THEOSOPHY WORLD ------------------------------------ January, 2007

An Internet Magazine Dedicated to the Theosophical Philosophy
And its Practical Application in the Modern World

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CONTENTS

"Discipleship," by B.P. Wadia
"Angel and Demon," by G. de Purucker
"Benefits from Restoration of the Teaching of Karma,"
    by Gertrude W. Van Pelt
"The Promethean Act," by Joan N. Burnett
"'What is Man, That Thou Art Mindful of Him,'" by H.T. Edge
"Symbolism," by R. Machell
"True Self-Realization," by H.T. Edge
"Rebirth, the Awakening," by G. de Purucker
"Continuity of Existence," by H.T. Edge

==================================================================

> OUR CHELAS ARE HELPED BUT WHEN THEY ARE INNOCENT OF THE CAUSES
> THAT LEAD THEM INTO TROUBLE; when such causes are generated by
> foreign, outside influences. Life and the struggle for adeptship
> would be too easy, had we all scavengers behind us to sweep
> away the EFFECTS we have generated through our own rashness and
> presumption.
>
> -- Mahatma K.H., THE MAHATMA LETTERS TO A.P. SINNETT, Letter
>    No. 54, page 305.

------------------------------------------------------------------
DISCIPLESHIP

By B.P. Wadia

[From LIVING THE LIFE, pages 140-45.]

> Disciples may be likened to the strings of the soul-echoing Vina;
>
> Mankind, unto its sounding board;
>
> The hand that sweeps it to the tuneful breath of the GREAT
> WORLD-SOUL.
>
> The string that fails to answer 'neath the Master's touch in
> dulcet harmony with all the others, breaks -- and is cast away.
> So the collective minds of Lanoo Shravakas. They have to be
> attuned to the Upadhyaya's mind -- one with the Over-Soul -- or,
> break away.

Among the Blessed Works of HPB, unique importance attaches to the
proclamation she made in the first sentence of the first volume
of her first book, and the achievement that enabled her to give
to the world THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE, "Dedicated to the Few."

The old, forgotten Path in the jungle of this civilization was
cleared by her so that the aspirant might walk it. But that
aspirant has to unfold true Devotion to Wisdom, to the Sages who
are its Custodians, and to all who are its students and pupils
and whom he must recognize as his companions.

The above quotation from the BOOK OF THE GOLDEN PRECEPTS
enshrines a vital instruction for all would-be Chelas. Those who
have attained the sweet fruits of Discipleship have done so by
the actual practice of the truth contained in these lines.

The Path to which HPB pointed can be trodden by the would-be
disciples of this cycle. The inspiration of the Esoteric
Philosophy she taught culminates in the learner's heart as a
concentrated aspiration to walk that Way. The strength and
loyalty with which a learner adheres to his resolve express his
inner faith and vision. The depth of that faith and the purity
of that vision are tested by the Power of Time; in the life of
the devotee that Power flows, testing and trying, and it does not
belong to the past, the present, or the future, but rather to the
Eternal Now. Chelaship is a continuous development toward
Immortality and may be called an Immortal Process.

It is taught that Chelaship begins with the inner attitude of
mind: what one thinks and feels is of greater importance than
outer acts, though outer behavior has to conform to the inner
perceptions; and the first task of the aspiring devotee is to
cultivate his perception by the study of right knowledge and the
practice of right discipline.

In the measure in which he overcomes the five hindrances -- (I)
lust, (2) ill-will, (3) torpor and languor, (4) restlessness and
mental worry, and (5) doubt -- does he achieve the success to
which the first statement of the above quotation points. A
would-be Chela is but a string, capable of echoing (there is an
important idea in this word "echoing") the Soul. In this world
of personalities and persons, the aspirant devotee has to become
the echo of his own Soul, of the Divine Singer within himself.

To become such an echo is not a negative but rather a positive
process. How to achieve the wonderful position of the true echo
of the Soul-Singer in this noisy, bragging, boastful, angry, and
greedy civilization of the dark cycle and the iron age? In one
place, the Mahatma K.H. has said these words that are exactly
applicable to the stage in Discipleship of which we are speaking:

> No men living are freer than we when we have once passed out of
> the stage of pupilage. Docile and obedient but never slaves
> during that time we must be; otherwise, and if we passed our time
> in arguing, we never would learn anything at all.

Next, our echoed song is for mankind. Once again in the measure
of our assimilation of the Divine Song of the Higher Manas can we
enable the voice of our personal self to influence mankind. The
service of humanity is therefore an early sine qua non in the
devotee's daily life.

In this quotation is stressed the idea of a special type of unity
between the minds of Lanoo Shravakas -- learner listeners.
Unless there is dulcet harmony between co-students who are
learning to listen and then to echo, the voice of the solitary
individual will be a voice lost in the wilderness of
civilization. It is a condition of Chelaship that each aspirant
learns to be devoted to the interests and welfare of
co-aspirants, co-students, and co-servers. It is the collective
minds of the learners that have to be attuned to the Master's
mind. All the strings of the soul-echoing Vina must be tightened
to produce the song for the help and service of mankind.

All tests and trials of the would-be Chela are directly related
to his inner attitude, which reflects itself in his outer
behavior. The neophyte's first privilege is to be tried in the
searching fire made up of his lower non-spiritual attributes. He
is tested on the psychological side of his nature -- especially
by "Doubt, Skepticism, Scorn, Ridicule, Envy, and finally
Temptation -- especially the latter," said the Master K.H. The
agents employed in this testing are "the jealous Lhamayin in
endless space."

These trials and tests have the effect of bringing out the evils
of the lower man, which coalesce to fight the effort of the
would-be Chela to oust them. They make a deadly hard weapon of
iron smelted by the Lhamayin, who wield it against the erect
integrity of the neophyte. Asks the Master -- "Why is it that
doubts and foul suspicions seem to beset every aspirant for
chelaship?" The answers to this question are numerous, but of
fundamental importance is this one: In the strife between the
Living and the Dead, on the Battlefield of Dharma, the neophyte
must see, face, fight, and conquer the conglomerate evil.

This produces a two-sided experience. As water develops the heat
of caustic lime, so the honest and sustained endeavor of the
neophyte brings into fierce action every unsuspected potentiality
latent in him. At the same time, his vivid and vital, moral and
intellectual forces are set free for his constructive use. Every
test passed, every trial faced, is a step forward on the Path in
the direction of the Master, which, one of them says, "forces us
to make one towards him."

This battle of the living portion of the personal man against his
dead aspects with their nefarious, deadening effects produces
despondency and despair, and Arjuna-like the neophyte wants to
withdraw, does not desire to fight out the field. It is very
necessary to remember that the first chapter of the Gita that
deals with this first real experience in Chela-life is designated
as a type of Yoga -- "Vishad-Yoga." Does it not imply "making
union with despondency?" What does it mean? Does it mean that we
should hug despair to our bosom and bolt from the field of
battle, refusing to engage in the greatest of all wars? Or,
Arjuna-like, should the neophyte make union with despondency with
the purpose of taking a good look at that fear-causing demon, of
understanding its demonic nature, of seeking the explanation
about it from the Teachings and the Teachers? Real union with
despondency implies mastering and using the demonic in the
service of the Divine.

Which virtue will enable the neophyte to continue to live his
life aright? Vishad -- despondency -- brings one to Vairagya,
detachment -- detachment from the self of matter, from the pairs
of opposites. Illusion has to be conquered if Truth is to be
perceived. Indifference to pleasure and to pain implies freedom
from "thirst for perceptible and scriptural enjoyments," says
Patanjali.

Vairagya, indifference, desirelessness, or detachment is the very
first Paramita that the aspiring and devoted neophyte should
unfold. It involves a mental abnegation to begin with, and this
is not agreeable to our modern mind; but it must be acquired if
discipleship is to be successful. This Paramita leads to the
flowering of the higher Resignation that has dauntless
energy-prana as its heart and patience sweet that naught can
ruffle as its head.

There are two suggestive sayings by two Zen teachers:

Gettan used to say:

> There are three kinds of disciples: those who impart Zen to
> others, those who maintain the temples and shrines, and then
> there are the rice bags and the clothes-hangers.

Gasan, the victorious disciple of Tekisui, remained when weaker
fellows ran away. Gasan remembered:

> A poor disciple utilizes a teacher's influence.
>
> A fair disciple admires a teacher's kindness.
>
> A good disciple grows strong under a teacher's discipline.

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ANGEL AND DEMON

By G. de Purucker

[From WIND OF THE SPIRIT, pages 210-15.]

The question has been asked as to what I think is the angel in
us, what the human part of us, and what the so-called demon. We
Theosophists use these terms -- angel and demon -- not in their
old Christian significance as actually implying that an angel
from heaven has taken up its abode in the human constitution, or
that a demon from outside of nature has taken up its abode in us,
or in each one of us. The highest part of man is a spiritual
being overshadowed by divinity; and we at times speak of this as
an 'angel' because the term is well known in the West, due to
Christian thought. We Theosophists speak of the demon as the
animal part of us, a very real entity, which the human part of
us, the central part of our constitution, usually converts into a
demon.

The animals occupy their place in the universe, and their lives
are remarkable in many ways, fascinatingly interesting. They
have a certain amount of developed individuality. No one would
say that a dog is a cat, a cat is an elephant, or a pig is a
horse. These are different kinds of animals, each with its own
individuality, and each kind having its own virtues.

In the ordinary course of nature, these virtues of the animal
lives are predominant and interest us humans. It is when men
spoil the unfortunate beasts that we find them departing from the
innocent and natural life that nature has endowed them with.
Most of the beasts have noble virtues, instinctively such, unless
man betrays their unconscious trust in him and distorts their
instincts. Look at the fidelity of the dog, the horse, even of
the house-cat! It is we who cause them to lead unnatural lives,
distorted lives, lives bent or twisted out of their natural
current; and it is just this that the human part of us does upon
and in the animal part of ourselves.

Let me make my meaning clear. I do not believe it is a good
thing to suppress the natural innocent animal in a man, but to
control it. Why, he is but part human. He is only part man.
Man, as we understand him, consists first of an inner god. Call
it an inner Buddha, an inner Christ, the source of all his being.
To this part of human nature, the Greeks gave the name Nous, the
noetic part, the source of all our highest, the center of
consciousness, and of conscience, the center of discrimination,
of compassion, of pity, of wisdom, of comprehension of other
things in the universe, of intuition, of sympathy, sympathy for
the souls of men and of all things. This is the highest part of
us, our spiritual part.

The particularly human part of us is what we call the higher
psuche, the psyche; and what we call the animal we can otherwise
call the natural part of man, and this is not his body. People
who have not looked into and studied this question all make that
silly mistake. They blame the body for man's faults and sins.
If the body sinned, there would be signs of it. You know
perfectly well if you examine yourselves that your body sins only
because emotions and low thinking impel it to do certain things.

I think it is altogether wrong to teach killing out the animal.
On the contrary, we want to refine, lift, and raise the animal.
In other words, we ensoul it with our humanity instead of
allowing it to control our human essence; that is what so many
men and women do. They allow the animal in them to run them.
Yet what would a man be without his animal nature? He would be
but part human. Do you think that I, G. de P., a human being,
could ever want to drop the animal part of me? Not on your sweet
lives! It gives me an opportunity to manifest on this plane. It
is my duty, my job, to make that animal a decent animal, a human
animal, to humanize it so that I, the ego, can work through it.

Sin actually with us humans does not reside in the body or in the
animal part of us. It resides in the human part of us, in our
emotions, in our willful, selfish thoughts that stimulate the
animal in us, rousing the wrong side, impelling it to do things
that carry the body with it. No, I want to be a full man, a
complete man: spirit, soul, controlled-and-refined animal, and
human body. Then if I misuse part of my being, from health I
shall obtain ill health, from decency I shall become indecent,
from human I shall have become animalized.

Those people who talk about killing out desire and killing out
the animal, to me are just plumb stupid. They lack psychological
penetration. A man to do his work in this world of ours needs to
be a complete septenary being. If he wants to be a god, he dies,
and for the time being, he is a god, or a demigod. As long as he
is on earth, it is his duty to be a full, complete man. His duty
is to act like a man, not like a degraded human run by the animal
part of him, but rather to use the animal as a vehicle through
which to work and manifest. He brings out the finest qualities
of the human animal in him, the devotion such as the dog has, the
affection such as the horse has, and the animal instinct of
remembrance such as the elephant has. He does this to manifest
humanly through them. That is the way for a man to live and
finally to die.

This animal is in his charge. This part of his constitution, in
indefinite future ages, will itself become a human being. The
spiritual part of us -- the Christ or Buddha within -- was a man
in past but now has become Bodhisattva-like or Christ-like
through evolution, through growth from within. Just so are us
humans, the central part of our constitution, striving or should
strive to rise towards the Bodhisattva-like part of us, the
Christ-like part of us.

Do you think a man would be as lovable, as approachable, who was
only part human if he had only part of his present constitution?
It is a peculiar paradox and a beautiful one in some ways in our
human understanding of each other, that what we love most in each
other are not the cold, exquisitely beautiful crystalline
virtues, but those things that we sense as fellow feelings, the
common humanity amongst us. Think over that.

That does not mean that the beautiful, holy, starry, pure,
crystalline virtues are not the highest part of us. They are.
They are our ideal and our lodestar. We are evolving towards
them, and the greatest man is precisely he who has developed them
most greatly. But if they have not instruments to work through
-- a receptive understanding human consciousness to work through,
which in turn can inspire and control the animal part of us, so
that we shall become fully human all along the line -- then we
have a man, outwardly complete, who because of what is modernly
called an inferiority complex will run off and shut himself away
from the world because he dare not face it.

The Theosophists' conception of the ideal man is not the washed
out, pallid ascetic who abandons his duty to humanity and to the
world merely in order to cultivate his own intermediate
constitution. Our ideal is the full man, the complete man, a man
like the Buddha, a man like the Christ, a man like the Masters, a
man who lives in the human animal, but controls, governs, and
makes it a fine instrument for himself, transmuting it into
harmony and beauty. He must be a full seven-principled human
being as the normal man is, but with every one of the principles
at work and all working in noble harmony for the universal good.
That is our ideal.

What is the use of flagellations, whipping the body, macerating
its flesh, or starving or abusing its health? All these things
show weakness, weakness of understanding and training, and an
utterly wrong psychology. If you are afraid of yourselves, it is
because your human part is as it is, weak, vacillating,
untrained, unreliable, an imperfect vehicle for the light from
above.

We do not, moreover, look upon as living an ideal life the man
who, for the sake of inner individual salvation, trying to attain
Nirvana by the back stairs, or by denying himself the right to do
his duty as a man in the world, macerates and flagellates the
body and kills it sometimes in the totally mistaken idea that
wrong and evil and sin arise in the body itself. The body is but
the passing instrument of the mind. It is the mind where wrong
is born, in evil thoughts. It is a wicked thing, in my judgment,
to abuse the gift that nature has given to us all, the gift of a
healthy body, and do our best to ruin it and make it unworthy for
the duty for which nature has intended it. The Christ did not
that. The Buddha did not that. The Masters do not that. It is
only the selfish monastics, the so-called yogins, fakirs, who
follow that parade of their virtue before the world, or at best
choose the Hatha-yoga way, so that they may have peace from
worldly responsibilities and duties. That is not the Masters'
way.

Do not imagine for an instant that I am preaching animalism. If
you do, you do not have my thought at all. My meaning is a
direct opposite of that. The true human is never animalistic.
He is essentially human, tender, compassionate, pitiful,
intelligent, self-sacrificing, full of sympathy, with a fellow
feeling for others; and because he himself has a lower part, the
animal part of him, he has sympathy, compassion, understanding,
and forgiveness for the failings of others. Our eyes should
always be turned upwards, heavenwards, because if we keep our
eyes turned downwards, earthwards, then the human is lost in the
animal -- and we all know the degenerate results of this!

The old Greeks, in fact all the ancient peoples, understood the
psychological composition of the human being very clearly --
something that modern psychology is just beginning to discover
anew. This knowledge of man's constitution and nature is as old
as thinking humanity. First in order is the divine or the
spiritual within him, the source of all the highest, the source
of all the rest of him, his consciousness coming down like a
stream from the god within, passing through every part of him,
glorifying, enlightening, and illuminating until it reaches the
lowest part and his brain is touched. This is the nous, the
noetic part.

Then comes the merely human, the vehicle of the former, the
higher psyche, then the psychic, the seat of our emotions and
ordinary thoughts, you and me as ordinary human beings. Then
comes the animal part of us by which we perform certain functions
in life, very necessary indeed, and that also helps us to
understand each other largely; in fact, without which we could
not manifest on this earth-plane. Then there comes the poor
unfortunate body. The body is a mere tool, an instrument that
follows the feelings and thoughts we have. That is where the
trouble is, in our feelings and thoughts, not in the unfortunate
body. Sin is born in the mind, in thought, in feeling. If you
want to eradicate sin, go to your self, the human part.

The point is, friends, let the angel, the higher part of us, be
dominant, not recessive. Let the animal have its own; let it be
innocently instinctual, but always under control. Let it be
clean. Simply let the flow from above, from the human, drop like
healing dew into the animal soul or animal mind, enlighten it,
and guide it instead of distorting it, as happens so often today.
Then you will have a fine man, a gentleman in the old sense of
the word, a man who instinctively loves the right, understands
self-sacrifice, and is determined to follow that law no matter at
what cost to himself. That is the gentleman. Because that is
our human being, when the spirit within us, the spiritual light,
fills our human part and passes the radiance on down to the
animal, it is beautiful. Then you have a man who in his higher
part is a hero, in his human part is a true leader, a true chief
of men, a guiding teacher, who in his human part is sympathetic,
faithful, affectionate, and true; and the body will show all
these fine things.

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BENEFITS FROM RESTORATION OF THE TEACHING OF KARMA

By Gertrude W. van Pelt

[From THE DOCTRINE OF KARMA: CHANCE OR JUSTICE, pages 55-58.]

Our civilization is being shaken to its foundations. Many have
said that its fate is hanging in the balance. The feeling of
instability and uncertainty as to the future is widespread.
Earnest people are asking what can restore normal conditions, and
are answering the question by a growing recognition of the fact
that men's hearts must be changed before radical reforms can
become effective.

The Great Teachers, two of whom initiated the Theosophical
Movement, having foreseen these conditions, sent their Messenger,
H.P. Blavatsky, to form a nucleus for a Universal Brotherhood,
and as a necessary preliminary to this, they restated through her
the ancient truths that give the basis for ethics. Men are not
going to do right unless they see a reason for it; unless their
minds are molded in harmony with the facts of Nature. Fed as the
Western nations have been, on unpleasant fairy-tales about life,
present and future, they are at sea for a rational explanation.
Current religious misinterpretations of the original teachings
given to every race, have outraged man's sense of justice; in the
groping after truth, a confusion of sects, good, bad, and
indifferent, has arisen worse than the Babel of tongues. It is
the Ancient Wisdom Religion, the fountain-head of all the Great
Religions and Philosophies of all times, the source of knowledge
in Science and Arts -- it is this alone that, in its universality
and power to coordinate every faculty of the mind, can restore
harmony and sanity to our world and evoke the true dignity of
human nature.

An honest and whole-hearted belief in the law of Karma in its
relation to life as a whole, would alone completely change the
character of our civilization. This may, perhaps, seem an
extravagant claim to those not understanding its deep meaning.
Yet the mere broadening of the present-day outlook would, in
itself, be a wonderful thing. The race-mind is now concentrated
on one physical incarnation, a mere wink of the eye in the soul's
history, and all events contained in it assume an undue
importance in one way and a lack of importance in another. The
sense of proportion and perspective is absolutely lost, and can
only be regained by lifting the veil and revealing the
illimitable vistas beyond. Simple common sense would then call
into play the faculties of reflection and judgment, to say
nothing of the awakening in the spiritual nature.

Gradually self-discipline would grow, beginning, perhaps, in
self-interest, but merging by degrees into something greater,
until the character is radically altered. Self-pity and whining
would be stamped out when the realization came that misfortunes
had been self-induced, and courage, will, and endurance would be
evoked. There would be less condemnation and uncharitable
criticism, and more kindness, more patience with the failings of
others, if a deeper understanding of the difficulties as well as
the possibilities in human nature were in the race-mind. We all
know that among the subtle poisons of our life is the tendency to
criticize others, to judge them unkindly, to impute to them
unworthy motives, etc. And we also know how this takes the edge
off every pleasure, and on the contrary, how fresh and clear the
air is when suspicion is absent and an atmosphere of healthy
sympathy exists.

The knowledge that one is master of his own destiny, would remove
the fear that at any time, out of the blue, an avalanche of
misfortune might be precipitated, once that the old records are
cleaned up. The knowledge that these old records themselves can
be softened in their results or even sometimes neutralized by the
force of will intelligently directed, would arouse courage.

The easy-going irresponsible, the indifferent, would gradually
awaken if the truth of Karma were in the minds of the majority,
for, by degrees, these sleepers would feel revitalized by a new
and invigorating mental atmosphere. Further, when the teaching
of Karma is realized, people will not seek to get something for
nothing, or envy those who have more than themselves. They will
know that time and the rolling cycles adjust all wrongs; that the
only way to gain life's treasures is to concentrate on the duty
in hand and leave the results to the Law.

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THE PROMETHEAN ACT

By Joan N Burnett

[From THE ARYAN PATH, October 1969, 428-33.]

Prometheus stole fire from the gods and brought it to earth for
man. This, at first, seems a meritorious act. Surely, it is not
for humanity to use its benefactor's name in any derogatory
sense. Shelley, in his great poem, "Prometheus Unbound," sees
him as man's helper against a tyrant-deity, who took revenge by
having Prometheus nailed to a rock in the Caucasus and sending a
vulture to prey daily on his vitals.

Before Shelley, there was Aeschylus. Aeschylus' "Prometheus
Bound" was the first play in a trilogy, and in it he so depicts
Prometheus "as the personification of the spirit ready to suffer
for the good he has done" that inevitably "our sympathies and
even our ethical judgments are mainly with him against Zeus."
(C.M. Bowra, ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE) The writer quoted then
suggests that in the third play, "Prometheus Delivered," which
was lost, it seems likely that Aeschylus reconciled Zeus and
Prometheus, since "the conflict depicted was between two right
causes, the betterment of humanity and the necessity of order."

How to evaluate these two right causes? Is not that the great
problem of our day, one that concerns -- no, not simply "the
whole world." From 20 July 1969, it concerns the entire cosmos.
Two days previously, with the astronauts still halfway from their
target, "far-sighted" businessmen were already discussing the
possibility of bringing down the vast quantities of valuable
metals scientists believe to be on the moon, and the BBC, London,
quoted their eager question -- "How would this affect
investments?"

From Prometheus to the Stock Exchange seems rather a dizzy drop,
but it is an apt, even a frightful, example of the predominant
view in this century of what constitutes "the betterment of
humanity." To how many of the three thousand pressmen at the
rocket-launch at Cape Kennedy, or of the millions glued
spellbound to their television screen or radio set, did "the
necessity of order" being preserved throughout the cosmos come
home with equal force?

Let us keep to earth, though, and not be sidetracked by the
monocot. It was for the earth-dwellers that Prometheus braved
the gods. A different interpretation of what he did for them
than either the Greek dramatist's or the English poet's is found
in a sentence of M. Jacques Albert-Cuttat's, his wise and
valuable little book, THE SPIRITUAL DIALOGUE OF EAST AND WEST.

> If [he says] the conquest of nature is divorced from its
> spiritual finality, and becomes an end instead of a means to
> glorify God by conforming the world to God's creative call . . .
> then the human domination of things becomes Promethean, i.e.,
> ungodly and therefore inhuman.

For "God" we may use our own thought-term, whatever signifies to
us that great Causative Principle of which we and the universe we
live in are the outward manifestation, which sustains all, being
the One Reality throughout, which is the source of cosmic law.
Even the most hardheaded young technocrat brooding over the
latest gadgets in his laboratory must confirm that such law
exists. Only through knowledge and observance of it did Apollo
11 itself come into being and achieve its end successfully.

Then why the stupidity, the evil, arrogant stupidity, of flouting
it elsewhere? Can so perfect a system be broken at any one point
without disaster following? That disaster does follow we know all
too well; the proofs are everywhere around us. Vegetation
destroyed by insecticides (which the insects themselves can now
withstand!); birds and fish killed in millions by oil or chemical
discharge; soil made barren, climates altered, by indiscriminate
tree-felling; rivers polluted with factory waste, as the
atmosphere with fumes -- not to mention radioactive dust. The
list is endless, and all these penalties, please note, are but
the outward and immediate ones. What the inner and long-term
ones will be, who can say? If in proportion to the crime,
appalling, surely. For the crime is against THE UNITY OF LIFE.

Can these be classed as Promethean acts? If we adopt M.
Albert-Cuttat's use of the term, yes. They are "human domination
of things" for no creative end, but for material profit only.
For this, and for this alone, man is exploiting both his innocent
fellow creatures and his living environment, nature, in which,
above all, "the necessity of order" is vital to him if he is to
continue to inhabit this planet earth in health and comfort.

Every one of the above abuses could be shown to have dire effects
on health, which has to be maintained nowadays by commercialized
drugs, anti-depression pills, and tranquillizers, twenty million
doctor's prescriptions for the last two being issued in Britain
in one year. Against the conquest of space put such defeat in
simply living! And remember that it may be a Promethean act to
disallow "the necessity of order" to one's body. According to
the Ancient Wisdom, a human birth is none too easily obtained; it
is the crown of long upward striving and the body entered into is
the vehicle for further progress. As such, it calls for respect
and care. Similar treatment to that which is lavished upon a
spacecraft!

Order reigns naturally in a healthy body, every part functioning
harmoniously with every other. More, it is a body suited -- some
would say allotted -- to the indwelling ego. Theosophy teaches
that the cells that compose it were brought together by no mere
chance; they bear the imprint of former lives and have to be
"redeemed," if need be, and their evolution furthered by the ego.

So all, from within outwards, are closely related each to each;
there is a deep foundational interdependence and unity. This is
proved in some degree by the need to match blood group with blood
group before giving a transfusion, though of course the "alchemy"
that blends the cells with the psyche goes far beyond physical
chemistry. Transfusion is a most dubious innovation and, when it
is forced on sick persons "for their good" against their known
wishes, should certainly count as a Promethean act, a violation
of the inner "order" which the dweller in that body deems
"necessity," preferring death if need be.

Now come the far more frightful transplants of organs, with all
the gruesome possibilities opened up to us recently of medical
and legal uncertainty as to when a donor is actually dead.
"Donor," by the way, is a sickly euphemism. Donors have been
rushed from their deathbeds through the city traffic to hospital
and laid on the operating-table still breathing but quite
impotent voluntarily to donate. Of course, one cannot pronounce
on this for all. To some the prolongation of bodily life, their
own or another's, will seem justifiable, even praiseworthy, by
any means. They will demand only a perfecting of technique.
Doctors themselves are divided on the subject. But the fact
remains: means exist and are in use for disrupting the basic
elements that make up a human being, by introducing strange
blood, a strange heart, even -- the latest repulsive aim --
strange sex organs, with what ultimate effect on that wretched
being no man knows, since all this is as yet in its early stages.

Nor do these experiments stop short with the physical envelope.
Drugs can be used without the recipient's knowledge. Some
paralyze or totally alter their brain functions. Some produce
sterility. Some destroy their moral judgment. All this power,
once the prerogative of "Zeus," rests now in the hands of those
modern Titans, the scientists, and in so far as it subserves only
EARTHLY man and promotes his material good solely (and through
the torture of millions of helpless animals at that), it must be
called a Promethean act.

Let us not be deceived by talk of "the betterment of humanity."
Granted, science HAS done much in certain ways for that. But one
suspects, nay, one knows, for they avow it, that another motive
is gaining fast upon our technocrats -- unholy curiosity.
Witness the Cambridge professor who recently deprived twelve
chaffinches of their hearing and said openly that his reason was
curiosity as to how they would behave when deaf, and that only!
Twelve of the sweetest little songsters in the bird-world! He was
"criticized" (!) for it but the matter petered out. And there
again we see the shameful attitude to nature, once the Magna
Mater approached with reverence and humility, now outraged,
exploited, her creatures abused, her pure waters and skies
defiled. "Holy earth," says Hesiod, writing of the birth of Zeus
in Crete, "took him in her arms. Holy earth hid him." In sharp
contrast spoke Sir Bernard Lovell of Jodrell Bank Observatory,
exulting in the triumphant flight to the moon. "Man is about to
free himself from the constraints of earth. We have lived these
millions of years in a dark cell."

Surely the darkness is rather in the type of mind that can so see
the lovely globe we live on -- Keats's "Fair world . . . fair
paradise of Nature's light" -- and spurn it so scornfully,
whatever wonders may lie ahead among its sister planets. And the
danger is that that darkness may deepen, even as in the days of
Atlantis, when men "degraded spiritual things and turned mighty
powers over nature to base uses," (W.Q. Judge, ECHOES FROM THE
ORIENT) unless a strong effort is made to counter it by those who
have a better wisdom than our glib, assertive technocrats do.

In his play "The Persians," Aeschylus shows the proud ruler,
Xerxes, not only trying to conquer his neighbors by force of arms
but also trying "to bend nature to his will more than it is right
for mortal man to do," by throwing a bridge across the
Hellespont. This may seem a small thing to us nowadays, far from
ranking as a Promethean act, but to a true Greek like Aeschylus
it was Hubris, which meant any kind of forwardness and excess,
and after Hubris came, inevitably, Nemesis, a lesson the Greeks
never failed to stress.

> When men or societies went too far, either in dominating other
> men and societies, or in exploiting the resources of nature to
> their own advantage, this overweening exhibition of pride had to
> be paid for. In a word, Hubris invited Nemesis . . . Today
> our technological idolaters seem to imagine that they can have
> all the advantages of an immensely elaborate industrial
> civilization without having to pay for them.

So wrote Aldous Huxley a good many years ago. But VEDANTA FOR
THE WESTERN WORLD may not please the "idolaters" as a textbook.

To say that the West wholly lacks reverence is to make ourselves
laughable: only weak fools, sentimentalists, claim reverence for
anything, be it art or sex or country peace or old age or the
soil or the animal world or what is wrongfully called "mere"
matter! Matter may be accounted low in the scale of creation, but
a perceptive eye will see it for what it is, "the most remote
effect of the emanative energy of the Deity." (H.P. Blavatsky)
As for the cry of sentimentalism, so popular with cheap critics
as an easy form of dismissal of whatever runs counter to their
own cocksure opinions, the dictionary defines "sentimental" as
"tinctured with sentiment," and what is sentiment but one of
man's best attributes, feeling? We need far more of it as a
counter to soulless efficiency. Feeling is sympathy, compassion,
and ahimsa, a concern for all that lives. It should mark our
attitude to the cosmos itself.

One last view of the Promethean act, always remembering that we
have used this phrase in a special sense throughout, seeing it as
a breaking-in upon the lawful order of things simply for man's
material benefit. It is, in essence, disruption. (Perhaps the
H-bomb is a grimly apt symbol of it.) It is "man's dominion," as
the poet Burns saw, breaking "nature's social union." But the
same act has, in fact, broken man himself, disrupting the harmony
between the human and divine elements in him. Unless the spirit
in him triumphs and effects reintegration, he will find no
lasting good, either through a new heart in his failing body, or
a new vision of "reality" derived from some hallucinatory drug,
or through all the copper and uranium that may lie awaiting him
on the moon.

There are few better analysts of and guides to the slow process
of reintegration than the late Hugh I'Anson Fausset, that Western
mystic who lived and wrote by the clear light of Eastern wisdom.
He writes, in one of his finest, most intuitive books, FRUITS OF
SILENCE:

> The law that on every level maintains the order and structure of
> the universe cannot be disregarded. It embodies the principle by
> which creation is made effective. Yoga teaches that to
> transgress this order, this dharma inherent in the heart of man
> as in the universe at large, and by which, as he becomes
> individually conscious, he can distinguish between right and
> wrong action, is to disturb the balance of the cosmos and to
> invite chaos to come again. It is also, by the ineluctable law
> of Karma, of cause and effect, to incur a debt against life that
> will have to be paid, and not only by the individual
> transgressor, before the balance can be restored . . .
>
> Few today recognize as their essential vocation the bending of
> their human faculties to the task of infusing spiritual meaning
> into the physical world from which their bodies are sprung. Yet
> this is our distinctive role in the creative drama in which we
> play, here on earth, a central part. And even when we perform
> that role perversely, exploiting or manipulating the powers of
> nature for our own delusive advantage, we only prove how
> impossible it is to escape our responsibility. For there is no
> power in life but spirit and to possess it consciously endows man
> with as awesome a capacity for unlimited destruction as for
> divine creation.

Scientific knowledge alone, he adds, will never restore to us our
"inherent sense of oneness with the Cosmos."

> [Only] when the mind consents to be the intelligence within the
> heart is it no longer the enemy of the real. And the ideas that
> are generated within a heart so enlightened are spiritual forces
> that descend into the sick body of life, charged with the
> radiations of a higher wisdom and a creative love.

In that last sentence, we find the true solution of the conflict
between the "two right causes" underlying the Promethean act.
For in fact, they are not two, but one. The necessity of order
and the betterment of humanity are indivisible. Only -- the
concept of that betterment must be spiritual.

------------------------------------------------------------------
'WHAT IS MAN, THAT THOU ART MINDFUL OF HIM?'

By H.T. Edge

[From THE THEOSOPHICAL PATH, December 1919, pages 559-63.]

All our capacity for happiness and usefulness depends on the view
we take of ourselves. We have our moods of dejection and
self-depreciation, when we say, "What's the use?" and sink into
apathy, seeking consolation in the doctrine, "Let us eat, drink,
and be merry, for tomorrow we die." We know the terrible strength
of such moods and what harm they work.

Is this the voice of the animal nature in us? Nay, it is worse
than that, for what animal indulges in self-depreciation? It is
an abuse of our gift of Mind, a perversion of our human nature.
We actually use our divine prerogative for denying our divine
freedom and power. The very power to enunciate such a doctrine
of despair confutes that doctrine, for it is only in virtue of
our intellect that we can enunciate it. Hence the preposterous
inconsistency of the attitude, and hence therefore the
self-deception we must practice in order to maintain it.

"Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels," says the
Psalmist; and more recent voices have declared, "Thou hast made
him a little higher than the apes." The "angels" are, in the
Hebrew original, the Elohim, which means the creative powers that
built cosmos out of chaos and were the Divine Instructors of Man.

Theosophy came at a time when the doctrine that man is a little
higher than the apes was fastening itself upon our mental and
moral atmosphere and threatening strangulation. It came to
restore the old teaching, the forgotten truth, that man was made
a little lower than the Elohim. It came to emphasize the dual
nature of man.

The true key to human evolution is given, as far as possible, in
H.P. Blavatsky's writings; and it is most important to bear it
in mind, as a counteractive of the doctrines of despair bred by
materialism in science and in religion. But even if man has
evolved upwards from the animal kingdom, the thoughtful mind will
ask what is the nature and origin of that power by which he has
so evolved. And though science may choose to ignore anything
beyond the material aspect of evolution, it cannot justifiably
deny other inquirers the right to consider the other aspects. Of
what nature and whence the self-conscious Mind of man and all its
marvelous attributes of freewill and self-determination? The
practical person will conclude that, whether the power of
evolution resides in the original cell or atom, or whether it
came from elsewhere, it is a most wonderful power, and its origin
and nature demands inquiry.

QUOTE

Our "Progenitors" had, in the course of eternal evolution, to
become GODS before they became men.

-- THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II, 349

QUOTE

Universal tradition shows primitive man living for ages together
with his Creators and first instructors -- the Elohim -- in the
World's "Garden of Eden," or "Delight."

-- THE SECRET DOCTRINE, II, 349

Man is dual. He is compounded of a rudiment that sprang from the
lower orders of creation, and a rudiment that is Divine and from
above.

This is one key, and quite enough to go for a long way. And it
is but a reinstatement of familiar truths that have been
preserved, but obscured, in religion. The dual creation of man
is found in confused form in the biblical Genesis, where it is
stated that the Elohim breathed into the "living soul" of man
their Divine essence, thus making him intelligent and immortal.
The words 'living soul,' in the above, it should be stated, are
better rendered 'animal soul,' being the Hebrew nephesh. This
man was formed out of the dust of the ground. But the other
account describes how the Elohim made man in their own image.
And this is of course the basis of ordinary Christian doctrine,
though all the life has been taken out of it, and we now find
even preachers of high degree speculating, and that openly,
whether there is any truth in what they have been teaching all
this time from their pulpits!

Another key of evolution is that history moves forward in cycles.
The ancient Greeks intended the zodiacal sign Libra or the
Balance:

QUOTE

To imply that when the course of evolution had taken the worlds
to the lowest point of grossness, where the earths and their
products were coarsest, and their inhabitants most brutish, the
turning point had been reached -- the forces were at an even
balance. At the lowest point, the still lingering divine spark
of spirit within began to convey the upward impulse.

-- ISIS UNVEILED, II, 457

The history of human races shows them gradually descending from
spirituality to materiality, and then reascending. This is also
the story of man the individual.

QUOTE

Our Higher Self is a poor pilgrim on his way to regain that which
he has lost.

-- H.P. Blavatsky

Hence, the history of humanity is epitomized in each man.
However much it may amuse us to study our biological and
zoological affinities, it is more practical to remember our
Divine parentage and ancestry. The Eternal Pilgrim is there,
seeking to express himself through the earthly instrument. The
Light within the shrine still burns, however much obscured by the
veils and colored windows of the mind and senses.

It was the aim of H.P. Blavatsky, by her writings and teachings,
to show that universal tradition as to man's Divine and heroic
ancestors is not mere childish fancy, but fact, faithfully
preserved, though often obscured; and that it refers to events
that have actually taken place on this earth. The cycles of time
are indicated by the geological record.

Thus, modern geologists have unearthed an important item of
knowledge. They have discovered the periodical changes of
upheaval, depression, etc., that mark off the earth's history
into larger and smaller cycles. They have mapped out the history
of the lower forms of life during these ages. They have not yet
done the same for human history, but we must give them time. The
period covered by what is generally accepted as human history is
absurdly small and insignificant in comparison, and is an
altogether too slender basis on which to build conclusions as to
human origin and destiny.

Once rid ourselves of the preconceived dogma that humanity gets
more primitive and savage as we go back, and we shall be able to
estimate at their proper value the facts. These show that the
beginnings of civilization can nowhere be discovered, but instead
of them the ruins of empires and cultures. To buttress their
preconceived theories as to the 'primitive man,' theorists point
to the unburied remains of degraded specimens, and say that these
represent the humanity of the past.

People talk of immortality as though it concerned the mysterious
after-life alone, and consent to remain DEAD all through their
present lifetime, in the hope that they will come to life after
their decease! But the important point is that we should be alive
here and now; and that is just what most of us are not. Eternity
is usually conceived of as being a very great deal of time,
tacked on to the end of the time we spend on earth. But eternity
is not time at all. We enter this state when we transcend the
illusions of time. Immortality is a condition we can and should
endue while on earth; for the Higher Self, the God within, knows
neither birth nor death.

Oh, it is important that man should preserve the center of his
vitality and not allow himself to decay like a rotten tree.
Living, as he does, in his petty personality, he makes for
himself a prison. In this prison, he chafes and frets, cursing
the powers that be and yielding to despondency and indifference.
Yet he has the key to the door of his prison within his
possession. The way of escape is in recognizing that that
personality is an illusion, a dream, a dogma, to which he has
chained himself.

The "Heart-Life" is a word often used with force by Theosophists,
to denote that real deep full life that lies beyond the small
life of the senses and personal desires. The Heart-Life must be
kept alive in humanity. For want of it, humanity has come to a
pretty pass. Humanity is longing to find again what it has lost.

With this in mind, we can better understand the inspiration of
H.P. Blavatsky, a Messenger who had tasted of these waters of
immortality, who knew of her own experience what Life really is,
and who dared all in order to come forth into the world and
prepare the way for a coming regeneration. We can better
appreciate the difficulties of her task and the constancy with
which she confronted them. Through this constancy, and that of
others who lit their torch at hers, the Theosophical Society was
preserved through many dangers, and still lives to carry out the
plans that its Founder devised. In the life at Lomaland, and in
the Raja-Yoga education established there, we see the foundations
being laid for a future state of humanity wherein the Heart-Life
shall reign again.

Faith is the great power that is needed to keep alive our hopes
and our efforts; for the world and the weakness of human nature
offer many discouragements. But those students of Theosophy who
have stood faithful through the years to its lofty principles,
and whose intuition has been grounded on loyalty to those
principles, are still working in deep inward joy for the cause
that they know must triumph so long as there are faithful souls
to support it. To them, the Divine nature of man is no mere
speculation, but a reality. They have lived to see the Divine
Spark triumphant over many and terrible snares laid for it by
mountains of selfishness that past Karma has accumulated for
them.

Reincarnation is an invaluable truth, but we must not let it
become a dead letter and a mere dogma of a vague futurity. It
must be, and can be, a thing of daily life, of the present
moment. For I die and am born again every time I achieve a
victory of the Spirit over the dark pessimism and despondency of
the passion-agitated mind. Hence, I can always take a new lease
of life, and have in truth discovered the secret of perpetual
youth. And all this because I have faith in the real teachings
about the nature of Man, and have sought to make those teachings
a reality in my life and a basis of conduct.

This realizing of the true nature of man does not mean a vain
puffing up of the personality. If that were so, how could the
workers at Lomaland get along together at all? Would there not be
continual personal frictions and factions? No; the enlargement of
the personality does not make for unity, but quite the reverse.
To realize the true self-respect, it is necessary to subordinate
the personality. This is of course a painful task, but the pain
is undertaken willingly and as a necessary process in the
self-purification for which the student is striving.

It is wonderful to see people striving to get knowledge by
reading a great many books, while all the time neglecting the
means by which knowledge could be made to pour in upon them in
measure as much as they could bear. By opening the channels of
intuition, we can broach the sources of infinite knowledge, for
we live in an ocean of it. But that can only be done by paring
away the cataracts from our eyes and loosening the bonds that
fetter our faculties. To know the ultimate mysteries of the
universe would be of little use to us, if we could not apply any
of that knowledge. What does concern us is to see the signposts
of conduct, to know how to steer our way through the life that is
before us and all around us. And it is here that the intuition
comes in.

For man, having once been a God -- being NOW a God in the clay --
has an unlimited fount of knowledge accessible. To approach it,
he has to arouse that mysterious power of INSIGHT.

What is Man? The answer depends on the point of view. Man may
look small on the dissecting table, under the microscope. He may
look small if we are scrutinizing his defects or criticizing his
clothes. We look very small to ourselves when we candidly
consider our weaknesses and foibles. That is not Man, that is
not ourselves. Look deeper and you will fail to find any end to
the possibilities of Man. He is an infinite being. What
belittles him is the delusion of personality. Let him therefore
realize that he is here to take his share in a stupendous and
glorious work, and then the burden of personality will lighten,
and he will place his feet on a spot whence he can deal with his
limitations.

------------------------------------------------------------------
SYMBOLISM

By R. Machell

[From THE THEOSOPHICAL PATH, September 1916, pages 223-27.]

How is it possible to avoid the conclusion that symbolism is
essential to art, when we find all creation characterized by
symbolism? For a symbol is but the outer form produced by the
interplay of invisible forces in conflict with the limitations of
matter, or inertia.

All form is produced in this way, and so may be said to be the
natural expression of inherent force balanced by the inertia of
matter, and this form is a symbol of that which produced it.
Thus all nature is symbolism, and symbolism is natural; it is
indeed unavoidable. But beyond this kind of inevitable symbolism
there is a form of symbolism in art that is distinguished from
other forms by the deliberate use of analogy in preference to the
more direct method of actual representation.

The difference between realism and symbolism in art would appear
to be that the realist aims at the reproduction of the actual
appearance of natural objects as an end in itself, while the
symbolist uses the representation of objects as a means of
suggesting ideas that are not capable of direct presentation in
art. Thus a flower might be used to express purity, a lion to
represent courage, and so on. These are simple forms of
symbolism, which to some minds appear as arbitrarily selected
substitutes for ideas, while to others they seem to be natural
emblems, in which the spiritual principle has expressed itself as
fully as the limitations of matter will allow.

It would seem as if the materialist, or realist, looked upon
natural objects as ends in themselves, whereas the symbolist sees
in them but a limited expression of the inherent idea. To the
latter the idea is the reality, and the visible object is but an
image that conceals the reality while suggesting in its form the
underlying forces that produced it.

To such a one the use of symbolism in art will appear inevitable:
while the realist who looks on the visible world as the reality
will necessarily consider symbolism as an attempt to suggest the
existence of that which is but a matter of belief or speculation,
by the unnatural use of natural objects.

But this crude way of stating the case does not cover the ground.
Man is complex. Man is not aware of the complexity of his own
nature. Man is a mystery, and his life is full of paradox. So
it is natural to find the most determined realist displaying a
tendency to symbolism, which to a spiritually minded man must
appear as an involuntary testimony to the existence of a soul in
the one who would himself deny its presence; and this symbolism
of the realist is perhaps a protest that his own soul makes
against the tyranny of his mind, which tries to limit by theories
the free range of spiritual expression. For the soul is
dependent on symbolism for language. Without symbolism the soul
is silent on the plane of matter and mind.

I know well that there are those who try to make the word "mind"
include the soul; but this is, to my thinking, but a trick to
blind the mind to its own natural limitations. Self-deception
seems to be a condition of life on the plane of intellect.

But mind is matter, and the Soul incarnate in material form must
use the mind as its interpreter. So the mind has to play a
double part, being the link between the more material and the
next higher plane of consciousness.

In this way it may happen that a man who has accepted without
close consideration the ordinary theories of materialism, may
believe himself to be a realist in the ordinary acceptance of the
term, while in fact he is keenly, or only faintly, perhaps, aware
of the inner life of things that gives their outer forms
significance. It may be this inner reality -- the character of
that which he represents, the soul of things -- that charms his
imagination and makes their outer forms so intensely interesting.

He studies nature with all his heart and strives to reproduce the
charm of it by the most faithful representation of natural
objects. And he is not wrongly styled a realist, because he does
indeed pursue reality, even if he fails to understand the working
of his own soul. But he is in fact a symbolist, for he is all
the time seeking to give expression to qualities in nature which
his Soul feels, but which no eyes can see, excepting in so far as
they are symbolized by visible forms.

And on the other hand the avowed symbolist may be the crudest
kind of intellectual materialist, and never know it. He may have
wit enough to see the correspondences that exist between certain
natural objects and certain abstract ideas, and he may find
intellectual diversion in toying with these things as a child
plays with a puzzle-game.

There are painters also who are solely preoccupied with the
sensuous charm of decorative arrangements of form and color, and
who seek to give added interest to their designs by the use of
figures and forms, the symbolical significance of which has been
popularized by symbolic painters or poets. In this way vast
numbers of ecclesiastical paintings have been produced, the real
theme of which was some decorative arrangement of forms and
colors, but which pass for symbolical because of the use of
familiar motifs as a basis for their artistic embroidery. This
repetition of conventionalized ideas has naturally made the
general public skeptical as to the real value of true symbolism.

Conventionality is the crystallization of a form which originally
embodied an idea. I say originally with intention and with no
reference to time; the ancients were no nearer to originality
than the moderns. All alike live and act and think in the
present moment -- they cannot do otherwise. The ancients were
modern in their day, and the moderns will be the ancients of the
future. Originality is the recognition of the origin of things,
which is in the eternal. It is the perception of eternal truth
and beauty in the temporary and evanescent form. Art is
concerned with both the contemplation of the eternal verity, or
the essential nature of things, and with the creation of
temporary forms through which the eternal may become manifest.
Art is in this sense a revelation of the eternal in the present
moment.

That is why there is such similarity of purpose and aim, and even
of method, in the greatest works of the great artists of
antiquity and of our own day. The most marked difference between
ancient and modern art is caused also by a similarity, or indeed
an identity, of purpose in those painters who sought then as now
to reach fame and recognition by skill and ingenuity in the
manipulation of conventionalized forms and crystallized symbols.
They are the materialists of all ages, even when the forms they
use are intended to suggest spiritual ideas; because there is no
real conviction behind the symbol, which is borrowed, but which
is not an expression of the artist's own soul-life.

Having no root in eternal reality, their works reflect the
temporary fashions of their day, as well as the traditions of
their school, which change from age to age, and which have but
one element of the eternal in them, the element of ceaseless
change. So the works of these, the majority in all ages, are
subject to classifications according to schools and periods,
nationality or religion: whereas the works of the exceptional men
of true genius have a most remarkable fundamental likeness, that
seems to assert itself above all the peculiarities of their
school or age. Their works bear the stamp of temporary
conditions, no doubt, but that which makes them remarkable is the
element of the eternal verity, which is beauty. This is what
lifts a work above temporary fame and makes it "classic."

How often one is arrested by the inexplicable attraction of some
familiar feature in the surrounding landscape or maybe in one's
own room, perhaps a bunch of flowers in a vase. Even now there
stands before me a group of roses that seem to be trying to
express their joy in their own beauty and their gratitude to the
loving hand that led them to the society of others as beautiful
as themselves, and so arranged them that the harmony of the
association made each more fully conscious of its own deep joy of
life. And in their inexpressible purity there seems to be a soul
that seeks to symbolize its own emotion in visible form
spontaneously, as a child smiles at its mother. There is a
presence in the roses as of a stately lady from some celestial
court who honors the chamber with her ethereal presence for a
little while, and when she goes, the flowers will droop and
gently fade into insignificance.

The essence of symbolism is significance. The secret of
significance is the presence of the Soul.

The soul can only find expression in material form when all the
elements of form are perfectly harmonious with the fashion of the
soul. The ordering of this harmony is Art. The end is
symbolism.

This is a practical age, we are told, and people have not much
use for symbols. They prefer photography to art because they
want the real thing, so they say. You may be shown a photograph
of a cat and everyone may agree that the picture is lifelike,
true to nature, and not a symbol in any sense at all. It is
accepted as a real reproduction of nature. But is it so? The
photograph is small perhaps and flat and smooth and no thicker
than a piece of paper, in fact it is from some points of view
quite like a piece of paper. Does a cat look like that? Does it
feel like that? Can you put a cat in your scrapbook like that? In
what way is it like a cat? Obviously it is but a symbol that
suggests a cat, and not really a reproduction of the creature.

The ordinary person who has no use for symbolism and suggestion
thinks that photography is so true to nature, that it is entirely
free from the taint of symbolism. But the fact is, all creation
is pure symbolism, because all creation is but the expression of
the invisible Soul of Things in outward and visible form. It is
only possible to deny the universal symbolism of nature by
refusing to look beyond the outer form of things, and the
deliberate acceptance of that outer form as the ultimate reality,
the thing in itself. But even so, it is hard to see how a work
of art, a picture, or even a photograph can be regarded as
anything else than a symbol. What then is to be understood by
the term when used to distinguish one kind of art from another?
What is the difference between realistic and symbolic art if both
are symbolic?

The answer is that in the one case the painter looks upon each
object in nature as a reality in itself, and the purpose of art
he takes to be the reproduction of such things, or the suggestion
of their appearance in the most convincing manner possible. The
symbolist on the other hand is supposed to use his power of
representation in such a way as to suggest thoughts and ideas
that are not inherent in the things he reproduces. He is
supposed to use his imagination to make natural objects appear to
be endowed with an inner life or significance that is not really
theirs.

I need hardly say that to a true artist such an aim would appear
inartistic to the last degree. True symbolism in art is not an
intellectual process for the creation of mental acrostics, but it
is an expression of the soul of things that reveals itself to the
soul of the painter, as an inner reality inherent in the outer
form.

To such a man all things are symbols; all living beings are the
ever-changing images of the soul's striving for expression in the
universe of matter. The whole of life to his imagination is pure
symbolism, and in his art he seeks to utter truth that is living
and comprehensible to the higher part of his intelligence. He is
at no pains to manufacture allegories, all life to him is
allegorical and he only seeks to simplify and to select some
theme of allegory detachable from the complexity of those
countless pictures wrought by the hearts of men into the tapestry
of human history that they weave eternally upon the loom of time.

We are all symbolists, whether we will or not; we are all weaving
at the loom of time strange pictures on the invisible tapestry of
history, invisible perhaps only to our normal vision, but seen in
part by the mysterious vision that we call imagination, hardly
knowing what we really mean by that, or we may call our inner
perception of these pictures intuition. Call them as you will, I
think that they are actual realities and constitute the world's
memory, its astral library, in whose archives are recorded all
the thoughts and deeds of men. Each man is a recording angel and
writes his doom each moment in the world's book of destiny. This
is the symbolism from which no soul is free until it attains the
ultimate illumination of the Spirit. The ultimate Truth is Light
and Liberation: all else is Symbolism.

------------------------------------------------------------------
TRUE SELF-REALIZATION

By H.T. Edge

[From THE THEOSOPHICAL PATH, March 1914, pages 182-87.]

If society is to be saved from the confusion of thought under
which it suffers, man must regain the sense of his own essential
Divinity. All fixed standards seem to be vanishing, and people
have lost their bearings amid the multitudinous deceptive lights
that flash up through the fog for a moment and are lost again.
It is universally understood that CHARACTER is the only pilot
that can steer us, and that all systems collapse unless founded
on a firm basis of individual character. But no one seems to
know how to restore character and give man back his lost sureness
and dignity. There is one thing for certain that will NOT do
this, and that is the philosophy that exalts above everything
else the ANIMAL nature of man. Man HAS an animal nature and
various animal functions; but he has a self-conscious mind that
can either be controlled by these animal functions or else can
control them. What is right and safe in the animal may be wrong
and destructive in man if he prostitutes his higher faculties to
lower forces. Are we to change all the laws that govern human
relationships, in order that animal man may have room to display
these emotionalized propensities?

We are even being taught to revere these propensities as some
sacred endowment from nature, but even the people who teach this
draw the line somewhere; they would not have man eating like a
hog or behaving in certain other ways in which various animals
behave. So it may be taken for granted that all agree that man
must restrain his animal propensities to some extent. The point
of difference is -- to WHAT extent?

According to some evolutionists the animal propensities developed
the intellect -- developed the intellect that is to restrain
them; and even the moral sense is supposed to have evolved out of
such passions as selfishness and fear. This seems a curious
reversal of the order of precedence.

We find in ourselves plenty of proof of our animal affinities but
we also find plenty of proof of our Divine nature. In fact, we
find in man the evidences of his affinity with all the kingdoms;
he is mineral, vegetable, animal, and divine. From the mineral
kingdom, he has derived the solid substance of his body and the
lesser laws that govern mineral atoms in their chemical and
physical properties. From the vegetable kingdom, again, man has
derived certain other and higher attributes; and from the animal
kingdom, he has derived a large and complex set of physiological
organs, with their appropriate functions and the desires that
reside in them. But he has derived much more than this. Man is
a storehouse of evolutionary products, a synthesis of universal
forces and qualities. From which kingdom did he derive his
self-conscious mind, his reflective and introspective intellect?
From which, again, did he derive his moral sense? It was
certainly not from the animal kingdom, which has these not. From
the animal kingdom, he derived that which it has.

The Divine Intelligence has existed from all time; or rather is
beyond all time. It is present everywhere in the universe, and
the tiniest atom manifests it in some degree. But man's mind is
its highest vehicle on our earth. This intelligence cannot
ensoul the animals, because they have not the vehicle for its
manifestation as such. But man is endowed with a faculty that
enables him to reflect the Divine Light to an unlimited degree.
He has the power of self-development. He can consciously invoke
the Divine. This supreme faculty places him far above all the
lower creation and can make him absolute lord over all the animal
propensities in him, however violent or however colored up by
specious philosophy and high-flown sentiment.

Possibly this may seem dogmatic to some people; but if man really
wants to control himself, there is no other way than by
acknowledging his Divinity. So there is the choice. There would
be no great harm -- or danger -- after all, in assuming as a rule
of life that man has a Divine nature.

Of course, the Divine nature is not that which makes a man puff
himself up, put on airs, and preach about "higher powers." That
is only his lower nature over again. For with his animal nature
man has acquired a large collection of animal peculiarities,
among them those of the peacock and the parrot. Only, whereas
these propensities, when exercised by the animal, are simply its
little best, in man they are follies. A peacock probably wishes
to please his mate, and knows no better way than to exhibit his
plumage; but a man knows better. The Divine nature is
sufficiently well expressed in the familiar words:

> "Charity" suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not;
> charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave
> itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked,
> thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the
> truth.

But perhaps it is better expressed by certain words not as
familiar to piety as to chivalry: Honor, Loyalty, Fealty,
Chastity, Fidelity, Courage, and the like. They are the very
backbone of human life. Whether we got them from the monkeys or
from God or wherever else, we MUST foster them or we shall decay
individually and collectively.

There are certain forces, always at work, whose influence is
hostile to humanity. Their effect is to destroy, if possible,
man's faith in himself. This is the only way in which humanity
can be destroyed. These forces are very subtle, for they
sometimes lurk unsuspected behind what are apparently lofty and
beneficent teachings. They work through human agents, some of
whom are conscious vehicles, others unconscious; some single
workers, others banded together. There is no need to point the
finger at anybody or any society or institution; the forces are
recognizable by their tendency and effects. We must beware these
forces, forces that tend to make us believe we are powerless or
corrupt, helpless or depraved. If we are depraved, we need not
stay so. If we are weak, we can become strong.

Humanity looks for a Savior to help it out of its difficulties.
Some expect a Messiah to come in the flesh; others fondly hope
that a spiritual outpouring of some kind will take place; and
others think the great God evolution will produce something out
of the melting-pot of human fatuities. But the true Savior is
ever present in his ancient temple -- the human heart; and it is
difficult to see how he is to help humanity without humanity's
helping itself.

We may often see sermons like this in the Sunday corners of
periodicals and elsewhere, but they amount to little because
there is no definite teaching behind them, and also because they
are inconsistent with currently accepted theories of life. But
Theosophy can do much more than preach moral sermons, for it has
its teachings to back up its precepts. Wordsworth could feel his
intimations of immortality and preexistence, and give them
utterance in poetry; and so have many other intuitive souls. But
they have always been hindered by their limitations. For the
fact is that the ordinary theories of human life and destiny do
not consist with the intuitions of truth that we obtain from the
Soul within. Also, many have complained that life seems a cruel
and meaningless farce. But these contrarieties disappear in the
light of the ancient wisdom now called Theosophy. It is the
Divine man that is the liver of the life; his are the purposes,
and they do not fail. If the fond delusions and desires,
engendered of our composite nature, do not fructify, it is
because they are not in accordance with our real Will or our real
interests. Pious people have often said, "It is Thy Will" or
"Thy will be done." In saying this, they have always thought of
an external power, not of their own true Self.

Can Theosophy restore the faded ideals of Honor, Loyalty, Truth,
etc? Yes, because it can bring about the conditions necessary to
their existence. Civilized humanity has to a great degree
mastered the idea of a collective interest in hygiene. We
realize that our health is interdependent, and that each one of
us has duties with regard to the community; and we take steps to
insure that these duties shall be performed, and we ourselves are
glad to perform them. We have begun to develop a sense of unity
in this respect. But it is so in morals also. If every man
realized that his acts and thoughts perfume or pollute the
atmosphere that his fellows breathe, he would thereby acquire an
unselfish interest in being pure. Theosophy, with its teachings
about man and nature, could render this a tangible fact.

Theosophy may be said to be demonstrating its teachings about the
essential Divinity of man by the success of the Raja-Yoga method
of education, founded by Katherine Tingley on lines also laid
down by H. P. Blavatsky; as well as by the effects that it
produces among the grown-up residents at the International
Headquarters, and upon all who embrace it. The children are
taught to rely upon their own inner strength from earliest years;
which is a very different thing from teaching them to rely on
their personal will. The great Law of helping and giving is
impressed upon them, and they respond readily for children are,
as the poet has sung, fresh from the Divine, and only need to be
guarded and kept from being educated in the way of selfishness.

Is it right to permit children to grow up in ignorance of their
Divine nature, and to send them out into the world thus crippled
by ignorance?

Theosophy answers the call of those who yearn for something
better than the ordinary ideals of life and who cherish
impersonal aspirations. It shows us how to call forth latent
powers and qualities that may be used impersonally and for the
good of all. Its limitless horizon of knowledge prevents it from
being a mere system of quietism, as is the case with so many
consolations that are offered; nor need it postpone its promised
boon to realms beyond the grave. And after all, what has
eternity to do with time, that we should so crudely imagine that
the one begins where the other ends? An eternal Now is no more
related to the future than it is to the present.

Sometimes people imagine that their Higher Self is but an
extension of their personality -- so deeply ingrained is the
sense of personal possession. But surely it is not right to lay
so much stress on the salvation of individual souls or the
development of separate personalities? The path of light and
liberation does not consist in a climax of egotism. What is
needed is to get away from that overwrought sense of separate
personality, that prison that shuts us up each in his own little
sanctum. For this, there is nothing like impersonal work,
solidarity. For though Theosophy does not teach annihilation or
absorption into the universal, but on the contrary maintains that
the Individuality (not the personality) of man remains the same
throughout the cycle of rebirths, yet the consciousness of the
Higher Self cannot be limited like that of the personality, nor
can there be any such feeling of separateness from other
creatures as we feel in our habitual state. So perhaps we may
approach the Divine by this way of forgetting the personality in
impersonal work. No one will deny that life grows smaller and
narrower for the selfish man; and the converse is true -- that
for the unselfish man it grows greater.

One day in the future, humanity in the mass will have reached the
point of definite and final choice between two paths; it will be
the day when humanity wins its triumph and fulfils its real
destiny. But before an aggregate of humanity can reach this
point, individuals may reach it. We must all reach it
eventually, for it is an inevitable stage in the destiny of man,
the Divine Pilgrim. It is as though he grew up, reached
maturity, passed a crisis, and was reborn. Jesus, in his private
conversation with Nicodemus, the man who came to him for
instruction, says that man is born a second time: the first time
of the flesh, the second time of the Spirit. Thus is the history
of the race repeated in the individual for man had "two
creations:" the first of the flesh, the second of the Spirit.

But moments of choice occur to us every day, when we may follow
either path. And it is important, in this age of sophistication,
to have the facts clearly before us. Then we may know that there
is something in us even more sacred than those desires that
bewildered philosophicules would have us reverence; and that a
true Man may be willing even to deny himself "self-realization,"
for the sake of a greater Self-realization.

It is indeed high time that the Divinity of man was taught anew
and with stronger appeal, if we are to withstand the "divinity"
of man's intellectualized passions (what a misuse of the word
"intellect"). Only Theosophy can make this ancient truth a
living reality. How drab and dreary does our modern life seem by
comparison with what it might be if the glory of humanity were
restored. What pigmies we are. Nothing sublime can flourish in
such surroundings, but either fizzles away in mawkish sentiment
or is buried in cynicism. The Divinity of man cannot manifest
itself in an atmosphere of selfishness, and the only condition of
attaining to beautiful ideals is that we should not seek to make
them into personal possessions or private enjoyments, as men
usually try to do.

------------------------------------------------------------------
REBIRTH, THE AWAKENING

By G. de Purucker

From GOLDEN PRECEPTS, pages 47-53.]

Rebirth, the awakening from the rest between earth-lives, is the
result of destiny, the destiny that you have made for yourself in
past lives. You have built yourself to come back here to earth;
and that is why you are here now, because in other lives you
built yourself to reincarnate. You are your own parents; you are
your own children; because you are yourself. You are simply the
result, as a character, as a human being, of what you built
yourself to be in the past; and your future destiny -- effect of
necessity following cause -- will be just the result, the karma,
of what you are now building yourself to be.

Here are the secret causes of rebirth: Men hunger for light and
know not where to look for it. The instincts of men tell them
the truth, but they know not how to interpret them. Their minds
or intellects are distorted through the teachings brought to them
by those who have sought for light in the material world alone.
To seek for light is a noble occupation indeed! But to search the
material world alone for it proves the searchers to have lost the
key to the grander WITHIN of which the material Universe is but
the shell, the clothing, the garment, the body -- the outer
carapace.

This is one of the secret causes of rebirth, the rebirth of the
human soul. An essential part of the Universe, man is one with
its very heart, in his heart of hearts and indeed in all his
being. He must obey the cosmic law of reembodiment; birth, then
growth, then youth, then maturity, then expansion of faculty and
power, then decay, then the coming of the Great Peace -- sleep,
rest; and then the coming forth anew into manifested existence.
Even so do universes reembody themselves. Even so does a
celestial body reembody itself -- star, sun, and planet. Each
one is a body such as you are in the lowest part of yourself.
Each one is an inseparable portion of the boundless Universe, as
much as you are. Each one springs forth from the womb of
boundless Space as its child, just as you do. One universal
cosmic law runs through and permeates all; so that what happens
to one, great or small, advanced or unadvanced, evolved or
unevolved, happens to everyone, to all.

You carve your own destiny; you make yourself what you are; what
you are now is precisely what in past lives you have made
yourself now to be, and what you will in the future be, you are
now making yourself to become. You have will, and you exercise
this will for your weal or for your woe, as you live your lives
on earth and later in the invisible realms of the spaces of
Space. This is one more, and the second, of the secret causes of
rebirth.

There is a third secret cause, and perhaps it is the most
materially effective; and this third cause resides in the bosom
of each one of us. It is the thirst for material life, thirst
for life on earth, hunger for the pastures and fields wherein
once we wandered and which are familiar to us, which brings us
back to earth repeatedly and repeatedly. It is this trishna,
this tanha, this thirst to return to familiar scenes that brings
us back to earth -- more effectual as an individual cause,
perhaps, than all else.

The excarnate entity after death and before the return to rebirth
on earth goes whither its sum total of yearnings, emotions,
aspirations, direct it to go. It is the same even in human life
on earth. A man will do his best to follow that career towards
which he yearns or aspires; and when we cast off this physical
body or garment that has outworn its usefulness, we are attracted
to those inner spheres and places that during the life on earth
last lived towards which we had yearnings and aspirations. That
is why we come back to this earth to bodies of flesh. It is the
same rule but working in the opposite direction. We had material
yearnings, material hungers and thirsts, latent as seeds in our
character after death; and they finally bring us back to earth.

After death, the nobler, brighter, purer, sweeter, seeds of
character, the fruitage, the consequence, of our yearnings for
beauty and for harmony and for peace, carry us into the realms
where harmony, beauty, and peace abide. These realms are spheres
just as earth is, but far more ethereal and far more beautiful;
for the veils of matter are thinner, the sheaths of material
substance there are not so thick as here. The eye of the spirit
sees more clearly. Death releases us from one world, and we pass
through the portals of change into another world, precisely as
the inverse takes place when the incarnating soul leaves the
realms of fine ether to come down to our own grosser and material
earth-life into the heavy body of physical matter.

The inner worlds to the entity passing through them, as it has
passed through this world, are as real -- more real in fact --
than ours is, because it is nearer to them. They are more
ethereal, and therefore are nearer to the ethereality of the
eternal pilgrim passing through another stage on its everlasting
journey towards perfection. These changes take place one after
another, before the next incarnation on the returning wheel of
the cycle. The pilgrim passing from one sphere to another
through the revolving centuries, ever going higher, to superior
realms, until reaching the topmost point of the cycle of that
particular pilgrim’s journey.

Therefore, fear not at all. All is well; for the heart of you is
the Universe, and the core of you is the heart of the Universe.
As our glorious daystar sends forth in all directions its streams
of rays, so does this heart of the Universe, which is everywhere
because nowhere in particular, constantly radiate forth streams
of rays; and these rays are the entities that fill the Universe
full.

------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTINUITY OF EXISTENCE

By H.T. Edge

[From THE THEOSOPHICAL PATH, December 1913, pages 369-74]

The recent presidential address at the British Association annual
meeting has aroused new interest in the discussion as to whether
there is continuity of existence -- in other words, life after
death; and many are the comments and lay sermons that have
appeared in the papers on this topic. The idea of continuity of
existence hinges on to the idea that there is in man a deeper
consciousness -- a soul or spirit -- which does not share in the
mortality of his body and of his personal make-up.

But for the most part, those who discuss the problem omit to
sufficiently eliminate the idea of TIME. Immortality is always
spoken of as if it came AFTER mortal life, the two being joined
end-on and lying separate from each other. But why should this
be so? Are we not, in thus reasoning, putting into the problem
too much of our narrow conventional notions? If there be an
immortal substratum in man, must it not be existent at all times,
both during and after life?

If this be so, then the question of immortality becomes a
question of the present and not of the future alone or
particularly. And see the bearing that this consideration has on
the question of attempts to communicate with the souls of the
departed. Why should we expect to be able to communicate with a
disembodied soul better than we can communicate with an embodied
soul? What do we know or apprehend of the immortal part of those
now living? And if we cannot recognize or discern the soul of a
living person, how could we fare any better in the case of a
deceased person?

It would seem likely that the so-called evidences of immortality,
derived from experiments in spiritism and psychic research, have
little if any bearing on the problem, and that all these
experiments have proved is the existence of certain phenomena or
properties of nature that have no particular connection with the
question of immortality. To be searching about in postmortem
regions for evidence of the existence in man of an immortal Self
seems after all a misdirected and futile attempt; and we are more
likely there to find what in fact we do often find -- evidences
of the temporary and partial survival of some of his mortal
vestures.

Again, we carry into these researches the same mental limitations
with which we are accustomed to approach problems concerning
mundane and physical affairs; and consequently we make the same
mistakes. Instead of looking for evidence of an immortal life,
we expect evidence of a continuation of mortal life; as though
the disembodied and emancipated soul lived the same kind of life
as the imprisoned ego lives while on earth.

To solve the question of immortality, we must evidently pursue a
different line. We must pursue the line of clarifying,
enlarging, and elevating our understanding. We must aim rather
to approach to knowledge of the immortal Self while in the body,
than look for traces of it after death. Nor can we solve such a
question by itself alone; for it is intimately mixed up with many
other questions, all of which are comprised under the general
head of Self-Knowledge.

It is said in newspaper comment that "occultism is everywhere and
stares us in the face wherever we turn." But what kind of
occultism is this? It merely reflects the real hunger for
knowledge that lies deep in the common heart. People really do
desire definite knowledge about the mysteries of their own nature
and the meaning of life, and are weary of statements, hypotheses,
and assertions. But there is a plentiful scum of folly and
superstition to be waded through. Yet the march of current
thought slowly but surely follows the lines long before marked
out by the pioneers; and such events as the aforesaid
presidential address mark a definite wave-front of current
opinion.

In speaking of the possibility of man’s attaining greater
knowledge while on earth, we broach the subject of
SELF-DEVELOPMENT -- an idea prominently in the public mind, and
the subject of much folly and futility. In speaking of
immortality, we cannot avoid speaking of self-development.

The most important thing to remember in this connection, as
Theosophists from H.P. Blavatsky onwards have so often said, is
the distinction between self and Self, between the real, enduring
Self in man and the numerous and varying personal selves that he
creates by his thoughts and desires. What self do we propose to
develop? If we are to develop any personal self, then the meaning
is that we shall simply intensify vanity, self-love, ambition,
desire, or some such undesirable and woe-bringing force. But the
teaching of the Wisdom of the Ages is that no such personal
factor is permanent or a possible source of happiness.

However strong a delusion may become, however fondly it may be
cherished and however enduring it may be, it has not the quality
of immortality and it must end in disillusionment and beginning
again. Hence the true self-development cannot mean the
developing of any mere personal desire whatever. Yet is not this
personal development the very thing that many popular teachings
aim directly at?

To dispel the illusion that there is any value in this kind of
self-development, it is only necessary to think of other people.
The desires of different people do not harmonize, and the
individual hopes and wishes of any particular person count very
small indeed beside the interests of humanity or even those of
any considerable section of humanity. How, then, can the
development of personality make for harmony and wisdom?

True, a man may argue that the interests of humanity are too
large for him and that he will therefore restrict his efforts to
a more contracted sphere. But then, in that case, he must also
limit his intellectual ambitions and be content to remain in
ignorance and perplexity as regards many problems. In short,
Wisdom is not to be had for the mere asking, but must be won.
There is no bar to man’s attainment of knowledge, except the
barriers that he makes himself; but he cannot expect to remain in
a lower sphere and at the same time to possess the knowledge
belonging to a higher sphere. In other words, if he desires
knowledge about immortality, he must WIN it, EARN it.

Of course it is our mental limitations that keep knowledge from
us. And what are these? First of all, there is the limitation of
personalism, which every religion teaches is the great cause of
ignorance. Personalism, we are assured, is an illusion; that is,
it is a false notion, a temporary state of mind, which must
disappear before the light of truth. And experience teaches us
how uncertain and fluctuating the mere person is. It is evident
that so long as we fail to grasp the great mystery of the
difference between "I" and "Thou" -- the difference between my
own self and other selves -- we stand helpless before a
fundamental problem. In view of this helplessness, it is not
wonderful that we fail to solve other problems. This question of
immortality and of the existence in man of an immortal Self must
be involved in the mystery of selfhood.

Personalism has been very strongly accentuated in the present
order of civilization, and consequently there is a corresponding
difficulty in grasping essential problems of life. The problems
we aspire to solve are to a great extent concerned with the life
of Man as a race, not with the life of units.

If there were not such a strongly developed personalism among us,
we should not be so much impressed with the supposed importance
of our own particular existence, or so much troubled about our
fate after death. We should be more conscious of the oneness of
life; we should feel more that we cannot die. This feeling gains
the predominance in moments of exaltation when people act
"heroically" -- or shall we say "naturally?" Now consider this
point: May it not be possible that the light that now comes only
in rare moments of exaltation could be with us all the time? In
that case, we should be able to act NATURALLY on ordinary
occasions; that is to say, we should be able to act in accordance
with the actual facts of our existence, instead of under the
influence of false notions.

The question, "Shall I live after death?" or the similar
questions, "Have I lived before?" and "Shall I be born again?"
cannot be even stated or formulated so long as we have failed to
find a definition of the words "I" and "self." It will be
admitted that most questions are stated vaguely and without
proper definition of the terms, and that this is the usual reason
why they lead to fruitless verbal quarrels. It will be admitted
too that the prudent man insists on having his question
accurately stated. Many go so far as to say that a question
accurately stated is its own answer. This certainly seems as if
it might be true in the present case. Could I define to myself
the word "I," the whole question of immortality might be solved
without further inquiry?

SOMETHING lives again, but what? The meaning of human life seems
incomprehensible except on the hypothesis that man is a union of
permanent and impermanent elements. The problem he solved
answers which are the impermanent elements, and what is left over
after these have been subtracted?

The answer to this question is not left to the decision of our
fond desires or imperfect conception of what is desirable and
just. In our innermost Self, we are wise and undeluded. Our
habitual consciousness knows not the end and purport of our life;
and its little plans, not being in harmony with the real purpose
of that life, "gang aft agley." No doubt we think it would be
very desirable that our precious personality should persist, in
its present habiliments, purified perhaps from the grief and pain
and a few of the more inconvenient sins, but in full enjoyment of
the pleasanter weaknesses. Yet we should think far otherwise,
could we in a moment of awakening become aware of the fatuity and
feebleness of that precious personality when seen in the light of
a ray from the Wisdom within. We pray to be washed clean when we
die, but what do we expect when we offer that prayer?

The passage of the Soul from life on earth to its state of
liberation after decease must be of the nature of a bright
awakening from a troubled dream. That gaining of light, about
which we sometimes talk when we say that at death we shall know
all -- what does it mean? We know that in our present state we
could not bear such an illumination, we could not understand a
revelation, should it be vouchsafed. We must first pass to a
larger sphere of consciousness. Death is liberation from the
illusions of embodied life, the chief of which is the person -- a
necessary limitation, doubtless, necessary for our evolution, but
still a bar to the knowledge toward which we aspire.

And those friends who have gone beyond our ken -- died, as we say
-- we knew them not when they were here, else perchance we should
know them now. It was only the outer man that our dim eyes
discerned, and that has faded from our vision. The mystery of
bereavement should serve to lift us nearer the light of
knowledge.

Theosophy comes to tell men they need not dwell forever in the
mists of ignorance, for they possess the light within them and
need but to seek it. This has always been the teaching of the
Helpers; but men have made for themselves formal religions with
doctrines that obscure the light. The Saviors say that man can
save himself by acknowledging his own Divinity; but after them
come other teachers who tell man that he is a helpless sinner.
It is upon man thus weakened that the trickster then plays,
deluding him with bogus philosophies and freak religions. And it
is not surprising that there is much doubt and confusion in the
world and that people cannot tell the true from the false.

The world will not realize for a long time what a priceless boon
was conferred on it by H.P. Blavatsky, the restorer of lost
ideals, which the world so cherishes, but which were in danger of
being stifled under a load of despair and cynicism. To her
efforts is due the great awakening that is now stirring the world
in its uneasy slumbers. It is as though a new spirit had been
infused. People talk of coming Christs and do not discern the
signs going on around them. Mankind is awakening to a fuller
consciousness. And we all know that its watchword is
"Brotherhood," and that nothing that cannot give this password
will pass muster. Here then is the way to distinguish the true
from the false. Who is working for humanity and who not? Or
which teachings make for Brotherhood and which not?

Immortality is an ideal to be sought after in the present -- not
longed for after death. We should aspire to reach that in us
that is immortal. And this we can achieve in proportion as we
can get away from our selfish limitations.

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