Theosophy - The Common Foundation of all Religions by H.S.Olcott - Adyar Pamphlet No.95
Adyar Pamphlets No 95, November 1918
The
Common Foundation of
all Religions ΔΔ
By
H.S. Olcott
[A lecture delivered at the Pachaiyappa’s Hall, Madras, on the 26th April, 1882]
Theosophical Publishing House Adyar, Chennai (Madras) India
BEFORE
proceeding with my discourse I must first express the profound thanks of Madame
Blavatsky - my learned colleague - and myself for the warm and distinguished
welcome we have received, from your Committee on our landing, and this immense
assemblage which embraces so large a number of the educated men of this Presidency.
We have thus had one more proof of the fact that the progress of our work in
India is being watched with affectionate interest by the intelligent classes
of the Indian Peninsula. Once more, upon visiting for the first time a Presidency
town, we find ourselves among friends the sincerity of whose welcome cannot
be misunderstood, and which unmistakably proves that we are not received as
strangers but as brethren are who return from a distant land to their own people.
Let us hope that the fraternal ties now created between us may never be broken,
but grow stronger and stronger as time makes us all to see the necessity for
united effort on behalf of the sacred cause of Indian interests. I trust that
you will give patient attention to the thoughts that I shall now offer for your
consideration.
Religion
is - according to Mr Herbert Spencer -
“a great (I should say the greatest) reality and a great truth - nothing
less than an essential and indestructible element of human nature”.
He holds that the religious institutions of the world represent a genuine
and universal feeling in the race just as really as any other institution.
The accessory superstitions which have overgrown and perverted the religious
sentiment must not be confounded with the religious sentiment itself. That
this is done is a mischievous mistake, alike of religionists and anti-religionists.
Science in clearing away these excrescences brings us always nearer the underlying
truth, and is therefore the handmaid and friend of true religion. The substratum
of truth is the one broad plateau of rock upon which the world’s theological
superstructures are reared. It is - as the title of our lecture puts it -
“the common foundation of all religions”.
And now what is it? What is this rock? It is a conglomerate, having more than one element
in its composition. In the first place, of necessity, is the idea of a part of man’s nature which
is non-physical; next, the idea of a post-mortem continuation of this non-physical part; third,
the existence of an Infinite Principle underlying all phenomena; fourth, a certain
relationship between this Infinite Principle and the non-physical part of man.
The
evolution of the grander from the lower intellectual conception in this graded
sequence is now conceded, alike by the scientist and the theologian. This evolution
is accompanied by an elimination, for in religion, as in all other departments
of thought, the light cannot be seen until the clouds are cleared away. Primitive
truth is the light, theologies the clouds; and they are clouds still, though
they glitter with all the hues of the spectrum. Fetish worship, animal worship,
hero worship, ancestor worship, nature worship, book worship; polytheism, monotheism,
theism, deism, atheism, materialism (which includes positivism), agnosticism;
the blind adoration of the idol, the blind adoration of the crucible - these
are the Alpha and the Omega of human religious thought, the measure of relative
spiritual blindness.
All
these concepts pass through a single prism - the human mind. And that is why
they are so imperfect, so incongruous, so human. A man can never see the whole
light by looking from inside his body outwardly, any more than one can see the
clear daylight through a dust-soiled window-glass, or the stars through a smeared
reflecting lens. Why? Because the physical senses are adapted only to the things
of a physical world, and religion is a transcendentalism. Religious truth is
not a thing for physical observation, but one for psychical intuition. One who
has not developed this psychical power can never know religion as a fact;
he can only accept it as a creed, or paint it to himself as an emotional sentimentality.
Bigotry is the brand to put upon one; gush that for the other. Back of both,
and equally threatening them, is Scepticism.
Like
man his religion has its ages; first, proclamation, propagandism, martyrdom;
second conquest, faith; third, neglect, self-criticism; fourth,
decadence, tenacious formalism; fifth, hypocrisy; sixth, compromise;
seventh, decay and extinction. And, like the human race, no religion
passes as a whole through these stages seriatim. At this very
day, we see the Australian sunk in the depths of animalism, the American Red
Indian just emerging from the Stone Age, the European in the full flush of high
material civilization. And so a glance at religious history shows us the cropping
up of highly heretical schools and sects in each great religion, of which each
represents some special departure from primitive orthodoxy, some separate advance
along the road towards the final goal that we have sketched out. And I also
note, as the physician observes the symptoms of his patient, that history constantly
shows in the bitter mutual hatreds of these cliques and sects for each other,
the clearest proofs that our postulate is correct when we say - as just now
- that Religion can never be really known by the physical brain of the physical
man. All these hatreds, bitternesses and cruel reprisals of sect for sect, and
world’s faith for world’s faith, show that men mistake the non-essentials
for essentials, illusions for realities.
We
can test this statement most easily. Look away from this war of theologians
to the class of men who have developed their psychical powers and what do you
see? In place of strife, peace, agreement mutual tolerance, a brotherly concord
as to the fundamentals of religion. Whatever their exoteric creed they are greater
than and far above it, and their innate holiness and gentleness of nature give
life and strength to the Church they represent; they are the flowers of the
human tree, the brothers of all mankind; for they know what is the light that
shines behind the clouds; under the foundations of all the Churches they see
the same rock. I ask those of you who wish to be convinced of this fact to read
the Dabistan, by Mohsan Fami, who records in it his observations of the
sâdhus of twelve different religions two centuries ago. “Granting
all the premises” - the modern sceptic will say - “can you prove
to me that science has not swept away all your religious hypotheses along with
the myths, legends, superstitions and other lumber? Well, I answer, “Yes”.
It is exactly on that datum line that the Theosophical Society is building itself
up. Some people think us opponents of Science, but on the contrary we are its
warmest advocates - until it begins to dogmatize from incomplete, known data
upon new facts. When it reaches that point we challenge it and fight it with
all our strength, such as it may be, just as we fight the dogmatism of theology.
For to our mind, it does not matter whether you blindly worship a fetish, a
man, a book, or a crucible - it is blind idolatry all the same; and Science
can be, and has been, as cruel and remorseless in her way as the Church ever
was in hers.
The first step is to have an agreement as to what the word “Science” means. I take it to be
the collection and arrangement of observed facts about Nature. If that is correct, then I
protest against half measures: I want those observations to be complete, to cover all of
Nature, not the half of it. What sort of ontology would it be which, while pretending to
investigate the laws of our being, took note only of our anatomy, physiology and whatever
relates to the physical frame of man, leaving out all that concerns his mental function?
Absurd! you would say; but I ask you whether it is any more absurd to study man in his
body without the mind, than to study him in body and mind while ignoring the trans-corporeal manifestations of his middle nature. You want me to define what I mean by this
“middle nature” and by its trans-corporeal manifestations: I will do so, I start, then, with the
proposition that there is more of a man than can be burnt with fire, eaten by tigers,
drowned by water, chopped to pieces with knives, or rotted in the ground. The materialist
will deny this, but it does not matter; the proposition can be proved as easily as that he is
a man.
They
have in Europe a science which they call psychology: it is a misnomer - it is
another kind of ology - but we wont quarrel about words. Well, when you come
to analyze the Western idea that underlies this term of psychology, you will
discover that it relates only to the normal and abnormal intellectual manifestations
of the brain. One class of scientists - especially among the alienists, or students
of insanity - maintain that mind is a function of the gray vesicles of the lobes
of the brain; injure the brain by any one of a dozen accidents, and sensation
is cut off, thought ceases, mind is destroyed, the thinking, hence responsible,
entity is extinguished. All that is left is carrion, and out of this carrion,
before the accident, sprang by magneto-electrical energy all that distinguishes
man from the lowest animal, as the lotus springs from slimy mud.
The
opposed party affirm that the brain is the organ of the mind, the machine of
its manifestation, and that the thinking something in man thinks still and still
exists even though the brain be shattered, even though the man die. The one
reflects the tone of materialistic science, the other the tone of the Christian
Churches and of the two crores of so-called modern Spiritualists. The Materialists
regard man as a Unity, a thinking machine, the other regard him as a Duality,
a compound of body and soul. There is no ground for a “middle nature”
in either of these schools. True, here and there, you will find some casual
allusion to a third and higher principle - the “spirit,” as, for
instance, in the Christian New Testament (I Thessaloniaus, v 23)
where I Paul says: “I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be
preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” - an expression
which, however sound as theology, is dreadfully loose and heterodox as science.
But the whole drift of Christian teaching and of mediumistic teaching favours
the duality theory; the body dead, the second principle enters on a new career
of its own until it attains to a postulated summum bonum or summum
malum state. Now experienced observers of the mediumistic phenomena have
seen many animated figures or more or less substantial apparitions of deceased
persons, and these they regard as the returning souls revisiting the land of
the living. They have no idea of this middle nature. But the Hindû philosophers
make a far deeper analysis of man. Instead of a single part, or a duality, they
affirm that there are no fewer than seven distinct groups which go to make up
a human being. These are:
(1)
The Material body - Stûlasarîra
(2) The Lingasarîra
(3)
The Life Principle - Jîva
(4) The Kâmarûpa, resulting as Mâyâvirûpa
(5)
The Physical Intelligence (or Animal Soul) - Manas
(6)
The Spiritual Intelligence - Buddhi
(7)
The Âtmâ
And so minute is their analysis, that each of these groups is subdivided into seven sub-groups. Generally speaking, the first, fourth and seventh principles mark the boundaries
of the tripartite or trinitarian man. And the fourth, which comes just midway between the
gross body (Stûlasarîra) and the Âtmâ, or divine and eternal principle, is this middle nature
of which we have been in search. Now the next question to be asked of us is whether this
fourth principle, or Mâyâvirûpa or human “Double,” is intelligent or non-intelligent, matter
or spirit; and the next, whether its existence can be scientifically accounted for and proved.
We will take them in order.
In
itself the Double is but a vapour, a mist, or a solid form according to its
relative state of condensation. Given outside the body one set of atmospheric,
electric, magnetic, telluric and other conditions, this form may be invisible
yet capable of making sounds or giving other tests of its presence; given another
set of conditions, it may be visible, but as a misty vapour; given a third set,
it may be condensed into perfect visibility and even tangibility. Volumes upon
volumes might be filled with bare paragraph abstracts of recorded instances
of these apparitional visits. Sometimes the form manifests intelligence, it
speaks; sometimes it can only show itself - I am now speaking of the apparitions
of dead persons. I have personally seen more than five hundred such apparitions
at a place in America where hundreds more saw them, and I put my experiences
in the form of a book, which was praised by some of the eminent scientists of
Europe as a careful record of scientifically accurate observations. I only mention
this to satisfy you that here is no case of hallucination or unsupported statements.
Well, then, we have here the middle nature of man acting outside of and after
the death of the physical body; though for my part - being a believer in Asiatic
Psychology - I do not believe that these post-mortem apparitions are the very
man himself - the thinking, responsible Ego. They are, I conceive, but the vapoury
image of the deceased - matter energized by a residuum of the vital force which
is still entangled in the lingering molecules. But to prove our proposition
we must show that this middle principle, this Mâyâvirûpa
or Double, can be separated from the living body at will, projected to a
distance, and animated by the full consciousness of that man.
We
have two means of proving this - (1) in the concurrent testimony of eye-witnesses
as recorded in the literature of different races; and (2) in the evidence of
living witnesses. In the Hindû religious and philosophical works there
are many such testimonies. Not to mention others, we may cite the case of Sankarâchârya,
who entranced his body, left it in the custody of his disciples, entered the
body of a Râjah just deceased, and lived in it for a number of weeks;
and that of Agastya, who appeared in the heat of the battle between Râma
and Râvana, while his body was entranced in the Nilghiris. This story
is given in the Râmâyana. In Patañjali’s Yoga
Sûtras this phenomenon is affirmed to be within the power of every
Siddha who perfects himself in Yoga. As to living witnesses, I am one myself;
for I have seen the Doubles of several men acting intelligently at great distances
from their bodies, and in this pamphlet that I now show you, [Hints on Esoteric
Theosophy (Calcutta, 1882)] will be found the certificates of no less than
nine reputable persons - five Hindûs and four Europeans - that they have
seen such appearances on various occasions within the past two years. And then
we have the scores of similar attestations from credible persons living in different
parts of the world which are to be read in many European books treating upon
these subjects. I do not pretend to say that a skeptical public can be expected
to take this mass of evidence, conclusive as it may be, without reserve; the
alleged phenomenon so surpasses ordinary human experience that, to believe its
reality, each one must see for himself. I however do affirm that we have here
a case of probable verity made out; for, under the strictest canons of scientific
orthodoxy, we cannot suspect a conspiracy to lie among so many individual witnesses,
who never saw or heard of each other, who, in fact, did not even live in the
same generation, but yet whose testimonies corroborate each other.
But
if we have a case of probable truth, the man of science will ask us what we
next demand of him. Do we allege a natural and scientific, or a supernatural,
hence unscientific, explanation for the projection of the Double of the living,
and the apparition of that of the deceased man? I answer, most assuredly, the
former. I am devoted enough to Science to deny, with all the emphasis I can
give to words, the fact that a miraculous phenomenon ever took place, in this
age or any age. Whatever has ever occurred must have done so within the operation
of natural law. To suppose anything else would be equivalent to saying that
there is no permanency in the laws of the universe, but that they can be set
aside and played with at the caprice of an irresponsible and meddlesome Power.
We should be in a universe going by jerks, started and stopped like a clock
that a child is playing with. This supernaturalism is the curse of all creeds,
it hangs like an incubus around the neck of the religions and hatches the satire
of the sceptic; it is the dry-rot that eats out the heart of any faith that
builds upon it. This it is which, carried in the body of a church, foredooms
it to ultimate destruction as surely as the hidden cancer carried in the human
system will one day kill it. And of all epochs this nineteenth century is the
worst in which to come before the public as the champions of supernatural religions.
They are going down in every land, melting before the laboratory fires like
waxen images. No, when I stand forth as the defender of Hindûism, Buddhism
or Zoroastrianism, I wish it understood that I do not claim any respect or tolerance
for them outside the limits of natural law, I believe - nay I know -
that their foundation is a scientific one, and on those conditions they must
stand or fall so far as I am concerned. I do not say they are in equally close
reconciliation with science, but I do say that whatever foundation they have,
whether broad or narrow, long or short, is and must be a scientific one. And
so, too, when I ask you to cease from making yourselves ridiculous by denying
the existence of this middle nature in man, it is because I am persuaded, as
the result of much reading and a good deal of personal experience, that the
Double, or Mâyâvirûpa, is a scientific fact.
Well
then, to return - is it matter or something else? I say matter plus something
else. And here stop a moment to think what matter is. Loose thinkers - among
whom we must class raw lads fresh from college, though they be ever so much
titled - are too apt to associate the idea of matter with the properties of
density, visibility, and tangibility. But this is very inexcusable. The air
we breathe is invisible, yet matter - its equivalents of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen
and carbonic acid are each atomic, ponderable, demonstrable by analysis. Electricity
cannot, except under prepaid conditions, be seen, yet it is matter. The Universal
Ether of science no one ever saw, yet it is matter in a state of extreme tenuity.
Take the familiar example of forms of water, and see how they rapidly run up
the scale of tenuity until they elude the clutch of science: stone-hard ice,
melted ice, condensed steam, super-heated and invisible steam, electricity,
and - it is gone out of the world of effects into the world of causes!
Well then, with this warning before you, my cerebrally superheated young friend of the
Madras University, pray do not contradict me when I say that the Hindû philosophy of man
fits in with the lines of modern science much more snugly than that of either the
supernaturalistic Christian or the materialistic man of science. As we have seen the
successive forms of water running up into the invisible world, so here, Esoteric Hindû
Philosophy gives us a graduated series of molecular arrangements in the human economy,
at one end of which is the concrete mass of the Stûlasarîra, at the other the last
sublimation called Âtmâ, or spirit. “But how can all these exist together in one combination;
is a man like a nest of boxes or baskets fitted into each other, or do you mean to say the
scientific absurdity that two things can simultaneously occupy the same space?” This is a
side question provoked by the main one, but we must dispose of it first.
I
will say, then, that as the thing has been explained to me, each of these several
sets of atoms which compose the seven parts of man occupy the interstitial space
between the next coarser set of atoms. They are focalized as to their several
energies in what the Hindûs call the Shadadharams, or centres of vital
force, crowned by Sahasrâram, in which Âtmâ is located. This
supreme point is in the crown of the head; the others are located at the base
of the spine, the abdomen, the umbilicus, the heart, the root of the throat,
and the centre of the frontal sinus. The atoms of the Buddhi would, then,
pervade the interstices of the Manas; those of the Manas , those of the
Kâmarûpa; those of the latter those of the Jîva;
those of the Stûlasarîra. And as each coarser contains the
particles of all the finer principles, therefore the Stûlasarîra
is the gross casket within which the several parts of the composite man are
contained. Pervading and energizing all is the Âtmâ, or that incomprehensible
final energy which cannot be comprehended by the physical senses, and which
is described to himself by the Brahman in the Mândûkya-Upanishat
by saying: “Thou art not this, nor that, nor the third, nor anything which
the mind can grasp with the help of the physical perceptions.” Your popular
Telugu poet beautifully and allegorically depicts this idea in his poem Sîtârâma
Añjaniyam (cosmic matter) where Sîtâ - who is herself
the personification of Prakrti - is asked by the daughters and wives of the
Rshis to point out her husband, but, through modesty, refrains. The ladies then
pointing successively to a number of different men ask each time: “Is
this thy husband?” She answers in the negative, but when they point to
Râma she is silent, for she cannot even speak of her heart’s lord
before strangers. So the poet would have us understand, while we may freely
say what Âtmâ is not, when we are required to say what it
is we must be silent, for words are powerless to express the sublime idea.
We
have now prepared the ground to answer both of the questions put to us by our
imaginary critic. The Kâmarûpa, when intelligently projected beyond
the physical body by the developed energy of an Initiate of Occult Science,
contains in it all his Manas and Buddhi (including the Chittham and Ahankâram,
- sense of individuality) - his Intelligence and Spiritual Intelligence.
The Initiate quits his earthly casket - in which are left the Jîva and
Lingasarîra - and for the moment lives, thinks and acts in this Double
of himself. Its atomic condition being less dense than that of the corporeal
body, it has enhanced powers of locomotion and perception. Barriers that would
stop the body - for example, the walls of a room - cannot stop it, for its particles
may pass through the interstices of the gross matter composing the wall. It
is in the subjective world and may traverse its space like thought, which is
itself a form of energy. Or, if he likes, the Initiate may simply project a
non-intelligent image of himself and make it appear at the spot at which he
may have focalized his thought. It depends upon him whether the image shall
be but an illusionary form, or his own self; it may be mere matter, or matter
plus himself. As to our accounting for the middle nature of man scientifically,
I have already shown that we may do this by the collection of testimonies, and
by personal observation. We may add that further proof is obtainable by the
best and surest of all methods - that of going oneself through the necessary
course of self-training and projecting one’s own Double. For this is no
exclusive science reserved for a favoured few; it is a true science based upon
natural law, and within the reach of everyone who has the requisite qualifications.
The humblest labourer may lift the veil of mystery as well as the proudest sovereign
or the haughtiest priest.
But
it is constantly asked: why are not these secrets thrown open to the world as
freely as the details of chemistry or any other branch of knowledge? It is a
natural question - for a superficial reasoner to put; but it is not a sound
one. The difference between psychic and physical sciences is that the former
can only be learned by the self-evolution of psychical powers. No college professor
can evolve them for you, nor any friend, fellow-student or relative; you must
evolve them for yourself. Can another man learn music, or Samskrit, or the art
of painting or sculpture for you? Can another eat, sleep, feel warm or cold,
digest or breathe for you? Then why should you expect him to learn psychology
for you? Anyhow he cannot do it, however much you may expect it, and that is
the final answer to all such questioners. Nor is it absolutely certain
that, even though you should try ever so much, you could evolve these powers
in yourself. Has every man the capacity for languages, or music, or poetry,
or science, or philosophy? You know that each of these require certain clear
aptitudes, and if you have them not you can never become a musician, poet, scientist
or philosopher. The branches of physical science are difficult to master, even
when you have the natural capacity; but psychical science is more difficult
than either of them - I might almost say than all combined. That is why the
Mahâtmâ has been described as “the rare efforescence of a
generation of enquirers” (Sinnett’s The
Occult World p 101), and in all generations the true Sâdhu has
been reverenced as almost a superhuman being. The term applies to him only in
the sense of his being above the weaknesses, the prejudice and the ignorance
of his fellow men.
With
the most absurd blindness to the experience of the race, we Founders of the
Theosophical Society are constantly being asked to turn its members into Adepts.
We must show the short cut to the Himavat, the private passages to the Asramums
in the Nilghiris! They are not willing to work and suffer for the getting of
knowledge, as all who have got it heretofore, they must be put into a first-class
carriage and taken straight behind the Veil of Isis! They fancy our Society
an improved sort of Miracle Club, or School of Magic wherein for ten rupees
a man can become a Mahâtmâ between the morning bath and the evening
meal! Such people entirely overlook the avowed two chief objects of the Society
- the formation of a nucleus of an Universal Brotherhood for the research after
truth and the promotion of kind feelings between man and man; and the promotion
of the study of ancient religions, philosophies and sciences. They do not appreciate
this purely unselfish part of the Society's work, nor seem to think it a noble
and most meritorious thing to labour for the enlightenment and happiness of
mankind. They have an insatiable curiosity to behold wonders, seeing which they
would not, in many instances, be stimulated to search after the hidden springs
of wisdom, but only sit with open mouth and pendulous tongue, to wonder how
the trick was done and what would be the next one?
Such
minds can get no profit by joining the Theosophical Society, and I advise them
to stay outside. We want no such selfish triflers. Ours is a serious, hard-working,
self-denying Society, and we want only men worthy to be called men and worthy
of our respect. We want men whose first question will not be “what good
can I get by joining?” “but” what good can I do by
joining?” Our work requires the services of men who can be satisfied to
labour for the next generation and the succeeding ones; men who, seeing the
lamentable religious state of the world - seeing noble faiths debased, temples,
churches, and holy shrines thronged by hypocrites and mockers - burn with a
desire to rekindle the fires of spirituality and morality upon the polluted
altars, and bring the knowledge of the Rshis within the reach of a sin-burdened
world. We want Hindûs who can love India with so pure an affection that
they will count it a joy and an honour beyond the price to work and to suffer,
even, for her sake. Men we want, who will be able to put aside for the moment
their puerile hatreds of race, and creed, and caste, as they put away a soiled
cloth or a worn-out garment; and with a loving heart and clean conscience be
ready to join with every other man - be he black or white, red or yellow, bondsman
or freeman - whose heart beats with love for India and her wide-scattered children
of many races, throughout the world. We welcome most those who are ready to
trample under foot their selfishness when it comes in conflict with the general
good. We welcome the intelligent student of science who has such broad conceptions
of his subject that he considers it quite as important to solve the mystery
of Force as to know the atomic combinations of Matter, and feeling so, is not
afraid or ashamed to take for his teacher anyone who is competent, whatever
be the colour of his skin.
Now to take our scientific argument one step further. Granted that the existence of the
Double has been proven, and also its projectibility, how is it projected? By an expenditure
of energy, of course. That energy is the vital force set in motion by the will. The power of
concentrating the will for this purpose is one that may be natural or acquired. There are
some persons who have it naturally so strong in them that they often send their Doubles
to distant places and make them visible, though they may never have given a day’s study
to the science of psychology; I have known both men and women of this sort. But it is an
uncommon power, and can never be exercised at all times except by the true proficient in
psychological science. The operations of the brain in mechanically evolving the current of
will-force have been more or less carefully expounded by Bain and Maudsley, while
Professors Tait and Balfour Stewart have, in their Unseen Universe, traced for us the
dynamic effect of thought evolution into the Ether, or, as Hindûs have called it these
thousands of years, the Âkâsa. They go so far as to say that it is not an unthinkable
proposition that the evolution of thought in a single human brain may dynamically affect a
distant planet. In other words, when a thought is evolved a vibration of etheric particles is
set up, and this motion must continue on indefinitely. Now the Yogi evolves such a current
and turns it upon himself as a concentrated force; continuing the process until the power
is sufficient to force his Double out of its corporeal encasement, and to project it to
whatsoever locality he desires. We have thus shown the fact of the Mâyâvirûpa, its
capability to exist outside the body, and the energy which causes its projection. I cannot
go into details to elaborate the argument, for I can only detain you an hour in this tropical
heat. But I have at least, I trust, shown you that I rely only upon scientific principles, and
claim no indulgence from the advocates of supernaturalism.
And
now is this Double - which is none other than what is commonly called the “Soul,”
immortal? No, it is not. So much of it as is matter in aggregation must ultimately
obey the law of dispersion which in time breaks up and forces out of the objective
universe whatever is material. It is equally the law of planetary as of lesser
forms. As all that is material in a star was primarily condensed from the loose
atoms in space, so all that is material in the human body, however coarse or
however fine it may be, was primarily condensed from the chaotic atoms in the
Âkâsa. And to that dispersed condition they must return whenever
the centripetal force that attracted them into the human nucleus ceases to resist
the centrifugal force or attractions of the atoms in space. This brings us right
upon the problem of a continuity of existence beyond the physical death. Here
is the dividing line between the world’s religions. The dualists affirm
that this soul goes to heavenly or infernal places to be for ever blest or punished
according to the deeds done in the body. Though they do not use the very word,
yet it is the doctrine of merit they teach. For even those extremely unscientific
theologians who affirm that a punishing and rewarding Deity has from all time
preordained some to be saved and some to be dammed, tell us that the merit of
faith in a certain system of morals and discipline and a share in the vicarious
merit of another, are prerequisites to future bliss. We may assume, therefore,
that merit, or KARMA,
is a corner-stone of Religion. This is both a logical and scientific proposition,
for the thoughts, words and deeds of a man are so many causes which must work
out corresponding effects; the good ones can only produce good effects, the
bad ones only bad - unless they are antagonized and neutralized by stronger
ones that are good.
I
need not go into the metaphysical analysis of what is bad and what good. We
may pass it over with the simple postulate that whatever has either a debasing
tendency upon the individual or promotes injustice, misery, suffering, ignorance
and animalism in society is essentially bad, that what tends to the contrary
is good. I should call that a bad religion which taught that it is meritorious
to do evil that good may come; for good can never come out of evil, the evil
tree produces not good fruit. A religion that can only be propagated at the
point of the sword; or upon the martyr’s pile; or under instruments of
torture; or by devastating countries and enslaving their populations; or by
cunning stratagems seducing ignorant children or adults away from their families
and castes and ancestral creeds - is a vile and devilish religion, the enemy
of truth, the destroyer of social happiness. If a religion is not based upon
a lie, the fact can be proved and it can stand unshaken as the rocky mountain
against all the assaults of sceptics. A true religion is not one that runs to
holes and corners, like a naked leper to hide his sores, when a bold critic
casts his searching eye upon it and asks for its credentials. If I stand here
to defend what is good in Hinduism, it is because of my full conviction that,
that good exists, and that however fantastic and even childish some may think
its tangled overgrowth of customs, legends and superstitions, there is the rock
of truth, of scientific truth, below them all. On that rock it is destined to
stand through countless coming generations as it has already stood through the
countless generations which have professed that hoary Faith since the Rshis
shot from their Himâlayan heights the blazing light of spiritual truth
over a dark and ignorant world.
It
is most reasonable that you should ask me what those of you are to do who are
not gifted with the power to get outside the illusion-breeding screen of the
body and acquire an intimate actual perception of “Divine” truth
through the developed psychical senses. As we have ourselves shown that all
men cannot be Adepts, what comfort do we hold out to the rest? This involves
a momentary glance at the theory of rebirths. If this little span of human life
we are now enjoying be the entire sum of human existence; if you and I never
lived before and will never live again, then there would be no ray of hope to
offer to any mind that was not capable of the intellectual suicide of blind
faith. The doctrine of a vicarious atonement for sin is not merely unthinkable,
it is positively repulsive to one who can take a larger and more scientific
view of man’s origin and destiny than that of the dualists. One whose
religious perceptions rest upon the intuition that cause and effect are equal;
that there is a perfect and correspondential reign of Law throughout the universe;
that under any reasonable conception of eternity there must always have been
at work the same forces as are now active - must scout the assertion that this
brief instant of sentient life is our only one.
Science
has traced us back through an inconceivably long sequence of existences - in
the human, the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms - to the cradle
of future sentient life, the Ether of space. Would a man of science, then, make
bold to affirm that you and I, who represent a relatively high stage of evolution,
came to be what we are without previous development in other births, whether
on this earth or other planets? And if he would not, he must, in conformity
with his own canons of the conservation and correlation of energy, deduce from
the whole analogy of nature that there is another life for us beyond this life.
The force which evolved us cannot be expended, it must run on in its vibratory
line until its limit is reached. And that limit the Hindû and the Buddhist,
the Jain and the Zoroastrian Adepts, all define as that abstract world which
lies beyond the phenomenal one of illusions and pain. Whatever they may call
it - whether Mukti, or Nirvâna, or Light - it is all the same idea; it
is the outcome of the eternal Principle of energy after passing around a cycle
of correlations with matter. That final limit the Middle Nature as a whole never
reaches, for it is material as to its form, size, colour and atomic relations;
if we call it the “Soul,” therefore, we may say that the “Soul”
is not immortal; for that which is material tends always to resume its primitive
atomic condition. And the Hindû philosopher, arguing from these premises,
teaches that what does escape out of the phenomenal world is Âtmâ,
the SPIRIT. And thus,
while from the Hindû standpoint it is correct to say the “Soul”
is not immortal, it must also be added that the “Spirit” is; for,
unlike the Soul or Middle Nature, Âtmâ contains no mortal and perishable
ingredients, but is of its essence unchangeable and eternal.
The confusion of the words “Soul” and “Spirit,” so common now, is perplexing and
mischievous to this last degree.
It
is no argument to bring against the Asiatic theory of Palingenesis, that we
have no remembrance of former existences. We have forgotten nineteen-twentieths
of the incidents of our present life. Memory plays as the most prankish tricks.
Every one of us can recollect some one trifling incident out of a whole day’s,
month’s year’s incidents of our earliest years, and one that was
in no way important, nor apparently more calculated than the others to impress
itself indelibly upon the memory. How is this? And if this utter forgetfulness
of the majority of our life-incidents is no proof that we did not exist consciously
at those times, then our oblivion of the entire experiences in previous births
is no argument against the fact of such previous births. Nor, let me hasten
to add, are the alleged remembrances of previous births, affirmed by the modern
school of Reincarnationists, valid proofs of such births; they may be - I do
not say they are mere tricks of the imagination, cerebral pictures suggested
by chance external influences. The only question with us is whether in science
and logic it is necessary for us to postulate for ourselves a series of births,
somewhere, at various times. And this I think must be answered in the affirmative.
So
then conceding the plurality of births, and coming back to our argument, we
see that even though anyone of us may not have the capacity for acquiring adeptship
in this birth, it is still a possibility to acquire it in a succeeding one.
If we make the beginning we create a cause which will, in due time and in proportion
to its original energy, sooner or later give us adeptship, and with it the knowledge
of the hidden laws of being, and of the way to break the shackles of matter
and obtain Mukti - Emancipation. And the first step in this beginning is to
cleanse ourselves from vicious desires and habits, to do away with unreasoning
prejudices, dogmatism and intolerance, to try to discover what is essentially
fundamental and what is non-essential in the religion one professes, and to
live up to the highest ideal of goodness, intelligence, and spiritual-mindedness
that one can extract from that religion and from the intuitions of one’s
own nature. I regard that man as a mad iconoclast who would strike down any
religion - especially one of the world’s ancient religions - without examining
it and giving it credit for its intrinsic truth. I call him a vain enthusiast
who would patch up a new Faith out of the ancient Faiths, merely to have his
name in the mouths of men. I call him a foolish zealot who would expect to make
all men see truth as he sees it, since no two men can even see alike a simple
tree or shrub, let alone grasp metaphysical propositions with the same clearness.
As for those who go about the world to propagate their peculiar religious belief,
without the ability to show its superiority to other beliefs which they would
supplant, or to answer without equivocation the fair questions of critics -
they are either well-meaning visionaries or presumptuous fools. But mad, or
vain, or stupid, as either of these may be, if they are sincere they are personally
entitled to the respect that sincerity always commands. Unless the whole world
is ready to accept one infallible chief and blindly adopt one creed, the wisest,
the only rule must ever be to tolerate in our fellow man that infirmity of judgment
which we are ourselves always liable to, and never wholly free from. And that
is the declared policy and platform of the Theosophical Society - as you may
see by reading this pamphlet containing its Rules and By-Laws. It is the broad
platform of mutual tolerance and universal brotherhood.
There
must be elementary stages leading up towards adeptship, you will say; there
are, and modern science has laid out some of them. I told you that psychology
is the most difficult of sciences to get to the bottom of, but still Western
research has cleared many obstacles from the path. Mesmerism is by far the most
necessary branch of study to take up first. It gives you (1) proof of the separability
of mind from conscious physical existence; a mesmerized subject may show an
active intellectual consciousness and discrimination while his body is not only
asleep but buried in so profound a trance as to more resemble a livid corpse
than a living man; (2) it gives you proof of the actual transmissibility of
thought from one mind to another; the mesmeric operator can, without uttering
a word or giving a perceptible signal, transmit to his subject the thought in
his own mind; (3) it easily proves the reality of a power to hear sounds and
see things occurring at great distances, to communicate with the thought of
distant persons, to look through walls, down into the bowels of the earth, into
the depths of the ocean and through all other obstructions to corporeal vision;
(4) of a power to look into the human body, detect the seat and causes of disease,
and prescribe suitable remedies, as also a power to impart health and restore
physical and mental vigour by the laying on of the mesmerist’s hands,
or by his imparting his robust vital force to a glass of water for the patient
to drink, or to a cloth for him to wear; (5) of a power to see the past and
even prognosticate the future. These and many more things Mesmeric Science enables
a person, not an Adept of the higher Asiatic Psychology, to prove completely
to himself and others. I say this on the authority of a Committee of the Academy
of France. And then, besides Mesmerism, there are the highly important branches
of Psychometry, Odyle, Mediumism, and others that to barely mention would be
beyond the scope of my present lecture. Each and all help the inquirer towards
the acquisition of “Divine” wisdom, towards an intelligent and scientific
conception of the laws of that “Eternal Something,” as Herbert Spencer
calls it, which you may call God or by any other name you like. Whatever name
you may choose for it, the knowledge of it is the highest goal for human thought,
and to be in a state of harmony with it the noblest, first and most necessary
aspiration of intelligent man. The pursuit of this knowledge is, in one word,
THEOSOPHY, and the
proper method of research constitute Theosophical Science.
And thus in a single sentence I have answered a thousand questions as to what
Theosophy is, and what the object of Theosophical research. Most of you, like the great
mass of Hindûs, have until this moment been imagining to yourselves that we were come
to preach some new religion, to propagate some new conceit, to set up some “New
Dispensation”. You see now how far you have been from the mark, and what popular
injustice has been done to us. Instead of preaching a new religion we are preaching the
superior claims of the oldest religions in the world to the confidence of the present
generation. It is not our poor ignorant selves that we offer to you as guides and gurus, but
the venerable Rshis of the archaic ages. It is not an American or a Russian, but a hoary
Hindû Philosophy that we claim your allegiance for. We come not to pull down or destroy,
but to rebuild the strong fabric of Asiatic religion. We ask you to help us to set it up again,
not on the shifting and treacherous sands of blind faith, but upon the rocky base of truth,
and to cement its separate stones together with the strong cement of Modern Science.
Hindûism proper has nothing whatever to fear from the researches of Science. Whatever
of falsehood may have come down to you from previous generations, we may well
dispense with, and when the time comes for us to see through our present mâyâ (illusions)
we will cheerfully do so. “The world was not made in a day,” and we are not such ignorant
enthusiasts as to dream that in a day, or a year, or a generation, long-established errors
can be detected and done away with. Let us but always desire to know the truth, and hold
ourselves ready to speak for it, act for it, die for it, if necessary, when we may discover it.
People ask us what in our religion, and how it is possible for us to be on equal terms of
friendliness with people of such antagonistic Faiths. I answer that what may be our
personal preferences among the world’s religions has nothing to do with the general
question of Theosophy. We are advocating Theosophy as the only method by which one
may discover that Eternal Something, not asking people of another creed than ours to take
our creed and throw aside their own. We two Founders profess a religion of tolerance,
charity, kindness, altruism, or love of one’s fellows; a religion that does not try to discover
all that is bad in our neighbour’s creed, but all that is good, and to make him live up to the
best code of morals and piety he can find in it. We profess, in a word, the religion that is
embodied in the Golden Rule of Confucius, of Gautama, and of the Founders of nearly all
the great religions; and that is preserved for the admiration and reverence of posterity in
the Edicts of the good king Asoka on the monoliths and rocks of Hindustan. Following this
simple creed, we find no difficulty whatever in living upon terms of perfect peace with the
adherent of any creed who will meet us in a reciprocal spirit. If we have been at war with
the pretended Christians, it is because they have belied the teachings of Him whom they
pretend to call Master, and by every vile and unworthy subterfuge have tried to oppose the
growth of our influence. It is they who war upon us, for defending Hindûism and the other
Asiatic religions, not we who war upon them. If they would practice their own precepts we
would never use voice or pen against them, for then they would respect the religious
feelings of the Hindû, the Pârsî, the Jain, the Jew, the Buddhist and the Musalmân, and
deserve our respect in return. But they began with calumny instead of argument, and
calumny, I fear, will be the favorite weapon to the bitter end. In comparison with the
unmanly conduct of my brawling countryman who lectured here the other day, denouncing
the Vedas as filthy abomination and the Theosophists as disreputable adventurers, how
sweet and noble was the behaviour of that Muhammadan lawyer who defended Raymond
Lully when a Musalmân tribunal was disposed to punish him for trying to propagate his
religion in their city. “If you think it a meritorious act, O Muslims, for a Musalmân to try to
preach Islâm among the heretics, why should we be uncharitable to this Christian whose
motive is identical?” I cannot remember the exact words, but that is the sense. The tender
voice of Charity spoke by that lawyer’s lips, and his words were the echo of the Spirit of
truth.
Come
then, ye old men and young men of Madras, if ye call yourselves lovers of India,
and would make yourselves worthy of the blessings of the Rshis, join hands and
hearts with us to carry on this great work. We ask you for no honours, no worldly
benefits or rewards for ourselves. We do not seek you for followers; choose
your proper leaders from among your wisest and purest men, and we will follow
them. We do not offer ourselves as your teachers, for all we can teach is what
we have learnt from this Asia; the Gospel we circulate is derived from the recluses
of the Indian mountains, not from the professors of the West. It is for India
we plead, for the restoration of her ancient religion, the vindication of her
ancient glory, the maintenance of her greatness in science, the arts and philosophy.
If any selfish consideration of sect or caste or local prejudice bars the way,
put it aside, at least until you have done something for the land of your birth,
the renown of your noble race. In this great crowd I see painted upon your foreheads
the vertical sect-marks of the Dwaitas and the Visishtâdvaitis, and the
horizontal stripes of the Sivas. These are the surface indications of religious
differences that have often burst out in bitter words and bitter deeds. But
with another sense than the eye of the body I see another set of sect-marks
indicative of far greater peril to Indian nationality and Indian spirituality
than those. These marks are branded deep upon the brains and hearts of some
- though, happily, not all - of your most promising young men, the choicest
children of the sorrowing Mother India, and they are eating away the sense of
pride that they belong to this race and have inherited this noble religion.
These are the B.A., B.L. and M.A. brands that the University over yonder has
marked you with. After three years of intercourse with the Hindû nation
and of identification with its thought, I almost feel a shudder when some noble-browed
youth is presented to me as a titled graduate. Not that I undervalue the importance
of college culture, nor the honourable distinction one earns by acquiring University
degrees; but I say that, if such distinctions can only be had at the cost
of one’s national honour and one’s spiritual intuitions, they
are a curse to the graduate and a calamity to his country. I would rather see
a dirty Bairâgee who has his ancestors’ intuitive belief
in man’s spiritual capabilities, than the most brilliant graduate ever
turned out of the University, who has lost that belief. Let me companion with
the naked hermit of the jungle rather than with a graduate who, though loaded
with degrees, has by a course of false history and false science, been made
to lose all faith in anything greater in the Universe than a Haeckel or a Comte,
or in any powers in himself higher than those of procreation, thought or digestion.
Call me a Conservative, if you will; I am Conservative to this extent that,
until our modern professors can show me a Philosophy that is unassailable; a
science that is self-demonstrative, that is, axiomatic; a psychology that takes
in all psychic phenomena; a new religion that is all truth and without a flaw
- - I shall proclaim that which I feel, I know, to be the fact, viz.,
that the Rshis knew the secrets of Nature and of Man, that there is but one
common platform of all religions, and that upon it ever stood and now stand
in fraternal concord and amity the Hierophants and esoteric Initiates of the
world’s great Faiths. That platform is THEOSOPHY.
May the blessing of its ancient Masters be upon our poor stricken India!
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