Searchable Theosophical Texts
Theosophy House
By
Annie Besant
The
Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
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CONTENTS
SECT. PAQB
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . 9
I. THEOSOPHY AS SCIENCE . ... 21
II. THEOSOPHY AS MORALITY AND ART . . 43
in. THEOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHY .... 52
IV. THEOSOPHY AS RELIGION . . . . 67
V. THEOSOPHY APPLIED TO SOCIAL PROBLEMS . 73
VI. A FEW DETAILS ABOUT SYSTEMS AND WORLDS 81
VII. THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY . . 89
BIBLIOGRAPHY
x
. . . ^ . 92
INDEX * .93
THEOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION
THEOSOPHY is derived from two Greek words Theos,
God; Sophia, Wisdom and is therefore God-Wisdom,
Divine Wisdom. Any dictionary will give as its mean
ing : "A claim to a direct knowledge of God and of
Spirits," a definition which is not inaccurate, though it
is scanty and affords but a small idea of all that is
covered by the word, either historically or practically.
The obtaining of " a direct knowledge of God "
is as
we shall see in dealing with the religious aspect of
Theosophy the ultimate object of all Theosophy, as
it is the very heart and life of all true Religion ; this is
" the highest knowledge, the knowledge of Him by
whom all else is known "
; but the lower knowledge,
that of the knowable " all else " and the methods of
knowing it, bulk largely in Theosophical study. This
is natural enough, for the supreme knowledge must be
gained by each for himself, and little can be done by
another, save by pointing to the way, by inspiring to
the effort, by setting the example ; whereas the lower
knowledge may be taught in books, in lectures, in con
versation, is transmissible from mouth to ear.
THE MYSTERIES
This inner, or esoteric, side of religion is found in all
the great faiths of the world, more or less explicitly
declared, but always existing as the heart of the religion,
10 THEOSOPHY
beyond all the dogmas which form the exoteric side.
Where the exoteric side propounds a dogma to the in
tellect, the esoteric offers a truth to the Spirit ; the one
is seen and defended by reason, the other is grasped
by intuition that faculty
" beyond the reason " after
which the philosophy of the West is now groping. In
the religions that have passed away it was taught in
the "
Mysteries," in the only way in which it can be
taught by giving instruction how to pursue the methods
which unfold the life of the Spirit more rapidly than that
life unfolds in natural and unassisted evolution ; we
learn from classical writers that in the Mysteries the
fear of death was removed, and that the object aimed
at was not the making of a good man only the
man who was already good was admissible but the
transforming of the good man into a God. Such
Mysteries existed as the heart of the religions of
antiquity, and only gradually disappeared from
from the fourth to the eighth centuries, when they
ceased for want of pupils. We find many traces of
the Christian Mysteries in the early Christian writers,
especially in the works of S. Clement of
of Origen, under the name of " The Mysteries of Jesus
".
The condition of high morality was made here, as in the
Greek Mysteries :
" Those who for a long time have
been conscious of no transgression ... let them draw
near." Indications of their origin and existence are
found in the New Testament, in which the Christ is
said to have taught His disciples secretly
" Unto you
it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of
God, but to others in parables
" and these teachings,
Origen maintains, were handed down in the Mysteries
of Jesus ; S. Paul also declares that " we speak
1 wisdom among them that are perfect
" two
terms used in the Mysteries. Islam has its secret
teachings said to have been derived from Ali, the
son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad to be found
by meditation and a discipline of life, methods taught
among the Sufis. Buddhism has its Sangha, within
INTRODUCTION 11
which, again by meditation and a discipline of life, the
inner truth is to be found. Hinduism, both in its
scriptures and its current beliefs, asserts the existence
of the supreme and the lower knowledge, the latter to
be gained by instruction, the former, once more, by
meditation and a discipline of life. It is this which makes
the supreme knowledge
" esoteric "
; it is not deliber
ately veiled and hidden away, but it cannot be imparted ;
it can only be gained by the unfolding of a faculty, of
a power to know, of a mode of consciousness, latent in
all men, but not yet developed in the course of normal
evolution. This shows itself sporadically in the Mystic,
often in erratic fashion, often accompanied with
hysteria, but, even then, is none the less an indication
for the clear-sighted and unprejudiced of a new de
parture in the long evolution of human consciousness.
It is brought to the surface sometimes by exceptional
purity :
" the pure in heart . . . shall see God."
Startling irruptions of it into ordinary life are seen in
such cases of " sudden conversion " as are recorded by
Prof. James.1 The spiritual consciousness is a reality;
its witness is found in all religions, and it is stirring in
many to-day, as it has stirred in all ages. Its evolution
in the individual can only be gently and deliberately
forced, ahead of normal evolution, by the meditation
and the discipline of life alluded to above. For esotericism
in religion is not a teaching, but a stage of
consciousness ; it is not an instruction, but a life.
Hence the complaint made by many, that it is elusive,
indefinite ; it is so to those who have not experienced it,
for only that which has been experienced in consciousness
can be known to consciousness. Esoteric methods can be
taught, but the esoteric- knowledge to which they lead,
when successfully followed and lived, must be won by
each for himself. We may help to remove obstacles to
vision, but a man can only see with his own eyes.
1 Varieties of Religious Experience.
12 THEOSOPHY
THE PRIMARY MEANING
Theosophy is this direct knowledge of God ; the
search after this is the Mysticism, or Esotericism, com
mon to all religions, thrown by Theosophy into a scien
tific form, as in Hinduism, Buddhism, Roman Catholic
Christianity and Sufism. Like these, it teaches in a
quite clear and definite way the methods of reaching
first-hand knowledge by unfolding the spiritual con
sciousness, and by evolving the organs through which
that consciousness can function on our earth once
more, the methods of meditation and of a discipline of
life. Hence it is the same as the Science of the Self,
1
the Science of the Eternal,2 which is the core of Hinduism;
it is
" the Knowledge of God which is Eternal Life "
which is the essence of Christianity. It is not a new
thing, but is in all religions, and hence we find the late
eminent Orientalist, Max Miiller, writing his well-known
work on Theosophy, or Psychological Religion.
THE SECONDARY MEANING
Theosophy, in a secondary sense the above being
the primary is the body of doctrine, obtained by
separating the beliefs common to all religions from the
peculiarities, specialities, rites, ceremonies and customs
which mark off one religion from another ; it presents
these common truths as a consensus of world-beliefs,
forming, in their entirety, the Wisdom-Religion, or the
Universal Religion, the source from which all separate
religions spring, the trunk of the Tree of Life from which
they all branch forth.
The name Theosophy, which, as we have said, is
Greek, was first used by Ammonius Saccas, in the third
century after Christ, and has remained ever since in
the history of religion in the West, denoting not only
Mysticism, but also an eclectic system, which accepts
1 Atma-vidya. 2 Brahma-vidys.
INTRODUCTION 13
truth wherever it is to be found, and cares little for its
outer trappings. It appeared in its present form in
tive Mythology was being used as an effective weapon
against Christianity, and, by transforming it into
Comparative Religion, it built the researches and dis
coveries of archaeologists and antiquarians into bul
warks of defence for the friends of religion, instead of
leaving them as missiles of attack for its enemies
COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY
The unburying of ancient cities, the opening of old
tombs, the translation of archaic manuscripts of both
dead and living religions, proved to demonstration the
fact that all the great religions which existed and
had existed resembled each other in their most salient
features. Their chief doctrines, the outlines of their
morality, the stories which clustered round their
founders, their symbols, their ceremonies, closely
resembled each other. The facts were undeniable, for
they were carved on ancient temples, written down in
ancient books ; the further research was carried, the
bulkier grew the evidence. Even among the most de
graded tribes of savages, traces were found of similar
teachings, traditions of sacred truths overlaid by the
crudities of animism and fetishism. How to explain
such similarities ? what their bearing on Christianity ?
" Evolution " was then the "
open sesame " of Science,
and the answer to these questions was not long delayed.
Religion had evolved ; from the dark ignorance of prime
val savages, who personified the powers of the Nature
they feared, had evolved the inspiring religions and the
splendid philosophies which had enthralled and civilised
mankind. The medicine-men of savages had been
glorified into Founders of religions ; the teachings of
Saints and Prophets were the refining of the hysterical
babblings of half-epileptic visionaries; the synthesis
of natural forces a synthesis wrought out by man s
14 THEOSOPHY
splendid intellect had been emotionalised into God.
Such was the answer of Comparative Mythology to the
alarmed questionings of men and women who found
their houses of faith crumbling into pieces around them,
leaving them exposed to the icy winds of doubt. At
the same time Immortality was threatened, and though
intuition whispered: "Not all of me shall die," physi
ology had captured psychology, and was showing the
brain as the creator of thought thought, which was
born with the brain, grew with it, was diseased with it,
decayed with it ; did it not finally die with it ? Agnos
ticism grew and flourished ; what could man know,
beyond what his senses could discover, beyond what
his intellect could grasp ? Such was the condition of
educated thought in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century. The younger generation can scarcely realise
that veritable "
eclipse of faith ".
COMPARATIVE RELIGION
Into that Europe Theosophy suddenly came, assert
ing the Gnosis as against Agnosticism, Comparative
Religion against Comparative Mythology. It declared
that man had not exhausted his powers in using his
senses and his intellect, for that beyond these there
were the intuition and the sure witness of the Spirit ;
that the existence of these powers was a demonstrable
fact ; that the testimony of the spiritual consciousness
was as indubitable as that of the intellectual and the
sensuous. It admitted all the facts discovered by
archaeologists and antiquarians, but asserted that they
were susceptible of quite other explanation than that
given by the enemies of religion, and that while the
facts were facts the explanation was only a hypothesis.
It set over against this hypothesis another, equally
explanatory of the facts that the community of re
ligious teachings, ethics, stories, symbols, ceremonies,
and even the traces of these among savages, arose from
the derivation of all religions from a common centre,
INTRODUCTION 15
from a Brotherhood of Divine Men, which sent out one
of its members into the world from time to time to
found a new religion, containing the same essential
verities as its predecessors, but varying in form with
the needs of the time, and with the capacities of the
people to whom the Messenger was sent. It was obvious
that either hypothesis would explain the admitted facts.
How should a decision between them be reached ?
Theosophy appealed to history : it pointed out that the
palmy days of each religion were its early days, and that
the teachings of the Messenger were never improved
on by the later adherents of the faith, whereas the
contrary must have been the case if the religion had
been produced by evolution ; the Hindus founded them
selves on their Upanishads,
1 the Zoroastrians on the
teachings of their Prophet, the Buddhists on the sayings
of the Lord Buddha, the Hebrews on Moses and the
Prophets, the Christians on the teachings of the Lord
Christ, the Muhammadans on those of their great
Prophet. Later religious literature consisted of com
mentaries, dissertations, arguments, not of new depar
tures, more inspiring than the original. Inspiration is
ever sought in later days in the sayings of the Founder,
and in the teachings of His immediate disciples. Manu,
Vyasa, Zarathushtra, the Buddha, the Christ these
Figures tower above humanity, and command the love
and reverence of mankind, generation after generation.
These are the Messengers, the religions are their messages.
Theosophy points to all these as the proofs that its
hypothesis is the true explanation of the facts, is no
longer a hypothesis, indeed, but is a truth affirmed by
history. Against this splendid array of Messengers with
their messages, Comparative Mythology cannot bring
one single proof from history of a religion that has
evolved from savagery into spirituality and philosophy ;
its hypothesis is disproved by history.
The Theosophical view is now so widely accepted that
people do not realise how triumphant was the opposing
1 Their most ancient literature, a part of the Vedas.
16 THEOSOPHY
theory, when Theosophy again rode into the arena oi
the world s thought in 1875, mounted on its new steed,
the Theosophical Society. But any who would realise
the conditions then existing should turn to the literature
of Comparative Mythology, published during the pre
ceding century, from the voluminous works of Dulaurr
and Dupuis,1 through Higgins
1
Anacalypsis, to the
books of Hargrave Jennings, Forlong, and a dozen
others, speaking with a positiveness that led the reader
to believe that the statements made were based on facts,
which no educated person could deny. Those who
plunged into that labyrinth of discussions in their youth,
who lost themselves in its endless and intricate windings,
who saw their faith devoured by the Minotaur of Com
parative Mythology, they know and only they can
know in its fullness the intensity of the relief when
the modern Ariadne the much misunderstood and
much maligned Helena Petrovna Blavatsky gave them
a clue which guided them through the mazes of the
labyrinth, and armed them with the sword of the
" Secret Doctrine" 2 with which to slay the monster.
It may be interesting to note, in passing, that olafashioned
Christianity which believed that all mankind
had descended from Adam, created 4004 B.C. had
preserved a tradition of a primeval revelation, given to
Adam and carried by his posterity to all parts of the
world ; man, inheriting original sin from his ancestor,
had corrupted this, but traces of it were to be found in
the grains of truth hidden by the husks of " heathen "
religions. This view, however, despite the germ of
truth it contained, was quite out of court with educated
people, who knew that the human race had existed for
hundreds of thousands of years, at least, instead of for
a span of six thousand.
1 On phallic and sun worships.
2 Mme. Blavatsky s monumental work, published in 1889.
INTRODUCTION 17
I
c
UNITY OF RELIGIONS
,
- The outcome of the whole position is that the fact of
* the community of religious belief is destructive to any
< religion which claims for itself a unique and isolated
position ; in such a position it is exposed to attack from
all sides, and its claim is easily disproved. But this
same fact is a defence, when all religions stand together,
when they present themselves as a Brotherhood, chil
dren of one ancestor, the Divine Wisdom.
This view becomes the more satisfactory as we notice
that each religion has its own special note, makes its
own special contribution to the forces working for the
evolution of man. As we notice their differences, in
addition to their similarities, we feel that they reveal a
plan of human education, just as when we hear a splendid
chord we feel that a master-musician has combined
the notes, with a full knowledge of the value of each.
Hinduism proclaims the One Immanent Life in every
thing, and hence the solidarity of all, the duty of each
to each, enshrined in the untranslatable word Dharma.1
Zoroastrianism strikes the note of Purity purity of
surroundings, of body, of mind. Hebraism sounds out
Righteousness.
Buddhism asserts Right Knowledge.
of Beauty.
the value of the Individual and exalts Self-Sacrifice.
Islam peals out the Unity of God. Surely the world
is the richer for each, and we cannot spare one jewel
from our chaplet of the world s religions. Out of the fair
spectacle of their varied beauty and the spiritual value
of the variety, grows in our minds the sense of the
reality of the great Brotherhood, and its work in the
1 Dharma, translated as religion, duty, obligation, is more than
these. It indicates the sum of a man s past evolution all that
has made him what he is and the next steps which he must take
in order to ensure his further evolution with the least possible
delay and difficulty.
B
18 THEOSOPHY
gurcrance of spiritual evolution. So deep a unity, so
exquisite and fruitful a diversity, cannot be mere chance,
mere coincidence, but must be the result of a plan
deliberately adopted and strongly carried out.
METHOD OP STUDY
As the Theosophical system of thought is an immense,
an all-inclusive, synthesis of truths, as it deals with God,
the Universe, and Man, and their relations to each other,
it will be best to divide its presentation under four heads,
corresponding to a very obvious and rational view of
Man. Man may be regarded as having a physical body,
an emotional nature, and an intellect ; and through these
he, an eternal Spirit, manifests himself in this mortal
world. These three departments of human nature,
as we may call them, correspond to his great activities :
Science, Ethics and ^Esthetics, Philosophy.
(1) Through his senses Man observes the phenomena
around him, and verifies his observations by experi
ments ; through his brain he records and arranges his
observations, makes inductions, frames hypotheses,
tests his hypotheses by devising crucial experiments,
and arrives at knowledge of Nature and understanding
of her laws : thus he constructs sciences, the splendid
results of the intelligent use of the organs of the physical
body on the physical world. We must study Theosophy
as SCIENCE.
(2) Man s emotional nature shows feelings and desires
feelings caused by contacts with the outside, contacts
which give pleasure or pain ; these arouse in him desires
cravings to re-experience the pleasure, to avoid the
recurrence of the pain. We shall see, when we come to
deal with these, that the deep-rooted yearning for
Happiness, planted in every sentient creature, spurs
him to place himself at last in harmony with law, that
is, to do the Right, to refuse to do the Wrong. The
expression of this harmony in life, in our relations with
INTRODUCTION 19
others and in the building of ourselves, is Right Con
duct. The expression of this same harmony in matter
is Right Form, or Beauty. We must study Theosophy
as MORALITY-ART.
(3) Man s intellect demands that his surroundings,
both as regards life and matter, shall be intelligible to
him ; it demands order, rationality, logical explanation.
It cannot live in a chaos without suffering; it must
know and understand, if it is to exist in peace. We
must study Theosophy as PHILOSOPHY.
(4) But these three, Science, Morality-Art, Philosophy,
do not perfectly satisfy our nature. The religious
consciousness persistently obtrudes itself in all nations,
all climes, all ages. It refuses to be silenced, and will
feed on the husks of superstition if denied the bread of
Truth. The Spirit who is Man will not cease his search
for the universal Spirit who is God, and God s answers
partial but with the promise of more are religions. We must study
Theosophy as RELIGION.
Under these four heads all the Theosophical teachings
most important to human life and conduct may be pre
sented. There remain : a few indications of the practi
cal application of these to social problems, and a mere
statement for within the brief compass of this little
book no more is possible of the larger vistas of the
past and the future opened up to us by Theosophy.
All divisions which seek to divide the really indivisible
Spirit the spark from the universal Fire are unsatis
factory, and tend to veil from us the unity of the con
sciousness which is our Self. Senses, emotions, intellect,
are but facets of the one diamond, aspects of the one
Spirit. Spiritual life, Religion, should be a synthesis of
Science, Morality-Art, and Philosophy they are but
facets of Religion. Religion should permeate all studies,
as Spirit permeates all forms. Our Self is one, not
multiple, albeit his overflowing life expresses itself hi
multitudinous ways. So although, for the sake of
clarity, I divide my subject into parts, I would pray
my reader to remember that classification is a means
20 THEOSOPHY
and not an end ; that classifications are many, while
consciousness is one ; and that while, for lucid ex
planation, we may avoid confusing the persons, we
should ever bear in mind that we must also avoid,
dividing the substance.
SECTION I
THEOSOPHY AS SCIENCE
THE old way of study was to state universals, and to
descend from them to particulars, and it remains the
best way for serious and philosophic students. The
modern way is to begin with particulars, and to ascend
from them to universals ; for the modern reader, who
has not yet made up his mind to a serious study of a
subject, this is the easier road, for it keeps the most
difficult part for the last. As this little book is meant
for the general reader, I follow this way.
Theosophy accepts the method of Science observa
tion, experiment, arrangement of ascertained facts,
induction, hypothesis, deduction, verification, assertion
of the discovered truth but immensely increases its
area. It sees the sum of existence as containing but
two factors, Life and Form, or, as some call them, Spirit
and Matter, others Time and Space, for Spirit is God s
motion, while Matter is His stillness ; both find their
union in Him, since the Root of Spirit is His Life, and
the Root of Matter is the universal ^Ether, the two
aspects of the One Eternal, out of Space and Time.1
While ordinary science confines Matter to the tangible,
Theosophical science extends it through many grades,
intangible to the physical, but tangible to the superphysical,
senses. It has observed that the condition
of knowing the physical universe is the possession of a
physical body, of which certain parts have been evolved
into organs of sense, eyes, ears, etc., through which
1 See Section III., p. 54.
21
22 THEOSOPHY
perception of outside objects is possible, and other
parts have been evolved into organs of action, hands,
feet, and the rest, through which contact with outside
objects can be obtained. It sees that, in the past,
physical evolution has been brought about by the efforts
of life to use its nascent powers, and that the struggle
to exercise an inborn faculty has slowly shaped matter
into an organ through which that faculty can be more
fully exercised. To reverse Biichner s statement : We
do not walk because we have legs ; we have legs because
we wanted to move. We can trace the growth of legs
from the temporary pseudopodia of the amoeba, through
the development of permanent protrusions from bodies,
up to the legs of man, and they were all gradually formed
by the efforts of the living creature to move. As
W. K. Clifford said of the huge saurians of a past age :
" Some wanted to fly, and they became birds." The
" Will to live " that is, to desire, to think, to act
lies behind all evolution.
The Theosophist carries on the same principle into
higher realms, if such exist ; and if consciousness is to
know any other sphere
l than the physical, it must have
a body of matter belonging to the sphere it wants to
investigate, and the body must have senses, developed
by the same want of the Life to see, to hear, etc. That
there should be other spheres, and other bodies through
which those spheres can be known, is no more inherently
incredible than that there is a physical sphere, and that
there are physical bodies through which we know it.
The Occultist the student of the workings of the
divine Mind in Nature asserts that there are such
spheres, and that he has and uses such bodies. The
following statements with one exception which will
1 I use the word " sphere
" to indicate the whole extent of
matter belonging to a definite type, i.e. built of atoms of one
sort. See under "Atoms" in Section VI. There may be
several
worlds in a sphere ; thus the heaven-world is in the mental sphere.
The word plane has been used in this sense, but it is found that
people do not readily grasp its meaning.
THEOSOPHY AS SCIENCE 23
be noted in its place are made as results of investiga
tions carried on in such spheres by the use of such bodies
by the writer and other Occultists ; we all received the
outline from highly developed members of our humanity,
and have proved it true step by step, and have filled in
many gaps, by our own researches. We, therefore, feel
that we have the right to affirm, on our own first-hand
experience stretching over a period of twenty-three
years in one case, and twenty-five in another that
super-physical research is practicable, and is as trust
worthy as physical research, and should be carried on
in similar ways ; that investigators are subject to errors,
both in physical and super-physical spheres, and for
similar reasons, and that these errors should lead to
closer research and not to its discontinuance.
A TABLE OF CORRESPONDENCES
The following table presents a view of the spheres
related to and including our earth, of the bodies used in
investigating them, and of the states of consciousness
manifested through them by their owner, the
The Eternal Man, a fragment of the Life of God, is
called the Monad, a " oneness "
;
l he is verily a Son of
God, made in His image, and expressing his life in three
ways : by the aspect of Will, the aspect of Wisdom,
the aspect of Creative Activity. He lives in his own
sphere, a spark in the divine Fire, and sends down a
ray, a current of his life, which embodies itself in the
five spheres of manifestation. This ray, appropriating
an atom of matter from each of the three higher of these
spheres, appears as the human Spirit, reproducing the
1 This is the statement, including what is said farther on about
the Monad, noted above, as not having been verified by the writer s
own observation. This highest Self is only made manifest to such
as we are on rare occasions in a great downflow of dazzling light :
in his own nature, in his own world, he is beyond the reach of
any vision yet attained by any of us. Yet what we call our life
is his, since he is the highest Self in each of us, "the hidden
God "as the Egyptians used to say.
24 THEOSOPHY
three aspects of the Monad, of Will, Wisdom, and
Creative Activity, and reveals himself, at a certain
stage of evolution, as the human ego, the individualised
Self ; he begins his long journey as a mere seed of life,
and, never losing his identity, moves through that long
journey, unfolding all the powers of the Monad, that
lie hidden within him, as the tree in the seed. As he
conquers his kingdom of matter, his Parent-Monad
pours down into him more and more life, and draws from
him more and more knowledge of the worlds in which he
lives. But the passing into the three highest mani
fested spheres is not enough for gaining full knowledge
and full power in our Solar System ; two yet remain,
and the process of dipping down into matter goes on.
The Spirit strengthens himself for his work by appro
priating a molecule of the coarser matter of the lowest
sphere he has so far entered, and links on to this an
atom from the fourth manifested sphere of denser
matter, and one from the fifth, the lowest, our physical
sphere. He is to obtain bodies, formed round these
permanently appropriated particles of matter, by which
he may be able to know and act upon the five manifested
spheres. We shall see that his lower bodies, forming
what is called his Personality, are cast off at and after
what we call death, and are renewed for each suc
cessive birth, while the higher, forming his Individuality,
remain through his long pilgrimage an important fact
as bearing on the possibility of remembering the past.
The above facts are tabulated opposite (see p. 25).
It may be asked :
" What is the object of this descent
into matter ? What does the Monad gain by it ?
"
Omniscient in his own sphere, he is blinded by matter
in the spheres of manifestation, being unable to respond
to their vibrations. As a man who cannot swim, flung
into deep water, is drowned, but can learn to move
freely in it, so with the Monad. At the end of his
pilgrimage, he will be free of the Solar System, able to
function in any part of it, to create at will, to move at
pleasure. Every power that he unfolds through denser
THEOSOPHY AS SCIENCE 25
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26 THEOSOPHY
matter, he retains for ever under all conditions ; the
implicit has become explicit, the potential the actual.
It is his own Will to live in all spheres, and not only in
one, that draws him into manifestation.
THE PHYSICAL BODY
The actual unfolding of consciousness is best traced
from below, for the physical body is the one which is
first organised as its instrument for knowledge, and it
unfolds itself by this in the physical world we know.
The emotional nature stimulates the glands and gaaglia
of the physical body, and the mental enthrones itself
over the cerebro-spinal system, and these proceed with
their evolution in the invisible spheres through the
stimulus obtained from the physical. We need not
dwell on the evolution of the dense physical body, as
that may be studied as physical science. Human
consciousness is here automatic, the Man having no
longer need to direct physical processes ; they go on
by habit, the result of long pressure from consciousness.
The finer part of the physical body, the etheric double,
permeates the dense, and extends a little beyond it
over the whole surface ; its proper sense-organs are
vortices on its own surface, situated opposite (1) the
top of the head, (2) the point between the eyebrows,
(3) the throat, (4) the heart, (5) the spleen, (6) the solar
plexus, (7) the base of the spine, (8, 9, 10) in the lower
part of the pelvic basin ; these last are not used, except
in Black Magic. These vortices technically called
chakrams, wheels, from their appearance are aroused
into activity in the course of occult training, and form
a bridge between the physical and astral spheres, so
that the latter comes to be included within the activity
of the waking consciousness. The health of its dense
partner depends on the Vitality in the etheric double,
which draws its energy directly from the Sun, and, in
the part in contact with the spleen, divides this energy
into streams, which it conveys to the different organs
THEOSOPHY AS SCIENCE 27
of the dense body ; the surplusage radiates outwards
and energises all living creatures within its range. The
very neighbourhood of a vigorously healthy person
vitalises, while a weak body draws on all around it
for Vitality, often seriously depleting those near to it.
Physical magnetism, the power of healing, etc., are
ways in which this surplus Vitality may be usefully
expended.
Etheric vision physical vision keener than the normal
may be used for examining minute objects, such as
chemical atoms, or the wave-forms of electrical and
other forces, or for studying such of the nature-spirits
as use etheric matter for their lowest bodies fairies,
gnomes, brownies, and creatures of that ilk. Very
slightly increased tenseness of the nerves, caused by
excitement, ill-health, drugs, alcohol, may bring these
within sight.
The etheric part of the brain plays an active part in
dreams, especially in those caused by impressions from
outside, or from any internal pressure from the cere
bral vessels. Its dreams are usually dramatic, and
may embroider any memory of past events, objects, or
persons.
1
In normal healthy persons the etheric part of the
physical body does not separate from the dense, but
the greater part of it may be driven out by anaesthetics,
and slips out easily in the case of persons who are
mediumistic, often serving as the basis for materialisa
tions. Death is its complete withdrawal from its dense
counterpart, in conjunction with the consciousness in
the higher bodies ; it remains with these for a varying
interval usually about thirty-six hours after death
and then is thrown off by the Man as of no further use ;
it decays away pari passu with the dense corpse.
1 See the many cases given in Du Prel s Philosophy of Mysticism.
28 THEOSOPHY
THE EMOTIONAL OR ASTRAL SPHERE, ITS WORLDS AND
ITS INHABITANTS
The astral sphere connected with our earth contains
two globes with which we need not here concern our
selves, also the astral world and its inhabitants, and
the intermediate or desire world, a part of the astral,
the inhabitants of which are normally under special
conditions. The whole sphere belongs to the state of
consciousness which shows itself as feelings, desires, and
emotions ; these changes in consciousness are accom
panied with vibrations in astral matter, and as astral
matter is fine and very rapid in its vibratory motions,
the vibrations are visible to astral sight as colours.
The passion of anger causes vibrations that yield a
flash of scarlet, while a feeling of devotion or love
suffuses the astral body with a blue or rosy hue. Each
feeling has its appropriate colour, because each is accom
panied by its own invariable set of vibrations.
The human astral body is, of course, composed of
astral matter, and, when accompanying the physical
body, which it permeates and beyond which it extends,
it appears as a cloud, or as a denned oval, according as
its owner is little or much developed. Clearness and
brightness of the more delicate colours, increased definiteness
of form and increase of size mark the higher
evolution. When the Man in his higher bodies draws
away from the physical as he does every night in
sleep then the astral body assumes the likeness of the
physical. Astral matter being very plastic under the
influence of thought, a man appears in the astral world
in the likeness of himself, as he sees himself, wearing
the clothes of which he thinks. A soldier, slain in
battle, and appearing in his astral body to a distant
friend, will bear his wounds ; a drowned man will
appear in dripping clothes. While human beings in the
astral world normally wear human forms, the in
habitants of that world who have not had physical
THEOSOPHY AS SCIENCE 29
bodies higher fairies, nature-spirits connected with
the evolution of plant and animal life, and the like
wear bodies that are constantly changing their outlines
and sizes. Sportive elementals as nature-spirits are
often called will sometimes take advantage of this
plasticity of astral matter to swell themselves up into
huge and terrible shapes for the sake of terrifying un
trained intruders into their world. Some drugs, such
as hashish, bhang, opium, and extreme alcoholic poison
ing, so affect the physical nerves as to render them
susceptible to astral vibrations, and then the patients
catch glimpses of some inhabitants of the astral world.
The horrors which torment a man suffering from de
lirium tremens are largely due to the sight of the loath
some elementals that gather round places where liquor
is sold, and feed on its exhalations, and are attracted
round him by the effluvia of his own drink-sodden
body.
All feelings of pleasure and pain in the physical body
are due to the presence of the interpenetrating astral,
and, if this be driven out by anaesthetics or mesmerism,
feeling disappears from the physical body. In sleep
during which the etheric double does not leave its dense
counterpart the astral can be very quickly recalled by
any disturbance of the physical body ; but where much
of the etheric matter has also been driven out, the bridge
of communication is broken, and trance is produced ;
under these conditions the dense body can be seriously
mutilated without pain supervening. Pain will, how
ever, show itself as soon as the astral body slips again
into the physical, and " consciousness returns ". It
may be said, in passing, that the normal centre of
human consciousness at the present stage of evolution
is in the astral body, from which it works on the physical.
"
Physical consciousness "
is now sub-conscious if such
a bull may be permitted to an Irishwoman.
The condition of a person during sleep varies with his
stage of evolution. The undeveloped man, in his higher
bodies, leaving the physical body, hovers round the
30 THEOSOPHY
places with which he is familiar ; the average man
drifts towards persons to whom he is attracted, but his
attention is turned inwards, and he communes with his
friends mentally only ; at a stage a little higher, his
mind is very active and receptive, and can work out
problems presented to it more easily than in the physical
body, as witness the common sayings :
"
sleep brings
counsel,"
" better sleep on it," and the like. A problem
quietly placed in the mind on going to sleep will gener
ally be found answered in the morning. All these
people do not work consciously in the astral world ; for
this it is necessary that the attention should be turned
outwards, not inwards. Where a man is pure and selfcontrolled,
and shows
helpfulness
in the physical world,
he is often " awakened " in the astral world by a more
advanced person. The process consists merely in in
ducing him to attend to what is going on around him,
instead of remaining immersed in thought ; his astral
body has evolved and has become organised by his
mental and moral activities, and he has only to wake
up to his astral surroundings. His helper explains
matters to him, and for a time keeps him near him ;
he shows him that astral matter obeys his thought, that
he can move at will and at whatever speed he wishes,
that he can walk through rocks, dive into seas, pass
through raging fires, step over a precipice and hover in
air, always provided that he is fearless and confident ;
if he loses courage, and only then, he is in danger, and
the imagined injury may "
repercuss," i.e. show itself
on the physical body as a bruise, a scratch, a wound, etc.
When he has learned these preliminary lessons, and can
see and hear correctly in the astral world, he is set to
work to help the "
living
" and the "
dead" ; he is then
what we call " an invisible helper," and spends his
night in succouring those in trouble, teaching the
ignorant, guiding those who have newly arrived in the
astral world through the gateway of death. To these
last we must now turn.
THEOSOPHY AS SCIENCE 81
THE DESIRE WORLD, OR PURGATORY
This is the part of the astral world in which conditions
are specialised for discarnate human beings, who, unless
they have knowledge, are not free in the astral world,
but are " the spirits in prison
"
spoken of by S. Peter.
They are held prisoners by their desires, and hence the
name of desire world is given to their abode.
We have seen that, at death, the Man, clothed in his
finer bodies, draws himself out of the physical garment
worn during earth-life, the " coat of skin " with
which
" the first man " was clothed after his "
fall " into
matter, caused by his seizure of "
knowledge ".
" Which
things are an allegory," as S. Paul says of the story of
Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. Having cast off his coat
of skin, the Man is himself, just as he wras while clothed
with it, and he "
goes to his own place
" in the astral
world, the place for which he has fitted himself. A re
arrangement of the matter of his astral body takes place
automatically, unless he has knowledge enough to
present it. During the life of the physical body, the
astral particles from all the seven astral subdivisions
of matter move freely about among themselves, and
some of all kinds are always on the surface of the astral
body ; sight of the whole astral world depends on the
presence on the surface of the astral body of particles
drawn from all the seven subdivisions, which answer
to our solids, liquids, gases, and the four states of ether.
These particles are not gathered together and fashioned
into an organ of vision, like the physical eye ; when
the Man turns his attention outwards he sees "
all over
him," through all these particles, or through such of
them as are in the direction of the object towards which
his attention is turned.1 If the rearrangement of the
>
1 New-comers in the astral world always look through the astral
simulacra of eyes, because accustomed to turn their attention out
wards in that way, just as they move their legs for walking.
Both are unnecessary.
32 THEOSOPHY
matter of the astral body takes place, the matter of each
subdivision is gathered together, and a series of con
centric shells is formed, the densest being outside.
Hence the Man can only see the subdivision of the
astral world to which the outermost shell belongs ;
the amount of each kind of matter depends on the kind
of desires and emotions he has cultivated on earth.
If these have been of a low order, the densest astral
matter will be very strongly vitalised, and this outer
most shell, placing him in touch with the lowest division
of the astral world only, will last for a long time ; it
disintegrates by slow starvation, i.e. by the deprivation
of its accustomed satisfactions. Hence a drunkard, a
glutton, a sensualist, a man of violent and brutal pas
sions, having strongly vitalised by physical indulgence
the densest and coarsest combinations of astral matter,
can only be conscious of his surroundings through these,
and sees only people like himself, and the worst qualities
of those who are of better types ; his raging passions
can find no satisfaction, because he has lost the physical
organs by which he erstwhile gratified them ; moreover,
these passions are much more violent than before, for
during his physical life most of the force of the astral
vibrations was used up in merely setting in motion the
heavy physical particles of matter, and only what was
left over was felt as pleasure or pain ; hence all passions
are pale and weak on earth compared with their violence
in the astral world, where, after easily setting in motion
the light astral particles, they show the whole remainder
of their force as pleasure or pain, as a rapture or an
agony inconceivable on earth. This last is what religions
call " hell " and a veritable hell, as to suffering,
it is,
created by the man for his own dwelling-place. But
it is only temporary, and might more fitly therefore,
for orthodox Christians and Musalmans, be called
"
purgatory ".
1 The thick layer of densest matter
1 Both these religions, while ordinarily speaking of hell as
everlasting, have passages in their Scriptures which contradict the
THEOSOPHY AS SCIENCE 35
wears away, and the man loses sight of this sphere of
astral life and begins to perceive the next, having learned,
by the sad lesson of bitter suffering, that the pleasures
he valued on earth are verily
" wombs of pain".
The average man does not experience this unfortunate
after-death condition, not having drawn into his astral
body while on earth much of the densest matter, and
such of it as he has is not strongly vitalised, and it
cannot hold him. If his interests on earth have all
been trivial a round of office or household drudgery
or manual labour, alternating with low, though not
vicious, forms of amusement and he has cared nothing
for larger interests, those of the community and the
nation, he will find himself shelled in by matter of the
sixth subdivision of the astral world, and will be sur
rounded by the astral counterparts of physical objects,
without the power to affect them or to take part in the
earth-life led among them ; he will, therefore, to use a
colloquialism, find himself very much bored, and be a
prey to an intolerable sense of ennui. It may be said
that this is hard, as most people have to spend their
lives in drudgery of some kind ; are they to be bored
after death, having drudged before it ? True ; but a
little knowledge will prevent this, and for this very
reason Theosophy is being spread far and wide. The
work which carries on the world need not be drudgery,
and to deeply religious people is not drudgery even now ;
for all useful work is part of the divine Activity, and all
workers are organs of that Activity, the Hands wherewith
the divine Worker accomplishes His work. Production
and distribution agriculture, mining, manufactures,
commerce, the pettiest trade are God s ways of nourish
ing humanity, and are the means of evolution. When a
man, a woman, see their little daily tasks as integral
portions of the one great work, they are no longer
idea. The New Testament speaks of a time when "God shall be
all in all," and Al Quran declares :
" All things shall perish save
His Face."
O
34 THEOSOPHY
drudges but co-workers with God.1 As George Herbert
sang:
" A servant in this cause
Makes drudgery divine ;
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws
Makes that and th action fine."
Those who thus work will find no boredom after death,
but fresh and joyous activity. For the rest, they
gradually adapt themselves to the new conditions, and
are helped to do so, and they find that they are rid of
many of the discomforts of earth, and may lead a quite
pleasant life ; they are in touch with their friends on
earth, and find that these are quite companionable
during earth s nights, though provokingly indifferent
during its days ; as Mr. Leadbeater pithily says :
" The
dead are never for a moment under the impression that
they have lost the living," however much the latter
lament the loss of the dead they loved. The man passes
on through the sixth, fifth, and fourth subdivisions, en
joying more and more association with those he loves,
until he passes into the higher subdivisions the material
heavens of the less instructed religionists of all faiths,
the region for art, literature, science, philanthropy, and
the large interests of life, followed on earth with some
selfishness, and here pursued along the habitual physical
lines and with the use of astral reproductions of physical
means and apparatus. These same pursuits, carried
on for unselfish motives, lift the Man into the heavenworld,
their proper home, and thither also those who
followed them more selfishly pass, for when they weary
of them in the astral world they fall asleep, to wake in
heaven.
The astral body has been cast off, shell after shell,
and in due time goes back to its elements, like the physi
cal. Some pure and lofty souls pass through the astral
world without attending to it, their minds set upon
higher things. Others, fully awake, do not allow the
1 See Application ofTheosophy to Social Problems, Section V., p. 77.
THEOSOPHY AS SCIENCE 35
matter of their astral bodies to be rearranged, but
retain their freedom and perform useful service. Omit
ting this last class, whose stay in the astral world will
depend on other causes, the general rule is that the
astral after-death life is long for the undeveloped and
short for the well-developed, while the heavenly is long
for the latter and short for the former.
THE MENTAL SPHERE, ITS WORLDS AND ITS
INHABITANTS
The mental sphere connected with our earth contains
two globes with which we are not now concerned. It
contains also two worlds, the higher and the lower, each
with its inhabitants, and a part of the lower is placed
under special conditions, for the use of discarnate
human beings ; this is the heaven-world. The whole
sphere belongs to the state of consciousness denominated
thought, or mental activity, and its matter answers to
the changes in consciousness that are caused by thinking ;
its seven subdivisions, though so much finer, again
correspond to those of the physical and astral worlds.
And the mental world is, like the physical, divided into
two, a lower and an upper, the former consistingof the four
denser sub-divisions and the latter of the three subtler ;
two bodies belong to it : the mental, composed of com
binations of the denser, and the causal, composed of
those of the finer. This world is of peculiar interest,
not only because Man spends here nearly all his time,
after the mind is fairly developed, only dipping down
into the physical world for brief snatches of mortal life
as a bird dives into the sea after a fish, but because it is
the meeting-place of the higher and the lower conscious
nesses. The immortal Individuality, descending from
above after the Monad has formed the Spirit by send
ing out his ray waits in high heaven, while the lower
bodies are being formed round the atoms attached to
him, brooding over them through long ages of slow
evolution ; when they are sufficiently evolved, he flashes
36 THEOSOPHY
down and takes possession of them, to use them for his
own evolution. The habitat of the Spirit as Intellect
of him " whose nature is knowledge
" is the causal
world, the three higher levels of the mental sphere;
these give him his body, the causal, the body which
remains, ever evolving, throughout his long series of
incarnations in denser matter. This world and body
are so named because all the causes, the effects of which
are seen in the lower worlds, reside in them. The causal
body begins, with the above-named flashing down, as
a mere film of matter, egg-shaped, like a shell round the
lower bodies, formed within it, as the chick in the egg.
A delicate network radiates from the permanent atom
of the causal body to all parts of this egg-like film, the
atom glowing like a brilliant nucleus ; with it are as
sociated the permanent atoms of the physical and astral
bodies and the permanent molecule-unit of the mental.
During life, it encloses the whole bodies, and at the death
of each it preserves this permanent germ of each, with
all the vibratory powers enshrined within it, the " seed
of life
" for each successive body. For ages it is little
more than this subtle network and surface, for it can only
grow by the higher human activities, by such as arouse
in its subtle matter a faint vibratory response ; as the
personality grows more thoughtful, more unselfish, more
engaged in right activities, its harvest for its owner
grows richer and richer. The personalities are like the
leaves put forth by a tree ; they draw in material from
outside, transform it into useful substances, send it down
the tree as crude sap, drop off and wither ; the sap is
changed into tree-food, and nourishes the tree, which sends
out new leaves, to repeat the same cycle. The conscious
ness, in the mental, astral, and physical bodies, gathers
experience ; casting off the physical and astral bodies,
as dead leaves, it transmutes these experiences into
qualities in the mental body, during its heavenly life ;
it is indrawn into the causal body with its harvest,
casting away the mental body, like the others, and ia
blended with the Spirit, who put it forth, enriching him
THEOSOPHY AS SCIENCE 37
with its harvest ; it has served the Spirit as a hand, put
forth to take food. The enriched Spirit, the Man, forms,
round the old permanent atoms, another mental and
astral body, capable of manifesting his enhanced quali
ties ; the physical permanent atom is planted through
the father in the body of the mother who is to provide
the physical body required by the changeless law of
cause and effect, and these three lower bodies are
nourished and coloured by her corresponding bodies ;
the new personality is thus launched into the mortal
world.1
While Intellect has, as its vehicle, the causal body, its
copy in denser matter, the Mind, has the mental body
as its instrument ; the one has abstract thinking as its
activity, the other concrete. The Mind acquires know
ledge by utilising the senses for observations, its percepts,
and by working on these and building them into con
cepts ; its powers are attention, memory, reasoning by
induction and deduction, imagination, and the like.
The Intellect knows, by the assonance of the outside
world with its own nature, and its power is Creation,
the arrangement of matter into bodies for its own natural
products, Ideas. When it sends a flash into the lower
Mind, illuminating its concepts and inspiring its imagina
tion, we call the flash Genius.
Both the causal and mental bodies expand enormously
in the later stages of evolution, and manifest the most
gorgeous radiance of many-coloured lights, glowing
with intense splendour when comparatively at rest,
and sending forth the most dazzling coruscations when
in high activity. Both interpenetrate the lower bodies
and extend beyond their surface, as has already been
stated with regard to the etheric double and the astral
body. The parts of all these bodies of finer matter
which are outside the dense physical body form col
lectively the " aura " of the human being, the
luminous
coloured cloud surrounding his dense body. The
etheric portion of the aura can be seen by Dr. Kilner s
1 The reader is advised to refer to the table on p. 25.
38 THEOSOPHY
apparatus ; an ordinary clairvoyant usually sees this
and the astral portion ; a clairvoyant more highly
developed sees the etheric, astral, and mental portions.
Few are able to see the portion consisting of the causal
body, and fewer still the rare beauty of the intuitional,
and the dazzling light of the spiritual, vehicles.
The clarity, delicacy, and brilliance of the auric colours,
or their opacity, coarseness, and dullness, show the
general stage of advancement of the owner. Changes
of emotion suffuse the astral portion with transitory
colours, as with the rose of love, the blue of devotion,
the grey of fear, the brown of brutality, the sickly
green of jealousy. The pure yellow of intelligence, the
orange of pride, the brilliant green of mental sympathy
and alertness, are equally familiar. Striations, bands,
streaks, flashes, etc., give a multiplicity of forms for
study, all expressive of certain qualities in the mental
and moral character. The child s aura, again, differs
much from that of the adult. But we must pass on,
as space is limited.
The Mind, working in the mental body, produces re
sults thoughts in the astral and physical bodies, in
the latter by using as its instrument the cerebro-spinal
system. In its own world it sends out definite "
thoughtforms,&
quot; thoughts embodied in mental matter, which go
forth into the mental world and may incorporate them
selves in other mental bodies ; its own vibrations, also,
send out undulations in all directions, that cause similar
vibrations in others. Comparatively few people, at
the present stage of evolution, can function freely in
the mental world, clothed only in the higher and the
mental bodies, separated from the physical and astral.
But those who can do so can tell about its phenomena
an important matter, since heaven l is a part of the
mental world, guarded from all unpleasant intrusions.
The inhabitants of the world are the higher ranks of
nature-spirits, called in the East Devas, or Shining
Ones, and by Christians, Hebrews, and Muhammadans
1 Called in the older Theosophical books Devachan, or Sukhavati.
THEOSOPHY AS SCIENCE 39
Aogels the lowest Order of the angelic Intelligences.
These are glowing forms with changing shades of ex
quisite colours, whose language is colour, whose motion
is melody.
THE HEAVEN-WOULD
The heaven-portion of the mental world is filled with
disearnate human beings, who work out into mental and
moral powers the good experiences they have garnered in
their earthly lives. Here the religious devotee is seen,
rapt in adoring contemplation of the Divine Form he
loved on earth, for God reveals Himself in any form dear
to the human heart ; here the musician fills the air with
melodious sounds, cultivating his capacity into higher
power ; here all that love are in close touch with their
beloved, and love gains new strength and depth by
fullest expression ; here the artists of form and colour
work out splendid conceptions in plastic material, re
sponsive to their thought ; here philanthropists shape
great schemes for human helping, architects of plans
to be wrought out when they return to earth. Every
high activity followed on earth, every noble thought and
aspiration, here grow into flowers, flowers which contain
within themselves the seeds which shall later be sown
on earth.. Knowing this, men may in this world prepare
the seeds of experience which shall flower in heaven.
The cultivation of every literary and artistic faculty,
of patient and steadfast love, of unselfish service to
man, of devotion to God, make a full and rich and
fruitful heaven. Those who sow sparingly reap spar
ingly ; while everyone s cup of happiness will be filled
to overflowing, we make our cups large or small here.
The length of our heaven depends on the materials we
can carry through death, and these materials are good
thoughts and pure emotions. It may stretch to fifteen
hundred or two thousand years ; it may be but a few
centuries ; hi the very little developed even less.
When the whole of the experience has been worked
40 THEOSOPHY
up into faculty, the Man casts off his mental body, and
is then truly himself, living in the causal and the two
higher bodies. If highly developed, he may live awhile
in the higher levels of the mental worlds ; generally his
stay there is very brief, only sufficient to allow him
to see his whole past and to glance over his coming
life, and he quickly begins to put himself down again,
driven by hunger for more experience. The germs of
the developed mental faculties are planted in mental
matter, to form a new mental body ; those of the de
veloped emotional and moral faculties in astral matter,
to form a new astral body, and these are the " innate
faculties," the "
character," which a child brings with
him into the world.
THE HIGHER SPHERES
The two higher spheres, the intuitional, in which the
Christ-nature unfolds in the Man, and the spiritual,
cannot be here fully described. The Intuition, the
clear insight into the nature of things that sees the
one Self in all and destroys the sense of separateness
is the faculty of the Wisdom-nature, the supreme
spiritual vision, for which " Nature has no veil in all her
kingdoms". The spiritual sphere, in which the unity
of the human will with the divine is realised, is the last
and highest in the at present manifested system the
monadic and the divine spheres being, as yet, unmanifested.
The wheel of normal human evolution revolves
in three worlds the physical, the intermediate, and
the heavenly : in the first we gather experience ; in the
second we suffer and enjoy according to our life in the
first; in the third we enjoy unalloyed happiness, and
transmute experience into faculty, past suffering into
power. These we bring back, and thus we grow and
evolve, age after age.
Each stage of this seonian evolution may be studied
by quickening the unfolding of the consciousness, and
the growth of the bodies belonging to the different
THEOSOPHY AS SCIENCE 41
worlds. No statement made in this Section need be
taken on trust save that about the Monad but the
study which enables verification to be fully made is as
arduous as that of the highest mathematics or astro
nomy. A slight development beyond the normal will,
however, enable etheric and astral facts to be examined,
and such experience may encourage the student to
pursue the further task.
RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES AND RITES
A great service rendered by Theosophy as Science to
the various religions is the explanation it offers of their
several ceremonies and rites. These were originally
planned out by great Occultists in order to convey to
the devoted and the good the influences of the higher
spheres. A " sacrament "
is well defined in the Cate
chism of the Church of England as " the outward and
visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace," and it is
not only a sign that the grace is present, but a means
whereby it may be conveyed to the worshipper. By
the old rules there must be for a sacrament an outer
physical Object, a Sign of Power, and a Word of Power,
and there must also be an Officiant duly qualified ac
cording to the laws of the religion. Thus, in Christian
Baptism., Water is the physical Object, the Sign of
Power is the Cross, the Word of Power is the baptismal
formula : "I baptize thee in the Name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" ; the Officiant
is the duly ordained minister. The inward spiritual
grace is the blessing poured out on the child by the
surrounding Angels, his admission to the community of
Christians in this and other worlds, and the welcome
extended to him by the invisible and visible Christian
Church. In the Holy Communion the same principle
is followed, and any clairvoyant, watching the ceremony,
will see a blazing out of light, following the words of
consecration, the light flashing out through the church
and bathing the worshipper, and being appropriated
42 THEOSOPHY
and drawn in by the really devoted ; it is because of the
tradition of this " real Presence " that the Host is
preserved in Roman Catholic churches, and from it, as
a matter of fact, radiates a constant blessing. Cere
monies performed to help those who have passed on,
the so-called "
dead," are all based on a knowledge of
the facts of the intermediate world, though the persons
who take part in them to-day know very little of their
real bearing on the one for whom they are done. The
daily prayer and meditation, incumbent on every pious
Hindu, are intended to draw down and spread abroad
gracious spiritual influences, attracting the Devas
" the ministry of Angels
" to shed their blessings on
the neighbourhood, on its human, animal, and vegetable
lives.
All these things are looked on as "
superstitions
" by
the ordinary, modern man of the world. Yet, since the
visible world is interpenetrated and surrounded by the
invisible, it is not irrational that the influence of the
latter should play on the former. It was regarded
as a superstition at the close of the eighteenth century
to believe that there was a force which made frogs
legs move when hanging on a wire ; Galvani was much
laughed at for watching them dance as they awaited
the frying-pan, and was called " the frogs dancingmaster
". None the less has the galvanic current linked
continents together. Many a "
superstition
"
points
the way to the discovery of forces unknown to the
ordinary man. The wise will observe and investigate,
and will study before they reject.
SECTION II
THEOSOPHY AS MORALITY AND ART
MORALITY has been well defined as " the science of
harmonious relations " l between all living things.
Moral laws are as much laws of Nature as are any laws
affecting physical phenomena, are to be sought in the
same laborious way, and established by the same
methods. As physical hygiene was laid down by ancient
legislators as part of religion,
2 so did they lay down
moral hygiene ; both have been accepted as part of
" revelation " by their followers, but both are based
on the facts of Nature known to these highly developed
men, though not to their people.
THE LIFE-SIDE MORALITY
We have seen that the teaching of one omnipresent
Life is part of Theosophy; on this Morality is based.
To injure another is to injure yourself, for each is part
of a single whole. The body as a whole is poisoned, if
poison be introduced into any part of it, and all living
things are harmed by harm which is done to one. This
one Life expresses itself in everything by seeking for
Happiness ; everywhere and always, without exception,
Life seeks Happiness, and no suffering is ever volun
tarily borne except as a road to a deeper and more
lasting joy. None seeks aimless suffering, for the mere
sake of suffering ; it is endured only as means to an
end. All religions recognise God as infinite Bliss, and
1 Sandtana Dharma Text-Book, Part III. : Ethics.
8 As in the laws of Manu and of Moses.
43
44 THEOSOPHY
union with God, i.e. with perfect Bliss, is sought by all
of them. Man s nature, since he is divine, is also
fundamentally blissful, and he therefore accepts all
happiness as natural, and its coming to him is taken as
needing no justification ; he never asks :
" Why do I
enjoy ?
" But his nature revolts against pain as un
natural, and as needing justification, and he instinctively
demands :
" Why do I suffer ?
"
Deep, unalloyed,
enduring Bliss is the goal of Life ; the perfect satisfac
tion of evfery part of the being. The fleeting will-o -thewisp
of earthly pleasure is often mistaken for the glow
of the Sun of Bliss, and then man suffers and learns.
" For God has a plan, and that plan is evolution."
1
If the part sets itself against the whole, it must suffer,
and all the sufferings of men are due to their ignorance
of their own nature, and to their disregard, also due to
ignorance, of the laws of the Nature in the midst of
which they live.
EIGHT AND WKONG
If evolution is God s plan, then we can gain a definite
criterion of Right and Wrong. The scientist will say :
That which helps forward evolution is Right ; that
which hinders it is Wrong. The religionist will say :
That which is according to the divine Will is Right ;
that which is against it is Wrong. Both are expressing
exactly the same idea, for the divine Will is evolution.
By studying evolution we find that its first half has been
developing an ever greater and greater separation the
aim has been the production of the Individual ; we find
that now, beginning the second half, we are moving
towards the integration of individuals into a Unity.
The Hindus call these processes the Path of Forthgoing
and the Path of Return, and there are no more ex
pressive names. Man s deepest instincts, showing
themselves in the foremost of his race and instinct
1 At the Feet of the Master, by J. Krishnamurti (Alcyone) p. 7.
THEOSOPHY AS MORALITY AND ART 45
is the Voice of Life are now seeking for Brotherhood,
beyond which lies Unity, the building of many parts
into a perfect whole. Hence all that makes for unity
is Right ; all that makes against it is Wrong.
EMOTIONS AND VIRTUES
The next step is that Happiness is essentially a
feeling ; it is due to a sense of the increase of life in us ;
we are happy when our life expands, when it becomes
more ; we suffer when our life diminishes, when it be
comes less.1 Love brings about union, and thus moreness
; hate causes separation, and hence lessness. We
have here the two Root Emotions, Love and Hate, both
expressions of Desire the manifestation of the aspect
of Will which is seen throughout the manifested worlds
as Attraction and Repulsion, the Builder and the
Destroyer of universes, systems, and worlds, as well as
of states, families, and individuals. Out of these two
Root Emotions spring all Virtues and Vices ; every
Virtue is an expression of Love, universalised, and
established by right reason as a permanent mode of
consciousness ; every Vice is an expression of Hate,
universalised, and established by wrong reason as a
permanent mode of consciousness ;
"
right
" and
"
wrong " have already been defined. This will at once
be understood by an illustration drawn from the family,
and we may premise that each of us, in Society as in the
family, is surrounded by three, and only three, classes
his superiors, his equals, his inferiors, with each of
which he has relations. In a happy family, Love unites
all the members ; Love, looking upwards to the heads
of the household, is the emotion of reverence ; Love,
looking round the circle of brothers and sisters, is the
emotion of affection ; Love, looking downwards on the
group of dependents, is the emotion of beneficence.
1 On the whole of this subject there is no better book than
The Science of the Emotions, by Bhagavan Das, a well-known Theosophical
writer.
46 THEOSOPHY
These emotions spring up spontaneously in the "
good
"
family, the family where "
right
"
feeling rules, and
" love is the fulfilling of the law ". Where love
rules,
laws are not needed. Outside the family, when men
enter into relations with the general public, the attitude
taken spontaneously in the family by Love must be
reproduced outside deliberately by Virtue. Looking
upwards as to God, the King, the Aged the emotion
of Love as reverence becomes the Virtues of Reverence,
Obedience, Loyalty, Respect, and the like, all fixed
attitudes of mind, or permanent modes of conscious
ness, towards the persons, whoever they may be, who
are recognised as superiors, spiritually, intellectually,
morally, socially, physically. Looking around on our
equals, the emotion of Love as affection becomes the
Virtues of Honour, Courtesy, Fairness, Friendliness,
Helpfulness, and the like, fixed attitudes of mind to
wards all, as before. To our inferiors, the emotion of
Love as beneficence becomes the Virtues of Protection,
Kindness, Courtesy, Readiness to assist, to share with,
and the like. The principle once grasped, the student
can work out its myriad applications ; Hate, with its
three main divisions of Fear, Pride, and Scorn, may be
similarly treated.
Every human being, living in Society, is related in
evitably, by the mere fact of his being there, to all around
him, and this makes him the centre of a web of obliga
tions, of duties ; to give to each related person his due
is to be a "
good
" man, and a source of social unity ;
to refuse to any his due is to be a " bad " man, and a
source of social disunity. Hence to know Duty and to
do it is goodness ; to know it intuitively and to do it
spontaneously is perfection.
While Life showing itself emotionally is Love, seen
intellectually it is Truth. For lack of understanding this,
controversies have arisen as to whether Love or Truth
should be the foundation of Morality. But they are one
essentially, as Life is one. Bhishma, a Master of Duty,
said that virtues are "forms of Truth," and that is
indubitably so ; Truth is the very basis of intellectual
THEOSOPHY AS MORALITY AND ART 47
character, as is Love of moral character ; as Love de
mands the presence of others for its expression while
Truth does not, it naturally rules the science of our
harmonious relations with others, and thus flowers into
virtues. " God is Love," says the Christian ;
" Brah
man is Truth," says the Hindu. Both speak the fact ;
seen from below, Love and Truth may look different ;
seen from above, they are one.
THE RATIONALE OF MORAL PRECEPTS
The great Teachers of humanity have formulated
certain universal ethical precepts, such as :
" To do
good to another is right ; to injure another is wrong."
" Do to others as you would that they should do to you ;
do not to others as you would not that they should
do to you."
" Love one another."
" What doth the
Lord thy God require of thee, but to do justly, and to
love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ?
" x
All moral teachings inspired by this spirit are parts of
the Divine Wisdom, of Theosophy. They need no
justification to the mind, for they obviously tend to
promote Happiness.
But much light is thrown on the rationale of less
obvious precepts by Theosophy ; thus to return good
for evil is not, at first glance, reasonable. " How then
will you recompense good ?
" asked Confucius. But
it is right. We have seen that changes in consciousness
are accompanied by vibrations of matter, and that such
vibrations are sympathetically reproduced by neigh
bouring bodies. If a man is feeling angry, or depressed,
or revengeful, his astral body will vibrate in assonance
with his mood. The astral body of anyone coming near
him will be impinged on by these vibrations, and will
begin to vibrate in unison with them, these vibrations
then producing in the second person a feeling of anger,
or depression, or revenge, as the case may be. He will
1 A large number of extracts from the Scriptures of great re
ligions may be found in the Universal Text-Boole of Religion and
Morals, Part II.
48 THEOSOPHY
thus strengthen the vibrations produced in his astral
body and will return them reinforced, strengthening
those of the first, and this fatal interchange will go on,
increasing the evil. But if the second person, under
standing the law, grips his astral body with his will,
prevents it from reproducing the vibrations which strike
on it, and imposes on it a contrary set of vibrations,
those which accompany a feeling of gentleness, cheer
fulness, or forgiveness, he will quiet down the vibrations
caused by evil emotion, and presently change them to
their opposite. Therefore the Lord Buddha taught :
" Hatred ceaseth not by hatred at any time ; hatred
ceaseth by love." This is as certain as that a red ray
of light will quench a green ray,
and leave stillness
absence of light vibrations. It is a law of Nature, and
one that can readily be verified by experiment. To
follow this law is to substitute a harmonious relation for
an inharmonious, i.e. to be moral.
Theosophy asserts as an ethical code the universal pre
cepts of the great Teachers, and studies their rationale
scientifically, as above, and historically, in their effects
on human evolution and human happiness. It sees
then1 verification in the disasters that follow the neglect
of these precepts, as much as in the security and
comfort which follow their observance, even though
that observance has never been more than partial,
except in the example set by the great Teachers Them
selves. Its morality is therefore eclectic ; in the garden
of the world it culls the fairest and most fragrant
flowers, planted by the great Teachers, and binding
these into one exquisite bouquet, it names it
" Theosophy
as Morality ".
IDEALS
In order to inspire moral conduct in Theosophists, it
points to the great Teachers as Examples, and inculcates
the forming of a moral Ideal and the practice of medita
tion thereon. An ideal is a synthesis of true fixed ideas,
intended to be an object of attentive and sustained
thought, and thus to influence conduct. By the laws
THEOSOPHY AS MORALITY AND ART 49
of thought to be treated in Section III. the effect
of such thought is to transform the thinker into the
likeness of his ideal, and thus to build up a noble char
acter. Along this line of moral evolution Theosophists
seek to guide all aspirants, trusting
" not to the law of
a carnal commandment, but to the power of an endless
life ". We fix our gaze on the World-Teachers, and seek
so to live that some ray of Their moral splendour may
take embodiment in us, and that we also may, in our
humble measure, lighten the darkness of the world.
THE FORM-SIDE ART
In the older world the Beautiful was placed on a level
with the Good and the True, and the cult of Beauty
made fair the common lives of men. Pythagoras spoke
of the Arts as making " the difference between the
barbarian and the man,"
x and Art and pure Literature
are the means of culture ; they polish the stone, after
Science and Philosophy have hewn the rough product
of the quarry into shape. Further East than Greece,
Beauty held a similar place in civilisation, as it did also
in Egypt and in the great Atlantean civilisations in the
Americas. In fact no civilisation that the world has
ever known, until that of the nineteenth century, has
set the Beautiful aside as a luxury for the wealthy,
instead of spreading it far and wide over the whole mass
of the population as one of the ordinary necessities for
decent human life. In nearly every European country
the arts and crafts of the peasantry are almost killed
out ; their old dress, suitable and comely, is being
disused, and replaced by miserable copies of grotesque
fashions set in Paris and London. The result is that
the manual labouring class has been entirely vulgarised,
has lost its inborn sense of Beauty to which its crafts
taken up for pastime in leisure hours in the past so
eloquently testify and, in the losing, has become
piteously coarse and ill-mannered. The spread of
civilised ugliness is threatening the Beauty which still
1 See Section V.,-p. 74.
50 THEOSOPHY
remains to the world in the common life of the further
East, and the destructive change may be summed up
in a single fact, that the disused kerosene oil-tin is
taking the place of the admirably wrought brass or clay
vessel for bringing water from the well to the house.
When the village girl, who now carries this tin atrocity
on her head, drops her graceful sari with its exquisite
vegetable dye, and puts on the ugly aniline-dyed skirt and
blouse of the West, she will have completed her own
vulgarisation, and the triumph of western civilisation.
BEAUTY AS THE LAW OF MANIFESTATION
From the standpoint of Theosophy, the sense of the
Beautiful is a priceless part of the emotional nature,
and is to it what Truth is to the Intellect and Goodness
to the Intuition. It sees Beauty as the Law of Mani
festation, to which all objects should conform. Ugliness
is against Nature, unnatural, intolerable. Nature is
ever striving to hide it away in order to transform it.
She covers all that is ugly with her wealth of Beauty ;
over a disused slag-heap she trails her creepers ; a broken
wall she festoons with her honeysuckle-bines, and tosses
over it a wreath of pink-faced roses ; she plants the
wayside ditch with fragrant violets, and draws a sheet
of anemones and wild hyacinths over the neglected spaces
of the woods. With her myriad voices she preaches
that Beauty is the essential condition of divine, and
therefore of all perfect, work.
Religion has ever been the foster-mother of Art ; the
Egyptian faith gave Philse to the world ;
l Hinduism
gave the mighty fanes of Madura and Chidambaran ;
Greece gave the Parthenon and many another gem ;
Islam gave the Alhambra, the Pearl Mosque, and the
Taj Mahal ; Christianity the noble Gothic cathedrals
to say nothing of the music, painting, sculpture,
oratory, that have glorified the life of man. Art is un
thinkable without Religion ; the most exquisite archi
tecture has been devised for temples, and on them
1 Modern civilisation has drowned it 1
THEOSOPHY AS MORALITY AND ART 51
other buildings have been modelled. If it has decayed,
it is because Religion has passed so much out of ordinary
life, and with the lack of its inspiration Art has become
imitative instead of creative. The new Theosophic
impulse will bring about a new blossoming of Art, and
already its fragrance is borne on the breeze blowing
from the future.
CREATION, NOT IMITATION
Imitation, however perfect and enjoyable, is not the
highest Art, from the Theosophical standpoint. Forms
are built by nature-spirits and lower Angels out of the
matter penetrated with the Life of the LOGOS ; they
built round His thought-forms, materialising His ideas.
Looking at an exquisite flower, we, who are human, can
see a little more of the divine thought in it than the
less developed nature-spirit could see and embody.
But the Artist he can see far more than we ; he sees
the many-sided thought of which the flower-form is only
a facet ; he sees the ideal, and it is that which we ask
him to show us. Rafaelle painted a woman with a
child in her arms ; we have seen many women carrying
their infant sons. But the painter of the San Sisto
Madonna saw the ideal Mother and the ideal Child,
infinite tenderness and protection in the Mother, ex
quisite sweetness and candid simplicity in the Child.
He saw not only mother and child, but Motherhood and
Childhood, the eternal perfection of the Idea, and he
painted it for the wonder and the love of every succeed
ing generation. And we blind ones can now see the
Madonna and the Babe in every mother and child, and
the whole world is fairer because Rafaelle lived and saw.
Unless Theosophy can give a new inspiration to Art,
it will have failed in part of its purpose ; for Beauty is
one of the most potent instruments for quickening
evolution, and harmony, without which life cannot be
happy, finds its natural expression in Art. Perfection in
form must accompany Perfection in thought.
SECTION III
THEOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHY
PHILOSOPHY is an explanation of Life, constructed by
the Mind and accepted as true by the Intellect. Without
an explanation which satisfies the reason, a man remains
restless and discontented. The unintelligibility of life
is torture to the thoughtful ; one cannot rest in the
midst of a whirl of forces and of events, a seething
chaos, which throws up fragments which cannot be
fitted into a rational whole. The Mind imperatively
demands order, succession, causal connections, the
stately rhythm of purposeful movements, the relation
of past to present, of present to future. To understand
is the deepest instinct in the Mind of Man, and it can
never rest satisfied until this understanding is obtained.
Man can suffer patiently, struggle perseveringly, endure
heroically, if he feels within rum a purpose, sees before
him a goal. But if he cannot see his way, does not
know his end, is baffled by causes he does not understand,
and buffeted by forces which whirl out at him from
darkness, strike him, and then whirl into darkness once
more, he is apt to break out into wild revolt, into savage
rebellion, and to waste his strength in aimless blows.
Ajax, fighting in the dark with his frantic appeal to the
Gods :
" If our fate be death,
Give light, and let us die,"
is a symbol of humanity, struggling in the night of
ignorance and passionately crying out to " whatever
Gods there be " to send him light, even though light
mean death.
m
THEOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHY 53
THEEE BASES FOR PHILOSOPHY
Men have striven to understand the mysteries of
existence by approaching them from one of three
mutually opposed view-points :
(1) All comes forth from Matter, the One Existence,
and this, from its own inherent energy, produces all
forms, and gives birth through them to life ; as Professor
Tyndall said in his famous Belfast address, we must
" see in matter the promise and potency of every form
of life ". Thought is the result of the activity of certain
arrangements of matter :
" The brain produces thought,"
said Karl Vogt,
" as the liver produces bile ". With the
dissolution of the form the life vanishes, and it is as idle
to ask where " it
"
is, as to ask where the flame is when
the candle burns out. The flame was only the result
of combustion, and with the ceasing of combustion the
flame necessarily ceases also. All materialistic philo
sophies are built on this basis.
(2) All comes forth from Spirit, pure mind, the One
Existence, and matter is merely a creation of the Spirit
engaged in thought. There is really no matter ; it is
an illusion, and if the Spirit rises above this illusion he
is free, self-sufficing, omnipotent. He imagines himself
separate, and is separate ; he imagines objects, and is
surrounded by them ; he imagines pain, and he suffers ;
he imagines pleasure, and he enjoys. Let him sink into
himself, and all the universe will fade away as a dream,
and " leave not a wrack behind ". All idealistic philo
sophies are built on this basis, with more or less thorough
ness in carrying it out.
(3) Spirit and Matter are two aspects of One Exist
ence, the All, coming forth from the One together,
united as inseparably during manifestation as the back
and front of the same object, merging into Oneness
again at the close of a period of manifestation. In the
All exist simultaneously all that has been, all that is,
all that can be. in one Eternal Present. In this fullness
arises a VOICE which is a WORD, a LOGOS, God making
54 THEOSOPHY
Himself manifest. That WORD separates out, from the
All, such Ideas as He selects for His future universe, and
arranges them within Himself according to His Will ;
He limits Himself by His own thought, thus creating
the "
Ring-Pass-Not
" of the universe-to-be whether
Solar System, congery of Solar Systems, congery of
congeries, etc. Within this Ring are the Ideas, everbegotten
eternally of the ceaseless Motion, which is the
One Life, within the Stillness which is its opposite and
supports all. The Motion is the Root of Spirit, which
will, when manifest, be Time, or changes in consciousness ;
the stillness is the Root of Matter, the omnipresent
"
^Ether," immobile, all-sustaining, all-pervading, which
will, when manifest, be Space. All Theosophic phil
osophies are built on this basis, Spirit and Matter
being regarded as two manifested aspects of the One,
the Absolute, out of Time and Space.1
The method of putting these truths will differ much
with different thinkers. H. P. Blavatsky has presented
them with great force, but with some obscurity of
language, hi the beginning of The Secret Doctrine.
Bhagavan Das makes a singularly profound and lucid
statement of them in his Science of Peace, where he
postulates the Self, the Not-Self or Spirit and Matter
and the Relation between them, as the great Trinity,
the Ultimate^ of Thought, collapsing into the One.
TRIPLICITY
The LOGOS shows Himself in His universe or system
under three aspects the "Persons" of the Christian
Trinity those of Will, Wisdom (or Knowledge-Love),
and Creativeness (or Activity). The human Monad is a
fragment of his divine Parent, and reproduces these three
aspects in Himself, manifesting them in Man as Spirit.
Hence the human spiritual Will, being part of the one Will,
is irresistible Power, when the Spirit realises his unity
1 See for the further working out of this, Section VI., "A few
Details about Systems and Worlds ".
THEOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHY 55
with the LOGOS. Hence to the human spiritual Wisdom
nothing in Nature can be veiled. Hence by the human
spiritual Creativeness all can be achieved.
It is this last aspect in the human Trinity which can
build up all that Wisdom can conceive and that Will can
determine. As Intellect in the subtler worlds and as
Mind in the lower, it stretches out into the cosmos, to
know, to understand. By this, whose " nature is
knowledge," Man becomes aware of all which is outside
himself, the " Not Self," in the Hindu phrase. We have
seen that by the use of bodies Man may know the outer
universe, and consciousness may become aware of its en
vironment ; beginning to borrow Myers terminology
with the knowledge of its own earth, as the planet
ary consciousness, it may stretch out to a knowledge
of its universe, as the cosmic consciousness. The reason
demands this as a necessary truth, not because it is
testified to by the giants of spiritual genius, but because
there are growths in the planetary consciousness which
are unintelligible, causeless, and useless unless there is
a cosmic consciousness which they adumbrate, and
towards which they strive. Religion, Art, unselfish
self-sacrificing Love are, as they have been called,
bye-products and follies, if we are but gnats of a day,
dancing in sunshine, scattered in storm ; if we build
civilisations with infinite toil and suffering only that
they may perish ; if all that will be left as blurred
record of humanity shall be a frozen planet whirling
in space till shattered, the weary purposeless labour to
be ever renewed, and its results ever destroyed. To
the Theosophic philosophy Man is an eternal spiritual
Intelligence, whose root is in God, and his countless
activities develop his own inherent powers, which none
can annihilate unless he himself casts any away as of
no further use to him, and even then they remain in the
Eternal Memory. To such a Being, universes are but
instructive toys, serving his education, and they may
crash into splinters without disturbing his serene
equanimity, for they are only means to an end. The
56 THEOSOPHY
universe as a treadmill, grinding out nothing, makes
existence a burden, life a perpetual punishment, leaving
us not even an Imposer of the burden whose pity we
might move, or a Judge to whose clemency we might
appeal to mitigate the punishment. Theosophy sees
Man as an unfolding Power, going from strength to
strength, erring only that he may learn, suffering only
that he may grow strong, a radiant, rejoicing, vic
torious Life, whose "
growth and splendour have no
limit".
Philosophically considered, Man, like all else, is com
posed of but two factors, Spirit and Matter. The various
bodies which occult Science describes are, from the
philosophical view-point, his material sheath. They
are, in their totality, merely his Body. Man is a spiritual
Intelligence in a Body. The constituents which go to
form this Body physical, emotional, mental, intel
lectual, intuitional, spiritual forms of matter are no
more germane to the study than are the solids, liquids,
gases, and ethers that compose the physical body of
man.
THOUGHT-POWER
Thought being the manifestation of Creativeness,
the third aspect of the human triplicity, Theosophic
philosophy applies it to quicken human evolution.
The application of the general laws of the evolution of
mind to this quickening of the evolution of a particular
consciousness is called in the East yoga. The word
means "
union," and is used to indicate the conscious
union of the particular with the universal Self, and all
the efforts leading to that consummation. The method
of yoga is purely scientific, the knowledge of the laws
of mental and intellectual evolution having been gained
by observation and established by experiment. It has
been proved, and can ever be re-proved, that thought,
concentrating itself attentively on any idea, builds that
idea into the character of the thinker, and a man may
THEOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHY 57
thus create in himself any desirable quality by sus
tained and attentive thinking meditation.
The careless play of Thought on undesirable ideas
and qualities is an active danger, creating a tendency
towards such undesirable things, and leading to actions
embodying them. " Action "
is a triplicity ; desire
conceives it, thought plans it, and the final act is the
embodiment of both. Hence that final act is often pre
cipitated by favourable circumstances when desire has
grown strong, and thought has completely sketched the
carrying out ; the mental action precedes the physical,
and when a man has dallied in thought with the idea
of a good or of an evil action, he may find himself per
forming it in the outer world even before he realises
what he is doing ; when the gate of opportunity has
swung open, the mental action rushes out into the
physical.
Concentrated mental activity may be directed to the
mental, emotional, and physical bodies, recreating them
to an extent proportional to the energy, perseverance,
and concentration employed. All schools of healing
Christian Science, Mental Science utilise this powerful
agency in obtaining their results, and their utility
depends on the knowledge of the practitioner as to the
force which he is employing, and as to the environment
in which he is using it the environment consisting
largely of the bodies of his patient. Innumerable
successes prove the existence of the force that is wielded,
and failures do not show that the force is non-existent,
but only that the manipulation of it was not skilful,
or could not evoke sufficient of it for the task in hand.
Thought-power being recognised in Theosophic phil
osophy as the one Creator, it is seen as working in
Evolution, and as having planned for the evolution of
the human consciousness the admirable method of
Reincarnation, under the Law of Action and Reaction,
called in the East Karma.
58 THEOSOPHY
REINCARNATION
The object of Man s assumption of bodies Incarna
tion has already been explained ; we have seen that
his three higher bodies form his permanent clothing,
and that they grow and increase with the unfolding of
his consciousness. We have seen also that the three
lower bodies are temporary, existing through a definite
life-cycle, spent by him in three worlds the earth, the
intermediate world, and heaven ; with his return to
the earth he assumes new bodies, and this is Reincarna
tion. The necessity for this lies in the comparative
density of the matter of which the lower worlds are
composed ; the bodies made of this can only grow and
expand within certain limits, far narrower than those
which belong to the subtler bodies ; stretched beyond
these, by the constant unfolding of consciousness, the}?-
lose their elasticity, and can no longer be used ; more
over, they grow old by this constant stretching, and
wear out. When the consciousness, at the end of a
cycle of growth, has definitely established itself in its
new stage of evolution, it needs new bodies shaped for
the expression of its enhanced powers. If this were not
arranged for in the Plan we should be like children
enclosed in iron armour, and stunted in their growth
by its non-expansiveness. Children " grow out of their
clothes," and we give them new ones ; we grow out of
our bodies, and are given new ones by our Father, the
LOGOS.
The method is simple enough ; a seed of divine con
sciousness is sown in the soil of human life ; nourished
by that soil, which is experience, stimulated by the
sunshine of joy, expanded by the rain of sorrow, it
swells and burgeons out into plant, flower, and fruit,
until it attains the likeness of the parent tree.
Put without metaphor : a human Spirit, a germinal
life, enters the babe of a savage ; he has scarcely any
intelligence, no moral sense; he lives there for
"
some
forty or fifty years, dominated by desires, robs, murders.
THEOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHY 59
finally is murdered. He passes into the intermediate
world, meets many old enemies, suffers, sees dimly that
his body was murdered as a result of murdering others,
comes to a vague conclusion unfavourable to murder ;
this is very faintly impressed on his consciousness ; he
enjoys the results of any dawning love he may have
felt ; he comes back a trifle more "
knowledgeable
"
than at his first birth. This is repeated over and over
again, till he has gradually but definitely arrived at
conclusions that murder and theft and other such
actions cause unhappiness, and love and kindness cause
happiness ; he has thus acquired a conscience, though
there is not much of it, and it is easily overborne by any
strong desire. The interval between births is at first
very short, but it gradually lengthens, as his thoughtpower
increases, until the regular round of the three
worlds is established ; in the first he gathers experience ;
in the second he suffers for his mistakes ; in the third
he enjoys the outcome of his good thoughts and emo
tions, and here also he works the whole of his good
mental and moral experiences into mental and moral
faculties ; in this heavenly world, further, he studies
his past life, and his sufferings, due to his mistakes,
bring him knowledge, and thus power.
" Every pain
that I suffered in one body became a power which I
wielded in the next."
l His stay in the third world
increases in length and richness of yield as he progresses.
At last he approaches the term of his long pilgrimage ;
he enters the Path, passes through the great Initiations,
and reaches human perfection.
2 For him, Reincarna
tion is over, for he has spiritualised matter for his own
use, and while he may wear it, it cannot blind or rule him.
Looking at this long-turning wheel of Births and
Deaths, a man may feel a sense of weariness. But it
must be remembered that each life-period is new to the
one living through it ; by a wise arrangement, a man
1 Edward Carpenter, Towards Democracy, " The Struggle of Man
with Satan."
2 See Section IV., " The Pat>> *n
Perfection and Divine Men."
60 THEOSOPHY
down here forgets his past, at least until he is strong
enough to bear its weight, and as Goethe said rejoicingly,
we " return bathed " and fresh. There is no sense of
weariness in the child, joyously springing out to meet his
new life, but a sense of glad vitality, of eager enjoyment,
of ever-fresh delights. A wayworn soul, entering into
a child s body, weighed down by the memory of past
struggles and blunders, of love and hates, would be a
poor exchange for the gladness of healthy childhood.
Every life is a new opportunity, and if we have wasted
one life, we have always
" another chance ". Re
incarnation is essentially a Gospel, good news, for it
makes an end of despair, encourages effort, cheers with
the proclamation of final success, and ensures the per
manence of every fragment, every seed, of good in us,
and time enough for the least evolved to flower into
perfection.
Its value as an explanation of life is untold. The
criminal, the lowest and vilest, the poorest, foulest speci
men of our race, is only a baby-soul, coming into a
savage body, and thrown into a civilisation for which
he is unfit if left to follow his own instincts, but which
will provide for him a field of rapid evolution if his elders
take him in hand and guide him firmly and gently. He
is now at the stage at which the average commonplace
men were standing a million or so years ago, and he will
evolve in the future as they have evolved in the past.
There is no partiality shown to those who are situated
differently from him; there is only difference of age.
The inborn inequality in men need no longer distress us
the inequality between the splendidly shaped and the
cripple, the healthy and the diseased, the genius and the
fool, the saint and the criminal, the hero and the coward.
True, they are born thus, and bring with them into the
world these inequalities which they cannot transcend.
But they are either much younger in experience, or
have built themselves as they are under the laws of
nature ; every weakness will disappear in time, oppor
tunity after opportunity will come to them, every height
THEOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHY 61
is open to them to climb with the strength necessary
for its scaling.
The knowledge of Reincarnation guides us, as we shall
see in Section V., in dealing with social problems. It
shows us also how the social instincts have evolved,
why self-sacrifice is the law of evolution for man, how
we may plan out our own future evolution under natural
laws. It teaches us that qualities evolved from earthly
experience are returned to earth for the service of man,
and how every effort brings its full result under unerring
law. By giving him sufficient time, it puts into man s
hands the power to make his destiny as he wills, and to
create himself after his ideals. It points to a future of
ever-growing power and wisdom, and rationalises our
hope of immortality. It makes the body the instrument
of the Spirit instead of his owner, and removes the fear
that as the Spirit required a physical body in order to
come into existence at birth, he is likely to perish when
deprived of that body by death. As Hume said, it is
the only theory of immortality that the philosopher
can look at.
Memory of past lives has its seat in the Intellect not
in the Mind, in the permanent individual not in the
mortal person. We saw in Section I. that the lower
bodies perished at and after death, and that new ones
were built wherewith to enter on the new life-period.
These have not passed through the experiences of past
lives ; how, then, should the memory of these abide
in them ? The man who would remember his past
must become conscious in the causal body, wherein the
means of memory reside, and learn further to send down
the memories garnered therein into his consciousness
working in the brain. Through the practice of yoga
this may be done, and he can then unroll and read the
imperishable scroll of the past.
We are in the habit of regarding Reincarnation from
the view-point of the mortal nature of man, and thus
seeing a succession of lives, which we describe as "re
incarnations". But it might sometimes be well to
62 THEOSOPHY
consider the question from the view-point of the Eternal
Man, the Monad manifesting as the triple Spirit. Thus
looked at Reincarnation disappears, unless we say that
a tree reincarnates with each spring when it puts out a
new crop of leaves, or a man reincarnates when he puts
on a new coat. This personality, which looms so large
down here, is only a new set of leaves, or a new coat.
The Man knows himself &s one Man all through, with an
unbroken continuity of consciousness, with a single
identity, and an uninterrupted memory. The days of
his mortal life have for him no more weariness than the
long succession of mortal days have for our consciousness
working in the physical body ; we rise in the morning
and go forth to interests ever renewed, and each new
day brings its own pleasures and pains which we live
through with zest. The fact that our physical body is
always changing does not trouble us a bit ; we are the
same, inside it. And so, in the larger life, we are the
same, the ever-living, ever-working Spirits. When we
realise this, pain and weariness drop away, for we see
them as belonging to that which is not ourselves. To
stand in the fixed centre, and to look at the whirling
wheel from there, is very refreshing and very useful.
If any of my readers feel tired, I would invite them to
seek for awhile this Place of Peace.
THE LAW OF ACTION AND BEACTION
Reincarnation is carried on under the Law of Action
and Reaction Karma. The word karma means action,
and we have seen above that every action is a triplicity.
The Hindu, who has studied psychology for thousands
of years, analyses action as made up of three factors :
thought, stimulated by desire, plans out and shapes it ;
will (or desire) draws the mental energies together and
directs them towards accomplishment ; the act itself takes
form in the mental world. It is then ready for mani
festation, and is, as it were, pressing outwards towards
embodiment ; it is thrown out into the physical world,
THEOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHY 63
when the thinker can create an opportunity by his will
power, or when an opportunity presents itself. It is
then precipitated as a visible act. The whole process is
regarded by the Hindu as a triple unity, and he calls it
"
Karma," action. The clear understanding of this is
needed for the grasping of the three subsidiary laws
which affect our future destiny.
But first it is necessary to realise that karma is a law
of nature, and not an arbitrary enactment which may
be changed at will, and that it brings about results,
but does not reward or punish. A law of nature is not
a command, but a relation, an invariable sequence.
It does not reward or punish, but yields invariable, and
therefore foreseeable, results.
It may be stated generally as follows : Where A and
B are in a certain relation to each other, C will follow.
Suppose we object to C ; we must keep A and B out
of that relation. Nature does not say :
" You must
have C." You must have it, if A and B are in a certain
relation to each other ; but if you can keep A and B
out of that relation by any device by the interposition
of some force, some obstacle C will not appear. Hence
the better we understand Nature, the more can we have
our own way in the midst of her laws ; every law of
Nature is an enabling force to the man of understanding,
though a compelling force to the ignorant ; we are
perfectly free to balance these forces against each other,
to neutralise those which are against our purpose
while we leave free to act those only which will accom
plish it. It was truly said :
" Nature is conquered by
obedience." The ignorant man is her slave and her
plaything ; the man of knowledge is her conqueror
and her king.
Karma is a Law of Nature ; it compels the ignorant,
but it gives freedom to the wise. The three subsidiary
expressions of it that bear most on our destiny are :
" Thought builds character "
;
" Desire attracts its
object, and creates opportunity for grasping it
"
;
"Action causes a favourable or unfavourable environ64
THEOSOPHY
ment according as it has brought happiness or unhappiness
to others." (1) We have already seen the
first, in dealing with thought-power ; anyone who
chooses to spend five minutes regularly every morning
in steady thought on any virtue which he does not
possess will find that virtue after a time the length of
which depends on the steadiness and strength of his
thought showing itself forth in his character. (2) A
strong and firm wish brings about its own accomplish
ment ; this is very often seen within the limits of a
single Ufe ; a review of several successive lives places
the existence of the law beyond doubt. (3) Those who
make others happy, reap happiness for themselves ;
happiness is found by not seeking it, and ever eludes
those who grasp at it most passionately. Most strongly
does this, again, come out in reviewing a succession of
lives ; the man who has caused widespread happiness
is born into prosperous circumstances, while the man
who has caused unhappiness appears in an unfortunate
environment. But so exactly does the law work
" Thought builds character " that if he has caused the
happiness from a selfish motive his selfishness will
result in a nature which is itself miserable, even when
surrounded by all that should make life pleasant :
" Though the mills of God grind slowly yet they grind exceeding
small ;
Though He stands and waits with patience, with exactness
grinds He all."
Karma being the result, at any given time, of all the
thoughts, desires, and actions of the past, manifested
in our character, our opportunities, and our environment,
it limits our present : If we are mentally dull, we cannot
suddenly become brilliant ; if we have few opportunities,
we cannot always create them ; if we are crippled, we
cannot be hale. But as we created, so can we change it ;
and our present thoughts, desires, and actions are chang
ing our future Karma day by day. Moreover, it is well
to remember, especially if we are facing a coming disaster,
THEOSOPHY AS PHILOSOPHY 65
that the Karma behind us is as mixed as our present
thoughts, desires, and actions. A review of any day
will show that it contains some good thoughts and some
bad, some noble desires and some base, some kindly
actions and some unkindly. Each kind has its full
effect, the good making good Karma and the bad making
bad. Hence when we face misfortune we have behind
us a stream of force which will aid us in turning it aside,
and another which weakens us. One of these may be
overwhelmingly strong, helping or hindering us ; if so,
our present effort will play but a small part in the
result ; but very often the two forces are fairly equally
balanced, and a strong present effort will turn the scale.
A knowledge of Karma should thus strengthen effort,
not paralyse it as unfortunately is sometimes the case
with those whose knowledge is very small. It must
never be forgotten that Karma, being a law of Nature,
leaves us just as much freedom as we are able to take.
To talk of "
interfering with Karma "
is to talk nonsense,
except in the sense that one may talk of interfering with
gravitation. In that sense we may interfere with both
just as much as we can. If our muscles are weak from
fever, we may be unable to walk upstairs against gravi
tation ; but if they are strong, we can run up gaily,
defying gravitation to keep us in the hall below. So
with Karma. Once more, Nature does not command
anyone to do one thing or another ; she lays down in
variable conditions under which things can, or cannot,
be done. It is for us to find out the conditions which
will enable us to succeed, and then all her forces work
with us and accomplish our desires. " Yoke your
waggon on to a star," said Emerson, and then the force
of the star will draw your waggon to the place where
you would have it.
One other practical point is of grave importance. We
may in the past have made some special karmic force
for evil so strong that we are unable to overbear it by
any force we can bring to bear against it to-day. Under
such circumstances we are driven to do wrong, even
E
66 THEOSOPHY
when we wish to do right, and we feel ourselves to be as
helpless as a straw driven before the wind.
Never mind. We have still resources. When the
temptation to evil comes, we may meet it in one of two
ways. Feeling that we must yield, we may yield supinely,
and thus forge another link in the deadly chain of evil
habit. But the knower of Karma says : "I have
created this hateful weakness by countless yieldings to
low desire ; I set against it the higher form of desire,
my Will, and I refuse to yield." Battling against the
temptation, the man is forced surely back, step by step,
until he falls over the precipice, and yields in act, though
not in Will. To the eye of the world, he has fallen, a
helpless victim in a hopeless slavery. To the eye of the
knower of Karma, he has, by his gallant struggle, filed
away much of the chain that is still round his limbs ;
a few more such "
failures," and the chain will snap,
and he will be free. A habit made by many wrong
desires cannot be destroyed by one effort of right desire,
except in those rare cases in which the God within
awakes, and with one touch of the fiery spiritual Will
burns up the chains. Such cases of " conversion " are
on record, but most men tread a longer path.
The more we understand Karma, the more it becomes
a power in our hands, instead of a power, which binds
them. Here, perhaps more than in anything else,
"
knowledge is power ".
SECTION IV
THEOSOPHY AS RELIGION
WE have seen that Spirit, as Man, has three aspects,
manifesting himself as Will, Intuition, and Intellect,
in the three subtlest bodies. But the word is also used
in a narrower sense, denoting the first of the three
aspects, that which is manifested in the highest world
of our fivefold system the spiritual, or nirvanic, world,
where his manifestation is Will, or Power. Often, also,
the word is used to denote the two higher aspects by
being made to include Intuition, and no objection can
be raised to this. The two aspects indeed represent
the "
spiritual nature " of the human being, as Intellect
and Mind represent his Intelligence, the Emotions his
Feelings, and the Body his instrument of Action. We
have seen that as this diversion marks out the four
great departments of human thought the scientific, the
ethico-artistic, the philosophical, and the religious it
is therefore a convenient one. But for the sake of
perfect clearness I shall use the word "
Spirit
" to denote
the Monad clothed in an atom of the highest manifested
world, and the word " Intuition " to denote him
clothed
in an additional atom of the next lower one.
The word "
Religion
" covers Man s search for God
and God s answer to the searching. God s answer is
His Self-revelation to the seeking Spirit who is Man.
As the atmosphere surrounds us and interpenetrates us,
but we remain unconscious of its presence though our
very life depends on it, so the Universal Spirit surrounds
and interpenetrates the particularised Spirit, and the
latter knows not Him on whom his life depends :
" Closer is He than breathing, nearer than hanr>s
and feet."
67
68 THEOSOPHY
"To know God "
is, then, the essence of Religion, as
we have seen that all religions testify ;
l all else is sub
ordinate, and the man who thus knows is the Mystic,
the Gnostic, the Theosophist. The names are indeed
borne by many, but only
" those who know " can wear
them in their full significance.
" God is immanent in
everything
"
is the statement of the truth in. Nature
which makes such knowledge possible.
" God is all and
in all "
is the Christian way of putting the same truth ;
though S. Paul puts it in the future, the Mystic puts it
in the present. What does it mean ?
THE IMMANENCE OF GOD
It means that the essence of Religion is this recogni
tion of God everywhere. The true Theosophist sees in
each a portion of the divine Splendour. In the stability of
mountains, in the might of crashing billows, in the rush
of whirling winds, he sees His Strength. In the starstrewn
depths of space, in the wide stretchings of deserts,
he sees His Immensity. In the colours of flowerspangled
meadows, in the rippling laughter of brooklets,
in the green depths of forest shades, in the gleaming
expanse of snowy mountain peaks, in the waving of the
golden corn in the sunshine, in the silver of wavelets in
the moonlight, he sees His Beauty. In the sweet shy
smile of the maiden wooed in her dawning, in the eager
kiss of the lover who claims her as bride, in the tender
eyes
of the wife as they rest on the husband, in the answering
glance of the husband caressing the wife, in the laughing
lips of the child JOJ
TOUS in play, in the warm protecting
care of the father and mother, in the steadfast devotion
of friend to friend, in the leal fidelity of comrade to
comrade, he sees His Love. This is the " recollectedness
" of the Mystic, and is the true meaning of the
word mistranslated " fear " which "
is the beginning of
Wisdom". To realise this, and thus to know oneself
1 See " Introduction ".
THEOSOPHY AS RELIGION 69
to be one with God, is the aim of Theosophy, as of all
true Religion. All else is means to this end.
THEOSOPHICAL TEACHINGS
The common doctrines of religions, that which has been
believed everywhere, at all times, and by everyone,
form the body of doctrines promulgated by Theosophy.
These are : The One Existence the One God mani
fested hi the universe under three Aspects ("
Persons,"
from persona, a mask) ; the hierarchies of superhuman
Beings Devas, Angels, and Archangels ; the Incarna
tion of Spirit in matter, of which Reincarnation is the
human phase ; the Law of Action and Reaction,
" as a
man sows, so shall he reap
"
; the existence of the Path
to Perfection, and of divine Men ; the three worlds
physical, intermediate, and heavenly and the higher
heavens ; the Brotherhood of humanity. These are
the leading doctrines of Universal Religion. They can
all be proved to be true by the wider Science which
investigates the manifested worlds, excluding none from
its study so far as its instruments can reach. Hence
Theosophy is everywhere the defender and helper of
religions, serving each in its own domain, pointing out
to each man the sufficiency of his own faith, and urging
him to deepen and spiritualise his beliefs rather than to
attack the forms preferred by others. It is thus a peace
maker among conflicting creeds, a carrier of goodwill,
amity, and tolerance wherever it goes. Knowing that
all religions come from one source, the White Brother
hood, it discourages bitterness of feeling among re
ligionists and all virulent attacks by one on another.
And hence we say of the Theosophical Society, its
vehicle :
" Peace is its watchword, as Truth is its aim."
THE PATH TO PERFECTION AND DIVINE MEN
This is a teaching which, though found in all religions,
has dropped much out of sight hi modern days, till
70 THEOSOPHY
reproclaimed in Theosophy, and may therefore be fitly
sketched here. It is very fully described in Hinduism,
Buddhism, Roman Catholic Christianity, and Sufism
(mystic Muhammadanism), and its main features are
identical in all. The man who would enter the Path
must recognise Unity as his aim, and this is to be reached
by profound devotion to God and unwearying service
of Man. The first stage is named Purification in the
Christian books, the Probationary or Preparatory Path
in the others. The Christian name gives the negative
side, the getting rid of weaknesses ; the non-Christian the
positive side, the acquirement of four "
Qualifications" ;
these are : (1) Discrimination between the Real and the
Unreal ; (2) Dispassion, or Desirelessness as regards the
Unreal ; (3) the Six Jewels, or Good Conduct, comprising
Self-control in Thought, Self-control in Action, Toler
ance, Endurance, Confidence in the God within, and
Equanimity or Balance ; (4) Desire for Union, or Love.
The partial but definite acquirement of these by the
candidate brings him to the entrance of the Path of
Illumination, to use the Christian term, of the Path of
Holiness, or "the Path," to use the non-Christian.
Theosophy follows the older nomenclature, which divides
this Path into four stages, each entered by an " Initia
tion". Initiation is a definite ceremony, conducted by
the Perfected Members of the White Brotherhood,
under the sanction of its Head ; it gives to the new
Initiate an expansion of consciousness, and admits him
to a definite rank in the Brotherhood ; he is pledged to
Service, and is what is technically called " safe for ever
"
;
that is, he cannot drop even temporarily out of evolution
during its period of activity.
Each successive Initiation carries with it certain
definite obligations, which must be fully discharged
before the next step can be taken. The fifth Initiation
"
perfects
" the Man, closing his human evolution. By
that He becomes a liberated Spirit ; He has " reached
the further shore ". Some of These remain on our earth,
to watch over and forward human evolution ; others
THEOSOPHY AS RELIGION 71
depart to fill the various offices needed for the helping
of our own and other planets, and for the general
guidance of the Solar System. Those we call " Masters
"
are among Those who remain on our earth, and They
form the fifth grade of the White Brotherhood ; other
ranks rise above Them, until the head of the whole
Hierarchy is reached.
GOVERNMENT OF OUR WORLD
The world is divided into areas, each of which has a
Master at its head, and He guides its activities, selects
some men as His instruments, uses them, lays them
quietly aside when useless, seeking ever to inspire, to
guide, to attract, to check, but never to dominate the
human will. The Great Plan must be carried out, but
it is carried out by utilising free agents, who pursue
certain aims which attract them, power, fame, wealth,
and the rest. Where a man s aims, if carried out, will
forward the Plan, opportunities to rise are placed in his
way, and he obtains what he wants, ignorantly accom
plishing a little bit of the Plan. " All the world s a stage,
and all the men and women merely players
"
; but the
Drama is written by the divine Playwright ; men can
only choose their parts, limited in their choice by the
Karma they have created in their past, that includes
their capacities.
Further, there are great departments in the govern
ment of the world, that includes the whole planet.
The administrative department, that rules seismic
changes, the raising and submerging of continents, the
evolution of races, sub-races, and nations, and the like,
has among its leading officials the Manus ; a Manu is a
typical Man, and each root-race has its Manu, embody
ing its type in its highest perfection.
1 The teaching
department is headed by the Bodhisattva, or Christ,
the Supreme Teacher of Gods and Men ; He founds
1 See Section VI., " Some Details about Systems and
Worlds,"
pp. 87, 88.
I
72 THEOSOPHY
religions directly or through His messengers, and places
each under the protection of a Master, He Himself
superintending and blessing all. When He becomes a
Buddha, He leaves the earth, and is succeeded by
another as Bodhisattva.
These Mighty Beings are the vicegerents on our earth
of the Supreme Lord, the LOGOS, or manifested God.
They are "ministers of His, that do His pleasure".
Thus it comes to pass that His world is guided, pro
tected, assisted, as it slowly rolls upwards, by the long
road of evolution, to His Feet.
SECTION V
THEOSOPHY APPLIED TO SOCIAL PROBLEMS
IT may help the reader to understand the value of
Theosophy in its bearing on Life, if we consider how it
may be applied to the resolution of some of the more
painful problems which confront us in the present state
of Society. Many suggestions may be drawn from
civilisations founded and ruled in the past by members
of the White Brotherhood, although, under the greatly
changed conditions now prevailing, new applications
.of the fundamental principles must be devised. The
foundation of a stable Society must be Brotherhood ;
the need of every human being is for happiness and for
conditions favourable to his evolution, and the duty of
Society is to supply an environment which yields these.
The birth of a human being into an organised Society
gives to him a claim, and to Society a duty the claim
of a child on its parents, the duty of the parents to the
child. It is this natural and proper claim of the younger
on the elder that has been perverted into the aggressive
doctrine of "
rights
"
; animals, children, the sick, the
ignorant, the helpless, all these have rights the right
to be kindly used, protected, nursed, taught, shielded ;
the strong, the grown-up, have only duties.
Organised Society exists for the happiness and the
welfare of its members, and where it fails to secure these
it stands ipso facto condemned. " Government exists
only for the good of the governed." So said Pythagoras,
preaching on the hill at Tauromenion, and the phrase
has echoed down the centuries, and has become the
watchword of those who are seeking the betterment of
73
74 THEOSOPHY
social conditions. Only when the good of the governed
is sought and secured does the State deserve the eloquent
description with which the great Greek Teacher closed
one of his lectures to the Greek colony of Naxos, whose
citizens were gathered round him on the hill : .
"
Listen, my children, to what the State should be to
the good citizen. It is more than father or mother, it
is more than husband or wife, it is more than child or
friend. The State is the father and mother of all, is
the wife of the husband, and the husband of the wife.
The family is good, and good is the joy of the man in
wife and in son. But greater is the State, which is the
Protector of all, without which the home would be
ravaged and destroyed. Dear to the good man is the
honour of the woman who bore him, dear the honour of
the wife whose children cling to his knees ; but dearer
should be the honour of the State that keeps safe the
wife and the child. It is the State from which comes
all that makes your life prosperous, and gives you
beauty and safety. Within the State are built up the
Arts, which make the difference between the barbarian
and the man. If the brave man dies gladly for the
hearthstone, far more gladly should he die for the
State."
Pythagoras has become the Master K. H., well known
in connection with the Theosophical Society, and he
speaks out the Theosophical ideal of the State the
father-mother of its citizens, the Protector of all.
The duty of the State, of organised Society, is to secure
to every one of its members at least the minimum of welfare
of food, clothing, shelter, education, leisure which
will enable each to develop to the full the faculties which
he brought with him into the world. There is no necessity
for the existence of starvation and poverty, of overwork
and absence of leisure, of lack of comfort and the means
of enjoyment. Human brains are quite clever enough
to plan out a social system in which every citizen should
have enough for happy life ; the only obstacles are
selfishness and want of will. It was done long ago
THEOSOPHY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 75
under the King-Initiates who ruled in the City of the
Golden Gate and in Peru. It was done in the time of
King Ramachandra, as may be read in the Rdmdyana.
It was done when the Manu ruled in the City of the
Bridge.
1 But it must be planned out by wisdom, not
by ignorance, and brought about by the love and
sacrifice of the higher, and not by the uprising of the
lower. Mobs can make revolutions ; but they cannot
build a State.
PRINCIPLES OF THE NEW ORDER
Basing itself on the study of the past, Theosophy can
lay down certain principles, to be worked out into
details by the highly educated and experienced. The
principles are : that Government should be in the
hands of the Elders, i.e. the wisest, the most experienced,
and the morally best ; that the possession of ability and
of power imposes the duty of service ; that freedom
brings happiness only to the educated and self-con
trolled, and that no one, so long as he is ignorant and
unself-controlled, should have any share in the govern
ing of others, and should only have such freedom as is
consistent with the welfare of the community ; that the
life of such a one should be rendered as happy and useful
as possible, under discipline until he is fit to " run
alone,"
so that his evolution may be quickened ; that co-opera
tion, mutual aid, should be substituted for competition,
mutual struggle ; that the fewer resources a man has **
within himself, the more means of outer enjoyment
should be placed within his reach by Society.
SUGGESTIONS
The suggestions which follow are the results of my
own study of what has been done in the past, and of my
own thought on present conditions. They are only
1 Much of interest and value may be found on the Manu s policy
in Bhagavan Das Science of Social Organisation,
76 THEOSOPHY
suggestions, and many Theosophists might disagree
with them. My only wish is to indicate a line of change
consonant with Theosophical ideas. Brotherhood im
peratively demands fundamental social changes, and
the rapid growth of unrest, justified by the conditions
of the classes that live by manual labour, will force a
change ere long. The only question is whether the
change shall be brought about by open-eyed wisdom
or by blind suffering. At present, Society is engaged in
trying the latter plan.
The land of a country should be used to support :
(1) the Ruler, his Councillors, Officials of every grade,
the administration of Justice, the maintenance of in
ternal Order and of National Defence ; (2) Religion,
Education, Amusement, Pensions, and the care of the
Sick ; (3) all who are not included under (1) and (2),
and who gain their livelihood by manual labour in pro
duction and distribution.
Education, free and universal, should be the only work
of the period between seven and twenty-one years of
age, so that the youths of both sexes should, on reach
ing manhood and womanhood, be ready to become
dutiful and useful citizens, with their faculties well
developed, so that they would be capable of leading an
honourable, self-supporting and self-respecting life.
The working life and all should work in one of the
three above-named divisions should last from twentyone
to fifty years of age, unless a shorter term should be
found sufficient for the support of the nation. During
the remainder of the life, the citizen should be hi receipt
of a pension, the result of the accumulated surplus of
his working years, and therefore a repayment, not a gift ;
he should be free to devote himself to any pursuit he
pleased.
Production and distribution should be organised by
such men as make the huge fortunes now becoming so
numerous, and after full provision for all concerned in
the producing and distributing, the surplus profits
should go to (1) and (2), chiefly to the latter. The
THEOSOPHY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 77
organisation of industry should be governed by the idea
that labour should be rendered as little burdensome as
possible by healthy conditions and by the substitution
of machinery for human beings in all unpleasant and
dangerous work mining, drainage, and the like ; where
unpleasant forms of human labour are necessary for the
welfare of the community, the hours of labour should be
shortened in proportion to the disagreeableness of the
task, without any diminution of pay. If the scavenger,
for instance, is to lead a human life, as much of his work
as can be done by machinery should be thus performed ;
for the rest, his hours should be very short, his pay good
since the health of the community depends on him
and recreation, some refining and educative, some
purely amusing, should be readily available within his
reach. He is an active hand of Nature, helping her ii\
her constant task of transforming the foul and the
dangerous into the nourishment of new life and new
beauty. He should be regarded, as said on p. 34. not
as a drudge but as a co-worker with God. Is it said that
he is coarse, repellent ? So much the more shame for
us, the refined and attractive, who profit by his work,
and have made him what he is by our selfishness, our
indifference, and our neglect.
The doctrine of Reincarnation, applied to education,
leads us to see in the child an ego who t as come into our
care during the time of the growth of his body, to be
helped in training it for the purpose for which he has
returned to the earth. Recognising that in the ego
himself are enshrined all the powe.s accumulated in
past lives, and that the germs of tliese are planted in
the new mental body, we feel the full force of Plato s
famous phrase, that " All knowledge is reminiscence,"
and seek to draw out of the ego that which he knows,
that he may stimulate the germinal mental faculties,
and so impress the plastic brain. We do not regard the
child-body as belonging to us, parents or teachers, but
as belonging to the ego, and we see it to be our duty to
help him in gaming full possession of it, to work from
78 THEOSOPHY
outside while he works from within, and to follow out
any indication given by him as to the best line of study,
the easiest road of progress. We give to the child the
greatest liberty compatible with his physical, moral, and
mental safety, and in everything try to understand and
to help, not to coerce. The detailed application of these
principles may be read in an admirable little book on
Education and Service, by Alcyone.
Reincarnation, applied to the treatment of criminals
and of the undeveloped class which is ever on the verge
of crime, suggests a policy wholly different from that of
our present Society, which gives them complete liberty
to do as they like, punishes them when they commit a
legal offence, restores them to liberty after a varying
term of gaol, and so gives them a life of alternating
freedom and imprisonment, transforming them into
ha.bitual criminals, and handing them over finally to
" the divine mercy," man having failed to do any good
with them.1 In the light of Reincarnation I suggest
that the congenital criminal is a savage, come to us as to
a school, and that it is our business to treat him as the
intellectual and moral baby which he is, and to restrain
the wild beast in him from doing harm. These people,
and the almost criminal class above them, are recog
nisable from birth, and they should be segregated in
small special schools, given such elementary education
as they can assimilate, be treated kindly and firmly,
have many games, and be taught a rough form of manual
laboui. The teachers in these schools should be volun
teers from the higier social classes, willing to teach and
play with the boys, and capable of arousing in them a
feeling of admiration, attachment, and loyalty, which
would evoke ^bcdience. They must be with those who
are obviously their superiors if this is to be done. From
these schools they should be drafted into small colonies,
bright, pleasant villages, with shops, playground, musichall,
and restaurant, ruled by men of the same type as
1 That which follows is the immediate treatment of the criminal
as he is. We hope, later, to eliminate the type.
THEOSOPHY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 79
before ; they should have everything to make life
pleasant, except freedom to make it mischievous and
miserable ; these colonies would supply gangs of
labourers for all the rougher kinds of work, mining,
road-making, porterage, scavengering, etc., leaving the
decent people now employed in these free for higher
tasks. Some, the true congenital criminal, the raw
savage, would remain under this kindly restraint for
life, but they would go out of life far less of savages
than they were when they came into it. Some would
respond to the treatment, and would acquire sufficient
industry and self-control to be ultimately set free. The
chief difficulties would be innate rowdyism and idleness,
for the criminal is a loafer, incapable of steady industry.
The school would do something to improve him, and to
do right would be made pleasant, while to be rowdy
and idle would be made unpleasant ; "he that will not
work neither shall he eat "
is a sound maxim, for food
is made by work, and he who, being able, refuses to
make it has no claim to it. Checks might be given
for each hour s work, exchangeable at the shops and
restaurant for the necessaries of life, and the man could
do as much or as little as he liked ; the equivalent in
necessaries and luxuries would be at his own choice.
It is only possible here to indicate the broad lines of
the solution of this problem, and similar methods would
be employed, mutatis mutandis, with girls and women
of the corresponding type.
Karma, applied to the slums, would see in them
magnets for the lowest types of incarnating Spirits ; it
would be our wisdom, as it is our duty, to get rid of
these foul spots, attractive only to the most undesirable
of the incoming crowd. In the light of Theosophy, it
is the duty of the elders to plan out, and gradually to
construct, towns of decent dwellings with sufficient
interspaces, to which should be transplanted the dwellers
in the slums ; these poison-spots must be pulled down,
and the soil, sodden with the filth of generations, should
be turned into gardens ; the filth will then be changed
80 THEOSOPHY
into trees and flowers, whereas to build new houses on
such soil is to invite disease. Moreover, Beauty must
be sought, for, as said in Section II., it is a necessity of
life for all, not a luxury for the few. Beauty refines and
cultivates, and reproduces itself in the forms and
manners of those who live under its influences. Beauty
in dress, in the home, in the town, is a crying need as an
evolutionary force. It is not without significance that
before the present age of machinery, when people were
more surrounded by natural beauty than they are now,
the clothes of the people of every class were beautiful,
as they still are in the East ; it is natural to man to
seek to express himself in Beauty ; it is only as he be
comes far removed from Nature, that he accepts with
indifference ugliness in clothes and surroundings. Con
trast the clothes seen in our slums with those seen in an
Indian village.
Volumes might be written on this theme of the
application of Theosophy to life, but within our present
limits the above must suffice.
SECTION VI
A FEW DETAILS ABOUT SYSTEMS AND WORLDS
IN Section III. the basic principle of the relation between
Spirit and Matter was given. It may be interesting to
consider some of its details.
It is possible to see that the universal ^Ether within
our Solar System and presumably elsewhere, since there
are many such Systems contains innumerable bubbles,
exactly similar in appearance to bubbles arising within
water, empty spaces, walled in only by the surrounding
water. A soap-bubble floating in the air is a tiny portion
of air within a surrounding film of soapy water ; but
the bubbles in water are tiny portions of air within a
mass of water, and have no limiting film ; they are kept
as bubbles by the pressure of the water containing them.
So these bubbles are kept as bubbles by the pressure
of the surrounding ^Ether, and as they cannot escape
from this, they can only remain bubbles. They are
" holes in ^Ether," or, as H. P. Blavatsky called them
long ago,
" holes in Space," and she said that they were
made by "
Fohat," the power of the Supreme LOGOS.
Ancient books similarly speak of " the great Breath "
as their cause ; the analogy is obvious, since bubbles
may be produced by breathing into water. A French
scientist, quoted by Mr. Leadbeater,1
says :
** There
is no matter ; there are nothing but holes in the ether."
But out of the aggregations of these holes, all that we
call matter is built up.
1 A Text-Boole of Theosophy, p. 27
81 w
82 THEOSOPHY
THB BUILDING OF ATOMS BY THE FIRST LIFE-WAVE
The LOGOS of a Solar System encloses a huge frag
ment of the universal ^Ether, thus bubble-filled, within
His before-mentioned Ring-Pass-Not. The bubbles are
visible to the sight of the third or spiritual sphere, and
one can see that He sets up a great whirl of force, which
sweeps the bubbles together into a huge mass ; the
Third Aspect of the LOGOS is the Creative, and through
this He sends forth the first Life-Wave, as it is called,
which builds the bubbles into atoms, later aggregates
atoms into molecules, and finally builds these into the
six familiar sets of combinations, which in the physical
world are called sub-atomic, super-etheric, etheric,
gaseous, liquid, and solid.
These original separate bubbles form the matter of
the divine sphere, while that of the monadic sphere is
made of groupings of the bubbles into atoms, these
being formed by an impulse of the Life-Wave of Creative
Thought, causing minute vortices, each of which draws
in 49 bubbles ; thus two interpenetrating worlds are
formed, the divine and the monadic, the first of free
bubbles, the second of some of these combined into
atoms, each atom consisting of 49 bubbles. The second
impulse from the Life-Wave separates out a quantity
of these 49-atom-bubbles, dissociates them, and recombines
them in vortices, each of which contains 492
bubbles, the atoms of the spiritual world. A third
impulse separates a mass of these from the remainder,
dissociates them, and recombines them in vortices,
each of which contains 49s bubbles, the atoms of the
intuitional world. A fourth impulse in similar fashion
yields atoms of the mental world, containing 494
bubbles. A fifth yields atoms of the astral world,
containing 495 bubbles, and a sixth builds the atoms of
the physical world, each composed of 496 bubbles.
Thus are formed the interpenetrating spheres of seven
types of matter, each type being the atomic basis of a
SYSTEMS AND WORLDS 83
world composed entirely of combinations of its own
particular atom. When this series of atoms was com
plete, the seventh impulse was sent forth, and this built
aggregations of atoms, a vast number of different
combinations ; these again entered into further com
binations with each other, in the process of many ages,
a period of inconceivable length ; during this time the
glowing nebula gradually cooled, ultimately being broken
up into a central Sun, with various planets revolving
round him as centre. This is the vast work of the
Creative Aspect of the Solar LOGOS, the "
Spirit of God "
who " moved upon the face of the waters " of ^Ether,
the axis of the whirling mountain which churned up the
ocean, so that out of it living things might arise.
THE EELATION BETWEEN ATOMS AND CONSCIOUSNESS
There is one point of great interest in the formation of
atoms that ought not to be omitted. The Life of the
LOGOS is the whirling force within the atom, that holds
its component parts together. This Life gives to the
atom its distinctive quality, its essential nature, which
is a particular mode of the divine Consciousness ; the
Hindu calls this the "
tattva," literally the " Thatness "
;
"
Tat,"
"
That," is a reverent expression for the Divine
Being, and Thatness indicates "
Godness," or " Godnature&
quot;. Each atom has thus its "Godness". The
measure of the vibration of the atom, imposed upon it
by the Will of the LOGOS, is the "
tanmatra," the
" measure of That "
; this is the axes of the atom,1
lines of the thought-force of the LOGOS, the angular
divergence of which, within the fixed limits of vibration,
determines its surface form. Each type of atom has
its own peculiar work, for the states of consciousness
manifested by the LOGOS within His universe what
He is outside it none, save His peers, can tell are
1 Like the axes of crystals. They are " imaginary
" lines ; but
imagination is the creative power, and these lines govern the
form of the crystal, though they are * non-existent ".
84 THEOSOPHY
identical in quality, though not in quantity, with the
states of consciousness in Man, the faint image of His
glory. It is thus His consciousness within the atom
which answers to our consciousness, stage by stage, the
material of the atom faithfully reflecting each stage in
the wave-lengths of its vibrations. Thus the atom of
the spiritual world vibrates in answer to the modes of
Spirit Spirit being its life ; that of the intuitional
world to the modes of Intuition for a like reason ;
that of the mental world to the modes of Intellect ; that
of the emotional world to the modes of Emotion and
Passion ; that of the physical world to the modes of
Vitality all for like reasons. Each change in conscious
ness in any of these states is at once answered by a change
of vibration in the corresponding matter ; any vibra
tion set up in matter is at once answered by a change
in the corresponding state of consciousness. For in
stance, all the matter of the emotional, or astral, sphere
is composed of atoms, the Life in which is Emotion, and
the measure of vibration of which is correlated to
emotion, to express and respond to it. The whole huge
gamut of emotions, passions, desires, is played by con
sciousness on this matter, and pure passion and desire
on this matter only ; as emotion is a mingling of passion
and thought, some mingling of thought-matter enters
into the expression of emotion. The matter of the
mental sphere is made of atoms similarly connected
with thought ; the Life is Mentality, the measure of
vibration is correlated to thought, to express and
respond to it. As definitely as in the physical world
the range of sounds lies within certain vibration-numbers,
and the range of colours within others, so can thoughts
and passions only be expressed by matter which vibrates
within certain limits.
CHAINS
When this part of the work has proceeded sufficiently
far for planets to be possible within the Solar System,
SYSTEMS AND WORLDS 85
a series of six globes composed of the matter of the
spheres of varying densities is formed in connection with
each planet seven globes, including the planet. Such
a series is called a Chain, and during its period of evolu
tion it passes through seven stages, or lives ; there is
thus a succession of seven Chains, and this complete
series is termed a Scheme of Evolution, and is under the
charge of a mighty spiritual Intelligence, called by
Theosophists a " Ruler of seven Chains ".
1 There are
ten of these in our Solar System, but only seven are
in manifestation, ruled by the " seven Spirits before
the throne of God," mentioned in the " Revelation of
S. John". They are at different stages of evolution,
marked by the sphere of matter in which their lowest
globes exist. Thus the Neptunian and the Terrene
Chains have each three globes in the physical sphere,
for these are both at their deepest point of descent into
matter, in their middle, or fourth, life. The seven
globes of the Earth Chain include Mars, the Earth, and
Mercury ; those of the Neptunian, Neptune and his
two satellites.
Those who are interested in this part of Theosophical
study must pursue it in larger books, for it is naturally
very complicated.
THE BUILDING OF FORMS BY THE SECOND LIFE-WAVE
Let us consider our own Chain. Evolution circles
round a Chain seven times, and each of these cycles is
appropriately called a Round. The evolutionary force
is called the Second Life-Wave, and it is the Life which
is sent out by the LOGOS through His second Aspect of
Wisdom, the dual Aspect, Knowledge-Love. Speaking
generally, this Life-Wave descends through the spheres
of matter, causing ever-increasing differentiation, and
then returns, causing reintegration into unity. Its
first work is to give to matter certain qualities, fitting it
to be materials for bodies ; it pours itself into the three
1 Called also a Planetary Logos, but the name causes confusion.
86 THEOSOPHY
finer kinds of matter which form the higher mental
sphere ; matter thus infused with the second Life-Wave
is called, when atomic,
" Monadic Essence," because it
has become fit to be used to supply permanent atoms
to Monads ;
1 when non-atomic, i.e. molecular, matter
is used, it is called " Elemental Essence " a name
borrowed from the writings of mediaeval Occultists ;
it was bestowed by them on the matter of which the
bodies of nature-spirits were composed, for they spoke
of these as "
Elementals," dividing them into classes
belonging to the " Elements " of Air, Mre, Water, and
Earth. The three higher levels of the mental sphere
are, regarded as mental Elemental Essence, the " first
Elemental Kingdom". All abstract
"thought-forms"
made of this, and a large and splendid host of Angels
Bodiless Devas have bodies composed of this matter.
The four lower levels of the mental sphere, suffused by
the second Life-Wave, form the " second Elemental
Kingdom "
; of this are made the bodies of the lower
Angels Form Devas. When the Life-Wave enters the
astral world, the atomic matter becomes astral Monadic
Essence, and the molecular matter astral Elemental
Essence, the " third Elemental Kingdom "
; the bodies
of the lowest Angels Passion Devas and of very many
nature-spirits are composed of this. The Life-Wave passes
on into the physical world, and performs its accustomed
task ; the bodies of the lower nature-spirits, fairies,
gnomes, and the like, are made of the etheric matter
thus suffused. The Mineral Kingdom is the turningpoint
of density ; there the second half of the work of
the Life-Wave proceeds, the building up of the bodies,
plants, animals, and men, now on the ascending arc;
the astral and mental bodies are also built of the
Elemental Essence on this ascending arc. Hence the
conflict that often arises between the life of the man
and the life in the matter of his bodies. The latter is
pressing downwards, seeking grosser and grosser em
bodiment and sharper differentiation ; the former is
1 See Section I., p. 24.
SYSTEMS AND WORLDS 87
aspiring upwards, and is seeking unity. S. Paul natur
ally exclaims as to this conflict : "I find another law
in my members, warring against the law of my mind,
and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which
is in my members." The Man must bring
" the flesh "
into subjection, for its life is evolutionarily downwards,
on the descending arc, and his is evolutionarily upwards,
on the ascending arc, taking its way to the realisation of
Spirit,
THE COMING OF THE MONAD BY THE THIRD LIFE-WAVE
The point at which Man definitely
"
individualises,"
is when the Monad and his Ray Spirit, Intuition, and
Intellect who had been brooding over the evolving
forms carried in the bosom of the second Life-Wave,
flashes downwards to meet the evolving embodied life,
and the causal body is formed of the matter of the first
Elemental Kingdom, on the higher levels of the mental
sphere. The human Monads are also ^orne on a divine
current, the " third Life-Wave," coming forth from the
LOGOS through His first Aspect. We see, then, that the
LOGOS sends forth three mighty waves of His Life,
through His three Aspects in succession : the first
shapes and ensouls matter ; the second imparts quali
ties and builds forms ; the third carries down the human
Monad to unite with the forms prepared by the second.
ROOT-RACES AND SUB-RACES
We must now narrow our attention to our own world.
Three times has evolution swept round the series of
globes of which our earth is the densest three Rounds
Be behind us. The fourth sweep has come as far as our
earth, which is now evolving under its influence.
Minerals, plants, animals, men, all evolve together, but
we may confine ourselves to men. Seven root-types
of men evolve on our earth during this stage of its life.
Theosophists call these types Root-Races, and each has
88 THEOSOPHY
its own special
"
continent," or configuration of land.
The first two Root-Races have disappeared. Of the
third, the Lemurian, which flourished on the continent
of Lemuria, now beneath the Pacific Ocean for the
most part, scarcely a pure specimen remains ; the
negroes are its descendants from mixed marriages.
The fourth, the Atlantean, spread over the earth from
the continent of Atlantis, which united western Europe
and Africa with eastern America ; it built some of the
mightiest civilisations the world has known, and the
greater part of the world s inhabitants still belong to it.
The fifth, the Aryan, leads humanity to-day. The sixth
is in the womb of the future, but its continent is beginning
its formation, and will occupy, roughly, the Lemurian
site ; the islands now being thrown up in the northern
Pacific are the indications of the commencement of a
work which will demand hundreds of thousands of years
for its accomplishment. The seventh lies far, far ahead.
Each Root-Race divides into seven sub-races ; we
have the fourth Root-Race divided into the Rmoahal,
Tlavatli, Toltec, Turanian, Semitic, Akkadian, and
Mongolian sub-races. The fifth Root-Race has, so far,
produced five sub-races : the Hindu, Arabian, Iranian,
Keltic, and Teutonic ; the sixth sub-race is beginning
to show itself in the United States.
Each Root-Race has, as the shaper of its type and the
guardian of its evolution, a Great Being called a " Manu
"
;
the name is derived from man, to think, the root of
"
man,"
"
homme,"
"
mann," etc. The Manu is The
Man, the type-Man of a Root-Race. The great racial
types may be realised by putting side by side a Negro,
a Mongol, an Aryan. The sub-race differences are
shown by a German and an Italian.
It will be seen that immense subjects of study are
here opened up, profoundly interesting, though not
bearing immediately on human happiness and human
conduct.
SECTION VII
THE THEOSOPHIOAL SOCIETY
THE Theosophical Society was founded in 1875 by a
Russian, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and an American,
Henry Steele Olcott. The first brought to it her vast
occult knowledge and entire self-sacrifice she belonged
to a wealthy family of the Russian nobility ; the second
brought extraordinary organising ability, already proved
in his service to his country in the purification of its
military department during the Civil War. At first,
on their reassertion of the Ancient Wisdom in the
modern world, they met a whirlwind of ridicule and
contempt. Now tke ideas have spread into every
civilised country, and it may be said, without fear of
contradiction, that it is to-day influencing the whole
world of thought.
The basis of the Society is a little peculiar ; only one
thing is binding on every member the acceptance of
Universal Brotherhood.
Its objects are :
First. To form a nucleus of the Universal Brother
hood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed,
sex, caste, or colour.
Second. To encourage the study of comparative
religion, philosophy, and science.
Third. To investigate the unexplained laws of Nature
and the powers latent in man.
It will be seen that no member is asked either to
believe or to spread Theosophical teachings. Every
member is left absolutely free to study exactly as he
chooses ; he may accept or reject any Theosophical
teaching ; he remains in his own religion, Hindu, Parsi,
Buddhist, Hebrew, Christian, Muhammadan, and his
religion, if he holds to it strongly, will colour all his
ideas. If he accepts Theosophical teachings, a strong
90 THEOSOPHY
believer in any special form of religion will present them
in his own form, and is absolutely free to do so. But
he must not insist on his own form of them being accepted
by others.
The experiment of forming a profoundly religious
body open to members of all religions equally is a unique
one, but it is gradually succeeding, with many difficulties,
occasional friction between members holding strongly
to opposing views, and plenty of discussion as to details.
The main policy of perfect tolerance, and the reason
for the policy, have been, formulated as follows by my
self, and have been objected to by no member. It may,
therefore, be presented as stating the general view.
No person s religious opinions are asked upon his joining,
nor is interference with them permitted, but everyone is re
quired to show to the religion of his fellow-members the same
respect as he claims for his own.
The Society has no dogmas, and therefore no heretics. It
does not shut any man out because he does not believe the
Theosophical teachings. A man may deny every one of them,
save that of human Brotherhood, and claim his place and his
right within its ranks.
Theosophists realise that just because the intellect can only
do its best work in its own atmosphere of freedom, truth can
best be seen when no conditions are laid down as to the right
of investigation, as to the methods of research. To them Truth
is so supreme a thing, that
they
do not desire to bind any man
with conditions as to how, or where, or why he shall seek it.
The future of the Society depends on the fact that it should
include a vast variety of opinions on all questions on which
differences of opinion exist ; it is not desirable that there should
be within it only one school of thought, and it is the duty of
every member to guard this liberty for himself and for others.
The Theosophical Society is the servant of the Divine Wisdom,
and its motto is :
" There is no Eeligion higher than Truth ".
It seeks in every error for the heart of truth whereby it lives,
and whereby it attaches to itself human minds.
Every religion, every philosophy, every science, every activity,
draws what it has of truth and beauty from the Divine Wisdom,
but cannot claim it as exclusively its own, or as against others.
Theosophy does not belong to the Theosophical Society ; the
Theosophical Society belongs to Theosophy.
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 91
The Theosophical Society is composed of students, belonging
to any religion in the world or to none, who are united by their
approval of the above objects, by their wish to remove religious
antagonisms and to draw together men of goodwill, whatsoever
their religious opinions, and by their desire to study religious
truths and to share the results of their studies with others.
Their bond of union is not the profession of a common belief,
but a common search and aspiration for Truth. They hold
that Truth should be sought by study, by reflection, by purity
of life, by devotion to high ideals, and they regard Truth as
a prize to be striven for, not as a dogma to be imposed by
authority. They consider that belief should be the result of
individual study or intuition, and not its antecedent, and
should rest on knowledge, not on assertion. They extend
tolerance to all, even to the intolerant, not as a privilege they
bestow but as a duty they perform, and they seek to remove
ignorance, not to punish it. They see every religion as a partial
expression of the Divine Wisdom, and prefer its study to its
condemnation, and its practice to proselytism. Peace is their
watchword, as Truth is their aim.
Theosophy is the body of truths which forms the basis of all
religions, and which cannot be claimed as the exclusive posses
sion of any. Members of the Theosophical Society study these
truths, and Theosophists endeavour to live them. Everyone
willing to study, to be tolerant, to aim high, and to work
perseveringly,
is welcomed as a member, and it rests with the
member to become a true Theosophist.
I may add that most of us regard the Theosophical
Society as the result of a spiritual impulse, sent out by
the White Brotherhood, in order to save the world from
sinking into Materialism, and to prepare the minds of
men for the restoration of the esoteric teachings of
religion. It is to us the latest of many such impulses,
the earlier ones being embodied in separate religions,
while this seeks to draw the existing religions into
united friendly co-operation. We regard H. P.
Blavatsky as a Messenger of the White Brotherhood,
and many of us, I myself among the number, feel to
her the deepest gratitude, because she opened to us, in
this life, the gateway through which we ha-^e passed
into the presence of Those who sent her.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine.
The Key to Theosophy.
The Voice of the Silence.
A. P. Sinnett, Esoteric Buddhism.
The Occult World.
The Growth of the Soul
Annie Besant, The Ancient Wisdom.
A Study in Consciousness.
Thought-Power.
An Introduction to Yoga.
Esoteric Christianity.
The Laws of the Higher Life.
In the Outer Court.
The Path of Discipleship.
Initiation, the Perfecting of Man.
The Three Paths and Dharma.
Universal Text-Book of Religion and Morals.
Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, Thought-Forms.
Occult Chemistry.
Man : Whence, How, Whither.
C. "W. Leadbeater, Man Visible and Invisible.
The Other Side of Death.
Some Glimpses of Occultism.
The Inner Life, 2 vols.
Invisible Helpers.
Clairvoyance.
A Text-Book of Theosophy.
J. Krishnamurti, At the Feet of the Master.
Education as Service.
Bhagavan Das, The Science of the Emotions.
The Science of Peace.
The Science of Social Organisation.
Mabel Collins, Light on the Path.
H. S. Olcott, Old Diary Leavest a History of the Theosophical
Society.
INDEX
ACTION, 57, 62, 63, 67
reaction, 57, 62-66, 69
Activity (creativeness), 25, 33,
54, 55, 57
Agnosticism, 14
Angels, 39, 42, 51, 69, 86
Art, 19, 49-51,55
Astral sphere, 28-35
awakening, 30
Atoms and consciousness, 83, 84
Atoms, permanent, 24, 36, 37
Aura, 37
Auric colours, 28, 38
BEAUTY, 49, 50, 80
Blavatsky, H. P., 16, 81, 89, 91
Bodhisattva, 71, 72
Body, astral, 28-35, 36, 37, 38,
40, 47, 86
causal, 36, 37, 61, 87
mental, 36, 37, 61, 86
physical, 18, 25, 26, 27, 36,
37, 38, 56
Brotherhood of masters, 15. 17,
47, 48, 49, 69-72, 73, 91
Building of atoms, 82, 83
of forms, 85
CEREMONIES and rites, 41
Chains, 84, 85
Chakrams, 26
Comparative religion, 13, 14
mythology, 13, 14, 15, 16
Creation (creativeness), 25, 37,
56, 82, 83
DESIRE, 45, 58, 59, 62, 63, 66
Desire-world, 31-35
Devas, 38, 42, 69, 86
Duty of State, 74
EDUCATION, 76, 77, 78
Emotion, 84
Emotions and virtues, 4547
Essence, monadic, 86
elemental, 86
Ethical code, 48
Etheric double, 25, 26, 29, 37
vision, 27
GENIUS, 37, 55
Government of world, 71, 72
HATE and vice, 45, 46
Heaven-world, 35, 39, 40, 59
Hell, 32
IDEALS, 48, 49, 51, 61
Individuality, 24, 25, 35
Initiation, 59, 70
Intellect, 25, 36, 37, 55, 61, 67,
84, 87
Intuition, 25, 40, 67, 84, 87
Intuitional sphere, 40
KARMA, 57, 62-66, 69; 71, 79
Knowledge of God, 1
esoteric, 13
LAWS, 43, 44, 48, 56, 57, 60, 63-
66
Love and virtue, 45, 46, 47
Life-wave, first, 82
second, 85, 87
.third, 87
MASTERS, 71
Meaning of Theosophy, 9, 12
94 INDEX
Memory of past, 60, 61
Mental sphere, 35-40, 86
Method of study, 18
Mind, 25, 37, 38, 52, 55, 56, 61,
67
Monad, 23, 24, 25, 35, 41, 54,
62, 67, 86, 87
Morality, 19, 43-49
Motion-time, 21, 54
Mysteries, the, 9, 10
Mythology, comparative, 13, 14,
15, 16
NATURE-SPIRITS, 27, 29, 51, 86
OLCOTT, H. S., 89
One existence, 53, 69
One life,
4
17, 19, 42, 54, 68
Organisation of industry, 76,
77
PATH, 59, 69-71
Personality, 24, 25, 36, 37, 62
Philosophy, 19, 52, 55, 90
three bases for, 53, 54
Plan, the great, 44, 71
Principles of New Order, 75
Purgatory, 31-34, 59
Pythagoras, 73, 74
RATIONALE of moral precepts,
47, 48
Reincarnation, 58-62, 69, 77-
79
Religion, 19, 55, 67, 90
Right and wrong, 44, 45
Root-races, 87, 88
SACRAMENTS, 41, 42
Science, 18, 21, 90
Slums, 79, 80|
Spirit as intellect, 25, 36, 37
as intuition, 25, 40
as will, 25, 40
Spiritual sphere, 40
Stillness-space, 21, 54
Suggestions on New Order, 75-
80
Superstitions, 42
TABLE of correspondences, 23,
25
Theosophical teachings, 69
Society, 16, 69
Thought-forms, 38, 51
Thought-power, 56, 57, 64, 86
Triplicity, 54, 55, 57, ;
Truth and morality, 46, 47
UNITY of religions, 12, 17
VIKTUES and love, 45, 46
and truth, 26
Vitality, 26, 27, 84
WILL, 25, 40, 45, 48, 54, 55, 66,
87
Wisdom, 25, 40, 54, 55, 85
Working life, 76
YOGA, 56, 61
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