[Page 1] NO reasonable man can hope to avoid misunderstandings
altogether in connection with a new movement of thought. For anyone
concerned with such a movement, the hardship of being saddled with
assertions he never made, and doctrines he never propounded, is very
great; but this treatment has to be accepted with patience as a natural
consequence of the mental activity characteristic of our age and country.
People of quick imagination cannot help criticising new ideas wherever
they crop up, no matter how crude and fragmentary their presentation, and
such ideas are lucky if not so dealt with on the basis of a fragmentary
statement purposely put forward as a caricature. This last fate, as well as
the first, has often befallen the Theosophical movement, but in truth, it is an
effort which no cultivated and well-disposed person of any nationality, who
comprehends it rightly, can have any ground for regarding either with
ridicule or hostility. If false impressions concerning the objects of the
Theosophical Society are kept aside, as well as mistaken notions in
reference to abnormal occurrences that have perhaps been too much
talked about in connection with its work, there will remain a path of
operations, which every one may not think it worth while to enter upon, but
which no man, amenable to the force of reason, can condemn as a path
leading to evil consequences or resulting from any sort of delusion.
In other words, people who have become zealous members of the
Theosophical Society are governed by a disposition to think that highly
important truths, relating to the origin and future destinies of man, may be
reached by a certain line of study, and that a great deal may be done
towards obliterating the acrimonious warfare of sects, by uniting for the
purposes of such study in a broad, loosely organised association, which
exacts from its fellows no subscription to any test or belief whatever,
beyond a simple recognition of the principle that men may wisely engage in
a fraternal search for those fundamental truths which must underlie the
discrepant creeds of the modern world, so far as each or any of these
creeds have real truth in them. Already, indeed, some members of the
Theosophical Society believe that they have prosecuted this search along
the lines indicated by the founders of the Society with great success.
Individual members may conceive, with varying degrees of confidence, that
certain persons who have communicated to them within the pale of the
society the results, or some of the results, of their search after spiritual
truth, have shown themselves so richly endowed with knowledge and
intellectual capacity as to be manifestly [Page 2] qualified in an extraordinary
degree to point out the way to others, and thus to save new inquirers 99
per cent, of the trouble they would otherwise have to take. But if ever it is
represented that Theosophists are the blindly credulous recipients of a
great volume of cut and dried Oriental dogmatism, that statement can only
be a more or less disingenuous perversion of the state of things just
described. As Theosophists they are simply inquirers after truth, and may
not be the less Theosophists because they are also, as the case may be,
Christians, Hindoos, Mahomedans, or Parsees.
Will
an objection be raised at the threshold here, to the effect
that so vague an aspiration as the desire for spiritual
truth can be no bond of union; that everyone who reads
or thinks of serious things is to that extent a Theosophist,
by this definition already, and without having ever heard
of the persons who have especially arrogated to themselves
that title ? Certainly, every open-minded person who reads
or thinks with the view of revising, and not merely with
that of confirming, established conceptions, is a potential
Theosophist, but in the society that has recently been
formed to pursue such revision systematically, there is
just so much of a predominant leaning towards enquiry,
in a certain direction, as to give the society a clearly-defined
reason for its existence, without militating against the
intellectual liberty of its members. This leaning has been
determined by what the present leaders of the society regard
as their great success in obtaining an insight into spiritual
science, with the help of some members of a certain organisation,
that has its principal seat at present in Tibet. It is
only within very recent years that anything has been known
of this organisation beyond the circle of its own initiates,
and whenever, among persons who have paid any attention
to the matter at all, a low estimate is formed of the importance
of the Theosophical movement, this can only ensue from
a doubt whether the information now current in the world
concerning the organisation referred to is to be relied on.
For if I am even approximately right in the statements
which in some books of mine on the subject I have ventured
to put forward, the assistance of those who are known in
the East as the Mahatmas cannot but be of priceless importance
for all students of spiritual truth, whatever their creed or
nationality.
The
convictions formed by those of us who think we have ascertained
with certainty that the occult fraternity of the Mahatmas,
or adepts, has a real existence, are to the effect that
the members of this fraternity have developed, by extraordinary
exertions, a faculty for exploring the mysteries of nature
along some other paths besides those marked out by the
physical senses. The chain of evidence on which those convictions
rest is long and intricate, and it is in reference to this
evidence especially that misunderstandings on the part
of careless readers of fragmentary Theosophical writings
are so apt to arise. Just as in the case of a very long
trial before a court of justice, some detached portions of
the evidence will seem, by readers of these alone, to have
no connection with the main facts under examination, so
the records of some isolated occurrences that have
[Page
3] interested
Theosophical enquirers, as contributing to establish some
link in the chain of their evidence, will often be scoffed
at as trivial and insignificant bases for the large conclusions
supposed to be derived from them. But the evidence, patiently
summed up, if examined as a whole, will not be found insufficient,
and the smallest incident, revealing on the part of those
who are invested in any degree with the abnormal powers
of the Mahatmas, may be a brick in the edifice — may
serve its purpose in demonstrating the possibility that,
by the methods of self-development which the Mahatmas employ,
faculties are awakened that subserve the investigation of
natural laws, ranging beyond those that can be appreciated
with the aid of the physical senses only. The mistake constantly
made in reference to this branch of the argument is, that
the abnormal phenomena which are thus treated as of importance
are gloated over with a mere wonder-loving enthusiasm by
their narrators as supernatural occurrences, held, because
they are supernatural, to be miraculous guarantees of a
new religion. Nothing of the kind is claimed on their behalf.
There are no students of physical science in any laboratory
in London who are more emphatic in repudiating the supernatural,
as an absurd contradiction in terms, than the students
of occult science. These are quite well aware that, when
they encounter a physical phenomenon, apparently doing violence
to what are commonly received as the laws of matter, its
importance lies — not in the notion, which
they never contemplate for an instant, that the order of
Nature has been reversed in this case, but in the evidence
so afforded that the previously received conception of
the order of Nature has been shown to be incomplete. And
when they find that the phenomenon under consideration
exhibits, on the part of those by whom it is provoked,
a grasp of some higher generalisation than that which has
sufficed to embrace more commonplace phenomena, the importance
they attach to that discovery is as follows: They argue,
as it seems to me, not unreasonably, that within the limits
of that higher generalisation it is very likely that a
purview of Nature is obtainable, that may bring within
the knowledge of those enjoying it an enlarged group of
experiences calculated to throw light on many problems
which appear to transcend " the knowable" from the
lower standpoint. It is quite true that none of the very
many abnormal phenomena that have been witnessed by many
theosophic students, nor even all of them collectively,
constitute a demonstration of the whole scheme of teaching
concerning the past and future evolution of humanity that
has been obtained, by this time, from the Mahatmas. But
these phenomena, and the assurances of a variety of persons
in a position to know, do prove that Mahatmas exist, and
exercise powers which link the operations of mind with
the phenomena of matter, and exhibit the consciousness
and will of man as forces, under some circumstances of
extraordinary potency, capable of effecting consequences
far beyond the range of the nervous and muscular systems
in which those forces habitually reside, The phenomena
of which I myself have been the [Page
4]
observer,
not to speak of many others of a far more striking character
testified to by others quite as well entitled as I
am to be credited with common honesty in giving their
evidence, distinctly demonstrate the fact that some persons
are capable of exercising their faculties of perception
and reflection, and communicating ideas at places far
remote from those at which their bodies may be stationed
at the time. The laws of nature, of which they avail
themselves in doing this — just as we may avail
ourselves on the physical plane of the laws relating
to the constitution of gases, when we send the voice
along a speaking-tube — are
on that which, till we understand it better, we may be
content to call the psychic plane, but are laws of Nature
none the less, and it is just this fact which renders
the evidences so afforded important. Our detractors erroneously
suppose that we are delighted with these phenomena, because
we conceive them to be supernatural. We are delighted
with them for exactly the opposite reason —
because we know them to be natural, and, knowing this,
perceive the splendid range of possibilities in the
direction of acquiring knowledge concerning the higher
truths of Nature with which the power of observing
on the psychic plane may very probably endow their
authors.
The Mahatmas are not fond of putting forward ex-cathedra statements, and
that which they may have been most inclined to do, so far as they have
taken any active part in directing the philosophic studies of the Theosophic
Society, has been to indicate the light which may be thrown upon the
evolution of humanity, and the laws of Nature in her higher realms, by the
intelligent consideration of old Aryan literature and philosophy, and most of
the doctrine so far conveyed to us by the Mahatmas may be shown to lurk
under various intricate disguises in Sanscrit writings which have either not
yet been translated at all, or have been translated with reference to the
surface meaning only, so that the translations sometimes obliterate the
esoteric meaning altogether. Still, of late, and by degrees, with the help of
the Mahatmas, some of us in the Theosophical Society have picked up so
much of this esoteric meaning, that when it comes to be presented in a
coherent shape, people often find fault with it because they regard it as ex-cathedra statement.
This is only one of the misunderstandings it is my present purpose to dispel
The Theosophical Society is an organisation of enquirers after truth, but
unless it is perpetually unsuccessful in its search, it cannot help the
accumulation in the hands of its most earnest and persevering members of
(what they regard as) a large harvest of truth. New comers are certainly not
expected to accept this en bloc, but in charging the society with being a
band of crocheteers who pin their faith unreasonably on a system of
cosmogony and anthropology as unproved as it is stupendous, the
opponents of the theosophical movements are certainly misdirecting their
criticism. It is open to any person to state the conclusions to which his own
studies have led him, and if other persons find these conclusions
sufficiently interesting to trace them back to their origin, well and good. No
[Page 5] one who shrinks from the trouble of so tracing them back will derive
much benefit from them; but, at all events, this trouble may be considerably
less than that which, in the first instance, gave rise to their evolution. So
far every one who may be disposed to try the path of Theosophical enquiry,
even in the most tentative spirit, will be convenienced and need not be
deterred by the fact that his forerunners have formulated and published by
this time a good many of the discoveries they believe themselves to have
made.
The
core, or main truth, underlying these discoveries, as
far as. I comprehend them is this: — The spiritual
evolution of man is a process that is blended as it goes
on with the physical evolution of the race as traced by the
Darwinian theory, but it is not included in that physical
evolution. It may be taken note of, by some of those higher
faculties brought into play on the psychic plane of natural
phenomena, and may be observed to be going on, on that plane,
quite independently of its progress on the physical plane.
That which, for convenience sake, we may here speak of as
the human soul — though the constitution of the soul,
examined in the light of esoteric science, is so complex
that the word is not perfectly applicable all along the line — goes
through a process of evolution as prolonged and elaborate
in each individual case as the evolution of the physical
types in which it manifests on the physical plane at successive
periods of its growth. The soul is an entity, having materiality
of a kind, though the matter of which it is composed is not
in the same order of matter as that which constitutes human
bodies on this earth, and many of the phenomena which interest
students of occult science are valuable, because they demonstrate
the existence of this matter of the higher kind. The soul
entity or individualised ego, of a human creature, having
once attained to that condition, by passing through the lower
forms of animated nature, is then educated by successive
human incarnations, and refreshed by successive periods of
existence on the higher psychic plane. Its individuality
is preserved throughout these successive processes of growth,
and the fact that the personal adventures of each incarnation
are forgotten by the time the next comes on, does not in
any way, when the circumstances of such forgetfulness are
rightly appreciated, militate against the unity of the individual.
They are summed up in the essence or the ego by the time
the period for re-incarnation arrives, and thus constitute
the advance which that ego has made by virtue of its last
life, along the path of spiritual evolution, but they are
not even forgotten until they have been fully developed in
all their consequences in the psychic existence immediately
following the physical life to which they have belonged.
There is ample time for this exhaustion of their effects,
because the whole process of human evolution is so deliberate
that thousands of years may elapse between the successive
incarnations of the same individual ego. If this gradual
wearing away of the life memories in each case strikes a
new-comer to the theory as a comfortless notion, that can
only be due to an inadequate appreciation, on his [Page
6] part,
of what long periods of time really mean. Anyone who says "Such
or such a feeling in me can never be exhausted, my interest
in the life experiences I am passing through, my desire
to remember myself as I know myself now, and to compare
any later fate that may await me with the destinies I have
already endured, can never die away" — in saying
that, he is simply failing to realise the ultimate significance
of the word "never". A man may be so full of thought and
affection, and his mental grasp of his "personality", i.e,
of the bundle of specific recollections which have grouped
themselves during his life around the central core of his
imperishable individuality, may be so strong, that he may
quite rightly regard that personality as logically and
in justice entitled to a prodigious prolongation. Very
well: there is no law of Nature, according to the esoteric
interpretation thereof, to say Nay to his aspirations.
These recollections, affections, and active mental states,
inhere not in the body, which goes to the coffin, but in
the far more durable psychic body which death sets free
from its grosser encasement. The true ego thus liberated
is under no obligation to return to earth as long as the
feelings and aspirations referred to continue in activity,
and let us attempt for a moment to measure the future possibilities
of their activity by a retrospective comparison. We can
look back over some few thousand years of history. We can
retrace our steps in imagination along the story of our
own country, till with some distinct impression of the
length of time concerned we get back into the Roman era,
and across that stepping-stone of thought we can roll fancy
backward into the misty period of Egyptian civilisation.
Let the man who feels that he will be wronged if he does
not retain his personal recollections "for ever" imagine
himself perpetuating them along a channel of thought in
experience which these exclusively engage, all through
the future history of the earth, till the Victorian era
of British civilisation has been covered with later strata
of events, as thickly as the era of the heptarchy is covered
for us. Is his unconquerable love of his own personality
unsatisfied still ? There is, still, at all events, no
natural law, if so, which blots it out. In the processes
of geologic change this country itself may melt away, and
new continents may be formed to be colonised afresh and
slowly bear their social organisations of civilised men.
If the ego of our hypothesis is egotistic still, he will
hold on to the existence in which that egotism has free
scope; but, in truth, the conjecture does a wrong to human
nature. The most pleasurable day wears to a close, the
most active votary of its enjoyments craves at last for
rest, the fullest and brightest life of the kind we are
familiar with so far, is for time and not for eternity.
At last its feelings, its emotions, its experiences will
be sublimated to a true essence which represents the progress
of the real individual along the path of spiritual evolution,
and thus advanced, the fully refreshed ego will be born
again, to take a fresh departure, as from the day-light
of another morning.
And
it is well for our ultimate perfection that this is the
law, for only by [Page
7] a long series
of such new departures can the human soul accumulate the
attributes required to lead it on to that higher evolution
to which it is naturally destined in the future, and from
the standpoint of which the humanity, we know at present
will be looked back upon, almost as we look back upon the
lower forms of animal life. This is one of the many profoundly
satisfactory aspects of the esoteric doctrine. The history
of humanity, viewed by the light thus thrown upon it, is
not the purposeless agglomeration of suffering which some
less highly sensitive interpretations would have it. It
is not a crude tangle of injustice, in which one person is
blessed with all happiness, and another cursed with all misery,
and both alike treated to an equal share of an unchangeable
beatitude afterwards. We may discern in the nature of the
esoteric teaching the operation of a retributive law which
does not merely obliterate the inequalities of its earlier
working by a deluge of results out of proportion to any merit
or demerit that can be concerned, but which meets every case
with absolute flexibility, and never departs one hair's
breadth from the strict fulfilment of justice to each and
every human being. Not merely in its operation as regards
the ultimate spiritual perfection of the soul, but in regard,
also, to the worldly experiences of incarnation, the law
of consequences, to which the Oriental philosophy gives the
name "Karma", tracks
each individual along the almost interminable procession
of his incarnations and metes out to him the fruit of his
own growth. The doctrine does not teach its followers to
be callous on that account to human suffering, to leave
unturned any stone, the turning of which may afford such
suffering relief. But it does supply a sublime justification
of suffering which may reconcile us to that which is truly
inevitable in our own destiny, as well as in those of others
whom we can only reach with a helpless sympathy.
It may, perhaps, be urged that the religious system round us may reconcile
us to this by teaching a profound, if as yet unenlightened, trust in the
benevolence of God, in whose inscrutable government of the world we may
be sure that good will come out of evil eventually, and the dark mysteries of
existence in this world be unriddled by-and-bye. And no esoteric teacher
would resent this trustful confidence: he would only point out that the
esoteric doctrine gives us the explanation much sooner than might have
been expected, of the manner in which the good is evoked from the evil, of
the providential ways that we might have feared would remain inscrutable
much longer. The esoteric doctrine does not come to break down, sweep
away, or discredit existing religious systems. It comes, on the contrary, to
justify them in their essentials, to put aside, with all gentleness, if possible,
distortions of original divine truth which have crept over the face of
theological dogma, but mainly to give the world a last exact knowledge of
spiritual science, so that the actual verities underlying a great many
shadowy, but not on that account erroneous, beliefs may present
themselves in clear outlines to the understanding, and constitute intelligible
springs of action, the intelligent recognition of which may [Page 8]
thenceforward conduce much more efficiently to the higher spiritual
evolution of the future than could be accomplished by the further influence
of a blind, however beautiful, piety.
In
England the Theosophical movement must, probably for
some time to come, present itself chiefly to public attention
in its aspect as a system of philosophical inquiry;
but its true importance would be ill-appreciated if we
considered it merely in this light. In India the movement
has another bearing, and there its philosophical is intimately
blended with its social and philanthropic aspects. The
rivalry of warring sects in Europe, keen as it may sometimes
appear, is a small evil compared with the hitherto irreconcilable
hostility of the various religious schools, sects, and
castes into which the population of India is broken up.
The Theosophical Society has, for the first time in modern
Indian history, succeeded in constructing a common platform
on which Hindoo, Mussulman, Buddhist and Parsee may stand
in a fraternal alliance. It has, in actual fact, laid
the foundations of the "Universal Brotherhood". which it
emphasises as the foremost object of its appeal to the world.
With a hundred branches in different parts of the country — the
magnificent fruit of Colonel Olcott's untiring exertions — the
nucleus of this grand union of humanity has already taken
shape. In the beginning some objections were raised to the
programme of the Association on the ground that, beautiful
as the idea of universal brotherhood might be, it was merely
another phrase for the millennium, and that no practical
result was likely to ensue from the promulgation of an idea
as vague as the motto of a copy-book. But the Society has
lived to prove that, in alliance with the philosophical views
it is enabled to suggest, its aspirations towards an all-embracing
fraternity are by no means an ebullition of empty sentiment.
To begin with, the fraternity it aims at is not vitiated
by the lower objects of material socialism. It is no community
of goods which the Theosophical Society desires to set on
foot, but a community of spiritual aspiration, of intellectual
endeavour. And it claims this by helping to show that every
man whose religion embodies a desire to ascertain essential
truth, and not only to trifle with the formalities of ceremonial,
or to fight for the predominance of a dogma, must at last
reach a common platform on which he will find himself side
by side with every other truth seeker, no matter from what
point of the compass he sets out. This is the way in which
the guidance in the study of ancient Aryan literature afforded
to the visible leaders of the Society by the real adept founders
of the undertaking in the background, has proved of such
inestimable value. An immense number of the more thoughtful
classes of the Indian people have been persuaded to seek
for the correspondences in their respective faiths rather
than to dwell upon their discrepancies. And all philanthropists
who may, for any reason, be shocked by the crude idolatry
and incoherent fancies which disfigure oriental religions
would do far more wisely to co-operate with the Theosophical
Society, in trying to lead the imagination of the Indian
people up [Page
9] from
these to the primary divine truths they have so sadly caricatured,
rather than to waste good effort in a lateral attack. Such
an attack cannot be successfully prosecuted from the point
of view of a religion which Europe has so far refined in
the minds of its most gifted representatives, that these
are sometimes apt to forget how it strikes an entirely
unprejudiced stranger, when its cut and dried doctrines are
crudely presented to him by preachers unable to illuminate
their symbology as they proceed. Indeed, we may gather a
higher lesson yet from the theosophic position even than
that which would recommend a generous recognition of the
good wrought already in India by its fraternal counsels.
We may be enabled, at last, to perceive that in penetrating
to the core, and partially obscured significance of our great
European faith itself, with the help of the light shining
from the Oriental Brotherhood, we may discern something more
than a moral benefit for India in the establishment of fraternal
sentiment there — something
which may reveal to European philosophy that its highest
triumphs can only be attained when the universal brotherhood
of the Theosophical Society has truly extended its influence
across both continents, and has bound together the lovers
of divine wisdom in England and in Hindustan in an even
closer union than that which, for the welfare of both, let
us trust, will long continue to attach them in physical allegiance
to one governing organisation.