blank of
contradiction! Now I
beg to state, that, with regard to the two sentences -- marked
respectively
12A and 12B -- there is a plain contradiction but for those who are not
acquainted
with that tenet; you were not, and therefore I plead "guilty" of an
omission,
but
"not guilty" of a contradiction. And even as regards the former, that
omission is so
small
that, like the girl accused of infanticide, who when brought before the Judge
said in
her
excuse that the baby was so very very little that it was not worth his while
calling it a
"baby"
at all -- I could plead the same for my omission, had I not before my eyes your
terrible
definition of my "exercising ingenuity." Well, read the explanation
given in my
"Notes
and Answers" and judge.
By
the bye, my good Brother, I have not hitherto suspected in you such a capacity
for
defending
and excusing the inexcusable as exhibited by you in my defence, of
the now
famous
"exercise of ingenuity." If the article (reply to C. C. Massey) has
been written in
the
spirit you attribute to me in your letter; and if I, or any one of us has
"an inclination to
tolerate
subtler and more tricksy ways of pursuing an end" than
generally admitted as.honourable by the truth-loving, straight-forward European
(is Mr. Hume included in this
category?)
-- indeed you have no right to excuse such a mode of dealing, even in me;
nor
to
view it "merely in the nature of spots in the sun," since a spot is a
spot whether found
in
the bright luminary or upon a brass candlestick. But you are mistaken, my dear
friend.
There
was no subtle, no tricky mode of dealing, to get her out of the
difficulty created by
her
ambiguous style and ignorance of English, not her ignorance of the subject --
which
is
not the same thing and alters entirely the question. Nor was I ignorant of the
fact that
M.
had written to you previously upon the subject since it was in one of his
letters (the
last
but one before I took the business off his hands) in which he touched upon the
subject
of "races" for the first and spoke of reincarnations. If M. told you
to beware
trusting
Isis too implicitly, it was because he was teaching you truth and
fact -- and that
at
the time the passage was written we had not yet decided upon teaching the
public
indiscriminately.
He gave you several such instances -- if you will but re-read his letter --
adding
that were such and such sentences written in such a way they would explain
facts
now
merely hinted upon, far better.
Of
course "to C.C.M." the passage must seem wrong and contradictory for
it is
"misleading"
as M. said. Many are the subjects treated upon in Isis that even H.P.B.
was
not
allowed to become thoroughly acquainted with; yet they are not contradictory if
--
"misleading."
To make her say -- as she was made by me to say -- that the passage
criticized
was "incomplete, chaotic, vague . . . clumsy as many more passages in that
work"
was a sufficiently "frank admission" I should think, to satisfy the
most crotchetty
critic.
To admit "that the passage was wrong," on the other hand, would have
mounted to
a
timeless falsehood, for I maintain that it is not wrong; since if
it conceals the whole
truth,
it does not distort it in the fragments of that truth as given in Isis.
The point in
C.C.M.'s
complaining criticism was not that the whole truth had not been given, but that
the
truth and facts of 1877 were represented as errors and contradicted in 1882 and
it was
that
point -- damaging for the whole Society, its "lay" and inner chelas,
and for our
doctrine
-- that had to be shown under its true colours; namely that of an entire
misconception
due to the fact that the "septenary" doctrine had not yet been
divulged to
the
world at the time when Isis was written. And thus it was shown. I
am sorry you do not
find
her answer written under my direct inspiration "very
satisfactory," for it proves to
me
only that up to this you have not yet grasped very firmly the difference
between the
sixth
and seventh and the fifth, or the immortal and the astral or personal
"Monads --
Egos."
The suspicion is corroborated by what H -- X gives in his criticism of
my
explanation
at the end of his "letter" in the September number; your letter
before me
completing
the evidence thereupon. No doubt the "real Ego inheres in the
higher
principles
which are reincarnated" periodically every one, two, or three or more
thousands
of years. But the immortal Ego the "Individual Monad," is not
the personal
monad
which is the 5th; and the passage in Isis did not answer Eastern
reincarnationists --
who
maintain in that same Isis -- had you but read the whole of it -- that
the individuality
or
the immortal "Ego" has to re-appear in every cycle -- but
the Western especially the
French
reincarnationists, who teach that it is the personal, or astral monad,
the "moi
fluidique" the manas,
or the intellectual mind, the 5th principle in short, that is
reincarnated
each time. Thus, if you read once more C.C.M.'s quoted passage from Isis
against
the "Reviewer of the Perfect Way," you will perhaps find that H.P.B.
and myself.were perfectly right in maintaining that in the above passage only
the "astral monad" was
meant.
And, there is a far more "unsatisfactory shock" to my mind,
upon finding that you
refuse
to recognise in the astral monad the personal Ego -- whereas, all of us
call it most
undoubtedly
by that name, and have so called it for millenniums -- than there could ever
be
in yours when meeting with that monad under its proper name in E. Levi's
Fragment
on
Death!
The
"astral monad" is the "personal Ego," and therefore,
it never reincarnates, as the
French
Spirites, will have it, but under "exceptional circumstances;" in
which case,
reincarnating,
it does not become a shell but, if successful in its second reincarnation
will
become
one, and then gradually lose its personality, after being so to say emptied of
its
best
and highest spiritual attributes by the immortal monad or the "Spiritual
Ego," during
the
last and supreme struggle. The "jar of feeling" then ought to be on my
side, as indeed
it
only "seemed to be another illustration of the difference between
eastern and western
methods,"
but was not -- not in this case at any rate. I can readily understand,
my dear
friend,
that in the chilly condition you find yourself (mentally) in, you are prepared
to
bask even in the rays
of a funereal pile upon which a living sutti is being performed; but
why,
why call it a -- Sun, and excuse its spot -- the corpse?
The
letter addressed to me, which your delicacy would not permit you to read, was for
your perusal and sent
for that purpose. I wanted you to read it.
Your
suggestion concerning G.K.'s next trial in art -- is clever, but not
sufficiently, as to
conceal
the white threads of the Jesuitically black insinuation. G.K. was however
caught
at
it: Nous verrons, nous verrons! says the French song.
G.
Khool says -- presenting his most humble salaams -- that you have
"incorrectly
described
the course of events as regards the first portrait." What he says is this:
(1) the
day
she came" she did not ask you "to give her a piece of"
etc. (page 300) but after you
had
begun speaking to her of my portrait, which she doubted much whether you could
have.
It is but after half-an-hour's talk over it in the front drawing room -- you
two
forming
the two upper points of the triangle, near your office door, and your lady the
lower
one (he was there he says) that she told you she would try. It was then that
she
asked
you for "a piece of thick white paper" and that you gave her a
piece of a thin letter
paper,
which had been touched by some very anti-magnetic person. However he did, he
says,
the best he could. On the day following, as Mrs. S. had looked at it just 27 minutes
before
he did it, he accomplished his task. It was not "an hour or two
before" as you say
for
he had told the "O.L." to let her see it just before breakfast. After
breakfast, she asked
you
for a piece of Bristol board, and you gave her two pieces, both marked
and not one as
you
say. The first time she brought it out it was a failure, he says,
"with the eyebrow like
a
leech," and it was finished only during the evening, while you were at the
Club, at a
dinner
at which the old Upasika would not go. And it was he again G.K.
"great artist"
who
had to make away with the "leech," and to correct cap and
features, and who made it
"look
like Master" (he will insist giving me that name though he is no
longer my chela in
reality),
since M. after spoiling it would not go to the trouble of correcting it but
preferred
going
to sleep instead. And finally, he tells me, my making fun of the
portrait.notwithstanding, the likeness is good but would have been better had
M. sahib not
interfered
with it, and he, G.K. allowed to have his own "artistic" ways. Such
is his tale,
and
he therefore, is not satisfied with your description and so he said to Upasika
who told
you
something quite different. Now to my notes.
(1) (1)
Nor
do they fret me -- particularly. But as they furnish our mutual friend with a
good
handle
against us, which he is likely to use any day in that nasty way, so
pre-eminently
his
own, I rather explain them once more -- with your kind permission.
(2)
Of
course, of course; it is our usual way of getting out of difficulties. Having
been
"invented"
ourselves, we repay the inventors by inventing imaginary races. There are a
good
many things more we are charged with having invented. Well, well, well; there's
one
thing, at any rate, we can never be accused of inventing; and that is Mr.
Hume
himself. To invent his
like transcends the highest Siddhi powers we know of.
And
now good friend, before we proceed any further, pray read the appended No. [A].
It
is
time you should know us as we are. Only, to prove to you, if not
to him, that we have
not
invented those races, I will give out for your benefit that which has
never been given
out
before. I will explain to you a whole chapter out of Rhys Davids work on
Buddhism,
or
rather on Lamaism, which, in his natural ignorance he regards as a corruption
of
Buddhism!
Since those gentlemen -- the Orientalists -- presume to give to the world their
soi-disant translations
and commentaries on our sacred books, let the theosophists show
the
great ignorance of those "world" pundits, by giving the public the
right doctrines and
explanations
of what they would regard as an absurd, fancy theory.
(3)
And
because I admit the superficial or apparent inconsistency -- and even that in
the case
only
of one who is so thoroughly unacquainted with our doctrines as you are -- is
that a
reason
why they should be regarded as conflicting in reality? Suppose I had written in
a
previous
letter -- "the moon has no atmosphere" and then went on
talking of other things;
and
told you in another letter "for the moon has an atmosphere of its own
"etc.: no doubt
but
that I should stand under the charge of saying to-day black and
to-morrow white. But
where
could a Kabalist see in the two sentences a contradiction? I can assure you
that he
would
not. For, a Kabalist who knows that the moon has no atmosphere answering
in any
respect
to that of our earth, but one of its own, entirely different from that
your men of
science
would call one, knows also that like the Westerns we Easterns, and Occultists
especially,
have our own ways of expressing thought as plain to us in their implied
meaning
as yours are to yourselves. Take for instance into your head to teach your
Bearer
astronomy.
Tell him to-day -- "see, how gloriously the sun is setting -- see how
rapidly it
moves, how it rises
and sets etc.;" and to-morrow try to impress him with the fact that the
sun
is comparatively motionless and that it is but our earth that loses and then
again.catches sight of the sun in her diurnal motion; and ten to one, if your
pupil has any brains
in
his head, he will accuse you of flatly contradicting yourself. Would this be a
proof of
your
ignorance of the heliocentric system? And could you be accused with anything
like
justice
of "writing one thing to-day and denying it to-morrow," though your
sense of
fairness
should prompt you to admit that you "can easily understand" the
accusation.
Writing
my letters, then, as I do, a few lines now and a few words two hours later;
having
to
catch up the thread of the same subject, perhaps with a dozen or more
interruptions
between
the beginning and the end, I cannot promise you anything like western accuracy.
Ergo -- the only
"victim of accident" in this case is myself. The innocent cross
examination
to which I am subjected by you -- and that I do not object to -- and the
positively
pre-determined purpose of catching me tripping whenever he can, on Mr.
Hume's
part, -- a proceeding regarded as highly legal and honest in western law, but
to
which
we, Asiatic savages, object most emphatically -- has given my colleagues
and
Brothers
a high opinion of my proclivities to martyrdom. In their sight I have become a
kind
of Indo-Tibetan Simon Stylites. Caught by the lower hook of the Simla
interrogation
mark
and impaled on it, I see myself doomed to equilibrize upon the apex of the
semicircle
for fear of slipping down at every uncertain motion either backward or
forward.
-- Such is the present position of your humble friend. Ever since I undertook
the
extraordinary
task of teaching two grown up pupils with brains in which the methods of
western
science had crystallized for years; one of whom is willing enough to make room
for
the new iconoclastic teaching, but who, nevertheless, requires a careful
handling
while
the other will receive nothing but on condition of grouping the subjects as he
wants
them to group, not in
their natural order -- I have been regarded by all our Chohans as a
lunatic.
I am seriously asked whether my early association with Western
"Pelings" had
not
made of me a half-Peling and turned me also into a "dzing-dzing"
visionary. All this
had
been expected. I do not complain; I narrate a fact, and humbly demand credit
for the
same,
only hoping it will not be mistaken again for a subtle and tricky way of
getting out
of
a new difficulty.
(5)
Every
just disembodied four-fold entity -- whether it died a natural or
violent death, from
suicide
or accident, mentally sane or insane, young or old, good, bad, or indifferent
--
loses
at the instant of death all recollection, it is mentally -- annihilated;
it sleeps it's
akasic
sleep in the Kama-loka. This state lasts from a few hours, (rarely less) days,
weeks,
months -- sometimes to several years. All this according to the entity, to its
mental
status
at the moment of death, to the character of its death, etc. That remembrance
will
return
slowly and gradually toward the end of the gestation (to the entity or Ego),
still
more
slowly but far more imperfectly and incompletely to the shell,
and fully to the Ego
at
the moment of its entrance into the Devachan. And now the latter being a state
determined
and brought by its past life, the Ego does not fall headlong but sinks into it
gradually
and by easy stages. With the first dawn of that state appears that life (or
rather
is once more lived over by
the Ego) from its first day of consciousness to its last. From
the
most important down to the most trifling event, all are marshalled before the
spiritual
eye
of the Ego; only, unlike the events of real life, those of them remain only
that are.chosen by the new liver (pardon the word) clinging to certain
scenes and actors, these
remain
permanently -- while all the others fade away to disappear for ever, or
to return to
their
creator -- the shell. Now try to understand this highly important,
because so highly
just
and retributive law, in its effects. Out of the resurrected Past nothing remains
but
what
the Ego has felt spiritually -- that was evolved by and through, and
lived over by his
spiritual
faculties -- they be love or hatred. All that I am now trying to
describe is in truth
--
indescribable. As no two men, not even two photographs of the same person, nor
yet
two
leaves resemble line for line each other, so no two states in Deva-Chan are
like.
Unless
he be an adept, who can realize such a state in his periodical Deva-chan
-- how
can
one be expected to form a correct picture of the same?
(6)
Therefore,
there is no contradiction in saying, that the ego once reborn in the Devachan,
"retains
for a certain time proportionate to its earth life a complete recollection of
his
(Spiritual)
life on earth." Here again the omission of the word "Spiritual"
alone, produced
a
misunderstanding!
(7)
All
those that do not slip down into the 8th sphere -- go to the Devachan.
Where's the
point
made or the contradiction?
(8)
The
Devachan State, I repeat, can be as little described or explained, by
giving a however
minute
and graphic description of the state of one ego taken at random, as all the
human
lives
collectively could be described by the "Life of Napoleon" or that of
any other man.
There
are millions of various states of happiness and misery, emotional states
having
their
source in the physical as well as the spiritual faculties and
senses, and only the latter
surviving.
An honest labourer will feel differently from an honest millionaire. Miss
Nightingale's
state will differ considerably from that of a young bride who dies
before the
consummation
of what she regards as happiness. The two former love their families; the
philanthropist
-- humanity; the girl centres the whole world in her future husband; the
melomanic knows of no higher
state of bliss and happiness than music -- the most divine
and
spiritual of arts. The devachan merges from its highest into its lowest
degree -- by
insensible
gradations; while from the last step of devachan, the Ego will often
find itself
in
Avitcha's faintest state, which, towards the end of the "spiritual
selection" of events
may
become a bona fide "Avitcha." Remember, every feeling is
relative. There is neither
good nor evil, happiness
nor misery per se. The transcendent, evanescent bliss of an
adulterer, who by his
act murders the happiness of a husband, is no less spiritually born
for
its criminal nature. If a remorse of conscience (the latter proceeding
always from the
Sixth Principle) has only
once been felt during the period of bliss and really spiritual
love,
born in the sixth and fifth, however polluted by the desires of the fourth, or
Kamarupa, -- then this
remorse must survive and will accompany incessantly the scenes
of pure love. I need
not enter into details, since a physiological expert, as I take you to be,.need
hardly have his imagination and intuitions prompted by a psychological observer
of
my
sort. Search in the depths of your conscience and memory, and try to see what
are the
scenes
that are likely to take their firm hold upon you; when once more in their
presence
you
find yourself living them over again; and that, ensnared, you will have
forgotten all
the
rest -- this letter among other things, since in the course of events it will
come far
later
on in the panorama of your resurrected life. I have no right to look
into your past
life.
Whenever
I may have caught glimpses of it, I have invariably turned my eyes away, for I
have
to deal with the present A. P. Sinnett -- (also and by far more "a
new invention"
than
the ex A.P.S.) -- not with the ancient man.
Yes;
Love and Hatred are the only immortal feelings; but the
gradations of tones along
the
seven by seven scales of the whole key-board of life, are numberless. And,
since it is
those
two feelings -- (or, to be correct, shall I risk being misunderstood again and
say
those
two poles of man's "Soul" which is a unity?) -- that mould the future
state of man,
whether
for devachan or Avitcha then the variety of such states must also
be
inexhaustible.
And this brings us to your complaint or charge, number --
(9)
--
for, having eliminated from your past life the Ratigans and Reeds who with you
have
never
transcended beyond the boundaries of the lower portion of your fifth principle
with
its
vehicle -- the kama -- what is it but the "partial
remembrance" of a life? The lines
marked
with your reddest pencil are also disposed of. For how can you dispute
the fact
that
music and harmony are for a Wagner, a Paganini, the King of Bavaria and so many
other
true artists and melomans, an object of the profoundest spiritual love
and
veneration?
With your permission I will not change one word in clause 9.
(10)
Pity
you have not followed your quotations with personal commentaries. I fail to
comprehend
in what respect you object to the word "dream"? Of course both bliss
and
misery
are but a dream; and as they are purely spiritual they are
"intensified."
(11)
Answered.
(12A & 12B)
Had
I but written, -- when answering Mr. Hume's objections, who after statistical
calculations
made with the evident intention of crushing our teaching, maintained
that
after
all spiritualists were right and the majority of seance rooms spooks were "Spirits"
--
"In
no case then, with the exception of suicides and shells" -- and those
accidents who die
full of some engrossing earthly passion -- is there any possibility for any other, etc.,
etc.".I would have been perfectly right and pucka as a
"professor"? To think that, eager as you
are
to accept doctrines that contradict in some most important points physical
science
from
first to last -- you should have consented at Mr. Hume's suggestion to split
hairs
over
a simple omission! My dear friend, permit me to remark that simple common sense
ought
to have whispered you that one who says one day: "in no case then
etc.:" and a few
days
later denies having ever pronounced the word never -- is not only no
adept but must
be
either suffering from softening of the brain or some other
"accident." "On margin I
said
rarely but I have not pronounced the word never -- refers to the margin
of the proof
of
your letter N. II; that margin -- or rather to avoid a fresh accusation -- the
piece of
paper
I had written upon some remarks referring to the subject and glued to the margin
of
your
proof -- you have cut out as well as the four lines of poetry. Why you have
done so
is
known better to yourself. But the word never refers to that margin.
To
one sin though I do, plead "guilty." That sin, was a very
acute feeling of irritation
against
Mr. Hume upon receiving his triumphant statistical letter; the answer to which
you
found incorporated in yours when I wrote for you the materials for your answer
to
Mr.
Khandallawala's letter that you had sent back to H.P.B. Had I not been irritated
I
would
not have become guilty of the omission, perhaps. This now is my Karma. I
had no
business
to feel irritated, or lose my temper; but that letter of his was I believe the
seventh
or
the eighth of that kind received by me during that fortnight. And I must say,
that our
friend
has the most knavish way of using his intellect in raising the most unexpected
sophisms
to tickle people's nerves with, that I have ever known! Under the pretext of
strict
logical reasoning, he will perform feigned thrusts at his antagonist --
whenever
unable
to find a vulnerable spot, and then, caught and exposed, he will answer in the
most
innocent
way: "Why, it is for your own good, and you ought to feel grateful! If I
were an
adept
I would always know what my correspondent really meant," etc. etc.
Being an
"adept"
in some small matters I do know what he really means; and that his
meaning
amounts
to this: were we to divulge to him the whole of our philosophy leaving no
inconsistency unexplained,
it would still do no good, whatever. For, as in the observation
embodied
in the Hudibrasian couplet:
"These
fleas have other fleas to bite 'em,
And
these -- their fleas ad infinitum . . . ."
--
so with his objections and arguments. Explain him one, and he will find a flaw
in the
explanation;
satisfy him by showing that the latter was after all correct, and he will fly
at
the
opponent for speaking too slow or too rapidly. It is an IMPOSSIBLE task -- and
I
give
it up. Let it last until the whole breaks under its own weight. He says "I
can kiss no
Pope's
toe," forgetting that no one has ever asked him to do so; "I can
love, but I cannot
worship"
he tells me. Gush -- he can love no one, and nobody but A. O.
Hume, and never
has.
And that really, one could almost exclaim "Oh Hume, -- gush is thy
name!" -- is
shown
in the following that I transcribe from one of his letters: "If for no
other reason, I
should
love M. for his entire devotion to you -- and you I have always loved (!).
Even
when
most cross with you -- as one always is most sensitive with those one cares
most
about
-- even when I was fully persuaded you were a myth, for even then my
heart.yearned to you as it often does to an avowedly fictitious character."
A sentimental Becky
Sharp
writing to an imaginary lover, could hardly express her feelings better!
I
will see to your scientific questions next week. I am not at home at present,
but quite
near
to Darjeeling, in the Lamasery, the object of poor H.P.B.'s longings. I thought
of
leaving
by the end of September but find it rather difficult on account of Nobin's boy.
Most
probably, also I will have to interview in my own skin the Old Lady if M.
brings
her
here. And -- he has to bring her -- or lose her for ever -- at least, as far as
the physical
triad
is concerned. And now good-bye, I ask you again -- do not frighten my little
man;
he
may prove useful to you some day -- only do not forget -- he is but an
appearance.
Yours,
K.
H.
FOOTNOTE:
1.
K.H.'s replies to the "Famous Contradictions"; the numbers correspond
to those which
appear
in the text of Mr. Sinnett's Queries. See ante Letter 24a. -- ED. (return to text).The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
--------------------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales--------------------
Letter No. 25
Devachan
Notes Latest Additions. Received
ANSWERS
TO QUERIES
(1)
Why should it be supposed that devachan is a monotonous condition only
because
some
one moment of earthly sensation is indefinitely perpetuated -- stretched, so to
say,
throughout
aeons? It is not, it cannot be so. This would be contrary to all
analogies and
antagonistic
to the law of effects under which results are proportioned to antecedent
energies.
To make it clear you must keep in mind that there are two fields of causal
manifestation,
to wit: the objective and subjective. So the grosser energies, those which
operate
in the heavier or denser conditions of matter manifest objectively in physical
life,
their
outcome being the new personality of each birth included within the grand cycle
of
the
evoluting individuality. The moral and spiritual activities find their sphere
of effects
in
"devachan." For example: the vices, physical attractions, etc. --
say, of a philosopher
may
result in the birth of a new philosopher, a king, a merchant, a rich Epicurean,
or any
other
personality whose make-up was inevitable from the preponderating proclivities
of
the
being in the next preceding birth. Bacon, for inst: whom a poet called --
"The
greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind" --
might
reappear in his next incarnation as a greedy money-getter, with extraordinary
intellectual
capacities. But the moral and spiritual qualities of the previous Bacon would
also
have to find a field in which their energies could expand themselves. Devachan
is
such
field. Hence -- all the great plans of moral reform of intellectual and
spiritual
research
into abstract principles of nature, all the divine aspirations, would, in
devachan
come
to fruition, and the abstract entity previously known as the great Chancellor
would
occupy
itself in this inner world of its own preparation, living, if not quite what
one
would
call a conscious existence, at least a dream of such realistic vividness
that none of
the
life-realities could ever match it. And this "dream" lasts -- until
Karma is satisfied in
that
direction, the ripple of force reaches the edge of its cyclic basin, and the
being moves
into
the next area of causes. This, it may find in the same world as before, or
another,
according
to his or her stage of progression through the necessary rings and rounds of
human
development.
Then
-- how can you think that "but one moment of earthly sensation only is
selected for
perpetuation"?
Very true, that "moment" lasts from the first to last; but then it
lasts but as
the
key-note of the whole harmony, a definite tone of appreciable pitch, around
which
cluster
and develop in progressive variations of melody and as endless variations on
a.theme, all the aspirations, desires, hopes, dreams, which, in connection with
that
particular
"moment" had ever crossed the dreamer's brain during his
life-time, without
having
ever found their realization on earth, and which he now finds fully realized in
all
their
vividness in devachan, without ever suspecting that all that blissful reality
is but the
progeny
begotten by his own fancy, the effects of the mental causes produced by
himself.
That
particular one moment which will be most intense and uppermost in the
thoughts of
his
dying brain at the time of dissolution will of course regulate all the other
"moments";
still
the latter -- minor and less vivid though they be -- will be there also, having
their
appointed
plan in this phantasmagoric marshalling of past dreams, and must give variety
to
the whole. No man on earth, but has some decided predilection if not a
domineering
passion;
no person, however humble and poor -- and often because of all that -- but
indulges
in dreams and desires unsatisfied though these be. Is this monotony? Would you
call
such variations ad infinitum on the one theme, and that theme modelling
itself, on,
and
taking colour and its definite shape from, that group of desires which was the
most
intense
during life "a blank destitution of all knowledge in the devachanic
mind" --
seeming
"in a measure ignoble"? Then verily, either you have failed,
as you say, to take
in
my meaning, or it is I who am to blame. I must have sorely failed to convey the
right
meaning,
and have to confess my inability to describe the -- indescribable. The
latter is a
difficult
task, good friend. Unless the intuitive perceptions of a trained chela come to
the
rescue,
no amount of description -- however graphic -- will help. Indeed, -- no adequate
words
to express the difference between a state of mind on earth, and one outside of
its
sphere
of action; no English terms in existence, equivalent to ours; nothing --
but
unavoidable
(as due to early Western education) preconceptions, hence -- lines of thought
in
a wrong direction in the learner's mind to help us in this inoculation of
entirely new
thoughts!
You are right. Not only "ordinary people" -- your readers -- but even
such
idealists
and highly intellectual units as Mr. C. C. M. will fail, I am afraid, to seize
the
true
idea, will never fathom it to its very depths. Perhaps, you may some
day, realize
better
than you do now, one of the chief reasons for our unwillingness to impart our
Knowledge
to European candidates. Only read Mr. Roden Noel's disquisitions and
diatribes
in Light! Indeed, indeed, you ought to have answered them as advised by
me
through
H.P.B. Your silence is a brief triumph to the pious gentleman, and seems like a
desertion of poor Mr.
Massey.
"A
man in the way to learn something of the mysteries of nature seems in a higher
state
of
existence to begin with on earth than that which nature apparently provides for
him as
a
reward for his best deeds."
Perhaps
"apparently" -- not so in reality. When the modus operandus
of nature is
correctly
understood. Then that other misconception: "The more merit, the longer
period
of
devachan. But then in Devachan . . . all sense of the lapse of time is lost: a
minute is as
a
thousand years . . . a quoi bon then, etc."
This
remark and such ways of looking at things might as well apply to the whole of
Eternity,
to Nirvana, Pralaya, and what not. Say, at once that the whole system of being,
of
existence separate and collective, of nature objective and subjective are but
idiotic,
aimless
facts, a gigantic fraud of that nature, which meeting with little sympathy
with.Western philosophy, has, moreover, the cruel disapprobation of the best
"lay-chela." A
quoi bon, in such a
case, this preaching of our doctrines, all this uphill work and
swimming
in adversum flumen? Why should the West be so anxious then to learn
anything
from the East, since it is evidently unable to digest that which can never meet
the
requirements of the special tastes of its Esthetics. Sorry outlook for us,
since even you
fail
to take in the whole magnitude of our philosophy, or to even embrace at one
scope a
small
corner -- the devachan -- of those sublime and infinite horizons of "after
life." I do
not
want to discourage you. I would only draw your attention to the formidable
difficulties
encountered by us in every attempt we make to explain our metaphysics to
Western
minds, even among the most intelligent. Alas, my friend, you seem as unable to
assimilate
our mode of thinking, as to digest our food, or enjoy our melodies!
No;
there are no clocks, no timepieces in devachan, my esteemed chela, though the
whole
Cosmos
is a gigantic chronometer in one sense. Nor do we, mortals, -- ici bas meme --
take
much, if any, cognizance of time during periods of happiness and bliss,
and find
them
ever too short; a fact that does not in the least prevent us from enjoying that
happiness
all the same -- when it does come. Have you ever given a thought to this little
possibility
that, perhaps, it is because their cup of bliss is full to its brim, that the
"devachanee"
loses "all sense of the lapse of time" and that it is something that
those who
land
in Avitchi do not, though as much as the devachanee, the Avitchee
has no cognizance
of
time -- i.e., of our earthly calculations of periods of time? I may also remind
you in
this
connection that time is something created entirely by ourselves; that
while one short
second
of intense agony may appear, even on earth, as an eternity to one man, to
another,
more
fortunate, hours, days, and sometimes whole years may seem to flit like one
brief
moment;
and that finally, of all the sentient and conscious beings on earth, man is the
only
animal that takes any cognizance of time, although it makes him neither happier
nor
wiser.
How then, can I explain to you that which you cannot feel, since you
seem unable
to
comprehend it? Finite similes are unfit to express the abstract and the
infinite; nor can
the
objective ever mirror the subjective. To realize the bliss in devachan, or
the woes in
Avitchi, you have to
assimilate them -- as we do. Western critical idealism (as shown in
Mr.
Roden Noel's attacks) has still to learn the difference that exists between the
real
being of
super-sensible objects, and the shadowy subjectivity of the ideas it has
reduced
them
to. Time is not a predicate conception and can, therefore, neither be
proved nor
analysed,
according to the methods of superficial philosophy. And, unless we learn to
counteract
the negative results of that method of drawing our conclusions agreeably to
the
teachings of the so-called "system of pure reason," and to
distinguish between the
matter
and the form of our knowledge of sensible objects, we can never arrive at
correct,
definite
conclusions. The case in hand, as defended by me against your (very natural)
misconception
is a good proof of the shallowness and even fallacy of that "system of
pure
(materialistic)
reason." Space and time may be -- as Kant has it -- not the product but
the
regulators
of the sensations, but only so far, as our sensations on earth are
concerned, not
those
in devachan. There we do not find the a priori ideas of those
"space and time"
controlling
the perceptions of the denizen of devachan in respect to the objects of his
sense;
but, on the contrary, we discover that it is the devachanee himself who
absolutely
creates
both and annihilates them at the same time. Thus, the "after states"
so called, can
never
be correctly judged by practical reason since the latter can have active being
only
in
the sphere of final causes or ends, and can hardly be regarded with Kant
(with whom it
means
on one page reason and on the next -- will) as the highest spiritual power in
man,
having
for its sphere that WILL. The above is not dragged in -- as you may think --
for
the
sake of an (too far stretched, perhaps) argument, but with an eye to a future
discussion
"at
home," as you express it, with students and admirers of Kant and Plato
that you will
have
to encounter.
In
a plainer language, I will now tell you the following, and, it will be no fault
of mine if
you
still fail to comprehend its full meaning. As physical existence has its
cumulative
intensity
from infancy to prime, and its diminishing energy thenceforward to dotage and
death,
so the dream-life of devachan is lived correspondentially. Hence you are right
in
saying
that the "Soul" can never awake to its mistake and find itself
"cheated by nature" --
the
more so, as strictly speaking, the whole of the human life and its boasted
realities,
are
no better than such "cheating." But you are wrong in pandering to the
prejudices and
preconceptions
of the Western readers (no Asiatic will ever agree with you upon this
point)
when you add that "there is a sense of unreality about the whole
affair which is
painful
to the mind," since you are the first one to feel that, it is no doubt due
much more
to
"an imperfect grasp of the nature of the existence" in devachan --
than to any defect in
our
system. Hence -- my orders to a chela to reproduce in an Appendix to your
article
extracts
from this letter and explanations calculated to disabuse the reader, and to
obliterate,
as far as possible, the painful impression this confession of yours is sure to
produce
on him. The whole paragraph is dangerous. I do not feel myself justified in
crossing
it out, since it is evidently the expression of your real feelings, kindly,
though --
pardon
me for saying so -- a little clumsily white-washed with an apparent defence of
this
(to
your mind) weak point of the system. But it is not so, believe me. Nature
cheats no
more
the devachanee than she does the living, physical man. Nature provides
for him far
more
real bliss and happiness there, than she does here, where
all the conditions of evil
and
chance are against him, and his inherent helplessness -- that of a straw
violently
blown
hither and thither by every remorseless wind -- has made unalloyed happiness on
this
earth an utter impossibility for the human being, whatever his chances and
condition
may
be. Rather call this life an ugly, horrid nightmare, and you will be right. To
call the
devachan
existence a "dream" in any other sense but that of a conventional
term, well
suited
to our languages all full of misnomers -- is to renounce for ever the knowledge
of
the
esoteric doctrine -- the sole custodian of truth. Let me then try once more to
explain to
you
a few of the many states in Devachan and -- Avitchi.
As
in actual earth-life, so there is for the Ego in devachan -- the first flutter
of psychic
life,
the attainment of prime, the gradual exhaustion of force passing into
semi-unconsciousness,
gradual
oblivion and lethargy, total oblivion and -- not death but birth:
birth
into another personality, and the resumption of action which daily begets new
congeries
of causes, that must be worked out in another term of Devachan, and still
another
physical rebirth as a new personality. What the lives in devachan and
upon Earth
shall
be respectively in each instance is determined by Karma. And this weary round
of
birth
upon birth must be ever and ever run through, until the being reaches the end
of the
seventh
round, or -- attains in the interim the wisdom of an Arhat, then that of a
Buddha.
and
thus gets relieved for a round or two, -- having learned how to burst through
the
vicious
circles -- and to pass periodically into the Paranirvana.
But
suppose it is not a question of a Bacon, a Goethe, a Shelley, a Howard, but of
some
hum-drum
person, some colourless, flaxless personality, who never impinged upon the
world
enough to make himself felt: what then? Simply that his devachanic state is as
colourless
and feeble as was his personality. How could it be otherwise since cause and
effect
are equal. But suppose a case of a monster of wickedness, sensuality, ambition,
avarice,
pride, deceit, etc.: but who nevertheless has a germ or germs of something
better,
flashes
of a more divine nature -- where is he to go? The said spark smouldering under
a
heap
of dirt will counteract, nevertheless, the attraction of the eighth sphere,
whither fall
but
absolute nonentities; "failures of nature" to be remodelled
entirely, whose divine
monad
separated itself from the five principles during their life-time, (whether in
the next
preceding
or several preceding births, since such cases are also on our records), and who
have
lived as soulless human beings. (1) These persons whose sixth principle has left
them
(while the seventh having lost its vahan (or vehicle) can exist independently
no
longer)
their fifth or animal Soul of course goes down "the bottomless pit."
This will
perhaps
make Eliphas Levi's hints still more clear to you, if you read over what he
says,
and
my remarks on the margin thereon (see Theosophist, October, 1881,
Article "Death")
and
reflect upon the words used: such as drones, etc. Well, the first named
entity then,
cannot,
with all its wickedness go to the eighth sphere -- since his wickedness is
of a too
spiritual, refined nature.
He is a monster -- not a mere Soulless brute. He must not be
simply
annihilated but PUNISHED; for, annihilation, i.e. total oblivion, and
the fact of
being
snuffed out of conscious existence, constitutes per se no
punishment, and as
Voltaire
expressed it: "le neant ne laisse pas d'avoir du bon." Here is
no taper-glimmer to
be
puffed out by a zephyr, but a strong, positive, maleficent energy, fed and
developed by
circumstances,
some of which may have really been beyond his control. There must be
for
such a nature a state corresponding to Devachan, and this is found in Avitchi
-- the
perfect
antithesis of devachan -- vulgarized by the Western nations into Hell
and Heaven,
and
which you have entirely lost sight of in your "Fragment." Remember:
"To be
immortal
in good one must identify himself with Good (or God); to be immortal in evil --
with
evil (or Satan)." Misconceptions of the true value of such terms as
"Spirit," "Soul,"
"individuality,"
"personality," and "immortality" (especially) -- provoke
wordy wars
between
a great number of idealistic debaters, besides Messrs. C.C.M. and Roden Noel.
And,
to complete your Fragment without risking to fall again under the mangling
tooth of
the
latter honourable gentleman's criticism -- I found it necessary to add to
devachan --
Avitchi
as its complement and applying to it the same laws as to the former. This is
done,
with
your permission, in the Appendix.
Having
explained the situation sufficiently I may now answer your query No. 1
directly.
Yes,
certainly there is "a change of occupation," a continual
change in Devachan, just as
much
-- and far more -- as there is in the life of any man or woman who happens to
follow
his or her whole life one sole occupation whatever it may be; with that
difference,
that
to the Devachanee his special occupation is always pleasant and fills his
life with
rapture.
Change then there must be, for that dream-life is but the fruition, the
harvest-time
of
those psychic seed-germs dropped from the tree of physical existence in our
moments.
of
dreams and hopes, fancy-glimpses of bliss and happiness stifled in an
ungrateful social
soil,
blooming in the rosy dawn of Devachan, and ripening under its ever fructifying
sky.
No
failures there, no disappointments! If man had but one single
moment of ideal
happiness
and experience during his life -- as you think -- even then, if Devachan
exists, --
it
could not be as you erroneously suppose, the indefinite prolongation of that
"single
moment,"
but the infinite developments, the various incidents and events, based upon,
and
outflowing from, that one "single moment" or moments, as the case may
be; all in
short
that would suggest itself to the "dreamer's" fancy. That one note, as
I said, struck
from
the lyre of life, would form but the Key-note of the being's subjective state,
and
work
out into numberless harmonic tones and semi-tones of psychic phantasmagoria.
There
-- all unrealized hopes, aspirations, dreams, become fully realized, and the dreams
of
the objective become the realities of the subjective existence. And
there behind the
curtain
of Maya its vapours and deceptive appearances are perceived by the adept, who
has
learnt the great secret how to penetrate thus deeply into the Arcana of being.
Doubtless
my question whether you had experienced monotony during what you consider
the
happiest moment of your life has entirely misled you. This letter thus, is the
just
penance
for my laziness to amplify the explanation.
Query
(2) What cycle is meant?
The
"minor cycle" meant is, of course, the completion of the seventh Round,
as decided
upon
and explained. Besides that at the end of each of the seven rounds come a less
"full"
remembrance;
only of the devachanic experiences taking place between the numerous
births
at the end of each personal life. But the complete recollection of all
the lives --
(earthly
and devachanic) omniscience -- in short -- comes but at the great end of
the full
seven
Rounds (unless one had become in the interim a Bodhisatwa, an Arhat) -- the
"threshold"
of Nirvana meaning an indefinite period. Naturally a man, a Seventh-rounder
(who
completes his earthly migrations at the beginning of the last race and ring)
will have
to
wait longer at that threshold than one of the very last of those Rounds. That Life
of the
Elect
between the minor Pralaya and Nirvana -- or rather before the Pralaya is
the Great
Reward,
the grandest, in fact, since it makes of the Ego (though he may never have been
an
adept, but simply a worthy virtuous man in most of his existences) --
virtually a God,
an
omniscient, conscious being, a candidate -- for eternities of aeons -- for a
Dhyan
Chohan
. . . Enough -- I am betraying the mysteries of initiation. But what has
NIRVANA
to do with the recollections of objective existences? That is a state still
higher
and
in which all things objective are forgotten. It is a State of absolute Rest and
assimilation
with Parabrahm -- it is Parabrahm itself. Oh, for the sad ignorance of our
philosophical
truths in the West, and for the inability of your greatest intellects to seize
the
true spirit of those teachings. What shall we -- what can we do!
Query
(3) You postulate an intercourse of entities in devachan which applies only to
the
mutual
relationship of physical existence. Two sympathetic souls will each work out
its
own
devachanic sensations making the other a sharer in its subjective bliss, but
yet each
is
dissociated from the other as regards actual mutual intercourse. For
what.companionship
could
there be between two subjective entities which are not even as
material
as that ethereal body-shadow -- the Mayavi-rupa?
Query 4. Deva Chan is
a state, not a locality. Rupa Loka, Arupa-Loka, and Kama-Loka
are
the three spheres of ascending spirituality in which the several groups of
subjective
entities
find their attractions. In the Kama-Loka (semi-physical sphere) dwell the
shells,
the
victims and suicides; and this sphere is divided into innumerable regions and
sub-regions
corresponding
to the mental states of the comers at their hour of death. This is the
glorious
"Summer-land" of the Spiritualists, to whose horizons is limited the
vision of
their
best seers -- vision imperfect and deceptive because untrained and non-guided
by
Alaya Vynyana (hidden
knowledge). Who in the West knows anything of true Sahalo-Kadhatu,
the
mysterious Chiliocosm out of the many regions of which but three can be
given
out to the outside world, the Tribuvana (three worlds) namely: Kama,
Rupa, and
Arupa-Lokas.
Yet see the sadness produced in the Western minds by the mention of even
those
three! See "Light" of January 6th!
Behold
your friend (M. A. Oxon) notifying the world of his readers that on your
assumption
in your "Secret doctrine" -- "no graver indictment could be
brought against
any
man by his bitterest foe" than the one you bring against us -- "these
mysterious
unknown."
It is not such bitter criticisms that are likely to draw out more of our
knowledge,
or to make the "unknown" more known. And then, the pleasure of
teaching a
public
one of whose great authorities (Roden Noel) says a few pages further on, that,
theosophists
are endowing "shells" with simulated consciousness. See the
difference one
word
will make. If the word "assimilated" instead of "simulated"
had been written the
true
idea would have been conveyed that the shells' consciousness is assimilated from
the
medium
and living persons present, whereas now ----! But of course, it is not our
European
critics, but our Asiatic chelas' expositions that "seem absolutely Protean
in their
ever
shifting variety." The man has to be answered and set right anyhow,
whether by
yourself
or Mr. Massey. But alas! the latter knows but little, and you, -- you look at
our
conception
of devachan with more than "discomfort"! But to resume.
From
Kama Loka then in the great Chiliocosm, -- once awakened from their post-mortem
torpor,
the newly translated "Souls" go all (but the shells) according
to their attractions,
either
to Devachan or Avitchi. And those two states are again differentiating ad
infinitum
--
their ascending degrees of spirituality deriving their names from the lokas in
which
they
are induced. For instance: the sensations, perceptions and ideation of a devachanee
in
Rupa-Loka, will, of course, be of a less subjective nature than they
would be in Arupa-Loka,
in
both of which the devachanic experiences will vary in their presentation to the
subject-entity,
not only as regards form, colour, and substance, but also in their formative
potentialities.
But not even the most exalted experience of a monad in the highest
devachanic
state in Arupa-Loka (the last of the seven states) -- is comparable to that
perfectly
subjective condition of pure spirituality from which the monad emerged to
"descend
into matter," and to which at the completion of the grand cycle it must
return.
Nor
is Nirvana itself comparable to
after
the struggle in Kama-Loka at the door of
devachan,
and only after the "gestation period." Please turn to my
responses upon the
subject
in your "Famous contradictions."
Query 6. Your
deductions as to the indefinite prolongation in Devachan of some one
moment
of earthly bliss having been unwarranted, your question in the last paragraph
of
this
interrogatory need not be considered. The stay in Devachan is proportioned to
the
unfinished
psychic impulses originating in earth-life: those persons whose attractions
were
preponderatingly material will sooner be drawn back into rebirth by the force
of
Tanha. As our London
opponent truly remarks: these subjects (metaphysical) are only
partly
for understanding. A higher faculty belonging to the higher life must see, --
and it
is
truly impossible to force it upon one's understanding -- merely in words. One
must see
with
his spiritual eye, hear with his Dharmakayic ear, feel with the sensations of
his
Ashta-vijnytana (spiritual
"I") before he can comprehend this doctrine fully; otherwise it
may
but increase one's "discomfort," and add to his knowledge very
little.
Query 7. The
"reward provided by nature for men who are benevolent in a large,
systematic
way" and who have not focussed their affections upon an individual or
speciality,
is that -- if pure -- they pass the quicker for that through the Kama and Rupa
Lokas
into the higher sphere of Tribuvana, since it is one where the
formulation of
abstract
ideas and the consideration of general principles fill the thought of its
occupants.
Personality
is the synonym for limitation, and the more contracted the person's ideas, the
closer
will he cling to the lower spheres of being, the longer loiter on the plane of
selfish
social
intercourse. The social status of a being is, of course, a result of Karma; the
law
being
that "like attracts like." The renascent being is drawn into the
gestative current with
which
the preponderating attractions coming over from the last birth make him
assimilate.
Thus one who died a ryot may be reborn a king, and the dead sovereign may
next
see the light in a coolie's tent. This law of attraction asserts itself in a
thousand
"accidents
of birth" -- than which there could be no more flagrant misnomer. When
you,
realize,
at least, the following -- that the skandas are the elements of limited
existence
then
will you have realized also one of the conditions of Devachan which has now
such a
profoundly
unsatisfactory outlook for you. Nor are your inferences (as regards the
well-being
and
enjoyment of the upper classes being due to a better Karma) quite correct in
their
general application. They have a eud[[ae together]]aemonistic ring about them
which
is hardly reconcilable with Karmic Law, since those "well-being and
enjoyment"
are
oftener the causes of a new and overloaded Karma than the production or effects
of
the
latter. Even as a "broad rule" poverty and humble condition in life
are less a cause of
sorrow
than wealth and high birth, but of that -- later on. My answers are once more
assuming
the shape of a volume rather than the decent aspect of a letter. "Writing
a new
book,
or for the Theosophist?" Well do you not think that (since your
desire is to reach
not
merely the most but also the most receptive minds) you had better
write the former, as
well
as for the latter? You might put into Esoteric Buddhism -- an
excellent title by the
bye
-- such matter as would be a sequel to, or amplification of what has appeared
in the
Theosophist, a
systematic, thoughtful exposition of what was and will be given in the
Journal
in snatched out brief Fragments. I am specially anxious -- on M's account --
that
the
Journal should be made as much as possible a success; should be circulated more
than.
it
is now in England. Your new book drawing as it is sure to -- the attention of
the most
educated,
thoughtful portion of the Western public to the organ of "Esoteric
Buddhism"
par excellence --
would thus do it a world of good, and both would prove of mutual
assistance.
Do not lose sight of Lillie's "Buddha and Early Buddhism" when you
write it.
With
its host of fallacies, unwarranted assumptions and distortion of facts and even
Sanskrit
and Pali words, this snobbish volume had nevertheless the greatest success with
Spiritualists
and even mystically inclined Christians. I will have it slightly reviewed by
Subba
Row or H.P.B. furnishing them with notes myself, but of this more in some
future
letter.
You have ample materials to work upon in my notes and papers. You have given
but
a few of the many points touched by me and amplified and re-amplified in heaps
of
letters,
as I do now. You could work out of them any number of new articles and
Fragments
for the magazine, and have enough and to spare -- left over for the book. And
these
in their turn may be followed up in a third volume later on. It may be well to
always
keep
this plan in mind.
Your
"wild scheme" with Darjeeling, good friend, as its objective point,
is not wild, but
simply
impracticable. The time has not yet come. But the drift of your energies is
carrying
you slowly yet steadily in the direction of personal intercourse. I will not
say
that
I desire it as much as you do, for seeing you nearly every day of my life I
care very
little
for objective intercourse; but for your sake I would if I could,
precipitate that
interview.
However ----? Meanwhile, be happy in knowing that you have done more real
good
to your kind within the two past years than in many previous years. And -- to
yourself
also.
I
am quite sure that you do not sympathize with the selfish feeling that prompts
the
London
Branch to wish to withhold even their small proportion of pecuniary support --
amounting
to a few guineas a year -- from the Parent Society. Who of the members
would
ever think of refusing, or trying to avoid payment of fees to any other
Society,
Club,
or Scientific Association he may happen to belong to? It is this indifference
and
selfishness
that have permitted them to stand by idle and calm from the first, and see the
two
in India giving their last rupee (and the Upasika actually selling her
jewellery -- for
the
honour of the Society) -- though many of the British members are far better
able to
afford
the necessary sacrifices than they. Mr. Olcott's sister is actually starving in
America,
and the poor man, loving her dearly as he does, would not nevertheless spare
Rs.
100 from the Society's, or rather the Theosophist's fund to relieve her
with six small
children
had not H.P.B. insisted upon, and M. given a small sum for it.
However,
I have told Mr. Olcott to send you the necessary official authority to compound
the
fees or make any other business agreement at
remember,
my very valued brother, that if poor Hindu clerks on Rs. 20 or 30 salaries are
expected
to help pay the Society's expenses with that fee, it is sheer injustice to
totally
exempt
the far richer
concessions
are required to local prejudices, you are certainly better qualified
than we, to
see,
and hence to negotiate according to the fitness of things. By all means put
"the
money
relations on a better footing" than at present, if the financial wind has
to be
tempered
for the shorn Peling-lamb. I have faith in your wisdom my friend, though
you.
would
have a certain right to be fast losing yours in mine, considering how tight the
negotiations
for the Phoenix-capital prove. You must have understood that I am still,
and
notwithstanding
the Chohan's approval of my "Lay-Chela" -- under last year's
restrictions,
and cannot bring to bear on the parties concerned all the psychic powers that
I
otherwise could. Besides, our laws and restrictions with regard to money or any
financial
operations whether within or outside our Association, are extremely severe --
inexorable
on some points. We have to proceed very cautiously; hence -- the delay. But I
do
hope that you yourself think, that something has already been done in that
direction.
Yes;
"K.H. did" mean that the review of "Mr. Isaacs should appear in
the Theosophist,"
and
"By the Author of the Occult World," so do send it before you go.
And, for the sake
of
old "Sam Ward" I would like to see it noticed in the "Pioneer."
But that does not
matter
much, now that you leave it.
Thereupon
-- Salam, and best wishes. I am extremely busy with preparations of initiation.
Several
of my chelas -- Gjual-khool among others -- are striving to reach "the
other
shore."
Yours
faithfully,
K.
H.
{The
"Review" asked for appeared in the February Theosophist. The T.S.
Headquarters
and the Magazine had been moved to
17.}
FOOTNOTE:
1.
See
course,
which, whenever it leaves a person "Soulless" becomes the cause of
the fifth
principle (Animal Soul) sliding down into the eighth sphere.
Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales
Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24 – 1DL
Mahatma Letters to A P
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