FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.
 

MYSTICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL,
THEOSOPHICAL, HISTORICAL AND SCIENTIFIC
ESSAYS

Selected from “The Theosophist”

A FACSIMILE OF THE
ORIGINAL EDITION OF
LONDON :
REEVES AND TURNER
196 STRAND, W.C.
1885

THE THEOSOPHY COMPANY
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A.
1980

CONTENTS.


MYSTICAL

                                                                                                                                              PAGE
THE “ELIXIR OF’ LIFE” . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .1
IS TILE DESIRE TO “LIVE ” SELFISH?. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . 33
CONTEMPLATION . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . 40
CHELAS AND LAY CHELAS. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. .  50
ANCIENT OPINIONS UPON PSYCHIC BODIES . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .61
THE NILGIRI SANNYASIS . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . ..72
WITCHCRAFT ON THE NILGIRIS . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. .76
SHAMANISM AND WITCHCRAFT AMONGST THE KOLARIAN TRIBES. . . .. . . .. . . . 82
MAHATMAS AND CHELAS. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . .  92
THE BRAHMANICAL THREAD . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . ..96
READING IN A SEALED ENVELOPE . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . .99
THE TWELVE SIGNS OF’ THE ZODIAC. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .103
THE SISHAL AND BHUKAILAS YOGIS ...... . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. 119
 

PHILOSOPHICAL.
 

TRUE AND FALSE PERSONALITY. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . . 122
CHASTITY. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .139
ZOROASTRIANISM ON THE SEPTENARY CONSTITUTION OF MAN . . . .. . . .. . . .. .144
BRAHMANISM ON THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .153
THE SEPTENARY PRINCIPLE IN ESOTERICISM. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . 187
PERSONAL AND IMPERSONAL GOD. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. .198
PRAKRITI AND PARUSHA . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .210
MORALITY AND PANTHEISM . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .212
OCCULT STUDY. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . 221

SOME INQUIRIES SUGGESTED BY MR. SINNETT'S “ESOTERIC
BUDDHISM. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . 230
SAKYA MUNI’S PLACE IN HISTORY. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. .365
INSCRIPTIONS DISCOVERED BY GENERAL A. CUNNINGHAM. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . 389
DISCRIMINATION OF SPIRIT AND NOT-SPIRIT . . . . . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. .394
WAS WRITING KNOWN BEFORE PANINI? . . . . . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . .408
 

THEOSOPHICAL.
 

WHAT IS THEOSOPHY?. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . 429
H0W A “CHELA” FOUND HIS “GURU” . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. 443
THE SAGES OF THE HIMAVAT . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .455
THE HIMALAYAN BROTHERS—DO THEY EXIST ? . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .459
INTERVIEW WITH A MAHATMA . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. .470
THE SECRET DOCTRINE. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . 473
 

HISTORICAL.
 

THE PURANAS ON THE DYNASTY OF THE MORYAS AND ON
KOOTHOOMI . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . ..482
THE THEORY OF CYCLES. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. 485
 

SCIENTIFIC.
 

ODORIGEN AND JIVA. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . ..496
INTROVERS10N OF MENTAL VISION . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . ..514
“PRECIPITATION”  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . 518
“HOW SHALL WE SLEEP?”  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .522
TRANSMIGRAT1ON OF THE LIFE ATOMS . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . . 531
“OM” AND ITS PRACTICAL, SIGNIFICANCE . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . . .  . . 540

THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE”
-----====ooo000ooo====-----

From a Chela’s* Diary. by G— M—, F.T.S.

And Enoch walked with the Elohim, and the Elohim took him.”—GENESIS.

INTRODUCTION.
 

The curious information—for whatsoever else the world may think of it, it will doubtless be acknowledged to be that—contained in the article that follows, merits a few words of introduction. The details given in it on the subject of what has always been considered as one of the darkest and most strictly guarded of the mysteries of the initiation into occultism—from the days of the Rishis until those of the Theosophical Society—came to the knowledge of the author in a way that would seem to the ordinary run of Europeans strange and supernatural. He himself, however, we may assure the reader, is a most thorough disbeliever in the
 ————————————————————
* A. Chela is the pupil and disciple of an initiated Guru or Master.—ED.

2 —————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

Supernatural, though he has learned too much to limit the capabilities of the natural as some do. Further, he has to make the following confession of his own belief. It will be apparent, from a careful perusal of the facts, that if the matter be really as stated therein, the author cannot himself be an adept of high grade, as the article in such a case would never have been written. Nor does he pretend to be one. He is, or rather was, for a few years an humble Chela. Hence, the converse must consequently be also true, that as regards the higher stages of the mystery he can have no personal experience, but speaks of it only as a close observer left to his own surmises—and no more. He may, therefore, boldly state that during, and notwithstanding, his unfortunately rather too short stay with some adepts, he has by actual experiment and observation verified some of the less transcendental or incipient parts of the “Course.” And, though it will be impossible for him to give positive testimony as to what lies beyond, he may yet mention that all his own course of study, training and experience, long, severe and dangerous as it has often been, leads him to the conviction that everything is really as stated, save some details purposely veiled. For causes which cannot be explained to the public, he himself may he unable or unwilling to use the secret he has gained access to. Still he is permitted by one to whom all his reverential affection and gratitude are due—his last guru—to divulge for the benefit of Science and Man, and specially for the good of those who are courageous enough to personally make the experiment, the following astounding particulars of the occult methods for prolonging life to a period far beyond the common—G. M.]

PROBABLY one of the first considerations which move the worldly-minded at present to solicit initiation into Theosophy is the belief, or hope, that, immediately on joining, some extraordinary advantage over the rest of mankind will be conferred upon the candidate. Some even think that the ultimate

3 ————————————————————THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE.”

result of their initiation will perhaps be exemption from that dissolution which is called the common lot of mankind. The traditions of the “Elixir of Life,” said to be in the possession of Kabalists and Alchemists, are still cherished by students of Medieval Occultism—in Europe. The allegory of the Ab-è Hyat or Water of Life, is still credited as a fact by the degraded remnants of the Asiatic esoteric sects ignorant of the real GREAT SECRET. The “pungent and fiery Essence,” by which Zanoni renewed his existence, still fires the imagination of modern visionaries as a possible scientific discovery of the future.

    Theosophically, though the fact is distinctly declared to be true, the above-named conceptions of the mode of procedure leading to the realization of the fact, are known to be false. The reader may or may not believe it; but as a matter of fact, Theosophical Occultists claim to have communication with (living) Intelligences possessing an infinitely wider range of observation than is contemplated even by the loftiest aspirations of modern science, all the present “Adepts” of Europe and America—dabblers in the Kabala—notwithstanding. But far even as those superior Intelligences have investigated (or, if preferred, are alleged to have investigated), and remotely as they may have searched by the help of inference and analogy, even They have failed to discover in the Infinity anything permanent but— SPACE, ALL IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Reflection, therefore, will easily suggest to the reader the further logical inference that in a Universe which is essentially impermanent in its conditions, nothing can

4 —————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

confer permanency. Therefore, no possible substance, even if drawn from the depths of Infinity; no imaginable combination of drugs, whether of our earth or any other, though compounded by even the Highest Intelligence; no system of life or discipline though directed by the sternest determination and skill, could possibly produce Immutability. For in the universe of solar systems, wherever and however investigated, Immutability necessitates “Non-Being” in the physical sense given it by the Theists—Non-Being which is nothing in the narrow conceptions of Western Religionists—a reductio ad absurdum. This is a gratuitous insult even when applied to the pseudo-Christian or ecclesiastical Jehovite idea of God.

    Consequently, it will be seen that the common ideal conception of “Immortality” is not only essentially wrong, but a physical and metaphysical impossibility. The idea, whether cherished by Theosophists or non-Theosophists, by Christians or Spiritualists, by Materialists or Idealists, is a chimerical illusion. But the actual prolongation of human life is possible for a time so long as to appear miraculous and incredible to those who regard our span of existence as necessarily limited to at most a couple of hundred years. We may break, as it were, the shock of Death, and instead of dying, change a sudden plunge into darkness to a transition into a brighter light. And this may be made so gradual that the passage from one state of existence to another shall have its friction minimised, so as to be practically imperceptible. This is a very different matter, and quite within the

5 ————————————————————THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE:

reach of Occult Science. In this, as in all other cases, means properly directed will gain their ends, and causes produce effects. Of course, the only question is, what are these causes, and how, in their turn, are they to be produced. To lift, as far as may be allowed, the veil from this aspect of Occultism, is the object of the present paper.

    We must premise by reminding the reader of two Theosophic doctrines, constantly inculcated in Isis” and in other mystic works—namely, (a) that ultimately the Kosmos is One—one under infinite variations and manifestations, and (b) that the so-called man is a “compound being “—composite not only in the exoteric scientific sense of being a congeries of living so-called material Units, but also in the esoteric sense of being a succession of seven forms or parts of itself, interblended with each other. To put it more clearly we might say that the more ethereal forms are but duplicates of the same aspect,—each finer one lying within the inter-atomic spaces of the next grosser. We would have the reader understand that these are no subtleties, no “spiritualities “ at all in the Christo-Spiritualistic sense. In the actual man reflected in your mirror are really several men, or several parts of one composite man; each the exact counterpart of the other, but the “atomic conditions” (for want of a better word) of each of which are so arranged that its atoms interpenetrate those of the next “grosser” form. It does not, for our present purpose, matter how the Theosophists, Spiritualists, Buddhists, Kabalists, or Vedantists, count, separate, classify, arrange or name these, as that war of terms may be

6  ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

postponed to another occasion. Neither does it matter what relation each of these men has to the various “elements” of the Kosmos of which he forms a part. This knowledge, though of vital importance in other respects, need not be explained or discussed now. Nor does it much more concern us that the Scientists deny the existence of such an arrangement, because their instruments are inadequate to make their senses perceive it. We will simply reply—” get better instruments and keener senses, and eventually you will.”

    All we have to say is that if you are anxious to drink of the “Elixir of Life,” and live a thousand years or so, you must take our word for the matter at present, and proceed on the assumption. For esoteric science does not give the faintest possible hope that the desired end will ever be attained by any other way; while modern, or so-called exact science—laughs at it.

    So, then, we have arrived at the point where we have determined—literally, not metaphorically—to crack the outer shell known as the mortal coil or body, and hatch out of it, clothed in our next. This “next” is not spiritual, but only a more ethereal form. Having by a long training and preparation adapted it for a life in this atmosphere, during which time we have gradually made the outward shell to die off through a certain process (hints of which will be found further on) we have to prepare for this physiological transformation.

    How are we to do it? In the first place we have the actual, visible, material body—Man, so called; though, in fact, but his outer shell—to deal

7 ————————————————————THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE.”

with. Let us bear in mind that science teaches us that in about every seven years we change skin as effectually as any serpent; and this so gradually and imperceptibly that, had not science after years of unremitting study and observation assured us of it, no one would have had the slightest suspicion of the fact.

    We see, moreover, that in process of time any cut or lesion upon the body, however deep, has a tendency to repair the loss and reunite; a piece of lost skin is very soon replaced by another. Hence, if a man, partially flayed alive, may sometimes survive and be covered with a new skin, so our astral, vital body—the fourth of the seven (having attracted and assimilated to itself the second) and which is so much more ethereal than the physical one—may be made to harden its particles to the atmospheric changes. The whole secret is to succeed in evolving it out, and separating it from the visible; and while its generally invisible atoms proceed to concrete themselves into a compact mass, to gradually get rid of the old particles of our visible frame so as to make them die and disappear before the new set has had time to evolve and replace them We can say no more. The Magdalene is not the only one who could be accused of having “seven spirits“ in her, though men who have a lesser number of spirits (what a misnomer that word !) in them, are not few or exceptional; they are the frequent failures of nature—the incomplete men and women.*
 ————————————————————
* This is not to be taken as meaning that such persons are thoroughly destitute of some one or several of the seven principles a man born without an arm has still its ethereal counterpart; but that they are so latent that they cannot be developed, and consequently are to be considered as non-existing.—ED. Theos.

8  ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

Each of these has in turn to survive the preceding and more dense one, and then die. The exception is the sixth when absorbed into and blended with the seventh. The “Phatu” * of the old Hindu physiologist had a dual meaning, the esoteric side of which corresponds with the Tibetan “Zung” (seven principles of the body).

     We Asiatics, have a proverb, probably handed down to us, and by the Hindus repeated ignorantly as to its esoteric meaning. It has been known ever since the old Rishis mingled familiarly with the simple and noble people they taught and led on. The Devas had whispered into every man’s ear—Thou only—if thou wilt—art “immortal.” Combine with this the saying of a Western author that if any man could just realize for an instant, that he had to die some day, he would die that instant. The Illuminated ‘will perceive that between these two sayings, rightly understood, stands revealed the whole secret of Longevity. We only die when our will ceases to be strong enough to make us live. In the majority of cases, death comes when the torture and vital exhaustion accompanying a rapid change in our physical conditions becomes so intense as to weaken, for one single instant, our “ clutch on life,” or the tenacity of the will to exist. Till then, however severe may be the disease, however sharp the pang, we are only sick or wounded, as the case may be.
 ————————————————————
* Dhatu—the seven principal substances of the human body—chyle, flesh, blood, fat, hones, marrow, semen.

9 ————————————————————THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE.”

This explains the cases of sudden deaths from joy, fright, pain, grief or such other causes. The sense of a life-task consummated, of the worthlessness of one’s existence, if strongly realized, produced death as surely as poison or a rifle-bullet. On the other hand, a stern determination to continue to live, has, in fact, carried many through the crises of the most severe diseases, in perfect safety.

    First, then, must be the determination—the Will—the conviction of certainty, to survive and continue.* ‘Without that, all else is useless. And to be efficient for the purpose, it must be, not only a passing resolution of the moment, a single fierce desire of short duration, but a settled and continued strain, as nearly as can be continued and concen-
 ————————————————————
* Col. Olcott has epigrammatically explained the creative or rather the re-creative power of the Will, in his “Buddhist Catechism.” He there shows—of course, speaking on behalf of the Southern Buddhists—that this Will to live, if not extinguished in the present life, leaps over the chasm of bodily death, and recombines the Skandhas, or groups of qualities that made up the individual into a new personality. Man is, therefore, reborn as the result of his own unsatisfied yearning for objective existence. Col. Olcott puts it in this way :
Q.  123   What is that, in man, which gives him the impression of having a permanent individuality?
A.  Tanha, or the unsatisfied desire for existence. The being having done that for which he must be rewarded or punished in future,
      and having Tanha, will have a rebirth through the influence of Karma.
Q.  124.   What is it that is reborn?
A.  A new aggregation of Skandhas, or individuality, caused by the last earning of the dying person.
Q.  128. To what cause must we attribute the differences in the combination of the Five Skandhas has which makes every individual
       different from every other individual?
A.   To the Karma of the individual in the next preceding birth.
Q.   129. What is the force or energy that is at work, under the ,guidance of Karma, to produce the new being ?
A.   Tanha—the “Will to Live.”

10  ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

trated without one single moment’s relaxation. In a word, the would-be “ Immortal” must be on his watch night and day, guarding self against—himself. To live—to live—to live—must be his unswerving resolve. He must as little as possible allow himself to be turned aside from it. It may be said that this is the most concentrated form of selfishness,—that it is utterly opposed to our Theosophic professions of benevolence, and disinterestedness, and regard for the good of humanity. Well, viewed in a short-sighted way, it is so. But to do good, as in everything else, a man must have time and materials to work with, and this is a necessary means to the acquirement of powers by which infinitely more good can be done than with—out them. When these are once mastered, the opportunities to use them will arrive, for there comes a moment when further watch and exertion are no longer needed :—the moment when the turning-point is safely passed. For the present as we deal with aspirants and not with advanced chelas, in the first stage a determined, dogged resolution, and an enlightened concentration of self on self, are all that is absolutely necessary. It must not, however, be considered that the candidate is required to be unhuman or brutal in his negligence of others. Such a recklessly selfish course would be as injurious to him as the contrary one of expending his vital energy on the gratification of his physical desires. All that is required from him is a purely negative attitude. Until the turning-point is reached, he must not “ lay out” his energy in lavish or fiery devotion to any cause,

11 ————————————————————THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE.”

however noble, however “good,” however elevated.* Such, we can solemnly assure the reader, would bring its reward in many ways—perhaps in another life, perhaps in this world, but it would tend to shorten the existence it is desired to preserve, as surely as self-indulgence and profligacy. That is why very few of the truly great men of the world (of course, the unprincipled adventurers who have applied great powers to bad uses are out of the question)—the martyrs, the heroes, the founders of religions, the liberators of nations, the leaders of reforms—ever became members of the long-lived “Brotherhood of Adepts” who were by some and for long years accused of selfishness. (And that is also why the Yogis, and the Fakirs of modern India—most of whom are acting now but on the dead-letter tradition, are required if they would be considered living up to the principles of their profession—to appear entirely dead to every inward feeling or emotion.) Notwithstanding the purity of their hearts, the greatness of their aspirations, the disinterestedness of their self-sacrifice, they could not live for they had missed the hour. They may at times have exercised powers which the world called miraculous; they may have electrified
 ————————————————————
* On page 151 of Mr. Sinnett’s “Occult World,” the author’s much abused, and still more doubted correspondent assures him that none yet of his “degree are like the stern hero of Bulwer’s” Zanoni . “the heartless morally dried up mummies some would fancy us to be” and adds that few of them “would care to play the part in life of a desiccated pansy between the leaves of a volume of solemn poetry.” But our adept omits saying that one or two degrees higher, and he will have to submit for a period of years to such a mummifying process unless, indeed, he would voluntarily give up a life-long labour and—Die—Ed.

 12  ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

 man and subdued Nature by fiery and self-devoted Will; they may have been possessed of a so-called superhuman intelligence; they may have even had knowledge of, and communion with, members of our own occult Brotherhood; but, having deliberately resolved to devote their vital energy to the welfare of others, rather than to themselves, they have surrendered life; and, when perishing on the cross or the scaffold, or falling, sword in hand, upon the battle-field, or sinking exhausted after a successful consummation of the life-object, on death-beds in their chambers, they have all alike had to cry out at last : “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani !”

    So far so good. But, given the will to live, however powerful, we have seen that, in the ordinary course of mundane life, the throes of dissolution cannot be checked. The desperate, and again and again renewed struggle of the Kosmic elements to proceed with a career of change despite the will that is checking them, like a pair of runaway horses struggling against the determined driver holding them in, are so cumulatively powerful, that the utmost efforts of the untrained human will acting within an unprepared body become ultimately useless. The highest intrepidity of the bravest soldier; the interest desire of the yearning lover; the hungry greed of the unsatisfied miser; the most undoubting faith of the sternest fanatic; the practised insensibility to pain of the hardiest red Indian brave or half-trained Hindu Yogi; the most deliberate philosophy of the calmest thinker—all alike fail at last. Indeed, sceptics will

13 ————————————————————THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE.”

allege in opposition to the verities of this article that, as a matter of experience, it is often observed that the mildest and most irresolute of minds and the weakest of physical frames are often seen to resist “Death” longer than the powerful will of the high-spirited and obstinately-egotistic man, and the iron frame of the labourer, the warrior and the athlete. In reality, however, the key to the secret of these apparently contradictory phenomena is the true conception of the very thing we have already said. If the physical development of the gross “outer shell” proceeds on parallel lines and at an equal rate with that of the will, it stands to reason that no advantage for the purpose of overcoming it, is attained by the latter. The acquisition of improved breechloaders by one modern army confers no absolute superiority if the enemy also becomes possessed of them. Consequently it will be at once apparent, to those who think on the subject, that much of the training by which what is known as “a powerful and determined nature,” perfects itself for its own purpose on the stage of the visible world, necessitating and being useless without a parallel development of the “gross” and so-called animal frame, is, in short, neutralized, for the purpose at present treated of, by the fact that its own action has armed the enemy with weapons equal to its own. The force of the impulse to dissolution is rendered equal to the will to oppose it; and being cumulative, subdues the will-power and triumphs at last. On the other hand, it may happen that an apparently weak and vacillating will-power residing in a weak and

14 —————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

undeveloped physical frame, may be so reinforced by some unsatisfied desire—the Ichcha (wish)—as it is called by the Indian Occultists (for instance, a mother’s heart-yearning to remain and support her fatherless children)—as to keep down and vanquish, for a short time, the physical throes of a body to which it has become temporarily superior.

    The whole rationale then, of the first condition of continued existence in this world, is (a) the development of a Will so powerful as to overcome the hereditary (in a Darwinian sense) tendencies of the atoms composing the “gross” and palpable animal frame, to hurry on at a particular period in a certain course of Kosmic change; and (b) to so weaken the concrete action of that animal frame as to make it more amenable to the power of the Will. To defeat an army, you must demoralize and throw it into disorder.

    To do this then, is the real object of all the rites, ceremonies, fasts, “prayers,” meditations, initiations and procedures of self-discipline enjoined by various esoteric Eastern sects, from that course of pure and elevated aspiration which leads to the higher phases of Adeptism Real, down to the fearful and disgusting ordeals which the adherent of the “Left-hand-Road” has to pass through, all the time maintaining his equilibrium. The procedures have their merits and their demerits, their separate uses and abuses, their essential and non-essential parts, their various veils, mummeries, and labyrinths. But in all, the result aimed at is reached, if by different processes. The Will is strengthened, encouraged and directed, and the

15 ————————————————————THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE.”

elements Opposing its action arc demoralized Now, to any one who has thought out and connected the various evolution theories, as taken, not from any occult source, but from the ordinary scientific manual accessible to all—from the hypothesis of the latest variation in the habits of species—say, the acquisition of carnivorous habits by the New Zealand parrot, for instance—to the farthest glimpses backwards into Space and Eternity afforded by the “Fire Mist” doctrine, it will be apparent that they all rest on one basis. That basis is, that the impulse once given to a hypothetical Unit has a tendency to continue; and consequently, that anything “done” by something at a certain time and certain place tends to repeat itself at other times and places.

    Such is the admitted rationale of heredity and atavism. That the same things apply to our ordinary conduct is apparent from the notorious ease with which “habits,”—bad or good, as the case may be—are acquired, and it will not be questioned that this applies, as a rule, as much to the moral and intellectual, as to the physical world.

    Furthermore, History and Science teach us plainly that certain physical habits conduce to certain moral and intellectual results. There never yet was a conquering nation of vegetarians. Even in the old Aryan times, we do not learn that the very Rishis, from whose lore and practice we gain the knowledge of Occultism, ever interdicted the Kshetriya (military) caste from hunting or a carnivorous diet. Filling, as they did, a certain place in the body politic in the actual condition of the world, the

16 ———————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

Rishis as little thought of interfering with them, as of restraining the tigers of the jungle from their habits. That did not affect what the Rishis did themselves.

    The aspirant to longevity then must be on his guard against two dangers. He must beware especially of impure and animal * thoughts. For Science shows that thought is dynamic, and the thought-force evolved by nervous action expanding outwardly, must affect the molecular relations of the physical man. The inner men,† however sublimated their organism may be, are still composed of actual, not hypothetical, particles, and are still subject to the law that an “action” has a tendency to repeat itself; a tendency to set up analogous action in the grosser “shell” they are in contact with, and concealed within.

     And, on the other hand, certain actions have a tendency to produce actual physical conditions unfavourable to pure thoughts, hence to the state required for developing the supremacy of the inner man.

    To return to the practical process. A normally healthy mind, in a normally healthy body, is a good starting-point. Though exceptionally powerful and self-devoted natures may sometimes recover the ground lost by mental degradation or physical misuse, by employing proper means, under the direction of unswerving resolution, yet often things may have gone so far that there is no longer
 ————————————————————
* In other words, the thought tends to provoke the deed.—G. M.
† We use the word in the plural, reminding the reader that, according to our doctrine, man is septenary.—G. M.

17 ————————————————————THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE.”

stamina enough to sustain the conflict sufficiently long to perpetuate this life; though what in Eastern parlance is called the “merit” of the effort will help to ameliorate conditions and improve matters in another.

    However this may be, the prescribed course of self-discipline commences here. It may be stated briefly that its essence is a course of moral, mental, and physical development, carried on in parallel lines—one being useless without the other. The physical man must be rendered more ethereal and sensitive; the mental man more penetrating and profound; the moral man more self-denying and philosophical. And it may be mentioned that all sense of restraint—even if self-imposed—is useless. Not only is all “goodness” that results from the compulsion of physical force, threats, or bribes whether of a physical or so-called “spiritual’ nature) absolutely useless to the person who exhibits it, its hypocrisy tending to poison the moral atmosphere of the world, but the desire to be “good” or “pure,” to be efficacious must be spontaneous It must be a self-impulse from within, a real preference for something higher, not an abstention from vice because of fear of the law: not a chastity enforced by the dread of Public Opinion; not a benevolence exercised through love of praise or dread of consequences in a hypothetical Future Life.*

    It will be seen now in connection with the
 ————————————————————
* Col. Olcott clearly and succinctly explains the Buddhist; doctrine of Merit or Karma, in his” Buddhist Catechism “ (Question 83).—G. M.

18 ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

doctrine of the tendency to the renewal of action, before discussed, that the course of self-discipline recommended as the only road to Longevity by Occultism is not a “visionary” theory dealing with vague “ideas,” but actually a scientifically devised system of drill. It is a system by which each particle of the several men composing the septenary individual receives an impulse, and a habit of doing what is necessary for certain purposes of its own free-will and with “pleasure.” Every one must be practised and perfect in a thing to do it with pleasure. This rule especially applies to the case of the development of Man. “Virtue” may be very good in its way—it may lead to the grandest results. But to become efficacious it has to be practised cheerfully not with reluctance or pain. As a consequence of the above consideration the candidate for Longevity at the commencement of his career must begin to eschew his physical desires, not from any sentimental theory of right or wrong, but for the following good reason. As, according to a well-known and now established scientific theory, his visible material frame is always renewing its particles; he will, while abstaining from the gratification of his desires, reach the end of a certain period during which those particles which composed the man of vice, and which were given a bad predisposition, will have departed. At the same time, the disuse of such functions will tend to obstruct the entry, in place of the old particles, of new particles having a tendency to repeat the said acts. And while this is the particular result as regards certain “ vices)” the general result of an

19 ————————————————————THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE.”

abstention from “gross” acts will be (by a modification of the well-known Darwinian law of atrophy by non-usage) to diminish what we may call the “relative” density and coherence of the outer shell (as a result of its less-used molecules); while the diminution in the quantity of its actual constituents will he “made up” (if tried by scales and weights) by the increased admission of more ethereal particles.

     What physical desires are to be abandoned and in what order? First and foremost, he must give up alcohol in all forms; for while it supplies no nourishment, nor any direct pleasure (beyond such sweetness or fragrance as may be gained in the taste of wine, &c., to which alcohol, in itself, is non-essential) to even the grossest elements of the “physical” frame, it induces a violence of action, a rush so to speak, of life, the stress of which can only be sustained by very dull, gross, and dense elements, and which, by the operation of the well-known law of Re-action (in commercial phrase, “supply and demand”) tends to summon them from the surrounding universe, and therefore directly counteracts the object we have in view.

    Next comes meat-eating, and for the very same reason, in a minor degree. It increases the rapidity of life, the energy of action, the violence of passions. It may be good for a hero who has to fight and die, but not for a would-be sage who has to exist and . . .

    Next in order come the sexual desires; for these, in addition to the great diversion of energy (vital force) into other channels, in many different

20  ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

ways, beyond the primary one (as, for instance, the waste of energy in expectation, jealousy, &c.), are direct attractions to a certain gross quality of the original matter of the Universe, simply because the most pleasurable physical sensations are only possible at that stage of density. Alongside with and extending beyond all these and other gratifications of the senses (which include not only those things usually known as “vicious,” but all those which, though ordinarily regarded as “innocent,” have yet the disqualification of ministering to the pleasures of the body—the most harmless to others and the least “gross” being the criterion for those to be last abandoned in each case)—must be carried on the moral purification.

    Nor must it be imagined that “ austerities” as commonly understood can, in the majority of cases, avail much to hasten the “etherealizing” process. That is the rock on which many of the Eastern esoteric sects have foundered, and the reason why they have degenerated into degrading superstitions. The Western monks and the Eastern Yogees, who think they will reach the apex of powers by concentrating their thought on their navel, or by standing on one leg, are practising exercises which serve no other purpose than to strengthen the willpower, which is sometimes applied to the basest purposes. These are examples of this one-sided and dwarf development. It is no use to fast as long as you require food. The ceasing of desire for food without impairment of health is the sign which indicates that it should be taken in lesser and ever decreasing quantities until the extreme

21 ————————————————————THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE.”

limit compatible ‘with life is reached. A stage will be finally attained where only water will be required.

    Nor is it of any use for this particular purpose of longevity to abstain from immorality so long as you are craving for it in your heart; and so on with all other unsatisfied inward cravings. To get rid of the inward desire is the essential thing, and to mimic the real thing without it is barefaced hypocrisy and useless slavery.

    So it must be with the moral purification of the heart. The “basest” inclinations must go first— then the others. First avarice, then fear, then envy, worldly pride, uncharitableness, hatred ; last of all ambition and curiosity must be abandoned successively. The strengthening of the more ethereal and so-called “spiritual” parts of the man must go on at the same time. Reasoning from the known to the unknown, meditation must be practised and encouraged. Meditation is the inexpressible yearning of the inner Man to “go out towards the infinite,” which in the olden time was the real meaning of adoration, but which has now no synonym in the European languages, because the thing no longer exists in the West, and its name has been vulgarized to the make-believe shams known as prayer, glorification, and repentance. Through all stages of training the equilibrium of the consciousness—the assurance that all must be right in the Kosmos, and therefore with you a portion of it—must be retained. The process of life must not be hurried but retarded, if possible; to do otherwise may do good to others—perhaps even to your-

22  ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

self in other spheres, but it will hasten your dissolution in this.

    Nor must the externals be neglected in this first stage. Remember that an adept, though “existing” so as to convey to ordinary minds the idea of his being immortal, is not also invulnerable to agencies from without. The training to prolong life does not, in itself, secure one from accidents. As far as any physical preparation goes, the sword may still cut, the disease enter, the poison disarrange. This case is very clearly and beautifully put in “Zanoni,” and it is correctly put and must be so, unless all “adeptism” is a baseless lie. The adept may be more secure from ordinary dangers than the common mortal, but he is so by virtue of the superior knowledge, calmness, coolness and penetration ‘which his lengthened existence and its necessary concomitants have enabled him to acquire; not by virtue of any preservative power in the process itself. He is secure as a man armed with a rifle is more secure than a naked baboon; not secure in the sense in which the deva (god) was supposed to be securer than a man.

    If this is so in the case of the high adept, how much more necessary is it that the neophyte should be not only protected but that he himself should use all possible means to ensure for himself the necessary duration of life to complete the process of mastering the phenomena we call death ! It may be said, why do not the higher adepts protect him? Perhaps they do to some extent, but the child must learn to walk alone; to make him independent of his own efforts in respect to safety,

23 ————————————————————THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE.”

would be destroying one element necessary to his development—the sense of responsibility. What courage or conduct would be called for in a man sent to fight when armed with irresistible weapons and clothed in impenetrable armour? Hence the neophyte should endeavour, as far as possible, to fulfill every true canon of sanitary law as laid down by modern scientists. Pure air, pure water, pure food, gentle exercise, regular hours, pleasant occupations and surroundings, are all, if not indispensable, at least serviceable to his progress. It is to secure these, at least as much as silence and solitude, that the Gods, Sages, Occultists of all ages have retired as much as possible to the quiet of the country, the cool cave, the depths of the forest, the expanse of the desert, or the heights of the mountains. Is it not suggestive that the Gods have always loved the “high places”; and that in the present day the highest section of the Occult Brotherhood on earth inhabits the highest mountain plateaux of the earth ?*
Nor must the beginner disdain the assistance of medicine and good medical regimen. He is still an ordinary mortal, and he requires the aid of an ordinary mortal.

    “Suppose, however, all the conditions required,
 ————————————————————
* The stern prohibition to the Jews to serve “their gods upon the high mountains and upon the hills” is traced back to the unwillingness of their ancient elders to allow people in most cases unfit for adeptship to choose a life of celibacy and asceticism, or in other word,, to pursue adeptship. This prohibition had an esoteric meaning before it became the prohibition, incomprehensible in its dead-letter sense: for it is not India alone whose sons accorded divine honours to the Wise Ones, but all nations regarded their adepts and initiates as divine.—G.M.

24 —————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

or which will be understood as required (for the details and varieties of treatment requisite, are too numerous to be detailed here), are fulfilled, what is the next step ?” the reader will ask. Well if there have been no backslidings or remissness in the procedure indicated, the following physical results will follow:—

    First the neophyte will take more pleasure in things spiritual and pure. Gradually gross and material occupations will become not only uncraved for or forbidden, but simply and literally repulsive to him. He will take more pleasure in the simple sensations of Nature—the sort of feeling one can remember to have experienced as a child. He will feel more light-hearted, confident, happy. Let him take care the sensation of renewed youth does not mislead, or he will yet risk a fall into his old baser life and even lower depths. “Action and Re-action are equal.”

    Now the desire for food will begin to cease. Let it be left off gradually—no fasting is required. Take what you feel you require. The food craved for will be the most innocent and simple. Fruit and milk will usually be the best. Then as till now, you have been simplifying the quality of your food, gradually—very gradually—as you feel capable of it diminish the quantity. You will ask: “Can a man exist without food?” No, but before you mock, consider the character of the process alluded to. It is a notorious fact that many of the lowest and simplest organisms have no excretions. The common guinea-worm is a very good instance. It has rather a complicated organism, but it has no

25 ————————————————————THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE.”

ejaculatory duct. All it consumes—the poorest essences of the human body—is applied to its growth and propagation. Living as it does in human tissue, it passes no digested food away. The human neophyte, at a certain stage of his development, is in a somewhat analogous condition, with this difference or differences, that he doer excrete, but it is through the pores of his skin, and by those too enter other etherealized particles of matter to contribute towards his support.* Otherwise, all the food and drink is sufficient only to keep in equilibrium those “gross” parts of his physical body which still remain to repair their cuticle-waste through the medium of the blood. Later on, the process of cell-development in his frame will undergo a change; a change for the better, the opposite of that in disease for the worse—he will become all living and sensitive, and will derive nourishment from the Ether (Akas). But that epoch for our neophyte is yet far distant.

    Probably, long before that period has arrived, other results, no less surprising than incredible to the uninitiated will have ensued to give our neophyte courage and consolation in his difficult task. It would be but a truism to repeat what has been again alleged (in ignorance of its real rationale) by hundreds and hundreds of writers as to the happiness and content conferred by a life of innocence and purity. But often at the very commencement of the process some real physical result, unexpected and unthought of by the neophyte, occurs. Some
 ————————————————————
* He is in a state similar to the physical state of a fœtus before birth into the world.—G. M.

26 —————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

lingering disease, hitherto deemed hopeless, may take a favourable turn; or he may develop healing mesmeric powers himself; or some hitherto unknown sharpening of his senses may delight him. The rationale of these things is, as we have said, neither miraculous nor difficult of comprehension. In the first place, the sudden change in the direction of the vital energy (which, whatever view we take of it and its origin, is acknowledged by all schools of philosophy as most recondite, and as the motive power) must produce results of some kind. In the second, Theosophy shows, as we said before, that a man consists of several men pervading each other, and on this view (although it is very difficult to express the idea in language) it is but natural that the progressive etherealization of the densest and most gross of all should leave the others literally more at liberty. A troop of horses may be blocked by a mob and have much difficulty in fighting its way through; but if every one of the mob could be changed suddenly into a ghost, there would be little to retard it. And as each interior entity is more rare, active, and volatile than the outer and as each has relation with different elements, spaces, and properties of the Kosmos which are treated of in other articles on Occultism, the mind of the reader may conceive—though the pen of the writer could not express it in a dozen volumes—the magnificent possibilities gradually unfolded to the neophyte.

    Many of the opportunities thus suggested may be taken advantage of by the neophyte for his own safety, amusement, and the good of those around

27 ————————————————————THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE.”

him; but the way in which he does this is one adapted to his fitness—a part of the ordeal he has to pass through, and misuse of these powers will certainly entail the loss of them as a natural result. The Itchcha (or desire) evoked anew by the vistas they open up will retard or throw back his progress.

    But there is another portion of the Great Secret to which we must allude, and which is now, for the first, in a long series of ages, allowed to be given out to the world, as the hour for it is come.

    The educated reader need not be reminded again that one of the great discoveries which has immortalized the name of Darwin is the law that an organism has always a tendency to repeat, at an analogous period in its life, the action of its progenitors, the more surely and completely in proportion to their proximity in the scale of life. One result of this is, that, in general, organized beings usually die at a period (on an average) the same as that of their progenitors. It is true that there is a great difference between the actual ages at which individuals of any species die. Disease, accidents and famine are the main agents in causing this. But there is, in each species, a well-known limit within which the Race-life lies, and none are known to survive beyond it. This applies to the human species as well as any other. Now, supposing that every possible sanitary condition had been complied with, and every accident and disease avoided by a man of ordinary frame, in some particular case there would still, as is known to medical men, come a time when the

28  ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

particles of the body would feel the hereditary tendency to do that which leads inevitably to dissolution, and would obey it. It must be obvious to any reflecting man that, if by any procedure this critical climacteric could be once thoroughly passed over, the subsequent danger of “Death” would be proportionally less as the years progressed. Now this, which no ordinary and unprepared mind and body can do, is possible sometimes for the will and the frame of one who has been specially prepared. There are fewer of the grosser particles present to feel the hereditary bias—there is the assistance of the reinforced “interior men” (whose normal duration is always greater even in natural death) to the visible outer shell, and there is the drilled and indomitable Will to direct and wield the whole. *

    From that time forward the course of the aspirant is clearer. He has conquered “the Dweller of the Threshold”—the hereditary enemy of his race, and, though still exposed to ever-new dangers in his progress towards Nirvana, he is flushed with victory, and with new confidence and
————————————————————
* In this connection we may as well show what modern science, and especially physiology has to say as to the power of the human will. “The force of will is a potent element in determining longevity. This single point must he granted without argument, that of two men every way alike and similarly circumstanced, the one who has the greater courage and grit will be longer-lived. One does not need to practise medicine long to learn that men die who might just as well live if they resolved to live, and that myriads who are invalids could become strong if they had the native or acquired will to vow they would do so. Those who have no other quality favourable to life, whose bodily organs are nearly all diseased, to whom each day is a day of pain, who are beset by life-shortening influences, yet do live by will alone.”—Dr George M. Beard.

29 ————————————————————THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE.”

new powers to second it, can press onwards to perfection.

    For, it must be remembered, that nature everywhere acts by Law, and that the process of purification we have been describing in the visible material body, also takes place in those which are interior, and not visible to the scientist by modifications of the same process. All is on the change, and the metamorphoses of the more ethereal bodies imitate, though in successively multiplied duration, the career of the grosser, gaining an increasing wider range of relations with the surrounding kosmos, till in Nirvana the most rarefied Individuality is merged at last into the INFINITE TOTALITY.

    From the above description of the process, it will be inferred why it is that “ Adepts “ are so seldom seen in ordinary life; for, pari passu, with the etherealization of their bodies and the development of their power, grows an increasing distaste, and a so-to-speak, “contempt “ for the things of our ordinary mundane existence. Like the fugitive who successively casts away in his flight those articles which incommode his progress, beginning with the heaviest, so the aspirant eluding “Death” abandons all on which the latter can take hold. In the progress of Negation everything got rid of is a help. As we said before, the adept does not become “immortal “ as the word is ordinarily understood. By or about the time when the Death-limit of his race is passed he is actually dead, in the ordinary sense, that is to say, he has relieved himself of all or nearly all such material particles as would have

30 —————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

necessitated in disruption the agony of dying. He has been dying gradually during the whole period of his Initiation. The catastrophe cannot happen twice over. He has only spread over a number of years the mild process of dissolution which others endure from a brief moment to a few hours. The highest Adept is, in fact, dead to, and absolutely unconscious of, the world; he is oblivious of its pleasures, careless of its miseries, in so far as sentimentalism goes, for the stern sense of DUTY never leaves him blind to its very existence. For the new ethereal senses opening to wider spheres are to ours much in the relation of ours to the Infinitely Little. New desires and enjoyments, new dangers and new hindrances arise, with new sensations and new perceptions; and far away down in the mist—both literally and metaphorically—is our dirty little earth left below by those who have virtually “gone to join the gods.”

    And from this account too, it will be perceptible how foolish it is for people to ask the Theosophist to “procure for them communication with the highest Adepts.” It is with the utmost difficulty that one or two can be induced, even by the throes of a world, to injure their own progress by meddling with mundane affairs. The ordinary reader will say: “This is not god-like. This is the acme of selfishness.” . . . . But let him realize that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the world, would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation. And is the result of all that have gone before in that line sufficiently encouraging to prompt a renewal of the attempt?

31 ————————————————————THE “ELIXIR OF LIFE.”

    A deep consideration of all that we have written, will also give the Theosophists an idea of what they demand when they ask to be put in the way of gaining practically “ higher powers.” Well, there, as plainly as words can put it, is the PATH can they tread it ?

    Nor must it be disguised that what to the ordinary mortal are unexpected dangers, temptations and enemies also beset the way of the neophyte. And that for no fanciful cause, but the simple reason that he is, in fact, acquiring new senses, has yet no practice in their use, and has never before seen the things he sees. A man born blind suddenly endowed with vision would not at once master the meaning of perspective, but would, like a baby, imagine in one case, the moon to be within his reach, and, in the other, grasp a live coal with the most reckless confidence.

    And what, it may be asked, is to recompense this abnegation of all the pleasures of life, this cold surrender of all mundane interests, this stretching forward to an unknown goal which seems ever more unattainable? For, unlike some of the anthropomorphic creeds, Occultism offers to its votaries no eternally permanent heaven of material pleasure, to be gained at once by one quick dash through the grave. As has, in fact, often been the case many would be prepared willingly to die now for the sake of the paradise hereafter. But Occultism gives no such prospect of cheaply and immediately gained infinitude of pleasure, wisdom and existence. It only promises extensions of these, stretching in successive arches

32 —————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

obscured by successive veils, in an unbroken series up the long vista which leads to NIRVANA. And this too, qualified by the necessity that new powers entail new responsibilities, and that the capacity of increased pleasure entails the capacity of increased sensibility to pain. To this, the only answer that can be given is two-fold: (1st) the consciousness of Power is itself the most exquisite of pleasures, and is unceasingly gratified in the progress onwards with new means for its exercise and (2ndly) as has been already said—THIS is the only road by which there is the faintest scientific likelihood that “ Death” can be avoided, perpetual memory secured, infinite wisdom attained, and hence an immense helping of mankind made possible, once that the adept has safely crossed the turning-point. Physical as well as metaphysical logic requires and endorses the fact that only by gradual absorption into infinity can the Part become acquainted with the Whole, and that that which is now something can only feel, know, and enjoy EVERYTHING when lost in Absolute Totality in the vortex of that Unalterable Circle wherein our Knowledge becomes Ignorance, and the Everything itself is identified with the NOTHING.

IS THE DESIRE TO “LIVE” SELFISH?
 

THE passage “ to live, to live, to live must be the unswerving resolve,” occurring in the article on the Elixir of Life, is often quoted by superficial and unsympathetic readers as an argument that the teachings of occultism are the most concentrated form of selfishness. In order to determine whether the critics are right or wrong, the meaning of the word “selfishness” must first be ascertained.

    According to an established authority, selfishness is that “ exclusive regard to one’s own interest or happiness ; that supreme self-love or self-preference which leads a person to direct his purposes to the advancement of his own interest, power, or happiness, without regarding those of others.”

    In short, an absolutely selfish individual is one who cares for himself and none else, or, in other words, one who is so strongly imbued with a sense of the importance of his own personality that to him it is the crown of all thoughts, desires, and aspirations, and beyond which lies the perfect blank. Now, can an occultist be then said to be “selfish when he desires to live in the sense in which that word is used by the writer of the article on the Elixir of Life? It has been said over and over again that the ultimate end of every aspirant after

34  ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

occult knowledge is Nirvana or Mukti, when the individual, freed from all Mayavic Upadhi, becomes one with Paramatma, or the Son identifies himself with the Father in Christian phraseology. For that purpose, every veil of illusion which creates a sense of personal isolation, a feeling of separateness from THE ALL, must be torn asunder, or, in other words, the aspirant must gradually discard all sense of selfishness with which we are all more or less affected. A study of the Law of Kosmic Evolution teaches us that the higher the evolution, the more does it tend towards Unity. In fact, Unity is the ultimate possibility of Nature, and those who through vanity and selfishness go against her purposes, cannot but incur the punishment of annihilation. The occultist thus recognizes that unselfishness and a feeling of universal philanthropy are the inherent laws of our being, and all he does is to attempt to destroy the chains of selfishness forged upon us all by Maya. The struggle then between Good and Evil, God and Satan, Suras and Asuras, Devas and Daityas, which is mentioned in the sacred books of all the nations and races, symbolizes the battle between unselfish and selfish impulses, which takes place in a man, who tries to follow the higher purposes of Nature, until the lower animal tendencies, created by selfishness, are completely conquered, and the enemy thoroughly routed and annihilated. It has also been often put forth in various Theosophical and other occult writings that the only difference between an ordinary man who works along with Nature during the course of Kosmic evolution and

35 ————————————————— IS THE DESIRE TO “LIVE’ SELFISH?

an occultist, is that the latter, by his superior knowledge, adopts such methods of training and discipline as will hurry on that process of evolution, and he thus reaches in a comparatively short time the apex which the ordinary individual will take perhaps billions of years to reach. In short, in a few thousand years he approaches that type of evolution which ordinary humanity attains in the sixth or seventh Round of the Manvantara, i.e., cyclic progression. It is evident that an average man cannot become a MAHATMA in one life, or rather in one incarnation. Now those, who have studied the occult teachings concerning Devachan and our after-states, will remember that between two incarnations there is a considerable period of subjective existence. The greater the number of such Devachanic periods, the greater is the number of years over which this evolution is extended. The chief aim of the occultist is therefore to so control himself as to be able to regulate his future states, and thereby gradually shorten the duration of his Devachanic existence between two incarnations. In the course of his progress, there comes a time when, between one physical death and his next rebirth, there is no Devachan but a kind of spiritual sleep, the shock of death, having, so to say, stunned him into a state of unconsciousness from which he gradually recovers to find himself reborn, to continue his purpose. The period of this sleep may vary from twenty-five to two hundred years, depending upon the degree of his advancement. But even this period may be said to be a waste of time, and hence all his exertions are directed to

36 —————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

shorten its duration so as to gradually come to a point when the passage from one state of existence into another is almost imperceptible. This is his last incarnation, as it were, for the shock of death no more stuns him. This is the idea the writer of the article on the Elixir of Life means to convey when he says :

    By or about the time when the Death-limit of his race is passed he is actually dead, in the ordinary sense, that is to say, he has relieved himself of all or nearly all such material particles as would have necessitated in disruption the agony of dying. He has been dying gradually during the whole period of his Initiation. The catastrophe cannot happen twice over, he has only spread over a number of years the mild process of dissolution which others endure from a brief moment to a few hours. The highest Adept is, in fact, dead to, and absolutely unconscious of, the World he is oblivious of its pleasures, careless of its miseries, in so far as sentimentalism goes, for the stern sense of Duty never leaves him blind to its very existence.

    The process of the emission and attraction of atoms, which the occultist controls, has been discussed at length in that article and in other writings. It is by these means that he gets rid gradually of all the old gross particles of his body, substituting for’ them finer and more ethereal ones, till at inst the former sthula sarira is completely dead and disintegrated, and he lives in a body entirely of his own creation, suited to his work. That body is essential to his purposes; as the Elixir of Life says :—

    To do good, as in every thing else, a man most have time and materials to Work with, and this is a necessary

37 ————————————————— IS THE DESIRE TO “LIVE” SELFISH?

means to the acquirement of powers by which infinitely more good can be done than without them. When these are once mastered, the opportunities to use them will arrive

    Giving the practical instructions for that purpose, the same paper continues :—

    The physical man must be rendered more ethereal and sensitive; the mental man more penetrating and profound; the moral man more selfdenying and philosophical.

Losing sight of the above important considerations, the following passage is entirely misunderstood :—

    And from this account too, it will be perceptible how foolish it is for people to ask the Theosophist “to procure for them communication with the highest Adepts.” It is with the utmost difficulty that one or two can be induced, even by the throes of a world, to injure their own progress by meddling with mundane affairs. The ordinary reader will say: “This is not God-like. This is the acme of selfishness.”

    But let him realize that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the world, would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation. And is the result of all that have gone before in that line sufficiently encouraging to prompt a renewal of the attempt?

    Now, in condemning the above passage as inculcating selfishness, superficial critics neglect many profound truths. In. the first place, they forget the other extracts already quoted which impose self-denial as a necessary condition of success, and which say that, with progress, new senses and new powers are acquired with which infinitely more good can be done than without them. The more spiritual the Adept becomes the less can he meddle with mundane gross affairs and the more he has to confine himself to spiritual work. It has been repeated, times out

38  ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

of number, that the work on the spiritual plane is as superior to the work on the intellectual plane as the latter is superior to that on the physical plane. The very high Adepts, therefore, do help humanity, but only spiritually: they are constitutionally incapable of meddling with worldly affairs. But this applies only to very high Adepts. There are various degrees of Adept-ship, and those of each degree work for humanity on the planes to which they may have risen. It is only the chelas that can live in the world, until they rise to a certain degree. And it is because the Adepts do care for the world that they make their chelas live in and work for it, as many of those who study the subject are aware. Each cycle produces its own occultists capable of working for the humanity of the time on all the different planes; but when the Adepts foresee that at a particular period humanity will he incapable of producing occultists for work on particular planes, for such occasions they do provide by either voluntarily giving up their further progress and waiting until humanity reaches that period, or by refusing to enter into Nirvana and submitting to re-incarnation so as to he ready for work when the time comes. And although the world may not be aware of the fact, yet there are even now certain Adepts who have preferred to remain in statu quo and refuse to take the higher degrees, for the benefit of the future generations of humanity. In short, as the Adepts work harmoniously, since unity is the fundamental law of their being, they have, as it were, made a division of labour, according to which each works on the plane appropriate to him-

39 ————————————————— IS THE DESIRE TO “LIVE” SELFISH?

self for the spiritual elevation of us all—and the process of longevity mentioned in the Elixir of Life is only the means to the end which, far from being selfish, is the most unselfish purpose for which a human being can labour.

CONTEMPLATION
 

A GENERAL misconception on this subject seems to prevail. One confines oneself for some time in a room, and passively gazes at one’s nose, a spot on the wall, or, perhaps, a crystal, under the impression that such is the true form of contemplation enjoined by Raj Yoga. Many fail to realize that true occultism requires a physical, mental, moral and spiritual development to run on parallel lines, and injure themselves, physically and spiritually, by practice of what they falsely believe to be Dhyan. A few instances may be mentioned here with advantage, as a warning to over-zealous students.
At Bareilly the writer met a member of the Theosophical Society from Farrukhabad, who narrated his experiences and shed bitter tears of repentance for his past follies—as he termed them. It appears from his account that fifteen or twenty years ago having read about contemplation in the Bhagavad Gita, he undertook the practice of it, without a proper comprehension of its esoteric meaning and carried it on for several years. At first he experienced a sense of pleasure, but simultaneously he found he was gradually losing self-control; until after a few years he discovered, to his great bewilderment and sorrow, that he was no

41 ————————————————————CONTEMPLATION.

longer his own master. He felt his heart actually growing heavy, as though a load had been placed on it. He had no control over his sensations the communication between the brain and the heart had become as though interrupted. As matters grew worse, in disgust lie discontinued his “contemplation.” This happened as long as seven years ago ; and, although since then lie has not felt worse, yet he could never regain his original healthy state of mind and body.

    Another case came under the writer’s observation at Jubbulpore. The gentleman concerned, after reading Patanjali and such other works, began to sit for “contemplation.” After a short time he commenced seeing abnormal sights and hearing musical bells, but neither over these phenomena nor over his own sensations could he exercise any control. He could not produce these results at will, nor could he stop them when they were occurring. Numerous such examples may be cited. While penning these lines, the writer has on his table two letters upon this subject, one from Moradabad and the other from Trichinopoly. In short, all this mischief is due to a misunderstanding of the significance of contemplation as enjoined upon students by all the schools of Occult Philosophy. With a view to afford a glimpse of the Reality through the dense veil that enshrouds the mysteries of this Science of Sciences, an article, the Elixir of Life, was written. Unfortunately, in too many instances, the seed seems to have fallen upon barren ground. Some of its readers pin their faith to the following clause in that paper :—

42 —————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

    Reasoning from the known to the unknown meditation must be practised and encouraged.
But, alas! their preconceptions have prevented them from comprehending what is meant by meditation. They forget that the meditation spoken of “is the inexpressible yearning of the inner Man to ‘go out towards the infinite,’ which in the olden time was the real meaning of adoration “—as the next sentence shows. A good deal of light would be thrown upon this subject if the reader were to turn to an earlier part of the same paper, and peruse attentively the following paragraphs :—

    So, then, we have arrived at the point where we have determined—literally, not metaphorically—to crack tho outer shell known as the mortal coil or body, and hatch out of it, clothed in our next. This ‘next’ is not a spiritual, but only a more ethereal form. Having by a long training and preparation adapted it for a life in the atmosphere, during which time we have gradually made the outward shell to die off through a certain process . . . . we have to prepare for this physiological transformation.

    How are we to do it ? In the first place we have the actual, visible, material body—Man, so called, though, in fact, but his outer shell—to deal with. Let us bear in mind that Science teaches us that in about every seven years we change shin as effectually as any serpent; and this so gradually and imperceptibly that, had not science after years of unremitting study and observation assured us of it, no one would have had the slightest suspicion of the fact Hence, if a man, partially flayed alive, may sometimes survive and be covered with a new skin, so our astral, vital body . . . . maybe made to harden its particles to the atmospheric changes. The whole secret is to succeed in evolving it out, and separating it from the visible; and while its generally invisible atoms proceed to concrete themselves into

43  ————————————————————CONTEMPLATION.

a compact mass, to gradually get rid of the old particles of our visible frame so as to make them die and disappear before the new set has had time to evolve and replace them We can say no more.

    A correct comprehension of the above scientific process will give a clue to the esoteric meaning of meditation or contemplation. Science teaches us that man changes his physical body continually, and this change is so gradual that it is almost imperceptible. Why then should the case be otherwise with the inner man? The latter too is developing and changing atoms at every moment. And the attraction of these new sets of atoms depends upon the Law of Affinity—the desires of the man drawing to his bodily tenement only such particles as are necessary to give them expression.

    For Science shows that thought is dynamic, and the thought-force evolved by nervous action expanding itself outwardly, must affect the molecular relations of the physical man. The inner men, however sublimated their organism may be, are still composed of actual, not hypothetical, particles, and are still subject to the law that an “action” has a tendency to repeat itself; a tendency to set up analogous action in the grosser “shell” they are in contact with, and concealed within.—The Elixir of Life.

    What is it the aspirant of Yog Vidya strives after if not to gain Mukti by transferring himself gradually from the grosser to the next less gross body, until all the veils of Maya being successively removed his Atma becomes one with Paramatma? Does he suppose that this grand result can be achieved by a two or four hours’ contemplation? For the remaining twenty or twenty-two hours

44  ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

that the devotee does not shut himself up in his room for meditation is the process of the emission of atoms and their replacement by others stopped? If not, then how does he mean to attract all this time only those suited to his end? From the above remarks it is evident that just as the physical body requires incessant attention to prevent the entrance of a disease, so also the inner man requires an unremitting watch, so that no conscious or unconscious thought may attract atoms unsuited to its progress. This is the real meaning of contemplation. The prime factor in the guidance of the thought is Will.

    Without that, all else is useless. And, to be efficient for the purpose, it must be, not only a passing resolution of the moment, a single fierce desire of short duration, but a settled and continued strain, as nearly as can be continued and concentrated without one single moment’s remission.

    The student would do well to take note of the italicized clause in the above quotation. He should also have it indelibly impressed upon his mind that
It is no use to fast as long as one requires food To get rid of the inward desire is the essential thing, and to mimic the real thing without it is barefaced hypocrisy and useless slavery.

    Without realizing the significance of this most important fact, any one who for a moment finds cause of disagreement with any one of his family, or has his vanity wounded, or for a sentimental flash of the moment, or for a selfish desire to utilize the Divine power for gross purposes—at once

45 ———————————————————— CONTEMPLATION.

rushes into contemplation and dashes himself to pieces on the rock dividing the known from the known. Wallowing in the mire of exotericism, he knows not what it is to live in the world and yet be not of the world; in other words, to guard self against self is an almost incomprehensible axiom for the profane. The Hindu ought to know better from the life of Janaka, who, although a reigning monarch, was yet styled Rajarshi and is said to have attained Nirvana. hearing of his widespread fame, a few sectarian bigots went to his court to test his Yoga-power. As soon as they entered the court-room, the king having read their thoughts—a power which every chela attains at a certain stage—gave secret instructions to his officials to have a particular street in the city lined on both sides by dancing girls singing the must voluptuous songs. He then had some gharas (pots) filled with water up to the brim so that the least shake would be likely to spill their contents. The wiseacres, each with a full ghara (pot) on his head, were ordered to pass along the street, surrounded by soldiers with drawn swords to he used against them if even so much as a drop of water were allowed to run over. The poor fellows having returned to the palace after successfully passing the test, were asked by the King-Adept what they had met with in the street they were made to go through. With great indignation they replied that the threat of being cut to pieces had so much worked upon their minds that they thought of nothing but the water on their heads, and the intensity of their attention did not permit them to

46  ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

take cognizance of what was going on around them. Then Janaka told them that on the same principle they could easily understand that, although being outwardly engaged in managing the affairs of his State, he could, at the same time, be an Occultist. He too, while in the world, was not of the world. In other words, his inward aspirations had been leading him on continually to the goal in which his whole inner self was concentrated.
Raj Yoga encourages no sham, requires no physical postures. It has to deal with the inner man whose sphere lies in the world of thought. To have the highest ideal placed before oneself and strive incessantly to rise up to it, is the only true concentration recognized by Esoteric Philosophy which deals with the inner world of noumena, not the outer shell of phenomena.

    The first requisite for it is thorough purity of heart. Well might the student of Occultism say with Zoroaster, that purity of thought, purity of word, and purity of deed,—these are the essentials of one who would rise above the ordinary level and join the “gods.” A cultivation of the feeling of unselfish philanthropy is the path which has to be traversed for that purpose. For it is that alone which will lead to Universal Love, the realization of which constitutes the progress towards deliverance from the chains forged by Maya (illusion) around the Ego. No student will attain this at once, but as our Venerated Mahatma says in the Occult World” :—

    The greater the progress towards deliverance, the less this will be the case, until, to crown all, human and purely

47 ———————————————————— CONTEMPLATION.

individual personal feelings, blood-ties arid friendship, patriotism and race predilection, will all give way to become blended into one universal feeling, the only true and holy, the only unselfish and eternal one, Love, an Immense Love for Humanity as a whole.

    In short, the individual is blended with the ALL.

Of course, contemplation, as usually understood, is not without its minor advantages. It develops one set of physical faculties as gymnastics does the muscles. For the purposes of physical mesmerism it is good enough; but it can in no way help the development of the psychological faculties, as the thoughtful reader will perceive. At the same time, even for ordinary purposes, the practice can never be too well guarded. If, as some suppose, they have to be entirely passive and lose themselves in the object before them, they should remember that, by thus encouraging passivity, they, in fact, allow the development of mediumistic faculties in themselves. As was repeatedly stated—the Adept and the Medium are the two Poles : while the former is intensely active and thus able to control the elemental forces, the latter is intensely passive and thus incurs the risk of falling a prey to the caprice and malice of mischievous embryos of human beings, and the elementaries.

    It will be evident from the above that true meditation consists in the “reasoning from the known to the unknown.” The “known” is the phenomenal world, cognizable by our five senses. And all that we see in this manifested world are the effects, the causes of which are to be sought after in the

48  ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY

noumenal, the unmanifested, the “unknown world : ” this is to be accomplished by meditation, i.e., continued attention to the subject. Occultism does not depend upon one method, but employs both the deductive and the inductive. The student must first learn the general axioms, which have sufficiently been laid down in the Elixir of Life and other occult writings. What the student has first to do is to comprehend these axioms and, by employing the deductive method, to proceed from universals to particulars. He has then to reason from the “known to the unknown,” and see if the inductive method of proceeding from particulars to universals supports those axioms. This process forms the primary stage of true contemplation. The student must first grasp the subject intellectually before he can hope to realize his aspirations. When this is accomplished, then comes the next stage of meditation, which is “the inexpressible yearning of the inner man to ‘go out towards the infinite.’” Before any such yearning can be properly directed, the goal must first be determined. The higher stage, in fact, consists in practically realizing what the first steps have placed within one’s comprehension. In short, contemplation, in its true sense, is to recognize the truth of Eliphas Levi’s saying :—

    To believe without knowing is weakness; to believe, because one knows, is power.

    The Elixir of Life not only gives the preliminary steps in the ladder of contemplation but also tells the reader how to realize the higher stages. It traces, by the process of contem-

49  ———————————————————— CONTEMPLATION.

plation as it were, the relation of man, “the known,” the manifested, the phenomenon, to “the unknown,” the unmanifested, the noumenon. it shows the student what ideal to contemplate and how to rise up to it. it places before him the nature of the inner capacities of man and how to develop them. To a superficial reader, this may, perhaps, appear as the acme of selfishness. Reflection will, however, show the contrary to be the case. For it teaches the student that to comprehend the noumenal, he must identify himself with Nature. Instead of looking upon himself as an isolated being, he must learn to look upon himself as a part of the Integral Whole. For, in the unmanifested world, it can be clearly perceived that all is controlled by the “ Law of Affinity,” the attraction of the one for the other. There, all is Infinite Love, understood in its true sense.

   It may now not be out of place to recapitulate what has already been said. The first thing to be done is to study the axioms of Occultism and work upon them by the deductive and the inductive methods, which is real contemplation. To turn this to a useful purpose, what is theoretically comprehended must be practically realized.
                                                                                                                 DAMODAR K. MAVALAUKAR.

CHELAS AND LAY CHELAS
 

A “CHELA” is a person who has offered himself to a master as a pupil to learn practically the “hidden mysteries of Nature and the psychical powers latent in man.” The master who accepts him is called in India a Guru; and the real Guru is always an adept in the Occult Science. A man of profound knowledge, exoteric and esoteric, especially the latter; and one who has brought his carnal nature under the subjection of the WILL; who has developed in himself both the power (Siddhi) to control the forces of Nature, and the capacity to probe her secrets by the help of the formerly latent but now active powers of his being—this is the real Guru. To offer oneself as a candidate for Chelaship is easy enough, to develop into an adept the most difficult task any man could possibly undertake. There are scores of “natural-born” poets, mathematicians, mechanics, statesmen, &e. But a natural-born adept is something practically impossible. For, though we do hear at very rare intervals of one who has an extraordinary innate capacity for the acquisition of occult knowledge and power, yet even he has to pass the self-same tests and probations, and go through the self-same training as any less endowed fellow aspirant. In this matter it is most true that there is no royal road by which favourites may travel.

51 ————————————————————CHELAS AND LAY CHELAS.

   For centuries the selection of Chelas—Outside the hereditary group within the gon-pa (temple)—has been made by the Himalayan Mahatmas themselves from among the class—in Tibet, a considerable one as to number—of natural mystics. The only exceptions have been in the cases of Western men like Fludd, Thomas Vaughan, Paracelsus, Pico di Mirandolo, Count St. Germain, &c., whose temperament affinity to this celestial science, more or less forced the distant Adepts to come into personal relations with them, and enabled them to get such small (or large) proportion of the whole truth as was possible under their social surroundings. From Book IV. of Kui-te, Chapter on “The Laws of Upasanas,” we learn that the qualifications expected in a Chela were;
1. Perfect physical health;
2. Absolute mental and physical purity;
3. Unselfishness of purpose; universal charity; pity for all animate beings;
4. Truthfulness and unswerving faith in the law of Karma, independent of the intervention of any power in Nature: a law whose course is not to be obstructed by any agency, not to be caused to deviate by prayer or propitiatory exoteric ceremonies;
5. A courage undaunted in every emergency, even by peril to life;
6. An intuitional perception of one’s being the vehicle of the manifested Avalokiteswara or Divine Atma (Spirit)
7. Calm indifference for, but a just appreciation of, everything that constitutes the objective and

52  ———————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

transitory world, in its relation with, and to, the invisible regions.

    Such, at the least, must have been the recommendations of one aspiring to perfect Chelaship. With the sole exception of the first, which in rare and exceptional cases might have been modified, each one of these points has been invariably insisted upon, and all must have been more or less developed in the inner nature by the Chela’s unhelped exertions, before he could be actually “put to the test.”

    When the self-evolving ascetic—whether in, or outside the active world—has placed himself, according to his natural capacity, above, hence made himself master of his (1) Sarira—body ; (2) Indriya—senses ; (3) Dosha—faults; (4) Dukkha —pain; and is ready to become one with his Manas—mind ; Buddhi—intellection, or spiritual intelligence; and Atma—highest soul, i.e., spirit when he is ready for this, and, further, to recognize in Atma the highest ruler in the world of perceptions, and in the will, the highest executive energy (power), then may he, under the time-honoured rules, be taken in hand by one of the Initiates. He may then be shown the mysterious path at whose farther end is obtained the unerring discernment of Phala, or the fruits of causes produced, and given the means of reaching Apavarga—emancipation from the misery of repeated births, pretya-bhâva, in whose determination the ignorant has no hand.

    But since the advent of the Theosophical Society, one of whose arduous tasks it is to re-awaken in

53 ————————————————————CHELAS AND LAY CHELAS.

the Aryan mind the dormant memory of the existence of this science and of those transcendent human capabilities, the rules of Chela selection have become slightly relaxed in one respect. Many members of the Society who would not have been otherwise called to Chelaship became convinced by practical proof of the above points, and rightly enough thinking that if other men had hitherto reached the goal, they too, if inherently fitted, might reach it by following the same path, importunately pressed to be taken as candidates. And as it would be an interference with Karma to deny them the chance of at least beginning, they were given it. The results have been far from encouraging so far, and it is to show them the cause of their failure as much as to warn others against rushing heedlessly upon a similar fate, that the writing of the present article has been ordered. The candidates in question, though plainly warned against it in advance, began wrong by selfishly looking to the future and losing sight of the past. They forgot that they had done nothing to deserve the rare honour of selection, nothing which warranted their expecting such a privilege; that they could boast of none of the above enumerated merits. As men of the selfish, sensual world, whether married or single, merchants, civilian or military employees, or members of the learned professions, they had been to a school most calculated to assimilate them to the animal nature, least so to develop their spiritual potentialities. Yet each and all had vanity enough to suppose that their case would be made

54 ——————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY

an exception to the law of countless centuries, as though, indeed, in their person had been born to the world a new Avatar! All expected to have hidden things taught, extraordinary powers given them, because—well, because they had joined the Theosophical Society. Some had sincerely resolved to amend their lives, and give up their evil courses we must do them that justice, at all events.

    All were refused at first, Col. Olcott the President himself, to begin with: and he was not formally accepted as a Chela until he had proved by more than a year’s devoted labours and by a determination which brooked no denial, that he might safely be tested. Then from all sides came complaints—from Hindus, who ought to have known better, as well as from Europeans who, of course, were not in a condition to know anything at all about the rules. ‘The cry was that unless at least a few Theosophists were given the chance to try, the Society could not endure. Every other noble and unselfish feature of our programme was ignored—a man’s duty to his neighbour, to his country, his duty to help, enlighten, encourage and elevate those weaker and less favoured than he; all were trampled out of sight in the insane rush for adeptship. The call for phenomena, phenomena, phenomena, resounded in every quarter, and the Founders were impeded in their real work and teased importunately to intercede with the Mahatmas, against whom the real grievance my, though their poor agents had to take all the buffets. At last, the word came from the higher authorities that a few of the most urgent candidates should be

55 ————————————————————CHELAS AND LAY CHELAS.

taken at their word. The result of the experiment would perhaps show better than any amount of preaching what Chelaship meant, and what are the consequences of selfishness and temerity. Each candidate was warned that be must wait for year in any event, before his fitness could be established, and that he must pass through a series of tests that would bring out all there was in him, whether bad or good. They were nearly all married men, and hence were designated “Lay Chelas”—a term new in English, but having long had its equivalent in Asiatic tongues. A Lay Chela is but a man of the world who affirms his desire to become wise in spiritual things. Virtually, every member of the Theosophical Society who subscribes to the second of our three “ Declared Objects” is such; for though not of the number of true Chelas, he has yet the possibility of becoming one, for he has stepped across the boundary—line which separated him from the Mahatmas, and has brought himself, as it were, under their notice. In joining the Society and binding himself to help along its work, he has pledged himself to act in some degree in concert with those Mahatmas, at whose behest the Society was organized, and under whose conditional protection it remains. The joining is then, the introduction; all the rest depends entirely upon the member himself, and he need never expect the most distant approach to the “favour” of one of our Mahatmas or any other Mahatmas in the world—should the latter consent to become known—that has not been fully earned by personal merit. The Mahatmas are the servants, not the arbiters of the Law of Karma.

56 ——————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

Lay-Chelaship confers no privilege upon any one except that of working for merit under the observation of a Master. And whether that Master be or be not seen by the Chela makes no difference whatever as to the result: his good thought, words and deeds will bear their fruits, his evil ones, theirs. To boast of Lay Chelaship or make a parade of it, is the surest way to reduce the relationship with the Guru to a mere empty name, for it would be prima facie evidence of vanity and unfitness for farther progress. And for years we have been teaching everywhere the maxim “ First deserve, then desire” intimacy with the Mahatmas.

    Now there is a terrible law operative in Nature, one which cannot be altered, and whose operation clears up the apparent mystery of the selection of certain “Chelas” who have turned out sorry specimens of morality, these few years past. Does the reader recall the old proverb, “Let sleeping dogs lie ?” There is a world of occult meaning in it. No man or woman knows his or her moral strength until it is tried. Thousands go through life very respectably, because they were never put to the test. This is a truism doubtless, but it is most pertinent to the present case. One who undertakes to try for Chelaship by that very act rouses and lashes to desperation every sleeping passion of his animal nature. For this is the commencement of a struggle for mastery in which quarter is neither to be given nor taken. It is, once for all, “To be, or Not to be;” to conquer, means Adept-ship : to fail, an ignoble Martyrdom; for to fall victim to lust, pride, avarice, vanity, selfishness,

57 ————————————————————CHELAS AND LAY CHELAS.

cowardice, or any other of the lower propensities, is indeed ignoble, if measured by the standard of true manhood. The Chela is not only called to face all the latent evil propensities of his nature, but, in addition, the momentum of maleficent forces accumulated by the community and nation to which he belongs. For he is an integral part of those aggregates, and what affects either the individual man or the group (town or nation), reacts the one upon the other. And in this instance his struggle for goodness jars upon the ‘whole body of badness in his environment, and draws its fury upon him. If he is content to go along ‘with his neighbours and be almost as they are—perhaps a little better or somewhat worse than the average—no one may give him a thought. But let it be known that he has been able to detect the hollow mockery of social life, its hypocrisy, selfishness, sensuality, cupidity and other bad features, and has determined to lift himself up to a higher level, at once he is hated, and every bad, bigotted, or malicious nature sends at him a current of opposing will-power. If he is innately strong he shakes it off, as the powerful swimmer dashes through the current that would bear a weaker one away. But in this moral battle, if the Chela has one single hidden blemish—do what he may, it shall and will be brought to light. The varnish of conventionalities which “civilization” overlays us all with must come off to the last coat, and the inner self, naked and without the slightest veil to conceal its reality, is exposed. The habits of society ‘which hold men to a certain degree under moral restraint, and compel then’ to pay tribute to virtue

58  ———————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

by seeming to be good whether they are so or not—these habits are apt to be all forgotten, these restraints to be all broken through under the strain of Chelaship he is now in an atmosphere of illusions—Maya. Vice puts on its most alluring face, and the tempting passions attract the inexperienced aspirant to the depths of psychic debasement. This is not a case like that depicted by a great artist, where Satan is seen playing a game of chess with a man upon the stake of his soul, while the latter’s good angel stands beside him to counsel and assist. For the strife is in this instance between the Chela’s will and his carnal nature, and Karma forbids that any angel or Guru should interfere until the result is known. With the vividness of poetic fancy Bulwar Lytton has idealized it for us in his “Zanoni,” a work which will ever be prized by the occultist while in his “Strange Story” he has with equal power shown the black side of occult research and its deadly perils. Chelaship was defined, the other day, by a Mahatma as a “psychic resolvent, which eats away all dross and leaves only the pure gold behind.” if the candidate has the latent lust for money, or political chicanery, or materialistic scepticism, or vain display, or false speaking, or cruelty, or sensual gratification of any kind the germ is almost sure to sprout; and so, on the other hand, as regards the noble qualities of human nature. The real man comes out. Is it not the height of folly, then, for any one to leave the smooth path of common-place life to scale the crags of Chelaship without some reasonable feeling of certainty that he has the right stuff in him? Well says the

59 ————————————————————CHELAS AND LAY CHELAS

Bible: “Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall ”—a text that would-be Chelas should consider well before they rush headlong into the fray! It would have been well for some of our Lay Chelas if they had thought twice before defying the tests. We call to mind several sad failures within a twelve-month. One went wrong in the head, recanted noble sentiments uttered but a few weeks previously, and became a member of a religion he had just scornfully and unanswerably proven false. A second became a defaulter and absconded with his employer’s money—the latter also a Theosophist. A third gave himself up to gross debauchery, and confessed it, with ineffectual sobs and tears, to his chosen Guru. A fourth got entangled with a person of the other sex and fell out with his dearest and truest friends. A fifth showed signs of mental aberration and was brought into Court upon charges of discreditable conduct. A sixth shot himself to escape the consequences of criminality, on the verge of detection! And so we might go on and on. All these were apparently sincere searchers after truth, and passed in the world for respectable persons. Externally, they were fairly eligible as candidates for Chelaship, as appearances go; but “within all was rottenness and dead men’s hones.” The world’s varnish was so thick as to hide the absence of the true gold underneath; and the “resolvent” doing its work, the candidate proved in each instance but a gilded figure of moral dross, from circumference to core.

    In what precedes we have, of course, dealt but with the failures among Lay Chelas; there have

60 ———————————————————— FIVE FEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

been partial successes too, and these are passing gradually through the first stages of their probation. Some are making themselves useful to the Society and to the world in general by good example and precept. If they persist, well for them, well for us all: the odds are fearfully against them, but still
“there is no impossibility to him who Wills.” The difficulties in Chelaship will never be less until human nature changes and a new order is evolved. St. Paul (Rom. vii. 18,19) might have had a Chela in mind when he said “to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.” And in the wise Kirátárjuniyam of Bharavi it is written :—
 

                                                          The enemies which rise within the body,
                                                          hard to be overcome—the evil passions—
                                                          Should manfully be fought; who conquers these
                                                         Is equal to the conqueror of worlds. (XI. 32.)

ANCIENT OPINIONS UPON PSYCHIC
BODIES
 

IT must be confessed that modern Spiritualism falls very short of the ideas formerly suggested by the sublime designation which it has assumed. Chiefly intent upon recognizing and putting forward the phenomenal proofs of a future existence, it concerns itself little with speculations on the distinction between matter and spirit, and rather prides itself on having demolished Materialism without the aid of metaphysics. Perhaps a Platonist might say that the recognition of a future existence is consistent with a very practical and even dogmatic materialism, but it is rather to be feared that such a materialism as this would not greatly disturb the spiritual or intellectual repose of our modern phenomenalists.* Given the consciousness with its sensibilities safely housed in the psychic body which demonstrably survives the physical carcase, and we are like men saved from shipwreck, who are for the moment thankful and content, not giving thought whether they are landed on a hospitable shore, or on a barren rock, or on an
———————————————————
* “I am afraid,” says Thomas Taylor in his Introduction to the Phædo, “there are scarcely any at the present day who know that it is one thing for the soul to be separated from the body, and another for the body to be separated from the soul, and that the former is by no means a necessary consequence of the latter.”

62  ———————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

island of cannibals. It is not of course intended that this “hand to mouth” immortality is sufficient for the many thoughtful minds whose activity gives life and progress to the movement, but that it affords the relief which most people feel when in an age of doubt they make the discovery that they are undoubtedly to live again. To the question “how are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?” modern Spiritualism, with its empirical methods, is not adequate to reply. Yet long before Paul suggested it, it had the attention of the most celebrated schools of philosophy, whose speculations on the subject, however little they may seem to be verified, ought not to be without interest to us, who, after all, are still in the infancy of a spiritualist revival.

    It would not be necessary to premise, but for the frequency with which the phrase occurs, that the spiritual body “ is a contradiction in terms. The office of body is to relate spirit to an objective world. By Platonic writers it is usually termed okhema—“vehicle.” It is the medium of action, and also of sensibility. In this philosophy the conception of Soul was not simply, as with us, the immaterial subject of consciousness. How warily the interpreter has to tread here, every one knows who has dipped, even superficially, into the controversies among Platonists themselves. All admit the distinction between the rational and the irrational part or principle, the latter including, first, the sensibility, and secondly, the Plastic, or that lower which in obedience to its sympathies enables the soul to attach itself to, and to organize into a

63 —————————————————— OPINIONS UPON PSYCHIC BODIES.

suitable body those substances of the universe to which it is most congruous. It is more difficult to determine whether Plato or his principal followers, recognized in the rational soul or nous a distinct and separable entity, that which is sometimes discriminated as “the Spirit.” Dr. Henry More, no mean authority, repudiates this interpretation. “There can be nothing more monstrous,” he says, “than to make two souls in man, the one sensitive, the other rational, really distinct from one another, and to give the name of Astral spirit to the former, when there is in man no Astral spirit beside the Plastic of the soul itself, which is always inseparable from that which is rational. Nor upon any other account can it be called Astral, but as it is liable to that corporeal temperament which proceeds from the stars, or rather from any material causes in general, as not being yet sufficiently united with the divine body—that vehicle of divine virtue or power.” So he maintains that the Kabalistic three souls—Nephesh, Ruach, Neschamah—originate in a misunderstanding of the true Platonic doctrine, which is that of a threefold “vital congruity.” These correspond to the three degrees of bodily existence, or to the three “vehicles,” the terrestrial, the aerial, and the ethereal. The latter is the augoeides—the luciform vehicle of the purified soul whose irrational part has been brought under complete subjection to the rational. The aerial is that in which the great majority of mankind find themselves at the dissolution of the terrestrial body, and in which the incomplete process of purification has to be

64  ———————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

undergone during long ages of preparation for the soul’s return to its primitive, ethereal state. For it must be remembered that the preexistence of souls is a distinguishing tenet of this philosophy as of the Kabala. The soul has “sunk into matter.” From its highest original state the revolt of its irrational nature has awakened and developed successively its “vital congruities” with the regions below, passing, by means of its “Plastic,” first into the aerial and afterwards into the terrestrial condition. Each of these regions teems also with an appropriate population which never passes, like the human soul, from one to the other—“gods,” “demons,” and animals.* As to duration, “the shortest of all is that of the terrestrial vehicle. In the aerial, the soul may inhabit, as they define, many ages, and in the ethereal, for ever.” Speaking of the second body, Henry More says “ the soul’s astral vehicle is of that tenuity that itself can as easily pass the smallest pores of the body as the light does glass, or the lightning the scabbard of a sword without tearing or scorching of it.” And again, “I shall make bold to assert that the soul may live in an aerial vehicle as well as in the ethereal, and that there are very few that arrive to that high happiness as to acquire a celestial vehicle immediately upon their quitting the terrestrial one; that heavenly chariot necessarily carrying us in triumph to the greatest happiness the soul of man is capable of, which would arrive to all men in-
———————————————————
* The allusion here is to those beings of the several kingdoms of the elements which we Theosophists, following after the Kabalists, have called the “Elementals.” They never become men.—ED. Theos.

65 ——————————————————OPINIONS UPON PSYCHIC BODIES.

differently, good or bad, if the parting with this earthly body would suddenly mount us into the heavenly. When by a just Nemesis the souls of men that are not heroically virtuous will find themselves restrained within the compass of this caliginous air, as both Reason itself suggests, and the Platonists have unanimously determined.” Thus also the most thorough-going, and probably the most deeply versed in the doctrines of the master among modern Platonists, Thomas Taylor (Introduction. Phædo) :—“After this our divine philosopher informs that the pure soul will after death return to pure and eternal natures; but that the impure soul, in consequence of being imbued with terrene affections, will be drawn down to a kindred nature, and be invested with a gross vehicle capable of being seen by the corporeal eye. For while a propensity to body remains in the soul, it causes her to attract a certain vehicle to herself; either of an aerial nature, or composed from the spirit and vapours of her terrestrial body, or which is recently collected from surrounding air ; for according to the arcana of the Platonic philosophy, between an ethereal body, which is simple and immaterial and is the eternal connate vehicle of the soul, and a terrene body, which is material and composite, and of short duration, there is an aerial body, which is material indeed, but simple and of a more extended duration; and in this body the unpurified soul dwells for a long time after its exit from hence, till this pneumatic
 ————————————————————
* This is the Hindu theory of nearly every one of the Aryan philosophies.—Ed. Theos.

66  ———————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

vehicle being dissolved, it is again invested with a composite body; while on the contrary the purified soul immediately ascends into the celestial regions with its ethereal vehicle alone.” Always it is the disposition of the soul that determines the quality of its body. “However the soul be in itself affected,” says Porphyry (translated by Cudworth), “so does it always find a body suitable and agreeable to its present disposition, and therefore to the purged soul does naturally accrue a body that comes next to immateriality, that is, an ethereal one.” And the same author, “The soul is never quite naked of all body, but hath always some body or other joined with it, suitable and agreeable to its present disposition (either a purer or impurer one). But that at its first quitting this gross earthly body, the spirituous body which accompanieth it (as its vehicle) must needs go away fouled and incrassated with the vapours and steams thereof, till the soul afterwards by degrees purging itself, this becometh at length a dry splendour, which hath no misty obscurity nor casteth any shadow.” Here it will be seen, we lose sight of the specific difference of the two future vehicles— the ethereal is regarded as a sublimation of the aerial. This, however, is opposed to the general consensus of Plato’s commentators. Sometimes the ethereal body, or augoeides, is appropriated to the rational soul, or spirit, which must then be considered as a distinct entity, separable from the lower soul. Philoponus, a Christian writer, says, that the Rational Soul, as to its energy, is separable from all body, but the irrational part or life

67 ——————————————————OPINIONS UPON PSYCHIC BODIES.

thereof is separable only from this gross body, and not from all body whatsoever, but hath after death a spirituous or airy body, in which it acteth—this I say is a true opinion which shall afterwards be proved by us....... The irrational life of the soul hath not all its being in this gross earthly body, but remaineth after the soul’s departure out of it, having for its vehicle and subject the spirituous body, which itself is also compounded out of the four elements, but receiveth its denomination from the predominant part, to wit, Air, as this gross body of ours is called earthy from what is most predominant therein.”—Cudworth, “Intell. Syst.” From the same source we extract the following: “Wherefore these ancients say that impure souls after their departure out of this body wander here up and down for a certain space in their spirituous vaporous and airy body, appearing about sepulchres and haunting their former habitation. For which cause there is great reason that we should take care of living well, as also of abstaining from a fouler and grosser diet; these Ancients telling us likewise that this spirituous body of ours being fouled and incrassated by evil diet, is apt to render the soul in this life also more obnoxious to the disturbances of passions. They further add that there is something of the Plantal or Plastic life, also exercised by the soul, in those spirituous or airy bodies after death; they being nourished too, though not after the same manner, as those gross earthy bodies of ours are here, but by vapours, and that not by parts or organs, but throughout the whole of them (as sponges), they imbibing every-

68  ———————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

where those vapours. For which cause they who are wise will in this life also take care of using a thinner and dryer diet, that so that spirituous body (which we have also at this present time within our proper body) may not be clogged and incrassed, but attenuated. Over and above which, those Ancients made use of catharms, or purgations to the same end and purpose also. For as this earthy body is washed by water so is that spirituous body cleansed by cathartic vapours—some of these vapours being nutritive, others purgative. Moreover, these Ancients further declared concerning this spirituous body that it was not organized, but did the whole of it in every part throughout exercise all functions of sense, the soul hearing, seeing and perceiving all sensibles by it everywhere. For which cause Aristotle himself affirmeth in his Metaphysics that there is properly but one sense and one Sensory. He by this one sensory meaneth the spirit, or subtle airy body, in which the sensitive power doth all of it through the whole immediately apprehend all variety of sensibles. And if it be demanded to how it comes to pass that this spirit becomes organized in sepulchres, and most commonly of human form, but sometimes in the forms of other animals, to this those Ancients replied that their appearing so frequently in human form proceeded from their being incrassated with evil diet, and then, as it were, stamped upon with the form of this exterior ambient body in which they are, as crystal is formed and coloured like to those things which it is fastened in, or reflects the image of them. And

69 ———————————————————OPINIONS UPON PSYCHIC BODIES.

that their having sometimes other different forms proceedeth from the phantastic power of the soul itself, which can at pleasure transform the spirituous body into any shape. For being airy, when it is condensed and fixed, it becometh visible, and again invisible and vanishing out of sight when it is expanded and rarified.” Proem in Arist. de Anima. And Cudworth says, “Though spirits or ghosts had certain supple bodies which they could so far condense as to make them sometimes visible to men, yet is it reasonable enough to think that they could not constipate or fix them into such a firmness, grossness and solidity, as that of flesh and bone is to continue therein, or at least not without such difficulty and pain as would hinder them from attempting the same. Notwithstanding which it is not denied that they may possibly sometimes make use of other solid bodies, moving and acting them, as in that famous story of Phlegons when the body vanished not as other ghosts use to do, but was left a dead carcase behind.”

    In all these speculations the Anima Mundi plays a conspicuous part. It is the source and principle of all animal souls, including the irrational soul of man. But in man, who would otherwise be merely analogous to other terrestrial animals—this soul participates in a higher principle, which tends to raise and convert it to itself. To comprehend the nature of this union or hypostasis it would be necessary to have mastered the whole of Plato’s philosophy as comprised in the Parmenides and the Timæus; and he would dogmatize rashly who without this arduous preparation should claim

70 ——————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

Plato as the champion of an unconditional immortality. Certainly in the Plædo the dialogue popularly supposed to contain all Plato’s teaching on the subject—the immortality allotted to the impure soul is of a very questionable character, and we should rather infer from the account there given that the human personality, at all events, is lost by successive immersions into “matter.” The following passage from Plutarch (quoted by Madame Blavatsky, “Isis Unveiled,” vol. ii. p. 284) ‘will at least demonstrate the antiquity of notions which have recently been mistaken for fanciful novelties. “Every soul hath some portion of nous, reason, a man cannot be a man without it; but as much of each soul as is mixed with flesh and appetite is changed, and through pain and pleasure becomes irrational. Every soul doth not mix herself after one sort; some plunge themselves into the body, and so in this life their whole frame is corrupted by appetite and passion ; others are mixed as to some part, but the purer part still remains without the body. It is not drawn down into the body, but it swims above, and touches the extremest part of the man’s head; it is like a cord to hold up and direct the subsiding part of the soul, as long as it proves obedient and is not overcome by the appetites of the flesh. The part that is plunged into the body is called soul. But the incorruptible part is called the nous, and the vulgar think it is ‘within them, as they likewise imagine the image reflected from a glass to be in that glass. But the more intelligent, who know it to be without, call it a Dæmon.” And in the same learned work (“Isis Unveiled “) we have two Christian authorities,

71  ——————————————————OPINIONS UPON PSYCHIC BODIES.

Irenæus and Origen, cited for like distinction between spirit and soul in such a manner as to show that the former must necessarily he regarded as separable from the latter. In the distinction itself there is of course no novelty for the most moderately well-informed. It is insisted upon in many modern works, among which may be mentioned Heard’s “ Trichotomy of Man” and Green’s “Spiritual Philosophy”; the. latter being an exposition of Coleridge’s opinion on this and cognate subjects. But the difficulty of regarding the two principles as separable in fact as well as in logic arises from the senses, if it is not the illusion of personal identity. That we are particle, and that one part only is immortal, the non-metaphysical mind rejects with the indignation which is always encountered by a proposition that is at once distasteful and unintelligible. Yet perhaps it is not a greater difficulty (if, indeed, it is not the very same) than that hard saying which troubled Nicodemus, and which has been the key-note of the mystical religious consciousness ever since. This, however, is too extensive and deep a question to be treated in this paper, which has for its object chiefly to call attention to the distinctions introduced by ancient thought into the conception of body as the instrument or “vehicle” of soul. That there is a correspondence between the spiritual condition of man and the medium of his objective activity every spiritualist will admit to be probable, and it may well be that some light is thrown on future states by the possibility or the manner of spirit communication with this one.

                                                                                                                              C. C. MASSEY.

THE NILGIRI SANNYASIS
 

I WAS told that Sannyasis were sometimes met with on a mountain called Velly Mallai Hills, in the Coimbatore District, and trying to meet with one, I determined to ascend this mountain. I travelled up its steep sides and arrived at an opening, narrow and low, into which I crept on all fours. Going up some twenty yards I reached a cave, into the opening of which I thrust my head and shoulders. I could see into it clearly, but felt a cold wind on my face, as if there was some opening or crevice—so I looked carefully, but could see nothing. The room was about twelve feet square. I did not go into it. I saw arranged round its sides stones one cubit long, all placed upright. I was much disappointed at there being no Sannyasi, and came back as I went, pushing myself backwards as there Was no room to turn. I was then told Sannyasis had been met with in the dense sholas (thickets), and as my work lay often in such places, I determined to prosecute my search, and did so diligently, without, however, any success.

    One clay I contemplated a journey to Coimbatore on my own affairs, and was walking up the road trying to make a bargain with a handy man whom I desired to engage to carry me there; but as we could not come to terms, I parted with. him and turned into the Lovedale Road at 6 P.M. I had

73  ————————————————————THE NILGIRI  SANNYASIS.

not gone far when I met a man dressed like a Sannyasi, who stopped and spoke to me. He observed a ring on my finger and asked me to give it to him. I said he was welcome to it, but inquired what he would give me in return, he said, “I don’t care particularly about it; I would rather have that flour and sugar in the bundle on your back.” “I will give you that with pleasure,” I said, and took down my bundle and gave it to him. “Half is enough for me,” he said; but subsequently changing his mind added, “now let me see what is in your bundle,” pointing to my other parcel. “I can’t give you that.” He said, “Why cannot you give me your swami (family idol)?” I said, “It is my swami, I will not part with it; rather take my life.” On this he pressed me no more, but said, “Now you had better go home.” I said, “I will not leave you.” “Oh you must,” he said, “you will die here of hunger.” “Never mind,” I said, “I can but die once.” “You have no clothes to protect you from the wind and rain; you may meet with tigers,” he said. “I don’t care,” I replied. “It is given to man once to die. What does it signify how he dies?” When I said this he took my hand and embraced me, and immediately I became unconscious. When I returned to consciousness, I found myself with the Sannyasi in a place new to me on a hill, near a large rock and with a big shola near. I saw in the shola right in front of us, that there was a pillar of fire, like a tree almost. I asked the Sannyasi what was that like a high fire. “Oh,” he said, “most likely a tree ignited by some careless wood-cutters.”

74  ———————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

“No,” I said, “it is not like any common fire—there is no smoke, nor are there flames—and it’s not lurid and red. I want to go and see it.” “No, you must not do so, you cannot go near that fire and escape alive.” “Come with me then,” I begged. “No—I cannot,” he said, “if you wish to approach it, you must go alone and at your own risk ; that tree is the tree of knowledge and from it flows the milk of life whoever drinks this never hungers again.” Thereupon I regarded the tree with awe.

    I next observed five Sannyasis approaching. They came up and joined the one with me, entered into talk, and finally pulled out a hookah and began to smoke. They asked me if I could smoke. I said no. One of them said to me, let us see the swami in your bundle (here gives a description of the same). I said, “I cannot, I am not clean enough to do so.” “Why not perform your ablutions in yonder stream?” they said. “If you sprinkle water on your forehead that will suffice.” I went to wash my hands and feet, and laved my head, and showed it to them. Next they disappeared. “As it is very late, it is time you returned home,” said my first friend. “No,” I said, “now I have found you I will not leave you.” “No, no,” he said, “you must go home. You cannot leave the world yet; you are a father and a husband, and you must not neglect your worldly duties. Follow the footsteps of your late respected uncle; he did not neglect his worldly affairs, though he cared for the interests of his soul; you must go, but I will meet you again

75 ———————————————————— THE NILGIRI  SANNYASIS.

when you get your fortnightly holiday.” On this he embraced me, and I again became unconscious. When I returned to myself, I found myself at the bottom of Col. Jones’ Coffee Plantation above Coonor on a path. Here the Sannyasi wished me farewell, and pointing to the high road below, he said, “Now you will know your way home ;“but I would not part from him.” I said, “All this will appear a dream to me unless you will fix a day and promise to meet me here again.” “I promise,” he said. “No, promise me by an oath on the head of my idol.” Again he promised, and touched the head of my idol. “Be here,” he said, “this day fortnight.” When the day came I anxiously kept my engagement and went and sat on the stone on the path. I waited a long time in vain. At last I said to myself, “I am deceived, he is not coming, he has broken his oath”—and with grief I made a poojah. Hardly had these thoughts passed my mind, than lo! he stood beside me. “Ah, you doubt me,” he said; “why this grief.” I fell at his feet and confessed I had doubted him and begged his forgiveness. He forgave and comforted me, and told me to keep in my good ways and he would always help me; and he told me and advised me about all my private affairs without my telling him one word, and he also gave me some medicines for a sick friend which I had promised to ask for but had forgotten. This medicine was given to my friend and he is perfectly well now.

             A verbatim translation of a Settlement Officer’s statement to
                                                                                                                                        E. H. MORGAN.

WITCHCRAFT ON THE NILGIRIS
 

HAVING lived many years (30) On the Nilgiris, employing the various tribes of the Hills on my estates, and speaking their languages, I have had many opportunities of observing their manners and customs and the frequent practice of Demonology and Witchcraft among them. On the slopes of the Nilgiris live several semi-wild people : 1st, the “Curumbers,” who frequently hire themselves out to neighbouring estates, and are first-rate fellers of forest; 2nd, the “Tain” (“ Honey Curumbers”), who collect and live largely on honey and roots, and who do not come into civilized parts; 3rd, the “ Mulu” Curumbers, who are rare on the slopes of the hills, but common in Wynaad lower down the plateau. These use bows and arrows, are fond of hunting, and have frequently been known to kill tigers, rushing in a body on their game and discharging their arrows at a short distance. In their eagerness they frequently fall victims to this animal; but they are supposed to possess a controlling power over all wild animals, especially elephants and tigers; and the natives declare they have the power of assuming the forms of various beasts. Their aid is constantly invoked both by the Curumbers first named, and by the natives generally, when wishing to be revenged on an enemy.

77  ———————————————————WITCHCRAFT ON THE NILGIRIS.

Besides these varieties of Curumbers there arc various other wild tribes I do not now mention, as they are not concerned in what I have to relate.
I had on my estate near Ootacamund a gang of young Badagas, some 30 young men, whom I had had in my service since they were children, and who had become most useful handy fellows. From week to week I missed one or another of them, and on inquiry was told they had been sick and were dead!

    One market-day I met the Moneghar of the village to which my gang belonged and some of his men, returning home laden with their purchases. The moment he saw me he stopped, and coming up to me, said, “Mother, I am in great sorrow and trouble, tell me what I can do !” “Why, what is wrong ?” I asked. “All my young men are dying, and I cannot help them, nor prevent it ; they are under a spell of the wicked Curumbers who are killing them, and I am powerless.” “Pray explain,” I said; “why do the Curumbers behavein this way, and what do they do to your people ?” “Oh, Madam, they are vile extortioners, always asking for money; we have given and given till we have no more to give. I told them we had no more money and then they said,—All right—as you please; we shall see. Surely as they say this, we know what will follow—at night when we are all asleep, we wake up suddenly and see a Curumber standing in our midst, in the middle of the room occupied by the young men.” “Why do you not close and bolt your doors securely?” I interrupted. “What is the use of bolts and bars

78  ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

to them? they come through stone walls. . . . Our doors were secure, but nothing can keep out a Curumber. He points his finger at Mada, at Kurira, at Jogie—he utters no word, and as we look at him he vanishes! In a few days these three young men sicken, a low fever consumes them, their stomachs swell, they die. Eighteen young men, the flower of my village, have died thus this year. These effects always follow the visit of a Curumber at night.” “Why not complain to the Government?” I said. “Ah, no use, who will catch them?” “Then give them the 200 rupees they ask this once on a solemn promise that they exact no more.” “I suppose we must find the money somewhere,” he said, turning sorrowfully away.

    A Mr. K— is the owner of a coffee estate near this, and like many other planters employs Burghers. On one occasion he went down the slopes of the hills after bison and other large game, taking some seven or eight Burghers with him as gun carriers (besides other things necessary in jungle- walking—axes to clear the way, knives and ropes, &c.). He found and severely wounded a fine elephant with tusks. Wishing to secure these, he proposed following up his quarry, but could not induce his Burghers to go deeper and further into the forests; they feared to meet the “Mula Curumbers” who lived thereabouts. For long he argued in vain, at last by dint of threats and promises he induced them to proceed, and as they met no one, their fears were allayed and they grew bolder, when suddenly coming on the elephant lying dead (oh, horror to them !), the beast was sur-

79  ——————————————————— WITCHCRAFT ON THE NILGIRIS.

rounded by a party of Mulu Curumbers busily engaged in cutting out the tusks, one of which they had already disengaged! The aifrighted Burghers fell back, and nothing Mr. K— could do or say would induce them to approach the elephant, which the Curumbers stoutly declared was theirs. They had killed him they said. They had very likely met him staggering under his wound and had finished him off. Mr. K—— was not likely to give up his game in this fashion. So walking threateningly to the Curumbers he compelled them to retire, and called to his Burghers at the same time. The Curumbers only said, “Just you DARE to touch that elephant,” and retired. Mr. K—— thereupon cut out the remaining tusk himself, and slinging both on a pole with no little trouble, made his men carry them. He took all the blame on himself, showed them that they did not touch them, and finally declared he would stay there all night rather than lose the tusks. The idea of a night near the Mulu Curumbers was too much for the fears of the Burghers, and they finally took up the pole and tusks and walked home. From that day those men, all but one who probably carried the gun, sickened, walked about like spectres, doomed, pale and ghastly, and before the month was out all were dead men, with the one exception!

    A few months ago, at the village of Ebanaud, a few miles from this, a fearful tragedy was enacted. The Moneghar or headman’s child was sick unto death. This, following on several recent deaths, was attributed to the evil influences of a village of

80 ———————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

Curumbers hard by. The Burghers determined on the destruction of every soul of them. They procured the assistance of a Toda, as they invariably do on such occasions, as without one the Curumbers are supposed to be invulnerable. They proceeded to the Curumber village at night and set their huts on fire, and as the miserable inmates attempted to escape, flung them back into the flames or knocked them down with clubs. In the confusion one old woman escaped unobserved into the adjacent bushes. Next morning she gave notice to the authorities, and identified seven Burghers, among whom was the Moneghar or headman, and one Toda. As the murderers of her people they were all brought to trial in the Courts here,—except the headman, who died before he could be brought in—and were all sentenced and duly executed, that is, three Burghers and the Toda, who were proved principals in the murders.

    Two years ago an almost identical occurrence took place at Kotaghery, with exactly similar results, but without the punishment entailed having any deterrent effect. They pleaded “justification,” as witchcraft had been practised on them. But our Government ignores all occult dealings and ‘will not believe in the dread power in the land. They deal very differently with these matters in Russia, where, in a recent trial of a similar nature, the witchcraft was admitted as an extenuating circumstance and the culprits who had burnt a witch were all acquitted. All natives of whatever caste are well aware of these terrible powers and too often do they avail themselves of them—much oftener

81 ——————————————————— WITCHCRAFT ON THE NILGIRIS.

than any one has an idea of. One day as I was riding along I came upon a strange and ghastly object—a basket containing the bloody head of a black sheep, a cocoanut, 10 rupees in money, some rice and flowers. These smaller items I did not see, not caring to examine any closer; but I was told by some natives that those articles were to be found in the basket. The basket was placed at the apex of a triangle formed by three fine threads tied to three small sticks, so placed that any one approaching from the roads on either side had to stumble over the threads and receive the full effects of the deadly “Soonium” as the natives call it. On inquiry I learnt that it was usual to prepare such a “Soonium” when one lay sick unto death; as throwing it on another was the only means of rescuing the sick one, and woe to the unfortunate who broke a thread by stumbling over it!
                                                                                                                                                E. H. MORGAN.

SHAMANISM AND WITCHCRAFT
AMONGST THE KOLARIAN TRIBES
 

HAVING resided for some years amongst the Mimdás and Hós of Singbhoom, and Chutia Nagpur, my attention was drawn at times to customs differing a good deal in some ways, but having an evident affinity to those related of the Nilghiri “Curumbers” in Mrs. Morgan’s article. I do not mean to say that the practices I am about to mention are confined simply to the Kolarian tribes, as I am aware both Oraons (a Dravidian tribe), and the different Hindu castes living side by side with the Kóls, count many noted wizards among their number; but what little I have come to know of these curious customs, I have learnt among the Mimdás and Hós, some of the most celebrated practitioners among them being Christian converts. The people themselves say, that these practices are peculiar to their race, and not learnt from the Hindu invaders of their plateau; but I am inclined to think that some, at least, of the operations have a strong savour of the Tantric black magic about them, though practised by people who are often entirely ignorant of’ any Hindu language.

    These remarks must he supplemented by a short sketch of Kól ideas of worship. They have nothing that I have either seen or heard of in the shape of

83  ————————————————————SHAMANISM AND WITCHCRAFT.

an image, but their periodical offerings are made to a number of elemental spirits, and they assign a genie to every rock or tree in the country, whom they do not consider altogether malignant, but who, if not duly “fed” or propitiated, may become so.

    The Singbonga (lit., sun or light spirit) is the chief; Búrú Bonga (spirit of the hills), and the Ikhir Bonga (spirit of the deep), come next. After these come the Darha, of which each family has its own, and they may be considered in the same light as Lares and Penates. But every threshing, flour and oil mill, has its spirit, who must be duly fed, else evil result may be expected. Their great festival (the Karam) is in honour of Singbonga and his assistants ; the opening words of the priests’ speech on that occasion, sufficiently indicate that they consider Singbonga, the creator of men and things. Múnúre Singbonga manokoa luekidkoa (In the beginning Singbonga made men).

    Each village has its Sarna or sacred grove, where the hereditary priest from time to time performs sacrifices, to keep things prosperous; but this only relates to spirits actually connected with the village, the three greater spirits mentioned, being considered general, are only fed at intervals of three or more years, and always on a public road or other public place, and once every ten years a human being was (and as some will tell you is sacrified to keep the whole community of spirits in good train. The Pahans, or village priests, are regular servants of the spirits, and the najo, deona and bhagats are people who in some way are supposed to obtain an influence or

84  ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

command over them. The first and lowest grade of these adepts, called najos (which may be translated as practitioners of witchcraft pure and simple), are frequently women. They are accused, like the “Mula Curumbers,” of demanding quantities of grain or loans of money, &c., from people, and when these demands are refused, they go away with a remark to the effect, “that you have lots of cattle and grain just now, but we’ll see what they are like after a month or two.” Then probably the cattle of the bewitched person will get some disease, arid several of them die, or some person of his family will become ill or get hurt in some unaccountable way. Till at last, thoroughly frightened, the afflicted person takes a little uncooked rice and goes to a deona or mati (as he is called in the different vernaculars of the province)—the grade immediately above najo in knowledge—and promising him a reward if he will assist him, requests his aid ; if the deona accedes to the request, the proceedings are as follows. The deona taking the oil brought, lights a small lamp and seats himself beside it with the rice in a surpa (winnower) in his hands. After looking intently at the lamp flame for a few minutes, he begins to sing a sort of chaunt of invocation in which all the spirits are named, and at the name of each spirit a few grains of rice are thrown into the lamp. When the flame at any particular name gives a jump and flares up high, the spirit concerned in the mischief is indicated. Then the deona takes a small portion of the rice wrapped up in a sál (Shorea robusta) leaf and proceeds to the nearest new white-ant nest from which

85 ———————————————————— SHAMAISM AND WITCHCRAFT.

he cuts the top off and lays the little bundle, half in and half out of the cavity. Having retired, he returns in about an hour to see if the rice is consumed, and according to the rapidity with which it is eaten he predicts the sacrifice which will appease the spirit. This ranges from a fowl to a buffalo, but whatever it may include, the pouring out of blood is an essential. It must be noted, however, that the mati never tells who the najo is who has excited the malignity of the spirit.

    But the most important and lucrative part of a deona’s business is the casting out of evil spirits, which operation is known variously as ashab and langhan. The sign of obsession is generally some mental alienation accompanied (in bad cases) by a combined trembling and restlessness of limbs, or an unaccountable swelling up of the body. Whatever the symptoms may he the mode of cure appears to be much the same. On such symptoms declaring themselves, the deona is brought to the house and is in the presence of the sick man and his friends provided with some rice in a surpa, some oil, a little vermilion, and the deona produces from his own person a little powdered sulphur and an iron tube about four inches long and two tiklis.*    Before the proceedings begin all the things mentioned are touched with vermilion, a small quantity of which is also mixed with the rice. Three or four grains of rice and one of the tikhis being put into the tube, a lamp is then lighted beside the sick man and the deona begins his chaunt, throwing
 ————————————————————
* Tiklis is a circular piece of gilt paper which is stuck on between the eyebrows of the women of the Province as ornament.

86  ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

grains of rice at each name, and when the flame flares up, a little of the powdered sulphur is thrown into the lamp and a little on the sick man, who thereupon becomes convulsed, is shaken all over and talks deliriously, the deona’s chaunt growing louder all the while. Suddenly the convulsions and the chaunt cease, and the deona carefully takes up a little of the sulphur off the man’s body and puts into the tube, which he then seals with the second tiklis. The deona and one of the man’s friends then leave the hut, taking the iron tube and rice with them, the spirit being now supposed out of the man and bottled up in the iron tube. They hurry across country until they leave the hut some miles behind. Then they go to the edge of some tank or river, to some place they know to be frequented by people for the purposes of bathing, &c., ‘where, after some further ceremony, the iron is stuck into the ground and left there. This is done with the benevolent intention that the spirit may transfer its attentions to the unfortunate person who may happen to touch it while bathing. I am told the spirit in this case usually chooses a young and healthy person. Should the deona think the spirit has not been able to suit itself with a new receptacle, he repairs to where a bazaar is taking place and there (after some ceremony) he mixes with the crowd, and taking a grain of the reddened rice jerks it with his forefinger and thumb in such a way that without attracting attention it falls on the person or clothes of some. This is done several times to make certain. Then the deona declares he has done his work, and is usually treated to the

87  ————————————————————SHAMANISM AND WITCHCRAFT.

best dinner the sick man’s friends can afford. It is said that the person to whom the spirit by either of these methods is transferred may not be affected for weeks or even months. But some fine day while he is at his work, he will suddenly stop, wheel round two or three times on his heels and fall down more or less convulsed, from that time forward he will begin to be troubled in the same way as his dis-obsessed predecessor was.
Having thus given some account of the deona, we now come to the bhagat, called by the Hindus sokha and sivnath. This is the highest grade of all, and, as I ought to have mentioned before, the ilm (knowledge) of both the deona and bhagat grades is only to be learned by becoming a regular chela of a practitioner; but I am given to understand that the final initiation is much hastened by a seasonable liberality on the part of the chela. During the initiation of the sokha certain ceremonies are performed at night by aid of a human corpse, this is one of the things which has led me to think that this part at least of these practices is connected with Tantric black magic.

                          The bhagat performs two distinct functions:

(1st), a kind of divination called bhao (the same in Hindi), and (2nd), a kind of Shamanism called darasta in Hindi, and bharotan in Horokaji, which, however, is resorted to only on very grave occasions—as, for instance, when several families think they are bewitched at one time and by the same najo.

    The bhao is performed as follows :—The person having some query to propound, makes a small dish out of a sàl leaf and puts in it a little

88  ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY

uncooked rice and a few pice; he then proceeds to the bhagat and lays before him the leaf and its contents, propounding at the same time his query. The bhagat then directs him to go out and gather two golaichi (varieties of Posinia) flowers (such practitioners usually having a golaichi tree close to their abodes) ; after the flowers are brought the bhagat seats himself with the rice close to the inquirer, and after some consideration selects one of the flowers, and holding it by the stalk at about a foot from his eyes in his left hand twirls it between his thumb and fingers, occasionally with his right hand dropping on it a grain or two of rice.* In a few minutes his eyes close and he begins to talk—usually about things having nothing to do with the question in hand, but after a few minutes of this, he suddenly yells out an answer to the question, and without another word retires. The inquirer takes his meaning as he can from the answer, which, I believe, is always ambiguous.

    The bharotan as I have above remarked is only resorted to when a matter of grave import has to be inquired about; the bhagat makes a high charge for a séance of this description. We will fancy that three or four families in a village consider themselves bewitched by a najo, and they resolve to have recourse to a bhagat to find out who the witch is; with this view a day is fixed on, and two delegates are procured from each of five neighbouring villages, who accompany the afflicted people to the house of the bhagat, taking with them a dali or offering, consisting of vegetables, which on arrival
 ————————————————————
* This is the process by which the bhagat mesmerizes himself.

89 ———————————————————— SHAMANISM AND WITCHCRAFT.

is formally presented to him. Two delegates are posted at each of the four points of the compass, and the other two sent themselves with the afflicted parties to the right of the bhagat, who occupies the centre of the apartment with four or five chelas, a clear space being reserved on the left: One chela then brings a small earthenware-pot full of lighted charcoal, which is set before the bhagat with a pile of mango wood chips and a ball composed of dhunia (resin of Shorea robusta), gur (treacle), and ghee (clarified butter), and possibly other ingredients. The bhagat’s sole attire consists of a scanty lenguti (waist-cloth), a necklace of the large wooden beads such as are usually worn by fakeers, and several garlands of golaichi flowers round his neck, his hair being unusually long and matted. Beside him stuck in the ground is his staff. One chela stands over the firepot with a bamboo-mat fan in his hand, another takes charge of the pile of chips, and a third of the ball of composition, and one or two others seat themselves behind the bhagat, with drums and other musical instruments in their hands. All being in readiness, the afflicted ones are requested to state their grievance. This they do, and pray the bhagat to call before him the najo, who has stirred up the spirits to afflict them, in order that he may be punished. The bhagat then gives a sign to his chelas, those behind him raise a furious din with their instruments, the fire is fed with chips, and a bit of the composition is put on it from time to time, producing a volume of thick greyish-blue smoke; this is carefully fanned over, and towards the bhagat, who, when well wrapped in smoke, closes

90 ———————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

his eyes and quietly swaying his body begins a low chaunt. The chaunt gradually becomes louder and the sway of his body more pronounced, until he works himself into a state of complete frenzy. Then with his body actually quivering, and his head rapidly working about from side to side, he sings in a loud voice how a certain najo (whom he names) had asked money of those people and was refused, and how he stirred up certain spirits (whom he also names) to hurt them, how they killed so and so’s bullocks, some one else’s sheep, and caused another’s child to fall ill. Then he begins to call on the najo to come and answer for his doings, and in doing so rises to his feet—still commanding the najo to appear; meanwhile he reels about; then falls on the ground and is quite still except for an occasional whine, and a muttered, “I see him !” “He is coming !” This state may last for an hour or more till at last the bhagat sits up and announces the nájo has come; as he says so, a man, apparently mad with drink, rushes in and falls with his head towards the bhagat moaning and making a sort of snorting as if half stifled. In this person the bewitched parties often recognize a neighbour and sometimes even a relation, but whoever he may be they have bound themselves to punish him. The bhayat then speaks to him and tells him to confess, at the same time threatening him, in case of refusal, with his staff. He then confesses in a half-stupefied manner, and his confession tallies with what the bhagat has told in his frenzy. The nájo is then dismissed and runs out of the house in the same hurry as he came in.

91 ———————————————————— SHAMANISM AND WITCHCRAFT.

    The delegates then hold a council at which the naijo usually is sentenced to a fine—often heavy enough to ruin him—and expelled from his village. Before the British rule the convicted najo seldom escaped with his life, and during the mutiny time, when no Englishmen were about, the Singbhoom Hôs paid off a large number of old scores of this sort. For record of which, see “Statistical Account of Bengal,” vol. xvii. p. 52.

    In conclusion I have merely to add that I have derived this information from people who have been actually concerned in these occurrences, and among others a man belonging to a village of my own, who was convicted and expelled from the village with the loss of all his movable property, and one of his victims, a relation of his, sat by me when the above was being written.
                                                                                                                                 E. D. EWEN.

MAHATMAS AND CHELAS
 

A MAHATMA is an individual ‘who, by special training and education, has evolved those higher faculties, and has attained that spiritual knowledge, which ordinary humanity will acquire after passing through numberless series of re-incarnations during the process of cosmic evolution, provided, of course, that they do not go, in the meanwhile, against the purposes of Nature and thus bring on their own annihilation. This process of the self-evolution of the MAHATMA extends over a number of “incarnations,” although, comparatively speaking, they are very few. Now, what is it that incarnates? The occult doctrine, so far as it is given out, shows that the first three principles die more or less with what is called the physical death. The fourth principle, together with the lower portions of the fifth, in which reside the animal propensities, has Kama Loka for its abode, where it suffers the throes of disintegration in proportion to the intensity of those lower desires; while it is the higher Manas, the pure man, which is associated with the sixth and seventh principles, that goes into Devachan to enjoy there the effects of its good Karma, and then to be reincarnated as a higher personality. Now an entity that is passing through the occult training in its successive births, gradually has less and less (in each incarnation) of that lower Manas until there

93  ————————————————————MAHATMAS AND CHELAS.

arrives a time when its whole Manas, being of an entirely elevated character, is centred in the individuality, when such a person may be said to have become a MAHATMA. At the time of his physical death, all the lower four principles perish without any suffering, for these are, in fact, to him like a piece of wearing apparel which he puts on and off at will. The real MAHATMA is then not his physical body but that higher Manas which is inseparably linked to the Atma and its vehicle (the sixth principle)—a union effected by him in a comparatively very short period by passing through the process of self-evolution laid down by Occult Philosophy. When therefore, people express a desire to “see a  MAHATMA,” they really do not seem to understand what it is they ask for. How can they, with their physical eyes, hope to see that which transcends that sight? Is it the body—a mere shell or mask—they crave or hunt after? And supposing they see the body of a MAHATMA, how can they know that behind that mask is concealed an exalted entity? By what standard are they to judge whether the Maya before them reflects the image of a true MAHATMA or not? And who will say that the physical is not a Maya? Higher things can be perceived only by a sense pertaining to those higher things; whoever therefore wants to see the real MAHATMA, must use his intellectual sight. He must so elevate his Manas that its perception will be clear and all mists created by Maya be dispelled. His vision will then be bright and he will see the MAHATMA wherever he may be, for, being merged into the sixth and the seventh principles,

94  ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

which know no distance, the MAHATMA may be said to be everywhere. But, at the same time, just as we may be standing on a mountain top and have within our sight the whole plain, and yet not be cognizant of any particular tree or spot, because from that elevated position all below is nearly identical, and as our attention may be drawn to something which may be dissimilar to its surroundings—in the same manner, although the whole of humanity is within the mental vision of the MAHATMA, he cannot be expected to take special note of every human being, unless that being by his special acts draws particular attention to himself. The highest interest of humanity, as a whole, is the MAHATMA’s special concern, for he has identified himself with that Universal Soul which runs through Humanity; and to draw his attention one must do so through that Soul. This perception of the Manas may be called “faith” which should not be confounded with blind belief. “ Blind faith” is an expression sometimes used to indicate belief without perception or understanding; while the true perception of the Manas is that enlightened belief which is the real meaning of the word “faith.” This belief should at the same time be accompanied by knowledge, i.e., experience, for “true knowledge brings with it faith.” Faith is the perception of the Manas (the fifth principle), while knowledge, in the true sense of the term, is the capacity of the Intellect, i.e., it is spiritual perception. in short, the individuality of man, composed of his higher Manas, the sixth and the seventh principle, should work as a unity, and then only can it obtain “divine wisdom,” for

95 ———————————————————— MAHATMAS AND CHELAS.

divine things can be sensed only by divine faculties. Thus a chela should be actuated solely by a desire to understand the operations of the Law of Cosmic Evolution, so as to be able to work in conscious and harmonious accord with Nature.
                                                                                                                                                                                            ANON.

THE BRAHMANICAL THREAD
 

I. THE general term for the investiture of this thread is Upanayana; and the invested is called Upanita, which signifies brought or drawn near (to one’s Guru), i.e., the thread is the symbol of the wearer’s condition.

    II. One of the names of this thread is Yajna Sutra Yajna means Brahma, or the Supreme Spirit, and Sutra the thread, or tie. Collectively, the compound word signifies that which ties a man to his spirit or god. It consists of three yarns twisted into one thread, and three of such threads formed and knotted into a circle. Every Theosophist knows what a circle signifies and it need not be repeated here. He will easily understand the rest and the relation they have to mystic initiation. The yarns signify the great principle of “three in one, and one in three,” thus :—The first trinity consists of Atma which comprises the three attributes of Manas, Buddhi, and Ahankara (the mind, the intelligence, and the egotism). The Manas again, has the three qualities of Satva, Raja, and Tama (goodness, foulness, and darkness). Buddhi has the three attributes of Pratyaksha, Upamiti and Anumiti (perception, analogy, and inference). Ahankara also has three attributes, viz., Jnata, Jneya, and Juan (the knower, the known, and the knowledge).

97  ————————————————————THE BRAHMANICAL THREAD.

    III. Another name of the sacred thread is Tridandi. Tri means three, and Danda, chastisement, correction, or conquest. This reminds the holder of the three great “corrections” or conquests he has to accomplish. These are :—(I) the Vakya Sanyama ;* (2) the Manas Sanyama; and (3) the Indriya (or Deha) Sanyama. Vakya is speech, Manas, mind, and Deha (literally, body) or Indriya, is the senses. The three conquests therefore mean the control over one’s speech, thought, and action.

    This thread is also the reminder to the man of his secular duties, and its material varies, in consequence, according to the occupation of the wearer. Thus, while the threat of the Brahmans is made of pure cotton, that of the Kshatriyas (the warriors) is composed of flax—the bow-string material; and that of Vaishyas (the traders and cattle-breeders), of wool. From this it is not to be inferred that caste was originally meant to be hereditary. In the ancient times, it depended on the qualities of the man. Irrespective of the caste of his parents, a man could, according to his merit or otherwise, raise or lower himself from one caste to another; and instances are not wanting in which a man has elevated himself to the position of the highest Brahman (such as Vishvamitra Rishi, Parasara, Vyasa, Satyakam, and others) from the very lowest of the four castes. The sayings of Yudhishthira on this subject, in reply to the questions of the great serpent, in the Arannya Parva of the Maha-Bharata, and of Manu, on the same point, are
 ————————————————————
* Danda and Sanyama are synonymous terms—A. S.

98  ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

well known and need nothing more than bare reference. Both Manu and Maha-Bharata—the fulcrums of Hinduism—distinctly affirm that a man can translate himself from one caste to another by his merit, irrespective of his parentage.

    The day is fast approaching when the so-called Brahmans will have to show cause, before the tribunal of the Aryan Rishis, why they should not be divested of the thread which they do not at all deserve, but are degrading by misuse. Then alone will the people appreciate the privilege of wearing it.
    There are many examples of the highest distinctive insignia being worn by the unworthy. The aristocracies of Europe and Asia teem with such.
                                                                                                                                                                     A. SARMAN.

READING IN A SEALED ENVELOPE
 

SOME years ago, a Brahman astrologer named Vencata Narasimla Josi, a native of the village of Periasamudram in the Mysore Provinces, came to the little town in the Bellary District where I was then employed. He was a good Sanskrit, Telugu and Canarese poet, and an excellent master of Vedic rituals; knew the Hindu system of astronomy, and professed to be an astrologer. Besides all this, he possessed the power of reading what was contained in any sealed envelope. The process adopted for this purpose was simply this :—We wrote whatever we chose on a piece of paper; enclosed it in one, two or three envelopes, each properly gummed and sealed, and handed the cover to the astrologer. He asked us to name a figure between I and 9, and on its being named, he retired with the envelope to some secluded place for some time; and then he returned with a paper full of figures, and another paper containing a copy of what was on the sealed paper—exactly, letter for letter and word for word. I tried him often and many others did the same ; and we were all satisfied that he was invariably accurate, and that there was no deception whatsoever in the matter.
About this time, one Mr. Theyagaraja Mudalyar, a supervisor in the Public Works Department, an English scholar and a good Sanskrit and Telugu

100  ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

poet, arrived at our place on his periodical tour of inspection. Having heard about the aforesaid astrologer, he wanted to test him in a manner, most satisfactory to himself. One morning handing to the astrologer a very indifferently gummed envelope, he said, “Here, Sir, take this letter home with you and come back to me with your copy in the afternoon.” This loose way of closing the envelope, and the permission given to the astrologer to take it home for several hours, surprised the Brahman, who said, “I don’t want to go home. Seal the cover better, and give me the use of some room here. I shall be ready with my copy very soon.” “No,” said the Mudalyar, “take it as it is, and come back whenever you like. I have the means of finding out the deception, if any be practised.”

    So then the astrologer went with the envelope; and returned to the Mudalyar’s place in the afternoon. Myself and about twenty others were present there by appointment. The astrologer then carefully handed the cover to the Mudalyar, desiring him to see if it was all right. “ Don’t mind that,” the Mudalyar answered; “I can find out the trick, if there be any. Produce your copy.” The astrologer thereupon presented to the Mudalyar a paper on which four lines were written and stated that this was a copy of the paper enclosed in the Mudalyar’s envelope. Those four lines formed a portion of an antiquated poem.

    The Mudalyar read the paper once, then read it over again. Extreme satisfaction beamed over his countenance, and he sat mute for some seconds seem-

101  —————————————————— READING IN A SEALED ENVELOPE.

ingly in utter astonishment. But soon after, the expression of his face changing, he opened the envelope and threw the enclosure down, jocularly saying to the astrologer, “Here, Sir, is the original of which you have produced the copy.”
 
   The paper lay upon the carpet, and was quite blank! not a word, nor a letter on its clean surface.
This was a sad disappointment to all his admirers; but to the astrologer himself, it was a real thunderbolt. He picked up the paper pensively, examined it on both sides, then dashed it on the ground in a fury; and suddenly arising, exclaimed, “My Vidya* is a delusion, and I am a liar!” The subsequent behaviour of the poor man made us fear lest this great disappointment should drive him to commit some desperate act. In fact he seemed determined to drown himself in the well, saying that he was dishonoured. While we were trying to console him, the Mudalyar came forward, caught hold of his hands, and besought him to sit down and calmly listen to his explanation, assuring him that he was not a liar, and that his copy was perfectly accurate. But the astrologer would not be satisfied; he supposed that all this was said simply to console him; and cursed himself and his fate most horribly. However, in a few minutes he became calmer and listened to the Mudalyar’s explanation, which was in substance as follows

    The only way for the sceptic to account for this phenomenon, is to suppose that the astrologer opened the covers dexterously and read their con-
 ————————————————————
* Secret knowledge, magic.

102 ———————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

tents. “So,” he said, “I wrote four lines of old poetry on the paper with nitrate of silver, which would be invisible until exposed to the light; and this would have disclosed the astrologer’s fraud, if he had tried to find out the contents of the enclosed paper, by opening the cover, however ingeniously. For, if he opened it and looked at the paper, he would have seen that it was blank, resealed the cover, and declared that the paper enveloped therein bore no writing whatever; or if he had, by design or accident, exposed the paper to light, the writing would have become black; and he would have produced a copy of it as if it were the result of his own Vidya; but in either case and the writing remaining, his deception would have been clear, and it would have been patent to all that he did open the envelope. But in the present case, the result proved conclusively that the cover was not opened at all.”
                                                                                                                                                  P. SREENEEVAS Row.

THE TWELVE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC
 

THE division of the Zodiac into different signs dates from immemorial antiquity. It has acquired a world-wide celebrity and is to be found in the astrological systems of several nations. The invention of the Zodiac and its signs has been assigned to different nations by different antiquarians. It is stated by some that, at first, there were only ten signs, that one of these signs was subsequently split up into two separate signs, and that a new sign was added to the number to render the esoteric significance of the division more profound, and at the same time to conceal it more perfectly from the uninitiated public. It is very probable that the real philosophical conception of the division owes its origin to some particular nation, and the names given to the various signs might have been translated into the languages of other nations. The principal object of this article, however, is not to decide which nation had the honour of inventing the signs in question, but to indicate to some extent the real philosophical meaning involved therein, and the way to discover the rest of the meaning which yet remains undisclosed. But from what is herein stated, an inference may fairly be drawn that, like so many other philosophical myths and

104 ———————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

allegories, the invention of the Zodiac and its signs owes its origin to ancient India.

    What then is its real origin, what is the philosophical conception which the Zodiac and its signs are intended to represent? Do the various signs merely indicate the shape or configuration of the different constellations included in the divisions, or, are they simply masks designed to veil some hidden meaning? The former supposition is altogether untenable for two reasons, viz. :—

    I. The Hindus were acquainted with the precession of the equinoxes, as may he easily seen from their work on Astronomy, and from the almanacs published by Hindu astronomers. Consequently they were fully aware of the fact that the constellations in the various Zodiacal divisions were not fixed. They could not, therefore, have assigned particular shapes to these shifting groups of fixed stars with reference to the divisions of the Zodiac. But the names indicating the Zodiacal signs have all along remained unaltered. It is to be inferred, therefore, that the names given to the various signs have no connection whatever with the configurations of the constellations included in them.

    II. The names assigned to these signs by the ancient Sanskrit writers and their exoteric or literal meanings are as follows :—

THE NAMES OF THE SIGNS.                                                    THEIR EXOTERIC 0R LITERAL
                                                                                                                         MEANINGS.
1 Mesha                                                                     Ram, or Aries.
2 Rishabha                                                                  Bull, or Taurus.
3 Mithunam                                                                 Twins, or Gemini (male
                                                                                           and female).
4 Karkataka                                                                Crab, or Cancer.
5 Simha                                                                       Lion, or Leo.

105 ——————————————————THE TWELVE SIGNS OF TEE ZODIAC.

6 Kanya                                                                      Virgin or Virgo.*
7 Tula                                                                          Balance, or Libra.
8 Vrischika                                                                  Scorpion, or Scorpio.
9 Dhanus                                                                     Archer, or Sagittarius.
10 Makara                                                                  The Goat, or Capricornus (Crocodile, in Sanskrit).
11 Kumbha                                                                 Water-bearer, or Aquarius.
12 Meenam                                                                  Fishes, or Pisces.

    The figures of the constellations included in the signs at the time the division was first made do not at all resemble the shapes of the animals, reptiles and other objects denoted by the names given them. The truth of this assertion can be ascertained by examining the configurations of the various constellations. Unless the shape of the crocodile †or the crab is called up by the observer’s imagination, there is very little chance of the stars themselves suggesting to his idea that figure, upon the blue canopy of the starry firmament.

    If, then, the constellations have nothing to do with the origin of the names by which the Zodiacal divisions are indicated, we have to seek for some other source which might have given rise to these appellations. It becomes my object to unravel a portion of the mystery connected with these Zodiacal signs, as also to disclose a portion of the sublime conception of the ancient Hindu philosophy which gave rise to them. The signs of the Zodiac have more than one meaning. From one
 ————————————————————
* Virgo-Scorpio, when none but the initiates knew there were twelve signs. Virgo-Scorpio was then followed for the profane by Sagittarius. At the middle or junction-point where now stands Libra and at the sign now called Virgo, two mystical signs were inserted which remained unintelligible to the profane.—En. Theos.

† This constellation was never called Crocodile by the ancient Western astronomers, who described it as a horned goat and called it so— Capricornus.—ED. Theos.

106 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

point of view they represent the different stages of evolution up to the time the present material universe with the five elements came into phenomenal existence. As the author of “Isis Unveiled” has stated in the second volume of her admirable work, “The key should be turned seven times” to understand the whole philosophy underlying these signs. But I shall wind it only once and give the contents of the first chapter of the History of Evolution. It is very fortunate that the Sanskrit names assigned to the various divisions by Aryan philosophers contain within themselves the key to the solution of the problem. Those of my readers who have studied to some extent the ancient “Mantra” and the “Tantra Sastras” * of India, would have seen that very often Sanskrit words are made to convey a certain hidden meaning by means of well-known pre-arranged methods and a tacit convention, while their literal significance is something quite different from the implied meaning. The following are some of the rules which may help an inquirer in ferreting out the deep significance of ancient Sanskrit nomenclature to be found in the old Aryan myths and allegories

    1. Find out the synonyms of the word used which have other meanings.

    2. Find out the numerical value of the letters composing the word according to the methods given in ancient Tantrika works.

    3. Examine the ancient myths or allegories, if there are any, which have any special connection with the word in question.
 ————————————————————
* Works on Incantation and Magic.

107  ——————————————————THE TWELVE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC.

    4. Permute the different syllables composing the word and examine the new combinations that will thus be formed and their meanings, &c. &c.
I shall now apply some of the above given rules to the names of the twelve signs of the Zodiac.

    I. Mesha.—One of the synonyms of this word is Aja. Now, Aja literally means that which has no birth, and is applied to the Eternal Brahma in certain portions of the Upanishads. So, the first sign is intended to represent Parabrahma, the self-existent, eternal, self-sufficient cause of all.

    II. Rishabham.—This word is used in several places in the Upanishads and the Veda to mean Pranava (Aum). Sankaracharya has so interpreted it in several portions of his commentary.*

    III. Mithuna.—As the word plainly indicates, this sign is intended to represent the first androgyne, the Ardhanâreeswara, the bisexual Sephira-Adam Kadmon.

    IV. Karkataka.—When the syllables are converted into the corresponding numbers, according to the general mode of transmutation so often alluded to in Mantra Shastra, the word in question will be represented by ////. This sign then is evidently intended to represent the sacred Tetragram; the Parabrahmadháraka; the Pranava resolved into four separate entities corresponding to its four Matras; the four Avasthas indicated by Jágrata (waking) Avastha, Swapna (dreaming) Avastha, Sushupti (deep sleep) Avastha, and Turiya (the last stage, i.e., Nirvana) Avastha (as yet in potentiality); the four states of Brahma called
 ————————————————————
* Example, “Rishabhasya—Chandasam Rishabhasya Pradhanasya Pranavasya.”

108  ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY

Vaiswanara, Taijasa (or Hiranyagarbha), Pragna, and Iswara, and represented by Brahma, Vishná, Maheswara, and Sadasiva; the four aspects of Parabrahma, as Sthula (gross), Sukshma (subtle), Vija (seed), and Sakshi (witness) ; the four stages or conditions of the Sacred Word, named Para, Pasyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari; Nadam, Bindu, Sakti and Kala. This sign completes the first quaternary.

    V. Simha.—This word contains a world of occult meaning within itself; and it may not be prudent on my part to disclose the whole of its meaning now. It will be sufficient for the present purpose to give a general indication of its significance.

     Two of its synonymous terms are Panchásyam and Hari, and its number in the order of the Zodiacal divisions (being the fifth sign) points clearly to the former synonym. This synonym—Panchasyam—shows that the sign is intended to represent the five Brahmas—viz., Isánam, Aghoram, Tatpurusham, Vamadevam, and Sadyojátam:—the five Buddhas. The second synonym shows it to be Narayana, the Jivátma or Pratyagátma. The Sukarahasy Upanishad will show that the ancient Aryan philosophers looked upon Narayana as the Jivátma.* The Vaishnavites may not admit
it. But as an Advaiti, I look upon Jivatma as identical with Paramatma in its real essence when stripped of its illusory attributes created by Agná-
 ————————————————————
* In its lowest or most material state, as the life-principle which animates the material bodies of the animal and vegetable worlds, &c.—Ed. Theos.

109 —————————————————— THE TWELVE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC.

nam or Avidya—ignorance. The Jivatma is correctly placed in the fifth sign counting from Mesham, as the fifth sign is the putrasthanam or the son’s house according to the rules of Hindu Astrology. The sign in question represents Jivatma—the son of Paramátma as it were. (I may also add that it represents the real Christ, the anointed pure spirit, though many Christians may frown at this interpretation.)* I will only add here that unless the nature of this sign is fully comprehended it will be impossible to understand the real order of the next three signs and their full significance. The elements or entities that have merely a potential existence in this sign become distinct separate entities in the next three signs. Their union into a single entity leads to the destruction of the phenomenal universe, and the recognition of the pure Spirit and their separation has the contrary effect. It leads to material earth-bound existence and brings into view the picture gallery of Avidya (Ignorance) or Maya (Illusion). If the real orthography of the name by which the sign in question is indicated is properly understood, it will readily be seen that the next three signs are not what they ought to be.
 ————————————————————
* Nevertheless it is a true one. The Jivatma in the Microcosm (man) is the same spiritual essence which animates the Macrocosm (universe), the differentiation, or specific difference between the two Jivatmas presenting itself but in the two states or conditions of the same and one Force. Hence, “this son of Paramatma” is an eternal correlation of the Father-Cause. Purusha manifesting himself as Brahmâ of the “golden egg” and becoming Viradja—the universe. We are “all born of Aditi from the water” (Hymns of the Maruts, X. 63, 2), and “Being was born from not-being” (Rig-Veda, Mandala I, Sukta 166).—Ed. Theos.

110 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

Kanya or Virgo and Vrischika or Scorpio should form one single sign, and Thula must follow the said sign if’ it is at all necessary to have a separate sign of that name. But a separation between Kanya and Vrischika was effected by interposing the sign Tula between the two. The object of this separation will be understood on examining the meaning of the three signs.

    VI. Kanyd.—Meaus a virgin and represents Sakti or Mahamáya. The sign in question is the sixth Rási or division, and indicates that there are six primary forces in Nature. These forces have different sets of names in Sanskrit philosophy. According to one system of nomenclature, they are called by the following names :*__(1) Parasakty ; (2) Gnanasakti; (3) Itchasakti (will-power) ; (4) Kriytisakti; (5) Kundalinisakti; and (6) Matriká-
 ————————————————————
* Parasakti :—Literally the great or supreme force or power. It means and includes the powers of light and heat.
  Gnanasakti :—Literally the power of intellect or the power of real wisdom or knowledge. It has two aspects.
    I. The following are some of its manifestations when placed under the influence or control of material conditions.
(a) The power of the mind in interpreting our sensations. (b) Its power in recalling past ideas (memory) and raising future expectation. (c) Its power as exhibited in what are called by modern psychologists “the laws of association,” which enables it to form persisting connections between various groups of sensations and possibilities of sensations, and thus generate the notion or idea of an external object. (d) Its power in connecting our ideas together by the mysterious link of memory, and thus generating the notion of self or individuality.
    II. The following are some of its manifestations when liberated from the bonds of matter
(a) Clairvoyance. (b) Pyschometry.
    Itchasakti :—Literally the power of the will. Its most ordinary manifestation is the generation of certain nerve currents which set in motion such muscles as are required for the accomplishment of the desired object.

111 ——————————————————THE TWELVE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC.

sakti. The six forces are in their unity represented by the Astral Light.*

    VII. Tula.—When represented by numbers according to the method above alluded to, this word will be converted into 36. This sign, therefore, is evidently intended to represent the 36 Tatwams. (The number of Tatwams is different
 ————————————————————
Kriyasakti :—The mysterious power of thought which enables it to produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own inherent energy. The ancients held that any idea will manifest itself externally if one’s attention is deeply concentrated upon it. Similarly an intense volition will be followed by the desired result.
    A Yogi generally performs his wonders by means of Itchasakti and Kriyasakti.
Kundalinisakti :—Literally the power or force which moves in a serpentine or curved path. It is the universal life-principle which everywhere manifests itself in Nature. This force includes in itself the two great forces of attraction and repulsion. Electricity and magnetism are but manifestations of it. This is the power or force which brings about that “continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations” which is the essence of life according to Herbert Spencer, and that “continuous adjustment of external relations to internal relations” which is the basis of transmigration of souls or punarjanmam (re-birth) according to the doctrines of the ancient Hindu philosophers.
    A Yogi must thoroughly subjugate this power or force before he can attain moksham. This force is, in fact, the great serpent of the Bible.
    Matrikasakti :—Literally the force or power of letters or speech or music. The whole of the ancient Mantra Shastra has this force or power in all its manifestations for its subject-matter. The power of The Word which Jesus Christ speaks of is a manifestation of this Sakti. The influence of its music is one of its ordinary manifestations. The power of the mirific ineffable name is the crown of this Sakti.
    Modern science has but partly investigated the first, second and fifth of the forces or powers above named, but it is altogether in the dark as regards the remaining powers.
 
* Even the very name of Kanya (Virgin) shows how all the ancient esoteric systems agreed in all their fundamental doctrines. The Kabalists and the Hermetic philosophers call the Astral Light the “heavenly or celestial Virgin.” The Astral Light in its unity is the 7th. Hence the seven principles diffused in every unity or the 6 and one—two triangles and a crown.—Ed. Theos.

112 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

according to the views of different philosophers but by Sakteyas generally and by several of the ancient Rishis, such as Agastya, Dvrasa and Parasurama, &c., the number of Tatwams has been stated to be 36). Jivatma differs from Paramatma, or to state the same thing in other words,
“ Baddha” differs from “ Mukta” in being encased as it were within these 36 Tatwams, while the other is free. This sign prepares the way to earthly Adam to Nara. As the emblem of Nara it is properly placed as the seventh sign.

    VIII. Vrischika.—It is stated by ancient philosophers that the sun when located in this Rási or sign is called by the name of Vishnu (see the 12th Skandha of Bhagavata). This sign is intended to represent Vishnu. Vishnu literally means that which is expanded—expanded as Viswam or Universe. Properly speaking, Viswam itself is Vishnu (see Sankaracharya’s commentary on Vishnusahasranamam). I have already intimated that Vishnu represents the Swapnavastha or the Dreaming State. The sign in question properly signifies the universe in thought or the universe in the divine conception.

    It is properly placed as the sign opposite to Rishabham or Pranava. Analysis from Pranava downwards leads to the Universe of Thought, and synthesis from the latter upwards leads to Pranava (Aum). We have now arrived at the ideal state of the universe previous to its coming into material existence. The expansion of the Vija or primi-
 ————————————————————
* As the Infinite differs from the Finite and the Unconditioned from the Conditioned.—ED. Theos.

113 ——————————————————THE TWELVE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC.

tive germ into the universe is only possible when the 36 “Tatwams” * are interposed between the Maya and Jivatma. The dreaming state is induced through the instrumentality of these “Tatwams.” it is the existence of these Tatwams that brings Hamsa into existence. The elimination of these Tatwams marks the beginning of the synthesis towards Pranava and Brahmam and converts Hamsa into Soham. As it is intended to represent the different stages of evolution from Brahmam downwards to the material universe, the three signs Kanya, Tula, and Vrischika are placed in the order in which they now stand as three separate signs.

   IX. Dhanus (Sagittarius).—When represented in numbers the name is equivalent to 9, and the division in question is the 9th division counting from Mesha. The sign, therefore, clearly indicates the 9 Brahmas—the 9 Parajapatis who assisted the Demiurgus in constructing the material universe.

    X. Makara.—There is some difficulty in interpreting this word; nevertheless it contains within itself the clue to its correct interpretation. The letter Ma is equivalent to number 5, and Kara means hand. Now in Sanskrit Thribhujam means a triangle, bhujam or karam (both are synonymous) being understood to mean a side. So, Makaram or Panchakaram means a Pentagon.†
 ————————————————————
* 36 is three times 12, or 9 Tetraktis, or 12 Triads, the most sacred number in the Kabalistic and Pythagorean numerals.— ED. Theos..

† The five-pointed star or pentagram represented the five limbs of man.—Ed. Theos.

114 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

Now, Makaram is the tenth sign, and the term “Dasadisa” is generally used by Sanskrit writers to denote the faces or sides of the universe. The sign in question is intended to represent the faces of the universe, and indicates that the figure of the universe is bounded by Pentagons. If we take the pentagons as regular pentagons (on the presumption or supposition that the universe is symmetrically constructed) the figure of the material universe will, of course, be a Dodecahedron, the geometrical model imitated by the Demiurgus in constructing the material universe. If Tula was subsequently invented, and if instead of the three signs “Kanya,” “Tulá,” and “ Vrischikam,” there had existed formerly only one sign combining in itself Kanya and Vrischika, the sign now under consideration was the eighth sign under the old system, and it is a significant fact that Sanskrit writers generally speak also of “Ashtadisa” or eight faces bounding space. It is quite possible that the number of disa might have been altered from 8 to 10 when the formerly existing Virgo-Scorpio was split up into three separate signs.

    Again, Kara may be taken to represent the projecting triangles of the five-pointed star. This figure may also be called a kind of regular pentagon (see Todhunter’s “Spherical Trigonometry,” p. 143). If this interpretation is accepted, the Rasi or sign in question represents the “microcosm.” But the “microcosm” or the world of thought is really represented by Vrischika. From an objective point of view the “ microcosm ” is represented by

115 ——————————————————THE TWELVE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC.

the human body. Makaram may be taken to represent simultaneously both the microcosm and the macrocosm, as external objects of perception.

    In connection with this sign I shall state a few important facts which I beg to submit for the consideration of those who are interested in examining the ancient occult sciences of India. It is generally held by the ancient philosophers that the macrocosm is similar to the microcosm in having a Shula Sariram and a Suksma Sariram. The visible universe is the Sthula Sariram of Viswam; the ancient philosophers held that as a substratum for this visible universe, there is another universe—perhaps we may call it the universe of Astral Light—the real universe of Noumena, the soul as it were of this visible universe. It is darkly hinted in certain passages of the Veda and the Upanishads that this hidden universe of Astral Light is to be represented by an Icosahedron. The connection between an Icosahedron and a Dodecahedron is something very peculiar and interesting, though the figures seem to be so very dissimilar to each other. The connection may be understood by the under-mentioned geometrical construction. Describe a Sphere about an Icosahedron; let perpendiculars be drawn from the centre of the Sphere on its faces and produced to meet the surface of the Sphere. Now, if the points of intersection be joined, a Dodecahedron is formed within the Sphere. By a similar process an Icosahedron may be constructed from a Dodecahedron. (See Todhunter’s “Spherical Trigonometry,” p. 141, art. 193). The figure constructed

116  ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

as above described will represent the universe of matter and the universe of Astral Light as they actually exist. I shall not now, however, proceed to show how the universe of Astral Light may be considered under the symbol of an Icosahedron. I shall only state that this conception of the Aryan philosophers is not to be looked upon as mere “theological twaddle” or as the outcome of wild fancy. The real significance of the conception in question can, I believe, be explained by reference to the psychology and the physical science of the ancients. But I must stop here and proceed to consider the meaning of the remaining two signs.

    XI. Kumbha (or Aquarius).—When represented by numbers, the word is equivalent to 14. It can be easily perceived then that the division in question is intended to represent the “Chaturdasa Bhuvanam,” or the 14 lokas spoken of in Sanskrit writings.

    XII. Mina (or Pisces).—This word again is represented by 5 when written in numbers, and is evidently intended to convey the idea of Panchamahabhutams or the 5 elements. The sign also suggests that water (not the ordinary water, but the universal solvent of the ancient alchemists) is the most important amongst the said elements.

    I have now finished the task which I have set to myself in this article. My purpose is not to explain the ancient theory of evolution itself, but to show the connection between that theory and the Zodiacal divisions. I have herein brought to light but a very small portion of the philosophy imbedded

117 —————————————————— THE TWELVE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC.

in these signs. The veil that was dexterously thrown over certain portions of the mystery connected with these signs by the ancient philosophers will never be lifted up for the amusement or edification of the uninitiated public.

    Now to summarize the facts stated in this article, the contents of the first chapter of the history of this universe are as follows
    1. The self-existent, eternal Brahmam.
    2. Pranava (Aum).
    3. The androgyne Brahmá, or the bisexual Sephira-Adam Kadmon.
    4. The Sacred Tetragram—the four matras of Pranava—the four avasthas—the four states of Brahma—the Sacred Dharaka.
    5. The five Brahmás—the five Buddhas representing in their totality the Jivatma.
    6. The Astral Light—the holy Virgin—the six forces in Nature.
    7. The thirty-six Tatwams born of Avidyá.
    8. The universe in thought—the Swapna Avastha—the microcosm looked at from a subjective point of view.
    9. The nine Prajapatis—the assistants of the Demiurgus.*
   10. The shape of the material universe in the mind of the Demiurgus—the DODECAHEDRON.
   11. The fourteen lokas.
   12. The five elements.
 ————————————————————
* The nine Kabalistic Sephiroths emanated from Sephira the 10th and the head Sephiroth are identical. Three trinities or triads with their emanative principle form the Pythagorean mystic Decad, the sum of all which represents the whole Kosmos.—ED. Theos.

118 ———————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

    The history of creation and of this world from its beginning up to the present time is composed of seven chapters. The seventh chapter is not yet
completed.
                                                                                                                                           T. SUBBA Row.
TRIPLICANE, MADRAS, September 14, 1881.

 THE SISHAL AND BHUKAILAS YOGIS
 

We are indebted to the kindness of the learned President of the Adi Brahmo Samaji for the following accounts of two Yogis, of whom one performed the extraordinary feats of raising his body by will power, and keeping it suspended in the air without visible support. The Yoga posture for meditation or concentration of the mind upon spiritual things is called Asana. There are various of these modes of sitting, such as Padmasan, &c. &c. Babu Rajnarain Bose translated this narrative from a very old number of the Tatwabodhini Patrika, the Calcutta organ of the Brahmo Samaj. The writer was Babu Akkhaya Kumar Dalta, then editor of the Patrika, of whom Babu Rajnarain speaks in the following high terms—” A very truth-loving and painstaking man; very fond of observing strict accuracy in the details of a description.”

                                                                                        SISHAL YOGI.

A few years ago, a Deccan Yogi, named Sishal, was seen at Madras, by many Hindus and Englishmen, to raise his Asana, or seat, up into the air. The picture of the Yogi, showing his mode of seating, and other particulars connected with him, may be found in the Saturday Magazine on page 28.

120 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

His whole body seated in air, only his right hand lightly touched a deer skin, rolled up in the form of a tube, and attached to a brazen rod which was firmly stuck into a wooden board resting on four legs. In this position the Yogi used to perform his japa (mystical meditation), with his eyes half shut. At the time of his ascending to his aerial seat, and also when he descended from it, his disciples used to cover him with a blanket. The Tatwabodhini Patrika, Chaitra, 1768 Sakabda, corresponding to March 1847.

                                                                                      THE BHUKAILAS YOGI.

The extraordinary character of the holy man who was brought to Bhukailas, in Kidderpore, about 14 years ago, may still be remembered by many. In the month of Asar, 1754 Sakabda (1834 A.C.), he was brought to Bhukailas from Shirpur, where he was under the charge of Hari Singh, the durwan (porter) of Mr. Jones. He kept his eyes closed, and went without food and drink, for three consecutive days, after which a small quantity of milk was forcibly poured down his throat. he never took any food that was not forced upon him. He seemed always without external consciousness. To remove this condition Dr. Graham applied ammonia to his nostrils; but it only produced tremblings in the body, and did not break his Yoga state. Three days passed before he could be made to speak. He said that his name was Dulla Nabab, and when annoyed, he uttered a single word, from which it was inferred that he was a Punjabi. When he

121 ———————————————————THE SISHAL AND BHUKAILAS YOGIS.

was laid up with gout Dr. Graham attended him, but he refused to take medicine, either in the form of powder or mixture. He was cured of the disease only by the application of ointments and liniments prescribed by the doctor. He died in the month of Chaitra 1755 Sakabda, of a choleric affection.*—The Tatwabodhini Patrika, Chaitra, 1768 Sakabda, corresponding to March, 1847 A.C.
 ————————————————————
* The above particulars of this holy man have been obtained on unexceptionable testimony.—ED. T. B. P.

PHILOSOPHICAL

-----====ooo000ooo====-----

TRUE AND FALSE PERSONALITY
 

THE title prefixed to the following observations may well have suggested a more metaphysical treatment of the subject than can be attempted on the present occasion. The doctrine of the trinity, or trichotomy of man, which distinguishes soul from spirit, comes to us with such weighty, venerable, and even sacred authority, that we may well be content, for the moment, with confirmations that should be intelligible to all, forbearing the abstruser
questions which have divided minds of the highest philosophical capacity. We will not now inquire whether the difference is one of states or of entities; whether the phenomenal or mind consciousness is merely the external condition of one indivisible Ego, or has its origin and nature in an altogether different principle; the Spirit, or immortal part of us, being of Divine birth, while the senses and understanding, with the consciousness—Ahankara— thereto appertaining, are from an Anima Mundi, or what in the Sankhya philosophy is called Prakriti. My utmost expectations will have been exceeded if it should happen that any considerations here offered should throw even a faint suggestive light

123 ——————————————————TRUE AND FALSE PERSONALITY.

upon the bearings of this great problem. It may be that the mere irreconcilability of all that is characteristic of the temporal Ego with the conditions of the superior life—if that can he made apparent—will incline you to regard the latter rather as the Redeemer, that has indeed to be born within us for our salvation and our immortality, than as the inmost, central, and inseparable principle of our phenomenal life. It may be that by the light of such reflections the sense of identity will present no insuperable difficulty to the conception of its contingency, or to the recognition that the mere consciousness which fails to attach itself to a higher principle is no guarantee of an eternal individuality.

    It is only by a survey of individuality, regarded as the source of all our affections, thoughts, and actions, that we can realize its intrinsic worthlessness; and only when we have brought ourselves to a real and felt acknowledgment of that fact, can we accept with full understanding those “hard sayings” of sacred authority which bid us “die to ourselves,” and which proclaim the necessity of a veritable new birth. This mystic death and birth is the key-note of all profound religious teaching; and that which distinguishes the ordinary religious mind from spiritual insight is just the tendency to interpret these expressions as merely figurative, or, indeed, to overlook them altogether.

    Of all the reproaches which modern Spiritualism, with the prospect it is thought to hold out of an individual temporal immortality, has had to encounter, there is none that we can less afford to neglect than that which represents it as an ideal

124  ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

essentially egotistical and bornê. True it is that our critics do us injustice through ignorance of the enlarged views as to the progress of the soul in which the speculations of individual Spiritualists coincide with many remarkable spirit teachings. These are, undoubtedly, a great advance upon popular theological opinions, while some of them go far to satisfy the claim of Spiritualism to be regarded as a religion. Nevertheless, that slight estimate of individuality, as we know it, which in one view too easily allies itself to materialism, is also the attitude of spiritual idealism, and is seemingly at variance with the excessive value placed by Spiritualists on the discovery of our mere psychic survival. The idealist may recognise this survival; but, whether he does so or not, he occupies a post of vantage when he tells us that it is of no ultimate importance. For he, like the Spiritualist who proclaims his “proof palpable of immortality,” is thinking of the mere temporal, self-regarding consciousness—its sensibilities, desires, gratifications, and affections—which are unimportant absolutely, that is to say, their importance is relative solely to the individual. There is, indeed, no more characteristic outbirth of materialism than that which makes a teleological centre of the individual. Ideas have become mere abstractions; the only reality is the infinitely little. Thus utilitarianism can see in the State only a collection of individuals whose “greatest happiness,” mutually limited by nice adjustment to the requirements of “the greatest numbers,” becomes the supreme end of government and law. And it cannot, I think, be pretended that Spiritualists in general have advanced beyond

125 ——————————————————TRUE AND FALSE PERSONALITY.

this substitution of a relative for an absolute standard. Their “glad tidings of great joy” are not truly religious. They have regard to the perpetuation in time of that lower consciousness whose manifestations, delights, and activity are in time, and of time alone. Their glorious message is not essentially different from that which we can conceive as brought to us by some great alchemist, who had discovered the secret of conferring upon us and upon our friends a mundane perpetuity of youth and health. Its highest religious claim is that it enlarges the horizon of our opportunities. As such, then, let us hail it with gratitude and relief; but, on peril of our salvation, if I may not say of our immortality, let us not repose upon a prospect which is, at best, one of renewed labours, and trials, and efforts to be free even of that very life whose only value is opportunity.

    To estimate the value of individuality, we cannot do better than regard man in his several mundane relations, supposing that either of these might become the central, actuating focus of his being—his “ruling love,” as Swedenborg would call it— displacing his mere egoism, or self-love, thrusting that more to the circumference, and identifying him, so to speak, with that circle of interests to which all his energies and affections relate. Outside this substituted Ego we are to suppose that he has no conscience, no desire, no will. Just as the entirely selfish man views the whole of life, so far as it can really interest him solely in relation to his individual well-being, so our supposed man of a family, of a society, of a Church, or a State, has no eye for any truth or any interest more abstract

126 ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

or more individual than that of which he may be rightly termed the incarnation. History shows approximations to this ideal man. Such a one, for instance, I conceive to have been Loyola; such another, possibly, is Bismarck. Now these men have ceased to be individuals in their own eyes, so far as concerns any value attaching to their own special individualities. They are devotees. A certain “conversion” has been effected, by which from mere individuals they have become “representative” men. And we—the individuals—esteem them precisely in proportion to the remoteness from individualism of the spirit that actuates them. As the circle of interests to which they are “devoted” enlarges—that is to say, as the dross of individualism is purged away—we accord them indulgence, respect, admiration and love. From self to the family, from the family to the sect or society, from the sect or society to the Church (in no denominational sense) and State, there is the ascending scale and widening circle, the successive transitions which make the worth of an individual depend on the more or less complete subversion of his individuality by a more comprehensive soul or spirit. The very modesty which suppresses, as far as possible, the personal pronoun in our addresses to others, testifies to our sense that we are hiding away some utterly insignificant and unworthy thing; a thing that has no business even to be, except in that utter privacy which is rather a sleep and a rest than living. Well, but in the above instances, even those most remote from sordid individuality, we have fallen far short of that ideal in

127 ——————————————————TRUE AND FALSE PERSONALITY.

which the very conception of the partial, the atomic, is lost in the abstraction of universal being, transfigured in the glory of a Divine personality. You are familiar with Swedenborg’s distinction between discrete and continuous degrees. Hitherto we have seen how man—the individual—may rise continuously by throwing himself heart and soul into the living interests of the world, and lose his own limitations by adoption of a larger mundane spirit. But still he has but ascended nearer to his own mundane source, that soul of the world, or Prakriti, to which, if I must not too literally insist on it, I may still resort as a convenient figure. To transcend it, he must advance by the discrete degree. No simple “bettering” of the ordinary self, which leaves it alive, as the focus—the French word “foyer” is the more expressive—of his thoughts and actions; not even that identification with higher interests in the world’s plane just spoken of, is, or can progressively become, in the least adequate to the realization of his Divine ideal. This “bettering” of our present nature, it alone being recognized as essential, albeit capable of “improvement,” is a commonplace, and to use a now familiar term a “Philistine,” conception. It is the substitution of the continuous for the discrete degree. It is a compromise with our dear old familiar selves. “And Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them; but everything that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.” We know how little acceptable that

128 ———————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

compromise was to the God of Israel; and no illustration can be more apt than this narrative, which we may well, as we would fain, believe to be rather typical than historical. Typical of that indiscriminate and radical sacrifice, or “vastation,” of our lower nature, which is insisted upon as the one thing needful by all, or nearly all,* the great religions of the world. No language could seem more purposely chosen to indicate that it is the individual nature itself, and not merely its accidental evils, that has to be abandoned and annihilated. It is not denied that what was spared was good; there is no suggestion of a universal infection of physical or moral evil; it is simply that what is good and useful relatively to a lower state of being must perish with it if the latter is to make way for something better. And the illustration is the more suitable in that the purpose of this paper is not ethical, but points to a metaphysical conclusion, though without any attempt at metaphysical exposition. There is no question here of moral distinctions; they are neither denied nor affirmed. According to the highest moral standard, 'A' may be a most virtuous and estimable person. According to the lowest, ' B' may be exactly the reverse. The moral interval between the two is within what I have called, following Swedenborg, the “continuous degree.” And perhaps the distinction can be still better expressed by another reference to that Book which we theosophical students do not less regard,
 ————————————————————
* Of the higher religious teachings of Mohammedanism I know next to nothing, and therefore cannot say if it should be excepted from the statement.

129 ——————————————————TRUE AND FALSE PERSONALITY.

because we are disposed to protest against all exclusive pretensions of religious systems. The good man who has, however, not yet attained his “son- ship of God” is “under the law”—that moral law which is educational and preparatory, “the schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ,” our own Divine spirit, or higher personality. To conceive the difference between these two states is to apprehend exactly what is here meant by the false, temporal, and the true, eternal personality, and the sense in which the word personality is here intended to be understood. We do not know whether, when that great change has come over us, when that great work* of our lives has been accomplished—here or hereafter—we shall or shall not retain a sense of identity with our past, and forever discarded selves. In philosophical parlance, the “matter” will have gone, and the very “form” will have been changed. Our transcendental identity with the 'A' or ' B' that now is † must depend on that question, already disclaimed in this paper, whether the Divine spirit is our originally central essential being, or is an hypostasis. Now, being “under the law” implies that we do not act directly from our own will, but indirectly, that is, in willing obedience to another
——————————————————
* The “great work,” so often mentioned by the hermetic philosophers, and which is exactly typified by the operation of alchemy, the conversion of the base metals to gold, is now well understood to refer to the analogous spiritual conversion. There is also good reason to believe that the material process was a real one.

† A person may have won his immortal life, and remained the same inner self he was on earth, through eternity; but this does not imply necessarily that he must either remain the Mr. Smith or Brown he was on earth, or lose his individuality.”—Isis Unveiled, vol. 1. p. 316.

130 ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

will. The will from which we should naturally act—our own will—is of course to be understood not as mere volition, but as our nature—our ruling love,” which makes such and such things agreeable to us, and others the reverse. As “under the law,” this nature is kept in suspension, and because it is suspended only as to its activity and manifestation, and by no means abrogated, is the law—the substitution of a foreign will—necessary for us. Our own will or nature is still central; that which we obey by effort and resistance to ourselves is more circumferential or hypostatic. Constancy in this obedience and resistance tends to draw the circumferential will more and more to the centre, till there ensues that “explosion,” as St. Martin called it, by which our natural will is for ever dispersed and annihilated by contact with the divine, and the latter henceforth becomes our very own. Thus has “the schoolmaster” brought us unto “Christ,” and if by “ Christ” we understand no historically divine individual, but the logos, word, or manifestation of God in us—then we have, I believe, the essential truth that was taught in the Vedanta, by Kapila, by Buddha, by Confucius, by Plato, and by Jesus. There is another presentation of possibly the same truth, for a reference to which I am indebted to our brother J. W. Farquhar. It is from Swedenborg, in the “Apocalypse Explained,” No. 57 :—“ Every man has an inferior or exterior mind, and a mind superior or interior. These two minds are altogether distinct. By the inferior mind man is in the natural world together with men there; but by the superior mind

131 ——————————————————TRUE AND FALSE PERSONALITY.

he is in the spiritual world with the angels there. These two minds are so distinct that man so long as he lives in the world does not know what is performing within himself in his superior mind; but when he becomes a spirit, which is immediately after death, he does not know what is performing in his mind.” The consciousness of the “superior mind,” as the result of mere separation from the earthly body, certainly does not suggest that sublime condition which implies separation from so much more than the outer garment of flesh, but otherwise the distinction between the two lives, or minds, seems to correspond with that now under consideration.

    What is it that strikes us especially about this substitution of the divine-human for the human-natural personality? Is it not the loss of individualism? (Individualism, pray observe, not individuality.) There are certain sayings of Jesus which have probably offended many in their hearts, though they may not have dared to acknowledge such a feeling to themselves: “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” and those other disclaimers of special ties and relationships which mar the perfect sympathy of our reverence. There is something awful and incomprehensible to us in this repudiation of individualism, even in its most amiable relations. But it is in the Aryan philosophies that we see this negation of all that we associate with individual life most emphatically and explicitly insisted on. It is, indeed, the impossibility of otherwise than thus negatively characterizing the soul that has attained Moksha (deliverance from bonds) which has caused the Hindu consummation

132 ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

to be regarded as the loss of individuality and conscious existence. It is just because we cannot easily dissociate individuality from individualism that we turn from the sublime conception of primitive philosophy as from what concerns us as little as the ceaseless activity and germination in other brains of thought once thrown off and severed from the thinking source, which is the immortality promised by Mr. Frederick Harrison to the select specimens of humanity whose thoughts have any reproductive power. It is not a mere preference of nothingness, or unconscious absorption, to limitation that inspires the intense yearning of the Hindu mind for Nirvana. Even in the Upanishads there are many evidences of a contrary belief, while in the Sankhya the aphorisms of Kapila unmistakably vindicate the individuality of soul (spirit). Individual consciousness is maintained, perhaps infinitely intensified, but its “matter” is no longer personal. Only try to realize what “freedom from desire,” the favourite phrase in which individualism is negated in these systems, implies Even in that form of devotion which consists in action, the soul is warned in the Bhagavad-Gita that it must be indifferent to results.

    Modern Spiritualism itself testifies to something of the same sort. Thus we are told by one of its most gifted and experienced champions, “Sometimes the evidence will come from an impersonal source, from some instructor who has passed through the plane on which individuality is demonstrable.” (M.A. (Oxon.), “ Spirit Identity,” p. 7.) Again, “And if he” (the investigator) “penetrates

133 ——————————————————TRUE AND FALSE PERSONALITY.

far enough, he will find himself in a region for which his present embodied state unfits him: a region in which the very individuality is merged, and the highest and subtlest truths are not locked within one breast, but emanate from representative companies whose spheres of life are interblended.” (Id., p. 15.) By this “interblending” is of course meant only a perfect sympathy and community of thought; and I should doubtless misrepresent the author quoted were I to claim an entire identity of the idea he wishes to convey, and that now under consideration. Yet what, after all, is sympathy but the loosening of that hard “astringent” quality (to use Böhme’s phrase) wherein individualism consists? And just as in true sympathy, the partial suppression of individualism and of what is distinctive, we experience a superior delight and intensity of being, so it may be that in parting with all that shuts us up in the spiritual penthouse of an Ego—all, without exception or reserve—we may for the first time know what true life is, and what are its ineffable privileges. Yet it is not on this ground that acceptance can be hoped for the conception of immortality here crudely and vaguely presented ill contrast to that bourgeois eternity of individualism and the family affections, which is probably the great charm of Spiritualism to the majority of its proselytes. It is doubtful whether the things that “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,” have ever taken stronghold of the imagination, or reconciled it to the loss of all that is definitely associated with the Joy and movement of living. Not as consummate bliss can the dweller on the

134 ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

lower plane presume to command that transcendent life. At the utmost he can but echo the revelation that came to the troubled mind in “Sartor Resartus,” “A man may do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness.” It is no sublimation of hope, but the necessities of thought that compel us to seek the condition of true being and immortality elsewhere than in the satisfactions of individualism. True personality can only subsist in consciousness by participation of that of which we can only say that it is the very negation of individuality in any sense in which individuality can be conceived by us. What is the content or “matter” of consciousness we cannot define, save by vaguely calling it ideal. But we can say that in that region individual interests and concerns will find no place. Nay, more, we can affirm that only then has the influx of the new life a free channel when the obstructions of individualism are already removed. Hence the necessity of the mystic death, which is as truly a death as that which restores our physical body to the elements. “Neither I am, nor is aught mine, nor do I exist,” a passage which has been well explained by a Hindu Theosophist (Peary Chand Mittra), as meaning “that when the spiritual state is arrived at, I and mine, which belong to the finite mind, cease, and the soul, living in the universum and participating in infinity with God, manifests its infinite state.” I cannot refrain from quoting the following passage from the same instructive writer :—
Every human being has a soul which, while not separable from the brain or nerves, is mind or jivatma, or sentient

135  ——————————————————TRUE AND FALSE PERSONALITY

soul, but when regenerated or spiritualized by yoga, it is free from bondage and manifests the divine essence. It rises above all phenomenal states—joy, sorrow, grief, fear, hope, and in fact all states resulting in pain or pleasure, and becomes blissful, realizing immortality, infinitude and felicity of wisdom within itself. The sentient soul is nervous, sensational, emotional, phenomenal, and impressional. It constitutes the natural life and is finite. The soul and the non-soul are thus the two landmarks. What is non-soul is prakriti, or created. It is not the lot of every one to know what soul is, and therefore millions live and die possessing minds cultivated in intellect and feeling, but not raised to the soul state. In proportion as one’s soul is emancipated from prakriti or sensuous bondage, in that proportion his approximation to the soul state is attained; and it is this that constitutes disparities in the intellectual, moral, and religious culture of human beings and their consequent approximation to God.—Spiritual Stray Leaves, Calcutta, 1879.

    He also cites some words of Fichte, which prove that the like conclusion is reached in the philosophy of Western idealism: “The real spirit which comes to itself in human consciousness is to be regarded as an impersonal pneuma—universal reason, nay, as the spirit of God Himself; and the good of man’s whole development, therefore, can be no other than to substitute the universal for the individual consciousness.”

    That there may be, and are affirmed to be, intermediate stages, states, or discrete degrees, will, of course, be understood. The aim of this paper has been to call attention to the abstract condition of the immortalized consciousness; negatively it is true, but it is on this very account more suggestive of practical applications. The connection of the Theosophical Society with the Spiritualist movement is so

136 ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

intimately sympathetic, that I hope one of these may he pointed out without offence. It is that immortality cannot he phenomenally demonstrated. What I have called psychic survival can be, and probably is. But immortality is the attainment of a state, and that state the very negation of phenomenal existence. Another consequence refers to the direction our culture should take. We have to compose ourselves to death. Nothing less. We are each of us a complex of desires, passions, interests, modes of thinking and feeling, opinions, prejudices, judgment of others, likings and dislikings, affections, aims public and private. These things, and whatever else constitutes, the recognizable content of our present temporal individuality, are all in derogation of our ideal of impersonal being—saving consciousness, the manifestation of being. In some minute, imperfect, relative, and almost worthless sense we may do right in many of our judgments, and be amiable in many of our sympathies and affections. We cannot be sure even of this. Only people unhabituated to introspection and self-analysis are quite sure of it. These are ever those who are loudest in their censures, and most dogmatic in their opinionative utterances. In some coarse, rude fashion they are useful, it may be indispensable, to the world’s work, which is not ours, save in a transcendental sense and operation. We have to strip ourselves of all that, and to seek perfect passionless tranquillity. Then we may hope to die. Meditation, if it be deep, and long, and frequent enough, will teach even our practical Western mind to understand the

137 ——————————————————TRUE AND FALSE PERSONALITY.

Hindu mind in its yearning for Nirvana. One infinitesimal atom of the great conglomerate of humanity, who enjoys the temporal, sensual life, with its gratifications and excitements, as much as most, will testify with unaffected sincerity that he would rather be annihilated altogether than remain for ever what he knows himself to be, or even recognizably like it. And he is a very average moral specimen. I have heard it said, “The world’s life and business would come to an end, there would be an end to all its healthy activity, an end of commerce, arts, manufactures, social intercourse, government, law, and science, if we were all to devote ourselves to the practice of Yoga, which is pretty much what your ideal comes to.” And the criticism is perfectly just and true. Only I believe it does not go quite far enough. Not only the activities of the world, but the phenomenal world itself, which is upheld in consciousness, would disappear or take new, more interior, more living, and more significant forms, at least for humanity, if the consciousness of humanity was itself raised to a superior state. Readers of St. Martin, and of that impressive book of the late James Hinton, “Man and his Dwelling-place,” especially if they have also by chance been students of the idealistic philosophies, will not think this suggestion extravagant. If all the world were Yogis, the world would have no need of those special activities, the ultimate end and purpose of which, by-the-by, our critic would find it not easy to define. And if only a few withdraw, the world can spare them. Enough of that.

138 ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

    Only let us not talk of this ideal of impersonal, universal being in individual consciousness as an unverified dream. Our sense and impatience of limitations are the guarantees that they are not final and insuperable. Whence is this power of standing outside myself, of recognizing the worthlessness of the pseudo-judgments, of the prejudices with their lurid colouring of passion, of the temporal interests, of the ephemeral appetites, of all the sensibilities of egoism, to which I nevertheless surrender myself so that they indeed seem myself? Through and above this troubled atmosphere I see a being, pure, passionless, rightly measuring the proportions and relations of things, for whom there is, properly speaking, no present, with its phantasms, falsities, and half-truths; who has nothing personal in the sense of being opposed to the whole of related personalities: who sees the truth rather than struggles logically towards it, and truth of which I can at present form no conception; whose activities are unimpeded by intellectual doubt, un-perverted by moral depravity, and who is indifferent to results, because he has not to guide his conduct by calculation of them, or by any estimate of their value. I look up to him with awe, because in being passionless he sometimes seems to me to be without love. Yet I know that this is not so; only that his love is diffused by its range, and elevated in abstraction beyond my gaze and comprehension. And I see in this being my ideal, my higher, my only true, in a word, my immortal self.
                                                                                                                                                  C. C. MASSEY.

CHASTITY
 

IDEAL woman is the most beautiful work of the evolution of forms (in our days she is very often only a beautiful work of art). A beautiful woman is the most attractive, charming, and lovely being that a man can imagine. I never saw a male being who could lay any claims to manly vigour, strength or courage, who was not an admirer of woman. Only a profligate, a coward or a sneak would hate women; a hero and a man admires woman, and is admired by her.

    Women’s love belongs to a complete man. Then she smiles on him his human nature becomes aroused, his animal desires like little children begin to clamour for bread, they do not want to be starved, they want to satisfy their hunger. His whole soul flies towards the lovely being, which attracts him with almost irresistible force, and if his higher principles, his divine spirit, is not powerful enough to restrain him, his soul follows the temptations of his physical body. Once again the animal nature has subdued the divine. Woman rejoices in her victory, and man is ashamed of his weakness; and instead of being a representation of strength, he becomes an object of pity.

    To be truly powerful a man must retain his power and never for a moment lose it. To lose it is to surrender his divine nature to his animal nature; to restrain his desires and retain his

140 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

power, is to assert his divine right, and to become more than a man—a god.

    Eliphas Levi says: “To be an object of attraction for all women, you must desire none ;” and every one who has had a little experience of his own must know that he is right. Woman wants what she cannot get, and what she can get she does not want. Perhaps it is to the man endowed with spiritual power, that the Bible refers, when it says : “To him who has much, more shall be given, and from him who has little, that little shall be taken away.”
To become perfect it is not required that we should be born without any animal desires. Such a person would not be much above an idiot; he would be rightly despised and laughed at by every true man and woman; but we must obtain the power to control our desires, instead of being controlled by them; and here lies the true philosophy of temptation.

    If a man has no higher aim in life than to eat aid drink and propagate his species; if all his aspirations and desires are centred in a wish of living a happy life in the bosom of his family; there can be no wrong if he follows the dictates of his nature and is satisfied with his lot. When he dies, his family will mourn, his friends will say he was a good fellow; they will give him a first-class funeral, and they will perhaps write on ins tombstone something like what I once saw in a certain churchyard:

      Here is the grave of John McBride,
He lived, got married, and died.

141 ——————————————————————CHASTITY.

    And that will be the end of Mr. John McBride, until in another incarnation he will wake up again perhaps as Mr. John Smith, or Ramchandra Row, or Patrick O’Flannegan, to find himself on much the same level as he was before.

    But if a man has higher aims and objects in life, if he wants to avoid an endless cycle of re-incarnations, if he wants to become a master of his destiny, then must he first become a master of himself. How can he expect to be able to control the external forces of Nature, if he cannot control the few little natural forces that reside within his own insignificant body?

    To do this, it is not necessary that a man should run away from his wife and family, and leave them uncared for. Such a man would commence his spiritual career with an act of injustice,—an act that like Banquo’s ghost would always haunt him and hinder him in his further progress. If a man has taken upon himself responsibilities, he is bound to fulfill them, and an act of cowardice would be a bad beginning for a work that requires courage.

    A celibate, who has no temptation and who has no one to care for but himself, has undoubtedly superior advantages for meditation and study. Being away from all irritating influences, he can lead what may be called a selfish life; because he looks out only for his own spiritual interest; but he has little opportunity to develop his will-power by resisting temptations of every kind. But the man who is surrounded by the latter, and is every day and every hour under the necessity of exercising his will-power to resist their surging violence,

142 ———————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

will, if he rightly uses these powers, become strong; he may not have as much opportunity for study as the celibate, being more engrossed in material cares; but when he rises up to a higher state in his next incarnation, his will-power will be more developed, and he will be in the possession of the password, which is CONTINENCE.

    A slave cannot become a commander, until after he becomes free. A man who is subject to his own animal desires, cannot command the animal nature of others. A muscle becomes developed by its use, an instinct or habit is strengthened in proportion as it is permitted to rule, a mental power becomes developed by practice, and the principle of will grows strong by exercise; and this is the use of temptations. To have strong passions and to overcome them, makes man a hero. The sexual instinct is the strongest of all, and he who vanquishes it, becomes a god. The human soul admires a beautiful form, and is therefore an idolater.

    The human spirit adores a principle, and is the true worshipper.

    Marriage is the union of the male spirit with the female soul for the purpose of propagating the species; but if in its place there is only a union of a male and a female body, then marriage becomes merely a brutal act, which lowers man and woman, not to the level of animals but below them; because animals are restricted to certain seasons for the exercise of their procreative powers; while man, being a reasonable being, has it in his power to use or abuse them at all times.

143 ———————————————————————CHASTITY.

    But how many marriages do we find that are really spiritual and not based on beauty of form or other considerations? How soon after the wedding-day do they become disgusted with each other? What is the cause of this? A man and a woman may marry and their characters may differ widely. They may have different tastes, different opinions and different inclinations. All those differences may disappear, and will probably disappear; because by living together they become accustomed to each other, and become equalized in time. Each influences the other, and as a man may grow fond of a pet snake, whose presence at first horrified him, so a man may put up with a disagreeable partner and become fond of her in course of time.

    But if the man allows full liberty to his animal passions, and exercises his “legal rights” without restraint, these animal cravings which first called so piteously for gratification, will soon be gorged, and flying away laugh at the poor fool who nursed them in his breast. The wife will come to know that her husband is a coward, because she sees him squirm under the lash of his animal passions; and as woman loves strength and power, so in proportion as he loses his love, will she lose her confidence. He will look upon her as a burden, and she will look upon him in disgust as a brute. Conjugal happiness will have departed, and misery, divorce or death will be the end.
   
    The remedy for all these evils is continence, and it has been our object to show its necessity, for it was the object of this article.

F. HARTMANN.

ZOROASTRIANISM ON THE SEPTENARY
CONSTITUTION OF MAN
 

MANY of the esoteric doctrines given out through the Theosophical Society reveal a spirit akin to that of the older religions of the East, especially the Vedic and the Zendic. Leaving aside the former, I propose to point out by a few instances the close resemblance which the doctrines of the old Zendic Scriptures, as far as they are now preserved, bear to these recent teachings.

    Any ordinary Parsi, while reciting his daily Niyashes, Gehs and Yashts, provided he yields to the curiosity of looking into the meanings of what he recites, will, with a little exertion, perceive how the same ideas, only clothed in a more intelligible and comprehensive garb, are reflected in these teachings. The description of the septenary constitution of man found in the 54th chapter of the Yasna, one of the most authoritative books of the Mazdiasnian religion, shows the identity of the doctrines of Avesta and the esoteric philosophy, indeed, as a Mazdiasnian, I felt quite ashamed that, having such undeniable and unmistakable evidence before their eyes, the Zoroastrians of the present day should not avail themselves of the opportunity offered of throwing light upon their now entirely misunderstood and misinterpreted Scriptures by the assistance and under the guidance of the Theosophical

145 ————————————————————SEPTENARY CONSTITUTION OF MAN.

Society. If Zend scholars and students of Avesta would only care to study and search for themselves, they would, perhaps, find to assist them, men who are in possession of the right and only key to the true esoteric wisdom; men, who would be willing to guide and help them to reach the true and hidden meaning, and to supply them with the missing links that have resulted in such painful gaps as to leave the meaning meaningless, and to create in the mind of the perplexed student doubts that finally culminate in a thorough unbelief in his own religion. Who knows but they may find some of their own co-religionists, who, aloof from the world, have to this day preserved the glorious truths of their once mighty religion, and who, hidden in the recesses of solitary mountains and unknown silent caves, are still in possession of; and exercising, mighty powers, the heirloom of the ancient Magi. Our Scriptures say that ancient Mobeds were Yogis, who had the power of making themselves simultaneously visible at different places, even though hundreds of miles apart, and also that they could heal the sick and work that which would now appear to us miraculous. All this was considered facts but two or three centuries back, as no reader of old books (mostly Persian) is unacquainted with, or will disbelieve a priori unless his mind is irretrievably biassed by modern secular education. The story about the Mobed and Emperor Akbar and of the latter’s conversion, is a well-known historical fact, requiring no proof.

I will first of all quote side by side the two

146 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY

passages referring to the septenary nature of man as I find them in our Scriptures and the THEOSOPHIST—
 

147 ————————————————————SEPTENARY CONSTITUTION OF MAN.

    The above is given in the Avesta as follows—
"We declare and positively make known this (that) we offer (our) entire property (which is) the body (the self consisting of) bones (tanwas), vital heat (ushtanas), aerial form (keherpas), knowledge (tevishis), consciousness (baodhas), soul (urwanem), and spirit frawashem), to the prosperous, truth-coherent (and) pure Gathas (prayers).”

    The ordinary Gujarathi translation differs from Spiegel’s, and this latter differs very slightly from what is here given. Yet in the present translation there has been made no addition to, or omission from, the original wording of the Zend text. The grammatical construction also has been preserved

148 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

intact. The only difference, therefore, between the current translations and the one here given is that ours is in accordance with the modern corrections of philological research which make it more intelligible, and the idea perfectly clear to the reader.

    The word translated “aerial form” has come down to us without undergoing any change in the meaning. It is the modern Persian word kaleb, which means a mould, a shape into which a thing is cast, to take a certain form and features. The next word is one about which there is a great difference of opinion. It is by some called strength, durability, i.e., that power which gives tenacity to and sustains the nerves. Others explain it as that quality in a man of rank and position which makes him perceive the result of certain events (causes), and thus helps him in being prepared to meet them. This meaning is suggestive, though we translate it as knowledge, or foreknowledge rather, with the greatest diffidence. The eighth word is quite clear. That inward feeling which tells a man that he knows this or that, that he has or can do certain things—is perception and consciousness. It is the inner conviction, knowledge and its possession. The ninth word is again one which has retained its meaning and has been in use up to the present day. The reader will at once recognize that it is the origin of tile modern word Rawan. It is (metaphorically) the king, the conscious motor or agent in man. It is that something which depends upon and is benefited or injured by the foregoing attributes. We say depends upon, because its progress entirely consists

149 ————————————————————SEPTENARY CONSTITUTION OF MAN.

in the development of those attributes. If they are neglected, it becomes weak and degenerated, and disappears. If they ascend on the moral and spiritual scale, it gains strength and vigour and becomes more blended than ever to the Divine essence—the seventh principle. But how does it become attracted toward its monad? The tenth word answers the question. This is the Divine essence in man. But this is only the irresponsible minister (this completes the metaphor). The real master is the king, the spiritual soul. It must have the willingness and power to see and follow the course pointed out by the pure spirit. The vizir’s business is only to represent a point of attraction, towards which the king should turn. It is for the king to see and act accordingly for the glory of his own self. The minister or spirit can neither compel nor constrain. It inspires and electrifies into action; but to benefit by the inspiration, to take advantage of it, is left to the option of the spiritual soul.

    If, then, the Avesta contains such a passage, it must fairly be admitted that its writers knew the whole doctrine concerning spiritual man. We cannot suppose that the ancient Mazdiasnians, the Magi, wrote this short passage, without inferring from it, at the same time, that they were thoroughly conversant with the whole of the occult theory about man. And it looks very strange indeed, that modern Theosophists should now preach to us the very same doctrines that must have been known and taught thousands of years ago by the Mazdiasnians,—the passage is quoted from one of their oldest writings. And since they propound the

150 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

very same ideas, the meaning of which has well-nigh been lost even to our most learned Mobeds, they ought to be credited at least with some possession of a knowledge, the key to which has been revealed to them, and lost to us, and which opens the door to the meaning of those hitherto inexplicable sentences and doctrines in our old writings, about which we are still, and will go on, groping in. the dark, unless we listen to what they have to tell us about them.

    To show that the above is riot a solitary instance, but that the Avesta contains this idea in many other places, I will give another paragraph which contains the same doctrine, though in a more condensed form than the one just given. Let tile Parsi reader turn to Yàsaa, chapter 26, and read the sixth paragraph, which runs as follows

    We praise the life (a/um), knowledge (daenam), consciousness (baodhas), soul (urwanem), and spirit (frawashem) of the first in religion, the first teachers and hearers (learners), the holy men and holy women who were the protectors of purity here (in this world).
Here the whole man is spoken of as composed of five parts, as under

                                                                          1. The Physical Body.
     1. Ahum Existence, Life. it includes                2 The Vital Principle.
                                                                          3. The Astral Body.

     2. Daenam—Knowledge.                              4. The Astral shape or
                                                                               body of desire.

     3. Baodhas—Consciousness.                        5. The Animal or physical intelligence
                                                                              or consciousness or Ego.

151————————————————————SEPTENARY CONSTITUTION OF MAN.

     4. Urwanem—Soul.                                       6. The Higher or Spiritual intelligence or
                                                                               consciousness, or
                                                                               Spiritual Ego.

     5. Frawashem—Spirit.                                  7. The Spirit.

    In this description the first triple group—viz., the bones (or the gross matter), the vital force which keeps them together, and the ethereal body, arc included in one and called Existence, Life. Tile second part stands for the fourth principle of the septenary man, as denoting the configuration of his knowledge or desires.* Then the three, consciousness (or animal soul), (spiritual) soul, and the pure Spirit are the same as in the first quoted passage. Why are these four mentioned as distinct from each other and not consolidated like the first part? The sacred writings explain this by saying that on death the first of these five parts disappears and perishes sooner or later in the earth’s atmosphere. The gross elementary matter (the shell) has to run within the earth’s attraction ; so the ahum separates from the higher portions and is lost. The second (i.e., the fourth of the septenary group) remains, but not with the spiritual soul. It continues to hold its place in the vast storehouse of the universe. And it is this
 ————————————————————
* Modern science also teaches that certain characteristics of features indicate the possession of certain qualities in a man. The whole science of physiognomy is founded on it. One can predict the disposition of a man from his features,—i.e., the features develop in accordance with the idiosyncrasies, qualities and vices, knowledge or the ignorance of man.

152 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

second daenam which stands before the (spiritual) soul in the form of a beautiful maiden or an ugly hag. That which brings this daenam within the sight of the (spiritual) soul is the third part (i.e., the fifth of the septenary group), the baodhas. Or in other words, the (spiritual) soul has with it, or in it, the true consciousness by which it can view the experiences of its physical career. So this consciousness, this power or faculty which brings the recollection, is always with, in other words, is a part and parcel of, the soul itself; hence, its not mixing with any other part, and hence its existence after the physical death of man.
                                                                                                                                   A PARSI  F.T.S.
 ————————————————————
* Our Brother has but to look into the oldest sacred hooks of China—namely, the YI KING. or Book of Changes (translated by James Legge) written 1,200 B.C., to find that same Septenary division of man mentioned in that system of Divination. Zhing, which is translated correctly enough “essence,” is the more subtle and pure part of matter—the grosser form of the elementary ether; Khi, or spirit,” is the breath, still material but purer than the zhing, and is made of’ the finer and more active form of ether. In the hwun, or soul (animus) the Khi predominates and the zhing (or zing) in the pho or animal soul. At death the hwun (Or spiritual soul) wanders away, ascending, and the pho (the root of the Tibetan word Pho-hat) descends and is changed into a ghostly shade (the shell). Dr. Medhurst thinks that “the Kwei Shans ” (see “Theology of the Chinese,” pp. 10—12) are “the expanding and contracting principles of human life! “The Kwei Shans” are brought about by the dissolution of the human frame—and consist of the expanding and ascending Shan which rambles about in space, and of the contracted and shrivelled Kwei, which reverts to earth and nonentity. Therefore, the Kwei is the physical body; the Shan is the vital principle the Kwei ,Shan  the linga-sariram, or the vital soul; Zhing the fourth
principle or kama Rupa, the essence of will; pho, the animal soul; Khi, the spiritual soul ; and Hwun the pure spirit—the seven principles of our occult doctrine !—ED. Theos.

BRAHMANISM ON THE SEVENFOLD
PRINCIPLE IN MAN
 

IT is now very difficult to say what was the real ancient Aryan doctrine. If an inquirer were to attempt to answer it by an analysis and comparison of all the various systems of esotericism prevailing in India, he will soon be lost in a maze of obscurity and uncertainty. No comparison between our real Brahmanical and the Tibetan esoteric doctrines will be possible unless one ascertains the teachings of that so-called “Aryan doctrine,” and fully comprehends the whole range of the ancient Aryan philosophy. Kapila’s “Sankhya,” Patanjali’s “Yog philosophy,” the different systems of “Saktaya” philosophy, the various Agamas and Tantras are but branches of it. There is a doctrine, though, which is their real foundation, and which is sufficient to explain the secrets of these various systems of philosophy and harmonize their teachings. It probably existed long before the Vedas were compiled, and it was studied by our ancient Rishis in connection with the Hindu scriptures. It is attributed to one mysterious personage called Maha.*

    The Upanishads and such portions of the Vedas
 ————————————————————
* The very title of the present chief of the esoteric Himalayan Brotherhood.—ED. Theos.

154 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

as are not chiefly devoted to the public ceremonials of the ancient Aryans are hardly intelligible without some knowledge of that doctrine. Even the real significance of the grand ceremonials referred to in the Vedas will not be perfectly apprehended without its light being throw  upon them. The Vedas were perhaps compiled mainly for the use of the priests assisting at public ceremonies, but the grandest conclusions of our real secret doctrine are therein mentioned. I am informed by persons competent to judge of the matter, that the Vedas have a distinct dual meaning—one expressed by the literal sense of the words, the other indicated by the metre and the swara (intonation), which are, as it were the life of the Vedas. Learned Pundits and philologists of course deny that swara has anything to do with philosophy or ancient esoteric doctrines ; but the mysterious connection between swara and light is one of its most profound secrets.

    Now, it is extremely difficult to show whether the Tibetans derived their doctrine from the ancient Rishis of India, or the ancient Brahmans learned their occult science from the adepts of Tibet; or, again, whether the adepts of both countries professed originally the same doctrine and derived it from a common source.* If you were to go to the Sramana Balagula, and question some of the Jain Pundits there about the authorship of the Vedas and the origin of the Brahmanical esoteric doctrine, they would probably tell you that the Vedas were composed by Rakshasas † or Daityas, and that the Brahmans had derived their secret
 ————————————————————
* See Appendix, Note I.                   †A kind of demons—devil.

155  ————————————————————THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN.

knowledge from them.* Do these assertions mean that the Vedas and the Brahmanical esoteric teachings had their origin in the lost Atlantis—the continent that once occupied a considerable portion of the expanse of the Southern and the Pacific oceans? The assertion in “Isis Unveiled,” that Sanskrit was the language of the inhabitants of the said continent, may induce one to suppose that the Vedas had probably their origin there, wherever else might be the birthplace of the Aryan esotericism.† but the real esoteric doctrine, as well as the mystic allegorical philosophy of the Vedas, were derived from another source again, whatever that may be—perchance from the divine inhabitants (gods) of the sacred island which once existed in the sea that covered in days of old the sandy tract now called Gobi Desert. However that may be, the knowledge of the occult powers of Nature possessed by the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis was learnt by the ancient adepts of India, and was appended by them to the esoteric doctrine taught by the residents of the sacred island.‡ The
————————————————————
* And so would the Christian padris. But they would never admit that their “fallen angels” were borrowed from the Rakshasas; that their “devil” is the illegitimate son of Dewel, the Sinhalese female demon ; or that the “war in heaven” of the Apocalypse—the foundation of the Christian dogma of the “Fallen Angels” was copied from the Hindu story about Siva hurling the Tarakasura who rebelled against the gods into Andhahkara, the abode of Darkness, according to Brahmanical, Shastras.

†  Not necessarily. (See Appendix, Note II.) It is generally held by Occultists that Sanskrit has been spoken in Java and adjacent islands from remote antiquity—ED. Theos.

‡ A locality which is spoken of to this day by the Tibetans, and called by them “Scham-bha-la,” the Happy Land. (See Appendix, Note III.)

156 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

Tibetan adepts, however, have not accepted this addition to their esoteric doctrine ; and it is in this respect that one should expect to find a difference between the two doctrines.*

    The Brahmanical occult doctrine probably contains everything that was taught about the powers of Nature and their laws, either in the mysterious island of the North or in the equally mysterious continent of the South. And if you mean to compare the Aryan and the Tibetan doctrines as regards their teachings about the occult powers of Nature, you must beforehand examine all the classifications of these powers, their laws and manifestations, and the real connotations of the various names assigned to them in the Aryan doctrine. Here are some of the classifications contained in the Brahmanical system :

    I. As appertaining to Parabrahmam and existing in the MACROCOSM.

    II. As appertaining to man and existing in the MICROCOSM.

    III. For the purposes of d Taraka Yog or Pranava Yog.

    IV. For the purposes of Sankhya Yog (where they are, as it were, the inherent attributes of Prakriti).

    V. For the purposes of Hata Yog.

    VI. For the purposes of Koula Agama.

    VII. For the purposes of Sakta Agama.

    VIII. For the purposes of Siva Aqama.

    IX. For the purposes of Sreechakram (the
 ————————————————————
* To comprehend this passage fully, the reader must turn to vol. i. pp. 589—594 of  “Isis Unveiled.”

157 ————————————————————THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN

Sreechakram referred to in “Isis Unveiled” is not the real esoteric Sreechakram of the ancient adepts of Aryavarta).*

    X. In Atharvena Veda, &c.
    In all these classifications subdivisions have been multiplied indefinitely by conceiving new combinations of the Primary Powers in different proportions. But I must now drop this subject, and proceed to consider the “Fragments of Occult Truth” (since embodied in “Esoteric Buddhism”).

    I have carefully examined it, and find that the results arrived at (in the Buddhist doctrine) do not differ much from the conclusions of our Aryan philosophy, though our mode of stating the arguments may differ in form. I shall now discuss the question from my own standpoint, though, following, for facility of comparison and convenience of discussion, the sequence of classification of the sevenfold entities or principles constituting man which is adopted in the “Fragments.” The questions raised for discussion are (1) whether the disembodied spirits of human beings (as they are called by Spiritualists) appear in the séance-rooms and elsewhere; and (2) whether the manifestations taking place are produced wholly or partly through their agency.

    It is hardly possible to answer these two questions satisfactorily unless the meaning intended to be conveyed by the expression “disembodied spirits of human beings” be accurately defined. The words spiritualism and spirit are very misleading. Unless English writers in general, and Spiritualists
 ————————————————————
* Very true. But who would be allowed to give out the “real esoteric one ” ?—Ed. Theos.

158 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

in particular, first ascertain clearly the connotation they mean to assign to the word spirit, there will be no end of confusion, and the real nature of these so-called spiritualistic phenomena and their modus occurrendi can never be clearly defined. Christian writers generally speak of only two entities in man—the body, and the soul or spirit (both seeming to mean the same thing to them). European philosophers generally speak of body and mind, and argue that soul or spirit cannot be anything else than mind. They are of opinion that any belief in lingasariram* is entirely unphilosophical. These views are certainly incorrect, and are based on unwarranted assumptions as to the possibilities of Nature, and on an imperfect understanding of its laws. I shall now examine (from the standpoint of the Brahmanical esoteric doctrine) the spiritual constitution of man, the various entities or principles existing in him, and ascertain whether either of those entities entering into his composition can appear on earth after his death, and if so, what it is that so appears.

    Professor Tyndall in his excellent papers on what he calls the “Germ Theory,” comes to the following conclusions as the result of a series of well-planned experiments :—Even in a very small volume of space there are myriads of protoplasmic germs floating in ether. If, for instance, say water (clear water) is exposed to them, and if they fall into it, some form of life or other will be evolved out of them. Now, what are the agencies for the bringing of this life into existence? Evidently—
 ————————————————————
* The astral body, so called.

159  ————————————————— THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN.

    I. The water, which is the field, so to say, for the growth of life.

    II. The protoplasmic germ, out of which life or a living organism is to be evolved or developed. And lastly—

    III. The power, energy, force, or tendency which springs into activity at the touch or combination of the protoplasmic germ and the water, and which evolves or develops life and its natural attributes.

    Similarly, there are three primary causes which bring the human being into existence. I shall call them, for the purpose of discussion, by the following names

    (1) Parabrahmam, the Universal Spirit.

    (2) Sakti, the crown of the astral light, combining in itself all the powers of Nature.

    (3) Prakriti, which in its original or primary shape is represented by Akasa. (Really every form of matter is finally reducible to Akasa.)*

    It is ordinarily stated that Prakriti or Akasa is the Kshetram, or the basis which corresponds to water in the example we have taken Brahmam the germ, and Sakti, the power or energy that comes into existence at their union or contact.†
 ————————————————————
* The Tibetan esoteric Buddhist doctrine teaches that Prakriti is cosmic matter, out of which all visible forms are produced; and Akasa, that same cosmic matter, but still more subjective—its spirit, as it were. Prakriti being the body or substance, and Akasa Sakti its soul or energy.

† Or, in other words, “Prakriti, Swabhavat, or Akasa, is SPACE, as the Tibetans have it; Space filled with whatsoever substance or no substance at all—i.e., with substance so imperceptible as to be only metaphysically conceivable. Brahman, then, would be the germ thrown into the soil of that field, and Sakti, that mysterious energy or force which develops it, and which is called by the Buddhist Arahat of Tibet, Fohat. That which we call form (rupa) is not different from that which we call space (sunyata) Space is not different from form. Form is the same as space space is the same as form. And so with the other skandhas, whether vedana, or sanjna, or sanskara, or vijnana, they are each the same as their opposite.” (Book of Sin-king, or the “Heart Sutra.” Chinese translation of the “Maha-Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya-Sutra,” chapter on the “Avalokiteshwara,” or the manifested Buddha.) So that the Aryan and Tibetan or Arhat doctrines agree perfectly in substance, differing but in names given and the way of putting it.

160 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

    But this is not the view which the Upanishads take of the question. According to them, Brahamam* is the Kshetram or basis, Akasa or Prakriti, the germ or seed, and Sakti, the power evolved by their union or contact. And this is the real scientific, philosophical mode of stating the case.

     Now, according to the adepts of ancient Aryavarta, seven principles are evolved out of these three primary entities. Algebra teaches us that the number of combinations of n things, taken one at a time, two at a time, three at a time, and so forth=2ⁿ- 1.

    Applying this formula to the present case, the number of entities evolved from different combinations of these three primary causes amounts to
2³- 1 = 8-1 = 7.

    As a general rule, whenever seven entities are mentioned in the ancient occult science of India, in any connection whatsoever, you must suppose that those seven entities came into existence from three primary entities; and that these three entities, again, are evolved out of a single entity or MONAD. To take a familiar example, the seven coloured rays in the solar ray are evolved out of three primary
 ————————————————————
* See Appendix, Note IV.

  161 —————————————————THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN.

coloured rays; and the three primary colours coexist with the four secondary colours in the solar rays. Similarly, the three primary entities which brought man into existence co-exist in him with the four secondary entities which arose from different combinations of the three primary entities.

    Now these seven entities, which in their totality constitute man, are as follows. I shall enumerate them in the order adopted in the “Fragments,” as far as the two orders (the Brahmanical and the Tibetan) coincide :—

                                                                 Corresponding names in Esoteric
                                                                                 Buddhism.

I. Prakriti.                                              Sthulasariram (Physical Body).

II. The entity evolved
out of the combination                    }         Sukshmasariram or Lingasariram
of Prakriti and Sakti.                                                           (Astral Body).

III. Sakti.                                                  Kamarupa (the Perispirit).

IV. The entity evolved out
of the combination of Brahmam,    }         Jiva (Life-Soul).
Sakti and Prakriti.

V. The entity evolved out
of the combination of Brahmam     }          Physical Intelligence (or animal soul).
and Prakriti.

VI. The entity evolved
out of the combination of                 }         Spiritual Intelligence (or Soul).
Brahmam and Sakti.

VII. Brahmam.                               }     The emanation from the ABSOLUTE, &c. (or pure spirit.)

    Before proceeding to examine these nature of these seven entities, a few general explanations are indispensably necessary.

162 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

    I. The secondary principles arising out of the combination of primary principles are quite different in their nature from the entities out of whose combination they came into existence. The combinations in question are not of the nature of mere mechanical juxtapositions, as it were. They do not even correspond to chemical combinations. Consequently no valid inferences as regards the nature of the combinations in question can be drawn by analogy from the nature [variety?] of these combinations.

    II. The general proposition, that when once a cause is removed its effect vanishes, is not universally applicable. Take, for instance, the following example :—If you once communicate a certain amount of momentum to a ball, velocity of a particular degree in a particular direction is the result. Now, the cause of this motion ceases to exist when the instantaneous sudden impact or blow which conveyed the momentum is completed; but according to Newton’s first law of motion, the ball will continue to move on for ever and ever, with undiminished velocity in the same direction, unless the said motion is altered, diminished, neutralized, or counteracted by extraneous causes. Thus, if the ball stops, it will not be on account of the absence of the cause of its motion, but in consequence of the existence of extraneous causes which produce the said result.

    Again, take the instance of subjective phenomena.
 
   Now the presence of this ink-bottle before me is producing in me, or in my mind, a mental representation of its form, volume, colour and so forth.

163  ————————————————————THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN.

The bottle in question may be removed, but still its mental picture may continue to exist. here, again, you see, the effect survives the cause. Moreover, the effect may at any subsequent time be called into conscious existence, whether the original cause be present or not.

    Now, in the ease of the filth principle above mentioned—the entity that came into existence by the combination of Brahmam and Prakriti—if the general proposition (in the “Fragments of Occult Truth”) is correct, this principle, which corresponds to the physical intelligence, must cease to exist whenever the Brahmam or the seventh Principle should cease to exist for the particular individual; but the fact is certainly otherwise. The general proposition under consideration is adduced in the “Fragments” in support of the assertion that when—ever the seventh principle ceases to exist for any particular individual, the sixth principle also ceases to exist for him. The assertion is undoubtedly true, though the mode of stating it and the reasons assigned for it, are to my mind objectionable.

    It is said that in cases where tendencies of a man’s mind are entirely material, and all spiritual aspirations and thoughts were altogether absent from his mind, the seventh principle leaves him either before or at the time of death, and the sixth principle disappears with it. Here, the very proposition that the tendencies of the particular individual’s mind are entirely material, involves the assertion that there is no spiritual intelligence or spiritual Ego in him, it should then have been said that, whenever spiritual intelligence ceases to

164 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

exist in any particular individual, the seventh principle ceases to exist for that particular individual for all purposes. Of course, it does not fly off anywhere. There can never be any thing like a change of position in the case of Brahmam.* The assertion merely means that when there is no recognition whatever of Brahmam, or spirit, or spiritual life, or spiritual consciousness, the seventh principle has ceased to exercise any influence or control over the individual’s destinies.

    I shall now state what is meant (in the Aryan doctrine) by the seven principles above enumerated.

    I. Prakriti.     This is the basis of Sthulasariram, and represents it in the above-mentioned classification.

    II. Prakriti and. Sakti.     This is the Lingasariram, or astral body.

    III. Sakti. This principle corresponds to your Kamarupa. This power or force is placed by ancient occultists in the Nabhichakram. This power can gather akasa or prakriti, and mould it into any desired shape. It has very great sympathy with the fifth principle, and can be made to act by its influence or control.

    IV. Brahmam and Sakti, and Prakriti. This again corresponds to your second principle, Jiva.
 ————————————————————
* True—from the standpoint of Aryan Exotericism and the Upanishads, not quite so in the case of the Arahat or Tibetan esoteric doctrine; and it is only on this one solitary point that the two teachings disagree, as far as we know, The difference is very trifling, though, resting as it does solely upon the two various methods of viewing the one and the same thing from two different aspects. (See Appendix, Note IV.)

165 ———————————————————— THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN.

This power represents the universal life-principle which exists in Nature. Its seat is the Anahatachakram (heart). It is a force or power which constitutes what is called Jiva, or life. It is, as you say, indestructible, and its activity is merely transferred at the time of death to another set of atoms, to form another organism.

    V. Brahma and Prakriti.     This, in our Aryan philosophy, corresponds to your fifth principle, called the physical intelligence. According to our philosophers, this is the entity in which what is called mind has its seat or basis. This is the most difficult principle of all to explain, and the present discussion entirely turns upon the view we take of it.

    Now, what is mind? It is a mysterious something, which is considered to be the seat of consciousness—of sensations, emotions, volitions, and thoughts. Psychological analysis shows it to be apparently a congeries of mental states, and possibilities of mental states, connected by what is called memory, and considered to have a distinct existence apart from any of its particular states or ideas. Now in what entity has this mysterious something its potential or actual existence? Memory and expectation, which form, as it were, the real foundation of what is called individuality, or Ahankaram, must have their seat of existence somewhere. Modern psychologists of Europe generally say that the material substance of brain is the seat of mind; and that past subjective experiences, which can be recalled by memory, and which in their totality constitute what is called

166 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

individuality, exist therein in the shape of certain unintelligible mysterious impressions and changes in the nerves and nerve-centres of the cerebral hemispheres. Consequently, they say, the mind—the individual mind—is destroyed when the body is destroyed ; so there is no possible existence after death.

    But there are a few facts among those admitted by these philosophers which are sufficient for us to demolish their theory. In every portion of the human body a constant change goes on without intermission. Every tissue, every muscular fibre and nerve-tube, and every ganglionic centre in the brain, is undergoing an incessant change. In the course of a man’s lifetime there may be a series of complete transformations of the substance of his brain. Nevertheless, the memory of his past mental states remains unaltered. There may be additions of new subjective experiences and some mental states may be altogether forgotten, but no individual mental state is altered. The person’s sense of personal identity remains the same throughout these constant alterations in the brain substance. * It is able to survive all these changes, and it can survive also the complete destruction of the material substance of the brain.

    This individuality arising from mental consciousness has its seat of existence, according to our philosophers, in an occult power or force, which keeps a registry, as it were, of all our mental impressions. The power itself is indestructible,
 ————————————————————
* This is also sound Buddhist philosophy, the transformation in question being known as the change of the skandhas.—ED. Theos.

167 ————————————————————THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN.

though by the operation of certain antagonistic causes its impressions may in course of time be effaced, in part or wholly.

    I may mention in this connection that our philosophers have associated seven occult powers with the seven principles or entities above-mentioned. These seven occult powers in the microcosm correspond with, or are the counterparts of, the occult powers in the macrocosm. The mental and spiritual consciousness of the individual becomes the general consciousness of Brahmam, when the barrier of individuality is wholly removed, and when the seven powers in the microcosm are placed en rapport with the seven powers in the macrocosm.

    There is nothing very strange in a power, or force, or sakti, carrying with it impressions of sensations, ideas, thoughts, or other subjective experiences. It is now a well-known fact, that an electric or magnetic current can convey in some mysterious manner impressions of sound or speech, with all their individual peculiarities ; similarly, I can convey my thoughts to you by a transmission of energy or power.

    Now, this fifth principle represents in our philosophy the mind, or, to speak more correctly, the power or force above described, the impressions of the mental states therein, and the notion of self-identity or Ahankaram generated by their collective operation. This principle is called merely physical intelligence in the “Fragments.” I do not know what is really meant by this expression. It may be taken to mean that intelligence which exists in a very

168 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

low state of development in the lower animals. Mind may exist in different stages of development, from the very lowest forms of organic life, where the signs of its existence or operation can hardly be distinctly realized, up to man, in whom it reaches its highest state of development.

    In fact, from the first appearance of life * up to Tureeya Avastha, or the state of Nirvana, the progress is, as it were, continuous. We ascend from that principle up to the seventh by almost imperceptible gradations. But four stages are recognized in the progress where the change is of a peculiar kind, and is such as to arrest an observer’s attention. These four stages are as follows :—

    (1) Where life (fourth principle) make its appearance.

    (2) Where the existence of mind becomes perceptible in conjunction with life.

    (3) Where the highest state of mental abstraction ends, and spiritual consciousness commences.

    (4) Where spiritual consciousness disappears, leaving the seventh principle in a complete state of Nirvana, or nakedness.

    According to our philosophers, the fifth principle under consideration is intended to represent the mind in every possible state of development, from the second stage up to the third stage.

IV Brahmam and Sakti. This principle corresponds to your “spiritual intelligence.” It is, in fact, Buddhi (I use the word Buddhi not in the
 ————————————————————
* In the Aryan doctrine, which blends Brahmam, Sakti, and Prakriti in one, it is the fourth principle then, in the Buddhist esotericisms the second in combination with the first.

169 ————————————————————THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN.

ordinary sense, but in the sense in which it is used by our ancient philosophers) ; in other words, it is the seat of Bodha or Atmabodha. One who has Atmabodha in its completeness is a Buddha. Buddhists know very well what this term signifies. This principle is described in the “Fragments” as  an entity coming into existence by the combination of Brahmam and Prakriti. I do not again know in what particular sense the word Prakriti is used in this connection. According to our philosophers it is an entity arising from the union of’ Brahmam and Sakti. I have already explained the connotation attached by our philosophers to the words Prakriti and Sakti.

    I stated that Prakriti in its primary state is Akasa.*

    If Akasa be considered to be Sakti or power † then my statement as regards the ultimate state of Prakriti is likely to give rise to confusion and misapprehension unless I explain the distinction between Akasa and Sakti. Akasa is
 ————————————————————
* According to the Buddhists, in Akasa lies that eternal, potential energy whose function it is to evolve all visible things out of itself — Ed. Theos.
† It was never so considered, as we have shown it. But as the “Fragments” are written in English, a language lacking such an abundance of metaphysical terms to express ever minute change of form, substance and state as are found in the Sanskrit, it was deemed useless to confuse the Western reader, untrained in the methods of Eastern expression, more than is necessary, with a too nice distinctions of proper technical terms. As “Prakriti in its primary state is Akasa,” and Sakti “ is an attribute AKASA,” it becomes evident that for the uninitiated it is all one. Indeed, to speak of the union of Brahmam and Prakriti” instead of “Brahmam and Sakti ” is no worse than for a theist to write that “That man has come into existence by the combination of spirit and matter,” whereas, his word, framed in an orthodox shape, ought to read “man is a living soul was created by the power (or breath) of God over matter.”

170 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

not, properly speaking, the crown of the astral light, nor does it by itself constitute any of the six primary forces. But, generally speaking, whenever any phenomenal result is produced, Sakti acts in conjunction with Akasa. And, moreover, Akasa serves as a basis or Adhishthanum for the transmission of force currents and for the formation or generation of force or power correlations.*

    In Mantrasastra the letter Ha represents Akasa, and you will find that this syllable enters into most of the sacred formulæ intended to be used in producing phenomenal results. But by itself it does not represent any Sakti. You may, if you please, call Sakti an attribute of Akasa.

    I do not think that, as regards the nature of this principle, there can in reality exist any difference of opinion between the Buddhist and Brahmanical philosophers.

    Buddhist and Brahmanical initiates know very well that mysterious circular mirror composed of two hemispheres which reflects as it were the rays emanating from the “burning bush ” and the blazing star—the spiritual sun Shining in CHIDAKASAM.

    The spiritual impressions constituting this principle have their existence in an occult power associated with the entity in question. The successive incarnations of Buddha, in fact, mean the successive transfers of this mysterious power, or the impressions thereof. The transfer is only possible when the Mahatma † who transfers it has com-
 ————————————————————
* That is to say, the Aryan Akasa is another word for Buddhist SPACE (in its metaphysical meaning).—Ed. Theos.
† The highest adept.

171 ———————————————————— THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN.

pletely identified himself with his seventh principle, has annihilated his Ahankaram, and reduced it to ashes in CHIDAGNIKUNDUM, and has succeeded in making his thoughts correspond with the eternal laws of Nature and in becoming a co-worker with Nature. Or, to put the same thing in other words, when he has attained the state of Nirvana, the condition of final negation, negation of individual, or separate existence.*

    VII. Atma.—The emanation from the absolute, corresponding to the seventh principle. As regards this entity there exists positively no real difference of opinion between the Tibetan Buddhist adepts and our ancient Rishis.

    We must now consider which of these entities can appear after the individual’s death in séance-rooms and produce the so-called spiritualistic phenomena.

    Now, the assertion of the Spiritualists, that the “disembodied spirits” of particular human beings appear in séance-rooms, necessarily implies that the entity that so appears bears the stamp of some particular personality.

    So, we have to ascertain beforehand in what entity or entities personality has its seat of existence. Apparently it exists in the person’s particular formation of body, and in his subjective experiences (called his mind in their totality). On the death of the individual his body is destroyed his lingasariram being decomposed, the power
 ————————————————————
* In the words of Agatha in the “Maha-pari-Nirvana Sutra,”
               “We reach a condition of rest
                 Beyond the limit of any human knowledge”—Ed. Theos.

172 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

associated with it becomes mingled in the current of the corresponding power in the macrocosm. Similarly, the third and fourth principles are mingled with their corresponding powers. These entities may again enter into the composition of other organisms. As these entities bear no impression of personality, the Spiritualists have no right to say that the disembodied spirit of the human being has appeared in the séance-room whenever any of these entities may appear there. In fact, they have no means of ascertaining that they belonged to any particular individual.

     Therefore, we must only consider whether any of the last three entities appear in séance-rooms to amuse or to instruct Spiritualists. Let us take three particular examples of individuals, and see what becomes of these three principles after death.

     I. One in whom spiritual attachments have greater force than terrestrial attachments.

     II. One in whom spiritual aspirations do exist, but are merely of secondary importance to him, his terrestrial interests occupying the greater share of his attention.

      III. One in whom there exists no spiritual aspirations whatsoever, one whose spiritual Ego is dead or non-existent to his apprehension.

    We need not consider the case of a complete adept in this connection. In the first two cases, according to our supposition, spiritual and mental experiences exist together ; when spiritual consciousness exists, the existence of the seventh principle being recognized, it maintains its connection with the fifth and sixth principles. But the existence of

173  ————————————————————THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN.

terrestrial attachments creates the necessity of Punarjanmam (re-birth), the latter signifying the evolution of a new set of objective and subjective experiences, constituting a new combination of surrounding circumstances, or, in other words, a new world. The period between death and the next subsequent birth is occupied with the preparation required for the evolution of these new experiences. During the period of incubation, as you call it, the spirit will never of its own accord appear in this world, nor can it so appear.

    There is a great law in this universe which consists in the reduction of subjective experiences to objective phenomena, and the evolution of the former from the latter. This is otherwise called “cyclic necessity.” Man is subjected to this law if he do not check and counterbalance the usual destiny or fate, and he can only escape its control by subduing all his terrestrial attachments completely. The new combination of circumstances under which he will then be placed may be better or worse than the terrestrial conditions under which he lived; but in his progress to a new world, you may be sure he will never turn around to have a look at his spiritualistic friends.

    In the third of the above three cases there is, by our supposition, no recognition of spiritual consciousness or of spirits; so they are non-existing so far as he is concerned. The case is similar to that of an organ or faculty which remains unused for a long time. It then practically ceases to exist.
    These entities, as it were, remain his, or in his possession, when they are stamped with the stamp

174 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

of recognition. When such is not the ease, the whole of his individuality is centred in his fifth principle. And after death this fifth principle is the only representative of the individual in question.

    By itself it cannot evolve for itself a new set of objective experiences, or, to say the same thing in other words, it has no punarjanmam. It is such an entity that can appear in séance-rooms; but it is absurd to call it a disembodied spirit.* It is merely a power or force retaining the impressions of the thoughts or ideas of the individual into whose composition it originally entered. It sometimes summons to its aid the Kamarupa power, and creates for itself some particular ethereal form (not necessarily human).

   Its tendencies of action will be similar to those of the individual’s mind when he was living. This entity maintains its existence so long as the impressions on the power associated with the fifth principle remain intact. In course of time they are effaced, and the power in question is then mixed up in the current of its corresponding power in the MACROCOSM, as the river loses itself in the sea. Entities like these may afford signs of there having been considerable intellectual power in the individuals to which they belonged; because very high intellectual power may co-exist with utter absence of spiritual consciousness. But from this circumstance it cannot be argued that either the
 ————————————————————
* It is especially on this point that the Aryan and Arahat doctrines quite agree. The teaching and argument that follow are in every respect those of the Buddhist Himalayan Brotherhood.— ED. Theos.

175 ————————————————————THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN.

spirits or the spiritual Egos of deceased individuals appear in séance-rooms.

   There are some people in India who have thoroughly studied the nature of such entities (called Pisacham). I do not know much about them experimentally, as I have never meddled with this disgusting, profitless, and dangerous branch of investigation.

    The Spiritualists do not know what they are really doing. Their investigations are likely to result in course of time either in wicked sorcery or in the utter spiritual ruin of thousands of men and women.*

    The views I have herein expressed have been often illustrated by our ancient writers by Comparing the course of a man’s life or existence to the orbital motion of a planet round the sun. Centripetal force is spiritual attraction, and centrifugal terrestrial attraction. As the centripetal force increases in magnitude in comparison with the centrifugal force, the planet approaches the sun—the individual reaches a higher plane of existence. If, on the other hand, the centrifugal force becomes greater than the centripetal force, the planet is removed to a greater distance from the sun, and moves in a new orbit at that distance—the individual comes to a lower level of existence. These are illustrated in the first two instances I have noticed above.

    We have only to consider the two extreme cases.

    When the planet in its approach to the sun passes over the line where the centripetal and
 ————————————————————
* We share entirely in this idea.—ED. Theos.

176 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

centrifugal force completely neutralize each other, and is only acted on by the centripetal force, it rushes towards the sun with a gradually increasing velocity, and is finally mixed up with the mass of the sun’s body. This is the case of a complete adept.

    Again, when the planet in its retreat from the sun reaches a point where the centrifugal force becomes all-powerful, it flies off in a tangential direction from its orbit, and goes into the depths of void space. When it ceases to be under the control of the sun, it gradually gives up its generative heat, and the creative energy that it originally derived from the sun, and remains a cold mass of material particles wandering through space until the mass is completely decomposed into atoms. This cold mass is compared to the fifth principle under the conditions above noticed, and the heat, light, and energy that left it are compared to the sixth and seventh principles.

    Either after assuming a new orbit or in its course of deviation from the old orbit to the new, the planet can never go back to any point in its old orbit, as the various orbits lying in different planes never intersect each other.

    This figurative representation correctly explains the ancient Brahmanical theory on the subject. It is merely a branch of what is called the Great Law of the Universe by the ancient mystics.
                                                                                                                                                            T. SUBBA Row.

177 ————————————————————THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN.

APPENDIX

NOTE I.

IN this connection it will be well to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that the country called “Si-dzang” by the Chinese, and Tibet by Western geographers, is mentioned in the oldest books preserved in the province of Fo-kien (the headquarters of the aborigines of China) as the great seat of occult learning in the archaic ages. According to these records, it was inhabited by the “Teachers of Light,” the “Sons of Wisdom” and the “Brothers of the Sun.” The Emperor Yu the “Great” (2207 B.C.), a pious mystic, is credited with having obtained his occult wisdom and the system of theocracy established by him—for he was the first one to unite in China ecclesiastical power with temporal authority—from Si-dzang. That system was the same as with the old Egyptians and the Chaldees ; that which we know to have existed in the Brahmanical period in India, and to exist now in Tibet—namely, all the learning, power, the temporal as well as the secret wisdom were concentrated within the hierachy of the priests and limited to their caste. Who were the aborigines of Tibet is a question which no ethnographer is able to answer correctly at present. They practise the Bhon religion, their sect is a pre- and anti- Buddhistic one, and they are to be found mostly in the province of Kam. That is all that is known of them. But even that would justify the supposition that they are the greatly degenerated descendants

178 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

of mighty and wise forefathers. Their ethnical type shows that they are not pure Turanians, and their rites—now those of sorcery, incantations, and Nature-worship—remind one far more of the popular rites of the Babylonians, as found in the records preserved on the excavated cylinders, than of the religious practices of the Chinese sect of Tao-sse (a religion based upon pure reason and spirituality), as alleged by some. Generally, little or no difference is made, even by the Kyelang missionaries, who mix greatly with these people on the borders of British Lahoul and ought to know better, between the Bhons and the two rival Buddhist sects, the Yellow Caps and the Red Caps. The latter of these have opposed the reform of Tzong-ka-pa from the first, and have always adhered to old Buddhism, so greatly mixed up now with the practices of the Bhons. Were our Orientalists to know more of them, and compare the ancient Babylonian Bel or Baal worship with the rites of the Bhons. they would find an undeniable connection between the two. To begin an argument here, proving the origin of the aborigines of Tibet as connected with one of the three great races which superseded each other in Babylonia, whether we call them the Akkadians (a name invented by F. Lenormant), or the primitive Turanians, Chaldees, and Assyrians, is out of the question. Be it as it may, there is reason to call the trans-Himalayan esoteric doctrine Chaldeo-Tibetan. And when we remember that the Vedas came, agreeably to all traditions, from the Mansarawara Lake in Tibet, and the Brahmins themselves from the far North, we are justified in

179 ————————————————————THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN.

looking on the esoteric doctrines of every people who once had or still has it, as having proceeded from one and the same source; and to thus call it the “Aryan-Chaldeo-Tibetan” doctrine, or Universal Wisdom-Religion. “Seek for the Lost Word among the hierophants of Tartary, China, and Tibet,” was the advice of Swedenborg the seer.

NOTE II.

    Not necessarily, we say. The Vedas, Brahmanism, and along with these, Sanskrit, were importations into what we now regard as India. They were never indigenous to its soil. There was a time when the ancient nations of the West included under the generic name of India many of the countries of Asia now classified under other names. There was an Upper, a Lower, and a Western India, even during the comparatively late period of Alexander; and Persia (Iran) is called Western India in some ancient classics. The countries now named Tibet, Mongolia, and Great Tartary were considered by them as forming part of India. When we say, therefore, that India has civilized the world, and was the Alma Mater of the civilizations, arts, and sciences of all other nations (Babylonia, and perhaps even Egypt, included) we mean archaic, pre-historic India, India of the time when the great Gobi was a sea, and the lost “Atlantis” formed part of an unbroken continent which began at the Himalayas and ran down over Southern India, Ceylon, and Java, to far-away Tasmania.

180 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

NOTE III.

    To ascertain such disputed questions, one has to look into and study well the Chinese sacred and historical records—a people whose era begins nearly 4,600 years back (2697 B.C.). A people so accurate, and by whom some of the most important inventions of modern Europe and its so much boasted modern science were anticipated—such as the compass, gunpowder, porcelain, paper, printing, &c.—known and practised thousands of years before these were rediscovered by the Europeans, ought to receive some trust for their records. And from Lao-tze down to Hiouen-Thsang their literature is filled with allusions and references to that island and the wisdom of the Himalayan adepts. In the “Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese,” by the Rev. Samuel Beal, there is a chapter “On the TIAN-TA’I School of Buddhism” (pp. 244—258) which our opponents ought to read. Translating the rules of that most celebrated and holy school and sect in China founded by Chiu-che-K’hae, called Che-chay (the Wise One), in the year 575 of our era, when coming to the sentence which reads “That which relates to the one garment (seamless) worn by the GREAT TEACHERS or THE SNOWY MOUNTAINS, the school of the Haimavatas” (p. 256), the European translator places after the last sentence a sign of interrogation, as well he may. The statistics of the school of the “Haimavatas,” or of our Himalayan Brotherhood, are not to be found in the general census records of India. Further, Mr. Beal translates a rule

181 ————————————————————THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN.

relating to “the great professors of the higher order who live in mountain depths remote from men,” the Aranyakas, or hermits.

    So, with respect to the traditions concerning this island, and apart from the (to them) historical records of this preserved in the Chinese and Tibetan sacred books, the legend is alive to this day among the people of Tibet. The fair island is no more, but the country where it once bloomed remains there still, and the spot is well known to some of the “great teachers of the Snowy Mountains,” however much convulsed and changed its topography by the awful cataclysm. Every seventh year these teachers are believed to assemble in SCHAM-BHA-LA, the “Happy Land.” According to the general belief it is situated in the north-west of Tibet. Some place it within the unexplored central regions, inaccessible even to the fearless nomadic tribes; others hem it in between the range of the Gangdisri Mountains and the northern edge of the Gobi desert, south and north, and the more populated regions of Khoondooz and Kashmir, of the Gya-Pheling (British India), and China, west and east, which affords to the curious mind a pretty large latitude to locate it in. Others still place it between Namur Nur and the Kuen-Lun Mountains, but one and all firmly believe in Scham-bha-la, and speak of it as a fertile fairy-like land once an island, now an oasis of incomparable beauty, the place of meeting of the inheritors of the esoteric wisdom of the god-like inhabitants of the legendary island.

    In connection with the archaic legend of the

182 ———————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

Asian Sea and the Atlantic Continent, is it not profitable to note a fact known to all modern geologists—that the Himalayan slopes afford geological proof that the substance of those lofty peaks was once a part of an ocean floor?

NOTE IV.

    We have already pointed out that, in our opinion, the whole difference between Buddhistic and Vedantic philosophies was that the former was a kind of Rationalistic Vedantism, while the latter might be regarded as transcendental Buddhism. If the Aryan esotericism applies the term jivatma to the seventh principle—the pure and per se unconscious spirit—it is because the Vedanta, postulating three kinds of existence— (1) the paramarthika (the true, the only real one), (2) the vyavaharika (the practical), and (3) the pratibhasika (the apparent or illusory life)—makes the first life or jiva, the only truly existent one. Brahma, or the ONE’S SELF, is its only representative in the universe, as it is the universal Life in toto, while the other two are but its “phenomenal appearances,” imagined and created by ignorance, and complete illusions suggested to us by our blind senses. The Buddhists, on the other hand, deny either subjective or objective reality even to that one Self-Existence. Buddha declares that there is neither Creator nor an Absolute Being. Buddhist rationalism was ever too alive to the insuperable difficulty of admitting one absolute consciousness, as in the words of Flint, “wherever there is consciousness there is

183————————————————————  THE SEVENFOLD PRINCIPLE IN MAN.

relation, and wherever there is relation there is dualism.” The ONE LIFE is either “MUKTA” (absolute and unconditioned), and can have no relation to anything nor to any one; or it is “BADDHA” (bound and conditioned), and then it cannot be called the absolute; the limitation, moreover, necessitating another deity as powerful as the first to account for all the evil in this world. Hence, the Arahat secret doctrine on cosmogony admits but of one absolute, indestructible, eternal, and uncreated UNCONSCIOUSNESS (so to translate) of an element (the word being used for want of a better term) absolutely independent of everything else in the universe; a something ever present or ubiquitous, a Presence which ever was, is, and will be, whether there is a God, gods, or none, whether there is a universe, or no universe, existing during the eternal cycles of Maha Yugs, during the Pralayas as during the periods of Manvantara, and this is SPACE, the field for the operation of the eternal Forces and natural Law, the basis (as Mr. Subba Row rightly calls it) upon which take place the eternal intercorrelations of Akása-Prakriti; guided by the unconscious regular pulsations of Sakti, the breath or power of a conscious deity, the theists would say; the eternal energy of an eternal, unconscious Law, say the Buddhists. Space, then, or “Fan, Bar-nang” (Mâha Sunyatâ) or, as it is called by Lao-tze, the “ Emptiness,” is the nature of the Buddhist Absolute. (See Confucius’ “ Praise of the Abyss.”) The word jiva, then, could never be applied by the Arahats to the Seventh Principle, since it is only through its cor-

184 ———————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

relation or contact with matter that Fo-hat (the Buddhist active energy) can develop active conscious life; and that to the question “how can unconsciousness generate consciousness?” the answer would be: “Was the seed which generated a Bacon or a Newton self-conscious?”

NOTE V.

    To our European readers, deceived by the phonetic similarity, it must not be thought that the name “Brahman” is identical in this connection with Brahma or Iswara, the personal God. The Upanishads—the Vedanta Scriptures—mention no such God, and one would vainly seek in them any allusions to a conscious deity. The Brahman, or Parabrahm, the absolute of the Vedantins, is neuter and unconscious, and has no connection with the masculine Brahmâ of the Hindu Triad, or Trimurti. Some Orientalists rightly believe the name derived from the verb “Brih,” to grow or increase, and to be in this sense the universal expansive force of Nature, the vivifying and spiritual principle or power spread throughout the universe, and which, in its collectivity, is the one Absoluteness, the one Life and the only Reality.

                                                                                                                                                  H. P. BLAVATSKY.

SEPTENARY DIVISION IN DIFFERENT
INDIAN SYSTEMS

We give below in a tabular form the classifications, adopted by Buddhist and by Vedantic teachers, of the principles in man :—

Classification in Esoteric    Vedantic Classification.      Classification in
              Buddhism.                                                           Târaka Raja Yoga.

    From the foregoing table it will be seen that the third principle in the Buddhist classification is not separately mentioned in the Vedantic division as it is merely the vehicle of prána. It will also be seen that the fourth principle is included in the third kosa (sheath), as the said principle is but the vehicle of will-power, which is but an energy of the mind. It must also be noticed that the Vignanamayakosa is considered to be distinct from the Manomayakosa, as a division is made after death between the lower part

186 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

of the mind, as it were, which has a closer affinity with the fourth principle than with the sixth and its higher part, which attaches itself to the latter, and which is, in fact, the basis for the higher spiritual individuality of man.

    We may also here point out to our readers that the classification mentioned in the last column is for all practical purposes connected with Raja Yoga, the best and simplest. Though their are seven principles in man, there are but three distinct Upadhis (bases), in each of which his Atma may work independently of the rest. These three Upadhis can be separated by an adept without killing himself. He cannot separate the seven principles from each other without destroying his constitution.
                                                                                                                                                                                        T. S.

THE SEPTENARY PRINCIPLE IN
ESOTERICISM
 

SINCE the exposition of the Arhat esoteric doctrine was begun, many who had not acquainted themselves with the occult basis of Hindu philosophy have imagined that the two were in conflict. Some of the more bigoted have openly charged the Occultists of the Theosophical Society with propagating rank Buddhistic heresy; and have even gone to the length of affirming that the whole Theosophic movement was but a masked Buddhistic
propaganda. We were taunted by ignorant Brahmins and learned Europeans that our septenary divisions of Nature and everything in it, including man, are arbitrary and not endorsed by the oldest religious systems of the East. It is now proposed to throw a cursory glance at the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Law-Books of Manu, and especially the Vedanta, and show that they too support our position. Even in their crude exotericism their affirmation of the sevenfold divison is apparent. Passage after passage may be cited in proof. And not only can the mysterious number be found traced on every page of the oldest Aryan Sacred Scriptures, but in the oldest books of Zoroastrianism as well; in the rescued cylindrical

188———————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

tile records of old Babylonia and Chaldea, in the Book of the Dead” and the Ritualism of ancient Egypt, and even in the Mosaic books— without mentioning the secret Jewish works, such as the Kabala.

    The limited space at command forces us to allow a few brief quotations to stand as landmarks and not even attempt long explanations. It is no exaggeration to say that upon each of the few hints now given in the cited Slokas a thick volume might be written.
From the well-known hymn To Time, in the Atharva-Veda (xix. 53)—

                                 “Time, like a brilliant steed with seven rays,
                                Full of fecundity, bears all things onward.
                                         *      *      *      *      *     *
                                 Time, like a seven-wheeled, seven-naved car moves on,
                                 His rolling wheels are all the worlds, his axle
                                 Is immortality .  .  .  ”

—down to Manu, “the first and the seventh man,” the Vedas, the Upanishads, and all the later systems of philosophy teem with allusions to this number. Who was Manu, the son of Swayambhuva? The secret doctrine tells us that this Manu was no man, but the representation of the first human races evolved with the help of the Dhyan-Chohans (Devas) at the beginning of the first Round. But we are told in his Laws (Book i. 80) that there are fourteen Manus for every Kalpa or “interval from creation to creation “ (read interval from one minor “Pralaya” to another) and that “in the present divine age there have been as yet seven Manus.” Those who know that

189————————————————————THE SEPTENARY PRINCIPLE.

there are seven Rounds, of which we have passed three, and are now in the fourth; and who are taught that there are seven dawns and seven twilights, or fourteen Manvantaras; that at the beginning of every Round and at the end, and on and between the planets, there is “an awakening to illusive life,“and an awakening to real life,” and that, moreover, there are “root-Manus,” and what we have to clumsily translate as the “seed-Manus”—the seeds for the human races of the forthcoming Round (a mystery divulged but to those who have passed the 3rd degree in initiation); those who have learned all that, will be better prepared to understand the meaning of the following. We are told in the Sacred Hindu Scriptures that “the first Manu produced six other Manus (seven primary Manus in all), and these produced in their turn each seven other Manus” (Bhrigu i. 61-63),* the production of the latter standing in the occult treatises as 7 x 7. Thus it becomes clear that Manu—the last one, the progenitor of our Fourth Round Humanity—must be the seventh, since we are on our fourth Round, and that there is a root-Manu on globe A and a seed-Manu on globe G. Just as each planetary Round commences with the appearance of a “Root-Manu” (Dhyan-Chohan) and closes with a “Seed-Manu,” so a root- and a seed-Manu appear respectively at the beginning and the termination
————————————————————
* The fact that Manu himself is made to declare that he was created by Viraj and then produced the ten Prajapatis, who again produced seven Menus, who in their turn gave birth to seven other Manus (Manu, i. 33-36), relates to other still earlier mysteries, and is at the same time a blind with regard to the doctrine of the Septenary chain.

190 ————————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

of the human period on any particular planet. It will be easily seen from the foregoing statement that a Manu-antaric period means, as the term implies, the time between the appearance of two Manus or Dhyan-Chohans: and hence a minor Manu-antara is the duration of the seven races on any particular planet, and a major Manu-antara is the period of one human round along the planetary chain. Moreover, that, as it is said that each of the seven Manus creates 7 x 7 Manus, and that there are 49 root-races on the seven planets during each Round, then every root-race has its Manu. The present seventh Manu is called “Vaivasvata,” and stands in the exoteric texts for that Manu who represents in India the Babylonian Xisusthrus and the Jewish Noah. But in the esoteric books we are told that Manu Vaivasvata, the progenitor of our fifth race—who saved it from the flood that nearly exterminated the fourth (Atlantean)—is not the seventh Manu, mentioned in the nomenclature of the Root, or primitive Manus, but one of the 49 “emanated from this ‘root ‘-Manu.”

     For clearer comprehension we here give the names of the 14 Manus in their respective order and relation to each Round :—

  1st        1st (Root) Manu on Planet       A.—Swayambhuva.
Round.   1st (Seed) Manu on Planet       G.—Swarochi (or)Swarotisha.

2nd         2nd (R.)     M.    on Planet       A.—Uttama.
Round     2nd (S.)     M.     ,,      ,,          G.—Thamasa.

3rd          3rd (R.)      M.     ,,      ,,           A.—Raivata.
Round     3rd (S.)      M.     ,,      ,,           G.—Chackchuska.

4th          4th (R.)      M.     ,,      ,,            A.—Vaivasvata (our pro-
Round     4th (S.)      M.     ,,       ,,           G.—Savarni. [genitor).

5th          5th (R.)      M.     ,,      ,,            A.—Daksha Savarni.
Round     5th (S.)      M.     ,,      ,,            G.—Brahma Savarni.

191————————————————————THE SEPTENARY PRINCIPLE.

6th           6th  (R.)    M.      on    Planet        A.—Dharma Savarni.
Round      6th  (S.)    M.       ,,       ,,             G.—Rudra Savarni.

7th           7th  (R.)    M.      ,,       ,,               A.—Rouchya.
Round      7th  (S.)    M.      ,,       ,,               G.—Bhoutya.

    Vaivasvata thus, though seventh in the order given, is the primitive Root-Mann of our fourth Human Wave [the reader must always remember that Manu is not a man but collective humanity], while our Vaivasvata was but one of the seven Minor Manus who are made to preside over the seven races of this our planet. Each of these has to become the witness of one of the periodical and ever-recurring cataclysms (by fire and water in turn) that close the cycle of every root-race. And it is this Vaivasvata—the Hindu ideal embodiment called respectively Xisusthrus, Deukalion, Noah, and by other names—who is the allegorical man who rescued our race when nearly the whole population of one hemisphere perished by water, while the other hemisphere was awakening from its temporary obscuration.

    The number seven stands prominently conspicuous in even a cursory comparison of the 11th Tablet of the Izdhubar Legends of the Chaldean account of the Deluge and the so-called Mosaic books. In both the number seven plays a most prominent part. The clean beasts are taken by sevens, the fowls by sevens also ; in seven days, it is promised Noah, to rain upon the earth ; thus he stays “yet other seven days,” and again seven days; while in the Chaldean. account of the Deluge, on the seventh day the rain abated. On the seventh day the dove is sent out ; by sevens, Xisusthrus

192———————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

takes “jugs of wine” for the altar, &c. Why such coincidence? And yet we are told by, and bound to believe in, the European Orientalists, when passing judgment alike upon the Babylonian and Aryan chronology they call them “extravagant and fanciful !” Nevertheless, while they give us no explanation of, nor have they ever noticed, as far as we know, the strange identity in the totals of the Semitic, Chaldean, and Aryan Hindu chronology, the students of Occult Philosophy find the following fact extremely suggestive. While the period of the reign of the 10 Babylonian antediluvian kings is given as 432,000 years,* the duration of the postdiluvian Kali-yug is also given as 432,000, while the four ages or the divine Maha-yug, yield in their totality 4,320,000 years. Why should they, if fanciful and “extravagant,” give the identical figures, when neither the Aryans nor the Babylonians have surely borrowed anything from each other ! We invite the attention of our occultists to the three figures given—4 standing for the perfect square, 3 for the triad (the seven universal and the seven individual principles), and 2 the symbol of our illusionary world, a figure ignored and rejected by Pythagoras.

    It is in the Upanishads and the Vedanta though, that we have to look for the best corroborations of the occult teachings. In the mystical doctrine the Rahasya, or the Upanishads—” the only Veda of all thoughtful Hindus in the present day,” as
————————————————————
* See “Babylonia,” by George Smith, p. 36. Here again, as with the Manus and 10 Prajapatis and the 10 Sephiroths in the Book of Numbers—they dwindle down to seven!

193———————————————————— THE SEPTENARY PRINCIPLE.

Monier Williams is made to confess, every word, as its very name implies,* has a secret meaning underlying it. This meaning can be fully realized only by him who has a full knowledge of Prana, the ONE LIFE, “the nave to which are attached the seven spokes of the Universal Wheel.” (Hymn to Prana, Atharva-Veda, XI. 4.)

    Even European Orientalists agree that all the systems in India assign to the human body: (a) an exterior or gross body (sthula-sarira); (b) an inner or shadowy body (sukshma), or linga-sarira (the vehicle), the two cemented with—c, life (jiv or Karana sarira, “causal body”).† These the occult system or esotericism divides into seven, farther adding to these—kama, manas, buddhi and atman. The Nyaya philosophy when treating of Prameyas (by which the objects and subjects of Praman are to be correctly understood) includes among the 12 the seven “root principles.” (see ixth Sutra), which are 1, soul (atman), and 2 its superior spirit Jivatman; 3, body (sarira); 4, senses (indriya); 5, activity or will (pravritti); 6, mind (manas); 7, Intellection (Buddhi). The seven Padarthas (inquiries or predicates of existing things) of Kanada in the Vaise-
————————————————————
*  Upanishad means, according to Brahminical authority, “to conquer ignorance by revealing the secret spiritual knowledge.” According to Monier Williams, the title is derived from the root sad with the prepositions upa and ni, and implies “something mystical that underlies or is beneath the surface.”
† This Karana-sarira is often mistaken by the uninitiated for Linga-sarira, and since it is described as the inner rudimentary or latent embryo of the body, confounded with it. But the Occultists regard it as the life (body) or Jiv, which disappears at death is withdrawn—leaving the 1st and 3rd principles to disintegrate and return to their elements.

194———————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

shikas, refer in the occult doctrine to the seven qualities or attributes of the seven principles. Thus: 1, substance (dravya) refers to body or sthula-sarira, 2, quality or property (guna) to the life principle, jiv; 3, action or act (karman) to the Linga-sarira; 4, Community or commingling of properties (Samanya) to Kamarupa; 5, personality or conscious individuality ( Visesha) to Manas; 6, co-inherence or perpetual intimate relation (Samuvuya) to Buddhi, the inseparable vehicle of Atman; 7, non-existence or non-being in the sense of, and as separate from, objectivity or substance (abhava)—to the highest monad or Atman.

    Thus, whether we view the ONE as the Vedic Purusha or Brahman (neuter) the “all-expanding essence;” or as the universal spirit, the “light of lights” (jyotisham jyotih) the TOTAL independent of all relation, of the Upanishads; or as the Paramatman of the Vedanta; or again as Kanada’s Adrishta, “the unseen Force,” or divine atom; or as Prakriti, the “eternally existing essence,” of Kapila—we find in all these impersonal universal Principles the latent capability of evolving out of themselves “six rays” (the evolver being the seventh). The third aphorism of the Sankhya-Karika, which says of Prakriti that it is the “root and substance of all things,” and no production, but itself a producer of “seven things, which produced by it, become also producers,” has a purely occult meaning.

    What are the “producers” evoluted from this universal root-principle, Mula-prakriti or undifferentiated primeval cosmic matter, which evolves out

195 ————————————————————THE SEPTENARY PRINCIPLE.

of itself consciousness and mind, and is generally called “Prakriti ” and amulam mulam, “ the rootless root,” and Aryakta, the “unevolved evolver,” &c.? This primordial tattwa or “eternally existing ‘that,’”the unknown essence, is said to produce as a first producer, 1, Buddhi—“intellect”— whether we apply the latter to the 6th macrocosmic or microcosmic principle. This first produced produces in its turn (or is the source of) Ahankara, “self- consciousness” and manas “mind.” The reader will please always remember that the Mahat or great source of these two internal faculties, “Buddhi” per se, can have neither self-consciousness nor mind; viz., the 6th principle in man can preserve an essence of personal self-consciousness or “personal individuality” only by absorbing within itself its own waters, which have run through that finite faculty; for Ahankara, that is the perception of “I,” or the sense of one’s personal individuality, justly represented by the term “Ego-ism,” belongs to the second, or rather the third, production out of the seven, viz., to the 5th principle, or Manas. It is the latter which draws “as the web issues from the spider” along the thread of Prakriti, the “root principle,” the four following subtle elementary principles or particles—Tanmatras, out of which “third class,” the Mahabhutas or the gross elementary principles, or rather sarira and rupas, are evolved—the kama, linga, Jiva and sthula-sarira. The three gun as of Prakriti “—the Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas (purity, passionate activity, and ignorance or darkness)— spun into a triple-stranded cord or “rope,” pass through the seven, or rather six, human principles.

196———————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

It depends on the 5th—Manas or Ahankara, the “I ”—to thin the guna, “rope,” into one thread— the sattwa; and thus by becoming one with the “unevolved evolver,” win immortality or eternal conscious existence. Otherwise it will be again resolved into its Mahabhautic essence; so long as the triple-stranded rope is left unstranded, the spirit (the divine monad) is bound by the presence of the gunas in the principles “like an animal” (purusha pasu). The spirit, atman or jivatman (the 7th and 6th principles), whether of the macro- or microcosm, though bound by these gunas during the objective manifestation of universe or man, is yet nirguna—i.e., entirely free from them. Out of the three producers or evolvers, Prakriti, Buddhi and Ahankara, it is but the latter that can be caught (when man is concerned) and destroyed when personal. The “divine monad” is aguna (devoid of qualities), while Prakriti, once that from passive Mula-prakriti it has become avyakta (an active evolver) is gunavat—endowed with qualities. With the latter, Purusha or Atman can have nought to do (of course being unable to perceive it in its gunuvatic state); with the former—or Mula-prakriti or undifferentiated cosmic essence— it has, since it is one with it and identical.

    The Atma Bodha, or “knowledge of soul,” a tract written by the great Sankaracharya, speaks distinctly of the seven principles in man (see 14th verse). They are called therein the five sheaths (panchakosa) in which is enclosed the divine monad—the Atman, and Buddhi, the 7th and 6th principles, or the individuated soul when made distinct (through avidya, maya and the gunas) from the supreme soul—

197———————————————————— THE SEPTENARY PRINCIPLE.

Parabrahm. The 1st sheath, called Ananda-maya—the “illusion of supreme bliss”—is the manas or fifth principle of the occultists, when united with Buddhi; the 2nd sheath is Vjnana-maya-kosa, the case or “envelope of self-delusion,” the in manas when self-deluded into the belief of the personal “I,”or ego, with its vehicle. The 3rd, the Mano-maya sheath, composed of “illusionary mind” associated with the organs of action and will, is the Kamarupa and Linga-sarira combined, producing an illusive “I” or Mayavi-rupa. The 4th sheath is called Prana-maya, illusionary life,” our second life principle or jiv, wherein resides life, the “breathing” sheath. The 5th kosa is called Anna-maya, or the sheath supported by food—our gross material body. All these sheaths produce other smaller sheaths, or six attributes or qualities each, the seventh being always the root sheath; and the Atman or spirit passing through all these subtle ethereal bodies like a thread, is called the “thread-soul” or sutratman.

    We may conclude with the above demonstration. Verily the Esoteric doctrine may well be called in its turn the “thread-doctrine,” since, like Sutratman or Pranatman, it passes through and strings together all the ancient philosophical religious systems, and, what is more, reconciles and explains them. For though seeming so unlike externally, they have but one foundation, and of that the extent, depth, breadth and nature are known to those who have become, like the “Wise Men of the East,” adepts in Occult Science.
                                                                                                                                                                      H. P. BLAVATSKY.

PERSONAL AND IMPERSONAL GOD

AT the outset I shall request my readers (such of them at least as are not acquainted with the Cosmological theories of the Idealistic thinkers of Europe) to examine John Stuart Mill’s Cosmological speculations as contained in his examination of Sir William Hamilton’s philosophy, before attempting to understand the Adwaita doctrine; and I beg to inform them beforehand that in explaining the main principles of the said doctrine, I am going to use, as far as it is convenient to do so, the phraseology adopted by English psychologists of the Idealistic school of thought. In dealing with the phenomena of our present plane of existence John Stuart Mill ultimately came to the conclusion that matter, or the so-called external phenomena, are but the creation of our mind; they are the mere appearances of a particular phase of our subjective self, and of our thoughts, volitions, sensations and emotions which in their totality constitute the basis of that Ego. Matter then is the permanent possibility of sensations, and the so-called Laws of matter are, properly speaking, the Laws which govern the succession and coexistence of our states of consciousness. Mill further holds that properly speaking there is no

199————————————————————PERSONAL AND IMPERSONAL GOD

noumenal Ego. The very idea of a mind existing separately as an entity, distinct from the states of consciousness which are supposed to inhere in it, is in his opinion illusory, as the idea of an external object, which is supposed to be perceived by our senses.

    Thus the ideas of mind and matter, of subject and object, of the Ego and external world, are really evolved from the aggregation of our mental states which are the only realities so far as we are concerned.

    The chain of our mental states or states of consciousness is “a double headed-monster,” according to Professor Bain, which has two distinct aspects, one objective and the other subjective. Mr. Mill has paused here, confessing that psychological analysis did not go any further; the mysterious link which connects together the train of our states of consciousness and gives rise to our Ahankaram in this condition of existence, still remains au incomprehensible mystery to Western psychologists, though its existence is but dimly perceived in the subjective phenomena of memory and expectation.

    On the other hand, the great physicists of Europe are gradually coming to the conclusion* that mind is the product of matter, or that it is one of the attributes of matter in some of its conditions. It would appear, therefore, from the speculations of Western psychologists that matter is evolved from mind and that mind is evolved from matter. These two propositions are apparently irreconcil-
————————————————————
 * See Tyndall’s Belfast Address.—S. R.

200———————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

able. Mill and Tyndall have admitted that Western science is yet unable to go deeper into the question. Nor is it likely to solve the mystery hereafter, unless it calls Eastern occult science to its aid and takes a more comprehensive view of the capabilities of the real subjective self of man and the various aspects of the great objective universe. The great Adwaitee philosophers of ancient Aryavarta have examined the relationship between subject and object in every condition of existence in this solar system in which this differentiation is presented. Just as a human being is composed of seven principles, differentiated matter in the solar system exists in seven different conditions. These different states of matter do not all come within the range of our present objective consciousness. But they can be objectively perceived by the spiritual Ego in man. To the liberated spiritual monad of man, or to the Dhyan Chohans, every thing that is material in every condition of matter is an object of perception. Further, Pragna or the capacity of perception exists in seven different aspects corresponding to the seven conditions of matter. Strictly speaking, there are but six states of matter, the so-called seventh state being the aspect of cosmic matter in its original undifferentiated condition. Similarly there are six states of differentiated Pragna, the seventh state being a condition of perfect unconsciousness. By differentiated Pragna, I mean the condition in which Pragna is split up into various states of consciousness. Thus we have six states of consciousness, either objective or subjective for the time being, as

201—————————————————— PERSONAL AND IMPERSONAL GOD.

the case may be, and a perfect state of unconsciousness, which is the beginning and the end of all conceivable states of consciousness, corresponding to the states of differentiated matter and its original undifferentiated basis which is the beginning and the end of all cosmic evolutions. It will be easily seen that the existence of consciousness is necessary for the differentiation between subject and object. Hence these two phases are presented in six different conditions, and in the last state there being no consciousness as above stated, the differentiation in question ceases to exist. The number of these various conditions is different in different systems of philosophy. But whatever may be the number of divisions, they all lie between perfect unconsciousness at one end of the line and our present state of consciousness or Bahirpragna at the other end. To understand the real nature of these different states of consciousness, I shall request my readers to compare the consciousness of the ordinary man with the consciousness of the astral man, and again compare the latter with the consciousness of the spiritual Ego in man. In these three conditions the objective universe is not the same. But the difference between the Ego and the non-Ego is common to all these conditions. Consequently, admitting the correctness of Mill’s reasoning as regards the subject and object of our present plane of consciousness, the great Adwaitee thinkers of India have extended the same reasoning to other states of consciousness, and came to the conclusion that the various conditions of the Ego and the non-Ego

202 —————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

were but the appearances of one and the same entity—the ultimate state of unconsciousness. This entity is neither matter nor spirit; it is neither Ego nor non-Ego; and it is neither object nor subject. In the language of Hindu philosophers it is the original and eternal combination of Purusha and Prakriti. As the Adwaitees hold that an external object is merely the product of our mental states, Prakriti is nothing more than illusion, and Purush is the only reality ; it is the one existence which remains eternal in this universe of Ideas. This entity then is the Parabrahmam of the Adwaitees. Even if there were to be a personal God with anything like a material Upadhi (physical basis of whatever form), from the standpoint of an Adwaitee there will he as much reason to doubt his noumenal existence as there would be in the case of any other object. In their opinion, a conscious God cannot be the origin of the universe, as his Ego would be the effect of a previous cause, if the word conscious conveys but its ordinary meaning. They cannot admit that the grand total of all the states of consciousness in the universe is their deity, as these states are constantly changing and as cosmic idealism ceases during Pralaya. There is only one permanent condition in the universe which is the state of perfect unconciousness, bare Chidakasam (field of consciousness) in fact.

    When my readers once realize the fact that this grand universe is in reality but a huge aggregation of various states of consciousness, they will not be surprised to find that the ultimate state of

203 —————————————————PERSONAL AND IMPERSONAL GOD.

unconsciousness is considered as Parabrahmam by the Adwaitees.

    The idea of a God, Deity, Iswar, or an impersonal God (if consciousness is one of his attributes) involves the idea of Ego or non-Ego in some shape or other, and as every conceivable Ego or non-Ego is evolved from this primitive element (I use this word for want of a better one) the existence of an extra-cosmic god possessing such. attributes prior to this condition is absolutely inconceivable. Though I have been speaking of this element as the condition of unconsciousness, it is, properly speaking, the Chidakasam or Chnmatra of the Hindu philosophers which contains within itself the potentiality of every condition of “Pragna,” and which results as consciousness on the one hand and the objective universe on the other, by the operation of its latent Chichakti (the power which generates thought).

    Before proceeding to discuss the nature of Parabrahmam. It is to be stated that in the opinion of Adwaitees, the Upanishads and the Brahmasutras fully support their views on the subject. It is distinctly affirmed in the Upanishads that Parabrahmam, which is but the bare potentiality of Pragna,* is not an aspect of Pragna or Ego in any shape, and that it has neither life nor consciousness. The reader will be able to ascertain that such is really the case on examining the Mundaka and Mandukya Upanishads. The language used here and there in the Upanishads is apt to mislead one into the belief that such
—————————————————
* The power or the capacity that gives rise to perception.

204 —————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

language points to the existence of a conscious Iswar. But the necessity for such language will perhaps be rendered clear from the following considerations.

    From a close examination of Mill’s cosmological theory the difficulty will be clearly seen referred to above, of satisfactorily accounting for the generation of conscious states in any human being from the stand-point of the said theory. It is generally stated that sensations arise in us from the action of the external objects around us : they are the effects of impressions made on our senses by the objective world in which we exist. This is simple enough to an ordinary mind, however difficult it may be to account for the transformation of a cerebral nerve-current into a state of consciousness.

    But from the stand-point of Mill’s theory we have no proof of the existence of any external object; even the objective existence of our own senses is not a matter of certainty to us. How, then, are we to account for and explain the origin of our mental states, if they are the only entities existing in this world? No explanation is really given by saying that one mental state gives rise to another mental state, to a certain extent at all events, under the operation of the so-called psychological “Laws of Association.” Western psychology honestly admits that its analysis has not gone any further. It may be inferred, however, from the said theory that there would be no reason for saying that a material upadhi (basis) is necessary for the existence of mind or states of consciousness.

    As is already indicated, the Aryan psychologists

205—————————————————PERSONAL AND IMPERSONAL GOD.

have traced this current of mental states to its source—the eternal Chinmatra existing everywhere. When the time for evolution comes this germ of Pragna unfolds itself and results ultimately as Cosmic ideation. Cosmic ideas are the conceptions of all the conditions of existence in the Cosmos existing in what may be called the universal mind (the demiurgic mind of the Western Kabalists).

    This Chinmatra exists as it were at every geometrical point of the infinite Chidakasam. This principle then has two general aspects. Considered as something objective it is the eternal Asath— Mulaprakriti or Undifferentiated Cosmic matter. From a subjective point of view it may be looked upon in two ways. It is Chidakasam when considered as the field of Cosmic ideation; and it is Chinmatra when considered as the germ of Cosmic ideation. These three aspects constitute the highest Trinity of the Aryan Adwaitee philosophers. It will be readily seen that the last-mentioned aspect of the principle in question is far more important to us than the other two aspects ; for, when looked upon in this aspect the principle under consideration seems to embody within itself the great Law of Cosmic Evolution, And therefore the Adwaitee philosophers have chiefly considered it in this light, and explained their cosmogony from a subjective point of view. In doing so, however, they cannot avoid the necessity of speaking of a universal mind (and this is Brahma, the Creator) and its ideation. But it ought not to be inferred therefrom that this universal mind necessarily belongs to an Omnipresent living conscious Creator, simply because in

206  —————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

ordinary parlance a mind is always spoken of in connection with a particular living being. It cannot be contended that a material Uphadi is indispensable for the existence of mind or mental states when the objective universe itself is, so far as we are concerned, the result of our states of consciousness. Expressions implying the existence of a conscious Iswar which arc to be found here and there in the Upanishads should not therefore be literally construed.

    It now remains to be seen how Adwaitees account for the origin of mental states in a particular individual. Apparently the mind of a particular human being is not the universal mind. Nevertheless Cosmic ideation is the real source of the states of consciousness in every individual. Cosmic ideation exists everywhere; but when placed under restrictions by a material Upadhi it results as the consciousness of the individual inhering in such Upadhi. Strictly speaking, an Adwaitee will not admit the objective existence of this material Upadhi. From his stand-point it is Maya or illusion which exists as a necessary condition of Pragna. But to avoid confusion, I shall use the ordinary language; and to enable my readers to grasp my meaning clearly the following simile may be adopted. Suppose a bright light is placed in the centre with a curtain around it. The nature of the light that penetrates through the curtain and becomes visible to a person standing outside depends upon the nature of the curtain. If several such curtains are thus successively placed around the light, it will have to penetrate

207  —————————————————PERSONAL AND IMPERSONAL GOD.

through all of them; and a person standing outside will only perceive as much light as is not intercepted by all the curtains. The central light becomes dimmer and dimmer as curtain after curtain is placed before the observer; and as curtain after curtain is removed the light becomes brighter and brighter until it reaches its natural brilliancy. Similarly, universal mind or Cosmic ideation becomes more and more limited and modified by the various Upadhis of which a human being is composed ; and when the action or influence of these various Upadhis is successively controlled, the mind of the individual human being is placed en rapport with the universal mind and his ideation is lost in Cosmic ideation.

    As I have already said, these Upadhis are strictly speaking the conditions of the gradual development or evolution of Bahipragna—or consciousness in the present plane of our existence—from the original and eternal Chinmatra, which is the seventh principle in man, and the Parabrahmam of the Adwaitees.

    This then is the purport of the Adwaitce philosophy on the subject under consideration, and it is, in my humble opinion, in harmony with the Arhat doctrine relating to the same subject. The latter doctrine postulates the existence of Cosmic matter in an undifferentiated condition throughout the infinite expanse of space. Space and time are but its aspects, and Purush, the seventh principle of the universe, has its latent life in this ocean of Cosmic matter. The doctrine in question explains Cosmogony from an objective point of view.

208  ——————————————————  FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

When the period of activity arrives, portions of the who’s differentiate according to the latent law. When this differentiation has commenced, the concealed wisdom or latent Chichakti acts in the universal mind, and Cosmic energy or Fohat forms the manifested universe in accordance with the conceptions generated in the universal mind out of the differentiated principles of Cosmic matter. This manifested universe constitutes a solar system. When the period of Pralaya comes, the process of differentiation stops and Cosmic ideation ceases to exist; and at the time of Brahmapralaya or Mahapralaya the particles of matter lose all differentiation, and the matter that exists in the solar system returns to its original undifferentiated condition. The latent design exists in the one unborn eternal atom, the centre which exists everywhere and nowhere; and this is the one life that exists everywhere. Now, it will be easily seen that the undifferentiated Cosmic matter, Purush, and the ONE LIFE of the Arhat philosophers, are the Mulaprakriti, Chidakasam, and Chinmatra of the Adwaitee philosophers. As regards Cosmogony, the Arhat stand-point is objective, and the Adwaitee standpoint is subjective. The Arhal Cosmogony accounts for the evolution of the manifested solar system from undifferentiated Cosmic matter, and Adwaitee Cosmogony accounts for the evolution of Bahipragna from the original Chinmatra. As the different conditions of differentiated Cosmic matter are but the different aspects of the various conditions of Pragna, the Adwaitee Cosmogony is but the complement of the Arhat Cosmogony. The

209 ————————————————— PERSONAL AND IMPERSONAL GOD.

eternal principle is precisely the same in both the systems, and they agree in denying the existence of an extra-Cosmic God.

    The Arhats call themselves Atheists, and they are justified in doing so if theism inculcates the existence of a conscious God governing the universe by his will-power. Under such circumstance the Adwaitee will come under the same denomination. Atheism and theism are words of doubtful import, and until their meaning is definitely ascertained it would be better not to use them in connection with any system of philosophy.
                                                                                                                                                                                      T. SUBBA ROW.

PRAKRITI AND PARUSHA

PRAKRITI may be looked upon either as Maya when considered as the Upadhi of Parabrahmam or as Avidya when considered as the Upadhi of Jivatma (7th principle in man).* Avidya is ignorance or illusion arising from Maya. The term Maya, though sometimes used as a synonym for Avidya, is, properly speaking, applicable to Prakriti only. There is no difference between Prakriti, Maya and Sakti; and the ancient Hindu philosophers made no distinction whatsoever between Matter and Force. In support of these assertions I may refer the learned hermit to “Swetaswatara Upanishad” and its commentary by Sankaracharya. In case we adopt the fourfold division of the Adwaitee philosophers, it will be clearly seen that Jagrata, † Swapna ‡ and Sushupti Avasthas § are the results of Avidya, and that Vyswanara || Hiranyagarbha ¶ and Sutratma** are
 ——————————————————  
* Upadhi—vehicle.
† Jagrata—waking state, or a condition of external perception.
‡  Swapna—dreamy state, or a condition of clairvoyance in the astral plane.
§ Sushupti—a state of extasis; and Avastas—states or conditions of Pragna.
||  Vyswanara_the magnetic fire that pervades the manifested solar system— the roost objective aspect of the ONE LIFE.
¶  Hiranyagarbha—the one life as manifested in the plane of astral Light.
** Sutratma—the Eternal germ of the manifested universe existing in the field of Mulaprakriti.

211 ——————————————————   PRAKRITI AND PARUSHA.

the manifestations of Parabrahmam in Maya or Prakriti. In drawing a distinction between Avidya and Prakriti, I am merely following the authority of all the great Adwaitee philosophers of Aryavarta. It will be sufficient for me to refer to the first chapter of the celebrated Vidantic treatise, the Panchadasi.

    In truth, Prakriti and Purusha are but the two aspects of the same ONE REALITY. As our great Sankaracharya truly observes at the close of his commentary on the 23rd Sutra of the first chapter of the Brahma sutras, “Parabrahmam is Karta (Purush), as there is no other Adhishtatha,* and Parabrahmam is Prakriti, there being no other Upadanam.” This sentence clearly indicates the relation between “the One Life” and “the One Element” of the Arha-philosophers. This will elucidate the meaning of the statement so often quoted by Adwaitees—“Sarvam Khalvitham Brahma’ ?† and also of what is meant by saying that Brahmam is the Upadanakarnam (material cause) of the Universe.
                                                                                                                                                                           T. SUBBA ROW.
——————————————————
* Adishtatha—that which inheres in another principle—the active agent working in Prakriti.
 † Everything in the universe is Brahms.

MORALITY AND PANTHEISM

QUESTIONS have been raised in several quarters as to the inefficiency of Pantheism (which term is intended to include Esoteric Buddhism, Adwaitee Vedantism, and other similar religious systems) to supply a sound basis of morality.

    The philosophical assimilation of meum and teum, it is urged, must of necessity be followed by their practical confusion, resulting in the sanction of cruelty, robbery, &c. This line of argument points, however, most unmistakably to the co-existence of the objection with an all but utter ignorance of the systems objected to, in the critic’s mind, as we shall show by-and-by. The ultimate sanction of morality, as is well known, is derived from a desire for the attainment of happiness and escape from misery. But schools differ in their estimate of happiness. Exoteric religions base their morality on the hope of reward and fear of punishment at the hands of an Omnipotent Ruler of the Universe by following the rules he has at his pleasure laid down for the obedience of his helpless subjects ; in some cases, however, religions of later growth have made morality to depend on the sentiment of gratitude to that Ruler for benefits received. The worthlessness, not to speak of the mischievousness, of

213    ——————————————————  MORALITY AND PANTHEISM.

such systems of morality is almost self-evident. As a type of morality founded on hope and fear, we shall take an instance from the Christian Bible:
“He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord.” The duty of supporting the poor is here made to depend upon prudential motives of laying by for a time when the “giver to the poor” will be incapable of taking care of himself. But the Mahabharata says that “He that desireth a return for his good deeds loseth all merit; he is like a merchant bartering his goods.” The true springs of morality lose their elasticity under the pressure of such criminal selfishness; all pure and unselfish natures will fly away from it in disgust.

    To avoid such consequences attempts have been made by some recent reformers of religion to establish morality upon the sentiment of gratitude to the Lord. But it requires no deep consideration to find that, in their endeavours to shift the basis of morality, these reformers have rendered morality entirely baseless. A man has to do what is represented to be a thing “dear unto the Lord” out of gratitude for the many blessings He has heaped upon him. But as a matter of fact he finds that the Lord has heaped upon him curses as well as blessings. A helpless orphan is expected to be grateful to him for having removed the props of his life, his parents, because he is told in consolation that such a calamity is but apparently an evil, but in reality the All-Merciful has underneath it hidden the greatest possible good. With equal reason might a preacher of the Avenging Ahriman exhort men to believe that under the apparent

214 ——————————————————FIVE YEAR’S OF THEOSOPHY.

blessings of the “Merciful” Father there lurks the serpent of evil.
    The modern Utilitarians, though the range of their vision is so narrow, have sterner logic in their teachings. That which tends to a man’s happiness is good, and must be followed, and the contrary shunned as evil. So far so good. But the practical application of the doctrine is fraught with mischief. Cribbed, cabined, and confined, by rank Materialism, within the short space between birth and death, the Utilitarians’ scheme of happiness is merely a deformed torso, which cannot certainly be considered as the fair goddess of our devotion.

     The only scientific basis of morality is to be sought for in the soul-consoling doctrines of Lord Buddha or Sri Sankaracharya. The starting-point of the “pantheistic” (we use the word for want of a better one) system of morality is a clear perception of the unity of the one energy operating in the manifested Cosmos, the grand result which it is incessantly striving to produce, and the affinity of the immortal human spirit and its latent powers with that energy, and its capacity to cooperate with the one life in achieving its mighty object.

    Now knowledge or jnanam is divided into two classes by Adwaitee philosophers—Paroksha and Aparoksha. The former kind of knowledge consists in intellectual assent to a stated proposition, the latter in the actual realization of it. The object which a Buddhist or Adwaitee Yogi sets before himself is the realization of the oneness of exist-

215   —————————————————— MORALITY AND PANTHEISM.

ence, and the practice of morality is the most powerful means to that end, as we proceed to show. The principal obstacle to the realization of this oneness is the inborn habit of man of always placing himself at the centre of the Universe. Whatever a man might act, think, or feel, the irrepressible personality is sure to be the central figure. This, as will appear on reflection, is that which prevents every individual from filling his proper sphere in existence, where he only is exactly in place and no other individual is. The realization of this harmony is the practical or objective aspect of the GRAND PROBLEM. And the practice of morality is the effort to find out this sphere; morality, indeed, is the Ariadne’s clue in the Cretan labyrinth in which man is placed. From the study of the sacred philosophy preached by Lord Buddha or Sri Sankara paroksha knowledge (or shall we say belief?), in the unity of existence is derived, but without the practice of morality that knowledge cannot be converted into the highest kind of knowledge, or aproksha jnanam, and thus lead to the attainment of mukti. It availeth naught to intellectually grasp the notion of your being everything and Brahma, if it is not realized in practical acts of life. To confuse meum and teum in the vulgar sense is but to destroy the harmony of existence by a false assertion of “ I,” and is as foolish as the anxiety to nourish the legs at the expense of the arms. You cannot be one with all, unless all your acts, thoughts, and feelings synchronize with the onward march of Nature. What is meant by the Brahmâjnani being beyond the reach of Karma,

216  ——————————————————FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

can be fully realized only by a man who has found out his exact position in harmony with the One Life in Nature; that man sees how a Brahmajnani can act only in unison with Nature, and never in discord with it: to use the phraseology of ancient writers on Occultism, a Brahmajnani is a real “co-worker with Nature.” Not only European Sanskritists, but also exoteric Yogis, fall into the grievous mistake of supposing that, in the opinion of our sacred writers, a human being can escape the operation of the law of Karma by adopting a condition of masterly inactivity, entirely losing sight of the fact that even a rigid abstinence from physical acts does not produce inactivity on the higher astral and spiritual planes. Sri Sankara has very conclusively proved, in his commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, that such a supposition is nothing short of a delusion. The great teacher shows there that forcibly repressing the physical body from working does not free one from vasana or vritti—the inherent inclination of the mind to work. There is a tendency, in every department of Nature, for an act to repeat itself; the Karma acquired in the last preceding birth is always trying to forge fresh links in the chain, and thereby lead to continued material existence ;—and this tendency can only be counteracted by unselfishly performing all the duties appertaining to the sphere in which a person is born; such a course alone can produce chitta suddhi, (purification of the mind), without which the capacity of perceiving spiritual truths can never be acquired.

    A few words must here be said about the

 217   —————————————————MORALITY AND PANTHEISM.

physical inactivity of the Yogi or the Mahatma. Inactivity of the physical body (sthula sarira) does not indicate a condition of inactivity either on the astral or the spiritual plane of action. The human spirit is in its highest state of activity in samadhi, (highest trance) and not, as is generally supposed, in a dormant, quiescent condition. And, moreover, it will be easily seen, by any one who examines the nature of occult dynamics, that a given amount of energy expended on the spiritual or astral plane is productive of far greater results than the same amount expended on the physical objective plane of existence. When an Adept has placed himself en rapport with the universal mind he becomes a real power in Nature. Even on the objective plane of existence the difference between brain and muscular energy, in their capacity of producing widespread and far-reaching results, can he very easily perceived. The amount of physical energy expended by the discoverer of the steam-engine might not have been more than that expended by a hardworking day-labourer. But the practical results of the labourer’s work can never be compared with the results achieved by the discovery of the steam-engine. Similarly, the ultimate effects of spiritual energy are infinitely greater than those of intellectual energy.

    From the above considerations it is abundantly clear that the initiatory training of a true Vedantin Raj Yogi must be the nourishing of a sleepless and ardent desire of doing all in his power for the good of mankind on the ordinary physical plane, his activity being transferred, however, to the higher

218  —————————————————— FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

astral and spiritual planes as his development proceeds. in course of time, as the Truth becomes realized, the situation is rendered quite clear to the Yogi, and he is placed beyond the criticism of any ordinary man. The Mahanirvan Tantra says :—
                                                                                         
Charanti trigunatite ko vidhir ko ishedhava.

    “For one, walking beyond the three gunas—Satva (feeling of gratification), Rajas (passional activity) and Tamas (inertness)—what injunction or what restriction is there? “—in the consideration of men, walled in on all sides by the objective plane of existence. This does not mean that a Mahatma can or will ever neglect the laws of morality, but that he, having unified his individual nature with Great Nature herself, is constitutionally incapable of violating any one of the laws of nature, and no man can constitute himself a judge of the conduct of the Great one without knowing the laws of all the planes of Nature’s activity. (As honest men are  honest without the least consideration of the) criminal law, so a Mahatma is moral without reference to the laws of morality.

    These are, however, sublime topics : we shall before conclusion notice some other considerations which lead the ordinary “pantheist” to the true foundation of morality. Happiness has been defined by John Stuart Mill as the state of absence of opposition. Manu gives the definition in more forcible terms
                                                             Sarvam paravasam duhkham
                                                             Sarva matmavasam sukham
                                                             Idam jnayo samasena
                                                             Lakshanam sukhaduhkhayo.

219   ——————————————————   MORALITY AND PANTHEISM.

    “Every kind of subjugation to another is pain, and subjugation to one’s self is happiness : in brief, this is to be known as the characteristic marks of the two.” Now, it is universally admitted that the whole system of Nature is moving in a particular direction, and this direction, we are taught, is determined by the composition of two forces—namely, the one acting from that pole of existence ordinarily called “matter” towards the other pole called “spirit,” and the other in the opposite direction. The very fact that Nature is moving shows that these two forces are not equal in magnitude. The plane on which the activity of the first force predominates is called in occult treatises the “ascending arc,” and the corresponding plane of the activity of the other force is styled the “descending arc.” A little reflection will show that the work of evolution begins on the descending arc and works its way upwards through the ascending arc. From this it follows that the force directed towards spirit is the one which must, though not without hard struggle, ultimately prevail. This is the great directing energy of Nature, and, although disturbed by the operation of the antagonistic force, it is this that gives the law to her; the other is merely its negative aspect, for convenience regarded as a separate agent. If an individual attempts to move in a direction other than that in which Nature is moving, that individual is sure to be crushed, sooner or later, by the enormous pressure of the opposing force. We need not say that such a result would be the very reverse of pleasurable. The only way, therefore, in which happiness might

220  ——————————————————   FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

be attained is by merging one’s nature in great Mother Nature, and following the direction in which she herself is moving: this again can only be accomplished by assimilating men’s individual conduct with the triumphant force of Nature, the other force being always overcome with terrific catastrophs. The effort to assimilate the individual with the universal law is popularly known as the practice of morality. Obedience to this universal law, after ascertaining it, is true religion, which has been defined by Lord Buddha “as the realization of the True.”

    An example will serve to illustrate the position. Can a practical pantheist, or, in other words, an occultist, utter a falsehood? Now, it will be readily admitted that life manifests itself by the power of acquiring sensation, temporary dormancy of that power being suspended animation. If a man receives a particular series of sensations and pretends they are other than they really are, the result is that he exercises his will-power in opposition to a law of Nature on which, as we have shown, life depends, and thereby becomes suicide on a minor scale. Space prevents further discussion, but all the ten deadly sins mentioned by Manu and Buddha can be satisfactorily dealt with in the light sought to be focussed here.

                                                                                                                  M0HINI M. CHATTERJI.

OCCULT STUDY

THE practical bearing of occult teaching on ordinary life is very variously interpreted by different students of the subject. For many Western readers of recent books on the esoteric doctrine, it even seems doubtful whether the teaching has any bearing on practical life at all. The proposal which it is supposed sometimes to convey, that all earnest inquirers should put themselves under the severe ascetic regimen followed by its regular Oriental disciples, is felt to embody a strain on the habits of modern civilization which only a few enthusiasts will be prepared to encounter. The mere intellectual charm of an intricate philosophy may indeed be enough to recommend the study to some minds, but a scheme of teaching that offers itself as a substitute for religious faith of the usual kind will be expected to yield some tangible results in regard to the future spiritual well-being of those who adopt it. Has occult philosophy nothing to give except to those who are in a position and willing to make a sacrifice in its behalf of all other objects in life? In that case it would indeed be useless to bring it out into the world. In reality the esoteric doctrine affords an almost infinite variety of opportunities for spiritual development, and no greater mistake could be made in connec-

222   ——————————————————  FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

tion with the present movement than to suppose the teaching of the Adepts merely addressed to persons capable of heroic self-devotion. Assuredly it does not discourage efforts in the direction of the highest achievement of occult progress, if any Western occultists may feel disposed to make them; but it is important for us all to keep clearly in view the lower range of possibilities connected with humbler aspirations.

    I believe it to be absolutely true that even the slightest attention seriously paid to the instructions now emanating from the Indian Adepts will generate results within the spiritual principles of those who render it—causes capable of producing appreciable consequences in a future state of existence. Any one who has sufficiently examined the doctrine of Devachan will readily follow the idea, for the nature of the spiritual existence which in the ordinary course of things must succeed each physical life, provides for the very considerable expansion of any aspirations towards real knowledge that may be set going on earth. I will recur to this point directly, when I have made clearer the general drift of the argument I am trying to unfold. At the one end of the scale of possibilities connected with occult study lies the supreme development of Adeptship; an achievement which means that the person reaching it has so violently stimulated his spiritual growth within a short period, as to have anticipated processes on which Nature, in her own deliberate way, would have spent a great procession of ages. At the other end of the scale lies the small result to which I have just alluded—a result

223      ——————————————————    OCCULT STUDY.

which may rather be said to establish a tendency in the direction of spiritual achievement than to embody such achievement. But between these two widely different results there is no hard and fast line that can be drawn at any place to make a distinct separation in the character of the consequences ensuing from devotion to occult pursuits. As the darkness of blackest night gives way by imperceptible degrees to the illumination of the brightest sunrise, so the spiritual consequences of emerging from the apathy either of pure materialism or of dull acquiescence in unreasonable dogmas, brighten by imperceptible degrees from the faintest traces of Devachanic improvement into the full blaze of the highest perfection human nature, can attain. Without assuming that the course of Nature which prescribes for each human Ego successive physical lives and successive periods of spiritual refreshment—without supposing that this course is altered by such moderate devotion to occult study as is compatible with the ordinary conditions of European life, it will nevertheless be seen how vast the consequences may ultimately be of impressing on that career of evolution a distinct tendency in the direction of supreme enlightenment, of that result which is described as the union of the individual soul with universal spirit.

    The explanations of the esoteric doctrine which have been publicly given, have shown that humanity in the mass has now attained a stage in the great evolutionary cycle from which it has the opportunity of growing upward towards final perfection. In the mass it is, of course, unlikely that

224 ——————————————————   FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

it will travel that road: final perfection is not a gift to be bestowed upon all, but to be worked for by those who desire it. It may be put within the theoretical reach of all; there may be no human creature living at this moment, of whom it can be said that the highest possibilities of Nature are impossible of attainment, but it does not follow by any means that every individual will attain the highest possibilities. Regarding each individual as one of the seeds of a great flower which throws out thousands of seeds, it is manifest that only a few, relatively to the great number, will become fully developed flowers in their turn. No unjust neglect awaits the majority. For each and every one the consequences of the remote future will be precisely proportioned to the aptitudes he develops, but only those can reach the goal who, with persistent effort carried out through a long series of lives, differentiate themselves in a marked degree from the general multitude. Now, that persistent effort must have a beginning, and granted the beginning, the persistence is not improbable. Within our own observation of ordinary life, good habits, even though they may not be so readily formed as bad ones, are not difficult to maintain in proportion to the difficulty of their commencement. For a moment it may be asked how this may be applied to a succession of lives separate from each other by a total oblivion of their details; but it really applies as directly to the succession of lives as to the succession of days within one life, which are separated from each other by as many nights. The certain operation of those affinities in the indivi-

225      ——————————————————    OCCULT STUDY.

dual Ego which are collectively described in the esoteric doctrine by the word Karma, must operate to pick up the old habits of character and thought, as life after life comes round, with the same certainty that the thread of memory in a living brain recovers, day after day, the impressions of those that have gone before. Whether a moral habit is thus deliberately engendered by an occult student in order that it may propagate itself through future ages, or whether it merely arises from unintelligent aspirations towards good, which happily for mankind are more widely spread than occult study as yet, the way it works in each case is the same. The unintelligent aspiration towards goodness propagates itself and leads to good lives in the future; the intelligent aspiration propagates itself in the same way plus the propagation of intelligence; and this distinction shows the gulf of difference which may exist between the growth of a human soul which merely drifts along the stream of time, and that of one which is consciously steered by an intelligent purpose throughout. The human Ego which acquires the habit of seeking for knowledge becomes invested, life after life, with the qualifications which ensure the success of such a search, until the final success, achieved at some critical period of its existence, carries it right up into the company of those perfected Egos which are the fully developed flowers only expected, according to our first metaphor, from a few of the thousand seeds. Now, it is clear that a slight impulse in a given direction, even on the physical plane does not produce the same effect as a stronger one; so, exactly in this matter of engendering

226  ——————————————————   FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

habits required to persist in their operation through a succession of lives, it is quite obvious that the strong impulse of a very ardent aspiration towards knowledge will be more likely than a weaker one to triumph over the so called accidents of Nature.

    This consideration brings us to the question of those habits in life which are more immediately associated in the popular views of the matter with the pursuit of occult science. It will be quite plain that the generation within his own nature by an occult student of affinities in the direction of spiritual progress, is a matter which has little if anything to do with the outer circumstances of his daily life. It cannot be dissociated from what may be called the outer circumstances of his moral life, for an occult student, whose moral nature is consciously ignoble, and who combines the pursuit of knowledge with the practice of wrong, becomes by that condition of things a student of sorcery rather than of true occultism—a candidate for satanic evolution instead of perfection. But at the same time the physical habits of life may be quite the reverse of ascetic, while all the while the thinking processes of the intellectual life are developing affinities which cannot fail in the results just seen to produce large ulterior consequences. Some misconception is very apt to arise here from the way in which frequent reference is made to the ascetic habits of those who purpose to become the regular chelas of Oriental Adepts. It is supposed that what is practised by the Master is necessarily recommended for all his pupils. Now this is far from being the case as regards the miscellaneous pupils

227      ——————————————————    OCCULT STUDY.

who are gathering round the occult teachers lately become known to public report. Certainly even in reference to their miscellaneous pupils the Adepts would not discountenance asceticism. As we saw just now, there is no hard line drawn across the scale on which are defined the varying consequences of occult study in all its varying degrees of intensity—so with ascetic practice, from the slightest habits of self-denial, which may engender a preference for spiritual over material gratification, up to the very largest developments of asceticism required as a passport to chelaship, no such practices can be quite without their consequences in the all-embracing records of Karma. But, broadly speaking, asceticism belongs to that species of effort which aims at personal chelaship, and that which contemplates the patient development of spiritual growth along the slow track of natural evolution claims no more, broadly speaking, than intellectual application. All that is asserted in regard to the opening now offered to those who have taken notice of the present opportunity, is, that they may now give their own evolution an impulse which they may not again have an opportunity of giving it with the same advantage to themselves if the present opportunity is thrown aside. True, it is most unlikely that any one advancing through Nature, life after life, under the direction of a fairly creditable Karma, will go on always without meeting sooner or later with the ideas that occult study implants. So that the occultist does not threaten those who turn aside from his teachings with any consequences that must necessarily be disastrous.

228  ——————————————————  FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

He only says that those who listen to them must necessarily derive advantage from so doing in exact proportion to the zeal with which they undertake the study and the purity of motive with which they promote it in others.

    Nor must it be supposed that those which have here been described as the lower range of possibilities in connection with occult study, are a mere fringe upon the higher possibilities, to be regarded as a relatively poor compensation accorded to those who do not feel equal to offering themselves for probation as regular chelas. It would be a grave misconception of the purpose with which the present stream of occult teaching has been poured into the world, if we were to think it a universal incitement to that course of action. It may be hazardous for any of us who are not initiates to speak with entire confidence of the intention of the Adepts, but all the external facts concerned with the growth and development of the Theosophical Society, show its purpose to be more directly related to the cultivation of spiritual aspirations over a wide area, than to the excitement of these with supreme intensity in individuals. There are considerations, indeed, which may almost be said to debar the Adepts from ever doing anything to encourage persons in whom this supreme intensity of excitement is possible, to take the very serious step of offering themselves as chelas. Directly that by doing this a man renders himself a candidate for something more than the maximum advantages that can flow to him through the operation of natural laws—directly that in this way he

229     ——————————————————    OCCULT STUDY.

claims to anticipate the most favourable course of Nature and to approach high perfection by violent and artificial processes, he at once puts himself in presence of many dangers which would never beset him if he contented himself with a favourable natural growth. It appears to be always a matter of grave consideration with the Adepts whether they will take the responsibility of encouraging any person who may not have it in him to succeed, to expose himself to these dangers. For any one who is determined to face them and is permitted to do so, the considerations put forward above in regard to the optional character of personal physical training fall to the ground. Those ascetic practices which a candidate for nothing more than the best natural evolution may undertake if he chooses, with the view of emphasizing his spiritual Karma to the utmost, become a sine qua non in regard to the very first step of his progress. But with such progress the present explanation is not specially concerned. Its purpose has been to show the beneficial effects which may flow to ordinary people living ordinary lives, from even that moderate devotion to occult philosophy which is compatible with such ordinary lives, and to guard against the very erroneous belief that occult science is a pursuit in which it is not worth while to engage, unless Adeptship is held out to the student as its ultimate result.
                                                                                                                                              LAY CHELA.

SOME INQUIRIES SUGGESTED BY MR.
SINNETT’S ‘ ESOTERIC BUDDHISM”

THE object of the following paper is to submit certain questions which have occurred to some English readers of “Esoteric Buddhism.” We have had the great advantage of hearing Mr. Sinnett himself explain many points which perplexed us; and it is with his sanction that we now venture to ask that such light as is permissible may be thrown upon some difficulties which, so far as we can discover, remain as yet unsolved. We have refrained from asking questions on subjects on which we understand that the Adepts forbid inquiry, and we respectfully hope that, as we approach the subject with a genuine wish to arrive at all the truth possible to us, our perplexities may be thought worthy of an authorized solution.

We begin, then, with some obvious scientific difficulties.

    1. Is the Nebular Theory, as generally held, denied by the Adepts? It seems hard to conceive of the alternate evolution from the sun’s central mass of planets, some of them visible and heavy, others invisible,—and apparently without weight, as they have no influence on the movements of the visible planets.

    2. And, further, the time necessary for the

231—————————————————— MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

manvantara even of one planetary chain, much more of all seven, seems largely to exceed the probable time during which the sun can retain heat, if it is merely a cooling mass, which derives no important accession of heat from without. Is some other view as regards the maintenance of the sun’s heat held by the Adepts?

    3. The different races which succeed each other on the earth are said to be separated by catastrophes, among which continental subsidences occupy a prominent place. Is it meant that these subsidences are so sudden and unforeseen as to sweep away great nations in an hour? Or, if not, how is it that no appreciable trace is left of such high civilizations as are described in the past? Is it supposed that our present European civilization, with its offshoots all over the globe, can be destroyed by any inundation or conflagration which leaves life still existing on the earth? Are our existing arts and languages doomed to perish? or was it only the earlier races who were thus profoundly disjoined from one another?

    4. The moon is said to be the scene of a life even more immersed in matter than the life on earth. Are there then material organizations living there? If so, how do they dispense with air and water, and how is it that our telescopes discern no trace of their works? We should much like a fuller account of the Adepts’ view of the moon, as so much is already known of her material conditions that further knowledge could be more easily adjusted than in the case (for instance) of planets wholly invisible.

232  ——————————————————   FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

    5. Is the expression “a mineral monad” authorized by the Adepts? If so, what relation does the monad bear to the atom, or the molecule, of ordinary scientific hypothesis? And does each mineral monad eventually become a vegetable monad, and then at last a human being? Turning now to some historical difficulties, we would ask as follows :—

    6. Is there not some confusion in the letter quoted on p. 62 of “Esoteric Buddhism,” where “the old Greeks and Romans” are said to have been Atlanteans? The Greeks and Romans were surely Aryans, like the Adepts and ourselves: their language being, as one may say, intermediate between Sanscrit and modern European dialects.

    7. Buddha’s birth is placed (on p. 141) in the year 643 B.C.. Is this date given by the Adepts as undoubtedly correct? Have they any view as to the new inscriptions of Asoka (as given by General A. Cunningham, “Corpus Inscriptionum Indicanum,” vol. i. pp. 20—23), on the strength of which Buddha’s Nirvana is placed by Barth (“ Religions of India,” p. 106), &c., about 476 B.C., and his birth therefore at about 556 B.C..? It would be exceedingly interesting if the Adepts would give a sketch however brief of the history of India in those centuries with authentic dates.

    8. Sankaracharya’s date is variously given by Orientalists, but always after Christ. Barth, for instance, places him about 788 A.D. In “Esoteric Buddhism” he is made to succeed Buddha almost immediately (p. 149). Can this discrepancy be explained? Has not Sankaracharya been usually

233—————————————————— MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

classed as Vishnuite in his teaching? And similarly has not Gaudapada been accounted a Sivite? and placed much later than “Esoteric Buddhism”
(p.147) places him? We would willingly pursue this line of inquiry, but think it best to wait and see to what extent the Adepts may be willing to clear up some of the problems in Indian religious history on which, as it would seem, they must surely possess knowledge which might be communicated to lay students without indiscretion.

    We pass on to some points beyond the ordinary range of science or history on which we should be very glad to hear more, if possible.

    9. We should like to understand more clearly the nature of the subjective intercourse with beloved souls enjoyed in Devachan. Say, for instance, that I die and leave on earth some young children. Are these children present to my consciousness in Devachan still as children? Do I imagine that they have died when I died? or do I merely imagine them as adult without knowing their life-history? or do I miss them from Devachan until they do actually die, and then hear from them their life-history as it has proceeded between my death and theirs?

    10. We do not quite understand the amount of reminiscence attained at various points in the soul’s progress. Do the Adepts, who, we presume, are equivalent to sixth rounders, recollect their previous incarnations? Do all souls which live on into the sixth round attain this power of remembrance? or does the Devachan, at the end of each round bring a recollection of all the Devachans, or

234   ——————————————————   FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

of all the incarnations, which have formed a part of that particular round? And does reminiscence carry with it the power of so arranging future incarnations as still to remain in company with some chosen soul or group of souls?

    We have many more questions to ask, but we scruple to intrude further. And I will conclude here by repeating the remark with which we are most often met when we speak of the Adepts to English friends. We find that our friends do not often ask for so-called miracles or marvels to prove the genuineness of the Adepts’ powers. But they ask why the Adepts will not give some proof—not necessarily that they are far beyond us, but that their knowledge does at least equal our own in the familiar and definite tracks which Western science has worn for itself. A few pregnant remarks on Chemistry,—the announcement of a new electrical law, capable of experimental verification—some such communication as this (our interlocutors say), would arrest attention, command respect, and give a weight and prestige to the higher teaching which, so long as it remains in a region wholly unverifiable, it can scarcely acquire.

    We gratefully recognize the very acceptable choice which the Adepts have made in selecting Mr. Sinnett as the intermediary between us and them. They could hardly have chosen any one more congenial to our Western minds :—whether we consider the clearness of his written style, the urbanity of his verbal expositions, or the earnest sincerity of his convictions. Since they have thus far met our peculiar needs with such considerate judgment, we

235——————————————————  MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

cannot but hope that they may find themselves able yet further to adapt their modes of teaching to the requirements of Occidental thought.

                                                                                                                                 AN ENGLISH F.T.S.

LONDON, July 1883.

REPLY TO AN ENGLISH F.T.S.

ANSWERS.

    It was not in contemplation, at the outset of the work begun in Fragments, to deal as fully with the scientific problems of cosmic evolution as now seems expected. A distinct promise was made, as Mr. Sinnett is well aware, to acquaint the readers with the outlines of Esoteric doctrines and—no more. A good deal would be given, much more kept back.

    This seeming unwillingness to share with the world some of Nature’s secrets that may have come into the possession of the few, arises from causes quite different from the one generally assigned. It is not SELFISHNESS erecting a Chinese wall between occult science and those who would know more of it, without making any distinction between the simply curious profane, and the earnest, ardent seeker after truth. Wrong and unjust are those who think so; who attribute to indifference for other people’s welfare a policy necessitated, on the contrary, by a far-seeing universal philanthropy; who accuse the custodians of lofty physical and spiritual though long rejected truths, of holding

236    ——————————————————   FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

them high above the people’s heads. In truth, the inability to reach them lies entirely with the seekers. Indeed, the chief reason among many others for such a reticence, at any rate, with regard to secrets pertaining to physical sciences—is to be sought elsewhere.* It rests entirely on the impossibility of imparting that the nature of which is at the present stage of the world’s development, beyond the comprehension of the would-be learners, however intellectual and however scientifically trained may be the latter. This tremendous difficulty is now explained to the few, who, besides having read “Esoteric Buddhism,” have studied and understood the several occult axioms approached in it. It is safe to say that it will not be even vaguely realized by the general reader, but will offer the pretext for sheer abuse. Nay, it has already.

    It is simply that the gradual development of man’s seven principles and physical senses has to be coincident and on parallel lines with Rounds and Root-races. Our fifth race has so far developed but its five senses. Now, if the Kama or Will-principle of the “Fourth-rounders” has already reached that stage of its evolution when the automatic acts, the unmotivated instincts and impulses of its childhood
——————————————————
* Needless to remind AN ENGLISH F.T.S. that what is said here, applies only to secrets the nature of which when revealed will not be turned into a weapon against humanity in general, or its units—men. Secrets of such class could not be given to any one but a regular chela of many years’ standing and during his successive initiations; mankind as a whole has first to come of age, to reach its majority, which will happen but toward the beginning of its sixth race—before such mysteries can be safely revealed to it. The vril is not altogether a fiction, as some chelas and even “lay “chelas know.

237 ——————————————————  MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

and youth, instead of following external stimuli, will have become acts of will framed constantly in conjunction with the mind (Manas), thus making of every man on earth of that race a free agent, a fully responsible being—the Kama of our hardly adult fifth race is only slowly approaching it. As to the sixth sense of this, our race, it has hardly sprouted above the soil of its materiality. It is highly unreasonable, therefore, to expect for the men of the fifth to sense the nature and essence of that which will be fully sensed and perceived but by the sixth—let alone the seventh race—i.e., to enjoy the legitimate outgrowth of the evolution and endowments of the future races with only the help of our present limited senses. The exceptions to this quasi-universal rule have been hitherto found only in some rare cases of constitutional, abnormally precocious individual evolutions; or, in such, where by early training and special methods, reaching the stage of the fifth rounders, some men in addition to the natural gift of the latter have fully developed (by certain occult methods) their sixth, and in still rarer eases their seventh, sense. As an instance of the former class may be cited the Seeress of Prevorst; a creature born out of time, a rare precocious growth, ill adapted to the uncongenial atmosphere that surrounded her, hence a martyr ever ailing and sickly. As an example of the other, the Count St. Germain may be mentioned. Apace with the anthropological and physiological development of man runs his spiritual evolution. To the latter, purely intellectual growth is often more an impediment than a help. An

238    ——————————————————    FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

instance: radiant stuff—” the fourth state of matter”—has been hardly discovered, and no one—the eminent discoverer himself not excepted—has yet any idea of its full importance, its possibilities, its connection with physical phenomena, or even its bearing upon the most puzzling scientific problems. How then can any “Adept” attempt to prove the fallacy of much that is predicated in the nebular and solar theories when the only means by which he could successfully prove his position is an appeal to, and the exhibition of, that sixth sense-consciousness which the physicist cannot postulate? Is not this plain?

    Thus, the obstacle is not that the “Adepts” would “forbid inquiry,” but rather the personal, present limitations of the senses of the average, and even of the scientific man. To undertake the explanation of that which at the outset would be rejected as a physical impossibility, the outcome of hallucination, is unwise and even harmful, because premature. It is in consequence of such difficulties that the psychic production of physical phenomena—save in exceptional cases—is strictly forbidden.

    And now, “Adepts” are asked to meddle with astronomy—a science which, of all the branches of human knowledge has yielded the most accurate information, afforded the most mathematically correct data, and of the achievements in which the men of science feel the most justly proud! It is true that on the whole astronomy has achieved triumphs more brilliant than those of most other sciences. But if it has done much in the direction of satisfying man’s straining and thirsting mind

239 ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

and his noble aspirations for knowledge, physical as to its most important particulars, it has ever laughed at man’s puny efforts to wrest the great secrets of Infinitude by the help of only mechanical apparatus. While the spectroscope has shown the probable similarity of terrestrial and sidereal substance, the chemical actions peculiar to the variously progressed orbs of space have not been detected, nor proven to be identical with those observed on our own planet. In this particular, Esoteric Psychology may be useful. But who of the men of science would consent to confront it with their own handiwork? Who of them would recognise the superiority and greater trustworthiness of the Adept’s knowledge over their own hypotheses, since in their case they can claim the mathematical correctness of their deductive reasonings based on the alleged unerring precision of the modern instruments; while the Adepts can claim but their knowledge of the ultimate nature of the materials they have worked with for ages, resulting in the phenomena produced. However much it may he urged that a deductive argument, besides being an incomplete syllogistic form, may often be in conflict with fact; that their major propositions may not always be correct, although the predicates of their conclusions seem correctly drawn—spectrum analysis will not be acknowledged as inferior to purely spiritual research. Nor, before developing his sixth sense, will the man of science concede the error of his theories as to the solar spectrum, unless he abjure, to some degree at least, his marked weakness for conditional and disjunctive

240    ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

syllogisms ending in eternal dilemmas. At present the “Adepts” do not see any help for it. Were these invisible and unknown profanes to interfere with—not to say openly contradict—the dicta of the Royal Society, contempt and ridicule, followed by charges of crass ignorance of the first elementary principles of modern science would be their only reward; while those ‘who would lend an ear to their “vagaries,” would be characterized immediately as types of the “mild lunatics” of the age. Unless, indeed, the whole of that august body should be initiated into the great Mysteries at once, and without any further ado or the preliminary and usual preparations or training, the F.R.S.’s could be miraculously endowed with the required sixth sense, the Adepts fear the task would be profitless. The latter have given quite enough, little though it may seem, for the purposes of a first trial. The sequence of martyrs to the great universal truths has never been once broken; and the long list of known and unknown sufferers, headed with the name of Galileo, now closes with that of Zöllner. Is the world of science aware of the real cause of Zöllner’s premature death? When the fourth dimension of space becomes a scientific reality like the fourth state of matter, he may have a statue raised to him by grateful posterity. But this will neither recall him to life, nor ‘will it obliterate the days and months of mental agony that harassed the soul of this intuitional, far-seeing, modest genius, made even after his death to receive the donkey’s kick of misrepresentation and to be publicly charged with lunacy.

241 ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

    Hitherto, astronomy could grope between light and darkness only with the help of the uncertain guidance offered it by analogy. It has reduced to fact and mathematical precision the physical motion and the paths of the heavenly bodies, and—no more. So far, it has been unable to discover with any approach to certainty the physical constitution of either sun, stars, or even cometary matter. Of the latter, it seems to know no more than was taught 5,000 years ago by the official astronomers of old Chaldea and Egypt—namely, that it is vaporous, since it transmits the rays of stars and planets without any sensible obstruction. But let the modern chemist be asked to tell one whether this matter is in any way connected with, or akin to, that of any of the gases he is acquainted with; or again, to any of the solid elements of his chemistry. The probable answer received will be very little calculated to solve the world’s perplexity; since, all hypotheses to the contrary notwithstanding, cometary matter does not appear to possess even the common law of adhesion or of chemical affinity. The reason for it is very simple. And the truth ought long ago to have dawned upon the experimentalists, since our little world (though so repeatedly visited by the hairy and bearded travellers, enveloped in the evanescent veil of their tails, and otherwise brought in contact with that matter) has neither been smothered by an addition of nitrogen gas, nor deluged by an excess of hydrogen, nor yet perceptibly affected by a surplus of oxygen. The essence of cometary matter must be—and the “Adepts” say is—totally different from any of the chemical or

242    ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

physical characteristics with which the greatest chemists and physicists of the earth are familiar—all recent hypotheses to the contrary notwithstanding. It is to be feared that before the real nature of the elder progeny of Mula Prakriti is detected, Mr. Crookes will have to discover matter of the fifth or extra radiant state; et seq.

   Thus, while the astronomer has achieved marvels in the elucidation of the visible relations of the orbs of space, he has learnt nothing of their inner constitution. His science has led him no farther towards a reading of that inner mystery than has that of the geologist, who can tell us only of the earth’s superficial layers, and that of the physiologist, who has until now been able to deal only with man’s outer shell, or Sthula Sarira. Occultists have asserted, and go on asserting daily, the fallacy of judging the essence by its outward manifestations, the ultimate nature of the life-principle by the circulation of the blood, mind by the gray matter of the brain, and the physical constitution of sun, stars and comets by our terrestrial chemistry and the matter of our own planet. Verily and indeed, no microscopes, spectroscopes, telescopes, photometers, or other physical apparatuses can ever be focussed on either the macro- or micro-cosmical highest principles, nor will the mayavirupa of either yield its mystery to physical inquiry. The methods of spiritual research and psychological observation are the only efficient agencies to employ. We have to proceed by analogy in everything to be sure. Yet the candid men of science must very soon find out that it is

243  ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

not sufficient to examine a few stars—a handful of sand, as it were, from the margin of the shoreless, cosmic ocean—to conclude that these stars are the same as all other stars—our earth included; that, because they have attained a certain very great telescopic power, and gauged an area enclosed in the smallest of spaces when compared with what remains, they have, therefore, concurrently perfected  the survey of all that  exists within even that limited space. For, in truth, they have done nothing of the kind. They have had only a superficial glance at that which is made visible to them under the present conditions, with the limited power of their vision. And even though it were helped by telescopes of a hundred-fold stronger power than that of Lord Rosse, or the new Lick Observatory, the case would not alter. No physical instrument will ever help astronomy to scan distances of the immensity of which that of Sirius, situated at the trifle of 130,125,000,000,000 miles away from the outer boundary of the spherical area, or even that of (a) Capella, with its extra trifle of 295,355,000,000,000* miles still farther away, can give them, as they themselves are well aware, the faintest idea. For, though an Adept is unable to cross bodily (i.e., in his astral shape) the limits of the solar system, yet he knows that, far stretching beyond the telescopic power of detection, there are systems upon systems, the smallest of which would, when compared with the system of
——————————————————
* The figures are given from the mathematical calculations of exoteric Western astronomy. Esoteric astronomy may prove them false some day.

244     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

Sirius, make the latter seem like an atom of dust imbedded in the great Shamo desert. The eye of the astronomer, who thinks he also knows of the existence of such systems, has never rested upon them, has never caught of them, even that spectral glimpse, fanciful and hazy as the incoherent vision in a slumbering mind that he has occasionally had of other systems, and yet he verily believes he has gauged INFINITUDE! And yet these immeasurably distant worlds are brought as clear and near to the spiritual eye of the astral astronomer as a neighbouring bed of daisies may be to the eye of the botanist.

    Thus, the “Adepts” of the present generation, though unable to help the profane astronomer by explaining the ultimate essence, or even the material constitution, of star and planet, since European science, knowing nothing as yet of the existence of such substances, or more properly of their various states or conditions, has neither proper terms for, nor can form any adequate idea of them by any description, they may, perchance, be able to prove what this matter is not—and this is more than sufficient for all present purposes. The next best thing to learning what is true is to ascertain what is not true.

    Having thus anticipated a few general objections, and traced a limit to expectations, since there is no need of drawing any veil of mystery before “An English F.T.S.,” his few questions may be partially answered. The negative character of the replies draws a sufficiently strong line of demarcation between the views of the Adepts and those of

245   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

Western science to afford some useful hints at least.

QUESTION 1.—DO THE ADEPTS DENY THE
NEBULAR THEORY?

Answer :—No; they do not deny its general propositions, nor the approximative truths of the scientific hypotheses. They only deny the completeness of the present, as well as the entire error of the many so-called “exploded” old theories, which, during the last century, have followed each other in such rapid succession. For instance: while denying, with Laplace, Herschel and others, that the variable patches of light perceived on the nebulous background of the galaxy ever belonged to remote worlds in the process of formation; and agreeing with modern science that they proceed from no aggregation of formless matter, but belong simply to clusters of “stars” already formed; they yet add that many of such clusters, that pass in the opinion of the astro-physicists for stars and worlds already evoluted, are in fact but collections of the various materials made ready for future worlds. Like bricks already baked, of various qualities, shapes and colour, that are no longer formless clay but have become fit units of a future wall, each of them having a fixed and distinctly assigned space to occupy in some forthcoming building, are these seemingly adult worlds. The astronomer has no means of recognizing their relative adolescence, except perhaps by making a distinction between the star clusters with the usual orbital

246     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

motion and mutual gravitation, and those termed, we believe, irregular star-clusters of very capricious and changeful appearances. Thrown together as though at random, and seemingly in utter violation of the law of symmetry, they defy observation: such, for instance, are 5 M. Lyrae, 5 2 M. Cephei, Dumb-Bell, and some others. Before an emphatic contradiction of what precedes is attempted, and ridicule offered perchance, it would not be amiss to ascertain the nature and character of those other so-called “temporary “ stars, whose periodicity, though never actually proven, is yet allowed to pass unquestioned. What are these stars which, appearing suddenly in matchless magnificence and splendour, disappear as mysteriously as unexpectedly, without leaving a single trace behind ? Whence do they appear? Whither are they engulfed? In the great cosmic deep—we say. The bright “brick” is caught by the hand of the mason—directed by that Universal Architect which destroys but to rebuild. It has found its place in the cosmic structure and will perform its mission to its last Manvantaric hour.

   Another point most emphatically denied by the Adepts” is, that there exist in the whole range of visible heavens any spaces void of starry worlds. There are stars, worlds and systems within as without the systems made visible to man, and even within our own atmosphere, for all the physicist knows. The “Adept” affirms in this connection that orthodox, or so-called official science, uses very often the word “infinitude” without attaching to it any

247   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

adequate importance; rather as a flower of speech than a term implying an awful, a most mysterious Reality. When an astronomer is found in his Reports “gauging infinitude,” even the most intuitional of his class is but too often apt to forget that he is gauging only the superficies of a small area and its visible depths, and to speak of these as though they were merely the cubic contents of some known quantity. This is the direct result of the present conception of a three-dimensional space. The turn of a four-dimensional world is near, but the puzzle of science will ever continue until their concepts reach the natural dimensions of visible and invisible space—in its septenary completeness. “The Infinite and the Absolute are only the names for two counter-imbecilities of the human (uninitiated) mind ;“ and to regard them as the transmuted “properties of the nature of things—of two subjective negatives converted into objective affirmatives,” as Sir W. Hamilton puts it, is to know nothing of the infinite operations of human liberated spirit, or of its attributes, the first of which is its ability to pass beyond the region of our terrestrial experience of matter and space. As an absolute vacuum is an impossibility below, so is it a like impossibility above. But our molecules, the infinitesimals of the vacuum “below,” are replaced by the giant-atom of the Infinitude “above.” When demonstrated, the four-dimensional conception of space may lead to the invention of new instruments to explore the extremely dense matter that surrounds us as a ball of pitch might surround—say, a fly, but which, in

248     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

our extreme ignorance of all its properties save those we find it exercising on our earth, we yet call the clear, the serene, and the transparent atmosphere. This is no psychology, but simply occult physics, which can never confound “substance” with “centres of Force,” to use the terminology of a Western science which is ignorant of Maya. In less than a century, besides telescopes, microscopes, micrographs and telephones, the Royal Society will have to offer a premium for such an etheroscope.

    It is also necessary in connection with the question under reply that  “An English F.T.S.” should know that the “Adepts” of the Good Law reject gravity as at present explained. They deny that the so-called “impact theory” is the only one that is tenable in the gravitation hypothesis. They say, that if all efforts made by the physicists to connect it with ether, in order to explain electric and magnetic distance-action have hitherto proved complete failures, it is again due to the race ignorance of the ultimate states of matter in Nature, and, foremost of all, of the real nature of the solar stuff. Believing but in the law of mutual magneto-electric attraction and repulsion, they agree with those who have come to the conclusion that  “Universal gravitation is a weak force,” utterly incapable of accounting for even one small portion of the phenomena of motion. In the same connection they are forced to suggest that science may he wrong in her indiscriminate postulation of centrifugal force, ‘which is neither a universal nor a consistent law. To cite but one instance

249   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

this force is powerless to account for the spheroidal oblateness of certain planets. For if the bulge of planetary equators and the shortening of their polar axes is to he attributed to centrifugal force, instead of being simply the result of the powerful influence of solar electro-magnetic attraction, “balanced by concentric rectification of each planet’s own gravitation achieved by rotation on its axis,” to use an astronomer’s phraseology (neither very clear nor correct, yet serving our purpose to show the many flaws in the system), why should there be such difficulty in answering the objection that the differences in the equatorial rotation and density of various planets are directly in opposition to this theory? How long shall we see even great mathematicians bolstering up fallacies to supply an evident hiatus The “Adepts” have never claimed superior or any knowledge of Western astronomy and other sciences. Yet turning even to the most elementary textbooks used in the schools of India, they find that the centrifugal theory of Western birth is unable to cover all the ground. That, unaided, it can neither account for every spheroid oblate, nor explain away such evident difficulties as are presented by the relative density of some planets. How indeed can any calculation of centrifugal force explain to us, for instance, why Mercury, whose rotation is, we are told, only “about one-third that of the Earth, and its density only about one-fourth greater than the Earth,” should have a polar compression more than ten times greater than the latter ? And again, why Jupiter, whose equatorial rotation is said to be “twenty-seven

250     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

times greater, and its density only about one-fifth that of the Earth,” should have its polar compression seventeen times greater than that of the Earth? Or, why Saturn, with an equatorial velocity fifty-five times greater than Mercury for centrifugal force to contend with, should have its polar compression only three times greater than Mercury’s? To crown the above contradictions, we are asked to believe in the Central Forces as taught by modern science, even when told that the equatorial matter of the sun, with more than four times the centrifugal velocity of the earth’s equatorial surface and only about one-fourth part of the gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested any tendency to bulge out at the solar equator, nor shown the least flattening at the poles of the solar axis. In other and clearer words, the sun, with only one-fourth of our earth’s density for the centrifugal force to work upon, has no polar compression at all! We find this objection made by more than one astronomer, yet never explained away satisfactorily so far as the “Adepts” are aware.

    Therefore do they say that the great men of science of the West, knowing nothing or next to nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulae, or the physical constitution of the sun, stars, or even the moon, are imprudent to speak so confidently as they do about the “central mass of the sun” whirling out into space planets, comets, and whatnot. Our humble opinion being wanted, we maintain : that it evolutes out, but the life principle, the soul of these bodies, giving and receiving it back

251   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

in our little solar system, as the “Universal Life-giver,” the ONE LIVE gives and receives it in the Infinitude and Eternity; that the Solar System is as much the Microcosm of the One Macrocosm, as man is the former when compared with his own little solar cosmos.

    What are the proofs of science? The solar spots (a misnomer, like much of the rest) ? But these do not prove the solidity of the “central mass,” any more than the storm-clouds prove the solid mass of the atmosphere behind them. Is it the non-coextensiveness of the sun’s body with its apparent luminous dimensions, the said “body” appearing “a solid mass, a dark sphere of matter confined within a fiery prison-house, a robe of fiercest flames?” We say that there is indeed a “prisoner” behind, but that having never yet been seen by any physical, mortal eye, what he allows to be seen of him is merely a gigantic reflection, an illusive phantasma of “solar appendages of some sort,” as Mr. Proctor honestly calls it. Before saying anything further, we will consider the next interrogatory.
 

QUESTION II.—IS THE SUN MERELY A COOLING MASS?

    Such is the accepted theory of modern science it is not what the “Adepts” teach. The former says—the sun “derives no important accession of heat from without ” the latter answer—“the sun needs it not.” He is quite as self dependent as he is self-luminous ; and for the maintenance of his

252     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

heat requires no help, no foreign accession of vital energy; for he is the heart of his system, a heart that will not cease its throbbing until its hour of rest shall come. Were the sun “a cooling mass,” our great life-giver would have indeed grown dim with age by this time, and found some trouble to keep his watch-fires burning for the future races to accomplish their cycles, and the planetary chains to achieve their rounds. There would remain no hope for evoluting humanity; except perhaps in what passes for science in the astronomical textbooks of Missionary Schools—namely, that “the sun has an orbital journey of a hundred millions of years before him, and the system yet but seven thousand years old “ (Prize Book, “Astronomy for General Readers.”)

    The “Adepts,” who are thus forced to demolish before they can reconstruct, deny most emphatically (a) that the sun is in combustion, in any ordinary sense of the word; or (b) that he is incandescent, or even burning, though he is glowing; or (c) that his luminosity has already begun to weaken and his power of combustion may be exhausted within a given and conceivable time; or even (d) that his chemical and physical constitution contains any of the elements of terrestrial chemistry in any of the states that either chemist or physicist is acquainted with. With reference to the latter, they add that, properly speaking, though the body of the sun—a body that was never yet reflected by telescope or spectroscope that man invented—cannot be said to be constituted of those terrestrial elements with

253   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

the state of which the chemist is familiar, yet that these elements are all present in the sun’s outward robes, and a host more of elements unknown so far to science. There seems little need, indeed, to have waited so long for the lines belonging to these respective elements to correspond with dark lines of the solar spectrum to know that no element present on our earth could ever be possibly found wanting in the sun; although, on the other hand, there are many others in the sun which have either not reached or not as yet been discovered on our globe. Some may be missing in certain stars and heavenly bodies still in the process of formation; or, properly speaking, though present in them, these elements on account of their undeveloped state may not respond as yet to the usual scientific tests. But how can the earth possess that which the sun has never had ? The “Adepts” affirm as a fact that the true Sun—an invisible orb of which the known one is the shell, mask, or clothing—has in him the spirit of every clement that exists in the solar system; and his “Chromosphere,” as Mr. Lockyer named it, has the same, only in a far more developed condition, though still in a state unknown on earth; our planet having to await its further growth and development before any of its elements can be reduced to the condition they are in within that chromosphere. Nor can the substance producing the coloured light in the latter be properly called solid, liquid, or even “gaseous,” as now supposed, for it is neither. Thousands of years before Leverrier and Padri Secchi, the old Aryans sung of

254     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

Surya . . . “hiding behind his Yogi,* robes his head that no one could see;” the ascetic’s dress being, as all know, dyed expressly into a red-yellow hue, a colouring matter with pinkish patches on it, rudely representing the vital principle in man’s blood—the symbol of the vital principle in the sun, or what is now called chromosphere. The “rose-coloured region!” How little astronomers will ever know of its real nature, even though hundreds of eclipses furnish them with the indisputable evidence of its presence. The sun is so thickly surrounded by a shell of this “red matter,” that it is useless for them to speculate with only the help of their physical instruments, upon the nature of that which they can never see or detect with mortal eye behind that brilliant, radiant zone of matter.

    If the “Adepts” are asked : “ What then, in your views, is the nature of our sun and what is there beyond that cosmic veil ? “—they answer:
beyond rotates and beats the heart and head of our system ; externally is spread its robe, the nature of which is not matter, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, such as you are acquainted with, but vital electricity, condensed and made visible† And if
——————————————————
* There is an interesting story in the Puranas relating to this subject. The Devas, it would appear, asked the great Rishi Vasishta to bring the sun into Satya Loka. The Rishi requested the Sun-god to do so. The Sun-god replied that all the worlds would be destroyed if he were to leave his place. The Rishi then offered to place his red-coloured cloth (Kashay Vastram) in the place of the sun’s disk, and did so. The visible body of the sun is this robe of Vasishta, it would seem.

† If the “English F. T. S.” would take the trouble of consulting p. 11 of the “ Magia Adamica “ of Eugenius Philalethes, his learned compatriot, he would find therein the difference between a visible and an invisible planet its clearly hinted at as it was safe to do at a time when the iron claw of orthodoxy had the power as well as disposition to tear the flesh from heretic bones. “The earth is invisible,” says he and which is more, the eye of man never saw the earth, nor can it be seen without art. To make this element visible is the greacest secret its magic. . . . As for this feculent, gross body upon which we walk, it is a compost, and no earth but it hath earth in it ... in a word, all the elements are visible but one, namely, the earth: and when thou hast attained to so much perfection as to know why God hath placed the earth its abscondito, thou hast an excellent figure whereby to know God himself, and how he is visible, how invisible,” The italics are the author’s, it being the custom of the Alchemists to emphasize those words which had a double meaning in their code. Here “God himself” visible and invisible, relates to their lapis philosophorum—Nature’s seventh principle.

255   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

the statement is objected to on the grounds that were the luminosity of the sun due to any other cause than combustion and flame, no physical law of which Western science has any knowledge could account for the existence of such intensely high temperature of the sun without combustion; that such a temperature, besides burning with its light and flame every visible thing in our universe, would show its luminosity of a homogeneous and uniform intensity throughout, which it does not ; that undulations and disturbances in the photosphere, the growing of the “protuberances,” and a fierce raging of elements in combustion have been observed in the sun, with their tongues of fire and spots exhibiting every appearance of cyclonic motion, and “solar storms,” &c. &c. ; to this the only answer that can be given is the following : the appearances are all there, yet it is not combustion. Undoubtedly were the “robes,” the dazzling drapery which now envelopes the whole of the sun’s globe, withdrawn, or even “the shining atmosphere which permits us

256     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

to see the sun” (as Sir William Herschel thought) removed so as to allow one trifling rent, our whole universe would be reduced to ashes. Jupiter Fulminator revealing himself to his beloved would incinerate her instantly. But it can never be. The protecting shell is of a thickness and at a distance from the universal HEART that call hardly be ever calculated by your mathematicians. And how can they hope to see the sun’s inner body once that the existence of that “chromosphere” is ascertained, though its actual density may be still unknown, when one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of their authorities—Sir W. Herschel—says the following : The sun, also, has its atmosphere, and if some of the fluids which enter into its composition should be of a shining brilliancy, while others are merely transparent, any temporary cause which may remove the lucid fluid will permit us to see the body of the sun through the transparent ones.” The underlined words, written nearly eighty years ago, embody the wrong hypothesis that the body of the sun might be seen under such circumstances, whereas it is only the far-away layers of “the lucid fluid” that would be perceived. And what the great astronomer adds invalidates entirely the first portion of his assumption : “If an observer were placed on the moon, he would see the solid body of our earth only in those places where the transparent fluids of the atmosphere would permit him. In others, the opaque vapours would reflect the light of the sun without permitting his view to penetrate to the surface of our globe.” Thus, if the atmosphere of our earth, which in its relation to the “atmosphere” (?) of

257   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

the sun is like the tenderest skin of a fruit compared with the thickest husk of a cocoa-nut, would prevent the eye of an observer standing on the moon from penetrating everywhere “to the surface of our globe,” how can an astronomer ever expect his sight to penetrate to the sun’s surface, from our earth and at a distance of from 85 to 95 million miles,* whereas, the moon, we are told, is only about 238,000 miles! The proportionately larger size of the sun does not bring it any the more within the scope of our physical vision. Truly remarks Sir W. Herschel that the sun “has been called a globe of fire, perhaps metaphorically ! “It has been supposed that the dark spots were solid bodies revolving near the sun’s surface.” They have been conjectured to be the smoke of volcanoes the scum floating upon an ocean of fluid matter. . . . They have been taken for clouds . . . . explained to be opaque masses swimming in the fluid matter of the sun. . . .“When all his anthropomorphic conceptions are put aside, Sir John Herschel, whose intuition was still greater than his great learning, alone of all astronomers comes near the truth—far nearer than any of those modern astronomers who, while admiring his gigantic learning, smile at his “imaginative and fanciful theories.” His only mistake, now shared by most astronomers, was that he regarded the “opaque body” occasionally observed through the curtain of the “luminous envelope” as the sun itself. When saying
——————————————————
* Verily, “alsolute accuracy in the solution of this problem (of distances between the heavenly bodies and the earth) is simply out of the question.”

258     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

in the course of his speculations upon the Nasmyth willow-leaf theory— “the definite shape of these objects, their exact similarity one to another . . all these characters seem quite repugnant to the notion of their being of a vaporous, a cloudy, or a fluid nature”—his spiritual intuition served him better than his remarkable knowledge of physical science. When he adds: “Nothing remains but to consider them as separate and independent sheets, flakes . . . . having some sort of solidity . . . Be they what they may, they are evidently the immediate sources of the solar light and heat”—he utters a grander physical truth than was ever uttered by any living astronomer. And when, furthermore, we find him postulating—“looked at in this
point of view, we cannot refuse to regard them as organisms of some peculiar and amazing kind; and though it would be too daring to speak of
such organization as partaking of the nature of life, yet we do know that vital action is competent to develop at once heat, and light, and electricity,” Sir John Herschel gives out a theory approximating an occult truth more than any of the profane ever did with regard to solar physics. These “wonderful objects “ are not, as a modern astronomer interprets Sir J. Herschel’s words, “solar inhabitants, whose fiery constitution enables them to illuminate, warm and electricize the whole solar system,” but simply the reservoirs of solar vital energy, the vital electricity that feeds the whole system in which it lives, and breathes, and has its being. The sun is, as we say, the storehouse of our little cosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and ever receiving a much as it gives out. Were

259   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

the astronomers to be asked—what definite and positive fact exists at the root of their solar theory—what knowledge they have of solar combustion and atmosphere—they might, perchance, feel embarrassed when confronted with all their present theories. For it is sufficient to make a résume of what the solar phycisists do not know, to gain conviction that they are as far as ever from a definite knowledge of the constitution and ultimate nature of the heavenly bodies. We may, perhaps, be permitted to enumerate :—

    Beginning with, as Mr. Proctor wisely calls it, “the wildest assumption possible,” that there is, in accordance with the law of analogy, some general resemblance between the materials in, and the processes at work upon, the sun, and those materials with which terrestrial chemistry and physics are familiar, what is that sum of results achieved by spectroscopic and other analyses of the surface and the inner constitution of the sun, which warrants any one in establishing the axiom of the sun’s combustion and gradual extinction? They have no means, as they themselves daily confess, of experimenting upon, hence of determining, the sun’s physical condition ; for (a) they are ignorant of the atmospheric limits ; (b) even though it were
proved that matter, such as they know of, is continuously falling upon the sun, being ignorant of its real velocity and the nature of the material it falls upon, they are unable “to discuss of the effect of motions wholly surpassing in velocity . . . . enormously exceeding even the inconceivable velocity of many meteors ;” (c) confessedly—they “have

260     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

no means of learning whence that part of the light comes which gives the continuous spectrum”. . . . hence no means of determining how great a depth of the solar substance is concerned in sending out that light. This light “may come from the surface layers only;” and, “it may be but a shell” . (truly!) ; and finally, (d) they have yet to learn “how far combustion, properly so-called, can take place within the sun’s mass;” and “whether these processes, which we (they) recognize as combustion, are the only processes of combustion which can actually take place there.” Therefore, Mr. Proctor for one comes to the happy and prudent idea after all “that what had been supposed the most marked characteristic of incandescent solid and liquid bodies, is thus shown to be a possible characteristic of the light of the glowing gas.” Thus, the whole basis of their reasoning having been shaken (by Frankland’s objection), they, the astronomers, may yet arrive at accepting the occult theory, viz., that they have to look to the 6th state of matter, for divulging to them the true nature of their photospheres, chromospheres, appendages, prominences, projections and horns. Indeed, when one finds one of the authorities of the age in physical science—Professor Tyndall—saving that “no earthly substance with which we are acquainted, no substance which the fall of meteors has landed on the earth—would be at all competent to maintain the sun’s combustion;” and again :—“ . . .  multiplying all our powers by millions of millions, we do not reach the sun’s expenditure. And still, notwithstanding this enormous drain in the lapse of human

261   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

history, we are unable to detect a diminution of his store . . . ”—after reading this, to see the men of science still maintaining their theory of “a hot globe cooling,” one may be excused for feeling surprised at such inconsistency. Verily is that great physicist right in viewing the sun itself as “a speck in infinite extension—a mere drop in the Universal sea;” and saying that, “to Nature nothing can be added; from Nature nothing can be taken away; the sum of her energy is constant, and the utmost man can do in the pursuit of physical truth, or in the applications of physical knowledge, ; to shift the constituents of the never-varying total. The law of conservation rigidly excludes both creation and annihilation . . .  the flux of power is eternally the same.” Mr. Tyndall speaks here as though he were an Occultist. Yet, the memento mori—“the sun is cooling . . . it is dying! ” of the Western Trappists of Science resounds as loud as it ever did.

    No, we say; no, while there is one man left on the globe, the sun will not be extinguished. Before the hour of the “Solar Parlaya” strikes on the watch-tower of Eternity, all the other worlds of our system will be gliding in their spectral shells along the silent paths of Infinite Space. Before it strikes, Atlas, the mighty Titan, the son of Asia and the nursling of Æther, will have dropped his heavy manvantaric burden and—died; the Pleiades, the bright seven Sisters, will have upon awakening hiding Sterope to grieve with them—to die themselves for their father’s loss. And, Hercules, moving off his left leg, will have to shift his place in heavens and

262     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

erect his own funeral pile. Then only, surrounded by the fiery element breaking through the thickening gloom of the Pralayan twilight, will Hercules, expiring amidst a general conflagration, bring on likewise the death of our sun : he will have unveiled by moving off the “CENTRAL SUN ”—the mysterious, the ever-hidden centre of attraction of our sun and system. Fables? Mere poetical fiction? Yet, when one knows that the most exact sciences, the greatest mathematical and astronomical truths went forth into the world among the hoi polloi from the circle of initiated priests, the Hierophants of the sanctum sanctorum of the old temples, under the guise of religious fables, it may not be amiss to search for universal truths even under the patches of fiction’s harlequinade. This fable about the Pleiades, the seven Sisters, Atlas, and Hercules exists identical in subject, though under other names, in the sacred Hindu hooks, and has likewise the same occult meaning. But then like the Ramayana “borrowed from the Greek Iliad” and the Bhagavat-Gita and Krishna plagiarized from the Gospel—in the opinion of the great Sanskritist, Prof. Weber, the Aryans may have also borrowed the Pleiades and their Hercules from the same source When the Brahmins can be shown by the Christian Orientalists to be the direct descendants of the Teutonic Crusaders, then only, perchance, will the cycle of proofs be completed, and the historical truths of the West vindicated

263   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

QUESTION 111.—ARE THE GREAT NATIONS TO BE SWEPT AWAY IN AN HOUR?

    No such absurdity was ever postulated. The cataclysm that annihilated the choicest sub-races of the Fourth race, or the Atlanteans, was slowly preparing its work for ages; as any one can read in “Esoteric Buddhism” (page 54). “Poseidonis,” so called, belongs to historical times, though its fate begins to be realized and suspected only now. What was said is still asserted: every root-race is separated by a catastrophe, a cataclysm—the basis and historical foundation of the fables woven later on into the religious fabric of every people, whether civilized or savage, under the names of “deluges,” “showers of fire,” and such like.

    That no “appreciable trace is left of such high civilization” is due to several reasons. One of these may be traced chiefly to the inability, and partially to the unwillingness (or shall we say congenital spiritual blindness of this our age!) of the modern archæologist to distinguish between excavations and ruins 50,000 and 4,000 years old, and to assign to many a grand archaic ruin its proper age and place in prehistoric times. For the latter the archæologist is not responsible—for what criterion, what sign has he to lead him to infer the true date of an excavated building bearing no inscription; and what warrant has the public that the antiquary and specialist has not made an error of some 20,000 years? A fair proof of this we have in the scientific and historic labelling of the

264     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

Cyclopean architecture. Traditional archæology bearing directly upon the monumental is rejected. Oral literature, popular legends, ballads and rites, are all stifled in one word—superstition; and popular antiquities have become “fables” and “folk-lore.” The ruder style of Cyclopean masonry, the walls of Tyrius, mentioned by Homer, are placed at the farthest end—the dawn of pre-Roman history; the walls of Epirus and Mycenæ—at the nearest. The latter are commonly believed the work of the Pelasgi and probably of about 1,000 years before the Western era. As to the former, they were hedged in and driven forward by the Noachian deluge till very lately—Archbishop Usher’s learned scheme, computing that earth and man “were created 4,004 B.C.,” having been not only popular but actually forced upon the educated classes until Mr. Darwin’s triumphs. Had it not been for the efforts of a few Alexandrian and other mystics, Platonists, and heathen philosophers, Europe would have never laid her hands even on those few Greek and Roman classics she now possesses. And, as among the few that escaped the dire fate not all by any means were trustworthy—hence, perhaps, the secret of their preservation—Western scholars got early into the habit of rejecting all heathen testimony, whenever truth clashed with the dicta of their churches. Then, again, the modern Archæologists, Orientalists and Historians, are all Europeans; and they are all Christians, whether nominally or otherwise. However it may be, most of them seem to dislike to allow any relic of archaism to antedate the sup-

265   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

posed antiquity of the Jewish records. This is a ditch into which most have slipped.

    The traces of ancient civilizations exist, and they are many. Yet, it is humbly suggested, that so long as there are reverend gentlemen mixed up unchecked in archaeological and Asiatic societies; and Christian bishops to write the supposed histories and religions of non-Christian nations, and to preside over the meetings of Orientalists—so long will Archaism and its remains be made subservient in every branch to ancient Judaism and modern Christianity.

    So far, archæology knows nothing of the sites of other and far older civilizations, except the few it has stumbled upon, and to which it has assigned their respective ages, mostly under the guidance of biblical chronology. Whether the West had any right to impose upon Universal History the untrustworthy chronology of a small and unknown Jewish tribe and reject, at the same time, every datum as every other tradition furnished by the classical writers of non-Jewish and non-Christian nations, is questionable. At any rate, had it accepted as willingly data coming from other sources, it might have assured itself by this time, that not only in Italy and other parts of Europe, but even on sites not very far from those it is accustomed to regard as the hotbed of ancient relies—Babylonia and Assyria—there are other sites where it could profitably excavate. The immense “Salt Valley” of Dasht-Beyad by Khorasson covers the most ancient civilizations of the world ; while the Shamo desert has had time to change from sea to land,

266     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

and from fertile land to a dead desert, since the day when the first civilization of the Fifth Race left its now invisible, and perhaps for ever hidden, “traces” under its beds of sand.

    Times have changed, are changing. Proofs of the old civilizations and the archaic wisdom are accumulating. Though soldier-bigots and priestly schemers have burnt books and converted old libraries to base uses; though the dry rot and the insect have destroyed inestimably precious records; though within the historic period the Spanish brigands made bonfires of the works of the refined archaic American races, which, if spared, would have solved many a riddle of history; though Omar lit the fires of the Alexandrian baths for months with the literary treasures of the Serapeum; though the Sybilline and other mystical books of Rome and Greece were destroyed in war; though the South Indian invaders of Ceylon “heaped into piles as high as the tops of the cocoanut trees” the cites of’ the Buddhists, and set them ablaze to light their victory—thus obliterating from the world’s knowledge early Buddhist annals and treatises of great importance: though this hateful and senseless Vandalism has disgraced the career of most fighting nations—still, despite everything, there are extant abundant proofs of the history of mankind, and bits and scraps come to light from time to time by what science has often called “most curious coincidences.” Europe has no very trustworthy history of her own vicissitudes and mutations, her successive races and their doings. What with their savage wars, the barbaric habits of the historic

267   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

Goths, Huns, Franks, and other warrior nations, and the interested literary Vandalism of the shaveling priests who for centuries sat upon its intellectual life like a nightmare, an antiquity could not exist for Europe. And, having no Past to record themselves, the European critics, historians and archæologists have not scrupled to deny one to others—whenever the concession excited a sacrifice of biblical prestige.

    No “traces of old civilizations” we are told And what about the Pelasgi—the direct forefathers of the Hellenes, according to Herodotus? What about the Etruscans—the race mysterious and wonderful, if any, for the historian, and whose origin is the most insoluble of problems? That which is known of them only shows that could something more be known, a whole series of prehistoric civilizations might be discovered. A people described as are the Pelasgi—a highly intellectual, receptive, active people, chiefly occupied with agriculture, warlike when necessary, though preferring peace; a people ‘who built canals as no one else, subterranean water-works, dams, walls, and Cyclopean buildings of the most astounding strength; who are even suspected of having been the inventors of the so-called Cadmean or Phœnician writing characters from which all European alphabets are derived—who were they? Could they be shown by any possible means as the descendants of the biblical Peleg (Gen. x. 25) their high civilization would have been thereby demonstrated, though their antiquity would still have to be dwarfed to 2247 “B.C..” And who were the Etruscans?

268     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

Shall the Easterns like the Westerns be made to believe that between the high civilizations of the pre-Roman (and we say—prehistoric) Tursenoi of the Greeks, with their twelve great cities known to history; their Cyclopean buildings, their plastic and pictorial arts, and the time when they were a nomadic tribe “first descended into Italy from their northern latitudes”—only a few centuries elapsed? Shall it be still urged that the Phœnicians with their Tyre 2750 “B.C.” (a chronology, accepted by Western history), their commerce, fleet, learning, arts, and civilization, were only a few centuries before the building of Tyre but “a small tribe of Semitic fishermen”? Or, that the Trojan war could not have been earlier than 1184 B.C., and thus Magna Græcia must be fixed somewhere between the eighth and the ninth Century “B.C.,” and by no means thousands of years before, as was claimed by Plato and Aristotle, Homer and the Cyclic Poems, derived from, and based upon, other records millenniums older? If the Christian historian, hampered by his chronology, and the freethinker by lack of necessary data, feel bound to stigmatize every non-Christian or non-Western chronology as “obviously fanciful,” “purely mythical,” and “not worthy of a moment’s consideration,” how shall one, wholly dependent upon Western guides get at the truth? And if these incompetent builders of Universal History can persuade their public to accept as authoritative their chronological and ethnological reveries, why should the Eastern student, who has access to quite different—and we make bold to say, more trustworthy—materials, be

269   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

expected to join in the blind belief of those who defend Western historical infallibility? He believes—on the strength of the documentary evidence, left by Yavanacharya (Pythagoras) 607 “B.C.” in India, and that of his own national “temple records,” that instead of giving hundreds we may safely give thousands of years to the foundation of Cumæa and Magna Græcia, of which it was the pioneer settlement. That the civilization of the latter had already become effete when Pythagoras, the great pupil of Aryan Masters went to Crotone. And, having no biblical bias to overcome, he feels persuaded that, if it took the Celtic and Gaelic tribes Britannicæ Insulæ , with the ready-made civilizations of Rome before their eyes, and acquaintance with that of the Phœnicians whose trade with them began a thousand years before the Christian era; and to crown all with the definite help later of the Normans and Saxons—two thousand years before they could build their mediæval cities, not even remotely comparable with those of the Romans; and it took them two thousand five hundred years to get half as civilized; then, that instead of that hypothetical period, benevolently styled the childhood of the race, being within easy reach of the Apostles and the early Fathers, it must be relegated to an enormously earlier time. Surely if it took the barbarians of Western Europe so many centuries to develop a language and create empires, then the nomadic tribes of the “mythical” periods ought in common fairness—since they never came under the fructifying energy of that Christian influence to which we are asked to

270     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

ascribe all the scientific enlightenment of this age—about ten thousand years to build their Tyres and their Veii, their Sidons and Carthagenes. As other Troys lie under the surface of the topmost one in the Troad; and other and higher civilizations were exhumed by Mariette Bey under the stratum of sand from which the archæological collections of Lepsius, Abbott, and the British Museum were taken; and six Hindu “Deihis,” superposed and hidden away out of sight, formed the pedestal upon which the Mogul conqueror built the gorgeous capital whose ruins still attest the splendour of his Delhi; so when the fury of critical bigotry has quite subsided, and Western men are prepared to write history in the interest of truth alone, will the proofs be found of the cyclic law of civilization. Modern Florence lifts her beautiful form above the tomb of Etrusean Florentia, which in her turn rose upon the hidden vestiges of anterior towns. And so also Arezzo, Perugia, Lucca, and many other European sites now occupied by modern towns and cities, are based upon the relics of archaic civilizations whose period covers ages incomputable, and whose names Echo has forgotten to even whisper through “the corridors of Time.”

    When the Western historian has finally and Unanswerably proven who were the Pelasgi, at least, and who the Etruscans, and the as mysterious Iapygians, who seem also to have had an earlier acquaintance with writing—as proved by their inscriptions—than the Phœnicians, then only may he menace the Asiatic into acceptance of his own arbitrary data and dogmas. Then also may he

271   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

tauntingly ask “how it is that no appreciable trace is left of such high civilizations as are described in the Past ?“

    “Is it supposed that the present European civilization with its offshoots . . . . can be destroyed by any inundation or conflagration?” More easily than was many another civilization. Europe has neither the titanic and Cyclopean masonry of the ancients, nor even its parchments, to preserve the records of its “existing arts and languages.” Its civilization is too recent, too rapidly growing, to leave any positively indestructible relics of either its architecture, arts or sciences. What is there in the whole Europe that could be regarded as even approximately indestructible, without mentioning the debacle of the geological upheaval that follows generally such cataclysms? Is it its ephemeral Crystal Palaces, its theatres, railways, modern fragile furniture : or its electric telegraphs, phonographs, telephones, and micrographs? While each of the former is at the mercy of fire and cyclone, the last enumerated marvels of modern science can be destroyed by a child breaking them to atoms. When we know of the destruction of the “Seven World’s Wonders,” of Thebes, Tyre, the Labyrinth, and the Egyptian pyramids and temples and giant palaces, as we now see slowly crumbling into the dust of the deserts, being reduced to atoms by the hand of Time—lighter and far more merciful than any cataclysm—the question seems to us rather the outcome of modern pride than of stern reasoning. Is it your daily newspapers and periodicals, rags of a few days; your fragile books bearing the records

272     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

of all your grand civilization, withal liable to become annihilated after a few meals are made on them by the white ants, that are regarded as invulnerable? And why should European civilization escape the common lot? It is from the lower classes, the units of the great masses who form the majorities in nations, that survivors will escape in greater numbers; and these know nothing of the arts, sciences, or languages except their own, and those very imperfectly. The arts and sciences are like the phœnix of old: they die but to revive. And when the question found on page 58 of “Esoteric Buddhism” concerning “the curious rush of human progress within the last two thousand years,” was first propounded, Mr. Sinnett’s correspondent might have made his answer more complete by saying: “This rush, this progress, and the abnormal rapidity with which one discovery follows the other, ought to be a sign to human intuition that what you look upon in the light of ‘discoveries’ are merely rediscoveries, which, following the law of gradual progress, you make more perfect, yet in enunciating, you are not the first to explain them.” We learn more easily that which we have heard about, or learnt in childhood. If, as averred, the Western nations have separated themselves from the great Aryan stock, it becomes evident that the races that first peopled Europe were inferior to the root-race which had the Vedas and the pre-historic Rishis. That which your far-distant forefathers had heard in the secrecy of the temples was not lost. It reached their posterity, which is now simply improving upon details.

273   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

QUESTION IV.—IS THE MOON IMMERSED IN
MATTER?

    No “Adept,” so far as the writers know, has ever given to “Lay Chela” his “views of time moon,” for publication. With Selenography, modern science is far better acquainted than any humble Asiatic ascetic may ever hope to become. It is to be feared the speculations on pp. 104 and 105 of “Esoteric Buddhism,” besides being hazy, are somewhat premature. Therefore, it may be as well to pass on to—
 

QUESTTON V.—ABOUT THE MINERAL MONAD.

    Any English expression that correctly translates the idea given is “authorized by the Adepts.” Why not? The term “monad” applies to the latent life in the mineral as much as it does to the life in the vegetable and the animal. The monogenist may take exception to time term and especially to the idea while the polygenist, unless he be a corporealist, may not. As to the other class of scientists, they would take objection to the idea even of a human monad, and call it “unscientific.” What relation does the monad bear to the atom? None whatever to the atom or molecule as in the scientific conception at present. It can neither be compared with the microscopic organism classed once among polygastric infusoria, and now regarded as vegetable and ranked among algae; nor is it quite the monas of the Peripatetics. Physically or con-

274     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

stitutionally the mineral monad differs, of course, from that of the human monad, which is neither physical, nor can its constitution be rendered by chemical symbols and elements. In short, the mineral monad is one—the higher animal and human monads are countless. Otherwise, how could one account for and explain mathematically the evolutionary and spiral progress of the four kingdoms? The “monad” is the combination of the last two Principles in man, the 6th and the 7th, and, properly speaking, the term “human monad” applies only to the Spiritual Soul, not to its highest spiritual vivifying Principle. But since divorced from the latter the Spiritual Soul could have no existence, no being, it has thus been called. The composition (if such a word, which would shock an Asiatic, seems necessary to help European conception) of Buddhi or the 6th principle is made up of the essence of what you would call matter (or perchance a centre of Spiritual Force) in its 6th and 7th condition or state; the animating ATMAN being part of the ONE L1FE or Parabrahm. Now the Monadic Essence (if such a term be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable and animal, though the same throughout the series of cycles from the lowest elemental up to the Deva kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression.

    It would be very misleading to imagine a monad as a separate entity trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and after an incalculable series of transmigrations flowering into a human being; in short, that the monad of a Humboldt dates back to the monad of an atom of

275   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

hornblende. Instead of saying a mineral monad, the correcter phraseology in physical science which differentiates every atom, would of course have been to call it the Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called the mineral kingdom. Each atom or molecule of ordinary scientific hypotheses is not a particle of something, animated by a psychic something, destined to blossom as a man after æons. But it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy which itself has not yet become individualized: a sequential manifestation of the one Universal Monas. The ocean does not divide into its potential and constituent drops until the sweep of the life-impulse reaches the evolutionary stage of man-birth. The tendency towards segregation into individual monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to the point. The Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Cosmos, in the pantheistic sense; and the Occultists while accepting this thought for convenience’ sake, distinguish the progressive stages of the evolution of the Concrete from the Abstract by terms of which the “Mineral Monad” is one. The term merely means that the tidal wave of spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit. The “Monadic Essence” begins to imperceptibly differentiate in the vegetable kingdom. As the monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their degrees of differentiation which constitutes properly the monad—not the atomic aggregation which is only the vehicle and the substance through which thrill the lower and higher degrees of intelligence.

276     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

And though, as shown by those plants that are known as sensitives, there are a few among them that may be regarded as possessing that conscious perception which is called by Leibnitz apperception, while the rest are endowed but with that internal activity which may be called vegetable nerve-sensation (to call it perception would be wrong), yet even the vegetable monad is still the Monad in its second degree of awakening sensation. Leibnitz came several times very near the truth, but defined the monadic evolution incorrectly and often greatly blundered. There are seven kingdoms. The first group comprises three degrees of elementals, or nascent centres of forces—from the first stage of the differentiation of Mulaprakriti to its third degree—i.e., from full unconsciousness to semi-perception; the second or higher group embraces the kingdoms from vegetable to man; the mineral kingdom thus forming the central or turning-point in the degrees of the “Monadic Essence”—considered as an Evoluting Energy. Three stages in the elemental side; the mineral kingdom ; three stages in the objective physical side—these are the seven links of the evolutionary chain. A descent of spirit into matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a re-ascent from the deepest depths of materiality (the mineral) towards its status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete organisms up to Nirvana—the vanishing point of differentiated matter. Perhaps a simple diagram will aid us :—

277   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

    The line A D represents the gradual obscuration of spirit as it passes into concrete matter; the point D indicates the evolutionary position of the mineral kingdom from its incipient (d) to its ultimate concretion (a); c, b, a, on the left-hand side of the figure, are the three stages of elemental evolution; i.e., the three successive stages passed by the spiritual impulse (through the elementals—of which little is permitted to be said) before they are imprisoned in the most concrete form of matter; and a, b, c, on the right-hand side, are the three stages of organic life, vegetable, animal, human. What is total obscuration of spirit is complete perfection of its polar antithesis—matter; and this idea is conveyed in the lines A D and D A. The arrows show the line of travel of the evolutionary impulse in entering its

278     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

vortex and expanding again into the subjectivity of the ABSOLUTE. The central thickest line, d d, is the Mineral Kingdom.

    The monogenists have had their day. Even believers in a personal god, like Professor Agassiz, teach now that, “There is a manifest progress in the succession of beings on the surface of the earth. The progress consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and among the vertebrates especially, in the increasing resemblance to man. Man is the end towards which all the animal creation has tended from the first appearance of the first Palæozoic. fishes” (“Principles of Zoology,” pp. 205—6). The mineral “monad” is not an individuality latent, but an all-pervading Force which has for its Present vehicle matter in its lowest and most concrete terrestrial state ; in man the monad is fully developed, potential, and either passive or absolutely active, according to its vehicle, the five lower and more physical human principles. In the Deva kingdom it is fully liberated and in its highest state—but one degree lower than the ONE Universal Life.*

QUESTION VIII.—SRI SANKARACHARYA’S DATE.

    It is always difficult to determine with precision the date of any particular event in the ancient history of India; and this difficulty is considerably enhanced by the speculations of European Orientalists, whose labours in this direction have but tended
 ——————————————————
* The above diagram represents a logical section of the scheme of evolution, and not the evolutionary history of a unit of consciousness.

279   ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

to thicken the confusion already existing in popular legends and traditions, which were often altered or modified to suit the necessities of sectarian controversy. The causes that have produced this result will be fully ascertained on examining the assumptions on which these speculations are based. The writings of many of these Orientalists are often characterized by an imperfect knowledge of Indian literature, philosophy and religion, and of Hindu traditions, and a contemptuous disregard for the opinions of Hindu writers and pundits. Very often, facts and dates are taken by these writers from the writings of their predecessors or contemporaries on the assumption that they are correct without any further investigation by themselves. Even when a writer gives a date with an expression of doubt as to its accuracy, his follower frequently quotes the same date as if it were absolutely correct. One wrong date is made to depend upon another wrong date, and one bad inference is often deduced from another inference equally unwarranted and illogical. And consequently, if the correctness of any particular date given by these writers is to be ascertained, the whole structure of Indian Chronology constructed by them will have to be carefully examined. It will be convenient to enumerate some of the assumptions above referred to before proceeding to examine their opinions concerning the date of Sankaracharya.

    I. Many of these writers are not altogether free from the prejudices engendered by the pernicious doctrine, deduced from the Bible, whether rightly or wrongly, that this world is only six thousand years old. We do not mean to say that

280     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

any one of these writers would now seriously think of defending the said doctrine. Nevertheless, it had exercised a considerable influence on the minds of Christian writers when they began to investigate the claims of Asiatic Chronology. If an antiquity of five or six thousand years is assigned to any particular event connected with the ancient history of Egypt, India or China, it is certain to be rejected at once by these writers without any inquiry whatever regarding the truth of the statement.

    II. They are extremely unwilling to admit that any portion of the Veda can be traced to a period anterior to the date of the Pentateuch, even when the arguments brought forward to establish the priority of the Vedas are such as would be convincing to the mind of an impartial investigator untainted by Christian prejudices. The maximum limit of Indian antiquity is, therefore, fixed for them by the Old Testament; and it is virtually assumed by them that a period between the date of the Old Testament on the one side, and the present time on the other, should necessarily be assigned to every book in the whole range of Vedic and Sanskrit literature, and to almost every event of Indian history.

   III. It is often assumed without reason that every passage in the Vedas containing philosophical or metaphysical ideas must be looked upon as a subsequent interpolation, and that every book treating of a philosophical subject must be considered as having been written after the time of Buddha or after the commencement of the Christian era. Civilization, philosophy and scientific investigation had their origin, in the opinion of these writers,

281 ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

within the six or seven centuries preceding the Christian era, and mankind slowly emerged, for the first time, from “the depths of animal brutality” within the last four or five thousand years.

    IV. It is also assumed that Buddhism was brought into existence by Gautama Buddha. The previous existence of Buddhism, Jainism and Arhat philosophy is rejected as an absurd and ridiculous invention of the Buddhists and others, who attempted thereby to assign a very high antiquity to their own religion. In consequence of this erroneous impression every Hindu book referring to the doctrines of Buddhists is declared to have been written subsequent to the time of Gautama Buddha. For instance, Mr. Weber is of opinion that Vyasa, the author of the Brahma Sutras, wrote them in the fifth century after Christ. This is indeed a startling revelation to the majority of Hindus.

    V. Whenever several works treating of various subjects are attributed to one and the same author by Hindu writings or traditions, it is often assumed, and apparently without any reason whatever in the majority of cases, that the said works should be considered as the productions of different writers. By this process of reasoning they have discovered two Badarayanas (Vyasas), two Patanjalis, and three Vararuchis. We do not mean to say that in every case identity of name is equivalent to identity of personality. But we cannot but protest against such assumptions when they are made without any evidence to support them, merely for the purpose of supporting a foregone conclusion or establishing a favourite hypothesis.

282——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

    VI. An attempt is often made by these writers to establish the chronological order of the events of ancient Indian history by means of the various stages in the growth or development of the Sanskrit language and Indian literature. The time required for this growth is often estimated in the same manner in which a geologist endeavours to fix the time required for the gradual development of the various strata composing the earth’s crust. But we fail to perceive anything like a proper method in making these calculations. It will be wrong to assume that the growth of one language will require the same time as that of another within the same limits. The peculiar characteristics of the nation to whom the language belongs must be carefully taken into consideration in attempting to make any such calculation. The history of the said nation is equally important. Any one who examines Max Muller’s estimate of the so-called Sutra, Brahmana, Mantra and Khanda periods, will be able to perceive that no attention has been paid to these considerations. The time allotted to the growth of these four “strata” of Vedic literature is purely arbitrary.

    We have enumerated these defects in the writings of European Orientalists for the purpose of showing to our readers that it is not always safe to rely upon the conclusions arrived at by these writers regarding the dates of ancient Indian history.

    In examining the various quotations and traditions selected by European Orientalists for the purpose of fixing Sankaracharya’s date, special care must be taken to see whether the person referred to was the very first Sankaracharya who established

283 ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

the Adwaitee doctrine, or one of his followers who became the Adhipathis (heads) of the various Mathams (temples) established by him and his successors. Many of the Adwaitee Mathadhipatis who succeeded him (especially of the Sringeri Matham) were men of considerable renown and were well known throughout India during their time. They are often referred to under the general name of Sankaracharya. Consequently, any reference made to any one of these Mathadhipatis is apt to be mistaken for a reference to the first Sankaracharya himself.

    Mr. Barth, whose opinion regarding Sankara’s date is quoted by “An English F.T.S.” against the date assigned to that teacher in Mr. Sinnett’s book on Esoteric Buddhism, does not appear to have carefully examined the subject himself. He assigns no reasons for the date given, and does not even allude to the existence of other authorities and traditions which conflict with the date adopted by him. The date which he assigns to Sankara appears in an unimportant foot-note on page 89 of his book on “The Religions of India,” which reads thus: “Sankaracharya is generally placed in the eighth century perhaps we must accept the ninth rather. The best accredited tradition represents him as born on the 10th of the month ‘Madhava’ in 788 A.D. Other traditions, it is true, place him in the second and fifth centuries. The author of the Dabistan, on the other hand, brings him as far down as the commencement of the fourteenth.” Mr. Barth is clearly wrong in saying that Sankara is generally placed in the eight century. There are as many traditions for placing him in some century

284 ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

before the Christian era as for placing him in some century after the said era, and it will also be seen from what follows that in fact evidence preponderates in favour of the former statement. It cannot be contended that the generality of Orientalists have any definite opinions of their own on the subject under consideration. Max Muller does not appear to have ever directed his attention to this subject. Monier Williams merely copies the date given by Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Weber seems to rely upon the same authority without troubling himself with any further inquiry about the matter. Mr. Wilson is probably the only Orientalist who investigated the subject with some care and attention; and he frankly confesses that the exact period at which “he (Sankara) flourished can by no means be determined” (p. 201 of vol. i. of his “Essays on the Religion of the Hindoos”). Under such circumstances the foot-note above quoted is certainly very misleading. Mr. Barth does not inform his readers where he obtained the tradition referred to, and what reasons he has for supposing that it refers to the first Sankaracharya, and that it is “the best accredited tradition.” When the matter is still open to discussion, Mr. Barth should not have adopted any particular date if he is not prepared to support it and establish it by proper arguments. The other traditions alluded to are not intended, of course, to strengthen the authority of the tradition relied upon. But the wording of the foot-note in question seems to show that all the authorities and traditions relating to the subject are comprised therein, when in fact the most important of them

285 ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

are left out of consideration, as will be shown hereafter. No arguments are to be found in support of the date assigned to Sankara in the other portions of Mr. Barth’s book, but there are a few isolated passages which may be taken either as inferences from the statement in question or arguments in its support, which it will be necessary to examine in this connection.

    Mr. Barth has discovered some connection between the appearance of Sankara in India and the commencement of the persecution of the Buddhists, which he seems to place in the seventh and eighth centuries. In page 89 of his book he speaks of “the great reaction on the offensive against Buddhism which was begun in the Deccan in the seventh and eighth centuries by the schools of Kumarila and Sankara;” and in page 135 he states that the “disciples of Kumarila and Sankara, organized into military bands, constituted themselves the rabid defenders of orthodoxy.” The force of these statements is, however, considerably weakened by the author’s observations on pages 89 and 134, regarding the absence of any traces of Buddhist persecution by Sankara in the authentic documents hitherto examined, and the absurdity of legends which represent him as exterminating Buddhists from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin.

    The association of Sankara with Kumarila in the passages above cited is highly ridiculous. It is well known to almost every Hindu that the followers of Purva Mimamsa (Kumarila commented on the Sutras) were the greatest and the bitterest opponents of Sankara and his doctrine, and Mr. Barth seems

286  ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

to be altogether ignorant of the nature of Kumarila’s views and Purva Mimamsa, and the scope and aim of Sankara’s Vedantic philosophy. It is impossible to say what evidence the author has for asserting that the great reaction against the Buddhists commenced in the seventh and eighth centuries, and that Sankara was instrumental in originating it. There are some passages in his book which tend to show that this date cannot be considered as quite correct. In page 135 he says that Buddhist persecution began even in the time of Asoka.

    Such being the case, it is indeed very surprising that the orthodox Hindus should have kept quiet for nearly ten centuries without retaliating on their enemies. The political ascendency gained by the Buddhists during the reign of Asoka did not last very long; and the Hindus had the support of very powerful kings before and after the commencement of the Christian era. Moreover, the author says, in p. 132 of his book, that Buddhism was in a state of decay in the seventh century. It is hardly to be expected that the reaction against the Buddhists would commence when their religion was already in a state of decay. No great religious teacher or reformer would waste his time and energy in demolishing a religion already in ruins. But what evidence is there to show that Sankara was ever engaged in this task? If the main object of his preaching was to evoke a reaction against Buddhism, he would no doubt have left us some writings specially intended to criticize its doctrines and expose its defects. On the other hand, he does not even allude to Buddhism in his independent works.

287 ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

Though he was a voluminous writer, with the exception of a few remarks on the theory advocated by some Buddhists regarding the nature of perception, contained in his Commentary on the Brahma-Sutras, there is not a single passage in the whole range of his writings regarding the Buddhists or their doctrines; and the insertion of even these few remarks in his Commentary was rendered necessary by the allusions contained in the Sutras which he was interpreting. As, in our humble opinion, these Brahma-Sutras were composed by Vyasa himself (and not by an imaginary Vyasa of the fifth century after Christ, evolved by Mr. Weber’s fancy), the allusions therein contained relate to the Buddhism which existed to the date of Gautama Buddha. From these few remarks it will be clear to our readers that Sankaracharya had nothing to do with Buddhist persecution. We may here quote a few passages from Mr. Wilson’s Preface to the first edition of his Sanskrit Dictionary in support of our remarks. He writes as follows regarding Sankara’s connection with the persecution of the Buddhists :—“Although the popular belief attributes the origin of the Bauddha persecution to Sankaracharya, yet in this case we have some reason to distrust its accuracy. Opposed to it we have the mild character of the reformer, who is described as uniformly gentle and tolerant; and, speaking from my own limited reading in Vedanta works, and the more satisfactory testimony of Ram Mohun Roy, which he permits me to adduce, it does not appear that any traces of his being instrumental to any persecution are to be found in his own writings, all

288   ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

which are extant, and the object of which is by no means the correction of the Bauddha or any other schism, but the refutation of all other doctrines besides his own, and the reformation or re-establishment of the fourth religious order.” Further on he observes that “it is a popular error to ascribe to him the work of persecution; he does not appear at all occupied in that odious task, nor is he engaged in particular controversy with any of the Bauddhas.”

    From the foregoing observations it will be seen that Sankara’s date cannot be determined by the time of the commencement of the Buddhist persecution, even if it were possible to ascertain the said period.

    Mr. Barth seems to have discovered some connection between the philosophical systems of Sankara, Ramanuja and Anandathirtha, and the Arabian merchants who came to India in the first centuries of the Hejira, and he is no doubt fully entitled to any credit that may be given him for the originality of his discovery. This mysterious and occult connection between Adwaita philosophy and Arabian commerce is pointed out in p. 212 of his book, and it may have some bearing on the present question, if it is anything more than a figment of his fancy. The only reason given by him in support of his theory is, however, in my humble opinion, worthless. The Hindus had a Prominent example of a grand religious movement under the guidance of a single teacher in the life of Buddha, and it was not necessary for them to imitate the adventures of the Arabian prophet. There is but one other passage in Mr. Barth’s book which has some reference to Sankara’s date. In page 207 he

289  ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

writes as follows :—“ The Siva, for instance, who is invoked at the commencement of the drama of Sakuntala, who is at once God, priest and offering, and whose body is the universe, is a Vedantic idea. This testimony appears to be forgotten when it is maintained, as is sometimes done, that the whole sectarian Vedantism commences with Sankara.” But this testimony appears to be equally forgotten when it is maintained, as is sometimes done by Orientalists like Mr. Barth, that Sankara lived in some century after the author of Sakuntala.

    From the foregoing remarks it will be apparent that Mr. Barth's opinion regarding Sankara’s date is very unsatisfactory. As Mr. Wilson seems to have examined the subject with some care and attention, we must now advert to his opinion and see how far it is based on proper evidence. In attempting to fix Amara Sinha’s date (which attempt ultimately ended in a miserable failure), he had to ascertain the period when Sankara lived. Consequently his remarks concerning the said period appear in his preface to the first edition of his Sanskrit Dictionary. We shall now reproduce here such passages from this preface as are connected with the subject under consideration and comment upon them. Mr. Wilson writes as follows :—

    The birth of Sankara presents the same discordance as every other remarkable incident amongst the Hindus. The Kadali (it ought to be Koodali) Brahmins, who form an establishment following and teaching his system, assert his appearance about 2,000 years since; some accounts place him about the beginning of the Christian era, others in the

290    ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

third or fourth century after ; a manuscript history of the kings of Konga, in Colonel Mackenzie’s Collection, makes him contemporary with Tiru Vikrama Deva Chakravarti, sovereign of Skandapura in the Dekkan, AD. 178; at Sringeri, on the edge of the Western Ghauts, and now in the Mysore Territory, at which place he is said to have founded a College that still exists, and assumes the supreme control of the Smarta Brahmins of the Peninsula, an antiquity of 1,600 years is attributed to him, and common tradition makes him about 1,200 years old. The Bhoja Prabandha enumerates Sankara among its worthies, and as contemporary with that prince; his antiquity will then be between eight and nine centuries. The followers of Madhwacharya in Tuluva seem to have attempted to reconcile these contradictory accounts by supposing him to have been born three times; first at Sivuli in Tuluva about 1,500 years ago, again in Malabar some centuries later, and finally at Padukachaytra in Tuluva, no more than 6oo years since; the latter assertion being intended evidently to do honour to their own founder, whose date that was, by enabling him to triumph over Sankara in a supposititious controversy. The Vaishnava Brahmins of Madura say that Sankara appeared in the ninth century of Salivahana, or tenth of our era. Dr. Taylor thinks that, if we allow him about 900 years, we shall not be far from the truth, and Mr. Colebroke is inclined to give him an antiquity of about 1,000 years. This last is the age which my friend Ram Mohun Roy, a diligent student of Sankara’s works, and philosophical teacher of his doctrines, is disposed to concur in,

291 ——————————————————  MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

and he infers that “from a calculation of the spiritual generations of the followers of Sankara Swami from his time up to this date, he seems to have lived between the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era,” a distance of time agreeing with the statements made to Dr. Buchanan in his journey through Sankara’s native country, Malabar, and in union with the assertion of the Kerala Utpatti, a work giving art historical and statistical account of the same province, and which, according to Mr. Duncan’s citation of it, mentions the regulations of the castes of Malabar by this philosopher to have been effected about 1,000 years before 1798. At the same time, it must be observed, that a manuscript translation of the same work in Colonel Mackenzie’s possession, states Sankaracharya to have been born about the middle of the fifth century, or between thirteen or fourteen hundred years ago, differing in this respect from Mr. Duncan’s statement—a difference of the less importance, as the manuscript in question, either from defects in the original or translation, presents many palpable errors, and cannot consequently be depended upon. The weight of authority therefore is altogether in favour of an antiquity of about ten centuries, and I am disposed to adopt this estimate of Sankara’s date, and to place him in the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth century of the Christian era.”

    We will add a few more authorities to Mr. Wilson’s list before proceeding to comment on the foregoing passage.

    In a work called “ The Biographical Sketches of Eminent Hindu Authors,” published at Bombay in

292     ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

1860 by Janardan Ramchenderjee, it is stated that Sankara lived 2,500 years ago, and that, in the opinion of some people, 2,200 years ago. The records of the Combaconum Matham give a list of nearly 66 Mathadhipatis from Sankara down to the present time, and show that he lived more than 2,000 years ago.

    The Kudali Matham referred to by Mr. Wilson, which is a branch of the Sringeri Matham, gives the same date as the latter Matham, their traditions being identical. Their calculation can safely be relied upon as far as it is supported by the dates given on the places of Samadhi (something like a tomb) of the successive Gurus of the Sringeri Matham; and it leads us to the commencement of the Christian era.

    No definite information is given by Mr. Wilson regarding the nature, origin, or reliability of the accounts which place Sankara in the third or fourth century of the Christian era or at its commencement; nor does it clearly appear that the history of the kings of Konga referred to unmistakably alludes to the very first Sancharacharya. These traditions are evidently opposed to the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Wilson, and it does not appear On what grounds their testimony is discredited by him. Mr. Wilson is clearly wrong in stating that an antiquity of 1,600 years is attributed to Sankara by the Sringeri Matham. We have already referred to the account of the Sringeri Matham, and it is precisely similar to the account given by the Kudali Brahmins. We have ascertained that it is so from the agent of the Sringeri Matham at

293  ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

Madras, who has recently published the list of teachers preserved at the said Matham with the dates assigned to them. And further, we are unable to see which “common tradition” makes Sankara “about 1,200 years old.” As far as our knowledge goes there is no such common tradition in India. The majority of people in Southern India have, up to this time, been relying on the Sringeri account, and in Northern India there seems to be no common tradition. We have but a mass of contradictory accounts.

    It is indeed surprising that an Orientalist of Mr. Wilson’s pretensions should confound the poet named Sankara and mentioned in Bhoja Prabandha with the great Adwaitee teacher. No Hindu would ever commit such a ridiculous mistake. We are astonished to find some of these European Orientalists quoting now and then some of the statements contained in such books as Bhoja Prabandha, Katha Sarit Sagara, Raja-tarangini and
Panchatantra, as if they were historical works. In some other part of his preface Mr. Wilson himself says that this Bhoja Prabandha is altogether untrustworthy, as some of the statements contained therein did not harmonize with his theory about Amarasimha’s date; but now he misquotes its statements for the purpose of supporting his conclusion regarding Sankara’s date. Surely, consistency is not one of the prominent characteristics of the writings of the majority of European Orientalists. The person mentioned in Bhoja Prabandha is always spoken of under the name of Sankara Kavi (poet), and he is nowhere called Sankaracharya (teacher), and the Adwaitee

294      ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

teacher is never mentioned in any Hindu work under the appellation of Sankara Kavi.

    It is unnecessary for us to say anything about the Madhwa traditions or the Opinion of the Vaishnava Brahmins of Madurah regarding Sankara’s date. It is, in our humble opinion, hopeless to expect anything but falsehood regarding Sankara’s history and his philosophy from the Madhwas and the Vaishnavas. They are always very anxious to show to the world at large that their doctrines existed before the time of Sankara, and that the Adwaitee doctrine was a deviation from their preexisting orthodox Hinduism. And consequently they have assigned to him an antiquity of less than 1,500 years.

    It does not appear why Dr. Taylor thinks that he can allow Sankara about 900 years, or on what grounds Mr. Colebrooke is inclined to give him an antiquity of about 1,000 years. No reliance can be placed on such statements before the reasons assigned therefore are thoroughly sifted.

    Fortunately, Mr. Wilson gives us the reason for Ram Mohun Roy’s opinion. We are inclined to believe that Ram Mohun Roy’s calculation was made with reference to the Sringeri list of Teachers or Gurus, as that was the only list published up to this time; and as no other Matham, except perhaps the Cumbaconum Matham, has a list of Gurus coming up to the present time in uninterrupted succession. There is no necessity for depending upon his calculation (which from its very nature cannot be anything more than mere guesswork) when the old list preserved at Sringeri contains the

295  ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

dates assigned to the various teachers. As these dates have not been published up to the present time, and as Ram Mohun Roy had merely a string of names before him, he was obliged to ascertain Sankara’s date by assigning a certain number of years on the average to every teacher. Consequently, his opinion is of no importance whatever when we have the statement of the Sringeri Matham which, as we have already said, places Sankara some centuries before the Christian era. The same remarks will apply to the calculation in question even if it were made on the basis of the number of teachers contained in the list preserved in the Cumbaconum Matham.

    Very little importance can be attached to the oral evidence adduced by some unknown persons before Dr. Buchanan in his travels through Malabar; and we have only to consider the inferences that may be drawn from the accounts contained in Kerala Utpatti. The various manuscript copies of this work seem to differ in the date they assign to Sankaracharya; even if the ease were otherwise, we cannot place any reliance upon this work, for the following among other reasons :—

    I. It is’ a well-known fact that the customs of Malabar are very peculiar. Their defenders have been, consequently, pointing to some great Rishi or some great philosopher of ancient India as their legislator. Some of them affirm (probably the majority) that Parasurama brought into existence some of these customs and left a special Smriti for the guidance of the people of Malabar; others say that it was Sankaracharya who sanctioned these

296       ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

peculiar customs. It is not very difficult to perceive why these two persons were selected by them. According to the Hindu Puranas, Parasurama lived in Malabar for some time, and according to Hindu traditions Sankara was born in that country. But it is extremely doubtful whether either of them had anything to do with the peculiar customs of the said country. There is no allusion whatever to any of these customs in Sankara’s works. He seems to have devoted his whole attention to religious reform, and it is very improbable that he should have ever directed his attention to the local customs of Malabar. While attempting to revive the philosophy of the ancient Rishis, it is not likely that he should have sanctioned the customs of Malabar, which are at variance with the rules laid down in the Smritis of those very Rishis; and as far as our knowledge goes, he left no written regulations regarding to the castes of Malabar.

    II. The statements contained in Kerala Utpatti are opposed to the account of Sankara’s life given in almost all the Sankara Vijayams (Biographies of Sankara) examined up to this time—viz., Vidyaranya’s Sankara Vijayam, Chitsukhachary’s Sankara Vijayavilasam, Brihat Sankara Vijayam, &c. According to the account contained in these works, Sankara left Malabar in his eighth year, and returned to his native village when his mother was on her death-bed, and on that occasion he remained there only for a few days. It is difficult to see at what period of his lifetime he was engaged in making regulations for the castes of Malabar.

    III. The work under consideration represents

297  ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

Malabar as the seat of Bhattapada’s triumphs over the Buddhists, and says that this teacher established himself in Malabar and expelled the Buddhists from that country. This statement alone will be sufficient to show to our readers the fictitious character of the account contained in this book. According to every other Hindu work, this great teacher of Purva Mimamsa was born in Northern India; almost all his famous disciples and followers were living in that part of the country, and according to Vidyaranya’s account he died at Allahabad.

    For the foregoing reasons we cannot place any reliance upon this account of Malabar.

    From an examination of the traditions and other accounts referred to above, Mr. Wilson comes to the conclusion that Sankaracharya lived in the end of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth century of the Christian era. The accounts of the Sringeri, Kudali and Cumbaconum Mathams, and the traditions current in the Bombay Presidency, as shown in the biographical sketches published at Bombay, place Sankara in some century before the Christian era. On the other hand, Kerala Utpatti, the information obtained by Dr. Buchanan in his travels through Malabar, and the opinions expressed by Dr. Taylor and Mr. Colebrooke, concur in assigning to him an antiquity of about 1,000 years. The remaining traditions referred to by Mr. Wilson are as much opposed to his opinion as to the conclusion that Sankara lived before Christ. ‘We shall now leave it to our readers to say whether, under such circumstances, Mr. Wilson is justified in asserting

298        ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

that “the weight of authority is altogether in favour” of his theory.

    We have already referred to the writings of almost all the European Orientalists who expressed an opinion upon the subject under discussion; and we need hardly say that Sankara’s date is yet to be ascertained.

    We are obliged to comment at length on the opinions of European Orientalists regarding Sankara’s date, as there will be no probability of any attention being paid to the opinion of Indian and Tibetan initiates when it is generally believed that the question has been finally settled by European Sanskritists. The Adepts referred to by “ An English F.T.S.” are certainly in a position to clear up some of the problems in Indian religious history. But there is very little chance of their opinions being accepted by the general public under present circumstances, unless they are supported by such evidence as is within the reach of the outside world. As it is not always possible to procure such evidence, there is very little use in publishing the information which is in their possession until the public are willing to recognize and admit the antiquity and trustworthiness of their traditions, the extent of their powers, and the vastness of their knowledge. In the absence of such proof as is above indicated, there is every likelihood of their opinions being rejected as absurd and untenable; their motives will no doubt be questioned, and some people may be tempted to deny even the fact of their existence. It is often asked by Hindus as well as by English men why these Adepts are so very unwilling to

299  ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

publish some portion at least of the information they possess regarding the truths of physical science. But, in doing so, they do not seem to perceive the difference between the method by which they obtain their knowledge and the process of modern scientific investigation by which the facts of Nature are ascertained and its laws are discovered. Unless an Adept can prove his conclusions by the same kind of reasoning as is adopted by the modern scientist they remain undemonstrated to the outside world. It is of course impossible for him to develop in a considerable number of human beings such faculties as would enable them to perceive their truth; and it is not always practicable to establish them by the ordinary scientific method unless all the facts and laws on which his demonstration is to be based have already been ascertained by modern science. No Adept can be expected to anticipate the discoveries of the next four or five centuries, and prove some grand scientific truth to the entire satisfaction of the educated public after having discovered every fact and law of Nature required for the said purpose by such process of reasoning as would be accepted by them. They have to encounter similar difficulties in giving any information regarding the events of the ancient history of India.

    However, before giving the exact date assigned to Sankaracharya by the Indian and Tibetan initiates, we shall indicate a few circumstances by which his date may be approximately determined. it is our humble opinion that the Sankara Vijayams hitherto published can be relied upon as far as they are consistent with each other regarding the

300       ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

general outlines of Sankara’s life. We cannot, however, place any reliance whatever upon Anandagiri’s Sankara Vijaya published at Calcutta. The Calcutta edition not only differs in some very material points from the manuscript copies of the same work found in Southern India, but is opposed to every other Sankara Vijayam hitherto examined. It is quite clear from its style and some of the statements contained therein, that it was not the production of Anandagiri, one of the four chief disciples of Sankara and the commentator on his Upanishad Bhashyam. For instance, it represents Sankara as the author of a certain verse which is to be found in Vidyaranya’s Adhikaranaratnamala, written in the fourteenth century. It represents Sankara as giving orders to two of his disciples to preach the Visishtadwaitee and the Dwaitee doctrines, which are directly opposed to his own doctrine. The book under consideration says that Sankara went to conquer Mandanamisra in debate, followed by Sureswaraeharya, though Mandanamisra assumed the latter name at the time of initiation. It is unnecessary for us here to point out all the blunders and absurdities of this book. It will be sufficient to say that in our opinion it was not written by Anandagiri, and that it was the introduction of an unknown author who does not appear to have been even tolerably well acquainted with the history of the Adwaitee doctrine. Vidyaranya’s (otherwise Sayanachary, the great commentator of the Vedas) Sankara Vijaya is decidedly the most reliable source of information as regards the main features of Sankara’s biography. Its authorship

301  ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

has been universally accepted, and the information contained therein was derived by its author, as may be seen from his own statements, from certain old biographies of Sankara existing at the time of its composition. Taking into consideration the author’s vast knowledge and information, and the opportunities he had for collecting materials for his work when he was the head of the Sringeri Matham, there is every reason to believe that he had embodied in his work the most reliable information he could obtain. Mr. Wilson, however, says that the book in question is “much too poetical and legendary” to be acknowledged as a great authority. We admit that the style is highly poetical, but we deny that the work is legendary. Mr. Wilson is not justified in characterizing it as such on account of its description of some of the wonderful phenomena shown by Sankara. Probably the learned Orientalist would not be inclined to consider the Biblical account of Christ in the same light. It is not the peculiar privilege of Christianity to have a miracle-worker for its first propagator. In the following observations we shall take such facts as are required from this work.

    It is generally believed that a person named Govinda Yogi was Sankara’s Guru, but it is not generally known that this Yogi was in fact Patanjali—the great author of the Mahabhashya and the Yoga Sutras—under a new name. A tradition current in Southern India represents him as one of the Chelas of Patanjali; but it is very doubtful if this tradition has anything like a proper

302       ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

foundation. But it is quite clear from the 94th, 95th, 96th, and 97th verses of the 5th chapter of Vidyaranya’s Sankara Vijayam that Govinda Yogi and Patanjali were identical. According to the immemorial custom observed amongst initiates, Patanjali assumed the name of Govinda Yogi at the time of his initiation by Goudapada. It cannot be contended that Vidyaranya represented Patanjali as Sankara’s Guru merely for the purpose of assigning some importance to Sankara and his teaching. Sankara is looked upon as a far greater man than Patanjali by the Adwaitees, and nothing can he added to Sankara’s reputation by Vidyaranya’s assertion. Moreover, Patanjali’s views are not altogether identical with Sankara’s views ; it may be seen from Sankara’s writings that he attached no importance whatever to the practices of Hatha Yog regarding which Patanjali composed his Yoga Sutras. Under such circumstances, if Vidyaranya had the option of selecting a Guru for Sankara, he would no doubt have represented Vyasa himself (who is supposed to be still living) as his Guru. We see no reason therefore to doubt the correctness of the statement under examination. Therefore, as Sankara was Patanjali’s Chela, and as Goudapada was his Guru, his date will enable us to fix the dates of Sankara and Goudapada. We may here point out to our readers a mistake that appears in p. 148 of Mr. Sinnett’s book on Esoteric Buddhism as regards the latter personage. He is there represented as Sankara’s Guru; Mr. Sinnett was informed, we believe, that he was Sankara’s Paramaguru, and not having properly

303  ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

understood the meaning of this expression, Mr. Sinnett wrote that he was Sankara’s Guru.

    It is generally admitted by Orientalists that Patanjali lived before the commencement of the Christian era. Mr. Barth places him in the second century before the Christian era, accepting Goldstucker’s opinion, and Monier Williams does the same thing. Weber, who seems to have carefully examined the opinions of all the other Orientalists who have written upon the subject, comes to the conclusion that “we must for the present rest satisfied with placing the date of the composition of the Bhashya between B.C. 140 and A.D. 6o, a result which considering the wretched state of the chronology of Indian Liturgy generally is, despite its indefiniteness, of no mean importance.” And yet even this date rests upon inferences drawn from one or two unimportant expressions contained in Patanjali’s Mahabhashya. It is always dangerous to draw such inferences, and especially so when it is known that, according to the tradition current amongst Hindu grammarians, some portions of Mahabhashya were lost, the gaps being filled up by subsequent writers. Even supposing that we should consider the expression quoted as written by Patanjali himself, there is nothing in those expressions which would enable us to fix the writer’s date. For instance, the connection between the expression “Arunad Yavanah Saketam” and the expedition of Menander against Ayodhya between B.C. 144 and 120, relied upon by Goldstücker is merely imaginary. There is nothing in the expression to show that the allusion

304       ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

contained therein points necessarily to Menander’s expedition. We believe that Patanjali is referring to the expedition of Yavanas against Ayodhya during the lifetime of Sagara’s father described in Harivamsa. This expedition occurred long before Rama’s time, and there is nothing to connect it with Menander. Goldstücker’s inference is based upon the assumption that there was no other Yavana expedition against Ayodhya known to Patanjali, and it will be easily seen from Harivamsa (written by Vyasa) that the said assumption is unwarranted. Consequently the whole theory constructed by Goldstücker on this weak foundation falls to the ground. No valid inferences can be drawn from the mere names of kings contained in Mahabhashya, even if they are traced to Patanjali himself, as there would be several kings in the same dynasty bearing the same name. From the foregoing remarks it will be clear that we cannot fix, as Weber has done, B.C. 140 as the maximum limit of antiquity that can be assigned to Patanjali. It is now necessary to see whether any other such limit has been ascertained by Orientalists. As Panini’s date still remains undetermined, the limit cannot be fixed with reference to his date. But it is assumed by some Orientalists that Panini must have lived at some time subsequent to Alexander’s invasion, from the fact that Panini explains in his Grammar the formation of the word Yavanani. We are very sorry that European Orientalists have taken the pains to construct theories upon this basis without ascertaining the meaning assigned to the word Yavana, and the time when the Hindus

305  ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

first became acquainted with the Greeks. It is unreasonable to assume without proof that this acquaintance commenced at the time of Alexander’s invasion. On the other hand, there are very good reasons for believing that the Greeks were known to the Hindus long before this event. Pythagoras visited India, according to the traditions current amongst Indian initiates, and he is alluded to in Indian astrological works under the name of Yavanacharya. Moreover, it is not quite certain that the word Yavana was strictly confined to the Greeks by the ancient Hindu writers. Probably it was originally applied to the Egyptians and the Ethiopians; it was probably extended first to the Alexandrian Greeks, and subsequently to the Greeks, Persians, and Arabians. Besides the Yavana invasion of Ayodhya described in Harivamsa, there was another subsequent expedition to India by Kala Yavana (Black Yavana) during Krishna’s lifetime described in the same work. This expedition was probably undertaken by the Ethiopians. Anyhow, there are no reasons whatever, as far as we can see, for asserting that Hindu writers began to use the word Yavana after Alexander’s invasion. We can attach no importance whatever to any inferences that may be drawn regarding the dates of Panini and Katyayana (both of them lived before Patanjali) from the statements contained in Katha Sarit Sayara, which is nothing more than a mere collection of fables. It is now seen by Orientalists that no proper conclusions can be drawn regarding the dates of Panini and Katyayana from the statements made by Hiuan Thsang,

306       ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

and we need not therefore say anything here regarding the said statements. Consequently the dates of Panini and Katyayana still remain undetermined by European Orientalists. Goldstücker is probably correct in his conclusion that Panini lived before Buddha, and the Buddhists’ accounts agree with the traditions of the initiates in asserting that Katyayana was a contemporary of Buddha. From the fact that Patanjali must have composed his Mahabhashyam after the composition of Panini’s Sutras and Katyayana’s Vartika, we can only infer that it was written after Buddha’s birth. But there are a few considerations which may help us in coming to the conclusion that Patanjali must have lived about the year 500 B.C.; Max Muller fixed the Sutra period between 500 B.C. and 600 B.C. We agree with him in supposing that the period probably ended with B.C. 500, though it is uncertain how far it extended into the depths of Indian antiquity. Patanjali was the author of the Yoga Sutras, and this fact has not been doubted by any Hindu writer up to this time. Mr. Weber thinks, however, that the author of the Yoga Sutras might be a different man from the author of the Mahabhashya, though he does not venture to assign any reason for his supposition. We very much doubt if any European Orientalist can ever find out the connection between the first Anhika of the Mahabhashya and the real secrets of Hatha Yoga contained in the Yoga Sutras. No one but an initiate can understand the full significance of the said Anhika; and the “eternity of the Logos” or Sabda is one of the principal doctrines of the

307  ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

Gymnosophists of India, who were generally Hatha Yogis. In the opinion of Hindu writers and pundits Patanjali was the author of three works, viz., Mahabhashya, Yoga Sutras, and a book on Medicine and Anatomy; and there is not the slightest reason for questioning the correctness of this opinion. We must, therefore, place Patanjali in the Sutra period, and this conclusion is confirmed by the traditions of the Indian initiates. As Sankaracharya was a contemporary of Patanjali (being his Chela) he must have lived about the same time. We have thus shown that there are no reasons for placing Sankara in the eighth or ninth century after Christ, as some of the European Orientalists have done. We have further shown that Sankara was Patanjali’s Chela, and that his date should be ascertained with reference to Patanjali’s date. We have also shown that neither the year B.C. 140 nor the date of Alexander’s invasion can be accepted as the maximum limit of antiquity that can be assigned to him, and we have lastly pointed out a few circumstances which will justify us in expressing an opinion that Patanjali and his Chela Sankara belonged to the Sutra period. We may, perhaps, now venture to place before the public the exact date assigned to Sankaracharya by Tibetan and Indian initiates. According to the historical information in their possession he was born in the year B.C. 510 (fifty-one years and two months after the date of Buddha’s Nirvana), and we believe that satisfactory evidence in support of this date can be obtained in India if the inscriptions at Conjeveram, Sringeri, Jaggurnath, Benares, Cash-

308       ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

mere, and various other places visited by Sankara, are properly deciphered. Sankara built Conjeveram, which is considered as one of the most ancient towns in Southern India; and it may be possible to ascertain the time of its construction if proper inquiries are made. But even the evidence now brought before the public supports the opinion of the Initiates above indicated. As Goudapada was Sankaracharya’s Guru’s guru, his date entirely depends on Sankara’s date ; and there is every reason to suppose that he lived before Buddha.

QUESTION VI.—“HISTORICAL DIFFICULTY ”—
WHY?

It is asked whether there may not be “some confusion” in the letter quoted on p. 62 of “Esoteric Buddhism” regarding “old Greeks and Romans said to have been Atlanteans.” The answer is—None whatever. The word “Atlantean” was a generic name. The objection to have it applied to the old Greeks and Romans on the ground that they were Aryans, “their language being intermediate between Sanskrit and modern European dialects,” is worthless. With equal reason might a future 6th Race scholar, who had never heard of the (possible) submergence of a portion of European Turkey, object to Turks from the Bosphorus being referred to as a remnant of the Europeans. “The Turks are surely Semites,” he might say 12,000 years hence,

309  ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

and “their language is intermediate between Arabic and our modern 6th Race dialects.” *

    The “historical difficulty” arises from a certain authoritative statement made by Orientalists on philological grounds. Professor Max Muller has brilliantly demonstrated that Sanskrit was the “elder sister”—by no means the mother—of all the modern languages. As to that “mother,” it is conjectured by himself and colleagues to be a “now extinct tongue, spoken probably by the nascent Aryan race.” When asked what was this language, the Western voice answers: “Who can tell?” When, “during what geological periods did this nascent race flourish?” the same impressive voice replies : “ In prehistoric ages, the duration of which no one can now determine.” Yet it must have been Sanskrit, however barbarous and unpolished, since “the ancestors of the Greeks, the Italians, Slavonians, Germans and Kelts” were living within “the same precincts” with that nascent race, and the testimony borne by language has enabled the philologist to trace the “language of the gods” in the speech of every Aryan nation. Meanwhile it is affirmed by these same Orientalists that classical Sanskrit has its origin at the very threshold of the Christian era ; while Vedic Sanskrit is allowed an antiquity of hardly 3,000 years (if so much) before that time.
——————————————————
* This is not to be construed to mean that 12,000 years hence there will be yet any man of the 6th Race, or that the 5th will be submerged. The figures are given simply for the sake of a better comparison with the present objection in the case of the Greeks and Atlantis.

310       ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

    Now, Atlantis, on the statement of the “Adepts,” sank over 9,000 years before the Christian era.* How then can one maintain that the “old Greeks and Romans” were Atlanteans? How can that be, since both nations are Aryans, and the genesis of their languages is Sanskrit? Moreover, the Western scholars know that the Greek and Latin languages were formed within historical periods, the Greeks and Latins themselves having no existence as nations 11,000 B.C.. Surely they who advance such a
——————————————————
* The position recently taken up by Mr. Gerald Massey in Light that the story of Atlantis is not a geological event but an ancient astronomical myth, is rather imprudent. Mr. Massey, notwithstanding his rare intuitional faculties and great learning, is one of those writers in whom the intensity of research bent into one direction has biassed his otherwise clear understanding. Because Hercules is now a constellation it does not follow that there never was a hero of this name. Because the Noachian Universal Deluge is now proved a fiction based upon geological and geographical ignorance, it does not, therefore, appear that there were not many local deluges in prehistoric ages. The ancients connected every terrestrial event with the celestial bodies. They traced the history of their great deified heroes and memorialized it in stellar configurations as often as they personified pure myths, anthropomorphizing objects in Nature. One has to learn the difference between the two modes before attempting to classify them under one nomenclature. An earthquake has just engulfed over 80,000 people (87,903) in Sunda Straits. These were mostly Malays, savages with whom but few had relations, and the dire event will be soon forgotten. Had a portion of Great Britain been thus swept away instead, the whole world would have been in commotion, and yet, a few thousand years hence, even such an event would have passed out of man’s memory ; and a future Gerald Massey might be found speculating upon the astronomical character and signification of the Isles of Wight, Jersey, or Man, arguing, perhaps, that this latter island had not contained a real living race of men but “belonged to astronomical mythology,” was a “Man submerged in celestial waters.” If the legend of the lost Atlantis is only “like those of Airyana-Vaêjo and Jambu-dvipa,” it is terrestrial enough, and therefore “the mythological origin of the Deluge legend” is so far an open question. We claim that it is not “indubitably demonstrated,” however clever the theoretical demonstration.

311 ——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

proposition do not realize how very unscientific is their statement !

    Such are the criticisms passed, such the “historical difficulty.” The culprits arraigned are fully alive to their perilous situation; nevertheless, they maintain the statement. The only thing which may perhaps here be objected to is, that the names of the two nations are incorrectly used. It may be argued that to refer to the remote ancestors and their descendants equally as “Greeks and Romans,” is an anachronism as marked as would be the calling of the ancient Keltic Gauls, or the Insubres, Frenchmen. As a matter of fact this is true. But, besides the very plausible excuse that the names used were embodied in a private letter, written as usual in great haste, and which was hardly worthy of the honour of being quoted verbatim with all its imperfections, there may perhaps exist still weightier objections to calling the said people by any other name. One misnomer is as good as another; and to refer to old Greeks and Romans in a private letter as the old Hellenes from Hellas or Magna Græcia, and the Latius as from Latium, would have been, besides looking pedantic, just as incorrect as the use of the appellation noted, though it may have sounded, perchance, more “historical.” The truth is that, like the ancestors of nearly all the Indo-Europeans (or shall we say Indo-Germanic Japhetidæ?), the Greek and Roman sub-races mentioned have to be traced much farther back. Their origin must be carried far into the mists of that “prehistoric” period, that mythical age which inspires the modern historian with such a feeling of squeamish-

312       ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

ness that anything creeping out of its abysmal depths is sure to be instantly dismissed as a deceptive phantom, the mythos of an idle tale, or a later fable unworthy of serious notice. The Atlantean “old Greeks” could not be designated even as the Autochthones—a convenient term used to dispose of the origin of any people whose ancestry cannot be traced, and which, at any rate with the Hellenes, meant certainly more than simply “soil-born,” or primitive aborigines; and yet the so-called fable of Deukalion and Pyrrha is surely no more incredible or marvellous than that of Adam and Eve—a fable that hardly a hundred years ago no one would have dared or even thought to question. And in its esoteric significance the Greek tradition is possibly more truly historical than many a so-called historical event during the period of the Olympiades, though both Hesiod and Homer may have failed to record the former in their epics. Nor could the Romans be referred to as the Umbro-Sabbellians, nor even as the Itali. Peradventure, had the historians learnt something more than they have of the Italian “Autochthones”—the Iapygians—one might have given the “old Romans” the latter name. But then there would be again that other difficulty: history knows that the Latin invaders drove before them, and finally cooped up, this mysterious and miserable race among the clefts of the Calabrian rocks, thus showing the absence of any race affinity between the two. Moreover, Western archeologists keep to their own counsel, and will accept of no other but their own conjectures. And since they have failed to make anything

313——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

out of the undecipherable inscriptions in an unknown tongue and mysterious characters on the Iapygian monuments, and so for years have pronounced them unguessable, he who would presume to meddle where the doctors muddle would be likely to be reminded of the Arab proverb about proffered advice. Thus, it seems hardly possible to designate “the old Greeks and Romans” by their legitimate, true name, so as to at once satisfy the “historians” and keep on the fair side of truth and fact. However, since in the Replies that precede Science had to be repeatedly shocked by most unscientific propositions, and that before this series is closed many a difficulty, philological and archeological as well as historical, will have to be unavoidably created—it may be just as wise to uncover the occult batteries at once and have it over with.

    Well, then, the “Adepts” deny most emphatically to Western science any knowledge whatever of the growth and development of the Indo-Aryan race which, “at the very dawn of history,” they have espied in its “patriarchal simplicity” on the banks of the Oxus. Before our proposition concerning “the old Greeks and Romans” can be repudiated or even controverted, Western Orientalists will have to know more than they do about the antiquity of that race and the Aryan language; and they will have to account for those numberless gaps in history which no hypotheses of theirs seem able to fill up. Notwithstanding their present profound ignorance with regard to the early ancestry of the Indo-European nations, and though no historian has yet ventured to assign even a remotely approxi

314       ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

mate date to the separation of the Aryan nations and the origines of the Sanskrit language, they hardly show the modesty that might, under these circumstances, be expected from them. Placing as they do that great separation of the races at the first “dawn of traditional history,” with the Vedic age as “the background of the whole Indian world” [of which confessedly they know nothing], they will, nevertheless, calmly assign a modern date to any of the Rik-vedic oldest songs, on its “internal evidence;” and in doing this, they show as little hesitation as Mr. Fergusson when ascribing a post-Christian age to the most ancient rockcut temple in India, merely on its “external form.” As for their unseemly quarrels, mutual recriminations, and personalities over questions of scholarship, the less said the better.

   “The evidence of language is irrefragable,” as the great Oxford Sanskritist says. To which he is answered—” provided it does not clash with historical facts and ethnology.” It may be—no doubt it is, as far as his knowledge goes—” the only evidence worth listening to with regard to ante-historical periods; “ but when something of these alleged “prehistorical periods” comes to be known, and when what we think we know of certain supposed prehistoric nations is found diametrically opposed to his “evidence of language,” the “Adepts” may be, perhaps, permitted to keep to their own views and opinions, even though they differ with those of the greatest living philologist. The study of language is but a part—though, we admit, a fundamental part—of true philology. To be complete,

315——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

the latter has, as correctly argued by Böckt, to be almost synonymous with history. We gladly concede the right to the Western philologist, who has to work in the total absence of any historical data, to rely upon comparative grammar, and take the identification of roots lying at the foundation of words of those languages he is familiar with, or may know of, and put it forward as the result of his study, and the only available evidence. But we would like to see the same right conceded by him to the student of other races; even though these be inferior to the European races, in the opinion of the paramount West: for it is barely possible that, proceeding on other lines, and having reduced his knowledge to a system which precludes hypothesis and simple affirmation, the Eastern student has preserved a perfectly authentic record (for him) of those periods which his opponent regards as ante-historical. The bare fact that, while Western men of science are referred to as “scholars” and scholiasts—native Sanskritists and archæologists are often spoken of as “Calcutta” and “Indian sciolists”—affords no proof of their real inferiority, but rather of the wisdom of the Chinese proverb that
“self-conceit is rarely companion to politeness.”

    The “Adept” therefore has little,if anything, to do with difficulties presented by Western history. To his knowledge—based on documentary records from which, as said, hypothesis is excluded, and as regards which even psychology is called to play a very secondary part—the history of his and other nations extends immeasurably beyond that hardly

316       ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

discernible point that stands on the far-away horizon of the Western world as a landmark of the commencement of its history. Records made throughout a series of ages, based on astronomical chronology and zodiacal calculations, cannot err. [This new “difficulty”—palæographical, this time—that may be possibly suggested by the mention of the Zodiac in India and Central Asia before the Christian era, is disposed of in a subsequent article.]

    Hence, the main question at issue is to decide which—the Orientalist or the “Oriental”—is most likely to err. The “English F.T.S.” has choice of two sources of information, two groups of teachers. One group is composed of Western historians with their suite of learned Ethnologists, Philologists, Anthropologists, Archæologists and Orientalists in general. The other consists of unknown Asiatics belonging to a race which, notwithstanding Mr. Max Muller’s assertion that the same “blood is running in the veins (of the English soldier) and in the veins of the dark Bengalese,” is generally regarded by many a cultured Western as “inferior.” A handful of men can hardly hope to be listened to, specially when their history, religion, language, origin and sciences, having been seized upon by the conqueror, are now disfigured and mutilated beyond recognition, and who have lived to see the Western scholar claim a monopoly beyond appeal or protest of deciding the correct meaning, chronological date, and historical value of the monumental and palæographic relics of his motherland. It has little, if ever, entered the mind of the Western public that their scholars have, until very lately, worked in a narrow

317——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

pathway obstructed with the ruins of an ecclesiastical, dogmatic Past; that they have been cramped on all sides by limitations of “revealed” events coming from God, “with whom a thousand years are but as one day,” and who have thus felt bound to cram millenniums into centuries and hundreds into units, giving at the utmost an age of 1,000 to what is 10,000 years old. All this to save the threatened authority of their religion and their own respectability and good name in cultured society. And even that, when free themselves from preconceptions, they have had to protect the honour of the Jewish divine chronology assailed by stubborn facts; and thus have become (often unconsciously) the slaves of an artificial history made to fit into the narrow frame of a dogmatic religion. No proper thought has been given to this purely psychological but very significant trifle. Yet we all know how, rather than admit any relation between Sanskrit and the Gothic, Keltic, Greek, Latin and old Persian, facts have been tampered with, old texts purloined from libraries, and philological discoveries vehemently denied. And we have also heard from our retreats, how Dugald Stewart and his colleagues, upon seeing that the discovery would also involve ethnological affinities, and damage the prestige of those sires of the world races—Shem, Ham and Japhet—denied in the face of fact that “Sanskrit had ever been a living, spoken language,” supporting the theory that “it was an invention of the Brahmins, who had constructed their Sanskrit on the model of the Greek and Latin.” And again we know, holding the proof of the same, how the majority of Orient-

318        ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

alists are prone to go out of their way to prevent any Indian antiquity (whether MSS. or inscribed monument, whether art or science) from being declared pre-Christian. As the origin and history of the Gentile world is made to move in the narrow circuit of a few centuries “B.C.,” within that fecund epoch when mother earth, recuperated from her arduous labours of the Stone age, begat, it seems without transition, so many highly civilized nations and false pretences, so the enchanted circle of Indian archeology lies between the (to them unknown) year of the Samvat era, and the tenth century of the Western chronology.

     Having to dispose of an “historical difficulty” of such a serious character, the defendants charged with it can but repeat what they have already stated; all depends upon the past history and antiquity allowed to the indo-Aryan nation. The first step to take is to ascertain how much History herself’ knows of that almost prehistoric period when the soil of Europe had not been trodden yet by the primitive Aryan tribes. From the latest Encyclopædia down to Professor Max Muller and other Orientalists, we gather what follows; they acknowledge that at some immensely remote period, before the Aryan nations got divided from the parent stock (with the germs of Indo-Germanic languages in them) ; and before they rushed asunder to scatter over Europe and Asia in search of new homes, there stood a “single barbaric (?) people as physical and political representative of the nascent Aryan race.” This people spoke “a now extinct Aryan language,” from which by a series of modifications (surely

319——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

requiring more thousands of years than our difficulty-makers are willing to concede) there arose gradually all the subsequent languages now spoken by the Caucasian races.

    That is about all Western history knows of its genesis. Like Ravana’s brother, Kumbhakarna,—the Hindu Rip van Winkle—it slept for a long series of ages a dreamless, heavy sleep. And when at last it awoke to consciousness, it was but to find the “nascent Aryan race” grown into scores of nations, peoples and races, most of them effete and crippled with age, many irretrievably extinct, while the true origin of the younger ones it was utterly unable to account for. So much for the “youngest brother.” As for “the eldest brother, the Hindu,” who, Professor Max Muller tells us, “was the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family,” and whose history this eminent philologist has now kindly undertaken to impart to him,—he, the Hindu, claims that while his Indo-European relative was soundly sleeping under the protecting shadow of Noah’s ark, he kept watch and did not miss seeing one event from his high Himalayan fastnesses; and that he has recorded the history thereof, in a language which, though as incomprehensible as the Iapygian inscriptions to the Indo-European immigrant, is quite clear to the writers. For this crime he now stands condemned as a falsifier of the records of his forefathers. A place has been hitherto purposely left open for India “to be filled up when the pure metal of history should have been extracted from the ore of Brahmanic exaggeration and superstition.” Unable, however, to meet this programme,

320        ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

the Orientalist has since persuaded himself that there was nothing in that “ore” but dross. He did more. He applied himself to contrast Brahmanic “superstition” and “exaggeration” with Mosaic revelation and its chronology. The Veda was confronted with Genesis. Its absurd claims to antiquity were forthwith dwarfed to their proper dimensions by the 4,004 years B.C. measure of the world’s age; and the Brahmanic “superstition and fables” about the longevity of the Aryan Rishis, were belittled and exposed by the sober historical evidence furnished in “The genealogy and age of the Patriarchs from Adam to Noah,” whose respective days were 930 and 950 years; without mentioning Methuselah, who died at the premature age of nine hundred and sixty-nine.

   In view of such experience, the Hindu has a certain right to decline the offers made to correct his annals by Western history and chronology. On the contrary, he would respectfully advise the Western scholar, before he denies point-blank any statement made by the Asiatics with reference to what is prehistoric ages to Europeans, to show that the latter have themselves anything like trustworthy data as regards their own racial history. And that settled, he may have the leisure and capacity to help his ethnic neighbours to prune their genealogical trees. Our Rajputs, among others, have perfectly trustworthy family records of an unbroken lineal descent through 2,000 years “B.C..” and more, as proved by Colonel Tod ; records which are accepted by the British Government in its official dealings with them. It is not enough to

321——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

have studied stray fragments of Sanskrit literature—even though their number should amount to 10,000 texts, as boasted of—allowed to fall into foreign hands, to speak so confidently of the “Aryan first settlers in India,” and assert that, “ left to themselves, in a world of their own, without a past and without a future (!) before them, they had nothing but themselves to ponder upon,” and therefore could know absolutely nothing of other nations. To comprehend correctly and make out the inner meaning of most of them, one has to read these texts with the help of the esoteric light, and after having mastered the language of the Brahmanic Secret Code—branded generally as “theological twaddle.” Nor is it sufficient—if one would judge correctly of what the archaic Aryans did or did not know; whether or not they cultivated the social and political virtues; cared or not for history—to claim proficiency in both Vedic and classical Sanskrit, as well as in Prakrit and Arya Bhdshá. To comprehend the esoteric meaning of ancient Brahmanical literature, one has, as just remarked, to be in possession of the key to the Brahmanical Code. To master the conventional terms used in the Puranas, the Aranyakas and Upanishads is a science in itself, and one far more difficult than even the study of the 3,996 aphoristical rules of Panini, or his algebraical symbols. Very true, most of the Brahmans themselves have now forgotten the correct interpretations of their sacred texts. Yet they know enough of the dual meaning in their scriptures to be justified in feeling amused at the strenuous efforts of the European Orientalist to protect the supremacy of his own national records

322       ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

and the dignity of his science by interpreting the Hindu hieratic text after a peremptory fashion quite unique. Disrespectful though it may seem, we call on the philologist to prove in some more convincing manner than usual, that he is better qualified than even the average Hindu Sanskrit pundit to judge of the antiquity of the “language of the gods;” that he has been really in a position to trace unerringly along the lines of countless generations the course of the “now extinct Aryan tongue” in its many and various transformations in the West, and its primitive evolution into first the Vedic, and then the classical Sanskrit in the East, and that from the moment when the mother-stream began deviating into its new ethnographical beds, lie has followed it up. Finally that, while lie, the Orientalist, can, owing to speculative interpretations of what he thinks he has learnt from fragments of Sanskrit literature, judge of the nature of all that he knows nothing about—i.e., to speculate upon the past history of a great nation he has lost sight of from its “nascent state,” and caught up again but at the period of its last degeneration—the native student never knew, nor can ever know, anything of that history. Until the Orientalist has proved all this, he can be accorded but small justification for assuming that air of authority and supreme contempt which is found in almost every work upon India and its Past. Having no knowledge himself whatever of those incalculable ages that lie between the Aryan Brahman in Central Asia, and the Brahman at the threshold of Buddhism, he has no right to

323——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

maintain that the initiated Indo-Aryan can never know as much of them as the foreigner. Those periods being an utter blank to him, he is little qualified to declare that the Aryan, having had no political history “of his own . . .“ his only sphere was “religion and philosophy . . . . in solitude and contemplation.” A happy thought suggested, no doubt, by the active life, incessant wars, triumphs, and defeats portrayed in the oldest songs of the Rik-Veda. Nor can he with the smallest show of logic affirm that “India had no place in the political history of the world,” or that “there are no synchronisms between the history of the Brahmans and that of other nations before the date of the origin of Buddhism in India ;“ for he knows no more of the prehistoric history of those “other nations” than of that of the Brahman. All his inferences, conjectures and systematic arrangements of hypotheses begin very little earlier than 200 “B.C.,” if even so much, on anything like really historical grounds. He has to prove all this before he can command our attention. Otherwise, however “irrefragable the evidence of language,” the presence of Sanskrit roots in all the European languages will be insufficient to prove, either that (a) before the Aryan invaders descended toward the seven rivers they had never left their northern regions; or (b) why the “eldest brother, the Hindu,” should have been “the last to leave the central home of the Aryan family.” To the philologist such a supposition may seem “quite natural.” Yet the Brahman is no less justified in

324       ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

his ever-growing suspicion that there may be at the bottom some occult reason for such a programme. That in the interest of his theory the Orientalist was forced to make “the eldest brother” tarry so suspiciously long on the Oxus, or wherever “the youngest” may have placed him in his “nascent state” after the latter “saw his brothers all depart towards the setting sun.” We find reasons to believe that the chief motive for alleging such a procrastination is the necessity to bring the race closer to the Christian era. To show the “brother” inactive and unconcerned. “with nothing but himself to ponder on,” lest his antiquity and “fables of empty idolatry,” and perhaps his traditions of other people’s doings, should interfere with the chronology by which it is determined to try him. The suspicion is strengthened when one finds in the book from which we have been so largely quoting—a work of a purely scientific and philological character—such frequent remarks and even prophecies as : “History seems to teach that the whole human race required a gradual education before, in the fulness of time, it could be admitted to the truths of Christianity.” Or, again “The ancient religions of the world were but the milk of Nature, which was in due time to be succeeded by the bread of life; “ and such broad sentiments expressed as that “ there is some truth in Buddhism, as there is in every one of the false religions of the ‘world, but . . . .*
   
    The atmosphere of Cambridge and Oxford seems decidedly unpropitious to the recognition of either
——————————————————
* Max Mülier’s “History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature.”

325——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

Indian antiquity, or the merit of the philosophies sprung from its soil ! *
 

LEAFLETS FROM ESOTERIC HISTORY.

The foregoing—a long, yet necessary digression—will show that the Asiatic scholar is justified in generally withholding what he may know. That it is not merely on historical facts that hangs the “historical difficulty” at issue ; but rather on its degree of interference with time-honoured, long-established conjectures, often raised to the eminence of an unapproachable historical axiom. That no statement coming from our quarters can ever hope to be given consideration so long as it has to be supported on the ruins of reigning hobbies, whether
——————————————————
* And how one-sided and biassed most of the Western Orientalists are may be seen by reading carefully “The History of Indian Literature, by Albrecht Weber—a Sanskrit scholiast classed with the highest authorities. The incessant harping upon the one special string of Christianity, and the ill-concealed efforts to pass it off as the key-note of all other religions, is painfully pre-eminent in his work. Christian influences are shown to have affected not only the growth of Buddhism and Krishna worship, but even that of the Siva-cult and its legends; it is openly stated that “it is not at all a far-fetched hypothesis that they have reference to scattered Christian missionaries!” The eminent Orientalist evidently forgets that, notwithstanding his efforts, none of the Vedic, Sutra or Buddhist periods can be possibly crammed into this Christian period—their universal tank of all ancient creeds, and of which some Orientalists would fain make a poor-house for all decayed archaic religions and philosophy. Even Tibet, in his opinion, has not escaped “Western influence.” Let us hope to the contrary. It can be proved that Buddhist missionaries were as numerous in Palestine, Alexandria, Persia, and even Greece, two centuries before the Christian era, as the Padris are now in Asia. That the Gnostic doctrines (as he is obliged to confess) are permeated with Buddhism. Basilides, Valentinian, Bardesanes, and especially Manes were simply heretical Buddhists, “the formula of abjuration of these doctrines in the case of the latter, specifying expressly Buddha (Bodda) by name.”

326 ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

of an alleged historical or religious character. Yet pleasant it is, after the brainless assaults to which occult sciences have hitherto been subjected—assaults in which abuse has been substituted for argument, and flat denial for calm inquiry—to find that there remain in the West some men who will come into the field like philosophers, and soberly and fairly discuss the claims of our hoary doctrines to the respect due to a truth and the dignity demanded for a science. Those alone whose sole desire is to ascertain the truth, not to maintain foregone conclusions, have a right to expect undisguised facts. Reverting to our subject, so far as allowable, we will now, for the sake of that minority, give them.

    The records of the Occultists make no difference between the “Atlantean” ancestors of the old Greeks and Romans. Partially corroborated and in turn contradicted by licensed or recognized history, their records teach that of the ancient Latini of classic legend called Itali; of that people, in short, which, crossing the Apennines (as their Judo-Aryan brothers—let this be known—had crossed before them the Hindoo-Koosh) entered from the north the peninsula—there survived at a period long before the days of Romulus but the name, and a nascent language. Profane history informs us that the Latins of the “mythical era” got so Hellenized amidst the rich colonies of Magna Grecia that there remained nothing in them of their primitive Latin nationality. It is the Latins proper, it says, those pre-Roman Italians who by settling in Latium had from the first kept themselves free from the Greek influence, who

327——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

were the ancestors of the Romans. Contradicting exoteric history, the Occult records affirm that if, owing to circumstances too long and complicated to be related here, the settlers of Latium preserved their primitive nationality a little longer than their brothers who had first entered the peninsula with them after leaving the East (which was not their original home), they lost it very soon, for other reasons. Free from the Samnites during the first period, they did not remain free from other invaders. While the Western historian puts together the mutilated, incomplete records of various nations and people, and makes them into a clever mosaic according to the best and most probable plan and rejects entirely traditional fables, the Occultist pays not the slightest attention to the vain self-glorification of alleged conquerors or their lithic inscriptions. Nor does he follow the stray bits of so-called historical information, often concocted by interested parties and found scattered hither and thither in the fragments of classical writers, whose original texts themselves have not seldom been tampered with. The Occultist follows the ethnological affinities and their divergences in the various nationalities, races and sub-races, in a more easy way; and he is guided in this as surely as the student who examines a geographical map. As the latter can easily trace by their differently coloured outlines the boundaries of the many countries and their possessions; their geographical superficies and their separations by seas, rivers and mountains; so the Occultist can by following the (to him) well distinguishable and defined auric shades and gradations of colour in the

328  ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

inner-man unerringly pronounce to which of the several distinct human families, as also to what special group, and even small sub-group of the latter, belongs any particular people, tribe, or man. This will appear hazy and incomprehensible to the many who know nothing of ethnic varieties of nerve-aura, and disbelieve in any “inner-man” theory, scientific but to the few. The whole question hangs upon the reality or unreality of the existence of this inner-man whom clairvoyance has discovered, and whose odyle or nerve-emanations Von Reichenbach proves. If one admits such a presence and realizes intuitionally that being closer related to the one invisible Reality, the inner type must be still more pronounced than the outer physical type, then it will be a matter of little, if any, difficulty to conceive our meaning. For, indeed, if even the respective physical idiosyncrasies and special characteristics of any given person make his nationality usually distinguishable by the physical eye of the ordinary observer—let alone the experienced ethnologist: the Englishman being commonly recognizable at a glance from the Frenchman, the German from the Italian, not to speak of the typical differences between human root-families* in their anthropological division—there
——————————————————
* Properly speaking, these ought to be called “Geological Races,” so as to be easily distinguished from their subsequent evolutions—the root-races. The Occult doctrine has nothing to do with the Biblical division of Shem, Ham and Japhet, and admires, without accepting it, the latest Huxleyan physiological division of the human races into their quintuple groups of Australioids, Negroids, Mongoloids, Xanthechroics, and the fifth variety of Melanochroics. Yet it says that the triple division of the blundering Jews is closer to the truth, it knows but of three entirely distinct primeval races whose evolution, formation and development went pari passu and on parallel lines with the evolution, formation, and development of three geological strata; namely, the BLACK, the RED-YELLOW, and the BR0WN-WHITE RACES.

329——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

seems little difficulty in conceiving that the same, though far more pronounced, difference of type and characteristics should exist between the inner races that inhabit these “fleshly tabernacles.” Besides this easily discernible psychological and astral differences, there are the documentary records in their unbroken series of chronological tables and the history of the gradual branching off of races and sub-races from the three geological primeval Races, the work of the Initiates of all the archaic and ancient temples up to date, collected in our “Book of Numbers,” and other volumes.

    Hence, and on this double testimony (which the Westerns are quite welcome to reject if so pleased) it is affirmed that, owing to the great amalgamation of various sub-races, such as the Iapygian, Etruscan, Pelasgic, and later—the strong admixture of the Hellenic and Kelto-Gaulic element in the veins of the primitive Itali of Latium—there remained in the tribes gathered by Romulus on the banks of the Tiber about as much Latinism as there is now in the Romanic people of Wallachia. Of course if the historical foundation of the fable of the twins of the Vestal Silvia is entirely rejected, together with that of the foundation of Alba Longa by the son of Æneas, then it stands to reason that the whole of the statements made must be likewise a modern invention built upon the utterly worthless fables of the “legendary mythical age.” For those who now

330  ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

give these statements, however, there is more of actual truth in such fables than there is in the alleged historical Regal period of the earliest Romans. It is to be deplored that the present statement should clash with the authoritative conclusion of Mommsen and others. Yet, stating but that which to the “Adepts” is fact, it must be understood at once that all (but the fanciful chronological date for the foundation of Rome—April, 753 “B.C.”) that is given in old traditions in relation to the Pœmerium, and the triple alliance of the Ramnians, Luceres and Tities, of the so-called Romuleian legend, is indeed far nearer truth than what external history accepts as facts during the Punic and Macedonian wars up to, through, and down the Roman Empire to its fall. The founders of Rome were decidedly a mongrel people, made up of various scraps and remnants of the many primitive tribes; only a few really Latin families, the descendants of the distinct sub-race that came along with the Umbro-Sabellians from the East remaining. And, while the latter preserved their distinct colour down to the Middle Ages through the Sabine element, left unmixed in its mountainous regions, the blood of the true Roman was Hellenic blood from its beginning. The famous Latin league is no fable, but history. The succession of kings descended from the Trojan Æneas is a fact; and the idea that Romulus is to be regarded as simply the symbolical representative of a people, as Æolus, Dorms, and Ion were once, instead of a living man, is as unwarranted as it is arbitrary. It could only have been entertained by a class of historiographers bent

331——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

upon condoning their sin in supporting the dogma that Shem, Ham and Japhet were the historical once living ancestors of mankind, by making a burnt-offering of every really historical but non-Jewish tradition, legend, or record which might presume to a place on the same level with these three privileged archaic mariners, instead of humbly grovelling at their feet as “absurd myths” and old wives’ tales and superstitions.

    It will thus appear that the objectionable statements on pp.56 and 62 of “Esoteric Buddhism,” which are alleged to create an “historical difficulty,” were not made by Mr. Sinnett’s correspondent to bolster a western theory, but in loyalty to historical facts. Whether they can or cannot be accepted in those particular localities where criticism seems based upon mere conjecture (though honoured with the name of scientific hypothesis), is something which concerns the present writers as little as any casual traveller’s unfavourable comments upon the time-scarred visage of the Sphinx can affect the designer of that sublime symbol. The sentences, “the Greeks and Romans were small sub-races of our own Caucasian stock” (p. 6), and they were “the remnants of the Atlanteans (the modern belong to the fifth race) ” (p. 62), show the real meaning on their face. By the old Greeks, “remnants of the Atlanteans” the eponymous ancestors (as they are called by Europeans) of the Æolians, Dorians and Ionians, are meant. By the connection together of the old Greeks and Romans without distinction, was meant that the primitive Latins were swallowed by Magna Græcia. And by “the modern” belonging

332  ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

“to the fifth race”—both these small branchlets from whose veins had been strained out the last drop of the Atlantean blood—it was implied that the Morgoloid 4th race blood had already been eliminated. Occultists make a distinction between the races intermediate between any two root-races the Westerns do not. The “old Romans” were Hellenes in a new ethnological disguise; and the still older Greeks the real blood ancestors of the future Romans. In direct relation to this, attention is drawn to the following fact—one of the many in close historical bearing upon the “mythical” age to which Atlantis belongs. It is a fable and may be charged to the account of historical difficulties. It is well calculated, however, to throw all the old ethnological and genealogical divisions into confusion.

    Asking the reader to bear in mind that Atlantis, like modern Europe, comprised many nations and many dialects (issues from the three primeval root-languages of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Races), we may return to Poseidonis, its last surviving remnant of 12,000 years ago. As the chief element in the languages of the 5th race is the Aryan-Sanskrit of the “Brown-white” geological stock or race, so the predominating element in Atlantis was a language which has now survived but in the dialects of some American Red-Indian tribes, and in the Chinese speech of the inland Chinamen, the mountainous tribes of Kivang-ze—a language which was an admixture of the agglutinate and the monosyllabic, as it would be called by modern philologists. It was, in short, the language of the “Red-yellow” second or middle

333——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

geological stock [we maintain the term “geological ”]. A strong percentage of the Mongoloid or 4th Root-race was, of course, to be found in the Aryans of the 5th. But this did not prevent in the least the presence at the same time of unalloyed, pure Aryan races in it. A number of small islands scattered around Poseidonis had been vacated, in consequence of earthquakes, long before the final catastrophe, which has alone remained in the memory of men.—thanks to some written records. Tradition says that one of the small tribes (the Æ.olians) who had become islanders after emigrating from far northern countries, had to leave their home again for fear of a deluge. If, in spite of the Orientalists and the conjecture of M. F. Lenormant—who invented a name for a people whose shadowy outline he dimly perceived in the faraway Past as preceding the Babylonians—we say that this Aryan race that came from Central Asia, the cradle of the 5th race Humanity, belonged to the “Akkadian” tribes, there will be a new historicoethnological difficulty created. Yet it is maintained that these “Akkads” were no more a “Turanian” race than any of the modern British people are the mythical ten tribes of Israel, so conspicuously present in the Bible, and absent from history. With such remarkable pacta conventa between modern exact (?) and ancient Occult sciences, we may proceed with the fable. Belonging virtually, through their original connection with the Aryan, Central Asian stock, to the 5th race, the old Æolians yet were Atlanteans, not only in virtue of their long residence in the now submerged continent, covering some thousands

334  ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

of years, but by the free intermingling of blood, by intermarriage with them. Perhaps in this connection Mr. Huxley’s disposition to account for his Melanochroi (the Greeks being included under this classification or type)—as themselves “the result of crossing between the Xanthochroi and the Australioids,” among whom he places the Southern India lower classes and the Egyptians to some extent—is not far off from fact. Anyhow the Æolians of Atlantis were Aryans on the whole, as much as the Basques—Dr. Pritchard’s Allophylians—are now southern Europeans, although originally belonging to the South Indian Dravidian stock [their progenitors having never been the aborigines of Europe prior to the first Aryan emigration, as supposed]. Frightened by the frequent earthquakes and the visible approach of the cataclysm, this tribe is said to have filled a flotilla of arks, to have sailed from beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and, sailing along the coasts, after several years of travel to have landed on the shores of the Ægeau Sea in the land of Pyrrha (now Thessaly), to which they gave the name of Æolia. Thence they proceeded on business with the gods to Mount Olympus. It may be stated here, at the risk of creating a “geographical difficulty,” that in that mythical age Greece, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, and many other islands of the Mediterranean, were simply the far-away possessions, or colonies, of Atlantis. Hence, the “fable” proceeds to state that all along the coasts of Spain, France, and Italy the Æolians often halted, and the memory of their “magical feats” still survives among the descendants of the old Massilians, of the tribes of

335——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

the later Carthago-Nova, and the seaports of Etruria and Syracuse. And here again it would not be a bad idea, perchance, even at this late hour, for the archæologists to trace, with the permission of the anthropological societies, the origin of the various autochthones through their folk-lore and fables, as they may prove both more suggestive and reliable than their “undecipherable” monuments. History catches a misty glimpse of these particular autochthones thousands of years only after they had been settled in old Greece—namely, at the moment when the Epireans cross the Pindus bent on expelling the black magicians from their home to Bœotia. But history never listened to the popular legends which speak of the “accursed sorcerers” who departed, leaving as an inheritance behind them more than one secret of their infernal arts, the fame of which crossing the ages has now passed into history—or, classical Greek and Roman fable, if so preferred. To this day a popular tradition narrates how the ancient forefathers of the Thessalonians, so renowned for their magicians, had come from behind the Pillars, asking for help and refuge from the great Zeus, and imploring the father of the gods to save them from the deluge. But the “Father” expelled them from the Olympus, allowing their tribe to settle only at the foot of the mountain, in the valleys, and by the shores of the Ægean Sea.

    Such is the oldest fable of the ancient Thessalonians. And now, what was the language spoken by the Atlantean Æolians? History cannot answer us. Nevertheless, the reader has only to be reminded of some of the accepted and a few of the as

336   ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

yet unknown facts, to cause the light to enter any intuitional brain. It is now proved that man was universally conceived in antiquity as born of the earth. Such is now the profane explanation of the term autochthones. In nearly every vulgarized popular fable, from the Sanskrit Arya “born of the earth,” or Lord of the Soil in one sense; the Erechtheus of the archaic Greeks, worshipped in the earliest days of the Akropolis and shown by Homer as “he whom the earth bore” ( Il. ii. 548) ; down to Adam fashioned of “red earth,” the genetical story has a deep occult meaning, and an indirect connection with the origin of man and of the subsequent races. Thus, the fables of Helen, the son of Pyrrha the red—the oldest name of Thessaly; and of Mannus, the reputed ancestor of the Germans, himself the son of Tuisco, “the red son of the earth,” have not only a direct bearing upon our Atlantis fable, but they explain moreover the division of mankind into geological groups as made by the Occultists. It is only this, their division, that is able to explain to Western teachers the apparently strange, if not absurd, coincidence of the Semitic Adam—a divinely revealed personage—being connected with red earth, in company with the Aryan Pyrrha, Tuisco, &c.—the mythical heroes of “foolish” fables. Nor will that division made by the Eastern Occultists, who call the 5th race people “the Brown-white,” and the 4th race the “Red- yellow,” Root-races—connecting them with geological strata—appear at all fantastic to those who understood verse iii. 34—9 of the Veda and its occult meaning, and another verse in which the

337——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

Dasyus are called “Yellow.” Hatvi Dasyun pra aryam varanam àvat is said of Indra who, by killing the Dasyus, protected the colour of the Aryans; and again, Indra “ unveiled the light for the Aryas and the Dasyus was left on the left hand” (ii. III 18). Let the student of Occultism bear in mind that the Greek Noah, Deukalion, the husband of Pyrrha, was the reputed son of Prometheus who robbed Heaven of its fire (i.e., of secret Wisdom “of the right hand,” or occult knowledge) ; that Prometheus is the brother of Atlas ; that he is also the son of Asia and of the Titan Iapetus—the antetype from which the Jews borrowed their Japhet for the exigencies of their own popular legend to mask its kabalistic, Chaldean meaning; and that he is also the antetype of Deukalion. Prometheus is the creator of man out of earth and water,* who after stealing fire from Olympus—a mountain in Greece— is chained on. a mount in the far-off Caucasus. From Olympus to Mount Kazbek there is a considerable distance. The Occultists say that while the 4th race was generated and developed on the Atlantean continent—our Antipodes in a certain sense—the 5th was generated and developed in Asia. [The ancient Greek geographer Strabo, for one, calls by the name of Ariana, the land of the Aryas, the whole country between the Indian Ocean in the south, the Hindu Kush and Parapamisis in the north, the Indus on the east, and the Caspian Gates, Karamania and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, on the west.] The fable of Prometheus relates to the ex-
——————————————————
* Behold Moses saying that it requires earth and water to make a living man.

338    ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

tinction of the civilized portions of the 4th race, whom Zeus, in order to create a new race, would destroy entirely, and Prometheus (who had the sacred fire of knowledge) saved partially “for future seed.” But the origin of the fable antecedes the destruction of Poseidonis by more than seventy thousand years, however incredible it may seem. The seven great continents of the world, spoken of in the Vishnu Purana (B. II., cap. 2) include Atlantis, though, of course, under another name. Ila and Ira are synonymous Sanskrit terms (see Amarakosha), and both mean earth or native soil; and Ilavrita is a portion of Ila, the central point of India (Jambudvipa), the latter being itself the centre of the seven great continents before the submersion of the great continent of Atlantis, of which Poseidonis was but an insignificant remnant. And now, while every Brahmin will understand the meaning, we may help the Europeans with a few more explanations.

    If, in that generally tabooed work, “Isis Unveiled,” the “English F.T.S.” turns to page 589, vol. i., he may find therein narrated another old Eastern legend. An island . . . . (where now the Gobi desert lies) was inhabited by the last remnants of the race that preceded ours: a handful of  “Adepts”
—the “Sons of God,” now referred to as the Brahman Pitris; called by another yet Synonymous name in the Chaldean Kabala. “Isis Unveiled” may appear very puzzling and contradictory to those who know nothing of Occult Sciences. To the Occultist it is correct, and while perhaps left purposely sinning (for it was the first cautious

339——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

attempt to let into the West a faint streak of Eastern esoteric light), it reveals more facts than were ever given before its appearance. Let any one read these pages and he may comprehend. The “six such races” in Manu refer to the sub-races of the fourth race (p. 590). In addition to this the reader must turn to the paper on “The Septenary Principle in Esotericism” (p. 187 ante), study the list of the “Manus” of our fourth Round (p. 254), and between this and “Isis” light may, perchance, be focussed. On pages 590—6 of the work mentioned above, he will find that Atlantis is mentioned in the “Secret Books of the East” (as yet virgin of Western spoliating hand) under another name in the sacred hieratic or sacerdotal language. And then it will be shown to him that Atlantis was not merely the name of one island but that of a whole continent, of whose isles and islets many have to this day survived. The remotest ancestors of some of the inhabitants of the now miserable fisherman’s hovel “Aclo” (once Atlan), near the gulf of Uraha, were allied at one time as closely with the old Greeks and Romans as they were with the “true inland China-man,” mentioned on p. 57 Of “Esoteric Buddhism.” Until the appearance of a map, published at Basle in 1522, wherein the name of America appears for the first time, the latter was believed to be part of India; and strange to him who does not follow the mysterious working of the human mind and its unconscious approximations to hidden truths— even the aborigines of the new continent, the Red-skinned tribes, the “Mongoloids” of Mr. Huxley,

340    ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

were named Indians. Names now attributed to chance : elastic word that! Strange coincidence, indeed, to him who does not know—science refusing yet to sanction the wild hypothesis—that there was a time when the Indian peninsula was at one end of the line, and South America at the other, connected by a belt of islands and continents. The India of the prehistoric ages was not only within the region at the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes, but there was even in the days of history, and within its memory, an upper, a lower, and a western India: and still earlier it was doubly connected with the two Americas. The lands of the ancestors of those whom Ammianus Marcellinus calls the “Brahmans of Upper India” stretched from Kashmir far into the (now) deserts of Schamo. A pedestrian from the north might then have reached—hardly wetting his feet—the Alaskan Peninsula, through Manchooria, across the future Gulf of Tartary, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands; while another traveller, furnished with a canoe and starting from the south, could have walked over from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands and trudged into any part of the continent of South America. On pp. 592—3 of “Isis,” vol. i., the Thevetatas—the evil, mischievous gods that have survived in the Etruscan Pantheon—are mentioned, along with the “sons of God” or Brahrnan Pitris. The Involute, the hidden or shrouded gods, the Consentes, Complices, and Novensiles, are all disguised relics of the Atlanteans; while the Etruscan arts of soothsaying their Disciplina revealed by Tages comes direct and in undisguised form from

341——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

the Atlantean king Thevetat, the “invisible” Dragon, whose name survives to this day among the Siamese and Burmese, as also, in the Jataka allegorical stories of the Buddhists as the opposing power under the name of Devadat. And Tages was the son of Thevetat, before he became the grandson of the Etruscan Jupiter-Tinia. Have the Western Orientalists tried to find out the connection between all these Dragons and Serpents; between the “powers of Evil” in the cycles of epic legends, the Persian and the Indian, the Greek and the Jewish; between the contests of Indra and the giant; the Aryan Nagas and the Iranian Aji Dahaka; the Guatemalian Dragon and the Serpent of Genesis—&c. &c. &c.? Professor Max Muller discredits the connection. So be it. But the fourth race of men, “men” whose sight was unlimited and who knew all things at once, the hidden as the unrevealed, is mentioned in the Popol-Vuh, the sacred books of the Guatemalians; and the Babylonian Xisuthrus, the far later Jewish Noah, the Hindu Vaivaswata, and the Greek Deukalion, are all identical with the great Father of the Thlinkithians, of Popol-Vuh who, like the rest of these allegorical (not mythical) Patriarchs, escaped in his turn and in his days, in a large boat at the time of the last great Deluge—the submersion of Atlantis.

    To have been an Indo-Aryan, Vaivaswata had not, of necessity, to meet with his Saviour (Vishnu, under the form of a fish) within the precincts of the present India, or even anywhere on the Asian continent; nor is it necessary to concede that he was

342    ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

the seventh great Manu himself (see catalogue of the Manus, in the paper on “The Septenary Principle in Esotericism” cited above), but simply that the Hindu Noah belonged to the clan of Vaivaswata and typifies the fifth race. Now the last of the Atlantean islands perished some 11,000 years ago; and the fifth race headed by the Aryans began its evolution, to the certain knowledge of the “Adepts” nearer one million than 900,000 years ago. But the historian and the anthropologist with their utmost stretch of liberality are unable to give more than from twenty to one hundred thousand years for all our human evolution. Hence we put it to them as a fair question : at what point during their own conjectural lakh of years do they fix the root-germ of the ancestral line of the “old Greeks and Romans?” Who were they? What is known or even “conjectured” about their territorial habitat after the division of the Aryan nations? And where were the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races? It is not enough for purposes of refutation of other peoples’ statements to say that the latter lived separate from the former, and then come to a full stop—a fresh hiatus in the ethnological history of mankind. Since Asia is sometimes called the Cradle of Humanity, and it is an ascertained fact that Central Asia was likewise the cradle of the Semitic and Turanian races (for thus it is taught in Genesis), and we find the Turans agreeably to the theory evolved by the Assyriologists preceding the Babylonian Semitists, where, at what spot of the globe, did these Semito-Turanian nations break away from the parent stock, and what has

343——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

become of the latter? It cannot be the small Jewish tribe of Patriarchs; and unless it can be shown that the garden of Eden was also on the Oxus or the Euphrates, fenced off from the soil inhabited by the children of Cain, philologists who undertake to fill in the gaps in Universal History with their made-up conjectures, may be regarded as ignorant of this detail as those they would enlighten.

    Logically, if the ancestors of these various groups had been at that remote period massed together, then the self-same roots of a parent common stock would have been equally traceable in their perfected languages as they are in those of the Judo-Europeans. And so, since whichever way one turns, one is met with the same troubled sea of speculation, margined by the treacherous quicksands of hypothesis, and every horizon bounded by inferential landmarks inscribed with imaginary dates. Again, the “Adepts” ask why should any one be awed into accepting as final criterion that which passes for science of high authority in Europe? For all this is known to the Asiatic scholar—in every ease save the purely mathematical and physical sciences—as little better than a secret league for mutual support, and, perhaps, admiration. He bows with profound respect before the Royal Societies of Physicists, Chemists, and, to a degree, even of Naturalists. He refuses to pay the slightest attention to the merely speculative and conjectural so-called “sciences” of the modern Physiologist, Ethnologist, Philologist, &c., and the mob of self-styling Œdipuses to whom it is not given to un-

344    ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

riddle the Sphynx of Nature, and who therefore throttle her.

    With an eye to the above, as also with a certain prevision of the future, the defendants in the cases under examination believe that the “historical difficulty” with reference to the non historical statement, necessitated more than a simple reaffirmation of the fact. They knew that with no better claims to a hearing than may be accorded by the confidence of a few, and in view of the decided antagonism of the many, it would never do for them to say
“we maintain” while Western professors maintained to the contrary. For a body of, so to say, unlicensed preachers and students of unauthorized and unrecognized sciences to offer to fight an august body of universally recognized oracles, would be an unprecedented piece of impertinence. Hence their respective claims had to be examined on however small a scale to begin with (in this as in all other cases) on other than psychological grounds. The “Adepts” in Occult Arts had better keep silence when confronted with the “A. C. S.’s”—Adepts in Conjectural Sciences—unless they could show, partially at least, how weak is the authority of the latter and on what foundations of shifting sands their scientific dicta are often built They may thus make it a thinkable conjecture that the former may be right after all. Absolute silence, moreover, as at present advised, would have been fatal. Besides risking to be construed into inability to answer, it might have given rise to new complaints among the faithful few, and lead to fresh charges of selfishness against the

345——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

writers. Therefore have the “Adepts” agreed to smooth in part at least a few of the most glaring difficulties and showing a highway to avoid them in future by studying the non-historical but actual, instead of the historical but mythical, portions of Universal History. And this they have achieved, they believe (at any rate with a few of their querists), by simply showing, or rather reminding them, that since no historical fact can stand as such against the
“assumption” of the “ Adepts”—historians being confessedly ignorant of pre-Roman and Greek origins beyond the ghostly shadows of the Etruscans and Pelasgians—no real historical difficulty can be possibly involved in their statement. From objectors outside the Society, the writers neither demand nor do they expect mercy. The “Adept” has no favours ask at the hands of conjectural science, nor does he exact from any member of the
“London Lodge” blind faith: it being his cardinal maxim that faith should only follow inquiry. The “Adept” is more than content to be allowed to remain silent, keeping what he may know to himself, unless worthy seekers wish to share it. He has so done for ages, and can do so for a little longer. Moreover, he would rather not “arrest attention” or “command respect” at present. Thus he leaves his audience to first verify his statements in every case by the brilliant though rather wavering light of modern science: after which his facts may be either accepted or rejected, at the option of the willing student. In short, the “Adept”—if one indeed—has to remain utterly unconcerned with, and unmoved by, the issue. He imparts that which it

346    ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

is lawful for him to give out, and deals but with facts.

     The philological and archæological “difficulties” next demand attention.
 

PHILOLOGICAL AND ARCHÆOL0GICAL “DIFFICULTIES.”

Two questions are blended into one. Having shown the reasons why the Asiatic student is prompted to decline the guidance of Western History, it remains to explain his contumacious obstinacy in the same direction with regard to philology and archæology. While expressing the sincerest admiration for the clever modern methods of reading the past histories of nations now mostly extinct, and following the progress and evolution of their respective languages, now dead, the student of Eastern occultism, and even the profane Hindu scholar acquainted with his national literature, can hardly be made to share the confidence felt by Western philologists in these conglutinative methods, when practically applied to his own country and Sanskrit literature. Three facts, at least, out of many are well calculated to undermine his faith in these Western methods :—

    1. Of some dozens of eminent Orientalists, no two agree, even in their verbatim translation of Sanskrit texts. Nor is there more harmony shown in their interpretation of the possible meaning of doubtful passages.

    2. Though Numismatics is a less conjectural branch of science, and when starting from well-established basic dates, so to say, an exact one (since

347——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

it can hardly fail to yield correct chronological data, in our ease, namely, Indian antiquities); archæologists have hitherto failed to obtain any such position. On their own confession, they are hardly justified in accepting the Samvat and Salivahana eras as their guiding lights, the real initial points of both being beyond the power of the European Orientalists to verify; yet all the same, the respective dates “of 57 B.C. and 78 A.D.” are accepted implicitly, and fanciful ages thereupon ascribed to archæological remains.

    3. The greatest authorities upon Indian archæaology and architecture—General Cunningham and Mr. Fergusson—represent in their conclusions the two opposite poles. The province of archæology is to provide trustworthy canons of criticism, and not, it should seem, to perplex or puzzle. The Western critic is invited to point to one single relic of the past in India, whether written record or inscribed or uninscribed monument, the age of which is not disputed. No sooner has one archæologist determined a date—say the first century—than another tries to pull it forward to the 10th or perhaps the 14th century of the Christian era. While General Cunningham ascribes the construction of the present Buddha Gaya temple to the 1st century after Christ—the opinion of Mr. Fergusson is that its external form belongs to the 14th century; and so the unfortunate outsider is as wise as ever. Noticing this discrepancy in a “Report on the Archæological Survey of India” (vol. viii. p. 60), the conscientious and capable Buddha-Gaya Chief Engineer, Mr. J. D. Beglar, observes that “notwithstanding

348    ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

his (Fergusson’s) high authority, this opinion must he unhesitatingly set aside,” and forthwith assigns the building under notice to the 6th century. While the conjectures of one archæologist are termed by another “hopelessly wrong,” the identifications of Buddhist relics by this other are in their turn denounced as “quite untenable.” And so in the case of every relic of whatever age.

    When the “recognized” authorities agree—among themselves at least—then will it be time to show them collectively in the wrong. Until then, since their respective conjectures can lay no claim to the character of history, the “Adepts” have neither the leisure nor the disposition to leave weightier business to combat empty speculations, in number as many as there are pretended authorities. Let the blind lead the blind, if they will not accept the light.*

    As in the “historical,” so in this new “archæological difficulty,” namely, the apparent anachronism as to the date of our Lord’s birth, the point at issue is again concerned with the “old Greeks and Romans.” Less ancient than our Atlantean friends, they seem more dangerous inasmuch as they have become the direct allies of philologists in our dispute over Buddhist annals. We are notified by Prof. Max Muller, by sympathy the most fair of Sanskritists as well as the most learned—and with whom, for a wonder, most of his rivals are found siding in this particular question—that “everything in Indian chronology depends on the date of Chan-
——————————————————
* However, it will be shown elsewhere that General Cunningham’s latest conclusions about the date of Buddha’s death are not all supported by the inscriptions newly discovered.—T. SUBBA Row.

349——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

dragupta,”—the Greek Sandracottus. “Either of these dates (in the Chinese and Ceylonese chronology) is impossible, because it does not agree with the chronology of Greece.” (“Hist. of the Sans. Lit.,” p. 275.) It is then by the clear light of this new Alexandrian Pharos shed, upon a few synchronisms casually furnished by the Greek and Roman classical writers, that the “extraordinary” statements of the” Adepts” have now to be cautiously examined. For Western Orientalists the historical existence of Buddhism begins with Asoka, though, even with the help of Greek spectacles, they are unable to see beyond Chandragupta. Therefore, “before that time Buddhist chronology is traditional and full of absurdities.” Furthermore, nothing is said in the Brahmanas of the Bauddhas—eryo, there were none before “Sandracottus,” nor have the Buddhists or Brahmans any right to a history of their own, save the one evoluted by the Western mind. As though the Muse of History had turned her back while events were gliding by, the “historian” confesses his inability to close the immense lacunæ between the Indo-Aryan supposed immigration en masse across the Hindoo Kush, and the reign of Asoka. Having nothing more solid, he uses contradictory inferences and speculations. But the Asiatic occultists, whose forefathers had her tablets in their keeping, and even some learned native Pundits—believe they can. The claim, however, is pronounced unworthy of attention. Of the late Smriti (traditional history) which, for those who know how to interpret its allegories, is full of unimpeachable historical records, an Ariadne’s thread through the

350    ——————————————————     FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY.

tortuous labyrinth of the Past—has come to be unanimously regarded as a tissue of exaggerations, monstrous fables, “clumsy forgeries of the first centuries A.D.” It is now openly declared as worthless not only for exact chronological but even for general historical purposes. Thus by dint of arbitrary condemnations, based on absurd interpretations (too often the direct outcome of sectarian prejudice), the Orientalist has raised himself to the eminence of a philological mantic. His learned vagaries are fast superseding, even in the minds of many a Europeanized Hindu, the important historical facts that lie concealed under the exoteric phraseology of the Puranas and other Smritic literature. At the outset, therefore, the Eastern Initiate declares the evidence of those Orientalists who, abusing their unmerited authority, play ducks and drakes with his most sacred relics, ruled out of court; and before giving his facts he would suggest to the learned European Sanskritist and archæologist that, in the matter of chronology, the difference in the sum of their series of conjectural historical events, proves them to be mistaken from A to Z. They know that one single wrong figure in an arithmetical progression will always throw the whole calculation into inextricable confusion: the multiplication yielding, generally, in such a case, instead of the correct sum something entirely unexpected. A fair proof of this may, perhaps, be found in something already alluded to—namely, the adoption of the dates of certain Hindu eras as the basis of their chronological assumptions. In assigning a date to text or monument they have, of course, to be guided by one of

351——————————————————   MR. SINNETT’S “ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.”

the pre-Christian Indian eras, whether inferentially, or otherwise. And yet—in one case, at least—they complain repeatedly that they are utterly ignorant as to the correct starting-point of the most important of these. The positive date of Vikramaditya, for instance, whose reign forms the starting point of the Samvat era, is in reality unknown to them. With some, Vikramaditya flourished “B.C.” 56; with others, 86; with others again, in the 6th century of the Christian era; while Mr. Fergusson will not allow the Samvat era any beginning before the “10th century A.D.” In short, and in the words of Dr. Weber,* they “have absolutely no authentic evidence to show whether the era of Vikramaditya dates from the year of his birth, from some achievement, or from the year of his death, or whether, in fine, it may not have been simply introduced by him for astronomical reasons.” There were several Vikramadityas and Vikramas in Indian history, for it is not a name, but an honorary title, as the Orientalists have now come to learn. How then can any chronological deduction from such a shifting premise be anything but untrustworthy, especially when, as in the instance of the Samvat, the basic date is made to travel along, at the personal fancy of Orientalists, between the 1st and the 10th century?

    Thus it appears to be pretty well proved that in ascribing chronological dates to Indian antiquities, Anglo-Indian as well as European archæologists are often guilty of the most ridiculous anachronisms. That, in fine, they have been hitherto furnishing
——————————————————
* “The History of Indian Literature,” Trubner’s Series, 1882, p. 202.