Theosophy - Secret Doctrine by H.P.Blavatsky- Volume 3- Part 3 of 4
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SECRET DOCTRINE -VOLUME -3-
by H.P.Blavatsky -
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SECTION
XXXIV
The
Post-Christian Successors to the Mysteries
(Page
303) THE Eleusinian Mysteries were no more. Yet it was these which
gave their principle features to the Neo-platonic school of Ammonius Saccas,
for the Eclectic System was chiefly characterised by its Theurgy and ecstasis.
It was Iamblichus who added to it the Egyptian doctrine of Theurgy with its
practices, and Porphyry, the Jew, who opposed this new element. The school,
however, with but few exceptions, practised asceticism and contemplation, its
mystics passing through a discipline as rigorous as that of the Hindu devotee.
Their efforts never tended so much to develop the successful practice of thaumaturgy,
necromancy or sorcery—such as they are now accused of—as to evolve
the higher faculties of the inner man, the Spiritual Ego. The school held that
a number of spiritual beings, denizens of spheres quite independent of the earth
and of the human cycle, were mediators between the “Gods” and men,
and even between man and the Supreme Soul. To put it in plainer language, the
soul of man became, owing to the help of the Planetary Spirits, “recipient
of the soul of the world” as Emerson puts it. Apollonius of Tyana asserted
his possession of such a power in these words (quoted by Professor Wilder in
his Neo-Platonism):
I
can see the present and the future in a clear mirror. The sage [Adept]
need not wait for the vapours of the earth and the corruption of the air to
foresee plagues and fevers; he must know them later than God, but earlier
than the people. The theoi or gods see the future; common men, the
present; sages that which is about to take place. My peculiar abstemious mode
of living produces such an acuteness of the senses, or creates some other
faculty, so that the greatest and most remarkable things may be performed.
[ Neo-Platonism and Alchemy. p.15
]
(Page
304)
Professor A. Wilder’s comment thereupon is remarkable:
This
is what may be termed Spiritual photography. The soul is the camera
in which facts and events, future, past, and present, are alike fixed; and
the mind becomes conscious of them. Beyond our everyday world of limits, all
is as one day or state—the past and future comprised in the present.
Probably this is the “great day,” the “last day,”
the “day of the Lord.” of the Bible writers—the day into
which everyone passes by death or ecstasis. Then the soul is freed
from the constraint of the body, and its nobler part is united to higher nature
and becomes partaker in the wisdom and foreknowledge of the higher beings.
[ Loc. cit.]
How
far the system practised by the Neo-Platonists was identical with that of the
old and the modern Vedântins may be inferred from what Dr. A. Wilder says
of the Alexandrian Theosophists.
The
anterior idea of the New Platonists was that of a single Supreme Essence.
. . All the old philosophies contained the doctrine that φεοι,
theoi, gods or disposers, angels, demons, and other spiritual agencies,
emanated from the Supreme Being. Ammonius accepted the doctrine of the Books
of Hermes, that from the divine All proceeded the Divine Wisdom or Amun; that
from Wisdom proceeded the Demiurge or Creator; and from the Creator, the subordinate
spiritual beings; the world and its people being the last. The first is contained
in the second, the first and second in the third, and so on through the entire
series. [ Op. cit., pp. 9. 10
]
This
is a perfect echo of the belief of the Vedântins, and it proceeds directly
from the secret teachings of the East. The same author says:
Akin
to this is the doctrine of the Jewish Kabala which was taught by the Pharsi
or Pharisees, who probably borrowed it, as their sectarian designation would
seem to indicate, from the Magians of Persia. It is substantially embodied
in the following synopsis.
The
Divine Being is the All, the source of all existence, the Infinite; and He
cannot be known. The Universe reveals Him, and subsists by Him. At the beginning
His effulgence went forth everywhere. [This
Divine Effulgence and Essence is the light of the Logos: only the Vedântin
would not use the pronoun “He,” but would say “It.”]
Eventually He retired within Himself and so formed around Him a vacant
space. Into this He transmitted His first Emanation, a Ray, containing in
it the generative and conceptive power, and hence the name IE, or Jah. This
in turn produced the tikkun, the pattern or idea or form; and
in this emanation, which also contained the male and female, or generative
and conceptive potencies, were the three primitive forces of Light, Spirit
and Life. This Tikkun is united to the Ray, or first emanation, and pervaded
by it; and by that union is also in perpetual communication with the infinite
source. It is the pattern, the primitive man, the Adam Kadmon, the macrocosm
of Pythagoras and other philosophers.
The
Root Races -
(Page
305) From it proceeded the Sephiroth . . . . From the Sephiroth
in turn emanated the four worlds, each proceeding out of the one immediately
above it, and the lower one enveloping its superior. These worlds became less
pure as they descended in the scale, the lowest of all being the material
world. [Loc. cit., note. p.10]
This
veiled enunciation of the Secret Teaching will be clear to our readers by this
time. These worlds are:
Aziluth
is peopled with the purest emanations [
the First, almost spiritual, Race of the human beings that were to inhabit
[ the Fourth;] the second, Beriah,
by a lower order, the servants of the former [ the second Race ];
the third, Jesirah, by the cherubim and seraphim, the Elohim and B’ni
Elohim [“Sons of Gods” or Elohim, our Third Race
]. The fourth world, Asiah, is inhabited by the Klipputh, of
whom Belial is chief [ the Atlantean
Sorcerers]. [
Loc. cit., note.]
These
worlds are all the earthly duplicates of their heavenly prototypes,
the mortal and temporary reflections and shadows of the more durable,
if not eternal, races dwelling in other, to us, invisible worlds.
The souls of the men of our Fifth Race derive their elements from
these four worlds—Root Races—that preceded ours: namely,
our intellect. Manas, the fifth principle, our passions and mental
and corporeal appetites. A conflict having arisen, called “war
in heaven,” among our prototypical worlds, war came to pass,
æons later, between the Atlanteans [See
Esoteric Buddhism, by A.P.
Sinnett. Fifth Edition.] of
Asiah, and those of the third Root Race, the B’ni Elohim or
the “Sons of God,” [ See
Isis Unveiled. Vol. I ., pp.589-595. The “Sons of God”
and their war with the giants and magicians.]
and then evil and wickedness were intensified. Mankind (in
the last sub-race of the third Root Race) having
Sinned
in their first parent [a physiological
allegory, truly!] from whose soul every
human soul is an emanation,
says
the Zohar, men were “exiled” into more material bodies to
Expiate
that sin and become proficient in goodness.
To
accomplish the cycle of necessity, rather, explains the doctrine; to progress
on their task of evolution, from which task none of us can be freed, neither
by death nor suicide, for each of us have to pass through the “Valley
of Thorns” before he emerges into the plains of divine light and rest.
And thus men will continue to be born in new bodies.
Till
they have become sufficiently pure to enter a higher form of existence.
(Page
306)
This
means only that Mankind, from the First down to the last, or Seventh Race, is
composed of one and the same company of actors, who have descended from higher
spheres to perform their artistic tour on this our planet, Earth. Starting as
pure spirits on our downward journey around the world (verily!) with the knowledge
of truth—now feebly echoed in the Occult Doctrines—inherent in us,
cyclic law brings us down to the reversed apex of matter, which is lost down
here on earth and the bottom of which we have already struck; and then, the
same law of spiritual gravity will make us slowly ascend to still higher, still
purer spheres than those we started from.
Foresight,
prophecy, oracular powers! Illusive fancies of man’s dwarfed perceptions,
which see actual images in reflections and shadows, and mistakes past actualities
for prophetic images of a future that has no room in Eternity. Our macrocosm
and its smallest microcosm, man, are both repeating the same play of universal
and individual events at each station, as on every stage on which Karma leads
them to enact their respective dramas of life. False prophets could have no
existence had there been no true prophets. And so there were, and many of both
classes, and in all ages. Only, none of these ever saw anything but that which
had already come to pass, and had been before prototypically enacted in higher
spheres—if the event foretold related to national or public weal or woe—or
in some preceding life, if it concerned only an individual, for every such event
is stamped as an indelible record of the Past and Future, which are only, after
all, the ever Present in Eternity. The “worlds” and the purifications
spoken of in the Zohar and other Kabalistic books, relate to our globe
and races no more and no less than they relate to other globes and other races
that have preceded our own in the great cycle. It was such fundamental truths
as these that were performed in allegorical plays and images during the Mysteries,
the last Act of which, the Epilogue for the Mystæ, was the anastasis
or “continued existence,” as also the “Soul transformation.”
Hence,
the author of Neo-platonism and Alchemy shows us that all such Eclectic
doctrines were strongly reflected in the Epistles of Paul, and were
Inculcated
more or less among the Churches. Hence, such passages as these “Ye were
dead in errors and sins; ye walked according to the æon of this world,
according to the archon that has the domination of the air.”
“We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the dominations,
against potencies, against the lords of darkness, and against the mischievousness
of spirits and the empryrean regions.”
The
“False Gnosis”- (
Page 307) But Paul was evidently hostile to the effort to blend
his gospel with the gnostic ideas of the Hebrew-Egyptian school, as seems
to have been attempted at Ephesus; and accordingly, wrote to Timothy, his
favorite disciple, “Keep safe the precious charge entrusted to thee;
and reject the new doctrines and the antagonistic principles of the gnosis,
falsely so-called, of which some have made profession and gone astray from
the faith.” [ Loc.cit. note.
]
But
as the Gnosis is the Science pertaining to our Higher Self, as blind faith is
a matter of temperament and emotionalism, and as Paul’s doctrine was still
newer and his interpretations far more thickly veiled, to keep the inner truths
hidden far away from the Gnostic, preference has been given to the former by
every earnest seeker after truth.
Besides
this, the great Teachers who professed the so-called “false Gnosis”
were very numerous in the days of the Apostles, and were as great as any converted
Rabbi could be. If Porphyry, the Jew Malek, went against Theurgy on account
of old traditional recollections, there were other teachers who practised it.
Plotinius, Iamblichus, Proclus, were all thaumaturgists, and the latter:
Elaborated
the entire theosophy and theurgy of his predecessors into a complete system.
[Op. cit., p.18.]
As
to Ammonius,
Countenanced
by Clemens and Athenagoras, in the Church, and by learned men of the Synagogue,
the Academy, and the Grove, he fulfilled his labour by teaching a common doctrine
for all. [ Op. cit.,p.8.]
Thus
it is not Judaism and Christianity that re-modelled the ancient Pagan Wisdom,
but rather the latter that put its heathen curb, quietly and insensibly, on
the new faith; and this, moreover, was still further influenced by the Eclectic
Theosophical system, the direct emanation of the Wisdom Religion. All that is
grand and noble in Christian theology comes from Neo-Platonism. It is too well-known
to now need much repetition that Ammonius Saccas, the God-taught (theodidaktos)
and the lover of truth (philalethes), in establishing his school, made
a direct attempt to benefit the world by teaching those portions of the Secret
Science that were permitted by its direct guardians to be revealed in those
days. [ No orthodox Christian has ever
equalled, far less surpassed, in the practice of true Christ-like virtues and
ethics, or in the beauty of his moral nature, Ammonius, the Alexandrian pervert
from Christianity (he was born from Christian parents.)]
The modern movement of our own Theosophical Society (Page
308) was begun on the same principles; for the Neo-Platonic school
of Ammonius aimed, as we do, at the reconcilement of all sects and peoples,
under the once common faith of the Golden Age, trying to induce the nations
to lay aside their contentions—in religious matters at any rate—by
proving to them that their various beliefs are all the more or less legitimate
children of one common parent, the Wisdom Religion.
Nor
was the Eclectic Theosophical system—as some writers inspired by Rome
would make the world believe—developed only during the third century of
our era; but it belongs to a much earlier age, as has been shown by Diogenes
Laertius. He traces it to the beginning of the dynasty of the Ptolemies; to
the great seer and prophet, the Egyptian Priest Pot-Amun, of the temple of the
God of that name—for Amun is the God of Wisdom. Unto that day the communication
between the Adepts of Upper India and Bactria and the Philosophers of the West
had never ceased.
Under
Philadelphus . . . the Hellenic teachers became rivals of the College of Rabbis
of Babylon. The Buddhistic, Vedântic and Magian systems were expounded
along with the philosophies of Greece . . . . Aristobulus, the Jew, declared
that the ethics of Aristotle were derived from the law of Moses (!); and Philo,
after him, attempted to interpret the Pentateuch in accordance with the doctrines
of Pythagoras and the Academy. In Josephus it is said that, in the Book of
the Genesis, Moses wrote philosophically—that is, in the figurative
style; and the Essenes of Carmel were reproduced in the Therapeutæ of
Egypt, who, in turn were declared by Eusebius to be identical with the christians,
though they actually existed long before the Christian era. Indeed, in its
turn, Christianity also was taught at Alexandria, and underwent an analogous
metamorphosis. Pantænus, Athenagoras and Clement were thoroughly instructed
in the Platonic philosophy, and comprehended its essential unity with the
oriental systems. [Op.cit., pp.3,
4.]
Ammonius,
though the son of Christian parents, was a lover of the truth, a true
Philaletheian foremost of all. He set his heart upon the work of reconciling
the different systems into a harmonious whole, for he had already perceived
the tendency of Christianity to raise itself on the hecatomb which it had constructed
out of all other creeds and faiths. What says history?
The
ecclesiastical historian, Mosheim, declares that
Ammonius,
conceiving that not only the philosophers of Greece, but also all those of
the different barbarous nations, were perfectly in unison with each other
with regard to every essential point, made it his business so to temper and
expound the tenets of all these various sects, as to make it appear they had
all of them originated from one and the same source, and all tended to one
and the same end.
Teachers
of Ammonius - (Page
309) Again, Mosheim says that Ammonius taught that the religion
of the multitude went hand in hand with philosophy, and with her had shared
the fate of being by degrees corrupted and obscured with mere human conceits,
superstition, and lies; that it ought, therefore, to be brought back to its
original purity by purging it of this dross and expounding it upon philosophical
principles; and that the whole which Christ had in view was to reinstate and
restore to its primitive integrity the Wisdom of the Ancients. [Quoted
by Dr. Wilder. p.5 ]
Now
what was that “Wisdom of the Ancients” that the Founder of Christianity
“had in view”? The system taught by Ammonius in his Eclectic Theosophical
School was made of the crumbs permitted to be gathered from the antediluvian
lore; those Neo-Platonic teachings are described in the Edinburgh Encyclopœdia
as follows:
He
[ Ammonius ] adopted the doctrines
which were received in Egypt concerning the Universe and the Deity, considered
as constituting one great whole; concerning the eternity of the world, the
nature of souls, the empire of Providence [
Karma ] and the government of
the world by demons [daimons
or spirits, archangels]. He also established
a system of moral discipline which allowed the people in general to live according
to the laws of their country and the dictates of nature; but required the
wise to exalt their minds by contemplation and to mortify the body
[ “Mortification” is here meant in the moral, not the physical
sense: to restrain every lust and passion, and live on the simplest diet possible.]
so that they might be capable of enjoying the presence and assistance of the
demons [ including their own daimon
or Seventh Principle] . . . and ascending
after death to the presence of the Supreme
[ Soul ] Parent. In order to
reconcile the popular religions, and particularly the Christian, with this
new system, he made the whole history of the heathen gods an allegory, maintaining
that they were only celestial ministers [
This is a Neo-Platonic teaching adopted as a doctrine in the Roman Catholic
Church with its worship of the Seven Spirits.]
entitled to an inferior kind of worship; and he acknowledged that Jesus Christ
was an excellent man and the friend of God, but alleged that it was not his
design entirely to abolish the worship of demons,
[The Church has made of it the worship of devils, “Daimon”
is Spirit, and relates to our divine Spirit, the seventh Principle and to
the Dhyân Chohans. Jesus prohibited going to the temple or church”
as Pharisees do “ but commanded that man should retire for prayer (communion
with his God) into a private closet. Is it Jesus who would have countenanced
in the face of the starving millions, the building of the most gorgeous churches?]
and that his only intention was to purify the ancient religion.
No
more could be declared except for those Philaletheians who were initiated, “persons
duly instructed and disciplined” to whom Ammonius communicated his more
important doctrines,
Imposing
on them the obligations of secrecy, as was done before him by Zoroaster and
Pythagoras, and in the Mysteries [ where
an oath was required from the (Page 310)
neophytes or catechumens not to divulge what they had learned ].
The great Pythagoras divided his teachings into exoteric and esoteric. [Op.
cit., p.7.]
Has
not Jesus done the same, since He declared to His disciples that to them it
was given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, whereas to the multitudes
it was not given, and therefore he spoke in parables which has a two-fold meaning?
Dr.
A. Wilder proceeds:
Thus
Ammonius found his work ready to his hand. His deep spiritual intuition, his
extensive learning, and his familiarity with the Christian fathers, Pantænus,
Clement and Athenagoras, and with the most erudite philosophers of the time,
all fitted him for the labour he performed so thoroughly . . . . The results
of his ministration are perceptible at the present day in every country of
the Christian world; every prominent system of doctrine now bearing the marks
of his plastic hand. Every ancient philosophy has had its votaries among the
moderns; and even Judaism, oldest of them all, has taken upon itself changes
which were suggested by the “God-taught” Alexandrian. [Op.
cit., p.7. ]
The
Neo-Platonic School of Alexandria founded by Ammonius—the prototype proposed
for the Theosophical Society—taught Theurgy and Magic, as much as they
were taught in the days of Pythagoras, and by others far earlier than his period.
For Proclus says that the doctrines of Orpheus, who was an Indian and came from
India, were the origin of the systems afterwards promulgated.
What
Orpheus delivered in hidden allegories, Pythagoras learned when he was initiated
into the Orphic Mysteries; and Plato next received a perfect knowledge of
them from Orphic and Pythagorean writings. [Op.
cit., p.18.]
The
Philaletheians had their division into neophytes (chelas) and Initiates,
or Masters; and the eclectic system was characterised by three distinct features,
which are purely Vedântic; a Supreme Essence, One and Universal; the eternity
and indivisibility of the human spirit; and Theurgy, which is Mantricism. So
also, as we have seen, they had their secret or Esoteric teachings like any
other mystic school. Nor were they allowed to reveal anything of their secret
tenets, any more than were the Initiates of the Mysteries. Only the penalties
incurred by the revealers of the secrets of the latter were far more terrible,
and this prohibition has survived to this day, not only in India, but even among
the Jewish Kabalists in Asia.
[The
Talmud gives the story of the four Tanaim, who are made, in allegorical
terms, to enter into the garden of delights, i.e., to be initiated into
the occult and final science.
“According
to the teaching of our holy masters the names of the four who entered the
garden of delight are: Ben Asai, Ben Zoma, Acher, and Rabbi Akiba . . . .
“Ben
Asai looked and—lost his sight. “Ben Zoma looked and—lost
his reason. “Acher made depredations in the plantation” (mixed
up the whole and failed). But Akiba, who had entered in peace came out of
it in peace; for the saint, whose name he blessed, had said, “This old
man is worthy of serving us with glory.’ “
“The
learned commentators of the Talmud, the Rabbis of the synagogue, explain
that the garden of delight, in which those four personages are made
to enter, is but that mysterious science, the most terrible of sciences for
weak intellects, which it leads directly to insanity,” says A. Franck,
in his Kabbalah. It is not the pure at heart and he who studies but
with a view to perfecting himself and so more easily acquiring the promised
immortality, who need have any fear: but rather he who makes of the science
of sciences a sinful pretext for worldly motives, who should tremble. The
latter will never understand the kabalistic evocations of the supreme initiation.—Isis
Unveiled.ii. 119.]
Difficulties
and Dangers - (Page
311) One
of the reasons for such secrecy may be the undoubtedly serious difficulties
and hardships of chelaship, and the dangers attending Initiation. The modern
candidate has, like his predecessor of old, to either conquer or die; when,
which is still worse, he does not lose his reason. There is no danger to him
who is true and sincere, and, especially, unselfish. For he is thus prepared
beforehand to meet any temptation.
He,
who fully recognised the power of his immortal spirit, and never doubted for
one moment its omnipotent protection, had naught to fear. But woe to the candidate
in whom the slightest physical fear—sickly child of matter—made
him lose sight and faith in his own invulnerability. He who was not wholly
confident of his moral fitness to accept the burden of these tremendous secrets
was doomed. [ Isis Unveiled.
ii. 119.]
There
were no such dangers in Neo-Platonic Initiations. The selfish and unworthy failed
in their object, and in the failure was the punishment. The chief aim was “reunion
of the part with the all.” This All was One, with numberless names.
Whether called Dui, the “bright Lord of Heaven” by the Aryan;
Iao, by the Chaldæan and Kabalist; Iabe by the Samaritan;
the Tiu or Tuisco by the Northman; Duw, by the Briton;
Zeus, by the Thracian or Jupiter by the Roman—it was the
Being, the Facit. One and Supreme, [See
Neo-Platonism. p.9.] the unborn
and the inexhaustible source of every emanation, the fountain of life and light
eternal, a Ray of which every one of us carries in him on this earth. The knowledge
of this Mystery had reached the Neo-Platonists from India through Pythagoras,
and still later through Apollonius of Tyana and the rules and methods for producing
ecstasy had come from the same lore of the divine Vidyâ, the Gnosis. For
Âryavarta, the bright focus into which has been poured in the beginning
of time the flames (Page 312)
of Divine Wisdom, had become the centre from which radiated the “tongues
of fire” into every portion of the globe. What was Samâdhi but that
Sublime
ecstasy, in which state things divine and the mysteries of Nature are revealed
to us,
of
which Porphyry speaks?
The
efflux from the divine soul is imparted to the human spirit in unreserved
abundance, accomplishing for the soul a union with the divine, and enabling
it while in the body to be partaker of the life which is not in the body,
he
explains elsewhere.
Thus
under the title of Magic was taught every Science, physical and metaphysical,
natural or deemed supernatural by those who are ignorant of the omnipresence
and universality of Nature.
Divine
Magic makes of man a God; human magic creates a new friend.
We
wrote in Isis Unveiled:
In
the oldest documents now in the possession of the World—the Vedas
and the older laws of Manu—we find many magical rites practised and
permitted by the Brâhmans. [See
the Code published by Sir William Jones, Chapter ix., p.11.]
Tibet, Japan, and China, teach in the present age that which was taught by
the oldest Chaldæns. The clergy of these respective countries prove
moreover what they teach—namely, that the practice of moral and physical
purity, and of certain austerities, develops the vital soul-power of self-illumination.
Affording to man the control over his own immortal spirit, it gives him truly
magical powers over the elementary spirits inferior to himself. In the West
we find magic of as high an antiquity as in the East. The Druids of Great
Britain practised it in the silent crypts of their deep caves; and Pliny devotes
many a chapter to the “wisdom”
[Pliny: Hist. Nat., xxx. i : ib., xvi. 14: xxv. 9. etc.]
of the leaders of the Celts. The Semothees—the Druids of the
Gauls—expounded the physical as well as the spiritual sciences. They
taught the secrets of the universe, the harmonious progress of the heavenly
bodies, the formation of the earth, and above all—the immortality of
the Soul. [Pomponius ascribes to them
the knowledge of the highest sciences.]
In their sacred groves —natural academies built by the hand of the Invisible
architect—the initiates assembled at the still hour of midnight, to
learn about what man once was, and what he will be.
[Cæsar, iii. 14] They
needed no artificial illumination, nor life-drawing gas, to light up their
temples, for the chaste goddess of night beamed her most silvery rays on their
oak-crowned heads; and their white-robed sacred bards knew how to converse
with the solitary queen of the starry vault.
[Pliny. xxx. Isis Unveiled. i. 18.]
During
the palmy days of Neo-Platonism these Bards were no more, for their cycle had
run its course, and the last of the Druids had perished at Bibractis and Alesia.
The
Neo-Platonic School - (Page
313) But the Neo-Platonic school was for a long time successful,
powerful and prosperous. Still, while adopting Âryan Wisdom in its Doctrines,
the school failed to follow the wisdom of the Brâhmans in practice. It
showed its moral and intellectual superiority too openly, caring too much for
the great and powerful of this earth. While the Brâhmans and their great
Yogis—experts in matters of philosophy, metaphysics, astronomy, morals
and religion—preserved their dignity under the sway of the most powerful
princes, remained aloof from the world and would not condescend to visit them
or to ask for the slightest favour, [“The
care which they took in educating youth, in familiarizing it with generous and
virtuous sentiments, did them peculiar honour, and their maxims and discourses,
as recorded by historians, prove that they were expert in matters of philosophy,
metaphysics, astronomy, morality and religion,” says a modern writer.
“If kings or princes desired the advice or the blessings of the holy men,
they were either obliged to go themselves, or to send messengers. To these men
no secret power of either plant or mineral was unknown. They had fathomed nature
to its depths, while psychology and physiology were to them open books, and
the result was that science that is now termed so superciliously, magic.”]
the Emperors Alexander, Severus, and Julian and the greatest among the aristocracy
of the land, embraced the tenets of the Neo-Platonists, who mixed freely with
the world. The system flourished for several centuries and comprised within
the ranks of its followers the ablest and most learned among the men of the
time; Hypatia, the teacher of the Bishop Synesius, was one of the ornaments
of the School until the fatal and shameful day when she was murdered by the
Christian mob at the instigation of Bishop Cyril of Alexandria. The school was
finally removed to Athens, and closed by order of the Emperor Justinian.
How
accurate is Dr. Wilder’s remark that
Modern
writers have commentated upon the peculiar views of the Neo-Platonists upon
these [metaphysical]
subjects, seldom representing them correctly, even if this was desired or
intended. [Op. cit., p.9.]
The
few speculations on the sublunary, material, and spiritual universes that they
did put into writing—Ammonius never having himself written a line, after
the wont of reformers—could not enable posterity to judge them rightly
even had not the early Christian Vandals, the later crusaders, and the fanatics
of the Middle Ages, destroyed three parts of that which remained of the Alexandrian
Library and its later schools.
Professor
Draper shows that Cardinal Ximenes alone
(Page
314)
Delivered to the flames in the squares of Granada eighty thousand Arabic manuscripts,
many of them translations of classical authors.
In
the Vatican Library, whole passages in the most rare and precious treatises
of the Ancients were found erased and blotted out, “for the sake of interlining
them with absurd psalmodies!” Moreover it is well known that over thirty-six
volumes written by Porphyry were burnt and otherwise destroyed by the “Fathers.”
Most of the little that is known of the doctrines of the Eclectics is found
in the writings of Plotinus and of those same Church Fathers.
Says
the author of Neo-Platonism:
What
Plato was to Socrates, and the Apostle John to the head of the Christian faith,
Plotinus became to the God-taught Ammonius. To Plotinus, Origenes, and Longinus
we are indebted for what is known of the Philaletheian system. They were duly
instructed, initiated and entrusted with the interior doctrines.
[Op. cit., p.11.]
This
accounts marvellously for Origen’s calling people “idiots”
who believe in the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve fables; as also for the fact
that so few of the writings of that Church Father have passed to posterity.
Between the secrecy imposed, the vows of silence and that which was maliciously
destroyed by every foul means, it is indeed miraculous that even so much of
the Philaletheian tenets has reached the world.
SECTION
XXXV
Symbolism
of Sun and Stars
(Page
315) And the Heaven
was visible in Seven Circles and the planets appeared with all their signs,
in star-form, and the stars were divided and numbered with the rulers that were
in them, and their revolving course, through the agency of the divine Spirit.
[ Hermes, iv.6 ]
Here
Spirit denotes Pneuma, collective Deity, manifested in its “Builders,”
or, as the Church has it, “the seven Spirits of the Presence,” the
mediantibus angelis of whom Thomas Aquinas says that “God never
works but through them.”
These
seven “rulers” or mediating Angels were the Kabiri Gods of the Ancients.
This was so evident, that it forced from the Church, together with the admission
of the fact, an explanation and a theory, whose clumsiness and evident sophistry
are such that it must fail to impress. The world is asked to believe, that while
the Planetary Angels of the Church are divine Beings, the genuine “Seraphim,
“ [ From Saraph ,
fiery, burning,” plural (see Isaiah, vi. 2-6). They are regarded
as the personal attendants of the Almighty, “his messengers,” angels
or metratons. In Revelation they are the “seven burning lamps”
in attendance before the throne.] these very same angels, under identical
names and planets, were and are “false”—as Gods of the ancients.
They are no better than pretenders; the cunning copies of the real Angels, produced
beforehand through the craft and power of Lucifer and of the fallen Angels.
Now, what are the Kabiri?
Kabiri,
as a name, is derived from Habir
, great, and also from Venus, this Goddess being called to the present day Kabar,
as in also her star. The Kabiri were worshipped at Hebron, the city of the Anakim,
or anakas (kings, princes). They are the highest Planetary Spirits, the “greatest
Gods” and “the powerful.” Varro, following Orpheus, (Page
316 ) calls these Gods ευδυνατοι“divine
Powers.” The word Kabirim when applied to men, and the words Heber, Gheber
(with reference to Nimrod, or the “giants” of Genesis, vi.)
and Kabir, are all derived from the “mysterious Word”—the
Ineffable and the “Unprounceable.’ Thus it is they who represent
tsaba, the “host of heaven.” The Church, however, bowing
before the angel Anael (the regent of Venus). [ Venus with the Chaldæans
and Egyptians was the wife of Proteus, and is regarded as the mother
of the Kabiri, the sons of Phta or Emepth—the divine light or the Sun.
The angels answer to the stars in the following order: The Sun, the Moon, Mars,
Venus, Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn: Michael, Gabriel, Samael, Anael, Raphael,
Zachariel, and Orifiel: this is in religion and Christian Kabalism; astrologically
and esoterically the places of the “regents” stand otherwise, as
also in the Jewish, or rather the real Chaldæan Kabalah.]
connects the planet Venus with Lucifer, the chief of the rebels under Satan—so
poetically apostrophized by the prophet Isaiah as “O, Lucifer, son of
the morning.” [ Loc.cit., xiv.12.] All the Mystery
Gods were Kabiri. As these “seven lictors” relate directly to the
Secret Doctrine their real status is of the greatest importance.
Suidas
defines the Kabiri as the Gods who command all the other dæmons (Spirits),
Macrobius introduces them as
Those
Penates and tutelary deities, through whom we live and learn and know (Saturn,
I.iii. ch.iv.).
The
teraphim through which the Hebrews consulted the oracles of the Urim and the
Thummim, were the symbolical hieroglyphics of the Kabiri. Nevertheless, the
good Fathers have made of Kibir the synonym of devil and of daimon (spirit)
a demon.
The
Mysteries of the Kabiri at Hebron (Pagan and Jewish) were presided over by the
seven Planetary Gods, among the rest by Jupiter and Saturn under their mystery
names, and they are referred to as
and and by Euripides
as Creuzer, moreover,
shows that whether in Phœnicia or in Egypt, the Kabiri were always the
seven planets as known in antiquity, who together with their Father the Sun—referred
to elsewhere as their “elder brother”—composed a powerful
ogdoad; [This is one more proof that the Ancients knew of seven planets
besides the Sun: for otherwise which is the eighth in such a case? The seventh,
with two others, as stated, were “mystery” planets, whether Uranus
or any other.] the eight superior powers, as .
or solar assessors, danced around him the sacred circular dance, the symbol
of the rotation of the planets around the Sun. Jehovah and Saturn, moreover,
are one.
It
is quite natural, therefore, to find a French writer, D’Anselme, applying
the same terms of
to Jehovah and his word, and they are correctly so applied.
The
Circle Dance - (Page
317)
For if the “circle dance” prescribed by the Amazons for the Mysteries—being
the “circle dance” of the planets, and characterised as “the
motion of the divine Spirit carried on the waves of the great Deep”—can
now be called “infernal” and “lascivious” when performed
by the Pagans, then the same epithets ought to be applied to David’s dance;
[ II. Sam., vi. 20-22.] and to the dance of the daughters
of Shiloh, [Judges. xxi. 21, et seq.] and to the
leaping of the prophets of Baal; [ I. Kings. xviii. 26 ]
they were all identical and all belonged to Sabæan worship. King David’s
dance, during which he uncovered himself before his maid-servants in a public
thoroughfare, saying:
I
will play (act wantonly) before .(Jehovah),
and I will yet be more vile than this,
was
certainly more reprehensible than any “circle dance” during the
Mysteries, or even than the modern Râsa Mandala in India. [This
dance—Râsa Mandala, enacted by the Gopis or shepherdesses of Krishna,
the Sun-God, is enacted to this day in Râjputâna in India, and is
undeniably the same theo-astronomical and symbolical dance of the planets and
the Zodiacal signs, that was danced thousands of years before our era.]
which is the same thing. It was David who introduced Jehovistic worship into
Judea, after sojourning so long among the Tyrians and Philistines, where these
rites were common.
David
knew nothing of Moses; and if he introduced the Jehovah-worship, it was not
in its monotheistic character, but simply as that of one of the many (Kabirean)
gods of the neighbouring nations, a tutelary deity of his own,
, to whom he had given the preference—whom he had chosen among all “other
(Kabeiri) gods,” [ Isis Unveiled. ii.45. ]
and
who was one of the “associates,” Chabir, of the Sun. The Shakers
dance the “circle dance” to this day when turning round for the
Holy Ghost to move them. In India it is Nârâ-yana who is “the
mover on the waters;” and Nârâyana is Vishnu in his secondary
form, and Vishnu has Krishna for an Avatâra, in whose honour the “circle
dance” is still enacted by the Nautch-girls of the temples, he being the
Sun-God and they the planets as symbolised by the gopis.
Let
the reader turn to the works of De Mirville, a Roman Catholic writer, or to
Monumental Christianity, by Dr. Lundy, a Protestant (Page
318) divine, if he wants to appreciate to any degree the subtlety
and casuistry of their reasonings. No one ignorant of the occult version can
fail to be impressed with the proofs brought forward to show how cleverly and
perseveringly “Satan has worked for long millenniums to tempt a humanity”
unblessed with an infallible Church, in order to have himself recognized as
the “One living God,” and his fiends as holy Angels. The reader
must be patient, and study with attention what the author says on behalf of
his Church. To compare it the better with the versions of the Occultists, a
few points may be quoted here verbatim.
St.
Peter tells us: “May the divine Lucifer arise in your hearts”
[ II ,Epistle. i. 19. The English text says: “Until the
day-star arise in your heart,” a trifling alteration which does not
really matter—as Lucifer is the day as well as the “morning”
star—and it is less shocking to pious ears. There are a number of such
alterations in the Protestant bibles.] [ Now the Sun is Christ
] . . . . “I will send my Son from the Sun,” said the Eternal
through the voice of prophetic traditions; and prophecy having become history
the Evangelists repeated in their turn: The Sun rising from on high
visited us. [ Again the English translation changes the world “Sun”
into “day-spring.” The Roman Catholics are decidedly braver and
more sincere than the Protestant theologians. De Mirville. iv.34. 38.]
Now
God says, through Malachi, that the Sun shall arise for those who fear his name,
What Malachi meant by “the Sun of Righteousness” the Kabalists alone
can tell; but what the Greek, and even the Protestant, theologians understood
by the term is of course Christ, referred to metaphorically. Only, as the sentence,
“I will send my Son from the Sun,” is borrowed verbatim from a Sibylline
Book, it becomes very hard to understand how it can be attributed to, or classed
with any prophecy relating to the Christian Savior, unless, indeed, the latter
is to be identified with Apollo. Virgil, again, says, “Here comes the
Virgin’s and Apollo’s reign,” and Apollo, or Apollyon, is
to this day viewed as a form of Satan, and is taken to mean the Antichrist.
If the Sibylline promise, “He will send his Son from the Sun” applies
to Christ, then either Christ and Apollo are one—and then why call the
latter a demon?—or the prophecy had nothing to do with the Christian Savior,
and, in such a case, why appropriate it at all?
But
De Mirville goes further. He shows us St. Denys, the Areopagite, affirming that
The
Sun is the special signification, and the statue of God. [Thus said
the Egyptians and the Sabæans in days of old, the symbol of whose manifested
gods, Osiris and Bel, was the sun. But they had a higher deity.] .
. . . It is by the Eastern door that the glory of the Lord penetrated into
the temples [ of the Jews and Christians, that divine glory being Sun-light.]
. . “ We build our churches towards the east,” says in his
turn St. Ambrose, “for during the Mysteries we begin by renouncing him
who is in the west.”
Christian
Astrolatry - (Page
319) “He who is in the west” is Typhon, the Egyptian
god of darkness—the west having been held by them as the “Typhonic
Gate of Death.” Thus, having borrowed Osiris from the Egyptians, the Church
Fathers thought little of helping themselves to his brother Typhon. Then again:
The
prophet Baruch [ Exiled from the Protestant bible but left in the
Apocrypha which, according to Article VI, of the Church of England,
“she doth read for example of life and instruction of manners”
(?), but not to establish any doctrine.] speaks of the stars that rejoice
in their vessels and citadels (Chap. iii.); and Ecclesiastes
applies the same terms to the sun, which is said to be “the admirable
vessel of the most High,” and the “citadel of the Lord”
φυλαχη[ Cornelius a Lapide. v.
248 ]
In every case there is no doubt about one thing, for the sacred writer says.
It is a Spirit who rules the sun’s course. Hear what he says
(in Eccles., i.6), “The sun also ariseth—and its spirit
lighting all in its circular path (gyrat gyrans) returneth according to his
circuits.” [Ecclesiastes. xIiii. The above quotations
are taken from Dr Mirville’s chapter “ On Christian and Jewish
Solar Theology,” iv. 35-38.]
De
Mirville seems to quote from texts either rejected by or unknown to Protestants,
in whose bible there is no forty-third chapter of Ecclesiastes; nor is
the sun made to go “in circuits” in the latter, but the wind. This
is a question to be settled between the Roman and the Protestant Churches. Our
point is the strong element of Sabæanism or Heliolatry present in Christianity.
An
Œcumenical Council having authoritatively put a stop to Christian Astrolatry
by declaring that there was no sidereal Souls in sun, moon, or planets, St.
Thomas took upon himself to settle the point in dispute. The “angelic
doctor” announced that such expressions did not mean a “soul,”
but only an Intelligence, not resident in the sun or stars, but one that assisted
them, “a guiding and directing intelligence.” [ Nevertheless
the Church has preserved in her most sacred rites the “star-rites”
of the Pagan Initiates. In the pre-Christian Mithraic Mysteries, the candidate
who overcame successfully the “twelve Tortures” which preceded the
final Initiation, received a small round cake or wafer of unleavened bread,
symbolising in one of its meanings, the solar disc, and known as the manna (heavenly
bread) . . . . A lamb, or a bull even, was killed, and with the blood the candidate
had to be sprinkled, as in the case of the Emperor Julian’s initiation.
The seven rules or mysteries that are represented in the Revelation as
the seven seals which are opened in order were then delivered to the newly born.]
(Page
320) Thereupon the author, comforted by the explanation, quotes Clement
the Alexandrian, and reminds the reader of the opinion of that philosopher,
the inter-relation that exists “between the seven branches of the candlestick—the
seven stars of the Revelation,” and the sun:
The
six branches (says Clement) fixed to the central candlestick have lamps, but
the sun placed in the midst of the wandering ones (πλανητων)
pours his beams on them all; this golden candlestick hides one more mystery:
it is the sign of Christ, not only in shape, but because he sheds his light
through the ministry of the seven spirits primarily created, and who are the
Seven Eyes of the Lord. Therefore the principal planets are to the seven primeval
spirits, according to St. Clement, that which the candlestick-sun is to Christ
Himself, namely—their vessels, their φυλαχαι
Plain
enough, to be sure; though one fails to see that this explanation even helps
the situation. The seven-branched chandelier of the Israelites, as well as the
“wanderers” of the Greeks, had a far more natural meaning, a purely
astrological one to begin with. In fact from Magi and Chaldæans down to
the much-laughed-at Zadkiel, every astrological work will tell its reader that
the Sun placed in the midst of the planets, with Saturn, Jupiter and Mars on
one side, and Venus, Mercury and the Moon on the other, the planets’ line
crossing through the whole Earth, has always meant what Hermes tells us, namely,
the thread of destiny, or that whose action (influence) is called destiny. [Truly
says S.T. Coleridge: “Instinctively the reason has always pointed out
to men the ultimate end of various sciences . . . . There is no doubt but that
astrology of some sort or other will be the last achievement of astronomy: there
must be chemical relations between the planets . . . .the difference of their
magnitude compared with that of their distances is not explicable otherwise.”
Between planets and our earth with its mankind, we may add.] But symbol
for symbol we prefer the sun to a candlestick. One can understand how the latter
came to represent the sun and planets, but no one can admire the chosen symbol.
There is poetry and grandeur in the sun when it is made to symbolise the “Eye
of Ormuzd” or of Osiris, and is regarded as the Vàhan (vehicle)
of the highest Deity. But one must for ever fail to perceive that any particular
glory is rendered to Christ by assigning to him the trunk of a candlestick.
[ “Christ then”. the author says (p,40), “is represented
by the trunk of the candlestick.”] in a Jewish synagogue, as mystical
seat of honour.
There
are then positively two suns, a sun adored and a sun adoring. The Apocalypse
proves it.
The
Word is found in Chap. vii., in the angel who ascends with the rising of the
sun, having the seal of the living God. . . . While commentators differ on
the personality of this angel, St. Ambrose and many other theologians see
in him Christ himself . . .. He is the Sun adored.
Michael
the Conqueror - (Page
321)
But in Chap. xix. we find an angel standing in the sun, inviting all
the nations to gather to the great supper of the Lamb. This time it is literally
and simply the angel of the sun—who cannot be mistaken for the “Word,”
since the prophet distinguishes him from the Word, the King of Kings and Lord
of Lords. . . . The angel in the sun seems to be an adoring sun. Who
may be the latter? And who else can he be but the Morning Star, the guardian
angel of the Word, his ferouer, or angel of the face, as the
Word is the angel of the Face (presence) of his Father, his principal attribute
and strength, as his name itself implies (Mikael), powerful rector glorified
by the Church, the Rector potens who will fell the Antichrist, the
Vice-Word, in short, who represents his master, and seems to be one with
him. [ De Mirville. iv. 41, 42.]
Yes,
Mikael is the alleged conqueror of Ormuzd, Osiris, Apollo, Krishna, Mithra,
etc., of all the Solar Gods, in short, known and unknown, now treated as demons
and as “Satan.” Nevertheless, the “Conqueror” has not
disdained to don the war-spoils of the vanquished foes—their personalities,
attributes, even their names—to become the alter ego of these demons.
Thus
the Sun-God here is Honover or the Eternal. The prince is Ormuzd, since
he is the first of the seven Amshaspends [ the demon copies of the
seven original angels ] (caput angelorum); the lamb (hamal),
the Shepherd of the Zodiac and the antagonist of the snake. But the Sun (the
Eye of Ormuzd) has also his rector, Korshid or the Mitraton, who is
the Ferouer of the face of Ormuzd, his Ized, or the morning star. The
Mazdeans had a triple Sun. . . . For us this Korshid-Mitraton is the
first of the psychopompian genii, and the guide of the sun, the immolator
of the terrestrial Bull [ or lamb ] whose wounds are licked
by the serpent [ on the famous Mithraic monument ]. [ De
Mirville. iv.42 ]
St.
Paul, in speaking of the rulers of this world, the Cosmocratores, only said
what was said by all the primitive Philosophers of the ten centuries before
the Christian era, only he was scarcely understood, and was often wilfully misinterpreted.
Damascius repeats the teachings of the Pagan writers when he explains that
There
are seven series of cosmocratores or cosmic forces, which are double: the
higher ones commissioned to support and guide the superior world; the lower
ones, the inferior world [our own].
And
he is but saying what the ancients taught. Iamblichus gives this dogma of the
duality of all the planets and celestial bodies, of gods and daimons (spirits).
He also divides the Archontes into two classes—the more and the less spiritual;
the latter more connected with and clothed with matter, as having a form,
while the former are bodiless (Page 322)
(arûpa). But what have Satan and his angels to do with all this?
Perhaps only that the identity of the Zoroastrian dogma with the Christian,
and of Mithra, Ormuzd, and Ahriman with the Christian Father, Son, and Devil,
might be accounted for. And when we say “Zoroastrian dogmas” we
mean the exoteric teaching. How explain the same relations between Mithra and
Ormuzd as those between the Archangel Mikael and Christ?
Ahura
Mazda says to holy Zaratushta: “When I created [ emanated
] Mithra . . . I created him that he should be invoked and adored equally
with myself.”
For
the sake of necessary reforms, the Zoroastrian Âryans transformed the
Devas, the bright Gods of India, into devs or devils. It was their Karma that
in their turn the Christians should vindicate on this point the Hindus. Now
Ormuzd and Mithra have become the devs of Christ and Mikael, the dark lining
and aspect of the Saviour and Angel. The day of the Karma of Christian theology
will come in its turn. Already the Protestants have begun the first chapter
of the religion that will seek to transform the “Seven Spirits”
and the host of the Roman Catholics into demons and idols. Every religion has
its Karma, as has every individual. That which is due to human conception and
is built on the abasement of our brothers who disagree with us, must have its
day. “There is no religion higher than truth.”
The
Zoroastrians, Mazdeans, and Persians borrowed their conceptions from India:
the Jews borrowed their theory of angels from Persia; the Christians borrowed
from the Jews.
Hence
the latest interpretation by Christian theology—to the great disgust of
the synagogue, forced to share the symbolical candlestick with the hereditary
enemy—that the seven-branched candlestick represents the seven Churches
of Asia and the seven planets which are the angels of those Churches. Hence
also, the conviction that the Mosaic Jews, the investors of that symbol for
their tabernacle, were a kind of Sabæans, who blended their planets and
the spirits thereof into one, and called them—only far later—Jehovah.
For this we have the testimony of Clemens Alexandrinus, St.Hieronymus and others.
And
Clement, as an Initiate of the Mysteries—at which the secret of the heliocentric
system was taught several thousands of years before Galileo and Copernicus—proves
it by explaining that
By
these various symbols connected with (sidereal) phenomena the totality of
all the creatures which bind heaven with earth, are figured. . . . The chandelier
represented the motion of the seven luminaries, describing their astral revolution.
To the right and left of that candelabrum projected the six branches, each
of which has its lamp, because the Sun placed as a candelabrum in the middle
of other planets distributes light to them. [ Notwithstanding the above,
written in the earliest Christian period by the renegade Neo-Platonist: the
Church persists to this day in her wilful error. Helpless against Galileo,
she now tries to throw a doubt even on the heliocentric system! ].
. . . . As to the cherubs having twelve wings between the two, they represent
to us the sensuous world in the twelve zodiacal signs. [Stromateis.
V., vi.]
The
Christian Sun-God - (Page
323)
And yet in the face of all this evidence, sun, moon, planets, all are shown
as being demoniacal before, and divine only after, the appearance of Christ.
All know the Orphic verse: “It is Zeus, it is Adas, it is the Sun, it
is Bacchus,” these names having been all synonymous for classic poets
and writers. Thus for Democritus “Deity is but a soul in an orbicular
fire,” and that fire is the Sun. For Iamblichus the sun was “the
image of divine intelligence”; for Plato “ an immortal living Being.”
Hence the oracle of Claros when asked to say who was the Jehovah of the Jews
answered, “It is the Sun.” We may add the words in Psalm xix.
4:
In
the sun hath he placed a tabernacle for himself [The English bible
has: “In them (the Heavens) hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,”
which is incorrect and has no sense in view of the verse that follows, for
there are things “hid from the heat thereof” if the latter
word is to be applied to the sun.] . . . . his going forth is from
the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it; and there is nothing
hid from the heat thereof.
Jehovah
then is the sun, and thence also the Christ of the Roman Church. And now the
criticism of Dupuis on that verse becomes comprehensible, as also the despair
of the Abbé Foucher. “Nothing is more favorable to Sabæism
than this text of the Vulgate!” he exclaims. And, however disfigured may
be the words and sense in the English authorised bible, the Vulgate and the
Septuagint both give the correct text of the original, and translate the latter:
“In the sun he established his abode”; while the vulgate regards
the “heat” as coming direct from God and not from the sun alone,
since it is God who issues forth from, and dwells in the sun and performs the
circuit: in sole posuit . . . . et ipse exultavit. From these facts it
will be seen that the Protestants were right in charging St. Justin with saying
that
God
has permitted us to worship the sun.
(Page
324)
And this, notwithstanding the lame excuses that what was really meant
was that
God
permitted himself to be worshipped in, or within, the sun,
which
is all the same.
It
will be seen from the above, that while the Pagans located in the sun and planets
only the inferior powers of Nature, the representative Spirits, so to say, of
Apollo, Bacchus, Osiris, and other solar gods the Christians, in their hatred
of Philosophy, appropriated the sidereal localities, and now limit them to the
use of their anthropomorphic deity and his angels—new transformations
of the old, old gods. Something had to be done in order to dispose of the ancient
tenants, so they were disgraced into “demons,” wicked devils.
SECTION
XXXVI
Pagan
Sidereal Worship, or Astrology
(Page
325) THE Teraphim of Abram’s father Terah, the “maker
of images,” and the Kabiri Gods are directly connected with ancient Sabæan
worship or Astrolatry. Kiyun, or the God Kivan, worshipped by the Jews in the
wilderness, is Saturn and Shiva, later on called Jehovah. Astrology existed
before astronomy, and Astronomus was the title of the highest hierophant
in Egypt. [ When the hierophant took his last degree, he emerged from
the sacred recess called Manneras and was given the golden Tau,
the Egyptian Cross, which was subsequently placed upon his breast, and buried
with him.] One of the names of the Jewish Jehovah, “Saboath,”
or the “Lord of Hosts” (tsabaoth), belongs to the Chaldæan
Sabæans ( or Tsabæans), and has for its root the word tsab,
meaning a “car,” a “ship,” and “an army”;
sabaoth thus meaning literally the army of the ship, the crew,
or a naval host, the sky being metaphorically referred to as the “upper
ocean” in the doctrine.
In
his interesting volumes, The God of Moses, Lacour explains that all such
words as
The
celestial armies or the hosts of heaven, signify not only the totality of
the heavenly constellations, but also the Aleim on whom they are dependent;
the aleitzbaout are the forces or souls of the constellations,
the potencies that maintain and guide the planets in this order and procession;
. . . . the Jae-va Tzbaout signifies Him, the supreme chief of those celestial
bodies.
In
his collectivity, as the chief “Order of Spirits,” not a chief Spirit.
The
Sabæans having worshipped in the graven images only the celestial
hosts—angels and gods whose habitation were the planets, never in truth
worshipped the stars. For on Plato’s authority, we know that among the
stars and constellations, the (Page 326) planets
alone had a right to the title of theoi (Gods), as that name was derived
from the verb φειν , to run or to circulate. Seldenus also
tells us that they were likewise called
φεο
βουλαισι (God-Councillors) and ραβοσοροι(lictors)
as they (the planets) were present at the sun’s consistory, solis
consistoris adstantes.
Says
the learned Kircher:
The
sceptres the seven presiding angels were armed with, explain these names of
Rhabdophores and lictors given to them.
Reduced
to its simplest expression and popular meaning, this is of course fetish worship.
Yet esoteric astrolatry was not at all the worship of idols, since under the
names of “Councillors” and “Lictors,” present at the
“Sun’s consistory,” it was not the planets in their material
bodies that were meant, but their Regents or “Souls” (Spirits).
If the prayer “Our Father in heaven,” or “Saint” so-and-so
in “Heaven” is not an idolatrous invocation , then “Our Father
in Mercury.” or “Our Lady in Venus,” “Queen of Heaven,”
etc., is no more so; for it is precisely the same thing, the name making no
difference in the act. The word used in the Christian prayers, “in heaven”
cannot mean anything abstract. A dwelling—whether of Gods, angels or Saints
(every one of these being anthropomorphic individualities and beings)—must
necessarily mean a locality, some defined spot in that “heaven”;
hence it is quite immaterial for purposes of worship whether that spot be considered
as “heaven” in general, meaning nowhere in particular, or in the
Sun, Moon or Jupiter.
The
argument is futile that there were
Two
deities, and two distinct hierarchies or tsabas in heaven, in the ancient
world as in our modern times . . . the one, the living God and his host, and
the other, Saturn, Lucifer with his councillors and lictors, or the
fallen angels.
Our
opponents say that it is the latter which Plato with the whole of antiquity
worshipped, and which two-thirds of humanity worship to this day. “The
whole question is to know how to discern between the two.”
Protestant
Christians fail to find any mention of angels in the Pentateuch, we may therefore
leave them aside. The Roman Catholics and the Kabalists find such mention ;
the former, because they have accepted Jewish angelology, without suspecting
that the “tsabæan Hosts” were colonists and settlers on Judæan
territory from the lands of the Gentiles; the latter, because they accepted
the bulk of the Secret Doctrine, keeping the kernel for themselves and leaving
the husks to the unwary.
The
Planetary Angels - (Page
327)
Cornelius a Lapide points out and proves the meaning of the word tsaba
in the first verse of Chapter ii. of Genesis; and he does so correctly,
guided, as he probably was, by learned Kabalists. The Protestants are certainly
wrong in their contention, for angels are mentioned in the Peutateuch
under the word tsaba, which means “hosts” of angels. In the
Vulgate the word is translated ornatus, meaning the “sidereal army,”
the ornament also of the sky—kabalistically. The biblical scholars
of the Protestant Church, and the savants among the materialists, who
failed to find “angels” mentioned by Moses, have thus committed
a serious error. For the verse reads:
Thus
the heaven and the earth were finished and all the host of them,
the
“host” meaning “the army of stars and angels”; the last
two words being, it seems, convertible terms in Church phraseology. A Lapide
is cited as an authority for this; he says that
Tsaba
does not mean either one or the other but “the one and the
other,” or both, siderum ae angelorum
If
the Roman Catholics are right on this point, so are the Occultists when they
claim that the angels worshipped in the Church of Rome are none else than their
“Seven Planets,” the Dhyân Chohans of Buddhistic Esoteric
Philosophy, or the Kumarâs, “the mind-born sons of Brahmâ,”
known under the patronymic of Vaidhâtra. The identity between the Kumarâs,
the Builders or cosmic Dhyân Chohans, and the Seven Angels of the Stars,
will be found without one single flaw if their respective biographies are studied,
and especially the characteristics of their chiefs, Sanat-Kumâra (Sanat
Sujâta), and Michael the Archangel. Together with the Kabirim (Planets),
the name of the above in Chaldæa, they were all “divine Powers”
(Forces). Fuerot says that the name Kabiri was used to denote the seven
sons of , meaning Pater
Sadic, Cain, or Jupiter, or again of Jehovah. There are seven Kumâras—four
exoteric and three secret—the names of the latter being found in the Sânkhya
Bhâshya, by Gaudapâdâchârya. [ The three
secret names are “Sana, Sanat Sujâta, and Kapila: “ while
the four exoteric Gods are called Sanat Kumâra, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanâtana.]
They are all “Virgin Gods,” who remain eternally pure and innocent
and decline to create progeny. In their primitive aspect, these Âryan
seven “mind-born sons” of God are not the regents of (Page
328) the planets, but dwell far beyond the planetary region. But
the same mysterious transference from one character or dignity to another is
found in the Christian Angel-scheme. The “Seven Spirits of the Presence”
attend perpetually on God, and yet we find them under the same names of Mikael,
Gabriel, Raphael, etc., as “Star-regents” or the informing deities
of the seven planets. Suffice it is to say that the Archangel Michael is called
“the invincible virgin combatant” as he “refused to create,”
which would connect him with both Sana Sujâta and the Kumâra who
is the God of War.[ Another Kumâra, the “God of War”
is called in the Hindu the “eternal celibate”—“the virgin
warrior.” He is the Ãryan St. Michael. ]
The
above has to be demonstrated by a few questions. Commenting upon St. John’s
“Seven Golden Candlesticks,” Cornelius a Lapide says:
These
seven lights relate to the seven branches of the candlestick by which were
represented the seven [ principal ] planets in the temples of
Moses and Solomon . . . or, better still, to the seven principal Spirits,
commissioned to watch over the salvation of men and churches.
St.
Jerome says:
In
truth the candlestick with the seven branches was the type of the world and
its planets.
St.
Thomas Aquinas, the great Roman Catholic doctor writes:
I
do not remember having ever met in the works of saints or philosophers a denial
that the planets are guided by spiritual beings . . . . It seems to me that
it may be proved to demonstration that the celestial bodies are guided by
some intelligence, either directly by God, or by the mediation of angels.
But the latter opinion seems to be far more consonant with the order of things
asserted by St. Denys to be without exception, that everything on earth is,
as a rule, governed by God through intermediary agencies. [ We give
the original: “Coelestia corpora moveri a spiritual creatura, a nemine
Sanctorum vel philosophorum, negatum, legisse me memini. (Opuse. X.
art. iiil) ... Mihi autam videtur quod Demonstrative probari posset,
quod ab aliquo intellectu corpora coelestia moveantur vel a Deo immediate,
vel a mediantibus angelis. Sed quod mediantibus angelis ca moveat, congruit
rerum ordine, quem Dionysius infallibilem asserit ut inferiora a Deo per Media
secundum cursum communem administrentur” (Opusc. II. art . ii.)
and if so, and God never meddles with the once for ever established
laws of Nature, leaving it to his administrators, why should their being called
Gods by the “heathen” to be deemed idolatrous?]
And
now let the reader recall what the Pagans say of this. All the classical authors
and philosophers who have treated the subject, repeat with Hermes Trismegistus,
that the seven Rectors—the planets including the sun—were the associates,
or the co-workers, of the Unknown All represented by the Demiurgos—commissioned
to contain the Cosmos—our Planetary world—within seven circles.
Celestial
Wheels - (Page
329) Plutarch shows them representing “the circle of the celestial
worlds.” Again, Denys of Thracia and the learned Clemens of Alexandria
both describe the Rectors as being shown in the Egyptian temples in the shape
of mysterious wheels or spheres always in motion, which made the Initiates affirm
that the problem of perpetual motion had been solved by the celestial wheels
in the Initiation Adyta. [ In one of Des Mousseaux's volumes on Demonology
(Œuvres des Demons) if we do not mistake.) the statement of the
Abbé Huc is found, and the author testifies to having heard the following
story repeatedly from the Abbé himself. In a lamasery of Tibet, the missionary
found the following:
It
is a simple canvas without the slightest mechanical apparatus attached, as the
visitor may prove by examining it at his leisure. It represents a moonlit landscape,
but the moon is not at all motionless or dead: quite the reverse, for, according
to the Abbé, one would say that our moon herself, or at least her living
double, lighted the picture. Each phase, each aspect, each movement of our satellite,
is repeated in her facsimile, in the movement and progress of the moon in the
sacred picture. “You see this planet in the painting ride as a crescent,
or full, shine brightly, pass behind the clouds, peep out or set, in a manner
corresponding in the most extraordinary way with the real luminary. It is, in
a word, a most perfect and resplendent reproduction of the pale queen of the
night, which received the adoration of so many people in the days of old.”
We know from the most reliable sources and numerous eye-witnesses, that such
“machines”—not canvas paintings—do exist in certain
temples of Tibet: as also the “sidereal wheels” representing the
planets, and kept for the same purposes—astrological and magical. Huc’s
statement was translated in Isis Unveiled from Des Mousseaux’s
volume.] This doctrine of Hermes was that of Pythagoras and of Orpheus
before him. It is called by Proclus “the God-given” doctrine. Iamblichus
speaks of it with greatest reverence. Philostratus tell his readers that the
whole sidereal court of the Babylonian heaven was represented in the temples.
In
globes made of sapphires and supporting the golden images of their respective
gods.
The
temples of Persia were especially famous for these representations. If Cedrenus
can be credited
The
Emperor Heraclius on his entry into the city of Bazaeum was struck with admiration
and wonder before the immense machine fabricated for King Chosroes, which
represented the night-sky with the planets and all their revolutions, with
the angels presiding over them. [ Cedrenus, p.338. Whether produced
by clockwork or magic power, such machines—whole celestial
spheres with planets rotating—were found in the Sanctuaries, and some
exist to this day in Japan, in a secret subterranean temple of the old Mikados,
as well as in two other places.]
It
was on such “spheres” that Pythagoras studied Astronomy in the adyta
arcana of the temples to which he had access. And it was there on his Initiation,
that the eternal rotation of those spheres—“the mysterious wheels”
as they are called by Clemens and Denys, and which Plutarch calls “world-wheels”—demonstrated
to him the verity (Page 330) of
what had been divulged to him, namely, the heliocentric system, the great secret
of the Adyta. All the discoveries of modern astronomy, like all the secrets
that can be revealed to it in future ages, were contained in the secret observatories
and Initiation Halls of the temples of old India and Egypt. It is in them that
the Chaldæan made his calculations revealing to the world of the profane
no more than it was fit to receive.
We
may, and shall be told, no doubt, that Uranus was unknown to the ancients, and
that they were forced to reckon the sun amongst the planets and as their chief.
How does anyone know? Uranus is a modern name ; but one thing is certain:
the ancients had a planet, “ a mystery planet,” that they never
named and that the highest Astronomus, the Hierophant, alone could “confabulate
with.” But this seventh planet was not the sun, but the hidden Divine
Hierophant, who was said to have a crown, and to embrace within its wheel “seventy-seven
smaller wheels.” In the archaic secret system of the Hindus, the sun is
the visible Logos “Sûrya”, over him there is another, the
divine or heavenly Man—who, after having established the system of the
world of matter on the archetype of the Unseen Universe, or Macrocosm, conducted
during the Mysteries the heavenly Ràsa Mandala; when he was said:
To
give with his right foot the impulse to Tyam or Bhûmi [
Earth ] that makes her rotate in a double revolution.
What
says Hermes again? When explaining Egyptian Cosmology he explains:
Listen,
O my son . . . the Power has also formed seven agents, who contain within
their circles the material world, and whose action is called destiny . . .
. When all became subject to man, the Seven, willing to favour human intelligence,
communicated to him their powers. But as soon as man knew their true essence
and his own nature, he desired to penetrate within and beyond the circles
and thus break their circumference by usurping the power of him who has dominion
over the Fire [ Sun ] itself; after which, having robbed one
of the Wheels of the Sun of the sacred fire, he fell into slavery. [ Champollion’s
Egypte Moderne. p.42.]
It
is not Prometheus who is meant here. Prometheus is a symbol and a personification
of the whole of mankind in relation to an event which occurred during its childhood,
so to say—the “Baptism by Fire”—which is a mystery within
the great Promethean Mystery, one that may be at present mentioned only in its
broad general features.
The
Promethean Mystery - (Page
331) By reason of the extraordinary growth of human intellect and
the development in our age of the fifth principle (Manas) in man, its rapid
progress has paralysed spiritual perceptions. It is at the expense of wisdom
that intellect generally lives, and mankind is quite unprepared in its present
condition to comprehend the awful drama of human disobedience to the laws of
Nature and the subsequent Fall, as a result. It can only be hinted at, in its
place.
SECTION
XXXVII
The
Souls of the Stars—Universal Heliolatry
(Page
332) IN order to show that the Ancients have never “mistaken
stars for Gods,” or Angels and the sun for the highest Gods and God, but
have worshipped only the Spirit of all, and have reverenced the minor Gods supposed
to reside in the sun and planets—the difference between these two worships
has to be pointed out. Saturn, “the Father of Gods” must not be
confused with his namesake—the planet of the same name with its eight
moons and three rings. The two—though in one sense identical, as are,
for instance, physical man and his soul—must be separated in the question
of worship. This has to be done the more carefully in the case of the seven
planets and their Spirits, as the whole formation of the universe is attributed
to them in the Secret Teachings. The same difference has to be shown again between
the stars of the Great Bear, the Riksha and the Chitra Shikhandina, “the
bright-crested,” and the Rishis—the mortal Sages who appeared on
earth during the Satya Yuga. If all of these have been so far closely united
in the visions of the seers of every age—the bible seers included—there
must have been a reason for it. Nor need one go back so far as into the periods
of “superstition” and “unscientific fancies” to find
great men in our epoch sharing in them. It is well known that Kepler, the eminent
astronomer, in common with many other great men who believed that the heavenly
bodies ruled favourably or adversely the fates of men and nations—fully
credited besides this the fact that all heavenly bodies, even our own earth,
are endowed with living and thinking souls.
Le
Couturier’s opinion is worthy of notice in this relation:
Christian
Star-Worship - (Page
333) We are too inclined to criticize unsparingly everything concerning
astrology and its ideas; nevertheless our criticism, to be one, ought at least
to know, lest it should be proved aimless, what those ideas in truth are.
And when among the men we thus criticize, we find such names as those of Regiomontanus,
Tycho Brahe, Kepler, etc., there is reason why we should be careful. Kepler
was an astrologer by profession, and became an astronomer in consequence.
He was earning his livelihood by genethliac figures, which, indicating his
state of the heavens at the moment of the birth of individuals, were a means
to which everyone resorted for horoscopes. That great man was a believer in
the principles of astrology, without accepting all its foolish results.
[ Musée des Sciences. p. 230.]
But
astrology is nevertheless proclaimed as a sinful science, and together with
Occultism is tabooed by the Churches. It is very doubtful, however, whether
mystic “star-worship” can be so easily laughed down as people imagine—at
any rate by Christians. The hosts of Angels, Cherubs and Planetary Archangels
are identical with the minor Gods of the Pagans. As to their “great Gods,”
if Mars has been shown—on the admission of even the enemies of the Pagan
astrologers—to have been regarded by the latter simply as the personified
strength of the one highest impersonal Deity, Mercury being personified as its
omniscience, Jupiter as its omnipotency, and so on, then the “superstition”
of the Pagan has indeed become the “religion” of the masses of the
civilized nations. For with the latter, Jehovah is the synthesis of the seven
Elohim, the eternal centre of all those attributes and forces, the Alei of the
Aleim, and the Adonai of the Adonim. And if with them Mars is now called St.
Michael, the “strength of God,” Mercury Gabriel, the “omniscience
and fortitude of the Lord,” and Raphael “the blessing or healing
power of God,” this is simply a change of names, the characters behind
the masks remaining the same.
The
Dalai-lama’s mitre has seven ridges in honour of the seven chief Dhyâni
Buddhas. In the funeral ritual of the Egyptians the defunct is made to exclaim:
Salutation
to you, O Princes, who stand in the presence of Osiris . . . . Send me the
grace to have my sins destroyed, as you have done for the seven spirits who
follow the Lord! [ Translated by the Vicomte de Rougemont. See Les
Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, 7th year. 1861 ]
Brahmâ’s
head is ornamented with seven rays, and he is followed by the seven Rishis,
in the seven Svargas. China has her seven Pagodas; (Page
334) the Greeks had their seven Cyclopes, seven Demiurgi, and the
Mystery Gods, the seven Kabiri, whose chief was Jupiter-Saturn, and with the
Jews, Jehovah. Now the latter Deity has become chief of all by Mikael (Michael).
He is the “Chief of the Host” (tsaba); the “Archistrategus
of the Lord’s army”; the “Conqueror of the Devil”—Victor
diaboli—and the “Archisatrap of the Sacred Militia, “ he who
slew the “Great Dragon.” Unfortunately astrology and symbology,
having no inducement to veil old things with new masks, have preserved the real
name of Mikael—“that was Jehovah”—Mikael being the Angel
of the face of the Lord, [ Isaiah, IXIII.9.] “the
guardian of the planets,” and the living image of God. He represents the
Deity in his visits to earth, for as it is well expressed in Hebrew, he is one
, who is as God, or who is like unto God. It is he who cast out the serpent.
[ Chap xii of Revelation: “There was war in heaven, Mikael
and his angels fought against the Dragon,” etc., (7) and the great dragon
was cast out (9).]
Mikael,
being the regent of the planet Saturn, is—Saturn. [ He is
also the informing Spirit of the Sun and Jupiter, and even of Venus.]
His mystery-name is Sabbathiel, because he presides over the Jewish Sabbath,
as also over the astrological Saturday. Once identified, the reputation of the
Christian conqueror of the devil is in still greater danger from further identifications.
Biblical angels are called Malachim, the messengers between God (or rather the
gods) and men. In Hebrew .
Malach, is also “a King,” and Malech or Melech was likewise Moloch,
or again Saturn, the Seb of Egypt, to whom Dies Saturni, or the Sabbath,
was dedicated. The Sabæans separated and distinguished the planet Saturn
from its God far more than the Roman Catholics do their angels from their stars;
and the Kabalists make of the Archangel Mikael the patron of the seventh work
of magic.
In
theological symbolism. . . . Jupiter [ the Sun ] is the risen
and glorious Saviour, and Saturn, God the Father, or the Jehovah of Moses, [
Dogme et Rituel. ii. 116 ] says Éliphas Lévi, who ought
to know. Jehovah and the Saviour, Saturn and Jupiter, being thus one, and Mikael
being called the living image of God, it does seem dangerous for the Church
to call Saturn, Satan—le dieu mauvais. However, Rome is strong
in casuistry and will get out of this as she got out of every other identification,
with glory to herself and to her own full satisfaction.
A
Singular Confession - (Page
335)
Nevertheless all her dogmas and rituals seem like so many pages torn out from
the history of Occultism, and then distorted. The extremely thin partition that
separates the Kabalistic and Chaldæan Theogony from the Roman Catholic
Angelology and Theodicy is now confessed by at least one Roman Catholic writer.
One can hardly believe one’s eyes in finding the following (the passages
italicized by us should be carefully noticed):
One
of the most characteristic features of our Holy Scriptures is the calculated
discretion used in the enunciation of the mysteries less directly useful to
salvation. . . . . Thus, beyond those “myriads of myriads”
of angelic creatures just noticed [ If enumerated, they will be found
to be the Hindu “divisions” and choirs of Devas, and the Dhyân
Chohans of Esoteric Buddhism.] and all these prudently elementary divisions,
there are certainly many others, whose very names have not yet reached us.
[ But this fact has not prevented the Roman Church from adopting them
all the same, accepting them from ignorant, though perchance sincere Church
Fathers, who had borrowed them from Kabalists—Jews and Pagans. ]
“For,” excellently says St. John Chrysostom, “there are
doubtless, (sine dubio,) many other Virtues [ celestial
beings ] whose denominations we are yet far from knowing . . . . The
nine orders are not by any means the only populations in heaven, where, on
the contrary, are to be found numberless tribes of inhabitants infinitely
varied, and of which it would be impossible to give the slightest idea
through human tongue . . .. Paul, who had learned their names, reveals
to us their existence.” ( De Incomprehensibili Natura Dei, Bk.
IV.) . . .
It
would thus amount to a gross mistake to see merely errors in the Angelology
of the Kabalists and Gnostics, so severely treated by the Apostle of the Gentiles,
for his imposing censure reached only their exaggerations and vicious interpretations,
and still more, the application of those noble titles to the miserable
personalities of demoniacal usurpers. [To call “usurpers”
those who preceded the Christian Beings for whose benefit these same titles
were borrowed, is carrying paradoxical anachronism a little too far! ]
Often nothing so resemble each other as the language of the judges
and that of the convicts [ of saints and Occultists ]. One
has to penetrate deeply into this dual study [ of creed and
profession ] and what is still better, to trust blindly to the authority
of the tribunal [ the Church of Rome, of course ] to enable
oneself to seize precisely the point of the error. The Gnosis condemned
by St. Paul remains, nevertheless, for him as for Plato the supreme knowledge
of the truths, and of the Being par excellence, σ σντως
(Republ. Bk. VI). The Ideas, types,αρχαι
of the Greek philosopher, the Intelligences of Pythagoras, the aeons
or emanations, the occasion of so much reproach to the first heretics,
the Logos or Word, Chief of these Intelligences, the Demiurgos, the
architect of the world under his father’s direction [ of the
Pagans ], the unknown God, the En-soph, or the It of the
Infinite [ of the Kabalists], the angelical periods,
[ Or the divine ages, the “days and years of Brahmâ.”]
the seven spirits, the Depths of Ahriman, the World’s
Rectors, the Archontes of the air, the God of this world,
the pleroma of the (Page 336)
intelligences, down to Metatron the angel of the Jews, all this
is found word for word, as so many truths, in the works of our greatest doctors,
and in St. Paul.[ De Mirville. ii. 325, 326. So we say too. And
this shows that it is to the Kabalists and Magicians that the Church
is indebted for her dogmas and names. Paul never condemned real Gnosis,
but the false one, now accepted by the Church.]
If
an Occultist, eager to charge the Church with a numberless series of plagiarisms
were to write the above, could he have written more strongly? And have we, or
have we not, the right, after such a complete confession, to reverse the tables
and to say of Roman Catholics and others what is said of the Gnostics and Occultists.
“They used our expressions and rejected our doctrines.” For it is
not the “promoters of the false Gnosis”—who had all those
expressions from their archaic ancestors—who helped themselves to Christian
expressions, but verily the Christian Fathers and Theologians, who helped themselves
to our nest, and have tried ever since to soil it.
The
words above quoted will explain much to those who are searching for truth and
for truth only. They will show the origin of certain rites in the Church inexplicable
hitherto to the simple-minded, and will give the reasons why such words as “Our
Lord the Sun” were used in prayer by Christians up to the fifth and even
sixth century of our era and embodied in the Liturgy, until altered into “Our
Lord, the God.” Let us remember that the early Christians painted Christ
on the walls of their subterranean necropolis, as a shepherd in the guise of
and invested with all the attributes of Apollo, driving away the wolf. Fenris,
who seeks to devour the Sun and his Satellites.
SECTION
XXXVIII
Astrology
and Astrolatry
(Page
337)
The books of Hermes Trismegistus contain the exoteric meaning, still veiled
for all but the Occultist, of the Astrology and Astrolatry of the Khaldi. The
two subjects are closely connected. Astrolatry, or the adoration of the heavenly
host, is the natural result of only half-revealed Astrology, whose Adepts carefully
concealed from the non-initiated masses its Occult principles and the wisdom
imparted to them by the Regents of the Planets—the “Angels.”
Hence, divine Astrology for the Initiates; superstitious Astrolatry for the
profane. St. Justin asserts it:
From
the first invention of the hieroglyphics it was not the vulgar, but the distinguished
and select men who became initiated in the secrecy of the temples into the
science of every kind of Astrology—even into its most abject kind: that
Astrology which later on found itself prostituted in the public thoroughfares.
There
was a vast difference between the Sacred Science taught by Petosiris Necepso—the
first Astrologers mentioned in the Egyptian manuscripts, believed to have lived
during the reign of Ramses II. (Sesostris) [ Sesostris, or Pharaoh Ramses
II., whose mummy was unswathed in 1886 by Maspero of the Bulak Museum, and recognised
as that of the greatest king of Egypt, whose grandson, Ramses III., was the
last king of an ancient kingdom.] —and the miserable charlatanry
of the quacks called Chaldæans, who degraded the Divine Knowledge under
the last Emperors of Rome. Indeed, one may fairly describe the two as the “high
ceremonial Astrology” and “astrological Astrolatry.” The first
depended on the knowledge by the Initiates of those (to us) immaterial Forces
or Spiritual Entities that effect matter and guide it. Called by the ancient
Philosophers the Archontes and the Cosmocratores, they were the types or paradigms
on the higher planes of the lower and more material beings on the scale of evolution,
whom we call Elementals and Nature-Spirits, to whom the Sabæans bowed
and whom they worshipped, without suspecting the essential difference. Hence
(Page 338) the latter kind when
not a mere pretence, degenerated but too often into Black Magic. It was the
favourite form of popular or exoteric Astrology, entirely ignorant of the apotelesmatic
principles of the primitive Science, the doctrines of which were imparted only
at initiation. Thus, while the real Hierophants soared like Demi-Gods to the
very summit of spiritual knowledge, the hoi polloi among the Sabæans
crouched, steeped in superstition—ten millenniums back, as they do now—in
the cold and lethal shadow of the valleys of matter. Sidereal influence is dual.
There is the physical and physiological influence, that of exotericism; and
the high spiritual, intellectual, and moral influence, imparted by the knowledge
of the former, called Astrology, so far back as the eighteenth century, “The
very foolish mother of a very wise daughter”—Astronomy. On the other
hand, Arago, a luminary of the nineteenth century, supports the reality of the
sidereal influence of the Sun, Moon and Planets. He asks:
Where
do we find lunar influences refuted by arguments that science would dare to
avow?
But
even Bailly, having, as he thought, put down Astrology as publicly practised,
dares not to do the same with the real Astrology. He says:
Judiciary
Astrology was at its origin the result of a profound system, the work of an
enlightened nation that would wander too far into the mysteries of God and
Nature.
A
Scientist of a more recent date, a member of the Institute of France, and a
professor of history, Ph. Lebas, discovers (unconsciously to himself) the very
root of Astrology in his able article on the subject in the Dictionnaire
Encyclopédique de France. He well understands, he tells his readers,
that the adhesion to that Science of such a number of highly intellectual men
should be in itself a sufficient motive for believing that all Astrology is
not folly:
While
proclaiming in politics the sovereignty of the people and of public opinion
can we admit, as heretofore, that mankind allowed itself to be radically deceived
in this only: that an absolute and gross absurdity reigned in the minds of
whole nations for so many centuries without being based on anything save—on
one hand human imbecility, and on the other charlatanry? How for fifty centuries
and more can most men have been either dupes or knaves? . . . . Even though
we may find it impossible to decide between and separate the realities of
Astrology from the elements of invention and empty dreaming in it, . . . let
us, nevertheless, repeat with Bossuet and all modern philosophers, that “nothing
that has been dominant could be absolutely false.” Is it not true, at
all events, that there is a physical reaction on one another among the planets.
The
Defence of Astrology - (Page
339) It is not again true, that the planets have an influence on
the atmosphere, and consequently at any rate a mediate action on vegetation
and animals? Has not modern science demonstrated now these two points beyond
any doubt? . . . Is it any less true that human liberty of action is not absolute;
that all is bound, that all weighs, planets as the rest, on each individual
will; that Providence [ or Karma ] acts on us and directs
men through those relations that it has established between them and the visible
objects and the whole universe? . . . Astrolatry, in its essence, is nothing
but that; we are bound to recognise that an instinct superior to the age they
lived in guided the efforts of the ancient Magi. As to the materialism and annihilation
of human moral freedom with which Bailly charges their theory (Astrology), the
reprobate has no sense whatever. All the great astrologers admitted, without
one single exception, that man could reäct against the influence of the
stars. This principle is established in the Ptolemœian Tetrabiblos,
the true astrological Scriptures, in chapters ii, and iii, of book i. [Op.
cit., p.422.]
Thomas
Aquinas had corroborated Lebas in anticipation; he says:
The
celestial bodies are the cause of all that happens in this sublunary world,
they act indirectly on human actions; but not all the effects produced by
them are unavoidable. [ Summa. Quest. xv. Art, v., upon Astrologers,
and Vol. III. pp.2-29.]
The
Occultists and Theosophists are, the first to confess that there is white and
black Astrology. Nevertheless, Astrology has to be studied in both aspects by
those who wish to become proficient in it; and the good or bad results obtained
do not depend upon the principles, which are the same in both kinds, but in
the Astrologer himself. Thus Pythagoras, who established the whole Copernican
system by the Book of Hermes, 2,000 years before Galileo’s predecessor
was born, found and studied in them the whole Science of divine Theogony, of
the communication with, and the evocation of, the world’s Rectors—the
Princes of the “Principalities” of St. Paul—the nativity of
each Planet and of the Universes itself, the formulæ of incantations and
the consecretation of each portion of the human body to the respective Zodiacal
sign corresponding to it. All this cannot be regarded as childish and absurd—still
less “devilish”—save by those who are, and wish to remain,
tyros in the Philosophy of the Occult Sciences. No true thinker—no one
who recognises the presence of a common bond between man and visible, as well
as invisible, Nature—would see in the old relics of Archaic Wisdom—such
as the Petemenoph Papyrus, for instance—“childish nonsense
and absurdity,” as many Academicians (Page
340) and Scientists have done. But upon finding in such ancient documents
the application of the Hermetic rules and laws, such as
The
consecration of one’s hair to the celestial Nile; of the left temple
to the living Spirit in the sun, and the right one to the spirit of Ammon,
he
will endeavour to study and comprehend better the “laws of correspondences.”
Nor will he disbelieve in the antiquity of Astrology on the plea that some Orientalists
have thought fit to declare that the Zodiac was not very ancient, being only
the invention of the Greeks of the Macedonian period. For this statement, besides
having been shown to be entirely erroneous by a number of other reasons, may
be entirely disproved by facts relating to the latest discoveries in Egypt,
and by the more accurate readings of hieroglyphics and inscriptions of the earliest
dynasties. The published polemics on the contents of the so-called “Magic”
Papyri of the Anastasi collection indicate the antiquity of the Zodiac. As the
Lettres à Lettrone say: The papyri discourse at length upon the
four bases or
Foundations
of the world, the identity of which it is impossible, according to Champollion,
to mistake, as one is forced to recognise in them the Pillars of the World
of St. Paul. It is they who are invoked with the gods of all the celestial
zones, quite analogous, once more, to the Spiritualia nequitiaœ in
cœlestibus of the same apostle. [“ The principalities
and powers [ born ] in heavenly places.” (Ephes.,
iii. 10). The verse. “For though there be that are called Gods, whether
in heaven or on earth, as there be Gods many and lords many” (I. Corinth.
viii. 5), shows at any rate, the recognition by Paul of a plurality of “Gods”
whom he calls “dæmons” (“spirits”—never
devils). Principalities, Thrones, Dominions. Rectors, etc., are all
Jewish and Christian names for the Gods of the ancients—the Archangels
and Angels of the former being in every case the Devas and the Dhyân
Chohans of the more ancient religions.]
That
invocation was made in the proper terms . . . . of the formula, reproduced
far too faithfully by Jamblichus for it to be possible to refuse him any longer
the merit of having transmitted to posterity the ancient and primitive spirit
of the Egyptian Astrologers. [ Answer by Reuvens to Letronne with regard
to his mistake notion about the Zodiac of Dendera.]
As
Letronne had tried to prove that all the genuine Egyptian Zodiacs had been manufactured
during the Roman period, the Sensaos mummy is brought forward to show that:
All
the Zodiacal monuments in Egypt were chiefly astronomical. Royal tombs and
funereal rituals are so many tables of constellations and of their influences
for all the hours of every month.
Thus
the genethliac tables themselves prove that they are far older than the period
assigned to their origin; all the Zodiacs of the sarcophagi of later epochs
being simple reminiscences of the Zodiacs belonging to the mythological [
archaic ] period.
Its
Later Deterioration - (Page
341)
Primitive
Astrology was as far above modern judiciary Astrology, so-called as the guides
(the Planets and Zodiacal signs) are above the lamp-posts. Berosus shows the
sidereal sovereignty of Bel and Mylitta (Sun and Moon), and only “the
twelve lords of the Zodiacal Gods,” the “thirty-six Gods Counsellors”
and the “twenty-four Stars, judges of this world,” which support
and guide the Universe (our solar system), watch over mortals and reveal to
mankind its fate and their own decrees. Judiciary Astrology as it is now known,
is correctly denominated by the Latin Church the
Materialistic
and pantheistic prophesying by the objective planet itself, independently
of its Rector [ the Mlac of the Jews, the ministers of the Eternal
commissioned by him to announce his will to mortals ]; the ascension
or conjunction of the planet at the moment of the birth of an individual deciding
his fortune and the moment and mode of his death. [ St. Ausgustine
(De Gen., I.iii.) and Delrio (Disquisit., Vol. IV., chap iii.)
are quoted by De Mirville, to show that “the more astrologers speak
the truth and the better they prophesy it, the more one has to feel diffident,
seeing that their agreement with the devil becomes thereby the more apparent.”
The famous statement made by Juvenal (Satires, vi.) to the effect that
“not one single astrologer could be found who did not pay dearly for
the help he received from his genius”—no more proves the latter
to be a devil than the death of Socrates proves his daimon to have been a
native from the nether world—if such there be. Such argument only demonstrates
human stupidity and wickedness, once reason is made subservient to prejudice
and fanaticism of every sort. “Most of the great writers of antiquity,
Cicero and Tacitus among them, believed in Astrology and the realization of
its prophecies: and “the penalty of death decreed nearly everywhere
against those mathematicians [astrologers] who happened to predict
falsely diminished neither their number nor their tranquility of mind.”]
Every
student of Occultism knows that the heavenly bodies are closely related during
each Manvantara with the mankind of that special cycle; and there are some who
believe that each great character born during that period has—as every
other mortal has, only in a far stronger degree—his destiny outlined within
his proper constellation or star, traced as a self-prophecy, an anticipated
autobiography, by the indwelling Spirit of that particular star. The human Monad
in its first beginning is that Spirit, or the Soul of that star (Planet) itself.
As our Sun radiates its light and beams on every body in space within the boundaries
of its system, so the Regent of every Planet-star, the Parent-monad, shoots
out from itself the Monad of every “pilgrim” Soul born under its
house within its own group. The Regents are esoterically seven, whether in the
Sephiroth, the “Angels of the Presence,” the Rishis, or the Amshaspends.
“The One is no number” is said in all the esoteric works.
(Page
342) From the Kasdim and Gazzim (Astrologers) the noble primitive
science passed to the Khartumim Asaphim (or Theologians) and the Hakamin (or
scientists, the Magicians of the lower class), and from these to the Jews during
their captivity. The Books of Moses had been buried in oblivion for centuries,
and when rediscovered by Hilkiah had lost their true sense for the people of
Israel. Primitive Occult Astrology was on the decline when Daniel, the last
of the Jewish Initiates of the old school, became the chief of the Magi and
Astrologers of Chaldæa. In those days even Egypt, who had her wisdom from
the same source as Babyon, had degenerated from her former grandeur, and her
glory had begun to fade out. Still, the science of old habit left her eternal
imprint on the world, and the seven great Primitive Gods reigned for ever in
the Astrology and the division of time of every nation upon the face of the
earth. The names of the days of our (Christian) week are those of the Gods of
the Chaldæans, who translated them from those of the Âryans; the
uniformity of these antediluvian names in every nation, from the Goths back
to the Indians, would remain inexplicable, as Sir W. Jones thought, had not
the riddle been explained to us by the invitation made by the Chaldæan
oracles, recorded by Porphyry and quoted by Eusebius:
To
carry those names first to the Egyptian and Phœnician colonies, then
to the Greeks, with the express recommendation that each God should be invoked
only on that day that had been called by his name. . . . .
Thus
Apollo says in those oracles: “I must be invoked on the day of the sun;
Mercury after his directions, then Chronos [Saturn], then Venus,
and do not fail to call seven times each of those gods.” [Preparatio
Evangelica. I. xiv.]
This
is slightly erroneous. Greece did not get her astrological instruction from
Egypt or from Chaldæa, but direct from Orpheus, as Lucian tells us. [
Ast., iv. 60] It was Orpheus, as he says, who imparted the Indian
Sciences to nearly all the great monarchs of antiquity; and it was they, the
ancient kings favoured by the Planetary Gods, who recorded the principles of
Astrology—as did Ptolemus, for instance. Thus Lucian writes:
The
Bœotian Tiresias acquired the greatest reputation in the art of predicting
futurity . . . . In those days divination was not as slightly treated as it
is now; and nothing was ever undertaken without previous consultation with
diviners, whose oracles were all directed by astrology . . . . At Delphos
the virgin commissioned to announce futurity was the symbol of the Heavenly
Virgin, . . . . and Our Lady.
Its
Prominent Disciples - (Page
343) On the sarcophagus of an Egyptian Pharaoh, Neith, mother of
Ra, the heifer that brings forth the Sun, her body spangled with stars, and
wearing the solar and lunar discs, is equally referred to as the “Heavenly
Virgin” and “Our Lady of the Starry Vault.”
Modern
judiciary Astrology in its present form began only during the time of Diodorus,
as he apprises the world. [Hist., I. ii.] But Chaldæan
Astrology was believed in by most of the great men in History, such as Cæsar,
Pliny, Cicero—whose best friends, Nigidius Figulus and Lucius Tarrutius,
were themselves Astrologers, the former being famous as a prophet. Marcus Antonius
never travelled without an Astrologer recommended to him by Cleopatra. Augustus,
when ascending the throne, had his horoscope drawn by Theagenes. Tiberius discovered
pretenders to his throne by means of Astrology and divination. Vitellius dared
not exile the Chaldæans, as they had announced the day of their banishment
as that of his death. Vespasian consulted them daily; Domitian would not move
without being advised by the prophets; Adrian was a learned Astrologer himself;
and all of them, ending with Julian (called the Apostate because he would
not become one), believed in, and addressed their prayers to, the Planetary
“Gods.” The Emperor Adrian, moreover, “predicted from the
January calends up to December 31st, every event that happened to
him daily.” Under the wisest emperors Rome had a School of Astrology,
wherein were secretly taught the occult influences of the Sun, Moon, and Saturn.
[ All these particulars may be found more fully and far more completely
in Champollion Figeac’s Ėgypte.] Jndiciary Astrology
is used to this day by the Kabalists; and Éliphas Lévi, the modern
French Magus, teaches its rudiments in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magic.
But the key to ceremonial or ritualistic Astrology, with the teraphim and
the urim and thummim of Magic, is lost to Europe. Hence our century of Materialism
shrugs it shoulders and sees in Astrology—a pretender.
Not
all scientists scoff at it, however, and one may rejoice in reading in the Musée
des Sciences [ Op. cit., p.230.] the suggestive and
fair remarks made by Le Couturier, a man of science of no mean reputation. He
thinks it curious (Page 344)
to notice that while the bold speculations of Democritus are found vindicated
by Dalton,
The
reveries of the alchemists are also on their way to a certain rehabilitation.
They receive renewed life from the minute investigations of their successors,
the chemists; a very remarkable thing indeed is to see how much modern discoveries
have served to vindicate, of late, the theories of the Middle Ages from the
charge of absurdity laid at their door. Thus, if, as demonstrated by Col.
Sabine, the direction of a piece of steel, hung a few feet above the soil,
may be influenced by the position of the moon, whose body is at a distance
of 240,000 miles from our planet, who then could accuse of extravagance the
belief of the ancient astrologers [ or the modern, either] in
the influence of the stars on human destiny.[ Op. cit., p.230.]
SECTION
XXXIX
Cycles
of Avatâras
(Page
345) We have already drawn attention to the facts that the record
of the life of a World-Savior is emblematical, and must be read by its mystic
meaning, and that the figures 432 have a cosmic evolutionary significance. We
find these two facts throwing light on the origin of the exoteric Christian
religion, and clearing away much of the obscurity surrounding its beginnings.
For is it not clear that the names and characters in the Synoptical Gospels
and in that of St. John are not historical? Is it not evident that the compilers
of the life of Christ, desirous to show that the birth of their Master was a
cosmic, astronomical, and divinely-preördained event, attempted to coördinate
the same with the end of the secret cycle, 4,320? When facts are collated this
answers to them as little as does the other cycle of “thirty-three solar
years, seven months, and seven days,” which has also been brought forward
as supporting the same claim, the soli-lunar cycle in which the Sun gains on
the Moon one solar year. The combination of the three figures, 4, 3, 2, with
cyphers according to the cycle and Manvantara concerned, was, and is, preëminently
Hindu. It will remain a secret even though several of its significant features
are revealed. It relates, for instance, to the Pralaya of the races in their
periodical dissolution, before which events a special Avatâra has always
to descend and incarnate on earth. These figures were adopted by all the older
nations, such as those of Egypt and Chaldæa, and before them were current
among the Atlanteans. Evidently some of the more learned among the early Church
Fathers who had dabbled, whilst Pagans, in temple secrets, knew them to relate
to the Avatâric or Messianic Mystery, and tried to apply this cycle
to the birth of their Messiah; they failed because the figures relate to the
respective ends of the Root-Races and not to any individual. In their badly-directed
efforts, moreover, an error of five years occurred. Is it possible, if their
claims as to the (Page 346) importance
and universality of the event were correct, that such a vital mistake should
have been allowed to creep into a chronological computation preördained
and traced in the heavens by the finger of God? Again, what were the Pagan and
even Jewish Initiates doing, if this claim as to Jesus be correct? Could they,
the custodians of the key to the secret cycles and Avatâras, the heirs
of the Âryan, Egyptian, and Chaldæan wisdom, have failed to recognize
their great “God-Incarnate,” one with Jehovah, [ In the 1,326
places in the New Testament where the word “God” is mentioned
nothing signifies that in God are included more beings than God. On the contrary
in 17 places God is called the only God. The places where the Father is so-called
amount to 320. In 105 places God is addressed with high-sounding titles. In
90 places all prayers and thanks are addressed to the Father: 300 times in the
New Testament is the Son declared to be inferior to the Father; 85 times
is Jesus called the “Son of Man; 70 times is he called a man. In not one
single place in the Bible is it said that God holds within him three different
Beings or Persons, and yet is one Being or Person—Dr. Karl Von Bergen’s
Lectures in Sweden.] their Saviour of the latter days, him whom
all the nations of Asia still expect as their Kalki Avatâra, Maitreya
Buddha, Sosiosh, Messiah, etc.,?
The
simple secret is this: There are cycles within greater cycles, which are all
contained in the one Kalpa of 4,320,000 years. It is at the end of this cycle
that the Kalki Avatâra is expected—the Avatâra Whose name
and characteristics are secret, Who will come forth from Shamballa, the “City
of Gods,” which is in the West for some nations, in the East for others,
in the North or South for yet others. And this is the reason why, from the Indian
Rishi to Virgil, and from Zoroaster down to the latest Sibyl, all have, since
the beginning of the Fifth Race, prophesied, sung, and promised the cyclic return
of the Virgin—Virgo, the constellation—and the birth of a divine
child who should bring back to our earth the Golden Age.
No
one, however fanatical, would have sufficient hardihood to maintain that the
Christian era has ever been a return to the Golden Age—Virgo having actually
entered into Libra since then. Let us trace as briefly as possible the Christian
traditions to their true origin.
First
of all, they discover in a few lines from Virgil a direct prophecy of the birth
of Christ. Yet it is impossible to detect in this prophecy any feature of the
present age. It is in the famous fourth Eclogue in which, half a century before
our era, Pollio is made to ask the Muses of Sicily to sing to him about greater
events.
The
last era of Cumæan song is now arrived and the grand series of ages
[ that series which recurs again and again in the course of our mundane
revolution ] begins afresh. Now the Virgin Astæa returns, and
the reign of Saturn recommences
An
Unfulfilled Prophecy - (Page
347) Now a new progeny descends from the celestial realms.
Do thou, chaste Lucina, smile propitious to the infant Boy who will bring
to a close the present Age of Iron, [ Kali Yuga, the Black or Iron
Age.] and introduce throughout the whole world the Age of Gold. . .
. . He shall share the life of Gods and shall see heroes mingled in society
with Gods, himself to be seen by them and all the peaceful world. . . . Then
shall the herds no longer dread the huge lion, the serpent also shall die:
and the poison’s deceptive plant shall perish. Come then, dear child
of the Gods, great descendant of Jupiter!. . . . The time is near. See, the
world is shaken with its globe saluting thee: the earth, the regions of the
sea, and the heavens sublime. [ Virgil, Eclogue. iv.]
It
is in these few lines, called the “Sibylline prophecy about the coming
of Christ,” that his followers now see a direct foretelling of the event.
Now who will presume to maintain that either at the birth of Jesus or since
the establishment of the so-called Christian religion, any portion of the above-quoted
sentences can be shown as prophetic? Has the “last age”—the
Age of Iron, or Kali Yuga—closed since then? Quite the reverse, since
it is shown to be in full sway just now, not only, because the Hindus use the
name, but by universal personal experience. Where is that “new race that
has descended from the celestial realms”? Was it the race that emerged
from Paganism into Christianity? Or is it our present race, with nations ever
red-hot for fight, jealous and envious, ready to pounce upon each other, showing
mutual hatred that would put to blush cats and dogs, ever lying and deceiving
one another? Is it this age of ours that is the promised “Golden Age”—in
which neither the venom of the serpent nor of any plant is any longer lethal,
and in which we are all secure under the mild sway of God-chosen sovereigns?
The wildest fancy of an opium-eater could hardly suggest a more inappropriate
description, if it is to be applied to our age or to any age since the year
one of our era. What of the mutual slaughter of sects, of Christians by Pagans,
and of Pagans and Heretics by Christians; the horrors of the Middle Ages and
of the Inquisition; Napoleon, and since his day, an “armed peace”
at best—at the worst, torrents of blood, shed for supremacy over acres
of land, and a handful of heathen : millions of soldiers under arms, ready for
battle; a diplomatic body playing at Cains and Judases; and instead of the “mild
sway of a divine sovereign” the universal, though unrecognised, sway of
Cæsarism, of “might” in lieu of “right,” and the
breeding therefrom of anarchists, socialists, pétroleuses, and destroyers
of every description?
(Page
348) The Sibylline prophecy
and Virgil’s inspirational poetry remain unfulfilled in every point, as
we see.
The
fields are yellow with soft ears of corn;
but
so they were before our era:
The
blushing grapes shall hang from the rude brambles, and dewy honey shall [
or may ] distil from the rugged oak;
but
they have not thus done, so far. We must look for another interpretation. What
is it? The Sibylline Prophetess spoke, as thousands of other Prophets and Seers
have spoken, though even the few such records that have survived are rejected
by Christian and infidel, and their interpretations are only allowed and accepted
among the Initiated. The Sibyl alluded to cycles in general and to the great
cycle especially. Let us remember how the Purânas corroborate the above,
among others the Vishnu Purâna:
When
the practices taught by the Vedas, and the Institutes of Law shall have nearly
ceased, and the close of the Kali Yuga [ the “Iron Age”
of Virgil ] shall be nigh, an aspect of that divine Being who exists
of his own spiritual nature in the character of Brahmâ and even is the
beginning of the end [ Alpha and Omega ], . . . shall
descend upon earth: he will be born in the family of Vishnuyashas, an eminent
Brâhman of Shamballah . . . . endowed with the eight superhuman powers.
By his irresistible might he will destroy . . . all whose minds are devoted
to iniquity. He will then reëstablish righteousness upon earth; and the
minds of those who live at the end of the [ Kali ] Age shall
be awakened and shall be as pellucid as crystal. [ At the close of
our Race, people, it is said, through suffering and discontent will become
more spiritual. Clairvoyance will become a general faculty. We shall be approaching
the spiritual state of the Third and Second Races.] The men who are
thus changed by virtue of that peculiar time shall be as the seeds of human
beings [ the Shistha, the survivors of the future cataclysm ],
and shall give birth to a race who shall follow the laws of the Krita [
or Satya ] Yuga [the age of purity, or the “Golden Age”]
For it is said: “When the sun and moon and Tishya [asterisms]
and the planet Jupiter are in one mansion the Krita Age [the Golden]
shall return. [Vishnu Purâna. IV., 228. Wilson’s
translation.]
The
astronomical cycles of the Hindus—those taught publicly—have been
sufficiently well understood, but the esoteric meaning thereof, in its application
to transcendental subjects connected with them has ever remained a dead-letter.
The number of cycles was enormous; it ranged from the Mahâ Yuga cycle
of 4,320,000 years down to the small septenary and quinquennial cycles, the
latter being composed of the five years called respectively the Samvatsara,
Parivatsara, Idvatsara, Anuvatsara, and Vatsara, each having secret attributes
or qualities attached to them.
Secret
Cycles - (Page
349)
Vriddhagarga gives these in a treatise, now the property of a Trans-Himâlayan
Matham (or temple); and describes the relation between this quinquennial and
the Brihaspati cycle, based on the conjunction of the Sun and Moon every sixtieth
year: a cycle as mysterious—for national events in general and those of
the Âryan Hindu nation especially—as it is important.
SECTION
XL
Secret
Cycles
(Page
350)
THE former five-year cycle comprehends sixty solar-sidereal months or 1800 days,
sixty-one solar months (or 1830); sixty-two lunar months (or 1860 lunations),
and sixty-seven lunar-asterismal months (or 1809 such days).
In
his Kâla Sankalita, Col. Warren very properly regards these years
as cycles; this they are, for each year has its own special importance as having
some bearing upon and connection with specified events in individual horoscopes.
He writes that in the cycle of sixty there.
Are
contained five cycles of twelve years, each supposed equal to one year of
the planet (Brihaspati, or Jupiter) . . . I mention this cycle because I found
it mentioned in some books, but I know of no nation or tribe that reckons
time after that account. [ Op. cit., p.212.]
The
ignorance is very natural, since Col. Warren could know nothing of the secret
cycles and their meanings. He adds:
The
names of the five cycles of Yugas are: . . . . (1) Samvatsara, (2) Parivatsara,
(3) Idvatsara, (4) Anuvatsara, (5) Udravatsara.
The
learned Colonel might, however, have assured himself that there were “other
nations” which had the same secret cycle, if he had but remembered that
the Romans also had their lustrum of five years (from the Hindus undeniably)
which represented the same period if multiplied by 12. [ At any rate,
the temple secret meaning was the same.] Near Benares there are still
the relics of all these cycle-records, and of astronomical instruments cut out
of solid rock, the everlasting records of Archaic Initiation, called by Sir
W. Jones (as suggested by the prudent Brâhmans who surrounded him) old
“back records” or reckonings.
The
Naros - (Page
351)
But in Stonehenge they exist to this day. Higgins says that Waltire found the
barrows of tumuli surrounding this giant-temple represented accurately the situation
and magnitude of the fixed stars, forming a complete orrery or planisphere.
As Colebrook found out, it is the cycle of the Vedas, recorded in the
Jyotisha, one of the Vedàngas, a treatise on Astronomy, which
is the basis of calculation for all other cycles, larger or smaller; [
Aiat. Res., vol. viii, p.470. et seq ] and the Vedas
were written in characters, archaic though they be, long after those natural
observations, made by the aid of their gigantic mathematical and astronomical
instruments, had been recorded by the men of the Third Race, who had received
their instruction from the Dhyân Chohans. Maurice speaks truly when he
observes that all such
Circular
stone monuments were intended as durable symbols of astronomical cycles by
a race who, not having, or for political reasons, forbidding the use of letters,
had no other permanent method of instructing their disciples or handing down
their knowledge to posterity.
He
errs only in the last idea. It was to conceal their knowledge from profane posterity,
leaving it as an heirloom only to the Initiates, that such monuments, at once
rock observatories and astronomical treatises, were cut out.
It
is no news that as the Hindus divided the earth into seven zones, so the more
western peoples—Chaldæans, Phœnicians, and even the Jews, who
got their learning either directly or indirectly from the Bràhmans—made
all their secret and sacred numerations by 6 and 12, though using the number
7 whenever this would not lend itself to handling. Thus the numerical base of
6, the exoteric figure given by Ãrya Bhatta, was made good use of. From
the first secret cycle of 600—the Naros, transformed successively into
60,000 and 60 and 6, and with other noughts added into other secret cycles—down
to the smallest, an Archæologist and Mathamatician can easily find it
repeated in every country, known to every nation. Hence the globe was divided
into 60 degrees, which, multiplied by 60, become 3,600 the “great year.”
Hence also the hour with its 60 minutes of 60 seconds each. The Asíatic
people count a cycle of 60 years also, after which comes the lucky seventh decad,
and the Chinese have their small cycle of 60 days, the Jews of 6 days, the Greeks
of 6 centuries—the Naros again.
(Page
352) The Babylonians had a great year of 3,600, being the Naros multiplied
by 6. The Tartar cycle called Van was 180 years, or three sixties; this multiplied
by 12 times 12=144, makes 25,920 years, the exact period of revolution of the
heavens.
India
is the birthplace of arithmetic and mathematics; as “Our Figures,”
in Chips from a German Workshop, by Prof. Max Müller, shows beyond
a doubt. As well explained by Krishna Shâstra Godbole in The Theosophist:
The
Jews . . . represented the units (1-9) by the first nine letters of our alphabet;
the tens (10-90) by the next nine letters; the first four hundreds (100-400)
by the last four letters, and the remaining ones (500-900) by the second forms
of the letters “kâf” (11th), “mîm”
(13th), “nûn” (13th), “pe”
(17th), and “sâd” (18th); and they represented
other numbers by combining these letters according to their value . . . . The
Jews of the present period still adhere to this practice of notation in their
Hebrew books. The Greeks had a numerical system similar to that used by the
Jews, but they carried it a little farther by using letters of the alphabet
with a dash or slant-line behind, to represent thousands (1000-9000), tens of
thousands (10,000-90,000) and one hundred of thousands (100,000) the last, for
instance, being represented by “rho” with a dash behind, while “rho”
singly represented 100. The Romans represented all numerical values by the combination
(additive when the second letter is of equal or less value) of six letters of
their alphabet: i (=I), v (=5), x (=10), c (for “centum”= 100),
d (=500), and m (=1000): thus 20=xx, 15=xv, and 9=ix. These are called the Roman
numerals, and are adopted by all European nations when using the Roman alphabet.
The Arabs at first followed their neighbours, the Jews, in their method of computation,
so much so that they called it Abjad from the first four Hebrew letters—“alif,”
“beth,” “gimel”—or rather “jimel,”
that is “jim” (Arabic being wanting in “g”, and “daleth,”
representing the first four units. But when in the early part of the Christian
era they came to India as traders, they found the country already using for
computation the decimal scale of notation, which they forthwith borrowed literally;
viz., without altering its method of writing from left to right, at variance
with their own mode of writing, which is from right to left. They introduced
this system into Europe through Spain and other European countries lying along
the coast of the Mediterranean and under their sway, during the dark ages of
European history. It has thus become evident that the Äryas knew well mathematics
or the science of computation at a time when all other nations knew but little,
if anything, of it. It has also been admitted that the knowledge of arithmetic
and algebra was first introduced from the Hindus by the Arabs, and then taught
by them to the Western nations. This fact convincingly proves that the Âryan
civilisation is older than that of any other nation in the world: and as the
Vedas are avowedly proved the oldest work of that civilisation, a presumption
is raised in favour of their great antiquity. [Theosophist, August.
1881.]
Age
of the Vedas - (Page
353)
But while the Jewish nation, for instance—regarded so long as the first
and oldest in the order of creation—knew nothing of arithmetic and remained
utterly ignorant of the decimal scale of notation—the latter existed for
ages in India before the actual era.
To
become certain of the immense antiquity of the Âryan Asiatic nations and
of their astronomical records one has to study more than the Vedas. The
secret meaning of the latter will never be understood by the present generation
of Orientalists; and the astronomical works which give openly the real dates
and prove the antiquity of both the nation and its science, elude the grasp
of the collectors of ollas and old manuscripts in India, the reason being too
obvious to need explanation. Yet there are Astronomers and Mathematicians to
this day in India, humble Shâstris and Pandits, unknown and lost in the
midst of that population of phenomenal memories and metaphysical brains, who
have undertaken the task and have proved to the satisfaction of many that the
Vedas are the oldest works in the world. One of such is the Shâstri
just quoted, who published in The Theosophist [ Aug., 1881x to
Feb., 1882.] an able treatise proving astronomically and mathematically
that:
If
the Post-Vaidika works alone, the Upanishads, the Brâhmanas, etc., down
to the Purânas, when examined critically carry us back to 20,000 B.C.
then the time of the composition of the Vedas themselves cannot be
less than 30,000 B.C., in round numbers, a date which we may take at present
as the age of that Book of books. [Loc. cit.,iv.127 ]
And
what are his proofs?
Cycles
and the evidence yielded by the asterisms. Here are a few extracts from his
rather lengthy treatise, selected to give an idea of his demonstrations and
bearing directly on the quinquennial cycle spoken of just now. Those who feel
interested in the demonstrations and are advanced mathematicians can turn to
the article itself, “The Antiquity of the Vedas,” [Theosophist,
vol. iii., p.22.] and judge for themselves.
10.
Somâkara in his commentary on the Shesha Jyotisha quotes
a passage from the Satapatha Brâhmana, which contains an observation
on the change of the topics, and which is also found in the Sâkhâyana
Brâhmana, as has been noticed by Prof.Max Müller in his preface
to Rigveda Samhitâ (p.xx. foot-note, vol. iv.). The passage is
this: . . . “The full-moon night in Phâlguna is the first night
of Samvatsara, the first year of the quinquennial age.” This passage
clearly shows that the quinquennial age which, according to the sixth verse
of the Jyotisha, begins on the 1st of Mâgha (January-February),
once began on the 15th of Phâlguna (February-March).
(Page 354) Now when the 15th of Phâlguna of
the first year called Samvatsara of the quinquennial age begins, the moon,
according to the Jyotisha, is in
position
of the four principal points on the ecliptic was then as follows:
The
winter solstice in 3◦29 of Purva Bhâdrapadâ.
The
vernal equinox in the beginning of Mrigashîrsha.
The
summer solstice in 10 of Purva Phâlgunî.
The
autumnal equinox in the middle of Jyeshtha.
The
vernal equinoctial point, we have seen, coincided with the beginning of Krittikâ
in 1421 B.C.; and from the beginning of Krittikâ to that of Mrigashîrsha,
was, consequence, 1421+26 2/3x72= 1421+1920= 3341 B.C., supposing the rate
of precession to be 50,, a year. When we take the rate to be 3◦20"
in 247 years, the time comes up to 1516+1960.7=3476.7 B.C.
When
the winter solstice by its retrograde motion coincided after that with the
beginning of Pûrva Bhâdrapadâ, then the commencement of
the quinquennial age was changed from the 15th to the 1st
of Phâlguna (February-March). This change took place 240 years after
the date of the above observation, that is, in 3101 B.C. This date is most
important, as from it an era was reckoned in after times. The commencement
of the Kali or Kali Yuga (derived from “kal,” “to reckon”),
though said by European scholars to be an imaginary date, becomes thus an
astronomical fact.
Interchange
for Krititkâ and Ashvinî
[The
impartial study of Vaidic and Post-Vaidic works shows that the ancient Ãryans
knew well the precession of the equinoxes, and “that they changed their
position from a certain asterism to two (occasionally three) asterisms back
whenever the precession amounted to two, properly speaking, to 2 11/61 asterisms
or about 29◦, being the motion of the sun in a lunar month, and so caused
the seasons to fall back a complete lunar month. . . . It appears certain
that at the date of Sûrya Siddhânta, Brahmâ Siddânta,
and other ancient treatises on astronomy, the vernal equinoctial point had
not actually reached the beginning of Ashvini, but was a few degrees east
of it. . . The astronomers of Europe change westward the beginning of Aries
and of all other signs of the Zodiac every year by about 50" 25, and thus
make the names of the signs meaningless. But these signs are as much fixed
as the asterisms themselves, and hence the Western astronomers of the present
day appear to us in this respect less wary and scientific in their observations
than their very ancient brethren—the Ãryas.”—Theosophist,
iii. 23.
We
thus see that the asterisms, twenty-seven in number, were counted from the
Mrigashîrsha when the vernal equinox retrograded was in its beginning,
and that the practice of thus counting was adhered to till the vernal equinox
retrograded to the beginning of Krittikâ, when it became the first of
the asterisms. For then the winter solstice had changed, receding from Phâlguna
(February-March) to Mâgha (January-February), one complete lunar month.
Testimony
of the Song Celestial
- (
Page 355) And, in like manner, the place of Krittikâ was
occupied by Ashvini, that is, the latter became the first of the asterisms,
heading all others, when its beginning coincided with the vernal equinoctial
point, or, in other words, when the winter solstice was in Pansha (December-February).
Now from the beginning of Krittikâ to that of Ashvinî there are
two asterisms, or 26⅔◦, and the time the equinox takes to retrograde
this distance at the rate of 1 in 72 years is 1920 years; and hence the date
at which the vernal equinox coincided with the commencement of Ashvinî
or with the end of Revatî is 1920-1421=499 A.D.
Bentley’s
Opinion
12.
The next and equally-important observation we have to record here is one discussed
by Mr. Bentley in his researches into his researches into the Indian antiquities.
“The first lunar asterism,” he says, “in the division of
twenty-eight was called Mûla, that is to say, the root or origin. In
the division of twenty-seven the first lunar asterism was called Jyestha,
that is to say, the eldest at first, and consequently of the same import as
the former” (vide his View of the Hindu Astronomy, p.4).
From this it becomes manifest that the vernal equinox was once in the beginning
of Mûla, and Mûla was reckoned the first of the asterisms when
they were twenty-eight in number, including Abhijit. Now there are fourteen
asterisms, of 180◦, from the beginning of Mrigashîrsha to that
of Mûla, and hence the date at which the vernal equinox coincided with
the beginning of Mûla was at least 3341+180x72=16,301 B.C. The position
of the four principal points on the ecliptic was then as given below:
The
winter solstice in the beginning of Uttara Phâlgunî in the month
of Shrâvana.
The
vernal equinox in the beginning of Mûla in Kârittka
The
summer solstice in the beginning of Pûrva Bhâdrapadâ in
Mâgha
The
autumnal equinox in the beginning of Mrigashîrsha in Vaishâkha.
A
Proof from the Bhagavad Gîtâ
13.
The Bhagavad Gîtâ, as well as the Bhâgavata,
makes mention of an observation which points to a still more remote antiquity
than the one discovered by Mr. Bentley. The passages are given in order below:
“I
am the Mârgashîrsha [ viz. the first morning for
months ] and the spring [viz. the first among the seasons].”
This
shows that at one time the first month of spring was Mârgashîrsha.
A season includes two months, and the mention of a month suggests the season.
“I
am the Samvatsara among the years [ which are five in number ]
and the spring among the seasons, and the Mârgashîrsha among the
months and the Abhijitamong the asterisms [ which are twenty-eight
in number ].”
This
clearly points out that at one time in the first year called Samvatsara, of
the quinquennial age, the Madhu, that is the first month of spring, was Mârgashîrsha,
and Abhijit was the first of the asterisms. It then concided with the vernal
equinoctial point, and thence from it the asterisms were counted. To find
the date of this observation: There are three asterisms from the beginning
of Mûla to the beginning of Abhijit, and hence the date in question
is at least 16,301+3/7 x 90 x 72 = 19,078
(Page 356) or about 20,000 B.C. The Samvatsara at this time began
in Bhâdrapadâ the winter solstitial month.
So
far then 20,000 years are mathematically proven for the antiquity of the Vedas.
And this is simply exoteric. Any mathematician, provided he be not blinded by
preconception and prejudice, can see this, and an unknown but very clever amateur
Astronomer, S.A. Mackey, has proved it some sixty years back.
His
theory about the Hindu Yugas and their length is curious—as being so very
near the correct doctrine.
It
is said in volume ii. p. 131, of Asiatic Researches that: “The
great ancestor of Yudhister reigned 27,000 years . . . at the end of the brazen
age.” In volume ix. p. 364, we read:
“In
the beginning of the Cali Yuga, in the reign of Yudhister. And
Yudhister . . . began his reign immediately after the flood called Pralaya.”
Here
we find three different statements concerning Yudhister . . . to explain these
seeming differences we must have recourse to their books of science, where we
find the heavens and the earth divided into five parts of unequal dimensions,
by circles parallel to the equator. Attention to these divisions will be found
to be of the utmost importance . . . as it will be found that from them arose
the division of their Maha-Yuga into its four component parts. Every astronomer
knows that there is a point in the heavens called the pole, round which the
whole seems to turn in twenty-four hours; and that at ninety degrees from it
they imagine a circle called the equator, which divides the heavens
and the earth into two equal parts, the north and the south. Between this circle
and the pole there is another imaginary circle called the circle of perpetual
apparition: between which and the equator there is a point in the heavens
called the zenith, through which let another imaginary circle pass, parallel
to the other two; and then there wants but the circle of perpetual occultation
to complete the round. . . . No astronomer of Europe besides myself has ever
applied them to the development of the Hindu mysterious numbers. We are told
in the Asiatic Researches that Yudhister brought Vicramâditya to
reign in Cassimer, which is in the latitude of 36 degrees. And in that latitude
the circle of perpetual apparition would extend up to 72 degrees altitude, and
from that to the zenith there are but 18 degrees, but from the zenith to the
equator in that latitude there are 36 degrees, and from the equator to the circle
of perpetual occultation there are 54 degrees. Here we find the semi-circle
of 180 degrees divided into four parts, in the proportion of 1, 2, 3, 4, i.e.,
18, 36, 54, 72. Whether the Hindu astronomers were acquainted with the motion
of the earth or not is of no consequence, since the appearances are the same;
and if it will give those gentlemen of tender consciences any pleasure
I am willing to admit that they imagined the heavens rolled round the earth,
but they had observed the stars in the path of the sun to move forward
through the equinoctial points, at the rate of fifty-four seconds of a degree
in a year, which carried the whole zodiac round in 24, 000 years; in which time
they also observed that the angle of obliquity varied, so as to extend or
contract the width of the tropics 4 degrees on each side, which rate
of motion would carry the tropics from the equator to the poles in 540,000 years:
in which time the Zodiac would have made twenty-two and a half revolutions,
which are expressed by the parallel circles from the equator to the poles .
. or what amounts to the same thing, the north pole of the ecliptic would have
moved from the north pole of the earth to the equator . . . .
Mackey's
Arguments - (Page
357)
Thus the poles become inverted in 1,080,000 years, which is their Maha Yuga,
and which they had divided into four unequal parts, in the proportions of 1,
2, 3, 4, for the reasons mentioned above; which are 108,000, 216,000, 324,000,
and 432,000. Here we have the most positive proofs that the above numbers originated
in ancient astronomical observations, and consequently are not deserving
of those epithets which have been bestowed upon them by the Essayist, echoing
the voice of Bentley, Wilford, Dupuis, etc.
I
have now to show that the reign of Yudhister for 27,000 years is neither absurd
nor disgusting, but perhaps the Essayist is not aware that there were several
Yudhisters or Judhisters. In volume ii., p. 131, Asiatic Researches:
“The great ancestor of Yudhister reigned 27,000 years at the end of the
brazen or third age.” Here I must again beg your attention to this projection.
This is a plane of that machine which the second gentleman thought so very clumsy;
it is that of a prolong spheroid, called by the ancients an atroscope.
Let the longest axis represent the poles of the earth, making an angle of 28
degrees with the horizon; then will the seven divisions above the horizon to
the North Pole, the temple of Buddha, and the seven from the North Pole to the
circle of perpetual apparition represent the fourteen Manvantaras, or very long
periods of time, each of which, according to the third volume of Asiatic
Researches, p. 258 or 259, was the reign of a Manu. But Capt. Wilford, in
volume v. p. 243, gives us the following information: “The Egyptians had
fourteen dynasties, and the Hindus had fourteen dynasties, the rulers
of which are called Menus.” . . .
Who
can here mistake the fourteen very long periods of time for those which constituted
the Cali Yuga of Delhi, or any other place in the latitude of 28 degrees, where
the blank space from the foot of Meru to the seventh circle from the equator,
constitutes the part passed over by the tropic in the next age; which proportions
differ considerably from those in the latitude of 36; and because the numbers
in the Hindu books differ, Mr. Bentley asserts that: “This shows what
little dependence is to be put in them.” But, on the contrary, it shows
with what accuracy the Hindus had observed the motions of the heavens
in different latitudes.
Some
of the Hindus inform us that “the earth has two spindles which
are surrounded by seven tiers of heavens and hells at the distance of
one Raju each.” This needs but little explanation when it is understood
that the seven divisions from the equator to their zenith are called Rishis
or Rashas. But what is most to our present purpose to know is that they
had given names to each of those divisions which the tropics passed over during
each revolution of the Zodiac. In the latitude of 36 degrees where the Pole
or Meru was nine steps high at Cassimere, they were called Shastras;
in latitude 28 degrees at Delhi, where the Pole of Meru was seven steps high,
they were called Menus; but in 24 degrees , at Cacha, where the Pole or Meru
was but six steps high, they were called Sacas. But in the ninth volume (Asiatic
Researches) Yudhister, the son of Dherma, or Justice, was the first
of the six Sacas; (Page 358) the
name implies the end, and as everything has two ends. Yudhister is as
applicable to the first as to the last. And as the division on the north of
the circle of perpetual apparition is the first of the Cali Yuga, supposing
the tropics to be ascending, it was called the division or reign of Yudhister.
But the division which immediately precedes the circle of perpetual apparition
is the last of the third or brazen age, and was therefore called Yudhister,
and his reign preceded the reign of the other, as the tropic ascended to the
Pole or Meru, he was called the father of the other—“the
great ancestor of Yudhister, who reigned twenty-seven thousand years, at
the end of the brazen age.” (Vol. ii. Asiatic Researches.)
The
ancient Hindus observed that the Zodiac went forward at the rate of fifty-four
seconds a year, and to avoid greater fractions, stated it at that, which would
make a complete round in 24,000 years; and observing the angle of the poles
to vary nearly 4 degrees each round, stated the three numbers as such, which
would have given forty-five rounds of the Zodiac to half a revolution
of the poles; but finding that forty-five rounds would not bring the northern
topic to coincide with the circle of perpetual apparition by thirty minutes
of a degree, which required the Zodiac to move one sign and a half more, which
we all know it could not do in less that 3,000 years, they were, in the case
before us, added to the end of the brazen age; which lengthen the reign
of that Yudhister to 27,000 years instead of 24,000, but, at another
time they did not alter the regular order of 24,000 years to the reign of each
of these long-winded monarchs, but rounded up the time by allowing a regency
to continue three or four thousand years. In volume ii. p.134, Asiatic Researches,
we are told that: “Paricshit, the great nephew and successor of Yudhister,
is allowed without controversy to have reigned in the interval between the brazen
and earthen, or Cali Ages, and to have died at the setting-in of the Cali
Yug.” Here we find an interregnum at the end of the brazen
age, and before the setting-in of the Cali Yug: and as there can be but
one brazen or Treta Yug, i.e., the third age, in a Maha Yuga, of 1,080,000
years: the reign of this Paricshit must have been in the second Maha Yuga, when
the pole had returned to its original position, which must have taken 2,160,000
years: and this is what the Hindus call the Prajanatha Yuga. Analogous to this
custom is that of some nations more modern, who, fond of even numbers, have
made the common year to consist of twelve months of thirty days each, and the
five days and odd measure have been represented as the reign of a little serpent
biting his tail, and divided into five parts, etc.
But
“Yudhister began his reign immediately after the flood called Pralaya,”
i.e., at the end of the Cali Yug (or age of heat), when the tropic had
passed from the pole to the other side of the circle of perpetual apparition,
which coincides with the northern horizon; here the tropics of summer solstice
would be again in the same parallel of north declination, at the commencement
of their first age, as he was at the end of their third age, or
Treta Yug, called the brazen age.
Enough
has been said to prove that the Hindu books of science are not disgusting absurdities,
originated in ignorance, vanity, and credulity; but books containing the most
profound knowledge of astronomy and geography.
What,
therefore, can induce these gentlemen of tender consciences to insist that Yudhister
was a real mortal man I have no guess; unless it be that they fear for the fate
of Jared and his grandfather, Methuselah?
THE
MYSTERY
OF THE BUDDHA-
(Pages
359-360) Note
It
is with some hesitation that I include the following Sections in the Secret
Doctrine. Together with some most suggestive thought, they contain very
numerous errors of fact, and many statements based on exoteric writings, not
on esoteric knowledge. They were given into my hands to publish, as part of
the Third Volume of the Secret Doctrine, and I therefore do not feel
justified in coming between the author and the public, either by altering the
statements, to make them consistent with fact, or by suppressing the Sections.
She says she is acting entirely on her own authority, and it will be obvious
to any instructed reader that she makes—possibly deliberately—many
statements so confused that they are merely blinds, and other statements—probably
inadvertently—that are nothing more than the exoteric misunderstandings
of esoteric truths. The reader must here, as everywhere, use his own judgment,
but, feeling bound to publish these Sections, I cannot let them go to the public
without a warning that much in them is certainly erroneous.
Annie
Besant
SECTION
XLI
The
Doctrine of Avatâras
(Page
361) A STRANGE STORY—a legend rather—is
persistently current among the disciples of some great Himâlayan Gurus,
and even among laymen, to the effect that Gautama, the Prince of Kapilavastu,
has never left the Terrestrial regions, though his body died and was burnt,
and its relics preserved to this day. There is an oral tradition among the Chinese
Buddhists, and a written statement among the secret books of the Lamaists of
Tibet, as well as a tradition among the Ãryans, that Gautama BUDDHA
has two doctrines: one for the masses and His lay disciples, the other for His
“elect,” the Arhats. His policy and after Him that of His Arhats
was, it appears, to refuse no one admission into the ranks of candidates for
Arhatship, but never to divulge the final mysteries except to those who had
proved themselves, during long years of probation, to be worthy of Initiation.
These once accepted were consecrated and initiated without distinction of race,
caste or wealth, as in case of His western successor. It is the Arhats who have
set forth and allowed this tradition to take root in the people’s mind,
and it is the basis, also, of the later dogma of Lamaic reincarnation or the
succession of human Buddhas.
The
little that can be said here upon the subject may or may not help to guide the
psychic student in the right direction. It being left to the option and responsibility
of the writer to tell the facts as she personally understood them, the
blame for possible misconceptions created must fall only upon her. She has been
taught the doctrine, but it was left to her sole intuition—as it is now
left to the sagacity of the reader—to group the mysterious and perplexing
facts together. The incomplete statements herein given are fragments of what
is contained in certain secret volumes, but it is not lawful to divulge the
details.
The
esoteric version of the mystery given in the secret volumes may (Page
362) be
told briefly. The Buddhists have always stoutly denied that their BUDDHA
was, as alleged by the Brâhmans, an Avatâra of Vishnu in the same
sense as a man is an incarnation of his Karmic ancestor. They deny it partly,
perhaps, because the esoteric meaning of the term “Mahâ Vishnu”
is not known to them in its full, impersonal, and general meaning. There is
a mysterious Principle in Nature called “Mahâ Vishnu,” which
is not the God of that name, but a principle which contains Bîja, the
seed of Avatârism or, in other words, is the potency and cause of such
divine incarnations. All the World Saviours, the Bodhisattvas and the Avatâras,
are the trees of salvation grown out from the one seed, the Bija or “Maha
Vishnu.” Whether it be called Adi-Buddha (Primeval Wisdom) or Mahâ
Vishnu, it is all the same. Understood esoterically, Vishnu is both Saguna and
Nirguna (with and without attributes). In the first aspect, Vishnu is the object
of exoteric worship and devotion; in the second, as Nirguna, he is the culmination
of the totality of spiritual wisdom in the Universe—Nirvanâ, [A
great deal if misconception is raised by a confusion of planes of being and
misuse of expressions. For instance, certain spiritual states have been confounded
with the Nirvâna of BUDDHA. The Nirvâna of
BUDDHA is totally different from any other spiritual state
of Samâdhi or even the highest Theophania enjoyed by lesser Adepts. After
physical death the kinds of spiritual states reached by Adepts differ greatly.]
in short—and has as worshippers all philosophical minds. In this esoteric
sense the Lord BUDDHA was an incarnation of Mahâ
Vishnu.
This
is from the philosophical and purely spiritual standpoint. From the plane of
illusion, however, as one would say, or from the terrestrial standpoint, those
initiated know that He was a direct incarnation of one of the primeval
“Seven Sons of Light” who are to be found in every Theogony—the
Dhyân Chohans whose mission it is, from one eternity (æon) to the
other, to watch over the spiritual welfare of the regions under their care.
This has been already enunciated in Esoteric Buddhism.
One
of the greatest mysteries of speculative and philosophical Mysticism—and
it is one of the mysteries now to be disclosed—is the modus operandi
in the degrees of such hypostatic transferences. As a matter of course, divine
as well as human incarnations must remain a closed book to the theologian as
much as to the physiologist, unless the esoteric teachings be accepted and become
the religion of the world. This teaching may never be fully explained to an
unprepared public; but one thing is certain and may be said now: that between
the dogma of a newly created soul for each new birth, and the physiological
assumption of a temporary animal soul, there lies the vast region of Occult
teaching [This region is the one possible point of conciliation between
the two diametrically opposed poles of religion and science, the one with its
barren fields of dogmas on faith, the other over-running with empty hypotheses,
both overgrown with the weeds of error. They will never meet. The two are at
feud, at an everlasting warfare with each other, but this does not prevent them
from uniting against Esoteric Philosophy, which for two millenniums has had
to fight against infallibility in both directions, or “mere vanity and
pretence” as Antoninus defined it, and now finds the materialism of Modern
Science arrayed against its truths.] with its logical and reasonable
demonstrations, the links of which may all be traced in logical and philosophical
sequence in nature.
All
Avatâras Identical - (Page
363) This “Mystery” is found, for him who understands
its right meaning, in the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna, in the Bhagavad
Gîtâ, chapter iv. Says the Avatâra:
Many
births of mine have passed, as also of yours, O Arjuna! All those I know,
but you do not know yours, O harasser of your enemies.
Although
I am unborn, with exhaustless Ãtmâ, and am the Lord of all that
is, yet, taking up the domination of my nature I am born by the power of illusion.
[ Whence some of the Gnostic ideas? Cerinthus taught that the world
and Jehovah having fallen off from virtue and primitive dignity the Supreme
permitted one of his glorious Æons, whose name was the “Anointed”
(Christ) to incarnate in the man Jesus. Basildes denied the reality of the
body of Jesus, and calling it an “illusion” held that it was Simon
of Cyrene who suffered on the Cross in his stead. All such teachings are echoes
of the Eastern Doctrines.]
Whenever,
O son of Bhârata, there is decline of Dharma [ the right law]
and the rise of Adharma [ the opposite of Dharma] here I manifest
myself.
For
the salvation of the good and the destruction of wickedness, for the establishment
of the law, I am born in every yuga.
Whoever
comprehends truly my divine birth and action, he, O Arjuna, having abandoned
the body does not receive re-birth; he comes to me.
Thus,
all the Avatâras are one and the same: the Sons of their “Father,”
in a direct descent and line, the “Father,” or one of the seven
Flames becoming, for the time being, the Son, and these two being one—in
Eternity. What is the Father? Is it the absolute Cause of all?—the fathomless
Eternal? No; most decidedly. It is Kâranâtma, the “Causal
Soul” which, in its general sense, is called by the Hindus Îshvara,
the Lord, and by Christians. “God,” the One and Only. From the standpoint
of unity it is so; but then the lowest of the Elementals could equally be viewed
in such case as the “One and Only.” Each human being has, moreover,
his own divine Spirit or personal God. That divine Entity or Flame from which
Buddhi emanates stands in the same relation to man, though on a lower plane,
(Page 364) as the Dhyâni-Buddha
to his human Buddha. Hence monotheism and polytheism are not irreconcilable;
they exist in Nature.
Truly,
“for the salvation of the good and the destruction of wickedness,”
the personalities known as Gautama, Shankara, Jesus and a few others were born
each in his age as declared—“I am born in every Yuga”—and
they were all born through the same Power.
There
is a great mystery in such incarnations and they are outside and beyond the
cycle of general re-births. Rebirths may be divided into three classes: the
divine incarnations called Avatâras; those of Adepts who give up Nirvana
for the sake of helping on humanity—the Nirmânakâyas; and
the natural succession of rebirths for all—the common law. The Avatâra
is an appearance, one which may be termed a special illusion within the natural
illusion that reigns on the planes under the sway of that power, Mâyâ;
the Adept is re-born consciously at his will and pleasure; [ A genuine
initiated Adept will retain his Adeptship, though there may be for our world
of illusion numberless incarnations of him. The propelling power that lies at
the root of a series of such incarnations is not Karma, as ordinarily
understood, but a still more inscrutable power. During the period of his lives
the Adept does not lose his Adeptship, though he cannot rise in it to a higher
degree.] the units of the common herd unconsciously follow the great
law of dual evolution.
What
is an Avatâra? for the term before being used ought to be well
understood. It is a descent of the manifested Deity—whether under the
specific name of Shiva, Vishnu, or Âdi-Buddha—into an illusive form
of individuality, an appearance which to men on this illusive plane is objective,
but it is not so in sober fact. That illusive form having neither past nor future,
because it has neither previous incarnation nor will have subsequent rebirths,
had naught to do with Karma, which has therefore no hold on it.
Gautama
BUDDHA was born an Avatâra in one sense. But this,
in view of unavoidable objections on dogmatic grounds, necessitates explanation.
There is a great difference between an Avatâra and a Jîvanmukta:
one, as already stated, is an illusive appearance, Karmaless, and having never
before incarnated; and the other, the Jîvanmukta, is one who obtains Nirvâna
by his individual merits. To this expression again an uncompromising, philosophical
Vedântin would object. He might say that as the condition of the Avatâra
and the Jivanmukta are one and the same state, no amount of personal merit,
in howsoever many incarnations, can lead its possessor to Nirvâna. Nirvâna,
he would say, is actionless; how can, then, any action lead to it?
Voluntary
Incarnation - (Page
365) It is neither a result nor a cause, but an ever-present, eternal
Is, as Nâgasena defined it. Hence it can have no relation to, or
concern with, action, merit, or demerit, since these are subject to Karma. All
this is very true, but still to our mind there is an important difference between
the two. An Avatâtara is ; a Jîvanmukta becomes one.
If the state of the two is identical, not so are the causes which lead to it.
An Avatâra is a descent of a God into an illusive form; a Jîvanmukta,
who may have passed through numberless incarnations and may have accumulated
merit in them, certainly does not become a Nirvâni because of that merit,
but only because of the Karma generated by it, which leads and guides him in
the direction of the Guru who will initiate him into the mystery of Nirvâna
and who alone can help him to reach this abode.
The
Shâstras say that from our works alone we obtain Moksha, and if we take
no pains there will be no gain and we shall be neither assisted nor benefited
by Deity [the Mahâ-Guru]. Therefore it is maintained that
Gautama, though an Avatâra in one sense, is a true human Jîvanmukta,
owing his position to personal merit, and thus more than an Avatâra. It
was personal merit that enabled him to achieve Nirvâna.
On
the voluntary and conscious incarnations of Adepts there are two types—those
of Nirmânakâyas, and those undertaken by the probationary chelâs
who are on their trial.
The
greatest, as the most puzzling mystery of the first type lies in the fact, that
such re-birth in a human body of the personal Ego of some particular Adept—when
it has been dwelling in the Mâyâvi or the Kâma Rûpa,
and remaining in the Kâma Loka—may happen even when his “Higher
Principles” are in the state of Nirvâna. [ From the so-called
Brahmâ Loka—the seventh and higher world, beyond which all is arûpa,
formless, purely spiritual—to the lowest world and insect, or even to
an object such as a leaf, there is perpetual revolution of the condition of
existence, evolution and re-birth. Some human beings attain states or spheres
from which there is only a return in a new Kalpa (a day of Brahmâ): there
are other states or spheres from which there is only return after 100 years
of Brahmâ (Mahâ Kalpa, a period covering 311,040.000.000.000 years).
Nirvâna, it is said, is a state from which there is no return. Yet it
is maintained that there may be, as exceptional cases, re-incarnation from that
state: only such incarnations are illusion, like everything else on this plane,
as will be shown.] Let it be understood that the above expressions are
used for popular purposes, and therefore that what is written does not deal
with this deep and mysterious question from the highest plane, that of
absolute spirituality, nor again from the highest philosophical point of view,
comprehensible but to the very few. It must not be supposed that anything can
go (Page 366) into Nirvâna
which is not eternally there; but human intellect in conceiving the Absolute
must put It as the highest term in an indefinite series. If this be borne in
mind a great deal of misconception will be avoided. The content of this spiritual
evolution is the material on various planes with which the Nirvânî
was in contact prior to his attainment of Nirvâna. The plane on which
this is true, being in the series of illusive planes, is undoubtedly the highest.
Those who search for that must go to the right source of study, the teachings
of the Upanishads, and must go in the right spirit. Here we attempt only
to indicate the direction in which the search is to be made, and in showing
a few of the mysterious Occult possibilities we do not bring our readers actually
to the goal. The ultimate truth can be communicated only from Guru to initiated
pupil.
Having
said so much, the statement still will and must appear incomprehensible, if
not absurd, to many. Firstly, to all those who are unfamiliar with the doctrine
of the manifold nature and various aspects of the human Monad; and secondly
to those who view the septenary division of the human entity from a too materialistic
standpoint. Yet the intuitional Occultist, who has studied thoroughly the mysteries
of Nirvâna—who knows it to be identical with Parabrahman, and hence
unchangeable eternal and no Thing but the Absolute All—will seize the
possibility of the fact. They know that while a Dharmakâya—a Nirvâni
“without remains,” as our Orientalists have translated it, being
absorbed into that Nothingness, which is the one real, because Absolute, Consciousness—cannot
be said to return to incarnation on Earth, the Nirvânî being no
longer a he, a she, or even an it, the Nirmânakâya—or he who
has obtained Nirvâna “with remains,” i.e., who is clothed
in a subtle body, which makes him impervious to all outward impressions and
to every mental feeling, and in whom the notion of his Ego has not entirely
ceased—can do so. Again, every Eastern Occultist is aware of the fact
that there are two kinds of Nirmânakâyas—the natural, and
the assumed; that the former is the name or epithet given to the condition of
a high ascetic, or Initiate, who has reached a stage of bliss second only to
Nirvâna; while the latter means the self-sacrifice of one who voluntary
gives up the absolute Nirvâna, in order to help humanity and be still
doing it good, or, in other words, to save his fellow-creatures by guiding them.
It may be objected that the Dharmakâya, being a Nirvânî or
Jîvanmukta, can have no “remains” left behind him after death,
for having attained that state from which no further incarnations are possible,
there is no need for him of a subtle body, or of the individual Ego that reincarnates
from one birth to another, and that therefore the latter disappears of logical
necessity; to this it is answered: it is so for all exoteric purposes and a
general law.
Cardinal
De Cusa - (Page
367) But the case with which we are dealing is an exceptional one,
and its realization lies within the Occult powers of the high Initiate, who,
before entering into the state of Nirvâna can cause his “remains”
(sometimes, though not very well, called his Mâyâvi Rûpa),
to remain behind, [This fact of the disappearance of the vehicle of
Egotism in the fully developed Yogi, who is supposed to have reached Nirvâna
on earth, years before his corporeal death, has led to the law in Manu, sanctioned
by millenniums of Brâhmanical authority, that such a Paramâtmâ
should be held as absolutely blameless and free from sin or responsibility,
do whatever he may (see last chapter of the Laws of Manu). Indeed, caste
itself—that most despotic, uncompromising and autocratic tyrant in India—can
be broken with impunity by the Yogi, who is above caste. This will give the
key to our statements.] whether he is to become a Nirvânî,
or to find himself in a lower state of bliss.
Next,
there are cases—rare, yet more frequent than one would be disposed to
expect—which are the voluntary and conscious reincarnations of Adepts
[The word “Adept” is very loosely used by H.P.B, who often
seems to have implied by it no more than the possession of special knowledge
of some kind. Here it seems to mean first as uninitiated disciple and then an
initiated one.—Eds.] on their trial. Every man has an Inner, a
“Higher Self,” and also an Astral Body. But few are those who, outside
the higher degrees of Adeptship, can guide the latter, or any of the principles
that animate it, when once death has closed their short terrestrial life. Yet
such guidance, or their transference from the dead to a living body, is not
only possible, but is of frequent occurrence, according to Occult and Kabalistic
teachings. The degrees of such power of course vary greatly. To mention but
three: the lowest of these degrees would allow an Adept, who has been greatly
trammelled during life in his study and in the use of his powers, to choose
after death another body in which he could go on with his interrupted studies,
though ordinarily he would lose in it every remembrance of his previous incarnation.
The next degree permits him, in addition to this, to transfer the memory of
his past life to his new body; while the highest has hardly any limits in the
exercise of that wonderful faculty.
As
an instance of an Adept who enjoyed the first mentioned power some mediæval
Kabalists cite a well-known personage of the fifteenth century—Cardinal
de Cusa; Karma, due to his wonderful devotion to
(Page 368) Esoteric study and the Kabalah, led the suffering
Adept to seek intellectual recuperation and rest from ecclesiastical tyranny
in the body of Copernicus. Si non e vero e ben trovato; and the perusal
of the lives of the two men might easily lead a believer in such powers to a
ready acceptance of the alleged fact. The reader having at his command the means
to do so is asked to turn to the formidable folio in Latin of the fifteenth
century, called De Docta Ignorantia, written by the Cardinal de Cusa,
in which all the theories and hypotheses—all the ideas—of Copernicus
are found as the key-notes to the discoveries of the great astronomer. [About
fifty years before the birth of Copernicus, De Cusa wrote as follows: “Though
the world may not be absolutely finite, no one can represent it to himself as
finite, since human reason is incapable of assigning to it any term . . . For
in the same way that our earth cannot be in the centre of the Universe, as thought,
no more could the sphere of the fixed stars be in it. . . . Thus this world
is like a vast machine, having its centre [Deity] everywhere,
and its circumference nowhere [ machina mundi, quasi habens ubique
centrum, et nullibi circumferentium]. . . . Hence the earth not being
in the centre, cannot therefore be motionless . . . and though it is far smaller
than the sun, one must not conclude for all that, that she is worse [vilior—more
vile]. . . . One cannot see whether its inhabitants are superior
to those who dwell nearer to the sun, or in other stars, as sidereal space cannot
be deprived of inhabitants. . . . The earth, very likely [fortasse]
one of the smallest globes, is nevertheless the cradle of intelligent beings,
most noble and perfect.” One cannot fail to agree with the biographer
of Cardinal de Cusa, who, having no suspicion of the Occult truth, and the reason
of such erudition in a writer of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, simply
marvels at such a miraculous foreknowledge, and attributes it to God, saying
of him that he was a man incomparable in every kind of philosophy, by whom many
a theological mystery inaccessible to the human mind (!), veiled and neglected
for centuries (velata et neglecta) were once more brought to light. “Pascal
might have read De Cusa’s works: but whence could the Cardinal have borrowed
his ideas? asks Moreri. Evidently from Hermes and the works of Pythagoras, even
if the mystery of his incarnation and re-incarnation be dismissed.] Who
was this extraordinary learned Cardinal? The son of a poor boatman, owing all
his career, his Cardinal’s hat, and the reverential awe rather than friendship
of the Popes Eugenius IV., Nicholas V., and Pius II., to the extraordinary learning
which seemed innate in him, since he had studied nowhere till comparatively
late in life. De Cusa died in 1473; moreover, his best works were written before
he was forced to enter orders—to escape persecution. Nor did the Adept
escape it.
In
the voluminous work of the Cardinal above-quoted is found a very suggestive
sentence, the authorship of which has been variously attributed to Pascal, to
Cusa himself, and to the Zohar, and which belongs by right to the Books
of Hermes:
The
world is an infinite sphere, whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference
is nowhere.
This
is changed by some into: “The centre being nowhere, and the circumference
everywhere,” a rather heretical idea for a Cardinal, though perfectly
orthodox from a Kabalistic standpoint.
The
Seven Rays - (Page
369) The theory of rebirth must be set forth by Occultists, and then
applied to special cases. The right comprehension of this psychic fact is based
upon a correct view of that group of celestial Beings who are universally called
the seven Primeval Gods or Angels—our Dhyân Chohans—the “Seven
Primeval Rays” or Powers, adopted later on by the Christian Religion as
the “Seven Angels of the Presence.” Arûpa, formless, at the
upper rung of the ladder of Being, materializing more and more as they descend
in the scale of objectivity and form, ending in the grossest and most imperfect
of the Hierachy, man— it is the former purely spiritual group that is
pointed out to us, in our Occult teaching, as the nursery and fountain-head
of human beings. Therein germinates that consciousness which is the earliest
manifestation from causal Consciousness—the Alpha and Omega of divine
being and life for ever. And as it proceeds downward through every phase of
existence descending through man, through animal and plant, it ends its descent
only in the mineral. It is represented by the double triangle—the most
mysterious and the most suggestive of all mystic signs, for it is a double glyph,
embracing spiritual and physical consciousness and life, the former triangle
running upwards, and the lower downwards, both interlaced, and showing the various
planes of the twice-seven modes of consciousness, the fourteen spheres of existence,
the Lokas of the Brâhmans.
The
reader may now be able to obtain a clearer comprehension of the whole thing.
He will also see what is meant by the “Watchers,” there being one
placed as the Guardian or Regent over each of the seven divisions or regions
of the earth, according to old traditions, as there is one to watch over and
guide every one of the fourteen worlds or Lokas. [This is the secret
meaning of the statements about the Hierarchy of Prajâpatis or Rishis.
First seven are mentioned, then ten, then twenty-one, and so on. They are “Gods”
and creators of men—many of them the “Lords of Beings”: they
are the “Mind-born Sons” of Brahmâ, and then they become mortal
heroes, and are often shown as of a very sinful character. The Occult meaning
of the Biblical Patriarchs, their genealogy, and their descendants dividing
among themselves the earth, is the same. Again, Jacob’s dream has the
same significance.] But it is not with any of these that we are at present
concerned, but with the “Seven Breaths,” so-called, that furnish
man with his immortal Monad in his cyclic pilgrimage.
The
Commentary on the Book of Dzyan says:
Descending
on his region first as Lord of Glory, the Flame (or Breath), having called
into conscious being the highest of the Emanations of that special region,
ascends from it again to Its primeval seat, whence It watches (Page
370) over and guides Its countless Beams (Monads). It chooses
as Its Avatâras only those who had the Seven Virtues in them [He
“of the Seven Virtues” is one who, without the benefit of Initiation,
becomes as pure as any Adept by the simple exertion of his own merit. Being
so holy, his body at his next incarnation becomes the Avatâra of his
“Watcher” or Guardian Angel, as the Christian would put it.]
in their previous incarnation. As for the rest, It overshadows each with
one of Its countless beams. . . . Yet even the “beam” is a part
of the Lord of Lords. [The title of the highest Dhyân Chohans.]
The
septenary principle in man—who can be regarded as dual only as concerns
psychic manifestation on this gross earthly plane—was known to all antiquity,
and may be found in every ancient Scripture. The Egyptians knew and taught it,
and their division of principles is in every point a counterpart of the Âryan
Secret Teaching. It is thus given in Isis Unveiled :
In
the Egyptian notions, as in those of all other faiths founded on philosophy,
man was not merely . . . a union of soul and body: he was a trinity when Spirit
was added to it. Besides, that doctrine made him consist of Kha (body), Khaba
(astral form or shadow), Ka (animal soul or life-principle,) Ba (the higher
soul), and Akh (terrestrial intelligence). They had also a sixth principle,
named Sah (or mummy), but the functions of this one commenced after the death
of the body. [Op. cit., ii. 367]
The
seventh principle being of course the highest, uncreated Spirit was generically
called Osiris, therefore every deceased person became Osirified—or an
Osiris—after death.
But
in addition to reiterating the old ever-present fact of reincarnation and Karma—not
as taught by the Spiritists, but as by the most Ancient Science in the world—Occultists
must teach cyclic and evolutionary reincarnation: that kind of re-birth, mysterious
and still incomprehensible to many who are ignorant of the world’s history,
which was cautiously mentioned in Isis Unveiled. A general re-birth for
every individual with interlude of Kâma Loka and Devachan, and a cyclic
concious reincarnation with a grand and divine object for the few. Those great
characters who tower like giants in the history of mankind like Siddârtha
BUDDHA and Jesus in the realm of the spiritual, and Alexander
the Macedonian and Napolean the Great in the realm of physical conquests are
but the reflected images of human types which had existed—not ten thousand
years before, as cautiously put forward in Isis Unveiled, but for millions
of consecutive years from the beginning of the Manvantara.
Special
Cases - (Page
371) For—with the exception of real Avatâras, as above
explained—they are the same unbroken Rays (Monads), each respectively
of its own special Parent-Flame—called Devas, Dhyân Chohans, or
Dhyâni-Buddhas, or again, Planetary Angels, etc.—shining in æonic
eternity as their prototypes. It is in their image that some men are born, and
when some specific humanitarian object is in view, the latter are hypostatically
animated by their divine prototypes reproduced again and again by the mysterious
Powers that control and guide the destinies of our world.
No
more could be said at the time when Isis Unveiled was written; hence
the statement was limited to the single remark that
There
is no prominent character in all the annals of sacred or profane history whose
prototype we cannot find in the half fictitious and half real traditions of
bygone religions and mythologies. As the star, glimmering at an immeasurable
distance above our heads, in the boundless immensity of the sky, reflects
itself in the smooth waters of a lake, so does the imagery of men of the antediluvian
ages reflect itself in the periods we can embrace in a historical retrospect.
But
now that so many publications have been brought out, stating much of the doctrine,
and several of them giving many an erroneous view, this vague allusion may be
amplified and explained. Not only does this statement apply to prominent characters
in history in general, but also to men of genius, to every remarkable man of
the age, who soars beyond the common herd with some abnormally developed special
capacity in him, leading to the progress and good of mankind. Each is a reincarnation
of an individuality that has gone before him with capacities in the same line,
bringing thus as a dowry to his new form that strong and easily re-awakened
capacity or quality which had been fully developed in him in his preceding birth.
Very often they are ordinary mortals, the Egos of natural men in the course
of their cyclic development.
But
it is with “special cases” that we are now concerned. Let us suppose
that a person during his cycle of incarnations is thus selected for special
purposes—the vessel being sufficiently clean—by his personal God,
the Fountain-head (on the plane of the manifested) of his Monad, who thus becomes
his in-dweller. That God, his own prototype or “Father in Heaven,”
is, in one sense, not only the image in which he, the spiritual man, is made,
but in the case we are considering, it is that spiritual, individual Ego himself.
This is a case of permanent, life-long Theophania. Let us bear in mind that
this is neither Avatârism, as it is understood in Brâhmanical Philosophy,
nor is the (Page 372) man thus
selected a Jîvanmukta or Nirvânî, but that it is a wholly
exceptional case in the realm of Mysticism. The man may or may not have been
an Adept in his previous lives; he is so far, and simply, an extremely pure
and spiritual individual—or one who was all that in his preceding birth,
if the vessel thus selected is that of a newly-born infant. In this case, after
the physical translation of such a saint or Bodhisattva, his astral principles
cannot be subjected to a natural dissolution like those of any common mortal.
They remain in our sphere and within human attraction and reach; and thus it
is that not only a Buddha, a Shankarâchârya, or a Jesus can be said
to animate several persons at one and the same time, but even the principles
of a high Adept may be animating the outward tabernacles of common mortals.
A
certain Ray (principle) from Sanat Kumâra spiritualized (animated) Pradvumna,
the son of Krishna during the great Mahâbhârata period, while at
the same time, he, Sanat Kumâra, gave spiritual instruction to King Dhritarâshtra.
Moreover, it is to be remembered that Sanat Kumâra is “an eternal
youth of sixteen,” dwelling in Jana Loka, his own sphere or spiritual
state.
Even
in ordinary mediumistic life, so-called, it is pretty well ascertained
that while the body is acting—even though only mechanically—or resting
in one place, its astral double may be appearing and acting independently in
another, and very often distant place. This is quite a common occurrence in
mystic life and history, and if this be so with ecstatics, Seers and Mystics
of every description, why cannot the same thing happen on a higher and more
spiritually developed plane of existence? Admit the possibility on the lower
psychic plane, then why not on a higher plane? In the cases of Higher Adeptship,
when the body is entirely at the command of the Inner Man, when the Spiritual
Ego is completely reünited with its seventh principle even during the life-time
of the personality, and the Astral Man or personal Ego has become so purified
that he has gradually assimilated all the qualities and attributes of the middle
nature (Buddhi and Manas in their terrestrial aspect) that personal Ego substitutes
itself, so to say, for the spiritual Higher Self, and is thenceforth capable
of living an independent life on earth; when corporeal death takes place the
following mysterious event often happens. As a Dharmakâya, a Nirvâni
“without remains” entirely free from terrestrial admixture, the
Spiritual Ego cannot return to reincarnate on earth. But in such cases, it is
affirmed, the personal Ego of even a Dharmakâya can remain in our sphere
as a whole, and return to incarnation on earth if need be.
The
Higher Astral - (Page
373) For now it can no longer be subject, like the astral remains
of any ordinary man, to gradual dissolution in the Kâma Loka (the limbus
or purgatory of the Roman Catholic, and the “Summer-land” of the
Spiritualist); it cannot die a second death, as such disintegration is called
by Proclus. [“After death, the soul continueth in the aerial (astral)
body, till it is entirely purified from all angry, sensual passion: then doth
it put off by a second death [when arising to Devachan] the aerial
body as it did the earthly one. Wherefore the ancients say that there is a celestial
body always joined with the soul, which is immortal, luminous and star-like.”
It becomes natural then, that the “aerial body” of an Adept should
have no such second dying, since it has been cleansed of all its natural impurity
before its separation from the physical body. The high Initiate is a “Son
of the Resurrection,” “being equal unto the angels,” and cannot
die any more (see Luke , xx. 36). It has become too holy and pure, no
longer by reflected but its own natural light and spirituality, either to sleep
in the unconscious slumber of a lower Nirvânic state, or to be dissolved
like any ordinary astral shell and disappear in its entirety.
But
in that condition known as the Nirmânakâya [the Nirvânî
“with remains,”] he can still help humanity.
“Let
me suffer and bear the sins of all [be reincarnated unto new misery]
but let the world be saved!” was said by Gautama BUDDHA:
an exclamation the real meaning of which is little understood now by his followers.
“If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” [St.
John, xxi. 21.] asks the astral Jesus of Peter. “Till I come”
means “till I am reincarnated again” in a physical body. Yet the
Christ of the old crucified body could truly say: “I am with my Father
and one with Him,” which did not prevent the astral from taking a form
again nor John from tarrying indeed till his Master had come; nor hinder John
from failing to recognize him when he did come, or from then opposing him. But
in the Church that remark generated the absurd idea of the millennium or chiliasm,
in its physical sense.
Since
then the “Man of Sorrows” has returned perchance more than once,
unknown to, and undiscovered by, his blind followers. Since then also, this
grand “Son of God” has been incessantly and most cruelly crucified
daily and hourly by the Churches founded in his name. But the Apostles, only
half-initiated, failed to tarry for their Master, and not recognizing him, spurned
him every time he returned. [See the extract made in the Theosophist
from a glorious novel by Dostoievsky—a fragment entitled “The Great
Inquisitor.” It is a fiction, naturally, still a sublime fiction of Christ
returning in Spain during the palmy days of the Inquisition, and being imprisoned
and put to death by the Inquisitor, who fears lest Christ should ruin the work
of Jesuit hands.]
SECTION
XLII
The
Seven Principles
(Page
374) THE “Mystery of Buddha” is that of several other
Adepts—perhaps of many. The whole trouble is to understand correctly that
other mystery: that of the real fact, so abstruse and transcendental at first
sight, about the “Seven Principles” in man, the reflections in man
of the seven powers in Nature, physically, and of the seven Hierarchies of Being
intellectually and spiritually. Whether a man—material, ethereal, and
spiritual—is for the clearer comprehension of his (broadly speaking) triple
nature, divided into groups according to one or another system, the foundation
and the apex of that division will be always the same. There being only three
Upâdhis (basics) in man, any number of Koshas (sheaths) and their aspects
may be built on these without destroying the harmony of the whole. Thus, while
the Esoteric System accepts the septenary division, the Vedântic classification
gives five Koshas, and the Târaka Râja Yoga simplifies them into
four—the three Upâdhis synthesized by the highest principle. Ätmâ.
THE
SEPTENARY DIVISION IN DIFFERENT INDIAN SYSTEMS |
|
Esoteric
Buddhism |
Vedânta |
Târaka
Râja Yoga |
1 |
Sthûla
Sharira |
Annamayakosha
(Kosha is "sheath" literally,
the sheath of every principle) |
Sthûlopâdhi
(Sthûla-upâdhi, or basis of the principle) |
2 |
Prâna
(Life) |
Prânamayakosha |
3 |
The
Vehicle of Prâna
(The Astral Body, or Linga Sharira) |
4 |
Kâma
Rûpa |
Mânomayakosha |
Sûkshmopâdhi |
5 |
Mind
|
(a)
Volitions and feelings, etc. |
(b)
Vijnâgam |
Vijnâmayakosha |
6 |
Spiritual
Soul (Buddhi) |
Anandamayakosha |
Kâranopâdhi |
7 |
Atmâ |
Atmâ |
Atmâ |
That
which has just been stated will, of course, suggest the question: “How
can a spiritual (or semi-spiritual) personality lead a triple or even a dual
life, shifting respective ‘Higher Selves’ ad libitum, and
be still the one eternal Monad in the infinity of a Manvantara?” The answer
to this is easy for the true Occultist, while for the uninitiated profane it
must appear absurd. The “Seven Principles” are, of course, the manifestation
of one indivisible Spirit, but only at the end of the Manvantara, and when they
come to be re-united on the plane of the One Reality does the unity appear;
during the “Pilgrim’s” journey the reflections of that indivisible
One Flame, the aspects of the one eternal Spirit, have each the power of action
on one of the manifested planes of existence—the gradual differentiations
from the one unmanifested plane—on that plane namely to which it properly
belongs.
The
Purified Self - (Page
375) Our earth affording every Mâyâvic condition, it
follows that the purified Egotistical Principle, the astral and personal Self
of an Adept, though forming in reality one integral whole with its Highest Self
(Âtmâ and Buddhi) may, nevertheless, for purposes of universal mercy
and benevolence, so separate itself from its divine Monad as to lead on this
plane of illusion and temporary being a distinct independent conscious life
of its own under a borrowed illusive shape, thus serving at once and the same
time a double purpose: the exhaustion of its own individual Karma, and the saving
of millions of human beings less favoured than itself from the effects of mental
blindness. If asked: “When the change described as the passage of a Buddha
or a Jîvanmukta into Nirvâna takes place, where does the original
consciousness which animated the body continue to reside—in the Nirvânî
or in the subsequent reincarnations of the latter’s ‘remains’
(the Nirmânakâya)?” the answer is that imprisoned consciousness
may be a “certain knowledge from observation and experience,” as
Gibbon puts it, but disembodied consciousness is not an effect, but a
cause. It is a part of the whole, or rather a Ray on the graduated scale of
its manifested activity, of the one all-pervading, limitless Flame, the reflections
of which alone can differentiate; and, as such, consciousness is ubiquitous,
and can be neither localized nor centered on or in any particular subject, nor
can it be limited. Its effects alone pertain to the region of matter, for thought
is an energy that affects matter in various ways, but consciousness per se,
as understood and explained by Occult philosophy, is the highest quality of
the sentient spiritual principle in us, the Divide Soul (or Buddhi) and our
Higher Ego, and does not belong to the plane of materiality. After the death
of the physical man, if he be an Initiate, it becomes transformed from a human
quality into the independent principle itself; the conscious Ego becoming Consciousness
per se without any Ego, in the sense that the latter can no longer be
limited or conditioned by the senses, or even by space or time. Therefore it
is capable, without separating itself from or abandoning its possessor, Buddhi,
of reflecting itself at the same time in its astral man that was without being
under any necessity for localizing itself. This is shown at a far lower stage
in our dreams. For if consciousness can display activity during our visions,
and while the body and its material brain are fast asleep—and if even
during those visions it is all but ubiquitous—how much greater must be
its power when entirely free from, and having no more connection with our physical
brain.
SECTION
XLIII
The
Mystery of Buddha
(Page
376) NOW the mystery of Buddha lies in this: Gautama, an incarnation
of pure Wisdom, had yet to learn in His human body and to be initiated into
the world’s secrets like any other mortal, until the day when He emerged
from His secret recess in the Himâlayas and preached for the first time
in the grove of Benares. The same with Jesus: from the age of twelve to thirty
years, when He was found preaching the sermon on the Mount, nothing is positively
said or known of Him. Gautama had sworn inviolable secrecy as to the Esoteric
Doctrines imparted to Him. In His immense pity for the ignorance—and as
its consequence the sufferings—of mankind, desirous though He was to keep
inviolate His sacred vows, He failed to keep within the prescribed limits. While
constructing His Esoteric Philosophy (the “Eye-Doctrine”) on the
foundations of eternal Truth, He failed to conceal certain dogmas, and trespassing
beyond the lawful lines, caused those dogmas to be misunderstood. In His anxiety
to make away with the false Gods, He revealed in the “Seven Paths to Nirvâna”
some of the mysteries of the Seven Lights of the Arûpa (formless) World.
A little of the truth is often worse than no truth at all.
Truth
and fiction are like oil and water: they will never mix.
His
new doctrine, which represented the outward dead body of the Esoteric Teaching
without its vivifying Soul, had disastrous effects: it was never correctly understood,
and the doctrine itself was rejected by the Southern Buddhists. Immense philanthropy,
a boundless love and charity for all creatures, were at the bottom of His unintentional
mistake; but Karma little heeds intentions, whether good or bad, if they remain
fruitless. If the “Good Law” as preached resulted in the most sublime
code of ethics and the unparalleled philosophy of things external in the visible
Kosmos, it biassed and misguided immature minds into believing there was nothing
more under the outward mantle of the system, and its dead-letter only was accepted.
Moreover, the new teaching unsettled many great minds which had previously followed
the orthodox Brâhmanical lead.
Shankarâchârya
- (Page
377) Thus, fifty odd years after his death “the great Teacher”
[ When we say the “great Teacher,” we do not mean His Buddhic
Ego, but that principle in Him which was the vehicle of His personal or terrestrial
Ego.] having refused full Dharmakâya and Nirvâna, was pleased,
for purposes of Karma and philanthropy, to be reborn. For Him death has been
no death, but as expressed in the “Elixir
of Life.” [ Five Years of Theosophy, New Edition,
p. 3.] He changed
A
sudden plunge into darkness to a transition into a brighter light.
The
shock of death was broken, and like many other Adepts, He threw off the mortal
coil and left it to be burnt, and its ashes to serve as relics, and began interplanetary
life, clothed in His subtle body. He was reborn as Shankara, the greatest Vedântic
teacher of India, whose philosophy—based as it is entirely on the fundamental
axioms of the eternal Revelation, the Shruti, or the primitive Wisdom-Religion,
as Buddha from a different point of view had before based His—finds itself
in the middle ground between the too exuberantly veiled metaphysics of the orthodox
Brâhmans and those of Gautama which, stripped in their exoteric garb of
every soul-vivifying hope, transcendental aspiration and symbol, appear in their
cold wisdom like crystalline icicles, the skeletons of the primeval truths of
Esoteric Philosophy.
Was
Shankarâchârya Gautama The Buddha, then, under a new personal form?
It may perhaps only puzzle the reader the more if he be told that there was
the “astral” Gautama inside the outward Shankara, whose higher principle,
or Ätman, was, nevertheless, his own divine prototype—the “Son
of Light,” indeed—the heavenly, mind-born son of Aditi.
This
fact is again based on that mysterious transference of the divine ex-personality
merged in the impersonal Individuality—now in its full trinitarian form
of the Monad as Âtma-Buddhi-Manas—to a new body, whether visible
or subjective. In the first case it is a Manushya-Buddha; in the second it is
a Nirmânakâya. The Buddha is in Nirvâna, it is said, though
this once mortal vehicle—the subtle body—of Gautama is still present
among the Initiates: nor will it leave the realm of conscious Being so long
as suffering mankind needs its divine help—not to the end of this Root
Race, at any rate. From time to time He, the “astral” Gautama, associates
Himself, in some most mysterious—to (Page
378) us quite incomprehensible—manner, with Avatâras
and great saints, and works through them. And several such are named.
Thus
it is averred that Gautama Buddha was reincarnated in Shankarâchâya—that,
as is said in Esoteric Buddhism:
Shankarâchârya
simply was Buddha in all respects in a new body. [Op. cit.,
p. 175 Fifth Edition.] While
the expression in its mystic sense is true, the way of putting it may be misleading
until explained. Shankara was a Buddha, most assuredly, but he never was a
reincarnation of the Buddha, though Gautama’s “Astral” Ego—or
rather his Bodhisattva—may have been associated in some mysterious way
with Shankarâchârya. Yes, it was perhaps the Ego, Gautama, under
a new and better adapted casket—that of a Brâhman of Southern
India. But the Âtman, the Higher Self that overshadowed both, was distinct
from the Higher Self of the translated Buddha, which was now in Its own sphere
in Kosmos.
Shankara
was an Avatâra in the full sense of the term. According to Sayanâchârya,
the great commentator on the Vedas, he is to be held as an Avatâra,
or direct incarnation of Shiva—the Logos, the Seventh Principle in Nature—Himself.
In the Secret Doctrine Shri Shankarâchârya is regarded as the abode—for
the thirty-two years of his mortal life—of a Flame, the highest of the
manifested Spiritual Beings, one of the Primordial Seven Rays.
And
now what is meant by a “Bodhisattva”? Buddhists of the Mahâyana
mystic system teach that each BUDDHA manifests Himself
(hypostatically or otherwise) simultaneously in three worlds of Being, namely,
in the world of Kâma (concupiscence or desire—the sensuous universe
or our earth) in the shape of a man; in the world of Rûpa (form, yet supersensuous)
as a Bodhisattva; and in the highest Spiritual World (that of purely incorporeal
existences) as a Dhyâni Buddha. The latter prevails eternally in space
and time, i.e., from one Mahâ-Kalpa to the other—the synthetic
culmination of the three being Ädi-Buddha, [ It would be useless
to raise objections from exoteric works to statements in this, which aims to
expound, however superficially, the Esoteric Teachings alone. It is because
they are misled by the exoteric doctrine that Bishop Bigandet and others aver
that the notion of a supreme eternal Ädi-Buddha is to be found only in
the writings of comparatively recent date. What is given here is taken from
the secret portions of Dus Kyi Khorlo (Kâla Chakra, in Sanskrit, or the
“Wheel of Time,” or duration).] the Wisdom-Principle, which
is Absolute, and therefore out of space and time. Their inter-relation is the
following:
The
Buddha Cannot Reincarnate - (Page
379) The Dhyâni-Buddha, when the world needs a human Buddha,
“creates” through the power of Dhyâna (meditation, omnipotent
devotion), a mind-born son—a Bodhisattva—whose mission it is after
the physical death of his human, or Manushya-Buddha, to continue his work on
earth till the appearance of the subsequent Buddha. The Esoteric meaning of
this teaching is clear. In the case of a simple mortal, the principles in him
are only the more or less bright reflections of the seven cosmic, and the seven
celestial Principles, the Hierarchy of supersensual Beings. In the case of a
Buddha, they are almost the principles in esse themselves. The Bodhisattva
replaces in him the Kârana Sharira, the Ego principle, and the rest correspondingly;
and it is in this way that Esoteric Philosophy explains the meaning of the sentence
that “by virtue of Dhyâna [or abstract meditation] the
Dhyâni-Buddha [the Buddha’s Spirit or Monad] creates
a Bodhisattva, “ or the astrally clothed Ego within the Manushya-Buddha.
Thus, while the Buddha merges back into Nirvâna whence it proceeded, the
Bodhisattva remains behind to continue the Buddha’s work upon earth. It
is then this Bodhisattva that may have afforded the lower principles in the
apparitional body of Shankarâchârya, the Avatâra.
Now
to say that Buddha, after having reached Nirvâna, returned thence to reïncarnate
in a new body, would be uttering a heresy from the Brâhmanical, as well
as from the Buddhisic standpoint. Even in the Mahâyâna exoteric
School in the teaching as to the three “Buddhic” bodies, [
The three bodies are (1) the Nirmânakâya (Pru-lpai-Ku in Tibetan),
in which the Bodhisattva after entering the six Pâramitâs the Path
to Nirvâna, appears to men in order to teach them: (2) Sambhogakâya
(Dzog-pai-Ku), the body of bliss impervious to all physical sensations, received
by one who has fulfilled the three conditions of moral perfection: and (3) Dharmakâya
(in Tibetan, Chos-Ku), the Nirvânic body.] it is said of the Dharmakâya—the
formless Being—that once it is taken, the Buddha in it abandons the world
of sensuous perceptions for ever, and has not, nor can he have, any more connection
with it. To say, as the Esoteric or Mystic School teaches, that though Buddha
is in Nirvâna he has left behind him the Nirmânakâya (the
Bodhisattva) to work after him, is quite orthodox and in accordance with both
the Esoteric Mahâyâna and the Prasanga Mâdhyâmika Schools,
the latter an anti-esoteric and most rationalistic system. For in the Kâla
Chakra Commentary it is shown that there is: (1) Ädi-Buddha, eternal
and conditionless; then (2) come Sambhogakâya-Buddhas, or Dhyâni-Buddhas,
existing from (æonic) eternity and never disappearing—the Causal
Buddhas so to say; and (3) the Manushya (Page
380) Bodhisattvas. The relation between them is determined by the
definition given. Ädi-Buddha is Vajradhara, and the Dhyâni-Buddhas
are Vajrasattva; yet though these two are different Beings on their respective
planes. They are identical in fact, one acting through the other, as a Dhyâni
through a human Buddha. One is “Endless Intelligence;” the other
only “Supreme Intelligence.” It is said of Phra Bodhisattva—who
was subsequently on earth Buddha Gautama:
Having
fulfilled all the conditions for the immediate attainment of perfect Buddhaship,
the Holy One preferred, from unlimited charity towards living beings, once
more to reincarnate for the benefit of man.
The
Nirvâna of the Buddhists is only the threshold of Paranirvâna, according
to the Esoteric Teaching: while with the Brâhmans, it is the summum
bonum, that final state from which there is no more return—not till
the next Mahâ-Kalpa at all events. And even this last view will be opposed
by some too orthodox and dogmatic Philosophers who will not accept the Esoteric
Doctrine. With them Nirvâna is absolute nothingness, in which there is
nothing and no one: only an unconditioned All. To understand the full characteristics
of that Abstract Principle one must sense it intuitionally and comprehend fully
the “one permanent condition in the Universe,” which the Hindûs
define so truly as
The
state of perfect unconsciousness—bare Chidâkâsham (field
of consciousness) in fact.
however
paradoxical it may seem to the profane reader. [ Five Years of Theosophy,
art. “Personal and Impersonal God, p. 129.]
Shankarâchârya
was reputed to be an Avatâra, an assertion the writer implicitly believes
in, but which other people are, of course, at liberty to reject. And as such
he took the body of a southern Indian, newly-born Brâhman baby; that body,
for reasons as important as they are mysterious to us, is said to have been
animated by Gautama’s astral personal remains. This divine Non-Ego chose
as its own Upâdhi (physical basis), the ethereal, human Ego of a great
Sage in this world of forms, as the fittest vehicle for Spirit to descend into.
Said
Shankarâchârya:
Parabrahman
is Kartâ [Purusha], as there is no other Adhishtâthâ,
[ Adhishtâthâ, the active or working agent in Prakriti
(or matter). ] and Parabrahman is Prakriti, there being no other substance.
[Vedânta-Sûtras. Ad. I. Pâda iv. ShI. 23 Commentary.
The passage is given as follows in Thibaut's translation (Sacred Books of
the East, xxxiv.) p. 286: “The Self is thus the operative cause, because
there is no other ruling principle, and the material cause because there is
no other substance from which the world could originate.”]
A
Fuller Explanation - (Page
381) Now what is true of the Macrocosmical is also true of the Microcosmical
plane. It is therefore nearer the truth to say—when once we accept such
a possibility—that the “astral” Gautama or the Nirmânakâya,
was the Upâdhi of Shankarâchâya’s spirit, rather than
the latter was a reincarnation of the former.
When
a Shankarâchârya has to be born, naturally every one of the principles
in the manifested mortal man must be the purest and finest that exist on earth.
Consequently those principles that were once attached to Gautama, who was the
direct great predecessor of Shankara, were naturally attracted to him, the economy
of Nature forbidding the re-evolution of similar principles from the crude state.
But it must be remembered that the higher ethereal principles are not, like
the lower more natural ones, visible sometimes to man (as astral bodies), and
they have to be regarded in the light of separate or independent Powers or Gods,
rather than at material objects. Hence the right way of representing the truth
would be to say that the various principles, the Bodhisattva, of Gautama Buddha,
which did not go to Nirvâna, reunited to form the middle principles of
Shankarâchârya, the earthly Entity. [In Five Years of
Theosophy (art. “Shâkya Muni’s Place in History,”
p. 234, note) it is stated that one day when our Lord sat in the Sattapanni
Cave (Saptaparna) he compared man to a Saptaparna (seven leaved) plant.
“Mendicants,”
he said, “there are seven Buddhas in every Buddha, and there are six
Bhikshus and but one Buddha in each mendicant. What are the seven? The
seven branches of complete knowledge. What are the six? The six organs
of sense. What are the five? The five elements of illusive being. And the One
which is also ten? He is a true Buddha who develops in him the ten forms of
holiness and subjects them all to the One.” Which means that every principle
in the Buddha was the highest that could be evolved on this earth; whereas in
the case of other men who attain to Nirvâna this is not necessarily the
case. Even as a mere human (Manushya) Buddha Gautama was a pattern for all men.
But his Arhats were not necessarily so.
It
is absolutely necessary to study the doctrine of the Buddhas esoterically and
understand the subtle differences between the various planes of existence to
be able to comprehend correctly the above. Put more clearly, Gautama, the human
Buddha, who had, exoterically, Amitâbha for his Bodhisattva and Avolokiteshvara
for his Dhyâni-Buddha—the triad emanating directly from Ädi-Buddha—assimilated
these by his “Dhyâna” (meditation) and thus become a Buddha
(“enlightened”). In another manner this is the case with all men;
every one of us has his Bodhisattva—the middle principle, if we hold for
a moment to the trinitarian division of the septenary group—and his Dhyâni-Buddha,
or Chohan, the “Father of the Son.” Our connecting link with the
higher Hierarchy of Celestial Beings lies here in a nutshell, only we are too
sinful to assimilate them.
(Page
382) Six centuries after the translation of the human Buddha (Gautama)
another Reformer, as noble and as loving though less favoured by opportunity,
arose in another part of the world, among another and a less spiritual race.
There is a great similarity between the subsequent opinions of the world about
the two Saviours, the Eastern and the Western. While millions became converted
to the doctrines of the two Masters, the enemies of both—sectarian opponents,
the most dangerous of all—tore both to shreds by insinuating maliciously-distorted
statements based on Occult truths, and therefore doubly dangerous. While of
Buddha it is said by the Brâhmans that He was truly an Avatâra of
Vishnu, but that He had come to tempt the Brâhmans from their faith, and
was therefore the evil aspect of the God: of Jesus the Bardesanian Gnostics
and others asserted that He was Nebu, the false Messiah, the destroyer and the
old orthodox religion. “He is the founder of a new sect of Nazars,”
said other sectarians. In Hebrew the word “Naba” means “to
speak by inspiration.” ()
is Nebo, the God of wisdom). But Nebo is also Mercury, who is Buddha in the
Hindu monogram of planets. And this is shown by the fact that the Talmudists
hold that Jesus was inspired by the Genius (or Regent) of Mercury confounded
by Sir William Jones with Gautama Buddha. There are many other strange points
of similarity between Gautama and Jesus, which cannot be noticed here. [
See Isis Unveiled, ii. 132.]
If
both the Initiates, aware of the danger of furnishing the uncultured masses
with the powers acquired by ultimate knowledge, left the innermost corner of
the sanctuary in profound darkness, who, acquainted with human nature, can blame
either of them for this? Yet although Gautama, actuated by prudence, left the
Esoteric and most dangerous portions of the Secret Knowledge untold, and lived
to the ripe old age of eighty—the Esoteric Doctrine says one hundred—years,
dying with the certainty of having taught its essential truths, and of having
sown the seeds for the conversion of one-third of the world, He yet perhaps
revealed more than was strictly good for posterity. But Jesus, who had promised
His disciples the knowledge which confers upon man the power of producing “miracles”
far greater than He had ever produced Himself, died, leaving but a few faithful
disciples—men only half-way to knowledge. They had therefore to struggle
with a world to which they could impart only what they but half-knew themselves,
and—no more. In later ages the exoteric followers of both mangled the
truths given out, often out of recognition.
Sacrifice
- (Page
383) With regard to the adherents of the Western Master, the proof
of this lies in the very fact that none of them can now produce the promised
“miracles.” They have to choose: either it is they who have blundered,
or it is their Master who must stand arraigned for an empty promise, an uncalled-for
boast. [“Before one becomes a Buddha he must be a Bodhisattva:
before evolving into a Bodhisattva he must be a Dhyâni-Buddha. . . . A
bodhisattva is the way and Path to his Father, and thence to the One Supreme
Essence” (Descent of Buddhas . p. 17. from Äryâsanga).
“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father
but by me “ (St. John, xiv.6). The “way” is not the
goal. Nowhere throughout the New Testament is Jesus found calling himself
God, or anything higher than “a son of God,” the son of a “Father”
common to all, synthetically. Paul never said (I. Tim., iii. 10). “God
was manifest in the flesh,” but “He who was manifested in the flesh”
(Revised Edition). While the common herd among the Buddhists—the Burmese
especially—regard Jesus as an incarnation of Devadatta, a relative who
opposed the teachings of the Buddha, the students of Esoteric Philosophy see
in the Nazarene Sage a Bodhisattva with the spirit of Buddha Himself in Him.]
Why such a difference in the destiny of the two? For the Occultist this enigma
of the unequal favour of Karma or Providence is unriddled by the Secret Doctrine.
It
is “not lawful” to speak of such things publicly, as St. Paul tells
us. One more explanation only may be given in reference to this subject. It
was said a few pages back that an Adept who thus sacrifices himself to live,
giving up full Nirvâna, though he can never lose the knowledge acquired
by him in previous existences, yet can never rise higher in such borrowed bodies.
Why? Because he becomes simply the vehicle of a “Son of Light” from
a still higher sphere, Who being Arûpa, has no personal astral body of
His own fit for this world. Such “Sons of Light,” or Dhyâni-Buddhas,
are the Dharmakâyas of preceding Manvantaras, who have closed their cycles
of incarnations in the ordinary sense and who, being thus Karmaless, have long
ago dropped their individual Rûpas, and have become identified with the
first Principle. Hence the necessity of a sacrificial Nirmânakâya,
ready to suffer for the misdeeds or mistakes of the new body in its earth-pilgrimage
without any future reward on the plane of progression and rebirth, since there
are no rebirths for him in the ordinary sense. The higher Self, or Divine Monad,
is not in such a case attached to the lower Ego; its connection is only temporary,
and in most cases it acts through decrees of Karma. This is a real, genuine
sacrifice, the explanation of which pertains to the highest Initiation of Gñâna
(Occult Knowledge). It is closely linked, by a direct evolution of Spirit and
involution of Matter, with the primeval and great Sacrifice at the foundation
of the manifested Worlds, the gradual smothering and (Page
384) death of the spiritual in the material. The seed “is not
quickened except it die.” [ I. Corinth., xv. 36] Hence
in the Purusha Sûkta of the Rig Veda, [ Op.cit., Mandala
x., hymn 90.] the mother-fount and source of all subsequent religions,
it is stated allegorically that “the thousand-headed Purusha” was
slaughtered at the foundation of the World, that from his remains the Universe
might arise. This is nothing more or less than the foundation—the seed,
truly—of the later many-formed symbol in various religions, including
Christianity, of the sacrificial lamb. For it is a play upon the words “Aja”
(Purusha), “the unborn,” or eternal Spirit, means also “lamb,”
in Sanskrit. Spirit disappears—dies, metaphorically—the more it
gets involved in matter, and hence the sacrifice of the “unborn,”
or the “lamb.”
Why
the BUDDHA chose to make this sacrifice will be plain
only to those who, to the minute knowledge of His earthly life, add that of
a thorough comprehension of the laws of Karma. Such occurrences, however, belong
to the most exceptional cases.
As
tradition goes, the Brâhmans had committed a heavy sin by persecuting
Gautama BUDDHA and His teachings instead of blending and
reconciling them with the tenets of pure Vaidic Brâhmanism, as was done
later by Shankarâchârya. Gautama had never gone against the Vedas,
only against the exoteric growth of preconceived interpretations. The Shruti—divine
oral revelation, the outcome of which was the Veda—is eternal.
It reached the ear of Gautama Siddartha as it had those of the Rishis who had
written it down. He accepted the revelation while rejecting the later overgrowth
of Brâhmanical thought and fancy and built His doctrines on one and the
same basis of imperishable truth. As in the case of His Western successor, Gautama,
the “Merciful,” the “Pure,” and the “Just,”
was the first found in the Eastern Hierarchy of historical Adepts, if not in
the world-annals of divine mortals, who was moved by that generous feeling which
locks the whole of mankind within one embrace, with no petty differences of
race, birth, or caste. It was He who first enunciated that grand and noble principle,
and He again who first put it into practice. For the sake of the poor and the
reviled, the outcast and the hapless, invited by Him to the king’s festival
table, He had excluded those who had hitherto sat along in haughty seclusion
and selfishness, believing that they would be defiled by the very shadow of
the disinherited ones of the land—and these non-spiritual Brâhmans
turned against Him for that preference.
Shankarâchârya
Still Living - (Page
385) Since then such as these have never forgiven the prince-beggar,
the son of a king, who, forgetting His rank and station, had flung widely open
the doors of the forbidden sanctuary to the pariah and the man of low estate,
thus giving precedence to personal merit over hereditary rank or fortune. The
sin was theirs—the cause nevertheless Himself: hence the “Merciful
and the Blessed One” could not go out entirely from this world of illusion
and created causes without atoning for the sin of all—therefore of these
Brâhmans also. If “man afflicted by man” found safe refuge
with the Tathâgata, “man afflicting man” had also his share
in His self-sacrificing, all embracing and forgiving love. It is stated that
He desired to atone for the sin of His enemies. Then only was he willing to
become a full Dharmakâya a Jîvanmukta “without remains.”
The
close of Shankarâchârya’s life brings us face to face with
a fresh mystery, Shankarâchârya retires to a cave in the Himâlayas,
permitting none of his disciples to follow him, and disappears therein forever
from the sight of the profane. Is he dead? Tradition and popular belief answer
in the negative, and some of the local Gurus, if they do not emphatically corroborate,
do not deny the rumour. The truth with its mysterious details as given in the
Secret Doctrine is known but to them; it can be given out fully only to the
direct followers of the great Dravidian Guru, and it is for them alone to reveal
of it as much as they think fit. Still it is maintained that this Adept of Adepts
lives to this day in his spiritual entity as a mysterious, unseen, yet overpowering
presence among the Brotherhood of Shamballa, beyond, far beyond, the snowy-capped
Himâlayas.
SECTION
XLIV
“Reincarnations”
of Buddha
(Page
386) EVERY section in the chapter on “Dezhin Shegpa”
[ Literally, “he who walks [or follows] in the way
[or path] of his predecessors.”] (Tathâgata)
in the Commentaries represents one year of that great Philosopher’s life,
in its dual aspect of public and private teacher, the two being contrasted and
commented upon. It shows the Sage reaching Buddhahood through a long course
of study, meditation, and Initiations, as any other Adept would have to do,
not one rung of the ladder up to the arduous “Path of Perfection”
being missed. The Bodhisattva became a Buddha and a Nirvânî through
personal effort and merit after having had to undergo all the hardships of every
other neophyte—not by virtue of a divine birth, as thought by some. It
was only the reaching of Nirvâna while still living in the body and on
this earth that was due to His having been in previous births high on the “Path
of Dzyan” (knowledge, wisdom). Mental or intellectual gifts and abstract
knowledge follow an Initiate in his new birth, but he has to acquire phenomenal
powers anew, passing through all the successive stages. He has to acquire Rinchen-na-dun
(“the seven precious gifts”) [ Schmidt, in Slanong Seetsen.
p.471, and Schlagintweit, in Buddhism in Tibet, p. 53, accept these precious
things literally, enumurating them as “the wheel, the precious
stone, the royal consort, the best treasurer, the best horse, the elephant,
the best leader.” After this one can little wonder if “besides a
Dhyâni-Buddhi and a Dhyâni-Bodhisattva” each human Buddha
is furnished with “a female companion, a Shakti”—when in truth
“Shakti” is simply the Soul-power, the psychic energy of the God
as of the Adept. The “royal consort,” the third of the “seven
precious gifts,” very likely led the learned Orientalist into this ludicrous
error.] one after the other. During the period of meditation no worldly
phenomena on the physical plane must be allowed to enter into his mind or cross
his thoughts. Zhine-lhagthong (Sanskrit: Vipashya, religious abstract meditation)
will develop in him most wonderful faculties independently of himself.
Vajradhara
- (Page
387) The four degrees of contemplation, or Sam-tan (Sanskrit: Dhyâna),
once acquired, everything becomes easy. For, once that man has entirely got
rid of the idea of individuality, merging his Self in the Universal Self, becoming,
so to say, the bar of steel to which the properties inherent in the loadstone
(Ädi Buddha, or Anima Mundi) are imparted, powers hitherto dormant in him
are awakened, mysteries in invisible Nature are unveiled, and becoming a Thonglam-pa
(a Seer) he becomes a Dhyâni-Buddha. Every Zung (Dhâranî,
a mystic word or mantra) of the Lokottaradharma (the highest world of causes)
will be known to him.
Thus,
after His outward death, twenty years later, Tathâgata in His immense
love and “pitiful mercy” for erring and ignorant humanity, refused
Paranirvâna [A Bodhisattva can reach Nirvâna and live, as
Buddha did, and after death he can either refuse objective incarnation or accept
and use it at his convenience for the benefit of mankind whom he can instruct
in various ways while he remains in the Devachanic regions within the attraction
of our earth. But having once reached Paranirvâna or “Nirvâna
without remains”—the highest Dharmakâya condition, in which
state he remains entirely outside of every earthly condition—he will return
no more until the commencement of a new Manvantara, since he has crossed beyond
the cycle of birth.] in order that He might continue to help men.
Says
a Commentary:
Having
reached the Path of Deliverance [Thar-lam] from
transmigration, one cannot perform Tulpa [Tulpa is the voluntary
incarnation of an Adept into a living body, whether of an adult, child, or new-born
babe.] any longer, for to become a Paranirvânî is to close
the circle of the Septenary Ku-Sum. [Ku-sum is the triple form of
the Nirvanâ state and its respective duration in the “cycle of Non
Being.” The number seven here refers to the seven Rounds of our septenary
System.] He has merged his borrowed Dorjesempa [Vagrasattva]
into the Universal and become one with it.
Vajradhara,
also Vajrasattva (Tibetan: Dorjechang and Dorjedzin, or Dorjosampa), is the
regent or President of all the Dhyân Chohans or Dhyâni Buddhas,
the highest, the Supreme Buddha; personal, yet never manifested objectively;
the “Supreme Conqueror,” the “Lord of all Mysteries,”
the “One without Beginning or End”—in short, the Logos of
Buddhism. For, as Vajrasattva, He is simply the Tsovo (Chief) of the Dhyâni
Buddhas or Dhyân Chohans, and the Supreme Intelligence in the Second World;
while as Vajradhara (Dorjechang), He is all that which was enumerated above.
“These two are one, and yet two,” and over them is “Chang,
the Supreme Unmanifested and (Page 388)
Universal Wisdom that has no name.” As two in one He (They) is
the Power that subdued and conquered Evil from the beginning, allowing it to
reign only over willing subjects on earth, and having no power over those who
despise and hate it. Esoterically the allegory is easily understood; exoterically
Vajradhara (Vajrasattva) is the God to whom all the evil spirits swore that
they would not impede the propagation of the Good Law (Buddhism), and before
whom all the demons tremble. Therefore we say this dual personage has the same
rôle assigned to it in canonical and dogmatic Tibetan Buddhism
as have Jehovah and the Archangel Mikael, the Metatron of the Jewish Kabalists.
This is easily shown. Mikael is “the angel of the face of God,”
or he who represents his Master. “My face shall go with thee” (in
English, “presence”), before the Israelites, says God to Moses (Exodus,
xxxiii. 141). “The angel of my presence” (Hebrew: “of
my face”) (Isaiah, Ixiii.9). etc. The Roman Catholics identify
Christ with Mikael, who is also his ferouer, or “face” mystically.
This is precisely the position of Vajradhara, or Vajrasattva, in Northern Buddhism.
For the latter, in His Higher Self as Vajradhara (Dorjechang), is never
manifested, except to the seven Dhyân Chohans, the primeval Builders.
Esoterically, it is the Spirit of the “Seven” collectively, their
seventh principle, or Ãtman. Exoterically, any amount of fables may be
found in Kâla Chakra, the most important work in the Gyut [or
(D)guy] division of the Kanjur, the division of mystic knowledge [(D)gyu].
Dorjechang (wisdom) Vajradhara, is said to live in the second Arûpa World,
which connects him with Metatron, in the first world of pure Spirits, the Briatic
world of the Kabalists, who call this angel El-Shaddai, the Omnipotent and Might
One. Metatron is in Greek αϒϒελος(Messenger),
or the Great Teacher. Mikael fights Satan, the Dragon, and conquers him and
his Angels. Vajrasattva, who is one with Vajrapâni, the Subduer of the
Evil Spirits, conquers Râhu, the Great Dragon who is always trying to
devour the sun and moon (eclipses). “War in Heaven” in the Christian
legend is based upon the bad angels having discovered the secrets (magical wisdom)
of the good ones (Enoch), and the mystery of the “Tree of Life.”
Let anyone read simply the exoteric accounts in the Hindu and Buddhist Pantheons—the
latter version being taken from the former—and he will find both resting
on the same primeval, archaic allegory from the Secret Doctrine. In the exoteric
texts (Hindu and Buddhist), the Gods churn the ocean to extract from it the
Water of Life—Amrita—or the Elixir of Knowledge.
Living
Buddhas - (Page
389) In both the Dragon steals some of this, and is exiled from heaven
by Vishnu, or Vajradhara, or the chief God, whatever may be his name. We find
the same in the Book of Enoch, and it is poetized in St. John’s
Revelation. And now the allegory, with all its fanciful ornamentations,
has become a dogma!
As
will be found mentioned later, the Tibetan Lamaseries contain many secrets and
semi-secret volumes, detailing the lives of great Sages. Many of the statements
in them are purposely confused, and in others the reader becomes bewildered,
unless a clue be given him, by the use of one name to cover many individuals
who follow the same line of teaching. Thus there is a succession of “living
Buddhas,” and the name Buddha is given to teacher after teacher. Schlagintweit
writes:
To
each human being Buddha belongs a Dhyâni-Buddha, and a Dhyâni-Bodhisattva,
and the unlimited number of the former also involves equally unlimited number
of the latter. [Buddhism in Tibet. p.52. This same generic
use of a name is found among Hindus with that of Shankarâchârya,
to take but one instance. All His successors bear his name, but are not reincarnations
of Him. So with the “Buddhas.”]
[But
if this be so—and the exoteric and semi-exoteric use of the name justify
the statement—the reader must depend on his own intuition to distinguish
between the Dhyâni Buddhas and the human Buddhas, and must not apply to
the great BUDDHA of the Fifth Race all that is ascribed
to “the Buddha” in books where, as said, blinds are constantly introduced.
In
one of these books some strange and obscure statements are made which the writer
gives, as before, entirely on her own responsibility, since a few may sense
a meaning hidden under words misleading in their surface meaning.] [The
words within brackets are supplied to introduce the statements following that
are confused and contradictory as they stand, and which H.P.B had probably intended
to elucidate to some slight extent, as they are written two or three times with
different sentences following them. The MS. is exceedingly confused, and everything
H.P.B said is here pieced together, the addition above made being marked in
brackets to distinguish it from hers.] It is stated that at the age of
thirty-three, Shankarâchârya, tired of his mortal body, “put
it off” in the cave he had entered, and that the Bodhisattva, that served
as his lower personality, was freed.
With
the burden of a sin upon him which he had not committed.
At
the same time it is added:
At
whatever age one puts off his outward body by free will, at that age will
he be made to die a violent death against his will in his next rebirth.
(Page 390) Now, Karma could have
no hold on “Mahâ Shankara” (as Shankara is called in the secret
work), as he had, as Avatâra, no Ego of his own, but a Bodhisattva—a
willing sacrificial victim. Neither had the latter any responsibility for the
deed, whether sinful or otherwise. Therefore we do not see the point, since
Karma cannot act unjustly. There is some terrible mystery involved in all this
story, one that no uninitiated intellect can ever unravel. Still, there it is,
suggesting the natural query, “Who, then, was punished by Karma?”
and leaving it to be answered.
A
few centuries later Buddha tried one more incarnation, it is said, in * * *
*, and again, fifty years subsequent to the death of this Adept, in one whose
name is given as Tiani-Tsang. [King Suddhodana.] No details, no
further information or explanation is given. It is simply stated that the last
Buddha had to work out the remains of his Karma, which none of the Gods themselves
can escape, forced as he was to bury still deeper certain mysteries have revealed
by him—hence misinterpreted. The words used would stand when translated:
[There are several names marked simply by asterisks.]
Born
fifty-two years too early as Shramana Gautama, the son of King Zastang; then
retiring fifty-seven years too soon as Mahâ Shankara, who got tired
of his outward form. This wilful act aroused and attracted King Karma, who
killed the new form of * * * at thirty-three, [Shankarâchârya
died also at thirty-two years of age, or rather disappeared from the sight
of his disciples, as the legend goes.] the age of the body was put
off. [ At whatever age one puts off his outward body by free will,
at that age will he be made to die in his next incarnation against his
will—Commentary.] He died in his next (body) at thirty-two
and a little over, and again in his next at eighty—a Mâyâ,
and at one hundred, in reality. The Bodhisatva chose Tiani-Tsang, [Does
“Tiani-Tsang” stand for Apollonius of Tyana? This is a simple
surmise. Some things in the life of that Adept would seem to tally with the
hypothesis—others to go against it.] then again the Sugata became
Tsong-Kha-pa, who became thus Dezhin-Shegpa [Tathâgata—“one
who follows in the way and manner of his predecessors.”]. The
Blessed One could do good to his generation as * * * but none to posterity,
and so as Tiani-Tsang he became incarnated only for the “remains”
[of his precedent Karma, as we understand it]. The Seven Ways
and the Four Truths were once more hidden out of sight. The Merciful One confined
since then his attention and fatherly care to the heart of Bodyul, the nursery
grounds of the seeds of truth. The blessed “remains” since then
have overshadowed and rested in many a holy body of human Bodhisattvas.
No
further information is given, least of all are there any details or explanations
to be found in the secret volume.
An
Obscure Passage - (Page
391) All is darkness and mystery in it, for it is evidently written
but for those who are already instructed. Several flaming red asterisks are
placed instead of names, and the few facts given are abruptly broken off. The
key of the riddle is left to the intuition of the disciple, unless the “direct
followers” of Gautama the Buddha—“those who are to be denied
by His Church for the next cycle”—and of Shankarâchârya,
are pleased to add more.
The
final section gives a kind of summary of the seventy sections—covering
seventy-three years of Buddha’s life [According to Esoteric teaching
Buddha lived one hundred years in reality, though having reached Nirvana in
his eightieth year he was regarded as one dead to the world of the living. See
article “Shâkyamuni’s Place in History” in Five Years
of Theosophy.]—from which the last paragraph is summarized
as follows:
Emerging
from—,the most excellent seat of the three secrets [Sang-Sum],
the Master of incomparable mercy, after having performed on all the anchorites
the rite of—. and each of these having been cut off, [It is a
secret rite, pertaining to high Initiation, and has the same significance
as the one to which Clement of Alexandria alludes when he speaks of “the
token of recognition being in common with us, as by cutting off Christ”
(Strom., 13). Schlagintweit wonders what it may be. “The typical representation
of a hermit.” he says, “is always that of a man with long, uncut
hair and beard . . . A rite very often selected, though I am unable to state
for what reason, is that of Chod (‘to cut’ or ‘to destroy’)
the meaning of which is anxiously kept a profound secret by the Lamas.”
(Buddhism in Tibet. p. 163).] perceived through [the
power of] Hlun-Chub [ Hlun-Chub is the divining spirit in man,
the highest degree of seership.] what was his next duty. The Most-Illustrious
meditated and asked himself whether this would help [the future]
generations. What they needed was the sight of Mâyâ in a body
of illusion. Which? . . . The great conqueror of pains and sorrows arose and
proceeded back to his birthplace. There Sugata was welcomed by the few, for
they did now know Shramana Gautama. “Shâkva [the Mighty]
is in Nirvâna . . . He has given the Science to the Shuddhas [Shûdra,]”
said they of Damze Yul [the country of Brâhmans: India] .
. . . It was for that, born of pity, that the All-Glorious One had to retire
to—, and then appear [karmically] as Mahâ Shankara;
and out of pity as—, and again as—, and again as Tsong-Kha-pa.
. . . For, he who chooses in humiliation must go down, and he who loves
not allows Karma to raise him. [ The secret meaning of this sentence
is that Karma exercises its way over the Adept as much as over any other man:
“Gods” can escape it as little as simple mortals. The Adept who,
having reached the Path and won His Dharmakâya—the Nirvâna
from which there is no return until the new grand Kalpa—prefers to use
His right of choosing a condition inferior to that which belongs to Him, but
that will leave him free to return whenever he thinks it advisable and under
whatever personality He may select, must be prepared to take all the chances
of failure—possibly—and a lower condition than was His lot—for
a certainty—as it is an occult law. Karma alone is absolute justice
and infallible in its selections. He who uses his right with it (Karma) must
bear the consequences—if any. Thus Buddha's first reincarnation was
produced by Karma—and it led Him higher than ever: the two following
were “out of pity” and * * *]
This
passage is confessedly obscure and written for the few. It is not lawful to
say any more, for the time has not yet come when nations are (Page
392) prepared to hear the whole truth. The old religions are full
of mysteries, and to demonstrate some of them would surely lead to an explosion
of hatred, followed, perhaps, by bloodshed and worse. It will be sufficient
to know that while Gautama Buddha is merged in Nirvâna ever since his
death, Gautama Shâkyamuni may have had to reincarnate—this dual
inner personality being one of the greatest mysteries of Esoteric psychism.
“The
seat of the three secrets” refers to a place inhabited by high Initiates
and their disciples. The “secrets” are the three mystic powers known
as Gopa, Yasodhara, and Uptala Varna, that Csomo de Köros mistook for Buddha’s
three wives, as other Orientalists have mistaken Shakti (Yoga power) personified
by a female deity for His wife; or the Draupadî—also a spiritual
power—for the wife in common of the five brothers Pândava.
SECTION
XLV
An
Unpublished Discourse of Buddha
(Page
393) (IT is found in the second Book of Commentaries and is
addressed to the Arhats.)
Said
the All-Merciful: Blessed are ye, O Bhikshus, happy are ye who have understood
the mystery of Being and Non-Being explained in Bas-pa [Dharma,
Doctrine], and have given preference to the latter, for ye are verily
my Arhats. . . . The elephant, who sees his form mirrored in the lake, looks
at it, and then goes away, taking it for the real body of another elephant,
is wiser than the man who beholds his face in the stream, and looking at it,
says, “Here I am . . . I am I” : for the “I,” his Self,
is not in the world of the twelve Nidânas and mutability, but in that
of Non-Being, the only world beyond the snares of Mâyâ. . . .. That
alone, which has neither cause nor author, which is self-existing, eternal,
far beyond the reach of mutability, is the true “I” [Ego],
the Self of the Universe. The Universe of Nam-Kha says: “I am the world
of Sien-Chan”; [The Universe of Brahmâ (Sien-Chan; Nam-Kha)
is Universal illusion, or our phenomenal world.] the four illusions laugh
and reply, “Verily so.” But the truly wise man knows that neither
man, nor the Universe that he passes through like a flitting shadow , is any
more a real Universe than the dewdrop that reflects a spark of the morning sun
is that sun. . . . There are three things, Bhikshus, that are everlastingly
the same, upon which no vicissitude, no modification can ever act: these are
the Law, Nirvâna, and Space, [ Âkasha. It is next to impossible
to render the mystic word “Tho-og” by any other term than”Space,”
and yet, unless coined on purpose, no new appellation can render it so well
to the mind of the Occultist. The term “Aditi” is also translated
“Space,” and there is a world of meaning in it.] and those
three are One, since the first two are within the last, and that last one a
Mâyâ, so long as man keeps within the whirlpool of sensuous existences.
One need not have his mortal body die to avoid the (Page
394) clutches of concupiscence and other passions. The Arhat who
observes the seven hidden precepts of Bas-pa may become Dang-ma and Lha. [Dang-ma,
a purified soul, and Lha, a freed spirit within a living body: an Adept or Arhat.
In the popular opinion in Tibet, a Lha is a disembodied spirit, something similar
to the Burmese Nat—only higher.] He may hear the “holy voice”
of . . . [Kwan-yin], [Kwan-yin is a synonym, for in the
original another term is used, but the meaning is identical. It is the divine
voice of Self, or the “Spirit-voice” in man, and the same as Vâchishvara
(the “Voice-deity”) of the Brâhmans. In China, the Buddhist
ritualists have degraded its meaning by anthropomorphizing it into a Goddess
of the same name, with one thousand hands and eyes, and they call it Kwan-shai-yin-Bodhisat.
It is the Buddhist “daimon”-voice of Socrates.] and find
himself within the quiet precincts of his Sangharama [Sanharama is the
sanctum sanctorum of an ascetic, a cave or any place he chooses for his
meditation.] transferred into Amitâbha Buddha. [ Amitâbha
Buddha is in this connection the “boundless light” by which things
of the subjective world are perceived.] Becoming one with Anuttara Samyak
Sambodhi, [ Esoterically, “the unsurpassingly merciful and enlightened
heart,” said of the “Perfect Ones,” the Jîvan-muktas,
collectively.] he may pass through all the six worlds of Being (Rûpa-loka)
and get into the first three worlds of Arûpa. [These six worlds—seven
with us—are the worlds of Nats or Spirits, with the Burmese Buddhists,
and the seven higher worlds of the Vedântins.] . . . He who listens
to my secret law, preached to my select Arhats, will arrive with its help at
the knowledge of Self, and thence at perfection.
It
is due to entirely erroneous conceptions of Eastern thought and to ignorance
of the existence of an Esoteric key to the outward Buddhist phrases that Burnouf
and other great scholars have inferred from such propositions—held also
by the Vedântins—as “my body is not body” and “myself
is no self of mine,” that Eastern psychology was based upon non-permanency.
Cousin, for instance, lecturing upon the subject, brings the two following propositions
to prove, on Burnouf’s authority, that, unlike Brâhmanism, Buddhism
rejects the perpetuity of the thinking principle. These are:
1.
Thought or Spirit [Two things entirely distinct from each other. The
“faculty is not distinguished from the subject” only on this material
plane, while thought generated by our physical brain, one that has never impressed
itself at the same time on the spiritual counterpart, whether through the
atrophy of the latter or the intrinsic weakness of that thought, can never
survive our body: this much is sure.]—for the faculty is not
distinguished from the subject—appears only with sensation and does
not survive it.
2.
The Spirit cannot itself lay hold of itself, and in directing attention to
itself it draws from it only the conviction of its powerlessness to see itself
otherwise than as successive and transitory.
This
all refers to Spirit embodied, not to the freed Spiritual Self on whom Mâya
has no more hold.
A
Mistaken View - (Page
395) Spirit is no body; therefore have the Orientalists made of it
“nobody” and nothing. Hence they proclaim Buddhists to be Nihilists,
and Vedântins to be the followers of a creed in which the “Impersonal
[God] turns out on examination to be a myth;” their goal
is described as
The
complete extinction of all spiritual, mental, and bodily powers by absorption
into the Impersonal. [Vedânta Sâra, translated
by Major Jacob. p. 123.]
SECTION
XLVI
Nirvana-Moksha
(Page
396) THE few sentences given in the text from one of Gautama Buddha’s
secret teachings show how uncalled for is the epithet of “Materialist”
when applied to One Whom two-thirds of those who are looked upon as great Adepts
and Occultists in Asia recognize as their Master, whether under the name of
Buddha or that of Shankarâchârya. The reader will remember the just-quoted
words are what Buddha Sanggyas (or Pho) is alleged by the Tibetan Occultists
to have taught: there are three eternal things in the Universe—the Law,
Nirvâna, and Space. The Buddhists of the Southern Church claim, on the
other hand, that Buddha held only two things as eternal—Åkâsha
and Nirvâna. But Âkâsha being the same as Aditi, [Aditi
is, according to the Rig Veda, “the Father and Mother of all the
Gods:” and Ãkâsha is held by Southern Buddhism as the Root
of all, whence everything in the Universe came out, in obedience to a law of
motion inherent in it : and this is the Tibetan “Space” (Tho-og).]
and both being translated “Space,” there is no discrepancy
so far, since Nirvâna as well as Moksha, is a state. Then in both cases
the great Kapilavastu Sage unifies the two, as well as the three, into one eternal
Element, and ends by saying that even “that One is a Mâyâ”
to one who is not a Damg-ma, a perfectly purified Soul.
The
whole question hangs upon materialistic misconceptions and ignorance of Occult
Metaphysics. To the man of Science who regards Space as simply a mental representation,
a conception of something existing pro formâ, and having no real
being outside our mind, Space per se is verily an illusion. He may fill
the boundless interstellar space with an “imaginary” ether, nevertheless
Space for him is an abstraction. Most of the Metaphysicians of Europe are so
wide of the mark, from the purely Occult standpoint, of a correct comprehension
of “Space,” as are the Materialists, though the erroneous conceptions
of both of course differ widely.
The
Ãkâsha - (Page
397) If, bearing in mind the philosophical views of the Ancients
upon this question, we compare them with what is now termed exact physical Science,
it will be found that the two disagree only in inferences and names, and that
their postulates are the same when reduced to their most simple expression.
From the beginning of the human Æons, from the very dawn of Occult Wisdom,
the regions that the men of Science fill with ether have been explored by the
Seers of every age. That which the world regards simply as cosmic Space, an
abstract representation, the Hindu Rishi, the Chaldæan Magus, the Egyptian
Hierophant held, each and all, as the one eternal Root of all, the playground
of all the Forces in Nature. It is the fountain-head of all terrestrial life,
and the abode of those (to us) invisible swarms of existences—of real
beings, as of the shadows only thereof, conscious and unconscious, intelligent
and senseless—that surround us on all sides, that interpenetrate the atoms
of our Kosmos, and see us not, as we do not either see or sense them through
our physical organisms. For the Occultist “Space” and “Universe”
are synonyms. In Space there is not Matter, Force, nor Spirit, but all that
and much more. It is the One Element, and that one the Anima Mundi—Space,
Ãkâsha, Astral Light—the Root of Life which, in its eternal,
ceaseless motion, like the out-and in-breathing of one boundless ocean, evolves
but to reabsorb all that lives and feels and thinks and has its being in it.
As said of the Universe in Isis Unveiled, it is.
The
combination of a thousand elements and yet the expression of a single Spirit—a
chaos to the sense, a Kosmos to the reason.
Such
were the views upon the subject of all the great ancient Philosophers, from
Manu down to Pythagoras, from Plato to Paul.
When
the dissolution [Pralaya] had arrived as its term the great
Being [Para-Ãtmâ, or Para-Purusha], the Lord existing
through himself, out of whom and through whom all things were, and are, and
will be, . . . resolved to emanate from his own substance the various creatures.
[Mânava-Dharma-Shâstra. i. 6, 7. ]
The
mystic Decad [of Pythagoras] (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10) is a way of
expressing this idea. The One is God; [The “God” of Pythagoras,
the disciple of the Ãryan Sages, is no personal God. Let it be remembered
that he taught as a cardinal tenet that there exists a permanent Principle
of Unity beneath all forms, changes, and other phenomena of the Universe.]
the Two, Matter; the Three, combining Monad and Duad and partaking of
the nature of both, is the phenomenal world; the Tetrad, or form of perfection,
expresses the emptiness of all; and the Decad, or sum of all, involves the
entire cosmos. [Isis Unveiled. i. xvi.]
(Page
398) Plato's “God” is the “Universal Ideation,”
and Paul saying “Out of him, and through him, and in him, all things are,”
had surely a Principle—never a Jehovah—in his profound mind. The
key to the Pythagorean dogmas is the key to every great Philosophy. It is the
general formula of unity in multiplicity, the One evolving the many and pervading
the All. It is the archaic doctrine of Emanation in a few words.
Speusippus
and Xenocrates held, like their Master, Plato, that;
The
Amima Mundi (or world-soul”) was not the Deity, but a manifestation.
Those philosophers never conceived of the One as an animate nature.
The original One did not exist, as we understand the term. Not till
he (it) had united with the many emanated existences (the Monad and Duad),
was a being produced. The τιμιον(“honoured”),
the something manifested, dwells in the centre as in the circumference, but
it is only the reflection of the Deity—the World-Soul. In this doctrine
we find the spirit of Esoteric Buddhism. [ Isis Unveiled, i,
xviii.]
And
it is that of Esoteric Brâhminism and of the Vedântin Adwaitis.
The two modern philosophers, Schopenhauer and von Hartmann teach the same ideas.
The Occultists say that:
The
psychic and ectenic forces, the “ideo-motor” and “electro-biological
powers,” “latent thought,” and even “unconscious cerebration”
theories can be condensed in two words: the Kabalistic Astral Light.[Isis
Unveiled, i, 58.]
Schopenhauer
only synthesized all this by calling it Will, and contradicted the men of Science
in their materialistic views, as von Hartmann did later on. The author of the
Philosophy of the Unconscious calls their views “an instinctual
prejudice.”
Furthermore,
he demonstrates that no experimenter can have anything to do with matter properly
so termed, but only with the forces into which he divides it. The visible
effects of matter are but the effects of force. He concludes thereby that
that which is now called matter is nothing but the aggregation of atomic forces,
to express which the word “matter” is used; outside of that, for
science, matter is but a word void of sense. [Isis Unveiled, i.
59.]
As
much, it is to be feared, as those other terms with which we are now concerned,
“Space,” “Nirvâna,” and so on.
The
bold theories and opinions expressed in Schopenhauer’s works
differ widely from those of the majority of our orthodox scientists.
[While they are to a great extent identical with those of
Esoteric Buddhism, the Secret
Doctrine of the East.] “In reality,” remarks
this daring speculator, “there is neither Matter nor
Spirit.
Matter
is Ever Giving - (Page
399) The tendency to gravitation in a stone is as unexplainable
as thought in the human brain . . . If matter can—no one knows why—fall
to the ground, then it can also—no one knows why—think. . . .
As soon, even in mechanics, as we trespass beyond the purely mathematical,
as soon as we reach the inscrutable adhesion, gravitation, and so on, we are
faced by phenomena which are to our senses as mysterious as the will
and thought in man : we find ourselves facing the incomprehensible,
for such is every force in nature. Where is, then, that matter which
you all pretend to know so well, and from which—being so familiar with
it—you draw all your conclusions and explanations, and attribute to
it all things? . . . That which can be fully realized by our reason and senses
is but the superficial: they can never reach the true inner substance of things.
Such was the opinion of Kant. If you consider that there is in a human head
some sort of a spirit, then you are obliged to concede the same to
a stone. If your dead and utterly-passive matter can manifest a tendency toward
gravitation or, like electricity, attract and repel and send out sparks, then
as well as the brain it can also think. In short, every particle of the so-called
spirit we can replace with an equivalent of matter, and every particle of
matter replace with spirit . . . Thus, it is not the Christian division of
all things into matter and spirit that can ever be found philosophically exact;
but only if we divide them into will and manifestation, which
form of division has naught to do with the former, for it spiritualizes everything;
all that which is in the first instance real and objective—body and
matter—it transforms into a representation, and every manifestation
into will.” [Parerga, II., iii, 112: quoted in Isis
Unveiled. i. 58.]
The
matter of science may be for all objective purposes a “dead and
utterly passive matter;” to the Occultist not an atom of it can be dead—“Life
is ever present in it.” We send the reader who would know more about it
to our article, “Transmigration of Life-Atoms.” [ Five
Years of Theosophy. p.338. et seq.] What we are now concerned
with is the doctrine of Nirvâna.
A
“system of atheism” it may be justly called, since it recognizes
neither God nor Gods—least of all a Creator, as it entirely rejects creation.
The Fecit ex nihilo is as incomprehensible to the Occult metaphysical
Scientist as it is to the scientific Materialist. It is at this point that all
agreement stops between the two. But if such be the sin of the Buddhist and
Brâhman Occultist, then Pantheists and Atheists, and also theistical Jews—the
Kabalists—must also plead “guilty” to it; yet no one would
ever think of calling the Hebrews of the Kabalah “Atheists.” Except
the Talmudistic and Christian exoteric systems there never was a religious Philosophy,
whether in the ancient or modern world, but rejected a priori the ex
nihilo hypothesis, simply because Matter was always co-eternalized with
Spirit.
(Page
400) Nirvâna, as well as the Moksha of the Vedântins,
is regarded by most of the Orientalists as a synonym of annihilation; yet no
more glaring injustice could be done, and this capital error must be pointed
out and disproved. On this most important tenet of the Brâhmo-Buddhistic
system—the Alpha and Omega of “Being” or “Non-Being”—rests
the whole edifice of Occult Metaphysics. Now the rectification of the great
error concerning Nirvâna may be very easily accomplished with relation
to the philosophically inclined, to those who,
In
the glass of things temporal see the image of things spiritual.
On
the other hand, to that reader who could never soar beyond the details of tangible
material form, our explanation will appear meaningless. He may comprehend and
even accept the logical inferences from the reasons given—the true spirit
will ever escape his intuitions. The word “nihil” having been misconceived
from the first, it is continually used as a sledge-hammer in the matter of Esoteric
Philosophy. Nevertheless it is the duty of the Occultist to try and explain
it.
Nirvâna
and Moksha, then, as said before, have their being in non-being, if such a paradox
be permitted to illustrate the meaning the better. Nirvâna, as some illustrious
Orientalists have attempted to prove does mean the “blowing-out”
[Prof. Max Mûller, in a letter to The Times (April. 1857),
maintained most vehemently that Nirvâna meant annihilation in the
fullest sense of the word. (Chips from a German Workshop, i. 287) But
in 1869, in a lecture before the General Meeting of the Association of German
Philologists at Kiel. “he distinctly declares his belief that the Nihilism
attributed to Buddha’s teaching forms no part of his doctrine, and that
it is wholly wrong to suppose that Nirvâna means annihiliation.”
(Trubner’s Amer-and Oriental Lit. Rec., Oct. 16th, 1869.)
] of all sentient existence. It is like the flame of a candle burnt out
to its last atom, and then suddenly extinguished. Quite so. Nevertheless, as
the old Arhat Nâgasena affirmed before the king who taunted him: “Nirvâna
is “—and Nirvâna is eternal. But the Orientalists deny
this, and say it is not so. In their opinion Nirvâna is not a re-absorption
in the Universal Force, not eternal bliss and rest, but it means literally “the
blowing-out, the extinction, complete annihilation, and not absorption.”
The Lankâvatâra quoted in support of their arguments by some
Sanskritists, and which gives the different interpretations of Nirvâna
by the Tîrthika Brâhmans, is no authority to one who goes to primeval
sources for information, namely, to the Buddha who taught the doctrine. As well
quote the Chârvâka Materialists in their support.
Blind
Faith Not Expected - (Page
401) If we bring as an argument the sacred Jaina books, wherein the
dying Gautama Buddha is thus addressed: “Arise into Nirvi [Nirvâna]
from this decrepit body into which thou hast been sent. . . . Ascend into thy
former abode, O blessed Avatâra;” and if we add that this seems
to us the very opposite of nihilism, we may be told that so far it may only
prove a contradiction, one more discrepancy in the Buddhist faith. If again
we remind the reader that since Gautama is believed to appear occasionally,
re-descending from his “former abode” for the good of humanity and
His faithful congregation, thus making it incontestable that Buddhism does not
teach final annihilation, we shall be referred to authorities to whom such teaching
is ascribed. And let us say at once: Men are no authority for us in questions
of conscience, nor ought they to be for anyone else. If anyone holds to Buddha’s
Philosophy, let him do and say as Buddha did and said; if a man calls himself
a Christian, let him follow the commandments of Christ—not the interpretations
of His many dissenting priests and sects.
In
A Buddhist Catechism the question is asked:
Are
there any dogmas in Buddhism which we are required to accept on faith?
A.
No. We are earnestly enjoined to accept nothing whatsoever on faith, whether
it be written in books, handed down from our ancestors, or taught by sages.
Our Lord Buddha has said that we must not believe in a thing said merely because
it is said; nor traditions because they have been handed down from antiquity;
nor rumours, as such; nor writings by sages, because sages wrote them; nor
fancies that we may suspect to have been inspired in us by a Deva (that is,
in presumed spiritual inspiration); nor from inferences drawn from some haphazard
assumption we may have made; nor because of what seems an analogical necessity;
nor on the mere authority of our teachers of masters. But we are to believe
when the writing, doctrine, or saying is corroborated by our own reason and
consciousness. “For this,” says he in concluding, “ I taught
you not to believe merely because you have heard, but when you believed of
your consciousness, then to act accordingly and abundantly.” [See
the Kalama Sutta of the Anguttaranikayo, as quoted in A Buddhist
Catechism by H. S. Olcott, President of the Theosophical Society. pp.
55.56.]
That
Nirvâna, or rather, that state in which we are in Nirvâna, is quite
the reverse of annihilation is suggested to us by our “reason and consciousness,’
and that is sufficient for us personally. At the same time, this fact being
inadequate and very ill-adapted for the general reader, something more efficient
may be added.
(Page
402) Without resorting to sources unsympathetic to Occultism, the
Kabalah furnishes us with the most luminous and clear proofs that the
term “nihil” in the minds of the Ancient Philosophers had a meaning
quite different from that it has now received at the hands of Materialists.
It means certainly “nothing”—or “no-thing.” F.
Kircher, in his work on the Kabalah and the Egyptian Mysteries [Œdipus
Ægypt., II. I, 291.] explains the term admirably. He tells
his readers that in the Zohar the first of the Sephiroth [Sephir,
or Aditi (mystic Space). The Sephiroth, be it understood, are identical with
the Hindu Prajâpatis, the Dhyân Chohans of Esoteric Buddhism, the
Zoroastrian Amshaspends, and finally with the Elohim—the “Seven
Angels of the Presence” of the Roman Catholic Church.] has a name
the significance of which is “ the Infinite,” but which was
translated indifferently by the Kabalists as “Ens” and “Non-Ens”
(“Being and “Non-Being”); a Being inasmuch as it is
the root and source of all other beings; Non-Being because Ain
Soph—the Boundless and the Causeless, the Unconscious and the Passive
Principle—resembles nought else in the Universe.
The
author adds:
This
is the reason why St. Denys did not hesitate to call it Nihil.
“Nihil”
therefore stands—even with some Christian theologians and thinkers, especially
with the earlier ones who lived but a few removes from the profound Philosophy
of the initiated Pagans—as a synonym for the impersonal, divine Principle,
the Infinite All, which is no Being or thing—the En or Ain Soph the Parabrahman
of the Vedânta. Now St. Denys was a pupil of St. Paul—an Initiate—and
this fact makes everything clear.
The
“Nihil” is in esse the Absolute Deity itself, the hidden
Power or Omnipresence degraded by Monotheism into an anthropomorphic Being,
with all the passions of a mortal on a grand scale. Union with That is not annihilation
in the sense understood in Europe. [According to the Eastern idea, the
All comes out from the One and returns to it again. Absolute annihilation is
simply unthinkable. Nor can eternal Matter be annihilated. Form may be annihilated:
co-relations may change. That is all. There can be no such thing as annihilation—in
the European sense—in the Universe.] In the East annihilation in
Nirvâna refers but to matter: that of the visible as well as the invisible
body for the astral body, the personal double, is still matter, however sublimated.
Buddha taught that the primitive Substance is eternal and unchangeable. Its
vehicle is the pure, liminous ether, the boundless, infinite Space.
Not
a void resulting from the absence of forms, but on the contrary, the foundations
of all forms . . . .
What
Annihilation Means - (Page
403) [This] denotes it to be the creation of Mâyâ,
all the works of which are as nothing before the uncreated Form [Spirit],
in whose profound and sacred depths all motion must cease for ever. [Isis
Unveiled. i, 289.]
Motion
here refers only to illusive objects, to their change as opposed to perpetuity,
rest—perpetual motion being the Eternal Law, the ceaseless Breath of the
Absolute.
The
mastery of Buddhistic dogmas can be attained only according to the Platonic
method : from universals to particulars. The key to it lies in the refined and
mystical tenets of spiritual influx and divine life.
Saith
Buddha:
Whosoever
is unacquainted with my Law, [The Secret Law, the “Doctrine
of the Heart,” so called in contrast to the “Doctrine of the Eye.”
or exoteric Buddhism.] and dies in that state must return to earth
until he becomes a perfect Samano [ascetic]. To
achieve this object he must destroy within himself the trinity of Mâyâ.
[“Illusive matter in its triple manifestation in the earthly,
and the astral or fontal Soul (the body) and the Platonian dual Soul—the
rational and the irrational one.”] He must extinguish his passions,
unite and identify himself with the Law [the teaching of the Secret Doctrine],
and comprehend the philosophy of annihilation. [Isis Unveiled.
i.289.]
No,
it is not in the dead-letter of Buddhistical literature that scholars may ever
hope to find the true solution of its metaphysical subtleties. Alone in all
antiquity the Pythagoreans understood them perfectly, and it is on the (to the
average Orientalist and the Materialist) incomprehensible abstractions of Buddhism
that Pythagoras grounded the principal tenets of his Philosophy.
Annihilation
means with the Buddhistical Philosophy only a dispersion of matter, in whatever
form or semblance of form it may be
for everything that bears a shape was created, and thus must sooner or later
perish, i.e., change that shape; therefore, as something temporal, though
seeming to be permanent, it is but an illusion, Mâyâ; for as eternity
has neither beginning nor end, the more or less prolonged duration of some particular
form passes, as it were, like an instantaneous flash of lightning. Before we
have the time to realize that we have seen it, it is gone and passed for ever;
hence even our astral bodies, pure ether, are but illusions of matter so long
as they retain their terrestrial outline. The latter changes, says the Buddhist,
according to the merits or demerits of the person during his lifetime, and this
is (Page 404) metempsychosis. When
the spiritual Entity breaks loose for ever from every particle of matter, then
only it enters upon the eternal and unchangeable Nirvâna. He exists in
Spirit, in nothing; as a form, a shape, a semblance, he is completely annihilated,
and thus will die no more, for Spirit alone is no Mâyâ, but the
only Reality in an illusionary universe of ever-passing forms.
It
is upon this Buddhist doctrine that the Pythagoreans grounded the principal
tenets of their philosophy. “Can that Spirit which gives life and motion,
and partakes of the nature of light, be reduced to nonentity?” they
ask. “Can that sensitive Spirit in brutes which exercises memory, one
of the rational faculties, die and become nothing?” And Whitelock Bulstrode
in his able defence of Pythagoras expounds this doctrine by adding:
“If
you say they [the brutes] breathe their Spirits into the air,
and there vanish, that is all that I contend for. The air indeed is the proper
place to receive them, being according to Laertius full of souls; and according
to Epicurus full of atoms, the principles of all things; for even this place
wherein we walk and birds fly has so much of a spiritual nature that it is
invisible, and therefore may well be the receiver of forms, since the forms
of all bodies are so; we can only see and hear its effects; the air itself
is too fine and above the capacity of the age. What then is the ether to the
region above, and what are the influences of forms that descend from thence?”
The Spirits of creatures, the Pythagoreans hold, who are emanations
of the most sublimated portions of ether—emanations, breaths, but
not forms. Ether is corruptible—all philosophers agree in that:—and
what is incorruptible is so far from being annihilated when it gets
rid of the form that it lays a good claim to immortality.
“But
what is that which has no body, no form; which is imponderable, invisible,
and indivisible—that which exists, and yet is not?” ask
the Buddhists. “It is Nirvâna,” is the answer. It is nothing—not
a region, but rather a state. [Isis Unveiled. i. 290.]
SECTION
XLVII
The
Secret Books of “Lam-Rin” and Dzyan
(Page
405) THE Book of Dzyan—from the Sanskrit word “Dhyân”
(mystic meditation)—is the first volume of the Commentaries upon the seven
secret folios of Kiu-te, and a Glossary of the public works of the same name.
Thirty-five volumes of Kiu-te for exoteric purposes and the use of the laymen
may be found in the possession of the Tibetan Gelugpa Lamas, in the library
of any monastery; and also fourteen books of Commentaries and Annotations on
the same by the initiated Teachers.
Strictly
speaking, those thirty-five books ought to be termed “The Popularized
Version” of the Secret Doctrine, full of myths, blinds, and errors; the
fourteen volumes of Commentaries, on the other hand—with their
translations, annotations, and an ample glossary of occult terms, worked out
from one small archaic folio, the Book of the Secret Wisdom of the World
[It is from the texts of all these works that the Secret Doctrine
has been given. The original matter would not make a small pamphlet, but the
explanations and notes from the Commentaries and Glossaries might be worked
into ten volumes as large as Isis Unveiled.]—contain a digest
of all the Occult Sciences. These, it appears, are kept secret and apart, in
the charge of the Teshu Lama of Tji-gad-je. The Books of Kiu-te are comparatively
modern having been edited within the last millennium, whereas the earliest volumes
of the Commentaries are of untold antiquity, some fragments of the original
cylinders having been preserved. With the exception that they explain and correct
some of the too fabulous, and to every appearance, grossly exaggerated accounts
in the Books of Kiu-tet [The monk Della Penna makes considerable fun
in his Memoirs (see Markham’s Tibet) of certain statements
in the books of Kiu-te. He brings to the notice of the Christian public “the
great mountain 160.000 leagues high” (a Tibetan league consisting of five
miles) in the Himâlayan Range. “According to their law,” he
says, “in the west of this world is an eternal world . . . a paradise
and in it a Saint called Hopahma, which means ‘Saint of Splendour and
Infinite Light.’ This Saint has many disciples who are all Chang-chub,”
which means, he adds in a footnote. “the Spirits of those who, on account
of their perfection, do not care to become saints, and train and instruct the
bodies of the reborn Lamas . . . so that they may help the living.” Which
means that the presumably “dead” Yang-Chhub (not “Chang-chub”)
are simply living Bodhisattvas, some of those known as Bhante (“the Brothers”).
As to the “mountain 160.000 leagues high,” the Commentary
which gives the key to such statements explains that according to the code used
by the writers, “to the west of the Snowy Mountain” 160 leagues
[the cyphers being a blind] from a certain spot and by a direct
road, is the Bhante Yul [the country of ‘Seat of the Brothers’],
the residence of Mahâ-Chohan . .” etc. This is the real meaning.
The “Hopahma” of Della Penna is—the Mahâ-Chohan, the
Chief.]—properly so called—the Commentaries have little
to do with these. They stand in relation to them (Page
406) as the Chaldæo-Jewish Kabalah stands to the Mosaic
Books. In the work known as the Avatumsaka Sûtra, in section: “The
Supreme Ãtman [ Soul] as manifested in the character of
the Arhats and Pratyeka Buddhas,” it is stated that:
Because
from the beginning all sentient creatures have confused the truth and embraced
the false, therefore there came into existence a hidden knowledge called Alaya
Vijñâna.
“Who
is in possession of the true knowledge?” is asked. “The great Teachers
of the Snowy Mountain,” is the response.
These
“great Teachers” have been known to live in the “Snowy Range”
of the Himâlayas for countless ages. To deny in the face of millions of
Hindus the existence of their great Gurus, living in the Ãshrams scattered
all over the Trans- or the Cis-Himâlayan slopes is to make oneself ridiculous
in their eyes. When the Buddhist Saviour appeared in India, their Ãshrams—for
it is rarely that these great Men are found in Lamaseries, unless on a short
visit—were on the spots they now occupy, and that even before the Brâhmans
themselves came from Central Asia to settle on the Indus. And before that more
than one Ãryan Dvija of fame and historical renown had sat at their feet,
learning that which culminated later on in one or another of the great philosophical
schools. Most of these Himâlayan Bhante were Aryan Brâhmans and
ascetics.
No
student, unless very advanced, would be benefited by the perusal of those exoteric
volumes. [ In some MSS, notes before us, written by Gelung (priest)
Thango-pa Chhe-go-mo, it is said: “The few Roman Catholic missionaries
who have visited our land (under protest) in the last century and have repaid
our hospitality by turning our sacred literature into ridicule, have shown little
discretion and still less knowledge. It is true that the Sacred Canon of the
Tibetans, the Kahgyur and Bstanhgyur, comprises 1707 distinct
works—1083 public and 624 secret volumes, the former being composed of
350 and the latter of 77 volumes folio. May we humbly invite the good missionaries,
however, to tell us when they ever succeeded in getting a glimpse of the last-named
secret folios? Had they even by chance seen them I can assure the Western Pandits
that these manuscripts and folios could never be understood even by a born Tibetan
without a key (a) to their peculiar characters, and (b) to their
hidden meaning. In our system every description of locality is figurative, every
name and word purposely veiled: and one has first to study the mode of deciphering
and then to learn the equivalent secret terms and symbols for nearly every word
of the religious heritage. The Egyptian enchorial or hieractic system is child’s
play to our sacerdotal puzzles.”] They must be read with a key
to their meaning and that key can only be found in the Commentaries.
Moreover there are some comparatively modern works that are positively injurious
so far as fair comprehension of even exoteric Buddhism is concerned. Such are
the Buddhist Cosmos, by Bonze Jin-ch’on of Pekin; the Shing-Tau-ki
( or The Records of the Enlightenment of Tathâgata), by Wang
Puk—seventh century; Hisai Sûtra (or Book of Creation),
and some others.
SECTION
XLVIII
Amita
Buddha Kwan-Shai-Yin, and Kwan-Yin
—What the “Book of Dzyan” and the Lamaseries of Tsong-Kha-Pa
Say
(Page
407) AS a supplement to the Commentaries there are many secret
folios on the lives of the Bhuddhas and Bodhisattvas, and among these there
is one on Prince Gautama and another on His reincarnation in Tsong-Kha-pa. This
great Tibetan Reformer of the fourteenth century, said to be a direct incarnation
of Amita Buddha, is the founder of the secret School near Tji-gad-je, attached
to the private retreat of the Teshu Lama. It is with Him that began the regular
system of Lamaic incarnations of Buddhas (Sang-gyas), or of Shâkya-Thub-pa
(Shakyamuni). Amida or Amita Buddha is called by the author of Chinese Buddhism,
a mythical being. He speaks of
Amida
Buddha (Ami-to Fo) a fabulous personage, worshipped assiduously—like
Kwan-yin—by the Northern Buddhists, but unknown in Siam, Burmah, and
Ceylon. [Chinese Buddhism. p.171.]
Very
likely. Yet Amida Buddha is not a “fabulous” personage, since (a)
“Amida” is the Senzar form of “Ãdi” ; “Ãdi-Buddhi”
and “Ãdi-Buddha, “ [“Buddhi” is a Sanskrit
term for “discrimination” or intellect (the sixth principle), and
“Buddha” is “wise,” “wisdom,” and also the
planet Mercury.] as already shown, existed ages ago as a Sanskrit term
for “Primeval Soul” and “Wisdom” ; and (b) the
name was applied to Gautama Shâkyamuni, the last Buddha in India, from
the seventh century, when Buddhism was introduced into Tibet. “Amitâbha”
(in Chinese, “Wu-lian-sheu”) means literally “Boundless Age,”
a (Page 408) synonym of “En”
or “Ain-Suph,” the “Ancient of Days,” and is an epithet
that connects Him directly with the Boundless Âdi-Buddhi (primeval and
Universal Soul) of the Hindus, as well as with the Anima Mundi of all the ancient
nations of Europe and the Boundless and Infinite of the Kabalists. If Amitâbha
be a fiction of the Tibetans, or a new form of Wu-liang-sheu, “a fabulous
personage,” as the author-compiler of Chinese Buddhism tells his
readers, then the “fable” must be a very ancient one. For on another
page he says himself that the addition to the canon of the books containing
the
Legends
of Kwan-yin and of the Western heaven with its Buddha, Amitâbha, was also
previous to the Council of Kashmere, a little before the beginning of our era,
[This curious contradiction may be found in Chinese Buddhism.
pp. 171. 273. The reverend author assures his readers that “to the philosophic
Buddhists . . . Amitâbha Yoshi Fo, and the others are nothing but the
signs of ideas” (p,236). Very true. But so should be all other deific
names, such as Jehovah, Allah, etc., and if they are not simply “signs
of ideas” this would only show that minds that receive them otherwise
are not “philosophic” : it would not at all afford serious proof
that there are personal, living Gods of these names in reality.]
and he places
the origin of the primitive Buddhist books which are common to the Northern
and Southern Buddhists before 246. B.C.
Since
Tibetans accepted Buddhism only in the seventh century A.D., how comes it that
they are charged with inventing Amita-Buddha? Besides which, in Tibet, Amitâbha
is called Odpag-med which shows that it is not the name but the abstract idea
that was first accepted of an unknown, invisible, and Impersonal Power—taken,
moreover, from the Hindu “Adi-Buddhi,” and not from the Chinese
“Amitâbha.” [The Chinese Amitâbha (Wu-liang-sheu)
and the Tibetan Amitâbha (Odpag-med) have now become personal Gods, ruling
over and living in the celestial region of Sukhâvati, or Tushita (Tibetan:Devachan):
while Àdi-Buddhi, of the philosophic Hindu, and Amita Buddha of the philosophic
Chinaman and Tibetan, are names for universal primeval ideas.] There
is a great difference between the popular Odpag-med (Amitâbha) who sits
enthroned in Devachan (Sukhâvati), according to the Mani Kambum
Scriptures—the oldest historical work in Tibet, and the philosophical
abstraction called Amita Buddha, the name being passed now to the earthly Buddha
Gautama.
SECTION
XLIX
Tsong-Kha-Pa—Lohans
in China
(Page
409) IN an article, “Reincarnation in Tibet,” everything
that could be said about Tsong-Kha-pa was published. [See The Theosophist
for March, 1882.] It was stated that this reformer was not, as is alleged
by Pârsi scholars, an incarnation of one of the celestial Dhyânis,
or the five heavenly Buddhas, said to have been created by Shâkyamuni
after he has risen to Nirvâna, but that he was an incarnation of Amita
Buddha Himself. The records preserved in the Gon-pa, the chief Lamasery of Tda-shi-Hlumpo,
show that Sang-gyas left the regions of the “Western Paradise” to
incarnate Himself in Tsong-Kha-pa, in consequence of the great degradation into
which His secret doctrines had fallen.
Whenever
made too public, the Good Law of Cheu [magical powers] fell
invariably into sorcery or “black magic.” The Dwijas, the Hoshang
[Chinese monks] and the Lamas could alone be entrusted safely with
the formulæ.
Until
the Tsong-Kha-pa period there had been no Sang-gyas (Buddha) incarnations in
Tibet.
Tsong-Kha-pa
gave the signs whereby the presence of one of the twenty-five Bodhisattvas [The
intimate relation of the twenty-five Buddhas (Bodhisattvas) with the twenty-five
Tattvas (the Conditioned or Limited) of the Hindus is interesting.] or
of the Celestial Buddhas (Dhyân Chohans) in a human body might be recognized,
and He strictly forbade necromancy. This led to a split amongst the Lamas, and
the malcontents allied themselves with the aboriginal Bhons against the reformed
Lamaism. Even now they form a powerful sect, practising the most disgusting
rites all over Sikkhim, Bhutan, Nepaul, and even on the borderlands of Tibet.
It was worse then. With the permission of the Tda-shu or Teshu Lama, [
It is curious to note the great importance given by European Orientalists to
the Dalai Lamas of Lhasa, and their utter ignorance as to the Tda-shu (or Teshu)
Lamas, while it is the latter who began the hierarchical series of Buddhi-incarnations,
and are de facto the “popes” in Tibet: the Dalai Lamas are
the creations of Nabang-lob-Sang, the Tda-shu Lama who was Himself the sixth
incarnation of Amita, through Tsong-Kha-pa, though very few seem to be aware
of that fact.] some hundred Lohans (Arhats), to avert strife, (Page
410) went to settle in China in the famous monastery near Tien-t’-ai,
where they soon became subjects for legendary lore, and continue to be so to
this day. They had been already preceded by other Lohans.
The
world-famous disciples of Tathâgata, called the “sweet-voiced”
on account of their ability to chant the Mantras with magical effect. [The
chanting of a Mantra is not a prayer, but rather a magical sentence in which
the law of Occult causation connects itself with and depends on, the will
and acts of its singer. It is a succession of Sanskrit sounds and when its
string of words and sentences is pronounced according to the magical formulae
in the Atharva Veda, but understood by the few, some Mantras produce
an instantaneous and very wonderful effect. In its esoteric sense it contains
the Vâch (the “mystic speech”) which resides in the Mantra,
or rather in its sounds, since it is according to the vibrations, one way
or the other, of ether that the effect is produced. The “sweet singers”
were called by that name because they were experts in Mantras. Hence the legend
in China that the singing and melody of the Lohans are heard at dawn by the
priests from their cells in the monastery of Fang-Kwang. (See Biography
of Chi-Kai in Tien-tai-nan-tchi.)]
The
first ones came from Kashmir in the year 3,000 lf Kali Yuga (about a century
before the Christian era). [The celebrated Lohan, Mâdhyantika,
who converted the king and whole country of Kashmir to Buddhism, sent a body
of Lohans to preach the Good Law. He was the sculptor who raised to Buddha the
famous statue one hundred feet high, which Hiuen-Tsang saw at Dardu, to the
north of the Punjab. As the same Chinese traveller mentions a temple ten Li
from Peshawur—350 feet round and 850 feet high—which was at his
time (A.D.550) already 850 years old. Koeppen thinks that so far back as 292
B.C. Buddhism was the prevalent religion in the Punjab.] while the last
ones arrived at the end of the fourteenth century, 1,500 years later; and, finding
no room for themselves at the lamasery of Yihigching, they built for their own
use the largest monastery of all on the sacred island of Pu-to (Buddha, or Put,
in Chinese), in the province of Chusan. There the Good Law, the “Doctrine
of the Heart,” flourished for several centuries. But when the island was
desecrated by a mass of Western foreigners, the chief Lohans left for the mountains
of ----------------. In the Pagoda of Pi-yun-ti, near Pekin, one can still see
the “Hall of the Five-hundred Lohans.” There the statues of the
first-comers are arranged below, while one solitary Lohan is placed quite under
the roof of the building, which seems to have been built in commemoration of
their visit.
The
works of the Orientalists are full of the direct landmarks of Arhats (Adepts),
possessed of thaumaturgic powers, but these are spoken of—whenever the
subject cannot be avoided—with unconcealed scorn. Whether innocently ignorant
of, or purposely ignoring, the importance of the Occult element and symbology
in the various Religions they undertake to explain, short work is generally
made of such passages, and they are left untranslated. In simple justice however,
it should be allowed that much as all such miracles may have been exaggerated
by popular reverence and fancy, they are neither less credible nor less attested
in “heathen” annals than are those of the numerous Christian Saints
in the church chronicles. Both have an equal right to a place in their respective
histories.
The
Lost Word - (Page
411) If, after the beginning of persecution against Buddhism, the
Arhats were no more heard of in India, it was because, their vows prohibiting
retaliation, they had to leave the country and seek solitude and security in
China, Tibet, Japan, and elsewhere. The sacerdotal powers of the Brâhmans
being at that time unlimited, the Simons and Apolloniuses of Buddhism had as
much chance of recognition and appreciation by the Brâhmanical Irenæuses
and Tertullians as had their successors in the Judæan and Roman worlds.
It was a historical rehearsal of the dramas that were enacted centuries later
in Christendom. As in the case of the so-called “Heresiarchs” of
Christianity, it was not for rejecting the Vedas or the sacred Syllable
that the Buddhist Arhats were persecuted, but for understanding too well the
secret meaning of both. It was simply because their knowledge was regarded as
dangerous and their presence in India unwelcome, that they had to emigrate.
Nor
were there a smaller number of Initiates among the Brâhmans themselves.
Even today one meets most wonderfully-gifted Sâddhus and Yogîs,
obliged to keep themselves unnoticed and in the shadow, not only owing to the
absolute secresy imposed upon them at their Initiation but also for fear of
the Anglo-Indian tribunals and courts of law, wherein judges are determined
to regard as charlatanry, imposition, and fraud, the exhibition of, or claim
to, any abnormal powers, and one may judge of the past by the present. Centuries
after our era the Initiates of the inner temples and the Mathams (monastic communities)
chose a superior council, presided over by an all-powerful Brahm-Ãtmâ,
the Supreme Chief of all those Mahâtmâs. This pontificate could
be exercised only by a Brâhman who had reached a certain age, and he it
was who was the sole guardian of the mystic formula, and he was the Hierophant
who created great Adepts. He alone could explain the meaning of the sacred word,
AUM, and of all the religious symbols and rites. And whosoever among those Initiates
of the Supreme Degree revealed to a profane a single one of the truths, even
the smallest of the secrets entrusted to him, had to die; and he who received
the confidence was put to death.
But
there existed, and still exists to this day, a Word far surpassing the mysterious
monosyllable, and which renders him who comes into possession of its key nearly
the equal of Brahman. The Brahmâtmâs alone possess this key, and
we know that to this day there are two (Page
412) great Initiates in Southern India who possess it. It can be
passed only at death, for it is the “Lost Word.” No torture, no
human power, could force its disclosure by a Brâhman who knows it; and
it is well guarded in Tibet.
Yet
this secresy and this profound mystery are indeed disheartening, since they
alone—the Initiates of India and Tibet—could thoroughly dissipate
the thick mists hanging over the history of Occultism, and force its claims
to be recognized. The Delphic injunction, “Know thyself,”
seems for the few in this age. But the fault ought not to be laid at the door
of the Adepts, who have done all that could be done, and have gone as far as
Their rules permitted, to open the eyes of the world. Only, while the European
shrinks from public obloquy and the ridicule unsparingly thrown on Occultists,
the Asiatic is being discouraged by his own Pandits. These profess to labour
under the gloomy impression that no Bîga Vidyâ, no Arhatship (Adeptship),
is possible during the Kali Yuga (the “Black Age”) we are now passing
through. Even the Buddhists are taught that the Lord Buddha is alleged to have
prophesied that the power would die out in “one millennium after His death.”
But this is an entire mistake. In the Dîgha Nikâya the Buddha
says:
Hear,
Subhadra! The world will never be without Rahats, if the ascetics in my congregations
well and truly keep my precepts.
A
similar contradiction of the view brought forward by the Brâhmans is made
by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gîtâ, and there is further the
actual appearance of many Sâddhus and miracle-workers in the past, and
even in the present age. The same holds good for China and Tibet. Among the
commandments of Tsong-Kha-pa there is one that enjoins the Rahats (Arhats) to
make an attempt to enlighten the world, including the “white barbarians,”
every century, at a certain specified period of the cycle. Up to the present
day none of these attempts has been very successful. Failure has followed failure.
Have we to explain the fact by the light of a certain prophecy? It is said that
up to the time when Phan-chhen-rin-po-chhe (the Great Jewel of Wisdom) [A
title of the Tda-shu-Illum-po Lama.] condescends to be reborn in the
land of the P’helings (Westerners), and appearing as the Spiritual Conqueror
(Chom-den-da), destroys the errors and ignorance of the ages, it will be of
little use to try to uproot the misconceptions of P’heling-pa (Europe):
her sons will listen to no one.
Tibetan
Prophecies - (Page
413) Another prophecy declares that the Secret Doctrine shall remain
in all its purity in Bhod-yul (Tibet), only to the day that it is kept free
from foreign invasion. The very visits of Western natives, however friendly,
would be baneful to the Tibetan populations. This is the true key to Tibetan
exclusiveness.
SECTION
L
A
Few More Misconceptions Corrected
(Page
414) NOTWITHSTANDING widespread misconceptions and errors—often
most amusing to one who has certain knowledge of the true doctrines—about
Buddhism generally, and especially about Buddhism in Tibet, all the Orientalists
agree that the Buddha’s foremost aim was to lead human beings to salvation
by teaching them to practise the greatest purity and virtue, and by detaching
them from the service of this illusionary world, and the love of one’s
still more illusionary—because so evanescent and unreal—body and
physical self. And what is the good of a virtuous life, full of privations and
suffering, if the only result of it is to be annihilation at the end? If even
the attainment of that supreme perfection which leads the Initiate to remember
the whole series of his past lives, and to foresee that of the future ones,
by the full development of that inner, divine eye in him, and to acquire the
knowledge that unfolds the causes [The twelve Nidânas, called in
Tibetan Tin-bred Chug-nyi, which are based upon the “Four Truths.”]
of the ever-recurring cycles of existence, brings him finally to non-being,
and nothing more—then the whole system is idiotic, and Epicureanism is
far more philosophical than such Buddhism. He who is unable to comprehend
the subtle, and yet so potent, difference between existence in a material or
physical state and a purely spiritual existence—Spirit or “Soul-life”—will
never appreciate at their full value the grand teachings of the Buddha, even
in their exoteric form. Individual or personal existence is the cause of pains
and sorrows; collective and impersonal life-eternal is full of divine bliss
and joy for ever, with neither causes nor effects to darken its light. And the
hope for such a life-eternal is the keynote of the whole of Buddhism. If we
are told that impersonal existence is no existence at all, but amounts to annihilation,
as was maintained by some French reincarnationists, then we would ask:
Misrepresentations
of Buddhism
-
(Page
415) What difference can it make in the spiritual perceptions of
an Ego whether he enter Nirvâna loaded with recollections only of his
own personal lives—tens of thousands according to the modern reincarnationists—or
whether, merged entirely in the Parabrâhmic state it becomes one with
the All, with the absolute knowledge and the absolute feeling of representing
collective humanities? Once that an Ego lives only ten distinct individual lives
he must necessarily lose his one self, and become mixed up—merged, so
to say—with these ten selves. It really seems that so long as this great
mystery remains a dead letter to the world of Western thinkers, and especially
to the Orientalists, the less the latter undertake to explain it the better
for Truth.
Of
all the existing religious Philosophies, Buddhism is the least understood. The
Lassens, Webers, Wassiljows, the Burnoufs and Juliens, and even such “eye-witnesses”
of Tibetan Buddhism as Csoma de Köros and the Schlagintweits, have hitherto
only added perplexity to confusion. None of these has ever received his information
from a genuine Gelugpa source: all have judged Buddhism from the bits of knowledge
picked up at Tibetan frontier lamaseries, in countries thickly populated by
Bhutanese and Leptchas, Bhons, and red-capped Dugpas, along the line of the
Himâlayas. Hundreds of volumes purchased from Burats, Shamans, and Chinese
Buddhists, have been read and translated, glossed and misinterpreted according
to invariable custom. Esoteric Schools would cease to be worthy of their name
were their literature and doctrines to become the property of even their profane
co-religionists—still less of the Western public. This is simple common-sense
and logic. Nevertheless this is a fact which our Orientalists have ever refused
to recognize: hence they have gone on, gravely discussing the relative merits
and absurdities of idols, “soothsaying tables,” and “magical
figures of Phurbu” on the “square tortoise.” None of these
have anything to do with the real philosophical Buddhism of the Gelugpa, or
even of the most educated among the Sakyapa and Kadampa sects. All such “plates”
and sacrificial tables, Chinsreg magical circles, etc., were avowedly got from
Sikkhim, Bhutan, and Eastern Tibet, from Bhons and Dugpas. Nevertheless, these
are given as characteristics of Tibetan Buddhism! It would be as fair to judge
the unread Philosophy of Bishop Berkeley after studying Christianity in the
clown-worship of Neapolitan lazzaroni, dancing a mystic jig before the idol
of St. Pip, or carrying the ex-voto in wax of the phallus of SS Cosmo
and Domiano, at Tsernie.
(Page
416) It is quite true that the primitive Shrâvakas (listeners
or hearers) and the Shramanas (the “thought-restrainers” and the
“pure”) have degenerated, and that many Buddhist sects have fallen
into mere dogmatism and ritualism. Like every other Esoteric, half-suppressed
teaching, the words of the Buddha convey a double meaning, and every sect has
gradually come to claim to be the only one knowing the correct meaning, and
thus to assume supremacy over the rest. Schism has crept in, and has fastened,
like a hideous cancer, on the fair body of early Buddhism. Nâgârjuna’s
Mahâyâna (“Great Vehicle”) School was opposed by the
Hînayâna (or “Little Vehicle”) System, and even the
Yogâchârya of Ãryâsanga became disfigured by the yearly
pilgrimage from India to the shores of Mansarovara, of hosts of vagabonds with
matted locks who play at being Yogis and Fakirs, preferring this to work. An
affected detestation of the world, and the tedious and useless practice of the
counting of inhalations and exhalations as a means to produce absolute tranquillity
of mind or meditation, have brought this school within the region of Hatha Yoga,
and have made it heir to the Brâhmanical Tîrthikas. And though its
Srotâpatti, its Sakridâgâmin, Anâgâmin, and Arhats,
[The Scrotâpatti is one who has attained the first Path
of comprehension in the real and the unreal: the Sakridâgâmin is
the candidate for one of the higher Initiations: “one who is to receive
birth once more” the Anâgâmin is he who has attained the “third
path,” or literally, “he who will not be reborn again” unless
he so wishes it, having the options of being reborn in any of the “worlds
of the Gods,” or of remaining in Devachan, or of choosing an earthly body
with a philanthropic object. An Arhat is one who has reached the higher Path:
he may merge into Nirvâna at will, while here on earth.] bear the
same names in almost every school, yet the doctrines of each differ greatly,
and none of these is likely to gain real Abhijñâs (the supernatural
abnormal five powers).
One
of the chief mistakes of the Orientalists when judging on “internal (?)
evidence,” as they express it, was that they assumed that the Pratyeka
Buddhas, the Bodhisattvas, and the “Perfect” Buddhas were a later
development of Buddhism. For on these three chief degrees are based the seven
and twelve degrees of the Hierarchy of Adeptship. The first are those who have
attained the Bodhi (wisdom) of the Buddhas, but do not become Teachers. [The
Pratyeka Buddha stands on the level of the Buddha, but His work for the world
has nothing to do with its teaching, and His office has always been surrounded
with mystery. The preposterous view that He, at such superhuman height of power,
wisdom and love could be selfish, is found in the exoteric books, though it
is hard to see how it can have arisen. H.P.B charged me to correct the mistake,
as she had, in a careless moment, copied such a statement elsewhere.—A.B.]
The human Bodhisattvas are candidates, so to say, for perfect Buddhaship (in
Kalpas to come), and with the option of using their powers now if need be.
A
Mysterious Land - (Page
417) “Perfect” Buddhas are simply “perfect”
Initiates. All these are men, and not disembodied Beings, as is given out in
the Hinayâna exoteric books. Their correct character may be found only
in the secret volumes of Lugrub or Nâgârjuna, the founder of the
Mahâyâna system, who is said to have been initiated by the Nâgas
(fabulous “Serpents,” the veiled name for an Initiate or Mahâtmâ).
The fabled report found in Chinese records that Nâgârjuna considered
his doctrine to be in opposition to that of Gautama Buddha, until he discovered
from the Nâgas that it was precisely the doctrine that had been secretly
taught by Shâkyamuni Himself, is an allegory, and is based upon the reconciliation
between the old Brâhmanical secret Schools in the Himâlayas and
Gautama’s Esoteric teachings, both parties having at first objected to
the rival schools of the other. The former, the parent of all others, had been
established beyond the Himâlayas for ages before the appearance of Shâkyamuni.
Gautama was a pupil of this; and it was with them, those Indian Sages, that
He has learned the truths of the Sungata, the emptiness and impermanence of
every terrestrial, evanescent thing, and the mysteries of Prajñâ
Pâramitâ, or “knowledge across the River,” which finally
lands the “Perfect One” in the regions of the One Reality. But His
Arhats were not Himself. Some of them were ambitious, and they modified certain
teachings after the great councils, and it is on account of these “heretics”
that the Mother-School at first refused to allow them to blend their schools,
when persecution began driving away the Esoteric Brotherhood from India. But
when finally most of them submitted to the guidance and control of the chief
Ãshrams, then the Yogâchârya of Ãryâsanga was
merged into the oldest Lodge. For it is there from time immemorial that
has lain concealed the final hope and light of the world, the salvation of mankind.
Many are the names of that School and land, the name of the latter being now
regarded by the Orientalists as the mythic name of a fabulous country. It is
from this mysterious land, nevertheless, that the Hindu expects his Kalki Avatâra,
the Buddhist his Maitreya, the Pârsî his Sosiosh, and the Jew his
Messiah, and so would the Christian expect thence his Christ—if he only
knew of it.
There,
and there alone, reigns Paranishpanna (Gunggrub), the absolutely perfect comprehension
of Being and Non-Being, the changeless true Existence in Spirit, even while
the latter is seemingly still in the body, every inhabitant thereof being a
Non-Ego because he has become the Perfect Ego. Their voidness is “self-existent
and perfect” (Page 418) —if
there were profane eyes to sense and perceive it—because it has become
absolute; the unreal being transformed into conditionless Reality, and the realities
of this, our world, having vanished in their own nature into thin (non-existing)
air. The “Absolute Truth” (Dondam-pay-den-pa; Sanskrit: Parmârthasatya),
having conquered “relative truth” (Kunza-bchi-den-pa; Sanskrit:
Samvritisatya), the inhabitants of the mysterious region are thus supposed to
have reached the state called in mystic phraseology Svasamvedanâ (“self-analyzing
reflection”) and Paramârtha, or that absolute consciousness of the
personal merged into the impersonal Ego, which is above all, hence above illusion
in every sense. Its “Perfect” Buddhas and Bodhisattvas may be on
every nimble Buddhist tongue as celestial—therefore unreachable Beings,
while these names may suggest and say nothing to the dull perceptions of the
European profane. What matters it to Those who, being in this world, yet live
outside and far beyond our illusive earth! Above Them there is but one class
of Nirvânîs, namely, the Chos-ku (Dharmakâya), or the Nirvânîs
“without remains”—the pure Arûpa, the formless Breaths.
[ It is an erroneous idea which makes the Orientalists take literally
the teaching of the Mahâyâna School about the three different kinds
of bodies, namely, the Prulpa-ku, the Longehod-dzocpaig-ku, and the Chos-ku,
as all pertaining to the Nirvânic condition. There are two kinds of Nirvâna:
the earthly, and that of the purely disembodied Spirits. These three “bodies”
are the three envelopes—all more or less physical—which are at the
disposal of the Adept who has entered and crossed the six Pâramitâs,
or “Paths” of Buddha. Once He enters upon the seventh, He can return
no more to earth. See Cosma, Jour. As. Soc. Beng., vii. 142: and Schott,
Buddhismus, p.9, who give it otherwise.]
Thence
emerge occasionally the Bodhisattvas in their Prul-pai-ka (or Nirmânakâya)
body and, assuming an ordinary appearance, they teach men. There are conscious,
as well as unconscious, incarnations.
Most
of the doctrines contained in the Yogâchârya, or Mahâyâna
systems are Esoteric, like the rest. One day the profane Hindu and Buddhist
may begin to pick the Bible to pieces, taking it literally. Education
is fast spreading in Asia, and already there have been made some attempts in
this direction, so that the tables may then be cruelly turned on the Christians.
Whatever conclusions the two may arrive at, they will never be half as absurd
and unjust as some of the theories launched by Christians against their respective
Philosophies. Thus, according to Spence Hardy, at death the Arhat enters Nirvâna:
That
is, he ceases to exist.
And,
agreeably to Major Jacob, the Jîvanmukta,
Absorbed
into Brahma, enters upon an unconscious and stonelike existence. [Vedânta
Sâra, translated by Major Jacob, p.119.]
Absurd
Conclusions - (Page
419) Shankarâchârya is shown as saying in his prolegomena
to the Shvetâshvatara:
Gnosis,
once arisen, requires nothing farther for the realization of its result: it
needs subsidia only that it may arise.
The
Theosophist, it has been argued, as long as he lives, may do good and evil as
he chooses and incur no stain, such is the efficacy of gnosis. And it is further
alleged that the doctrine of Nirvâna lends itself to immoral inferences,
and that the Quietists of all ages have been taxed with immortality. [Ibid.
p.122.]
According
to Wassilyew [Der Buddhismus, pp. 327, 357, et seq., quoted
by Schlagintweit.] and Csoma de Köros, [Buddhism in Tibet,
p.41.] the Prasanga School adopted a peculiar mode of
Deducing
the absurdity and erroneousness of every esoteric opinion. [Jour
of As. Soc. Bengal, vii, 144, quoted as above.]
Correct
interpretations of Buddhist Philosophy are crowned by that gloss on a thesis
from the Prasanga School, that
Even
an Arhat goes to hell in case he doubt anything, [Buddhism in Tibet,
p.44.]
thus
making of the most free-thinking religion in the world a blind-faith system.
The “threat” refers simply to the well-known law that even an Initiate
may fail, and thus have his object utterly ruined, if he doubt for one moment
the efficacy of his psychic powers—the alphabet of Occultism, as every
Kabalist well knows.
The
Tibetan sect of the Ngo-vo-nyid-med par Mraba (“they who deny existence,”
or “regard nature as Mâyâ”) [They maintain also
the existence of One Absolute pure Nature, Parabrahman: the illusion of everything
outside of it; the leading of the individual Soul—a Ray of the “Universal”—into
the true nature of existence and things by Yoga alone.] can never be
contrasted for one moment with some of the nihilistic or materialistic schools
of India, such as the Chârvâka. They are pure Vedântins—if
anything—in their views. And if the Yogâchâryas may be compared
with, or called the Tibetan Vishishtadwaitîs, the Prasanga School is surely
the Adwaita Philosophy of the land. It was divided into two: one was originally
founded by Bhavya, the Svantatra Madhyamika School, and the other by Buddhapâlita;
both have their exoteric and esoteric divisions. It is necessary to belong to
the latter to know anything of the (Page 420)
esoteric doctrines of that sect, the most metaphysical and philosophical of
all. Chandrakirti (Dava Dagpa) wrote his commentaries on the Prasanga doctrines
and taught publicly; and he expressly states that there are two ways of entering
the “Path” to Nirvâna. Any virtuous man can reach by Naljorngonsum
(“meditation by self-perception”), the intuitive comprehension of
the four Truths, without either belonging to a monastic order or having been
initiated. In this case it was considered as a heresy to maintain that the visions
which may arise in consequence of such meditation, or Vishnâ (internal
knowledge), are not susceptible of errors (Namtog or false visions), for they
are. Alaya alone having an absolute and eternal existence, can alone have absolute
knowledge; and even the Initiate, in his Nirmânakâya [Nirmânakâya
(also Nirvânakâya, vulg.) is the body or Self “with remains,”
or the influence of terrestrial attributes, however spiritualized, clinging
yet to that Self. An initiate in Dharmakâya, or in Nirvâna “without
remains,” is the Jîvanmukta, the Perfect Initiate, who separates
his Higher Self entirely from his body during Samâdhi. [It will
be noticed that these two words are here used in a sense other than that previously
given.—A.B.] body may commit an occasional mistake in accepting
the false for the true in his explorations of the “Causeless” World.
The Dharmakâya Bodhisattva is alone infallible, when in real Samâdhi.
Ãlaya, or Nying-po, being the root and basis of all, invisible and incomprehensible
to human eye and intellect, it can reflect only its reflection—not Itself.
Thus that reflection will be mirrored like the moon in tranquil and clear water
only in the passionless Dharmakâya intellect, and will be distorted by
the flitting image of everything perceived in a mind that is itself liable to
be disturbed.
In
short, this doctrine is that of the Râj-Yoga in its practice of the two
kinds of the Samâdhi state; one of the “Paths” leading to
the sphere of bliss (Sukhâvatî or Devachan), where man enjoys perfect,
unalloyed happiness, but is yet still connected with personal existence; and
the other Path that leads to entire emancipation from the worlds of illusion,
self, and unreality. The first one is open to all and is reached by merit simply;
the second—a hundredfold more rapid—is reached through knowledge
(Initiation). Thus the followers of the Prasanga School are nearer to Esoteric
Buddhism than are the Yogâchâryas; for their views are those of
the most secret Schools, and only the echo of these doctrines is heard in the
Yamyangshapda and other works in public circulation and use. For instance,
the unreality of two out of the three divisions of time is given in public works,
namely (a) that there is neither past nor future, both of these divisions
being correlative to the present; and (b) that the reality of things
can never be sensed or perceived except by him who has obtained the Dharmakâya
body; here again is a difficulty, since this body “without remains”
carries the Initiate to full Paranirvâna, if we accept the exoteric explanation
verbally, and can therefore neither sense nor perceive.
Materialistic
Orientalists - (Page
421) But evidently our Orientalists do not feel the caveat
in such incongruities, and they proceed to speculate without pausing to reflect
over it. Literature on Mysticism being enormous, and Russia, owing to the free
intercourse with the Burats, Shamans, and Mongolians, having alone purchased
whole libraries on Tibet, scholars ought to know better by this time. It suffices
to read, however, what Csoma wrote on the origin of the Kâla Chakra System,
[The “Secret” Books of Dus-Kyi Khorio (“Time Circle”).
See Jour. As. Soc., ii. 57. These works were abandoned to the Sikkhim
Dugpas, from the time of Tsong-Kha-pa’s reform.] or Wassilyew on
Buddhism, to make one give up every hope of seeing them go below the rind of
the “forbidden fruit.” When Schlagintweit is found saying that Tibetan
Mysticism is not Yoga—
That
abstract devotion by which supernatural powers are acquired, [ Glossary
of Judicial and Revenue Terms, art. “Yoga,” quoted in Buddhism
in Tibet. p.47.]
as
Yoga is defined by Wilson, but that it is closely related to Siberian Shamanism,
and is “almost identical with the Tântrika ritual”; and that
the Tibetan Zung is the “Dhâranîs,” and
the Gynt only the Tantras—pre-Christian Tantra being judged
by the ritual of the modern Tântrikas—one seems almost justified
in suspecting our materialistic Orientalists of acting as the best friends and
allies of the missionaries. Whatever is not known to our geographers seems to
be a non-existent locality. Thus:
Mysticism
is reported to have originated in the fabulous country, Sambhala. . . . .
Csoma, from careful investigations, places this [ fabulous?]
country beyond the Sir Daria [Yaxartes] between 45◦ and
50◦ north latitude. It was first known in India in the year 965 A.D,
and was introduced . . . into Tibet from India, via Kashmir, in the
year 1025 A.D. [Buddhism in Tibet. pp. 47, 48.]
“It”
meaning the “Dus-kyi Khorlo,” or Tibetan Mysteries. A system as
old as man, known in India and practised before Europe had become a continent,
“was first known,” we are told, only nine or ten centuries ago!
The text of its books in its present form may have “originated”
even later, for there are numerous such texts that have been tampered with by
sects to suit the fancies of each. But who has read (Page
422) the original book on Dus-Kyi Khorlo, re-written by Tsong-Kha-pa,
with his Commentaries? Considering that this grand Reformer burnt every book
on Sorcery on which he could lay his hands in 1387, and that he has left a whole
library of his own works—not a tenth part of which has ever been made
known—such statements as those above quoted are, to say the least, premature.
The idea is also cherished—from a happy hypothesis offered by Abbé
Huc—that Tsong-Kha-pa derived his wisdom and acquired his extraordinary
powers from his intercourse with a stranger from the West, “remarkable
for a long nose.” This stranger is believed by the good Abbé “to
have been a European missionary;” hence the remarkable resemblance of
the religious ritual in Tibet to the Roman Catholic service. The sanguine “Lama
of Jehovah” does not say, however, who were the five foreigners who appeared
in Tibet in the year 371 of our era, to disappear as suddenly and mysteriously
as they came, after leaving with King Thothori-Nyang-tsan instructions how to
use certain things in a casket that “had fallen from heaven” in
his presence precisely fifty years before, or in the year A.D. 331. [Buddhism
in Tibet, pp. 63, 64. The objects found in the casket, as enumerated in
the exoteric legend, are of course symbolical. They may be found mentioned in
the Kanjur. They were said to be: (1) two hands joined (2) a miniature
Choten (Stûpa, or reliquary); (3) a talisman with “Om mani padme
hum” inscribed on it: (4) a religious book, Zamatog (“a constructed
vehicle”).]
There
is generally a hopeless confusion about Eastern dates among European scholars,
but nowhere is this so great as in the case of Tibetan Buddhism. Thus, while
some, correctly enough, accept the seventh century as the date of the introduction
of Buddhism, there are others—such as Lassen and Koeppung, for instance—who
show on good authority, the one, the construction of a Buddhist monastery on
the slopes of the Kailas Range so far back as the year 137 B.C., [Alterthumskunde,
ii, 1072.] and the other, Buddhism established in and north of the Punjab,
as early as the year 292 B.C. The difference though trifling—only just
one thousand years—is nevertheless puzzling. But even this is easily explained
on Esoteric grounds. Buddhism—the veiled Esotericism of Buddha—was
established and took root in the seventh century of the Christian era; while
true Esoteric Buddhism, or the kernel, the very spirit of Tathâgata’s
doctrines, was brought to the place of its birth, the cradle of humanity, by
the chosen Arhats of Buddha, who were sent to find for it a secure refuge, as
Introduction
of Buddhism into Tibet - (Page
423) The Sage had perceived the dangers ever since he had
entered upon Thonglam (“the Path of seeing,” or clairvoyance).
Amidst
populations deeply steeped in Sorcery the attempt proved a failure; and it was
not until the School of the “Doctrine of the Heart” had merged with
its predecessor, established ages earlier on the slope facing Western Tibet,
that Buddhism was finally engrafted, with its two distinct Schools—the
Esoteric and the exoteric divisions—in the land of the Bhon-pa.
SECTION
LI
The
'Doctrine of the Eye' and The 'Doctrine of the Heart',or the 'Heart's Seal'.
(Page
424) PROF. ALBRECHT WEBER was right when he
declared that the Northern Buddhists
Alone
possess these [Buddhist] Scriptures complete.
For,
while the Southern Buddhists have no idea of the existence of an esoteric doctrine
enshrined like a pearl within the shell of every religion— the Chinese
and the Tibetans have preserved numerous records of the fact. Degenerate, fallen
as is now the Doctrine publicly preached by Gautama, it is yet preserved in
those monasteries in China that are placed beyond the reach of visitors. And
though for over two millennia every new “reformer,” taking something
out of the original has replaced it by some speculation of his own, still truth
lingers even now among the masses. But it is only in the Trans-Himâlayan
fastnesses—loosely called Tibet—in the most inaccessible spots of
desert and mountain, that the Esoteric “Good Law”—the “Heart’s
Seal”—lives to the present day in all its pristine purity.
Was
Emanual Swedenborg wrong when he remarked of the forgotten, long-lost Word:
Seek
for it in China; peradventure you may find it in Great Tartary.
He
had obtained this information, he tells his readers, from certain “Spirits,”
who told him that they performed their worship according to this (lost) ancient
Word. On this it was remarked in Isis Unveiled that
Other
students of Occult Sciences had more than the world of “spirits”
to rely upon in this special case: they have seen the books
that
contain the “Word. [Op.cit., ii. 470.]
Swedenborg
Claims - (Page
425) Perchance the names of those “Spirits” who visited
the great Swedish Theosophist were Eastern. The word of a man of such undeniable
and recognised integrity, of one whose learning in Mathematics, Astronomy, the
natural Sciences and Philosophy was far in advance of his age, cannot be trifled
with or rejected as unceremoniously as if it were the statement of a modern
Theosophist: further, he claimed to pass at will into that state when the Inner
Self frees itself entirely from every physical sense, and lives and breathes
in a world where every secret of Nature is an open book to the Soul-eye. [Unless
one obtains exact information and the right method, one’s visions, however
correct and true in Soul-life, will ever fail to get photographed in our human
memory, and certain cells of the brain are sure to play havoc with our remembrances.]
Unfortunately two-thirds of his public writings are also allegorical in
one sense: and, as they have been accepted literally, criticism has not spared
the great Swedish Seer any more than other Seers.
Having
taken a panoramic view of the hidden Sciences and Magic with their Adepts in
Europe, Eastern Initiates must now be mentioned. If the presence of Esotericism
in the Sacred Scriptures of the West only now begins to be suspected, after
nearly two thousand years of blind faith in their verbatim wisdom, the
same may well be granted as to the Sacred Books of the East. Therefore neither
the Indian nor the Buddhist system can be understood without a key, nor can
the study of comparative religion become a “Science” until the symbols
of every Religion yield their final secrets. At the best such a study will remain
a loss of time, a playing at hide-and-seek.
On
the authority of a Japanese Encyclopædia, Remusat shows the Buddha,
before His death, committing the secrets of His system to His disciple, Kâsyapa,
to whom alone was entrusted the sacred keeping of the Esoteric interpretation.
It is called in China Ching-fa-yin-Tsang (“the Mystery of the Eye
of the Good Doctrine”). To any student of Buddhist Esotericism the term,
“the Mystery of the Eye,” would show the absence of any Esotericism.
Had the word “Heart” stood in its place, then it would have meant
what it now only professes to convey. The “Eye Doctrine” means dogma
and dead-letter form, church ritualism intended for those who are content with
exoteric formulæ. The “Heart Doctrine,” or the “Heart’s
Seal” (the Sin Yin) is the only real one. This may be found corroborated
by Hiuen Tsang. (Page 426) In his
translation of Mahâ-Prajnâ-Pâramitâ (Ta-poh-je-King),
in one hundred and twenty volumes, it is stated that it was Buddha’s “favourite
disciple Ãnanda,” who, after his great Master had gone into Nirvâna,
was commissioned by Kâsyapa to promulgate “the Eye of the Doctrine,”
the “Heart” of the Law having been left with the Arhats alone.
The
essential difference that exists between the two—the “Eye”
and the “Heart,” or the outward form and the hidden meaning, the
cold metaphysics and the Divine Wisdom—is clearly demonstrated in several
volumes on “Chinese Buddhism,” written by sundry missionaries. Having
lived for years in China, they still know no more than they have learned from
pretentious schools calling themselves esoteric, yet freely supplying the open
enemies of their faith with professedly ancient manuscripts and esoteric works!
This ludicrous contradiction between profession and practice has never, as it
seems, struck any of the western and reverend historians of other people’s
secret tenets. Thus many esoteric schools are mentioned in Chinese Buddhism
by the Rev. Joseph Edkins, who believes quite sincerely that he has made “a
minute examination” of the secret tenets of Buddhists whose works “were
until lately inaccessible in their original form.” It really will not
be saying too much to state at once that the genuine Esoteric literature is
“inaccessible” to this day, and that the respectable gentleman who
was inspired to state that
It
does not appear that there was any secret doctrine which those who knew it
would not divulge,
made
a great mistake if he ever believed in what he says on page 161 of his work.
Let him know at once that all those Yû-luh (“Records of the Sayings”)
of celebrated teachers are simply blinds, as complete—if not more so—than
those in the Purânas of the Brâhmans. It is useless to enumerate
an endless string of the finest Oriental scholars or to bring forward the researches
of Remusat, Burnouf, Koeppen, St. Hilaire, and St. Julian, who are credited
with having exposed to view the ancient Hindu world, by revealing the sacred
and secret books of Buddhism: the world that they reveal has never been veiled.
The mistakes of all the Orientalists may be judged by the mistake of one of
the most popular, if not the greatest among them all—Prof. Max Müller.
It is made with reference to what he laughingly translates as the “god
Who” (Ka).
The
God 'Who' - (Page
427)
The
authors of the Brâhmanas had so completely broken with the past, that,
forgetful of the poetical character of the hymns and the yearning of the poets
after the Unknown God, they exalted the interrogative pronoun itself into
a deity, and acknowledged a god Ka (or Who?) . . . Wherever interrogative
verses occur the author states that Ka is Prajâpati, or the Lord of
Creatures. Nor did they stop here. Some of the hymns in which the interrogative
pronoun occurred were called Kadvat, i.e., having Kad or Quid. But
soon a new adjective was formed, and not only the hymns but the sacrifice
also offered to the god were called Kaya, or “Who”-ish . . . .
At the time of Pânini this word acquired such legitimacy as to call
for a separate rule explaining its formation. The Commentator here explains
Ka by Brahman.
Had
the commentator explained It even by Parabrahman he would have been still more
in the right than he was by rendering It as “Brahman.” One fails
to see why the secret and sacred Mystery-Name of the highest, sexless, formless
Spirit, the Absolute,—Whom no one would have dared to classify with the
rest of the manifested Deities, or even to name during the primitive nomenclature
of the symbolical Panthenon, should not be expressed by an interrogative pronoun.
Is it those who belong to the most anthropomorphic Religion in the world who
have a right to take ancient Philosophers to task for even an exaggerated religious
awe and veneration?
But
we are now concerned with Buddhism. Its Esotericism and oral instruction, which
is written down and preserved in single copies by the highest chiefs in genuine
Esoteric Schools, is shown by the author San-Kian-yi-su. Contrasting Bodhidharma
with Buddha, he exclaims:
“Julai”
(Tathâgata) taught great truths and the causes of things. He became
the instructor of men and Devas. He saved multitudes, and spoke the contents
of more than five hundred works. Hence arose the Kiau-men, or exoteric branch
of the system, and it was believed to be the tradition of the words
of Buddha. Bodhidharma brought from the Western Heaven [Shamballa]
the “Seal of Truth” (true seal) and opened the fountain of contemplation
in the East. He pointed directly to Buddha’s heart and nature, swept
away the parasitic and alien growth of book-instruction, and thus established
the Tsung-men, or Esoteric branch of the system containing the tradition of
the heart of Buddha. [ Chinese Buddhism, p.158. The Rev. Joseph
Edkins either ignores or—which is more probable—is utterly ignorant
of the real existence of such Schools, and judges by the Chinese travesties
of these, calling such Esotericism “heterodox Buddhism.” And so
it is, in one sense.]
A
few remarks made by the author of Chinese Buddhism throw a flood of light
on the universal misconceptions of Orientalists in general, and (Page
428) of the missionaries in the “lands of the Gentiles”
in particular. They appeal very forcibly to the intuition of Theosophists—more
particularly those in India. The sentences to be noticed are italicized.
The
common [Chinese] word for the Esoteric Schools is dan,
the Sanskrit Dhyâna . . . . Orthodox Buddhism has in China slowly
but steadily become heterodox. The Buddhism of books and ancient traditions
has become the Buddhism of mystic contemplation . . . . The history of
ancient schools springing up long ago in the Buddhist communities of India can
now be only very partially recovered. Possibly some light may be thrown
back by China upon the religious history of the country from which Buddhism
came. [That country—India—has lost the records of such Schools
and their teaching only so far as the general public, and especially the inappreciative
Western Orientalists, are concerned. It has preserved them in full in some Mathams,
(refuges for mystic contemplation). But it may perhaps be better to seek them
with, and from their rightful owners, the so-called “mythical” Adepts,
or Mahâtmâs.] In no part of the story is aid to the recovery
of the lost knowledge more likely to be found than in the accounts of the patriarchs,
the line of whom was completed by Bodhidharma. In seeking the best explanation
of the Chinese and Japanese narrative of the patriarchs, and the seven Buddhas
terminating in Gautama, or Shâkyamuni, it is important to know the Jain
traditions as they were early in the sixth century of our era, when the Patriarch
Bodhidharma removed to China . . . .
In
tracing the rise of the various schools of esoteric Buddhism it must be kept
in mind that a principle somewhat similar to the dogma of apostolical succession
belongs to them all. They all profess to derive their doctrines through a
succession of teachers, each instructed personally by his predecessor, till
the time of Bodhidharma, and so further up in the series to Shâkyamuni
himself and the earlier Buddhas. [Chinese Buddhism. pp.155-159.]
It
is complained further on, and is mentioned as a falling away from strict orthodox
Buddhism, that the Lamas of Tibet are received in Pekin with the utmost respect
by the Emperor.
The
following passages, taken from different parts of the book, summarise Mr. Edkin’s
views:
Hermits
are not uncommonly met with in the vicinity of large Buddhist temples . .
. their hair being allowed to grow unshorn. . . . The doctrine of metempsychosis
is rejected. Buddhism is one form of Pantheism on the ground that the doctrine
of metempsychosis makes all nature instinct with life, and that that life
is the Deity assuming different forms of personality, that Deity not being
a self-conscious, free-acting Self-Cause, but an all-pervading Spirit. The
esoteric Buddhists of China, keeping rigidly to their one doctrine, [They
certainly reject most emphatically the popular theory of the transmigration
of human entities or Souls into animals, but not the evolution of men
from animals—so far, at least, as their lower principles are
concerned.] say nothing of the metempsychosis, . . . . or any other
of the more material parts of the Buddhist system . . . . . . The Western
paradise promised to the worshippers of Amida Buddha is . . . inconsistent
with the doctrine of Nirvana [?]. [It is quite consistent,
on the contrary, when explained in the light of the Esoteric Doctrine. The
“Western paradise,” or Western heaven, is no fiction located in
transcendental space. It is a bona-fide locality in the mountain, or,
to be more correct, one encircled in a desert within mountains. Hence it is
assigned for the residence of those students of Esoteric Wisdom—disciples
of Buddha—who have attained the rank of Lohans and Anâgâmins
(Adepts). It is called “Western” simply from geographical considerations:
and “the great iron mountain girdle” that surrounds the Avitchi,
and the seven Lokas that encircle the “Western paradise” are a
very exact representation of well-known localities and things to the Eastern
student of Occultism.]
More
Misrepresentations
-
(Page
429)
. . . . It promises immortality instead of annihilation. The great
antiquity of this School is evident from the early date of the translation
of the Amida Sûtra, which came from the hands of Kumârajîva
and Ku-lian-theu-King, dating from the Han dynasty,its extent of influence
is seen in the attachment of the Tibetans and Moguls to the worship of this
Buddha, and in the fact that the name of this fictitious personage [?]
is more commonly heard in China than that of the historical Shâkyamuni.
We
fear the learned writer is on a false track as to Nirvâna and Amita Buddha.
However, here we have the evidence of a missionary to show that there are several
schools of Esoteric Buddhism in the Celestial Empire. When the misuse of dogmatical
orthodox Buddhist Scriptures had reached its climax, and the true spirit of
the Buddha’s Philosophy was nearly lost, several reformers appeared from
India, who established an oral teaching. Such were Bodhidharma and Nâgârjuna,
the authors of the most important works of the contemplative School in China
during the first centuries of our era. It is known, moreover, as is said in
Chinese Buddhism, that Bodhidharma became the chief founder of the Esoteric
Schools, which were divided into five principal branches. The data given are
correct enough, but every conclusion, without one single exception, is wrong.
It was said in Isis Unveiled that—
Budda
teaches the doctrine of a new birth as plainly as Jesus does. Desiring to
break with the ancient Mysteries, to which it was impossible to admit the
ignorant masses, the Hindu reformer, though generally silent upon more than
one secret dogma, clearly states his thought in several passages. Thus, he
says: “Some people are born again; evil-doers go to hell [Avitchi];
righteous people go to heaven [Devachan]; those who are free
from all worldly desires enter Nirvâna” (Precepts of the Dhammapada,
v. 126). Elsewhere Buddha states that “it is better to believe in
a future life, in which happiness or misery can be felt: for if the heart
believes therein it will abandon sin and act virtuously; and even if there
is no resurrection [rebirth], such a life will bring a good
name and the reward of men. But those who believe in extinction at death will
not fail to commit any sin that they may choose, because of their disbelief
in a future.” (See Wheel of the Law.)
How
is immortality, then, “inconsistent with the doctrine of (Page
430) Nirvâna?” The above are only a few of Buddha’s
openly-expressed thoughts to his chosen Arhats; the great Saint said much more.
As a comment upon the mistaken views held in our century by the Orientalists,
“who vainly try to fathom Tathâgata’s thoughts,” and
those of Brâhmans, “who repudiate the great Teacher to this day,”
here are some original thoughts expressed in relation to the Buddha and the
study of the Secret Sciences. They are from a work written in Chinese by a Tibetan,
and published in the monastery of Tientaï for circulation among the Buddhists
Who
live in foreign lands, and are in danger of being spoiled by missionaries,
as
the author truly says, every convert being not only “spoiled” for
his own creed, but being also a sorry acquisition for Christianity. A translation
of a few passages, kindly made from that work for the present volumes is now
given.
No
profane ears having heard the mighty Chau-yan [secret and enlightening
precepts] of Vu-vei-Tchen-jen [Buddha within Buddha],
[The word is translated by the Orientalists as “true man without
a position,” (?) which is very misleading. It simply means the true
inner man or Ego. “Buddha within Buddha” meaning that there
was a Gautama inwardly as well as outwardly.] of our
beloved Lord and Bodhisattva, how can one tell what his thoughts really were?
The holy Sang-gyas-Panchhen [One of the titles of Gautama Buddha in
Tibet.] never offered an insight into the One Reality to the
unreformed [uninitiated ] Bhikkus. Few are those even among
the Tu-fon [Tibetans] who knew it; as for the Tsung-men [The
“Esoteric” Schools, or sects, of which there are many in China.]
Schools, they are going with every day more down hill . . . . Not even the
Fa-siong-Tsung [ A school of contemplation founded by Hiuen-Tsang,
the traveller, nearly extinct. Fa-siong-Tsung means “the School that
unveils the inner nature of things.”] can give one the wisdom
taught in real Naljor-chod-pa [Sanskrit: [ Esoteric, or hidden,
teaching of Yoga (Chinese: Yogi-mi-Kean).] Yogâchârya]:
. . . . it is all “Eye” Doctrine, and no more. The loss of a restraining
guidance is felt; since the Tch’-an-si [teachers] of inward
meditation [self-contemplation or Tchung-kwan] have become rare,
and the Good Law is replaced by idol-worship [Siang-kyan]. It
is of this [idol- or image-worship] that the Barbarians [Western
people] have heard, and know nothing of Bas-pa-Dharma [the secret
Dharma or doctrine]. Why has truth to hide like a tortoise within its
shell? Because it is now found to have become like the Lama’s tonsure
knife, [The “tonsure knife” is made of meteoric
iron, and is used for the purpose of cutting off the “vow-lock,”
or hair from the novice’s head during his first ordination. It has a
double-edged blade, is sharp as a razor, and lies concealed within a hollow
handle of horn. By touching a spring the blade jerks out like a flash of lightening,
and recedes back with the same rapidity. A great dexterity is required in
using it without wounding the head of the young Gelung and Gelung-ma (candidates
to become priests and nuns) during the preliminary rites, which are public.]
a weapon too dangerous to use even for the Lanoo. Therefore no one can be
entrusted with the knowledge [Secret Science] before his time.
Âryâsanga
- (Page
431) The Chagpa-Thog-mad have become rare, and the best have retired
to Tushita the Blessed. [Chapa-Thog-mad is the Tibetan name of Ãryâsanga,
the founder of the Yogâchârya or Naljorchodpa School. This Sage
and Initiate is said to have been taught “Wisdom” by Maitreya
Buddha Himself, the Buddha of the Sixth Race, at Tushita (a celestial region
presided over by Him), and as having received from Him the five books of Champaitehos-nga.
The Secret Doctrine teaches, however, that he came from Dejung, or Shambballa,
called the “source of happiness” (“wisdom-acquired”)
and declared by some Orientaliss to be a “fabulous” place.]
Further
on, a man seeking to master the mysteries of Esotericism before he had been
declared by the initiated Tch’-an-si (teachers) to be ready to receive
them, is likened to
One
who would; without a lantern and on a dark night, proceed to a place full
of scorpions, determined to feel on the ground for a needle his neighbour
has dropped.
Again:
He
who would acquire the Sacred Knowledge should, before he goes any farther
“trim his lamp of inner understanding,” and then “with
the help of such good light” use his meritorious actions as a dust-cloth
to remove every impurity from his mystic mirror, [ It may not be, perhaps,
amiss to remind the reader of the fact that the “mirror” was a
part of the symbolism of the Thesmophoria, a portion of the Eleusinian Mysteries;
and that it was used in the search for Atma, the “Hidden One,”
or “Self.” In his excellent paper on the above-named mysteries,
Dr. Alexander Wilder of New York says: “Despite the assertion of Herodotus
and others that the Bacchic Mysteries were Egyptian, there exists strong probability
that they came originally from India, and were Shaivitic or Buddhistical.
Kore-Persep-honeia was but the goddess Parasu-pani, or Bhavani, and Zagreus
is from Chakra, a country extending from ocean to ocean. If this is a Turanian
story we can easily recognise the ‘horns’ as the crescent worn
by Lama-priests, and assume the whole legend [the fable of Dionysus-Zagreus]
to be based on Lama-succession and transmigration . . . . The whole story
of Orpheus . . . has a Hindu ring all through.” The tale of “Lama-succession
and transmigration” did not originate with the Lamas, who date themselves
only so far back as the seventh century, but with the Chaldæans and
the Brâhmans still earlier.] so that he should be enabled to
see in its lustre the faithful reflection of Self . . . . First, this; then
Tong pa-nya, [The state of absolute freedom from any sin or desire.]
lastly; Samma Sambuddha. [The state during which an Adept sees the
long series of his past births, and lives through all his previous incarnations
in this and the other worlds. (See the admirable description in the Light
of Asia. p. 166, 1884 ed.)]
In
Chinese Buddhism a corroboration of these statements is to be found in
the aphorisms of Lin-tsi:
Within
the body which admits sensations, acquires knowledge, thinks, and acts, there
is the “true man without a position” Wu-wei-chen-jen. He makes
himself clearly visible; not the thinnest separating film hides him. Why do
you not recognise him? . . . If the mind does not come to conscious existence,
there is deliverance everywhere . . . . . What is Buddha? Ans. A mind
clear and at rest. What is the Law? Ans. A mind clear and enlightened.
What is Tau? Ans. In every place absence of impediments and
pure enlightenment. These three are one.
(Page
432) The reverend author of Chinese Buddhism makes merry over
the symbolism of Buddhist discipline. Yet the self-inflicted “slaps on
the cheek” and “blows under the ribs” find their pendants
in the mortifications of the body and self-flagellation—“the discipline
of the scourge”—of the Christian monks, from the first centuries
of Christianity down to our own day. . But then the said author is a Protestant
who substitutes for mortification and discipline—good living and comfort.
The sentence in the Lin-tsi,
The
“true man, without a position,” Wu-wei-chen-jen, is wrapped in
a prickly shell, like the chestnut. He cannot be approached. This is Buddha—the
Buddha within you,
is
laughed at. Truly
An
infant cannot understand the seven enigmas!
SOME
PAPERS ON THE BEARING OF OCCULT PHILOSOPHY ON LIFE
|
(Page
433-434)
Note
Papers
I. II. III. of the following were written by H.P.B and were circulated privately
during her lifetime, but they were written with the idea that they would be
published after a time. They are papers intended for students rather than for
the ordinary reader, and will repay careful study and thought. The “Notes
of some Oral Teaching” were written down by some of her pupils and were
partially corrected by her, but no attempt has been made to relieve them of
their fragmentary character. She had intended to make them the basis for written
papers similar to the first three, but her failing health rendered this impossible,
and they are published with her consent, the time for restricting them to a
limited circle having expired.
Annie
Besant
PAPER
1
A
Warning
(Page
435) THERE is a strange law in Occultism which has been ascertained
and proven by thousands of years of experience; nor has it failed to demonstrate
itself, almost in every case, during the years that the Theosophical Society
has been in existence. As soon as anyone pledges himself as a “Probationer,”
certain Occult effects ensue. Of these the first is the throwing outward
of everything latent in the nature of the man; his faults, habits, qualities
or subdued desires, whether good, bad or indifferent.
For
instance, if a man be vain or a sensualist, or ambitious, whether by atavism
or by karmic heirloom, those vices are sure to break out, even if he has hitherto
successfully concealed and repressed them. They will come to the front irrepressibly,
and he will have to fight a hundred times harder than before, until he kills
all such tendencies in himself.
On
the other hand, if he be good, generous, chaste and abstemious, or has any virtue
hitherto latent and concealed in him, it will work its way out as irrepressibly
as the rest. Thus a civilized man who hates to be considered a saint, and therefore
assumes a mask, will not be able to conceal his true nature, whether base or
noble.
THIS
IS AN IMMUTABLE LAW IN THE DOMAIN OF THE OCCULT.
Its
action is the more marked, the more earnest and sincere the desire of the candidate,
and the more deeply he has felt the reality and importance of his pledge.
The
ancient occult axiom, “Know Thyself,” must be familiar to every
student; but few if any have apprehended the real meaning of this wise exhortation
of the Delphic Oracle. You all know your earthly pedigree, but who of you has
ever traced all the links of heredity, (Page
436) astral, psychic and spiritual,
which go to make you what you are? Many have written and expressed their desire
to unite themselves with their Higher Ego, yet none seem to know the indissoluble
link connecting their “Higher Egos” with the One Universal SELF.
For
all purposes of Occultism, whether practical or purely metaphysical, such knowledge
is absolutely requisite. It is proposed, therefore, to begin these papers by
showing this connection in all directions with the worlds: Absolute, Archetypal,
Spiritual, Mânasic, Psychic, Astral, and Elemental. Before, however, we
can touch upon the higher worlds—Archetypal, Spiritual and Mânasic—we
must master the relations of the seventh, the terrestrial world, the lower Prakriti,
or Malkuth as in the Kabalah, to the worlds or planes which immediately follow
it.
Om
“OM,”
says the Ãryan Adept, the son of the Fifth Race, who with this syllable
begins and ends his salutation to the human being, his conjuration of, or appeal
to, non-human PRESENCES.
“OM-MANI,”
murmurs the Turanian Adept, the descendant of the Fourth Race; and after pausing
he adds, “PADME-HUM.”
This
famous invocation is very erroneously translated by the Orientalists as meaning,
“Oh the Jewel in the Lotus.” For although, literally, OM is a syllable
sacred to the Deity, PADME means “in the Lotus,” and MANI is any
precious stone, still neither the words themselves, nor their symbolical meaning,
are thus really correctly rendered.
In
this, the most sacred of all Eastern formulas, not only has every syllable a
secret potency producing a definite result, but the whole invocation has seven
different meanings and can produce seven distinct results, each of which may
differ from the others.
The
seven meanings and the seven results depend upon the intonation which is given
to the whole formula and to each of its syllables; and even the numerical value
of the letters is added to or diminished according as such or another rhythm
is made use of. Let the student remember that number underlies form, and number
guides sound. Number lies at the root of the manifested Universe: numbers and
harmonious proportions guide the first differentiations of homogeneous substance
into heterogeneous elements; and number and numbers set limits to the formative
hand of Nature.
The
Jewel of the Lotus - (Page
437) Know the corresponding numbers of the fundamental principle
of every element and its sub-elements, learn their interaction and behaviour
on the occult side of manifesting Nature, and the law of correspondences will
lead you to the discovery of the greatest mysteries of macrocosmical life.
But
to arrive at the macrocosmical, you must begin by the microcosmical, i.e.,
you must study MAN, the microcosm—in this case as physical science does—inductively,
proceeding from particulars to universals. At the same time, however, since
a key-note is required to analyze and comprehend any combination of differentiations
of sound, we must never lose sight of the Platonic method, which starts with
one general view of all, and descends from the universal to the individual.
This is the method adopted in Mathematics—the only exact science
that exists in our day.
Let
us study Man, therefore; but if we separate him for one moment from the Universal
Whole, or view him in isolation, from a single aspect, apart from the “Heavenly
Man”—the Universe symbolized by Adam Kadmon or his equivalents in
every Philosophy—we shall either land in Black Magic or fail most ingloriously
in our attempt.
Thus
the mystic sentence, “Om Mani Padme Hum,” when rightly understood,
instead of being composed of the almost meaningless words, “Oh the Jewel
of the Lotus,” contains a reference to this indissoluble union between
Man and the Universe, rendered in seven different ways, and having the capability
of seven different applications to as many planes of thought and action.
From
whatever aspect we examine it, it means: “I am that I am;” “I
am in thee and thou art in me.” In this conjunction and close union with
the good and pure man becomes a God. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he
will bring about, or innocently cause to happen, unavoidable results. In the
first case, if an Initiate (of course an Adept of the Right-hand Path alone
is meant), he can guide a beneficent or a protecting current, and thus benefit
and protect individuals and even whole nations. In the second case, although
quite unaware of what he is doing, the good man becomes a shield to whomsoever
he is with.
Such
is the fact; but its how and why have to be explained, and this can be done
only when the actual presence and potency of numbers in sounds, and hence in
words and letters, have been rendered clear. The formula, “Om Mani
Padme Hum,” has been chosen as an illustration on account of its almost
infinite potency in the mouth of an Adept, and (Page
438) of its potentiality when pronounced by any man. Be careful,
all you who read this: do not use these words in vain, or when in anger, lest
you become yourself the first sacrificial victim, or, what is worse, endanger
those whom you love.
The
profane Orientalist, who all his life skims mere externals, will tell you flippantly,
and laughing at the superstition, that in Tibet this sentence is the most powerful
six-syllabled incantation and is said to have been delivered to the nations
of Central Asia by Padmapâni, the Tibetan Chenresi. [See supra.ii.
188. 189.]
But
who is Padmapâni, in reality? Each
of us must recognize him for himself, whenever he is ready. Each of us has within
himself the “Jewel in the Lotus,” call it Padmapâni, Krishna,
Buddha, Christ, or whatever name we may give to our Divine Self. The exoteric
story runs thus:
The
supreme Buddha, or Amitâbha, they say, at the hour of the creation of
man, caused a rosy ray of light to issue from his right eye. The ray emitted
a sound and became Padmapâni Bodhisattva. Then the Deity allowed to stream
forth from his left eye a blue ray of light, which, becoming incarnate in the
two virgins Dolma, acquired the power to enlighten the minds of living beings.
Amhitâbha then called the combination, which forthwith took up its abode
in man. “Om Mani Padme Hum,” “I am the Jewel in the
Lotus and in it I will remain.” Then Padmapâni, “the One in
the Lotus,” vowed never to cease working until he had made Humanity feel
his presence in itself and had thus saved it from the misery of rebirth. He
vowed to perform the feat before the end of the Kalpa, adding that, in case
of failure, he wished that his head should split into numberless fragments.
The Kalpa closed; but Humanity felt him not within its cold, evil heart. Then
Padmapâni’s head split and was shattered into a thousand fragments.
Moved with compassion, the Deity re-formed the pieces into ten heads,
three white, and seven of various colours. And since that day man has become
a perfect number, or TEN.
In
this allegory the potency of SOUND, COLOUR, and NUMBER is so ingeniously introduced
as to veil the real Esoteric meaning. To the outsider it reads like one of the
many meaningless fairy-tales of creation; but it is pregnant with spiritual
and divine, physical and magical meaning. From Amitâbha—no colour,
or the white glory— are born the seven differentiated colours of
the prism.
The
Pythagorean Tetrad - (Page
439) These each emit a corresponding sound, forming the seven of
the musical scale. As Geometry,
among the Mathematical Sciences, is specially related to
Architecture, and also (proceeding to Universals) to Cosmogony,
so the ten Jods of the Pythagorean Tetrad, or Tetraktys, being
made to symbolize the Macrocosm, the Microcosm, or man, its image, had also
to be divided into ten points. For this Nature herself has provided, as will
be seen.
But
before this statement can be proved and the perfect correspondences between
the Macrocosm and Microcosm demonstrated, a few words of explanation are necessary.
To
the learner who would study the Esoteric Sciences with their double object:
(a) of proving Man to be identical in spiritual and physical essence
with both the Absolute Principle and with God in Nature; and (b) of demonstrating
the presence in him of the same potential powers as exist in the creative forces
in Nature—to such a one a perfect knowledge of the correspondences between
Colours, Sounds, and Numbers is the first requisite. As already said, the sacred
formula of the far East, “Om Mani Padme Hum.” is the one
best calculated to make these correspondential qualities and functions clear
to the learner.
In
the allegory of Padmapâni, the Jewel (or Spiritual Ego) in the Lotus,
or the symbol of androgynous man, the numbers 3, 4, 7, 10, as synthesizing the
Unit, Man, are prominent, as I have already said. It is on the thorough
knowledge and comprehension of the meaning and potency of these numbers, in
their various and multiform combinations, and in their mutual correspondence
with sounds or words, and colours or rates of motion (represented in physical
science by vibrations), that the progress of a student in Occultism depends.
Therefore we must begin with the first, initial word, OM, or AUM. OM is a “blind.”
The sentence “Om Mani Padme Hum,” is not a six- but a seven-syllabled
phrase, as the first syllable is double in its right pronunciation, and triple
in its essence, A-UM. It represents the for ever concealed primeval triune differentiation,
not from but in the ONE Absolute, and is therefore symbolized
by the 4, or the Tetraktys, in the metaphysical world. It is the Unit-ray, or
Ãtman.
It
is the Ãtman, this highest Spirit in man, which, in conjunction with
Buddhi and Manas, is called the upper Triad, or Trinity. This
(Page 440) Triad with its four lower human principles, is, moreover,
enveloped with an auric atmosphere, like the yolk of an egg (the future embryo)
by the albumen and shell. This, to the perceptions of higher Beings from other
planes, makes of each individuality an oval sphere of more or less radiancy.
To
show the student the perfect correspondence between the birth of Kosmos, a World,
a Planetary Being, or a Child of Sin and Earth, a more definite and clear description
must be given. Those acquainted with Physiology will understand it better than
others.
Who,
having read say the Vishnu or other Purâna, is not familiar
with the exoteric allegory of the birth of Brahmâ (male-female) in the
Egg of the World, Hiranyagarbha, surrounded by its seven zones, or rather planes,
which in the world of form and matter become seven and fourteen Lokas; the numbers
seven and fourteen reäppearing as occasion requires.
Without
giving out the secret analysis, the Hindus have from time immemorial compared
the matrix of the Universe, and also the solar matrix, to the female uterus.
It is written of the former: “Its womb is vast as the Meru,” and
The
future mighty oceans lay asleep in the waters that filled its cavities, the
continents, seas and mountains, the stars, planets, the gods, demons and mankind.
The
whole resembled, in its inner and outer coverings, the cocoanut filled interiorly
with pulp, and covered externally with husk and rind. “Vast as Meru,”
say the texts.
Meru
was its Amnion, and the other mountains were its Chorion,
adds
a verse in Vishnu Purâna. [ Wilson’s translation,
as amended by Fitzedward Hall, i. 40.]
In
the same way is man born in his mother’s womb. As Brahmâ is surrounded,
in exoteric traditions, by seven layers within and seven without the Mundane
Egg, so is the embryo (the first or the seventh layer, according to the end
from which we begin to count). Thus, just as Esotericism in its Cosmogony enumerates
seven inner and seven outer layers, so Physiology notes the contents of the
uterus as seven also, although it is completely ignorant of this being a copy
of what takes place in the Universal Matrix. These contents are:
1.
Embryo. 2. Amniotic Fluid, immediately surrounding the Embryo.
3. Amnion, a membrane derived from the Fœtus, which contains the
fluid. 4. Umbilical l’esicle, which serves to convey nourishment
originally to the Embryo and to nourish it.
Seven
Correspondential Contents - (Page
441) 5. Allantois, a protrusion from the Embryo in the form
of a closed bag, which spreads itself between 3 and 7, in the midst of 6, and
which, after being specialized into the Placenta, serves to conduct nourishment
to the Embryo. 6. Interspace between 3 and 7 (the Amnion and Chorion),
filled with an albuminous fluid. 7. Chorion, or outer layer.
Now,
each of these seven contents severally corresponds with, and is formed after,
an antetype, one on each of the seven planes of being with which in their turn
correspond the seven states of Matter and all other forces, sensational or functional,
in Nature.
(Page
442)
The
following is a bird’s-eye view of the seven correspondential contents
of the wombs of Nature and of Woman. We may contrast them thus:
|
Cosmic
Process (Upper
Pole) |
Human
Process (Lower
Pole) |
1 |
The
mathematical Point, called the "Cosmic See", the Monad of Leibnix;
which contians the whole Universe, as the acorn the oak. This is the first
bubble on the surface of boundless homogeneous Substance, or Space, the
buble of differentiation in its incipient stage. It is the beginning of
the Orphic or Brahmâ's Egg. It corresponds in Astrology and Astronomy
to the Sun |
The
terrestrial Embryo, which contains in it the future man with all his potentialities.
In the series of principles of the human system it is the Atman, or the
super-spiritual principle, just as in the physical Solar System it is the
Sun |
2 |
The
vis vitae of our solar system exudes from the Sun.
(a)
It is called, when referred to the higher planes, Akâsha
(b)
It proceeds from the ten "divinities" the ten numbers of the
Sun, which is itself the "Perfect Number". These are called
Dis - in reality Space - the forces spread in Space, three of which are
contained in the Sun's Atman, or seventh principle, and seven are the
rays shot out by the Sun.
|
The
Amniotic Fluid exudes from the Embryo.
(a)
It is called, on the plane of matter, Prâna [ Prâna
is in reality the universal Life Principle.]
(b) It proceeds, taking its source in the universal One Life, from the
heart of man and Buddhi, over which the Seven Solar Rays (Gods) preside.
|
3 |
The
Ether of Space, which, in its external aspect, is the plastic crust which
is supposed to envelope the Sun. On the higher plane it is the whole Universe,
as the third differentiation of evolving Substance, Mulaprakriti becoming
Prakriti.
(a)
It corresponds mystically to the manifested Mahat, or the Intellect or
Soul of the World
|
The
Amnion, the membrane containing the Amniotic Frluid and enveloping the
Embryo. After the birth of man it becomes the third layer, so to say,
of his magneto-vital aura.
(a)
Manas, the third principle (counting from above), or the Human Soul in
Man.
|
4 |
The
sidereal contents of Ether, the substantial parts of it, unknown to Modern
Science, represented:
(a)
In Occult and Kabalistic Mysteries, by Elementals.
(b) In physical Astronomy, by meteors,comets, and all kinds of casual
and phenomenal cosmic bodies
|
Umbilical
Vesicle, serving, as Science teaches, to nourish the Embryo originally,
but, as Occult Science avers, to carry to the Foetus by osmosis the cosmic
influences extraneous to the mother.
(a)
In the grown man these become the feeders of Kâma, over which they
preside.
(b)
In the physical man, his passions and emotions, the moral meteors and
comets of human nature.
|
5 |
Life
currents in Ether, having their origin in the Sun: the canals through which
the vital principle of that Ether (the blood of the Cosmic Body) passes
to nourish everything on the Earth and on the other Planets: from the minerals,
which are thus made to grow and become specialized, from the plants, which
are thus fed, to animal and man, to whom life is thus imparted. |
The
Allantois, a protrusion from the Embryo, which spreads itself between the
Amnion and Chorion; it is supposed to conduct the nourishment from the mother
to the Embryo. It corresponds to the life-principle, Prâna or Jîva. |
6 |
The
double radiation, psychic and physical, which radiates from the Cosmic Seed
and expands around the whole Kosmos, as well as around the Solar System
and every Planet. In Occultism it is called the upper divine, and the lower
material, Astral Light. |
The
Allantois is divided into two layers. The inter space between the Amnion
and the Chorion contains the Allantois and also an albuminous fluid. [All
the uterine contents, having a direct spiritual connnection with their cosmic
antetypes, are, on the physical plane, potent objects in Black Magic, and
are therefore considered unclean.] |
7 |
The
outer crust of every sidereal body, the Shell of the Mundane Egg, or the
sphere of our Solar System, of our Earth, and of every man and animal.
In sidereal space, Ether proper; on the terrestrial plane, Air, which
again is built in seven layers.
(a)
The primordial potential world-stuff becomes (for the Manvantaric period)
the permanent globe or globes.
|
The
Chorion, or the Zona Pellucida, the globular object called Blastodermic
Vesicle, the outer and the inner layers of the membrane of which go to
form the physical man. The outer, or ectoderm, forms his epidermis; the
inner, or endoderm, his muscles, bones, etc.. Man's skin, again, is composed
of seven layers.
(a)
The "primitive" becomes the "permanent" Chorion.
|
Correspondence
Between Races and Man - (Page
443) Even in the evolution of the Races we see the same order as
in Nature and Man. [See supra, ii. Part I.] Placental
animal-man became such only after the separation of sexes in the Third Root-Race.
In the physiological evolution, the placenta is fully formed and functional
only after the third month of uterine life.
(Page
444) Let us put aside such human conceptions as a personal God, and
hold to the purely divine, to that which underlies all and everything in boundless
Nature. It is called by its Sanskrit Esoteric name in the Vedas, TAT
(or THAT), a term for the unknowable Rootless Root. If we do so, we may answer
these seven questions of the Esoteric Catechism thus:
(1)
Q.—What is the Eternal Absolute?
A.—THAT.
(2)
Q.—How came Kosmos into being?
A.—Through
THAT.
(3)
Q.—How, or what will it be when it falls back into Pralaya?
A.—In
THAT.
(4)
Q.—Whence all the animate, and suppositionally, the “inanimate”
nature?
A.—From
THAT.
(5)
Q.—What is the Substance and Essence of which the Universe is formed?
A.—THAT.
(6)
Q.—Into what has it been and will be again and again resolved?
A.—Into
THAT.
(7)
Q.—Is THAT then both the instrumental and material cause of the Universe?
A.—What
else is it or can it be than THAT?
As
the Universe, the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, [The Solar System or the
Earth, as the case may be.] are ten, why should we divide Man
into seven “principles”? This is the reason why the perfect
number ten is divided into two: in their completeness, i.e., super-spiritually
and physically, the forces are TEN: to-wit, three on the subjective and inconceivable,
and seven on the objective plane. Bear in mind that I am now giving you the
description of the two opposite poles: (a) the primordial Triangle, which,
as soon as it has reflected itself in the “Heavenly Man,” the highest
of the lower seven—disappears, returning into “Silence and Darkness”;
and (b) the astral paradigmatic man, whose Monad (Ãtmâ)
is also represented by a triangle, as it has to become a ternary in conscious
Devachanic interludes. The purely terrestrial man being reflected in the universe
of Matter, so to say, upside down, the upper Triangle, wherein the creative
ideation and the subjective potentiality of the formative faculty resides, is
shifted in the man of clay below the seven.
DIAGRAM
I (Page 444a)
Man
and The Logos - (Page
445) Thus three of the
ten containing in the archetypal world only ideative and paradigmatical potentiality,
i.e., existing in possibility, not in action, are in fact one. The potency
of formative creation resides in the Logos, the synthesis of the seven Forces
or Rays, which becomes forthwith the Quaternary, the sacred Tetraktys. This
process is repeated in man, in whom the lower physical triangle becomes, in
conjunction with the female One, the male-female creator, or generator. The
same on a still lower plane in the animal world. A mystery above, a mystery
below, truly.
This
is how the upper and highest, and the lower and most animal, stand in mutual
relation.
In
this diagram No.-1-, we see that physical man (or his body) does not share in
the direct pure waves of the divine Essence which flows from the One
in Three, the Unmanifested, through the Manifested Logos (the upper face
in the diagram). Purusha, the primeval Spirit, touches the human head and stops
there. But the Spiritual Man (the synthesis of the seven principles) is directly
connected with it. And here a few words ought to be said about the usual exoteric
enumeration of the principles. At first an approximate division only was made
and given out. Esoteric Buddhism begins with Ãtmâ, the seventh,
and ends with the Physical Body, the first. Now neither Ãtmâ, which
is no individual “principle,” but a radiation from and one with
the Unmanifested Logos, nor the Body, which is the material rind, or shell,
of the Spiritual Man, can be, in strict truth, referred to as “principles.”
Moreover, the chief “principle” of all, one not even mentioned heretofore,
is the “Luminous Egg” (Hiranyagarbha), or the invisible magnetic
sphere in which every man is enveloped. [ So are the animals, the plants,
and even the minerals. Reichenbach never understood what he learned through
his sensitives and clairvoyants. It is the odic, or rather the auric
or magnetic fluid which emanates from man, but it is also something more.]
It is the direct emanation: (a) from the Ãtmic Ray in its triple
aspect of Creator, Preserver and Destroyer (Regenerator); and (b) from
Buddhi-Manas. The seventh aspect of this individual Aura is the faculty
of assuming the form of its body and becoming the “Radiant,” the
Luminous Augoeides. It is this, strictly speaking, which at times becomes the
form called Mâyâvi Rûpa. Therefore, as explained in the second
face of the diagram (the astral man), the Spiritual Man consists of only five
(Page 446) principles, as taught by the Vedântins, [See
supra. i. 181. for the Vedântic exoteric enumeration.] who
substitute tacitly, for the physical this sixth or Auric, Body, and merge the
dual Manas (dual mind, or consciousness) into one. Thus they speak of the five
Koshas (sheaths or principles), and call Ãtmâ the sixth yet no
“principle.” This is the secret of the late Subba Row’s criticism
of the division in Esoteric Buddhism. But let the student now learn the
true Esoteric enumeration.
The
reason why public mention of the Auric body was not permitted was on account
of its being so sacred. It is this Body which, at death, assimilates the essence
of Buddhi and Manas and becomes the vehicle of these spiritual principles, which
are not objective, and then, with the full radiation of Ãtmâ
upon it ascends as Manas-Taijasi into the Devachanic state. Therefore it is
called by many names. It is the Sûtrâtmâ, the silver “thread”
which “incarnates” from the beginning of Manvantara to the end,
stringing upon itself the pearls of human existence, in other words, the spiritual
aroma of every personality it follows through the pilgrimage of life.
[See Lucifer, January 1889, “Dialogue upon the Mysteries
of After-Life.”] It is also the material from which the Adept forms
his Astral Bodies, from the Augoeides and the Mâyâvi Rûpa
downwards. After the death of man, when its most ethereal particles have drawn
into themselves the spiritual principles of Buddhi and the Upper Manas, and
are illuminated with the radiance of Ãtmâ, the Auric Body remains
either in the Devachanic state of consciousness, or, in the case of a full Adept,
prefers the state of a Nirmânakâya, that is, one who has so purified
his whole system that he is above even the divine illusion of a Devachanî.
Such an Adept remains in the astral (invisible) plane connected with our earth,
and henceforth moves and lives in the possession of all his principles except
the Kâma Rûpa and Physical Body. In the case of the Devachanî,
the Linga-Sharira—the alter ego of the body, which during life
is within the physical envelope while the radiant aura is without—strengthened
by the material particles which this aura leaves behind, remains close to the
dead body and outside it, and soon fades away. In the case of the full Adept,
the body alone becomes subject to dissolution, while the centre of that force
which was the seat of desires and passions, disappears with its cause—the
animal body. But during the life of the latter all these centres are more or
less active and in constant correspondence with their prototypes, the cosmic
centres, and their microcosms, the principles.
Cosmic,
Spiritual, and Physical Centres - (Page
447) It is only through these cosmic and spiritual centres that the
physical centres (the upper seven orifices, and the lower triad) can benefit
by their Occult interaction, for these orifices, or openings, are channels conducting
into the body the influences that the will of man attracts and uses,
viz., the cosmic forces.
This
will has, of course, to act primarily through the spiritual principles. To make
this clearer, let us take an example. In order to stop pain, let us say in the
right eye, you have to attract to it the potent magnetism from that cosmic principle
which corresponds to this eye and also to Buddhi. Create, by a powerful will
effort, an imaginary line of communication between the right eye and Buddhi,
locating the latter as a centre in the same part of the head. This line,
though you may call it “imaginary,” is, once you succeed in seeing
it with your mental eye and give it a shape and colour, in truth as good as
real. A rope in a dream is not and yet is. Moreover, according
to the prismatic colour with which you endow your line, so will the influence
act. Now Buddhi and Mercury correspond with each other, and both are yellow,
or radiant and golden coloured. In the human system, the right eye corresponds
with Buddhi and Mercury; and the left with Manas and Venus or Lucifer. Thus,
if your line is golden or silvery, it will stop the pain; if red, it will increase
it, for red is the colour of Kâma and corresponds with Mars. Mental or
Christian Scientists have stumbled upon the effects without understanding
the causes. Having found by chance the secret of producing such results
owing to mental abstraction, they attribute them to their union with God (whether
a personal or impersonal God they know best), whereas it is simply the effect
of one or another principle. However it may be, they are on the path of discovery,
although they must remain wandering for a long time to come.
Let
not Esoteric students commit the same mistake. It has often been explained that
neither the cosmic planes of substance nor even the human principles—with
the exception of the lowest material plane or world and the physical body, which,
as has been said, are no “principles,”—can be located or thought
of as being in Space and Time. As the former are seven in ONE, so are we seven
in ONE—that same absolute Soul of the World, which is both Matter and
non-Matter, Spirit and non-Spirit, Being and non-Being. Impress yourselves well
with this idea, all those of you who would study the mysteries of SELF.
Remember
that with our physical senses alone at our command, none (Page
448) of us can hope to reach beyond gross Matter. We can do so only
through one or another of our seven spiritual senses, either by training,
or if one is a born Seer. Yet even a clairvoyant possessed of such faculties,
if not an Adept, no matter how honest and sincere he may be, will through his
ignorance of the truths of Occult Science, be led by the visions he sees in
the Astral Light only to mistake for God or Angels the denizens of those spheres
of which he may occasionally catch a glimpse, as witness Swedenborg and others.
These
seven senses of ours correspond with every other septenate in nature and in
ourselves. Physically, though invisibly, the human Auric Envelope (the amnion
of the physical man in every age of life) has seven layers, just as Cosmic Space
and our physical epidermis have. It is this Aura which, according to our mental
and physical state of purity or impurity, either opens for us vistas into other
worlds, or shuts us out altogether from anything but this three-dimensional
world of Matter.
Each
of our seven physical senses (two of which are still unknown to profane Science),
and also of our seven states of consciousness—viz.: (1) waking;
(2) waking-dreaming; (3) natural sleeping; (4) induced or trance-sleep; (5)
psychic; (6) super-psychic; and (7) purely spiritual—corresponds with
one of the seven Cosmic Planes, develops and uses one of the seven super-senses,
and is connected directly, in its use on the terestro-spiritual plane, with
the cosmic and divine centre of force that gave it birth, and which is its direct
creator. Each is also connected with, and under the direct influence of, one
of the seven sacred Planets. [See supra, i. 626-629] These
belonged to the Lesser Mysteries, whose followers were called Mystai (the veiled),
seeing that they were allowed to perceive things only through a mist, as it
were “with the eyes closed”; while the Initiates or “Seers”
of the Greater Mysteries were called Epoptai (those who see things unveiled).
It was the latter only who were taught the true mysteries of the Zodiac and
the relations and correspondences between its twelve signs (two secret) and
the ten human orfices. The latter are now of course ten in the female, and only
nine in the male; but this is merely an external difference. In the second volume
of this work it is stated that till the end of the Third Root-Race (when androgynous
man separated into male and female) the ten orifices existed in the hermaphrodite,
first potentially, then functionally.
Woman
and Alchemy (Page
449) The evolution of the human embryo shows this. For instance,
the only opening formed at first is the buccal cavity, “a cloaca
communicating with the anterior extremity of the intestine.” These become
later the mouth and the posterior orifice: the Logos differentiating and emanating
gross matter on the lower plane, in Occult parlance. The difficulty which some
students will experience in reconciling the correspondences between the Zodiac
and the orifice can be easily explained. Magic is coëval with the Third
Root-Race, which began by creating through Kriyâshakti and ended by generating
its species in the present way. [See supra i. 228, et seq.,
ii. passim.] Woman, being left with the full or perfect number
10 (the divine number of Jehovah), was deemed higher and more spiritual than
man. In Egypt, in days of old, the marriage service contained an article that
the woman should be the “lady of the lord,” and real lord over him,
the husband pledging himself to be “obedient to his wife” for the
production of alchemical results such as the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher’s
Stone, for the spiritual help of the woman was needed by the male Alchemist.
But woe to the Alchemist who should take this in the dead-letter sense of physical
union. Such sacrilege would become Black Magic and be followed by certain
failure. The true Alchemist of old took aged women to help him, carefully
avoiding the young ones; and if any of them happened to be married they treated
their wives for months both before and during their operations as sisters.
The
error of crediting the Ancients with knowing only ten of the zodiacal signs
is explained in Isis Unveiled. [Op. cit., 456, 461 et
seq.] The Ancients did know of twelve, but viewed these signs differently
from ourselves. They took neither Virgo nor Scorpio singly into consideration,
but regarded them as two in one, since they were made to refer directly and
symbolically to the primeval dual man and his separation into sexes. During
the reformation of the Zodiac, Libra was added as the twelfth sign, though it
is simply an equilibrating sign, at the turning point—the mystery of separated
man.
Let
the student learn all this well. Meanwhile we have to recapitulate what has
been said.
(1)
Each human being is an incarnation of his God, in other words, one with his
“Father in Heaven,” just as Jesus, an Initiate, is made to say.
As many men on earth, so many Gods in Heaven; and yet these (Page
450) Gods are in reality ONE, for at the end of every period of
activity, they are withdrawn, like the rays of the setting sun, into the Parent
Luminary, the Non-Manifested Logos, which in its turn is merged into the One
Absolute. Shall we call these “Fathers” of ours, whether individually
or collectively, and under any circumstances, our personal God? Occultism
answers, Never. All that an average man can know of his “Father”
is what he knows of himself, through and within himself. The Soul of his “Heavenly
Father” is incarnated in him. This Soul is himself, if he be successful
in assimilating the Divine Individuality while in his physical, animal shell.
As to the Spirit thereof, as well expect to be heard by the Absolute. Our
prayers and supplications are vain, unless to potential words we add potent
acts, and make the Aura which surrounds each one of us so pure and divine
that the God within us may act outwardly, or in other words, become as it
were an extraneous Potency. Thus have Initiates, Saints, and very holy and
pure men have been enabled to help others as well as themselves in the hour
of need, and produce what are foolishly called “miracles,” each
by the help and with the aid of the God within himself, which he alone has
enabled to act on the outward plane.
(2)
The word AUM or OM, which corresponds to the upper Triangle, if pronounced
by a very holy and pure man, will draw out, or awaken not only the less exalted
Potencies residing in the planetary spaces and elements, but even his Higher
Self, or the “Father” within him. Pronounced by an averagely good
man, in the correct way, it will help to strengthen him morally, especially
if between two “AUMS” he meditates intently upon the AUM within
him, concentrating all his attention upon the ineffable glory. But woe to
the man who pronounces it after the commission of some far-reaching sin: he
will only thereby attract to his own impure, photosphere invisible Presences
and Forces which could not otherwise break through the Divine Envelope.
AUM
is the original of Amen. Now. Amen is not a Hebrew term, but, like the word
Halleluiah, was borrowed by the Jews and Greeks from the Chaldees.
The latter word is often found repeated in certain magical inscriptions upon
cups and urns among the Babylonian and Ninevean relics. Amen does not mean
“so be it,” or “verily,” but signified in hoary antiquity
almost the same as AUM. The Jewish Tanaïm (Initiates) used it for the
same reason as the Ãryan Adepts use AUM, and with a like success, the
numerical value of AMeN in Hebrew letters being 91, the same as the
full value of YHVH, [Jod-Hevah, or male-female on the
terrestrial plane, as invented by the Jews, and now made out to mean Jehovah:
but signifying in reality and literally, “giving being” and “receiving
life.’] 26, and A DoNa Y, 65, or 91. Both words mean the
affirmation of the being, or existence of the sexless “Lord” within
us.
Sound
and Colour - (Page
451) (3) Esoteric Science teaches that every sound in the visible
world awakens its corresponding sound in the invisible realms, and arouses to
action some force or other on the Occult side of Nature. Moreover, every sound
corresponds to a colour and a number (a potency spiritual, psychic or physical)
and to a sensation on some plane. All these find an echo in every one of the
so-far developed elements, and even on the terrestrial plane, in the Lives that
swarm in the terrene atmosphere, thus prompting them to action.
Thus
a prayer, unless pronounced mentally and addressed to one’s “Father”
in the silence and solitude of one’s “closet,” must have more
frequently disastrous than beneficial results, seeing that the masses are entirely
ignorant of the potent effects which they thus produce. To produce good effects,
the prayer must be uttered by “one who knows how to make himself heard
in silence,” when it is no longer a prayer, but becomes a command. Why
is Jesus shown to have forbidden his hearers to go to the public synagogues?
Surely every praying man was not a hypocrite and a liar, nor a Pharisee who
loved to be seen praying by people! He had a motive, we must suppose: the same
motive which prompts the experienced Occultist to prevent his pupils from going
into crowded places now as then, from entering churches, séance rooms,
etc., unless they are in sympathy with the crowd.
There
is one piece of advice to be given to beginners, who cannot help going into
crowds—one which may appear superstitious, but which in the absence of
Occult knowledge will be found efficacious. As well known to good Astrologers,
the days of the week are not in the order of those planets whose names they
bear. The fact is that the ancient Hindus and Egyptians divided the day into
four parts, each day being under the protection (as ascertained by practical
magic) of a planet; and every day, as correctly asserted by Dion Cassius, received
the name of the planet which rules and protected its first portion. Let the
student protect himself from the “Powers of the Air” (Elementals)
which throng public places, by wearing either a ring containing some jewel of
the colour of the presiding planet, or else of the metal sacred to it. But the
best protection is a clear conscience and a firm desire to benefit Humanity.
The
Planets, The Days of the Week and Their Corresponding Colours and Metals - (Page
452) In the accompanying diagram the days of the week do not stand
in their usual order, though they are placed in their correct sequence as determined
by the order of the colours in the solar spectrum and the corresponding colours
of their ruling planets. The fault of the confusion in the order of the days
revealed by this comparison lies at the door of the early Christians. Adopting
from the Jews their lunar months, they tried to blend them with the solar planets,
and so made a mess of it; for the order of the days of the week as it now stands
does not follow the order of the planets.
Now,
the Ancients arranged the planets in the following order: Moon, Mercury, Venus,
Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, counting the Sun as a planet for exoteric purposes.
Again, the Egyptians and Indians, the two oldest nations, divided their day
into four parts, each of which was under the protection and rule of a planet.
In course of time each day came to be called by the name of that planet which
rules its first portion—the morning. Now, when they arranged their week,
the Christians proceeded as follows: they wanted to make the day of the Sun,
or Sunday, the seventh, so they named the days of the week by taking every fourth
planet in turn; e.g., beginning with the Moon (Monday), they counted
thus: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars; thus Tuesday, the day whose first
portion was ruled by Mars, became the second day of the week; and so on. It
should be remembered also that the Moon, like the Sun, is a substitute for a
secret planet.
The
present division of the solar year was made several centuries later than the
beginning of our era; and our week is not that of the Ancients and the Occultists.
The septenary division of the four parts of the lunar phases is as old as the
world and originated with the people who reckoned time by the lunar months.
The Hebrews never used it, for they counted only the seventh day, the Sabbath,
though the second chapter of Genesis seems to speak of it. Till the days
of the Cæsars there is no trace of a week of seven days among any nation
save the Hindus. From India it passed to the Arabs, and reached Europe with
Christianity. The Roman week consisted of eight days, and the Athenian of ten.
[See Notice sur le Calendrier. J.H. Ragon.]
The
Days of the Week - (Page
453) Thus one of the numberless contradictions and fallacies of Christendom
is the adoption of the Indian septenary week of the lunar reckoning, and the
preservation at the same time of the mythological names of the planets.
Nor
do modern Astrologers give the correspondences of the days and planets and their
colours correctly; and while Occultists can give good reason for every detail
of their own tables of colours, etc., it is doubtful whether the Astrologers
can do the same.
To
close this first Paper, let me say that the readers must in all necessity be
separated into two broad divisions: those who have not quite rid themselves
of the usual sceptical doubts, but who long to ascertain how much truth there
may be in the claims of the Occultists; and those others who, having freed themselves
from the trammels of Materialism and Relativity, feel that true and real bliss
must be sought only in the knowledge and personal experience of that which the
Hindu Philosopher calls the Brahmavidyâ, and the Buddhist Arhat the realization
of Ãdibuddha, the primeval Wisdom. Let the former pick out and study
from these Papers only those explanations of the phenomena of life which profane
Science is unable to give them. Even with such limitations, they will find by
the end of a year or two that they will have learned more than all their Universities
and Colleges can teach them. As to the sincere believers, they will be rewarded
by seeing their faith transformed into knowledge. True knowledge is of Spirit
and in Spirit alone, and cannot be acquired in any other way except through
the region of the higher mind, the only plane from which we can penetrate the
depths of the all-pervading Absoluteness. He who carries out only those laws
established by human minds, who lives that life which is prescribed by the code
of mortals and their fallible legislation, chooses as his guiding star a beacon
which shines on the ocean of Mâya, or of temporary delusions, and lasts
for but one incarnation. These laws are necessary for the life and welfare of
physical man alone. He has chosen a pilot who directs him through the shoals
of one existence, a master who parts with him, however, on the threshold of
death. How much happier that man who, while strictly performing on the temporary
objective plane the duties of daily life, carrying out each and every law of
his country, and rendering in short, to Cæsar’s what is Cæsar’s,
leads in reality a spiritual and permanent existence, a life with no breaks
of continuity, no gaps, no interludes, (Page
454) not even during those periods which are the halting places of
the long pilgrimage of purely spiritual life. All the phenomena of the lower
human mind disappear like the curtain of a proscenium, allowing him to live
in the region beyond it, the plane of the noumenal, the one reality. If man
by suppressing, if not destroying, his selfishness and personality, only succeeds
in knowing himself as he is behind the veil of physical Mâyâ, he
will soon stand beyond all pain, all misery and beyond all the wear and tear
of change, which is the chief originator of pain. Such a man will be physically
of Matter, he will move surrounded by Matter, and yet he will live beyond and
outside it. His body will be subject to change, but he himself will be entirely
without it, and will experience everlasting life even while in temporary bodies
of short duration. All this may be achieved by the development of unselfish
universal love of Humanity, and the suppression of personality, or selfishness,
which is the cause of all sin, and consequently of all human sorrow.
DIAGRAM
II
|
These Correspondences
are from the Objective, Terrestrial Plane |
ATMAN is
no Number, and ccorresponds to no visible Planet, for it proceeds from the
Spiritual Sun; nor does it bear any relation either to Sound, Colour, or
the rest, for it includes them all. |
ATMA
|
As the
Human Principles have no numbers per se, but only correspond
to Numbers, Sounds, Colours, etc., they are not enumerated here in
the order used for esoteric purposes. |
NUMBERS |
METALS |
PLANETS |
THE
HUMAN PRINCIPLES |
DAYS
OF THE WEEK |
COLOURS
|
SOUND
MUSIC SCALE |
1 and
10
Physical Man's Key-note |
Iron |
Mars
The Planet of Generation |
Kâma Rûpa
The Vehicle or seat
of the Animal Instincts and Passions
|
Tuesday
Dies Martis,
or Tiu
|
1-
Red |
Sanskrit Gamut |
Italian Gamut |
Sa |
Do |
2
The Spiritual and Life Physical
|
Gold
|
The Sun
The Giver of Life physically, Spiritually and Esoterically, the substitute
for the inter-Mercurial Planet, a sacred and secret planet with the ancients |
Prâna or
Jiva
Life
|
Sunday
Dies Sola or Sun |
2-
Orange |
Ri |
Re |
3
Because BUDDHI is (so to speak) between Atma and Manas, and forms with the
seventh, or AURIC ENVELOPE, the Devachanic Triad |
Mercury
Mixes with Sulphur,
as Buddhi is mixed with the Flame of Spirit (See Alchemical Definitions)
|
Mercury |
Buddhi
Spiritual Soul, or Atmic Ray, vehicle or Atmâ |
Wednesday
Dies Mercuri, or Woden
Day of Buddha in the South, and of Woden in the North - Gods of Wisdom
|
3
Yellow |
Ga |
Mi |
4
The middle principle
- between the purely material and purely spiritual trias. The conscious
part of animal man.
|
Lead |
Saturn |
Kama Manas
The Lower Mind, or Animal Soul
|
Saturday
Dies Saturni, or Saturn
|
4
Green |
Ma |
Fa |
5 |
Tin |
Jupiter |
Auric
Envelope |
Thursday
Dies...
or Thor |
5
Black |
Pa |
Sol |
6 |
Copper
When alloyed becomes Bronze (the dual principle) |
Venus
The Morning and the
Evening Star
|
Manas
The Higher Mind, or Human Soul |
Friday
Dies... |
6
Indigo or Dark Blue |
Da |
La |
7
Contains in itself the reflection of Septenary Man |
Silver |
The Moon
The Parent of the Earth |
Linga
Sharira
The Astral Double of Man; the Parent of the Physical Man |
Monday,
Dies Lunae or Moon
|
7
Violet |
Ni |
Si |
PAPER
II
An
Explanation - (Page
455) IN view of the abstruse nature of the subjects dealt with, the
present Paper will begin with an explanation of some points which remained obscure
in the preceding one, as well as of some statements in which there was an appearance
of contradiction.
Astrologers,
of whom there are many among the Esotericists, are likely to be puzzled by some
statements distinctly contradicting their teachings; whilst those who know nothing
of the subject may perhaps find themselves opposed at the outset by those who
have studied the exoteric systems of the Kabalah and Astrology. For let it be
distinctly known, nothing of that which is printed broadcast, and available
to every student in public libraries or museums, is really Esoteric, but is
either mixed with deliberate “blinds,” or cannot be understood and
studied with profit without a complete glossary of Occult terms.
The
following teachings and explanations, therefore, may be useful to the student
in assisting him to formulate the teaching given in the preceding Paper.
In
Diagram I, it will be observed that the 3, 7, and 10 centres are respectively
as follows:
(a)
The 3 pertain to the spiritual world of the Absolute, and therefore to the three
higher principles in Man.
(b)
The 7 belong to the spiritual, psychic, and physical worlds and to the body
of man. Physics, metaphysics and hyper-physics are the triad that symbolizes
man on this plane.
(c)
The 10, or the sum total of these, is the Universe as a whole, in all its aspects,
and also its Microcosm—Man, with his ten orifices.
Laying
aside, for the moment, the Higher Decad (Kosmos) and the (Page
456) Lower Decad (Man), the first three numbers of the separate sevens
have a direct reference to the Spirit, Soul and Auric Envelope of the human
being, as well as to the higher supersensual world. The lower four, or the four
aspects, belong to Man also, as well as to the Universal Kosmos, the whole being
synthesized by the Absolute.
If
these three discrete or distributive degrees of Being be conceived, according
to the Symbology of the Eastern Religions, as contained in one Ovum, or EGG,
the name of that EGG will be Svabhâvat, or the ALL-BEING
on the manifested plane. This Universe has, in truth, neither centre nor periphery;
but in the individual and finite mind of man it has such a definition, the natural
consequence of the limitations of human thought.
In
Diagram II, as already stated therein, no notice need be taken of the numbers
used in the left-hand column, as these refer only to the Hierarchies of the
Colours and Sounds on the metaphysical plane, and are not the characteristic
numbers of the human principles or of the planets. The human principles elude
enumeration, because each man differs from every other, just as no two blades
of grass on the whole earth are absolutely alike. Numbering is here a question
of spiritual progress and the natural predominance of one principle over another.
With one man it may be Buddhi that stands as number one; with another, if he
be a bestial sensualist, the Lower Manas. With one the physical body, or perhaps
Prâna, the life principle, will be on the first and highest plane, as
would be the case in an extremely healthy man, full of vitality; with another
it may come as the sixth or even seventh downward. Again, the colours and metals
corresponding to the planets and human principles, as will be observed, are
not those known exoterically to modern Astrologers and Western Occultists.
Let
us see whence the modern Astrologer got his notions about the correspondence
of planets, metals and colours. And here we are reminded of the modern Orientalist,
who, judging by appearances credits the ancient Akkadians (and also the Chaldæans,
Hindus and Egyptians) with the crude notion that the Universe, and in like manner
the earth, was like an inverted, bell-shaped bowl! This he demonstrates by pointing
to the symbolical representations of some Akkadian inscriptions and to the Assyrian
carvings. It is, however, no place here to explain how mistaken is the Assyriologist,
for all such representations are simply symbolical of the Khargakkurra,
the World-Mountain, or Meru, and relate only to the North Pole, the Land of
the Gods.
Astrology
and Lunar Weeks - (Page
457) Now, the Assyrians arranged their exoteric teaching about
the planets and their correspondences as follows;
Numbers
|
Planets |
Metals |
Colours |
Solar
Days of Week |
1 |
Saturn |
Lead |
Black |
Saturday
(Whence Sabbath, in honour of Jehovah) |
2 |
Jupiter |
Tin |
White,
but as often Purple or Orange |
Thursday |
3 |
Mars |
Iron |
Red |
Tuesday |
4 |
Sun |
Gold |
Yellow-golden |
Sunday |
5 |
Venus |
Copper |
Green
or Yellow |
Friday |
6 |
Mercury |
Quick
Silver |
Blue |
Wednesday |
7 |
Moon |
Silver |
Silver-white |
Monday
|
This
is the arrangement now adopted by Christian Astrologers, with the exception
of the order of the days of the week, of which, by associating the solar planetary
names with the lunar weeks, they have made a sore mess, as he has been already
shown in Paper I. This is the Ptolemaic geocentric system, which represents
the Universe as in the following diagram, showing our Earth in the centre of
the Universe, and the Sun a Planet, the fourth in number:
And
if the Christian chronology and order of the days of the week are being daily
denounced as being based on an entirely wrong astronomical foundation, it is
high time to begin a reform also in Astrology built on such lines, and coming
to us entirely from the Chaldæan and Assyrian exoteric mob.
But
the correspondences given in these Papers are purely Esoteric.
(Page
458) For this reason it follows that when the Planets of the Solar
System are named or symbolized (as in Diagram II.) it must not be supposed that
the planetary bodies themselves are referred to, except as types on a purely
physical plane of the septenary nature of the psychic and spiritual worlds.
A material planet can correspond only to a material something. Thus when Mercury
is said to correspond to the right eye, it does not mean that the objective
planet has any influence on the right optic organ, but that both stand rather
as corresponding mystically through Buddhi. Man derives his Spiritual Soul (Buddhi)
from the essence of the Mânasa Putra, the Sons of Wisdom, who are the
Divine Beings (or Angels) ruling and presiding over the planet Mercury.
In
the same way Venus, Manas and the left eye are set down as correspondences.
Exoterically, there is, in reality, no such association of physical eyes and
physical planets; but Esoterically there is: for the right eye is the “Eye
of Wisdom,” i.e., it corresponds magnetically with that Occult
centre in the brain which we call the “Third Eye”; [See
supra, ii.302. et seq.] while the left corresponds with the
intellectual brain, or those cells which are the organ on the physical plane
of the thinking faculty. The kabalistic triangle of Kether, Chokmah and Binah
shows this. Chokmah and Binah, or Wisdom and Intelligence, the Father and Mother
or, again, the Father and Son, are on the same plane and reäct mutually
on one another.
When
the individual consciousness is turned inward, a conjunction of Manas and Buddhi
takes place. In the spiritually regenerated man this conjunction is permanent,
the Higher Manas clinging to Buddhi beyond the threshold of Devachan, and the
Soul, or rather the Spirit, which should not be confounded with Ãtmâ,
the Super-Spirit, is then said to have the “Single Eye.” Esoterically,
in other words, the “Third Eye” is active. Now Mercury is called
Hermes, and Venus, Aphrodite, and thus their conjunction in man on the psycho-physical
plane gives him the name of the Hermaphrodite, or Androgyne. The absolutely
Spiritual Man is, however, entirely disconnected from sex. The Spiritual Man
corresponds directly with the higher “coloured circles,” the Divine
Prism which emanates from the One Infinite White Circle; while physical man
emanates from the Sephiroth, which are the Voices or Sounds of Eastern Philosophy.
Seeing
Sounds and Hearing Colours - (Page
459) And these “Voices” are lower than the “Colours,”
for they are the seven lower Sephiroth, or the objective Sounds, seen, not heard,
as the Zohar shows, [Op. cit., ii. 81.6.] and even
the Old Testament also. For, when properly translated, verse 18 of chapter xx.
Exodus would read: “And the people saw the Voices” (or Sounds,
not the “thunderings” as now translated); and these Voices, or Sounds,
are the Sephiroth. [See Frank’s Die Kabbala, p.314, et
seq.]
In
the same way the right and left nostrils, into which is breathed the “Breath
of Lives,” [Genesis, ii, 7.] are here said to correspond
with Sun and Moon, as Brahmâ-Prajâpati and Vâch, or Osiris
and Isis, are the parents of the natural life. This Quaternary, viz.:
the two eyes and two nostrils, Mercury and Venus, Sun and Moon, constitutes
the Kabalistic Guardian-Angels of the Four Corners of the Earth. It is the same
in the Eastern Esoteric Philosophy, which, however, adds that the Sun is not
a planet, but the central star of our system, and the Moon a dead planet, from
which all the principles are gone, both being substitutes, the one for an invisible
inter-Mercurial planet, and the other for a planet which seems to have now altogether
disappeared from view. These are the Four Mahârâjahs, [Supra,
i. 147.] the “Four Holy Ones” connected with Karma and Humanity,
Kosmos and Man, in all their aspects. They are: the Sun, or its substitute Michael;
Moon, or substitute Gabriel; Mercury, Raphael; and Venus, Uriel. It need hardly
be said here again that the planetary bodies themselves, being only physical
symbols, are not often referred to in the Esoteric System, but, as a rule, their
cosmic, psychic, physical and spiritual forces are symbolized under these names.
In short, it is the seven physical planets which are the lower Sephiroth of
the Kabalah, and our triple physical Sun whose reflection only we see,
which is symbolized, or rather personified, by the Upper Triad, or Sephirothal
Crown. [We may refer for confirmation to Origen’s works, who says
that “the seven ruling daimons” (genii or planetary rulers) are
Michael, the Sun (the lion-like): the second in order, the Bull, Jupiter or
Suriel, etc.: and all these, the “Seven of the Presence,” are the
Sephiroth. The Sephirothal Tree is the Tree of the Divine Planets as given by
Porphyry, or Porphyry’s Tree, as it is usually called.]
Then,
again, it will be well to point out that the numbers attached to the psychic
principles in Diagram I. appear the reverse of those in exoteric writings. This
is because numbers in this connection are purely arbitrary, changing with every
school. Some schools count (Page 460)
three, some four, some six, and others seven, as do all the Buddhist Esotericists.
As said before, [Supra, i, 147.] the Esoteric School has
been divided into two departments since the fourteenth century, one for the
inner Lanoos, or higher Chelâs, the other for the outer circle, or lay
Chelâs. Mr. Sinnett was distinctly told in the letters he received from
one of the Gurus that he could not be taught the real Esoteric Doctrine given
out only to the pledged disciples of the Inner Circle. The numbers and principles
do not go in regular sequence, like the skins of an onion, but the student must
work out for himself the number appropriate to each of his principles, when
the time comes for him to enter upon practical study. The above will suggest
to the student the necessity of knowing the principles by their names and their
appropriate faculties apart from any system of enumeration, or by association
with their corresponding centres of actions, colours, sounds, etc., until these
become inseparable.
The
old and familiar mode of reckoning the principles, given in the Theosophist
and Esoteric Buddhism, leads to another apparently perplexing contradiction,
though it is really none at all. The principles numbered 3 and 2, viz
: Linga Sharîra and Prâna, or Jîva, stand in the reverse order
to that given in Diagram I . A moment's consideration will suffice to explain
the apparent discrepancy between the exoteric enumeration, and the Esoteric
order given in Diagram I. For in Diagram I. the Linga Sharîra is defined
as the vehicle of Prâna, or Jîva, the life principle, and as such
must of necessity be inferior to Prâna, not superior as the exoteric enumeration
would suggest. The principles do not stand one above the other, and thus cannot
be taken in numerical sequence; their order depends upon the superiority and
predominance of one or another principle, and therefore differs in every man.
The
Linga Sharîra is the double, or protoplasmic antetype of the body, which
is its image. It is in this sense that it is called in Diagram II. the parent
of the physical body, i.e., the mother by conception of Prâna,
the father. This idea is conveyed in the Egyptian mythology by the birth of
Horus, the child of Osiris and Isis, although, like all sacred Mythoi, this
has both a threefold spiritual, and a sevenfold psycho-physical application.
To close the subject, Prâna, the life principle, can, in sober truth,
have no number, as it pervades every other principle, or the human total.
Planetary
and Human Bodies - (Page
461) Each number of the seven would thus be naturally applicable
to Prâna-Jîva exoterically as it is to the Auric Body Esoterically.
As Pythagoras showed, Kosmos was produced not through or by number,
but geometrically, i.e., following the proportions of numbers.
To
those who are unacquainted with the exoteric astrological natures ascribed in
practice to the planetary bodies, it may be useful if we set them down here
after the manner of Diagram II., in relation to their dominion over the human
body, colours, metals, etc., and explain at the same time why genuine Exoteric
Philosophy differs from the astrological claims.
Planets |
Days |
Metals |
Parts
of the Body |
Colours |
Saturn |
Saturday |
Lead |
Right Ear,
Knees and Bony Sytem |
Black * |
Jupiter |
Thursday |
Tin |
Left Ear,
Thighs, Feet and Arterial System |
Purple
† |
Mars |
Tuesday |
Iron |
Forehead
and Nose, the Skull. Sex-function and Muscular Sytem |
Red. |
Sun |
Sunday |
Gold |
Right Eye,
Heart and Vital Centres |
Orange
‡ |
Venus |
Friday |
Copper |
Chin and
Cheeks, Neck and Reins and the Venous Sytem |
Yellow
§ |
Mercury |
Wednesday |
Quicksilver |
Mouth,
Hands, Abdominal Viscera and Nervous System |
Dove or
Cream¶
|
Moon |
Monday |
Silver |
Breasts,
Left Eye, the Fluidic Sytem, Saliva, Lymph, etc. |
White** |
*
[Esoterically, green, there being no black in the prismatic ray.]
†
[Esoterically, light blue. As a pigment, purple is a compound of red
and blue, and in Eastern Occultism blue is the spiritual essence of the colour
purple, while red is its material basis. In reality, Occultism makes Jupiter
blue because he is the son of Saturn, which is green, and light blue as a prismatic
colour contains a great deal of green. Again, the Auric Body will contain much
of the colour of the Lower Manas if the man is a material sensualist, just as
it will contain much of the darker hue if the Higher Manas has preponderance
over the Lower.]
‡
[Esoterically, the Sun cannot correspond with the eye, nose, or any other
organ, since, as explained, it is no planet, but a central star. It was adopted
as a planet by the post-Christian Astrologers, who had never been initiated.
Moreover, the true colour of the Sun is blue, and it appears yellow only owing
to the effect of the absorbtion of vapours (chiefly metallic) by its atmosphere.
All is Mayâ on our earth.]
§
[Esoterically, indigo, or dark blue, which is the complement of yellow in
the prism. Yellow is a simple or primitive colour. Manas being dual in its nature—as
is its sidereal symbol, the planet Venus, which is both the morning and evening
star—the difference between the higher and the lower principles of Manas,
whose essence is derived from the Hierarchy ruling Venus, is denoted by the
dark blue and green. Green, the Lower Manas, resembles the colour of the solar
spectrum which appears between the yellow and the dark blue, the Higher Spiritual
Manas. Indigo is the intensified colour of the heaven or sky, to denote the
upward tendency of Manas toward Buddhi, or the heavenly Spiritual Soul. This
colour is obtained from the indigofera tinctoria, a plant of the highest
occult properties in India, much used in White Magic, and occultly connected
with copper. This is shown by the indigo assuming a copper lustre, especially
when rubbed on any hard substance. Another property of the dye is that it is
insoluble in water and even in ether, being lighter in weight than any known
liquid. No symbol has ever been adopted in the East without being based upon
a logical and demonstrable reasons. Therefore Eastern Symbologists, from the
earliest ages, have connected the spiritual and the animal minds of man, the
one with dark blue (Newton’s indigo), or true blue, free from green; and
the other with pure green.]
¶
[Esoterically, yellow, because the colour of the Sun is orange, and Mercury
now stands next to the Sun in distance, as it does in colour. The planet for
which the Sun is a substitute was still nearer the Sun than Mercury now is,
and was one of the most secret and highest planets. It is said to have become
invisible at the close of the Third Race.]
**
[Esoterically, violet, because, perhaps, violet is the colour assumed
by a ray of sunlight when transmitted through a very thin plate of silver, and
also because the Moon shines upon the Earth with light borrowed from the Sun,
as the human body shines with qualifications borrowed from its double—the
aerial man. As the astral shadow starts the series of principles in man, on
the terrestrial plane, up to the lower, animal Manas, so the violet ray starts
the series of prismatic colours from its end up to green, both being, the one
as a principle and the other as a colour, the most refrangible of all the principles
and colours. Besides which, there is the same great Occult mystery attached
to all these correspondences, both celestial and terrestrial bodies, colours
and sounds. In clearer words, there exists the same law of relation between
the Moon and the Earth, the astral and the living body of man, as between the
violet end of the prismatic spectrum and the indigo and the blue. But of this
more anon.]
(Page
462) Thus it will be seen that the influence of the solar system
in the exoteric kabalistic Astrology is by this method distributed over the
entire human body, the primary metals, and the gradations of colour from black
to white; but that Esotericism recognizes neither black nor white as colours,
because it holds religiously to the seven solar or natural colours of the prism.
Black and white are artificial tints. They belong to the Earth, and are only
perceived by virtue of the special construction of our physical organs. White
is the absence of all colours, and therefore no colour; black is simply the
absence of light, and therefore the negative aspect of white. The seven prismatic
colours are direct emanations from the Seven Hierarchies of Being, each of which
has a direct bearing upon and relation to one of the human principles, since
each of these Hierarchies is, in fact, the creator and source of the corresponding
human principle. Each prismatic colour is called in Occultism the “Father
of Sound” which corresponds to it; Sound being the Word, or the Logos,
of its Father-Thought. This is the reason why sensitives connect every colour
with a definite sound, a fact well recognized in Modern Science (e.g.,
Francis Galton’s Human Faculty). But black and white are entirely
negative colours, and have no representatives in the world of subjective being.
Planets
and Faculties - (Page
463) Kabalistic Astrology says that the dominion of the planetary
bodies in the human brain also is defined thus: there are seven primary groups
of faculties, six of which function through the cerebrum, and the seventh through
the cerebellum. This is perfectly correct Esoterically. But when it is further
said that: Saturn governs the devotional faculties; Mercury, the intellectual;
Jupiter, the sympathetic; the Sun, the governing faculties; Mars, the selfish;
Venus, the tenacious; and the Moon, the instincts;—we say that the explanation
is incomplete and even misleading. For, in the first place, the physical planets
can rule only the physical body and the purely physical functions. All the mental,
emotional, psychic and spiritual faculties, are influenced by the Occult properties
of the scale of causes which emanate from the Hierarchies of the Spiritual Rulers
of the planets, and not by the planets themselves. This scale, as given in Diagram
II, leads the student to perceive in the following order: (1) colour; (2) sound;
(3) the sound materializes into the spirit of the metals, i.e., the metallic
Elementals; (4) these materialize again into the physical metals; (5) then the
harmonial and vibratory radiant essence passes into the plants, giving them
colour and smell, both of which “properties” depend upon the rate
of vibration of this energy per unit of time; (6) from plants it passes into
the animals; (7) and finally culminates in the “principles” of man.
Thus
we see the Divine Essence of our Progenitors in Heaven circling through seven
stages; Spirit becoming Matter, and Matter returning to Spirit. As there is
sound in Nature which is inaudible, so there is colour which is invisible, but
which can be heard. The creative force, at work in its incessant task of transformation,
produces colour, sound and numbers, in the shape of rates of vibration which
compound and dissociate the atoms and molecules. Though invisible and inaudible
to us in detail, yet the synthesis of the whole becomes audible to us on the
material plane. It is that which the Chinese call the “Great Tone,”
or Kung. It is, even by scientific confession, the actual tonic of Nature,
held by musicians to be the middle Fa on the keyboard of a piano. We hear it
distinctly in the voice of Nature, in the roaring of the ocean, in the sound
of the foliage of a great forest, in the distant roar of a great city, in the
wind, the tempest and the storm; in short, in everything in Nature which has
a voice or produces sound. To the (Page 464)
hearing of all who hearken, it culminates in a single definite tone, of an unappreciable
pitch, which, as said, is the F, or Fa, of the diatonic scale. From these particulars,
that wherein lies the difference between the exoteric and the Esoteric nomenclature
and symbolism will be evident to the student of Occultism. In short, kabalistic
Astrology, as practised in Europe, is the semi-esoteric Secret Science, adapted
for the outer and not for the inner circle. It is, furthermore, often left incomplete
and not infrequently distorted to conceal the real truth. While it symbolizes
and adapts its correspondences on the mere appearances of things, Esoteric Philosophy,
which concerns itself pre-eminently with the essence of things, accepts only
such symbols as cover the whole ground, i.e., such symbols as yield a
spiritual as well as a psychic and physical meaning. Yet even Western Astrology
has done excellent work, for it has helped to carry the knowledge of the existence
of a Secret Wisdom throughout the dangers of the Mediæval Ages and their
dark bigotry up to the present day, when all danger has disappeared.
The
order of the planets in exoteric practice is that defined by their geocentric
radii, or the distance of their several orbits from the Earth as a centre, viz.,
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon. In the first three of these
we find symbolized the celestial Triad of supreme power in the physical, manifested
universe, or Brahmâ, Vishnu and Shiva; while in the last four we recognize
the symbols of the terrestrial quaternary ruling over all natural and physical
revolutions of the seasons, quarters of the day, points of the compass, and
elements. Thus:
Spring |
Summer |
Autumn |
Winter |
Morning |
Noon |
Evening |
Night |
Youth |
Adolescence |
Manhood |
Age |
Fire |
Air |
Water |
Earth |
East |
South |
West |
North
|
But
Esoteric Science is not content with analogies on the purely objective plane
of the physical senses, and therefore it is absolutely necessary to preface
further teachings in this direction with a clear explanation of the real meaning
of the word Magic.
SIMON
MAGUS THE MAGICIAN (Page
465)
What
Magic is, in Reality |
Esoteric
Science is, above all, the knowledge of our relations with and in Divine Magic,
[Magic., Magia, means, in its spiritual, secret sense, the “Great
Life,” or divine life in spirit. The root is magh, as seen
in the Sanskrit mahat, Zend maz, Greek megas, and Latin
magnus, all signifying “great”.] inseparableness from
our divine Selves—the latter meaning something else besides our
own higher Spirit. Thus, before proceeding to exemplify and explain these relations,
it may perhaps be useful to give the student a correct idea of the full meaning
of this most misunderstood world “Magic.” Many are those willing
and eager to study Occultism, but very few have even an approximate idea of
the Science itself. Now, very few of our American and European students can
derive benefit from Sanskrit works or even their translations, as these translations
are, for the most part, merely blinds to the uninitiated. I therefore propose
to offer to their attention demonstrations of the aforesaid drawn from Neo-Platonic
works. These are accessible in translation; and in order to throw light on that
which has hitherto been full of darkness, it will suffice to point to a certain
key in them. Thus the Gnosis, both pre-Christian and post-Christian, will serve
our purpose admirably.
There
are millions of Christians who know the name of Simon Magus, and the little
that is told about him in the Acts; but very few who have even heard
of the many motley, fantastic and contradictory details which tradition records
about his life. The story of his claims and his death is to be found only in
the prejudiced, half-fantastic records about him in the works of the Church
Fathers, such as Irenæus, Ephiphanius and St. Justin, and especially in
the anonymous Philosophumena. Yet he is a historical character, and the
appellation of “Magus” was given to him and was accepted by all
his contemporaries, including the heads of the Christian Church, as a qualification
indicating the miraculous powers he possessed, and irrespective of whether he
was regarded as a white (divine) or a black (infernal) Magician. In this respect,
opinion has always been made subservient to the Gentile or Christian proclivities
of his chronicler.
It
is in his system and in that of Menander, his pupil and successor, that we find
what the term “Magic” meant for Initiates in those days.
Simon,
as all the other Gnostics, taught that our world was created by the lower
angels, whom he called Æons. He mentions only three (Page
466) degrees as such, because it was and is useless, as we have before
explained, to teach anything about the four higher ones, and he therefore begins
at the plane of globes A and G. His system is as near to Occult Truth as any,
so that we may examine it, as well as his own and Meander’s claims about
“Magic,” to find out what they meant by the term. Now, for Simon,
the summit of all manifested creation was Fire. It was, with him as with us,
the Universal Principle, the Infinite Potency, born from the concealed Potentiality.
This Fire was the primeval cause of the manifested world of being, and was dual,
having a manifested and a concealed, or secret, side.
The
secret side of the Fire is concealed in its evident [or objective]
side, and the objective is produced from the secret side, [Philosophumena,
vi.9.]
he
writes, which amounts to saying that the visible is ever present in the invisible,
and the invisible in the visible. This was but a new form of stating Plato’s
idea of the Intelligibe (Noêton) and the Sensible (Aisthêton),
and Aristotle’s teaching on the Potency (Dunamis) and the Act (Energeia).
For Simon, all that can be thought of, all that can be acted upon, was perfect
intelligence. Fire contained all. And thus all the parts of that Fire,
being endowed with intelligence and reason, was susceptible of development by
extension and emanation. This is our teaching of the Manifested Logos, and these
parts in their primordial emanations are our Dhyân Chohans, the “Sons
of Flame and Fire,” or higher Æons. This “Fire” is the
symbol of the active and living side of Divine Nature. Behind it lay “infinite
Potentiality in Potentiality,” which Simon named “that which has
stood, stands and will stand,” or permanent stability and personified
immutability.
From
the Potency of Thought, Divine Ideation thus passed to Action. Hence the series
of primordial emanations through Thought begetting the Act, the objective side
of Fire being the Mother, the sacred side of it being the Father. Simon called
these emanations Syzygies (a united pair, or couple), for they emanated two-by-two,
one as an active, and the other as a passive Æon. Three couples thus emanated
(or six in all, the Fire being the seventh), to which Simon gave the following
names: “Mind and Thought; Voice and Name; Reason and Reflection,”
† [Nous, Epinoia: Phôni : Onoma : Logismos, Enthumesis.]
the first in each pair being male, the last female. From these primordial six
emanated the six Æons of the Middle World. Let us see what Simon himself
says:
Series
of Æons - (Page
467) Each of these six primitive beings contained the entire infinite
Potency [of its parent]; but it was there only in Potency, and
not in Act. That Potency had to be called forth [or conformed] through
an image in order that it should manifest in all its essence, virtue,
grandeur and effects; for only then could the emanated Potency become similar
to its parent, the eternal and infinite Potency. If, on the contrary, it remained
simply potentially in the six Potencies and failed to be conformed through
an image, then the Potency would not pass into action, but would get lost.
[Philosophumena, vi. 12.]
in
clearer terms, it would become atrophied, as the modern expression goes.
Now,
what do these words mean if not that to be equal in all things to the Infinite
Potency the Æons had to imitate it in its action, and become themselves,
in their turn, emanative Principles, as was their Parent, giving life to new
beings, and becoming Potencies in actu themselves? To produce emanations,
or to have acquired the gift of Kryiâshakti, [See supra, sub
voce.] is the direct result of that power, an effect which depends
on our own action. That power, then, is inherent in man, as it is in the primordial
Æons and even in the secondary Emanations, by the very fact of their and
our descent from the One Primordial Principle, the Infinite Power, or Potency.
Thus we find in the system of Simon Magus that the first six Æons, synthesized
by the seventh, the Parent Potency, passed into Act, and emanated, in their
turn, six secondary Æons, which were each synthesized by their respective
Parents. In the Philosophumena we read that Simon compared the Æons
to the “Tree of Life.” Said Simon in the Revelation: [The
Great Revelation (Hê Megalê Apophasis), of which Simon himself
is supposed to have been the author.]
It
is written that there are two ramifications of the universal Æons, having
neither beginning nor end, issued both from the same Root, the invisible and
incomprehensible Potentiality, Sigê [Silence]. One of
these [series of Æons] appears from above. This is the
Great Potency, Universal Mind [or Divine Ideation, the Mahat of the
Hindus]; it orders all things and is male. The other is from below,
for it is the Great [manifested] Thought, the female Æon,
generating all things. These [two kinds of Æons] corresponding
[Literally, standing opposite each other in rows or pairs.]
with each other, have conjunction and manifest the middle distance [the
intermediate sphere or plane], the incomprehensible Air which has neither
beginning nor end. [Philosophumena, vi. 18.]
This
female “Air” is our Ether, or the kabalistic Astral Light. It (Page
468) is, then, the Second World of Simon, born of Fire, the principle
of everything. We call it the ONE LIFE,
the Intelligent, Divine Flame, omnipresent and infinite. In Simon’s system
this Second World was ruled by a Being, or Potency, both male and female, or
active and passive, good or bad. This Parent-Being, like the primordial infinite
Potency, is also called “that which has stood, stands and will stand,”
so long as the manifested Kosmos shall last. When it emanated in actu
and became like unto its own Parent, it was not dual or androgyne. It is the
Thought (Sigê) that emanated from it which became as itself (the Parent),
having become like unto its image (or antetype): the second had now become in
its turn the first (on its own plane or sphere). As Simon has it:
It
[the Parent or Father] was one. For having it [the thought]
in itself, it was alone. It was not, however, first, though it was preëxisting:
but manifesting itself to itself from itself, it became the second (or dual).
Nor was it called Father before it [the Thought] gave it that
name. As, therefore, itself developing itself by itself manifested to itself
its own Thought, so also the Thought being manifested did not act, but seeing
the Father hid it in itself, that is, (hid) that Potency (in itself), And
the Potency [Dunamis, viz.: Nous] and Thought
[Epinoia] are male-female. Whence they correspond with
one another— For Potency in no way differs from Thought— being
one. So from the things above is found Potency, and from those below, Thought.
It comes to pass, therefore, that that which is manifested from them, although
being one, yet is found to be twofold, the androgyne having the female in
itself. So is Mind in Thought, things inseparable from each other which though
being one are yet found dual. [Op.cit.,vi.18.]
He
[Simon] calls the first Syzygy of the six Potencies and of the
seventh, which is with it, Nous and Epinoia, Heaven and Earth: the male looks
down from on high and takes thought for his Syzygy [or spouse],
for the Earth below receives those intellectual fruits which are brought down
from Heaven and are cognate to the Earth. † [Op.cit.,i.13.]
Simon’s
Third World with its third series of six Æons and the seventh, the Parent,
is emanated in the same way. It is this same note which runs through every Gnostic
system—gradual development downward into Matter by similitude; and it
is a law which is to be traced down to primordial Occultism, or Magic. With
the Gnostics, as with us, this seventh Potency, synthesizing all, is the Spirt
brooding over the dark waters of undifferentiated Space, Nârâyana,
or Vishnu, in India; the Holy Ghost in Christianity. But while in the latter
the conception is conditioned and dwarfed by limitations necessitating faith
and grace, Eastern Philosophy shows it pervading every atom, conscious or unconscious.
The
Triple Æon - (Page
469) Irenæus supplements the information on the further development
of these six Æons. We learn from him that Thought, having separated from
its Parent, and knowing through its identity of Essence with the latter what
it had to know, proceeded on the second or intermediate plane, or rather World
(each of such Worlds consisting of two planes, the superior and inferior, male
and female, the latter assuming finally both Potencies and becoming androgyne),
to create inferior Hierarchies, Angels and Powers, Dominions and Hosts, of every
description, which in their turn created, or rather emanated out of their own
Essence, our world with its men and beings, over which they watch.
It
thus follows that every rational being—called Man on Earth—is of
the same essence and possesses potentially all the attributes of the higher
Æons, the primordial Seven. It is for him to develope, “with the
image before him of the highest,” by imitation in actu, the Potency
with which the highest of his Parents, or Fathers, is endowed. Here we may again
quote with advantage from the Philosophumena:
So
then, according to Simon, this blissful and imperishable [principle]
is concealed in everything in potency, not in act. This is “that which
has stood, stands and will stand,” viz., that which has stood
above in ingenerable Potency; that which stands below in the stream of the
waters generated in an image; that which will stand above, beside the blissful
infinite Potency, if it makes itself like unto this image. For three, he says,
are they that stand, and without these three Æons of stability, there
is no adornment of the generable which, according to them [the Simonians],
is borne on the water, and being moulded according to the similitude is a
perfect and celestial (Æon), in no manner of thinking inferior to the
ingenerable Potency. Thus they say: “I and thou [are]
one; before me [wast] thou: that which is after thee [is] I.”
This, he says, is the one Potency, divided into above and below, generating
itself, nourishing itself, seeking itself, finding itself; its own mother,
father, brother, spouse, daughter and son, one, for it is the Root
of all. [Op cit., vi.17.]
Thus
of this triple Æon, we learn the first exists as “that which has
stood, stands and will stand,” or the uncreate Power, Âtman; the
second is generated in the dark waters of Space (Chaos, or undifferentiated
Substance, our Buddhi), from or through the image of the former reflected in
those waters, the image of Him, or It, which moves on them; the third World
(or, in man, Manas) will be endowed with every power of that eternal and omnipresent
Image if it but assimilates it to itself. For, (Page
470)
All
that is eternal, pure and incorruptible is concealed in everything that is
if
only potentially, not actually. And
Everything
is that image, provided the lower image (man) ascends to that highest Source
and Root in Spirit and Thought.
Matter
as Substance is eternal and has never been created. Therefore Simon Magus, with
all the great Gnostic Teachers and Eastern Philosophers, never speaks of its
beginning. “Eternal Matter” receives its various forms in the lower
Æon from the Creative Angels, or Builders, as we call them. Why, then,
should not Man, the direct heir of the highest Æon, do the same, by the
potency of his thought, which is born from Spirit? This is Kriyâshakti,
the power of producing forms on the objective plane through the potency of Ideation
and Will, from invisible, indestructible Matter.
Truly
says Jeremiah, [Op. cit., i. 5.] quoting the “Word
of the Lord”:
Before
I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of
the womb I sanctified thee,
for
Jeremiah stands here for Man when he was yet an Æon, or Divine Man, both
with Simon Magus and Eastern Philosophy. The first three chapters of Genesis
are as Occult as that which is given in Paper I. For the terrestrial Paradise
is the Womb, says Simon, [Philosophumena, vi. 14.] Eden
the region surrounding it. The river which went out of Eden to water the garden
is the Umbilical Cord; this cord is divided into four Heads, the streams that
flowed out of it, the four canals which serve to carry nutrition to the Fœtus,
i.e., the two arteries and the two veins which are the channels for the
blood and convey the breathing air, the unborn child, according to Simon, being
entirely enveloped by the Amnion, fed through the Umbilical Cord and given vital
air through the Aorta. [At first there are the omphalo-mesenteric vessels,
two arteries and two veins, but these afterwards totally disappear, as does
the “vascular area” on the Umbilical Vesicle, from which they proceed.
As regards the “Umbilical Vessels” proper, the Umbilical Cord ultimately
has entwined around it from right to left the one Umbilical Vein which takes
the oxygenated blood from the mother to the Fœtus, and two Hypogastic or
Umbilical Arteries which take the used-up blood from the Fœtus to the Placenta,
the contents of the vessels being the reverse of that which prevails after birth.
Thus Science corroborates the wisdom and knowledge of ancient Occultism, for
in the days of Simon Magus no man, unless an Initiate, knew anything about the
circulation of the blood or about Physiology. While this Paper was being printed,
I received two small pamphlets from Dr. Jerome A. Anderson, which were printed
in 1884 and 1888 and in which is to be found the scientific demonstration of
the fœtal nutrition as advanced in Paper I. Briefly, the Fœtus is
nourished by osmosis from the Amniotic Fluid and respires by means of the Placenta.
Science knows little or nothing about the Amniotic Fluid and its uses. If any
one cares to follow up this question, I would recommend Dr. Anderson’s
Remarks on the Nutrition of the Fœtus. (Wood & Co., New York)]
Magic
and Miracles - (Page
471) The above is given for the elucidation of that which is to follow.
The disciples of Simon Magus were numerous, and were instructed by him in Magic.
They made use of so-called “exorcisms” (as in the New Testament),
incantations, philtres; believed in dreams and visions, and produced them at
will; and finally forced the lower orders of spirits to obey them. Simon Magus
was called “the Great Power of God,” literally “the Potency
of the Deity which is called Great.” That which was then termed Magic
we now call Theosophia, or Divine Wisdom, Power and Knowledge.
His
direct disciple, Menader, was also a great Magician. Says Irenæus, among
other writers:
The
successor of Simon was Menander, a Samaritan by birth, who reached the highest
summits in the Science of Magic.
Thus
both master and pupil are shown as having attained the highest powers in the
art of enchantments, powers which can be obtained only through “the help
of the Devil,” as Christians claim; and yet their “works”
were identical with those spoken of in the New Testament, wherein such
phenomenal results are called divine miracles, and are therefore, believed in
and accepted as coming from and through God. But the question is, have these
so-called “miracles” of the “Christ” and the Apostles
ever been explained any more than the magical achievements of so-called Sorcerers
and Magicians? I say, never. We Occultists do not believe in supernatural phenomena,
and the Masters laugh at the word “miracle.” Let us see, then, what
is really the sense of the word Magic.
The
source and basis of it lie in Spirit and Thought, whether on the purely divine
or the terrestrial plane. Those who know the history of Simon have the two versions
before them, that of White and of Black Magic, at their option, in the much
talked of union of Simon with Helena, whom he called his Epinoia (Thought).
Those who, like the Christians, had to discredit a dangerous rival, talk of
Helena as being a beautiful and actual woman, whom Simon had met in a house
of ill fame at Tyre, and who was, according to those who wrote his life the
incarnation of Helen of Troy. How, then, was she “Divine Thought”?
The lower angels, Simon is made to say in Philosophumena, or the third
Æons, being so material, had more badness in them than all the others.
Poor man, created or emanated from them, had the vice of his origin. What was
it? Only this: when the third Æons possessed themselves, in their turn,
of the Divine Thought through (Page 472)
the transmission into them of Fire, instead of making of a man a complete being,
according to the universal plan, they at first detained from him that Divine
Spark (Thought, on Earth Manas); and that was the cause and origin of senseless
man’s committing the original sin as the angels had committed it æons
before refusing to create. [Supra. vol. ii.] Finally, after
detaining Epinoia prisoner amongst them and having subjected the Divine Thought
to every kind of insult and desecration, they ended by shutting it into the
already defiled body of man. After this, as interpreted by the enemies of Simon,
she passed from one female body into another through ages and races, until Simon
found and recognized her in the form of Helena, the “prostitute,”
the “lost sheep” of the parable. Simon is made to represent himself
as the Saviour descended on Earth to rescue this “lamb” and those
men in whom Epinoia is still under the dominion of the lower angels. The greatest
magical feats are thus attributed to Simon through his sexual union with Helena,
hence Black Magic. Indeed, the chief rites of this kind of Magic are based on
such disgusting literal interpretation of noble myths, one of the noblest of
which was thus invented by Simon as a symbolical mark of his own teaching. Those
who understood it correctly knew what was meant by “Helena.” It
was the marriage of Nous (Ãtmâ-Buddhi) with Manas, the union through
which Will and Thought become one and are endowed with divine powers. For Ãtman
in man, being of an unalloyed essence, the primordial Divine Fire (or the eternal
and universal “that which has stood, stands and will stand”), is
of all the planes; and Buddhi is its vehicle or Thought, generated by and generating
the “Father” in her turn, and also Will. She is “that which
has stood, stands and will stand,” thus becoming, in conjunction with
Manas, male-female, in this sphere only. Hence, when Simon spoke of himself
as the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and of Helena and his Epinoia
Divine Thought, he meant the marriage of his Buddhi with Manas. Helena was the
Shakti of the inner man, the female potency.
Now,
what says Menander? The lower angels, he taught, were the emanations of Ennoia,
(Designing Thought). It was Ennoia who taught the Science of Magic and imparted
it to him, together with the art of conquering the creative angels of the lower
world. The latter stand for the passions of our lower nature.
Magic
a Divine Science - (Page
473) His pupils, after receiving baptism from him (i.e., after
Initiation), were said to “resurrect from the dead” and, “growing
no older,” became “immortal.” [See Eusebius, Hist.
Eccles.,Lib. III, iii. cap. 26.] This “resurrection “
promised by Menander meant, of course, simply the passage from the darkness
of ignorance into the light of truth, the awakening of man’s immortal
Spirit to inner and eternal life. This is the Science of the Râja Yogîs—Magic.
Every
person who had read Neo-Platonic Philosophy knows how its chief Adepts, such
as Plotinus, and especially Porphyry, fought against phenomenal Theurgy. But,
beyond all of them, Jamblichus, the author of the De Mysteriis, lifts
high the veil from the real term Theurgy, and shows us therein the true Divine
Science of Râja Yoga.
Magic,
he says, is a lofty and sublime Science, Divine, and exalted above all others.
It
is the great remedy for all . . . . It, neither takes its source in, nor is
it limited to, the body of its passions, to the human compound or its constitution;
but all is derived by it from our upper Gods,
our
divine Egos, which run like a silver thread from the Spark in us up to the primeval
divine Fire. † [De Mysteriis, p.100, lines 10 to 19: p.109,
fol. I.]
Jamblichus
execrates physical phenomena, produced, as he says, by the bad demons who deceive
men (the spooks of the sêance room), as vehemently as he exalts Divine
Theurgy. But to exercise the latter, he teaches, the Theurgist must imperatively
be “a man of high morality and a chaste Soul.” The other kind of
Magic is used only by impure, selfish men, and has nothing of the Divine in
it. No real Vates would ever consent to find in its communications anything
coming from our higher Gods. Thus one (Theurgy) is the knowledge of our Father
(the Higher Self); the other, subjection to our lower nature. One requires holiness
of the Soul, a holiness which rejects and excludes everything corporeal; the
other, the desecration of it (the Soul). One is the union with the Gods (with
one’s God), the source of all Good; the other intercourse with demons
(Elementals), which, unless we subject them, will subject us, and lead us step
by step to moral ruin (mediumship). In short:
Theurgy
unites us most strongly to divine nature. This nature begets itself through
itself, moves through its own powers, supports all, and is intelligent. Being
the ornament of the Universe, it invites us to intelligible truth, to perfection
(Page 474) and imparting perfection
to others. It unites us so intimately to all the creative actions of the Gods,
according to the capacity of each of us, that the soul having accomplished
the sacred rites is consolidated in their [the Gods’]
actions and intelligences, until it launches itself into and is absorbed by
the primordial divine essence. This is the object of the sacred Initiations
of the Egyptians. [De Mysteriis. p. 290. lines 15 to 18. et
seq., caps. v and vii.]
Now,
Jamblichus shows us how this union of our Higher Soul with the Universal Soul,
with the Gods, is to be effected. He speaks of Manteia, which Samâdhi,
the highest trance. [Ibid., p.100, sec. iii. cap] He speaks
also of dream which is divine vision, when man re-becomes again a God. By Theurgy,
or Râja Yoga, a man arrives at: (1) Prophetic Discernment through our
God (the respective Higher Ego of each of us) revealing to us the truths of
the plane on which we happen to be acting; (2) Ecstacy and Illumination; (3)
Action in Spirit (in Astral Body or through Will); (4) and Domination over the
minor, senseless demons (Elementals) by the very nature of our purified Egos.
But this demands the complete purification of the latter. And this is called
by him Magic, through initiation into Theurgy.
But
Theurgy has to be preceded by a training of our senses and the knowledge of
the human Self in relation to the Divine SELF. So long as man has not thoroughly
mastered this preliminary study, it is idle to anthropomorphize the formless.
By “formless” I mean the higher and the lower Gods, the supermundane
as well as mundane Spirits, or Beings, which to beginners can be revealed only
in Colours and Sounds. For none but a high Adept can perceive a “God”
in its true transcendental form, which to the untrained intellect, to the Chelâ,
will be visible only by its Aura. The visions of full figures casually perceived
by sensitives and mediums belong to one or another of the only three categories
they can see: (a) Astrals of living men; (b) Nirmânakâyas
(Adepts, good or bad, whose bodies are dead, but who have learned to live in
the invisible space in their ethereal personalities); and (c) Spooks,
Elementaries and Elementals masquerading in shapes borrowed from the Astral
Light in general, or from figures in the “mind’s eye” of the
audience, or of the medium, which are immediately reflected in their respective
Auras.
Having
read the foregoing, students will now better comprehend the necessity of first
studying the correspondences between our “principles”—which
are but the various aspects of the triune (spiritual and physical) man—and
our Paradigm; the direct roots of these in the Universe.
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