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Hestitation, anxiety, dissatisfaction are to the Taoist what sin is to the Christian. To dispel them and clear the mind and heart the I Ching is devoutly, ceremoniously cast.
-- Sam Reifler, I CHING: A NEW INTERPRETATION FOR MODERN TIMES, page 4.
By B.P. Wadia
[From THUS HAVE I HEARD, pages 289-91.]
Everywhere people are feeling depressed, caught up in the routine of living. Life seems to revolve like a ruthless machine.
Rich and poor alike desire contentment. The prince as well as the peasant looks for some peace of mind; all wish for a steadier beat of the heart emotions. Many ask, "What's the matter with us?"
Someone throws out a feeler. "Man does not live by bread alone."
"How, then?"
"The Kingdom of God is within you. The secure Refuge is your own heart. The Peace born of understanding can unfold in your own mind."
Such an answer puzzles some. The great majority dismisses it with a good-natured shrug. A few listen, pause, gaze quietly ahead, begin to reflect, and then turn to inquire. Who says that the kingdom of peace and prosperity, of repose and rest, of contentment and understanding are within man? It sounds familiar, sounds authoritative, but whence this idea and what does it mean? This inquiry is the beginning of wisdom. Press the search for the first answer and its meaning. Ere long, one comes upon the truth. Not a single Teacher only but the Sages of all times have asserted this answer to be true.
Look inward, thou art Buddha.
-- THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE, page 29
The Kingdom of God is within you.
-- Luke 17:21
The Kingdom of God is Righteousness and Peace.
-- Romans 14:17
Self is the Lord of self; what higher Lord could there be?
-- THE DHAMMAPADA, V, 160
The spirit in the body is called Maheswara, the Great Lord, the spectator, the admonisher, the sustainer, the enjoyer, and also the Paramatma, the highest soul.
-- THE BHAGAVAD-GITA, XIII, 22
This Soul of mine within the heart is smaller than a grain of rice, or a barley corn, or a mustard seed, or a grain of millet, or the kernel of a grain of millet. This Soul of mine within the heart is greater than the earth, vaster than the atmosphere, higher than the sky, encompasses the entire firmament. Containing all works, all desires, all odors, all tastes, the whole universe is this Soul in the heart.
-- CHANDOGYA UPANISHAD, III, 14, 2
And in another Upanishad, the Soul is compared to a tree in which birds nest -- our thoughts and feelings, our words and voices, our impressions and expressions.
Our Soul in the heart is a Being within our being. Our heart is a living entity and an intelligent one; but within its innermost recess is another Person, another Being with its own life and its own intelligence. That Being is divine in its powers. We do not know the true nature of our heart, for priest or teacher has not taught us about it. The bodily heart is a symbol of life, every throb of which tells us that we are alive; the throb stops and others say that we are no more. Modern knowledge tells us of the valves and chambers of flesh, of the pumping of the blood in and out by the heart.
Sages spoke of the Heart as the seven-petal lotus, the Saptaparna, the Cave of the Buddha. They have further said that the Heart has seven brains. The physical heart is the King of the physical body and it is said that in that heart is a spot that is the last to die. But the Heart of the heart is the Kingdom Divine of the Thinker, the Compassionate One, the Inner Being, the Shining Ruler, the Raja whose Power is Peace, whose Strength is Sacrifice. The body can live on "by bread alone," but Man cannot. The body lives in a city, a country, an Empire -- an earthly kingdom that fatigues us and wears us out -- and in the progress of time the heart of the body dies. Righteousness and Peace, Lordliness and Strength, Enlightenment and Glory are of the Kingdom of the Spirit in the body.
The first lesson is to learn and to feel that there are two Kingdoms. One is without. One is within. In Earth's Kingdom, we toil for bread and often fail. The inner Kingdom can provide us with Righteousness and give us light where we now see but darkness. It can bring us intimations of immortality when here we are certain only of death. Here we see only the unreal while we aspire to see the True revealed. We live surrounded by shadows cast by myriad men and feel the darkness enveloping us, fold after fold. What did Jesus mean when He said to His Chelas, "Ye are the light of the world?" What did the Enlightened Buddha mean when He said to His Apostles, "Be ye lamps unto yourselves?" What do these statements mean to us? Are they meant for us?
(In 1937, Dr. G. de Purucker gave a radio talk in The Netherlands. The talk was preceded by an introduction by Jan H. Venema given in Dutch. Both the talk and its introduction were recorded and can be read or listened to at http://theosophy.com. We base the following upon a translation of Venema's Introduction by Katinka Hesselink.)
The theosophical doctrines relating to the existence of inner and outer worlds in our universe throw a special light on the important question of human existence, the existence after death. In relation to these Teachings, there is already a dogma, says Dr. de Purucker. It calls upon the intellect and intuition.
The last scientific deductions of the greatest scientists of our time approach the occult, theosophical teachings remarkably. Dr. de Purucker calls the whole universe around us one, an interrelated organism in which there are many worlds visible and invisible to us. He points out that the seers and wise men of most ancient times had the same doctrines relating to the universe, although expressed in different language.
We can see human life in the great Cosmos as a pilgrimage through these many planes. One lifetime or incarnation in these worlds visible to us resembles merely a day in eternal existence. The theosophical Leader depicts how one can view this pilgrimage.
It is not right to think and it goes against all scientific lore that our physical world would be different or superior to the inner worlds. It is merely a matter of different vibrations. As he says, Theosophy is the biggest friend of true religion when properly understood and explained. It is the original source of all schools of philosophy.
No theosophist preaches a dogma, because the theosophical teachings assert that nobody should accept anything contrary to their conscience, their intuition, or their penetrating intellect.
The eminent founders of the old philosophies and Mystery Schools were the flowers of the human race. We call them Masters or Teachers. Their teachings were fundamentally the same. Therefore, it pays off, Dr. de Purucker says, to study these all-inclusive teachings of life and death. We can in truth call it a philosophy of life. What philosophy can we call greater than the one that informs on the vital aspects of life: life and death?
Dr. de Purucker thanks all those who spread these noble teachings and hopes that they will penetrate in these hard times, because they are so necessary.
[This is a true sketch of a Theosophist written by the President of the Australian Section of the Theosophical Society (Pasadena), from THE THEOSOPHICAL FORUM, March 1945, pages 130-32.]
Inspired by a sense of duty dimly perceived and never quite understood, the subject of this portrait enlisted soon after the outbreak of the First World War. He heard the call that involved him in great self-sacrifice and ended a brilliant career. He answered it without cavil or delay, without any hesitation or pause for a single backward glance into his past.
He was twenty-two years old and as fair of a specimen of young manhood as could be found in a long day's march. Born of a young mother some months after his father's death, circumstances saved him from any possibility of life in his wealthy grandfather's home spoiling him. He grew up in the company of an uncle only three years older than he was. To this uncle, he was tied by bonds of affection such as presuppose associations in other lives.
He was the Sir Galahad of a group of young Theosophists, most sharing in the supreme sacrifice he also made. A brilliant athlete, starring at tennis and lacrosse with equal success, he was also a dreamer, artist, and musician. The violin came to him almost by instinct. Playing by ear, he possessed natural intonation and a sense of perfect pitch. He was never off note. His music gave great joy to many people.
At the summer seaside camp that he attended for four seasons, his slim body aroused admiration (of which he was unconscious) as he paused poised on the crest of the surf before vanishing, laughing, in the smother of boiling foam.
An inner fastidiousness surrounded him like an aura. Nothing that was coarse and little that was flippant passed his lips. He was a happy, healthy specimen of clean young manhood, eager for life and with a zest for adventure. The offer of love came to him. For the greater cause of war, he had to bypass it.
Once, his closest friend jocularly quoted to him the lines of Milton:
So dear to Heaven is peerless chastity That when a soul is found supremely so A thousand liveried angels lackey her
The friend then asked when the sound of wings might be expected. A startled look crossed his face. His eyes went blank with that indrawn vision of one who realizes the opening of unexpected inner worlds suddenly.
The ebb and flow of great tides of war swept him apart from his friend for the time. Then he met his friend again in Cairo. They explored that strangest of cities together. The Pyramids, indigo blue against the burning disc of gold and then turning to rose pink in the sunset, welcomed him as an old friend. In the moonlight, the Sphinx seemed to reveal to him her most mystical smile.
Then France came with the hideousness of the mud of the Somme battlefields. His friend, in London and later in Picardy, received many letters until circumstances that made further correspondence impossible. Neither of them had any part in the shadow that darkened their subtle relationship for a time. Finally, a bullet found its billet. His fellows buried his fair young body in a wartime cemetery that was later the scene of some of the fiercest fighting ere the war ended. They returned his physical body to Mother Earth.
Those who saw him wrote that death had erased the weariness and fatigue that had drawn and lined his face in his last bitter months of fighting. He looked in death as he had in earlier, happier days. His dust slowly mingled with the dust of earlier generations. His blood served to give added richness to the poppies that were to grace the coming summer. A few weeks later, his beloved uncle made the same sacrifice, not knowing that his nephew had already traveled the same road.
His friend received the news a few days after the event, on Christmas Eve. There was a great party planned in the old city of Rouen. His friend took no part, although the suggestion had come from him originally. Instead, he spent the vigil of the Birth of the Savior in the Cathedral. The sun faded from the great rose window of exquisite stained glass. The candles shone like stars in the hushed sanctuary. (Being wartime, there was no celebration of Midnight Mass.)
In the vast stillness, all sense of personal loss faded. Only the magnitude of the sacrifice remained. In some mysterious way, it revealed that the young Theosophist had entered the Path of Sacrifice. He died for an ideal that he had only vaguely understood, because he had never paused to work out the details. That death had joined him to the lower ranks of those Great Ones who are "slain from the foundations of the world." They resurrect to form the Guardian Wall that protects Humanity from much misery, cruelty, and sin. We see him and others like him as future World Saviors, learning the lesson that "he who loseth his life shall find it."
In war, we pay many accounts in full, impersonally and without the creation of fresh karma. Otherwise, war would be a horror of useless and unavailing cruelty and hideousness. Perhaps without any conscious knowledge at this stage, those who ready on what ultimately becomes the Via Crucis take the first steps.
Abraham Lincoln once said, "To live in the hearts of those we leave behind us is not to die." His own generation will never forget this companion of many adventures. It is certain that all of the band will gather anew in some better generation. Death for him has been the gateway into a larger life. Of those who journeyed down the pathway of the Sun with him, we might say:
For Life, their names are faint forgotten things; But now, within the larger book of Death, Their names are written with the names of kings.
-- Eugene Lee-Hamilton, MIMMA BELLA
[From THE THEOSOPHICAL FORUM, September 1945, pages 400-4, reprinted there from THEOSOPHICAL NEWS AND NOTES, England, January/February 1945.]
"Dark Forces," "Blind Forces" -- these two phrases are often met with in books, journals, and newspapers. They are used to describe conditions that are not easily comprehended. Both are invested with fear. Such phrases come most readily into use when there is an eruption from the unknown into the familiar and supposedly known.
It is alarming to be compelled suddenly to face and have to deal with forces, the existence of which most of us refuse to acknowledge, though we are instinctively aware that they are there lurking in the shadows, ready to rush out and threaten, if not overthrow, our material and psychic stability.
Some suggest that blind forces are the welling up of part, at least, of a mass of "memories" of our long physical past, which has not been sufficiently sublimated or are inadequately locked up until the process of inattention starves such memories into extinction. Like some startling Jack-in-the-box, out they spring, but, unlike Jack, they are not static once sprung. They spread and spread through thought and feeling, touching everything with an odd slime of "evil." What are these ruthless "dark forces," these devastating "blind forces?"
One explanation is that such forces are the outcome of "original sin" -- usually thought of as Adam's yielding to the temptation "to know" and that sin has beset mankind ever since. Another suggestion is that this world, since the episode of Adam is "under the dominion of the prince of evil" and there is not sufficient spiritual power available to rout him for the last time. He has periodic outbursts when he tempts the unregenerate man to cruel fury. He is always there in myriad disguises, whispering enticements to a man to launch upon the risky tides of wrongdoing, only to find him in the end abandoned to wreckage.
Others suggest there are abysses of low and sordid life yawning at our feet, fascinations that lure the beast in us to indulgences, and if we yield, we are sunk in the slime, to be rescued with great difficulty. Others, again, think of dark forces as being but the ignorance that is still our sad portion, our lack of ability to illumine the surrounding darkness with the light of our real Selves, abiding in the inner recess of our being.
It would seem that we should distinguish between the two phrases. They do not mean the same thing. "Blind forces" appear to be the stream of matter pouring without resistance through time and space, whirling, battling for experience, utterly regardless of the quality of the experience. This stream of "matter" is unaware that anything is of any consequence that does not slake its own thirst for "sensation" -- good or bad.
Anger, pain, hatred, love, misery, sorrow, joy, happiness, fear, repulsions and attractions, passions and ecstasies, actions, feeling, thought, pride and humility, courage and despair, and all other categories of experience, of contact, are conditions into which "matter" rushes and "enjoys" itself. It does not possess the quality of discrimination, therefore exercises no choice. If this notion is correct, then we can grasp a little the meaning of material evolution and begin to emphasize only those conditions that lend themselves to chosen and cultivated harmony, or "good."
It has also been suggested that there is a directive something in nature that drives these forces along the stream of time -- an indigested stream of matter, as it were, until self-conscious creatures, like man, deliberately set the modes into and around which matter will congregate.
Primeval man, not yet master of his destiny, needs protection from these surging forces -- he senses his ineffectiveness against the terrifying massive powers of nature. He sets up protections against them, hence his many fetishes and taboos, his incantations, his talismans, and his propitiations of all sorts.
Average man, even in "civilized" countries, is uneasily aware of forces about him against which he tries to protect himself by blindly ignoring them, being skeptical about them, or propitiating them in small ways. Spiritual man is courageously aware of such forces and does what he can to sublimate and thus compel their obedience, their submission to his trained will and fearless mastering.
Leaving aside the magical practices of primitive man for self-protection from the pressures of fearsome dark and blind forces, we may consider profitably how the average civilized person faces and deals with them. By "civilized" one means persons adhering to any one of the real religions of the world or who are members of a nation or community which has a high social ideal, and moves to expression of that ideal in practical welfare measures.
Tibet, for instance, considers its religious life to be highly advanced, especially among the Buddhists. Most Tibetan Buddhists observe and to some extent practice the high benign directions of the Lord Buddha. The Buddha paced his swift way to the control of natural forces and brought them into obedience to His Will. The Christ did the same, and His demonstrations of His powers are called "miracles" -- which is a misleading word.
Both these World Teachers did more. They could change men. Which means They could so attune the few and the many near enough to Their own exalted states of consciousness that for the time being and often permanently the few or the multitudes were changed in their powers of response to all about them, inwardly and outwardly. In a measure, they became "pure." Therefore, the quality of matter associated with them became more pure.
This is the purpose of all right ritual and ceremonial. The quality of matter is improved, little or much, according to the potency of the performance. Yet in both Buddhist Tibet and in many Christian lands there are deep-seated fears of "blind forces" threatening the security of human life and needing propitiations to keep them at bay. "Nature" is not regarded as being always kind or mild, but as a subtle menace operating in strange ways. It is not thought well to disturb Nature by thoughtless and disregarding attitudes. She knows her own way to retaliation.
As distinguished from the "blind forces" that can be invested in objects or directed against creatures, since such forces are obedient to strong wills, we should be clear that "dark forces" are evilly intentioned humans. The mind of such humans is concerned with dominating or destroying the good in other human beings.
They direct their dire and evil will towards either exploiting the good in others to their own bad ends, or destroying the good in them by forcing upon them degrading ideas. They range in capacity from the simple desire to "boss" at all costs to the terrible thirst for blind obedience to their dark wills. They corrupt youth, and fasten helpless dread upon the aged. They paralyze the will in others and bind them to nefarious ends clothed in the semblance of fairness. They deride spiritual values as being absurd, and give reign to naked selfishness. They forego their humaneness to be without compunction to act. They equally corrupt "matter" by all these and other means. They imbue it with gross feelings to match their own, they stain it with injurious thoughts to sustain their ugly designs, and they act in accordance with the laws of the crudest ranges of matter.
The Scriptures of the world reveal that those who gave them were well aware of all these things and warned humanity to arm itself with "righteousness" if it was to be competent to deal with the situation. A "right thinking" person is a center of "light" -- feeble or brilliant. Large enough numbers of right thinkers create a luminous quality in the mental atmosphere of a country, which in its measure automatically dispels some at least of the dark, murky quality of the sordid minds that exist in every country. If there is a preponderance of such in any nation, then that nation is a "dark force," a menace to the world. It attracts to itself the unevolved types of men and matter and eventually exercises all this combination to conquer and tyrannize over others.
Every reader will recall how any worthwhile arcane school, ancient and modern, stresses the value of meditation -- a word that bothers all but students that are intent upon cultivating the "inner life." That is, they are stressing the harmonies of consciousness instead of yielding to the clamor of matter. They are "redeemers" of matter -- following the idea expressed in a Hindu philosophy, where it is suggested that by dwelling upon those things which are subtler and more spiritual, matter, in contact with such an effort, responds and thereby is improved. Individuals or nations thus striving towards the "Light" are a blessing.
A study of the "dark" and "blind" forces along these lines will soon reveal the true value of having in our midst those who are called Saints, Yogis (of the best kind), elsewhere Arhats, sometimes called Devotees or again Mystics, and some Dervishes too. They are the "opposites" of the dark forces. They "illumine" their contacts.
Through selfishness, fear, hatred, anger, tyranny, persecution, torture, poverty, illiteracy, the dark forces may the more readily play upon mankind and try to corrupt it. Through unselfishness, love, security, helpfulness, non-killing, non-covetousness, education and culture, and idealism, the forces of light advance. Dark forces demand slavish obedience. The forces of light render service. "Sacrifice yourself to me" has always been the demand of all-devouring Molochs. Through self-sacrifice, the lovers and saviors of the world draw mankind to the feet of God. Domination is the watchword of Darkness. Brotherhood is the watchword of Light.
[From THE THEOSOPHICAL FORUM, April 1947, pages 248-56.]
THE PILGRIM
Voice Divine, teach me how to reach the POINT whence radiates the Kosmic effulgence, the one White Ray of variegated colors.
THE VOICE
First and foremost, if thou art ready to revisit thy native shores, hear what the "Voice of the Silence" constantly whispers in the ears of man: "Empty thyself, and I will fill thee."
Earthbound and spell-bound, thou Temple of the Invisible Deity, thy mortal walls are under the battering-ram of Time. The Shrine, the heirloom of Mother Earth who reared it, is truly hers, but the God within -- who art thyself -- is above and beyond decay. Therefore if thou wishest to be one with the Universal, cast off thy limitations that thy coming Progress may be commensurate with thy present living. With thoughts of the world thou art finite, above them thou art infinite.
The Supreme Point cannot be conceived by what mortals call Thought, the product of the brain loom. But to you is given the Key which unlocks the "Gates of Gold," it is not found in mere cerebration. To make myself clear to thee, I shall call that which is beyond thought -- the key which ushers man into the regions of the One Pure Life -- META-THOUGHT, or Intuition. Free from man-made blending, it gives an insight into that supernatural knowledge which is the Quintessence of Life.
To gain this META-THOUGHT thy mind should be wholly free from those ties which bind it to the Earth. When the Ocean, attracted by the hot Sun, becomes transformed into humid atmosphere, it leaves its saltiness behind and sails to the skies in buoyant clouds. Shorn of thy earthly impediments, Oh Wanderer! Thy flight will be both easy and speedy. When thy mind ceases to get its nourishment from the outer world, SAMADHI is at hand, and this state is accomplished when thy senses whose slave so long thou wast, are in their turn brought under subjection.
The next point upon which thou cannot be warned too much is the paramount importance to Humanity of that Law of Nature which no aspirant can safely overrule, and which requires him to be at one with her methods in all his longings after the Divine. This means that thou, in wishing thy Bliss, must not only do thy utmost for the removal of that mass of evil under which thy brethren groan, but must ever study without the least thought of self, to seek their salvation in thine own. A real Savior thou, if but a single vice fall to thy moral sword.
This Space which thou seest as vacant has within it that Ineffable Principle of the ONE which is to Space what that is to thy physical eye. This inscrutable Principle is Space permeable through Space. It is both Within-without and Without-within. From time immemorial man's thoughts have been brooding in Space. Humanities after humanities have come and gone, and they have left therein undying shadows of their thoughts.
In this Earth man is a Farmer sowing seeds of his deeds after the plough of his Thoughts. Pilgrim in mortal coils! Know that Thought is the beginning and end of this world. Tenuous as Tenuity itself, this wielder of the fate of worlds and their contents gives birth to all Upadhis that ever spring up in the passing phantasmagoria. Therefore, to free thy back from its heavy load, Oh thou self in search of Self, try to attune thy thoughts with Nature's Harmony. To THINK IS TO BE.
Thou art now in sad trouble because of the mad crowd of past thoughts that deceived thee like so many mirages on the horizon of Maya. Misdirected thoughts and a thirst after things as perishable as the hands that made them are at the bottom of all thy irksome pilgrimages.
Thought is the father of deeds; hence, every day, every hour, every minute, need I say every second, sit thou in judgment over thyself, and concentrate thy mind upon the one POINT from which thou hast wandered. By evil thoughts came the troubles of Life. With the Single Thought of the Highest their end is near at hand. If the mind is to be retrieved from its wild and aimless rush after short-lived emotions, it should be made to center upon its Pivot by a process akin to that by which a schoolboy flying his kite winds up its thread upon the reel.
The owner of a mind absorbed in useless passing concerns of the world, finds himself in the same state as the wealthy man who, having staked his all in great speculations, is unable, notwithstanding all his riches, to meet an unexpected heavy call. Like the burning-glass, all the movements of the mind should be focused upon the Primordial Law, so that its love of vanities may be consumed by its spiritual rays.
The Universe from one end to the other is a chained whole, and the Waves of Life which pulsate through its length and breadth from the Sun, the central source of mortal life, the faint reflection of the spiritual one which energizes it, are fraught with psychic power, the vehicle of human thoughts which do good or evil as the varied circumstances of daily existence may dictate, producing births which end in death as soon as their mission of Life is accomplished.
Now imagine such waves circling round each Upadhi, and think that Life as such is from the Eternal Fount whence proceeds everything that to mankind is Absolute Truth and Absolute Knowledge, which latter means that CALM SERENE in which the knower, knowledge, and the thing known are unified. This is TRIPITI, the supreme Bliss gained by the seeker after many processes of purification.
If the slightest effort is made by one Upadhi either in thought, word or deed to upset its neighbor -- for the all are in ONE, and the ONE is in all -- the whole organization of the Man is thrown into confusion. Thus, if the Upadhi A runs counter to the psychic and life-giving currents undulating round H, the necessary result is that these two will not only throw themselves into confusion, but even the union prevailing between the intermediate ones will be equally disturbed.
Nature and Nature's laws sweep along with these Upadhis in Space, and when one of them aids her original Design, which is constant upward Progress -- on psychic and spiritual planes -- it is no longer subject to limitations, and feels the Essence within, which had first quickened it into Life. On this basis, those great readers of Nature, Souls sublime, who in past lives have gained all human experiences and make it their felicity to work for men, as undying oracles of God, proclaim the everlasting truth that the mischief done to one is mischief done to all, and that the good of one is the good of all. A stone thrown into still water with its ever increasing circles will show thee the force of what I mean.
The Wise Ones of Earth send forth their good wishes to Humanity by their all-powerful magnetic will. Beware of evil thoughts, for their record is everlasting in Heaven. No man while pursuing his own way of life should by his thoughts do wrong to another. A fervent thought sent round for the well-being of Humanity is worth more than kingdoms. The Great Souls rule the world by their holy thoughts and aspirations, while the edicts of kings are in force but for a day. In all ages and in all climes the keynote of the Sage has been, "Do good and be good."
Remember that the Universe exists in two planes, the physical and the spiritual, both being strictly complementary; the one to the other, as fire produces heat, and heat, fire. What tongue can tell the smallest Secret of Physical Nature? There is Soul in a blade of grass, and even in a dumb stone. Listen to what Pushpadanta the Hindu poet, said of God, in his Maimana:
For one Brahma Kalpa, Saraswati (Minerva) sang thy glories, Oh Shambhu! (God of Heavens) on a paper of the size of the Earth's dimensions, with the pen of Kalpatan dipped in the ink-horn of the Ocean, and yet but a few of thy virtues were done justice to.
The immovable rock, the ever-flowing river, the busy ant are the dwelling adyta of the Holy One. Everything that exists has its own spiritual hiding-place to which it retires day and night. If this be the physical view of the Universe, its spiritual is past human speech. Here the Universe is an equilateral triangle, one of its sides being Universal Justice, another Universal Love, joined together with the basic line of Universal Harmony.
The equipoise of the scales of Nature's justice makes manifest the millionth part of a grain of unrighteousness. Far from having favorites, her loyal sons are chastened with the same impartiality as those who disobey her. Justice is the axis upon which unceasingly turns the spiritual Universe governed by the sun benign of Universal Love.
In Justice, Love, and Harmony there is a Life that knows no Death; in injustice, hatred and discord there is that which induces Death in Life. There is no sin greater than that of ill-will toward others, and no virtue higher than good-will toward all. These are the watchwords of Salvation by self, a Salvation which says as long as there is a single soul writhing in pain, the wise man's mind shall strive to relieve it.
True Salvation is collective, it is never for one. It covers humanity with its blissful folds. The Salvation which is for one is but an inn, a momentary resting-place before the journey is resumed. Pray therefore, nay, ardently desire that thou mayest rise with all, and that Humanity's rise may be thine own.
Aspire! Aspire! Aspire! Thy message is Peace, and as such I give it thee. So help thee thy Higher Self. Thine be the Deathless Joy. AUM.
Blessed be Humanity, doubly blessed those who bless it by noble deeds. SHANTI.
As the Voice ceased, the heavy load fell from the Pilgrim's back to the ground. A sudden flash and the Eternal Pilgrim knew that the Voice he had heard had come to him from the HOLY OF THE HOLIES of his own Heart -- the lotus throne of Narayana, wherein Being, Thought, and Bliss are indissolubly one.
[From THE CANDLE OF VISION, pages 89-101]
I have failed in my purpose if I have not made it clear that in the actual architecture of dream and vision there is a mystery which is not explained by speaking of suppressed desire or sex or any of those springs which modern psychologists surmise are released in dream.
A mood may attract its affinities but it does not create what it attracts. Between anger and a definite vision of conflict, there is a gulf as mysterious as there was between Aladdin's desire and the building of his marvelous palace. I desire a house. Desire does not build it. I design a house. Every line is drawn with full consciousness. When I give the plan to the builder, every brick is placed with full consciousness by the masons.
No coherent architecture in city or dream arises magically by some unreason which translates bodiless desire into organic form. Between desire and its visionary embodiment or fulfillment may be but a second of time. However swift that succession, there must be space for intellectual labor, construction of forms or the choice of forms, and endowing them with motion.
A second to my brain is too brief a fragment of time for more than sight. To a more intense consciousness that is coworker with mine, I believe that second suffices for a glimpse into a fullness or plenitude of form. It allows for the selection of these and the unrolling of a vast pageantry. There is something, a creature within me, behind whose swiftness I falter a hopeless laggard. It may be a traveler through the Archaeus and back again with the merchandise of its travel before my pulse has beaten twice.
As an artist who has labored slowly at the creation of pictures, I assert that the forms of dream or vision if self-created require a conscious artist to arrange them, a magician to endow them with life. The process is intellectual. That is, it is conscious on some plane of being, though that self who sits in the gate of the body does not know what powers or dignitaries meet in the inner palace chambers of the soul.
When we have dreams of flying and see all things from an angle of vision of which we never could have experience in waking, we know that to speak of the moving pictures of dream as memories or unconscious recombination of things seen when waking is to speak without subtlety or intellectual comprehension.
I criticize the figures I see in dream or vision exactly as I would the figures in a painting. Even if I see a figure in dream I have seen when waking, if the figure acts in a manner differing from its action when seen with the physical eye, if it now walks when it then sat, or looks down where before it looked up, and if these motions in dream appear authentic so that face and form have the proper light and shade and the anatomies are undistorted, that dream change in the figure of memory is itself a most perplexing thing.
We must suppose that memory as memory is as fixed in its way as a picture is fixed or as the attitude of a statue is fixed. If it fades, it should be by loss of precision and not into other equally precise but differing forms and gestures. Now we could not without cracks or distorting of anatomies or complete remodeling change the pose of a statue even if it was modeled in some easily malleable substance the plastic changes from stillness to motion in a figure, which we presume to be a memory. This is wonderful when we think of it, as wonderful as if the little clay terra cotta statuette upon my shelf should change from its cast solidity and walk up and down before me.
For myself, I think man is a protean being, within whose unity there is diversity. There are creatures in the soul that can inform the images of our memory, or the eternal memory, aye, and speak through them to us in dream, so that we hear their voices. It is with us in our minute microcosmic fashion even as it was said of the universe that it is a soliloquy of Deity wherein Ain-Soph talks to Ain-Soph.
We can make such general speculations about all pictures moving before the inner eye. It is worthwhile investigating the anatomy of vision and to be intent on what appears to us. If we have intentness, we have memory. A mental picture which at first had yielded nothing to us may be followed by others which indicate a relation to the earliest in the series so that they seem like pages read at different times from the same book.
When young, I haunted the mountains. I found that vision became richer and more luminous in the high air. For hours, I have watched shining landscape and figures in endless procession, trying to discover in these some significance other than mere beauty.
Once on the hillside, I seemed to slip from today into some remote yesterday of earth. There was the same valley below me, but now it was deepening into evening and the skies were towering up through one blue heaven to another.
There was a battle in the valley and men reeled darkly hither and thither. I remember one warrior about whom the battle was thickest. A silver star flickered above his helmet through the dusk. But this I soon forgot. I was impelled to look upwards.
There above me was an airship glittering with light. It halted above the valley while a grey-bearded, majestic man, with robes all starred and jeweled, bent over and looked down upon the battle. The pause was but for an instant. Then the lights flashed more brilliantly. Some luminous mist was jetted upon the air from many tubes below the boat. It soared and passed beyond the mountain. It was followed by another and yet others, all glittering with lights. They climbed the air over the hill and were soon lost amid the other lights of heaven.
It must be a quarter of a century ago since I saw this vision, which I remember clearly because I painted the ship. It must, I think, be about five or six years after that a second vision in the same series startled me. I was again on the high places, and this time the apparition in the mystical air was so close that if I could have stretched out a hand from this world to that I could have clutched the aerial voyager as it swept by me.
A young man was steering the boat. His black hair was blown back from his brows, his face pale and resolute, his head bent, and his eyes intent on his wheel. Beside him sat a woman, a rose-colored shawl speckled with golden threads drawn over her head, around her shoulders, and across her bosom and folded arms. Her face was proud as a queen's. I long remembered that face for its pride, stillness, and beauty.
At the moment, I thought it was some image in the eternal memory of a civilization more remote than Atlantis. I cried out in my heart in a passion of regret for romance passed away from the world, not knowing that the world's great age was again returning and soon we were to swim once more beneath the epic skies.
After that at different times and places, I saw other such aerial wanderers. I noted that all such visions had a character in keeping with each other. They were never mixed up with modernity. They had the peculiarities by which we recognize civilizations as distinct from each other, Chinese from Greek or Egyptian from Hindu. They were the stuff out of which romance is made.
If I had been a storyteller like our great Standish O'Grady, I might have made without questioning a wonder tale of the air, legendary or futurist. I have always had as much of the philosophic as the artistic interest in what people call imagination. I have thought that many artists and poets gave to art or romance what would have had an equal if not a greater interest as psychology.
I began to ask myself where in the three times or in what realm of space these ships were launched. Was it ages ago in some actual workshop in an extinct civilization? Were these but images in the eternal memory? Or were they launched by my own spirit from some magical arsenal of being? If so, with what intent where they launched? Or were they images of things yet to be in the world, begotten in that eternal mind where past, present, and future coexist, and from which they stray into the imagination of scientist, engineer, or poet to be realized in discovery, mechanism, or song? I find it impossible to decide.
Sometimes I even speculate on a world interpenetrating ours where another sun is glowing and other stars are shining over its own woods, mountains, rivers, and race of beings. I do not know why not. We are forced into such speculation when we become certain that no power in us of which we are conscious is concerned in the creation of such visionary forms.
If these ships were launched so marvelously upon the visionary air by some transcendent artisan of the spirit, they must have been built for some purpose, but for what? I was not an engineer intent on aerial flight. This is, I think, notable that at the moment of vision, I seemed to myself to understand the mechanism of these airships. I felt that if I could have stepped out of this century into that visionary sailing vessel or gallant bark, I could have taken the wheel and steered it confidently on to its destiny.
I knew that the closing of a tube at one side of the bow would force the ship to steer in that direction, because the force jetted from the parallel tube on the other side, no longer balanced by an equal emission of power, operated to bring about the change.
There is an interest in speculating about this impression of knowledge. It might indicate some complicity of the subconscious mind with the vision which startled the eye. That knowledge may have been poured on the one while seeing was granted to the other.
If the vision was imagination, that is if the airship was launched from my own spirit, I must have been in council with the architect, perhaps in deep sleep. If I suppose it was imagination, I am justified in trying by every means to reach with full consciousness to the arsenal where such wonders are wrought. I cannot be content to accept it as imagination and not try to meet the architect.
As for these visions of airships and for many others, I have been unable to place them even speculatively in any world or any century. It must be so with the imaginations of many other people. But I think that when we begin speculation about these things, it is the beginning of our wakening from the dream of life.
I have suggested that images of things to be may come into our sphere out of a being where time does not exist. I have had myself no definite proof as yet that any vision I saw was prophetic. Only one which suggested itself as such to me and this was so remarkable that I put it on record. If it was prophetic, its significance may become apparent later on.
I was meditating about twenty-one years ago in a little room. My meditation was suddenly broken by a series of pictures which flashed before me with the swiftness of moving pictures in a theater. They had no relation I could discover to the subject of my meditation, and were perhaps interpolated into it then. In a tense state of concentration when the brain becomes luminous, it is easier to bring to consciousness what has to be brought.
I was at the time much more interested in the politics of eternity than in the politics of my own country, and would not have missed an hour of my passionate meditation on the spirit to have witnessed the most dramatic spectacle in any of our national movements.
In this meditation, I was brought to a wooded valley beyond which was a mountain. Between heaven and earth over the valley was a vast figure surrounded with a golden disk of light. It descended from that circle of light, assumed human shape, stood before me, and looked at me. The face of this figure was broad and noble in type, beardless, and dark-haired. It was in its breadth akin to the face of the young Napoleon. I would refer both to a common archetype. The being looked at me and then it vanished.
It was instantly replaced by another vision. This second vision was of a woman with a blue cloak around her shoulders. She came into a room and lifted a young child upon her lap. Rays of light converged on that child from all Ireland.
Then this disappeared and was on the instant followed by another picture in the series. Here I was brought from Ireland to look on the coronation throne at Westminster. There sat on it a figure of empire which grew weary and let fall the scepter from its fingers and itself then drooped and fell and disappeared from the famous seat.
In swift succession came another scene. A gigantic figure, wild and distraught, was beating a drum and stalking up and down. Wherever its feet fell, there were sparks and the swirling of flame and black smoke upward as from burning cities. It was like the Red Swineherd of legend which beat men into an insane frenzy.
When that distraught figure vanished, I saw the whole of Ireland lit up from mountain to sea, spreading its rays to the heavens as in the vision which Brigid the seeress saw and told to Patrick.
All I could make of that sequence was that some child of destiny was born then or to be born. Around that child, the future of Ireland was to pivot. It was to be an Avatar, as symbolized by the descent of the first figure from the sky. Before that high destiny was to be accomplished, the power of empire was to be weakened. There was to be one more tragic episode in Irish history.
Time alone can tell whether this is truth or fantasy. No drums that have since beaten in this land seem to me to be mad enough to be foretold of in that wild drumming. What can I say of such a vision but that it impressed me to forgetfulness of analysis? What it said was more important than any philosophy of its manner.
I have tried to reason over it with myself. I did this as I would with a sequence of another character, to deduce from a sequence better than could be done from a single vision, valid reasons for believing that there must be a conscious intellect somewhere behind the sequence. But I cannot reason over it. I only know that I look everywhere in the face of youth, in the aspect of every new notability, hoping before I die to recognize the broad-browed Avatar of my vision.
[The following comes from a series that appeared in THE THEOSOPHICAL PATH, under Katherine Tingley as Editor and published at the Point Loma Theosophical Community. It later appeared in book form under the title TRUE MESSIAH: THE STORY AND WISDOM OF APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 3 B.C. -- 96 A.D., published by Point Loma Publications.]
APOLLONIUS -- IARCHAS
The discourse between Iarchas and Apollonius sometimes fell upon foreknowledge, a subject which, as the latter was greatly addicted to it, often gave rise to much conversation. Iarchas praised him for it, and said, "They who take pleasure in the art of divination, most excellent Apollonius, become by it divine and useful to mankind. He who possesses within himself the power of foreknowledge, and is capable by it of instructing the ignorant in what can only be acquired by having recourse to the oracle itself, I consider to be most happy, and equal to the Delphic God. You know the art of divination enjoins all who consult the oracle to approach it with pure hearts, otherwise to depart from it.
"For my part, I think that he that wishes to learn the secrets of the future should keep himself pure and free from all mental strain and turpitude whatever. And it is my opinion that a man of this character will utter predictions which he himself and the tripod within his own breast will clearly understand; and that the oracles which he delivers will, on account of the purity of his life, be the more to be relied upon. Hence it is not surprising you, whose soul is filled with such a portion of the divine ether, should possess this kind of knowledge."
They were no dull sophists, these divine philosophers, but had a lively sense of humor, as all true philosophers have, for use in its right place. To relieve the conversation, they asked Damis what knowledge he had of futurity after having been so long a disciple of Apollonius, and there was some quiet fun over his claim that he knew about as much as the old women fortune-tellers who uttered predictions as to stray cattle and the like; enough for himself, though not enough to help others. They all laughed heartily at the quaint manner in which he said this, which need not have prevented him from seeing that there was also a concealed hint in the question that he might learn a good deal from Apollonius if he chose.
DIVINATION AND MEDICINE
Divination is not a science to be despised, though it is utterly misunderstood and degraded in so-called learned circles and universities. Iarchas goes on to show that it is responsible for the whole science of our medicine. Nor does this refer alone to ancient times, for much of our most efficacious modern medicine has been so discovered, as history shows. Divination, declared Iarchas, had rendered great benefit to mankind, of which the greatest was the knowledge of medicine.
"For the learned sons of Aesculapius could never have known their profession so well, had not Aesculapius, who was the son of Apollo, in obedience to his father's sayings and predictions, prepared the medicines most proper for curing each disease. These remedies he showed to his children, and taught his scholars what simples were best to be applied to every species of ulcer, whether new or old. Who will deprive divination of the discovery of the exact proportions of medical potions for every kind of disease and the fittest medicines to be applied in the case of persons poisoned, and the manner of converting poisons themselves into remedies? I do not think that mortals without some knowledge of futurity would have had the courage enough to use the most dangerous poisons in the curing of disease."
MYSTERIES OF NATURE
Discussing the strange mysteries of nature and of science with Iarchas, Apollonius had many erroneous notions of the Greeks corrected, and others deemed fabulous confirmed. Philostratus considers that of such accounts "full credit is not to be given to, nor withheld from them." A wise conclusion, seeing that though many absurdities are held in the popular mind as to the wonders of strange countries, not a few of the most absurd are symbols covering in an unforgettable way most important and far-reaching truths of science.
The fountain of golden water to which such wonderful properties are ascribed is declared by Iarchas to have been unheard of in his country. Possibly he used other symbolism for the same thing. The magnet he possessed, and showed its properties; but the pantarba (mentioned by Roger Bacon in later years) does not appear to be popularly identifiable. It seems to be a combination of the magnet and the diamond, with properties superior to those of both. Described as a small stone, the largest of which is about the size of a man's thumbnail, it is generated in the cavities of the earth about four paces below the surface. It possesses the hidden virtue of causing the ground to swell, and sometimes to open, in the place where it is produced. But search for it is not permitted, because it is acquired only by art, the performance of certain words. By night it gives a light like that of fire of a radiant shining quality, but when seen by day it dazzles the eyes with a thousand glittering rays. This light contains within it "a subtle spirit of ineffable power," which attracts whatever is near it, or even at some little distance. If many stones are cast into the sea or any running stream haphazard, this stone or gem, if immersed where they lie, will draw all to itself by the influence of the spirit, and make them form a cluster like a swarm of bees. When Iarchas said this, he showed the stone and demonstrated its powers. It appears to have been either electrical or alchemical, or both.
SYMBOLISM OF GRIFFONS, THE PHOENIX, AND SWANS
Griffons are described as actual beasts with membranous wings, slow of flight, but formidable. The account is detailed, but appears to be as symbolical as that of the phoenix, which is just as detailed and yet is all symbolical. The latter visits Egypt every five hundred years and during that time is said to fly all over India. There is never more than one. It emits rays of the color of gold and resembles the eagle in shape and size. It sits on its nest, which it makes for itself with spices, near the fountains of the Nile. What the Egyptians say of its coming into their country, is said also by the Indians, with the addition that while burning itself in its nest, it sings a farewell dirge, as swans are said to do.
The symbolism is very beautiful and ingenious, and the mention of the Swan has the significance that the bird is employed in Indian symbolism to express much the same thing on a larger or smaller scale. Possibly the real old Rosicrucian pelican is the same, and the duck of the Kalevala may be related.
JOURNEYS IN ASIA MINOR, GREECE, AND ITALY
On coming into Ionia, Apollonius visited Ephesus, where the artisans and tradesmen immediately left their work and followed him; some admiring his wisdom, others his beauty; some his way of living, others his singular dress; and many admiring him in every way. Prophesies of the Oracle of Colophon were quoted, announcing him as a man possessing some of Apollo's wisdom, being a man truly wise, and the like. The oracles in the temples of Didyme and Pergamus said the same, and all who needed assistance were commanded by Apollo to go to Apollonius, for such was his will and the decree of the Fates. Ambassadors came from several cities offering him hospitality, since they considered him the best guide of their lives and the fittest person to advise them in erecting altars and statues. These things he attended to by letters and by word of mouth, saying he would visit them. Smyrna sent ambassadors urging his presence, but without giving a reason. He asked them their business, and they replied, "To see you and to be seen by you!"
"I will come," said the Sage, "and may the Muses grant a mutual affection between us!"
His first speech to the Ephesians was from the porch of the temple; not in the argumentative manner of Socrates, but as one having authority. He advised them earnestly to study philosophy and to turn away from their present manner of living in dissipation, occupied with cruel sports, extravagant shows, pantomimes, dances, noise, and debauchery. "Though by remonstrance, he alienated from him the minds of the Ephesians, yet he would not wink at their depravity, which he tore up by the roots, and made odious to the people."
He utilized the love of omens and prodigies in an effective way to illustrate a speech on the community of goods. While he was talking, a flock of sparrows sat silently on a tree near by. Suddenly one sparrow seemed to be telling the rest of something and they all flew away in the same direction. Apollonius noted that many of his audience watched them to see the cause of the prodigy. Without pausing, he went on to tell how there was once a sparrow which saw a boy let fall some corn in a lane. The bird immediately went off to tell its companions, and they all went together to share the banquet. The Ephesian crowd saw the drift of his tale and ran to see if what he had said was really the case. Meanwhile he went on with his speech about community of goods, as he had begun. When the men who had gone to verify the tale had returned, shouting with joy and amazement because they had found it correct, Apollonius proceeded to emphasize the lesson of his talk.
"You see," said he, "what care these sparrows take of each other, and with what satisfaction they divide their goods -- a doctrine which is despised by you: for if you see a man who relieves the wants of others, you consider him idle and extravagant; and those who are fed by his bounty as little better than flatterers and parasites. What else, then, have you to do but shut yourselves up at home, like birds to be fattened for the table, and indulge your appetites in darkness till you burst with fat?"
That was the way with Apollonius. His work was to teach, and teach he did -- even though the lessons might be unpopular or alienate people of selfish and idle habits. The little homely incidents of daily life were text enough for his discourse.
REBUKES THE EPHESIANS
Soon the confirmation of his urgency in preaching against the worldly ways and idle dissipation of the Ephesians came. They had not liked the rebuke; they liked less the result of their manner of living. For that is precisely what he was trying to demonstrate: that the law of cause and effect is immutable; and the plague was upon them. Apollonius saw it coming, and again and again spoke as though forbidding some monster to enter the land or to pass.
The Ephesians, probably much the same as any modern crowd, treated lightly these exclamations in his discourses, as though they were the effect of fear and superstition. When they saw him visiting the temples and attempting to avert or deprecate the evil, they were confirmed in their careless idea. Apollonius saw that there was no change in their conduct, and thought he was no longer of any use among such a people. Therefore he resumed his travels though Ionia, redressing what was wrong, and always speaking on topics most useful to his hearers.
At Smyrna he took the cup of the city council and made libation of part of the contents, making supplication to the gods that Aegeon, the shaker of the earth, might not destroy the cities of the Ionians. In after days it was supposed that he foresaw the calamity that was going to befall Smyrna, Miletus, Chios, Samos, and many other Ionian cities.
The Smyrniotes took much pride in the magnificence of their city, its wealth and buildings, its treasures of art, and its natural beauty of landscape. All this Apollonius compared to a statue of Jupiter by Phidias, very beautiful but merely an immovable statue; while a city of good and great men may be compared to Jupiter himself who is not on earth in one place like a statue, but everywhere in the heavens.
Understanding that the people of Smyrna were given to idle disputes, Apollonius declared that a well constituted state should have a "discordant concord." The phrase aroused curiosity and discussion which he satisfied by saying that there should not be rivalry but emulation for the common good; not striving for excellence in one thing alone like the militarism of the Lacedemonians, but the variety of effort to make all professions honored and all share in their contribution to the general good of the state. Using a homely simile, he pointed to a ship getting under way in the harbor: as each of the crew did his work in his place to the best of his ability, so the ship prospered.
The plague now raged at Ephesus, and at last the people saw what Apollonius had tried to do. They sent an ambassador to him and he agreed to go to Ephesus, which he did instantly by one of those methods of personal transport he sometimes used. He gathered the Ephesians together and assured them. "Be not dejected, for I will this day put a stop to the disease." Leading the way to the theater he pointed out an old beggar, with a wallet in his hand begging for crusts. This object was in a filthy state and constantly blinked his eyes.
Apollonius called upon the Ephesians to stone him, as being the enemy of the Gods. This amazing order shocked them, especially as the old man was then doing all he could to excite pity and seeking alms. Apollonius demanded instant compliance with his order, and when it was carried out he made them remove the stones. The old man had seemingly turned into a furious maniac immediately he saw they were going to attack him. But under the heap of stones they found no man at all, but a huge mad dog, foaming at the mouth. With the disappearance of this foul monster the plague was stayed, and the city erected a statue on the spot to Hercules, as being the god who had wrought through their deliverer.
[From THE THEOSOPHICAL FORUM, September 1945, pages 404-8.]
In THE THEOSOPHICAL FORUM for October 1937, I wrote an article under the above heading, giving an appreciation of Poe together with a number of quotations from his writings, showing how close these come in many cases to the teachings of Theosophy. One purpose of that article was to show that there exists in men a power of direct vision that can bring them into contact with truth. This can happen when we find no contact with Oriental or other channels wherefrom the seer might have derived his vision. The present writing is a continuation of the same theme.
We begin with a quotation from "Mesmeric Revelation," published in the COLUMBIAN MAGAZINE, August 1844, and included in collections of the author's Tales. It shows remarkable agreement with what Theosophy teaches as to the primordial principle wherefrom spring the universes. The Revelation is from the lips of a moribund invalid, who has been put into the clairvoyant state by the mesmeric operator and questioned by him.
Operator: "Where is the beginning?"
Subject: "You know that the beginning is GOD," said in a low, fluctuating tone, with every sign of the most profound veneration.
Operator: "What, then, is God?"
Subject: Hesitating for many minutes, "I cannot tell."
Operator: "Is not God spirit?"
Subject: "While I was awake, I knew what you meant by 'spirit,' but now it seems only a word -- such, for instance, as truth, beauty -- a quality, I mean."
Operator: "Is not God immaterial?"
Subject: "There is no immateriality; it is a mere word. That which is not matter, is not at all -- unless qualities are things."
Operator: "Is God, then, material?"
Subject: "No!"
Operator: Startled very much, "what, then, is he?"
Subject: After a long pause, and muttering, "I see, but it is a thing difficult to tell." Another long pause, "he is not spirit, for he exists. Nor is he matter, AS YOU UNDERSTAND IT. There are GRADATIONS of matter of which man knows nothing. The grosser impels the finer and the finer pervades the grosser. The atmosphere, for example, impels the electric principle, while the electric principle permeates the atmosphere. These gradations of matter increase in rarity or fineness until we arrive at a matter UNPARTICLED -- without particles -- indivisible -- ONE; and here the law of impulsion and permeation is modified. The ultimate or unparticled matter not only permeates all things, but also impels all things; and thus IS all things within it. This matter is God. What men attempt to embody in the word 'thought,' is this matter in motion."
On this question of Matter, see what is said by K.H. in THE MAHATMA LETTERS, page 52, from which long letter we can quote only brief extracts:
When we speak of our One Life, we also say that it penetrates, nay is the very essence of every atom of matter; and that therefore it not only has correspondence with matter but also has all its properties likewise, etc. -- hence IS material, is MATTER itself...
Matter we know to be eternal, i.e., having had no beginning (a) because matter is Nature herself (b) because that which cannot annihilate itself and is indestructible exists necessarily -- and therefore it could not begin to be, nor can it cease to be (c) because the accumulated experience of countless ages, and that of exact science, show to us matter (or nature) acting by her own peculiar energy, of which not an atom is ever in an absolute state of rest, and therefore it must have always existed, i.e., its materials ever changing form, combinations, and properties, but its principles or elements being absolutely indestructible.
In "William Wilson," we find a theme which has been treated by others, as, for instance, by Bulwer Lytton in A STRANGE STORY; and which is told by Poe in his usual manner of gradually increasing intensity culminating in a climax of horror, and in a setting portraying fond reminiscences of his own early school years in England.
The story is told in the first person. It is that of a man who murders his own Soul. William Wilson is haunted throughout life by another individual of the same likeness and the same name, who is wont to appear suddenly at critical moments when his original is on the point of committing some deed of iniquity or crime, and to whisper in his ear words of warning, while at the same time frustrating the evil deed.
Wilson continues in his career of vice and violence, until a time is reached when, as he is about to seduce the daughter of his noble host, his double again appears. Stung to madness and inflamed by wine, he resolves to slay the double and rid himself forever of the hated interference. Accomplishing his purpose, he is addressed by the other William Wilson:
You have conquered, and I yield. Yet henceforth art thou also dead -- dead to the World, to Heaven, and to Hope! In me didst thou exist -- and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.
Is not this the teaching of the "soulless man," one of those fortunately very rare cases wherein a man persists in evil to the point where his Spiritual Soul abandons the attempt to redeem its lower vehicles, and in sorrow breaks away, to begin anew its task in later cycles, while the relic pursues a headlong course to final annihilation?
Theosophists are aware of the distinction drawn between Eternity and Time, or between Duration and Time, or between undivided Time and divided Time. The latter pertains to our terrestrial consciousness; the former pertains to that which lies beyond. In "The Colloquy of Moons and Una," two disembodied spirits converse, and Monos describes to Una his sensations while dying. Even when supposed by all to be dead, yet he was conscious; his faculties die out slowly one by one -- until at last only one sense remains, the sense of Time.
Motion in the animal frame had fully ceased. No muscle quivered; no nerve thrilled; no artery throbbed. There seemed to have sprung up in the brain, THAT of which no words could convey to the merely human intelligence even an indistinct conception. Let me term it a mental pendulous pulsation. It was the moral embodiment of man's abstract idea of Time ... This -- this keen, perfect, self-existing sentiment of DURATION -- this sentiment existing (as man could not possibly have conceived it to exist) independently of any succession of events -- this idea -- this sixth sense, upspringing from the ashes of the rest, was the first obvious and certain step of the intemporal soul upon the threshold of the temporal Eternity.
Theosophists are familiar with the idea that nothing in Nature is independent, but that all things are linked. Yet Nature, as presented to our mind by our physical senses, seems to contradict this idea, for we thus get an ATOMIC picture, composed of apparently separate parts without any visible connection. This error strays into our reasoning, so that we are prone to study things separately, as if each had an independent existence; thus finding ourselves often confronted with what we sometimes call a "paradox." Poe, in the following quotation from "The Mystery of Marie Poget," illustrates the errors arising from this habit of considering the details apart from the whole. He also refers to the laws of chance and probability.
Nothing is more difficult than to convince the merely general reader that the fact of sixes having been thrown twice in succession by a player at dice is sufficient cause for betting the largest odds that sixes will not be thrown in the third attempt. A suggestion to this effect is usually rejected by the intellect at once. It does not appear that the two throws completed and now absolutely in the Past can have any influence upon the throw that exists only in the Future. The chance for throwing sixes seems to be precisely as it was at any ordinary time -- that is to say, subject only to the influence of the various other throws which may be made by the dice ... The error here involved -- a gross error redolent of mischief -- I cannot attempt to expose within the limits assigned me at present; and with the philosophical it needs no exposure. It forms one of an infinite series of mistakes that arise in the path of Reason through her propensity for seeking truth IN DETAIL.
To know a thing, we must BE that thing; we must see it from the inside, not merely from the outside; object and subject must be united in ONE. This thought is familiar enough to Theosophical students. It points to a higher kind of Knowledge, whereby we unite our mind with the object to be known, instead of getting a mere picture of its illusory form. The word "sympathy" has much to do with this topic, especially as concerns our understanding of our fellowman. The following is from "Eureka: a Prose Poem," quoted several times in our first article.
"Nous ne connaissons rien," says the Baron de Bielefeld, "de la nature ou de l'essence de Dieu: -- pour savoir ce qu'il est, il faut etre Dieu meme." -- "We know absolutely NOTHING of the nature or essence of God: -- in order to comprehend what he is, we should have to be God ourselves ..." I nevertheless venture to demand if this, our present ignorance of the Deity is an ignorance to which the soul is EVERLASTINGLY condemned.
The Path to Wisdom, as understood in Theosophy, consists in a progressive self-identification with one's Inner God; the culminating step of which progress is full Self-realization, complete union of the disciple with that Divinity which is his own true Self. All this is implied in the above quotation from Poe. All that he predicates of this original Matter is Oneness.
I propose to show that this Oneness is a principle abundantly sufficient to account for the constitution, the existing phenomena, and the plainly inevitable annihilation of at least the material Universe.
He then shows how the notion of unity implies divisibility, the One implies the Many. He thus proceeds systematically to outline the expansion of the One into the manifold Universe, and its return process to material "annihilation," which is what we call Pralaya. This was described in our previous article.
With this, we conclude our quotations from Poe, a genius who soared very high without having the stamina to deal with the reaction. His own writings show clearly enough this tragedy of the soul. His culminating work "Eureka" was published the year before that "lonesome" October, of which he speaks so prophetically in his poem, "Ulalume," and which witnessed the gloomy end of his short and troubled life-drama.
Dancing with friends, the secret of brotherly love again becomes apparent. Holding hands with a smiling group of people, I cannot help beaming. It becomes so easy to forget myself when giving myself to the dance. There is just the step, just the music, just the sea of warm humanity. The challenge of the dance captures my attention as I do it will excellence. Doing each step with reverence, I do worship to sacred Benevolence. I discover both a lightness and a deep commitment to the passing moment. And passing deeper, the dance dances me as I look up and smile at the others. Walking along an empty beach at sunset, I can sense the majesty of life. The roar of the surf, the fresh breeze, the brilliant sky all shout their wonders. Without anyone to remind me of my place in life, of my imperfections, I feel the grandeur of existence, of life, of being manifest, so easily! But when that annoying woman with the short temper comes around, I quickly fill with her rage and have forgotten this beauty. Or when another is telling his friend how terrible that I am, It is so easy to see him as enemy instead of a living human being. It is different, though, in dancing here tonight; there is an embracing peace. People of all sizes, all ages, all skills, both sexes, all intermingle. No one is great. No one is inferior. All are one unity: the dance. And amidst the good cheer, something deeper is happening. Behind all manifest life is a spiritual presence, vast beyond words. It can only be called dark because the brightest of lights does it dishonor. And it can only be spoken of as silence as the sweetest of music shames it. For want of a better term, it has been called the Void by many a great man. No matter what I may do, it is there giving life and meaning. Regardless of how aware I may be of this treasure, I possess it. As much in my deepest shame as in my greatest triumph, it stands beside me. And it brings so much unspeakable joy when I remember that it is here! As the dance continues and the smiling, sometimes stumbling people plod along, I become lost in it, the dance takes me over, and I watch it happen. Looking at the others in amazement, I fly in a higher space within. And the roar of the great Silence behind manifest things is so sweetly heard!
[This talk comes from the first part of the tape recording on "Chapter XII of FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY, Part III," made of a private class held on June 16, 1954.]
Tonight we continue our study of the latter part of Chapter XII. It deals with many important subjects. Practically every sentence is pregnant with profound meaning upon which we could elaborate at length. The chapter involves a large number of Teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy.
Before we go on, three of us have written short explanations of the Teachings in the early part of the chapter. Each has taken a few paragraphs and put it into his or her own words.
The chapter opens defending the truthfulness of the subsequent quotes from THE SECRET DOCTRINE. The author briefly sets forth the tradition of the perception and recording of the ancient teachings by initiated prophets and seers throughout the ages. These teachings are the cumulative contributions of generations of wise men. With a spiritual eye, they have penetrated deep into the reality that lies beyond the veil of matter.
The Teachings are not the vision of a few, but rather those of an army of Knowers that attained their knowledge through the perfection and exaltation of their entire being. Some have the duty to pave the way for a future Teacher. Others support a Teaching previously unrevealed. Yet others explain and elaborate. For those who will see, listen, and learn, they pierce that thin veil, impenetrable to the profane.
The Teachings are windows into the soul of matter. The endless stream of evolving entities goes past them. Some do not look. Others see but are not aware. Yet others come to see that this vast network of apparently unrelated facts and doctrines inextricably interwoven into the fabric of the cosmos. Each is a thread properly placed, revealing the pattern of the unknowable substance principle.
This One exists in every atom of the universe on the manifested plane. Neither spirit nor matter, it is both. During its periodic manifestation, it is reality to the conscious beings within it. It is the totality of matter. When pursued beyond energy and impulse, matter leads back to the divine essence. Upon this concept is based the doctrine of Maya. It holds that the manifested universe is not an illusion, but rather is a temporary expression of the divine.
During periods of manifestation, every atom in the universe imbues itself with consciousness relative to its own plane. In the lower kingdoms, it is but an impulse. On a more grandiose scale, the entire universe is but an impulse of unfoldment. The external universe emanates itself through itself. In this process, beings vitalize and control its physical functions. These beings are conscious, feeling entities at various stages of becoming. Some are perfected men of past and present cycles. Others are incipient men. Both groups are devoid of attachment to personality, the former group having won freedom and the latter only approaching addiction to it.
The guides and controllers of the manifested universe are angels or Dhyani-Chohans. These cosmic divine powers are agents of karmic law. They are the framers, shapers, and ultimately creators of the manifested universe. They are of various degrees of attainment.
-- Audrey
There are many types of planetary spirits, many degrees of attainment, and many subdivisions in the hierarchical structure. HPB uses "Dhyani-Chohans" in THE SECRET DOCTRINE in a generic sense. She speaks of that kingdom of spiritual-divine entities in the same way we speak of human beings. When we say men and women, we mean a large variety of degrees of humanhood. This ranges from half animals to saintly individualities standing on the verge of becoming something higher.
As a term, "Dhyani-Chohans" is complex, covering three kingdoms with a considerable variety of stages. It refers to the three upper ranges of the tenfold structure of the hierarchy. Students find different passages about them difficult to compare and understand because they refer to beings at vastly different degrees of attainment all of whom HPB calls indiscriminately Dhyani-Chohans.
We learn from Dr. de Purucker's FUNDAMENTALS of the importance of the psychological study of man. If man knows himself, he also knows from where he came. Knowing that, he knows whence he goes.
It is important to consider the law of hierarchies. It is also important to consider the law of the inner nature of things, Swabhava. This is the law of the essential nature of things, meaning self-evolution, self-formation, self-development, and self-becoming. With these two, one may gain entrance into the knowledge of the psychological nature of man. Their study aids the development of one's spirit and mind along with his or her other faculties.
Nothing can come out of anything but what the thing is in itself. That law of self-becoming is an inner impulse, current, or catalytic sequence following an already established pattern. From it, we deduct the relation between this principle of Swabhava, the law of hierarchies, and the realization of cycles.
From previous Manvantaras, the pneuma or spirit releases its tension. It extrudes a vehicle of a certain nature and stage of evolution, the only thing its new form could become. It is the spermatic or seed Logoi, the impulse to concretion forming and evolving itself. It is the inner essence resulting from previous periods of evolution. Nothing can come out of latency from it but that which it is itself. A seed of a rose always forms a rose tree. An egg of a scorpion always becomes a scorpion.
What chaos it would be if Swabhava failed and a scorpion manifested out of the seed of a rose! Unfortunately, in our illusory world, this most deceiving thing happens. It is not rare when out of a beautiful face scorpion-like actions appear. Concealed within the beautiful words of promise and hope may lay a snake.
It is not clear what makes an average person become an Initiate or Mahatma. Does one's Swabhavic condition allow him that tremendous change? If it permits him to grow, it must be of another kind of Swabhava, because his vehicle remains the same physically. The impulse that makes a man become a man and nothing else is a spiritual impulse. It is capable of making a gradual change in part of the man's constitution. Our book says that after death man is not to meet his creator. He meets his creation, his creature, the result of his efforts in life, his astral part.
Consider that at the man's death his cells do not stop their evolution as in the case of infusoria (protozoa found in decaying animal or vegetable matter). They continue their divisions and sub-divisions in a way characteristic of the human race. This, as in life, is according to his Swabhavic condition. What subtle failure takes place in the formation of monsters? The difficult and profound subject and has not been thought out by science yet.
Swabhava needs a proper field of action into which it can manifest. A seed would not germinate without fertile soil. An Ego unchains its power of evolution into an opposing ground of action. There is tremendous energy of growth.
-- Antonio
This fine contribution shows much original thought. It contains questions I do not know how to answer. I might speculate. Together with us here, some of the best, the most-seasoned students of the Movement know little of the intricacies of Swabhava. From when THE SECRET DOCTRINE was out in 1888 to the teaching period of Dr. de Purucker in 1929, students did not understand it at all. They did not discuss it. It had not become impressed upon their minds. Other aspects of THE SECRET DOCTRINE conveyed meaning, holding their interest. Only in the years when Dr. de Purucker taught did interest in Swabhava arise. Students have grasped some of the doctrine, but not nearly enough to answer the many questions popping up its study.
In due course, everyone is going to become an Initiate, Adept, Mahatma. This unfoldment is a natural stage in the development of consciousness. The mystical Christian speaks of the Adept as a Christos or illumined man. In his terminology, it is a stage of consciousness. Some appear to reach and enter that stage easily. Others appear greatly delayed in attaining it. This apparent ease or delay is illusory. Seeing back of the illusion, we find that the timing is natural. One may have passed through Initiation successfully and entered Mahatmaship after a long, cumulative effort spanning many lifetimes. In doing so, he has not become anything but what his inner Swabhavic urge motivated or impelled him to become.
We can run through the evolutionary race, journey, or pilgrimage at various speeds. In one case at a certain degree of tension, we may utilize the impelling forces in a better way. In another case, we utilize them in a lesser way. The competing runners succeed in rounding out certain grooves or traveling certain spirals of the evolutionary pilgrimage at different speeds. In due course, each brings out his individual Swabhava.
I am not prepared to elaborate upon other points raised by this paper such as exceptional cases like monstrosities. Of necessity, they must receive adequate explanation in due time.
The chapter gives us hope that we will evolve ever higher and higher.
Swabhava is the habit of the essential nature of things. It only works in that which is it. Only its own vehicle or self is appropriate for its manifestation. Apply this to the evolution of man. We know that each incarnation brings forth a physical body. The spiritual nature does not descend into and become that body. It throws off part of itself. In its turn, that part throws off something lower. The physical body is the lowest such manifestation of the spiritual nature or the God within.
The spiritual nature retains its highest sphere during our sojourn through the depths of materiality. There is no death for the God within. Swabhava is a habit. By it, the physical body gradually manifests its spiritual nature, becoming that which is within. The seed germinates and grows, manifesting our inner God.
-- Marge Bonnell
This is another aspect of the same thought. It is interesting how many viewpoints we can present, all of value and originality. If we had hundreds, no two would be alike, no more than two leaves of a tree.
We have covered the current phase of the subject. We can now proceed, taking a few more steps into the chapter. Dwell a moment on how occultism sees psychology. The author says it means the study of the inner economy of man, the interconnection of his principles, of his centers of energy or force, of what the man really is inwardly.
See the tremendous scope of the study of genuine esoteric psychology. In psychology, modern science is so far from this! Naturally, it has progressed. Moving ahead, it has made valuable discoveries.
There is much that psychology still needs. It must first understand that there exist internal principles, more ethereal substances, and non-physical energies and forces. It needs to realize that there is an interconnection between them all, from the spiritual-divine down to the physical. It has to uncover the existence and function of at least some of these forces and energies of the inner man. Until then, psychology will remain a sublimated physiology at best.
The Occidental psychology may never cross the bridge, becoming a genuine esoteric science. To do so, it must blend its pursuits and research with aspects of genuine spiritual yoga. This is not Hatha Yoga, but rather is what we might call Brahma Yoga, Raja Yoga, or the Yoga of Union. It is the science of the spiritual-divine, the intellectual-intuitive part of man. It deals with the soul, the Ego, and the spirit of the human entity.
The number ten forms the skeleton or numerical framework of being for man as well as for everything else in the universe. Three of the ten elements, planes, or principles belong to the Arupa or formless world. Seven belong to the world of form. The seven produce each other on a downward scale in the process of manifestation. They do this exactly as the hierarchies do. Each emanates or evolves a lower. This lower evolves or emanates a still lower one. This continues down to the seventh or lowest.
The process whereby the inner principles of man and the universe manifest themselves in the outer worlds has no equivalent in our laboratories. The process partly represents the unwrapping of that which is within, making it manifest outwardly. There is more to it. In the Esoteric Philosophy, the outer not only manifestations the inner, the inner also permeates the outer through and through.
In illustration, speak of the mind not in opposition to the body. The body is not the mind, obviously. The mind is certainly not the body. In every cell of our physical and astral structure -- call it the body -- certain aspects of the mind are present. To the last little cell of the physical structure, there is some of our mind. There is even more. Some of everything else that we are is there too.
Many energies run up and down the human constitution, including the Atman, Buddhi, Manas, Kama, and Prana. On the physical plane, they exist in potentiality in every cell and even in every atom. All of what the body builds itself as well as the astral structure is only an exteriorization of the internal principles. They are a reflection thereof, a manifestation of those energies. There is no break of continuity anywhere.
The inner becomes the outer. The inner unfolds and unwraps itself. It rolls out, which is the actual meaning of the word "evolution." "Evolvare" means to roll out. It rolls itself out into the entire hierarchy that man is (or the cosmic hierarchy if we speak of a world). It touches bottom, as it were, in its rolling out process. That bottommost point, center, or nucleus is our physical body in its grossest part.
Eventually, everything that has rolled out begins to roll back, withdrawing itself inwardly, a process that we call dying. The scroll has unrolled itself and now rolls itself in again. It wraps itself in, withdrawing from the world of manifestation back into its source temporarily.
It the same with man as it is with the universe. Compare it to the breath. We breathe out and breathe in, with the process reversing between the two actions. On a larger scale, there is the same universal breathing action. There is the universal cadence of things, manifesting on all levels of consciousness, in every aspect of the universe. This rhythmic dance or pulsation of life moves from the inner to the outer then from the outer back to the inner again. Some folklore offers the suggestive symbol of the winking of the eye. It winks, opens, sees, cognizes, takes in, closes, and opens yet again.
The author continues, saying man is composed of three essential bases. The Sanskrit term is "Upadhi." It is what stands forth. It follows a model or pattern, like a canvas upon which the light from a projecting lantern plays. When we show some slides, the canvas is the Upadhi, the basis upon which a model, picture, or pattern finds expression. Compared to the ultimate reality, it is a play of shadow and form.
A being is composed of three essential bases, three Upadhis. First is the monadic or spiritual. Second is that which the laws of light supply, the so-called Manasa-Dhyanis. It is the intellectual and intuitive side of man. This element principle gives man his humanity. Third is the vital-astral-physical.
Do not confuse this division with that of the seven principles. The principles are contained in the three Upadhis, but are not the same. Whether of man or universe, they are the seven types of material. Dr. de Purucker calls them the stuff with which the universe constructs itself, its building blocks. Formed in replica of the universal structure, man has within himself the various materials of the universe, which we call the principles. Principal elements would be another term for the same thing.
The Upadhis are composed of these principles. They represent a threefold division of man. From a certain standpoint, it helps us to realize that man or universe has this subdivision. First, there is the spiritual level or center. Call it the monadic. Next, there is the intellectual-intuitive division. Third is the purely physical-astral-vital, the grossest in which the intermediate and the highest part function.
Each of these is a base that springs from a different line of evolution. Each hierarchy possesses in embryo everything of the entire universe from the least as the greatest of that period of manifestation. (For who can say what would be least and greatest of that which is endless?) Formed from three separate hierarchies of being, man is composite.
Man is a composite entity. He is not one soul, an unmixed entity. Various elements build him up. Hence, his principles are separable to a certain extent. Here is an important point. Any one of the Upadhis can separate from the other two temporarily without bringing about the physical death of the man. The elements forming any one of the Upadhis cannot separate without causing physical death. The human entity can separate according to the three cleavage lines: the monadic or spiritual, the intellectual-intuitive, and the vital-astral-physical. We can separate him into these three without a final dissolution ensuing. Bringing the Upadhis together again, the man can reconstitute himself again.
Death is the dissolution of the sevenfold compound constitution into its component elements and principles. It coheres no longer. It falls apart. With training in the higher degrees of Yoga and in the initiatory rites, one can divide into the three bases without undergoing death. If necessary, the three can function apart from one another for a time.
Only someone extraordinary could exist in one Upadhi for a time, apart from the other two. That separation happens in high degrees of Initiation. In the initiatory rites, one divides himself to partake of other states of consciousness, experimentally investigating and coming to know other spheres of being. This is not possible for an ordinary person, for the psychically inclined, nor even the mildly spiritual. It pertains to those involved with high degrees of spiritual yoga.
I do not know much about this. Advanced individuals seeking higher attainment achieve further illumination by the subdivision of consciousness into its three main bases. This is conscious, first-hand experimentation with the dynamics of one's own consciousness.
A golden thread runs through the three Upadhis. It cannot be broken. Even if temporarily separated, the three parts still connect in a subtle way by way of that tread. The three Upadhis belong to the same individual hierarchy of a being. They can only gather and reconstitute the full-fledged individual by having something binding them together. That fundamental stream of consciousness runs through the entire being from Atman to physical. It is the individual divine ray of the person undergoing this experience. We have our own fundamental consciousness, a ray from the spiritual sun. Strung upon it, our entire constitution hangs as a pendant from the Monad.
There are three Upadhis and seven principles. How do they correlate? I do not know if I can explain. It is quite metaphysical and complex. Obviously, from a numerical standpoint, three and seven are numbers not divisible one by the other. Something with seven links cannot correlate with something having three links without overlap. It is a difficult problem of consciousness. It is something for which we do not have adequate words. Our knowledge is limited. I find it difficult to explain the correlation between the seven element principles and the three Upadhis.
Subba Row was a great initiate of the early days of the Theosophical Movement. To a certain point, he collaborated with HPB. He wrote quite a bit on our subject. In fact, there was a controversy over it. In 1885 to 1887, Subba Row wrote articles presenting the fourfold constitution of man in THE THEOSOPHIST. He definitely opposed articles by HPB on our sevenfold constitution. They had quite a controversy, which proved finally to have been a put-up job. These two chelas of the same Master presented two ways of looking at the human being, each from a different angle, so intuitive students would search and think on their own. It is metaphysical. The articles are some of the most difficult ones in the early magazine. I am not prepared to go into that material. It involves too many things that I am not clear about myself.
On what planes do the separations of the Upadhis take place? The lowest basis is the physical-vital-astral, on the physical and lower aspects of the astral plane. Next is the internal man, the real individual, the part that makes us human. It is the higher mental, intellectual, spiritual-intellectual, or intuitive. It pertains to the Manasic or spiritual-mental plane. Our real individual Ego functions on the plane. On this plane, the human entity dwells apart from its lower vehicles.
The foremost and highest basis is the monadic or spiritual. It exists in spiritual realms completely outside the consciousness of the human part of us. The monadic or spiritual is on the plane of the inner God, the plane on which our inner divinity, the ray from the planetary spirit, dwells.
Note here that there are intermediate planes between the three that I have mentioned. I have just indicated the three main ones.
This separation is not possible for the average person because he would not know how to function self-consciously on any of the other planes. He could not function in the other parts of his constitution consciously.
Going through the separation of the Upadhis, you would not die. Unprepared, if your constitution could rip apart into these three bases prior to your being ready to do so on your own, you would lose consciousness. You would not be able to function consciously with any purpose or objective. Such a separation is impossible. A man of adequate spiritual attainment must do it consciously. He would know how to reconstitute himself.
These three lines of evolution, the three aspects or qualities of man, come from three different hierarchies or states. We often speak of them as three different planes of being. The lowest base comes from the Earth, ultimately from the moon. The middle, Manasic, or intellectual-intuitional comes from the sun. The Monadic, the highest, comes from the Monad of Monads, the supreme flower or acme, the supreme seed of the universal hierarchy that forms our cosmic universe.
We must correctly understand how these three separate parts of the economy of the inner man work together. This is essential to our future studies. If we follow our studies properly, we meet new ideas and thoughts at every step. These are new links with the universal light and being around us, of which we also are children.
We are composite entities. We should look upon ourselves as aggregates, composites, the three main parts of which come from different realms. We are a coming together of three different centers of consciousness by means of the old and ancient evolutionary pilgrimage.
It is correct to some extent to say that we have three creators within ourselves. The lowest part of us is from the moon. It is lunar. The intermediate part, the real man, the spiritual intellect, the intellectual-intuitional part, the Manas, is a solar entity. It is from the sun. The highest spiritual part, the monadic, has its roots in the spiritual Hierarch of the system in which we live and evolve.