London
Lectures of 1907
Contents |
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PART I |
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PSYCHISM
AND SPIRITUALITY |
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THE PLACE OF MASTERS IN RELIGIONS |
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THEOSOPHY
AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
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PART II |
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THE PLACE OFPHENOMENA IN THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY |
71 |
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SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL AUTHORITY |
93 |
THE RELATION OF THE MASTERS TO THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY |
113 |
THE FUTURE OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY |
134 |
PART III |
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THE VALUE OF THEOSOPHY IN THE WORLD OF THOUGHT |
157 |
PART IV |
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THE FIELD OF WORK OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY |
183 |
Part I
Psychism and Spirituality
The Place of Masters in Religions
Theosophy and the Theosophical Society
Three public Lectures delivered in the smaller Queen's
Hall, London, on 16th, 23rd, and 20th June 1907.
Psychism and Spirituality
Our subject tonight consists of two words: psychism
—spirituality. I am going to speak to you on the subjects denoted by these two
words, because there is so much confusion about them in ordinary conversation,
in ordinary literature, and out of that confusion much of harm arises. People
think of one thing and use the name of the other, and so continually fall into
blunders and mislead others with whom they talk. I want tonight to draw a sharp
and intelligible division between psychism and spirituality; if possible, to
explain very clearly what each of them means; so that, thoroughly understanding
the meaning of the things, people may choose for themselves which of the two
they desire to evolve, or unfold, within themselves. For if a person, desiring
to unfold the spiritual nature, uses the means which are only adapted for
developing the psychic nature, disappointment, possibly danger, will result;
while, on the other hand, if a person desires to develop the psychic nature, and
thinks that he* will reach that development quickly by unfolding his spiritual
powers, he also is equally doomed to disappointment; but in the second case,
only to disappointment for a time. For while it is
4
not true that the great psychic is necessarily a spiritual
person, it is true that the great spiritual person is ' inevitably a psychic.
All the powers of Nature are subject to the Spirit, and hence, when a man has
truly unfolded his spiritual nature, there is nothing in the lower world which
is not open to him and obedient to his will. In that sense, then, the man who
follows the spiritual path will not ultimately be disappointed if he is seeking
psychic development, but the very seeking for it will, on the spiritual path,
act as a certain barrier. I shall return to the point again presently, and show
you in what sense, and why, it is true that the development of the psychic
powers may hinder the unfolding of the spiritual.
Now, to distinguish clearly between the two, I will begin
with two brief definitions. They will be expanded naturally in the course of the
lecture, but I will define each of these two words in a single sentence so as to
make the definition clear and brief. Spirituality is the ■ Self-realisation of
the One; psychism is the manifestation of the powers of consciousness through
organised matter. Each word of that definition has its own value. We are far too
apt, in our ordinary thought and talking, to limit the words " psychical," "
psychic," or " psychism " in a quite illegitimate way, and the popular use of
the term is illegitimate. It is generally used amongst us to mean unusual
manifestations of the powers of consciousness, whereas, properly speaking, the
word ought to cover every outer manifestation of consciousness, whether on the
physical, on the astral, on the mental, or on the buddhic plane. It does
not matter in what world you are
5
moving, in what matter your consciousness is acting; so
long as it is utilising organised matter for its own expression so long are
those manifestations psychic, and are properly included under the term psychism.
You may perhaps wonder why I lay stress on this. You will see it at once if I
remind you that unless we keep this definition in mind—accurate, legitimate as
it is—we shall be 'making a division between the manifestation of the
consciousness on the physical and on the astral and mental planes, between its
manifestation in the physical and those in the astral and mental bodies; and if
we do that the whole of our thought will be on mistaken lines. You need
practically to be pressed back to what you know of consciousness on the physical
plane, before you can thoroughly follow its manifestations on the astral and on
the mental. If you try to separate off manifestations which are the same in kind
though differing in degree, according to the fineness of the matter which is
employed, if you try to separate them off, you will always regard what you call
psychism—that is, astral and mental manifestations in the subtler bodies—in an
artificial and unwise manner. If, on the other hand, you realise that •
consciousness is one, that its manifestation on any plane is conditioned by the
matter of the plane, that it is one in essence, only varying in degree according
to the lessening or the increase of the resistance of the matter of the planes,
then you will not be inclined to take up exaggerated views with regard to what
people are so fond of calling psychism. You will not denounce it in the foolish
way of many people, because in denouncing it you will know that you denounce all
intellectual mani-
6
festations, an absurdity of which very few people are
likely to be guilty; if you take your intellectual manifestations in the
physical world as admirable things, to be always encouraged, strengthened,
developed, then you will be compelled, by parity of reasoning, to understand
that the manifestations of the same consciousness in finer matter, astral or
mental, are equally worthy, and no more worthy, of development, of
consideration. You will not find yourself in the absurdly illogical position of
declaring it a good thing to train the physical plane consciousness, while it is
dangerous to cultivate the astral and mental plane consciousness. You will
understand that all psychism is of the same kind, that on each plane the
development of psychism has its own laws ; but that it is absurd to admire the
working of consciousness on the lower plane, and shrink from it as something
dangerous, almost diabolical, when it appears on a plane higher than the
physical.
It is this rational and common-sense view which I want to
impress upon you to-night, to get you out of the region of mystery, marvel,
wonder, and fear, which to so many people surround what is called psychism; to
make you understand that you are unfolding consciousness, showing out your
powers on one plane after another according to the organisation and the fineness
of the bodies in which your consciousness is working; and that if you will only
keep your common sense and reason, if you will only not allow yourself to be
terrified by what at present is unusual, you may then walk along the psychic
pathway in the astral or mental world, as resolutely, and with as great an
absence of hysteria, as
7
walk along the psychic pathway in the physical world. That
is the general idea; and, of course, this is the meaning in which, after all,
the word is often used down here. When you say "psychology" you do not mean only
the workings of consciousness in astral and mental bodies; you mean the whole
consciousness of the man, the workings of the mind, wherever the mind is active;
the whole of that you include under " psychology." Why, then, when you change
its form, should you narrow it down, as though that which is mind on one plane
is not also mind on all planes on which the mind is able to function ?
Now let us consider for a moment the workings of the mind
on the physical plane: they are familiar. There is, however, one important point
about them. In the materialistic science of the last century you had very widely
spread, amongst scientific men, the view that thought was only the result of
certain kinds of vibration in certain kinds of matter. I need not dwell on that.
But you are aware that both in England, and more especially in France and
Germany, most elaborate disquisitions were written to prove that thought was
only the product of nervous matter. You rarely, I think never, now find a
well-trained scientist prepared to commit himself to that position. Those who
survive as representatives of that same school may do so, but they are literally
survivals. The mass of psychologists of today admit that the manifestations of
mind cannot any longer be regarded as the results of vibrations in the physical
brain, that at least we must go beyond these limitations when dealing with the
results of the study of
8
consciousness, as it is now studied amongst scientific ,
men. They will no longer, then, regard thought as the product of matter. They
certainly will not be prepared to go as far as I now propose to go, and say that
the thinking organism is the production of thought—the very antithesis, you will
agree, of the other position, but which is vital to the understanding of the
unfolding of the powers of consciousness through matter. It is recognised in
ordinary biology that the function appears before the organ. There I am on safe
scientific ground. It is recognised that the exercise of the function gradually
builds up the organ. All the researches into the simpler forms of organisms go
to prove that. It is also recognised that when the exercise of the function has
built the organ in a very simple form, the exercise of the function continually
improves the organ which originally it builded. So far we are hand in hand with
ordinary science. I think I shall not go too far in saying that a large number
of the more scientific psychologists of today will at least agree that the brain
as you find it in the adult man is very largely the result of the exercise of
thinking through the earlier years of life. I do not think they would go so far
as to say that thinking has literally produced it. They would, however, judging
by very many things that have been said, be willing to admit that by hard
thinking we can improve our apparatus of thought. That is one reason for
thinking hard—in order to think better. And the harder you think, the more will
your thinking instrument improve.
In my next step, however, I cannot by any stretching of
ordinary science persuade it to accompany me,
9
or give me a foundation ; for the point is that your
consciousness, working on the next plane above the one on which the organ of
consciousness is being built, is the shaper of that mechanism. To put it
concretely: your physical brain is built up from the astral plane, and it is
your consciousness working in matter finer than the physical which builds up the
brain in the forming child within the limits laid down by karma. Now, that is a
general law for healthy evolution. You will see the importance of this law a
little further on. Every body which we possess — physical, astral, mental,
buddhic — is always built up by consciousness working in the plane next above
it; the next plane, or world, is a world very much more " next" than you are
next each other sitting here—not far away beyond the stars, removed by great
spaces. It is interpenetrating you in every portion of your being. It is only "
next" in the sense that the solids, liquids, and gases of your bodies are next
each other in the body—not far away, but here. So that the working is of the
closest and most intimate kind. Some of you who are students, of Theosophical
literature will remember that H.P.B. has spoken of all of us as working in the
astral consciousness. You will see that you are not working with a physical
consciousness in the literal sense of the term, if you think for a moment. How
much do you know of the consciousness working in the various cells and tissues
of your physical body? Practically nothing, except when you are ill. Only when
the body is disorganised do you become conscious of that working. Normally, the
motion of your blood, the building up by
10
assimilation of your muscles and nerves, the life of your
cells, the protective action of some of the living cells in your body—the "
devourers," as they are called—go on without your knowledge, without your
thought, without your giving one moment's conscious attention to them. In the
Perfect Man, the consciousness of all this is ever present, but in us,
imperfect, it is not; we are not yet sufficiently vitalised and unfolded to
carry on the whole of our consciousness, with full awareness of all its
activities. We are only able to manage a very small part of it, and so have let
go the consciousness that keeps at work the physical body, to concentrate
ourselves in a higher world, and utilise the nervous mechanism as the apparatus
of our thinking. That law obtains, then, all through. If you want to organise
and build up your astral body, you can only do it from the mental plane. You
must raise your thought to a higher power by concentration, by regular
meditation, by deliberately working on the consciousness, before you can raise
it to that power from which it shall be able to organise your . astral body, as
it has already organised your physical body. That is the reason why meditation
is necessary in all these things ; because without the creative power of thought
we cannot organise the body in the world which is nearest to the physical.
Now, supposing that we recognise that our consciousness
working in the physical brain, the instrument over which we have complete
control, is continually at work contacting the outer world, using the brain as
an instrument on which it can play, and continually bringing down from higher
worlds impressions which it transmits more
11
or less perfectly to the physical plane, we need not dwell
upon our ordinary thinking. Let us take thinking a little more unusual, where
the finer part of the brain, its etheric matter, is being more largely
vitalised, more definitely used. The powers of the imagination—the creative
power—the artistic powers, all creative in their nature, these utilise most the
ethers of the brain, and, by working in those, bring into activity the lower and
coarser matter of the dense brain. Now, the thought passes from the
consciousness through vehicle after vehicle to find its clear expression here.
But do you not have many mental impressions that are not clear, not well
defined, and yet which impress you deeply, and of which you feel sure ? They are
of many kinds, and reach you in many ways. What is important to you is simply
this for the moment: that being surrounded by the astral and mental worlds,
contacts from these are continually touching you, continually causing changes in
your consciousness. If your astral body were thoroughly organised like your
physical, the impressions made would be clear and sharp like the physical. If
your mental body were well organised, the impressions of that plane, the
heavenly plane, would be clear and sharp like the physical. But as the astral
and mental bodies at this stage of evolution are not well organised, the
impressions received by them, causing changes in the consciousness, are vague
and indeterminate, and it is these which are generally called " psychic." And
when you have a Psychical Research Society, it is not dealing with the ordinary
processes of thought, but with those which are not ordinary; and all those
things to which it gives many
12
strange names are all workings of the consciousness, in
sheaths or bodies of which it has not yet gained the mastery, which it has not
yet definitely organised for its purposes. Slowly and gradually they become
organised, and strenuous thinking is the method for the astral body, and the
working of the pure reason is the method for the mental body. Let us consider
with regard to this, whether there is any other way of bringing the astral body*
and mental body into activity. For you may have noticed that I used the word "
normal" evolution, orderly evolution on the lines of natural evolution, always
from above. But you may stimulate it from below. It is possible to stimulate the
astral body, at least, from the physical plane, but you do it at the cost of
higher evolution a little later on, and the reason you can do it is simple
enough. In the astral body are all the centres of your senses. You know how
after death a man's desires are the same as they were during his physical life.
You know how in dreams your desires resemble desires that you may have in your
waking consciousness. The centre of all your psychic powers, of your conscious
powers, the centres of these are in the astral, and if (especially with your
senses, each of which has its own centre in the astral body) you overstrain the
physical senses down here, you will get an action on the astral plane, but an
unhealthy, because disorderly one, one not going along the line of evolution but
trying to create from below instead of from above. None the less, you may have
some results, and in the two famous Indian systems for developing the powers of
the consciousness, and for unfolding the consciousness itself, you have this
13
recognised, and you read of Raja Yoga and of Hatha Yoga, of
the Kingly Yoga and of the Yoga of Effort. The Yoga of Effort is Hatha Yoga, and
is practised by physical means and followed by physical effects. The eye is
stimulated in certain ways, and the effect of straining the physical eye is to
bring about a certain limited kind of clairvoyance. You can gain it in that way
"by gazing into crystals, and so on. They do stimulate the centre of physical
sight, but not the astral; and that is why they cannot go very far. You can get
a certain amount of clairvoyance by these means, but you are only expanding your
physical sight, and working on centres of the astral body connected with the
physical organ of vision, the eye. The true astral sight is an entirely
different thing. That comes from a centre of its own in the astral body. It has
to be created from the mental body, as the organ of the physical was from the
astral. The centre of that sight will be in the mental body and not in the
astral, and only the organ of it in the astral body. The method of the Kingly,
the Raja Yoga, is always by thought—concentrate, meditate, contemplate* think:
by that means, in a healthy, normal, natural way you will inevitably develop the
powers of sight on the astral, as in the course of Nature the powers of sight
were developed on the physical plane. And if you realise that your consciousness
is one, building its bodies for its fuller and more complete expression, that
you are here in order to become masters of matter instead of its slaves, to
become lords of matter, using every organ of matter for knowledge of the world
to which that matter belongs, and not to be blinded by it, as we are for so long
a time in
14
our climb upwards, then you will see that this natural
development of astral powers is inevitable in the course ' of evolution, and all
that you can do is to quicken it, following the line which Nature has traced. As
Nature slowly will evolve in every human being the power of using the astral
body as freely as you use the physical body now, so can you quicken the coming
of that day for yourselves by understanding the powers of thought and turning
them to the object you desire to obtain. There are many ways in which this may
be done, and many rules you may learn for your guidance. Those rules may be
summed up under two heads: clear and strenuous thinking, discipline for the
bodies that you are trying to evolve; and also, I should add, for the body below
them in evolution. Those are the two great laws for the safe evolution of these
so-called psychic powers, what I call the powers of the consciousness on the
astral and mental planes. There must be a discipline for the bodies, for you
have to choose the material which will serve you best in the work you are doing
out of the innumerable combinations of matter with which Nature presents you.
You must choose the combinations that will serve your purpose, which you can
utilise in the building of the organs of sense on plane after plane. Just as
really as the man who is a drunkard will injure his nervous system by his
-excesses, and by supplying coarse and over-active compounds will injure the
physical body, so making it a less useful instrument for the man —as any excess,
not only drunkenness, but gluttony, profligacy, and so on—as these injure the
physical body as an instrument of consciousness, and to have full and
15
perfect consciousness here we must train, discipline, build
up our body with knowledge and with self-control, so also is that true on the
higher planes. A regimen is necessary when you are dealing with the organisation
of the subtler matter of the astral and mental worlds, for you cannot build up
your physical body out of the coarser combinations of matter on the physical,
and have finer combinations on the astral and mental. The bodies have to match
each other. They have to correspond with each other; and as you find all sorts
of combinations related the one to the other on every plane, you must choose
your combinations on the physical if you desire to choose them also on the
astral and mental. You cannot make your physical body coarse, and organise the
astral and mental bodies for the finer purposes of the man; and you must settle
that in your minds if you wish to try to develop these higher powers of
consciousness. Not only because if you gather together the coarser materials of
the astral world, you will find yourself hampered by them in the higher
expression of consciousness, but also because the presence of these combinations
in you exposes you to a number of dangers on the astral plane. The purer the
elements of your astral body, the safer you are in your earlier wanderings on
that plane. It is important to mention this, because in some of the schools of
thought which are trying only to develop astral powers, you will find that they
deliberately use other methods in order to make their astral body active. Many
schools of the " left hand path " in India will use spirits, wines, meats of all
sorts, in order to bring about a certain astral condition, and they succeed,
16
because by these means they attract to themselves, and for
a time govern, the elemental powers of those lower planes—the elementals of the
lower astral worlds. So that you may find that an Indian, who knows a little of
this and wants to use it for his own purposes, will deliberately use these
things which are attractive to the elementals of those lower worlds, and gather
them around him and use them. But he does it knowing what he does, and aiming at
that which he desires to conquer. But amongst those who practise black magic of
the higher kinds—of the mental kinds—you have an asceticism as stern and rigid
as has ever been used by those who are trying to develop their higher bodies for
nobler ends. It is a mistake to think that the brothers of the dark side are, as
a rule, licentious and indifferent to what you call morality. On the contrary,
they are exceedingly strict. Their faults are the faults of the mind, not the
faults of the lower desires, of the organs of the different bodies which may
gratify them. Their faults are the more dangerous faults of mental powers
misused for personal ends. But they realise very well that if they want the
mental powers and the higher ranges of those powers, they must be as rigid in
the discipline of the lower bodies as any pupil of the White Lodge could be.
Take it, then, that to develop in this way, a regimen for the bodies, as well as
the strict working and training of the mind, is absolutely necessary. But with
these the result is sure. You cannot set a time for the result, for it depends
where the worker is beginning in his present life. In all these matters Nature's
laws will not permit of what is called miraculous growth, and if you find
17
persons developing psychic powers very rapidly, when
perhaps they have been meditating only a few months, it is because in a previous
life they have cultivated these powers and are taking up their lessons again in
a more advanced class of evolution, and not in the infant class, as many do in
the present life. So that there are differences. Some now beginning are not
likely to succeed in their present incarnation; but if that discourages them,
one can only say: " If you do not do it now, you will have to begin again next
life, and so on and on and on. For Nature's laws cannot be violated, and Nature
knows no favoritism and no partiality. Some time or other you have to begin, and
the sooner you begin the sooner will you succeed."
Now the whole of this, you will remark, is the training,
the organising of bodies. And psychism implies that. You must train, purify,
organise, in order that the powers of the consciousness may show forth. You will
see very fully now why at the beginning 1 urged you to realise that the whole of
these manifestations are similar in kind, so that when you find someone saying
to you: " Oh! So-and-so is a psychic," as though that were to condemn the
person; " Such-and-such a person is a mere clairvoyant," and so on, as though
the fact of possessing clairvoyance were a disadvantage rather than an
advantage; then the proper* answer is: " Are you prepared to go the whole way
with that ? " Many Indians do so (it is the point to which I said I would
return); they say that the siddhis, the powers of consciousness manifested on
the lower planes, are hindrances to the spiritual life. And so they are in a
sense. The spiritual life goes in-
18
wards: all psychic powers go outwards. It is the same
Self in either case—the Self turning inwards on Itself, or the Self going
outwards to the world of objects. But it does not make one scrap of
difference whether it goes out to physical, astral, or mental objects: it is all
the objective consciousness, and therefore the very reverse of the spiritual.
But the Indian does not shrink from that as ordinarily the man in the West
does. He is perfectly honest. He says: " Yes, the powers of the
intellect applied to the objects of the world are a hindrance in the spiritual
life. We do not want them, do not care to think about it. We give up all
the objects of the physical plane when seeking the Self." And if you are
prepared to say that, then by all means turn aside from psychism, but do not at
one and the same time encourage intellectuality on the physical plane and
denounce what you call psychism on the others, because that is mere folly. If
it is better to be blind here than to see—and the Indian will tell you it often
is, because it shuts out all the distracting objects of the physical plane—if
you are prepared to say that, and say: " Yes, I would rather be blind than see,"
then you may go on to denounce seeing on the astral plane. But if you value
your physical sight, why not value the astral sight—it is a stage higher—as well
? and the mental sight—which is a stage higher yet—as well ? Why denounce
astral and* mental, and praise up the physical ? Why admire the power of
sight of the painter, who sees more shades than you can see, and denounce the
sight of the clairvoyant, who sees very much more than the cleverest painter ?
They all belong to the object world ; they all lead the Self away from the
realisation
19
of himself, and they are all exactly on the same level. It
seems strange when one sees the same person exalting the psychic on the physical
plane and denouncing it on the astral and mental.
But now let us turn to " spirituality" and see what that
means. " The Self-realisation of the One "; not the declaring that all men are
one, that all men are brothers: we can all do that. Anyone who has reached a
certain stage of intellectual knowledge will recognise the unity of mankind;
will say, with the writer in the Christian book, that God has made all men of
one blood—quoted again from what is called a Pagan book. That intellectual
recognition of the unity is practically universal among educated people ; but
very few are prepared to carry out the intellectual recognition into practical
life and practical training. Now for the development of what are called psychic
faculties some amount of retirement from the world is very useful. For the
development of the spiritual consciousness no such retirement is necessary. In
fact, for the most part, except in the earlier stages perhaps, seclusion is a
mistake; for the world is the best place for the unfolding of the sense of
unity, and best amongst men and women and children can we call out the powers of
the spiritual life. And that for a simple reason. In the lower world the Spirit
shows itself out by love, by sympathy; and the more we can love, the more we can
sympathise, the greater will be the unfolding of the consciousness of the Self
within. It was a true word of the early Christian Initiate, that if a man loves
not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen ?
And if the perfection of the spiritual
20
consciousness be that vision of the Supreme, the
consciousness which knows itself to be one with God, then the way to the
realisation will be by the partial realisation of loving sympathy, for which the
world is the most fitting field, and our brethren around us the natural
stimulus. Love, sacrifice, these are the manifestations of the Spirit on the
physical plane, as is right knowledge also. For the Spirit is not a one-sided
thing, but a Trinity, and knowledge is as necessary as love. The special value
of love lies in its unifying power, and in the fact that it makes what the world
calls sacrifice natural and delightful. You know it in your own experience. Just
in proportion as you love another is it a joy and not a sorrow to give up things
in order that the happiness of the other may be increased. It is no sacrifice
for a mother to give up personal enjoyment for the sake of giving it to her
children. A deeper joy is felt in the happiness of the child than could possibly
have been felt in the enjoyment of the thing by herself; a sweeter, finer,
profounder happiness is the enjoyment of the happiness of the beloved. And that
a little widens out the consciousness, and hence family life is one of the best
schools for spiritual unfolding ; for in the continual sacrifices of the family
life, springing from love and rendered joyful by affection, the Self feels
itself a larger Self, and reaches the sense of unity with those immediately
around. And after the family the public life, the life of the community, the
life of the nation: these also are schools for the unfolding of the spiritual
consciousness. For the man who is a good citizen of the community feels the life
of the community as his own life, and so
21
becomes conscious of a larger Self than the narrow self of
the family. And the man who loves his nation, his Self widens out to the
boundaries of the nation, and he is conscious of a larger Self than the self of
the family, or the community within the State. And just in proportion as the
love widening does not grow superficial and shallow (for if you have only a
certain amount of water and you make your dish wider and wider, the water will
become shallower and shallower) does it approach spiritual love. Too often love
becomes unreal with those who try to love the far-off when they do not love the
near. But if you avoid the temptation, and remembering that the Spirit has no
limitations, and that you can draw and draw and draw on the love within you and
never find the bottom of the source of love; if you are strong enough to do
that, then the love of the family, of the community, of the State, will widen
out into the love of humanity, and you shall know yourself as one with all, and
not only with your family, or your community, or your nation. All these local
loves are schoolmasters to bring us to the wider love of man. But do not blunder
in the idea that you can have the wider unless you have gone through the
narrower; for the bad husband, the bad citizen, the bad patriot, will never make
a real lover of humanity. He must learn his alphabet before he can Bead in this
book of love, and must spell out the letters before he may pronounce the word.
None the less, these successive stages are all stages towards the spiritual
life, and prepare the man for the consciously spiritual realisation. And if you
would really train yourself for the unfolding of this life
22
within you, practise it on those who are nearest to you by
meeting them with love and sympathy in the daily paths of life. Not only those
whom you like, but those you care not for as well; not with those who love you
only, but with those who dislike you also. Remember that you have to break down
barriers—barriers of the bodies that bar you out from your fellow Selves in the
worlds around you, and that breaking down of the barriers is part of the
training in the spiritual life. Only as barrier after barrier is broken down,
only as wall after wall is levelled to the ground, will the freedom of the
Spirit become possible in manifestation on every plane and in every world. The
Spirit is ever free in his own nature and his own life, but, confined within the
barriers of the body, he has to learn to transcend them, before, on these planes
of matter, he can realise the divine freedom which is his eternal birthright. So
long as you feel yourself separate from others, so long are you shut out from
the realisation of the unity; so long as you say " my " and " mine," so long the
realisation of the Spirit is not yet possible for you. Love of individual
possessions, not only physical but moral and mental, not the vulgar pride of
physical wealth only, but moral pride, intellectual pride, everything that says
" I" as against " you," and does not realise that I and you are one—all this is
against the spiritual life. Hardest of all lessons when brought down to
practical life; most difficult of all attainments when effort is made to realise
it, and not only to talk about it and imagine it. It is best practised by
continual renunciation of the individual possessions on every plane, and the
constant thought of unity.
27,
When you are trying to live the life of the Spirit, you
will try to be pure. You do well, but why ? In order that you may be pure, and
leave your impure brethren in their impurity ? Oh no! You must try to be pure,
in order that there may be more purity in the world to share amongst all men,
because you are pure. You are not wanting to be purer than others, but only
gathering purity that you may spread it in every direction, and most joyous when
your own purity lifts someone from the mire, who is trampled into it under the
feet of the world. You want to be wise. You do well; for wisdom is a splendid
possession. But why ? In order that you may look down on the ignorant and say: "
I am wiser than thou," as the pure man might say: "I am holier than thou" ? Oh
no! but in order that the wisdom that you gather may enlighten the ignorant, and
become theirs and not only yours. Otherwise it is no spiritual thing; for
spirituality does not know "myself" and " others "; it only knows the One Self,
of whom all forms are manifestations.
We dare not call ourselves spiritual until we have reached
that point which none of us as yet has reached, for to reach it means to become
a Christ. When, looking at the lowest and basest and most ignorant and vilest,
we can say: " That is myself, in such-and-such a garb," and say it feeling it,
rejoicing in it—because if there are two of you, and one is pure and the other
impure, and the two are one, then neither is perfect, but both are raised above
the level of the lowest—that is the true atonement, the real work of the Christ;
and the birth of Christ within you means the willingness to throw down
24
all walls of separation, and the stature of Christ within
you means that you have accomplished it.
For the most part we claim our unity above; we do not take
pride in claiming our unity below; we are glad to say, "Yes, I also am Divine; I
am a Christ in the making; I am one with Him." Harder to say: "I am one with the
lowest of my brethren, sharing with them the same Divine life." Yet our Divinity
is only realised as we recognise that same Divinity in others. You may remember
that exquisite story of Olive Schreiner, breathing the very essence first of the
unspiritual, and then of the spiritual life. In the first case a woman, pure and
spotless, her garments shining with whiteness, and her feet shod as with snow,
went up to the Gates of Heaven and trod the golden streets. And as she trod them
in her shining robes the angels shuddered back, and said: " See, her garments
are blood-spotted, and her sandals are stained with mire and blood." From the
throne the Christ asked: " Daughter, how is it that your garments are
blood-spotted and your sandals stained ? " And she answered: " Lord, I was
walking in miry ways, and I saw a woman there down in the mire, and I stepped
upon her that I might keep my sandals clean." The Christ and the angels
vanished, and the woman fell from heaven, and wandered again in the miry ways of
earth. Once again she came to the .heavenly portal and trod the golden streets,
and this time she was not alone. Another woman was with her, and the garments of
both were blood-flecked, and the sandals of both were stained with the mire and
blood of earth. But the angels seeing them pass by, cried out: " See how whitely
their garments
25
shine! And see how white are their feet!" And the Christ,
when they came before the throne, said: " How come ye here in garments that are
soiled ? " And the answer came: " I saw this my sister trampled upon, and I bent
down to lift her up, and in the picking of her up my garments were soiled, but I
have brought her with me to Thy presence." And the Christ smiled and lifted them
up beside Him, and the angels sang for joy. For it is not the sin and the shame
that are shared that soil the garments of the Spirit, and leave upon it the mire
of earth.
If, then, you would lead the spiritual life, go downwards
as well as upwards. Feel your unity with the sinner as well as with the saint.
For the only thing that makes you divine is the Spirit that lives in every human
heart alike, in all equally dwelling, and there is no difference in the divinity
of the Spirit, but only in the stage of its manifestation. And just as you and I
climb upwards and show more of the spiritual life in the lower worlds, should we
raise our brethren with us, and know the joy of the redeemer, and the power of
the life that saves. For Those whom we call Masters, Those who are the Christs
of the world, Those are reverenced and beloved, because to Them there is no
difference, but the sinner is as beloved as the saint—nay, sometimes more,
because compassion flows out to the weaker more than to the strong.
Such is the spiritual life? such the goal that every man
who would become spiritual must place before his eyes. Very different from the
psychic, and not to be confused with it—the unfolding of the divinity in man,
and not
26
the purification and the organisation of the vehicles. Both
are good, both necessary, and I finish with the words with which I began, that
while to be psychic is no proof of spirituality, to be spiritual is to possess
every power in heaven and on earth. Choose ye each your road. Tread whichever
you will, but beware that by the growth of your powers here, in separation, you
do not delay the growth of the spirituality which is the realisation of the
unity of the Self. For everything which divides becomes evil, by the very fact
of its dividing; every power which is shared is a wing to carry us upwards, but
every power that is kept for the lower self is a clog that holds us down to
earth.
The Place of Masters in Religions
Everyone of us who belongs to any special religion can
trace back along the line of his religion further and further into the past,
until he comes to its beginning, its first Teacher. And round that Teacher is
usually a group of men and women who to the Founder of the religion are
disciples, but to those who accept the religion later are teachers, apostles.
And this is invariably true. The Hebrew, if you ask him, will trace back his
religion to the time of the great legislator Moses, and behind Him to a yet more
heroic figure, Abraham, the " friend of God." Look back to some yet older faith,
the faith of Egypt, of Chaldea, of Persia, of China, of India, and you will find
exactly the same thing is true. The Pars!, representative of a splendid
tradition, but whose religion, as it' now, is, as has been well said, " a
religion of fragments only—he will trace back his religion to his own great
Prophet, the Prophet of the Fire, who led the exodus from the centre of Asia and
guided His people into what we now call the land of Persia. Egypt, if you ask
her story, will show you heroic figures of her past, and amongst them that great
King and Priest, Osiris, who, slain, as the old legend tells us, rises again, as
Lord and
27
28
Judge of His people. Buddhism, spread in the far East, will
trace back its story to the Buddha, and will declare in addition to that, that
not only is the Buddha the Teacher of that particular faith, but that a living
person still exists on the earth as Teacher, as Protector, whom they call the
Bodhisattva, the wise and the pure. India will tell you of a great group of
teachers gathered round their Manu, the tradition of whose laws are still
preserved, and is still used as the basis of the social legislation administered
now by the English rulers. And round that great Lawgiver of the past, wise men
are gathered whose names are known throughout the land, each of them standing at
the head of some noble Indian family, that traces its ancestry backward and
backward till it ends in the Sage, the Teacher. And this is equally true of more
modern religions. Take the Christian religion, and the Christian traces his
religion back until it finds its source in the personality of the Prophet of
Judea, of Jesus the Christ. And it is interesting, as one of those strange
parallels which meet us often in the comparative study of religions, that Just
as the Buddhist has his Buddha and also his Bodhisattva, so the Christian has
the two names: Christ, representing the living Spirit, a stage in the spiritual
unfolding, the name representing a stage, an office, rather than a special man,
and joined to that the individual name of Jesus, in order to mark the intimate
connection, as some would say the identity, between the" two. But just as among
the Buddhists the distinction is drawn, so among the early Christians you will
find a similar distinction was made between the man Jesus and the spiritual
Christ.
29
So that in those early days many of those who were called "
Gnostics " divided the two in a similar fashion, although uniting them at a
certain stage of the teaching, of the ministry. And if you take the latest born
of the religions, the Mussalman, the religion of Islam, that again is traced
backward to a Prophet, the Prophet Muhammad, the great Prophet of Arabia.
Universally this is true, that the religion traces itself back to a single
mighty figure, whom some call a " God-man," a man too divine to be regarded as
wholly like those amongst whom he lived and moved and taught; above them and yet
of them, closely bound to them by a common humanity, although raised above them
by a manifestation of the God within, mightier, more complete, more compelling,
than the manifestation in the ordinary men and women around Him. So with all
religions, and in that thought of the divine figure, the Founder of every faith,
you have the fullest, the truest, the most perfect conception of that which we
Theosophists call the ideal of the Master. All such mighty beings by the
Theosophist would be given the name of Master. And not by the Theosophist alone,
for that word in other religions has been applied to the Founder, the Chief of
the faith. Nay, to the Christian it should come with special force, with special
significance, for it was the name that Christ the Teacher chose as best
Expressing His own relationship to those who believed on Him, to those who
followed Him, " Neither be ye called masters," He said; " for one is your
Master, even Christ." And so again you may remember that, in speaking to His
disciples, He said: "Ye call Me Master and Lord, and ye say well,
30
for so I am." So that to the Christian heart the name
Master should be above all other names sacred and beloved, since it was the
chosen name of their own Teacher, the name that He claimed from His disciples,
that name that He used as representing His relation to them. So this idea of a
Master in religion certainly should be one which comes with no alien sound, no
foreign significance, among those who look up to the Master Christ. And exactly
the same idea is that of a Master in any great religion; it is a common idea—it
signifies the Founder, the Teacher, divine and yet human. To that point I will
return later.
Let us study the central idea of these Masters a little
more closely, and see what are the special characteristics which mark Them in
the religions of the past. If you go back very, very far, you will always find
that the Master wears a double character: ruler, law-giver, on the one side;
teacher upon the other. In all the old civilisations this is characteristic; for
in those days the idea had not arisen of sacred and secular, or sacred and
profane, as we say in the modern world. To the old civilisations there was no
such thing as sacred history and profane history; no division was made between
sacred science and secular science; all history was sacred, all science was
divine. And so much was that the case that, when you find an ancient pupil among
of an ancient teacher as to divine science, the answer -was given: " There are
two forms of divine science, the higher and the lower." And the lower divine
science was made up of all the things that now you call literature, science, and
art; all those were run over by name, and summed up under the
THE PLACE OF MASTERS IN RELIGIONS 31
heading of the lower divine science. The higher, supreme
Science was that knowledge of God, to which accurately the word Wisdom ought
only to be applied. So that to their thought Deity was everywhere, and there was
only variety in the manifestations of Deity. All Nature was sacred. God
expressed Himself in every object, in every form. All that could be said was
that through one form more of His glory came than through another. The form
might be more or less transparent, but the inner radiant light was the same in
all. And it was natural, inevitable, with such a conception of Nature and of
God, that the Master, the Founder, of a religion should unite in His sole person
the office alike of the Priest and of the King. And so you find it. The only
likeness in modern days is not now a very fortunate one in the eyes of many—the
King-Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. For so ill had the duties of the King
been performed in that high seat, that the people lost the sense of the
divinity, and revolted against it, and cast it off, and left that Pontiff shorn
of his royal character. But far back in the old civilisations, in the one person
the two offices were united. The Pharaoh of Egypt was truly the Lord of the
triple diadem, but also the supreme Priest in every temple of his land. So also
in Chaldea, in India, and in many another land; and wherever that is the case
you find a certain outline given to the civilisation, differing in detail, but
marvellously similar in the broad touches of that sketch. You find that in those
days the Priest-King, the Ruler of the land and the supreme Teacher of his
people, shaped the polity of the nation as he shaped the doctrines taught in the
32
temples of the religion. Both the religion and the polity
have the keynote of duty. And always with increasing power there came greater
weight of responsibility, heavier burden of duty; and the freest in those
civilisations were the poorest. Those who were regarded as the children of the
national household were ever cared for with extremest care. The very fact that
they were the lowest in development gave them the greatest claim on the divine
Man who ruled, so that all through the note of those civilisations is the note
which to-day would be called socialistic—with one enormous difference, that the
most wise ruled. The result, in a sense, would be the result that the Socialist
dreams of, the absence of poverty, the universality of some form of work done
for the State as a whole, a duty of each man to bear a share of the burden; but
the burden grew lighter and lighter as it came downwards to the younger members
of the family, of the nation; the duty the most burdensome was placed on the
highest. And you will find that, while still the tradition remained, it was very
difficult sometimes to get rulers and governors of large States and small. It
comes out in the Chinese books. The Emperor sends down word that So-and-so is to
be governor of a State, and So-and-so, in those degenerate days, generally tried
to escape from it, because of the tremendous burden that the governorship
imposed. For in the case of the old Rulers, in the days when the divine Kings
were the Kings and Priests of the people, anything that was wrong in the nation
was related to the Ruler, and not to the people at large. Remember the words of
one great Teacher of later days, Confucius, when a King turned to
33
him and said: " Master, why is there robbery, why is there
murder in my land ? How shall I stop it ?" His stern answer was: "If you, O
King, did not steal and murder, there would be no robbery and no murder in your
land." Always the highest with the weight of responsibility; the younger with
the right to enjoy, to be happy, to be cared for. Where food was short, they
were *he last to starve, and the King the first; where anything went short of
material things, they were the first to be given their share, and the King the
last. Such was the outline of the social organisation. Slight traces of it
remain even to the present day. You can see traces of it in the civilisation
that was destroyed in Peru by the conquerors, the Spanish conquerors, of that
land. Some traces of it still remain in India, although degraded and decayed.
The note is always the same: the higher, the more burdened; the higher, the
harder the life; the higher, the greater the duty. For that is the type of the
Master, and the idea ran through the whole of the civilisation. He, the
Priest-King, mighty in knowledge and in power, must bear upon his broad
shoulders the burden that would crush a weaker man. And so downwards through all
the degrees of ruler, in proportion to the power and its expansion, so in
proportion the weight and the responsibility.
They passed away from earth as humanity grew out of its
infant stage. My phrase is too strong—I should not have said: " They passed away
from earth." They passed away into silence, not from earth ; thereon many of
Them still remain. But They drew back from the outer position, from outer power,
and became the great
3
34
company of Elder Brothers of humanity, only some of whom
remained in close touch with the race.
And that is the next point in the idea of the Master. Those
who founded a religion were bound to remain wearing the body of man, fixed to
the earth, bound to the outward semblance of humanity, so long as the religion
lived upon earth which They had given to it. That was the rule: no liberation
for the Marr who founded a religion until all who belonged to that religion had
themselves passed out of it, into liberation, or into another faith, and the
religion was dead. The death of a religion is the liberation from all bondage of
the Master who gave it to the world. He in a very real sense is incarnate in the
religion that He bestows. While that religion lives and teaches, while men still
find in it the expression of their thought, so long that divine Man must remain,
and guide and protect and help the religion which He gave to earth. Such is the
law. No Master may leave our humanity while that which He started as a human
school is still existing upon earth. Some have passed away, and would no longer
be spoken of as Masters—the name given to Them in the occult world is
different—but Those who have passed away have passed away because Their
religions are dead: the Masters of ancient Egypt, of ancient Chaldea, have gone
from this earth into the mighty company of Those who no longer bear the burden
of the flesh. But the Masters of every living religion live on earth, and are
the links, for the people of that religion, between God and man; the Master is
the divine Man, one with his brothers, who look to him for help, one with the
God around and
THE PLACE OF MASTERS IN RELIGIONS 35
above, and through Him the spiritual life is ever flowing.
The word " mediator," applied in the Christian scriptures to the Christ,
signifies a real and living relation. There are such mediators between God and
man, and they are all God-men, true Christs. Such links between the God without
and the God within us are necesssary for the helping by the one, and for the
manifestation of the other? The God within us, unfolding his powers, answers to
the God without us, and the link is the God-man who shares the manifested nature
of divinity, and yet remains one with His brethren in the flesh. A bondage, yes.
But a voluntary bondage—a bondage assumed in the day in which the Messenger came
forth from the great White Lodge to bring a new revelation, to found a new
divine kingdom upon earth. Heavy the responsibility of a divine Man who takes
upon Himself the tremendous burden of speaking out to the world a new Word in
the divine revelation. All that grows out of it makes the heavy burden of His
destiny. Everything which happens within that communion of which He is the
centre must react upon Him, and He is ultimately responsible; and as that divine
Word is always spoken in a community of men and women imperfect, sinning,
ignorant, that Word is bound to be distorted and twisted, because of the medium
in which it works. That is why every such Teacher is called a " sacrifice
"—Himself at once the sacrificer and the sacrifice, the greatest sacrifice that
man may make to man, a sacrifice so mighty that none in whom Deity is not
unfolded to the greatest height compatible with human limitation is strong
enough to make it, is strong enough to endure it. That is the true
36
sacrifice of the Christ; not a few hours' agony in dying,
but century after century of crucifixion on the cross of matter, until salvation
has been won for the people who bear His name, or until they have passed under
some other Lord. Hence is that road always called " the Way of the Cross." Long
before Christianity came to birth, the " Way of the Cross " was known to every
Initiate, and Those were said to tread it who volunteered f(5r the mighty
service of proclaiming the old message again in the ears of the world of the
time. A sacrifice: for none may tell, who volunteers for the service, what lies
before the religion that He founds, what shall be the deeds of the community
that He begins on earth. And every sin and crime of that religion, or that
Church, falls into the scales of Karma stamped with the name of the Founder. He
is responsible for it, and bearing that responsibility is the mighty sacrifice
He makes; and the result is inevitable; for in a world imperfect no perfection
can be perfectly mirrored. As the sun-ray falling upon water is twisted and
distorted, so is it with the rays of a perfect truth falling in amongst a
community of imperfect men; and no action down here can be a perfect action, for
" action," it is written in an ancient book, " is surrounded with evil as a fire
is surrounded with smoke." The imperfection of the medium makes the smoke round
every Word of Fire, every Word of Truth. And the Founder must endure the
pungency of the smoke, if He would speak the Word of Fire. The realisation of
that, however dimly, however imperfectly, makes the passion of gratitude in the
human heart to those Men who bear their infirmities and open up the way to God
for man.
37
It is that which in some forms of popular Christianity has
been distorted in speaking of the sacrifice of the Christ, when it has been made
a sacrifice, not for man, sinful and foolish, but to the Father of all
perfection, who needs no sacrifice of suffering in order to reconcile Him to the
children sprung from His life. That is one of the distortions of the ignorance
of man; that the falsification which has been spoken in the name of religion and
has obscured the perfect love of God—for every divine Man who comes out is a
manifestation of the divine heart, and a revelation of God to man. And how could
it be that the Master of Compassion, who wins human hearts by the tenderness of
His love, could be a Revealer of God, if there were not in God a compassion
mightier than His own, and profounder than His humanity, as God is greater than
man ? But the splendor of the truth dazzled the eyes of those to whom it was
presented, and their own ignorance, and fear, and limitation, imposed upon that
perfect sacrifice the terrible aspect of a sacrifice to God—an aspect which it
assumed, not only in Christianity, but in other faiths as well. For the most
part, not always, in the elder religions they understood that the story of the
life and death was an allegory, a " myth," as they called it, revealing a deeper
truth. And so they avoided the pain and the sense of revulsion which has roused
the conscience of civilised man to revolt against the cruder presentments of the
doctrine; the great truth of the sacrifice is true, but it is not a legal, a
contract, sacrifice, made between man's representative and God; but the effort
of the divine to make itself understood, and the voluntary binding of the
sacrifice to the
38
cross of matter until His people are set free. And then, as
I said, He passes on into other worlds, to other work, and is no longer called a
Master of the Wisdom.
Now, looking at this idea, let us ask: " What is the work
of these Masters in the religions of the world, and why is it that this thought
of the Masters has been so revived in the modern world, and made so much more
living, in a sense, than it has been for many a long year ? " In the early days
of Christianity, as I said, you find the idea; but it has largely vanished from
the Churches as a living truth, and they think of Jesus, the Christian Master,
as risen from the dead and ascended into heaven. And the materialising spirit of
ignorance has made the ascent a going away, and the Man has gone, although the
God remains. But that is only a materialisation of the older truth; for,
according to the truth, heaven is not a faraway place to which people go. No one
goes there; they only open their eyes and see it on every side around them. For
heaven is a state of the psychic life which is realised in the higher bodies,
the bodies of the mental plane, and it does not need to go hither and thither,
North, South, East, or West, to find it; for, as the great Teacher said: "
Behold, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you "— not far away, beyond the sun or
moon or stars. And the ascension of Jesus to heaven, as the Church of England
puts it—in words that sound very strange in modern ears, because they have lost
their mystic meaning and are only taken in what S. Paul used to call the "
carnal" interpretation—in the fourth article of the Church of England, was that
He ascended into heaven, taking with Him His " flesh, bones, and all things
appertaining to the
THE PLACE OF MASTERS IN RELIGIONS
39
perfection of man's nature." Now when you take that in
the literal and crude signification, naturally the thoughtful man revolts
against it. What is this about a physical body and physical bones going up
through the air into the sky ? And where has it gone to ? The modern man
cannot believe it in that sense, and so he loses the spiritual verity
enshrined in words of symbolism and of allegory. For the fact that Jesus the
Master went away, but still dwells on earth in the flesh, that is the truth
which the article tries to indicate; and not that He is gone far away into a
far-off heaven to sit at the right hand of God, whence He shall come again to
judge. He lives in the body, and also lives in the midst of the Church, which
is His true mystical body; and so long as that Church exists, so long as that
Church is found on earth, so long its Master shall live within it, and shall
dwell in a human body. He is not gone away, He has not ascended anywhere in
the literal sense, but is permeating the whole of His Communion, and
living upon earth until the last Christian has passed away to liberation, or is
born into some other faith. That is the inner meaning He lives and may be
reached. And if the teachings o; the Theosophical Society have any value for
the Christian Church, it is because they are bringing back to live in Christian
hearts this living truth of the bodily ever-presence of the Christ amongst
them. Theosophists who are Christians, and remain within the limits of
the Christian Church, have gained a vivid view of this real humanity of Jesus.
They learn that He may be reached as truly now as when He walked near the sea
of Galilee, or taught in the streets of Jerusalem, that they may
40
know Him with as real a sense of His presence, may learn
from Him as truly as any apostle or disciple in the past, that it is a living
and real presence—not only, as the Roman Catholic Church says, in the Sacrament
of the altar, but in the experience of the Christian heart. And it has never
been left without a witness. Look all through the history of the Christian
Church, and see how one after another has come into living touch with the Master
Jesus. Every great saint has proclaimed his own experience as regards his
contact with his Lord. And only in comparatively modern days, and in parts
only of the Christian Church, has that great and vivifying truth been lost sight
of. The Greek Church has never lost it; the Roman Catholic Church has
never lost it. The testimony of the saints in those ancient communions
bears witness to the continuing connection between the Christian and the Christ.
You find it in some of the extreme Protestant communities also, where they
bear a living testimony to the reality of the personal communion. Not through
books and churches only, but within the living heart of man, visible
sometimes even to physical eyes, shining out in the vision of the saint,
speaking in the rapture of the prophet—it has never quite passed away from
Christianity. It is coming back more strongly year after year, coming back
with increased vitality, with more reality and strength behind it; coming back
because the Christ within the Church, finding that forgetfulness was coming over
the modern mind, has, as in the olden days, used a scourge of whipcord instead
of only the voice of love. For inasmuch as the voice of love was not listened
to, and the reality of His presence
THE PLACE OF MASTERS IN RELIGIONS 41
was being forgotten, He has used the whip of what is called
the Higher Criticism to drive men out of books back to the living Master of the
Christian faith. When you build the house of your faith on books and
manuscripts, on councils and traditions, you are building on the sand, and the
storm has come—the storm of criticism, of investigation, of scholarship, and the
house of faith totters, because it is founded on the sand. But build the house
of your faith on the rock of human experience, on the one rock on which every
true Church is founded, the individual touch between the human Spirit and the
divine, the personal experience of the human man on earth with the divine Man in
the heaven, beside and around him, and you build the house of your faith on a
rock that nothing can shake nor destroy, and it will shelter you, no matter what
storms may rage outside. And so, as in the temple, the whip has been used in
order that men may learn what they would not learn by the gentle instruction
spoken only in the words of the friend. The enemy has been used for it, the foe,
the assailant, who has made sharp his weapons, and has cut many of the old
manuscripts in pieces; and the result of that is that the Christian Church is
thrown back upon the Christ Himself, no longer seen dimly through history, but
in vivid reality before the eyes of the heart of the Christian, and that He will
live to Christianity a new life The mystic belief will come back, and the
literal interpretations will fall away. * And when that is done, then
Christianity shall have renewed its youth and its power, and shall know that the
Master is living in His Church, and is still the Master of life and death, as in
the olden days.
42
And by a very real instinct you will find that the most
earnest Christians cling to the humanity of Jesus, and that is the value of the
Master to us, when inside our hearts is written the truth of His existence. If
there were only such men as we, and God, the gulf would be too vast, the
difference too terrible—nothing to encourage us to believe that Divinity was
within us. We seem so trivial, so foolish, so childish, that we hardly dare
sometimes to believe that we are truly God. It seems impossible for us in our
modern life, with all the follies in which we spend ourselves, with all the
childish ambitions and terrors with which we amuse or frighten ourselves. This
little modern life seems so petty and so vulgar that we scarcely dare to believe
ourselves divine. We speak of the old heroic days, and think that if we had
lived then, we too should have been heroic, as the heroes and martyrs and saints
of earlier times. But in truth humanity is just as divine to-day, as it ever was
in the past. And if the divine were manifested in us as it was in the great ones
of the past, we should be heroic as they were; it is not circumstances that make
the difference, but only that the God within us is more in the stage of
childhood than in those mighty ones of the past, in which He had risen to the
stature of divine manhood. And when we think of the Masters and realise that
They are; still more, perhaps, when in some happy moment we catch a glimpse of
such divine Men, or feel Their presence closer than that of a human friend, ah!
then it is that the inspiration which flows from Them, as from a ceaseless
source, encourages and vivifies the life within. For we realise that it was not
so very, very long ago that
THE PLACE OF MASTERS IN 'RELIGIONS
43
They were as we are, plunged down in the trivialities of
earth; that They have climbed above them by the unfolding of the God within. And
what They have done, you and I may also do. They are a constant inspiration and
encouragement for humanity. They are men, and only God as we are God; the only
difference being that They have God more manifest in Them than He is in us. They
also in Their day were weak and foolish; They also strove and struggled, as we
strive and struggle now: They also failed, as we are failing now; They also
blundered, as we are blundering now; and They have risen above it all, strength
after strength revealed in Them, wisdom and power and love growing ever more and
more divine. And what They have done, you and I can do. For They are truly but
the first-fruits of humanity, the promise of the harvest, and not something
strange, miraculous, and far away. The Christian clings to the manhood of Jesus
for the reason that as "He hath suffered, being tempted, He is able to succour
them that are tempted." And it is a true instinct, a wise faith, for it is by
coming into touch with such links between humanity and God, that you and I in
time will become divine. In Him that divine seed of Spirit has unfolded into
flower and fruit. When you sow a seed in the soil of your garden, you sow it in
the full belief that it will grow, that it will become a plant with leaf and
flower and fruit. And you believe it by all the promise of the past, which has
proved that out of such seeds grow such flowers; all that is behind you to make
your faith a reasonable faith; and when you plant that trivial thing, a little
larger than a pin's head, and
44
hide it in the darkness of the ground out of sight, you
have a living faith within you that out of that seed shall grow the perfect
flower. Have the same faith for the seed of divinity that is planted within you,
though it be planted in the darkness of your heart. Even if at present the first
little shoot has not come up above the darkness of the soil in which it is
buried, none the less the seed is
r
there; it will grow and ripen into the perfect fruit. It
must be so. There are no failures for the divine Husbandman, no seed which is
not living, which falls from His hands into the ground. And near us the Masters
stand ever, the living truth of what man can be —nay, what he shall be in the
centuries to come. They are proofs of what you and I shall be, the finished
copies of the statues which lie as yet so rough, so unhewn, in the marble of our
humanity. That is Their value for all men, and part of Their work is to help us
to become what They are, to foster in us every shoot of the spiritual life, to
strengthen in us every effort and struggle towards the light. Theirs the
glorious work, not only of building up mighty faiths, but of living in them, and
pouring out spiritual life on the heart of each who enters within the portals of
those faiths. That is Their splendid work; and if Theosophy is doing much in all
the religions of the world to make them more real to their adherents, and give
to them fresh vitality and strength and vigor, it is only because it is the
latest impulse from the Masters of the Wisdom, and so is the most convenient
channel through which that life may be poured into all the religions of the
world. Only the latest of the impulses. All religions have been born out of
such an
45
impulse, and the only difference between this and the
earlier impulses is that while they each founded a religion and round
that religion a wall was built, so that there were believers inside the wall
and unbelievers outside, round this spiritual forth streaming no walls are to
be built, but the waters are to spread everywhere without limitation, without
exception. That is the specialty in the message of Theosophy. It belongs to
all alike. As much yours, though you do not call it by that name, perhaps, as
it is theirs who call it by that name. It is only living, because it lives in
every religion; it is only true, because it comes from the same Masters of the
eternal Wisdom, belongs equally to all, to every religion that cares to take
any of the truth that it has re-proclaimed. And all over the world the glad
message is going. There is not one religion which is now living, amongst
whose adherents Theosophy is not spreading, and making them better members of
their religions than they were before. For there is many a man and woman, in
East and West alike, who had gone away from the religion into which they were
born, because the mystic element had vanished and the literal sense of the
doctrines was in truth the letter which killeth, while the spirit
that was life seemed to have escaped. Many such men and women, in East
and West, have come back with joy to the religion in which they were born, in
realising that it is only an expression of the one divine Wisdom, and
that the Masters of the Wisdom Jive and move amongst us.
And it may be that if the world grows more spiritual, it
may be that if Spirit again becomes triumphant over matter, after passing
through the darkness which was
46
necessary in order that the intellect might be thoroughly
developed and might learn its powers and its limitations ; it may be that, in
days to come, when the world is more spiritualised than to-day, climbing as
it is again the upward arc, these living Masters of the world's religions
will come amongst us again visibly as in the earlier days. It is not They
who keep back in silence. It is we who shut Them out, and make Their presence a
danger rather than an encouragement and an inspiration. And every one of you—no
matter what your faith may be, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Theosophist,
what matters it ?—every one of you who makes the Master of your own faith a
living reality, part of your life, nearer than friend and brother, every such
believer and worker is hastening the day of joy when the world shall be ready
for the open reception of the Masters, that They may move visibly amongst
humanity once more. That it may be so, open your heart to every breath of
truth; that it may be so, open your eyes to every ray from the one eternal Sun.
In the past the world would have none of the Masters. They slew the
Christ; they made the prophets outcasts. And until in our heart the love
of the Master awakens, until with passionate longing, with continual
insistence, we call to the divine Men the welcome, without which They
may not come, They must remain hidden. Only when there comes up from
heart after heart one vast chant of devotion and appeal, only then will They
come to- the many as They have already come to the few, and show out the
visible splendor of Their manhood, as the glory of Their divinity has ever been
upon the earth.
Theosophy and the Theosophical Society
I want to put before you clearly and plainly what Theosophy
means, and what is the function of the Theosophical Society. For we notice very
often, especially with regard to the Society, that there is a good deal of
misconception touching it, and that people do not realise the object with which
it exists, the work that it is intended to perform. It is very often looked upon
as the expression of some new religion, as though people in becoming
Theosophists must leave the religious community to which he or she may happen to
belong. And so a profound misconception arises, and many people imagine that in
some way or other it is hostile to the religion which they profess. Now
Theosophy, looked at historically or practically, belongs to all the religions
of the world, and every religion has an equal claim to it, has an equal right to
say that Theosophy exists within it. For Theosophy, as the name implies, the
Divine Wisdom, the Wisdom of God, clearly cannot be appropriated by any body of
people, by any Society, not even by the greatest of the religions of the world.
It is a common
47
4§
property, as free to everyone as the sunlight and the air.
No one can claim it as his, save by virtue of his common humanity; no one can
deny it to his brother, save at the peril of destroying his own claim thereto.
Now the meaning of this word, both historically and practically, the Wisdom, the
Divine Wisdom, is a very definite and clear meaning; it asserts the possibility
of the knowledge of God. That is the point that the student ought to grasp; this
knowledge of God, not the belief in Him, not the faith in Him, not only vague
idea concerning Him, but the knowledge of Him, is possible to man. That is the
affirmation of Theosophy, that is its root-meaning and its essence.
And we find, looking back historically, that this has been
asserted in the various great religions of the world. They all claim that man
can know, not only that man can believe. Only in some of the more modern faiths,
in their own modern days, the knowledge has slipped into the background, and the
belief, the faith, looms very-large in the mind of the believer. Go back as far
as you will in the history of the past, and you will find the most ancient of
religions affirming this possibility of knowledge. In India, for instance, with
its antique civilisation, you find that the very central idea of Hinduism is
this supreme knowledge, the knowledge of God. As I pointed out to you the other
day with regard to this old Eastern religion, all knowledge is regarded in a
higher or a lower degree as the knowledge of God; for there is no division, as
you know, in that ancient faith, between the secular and the sacred. That
division is a modern division, and was unknown in the
THEOSOPHY AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 49
ancient world. But they did make a division in knowledge
between the higher and the lower; and the lower knowledge, or the lower science,
called the " lower divine science," was that which you will call "science"
nowadays, the study of the external world. But it also included all that here we
speak of as Literature, as Art, as Craft—everything, in fact, which the human
brain can study and the human fingers can accomplish—the whole of that, in one
grand generalisation, was called " Divine Wisdom," but it was the lower divine
Wisdom, the inferior knowledge of God. Then, beside, or rather above that, came
the Supreme Knowledge, the higher, the superior, that beyond which there was no
knowledge, which was the crown of all. Now, that supreme knowledge is declared
to be " the knowledge of Him by Whom all things are known "—a phrase indicating
the Supreme Deity. It was that which was called the supreme knowledge, or, par
excellence, the Divine Knowledge, and that old Hindu thought is exactly the same
as you have indicated by the name Theosophy.
So, again, classical students may remember that among the
Greeks and the early Christians there was what was called the Gnosis, the
knowledge, the definite article pointing to that which, above all else, was to
be regarded as knowledge or wisdom. And when you find among the Neo-Platonists
this word Gnosis used, it always means, and is defined to mean, " the knowledge
of God," and the "Gnostic" is "a man who knows God." So, again, among the early
Christians. Take such a man as Origen. He uses the same word in exactly the same
sense; for when Origen is declaring that the Church has
4
50
medicine for the sinner, and that Christ is the Good
Physician who heals the diseases of men, he goes on to say that the Church
has also the Gnosis for the wise, and that you cannot build the Church
out of sinners; you must build it out of Gnostics. These are the men who
know, who have the power to help and to teach; and there can be no medicine for
the diseased, no upholder of the weak, unless, within the limits of the
religion, the Gnostic is to be found. And so Origen lays immense stress on
the Gnostic, and devotes page after page to a description of him: what he is,
what he thinks, what he does; and to the mind of that great Christian teacher,
the Gnostic was the strength of the Church, the pillar, the buttress of the
faith. And so, coming down through the centuries, since the Christian time,
you will find the word Gnostic used every now and again, but more often the
term " Theosophist" and " Theosophy " ; for this term came into use in the later
school, the Neo-Platonists, and became the commonly accepted word for those who
claimed this possibility of knowledge, or even claimed to know. And a phrase
regarding this is to be found in the mystic Fourth Gospel, that of S. John,
where into the mouth of the Christ the words are put, that the " knowledge of
God is eternal life "— not the faith, nor the thought, but the knowledge—again
declaring the possibility of this "Gnosis. And the same idea is found along
the line of the Hermetic Science, or Hermetic Philosophy, partly derived from
Greece and partly from Egypt. The Hermetic philosopher also claimed to know,
and claimed that in man was this divine faculty of knowledge, above the reason,
higher than the intellect. And
THEOSOPHY AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 51
whenever, among the thoughtful and the learned, you find
reference made to " faith," as where, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is said
to be " the evidence of things not seen," the same idea comes out, and Faith,
the real Faith, is only this intense conviction which grows out of the inner
spiritual being of man, the Self, the Spirit, which justifies to the intellect,
to the senses, that there is God, that God truly exists. And this is so strongly
felt in the East that no one there wants to argue about the existence of God; it
is declared that that existence cannot be proved by argument. " Not by
argument," it is written, " not by reasoning, not by thinking, can the Supreme
Self be known." The only proof of Him is "the conviction in the Spirit, in the
Self." And thus Theosophy, then, historically, as you see, always makes the
affirmation that man can know; and after that supreme affirmation that God may
be known, then there comes the secondary affirmation, implied really in that,
and in the fact of man's identity of nature with the Supreme, that all things in
the universe can be known— things visible and invisible, subtle and gross. That
is, so to speak, a secondary affirmation, drawn out of the first; for clearly if
in man resides the faculty to know God as God, then every manifestation of God
may be known by the faculty which recognises the identity of the human Spirit
with the Supreme Spirit that permeates the universe at large. So in dictionaries
and in encyclopedias you will sometimes find Theosophy defined as the idea that
God, and angels, and spirits, may hold direct communication with men; or
sometimes, in the reverse form, that men can hold communication with
52
spirits, and angels, and even with God Himself; and
although that definition be not the best that can be given, it has its own
truth, for that is the result of the knowledge of God, the inevitable outcome of
it, the manifestation of it. The man who knows God, and knows all things in Him,
is evidently able to communicate with any form of living being, to come into
relation with anything in the universe of which the One Life is God.
In modern days, and among scientific people, the
affirmation which is the reverse of this became at one time popular, widely
accepted — not Gnostic but " Agnostic," " without the Gnosis " ; that was the
position taken up by Huxley and by many men of his own time of the same school
of thought. He chose the name because of its precise signification; he was far
too scientific a man to crudely deny, far too scientific to be willing to speak
positively of that of which he knew nothing; and so, instead of taking up the
position that there is nothing beyond man, and man's reason, and man's senses,
he took up the position that man was without possibility of knowledge of what
there might be, that his only means of knowledge were the senses for the
material universe, the reason for the world of thought. Man, by his reason,
could conquer everything in the realm of thought, might become1" mighty in
intellect, and hold as his own domain everything that the intellect could grasp
at its highest point of growth, its highest possibility of attainment. That
splendid avenue of progress Huxley, and men like Huxley, placed before humanity
as the road along which it might hope to walk, full of the certainty
THEOSOPHY AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 53
of ultimate achievement. But outside that, beyond the
reason in the world of thought and the senses in the material world, Huxley, and
those who thought like him, declared that man was unable to pierce—hence "
Agnostic," " without the Gnosis," without the possibility of plunging deeply
into the ocean of Being, for there the intellect had no plummet. Such, according
to science at one* time, was man; and whatever man might hope for, whatever man
might strive for, on, as it were, the portal of the spiritual universe was
written the legend " without knowledge." Thither man might not hope to
penetrate, thither man's faculties might never hope to soar; for when you have
defined man as a reasoning being, you have given the highest definition that
science was able to accept, and across the spiritual nature was written : "
imagination, dream, and phantasy."
And yet there is much in ordinary human history which shows
that man is something more than intellect, as clearly as it shows that the
intellect is greater than the senses; for every statesman knows that he has to
reckon with what is sometimes called "the religious instinct" in man, and that
however coldly philosophers may reason, however sternly science may speak, there
is in man some upwelling power which refuses to take the agnosticism of the
intellect, as it refuses to accept the positivism of the senses ;*and with that
every ruler of men has to deal, with that every statesman has to reckon. There
is something* in man which from time to time wells up with irresistible power,
sweeping away every limit which intellect or senses may strive to put in its
path—the religious instinct. And even to take
54
that term, that name, even that is to join on this part of
man's nature to a part of nature universal, which bears testimony in every time,
and in every place, that to every instinct in the living creature there is some
answer in the nature outside itself. There is no instinct known in plant, in
animal, in man, to which nature does not answer; nature, which has woven the
demand into the texture of the living creature, has always the supply ready to
meet the demand; and strange indeed it would be, well-nigh incredible, if the
profoundest instinct of all in nature's highest product on the physical plane,
if that ineradicable instinct, that seeking after God and that thirst for the
Supreme, were the one and only instinct in nature for which there is no answer
in the depths and the heights around us. And it is not so. That argument is
strengthened and buttressed by an appeal to experience; for you cannot, in
dealing with human experience and the testimony of the human consciousness,
leave entirely out of court, silenced, as though it were not relevant, the
continual testimony of all religions to the existence of the spiritual nature in
man. The spiritual consciousness proves itself quite as definitely as the
intellectual or the sensuous consciousness proves itself—by the experience of
the individual, alike in every religion as in every century in which humanity
has lived, has thought, has suffered, has rejoiced". The religious, the
spiritual nature, is that which is the strongest in man, not the weakest; that
which breaks down the barriers of the intellect, and crushes into silence the
imperious demands of the senses; which changes the whole life as by a miracle,
and turns the face of the man in a direction
THEOSOPHY AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 55
contrary to that in which he has been going all his life.
Whether you take the facts of conversion, or whether you take the testimony of
the saint, the prophet, the seer, they all speak with that voice of authority to
which humanity instinctively bows down; and it was the mark of the spiritual man
when it was said of Jesus, the Prophet: " He taught them as one having
authority, and not as the scribes." For where the spiritual man speaks, his
appeal is made to the highest and the deepest part in every hearer that he
addresses, and the answer that comes is an answer that brooks no denial and
permits no questioning. It shows its own imperial nature, the highest and the
dominant nature in the man, and where the Spirit once has spoken the intellect
becomes obedient, and the senses begin to serve.
Now Theosophy, in declaring that this nature of man can
know God, bases that statement on identity of nature. We can know—it is our
continual experience— we can know that which we share, and nothing else. Only
when you have appropriated for yourself something from the outside world can you
know the similar things in the outside world. You can see because your eye has
within it the ether of which the waves are light; you can hear because your ear
has in it the ether and the air whose vibrations are sound; and so with
everything else. Myriads of things exist outside you, and you are unconscious of
them, because you have not yet appropriated to your own service that which is
like unto them in outer nature. And you can know God for exactly the same reason
that you can know by sight or hearing—because you are part of God; you can know
56
Him because you share His nature. " We are partakers of the
Divine Nature," says the Christian teacher "Thou art That," declares the Hindu.
The Sufi cries out that by love man and God are one, and know each other. And
all the religions of the world in varied phrase announce the same splendid truth
of man's Divinity. It is on that that Theosophy founds its affirmation that the
knowledge of God is possible to man; that the foundation, then, of Theosophy,
that the essence of its message.
And the value of it at the time when it was re-proclaimed
to the world was that it was an affirmation in the face of a denial. Where
Science began to cry " agnosticism," Theosophy came to cry out " gnosticism." At
the very same time the two schools were born into the modern world, and the
re-proclamation of Theosophy, the supreme knowledge, was the answer from the
invisible worlds to the nescience of Science. It came at the right time, it came
in the right form, as in a few moments we shall see; but the most important
thing of all is that it came at the very moment when Science thought itself
triumphant in its nescience. This re-proclamation, then, of the most ancient of
all truths, was the message of Theosophy to the modern world. And see how the
world has changed since that was proclaimed ! It is hardly necessary now to make
that affirmation, so universal has become the acceptance of it. It is almost
difficult to look^back to the year 1875, and realise how men were thinking and
feeling then. I can remember it, because I was in it. The elder amongst you can
remember it, for the same reason. But for the
THEOSOPHY AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 57
younger of you, who have begun to think and feel in the
later times, when this thought was becoming common, you can scarcely realise the
change in the intellectual atmosphere which has come about during these last two
and-thirty years. Hardly worth while is it to proclaim it now, it is so
commonplace. If now you say: " Man can know God," the answer is: " Of course he
can." Thirty-two years ago it was: " Indeed he cannot." And that is to be seen
everywhere, all over the world, and not only among those people who were
clinging blindly to a blind faith, desperately sticking to it as the only raft
which remained for them to save them from being submerged in materialism. It is
recognised now on all hands; literature is full of it; and it is not without
significance that some months ago The Hibbert Journal —which has in it so much
of the advanced thought of the day, for which bishops and archbishops and
learned clerics write—it is not without significance that that journal drew its
readers' attention to " the value of the God-idea in Hinduism." And the only
value of it was this, for man : that man is God, and therefore can know God; and
the writer pointed out that that was the only foundation on which, in modern
days, an edifice that could not be shaken could be reared up for the Spirit in
man. That is the religion of the future, the religion of the Divine Self; that
the common religion, the universal religion, of which all the religions that are
living in the world will be recognised as branches, as* sects of one mighty
religion, universal and supreme. For just as now in Christianity you have many a
sect and many a church, just as in Hinduism we find many sects and many schools,
and as in
58
every other great religion of the world at the present time
there are divisions between the believers in the same religion, so shall it
be—very likely by the end of this century—with all the religions of the world;
there will be only one religion—the knowledge of God—and all religions sects
under that one mighty and universal name.
And then, naturally, out of this knowledge there must
spring a large number of other knowledges subservient to it, that which you hear
so much about in Theosophical literature, of other worlds, the worlds beyond the
physical, worlds that are still material, although the matter be of a finer,
subtler kind; all that you read about the astral, and mental, and buddhic
planes, and so on—all these lower knowledges find their places naturally, as
growing out of the one supreme knowledge. And at once you will ask: " Why ?" If
you are really divine, if your Self is the same Self of which the worlds are a
partial expression, then it is not difficult to see that that Self in you, as it
unfolds its divine powers, and shapes the matter which it appropriates in order
to come in contact with all the different parts of the universe, that that Self,
creating for itself bodies, will be able to know every material thing in the
universe, just as you know the things of the physical plane through the physical
body. For it is all on the same lines: that which enables you to know is not
only body—that is the« medium between you and the physical world—but the Knower
in you is that which enables you to know, the power of perception which is of
consciousness, and not of body. When consciousness vanishes, all the organs of
consciousness are there, as perfect as ever, but the Knower has left them, and
know-
THEOSOPHY AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 59
ledge disappears with him; and so, whether it be in a
swoon, in a fainting fit, in sleep, or in death, the perfect instrument of the
physical body becomes useless when the hand of the master workman drops it. The
body is only his tool, whereby he contacts the things in a universe which is not
himself; and the moment he leaves it, it is a mere heap of matter, doomed to
decay, to destruction. But just as he has that body for knowledge here, so he
has other bodies for knowledge everywhere, and in every world he can know, he
who is the Knower, and every world is made up of objects of knowledge, which he
can perceive, examine, and understand.
And the world into which you shall pass when you go through
the portal of death, that is around you at every moment of your life here, and
you only do not know it because your instrument of knowledge there is not yet
perfected, and ready there to your hand; and the heavenly world into which you
will pass out of the intermediate world next to this, that is around you now,
and you only do not know it because your instrument of knowledge there has not
yet been fashioned. And so with worlds yet higher, knowledge of them is
possible, because the Knower is yourself and is God, and you can create your
instruments of knowledge according to your wisdom and your will.
Hence Theosophy includes the whole of this vast scheme or
field of knowledge; and the whole of it is yours, yours to possess at your will.
Hence Theosophy should be to you a proclamation of your own Divinity, with
everything that flows therefrom; and all the knowledge that may be gathered, all
the investigations that
60
may be made, they are all part-t of this great scheme. And
the reason why all the religions of the world teach the same, when you come to
disentangle the essence of their teaching from the shape in which they put it,
the reason that they all teach the same is that they are all giving you
fragments of knowledge of the other worlds, and these worlds are all more real
than the world in which you are; and they all teach the same fundamental truths,
the same fundamental moral principles, the same religious doctrines, and use the
same methods in order that men may come into touch with the other worlds. The
sacraments do not belong to Christianity alone, as sometimes Christians think;
every religion has its sacraments, some more numerous than others, but all have
some. For what is a sacrament? It is the earthly, the physical representative of
a real correspondence in nature; as the catechism of the Church of England
phrases it: " An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." It
is a true definition. A sacrament is made up of the outer and inner, and you
cannot do without either. The outer thing is correlated to the inner, and is a
real means of coming into touch with the higher, and is not only a symbol, as
some imagine. The great churches and religions of the past always cling to that
reality of the sacrament, and they do well. It is only in very modern times, and
among a comparatively small number of Christian people, that the sacrament has
become only a symbol, 'instead of a channel of living and divine power. And much
is lost to the man who loses out of his religion the essential idea of the
sacrament; for it is the link between the spiritual and
THEOSOPHY AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 61
the physical, the channel whereby the spiritual pours down
into the physical vehicle. Hence the value that all religions put upon
sacraments, and their recognition of their reality, and their priceless service
to mankind. And so with many other things in ceremonies and rites, common to all
the different faiths—the use of musical sounds, a use which tunes the bodies so
that the spiritual power may be able to manifest through them and by them. For
just as in your orchestra you must tune the instruments to a single note, so
must you tune your various bodies in order that harmoniously they may allow the
spiritual force to come through from the higher to the lower plane. It is a real
tuning, a real making of harmonious vibrations; and the difference between the
vibrations that are harmonious and the vibrations that are discordant, from this
point of view, is this : when all the bodies vibrate together, all the particles
and their spaces correspond, so that you get solid particles, then spaces, and
then solid particles, and spaces again, corresponding through all the bodies;
whereas in the normal condition the bodies do not match in that way, and the
spaces of one come against the solid parts of the other, and so you get a block.
When sounds are used, the mystical sounds called mantras in Hinduism, the effect
of those is to change the bodies from this condition to that, and so the forces
from without can come into the man, and the forces in him may flow out to
others. That is the value of it. You are able to produce mechanically a result
which otherwise has to be produced by a tremendous exertion of the will; and the
man of knowledge never uses more force than is necessary
62
in order to bring about what he desires, and the Occultist
—who is the wise man on many planes—he uses the easiest way always to gain his
object. Hence the use of music, or mantras, in every faith. Pythagoras used
music in order to prepare his disciples to receive his teachings. The Greek and
the Roman Catholic Churches use special forms of music to produce a definite
effect upon the worshippers who hear them. All of you must be aware that there
are some kinds of music which have the remarkable effect upon you, of lifting
you higher than you can rise by your own unassisted effort. Even the songs of
illiterate Christian bodies do have some effect upon them, in raising them to a
higher level, although they possess little of the true quality of the mantra. In
Theosophy you find all these things dealt with scientifically—a mass of
knowledge, but all growing out of the original statement that man can know God.
Now it is clear that in all that, there is nothing which a
man of any faith cannot accept, cannot study. I do not mean that he will accept
everything that a Theo-sophist would say; but I mean that the knowledge is
knowledge of a kind which he will be wise to study, and to appropriate so far as
it recommends itself to his reason and his intuition. And that is all the man
need do—study. All this knowledge is spread out for you freely: you can take it,
if you will. The Theosophical Society, which spreads it broadcast everywhere,
claims in it no property, no proprietary rights, but gives it out freely
everywhere. The books in which much of it is written are as free to the
non-Theosophist as to the Theo-sophist. The results of Theosophical
investigation are
THEOSOPHY AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 63
published freely that all who choose may read. Everything
is done that can be done by the Society to make the whole thing common property
; and nothing gives the true Theo-sophist more delight than when he sees the
Theosophical teachings coming out in some other garb which gives them a
different name, but hands them on to those who might be frightened perhaps by
the name " Theosophy." And so, when we find a clergyman scattering broadcast to
his congregation Theosophical teaching as Christian, we say: " See, our work is
bearing fruit"; and when we find the man who does not label himself "
Theosophist" giving any of these truths to the world, we rejoice, because we see
that our work is being done. We have no desire to take the credit of it, nor to
claim it as ours at all; it belongs to every man who is able to see it, quite as
much as it does to anyone who may call himself " Theosophist." For the
possession of truth comes of right to the man who can see the truth, and there
is no partiality in the world of intellect or of Spirit. The only test for a
man's fitness to receive is the ability to perceive; and the only claim he has
to see by the light is the power of seeing.
And that, perhaps, may explain to you what some think
strange in our Society—we have no dogmas. We do not shut out any man because he
does not believe Theosophical teachings. A man may deny every one of them, save
that of human brotherhood, and claim his place and his right within our ranks.
But his place and his right within our ranks are founded on the very truths that
he denies; for if man could not know God, if there were no identity of nature in
every man with God, then there
64
would be no foundation for our reception of him, nor any
reason for welcoming him as a brother. Because there is only one life, and one
nature, therefore the man who denies is God, as is he who affirms. Therefore
each has a right to come; only the one who affirms knows why he welcomes his
brother, and the one who denies is ignorant, and knows not why he has a right
within our ranks. But those of us who try to be Theosophists in reality, as well
as in name, we understand why it is that we make him welcome, and it is based on
this sane idea, that a man can see the truth best by studying it, and not by
repeating formula that he does not understand. What is the use of putting a
dogma before a man and saying: " You must repeat that before you can come into
my Church " ? If the man repeats it not understanding it, he is outside, no
matter how much you bring him in ; and if he sees it, there is no need to make
that as a portal to your fellowship. And we believe, we of the Theosophical
Society, that just because the intellect can only do its best work in its own
atmosphere of freedom, truth has the best chance of being seen when you do not
make any conditions as to the right of investigation, as to the claim to seek.
To us, truth is so supreme a thing that we do not desire to bind any man with
conditions as to how, or where, or why, he shall seek it. These things, we say,
we know are true; and because we know they are true, come amongst us, even
though you do not believe them, and find out for yourself whether they be true
or not. And the man is better worth having when he comes in an unbeliever, and
wins to the knowledge of the truth, than is the facile believer
THEOSOPHY AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 65
who acknowledges everything and never gets a real grip upon
truth at all. We believe that truth is only found by seeking, and that the true
bond is the love of truth, and the effort to find it; that that is a far more
real bond than the repetition of a common creed. For the creed can be repeated
by the lips, but the seeing of truth as true can only come from the intellect
and the spirit, and to build on the intellect and the spirit is a firmer
foundation than to build on the breath of the lips. Hence our Society has no
dogmas. Not that it does not stand for any truths, as some people imagine. Its
name marks out the truth for which it stands: it is the Theosophical Society ;
and that shows its function and its place in the world—a Society that asserts
the possibility of the knowledge of God; that is its proclamation, as we have
seen, and all the other truths that grow out of that are amongst our teachings.
The Society exists to spread the knowledge of those truths, and to popularise
those teachings amongst mankind. " But," you may say, " if it be the fact that
you throw out broadcast all your teachings, that you write them in books that
every man can buy, what is, then, the good of being a member of the Theosophical
Society ? We should not have any more as members than we have as non-members."
That is not quite true, but it may stand as true for the moment. Why should you
come in ? For no reason at all, unless to you it is the greatest privilege to
come in, and you desire to be among those who are the pioneers of the thought of
the coming days. No reason at all: it is a privilege. We do not beg you to come
in; we only say: " Come if you like to come, and share the glorious
5
66
privilege that we possess; but if you would rather not,
stay outside, and we will give you everything which we believe will be
serviceable and useful to you." The feeling that brings people into our Society
is the feeling that makes the soldier spring forward to be amongst the pioneers
when the army is going forth. There are some people so built that they like to
go in front and face difficulties, so that other people may have an easier time,
and walk along a path that has already been hewn out for them by hands stronger
than their own. That is the only reason why you should come in : no other. Do
not come to " get" ; you will be disappointed if you do. You can " get" it
outside. Come in to give, to work, to be enrolled amongst the servants of
humanity who are working for the dawn of the day of a nobler knowledge, for the
coming of the recognition of a spiritual brotherhood amongst men. Come in if you
have the spirit of the pioneer within you, the spirit of the volunteer; if to
you it is a delight to cut the way through the jungle that others may follow, to
tread the path with bruised feet in order that others may have a smooth road to
lead them to the heights of knowledge. That is the only advantage of coming in :
to know in your own heart that you realise what is coming, and are helping to
make it come more quickly for the benefit of your fellow-men; that you are
working for" humanity; that you are co-workers with God, in making the knowledge
of Him spread abroad on every side; that you are amongst those to whom future
centuries will look back, thanking you that you saw the light when all men
thought it was dark, and that you recognised the coming dawn when others
THEOSOPHY AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 6"]
believed the earth was sunk in midnight. I know of no
inspiration more inspiring, of no ideal that lifts men to greater heights, of no
hope that is so full of splendor, no thought that is so full of energy, as the
inspiration, and the ideal, and the hope, and the thought, that you are working
for the future, for the day that has not yet come. There will be so many in the
days to come who will see the truth, so many in the unborn generations who will
live from the hour of their birth in the light of the Divine Wisdom. And what is
it not to know that one is bringing that nearer ? to feel that this great
treasure is placed in your hands for the enriching of humanity, and that the
bankruptcy of humanity is over and the wealth is being spread broadcast on every
side ? What a privilege to know that those generations in the future, rejoicing
in the light, will feel some touch of thanks and gratitude to those who brought
it when the days were dark, to those whose faith in the Self was so strong that
they could believe when all other things were against it, to those whose surety
of the divine knowledge was so mighty that they could proclaim its possibility
to an agnostic world. That is the only reason why you should come into the
vanguard, that the only reason why you should join the ranks of the pioneers.
Hard work and little reward, hard words and little praise, but the knowledge
that you work for the future, and that with the co-operation of Deity the final
result is sure.
Part II
The Place of Phenomena in the Theosophical Society
Spiritual and Temporal Authority
The Relation of Masters to the Theosophical Society
The Future of the Theosophical Society
Four Lectures delivered to the Blavatsky Lodge, London, in
June and July 1907.
The Place of Phenomena in the Theosophical Society
I have taken for these four lectures, confined to members
of the Theosophical Society, four subjects of great interest to ourselves, and
in dealing with them I propose to ask you to look at them from a wide standpoint
rather than a narrow one, and to consider the Theosophical Movement and the
Theosophical Society, not as an isolated movement or Society, not as a separate
thing, but rather as one of a series of spiritual impulses, like to its
predecessors in its nature, interested in the same questions, and subject to the
same conditions as those that preceded it in time.
We find, looking back over the history of the past, that
great spiritual impulses occur from time to time, and each of these in the past
has founded a new religion, or stamped some marked change in a religion already
existing. The spiritual impulse that brought to birth the Theosophical Society
is to be thought of as of the same nature as those which founded one religion in
the world after another. And if we regard it in this way we can sometimes,
looking at the whole succession of such movements, recognise certain definite
principles working
72
in all of them, and then apply those principles to the
movement of our own time. And this seems to me to be a wiser and saner way of
regarding the Theosophical Society than looking upon it as unique and
isolated. Certainly it is more easy to see our way in the solution of difficult
problems of our own time, if we regard these problems as similar in nature to
the problems that have been presented to our predecessors. Because always, in
dealing with the problems of our own time, we are apt to be confused and
bewildered by secondary issues that rise up around them, complicating them,
perhaps largely clouding them, when we try to understand; whereas if we can
catch sight of the underlying principle and study it apart from any difficulties
of our own time, we are then able to apply that same principle, as discovered
apart from the circumstances of the moment, and in that way there is a hope of
applying it more justly amid the more exciting incidents of our own day. And
it is that which I want to do in these lectures—to take our movement as a part
of a world series, to study the principles that underlie the whole of that
series, to trace out the working of these principles amongst the societies that
have preceded us in the spiritual world, and then, having grasped them, to
apply them to the solution of the problems of our own time. For there is a
tendency in the Theosophical Society to narrow itself down to its time, instead
of trying to widen out the thought of its time. It is a tendency which we
see affecting every religion, every church, every great society, and it is
useless to recognise this fact in the history of others unless we apply the fact
for instruction in our own.
PLACE OF PHENOMENA IN THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 73
Now in all the religions of the past, so far as we have any
knowledge of them in history or from what are called the "occult records," there
is one thing we see in their early days—the presence of happenings regarded as
abnormal. I have used the word " phenomena," but it is a very stupid word. One
uses it because it is generally used; there is no justification in using that
particular worS in relation to some outer manifestations rather than to all.
Properly speaking, " phenomena," of course, will cover the whole of the objects
in the world, in the Not-Self, everything outside the Self; but the word has
been narrowed down, especially in our own time, to those occurrences in the
world around us, in the Not-Self, which are unusual, which seem to be abnormal,
which are the results of laws which are not familiar, and therefore which are
regarded by some people as supernatural, by others, speaking more carefully,
simply as superphysical. And we lose much by separating off what we call "
abnormal" happenings, the so-called " phenomena," from the normal everyday
happenings of life. For there is no fundamental difference between them. All
planes are equally within the realm of law; all worlds, denser or grosser in
material organisation, are equally worlds moving by order and law. There is
nothing really abnormal in Nature. Some things happen more seldom than
others—«are unusual; but the very idea of abnormal seems to me in many respects
mischievous and harmful. It is better to look on the whole
world-system—universe, call it what you will—as a part of a definite order in
which all the things that happen happen by law, in which there no gaps,
no abnor-
74
malities, but only limitations of our own knowledge at a
certain time. All the gaps in Nature are gaps in the knowledge of the observers
of Nature. There is nothing miraculous or supernatural, but everything is the
orderly product of Nature working along definite lines and guided by definite
intelligence.
And one reason why it is so important to recognise this is
in order to clear away the atmosphere of wonder, of marvel, of awe, of
reverence, that is apt, very much to the detriment of the observers, to enshroud
everything unusual, every manifestation of a force with which we are not
familiar, everything that in the old days was called " miraculous." And one
thing I want strongly to impress upon you is, that in everything that can be
called a " phenomenon," you ought to deal with it according to the same laws,
according to the same canons of observation, as you deal with the phenomena with
which you are most familiar on the physical plane. You should not regard an
unusual phenomenon as one which is necessarily to be regarded with reverence in
any way. You should not necessarily talk in whispers, when speaking about what
we call " phenomena." It is better to talk in your natural voice, and apply your
ordinary common sense and the laws of sane judgment in every case. If you do
that instead of getting alarmed or astonished, if you will stand on your feet
instead of falling on your knees, your study of the other worlds will be more
profitable, and the dangers you are likely to meet will be very much diminished.
To come back to the point of the beginnings of all
religious movements, we find that all begin in the atmos-
PLACE OF PHENOMENA IN THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 75
phere of " phenomena." The divine Man who founds the
religion, and those who immediately surround Him, are always people who have a
knowledge of more worlds than one. And because they are possessors of that
firsthand knowledge, they are able to speak with authority. Now, the authority
that should be recognised in all these matters is simply the authority of
knowledge.
Another of the difficulties we want to clear away in
studying phenomena is the idea that the happening of a certain thing by a law
that we do not understand in the realm of matter gives any sort of authority on
questions of spiritual knowledge, or gives a person a right to speak with
authority on things not concerned with the particular laws under which that
phenomena takes place. The mischief of the old idea of miracle was that it was
supposed to be a proof, not of knowledge of another world or other forces, but
of the title of the miracle-worker to speak with authority on religious and
moral questions; while, as a matter of fact, the knowledge of what occurs on the
astral plane, the knowledge of what occurs on the mental plane, or the power to
utilise the forces of these planes in the production of certain happenings here
which are not usual, these things by no means give a man any authority to speak
on moral problems or to decide on spiritual questions. That is a matter of the
utmost importance, for knowledge of the astral and mental worlds is the same in
kind as knowledge of the physical world; and it no more follows that a
clairvoyant or clairaudient, or a man who can use any of the powers of subtler
planes down here, has more authority on religious and moral questions than a
good
76
mathematician, a good electrician, or a good chemist. You
are not likely, on the physical plane, to fall into the blunder of thinking that
because a man is a good chemist he has authority on moral problems: you will at
once see the absurdity. But many of you do not see that the same is true when
you deal with good chemists or electricians belonging to the astral or mental
planes. They have no more authority qua, their knowledge of these planes than
the chemist. I often wish that in the Theo-sophical Society the old fable of the
Jewish Rabbis was better remembered and applied. Two Rabbis were arguing, and
one of them, to support his side of the argument, made a wall fall down;
whereupon the other Rabbi sensibly remarked : " Since when have walls had a
voice in our discussions ? " That spirit is of enormous importance, and does not
in any sense touch the fact that you find the great Founders of religions and
the illuminated men who surrounded them were men who had power to produce
phenomena of various kinds, to heal the sick, to make the lame to walk, and so
on, and that phenomena always accompanied the great religious Teacher in the
past. These things did not give Him His religious authority: they were simply
the outcome of His knowledge of natural laws; for a man who is thoroughly
spiritual has matter subject to him on every plane in Nature. But it by no
meant; follows that the man who can manipulate matter on the lower planes is
therefore able to speak with authority on the higher. The fact that the
spiritual man is always a great psychic, always has power to utilise higher
forces for controlling physical matter, that fact, while true, does not prove
the truth of
PLACE OF PHENOMENA IN THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 77
the opposite idea, that the man who has power over matter
is necessarily highly unfolded as regards the spirit. It is true, of course,
that the founders of religion were men surrounded with clouds of phenomena, and
the reason for that is the one I have just stated: that to the truly spiritual
man matter is an obedient servant; to use a quotation from an Indian book: " The
truly spiritual man all the siddhis stand ready to serve."
Now it was necessary for the founding of religions and for
the teaching of many of the doctrines of religions which had to do with worlds
invisible to the physical eye, that the man who first promulgated these
doctrines should be a man who had a first-hand acquaintance with the conditions
they described. For you must remember that in every religion there are two sides
to its teaching: the side of the spiritual truths known only to the unfolded
divine consciousness; the side of the existence of other worlds than this, and
of the conditions existing in those worlds—important to men, as they have to
pass into those worlds after death, important to men also, as much of the
symbolism, the rites and ceremonies, are connected with what we may roughly call
occult science. As the Buddha said when speaking of worlds beyond the physical:
" If you want to know your way to a village and particulars about the village,
you ask a man who lives there and who has gone along the roads leading to it:
and so you do right to come to me when you want to know about the Devas and
about the invisible worlds, for I know those worlds and I know the way thereto."
So that looking back to these great spiritual Teachers and Revealers of the
unseen, we find they are
78
always men of first-hand knowledge. That first-hand
knowledge was shared by Their immediate followers, who carried on the teaching
of the system after the Teacher had withdrawn. And it matters not what religion
you take, living or dead, you will find it equally true, that phenomena were
common in the earlier days of the teaching of that religion.
Now let me take two typical religions, one Eastern and one
Western, with regard to the continuance of the phenomena of the earlier days—the
Hindu religion in the East for the Eastern example, and the Roman Catholic
Church in the West for the Western example. In both these great religious
movements we find a continuance of phenomena; neither Hinduism as typical of
Eastern teaching, nor Roman Catholicism as the most widespread form of
Christianity in the West, has ever taken up the position that the life which
showed itself through the earlier teachers was cut off and no longer irrigated
the fields of the religion. On the contrary, you find both these typical
religions claiming continuity of life and of knowledge. Amongst the Hindus it is
a commonplace to assert the possibilities of yoga, that a man can now, as much
as in the days of the Manu or of the great Rishis, do what They did, can free
himself from the physical body, can travel into other worlds of the system1, can
acquaint himself with the forces and objects of those worlds, and carry on as
definite a study of the Not-Self in those worlds, as anyone who wishes to do so
may carry on a definite study of the Not-Self in the physical world. The claim
has never been given up; the practice never wholly disappeared.
PLACE OF PHENOMENA IN THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 79
So also with the Roman Catholic communion. There has been
there a succession of saints and of seers who have always claimed to be in
direct touch with other worlds, and who have claimed and exercised the powers of
those worlds manifestly on the physical plane. To-day in the Roman Catholic
Church similar phenomena are said to occur, and certainly the evidence offered
for these phenomena is far more easily verifiable than the evidence offered for
such phenomena in the earlier centuries of the Christian story. So also among
the Hindus it is more easy to prove nowadays the powers possessed by a yogi,
than it is to prove the possession of those powers thousands of years ago in the
obscurity of the earlier days of Hinduism. Consequently you find amongst Roman
Catholics and Hindus a definite belief that these things are still possible; and
the only thing that either will say with regard to their happening is that the
greater descent of the people as a whole into materiality has made the
possession of these powers a far rarer qualification of a believer in one or
other of the religions, than was the case in the early days of enthusiasm, and
of a greater outpouring of spiritual life. There is no doubt, so far as
Christianity is concerned, that the sacred books of the Christians entirely
support the Roman Catholic contention. I am not going into the question of the
authenticity of particular phrases; I simply take the New Testament, as it is
admitted to be a sacred book. There you have placed in the mouth of Jesus the
distinct declaration that those who believe on Him should do greater works than
He did; and in one passage —rejected, I know, as not in the original manuscripts
by
80
many scholars, but still coming down from a great Christian
antiquity—you have the distinct statement that they shall be able to drink
poison, and so on. So it is clearly a part of the definite Christian teaching
and tradition, that these so-called abnormal powers are within the reach of
believers in Christianity. And so also with regard to Hinduism.
Now another thing is to be observed in this connection :
that as the religion has gone on generation after generation, century after
century, there has been a diminution of the powers, and a much less frequent
happening of these so-called miracles. Side by side with the weakening of these
powers and the lessening in number of the phenomena has been also the gradual
lessening of the power of the religion over the minds and lives of men. The
inroads of other forms of thought, the slackening of the grasp of the believer
on the realities of the unseen worlds, have diminished religious authority, and
the power of those unseen realities has weakened as time has gone on. So if we
take the case of Hinduism or Christianity we find them giving back before the
inroads of a more materialistic philosophy, before the inroads of a
self-assertive science. We find among cultured and thoughtful people in the East
and West there has been a great slackening of hold on the teachings of religion,
and that the power exercised over the lives of believers has become much less
real than in earlier days. That is inevitable, the result of the efflux of time,
and the need for the recurrence of spiritual impulses lies in that fact, which
is ever repeating itself. Just in the same way in which we read in the
Bhagavad-Gita that by the efflux
PLACE OF PHENOMENA IN THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 81
of time this yoga disappears, and then some teacher conies
in order to restore vividness to the life, so it is over and over again in the
case of every great spiritual movement.
Now when we apply these manifest principles and facts to
the latest spiritual movement, that which gave birth to the Theosophical
Society, we find that we are running through, in a very short time, the same
series of facts as characterised the religions of the past. Here also, as
with them, a great outburst of phenomena in the earlier days; H.P.B. living in
a cloud of phenomena those who came in touch with her bathed in phenomena of all
kinds. You can see the result of that early training in our late President,
Colonel Olcott, to whom phenomena in connection with the Theosophical Society
were the most natural things in the world. He had no hesitation in talking
of them, was always bubbling over with his experiences of them in the past.
You must remember, when he was over here, how much he thought about them,
the pleasure he took in recalling his earlier experiences, and of
showing the material articles produced phenomenally in those earlier
days; and you cannot take up Old Diary Leaves without finding yourself
face to face with every-day happenings of phenomena. Life then seemed to be made
up of the abnormal, in the sense in which that word is used. The normal for
the time being had disappeared. If a duster had to be hemmed, an elemental
did it. If pencils were needed, a hand, was put forward, twisted the pencils
about, and there were twelve in place of the one, and so on. Much greater
people than H.P.B. were concerned in producing
82
these phenomena. Colonel Olcott tells us how H.P.B. on
one occasion drank some lukewarm water which a Master drew from a water-skin on
a camel, and magnetised, and made her believe it to be coffee. On his
removing the magnetism before she had finished drinking, she found to her
disgust that she had been drinking this lukewarm water. The present-day
Theosophist would probably have objected to such playfulness, but 'such things
were continually happening in the early days. When Colonel Olcott came into
the Society he came straight from the investigation of spiritualistic phenomena
—a thoroughly well-trained observer, beginning with a good deal of scepticism,
and beaten out of it by his own observations in innumerable spiritualistic
seances. So that when he came in touch with H.P.B. he was no
credulous, unobservant person, overborne by a number of wonderful happenings,
but a thoroughly equipped and cold-blooded and well-trained observer of
the super-physical, and he naturally brought his powers of observation to
bear on these wonderful happenings. He has left on record the full stories of
these earlier days. You may find similar stories, not to the same extent
indeed, in Mr Sinnett's book, The Occult World. There we find similar
instances, similar marvels worked by H.P.B. in order to arouse his attention,
and to prove to him the existence of certain laws? which otherwise would have
remained, so to speak, in the air. So there were also there a large number of
unusual happenings—letters in pillow-cases, letters on branches of trees, and so
on. You would all do well to re-read the Old Diary Leaves or The Occult World.
Each one of you should deliberately ask
PLACE OF PHENOMENA IN THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 83
himself: " Why do I believe these things to be true ? "
Because it seems to me that most members of the Theosophical Society are rather
slipping into the position of the modern Christian, that in order that a miracle
may be true it must be old, and if it happens nowadays it must immediately be
discredited. That is not rational. But jt is a perfectly rational position to
take up with all phenomena to say: "I shall not accept one of them unless
thoroughly satisfied with the evidence on which it rests "; that is a perfectly
reasonable attitude; but what seems to me a little less reasonable is to swallow
wholesale the phenomena of the early days, and to look very much askance at
anything that happens now ; to glance back proudly to the past, and to regard
anything which might happen now as wrong, as undesirable. Because if that is the
right position, then it ought to be applied all round; it ought to be applied to
the early phenomena of the Society as much as to anything that may occur now;
and the same rigid demand for evidence should be made as is made at the present
time. But, on the other hand, if the evidence be as full and as satisfactory now
as that which supported the earlier phenomena, then it does not seem quite
reasonable to accept the earlier and deny the later.
Let us for a moment see how far the Society has been going
along the same line as that along which the other religions have gone—the
gradual disappearance of phenomena and the substitution for them of teaching
appealing to the reason only, and not to the senses, claiming its authority on
grounds which appeal to the consciousness in man, as far as is practicable
divorced
84
from matter, or to that consciousness working through
comparatively thick and gross veils of matter. After the Coulomb difficulty
there was a cessation almost entirely of these phenomena in the Theosophical
Society. Two reasons led up to that: first, the utter disinclination of H.P.B.
herself to continue to expose herself to the attacks of people with regard to
her good faith. She was so maligned and slandered, so many friends turned
against her and spoke of the powers she possessed as fraudulent and as tricks,
that when her Master raised her from the bed that might have been her death-bed,
and would have been, save for His coming to her at Adyar, she made the condition
that she should not be forced to produce phenomena in the way she had been
forced before; that she should be allowed to put that aside. The consent was
given. Lion-hearted as she was, she shrank from the storm of slander that broke
on her. The other reason was that people belonging to the Society took fright.
The pressure of public reprobation was so strong, the force of unbelief so
crushing, that the members of the Society itself shrank back and were afraid to
face public opinion, ignorant and persecuting as it was; and it is pathetic and
interesting to read the letters she wrote in the years immediately succeeding
the Coulomb difficulty, in which she pointed out that those to whom she had
brought the light were ashamed to stand beside her under the conditions to which
she was then exposed. She complained that the writings in the Society were
changing their character; that they were no longer occult and full of teaching
of the unseen, but had become purely philosophical and
PLACE OF PHENOMENA IN THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 85
metaphysical; that her own journal had turned aside from
its earlier occultism, and confined itself to articles addressed only to the
intellect; and she says in one of these letters : " Say what you may, it was my
phenomena on which the Theosophical Society was founded. It is my phenomena by
which that Society has been built up." It was a natural feeling of half
resentment against the policy of the time, that had left her in the lurch, and
put the Society upon a different footing. It was in connection with that
terrible time, in the turmoil and whirl of conflicting opinions, that those
words recorded of her Master, spoken to herself, in one of the records left to
the Society, occurred, in which He said: " The Society has liberated itself from
our grasp and influence .... it is no longer .... a body over the face of which
broods the Spirit from beyond the Great Range." Along those newer lines the
Society went, and there are many who will say : " They are better lines. It is
better that these abnormal happenings should fall into the background, that they
should not be presented to a scornful and sceptical world, that we should rely
on the literature that we have, without desiring to increase it by new
knowledge, in which much can only be gained by abnormal means. Better to rest on
what we have, and not try to add to it." Very many of our members take that
view, and it is a perfectly reasonable view to take, a view which ought to have
its place in the Theosophical Society, a view which is useful as correcting the
tendency to undue credulity, which otherwise might hold on its way unchecked.
For the life of the Society depends on the fact that it should include a vast
variety of opinions
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on all the questions on which difference of opinion is
possible; and it is not desirable that there should be only one school of
thought in the Society. There should be many schools of thought, as many schools
as there are different thinkers who can formulate their thought, and each
standing with an equal right to speak and of claiming a respectful hearing. None
of them has a right to say: " There is no place for you in the Theosophical
Society." Neither must the person who is strong on the subject of phenomena try
to silence those who meet phenomena with disbelief, or who think them dangerous;
nor should a person who stands only on philosophy and metaphysics say to the
Theosophical acceptor of the phenomena: " Your views are wrong and dangerous."
Perfect freedom of thought is the law and life of the Society; and if we are not
fit for that, if we have not reached the position where we can understand that
the more we can enrich the Society with differences of opinion and different
standpoints, the more likely is it to do its work and live for centuries to
come, when other new avenues of knowledge unfold before it, we are not ready to
be members of the Theosophical Society at all. Now the Society has gone along
those lines, along which every religion has gone, from the time of the Coulomb
trial. What has been the effect of that on religions ? A weakening power. We
Have to beware that the same thing does not take place with us that has taken
place with the different religions of the past; we should take care—especially
in an era wherein ordinary science on the physical plane is pressing onwards
into the higher realms of the physical plane, and on to the very threshold
PLACE OF PHENOMENA IN THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 87
of the astral plane, and bids fair to cross that threshold
and demonstrate its teaching there—lest we, who claim to be in the forefront of
this great movement, do not fall into the background, and become unworthy of
carrying on the standard of knowledge. Therefore I would claim for the Society
its place as a seeker after new knowledge, investigation by what we call
clairvoyance, the definite and regular carrying out of the third object, which
has been far too much neglected of late years; practically, where many years ago
the Society was leading the way in the investigation of the hidden laws in
Nature and the hidden powers in man, it now has to take a back seat with regard
to the contributions it is making under that particular object for which amongst
others it was founded. For more work has been done of late years by the
Psychical Research and similar Societies than by the Theosophical Society, and
that is neither right or wise —not right, because as long as we keep such
research as one of our objects we ought to live up to it; not wise, because the
lessons we have learnt, the various theories we have studied, are better guides
to investigation than anything which the other Societies have, who have not yet
been able to formulate theories but are simply in the state of collecting
phenomena. For that reason it seems to me that the Society can do work here
which the others cannot. They collect and verify with patient care masses of
most interesting and valuable phenomena. The work done by the fete Mr. Gurney
and Mr. Myers, and a large number of their co-workers, is invaluable work from
the standpoint of the Theosophical student. But there is no order in it; there
is no reason in it. It is a
88
mere chaos of facts, and they cannot explain or correlate
them. They cannot classify or place them in order. They have no world-embracing
knowledge which enables them to place each fact in its own place, and to show
the relation of one set of facts to the other. There are splendid observations,
but no co-ordination and building of them into a science; and it seems to me
that it js a duty of the Theosophical Society, not only to deal with the facts
that others have verified, but to carry on researches by properly qualified
persons among its own members; to utilise its magnificent theories, its
knowledge—for they are more than theories—for the explanation of new phenomena,
for the gradual evolution of new powers among greater numbers of its members ;
and I do not believe that in that there is so much danger as some people fear. I
do not believe that the study of the hidden side of Nature is so perilous a
study as some think. All researches at first hand in the early days of a science
have some danger: chemistry, electricity, had dangers for their pioneers, but
not dangers from which wise people and brave should shrink; and I fear for the
future of the Theosophical Society if it follows the track of many of the
religions and lets go its hold of knowledge of the other worlds, and comes to
depend on hearsay, tradition, belief in the experience of others, and the
avoidance of the reverification of experience. For it must be remembered that in
giving a vast mass of knowledge to the world, H.P.B. distinctly stated that
these are facts which can be reverified by every generation of observers ; she
did not give a body of teaching to be swallowed, to be taken on authority, to be
accepted
PLACE OF PHENOMENA IN THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 89
by what is called faith ; but a body of verifiable
teachings, facts to be examined over again, facts to be experimented on, to be
carefully studied, as the scientific man studies the part of the world he knows.
Unless we can do that, I fear we shall tend only to become another religion
among the religions of the world; that we also shall lose our power over the
thought of our generation, and to that which has been done so splendidly in past
years—the spreading of these ideas so that they are becoming commonplace now
among cultured and intellectual people—pause will be given, and the spreading
influence will be checked, because we have left part of our work undone, part of
our message unsaid. And I would urge on you in relation to this that which I
said in a sentence at the beginning of my address, that there is one condition
of research into these matters common to ordinary science and to the science of
the higher worlds, and that is a balanced judgment, acute and accurate
observation, and a constant readiness to reverify and recast earlier
observations in the light of the later ones that are made. All science grows by
modification as more and more facts are collected by the scientific observers,
and no scientific man would make any progress in his science, if he were always
in the reverential attitude of the devotee before a spiritual truth when he is
working out experiments in his laboratory. You may show reverence to great
beings like the Masters, there the posture of reverence is the right one; but
when you are dealing with the phenomena of the astral plane there is no more
need to show reverence than with phenomena of the physical plane. It is out
of
go
place, and if you make that atmosphere round it, you will
always be at the mercy of misconception and error of all kinds. You must try, in
all psychical research, in all weighing of observation of phenomena, to
cultivate the purely scientific spirit, indifferent save to the truth and the
accuracy of the results, looking on every matter with a clear eye, without bias
and without prejudice; not seeking for facts to verify a doctrine already
believed in, but seeking for facts in order to draw conclusions from them as to
the laws and truths of the unseen world. There is no other safe way of
investigation, no other reasonable condition of mind in face of the objective
world; and if it be possible amongst us to break down this wall between the
physical, astral and mental, to see all objects in all worlds as simply part of
the Not-Self which we are studying, dealing with them in the same way,
interpreting them in the same spirit, then we are likely to add largely to our
knowledge without risking the loss of our judgment or becoming mere enthusiasts,
carried away by marvels and unable either to observe accurately or judge
correctly. The place of phenomena in the Theosophical Society seems to me to be
a constant place. They must be recognised as fit objects for the study of the
Theosophist. We must recognise frankly that our future literature depends on the
development of these powers which can be utilised in the worlds beyond the
physical; that we are not satisfied to be only receivers, but also desire to be
investigators and students; that while we will check the observations of to-day
by the observations of the past, and hold our conclusions lightly until they
have been repeatedly verified, we will not
PLACE OF PHENOMENA IN THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 91
be frightened back from investigation by the idea that
psychism is a thing to be disliked, to be shrunk from, to be afraid of. Some of
you think that I have laid too much stress, when speaking of observations in the
other worlds, on the probability of mistake. Some have blamed me from time to
time because I have guarded myself so much by saying: " It is likely that
mistakes have come into these observations." But it is only by keeping that
frame of mind, that reiterated observation can correct the blunders which we
inevitably fall into in our earlier investigations. There is no scientific man
in the world who, when making experiments in a new branch of science, is not
well aware that he may blunder, is likely to make mistakes, likely to have to
correct himself, to find out that wider knowledge alters the proportion between
his facts. And I have tried to lay stress on the fact that these things are true
as regards the astral plane as much as they are true of the physical; that it is
not a question of revelation by some highly evolved being, but a question of
observation by gradually developing beings—a very, very different thing. And
unless you are prepared to take up that reasonable position, unless you will
allow the investigator to make mistakes and to correct them, without calling out
too loudly against them, or abusing them for not being perfect and invariable,
you will build a wall against the gaining of further knowledge, and cramp the
Society, and give it only tradition instead of ever fresh knowledge, ever
widening information.
So that I declare thus the place of phenomena in the
Theosophical Society: I declare that it was founded with
Q2
them, built up by them, nourished by them, and that they
ought to continue to be a department of our work, a proper subject for our
investigation. Only, do not get confused by bringing faith into the region of
phenomena. There is only one thing to which the word faith ought really to be
applied: and that is the conviction of Deity within us. That is the real faith,
the faith in the Self within,^an unconquerable, imperial conviction of the
Divinity which is the root of our nature. That faith is truly above reason; that
conviction transcends all proofs and all intellect; but nothing in the object
world is an object of faith; all are objects of knowledge. If you can keep that
distinction clear in your mind; if you can remember that the only warranted
conviction above reason is that conviction of your eternity, then you may go
safely into the region of phenomena, into the manifestations and happenings of
the objective world, with clear judgment, clear sight, unbiassed mind; and
knowledge shall reward you in your researches into Nature, for Nature always has
a reward for the seeker into her secrets.
Spiritual and Temporal Authority
I am to speak to-night, as you know, on " Spiritual and
Temporal Authority," and I have chosen this, with the other subjects, as bearing
on questions of immediate interest to the Theosophical Society. But in dealing
with each of these, as on the first occasion, I want, if I can, to lift you
above any controversy of the moment, and to put before you broad outlines rather
than mere details, and to lead you to look at all these questions from the wider
standpoint of the experience of the past, trying to apply that experience as far
as you can to the questions, the difficulties, of the present. And this question
that I have chosen for the subject of our thought to-night is one which carries
us back into the very beginnings of human history on our globe, which we may
trace downwards through civilisation after civilisation, and we can then study,
as it were by contrast, many of our modern civilisations. And out of all this it
may be that we shall learn some lesson for our own small affairs of the moment.
For local affairs are only really interesting as we see them as manifestations
of the great principles which work out in the history of humanity; and we can
only rightly, I think, understand the power
93
94
of the Theosophical Movement, if we see it in its proper
place in history, and not as a mere bubble on the water of the present.
Now, far, far back—I suppose some people will say " not in
history," for the time I am speaking of is what would be called
"prehistoric"—when the great Lords from the planet Venus came to our globe to
guide and train the humanity which just then had come to the birth, we find a
group of Teachers and Rulers, not belonging to our humanity at all, but, as I
said, coming from the planet Venus, from the far more highly evolved humanity
living in that world. They came for the specific purpose of making the evolution
of the new humanity more rapid than otherwise it would be. For, as you know, at
that time humanity was facing a very terrible danger. The bodies had evolved up
to a certain point, the brooding Spirit was over each body, but the intellectual
evolution had scarcely begun to dawn; mind, as we know it now, had scarcely
asserted itself; only mind, as we see it in the animals, had been slowly
unfolding its powers in the upward-climbing towards the light. And as it is
always true that any force which is poured down into a body must necessarily
flow along the channels which that body has prepared for it, in these animal
men, as we may call them, when they received a new influx of spiritual life—for,
if we prefer the phrase, " as the influx grew stronger and stronger "—that new
life, that additional force, inevitably ran into animal channels, lacking the
guiding and directing force of the intelligence. Hence the immediate result of
any increased down-pouring from the spiritual plane was an increase in
SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL AUTHORITY 95
animality in the growing man; and his body, growing up out
of the animal kingdom, influenced by that—although, as you remember, human from
the beginning, yet retracing its ancestry in those early days—was driven by the
incoming life into various lines of activity, harmless to the brute, but that
would have been destructive to the upward-climbing human being. Hence the need
for a swift intervention on the part of the Guardians of all humanities; and our
planetary Logos called to His help humanity from a chain older than His own, so
that He might have for His infant children guides that would protect them
against danger, and would lead them upwards more swiftly than they themselves
could have climbed alone. Hence the coming of those Mighty Ones, and it was They
who were the first Adepts, Masters, for our humanity. There is no other term for
the moment to apply to them, although the term " Master " is really
inappropriate: They were far higher in the Occult Hierarchy than Those we speak
of as the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion. They became the first Teachers and
Kings of our child humanity, and They were of many grades. " Divine Kings " They
are called in the old records; Teachers and Kings in one. They established the
polities of the infant nations ; They gave to those same nations their religions
; and in those early days, as in the days that will close our human history,
there was no distinction recognised between " sacred" and " profane." It was
seen that Spirit, clothing itself in matter, should be regarded in each of its
tabernacles as a single individual. Spirit and matter were not regarded, so to
speak, as distinguished from
96
each other, save in quality. The two combined into the
making of the man. And the man's life was a human life, and the body guided by
human consciousness; but the body was not thought of as separate from the
Spirit, nor the Spirit from the body; both were combined into a single being.
And in all true organisations that is the point which is to be aimed at: that
the informing life shall shape and mould the organism which is thus expressing
the life on planes of matter ; that that organism shall ever be an organism
spirit-inspired, life-shaped, so as to become more and more perfectly the
expression of the life which it enfolds. We shall see presently that for a time,
when Spirit became utterly blinded by matter, that matter, as it were, took the
upper hand and claimed to be monarch. But in those far-off days it was still
recognised that Spirit was the master of matter, and the Gods walked amongst men
and were recognised by men as their Teachers and Kings. And humanity in its
infancy clung to These, who were as fathers and mothers of the race, and looked
to Them for everything necessary to nourish and develop the young life. So that
looking back to those earlier days, the great lawgivers like the Manus were at
once Kings and Priests. They gave everything to the humanity that They guarded :
literature, science, art, architecture, everything which was necessary to the
national life. And finder that mighty protection grew up the vast civilisations
of the past. You find traces of them, of course, in Egypt; traces of them, in
fact, everywhere in the older, the now dying, or dead peoples. And these
King-Priests, these King-Prophets, summed up in Their own divine persons all the
ruling powers of
SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL AUTHORITY 97
Spirit and matter alike. The State was a Church, or the
Church was a State.
Gradually, as these Great Ones withdrew, as Those who only
lived for service saw that humanity had begun to take its first steps, and
needed less physical guidance and visible helping, others still great, but not
as superhuman as the earlier ones, took up the royal and priestly rank. Still
the two ran together: the temporal and spiritual power in one pair of hands ;
and so on and on, from Atlantis downwards. Some traces of it still survive, as
in the Indian civilisation, where the ideal of the monarch is always that of the
Divine representative upon earth. But in India, after the earliest days, you see
the beginning division, and the offices of the King and of the Teacher gradually
diverged the one from the other. And as time went on, and man grew a little
older in his childhood, those who ruled over the State gave away out of their
hands the teaching of the religion. Rightly and well; for it was necessary that
humanity should learn to guide itself. It was on the downward arc still, not yet
beginning its upward climbing, and it had to plunge deeper and deeper into
matter. The eyes of the Spirit had to be blinded in order that the eyes of the
intellect might open, and so gradually prepare humanity for a loftier
manifestation of the spiritual life.
And then we find that with the dividing of the two offices,
the Kings grew less and less fathers of their peoples, and became more and more
tyrants over the nations. In the elder days the principle that was taught was
clear and simple: the greater the power, the greater the sacrifice; the greater
the power, the greater the duty.
7
98
And on that principle of the Law of Sacrifice the old
civilisations were built up; to that they owed their splendor; to that the long
ages through which they lived and flourished; to sacrifice, as the very basis of
the national and religious polity, they owed the vigor, the young vigor, of
humanity. Their literature was grandiose; their architecture magnificent; their
art sublime. The traces of divinity ran through the whole of it. But, beautiful
as it was, it would not have been well that it should have lasted, for had it
been so, mankind would have grown to depend too much upon the manifested Divine
life walking incarnate side by side with it. And it was necessary that the
growing child should prove his own limbs, and the growing intelligence should
learn to depend upon itself. Then we come to a long period when the tyranny of
the King brought out more and more strongly the usefulness of the Teacher, and
when the Teacher was continually standing between the power of the tyrant and
the helplessness of the people; when religion became a shield for the weak, a
strong check for the violence of power. And we pass thus through all that long
period of human history where the oppressed found their only refuge in the
priests of the religions, and found them a sure protection against the sword of
the secular power. So went on for hundreds, nay, for thousands of years, the
growth of humanity; and the two powers went further and further apart, coming
more and more the one into opposition with the other. And the people, the
nations, gradually grew in power, grew in intelligence, to a considerable
extent. The priest was still the teacher, and still the
SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL AUTHORITY 99
schools and the temples were united. Unfortunately, after a
while the religions became corrupted as well as the royalties, and priests began
to share the worldliness that had already degraded the Kings; and then, with the
failure of the priesthood, practically ceased the education of the people for
many and many a long century, and intelligence was not developed, and the power
of the mind was not assisted to manifest itself.
And so onward and onward till we come to Middle Age Europe,
and we find a down-trodden proletariat, an indifferent and luxurious kingship
and priesthood, allied now to oppress, not to raise. Therefore, contest between
the Church and the State, until the Pontiff of Rome remained the only
representative of the union of the spiritual and temporal authority—his
spiritual authority enormous, his temporal authority growing smaller, and badly
used, so that in the States of the Church in Italy there was almost the acme of
bad temporal government ; and there was little to choose, really, between the
States of the Church and the odious tyranny of Naples. In the States of the
Church the old ideal of the Priest-King was degraded to its lowest point, and
neither on the side of Pontiff, nor on the side of King, was the ruler of Rome
the father, the shepherd of his people, but often only a devouring wolf. Hence
the last degradation of a once magnificent office. *
Meanwhile the Democracy was growing, and numbers were
beginning to claim their power, until the people, having seen how badly Kings
and priests could rule, thought that they could not, after all, do very much
worse themselves, if they seized authority by the power
IOO
of numbers, and took the helm of the States, of the
Nations, into their own rough and untrained grip. And so has risen in the modern
life of Europe the power, as it is called, of the Democracy. Practically, at the
present time, Democracy may be said to be on its trial. It cannot claim so far
to be a very splendid success, but its trial is not yet over, and many a year
may yet, lie before it, in order that the world may have an object-lesson to
show that the only true authority is the authority of Wisdom, and not the
authority of numbers; and that it is not possible for humanity to take its next
step onwards until it has managed to draw out of the lessons of the past and of
the present some way of blending, some way of uniting, the different experiences
through which it has passed. For all who study the world's unfolding and believe
that this world is not alone, but is a part linked with other worlds, and that
other beings above humanity take their share in humanity's evolution —all who
thus look at history and see the powers that lie behind the veil and that pull
the strings of those whom we call kings, and statesmen, and generals, and the
mighty ones of earth, they know that no great human experiment can be void of
its value, and no great human experiment but has some fruit of wisdom to be
gathered from it. So that no wise man, no thoughtful Theosophist, should look
with a feelifSg of repulsion and anger on the experiments that are being made
all over the world to-day in the effort of the nations to rule themselves by
numbers rather than by wisdom. For it is a necessary experience. Only in this
fashion can the lower mind complete its evolution and be ready to give up its
sceptre
SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL AUTHORITY IOI
to that Pure Reason which is to be the mark of the Sixth
Race, which is to find its expression in the polity of that coming Race. Out of
all these experiments we are to learn, out of all successes and all failures we
are to spell out, the lesson whereon the next civilisation will be built,
whereby its foundation will gradually be laid. For if one sees the Theosophical
Society aright, it is as one of the builders of that coming time, one of the
builders of the civilisation that has not yet really dawned on earth, the
civilisation of the Sixth Root Race, with the experiments that will go before it
in the Sixth and Seventh sub-races of the Fifth. For these experiments take long
in the making, and, as a great teacher once said: " Time is no object with us."
There is plenty of time for all the experiments, and all the blunders, and all
the failures; and all the successes of the future will grow out of these,
because every failure rightly seen is the seed of a coming success, and only by
the failures that we make in our ignorance may the plant of wisdom be sown, and
presently flower and bear fruit for the feeding of the nations. So that there is
time enough, and no need for impatience, when we see the blunders of our various
democratic governments. But there is much need that thoughtful people should
take care so to see the signs of the time, and so to understand the forces at
work, that the same blunder be not made in the days of the present as was made
at the close of the eighteenth century in France; for there also was a time when
an effort was made for a great step forward, a step too big, apparently, to be
possible of being then taken, a step which only caused the drowning of the
forward movement in blood, and
IO2
has thrown Prance backward, and not forward as some people
suppose; for ever since that time she has had a cancer at the heart of her, and
no effort that has been made has borne due fruit. Nay, it is even possible that
that was her opportunity in which she failed, and that the opportunity will have
to pass to other peoples, to be worked out by other
hands. r
Looking at the democracies of to-day, we see that both the
great powers are rejected, King and priest alike, royalty reduced to a mere
puppet, priesthood looked on with suspicion and with hatred; and in both cases
one is bound to admit that there is much justification, for they are the result
of the harm that unbridled power in Church and in State alike have wrought to
the people, who are now revolting against both. But the revolt is only a passing
thing. Humanity does not really change; only passing manifestations of it
change; and though the passing manifestations be counted by centuries, what is
that in the length of a day counted by myriads of years, and to peoples who are
spiritual intelligences unfolding their powers in humanity? Kingship and
priesthood are mighty powers, and the need for them deep-rooted in the nature of
humanity. Only on the upward path they are different from what they were on the
path of descent, and the way in which those are to be shaped and moulded and'
again made mighty, that will be the answer of human experience after it has
proved the rule of ignorance to be a mistake and a failure. Gradually, in some
way that as yet we do not see, a way will be found of discovering the wise, who
alone have the right to rule. For there is no authority for the inteili-
SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL AUTHORITY 103
gence, there is no authority for the free intellect of man,
save the authority of Wisdom, to which the intellect bows because it is itself
in flower. And those who develop the intelligence of men, as humanity is
beginning to evolve its intelligence, they will only find their Kings and
Priests where they see a wisdom greater than their own, a knowledge which
transcends theirs, but is the promise of what they themselves in the future
should become. And out of all the birth-throes of the present, and the ugly
shapes which humanity takes on, will come the fairer birth of Wisdom, when again
it shall sit on the combined throne of King and Priest. For it is necessary that
human life should regain its unity, and that again the Spirit shall be known to
be master, and the body its instrument, its tool, its expression. And on the
upward-climbing arc we have again to come to the same levels that we passed in
our downward-going arc of the ages of the past. In the half circle we had first
the Priest-King; and then the two side by side, co-operators; and then the
separation and the rivalry; and, finally, an evil junction to oppress the
ignorant and the poor. And slowly we shall have to climb on the path where
Spirit is manifesting more and more, and matter is becoming more and more
obedient, until each of those stages is again seen in the history of humanity,
and until, at the end, Spirit shall be lord * unchallenged, and matter obedient
servant, carrying out his will. And in the humanity of the great Sixth Race in
which Buddhi, or Pure Reason, is to be the mark, in which Wisdom will be the
shaper of humanity's plans, and the strength of matter will be used in order to
carry them out, in those
104
days there will be the building-up of the dual authority
once more, and the shaping of it to diviner ends than even in those early days
of the infant humanity. And in those days, again, ruler and priest shall be one,
until at last the unity shall be realised in the life of those who are to
accomplish their human evolution upon earth; until finally in each spiritual
individual these two characteristics are unfolded, and each man is King and
Priest, uniting the two phases in his own individuality, and learning, in that
dual power, to become the servant of those who are less evolved than himself.
You see a touch of that when the Christian religion was sent out into the world,
a glimpse of the splendid ideal when the Apostle, writing to his infant Church,
spoke of them as " Kings and priests unto God "; in each individual this
identity is to be at last achieved, so that no outer rule is any longer
necessary, the inner rule being enough. That unity will mark the closing scenes
of life on earth in each of those whose human evolution will be finished, who
will have to pass on into other worlds when they shall have united again each of
these in their own persons, and shall use that twofold power for the training of
the humanity below them, ascending towards the point which they shall have
gained and shall occupy.
Such the vast sweep of humanity's evolution: from Spirit,
through densest matter, upward-climbing again to Spirit, bearing with it all the
powers that by the experience in matter it has gained. Such the great sweep, and
the great history. What relation has that to our little Society and our little
movement? Some would be inclined to say: " None; no relation at all.
SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL AUTHORITY 105
You cannot bring down into so small a microcosm those great
principles shown out in their working in a macrocosm." And yet if you and I, in
our tiny personalities, repeat in miniature the life of the Logos in the vast
sweep of His creative activity, who shall say that in a movement such as ours
there is not similarly a retracing of the lines along which humanity at large
has to grow ? And who shall say whether we may not understand our movement
better, and guide it more wisely, if we recognise these correspondences of the
great growth of the world to the small growth of our Movement—a world-reflection
in a tiny mirror ? For it is no true humility to lessen too much the varied
operations of the Great White Lodge in the world of men, any more than it is a
true humility for the individual to be ashamed to claim his divine inheritance,
and look upon himself as a " mere worm of earth." The men or women who only feel
themselves to be of the earth, and not of Deity, their lives become more vulgar
and common than they ought to be ; for it is a great thing to realise
possibilities and to see correspondences, and to take out of them their
inspiring value, their invigorating force. And just as you and I have the right
to say that we are Gods in the making, and that there is nothing in the great
power of the Logos that does not lie hidden in germ within ourselves, just as we
have the sight to say that, as man best understands himself when he knows
himself divine and realises the possibilities within him, and sees the road to
Deity which he is to tread, so is every spiritual movement great in proportion
to the realisation of its one-ness with the great world-movement, and small and
petty when
IO6
the men and women who compose it can only keep their eyes
on the muck of the earth instead of looking up to the crown of stars that the
angel holds over their head. So that I do not fear to provoke a false pride, but
rather to get rid of a false humility, when I ask you to see in this Movement,
which belongs to the Great Lodge and is its child, to see in it the same forces
at work that you see working in the world-history, and to realise that here also
correspondences exist, and that we may guide our Movement most worthily by
seeing those correspondences and utilising them for the common good.
So let us pause now, after these high flights, in the
little valley in which we live, and see whether in the Theosophical Society any
such process of events may be seen as has been played on the great world
theatre, in the drama of evolving humanity. For mind! we have no meaning unless
we are related to that, and our Movement has no sense unless it retraces the
steps of the great world drama, as every great spiritual movement does, from the
time of its birth to the time of its passing away, and its incarnation in some
other form. I do not claim it for our Society only, but for all great spiritual
movements—churches, religions, call them what you will.
Now, we began our Movement as humanity began its education.
There was no difference between spiritual and temporal. The whole* Society was
regarded as a spiritual movement; and if you go back to those early days, and
read the earliest statements, you will find it said that this Society existed in
what then were called three Sections: First, Second, and Third. The First
Section was the Brotherhood, the Elder Brothers of
SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL AUTHORITY 107
Humanity; the Second, those who were striving to lead the
higher, the more spiritual life, and were in training for the purpose; and the
Third Section made up the bulk of the Society. Those three Sections were the
Theosophical Society. So that it began on a very lofty level; and its First
Section, the Elder Brothers, Those whom we speak of as Masters, They were
regarded as forming the First Section of the Society, and as part of it; and the
Society has linked closely the Second and Third Sections under the First, as in
the days when the Gods walked with men, in the early story of humanity. And They
came and went far more freely then than later, and mingled more with the
Society, taking a more active part in this work; and it is wonderful to read
some of the old letters of the time, and the close and intimate knowledge shown
by those great Teachers of the details of the work of the Society, even of what
was written about it in an Indian newspaper, and what ought to be answered, and
so on. And the Society grew, became more numerous, and spread in many lands; and
naturally as it spread, many of these ties somewhat weakened so far as the
Society, as a whole, was concerned—not weakened with individuals, but somewhat
weakened with the Body at large. And so things went on and on, until the Society
passed through the same stage through which humanity had passed when the
Priest-Kings entirely disappeared, and when those words were spoken by one of
the Great Ones: " The Society has liberated itself from our grasp and influence,
and we have let it go; we make no unwilling slaves. . . . Out of the three
Objects the second alone is attended to; it is no longer
108
either a Brotherhood, nor a body over the face of which
broods the Spirit from beyond the Great Range." And when that time was well
established a change was made in the organisation of the Society. It was no
longer, so to speak, one and indivisible, but two parts were made— Exoteric and
Esoteric; and, as you know, for some time the Colonel fought against that,
thinking it meant ^an unwise and dangerous division of authority in the Society,
until, as he was coming over here with his mind in opposition to the proposal
that H.P.B. should form the Esoteric Section, he received, on board the steamer
on which he travelled, a letter from his Master telling him to carry out what
H.P.B. wished; and, ever obedient as he was, for when his Master spoke he knew
no hesitation, when he arrived here in England he did what he had been told, and
authorised the formation of what was then called the Esoteric Section of the
Theosophical Society. You can read all this for yourselves; it is all in print.
Then came that distinct cleavage of Exoteric and Esoteric— the two heads, H. S.
Olcott and H.P.B., one wielding the temporal and the other the spiritual
authority in the Society. It meant that the Society had ceased to be the
spiritual vehicle it was in the earlier days. It meant, as was printed at that
time, that some of the members wished to carry on the Society on its original
lines, and so they formed themselves into this Section under her, on the
original lines. So it went on, like that time in the history of humanity, in
order that certain faculties might grow and become strong, and that the
spiritual side for a time might seem apart, and the other might go its own way
unruled. Many difficulties grew
SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL AUTHORITY 109
out of it, but still they were not insuperable—a certain
clashing of authorities from time to time, and certain jealousy between the one
and the other. These things were the inevitable concomitants of the separation,
of the differences between the spiritual and temporal sides, the Spirit and the
body, as it were. So things went on^until the President passed away. When H.P.B.
left us, she left me in charge of her work, as her colleague did in Adyar
lately, thus uniting again the two powers, the two authorities, in a single
person.
Now, what does it mean to the Society? That is the question
for us. What is it to bring forth in our Movement ? Ill or well ? It is only
possible, at this beginning of the road, to point out the two things that may
happen. For the Society and its President together will have to settle which of
the two shall come. It may be that They, who from behind look on, may foresee
what is coming; or it may be, as it often is, that They also are not able
completely to say what shall come out of the clashing wills of men, differing
views, possible antagonisms. Two possibilities there clearly are before us,
either of which, I suggest, may come. For you and for me it is to decide which
shall come. And I can only tell you how it seems to me, and you must judge and
act as you think right. For at last our Society, like humanity, has reached the
point when the individual must do his duty, and must no longer be a child guided
entirely from without, but a man with the God within co-operating with the God
without. Hence it is not a question for any to decide for us: we have to decide
it for ourselves. And as I say, I can only put to you what seem to me the two
possibilities. Let
110
me take the bad possibility first. It may be that I, in
whose hands these two powers now are placed, shall prove too weak to bear that
burden, too blind to walk along that difficult path. It may be that I shall err
on the one side or on the other, either making the Society too exoteric and
empty, a material thing, or, on the other hand, pressing too far the spiritual
side, with all that that means. It may be that the task is too great, and that
the time has not come. I recognise that as possible; for in all questions of
peoples, persons, and times, experiments may be made which it is known will
fail, in order that out of the failure fresh wisdom may be gathered, and it may
be that this shall be a failure. And if so it matters not, for out of that
failure some higher good will spring. That is the conviction of those who know
that the Self is ever in us, and that the Self can never perish; so that it
matters not what catastrophe may come, provided faith in the Self remains secure
with His endless possibilities of recovery, and greater powers of manifestation.
And it may quite well be that, in hands as weak and knowledge as limited as
mine, failure will meet this great experiment which the Masters are making, and
that we shall find that neither President nor Society is fit to take that step
forward, are both still too childish, not sufficiently mature, and therefore
notable to tread the path which is the path upwards to the spiritual life, when
the organisation shall again become but the mere outside veiling of the
spiritual life, carrying the message of regeneration to the world, and the birth
of a new civilisation. That is one possibility that should be faced. And the
other?
SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL AUTHORITY III
The other is that we may permit the Great Ones to be
sufficiently in touch with our little selves to send Their forces through us,
and that Their life shall become the life of the Society ; that out of this
rejoining of spiritual and temporal a greater spirituality shall circulate
in every vein and vessel of the Society, and it shall become again truly a
vehicle of the Masters of the Wisdom. It may be that it is preparing for a
greater and a nobler life, making the place ready for some greater one to come,
who shall worthily and strongly wield the power that I am bound to wield too
weakly, but yet, perhaps, strongly enough to make that preparation possible.
Perhaps you and I together are strong enough and wise enough to till the
field, where another shall sow the seed that shall grow up into a greater
civilisation and mark a step forward in the history of humanity. That is our
great opportunity, that the possibility that I see opening before us in this
policy now changed for the second time. It may be that we have learned enough
in the last eighteen years to tread this path rightly, to tread it sufficiently
to prepare a field for a greater one to come ; and that is the hope in which I
live at the present time. I believe that it is possible, if only we can rise
to the height of our great opportunity, that someone will come from the
far-off land where greater than we are living, and take this instrument and
make it fit to be a tool in a Master's hand—some Disciple greater and mightier
than I, someone belonging to the same company, but far wiser and far stronger
than I. And that such a one will take this Movement and make it a little more
what the heart of the Masters desires— more truly a Brotherhood, more full of
knowledge, more
112
really linked to the higher worlds by a centre of wise
Occultism—that seems to me the great possibility which is opening before us.
But, as 1 said, I know not if we are great enough to take it, or are still too
small; but it is to that great work that I would invite your co-operation ; it
is to that mighty task that I would ask you to address yourselves. At least
believe in the possibility of it; at least raise your eyes to that great stature
to which it may be our Society shall attain. For if we can rise to it, then it
means that we shall be builders of the next civilisation, that our hands shall
take part in the making of the foundation of the humanity that is still to be
born; it means that we shall be its forerunners, its heralds, that we shall be
the messengers whose feet shall be fair upon the mountains, telling of the
coming of a greater man, of the birth of a more spiritual humanity. And even
supposing that, accepting that ideal, we fail, supposing that we are not strong
enough, and wise enough, and unselfish enough, to do it, then, then—if I may
quote the words of Giordano Bruno— " It is better to see the Great and fail in
trying to achieve it, than never to see it, nor try to achieve it at all."
The Relation of the Masters to the Theosophical Society
Those of you who have been present in the Queen's Hall on
Sunday evenings will remember that I spoke there a fortnight ago on "The
Relation of Masters to Religions." There, of course, I dealt with the subject in
the most general possible way, while here I propose to deal with it more
closely; but I must ask all of you, as I asked you last Thursday and the
preceding Thursday, to remember that in dealing with the Theosophical Society we
are only dealing with one part of a worldwide and, as I might say, century or
millennium-wide story — the story, practically, of the relation of the spiritual
world to the physical. Although I am now going to deal specially with the
relation of the Masters to our own Society, I would ask you all to bear in mind
the more general relation of which I have spoken elsewhere. I do not want to
repeat what there I said, but I want to recall to your minds the leading
principle that the Theosophical Society cannot claim an exclusive right to any
special spiritual privilege, that the spiritual privileges that it enjoys are
part of the
113 8
114
general spiritual heritage of the world, and that you have
to consider any special case in relation to those general principles. So that in
thinking of the Masters in relation to our own Society, we must bear in mind how
very wide are their relations to all great spiritual movements, to all
religions, and that all who are spoken of in the different faiths as Founder or
Founders of a particular religion would fall under the name, Master.
Now I was hesitating a moment in completing that sentence,
because one almost has to explain that in thus using the word one is including
in it a little more than is included under the term in the special significance
with which we are going to use it now; for in the case of the religions of the
Hindus, the religion of the Buddhists, and the religion of the Christians, when
we speak of the Founder of each of these religions, we are speaking of great
personages who, in the Occult Hierarchy, are higher than those whom we call
Masters: in the case of Hinduism, the Manu, who is the Lord really of the whole
of the Fifth Root Race ; in the case of Buddhism, the Buddha, who is a teacher
of all gods and men before He takes up His place as the illuminated, the supreme
Buddha. And in the case of the Christian Religion also, there is something
peculiar in the life of the Founder. You have there, in the first place, a being
whom we call by the name Jesus, in himself a disciple, but living in the world
at that time under exceedingly strange and peculiar conditions. Some of you may
have read with some amount of care that section of the third volume of The
Secret Doctrine which is called " The Mystery of
RELATION OF MASTERS TO THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 115
the Buddha." I am bound to confess that as it stands there
it is very confused, partly intentionally, I think, on the part of the writer,
but also partly in consequence of the fact mentioned in that volume, that you
have there- put together a large number of fragments, and they were put together
by myself at a time when I knew very much less of the arrangement, so to speak,
of those relationships between the higher and lower worlds than I do now. Hence
there is some darkness there that belongs to the subject, and some that belongs
to the incompetence of the compiler. The result of the two together is a good
deal of confusion to any student who has not the key to it. I am only concerned
for the moment with one of these statements, with what are called " the remains
of the Buddha "—not a very comfortable name, because it gives one the idea of a
corpse—that is, empty bodies of the Buddha on the various planes. Those have
been preserved on the higher planes for special purposes, and are occasionally
used under very peculiar conditions, when subtle bodies of a very pure and very
lofty character are needed for some particular purpose. Now in the case of Him
who was known as Jesus, the subtle bodies were these particular bodies that are
kept on the higher planes, and He was allowed to use these for a number of
years, holding them, as it were, as tenant for the great personage who was to
take possession of them later. Then came the lofty being known as the
Bodhisattva, who took possession of these vehicles which had thus been kept
ready for Him, and He who was the disciple and now is the Master Jesus took
birth later as Apollonius of Tyana, and so passed
Il6
onwards step by step until he became one of the Masters of
the Wisdom.
I made that slight digression because otherwise I should
have conveyed a slightly false impression by the phrase " all Founders of
religions." We mean amongst ourselves by the word " Master," when used
accurately, a very distinctly marked rank in the Occult Hierarchy; He is a being
who has attained what is called " liberation" in the East, what is called
"salvation" in the West; a being whose soul and Spirit have become unified, who
lives consciously on the highest plane of our own universe — the fivefold
universe — and whose centre of consciousness is on the atmic, sometimes called
the nirvanic, plane. Living in full consciousness on that plane, He has no sense
of bondage in any form with which He may ally Himself. He has passed during His
Arhatship beyond all desire for life in form, or life out of form. He has thrown
away those fetters; together with the limiting " I-making" faculty, the limit of
individuality, that also has gone. His consciousness, then, working on this
atmic plane, works indifferently up and down through all the five planes, and
the whole of these together form to Him but a single plane, the plane of His
waking consciousness. That is an important point to remember, for there is often
a certain confusion of thought with regard to this term " waking consciousness."
It ought not to mean simply the consciousness that you and I may have as waking
consciousness, confined to the physical world; but the consciousness which
—enlarging stage by stage as the active centre of consciousness rises through
the planes inwards—is aware
RELATION OF MASTERS TO THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 117
of all which is below that centre; and is aware thereof
without it being necessary for the person to leave the physical body, in order
that that consciousness may be in an active and working condition. The waking
consciousness is the normal, daily consciousness, and may include the physical
plane; or physical and astral; or,, physical, astral, mental; one more when you
take in the buddhic; one more when you take in the atmic; and provided that the
person whose consciousness is spoken of does not need to leave his active body,
his body of action, in using his consciousness on any of these planes, does not
have to throw the body into trance in order to be conscious on any or on all of
them, we speak always, then, of that consciousness as being " his waking
consciousness." Some disciples, for instance, will often include in the waking
consciousness the astral, mental, and even buddhic planes; but it is
characteristic of the Master alone that He unites in His waking consciousness
the whole of the five planes on which our universe is gradually unfolding. So
that we may define the position of the Master, for the moment, as that of a
Person who has reached liberation ; the meaning of that being that he is living
in the Spirit consciously; that he is in conscious relation to the Monad, above
the atmic plane; his centre of consciousness is there, and as the result of the
centre of consciousness being in the Monad, the whole of the five planes become
part of his waking consciousness. As regards the bodies there is also a
difference: the whole of the five bodies of these planes act for Him as a single
body, His body of action. That does not mean, of course, that He cannot
118
separate off the parts if He needs to do so; but it means
that in His ordinary, normal condition, the whole of His bodies are only layers
of a single body, just as much as solid, liquid, gases, and ethers, for you and
me, form our physical body, and we need not trouble to distinguish the matter
belonging to one sub-plane or another. So to the Master, the matter of the whole
of these planes forms His body of action, and although He is able to separate
one part from another if he desires, normally He will be working with the whole
of them together, and the whole will constitute the instrument of His physical
or waking consciousness.
It is hardly necessary to add to that definition that He is
one who is always in possession of a physical body; it is implied in the very
description I have been giving. That part of it is important only, or chiefly,
when you are considering the question of liberation in relation to a number of
different classes, as we may say, in this great Occult Hierarchy, the names in
the West are not familiar, and there is no particular need to trouble you with
them for the moment in the Samskrit form. Speaking generally, you have a class I
have just alluded to, the Masters who possess the physical body, and another who
are without that body, and are therefore not called Jivanmuktas (the name you so
often find in our books in relation to the Masters) or Muktas, with a prefix
which means "without a body." Then again you may have other classes, Beings who
perform various functions in the universe; some, for instance, animate the whole
of the physical universe, and are distinguished as being what is called blended
with matter, the class that gives
RELATION OF MASTERS TO THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 119
the sense of life, of consciousness, to all those things in
Nature which so much impress the mind occasionally when we are face to face in
solitude with some splendid landscape—some great forest, perhaps, in the
silence. We need not go into these various classes; I only mention them in order
to separate from the rest that particular class of freed, liberated, or, if you
like the Christian term, "saved," persons, who no more need come involuntarily
into incarnation, but who are free both as regards consciousness and as regards
matter.
Now these great Beings that I have just defined ought to be
separated in your thought for a very practical reason that we shall see in a
moment; they ought to be separated in your thought from those still mightier
Beings in the grades of the Occult Hierarchy that stretch further and further
upwards into the invisible worlds. For you lose a great deal practically when
you mass the whole of them together, and fail to recognise the particular
function of a Master, as regards the world in which He voluntarily takes
incarnation. It is the kind of distinction that we have sometimes put to
students as regards the use of the words Jesus and Christ; Jesus denotes
specifically the man, the living man, the Master, who is still in possession of
a physical body, and in close relation to the physical earth; the Christ, in a
higher sense, is an indwelling spiritual being, who can be reached by the
Spirit, but not seen as such by the eyes in any phenomenal world. So again there
is the yet loftier Being to whom the name of Christ is applied amongst the
Christians, when they are speaking of One we call the Second Logos ; these are
Beings of different
12O
grades, and in different relations to mankind; but the
Master, as Master, is a man, and the manhood must never be forgotten. It was
on that point that H.P.B. laid so much stress in speaking of those Beings with
whom she had come into physical contact, whom she knew in their physical bodies;
and one thing, as you know, which she protested against in relation to this type
of Being was the putting Them too far away from human love and sympathy,
making Them belong to a class of beings to whom at present They do not belong,
and hence making a gulf between Them and humanity which ought not to be made,
because the making of it destroys Their value to the people who make it. A
phrase she once used, that I have quoted to you before, is the complaint that "
they have turned our Masters into cold far-off stars, instead of living men,"
and on the fact that They are living men she continually insisted; for it is by
virtue of that living manhood that They are able to play the part that They play
in the evolution of the race. Others have other work to do as regards
humanity, as regards the destinies of the nations, and so on, but these
particular people are still in close touch with the humanity to which They
belong, and They deliberately refuse to go on away from it, remaining with it
until humanity, at least with regard to very, very large numbers of its
members, has reached the position in-.which They stand to-day, as the promise
of what humanity shall be, the first-fruits of humanity as it is. They are
specially concerned with the direct teaching, training, and helping of man, in
the quickening of his evolution; and the reason the body is retained is in order
that this close personal touch may
RELATION OF MASTERS TO THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 121
be kept, primarily with Their disciples, and then through
Their disciples with comparatively large numbers of people, And it is a marked
and significant fact, that just in proportion as a religion has lost touch with
this aspect of the Divine Life which we call the Life of the Master, so has it
tended to become more formal, less highly vitalised, less spiritual, with less
of the mystic element in it, and more of the literal; so that it becomes
necessary in the efflux of time that every now and again a Master should come
forth from the Great White Lodge, and testify again upon earth to the reality of
the tie between the Elder Brothers of the race and the younger brothers who are
living constantly in the physical world. Now one distinguishing mark of a
Master, His chief function, we may say, is to perform the greatest act of
sacrifice which is known in the Occult Hierarchy, save the act of the One who is
called The Great Sacrifice, the Silent Watcher, whose sacrificial act is still
greater than the sacrificial acts performed by Those who are spoken of as
Masters. This particular act of sacrifice, occurring from time to time at the
beginning of a new epoch in religion and civilisation, is performed by one o:
the Body, who volunteers to start a further spiritual impulse in the world, and
to bear the karma of the impulse that He generates. That may not appear to you
at first glance, unless you* have gone into the subject carefully, to be such a
transcendent act of sacrifice as it really is. It may seem a comparatively small
thing to start such an impulse, and very vague probably are the ideas of many of
you as to what is implied in the statement " bearing the karma," which the
generation of the
122
impulse implies. The great act of sacrifice lies not only
in the truth that He is wearing a physical body of coarse matter, which hampers
Him from time to time, but that He cannot lay that body aside, once He has used
it for giving this great spiritual impulse, until that impulse is entirely
exhausted, and the religion, or the association, to which it has given birth has
vanished out of the physical world. Take, for instance, the case of the Master,
Jesus: He—by His own voluntary act of course, in the beginning, for it is always
a volunteer who comes forward; such a sacrifice cannot be imposed—He,
voluntarily, giving up His body, and later taking from the Bodhisattva the
guarding of the infant plant of which the Bodhisattva had sown the seed which
was to grow into the great tree of Christianity, taking that from Him, He bound
Himself by the acceptance of that work to remain in the bonds of the physical
body until the Christian Church had completed its work, and until the last
Christian had passed away, either into liberation, or re-birth into some other
faith. It is the same with the other great religions, so many of which are now
dead —the religion of Egypt, of Chaldea, and many another. The Masters who had
to do with those have long since cast away Their physical bodies, and thereby
ceased to be what we call Masters, because the religion that each gave to the
world had done its work, and no souls remained who could be further helped by
passing through the teaching and the training of that particular religion. This
is the central idea of the act of sacrifice, and it becomes the more a
sacrificial act because the One who undertakes this tremendous task cannot tell
how the
RELATION OF MASTERS TO THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 123
impulse will flow in all its details, cannot even estimate
the amount of difficulty, of delay, nay, of mischief, that may grow out of the
impulse that He has given. In the first place, He Himself is limited by these
bodies that He has assumed. He cannot use the whole of His vast consciousness
within the limitations of a physical brain and a physical body. Thus, although
He has unified His bodies and is able, so to speak, to run up and down the
ladder of the planes as He will, He is still largely limited in His activities
where He is working in the unplastic matter of the physical plane; and so, when
He undertakes a work like this, He generates causes whose effects He cannot
thoroughly calculate, He takes the risk which surrounds every great undertaking,
He submits Himself to the conditions of this task upon which He enters, and He
is obliged, having once taken it, to bear it until success or failure has
crowned the effort that He makes.
Those of you who have carefully thought on these subjects
will realise that while the knowledge of a Master is, as regards you or me,
practical omniscience, it is by no means omniscience on His own plane, relative
to the problems with which He has to deal and which He has to solve. A Master
amongst Masters, a Master within the Great White Lodge, He is amongst His peers,
in the presence of His Superiors, and the problems with which that Lodge has to
deal, the questions on which that Lodge has to decide, are, if I may use the
phrase, as difficult and as puzzling on that plane of being as the problems that
we have to decide down here are on our plane. Hence the possibility of
miscalculation, the possibility of error, the possibility of mistake; and you
can well
124
understand that these beings are subject to such
limitations when you remember the startling assertion that even the Lord Buddha
Himself, high above the Masters, that even He committed an error in His work on
the physical plane. When, then, a Master volunteers to serve as what may
literally be called the scapegoat of a new spiritual movement, He takes up a
karma whose whole course He is unable to see. And it need not, therefore, be a
matter of surprise that when the time was approaching when another great
spiritual impulse might again be given, according to cyclic law, when the two
who volunteered to undertake the task, to make the sacrifice, offered Themselves
in the Great White Lodge, differences of opinion arose as to whether it was
desirable or not that what we now call the Theosophical Society should be
founded.
The time came, as most of you know, I suppose, for an
effort of some sort to be made. It had been so since the fourteenth century, for
it was in the thirteenth century that in Tibet a mighty personage then living in
that land, promulgated His order to the Lodge that at the close of every century
an effort should be made to enlighten the "white barbarians of the West." That
order having gone forth, it became necessary, of course, to obey it; for in
those regions disobedience is unknown. «• Hence at the close of each century—as
you may verify for yourselves if you choose to go through history carefully,
beginning from the time when Christian Rosenkreuz founded the Rosicrucian
Society late in the fourteenth century—you will find on every occasion, towards
the close of the century, a new
RELATION OF MASTERS TO THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 125
ray of light is shed forth. Towards the close of the
last century—I do not mean the one to which we belong, but the century before,
the eighteenth—a mighty effort was made, of which the burden fell upon two great
personages closely connected with the Lodge, though neither of them, I believe,
at that time was a Master—he who was then known as the Comte de St Germain, who
is now one of the Masters, and his colleague in that great task, closely allied
to him, of a noble Austrian family, known to us in later days as H.P.B. When
those made their attempt to change the face of Europe, they failed, the time not
being ripe; the misery and the wretchedness of the epoch, the degradation of the
masses of the population, the horrible poverty, the shameful starvation, all
these were the rocks on which split, and was broken up into foam, the spiritual
wave of which those two personages were the crest. The karma of that, for the
one whom we know of as H.P.B., was the trying and suffering
incarnation that she spent amongst us, when she founded, under the order
of her Master, the Theosophical Society, and gave her life to it
that ii might live. And it was that fact, that the last grea-spiritual
effort had been drowned in bloodshed, it was that which gave her her marked
horror of mixing up the spiritual movement with a political effort, which made
her realise that before a spiritual movement could be successful in the outer
world it must shape, raise, remodel the conscience of those who were affected
by it, that it must not dare to put its hand as a whole to any great political
or social movement before it was strong enough to control the forces which it
evoked. Hence
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her shrinking from all idea of this Society plunging, as a
Society, into political work or social reform. Not that individuals of the
Society might not do it, not that members of it might not use their best thought
and energy in order to bring forward and strengthen any movement which was
really for the benefit of mankind; but that the Society as a Society, as the
vehicle of this great torrent of life, must not pour that torrent into any
physical and earthly vessel, lest again it should break the vessel into pieces,
lest again it should put the hands of the clock back, instead of forward, as was
done in France. So for this time it was to be a spiritual movement, and the work
was to be spiritual, intellectual, and ethical. Those were to be its special
marks, this its special work; and when the two great Teachers who were
identified with the movement—her own Master and His closest co-worker in the
Great White Lodge, the two who over and over again in centuries gone by had
stood side by side as fellow-workers in the civilisations of the past—when They
volunteered for this great emprise, doubt, as I said, arose among Their peers.
The lesson of the eighteenth century was not forgotten ; the question inevitably
arose: " Is the West ready for a movement of this sort again ? Can it be carried
on in such an environment without doing, perhaps, more harm than the good which
it is capable of accomplishing?" And so, much discussion arose—strange as that
may sound to some, in connection with a body of workers so sublime —and most
were against it, and declared the time was not ripe; but these two offered to
take the risk and bear the burden, offered to bear the karma of the effort,
RELATION OF MASTERS TO THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 12 7
and to throw their lives into the shaping, guiding, and
uplifting. And as the question of time is always one of the most complicated and
difficult questions for Those who have to deal with the great law of cycles and
the evolution of man, it was felt that it was possible that the effort might
succeed, even although the time was not quite ripe, the clock had not quite
struck the hour. And so" permission was given, and the two assumed the
responsibility. How the earlier stages were made is familiar to you all; how
they chose that noble worker Their disciple, known to us as H.P.B., and prepared
her for the work she had to do; how in due course They sent her to America to
search there for a comrade who would supply what was lacking in herself—the
power of organisation, the power of speaking to men and gathering them around
him, and shaping them into a movement in the outer world. And you all know the
story of how they met; you all know how they joined hands together. One of them
has put the whole thing on record, for the instruction of the younger members of
the Society now and in centuries to come. The movement began, as you know,
closely watched over, constantly protected by those two who had taken this
burden of responsibility upon Themselves. And you may read in many of H.P.B.'s
letters, how continual in those days was the touch, how constant the directions;
and it went on thus year after year—for the first seven years at least of the
Society's life, and a little more; you may read in the issue of the Theosophist
(June) a letter from one of these same Teachers, showing how close was the
interest taken, how close the scrutiny which was kept up in all the
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details of the Society's work. In publishing that letter I
thought it only right to strike out the names which occur in the original. It
would not be right or fair to print those publicly yet, as you can perfectly
well see when you are able to supply the blanks which are left for names. You
may read in that letter how the Master who wrote it had been watching the action
of a particular branch, how He had marked in connection with another branch some
of the members of the branch who were working ill or not well; how He pointed
out that such-and-such members would be better out of the branch than in it,
were hinderers rather than helpers—all going to show how close was the watch
which They then kept upon the branches of Their infant Society. And so again you
may read in other letters than that, suggestions of writing letters to
newspapers, and so on, which would strike you as very trivial if they came from
the Masters at the present time; how a letter might be written here, an article
answered there ; how a leading article ought not to be allowed to remain with
its false suggestions to the injury of the Society, and so on. But there came a
time, with the increase of the numbers in the Society, when many came in who had
not the strong belief of the outer founders in the reality of the life of the
Masters and Their connection with the Theosophical Society, and disputes and
arguments arose. And if you turn back to the Theosophist of those days you will
see a great deal of discussion going on as to who were the Brothers, and what
They did, and what relation they bore to the Society, and so on; until at last
They grew a little weary of this continual challenging of Their life, and work,
and interest,
RELATION OF MASTERS TO THEOSOPH1CAL SOCIETY 129
and gave the warning which still exists amongst the papers
of the Society, that unless before a very short time these questions were set at
rest, and the fact of Their relation to the Society was generally recognised,
They would withdraw again for a time into the silence in which They had remained
so long, and would wait until conditions were more favorable before they again
took Their active part in the guiding of the Society's work. Unfortunately the
warning was not taken, and so the withdrawal into the comparative silence took
place, and the Society entered on that other cycle of its work on which, as you
know, the judgment of the Master was passed in the quotation I made the other
day, that " the Society has liberated itself from our grasp and influence, and
we have let it go; we make no unwilling slaves. It is now a soulless corpse, a
machine run so far well enough, but which will fall to pieces when .... Out of
the three objects, the second alone is attended to; it is no longer either a
Brotherhood, nor a body over the face of which broods the Spirit from beyond the
great Range." Thus Their relations to the Society of the time altered, became
less direct, less continual. Their direct influence was confined to individuals
and withdrawn for the Society at large, save as to general strengthening, not
because They desired it should be so, but because so the Society desired, and
the Society is master of its own destiny, and may shape its own fate according
to the will of its majority. Still They watched over it, though not permitted to
" interfere " with its outer working so much as They had done in the earlier
days, and H.P.B. was obliged to declare that They did not direct it. The
relation remained, but was
9
130
largely in abeyance, latent to some extent, as we may say,
and They were waiting for the time when again the possibility might open before
Them of more active work within the movement which They had started, whose heavy
karma They were compelled to bear.
The fact that They bear the karma of the Society as a
whole, seems to me one which members of the Society ought never to forget; for,
coming into this movement as we have done, finding through the Society the
teachings which have changed our lives, having received from it the light which
has made all our thought different, which has rendered life intelligible, and
life on other planes familiar, at least in theory, and to some in practice, it
would seem that the very commonest gratitude, such as men or women of the world
might feel for some small benefactions shown by friend to friend, that aven that
feeling, small and poor as it is, might live in the heart of every member
towards Those who have made the existence of the Theosophical Society possible.
I do not mean, of course, in those who do not believe in the fact of Their
existence; and there are, quite rightly and properly, many such amongst us; for
it is the foundation of the Theosophical Society that men of all opinions may
come within its ranks and benefit by the splendor of its teachings, whether or
not they accept them one Ky one. Their non-belief does not alter the fact that
the teachings come to them through the Society, and from Those who made the
Society a living organism upon earth. Nor do I mean in saying that this feeling
of gratitude should exist in the heart of each, that anyone need take the
particular view
RELATION OF MASTERS TO THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 131
of the Masters which I myself take, founding that view, it
may be, on more knowledge than very many of those who reject it personally can
be said to possess. In all these matters every member is free, and I am only
urging upon you your responsibility at least to try to understand, where you
touch matters of such far-reaching importance ; and at least to consider that
you should not add to the burden on those mighty shoulders more than you can
avoid adding. Now none of us, whatever we may happen to know—the differences of
knowledge between us are trivial as compared with the difference between all of
us and Them—can surely escape the duty of considering whether by his own
ignorance, and carelessness, and folly, and indifference, he is adding to that
burden which They bear. For They cannot avoid taking the karma that you and I
largely generate, by virtue of Their unity with this Society, and the fact that
Their life circulates through it, and that They have sacrificed Themselves in
order that it may live. By that sacrifice they cannot avoid sharing the karma
that you and I are making by every careless thought, by every foolish action, by
every wilful or even not wilful ignorance, the burden that They have taken out
of love for man and for his helping. And I have often thought, when I have been
trying dimly to understand the mysteries of this divine compassion, and the
greatness of the love and of the pity which moves those mighty Ones to mix
themselves up with our small, petty selves, I have often thought how strange
must seem to Them, from Their position, the indifference with which we take such
priceless blessings, the indifference with which we accept such
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mighty sacrifice. For the love that These deserve at our
hands is surely beyond all claim of kindred, of blood, of touch between man and
man; the claim that They have upon us, these Men who are Masters and Teachers,
for what They have given and made possible for you and me, seems to me a claim
beyond all measuring, a debt beyond all counting. And when one looks at the
Society as a whole, and realises how little as a whole it takes account of those
deep occult truths into touch with which it has come, how little it realises how
mighty the possibility that these supreme acts of sacrifice have opened before
every one of us, it seems almost too sad to be credible, too pathetic to be
expressed; one realises how sometimes Their hearts must be wrung, as the heart
of the Christ was wrung when He stood and looked over Jerusalem, and knew that
the people to whose race He belonged were driving further and further away their
possibilities, and were despising that which He had brought for their
redemption. How often His cry: " Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the
prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have
gathered thee together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye
would not"—how often must that same cry go out from the heart of the Masters,
when They look at the movement for which They are responsible, and realise now
little its greatness is understood by those who are its members, and are
reckoned within its pale.1 For if even for one brief hour you could
1 This was spoken some weeks before the issue of Mr
Sinnett's extraordinary manifesto, denying'' the things most surely believed
among us."
RELATION OF MASTERS TO THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 133
realise the heart of the Master, and what He feels and
knows with regard to this movement which is His, it seems to me that in the
light of even that brief meditation there would be a throwing away of
personalities, there would be a trampling down of silly pride, a casting aside
of careless obstinacy, a yearning to have some share in the sacrifice, and to
give ourselves, however petty we may be, side by side with that sublime
sacrifice which They are making year after year for us, unworthy of Their
compassion. And yet nothing less than that is the movement which lives by Their
life; nothing less than that is the relation of the Masters to the Theosophical
Society. They bear it in Their heart, They bear it on Their shoulders, They
offer daily sacrifice that this spiritual effort may succeed in the helping and
the uplifting of the world. And They, so great, speak to us, so small; and none
will surely refuse to listen who catches one glimpse of the possibility of Their
speech ; none will reject Their pleading, who can hear one whisper of that Voice
; and the one thing that one hopes for, that one longs for, with regard to
oneself and to all who are members of the Society, is that amongst us there may
be some ears found to hear the voice of the Masters, and some hearts mirroring
enough of their compassion to at least sacrifice themselves for the helping of
the world.
The Future of the Theosophical Society
There are two futures of the Theosophical Society to which
we may address our attention : the immediate future, and a future further off.
And I am going to begin with the future further off, because it is only by
recognising the nature of that future that we can properly devise the means
whereby we may bring it about. For in all human affairs it is necessary to
choose an end to which effort should be directed, and the nature of the end will
govern the nature of the means. One of the great faults, I think, of our modern
life is to live in what is called a hand-to-mouth way, to snatch at any
momentary advantage, to try to bring about something which serves as an
improvement for the moment without trying to understand, without caring to
consider, whether in very many cases the temporary improvement may not bring
with it a more fatal mischief than that which it is intended to remedy. And at
least in the Theosophical Society, where we try to study tendencies, and to
understand something of the forces which are working around us in life, we ought
to avoid this popular blunder of the
'34
THE FUTURE OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 135
time, we ought to try to see the goal towards which we are
moving, and to choose our immediate methods with reference to that goal. Of
course, when I speak of a goal and an end, I am using the terms in a relative,
not in an absolute sense—the goal, the end which is within a measurable
distance, and so may be taken as a point towards which the roads on which we
travel should tend. Let us, then, look first on that goal, and see its nature
and the kind of methods which will help to realise it upon earth.
You are all familiar in the Theosophical Society with the
theory of cycles, so that you are accustomed to look upon events as tending to
repeat themselves on higher and higher levels of what has been called the "
spiral of evolution." For while it is true that history does not repeat itself
upon the same level, it is also true that it does repeat itself upon
successively higher levels, and that anyone who is studying Theosophical
teaching as to the evolution of man, the evolution of globes, the evolution of
systems, the evolution of universes, may very much facilitate his study by
grasping the main truths which underlie each of these in turn. We are
continually repeating on a higher plane that which we have done upon a lower.
Our terms are a constant series of repetitions, so that if we understand their
meaning in one series we are able to argue to their meaning in another. And I
have often pointed out to you with respect to these recurring cycles of events,
and recurring terms, that especially among Hindus, and in the Samskrit language,
you find whole series of terms, the meaning of each of which varies with the
term from
136
which the series starts; so that if you know them once, you
know them for all occasions. Take a very familiar case. Let me remind you of the
word " samadhi." That is a relative term, and is the last of a series, which has
regard to the waking consciousness of the individual and the plane on which the
centre of the waking consciousness is found. So that before you can say what the
word " samadhi" means for any individual, you must ascertain on what plane of
consciousness his normal centre is at work; and when you know that, then you can
pass up step by step until you come to the term in the series which is
represented by that word " samadhi." It is the same over and over again in our
Theosophical studies, and especially do we find this to be true in the
characteristics— important in this particular relation — the characteristics of
the great Races, the Root-Races, as represented in miniature in the sub-races of
each Root-Race. If we can find out those characteristics, trace them and see how
they are brought about in the course of evolution in the small cycle which is
nearer to us, the cycle of the sub-race, then it is comparatively easy for us,
as regards the future, to foresee the appearance of those characteristics in the
Root-Race that corresponds to the sub-race. And I shall want to use that method
in dealing with the future of the Society; it is for that reason that I draw
your attention to these continually recurring cycles of times and events. Now if
we look back to the Fourth Root-Race, we can study in the history of that Race
the evolution of the Fifth. We can see the methods used to bring about that
evolution. We can trace the means which were employed in order
THE FUTURE OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 137
that that evolution might be made secure; and we can see,
by studying that which lies behind us, that the fourth sub-race of that
Root-Race showed out the characteristics of the Fourth Race as a whole; that the
fifth sub-race of that Fourth showed out some of the characteristics of the
Fifth Root-Race that was to follow in the course of evolution. And in this way,
applying the analogy, if we can trace out to some extent for ourselves the
characteristics of the sixth sub-race which is to succeed our own fifth
sub-race, then we shall be on the track of the line of evolution which will
bring about the Sixth Root-Race when the time for its coming strikes. Let us
glance back for a moment to see the main points of the evolution of a sub-race
and a Race.
When our own Fifth Root-Race was to be evolved, certain
types were chosen out of the fifth sub-race of the Fourth Root-Race, and they
were chosen by the Manu who was to guide the evolution of the Fifth Root-Race.
Those types showed out in a comparatively germinal fashion the mental
characteristics which were to grow out of the selected groups. And you may
learn, if you care to do it, how those choices were made, and how the first
choice was a failure. Chosen as it was by the wisdom of the highly exalted being
whom we speak of as the Manu, none the less the material in which He tried to
work proved too stubborn, too little, plastic, to adapt itself to His influence
striving to shape and to mould it. And in consequence, after prolonged efforts,
He threw aside the families that thus He had selected, and began making a new
choice, a fresh selection, in order to see if the second choice would prove more
fortunate than the first. And
138
the way He chose them was a simple and effective one: He
selected a certain number of His own disciples and sent them out as messengers
to the various nations of the world, that constituted that part of the great
Fourth Race which He had chosen for His second experiment. He sent them into
nation after nation, with the mission to gather out of that nation those who
appeared to be the most promising for the work which He had to carry out. They
tried in various fashions, sometimes by direct invitation, where the
characteristic that was being sought was clearly developed, namely, the lower
mind. It was the development of the lower manas that was the keynote of the
selection; for the Fifth Root-Race was to show out that development of the lower
manas. I say " lower manas " rather than " manas "; because the full development
of the manasic principle in man is reserved for the Fifth Round, and not for the
Fourth, and we, of course, are still in the Fourth Round. That Fourth Round,
pre-eminently kamic, must necessarily color every evolution which goes on during
its existence, and high as we may strive to raise manasic powers amongst us, we
cannot escape from the fundamental vice of our birth, from the manasic
standpoint, that we are plunged in kamic matter, and that the matter in which we
work is matter of the Fourth Round, adapted to the kamic principle, and not
matter of the Fifth, adapted to the manasic. Hence the best thing that we can do
is to evolve the lower manas, manas deeply tinged with kama. Out of that Fourth
Race, then, were selected the people who showed most plainly the budding of this
intelligence which was needed, the messengers
THE FUTURE OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 139
of the Manu striking a note which attracted those in whom
this lower manasic principle was more highly developed than among their comrades
and peers. Gradually from different nations groups of men and women gathered
round the messengers of the Manu, who then began to lead them away from their
own people, from their own nation, from all their surroundings, in order to seek
the appointed place where the Manu was grouping those on whom the great
experiment was to be made for the second time. Slowly and gradually they were
thus gathered together out of the nations into which the fifth sub-race of the
Fourth Race had spread. And the flower of those nations, attracted by the
keynote struck by the messengers, gradually gathered round the Manu, and became
the material, the nucleus, of the new Root Race. As you know, He took them far
away to the Sacred Land, shutting them away from the masses of the Fourth and
Third Race peoples, and dividing them by physical barriers from all that might
contaminate and stain. Very, very different were those people from the
generations which thousands upon thousands of years later were to spring from
them in physical succession; rather, to the people about them were they folk who
were developed in an uncongenial fashion, people who were by no means looked up
to and admired in the nations amongst whom they dwelt, amongst whom they had
grown up. For the building of a new type is not made out of those in whom the
type of the old Race, that which is before those who are selected for a changed
line of evolution, has flowered. The triumphs of evolution in the Fourth Race,
as the
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Fourth Race judged them, were by no means the best material
for the building of the Fifth. Those who were most admired in the Fourth, those
who were regarded as the flowers of their own nations, were those in whom the
kamic faculty, with its allied psychic powers, was most developed, was most
triumphant. For you must remember that in the very different civilisation of
those days, psychic powers were playing an enormous part in all the most highly
developed people of the time. Where the dawning principle of manas began
somewhat to triumph over the kamic, there the psychic faculties inevitably
diminished in their power, and showed themselves very much more feebly than in
the leaders of the time, those who were the pioneers of the civilisation of the
day. The faculties most valued at that time were least to be recognised in those
who were the chosen of the Manu; for what He was seeking was the dawn of the
intellectual principle, and where that dawns, the psychic for a time is
submerged. I cannot dwell now on the reason for that; the psychism of the time
was the psychism of the whole of the astral body, and not the psychism which
succeeds the intellectual development, which is the result of a higher
organisation of that body into special organs of astral senses—the well-known
chakras. The reason is well known among all students of the different stages of
evolution, and the only reason I allude to it now is because I want you to
recognise a very significant fact: that those who were chosen out of that
civilisation by the Manu, in order that he might make a new Race out of them,
were not the people who were the leading examples of the highest civilisation of
THE FUTURE OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 141
the time. Those were left behind in their own environment.
Those were left behind to carry on their evolution along the lines already
becoming the lines of the past, and not the lines of the future. And these
people in whom the psychic powers were less shown, and in whom the less valued
intellectual power was germinating, on lines more fitted for the development in
future, they were chosen out for the building of the Fifth Race, and carried
away from their Fourth Race surroundings into the far-off land of their
education. There of course they remained until the time came when the Manu
incarnated amongst them—and so on. That is old history on which I need not
dwell.
Let us apply those same principles to the choosing out of
another Root-Race, and we shall see that just as then, for the fifth Root-Race,
the manasic principle was selected, so in the choosing out for a Sixth
Root-Race, the buddhic principle must be the one which must be sought for in
order that the material may be shaped in which it will be possible for it in its
turn to develop. There again I must remind you that the buddhi of the Sixth
Root-Race in this Round will be something very different from the evolution of
the pure buddhic principle in its own Round, the Round that belongs to it in the
future evolution of humanity: it will be buddhic contaminated with kama, showing
out much of the kamic characteristics—inevitably, inasmuch as it must work in
kamic matter. Hence you must not take quite your ideal buddhi, such as you may
fancy it in its perfection— the magnificent principle of Pure Reason, in its
higher intuitive power—but a shadow, a reflexion of it, such
142
a shadow and reflexion as is able to take its veils, its
garments, from the matter of our own Round. None the less, that will be the
distinguishing, the dominant principle of the Sixth Root-Race, and therefore I
ask you to fix your mind on that as the goal towards which all roads in the
present should tend. Far-off indeed it is, counting as we count time; but
tendencies show themselves long, long before they appear upon the surface,
recognisable to the eye of the flesh. In each sub-race appears a principle which
manifests itself more fully, more thoroughly, in the corresponding Root-Race;
and therefore, though it will only be possible for us at the present time to
work towards the next sub-race of our own Fifth Race, which is already beginning
to appear upon the surface of our globe, none the less is it true that in
quickening the evolution of that sub-race it is the next Root-Race to which we
must look for our guiding principle; that is the far-off Pole-star by which we
must guide our ships at the present time, that the point towards which we must
steer, however far off we must sorrowfully admit that it is.
Let us then, recognising that fact, that the Sixth
Root-Race will be the embodiment of the next principle in us, the buddhic
principle, that of Pure Reason—as distinguished from Intellect, which is Reason
reflected in Activity—when you realise "that, and remember that the note of
buddhi is union—not yet unity but union—you will find that as much as you
require for your guiding principle in the evolution of the corresponding
sub-race, whose foot is now on the threshold. So that in this fashion, though
seeming to go so far abroad into the
THE FUTURE OP THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 143
past and the future, I bring you to the practical question
of the next step forward in human evolution.
The next thing you must remember is that the flowering of
the Fifth Root-Race will go on long, long after the beginning of the sixth
sub-race is seen. For these Races and sub-races overlap each other; and just as
at the present time the majority of mankind belongs to the Fourth Root-Race and
not to the Fifth, but the Fifth Root-Race dominates the evolution of the world,
although still in a minority, so is it of sub-races also. The sixth sub-race
will be at first in an almost inappreciable minority, but coloring the whole;
then multiplying more and more, until it becomes an appreciable minority. Then,
as it grows more and more numerous, and nations are born of it, it will begin to
dominate and lead the civilisation of the then world. But even then the Fifth
Race will be in an enormous majority for ages and ages yet to come. The fifth
sub-race has not yet touched its highest point, has not yet asserted itself to
the point to which its evolution will reach in the centuries that lie
immediately before us. It is nearing its highest point; it is climbing rapidly
now to its zenith; but still many years of mortal time intervene between the
present day and the day when it will rule in the height of its power. It is
climbing fast in these days; but still, compare it with the corresponding point
hi the Atlantean civilisation, and you will realise that it has not yet climbed
to its highest point. For every Race must overtop the Race that has gone before
it, and we have not yet reached even the level of the old Atlantis in knowledge,
and therefore in power over the lower nature, although, as I
144
said, the climbing now is rapid, and will become more and
more rapid with every ten years that pass over our heads. For there is that
speciality in evolution, that it ever goes forward at an increasing rate. The
more it develops its powers, the more swiftly do those powers multiply
themselves; so that, to quote a well-known phrase of a great Teacher, " it grows
not by additions but by powers." And this civilisation of ours will rush forward
more and more rapidly with every decade that passes. Still, the very fact that
it has not reached the highest levels of the Fourth tells you that time lies
before us in the building of the sixth sub-race, and that is our immediate work.
We need not trouble now any further about the Sixth Root-Race; for whatever
builds the sixth sub-race amongst us is contributing to the building of that
Root-Race of the future. The same faculties are demanded, although then at a
higher level, and we can come down to our humbler level and consider what the
sixth sub-race is to be. And in that we shall realise the work and the future of
the Theosophical Society.
The great characteristic of that Race is to be union, and
all that tends to union is a force which is working for the coming of that
sub-race, no matter whether very often the force looked at from without is often
repellent. It is not the outer manifestation of the moment, but the tendency,
the direction of the force which is important. There may be many things, more
beautiful on the surface, which have accomplished their aim, and are on the
downward path towards decay, whilst the things that are rising, still below the
horizon, have, as all germinal
THE FUTURE OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 145
things have, much about them that is repellent and that
will be used up in the growth of the coming creature, before it really manifests
upon earth. It has been said by a Master that if we could see with the eye of
the Spirit the generation of the human being, his ante-natal life, we should
understand the generation of worlds, the generation of universes. And that,
again, is a general principle. Let us see one or two lessons that we may draw
from it at the moment.
Take the evolution of a seed into a plant, and what do you
find ? A tiny germ surrounded by a mass of nutrient matter; and before that tiny
germ will show itself in root, and stem, and leaf above the ground and become
visible to the eye of the observer on the earth, that nutrient material must be
absorbed by the growing germ, and changed into the exquisite tissues of the
plant that is to be. And so, if you take the growing germ, animal or human, how
unlike is that budding creature from the animal or the man that shall be! How
lacking in beauty in many of the methods of its growth, of its nutrition, of its
gradual shaping! And by what marvellous alchemy of inspiring life does the
living germ gather into itself all the nutrient matter that surrounds it, and
shapes it into organ after organ, until the perfect creature is ready to be born
into the world. And as in these cases, so with the growth of a sub-race, of
which the germ is planted now. How much has to be done before it is ready for
the birth-hour, that yet is at a measurable distance from the moment that the
germ is planted in the womb of time. Try to realise the analogy by means of the
image that I have suggested, and it will
10
146
not then seem so unlikely to you, that which is true, that
in our own times again many messengers have come out from the Manu of the
future, in order that those messengers may strike certain keynotes, which mark
the chief characteristic of the child that is to be. That note is well known at
the present time: we call it Brotherhood. Now notice at the present time how
many such messengers are found scattered throughout the world, and how the
varied organisations of men of every kind are tending in that direction, and are
more and more recognising that as the keynote of their progress and their
evolution. There are, so far as I know, only two great organisations at the
present time that have deliberately taken Universal Brotherhood as their motto,
their cry, in the world: the one is Masonry, the other is the Theosophical
Society. Those are the only two which proclaim Universal Brotherhood. For
although many religions declare Brotherhood, they do not make it universal; it
is a Brotherhood within the limits of their own creed, and a man to become a
brother must come within the limits of the religion. See how clearly that is
declared in the great and universal baptismal ceremony which marks the entrance
of the child into the Christian Church. In that sacrament he is "made a child of
God." He was not a child of God before, from the Church standpoint. Hcwas born
under the wrath of God, in the kingdom of Satan. In the ceremony of baptism he
is made a child of God, an heir of the kingdom of heaven; and that is the
keynote of the Churches everywhere: those outside are not children of God.
And you must remember that it is that Fatherhood
THE FUTURE OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 147
of God which connotes the Brotherhood of man. Only by the
rooting in the Father-Life is the Brother-Life intelligible. And because the
Theosophical Society knows no limit of creed, no limit of religion, and declares
that every human being is, in his own essential nature, one with the Supreme
Life and the Supreme God, because of that its Brotherhood is universal, and
knows none as outside its pale. Every man, no matter what he is, is recognised
as brother. He comes not into the Brotherhood, nor can he be cast out from it.
His Spirit, his Life, places him in it: it is a fact beyond us, above us. We
have no power either to create it or to destroy. We recognise the great fact,
and we do not call ourselves the Universal Brotherhood, but only a nucleus -in
it—a very different thing; the Brotherhood is as universal as humanity, that is
our fundamental doctrine, and it implies that Brotherhood is as universal as
Life. So also with Masonry, where it is rightly seen and understood—no barriers
of creed, all men equally welcome within the Masonic Lodge. I say "where rightly
understood," for there are lands where Masonry has spread, where the Lodge has
become exclusive as the creed has become exclusive; and among American Masons, I
believe, the negro, as negro, is not admitted into the Masonic Lodge. But that
is the denial of Masonry, a disgrace to it, aifd not a triumph. And although it
be true that Masonry has lost widely its knowledge, it still for the most part
remains a Brotherhood, and in that it has in it the link of a life that will not
die, and that has every possibility of revival throughout the earth.
148
Quite outside these two, limited brotherhoods are
proclaimed in every direction now. The Church asserts it within its own limits.
All religions assert it within their respective limitations. Outside religions
and churches the same cry is heard. Socialism declares it, and tries to build
its policy upon it. Everywhere this cry of Brotherhood is heard, although it has
not yet been lived, and that is one of the signs of the coming birth of the
sub-race, in which Brotherhood shall be the dominant note of its every
civilisation, and in which a civilisation that is not brotherly, in which there
are ignorant people, and poor people, and starving people, and diseased people,
will be looked at as barbarous, and not really as civilisation at all. Its note
is Brotherhood, the dominant note of the coming day. And because we have taken
that as our first object, we have a right to call ourselves a nucleus thereof;
and because we definitely recognise it, we can consciously co-operate with
nature. That is the real strength of our Movement —not our numbers, they are
comparatively small, but our conscious working with the forces that make for the
future. The Theosophical Society is a fragment of the vast Theosophical Movement
which is surging upon every side around us; but this we have that enables us to
be on the crest of that great wave, that we know for what we are working, we
understand the tendencies which make for the future. Hence in our Theosophical
Society we must above all else hold up this word, and work for it in every phase
of human activity. That word marks out for your Theosophical Lodges what
movements you should help, and what movements you should
THE FUTURE OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 149
not help. It is no use to pour water into a broken vessel,
and every vessel that has not on it the name or the principle of Brotherhood is
a broken vessel that will not hold water for the coming time. But every
movement, however mingled with ignorance, with folly, with temporary mischief,
which seeks after Brotherhood and strives to realise it, is a living vessel,
into which the Water of Life may be poured; and with those movements you should
work, trying to inspire and to purify, to get rid of that which comes from
ignorance, and to replace it with the wisdom which it is your sacred duty to
spread abroad among the children of men. So that in your public work you have
this great keynote.
And that leads me to pause for a moment on that spreading
Socialist Movement that you see around you on every side. Now, it is making one
tremendous blunder that I need not dwell on here, but that I shall dwell on
to-morrow night in addressing a Socialist Society. They are forgetting the very
root of progress, they are forgetting the building of brothers, out of which to
build a Brotherhood hereafter. They think that the future depends on economic
conditions, on who holds land, and who holds capital. These conditions are
conditions to be discussed carefully, to be worked out intellectually. But
whatever ownership you have of any of the means of life, if the lift is
poisoned, it cannot be healthy in the midst even of a well-arranged society. For
society grows out of men, and not men out of society, and until that is realised
all schemes must fail, for they are founded on sand, and not on rock. You who
have studied and understand, to some small extent
150
at least, the powers which are working in the world of the
present, you ought to be able to help to eliminate the evil and to strengthen
the good. And the Theosophical Society, among these movements of the day, must
hold up firmly a true ideal. It is the function of the prophet, of the spiritual
teacher, to hold up the ideal, and point ever towards it, so that individuals
may have it ever before their eyes and choose the roads which lead in the right
direction.
And again, the principles that I have put to you may
explain to you why this Theosophical Society, so weak, is yet so strong—weak in
its numbers, weak in the qualifications of its members, not numbering amongst
its adherents the most learned and the most mighty of the earth, made up of very
mediocre, average people, not the great leaders of the civilisation of the day;
but in them all, else would they not be members of the Theosophical Society, is
the dawning aspiration after a nobler condition, and some willingness to
sacrifice themselves in order that the coming of that condition may be quickened
upon earth. That is the justification of our Society now. We are like the
nutrient material that surrounds the germ, and the germ grows out of the love,
and the aspiration, and the spirit of self-sacrifice, which are found in our
movement, however little developed to-day. And tFie fact that we recognise it as
duty, as ideal, is the promise for the future. We are what our past has made us;
we shall be what our present is creating; and if within your heart and mine the
longing for the nobler state is found, that marks our place in the future, and
our right to be among the
THE FUTURE OP THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 151
earlier members of the sub-race that is now preparing to be
born. For our thoughts now are what we shall be in our next life; our
aspirations now mark our capacities then. You know how the intermediate life is
spent, between the death that will close your present lives and the birth that
will open the portal of your next lives. You know that in the heavenly places
you will be weaving into faculty, into capacity, every thought and every
aspiration towards the higher life which in these days of your weakness you are
generating, and are trying to cherish and cultivate. It is not you as you are
who will make the future, but you as you shall be, self-created from your
aspirations now. And just in proportion as each of you nourishes those
aspirations, and cherishes those ideals, and tries, however feebly, to work them
out amid the limitations of your past which cramps your present life, just so
far will you, in the interval between death and birth, make the nobler faculties
which shall qualify you to be born in the sixth sub-race upon earth. That should
be your keynote in your lives now, that the inspiring motive, the controlling
power. And if you want to assure yourselves that that sub-race is on the
threshold, as I said, then look at the world around you, and measure the change
which is coming over it. I said we were weak in numbers, that we are only
average and mediocre people; but whsrt about the spread of our ideas ? What
about the way in which, during the last thirty years, these Theosophical ideas
have spread through this Fifth Race civilisation, have permeated its literature,
are beginning to guide its science, are beginning to inspire its art ? That is
the proof of the strength of
152
the force, despite the feebleness of the vehicles in which
that force is playing. Very clearly not to you nor to me is the spread of these
ideas due, but to the Mighty Ones behind the Society, who give the forces in
which we are lacking. For the whole Movement is Theirs; They are working outside
as well as within. And Their outside working shows itself in the innumerable
movements which are all tending in the same direction. It is not we who have
spread the ideas. The ideas are scattered in the mental atmosphere around us,
and our only merit is that we caught them up a little more quickly than other
people, and realise that they are a part of the Eternal Wisdom. That is our only
claim, our only prerogative— consciously, deliberately we choose these ideas,
and however weakly we carry them out, none the less the choice has been made and
registered in the books of Destiny. For whether you will or not, you must grow
in the direction of your thought; and you cannot be part of this Movement
without your thought being more or less colored by the Theosophical ideal.
People often say: " Why should I come into the Theosophical
Society? You give us your books. You spread your knowledge broadcast everywhere.
I can buy it in the book-shops. I can hear it in the lectures. Why should I come
in ? " And I always say: " There is no reason why you shoGld come in, if you do
not wish to come. Take everything we can give, and take it freely. You are more
than welcome to it. We are only trustees for you. And if you do not care to be
among the pioneers, by all means stay outside, and walk along the smoother paths
which others have carved out for
THE FUTURE OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 153
you." But there is one reason that I may say to you— I do
not say it to those outside—there is a reason why you should be within it. You
are more in touch with the forces that make the future. You are surrounded,
bathed, in the atmosphere in which the future shall grow. All that is good in
you is nourished by those forces. All that is harmonious with them is
strengthened by their overmastering might. You cannot be amongst us without
sharing that inspiration; you cannot be a member without sharing the life which
is poured out unstinted through all the vessels of the Theosophical Society.
Outside it is not worth while to say this, for that is not a reason for inducing
people to come in; but you may rejoice that good karma in the past has brought
you into the Society in the present. It has given you the right to have this
opportunity of a nobler birth in the coming time, has given you the opportunity
of taking part in that great work which is beginning to be wrought among
humanity. It gives you, from your life in the heavenly places, touch with powers
and opportunities that belong to these ideals in the world of men, and it gives
you the possibility there of touch with the Mighty Ones whom here, however
unworthily, we strive to follow. So that it is a great thing to be within it,
and it means much for the future of you, if you can keep in it. For the
immediate future »f the Theosophical Society is the work of building that next
sub-race which is to come. That is the work for which consciously it ought to be
working now. In proportion as you realise it, so will be the strength of your
labor; in proportion as you understand it, so should be your share in the
gladder
154
work of that happier time. For the future of the
Theosophical Society is to be the mother, and even the educator, of the child
sixth sub-race which already is going through its ante-natal life. That is its
future, secure, inevitable; yours the choice if you will share that future or
not.
Part III
The Value of Theosophy in the World of Thought
An Address on taking office as President of the
Theosophical Society.
Delivered at the Queen's Hall, Langham Place,
London, W., on 10th July 1907.
The Value of Theosophy in the World of Thought
You will have seen on the handbill announcing the lecture,
that we are holding this meeting in connection with my taking office as
President of the Theosophical Society, and it is my purpose, in addressing you
to-night, to try to show you, at least to some small extent, what is the value
which the Society represents, as regarded from the standpoint of human
activities, manifested in the world of thought. I want to try to show you that
when we say Theosophy we are speaking of something of real value which can serve
humanity in the various departments of intellectual life. I propose, in order to
do this, to begin with a very brief statement of the fundamental idea of
Theosophy; and then, turning to the world of religious thought, to the world of
artistic thought, to the world of scientific .thought, and lastly to the world
of political thought, to point out to you how that which is called Theosophy may
bring contributions of value to each of these in turn.
Now Theosophy, as the name implies, is a Wisdom, a Divine
Wisdom; and the name historically, as many of
158
you know, is identical with that which in Eastern lands has
been known by various names—as Tao, in China; as the Brahmavidya, in India; as
the Gnosis, among the Greeks and the early Christians; and as Theosophy through
the Middle Ages and in modern times. It implies always a knowledge, a Wisdom
that transcends the ordinary knowledge, the ordinary science of the earth; it
implies a wisdom as regards life, a wisdom as regards the essential nature of
things, a wisdom which is summed up in two words when we say " God-Wisdom." For
it has been held in elder days—although in modern times it has become largely
forgotten—that man can really never know anything at all unless he knows
himself, and knows himself Divine; that knowledge of God, the Supreme, the
Universal Life, is the root of all true knowledge of matter as well as of
Spirit, of this world as well as of worlds other than our own; that in that one
supreme knowledge all other knowledges find their root; that in that supreme
light all other lights have their origin; and that if man can know anything, it
is because he is Divine in nature, and, sharing the Life that expresses itself
in a universe, he can know at once the Life that originates and the Matter that
obeys.
Starting from such a standpoint, you will at once realise
that Theosophy is a spiritual theory of the world as against a materialistic, It
sees Spirit as the moulder, the shaper, the arranger of matter, and matter only
as the obedient expression and servant of the Spirit; it sees in man a spiritual
being, seeking to unfold his powers by experience in a universe of forms; and it
declares that man misunderstands himself, and will fail of his true
VALUE OF THEOSOPHY IN THE WORLD OF THOUGHT 159
end, if he identifies himself with the form that perishes
instead of with the life which is deathless. Hence, opposed to materialism alike
in science and philosophy, it builds up a spiritual conception of the universe,
and necessarily it is idealistic in its thought, and holds up the importance of
the ideal as a guide to all human activity. The ideal, which is thought applied
to conduct, that is the keynote of Theosophy and its value in the varied worlds
of thought; and the power of thought, the might of thought, the ability that it
has to clothe itself in forms whose life only depends on the continuance of the
thought that gave them birth, that is its central note, or keynote, in all the
remedies that it applies to human ills. Idealist everywhere, idealist in
religion, idealist in art, idealist in science, idealist in the practical life
that men call politics, idealist everywhere; but avoiding the blunder into which
some idealists have fallen, when they have not recognised that human thought is
only a portion of the whole, and not the whole. The Theosophist recognises that
the Divine Thought, of which the universe is an expression, puts limitations on
his own power of thought, on his own creative activity. He realises that the
whole compels the part, and that his own thought can only move within the vast
circle of the Divine Thought, which he only partially expresses; so that while
he will maintain that, on the ideal depends all that is called " real" in the
lower worlds, he will realise that his creative power can only slowly mould
matter to his will, and though every result will depend on a creative thought,
the results will often move slowly, adapting themselves to the thought that
gives them birth. Hence, while
l6o
idealist, he is not impracticable; while he sees the power
of thought, he recognises its limitations in space and time; and while asserting
the vital importance of right thought and right belief, he realises that only
slowly does the flower of thought ripen into the fruit of action.
But on the importance of thought he lays a stress unusual
in modern life. It is the cant of the day, in judging the value of a man, that
"it does not matter what he believes but only what he does." That is not true.
It matters infinitely what a man believes; for as a man's belief so he is ; as a
man's thought, so inevitably is his action. There was a time in the world of
thought when it was said with equal error: " It does not matter what a man does,
provided his faith is right." If that word " faith " had meant the man's thought
in its integrity, then there would have been but little error; for the right
thought would inevitably have brought right action ; but in those days right
thought meant only orthodox thought, according to a narrow canon of
interpretation, the obedient repetition of creeds, the blind acceptance of
beliefs imposed by authority. In those days what was called Orthodoxy in
religion was made the measure of the man, and judgment depended upon orthodox
acquiescence. Against that mistake the great movement that closed the Middle
Ages was the protest of the intellect of man, and it was declared that no
external authority must bind the intellect, and none had right to impose from
outside the thought which is the very essence of the man—that great assertion of
the right of private judgment, of the supreme principle of the free
intelligence, so necessary for the progress of humanity.
VALUE OF THEOSOPHY IN THE WORLD OF THOUGHT l6l
But like all things it has been followed by a reaction, and
men have run to the other extreme: that nothing matters except conduct, and
action alone is to be considered. But your action is the result of your thought
of yesterday, and follows your yesterday as its expression in the outer world;
your thought of to-day is your action of to-morrow, and your future depends on
its accuracy and its truth, on its consonance with reality. Hence it is
all-important in the modern world to give back to thought its right place as
above action, as its inspirer and its guide. For the human spirit by its
expression as intellect judges, decides, directs, controls. Its activity is the
outcome of its thinking; and if without caring for thought you plunge into
action, you have the constant experiments, feeble and fruitless, which so
largely characterise our modern life.
Pass, then, from that first assertion of the importance of
right thinking, to see what message Theosophy has for the world of religious
thought. What is religion ? Religion is the quenchless thirst of the human
spirit for the Divine. It is the Eternal, plunged into a world of transitory
phenomena, striving to realise its own eternity. It is the Immortal, flung into
a world of death, trying to realise its own deathlessness. It is the white Eagle
of Heaven, born in the illimitable spaces, beating its wings against the bars of
matter, aiad striving to break them and rise into the immensities where are its
birthplace and its real home. That is religion : the striving of man for God.
And that thirst of man for God many have tried to quench with what is called
Theology, or with
books that are called sacred, traditions that are deemed
II
162
holy, ceremonies and rites which are but local expressions
of a universal truth. You can no more quench that thirst of the human Spirit by
anything but individual experience of the Divine, than you can quench the thirst
of the traveller parched and dying in the desert by letting him hear water go
down the throat of another. Human experience, and that alone, is the rock on
which all religion is founded, that is the rock that can never be shaken, on
which every true Church must be built. Books, it is true, are often sacred; but
you may tear up every sacred book in the world, and as long as man remains, and
God to inspire man, new books can be written, new pages of inspiration can be
penned. You may break in pieces every ceremony, however beautiful and elevating,
and the Spirit that made them to express himself has not lost his artistic
power, and can make new rites and new ceremonies to replace every one that is
broken and cast aside. The Spirit is deathless as God is deathless, and in that
deathlessness of the Spirit lies the certainty, the immortality of religion. And
Theosophy, in appealing to that immortal experience, points the world of
religions—confused by many an attack, bewildered by many an assault, half timid
before the new truth discovered every day, half scared at the undermining of old
foundations, and the tearing by criticism of many documents—points it back tcp
its own inexhaustible source, and bids it fear neither time nor truth, since
Spirit is truth and eternity. All that criticism can take from you is the outer
form, never the living reality; and well indeed is it for the churches and for
the religions of the world that the outworks of documents should be levelled
VALUE OF THEOSOPHY IN THE WORLD OF THOUGHT
163
with the ground, in order to show the impregnability of the
citadel, which is knowledge and experience.
But in the world of religious thought there are many
services, less important, in truth, than the one I have spoken of, but still
important and valuable to the faiths of the world; for Theosophy brings back to
men, living in tradition, testimony to the reality of knowledge transcending the
knowledge of the senses and the reasoning powers of the lower mind. It comes
with its hands full of proof, modern proof, proof of to-day, living witnesses,
of unseen worlds, of subtler worlds than the physical. It comes, as the Founders
and the early Teachers of every religion have come, to testify again by personal
experience to the reality of the unseen worlds of which the religions are the
continual witnesses in the physical world. Have you ever noticed in the
histories of the great religions how they grow feebler in their power over men
as faith takes the place of knowledge, and tradition the place of the living
testimony of living men ? That is one of the values of Theosophy in the
religious world, that it teaches men to travel to worlds unseen, and to bring
back the evidence of what they have met and studied; that it so teaches men
their own nature that it enables them to separate soul and body, and travel
without the physical body in worlds long thought unattainable, save through the
gateway of death. I say " Long thought unattainable " ; but the scriptures of
every religion bear witness that they are not unattainable. The Hindu tells us
that man should separate himself from his body as you strip the sheath from the
stem of the grass. The Buddhist tells us that by deep thought and contempla-
164
tion mind may know itself as mind apart from the physical
brain. Christianity tells us many a story of the personal knowledge of its
earlier teachers, of a ministry of angels that remained in the Church, and of
angelic teachers training the neophytes in knowledge. Islam tells us
that its own great prophet himself passed into higher worlds, and brought
back the truths which civilised Arabia, and gave knowledge which lit
again the torch of learning in Europe when the Moors came to Spain. And so
religion after religion bears testimony to the possibility of human knowledge
outside the physical world; we only re-proclaim the ancient truth—with this
addition, which some religions now shrink from making: that what man did in the
past man may do to-day; that the powers of the Spirit are not shackled, that the
knowledge of the other worlds is still attainable to man. And outside that
practical knowledge of other worlds it brings by that same method the distinct
assertion of the survival of the human Spirit after death. It is only in
very modern times that that has been doubted by any large numbers of people.
Here and there in the ancient world, like 1 Lucretius in Rome, perhaps;
like a Democritus in Greece; certainly like a Charvaka in India, you find one
here and there who doubts the deathlessness of the Spirit in man; but in
modern days that disbelief, or the hopeless cynicism which thinks knowledge
impossible, has penetrated far and wide among the cultured, the educated
classes, and from them to the masses of the uneducated. That is the
phenomenon of modern days alone, that man by hundreds and by thousands despairs
of his own immortality. And yet the deepest conviction
VALUE OF THEOSOPHY IN THE WORLD OF THOUGHT 165
of humanity, the deepest thought in man, is the persistence
of himself, the " I " that cannot die. And with one great generalisation, and
one method, Theosophy asserts at once the deathlessness of man and the existence
of God; for it says to man, as it was ever said in the ancient days : " The
proof of God is not without you but within you." All the greatest teachers have
reiterated that message, so full of hope and comfort; for it shuts none out from
knowledge. What is the method ? Strip away your senses, and you find the mind;
strip away the mind, and you find the pure reason; strip away the pure reason,
and you find the will-to-live; strip away the will-to-live, and you find Spirit
as a unit; strike away the limitations of the Spirit, and you find God. Those
are the steps: told in ancient days, repeated now. " Lose your life," said the
Christ, " and you shall find it to life eternal." That is true: let go
everything that you can let go; you cannot let go yourself, and in the
impossibility of losing yourself you find the certainty of the Self Universal,
the Universal Life.
Pass again from that to another religious point. I
mentioned ceremonies, rites of every faith. Those Theosophy looks at and
understands. So many have cast away ceremonies, even if they have found them
helpful, because they do not understand them, and fear superstition in their
use. Knowledge has two great enemies: Superstition and Scepticism. Knowledge
destroys blind superstition by asserting and explaining natural truths of which
the superstition has exaggerated the unessentials; and it destroys scepticism by
proving the reality of the facts of the unseen world. The ceremony,
166
the rite, is a shadow in the world of sense of the truths
in the world of Spirit; and every religion, every creed, has its ceremonies as
the outward physical expression of some eternal spiritual truth. Theosophy
defends them, justifies them, by explaining them; and when they are understood
they cease to be superstitions that blind, and become crutches that help the
halting mind to climb to the spiritual life.
Let us pass from the world of religious thought, and pause
for a moment on the world of artistic thought. Now to Art, perhaps more than in
any other department of the human intelligence, the ideal is necessary for life.
All men have wondered from time to time why the architecture—to take one case
only—why the architecture of the past is so much more wonderful, so much more
beautiful, than the architecture of the present. When you want to build some
great national building to-day you have to go back to Greece, or Rome, or the
Middle Ages for your model. Why is it that you have no new architecture,
expressive of your own time, as that was expressive of the past ? The severe
order of Egypt found its expression in the mighty temples of Karnak; the beauty
and lucidity of Grecian thought bodied itself out in the chaste and simple
splendor of Grecian buildings; the sternness of Roman law found its ideal
expression in those wondrous buildings whose ruins still survive in Rome; the
faith of the Middle Ages found its expression in the upward-springing arch of
Gothic architecture, and the exquisite tracery of the ornamented building. But
if you go into the Gothic cathedral, what do you find there ? That not alone
in
VALUE OF THEOSOPHY IN THE WORLD OF THOUGHT 167
wondrous arch and splendid pillar, upspringing in its
delicate and slender strength from pavement to roof, not there only did the art
of the builder find its expression. Go round to any out-of-the-way corner, or
climb the roof of those great buildings, and you will find in unnoticed places,
in hidden corners, the love of the artist bodying itself forth in delicate
tracery, in stone that lives. Men carved for love, not only for fame; men carved
for beauty's sake, not only for money; and they built perfectly because they had
love and faith, the two divine builders, and embodied both in deathless stone.
Before you can be more than copyists you must find your modern ideal, and when
you have found it you can build buildings that will defy time. But you have not
found it yet; the artist amongst us is too much of a copyist, and too little of
an inspirer and a prophet. We do not want the painter only to paint for us the
things our own eyes can see. We want the artist eye to see more than the common
eye, and to embody what he sees in beauty for the instruction of our blinded
sight. We do not want accurate pictures of cabbages and turnips and objects of
that sort. However cleverly done, they remain cabbaggs and turnips still. The
man who could paint for us the thought that makes the cabbage, he would be the
artist, the man who knows the Life. And so for our new Art we must have a
splendid ideal. Do you want to know how low Art may sink when materialism
triumphs and vulgarises and degrades ? Then see that exhibition of French
pictures that was placed in Bond Street some years ago, which attracted those
who loved indecency more than those who loved the beautiful, and
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then you will understand how Art perishes where the breath
of the ideal does not inspire and keep alive. And Theosophy to the artist would
bring back that ancient reverence which regards the artist of the Beautiful as
one of the chief God-revealers to the race of which he is a portion; which sees
in the great musical artist, or the sculptor, or the painter, a God-inspired
man, bringing down the grace of heaven to illuminate the dull grey planes of
earth. The artists should be the prophets of our time, the revealers of the
Divine smothered under the material; and were they this, they would be regarded
with love and with reverence; for true art needs reverence for its growing, and
the artist, of all men— subtle, responsive, sensitive to everything that touches
him—needs an atmosphere of love and reverence that he may flower into his
highest power, and show the world some glimpse of the Beauty which is God.
And the world of science — perhaps there, after the world
of religion, Theosophy has most of value to offer. Take Psychology. What a
confusion; what a mass of facts want arrangement; what a chaos of facts out of
which no cosmos is built! Theosophy, by its clear and accurate definition of
man, of the relation of consciousness to its bodies, of Spirit to its vehicles,
arranges into order that vast mass of facts with which psychology is struggling
now. It takes, into that wonderful " unconscious " or " sub-conscious "—which is
now, as it were, the answer to every riddle ; but it is not understood—it takes
into that the light of direct investigation; divides the " unconscious" which
comes from the past from that which is the presage of the future, separates out
VALUE OF THEOSOPHY IN THE WORLD OF THOUGHT
169
the inheritance of our long past ancestry which remains as
the " sub-conscious" in us; points to the higher " super-conscious," not "
sub-conscious," of which the genius is the testimony at the present time; shows
that human consciousness transcends the brain ; proves that human consciousness
is in touch with worlds beyond the physical; and makes sure and certain the hope
expressed by science, that it is possible that that which is now unconscious
shall become conscious, and that man shall find himself in touch with a universe
and not only in touch with one limited world. That which Myers sometimes spoke
of as the " cosmic consciousness," as against our own limited consciousness, is
a profound truth, and carries with it the prophecy of man's future greatness.
Just as the fish is limited to the water, as the bird is limited to the air, so
man has been limited to the physical body, and has dreamed he had no touch with
other spaces, to which he really belongs. But your consciousness is living in
three worlds, and not in one, is touching mightier possibilities, is beginning
to contact subtler phenomena; and all the traces of that are found in your
newest psychology, and are simply proofs of those many theories about man which
Theosophy has been teaching in the world for many a century, nay, for many a
millennium.
And physics and chemistry is there anything of value along
Theosophical lines of thought and investigation, which might aid our physicists
and our chemists, puzzled at the subtlety of the forces with which they have to
deal? Has it never struck some of the more intuitive physicists and materialists
that there may be subtler
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senses which may be used for investigation of the subtler
forces? That man may have in himself senses by the evolution of which he will
able to pierce the secrets that now he is striving vainly to unveil ? Has it
never even struck a physicist or a chemist that, if he does not believe in the
possibility of himself developing those subtler forces, he might utilise them in
others in order to prosecute further his own investigations ? They are beginning
to to do that in France. They are beginning to now try to use those whom they
call " lucid "; that is, people who see with eyes keener than the physical; they
are beginning to use those in medicine, are using them for the diagnosis of
disease, are using them for the testing of the sensitiveness of man, are
beginning to use them to try to discover if man has any body subtler than the
physical. And while I would not say to the scientific man: " Accept our
theories," I would say to him: " Take them as hypotheses by which you may direct
your further experiments, and you may go on and make discoveries more rapidly
than you can at the present time." For there is many a clairvoyant who, put
before a piece of some elemental substance, could describe it very much better
than is done by your fractional analysis. And along other lines—chemical and
electrical—surely there is something a little unsatisfactory, when a few years
ago men told us that the atom was composed literally of myriads of particles,
and during the last year it has been suggested that perhaps one particle is all
of which an atom is composed. Might it not be wise to try to get hold of your
atoms by sight keener than the physical, as it is possible to do, whether by
the ordinary clair-
VALUE OF THEOSOPHY IN THE WORLD OF THOUGHT 171
voyant who is sometimes developed up to that point, or by
an untrained sensitive whose senses are set free from the limitations of the
physical brain, and from that sensitive try to gather something of the
composition of matter which may guide you in your more scientific search ? I
realise that what one, or two, or twenty people see, is no proof for the
scientific man ; but it may give a hint whereby mathematical deductions may be
made, and calculations which otherwise would not be thought of. So that I only
suggest the utilising by science of certain powers that are now available,
keener than those of the ordinary senses—a new sort of human microscope or human
telescope—whereby you may pierce to the larger or the smaller, beyond the reach
of your physical microscopes and telescopes, made of metal and not of
intelligence showing itself in matter.
Is there anything of value in Theosophical ideas, shall I
say to the science of medicine? Some say it is not yet a science, but works
empirically only. There is some truth in that; but are there not here again
lines of investigation which the physician might well study? For instance, the
power of thought over the human body, all that mass of facts on which partly is
built up such a science as Mental Healing, or what is called Faith Cure, and so
on. Do you think that these things have been going on for hundreds of years, and
that there is no truth lying behind them ? " The effects of imagination," you
say. But what is imagination? It does not matter of what it is the effect, if it
brings cure where before there was disease- If you put into a man's body a drug
that you do not understand, and find that it cures a
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disease and relieves a pain, will you throw the drug aside
because you do not understand it ? And why do you throw the power of imagination
aside because you cannot weigh it in your balance, nor find that it depresses
one scale more than the other? Imagination is one of the subtlest powers of
thought: imagination is one of the strongest powers that the doctor might
utilise when his drugs fail him and his old methods no longer serve his purpose.
Suggestion, the power of thought. Why, there are records of cases where
suggestion has killed! That which has killed can also cure, and man's body being
only a product of thought, built up through the ages, answers more rapidly to
its creator than it does to clumsier products from the mineral and vegetable
kingdoms. Here again I only ask experiment. You know that you can produce wounds
upon the body of the hypnotised patient, in a state of trance. By suggestion
lesions are made, burns are caused, inflammation and pain appear by the mere
suggestion of a wound. A blister is placed on a patient and forbidden to act;
the skin is untouched when the blister is removed: a bit of wet paper is given
by thought the qualities of the blister, and it will raise the skin, with all
the accompaniments of the chemical blister. Now these things are known. You can
see the pictures of wounds thus produced, if you will, in some of the Paris
hospitals, for along this line the Frenchman is investigating further than the
Englishman has done. And along that line also lies much of useful experiment to
be brought to the relief of the diseases of humanity.
But as I have touched upon medicine, let me say—
VALUE OF THEOSOPHY IN THE WORLD OF THOUGHT 173
for I ought here to say it—that there are some methods of
modern medicine which Theosophy emphatically condemns. It declares that no
knowledge which is gained from a tortured, a vivisected creature, is legitimate,
even if it were as useful as it has been proved to be useless. It declares that
all inoculations of disease into the healthy body are illegitimate, and it
condemns all such. It declares that all those foul injections of modern medicine
which use animal fluids to restore the exhausted vitality of man are ruinous to
the body into which they are put. Here again France, by the very excess of its
methods, is beginning to recoil before the results which have come about. Only
two years ago I was told by a leading physician of Paris that many of the
doctors had met together to look at the results which had grown out of the
methods that for years they had been following without hesitation and without
scruple, and that they feared that they had caused more diseases than they
cured. Why are these things condemned as illegitimate ? Because the building up
of the human body is the building by a living Spirit of a temple for himself,
and it is moulded by that Spirit for his own purposes. The higher powers of
intelligence have made the human body what it is, different from the animal
bodies out of which, physically, in ages long gone by, it has grown. Your
delicacy of touch, the exquisite beauty and delicacy of your nervous system,
these things are the outcome of the higher powers of the Spirit expressing
themselves in the human body, where they cannot express themselves in the animat
form. And if you ignore this, if you forget it, if you forget that this
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splendid human temple built up by the Spirit of man through
ages of toil and of suffering, to express his own higher qualities—compassion,
tenderness, love, pity for the weak and the helpless, protection of the helpless
against the strong—if you forget the whole of that, and act as a brute even
would not act, in cruelty and wickedness to men and animals alike, you will
degrade the body you are trying to preserve, you will paralyse the body you are
trying to save from disease, and you will go back into the savagery which is the
nemesis of cruelty, and ruin these nobler bodies, the inheritance of the
civilised races.
I pass from that to my last world, the world of political
thought. Now Theosophy takes no part in party politics. It lays down the great
principle of human Brotherhood, and bids its followers go out into the world and
work on it—using their intelligence, their power of thought, to judge the value
of every method which is proposed. And our general criticism on the politics of
the moment would be that they are remedies, not preventions, and leave untouched
the root out of which all the miseries grow. Looking sometimes at your party
politics, it seems to me as though you were as children plucking flowers and
sticking them into the sand and saying: " See what a beautiful garden I have
made." And when you wake the next morning the flowers are dead, for there were
no roots, but only rootless flowers. I know you must make remedies, but you
should not stop at that. When you send out your Red Cross doctors and nurses to
pick up the mutilated bodies that your science of war has maimed, they are doing
noble work, and deserve our
VALUE OF THEOSOPHY IN THE WORLD OF THOUGHT 175
love and gratitude, for the wounded must be nursed; but the
man who works for peace does more for the good of humanity than the Red Cross
doctors and nurses. And so also in the political world. You cannot safely
live "hand-to-mouth" in politics any more than in any other department of human
life. But how many are there in the political parties who care for causes and
not only for effects ? That is the criticism we should make. We see
everywhere Democracy spreading; but Democracy is on its trial, and unless
it can evolve some method by which the wise shall rule, and not merely the
weight of ignorant numbers, it will dig its own grave. So long as you leave
your people ignorant they are not fit to rule. The schools should come before
the vote, and knowledge before power. You are proud of your liberty; you
boast of a practically universal suffrage—leaving out, of course, one half of
humanity!—but taking your male suffrage as you have it, how many of the voters
who go to the poll know the principles of political history, know anything of
economics, know anything of all the knowledge which is wanted for the guiding of
the ship of the State through troubled waters ? You do not choose your
captains out of people who know nothing of navigation; but you choose the
makers of your rulers out of those who have not studied and do not know.
That is not wise. I do not deny it is a necessary stage i*i the evolution
of man. I know that the Spirit acts wisely, and guides the nations along
roads in which lessons are to be learned; and I hope that out of the blunders,
and the errors, and the crudities of present politics there "will evolve a
saner method, in which the wise of the nation will have power
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and guide its councils, and wisdom, not numbers, shall
speak the decisive word.
Now there is one criticism of politics that we often hear
in these days. It is said that behind politics lie economics. That is true. You
may go on playing at politics for ever and ever ; but if your economic
foundation is rotten, no political remedies can build a happy and prosperous
nation. But while I agree that behind politics lie economics, there is something
that lies also behind economics, and of that I hear little said. Behind
economics lies character, and without character you cannot build a free and a
happy nation. A nation enormous in power, what do you know of the way in which
your power is wielded in many a far-off land ? How much do you know about your
vast Indian Empire ? How many of your voters going to the poll can give an
intelligent answer to any question affecting that 300,000,000 of human beings
whom you hold in your hand, and deal with as you will ? There are
responsibilities of Empire as well as pride in it, and pride of Empire is apt to
founder when the responsibilities of Empire are ignored. And so the Theosophist
is content to go to the root of the matter, and try to build up for you the
citizens out of whom your future State is to be made. Education, real education,
secular education, is now your cry. They tried secular education <n Prance; they
destroyed religious teaching; they tried to give morality without religion. But
the moral lessons had no effect: they were too cold and dull, and dead. Is it
not a scandal that in a country like this, where the vast majority are
religious, you are quarrelling so much about the trifles
VALUE OF THEOSOPHY IN THE WORLD OF THOUGHT 177
that separate you, that the only way to peace seems to be
to take religion out of the schools altogether, and train the children only in
morality, allowing an insignificant minority to have its way ? Why! we have done
better than that in India, we Theosophists. Hindu Theosophists have founded
there a College in which, despite all their sects and all their religious
quarrels, they have found a common minimum of Hinduism on which their children
can be trained in religion and morality alike. I grant it was a Theosophical
inspiration that began the movement; but the whole mass of Hindus have fallen in
with it, and are accepting the books as the basis of education. Government has
recognised them, and has begun to introduce them for the use of Hindus in its
own schools. That is the way in which we Theosophists work at politics. We go to
the root to build character, and we know that noble characters will make a noble
and also a prosperous nation. But you can no more make a nation of free men out
of children untrained in duty and in righteousness, than you can build a house
that will stand if you use ill-baked bricks and rotten timber. Our keynote in
politics is Brotherhood. That worked out into life will give you the nation that
you want.
And what does Brotherhood mean ? It means that everyone of
us, you and I, nevery man and woman throughout the land, looks on all others as
they look on their own brothers, and acts on the same principle which in the
family rules. You keep religion out of politics ? You cannot, without peril "to
your State; for unless you teach your people that they are a Brother-
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hood, whether or not they choose to recognise it, you are
building on the sand and not on the rock. And what does Brotherhood mean ? It
means that the man who gains learning, uses it to teach the ignorant, until none
are ignorant. It means that the man who is pure takes his purity to the foul,
until all have become clean. It means that the man who is wealthy uses his
wealth for the benefit of the poor, until all have become prosperous. It means
that everything you gain, you share; everything you achieve, you give its fruit
to all. That is the law of Brotherhood, and it is the law of national as well as
of individual life. You cannot rise alone. You are bound too strongly each to
each. If you use your strength to raise yourself by trampling on your fellows,
inevitably you will fail by the weakness that you have wronged.
Do you know who are the greatest enemies of a State? The
weak, injured by the strong. For, above all States, rules an Eternal Justice;
and the tears of miserable women, and the curses of angry, starving men, sap the
foundations of a State that denies Brotherhood, and reach the ears of that
Eternal Justice by which alone States live, and Nations continue. It is written
in an ancient scripture that a Master of Duty said to a King: " Beware the tears
of the weak, for they sap the thrones of Kings." Strength may threaten: weakness
undermines. Strength may stand up to fight: weakness cuts away the ground on
which the fighters are standing. And the message of Theosophy to the modern
political world is: Think less about your outer laws, and more about the lives
of the people who have to live under those
VALUE OF THEOSOPHY IN THE WORLD OF THOUGHT 179
laws. Remember that government can only live when the
people are happy; that States can only flourish where the masses of the
population are contented; that all that makes life enjoyable is the right of the
lowest and the poorest; that they can do without external happiness far less
than you, who have so many means of inner satisfaction, of enjoyment, by the
culture that you possess and that they lack. If there is not money enough for
everything, spend your money in making happier, healthier, purer, more educated,
the lives of the poor; then a happy nation will be an imperial nation; for
Brotherhood is the strongest force on earth.
Part IV
The Field of Work of the Theosophical Society
The Presidential Address delivered to the Convention of the
British Section of the Theosophical Society, held in Essex Hall, London, July
1907.
The Field of Work of the Theosophical Society.
It is my duty now to bring to a close this Convention, and
to bid you all farewell, to scatter to your various places and to do, let us
hope, with fresh courage and deeper knowledge, the varied works which you are
called upon to perform. And let me, before I take up the subject upon which I am
to speak—" The Field of Work of the Theosophical Society"—let me, ere beginning
that subject, say one word of gratitude to her without whom the Theosophical
Society could not till any field, nor sow any seed—to H.P.B., our Teacher and
our Helper, let us offer our heart's gratitude; for without her we could not
have met together, without her we could not have learned the Theosophical
teaching. It may be that many of us have learned much since she first taught us,
but she was, the first Teacher, and the Bringer of the Light. It may be that
some, since they met her, have known their Master face to face; but it was she
who led them to His presence, she to whom the possibility in this life was due.
It may well be that had she not come some other might have come to do the
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184
work, but that matters not to us; that she did it is her
claim to our homage, and we, who live in the light she brought, may well pay
tribute of gratitude to her.
What is the Field of our Society's work? It is - sketched
in our Three Objects; and those of you who have looked upon the Objects with
care, in the various recensions through which they have passed, may have noticed
that each one of them covers one of the aspects of human consciousness. In the
first, that which declares the truth of the Universal Brotherhood, we have the
field of work of the Activity aspect, the active principle of the consciousness,
of the Spirit, which seeks expression in service to the race. In the second, the
study of the religions and the philosophies of the world, we have the field of
work for the Cognition aspect of consciousness, that which gathers together the
fruit of knowledge; it is the Knower gathering the food by which he unfolds his
powers. And in the third we have the field of work of the Will, the Power aspect
of the consciousness, the deepest root of our being, that by which the worlds
exist, as they are supported by the Wisdom, as they are created by the Activity.
So that when we thus look at the objects of the Society and realise the relation
that they bear to our conscious selves, we see that the field of tfc-e work of
the Theosophical Society is wide as the world, and knows no limit where Will and
Knowledge and Activity can make their way. And it is true, now and always, that
everything which helps and benefits man is Theosophical work, and that nothing
can be excluded from the sphere of our work
FIELD OF WORK OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 185
which includes every aspect of consciousness. So let us
take this natural, this scientific division of our work, and see what we may do
in each field which offers itself to the appropriate power in our nature.
The first will naturally cover all active working for
humanity, all service which one can offer to another; and
it will be well, in the days that lie before us, if we
realise
that there is no scheme for human helping, no possible
effort for human uplifting, which is outside the field of
work of the First Object of our Society. Every Lodge of
the Society should make it one of its activities to serve
humanity in the place where the Lodge is founded;
and the value of the Lodge should be in the knowledge
that is there gathered with the object of spreading it.
For Theosophy should be your touch-stone as to the
value of every scheme, as to the tendency of every
proposition. In all the countless schemes around us
in these active times, some work only for the moment;
others, based on sound principle, are preparing the world
for a better and happier future. By your Theosophical
knowledge you can judge the value of every such
scheme, and throw yourselves into those alone which
work on lines beneficial to the future, which are laying
the foundations of a civilisation greater than our own.
For among the many schemes and many methods
there are ways in which «ach man inspired by the
Spirit of Brotherhood may find work that satisfies his
reason and is justified by his conscience. And there is
no one particular method, no one special road, along
which the Society, as Society, car? go. It lays down the
principle of Brotherhood as an active working spirit in
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the life of every member, and then it leaves the member
free to use his own judgment and his own conscience as to which among the many
methods recommends itself most to him as an individual. So that in speaking of
that field of work, it is not for me to say: " This plan, that method, the other
means, that is what you ought to follow"; but only that you are not carrying out
the First Object of the Society, unless you are engaging your activity in some
task which in your intelligence and conscience is working for the benefit of
your fellow-men. That is a point I want to put to your Lodges; for when I see
questions discussed as to giving new life to Lodges, vivifying Lodges, and so
on, I know well that the only cause for the need of such discussion is because
men allow the life to stagnate within the Lodge, instead of sending it forth a
living stream to fertilise the place in which the Lodge is built. There would be
no lack of life were it not that you keep it bottled up for your own advantage,
for your own needs. The source of life is inexhaustible, and it only ceases to
flow where there is stagnation, because it is not allowed to run out to the
people who have need of it, but is kept within the narrow limits of a Lodge. If
you worked as well as talked, if you labored as well as discussed, if you served
as well as praised service, there would be no time and no need to discuss how
the Lodges «of the Theosophical Society shall be vivified.
Your Lodge should be your place of inspiration, the place
where you learn how you are to serve, the place where you find the bread of
life. But the bread of life is meant to feed the hungry, and not to surfeit
those
FIELD OF WORK OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 187
already filled, to feed the hungry crowds around you
starving for knowledge, that life may be made intelligible
and thus tolerable to them; and it is yours to feed the
flock of the Great Shepherd, and to help those who,
without this Wisdom, are helpless. And all need it; not
the poor alone, nor the rich alone, but every child of
man. For the one thing that presses upon all alike,
the bitterness of life, is the sense of wrong, the want of
intelligibility in life, and therefore a feeling of the
lack of
justice upon earth; that is the sting which pierces every
heart; whether the heart belong to the rich or the poor,
it matters not. When you understand life, life becomes
bearable; and never till you understand it will it cease
to be a burden grievous to be borne; but when you
understand it, everything changes. When you realise its
meaning, its value, you can put up with the difficulties.
And our work with regard to those around us is to bring
that knowledge, and by that knowledge to lift them to a
place of peace. That is the work which demands to be
done, and which your Lodges have the duty of doing.
For there ought not to be one scheme for human helping,
in any place where a Lodge of the Theosophical Society
is established, where in that Lodge workers may not be
found ready and eager to give labor to the helping of
their brothers amongst whom they live. What is the
use of prattling about Univ*rsal Brotherhood, if you do
not live it ? Sometimes, in discussions on Brotherhood,
it is spoken of as though it only meant soft words and
well-turned phrases, sentimentality and not reality. It
means work, constant, steadfast,* unwearied work, for
those who require service at our hands; not soft words
l88
to each other, but work for the world, that is the true
meaning of Brotherhood.
Pass from that to our next field of work, sketched out by
our Second Object. Without that you cannot rightly work for Brotherhood, for you
will not understand the knowledge already garnered. You must learn in order to
teach, you must study in order to understand, and this Object is not carried on
in our Lodges as effectively as it ought to be; for it is translated into one
man studying, and pouring out the fruits of his study into the open mouths round
him on every side. That is all very well in the beginning when the young bird
comes out of the egg. It is necessary that the father and mother bird should
pour food into the wide open beak ; but some of you ought to have gone beyond
that in the thirty-two years of life of the Society: you ought to be ready to
help, and not only to be helped. And the life of the Society will not be healthy
while so few are students, and therefore so few are fit to teach. Every Lodge
should have its classes for study under this object. There are other ways in
which you must learn as well as by the teaching of brother Theosophists, and
there is a plan they are just adopting in the Paris Lodge for the work of the
coming winter, which is a very good one; instead of Theosophists studying the
books of scholars, and then giving out what they have learned, the French Lodge
is inviting leading representatives of the various branches of thought, those
specially interesting to us, in order that they may put their knowledge from
their own standpoint, and that the Theosophist may have the advantage of
listening to them at first hand.
FIELD OF WORK OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 189
That seems to me a very admirable plan, and I know not why
in some of the London Lodges you should not try to take a leaf out of our
French neighbor's book, and why one Lodge at least should not try, if only for
one six months, to bring to that Lodge some leader in the world of thought, who
shall tell ft what he. believes, and explain the lines of his work. If you
could persuade specialists along the many lines of study, religious and
philosophical, to give you the fruits of their work, you would learn more
rapidly, you would learn the spirit of a school in a more satisfactory manner,
than when you are only studying books, and then giving out the books you have
read. You value, and rightly value, the knowledge that Mt Mead brings you
along his special lines of study, but why should you not have that same
advantage similarly from others who follow other lines of thought, and would
speak similarly from first-hand knowledge ? There is a life in it that there
never is in second-hand knowledge, a vigor and strength in it that you can never
get when it has only been learned secondhand, and then poured forth. Men who
study deeply are glad to find audiences who are willing to listen to the results
of their study, and who will give them glad hearing when they come out into
the world from the study to tell what by labor and toil they have learned. And
so I suggest that some* of you should see whether you might not make your
Lodges more valuable if, instead of always going round the same wheel of a
few local lecturers, you tried to win to each locality now and again a really
learned and well-trained man, and then, with your own Lodge as a nucleus of
hearers, gather
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round them others also who would be only too glad of the
opportunity that your Lodge would give in the place where it happens to be. You
have Lodges in the suburbs, Lodges in the towns outside the area of London, and
how glad many of these would be, if you .made yourselves the channels for
knowledge of that sort to be poured out amongst them. There is one line of work
you might well take up, and the country Lodges might do the same, winning down
from London now and again some thinker who would come and give the benefit of
his study; and if you were known all over England as the places where such
knowledge might be gained, and the bringers of such within the reach of your
fellow-townsmen, the Society would profit by your labor as well as those who
immediately benefit by the effort. And wherever you deal with the study of a
religion, learn it from the lips of one who believes it rather than by the
exposition of one who does not; for only so will you catch the spirit of the
different religions. If you would learn about Roman Catholicism, win a Roman
Catholic student or priest to come and tell you how his Church appeals to him;
or if you want to learn about the Church of England, win some clergyman who will
come and tell you what that Church means to him; or about Buddhism, win a
Buddhist to come and tell you what his own religion is to him; and so with the
Hindu, and on and on, all round the different religions. For none can really
tell what a religion is to its followers who does not believe in it, and no one
can give you its spirit who does not feel it. And it is in that way that your
Theosophy should lead you into sympathy with every form of
FIELD OF WORK OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 19I
religious thought, learning it as it comes from the mouth
of a believer, and not in the sort of warmed-up fashion in which one who does
not believe it re-cooks it for his fellow Theosophists. There, it seems to me,
is your field of work under the Second Object; and out of this study would grow
literature, illuminating these various, religions and philosophies, and from
your classes should be evolved teachers, to carry to the different communities
the results of their study on different lines, thus bringing the Second Object
to the helping of the First.
I had a letter the other day from a good member of the
Theosophical Society, and the writer said, being a Christian, that Christian
lines of work attracted her, and she thought she ought to leave the Society in
order to help people along those lines. But what sort of Theosophy is that ? You
who are Christians, or believers in any other faith, you should become
Theosophists to help your own religions, and to bring them the life, not by
leaving the Society, but by learning in the Society to help them; that is the
duty of every believer in whatever religion you may happen to believe. For you
should be messengers to the various religions, helping them to understand more
deeply than many of them do to-day; and if you would understand that that is
part of your duty, to help your own faiths, to enlighten those who will not come
to the Theosophical Lodge but yet will listen to the fellow believer offering
them the knowledge that in the Lodge he has gained, then the spread of our
doctrines, rapid as it is, would be far more rapid and along healthy lines. For
we do not exist as a Society simply to study, but to spread the light, and
every
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religion should be the richer and the fuller in proportion
to the number of Theosophists that it enrolls amongst its followers.
Pass to the Third Object. There also we have work to do,
and we cannot work for Brotherhood effectively without understanding the nature
of man. And I feel that one or two who criticised the Society this afternoon on
that point had the right to make the criticism that they did; for, while in the
earlier days that Third Object was so carried out in the Society that it was the
leader in the fields of all such research, it certainly now has fallen into the
background, and is only a gleaner in the fields where others are reaping, and
that is not right. The knowledge that you have in theory as to the constitution
of man and nature, should be a guide to you in researches, and not simply remain
theoretical knowledge. That which was said this afternoon about the Psychical
Research Society is true. It goes into everything unusual with a prejudice
against it, rather than with a feeling that there is something to be learned ;
but on the other hand, one is bound to say that during the last ten or twelve
years that Society has done more to familiarise the public with these facts of
the hidden powers of man than our own has done in practice, though we have done
much more in theory. Now I am not in favor of much experiment preceding a study
of theory; I believe that we need the theory in order to experiment wisely; but
I also believe that having a true theory we should use it to guide our
investigations, and thus to add to the knowledge of^the world. A part of our
work, it seems to me, that lies before us in the coming time,
FIELD OK WORK OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 193
is to help the world to walk wisely along those roads of
research on which it has entered now. You cannot prevent it going forward along
them, knowledge is already too widely spread for that; but what you can do is to
help men to walk wisely, and to avoid many a pitfall into which otherwise they
would be very likely, to fall. And along those lines there is very much to be
done: plans to be worked out, methods of research to be planned and tested; and
I hope before very long to see some groups in our Society that will take up this
special line of work as part of their activities, and, headed by someone who
knows practically something of that with which he is dealing, will then help the
younger students to learn wisely and to experiment carefully. And in these
matters it is well, so far as you can, to bring the more scientific members of
the Society into touch with this work; for one of the reasons that Spiritualism
fell into discredit for a time was because the scientific and the thoughtful
abstained from it, and left it in the hands of the credulous and the unwise. The
leaders of the scientific world who ought to have joined in the work which Sir
William Crookes, Alfred Wallace, and others began, instead of following them and
strengthening their hands, turned their backs on it all, leaving it to be
carried on by those who knew far less than they, and who were not accustomed to
accurate observation and careful recording of phenomena. Now leading scientific
men are beginning to work at it. Along all lines of psychical research work
should be done by us, if we do not mean to cancel the Third Object in our
Society.
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194
Thus, then, a great field of work opens out before us, so
wide a field, so great, that you would have no need to ask for work if you would
only begin to labor along these lines. And take that other line about which Mrs.
Cooper Oakley spoke—the line of Historical •Research into Mysticism. Has it ever
struck you how much of the work of our forerunners remains unknown, because
their work is not scanned by sympathetic eyes ? How many of the pioneers in the
past centuries lie under a heap of calumny, because none has tried to
understand, none has tried to realise, the nature of their work ? Men like
Paracelsus, Cagliostro, and many another whose name I might mention, who are
crying out, as it were, for research, and thought, and labor on mystical and
occult lines. There again I have good hope that some really efficient work will
be going on; for to my mind one of the purposes for which our Presidency should
exist is to act as a centre round which every country may gather together, and
thus communicate with each other, and form bodies scattered all over the world
for mutual aid. The strength of our Society is in that unity of thought, which
can only be brought about as one part of the Society realises that other parts
are linked with it, as it ought to be, by the President of the whole. For the
Presidency would be an idle show, if it is not to he a centre for inspiration
and labor. The great work done by the late President is, as I have said
elsewhere, practically complete; he has given the Theosophical Society an
organisation by which it can work and live*; ours to use the organisation that
he made, ours to employ this splendid instrument which
FIELD OF WORK OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 195
is now in our hands for world-wide labor and for worldwide
helping. That is the work to which I would summon you now, and pray your help.
Let us not stand apart one from the other, and work always along isolated lines;
in addition to the isolated work, we should have the combined work; for many
often can bring about a-result which one cannot do. Take, for instance, the
great libraries of Europe, far, far apart. It is very laborious for a person to
travel all over Europe and labor alone in them all; but if we had students
working in every great library, we should have feeders who would send in to a
common centre the result of their work, which could then be shed over the world.
Along those lines the Society will become respected, when
it is known for honest and useful work in all departments of human activity.
There is no good in glorifying it by words and saying what a splendid thing it
is, unless we justify ourselves to the world by the work which we contribute for
the world's helping.
In this way, then, I would ask you to look at our great
field of work. Laborers are wanted. There is more than work enough for all, and
in this work the principle that must guide us is, as we have so often said,
freedom of thought, freedom of expression. But let it be understood in the
Society, for there is danger of this being forgotten, that there is freedom for
those who assert as well as for those who deny; that all alike are free. Those
who know have a right to speak, and there should be no outcry against them;
those who do not believe have a right to say they do not believe, and there
should be no outcry against them because they believe not
196
But there is a danger lest those who believe not should
think that they have the only right of speech, and that those who experience
have no right to say out that which they know to be true. It is the danger which
dogs the steps of Freethought everywhere. You can see it in •France at the
present time, where the Freethinker, smarting against the oppression of the
Church, tries to silence the Church, as he has been silenced in the past; but it
is a bad reaction, and we cannot have that within the Society—there must be
liberty for all. I do not wish to impose my own beliefs on any man or woman in
the Society, but I claim the right amongst you to speak the truth I know, and to
bear witness to the reality of my Master whom for eighteen years I have served,
without being attacked vehemently by those who deny my experience. I know
whereof I speak. I ask you not to believe; that is your own choice. I ask you
not to accept; that is for you to decide. But you have no right to try to stop
my lips, nor to say that the assertion of my belief is outside the liberty
allowed in the Theosophical Society. I, as President, will defend to the utmost
the right of each to speak his thought—believers and non-believers of every
type; but I will not recognise the right of any to impose upon the Society a
dogma of. unbelief, any more than a dogma of belief. Only by that liberty of all
can we live and grow; only by*he perfect freedom, and the recognition of every
man's right to speak, no matter what he says, can the health of the Society be
secured. For in the years that lie before us there is much new knowledge to be
gained, many new facts to be discovered, many new experiences to go through, and
we must not discourage
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197
the seekers and investigators by making it difficult for
them to speak amongst us. We need every fact that any human being can bring to
us. We have the right to challenge the fact and investigate it, and either to
say: " It is fact"; or: "To me it is not fact" ; but we have no right to say to
any human being: " You shall not search nor speak," for that would be the
death-knell of our liberty, that the denial of the foundation on which we stand.
And so let us go forward to a future, I hope, fairer than
anything we have in our past. Let us welcome all thought, all refusal of
thought, all investigation, all speech, however different it may be from our own
speech and thought, and doing this with full respect of each for each, full
recognition that minds are different, and that each mind has its own sphere in
which it can do useful work for all, let us encourage in our Society every
school of thought, every form of opinion, every expression of thought which is
in a man's mind. And out of all that clash of opinion, out of all that
discussion, Truth should come out stronger, richer, larger than ever. And never
mind if sometimes falsehoods are spoken; never mind if sometimes mistakes are
made. An old scripture says: " Truth conquers, not falsehood "; for God is
Truth, and nothing that is not drawn from His Life can live, nothing that is
drawn from His life can die; and realising that, we can go forward fearlessly
into the unknown future, sure that to brave hearts and true lives every
experience, every failure, every mistake, is only another rung of the ladder by
which we climb from ignorance into knowledge, from the bondage of matter into
the liberty of Spirit.
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